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10808	----	CONSUMERS' COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES IN NEW YORK STATE _Published April 1922_ _by_ The Consumers' League of New York 289 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY * * * * * This study was originally prepared for the Consumers' League of New York in 1921 by Mr. Cedric Long. It has been revised by the League in April, 1922. The Consumers' League wishes to express its appreciation of the valuable advice and assistance given by Mr. Louis B. Blachly of the Bureau of Cooperative Associations of the State Department of Farms and Markets both in the original preparation of the material and in its revision. * * * * * COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES The principles established by the Rochdale Pioneers in England in 1844 and observed consistently by successful societies since that time are as follows: 1. Earnings of capital stock limited to legal or current rate of interest. 2. Surplus earnings to be returned to members in proportion to patronage. 3. One vote for each member regardless of amount of stock owned. No proxy voting permitted. In addition, the majority of societies adhere to the following principles: 1. Business to be done for cash. 2. Goods to be sold at current market prices. 3. Education given in the principles and aims of cooperation. CONSUMERS' COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES IN NEW YORK STATE The Extent of Consumers' Cooperation. The Tenth International Cooperative Congress, held in Switzerland in 1921, disclosed the fact that since the last Congress, in 1913, the number of cooperators in the twenty-five countries represented had increased from approximately eight million to thirty million and that cooperative trade had increased correspondingly. Today in Great Britain the cooperative societies number more than four million members, nearly one-third of the entire population being represented in these societies. Switzerland, in 1920, boasted three hundred and sixty-two thousand members and a third of the Swiss people bought goods through their own societies. Cooperation is still alive in Russia in spite of its unsettled economic conditions. In 1920 there were twenty-five thousand societies with twelve million heads of families. In the same year the German cooperative societies were two million seven hundred thousand members strong. In the United States cooperation has had an erratic development. Within the past seven years, however, there has been a rapid increase in new societies until today it is estimated that there are about three thousand with a membership of half a million. In number of societies New York is far behind most of its sister states. It has one hundred and twenty-five genuine consumers' cooperative associations, seventy-five of which are among farmer groups and the remaining fifty among city consumers. There are in addition some twenty cooperative buying groups connected with large commercial organizations. No complete tabulation has been made of the total business of all these cooperative groups, but in 1921 the five largest cooperative societies among the city consumers, with an average membership of 1,800 persons, all located in New York City, did a total business of approximately one million dollars. These societies and many others are prospering. On the other hand there are many cooperatives which have failed. Whether they have failed or succeeded more knowledge of practical cooperation can be gained from their experience than can ever be learned from books. The Consumers' League feels that the experience of these societies should not be wasted. For this reason it is telling the stories of several cooperatives in New York, some of which are successfully established and some of which have fallen by the roadside. In these brief stories are written a hundred lessons that cooperatives should heed. SUCCESSFUL COOPERATION The Utica Cooperative Society. At the corner of Court and Schuyler Streets in Utica stands a grocery store which is different from an ordinary store. It is different because it is a cooperative store and it belongs to those who buy as well as to those who serve. There is no need for the purchaser to be on guard lest the bargain be to his disadvantage, for he is dealing with friendly clerks who are there to help him find what he wants, not to sell him something he cannot use. In this store the purchaser can find all the articles carried by a first-class grocer, canned goods, green goods, dairy products and, in addition, a complete supply of baked goods, baked by the cooperative society itself. The bakery is to be found behind the grocery. Large, high windows throw a flood of light into the mixing room. The oven is of a modern type, large, easily controlled and economical. Five men work at the baking and a boy wraps bread in waxed paper with a mechanical device which automatically folds and seals. The three delivery wagons bear the cooperative motto, "Each for All, and All for Each." They are used in the morning for the delivery of baked goods and in the afternoon for the delivery of groceries. It keeps three boys busy all day covering the territory between the cooperators' homes. The delivery system is essential because the membership is scattered throughout the entire city. There are fourteen employees in the grocery and bakery. Hitherto they have received wages higher than those generally prevailing throughout the city for the same kind of work, but recently on their own initiative they voted themselves a ten per cent decrease. In a cooperative all members may know the financial status of the business and the employees found that, due to the diminishing margin of profit, the business could not support such a high scale of wages. Their wage cut followed because as members of the cooperative they were interested not only in their own wages but in the good of the society as a whole. The Utica Cooperative Society was organized in 1915 by a group of Germans. Half a dozen nationalities are now represented, although Americans predominate. Although they had only ninety-two members and $1,250 to start, they bought out a private store and began cooperative business. Their bakery was originally in the cellar under the store. The former owner was employed as manager. For three or four years they experienced many difficulties. Within two years two managers proved inefficient and had to be replaced. Only the tenacious loyalty of a few kept the society alive. But they had the foresight and determination to fight through those lean years. Now for five years they have had the same manager. He insists upon scrupulous bookkeeping methods, careful buying, close supervision of his work by the board of fifteen directors, strict regard for the needs and desires of the membership, and exceptional precautions against waste and leakage. The president, a man having a private business of his, own, has an idealism almost religious in quality. These two men cooperate closely on matters of policy and provide much of the leadership which has brought success. The membership is now 380. The capital stock has increased from $1,250 to $27,594. The business in 1921 amounted to $105,598, forty per cent of which was done by the bakery. Since 1915 the rebates to members on patronage have totaled $8,207, fluctuating from nothing at all in some years to eight per cent and ten per cent in other years. During this period the lump sum saved to purchasers, including rebates, the earnings on stock shares, and reserve fund, amounted to $12,642. This sum would have gone into the pockets of private storekeepers except for the cooperative store. The Utica Society has succeeded because it has met the prime requirements for effective cooperation. The greater part of the membership was loyal during critical times when the easy way would have been to withdraw and trade at chain stores. The management worked unceasingly to put the business on an economical basis. Finally they won out because they put Service over Profit and carried out that rule in the most practical and businesslike way they could find. * * * * * Our Cooperative Cafeteria. If you should drop in for lunch at any one of the three branches of our Cooperative Cafeteria in New York City the first thing that would strike you would be the friendly spirit of those back of the serving tables. Before you paid your check you would observe further that the food had a variety and flavor not found in the ordinary restaurant. If you were discerning you would detect that a complex machinery was at work which had nearly escaped you because of its smooth operation. That genial spirit which infects the whole place and those subtle things which appeal to your eye and palate explain the success of the cafeteria. But there are some underlying causes for these things that we must get hold of and to do that we must go back to the year 1919. In October of that year a private cafeteria was started by two women with a record of successful cafeteria experience behind them. The experiment proved successful and the following April a momentous step was taken. It was proposed that the persons who ate there become the owners. A cooperative society was formed and in two weeks shares were sold to the value of two thousand dollars. The new owners took over the cafeteria and the former owners became their hired employees. This was the beginning of Our Cooperative Cafeteria. The cafeteria had from the outset advantages which are gained by many cooperatives only after bitter and costly experience. They had skillful and experienced management to which they immediately gave over all technical control, holding them responsible through an active Board of Directors and an accounting system devised by experts. The management justified the confidence of the shareholders. On April 1, 1921, after one year of operation they had outgrown the first plant and a new branch had been running for two months. There were in all 379 members. The year's business had been $96,000, of which $6,000 were net earnings. The stockholders had received six per cent on their investment, a reserve fund had been laid aside, and every month the member-patrons had received rebates on the food eaten of from six per cent to sixteen per cent. At the end of the second year the third branch, larger than either of the others, located in the Wall Street business section, had been in operation for three months. The membership of the society had increased to 750. The business for the year had been $190,000 and the net earnings were $12,000. The cafeteria now employs sixty-eight workers, most of whom are shareholders and vote as such in membership meetings. The worker receives the same food as the patrons, served at the same counter. Against all restaurant traditions the worker is served before the meal so that she may have the best there is and have it before she is too tired to eat it. The minimum wage is higher than the customary rate for restaurant workers in New York. The forty-eight hour week is the standard, although as yet some of the help work over that time. Overtime is one thing that the management has not yet been able wholly to eliminate. It has been found that the policy determining function of the stockholders and Board of Directors cannot operate independently of the plans of the management. The two in a business organization must be closely inter-related. The stockholders have not tried to supervise the details of the business, as has sometimes been done to the disaster of cooperatives. The general manager instead has gone to the Board of Directors and sits there practically as a full member. As a result the policy function of the Board and the management function are closely linked together as they must be in a business that is to be permanent. The stockholders are not idle, however. Through their committees, they have amended the by-laws. They have recently called a general meeting for the consideration of labor policy, and they publish monthly a little paper known as "The Cooperative Crier." The average attendance at the shareholders' monthly meetings is sixty or sixty-five. To an unusual degree the success of Our Cooperative Cafeteria is bound up with its management, not only because it is technically expert, but because it is thoroughly imbued with the cooperative spirit. Around the first nucleus has grown a staff of intelligent young men and women, usually college bred, who are devoting all their brains and energy to see that this cooperative cafeteria succeeds. They seem to find a peculiar satisfaction in knowing that their efforts will not enrich a few individuals at the expense of patron and employee alike, but will increase the common welfare of the community itself. Like other cooperatives, the cafeteria has found the need for expert and trained workers in place of the hard-pressed volunteer. Much of the work on education and cooperative organization is carried on by trained members of the staff. This interest of the paid employees in things other than mere technical efficiency contributes much to that friendly spirit which makes Our Cooperative Cafeteria unique among the restaurants of New York. * * * * * The Village Cooperative Society, Inc. After nearly two years of discussion and meetings and after long consultation with experts a group composed largely of the housewives in Greenwich Village in the heart of New York City started in January, 1921, a cooperative laundry. The second-hand machinery which they purchased was not a laundry unit, the capacity of the washer being one-fourth that of the ironer; they had insufficient capital, half of it borrowed; they employed an inexperienced manager and a green bookkeeper; and for the first eight months the supervision was almost entirely carried on by volunteers, hard working, but without the foresight and power of control so essential to a new organization. Under these handicaps the cooperative laundry lost money every month. It existed through those months due largely to two things. First, they were forced almost immediately to employ a new manager who consistently turned out high grade work, and secondly, a small group of volunteers put all their energy into making the thing a success. Then the causes of the continued failure were one by one eliminated. A business manager who had an intense interest in cooperation was hired to supervise general operations. He took over much of the work of the volunteers and for the first time the laundry developed a well thought out policy. The inexperienced bookkeeper was eliminated and all supervision headed up in the new manager. Better service brought more work, and new machinery made greater output possible without additional labor. The manager found labor cost too high and introduced methods which saved both labor and money. He found the machinery badly arranged. When the plumber told him it would cost twenty-five dollars to rearrange it he spent a dollar and forty cents and did it himself. After a discussion in the Board of Directors which nearly wrecked the organization, a Board policy of leaving all details of management to the manager and chairman of a managing committee was determined upon, while the Board devoted itself to the determination of general policies. The results of these changes were soon apparent. For the first time the dead line between losses and earnings was crossed and net earnings gradually began to mount. In September, 1921, the amount of business wavered around a hundred dollars a week. In March, 1922, it averaged about $330 per week, and net earnings have run as high as $75 per week. The laundry is still small and is located in quarters for which it pays a regular commercial rent. It has expanded several times and now has three power washers, an ironer or mangle, a dry room and other equipment. It employs a business manager, who supervises the plant and does everything from keeping the books to collecting the laundry in a pinch, a work manager, a washer, a sorter and marker, four ironers and a delivery boy. It still holds hard to the policy of putting out the very best kind of work and economizing in every particular. Its very success has in a way embarrassed the laundry. The manager has been offered special inducements to leave. The delivery system has been tampered with. There has even been acid thrown on the clothes by outsiders jealous of its business. But this has only stimulated the whole membership to fight harder to realize their aim of getting their own laundry work done the way they want it, and without profit. * * * * * The Finnish Cooperative Societies of Brooklyn. What is it that makes the Finns so successful at Cooperation? Industry and cleanliness. At any rate those are the striking characteristics of the Finns of Brooklyn. Up to the present time they have never paid any dividends. It has been explained to them, as their manager says, that if the business is to serve them properly it must grow, and in order to grow it needs all the surplus earnings for expansion. And so, because the members are industrious and far-sighted, they have foregone their dividends. The cleanliness of their stores, too, is an inspiration not only to their membership but to hundreds of others who have visited their plant. This is one of the biggest business assets they possess. These virtues have enabled the Finnish group in Brooklyn to build cooperatively a three-story modern business block, to run therein a wholesale bakery, a retail bakery, a meat shop and grocery store, a cooperative restaurant and a cooperative pool room, to build adjacent to this two modern cooperative apartment houses and to lay the foundations for a third now under construction. Outside of the housing venture the business done last year was $175,000 and today there are nearly two thousand members. Although these undertakings are practically a part of the same group there are three separate corporations. The largest of these is the Finnish Cooperative Trading Association, Inc. The restaurant is operated as the Workers' Cooperative Restaurant, Inc., and the housing association as the Finnish Homebuilders' Association, Inc. The restaurant is the oldest. Seven years ago a group of Finns in this locality boarded together. Their capital was a hundred dollars which some one had loaned to them. They ran their little business on a cooperative basis, paying for the meals and putting back any surplus into a reserve. No one contributed anything, but before long they paid back the one hundred dollars. Early in 1922 they incorporated. They then owned a fine modern restaurant, had done $70,000 worth of business in 1921, and had three thousand dollars in the bank. And no one had ever paid a cent into the business. With all this they sell their food at unusually low prices, well cooked, wholesome, and clean. In 1917 a larger group determined to have a bakery which came up to their standards. In 1919 they had raised enough money to start construction. Then they faced their first test Their money gave out. Undaunted they organized a money raising "army," as they called it, of thirty or forty men. The money was raised. By the time the new bakery was opened they had fourteen hundred members and had raised $140,000. The total organization expenses for three years came to $400, less than three-tenths of one per cent for promotion expenses. The new business block was opened in May, 1920. All but the restaurant was under one general manager. He was bonded for $10,000. He had had business experience in running a cooperative bank in Wisconsin. To him was delegated a large degree of freedom, but he was held strictly accountable to the Board of Directors. A thorough and comprehensive system of bookkeeping and accounting was installed. Each separate business, the bakeries, the pool room, the meat shop, was put on a cost accounting basis and the manager knew just which one was making or losing money. All the branches of the business, however, have made money. Over $12,000 in net earnings, after allowing for interest on the investment, have been made since the business started. Last year the bakery did business to the extent of $135,000, the meat market and grocery $58,000, and the pool room $12,000. Already the business has outgrown its quarters. A new oven has been added to the bakery. The third floor, which was used exclusively as a pool room, has been invaded and the thirteen pool tables rearranged and put closer together so that more room may be had for bakery products. Adjacent land has been purchased so that the building itself may be added to. The membership of the Trading Association alone is eighteen hundred and forty. The employees of the association work among almost ideal conditions. The twelve bakers are all union men and members of the cooperative association as well. They work seven and one-half hours a day and are paid from forty-five to fifty dollars per week. The light, airy bakery is always kept spotless. Adjacent to it is a commodious room with lockers for each man and two shower baths make it easy to keep clean. Down on the first floor the retail bakery is so immaculately clean that you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry and to smell them hungrier still. This, you are told, is because only the purest ingredients are used. Many bakers use powdered eggs for baking, commonly imported from China; this cooperative uses only fresh eggs. They buy a better grade of flour than their competitors do. The same thing is true of the meat shop next door. They do not aim to make money on their meat. Their sole aim is to sell only the best. This policy has been so popular that the quantity sold the first three months of 1922 was almost treble that for the same months in 1921. And the meat store, too, has made substantial net earnings. The two cooperative apartments which lie adjacent to the business block house thirty-two families. The apartments contain five rooms and bath and are thoroughly modern. They are light and airy with high ceilings and hardwood floors. Needless to say their tenant-owners keep them in the most immaculate condition. Recently a group of business men, several of them builders, went through the buildings and many expressed the wish that they could get similar apartments for three times the money that these cooperators were paying. For the best apartments the rent has recently been raised to $31.50 per month. But out of this amount the tenant-owner is not only paying all upkeep but is paying off the mortgage at the rate of $1,000 per year. Similar apartments in the locality rent from $75 to $80 per month. The tenant-owners, of course, run their apartments on the cooperative plan of one vote per member. The members of the Finnish Cooperative Societies of Brooklyn are fast becoming independent of the middlemen, for cooperation touches them on many sides. They have learned to serve themselves and they get what they want, honest goods--and clean. COOPERATIVES THAT FAILED When one has made mistakes the importance which is attached to them depends upon the gravity of the consequences. This being the case, the stones of cooperatives which follow are worth attention, for, as a result of their mistakes, they are now dead. One of the most pitiful aspects of cooperative failures is that one group after another will go on making the identical mistakes that have brought ruin to others. Sometimes it is the result of sheer ignorance, and sometimes of shameful negligence. In either case the result is the same--the stockholders lose their savings and cooperation feels the blow. Two years ago the State authorities were called upon to investigate a cooperative that was about to fail. Several members made the claim that the officers had defaulted with property of the association. An accountant was called in to examine the books. After considerable coaxing the secretary-treasurer unearthed them and turned them over. They consisted of an old black bag full of all the bills, vouchers and other scrap paper for the previous six months! Those were his books. He had sold the store without taking an inventory. When an inventory was finally made it was found that some of the stock had not turned over for a year. On one top shelf two hundred pepper shakers full of pepper stretched half the length of the room. Full value had been paid for this dead stock and several hundred dollars to boot for "good will." From the cooperative standpoint the most dangerous thing was that half the directors had become disgruntled and, though remaining on the Board, refused to attend meetings. A quorum could not be obtained and for months the president and treasurer had run the business without reference to directors or stockholders. The cooperative society failed and every cent of the four thousand dollars of the cooperators was lost. Another cooperative store, this time in the Bronx, was taken over by the manager within one year. Upon inquiry its directors proudly exhibited its books. It was a beautiful set costing, they said, nearly seventy-five dollars. The store had started in November. For November and the first three days of December everything was kept in good shape. But during the entire next year not an entry had been made. The directors had the books, but the manager had the store. The stockholders lost all their capital. A thriving business was being done by still another cooperative store in New York. At the outset the directors had voted to bond the manager. But the matter was put off and put off. One day the manager disappeared and with him two thousand dollars belonging to the cooperative. After a few months the manager was found, but the money was gone. The loss of the total sum was more than the cooperative could stand, however, and after struggling along for a few months, it closed its doors. A clever organizer two years ago started organizing a cooperative store in New York. On the society's letter heads he had printed a picture of the world and across the world the word "BIG." He was going to start a whole chain of stores. In three months the first and only store was put into the hands of an assignee and the man left the city. An audit of his accounts showed that he had collected $3,600. One-fourth of this had gone for promotion expenses, $2,350 for rental, fixtures, etc., leaving only $350 for operating expenses. Where the Finns spent three-tenths of one per cent for promotion he had spent twenty-five per cent. This had forced the association to start with so small an operating capital that it was soon badly embarrassed for lack of funds and could do nothing but close its doors. It would be possible to go on with many other illustrations. Such failures as these are not really a test of genuine cooperation. Any ordinary business with such management would also have failed. But it is significant that most of the recent cooperative failures have been among grocery stores. In this particular business the margin of profit is so small that only the most skillful and economical management can bring success. A recent survey of all the private grocery stores in one city showed that the average annual profit was only $400 per grocer. There is no longer any excuse for cooperatives to follow the blind into the pit. There are many sources of information and advice available to cooperatives that should be fully utilized before any money is spent in a cooperative enterprise that promises only failure. FALSE COOPERATIVES The impractical cooperative which fails is bad enough, for it discourages many people from making a second attempt, but the false cooperative is a greater menace to the cooperative movement. The private promoter with his selfish interests rigs up a scheme to look like cooperation, but the actual purpose is to provide a channel whereby thousands of dollars will flow from the pockets of the working people into those of the promoter. Inasmuch as New York State has a law which forbids the use of the word cooperation by any concern which is not organized under the Cooperative Law, such promoters have to be uncommonly shrewd. * * * * * The Glynn System. Early in 1920 a group of three or four private business men in Buffalo established a promoting corporation and then set out to organize a cooperative wholesale which was to be a separate concern from their promoting enterprise but was to be controlled by it. The promoters sold shares in the Buffalo Wholesale to individuals in fifteen or twenty cities and towns all the way across the central part of the State. They opened up six or seven stores and handled goods in large quantities through their wholesale plant. The capital was solicited chiefly through labor unions. Elaborate promises were made to prospective shareholders: they were to have a local store in their neighborhood, dividends were to be paid regularly, goods could be bought at prices below those prevailing at the chain stores and the local group was to have local autonomy. As a matter of fact the ultimate control was always in the hands of the few promoters in Buffalo. These men had two large sources of revenue from the many transactions carried on. They exacted from each member five dollars "for organizing expenses," and they took a commission on all the business handled through the wholesale. By the spring of 1921 some of the members in one or two centers became suspicious, and began an investigation. They found that stores were in many cases grossly mismanaged. One manager had absconded with $600. Organizing or promoting expenses in some places were as high as thirty-three per cent. The weekly newspaper was discontinued for lack of funds. Some wholesale merchants finally refused to give further credit to the Buffalo headquarters and at the end of the first year of operation one of the office force confided to a friend that there was a ten thousand dollar deficit. When bankruptcy was finally declared in midsummer, the promoters were not to be found. The principal organizer, an ardent friend of labor for many years, had been completely duped by these promoters and was left penniless and alone to face hundreds of investors. Cooperation was put in disrepute for thousands of men and women in dozens of cities and towns throughout the State. Cooperation cannot be developed downward from a central wholesale organization with a corps of organizers, nor will it grow when built upon mercenary motives. In this case organized labor in the state was partly to blame for not heeding the warning of a few groups of cooperators who were aware of the nature of the concern early in its history. But the ultimate blame lies with the individual men and women who joined the corporation without looking carefully into its organization. * * * * * The Cooperative Society of America. In 1920 The Cooperative Society of America was doing a flourishing business in Chicago and vicinity. One of the leaders of the enterprise went to Europe in 1921 and convinced most of the leading cooperators of those countries that he was the greatest power in the cooperative movement in the United States. By the summer of 1921, the agents of the principal promoter of this scheme, Harrison Parker, were operating in New York City, and scores of salesmen were covering the various boroughs selling stock. Within two weeks all the agencies interested in protecting cooperation were organized to fight this fraud. The matter was placed in the hands of the Attorney General and a special deputy appointed to prosecute. The leading newspapers ran an expose of its operations. At this juncture, the Chicago headquarters suddenly went into the hands of a receiver and the New York office closed its doors. Late in the year federal action was instituted against Harrison Parker in Chicago. The entire business of the so-called cooperative was disclosed to the courts. It was found that 81,000 people had invested fifteen millions in this gigantic fraud. Here in New York there were many hundreds, if not several thousands, of men and women who lost large sums of money in the ensuing bankruptcy. These people were taken in by the dramatic appeal to their selfish interests. The Chicago organization showed them photographs of the "massive buildings" in Chicago in which it was doing business, spoke glibly of its banking and insurance departments, and then promised them a share in the spoils if they would pay $75 for their certificates which were worth only $25 or $50 at their face value. That so many people could be duped by these "get-rich-quick" methods is an indication of the amazing lack of cooperative understanding which prevails in the United States. It is a part of the purpose of this Bulletin to correct the misunderstanding which prevails because of the fraudulent use of the word cooperation. In the case of a suspected false cooperative, test it by the Rochdale principles. If it fails to measure up to them take the matter up directly with the State authorities or the Cooperative League of America. HOW TO START A COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISE IN NEW YORK STATE In starting a cooperative enterprise two things must be considered: first, the kind of business to go into and, second, the method of organization. Any group desiring to engage in a cooperative venture should first of all, through a committee and by consultation with experts, determine what type of enterprise will serve them most effectively. Where competition is unusually keen and profit margins are low, cooperation is less likely to be of service than where the opposite is the case. Whatever enterprise is started men experienced in that business should be consulted as to the location of the business, the stock and equipment needed, the operating capital necessary, etc. Preliminary organization should likewise be handled by a committee which might estimate the number of persons who would become members, the service each could contribute to the society, etc. Meetings should be held to educate the group in both cooperation and the special need of the undertaking. For this purpose many educational bulletins may be obtained from the Cooperative League of America and other reliable sources. Actual organization of the society consists of incorporation, election of officers, the adoption of by-laws, and the immediate adoption of a sound system of bookkeeping. No action undertaken before incorporation has any legal effect on an incorporated body, so early incorporation is desirable. The New York State law requires that all firms using the word "cooperation" incorporate under one of the three state cooperative laws. Outside of farmers' cooperatives practically all cooperative societies are incorporated under the Stock Law known as Article III. Copies of these laws may be obtained from the State Department of Farms and Markets. The Department has prepared simple forms for incorporation under this law. When these are filled out and sworn to and the papers filed with the Secretary of State and the County Clerk, the society may legally begin business. The fee of the Secretary of State is $30. A board of directors is named in the incorporation papers and this board, through a paid manager, will transact the society's business. Model by-laws, upon which the by-laws controlling the organization may be based, may be obtained from the State Department of Farms and Markets or from the Cooperative League of America. THE PRESENT TREND OF COOPERATION There have been significant developments in the cooperative enterprise in New York in the last two years. In the first place while a number of small groceries closed their doors, the larger cooperatives have grown larger and more prosperous. At last there appear to have developed cooperatives which have passed that critical stage connected with the life of a newly-organized business. One of these larger cooperatives, which did over $200,000 worth of business in 1921, has turned its surplus into its business ever since it started and is now buying more land to erect a second business block in order to take care of expansion which is forced upon it by the growing trade. Another cooperative has established two prosperous branches and is now doing a business of a quarter of a million dollars a year. A third, following a profitable year in which its business amounted to $205,000, is likewise building a new plant. The balance sheets of each of these associations would be the envy of most business undertakings. A second development is the appearance of a new type of management. A group of younger men and women with a broad background, an intense interest in cooperation and a capacity of growing up with the business is working now to make these cooperatives even more successful. The cooperative movement is likely to grow in pretty close proportion to the ability of these leaders and the men and women they can attach to themselves. Heretofore the greatest handicap of the cooperative movement in this country has been the lack of trained and able leaders. A third significant development is the adoption by cooperatives of the best methods of management and accounting. Until this had been done the cooperatives had small chance of succeeding. It is probable that cooperatives which lack some of the incentives of the ordinary commercial business will be compelled constantly to adopt the most efficient and advanced type of machinery. In setting this up as a definite standard they will escape the inertia and conservatism that ordinarily characterize large groups, a condition which at the present time is retarding the British cooperative movement. Two years ago accurate accounting was an unusual thing among cooperatives. At the present time practically all the cooperatives in the State have their books gone over periodically by trained public accountants. A still further trend in the cooperative development is the extension of the movement into new lines of business. To this extent the failure of cooperative grocery stores has had a beneficial effect since it has forced groups to undertake different kinds of cooperative business. In New York City at the present time cooperatives are engaged in such diverse business as that of restaurants, cafeterias, bakeries, coal associations, pool rooms, printing establishments, meat stores and laundries. This means that the cooperatives are not following tradition but are thinking for themselves and are selecting that enterprise which will serve them most effectively. In going into these businesses where profits are greatest they are not only prospering themselves but they are performing one of their most legitimate functions, that of protecting the consumer from extortionate profits. BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Bubnoff, J.V. The Cooperative Movement in Russia. 162 p. Manchester, 1917. Faber, Harold. Cooperation in Danish Agriculture. 176 p. London, 1918. Gebhard, Hannes. Cooperation in Finland. 190 p. London, 1916. [A] Gide, Charles. Consumers' Cooperative Societies (trans. from the French). 251 p. Manchester, 1921. [A] Harris, Emerson P. Cooperation, The Hope of the Consumer. 328 p. New York, Macmillan Company, 1918. Howe, Frederick C. Denmark, A Cooperative Commonwealth. 203 p. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921. Johns Hopkins University Studies, Vol. VI. History of Cooperation in the United States. 540 p. Baltimore, 1888. Nicholson, Isa. Our Story. 80 p. Manchester, 1918. Powell, G. Harold. Cooperation in Agriculture. 327 p. New York, Macmillan Company, 1913. Redfern, Percy. The Story of the Cooperative Wholesale Society. 439 p. Manchester, 1913. Redfern, Percy. The Consumer's Place in Society. 107 p. Manchester, 1920. Smith-Gordon and Staples. Rural Reconstruction in Ireland. 279 p. London, 1917. [A] Sonnischsen, Albert. Consumers' Cooperation. 223 p. New York, Macmillan Company, 1919. [A] Webb, Catherine. Industrial Cooperation. 278 p. Manchester, 1917. [A] Webb, Beatrice and Sidney. The Consumers' Cooperative Movement. 504 p. London, 1921. [A] Woolf, Leonard. Cooperation and the Future of Industry. 141 p. London, 1918. Woolf, Leonard. Socialism and Cooperation. 129 p. London, 1921. Transactions of American Cooperative Convention. New York, Cooperative League of America, 1918 and 1921. People's Year Book, Annual of the English and Scottish Wholesale Societies. London, 1921. [Footnote A: Best books on the subject.] Magazines Cooperation. The Cooperative League of America, New York, N.Y. The Canadian Cooperator. Brantford, Ontario, Canada. The International Cooperative Bulletin. 14 Great Smith Street, Westminster, London, England. Pamphlets Historical Consumers' Cooperation in New York City. Bulletin of the Division of Foods and Markets for May, 1920. Prepared in cooperation with The Consumers' League of New York City. An Idea That Grew. Genevieve M. Fox. National Board, Young Women's Christian Association, 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City. The following are pamphlets of the Cooperative League of America: Story of Cooperation. British Cooperative Movement. A Baker and What He Baked. The Control of Industry by the People through the Cooperative Movement. Cooperative Consumers' Movement in the United States. Cooperative Movement (Yiddish). Technical. Credit Union and Cooperative Store. Arthur Ham. The Russell Sage Foundation, 130 East 22nd Street, New York City. The following are pamphlets of the Department of Farms and Markets: Cooperative Housing. Article 3, Stock Cooperative Law. By-laws for Cooperative Associations organized under Article 3, Stock Cooperative Law. Article 21, Membership Cooperative Law. By-laws for Cooperative Associations organized under Article 21, Membership Cooperative Law. Article 13 A, Farmers' Cooperative Law. By-laws for Cooperative Associations organized under Article 13 A, Farmers' Cooperative Law. The following are pamphlets of the Cooperative League of America: How to Start and Run a Rochdale Cooperative Store. System of Store Records and Accounts. A Model Constitution and By-Laws for a Cooperative Society. Cooperative Education. Duties of Educational Committee Defined. How to Start a Cooperative Wholesale. Why Cooperative Stores Fail. Cooperative Housebuilding. Cooperative Housing for Europe's Homeless. 
10725	----	The Centralia Conspiracy By Ralph Chaplin [Illustration: cover] A Tongue of Flame The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of flame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all her work is ruin. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.--Emerson. Murder or Self-Defense? This booklet is not an apology for murder. It is an honest effort to unravel the tangled mesh of circumstances that led up to the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia, Washington. The writer is one of those who believe that the taking of human life is justifiable only in self-defense. Even then the act is a horrible reversion to the brute--to the low plane of savagery. Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other methods of settling human differences than those of blood letting. The nation was shocked on November 11, 1919, to read of the killing of four American Legion men by members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Centralia. The capitalist newspapers announced to the world that these unoffending paraders were killed in cold blood--that they were murdered from ambush without provocation of any kind. If the author were convinced that there was even a slight possibility of this being true, he would not raise his voice to defend the perpetrators of such a cowardly crime. But there are two sides to every question and perhaps the newspapers presented only one of these. Dr. Frank Bickford, an ex-service man who participated in the affair, testified at the coroner's inquest that the Legion men were attempting to raid the union hall when they were killed. Sworn testimony of various eyewitnesses has revealed the fact that some of the "unoffending paraders" carried coils of rope and that others were armed with such weapons as would work the demolition of the hall and bodily injury to its occupants. These things throw an entirely different light on the subject. If this is true it means that the union loggers fired only in self-defense and not with the intention of committing wanton and malicious murder as has been stated. Now, as at least two of the union men who did the shooting were ex-soldiers, it appears that the tragedy must have resulted from something more than a mere quarrel between loggers and soldiers. There must be something back of it all that the public generally doesn't know about. There is only one body of men in the Northwest who would hate a union hall enough to have it raided--the lumber "interests." And now we get at the kernel of the matter, which is the fact that the affair was the outgrowth of a struggle between the lumber trust and its employees--between Organized Capital and Organized Labor. A Labor Case And so, after all, the famous trial at Montesano was not a murder trial but a labor trial in the strict sense of the word. Under the law, it must be remembered, a man is not committing murder in defending his life and property from the felonious assault of a mob bent on killing and destruction. There is no doubt whatever but what the lumber trust had plotted to "make an example" of the loggers and destroy their hall on this occasion. And this was not the first time that such atrocities had been attempted and actually committed. Isn't it peculiar that, out of many similar raids, you only heard of the one where the men defended themselves? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but the preservation of its holy profits is the first law of the lumber trust. The organized lumber workers were considered a menace to the super-prosperity of a few profiteers--hence the attempted raid and the subsequent killing. What is more significant is the fact the raid had been carefully planned weeks in advance. There is a great deal of evidence to prove this point. There is no question that the whole affair was the outcome of a struggle--a class struggle, if you please--between the union loggers and the lumber interests; the former seeking to organize the workers in the woods and the latter fighting this movement with all the means at its disposal. In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident but rather an incident in an eventful industrial conflict, little known and less understood, between the lumber barons and loggers of the Pacific Northwest. This viewpoint will place Centralia in its proper perspective and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circumstances and conditions that gave it birth. But was there a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to commit murder and violence in an effort to drive organized labor from its domain? Weeks of patient investigating in and around the scene or the occurrence has convinced the present writer that such a conspiracy has existed. A considerable amount of startling evidence has been unearthed that has hitherto been suppressed. If you care to consider Labor's version of this unfortunate incident you are urged to read the following truthful account of this almost unbelievable piece of mediaeval intrigue and brutality. The facts will speak for themselves. Credit them or not, but read! The Forests of the Northwest The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white explorers to set foot upon its fertile soil were awed by the magnitude and grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly trees. Towering into the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air. When Columbus first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the snow-capped mountains--waiting for the hand of man to put them to the multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those "calm cathedral isles," wondering at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with such inexhaustible resources. But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them, robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream that the day would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which prolific nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon mankind. But that day has come and with it the struggle between master and man that was to result in Centralia--or possibly many Centralias. Lumber--A Basic Industry It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites. It seems that reason would preclude the possibility of any other arrangement, and that it would be considered as absurd for individuals to lay claim to forests, mines, railroads and factories as it would be for individuals to lay claim to the ownership of the sunlight that warms us or to the air we breathe. But the poor human race, in its bungling efforts to learn how to live in our beautiful world, appears destined to find out by bitter experience that the private ownership of the means of life is both criminal and disastrous. Lumber is one of the basic industries--one of the industries mankind never could have done without. The whole structure of what we call civilization is built upon wooden timbers, ax-hewn or machine finished as the case may be. Without the product of the forests humanity would never have learned the use of fire, the primitive bow and arrow or the bulging galleys of ancient commerce. Without the firm and fibrous flesh of the mighty monarchs of the forest men might never have had barges for fishing or weapons for the chase; they would not have had carts for their oxen or kilns for the fashioning of pottery; they would not have had dwellings, temples or cities; they would not have had furniture nor fittings nor roofs above their heads. Wood is one of the most primitive and indispensable of human necessities. Without its use we would still be groping in the gloom and misery of early savagery, suffering from the cold of outer space and defenseless in the midst of a harsh and hostile environment. From Pioneer to Parasite So it happened that the first pioneers in the northern were forced to bare their arms and match their strength with the wooded wilderness. At first the subjugation of the forests was a social effort. The lives and future prosperity of the settlers must be made secure from the raids of the Indians and the inclemency of the elements. Manfully did these men labor until their work was done. But this period did not last long, for the tide of emigration was sweeping westward over the sun-baked prairies to the promised land in the golden West. [Illustration: Fir and Spruce Trees The wood of the West coast abound with tall fir trees. Practically all high grade spruce comes from this district also. Spruce was a war necessity and the lumber trust profiteered unmercifully on the government. U.S. prisons are full of loggers who struck for the 8 hour day in 1917.] Towns sprang up like magic, new trees were felled, sawmills erected and huge logs in ever increasing numbers were driven down the foaming torrents each year at spring time. The country was new, the market for lumber constantly growing and expanding. But the monopolist was unknown and the lynch-mobs of the lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future. So passed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone, when freedom was dear to the hearts of all. It was at this time that the spirit of real Americanism was born, when the clean, sturdy name "America" spelled freedom, justice and independence. Patriotism in these days was not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their bloody hands in the folds of their nation's flag. But modern capitalism was creeping like a black curse upon the land. Stealing, coercing, cajoling, defrauding, it spread from its plague-center in Wall St., leaving misery, class antagonism and resentment in its trial. The old free America of our fathers was undergoing a profound change. Equality of opportunity was doomed. A new social alignment was being created. Monopoly was loosed upon the land. Fabulous fortunes were being made as wealth was becoming centered into fewer and fewer hands. Modern capitalism was entrenching itself for the final and inevitable struggle for world domination. In due time the social parasites of the East, foreseeing that the forests of Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin could not last forever, began to look to the woods of the Northwest with covetous eyes. [Illustration: Cedar Trees of the Northwest With these giants the logger daily matches his strength and skill. The profit-greedy lumber trust has wasted enough trees of smaller size to supply the world with wood for years to come.] Stealing the People's Forest Land The history of the acquisition of the forests of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California is a long, sordid story of thinly veiled robbery and intrigue. The methods of the lumber barons in invading and seizing its "holdings" did not differ greatly, however, from those of the steel and oil kings, the railroad magnates or any of the other industrial potentates who acquired great wealth by pilfering America and peonizing its people. The whole sorry proceeding was disgraceful, high-handed and treacherous, and only made possible by reason of the blindness of the generous American people, drugged with the vanishing hope of "success" and too confident of the continued possession of its blood-bought liberties. And do the lumber barons were unhindered in their infamous work of debauchery, bribery, murder and brazen fraud. As a result the monopoly of the Northwestern woods became an established fact. The lumber trust came into "its own." The new social alignment was complete, with the idle, absentee landlord at one end and the migratory and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest; but the brawny logger whose labor had made possible the development of the industry was given, as his share of the spoils, a crumby "bindle" and a rebellious heart. The masters had gained undisputed control of the timber of the country, three quarters of which is located in the Northwest; but the workers who felled the trees, drove the logs, dressed, finished and loaded the lumber were left in the state of helpless dependency from which they could only extricate themselves by means of organization. And it is this effort to form a union and establish union headquarters that led to the tragedy at Centralia. The lumber barons had not only achieved a monopoly of the woods but a perfect feudal domination of the woods as well. Within their domain banks, ships, railways and mills bore their private insignia-and politicians, Employers' Associations, preachers, newspapers, fraternal orders and judges and gun-men were always at their beck and call. The power they wield is tremendous and their profits would ransom a kingdom. Naturally they did not intend to permit either power or profits to be menaced by a mass of weather-beaten slaves in stag shirts and overalls. And so the struggle waxed fiercer just as the lumberjack learned to contend successfully for living conditions and adequate remuneration. It was the old, old conflict of human rights against property rights. Let us see how they compared in strength. The Triumph of Monopoly The following extract from a document entitled "The Lumber Industry," by the Honorable Herbert Knox Smith and published by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of Corporations) will give some idea of the holdings and influence of the lumber trust: "Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber--each a foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home. These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held enough standing timber; an indispensable natural resource, to yield the planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New York to Liverpool. It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France, Germany and Italy. It would build a fence eleven miles high along our entire coast line. All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, or interests more or less interlocked. One of those interests--a grant of only three holders--monopolized at one time two hundred and thirty-seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which would make a column one foot square and three million miles high. Although controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight percent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time." The above illuminating figures, quoted from "The I.W.A. in the Lumber Industry," by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power of the lumber trust. [Illustration: "Topping a Tree" After one of these huge trees is "topped" it is called a "spar tree"--very necessary in a certain kind of logging operations. As soon as the chopped-off portion falls, the trunk vibrates rapidly from side to side sometimes shaking the logger to certain death below.] Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence--nothing but their hard, bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the world--and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker. But let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things possible, is like. The Human Element--"The Timber Beast" Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two categories--the saw-mill hand and the logger. The former, like his brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is essentially a man of the open air. Both types are necessary to the production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an imperative necessity. Sawmill work is machine work--rapid, tedious and often dangerous. There is the uninteresting repetition of the same act of motions day in and day out. The sights, sounds and smells of the mill are never varied. The fact that the mill is permanently located tends to keep mill workers grouped about the place of their employment. Many of them, especially in the shingle mills, have lost fingers or hands in feeding the lumber to the screaming saws. It has been estimated that fully a half of these men are married and remain settled in the mill communities. The other half, however, are not nearly so migratory as the lumberjack. Sawmill workers are not the "rough-necks" of the industry. They are of the more conservative "home-guard" element and characterized by the psychology of all factory workers. The logger, on the other hand, (and it is with him our narrative is chiefly concerned), is accustomed to hard and hazardous work in the open woods. His occupation makes him of necessity migratory. The camp, following the uncut timber from place to place, makes it impossible for him to acquire a family and settle down. Scarcely one out of ten has ever dared assume the responsibility of matrimony. The necessity of shipping from a central point in going from one job to another usually forces a migratory existence upon the lumberjack in spite of his best intentions to live otherwise. What Is a Casual Laborer? The problem of the logger is that of the casual laborer in general. Broadly speaking, there are three distinct classes of casual laborers: First, the "harvest stiff" of the middle West who follows the ripening crops from Kansas to the Dakotas, finding winter employment in the North, Middle Western woods, in construction camps or on the ice fields. Then there is the harvest worker of "the Coast" who garners the fruit, hops and grain, and does the canning of California, Washington and Oregon, finding out-of-season employment wherever possible. Finally there is the Northwestern logger, whose work, unlike that of the Middle Western "jack" is not seasonal, but who is compelled nevertheless to remain migratory. As a rule, however, his habitat is confined, according to preference or force of circumstances, to either the "long log" country of Western Washington and Oregon as well as California, or to the "short log" country of Eastern Washington and Oregon, Northern Idaho and Western Montana. Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in what is called the "short log" region. [Illustration: A Logger of the Pacific Northwest This is a type of the men who work in the "long log" region of the West coast. His is a man's sized job, and his efforts to organize and better the working conditions in the lumber industry have been manly efforts--and bitterly opposed.] As a rule the logger of the Northwest follows the woods to the exclusion of all other employment. He is militantly a lumberjack and is inclined to be a trifle "patriotic" and disputatious as to the relative importance of his own particular branch of the industry. "Long loggers," for instance, view with a suspicion of disdain the work of "short loggers" and vice versa. "Lumber-Jack" The Giant Killer But the lumber-jack is a casual worker and he is the finished product of modern capitalism. He is the perfect proletarian type--possessionless, homeless, and rebellious. He is the reverse side of the gilded medal of present day society. On the one side is the third generation idle rich--arrogant and parasitical, and on the other, the actual producer, economically helpless and denied access to the means of production unless he "beg his lordly fellow worm to give him leave to toil," as Robert Burns has it. The logger of the Northwest has his faults. He is not any more perfect than the rest of us. The years of degradation and struggle he has endured in the woods have not failed to leave their mark upon him. But, as the wage workers go, he is not the common but the uncommon type both as regards physical strength and cleanliness and mental alertness. He is generous to a fault and has all the qualities Lincoln and Whitman loved in men. In the first place, whether as faller, rigging man or on the "drive," his work is muscular and out of doors. He must at all times conquer the forest and battle with the elements. There is a tang and adventure to his labor in the impressive solitude of the woods that gives him a steady eye, a strong arm and a clear brain. Being constantly close to the great green heart of Nature, he acquires the dignity and independence of the savage rather than the passive and unresisting submission of the factory worker. The fact that he is free from family ties also tends to make him ready for an industrial frolic or fight at any time. In daily matching his prowess and skill with the products of the earth he feels in a way, that the woods "belong" to him and develops a contempt for the unseen and unknown employers who kindly permit him to enrich them with his labor. He is constantly reminded of the glaring absurdity of the private ownership of natural resources. Instinctively he becomes a rebel against the injustice and contradictions of capitalist society. Dwarfed to ant-like insignificance by the verdant immensity around him, the logger toils daily with ax, saw and cable. One after another forest giants of dizzy height crash to the earth with a sound like thunder. In a short time they are loaded on flat cars and hurried across the stump-dotted clearing to the river, whence they are dispatched to the noisy, ever-waiting saws at the mill. And always the logger knows in his heart that this is not done that people may have lumber for their needs, but rather that some overfed parasite may first add to his holy dividends. Production for profit always strikes the logger with the full force of objective observation. And is it any wonder, with the process of exploitation thus naked always before his eyes, that he should have been among the very first workers to challenge the flimsy title of the lumber barons to the private ownership of the woods? The Factory Worker and the Lumber-Jack Without wishing to disparage the ultimate worth of either; it might be well to contrast for a moment the factory worker of the East with the lumber-jack of the Pacific Northwest. To the factory hand the master's claim to the exclusive title of the means of production is not so evidently absurd. Around him are huge, smoking buildings filled with roaring machinery--all man-made. As a rule he simply takes for granted that his employers--whoever they are--own these just as he himself owns, for instance, his pipe or his furniture. Only when he learns, from thoughtful observation or study, that such things are the appropriated products of the labor of himself and his kind, does the truth dawn upon him that labor produces all and is entitled to its own. [Illustration: Logging Operations Look around you at the present moment and you will see wood used for many different purposes. Have you ever stopped to think where the raw material comes from or what the workers are like who produce it? Here is a scene from a lumber camp showing the loggers at their daily tasks. The lumber trust is willing that these men should work-but not organize.] It must be admitted that factory life tends to dispirit and cow the workers who spend their lives in the gloomy confines of the modern mill or shop. Obedient to the shrill whistle they pour out of their clustered grey dwellings in the early morning. Out of the labor ghettos they swarm and into their dismal slave-pens. Then the long monotonous, daily "grind," and home again to repeat the identical proceeding on the following day. Almost always, tired, trained to harsh discipline or content with low comfort; they are all too liable to feel that capitalism is invincibly colossal and that the possibility of a better day is hopelessly remote. Most of them are unacquainted with their neighbors. They live in small family or boarding house units and, having no common meeting place, realize only with difficulty the mighty potency of their vast numbers. To them organization appears desirable at times but unattainable. The dickering conservatism of craft unionism appeals to their cautious natures. They act only en masse, under awful compulsion and then their release of repressed slave emotion is sudden and terrible. Not so with the weather-tanned husky of the Northwestern woods. His job life is a group life. He walks to his daily task with his fellow workers. He is seldom employed for long away from them. At a common table he eats with them, and they all sleep in common bunk houses. The trees themselves teach him to scorn his master's adventitious claim to exclusive ownership. The circumstances of his daily occupation show him the need of class solidarity. His strong body clamours constantly for the sweetness and comforts of life that are denied him, his alert brain urges him to organize and his independent spirit gives him the courage and tenacity to achieve his aims. The union hall is often his only home and the One Big Union his best-beloved. He is fond of reading and discussion. He resents industrial slavery as an insult. He resented filth, overwork and poverty, he resented being made to carry his own bundle of blankets from job to job; he gritted his teeth together and fought until he had ground these obnoxious things under his iron-caulked heel. The lumber trust hated him just in proportion as he gained and used his industrial power; but neither curses, promises nor blows could make him budge. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get what he wanted. And his boss didn't like it very well. The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion--excepting in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be--that "wild wobbly dream" that every passing day brings closer to realization--and he wants all who work around him to share his vision and his determination to win so that all will be ready and worthy to live in the New Day that is dawning. In a word the Northwestern lumber-jack was too human and too stubborn ever to repudiate his red-blooded manhood at the behest of his masters and become a serf. His union meant to him all that he possessed or hoped to gain. Is it any wonder that he endured the tortures of hell during the period of the war rather than yield his Red Card--or that he is still determined and still undefeated? Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunning--or that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violence--and failed? Why the Loggers Organized The condition of the logger previous to the period of organization beggars description. Modern industrial autocracy seemed with him to develop its most inhuman characteristics. The evil plant of wage slavery appeared to bear its most noxious blossoms in the woods. The hours of labor were unendurably long, ten hours being the general rule--with the exception of the Grays Harbor district, where the eleven or even twelve hour day prevailed. In addition to this men were compelled to walk considerable distances to and from their work and meals through the wet brush. Not infrequently the noon lunch was made almost impossible because of the order to be back on the job when work commenced. A ten hour stretch of arduous labor, in a climate where incessant rain is the rule for at least six months of the year, was enough to try the strength and patience of even the strongest. The wages too were pitiably inadequate. The camps themselves, always more or less temporary affairs, were inferior to the cow-shed accommodations of a cattle ranch. The bunk house were over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary. In these ramshackle affairs the loggers were packed like sardines. The bunks were arranged tier over tier and nearly always without mattresses. They were uniformly vermin-infested and sometimes of the "muzzle-loading" variety. No blankets were furnished, each logger being compelled to supply his own. There were no facilities for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing. Lighting and ventilation were of course, always poor. In addition to these discomforts the unorganized logger was charged a monthly hospital fee for imaginary medical service. Also it was nearly always necessary to pay for the opportunity of enjoying these privileges by purchasing employment from a "job shark" or securing the good graces of a "man catcher." The former often had "business agreements" with the camp foreman and, in many cases, a man could not get a job unless he had a ticket from a labor agent in some shipping point. It may be said that the conditions just described were more prevalent in some parts of the lumber country than in others. Nevertheless, these prevailed pretty generally in all sections of the industry before the workers attempted to better them by organizing. At all events such were the conditions the lumber barons sought with all their power to preserve and the loggers to change. Organization and the Opening Struggle A few years before the birth of the Industrial workers of the World the lumber workers had started to organize. By 1905, when the above mentioned union was launched, lumber-workers were already united in considerable numbers in the old Western afterwards the American Labor Union. This organization took steps to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World and was thus among the very first to seek a larger share of life in the ranks of that militant and maligned organization. Strike followed strike with varying success and the conditions of the loggers began perceptibly to improve. Scattered here and there in the cities of the Northwest were many locals of the Industrial Workers of the World. Not until 1912, however, were these consolidated into a real industrial unit. For the first time a sufficient number of loggers and saw mill men were organized to be grouped into an integral part of the One Big Union. This was done with reasonable success. In the following year the American Federation of Labor attempted a similar task but without lasting results, the loggers preferring the industrial to the craft form of organization. Besides this, they were predisposed to sympathize with the ideal of solidarity and Industrial Democracy for which their own union had stood from the beginning. The "timber beast" was starting to reap the benefits of his organized power. Also he was about to feel the force and hatred of the "interests" arrayed against him. He was soon to learn that the path of labor unionism is strewn with more rocks than roses. He was making an earnest effort to emerge from the squalor and misery of peonage and was soon to see that his overlords were satisfied to keep him right where he had always been. Strange to say, almost the first really important clash occurred in the very heart of the lumber trust's domain, in the little city of Aberdeen, Grays Harbor County--only a short distance from Centralia, of mob fame! [Illustration: Eugene Barnett (After the man-hunt) Coal miner. Born in North Carolina. Member of U.M.W.A. and I.W.W. Went to work underground at the age of eight. Self educated, a student and philosopher. Upon reaching home Barnett, fearful of the mob, took to the woods with his rifle. He surrendered to the posse only after he had convinced himself that their purpose was not to lynch him.] This was in 1912. A strike had started in the saw mills over demands of a $2.50 daily wage. Some of the saw mill workers were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. They were supported by the union loggers of Western Washington. The struggle was bitterly contested and lasted for several weeks. The lumber trust bared its fangs and struck viciously at the workers in a manner that has since characterized its tactics in all labor disputes. The jails of Aberdeen and adjoining towns were filled with strikers. Picket lines were broken up and the pickets arrested. When the wives of the strikers with babies in their arms, took the places of their imprisoned husbands, the fire hose was turned on them with great force, in many instances knocking them to the ground. Loggers and sawmill men alike were unmercifully beaten. Many were slugged by mobs with pick handles, taken to the outskirts of the city and told that their return would be the occasion of a lynching. At one time an armed mob of business men dragged nearly four hundred strikers from their homes or boarding houses, herded them into waiting boxcars, sealed up the doors and were about to deport them en masse. The sheriff, getting wind of this unheard-of proceeding, stopped it at the last moment. Many men were badly scarred by beatings they received. One logger was crippled for life by the brutal treatment accorded him. But the strikers won their demands and conditions were materially improved. The Industrial Workers of the World continued to grow in numbers and prestige. This event may be considered the beginning of the labor movement on Grays Harbor that the lumber trust sought finally to crush with mob violence on a certain memorable day in Centralia seven years later. Following the Aberdeen strike one or two minor clashes occurred. The lumber workers were usually successful. During this period they were quietly but effectually spreading One Big Union propaganda throughout the camps and mills in the district. Also they were organizing their fellow workers in increasing numbers into their union. The lumber trust, smarting under its last defeat, was alarmed and alert. [Illustration: Bert Faulkner American. Logger. 21 years of age. Member of the Industrial Workers of the World since 1917. Was in the hall when raid occurred. Faulkner personally knew Grimm, McElfresh and a number of others who marched in the parade. He is an ex-soldier himself. The prosecution used a great deal of pressure to make this boy turn state's evidence. He refused stating that he would tell nothing but the truth. At the last moment he was discharged from the case after being held in jail four months.] A Massacre and a New Law But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the World, had started a drive for membership around Puget Sound. Loggers and mill hands were eager for the message of Industrial Unionism. Meetings were well attended and the sentiment in favor of the organization was steadily growing. The A.F. of L. shingle weavers and longshoremen were on strike and had asked the I.W.W. to help them secure free speech in Everett. The ever-watchful lumber interests decided the time to strike had again arrived. The events of "Bloody Sunday" are too well known to need repeating here. Suffice to say that after a summer replete with illegal beatings and jailings five men were killed in cold blood and forty wounded in a final desperate effort to drive the union out of the city of Everett, Washington. These unarmed loggers were slaughtered and wounded by the gunfire of a gang of business men and plug-uglies of the lumber interests. True to form, the lumber trust had every union man in sight arrested and seventy-four charged with the murder of a gunman who had been killed by the cross-fire of his own comrades. None of the desperadoes who had done the actual murdering was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded. The charge against the members of the Industrial Workers of the World was pressed. The case was tried in court and the Industrialists declared "not guilty." George Vanderveer was attorney for the defense. The lumber interests were infuriated at their defeat, and from this time on the struggle raged in deadly earnest. Almost everything from mob law to open assassination had been tried without avail. The execrated One Big Union idea was gaining members and power every day. The situation was truly alarming. Their heretofore trustworthy "wage plugs" were showing unmistakable symptoms of intelligence. Workingmen were waking up. They were, in appalling numbers, demanding the right to live like men. Something must be done something new and drastic--to split asunder this on-coming phalanx of industrial power. But the gun-man-and-mob method was discarded, temporarily at least, in favor of the machinations of lumber trust tools in the law making bodies. Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them--and with as little impunity. So the notorious Washington "Criminal Syndicalism" law was devised. This law, however, struck a snag. The honest-minded governor of the state, recognizing its transparent character and far-reaching effects, promptly vetoed the measure. After the death of Governor Lister the criminal syndicalism law was passed, however, by the next State Legislature. Since that time it has been used against the American Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialist Party and even common citizens not affiliated with any of these organizations. The criminal syndicalism law registers the high water mark of reaction. It infringes more on the liberties of the people than any of the labor-crushing laws that blackened Russia during the dynasty of the Romanoffs. It would disgrace the anti-Celestial legislation of Hell. The Eight Hour Day and "Treason" Nineteen hundred and seventeen was an eventful year. It was then the greatest strike in the history of the lumber industry occurred-the strike for the eight hour day. For years the logger and mill hand had fought against the unrestrained greed of the lumber interests. Step by step, in the face of fiercest opposition, they had fought for the right to live like men; and step by step they had been gaining. Each failure or success had shown them the weakness or the strength of their union. They had been consolidating their forces as well as learning how to use them. The lumber trust had been making huge profits the while, but the lumber workers were still working ten hours or more and the logger was still packing his dirty blankets from job to job. Dissatisfaction with conditions was wider and more prevalent then ever before. Then came the war. As soon as this country had taken its stand with the allied imperialists the price of lumber, needed for war purposes, was boosted to sky high figures. From $16.00 to $116.00 per thousand feet is quite a jump; but recent disclosures show that the Government paid as high as $1200.00 per thousand for spruce that private concerns were purchasing for less than one tenth of that sum. Gay parties with plenty of wild women and hard drink are alleged to have been instrumental in enabling the "patriotic" lumber trust to put these little deals across. Due to the duplicity of this same bunch of predatory gentlemen the airplane and ship building program of the United States turned out to be a scandal instead of a success. Out of 21,000 feet of spruce delivered to a Massachusetts factory, inspectors could only pass 400 feet as fit for use. Keep these facts and figures in mind when you read about what happened to the "disloyal" lumber workers during the war-and afterwards. [Illustration: Mrs. Elmer Smith and Baby Girl Mrs. Elmer Smith is the cultured daughter of a Washington judge. Since Elmer Smith got into trouble many efforts have been made to induce his wife to leave him. Mrs. Smith prefers, however, to stick with her rebel lawyer whom she loves and admires.] Discontent had been smouldering in the woods for a long time. It was soon fanned to a flame by the brazen profiteering of the lumber trust. The loggers had been biding their time--rather sullenly it is true--for the day when the wrongs they had endured so patiently and so long might be rectified. Their quarrel with the lumber interests was an old one. The time was becoming propitious. In the early summer of 1917 the strike started. Sweeping through the short log country it spread like wild-fire over nearly all the Northwestern lumber districts. The tie-up was practically complete. The industry was paralyzed. The lumber trust, its mouth drooling in anticipation of the many millions it was about to make in profits, shattered high heaven with its cries of rage. Immediately its loyal henchmen in the Wilson administration rushed to the rescue. Profiteering might be condoned, moralized over or winked at, but militant labor unionism was a menace to the government and the prosecution of the war. It must be crushed. For was it not treacherous and treasonable for loggers to strike for living conditions when Uncle Sam needed the wood and the lumber interests the money? So Woodrow Wilson and his coterie of political troglodytes from the slave-owning districts of the old South, started out to teach militant labor a lesson. Corporation lawyers were assembled. Indictments were made to order. The bloodhounds of the Department of "Justice" were unleashed. Grand Juries of "patriotic" business men were impaneled and did their expected work not wisely but too well. All the gun-men and stool-pigeons of Big Business got busy. And the opera bouffe of "saving our form of government" was staged. Industrial Heretics and the White Terror For a time it seemed as though the strikers would surely be defeated. The onslaught was terrific, but the loggers held out bravely. Workers were beaten and jailed by the hundreds. Men were herded like cattle in blistering "bull-pens," to be freed after months of misery, looking more like skeletons than human beings. Ellensburg and Yakima will never be forgotten in Washington. One logger was even burned to death while locked in a small iron-barred shack that had been dignified with the title of "jail." In the Northwest even the military were used and the bayonet of the soldier could be seen glistening beside the cold steel of the hired thug. Union halls were raided in all parts of the land. Thousands of workers were deported. Dozens were tarred and feathered and mobbed. Some were even taken out in the dead of night and hanged to railway bridges. Hundreds were convicted of imaginary offenses and sent to prison for terms from one to twenty years. Scores were held in filthy jails for as long as twenty-six months awaiting trial. The Espionage Law, which never convicted a spy, and the Criminal Syndicalism Laws, which never convicted a criminal, were used savagely and with full force against the workers in their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of the American people. Our form of government, forsooth, must be saved. Our institutions must be rescued from the clutch of the "reds." Thus was the war-frenzy of their dupes lashed to madness and the guarantees of the constitution suspended as far as the working class was concerned. So all the good, wise and noisy men of the nation were induced by diverse means to cry out against the strikers and their union. The worst passions of the respectable people were appealed to. The hoarse blood-cry of the mob was raised. It was echoed and re-echoed from press and pulpit. The very air quivered from its reverberations. Lynching parties became "respectable." Indictments were flourished. Hand-cuffs flashed. The clinking feet of workers going to prison rivaled the sound of the soldiers marching to war. And while all this was happening, a certain paunchy little English Jew with moth-eaten hair and blotchy jowls the accredited head of a great labor union glared through his thick spectacles and nodded his perverse approval. But the lumber trust licked its fat lips and leered at its swollen dividends. All was well and the world was being made "safe for democracy!" [Illustration: Britt Smith American. Logger. 35 years old. Had followed the woods for twenty years. Smith made his home in the hall that was raided and was secretary of the Union. When the mob broke into the jail and seized Wesley Everest to torture and lynch him they cried, "We've got Britt Smith!" Smith was the man they wanted and it was to break his neck that ropes were carried in the "parade." Not until Everest's body was brought back to the city jail was it discovered that the mob had lynched the wrong man.] Autocracy vs. Unionism This unprecedented struggle was really a test of strength between industrial autocracy and militant unionism. The former was determined to restore the palmy days of peonage for all time to come, the latter to fight to the last ditch in spite of hell and high water. The lumber trust sought to break the strike of the loggers and destroy their organization. In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best--and they were bad losers. After the war-fever had died down--one year after the signing of the Armistice--they were still trying in Centralia to attain their ignoble ends by means of mob violence. But at this time the ranks of the strikers were unbroken. The heads of the loggers were "bloody but unbowed." Even at last, when compelled to yield to privation and brute force and return to work, they turned defeat to victory by "carrying the strike onto the job." As a body they refused to work more than eight hours. Secretary of War Baker and President Wilson had both vainly urged the lumber interests to grant the eight hour day. The determined industrialists gained this demand, after all else had failed, by simply blowing a whistle when the time was up. Most of their other demands were won as well. In spite of even the Disque despotism, mattresses, clean linen and shower baths were reluctantly granted as the fruits of victory. But even as these lines are written the jails and prisons of America are filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime is loyalty to the working class. The war profiteers are still wallowing in luxury. None has ever been placed behind the bars. Before he was lynched in Butte, Frank Little had said, "I stand for the solidarity of labor." That was enough. The vials of wrath were poured on his head for no other reason. And for no other reason was the hatred of the employing class directed at the valiant hundreds who now rot in prison for longer terms than those meted out to felons. William Haywood and Eugene Debs are behind steel bars today for the same cause. The boys at Centralia were conspired against because they too stood "for the solidarity of labor." It is simply lying and camouflage to attempt to trace such persecutions to any other source. These are things America will be ashamed of when she comes to her senses. Such gruesome events are paralleled in no country save the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm or the Russia of the Czar. This picture of labor persecution in free America--terrible but true--will serve as a background for the dramatic history of the events leading up to the climactic tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919. While in Washington... All over the state of Washington the mobbing, jailing and tar and feathering of workers continued the order of the day until long after the cessation of hostilities in Europe. The organization had always urged and disciplined its members to avoid violence as an unworthy weapon. Usually the loggers have left their halls to the mercy of the mobs when they knew a raid was contemplated. Centralia is the one exception. Here the outrages heaped upon them could be no longer endured. In Yakima and Sedro Woolley, among other places in 1918, union men were stripped of their clothing, beaten with rope ends and hot tar applied to the bleeding flesh. They were then driven half naked into the woods. A man was hanged at night in South Montesano about this time and another had been tarred and feathered. As a rule the men were taken unaware before being treated in this manner. In one instance a stationary delegate of the Industrial Workers of the World received word that he was to be "decorated" and rode out of town on a rail. He slit a pillow open and placed it in the window with a note attached stating that he knew of the plan; would be ready for them, and would gladly supply his own feathers. He did not leave town either on a rail or otherwise. In Seattle, Tacoma and many other towns, union halls and print shops were raided and their contents destroyed or burned. In the former city in 1919, men, women and children were knocked insensible by policemen and detectives riding up and down the sidewalks in automobiles, striking to right and left with "billy" and night stick as they went. These were accompanied by auto trucks filled with hidden riflemen and an armored tank bristling with machine guns. A peaceable meeting of union men was being dispersed. [Illustration: Loren Roberts American. Logger. 19 years old. Loren's mother said of him at the trial: "Loren was a good boy, he brought his money home regularly for three years. After his father took sick he was the only support for his father and me and the three younger ones." The father was a sawyer in a mill and died of tuberculosis after an accident had broken his strength. This boy, the weakest of the men on trial, was driven insane by the unspeakable "third degree" administered in the city jail. One of the lumber trust lawyers was in the jail at the time Roberts signed his so-called "confession." "Tell him to quit stalling," said a prosecutor to Vanderveer, when Roberts left the witness stand. "You cur!" replied the defense attorney in a low voice, "you know who is responsible for this boy's condition." Roberts was one of the loggers on Seminary Hill.] In Centralia, Aberdeen and Montesano, in Grays Harbor County, the struggle was more local but not less intense. No fewer than twenty-five loggers on different occasions were taken from their beds at night and treated to tar and feathers. A great number were jailed for indefinite periods on indefinite charges. As an additional punishment these were frequently locked in their cells and the fire hose played on their drenched and shivering bodies. "Breech of jail discipline" was the reason given for this "cruel and unusual" form of lumber trust punishment. In Aberdeen and Montesano there were several raids and many deportations of the tar and feather variety. In Aberdeen in the fall of 1917 during a "patriotic" parade, the battered hall of the union loggers was again forcibly entered in the absence of its owners. Furniture, office fixtures, Victrola and books were dumped into the street and destroyed. In the town of Centralia, about a year before the tragedy, the Union Secretary was kidnapped and taken into the woods by a mob of well dressed business men. He was made to "run the gauntlet" and severely beaten. There was a strong sentiment in favor of lynching him on the spot, but one of the mob objected saying it would be "too raw." The victim was then escorted to the outskirts of the city and warned not to return under pain of usual penalty. On more than one occasion loggers who had expressed themselves in favor of the Industrial Workers of the World, were found in the morning dangling from trees in the neighborhood. No explanation but that of "suicide" was ever offered. The whole story of the atrocities perpetrated during these days of the White Terror, in all probability, will never be published. The criminals are all well known but their influence is too powerful to ever make it expedient to expose their crimes. Besides, who would care to get a gentleman in trouble for killing a mere "Wobbly"? The few instances noted above will, however, give the reader some slight idea of the gruesome events that were leading inevitably to that grim day in Centralia in November, 1919. Weathering the Storm Through it all the industrialists clung to their Red Cards and to the One Big Union for which they had sacrificed so much. Time after time, with incomparable patience, they would refurnish and reopen their beleaguered halls, heal up the wounds of rope, tar or "billy" and proceed with the work of organization as though nothing had happened. With union cards or credentials hidden in their heavy shoes they would meet secretly in the woods at night. Here they would consult about members who had been mobbed, jailed or killed, about caring for their families--if they had any--about carrying on the work of propaganda and laying plans for the future progress of their union. Perhaps they would take time to chant a rebel song or two in low voices. Then, back on the job again to "line up the slaves for the New Society!" Through a veritable inferno of torment and persecution these men had refused to be driven from the woods or to give up their union--the Industrial Workers of the World. Between the two dreadful alternatives of peonage or persecution they chose the latter--and the lesser. Can you imagine what their peonage must have been like? Sinister Centralia But Centralia was destined to be the scene of the most dramatic portion of the struggle between the entrenched interests and the union loggers. Here the long persecuted industrialists made a stand for their lives and fought to defend their own, thus giving the glib-tongued lawyers of the prosecution the opportunity of accusing them of "wantonly murdering unoffending paraders" on Armistice Day. Centralia in appearance is a creditable small American city--the kind of city smug people show their friends with pride from the rose-scented tranquility of a super-six in passage. The streets are wide and clean, the buildings comfortable, the lawns and shade trees attractive. Centralia is somewhat of a coquette but she is as sinister and cowardly as she is pretty. There is a shudder lurking in every corner and a nameless fear sucks the sweetness out of every breeze. Song birds warble at the outskirts of the town but one is always haunted by the cries of the human beings who have been tortured and killed within her confines. A red-faced business man motors leisurely down the wet street. He shouts a laughing greeting to a well dressed group at the curb who respond in kind. But the roughly dressed lumberworkers drop their glances in passing one another. The Fear is always upon them. As these lines are written several hundred discontented shingle-weavers are threatened with deportation if they dare to strike. They will not strike, for they know too well the consequences. The man-hunt of a few months ago is not forgotten and the terror of it grips their hearts whenever they think of opposing the will of the Moloch that dominates their every move. Around Centralia are wooded hills; men have been beaten beneath them and lynched from their limbs. The beautiful Chehalis River flows near by; Wesley Everest was left dangling from one of its bridges. But Centralia is provokingly pretty for all that. It is small wonder that the lumber trust and its henchmen wish to keep it all for themselves. Well tended roads lead in every direction, bordered with clearings of worked out camps and studded with occasional tree stumps of great age and truly prodigious size. At intervals are busy saw mills with thousands of feet of odorous lumber piled up in orderly rows. In all directions stretches the pillared immensity of the forests. The vistas through the trees seen enchanted rather than real--unbelievable green and of form and depth that remind one of painted settings for a Maeterlinck fable rather than matter-of-fact timber land. The High Priests of Labor Hatred Practically all of this land is controlled by the trusts; much of it by the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, of which F.B. Hubbard is the head. The strike of 1917 almost ruined this worthy gentleman. He has always been a strong advocate of the open shop, but during the last few years he has permitted his rabid labor-hatred to reach the point of fanaticism. This Hubbard figures prominently in Centralia's business, social and mob circles. He is one of the moving spirits in the Centralia conspiracy. The Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, besides large tracts of land, owns saw-mills, coal mines and a railway. The Centralia newspapers are its mouthpieces while the Chamber of Commerce and the Elks' Club are its general headquarters. The Farmers' & Merchants' Bank is its local citadel of power. In charge of this bank is a sinister character, one Uhlman, a German of the old school and a typical Prussian junker. At one time he was an officer in the German army but at present is a "100% American"--an easy metamorphosis for a Prussian in these days. His native born "brother-at-arms" is George Dysart whose son led the posses in the man-hunt that followed the shooting. In Centralia this bank and its Hun dictator dominates the financial, political and social activities of the community. Business men, lawyers, editors, doctors and local authorities all kow-tow to the institution and its Prussian president. And woe be to any who dare do otherwise! The power of the "interests" is a vengeful power and will have no other power before it. Even the mighty arm of the law becomes palsied in its presence. [Illustration: Lumberworkers Union Hall, Raided in 1918 The first of the two halls to be wrecked by Centralia's terrorists. This picture was not permitted to be introduced as evidence of the conspiracy to raid the new hall. Judge Wilson didn't want the jury to know anything about this event.] The Farmers' & Merchants' Bank is the local instrumentality of the invisible government that holds the nation in its clutch. Kaiser Uhlman has more influence than the city mayor and more power than the police force. The law has always been a little thing to him and his clique. The inscription on the shield of this bank is said to read "To hell with the Constitution; this is Lewis County." As events will show, this inspiring maxim has been faithfully adhered to. One of the mandates of this delectable nest of highbinders is that no headquarters of the Union of the lumber workers shall ever be permitted within the sacred precincts of the city of Centralia. The Loved and Hated Union Hall Now the loggers, being denied the luxury of home and family life, have but three places they can call "home." The bunkhouse in the camp, the cheap rooming house in town and the Union Hall. This latter is by far the best loved of all. It is here the men can gather around a crackling wood fire, smoke their pipes and warm their souls with the glow of comradeship. Here they can, between jobs or after work, discuss the vicissitudes of their daily lives, read their books and magazines and sing their songs of solidarity, or merely listen to the "tinned" humor or harmony of the much-prized Victrola. Also they here attend to affairs of their Union--line up members, hold business and educational meetings and a weekly "open forum." Once in awhile a rough and wholesome "smoker" is given. The features of this great event are planned for weeks in advance and sometimes talked about for months afterwards. [Illustration: The Scene of the Armistice Day Tragedy This is what was left of the Union hall the loggers tried to defend on November 11th. Three of the raiders, Grimm, McElfresh and Cassagranda, were killed in the immediate vicinity of the doorway. Several others were wounded while attempting to rush the doors.] These halls are at all times open to the public and inducements are made to get workers to come in and read a thoughtful treatise on Industrial questions. The latch-string is always out for people who care to listen to a lecture on economics or similar subjects. Inside the hall there is usually a long reading-table littered with books, magazines or papers. In a rack or case at the wall are to be found copies of the "Seattle Union Record," "The Butte Daily Bulletin," "The New Solidarity," "The Industrial Worker," "The Liberator," "The New Republic" and "The Nation." Always there is a shelf of thumb-worn books on history, science, economics and socialism. On the walls are lithographs or engravings of noted champions of the cause of Labor, a few photographs of local interest and the monthly Bulletins and Statements of the Union. Invariably there is a blackboard with jobs, wages and hours written in chalk for the benefit of men seeking employment. There are always a number of chairs in the room and a roll top desk for the secretary. Sometimes at the end of the hall is a plank rostrum--a modest altar to the Goddess of Free Speech and open discussion. This is what the loved and hated I.W.W. Halls are like--the halls that have been raided and destroyed by the hundreds during the last three years. Remember, too, that in each of these raids the union men were not the aggressors and that there was never any attempt at reprisal. In spite of the fact that the lumber workers were within their legal right to keep open their halls and to defend them from felonious attack, it had never happened until November 11, that active resistance was offered the marauders. This fact alone speaks volumes for the long-suffering patience of the logger and for his desire to settle his problems by peaceable means wherever possible. But the Centralia raid was the straw that broke the camel's back. The lumber trust went a little too far on this occasion and it got the surprise of its life. Four of its misguided dupes paid for their lawlessness with their lives, and a number of others were wounded. There has not since been a raid on a union hall in the Northwestern District. It is well that workingmen and women throughout the country should understand the truth about the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia and the circumstances that led up to it. But in order to know why the hall was raided it is necessary first to understand why this, and all similar halls, are hated by the oligarchies of the woods. The issue contested is whether the loggers have the right to organize themselves into a union, or whether they must remain chattels--mere hewers of wood and helpless in the face of the rapacity of their industrial overlords--or whether they have the right to keep open their halls and peacefully to conduct the affairs of their union. The lumber workers contend that they are entitled by law to do these things and the employers assert that, law or no law, they shall not do so. In other words, it is a question of whether labor organization shall retain its foothold in the lumber industry or be "driven from the woods." Pioneers of Unionism It is hard for workers in most of the other industries--especially in the East--to understand the problems, struggles and aspirations of the husky and unconquerable lumber workers of the Northwest. The reason is that the average union man takes his union for granted. He goes to his union meetings, discusses the affairs of his craft, industry or class, and he carries his card--all as a matter of course. It seldom enters his mind that the privileges and benefits that surround him and the protection he enjoys are the result of the efforts and sacrifices of the nameless thousands of pioneers that cleared the way. But these unknown heroes of the great struggle of the classes did precede him with their loyal hearts and strong hands; otherwise workers now organized would have to start the long hard battle at the beginning and count their gains a step at a time, just as did the early champions of industrial organization, or as the loggers of the West Coast are now doing. The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry. They were the men who made possible all things that came after and all things that are still to come. They were the trail blazers. It is easier to follow them than to have gone before them--or with them. They established the outposts of unionism in the wilderness of Industrial autocracy. Their voices were the first to proclaim the burning message of Labor's power, of Labor's mission and of Labor's ultimate emancipation. Their breasts were the first to receive the blows of the enemy; their unprotected bodies were shielding the countless thousands to follow. They were the forerunners of the solidarity of Toil. They fought in a good and great cause; for without solidarity, Labor would have attained nothing yesterday, gained nothing today nor dare to hope for anything tomorrow. [Illustration: Seminary Hall The Union hall looks out on this hill, with Tower avenue and an alley between. It is claimed that loggers, among others Loren Roberts, Bert Bland and the missing Ole Hanson, fired at the attacking mob from this position.] The Block House and the Union Hall In the Northwest today the rebel lumberjack is a pioneer. Just as our fathers had to face the enmity of the Indians, so are these men called upon to face the fury of the predatory interests that have usurped the richest timber resources of the richest nation in the world. Just outside Centralia stands a weatherbeaten landmark. It is an old, brown dilapidated block house of early days. In many ways it reminds one of the battered and wrecked union halls to be found in the heart of the city. The evolution of industry has replaced the block house with the union hall as the embattled center of assault and defense. The weapons are no longer the rifle and the tomahawk but the boycott and the strike. The frontier is no longer territorial but industrial. The new struggle is as portentous as the old. The stakes are larger and the warfare even more bitter. The painted and be-feathered scalp-hunter of the Sioux or Iroquois were not more heartless in maiming, mutilating and killing their victims than the "respectable" profit-hunters of today--the type of men who conceived the raid on the Union Hall in Centralia on Armistice Day--and who fiendishly tortured and hanged Wesley Everest for the crime of defending himself from their inhuman rage. It seems incredible that such deeds could be possible in the twentieth century. It is incredible to those who have not followed in the bloody trail of the lumber trust and who are not familiar with its ruthlessness, its greed and its lust for power. As might be expected the I.W.W. Halls in Washington were hated by the lumber barons with a deep and undying hatred. Union halls were a standing challenge to their hitherto undisputed right to the complete domination of the forests. Like the blockhouses of early days, these humble meeting places were the outposts of a new and better order planted in the stronghold of the old. And they were hated accordingly. The thieves who had invaded the resources of the nation had long ago seized the woods and still held them in a grip of steel. They were not going to tolerate the encroachments of the One Big Union of the lumber workers. Events will prove that they did not hesitate at anything to achieve their purposes. The First Centralia Hall In the year 1918 a union hall stood on one of the side streets in Centralia. It was similar to the halls that have just been described. This was not, however, the hall in which the Armistice Day tragedy took place. You must always remember that there were two halls raided in Centralia; one in 1918 and another in 1919. The loggers did not defend the first hall and many of them were manhandled by the mob that wrecked it. The loggers did defend the second and were given as reward a hanging, a speedy, fair and impartial conviction and sentences of from 25 to 40 years. No member of the mob has ever been punished or even taken to task for this misdeed. Their names are known to everybody. They kiss their wives and babies at night and go to church on Sundays. People tip their hats to them on the street. Yet they are a greater menace to the institutions of this country than all the "reds" in the land. In a world where Mammon is king the king can do no wrong. But the question of "right" or "wrong" did not concern the lumber interests when they raided the Union hall in 1918. "Yes, we raided the hall, what are you going to do about it," is the position they take in the matter. During the 1917 strike the two lumber trust papers in Centralia, the "Hub" and the "Chronicle" were bitter in their denunciation of the strikers. Repeatedly they urged that most drastic and violent measures be taken by the authorities and "citizens" to break the strike, smash the union and punish the strikers. The war-frenzy was at its height and these miserable sheets went about their work like Czarist papers inciting a pogrom. The lumber workers were accused of "disloyalty," "treason," "anarchy"--anything that would tend to make their cause unpopular. The Abolitionists were spoken about in identical terms before the civil war. As soon as the right atmosphere for their crime had been created the employers struck and struck hard. It was in April, 1918. Like many other cities in the land Centralia was conducting a Red Cross drive. Among the features of this event were a bazaar and a parade. The profits of the lumber trust were soaring to dizzy heights at this time and their patriotism was proportionately exalted. There was the usual brand of hypocritical and fervid speechmaking. The flag was waved, the Government was lauded and the Constitution praised. Then, after the war-like proclivities of the stay-at-home heroes had been sufficiently worked upon; flag, Government and Constitution were forgotten long enough for the gang to go down the street and raid the "wobbly" hall. Dominating the festivities was the figure of F.B. Hubbard, at that time President of the Employers' Association of the State of Washington. This is neither Hubbard's first nor last appearance as a terrorist and mob-leader--usually behind the scenes, however, or putting in a last minute appearance. [Illustration: Avalon Hotel, Centralia From this point Elsie Hornbeck claimed she identified Eugene Barnett in the open window with a rifle. Afterwards she admitted that her identification was based only on a photograph shown her by the prosecution. This young lady nearly fainted on the witness stand while trying to patch her absurd story together.] The 1918 Raid It had been rumored about town that the Union Hall was to be wrecked on this day but the loggers at the hall were of the opinion that the business men, having driven their Secretary out of town a short time previously, would not dare to perpetrate another atrocity so soon afterwards. In this they were sadly mistaken. Down the street marched the parade, at first presenting no unusual appearance. The Chief of Police, the Mayor and the Governor of the State were given places of honor at the head of the procession. Company G of the National Guard and a gang of broad-cloth hoodlums disguised as "Elks" made up the main body of the marchers. But the crafty and unscrupulous Hubbard had laid his plans in advance with characteristic cunning. The parade, like a scorpion, carried its sting in the rear. Along the main avenue went the guardsmen and the gentlemen of the Elks Club. So far nothing extraordinary had happened. Then the procession swerved to a side street. This must be the right thing for the line of march had been arranged by the Chamber of Commerce itself. A couple of blocks more and the parade had reached the intersection of First Street and Tower Avenue. What happened then the Mayor and Chief of Police probably could not have stopped even had the Governor himself ordered them to do so. From somewhere in the line of march a voice cried out, "Let's raid the I.W.W. Hall!" And the crowd at the tail end of the procession broke ranks and leaped to their work with a will. In a short time the intervening block that separated them from the Union Hall was covered. The building was stormed with clubs and stones. Every window was shattered and every door was smashed, the very sides of the building were torn off by the mob in its blind fury. Inside the rioters tore down the partitions and broke up chairs and pictures. The union men were surrounded, beaten and driven to the street where they were forced to watch furniture, records, typewriter and literature demolished and burned before their eyes. An American flag hanging in the hall, was torn down and destroyed. A Victrola and a desk were carried to the street with considerable care. The former was auctioned off on the spot for the benefit of the Red Cross. James Churchill, owner of a glove factory, won the machine. He still boasts of its possession. The desk was appropriated by F.B. Hubbard himself. This was turned over to an expressman and carted to the Chamber of Commerce. A small boy picked up the typewriter case and started to take it to a nearby hotel office. One of the terrorists detected the act and gave warning. The mob seized the lad, took him to a nearby light pole and threatened to lynch him if he did not tell them where books and papers were secreted which somebody said had been carried away by him. The boy denied having done this, but the hoodlums went into the hotel, ransacked and overturned everything. Not finding what they wanted, they left a notice that the proprietor would have to take the sign down from his building in just twenty-four hours. Then the mob surged around the unfortunate men who had been found in the Union hall. With cuffs and blows these were dragged to waiting trucks where they were lifted by the ears to the body of the machine and knocked prostrate one at a time. Sometimes a man would be dropped to the ground just after he had been lifted from his feet. Here he would lay with ear drums bursting and writhing from the kicks and blows that had been freely given. Like all similar mobs this one carried ropes, which were placed about the necks of the loggers. "Here's and I.W.W." yelled someone. "What shall we do with him?" A cry was given to "lynch him!" Some were taken to the city jail and the rest were dumped unceremoniously on the other side of the county line. Since that time the wrecked hall has remained tenantless and unrepaired. Grey and gaunt like a house in battle-scarred Belgium, it stands a mute testimony of the labor-hating ferocity of the lumber trust. Repeated efforts have since been made to destroy the remains with fire. The defense had tried without avail to introduce a photograph of the ruin as evidence to prove that the second hall was raided in a similar manner on Armistice Day, 1919. Judge Wilson refused to permit the jury to see either the photographs or the hall. But in case of another trial...? Evidently the lumber trust thought it better to have all traces of its previous crime obliterated. The raid of 1918 did not weaken the lumber workers' Union in Centralia. On the contrary it served to strengthen it. But not until more than a year had passed were the loggers able to establish a new headquarters. This hall was located next door to the Roderick Hotel on Tower Avenue, between Second and Third Streets. Hardly was this hall opened when threats were circulated by the Chamber of Commerce that it, like the previous one, was marked for destruction. The business element was lined up solid in denunciation of and opposition to the Union Hall and all that it stood for. But other anti-labor matters took up their attention and it was some time before the second raid was actually accomplished. There was one rift in the lute of lumber trust solidarity in Centralia. Business and professional men had long been groveling in sycophantic servility at the feet of "the clique." There was only one notable exception. A Lawyer--and a Man A young lawyer had settled in the city a few years previous to the Armistice Day tragedy. Together with his parents and four brothers he had left his home in Minnesota to seek fame and fortune in the woods of Washington. He had worked his way through McAlester College and the Law School of the University of Minnesota. He was young, ambitious, red-headed and husky, a loving husband and the proud father of a beautiful baby girl. Nature had endowed him with a dangerous combination of gifts,--a brilliant mind and a kind heart. His name was just plain Smith--Elmer Smith--and he came from the old rugged American stock. Smith started to practice law in Centralia, but unlike his brother attorneys, he held to the assumption that all men are equal under the law--even the hated I.W.W. In a short time his brilliant mind and kind heart had won him as much hatred from the lumber barons as love from the down-trodden,--which is saying a good deal. The "interests" studied the young lawyer carefully for awhile and soon decided that he could be neither bullied or bought. So they determined to either break his spirit or to break his neck. Smith is at present in prison charged with murder. This is how it happened: Smith established his office in the First Guarantee Bank Building which was quite the proper thing to do. Then he began to handle law suits for wage-earners, which was altogether the reverse. Caste rules in Centralia, and Elmer Smith was violating its most sacred mandataries by giving the "working trash" the benefit of his talents instead of people really worth while. Warren O. Grimm, who was afterwards shot while trying to break into the Union Hall with the mob, once cautioned Smith of the folly and danger of such a course. "You'll get along all right," said he, "if you will come in with us." Then he continued: "How would you feel if one of your clients would come up to you in public, slap you on the back and say 'Hello, Elmer?'" "Very proud," answered the young lawyer. [Illustration: Elmer Smith Attorney at law. Old American stock--born on a homestead in North Dakota. By championing the cause of the "under-dog" in Centralia Smith brought down on himself the wrath of the lumber trust. He defended many union men in the courts, and at one time sought to prosecute the kidnappers of Tom Lassiter. Smith is the man Warren O. Grimm told would get along all right, "if you come in with us." He bucked the lumber trust instead and landed in prison on a trumped-up murder charge. Smith was found "not guilty" by the jury, but immediately re-arrested on practically the same charge. He is not related to Britt Smith.] [Illustration: Wesley Everest Logger. American (old Washington pioneer stock). Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917. A returned soldier. Earnest, sincere, quiet, he was the "Jimmy Higgins" of the Centralia branch of the Lumberworkers Union. Everest was mistaken for Britt Smith, the Union secretary, whom the mob had started out to lynch. He was pursued by a gang of terrorists and unmercifully manhandled. Later--at night--he was taken from the city jail and hanged to a bridge. In the automobile, on the way to the lynching, he was unsexed by a human fiend--a well known Centralia business man--who used a razor on his helpless victim. Even the lynchers were forced to admit that Everest was the most "dead game" man they had ever seen.] Some months previous Smith had taken a case for an I.W.W. logger. He won it. Other cases in which workers needed legal advice came to him. He took them. A young girl was working at the Centralia "Chronicle." She was receiving a weekly wage of three dollars which is in defiance of the minimum wage law of the state for women. Smith won the case. Also he collected hundreds of dollars in back wages for workers whom the companies had sought to defraud. Workers in the clutches of loan sharks were extricated by means of the bankruptcy laws, hitherto only used by their masters. An automobile firm was making a practice of replacing Ford engines with old ones when a machine was brought in for repairs. One of the victims brought his case to Smith. and a lawsuit followed. This was an unheard-of proceeding, for heretofore such little business tricks had been kept out of court by common understanding. A worker, formerly employed by a subsidiary of the Eastern Lumber & Railway Company, had been deprived of his wages on a technicality of the law by the corporation attorneys. This man had a large family and hard circumstances were forced upon them by this misfortune. One of his little girls died from what the doctor called malnutrition--plain starvation. Smith filed suit and openly stated that the lawyers of the corporation were responsible for the death of the child. The indignation of the business and professional element blazed to white heat. A suit for libel and disbarment proceedings were started against him. Nothing could be done in this direction as Smith had not only justice but the law on his side. His enemies were waiting with great impatience for a more favorable opportunity to strike him down. Open threats were beginning to be heard against him. A Union lecturer came to town. The meeting was well attended. A vigilance committee of provocateurs and business men was in the audience. At the close of the lecture those gentlemen started to pass the signal for action. Elmer Smith sauntered down the aisle, shook hands with the speaker and told him he would walk to the train with him. The following morning the door to Smith's office was ornamented with a cardboard sign. It read: "Are you an American? You had better say so. Citizens' Committee." This was lettered in lead pencil. Across the bottom were scrawled these words: "No more I.W.W. meetings for you." In 1918 an event occurred which served further to tighten the noose about the stubborn neck of the young lawyer. On this occasion the terrorists of the city perpetrated another shameful crime against the working class--and the law. Blind Tom--A Blemish on America Tom Lassiter made his living by selling newspapers at a little stand on a street corner. Tom is blind, a good soul and well liked by the loggers. But Tom has vision enough to see that there is something wrong with the hideous capitalist system we live under; and so he kept papers on sale that would help enlighten the workers. Among these were the "Seattle Union Record," "The Industrial Worker" and "Solidarity." To put it plainly, Tom was a thorn in the side of the local respectability because of his modest efforts to make people thing. And his doom had also been sealed. Early in June the newsstand was broken into and all his clothing, literature and little personal belongings were taken to a vacant lot and burned. A warning sign was left on a short pole stuck in the ashes. The message, "You leave town in 24 hours, U.S. Soldiers, Sailors and Marines," was left on the table in his room. With true Wobbly determination, Lassiter secured a new stock of papers and immediately re-opened his little stand. About this time a Centralia business man, J.H. Roberts by name, was heard to say "This man (Lassiter) is within his legal rights and if we can't do anything by law we'll take the law into our own hands." This is precisely what happened. On the afternoon of June 30th, Blind Tom was crossing Tower Avenue with hesitating steps when, without warning, two business men seized his groping arms and yelled in his ear, "We'll get you out of town this time!" Lassiter called for help. The good Samaritan came along in the form of a brute-faced creature known as W.R. Patton, a rich property owner of the city. This Christian gentleman sneaked up behind the blind man and lunged him forcibly into a waiting Oakland automobile. The machine is owned by Cornelius McIntyre who is said to have been one of the kidnapping party. "Shut up or I'll smash your mouth so you can't yell," said one of his assailants as Lassiter was forced, still screaming for help, into the car. Turning to the driver one of the party said, "Step on her and let's get out of here." About this time Constable Luther Patton appeared on the scene. W.R. Patton walked over to where the constable stood and shouted to the bystanders, "We'll arrest the first person that objects, interferes or gets too loud." "A good smash on the jaw would do more good," suggested the kind-hearted official. "Well, we got that one pretty slick and now there are two more we have to get," stated W.R. Patton, a short time afterwards. Blind Tom was dropped helpless in a ditch just over the county line. He was picked up by a passing car and eventually made his way to Olympia, capital of the state. In about a week he was back in Centralia. But before he could again resume his paper selling he was arrested on a charge of "criminal syndicalism." He is now awaiting conviction at Chehalis. Before his arrest, however, Lassiter engaged Elmer Smith as his attorney. Smith appealed to County Attorney Herman Allen for protection for his client. After a half-hearted effort to locate the kidnappers--who were known to everybody--this official gave up the task saying he was "Too busy to bother with the affair, and, besides, the offense was only 'third degree assault' which is punishable with a fine of but one dollar and costs." The young lawyer did not waste any more time with the County authorities. Instead he secured sworn statements of the facts in the case and submitted them to the Governor. These were duly acknowledged and placed on file in Olympia. But up to date no action has been taken by the executive to prosecute the criminals who committed the crime. "Handle these I.W.W. cases if you want to," said a local attorney to Elmer Smith, counsel for one of the banks, "but sooner or later they're all going to be hanged or deported anyway." [Illustration: Where Barnett's Rifle Was Supposed to Have Been Found Eugene Barnett was said to have left his rifle under this sign-board as he fled from the scene of the shooting. It would have been much easier to hide a gun in the tall brush in the foreground. In reality Barnett did not have a rifle on November 11th and was never within a mile of this place. Prosecutor Cunningham said he had "been looking all over for that rifle" when it was turned over to him by a stool pigeon. Strangely enough Cunningham knew the number of the gun before he placed hands on it.] Smith was feathering a nest for himself--feathering it with steel and stone and a possible coil of hempen rope. The shadow of the prison bars was falling blacker on his red head with every passing moment. His fearless championing of the cause of the "under dog" had won him the implacable hatred of his own class. To them his acts of kindness and humanity were nothing less than treason. Smith had been ungrateful to the clique that had offered him every inducement to "come in with us". A lawyer with a heart is as dangerous as a working man with his brains. Elmer Smith would be punished all right; it would just be a matter of time. The indifference of the County and State authorities regarding the kidnapping of blind Tom gave the terrorists renewed confidence in the efficacy and "legality" of their methods. Also it gave them a hint as to the form their future depredations were to take. And so, with the implied approval of everyone worth considering, they went about their plotting with still greater determination and a soothing sense of security. The Conspiracy Develops The cessation of hostilities in Europe deprived the gangsters of the cloak of "patriotism" as a cover for their crimes. But this cloak was too convenient to be discarded so easily. "Let the man in uniform do it" was an axiom that had been proved both profitable and safe. Then came the organization of the local post of the American Legion and the now famous Citizen's Protective League--of which more afterwards. With the signing of the Armistice, and the consequent almost imperceptible lifting of the White Terror that dominated the country, the organization of the loggers began daily to gather strength. The Chamber of Commerce began to growl menacingly, the Employers' Association to threaten and the lumber trust papers to incite open violence. And the American Legion began to function as a "cats paw" for the men behind the scenes. Why should the beautiful city of Centralia tolerate the hated Union hall any longer? Other halls had been raided, men had been tarred and feathered and deported--no one had ever been punished! Why should the good citizens of Centralia endure a lumberworkers headquarters and their despised union itself right in the midst of their peaceful community? Why indeed! The matter appeared simple enough from any angle. So then and there the conspiracy was hatched that resulted in the tragedy on Armistice Day. But the forces at work to bring about this unhappy conclusion were far from local. Let us see what these were like before the actual details of the conspiracy are recounted. There were three distinct phases of this campaign to "rid the woods of the agitators." These three phases dovetail together perfectly. Each one is a perfect part of a shrewdly calculated and mercilessly executed conspiracy to commit constructive murder and unlawful entry. The diabolical plan itself was designed to brush aside the laws of the land, trample the Constitution underfoot and bring about an unparalleled orgy of unbridled labor hatred and labor repression that would settle the question of unionism for a long time. The Conspiracy--And a Snag First of all comes the propaganda stage with the full force of the editorial virulence of the trust-controlled newspapers directed against labor in favor of "law and order," i.e., the lumber interests. All the machinery of newspaper publicity was used to vilify the lumber worker and to discredit his Union. Nothing was left unsaid that would tend to produce intolerance and hatred or to incite mob violence. This is not only true of Centralia, but of all the cities and towns located in the lumber district. Centralia happened to be the place where the tree of anti-labor propaganda first bore its ghastly fruit. Space does not permit us to quote the countless horrible things the I.W.W. was supposed to stand for and to be constantly planning to do. Statements from the lips of General Wood and young Roosevelt to the effect that citizens should not argue with Bolshevists but meet them "head on" were very conspicuously displayed on all occasions. Any addle-headed mediocrity, in or out of uniform, who had anything particularly atrocious to say against the labor movement in general or the "radicals" in particular, was afforded every opportunity to do so. The papers were vying with one another in devising effectual, if somewhat informal, means of dealing with the "red menace." Supported by, and partly the result of this barrage of lies, misrepresentation and incitation, came the period of attempted repression by "law". This was probably the easiest thing of all because the grip of Big Business upon the law-making and law-enforcing machinery of the nation is incredible. At all events a state's "criminal syndicalism law" had been conveniently passed and was being applied vigorously against union men, A.F. of L. and I.W.W. alike, but chiefly against the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union, No. 500, of the Industrial Workers of the World, the basic lumber industry being the largest in the Northwest and the growing power of the organized lumberjack being therefore more to be feared. [Illustration: His Uncle Planned It Dale Hubbard, killed in self-defense by Wesley Everest, Armistice Day, 1919. F. Hubbard, a lumber baron and uncle of the dead man, is held to have been the instigator of the plot in which his nephew was shot. Hubbard was martyrized by the lumber trust's determination "to let the men in uniform do it."] No doubt the lumber interests had great hope that the execution of these made-to-order laws would clear up the atmosphere so far as the lumber situation was concerned. But they were doomed to a cruel and surprising disappointment. A number of arrests were made in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and even Nevada. Fifty or sixty men all told were arrested and their trials rushed as test cases. During this period from April 25th to October 28th, 1919, the lumber trust saw with chagrin and dismay each of the state cases in turn either won outright by the defendants or else dismissed in the realization that it would be impossible to win them. By October 28th George F. Vanderveer, chief attorney for the defense, declared there were not a single member of the I.W.W. in custody in Washington, Idaho or Montana under this charge. In Seattle, Washington, an injunction was obtained restraining the mayor from closing down the new Union hall in that city under the new law. Thus it appeared that the nefarious plan of the employers and their subservient lawmaking adjuncts, to outlaw the lumber workers Union and to penalize the activities of its members, was to be doomed to an ignominious failure. Renewed Efforts--Legal and Otherwise Furious at the realization of their own impotency the "interests" launched forth upon a new campaign. This truly machiavellian scheme was devised to make it impossible for accused men to secure legal defense of any kind. All labor cases were to be tried simultaneously, thus making it impossible for the defendants to secure adequate counsel. George F. Russell, Secretary-Manager of the Washington Employers' Association, addressed meetings over the state urging all Washington Prosecuting Attorneys to organize that this end might be achieved. It is reported that Governor Hart, of Washington, looked upon the scheme with favor when it was brought to his personal attention by Mr. Russell. However, the fact remains that the lumber trust was losing and that it would have to devise even more drastic measures if it were to hope to escape the prospect of a very humiliating defeat. And, all the while the organization of the lumber workers continued to grow. In Washington the situation was becoming more tense, momentarily. Many towns in the heart of the lumber district had passed absurd criminal syndicalism ordinances. These prohibited membership in the I.W.W.; made it unlawful to rent premises to the organization or to circulate its literature. The Employers' Association had boasted that it was due to its efforts that these ordinances had been passed. But still they were faced with the provocative and unforgettable fact, that the I.W.W. was no more dead than the cat with the proverbial nine lives. Where halls had been closed or raided the lumber workers were transacting their union affairs right on the job or in the bunkhouses, just as though nothing had happened. What was more deplorable a few Union halls were still open and doing business at the same old stand. Centralia was one of these; drastic measures must be applied at once or loggers in other localities might be encouraged to open halls also. As events prove these measures were taken--and they were drastic. The Employers Show Their Fangs That the Employers' Association was assiduously preparing its members for action suitable for the situation is evidenced by the following quotations from the official bulletin addressed privately "to Members of the Employers' Association of Washington". Note them carefully; they are published as "suggestions to members" over the written signature of George F. Russell Secretary-Manager: June 25th, 1918.--"Provide a penalty for idleness ... Common labor now works a few days and then loafs to spend the money earned ... Active prosecution of the I.W.W. and other radicals." April 30th, 1919.--"Keep business out of the control of radicals and I.W.W.... Overcome agitation ... Closer co-operation between employers and employees ... Suppress the agitators ... Hang the Bolshevists." May 31st, 1919.--"If the agitators were taken care of we would have very little trouble ... Propaganda to counteract radicals and overcome agitation ... Put the I.W.W. in jail." June 30th, 1919.--"Make some of the Seattle papers print the truth ... Get rid of the I.W.W.'s." July 2nd, 1919.--"Educate along the line of the three R's and the golden rule, economy and self denial ... Import Japanese labor ... Import Chinese labor." July 31st, 1919.--"Deport about ten Russians in this community." August 31st, 1919.--"Personal contact between employer and employee, stringent treatment of the I.W.W." October 15th, 1919. "There are many I.W.W.s--mostly in the logging camps...." October 31st, 1919.--(A little over a week before the Centralia raid.) "Run your business or quit ... Business men and tax payers of Vancouver, Washington, have organized the Loyal Citizen's Protective League; opposed to Bolsheviki and the Soviet form of government and in favor of the open shop ... Jail the radicals and deport them ... Since the armistice these radicals have started in again. ONLY TWO COMMUNITIES IN WASHINGTON ALLOW I.W.W. HEADQUARTERS." (!!!) [Illustration: Arthur McElfresh A Centralia druggist. His wife warned him not to march to the union headquarters because "she knew he'd get hurt." McElfresh is the man said to have been shot inside the hall when the mob burst through the door.] December 31st, 1919. "Get rid of all the I.W.W. and all other un-American organizations ... Deport the radicals or use the rope as at Centralia. Until we get rid of the I.W.W. and radicals we don't expect to do much in this country ... Keep cleaning up on the I.W.W.... Don't let it die down ... Keep up public sentiment..." These few choice significant morsels of one hundred percent (on the dollar) Americanism are quoted almost at random from the private bulletins of the officials of the Iron Heel in the state of Washington. Here you can read their sentiments in their own words; you can see how dupes and hirelings were coached to perpetrate the crime of Centralia, and as many other similar crimes as they could get away with. Needless to say these illuminating lines were not intended for the perusal of the working class. But now that we have obtained them and placed them before your eyes you can draw your own conclusion. There are many, many more records germane to this case that we would like to place before you, but the Oligarchy has closed its steel jaws upon them and they are at present inaccessible. Men are still afraid to tell the truth in Centralia. Some day the workers may learn the whole truth about the inside workings of the Centralia conspiracy. Be that as it may the business interests of the Northwest lumber country stand bloody handed and doubly damned, black with guilt and foul with crime; convicted before the bar of public opinion, by their own statements and their own acts. Failure and Desperation Let us see for a moment how the conspiracy of the lumber barons operated to achieve the unlawful ends for which it was designed. Let us see how they were driven by their own failure at intrigue to adopt methods so brutal that they would have disgraced the head-hunter; how they tried to gain with murder-lust what they had failed to gain lawfully and with public approval. The campaign of lies and slander inaugurated by their private newspapers failed to convince the workers of the undesirability of labor organization. In spite of the armies of editors and news-whelps assembled to its aid, it served only to lash to a murderous frenzy the low instincts of the anti-labor elements in the community. The campaign of legal repression, admittedly instituted by the Employers' Association, failed also in spite of the fact that all the machinery of the state from dog-catcher down to Governor was at its beck and call on all occasions and for all purposes. Having made a mess of things with these methods the lumber barons threw all scruples to the winds--if they ever had any--threw aside all pretension of living within the law. They started out, mad-dog like, to rent, wreck and destroy the last vestige of labor organization from the woods of the Northwest, and furthermore, to hunt down union men and martyrize them with the club, the gun, the rope and the courthouse. It was to cover up their own crimes that the heartless beasts of Big Business beat the tom-toms of the press in order to lash the "patriotism" of their dupes and hirelings into hysteria. It was to hide their own infamy that the loathsome war dance was started that developed perceptibly from uncomprehending belligerency into the lawless tumult of mobs, raids and lynching! And it will be an everlasting blot upon the fair name of America that they were permitted to do so. The Centralia tragedy was the culmination of a long series of unpunished atrocities against labor. What is expected of men who have been treated as these men were treated and who were denied redress or protection under the law? Every worker in the Northwest knows about the wrongs lumberworkers have endured--they are matters of common knowledge. It was common knowledge in Centralia and adjoining towns that the I.W.W. hall was to be raided on Armistice Day. Yet eight loggers have been sentenced from twenty-five to forty years in prison for the crime of defending themselves from the mob that set out to murder them! But let us see how the conspiracy was operating in Centralia to make the Armistice Day tragedy inevitable. The Maelstrom--And Four Men Centralia was fast becoming the vortex of the conspiracy that was rushing to its inevitable conclusion. Event followed event in rapid succession, straws indicating the main current of the flood tide of labor-hatred. The Commercial Club was seething with intrigue like the court of old France under Catherine de Medici; only this time it was Industrial Unionism instead of Huguenots who were being Marked for a new night of St. Bartholomew. The heresy to be uprooted was belief in industrial instead of religious freedom; but the stake and the gibbet were awaiting the New Idea just as they had the old. The actions of the lumber interests were now but thinly veiled and their evil purpose all too manifest. The connection between the Employers' Association of the state and its local representatives in Centralia had become unmistakably evident. And behind these loomed the gigantic silhouette of the Employers' Association of the nation--the colossal "invisible government"--more powerful at times than the Government itself. More and more stood out the naked brutal fact that the purpose of all this plotting was to drive the union loggers from the city and to destroy their hall. The names of the men actively interested in this movement came to light in spite of strenuous efforts to keep them obscured. Four of these stand out prominently in the light of the tragedy that followed: George F. Russell, F.B. Hubbard, William Scales and last, but not least, Warren O. Grimm. [Illustration: Warren O. Grimm Warren O. Grimm, killed at the beginning of the rush on the I.W.W. hall. At another raid on an I.W.W. hall in 1918 Grimm was said by witnesses to have been leading the mob, "holding two American flags and dancing like a whirling dervish." His life-long friend, Frank Van Gilder, testified: "I stood less than two feet from Grimm when he was shot. He doubled up, put his hands to his stomach and said to me: 'My God, I'm shot.'" "What did you do then?" "I turned and left him."] The first named, George F. Russell, is a hired Manager for the Washington Employers' Association, whose membership employs between 75,000 and 80,000 workers in the state. Russell is known to be a reactionary of the most pronounced type. He is an avowed union smasher and a staunch upholder of the open shop principle, which is widely advertised as the "American plan" in Washington. Incidentally he is an advocate of the scheme to import Chinese and Japanese cooley labor as a solution of the "high wage and arrogant unionism" problem. F. B. Hubbard, is a small-bore Russell, differing from his chief only in that his labor hatred is more fanatical and less discreet. Hubbard was hard hit by the strike in 1917 which fact has evidently won him the significant title of "a vicious little anti-labor reptile." He is the man who helped to raid the 1918 Union Hall in Centralia and who appropriated for himself the stolen desk of the Union Secretary. His nephew Dale Hubbard was shot while trying to lynch Wesley Everest. William Scales is a Centralia business man and a virulent sycophant. He is a parochial replica of the two persons mentioned above. Scales was in the Quartermaster's Department down on the border during the trouble with Mexico. Because he was making too much money out of Uncle Sam's groceries, he was relieved of his duties quite suddenly and discharged from the service. He was fortunate in making France instead of Fort Leavenworth, however, and upon his return, became an ardent proselyte of Russell and Hubbard and their worthy cause. Also he continued in the grocery business. [Illustration: Hizzoner, The Jedge In his black robe, like a bird of prey, he perched above the courtroom and ruled always adversely to the cause of labor. Appointed to try men accused of killing other men whom he had previously eulogized Judge John M. Wilson did not disappoint those who appointed him. In open court Vanderveer told him. In open court Vanderveer told this man: "There was a time when I thought your rulings were due to ignorance of the law. That will no longer explain them."] Warren O. Grimm came from a good family and was a small town aristocrat. His brother is city attorney at Centralia. Grimm was a lawyer, a college athlete and a social lion. He had been with the American forces in Siberia and his chief bid for distinction was a noisy dislike for the Worker's & Peasants' Republic of Russia, and the I.W.W. which he termed the "American Bolsheviki". During the 1918 raid on the Centralia hall Grimm is said to have been dancing around "like a whirling dervish" and waving the American flag while the work of destruction was going on. Afterwards he became prominent in the American Legion and was the chief "cat's paw" for the lumber interests who were capitalizing the uniform to gain their own unholy ends. Personally he was a clean-cut modern young man. Shadows Cast Before On June 26th, the following notice appeared conspicuously on the first page of the Centralia Hub: Meeting of Business Men Called for Friday Evening "Business men and property owners of Centralia are urged to attend a meeting tomorrow in the Chamber of Commerce rooms to meet the officers of the Employers' Association of the state to discuss ways and means of bettering the conditions which now confront the business and property interests of the state. George F. Russell, Secretary-Manager, says in his note to business men: 'We need your advice and your co-operation in support of the movement for the defense of property and property rights. It is the most important question before the public today.'" At this meeting Mr. Russell dwelt on the statement that the "radicals" were better organized than the property interests. Also he pointed out the need of a special organization to protect "rights of property" from the encroachments of all "foes of the government". The Non-Partisan League, the Triple Alliance and the A.F. of L. were duly condemned. The speaker then launched out into a long tirade against the Industrial Workers of the World which was characterized as the most dangerous organization in America and the one most necessary for "good citizens" to crush. Needless to state the address was chock full of 100% Americanism. It amply made up in forcefulness anything it lacked in logic. So the "Citizens' Protective League" of Centralia was born. From the first it was a law unto itself--murder lust wearing the smirk of respectability--Judge Lynch dressed in a business suit. The advent of this infamous league marks the final ascendancy of terrorism over the Constitution in the city of Centralia. The only things still needed were a secret committee, a coil of rope and an opportunity. F.B. Hubbard was the man selected to pull off the "rough stuff" and at the same time keep the odium of crime from smirching the fair names of the conspirators. He was told to "perfect his own organization". Hubbard was eminently fitted for his position by reason of his intense labor-hatred and his aptitude for intrigue. The following day the Centralia Daily Chronicle carried the following significant news item: BUSINESS MEN OF COUNTY ORGANIZE Representatives From Many Communities Attend Meeting in Chamber of Commerce, Presided Over Secretary of Employers' Association. "The labor situation was thoroughly discussed this afternoon at a meeting held in the local Chamber of Commerce which was attended by representative business men from various parts of Lewis County. "George F. Russell, Secretary of the Employers' Association, of Washington, presided at the meeting. "A temporary organization was effected with F. B. Hubbard, President of the Eastern Railway & Lumber Company, as chairman. He was empowered to perfect his own organization. A similar meeting will be held in Chehalis in connection with the noon luncheon of the Citizens' Club on that day." [Illustration: "Special Prosecutor" C.D. Cunningham, attorney for F.B. Hubbard and various lumber interests, took charge of the prosecution immediately. He was the father of much of the "third degree" methods used on witnesses. Vanderveer offered to prove at the trial that Cunningham was at the jail when Wesley Everest was dragged out, brutally mutilated and then lynched.] The city of Centralia became alive with gossip and speculation about this new move on the part of the employers. Everybody knew that the whole thing centered around the detested hall of the Union loggers. Curiosity seekers began to come In from all parts of the county to have a peep at this hall before it was wrecked. Business men were known to drive their friends from the new to the old hall in order to show what the former would look like in a short time. People in Centralia generally knew for a certainty that the present hall would go the way of its predecessor. It was just a question now as to the time and circumstances of the event. Warren O. Grimm had done his bit to work up sentiment against the union loggers and their hall. Only a month previously--on Labor Day, 1919,--he had delivered a "labor" speech that was received with great enthusiasm by a local clique of business men. Posing as an authority on Bolshevism on account of his Siberian service Grimm had elaborated on the dangers of this pernicious doctrine. With a great deal of dramatic emphasis he had urged his audience to beware of the sinister influence of "the American Bolsheviki--the Industrial Workers of the World." A few days before the hall was raided Elmer Smith called at Grimm's office on legal business. Grimm asked him, by the way, what he thought of his Labor Day speech. Smith replied that he thought it was "rotten" and that he couldn't agree with Grimm's anti-labor conception of Americanism. Smith pointed to the deportation of Tom Lassiter as an example of the "Americanism" he considered disgraceful. He said also that he thought free speech was one of the fundamental rights of all citizens. "I can't agree with you," replied Grimm. "That's the proper way to treat such a fellow." The New Black Hundred On October 19th the Centralia Hub published an item headed "Employers Called to Discuss Handling of 'Wobbly' Problem." This article urges all employers to attend, states that the meeting will be held in the Elk's Club and mentioned the wrecking of the Union Hall in 1918. On the following day, October 20th, three weeks before the shooting, this meeting was held at the hall of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks--the now famous Elks' Club of Centralia. The avowed purpose of this meeting was to "deal with the I.W.W. problem." The chairman was William Scales, at that time Commander of the Centralia Post of the American Legion. The I.W.W. Hall was the chief topic of discussion. F.B. Hubbard opened up by saying that the I.W.W. was a menace and should be driven out of town. Chief of Police Hughes, however, cautioned them against such a course. He is reported to have said that "the I.W.W. is doing nothing wrong in Centralia--is not violating any law--and you have no right to drive them out of town in this manner." The Chief of Police then proceeded to tell the audience that he had taken up the matter of legally evicting the industrialists with City Attorney C.E. Grimm, a brother of Warren O. Grimm, who is said to have told them, "Gentlemen, there is no law by which you can drive the I.W.W. out of town." City Commissioner Saunders and County Attorney Allen had spoken to the same effect. The latter, Allen, had gone over the literature of the organization with regard to violence and destruction and had voluntarily dismissed a "criminal syndicalist" case without trial for want of evidence. [Illustration: Lewis County's Legal Prostitute Herman Allen, prosecuting attorney of Lewis County. He stood at the corner during the raid and received papers stolen from the hall. There is no record of his having protested against any illegal action. He turned over his office to the special Prosecutors and acted as their tool throughout. During the entire trial he never appeared as an active participant.] Hubbard was furious at this turn of affairs and shouted to Chief of Police Hughes: "It's a damned outrage that these men should be permitted to remain in town! Law or no law, if I were Chief of Police they wouldn't stay here twenty-four hours." "I'm not in favor of raiding the hall myself," said Scales. "But I'm certain that if anybody else wants to raid the I.W.W. Hall there is no jury in the land will ever convict them." After considerable discussion the meeting started to elect a committee to deal with the situation. First of all an effort was made to get a workingman elected as a member to help camouflage its very evident character and make people believe that "honest labor" was also desirous of ridding the town of the hated I.W.W. Hall. A switchman named Henry, a member of the Railway Brotherhood, was nominated. When he indignantly declined, Hubbard, red in the face with rage, called him a "damned skunk." The Inner Circle Scales then proceeded to tell the audience in general and the city officials in particular that he would himself appoint a committee "whose inner workings were secret," and see if he could not get around the matter that way. The officers of the League were then elected. The President was County Coroner David Livingstone, who afterwards helped to lynch Wesley Everest. Dr. Livingstone made his money from union miners. William Scales was vice president and Hubbard was treasurer. The secret committee was then appointed by Hubbard. As its name implies it was an underground affair, similar to the Black Hundreds of Old Russia. No record of any of its proceedings has ever come to light, but according to best available knowledge, Warren O. Grimm, Arthur McElfresh, B.S. Cromier and one or two others who figured prominently in the raid, were members. At all events on November 6th, five days before the shooting, Grimm was elected Commander of the Centralia Post of the American Legion, taking the place of Scales, who resigned in his favor. Scales evidently was of the opinion that a Siberian veteran and athlete was better fitted to lead the "shock troops" than a mere counter-jumper like himself. There is no doubt but the secret committee had its members well placed in positions of strategic importance for the coming event. The following day the Tacoma News Tribune carried a significant editorial on the subject of the new organization: "At Centralia a committee of citizens has been formed that takes the mind back to the old days of vigilance committees of the West, which did so much to force law-abiding citizenship upon certain lawless elements. It is called the Centralia Protective Association, and its object is to combat I.W.W. activities in that city and the surrounding country. It invites to membership all citizens who favor the enforcement of law and order ... It is high time for the people who do believe in the lawful and orderly conduct of affairs to take the upper hand ... Every city and town might, with profit, follow Centralia's example." The reference to "law and orderly conduct of affairs" has taken a somewhat ironical twist, now that Centralia has shown the world what she considers such processes to be. No less significant was an editorial appearing on the same Date in the Centralia Hub: "If the city is left open to this menace, we will soon find ourselves at the mercy of an organized band of outlaws bent on destruction. What are we going to do about it?" And, referring to the organization of the "secret committee," the editorial stated: "It was decided that the inner workings of the organization were to be kept secret, to more effectively combat a body using similar tactics." The editorial reeks with lies; but it was necessary that the mob spirit should be kept at white heat at all times. Newspaper incitation has never been punished by law, yet it is directly responsible for more murders, lynching and raids than any other one force in America. [Illustration: The Stool Pigeon Tom Morgan, who turned state's evidence. There is an historical precedent for Morgan. Judas acted similarly, but Judas later had the manhood to go out and hang himself. Morgan left for "parts unknown."] The Plot Leaks Out By degrees the story of the infamous secret committee and its diabolical plan leaked out, adding positive confirmation to the many already credited rumors in circulation. Some of the newspapers quite openly hinted that the I.W.W. Hall was to be the object of the brewing storm. Chief of Police Hughes told a member of the Lewis County Trades Council, William T. Merriman by name, that the business men were organizing to raid the hall and drive its members out of town. Merriman, in turn carried the statement to many of his friends and brother unionists. Soon the prospective raid was the subject of open discussion,--over the breakfast toast, on the street corners, in the camps and mills--every place. So common was the knowledge in fact that many of the craft organizations in Centralia began to discuss openly what they should do about it. They realized that the matter was one which concerned labor and many members wanted to protest and were urging their unions to try to do something. At the Lewis County Trades Council the subject was brought up for discussion by its president, L. F. Dickson. No way of helping the loggers was found, however, if they would so stubbornly try to keep open their headquarters in the face of such opposition. Harry Smith, a brother of Elmer Smith, the attorney, was a delegate at this meeting and reported to his brother the discussion that took place. Secretary Britt Smith and the loggers at the Union hall were not by any means ignorant of the conspiracy being hatched against them. Day by day they had followed the development of the plot with breathless interest and not a little anxiety. They knew from bitter experience how union men were handled when they were trapped in their halls. But they would not entertain the idea of abandoning their principles and seeking personal safety. Every logging camp for miles around knew of the danger also. The loggers there had gone through the hell of the organization period and had felt the wrath of the lumber barons. Some of them felt that the statement of Secretary of Labor Wilson as to the attitude of the Industrial Workers of the World towards "overthrowing the government," and "violence and destruction" would discourage the terrorists from attempting such a flagrant and brutal injustice as the one contemplated. [Illustration: "Oily" Abel Suave and slimy as a snake; without any of the kindlier traits of nature, W.H. Abel, sounded the gamut of rottenness in his efforts to convict the accused men without the semblance of a fair trial. Abel is notorious throughout Washington as the hireling of the lumber interests. In 1917 he prosecuted "without fee" all laboring men on strike and is attorney for the Cosmopolis "penitentiary" so called on account of the brutality with which it treats employes. Located in one of the small towns of the state Abel has made a fortune prosecuting labor cases for the special interests.] Regarding the deportation of I.W.W.'s for belonging to an organization which advocates such things, Secretary of Labor Wilson had stated a short time previously: "An exhaustive study into the by-laws and practices of the I.W.W. has thus far failed to disclose anything that brings it within the class of organizations referred to." Other of the loggers were buoyed up with the many victories won in the courts on "criminal syndicalism" charges and felt that the raid would be too "raw" a thing for the lumber interests even to consider. All were secure in the knowledge and assurance that they were violating no law in keeping open their hall. And they wanted that hall kept open. Of course the question of what was to be done was discussed at their business meetings. When news reached them on November 4th of the contemplated "parade" they decided to publish a leaflet telling the Citizens of Centralia about the justice and legality of their position, the aims of their organization and the real reason for the intense hatred which the lumber trust harbored against them. Such leaflet was drawn up by Secretary Britt Smith and approved by the membership. It was an honest, outspoken appeal for public sympathy and support. This leaflet--word for word as it was printed and circulated in Centralia--is reprinted below: To the Citizens of Centralia We Must Appeal [Illustration: The Chief Fink Frank P. Christensen, who was the "fixer" for the prosecution. As Assistant Attorney General he used his office to intimidate witnesses and in the effort to cover up actions of the mob. He is reported to have been responsible for the recovery and burial of Everest's body, saying: "We've got to bring in that body and bury it. If the wobs ever find out what was done and get it they'll raise hell and make capital of it."] "To the law abiding citizens of Centralia and to the working class in general: We beg of you to read and carefully consider the following: "The profiteering class of Centralia have of late been waving the flag of our country in an endeavor to incite the lawless element of our city to raid our hall and club us out of town. For this purpose they have inspired editorials in the Hub, falsely and viciously attacking the I.W.W., hoping to gain public approval for such revolting criminality. These profiteers are holding numerous secret meetings to that end, and covertly inviting returned service men to do their bidding. In this work they are ably assisted by the bankrupt lumber barons of southwest Washington who led the mob that looted and burned the I.W.W. hall a year ago. "These criminal thugs call us a band of outlaws bent on destruction. This they do in an attempt to hide their own dastardly work in burning our hall and destroying our property. They say we are a menace; and we are a menace to all mobocrats and pilfering thieves. Never did the I.W.W. burn public or private halls, kidnap their fellow citizens, destroy their property, club their fellows out of town, bootleg or act in any ways as law-breakers. These patriotic profiteers throughout the country have falsely and with out any foundation whatever charged the I.W.W. with every crime on the statute books. For these alleged crimes thousands of us have been jailed in foul and filthy cells throughout this country, often without charge, for months and in some cases, years, and when released re-arrested and again thrust in jail to await a trial that is never called. The only convictions of the I.W.W. were those under the espionage law, where we were forced to trial before jurors, all of whom were at political and industrial enmity toward us, and in courts hostile to the working class. This same class of handpicked courts and juries also convicted many labor leaders, socialists, non-partisans, pacifists, guilty of no crime save that of loyalty to the working class. "By such courts Jesus the Carpenter was slaughtered upon the charge that 'he stirreth up the people.' Only last month 25 I.W.W. were indicted in Seattle as strike leaders, belonging to an unlawful organization, attempting to overthrow the government and other vile things under the syndicalist law passed by the last legislature. To exterminate the 'wobbly' both the court and jury have the lie to every charge. The court held them a lawful organization and their literature was not disloyal nor inciting to violence, though the government had combed the country from Chicago to Seattle for witnesses, and used every pamphlet taken from their hall in government raids. "In Spokane 13 members were indicted in the Superior Court for wearing the I.W.W. button and displaying their emblem. The jury unanimously acquitted them and the court held it no crime. "In test cases last month both in the Seattle and Everett Superior Courts, the presiding judge declared the police had no authority in law to close their halls and the padlocks were ordered off and the halls opened. "Many I.W.W. in and around Centralia went to France and fought and bled for the democracy they never secured. They came home to be threatened with mob violence by the law and order outfit that pilfered every nickel possible from their mothers and fathers while they were fighting in the trenches in the thickest of the fray. "Our only crime is solidarity, loyalty to the working class and justice to the oppressed." "Let the Men in Uniform Do It" On November 6th, the Centralia Post of the American Legion met with a committee from the Chamber of Commerce to arrange for a parade-another "patriotic" parade. The first anniversary of the signing of the armistice was now but a few days distant and Centralia felt it incumbent upon herself to celebrate. Of course the matter was brought up rather circumspectly, but knowing smiles greeted the suggestion. One business man made a motion that the brave boys wear their uniforms. This was agreed upon. The line of march was also discussed. As the union hall was a little off the customary parade route, Scales suggested that their course lead past the hall "in order to show them how strong we are." It was intimated that a command "eyes right" would be given as the legionaries and business men passed the union headquarters. This was merely a poor excuse of the secret committeemen to get the parade where they needed it. But many innocent men were lured into a "lynching bee" without knowing that they were being led to death by a hidden gang of broad-cloth conspirators who were plotting at murder. Lieutenant Cormier, who afterwards blew the whistle that was the signal for the raid, endorsed the proposal of Scales as did Grimm and McElfresh--all three of them secret committeemen. Practically no other subject but the "parade" was discussed at this meeting. The success of the project was now assured for it had placed into the hands of the men who alone could arrange to "have the men in uniform do it." The men in uniform had done it once before and people knew what to expect. The day following this meeting the Centralia Hub published an announcement of the coming event stating that the legionaires had "voted to wear uniforms." The line of march was published for the first time. Any doubts about the real purpose of the parade vanished when people read that the precession was to march from the City Park to Third street and Tower avenue and return. The union hall was on Tower between Second and Third streets, practically at the end of the line of march and plainly the objective of the demonstrators. [Illustration: Bridge from which Everest Was Hanged From this bridge, over the Chehalis river, Wesley Everest was left dangling by a mob of business men. Automobile parties visited this spot at different times during the night and played their headlights on the corpse in order better to enjoy the spectacle.] "Decent Labor"--Hands Off! A short time after the shooting a virulent leaflet was issued by the Mayor's office stating that the "plot to kill had been laid two or three weeks before the tragedy," and that "the attack (of the loggers) was without justification or excuse." Both statements are bare faced lies. The meeting was held the 6th and the line of march made public of the 7th. The loggers could not possibly have planned a week and a half previously to shoot into a parade they knew nothing about and whose line of march had not yet been disclosed. It was proved in court that the union men armed themselves at the very last moment, after everything else had failed and they had been left helpless to face the alternative of being driven out of town or being lynched. About this time eyewitnesses declare coils of rope were being purchased in a local hardware store. This rope is all cut up into little pieces now and most of it is dirty and stained. But many of Centralia's best families prize their souvenir highly. They say it brings good luck to a family. A few days after the meeting just described William Dunning, vice president of the Lewis County Trades and Labor Assembly, met Warren Grimm on the street. Having fresh in his mind a recent talk about the raid in the Labor Council meetings, and being well aware of Grimm's standing and influence, Dunning broached the subject. "We've been discussing the threatened raid on the I.W.W. hall," he said. "Who are you, an I.W.W.?" asked Grimm. Dunning replied stating that he was vice president of the Labor Assembly and proceeded to tell Grimm the feeling of his organization on the subject. "Decent labor ought to keep its hands off," was Grimm's laconic reply. The Sunday before the raid a public meeting was held in the union hall. About a hundred and fifty persons were in the audience, mostly working men and women of Centralia. A number of loggers were present, dressed in the invariable mackinaw, stagged overalls and caulked shoes. John Foss, an I.W.W. ship builder from Seattle, was the speaker. Secretary Britt Smith was chairman. Walking up and down the isle, selling the union's pamphlets and papers was a muscular and sun-burned young man with a rough, honest face and a pair of clear hazel eyes in which a smile was always twinkling. He wore a khaki army coat above stagged overalls of a slightly darker shade,--Wesley Everest, the ex-soldier who was shortly to be mutilated and lynched by the mob. "I Hope to Jesus Nothing Happens" The atmosphere of the meeting was already tainted with the Terror. Nerves were on edge. Every time any newcomer would enter the door the audience would look over their shoulders with apprehensive glances. At the conclusion of the meeting the loggers gathered around the secretary and asked him the latest news about the contemplated raid. For reply Britt Smith handed them copies of the leaflet "We Must Appeal" and told of the efforts that had been made and were being made to secure legal protection and to let the public know the real facts in the case. "If they raid the hall again as they did in 1918 the boys won't stand for it," said a logger. "If the law won't protect us we've got a right to protect ourselves," ventured another. "I hope to Jesus nothing happens," replied the secretary. Wesley Everest laid down his few unsold papers, rolled a brown paper cigarette and smiled enigmatically over the empty seats in the general direction of the new One Big Union label on the front window. His closest friends say he was never afraid of anything in all his life. None of these men knew that loggers from nearby camps, having heard of the purchase of the coils of rope, were watching the hall night and day to see that "nothing happens." The next day, after talking things over with Britt Smith, Mrs. McAllister, wife of the proprietor of the Roderick hotel from whom the loggers rented the hall, went to see Chief of Police Hughes. This is how she told of the interview: "I got worried and I went to the Chief. I says to him 'Are you going to protect my property?' Hughes says, 'We'll do the best we can for you, but as far as the wobblies are concerned they wouldn't last fifteen minutes if the business men start after them. The business men don't want any wobblies in this town.'" The day before the tragedy Elmer Smith dropped in at the Union hall to warn his clients that nothing could now stop the raid. "Defend it if you choose to do so," he told them. "The law gives you that right." It was on the strength of this remark, overheard by the stool-pigeon, Morgan, and afterwards reported to the prosecution, that Elmer Smith was hailed to prison charged with murder in the first degree. His enemies had been certain all along that his incomprehensible delusion about the law being the same for the poor man as the rich would bring its own punishment. It did; there can no longer be any doubt on the subject. [Illustration: Carting Away Wesley Everest's Body for Burial After the mutilated body had been cut down in laid in the river for two days. Then it was taken back to the city jail where it remained for two days more--as an object lesson--in plain view of the comrades of the murdered boy. Everest was taken from this building to be lynched. During the first week after the tragedy this jail witnessed scenes of torture and horror that equaled the worst days of the Spanish inquisition.] The Scorpion's Sting November 11th was a raw, gray day; the cold sunlight barely penetrating the mist that hung over the city and the distant tree-clad hills. The "parade" assembled at the City Park. Lieutenant Cormier was marshal. Warren Grimm was commander of the Centralia division. In a very short time he had the various bodies arranged to his satisfaction. At the head of the procession was the "two-fisted" Centralia bunch. This was followed by one from Chehalis, the county seat, and where the parade would logically have been held had its purpose been an honest one. Then came a few sailors and marines and a large body of well dressed gentlemen from the Elks. The school children who were to have marched did not appear. At the very end were a couple of dozen boy scouts and an automobile carrying pretty girls dressed in Red Cross uniforms. Evidently this parade, unlike the one of 1918, did not, like a scorpion, carry its sting in the rear. But wait until you read how cleverly this part of it had been arranged! The marchers were unduly silent and those who knew nothing of the lawless plan of the secret committee felt somehow that something must be wrong. City Postmaster McCleary and a wicked-faced old man named Thompson were seen carrying coils of rope. Thompson is a veteran of the Civil War and a minister of God. On the witness stand he afterwards swore he picked up the rope from the street and was carrying it "as a joke." It turned out that the "joke" was on Wesley Everest. "Be ready for the command 'eyes right' or 'eyes left' when we pass the 'reviewing stand'," Grimm told the platoon commanders just as the parade started. The procession covered most of the line of march without incident. When the union hall was reached there was some craning of necks but no outburst of any kind. A few of the out-of-town paraders looked at the place curiously and several business men were seen pointing the hall out to their friends. There were some dark glances and a few long noses but no demonstration. "When do we reach the reviewing stand?" asked a parader, named Joe Smith, of a man marching beside him. "Hell, there ain't any reviewing stand," was the reply. "We're going to give the wobbly hall 'eyes right' on the way back." The head of the columns reached Third avenue and halted. A command of 'about face' was given and the procession again started to march past the union hall going in the opposite direction. The loggers inside felt greatly relieved as they saw the crowd once more headed for the city. But the Centralia and Chehalis contingents, that had headed the parade, was now in the rear--just where the "scorpion sting" of the 1918 parade had been located! The danger was not yet over. "Let's go! At 'em, boys!" The Chehalis division had marched past the hall and the Centralia division was just in front of it when a sharp command was given. The latter stopped squarely in front of the hall but the former continued to march. Lieutenant Cormier of the secret committee was riding between the two contingents on a bay horse. Suddenly he placed his fingers to his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Immediately there was a hoarse cry of "Let's go-o-o! At 'em, boys!" About sixty feet separated the two contingents at this time, the Chehalis men still continuing the march. Cromier spurred his horse and overtook them. "Aren't you boys in on this?" he shouted. At the words "Let's go," the paraders from both ends and the middle of the Centralia contingent broke ranks and started on the run for the union headquarters. A crowd of soldiers surged against the door. There was a crashing of glass and a splintering of wood as the door gave way. A few of the marauders had actually forced their way into the hall. Then there was a shot, three more shots ... and a small volley. From Seminary hill and the Avalon hotel rifles began to crack. [Illustration: Elks Club, Centralia It was here that the Centralia conspiracy was hatched and the notorious "secret committee" appointed to do the dirty work.] The mob stopped suddenly, astounded at the unexpected opposition. Out of hundreds of halls that had been raided during the past two years this was the first time the union men had attempted to defend themselves. It had evidently been planned to stampede the entire contingent into the attack by having the secret committeemen take the lead from both ends and the middle. But before this could happen the crowd, frightened at the shots started to scurry for cover. Two men were seen carrying the limp figure of a soldier from the door of the hall. When the volley started they dropped it and ran. The soldier was a handsome young man, named Arthur McElfresh. He was left lying in front of the hall with his feet on the curb and his head in the gutter. The whole thing had been a matter of seconds. "I Had No Business Being There" Several men had been wounded. A pool of blood was widening in front of the doorway. A big man in officer's uniform was seen to stagger away bent almost double and holding his hands over his abdomen. "My God, I'm shot!" he had cried to the soldier beside him. This was Warren O. Grimm; the other was his friend, Frank Van Gilder. Grimm walked unassisted to the rear of a nearby soft drink place from whence he was taken to a hospital. He died a short time afterwards. Van Gilder swore on the witness stand that Grimm and himself were standing at the head of the columns of "unoffending paraders" when his friend was shot. He stated that Grimm had been his life-long friend but admitted that when his "life-long friend" received his mortal wound that he (Van Gilder), instead of acting like a hero in no man's land, had deserted him in precipitate haste. Too many eye witnesses had seen Grimm stagger wounded from the doorway of the hall to suit the prosecution. Van Gilder knew at which place Grimm had been shot but it was necessary that he be placed at a convenient distance from the hall. It is reported on good authority that Grimm, just before he died in the hospital, confessed to a person at his bedside: "It served me right, I had no business being there." A workingman, John Patterson, had come down town on Armistice Day with his three small children to watch the parade. He was standing thirty-five feet from the door of the hall when the raid started. On the witness stand Patterson told of being pushed out of the way by the rush before the shooting began. He saw a couple of soldiers shot and saw Grimm stagger away from the doorway wounded in the abdomen. The testimony of Dr. Bickford at the corner's inquest under oath was as follows: "I spoke up and said I would lead if enough would follow, but before I could take the lead there were many ahead of me. Someone next to me put his foot against the door and forced it open, after which a shower of bullets poured through the opening about us." Dr. Bickford is an A.E.F. man and one of the very few legionaires who dared to tell the truth about the shooting. The Centralia business element has since tried repeatedly to ruin him. In trying to present the plea of self defense to the court, Defense attorney Vanderveer stated: "There was a rush, men reached the hall under the command of Grimm, and yet counsel asks to have shown a specific overt act of Grimm before we can present the plea of self-defense. Would he have had the men wait with their lives at stake? The fact is that Grimm was there and in defending themselves these men shot. Grimm was killed because he was there. They could not wait. Your honor, self defense isn't much good after a man is dead." The prosecution sought to make a point of the fact that the loggers had fired into a street in which there were innocent bystanders as well as paraders. But the fact remains that the only men hit by bullets were those who were in the forefront of the mob. Through the Hall Window How the raid looked from the inside of the hall can best be described from the viewpoint of one of the occupants, Bert Faulkner, a union logger and ex-service man. Faulkner described how he had dropped in at the hall on Armistice Day and stood watching the parade from the window. In words all the more startling for their sheer artlessness he told of the events which followed: First the grimacing faces of the business men, then as the soldiers returned, a muffled order, the smashing of the window, with the splinters of glass falling against the curtain, the crashing open of the door ... and the shots that "made his ears ring," and made him run for shelter to the rear of the hall, with the shoulder of his overcoat torn with a bullet. Then how he found himself on the back stairs covered with rifles and commanded to come down with his hands in the air. Finally how he was frisked to the city jail in an automobile with a business man standing over him armed with a piece of gas pipe. Eugene Barnett gave a graphic description of the raid as he saw it from the office of the adjoining Roderick hotel. Barnett said he saw the line go past the hotel. The business men were ahead of the soldiers and as this detachment passed the hotel returning the soldiers still were going north. The business men were looking at the hall and pointing it out to the soldiers. Some of them had their thumbs to their noses and others were saying various things. [Illustration: City Park, Centralia At this place the parade assembled that started out to raid the Union hall and lynch its secretary.] "When the soldiers turned and came past I saw a man on horseback ride past. He was giving orders which were repeated along the line by another. As the rider passed the hotel he gave a command and the second man said: 'Bunch up, men!' "When this order came the men all rushed for the hall. I heard glass break. I heard a door slam. There was another sound and then shooting came. It started from inside the hall. "As I saw these soldiers rush the hall I jumped up and threw off my coat. I thought there would be a fight and I was going to mix in. Then came the shooting, and I knew I had no business there." Later Barnett went home and remained there until his arrest the next day. In the union hall, besides Bert Faulkner, were Wesley Everest, Roy Becker, Britt Smith, Mike Sheehan, James McInerney and the "stool pigeon," these, with the exception of Faulkner and Everest, remained in the hall until the authorities came to place them under arrest. They had after the first furious rush of their assailants, taken refuge in a big and long disused ice box in the rear of the hall. Britt Smith was unarmed, his revolver being found afterwards, fully loaded, in his roll-top desk. After their arrest the loggers were taken to the city jail which was to be the scene of an inquisition unparalleled in the history of the United States. After this, as an additional punishment, they were compelled to face the farce of a "fair trial" in a capitalistic court. Wesley Everest But Destiny had decided to spare one man the bitter irony of judicial murder. Wesley Everest still had a pocket full of cartridges and a forty-four automatic that could speak for itself. This soldier-lumberjack had done most of the shooting in the hall. He held off the mob until the very last moment, and, instead of seeking refuge in the refrigerator after the "paraders" had been dispersed, he ran out of the back door, reloading his pistol as he went. It is believed by many that Arthur McElfresh was killed inside the hall by a bullet fired by Everest. In the yard at the rear of the hall the mob had already reorganized for an attack from that direction. Before anyone knew what had happened Everest had broken through their ranks and scaled the fence. "Don't follow me and I won't shoot," he called to the crowd and displaying the still smoking blue steel pistol in his hand. "There goes the secretary!" yelled someone, as the logger started at top speed down the alley. The mob surged in pursuit, collapsing the board fence before them with sheer force of numbers. There was a rope in the crowd and the union secretary was the man they wanted. The chase that followed probably saved the life, not only of Britt Smith, but the remaining loggers in the hall as well. Running pell-mell down the alley the mob gave a shout of exaltation as Everest slowed his pace and turned to face them. They stopped cold, however, as a number of quick shots rang out and bullets whistled and zipped around them. Everest turned in his tracks and was off again like a flash, reloading his pistol as he ran. The mob again resumed the pursuit. The logger ran through an open gateway, paused to turn and again fire at his pursuers; then he ran between two frame dwellings to the open street. When the mob again caught the trail they were evidently under the impression that the logger's ammunition was exhausted. At all events they took up the chase with redoubled energy. Some men in the mob had rifles and now and then a pot-shot would be taken at the fleeing figure. The marksmanship of both sides seems to have been poor for no one appears to have been injured. Dale Hubbard This kind of running fight was kept up until Everest reached the river. Having kept off his pursuers thus far the boy started boldly for the comparative security of the opposite shore, splashing the water violently as he waded out into the stream. The mob was getting closer all the time. Suddenly Everest seemed to change his mind and began to retrace his steps to the shore. Here he stood dripping wet in the tangled grasses to await the arrival of the mob bent on his destruction. Everest had lost his hat and his wet hair stuck to his forehead. His gun was now so hot he could hardly hold it and the last of his ammunition was in the magazine. Eye witnesses declare his face still wore a quizzical, half bantering smile when the mob overtook him. With the pistol held loosely in his rough hand Everest stood at bay, ready to make a last stand for his life. Seeing him thus, and no doubt thinking his last bullet had been expended, the mob made a rush for its quarry. "Stand back!" he shouted. "If there are 'bulls' in the crowd, I'll submit to arrest; otherwise lay off of me." [Illustration: Blind Tom Lassiter Tom Lassiter is the blind news dealer who Was kidnapped and deported out of town in June, 1919, by a gang of business men. His stand was raided and the contents burned in the street. He had been selling The Seattle Union Record, The Industrial Worker and Solidarity. County attorney Allen said he couldn't help to apprehend the criminals and would only charge them with third degree assault if they were found. The fine would be one dollar and costs! Lassiter is now in jail in Chehalis charged with "criminal syndicalism."] No attention was paid to his words. Everest shot from the hip four times,--then his gun stalled. A group of soldiers started to run in his direction. Everest was tugging at the gun with both hands. Raising it suddenly he took careful aim and fired. All the soldiers but one wavered and stopped. Everest fired twice, both bullets taking effect. Two more shots were fired almost point blank before the logger dropped his assailant at his feet. Then he tossed away the empty gun and the mob surged upon him. The legionaire who had been shot was Dale Hubbard, a nephew of F.B. Hubbard, the lumber baron. He was a strong, brave and misguided young man--worthy of a nobler death. "Let's Finish the Job!" Everest attempted a fight with his fists but was overpowered and severely beaten. A number of men clamoured for immediate lynching, but saner council prevailed for the time and he was dragged through the streets towards the city jail. When the mob was half a block from this place the "hot heads" made another attempt to cheat the state executioner. A wave of fury seemed here to sweep the crowd. Men fought with one another for a chance to strike, kick or spit in the face of their victim. It was an orgy of hatred and blood-lust. Everest's arms were pinioned, blows, kicks and curses rained upon him from every side. One business man clawed strips of bleeding flesh from his face. A woman slapped his battered cheek with a well groomed hand. A soldier tried to lunge a hunting rifle at the helpless logger; the crowd was too thick. He bumped them aside with the butt of the gun to get room. Then he crashed the muzzle with full force into Everest's mouth. Teeth were broken and blood flowed profusely. A rope appeared from somewhere. "Let's finish the job!" cried a voice. The rope was placed about the neck of the logger. "You haven't got guts enough to lynch a man in the daytime," was all he said. At this juncture a woman brushed through the crowd and took the rope from Everest's neck. Looking into the distorted faces of the mob she cried indignantly, "You are curs and cowards to treat a man like that!" There may be human beings in Centralia after all. Wesley Everest was taken to the city jail and thrown without ceremony upon the cement floor of the "bull pen." In the surrounding cells were his comrades who had been arrested in the union hall. Here he lay in a wet heap, twitching with agony. A tiny bright stream of blood gathered at his side and trailed slowly along the floor. Only an occasional quivering moan escaped his torn lips as the hours slowly passed by. "Here Is Your Man" Later, at night, when it was quite dark, the lights of the jail were suddenly snapped off. At the same instant the entire city was plunged in darkness. A clamour of voices was heard beyond the walls. There was a hoarse shout as the panel of the outer door was smashed in. "Don't shoot, men," said the policemen on guard, "Here is your man." It was night now, and the business men had no further reason for not lynching the supposed secretary. Everest heard their approaching foot steps in the dark. He arose drunkenly to meet them. "Tell the boys I died for my class," he whispered brokenly to the union men in the cells. These were the last words he uttered in the jail. There were sounds of a short struggle and of many blows. Then a door slammed and, in a short time the lights were switched on. The darkened city was again illuminated at the same moment. Outside three luxurious automobiles were purring them selves out of sight in the darkness. The only man who had protested the lynching at the last moment was William Scales. "Don't kill him, men," he is said to have begged of the mob. But it was too late. "If you don't go through with this you're an I.W.W. too," they told him. Scales could not calm the evil passions he had helped to arouse. But how did it happen that the lights were turned out at such an opportune time? Could it be that city officials were working hand in glove with the lynch mob? Defense Attorney Vanderveer offered to prove to the court that such was the case. He offered to prove this was a part of the greater conspiracy against the union loggers and their hall,--offered to prove it point by point from the very beginning. Incidentally Vanderveer offered to prove that Earl Craft, electrician in charge of the city lighting plant, had left the station at seven o'clock on Armistice day after securely locking the door; and that while Craft was away the lights of the city were turned off and Wesley Everest taken out and lynched. Furthermore, he offered to prove that when Craft returned, the lights were again turned on and the city electrician, his assistant and the Mayor of Centralia were in the building with the door again locked. These offers were received by his honor with impassive judicial dignity, but the faces of the lumber trust attorneys were wreathed with smiles at the audacity of the suggestion. The corporation lawyers very politely registered their objections which the judge as politely sustained. The Night of Horrors After Everest had been taken away the jail became a nightmare--as full of horrors as a madman's dream. The mob howled around the walls until late in the night. Inside, a lumber trust lawyer and his official assistants were administering the "third degree" to the arrested loggers, to make them "confess." One at a time the men were taken to the torture chamber, and so terrible was the ordeal of this American Inquisition that some were almost broken--body and soul. Loren Roberts had the light in his brain snuffed out. Today he is a shuffling wreck. He is not interested in things any more. He is always looking around with horror-wide eyes, talking of "voices" and "wires" that no one but himself knows anything about. There is no telling what they did to the boy, but he signed the "confession." Its most incriminating statement must have contained too much truth for the prosecution. It was never used in court. When interviewed by Frank Walklin of the Seattle Union Record the loggers told the story in their own way: "I have heard tales of cruelty," said James McInerney, "but I believe what we boys went through on those nights can never be equaled. I thought it was my last night on earth and had reconciled myself to an early death of some kind, perhaps hanging. I was taken out once by the mob, and a rope was placed around my neck and thrown over a cross-bar or something. "I waited for them to pull the rope. But they didn't. I heard voices in the mob say, 'That's not him,' and then I was put back into the jail." John Hill Lamb, another defendant, related how several times a gun was poked through his cell window by some one who was aching to get a pot shot at him. Being ever watchful he hid under his bunk and close to the wall where the would-be murderer could not see him. Britt Smith and Roy Becker told with bated breath about Everest as he lay half-dead in the corridor, in plain sight of the prisoners in the cells on both sides. The lights went out and Everest, unconscious and dying, was taken out. The men inside could hear the shouts of the mob diminishing as Everest was hurried to the Chehalis River bridge. [Illustration: Bert Bland Logger. American. (Brother of O.C. Bland.) One of the men who fired from Seminary Hill. Bland has worked all his life in the woods. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World during the great strike of 1917. Bert Bland took to the hills after the shooting and was captured a week later during the man hunt.] None of the prisoners was permitted to sleep that night; the fear of death was kept upon them constantly, the voices outside the cell windows telling of more lynchings to come. "Every time I heard a footstep or the clanking of keys," said Britt Smith, "I thought the mob was coming after more of us. I didn't sleep, couldn't sleep; all I could do was strain my ears for the mob I felt sure was coming." Ray Becker, listening at Britt's side, said: "Yes, that was one hell of a night." And the strain of that night seems to linger in their faces; probably it always will remain--the expression of a memory that can never be blotted out. When asked if they felt safer when the soldiers arrived to guard the Centralia jail, there was a long pause, and finally the answer was "Yes." "But you must remember," offered one, "that they took 'em out at Tulsa from a supposedly guarded jail; and we couldn't know from where we were what was going on outside." "For ten days we had no blankets," said Mike Sheehan. "It was cold weather, and we had to sleep uncovered on concrete floors. In those ten days I had no more than three hours sleep." "The mob and those who came after the mob wouldn't let us sleep. They would come outside our windows and hurl curses at us, and tell each of us it would be our turn next. They brought in Wesley Everest and laid him on the corridor floor; he was bleeding from his ears and mouth and nose, was curled in a heap and groaning. And men outside and inside kept up the din. I tried to sleep; I was nearly mad; my temples kept pounding like sledge-hammers. I don't know how a man can go through all that and live--but we did." All through the night the prisoners could hear the voices of the mob under their cell windows. "Well, we fixed that guy Everest all right," some one would say. "Now we'll get Roberts." Then the lights would snap off, there would be a shuffling, curses, a groan and the clanking of a steel door. All the while they were being urged to "come clean" with a statement that would clear the lumber trust of the crime and throw the blame onto its victims. McInerney's neck was scraped raw by the rope of the mob but he repeatedly told them to "go to hell!" Morgan, the stool-pigeon, escaped the torture by immediate acquiescence. Someone has since paid his fare To parts unknown. His "statement" didn't damage the defense. [Illustration: Ray Becker Logger, American born. Twenty-five years of age. Studied four years for the ministry before going to work in the woods. His father and brother are both preachers. Becker joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917 and has always been a strong believer in the cause of the solidarity of Labor. He has the zeal of a prophet and the courage of a lion. Defended himself inside the hall with an Ivor Johnson, 38, until his ammunition was exhausted. He surrendered to the authorities--not the mob.] The Human Fiend But with the young logger who had been taken out into the night things were different. Wesley Everest was thrown, half unconscious, into the bottom of an automobile. The hands of the men who had dragged him there were sticky and red. Their pant legs were sodden from rubbing against the crumpled figure at their feet. Through the dark streets sped the three machines. The smooth asphalt became a rough road as the suburbs were reached. Then came a stretch of open country, with the Chehalis river bridge only a short distance ahead. The cars lurched over the uneven road with increasing speed, their headlights playing on each other or on the darkened highway. Wesley Everest stirred uneasily. Raising himself slowly on one elbow he swung weakly with his free arm, striking one of his tormentors full in the face. The other occupants immediately seized him and bound his hands and feet with rope. It must have been the glancing blow from the fist of the logger that gave one of the gentlemen his fiendish inspiration. Reaching in his pocket he produced a razor. For a moment he fumbled over the now limp figure in the bottom of the car. His companions looked on with stolid acquiescence. Suddenly there was a piercing scream of pain. The figure gave a convulsive shudder of agony. After a moment Wesley Everest said in a weak voice: "For Christ's sake, men; shoot me--don't let me suffer like this." On the way back to Centralia, after the parade rope had done Its deadly work, the gentlemen of the razor alighted from the car in front of a certain little building. He asked leave to wash his hands. They were as red as a butcher's. Great clots of blood were adhering to his sleeves. "That's about the nastiest job I ever had to do," was his casual remark as he washed himself in the cool clear water of the Washington hills. The name of this man is known to nearly everybody in Centralia. He is still at large. The headlight of the foremost car was now playing on the slender steel framework of the Chehalis river bridge. This machine crossed over and stopped, the second one reached the middle of the bridge and stopped while the third came to a halt when it had barely touched the plankwork on the near side. The well-dressed occupants of the first and last cars alighted and proceeded at once to patrol both approaches to the bridge. Lynching--An American Institution Wesley Everest was dragged out of the middle machine. A rope was attached to a girder with the other end tied in a noose around his neck. His almost lifeless body was hauled to the side of the bridge. The headlights of two of the machines threw a white light over the horrible scene. Just as the lynchers let go of their victim the fingers of the half dead logger clung convulsively to the planking of the bridge. A business man stamped on them with a curse until the grip was broken. There was a swishing sound; then a sudden crunching jerk and the rope tied to the girder began to writhe and twist like a live thing. This lasted but a short time. The lynchers peered over the railing into the darkness. Then they slowly pulled up the dead body, attached a longer rope and repeated the performance. This did not seem to suit them either, so they again dragged the corpse through the railings and tied a still longer rope around the horribly broken neck of the dead logger. The business men were evidently enjoying their work, and besides, the more rope the more souvenirs for their friends, who would prize them highly. This time the knot was tied by a young sailor. He knew how to tie a good knot and was proud of the fact. He boasted of the stunt afterwards to a man he thought as beastly as himself. In all probability he never dreamed he was talking for publication. But he was. The rope had now been lengthened to about fifteen feet. The broken and gory body was kicked through the railing for the last time. The knot on the girder did not move any more. Then the lynchers returned to their luxurious cars and procured their rifles. A headlight flashed the dangling figure into ghastly relief. It was riddled with volley after volley. The man who fired the first shot boasted of the deed afterwards to a brother lodge member. He didn't know he was talking for publication either. On the following morning the corpse was cut down by an unknown hand. It drifted away with the current. A few hours later Frank Christianson, a tool of the lumber trust from the Attorney General's office, arrived in Centralia. "We've got to get that body," this worthy official declared, "or the wobs will find it and raise hell over its condition." The corpse was located after a search. It was not buried, however, but carted back to the city jail, there to be used as a terrible object lesson for the benefit of the incarcerated union men. The unrecognizable form was placed in a cell between two of the loggers who had loved the lynched boy as a comrade and a friend. Something must be done to make the union men admit that they, and not the lumber interests, had conspired to commit murder. This was the final act of ruthlessness. It was fruitful in results. One "confession," one Judas and one shattered mind were the result of their last deed of fiendish terrorism. [Illustration: The Burial of the Mob's Victim No undertaker would handle Everest's body. The autopsy was performed by a man from Portland, who hung the body up by the heels and played a hose on it. The men lowering the plank casket into the grave are Union loggers who had been caught in the police drag net and taken from jail for this purpose.] No undertaker could be found to bury Everest's body, so after two days it was dropped into a hole in the ground by four union loggers who had been arrested on suspicion and were released from jail for this purpose. The "burial" is supposed to have taken place in the new cemetery; the body being carried thither in an auto truck. The union loggers who really dug the grave declare, however, that the interment took place at a desolate spot "somewhere along a railroad track." Another body was seen, covered with ashes in a cart, being taken away for burial on the morning of the twelfth. There are persistent rumors that more than one man was lynched on the eve of Armistice day. A guard of heavily armed soldiers had charge of the funeral. The grave has since been obliterated. Rumor has it that the body has since been removed to Camp Lewis. No one seems to know why or when. "As Comical as a Corner" An informal inquest was held in the city jail. A man from Portland performed the autopsy, that is, he hung the body up by the heels and played a water hose on it. Everest was reported by the corner's jury to have met his death at the hands of parties unknown. It was here that Dr. Bickford let slip the statement about the hall being raided before the shooting started. This was the first inkling of truth to reach the public. Coroner Livingstone, in a jocular mood, reported the inquest to a meeting of gentlemen at the Elks' Club. In explaining the death of the union logger, Dr. Livingstone stated that Wesley Everest had broken out of jail, gone to the Chehalis river bridge and jumped off with a rope around his neck. Finding the rope too short he climbed back and fastened on a longer one; jumped off again, broke his neck and then shot himself full of holes. Livingstone's audience, appreciative of his tact and levity, laughed long and hearty. Business men still chuckle over the joke in Centralia. "As funny as a funeral" is no longer the stock saying in this humorous little town; "as comical as a coroner" is now the approved form. The Man-Hunt Acting on the theory that "a strong offensive is the best defense," the terrorists took immediate steps to conceal all traces of their crime and to shift the blame onto the shoulders of their victims. The capitalist press did yeoman service in this cause by deluging the nation with a veritable avalanche of lies. For days the district around Centralia and the city itself were at the mercy of a mob. The homes of all workers suspected of being sympathetic to Labor were spied upon or surrounded and entered without warrant. Doors were battered down at times, and women and children abused and insulted. Heavily armed posses were sent out in all directions in search of "reds." All roads were patrolled by armed business men in automobiles. A strict mail and wire censorship was established. It was the open season for "wobblies" and intimidation was the order of the day. The White Terror was supreme. An Associated Press reporter was compelled to leave town hastily without bag or baggage because he inadvertently published Dr. Bickford's indiscreet remark about the starting of the trouble. Men and women did not dare to think, much less think aloud. Some of them in the district are still that way. To Eugene Barnett's little home came a posse armed to the teeth. They asked for Barnett and were told by his young wife that he had gone up the hill with his rifle. Placing a bayonet to her breast they demanded entrance. The brave little woman refused to admit them until they had shown a warrant. Barnett surrendered when he had made sure he was to be arrested and not mobbed. O.C. Bland, Bert Bland, John Lamb and Loren Roberts were also apprehended in due time. Two loggers, John Doe Davis and Ole Hanson, who were said to have also fired on the mob, have not yet been arrested. A vigorous search is still being made for them in all parts of the country. It is believed by many that one of these men was lynched like Everest on the night of November 11th. [Illustration: Court House at Montesano--And a Little "Atmosphere" The trial was held on the third floor of the building as you look at the picture. The soldiers were sent for over the head of the judge by one of the lumber trust attorneys of the prosecution. Their only purpose was to create the proper "atmosphere" for an unjust conviction.] Hypocrisy and Terror The reign of terror was extended to cover the entire West coast. Over a thousand men and women were arrested in the state of Washington alone. Union halls were closed and kept that way. Labor papers were suppressed and many men have been given sentences of from one to fourteen years for having in their possession copies of periodicals which contained little else but the truth about the Centralia tragedy. The Seattle Union Record was temporarily closed down and its stock confiscated for daring to hint that there were two sides to the story. During all this time the capitalist press was given full rein to spread its infamous poison. The general public, denied the true version of the affair, was shuddering over its morning coffee at the thought of I.W.W. desperadoes shooting down unoffending paraders from ambush. But the lumber interests were chortling with glee and winking a suggestive eye at their high priced lawyers who were making ready for the prosecution. Jurymen were shortly to be drawn and things were "sitting pretty," as they say in poker. Adding a characteristic touch to the rotten hypocrisy of the situation came a letter from Supreme Court Judge McIntosh to George Dysart, whose son was in command of a posse during the manhunt. This remarkable document is as follows: Kenneth Mackintosh, Judge The Supreme Court, State of Washington Olympia. George Dysart, Esq., Centralia, Wash. My Dear Dysart: November 13, 1919. I want to express to you my appreciation of the high character of citizenship displayed by the people of Centralia in their agonizing calamity. We are all shocked by the manifestation of barbarity on the part of the outlaws, and are depressed by the loss of lives of brave men, but at the same time are proud of the calm control and loyalty to American ideals demonstrated by the returned soldiers and citizens. I am proud to be an inhabitant of a state which contains a city with the record which has been made for Centralia by its law-abiding citizens. Sincerely, (Signed) Kenneth MacKintosh. "Patriotic" Union Smashing Not to be outdone by this brazen example of judicial perversion, Attorney General Thompson, after a secret conference of prosecuting attorneys, issued a circular of advice to county prosecutors. In this document the suggestion was made that officers and members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Washington be arrested by the wholesale under the "criminal syndicalism" law and brought to trial simultaneously so that they might not be able to secure legal defense. The astounding recommendation was also made that, owing to the fact that juries had been "reluctant to convict," prosecutors and the Bar Association should co-operate in examining jury panels so that "none but courageous and patriotic Americans" secure places on the juries. This effectual if somewhat arbitrary plan was put into operation at once. Since the tragedy at Centralia dozens of union workers have been convicted by "courageous and patriotic" juries and sentenced to serve from one to fourteen years in the state penitentiary. Hundreds more are awaiting trial. The verdict at Montesano is now known to everyone. Truly the lives of the four Legion boys which were sacrificed by the lumber interests in furtherance of their own murderous designs, were well expended. The investment was a profitable one and the results are no doubt highly gratifying. But just the same the despicable plot of the Attorney General is an obvious effort to defeat the purpose of the courts and obtain unjust convictions by means of what is termed "jury fixing." There may be honor among thieves but there is plainly none among the public servants they have working for them! [Illustration: Mike Sheenan Born in Ireland. 64 years old. Has been a union man for over fifty years, having joined his grandfather's union when he was only eight. Has been through many strikes and has been repeatedly black-hated, beaten and even exiled. He was a stoker in the Navy during the Spanish War. Mike Sheehan was arrested in the Union hall, went through the horrible experience in the city jail and was found "not guilty" by the jury. Like Elmer Smith, he was re-arrested on another similar charge and thrown back in jail.] The only sane note sounded during these dark days, outside of the startling statement of Dr. Bickford, came from Montana. Edward Bassett, commander of the Butte Post of the American Legion and an over-seas veteran, issued a statement to the labor press that was truly remarkable: "The I.W.W. in Centralia, Wash., who fired upon the men that were attempting to raid the I.W.W. headquarters, were fully justified in their act. "Mob rule in this country must be stopped, and when mobs attack the home of a millionaire, of a laborer, or of the I.W.W., it is not only the right but the duty of the occupants to resist with every means in their power. If the officers of the law can not stop these raids, perhaps the resistance of the raided may have that effect. "Whether the I.W.W. is a meritorious organization or not, whether it is unpopular or otherwise, should have absolutely nothing to do with the case. The reports of the evidence at the coroner's jury show that the attack was made before the firing started. If that is true, I commend the boys inside for the action that they took. "The fact that there were some American Legion men among the paraders who everlastingly disgraced themselves by taking part in the raid, does not affect my judgment in the least. Any one who becomes a party to a mob bent upon unlawful violence, cannot expect the truly patriotic men of the American Legion to condone his act." Vanderveer's Opening Speech Defense Attorney George Vanderveer hurried across the continent from Chicago to take up the legal battle for the eleven men who had been arrested and charged with the murder of Warren O. Grimm. The lumber interests had already selected six of their most trustworthy tools as prosecutors. It is not the purpose of the present writer to give a detailed story of this "trial"--possibly one of the greatest travesties on justice ever staged. This incident was a very important part of the Centralia conspiracy but a hasty sketch, such as might be portrayed in these pages, would be an inadequate presentation at best. It might be well, therefore, to permit Mr. Vanderveer to tell of the case as he told it to the jury in his opening and closing arguments. Details of the trial itself can be found in other booklets by more capable authors. Vanderveer's opening address appears in part below: May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury:--As you have already sensed from our examination of you and from a question which I propounded to counsel at the close of his statement yesterday, the big question in this case is, who was the aggressor, who started the battle? Was it on the one side a deliberately planned murderous attack upon innocent marchers, or was it on the other side a deliberately planned wicked attack upon the I.W.W., which they merely resisted? That, I say, is the issue. I asked counsel what his position would be in order that you might know it, and that he said was his position, that he would stand and fall and be judged by it, and I say to you now that is our position, and we will stand or fall and be judged by that issue. In order that you may properly understand this situation, and the things that led up to it, the motives underlying it, the manner in which it was planned and executed, I want to go just a little way back of the occurrence on November 11th, and state to you in rough outline the situation that existed in Centralia, the objects that were involved in this case, the things each are trying to accomplish and the way each went about it. There has been some effort on the part of the state to make it appear it is not an I.W.W. trial. I felt throughout that the I.W.W. issue must come into this case, and now that they have made their opening statement, I say unreservedly it is here in this case, not because we want to drag it in here, but because it can't be left out. To conceal from you gentlemen that it is an I.W.W. issue would be merely to conceal the truth from you and we, on our part, don't want to do that now or at any time hereafter. The I.W.W. is at the bottom of this. Not as an aggressor, however. It is a labor organization, organized in Chicago in 1905, and it is because of the philosophy for which it stands and because of certain tactics which it evolves that this thing arose. [Illustration: James McInerney Logger. Born in County Claire, Ireland. Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1916. Was wounded on the steamer "Verona" when the lumber trust tried to exterminate the union lumberworkers with bullets at Everett, Washington. McInerney was one of those trapped in the hall. He surrendered to officers of the law. While in the city jail his neck was worn raw with a hangman's rope in an effort to make him "confess" that the loggers and not the mob had started the trouble. McInerney told them to "go to hell." He is Irish and an I.W.W. and proud of being both.] A Labor Movement on Trial The I.W.W. is the representative in this country of the labor movement of the rest of the world It is the representative in the United States of the idea that capitalism is wrong: that no man has a right, moral or otherwise, to exploit his fellow men, the idea that our industrial efforts should be conducted not for the profits of any individual but should be conducted for social service, for social welfare. So the I.W.W. says first, that the wage system is wrong and that it means to abolish that wage system. It says that it intends to do this, not by political action, not by balloting, but by organization on the industrial or economical field, precisely as employers, precisely as capital is organized on the basis of the industry, not on the basis of the tool. The I.W.W. says industrial evolution has progressed to that point there the tool no longer enforces craftsmanship. In the place of a half dozen or dozen who were employed, each a skilled artisan, employed to do the work, you have a machine process to do that work and it resulted in the organization of the industry on an industrial basis. You have the oil industry, controlled by the Standard Oil; you have the lumber industry, controlled by the Lumbermen's Association of the South and West, and you have the steel and copper industry, all organized on an industrial basis resulting in a fusing, or corporation, or trust of a lot of former owners. Now the I.W.W. say if they are to compete with our employers, we must compete with our employers as an organization, and as they are organized so we must protect our organization, as they protect themselves. And so they propose to organize into industrial unions; the steel workers and the coal miners, and the transportation workers each into its own industrial unit. This plan of organization is extremely distasteful to the employers because it is efficient; because it means a new order, a new system in the labor world in this country. The meaning of this can be gathered, in some measure, from the recent experiences in the steel strike of this country, where they acted as an industrial unit; from the recent experiences in the coal mining industry, where they acted as an industrial unit. Instead of having two or three dozen other crafts, each working separately, they acted as an industrial unit. When the strike occurred it paralyzed industry and forced concessions to the demands of the workers. That is the first thing the I.W.W. stands for and in some measure and in part explains the attitude capital has taken all over the country towards it. In the next place it says that labor should organize on the basis of some fundamental principle; and labor should organize for something more than a mere bartering and dickering for fifty cents a day or for some shorter time, something of that sort. It says that the system is fundamentally wrong and must be fundamentally changed before you can look for some improvement. Its philosophy is based upon government statistics which show that in a few years in this country our important industries have crept into more than two-thirds of our entire wealth. Seventy-five per cent of the workers in the basic industry are unable to send their children to school. Seventy-one per cent of the heads of the families in our basic industries are unable to provide a decent living for their families without the assistance of the other members. Twenty-nine per cent of our laborers are able to live up to the myth that he is the head of the family. The results of these evils are manifold. Our people are not being raised in decent vicinities. They are not being raised and educated. Their health is not being cared for; their morals are not being cared for. I will show you that in certain of our industries where the wages are low and the hours are long, that the children of the working people die at the rate of 300 to 350 per thousand inhabitants under the age of one year because of their undernourishment, lack of proper housing and lack of proper medical attention and because the mothers of these children before they are born and when the children are being carried in the mother's womb that they are compelled to go into the industries and work and work and work, and before the child can receive proper nourishment the mother is compelled to go back into the industry and work again. The I.W.W.'s say there must be a fundamental change and that fundamental change must be in the line of reorganization of industry, for public service, so that the purpose shall be that we will work to live and not merely live to work. Work for service rather than work for profit. [Illustration: James McInerney (After he had undergone the "Third degree".) McInerney had a rope around his neck nearly all night before this picture was taken. One end of the rope had been pulled taut over a beam by his tormentors. McInerney had told them to "go to hell." "It's no use trying to get anything out of a man like that," was the final decision of the inquisitors.] To Kill an Ideal... Some time in September, counsel told you, the I.W.W., holding these beliefs, opened a hall in Centralia. Back of that hall was a living room, where Britt Smith lived, kept his clothes and belongings and made his home. From then on the I.W.W. conducted a regular propaganda meeting every Saturday night. These propaganda meetings were given over to a discussion of these industrial problems and beliefs. From that district there were dispatched into nearby lumber camps and wherever there were working people to whom to carry this message--there were dispatched organizers who went out, made the talks in the camps briefly and sought to organize them into this union, at least to teach them the philosophy of this labor movement. Because that propaganda is fatal to those who live by other people's work, who live by the profits they wring from labor, it excited intense opposition on the part of employers and business people of Centralia and about the time this hall was opened we will show you that people from Seattle, where they maintain their headquarters for these labor fights, came into Centralia and held meetings. I don't know what they call this new thing they were seeking to organize--it is in fact a branch of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of the United States, a national organization whose sole purpose is to fight and crush and beat labor. It was in no sense a local movement because it started in Seattle and it was organized by people from Seattle, and the purpose was to organize in Centralia an organization of business men to combat this new labor philosophy. Whether in the mouths of the I.W.W., or Nonpartisan League, or the Socialists, it did not make any difference; to brand anybody as a traitor, un-American, who sought to tell the truth about our industrial conditions. The Two Raids In the fall of 1918, the I.W.W. had a hall two blocks and a half from this hall, at the corner of First and B streets. There was a Red Cross parade, and that hall was wrecked, just as was this hall. These profiteering gentlemen never overlook an opportunity to capitalize on a patriotic event, and so they capitalized the Red Cross parade that day just as they capitalized the Armistice Day parade on November 11, and in exactly the same way as on November 11. And that day, when the tail-end of the parade of the Red Cross passed the main avenue, it broke off and went a block out of its way and attacked the I.W.W. hall, a good two-story building. And they broke it into splinters. The furniture, records, the literature that belongs to these boys, everything was taken out into the street and burned. [Illustration: O. C. Bland Logger. American. Resident of Centralia for a number of years. Has worked in woods and mills practically all his life. Has a wife and seven children. Bland was in the Arnold hotel at the time of the raid. He was armed but had cut his hand on broken glass before he had a chance to shoot. Since his arrest and conviction his family has undergone severe hardships. The defense is making an effort to raise enough funds to keep the helpless wives and children of the convicted men in the comforts of life.] Now, what was contemplated on Armistice Day? The I.W.W. did as you would do; it judged from experience. Patience No Longer a Virtue When the paraders smashed the door in, the I.W.W.'s, as every lover of free speech and every respecter of his person--they had appealed to the citizens, they had appealed to the officers, and some of their members had been tarred and feathered, beaten up and hung--they said in thought: "Patience has ceased to be a virtue." And if the law will not protect us, and the people won't protect us, we will protect ourselves. And they did. And in deciding this case, I want each of you, members of the jury, to ask yourself what would you have done? There had been discussions of this character in the I.W.W. hall, and so have there been discussions everywhere. There had never been a plot laid to murder anybody, nor to shoot anybody in any parade. I want you to ask yourself: "Why would anybody want to shoot anybody in a parade," and to particularly ask yourself why anyone would want to shoot upon soldiers? He who was a soldier himself, Wesley Everest, the man who did most of the shooting, and the man whom they beat until he was unconscious and whom they grabbed from the street and put a rope around his neck, the man whom they nearly shot to pieces, and the man whom they hung, once dropping him ten feet, and when what didn't kill him lengthened the rope to 15 feet and dropped him again--why would one soldier want to kill another soldier, or soldiers, who had never done him nor his fellows any harm? I exonerate the American Legion as an organization of the responsibility of this. For I say they didn't know about it. The day will come when they will realize that they have been mere catspaws in the hands of the Centralia commercial interests. That is the story. I don't know what the verdict will be today, but the verdict ten years hence will be the verdict in the Lovejoy case; that these men were within their rights and that they fought for a cause, that these men fought for liberty. They fought for these things for which we stand and for which all true lovers of liberty stand, and those who smashed them up are the real enemies of our country. This is a big case, counsel says, the biggest case that has ever been tried in this country, but the biggest thing about these big things is from beginning to end it has been a struggle on the one side for ideals and on the other side to suppress those ideals. This thing was started with Hubbard at its head. It is being started today with Hubbard at its head in this courtroom, and I don't believe you will fall for it. Vanderveer's Closing Argument There are only two real issues in this case. One is the question: Who was the aggressor in the Armistice Day affray? The other is: Was Eugene Barnett in the Avalon hotel window when that affray occurred? We have proven by unimpeachable witnesses that there was a raid on the I.W.W. hall in Centralia on November 11--a raid, in which the business interests of the city used members of the American Legion as catspaws. We have shown that Warren O. Grimm, for the killing of whom these defendants are on trial, actually took park in that raid, and was in the very doorway of the hall when the attack was made, despite the attempts of the prosecution to place Grimm 100 feet away when he was shot. We have proven a complete alibi for Eugene Barnett through unshaken and undisputable witnesses. He was not in the Avalon hotel during the riot; he was in the Roderick hotel lobby; he had no gun and he took no part in the shooting. In my opening statement, I said I would stand or fall on the issue of: Who was the aggressor on Armistice Day? I have stood by that promise, and stand by it now. Mr. Abel, specially hired prosecutor in this trial, made the same promise. So did Herman Allen, the official Lewis county prosecutor, who has been so ingloriously shoved aside by Mr. Abel and his colleague, Mr. Cunningham, ever since the beginning here. But a few days ago, when the defense was piling up evidence showing that there was a raid on the I.W.W. hall by the paraders, Mr. Abel backed down. Why Were the Shots Fired? I was careful in the beginning to put him on record on that point; all along I knew that he and Mr. Allen would back down on the issue of who was the aggressor; they could not uphold their contention that the Armistice Day paraders were fired upon in cold blood while engaged in lawful and peaceful action. What possible motive could these boys have had for firing upon innocent marching soldiers? It is true that the marchers were fired upon; that shots were fired by some of these defendants; but why were the shots fired? [Illustration: John Lamb Logger. American. Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917. Lamb was in the Arnold Hotel with O.C. Bland during the raid on the hall. Neither of them did any shooting. John Lamb has lived for years in Centralia. He is married and has five children who are left dependent since the conviction.] There is only one reason why--they were defending their own legal property against unlawful invasion and attack; they were defending the dwelling place of Britt Smith, their secretary. And they had full right to defend their lives and that property and that home against violence or destruction; they had a right to use force, if necessary, to effect that defense. The law gives them that right; and it accrues to them also from all of the wells of elementary justice. The law says that when a man or group of men have reason to fear attack from superior numbers, they may provide whatever protection they may deem necessary to repel such an attack. And it says also that if a man who is in bad company when such an attack is made happens to be killed by the defenders, those defenders are not to be considered guilty of that man's death. So they had the troops come, to blow bugles and drill in the streets where the jury could see; their power, however wielded, was great enough to cause Governor Hart to send the soldiers here without consulting the trial judge or the sheriff, whose function it was to preserve law and order here--and you know, I am sure, that law and order were adequately preserved here before the troops came. "Fearful of the Truth" They tried the moth-eaten device of arresting our witnesses for alleged perjury, hoping to discredit those witnesses thus in your eyes because they knew they couldn't discredit them in any regular nor legitimate way. Fearful of the truth, the guilty ones at Centralia deliberately framed up evidence to save themselves from blame--to throw the responsibility for the Armistice Day horror onto other men. But they bungled the frame-up badly. No bolder nor cruder fabrication has ever been attempted than the ridiculous effort to fasten the killing of Warren Grimm upon Eugene Barnett. [Illustration: Court Room in which the Farcical "Trial" Took Place This garish room in the court house at Montesano was the scene of the attempted "judicial murder" that followed the lynching. The judge always entered his chambers through the door under the word "Transgression": the jury always left through the door over which "Instruction" appears. In this room the lumber trust attorneys attempted to build a gallows of perjured testimony on which to break the necks of innocent men.] These conspirators were clumsy enough in their planning to drive the I.W.W. out of town; their intent was to stampede the marching soldiers into raiding the I.W.W. hall. But how much more clumsy was the frame-up afterward--the elaborate fixing of many witnesses to make it appear that Grimm was shot at Tower avenue and Second street when he actually was shot in front of the hall; and to make it appear that Ben Casagranda and Earl Watts were shot around the corner on Second street, when they were actually shot on Tower avenue, close to the front of the hall. These conspirators were clumsy enough in their planning to drive the I.W.W. out of town; their intent was to stampede the marching soldiers into raiding the I.W.W. hall. But how much more clumsy was the frame-up afterward--the elaborate fixing of many witnesses to make it appear that Grimm was shot at Tower avenue and Second street when he actually was shot in front of the hall; and to make it appear that Ben Casagranda and Earl Watts were shot around the corner on Second street, when they were actually shot on Tower avenue, close to the front of the hall. Then, you will remember, I compelled Elsie Hornbeck to admit that she had been shown photographs of Barnett by the prosecution. She would not have told this fact, had I not trapped her into admitting it; that was obvious to everybody in this courtroom that day. You have heard the gentlemen of the prosecution assert that this is a murder trial, and not a labor trial. But they have been careful to ask all our witnesses whether they were I.W.W. members, whether they belonged to any labor union, and whether they were sympathetic towards workers on trial for their lives. And when the answer to any of these questions was yes, they tried to brand the witness as one not worthy of belief. Their policy and thus browbeating working people who were called as witnesses is in keeping with the tactics of the mob during the days when it held Centralia in its grasp. You know, even if the detailed story has been barred from the record, of the part F.R. Hubbard, lumber baron, played in this horror at Centralia. You have heard from various witnesses that the lumber mill owned by Hubbard's corporation, the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, is a notorious non-union concern. And you have heard it said that W.A. Abel, the special prosecutor here, has been an ardent and active labor-baiter for years. Hubbard wanted to drive the I.W.W. out of Centralia. Why did he want to drive them out? He said they were a menace. And it is true that they were a menace, and are a menace--to those who exploit the workers who produce the wealth for the few to enjoy. Why Were Ropes Carried? Was there a raid on the hall before the shooting? Dr. Frank Bickford, a reputable physician, appeared here and repeated under oath what he had sworn to at the coroner's inquest--that when the parade stopped, he offered to lead a raid on the hall if enough would follow,--but that others pushed ahead of him, forced open the door, and then the shots came from inside. And why did the Rev. H.W. Thompson have a rope? Thompson believes in hanging men by the neck until they are dead. When the state Employers' Association and others wanted the hanging law in Washington revived not long ago, the Reverend Thompson lectured in many cities and towns in behalf of that law. And he has since lectured widely against the I.W.W. Did he carry a rope in the parade because he owned a cow and a calf? Or what? Why did the prosecution need so many attorneys here, if it had the facts straight? Why were scores of American Legion members imported here to sit at the trial at a wage of $4 per day and expenses? They have told you this was a murder trial, and not a labor trial. But vastly more than the lives of ten men are the stakes in the big gamble here; for the right of workers to organize for the bettering of their own condition is on trial; the right of free assemblage is on trial; democracy and Americanism are on trial. In our opening statement, we promised to prove various facts; and we have proven them, in the main; if there are any contentions about which the evidence remains vague, this circumstance exists only because His Honor has seen fit to rule out certain testimony which is vital to the case, and we believed, and still believe, was entirely material and properly admissible. But is there any doubt in your minds that there was a conspiracy to raid the I.W.W. hall, and to run the Industrial Workers of the World out of town? Even if the court will not allow you to read the handbill issued by the I.W.W., asking protection from the citizens of Centralia have you any doubt that the I.W.W. had reason to fear an attack from Warren Grimm and his fellow marchers? And have you any doubt that there was a raid on the hall? When I came into this case I knew that we were up against tremendous odds. Terror was loose in Centralia; prejudice and hatred against the I.W.W. was being systematically and sweepingly spread in Grays Harbor county and throughout the whole Northwest; and intimidation or influence of some sort was being employed against every possible witness and talesman. [Illustration: George Vanderveer This man single handed opposed six high priced lumber trust prosecutors in the famous trial at Montesano. Vanderveer is a man of wide experience and deep social vision. He was at one time prosecuting attorney for King County, Washington. The lumber trust has made countless threats to "get him." "A lawyer with a heart is as dangerous as a workingman with brains."] Not only were unlimited money and other resources of the Lewis County commercial interests banded against us, but practically all the attorneys up and down the Pacific coast had pledged themselves not to defend any I.W.W., no matter how great nor how small the charge he faced. Our investigators were arrested without warrant; solicitors for our defense fund met with the same fate. And when the trial date approached, the judge before whom this case is being heard admitted that a fair trial could not be had here, because of the surging prejudice existent in this community. Then, five days later, the court announced that the law would not permit a second change of venue, and that the trial must go ahead in Montesano. In the face of these things, and in the face of all the atmosphere of violence and bloodthirstiness which the prosecution has sought to throw around these defendants, I am placing our case in your hands; I am intrusting to you gentlemen to decide upon the fate of ten human beings--whether they shall live or die or be shut away from their fellows for months or years. But I am asking you much more than that--I am asking you to decide the fate of organized labor in the Northwest; whether its fundamental rights are to survive or be trampled underfoot. The Lumber Trust Wins the Jury On Saturday evening, March 13th, the jury brought in its final verdict of guilty. In the face of the very evident ability of the lumber interests, to satisfy its vengeance at will, any other verdict would have been suicidal--for the jury. The prosecution was out for blood and nothing less than blood. Day by day they had built the structure of gallows right there in the courtroom. They built a scaffolding on which to hang ten loggers--built it of lies and threats and perjury. Dozens of witnesses from the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion took the stand to braid a hangman's rope of untruthful testimony. Some of these were members of the mob; on their white hands the blood of Wesley Everest was hardly dry. And they were not satisfied with sending their victims to prison for terms of from 25 to 40 years, they wanted the pleasure of seeing their necks broken. But they failed. Two verdicts were returned; his honor refused to accept the first; no intelligent man can accept the second. Here is the way the two verdicts compare with each other: Elmer Smith and Mike Sheehan were declared not guilty and Loren Roberts insane, in both the first and second verdicts. Britt Smith, O.C. Bland, James McInerney, Bert Bland and Ray Becker were found guilty of murder in the second degree in both instances, but Eugene Barnett and John Lamb were at first declared guilty of manslaughter, or murder "in the third degree" in the jury's first findings, and guilty of second degree murder in the second. The significant point is that the state made its strongest argument against the four men whom the jury practically exonerated of the charge of conspiring to murder. More significant is the fact that the whole verdict completely upsets the charge of conspiracy to murder under which the men were tried. The difference between first and second degree murder is that the former, first degree, implies premeditation while the other, second degree, means murder that is not premeditated. Now, how in the world can men be found guilty of conspiring to murder without previous premeditation? The verdict, brutal and stupid as it is, shows the weakness and falsity of the state's charge more eloquently than anything the defense has ever said about it. But Labor Says, "Not Guilty!" But another jury had been watching the trial. Their verdict came as a surprise to those who had read the newspaper version of the case. No sooner had the twelve bewildered and frightened men in the jury box paid tribute to the power of the Lumber Trust with a ludicrous and tragic verdict than the six workingmen of the Labor Jury returned their verdict also. Those six men represented as many labor organizations in the Pacific Northwest with a combined membership of many thousands of wage earners. The last echoes of the prolonged legal battle had hardly died away when these six men sojourned to Tacoma to ballot, deliberate and to reach their decision about the disputed facts of the case. At the very moment when the trust-controlled newspapers, frantic with disappointment, were again raising the blood-cry of their pack, the frank and positive statement of these six workers came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky,--"Not Guilty!" The Labor Jury had studied the development of the case with earnest attention from the beginning. Day by day they had watched with increasing astonishment the efforts of the defense to present, and of the prosecution and the judge to exclude, from the consideration of the trial jury, the things everybody knew to be true about the tragedy at Centralia. Day by day the sordid drama had been unfolded before their eyes. Day by day the conviction had grown upon them that the loggers on trial for their lives were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were convinced in their hearts and minds that the loggers on trial were innocent. And they would have been just as honest and just as fearless had their convictions been otherwise. It cannot be said that the Labor Jury was biased in favor of the defendants or of the I.W.W. If anything, they were predisposed to believe the defendants guilty and their union an outlaw organization. It must be remembered that all the labor jury knew of the case was what it had read in the capitalist newspapers prior to their arrival at the scene of the trial. These men were not radicals but representative working men--members of conservative unions--who had been instructed by their organizations to observe impartially the progress of the trial and to report back to their unions the result of their observations. Read their report: Labor's Verdict Labor Temple, Tacoma, March 15, 1920, 1:40 p.m. The Labor Jury met in the rooms of the Labor Temple and organized, electing P. K. Mohr as foreman. Present: J.A. Craft, W.J. Beard, Otto Newman, Theodore Mayer, E.W. Thrall and P.K. Mohr. 1. On motion a secret ballot of guilty or not guilty was taken, the count resulting in a unanimous "Not Guilty!" 2. Shall we give our report to the press? Verdict, "Yes." [Illustration: Labor's Silent Jury W.J. Beard, Central Labor Council, Tacoma: Paul K. Mohr, Central Labor Council, Seattle: Theodore Meyer, Central Labor Council, Everett: E.W. Thrall, Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia: John A. Craft, Metal Trades Council, Seattle.] 3. Was there a conspiracy to raid the I.W.W. hall on the part of the business interests of Centralia? Verdict, "Yes." There was evidence offered by the defense to show that the business interests held a meeting at the Elk's Club on October 20, 1919, at which ways and means to deal with the I.W.W. situation were discussed. F.B. Hubbard, Chief of Police Hughes and William Scales, commander of the American Legion at Centralia, were present. Prosecuting Attorney Allen was quoted as having said, "There is no law that would let you run the I.W.W. out of town." Chief of Police Hughes said, "You cannot run the I.W.W. out of town; they have violated no law." F.G. Hubbard said, "It's a damn shame; if I was chief I would have them out of town in 24 hours." William Scales, presiding at the meeting, said that although he was not in favor of a raid, there was no American jury that would convict them if they did, or words to that effect. He then announced that he would appoint a secret committee to deal with the I.W.W. situation. 4. Was the I.W.W. hall unlawfully raided? Verdict, "Yes." The evidence introduced convinces us that an attack was made before a shot was fired. 5. Had the defendants a right to defend their hall. Verdict, "yes." On a former occasion the I.W.W. hall was raided, furniture destroyed and stolen, ropes placed around their necks and they were otherwise abused and driven out of town by citizens, armed with pick handles. 6. Was Warren O. Grimm a party to the conspiracy of raiding the I.W.W. hall? Verdict, "Yes." The evidence introduced convinces us that Warren O. Grimm participated in the raid of the I.W.W. hall. 7. To our minds the most convincing evidence that Grimm was in front of and raiding the I.W.W. hall with others, is the evidence of State Witness Van Gilder who testified that he stood at the side of Grimm at the intersection of Second street and Tower avenue, when, according to his testimony, Grimm was shot. This testimony was refuted by five witnesses who testified that they saw Grimm coming wounded from the direction of the I.W.W. hall. It is not credible that Van Gilder, who was a personal and intimate friend of Grimm, would leave him when he was mortally wounded, to walk half a block alone and unaided. 8. Did the defendants get a fair and impartial trial? Verdict, "No." The most damaging evidence of a conspiracy by the business men of Centralia, of a raid on the I.W.W. hall, was ruled out by the court and not permitted to go to the jury. This was one of the principal issues that the defense sought to establish. Also the calling of the federal troops by Prosecuting Attorney Allen was for no other reason than to create atmosphere. On interviewing the judge, sheriff and prosecuting attorney, the judge and the sheriff informed us that in their opinion the troops were not needed and that they were brought there without their consent or knowledge. In the interview Mr. Allen promised to furnish the substance of the evidence which in his opinion necessitated the presence of the troops the next morning, but on the following day he declined the information. He, however, did say that he did not fear the I.W.W., but was afraid of violence by the American Legion. This confession came after he was shown by us the fallacy of the I.W.W. coming armed to interfere with the verdict. Also the presence of the American Legion in large numbers in court. Theodore Meyer, Everett Central Labor Council; John O. Craft, Seattle Metal Trades Council; E.W. Thrall, Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia; W.J. Beard, Tacoma Central Labor Council; Otto Newman, Portland Central Labor Council; P.K. Mohr, Seattle Central Labor Council. The above report speaks for itself. It was received with great enthusiasm by the organizations of each of the jurymen when the verdict was submitted. On March 17th, the Seattle Central Labor Council voted unanimously to send the verdict to all of the Central Labor Assemblies of the United States and Canada. Not only are the loggers vindicated in defending their property and lives from the felonious assault of the Armistice Day mob, but the conspiracy of the business interests to raid the hall and the raid itself were established. The participation of Warren O. Grimm is also accepted as proved beyond doubt. Doubly significant is the statement about the "fair and impartial trial" that is supposed to be guaranteed all men under our constitution. Nothing could more effectively stamp the seal of infamy upon the whole sickening rape of justice than the manly outspoken statements of these six labor jurors. Perhaps the personalities of these men might prove of interest: E. W. Thrall, of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia, is an old time and trusted member of his union. As will be noticed, he comes from Centralia, the scene of the tragedy. Otto Newman, of the Central Labor Council, Portland, Oregon, has ably represented his union in the C.L.C. for some time. W.J. Beard is organizer for the Central Labor Council in Tacoma, Washington. He is an old member of the Western Federation of Miners and remembers the terrible times during the strikes at Tulluride. John O. Craft is president of Local 40, International Union of Steam Operating Engineers, of which union he has been a member for the last ten years. Mr. Craft has been actively connected with unions affiliated with the A.F. of L. since 1898. Theodore Meyer was sent by the Longshoremen of Everett, Washington. Since 1903 he has been a member of the A.F. of L.; prior to that time being a member of the National Sailors and Firemen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Sailors' Union of Australia. P. K. Mohr represents the Central Labor Council of Seattle and is one of the oldest active members in the Seattle unions. Mr. Mohr became a charter member of the first Bakers' Union in 1889 and was its first presiding officer. He was elected delegate to the old Western Central Labor Council in 1890. At one time Mr. Mohr was president of the Seattle Labor Council. At the present time he is president of the Bakers' Union. Such are the men who have studied the travesty on justice in the great labor trial at Montesano. "Not Guilty" is their verdict. Does it mean anything to you? Wesley Everest Torn and defiant as a wind-lashed reed, Wounded, he faced you as he stood at bay; You dared not lynch him in the light of day, But on your dungeon stones you let him bleed; Night came ... and you black vigilants of Greed,... Like human wolves, seized hand upon your prey, Tortured and killed ... and, silent, slunk away Without one qualm of horror at the deed. Once ... long ago ... do you remember how You hailed Him king for soldiers to deride-- You placed a scroll above His bleeding brow And spat upon Him, scourged Him, crucified...? A rebel unto Caesar--then as now-- Alone, thorn-crowned, a spear wound in His side! --R.C. in "N.Y. Call." 
14055	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14055-h.htm or 14055-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/0/5/14055/14055-h/14055-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/0/5/14055/14055-h.zip) FOOD GUIDE FOR WAR SERVICE AT HOME Prepared under the Direction of the United States Food Administration in Co-Operation with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Education With a Preface by Herbert Hoover United States Food Administrator 1918 [Illustration: Reproduced by courtesy of National Geographic Society] ANNOUNCEMENT In the spring of 1918 the Collegiate Section of the United States Food Administration was called upon to prepare a simple statement of the food situation as affected by the war, suitable for elementary and high school teachers, high-school pupils, and the general public. The demand arose because of the wide adoption of the three courses on this subject then being sent out weekly to universities, colleges, and normal schools throughout the country. This little volume is the response to that request. It was written by Katharine Blunt, of the University of Chicago, Frances L. Swain, of the Chicago Normal School, and Florence Powdermaker, of the United States Department of Agriculture. The records of the Food Administration have been open to the writers and they have had the advice and criticism of its officials and specialists. No effort has been spared to secure accuracy of statement in the text. OLIN TEMPLIN, Director of the Collegiate Section. July 1, 1918. PREFACE The long war has brought hunger to Europe; some of her peoples stand constantly face to face with starvation. All agriculture has been seriously interfered with. Food production has been lessened to the point of danger. Millions of men who had given all their time and energy to raising food have been killed; more millions are still fighting; other millions have gone from the farms into the great war-factories. Women, too, have been drafted from the fields and home gardens into the factories and to replace the absent men in a host of occupations. Great stretches of once fertile land have been temporarily ruined by the scourge of war; some are still under falling shot and shell. Belgium and France have lost millions of acres of productive land to the enemy. The fertilizers necessary for keeping up the production of the land still available are lacking. All this means that the Allies have to rely on the outside for the maintenance of their food-supply. But because ships are fewer than they were, and because many of them must carry troops and munitions exclusively, these ships cannot be sent on voyages longer than absolutely necessary to find and bring back the needed food. They cannot afford to go the long time-consuming way to Australia and back; but few of them can be let go to India and the Argentine. They must carry food by the shortest routes. The shortest is from North America to England and France. Therefore by far the greater part of the food provided for the Allies from the outside must come from us. As a matter of fact more than 50 per cent of this outside food for the Allies does now come from North America. And that is a great deal. It is very much more than we ever sent them before. Also we are sending more and more food overseas for our own growing armies in France and our growing fleets in European waters. To meet all this great food need in Europe--and meeting it is an imperative military necessity--we must be very careful and economical in our food use here at home. We must eat less; we must waste nothing; we must equalize the distribution of what food we may retain for ourselves; we must prevent extortion and profiteering which make prices so high that the poor cannot buy the food they actually need; and we must try to produce more food by planting more wheat and other grain, raising more cattle and swine and sheep, and making gardens everywhere. To help the people of America do all these things, and to coordinate their efforts, the President and Congress created the United States Food Administration. The Food Administration, therefore, asks all the people to help feed the Allies that they may continue to fight, to help feed the hungry in Belgium and other starving lands that they may continue to live, and to help feed our own sailors and soldiers so that they may want nothing. It asks help, also, in its great task of preventing prices from going too high and of stabilizing them, and of keeping the flow of distribution even, so that all our people, rich and poor alike, may be able to obtain the food they need. For all this there is needed a "food education" of all our people. Every home in our broad land must be reached. One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is by getting information to the children of the nation about food and the possibilities and methods of its most wise and economical use. To obtain this result we must get this information into the hands of parents and teachers. For the purpose of diffusing this information this little book has been prepared under the direction of the Food Administration. By following the suggestions for food conservation herein contained every one can render his country an important war service. I am sure that all will be glad to do this. HERBERT HOOVER. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE WHEAT SITUATION The world's supply of wheat--Wheat in the United States--Meeting the wheat shortage CHAPTER II. THE WAR-TIME IMPORTANCE OF WHEAT AND OTHER CEREALS The significance of different kinds of food--The social importance of cereals, especially wheat--Wheat flour in war-time--The 50-50 rule. Another way to cut the consumption of wheat--Substitutes for wheat flour CHAPTER III. WAR BREAD The bakers' regulations. Victory bread--The individual's answer to the bread cry--Flour and bread in the Allied countries--Why we in the United States do not have bread cards CHAPTER IV. THE MEAT SITUATION Where Europe's meat has been produced--The war and the European meat-supply--The meat rations of Europe--The part of the United States--Meat conservation--Meat and other protein foods--The meat substitutes CHAPTER V. FATS The situation abroad--The situation in the United States CHAPTER VI. SUGAR Why is there a sugar shortage?--The effect of the shortage--In place of sugar--The price of sugar--To cut down on sugar CHAPTER VII. MILK--FOR THE NATION'S HEALTH The valuable constituents of milk--Our milk problem--Our milk abroad CHAPTER VIII. VEGETABLES AND FRUITS In the war diet--Canning and drying vegetables and fruits CONCLUSION A FEW REFERENCES INDEX CHAPTER I THE WHEAT SITUATION Wheat is as much a war necessity as ammunition--wheat is a war weapon. To produce it and distribute it where it is needed and in sufficient quantities is the most serious food problem of the Allied world. The continent of Europe, with her devastated fields, can raise but a small fraction of the wheat she needs, and ships are so few that she cannot import it from many of the usual sources. Not one of the warring European countries has escaped serious suffering, and the neutral countries have suffered with them. THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF WHEAT France, always an agricultural nation, was the most nearly self-sustaining of the western Allies. Now one-third of her wheat-fields are barren. Thousands of her acres have been taken by the enemy, or are in No Man's Land. Much of the land that has been fought over these past four years is now hopeless for farming, and will be for years to come. Even the territory still under cultivation cannot be expected to yield large returns, for laborers, tools, and fertilizers are lacking. The men who have left the fields to fight have been replaced chiefly by women, children, and old men, while furloughed soldiers at times help to bring in the crops. To get adequate return from the soil which has been tilled for centuries, tons of fertilizer are necessary. Fertilizers are an absolute necessity, and nitrates, one of the most important of them, can no longer be imported from Chile. The work-animals have been driven off by the enemy or slaughtered for want of food, and mechanics are lacking to repair and replace the worn-out farm-machinery. As a result of this, in 1917 France raised only enough wheat to supply 40 per cent of her need, instead of 90 per cent, as in pre-war years. In England the situation is not much better. Unlike France, England has always imported far more wheat than she raised. But now through vigorous effort she alone of all the European countries has increased her cereal production so that it has actually been doubled. Being free from the devastation of war at home, she has been able to convert the great lawns of her parks and country estates into grain-fields. English women of all classes, an army of half a million, are working on the land. At the same time the consumption of wheat has been reduced. Even yet, however, the home-grown supply in England is only one-fourth of the wheat required. In Belgium the devastation is so complete that the women, children, and old people left there would die of famine if food were not sent to them. Two and a half million Belgians daily stand in line waiting for food to be doled out to them. The United States must supply three-fourths of the wheat contained in their meagre bread ration. In Italy, too, the condition is serious, for she produces far less than she needs, despite every effort of her Government to stimulate production. [Illustration: WHEAT FIELDS OF THE WORLD] Germany and Austria-Hungary have not escaped universal suffering from lack of wheat. Germany before the war was a wheat-importing country, and Austria-Hungary was able to supply herself with wheat, but had none to export. Their war crops have been below normal, and even the wheat taken from conquered territory has not been sufficient to prevent severe shortage, resulting in bread riots in industrial centres. The imports of wheat into both the Allied and enemy European countries to supplement the wheat of their own raising came in peace-times from seven countries--Russia, Roumania, Australia, the United States, Canada, Argentina, and India. Most of these have now failed as a source of supply. Russia and Roumania were the great wheat-bins of Europe. They produced as much wheat as the United States, and sometimes more, and they were always able to make up or nearly make up the deficiencies of western Europe. Russia and Roumania are now themselves on the verge of famine. Even before their own situation became so desperate, they could get little wheat to the western Allies, because the enemy territory and the battle-lines made a great wall of separation. Australia and India both continue to grow large crops of wheat, and have a surplus in storage, but it cannot be sent to Europe because of lack of ships. Australia has wheat stored from her last three crops. The Argentine had very poor crops in 1916 and 1917, and although the 1918 crop is good, it is scarcely more available to Europe than Australia's wheat. SO THE WHEAT SCARCITY IS NOT A QUESTION ONLY OF THE AMOUNT OF WHEAT IN THE WORLD. IT IS A PROBLEM OF GETTING IT WHERE IT IS NEEDED--WHEAT PLUS SHIPS. Not a single ship must go farther than is absolutely necessary. A glance at the map shows why wheat for Europe should come from North America rather than from Australia or India, or even the Argentine. The trip from Australia is three times as long as from North America, so it takes only one-third as many ships to carry food to Europe from the United States as from Australia. The Argentine is twice as far from Europe as the United States, and therefore twice as many ships are needed to carry an equal amount of Argentine food to Europe. If this continent could produce and save enough next year to provide the whole of the Allied food necessities, we could save 1,500,000 tons of world shipping to be used for other purposes. EVERY SHIP SAVED IS A SHIP BUILT TO CARRY MORE MEN AND MORE AMMUNITION TO FRANCE. WHEAT IN THE UNITED STATES The United States has never had a large wheat surplus to export, and the last few years it has had an unusually low supply to meet the extraordinary demand. The 1916 crop was small. The 1917 crop was only four-fifths of normal, little more than we ordinarily consume ourselves. We entered the last harvest with our stocks of wheat and other cereals practically exhausted. Hence to feed the Allies until the 1918 harvest, we had to send wheat which we should ordinarily have eaten. All that we could send under normal conditions from July, 1917, to July, 1918, has usually been estimated at about 20,000,000 bushels, but in the first eleven months of this time we actually did send 120,000,000 bushels, six times as much as we could have shipped without conservation. One-half of the total output of our flour-mills in the month of May, 1918, went abroad. This achievement in feeding the Allies has been made possible and will continue to be possible, through the measures of economy and substitution established by the Food Administration, and the constant and continued personal sacrifice of each one of us. Even the 1918 wheat crop, successful as it promises to be, will not mean freedom from saving. Throughout the war there can be no relaxation. We must build up a great national reserve in years of good harvest for the greater and greater demands of Europe. NEVER AGAIN MUST WE LET OURSELVES AND THE WORLD FACE THE DANGER THAT WAS BEFORE US IN THE SPRING OF 1918. MEETING THE WHEAT SHORTAGE To keep wheat constantly going over to our Allies and sufficient stores in the United States at the same time, is one of the big problems of the Food Administration. Production has had to be increased and consumption decreased. The price has had to be kept down, for in a time of shortage prices always tend to go up. It is true that high prices furnish one method of decreasing the consumption of food, but it is a method that means enforced conservation by the poor and no conservation by the rich. The burden thus falls on those least able to bear it. To meet this situation the Food Administration has gone into the wheat business itself. PRACTICALLY ENTIRE CONTROL OF THE BUYING AND SELLING OF WHEAT IS IN THE HANDS OF THE GREAT UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION GRAIN CORPORATION. Through this organization all wheat sales are made to the Army and Navy, to our allies, and to the neutrals. The price which it pays for these huge quantities sets the price for the entire country. The Food Administration also makes the movement of wheat from the farmer to the miller and to the wholesaler as simple and direct as possible. It prevents hoarding and speculation. "I am convinced," said Mr. Hoover, in April, 1918, "that at no time in the last three years has there been as little speculation in the nation's food as there is to-day." [Illustration: COST OF A POUND LOAF OF BREAD] As a result of this business management of wheat, the consumer pays less for flour, although the farmer gets more for his wheat. In May, 1917, the difference between the price of the farmer's wheat and of the flour made from it was $5.86 per barrel of 196 pounds. Fifteen months later the difference was 64 cents. In February, 1917, before the United States went into the war, flour sold at wholesale for $8.75 a barrel. In May, 1917, the war, with no food control, had driven the price up to $17. But in February, 1918, after six months of the Food Administration, it had gone down to $10.50 wholesale, and this in spite of unprecedented demand for our very short supply. Without control, flour would undoubtedly be selling for $50 a barrel. During the Civil War, with no world wheat shortage, but without food control, the price of wheat increased 130 per cent over the price in 1861. The milling and sale of flour, the baking of bread, and the purchases of the individual are all regulated to a greater extent than would have scarcely been thought possible before the war. Every effort has been made to produce a great 1918 wheat-crop. Congress, at the time the Food Control Bill was passed, fixed the price of the 1918 wheat at a minimum of $2 per bushel, and the President later fixed the price at $2.20. This has been high enough to encourage the farmer to increase his crop and not too high to be fair to the consumer. The Department of Agriculture, during the winter of 1917-18, had for its slogan, "a billion-bushel crop for 1918." It has worked intensively to help the farmer in selecting and testing seed and in fighting destructive insects and plant-diseases, and in every way to help him grow more wheat. Constant reliance has been placed on the individual's intelligence and patriotism in wheat-saving. One of the unusual aspects of the Food Administration is its confidence in the co-operation of the country and the response which this confidence has met. Wheatless meals are now a commonplace occurrence. Wheatless days are being observed in many hotels and homes. People all over the country have pledged themselves to do entirely without wheat until the 1918 harvest is available. About 100,000 barrels of flour were returned by individuals and companies during the spring of 1918, to be shipped to the Allies and the Army and Navy. The individual all over the country, consumer, dealer, miller, or farmer, has risen to the occasion to do his share toward the fulfilment of the Government's promise to Europe. CHAPTER II THE WAR-TIME IMPORTANCE OF WHEAT AND OTHER CEREALS When the United States was called on to supply the Allies with much of its wheat and flour, we fortunately found at hand a plentiful supply of a great variety of other cereals. The use of corn was, of course, not an experiment--generations of Southerners have flourished on it. But we also had oats, rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, and such local products as the grain sorghums, which are grown in the South and West. All of them are cereals and all can be used interchangeably with wheat in our diet. To understand clearly the value of cereals in the diet to-day, it is well to review the part played by food in general. Europe to-day is eating to live. She therefore thinks of food not in terms of menus but as a means of keeping up bodily functions, as sources of protein, carbohydrate and fat--terms seldom heard outside of the university a few years ago. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD We need food first of all to burn as fuel for all the activities of the body, just as any other machine needs fuel. The fuel value of food, or its energy, is measured in _calories_. A calorie measures the amount of heat or energy given off when anything burns, whether it is coal in a stove or food in the body. Practically all foods give this fuel or energy, but some give much more than others. Fats give more fuel than an equal weight of any other food. Sugar and foods rich in starch like flour and corn meal are fuel foods. This is one of the reasons why they are chosen to be shipped abroad. The cereals always supply an important part of the fuel of the diet. Watery foods, like many vegetables and fruits, normally give less fuel. A person could not live on lettuce any better than a house could be heated with tissue paper. If the food does not supply enough energy, a person will burn up part of his own body for fuel and will grow emaciated. Far too often we find children of the very poor who are undernourished because of lack of food fuel. Sometimes even well-to-do young people half starve themselves because they get "notions" about food. One of the terrible tragedies abroad is the hundreds and thousands of men and women and children who are worn and thin and sick for lack of food. We need food, too, to keep the organs of the body running smoothly. Abroad, people are suffering not only because they have not enough food, but because they have not the right kinds of food. Milk and vegetables and fruits are especially useful. They are the chief sources of the much-needed _mineral salts_ and the two _vitamines_. The vitamines are substances of great importance about which has centred much discussion lately and which scientists do not yet fully understand, though they realize that they are essential for the growth of children and for health in adults. The _protein_ of food is used to build the body if we are young, and to restore the daily wear and tear if we are older. The mineral salts are also necessary for this purpose. Protein will be discussed further in the chapter on meat and meat substitutes, but it should be realized here that the protein we eat comes not only from these foods, but also from the cereals. Cereals supply a full half of the protein of many diets. Cereals are therefore important for their fuel since they are rich in starch, and for their protein, and, if we eat the entire kernel, for their mineral matter and vitamines. They also have the pleasant flavor and texture which we have grown to like. Wheat is no better than any of the other cereals. It possesses absolutely no nutritional advantage for man or beast over oats, corn, and rye. It has no more protein, and no better protein. It has no more fat and no better fat. It has no better mineral salts and in no larger amounts. It has no more fuel or better fuel. It is just _one_ of the cereals, and there is not the slightest evidence that it is the best one. It has merely become one of our habits. Corn and wheat and the other cereals are just as well digested if equally well prepared. A soggy piece of wheat bread may, of course, be less readily digestible than a well-made piece of corn-bread, but that is a question of skill in cooking, not of difference in cereals. Complaints have been heard in England about the war bread. It is true that it may be hard on those of frail digestive powers to change their food habits in any way, but Hutchison, an eminent London physician, in tracing down complaints, found that frequently people laid to the new bread ailments from which they had suffered before the war. "When in doubt, blame the war bread," seemed to be the motto. THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF CEREALS, ESPECIALLY WHEAT The world eats more cereals than any other kind of food. They are so widely available, so cheap and nutritious, that they are a main reliance of the human race. A shortage is always extremely serious. Not only is an abundance important, but an abundance of the accustomed kind. In parts of India, the inhabitants use rice as almost the only cereal. When the rice-crop failed some years ago, thousands of people died of starvation with a supply of wheat available. They did not know the use of wheat as food. Countries like France, which use their cereals chiefly for bread, are the most dependent on wheat, since wheat is the most easily made into bread. In the United States cereals make up almost one-third of our food. Although wheat in most parts of the country has been the main dependence, we have used a much greater variety of cereals than most people, so that it is comparatively simple for the majority to make increased use of them. The very poor must depend largely upon cereals because they can get more for their money from them than from other foods. Cereals, to most of them, mean bread. It is such a large part of their diet that doing without it means a far more fundamental and difficult change in their food habits than for the well-to-do with greater freedom of choice. Besides, the already overburdened working woman must get her bread in the easiest possible way--a ready-made loaf from the baker. The burden of scarcity or high prices falls on those least able to bear it. Europeans eat even larger amounts of wheat than we. Over half the food of the French is bread, so if the wheat shortage were near the danger-line, it might lead to a serious weakening of the marvellous courage of the French people. WHEAT FLOUR IN WAR-TIME To use this country's share of the short supply of wheat to the greatest advantage the Food Administration has changed the making of flour to include more of the wheat-kernel. The difference between peace and war time flour is easily understood if the structure of grains is considered. Wheat and other cereals have kernels much alike; all have three principal parts: The outer covering, called _bran_, is made up of several layers. This is rich in important mineral salts, and the rest is largely cellulose, or woody fibre. The _germ_ is the small part from which the new plant will develop. Here the small amount of fat in the kernel is stored. The largest part of the kernel, called the _endosperm_, contains the nourishment to be used by the plant as it begins to develop. This is mostly starch, with some protein. It is the part of the wheat, for instance, which is chiefly used to make our white flour. The kind of flour made depends on how much and what parts of the kernel are used. Graham flour is manufactured by grinding practically all of the wheat-kernel--a 100-per-cent use of the grain, called 100-per-cent extraction. Some people still fail to realize that Graham flour and Graham bread are wheat, perhaps because of the different name and brown color. The so-called "whole-wheat" flour is often 95 per cent of the kernel only, but may be as little as 85 per cent, depending on the amount of the bran and germ removed in the making. Ordinary white flour contains the endosperm alone, with practically none of the bran and germ. Some brands before the war used up as little as 56 per cent of the wheat, leaving the rest of it to be turned into lower-grade flours and cattle-feed. White flour thus uses less of the wheat for human food than Graham or whole-wheat flour. Yet to convert all the country's wheat into Graham flour would not be a wheat-saving measure, because it is not so well suited to our trade conditions. Graham flour, for one thing, does not keep so well as flour of lower extractions, as the fat in the germ may become rancid in a comparatively short time. Flour in this country is often thirty days or longer in transit and may be months in warehouses, stores, and homes. A flour to be satisfactory under extreme conditions here or for shipment abroad must keep at least six months--too long to be sure that Graham flour will keep. In small countries like England, where flour is used up more promptly, a high extraction is more practicable than in the United States. Moreover, while Graham and whole-wheat flours with their larger quantities of mineral salts are a more desirable food for some people than white flour, they are occasionally irritating to people with weak digestions, so that it would be unfortunate to have only these flours on the market. The Food Administration, therefore, has considered that the most effective use of our wheat could be obtained by forbidding the manufacture of fancy flours of low extraction and making all flour contain at least 74 per cent of the wheat. This still gives a fine white flour that keeps well and is difficult to distinguish from that on the market before the war. To help in the enforcement of its flour rulings, the Food Administration has licensed all mills and elevators which handle over 100 barrels of flour a day. If the rulings of the Food Administration are not obeyed the license may be taken away, and the business closed. The hoarding of flour has been stopped by prohibiting mills, elevators, and bakers from having more than 30 days' supply on hand. THE 50-50 RULE. ANOTHER WAY TO CUT THE CONSUMPTION OF WHEAT NOT ONLY MUST THE MILLER MANUFACTURE FLOUR IN ACCORDANCE WITH NEW REGULATIONS, BUT THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER MUST BUY IT UNDER RESTRICTIONS. To many people the first realization that war and food difficulties are necessarily associated, came with the announcement in the spring of 1918 of the now familiar rules for the purchase of flour. With every pound of white wheat flour, the purchaser must buy a pound of some other cereal; with every pound of Graham flour, three-fifths of a pound of other cereal. The purpose of this regulation is, of course, to lessen the use of wheat by increasing the use of the substitutes. The housekeeper who through lack of initiative or ingenuity fails to feed the family the substitutes and lets them accumulate on her shelf has just so far failed to co-operate with the Food Administration. Many a housewife has learned the value of these cereals and will continue to use them long after the war and the Food Administration have passed into history. A little thought will show the absence of any real burden in the 50-50 rule. A housekeeper for her family of four buys five pounds of wheat flour and five pounds of other cereals. She may use 1¼ pounds of the substitutes with the 5 pounds of wheat flour to make about 8 pounds of Victory bread--sufficient to give each member of her family 2 pounds of bread during the week. She may serve an ounce of oatmeal as the breakfast cereal and an ounce of rice, hominy, or other cereal for each person daily and will then have used all the substitutes. These cereals can be made into an endless variety of quick breads, cakes, and pastry, or combined with other foods as the main dish of the meal. SUBSTITUTES FOR WHEAT FLOUR The cereals on the market are varied enough to suit any taste. REMEMBER THAT AS FAR AS NUTRITIONAL VALUE IS CONCERNED, IT MAKES PRACTICALLY NO DIFFERENCE WHETHER WE EAT WHEAT OR OATS, RYE OR BARLEY. The quantities of starch, protein, mineral matter, and fat are so nearly the same that any one of them can take the place of another. Oatmeal has a slight advantage over wheat both in protein and fat, and since oats is an abundant crop in our country it is an excellent substitute. Rice has a very little more starch and less protein than the others. There is just one advantage that wheat flour has over the other cereals--it can be made into lighter and more durable bread. The reason for this is given in the next chapter. _Corn, the most abundant substitute._ Indian corn is native to the United States. Since it carried the Pilgrims through their year of famine, it has always been considered our national grain. Other countries have adopted it to some extent, but more than three quarters of the world's corn is grown here. In 1917 our corn crop was 3,000,000,000 bushels, four times as large as our wheat crop. Most of the crop has always been used as a feed-grain, with only a small percentage for human food. The South has always used much more corn than the North, actually eating more corn than wheat. The foods from corn and the ways of using them are more numerous than is often appreciated. Corn meal and corn flour are the most important. We are making almost as much corn meal as wheat flour. The yellow and white corn meals, milled from different kinds of corn, are practically the same in composition, though slightly different in flavor. The method of milling corn meal makes more difference in the composition than the kind of corn used. The old "water-ground" meal was simply crushed between millstones and only the coarsest particles of bran bolted out. This ranks with Graham as a product of 100 per cent extraction and like Graham, it may not keep well, because the germ is left in. The new process, more like modern flour-milling, removes some of the bran and germ. The product is a granulated corn meal which keeps better than the other, and has practically the same composition, though to some people a less desirable flavor. If corn meal is further ground and bolted, we have corn flour. Some of this has been put on the market lately and is proving a good substitute for wheat flour; but the amount available is only a small fraction of the amount of corn meal. Other important corn products are hominy of different kinds, hulled corn, and popcorn. The latter, usually eaten as an "extra," is really a valuable part of the diet. Corn is the same satisfactory food whether it is eaten as mush in New England, _polenta_ in Italy, or _tamales_ in Mexico. Many of the people of Mexico and Central America live on corn and beans to a surprising extent. In portions of Italy the rural population have adopted the grain as their main food. Our corn-meal mush is their _polenta_, which is served sometimes with cheese, sometimes with tomato sauce or meat gravy. _Oats_. An Englishman once taunted a Scotchman with the fact that while England used oats only for her horses, Scotland fed it to her men. "Ah!" said Sandy; "but where will you find such horses as you raise in England and such men as in Scotland!" The United States, more like England than Scotland, has used oats mostly for feed. The crop is second only to the corn-crop. Oats are eaten in the form of oatmeal, which is a finely granulated meal, and as the common rolled oats which have been steamed and put through rollers. There is little oat flour on the market at present. A successful and palatable home-made flour may be prepared by putting rolled oats through a food-chopper. Any of the forms of oats can be used in breads of all kinds, but the more finely ground flour can be substituted in larger proportion. The demand for oat products has grown so rapidly the last year that mills are running to their limit. Special machinery is required for its manufacture, so that a great increase in the supply is not feasible in a short time. _Barley and Rye_. In using barley and rye for bread we are only going back to the methods of our forefathers. Barley is supposed to be one of the first cereals used by man. Good barley flour is a very acceptable substitute for wheat, but if too large a proportion of the kernel is included, it may be bitter in flavor. _Rye_, of all the cereals, makes bread nearest like wheat, though the rye bread formerly made usually contained from 20 per cent to 80 per cent wheat flour. The supply is far below what we could well use. For this reason it is not included among the cereals which the housekeeper is allowed to buy on the 50-50 plan, and since March 31, 1918, bakers have not been allowed to use it as a substitute in baking on the same basis as the other substitutes. _Rice_. Rice forms the chief food of hundreds of millions of people, and in many oriental countries is the staple cereal, like wheat with us. As a wheat substitute we may use it cooked whole or ground into a flour. The rice flour may be mixed with other cereals in making bread and cakes. The rice polish, which is a by-product secured by rubbing off with brushes the outside coating of the brown rice, is much cheaper. It has been sold chiefly for stock-feed, but it has possibilities as a flour substitute. The rice-growers of the South are doing their best to supply the country with rice in quantity and to make known the possibilities of this cereal. The rice flour supply, though not large now, will doubtless be much increased by next year. One Louisiana mill, for example, is increasing its output from 150 to 1,200 barrels a day. _Other Cereal Substitutes_. Besides the substitutes which are common all over the country, there are products produced in too small amounts to make them universal substitutes, such as buckwheat, cottonseed meal, and peanut flour, any of which can be used with other flours for baking. The Southwest produces both flour and meal from milo, kaffir, and feterita. Flours are made from the Irish and sweet potato, from tapioca, from soy beans, and bananas, but they are manufactured in such small amounts that they do not take the place of wheat to any great extent. Potato flour comes nearest to doing this. It has always been used to some extent in Europe and it is being widely used in Germany now. Potato itself can be used instead of wheat. An extra potato at a meal will take the place of a large slice of bread. Many of the substitute cereals do not keep so well as wheat, especially if they contain more than a minimum of moisture and fat. The housekeeper and the baker should therefore buy them in small enough quantities to use them up promptly and should keep them in a cool, well-ventilated place. May and June and the summer months are the time when most care is needed. It is the free use of these many wholesome substitutes that is making possible the necessary saving of wheat. We who appreciate their wholesomeness and their value can well break away from our wheat habit and gladly make the little effort sometimes necessary to begin using newer foods. CHAPTER III WAR BREAD Bread is the staff of life for all nations. But "bread" does not necessarily mean the wheat loaf. At one time and place it has been barley cake, at another oaten cake, and at another corn pone. Bread has always been whatever cereal happened to be convenient. Even such unbreadlike food as rice is to some races what bread is to us. Why, then, have we developed our wheat-bread habit? Partly because wheat bread has been easy to get and we have grown to like the taste, but chiefly because wheat flour gives the lightest loaf. To understand why, make a dough with a little white flour and water and then gently knead it in cold water. The consistency changes, the starch is washed out and a rubbery, sticky ball is left--the _gluten_, which is the protein of the wheat. It is this gluten in the flour that stretches when bread rises and then stiffens when it is baked, making a light, porous loaf. Wheat is the only one of the cereals that has much gluten; rye has a little and the others practically none. Gluten seems to be essential to the making of a light, yeast-raised loaf. Products raised with baking-powder, for which our standard of lightness is different--"quick breads" like biscuits and muffins and cakes--do not require the gluten and can easily be made from substitute cereals. But for our ordinary loaf of bread, at least some wheat seems to be almost essential, though with skill in the making, rye can be made to serve in its place. Patriotic bakers and housewives all over the country have been trying to produce a wheatless loaf which is light, palatable, and sufficiently durable to stand transportation. The durability is a very important consideration; crumbly corn bread cannot be distributed by bakers nor served to armies. Corn bread and the other quick breads are chiefly home-made products. OUR PRESENT PROBLEM, THEREFORE, IS TO MAKE THE MOST EFFECTIVE POSSIBLE USE OF OUR WHEAT GLUTEN, TO MAKE IT GO AS FAR AS POSSIBLE IN OUR BREADS. BOTH BAKERS AND PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS HAVE THEIR SHARE IN SOLVING THE PROBLEM. THE BAKERS' REGULATIONS. VICTORY BREAD The bakers have co-operated loyally. Probably no other food industry has been more vitally affected by the war. ALL BAKERS USING THREE OR MORE BARRELS OF FLOUR A MONTH HAVE BEEN LICENSED AND SO ARE UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION. This means practically all the commercial bakers of the country, and many hotels, clubs, and institutions. About two-fifths of the bread in the United States is made in bakeries and three-fifths in the home. The bakeries have used 35,000,000 barrels of flour each year, so the importance of this field for conservation is plain. The amount of wheat flour they are now permitted to have has been reduced: at present 80 per cent of their last year's quantity, or, if they are pastry and cracker bakers, 70 per cent. They must make no bread wholly of wheat flour. Some substitute must be mixed with the wheat. When the regulation went into effect in February, 1918, 20 per cent was required and later, 25 per cent. In pies and cakes there must be at least one-third substitute. The amounts of sugar and fat used are limited. Even the sizes of the loaves are fixed, so that the extravagance of making and handling all sorts of fancy shapes and sizes may be avoided. Bread must not be sold to the retailer at unreasonable prices. Victory bread is bread made in accordance with these regulations. The name "Victory" was chosen as representing the idea underlying the conservation of wheat. The name is really a present to the Food Administration, having been used by two large firms who gave up all rights to their trade-mark. Hotels and restaurants are required to make or serve bread containing at least as much of the wheat substitutes as Victory bread. They may not serve more than two ounces of bread and other wheat products to a guest at a meal. Many of them have recently promised to use no wheat at all till the next harvest. That means, of course, that only through intelligent effort can they serve yeast bread. THE INDIVIDUAL'S ANSWER TO THE BREAD CRY UNTIL THE WHEAT-SUPPLY INCREASES AND THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION LESSENS RESTRICTIONS, USE NO WHEAT AT ALL IF YOU CAN POSSIBLY DO WITHOUT. Remember that you can make delicious muffins and other quick breads from the substitute flours. And you need no bread at all at some meals. An extra potato or a serving of rice can be eaten instead of the usual two slices of bread and the body will be supplied with the same amount of energy. Do not be the slave of old food habits. WHEN ALL EUROPE IS EATING TO KEEP ALIVE, FASTIDIOUSNESS AND FOOD "NOTIONS" MUST PLAY NO PART IN THE DIETARY. Some people find it is almost impossible to do without the baker's loaf. Hundreds in crowded city quarters have no facilities of their own for baking. Women doing their share in factories and workshops cannot get up earlier to make corn bread for breakfast. Victory bread must be saved for them. For households which must use wheat, the Food Administration has fixed a voluntary ration of 1½ pounds of wheat per week for each person. This includes wheat in the form of bread, pastry, macaroni, crackers, noodles, and breakfast foods. All who can should do more than their share--they must do their utmost to make up for those whose circumstances prevent them from doing it. THE INTERESTS AND DESIRES OF EACH OF US IN THIS WAR CAN BE TRANSLATED INTO SERVICE IN NO MORE EFFECTIVE WAY THAN BY CONFORMING OUR FOOD HABITS TO THE NEEDS OF THE HOUR. FLOUR AND BREAD IN THE ALLIED COUNTRIES All the Allied countries have been stretching their meagre wheat-supply to the limit and are enforcing the most stringent regulations. The flour is required to be of high extraction--ordinarily from 81 per cent to 90 per cent, decidedly higher than our 74 per cent. Even with this coarse, gray flour a large percentage of substitute must be mixed, usually 25 per cent. In England there are local regulations on the use of mashed potato in bread. Their bread must be twelve hours old before it is sold, so that people will not be tempted to eat too much. The result is seldom palatable. In France no flour at all may be used to make the delectable pastries and cakes which have long been the delight of the French people and their guests. In Italy, macaroni, which in many regions is as much the "staff of life" as bread, must contain 43 per cent substitute, and in some places may not be manufactured at all. Both England and France have subsidized bread; the Government has set a price below cost and itself makes up the difference to the baker. England has appropriated $200,000,000 for the purpose. Bread rations are in force in both France and Italy. France has recently put her whole people on a rigorous ration which limits them to two-thirds of the amount of bread that they have been accustomed to. Remember that bread is a far more important part of the French diet than of ours. Even children under three have bread cards allowing them 3½ ounces a day. Rations are not a guarantee that the amount mentioned will be forthcoming; they only permit one to have it if it can be obtained. One interesting result of the stringency, according to an American officer writing from Paris, is that guests even at formal dinners, may be asked to bring their own bread, finding this postscript on their invitations: "Apportez un peu de pain si vous le voulez."[1] In Italy the very limited bread rations are fixed locally. [Footnote 1: "Bring a little bread if you wish it."] England has compulsory rations for meat and butter or margarine and sugar, but not for bread. Her bread system is voluntary like ours, but much more detailed. The voluntary ration allows one-half pound of bread a day for sedentary and unoccupied women and larger allowances up to a little over a pound for men doing heavy labor. Waste of any kind is very heavily punished--one woman was fined $500 for throwing away stale bread. "Why not send corn abroad?" One hears the question over and over again. The answers are many. In the first place, we _are_ sending corn over--our exports of corn during March, 1918, increased 180 per cent and of corn meal 383 per cent over the pre-war average. This they are using as we are using it in our Victory bread. But they must have enough wheat to make a durable loaf of bread at the bakeshops, where for generations all the baking has been done. The French housewife has no facilities for bread-making and the French woman does not know how and has not the time to learn. She is doing a man's work and her own woman's labor besides, and the extra unaccustomed labor of bread-making cannot be added to her burdens. WHY WE IN THE UNITED STATES DO NOT HAVE BREAD CARDS Some people, disturbed either selfishly or patriotically by the failure of a neighbor to conserve wheat, have asked why the Food Administration trusts to voluntary methods, why it does not ration the country. Rationing may come yet, but any such system bristles with difficulties. The cost to the Government has been variously estimated all the way from $10,000,000 to $45,000,000 a year. Fifty per cent of the population could not be restrained in their consumption by rationing, for they are either producers or live in intimate contact with the producer. A wheat ration which would be fair for the North might actually increase the consumption in the South. Finally, the burden of a bread card would fall largely not on the well-to-do, who eat less wheat already and can easily cut down further, but on those with little to spend, who might have to change their whole food habits. The success that is meeting our method of voluntary reduction of consumption "will be one of the remembered glories of the American people in this titanic struggle." CHAPTER IV THE MEAT SITUATION Meat shortage is not a war problem only. We had begun to talk of it long before the war, and we shall find it with us after peace is declared. Great production of beef can take place only in sparse settlements. As the tide of increasing population flows over a country, the great cattle-ranges are crowded out, giving place to cultivated fields. More people means less room for cattle--a relative or even absolute decrease in the herds. WHERE EUROPE'S MEAT HAS BEEN PRODUCED In spite of their crowded territory, the majority of European countries have raised most of their meat themselves, though usually they have had to import fodder to keep up their herds. They have been less dependent on import for meat than for wheat. Great Britain is the only country which has imported much meat--almost one-half her supply. Her imports, and to a lesser extent those of other European countries, have come chiefly from Denmark and Russia in Europe, and from six countries outside--the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand. THE WAR AND THE EUROPEAN MEAT-SUPPLY Imports of both animals and fodder are interrupted. With meat as with wheat, the great shortage is due to lack of ships. Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent South America, are cut off. Fodder such as cottonseed press-cake cannot be shipped in large amounts as it takes three times as much shipping to transport feed as it does the meat made by the animals from it. Denmark's supply of animals to Great Britain has practically stopped, because of her own shortage, and because much of what she has goes to Germany. The European herds have been cut down. Every one of the warring countries has fewer meat animals now than before the war. There were roughly 100,000,000 animals less in Europe at the end of 1917 than in 1914. Many of those left are in very poor condition, so that the shortage is even more serious than is indicated by the falling off in numbers. Belgium, Serbia, and Roumania are in the worst condition. Practically all the animals in those countries have been killed or confiscated by the invading German and Austrian armies. This is one cause of their terrible famine conditions. The United Kingdom, France, and Italy have also lost seriously. France is the greatest loser of the three, with more than one-fifth of her herds gone. The enemy has driven off large numbers of her cattle. She, like the others, is in difficulty not only for meat, but for milk. Her situation is complicated by the fact that she has no great cold-storage plants like ours, and so must get meat-supplies at frequent intervals. Before the war Germany was much better prepared than the Allies in that she had many more animals in proportion to her population than they. But she was more dependent upon imports of feed, and as her commerce has been cut off, she has had to kill her animals faster. Counting up all her animals in terms of cattle according to the amount of meat they would yield, shows a loss of over one-third. For Austria, there are no available figures, but her decrease has probably been larger than Germany's. Meat shortage is not a problem by itself, but is closely connected with the shortage of available grain. When cereals are short, they must be fed to human beings rather than to animals. Feeding grain to animals and then eating the animals is not nearly so economical as eating grain directly. For example, when grain is fed to a cow, only 3½ per cent of the energy of the grain is turned into meat or fat, and 96 per cent is burned up by the cow in its own daily living. When a man eats the grain directly, he uses at least 85 per cent of its energy. Thus 81½ per cent more of the grain is actually used for human food. So Europe to-day has to sacrifice her herds, and uses grain for bread instead of turning it into meat. Alongside this shortage has come an increased demand for meat for the great armies. The soldier's ration always contains more meat than is eaten by the civilian population. THE MEAT RATIONS OF EUROPE The shortage has compelled vigorous control of consumption in order to make the distribution as nearly fair as possible. Compulsory meat rations are enforced in all the warring countries. They vary, of course, from time to time as the amount of available meat changes, but the following statements give a picture of how limited the allowances are in periods of shortage. England did not suffer for lack of meat at the outset of the war. Her voluntary ration (November, 1917) was generous, 2 pounds per week. In the beginning of 1918 the supply was very low, and by the end of February London was put on meat rations, and in April the rest of the country. The rationing system has made distribution easier and more fair and greatly lessened the distressing "queues" of people waiting before butchers' shops for their allowance. The regulations allow each person 4 coupons a week. Children under 10 are on half-rations. At first, 3 of these coupons could buy 5 pence' worth of beef, pork, or mutton, and one had to be used for a limited amount of bacon, ham, poultry, or game. The total amounted to about 1¼ pounds of meat a week. Because of the increased amount of bacon and ham which the United States was able to send in the late spring, heavy workers were permitted in May 2 extra coupons, for which they might buy a pound of bacon. Boys between 13 and 18 years were allowed 1 extra coupon for bacon, poultry, or game. But at the same time only 2 instead of 3 coupons were to be used for fresh meat, so as to cut down further the slaughtering of cattle. Heavy fines are imposed for wasting food or profiteering. In the restaurants the meat portions are about a fifth of the size of those served in an American hotel. An American staying in London said recently that he could eat two meals in succession in a London restaurant, and leave the table still minus that self-satisfied feeling that a meal in America gives. At first France used meatless days instead of rations, and in the spring of 1918 went back to meatless days. High prices also keep down consumption. In July, 1917, there were 2 meatless days, and cattle could not be slaughtered on the 2 preceding days. Though this order was abolished in October, 1917, meat had gone up so high in price that consumption went away down. The Paris letter of the London _Daily News_ and _Leader_ on February 28, 1918, says that rump steak was selling for 4 shillings 2 pence--$1 per pound. Since May 15, 3 days a week must be meatless--Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On these days all butchers' shops are closed. Horse meat may be sold, but no poultry or game. Fish is scarce and very expensive. Italy has meatless days, formerly 2, and since May, 1918, 3. The ration and the number of cattle to be slaughtered are decided locally and strictly regulated. The Central Powers probably have the lowest meat ration. The quantities allowed vary in different parts of the country, but the average in Germany has been about 9 ounces a week per person. It was reported that this was reduced to 6 ounces in the middle of May--barely two small servings each week. THE PART OF THE UNITED STATES As with wheat, meat for Europe must come chiefly from the United States and Canada, since ships are few and the Atlantic the shortest route. The extra demand upon us is to offset the loss from inaccessible markets and the depleted herds in Europe. The United States is now exporting far larger quantities than it has ever exported before. In March, 1918, we sent over 87,000,000 pounds of beef. Ordinarily we export between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 pounds a month. Of pork we sent 308,000,000 pounds--six times more than usual. It is roughly estimated that it is necessary to send 75,000,000 pounds of meat and meat products of all kinds abroad weekly to the Allies and our army. To buy and sell this huge and unusual quantity of meat, a careful organization has been necessary. At first the Allied nations bought meat in this country as best they could in competition with the domestic market and each other, often feverishly to meet emergencies. LAST DECEMBER A COMMISSION WAS FORMED TO BUY FOR ALL THE ALLIES. The prices to be paid are settled by experts, after careful study, so that packers, storage warehouses, and producers shall all have adequate, but not excessive return for their labor. The buying is planned ahead so that we can ship at times when we have plenty. The meat which we are shipping now is coming in part from an increased slaughter of cattle and hogs, a condition which may have serious consequences in reducing our reserve. The need for conservation is constant, though at times the situation becomes easier in one kind of meat or another. In the summer of 1917 we were short on hogs. In the spring of 1918, thanks to the "keep-a-pig" movement and vigorous conservation, as well as high prices, we temporarily had hogs in plenty. Beef is short for the summer season. Policies must change frequently with fluctuating supplies and varying demands from Europe. However, the export demand for our forces and the Allies is limited only by shipping capacity, and it may be that we shall have a still larger demand at the war's end which will tax any reserve which we can possibly accumulate. MEAT CONSERVATION Meat does not play nearly so important a part in the world's dietary as we are accustomed to think. There is no comparison, in the quantity consumed, between meat and bread, or even meat and sugar or potatoes. Half of the people of the earth eat little or none of it. Only in two kinds of communities is meat used largely--new and thinly populated countries with much grazing-land, or wealthy industrial countries. Australia and New Zealand are of the first type, consuming more meat per person than any other country in the world--5 pounds a week in Australia and 4 pounds in New Zealand. The United States, parts of which may be considered in both classes, eats about 3¼ pounds per person weekly. This is much less than some years ago, when there was more grazing-land. Great Britain, because it could afford to import it, used about 2¼ pounds a week before the war. Germany's consumption was slightly lower. France, Denmark, Switzerland, with fewer animals or less wealth, are small meat-eaters, the average amount being about 1½ pounds a week--about half as much as our consumption. MEAT AND OTHER PROTEIN FOODS Meat is eaten partly because of its pleasant flavor and partly because it is a source of protein which is necessary to build or renew the various parts of the body. Every cell in the body contains it and needs a steady supply. Meat is a valuable protein food, but so are plenty of others--fish, cheese, eggs, milk, dried beans, dried peas, nuts, cereals. Cottage-cheese is the most nearly pure protein of anything that we eat. We can get protein just as satisfactorily from cheese and the other animal protein foods as from meat, and almost as satisfactorily from the vegetable protein foods. THE OLD IDEA THAT MEAT IS ESPECIALLY "STRENGTHENING" HAS NO FOUNDATION. Neither is one kind of meat less thoroughly digested than another. There is little danger in this country that our diet will fall too low in protein. Many of us eat considerably more than we need. Even those who must spend a dangerously limited amount on their diet, are not apt to be low in protein, for they often err on the side of spending an unwise proportion of their money on meat. Most scientists now consider three ounces of carefully chosen protein per day a safe allowance for an average man. An average woman needs less. It is not at all difficult for an interested person to count up roughly whether he is eating more or less than this quantity. A small serving of lean meat or fish, about two inches square and three-quarters of an inch thick, contains about one-half ounce of protein. Two eggs, a pint of milk, a quarter of a cup of cottage-cheese, an inch-and-a-quarter cube of American cheese, each have about this same amount. So does a cup and a half of baked beans or two and a half cups of cooked cereal or six half-inch slices of bread (3 x 3½ inches). A person eating six of these portions daily will of course have his three ounces of protein. A man moderate in his eating and patriotic in his saving of meat will probably find his consumption not far from this quantity. THE MEAT SUBSTITUTES _Fish_. The possible supply of fish is practically unlimited, and much of it is little appreciated by us. We eat on the average only 18 pounds apiece per year, though our meat consumption is 170 pounds. The British and Canadians use much more fish than we do--56 and 29 pounds respectively. The United States Bureau of Fisheries and many State colleges are constantly introducing new varieties, from shark down. We should learn to value the many kinds which are available, fresh, dried, and canned, not merely the few we happen to be used to. _Eggs_ form a very valuable food not only for protein, but for mineral salts and vitamines as well. It is unfortunate that the price is often high, but it should be realized that expenditure for eggs makes expenditure for meat unnecessary. _Poultry_ is not now listed as a meat substitute by the Food Administration because the supply has become very limited. _Cheese_ is one of the best substitutes for meat. It represents most of the food value of a much greater bulk of milk, and its protein, fat, and mineral salts make it an important food. We in America are very slow to appreciate it. We are apt to use it in small quantity for its flavor rather than as a real food. We could well eat more of it, to the advantage both of the palatability and nutritive quality of our diet. _Milk_, one of the most easily digested and simplest sources of protein in our diet and the most valuable of our foods, is discussed in Chapter VII. _Nuts_ are usually thought of as a luxury, but the amount of protein and fat they contain makes them really an important food. Peanuts are usually classed with the nuts and are considered the most valuable nut-crop of the United States. They are growing so fast in importance that the acreage was increased 60 per cent in 1917. They are used for oil and for fodder as well as for human food. Peanut-butter or a bag of peanuts is a good investment, but it should be counted as part of the necessary food, not eaten as an extra. The occasional indigestion following injudicious eating of cheese and nuts is probably often due to forgetting that they are very substantial foods and eating them at the end of an already sufficient meal. _Peas and Beans_ are taken up with the other vegetables in Chapter VIII. Why do not the Allies use these substitutes? Mainly because they haven't them. Dairy products are as scarce as meat. All the fish and beans and peas that they can get are being used. But it is not enough. THEIR SMALL MEAT RATION MUST BE MAINTAINED, AND THEIR ARMIES AS WELL AS OURS MUST HAVE MEAT. KEEP IT GOING OVER! CHAPTER V FATS To a person who has been in Europe since the war began the question of the importance of fats is no longer debatable. Having practically gone without them, he knows they are important. In Germany it is the lack of fat that is the cause, perhaps, of the most discomfort and makes the German most dissatisfied with his rations. Even when the diet was sufficient, it was not satisfactory if low in fat. This dependence on fat in the diet is due to several reasons, both physiological and psychological. Some people, the Japanese for example, habitually eat but little. But it is the habit of both Europeans and Americans to use considerable fat both on the table and in cooking. The taste of food is not so pleasing without it. Their recipes almost all use fat in one form or another, so that when little or none is available, a change must be made in most of the methods of cooking. Practically all food must be boiled, and is lacking in the flavor and texture to which we are accustomed. The food, no matter how nutritious it may be, will not taste good. Fats are very concentrated food, a fact which gives them added value in war-time, making them the most economical food to ship. A POUND OF ANY FAT GIVES 2¼ TIMES AS MUCH ENERGY AS A POUND OF SUGAR--the reason for the slogan "Fats Are Fuel for Fighters." Soldiers engaged in the most strenuous physical activities need fuel for all the energy they expend. Bacon, butter, all the forms of fat give them the most energy in the smallest weight of food. Fats stave off the feeling of hunger longer than other foods because they pass more slowly from the stomach and delay the passage of foods eaten with them. A slice of bread and butter will "satisfy" one for a much longer time than a slice of bread and jelly, even though there is enough jelly to give exactly the same amount of fuel. In the countries in which there is a fat shortage, the appetite does not stay satisfied during the usual period between meals, even when the previous meal contained the customary amount of calories. The feeling of hunger is sometimes almost constant. Certain fats are valuable for an entirely different reason. Milk fat, either in the milk or as butter, beef fat which is a constituent of oleomargarine, the fat in the yolk of egg, all contain one of the vitamines needed by children in order to grow properly, and by grown people to keep in good health. Lard and the vegetable fats and oils, like nut or vegetable margarine and cottonseed-oil, do not contain this substance, but if there is sufficient milk in the diet, there will be plenty of this "fat-soluble vitamine." In all other respects the fats are alike from a nutritional standpoint. One fat can replace another without harm. Until the war came there was little need of knowing or bothering as to what kind of fats we ate, or of concerning ourselves with the fact that many more varieties were available than most of us used. Now it does make a decided difference. OUR ARMIES AND THOSE OF THE ALLIES NEED FAT, A GREAT DEAL OF IT, AND WE MUST SHIP THEM THE KIND MOST SUITED TO THEIR PURPOSES. WE CAN USE WHAT THE ALLIES AND THE ARMY DO NOT NEED. THE SITUATION ABROAD There is a shortage of the animal fats, lard, butter, and oleomargarine for the same reasons, of course, that cause the meat shortage. England, particularly recently, has had very little, less even than the French and Italians, who are not accustomed to using much. England was the largest butter importer in the world, getting her supply mostly from northwestern Europe, Denmark, Russia, Sweden, and Holland. Russia can no longer supply her. Neither can the neutrals, who have been supplying Germany under pressure; they need Germany's coal. Although the United States has increased her butter exports to the United Kingdom, if our entire exports went to them, it would supply only 6 per cent of the amount needed. To help the situation, England has greatly increased her manufacture of oleomargarine. Oleo oil and vegetable oils are being imported in large quantities and now England uses twice as much margarine as butter. But even with the margarine to help out, there is but little to go around. The weekly ration of butter and margarine is one-fourth of a pound per person, and at times even that amount has not been available. In April an American newspaper man in London reported that he had forgotten what butter tasted like. It could only be obtained on the farms, and even those who made it were strictly limited in the amount that they could keep themselves. Not even margarine could be served at luncheon or dinner. There were long queues in front of the shops before the distribution was better systematized. At present the total amount of fat in the diet is increased somewhat by the allowance of bacon and ham. In Germany the fat shortage, has been so severe that, combined with the bread shortage, it has been the greatest cause of food riots. Before the war the Germans imported about half their supply, most of which is now cut off. Of course, the vegetable oils from the United States and the tropics are not available. The neutrals have had to lessen their exports because of their own shortage, and the embargo which the United States laid on its exports of fats to neutrals. Germany's inability to feed her animals has greatly curtailed her supply of animal fats. As a result the rations have been decreasing steadily in spite of every effort. Bones are collected and the fat extracted. Seeds, such as those of the sunflower, and the kernels of fruit have the oil pressed from them. During 1915-16 the rations varied from 3¼ ounces to 10 ounces of table fat a week. By December, 1917, it had been decreased, so that the average total fat ration was a little under 3 ounces a week, some communities receiving a little more, and others none at all. The local newspapers give interesting side-lights showing the results of this shortage. An owner of a boot-shop was prosecuted by the police for having 70 pairs of good shoes which he would sell only in exchange for butter or bacon. (_Brunswick Volksfreund_, January 16, 1918.) THE SITUATION IN THE UNITED STATES The United States has great resources of vegetable oils, cottonseed, peanut, corn, and olive oil. It is this apparent plenty that makes it so difficult for many to visualize the shortage abroad. We are shipping about one-third of the lard which we produce, and large quantities of oleo oil for oleomargarine. Although the exports of butter in 1917 have almost been doubled since the preceding fiscal year, it is relatively unimportant, representing only about 1 per cent of the production. We are shipping cottonseed oil also, but this requires tank-steamers, which are scarce. In general, as the oils are much more difficult to handle and impossible for the armies to use, we must ship the solid animal fats. _The Individual's Part in Fat Conservation_. Although at present there is butter and lard on the market, the need for conserving it is important, just as in the case of meat. WASTE OF ANY KIND SHOULD BE ABHORRENT TO ALL OF US AT THIS TIME. There probably has been a greater waste of fat than of any other commodity, but it is encouraging to note that this waste has been decreased by conservation. The amount of fat in city garbage has gone down all over the country. In Columbus, Ohio, the fat in the garbage was almost 50 per cent less in 1917 than in 1916. In fourteen large cities with a total population of over 5,000,000 nearly 40 per cent less fat was recovered in March, 1918, than in March, 1917. Not only can fat be saved by carefully avoiding every bit of waste, but less can actually be used. FRY FOOD LESS, AND BAKE, BROIL, OR BOIL THEM MORE. USE VEGETABLE OILS. In a long view of the food situation, it is the animal fats that cause gravest concern, because of the years necessary to build up a herd. WE MUST SEND AS MUCH FAT ABROAD AS POSSIBLE, AND CREATE RESERVES FOR PERIODS OF SHORTAGE WITH A MINIMUM DEPLETION OF OUR HERDS. CHAPTER VI SUGAR OF ALL THE FOODS WHICH IT IS NECESSARY TO CONSERVE, SUGAR IS THE EASIEST TO DO WITHOUT. If the war and what it means has become part of a person's consciousness, he wishes only the bare essentials. Sugar is a luxury of former times which has become a commonplace to-day. The average use in the United States was 83 pounds per person last year--1-2/3 pounds a week--less than one hundred years ago the yearly consumption was 9 pounds. Sugar was a rare luxury. It will do no harm to regard it so again. WHY IS THERE A SUGAR SHORTAGE? Sugar is scarce for two reasons--much less beet-sugar is actually being grown, and some of the cane-sugar is too far away to be available. The sugar-beet, grown in temperate climates, and the sugar-cane, native in tropical and semitropical regions, are the only two sources of sugar large enough to be of more than local importance. Before the war, 93 per cent of the entire world crop of beet-sugar was grown in Europe. The industry was started by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century when he was at war with most of Europe, and France was shut off from her supply of cane-sugar from the West Indies. The industry spread over the great plain of Central Europe, from the north of France over Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary to Central Russia. In 1914 all of these countries were producing enough sugar for their own needs. England produced none at all, but the continent, especially Germany and Austria, supplied her with about 54 per cent of what she needed. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR FACTORIES--ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1916 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD OF WORLD'S PROOUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES] The beet-sugar industry in the United States started in 1863 and has grown rapidly since 1897. In 1917 it supplied 22 per cent of the consumption. Sugar-cane is grown in tropical and semitropical countries all over the globe. Cuba leads in the amount produced, and consumes only a small fraction of her production herself. Java, too, is a large exporter. India raises millions of tons but has to import some to fill all her needs. In the United States, Louisiana, Texas, and some parts of Florida produce about 6 per cent of what we use, but our dependencies, Porto Rico, the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines all export to us, and together with Cuba, make up the deficiency. The war has changed entirely the peace-time distribution. The map shows what the battle-lines have done to the beetfields of Europe. Belgium and the northern part of France, in which practically all the beets were grown, are in German hands. In 1914 the battle-line eliminated 203 of the 213 French sugar-factories. In 1916-17 the falling back of the Germans had returned 65 factories to the French, but now again some of these have fallen into the enemy's hands. The French crop in 1915-16 was only one-fifth of the crop before the war and the following year it was only a fourth. Italy's crop was 25 per cent less in 1916-17 than before the war and the estimated yield for this year is 50 per cent less. England, of course, can no longer get sugar from the continent. So the allied world must import cane-sugar or have almost no sugar at all. The cane-sugar supply is largely dependent on shipping. Ships cannot be spared to go to the East. Therefore the sugar of Cuba and the rest of the West Indies, our main source of supply, must be shared with the Allies. It is to the credit of all involved that every effort is being made to see that the division is a fair one. A commission representing the Allies, the United States, and Cuba apportioned the 1917-18 Cuban crop and fixed its price. Competitive bidding by the many purchasers, with the danger of forcing up the price of the limited supply, was in this way prevented. THE EFFECT OF THE SHORTAGE The rations of Europe are the most convincing evidence of the extent of the sugar shortage. In England ½ pound a week is allowed for each person, half the average amount used in their households before the war. France had sugar cards long before she had any other ration. Seven ounces a week were allowed, and later in the year only one-quarter of a pound. Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918 had an average household ration of 6 ounces a week. The United States in accordance with its usual method is asking the individual for voluntary conservation of sugar. Each household is asked to observe a voluntary weekly ration of not more than three-quarters of a pound per person. Extra amounts of sugar for home canning may be secured by making a certified declaration to the dealer that it is to be used only for canning and preserving. Food manufacturers using sugar are dealt with more strictly than private individuals. Every business using sugar may purchase it only on certificates obtained from the Federal Food Administrators. At present manufacturers of essential products such as canned vegetables and fruits may get the amount needed to fill their necessary requirements. Manufacturers of less essential products get a percentage of what they used before--at present soft-drink and candy manufacturers get 50 per cent and ice-cream makers 75 per cent. The decreased use of sugar has resulted in the release of the ships which had been used to bring Cuban sugar to this country--50,000 tons freed to carry men and munitions and food to the Western front in the spring of 1918. IN PLACE OF SUGAR The United States is much more fortunate than Europe in having sweets other than sugar at its disposal. As our corn-crop is immense, the supply of corn-syrup is limited only by the ability of the manufacturers to turn it out. It is a wholesome, palatable syrup and can often take the place of sugar both in cooking and on the table. Although it is not as sweet as ordinary sugar, it serves the body for fuel in the same way. We have cane-syrup, and also molasses and refiner's syrup, by-products of sugar-making, and in some parts of the country, local products such as honey, maple sugar and syrup, and sorghum syrup. Sweet fruits, both fresh and dried, contain considerable amounts of sugar, some of the dried fruits being over two-thirds sugar, and when added to cereals, for example, take the place of part or all of the sugar. THE PRICE OF SUGAR In spite of the short supply, the Food Administration has kept down the price of sugar by an agreement with the sugar-refineries that the wholesale price must not be more than the cost of the raw sugar plus a fixed amount to cover costs of refining. Even during December, 1917, when there was a severe shortage in the East, the price remained stable. Refiners say that without regulation by the Food Administration the price would have gone to 25 cents a pound or higher. At times the Food Administration has had to use compulsion to keep the price level and has not hesitated to do so where necessary. Licenses have been withdrawn for failure to comply with regulations, and businesses closed for longer or shorter times. One dealer who was charging 14 cents a pound for sugar had his store closed for 2 weeks; another paid $200 to the Red Cross for overcharging; another, for selling sugar and flour without regard to regulations, was closed indefinitely. TO CUT DOWN ON SUGAR USE FEWER SWEETS OF ANY KIND AND USE SUGAR SUBSTITUTES. Sugar does serve a desirable purpose in making certain of our foods more palatable, but the quantity necessary for this is small, and for much of it other sweets can be used instead. The household consumption uses by far the largest percentage of the sugar-supply. Its economical use also helps to provide a reserve for preserving surplus fruits. SUCH "EXTRAS" AS CANDY AND CAKES CAN BE ENTIRELY DISPENSED WITH. Of course, sugar is a food, as it is burned in the body for fuel. But there are two good physiological reasons for avoiding excessive amounts. If we eat a large quantity in candy after already sufficient meals, we are overeating and may suffer from digestive disturbances in consequence. Eating sweets instead of other food is also bad and a cause of undernourishment. Sugar is pure carbohydrate, and although we may eat enough to satisfy the feeling of hunger the body will lack minerals, protein, and other substances absolutely necessary for its well-being. The person may feel satisfied, but he will be undernourished nevertheless. The conservation of sugar will not only permit a fair distribution to our associates in the war, but insure a sufficient amount for our own men. It is especially valuable for them because it burns so rapidly in the body that it gives energy more quickly than other foods. CHAPTER VII MILK--FOR THE NATION'S HEALTH In war-time there is constant danger of letting down the health standard. Food is high in price, demands on incomes are many and insistent, worst of all, life is being expended so freely abroad that we become careless about it at home. But while we are fighting to make the world a decent place to live in, we must keep up our health and vigor at home. MILK IS VITAL TO NATIONAL HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY. We can conserve wheat and meat, sugar and fats, and be none the worse for it, but WE MUST USE MILK. The children of to-day must have it for the sake of a vigorous, hardy manhood to-morrow. A quart for every child, a pint for every adult is not too high an ideal. There is no lack of evidence that children suffer if they do not have enough. In New York in this past winter, two things were observed which are undoubtedly closely connected--increased undernutrition among school children, and decreased use of milk. The Mayor's Milk Committee in the fall of 1917 reported that the city as a whole had cut down its milk consumption 25 per cent, and certain tenement districts 50 per cent. The majority of the families who had reduced the milk to little or none were giving their children tea and coffee instead--substituting drinks actually harmful to children for the most valuable food they could have. About the same time as the milk investigation, a count was made of the number of New York children who were seriously undernourished-- half-starved. Twelve were found in every 100 children, twice as many as the year before. The warring nations in Europe fully realize the value of milk. In the face of a serious shortage they are making every effort to get to the children as much milk as can be produced or imported. Until children, mothers, and invalids are supplied, no one else may buy any. For adults, milk is an almost unknown luxury. All the countries have definite milk rations for their children. These rations would be adequate if they could be obtained, but many times they fall short. Every effort is made to treat all children, rich and poor, alike. The price of milk is regulated, but parents who cannot afford to buy it are given it free or at cost. Dried and condensed milk are used where they can be obtained and fresh milk cannot. Thousands of tons of condensed milk have been sent over from America. There has been scarcely a child born in the north of France and none in Belgium whose continued life during all that period has not been dependent upon American condensed milk. At one time the Ministry of Food in Great Britain, anticipating a milk shortage in the winter bought large quantities of dried milk for distribution by local health committees and infant welfare societies. In Belgium, in spite of the misery of the people, fewer young children are dying than before the war, because of the milk and bread and care that they get at the "soupes" and children's canteens. But in Poland, Roumania, and Serbia, thousands and tens of thousands of babies and young children have died since the war for lack of milk and other food. Grown people should use milk and appreciate that it is far more than a beverage. Comparing it with tea and coffee is not sensible. The idea that food is "something to chew" breaks down completely when milk is considered. "Milk is both meat and drink." THE VALUABLE CONSTITUENTS OF MILK What gives milk its unique value? It must contain especially valuable substances, since it is an adequate food for the young for several months after birth and is one of the most important constituents of a grown person's diet. It contains protein of a kind more valuable, especially for growing children, than that of most other foods. Milk protein separates out when milk sours and is the familiar cottage-cheese. Because of it, milk, whole or skim, is a valuable meat substitute. When we drink milk, therefore, we need less meat. It contains fat. A pint of milk has a little more than half an ounce--the same amount as an ordinary serving of butter. By drinking milk we can save fat as well as meat. Milk-sugar is also present, more or less like ordinary sugar, but not so sweet. The sugar, the fat, and part of the protein burn in the body, giving the energy needed for the body's activities. A pint gives as much fuel as 4 eggs, or half a pound of meat, or 3 or 4 large slices of bread. Although bread is cheaper fuel than milk, its economy compared with meat or eggs is obvious. The pint of milk costs usually about 7 cents, while the eggs and meat cost at least two or three times as much. The economy of substituting milk for at least part of the meat in the diet is plain. It is the advice of an expert to "let no family of 5 buy meat till it has bought 3 quarts of milk." But this is not the whole story of milk. Milk is extraordinarily rich in calcium, commonly called lime, necessary for the growth of the bones and teeth and also important in the diet of adults, even though they have stopped growing. No other food has nearly as much. A pint has almost enough calcium for one entire day's supply. It takes 2¼ pounds of carrots to give the same amount, or 7 pounds of white bread or the impossible quantity of 21 pounds of beef! A diet without milk (or cheese) is in great danger of being too low in calcium, especially a meat-and-bread diet without vegetables. Among the most necessary constituents of milk are the two vitamines. One is present chiefly in the fat and the other in the watery part of the milk. Without milk fat, in whole milk or in butter, we run considerable risk of having too little of the fat-soluble vitamine. The other vitamine is more widely distributed in our foods, so that with our varied diet there is little danger of not getting enough. Milk, therefore, fills all the needs of the child, except, perhaps, for iron, and is one of the best foods in the diet of grown people. THERE IS NO OTHER FOOD THAT HAS ALL THE VIRTUES OF MILK; IT THEREFORE HAS NO SUBSTITUTE. "THE REGULAR USE OF MILK IS THE GREATEST SINGLE FACTOR OF SAFETY IN THE HUMAN DIET." OUR MILK PROBLEM We have not nearly enough milk in the United States to give every child the quart and every adult the pint which they should have. Although we actually produce about a quart per person, more than half of this is used for butter, cheese, and cream, and only about two-thirds of a pint is drunk directly as milk or used in cooking. This spring we have slightly more than this amount because of the dairymen's response to the patriotic appeal to maintain production, but our supply and consumption of milk are still far below what they should be. To increase the quantity in the country the price of milk must be low enough for people to afford it, but high enough to keep the producer and distributer in the business. The question of a fair price is a difficult one. The cost of feed has gone up, labor is scarce and dear, but further economies in both production and distribution are still possible. This past winter the Food Administration and the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture have assisted many local commissions in determining fair milk prices and pointing out economies all along the line of the milk business. It is most unfortunate that ignorance of the value of milk makes people particularly sensitive to a change in its price. When it goes up even a cent a quart, many cut down their consumption, while a considerably larger advance in the price of meat will make little difference in the amount bought. If diminished use of milk continues, dairymen may go out of business and permanent harm be done, both to us and to those dependent on us abroad. A factory may close down and when the need comes reopen immediately, but if a cow is killed it takes practically three years to replace her. The milk we have should be used as effectively as possible. The most economical way for a nation to use its milk so as to get the benefit of all the food in it, is, of course, as whole milk, or evaporated or dried whole milk. The next most economical way is in the form of whole-milk cheese, since all but the whey is used in it. Cream and butter are much less economical unless all the skim milk is used. As 41 per cent of our milk-supply goes to make butter, we have large quantities of skim milk containing as much protein, it is estimated, as all the beef we eat. At present we feed the largest part of this to animals or actually throw it away. Since the cottage-cheese drive of the Department of Agriculture, an increasing amount of it is being made into cottage-cheese--a palatable and useful meat substitute. It can, of course, be used as a beverage or in cooking. Whey also has many food uses. Buttermilk, too, is justly popular and healthful. Skim milk is not a substitute for whole milk for children. Cream, valuable food though it is, is also extravagant in its use of milk. It takes five quarts of milk to produce a quart of cream. Buying whole milk is, therefore, better policy than buying cream and no milk. The sale of cream is now forbidden in Great Britain for this reason. OUR MILK ABROAD It is our supply of milk that is helping to meet the milk shortage abroad. Before the war we exported very little. By 1917 our export of evaporated, condensed, and dried milk had gone up twentyfold. In the spring of 1918 we sent over the equivalent in whole milk of almost 50,000,000 pounds a month, and should probably have sent much more were it not for the lack of ships. After the war, when ships are released, the demand for it will be enormous. It will take years to build up the dairy-herds of Europe again, so we shall continue to be their main source of supply. LEARN AND TEACH THE UNIQUE VALUE AND ECONOMY OF MILK. DO EVERYTHING TO PREVENT IN THIS COUNTRY THE TRAGIC RESULTS WHICH ARE FOLLOWING THE CUTTING DOWN OF MILK CONSUMPTION ABROAD. CHAPTER VIII VEGETABLES AND FRUITS Vegetables and fruits represent a different and happier phase of the food situation than our short supplies of wheat and meat. The vegetables especially are a great potential reserve of food, for they can be produced in quantity in three or four months on unused land by labor that otherwise might not be used. Abroad every resource for vegetable-raising is being utilized to the utmost. France and Belgium have long made the most of all their land. Now England has made it compulsory to leave no ground uncultivated. Golf-courses are now potato-patches. Parks and every bit of back yard all grow their quota of vegetables. The boys in the old English public schools work with the hoe where before they played football. We in America have no more than touched our capacity for raising gardens. What we have done is merely a beginning. As the war goes on we shall realize more and more the necessity for seizing every opportunity for active service. The accomplishments of the summer of 1917 showed the possibilities of the work, and placed it beyond the purely experimental stage. They have given experience and emphasized the value of expert advice and the economy of community efforts. Not only is the "plant a garden" a civilian movement, but it has taken hold in the armies as well. The American Army Garden service is planning truck-gardens in France to supply our troops. The Woman's Auxiliary Army Corps of England plants gardens back of the British lines. Last summer the French fed 20,000 of their men from similar gardens. EVERY POUND OF FOOD GROWN IN THESE HOME AND COMMUNITY GARDENS RELIEVES THE RAILROAD CONGESTION AND GIVES MORE SPACE FOR TRANSPORTING MUNITIONS AND COAL. EVERY POUND OF FOOD GROWN RELEASES STAPLES FOR EUROPE. Extra production of food of any kind, anywhere, takes on a new significance in the presence of half a world hungry. IF YOU CANNOT GROW VEGETABLES, USE THEM IN ABUNDANCE ANYWAY. They are too perishable to ship abroad and too bulky, containing so much water that it would be an uneconomical use of shipping to export them. But the more America eats of almost any kind of vegetable or fruit, the less of the more durable, concentrated foods will she require. The products are so varied in kind and composition that they can be used to serve almost any purpose--beans and peas to save meat; potatoes and others to save wheat; sweet fruits to save sugar; jams, even, when spread on bread, to save fat. All will improve the health and therefore increase human energies for winning the war. IN THE WAR DIET _To Save Meat_. Beans and peas and peanuts are the only vegetables with much protein, so that they are the ones thought of primarily as meat substitutes. There are many kinds of them, fresh or dried, more than most of us realize. It is worth while to add to the diet not only the ordinary white or navy beans, but kidney, lima, black or soy beans, cow-peas, the many colored beans such as the pinto, frijoles, and the California pinks. It is these latter kinds that are used by the Mexicans as their chief standby. The Army and Navy use huge quantities of the white beans, and the Allied Governments are also buying tons of the pintos. The 1917 bean-crop, in response to the patriotic appeal, was 50 per cent higher than the normal. Nearly all this increase was in the colored beans, chiefly pintos. The Food Administration, fearing that some of this unusual surplus might be wasted and the farmer discouraged from producing a large output in 1918, bought up the extra crop and distributed it for sale at the different markets. Though soy beans and peanuts at least are exceptions, the protein in beans and peas is not so satisfactory as a bodybuilder as that in animal foods, so that a diet in which they are a large part should contain also some milk or eggs or a little meat. Two cups (half a pound) of shelled green peas or beans, or one cup with a cup of skim milk gives as much protein as a quarter of a pound of beef. Dried beans and peas are, of course, cheaper than the canned with their larger amount of water. At the usual market prices as much fuel can be bought for 5 cents spent for dried peas as for 25 cents for canned peas. Meat-savers do not all have to be high-protein foods, since the diet of most of us contains considerably more protein than is necessary. Any vegetable can be a "meat extender." The pleasant flavor of meat can be obtained in meat stews, such as the delicious French "pot-au-feu." Stews can easily be made with less meat and more vegetables than usual. The meat allowance is now so very small in France and the vegetables so scarce in the cities, that the ingenuity of even the French woman is taxed to get a meal. _To Save Wheat_. Potatoes to save wheat! The great potato drive to utilize the surplus of our huge 1917 potato-crop, 100,000,000 bushels above normal, has fixed in every one's mind the interchangeableness of these two foods. Potatoes are one-fifth starch--almost the same quantity as in cooked breakfast cereals. Because of this starch, they give as satisfactory a fuel as wheat or corn or any other cereal. One medium-sized potato supplies the same number of calories as a large slice of bread, and contains more mineral salts than white bread. Europe has learned to eat potatoes instead of wheat. When bread has been short potatoes have been the mainstay in every country. They are to-day the largest single element, in terms of energy, in the German war ration. Sweet potatoes are also first-class wheat-savers. So to a lesser extent are most vegetables and fruits. Very few except white and sweet potatoes contain much starch, but many of them have considerable sugar, which serves as fuel just as starch does--carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and practically all fruits such as bananas, oranges, and grapes. _To Save Sugar_. We want sugar, of course, both for fuel and flavor. The vegetables and some fruits have their sugar so covered up by other tastes that it does not help to make the food sweet. It does, of course, serve for fuel. Bananas especially are fuel foods, containing much starch when green, which changes to sugar as the fruit ripens. The sweetest fruits are the dried ones--dates, figs, raisins, prunes. They have so much sugar that they can well be used in place of candy. _To Save Fat_, Although few common fruits and vegetables contain fat, jam is a real fat-saver. It is of high fuel value, and has the advantage of being a "spreading material" so that it can replace butter with bread and cereals. Jam is of great importance in Europe to-day and all the Governments have taken steps to keep up the supply. It is a regular part of the English army ration. _To Keep the Nation Well_. An increase in the use of vegetables and fruits is practically sure to mean an increase in health. Many of us, especially city-dwellers, do not eat enough of them. Many a young girl who "does not like vegetables" probably owes part of her languor to inadequate diet. The old-fashioned "touch of scurvy" formerly noticed at the end of the winter and even now not an unknown thing, was probably due to lack of vegetables in the winter diet. The constipation which is so disturbingly prevalent can usually be cured or prevented by eating vegetables and fruits in sufficient quantities. One of the most serious limitations in the diet of many of the very poor is the lack of vegetables as well as milk and the unduly large proportion of meat and bread. In a community in New York City with high mortality rate, 75 mothers whose diet was observed, ate vegetables on the average only twice a week, and fruit about the same number of times. It is not difficult to understand why vegetables and fruits are so important. Only a few are especially valuable as fuel or as a source of protein, but almost all are high in mineral salts and can supply the "roughage" desirable in the diet. Some also contain the vitamines, the leafy vegetables being especially valuable because, like milk, they contain the two kinds. The "greens," leafy vegetables like spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and lettuce, are the ones that help most in these last ways--"protective foods," they have been called. They are rich in the iron, calcium, and other minerals that some of the other foods lack. The use of plenty of these vegetables should go far toward keeping up health. CANNING AND DRYING VEGETABLES AND FRUITS The value of these foods both for the nation's health and for saving staples applies just as much in winter as in summer. In war-time, a winter supply, either stored, dried, or canned, takes on special significance because of their substitute value if the supply of staples runs critically low. The canning industry, because it makes vegetables obtainable at all times and places, has been of great importance in the health and development of the country. Smith, in his "Commercial Geography," says that "canning, more than any other invention since the introduction of steam, has made possible the building up of towns and communities beyond the bounds of varied production." A century or two ago, sailors after a voyage of a year or two, almost always came home with scurvy. Recently Nansen and his men drifted in the Arctic ice for years and remained in good health, because of their supply of canned vegetables, fruits, and meats. The Government has not been slow in appreciating the need of canned vegetables for the Army and Navy. It has commandeered about 25 per cent of the canned beans, 12 per cent of the corn, and 18 per cent of the tomatoes of the 1917 pack. Large amounts will be needed this year also. Much of the 1918-19 supply for our troops in France is to be canned in France, by arrangement with the French Government, thus saving valuable shipping space. Drying, or dehydrating, has long been known for beans, peas, and corn, and for dates, prunes, figs, and raisins. But dried potatoes, beets, carrots, and "soup mixtures" are more or less new. The drying, of course, merely removes most of the water from the vegetable, and if the process is properly carried out, soaking the vegetable in water restores its original freshness. The war, with the need for every ounce of food and the increasing transportation difficulties, has brought the process into prominence. The dehydrated products, if properly stored, seem to keep a long time. Their saving in freight and shipping is plain, when it is remembered that the fresh vegetables and fruits often contain over 90 per cent water, and the dried from 8 per cent to 10 per cent. Ships are too precious to be used for carrying unnecessary water. Our Government has placed orders for several thousand tons of dehydrated potatoes for the Army and may use other dried products as they can be obtained. Canada has sent abroad within the past 3 years over 50 million pounds of dehydrated vegetables, about two-thirds of which was the vegetable-soup mixture and one-third dried sliced potatoes. When reconstituted this would make about 400,000,000 pounds of vegetables. Germany has been drying her vegetables and fruits far more than we. In 1917 she had over 2,000 commercial plants, and an elaborate system of distributing all the available fresh material to the different plants to avoid waste. Individuals and communities with gardens or wherever fresh products can be obtained should not be dependent upon commercial agencies. AS FAR AS POSSIBLE EVERY FAMILY AND EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD SHOULD BE SELF-SUPPORTING. HOME AND COMMUNITY CANNING AND DRYING ARE IMPORTANT DUTIES. CAN AND DRY THE SURPLUS. STORE UP ENOUGH TO CARRY THROUGH THE NEXT WINTER. FOLLOW EXPERT ADVICE AS TO METHODS. USE THE GREATEST CARE TO PREVENT SPOILAGE. WHEREVER POSSIBLE UNITE WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS IN COMMUNITY CANNERIES AND DRYERS SO THAT EVERY ONE CAN HAVE THE BENEFIT OF THE BEST EQUIPMENT AND THE MOST SKILLED SUPERVISION. A GREAT DEAL WAS DONE IN 1917; MILLIONS OF CANS WERE PUT UP AND GREAT WASTE PREVENTED. BUT IN 1918 MORE MUST BE DONE. MORE VEGETABLES MUST BE RAISED AND MORE MUST BE CANNED. A GREAT RESERVE FOR THE WINTER IS MORE NECESSARY THAN EVER. CONCLUSION Almost a year of food control in this country has passed and the great new experiment in democratic administration of the nation's food is succeeding. The method of well-directed voluntary co-operation, much more characteristic of our food control than of any other country's, can be judged by its results to date. We have sent abroad six times the wheat that we had believed was in the country for export. We have exported vastly increased shipments of the other cereals, of beef and pork, of fats and condensed milk. With Canada, we are supplying 50 per cent of the Allies' food, instead of barely 5 per cent, as before the war. Meanwhile our own population has been taken care of. No one has gone hungry because of the shipments of food out of the country. The price of the most important food, bread, has been kept stable--a new experience in time of war. These and others are great accomplishments, brought about through the co-operation of the nation, BUT THEY ARE SLIGHT IN COMPARISON WITH WHAT MUST STILL BE DONE. The huge resources for extra food production and conservation have hardly been touched. The imagination is just beginning to be stirred by the immensity of the whole undertaking and the sacrifice required to win the war. Men, ammunition and food, in a steadily increasing stream, must go across. "OUR DUTY, IF WE ARE TO DO THIS GREAT THING AND SHOW AMERICA TO BE WHAT WE BELIEVE HER TO BE--THE GREATEST HOPE AND ENERGY OF THE WORLD--IS TO STAND TOGETHER NIGHT AND DAY UNTIL THE JOB IS FINISHED."--PRESIDENT WILSON. A FEW REFERENCES American Academy of Political and Social Science. "World's Food." Philadelphia, 1917. (_Annals of the American Academy_, November, 1917.) Carter, Howe and Mason. "Nutrition and Clinical Dietetics." Philadelphia, Lea & Febiger, 1918. Holmes, A.D., and Lang, H.L. "Fats and Their Economical Use in the Home." Washington, 1916. (Department of Agriculture Bulletin 469.) Kellogg, Vernon, and Taylor, Alonzo E. "Food Problems." New York, Macmillan, 1917. Langworthy, C.F. "Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, and Other Starchy Roots as Food." Washington, 1917. (Department of Agriculture Bulletin 468.) Langworthy, C.F. "Eggs and Their Value as Food." Washington, 1917. (Department of Agriculture Bulletin 471.) Lusk, Graham. "Food in War Time." Philadelphia, Saunders, 1917. Lusk, Graham. "Fundamental Basis of Nutrition." New Haven, Yale University Press, 1915. Mendel, Lafayette B. "Changes in Food Supply and Their Relation to Nutrition." New Haven, Yale University Press, 1916. Mendenhall, Dorothy R. "Milk." Washington, 1918. (_Children's Bureau_, Publication 35.) Rose, Mary Swartz. "Everyday Foods in War Time." New York, Macmillan, 1918. Rose, Mary Swartz. "Feeding the Family." New York, Macmillan, 1917. Sherman, Henry C. "Chemistry of Food and Nutrition." New York, Macmillan, 1918. Sherman, Henry C. "Food Products." New York, Macmillan, 1917. Taylor, Alonzo E. "War Bread." New York, Macmillan, 1918. The publications of the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Food Administration. The United States Food Leaflets. United States Department of Agriculture: Farmers' Bulletin 487. "Cheese and Its Economical Uses in the Diet." C.F. Langworthy and Caroline L. Hunt. 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 565. "Corn as a Food and Ways of Using It." C.F. Langworthy and Caroline L. Hunt, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 717. "Food for Young Children." Caroline L. Hunt, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 808. "What the Body Needs." Caroline L. Hunt and Helen W. Atwater, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 817. "Cereal Foods." Caroline L. Hunt and Helen W. Atwater, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 824. "Foods Rich in Protein." Caroline L. Hunt and Helen W. Atwater, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 839. "Home Canning by the One-Period Cold-Pack Method." O.H. Benson, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 841. "Drying Fruits and Vegetables in the Home." Farmers' Bulletin 853. "Home Canning of Fruits and Vegetables." M.E. Cresswell and Ola Powell, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 871. "Fresh Fruits and Vegetables as Conservers of Other Staple Foods." Caroline L. Hunt, 1917. Farmers' Bulletin 881. "Preservation of Vegetables by Fermentation and Salting." L.A. Round and H.L. Lang, 1917. INDEX Agriculture, Department of.--Aids wheat production, 8; campaign for increased use of milk, 53. Austria.--Wheat-supply, 4; meat-supply, 20-30; sugar-supply, 45. Banana flour as wheat substitute, 20. Barley as wheat substitute, 19. Beans.--Varieties, 56; as meat substitute, 57. Belgium.--Wheat-supply, 2; meat-supply, 29; sugar-supply, 44; milk supplied to children, 50. Bread.--Advantages of wheat loaf, 22-23; bakers' bread regulated, 23; conservation of, by housewives, 24-25; restrictions on use in Europe, 25-26; rationing not necessary in United States, 27. Buckwheat as wheat substitute, 20. Butter.--Consumption in England, 39; uneconomical way to use milk, 53. Calorie defined, 10. Candy.--Manufacturers restricted in use of sugar, 46. Canning.--Sugar allowed for, 45-46; importance of industry, 60; urged upon housewives for conservation, 61. Cereals.--Defined, 10; food value, 12, 17; wide consumption of, 12-13. Cheese.--Valuable protein food, 34; as meat substitute, 35-36; a use for skim milk, 54. Corn as wheat substitute, 17-18; why Allies can not use, 26-27. Corn-syrup as sugar substitute, 46. Cottonseed meal as wheat substitute, 20. Cream.--Extravagant use of milk, 54. Drying.--Process, 60; importance of, 61. Eggs as meat substitute, 35. England.--Wheat-supply, 2; restrictions concerning bread, 25-26; meat-supply, 29; meat restrictions, 30-31; fat shortage, 39; sugar-supply, 44; milk regulations, 50, 54; cultivation of soil, 55-56. Fats.--Food value, 37-38; shortage in Europe, 39; resources and exports of United States, 40-41; necessity for conservation, 41. Feterita as wheat substitute, 20. Fifty-fifty rule, 16-17. Fish as meat substitute, 35. Flour.--Manufacture of, 14-15; 74 per cent extraction allowed, 15; consumption cut by licensing millers, 15; by fifty-fifty rule, 16-17. Food Administration.--Takes control of wheat business, 6, 8; licenses millers, 15; licenses bakers, 23-24; regulates sugar prices, 46-47; aids increased use of milk, 53; achievements in year of existence, 62. Foods.--Importance of different kinds, 10-11. France.--Wheat-supply, 1-2; bread regulations, 26; meat-supply, 29; meat regulations, 31-32; sugar-supply, 44; sugar restrictions, 45; production of fruit and vegetables, 56. Fruit.--As sugar substitute, 46, 58; food value, 58-59; conservation of, by canning and drying, 59-61. Garbage conservation, 41. Gardens.--See Production. Germany.--Wheat-supply, 3-4; meat-supply, 20-30; meat restrictions, 32; fat shortage, 40; sugar restrictions, 45; conservation of food by drying, 61. Gluten.--Importance in bread, 22-23. Graham flour.--Manufacture, 14; inferiority to wheat, 15. Grain corporation, controls wheat trade, 6, 8. Honey as sugar substitute, 46. Hotels and restaurants.--Regulations in use of bread, 24. Ice-cream.--Manufacturers restricted in use of sugar, 46. Italy.--Restrictions on macaroni, 25; bread rations, 26; meat-supply, 29; sugar-supply, 44. Jam as substitute for butter, 58. Kaffir as wheat substitute, 20. Legumes.--See Beans, Peanuts, Peas. Macaroni.--Restrictions in manufacture of in Italy, 25; not a wheat substitute, 25. Maple-syrup as sugar substitute, 46. Margarine.--Use in England, 39. Meat.--Shortage in Europe, 28-32; exports from United States, 32-33; consumption, 33-34; food value, 34-35. Meat extenders, vegetables as, 57. Meat substitutes, 35-36; vegetables as, 57. Milk.--As meat substitute, 36; necessity for children, 49-50; shortage in Europe, 50; food value, 51-52; supply in United States, 52-53; economical uses of, 53-54. Milk, condensed.--Use in Europe, 50; amount exported from United States, 54. Milo as wheat substitute, 20. Molasses as sugar substitute, 46. Nuts as meat substitutes, 36. Oats as wheat substitute, 19. Oils, vegetable.--Use in Germany, 40; supply in United States, 40-41; as substitute for animal fats, 41. Peanut flour as wheat substitute, 20. Peanuts as meat substitute, 36. Peas as meat substitute, 56. Potato flour as wheat substitute, 20. Potatoes as wheat substitute, 20, 57-58. Poultry as meat substitute, 35. Production.--Decreased in France, 1-2; of cereals doubled in England, 2; of vegetables in England and America, 55. Protein.--Defined, 11; amount necessary in diet, 34-35. Rationing: Austria.--Sugar, 45. Rationing: England.--Bread not rationed, 26; meat, 30-31; fats, 39; sugar, 45. Rationing: France.--Bread, 26; meat, 31; sugar, 45. Rationing: Germany.--Meat, 32; fats, 40; sugar, 45. Rationing: Italy.--Bread, 26; meat, 32. Rationing: U.S.--Voluntary wheat ration, 25; reasons for not introducing system, 27. Rice.--Chief diet in India, 13; as wheat substitute, 19-20. Roumania.--Wheat-supply, 4; meat-supply, 29. Russia.--Wheat-supply, 4. Rye, as wheat substitute, 19. Shipping.--Necessity for saving, 5; released by decreased use of sugar, 46. Soy bean flour as wheat substitute, 20. Substitutes.--See Meat, Sugar, Wheat substitutes. Sugar.--Consumption in United States, 42; shortage, 42, 44-45; restrictions on, 45-46; price regulated, 46-47; conservation of, 47-48. Sugar substitutes, 46, 58. Tapioca flour as wheat substitute, 20. United States: Exports.--Wheat, 5-6; meat, 33; fat, 40-41; sugar, 44-45; milk, 54. Vegetables.--Importance in conservation, 55; production of, 56; as meat substitute, 36, 56-57; as wheat substitute, 20, 57-58; as sugar substitute, 58; food value, 58-59; conservation of by canning and drying, 50-61. Victory bread, 24. Vitamines.--Defined, 11; in fats, 38; in milk, 52; in fruit and vegetables, 59. War bread.--See Flour, Victory bread, Wheat substitutes. Wheat.--Necessity in war, 1; shortage in Europe, 1-4; distribution a problem, 4-5; supply and exports of United States, 5-6; controlled by United States Grain Corporation, 6, 8; conservation of by individuals, 8-9. Wheat substitutes.--Corn, 18-19; oats, 19; barley, 19; rye, 19; rice, 20; miscellaneous, 20; keeping quality, 20-21; vegetables, 57-58. 
13397	----	HISTORY of the COMSTOCK PATENT MEDICINE BUSINESS and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills by Robert B. Shaw Associate Professor, Accounting and History Clarkson College of Technology Potsdam, N.Y. SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY NUMBER 22 COVER: Changing methods of packaging Comstock remedies over the years.--Lower left: Original packaging of the Indian Root Pills in oval veneer boxes. Lower center: The glass bottles and cardboard and tin boxes. Lower right: The modern packaging during the final years of domestic manufacture. Upper left: The Indian Root Pills as they are still being packaged and distributed in Australia. Upper center: Dr. Howard's Electric Blood Builder Pills. Upper right: Comstock's Dead Shot Worm Pellets. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Shaw, Robert B., 1916-- History of the Comstock patent medicine business and of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. (Smithsonian studies in history and technology, no. 22) Bibliography: p. 1. Comstock (W.H.) Company. I. Title. II. Series: Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian studies in history and technology, no. 22. HD9666.9.C62S46 338.7'6'615886 76 39864 _Official publication date is handstamped in a limited number of initial copies and is recorded in the Institution's annual report_, Smithsonian Year. For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402--Price 65 cents (paper cover) Stock Number 4700-0204 *History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills* For nearly a century a conspicuous feature of the small riverside village of Morristown, in northern New York State, was the W.H. Comstock factory, better known as the home of the celebrated Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. This business never grew to be more than a modest undertaking in modern industrial terms, and amid the congestion of any large city its few buildings straddling a branch railroad and its work force of several dozens at most would have been little noticed, but in its rural setting the enterprise occupied a prominent role in the economic life of the community for over ninety years. Aside from the omnipresent forest and dairy industries, it represented the only manufacturing activity for miles around and was easily the largest single employer in its village, as well as the chief recipient and shipper of freight at the adjacent railroad station. For some years, early in the present century, the company supplied a primitive electric service to the community, and the Comstock Hotel, until it was destroyed by fire, served as the principal village hostelry. But the influence of this business was by no means strictly local. For decades thousands of boxes of pills and bottles of elixir, together with advertising circulars and almanacs in the millions, flowed out of this remote village to druggists in thousands of communities in the United States and Canada, in Latin America, and in the Orient. And Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and the other remedies must have been household names wherever people suffered aches and infirmities. Thus Morristown, notwithstanding its placid appearance, played an active role in commerce and industry throughout the colorful patent-medicine era. Today, the Indian Root Pill factory stands abandoned and forlorn--its decline and demise brought on by an age of more precise medical diagnoses and the more stringent enforcement of various food and drug acts. After abandonment, the factory was ransacked by vandals; and records, documents, wrappers, advertising circulars, pills awaiting packaging, and other effects were thrown down from the shelves and scattered over the floors. This made it impossible to recover and examine the records systematically. The former proprietors of the business, however, had for some reason--perhaps sheer inertia--apparently preserved all of their records for over a century, storing them in the loft-like attic over the packaging building. Despite their careless treatment, enough records were recovered to reconstruct most of the history of the Comstock enterprise and to cast new light upon the patent-medicine industry of the United States during its heyday. The Comstock business, of course, was far from unique. Hundreds of manufacturers of proprietary remedies flourished during the 1880s and 1890s the Druggists' Directory for 1895 lists approximately 1,500. The great majority of these factories were much smaller than Comstock; one suspects, in fact, that most of them were no more than backroom enterprises conducted by untrained, but ambitious, druggists who, with parttime help, mixed up some mysterious concoctions and contrived imaginative advertising schemes. A few of these businesses were considerably larger than Comstock. However, the Comstock company would seem to be typical of the more strongly established patent-medicine manufacturers, and therefore a closer examination of this particular enterprise should also illuminate its entire industry. *The Origin of the Business* The Indian Root Pill business was carried on during most of its existence by two members of the Comstock family--father and son--and because of unusual longevity, this control by two generations extended for over a century. The plant was also located in Morristown for approximately ninety years. The Indian Root Pills, however, were not actually originated by the Comstock family, nor were they discovered in Morristown. Rather, the business had its genesis in New York City, at a time when the city still consisted primarily of two-or three-story buildings and did not extend beyond the present 42nd Street. According to an affidavit written in 1851--and much of the history of the business is derived from documents prepared in connection with numerous lawsuits--the founder of the Comstock drug venture was Edwin Comstock, sometime in or before 1833. Edwin, along with the numerous other brothers who will shortly enter the picture, was a son of Samuel Comstock, of Butternuts, Otsego County, New York. Samuel, a fifth-generation descendant of William Comstock, one of the pioneer settlers of New London, Connecticut, and ancestor of most of the Comstocks in America, was born in East Lyme, Connecticut, a few years before the Revolution, but sometime after the birth of Edwin in 1794 he moved to Otsego County, New York. Edwin, in 1828, moved to Batavia, New York, where his son, William Henry Comstock, was born on August 1, 1830. Within four or five years, however, Edwin repaired to New York City, where he established the extensive drug and medicine business that was to be carried on by members of his family for over a century. Just why Edwin performed this brief sojourn in Batavia, or where he made his initial entry into the drug trade, is not clear, although the rapid growth of his firm in New York City suggests that he had had previous experience in that field. It is a plausible surmise that he may have worked in Batavia in the drug store of Dr. Levant B. Cotes, which was destroyed in the village-wide fire of April 19, 1833; the termination of Edwin's career in Batavia might have been associated either with that disaster or with the death of his wife in 1831. The Comstocks also obviously had some medical tradition in their family. Samuel's younger brother, John Lee Comstock, was trained as a physician and served in that capacity during the War of 1812--although he was to gain greater prominence as a historian and natural philosopher. All five of Samuel's sons participated at least briefly in the drug trade, while two of them also had careers as medical doctors. A cousin of Edwin, Thomas Griswold Comstock (born 1829), also became a prominent homeopathic physician and gynecologist in St. Louis.[1] It might also be significant that the original home of the Comstock family, in Connecticut, was within a few miles of the scene of the discovery of the first patent medicine in America--Lee's "Bilious Pills"--by Dr. Samuel Lee (1744-1805), of Windham, sometime prior to 1796.[2] This medicine enjoyed such a rapid success that it was soon being widely imitated, and the Comstocks could not have been unaware of its popularity. So it seems almost certain that Edwin was no longer a novice when he established his own drug business in New York City. Between 1833 and 1837 he employed his brother, Lucius S. Comstock (born in 1806), as a clerk, and for the next fifteen years Lucius will figure very conspicuously in this story. He not merely appended the designation "M.D." to his name and claimed membership in the Medical Society of the City of New York, but also described himself as a Counsellor-at-Law. Edwin, the founder of the business, did not live long to enjoy its prosperity--or perhaps we should say that he was fortunate enough to pass away before it experienced its most severe vicissitudes and trials. After Edwin's death in 1837, Lucius continued the business in partnership with another brother, Albert Lee, under the style of Comstock & Co. Two more brothers, John Carlton (born 1819) and George Wells (born 1820), were employed as clerks. [Footnote 1: _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_, VII: 280.] [Footnote 2: The Comstock brothers' grandmother, Esther Lee, was apparently unrelated to Dr. Samuel Lee, the inventor of the Bilious Pills.] [Illustration: FIGURE 1.--Original wrapper for Carltons Liniment, 1851.] The partnership of Comstock & Co. between Lucius and Albert was terminated by a dispute between the two brothers in 1841, and Albert went his own way, taking up a career as a physician and living until 1876. Lucius next went into business with his mother-in-law, Anne Moore, from 1841 to 1846; after the dissolution of this firm, he formed a new partnership, also under the name of Comstock & Co., with his brother John (generally known as J. Carlton). This firm again employed as clerks George Wells Comstock and a nephew, William Henry, a son of Edwin. William Henry was to eventually become the founder of the business at Morristown. In March of 1849, still a new partnership was formed, comprising Lucius, J. Carlton, and George Wells, under the name of Comstock & Co. Brothers, although the existing partnership of Comstock & Co. was not formally terminated. Assets, inventories, and receivables in the process of collection were assigned by Comstock & Co. to Comstock & Co. Brothers. But before the end of 1849 the partners quarreled, Lucius fell out with his brothers, and after a period of dissension, the firm of Comstock & Co. Brothers was dissolved as of August 1, 1850. On or about the same date J. Carlton and George Wells formed a new partnership, under the name of Comstock & Brother, doing business at 9 John Street in New York City, also taking their nephew, William Henry, as a clerk. Lucius continued in business at the old address of 57 John Street. As early as June 30, 1851, the new firm of Comstock & Brother registered the following trade names[3] with the Smithsonian Institution: Carlton's Liniment, a certain remedy for the Piles; Carlton's Celebrated Nerve and Bone Liniment for Horses; Carlton's Condition Powder for Horses and Cattle; Judson's Chemical Extract of Cherry and Lungwort. The repetition of his name suggests that J. Carlton was the principal inventor of his firm's remedies. Suits and Countersuits All of the foregoing changes in name and business organization must have been highly confusing to the wide array of agents and retail druggists over many states and the provinces of Canada with whom these several firms had been doing business. And when George Wells and J. Carlton split off from Lucius and established their own office down the street, it was not at all clear who really represented the original Comstock business, who had a right to collect the numerous accounts and notes still outstanding, and who owned the existing trade names and formulas. Dispute was inevitable under such circumstances, and it was aggravated by Lucius' irascible temper. Unfortunately for family harmony, these business difficulties also coincided with differences among the brothers over their father's will. Samuel had died in 1840, but his will was not probated until 1846; for some reason Lucius contested its terms. There had also been litigation over the estate of Edwin, the elder brother. With the inability of the two parties to reach friendly agreement, a lawsuit was initiated in June 1850 between Lucius on the one hand and J. Carlton and George Wells on the other for the apportionment of the property of Comstock & Co. Brothers, which was valued at about $25,000 or $30,000. Subsequently, while this litigation was dragging on, Lucius found a more satisfying opportunity to press his quarrel against his brothers. This arose out of his belief that they were taking his mail out of the post office. On May 26, 1851, one of the New York newspapers, the _Day Book_, carried the following item: United States Marshal's Office--Complaint was made against J. Carlton Comstock and Geo. Wells Comstock, of No. 9 John Street, and a clerk in their employ, for taking letters from the Post Office, belonging to Dr. L.S. Comstock, of 57 in the same street. Dr. Comstock having missed a large number of letters, on inquiry at the Post Office it was suspected that they had been taken to No. 9 John Street. By an arrangement with the Postmaster and his assistants, several letters were then put in the Post Office, containing orders addressed to Dr. Comstock, at 57 John Street, for goods to be sent to various places in the city to be forwarded to the country. The letters were taken by the accused or their clerk, opened at No. 9, the money taken out and the articles sent as directed, accompanied by bills in the handwriting of Geo. Wells Comstock. Warrants were then issued by the U.S. Commissioner and Recorder Talmadge, and two of the accused found at home were arrested and a large number of letters belonging to Dr. C. found on the premises. J.C. Comstock has not yet been arrested. It is said he is out of the city. These two young men have for some months been trading sometimes under the name of "Comstock & Brother", and sometimes as "Judson & Co." at No. 9 John Street. The same episode was also mentioned in the _Express_, the _Commercial Advertiser_, and the _Tribune_. In fact, a spirited debate in the "affair of the letters" was carried on in the pages of the press for a week. The brothers defended themselves in the following notice printed in the _Morning Express_ for May 31: OBTAINING LETTERS Painful as it is, we are again compelled to appear before the public in defense of our character as citizens and business men. The two letters referred to by L.S. Comstock (one of which contained One Dollar only) _were both directed "Comstock & Co." which letters we claim; and we repeat what we have before said, and what we shall prove that no letter or letters from any source directed to L.S. Comstock or Lucius S. Comstock have been taken or obtained by either of us or any one in our employ_. The public can judge whether a sense of "duty to the Post Office Department and the community", induced our brother to make this charge against us (which if proved would consign us to the Penitentiary) and under the pretence of searching for letters, which perhaps never existed; to send Police Officers to invade not only our store, but our dwelling house, where not even the presence of our aged Mother could protect from intrusion. These are the means by which he has put himself [Footnote 3: Receipts for these registrations were signed by the prominent librarian, Charles Coffin Jewett, later to be superintendent of the Boston Public Library for many years.] [Illustration: FIGURE 2.--Wrapper for Oldridge's Balm of Columbia, Comstock & Co., druggists.] in possession of the _names of our customers; of our correspondence_; and our private and business papers. J.C. & GEO. WELLS COMSTOCK, firm of Comstock & Brother, No. 9 John Street Lucius, for his part, never deigned to recognize his opponents as brothers but merely described them as "two young men who claim relationship to me." It was the position of J. Carlton and George that as they, equally with Lucius, were heirs of the dissolved firm of Comstock & Co. Brothers, they had as much right as Lucius to receive and open letters so addressed. Moreover, since the predecessor firm of Comstock & Co. had never been dissolved, J. Carlton also shared in any rights, claims, or property of this firm. In a more personal vein, the brothers also asserted in their brief that Lucius "is not on speaking terms with his aged mother nor any one of his brothers or sisters, Nephews or Nieces, or even of his Uncles or Aunts, embracing quite a large circle all of whom have been estranged from him, either by personal difficulties with him, or his improper conduct towards his brothers." Lucius, in turn, had copies of his charges against his brothers, together with aspersions against their character and their medicines, printed as circulars and widely distributed to all present or former customers in the United States and Canada. Meanwhile the civil litigation respecting the division of the assets of the old partnership, broken down into a welter of complaints and countercomplaints, dragged on until 1852. No document reporting the precise terms of the final settlement was discovered, although the affair was obviously compromised on some basis, as the surviving records do speak of a division of the stock in New York City and at St. Louis. The original premises at 57 John Street were left in the possession of Lucius. In this extensive litigation, J. Carlton and George were represented by the law firm of Allen, Hudson & Campbell, whose bill for $2,132 they refused to pay in full, so that they were, in turn, sued by the Allen firm. Some of the lengthy evidence presented in this collection suit enlightened further the previous contest with Lucius. He was described as an extremely difficult person: "at one time the parties came to blows--and G.W. gave the Dr. a black eye." The action by the law firm to recover its fee was finally compromised by the payment of $1,200 in January 1854. The settlement of the affairs of Comstock & Co. Brothers failed to bring peace between Lucius and the others. The rival successor firms continued to bicker over sales territory and carried the battle out into the countryside, each contending for the loyalty of former customers. Letters and circulars attacking their opponents were widely distributed by both parties. As late as December 1855, more than four years after the event, Lucius was still complaining, in a series of printed circulars, about the "robbery" of his mail from the post office, although the case had been dismissed by the court. But somehow the new firm of Comstock & Brother triumphed over Comstock & Co., for in the summer of 1853 Lucius found it necessary to make an assignment of all of his assets to his creditors. Thereafter he removed his business from John Street to 45 Vesey Street, in the rear of St. Paul's Churchyard, but although he put out impressive new handbills describing his firm as "Wholesale Chemists, Druggists and Perfumers," he apparently no longer prospered in the drug trade, for old New York City directories show that he shortly turned his main energies to the practice of law. Versatile as he was, Lucius entered the Union Army as a surgeon during the Civil War, and upon his return he resumed his legal career, continuing to his death in 1876. Aside from his role in the Comstock medicine business, Lucius also rates a footnote in United States political history as the foreman of the grand jury that indicted Boss Tweed in 1872. *A New Partnership Formed* The two proprietors of Comstock & Brother at 9 John Street were the brothers George Wells and J. Carlton Comstock. At the time of the events just related, their nephew, William Henry Comstock, was an employee, but not a partner, of the firm (he was the "clerk" who had removed the controversial letters from the post office). This partnership was terminated by the death on September 17, 1853, of J. Carlton Comstock, the inventor of the veterinary medicines. To continue the business, a new partnership, also under the name of Comstock & Brother, comprising George Wells Comstock, William Henry Comstock, and Baldwin L. Judson, was formed on October 1, 1853. Judson was the husband of Eliza, a sister of Lucius and his brothers. George contributed one half of the capital of the new firm and the other two, one quarter each; however, exclusive possession of all trademarks, recipes, and rights to the medicines was reserved to George. It is not clear precisely when Judson entered the drug business or first became associated with the Comstocks; there is some evidence that he had previously been in business for himself, as several remedies were registered by him prior to this time. Judson's Chemical Extract was registered with the Smithsonian by the Comstock firm in 1851, but Dr. Larzetti's Juno Cordial or Procreative Elixir had previously been entered by Judson & Co. in 1844. A variant of the Juno Cordial label also mentions Levi Judson (a father?) as Dr. Larzetti's only agent in America. Besides the "new" remedies, the Comstock firm--both Comstock firms--was also selling all of the "old" patent medicines, most of them of British origin. These included such items as Godfrey's Cordial, Bateman's Pectoral Drops, Turlington's Balsam of Life, British Oil, and others. The only strictly American product that could claim a venerability somewhat approaching these was Samuel Lee's Bilious Pills, patented on April 30, 1796. Most of the more recent remedies probably had been originated by local doctors or druggists, either upon experimentation or following old folk remedies, and after enjoying some apparent success were adopted by drug manufacturers. With rare exceptions, however, the names of the discoverers never seem to have made their way into medical history. [Illustration: FIGURE 3.--Original wrapper for Judson's Chemical Extract of Cherry and Lungwort, printed about 1855.] *Entrance of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills* During the summer of 1855 the Comstock firm, now located at 50 Leonard Street, was approached by one Andrew J. White, who represented himself as the sole proprietor of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and who had previously manufactured them in his own business, conducted under the name of A.B. Moore, at 225 Main Street, in Buffalo. Actually, White's main connection with this business had been as a clerk, and he had been taken in as a partner only recently. Nevertheless, the Comstocks accepted his claims--carelessly, one must believe--and on August 10, 1855, signed a contract with White for the manufacture and distribution of these pills. The originator of these pills was Andrew B. Moore. This is clear from several legal documents, including an injunction proceeding in behalf of White and Moore in 1859, which reads in part as follows: The defendant Moore always had an equal right with White to manufacture the pills--and by the agreement of 21st June, 1858 Moore is (illegible) to his original right and the defendants are manufacturing under Moore's original right.... The plaintiffs (the Comstocks) by their acts have disenabled Moore from using _his own name_.... (emphasis in original). [Illustration: FIGURE 4.--Label for Dr. Larzetti's Juno Cordial, 1844.] [Illustration: FIGURE 5.--List of medicines offered by Comstock & Brother (predecessor of the firm which later moved to Morristown) in 1854.] In an undated form of contract, between Moore on the one part and George Comstock, William H. Comstock, Judson, and White on the other part, the parties agree, at Moore's option, either to sell all rights and interest in Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills to him, or to buy them from him, but in the latter event he must covenant that "he will forever refrain from the manufacture or sale of any medicine called Dr. Morse's Root Pills, Moore's Indian Root Pills, or Morse's Pills, or Moore's Pills, or any other name or designation similar to or resembling in any way either thereof...." In brief, there never was a Dr. Morse--other than Andrew B. Moore. And the Comstocks never claimed any origin of the pills in legal documents, other than their purchase from White. Subsequently, the company fabricated a lengthy history of the discovery of the pills and even pictured Dr. Morse with his "healthy, blooming family." This story was printed in almanacs and in a wrapper accompanying every box of pills. According to this version, "the famous and celebrated Dr. Morse," after completing his education in medical science, traveled widely in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, and spent three years among the Indians of our western country, where he discovered the secret of the Indian Root Pills. Returning from one of these journeys after a long absence, he found his father apparently on his death bed. But let us quote the story directly: A number of years ago this good man was very sick. He had eight of the most celebrated doctors to attend him both night and day. With all their skill this good and pious gentleman grew worse, and finally they gave him up, saying that it was impossible to cure him and he would soon die ... In the afternoon he was taken with shortness of breath and supposed to be dying. The neighbors were sent for, the room soon filled, and many prayers were offered up from the very hearts of these dear Christian people, that some relief might be obtained for this good and pious man. While these prayers were ascending like sweet incense to the throne above, and every eye was bathed in tears, a rumbling noise was heard in the distance, like a mighty chariot winding its way near, when all at once a fine span of horses, before a beautiful coach, stood before the door, out of which alighted a noble and elegant-looking man. In a moment's time he entered the room, and embraced the hand of his dear father and mother. She clasped her arms around his neck and fainted away. The Doctor, surprised to see his father so nearly gone, immediately went to his coach, taking therefrom various plants and roots, which he had learned from the Red Men of the forest as being good for all diseases, and gave them to his father, and in about two hours afterwards he was much relieved.... Two days afterwards he was much better, and the third day he could walk about the room ...and now we behold him a strong, active man, and in the bloom of health, and at the age of ninety-five able to ride in one day thirty-five miles, in order to spend his birthday with this celebrated Doctor, his son. The foregoing event was supposed to have occurred some years before 1847, as the elder Mr. Morse's ninety-fifth birthday referred to was celebrated on November 20, 1847, when he was still hale and hearty. The old gentleman was also said to be enormously wealthy, "with an income of about five hundred thousand dollars annually, and the owner of a number of fine, elegant ships, which sailed in different directions to every part of the world." Dr. Morse, who was the first man to establish that all diseases arise from the impurity of the blood, subsequently discarded his regular practice of medicine and, as a boon to mankind, devoted his entire energy to the manufacture of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. [Illustration: FIGURE 6.-"A Short History of Dr. Morse's Father." A copy was inserted in every box of the pills.] This story, which was first disseminated as early as the late 1850s, was an entire fabrication. Throughout the patent-medicine era it was the common practice to ascribe an Indian, or at least some geographically remote, origin to all of these nostrums and panaceas. In the words of James Harvey Young, in his book on the Social History of Patent Medicines:[4] From the 1820's onward the Indian strode nobly through the American patent-medicine wilderness. Hiawatha helped a hair restorative and Pocahontas blessed a bitters. Dr. Fall spent twelve years with the Creeks to discover why no Indian had ever perished of consumption. Edwin Eastman found a blood syrup among the Comanches. Texas Charlie discovered a Kickapoo cure-all, and Frank Cushing pried the secret of a stomach renovator from the Zuni. (Frank, a famous ethnologist, had gone West on a Smithsonian expedition.) Besides these notable accretions to pharmacy, there were Modoc Oil, Seminole Cough Balsam, Nez Perce Catarrh Snuff, and scores more, all doubtless won for the use of white men by dint of great cunning and valor. [Footnote 4: Young, James Harvey, _The Toadstool Millionaires, A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation_. Princeton University Press. 1961.] Judson's Mountain Herb Pills, a companion product of the Indian Root Pills, had an even more romantic origin--so remarkable, in fact, that the story was embodied in a full-scale paperback novel published by B.L. Judson & Co. in 1859. According to this book, the remedy was discovered--or at least revealed to the world--by a famous adventurer, Dr. Cunard. Dr. Cunard's career somehow bore a remarkable similarity to that of Dr. Morse. He was also the scion of a wealthy family who spent much time traveling throughout the world, and in this process becoming fluent in no less than thirty languages. Eventually he encountered an Aztec princess about to be tortured and sacrificed by Navajo Indians; he interrupted this ceremony only to be captured himself, but by virtue of successfully foretelling an eclipse (happily he had his almanac with him) he won release for himself and the princess. Thereafter he led her back to her home, in some remote part of Mexico, and lived among her people for a year. As a boon for having saved the princess, he was given possession of the ancient healing formula of the Aztecs. Upon returning home Dr. Cunard, in an experience very similar to Dr. Morse's, found his mother on her death bed, but he effected an instant cure by the use of the miraculous herbs he had brought with him. The news spread, soon a wide circle of neighbors was clamoring for this medicine, and in order that all mankind might share in these benefits, Dr. Cunard graciously conveyed the secret to B.L. Judson & Co. These stories were told entirely straightforwardly, with the intention of being believed. How widely they were actually accepted is difficult to say. In retrospect it seems extremely curious that persons as prominent, as successful, as wealthy as Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard were never seen or heard by the public, were never mentioned in the newspapers, never ran for public office, their names never listed in any directories, biographies or encyclopedias, and in fact they were not noticed anywhere--except in the advertising material of Comstock & Co. and B.L. Judson. Perhaps such credulity was not unusual in the 1850s, before the advent of widely distributed newspapers and other means of communication, but more than fifty years later, in the early years of the present century, essentially the same version of the history of Dr. Morse was still being printed in the Comstock almanacs. *The Struggle for Control of the Indian Root Pills* The agreement of August 10, 1855, between Andrew J. White and the Comstocks established a partnership "for the purpose of manufacturing and selling Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and for no other purpose," the partners thereof being A.J. White as an individual and Comstock & Brother as a firm. The new partnership was named A.J. White & Co., but White contributed no money or property--nothing but the right to Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. The Comstock firm supplied all of the tangible assets, together with the use of their existing business premises. In turn, Comstock was to receive three fourths and White one fourth of the profits. In brief, the new firm, although bearing White's name, was controlled by the Comstocks. It is not clear why Moore, the originator of the pills, was not taken into the new business or otherwise recognized in the agreement. As we have seen, White claimed absolute ownership of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills, but Moore evidently did not agree, for he continued to manufacture and peddle his own pills, at the same time denouncing those prepared by A.J. White & Co. under Comstock control as forgeries. Moore had previously been in business in Buffalo, at 225 Main Street, under his own name; an announcement in the 1854 Buffalo City Directory (the _Commercial Advertiser_) describes his firm as successor both to C.C. Bristol and to Moore, Liebetrut & Co. The same directory shows White as merely a clerk at Moore's place of business, although he was made a partner sometime during 1854. Cyrenius C. Bristol, whose business Moore took over, had entered the drug trade in 1832, initially in partnership with a Dr. G.E. Hayes. In the drug field his best known preparation was Bristol's renowned sarsaparilla, and he is credited with having originated the patent-medicine almanac, along with other advertising innovations. The patent-medicine business, however, represented merely one of his wide-ranging interests; he was also a co-owner of vessels plying the Great Lakes, a publisher, and a dabbler in such occult arts as Mesmerism, Phrenology, and Morse's theory of the electric telegraph. In 1855 he appeared as the proprietor of the _Daily Republic_, and it was perhaps his growing involvement in publishing that led him to turn his drug business over to Moore. While we know this much about Moore's antecedents, a very considerable mystery remains. If Moore was the proprietor of his own apparently prosperous drug and medicine business in Buffalo in 1854, with White as one of his clerks, how did it happen that in the following year White represented himself to the Comstocks as the sole owner of Dr. Morse's (Moore's) Indian Root Pills? And Moore, although he initially disputed this claim, left his own business in Buffalo and ultimately joined White and the Comstocks, not even in the capacity of a partner, but merely as an employee. These events would seem, however, to date the origin of the Indian Root Pills fairly closely. Moore was already manufacturing them in Buffalo prior to White's initial agreement with the Comstocks, but as he did not mention them by name in his _Commercial Advertiser_ announcement in 1854, it is a fair presumption that the pills were new at this time. But they must have caught on very rapidly to induce the Comstocks to enter a partnership with White, under his name, when he contributed only the Indian Root Pills but no cash or other tangible assets. [Illustration: FIGURE 7.--Wrapper for Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills, A.J. White & Co., sole proprietor.] [Illustration: FIGURE 8.--Indian Root Pill labels: _a_, original used by Moore, the originator of the pills; _b_, initial label used by A.J. White & Co. under Comstock ownership, 1855-1857; _c_, revised label adopted by Comstocks in June 1857 after Moore changed the color of his label to blue; _d_, label adopted by Moore and White for selling in competition with the Comstocks, 1859. Obviously printed from the same plate as _c_, but with an additional signature just above the Indian on horseback; _e_, new label adopted by the Comstocks after the departure of Moore and White; _f_, label used in the final years of the business; _g_, label, in Spanish, used in final years for export trade to Latin America.] While manufacturing the pills in Buffalo, Moore had been packaging them under a yellow label bearing a pictorial representation of the British coat-of-arms, flanked on one side by an Indian and on the other by a figure probably supposed to represent a merchant or a sea captain. The labels also described Moore as the proprietor, "without whose signature none can be genuine." And after the formation of A.J. White & Co. and the purported transfer of Dr. Morse's pills to it, Moore still continued to sell the same medicine and to denounce the White-Comstock product as spurious. The latter was packaged under a white label showing an Indian warrior riding horseback and was signed "A.J. White & Co." While the color was shortly changed to blue and the name of the proprietor several times amended through the ensuing vicissitudes, the label otherwise remained substantially unchanged for as long as the pills continued to be manufactured, or for over 100 years. The nuisance of Moore's independent manufacture of the pills was temporarily eliminated when, on June 21, 1858, Moore was hired by A.J. White & Co.[5] and abandoned competition with them. The Comstocks, in employing him, insisted upon a formal, written agreement whereunder Moore agreed to discontinue any manufacture or sale of the pills and to assign all rights and title therein, together with any related engravings, cuts, or designs, to A.J. White & Co. As previously stated, the two Comstock brothers, Judson, and White had offered either to sell the Indian Root Pill business in its entirety to Moore, or to buy it from him. Moore's employment by A.J. White & Co. presumably followed his election not to purchase and operate the business himself. So far so good. The Comstocks' claim to the Indian Root Pills through the 75 percent controlled A.J. White & Co. now seemed absolutely secure and the disparagement of their products at an end. But new dissension must have occurred, for on New Year's Day of 1859, without prior notice, Moore and White absented themselves from the Comstock office, taking with them as many of the books, accounts, records, and other assets of A.J. White & Co. as they could carry. Forthwith they established a business of their own, also under the name of A.J. White & Co., at 10 Courtlandt Street, where they resumed the manufacture and distribution of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills, under a close facsimile of the label already being used by the A.J. White-Comstock firm. These events left the Comstocks in an embarrassing position. For over three years they had been promoting the A.J. White trade name, but now they could hardly keep a competitor from operating under his own name. Their official attitude was that the old firm of A.J. White & Co. was still in existence and controlled by the Comstocks. But shortly they conceded this point tacitly when they introduced new labels for the Indian Root Pills, under the name and signature of B. Lake Judson, and advised that any accounts or correspondence with A.J. White & Co. still outstanding should be directed to the new firm of Judson. Obviously, this state of affairs was extremely confusing to all of the customers. Judson traveled widely through the Canadian maritime provinces and prevailed upon many merchants to disavow orders previously given to the new A.J. White firm at 10 Courtlandt Street. On April 28, 1859, White and Moore, for their part, appointed one James Blakely of Napanee, Canada West, to represent them in the territory between Kingston and Hamilton "including all the back settlements," where he should engage in the collection of all notes and receipts for the Indian Root Pills and distribute new supplies to the merchants. On all collections he was to receive 25 percent; new medicines were to be given out without charge except for freight. In his letter accepting the appointment, Blakely advised that: I think the pills should be entered here so as to avoid part of the enormous duty. 30% is too much to pay. I think there might be an understanding so that it might be done with safety. Goods coming to me should come by Oswego and from thence by Steamer to Millport. By this route they would save the delay they would be subject to coming by Kingston and avoid the scrutiny they would give them there at the customhouse. [Footnote 5: Moore claimed later (his affidavit of November 22, 1859) that he thought he was hired only by White personally, and did not realize that A.J. White & Co. was controlled by the Comstocks.] [Illustration: FIGURE 9.--"To Purchasers of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills"--a warning by James Blakely, Canadian agent for A.J. White, against the "counterfeit" pills manufactured by the Comstock firm.] The great bulk of the notes and accounts which were assigned to Blakely for collection were undoubtedly accounts originally established with the old A.J. White & Co. and therefore in dispute with the Comstocks. But in any case, Blakely went vigorously up and down his territory, frequently crossing the paths of agents of the Comstocks, pushing the pills and attempting to collect outstanding bills owed to A.J. White & Co. by persuasion and threats. On July 2, 1860, he wrote that: My sales have been pretty good. Comstock Pills are put in almost every place, generally on commission at a low figure, but I get them put aside in most cases and make actual sales so they will be likely to get them back. Meanwhile, back in New York City, the fight between the erstwhile partners went on, mostly in the legal arena. On April 14, 1859, the sheriff, at the instigation of the Comstocks, raided White's premises at 10 Courtlandt Street and seized the books, accounts, and correspondence carried away by White and Moore on January 1. Simultaneously, the Comstocks succeeded in having White and Moore arrested on a charge of larceny "for stealing on last New Year's Day a large number of notes and receipts," and in September White was arrested on a charge of forgery. Since the alleged offense took place in Pennsylvania, he was extradited back to that state. Neither the circumstances nor the disposition of this case is known, but since White claimed the right to collect notes issued by the old A.J. White & Co., it is probable that the charge arose merely out of his endorsement of some disputed note. On this occasion the Comstocks printed and distributed circulars which were headed: "Andrew J. White, the pill man indicted for forgery," and thereunder they printed the requisition of the governor of New York in response to the request for extradition from Pennsylvania, in such a way as to suggest that their side of the dispute had official sanction. The Comstocks must also have discovered White's and Blakely's arrangement for avoiding "scrutiny" of their goods shipped into Canada, for on July 29 there was an acknowledgment by the Collector of Customs of the Port of Queenston of certain information supplied by George Wells Comstock, William Henry Comstock, and Baldwin L. Judson on goods being "smuggled into this province." While the principal case between the Comstocks and White and Moore was scheduled for trial in December 1860, no documents which report its outcome were discovered. However, it is a fair surmise that the rival parties finally realized that they were spending a great deal of energy and money to little avail, injuring each other's business in the process and tarnishing the reputation of the Indian Root Pills regardless of ownership. In any case, a final settlement of this protracted controversy was announced on March 26, 1861, when White and Moore relinquished all claims and demands arising out of the sale of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills prior to January 1, 1859. [Illustration: FIGURE 10.--As one episode in the contest between the Comstocks and White and Moore for control of the Indian Root Pills, the Comstocks succeeded in having White indicted for forgery and briefly lodged in jail.] Since no copy of this agreement was found, we do not know what inducement was offered to Moore and White. However, hundreds of announcements of the settlement, directed "To the debtors of the late firm of A.J. WHITE & CO." were printed, advising that The controversy and the difficulties between the members of the old firm of A.J. White & Co. of No. 50 Leonard Street, New York, being ended, we hereby notify all parties to whom MORSE'S INDIAN ROOT PILLS were sent or delivered prior to January 1, 1859, and all parties holding for collection or otherwise, any of said claims or demands for said Pills, that we the undersigned have forever relinquished, and have now no claim, right, title or interest in said debts or claims, and authorize the use of the names of said firm whenever necessary in recovering, collecting and settling such debts and claims. The announcement was signed by Andrew J. White and Andrew B. Moore. This should have been the end of this wearisome affair, but it was not. It soon appeared that Moore had violated this agreement by concealing a number of accounts, together with a quantity of pills, circulars, labels, and a set of plates, and, in the words of Comstock's complaint, transferred them "to James Blakely, an irresponsible person in Canada West." And Blakely evidently continued to collect such accounts for the benefit of himself and Moore. However, the Comstocks also entered the scene of strife, and sometime during the summer of 1862 William Henry Comstock, then traveling in Ontario, collected a note in the amount of $7.50 in favor of A.J. White & Co., as he had every right to do, but endorsed it "James Blakely for A.J. White & Co." Blakely, when he learned of this, charged Comstock with forgery; Comstock in turn charged Blakely with libel. Comstock probably defended his somewhat questionable endorsement by the agreement of March 26 of the previous year; in any event the case was dismissed by a Justice of the Peace in Ottawa without comment. In New York City, on November 25, the Comstocks had Moore arrested again, with White at this time testifying in their support. There was also an attempt to prosecute Blakely in Canada; his defense was that he had bought the disputed accounts and notes from Moore on March 11, 1861--a few days before the agreement with the Comstocks--and that his ownership of these notes was thereafter absolute and he was no longer working as an agent for Moore. This controversy was still in the courts as late as April of 1864, and its final outcome is not known. But in any case, aside only from Moore's and Blakely's attempts to collect certain outstanding accounts and to dispose of stock still in their hands, the agreement of March 26, 1861, left the Comstocks in full and undisputed possession of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. White thereafter continued in the patent-medicine business in New York City on his own; his firm was still active as recently as 1914. The subsequent history of Moore is unknown. *The Brothers Part Company* One would imagine that the three partners of Comstock & Brother would have been exhausted by litigation and would be eager to work amicably together for years. But such was not to be the case. The recovered records give notice of a lawsuit (1866) between George Comstock on the one hand and William H. Comstock and Judson on the other. No other documents relating to this case were found, and thus the precise issue is not known, or how it was finally settled. However, it was obviously a prelude to the dissolution of the old firm. Letters and documents from the several years preceding this event suggest that Judson had become more prominent in the business, and that he and William H. Comstock had gradually been drawing closer together, perhaps in opposition to George. Judson, although a partner of Comstock & Brother, also operated under his own name at 50 Leonard Street and had originated several of the medicines himself. It is not clear whether the old firm of Comstock & Brother was formally dissolved, but after 1864 insurance policies and other documents referred to the premises as "Comstock & Judson." In 1863 the federal internal revenue license in connection with the new "temporary" Civil War tax on the manufacturing of drugs[6] was issued simply to B.L. Judson & Co., now located, with the Comstocks, at 106 Franklin Street. [Footnote 6: The "temporary" tax placed upon drug manufacture as a revenue measure during the Civil War remained in effect until 1883.] [Illustration: FIGURE 11.--This announcement, sent to all customers of the Indian Root Pills, marked the final termination of the long dispute between two firms, both named A.J. White & Co., and both of whom claimed ownership of the pills.] During this period Judson and William Henry Comstock became interested in a coffee-roasting and spice-grinding business, operated under the name of Central Mills, and located in the Harlem Railroad Building at the corner of Centre and White Streets. Possibly George objected to his partners spreading their energies over a second business; in any case, dissension must have arisen over some matter. On April 1, 1866, balance sheets were drawn up separately for B.L. Judson & Co. and Comstock & Judson; the former showed a net worth of $48,527.56 against only $5,066.70 for the latter. Both of these firms had a common bookkeeper, E. Kingsland, but the relationship between the firms is not known. On April 25, Judson and William H. Comstock sold their coffee-roasting business to one Alexander Chegwidden, taking a mortgage on the specific assets, which included, besides roasters and other machinery, a horse and wagon. But if this had been a factor in the controversy among the partners, the sale failed to end it, for we find that on December 21, 1866, George W. obtained an injunction against William Henry and Judson restraining them from collecting or receiving any accounts due the partnership of B.L. Judson & Co., transferring or disposing of any of its assets, and continuing business under that name or using any of its trademarks. Unfortunately, we have no information as to the details of this case or the terms of settlement, but we do find that on February 1, 1867, the law firm of Townsend, Dyett & Morrison rendered a bill for $538.85 to B.L. Judson and William H. Comstock for "Supervising and engrossing two copies of agreement with George W. Comstock on settlement" and for representing the two parties named in several actions and cross actions with George. This settlement, whatever its precise character may have been, obviously marked the termination of the old partnership--or, more properly, the series of successor partnerships--that had been carried on by various of the Comstock brothers for over thirty years. William Henry, the former clerk and junior partner--although also the son of the founder--was now going it alone. Before this time he had already transferred the main center of his activities to Canada, and he must have been contemplating the removal of the business out of New York City. After this parting of the ways, George W. Comstock was associated with several machinery businesses in New York City, up until his death in 1889. During the Draft Riots of 1863 he had played an active role in protecting refugees from the Colored orphanage on 43rd Street, who sought asylum in his house at 136 West 34th Street.[7] *Dr. Morse's Pills Move to Morristown* In April 1867, the home of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and of the other proprietary remedies was transferred from New York City to Morristown, a village of 300 inhabitants on the bank of the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State. This was not, however, the initial move into this area; three or four years earlier William H. Comstock had taken over an existing business in Brockville, Ontario, directly across the river. No specific information as to why the business was established here has been found, but the surrounding circumstances provide some very good presumptions. The bulk of the Comstocks' business was always carried on in rural areas--in "the back-woods." Specifically, the best sales territory consisted of the Middle West--what was then regarded as "The West"--of the United States and of Canada West, i.e., the present province of Ontario. A surviving ledger of all of the customers of Comstock & Brother in 1857 supplies a complete geographic distribution. Although New Jersey and Pennsylvania were fairly well represented, accounts in New York State were sparse, and those in New England negligible. And despite considerable travel by the partners or agents in the Maritime Provinces, no very substantial business was ever developed there. The real lively sales territory consisted of the six states of Ohio, Indiana, [Footnote 7: _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_, IV:500.] Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, which accounted for over two thirds of all domestic sales, while Canada West contributed over 90 percent of Canadian sales. More regular customers were to be found in Canada West--a relatively compact territory--than any other single state or province. The number of customers of Comstock & Brother in 1857 by states and provinces follows: Alabama 12 Arkansas 1 Connecticut 3 Delaware 5 D.C. 1 Florida 5 Georgia 15 Illinois 415 Indiana 298 Iowa 179 Kansas Ter. 1 Kentucky 21 Louisiana 7 Maine 2 Maryland 21 Massachusetts 5 Minnesota Ter. 6 Mississippi 8 Missouri 32 Michigan 194 New York State 88 New York City 3 New Jersey 212 New Hampshire 1 North Carolina 9 Ohio 179 Pennsylvania 192 Rhode Island 2 South Carolina 5 Tennessee 21 Texas 1 Virginia 30 Wisconsin 303 New Brunswick 15 Nova Scotia 19 Canada East (Quebec) 7 Canada West 434 Total United States 2,277 Total Canada 475 The concentration of this market and its considerable distance from New York City at a time when transportation conditions were still relatively primitive must have created many problems in distribution. Moreover, the serious threat to the important Canadian market imposed by White and Moore, although eventually settled by compromise, must have emphasized the vulnerability of this territory to competition. It was also probable that the office in lower Manhattan--at 106 Franklin Street after May 20, 1862--was found to be increasingly congested and inconvenient as a site for mixing pills and tonics, bottling, labeling, packaging and shipping them, and keeping all of the records for a large number of individual small accounts. A removal of the manufacturing part of the business to more commodious quarters, adjacent to transportation routes, must have been urgent. But why move to as remote a place as Morristown, New York, beyond the then still wild Adirondacks? It is obvious that this location was selected because the company already had an office and some facilities in Brockville, Canada West. William H. Comstock must have first become established at Brockville, after extensive peregrinations through Canada West, around 1859 or 1860. During the dispute between A.J. White and Comstock & Judson, Blakely, the aggressive Canadian agent, had written to White, on September 1, 1859, that he had heard from "Mr. Allen Turner of Brockville" that the Comstocks were already manufacturing Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills at St. Catherines. Evidently the Comstocks thought of several possible locations, for on July 2 of the following year Blakely advised his principals that the Comstocks were now manufacturing their pills in Brockville. Two years later, in November 1862, when Blakely sued William H. Comstock for the forgery of a note, the defendant was then described in the legal papers as "one Wm. Henry Comstock of the town of Brockville Druggist." And in July 1865, Comstock was writing from Brockville to E. Kingsland, the bookkeeper in New York City, telling him to put Brenner--the bearer of the letter--"in the mill." Comstock had apparently taken over an existing business in Brockville, as receipts for medicines delivered by him describe him as "Successor to A.N. M'Donald & Co." Dr. McKenzie's Worm Tablets also seem to have come into the Comstock business with this acquisition. This did not mean a final move to Brockville for William H. Comstock; for several years he must have gone back and forth and was still active in New York City as a partner of his brother and of Judson. We have seen that he subsequently went into partnership with Judson in the purchase of the coffee-roasting business. In December 1866, he was a defendant in the lawsuit initiated by his brother George, when he was still apparently active in the New York City business. Nevertheless, he apparently shifted the center of his activities to the Brockville area about 1860, relinquishing primary responsibility for affairs in New York City to his brother and to Judson. [Illustration: FIGURE 12.--Label for Victoria Hair Gloss, Comstock & Brother, 1855.] We now find the Comstock business established at Brockville. Exactly why a second plant was built at Morristown, right across the river, is again a matter for conjecture. It is a fair assumption, however, that customs duties or other restraints may have interfered with the ability of the Canadian plant to supply the United States market. Thus, facilities on the other side of the border, but still close enough to be under common management, must have become essential. In an era of water transportation, Morristown was a convenient place from which to supply the important middle western territory. Ogdensburg was the eastern terminus of lake boats, and several lines provided daily service between that point and Buffalo. The railroad had already reached Ogdensburg (although not yet Morristown) so that rail transportation was also convenient. And the farms of St. Lawrence County could certainly be counted upon to supply such labor as was necessary for the rather simple tasks of mixing pills and elixirs and packaging them. Finally, the two plants were directly across the river from each other--connection was made by a ferry which on the New York side docked almost on the Comstock property--so that both could easily be supervised by a single manager. In fact, if it had not been for the unusual circumstance that they were located in two different countries, they could really have been considered as no more than separate buildings constituting a single plant. Surviving receipts for various goods and services show that the move to Morristown was carried out in March or April of 1867. Although the Morristown undertaking was obviously regarded as a continuation of the New York business, it was operated by William Henry Comstock as the sole proprietor for many years, and the terms of any settlement or subsequent relationship with Judson are unknown. A "Judson Pill Co." was subsequently established at Morristown, but this was no more than a mailing address for one department of the Comstock business. What happened to Judson as an individual is a mystery; like Moore, he quietly disappears from our story. It is also puzzling that no record of the transfer of land to Mr. Comstock upon the first establishment of the pill factory in Morristown in 1867 can be found. The earliest deed discovered in the St. Lawrence County records shows the transfer of waterfront property to William Henry Comstock "of Brockville, Ontario," from members of the Chapman family, in March 1876. Additional adjoining land was also acquired in 1877 and 1882. *The Golden Era* With the establishment of the Comstock patent-medicine business at Morristown in 1867, this enterprise may be said to have reached maturity. Over thirty years had passed since William Henry's father had established its earliest predecessor in lower Manhattan. Possession of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills was now unchallenged, and this and the other leading brand names were recognized widely in country drug stores and farmhouses over one third of a continent. No longer did the medicines have to be mixed, bottled, and packaged in cramped and dingy quarters above a city shop; spacious buildings in an uncongested country village were now being used. No further relocations would be necessary, as operations exceeded their capacity, or as landlords might elect to raise rents; the pill factory was to remain on the same site for the following ninety years. And the bitter struggles for control, perhaps acerbated because of the family relationship among the partners, were now a thing of the past. William H. Comstock was in exclusive control, and he was to retain this position, first as sole proprietor and later as president, for the remainder of his long life. The patent-medicine business as a whole was also entering, just at this time, upon its golden era--the fifty-year span between the Civil War and World War I. Improved transportation, wider circulation of newspapers and periodicals, and cheaper and better bottles all enabled the manufacturers of the proprietary remedies to expand distribution--the enactment and enforcement of federal drug laws was still more than a generation in the future. So patent medicines flourished; in hundreds of cities and villages over the land enterprising self-proclaimed druggists devised a livelihood for themselves by mixing some powders into pills or bottling some secret elixir--normally containing a high alcoholic content or some other habit-forming element--created some kind of a legend about this concoction, and sold the nostrum as the infallible cure for a wide variety of human (and animal) ailments. And many conservative old ladies, each one of them a pillar of the church and an uncompromising foe of liquor, cherished their favorite remedies to provide comfort during the long winter evenings. But of these myriads of patent-medicine manufacturers, only a scant few achieved the size, the recognition, and wide distribution of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and the other leading Comstock remedies. [Illustration: FIGURE 13.--Comstock factory buildings, about 1900.] [Illustration: FIGURE 14.--Wrapper for Longley's Great Western Panacea.] Of course, the continued growth of the business was a gradual process; it did not come all at once with the move to Morristown. Even in 1878, after eleven years in this village, the Comstock factory was not yet important enough to obtain mention in Everts' comprehensive _History of St. Lawrence County_.[8] But, as we have seen, additional land was purchased in 1877 and 1882, obviously bespeaking an expansion of the enterprise. In 1885, according to a time book, the pill factory regularly employed about thirty persons, plus a few others on an occasional basis. Mr. Comstock, from his residence across the river in Brockville, was the manager of the business; however, the operations were under the immediate charge of E. Kingsland, former chief clerk of the Judson and Comstock offices in New York City, who was brought up to Morristown as superintendent of the factory. E. Kingsland was a cousin of Edward A. Kingsland, one of the leading stationers in New York City, and presumably because of this relationship, Kingsland supplied a large part of Comstock's stationery requirements for many years. Kingsland in Morristown retired from the plant in 1885 and was succeeded by Robert G. Nicolson, who had been a foreman for a number of years. Nicolson, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, was brought to America as a child, first lived at Brockville, and then came to Morristown as foreman in the pill factory shortly after it was established. He was succeeded as superintendent by his own son, Robert Jr., early in the present century. The great majority of the employees of the pill factory were women--or, more properly, girls--in an era when it was not yet common-place for members of the fair sex to leave the shelter of their homes for paid employment. The wage rates during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s were $3 to $5 a week for girls and $7 to $12 a week for men; the last-named amount was an acceptable rate at that time for a permanent and experienced adult man. The factory management of this era was joyously unaware of minimum wages, fair employment laws, social security, antidiscrimination requirements, fair trade, food and drug acts, income taxes, and the remaining panoply of legal restrictions that harass the modern businessman. Since only a few scattered payroll records have been recovered, Comstock's maximum employment during the Morristown period is not known, or just when it was reached. In a brief sketch of the Indian Root Pill business, however, Mrs. Doris Planty, former Morristown town historian, mentions a work force of from "40 to 50" around the turn of the century. In 1875, twenty years after its original projection, the Utica & Black River Railroad finally came through the village, bisecting the Comstock property with a right-of-way thirty-six feet wide and dividing it thereafter into a "lower shop," where the pills and tonics were made, and the "upper shop," where the medicines were packaged and clerical duties performed. The superintendent and his family lived above the upper shop in an apartment; it was in the spacious attic above this apartment that the records of the business, in a scattered and ransacked condition, were found. Inasmuch as the first recorded sale of land to Comstock occurred in March 1876, almost simultaneously with the arrival of the railroad, it is a fair surmise that the second building was put up about this time. The coming of the railroad also put a station almost at the doorstep of the factory, and thereafter many shipments came and went by rail. The company's huge volume of mailings, often ten or fifteen bags a day, was also delivered directly to the trains, without going through the local post office. For some years, however, heavy shipments, including coal for the factory's boilers, continued to come by ship. The Brockville ferry also operated from a dock immediately adjacent to the railroad station; one end of the station was occupied by the United States Customs House. Almost from the time of its arrival in Morristown, the Black River Railroad operated a daily through Wagner Palace Sleeping Car from New York City via Utica and Carthage, and service over the same route was continued by the New York Central after it took over the North Country railroads in 1891. This meant that Mr. Comstock, when he had business in New York City, could linger in his factory until the evening train paused at the station to load the afternoon's outpouring of pills and almanacs, swing aboard the waiting Pullman, and ensconce himself comfortably in his berth, to awaken in the morning within the cavernous precincts of Grand Central Station--an ease and convenience of travel which residents of the North Country in the 1970s cannot help but envy. The daily sleeping car through Morristown to and from New York City survived as long as the railroad itself, into the early 1960s, thus outlasting both of the Comstocks--father and son. [Footnotes 8: Or perhaps Mr. Comstock merely failed to pay for an engraved plate and to order a book; these county histories were apparently very largely written and edited with an eye to their subscribers.] The pills were originally mixed by hand. In the summer of 1880 the factory installed a steam engine and belt-driven pill-mixing machinery. At least one rotary pill machine was purchased from England, from J.W. Pindar, and delivered to Comstock at a total cost (including ocean freight) of £19-10-9--about $100. One minor unsolved mystery is that a bill for a second, identical machine made out to A.J. White--with whom Comstock had not been associated for twenty years--is filed among the Comstock records; it can only be surmised that at this time Comstock and White were again on good terms, the memories of lawsuits, arrests, and prosecutions long since forgotten, and Comstock either ordered a machine in behalf of White or perhaps agreed to take one off his hands. At the time of this expansion, certain outbuildings and a dock for the unloading of coal were erected adjoining the lower building. During 1881 an underwater telegraph cable was laid between Morristown and Brockville, allowing immediate communication between the two Comstock factories. With the advent of the electrical age, around the turn of the century, the Comstock factory also installed a generator to supply lighting, the first in the locality to introduce this amenity. The wires were also extended to the four or five company-owned houses in the village, and then to other houses, so that the company functioned as a miniature public utility. Its electric lines in the village were eventually sold to the Central New York Power Corporation and incorporated into that system. Steam heat was also supplied to the railroad station and the customs house, and the company pumped water out of the river to the water tower on the hill above Pine Hill Cemetery, following the installation of the public water system. In 1908, Comstock built a large hotel across the street from the upper factory; sitting part way up the hill and surrounded by a wide veranda, it represented a conspicuous feature in the village and dominated the waterfront scene until its destruction by fire in 1925. The Comstock family, in 1910, also built a town hall and social center for the village. Adjacent to the lower shop a large boathouse was erected to shelter Mr. Comstock's yacht, the _Maga Doma_, a familiar sight on the river for many years. [Illustration: FIGURE 15.--The village of Morristown from the waterfront. Railroad depot, Comstock Hotel, and pill-factory buildings located left of center.] In any large city, of course, a factory employing, at most, forty or fifty workers would have passed unnoticed, and its owner could hardly expect to wield any great social or political influence. In a remote village like Morristown, things are quite different; a regular employer of forty persons creates a considerable economic impact. For two generations the Indian Root Pill factory supplied jobs, in an area where they were always scarce, and at a time when the old forest and dairy industries were already beginning to decline. But the recital of its close associations with the village makes it clear that the pill factory was more than a mere employer; for ninety years it provided a spirit that animated Morristown, pioneered in the introduction of utilities and certain social services, linked the village directly with the great outside world of drug stores and hypochondriacs, and distinguished it sharply from other, languishing St. Lawrence County villages. One may wonder whether Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills really did anyone any good. They certainly did heap many benefits upon all citizens of Morristown. [Illustration: FIGURE 16.--Depot, Comstock Hotel, and factory buildings (at right), about 1910.] While there was only a single Comstock medicine business, operated as a sole proprietorship until 1902, Comstock found it convenient to maintain several dummy companies--really no more than mailing addresses--for some years after the move to the North. Thus, in Morristown was to be found, at least in business and postal directories, besides the Comstock company itself, two other proprietary manufacturers: Judson Pill Co. and E. Kingsland & Co. The Judson Pill Co. preserved the name of Comstock's former partner, while use of the name E. Kingsland perhaps flattered the vanity of the former chief clerk and later plant superintendent. The major Kingsland product was Chlorinated Tablets, a sure cure for coughs, colds, hoarseness, bronchial irritation, influenza, diphtheria, croup, sore throat and all throat diseases; these were especially recommended by Dr. MacKenzie, Senior Physician in the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat (was there any such hospital?) in London, England. The Kingsland pills were also popularized under the name of Little Pink Granules. Over on the Canadian side of the river, where another plant approximately the same size as the Morristown facilities was in operation, the Comstock Company had assimilated the Dr. Howard Medicine Co. Dr. Howard's leading remedies were his Seven Spices for all Digestive Disorders and the Blood Builder for Brain and Body. The latter, in the form of pills, was prescribed as a positive cure for a wide array of ailments, but like many other patent medicines of the era, it was hinted that it had a particularly beneficial effect upon sexual vitality. They have an especial action (through the blood) upon the SEXUAL ORGANS of both Men and Women. It is a well recognized fact that upon the healthy activity of the sexual apparatus depend the mental and physical well-being of every person come to adult years. It is that which gives the rosy blush to the cheek, and the soft light to the eye of the maiden. The elastic step, the ringing laugh, and the strong right arm of the youth, own the same mainspring. How soon do irregularities rob the face of color, the eye of brightness! Everyone knows this. The blood becomes impoverished, the victim PALE. This pallor of the skin is often the outward mark of the trouble within. But to the sufferer there arise a host of symptoms, chiefest among which are loss of physical and nervous energy. Then Dr. Howard's BLOOD BUILDER steps into the breach and holds the fort. The impoverished Blood is enriched. The shattered nervous forces are restored. Vigor returns. Youth is recalled. Decay routed. The bloom of health again mantles the faded cheek. Improvement follows a few days' use of the pills; while permanent benefit and cure can only reasonably be expected when sufficient have been taken to enrich the Blood. Before the Blood Builder pills were taken, all their users were advised to have their bowels thoroughly cleansed by a laxative medicine and, happily, the company also made an excellent preparation for this purpose--Dr. Howard's Golden Grains. While the good doctor was modern enough--the circular quoted from was printed in the 1890s--to recognize the importance of the healthy activity of the sexual apparatus, such a suggestion should not be carried too far--so we find that the pills were also unrivaled for building up systems shattered by debauchery, excesses, self-abuse or disease. Along with the pills themselves was recommended a somewhat hardy regimen, including fresh air, adequate sleep, avoidance of lascivious thoughts, and bathing the private parts and buttocks twice daily in ice-cold water. [Illustration: FIGURE 17.--Card used in advertising Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets.] A few years after their initial introduction, Dr. Howard's Blood Builder Pills somehow became "electric"--this word surrounded by jagged arrows prominently featured on the outer wrapper--although the character of the improvement which added this new quality was not explained anywhere. The literature accompanying these remedies explained that "in the evening of an active, earnest and successful life, and in order that the public at large might participate in the benefit of his discoveries," Dr. Howard graciously imparted to the proprietors the composition, methods of preparation, and modes of using these medicines. In other words, he was obviously a public benefactor of the same stamp as Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard--although by the final years of the century, the old story about the long absence from home, the extended travels in remote lands, and the sudden discovery of some remarkable native remedy would probably have sounded a trifle implausible. *Putting the Pills Through* Given the characteristics of the patent-medicine business, its most difficult and essential function was selling--or what the Comstocks and their representatives frequently described in their letters as "putting the pills through." During the full century within which Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and their companion remedies were distributed widely over North America and, later, over the entire world, almost every form of advertising and publicity was utilized. And it is a strong presumption that the total costs of printing and publicity were much larger than those of manufacture and packaging. Initially, the selling was done largely by "travelers" calling directly upon druggists and merchants, especially those in rural communities. All of the Comstock brothers, with the exception perhaps of Lucius, seem to have traveled a large part of their time, covering the country from the Maritime Provinces to the Mississippi Valley, and from Ontario--or Canada West--to the Gulf. Their letters to the "home office" show that they were frequently absent for extended periods, visiting points which at the very dawn of the railroad era, in the 1840s and 1850s, must have been remote indeed. In the surviving letters we find occasional references to lame horses and other vicissitudes of travel, and one can also imagine the rigors of primitive trains, lake and river steamers, stagecoaches, and rented carriages, not to mention ill-prepared meals and dingy hotel rooms. Judson seems to have handled Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. J. Carlton Comstock, who died in 1853, covered the South and in fact maintained a residence in New Orleans; prior to the opening of the railroads, this city was also a point of entry for much of the West. George Wells Comstock made several extensive tours of the West, while William Henry spent much of his time in Canada West and, as we have seen, lived in Brockville after 1860. Andrew J. White spent most of his time traveling after he joined the firm in 1855; Moore also covered Canada West intensively, briefly for the Comstocks and then in opposition to them. Besides the partners themselves, the several successor Comstock firms had numerous agents and representatives. As early as 1851, during the dispute between Lucius and his brothers, it was stated in a legal brief that the partnership included, besides its manufacturing house in New York City, several hundred agencies and depots throughout every state and county in the Union. This assertion may have stretched the truth a bit, as most of the agents must have handled other products as well, but the distribution system for the pills was undoubtedly well organized and widely extended. Several full-time agents did work exclusively for the Comstocks; these included Henry S. Grew of St. John's, Canada East, who said he had traveled 20,000 miles in three years prior to 1853, and Willard P. Morse in the Middle West, whose signature is still extant on numerous shipping documents. While personal salemanship always must have been most effective in pushing the pills--and also useful in the allied task of collecting delinquent accounts--as the business grew the territory was far too vast to be covered by travelers, and so advertising was also used heavily. Hardly any method was neglected, but emphasis was always placed upon two media: almanacs and country newspapers. Millions of the almanacs poured out of the small Morristown railroad station. In the early years of the present century, for which the record has been found, from July until the following April shipments of almanacs usually ran well in excess of one million per month. At various times they were also printed in Spanish and in German; the Spanish version was for export, but the German was intended primarily for our own "native" Germans in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and elsewhere throughout the Middle West. Around the turn of the century, the patent-medicine almanac was so common that one could walk into any drug store and pick up three or four of them. Credit for the origination of the free patent-medicine almanac has been ascribed to Cyrenius C. Bristol, founder of the firm which Moore later took over and therefore an indirect predecessor of the Indian Root Pills. Whether or not this is strictly accurate, it is known that Bristol's Sarsaparilla Almanac was being printed as early as 1843 and by 1848 had expanded into an edition of 64 pages. [Illustration: FIGURE 18.--German circular for Judson's Mountain Herb Pills.] The Comstocks were almost as early. The first date they printed almanacs is not known, but by 1853 it was a regular practice, for the order book of that year shows that large batches of almanacs, frequently 500 copies, were routinely enclosed with every substantial order. Over their entire history it is quite reasonable that somewhere in the vicinity of one billion almanacs must have been distributed by the Comstock Company and its predecessors. As a matter of fact, back in the 1850s there was not merely a Comstock but also a Judson almanac. One version of the latter was the "Rescue of Tula," which recounted Dr. Cunard's rescue of the Aztec princess and his reward in the form of the secret of the Mountain Herb Pills. In the 1880s, Morse's Indian Root Pill almanac was a 34-page pamphlet, about two thirds filled with advertising and testimonials--including the familiar story of the illness of Dr. Morse's father and the dramatic return of his son with the life-saving herbs--but also containing calendars, astronomical data, and some homely good advice. Odd corners were filled with jokes, of which the following was a typical specimen: "Pa," said a lad to his father, "I have often read of people poor but honest; why don't they sometimes say, 'rich but honest'"? "Tut, tut, my son, nobody would believe them," answered the father. Before 1900 the detailed story of the discovery of Dr. Morse's pills was abridged to a brief summary, and during the 1920s this tale was abandoned altogether, although until the end the principal ingredients were still identified as natural herbs and roots used as a remedy by the Indians. In more recent years the character and purpose of Dr. Morse's pills also changed substantially. As recently as 1918, years after the passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906, they were still being recommended as a cure for: Biliousness Dyspepsia Constipation Sick Headache Scrofula Kidney Disease Liver Complaint Jaundice Piles Dysentery Colds Boils Malarial Fever Flatulency Foul Breath Eczema Gravel Worms Female Complaints Rheumatism Neuralgia La Grippe Palpitation Nervousness Further, two entire pages were taken in the almanac to explain how, on the authority of "the celebrated Prof. La Roche of Paris," appendicitis could be cured by the pills without resort to the surgeon's knife. Besides the almanacs, almost every known form of advertising in the preradio era was employed. Announcements were inserted in newspapers--apparently mostly rural newspapers--all over the country; the two remedies pushed most intensively were the Indian Root Pills and Judson's Mountain Herb Worm Tea. The latter always bore a true likeness of Tezuco, the Aztec chief who had originally conferred the secret of the medicine upon Dr. Cunard. Besides the Mountain Herb Worm Tea, there were also Mountain Herb Pills; it is not clear how the pills differed from the tea, but they were recommended primarily as a remedy for Diarrhoea Dropsy Debility Fever and Ague Female Complaints Headaches Indigestion Influenza Inflammation Inward Weakness Liver Complaints Lowness of Spirits Piles Stone and Gravel Secondary Symptoms with particular stress upon their value as a "great female medicine." Besides the major advertisement of the pills, consisting of an eight-inch column to be printed in each issue of the paper, smaller announcements were provided, to be inserted according to a specified monthly schedule among the editorial matter on the inside pages. Sample monthly announcements from the Judson Mountain Herb Pills contract used in 1860 were: JANUARY THE GREAT FEMALE MEDICINE The functional irregularities peculiar to the weaker sex, are invariably corrected without pain or inconvenience by the use of Judson's Mountain Herb Pills. They are the safest and surest medicine for all the diseases incidental to females of all ages, and more especially so in this climate. Ladies who wish to enjoy health should always have these Pills. No one who ever uses them once will ever allow herself to be without them. They remove all obstructions, purify the blood and give to the skin that beautiful, clear and healthful look so greatly admired in a beautiful and healthy woman. At certain periods these Pills are an indispensable companion. From one to four should be taken each day, until relief is obtained. A few doses occasionally, will keep the system healthy, and the blood so pure, that diseases cannot enter the body. MARCH DISEASES OF THE CHEST AND LUNGS These diseases are too well known to require any description. How many thousands are every year carried to the silent grave by that dread scourge Consumption, which always commences with a slight cough. Keep the blood pure and healthy by taking a few doses of JUDSON'S MOUNTAIN HERB PILLS each week, and disease of any kind is impossible. Consumption and lung difficulties always arise from particles of corrupt matter deposited in the air cells by bad blood. Purify that stream of life and it will soon carry off and destroy the poisonous matter; and like a crystal river flowing through a desert, will bring with it and leave throughout the body the elements of health and strength. As the river leaving the elements of fertility in its course, causes the before barren waste to bloom with flowers and fruit, so pure blood causes the frame to rejoice in strength and health, and bloom with unfading beauty. [Illustration: FIGURE 19.--Card used in advertising Judson's Mountain Herb Pills.] Any person who read the notices for both medicines carefully might have noticed with some surprise that the Mountain Herb Pills and the Indian Root Pills were somehow often recommended for many of the same diseases. In fact, the Mountain Herb Pills and the Indian Root Pills used identical text in explaining their effect upon several disagreeable conditions. Always prominent in this advertising were reminders of our fragile mortality and warnings, if proper medication were neglected, of an untimely consignment to the silent grave. Unfortunately, newspapers in the South had been utilized extensively just on the eve of the Civil War, and it undoubtedly proved impossible to supply customers in that region during the ensuing conflict. However, other advertising was given a military flavor and tied in with the war, as witness the following (for 1865): GENERAL ORDERS--No. 1 _Headquarters_ Department of this Continent and adjacent Islands Pursuant to Division and Brigade orders issued by 8,000 Field Officers, "On the Spot", where they are stationed. All Skedadlers, Deserters, Skulkers, and all others--sick, wounded and cripples--who have foresaken the cause of General Health, shall immediately report to one of the aforesaid officers nearest the point where the delinquent may be at the time this order is made known to him, and purchase one box of JUDSON'S MOUNTAIN HERB PILLS and pay the regulation price therefor. All who comply with the terms of this order, will receive a free pardon for past offences, and be restored to the Grand Army of General Health. A. GOOD HEALTH Lieutenant-General By order Dr. Judson, Adjutant-General Sold by all dealers. Twenty years later, when the Civil War had passed out of recent memory and Confederate currency was presumably becoming a curiosity, Comstock printed facsimiles of $20 Confederate bills,[9] with testimonials and advertisements upon the reverse side; it can be assumed that these had enough historical interest to circulate widely and attract attention, although each possessor must have felt a twinge of disappointment upon realizing that his bill was not genuine but merely an advertising gimmick. [Footnote 9: These facsimile bills were registered as a trademark at the United States Patent Office. In his registration application, Mr. Comstock described himself as a citizen of the United States, residing at Morristown, N.Y.--although he had served three terms as mayor of Brockville, Ontario, prior to this time.] Back in the 1850s, the Comstock Company in lower Manhattan had an advertising agent, one Silas B. Force, whose correspondence by some unexplained happenstance was also deposited in the loft of the Indian Root Pill building in Morristown, even though he was not an exclusive agent and served other clients besides the Comstocks. One of these was Dr. Uncas Brant, for whom Force had the following announcement printed in numerous papers: AN OLD INDIAN DOCTOR WHO HAD made his fortune and retired from business, will spend the remainder of his days in curing that dreadful disease--CONSUMPTION--FREE OF CHARGE: his earnest desire being to communicate to the world his remedies that have proved successful in more than 3,000 cases. He requires each applicant to send him a minute description of the symptoms, with two Stamps (6 cts) to pay the return letter, in which he will return his _advice prescription_, with directions for preparing the medicines &c. _The Old Doctor_ hopes that those afflicted will not, on account of delicacy, refrain from consulting him because he makes _No Charge_. His sole object in advertising is to do all the good he can, before he dies. He feels that he is justly celebrated for cure of Consumption, Asthma, Bronchitis, Nervous Affections, Coughs, Colds, &c. Address DOCT. UNCAS BRANT Box 3531, P.O., New York This type of an apparently free diagnosis of medical ills, prompted solely by the benevolence of some elderly or retired person, was a familiar petty swindle around the middle of the last century. The newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old nurses, or Indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer. The victim would receive in reply a recipe for the proper medicine, always with the advice that great care must be taken to prepare it exactly as directed, and with the further advice that if the ingredients should not prove to be conveniently available the benevolent old doctor or retired clergyman could provide them for a trifling sum. Invariably, the afflicted patient would discover that the ingredients specified were obscure ones, not kept by one druggist in a hundred and unknown to most of them. Thus, he would be obliged, if he persisted in the recommended cure, to send his money to the kindly old benefactor. Frequently, he would receive no further reply or, at best, would receive some concoction costing only a few cents to compound. The scheme was all the safer as it was carried on exclusively by mail, and the swindler would usually conclude each undertaking under any given name before investigation could be initiated. Besides participating in such schemes, Force apparently devoted a large part of his energy in collecting accounts due him or, in turn, in being dunned by and seeking to postpone payment to newspapers with whom he was delinquent in making settlement. Other forms of advertising employed over the years included finely engraved labels, circulars and handbills, printed blotters, small billboards, fans, premiums sent in return for labels, a concise--_very_ concise--reference dictionary, and trade cards of various sorts. One trade card closely resembled a railroad pass; this was in the 1880s when railroad passes were highly prized and every substantial citizen aspired to own one. Thus, almost everyone would have felt some pride in carrying what might pass, at a glance, as a genuine pass on the K.C.L.R.R.; although it was signed only by "Good Health" as the general agent, entitled the bearer merely to ride on foot or horseback and was actually an advertisement of Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets. Another card played somewhat delicately but still unmistakably on the Indian Root Pills' capacity to restore male virility. This card pictured a fashionably dressed tomcat, complete with high collar, cane and derby, sitting somewhat disconsolately on a fence as the crescent moon rose behind him, with these reflections: How terribly lonesome I feel! How queer, To be sitting alone, with nobody near, Oh, how I wish Maria was here, Mon dieu! The thought of it fills me with horrible doubt, I should smile, I should blush, I should wail, I should shout, Just suppose some fellow has cut me out! Me out! And underneath the lesson is given: Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills The Best Family Pill in use [Illustration: FIGURE 20.--A trade card advertising Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets, which closely resembled a railroad pass.] Testimonials submitted voluntarily by happy users of the pills were always widely featured in the almanacs, newspaper advertisements, and handbills. Although the easy concoction of the stories about Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard might suggest that there would have been no hesitation in fabricating these testimonials, it is probable that they were genuine; at least, many have survived in the letters scattered over the floor of the Indian Root Pill factory. In some cases one might feel that the testimonials were lacking in entire good faith, for many of them were submitted by dealers desiring lenient credit or other favors. Witness, for example, the following from B. Mollohan of Mt. Pleasant, Webster County, West Va., on April 16, 1879: Pleas find here enclosed Two Dollars & 50 cts $2 _50_ cts for which pleas place to my credit and return receipt to me for same. I cant praise your Dr Morse pill two high never before in all my recolection has there bin a meddison here that has given such general satisfaction. I hope the pills will always retain their high standing and never bee counterfeited.... I could sell any amt Pills allmost if money was not so scarce. I have to let some out on credit to the Sick and Poor & wait some time though I am accountable to you for all I recd & will pay you as fast as I sell & collect ... I have about one Doz Box on hand. Mollohan's complaint about the shortage of money and the long delay in collecting many accounts reflected a condition that prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. Money was scarce, and the economy of many rural communities was still based largely on the barter system, so that it was very difficult for farmers to generate cash for store goods. Consequently, country storekeepers had to be generous in extending credit, and, in turn, manufacturers and jobbers had to be lenient in enforcing collection. Not all of the storekeepers could write as neatly and clearly as Mollohan. The following letter, quoted in full, from Thomas Cathey of Enfield, Illinois, on January 23, 1880, not merely presented a problem relating to the company's policy of awarding exclusive territories but offered considerable difficulty in deciphering: mr CumStock der ser i thaut i Wod rite yo u a few lineS to inform you that i was the fir St agent for you pills in thiS Setlement but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op him if you pleeS mr CumStock i Sent you too dollars the 21 p leeS Credet my a Count With hit mr. Cumsto Ck i Want you to Send mee Sum of you pam pletS i Want you to Send mee right of three tow nShipS aS i am Working up a good trad her i wan t indin Cree an enfield an Carnie tonnShipS rite Son aS poSSible an let me know whether you will let me have thoSe townShipS or not for my territory i Sold a box of pillS to melven willSon his gir l She haS the ChilS for three yer and he tride eve n thang he cood her wan nothing never dun her eny good one box of you pills brok them on her tha ar the beSt pillS i ever Saw in my life tha ar the beSt medeSon for the ChillS i ever Saw an rumiteS i am giting up a good trad i Want you to Send me Sum of you pampletS i want you to Stop theSe oth er agentS that iS botheran me an oblige you rite Son. enfield White Co. illS thomaS Cathey Sadly, we do not know how the company handled Mr. Cathey's request for sole representation in three Illinois townships. After the pills achieved wide recognition and other methods of publicity, chiefly the almanacs, were well established, newspaper advertising was terminated. An invitation to agents (about 1885) declared that For some years past they have not been advertised in newspapers, they being filled with sensational advertisements of quack nostrums got up for no other purpose than catch-penny articles ... The Indian Root Pills obviously claimed a more lofty stature than other, common proprietary remedies. The exclusive representation scheme was also a partial substitution for newspaper advertising; the company was aggressive in soliciting additional agents--aiming at one in every town and village--and then in encouraging them to push the pills by offering prizes such as watches, jewelry, and table utensils.[10] [Footnote 10: In connection with this offer the pills were priced to agents at $2 per dozen boxes--$24 per gross--and were to be retailed at $3 per dozen--25¢ per box. Other agreements, however, probably intended for more substantial dealers, specified a price of $16 per gross for the Indian Root Pills.] [Illustration: FIGURE 21.--Cover for booklet used as a circular describing the Indian Root Pills.] What were the ingredients of the Indian Root Pills and the other Comstock preparations? Originally, the formulas for the various remedies were regarded as closely held secrets, divulged only to proprietors and partners--and not even to all of them--and certainly never revealed to the purchasers. But despite this secrecy, charges of counterfeiting and imitating popular preparations were widespread. In many cases, the alleged counterfeits were probably genuine--to the extent that either of these terms has meaning--for it was a recurrent practice for junior partners and clerks at one drug house to branch off on their own, taking some of the secrets with them--just as Andrew B. White left Moore and joined the Comstocks, bringing the Indian Root Pills with him. In the latter years, under the rules of the Federal Food and Drug Act, the ingredients were required to be listed on the package; thus we know that the Indian Root Pills, in the 1930s and 1940s, contained aloes, mandrake, gamboge, jalap, and cayenne pepper. _Aloe_ is a tropical plant of which the best known medicinal varieties come from Socotra and Zanzibar; those received by the Comstock factory were generally described as Cape (of Good Hope) _Aloe_. The juice _Aloes_ is extracted from the leaves of this plant and since antiquity has been regarded as a valuable drug, particularly for its laxative and vermifuge properties. _Mandrake_ has always been reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities. _Gamboge_ is a large tree native to Ceylon and Southeast Asia, which produces a resinous gum, more commonly used by painters as a coloring material, but also sometimes employed in medicine as a cathartic. _Jalap_ is a flowering plant which grows only at high altitudes in Mexico, and its root produces an extract with a powerful purgative effect. All of these ingredients possessed one especial feature highly prized by the patent-medicine manufacturers of the nineteenth century, i.e., they were derived from esoteric plants found only in geographically remote locations. One does find it rather remarkable, however, that the native Indian chiefs who confided the secrets of these remedies to Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard were so familiar with drugs originating in Asia and Africa.[11] The Indians may very well have been acquainted with the properties of jalap, native to this continent, but the romantic circumstances of its discovery, early in the last century seem considerably overdrawn, as the medicinal properties of jalap were generally recognized in England as early as 1600. Whether the formula for the Indian Root Pills had been constant since their "discovery"--as all advertising of the company implied--we have no way of knowing for sure. However, the company's book of trade receipts for the 1860s shows the recurring purchase of large quantities of these five drugs, which suggests that the ingredients did remain substantially unchanged for over a century. For other remedies manufactured by the company, the ingredients purchased included: Anise Seed Black Antimony Calomel Camphor Gum Arabic Gum Asphaltum Gum Tragacanth Hemlock Oil Horehound Laudanum Licorice Root Magnolia Water Muriatic Acid Saltpetre Sienna Oil Sulphur Wormseed It is not known where the calomel (mercurous chloride) and some of the other harsher ingredients were used--certainly not in the Indian Root Pills or the Mountain Herb Worm Tea--for the company frequently incorporated warnings against the use of calomel in its advertising and even promised rewards to persons proving that any of its preparations contained calomel. Less active ingredients used to supply bulk and flavor included alcohol, turpentine, sugar, corn starch, linseed meal, rosin, tallow, and white glue. Very large quantities of sugar were used, for we find that Comstock was buying one 250-pound barrel of sugar from C.B. Herriman in Ogdensburg approximately once a month. In the patent-medicine business it was necessary, of course, that the pills and tonics must be palatable, neutralizing the unpleasant flavor of some of the active ingredients; therefore large quantities of sugar and of pleasant-tasting herbs were required. It was also desirable, for obvious reasons, to incorporate some stimulant or habit-forming element into the various preparations. [Footnote 11: Actually, the formula for the Indian Root Pills would seem to have corresponded closely with that for "Indian Cathartic Pills" given in _Dr. Chase's Recipes_, published in 1866. These were described as follows: Aloes and gamboge, of each 1 oz.; mandrake and blood-root, with gum myrrh, of each 1/4 oz.; gum camphor and cayenne, of each 1-1/2 drs.; ginger, 4 oz.; all finely pulverized and thoroughly mixed, with thick mucilage (made by putting a little water upon equal quantities of gum arabic and gum tragacanth) into pill mass; then formed into common sized pills. Dose: Two to four pills, according to the robustness of the patient.] A register of incoming shipments for the year 1905 shows that the factory was still receiving large quantities of aloes, gamboge, mandrake, jalap, and pepper. One new ingredient being used at this time was talc, some of which originated at Gouverneur, within a few miles of the pill manufactory, but more of it was described as "German talc." The same register gives the formulas for three of the company's other preparations. One of these, the _Nerve & Bone Liniment_, was simply compounded of four elements: 3 gal. Turpentine 2 qts. Linseed Oil 2 lbs. Hemlock 2 lbs. Concentrated Amonia. The formula for the _Condition Powders_ (for horses and livestock) was far more complex, consisting of: 4 lbs. Sulphur 4 lbs. Saltpetre 4 lbs. Black Antimony 4 lbs. Feongreek Seed 8 lbs. Oil Meal 1-1/2 oz. Arsenic 2 oz. Tart Antimony 6 lbs. Powdered Rosin 2 lbs. Salt 2 lbs. Ashes 4 lbs. Brand (Bran-?). The name of the third preparation was not given, but the ingredients were: 1 oz. Dry White Lead 1 oz. Oxide of Zinc 1/2 oz. Precipitated Chalk 3 oz. Glycerine Add 1 lb. Glue. [Illustration: FIGURE 22.--A partial list of remedies offered for sale by Lucius Comstock in 1854, shortly after the separation of the old company into the rival firms of Comstock & Co. and Comstock & Brother.] Originally, Comstock and its predecessor firms marketed a large number of remedies. In 1854, Comstock & Company--then controlled by Lucius Comstock--listed nearly forty of its own preparations for sale, namely: Oldridge's Balm of Columbia George's Honduras Sarsaparilla East India Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary Balsam Linn's Pills and Bitters Oil of Tannin, for Leather Nerve & Bone Liniment (Hewe's) Nerve & Bone Liniment (Comstock's) Indian Vegetable Elixir Hay's Liniment for Piles Tooth Ache Drops Kline Tooth Drops Carlton's Nerve and Bone Liniment, for Horses Condition Powders, for Horses Pain Killer Lin's Spread Plasters Carlton's Liniment for the Piles, warranted to cure Dr. Mc Nair's Acoustic Oil, for Deafness Dr. Larzetti's Acoustic Oil, for Deafness Salt Rheum Cure Azor's Turkish Wine Dr. Larzetti's Juno Cordial, or Procreative Elixir British Heave Powders All of the foregoing were medicines for which Lucius claimed to be the sole proprietor--although it is improbable that he manufactured all of them: several of them were probably identical preparations under different labels. In addition to these, he offered a larger list of medicines as a dealer. Brother J. Carlton Comstock must have been the main originator of medicines within the firm; he seems to have specialized largely in veterinary remedies, although the liniment for the piles also stood to his credit. Despite Lucius' claim to sole proprietorship of these remedies, the departing brothers also manufactured and sold most of the identical items, adding two or three additional preparations, such as Dr. Chilton's Fever and Ague Pills and Youatt's Gargling Oil (for animals). Aside from J. Carlton Comstock and Judson, the originators of most of the other preparations are cloaked in mystery; most of them were probably entirely fictitious. Admittedly, William Youatt (1776-1847), for whom several of the animal remedies were named, was an actual British veterinarian and his prescriptions were probably genuine, but whether he authorized their sale by proprietary manufacturers or was himself rewarded in any way are questions for speculation. The versatile Dr. Larzetti seems to have experimented both with impotency and deafness, but his ear oil--a number of specimens of which were still on hand in the abandoned factory--was identical in every respect with Dr. McNair's oil, as the labels and directions, aside only from the names of the doctors, were exactly the same for both preparations. In fact, some careless printer had even made up a batch of circulars headed "Dr. Mc Nair's Acoustic Oil" but concluding with the admonition, "Ask for Larzetti's Acoustic Oil and take no other." Presumably simple Americans who were distrustful of foreigners would take Mc Nair's oil, but more sophisticated persons, aware of the accomplishments of doctors in Rome and Vienna, might prefer Larzetti's preparation. [Illustration: FIGURE 23.--Dr. McNair's and Dr. Larzetti's acoustic oil apparently were identical in every respect. Labels and directions, with the difference only of the doctors' names, were quite obviously printed from the same type.] As the century moved along, the Comstock factory at Morristown reduced the number of remedies it manufactured, and concentrated on the ones that were most successful, which included, besides the Indian Root Pills, Judson's Mountain Herb Pills, Judson's Worm Tea, Carlton's Condition Powders, Carlton's Nerve & Bone Liniment, and Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets. At some undisclosed point, Carlton's Nerve & Bone Liniment for Horses, originally registered with the Smithsonian Institution on June 30, 1851, ceased to be a medicine for animals and became one for humans. And sometime around 1920 the Judson name disappeared, the worm medicine thereafter was superseded by Comstock's Worm Pellets. Long before this, Judson had been transposed into somewhat of a mythical character--"old Dr. Judson"--who had devised the Dead Shot Worm Candy on the basis of seventy years' medical experience. During the final years of the Comstock business in Morristown, in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, only three items were manufactured and sold: the Indian Root Pills, the Dead Shot Worm Pellets and Comstock's N & B Liniment.[12] The worm pellets had been devised by Mrs. Hill, "an old English nurse of various and extended experience in the foundling hospitals of Great Britain." Besides its chemicals and herbs, the Comstock factory was a heavy consumer of pillboxes and bottles. While the company advertised, in its latter years, that "our pills are packaged in metal containers--not in cheap wooden boxes," they were, in fact, packaged for many decades in small oval boxes made of a thin wooden veneer. These were manufactured by Ira L. Quay of East Berne, New York, at a price of 12¢ per gross. The pill factory often must have been a little slow in paying, for Quay was invariably prodding for prompt remittance, as in this letter of December 25, 1868: Mr Wm h comstock Dear sir we have sent you one tierce & 3 cases of pill boxes wich we want you to send us a check for as soon as you git this for we have to pay it the first of next month & must have the money if you want eney moure boxes we will send them & wait for the money till the first of april youres truly Quay & Champion Quay continued to supply the boxes for at least fifteen years, during which his need for prompt payment never diminished. Comstock also bought large quantities of bottles, corks, packing boxes, and wrappers. Throughout the company's long existence, however, more frequent payments were made to printers and stationers--for the heavy flow of almanacs, handbills, labels, trade cards, direction sheets, and billheads--than for all the drugs and packaging materials. In the success achieved by the Indian Root Pills, the printing press was just as important a contributor as the pill-mixing machine. *The Final Years* When William Henry Comstock, Sr., moved the Indian Root Pill business to Morristown, in 1867, he was--at age 37--at least approaching middle life. Yet he was still to remain alive, healthy, and in direct charge of the medicine business for more than half a century longer. And the golden era of the patent-medicine business may be said to have coincided very closely with Mr. Comstock's active career--from about 1848 to 1919. [Footnote 12: However, additional items were manufactured by the Dr. Howard Medicine Co., affiliated with the Comstock factory in Brockville. Also, during World War II the company accepted an Army contract for the manufacture and packaging of foot powder.] [Illustration: FIGURE 24.--In its final years the Comstock factory discontinued most of its old remedies and concentrated upon the three most successful: Comstock's Dead Shot Worm Pellets, Comstock's N. & B. Liniment, and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills.] While no schedule of sales, net income, or financial results are available, the fragmentary records make it obvious that the business continued to flourish beyond World War I, and long after the passage of the first Food and Drug Act--in 1906. The almanacs were still printed as recently as 1938; while the labels and other advertising matter abandoned their ornate nineteenth-century style and assumed a distinctly modern aspect--to the extent of introducing comic-style picture stories, featuring the small boy who lacked energy to make the little league baseball team (he had worms), and the girl who lacked male admirers because of pimples on her face (she suffered from irregular elimination). Sales volume of the Morristown factory, however, apparently did reach a peak early in the present century--perhaps around 1910--and began a more rapid decline during the 1920s. During this same period the geographical character of the market shifted significantly; as domestic orders dropped off, a very substantial foreign business, particularly in Latin America, sprang up. While this did not compensate fully for the loss of domestic sales, it did provide a heavy volume that undoubtedly prolonged the life of the Indian Root Pill factory by several decades. William Henry Comstock, Sr., who first came to Brockville in 1860, at a time when the struggle with White for the control of the pills was still in progress, married a Canadian girl, Josephine Elliot, in 1864; by this marriage he had one son, Edwin, who lived only to the age of 28. In 1893 Comstock married, for a second time, Miss Alice J. Gates, and it is a favorable testimony to the efficacy of some of his own virility medicines that at age 67 he sired another son, William Henry Comstock II (or "Young Bill") on July 4, 1897. In the meanwhile, the elder Comstock had become one of the most prominent citizens of Brockville, which he served three terms as mayor and once represented in the Canadian parliament. Besides his medicine factories on both sides of the river, he was active in other business and civic organizations, helped to promote the Brockville, Westport & Northwestern Railway, and was highly regarded as a philanthropist. Although he lived well into the automobile age, he always preferred his carriage, and acquired a reputation as a connoisseur and breeder of horses. As remarked earlier, his steam yacht was also a familiar sight in the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River. The medicine business in Morristown was operated as a sole proprietorship by Comstock from the establishment here in 1867 up until 1902, when it was succeeded by W.H. Comstock Co., Ltd., a Canadian corporation. St. Lawrence County deeds record the transfer of the property--still preserving the 36-foot strip for the railroad--from personal to corporate ownership at that time. Comstock--the same callow youth who had been charged with rifling Lucius' mail in the primitive New York City of 1851--came to the end of his long life in 1919. He was succeeded immediately by his son, William Henry II, who had only recently returned from military service during World War I. According to Mrs. Planty, former Morristown historian, "Young Bill" had been active in the business before the war and was making an inspection of the company's depots in the Orient, in the summer of 1914, when he was stranded in China by the cancellation of transpacific shipping services and was therefore obliged to cross China and Russia by the Transiberian Railway. This story, however, strains credulity a trifle, as the journey would have brought him closer to the scene of conflict at that time, and he was, in any event, only 17 years old when these events are supposed to have occurred. The decline of the patent-medicine business was ascribed by Stewart Holbrook in his _Golden Age of Quackery_ to three main factors: the Pure Food and Drug Acts; the automobile; and higher standards of public education. All of these were, of course, strongly in evidence by the 1920s, when William Henry Comstock II was beginning his career as the head of the Indian Root Pill enterprise. Nevertheless, the Morristown plant was still conducting a very respectable business at this time and was to continue for some four decades longer. The Comstock enterprise never seemed to have been much embarrassed by the muckraking attacks that surrounded the passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906. Aside from the enforcement of these measures by the energetic Harvey Wiley, the two most effective private assaults upon the patent-medicine trade probably were the exposures by Samuel Hopkins Adams in a series of articles in _Collier's_ magazine in 1905-1906, under the title, "The Great American Fraud," and the two volumes entitled, _Nostrums and Quackery_, embodying reprints of numerous articles in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ over a period of years. Both sources named names fearlessly and described consequences bluntly. But the Comstock remedies, either because they may have been deemed harmless, or because the company's location in a small village in a remote corner of the country enabled it to escape unfriendly attention, seemed to have enjoyed relative immunity from these attacks. At least, none of the Comstock remedies was mentioned by name.[13] To be sure, these preparations--or at least those destined for consumption within the United States--had to comply with the new drug laws, to publish their ingredients, and over a period of time to reduce sharply the extensive list of conditions which they were supposed to cure. Nevertheless, it seems probable that the general change in public attitudes rather than any direct consequences of legislative enforcement caused the eventual demise of the Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. [Illustration: FIGURE 25.--Comstock packaging building (upper floor used as residence for manager--note laundry) at left, hotel at right. Ferry slip directly ahead. About 1915.] Foreign business began to assume considerable importance after 1900; shipments from Morristown to the West Indies and Latin America were heavy, and the company also listed branches (perhaps no more than warehouses or agencies) in London, Hongkong, and Sydney, Australia. Certain of the order books picked up out of the litter on the floor of the abandoned factory give a suggestion of sales volume since 1900: [Footnote 13: Dr. William's Pink Pills, also headquartered in Brockville, were not so fortunate, as they were mentioned disparagingly in both the _Collier's_ and American Medical Association articles. Among numerous proprietary manufacturers who protested, blustered, or threatened legal action against _Collier's_, the Dr. Williams Co. was one of only two who actually instituted a libel suit.] SALES OF DR. MORSE'S INDIAN ROOT PILLS gross | | Estimated | | Dollar | Domestic Foreign Total | Amount -----+-------------------------------+------------ 1900 | --- --- 6,238 | 100,000 1910 | 5,975 --- --- | 96,000 1920 | 3,243 --- --- | 52,000 1930 | --- 1,893 --- | 30,000 1941 | 316 --- --- | 5,000 The foregoing data show sales of the Indian Root Pills only; this was by far the most important product, but the factory was also selling Worm Pellets, Judson's Pills (up to 1920), and N & B Liniment. Also, this tabulation excludes sales in quantities less than one gross, and there were actually many such smaller orders. Only physical shipments were shown in the records recovered, and the dollar volume is the author's computation at $16 per gross, the price which prevailed for many years. Through 1900 there was only a single order book; beginning prior to 1910, separate domestic and foreign order books were introduced, but most of them have been lost. On the assumption that there was a fair volume of foreign sales in 1910, total sales must have continued to climb through the decade then ending, but by 1920 domestic sales--and probably total sales--had dropped materially. The number of employees, apparently about forty at the peak of the business, had dropped to thirteen according to the 1915 paybook but recovered slightly to sixteen in 1922. These fragmentary data suggest that the Morristown branch of the Comstock enterprise probably never grossed much over $100,000, but in an era when $12 or $15 represented a good weekly wage and the clutching grasp of the income-tax collector was still unknown, this was more than adequate to support the proprietor in comfort and to number him among the more influential citizens of the district. It is not known how Morristown sales compared with those of the Brockville factory, but it may be assumed that the company utilized its "dual nationality" to the utmost advantage, to benefit from favorable tariff laws and minimize the restrictions of both countries. The Morristown plant supplied the lucrative Latin American trade, while during the era of Imperial preference, Brockville must have handled the English, Oriental, and Australian business. [Illustration: FIGURE 26.--In its final years the Comstock advertising assumed a modern guise. Depicted here is the N. & B. Liniment (originally registered with the Smithsonian as Carlton's Celebrated Nerve and Bone Liniment for horses, in 1851).] For many decades--from 1900 at least up into the 1930s--a number of very large shipments, normally 100 gross or more in single orders, were made to Gilpin, Langdon & Co., Baltimore, and to Columbia Warehouse Co. in St. Louis, important regional distributors. Many substantial orders were also received from legitimate drug houses, such as Lehn & Fink; Schieffelin & Co.; Smith, Kline & French; and McKesson & Robbins. Curiously, A.J. White & Co. of New York City also appears in the order book, around 1900, as an occasional purchaser. Among the foreign orders received in 1930 the United Fruit Company was, by a wide margin, the largest single customer. Pills destined for the Latin American market were packaged alternatively in "glass" or "tin," and were also labeled "Spanish" or "English," as the purchasers might direct. Spanish language almanacs and other advertising matter were generally inserted in the foreign parcels, along with many copies of "tapes"--the advertisements of the worm pills conspicuously illustrated with a horrifying picture of an enormous tapeworm. Sales volume began to decline more precipitously in the 1930s, and the Morristown factory was no longer working even close to capacity. The domestic order book for 1941 shows sales of the Indian Root Pills, in quantities of one gross or more, of only 316 gross. The Royal Drug Co. of Chicago gave one single order for 44 gross, and Myers Bros. Drug Co. of St. Louis bought 25 gross in one shot, but otherwise orders in excess of five gross were rare, and those for one gross alone--or for one half gross, one fourth gross, or one sixth gross--were far more common. The number of orders was still substantial, and the packing and mailing clerks must have been kept fairly busy, but they were working hard for a sharply reduced total volume. Some stimulus was provided for the factory during the war years by a military contract for foot powder, but the decline became even more precipitous after the conflict. The Comstock Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1925, never to be rebuilt. And by the late 1940s the once-busy railroad bisecting the factory property--the old Utica & Black River--had deteriorated to one lonely train crawling over its track in each direction, on weekdays only, but still carrying a New York City sleeping car. The 1950 order book reveals a business that had withered away to almost nothing. Once again, as in 1900, both foreign and domestic sales were recorded in a single book, but now foreign sales greatly outstripped the domestic. In fact, a mere 18 gross of the pills were sold--in quantities of one gross or more--in the domestic market in that year, contrasting sadly with nearly 6,000 gross in 1910. Even the Henry P. Gilpin Co. of Baltimore, which at one time had been ordering 100 gross or more every month or six weeks, took only a meager four gross during the entire year. There were a large number of very small shipments--such as four boxes of pills here, or a bottle of liniment there--but these did not aggregate very much and gave the appearance of merely accommodating individual customers who could no longer find their favorite remedies in their own local drug stores. The foreign business--chiefly in the West Indies, Puerto Rico, and South America--was still fairly substantial in 1950, amounting to 579 gross of the Indian Root Pills, but this was far from compensating for the virtual disappearance of the domestic market. At the old price of $16 per gross--which may no longer have been correct in 1950--the Morristown factory could not have taken in a great deal more than $10,000--hardly enough to justify its continued operation. In any case, it was obviously only the foreign business that kept the plant operating as long as it did; without that it would probably have closed its doors 20 years earlier. A number of customers were, however, faithful to the Comstock Company for very many years. Schieffelin & Co. and McKesson & Robbins were both important customers way back in the 1840s, and their favor had been an object of dispute in the split between Lucius and the other brothers in 1851. Schieffelin still appeared frequently in the order books up to the 1920s; during the final years McKesson & Robbins was by far the largest single domestic customer. A number of other firms--John L. Thompson Sons & Co. of Troy, N.Y.; T. Sisson & Co. of Hartford, Conn.; and Gilman Brothers of Boston, Mass.--appear both in the 1896 and the 1950 order books, although unfortunately the quantities taken had fallen from one or two gross at a shot in the earlier year to a mere quarter gross or a few dozen boxes by 1950. Toward the end, in the late 1950s, employment in the factory dropped to only three persons--J.M. Barney (foreman), Charles Pitcher, and Florence Cree--and they were only doing maintenance work and filling such few orders, mostly in quantities of a few dozen boxes only, that came to the factory unsolicited. Gone were the days of travelers scouring the back country, visiting country druggists, and pushing the pills, while simultaneously disparaging rival or "counterfeit" concoctions; gone were the days when the almanacs and other advertising circulars poured out of Morristown in the millions of copies; long since vanished were the sweeping claims of marvelous cures for every conceivable ailment. In these final days the Indian Root Pills, now packaged in a flat metal box with a sliding lid, were described modestly as the Handy Vegetable Laxative. And the ingredients were now printed on the box; nothing more was heard of Dr. Morse's remarkable discovery gleaned during his long sojourn with the Indians of the western plains. [Illustration: FIGURE 27.--The pill-mixing building, about 1928 (building torn down in 1971).] Although the records disclose nothing to this effect, it is a fair premise that the Comstock family often must have considered closing the Morristown plant after World War II and, more particularly, in the decade of the 1950s. Such inclinations may, however, have been countered by a willingness to let the plant run as long as a trickle of business continued and it did not fall too far short of covering expenses. The last few surviving employees were very elderly, and their jobs may have been regarded as a partial substitute for pensions. This view is evidenced by an injury report for George Clute, who suffered a fit of coughing while mixing pills in January 1941; he was then 77 years old and had been working in the factory for 34 years. The final paybooks show deductions for Social Security and unemployment insurance--specimens of vexatious red tape that the factory had avoided for most of its existence. The decision to close the Morristown factory was finally forced upon the family, on May 15, 1959, by the death of William Henry Comstock II--"Young Bill"--who had been president of the company since 1921. Like his father, "Young Bill" Comstock had been a prominent citizen of Brockville for many years, served a term as mayor--although he was defeated in a contest for a parliamentary seat--was also active in civic and social organizations, and achieved recognition as a sportsman and speedboat operator. [Illustration: FIGURE 28.--The packaging and office building at left, depot in center, and Comstock Hotel at right. Canadian shore and city of Brockville (location of another Comstock factory) in background.] The actual end of the business came in the spring of 1960. The frequency and size of orders had dropped sharply, although the names of many of the old customers still appeared, as well as individuals who would send one dollar for three boxes of the pills. These small shipments were usually mailed, rather than going by express or freight, as formerly. The very last two shipments, appropriately, were to old customers: One package of one-dozen boxes of pills on March 31, 1960, to Gilman Brothers of Boston, and two-dozen boxes to McKesson & Robbins at Mobile, Alabama, on April 11. And with this final consignment the factory closed its doors, concluding ninety-three years of continuous operation in the riverside village of Morristown. Very little of this story remains to be told. Mrs. Comstock became president of the company during its liquidation--and thus was a successor to her _father-in-law_, who had first entered the business as a clerk, _119 years earlier_, in 1841. The good will of the company and a few assets were sold to the Milburn Company of Scarborough, Ontario, but the Comstock business was terminated, and the long career of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills brought to a close. The few superannuated employees were assured of protection against all medical expenses, by the company or by the Comstock family, for the rest of their lives. A few years later the associated Canadian factory standing in the heart of Brockville was torn down; during its lifetime that community had grown up around it, from a village to a flourishing small city. The buildings in Morristown were sold to other parties and left to stand untenanted and forlorn for years. The upper (packaging) building, from which the records were recovered, remains in fair condition and may yet be renovated for some further use. The lower (pill-mixing) building, after standing derelict and at the point of collapse for many years, was finally torn down in 1971. The hotel, a large water tank behind the factory, and the combination depot and customs house have all vanished from the scene. The shed where the Comstocks kept their yacht has been maintained and still shelters several boats, but the ferry slip just below the factory steps is now abandoned, and no longer do vessels ply back and forth across the river to connect Morristown and Brockville. The railroad only survived the passing of the factory by a year or two and is now memorialized by no more than a line of decaying ties. The main highway leading westward from Ogdensburg toward the Thousand Islands area has been straightened and rerouted to avoid Morristown, so that now only the straying or misguided traveler will enter the village. If he does enter he will find a pleasant community, scenically located on a small bay of the St. Lawrence River, commanding an enticing view of the Canadian shore, and rising in several stages above the lower level, where the factory once stood; but it is a somnolent village. No longer do river packet steamers call at the sagging pier, no longer do trains thread their way between the factory buildings and chug to a halt at the adjacent station. No longer do hope-giving pills and elixirs, or almanacs and circulars in the millions, pour out of Morristown destined for country drugstores and lonely farmhouses over half a continent. Only memories persist around the empty ferry slip, the vanished railroad station, and the abandoned factory buildings--for so many years the home of the distinguished Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. *Bibliography* The principal source of information for this history of the Comstock medicine business comprises the records, letters, documents, and advertising matter found in the abandoned pill-factory building at Morristown, New York. Supplemental information was obtained from biographies, local and county histories, old city directories, genealogies, back files of newspapers, and materials from the office of the St. Lawrence County Historian, at the courthouse, Canton, New York. Two standard histories of the patent-medicine era in America are: Holbrook, Stewart H. _Golden Age of Quackery._ New York City: Macmillan Co. 1959. Young, J.H. _The Toadstool Millionaires, A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation._ Princeton University Press. 1961. Early in the present century, during the "exposure" of the patent-medicine industry, two principal critical works also were published, each highly specific and naming names fearlessly: Adams, Samuel Hopkins. _The Great American Fraud._ Serially in _Collier's_ Magazine in 1905-1906. (Reprinted in book form, 1906.) American Medical Association. _Nostrums and Quackery._ Chicago: American Medical Association Press. (Reprints from the _Journal of the American Medical Association_: volume I, 1911; volume II, 1921; volume III, 1936.) Recently two books have appeared, which are largely pictorial, essentially uncritical, and strive mainly to recapture the colorfulness and ingenuity of patent-medicine advertising. Carson, Gerald. _One for a Man, Two for a Horse._ 128 pages. New York City: Doubleday and Co. 1961. Hechtlinger, Adelaide. _The Great Patent Medicine Era._ New York City: Grosset and Dunlap. 1970. A highly recommended source of information on the very early history of patent medicines in America is: Griffenhagen, George B., and James Harvey Young. Old English Patent Medicines in America. _United States National Museum Bulletin 218, Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, paper 10: 155-183 1959. DR. MORSE'S PILLS LIVE ON Although the original Comstock enterprise has been dissolved and all of its undertakings in North America terminated, as has been related herein, Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and Comstock's Worm Tablets are still being manufactured and sold--by the W.H. Comstock Company Pty. Ltd., in Australia. This concern, originally a subsidiary of the Canadian company, is headed by the former branch manager for the Comstocks, who acquired the rights for Australia and the Orient following the dissolution of the Brockville company. Distribution is also carried out from this source into New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Packaging and directions are now modern, the pills being described as "The Overnight Laxative with the Tonic Action," but a reproduction of the old label and the facsimile signature of William Henry Comstock, Sr., are still being portrayed. Thus, the Indian Root Pills have been manufactured continuously for at least 115 years and the Comstock business, through the original and successor firms, has survived for nearly 140 years. 
11270	----	[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end.] A Practical Illustration of "Woman's Right to Labor;" or, A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia Edited By Caroline H. Dall, Author of "Woman's Right To Labor," "Historical Pictures Retouched," &c. &c. "Whoso cures the plague, Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech." "And witness: she who did this thing was born To do it; claims her license in her work." Aurora Leigh. 1860. To the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, Faithful Always To "Women And Work," and One of the Best Friends of The New-England Female Medical College, The Editor Gratefully Dedicates This Volume. "The men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, 'A woman's function plainly is ... to talk.'" "What He doubts is, whether we can _do_ the thing With decent grace we've not yet done at all. Now do it." "Bring your statue: You have room." "None of us is mad enough to say We'll have a grove of oaks upon that slope, And sink the need of acorns." Preface. It is due to myself to say, that the manner in which the Autobiography is subordinated to the general subject in the present volume, and also the manner in which it is _veiled_ by the title, are concessions to the modesty of her who had the best right to decide in what fashion I should profit by her goodness, and are very far from being my own choice. Caroline H. Dall. 49. Bradford Street, Boston, Oct. 30, 1860. Practical Illustration of "Woman's Right to Labor" It never happens that a true and forcible word is spoken for women, that, however faithless and unbelieving women themselves may be, some noble men do not with heart and hand attempt to give it efficiency. If women themselves are hard upon their own sex, men are never so in earnest. They realize more profoundly than women the depth of affection and self-denial in the womanly soul; and they feel also, with crushing certainty, the real significance of the obstacles they have themselves placed in woman's way. Reflecting men are at this moment ready to help women to enter wider fields of labor, because, on the one side, the destitution and vice they have helped to create appalls their consciousness; and, on the other, a profane inanity stands a perpetual blasphemy in the face of the Most High. I do not exaggerate. Every helpless woman is such a blasphemy. So, indeed, is every helpless man, where helplessness is not born of idiocy or calamity; but society neither expects, provides for, nor defends, helpless men. So it happened, that, after the publication of "Woman's Right to Labor," generous men came forward to help me carry out my plans. The best printer in Boston said, "I am willing to take women into my office at once, if you can find women who will submit to an apprenticeship like men." On the same conditions, a distinguished chemist offered to take a class of women, and train them to be first-class apothecaries or scientific observers, as they might choose. To these offers there were no satisfactory responses. "Yes," said the would-be printers, "we will go into an office for six months; but, by that time, our oldest sisters will be married, and our mothers will want us at home." "An apprenticeship of six years!" exclaimed the young lady of a chemical turn. "I should like to learn very much, so that I could be a chemist, _if I ever had to_; but poison myself for six years over those 'fumes,' not I." It is easy to rail against society and men in general: but it is very painful for a woman to confess her heaviest obstacle to success; namely, the _weakness of women_. The slave who dances, unconscious of degradation on the auction-block, is at once the greatest stimulus and the bitterest discouragement of the antislavery reformer: so women, contented in ignominious dependence, restless even to insanity from the need of healthy employment and the perversion of their instincts, and confessedly looking to marriage for salvation, are at once a stimulus to exertion, and an obstacle in our way. But no kind, wise heart will heed this obstacle. Having spoken plain to society, having won the sympathy of men, let us see if we cannot compel the attention of these well-disposed but thoughtless damsels. "Six years out of the very bloom of our lives to be spent in the printing-office or the laboratory!" exclaim the dismayed band; and they flutter out of reach along the sidewalks of Beacon Street, or through the mazes of the "Lancers." But what happens ten years afterward, when, from twenty-six to thirty, they find themselves pushed off the _pavé_, or left to blossom on the wall? Desolate, because father and brother have died; disappointed, because well-founded hopes of a home or a "career" have failed; impoverished, because they depended on strength or means that are broken,--what have they now to say to the printing-office or the apothecary's shop? They enter both gladly; with quick woman's wit, learning as much in six months as men would in a year; but grumbling and discontented, that, in competing with men who have spent their whole lives in preparation, they can only be paid at half-wages. What does common sense demand, if not that women should make thorough preparation for trades or professions; and, having taken up a resolution, should abide by all its consequences like men? Before cases like these my lips are often sealed, and my hands drop paralyzed. Not that they alter God's truth, or make the duty of protest against existing wrong any less incumbent: but they obscure the truth; they needlessly complicate the duty. Perplexed and anxious, I have often felt that what I needed most was an example to set before young girls,--an example not removed by superiority of station, advantage of education, or unwonted endowment, beyond their grasp and imitation. There was Florence Nightingale. But her father had a title: it was fair to presume that her opportunities were titled also. All the girls I knew wished they could have gone to the Crimea; while I was morally certain, that the first amputation would have turned them all faint. There was Dorothea Dix: she had money and time. It was not strange that she had great success; for she started, a monomaniac in philanthropy, from the summit of personal independence. Mrs. John Stuart Mill: had she ever wanted bread? George Sand: the woman wasn't respectable. In short, whomsoever I named, who had pursued with undeviating perseverance a worthy career, my young friends had their objections ready. No one had ever been so poor, so ill educated, so utterly without power to help herself, as they; and, provoking as these objections were, I felt that they had force. My young friends were not great geniuses: they were ordinary women, who should enter the ordinary walks of life with the ordinary steadfastness and devotion of men in the same paths; nothing more. What I wanted was an example,--not too stilted to be useful,--a life flowing out of circumstances not dissimilar to their own, but marked by a steady will, an unswerving purpose. As I looked back over my own life, and wished I could read them its lessons,--and I looked back a good way; for I was very young, when the miserable destitution of a drunkard's wife, whom I assisted, showed me how comfortable a thing it was to rest at the mercy of the English common law,--as I looked back over my long interest in the position of woman, I felt that my greatest drawback had been the want of such an example. Every practical experiment that the world recorded had been made under such peculiar circumstances, or from such a fortuitous height, that it was at once rejected as a lesson. One thing I felt profoundly: as men sow they must reap; and so must women. The practical misery of the world--its terrible impurity will never be abated till women prepare themselves from their earliest years to enter the arena of which they are ambitious, and stand there at last mature and calm, but, above all, _thoroughly trained_; trained also at _the side of the men_, with whom they must ultimately work; and not likely, therefore to lose balance or fitness by being thrown, at the last moment, into unaccustomed relations. A great deal of nonsense has been talked lately about the unwillingness of women to enter the reading-room of the Cooper Institute, where men also resort. "A woman's library," in any city, is one of the partial measures that I deprecate: so I only partially rejoice over the late establishment of such a library in New York. I look upon it as one of those half-measures which must be endured in the progress of any desired reform; and, while I wish the Cooper Institute and its reading-room God-speed with every fibre of my consciousness, I have no words with which to express my shame at the mingled hypocrisy and indelicacy of those who object to use it. What woman stays at home from a ball because she will meet men there? What woman refuses to walk Broadway in the presence of the stronger sex? What woman refuses to buy every article of her apparel from the hands of a man, or to let the woman's tailor or shoemaker take the measure of her waist or foot; try on and approve her coiffure or bernouse? What are we to think, then, of the delicacy which shrinks from the reading-room frequented by men; which discovers so suddenly that magazines are more embarrassing than mazourkas; that to read in a cloak and hat before a man is more indelicate than to waltz in his presence half denuded by fashion? Of course, we are to have no patience with it, and to refuse utterly to entertain a remonstrance so beneath propriety. The object of my whole life has been to inspire in women a desire for _thorough training_ to some special end, and a willingness to share the training of men both for specific and moral reasons. Only by sharing such training can women be sure that they will be well trained; only by God-ordained, natural communion of all men and women can the highest moral results be reached. "Free labor and free society:" I have said often to myself, in these two phrases lies hidden the future purification of society. When men and women go everywhere together, the sights they dare not see together will no longer exist. Fair and serene will rise before them all heights of possible attainment; and, looking off over the valleys of human endeavor together, they will clear the forest, drain the morass, and improve the interval stirred by a common impulse. When neither has any thing to hide from the other, no social duty will seem too difficult to be undertaken; and, when the interest of each sex is to secure the purity of the other, neither religion nor humanity need despair of the result. It was while fully absorbed in thoughts and purposes like these, that, in the autumn of 1856, I first saw Marie Zakrzewska.[1] During a short visit to Boston (for she was then resident in New York), a friend brought her before a physiological institute, and she addressed its members. She spoke to them of her experience in the hospital at Berlin, and showed that the most sinning, suffering woman never passed beyond the reach of a woman's sympathy and help. She had not, at that time, thoroughly mastered the English language; though it was quite evident that she was fluent, even to eloquence, in German. Now and then, a word failed her; and, with a sort of indignant contempt at the emergency, she forced unaccustomed words to do her service, with an adroitness and determination that I never saw equalled. I got from it a new revelation of the power of the English language. She illustrated her noble and nervous thoughts with incidents from her own experience one of which was told in a manner which impressed it for ever on my consciousness. "Soon after I entered the hospital," said Marie, "the nurse called me to a ward where sixteen of the most forlorn objects had begun to fight with each other. The inspector and the young physicians had been called to them, but dared not enter the _mêlée_. When I arrived, pillows, chairs, foot-stools and vessels had deserted their usual places; and one stout little woman, with rolling eyes and tangled hair, lifted a vessel of slops, which she threatened to throw all over me, as she exclaimed, 'Don't dare to come here, you green young thing!' "I went quietly towards her, saying gently, 'Be ashamed, my dear woman, of your fury.' "Her hands dropped. Seizing me by the shoulder she exclaimed, 'You don't mean that you look on me as a woman?' "'How else?' I answered; while she retreated to her bed, all the rest standing in the attitudes into which passion had thrown them. "'Arrange your beds,' I said; 'and in fifteen minutes let me return, and find every thing right.' When I returned, all was as I had desired; every woman standing at her bedside. The short woman was missing; but, bending on each a friendly glance, I passed through the ward, which never gave me any more trouble. "When, late at night, I entered my room, it was fragrant with violets. A green wreath surrounded an old Bible, and a little bouquet rested upon it. I did not pause to speculate over this sentimentality, but threw myself weary upon the bed; when a light tap at the door startled me. The short woman entered; and humbling herself on the floor, since she would not sit in my presence entreated to be heard. "'You called me a woman,' she said, 'and you pity us. Others call us by the name the world gives us. You would help us, if help were possible. All the girls love you, and are ashamed before you; and therefore _I_ hate you--no: I will not hate you any longer. There was a time when I might have been saved,--I and Joanna and Margaret and Louise. We were not bad. Listen to me. If _you_ say there is any hope, I will yet be an honest woman.' "She had had respectable parents; and, when twenty years old, was deserted by her lover, who left her three months pregnant. Otherwise kind, her family perpetually reproached her with her disgrace, and threatened to send her away. At last, she fled to Berlin; keeping herself from utter starvation, by needlework. In the hospital to which she went for confinement, she took the small-pox. When she came out, with her baby in her arms, her face was covered with red blotches. Not even the lowest refuge was open to her, her appearance was so frightful. With her baby dragging at her empty breast, she wandered through the streets. An old hag took pity on both; and, carefully nursed till health returned, her good humor and native wit made those about her forget her ugly face. She was in a brothel, where she soon took the lead. Her child died, and she once more attempted to earn her living as a seamstress. She was saved from starvation only by her employer, who received her as his mistress. Now her luck changed: she suffered all a woman could; handled poison and the firebrand. 'I thought of stealing,' she said, 'only as an amusement: it was not exciting enough for a trade.'. She found herself in prison; and was amused to be punished for a trifle, when nobody suspected her crime. It was horrible to listen to these details; more horrible to witness her first repentance. "When I thanked her for her violets, she kissed my hands, and promised to be good. "While she remained in the hospital, I took her as my servant, and trusted every thing to her; and, when finally discharged, she went out to service. She wished to come with me to America. I could not bring her; but she followed, and, when I was in Cleveland, inquired for me in New York." It will be impossible, for those who have not heard such stories from the lips and in the dens of the sufferers, to feel as I felt when this dropped from the pure lips of the lecturer. For the first time I saw a woman who knew what I knew, felt what I felt, and was strong in purpose and power to accomplish our common aim,--the uplifting of the fallen, the employment of the idle, and the purification of society. I needed no farther introduction to Marie Zakrzewska. I knew nothing of her previous history or condition; but when I looked upon her clear, broad forehead, I saw "Faithful unto death" bound across it like a phylactery. I did not know how many years she had studied; but I saw thoroughness ingrained into her very muscle. I asked no questions of the clear, strong gaze that pierced the assembly; but I felt very sure that it could be as tender as it was keen. For the first time I saw a woman in a public position, about whom I felt thoroughly at ease; competent to all she had undertaken, and who had undertaken nothing whose full relations to her sex and society she did not understand. I thanked God for the sight, and very little thought that I should see her again. She came once more, and we helped her to establish the Women's Infirmary in New York; again, and we installed her as Resident Physician in the New-England Female Medical College. I had never felt any special interest in this college. I was willing it should exist as one of the half-way measures of which I have spoken,--like the reading-room in New York; but I was bent on opening the colleges which already existed to women, and I left it to others to nurse the young life of this. The first medical men, I felt assured, would never, in the present state of public opinion, take an interest in a _female_ college; and I desired, above all things, to protect women from second-rate instruction. But, when Marie Zakrzewska took up her residence in Springfield Street, it was impossible to feel indifferent. Here was a woman born to inspire faith; meeting all men as her equals till they proved themselves superior; capable of spreading a contagious fondness for the study of medicine, as Dr. Black once kindled a chemical enthusiasm in Edinburgh. Often did I ponder her past life, which had left significant lines on face and form. We met seldom,--always with perfect trust. Whatever I might have to say, I should have felt sure of being understood, if I had not seen her for six months; nor could she have failed to find a welcome in my heart for any words of hers. Then I heard the course of lectures which she delivered to ladies in the spring of 1860. For the first time, I heard a woman speak of scientific subjects in a way that satisfied me; nor should I have blushed to find scientific men among her audience. I had felt, from the first, that her life might do what my words never could: namely, inspire women with faith to try their own experiments; give them a dignity, which should refuse to look forward to marriage as an end, while it would lead them to accept it gladly as a providential help. I did not fear that she would be untrue to her vocation, or easily forsake it for a more domestic sphere. She had not entered it, I could see, without measuring her own purpose and its use. It was with such feelings, and such knowledge of Marie, that in a private conversation, last summer with Miss Mary L. Booth of New York, I heard with undisguised pleasure that she had in her possession an autobiography of her friend, in the form of a letter. I really longed to get possession of that letter so intensely, that I dared not ask to see it: but I urged Miss Booth to get consent to its publication; "for," I said, "no single thing will help my work, I am convinced, so much." "I look forward to its publication," she replied, "with great delight: it will be the sole labor of love, of my literary life. But neither you nor I believe in reputations which death and posterity have not confirmed. What reasons could I urge to Marie for its present publication?" "The good of her own sex," I replied, "and a better knowledge of the intimate relations existing between free labor and a pure society. I know nothing of our friend's early circumstances; but I cannot be mistaken in the imprint they have left. This is one of those rare cases, in which a life may belong to the public before it has closed." I returned to Boston. Later in the season, Miss Booth visited Dr. Zakrzewska. Imagine my surprise when she came to me one day, and laid before me the coveted manuscript. "It is yours," she said, "to publish if you choose. I have got Marie's consent. She gave it very reluctantly; but her convictions accord with yours, and she does not think she has any right to refuse. As for me," Miss Booth continued, "I resign without regret my dearest literary privilege, because I feel that the position you have earned in reference to 'woman's labor' entitles you to edit it." In an interview which I afterwards held with Marie Zakrzewska, she gave me to understand, that, had she been of American birth, she would never have consented to the publication of her letter in her lifetime. "But," she said, "I am a foreigner. You who meet me and sustain me are entitled to know something of my previous history. Those whom I most loved are dead; not a word of the record can pain them; not a word but may help some life just now beginning. It will make a good sequel to 'Woman's Right to Labor.'" "Only too good," I thought. "May God bless the lesson!" It was agreed between Miss Booth and myself, that the autobiography should keep its original, simple form, to indicate how and why it was written: so I invite my friends to read it at once with me. Here is something as entertaining as a novel, and as useful as a treatise. Here is a story which must enchant the conservative, while it inspires the reformer. The somewhat hazy forms of Drs. Schmidt and Müller, the king's order to the rebellious electors, the historic prestige of a Prussian locality,--all these will lend a magic charm to the plain lesson which New York and Boston need. * * * * * New York, September, 1857. Dear Mary, It is especially for your benefit that I write these facts of my life. I am not a great personage, either through inherited qualifications or the work that I have to show to the world; yet you may find, in reading this little sketch, that with few talents, and very moderate means for developing them, I have accomplished more than many women of genius and education would have done in my place, for the reason that confidence and faith in their own powers were wanting. And, for this reason, I know that this story might be of use to others, by encouraging those who timidly shrink from the field of action, though endowed with all that is necessary to enable them to come forth and do their part in life. The fact that a woman of no extraordinary powers can make her way by the simple determination, that whatever she can do she will do, must inspire those who are fitted to do much, yet who do nothing because they are not accustomed to determine and decide for themselves. I do not intend to weary you with details of my childhood, as I think that children are generally very uninteresting subjects of conversation to any except their parents, who naturally discover what is beautiful and attractive in them, and appreciate what is said in correspondence with their own feelings. I shall, therefore, only tell you a few facts of this period of my life, which I think absolutely necessary to illustrate my character and nature. I was born in Berlin, Prussia, on the 6th of September, 1829; and am the eldest of a family of five sisters and one brother. My early childhood passed happily, though heavy clouds of sorrow and care at times overshadowed our family circle. I was of a cheerful disposition; and was always in good humor, even when sick. I was quiet and gentle in all my amusements: my chief delight consisting in telling stories to my sister, one year younger than myself, who was always glad to listen to these products of my imagination, which were wholly original; for no stories were told me, nor had I any children's books. My heroes and heroines were generally distinguished for some mental peculiarity,--being kind or cruel, active or indolent,--which led them into all sorts of adventures till it suited my caprice to terminate their career. In all our little affairs, I took the lead, planning and directing every thing; while my playmates seemed to take it for granted, that it was their duty to carry out my commands. My memory is remarkable in respect to events that occurred at this time, while it always fails to recall dates and names. When twenty years of age, I asked my father what sort of a festival he took me to once, in company with a friend of his with only one arm, when we walked through meadows where daisies were blossoming in millions, and where we rode in carriages that went round continually until they were wound up. My father answered, with much surprise, that it was a public festival of the cabinet-makers, which was celebrated in a neighboring village; and that I was, at that time, only nineteen months old. He was so much interested in my story, that I related another of my memories. One dark morning, my mother wakened me, and hastened my dressing. After this was accomplished, she handed me a cup of something which I had never tasted before, and which was as disagreeable as assafoetida in later years. This was some coffee, which I had to take instead of my usual milk. Then I went with my father to the large park called Thiergarten, where we saw the sun rise. I began to spring about; looking at the big oaks which seemed to reach into the heavens, or stooping down to pluck a flower. Birds of all kinds were singing in chorus, while the flower-beds surrounding the statue of Flora scented the pure morning air with the sweetest of perfumes. The sun ascended, meanwhile, from the edge of a little pond covered with water-lilies. I was intoxicated with joy. The feeling of that morning is as fresh to-day as when I related this to my father. I know I walked till I got fairly tired, and we reached a solitary house beyond the park. Probably fatigue took entire possession of me; for I remember nothing more till we were on our way home, and the sun was setting. Then I begged for some large yellow plums which I saw in the stores. My father bought some, but gave me only a few; while I had a desire for all, and stole them secretly from his pockets; so that, when we reached home, I had eaten them all. I was sick after I went to bed, and remember taking some horrible stuff the next morning (probably rhubarb); thus ending the day, which had opened so poetically, in rather a prosaic manner. When I repeated this, my parents laughed, and said that I was only twenty-six months old, when my father's pride in his oldest child induced him to take me on this visit; when I walked the whole way, which was about _nine miles_. These anecdotes are worth preserving, only because they indicate an impressionable nature, and great persistence of muscular endurance. It is peculiar, that between these two events, and a third which occurred a year after, every thing should be a blank. A little brother was then born to me, and lay undressed upon a cushion, while my father cried with sobs. I had just completed my third year, and could not understand why, the next day, this little thing was carried off in a black box. From that time, I remember almost every day's life. I very soon began to manifest the course of my natural tendencies. Like most little girls, I was well provided with dolls; and, on the day after a new one came into my possession, I generally discovered that the dear little thing was ill, and needed to be nursed and doctored. Porridges and teas were accordingly cooked on my little toy stove, and administered to the poor doll, until the _papier-mâché_ was thoroughly saturated and broken; when she was considered dead, and preparations were made for her burial,--this ceremony being repeated over and over again. White dresses were put on for the funeral; a cricket was turned upside-down to serve as the coffin; my mother's flower-pots furnished the green leaves for decoration; and I delivered the funeral oration in praise of the little sufferer, while placing her in the tomb improvised of chairs. I hardly ever joined the other children in their plays, except upon occasions like these, when I appeared in the characters of doctor, priest, and undertaker; generally improving the opportunity to moralize; informing my audience, that Ann (the doll) had died in consequence of disobeying her mother by going out before she had recovered from the measles, &c. Once I remember moving my audience to tears by telling them that little Ann had been killed by her brother, who, in amusing himself with picking off the dry skin after she had had the scarlatina, had carelessly torn off the real skin over the heart, as they could see; thus leaving it to beat in the air, and causing the little one to die. This happened after we had all had the scarlatina. When five years old, I was sent to a primary school. Here I became the favorite of the teacher of arithmetic; for which study I had quite a fancy. The rest of the teachers disliked me. They called me unruly because I would not obey arbitrary demands without receiving some reason, and obstinate because I insisted on following my own will when I knew that I was in the right. I was told that I was not worthy to be with my playmates; and when I reached the highest class in the school, in which alone the boys and girls were taught separately, I was separated from the latter, and was placed with the boys by way of punishment, receiving instructions with them from men, while the girls in the other class were taught by women. Here I found many friends. I joined the boys in all their sports; sliding and snow-balling with them in winter, and running and playing ball in summer. With them I was merry, frank, and self-possessed; while with the girls I was quiet, shy, and awkward. I never made friends with the girls, or felt like approaching them. Once only, when I was eleven years old, a girl in the young ladies' seminary in which I had been placed when eight years of age won my affection. This was Elizabeth Hohenhorst, a child of twelve, remarkably quiet, and disposed to melancholy. She was a devout Catholic; and, knowing that she was fated to become a nun, was fitting herself for that dreary destiny, which rendered her very sentimental She was full of fanciful visions, but extremely sweet and gentle in her manners. My love for her was unbounded. I went to church in her company, was present at all the religious festivals, and accompanied her to receive religious instruction: in short, I made up my mind to become a Catholic, and, if possible, a nun like herself. My parents, who were Rationalists, belonging to no church, gave me full scope to follow out my own inclinations; leaving it to my nature to choose for me a fitting path. This lasted until Elizabeth went for the first time to the confessional; and, when the poor innocent child could find no other sin of which to speak than the friendship which she cherished for a Protestant, the priest forbade her to continue this, until I, too, had become a Catholic; reminding her of the holiness of her future career. The poor girl conscientiously promised to obey. When I came the next morning and spoke to her as usual, she turned away from me, and burst into tears. Surprised and anxious, I asked what was the matter; when, in a voice broken with sobs, she told me the whole story, and begged me to become a Catholic as soon as I was fourteen years old. Never in my whole life shall I forget that morning. For a moment, I gazed on her with the deepest emotion, pitying her almost more than myself; then suddenly turned coldly and calmly away, without answering a single word. My mind had awakened to the despotism of Roman Catholicism, and the church had lost its expected convert. I never went near her again, and never exchanged another word with her. This was the only friend I had during eight and a half years of uninterrupted attendance at school. A visit that I paid to my maternal grandfather, when seven or eight years old, made a strong impression on my mind. My grandfather, on his return from the war of 1813-15, in which he had served, had received from the authorities of Prenzlau (the city in which he lived) a grant of a half-ruined cloister, with about a hundred acres of uncultivated land attached, by way of acknowledgment for his services. He removed thither with his family; and shortly after invited the widows of some soldiers, who lived in the city, to occupy the apartments which he did not need. The habitable rooms were soon filled to overflowing with widows and orphans, who went to work with him to cultivate the ground. It was not long before crippled and invalid soldiers arrived, begging to be allowed to repair the cloister, and to find a shelter also within its walls. They were set to work at making brick, the material for which my grandfather had discovered on his land: and, in about five years, an institution was built, the more valuable from the fact that none lived there on charity, but all earned what they needed by cultivating the ground; having first built their own dwelling, which, at this time, looked like a palace, surrounded by trees, grass, and flowers. Here, in the evening, the old soldiers sung martial songs, or told stories of the wars to the orphans gathered about them, while resting from the labors of the day. I tell you of this institution so minutely, to prove to you how wrong it is to provide charitable homes for the poor as we provide them,--homes in which the charity always humiliates and degrades the individual. Here you have an instance in which poor crippled invalids and destitute women and children established and supported themselves, under the guidance of a clear-headed, benevolent man, who said, "Do what you like, but work for what you need." He succeeded admirably, though he died a very poor man; his younger children becoming inmates of the establishment, until they were adopted by their relatives. When I visited my grandfather, the "convent," as he insisted on calling it,--rejecting any name that would have indicated a charitable institution,--contained about a hundred invalid soldiers, a hundred old women, and two hundred and fifty orphans. One of the wings of the building was fitted up as a hospital, and a few of the rooms were occupied by lunatics. It was my greatest delight to take my grandfather's hand at noon, as he walked up and down the dining-room, between the long tables, around which were grouped so many cheerful, hearty faces; and I stood before him with an admiration that it is impossible to describe, as he prayed, with his black velvet cap in his hand, before and after dinner; though I could not comprehend why he should thank another person for what had been done, when every one there told me that all that they had they owed to my grandfather. One afternoon, on returning from the dining-room to his study, I spied on his desk a neatly written manuscript. I took it up, and began to read. It was a dissertation on immortality, attempting by scientific arguments to prove its impossibility. I became greatly interested, and read on without noticing that my grandfather had left the room, nor that the large bell had rung to call the family to dinner. My grandfather, a very punctual man, who would never allow lingering, came back to call and to reprimand me; when he suddenly started on seeing the paper in my hands, and, snatching it from me, tore it in pieces, exclaiming, "That man is insane, and will make this child so too!" A little frightened, I went to the dinner-table, thinking as much about my grandfather's words as about what I had read; without daring, however, to ask who this man was. The next day, curiosity mastered fear. I asked my grandfather who had written that paper; and was told, in reply, that it was poor crazy Jacob. I then begged to see him; but this my grandfather decidedly refused, saying that he was like a wild beast, and lay, without clothes, upon the straw. I knew nothing of lunatics; and the idea of a wild man stimulated my curiosity to such an extent, that, from that time, I teased my grandfather incessantly to let me see Jacob, until he finally yielded, to be rid of my importunity, and led me to the cell in which he was confined. What a spectacle presented itself in the house that I had looked on as the abode of so much comfort! On a bundle of straw, in a corner of a room, with no furniture save its bare walls, sat a man, clad only in a shirt; with the left hand chained to the wall, and the right foot to the floor. An inkstand stood on the floor by his side; and on his knee was some paper, on which he was writing. His hair and beard were uncombed, and his fine eyes glared with fury as we approached him. He tried to rise, ground his teeth, made grimaces, and shook his fist at my grandfather, who tried in vain to draw me out of the room. But, escaping from his grasp, I stepped towards the lunatic, who grew more quiet when he saw me approach; and I tried to lift the chain, which had attracted my attention. Then, finding it too heavy for me, I turned to my grandfather and asked, "Does not this hurt the poor man?" I had hardly spoken the words when his fury returned, and he shrieked,-- "Have I not always told you that you were cruel to me? Must this child come to convince you of your barbarity? Yes: you have no heart." I looked at my grandfather: all my admiration of him was gone; and I said, almost commandingly,--"Take off these chains! It is bad of you to tie this man!" The man grew calm at once, and asked imploringly to be set free; promising to be quiet and tractable if my grandfather would give him a trial. This was promised him: his chains were removed the same day; and Jacob was ever after not only harmless and obedient, but also a very useful man in the house. I never afterwards accompanied my grandfather. I had discovered a side in his nature which repelled me. I spent the remainder of my visit in the workrooms and the sickroom, always secretly fearing that I should meet with some new cruelty; but no such instance ever came to my view. On my return from my grandfather's, I found that a cousin had suddenly become blind. She was soon after sent to the ophthalmic hospital, where she remained for more than a year; and, during this time, I was her constant companion after school-hours. I was anxious to be useful to her; and, being gentler than the nurse, she liked to have me wash out the issues that were made in her back and arms. The nurse, who was very willing to be relieved of the duty, allowed me to cleanse the eyes of the girl next my cousin; and thus these cares were soon made to depend on my daily visit. Child as I was, I could not help observing the carelessness of the nurses, and their great neglect of cleanliness. One day, when the head-nurse had washed the floor, leaving pools of water standing under the beds, the under-nurse found fault with it, and said, "I shall tell the doctor, when he comes, why it is that the patients always have colds." "Do," said the head-nurse. "What do men understand of such matters? If they knew any thing about them, they would long ago have taken care that the mattress upon which one patient dies should always be changed before another comes in." This quarrel impressed itself upon my memory; and the wish rose in my mind, that some day I might be head-nurse, to prevent such wrongs, and to show kindness to the poor lunatics. At the end of the year, my cousin left the hospital At the same time, trouble and constant sickness fell upon our family. My father, who held liberal opinions and was of an impetuous temperament manifested some revolutionary tendencies, which drew upon him the displeasure of the government and caused his dismissal, with a very small pension, from his position as military officer. This involved us in great pecuniary difficulties; for our family was large, and my father's income too small to supply the most necessary wants; while to obtain other occupation for the time was out of the question In this emergency, my mother determined to petition the city government for admission to the school of midwives established in Berlin, in order in this manner to aid in the support of the family. Influential friends of my father secured her the election; and she was admitted to the school in 1839, I being at that time ten years of age. The education of midwives for Berlin requires a two years' course of study, during six months of which they are obliged to reside in the hospital, to receive instructions from the professors together with the male students. My mother went there in the summer of 1840. I went to stay at the house of an aunt, who wished my company; and the rest of the children were put out to board together. In a few weeks, my eyes became affected with weakness, so that I could neither read nor write; and I begged my mother to let me stay with her in the hospital. She applied for permission to the director, and received a favorable answer. I was placed under the care of one of the physicians (Dr. Müller), who took a great fancy to me, and made me go with him wherever he went while engaged in the hospital. My eyes being bandaged, he led me by the hand, calling me his "little blind doctor." In this way I was constantly with him, hearing all his questions and directions, which impressed themselves the more strongly on my mind from the fact that I could not see, but had to gain all my knowledge through hearing alone. One afternoon, when I had taken the bandage off my eyes for the first time, Dr. Muller told me that there was a corpse of a young man to be seen in the dead-house, that had turned completely green in consequence of poison that he had eaten. I went there after my rounds with him: but finding the room filled with relatives, who were busily engaged in adorning the body with flowers, I thought that I would not disturb them, but would wait until they had gone before I looked at it; and went meanwhile through the adjoining rooms. These were all freshly painted. The dissecting-tables, with the necessary apparatus, stood in the centre; while the bodies, clad in white gowns, were ranged on boards along the walls. I examined every thing; came back, and looked to my heart's content at the poisoned young man, without noticing that not only the relatives had left, but that the prosector had also gone away, after locking up the whole building I then went a second time to the other rooms, and looked again at every thing there; and at last, when it became dark and I could not leave the house, sat down upon the floor, and went to sleep, after knocking for half an hour at the door, in the hope that some passer might hear. My mother, who knew that I had gone with Dr. Müller, did not trouble herself about me until nine o'clock, when she grew uneasy at my stay; and, thinking that he might have taken me to his rooms, went there in search of me, but found that he was out, and that the doors were locked. She then inquired of the people in the house whether they knew any thing about me, and was told that they had last seen me going into the dead-house. Alarmed at this intelligence, my mother hastened to the prosector, who unwillingly went with her to the park in which the dead-house stood, assuring her all the way that I could not possibly be there; when, on opening the door, he saw me sitting close by, on the floor, fast asleep. In a few days after this adventure, I recovered the use of my eyes. As it was at this time the summer vacation, in which I had no school-tasks, I asked Dr. Müller for some books to read. He inquired what kind of books I wanted. I told him, "Books about history;" upon which he gave me two huge volumes,--The "History of Midwifery" and the "History of Surgery." Both were so interesting that I read them through during the six weeks of vacation; which occupied me so closely that even my friend Dr. Müller could not lay hold of me when he went his morning and evening rounds. From this time I date my study of medicine; for, though I did not continue to read upon the subject, I was instructed in the no less important branch of psychology by a new teacher, whom I found on my return to school at the close of the summer vacation. To explain better how my mind was prepared for such teaching, I must go back to my position in school. In both schools that I attended, I was praised for my punctuality, industry, and quick perception. Beloved I was in neither: on the contrary, I was made the target for all the impudent jokes of my fellow-pupils; ample material for which was furnished in the carelessness with which my hair and dress were usually arranged; these being left to the charge of a servant, who troubled herself very little about how I looked, provided that I was whole and clean. The truth was, I often presented a ridiculous appearance; and once I could not help laughing heartily at myself, on seeing my own face by accident in a glass, with one braid of hair commencing over the right eye, and the other over the left ear. I quietly hung a map over the glass to hide the ludicrous picture, and continued my studies; and most likely appeared in the same style the next day. My face, besides, was neither handsome, nor even prepossessing; a large nose overshadowing the undeveloped features: and I was ridiculed for my ugliness, both in school and at home, where an aunt of mine, who disliked me exceedingly, always said, in describing plain people, "Almost as ugly as Marie." Another cause arose to render my position at school still more intolerable. In consequence of the loss of his position in the army, my father could no longer afford to pay my school-bills; and was about, in consequence, to remove me from school; when the principal offered to retain me without pay, although she disliked me, and did not hesitate to show it, any more than to tell me, whenever I offended her, that she would never keep so ugly and naughty a child _without being paid for it_, were it not for the sake of so noble a father. These conditions and harsh judgments made me a philosopher. I heard myself called obstinate and wilful, only because I believed myself in the right, and persisted in it. I felt that I was not maliciously disposed towards any one, but wished well to all; and I offered my services not only willingly, but cheerfully, wherever they could be of the least use; and saw them accepted, and even demanded, by those who could not dispense with them, though they shunned and ridiculed me the same as before. I felt that they only sought me when they needed me: this made me shrink still more from their companionship; and, when my sister did not walk home from school with me, I invariably went alone. The idea that I might not wish to attach myself to playmates of this sort never occurred to any one; but I was constantly reproached with having no friends among my schoolfellows, and was told that no one could love so disagreeable and repelling a child. This was a severe blow to my affectionate nature; but I bore it calmly, consoling myself with the thought that they were wrong,--that they did not understand me,--and that the time would come, when they would learn that a great, warm heart was concealed beneath the so-called repulsive exterior. But, however soothing all this was for the time, a feeling of bitterness grew up within me. I began to be provoked at my ugliness, which I believed to be excessive. I speculated why parents so kind and good as mine should be deprived of their means of support, merely because my father would not consent to endure wrong and imposition. I was indignant at being told, that it was only for my father's sake that I was retained in a school where I tried to do my best, and where I always won the highest prizes; and I could not see why, at home, I should be forced to do housework when I wanted to read, while my brother, who wished to work, was compelled to study. When I complained of this last grievance, I was told that I was a girl, and never could learn much, but was only fit to become a housekeeper. All these things threw me upon my own resources, and taught me to make the most of every opportunity, custom and habit to the contrary notwithstanding. It was at this juncture that I found, on my return to school, the psychologic instructor of whom I have spoken, in a newly engaged teacher of history, geography, and arithmetic; all of which were my favorite studies. With this man I formed a most peculiar friendship: he being twenty years older than myself, and in every respect a highly educated man; I, a child of twelve, neglected in every thing except in my common-school education. He began by calling my attention to the carelessness of my dress and the rudeness of my manners, and was the first one who ever spoke kindly to me on the subject. I told him all my thoughts; that I did not mean to be disagreeable, but that every one thought that I could not be otherwise; that I was convinced that I was good enough at heart; and that I had at last resigned myself to my position, as something that could not be helped. My new friend lectured me on the necessity of attracting others by an agreeable exterior and courteous manners; and proved to me that I had unconsciously repelled them by my carelessness, even when trying the most to please. His words made a deep impression on me. I thanked him for every reproach, and strove to do my best to gain his approbation. Henceforth my hair was always carefully combed, my dress nicely arranged, and my collar in its place; and, as I always won the first prizes in the school, two of the other teachers soon grew friendly towards me, and began to manifest their preference quite strongly. In a few months I became a different being. The bitterness that had been growing up within me gradually disappeared; and I began to have confidence in myself, and to try to win the companionship of the other children. But a sudden change took place in my schoolmates, who grew envious of the preference shown me by the teachers. Since they could no longer ridicule me for the carelessness of my dress, they now began to reproach me for my vanity, and to call me a coquette, who only thought of pleasing through appearances. This blow was altogether too hard for me to bear. I knew that they were wrong: for, with all the care I bestowed on my dress, it was not half so fine as theirs; as I had but two calico dresses, which I wore alternately, a week at a time, through the summer. I was again repelled from them; and at noon, when the rest of the scholars went home, I remained with my teacher-friend in the schoolroom, assisting him in correcting the exercises of the pupils. I took the opportunity to tell him of the curious envy that had taken possession of the girls; upon which he began to explain to me human nature and its fallacies, drawing inferences therefrom for personal application. He found a ready listener in me. My inclination to abstract thought, combined with the unpleasant experience I had had in life, made me an attentive pupil, and fitted me to comprehend his reasoning in the broadest sense. For fifteen months, I thus spent the noon-hour with him in the schoolroom; receiving lessons in and reasoning upon concrete and abstract matters, that have since proved of far more psychologic value to me than ten years of reading on the same subjects could do. A strong attachment grew up between us: he became a necessity to me, and I revered him like an oracle. But his health failed; and he left the school at the end of these fifteen months, in a consumption. Shortly after, he sent to the school for me one morning to ask me to visit him on his deathbed. I was not permitted to leave the class until noon; when, just as I was preparing to go, a messenger came to inform the principal that he had died at eleven. This blow fell so heavily upon me, that I wished to leave the school at once. I was forced to stay three weeks longer, until the end of the quarter; when I left the schoolroom on the 1st of April, 1843, at the age of thirteen years and seven months, and never entered it again. On the same day that I quitted my school, an aunt, with whom I was a favorite, was attacked with a violent hemorrhage from the lungs, and wished me to come to stay with her. This suited my taste. I went; and, for a fortnight, was her sole nurse. Upon my return home, my father told me, that, having quitted school, I must now become a thorough housekeeper, of whom he might be proud; as this was the only thing for which girls were intended by nature. I cheerfully entered upon my new apprenticeship, and learned how to sweep, to scrub, to wash, and to cook. This work answered very well as long as the novelty lasted; but, as soon as this wore off, it became highly burdensome. Many a forenoon, when I was alone, instead of sweeping and dusting, I passed the hours in reading books from my father's library, until it grew so late, that I was afraid that my mother, who had commenced practice, would come home, and scold me for not attending to my work; when I would hurry to get through, doing every thing so badly, that I had to hear daily that I was good for nothing, and a nuisance in the world; and that it was not at all surprising that I was not liked in school, for nobody could ever like or be satisfied with me. Meanwhile, my mother's practice gradually increased; and her generous and kindly nature won the confidence of hundreds, who, wretchedly poor, found in her, not only a humane woman, but a most skilful practitioner. The poor are good judges of professional qualifications. Without the aid that money can buy, without the comforts that the wealthy hardly heed, and without friends whose advice is prompted by intelligence, they must depend entirely upon the skill and humanity of those to whom they apply. Their life and happiness are placed in the hands of the physician, and they jealously regard the one to whom they intrust them. None but a good practitioner can gain fame and praise in this class, which is thought so easily satisfied. It is often said, "Oh! those people are poor, and will be glad of any assistance." Far from it. There is no class so entirely dependent for their subsistence upon their strength and health; these constitute their sole capital, their stock in trade: and, when sick, they anxiously seek out the best physicians; for, if unskilfully attended, they may lose their all, their fortune, and their happiness. My mother went everywhere, both night and day; and it soon came to pass, that when she was sent for, and was not at home, I was deputed to go in search of her. In this way I gradually became a regular appendage to my mother; going with her in the winter nights from place to place, and visiting those whom she could not visit during the day. I remember that in January, 1845, my mother attended thirty-five women in childbed,--the list of names is still in my possession,--and visited from sixteen to twenty-five daily, with my assistance. I do not think, that, during the month, we were in bed for one whole night. Two-thirds of these patients were unable to pay a cent. During these years, I learned all of life that it was possible for a human being to learn. I saw nobleness in dens, and meanness in palaces; virtue among prostitutes, and vice among so-called respectable women. I learned to judge human nature correctly; to see goodness where the world found nothing but faults, and also to see faults where the world could see nothing but virtue. The experience thus gained cost me the bloom of youth; yet I would not exchange it for a life of everlasting juvenescence. To keep up appearances is the aim of every one's life; but to fathom these appearances, and judge correctly of what is beneath them, ought to be the aim of those who seek to draw true conclusions from life, or to benefit others by real sympathy. One fact I learned, both at this time and afterwards; namely, that men always sympathize with fallen and wretched women, while women themselves are the first to raise and cast the stone at them. Why is this? Have not women as much feeling as men? Why, women are said to be made up entirely of feeling. How does it happen, then, that women condemn where men pity? Do they do this in the consciousness of their own superior virtue? Ah, no! for many of the condemning are no better than the condemned. The reason is, that men know the world; that is, they know the obstacles in the path of life, and that they draw lines to exclude women from earning an honest livelihood, while they throw opportunities in their way to earn their bread by shame. All men are aware of this: therefore the good as well as the bad give pity to those that claim it. It is my honest and earnest conviction, that the reason that men are unwilling for women to enter upon public or business life is, not so much the fear of competition, or the dread lest women should lose their gentleness, and thus deprive society of this peculiar charm, as the fact that they are ashamed of the foulness of life which exists outside of the house and home. The good man knows that it is difficult to purify it: the bad man does not wish to be disturbed in his prey upon society. If I could but give to all women the tenth part of my experience, they would see that this is true; and would see, besides, that only faith in ourselves and in each other is needed to work a reformation. Let woman enter fully into business, with its serious responsibilities and duties; let it be made as honorable and as profitable to her as to men; let her have an equal opportunity for earning competence and comfort,--and we shall need no other purification of society. Men are no more depraved than women; or, rather, the total depravity of mankind is a lie. From the time of my leaving school until I was fifteen years old, my life was passed, as I have described, in doing housework, attending the sick with my mother, and reading a few books of a scientific and literary character. At the end of this time, a letter came from an aunt of my mother's, who was ill, and whose adopted daughter (who was my mother's sister) was also an invalid, requesting me to visit and nurse them. I went there in the fall. This was probably the most decisive event of my life. My great-aunt had a cancer that was to be taken out. The other was suffering from a nervous affection, which rendered her a confirmed invalid. She was a most peculiar woman, and was a clairvoyant and somnambulist of the most decided kind. Though not ill-natured, she was full of caprices that would have exhausted the patience of the most enduring of mortals. This aunt of mine had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous derangement, which baffled the most skilful physicians who had visited her. Her senses were so acute, that one morning she fell into convulsions from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this result. But she insisted upon it; telling us that the music was like that of the Bohemian miners, who played nothing but polkas. I was determined to ascertain the truth; and really found, that, in a public garden one and a half miles from her house, such a troop had played all the afternoon. No public music was permitted in the city, because the magistrate had forbidden it on her account. She never was a Spiritualist, though she frequently went into what is now called a trance. She spoke, wrote, sang, and had presentiments of the finest kind, in this condition,--far better than I have ever seen here in America in the case of the most celebrated mediums. She even prescribed for herself with success, yet was not a Spiritualist. She was a somnambulist; and, though weak enough when awake, threatened several times to pull the house down, by her violence in this condition. She had strength like a lion, and no man could manage her. I saw the same thing in the hospital later. This aunt is now healthy; not cured by her own prescriptions or the magnetic or infinitesimal doses of Dr. Arthur Lutze, but by a strong emotion which took possession of her at the time of my great-aunt's death. She is not sorry that she has lost all these strange powers, but heartily glad of it. When she afterwards visited us in Berlin, she could speak calmly and quietly of the perversion to which the nervous system may become subject, if managed wrongly; and could not tell how glad she was to be rid of all the emotions and notions she had been compelled to dream out. Over-care and over-anxiety had brought this about; and the same causes could again bring on a condition which the ancients deemed holy, and which the psychologist treats as one bordering on insanity. The old aunt was extremely suspicious and avaricious. Eight weeks after my arrival, she submitted to an operation. The operating surgeon found me so good an assistant, that he intrusted me often with the succeeding dressing of the wound. For six weeks, I was the sole nurse of the two; going from one room to the other both night and day, and attending to the household matters beside, with no other assistant than a woman who came every morning for an hour or two to do the rough work; while an uncle and a boy-cousin were continually troubling me with their torn buttons, &c. I learned in this time to be cheerful and light-hearted in all circumstances; going often into the anteroom to have a healthy, hearty laugh. My surroundings were certainly any thing but inspiring. I had the sole responsibility of the two sick women; the one annoying me with her caprices, the other with her avarice. In one room, I heard fanciful forebodings; in the other, reproaches for having used a teaspoonful too much sugar. I always had to carry the key of the storeroom to the old aunt, in order that she might be sure that I could not go in and eat bread when I chose. At the end of six weeks, she died; and I put on mourning for the only time in my life, certainly not through grief. Shortly after the death of my aunt, the attending physician introduced me to a disciple of Hahnemann by the name of Arthur Lutze; who was, I think, a doctor of philosophy,--certainly not of medicine. Besides being an infinitesimal homeopathist this man was a devotee to mesmerism. He became very friendly towards me, and supplied me with books; telling me that I would not only make a good homeopathic physician, but also an excellent medium for mesmerism, magnetism, &c. At all events, I was glad to get the books, which I read industriously; while he constantly supplied me with new ones, so that I had quite a library when he left the place, which he did before my return. He, too, lived in Berlin, and inquired my residence; promising to visit me there, and to teach me the art he practised. I remained with my aunt until late in the spring; when my health failed, and I returned home. I was very ill for a time with brain-fever; but at last recovered, and set to work industriously to search for information in respect to the human body. Dr. Lutze kept his word: he visited me at my home, gave me more books, and directed my course of reading. But my father, who had become reconciled to my inclination to assist my mother, was opposed to homoeopathy, and especially opposed to Dr. Arthur Lutze. He even threatened to turn him out of the house, if I permitted him to visit me again; and burned all my books, except one that I snatched from the flames. From this time, I was resolved to learn all that I could about the human system. I read all the books on the subject that I could get, and tried besides to educate myself in other branches. My father was satisfied with this disposition, and was glad to hear me propose to have a French teacher in the house, both for my sake and for that of the other children. I studied in good earnest by myself at the same time, going through the usual discipline of German girls. I learned plain sewing, dress-making and the management of the household; but was allowed to use my leisure time as I pleased. When my sisters went skating, I remained at home to study; when they went to balls and theatres, I was thought the proper person to stay to watch the house. Having become so much older, I was now of great assistance to my mother in her business. No one complained any longer of my ugliness or my rudeness. I was always busy; and, when at liberty, always glad to do what I could for others; and, though these years were full of hardships, I consider them among the happiest of my life. I was as free as it was possible for any German girl to be. My household duties, however, continued distasteful to me, much to the annoyance of my father, who still contended that this was the only sphere of woman. From being so much with my mother, I had lost all taste for domestic life: any thing out of doors was preferable to the monotonous routine of the household. I at length determined to follow my inclinations by studying, in order to fit myself to become a practitioner of midwifery, as is usual in Berlin. My father was satisfied, and pleased with this idea, which opened the way to an independent respectable livelihood; for he never really wished to have us seek this in marriage. My mother did not like my resolution at all. She practised, not because she liked the profession, but because in this way she obtained the means of being independent and of aiding in the education of the children. I persisted, however, in my resolution; and immediately took measures to carry it into effect by going directly to Dr. Joseph Hermann Schmidt, the Professor of Midwifery in the University and Schools for Midwives, and Director of the Royal Hospital Charité; while my father, who for several years held the position of a civil officer, made the application to the city magistrates for me to be admitted as a pupil to the School for Midwives in which my mother had been educated. In order to show the importance of this step, it is necessary to explain more fully the history and organization of the school. About 1735, Justina Ditrichin (the wife of Siegemund, a distinguished civil officer of Prussia) was afflicted with an internal disease which baffled the skill of the midwives, who had pronounced her pregnant, and none of whom could define her disorder. After many months of suffering, she was visited by the wife of a poor soldier, who told her what ailed her; in consequence of which, she was cured by her physicians. This circumstance awakened in the mind of the lady an intense desire to study midwifery; which she did, and afterwards practised it with such success, that, in consequence of her extensive practice, she was obliged to confine herself solely to irregular cases. She performed all kinds of operations with masterly skill, and wrote the first book on the subject ever published in Germany by a woman. She was sent for from all parts of Germany, and was appointed body-physician of the Queen, and the ladies of the court, of Prussia and Mark Brandenburg. Through her influence, schools were established, in which women were instructed in the science and the art of obstetrics. She also taught many herself; and a very successful and respectable practice soon grew up among women. After her death, however, this was discountenanced by the physicians, who brought it into such disrepute by their ridicule, that the educated class of women withdrew from the profession, leaving it in the hands of ignorant pretenders, who continued to practise it until 1818; when public attention was called to the subject, and strict laws were enacted, by which women were required to call in a male practitioner in every irregular case of confinement, under penalty of from one to twenty years of imprisonment, and the forfeiture of the right to practise. These laws still continue in force; and a remarkable case is recorded by Dr. Schmidt of a woman, who, feeling her own competency to manage a case committed to her care, _did not_ send for a male physician as the law required. Although it was fully proved that she had done every thing that could have been done in the case, her penalty was imprisonment for twenty years. Two other cases are quoted by Dr. Schmidt, in which male practitioners were summoned before a legal tribunal, and it was proved that they _had not_ done that which was necessary; yet their penalty was no heavier than that inflicted on the woman, who had done exactly what she ought. At this time (1818), it was also made illegal for any woman to practise who had not been educated. This brought the profession again into repute among women of the higher classes. A school for midwives, supported by the government, was established in Berlin, in which women have since continued to be educated for practice in this city and in other parts of Prussia. Two midwives are elected each year, by a committee, from the applicants, to be educated for practice in Berlin; and, as they have to study two years, there are always four of these students in the school, two graduating every year. The remainder of the students are from the provincial districts. To be admitted to this school is considered a stroke of good fortune; as there are generally more than a hundred applicants, many of whom have to wait eight or ten years before they are elected. There is, besides, a great deal of favoritism; those women being generally chosen who are the widows or wives of civil officers or physicians; to whom this chance of earning a livelihood is given, in order that they may not become a burden on the government. Though educated apart from the male students while studying the theory of midwifery, they attend the accouchement-ward together, and receive clinical or practical instruction in the same class, from the same professor. The male students of medicine are admitted to the university at the age of eighteen; having first been required to go through a prescribed course of collegiate study, and to pass the requisite examination. Here they attend the lectures of various professors, often of four or five upon the same subject, in order to learn how it is treated from different points of view. Then, after having thus studied for a certain length of time, they present themselves for an examination by the professors of the university, which confers upon them the title of "M.D.," without the right to practise. They are then obliged to prepare for what is called the State's examination, before a Board of the most distinguished men in the profession appointed to this place by the government: these also constitute the medical court. Of this number, Dr. Schmidt was one. Dr. Schmidt approved my resolution, and expressed himself warmly in favor of it. He also recommended to me a course of reading, to be commenced at once, as a kind of preliminary education; and, although he had no influence with the committee of the city government who examined and elected the pupils, he promised to call upon some of them, and urge my election. But, despite his recommendation and my father's position as civil officer, I received a refusal, on the grounds that I was much too young (being only eighteen), and that I was unmarried. The latter fault I did not try to remove; the former I corrected daily; and, when I was nineteen, I repeated my application, and received the same reply. During this time, Dr. Schmidt became more and more interested in me personally. He promised that he would do all in his power to have me chosen the next year; while, during this time, he urged me to read and study as much as possible, in order to become fully acquainted with the subject. As usual, I continued to assist my mother in visiting her patients, and thus had a fine opportunity for explaining to myself many things which the mere study of books left in darkness. In fact, these years of preliminary practical study were more valuable to me than all the lectures that I ever listened to afterwards. Full of zeal and enthusiasm, and stimulated by a friend whose position and personal acquirements inspired me with reverence and devotion, I thought of nothing else than how to prepare myself in such a way that I should not disappoint him nor those to whom he had commended me. Dr. Schmidt was consumptive, and almost an invalid; often having to lecture in a reclining position. The author of many valuable medical works, and director of the largest hospital in Prussia (the Charité of Berlin), he found a most valuable assistant in his wife,--one of the noblest women that ever lived. She was always with him, except in the lecture-room; and almost all of his works are said to have been written by her from his dictation. This had inspired him with the highest possible respect for women. He had the utmost faith in their powers when rightly developed, and always declared their intellectual capacity to be the same with that of men. This belief inspired him with the desire to give me an education superior to that of the common midwives; and, at the same time, to reform the school of midwives by giving to it a professor of its own sex. To this position he had in his own mind already elected me; but, before I could take it, I had to procure a legitimate election from the city to the school as pupil; while, during my attendance he had to convince the government of the necessity of such a reform, as well as to bring over the medical profession: which was not so easily done; for many men were waiting already for Dr. Schmidt's death in order to obtain this very post, which was considered valuable. When I was twenty, I received my third refusal. Dr. Schmidt, whose health was failing rapidly, had exerted himself greatly to secure my admission; and the medical part of the committee had promised him that they would give me their vote: but some theological influence was set to work to elect one of the deaconesses in my stead, that she might be educated for the post of superintendent of the lying-in ward of the hospital, which was under Dr. Schmidt's care. She also was rejected, in order not to offend Dr. Schmidt; but for this he would not thank them. No sooner had I carried him the letter of refusal than he ordered his carriage, and, proceeding to the royal palace, obtained an audience of the king; to whom he related the refusal of the committee to elect me, on the ground that I was too young and unmarried, and entreated of him a cabinet order which should compel the city to admit me to the school; adding, that he saw no reason why Germany, as well as France, should not have and be proud of a La Chapelle. The king, who held Dr. Schmidt in high esteem, gave him at once the desired order; and I became legally the student of my friend: though his praise procured me intense vexation; for my name was dropped entirely, and I was only spoken of as La Chapelle the Second; which would by no means have been unpleasant had I earned the title; but to receive it sneeringly in advance, before having been allowed to make my appearance publicly, was indeed unbearable. On the third day after his visit to the king, Dr. Schmidt received me into the class, and introduced me to it as his future assistant teacher. This announcement was as surprising to me as to the class; but I took it quietly, thinking that, if Dr. Schmidt did not consider me fit for the place, he would not risk being attacked for it by the profession _en masse_, by whom he was watched closely. On the same day, a little incident occurred which I must mention. In the evening, instead of going alone to the class for practical instruction, I accompanied Dr. Schmidt at his request. We entered the hall where his assistant, the chief physician, had already commenced his instructions. Dr. Schmidt introduced me to him as his private pupil, to whom he wished him to give particular attention; ending by giving my name. The physician hurriedly came up to me, and grasped my hand, exclaiming, "Why, this is my little blind doctor!" I looked at him, and recognized the very Dr. Müller with whom I used to make the rounds of the hospital when twelve years old, and who had since risen to the position of chief physician. This rencontre, and the interest that he manifested afterwards greatly relieved Dr. Schmidt, who had feared that he would oppose me, instead of giving me any special aid. During this winter's study, I spent the most of the time in the hospital, being almost constantly at the side of Dr. Schmidt. I certainly made the most of every opportunity; and I scarcely believe it possible for any student to learn more in so short a time than I did during this winter. I was continually busy; acting even as nurse, whenever I could learn any thing by it. During the following summer, I was obliged to reside wholly in the hospital; this being a part of the prescribed education. Here I became acquainted with all the different wards, and had a fine opportunity to watch the cases by myself. In the mean time, Dr. Schmidt's illness increased so rapidly, that he feared to die before his plans in respect to me had been carried out; especially as the state of his health had compelled him to give up his position as Chief Director of the Hospital Charité. His design was to make me chief accoucheuse in the hospital, and to surrender into my hands his position as professor in the School for Midwives, so that I might have the entire charge of the midwives education. The opposition to this plan was twofold: firstly, the theological influence that sought to place the deaconess (Sister Catherine) in the position of house-midwife; and, secondly, the younger part of the profession, many of whom were anxious for the post of professor in the School for Midwives, which never would have been suffered to fall into the hands of Sister Catherine. Dr. Schmidt, however, was determined to yield to neither. Personal pride demanded that he should succeed in his plan; and several of the older and more influential members of the profession took his part, among whom were Johannes Müller, Busch, Müller, Kilian, &c. During the second winter, his lecturing in the class was only nominal; often nothing more than naming the heads of the subjects, while I had to give the real instruction. His idea was to make me feel the full responsibility of such a position, and, at the same time, to give me a chance to do the work that he had declared me pre-eminently capable of doing. This was an intrigue; but he could not have it otherwise. He did not intend that I should perform his duty for his benefit, but for my own. He wished to show to the government the fact that I had done the work of a man like himself, and done it well; and that, if he had not told them of his withdrawal, no one would have recognized his absence from the result. At the close of this term, I was obliged to pass my examination at the same time with the fifty-six students who composed the class. Dr. Schmidt invited some of the most prominent medical men to be present, besides those appointed as the examining committee. He informed me of this on the day before the examination, saying, "I want to convince them that you can do better than half of the young men at _their_ examination." The excitement of this day I can hardly describe. I had not only to appear before a body of strangers, of whose manner of questioning I had no idea, but also before half a dozen authorities in the profession, assembled especially for criticism. Picture to yourself my position: standing before the table at which were seated the three physicians composing the examining committee, questioning me all the while in the most perplexing manner, with four more of the highest standing on each side,--making eleven in all; Dr. Schmidt a little way off, anxious that I should prove true all that he had said in praise of me; and the rest of the class in the background, filling up the large hall. It was terrible. The trifling honor of being considered capable was rather dearly purchased. I went through the whole hour bravely, without missing a single question; until finally the clock struck twelve, when every thing suddenly grew black before my eyes, and the last question sounded like a humming noise in my ear. I answered it--how I know not,--and was permitted to sit down and rest for fifteen minutes before I was called to the practical examination on the manikin. I gave satisfaction to all, and received the diploma of the first degree. This by no means ended the excitement. The students of the year were next examined. This examination continued for a week; after which the diplomas were announced, when it was found that never before had there been so many of the first degree, and so few of the third. Dr. Schmidt then made it known that this was the result of my exertions, and I was pronounced _a very capable woman_. This acknowledgment having been made by the medical men present at the examination, Dr. Schmidt thought it would be an easy matter to get me installed into the position for which I had proved myself capable. But such could not be the case in a government ruled by hypocrisy and intrigue. To acknowledge the capability of a woman did not by any means say that she was at liberty to hold a position in which she could exercise this capability. German men are educated to be slaves to the government: positive freedom is comprehended only by a few. They generally struggle for a kind of negative freedom; namely, for themselves: for each man, however much he may be inclined to show his subserviency to those superior in rank, thinks himself the lord of creation; and, of course, regards woman only as his appendage. How can this lord of creation, being a slave himself, look upon the _free development_ and _demand of recognition_ of his appendage otherwise than as a nonsense, or usurpation of his exclusive rights? And among these lords of creation I heartily dislike that class which not only yield to the influence brought upon them by government, but who also possess an infinite amount of narrowness and vanity, united to as infinite servility to money and position. There is not ink and paper enough in all the world to write down the contempt I feel for men in whose power it is to be free in thought and noble in action, and who act to the contrary to feed their ambition or their purses. I have learned, perhaps, too much of their spirit for my own good. You can hardly believe what I experienced, in respect to intrigue, within the few months following my examination. All the members of the medical profession were unwilling that a woman should take her place on a level with them. All the diplomatists became fearful that Dr. Schmidt intended to advocate the question of "woman's rights;" one of them exclaiming one evening, in the heat of discussion, "For Heaven's sake! the Berlin women are already wiser than all the men of Prussia: what will become of us if we allow them to manifest it?" I was almost forgotten in the five months during which the question was debated: it became more than a matter of personal intrigue. The real question at stake was, "How shall women be educated, and what is their true sphere?" and this was discussed with more energy and spirit than ever has been done here in America. Scores of letters were written by Dr. Schmidt to convince the government that a woman could really be competent to hold the position in question, and that I had been pronounced so by the whole Faculty. The next objection raised was that my father was known as holding revolutionary principles; and to conquer this, cost a long discussion, with many interviews of the officials with my father and Dr. Schmidt. The next thing urged was that I was much _too young_; that it would be necessary, in the course of my duties, to instruct the young men also; and that there was danger in our thus being thrown together. In fact, this reason, read to me by Dr. Schmidt from one of the letters written at this time (all of which are still carefully preserved), runs thus: "To give this position to Miss M. E. Zakrzewska is dangerous. She is a prepossessing young lady; and, from coming in contact with so many gentlemen, must necessarily fall in love with some one of them, and thus end her career." To this I have only to reply, that I am sorry that I could not have found _one_ among them that could have made me follow the suggestion. This objection however, seemed for a while the most difficult to be met: for it was well known, that, when a student myself, I had stood on the most friendly terms with my fellow-students, and that they had often taken my part in little disturbances that naturally came up in an establishment where no one was permitted to enter or to leave without giving a reason, and where even my private patients were sent away at the door because I did not know of their coming, and could not announce to the doorkeeper the name and residence of those who might possibly call. That this difficulty was finally conquered, I have to thank the students themselves. My relation with these young men was of the pleasantest kind. They never seemed to think that I was not of their sex, but always treated me like one of themselves. I knew of their studies and their amusements; yes, even, of the mischievous pranks that they were planning both for college and for social life. They often made me their confidante in their private affairs, and were more anxious for my approval or forgiveness than for that of their relatives. I learned, during this time, how great is the friendly influence of a woman even upon fast-living and licentious young men; and this has done more to convince me of the necessity that the two sexes should live together from infancy, than all the theories and arguments that are brought to convince the mass of this fact. As soon as it became known among the students that my youth was the new objection, they treated it in such a manner that the whole thing was transformed into a ridiculous bugbear, growing out of the imagination of the _virtuous_ opposers. Nothing now seemed left in the way of my attaining to the position; when suddenly it dawned upon the mind of some that I was irreligious; that neither my father nor my mother attended church; and that, under such circumstances, I could not, of course, be a church-goer. Fortunately, I had complied with the requirements of the law, and could therefore bring my certificate of confirmation from one of the Protestant churches. By the advice of Dr. Schmidt, I commenced to attend church regularly, and continued until a little incident happened which I must relate here. One Sunday, just after the sermon was over, I remembered that I had forgotten to give instructions to the nurse in respect to a patient, and left the church without waiting for the end of the service. The next morning, I was summoned to answer to the charge of leaving the church at an improper time. The inquisitor (who was one of those who had accused me of irreligion), being vexed that I contradicted him by going to church regularly, was anxious to make me confess that I did not care for the service: but I saw through his policy as well as his hypocrisy, and simply told him the truth; namely, that I had forgotten important business, and therefore thought it excusable to leave as soon as the sermon was over. Whether he sought to lure me on to further avowals, I know not: but, whatever was his motive, he asked me, in reply, whether I believed that he cared for the humdrum custom of church-going and whether I thought him imbecile enough to consider this as any thing more than the means by which to keep the masses in check; adding, that it was the duty of the intelligent to make the affair respectable by setting the example of going themselves; and that he only wished me to act on this principle, when all accusations of irreligion would fall to the ground. I had always known that this man was not my friend: but, when I heard this, I felt disenchanted with the whole world; for I had never thought him more than a hypocrite, whereas I found him the meanest of Jesuits, both in theory and practice. I was thoroughly indignant; the more so, since I felt guilty myself in going to church simply to please Dr. Schmidt. I do not remember what answer I gave; but I know that my manners and words made it evident that I considered him a villain. He never forgave me this, as all his future acts proved to me: for, in his position of chief director of the hospital, he had it in his power, more than any one else, to annoy me; and that he did so, you will presently see. The constant opposition and attendant excitement together with the annoyances which my father, as civil officer, had to endure, made him resolve to present a declaration to the government, that I should never, with his consent, enter the position. He had become so tired of my efforts to become a public character in my profession, that he suddenly conceived the wish to have me married Now, take for a moment into consideration the facts that I was but twenty-two years of age, full of sanguine enthusiasm for my vocation, and strong in the friendship of Dr. Schmidt. He had inspired me with the idea of a career different from the common routine of domestic life. My mother, overcoming her repugnance to my entering my profession, had been my best friend, encouraging me steadily; while my father, yielding to the troubles that it involved, had become disgusted with it, and wished me to abandon my career. He was stern, and would not take back his word. I could do nothing without his consent; while Dr. Schmidt had finally overcome all difficulties, and had the prospect of victory if my father would but yield. A few weeks of this life were sufficient to drive one mad, and I am sure that I was near becoming so. I was resolved to run away from home or to kill myself while my father was equally resolved to marry me to a man of whom I did not know the sight. Matters finally came to a crisis through the illness of Dr. Schmidt, whose health failed so rapidly, that it was thought dangerous to let him be longer excited by the fear of not realizing his favorite scheme. Some of his medical advisers influenced the government to appeal to my father to withdraw his declaration; which, satisfied with the honor thus done him, he did on the 1st of May, 1852. On the 15th of May, I received my legal instalment to the position for which Dr. Schmidt had designed me. The joy that I felt was great beyond expression. A youthful enthusiast of twenty-two, I stood at the height of my wishes and expectations. I had obtained what others only could obtain after the protracted labor of half a lifetime; and already I saw myself in imagination occupying the place of Dr. Schmidt's aspirations,--that of a German La Chapelle. No one, that has not passed at the same age through the same excitement, can ever comprehend the fulness of my rejoicing, which was not wholly selfish; for I knew that nothing in the world would please Dr. Schmidt so much as this victory. The wildest joy of an accepted suitor is a farce compared to my feelings on the morning of that 15th of May. I was reconciled to my bitterest opponents: I could even have thanked them for their opposition, since it had made the success so much the sweeter. Not the slightest feeling of triumph was in my heart; all was happiness and rejoicing: and it was in this condition of mind and heart that I put on my bonnet and shawl to carry the good news to Dr. Schmidt. Without waiting to be announced, I hastened to his parlor, where I found him sitting with his wife upon the sofa. I did not walk, but flew, towards them, and threw the letter upon the table, exclaiming "There is the victory!" Like a conflagration my joy spread to Dr. Schmidt as well as to his wife, who thought that she saw in these tidings a cup of new life for her husband. I only staid long enough to accept their congratulations. Dr. Schmidt told me to be sure to come the next morning to enter legally upon my duties at his side. Meanwhile, he gave me a vacation for the afternoon to see my friends and carry them the news. He saw that I needed the open air, and felt that he, too, must have it to counteract his joy. I went to tell my father and several friends, and spent the day in blissful ignorance of the dreadful event that was transpiring. The next morning, at seven o'clock, I left home to go to my residence in the hospital. I had not slept during the night: the youthful fire of enthusiasm burnt too violently to allow me any rest. The old doorkeeper opened the door for me, and gazed at me with an air of surprise. "What is the matter?" I asked. "I am astonished to see you so cheerful," said he. "Why?" I asked with astonishment. "Don't you know that Dr. Schmidt is dead?" was the answer. Dr. Schmidt dead! I trembled; I staggered; I fell upon a chair. The beautiful entrance-hall, serving also as a greenhouse during the winter, filled in every place with flowers and tropical fruit, faded from my eyes; and in its stead I saw nothing but laughing faces, distorted with scorn and mockery. A flood of tears cooled the heat of my brain, and a calmness like that of death soon took possession of me. I had fallen from the topmost height of joy and happiness to the profoundest depth of disappointment and despair. If there were nothing else to prove the strength of my mind, the endurance of this sudden change would be sufficient. I went at once to Dr. Schmidt's residence in the Hospital Park, where I met him again, not as I had expected an hour before, ready to go with me to the hospital-department which I was henceforth to superintend, but a corpse. After I had left the day before, he had expressed a wish to go into the open air, he being not much less excited than myself. Mrs. Schmidt ordered the carriage, and they drove to the large park. He talked constantly and excitedly about the satisfaction that he felt in this success, until they arrived; when he wished to get out of the carriage, and walk with his wife. Mrs. Schmidt consented; but they had scarcely taken a few steps when he sank to the ground, and a gush of blood from his mouth terminated his existence. I left Dr. Schmidt's house, and entered alone into the wards, where I felt that I was without friendly encouragement and support. During the three days that intervened before the burial of Dr. Schmidt, I was hardly conscious of any thing, but moved about mechanically like an automaton. The next few days were days of confusion; for the death of Dr. Schmidt had left so many places vacant that some fifty persons were struggling to obtain some one of his offices. The eagerness, servility, and meanness which these educated men displayed in striving to conquer their rivals was more than disgusting. The serpents that lie in wait for their prey are endurable; for we know that it is their nature to be cunning and relentless: but to see men of intellect and education sly and snaky, ferocious, yet servile to the utmost, makes one almost believe in total depravity. The most of these men got what they deserved; namely, nothing: the places were filled temporarily with others, and every thing went on apparently as before. My position soon became very disagreeable. I had received my instalment, not because I was wanted by the directors of the hospital, but because they had been commanded by the government to accept me in the hope of thus prolonging the life of Dr. Schmidt. Young and inexperienced in petty intrigue, I had now to work without friendly encouragement and appreciation, with no one about me in whom I had a special interest; while every one was regretting that the instalment had been given me before Dr. Schmidt's death, which might have happened just as well from some other excitement, in an establishment where three thousand people were constantly at war about each other's affairs. I surveyed the whole arena, and saw very well, that, unless I practised meanness and dishonesty as well as the rest, I could not remain there for any length of time; for scores were ready to calumniate me whenever there was the least thing to be gained by it. I was about to commence a new period of life. I had a solid structure as a foundation; but the superstructure had been built up in so short a time, that a change of wind would suffice to cast it down. I resolved, therefore, to tear it down myself, and to begin to build another upon the carefully laid basis; and only waited for an opportunity to manifest my intention. This opportunity soon presented itself. Sister Catherine, the deaconess of whom I have spoken, who had been allowed to attend the School of Midwives after my election, through the influence of her theological friends upon Dr. Schmidt (the city magistrates having refused her because I was already the third accepted pupil), had as yet no position: and these friends now sought to make her the second _accoucheuse_; I having the first position, with the additional title of Chief. This she would not accept. She, the experienced deaconess, who had been a Florence Nightingale in the typhus epidemic of Silesia, was unwilling to be under the supervision of a woman who had nothing to show but a thorough education, and who was, besides, eight years younger than herself. Her refusal made my enemies still more hostile. Why they were so anxious for her services, I can only explain by supposing that the directors of the hospital wished to annoy Pastor Fliedner, the originator of the Kaiserswerth Sisterhood; for, in placing Sister Catherine in this position, they robbed him of one of the very best nurses that he ever had in his institution. My desire to reconcile the government of the hospital, in order that I might have peace in my position to pursue my development and education so as to realize and manifest to the people the truth of what Dr. Schmidt had affirmed of me, induced me to go to one of the directors, and propose that Sister Catherine should be installed on equal terms with me; offering to drop the title of Chief, and to consent that the department should be divided into two. My proposition was accepted nominally, and Sister Catherine was installed, but with a third less salary than I received; while I had to give the daily reports, &c., and to take the chief responsibility of the whole. Catherine was quite friendly to me; and I was happy in the thought that there was now one at least who would stand by me, should any difficulties occur. How much I was mistaken in the human heart! This pious, sedate woman, towards whom my heart yearned with friendship, was my greatest enemy; though I did not know it until after my arrival in America. A few weeks afterwards, the city petitioned to have a number of women instructed in the practice of midwifery. These women were all experienced nurses, who had taken the liberty to practise this art to a greater or less extent from what they had learned of it while nursing; and, to put an end to this unlawful practice, they had been summoned before an examining committee, and the youngest and best educated chosen to be instructed as the law required. Dr. Müller, the pathologist, was appointed to superintend the theoretical, and Dr. Ebert the practical, instruction. Dr. Müller, who never had given this kind of instruction before, and who was a special friend of mine, immediately surrendered the whole into my hands; while Dr. Ebert, whose time was almost wholly absorbed in the department of the diseases of children, appointed me as his assistant. Both gentlemen gave me certificates of this when I determined to emigrate to America. The marked preference for my wards that had always been shown by the male students was shared by these women when they came. Sister Catherine was neither ambitious nor envious; yet she felt that she was the second in place. Drs. Müller and Ebert never addressed themselves to her; neither did they impress the nurses and the servants with the idea that she was any thing more than the head-nurse. All these things together made her a spy; and, though nothing happened for which I could be reproved, all that I said and did was watched and secretly reported. Under a despotic government, the spy is as necessary as the corporal. The annoyance of this reporting is, that the secrecy exists only for the one whom it concerns; while the subaltern officers and servants receive hints that such a person is kept under constant surveillance. When it was found that no occasion offered to find fault with me, our administrative inspector was removed, and a surly old corporal put in his place, with the hint that the government of the hospital thought that the former inspector did not perform his duty rightly, since he never reported disturbance in a ward that had been notorious as being the most disorderly in former times. The truth was, that, in my innocence of heart, I had been striving to gain the respect and friendship of my enemies by doing my work better than any before me had done. To go to bed at night regularly was a thing unknown to me. Once I was not undressed for twenty-one days and nights; superintending and giving instructions on six or eight confinement cases in every twenty-four hours; lecturing three hours every afternoon to the class of midwives; giving clinical lectures to them twice a week, for an hour in the morning; superintending the care of some twenty infants, who were epidemically attacked with purulent ophthalmia; and having, besides, the general supervision of the whole department. But all this could not overcome the hostility of my enemies, the chief cause of which lay in the mortification at having been vanquished by my appointment. On the other hand, I was happy in the thought that Mrs. Schmidt continued to take the same interest in me as before, and was glad to hear of my partial success. The students, both male and female, were devoted to me, and manifested their gratitude openly and frankly. This was the greatest compensation that I received for my work. The women wished to show their appreciation by paying me for the extra labor that I performed in their instruction; not knowing the fact, that I did it simply in order that they might pass an examination which should again convince the committee that I was in the right place. I forbade them all payment, as I had refused it to the male students when they wished to pay me for their extra instruction on the manikin: but in a true, womanly way, they managed to learn the date of my birthday; when two or three, instead of attending the lecture, took possession of my room, which they decorated with flowers; while en the table they displayed presents to the amount of some hundred and twenty dollars, which the fifty-six women of the class had collected among themselves. This was, of course, a great surprise to me, and really made me feel sad; for I did not wish for things of this sort. I wished to prove that unselfishness was the real motive of my work; and thought that I should finally earn the crown of appreciation from my enemies, for which I was striving. This gift crossed all my plans. I must accept it, if I would not wound the kindest of hearts; yet I felt that I lost my game by so doing. I quietly packed every thing into a basket, and put it out of sight under the bed, in order that I might not be reminded of my loss. Of course, all these things were at once reported. I saw in the faces of many that something was in agitation, and waited a fortnight in constant expectation of its coming. But these people wished to crush me entirely. They knew well that a blow comes hardest when least expected, and therefore kept quiet week after week, until I really began to ask their pardon in my heart for having done them the wrong to expect them to act meanly about a thing that was natural and allowable. In a word, I became quiet and happy again in the performance of my duties; until suddenly six weeks after my birthday, I was summoned to the presence of Director Horn (the same who had reprimanded me for leaving the church), who received me with a face as hard and stern as an avenging judge, and asked me whether I knew that it was against the law to receive any other payment than that given me by the hospital. Upon my avowing that I did, he went on to ask how it was, then, that I had accepted gifts on my birthday. This question fell upon me like a thunderbolt; for I never had thought of looking upon these as a payment. Had these women paid me for the instruction that I gave them beyond that which was prescribed, they ought each one to have given me the value of the presents. I told him this in reply, and also how disagreeable the acceptance had been to me, and how ready I was to return the whole at his command; since it had been my desire to prove, not only my capability, but my unselfishness in the work. The man was ashamed; I saw it in his face as he turned it away from me: yet he saw in me a proof that he had been vanquished in intrigue, and was resolved that the occasion should end in my overthrow. Much more was said about the presents and their significance; and I soon ceased to be the humble woman, and spoke boldly what I thought, in defiance of his authority, as I had done at the time of the religious conversation (by the way, I never attended church again after that interview.) The end was, that I declared my readiness to leave the hospital. He wished to inflict direct punishment on me; and forbade me to be present at the examination of the class, which was to take place the next day. This was really a hard penalty, to which he was forced for his own sake; for, if I had been present, I should have told the whole affair to men of a nobler stamp, who would have opposed, as they afterwards did, my leaving a place which I filled to their entire satisfaction. I made my preparations to leave the hospital on the 15th of November. What was I to do? I was not made to practise quietly, as is commonly done: my education and aspirations demanded more than this. For the time, I could do nothing more than inform my patients that I intended to practise independently. My father again wished that I should marry; and I began to ask myself, whether marriage is an institution to relieve parents from embarrassment. When troubled about the future of a son, parents are ready to give him to the army; when in fears of the destiny of a daughter, they induce her to become the slave of the marriage bond. I never doubted that it was more unendurable and unworthy to be a wife without love, than a soldier without a special calling for that profession; and I never could think of marriage as the means to procure a shelter and bread. I had so many schemes in my head, that I would not listen to his words. Among these was especially the wish to emigrate to America. The Pennsylvania Female Medical College had sent its first Report to Dr. Schmidt, who had informed me of it as well as his colleagues, and had advocated the justice of such a reform. This fact occurred to my memory; and, for the next two months, I did nothing but speculate how to carry out my design of emigration. I had lived rather expensively and lavishly, without thinking of laying up any money; and my whole fortune, when I left the Charité, consisted of sixty dollars. One thing happened in connection with my leaving the hospital, which I must relate here. Director Horn was required to justify his conduct to the minister to whom the change had to be reported; and a committee was appointed to hear the accusation and pass judgment upon the affair. As this was done in secrecy and not before a jury, and as the accuser was a man of high rank, I knew nothing of it until Christmas Eve, when I received a document stating that, _as a gratification for my services for the benefit of the city of Berlin_ in instructing the class of midwives, a compensation was decreed me of fifty dollars. This was a large sum for Berlin, such as was only given on rare occasions. I was also informed that Director Horn was instructed to give me, should I ever demand it, a first-class certificate of what my position had been in the hospital with the title of Chief attached. Whatever I had suffered from the injustice of my enemies, I was now fully recompensed. I inquired who had taken my part so earnestly against Director Horn as to gain this action, and found that it was Dr. Müller the pathologist, backed by several other physicians. Director Horn, it was said, was greatly humiliated by the decision of Minister von Raumer, who could not see the least justice in his conduct in this matter; and, had I not left the hospital so readily, I should never have stood so firmly as after this secret trial. It was done, however; and I confidently told my mother of my design to emigrate. Between my mother and myself there existed, not merely the strongest relation of maternal and filial love, but also a professional sympathy and peculiar friendship, which was the result of two similar minds and hearts, and which made me stand even nearer to her than as a child I could possibly have done. She consented with heart and soul, encouraged me in all my plans and expectations, and asked me at once at what time I would leave. I next told my father and the rest of the family of my plan. My third sister (Anna), a beautiful, joyous young girl, exclaimed, "And I will go with you!" My father, who would not listen to my going alone, at once consented to our going together. But I thought differently In going alone, I risked only my own happiness: in going with her, I risked hers too; while I should be constantly restricted in my adventurous undertaking from having her with me, who knew nothing of the world save the happiness of a tranquil family life. The next day, I told them that I had changed my mind, and should not go away, but should establish myself in Berlin. Of course, I received a torrent of gibes on my fickleness; for they did not understand my feelings in respect to the responsibility that I feared to take for my younger sister. I began to establish myself in practice. Mrs. Schmidt, who was anxious to assist me in my new career, suggested to those physicians who were my friends the establishment of a private hospital, which should be under my care. She found them strongly in favor of the plan; and, had I not been constantly speculating about leaving for America, this scheme would have been realized. But I had resolved to emigrate, and took my measures accordingly. I went secretly to Drs. Müller and Ebert, and procured certificates from them attesting my position in respect to them in the hospital. I then obtained the certificate from Director Horn, and carried them all to the American Chargé d'Affaires (Theodore S. Fay) to have them legalized in English, so that they could be of service to me in America.[2] When I told Drs. Ebert and Müller and Mrs. Schmidt of my intention to emigrate, they pronounced me insane. They thought that I had the best field of activity open in Berlin, and could not comprehend why I should seek greater freedom of person and of action. Little really is known in Berlin about America, and to go there is considered as great an undertaking as to seek the river Styx in order to go to Hades. The remark that I heard from almost every quarter was, "What! you wish to go to the land of barbarism, where they have negro slavery, and where they do not know how to appreciate talent and genius?" But this could not prevent me from realizing my plans. I had idealized the freedom of America, and especially the reform of the position of women, to such an extent, that I would not listen to their arguments. After having been several years in America, very probably I would think twice before undertaking again to emigrate; for even the idealized freedom has lost a great deal of its charm, when I consider how much better it could be. Having put every thing in order, I told my father of my conclusion to leave. He was surprised to hear of it the second time: but I showed him my papers in readiness for the journey, and declared that I should go as soon as the ship was ready to sail; having a hundred dollars,--just money enough to pay my passage. He would not give his consent, unless my sister Anna accompanied me; thinking her, I suppose, a counterpoise to any rash undertakings in which I might engage in a foreign land. If I wished to go, I was, therefore, forced to have her company; of which I should have been very glad, had I not feared the moral care and responsibility. We decided to go in a fortnight. My father paid her passage, and gave her a hundred dollars in cash,--just enough to enable us to spend a short time in New York: after which he expected either to send us more money, or that we would return; and, in case we did this, an agreement was made with the shipping-merchant that payment should be made on our arrival in Hamburg. On the 13th of March, 1853, we left the paternal roof, to which we should never return. My mother bade us adieu with tears in her eyes; saying, "_Au revoir_ in America!" She was determined to follow us. Dear Mary, here ends my Berlin and European life; and I can assure you that this was the hardest moment I ever knew. Upon my memory is for ever imprinted the street, the house, the window behind which my mother stood waving her handkerchief. Not a tear did I suffer to mount to my eyes, in order to make her believe that the departure was an easy one; but a heart beating convulsively within punished me for the restraint. My father and brothers accompanied us to the _dépôt_, where the cars received us for Hamburg. On our arrival there, we found that the ice had not left the Elbe, and that the ships could not sail until the river was entirely free. We were forced to remain three weeks in Hamburg. We had taken staterooms in the clipper ship "Deutschland." Besides ourselves, there were sixteen passengers in the first cabin; people good enough in their way, but not sufficiently attractive to induce us to make their acquaintance. We observed a dead silence as to who we were, where we were going, or what was the motive of our emigrating to America. The only person that we ever spoke to was a Mr. R. from Hamburg, a youth of nineteen, who, like ourselves, had left a happy home in order to try his strength in a strange land. The voyage was of forty-seven days' duration; excessively stormy, but otherwise very dull, like all voyages of this kind; and, had it not been for the expectations that filled our hearts, we should have died of _ennui_. As it was, the days passed slowly, made worse by the inevitable sea-sickness of our fellow-passengers; and we longed for the hour that should bring us in sight of the shores of the New World. And now commences _my life in America_. "Dear Marie, best Marie! make haste to come upon deck to see America! Oh, how pleasant it is to see the green trees again! How brightly the sun is gilding the land you are seeking,--the land of freedom!" With such childlike exclamations of delight, my sister Anna burst into my cabin to hasten my appearance on deck on the morning of the 22d of May, 1853. The beautiful child of nineteen summers was only conscious of a heart overflowing with pleasure at the sight of the charming landscape that opened before her eyes after a tedious voyage of forty-seven days upon the ocean. We had reached the quarantine at Staten Island. The captain, the old pilot, every one, gazed at her as she danced joyously about the deck, with a mingled feeling of sadness and curiosity; for our reserve while on shipboard had surrounded us with a sort of mystery which none knew how to unravel. As soon as I had dressed for going on shore, and had packed up the things that we had used on our voyage, in order that they might not be stolen during this time of excitement, I obeyed the last call of my impatient sister to come at least to see the last rays of sunrise; and went on deck, where I was at once riveted by the beautiful scene that was spread before my eyes. The green, sloping lawns, with which the white cottages formed such a cheerful contrast; the trees, clad in their first foliage, and suggesting hope by their smiling blossoms; the placid cows, feeding quietly in the fields; the domestic chickens, just visible in the distance; and the friendly barking of a dog,--all seemed to greet me with a first welcome to the shores of this strange country: while the sun, shining brightly from a slightly clouded sky, mellowed the whole landscape, and so deeply impressed my soul, that tears sprang to my eyes, and a feeling rose in my heart that I can call nothing else than devotional; for it bowed my knees beneath me, and forced sounds from my lips that I could not translate into words, for they were mysterious to myself. A stranger in a strange, wide land, not knowing its habits and customs, not understanding its people, not yet understanding its workings and aims, my mind was not clouded with loneliness. I was happy. Had it not been my own wish that had made me leave the home of a kind father, and of a mother beloved beyond all earthly beings? I had succeeded in safely reaching the shores of America. Life was again open before me. With these thoughts, I turned from the beautiful landscape; and finding the captain, a noble-hearted sailor, inquired of him how long it would take us to reach the port of New York. "That is New York," said he, pointing to a dark mass of buildings, with here and there a spire towering in the air. "We shall reach there about eight o'clock; but it is Sunday, and you will have to stay on board till to-morrow." With this he turned away, calling his men to weigh anchor; as the physician, whose duty it was to inspect the cargo of men, like cattle, had just left in his boat. On we went, my sister still dancing and singing for joy; and Mr. R. and myself sitting somewhat apart,--he looking dedespondently into the water, I with my head firmly raised in the air, happy in heart, but thoughtful in mind, and trusting in my inward strength for the future. I took my breakfast on deck. No one seemed to have any appetite; and I felt somewhat reproved when I heard some one near me say, "She seems to have neither head nor heart: see how tranquilly she can eat at such a time as this!" These words were spoken by one of the cabin-passengers,--a young man, who was exceedingly curious to know why I was going to America, and had several times tried to make the rest of the passengers believe that it must be in consequence of an unhappy love. The poor simpleton! he thought that women could only enter into life through the tragedy of a broken heart. A bell sounded. We were opposite Trinity Church, which had just struck eight. On my right lay an enormous collection of bricks (houses I could not call them; for, seen from the ship, they resembled only a pile of ruins); on my left, the romantic shore of New Jersey. But the admiration with which I had gazed upon Staten Island was gone as I stood before this beautiful scene; the appreciation of Nature was mastered by another feeling,--a feeling of activity that had become my ideal. I had come here for a purpose,--to carry out the plan which a despotic government and its servile agents had prevented me from doing in my native city. I had to show to those men who had opposed me so strongly because I was a woman, that in this land of liberty, equality, and fraternity, I could maintain that position which they would not permit to me at home. My talents were in an unusual direction. I was a physician; and, as such, had for years moved in the most select circles of Berlin. Even my enemies had been forced to give me the highest testimonials: and these were the only treasure that I brought to this country; for I had given my last dollar to the sailor who brought me the first news that land was in sight. I looked again upon New York, but with a feeling that a great mystery was lying before my eyes,--a feeling that was confirmed by the men, who came off to the ship in small boats, speaking a language that seemed like a chaos of sounds. As I turned, I saw my sister coming slowly up from the cabin with a changed air; and I asked her with surprise what was the matter. "O Marie!" said she, "most of the passengers are called for. Mr. R.'s brother has just come to take him on shore. He was so glad to see him (for he thought he was in New Orleans), that I think he will forget to say good-by. I am afraid that we shall have to stay here all alone, and"--"Are the Misses Zakrzewska on board?" called a voice from a little boat by the side of the ship. We looked down in surprise, but did not recognize the man, who spoke as if he were an acquaintance. The captain answered "Yes." Upon which the same voice said, "Mr. G. requests them to wait: he will be here in a moment." This announcement surprised us the more that it came from a totally unexpected quarter. An acquaintance of ours, who had emigrated to New York a few years before, and had shortly after married a Mr. G., had heard from her brother in Berlin of our departure for America in the ship "Deutschland;" and these good people, thinking that they could be of use to us in a new country, had been watching for its arrival. No one on board dared ask a question as to who our friends were, so reserved had we been in regard to our plans: only the young man who had accused me of having neither head nor heart said, half aside, "Ah, ha! now we know the reason why Miss Marie ate her breakfast so calmly, while her sister danced for joy. They had beaux who were expecting them." "Simpleton!" thought I: "must women always have beaux in order to be calm about the future?" Mr. G. came on board in a few minutes, bringing us from his wife an invitation of welcome to her house. I cannot express in words the emotion awakened in my heart by the really unselfish kindness that had impelled these people to greet us in this manner; and this was increased when we reached their very modest dwelling, consisting of a large shop in which Mr. G. carried on his business of manufacturing fringes and tassels, one sitting-room, a bedroom, and a small kitchen. My strength left me, and my composure dissolved in a flood of tears. The good people did all that they could to make us feel at home, and insisted that we should occupy the sitting-room until we had decided what further to do. Of course, I determined that this should be for as short a time as possible, and that we would immediately look out for other lodgings. One-half of this first day was spent in talking about home; the other, in making an excursion to Hoboken. This visit we would gladly have dispensed with, so exhausted were we by the excitement that we had passed through since sunrise; but our friends were bent on entertaining us with stories and sights of the New World, and we followed them rather reluctantly. I have since been glad that I did so; for my mind was in a state that rendered it far more impressible than usual, and therefore better fitted to observe much that would have been lost to me in a less-excited condition. Here I first saw the type of common German life on Sunday in America; and I saw enough of it on that one Sunday afternoon to last a whole lifetime. My friends called on several of their acquaintances. Everywhere that we went, I noticed two peculiarities,--comparative poverty in the surroundings, and apparent extravagance in the manner of living: for in every house we found an abundance of wine, beer, cake, meat, salad, &c., although it was between the hours of meals; and every one was eating, although no one seemed hungry. At nine o'clock in the evening, the visit was concluded by going to a hotel, where a rich supper was served up to us; and at eleven at night we returned home. My work in America had already commenced. Was it not necessary for a stranger in a new country to observe life in all its phases, before entering upon it? It seemed so to me; and I had already planned, while on ship-board, to spend the first month in observations of this kind. I had made a fair beginning; and, when I saw many repetitions of this kind of life among my countrymen, I feared that this was their main purpose in this country, and their consolation for the loss of the entertainments and recreations which their fatherland offered to them. But, as soon as I got opportunity to make my observations among the educated classes I found my fear ungrounded; and I also found that the Americans had noticed the impulse for progress and higher development which animated these Germans. The German mind, so much honored in Europe for its scientific capacity, for its consistency regarding principles, and its correct criticism, is not dead here: but it has to struggle against difficulties too numerous to be detailed here; and therefore it is that the Americans don't know of its existence, and the chief obstacle is their different languages. A Humboldt must remain unknown here, unless he chooses to Americanize himself in every respect; and could he do this without ceasing to be Humboldt the cosmopolitan genius? It would be a great benefit to the development of this country if the German language was made a branch of education, and not an accomplishment simply. Only then would the Americans appreciate how much has been done by the Germans to advance higher development, and to diffuse the true principles of freedom. It would serve both parties to learn how much the Germans aid in developing the reason, and supporting progress in every direction. The revolution of 1848 has been more serviceable to America than to Germany; for it has caused the emigration of thousands of men who would have been the pride of a free Germany. America has received the German freemen, whilst Germany has retained the _subjects_. The next morning, I determined to return to the ship to look after my baggage. As Mr. and Mrs. G. were busy in their shop, there was no one to accompany me: I therefore had either to wait until they were at leisure, or to go alone. I chose the latter, and took my first walk in the city of New York on my way to the North River, where the ship was lying. The noise and bustle everywhere about me absorbed my attention to such a degree, that, instead of turning to the right hand, I went to the left, and found myself at the East River, in the neighborhood of Peck Slip. Here I inquired after the German ship "Deutschland," and was directed, in my native tongue, down to the Battery, and thence up to Pier 13, where I found the ship discharging the rest of her passengers and their baggage. It was eleven o'clock when I reached the ship: I had, therefore, taken a three-hours' walk. I had now to wait until the custom-house officer had inspected my trunks, and afterwards for the arrival of Mr. G., who came at one o'clock with a cart to convey the baggage to his house. While standing amidst the crowd, a man in a light suit of clothes of no positive color, with a complexion of the same sort, came up to me, and asked, in German, whether I had yet found a boarding-place The man's smooth face instinctively repelled me; yet the feeling that I was not independently established made me somewhat indefinite in my reply. On seeing this, he at once grew talkative and friendly, and, speaking of the necessity of finding a safe and comfortable home, said that he could recommend me to a hotel where I would be treated honestly; or that, if I chose to be in a private family, he knew of a very kind, motherly lady, who kept a boarding-house for ladies alone,--not to make money, but for the sake of her country-women. The familiarity that he mingled in his conversation while trying to be friendly made me thoroughly indignant: I turned my back upon him, saying that I did not need his services. It was not long before I saw him besieging my sister Anna, who had come with Mr. G.; being nervous lest I might not have found the ship. What he said to her, I do not know. I only remember that she came to me, saying, "I am afraid of that man: I wish that we could go home soon." This meeting with a man who makes friendly offers of service may seem a small matter to the mere looker-on; but it ceases to be so when one knows his motives: and, since that time, I have had but too many opportunities to see for what end these offers are made. Many an educated girl comes from the Old World to find a position as governess or teacher, who is taken up in this manner, and is never heard from again, or is only found in the most wretched condition. It is shameful that the most effective arrangements should not be made for the safety of these helpless beings, who come to these shores with the hope of finding a Canaan. The week was mostly spent in looking for apartments; as we had concluded to commence housekeeping on a small scale, in order to be more independent and to save money. On our arrival, I had borrowed from my sister the hundred dollars which my father had given her on our departure from Berlin, and which was to be my capital until I had established myself in business. I succeeded in finding a suite of rooms, with windows facing the street, in the house of a grocer; and, having put them in perfect order, we moved into them on the 6th of June, paying eleven dollars as our rent for two months in advance. My sister took charge of our first day's housekeeping while I went to deliver my letters of introduction. I went first to Dr. Reisig, in Fourteenth Street. My mother, who had employed him when he was a young man and we were small children, had spoken of him kindly; and, for this reason, I had confidence in him. I found him a very friendly man, but by no means a cordial one. He informed me that female physicians in this country were of the lowest rank, and that they did not hold even the position of a good nurse. He said that he wished to be of service to me if I were willing to serve as nurse; and, as he was just then in need of a good one, would recommend me for the position. I thanked him for his candor and kindness, but refused his offer, as I could not condescend to be patronized in this way. Depressed in hope, but strengthened in will, I did not deliver any more of my letters, since they were all to physicians, and I could not hope to be more successful in other quarters. I went home, therefore, determined to commence practice as a stranger. The result of my experiment discouraged my sister greatly. After meditating for some time, she suddenly said, "Marie, I read in the paper this morning of a dressmaker who wanted some one to sew for her. I know how to sew well: I shall go there, and you can attend to our little household. No one here knows me, and I do not think there is any thing wrong in my trying to earn some money." She was determined, and went. I put up my sign, and spent my time in attending to the household duties, and in reading in order to gain information of the country and the people. Occasionally I took walks through different parts of the city, to learn, from the houses and their surroundings the character of life in New York. I am sure that though, perhaps, I appeared idle, I was not so in reality; for during this time I learned the philosophy of American life. But our stock of money was becoming less and less. To furnish the rooms had cost us comparatively little, as we had brought a complete set of household furniture with us; but paying the rent and completing the arrangements had not left us more than enough to live upon, in the most economical manner, until the 1st of August. My sister obtained the place at the dressmaker's; and after working a week from seven in the morning until twelve (when she came home to dinner), then from one in the afternoon until seven in the evening, she received two dollars and seventy-five cents as the best sewer of six. She brought home the hardly earned money with tears in her eyes; for she had expected at least three dollars for the week's work. She had made each day a whole muslin dress, with the trimmings. And this was not all: the dressmaker often did not pay on Saturday nights, because, as she said, people did not pay her punctually; and the poor girls received their wages by six or eight shillings at a time. For the last two weeks of my sister's work, she received her payment seven weeks after she had left. We lived in this manner until the middle of July, when I lost patience; for practice did not come as readily as I wished, nor was I in a position for making money in any other way. My sister, usually so cheerful and happy, grew grave from the unusual work and close confinement. One of these nights, on lying down to sleep, she burst into tears, and told me of her doubts and fears for the future. I soothed her as well as I could, and she fell asleep. For myself, I could not sleep, but lay awake all night meditating what I could possibly do. Should I write home, requesting help from my father? He certainly would have given it; for we had received a letter two weeks before, offering us all desirable aid. No: all my pride rebelled against it. "I must help myself," I thought, "and that to-morrow." The next morning, my sister left me as usual. I went out, and walked through the city to Broadway turning into Canal Street, where I had formed an acquaintance with a very friendly German woman by purchasing little articles at various times at her store. I entered without any particular design, and exchanged a few commonplaces with her about the weather. Her husband stood talking with a man about worsted goods, and their conversation caught my ear. The merchant was complaining because the manufacturer did not supply him fast enough: upon which the man answered, that it was very difficult to get good hands to work; and that, besides, he had more orders than it was possible to fill; naming several merchants whose names I had seen in Broadway, who were also complaining because he did not supply them. After he had left, I asked carelessly what kind of articles were in demand, and was shown a great variety of worsted fancy-goods. A thought entered my brain. I left the store, and, walking down Broadway, asked at one of the stores that had been mentioned for a certain article of worsted goods, in order to learn the price. Finding this enormous, I did not buy it; and returned home, calculating on my way how much it would cost to manufacture these articles, and how much profit could be made in making them on a large scale. I found that two hundred per cent profit might be made by going to work in the right way. My sister came home, as usual, to dinner. I sat down with her, but could not eat. She looked at me anxiously, and said, "I hope you are not sick again. Oh, dear! what shall we do if you get sick?" I had been ill for a week, and she feared a relapse. I said nothing of my plan, but consoled her in respect to my health. As soon as she had left, I counted my money. But five dollars remained. If I had been dependent upon money for cheerfulness, I should certainly have been discouraged. I went to John Street, and, entering a large worsted store, inquired of a cheerful-looking girl the wholesale price of the best Berlin wool; how many colors could be had in a pound; &c. The pleasant and ready answers that I received in my native tongue induced me to tell her frankly that I wanted but a small quantity at that time, but that I intended to make an experiment in manufacturing worsted articles; and, if successful, would like to open a small credit, which she said they generally would do when security was given. I purchased four and a half dollars' worth of worsted; so that fifty cents were left in my pocket when I quitted the store. I then went to the office of a German newspaper, where I paid twenty-five cents for advertising for girls who understood all kinds of knitting. When my sister came home at night, the worsted was all sorted on the table in parcels for the girls who would come the next morning, while I was busily engaged in the experiment of making little worsted tassels. I had never been skilful in knitting; but in this I succeeded so well, that I could have made a hundred yards of tassels in one day. My sister turned pale on seeing all this; and hurriedly asked, "How much money have you spent?"--"All, my dear Anna," answered I; "all, except twenty-five cents, which will be sufficient to buy a pound of beefsteak and potatoes for to-morrow's dinner. Bread, tea, and sugar we have still in the house; and to-morrow night you will bring home your twenty-two shillings." "May you succeed, Marie! that is all I have to say," was her reply. She learned of me that evening how to make the tassels; and we worked till midnight, finishing a large number. The next day was Saturday, and some women really came to get work. I gave them just enough for one day, keeping one day's work in reserve. The day was spent busily in arranging matters, so that, on Monday morning, I might be able to carry a sample of the manufactured articles to those stores that I had heard mentioned as not being sufficiently supplied. In the evening, my sister came home without her money: the dressmaker had gone into the country in the afternoon, without paying the girls. She was more than sad, and I felt a little uncomfortable; for what was I to do, without money to provide for the next two days, or to pay those girls on Monday with whose work I might not be satisfied? What was to be done? To go down to our landlord, the grocer, and ask him to advance us a few dollars? No: he was a stranger, and had no means of knowing that we would return the money. Besides, I did not wish the people in the house to know our condition. My resolution was taken. I proposed to my sister to go to the market with me to buy meat and fruit for the morrow. She looked at me with blank astonishment; but, without heeding it, I said calmly, taking from the bureau-drawer the chain of my watch, "Anna, opposite the market, there is a pawnbroker. No one knows us; and, by giving a fictitious name, we can get money, without thanking any one for it." She was satisfied; and, taking a little basket, we went on our errand. I asked of the pawnbroker six dollars, under the name of Müller and received the money; after which we made our purchases, and went home in quite good spirits. On Monday morning, the knitters brought home their work. I paid them, and gave them enough for another day; after which I set about finishing each piece, completing the task about two in the afternoon. This done, I carried the articles to Broadway; and, leaving a sample in a number of stores, received orders from them for several dozens.[3] I then went to the worsted store in John Street, where I also obtained orders for the manufactured articles, together with ten dollars' worth of worsted on credit; having first given my name and residence to the book-keeper, with the names of the stores from which I had received orders. In the evening, when my sister came home, I was, therefore, safely launched into a manufacturing business. The news cheered her greatly; but she could not be induced to quit her sewing. The new business had sprung up so rapidly and pleasantly that she could not trust in the reality of its existence. I must tell you here something of the social life that we led. We had brought a number of friendly letters with us from our acquaintances in Berlin to their friends and relatives in America; all of which, upon our arrival, we sent by post, with the exception of two,--the one sent by a neighbor to his son, Albert C.; the other to a young artist; both of whom called for their letters. About four weeks after we were settled in New York, we received a call from some young men whose sisters had been schoolmates of my sisters in Berlin, who came to inquire of us where to find Mr. C. We could give them no information, as we had not seen him since he called for his letter; neither did we now see any thing of the G.'s: but the acquaintance thus formed with these young men was continued, and our solitude was now and then enlivened by an hour's call from them. Soon after I had commenced my new business, they came one day in company with Mr. C., whom they had met accidently in the street, and, on his expressing a wish to see us, had taken the liberty to bring to our house. My business continued to prosper; and, by constantly offering none but the best quality of goods for sale, in a very short time I had so much to do, that my whole time in the day was occupied with out-door business, and I was forced to sit up at night with my sister to prepare work for the knitters. At one time, we had constantly thirty girls in our employ; and in this way I became acquainted with many of those unfortunates who had been misled and ruined on their arrival by persons pretending friendship. Two of these in particular interested me greatly. One, the grand-daughter of Krummacher, and bearing his name, was the daughter of a physician, who had come to this country, hoping to find a place as governess. Poor girl! she was a mere wreck when I found her, and all my efforts to raise her up were in vain. She was sick, and in a terrible mental condition. We took her into our house, nursed her and cared for her, and, when she had recovered, supplied her with work; for which we paid her so well, that she always had three dollars a week, which paid for her board and washing. It was twice as much as she could earn, yet not enough to make her feel reconciled with life. At one time, she did not come to us for a whole week. I went to see her, and her landlady told me that she was melancholy. I persuaded her to come and stay with us for a few days; but, in spite of all my friendly encouragement I could not succeed in restoring her to cheerfulness. She owned that she could not work merely to live: she did not feel the pangs of hunger; but she felt the want of comforts to which she had been accustomed, and which, in our days, are regarded as necessities. She attempted to find a situation as governess; but her proficiency in music, French, and drawing, counted as nothing. She had no city references; and, having been two years in New York, dared not name the place to which she had been conducted on her arrival. She left us at last in despair, after having been a week with us. She never called again, and I could not learn from her landlady where she had gone. Three months afterwards, I heard from one of the girls in our employ that she had married a poor shoemaker in order to have a home; but I never learned whether this was true. About a year later, I met her in the Bowery, poorly but cleanly dressed. She hastily turned away her face on seeing me; and I only caught a glimpse of the crimson flush that overspread her countenance. The other girl that I referred to was a Miss Mary ----, who came with her mother to this country, expecting to live with a brother. They found the brother married, and unwilling to support his sister; while his wife was by no means friendly in her reception of his mother. The good girl determined to earn a support for her mother, and a pretended friend offered to take care of their things until she could find work and rent lodgings. After four weeks' search, she found a little room and bedroom in a rear-building in Elizabeth Street, at five dollars a month; and was preparing to move, when her _friend_ presented a bill of forty dollars for his services. She could only satisfy his rapacity by selling every thing that she could possibly spare: after which she commenced to work; and as she embroidered a great deal, besides working for me (for which I paid her six dollars a week), for a time she lived tolerably well. After some time, her mother fell ill; and she had to nurse her and attend to the household, as well as labor for their support. It was a trying time for the poor girl. She sought her brother; but he had moved to the West. I did all that I could for her; but this was not half enough: and, after I had quitted the manufacturing business and left the city, my sister heard that she had drowned herself in the Hudson, because her mother's corpse was lying in the house, while she had not a cent to give it burial, or to buy a piece of bread, without selling herself to vice. Are not these two terrible romances of New-York life? And many besides did I learn among these poor women; so many, indeed, that I forget the details of all. Stories of this kind are said to be without foundation: I say that there are more of them in our midst than it is possible to imagine. Women of good education, but without money, are forced to earn their living. They determine to leave their home, either because false pride preprevents their seeking work where they have been brought up as _ladies_, or because this work is so scarce that they cannot earn by it even a life of semi-starvation; while they are encouraged to believe that in this country they will readily find proper employment. They are too well educated to become domestics; better educated, indeed, than are half the teachers here: but modesty, and the habit of thinking that they must pass through the same legal ordeal as in Europe, prevent them from seeking places in this capacity. They all know how to embroider in the most beautiful manner; and, knowing that this is well paid for in Europe, seek to find employment of this kind in the stores. Not being able to speak English, they believe the stories of the clerks and proprietors and are made to work at low wages, and are often swindled out of their money. They feel homesick forlorn and forsaken in the world. Their health at length fails them, and they cannot earn bread enough to keep themselves from starvation. They are too proud to beg; and the consequence is, that they walk the streets, or throw themselves into the river. I met scores of these friendless women. Some I took into my house; for others I found work, and made myself a sort of guardian; while to others I gave friendship to keep them morally alive. It is a curious fact, that these women are chiefly Germans. The Irish resort at once to beggary or are inveigled into brothels, as soon as they arrive; while the French are always intriguing enough either to put on a white cap and find a place as _bonne_, or to secure a _private_ lover. I am often in despair about the helplessness of women, and the readiness of men to let them earn money in abundance by shame, while they grind them down to the merest pittance for honorable work. Shame on society, that women are forced to surrender themselves to an abandoned life and death, when so many are enjoying wealth and luxury in extravagance! I do not wish them to divide their estates with the poor; I am no friend to communism in any form: I only wish institutions that shall give to women an education from childhood that will enable them, like young men, to earn their livelihood. These weak women are the last to come forth to aid in their emancipation from inefficient education. We cannot calculate upon these: we must educate the children for better positions and leave the adults to their destiny. How many women marry only for a shelter or a home! How often have I been the confidante of girls, who the day before, arrayed in satin, had given their hands to rich men before the altar, while their hearts were breaking with suppressed agony! and this, too, among Americans, this great, free nation, who, notwithstanding, let their women starve. It is but lately that a young woman said to me, "I thank Heaven, my dear doctor, that you are a woman; for now I can tell you the truth about my health. It is not my body that is sick, but my heart. These flounces and velvets cover a body that is sold,--sold legally to a man who could pay my father's debts." Oh! I scorn men, sometimes from the bottom of my heart. Still this is wrong: for it is the women's, the mothers' fault, in educating their daughters to be merely beautiful machines, fit to ornament a fine establishment; while, if they do not succeed in gaining this, there is nothing left but wretchedness of mind and body. Women, there is a connection between the Fifth Avenue and the Five Points! Both the rich and the wretched are types of womanhood; both are linked together, forming one great body; and both have the same part in good and evil. I can hardly leave this subject, though it may seem to have little to do with my American experience; but a word spoken from a full heart not only gives relief, but may fall on _one_ listening ear, and take root there. I must now return to my new enterprise. The business paid well: and, although I was often forced to work with my sister till the dawn of morning, we were happy; for we had all that we needed, and I could write home that the offered assistance was superfluous. Here I must say, that I had resolved, on leaving Berlin, never to ask for aid, in order that I might be able with perfect freedom to carry out my plans independently of my family. How this was ever to be done, I did not yet see; though I had a good opportunity to learn, from life and from the papers, what I had to expect here. But this mode of instruction, though useful to one seeking to become a philosopher, was very unsatisfactory to me. The chief thing that I learned was, that I must acquire English before I could undertake any thing. And this was the most difficult point to overcome. I am not a linguist by nature: all that I learn of languages must be obtained by the greatest perseverance and industry; and, for this, my business would not allow me time. Shortly after I had fairly established myself in the manufacturing business, I received news from Berlin, that Sister Catherine had left the Hospital Charité, and was intending to join me in America, in order to aid me in carrying out my plan for the establishment of a hospital for women in the New World. The parties interested in her had finally succeeded in placing her in the wished-for position, thus disconnecting her from the sisterhood. But, after my departure, the position became greatly modified in rank, and inferior in character. Private reasons besides made it disagreeable for her to remain there any longer; and in this moment she remembered my friendship towards her, and in the unfortunate belief that she shared with many others, that all that I designed to do I could do at once, resolved to come to me, and offer her assistance. She joined us on the 22d of August, and was not a little disappointed to find me in the tassel instead of the medical line. The astonishment with which her acquaintances in Berlin heard her announce her intention of going to seek help from a person to whom she had been less than a friend, could not be expressed in words; and she told me that the annoyance that they manifested was really the chief stimulus that decided her to come at last. She arrived without a cent. Having always found friends enough ready to supply her with money, whenever she wished to establish a temporary hospital, it had never occurred to her that she should need any for private use, beyond just enough to furnish the simple blue merino dress of the sisterhood, which had often been provided for her by the Kaiserswerth Institute. But here she was; and she very soon learned to understand the difficulties which must be overcome before I could enter again into my profession. She became satisfied, and lived with us, sharing equally in whatever we had ourselves. There is a peculiar satisfaction in showing kindness to a person who has injured us, though unconsciously under different circumstances: and, in her case, she was not entirely unconscious of the harm she had done me; for she confessed to me while in America, that her acquaintance was courted by all those who had been thwarted in their opposition by my appointment, and that she knew well that they sought every opportunity to annoy me. On the 18th of September, a sister, one year younger than myself, joined us; having been tempted by our favorable accounts to try a life of adventure. We were now four in the family. But Catherine gradually grew discontented. Having been accustomed to the comforts afforded in large institutions, and to receiving attentions from the most aristocratic families of Prussia, the monotonous life that we led was only endurable to her so long as the novelty lasted. This soon wore off, and she became anxious for a change. She had heard her fellow-passengers speak of a Pastor S., who had been sent to America as a missionary; and she begged me to seek him out, and take her to him, that she might consult him as to what she had best do. I did so, and she soon became acquainted with his family. Mr. S. exerted himself in her behalf, and secured her a place as nurse in the Home for the Friendless, where she had the charge of some thirty children. This was a heavy task; for, though none were under a year old, she was constantly disturbed through the night, and could get but a few hours' consecutive sleep. Besides, she could not become reconciled to washing under the hydrant in the morning, and to being forced to mingle with the commonest Irish girls. She was in every respect a lady, and had been accustomed to have a servant at her command, even in the midst of the typhus-fever in the desolate districts of Silesia; while here she was not even treated with humanity. This soon grew unbearable; and she returned to us on the 16th of October, after having been only ten days in the institution. So eager was she to make her escape, that she did not even ask for the two dollars that were due her for wages. But we could not receive her; for we had taken another woman in her place, as friendless and as penniless as she. Besides, a misfortune had just fallen upon us. During the night before, our doors had been unlocked, our bureau-drawers inspected, and all our money, amounting to fifty-two dollars, carried off; and, when Catherine arrived, we were so poor that we had to borrow the bread and milk for our breakfast. Fortunately, the day before, I had refused the payment due me for a large bill of goods; and this came now in a very good time. I did not feel justified, however, in increasing the family to five after our loss; nor did she claim our assistance, but went again to Pastor S., who had invited her to visit his family. With his assistance, she obtained some private nursing, which maintained her until the congregation had collected money enough to enable her to return to Berlin; which she did on the 2d of December. Having many friends in the best circles of that city, she immediately found a good practice again; and is now, as she says, enjoying life in a civilized manner. We moved at once from the scene of the robbery and took a part of a house in Monroe Street, for which we paid two hundred dollars a year. Our business continued good, and I had some prospects of getting into practice. But, with spring, the demand for worsted goods ceased; and as my practice brought me work, but no money, I was forced to look out for something else to do. By accident, I saw in a store a coiffure made of silk, in imitation of hair, which I bought; but I found, on examination, that I could not manufacture it, as it was machine-work. I went, therefore, to Mr. G., and proposed to establish a business with him, in which he should manufacture these coiffures, while I would sell them by wholesale to the merchants with whom I was acquainted. Mr. G. had completely ruined himself during the winter by neglecting his business and meddling with Tammany-Hall politics, which had wasted his money and his time. He had not a single workman in his shop when I called, and was too much discouraged to think of any new enterprise; but, on my telling him that I would be responsible for the first outlay, he engaged hands, and, in less than a month, had forty-eight persons busily employed. In this way I earned money during the spring, and freed myself from the obligations which his kindness in receiving us the spring before had laid upon us. My chief business now was to sell the goods manufactured by Mr. G. Our worsted business was very small; and the prospect was that it would cease entirely, and that the coiffure that we made would not long continue in fashion. Some other business, therefore, had to be found, especially as it was impossible for us to lay up money. Our family now consisted of myself and two sisters, the friend that was staying with us, and a brother, nineteen years of age, who had joined us during the winter, and who, though an engineer and in good business, was, like most young men, thoughtless and more likely to increase than to lighten our burdens. Our friend Mr. C., who had become our constant visitor, planned at this time a journey to Europe; so that our social life seemed also about to come to an end. On the 13th of May, 1854, as I was riding down to the stores on my usual business, reveries of the past took possession of my mind. Almost a year in America, and not one step advanced towards my purpose in coming hither! It was true that I had a comfortable home, with enough to live upon, and had repaid my sister the money that I had borrowed from her on our arrival; yet what kind of a life was it that I was leading, in a business foreign to my nature and inclinations, and without even the prospect of enlarging this? These reflections made me so sad, that, when I reached the store, the book-keeper noticed my dejection, and told me, by way of cheering me, that he had another order for a hundred dollars' worth of goods, &c.; but this did not relieve me. I entered the omnibus again, speculating constantly on what I should do next; when a thought suddenly dawned upon me. Might not the people in the Home for the Friendless be able to give me advice? I had hardly conceived the idea, when I determined to ride directly up there, instead of stopping at the street in which I lived. I thought, besides, that some employment might be found for my sister Anna, in which she could learn the English language, for which she had evinced some talent, while I had decided that I could never become master of it. I had seen the matron, Miss Goodrich, once when I called there on Catherine S. She had a humane face, and I was persuaded that I should find a friend in her. I was not mistaken. I told her of my plans in coming here, and of our present mode of life and prospects; and confided to her my disappointment and dejection, as well as my determination to persevere courageously. She seemed to understand and to enter into my feelings, and promised to see Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, whom she advised me to call upon at once. I went home full of the hope and inspiration of a new life. Dear Mary, you can hardly comprehend the happiness of that morning. I was not suffering, it is true, for the necessaries of life; but, what was far worse, I suffered from the feeling that I lived for no purpose but to eat and to drink. I had no friends who were interested in the pursuits towards which my nature inclined; and I saw crowds of arrogant people about me, to whom I could not prove that I was their equal in spite of their money. My sisters had not seen me so cheerful since our arrival in America, and thought that I had surely discovered the philosopher's stone. I told them of what I had done, and received their approbation. On the morning of the 15th of May,--the anniversary of the death of Dr. Schmidt and of my greatest joy and my greatest misery,--we received a call from Miss Goodrich, who told us that she had seen Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and thought that she had also procured a suitable place for my sister. She gave us the addresses of Dr. Blackwell and of Miss Catherine Sedgwick. We called first upon the latter, who was extremely kind; and although she had quite misunderstood our wishes,--having exerted herself to procure a place for my sister in a way that manifested the belief that we had neither a home nor the means to live,--yet her friendliness and readiness to assist us made us for ever grateful to her. At that time we did not know her standing in society, and looked upon her merely as a benevolent and wealthy woman. We soon learned more of her, however: for, though unsuccessful in her first efforts, she shortly after sent for my sister, having secured her a place in Mr. Theodore Sedgwick's family; which was acceptable, inasmuch as it placed her above the level of the servants. She remained there seven weeks, and then returned home. On the same morning, I saw Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell; and from this call of the 15th of May I date my new life in America. She spoke a little German, and understood me perfectly when I talked. I gave her all my certificates for inspection but said nothing to her of my plans in coming to America. It would have seemed too ludicrous for me in my position to tell her that I entertained the idea of interesting the people in the establishment of a hospital for women. I hardly know what I told her, indeed; for I had no other plan of which to speak, and therefore talked confusedly, like an adventurer. I only know that I said that I would take the position of nurse, if I could enter one of the large hospitals, in order to learn the manner in which they were managed in this country. I cannot comprehend how Dr. Blackwell could ever have taken so deep an interest in me as she manifested that morning; for I never in my life was so little myself. Yet she did take this interest; for she gave me a sketch of her own experience in acquiring a medical education, and explained the requirements for such in this country, and the obstacles that are thrown in the way of women who seek to become physicians. She told me of her plan of founding a hospital,--the long-cherished idea of my life; and said that she had opened a little dispensary--the charter for which was procured during the preceding winter, under the name of "The New-York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children"--on the 1st of May, two weeks before, and which was designed to be the nucleus for this hospital, where she invited me to come and assist her. She insisted that, first of all, I should learn English; and offered to give me lessons twice a week, and also to make efforts to enable me to enter a college to acquire the title of M.D., which I had not the right to attach to my name. I left her after several hours' conversation, and we parted friends. I continued my work at home; going regularly to Dr. Blackwell to receive lessons in English, and to assist her in the dispensary. As we grew better acquainted, I disclosed more to her of the fact, that I had a fixed plan in coming to this country; which increased her interest in me. She wrote in my behalf to the different colleges, and at length succeeded in obtaining admission for me to the Cleveland Medical College (Western Reserve) on the most favorable terms; credit being given me on the lecture-fees for an indefinite time. Here I must stop to tell you why this credit was necessary. The articles that I had manufactured had gone out of fashion in May: and I could not invent any thing new, partly because I no longer felt the same interest as before, knowing that I should soon go to a medical college; and partly because the articles then in fashion were cheaper when imported. We had to live for a little while on the money that we had laid up, until I procured a commission for embroidering caps. It is perfectly wonderful into what kinds of business I was forced, all foreign to my taste. And here let me tell you some secrets of this kind of business, in which hundreds of women starve, and hundreds more go down to a life of infamy. Cap-making (the great business of Water Street of New York) gives employment to thousands of unfortunates. For embroidering caps, the wholesale dealer pays seven cents each; and for making up, three cents. To make a dozen a day, one must work for sixteen hours. The embroidering is done in this wise: I received the cut cloth from the wholesale dealer; drew the pattern upon each cap; gave them, with three cents' worth of silk, to the embroiderer, who received three cents for her work; then pressed and returned them; thus making one cent on each for myself. By working steadily for sixteen hours, a girl could embroider fifteen in a day. I gave out about six dozen daily; earning, like the rest, fifty cents a day: unless I chose to do the stamping and pressing at night, and to embroider a dozen during the day; in which case, I earned a dollar. One can live in this way for a little while, until health fails, or the merchant says that the work has come to an end. You will think this terrible again. Oh, no! this is not terrible. The good men provide in another way. They tell every woman of a prepossessing appearance, that it is wrong in her to work so hard; that many a man would be glad to care for her; and that many women live quite comfortably with the help of _a friend_. They say, further, that it is lonely to live without ever going to church, to the concert and theatre; and that if these women would only permit the speakers to visit them, and to attend them to any of these places, they would soon find that they would no longer be obliged to work so hard. This is the polished talk of gentlemen who enjoy the reputation of piety and respectability, and who think it a bad speculation to pay women liberally for their work. So it would be, in truth; for these poor creatures would not be so willing to abandon themselves to a disreputable life, if they could procure bread in any other way. During the summer of 1854, I took work on commission from men of this sort. While in Berlin I had learned from the prostitutes in the hospital in what manner educated women often became what they then were. The average story was always the same. The purest love made them weak; their lover deceived and deserted them; their family cast them off by way of punishment. In their disgrace, they went to bury themselves in large cities, where the work that they could find scarcely gave them their daily bread. Their employers attracted by their personal appearance and the refinement of their speech and manners, offered them assistance in another way, in which they could earn money without work. In despair, they accepted the proposals; and sunk gradually, step by step, to the depths of degradation, as depicted by Hogarth in the "Harlot's Progress." In New York, I was thrown continually among men who were of the stamp that I described before; and can say, even from my own experience, that no man is ever more polite, more friendly, or more kind, than one who has impure wishes in his heart. It is really so dangerous for a woman of refined nature to go to such stores, that I never suffered my sister to visit them; not because I feared that she would listen to these men, but because I could not endure the thought that so innocent and beautiful a girl should come in contact with them, or even breathe the same atmosphere. When fathers are unwilling that their daughters shall enter life as physicians, lawyers, merchants, or in any other public capacity, it is simply because they belong to the class that so contaminates the air, that none can breathe it but themselves; or because, from being thrown constantly in contact with such men, they arrive at the same point at which I then stood, and say to themselves "_I_ can afford to meet such men. I am steeled by my knowledge of mankind, and supported by the philosophy that I have learned during years of trial. It cannot hurt _me_; but, by all means, spare the young and beautiful the same experience!" I dealt somewhat haughtily with the merchants whom I have described, in a manner that at once convinced them of my position. But the consequence was, that the embroidery commission, which had commenced so favorably, suddenly ceased, "_because the Southern trade had failed_:" in truth, because I would not allow any of these men to say any more to me than was absolutely necessary in our business. My income became less and less, and we were forced to live upon the money that we had laid up during the year. I did not look for any new sources of employment, for I was intending to go to Cleveland in October; while my next sister had business of her own, and Anna was engaged to be married to our friend Mr. C. My brother was also with them; and my mother's brother, whom she had adopted as a child, was on his way to America. After having settled our affairs, fifty dollars remained as my share; and, with this sum, I set out for Cleveland on the 16th of October, 1854. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell had supplied me with the necessary medical text-books; so that I had no other expenses than my journey and the matriculation fees, which together amounted to twenty dollars, leaving thirty dollars in my possession. I do not believe that many begin the study of medicine with so light a purse and so heavy a heart as did I. My heart was heavy for the reason that I did not know a single sentence of English. All of my study with Dr. Blackwell had been like raindrops falling upon stone: I had profited nothing. The lectures I did not care for, since there was more need of my studying English than medicine: but the subjects were well known to me; and I therefore reasoned, that, by hearing familiar things treated of in English, I must learn the language; and the logic held good. I have already told you that the Faculty had agreed to give me credit for my lecture-fees. Dr. Blackwell had written also to a lady there, who had called upon her some time before in the capacity of President of a Physiological Society, which, among other good things, had established a small fund for the assistance of women desirous of studying medicine. This lady (Mrs. Caroline M. Severance) replied in the most friendly manner, saying that I might come directly to her house, and that she would see that my board for the winter was secured by the Physiological Society over which she presided. The journey to Cleveland was a silent but a pleasant one. Through a mishap, I arrived on Saturday night, instead of in the morning; and, being unwilling to disturb Mrs. Severance at so late an hour, went first to a hotel. But what trials I had there! No one could understand me; until at last I wrote on a slate my own name and Mrs. Severance's, with the words, "A carriage," and "To-morrow." From this the people inferred that I wished to stay at the hotel all night, and to have a carriage to take me to Mrs. Severance's the next day; as was the case. A waiter took my carpet-bag and conducted me to a room. I could not understand his directions to the supper-room, neither could I make him understand that I wanted some supper in my own room; and the consequence was, that I went to bed hungry, having eaten nothing all day but a little bread, and an apple for luncheon. As soon as I was dressed the next morning, I rang the bell furiously; and, on the appearance of the waiter, exclaimed, "Beefsteak!" This time he comprehended me, and went laughingly away to bring me a good breakfast. I often saw the same waiter afterwards at the hotel; and he never saw me without laughing, and exclaiming, "Beefsteak!" In the course of the forenoon, I was taken in a carriage to the house of Mrs. Severance; but the family were not at home. I returned to the hotel, somewhat disheartened and disappointed. Although I should have supposed that death was not far off if no disappointment had happened to me when I least expected it, yet this persistent going wrong of every thing in Cleveland was really rather dispiriting. But a bright star soon broke through the clouds, in the shape of Mr. Severance, who came into the parlor directly after dinner, calling for me in so easy and so cordial a manner, that I forgot every thing, and was perfectly happy. This feeling, however, lasted only until I reached the house. I found four fine children, all full of childish curiosity to hear me talk; who, as soon as they found that I could not make myself understood by them, looked on me with that sort of contempt peculiar to children when they discover that a person cannot do as much as they can themselves. Mr. Severance, too, was expecting to find me accomplished in music, "like all Germans;" and had to learn that I had neither voice nor ear for the art. Mrs. Severance understood a little German, yet not half enough to gain any idea of how much or how little I was capable of doing; and therefore looked upon me with a sort of uncertainty as to what was my real capacity. This position was more provoking than painful; there was even something ludicrous in it: and, when not annoyed, I often went into my room to indulge in a hearty laugh by myself. I met with a most cordial reception in the college The dean (Dr. John J. Delamater) received me like a father; and, on the first day, I felt perfectly at home. All was going on well. I had a home at Mrs. Severance's; while, despite my mutilated English, I found many friends in the college, when circumstances changed every thing. Some changes occurred in Mr. Severance's business; and he was forced, in consequence, to give up house-keeping At that time, I did not know that the Physiological Society was ready to lend me money; and was therefore in great distress. I never experienced so bitter a day as that on which Mrs. Severance told me that I could stay with her no longer. It was but five weeks after my arrival, and I was not able to make myself understood in the English language, which was like chaos to me. On the same day, I well remember, that, for the first time in my life, I made an unsuccessful attempt to borrow money; and, because it was the first and the last time, it was the more painful to me to be refused. I envied the dog that lived, and was happy without troubling his brain; I envied the kitchen-maid that did her work mechanically, and enjoyed life far more than those fitted by nature for something higher, while the world would go on just as well without them as with them. Mrs. Severance secured a boarding-place for me for the rest of the winter; and paid my board, amounting to thirty-three dollars, from the funds of the society. I lived quietly by myself; studied six hours daily at home, with four dictionaries by me; attending six lectures a day, and going in the evening for three hours to the dissecting-rooms. I never conversed with any one in the boarding-house nor even asked for any thing at the table; but was supplied like a mute. This silence was fruitful to me. About New Year, I ventured to make my English audible; when, lo! every one understood me perfectly. From this time forward, I sought to make acquaintances, to the especial delight of good old Dr. Delamater, who had firmly believed that I was committing gradual suicide. Through Mrs. Severance, I became acquainted with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, who was then on a visit to Cleveland; and, through her, with the Rev. A.D. Mayo, who was pastor of a small society there, known as that of the Liberal Christians. I found many dear and valued friends during my residence in Cleveland, but none to whom I am bound in lasting gratitude as to Mr. Mayo, who offered me his assistance when he learned that I was in need; my extra expenses having swallowed up the little money that I had brought with me, so that I had not even enough to return to my sisters in New York. As the minister of a small congregation advocating Liberal ideas, he had a hard position in Cleveland, both socially and pecuniarily; yet he offered to share his little with me. I was forced to accept it; and I am now, and have always been, glad that I did so. No one, that has not had the experience, can appreciate the happiness that comes with the feeling, that a rich man has not cast a fragment of his superfluity towards you (and here let me remark, that it is next to impossible to find wealth and generosity go together in friendship), but that the help comes from one who must work for it as well as the recipient. It proves the existence of the mutual appreciation that is known by the name of "friendship." The apple given by a friend is worth ten times more than a whole orchard bestowed in such a way as to make you feel that the gift is but the superfluity of the donor. I remained for ten months a member of Mr. Mayo's family; when he received a call to Albany, and changes had to be made in his household. During this time, I earned a little money by giving lessons in German, that served to cover my most necessary expenses. For the last five months that I spent in Cleveland, I carried in my purse one solitary cent as a sort of talisman; firmly believing that some day it would turn into gold: but this did not happen; and on the day that I was expecting the receipt of the last eighteen dollars for my lessons, which were designed to bear my expenses to New York, I gave it to a poor woman in the street who begged me for a cent; and it doubtless, ere long, found its way into a gin-shop. The twenty months that I spent in Cleveland were chiefly devoted to the study of medicine in the English language; and in this I was assisted by most noble-hearted men. Dr. Delamater's office became a pleasant spot, and its occupants a necessity to me; and, on the days that I did not meet them, my spirits fell below zero. In spite of the pecuniary distress from which I constantly suffered, I was happier in Cleveland than ever before or since. I lived in my element; having a fixed purpose in view, and enjoying the warmest tokens of real friendship. I was liked in the college; and, though the students often found it impossible to repress a hearty laugh at my ridiculous blunders in English, they always showed me respect and fellowship in the highest sense of the terms. In the beginning of the first winter, I was the only woman; after the first month, another was admitted; and, during the second winter, there were three besides myself that attended the lectures and graduated in the spring. I should certainly look upon this season as the spring-time of my life, had not a sad event thrown a gloom over the whole. In the autumn of 1854, after deciding to go to Cleveland to resume my medical studies, I wrote to my parents to tell them of my hopes and aims. These letters were not received with the same pleasure with which they had been written. My father, who had encouraged me before my entrance upon a public career, was not only grieved by my return to my old mode of life, but greatly opposed to it, and manifested this in the strongest words in the next letter that I received from him. My mother on the contrary, who had not been at all enthusiastic in the beginning, was rather glad to receive the news. As I had left many good friends among the physicians of Berlin, my letters were always circulated, after their arrival, by one of their number who stood high in the profession; and, though I did not receive my father's approbation, he sent me several letters from strangers who approved my conduct, and who, after hearing my letters, had sent him congratulations upon my doings in America. How he received the respect thus manifested to him, you can judge from a passage in one of his letters, which I will quote to you:-- "I am proud of you, my daughter; yet you give me more grief than any other of my children. If you were a young man, I could not find words in which to express my satisfaction and pride in respect to your acts; for I know that all you accomplish you owe to yourself: but you are a woman, a weak woman; and all that I can do for you now is to grieve and to weep. O my daughter! return from this unhappy path. Believe me, the temptation of living for humanity _en masse,_ magnificent as it may appear in its aim, will lead you only to learn that all is vanity; while the ingratitude of the mass for whom you choose to work will be your compensation." Letters of this sort poured upon me; and, when my father learned that neither his reasoning nor his prayers could turn me from a work which I had begun with such enthusiasm, he began to threaten; telling me that I must not expect any pecuniary assistance from him; that I would contract debts in Cleveland which I should never be able to pay, and which would certainly undermine my prospects; with more of this sort. My good father did not know that I had vowed to myself, on my arrival in America, that I would never ask his aid; and besides, he never imagined that I could go for five months with a single cent in my pocket. Oh, how small all these difficulties appeared to me, especially at a time when I began to speak English! I felt so rich, that I never thought money could not be had, whenever I wanted it in good earnest. After having been nine months in Cleveland, I received news that my mother had left Berlin with my two youngest sisters to pay us a visit, and to see what the prospects would be for my father in case she chose to remain. Dear Mary, shall I attempt to describe to you the feeling that over-powered me on the receipt of these tidings? If I did, you never could feel it with me: for I could not picture in words the joy that I felt at the prospect of beholding again the mother whom I loved beyond all expression, and who was my friend besides; for we really never thought of each other in our relation of mother and child, but as two who were bound together as friends in thought and in feeling. No: I cannot give you a description of this, especially as it was mingled with the fear that I might not have the means to go to greet her in New York before another ten months were over. Day and night, night and day, she was in my mind; and, from the time that I had a right to expect her arrival, I counted the hours from morning until noon, and from noon until night, when the telegraph office would be closed. At length, on the 18th of September, the despatch came,--not to me, but to my friend Mr. Mayo,--bearing the words, "Tell Marie that she must calmly and quietly receive the news that our good mother sleeps at the bottom of the ocean, which serves as her monument and her grave." Mary, this is the most trying passage that I have to write in this sketch of my life; and you must not think me weak that tears blot the words as I write. My mother fell a victim to sea-sickness which brought on a violent hemorrhage, that exhausted the sources of life. She died three weeks before the vessel reached the port; and my two sisters (the one seventeen and the other nine years of age) chose rather to have her lowered on the Banks of Newfoundland, than bring to us a corpse instead of the living. They were right; and the great ocean seems to me her fitting monument. Of course, upon the receipt of these tidings, I could remain no longer in Cleveland, but took my last money, and went to New York to stay for a while with my afflicted brother and sisters. The journey was very beneficial to me; for, without it, I should not have been able to go through my winter's study. During my stay in New York, I often visited Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and learned that the little dispensary was closed because her practice prevented her from attending it regularly; but that, during my absence, she had been trying to interest some wealthy friends in the collection of money, to enable us, after my return in the spring, to commence again upon a little larger scale. To effect this, she proposed to hold a fair during the winter after my return; and we concluded that the first meeting for this purpose should be held during my visit in New York. She succeeded in calling together a few friends at her house, who determined to form a nucleus for a Fair Association for the purpose of raising money for the New-York Infirmary. I made a visit of a few days to Boston, and then returned again to Cleveland. The winter passed in very much the same manner as the first, with the difference that I spoke better English, and visited many friends whom I had made during the preceding year. In the spring of 1856, I graduated. Shortly after commencement, the Dean of the College (Dr. Delamater) called upon me at the house of a friend with whom I was staying on a visit. A call from this venerable gentleman was a thing so unusual, that numberless conjectures as to what this visit might mean flitted through my brain on my way to the parlor. He received me, as usual, paternally; wished me a thousand blessings; and handed back to me the note for one hundred and twenty dollars, payable in two years, which I had given for the lecture-fees; telling me, that, in the meeting of the Faculty after graduating-day it was proposed by one of the professors to return the note to me as a gift; to which those present cheerfully gave a unanimous vote, adding their wishes for my success, and appointing Dr. Delamater as their delegate to inform me of the proceedings. This was a glorious beginning, for which I am more than thankful, and for which I was especially so at that time, when I had barely money enough to return to New York, with very small prospects of getting means wherewith to commence practice. The mention of this fact might be thought indiscreet by the Faculty in Cleveland, were they still so organized as to admit women; which, I am sorry to say, is no longer the case; though they give as their reason, that women at present have their own medical colleges, and, consequently, have no longer need of theirs. Before I quit the subject of the Cleveland College I must mention a fact, which may serve as an argument against the belief that the sexes cannot study together without exerting an injurious effect upon each other. During the last winter of my study, there was such emulation in respect to the graduating honors among the candidates for graduation comprising thirty-eight male and four female students, that all studied more closely than they had ever done before--the men not wishing to be excelled by the women, nor the women by the men; and one of the professors afterwards told me, that whereas it was usually a difficult thing to decide upon the three best theses to be read publicly at the commencement, since all were more or less indifferently written, this year the theses were all so good, that it was necessary, to avoid doing absolute injustice, to select thirteen from which parts should be read. Does not this prove that the stimulus of the one sex upon the other would act rather favorably than otherwise upon the profession? and would not the very best tonic that could be given to the individual be to pique his _amour propre_ by the danger of being excelled by one of the opposite sex? Is not this natural? and would not this be the best and the surest reformation of humanity and its social condition, if left free to work out its own development? On the day following the visit of Dr. Delamater, I received a letter from my brother-in-law, in which he told me that his business compelled him to go to Europe for half a year; and that he had, therefore, made arrangements for me to procure money, in case that I should need it to commence my practice. He said that he intended to assist me afterwards; but that, as he thought it best for my sister (his wife) to live out of New York during his absence, he was willing to lend me as much money as I required until his return. I accepted his offer with infinite pleasure; for it was another instance of real friendship. He was by no means a rich man, but was simply in the employ of a large importing house. With these prospects I left Cleveland. Immediately after my arrival in New York, I began to look out for a suitable office; consulting Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, with whom I had maintained a constant correspondence, in regard to location. I soon found that I could not obtain a respectable room without paying an exorbitant price. Some were afraid to let an office to a female physician, lest she might turn out a spiritual medium, clairvoyant hydropathist, &c.; others, who believed me when I told them that I had a diploma from a regular school, and should never practise contrary to its requirements, inquired to what religious denomination I belonged, and whether I had a private fortune, or intended to support myself by my practice; while the third class, who asked no questions at all, demanded three dollars a day for a back parlor alone, without the privilege of putting a sign on the house or the door. Now, all this may be very aggravating, when it is absolutely necessary that one should have a place upon which to put a sign to let the world know that she is ready to try her skill upon suffering humanity; but it has such a strongly ludicrous side, that I could not be provoked, in spite of all the fatigue and disappointment of wandering over the city, when, with aching limbs, I commenced the search afresh each morning, with the same prospect of success. I finally gave up looking for a room, and accepted Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's offer; to occupy her back parlor (the front one serving as her own office); of which I took possession on the 17th of April. Meanwhile, I had regularly attended the Thursday fair-meetings; wondering how persons could afford to meet to so little purpose. There was scarcely any life in these gatherings; and, when I saw ladies come week after week to resume the knitting of a baby's stocking (which was always laid aside again in an hour or two, without any marked progress), I began to doubt whether the sale of these articles would ever bring ten thousand cents, instead of the ten thousand dollars which it was proposed at the first meeting to raise in order to buy a house. I used to say on Wednesday, "To-morrow we have our fair-meeting. I wonder whether there will be, as usual, two and a half persons present, or three and three-quarters." I grew at length heartily sick of this kind of effort, and set about speculating what better could be done. The idea occurred to me to go from house to house, and ask for a dime at each, which, if given, would amount to ten dollars a day; and, with the money thus collected daily for half a year, to establish a nucleus hospital, which, as a fixed fact, should stimulate its friends to further assistance. I took my note-book, and wrote out the whole plan, and also calculated the expenses of such a miniature hospital as I proposed; including furniture beds, household utensils; every thing, in short, that was necessary in such an institution. With this book, which I still have in my possession, I went one evening into Dr. Blackwell's parlor, and, seating myself, told her that _I_ could not work any longer for the fair in the way that the ladies were doing; and then read my plan to her, which I advocated long and earnestly. She finally agreed with me that it would be better speedily to establish a small hospital than to wait for the large sum that had been proposed; though she did not approve of the scheme of the dime collection, fearing that I would not only meet with great annoyances, but would also injure my health in the effort. At that time, after some discussion, I agreed with her: now I think that this plan would have been better than that which I afterwards followed. On the same evening, I proposed, and we agreed, that, on a year from that day (the 1st of May, 1857), the New-York Infirmary should be opened. I went to rest with a light heart, but rose sorrowfully in the morning. "In one year from to-day, the Infirmary must be opened," said I to myself; "and the funds towards it are two pairs of half-knit babies' stockings." The day was passed in thinking what was the next best scheme to raise money for its foundation. At length I remembered my visit to Boston, and some friends there whose influence might help me _to beg_ for an _institution for American women_. For myself I could never have begged; I would sooner have drowned myself: now I determined to beg money from Americans to establish an institution for their own benefit. This plan was disclosed to Dr. Blackwell, and agreed upon, as there was nothing risked in it; I taking the whole responsibility. On the next day, the fair-meeting was held at Dr. Blackwell's. The new plan was brought forward; and, although it was as yet nothing but a plan, it acted like a warm, soft rain upon a field after a long drought. The knitting and sewing (for which I have a private horror under all conditions) were laid aside, to my great relief; and the project was talked of with so much enthusiasm, that I already saw myself in imagination making my evening visits to the patients in the New-York Infirmary; while all the members present (and there were unusually many; I think, six or seven) discussed the question the next day among their circles of friends, whether Henry Ward Beecher or a physician of high standing should make the opening speech in the institution. This excitement increased the interest exceedingly and the succeeding meetings were quite enthusiastic. The babies' stockings were never again resumed (don't think that, because I detested those stockings so much, I am cruel enough to wish the little creatures to go barefoot); but plans were made for raising money in New York, and for getting articles for sale on a larger scale. Dr. Blackwell wrote to her sister. Dr. Emily Blackwell, who was at that time studying in England, requesting her to make collections among their friends in that country; which she did with success. After having thus thoroughly impressed the public mind with the idea that the Infirmary must be opened, we began to look about for a suitable house. In autumn, I went to Boston to see what aid could be obtained there. I cannot tell you here in what manner I became acquainted with a circle of noble women, who had both means and the disposition to employ them for such a purpose: it suffices to say, that I interested them in the undertaking and obtained a hundred dollars towards the expenses of the fair, together with a promise of a large table of fancy-goods, and an invitation to come again in case any further aid was needed. At the end of three weeks, I left Boston for Philadelphia; but here I was not successful, as all who were interested in the medical education of women contributed largely already to the Philadelphia College. A small table of fancy-goods was the result of my visit there. The money and promise of goods that I received in Boston stimulated our friends in New York to such a degree, that, in spite of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's doubts as to whether we should cover the expenses, the fair realized a thousand dollars. Yet this was not half sufficient to commence the proposed hospital; and I therefore proposed to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell that I should go on another begging tour through New England, while she and her sister (Dr. Emily Blackwell, who had arrived from England a week before the fair) should arrange matters in New York, where they had more acquaintances than I. I went for the second time to Boston in February, and met with unexpected success; bringing back about six hundred dollars in cash, with promises of a like sum for the ensuing two years. I had represented our scheme as a three-years' experiment In the mean time, the Drs. Blackwell had hired a large, old-fashioned house, No. 64, Bleeker Street, which we had looked at together, and which was very well suited to our purpose, devoting the rest of their time chiefly to endeavors to interest the Legislature in our enterprise; the result of which was, that, though nothing was granted us that spring, the next winter, when we could show our institution in operation, the usual dispensary grant was extended to us. On the 3d of April, I returned from Boston, and almost immediately went to work with some of our lady-managers to order beds and to furnish the house and dispensary, and also to superintend the internal changes. After five weeks of hard work, I had the pleasure, on the 15th of May, 1857, of listening in the wards of the New-York Infirmary to the opening speeches delivered by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Elder, and Rev. Dudley Tyng. A few days afterwards, I admitted the first house-patient and opened the dispensary, which I attended two days in the week; Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell taking charge of it for the remaining four days. I had offered two years' gratuitous services as my contribution to the Infirmary, remaining there not only as resident physician, but also as superintendent of the household and general manager; and attending to my private practice during the afternoon. The institution grew rapidly, and the number of dispensary patients increased to such an extent, that the time from seven in the morning until one in the afternoon was wholly occupied in the examination of cases. In the second year of the existence of the Infirmary the state of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's health compelled her to go to Europe: and for nine months Dr. Emily Blackwell and I took charge of the business, which at this time was considerable; the attendance at the dispensary averaging sixty daily. During the course of this year, I received letters from some of the Trustees of the New-England Female Medical College in Boston, inquiring whether I were inclined to take charge of a hospital in connection with that institution. A consultation on the subject with Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell seemed to prove to us, that by doing this, and helping the college to attain its objects, we could probably best aid the cause of the medical education of women. After hesitating for a long time what course to pursue, I went to Boston in the spring of 1859, in order to define in a public address my views and position in respect to the study of medicine. I found so great a desire prevailing for the elevation of the institution to the standard of the male medical colleges, and such enthusiasm in respect to the proposed hospital, that I concluded at once to leave the Infirmary; Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's absence having proved that it could be sustained by two, not only without loss, but with a steady increase, secured by the good done by its existence. Having fulfilled my promise of two years to the institution, on the 5th of June, 1859, I left for Boston, where I am now striving to make the hospital-department as useful as the New-York Infirmary is to the public and the students. Now, my dear Mary, you may think me very long in my story, especially in the latter part, of which you know much already; but I could not refrain from writing fully of this part of my life, which has been the object of all my undertakings, and for which I have borne trials and overcome difficulties which would have crushed nine out of ten in my position. I do not expect that this will be the end of my usefulness; but I do expect that I shall not have to write to you any more of my doings. It was simply in order that you, my friend, should understand me fully, and because you have so often expressed a wish to know my life before we met, that I finished this work. Now you have me externally and internally, past and present: and although there have been many influences besides which have made their impressions on my peculiar development, yet they are not of a nature to be spoken of as facts; as, for instance, your friendship for me. On looking back upon my past life, I may say that I am like a fine ship, that, launched upon high seas, is tossed about by the winds and waves, and steered against contrary currents, until finally stranded upon the shore, where, from the materials, a small boat is built, just strong enough to reach the port into which it had expected to enter with proudly swelling sails. But this ambition is entirely gone; and I care now very little whether the people recognize what is in me or not, so long as the object for which I have lived becomes a reality. And now, my good friend, I must add one wish before I send these last few pages to you; namely, that I may be enabled some day to go with you to Berlin, to show you the scenes in which my childhood and youth were passed, and to teach you on the spot the difference between Europe and America. All other inducements to return have vanished. The death of my father during the last year severed the last tie that bound me to my native place. Nearly all the men who aided in promoting my wishes have passed away; and the only stimulus that now remains to revisit the home of my youth is the wish to wander about there with you, and perhaps two or three other of my American friends. Until this can be accomplished, I hope to continue my present work in the New-England Female Medical College, which, though by no means yet what we wish it to be, is deserving of every effort to raise it to the stand that it ought to take among the medical institutions of America. Yours with love, Marie E. Zakrzewska. Boston, September, 1859. * * * * * The sweet, pure song has ended. Happy she who has been permitted to set its clear, strong notes to music. I need not murmur that my own old hand-organ grows useless, since it has been permitted to grind out the _key_. Yet Marie's story is told so modestly, and with so much personal reserve, that, for the sake of the women whom we are both striving to help, I must be forgiven for directing the public attention to a few of its points. In all respects, the "little blind doctor" of the story is the Marie Zakrzewska that we know. The early anecdotes give us the poetic impressibility and the enduring muscular fibre, that make themselves felt through the lively, facile nature. The voice that ordered the fetters taken off of crazy Jacob is the voice we still hear in the wards of the hospital. But that poetic impressibility did not run wild with crazy fancies when she was left to sleep on the floor of the dead-house: the same strong sense controlled it that started the "tassel manufactory" in New York, where it had been meant to open a physician's office. Only thirteen years old when she left school, she had but little aid beside a _steady purpose_ in preparing for her career. We hear of her slatternly habits; but who would ever guess them, who remembers the quiet, tasteful dress of later years? How free from all egotism is the record! The brain-fever which followed her attendance on her two aunts is mentioned as quietly as if it were a sprained foot. Who of us but can see the wearing-away of nervous energy which took place with the perpetual care of a cancer and a somnambulist pressed also by the hard reading suggested by Dr. Arthur Lütze? Berlin educated the second La Chapelle; but it was for America, not Germany. The dreadful tragedy of Dr. Schmidt's death is hardly dwelt upon long enough to show its full effects, so fearful is our friend of intruding a personal matter. When "Woman's Right to Labor" was printed, many persons expressed their regret that so little was said about sin and destitution in Boston itself; and many refused to believe that every pit-fall and snare open in the Old World gaped as widely here. "You have only the testimony of the girls themselves," they would reply, when I privately told them what I had not thought it wise to print. I have never regretted yielding to the motives which decided me to withhold much that I knew. "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead," said, of old, the divine voice; and the hearts that were not touched by what I thought it fit to tell would never have been stirred to energy by fuller revelations. In these pages, authenticated by a pure and cultivated woman, who holds a high position among us, every fact at which I hinted is made plain; and here no careless talker may challenge the record with impunity. Here, as in New York, smooth-faced men go on board the emigrant-ship, or the steerage of the long-expected steamer; here, as there, they make friendly offers and tell plausible lies, which girls who have never walked the streets of Berlin at night, nor seen the occupants of a hospital-ward at the Charité, can hardly be expected to estimate at their just worth. The stories which I have told of unknown sufferers are here repeated. The grand-daughter of Krummacher marries a poor shoemaker to save herself from vice, and poor German Mary drowns herself in the Hudson because she feels herself a burden on a heartless brother. Better far to sink beneath its waves than beneath the more remorseless flood which sweeps over all great cities. Now, when the story of the Water-street cap-makers is told, to be matched by many another in Boston itself, it is no longer some ignorant, half-trained stranger who tells the story, but the capable, skilled woman, who, educated for better things, made tassels and coiffures, and accepted commissions in embroidery, till the merchants were convinced that here, indeed, was a woman without reproach. Water-street merchants would do well to remember hereafter that the possibilities of a Zakrzewska lie hidden in every oppressed girl, and govern themselves accordingly. Think of this accomplished woman, able to earn no more than thirty-six cents a day,--a day sixteen hours long, which finished a dozen caps at three cents each! What, then, must become of clumsy and inferior work-women? Think of it long and patiently, till you come to see, as she bids you, the true relation between the idleness of women and money in the Fifth Avenue and the hunted squalor of women without money at the Five Points. Women of Boston, the parallel stands good for you. Listen, and you may hear the dull murmur of your own "Black Sea," as it surges against your gateway. Hasten to save those whom it has not yet overwhelmed Believe me that many of them are as pure and good as the babes whom you cradle in cambric and lace. If you will not save them, neither shall you save your own beloved ones from the current which undermines like a "back-water" your costliest churches, your most sacred homes. Caroline H. Dall. Oct. 29, 1860. L'Envoi. "Unbarred be all your gates, and opened wide, Till she who honors women shall come in!" Dante: Sonnet xx. Footnotes [1] Pronounced Zak-shef-ska. [2] "The undersigned, Secretary of Legation of the United States of America, certifies that Miss Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska has exhibited to him very strong recommendations from the highest professional authorities of Prussia, as a scientific, practical, experienced _accoucheuse_ of unusual talent and skill. She has been chief _accoucheuse_ in the Royal Hospital of Berlin, and possesses a certificate of her superiority from the Board of Directors of that institution. She has not only manifested great talent as a practitioner, but also as a teacher; and enjoys the advantage of a moral and irreproachable private character. She has attained this high rank over many female competitors in the same branch; there being more than fifty[A] in the city of Berlin who threaten, by their acknowledged excellence, to monopolize the obstetric art." Theo. S. Fay. "Legation United States, Berlin, Jan. 26, 1853." [SEAL.] [A] "Upon inquiry, I find that, instead of fifty, there are one hundred and ten female _accoucheuses_ in Berlin. "THEO. S. FAY." [3] Here I have to remark, that, not being able to speak English, I conducted my business at the different stores either in German or French, as I easily found some of the _employées_ who could speak one of these languages. 
10126	----	FACTORY FOLK DURING THE COTTON FAMINE*** Many thanks to Peter Moulding who transcribed this eText. email: p e t e r @ m o u l d i n g n a m e . i n f o http://www.mouldingname.info/00.html HOME-LIFE OF THE LANCASHIRE FACTORY FOLK DURING THE COTTON FAMINE BY EDWIN WAUGH Author of "Lancashire Sketches", "Poems and Lancashire Songs", "Tufts of Heather from the Northern Moors", etc, etc. "Hopdance cries in poor Tom's belly for two white herrings. Croak not, black angel: I have no food for thee." --King Lear. CONTENTS Chap. Page I 1 Among the Blackburn Operatives II 13 " " III 23 Among the Preston Operatives IV 32 " " V 40 " " VI 48 " " VII 59 " " VIII 69 " " IX 79 " " X 87 " " XI 97 " " XII 107 " " XIII 115 " " XIV 123 " " XV 132 Among the Wigan Operatives XVI 139 " " XVII 147 " " XVIII 155 " " XIX 163 " " XX 171 " " XXI 179 " " XXII 189 An Incident by the Wayside XXIII 197 Wandering Minstrels; or, Wails of the Workless Poor LETTERS AND SPEECHES UPON THE COTTON FAMINE 209 Letters of a Lancashire Lad 217 Mr Cobden's Speech 227 Speech of the Earl of Derby 253 Songs of Distress chiefly written during the Cotton Famine PREFACE The following chapters are reprinted from the columns of the Manchester Examiner and Times, to which Paper they were contributed by the Author during the year 1862. HOME LIFE OF THE LANCASHIRE FACTORY FOLK DURING THE COTTON FAMINE. (Reprinted from the Manchester Examiner and Times of 1862) CHAPTER I. AMONG THE BLACKBURN OPERATIVES "Poor Tom's a-cold. Who gives anything to poor Tom?" --King Lear. Blackburn is one of the towns which has suffered more than the rest in the present crisis, and yet a stranger to the place would not see anything in its outward appearance indicative of this adverse nip of the times. But to any one familiar with the town in its prosperity, the first glance shows that there is now something different on foot there, as it did to me on Friday last. The morning was wet and raw, a state of weather in which Blackburn does not wear an Arcadian aspect, when trade is good. Looking round from the front of the railway station, the first thing which struck me was the great number of tall chimneys which were smokeless, and the unusual clearness of the air. Compared with the appearance of the town when in full activity, there is now a look of doleful holiday, an unnatural fast-day quietness about everything. There were few carts astir, and not so many people in the streets as usual, although so many are out of work there. Several, in the garb of factory operatives, were leaning upon the bridge, and others were trailing along in twos and threes, looking listless and cold; but nobody seemed in a hurry. Very little of the old briskness was visible. When the mills are in full work, the streets are busy with heavy loads of twist and cloth; and the workpeople hurry in blithe crowds to and from the factories, full of life and glee, for factory labour is not so hurtful to healthy life as it was thirty years ago, nor as some people think it now, who don't know much about it. There were few people at the shop windows, and fewer inside. I went into some of the shops to buy trifling things of different kinds, making inquiries about the state of trade meanwhile, and, wherever I went, I met with the same gloomy answers. They were doing nothing, taking nothing; and they didn't know how things would end. They had the usual expenses going on, with increasing rates, and a fearfully lessened income, still growing less. And yet they durst not complain; but had to contribute towards the relief of their starving neighbours, sometimes even when they themselves ought to be receiving relief, if their true condition was known. I heard of several shopkeepers who had not taken more across their counters for weeks past than would pay their rents, and some were not doing even so much as that. This is one painful bit of the kernel of life in Blackburn just now, which is concealed by the quiet shell of outward appearance. Beyond this unusual quietness, a stranger will not see much of the pinch of the times, unless he goes deeper; for the people of Lancashire never were remarkable for hawking their troubles much about the world. In the present untoward pass, their deportment, as a whole, has been worthy of themselves, and their wants have been worthily met by their own neighbours. What it may become necessary to do hereafter, does not yet appear. It is a calamity arising, partly from a wise national forbearance, which will repay itself richly in the long run. But, apart from that wide- spread poverty which is already known and relieved, there is, in times like the present, always a certain small proportion, even of the poorest, who will "eat their cake to th' edge," and then starve bitterly before they will complain. These are the flower of our working population; they are of finer stuff than the common staple of human nature. Amongst such there must be many touching cases of distress which do not come to light, even by accident. If they did, nobody can doubt the existence of a generous will to relieve them generously. To meet such cases, it is pleasant to learn, however, as I did, that there is a large amount of private benevolence at work in Blackburn, industriously searching out the most deserving cases of distress. Of course, this kind of benevolence never gets into the statistics of relief, but it will not the less meet with its reward. I heard also of one or two wealthy men whose names do not appear as contributors to the public relief fund, who have preferred to spend considerable sums of money in this private way. In my wanderings about the town I heard also of several instances of poor people holding relief tickets, who, upon meeting with some temporary employment, have returned their tickets to the committee for the benefit of those less fortunate than themselves. Waiving for the present all mention of the opposite picture; these things are alike honourable to both rich and poor. A little past noon, on Friday, I set out to visit the great stone quarries on the southern edge of the town, where upwards of six hundred of the more robust factory operatives are employed in the lighter work of the quarries. This labour consists principally of breaking up the small stone found in the facings of the solid rock, for the purpose of road-mending and the like. Some, also, are employed in agricultural work, on the ground belonging to the fine new workhouse there. These factory operatives, at the workhouse grounds, and in the quarries, are paid one shilling a day--not much, but much better than the bread of idleness; and for the most part, the men like it better, I am told. The first quarry I walked into was the one known by the name of "Hacking's Shorrock Delph." There I sauntered about, looking at the scene. It was not difficult to distinguish the trained quarrymen from the rest. The latter did not seem to be working very hard at their new employment, and it can hardly be expected that they should, considering the great difference between it and their usual labour. Leaning on their spades and hammers, they watched me with a natural curiosity, as if wondering whether I was a new ganger, or a contractor come to buy stone. There were men of all ages amongst them, from about eighteen years old to white-headed men past sixty. Most of them looked healthy and a little embrowned by recent exposure to the weather; and here and there was a pinched face which told its own tale. I got into talk with a quiet, hardy-looking man, dressed in soil-stained corduroy. He was a kind of overlooker. He told me that there were from eighty to ninety factory hands employed in that quarry. "But," said he, "it varies a bit, yo known. Some on 'em gets knocked up neaw an' then, an' they han to stop a-whoam a day or two; an' some on 'em connot ston gettin' weet through--it mays 'em ill; an' here an' theer one turns up at doesn't like the job at o'--they'd rayther clem. There is at's both willin' an' able; thoose are likely to get a better job, somewheer. There's othersome at's willin' enough, but connot ston th' racket. They dun middlin', tak 'em one wi' another, an' considerin' that they're noan use't to th' wark. Th' hommer fo's leet wi' 'em; but we dunnot like to push 'em so mich, yo known--for what's a shillin' a day? Aw know some odd uns i' this delph at never tastes fro mornin' till they'n done at neet,--an' says nought abeawt it, noather. But they'n families. Beside, fro wake lads, sick as yon, at's bin train't to nought but leet wark, an' a warm place to wortch in, what con yo expect? We'n had a deeal o' bother wi 'em abeawt bein' paid for weet days, when they couldn't wortch. They wur not paid for weet days at th' furst; an' they geet it into their yeds at Shorrock were to blame. Shorrock's th' paymaister, under th' Guardians, But, then, he nobbut went accordin' to orders, yo known. At last, th' Board sattle't that they mut be paid for weet and dry,- -an' there's bin quietness sin'. They wortchen fro eight till five; an', sometimes, when they'n done, they drilln o' together i'th road yon--just like sodiurs--an' then they walken away i' procession. But stop a bit;--just go in yon, an' aw'll come to yo in a two-thre minutes." He returned, accompanied by the paymaster, who offered to conduct me through the other delphs. Running over his pay-book, he showed me, by figures opposite each man's name, that, with not more than a dozen exceptions, they had all families of children, ranging in number from two to nine. He then pointed out the way over a knoll, to the next quarry, which is called "Hacking's Gillies' Delph," saying that he would follow me thither. I walked on, stopping for him on the nearest edge of the quarry, which commanded a full view of the men below. They seemed to be waiting very hard for something just then, and they stared at me, as the rest had done; but in a few minutes, just as I began to hear the paymaster's footsteps behind me, the man at the nearest end of the quarry called "Shorrock!" and a sudden activity woke up along the line. Shorrock then pointed to a corner of the delph where two of these poor fellows had been killed the week before, by stones thrown out from a fall of earth. We went down through the delph, and up the slope, by the place where the older men were at work in the poorhouse grounds. Crossing the Darwen road, we passed the other delphs, where the scene was much the same as in the rest, except that more men were employed there. As we went on, one poor fellow was trolling a snatch of song, as he hammered away at the stones. "Thir't merry, owd mon," said I, in passing. "Well," replied he, "cryin' 'll do nought, wilt?" And then, as I walked away, he shouted after me, with a sort of sad smile, "It's a poor heart at never rejoices, maister." Leaving the quarries, we waited below, until the men had struck work for the day, and the whole six hundred came trooping down the road, looking hard at me as they went by, and stopping here and there, in whispering groups. The paymaster told me that one-half of the men's wages was paid to them in tickets for bread--in each case given to the shopkeeper to whom the receiver of the ticket owed most money-- the other half was paid to them in money every Saturday. Before returning to town I learnt that twenty of the more robust men, who had worked well for their shilling a day in the quarries, had been picked out by order of the Board of Guardians, to be sent to the scene of the late disaster, in Lincolnshire, where employment had been obtained for them, at the rate of 3s. 4d. per day. They were to muster at six o'clock next morning to breakfast at the soup kitchen, after which they were to leave town by the seven o'clock train. I resolved to be up and see them off. On retiring to bed at the "Old Bull," a good-tempered fellow, known by the name of "Stockings," from the fact of his being "under-boots," promised to waken me by six o'clock; and so I ended the day, after watching "Stockings" write "18" on the soles of my boots, with a lump of chalk. "Stockings" might as well have kept his bed on Saturday morning. My room was close to the ancient tower, left standing in the parish churchyard; and, at five o'clock, the beautiful bells of St Marie's struck up, filling my little chamber with that heart-stirring music, which, as somebody has well said, "sounds like a voice from the middle ages." I could not make out what all this early melody meant; for I had forgotten that it was the Queen's birthday. The old tower was in full view from my bed, and I lay there a while looking at it, and listening to the bells, and dreaming of Whalley Abbey, and of old features of life in picturesque Blackburnshire, now passed away. I felt no more inclination for sleep; and when the knock came to my door, I was dressed and ready. There were more people in the streets than I expected, and the bells were still ringing merrily. I found the soup kitchen a lively scene. The twenty men were busy at breakfast, and there was a crowd waiting outside to see them off. There were several members of the committee in the kitchen, and amongst them the Rev. Joseph V. Meaney, Catholic priest, went to and fro in cheerful chat. After breakfast, each man received four pounds of bread and one pound of cheese for the day's consumption. In addition to this, each man received one shilling; to which a certain active member of the committee added threepence in each case. Another member of the committee then handed a letter to each of the only three or four out of the twenty who were able to write, desiring each man to write back to the committee,--not all at once, but on different days, after their arrival. After this, he addressed them in the following words:--"Now, I hope that every man will conduct himself so as to be a credit to himself and an honour to Blackburn. This work may not prove to be such as you will like, and you must not expect it to be so. But, do your best; and, if you find that there is any chance of employment for more men of the same class as yourselves, you must write and let us know, so as to relieve the distress of others who are left behind you. There will be people waiting to meet you before you get to your journey's end; and, I have no doubt, you will meet with every fair encouragement. One-half of your wages will be paid over to each man there; the other half will be forwarded here, for the benefit of your families, as you all know. Now go, and do your duty to the best of your power, and you will never regret it. I wish you all success." At half-past six the men left the kitchen for the station. I lingered behind to get a basin of the soup, which I relished mightily. At the station I found a crowd of wives, children, and friends of those who were going away. Amongst the rest, Dr Rushton, the vicar of Blackburn, and his lady, had come to see them off. Here a sweet little young wife stood on the edge of the platform, with a pretty bareheaded child in her arms, crying as if her heart would break. Her husband now and then spoke a consoling word to her from the carriage window. They had been noticed sharing their breakfast together at the kitchen. A little farther on, a poor old Irishwoman was weeping bitterly. The Rev. Mr Meaney went up to her, and said, "Now, Mrs Davis, I thought you had more sense than to cry." "Oh," said a young Irishwoman, standing beside her, "sure, she's losin' her son from her." "Well," said the clergyman, cheeringly, "it's not your husband, woman." "Ah, thin," replied the young woman, "sure, it's all she has left of him." On the door of one compartment of the carriage there was the following written label:--"Fragile, with care." " How's this, Dennis?" said the Catholic priest to a young fellow nearest the door; "I suppose it's because you're all Irishmen inside there." In another compartment the lads kept popping their heads out, one after another, shouting farewells to their relatives and friends, after which they struck up, "There's a good time coming!" One wag of a fellow suddenly called out to his wife on the platform, "Aw say, Molly, just run for thoose tother breeches o' mine. They'n come in rarely for weet weather." One of his companions replied, "Thae knows hoo cannot get 'em, Jack. Th' pop-shops are noan oppen yet." One hearty cheer arose as the train started, after which the crowd dribbled away from the platform. I returned to the soup kitchen, where the wives, children, and mothers of the men who had gone were at breakfast in the inner compartment of the kitchen. On the outer side of the partition five or six pinched-looking men had straggled in to get their morning meal. When they had all done but one, who was left reared against the wooden partition finishing his soup, the last of those going away turned round and said, "Sam, theaw'rt noan as tickle abeawt thi mate as thae use't to be." "Naw," replied the other, "it'll not do to be nice these times, owd mon. But, thae use't to think thisel' aboon porritch, too, Jone. Aw'll shake honds wi' tho i' thae's a mind, owd dog." "Get forrud wi' that stuff, an' say nought," answered Jone. I left Sam at his soup, and went up into the town. In the course of the day I sat some hours in the Boardroom, listening to the relief cases; but of this, and other things, I will say more in my next. CHAPTER II. A little after ten o'clock on Saturday forenoon, I went into the Boardroom, in the hope of catching there some glimpses of the real state of the poor in Blackburn just now, and I was not disappointed; for amongst the short, sad complainings of those who may always be heard of in such a place, there was many a case presented itself which gave affecting proof of the pressure of the times. Although it is not here where one must look for the most enduring and unobtrusive of those who suffer; nor for the poor traders, who cannot afford to wear their distress upon their sleeves, so long as things will hold together with them at all; nor for that rare class which is now living upon the savings of past labour--yet, there were many persons, belonging to one or other of these classes, who applied for relief evidently because they had been driven unwillingly to this last bitter haven by a stress of weather which they could not bide any longer. There was a large attendance of the guardians; and they certainly evinced a strong wish to inquire carefully into each case, and to relieve every case of real need. The rate of relief given is this (as you will have seen stated by Mr Farnall elsewhere):--"To single able bodied men, 3s. for three days' work. To the man who had a wife and two children, 6s. for six days' work, and he would have 2s. 6d. added to the 6s., and perhaps a pair of clogs for one of his children. To a man who had a wife and four children, 10s. was paid for six days' labour, and in addition 4s., and sometimes 4s. 6d., was given to him, and also bits of clothing and other things which he absolutely wanted." Sitting at that Board I saw some curious--some painful things. It was, as one of the Board said to me, "Hard work being there." In one case, a poor, pale, clean-looking, and almost speechless woman presented herself. Her thin and sunken eyes, as well as her known circumstances, explained her want sufficiently, and I heard one of the guardians whisper to another, "That's a bad case. If it wasn't for private charity they'd die of starvation." "Yes," replied another; "that woman's punished, I can see." Now and then a case came on in which the guardians were surprised to see a man ask for relief whom everybody had supposed to be in good circumstances. The first applicant, after I entered the room, was a man apparently under forty years of age, a beerhouse keeper, who had been comparatively well off until lately. The tide of trouble had whelmed him over. His children were all factory operatives, and all out of work; and his wife was ill. "What; are you here, John?" said the chairman to a decent-looking man who stepped up in answer to his name. The poor fellow blushed with evident pain, and faltered out his story in few and simple words, as if ashamed that anything on earth should have driven him at last to such an extremity as this. In another case, a clean old decrepid man presented himself. "What's brought you here, Joseph?" said the chairman. "Why; aw've nought to do,--nor nought to tak to." "What's your daughter, Ellen, doing, Joseph?" "Hoo's eawt o' wark." "And what's your wife doing?" "Hoo's bin bed-fast aboon five year." The old man was relieved at once; but, as he walked away, he looked hard at his ticket, as if it wasn't exactly the kind of thing; and, turning round, he said, "Couldn't yo let me be a sweeper i'th streets, istid, Mr Eccles?" A clean old woman came up, with a snow- white nightcap on her head. "Well, Mary; what do you want?" "Aw could like yo to gi mo a bit o' summat, Mr Eccles,--for aw need it" "Well, but you've some lodgers, haven't you, Mary?" "Yigh; aw've three." "Well; what do they pay you?" "They pay'n mo nought. They'n no wark,--an' one connot turn 'em eawt." This was all quite true. "Well, but you live with your son; don't you?" continued the chairman. "Nay," replied the old woman, "HE lives wi' ME; an' he's eawt o' wark, too. Aw could like yo to do a bit o' summat for us. We're hard put to 't." "Don't you think she would be better in the workhouse?" said one of the guardians. "Oh, no," replied another; "don't send th' owd woman there. Let her keep her own little place together, if she can." Another old woman presented herself, with a threadbare shawl drawn closely round her gray head. "Well, Ann," said the chairman, "there's nobody but yourself and your John, is there?" "Nawe." "What age are you?" "Aw'm seventy." "Seventy!" "Aye, I am." "Well, and what age is your John?" "He's gooin' i' seventy-four." "Where is he, Ann ?" "Well, aw laft him deawn i' th' street yon; gettin' a load o' coals in." There was a murmur of approbation around the Board; and the old woman was sent away relieved and thankful. There were many other affecting cases of genuine distress arising from the present temporary severity of the times. Several applicants were refused relief on its being proved that they were already in receipt of considerably more income than the usual amount allowed by the Board to those who have nothing to depend upon. Of course there are always some who, having lost that fine edge of feeling to which this kind of relief is revolting, are not unwilling to live idly upon the rates as much and as long as possible at any time, and who will even descend to pitiful schemes to wring from this source whatever miserable income they can get. There are some, even, with whom this state of mind seems almost hereditary; and these will not be slow to take advantage of the present state of affairs. Such cases, however, are not numerous among the people of Lancashire. It was a curious thing to see the different demeanours and appearances of the applicants--curious to hear the little stories of their different troubles. There were three or four women whose husbands were away in the militia; others whose husbands had wandered away in search of work weeks ago, and had never been heard of, since. There were a few very fine, intelligent countenances among them. There were many of all ages, clean in person, and bashful in manner, with their poor clothing put into the tidiest possible trim; others were dirty, and sluttish, and noisy of speech, as in the case of one woman, who, after receiving her ticket for relief, partly in money and partly in kind, whipped a pair of worn clogs from under her shawl, and cried out, "Aw mun ha' some clogs afore aw go, too; look at thoose! They're a shame to be sin!" Clogs were freely given; and, in several cases, they were all that were asked for. In three or four instances, the applicants said, after receiving other relief, "Aw wish yo'd gi' me a pair o' clogs, Mr Eccles. Aw've had to borrow these to come in." One woman pleaded hard for two pair, saying, "Yon chylt's bar-fuut; an' HE'S witchod (wet-shod), an' as ill as he con be." "Who's witchod?" asked the chairman. "My husban' is," replied the woman; "an' he connot ston it just neaw, yo mun let HIM have a pair iv yo con." "Give her two pairs of clogs," said the chairman. Another woman took her clog off, and held it up, saying, "Look at that. We're o' walkin' o'th floor; an' smoor't wi' cowds." One decent-looking old body, with a starved face, applied. The chairman said, "Why, what's your son doing now? Has he catched no rabbits lately?" "Nay, aw dunnot know 'at he does. Aw get nought; an' it's ME at wants summat, Mr Eccles," replied the old woman, in a tremulous tone, with the water rising in her eyes. "Well, come; we mustn't punish th' owd woman for her son," said one of the guardians. Various forms of the feebleness of age appeared before the Board that day. "What's your son John getting, Mary?" said the chairman to one old woman. "Whor?" replied she. "What's your son John getting?" The old woman put her hand up to her ear, and answered, "Aw'm rayther deaf. What say'n yo?" It turned out that her son was taken ill, and they were relieved. In the course of inquiries I found that the working people of Blackburn, as elsewhere in Lancashire, nickname their workshops as well as themselves. The chairman asked a girl where she worked at last, and the girl replied, "At th' 'Puff-an'-dart.'" "And what made you leave there?" "Whau, they were woven up." One poor, pale fellow, a widower, said he had "worched" a bit at "Bang-the-nation," till he was taken ill, and then they had "shopped his place," that is, they had given his work to somebody else. Another, when asked where he had been working, replied, "At Se'nacre Bruck (Seven-acre Brook), wheer th' wild monkey were catched." It seems that an ourang-outang which once escaped from some travelling menagerie, was re-taken at this place. I sat until the last application had been disposed of, which was about half-past two in the afternoon. The business had taken up nearly four hours and a half. I had a good deal of conversation with people who were intimately acquainted with the town and its people; and I was informed that, in spite of the struggle for existence which is now going on, and not unlikely to continue for some time, there are things happening amongst the working people there, which do not seem wise, under existing circumstances. The people are much better informed now than they were twenty years ago; but, still, something of the old blindness lingers amongst them, here and there. For instance, at one mill, in Blackburn, where the operatives were receiving 11s. a week for two looms, the proprietor offered to give his workpeople three looms each, with a guarantee for constant employment until the end of next August, if they would accept one and a quarter pence less for the weaving of each piece. This offer, if taken, would have raised their wages to an average of 14s. 6d. a week. It was declined, however, and they are now working, as before, only on two looms each, with uncertainty of employment, at lls. a week. Perhaps it is too much to expect that such things should die out all at once. But I heard also that the bricklayers' labourers at Blackburn struck work last week for an advance of wages from 3s. 6d. a day to 4s. a day. This seems very untimely, to say the least of it. Apart from these things, there is, amongst all classes, a kind of cheery faith in the return of good times, although nobody can see what they may have to go through yet, before the clouds break. It is a fact that there are more than forty new places ready, or nearly ready, for starting, in and about Blackburn, when trade revives. After dinner, I walked down Darwen Street. Stopping to look at a music-seller's window, a rough-looking fellow, bareheaded and without coat, came sauntering across the road from a shop opposite. As he came near he shouted out, "Nea then Heaw go!" I turned round; and, seeing that I was a stranger, he said, "Oh; aw thought it had bin another chap." "Well," said I, "heaw are yo gettin' on, these times?" "Divulish ill," replied he. "Th' little maisters are runnin' a bit, some three, some four days. T'other are stopt o' together, welly. . . . It's thin pikein' for poor folk just neaw. But th' shopkeepers an' th' ale-heawses are in for it as ill as ony mak. There'll be crashin' amung some on 'em afore lung." After this, I spent a few minutes in the market-place, which was "slacker" than usual, as might be expected, for, as the Scotch proverb says, "Sillerless folk gang fast through the market." Later on, I went up to Bank Top, on the eastern edge of the town, where many factory operatives reside. Of course, there is not any special quarter where they are clustered in such a manner as to show their condition as a whole. They are scattered all round the town, living as near as possible to the mills in which they are employed. Here I talked with some of the small shopkeepers, and found them all more or less troubled with the same complaint. One owner of a provision shop said to me, "Wi'n a deeal o' brass owin'; but it's mostly owin' by folk at'll pay sometime. An' then, th' part on 'em are doin' a bit yo known; an' they bring'n their trifle o' ready brass to us; an' so we're trailin' on. But folk han to trust us a bit for their stuff, dunnot yo see,--or else it would be 'Wo-up!' soon." I heard of one beerhouse, the owner of which had only drawn ls. 6d. during a whole week. His children were all factory operatives, and all out of work. They were very badly off, and would have been very glad of a few soup tickets; but, as the man said, "Who'd believe me if aw were to go an' ax for relief?" I was told of two young fellows, unemployed factory hands, meeting one day, when one said to the other, "Thae favvurs hungry, Jone." "Nay, aw's do yet, for that," replied Jone. "Well," continued the other; "keep thi heart eawt of thi clogs, iv thi breeches dun eawt-thrive thi carcass a bit, owd lad." "Aye," said Jone, "but what mun I do when my clogs gi'n way?" "Whaw, thae mun go to th' Guardians; they'n gi tho a pair in a minute." "Nay, by __," replied Jone, "aw'll dee furst!" In the evening, I ran down to the beautiful suburb called Pleasington, in the hope of meeting a friend of mine there; not finding him, I came away by the eight o'clock train. The evening was splendid, and it was cheering to see the old bounty of nature gushing forth again in such unusual profusion and beauty, as if in pitiful charity for the troubles of mankind. I never saw the country look so rich in its spring robes as it does now. CHAPTER III. AMONG THE PRESTON OPERATIVES. Proud Preston, or Priest-town, on the banks of the beautiful Ribble, is a place of many quaint customs, and of great historic fame. Its character for pride is said to come from the fact of its having been, in the old time, a favourite residence of the local nobles and gentry, and of many penniless folk with long pedigrees. It was here that Richard Arkwright shaved chins at a halfpenny each, in the meantime working out his bold and ingenious schemes, with patient faith in their ultimate success. It was here, too, that the teetotal movement first began, with Anderson for its rhyme-smith. Preston has had its full share of the changeful fortunes of England, and, like our motherland, it has risen strongly out of them all. War's mad havoc has swept over it in many a troubled period of our history. Plague, pestilence, and famine have afflicted it sorely; and it has suffered from trade riots, "plug-drawings," panics, and strikes of most disastrous kinds. Proud Preston--the town of the Stanleys and the Hoghtons, and of "many a crest that is famous in story"--the town where silly King Jamie disported himself a little, with his knights and nobles, during the time of his ruinous visit to Hoghton Tower,--Proud Preston has seen many a black day. But, from the time when Roman sentinels kept watch and ward in their old camp at Walton, down by the Ribble side, it has never seen so much wealth and so much bitter poverty together as now. The streets do not show this poverty; but it is there. Looking from Avenham Walks, that glorious landscape smiles in all the splendour of a rich spring- tide. In those walks the nursemaids and children, and dainty folk, are wandering as usual airing their curls in the fresh breeze; and only now and then a workless operative trails by with chastened look. The wail of sorrow is not heard in Preston market-place; but destitution may be found almost anywhere there just now, cowering in squalid corners, within a few yards of plenty--as I have seen it many a time this week. The courts and alleys behind even some of the main streets swarm with people who have hardly a whole nail left to scratch themselves with. Before attempting to tell something of what I saw whilst wandering amongst the poor operatives of Preston, I will say at once, that I do not intend to meddle with statistics. They have been carefully gathered, and often given elsewhere, and there is no need for me to repeat them. But, apart from these, the theme is endless, and full of painful interest. I hear on all hands that there is hardly any town in Lancashire suffering so much as Preston. The reason why the stroke has fallen so heavily here, lies in the nature of the trade. In the first place, Preston is almost purely a cotton town. There are two or three flax mills, and two or three ironworks, of no great extent; but, upon the whole, there is hardly any variety of employment there to lighten the disaster which has befallen its one absorbing occupation. There is comparatively little weaving in Preston; it is a town mostly engaged in spinning. The cotton used there is nearly all what is called "Middling American," the very kind which is now most scarce and dear. The yarns of Preston are known by the name of "Blackburn Counts." They range from 28's up to 60's, and they enter largely into the manufacture of goods for the India market. These things partly explain why Preston is more deeply overshadowed by the particular gloom of the times than many other places in Lancashire. About half-past nine on Tuesday morning last, I set out with an old acquaintance to call upon a certain member of the Relief Committee, in George's Ward. He is the manager of a cotton mill in that quarter, and he is well known and much respected among the working people. When we entered the mill-yard, all was quiet there, and the factory was still and silent. But through the office window we could see the man we wanted. He was accompanied by one of the proprietors of the mill, turning over the relief books of the ward. I soon found that he had a strong sense of humour, as well as a heart welling over with tenderness. He pointed to some of the cases in his books. The first was that of an old man, an overlooker of a cotton mill. His family was thirteen in number; three of the children were under ten years of age; seven of the rest were factory operatives; but the whole family had been out of work for several months. When in full employment the joint earnings of the family amounted to 80s. a week; but, after struggling on in the hope of better times, and exhausting the savings of past labour, they had been brought down to the receipt of charity at last, and for sixteen weeks gone by the whole thirteen had been living upon 6s. a week from the relief fund. They had no other resource. I went to see them at their own house afterwards, and it certainly was a pattern of cleanliness, with the little household gods there still. Seeing that house, a stranger would never dream that the family was living on an average income of less than sixpence a head per week. But I know how hard some decent folk will struggle with the bitterest poverty before they will give in to it. The old man came in whilst I was there. He sat down in one corner, quietly tinkering away at something he had in his hands. His old corduroy trousers were well patched, and just new washed. He had very little to say to us, except that "He could like to get summat to do; for he wur tired o' walkin' abeawt." Another case was that of a poor widow woman, with five young children. This family had been driven from house to house, by increasing necessity, till they had sunk at last into a dingy little hovel, up a dark court, in one of the poorest parts of the town, where they huddled together about a fireless grate to keep one another warm. They had nothing left of the wreck of their home but two rickety chairs, and a little deal table reared against the wall, because one of the legs was gone. In this miserable hole-- which I saw afterwards--her husband died of sheer starvation, as was declared by the jury on the inquest. The dark, damp hovel where they had crept to was scarcely four yards square; and the poor woman pointed to one corner of the floor, saying, "He dee'd i' that nook." He died there, with nothing to lie upon but the ground, and nothing to cover him, in that fireless hovel. His wife and children crept about him, there, to watch him die; and to keep him as warm as they could. When the relief committee first found this family out, the entire clothing of the family of seven persons weighed eight pounds, and sold for fivepence, as rags. I saw the family afterwards, at their poor place; and will say more about them hereafter. He told me of many other cases of a similar kind. But, after agreeing to a time when we should visit them personally, we set out together to see the "Stone Yard," where there are many factory hands at work under the Board of Guardians. The "Stone Yard" is close by the Preston and Lancaster Canal. Here there are from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty, principally young men, employed in breaking, weighing, and wheeling stone, for road mending. The stones are of a hard kind of blue boulder, gathered from the land between Kendal and Lancaster. The "Labour Master" told me that there were thousands of tons of these boulders upon the land between Kendal and Lancaster. A great deal of them are brought from a place called "Tewhitt Field," about seven mile on "t' other side o' Lancaster." At the "Stone Yard" it is all piece-work, and the men can come and go when they like. As one of the Guardians told me, "They can oather sit an' break 'em, or kneel an' break 'em, or lie deawn to it, iv they'n a mind." The men can choose whether they will fill three tons of the broken stone, and wheel it to the central heap, for a shilling, or break one ton for a shilling. The persons employed here are mostly "lads an' leet- timber't chaps." The stronger men are sent to work upon Preston Moor. There are great varieties of health and strength amongst them. "Beside," as the Labour Master said, "yo'd hardly believe what a difference there it i'th wark o' two men wortchin' at the same heap, sometimes. There's a great deal i'th breaker, neaw; some on 'em's more artful nor others. They finden out that they can break 'em as fast again at after they'n getten to th' wick i'th inside. I have known an' odd un or two, here, that could break four ton a day,--an' many that couldn't break one,--but then, yo' know, th' men can only do accordin' to their ability. There is these differences, and there always will be." As we stood talking together, one of my friends said that he wished "Radical Jack" had been there. The latter gentleman is one of the guardians of the poor, and superintendent of the "Stone Yard." The men are naturally jealous of misrepresentation; and, the other day, as "Radical Jack" was describing the working of the yard to a gentleman who had come to look at the scene, some of the men overheard his words, and, misconceiving their meaning, gathered around the superintendent, clamorously protesting against what he had been saying. "He's lying!" said one. "Look at these honds!" cried another; "Wi'n they ever be fit to go to th' factory wi' again?" Others turned up the soles of their battered shoon, to show their cut and stockingless feet. They were pacified at last; but, after the superintendent had gone away, some of the men said much and more, and "if ever he towd ony moor lies abeawt 'em, they'd fling him into th' cut." The "Labour Master" told me there was a large wood shed for the men to shelter in when rain came on. As we were conversing, one of my friends exclaimed, "He's here now!" "Who's here?" "Radical Jack." The superintendent was coming down the road. He told me some interesting things, which I will return to on another occasion. But our time was up. We had other places to see. As we came away, three old Irishwomen leaned against the wall at the corner of the yard, watching the men at work inside. One of them was saying, "Thim guardians is the awfullest set o' min in the world! A man had better be transpoorted than come under 'em. An' thin, they'll try you, an' try you, as if you was goin' to be hanged." The poor old soul had evidently only a narrow view of the necessities and difficulties which beset the labours of the Board of Guardians at a time like this. On our way back to town one of my friends told me that he "had met a sexton the day before, and had asked him how trade was with him. The sexton replied that it was "Varra bad--nowt doin', hardly." "Well, how's that?" asked the other. "Well, thae sees," answered the sexton, "Poverty seldom dees. There's far more kilt wi' o'er-heytin' an' o'er-drinkin' nor there is wi' bein' pinched." CHAPTER IV. Leaving the "Stone Yard," to fulfil an engagement in another part of the town, we agreed to call upon three or four poor folk, who lived by the way; and I don't know that I could do better than say something about what I saw of them. As we walked along, one of my companions told me of an incident which happened to one of the visitors in another ward, a few days before. In the course of his round, this visitor called upon a certain destitute family which was under his care, and he found the husband sitting alone in the house, pale and silent. His wife had been "brought to bed" two or three days before; and the visitor inquired how she was getting on. "Hoo's very ill," said the husband. "And the child," continued the visitor, "how is it?" "It's deeod," replied the man; "it dee'd yesterday." He then rose, and walked slowly into the next room, returning with a basket in his hands, in which the dead child was decently laid out. "That's o' that's laft on it neaw," said the poor fellow. Then, putting the basket upon the floor, he sat down in front of it, with his head between his hands, looking silently at the corpse. Such things as these were the theme of our conversation as we went along, and I found afterwards that every visitor whom it was my privilege to meet, had some special story of distress to relate, which came within his own appointed range of action. In my first flying visit to that great melancholy field, I could only glean such things as lay nearest to my hand, just then; but wherever I went, I heard and saw things which touchingly testify what noble stuff the working population of Lancashire, as a whole, is made of. One of the first cases we called upon, after leaving the "Stone Yard," was that of a family of ten--man and wife, and eight children. Four of the children were under ten years of age,--five were capable of working; and, when the working part of the family was in full employment, their joint earnings amounted to 61s. per week. But, in this case, the mother's habitual ill-health had been a great expense in the household for several years. This family belonged to a class of operatives--a much larger class than people unacquainted with the factory districts are likely to suppose--a class of operatives which will struggle, in a dumb, enduring way, to the death, sometimes, before they will sacrifice that "immediate jewel of their souls"-- their old independence, and will keep up a decent appearance to the very last. These suffer more than the rest; for, in addition to the pains of bitter starvation, they feel a loss which is more afflicting to them even than the loss of food and furniture ; and their sufferings are less heard of than the rest, because they do not like to complain. This family of ten persons had been living, during the last nine weeks, upon relief amounting to 5s. a week. When we called, the mother and one or two of her daughters were busy in the next room, washing their poor bits of well-kept clothing. The daughters kept out of sight, as if ashamed. It was a good kind of cottage, in a clean street, called "Maudland Bank," and the whole place had a tidy, sweet look, though it was washing-day. The mother told me that she had been severely afflicted with seven successive attacks of inflammation, and yet, in spite of her long-continued ill-health, and in spite of the iron teeth of poverty which had been gnawing at them so long, for the first time, I have rarely seen a more frank and cheerful countenance than that thin matron's, as she stood there, wringing her clothes, and telling her little story. The house they lived in belonged to their late employer, whose mill stopped some time ago. We asked her how they managed to pay the rent, and she said, "Why, we dunnot pay it; we cannot pay it, an' he doesn't push us for it. Aw guess he knows he'll get it sometime. But we owe'd a deal o' brass beside that. Just look at this shop book. Aw'm noan freetend ov onybody seein' my acceawnts. An' then, there's a great lot o' doctor's-bills i' that pot, theer. Thoose are o' for me. There'll ha' to be some wark done afore things can be fotched up again. . . . Eh; aw'll tell yo what, William, (this was addressed to the visitor,) it went ill again th' grain wi' my husband to goo afore th' Board. An' when he did goo, he wouldn't say so mich. Yo known, folk doesn't like brastin' off abeawt theirsel' o' at once, at a shop like that. . . . Aw think sometimes it's very weel that four ov eawrs are i' heaven,--we'n sich hard tewin' (toiling), to poo through wi' tother, just neaw. But, aw guess it'll not last for ever." As we came away, talking of the reluctance shown by the better sort of working people to ask for relief, or even sometimes to accept it when offered to them, until thoroughly starved to it, I was told of a visitor calling upon a poor woman in another ward; no application had been made for relief, but some kind neighbour had told the committee that the woman and her husband were "ill off." The visitor, finding that they were perishing for want, offered the woman some relief tickets for food; but the poor soul began to cry, and said; "Eh, aw dar not touch 'em; my husban' would sauce me so! Aw dar not take 'em; aw should never yer the last on't!" When we got to the lower end of Hope Street, my guide stopped suddenly, and said, "Oh, this is close to where that woman lives whose husband died of starvation. "Leading a few yards up the by-street, he turned into a low, narrow entry, very dark and damp. Two turns more brought us to a dirty, pent-up corner, where a low door stood open. We entered there. It was a cold, gloomy-looking little hovel. In my allusion to the place last week I said it was "scarcely four yards square." It is not more than three yards square. There was no fire in the little rusty grate. The day was sunny, but no sunshine could ever reach that nook, nor any fresh breezes disturb the pestilent vapours that harboured there, festering in the sluggish gloom. In one corner of the place a little worn and broken stair led up to a room of the same size above, where, I was told, there was now some straw for the family to sleep upon. But the only furniture in the house, of any kind, was two rickety chairs and a little broken deal table, reared against the stairs, because one leg was gone. A quiet- looking, thin woman, seemingly about fifty years of age, sat there, when we went in. She told us that she had buried five of her children, and that she had six yet alive, all living with her in that poor place. They had no work, no income whatever, save what came from the Relief Committee. Five of the children were playing in and out, bare-footed, and, like the mother, miserably clad; but they seemed quite unconscious that anything ailed them. I never saw finer children anywhere. The eldest girl, about fourteen, came in whilst we were there, and she leaned herself bashfully against the wall for a minute or two, and then slunk slyly out again, as if ashamed of our presence. The poor widow pointed to the cold corner where her husband died lately. She said that "his name was Tim Pedder. His fadder name was Timothy, an' his mudder name was Mary. He was a driver (a driver of boat-horses on the canal); but he had bin oot o' wark a lang time afore he dee'd." I found in this case, as in some others, that the poor body had not much to say about her distress; but she did not need to say much. My guide told me that when he first called upon the family, in the depth of last winter, he found the children all clinging round about their mother in the cold hovel, trying in that way to keep one another warm. The time for my next appointment was now hard on, and we hurried towards the shop in Fishergate, kept by the gentleman I had promised to meet. He is an active member of the Relief Committee, and a visitor in George's ward. We found him in. He had just returned from the "Cheese Fair," at Lancaster. My purpose was to find out what time on the morrow we could go together to see some of the cases he was best acquainted with. But, as the evening was not far spent, he proposed that we should go at once to see a few of those which were nearest. We set out together to Walker's Court, in Friargate. The first place we entered was at the top of the little narrow court. There we found a good-tempered Irish-woman sitting without fire, in her feverish hovel. "Well, missis," said the visitor, "how is your husband getting on?" "Ah, well, now, Mr. T----," replied she, "you know, he's only a delicate little man, an' a tailor; an' he wint to work on the moor, an' he couldn't stand it. Sure, it was draggin' the bare life out of him. So, he says to me, one morning, "Catharine," says he, "I'll lave off this a little while, till I see will I be able to get a job o' work at my own trade; an' maybe God will rise up some thin' to put a dud o' clothes on us all, an' help us to pull through till the black time is over us." So, I told him to try his luck, any way; for he was killin' himself entirely on the moor. An' so he did try; for there's not an idle bone in that same boy's skin. But, see this, now; there's nothin' in the world to be had to do just now--an' a dale too many waitin' to do it--so all he got by the change was losin' his work on the moor. There is himself, an' me, an' the seven childer. Five o' the childer is under tin year old. We are all naked; an' the house is bare; an' our health is gone wi' the want o' mate. Sure it wasn't in the likes o' this we wor livin' when times was good." Three of the youngest children were playing about on the floor. "That's a very fine lad," said I, pointing to one of them. The little fellow blushed, and smiled, and then became very still and attentive. "Ah, thin," said his mother, "that villain's the boy for tuckin' up soup! The Lord be about him, an' save him alive to me,--the crayter ! . . . An' there's little curly there,-- the rogue! Sure he'll take as much soup as any wan o' them. Maybe he wouldn't laugh to see a big bowl forninst him this day." "It's very well they have such good spirits," said the visitor. "So it is," replies the woman, "so it is, for God knows it's little else they have to keep them warm thim bad times." CHAPTER V. The next house we called at in Walker's Court was much like the first in appearance--very little left but the walls, and that little, such as none but the neediest would pick up, if it was thrown out to the streets. The only person in the place was a pale, crippled woman; her sick head, lapped in a poor white clout, swayed languidly to and fro. Besides being a cripple, she had been ill six years, and now her husband, also, was taken ill. He had just crept off to fetch medicine for the two. We did not stop here long. The hand of the Ancient Master was visible in that pallid face; those sunken eyes, so full of deathly langour, seemed to be wandering about in dim, flickering gazes, upon the confines of an unknown world. I think that woman will soon be "where the weary are at rest." As we came out, she said, slowly, and in broken, painful utterances, that "she hoped the Lord would open the heavens for those who had helped them." A little lower down the court, we peeped in at two other doorways. The people were well known to my companion, who has the charge of visiting this part of the ward. Leaning against the door-cheek of one of these dim, unwholesome hovels, he said, "Well, missis; how are you getting on?" There was a tall, thin woman inside. She seemed to be far gone in some exhausting illness. With slow difficulty she rose to her feet, and, setting her hands to her sides, gasped out, "My coals are done." He made a note, and said, I'll send you some more." Her other wants were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court, where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man- nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the "Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in--but the fire--and that was gone out." As we came away, a stalwart Irishman met us at a turn of the court, and said to my companion, "Sure, ye didn't visit this house." " Not to-day;" replied the visitor. "I'll come and see you at the usual time." The people in this house were not so badly off as some others. We came down the steps of the court into the fresher air of Friargate again. Our next walk was to Heatley Street. As we passed by a cluster of starved loungers, we overheard one of them saying to another, "Sitho, yon's th' soup-maister, gooin' a-seein' somebry." Our time was getting short, so we only called at one house in Heatley Street, where there was a family of eleven--a decent family, a well-kept and orderly household, though now stript almost to the bare ground of all worldly possession, sold, bitterly, piecemeal, to help to keep the bare life together, as sweetly as possible, till better days. The eldest son is twenty-seven years of age. The whole family has been out of work for the last seventeen weeks, and before that, they had been working only short time for seven months. For thirteen weeks they had lived upon less than one shilling a head per week, and I am not sure that they did not pay the rent out of that; and now the income of the whole eleven is under 16s., with rent to pay. In this house they hold weekly prayer-meetings. Thin picking--one shilling a week, or less--for all expenses, for one person. It is easier to write about it than to feel what it means, unless one has tried it for three or four months. Just round the corner from Heatley Street, we stopped at the open door of a very little cottage. A good-looking young Irishwoman sat there, upon a three- legged stool, suckling her child. She was clean; and had an intelligent look. "Let's see, missis," said the visitor, "what do you pay for this nook?" "We pay eighteenpence a week--and they WILL have it--my word." "Well, an' what income have you now?" "We have eighteenpence a head in the week, an' the rent to pay out o' that, or else they'll turn us out." Of course, the visitor knew that this was true; but he wanted me to hear the people speak for themselves. "Let's see, Missis Burns, your husband's name is Patrick, isn't it?" " Yes, sir; Patrick Burns." "What! Patrick Burns, the famous foot- racer?" The little woman smiled bashfully, and replied, "Yes, sir; I suppose it is." With respect to what the woman said about having to pay her rent or turn out, I may remark, in passing, that I have not hitherto met with an instance in which any millowner, or wealthy man, having cottage property, has pressed the unemployed poor for rent. But it is well to remember that there is a great amount of cottage property in Preston, as in other manufacturing towns, which belongs to the more provident class of working men. These working men, now hard pressed by the general distress, have been compelled to fall back upon their little rentals, clinging to them as their last independent means of existence. They are compelled to this, for, if they cannot get work, they cannot get anything else, having property. These are becoming fewer, however, from day to day. The poorest are hanging a good deal upon those a little less poor than themselves; and every link in the lengthening chain of neediness is helping to pull down the one immediately above it. There is, also, a considerable amount of cottage property in Preston, belonging to building societies, which have enough to do to hold their own just now. And then there is always some cottage property in the hands of agents. Leaving Heatley Street, we went to a place called "Seed's Yard." Here we called upon a clean old stately widow, with a calm, sad face. She had been long known, and highly respected, in a good street, not far off, where she had lived for twenty-four years, in fair circumstances, until lately. She had always owned a good houseful of furniture; but, after making bitter meals upon the gradual wreck of it, she had been compelled to break up that house, and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now, creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence. The old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the whole family had been out of work for many months. One of the daughters, a clean, intelligent-looking young woman, about eighteen, sat at the table, eating a little bread and treacle to a cup of light-coloured tea, when we went in; but she blushed, and left off until we had gone--which was not long after. It felt almost like sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver--a poor trade now in the best of times--a very poor trade--since the days when tattered old "Jem Ceawp" sung his pathetic song of "Jone o' Greenfeelt"-- "Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows; We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes; We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good; An' Wayterloo porritch is th' most of er food; This clemmin' and starvin', Wi' never a farthin'-- It's enough to drive ony mon mad." This family was four in number--man, wife, and two children. They had always lived near to the ground, for the husband's earnings at the loom were seldom more than 7s. for a full week. The wife told us that they were not receiving any relief, for she said that when her husband "had bin eawt o' wark a good while he turn't his hond to shaving;" and in this way the ingenious struggling fellow had scraped a thin living for them during many months. "But," said she, " it brings varra little in, we hev to trust so much. He shaves four on 'em for a haw-penny, an' there's a deal on 'em connot pay that. Yo know, they're badly off--(the woman seemed to think her circumstances rather above the common kind); an' then," continued she, "when they'n run up a shot for three-hawpence or twopence or so, they cannot pay it o' no shap, an' so they stoppen away fro th' shop. They cannot for shame come, that's heaw it is; so we lose'n their custom till sich times as summat turns up at they can raise a trifle to pay up wi'. . . . He has nobbut one razzor, but it'll be like to do." Hearken this, oh, ye spruce Figaros of the city, who trim the clean, crisp whiskers of the well-to-do! Hearken this, ye dainty perruquiers, "who look so brisk, and smell so sweet," and have such an exquisite knack of chirruping, and lisping, and sliding over the smooth edge of the under lip,--and, sometimes, agreeably too,--"an infinite deal of nothing,"--ye who clip and anoint the hair of Old England's curled darlings! Eight chins a penny; and three months' credit! A bodle a piece for mowing chins overgrown with hair like pin-wire, and thick with dust; how would you like that? How would you get through it all, with a family of four, and only one razor? The next place we called at was what my friend described, in words that sounded to me, somehow, like melancholy irony,--as "a poor provision shop." It was, indeed, a poor shop for provender. In the window, it is true, there were four or five empty glasses, where children's spice had once been. There was a little deal shelf here and there; but there were neither sand, salt, whitening, nor pipes. There was not the ghost of a farthing candle, nor a herring, nor a marble, nor a match, nor of any other thing, sour or sweet, eatable or saleable for other uses, except one small mug full of buttermilk up in a corner--the last relic of a departed trade, like the "one rose of the wilderness, left on its stalk to mark where a garden has been." But I will say more about this in the next chapter. CHAPTER VI. Returning to the little shop mentioned in my last--the "little provision shop," where there was nothing left to eat--nothing, indeed, of any kind, except one mug of buttermilk, and a miserable remnant of little empty things, which nobody would buy; four or five glass bottles in the window, two or three poor deal shelves, and a doleful little counter, rudely put together, and looking as if it felt, now, that there was nothing in the world left for it but to become chips at no distant date. Everything in the place had a sad, subdued look, and seemed conscious of having come down in the world, without hope of ever rising again; even the stript walls appeared to look at one another with a stony gaze of settled despair. But there was a clean, matronly woman in the place, gliding about from side to side with a cloth in her hands, and wiping first one, then another, of these poor little relics of better days in a caressing way. The shop had been her special care when times were good, and she clung affectionately to its ruins still. Besides, going about cleaning and arranging the little empty things in this way looked almost like doing business. But, nevertheless, the woman had a cheerful, good- humoured countenance. The sunshine of hope was still warm in her heart; though there was a touch of pathos in the way she gave the little rough counter another kindly wipe now and then, as if she wished to keep its spirits up; and in the way she looked, now at the buttermilk mug, then at the open door, and then at the four glass bottles in the window, which had been gazed at so oft and so eagerly by little children outside, in the days when spice was in them. . . . The husband came in from the little back room. He was a hardy, frank-looking man, and, like his wife, a trifle past middle age, I thought; but he had nothing to say, as he stood there with his wife, by the counter side. She answered our questions freely and simply, and in an uncomplaining way, not making any attempt to awaken sympathy by enlarging upon the facts of their condition. Theirs was a family of seven--man, wife, and five children. The man was a spinner; and his thrifty wife had managed the little shop, whilst he worked at the mill. There are many striving people among the factory operatives, who help up the family earnings by keeping a little shop in this way. But this family was another of those instances in which working people have been pulled down by misfortune before the present crisis came on. Just previous to the mills beginning to work short time, four of their five children had been lying ill, all at once, for five months; and, before that trouble befell them, one of the lads had two of his fingers taken off, whilst working at the factory, and so was disabled a good while. It takes little additional weight to sink those whose chins are only just above water; and these untoward circumstances oiled the way of this struggling family to the ground, before the mills stopped. A few months' want of work, with their little stock of shop stuff oozing away--partly on credit to their poor neighbours, and partly to live upon themselves --and they become destitute of all, except a few beggarly remnants of empty shop furniture. Looking round the place, I said," Well, missis, how's trade?" "Oh, brisk," said she; and then the man and his wife smiled at one another. "Well," said I, "yo'n sowd up, I see, heawever." "Ay," answered she, "we'n sowd up, for sure--a good while sin';" and then she smiled again, as if she thought she had said a clever thing. They had been receiving relief from the parish several weeks; but she told me that some ill-natured neighbour had "set it eawt," that they had sold off their stock out of the shop, and put the money into the bank. Through this report, the Board of Guardians had "knocked off" their relief for a fortnight, until the falsity of the report was made clear. After that, the Board gave orders for the man and his wife and three of the children to be admitted to the workhouse, leaving the other two lads, who were working at the "Stone Yard," to "fend for theirsels," and find new nests wherever they could. This, however, was overruled afterwards; and the family is still holding together in the empty shop,--receiving from all sources, work and relief, about 13s. a week for the seven,--not bad, compared with the income of very many others. It is sad to think how many poor families get sundered and scattered about the world in a time like this, never to meet again. And the false report respecting this family in the little shop, reminds me that the poor are not always kind to the poor. I learnt, from a gentleman who is Secretary to the Relief Committee of one of the wards, that it is not uncommon for the committees to receive anonymous letters, saying that so and so is unworthy of relief, on some ground or other. These complaints were generally found to be either wholly false, or founded upon some mistake. I have three such letters now before me. The first, written on a torn scrap of ruled paper, runs thus:--"May 19th, 1862.--If you please be so kind as to look after __ Back Newton Street Formerly a Resident of __ as i think he is not Deserving Relief.--A Ratepayer." In each case I give the spelling, and everything else, exactly as in the originals before me, except the names. The next of these epistles says:-- "Preston, May 29th.--Sir, I beg to inform you that __, of Park Road, in receipt from the Relief Fund, is a very unworthy person, having worked two days since the 16 and drunk the remainder and his wife also; for the most part, he has plenty of work for himself his wife and a journeyman but that is their regular course of life. And the S___s have all their family working full time. Yours respectfully." These last two are anonymous. The next is written in a very good hand, upon a square piece of very blue writing paper. It has a name attached, but no address:--"Preston, June 2nd, 1862.--Mr. Dunn,-- Dear Sir, Would you please to inquire into the case of __, of __. the are a family of 3 the man work four or more days per week on the moor the woman works 6 days per week at Messrs Simpsons North Road the third is a daughter 13 or 14 should be a weaver but to lasey she has good places such as Mr. Hollins and Horrocks and Millers as been sent a way for being to lasey. the man and woman very fond of drink. I as a Nabour and a subscriber do not think this a proper case for your charity. Yours truly, __." The committee could not find out the writer of this, although a name is given. Such things as these need no comment. The next house we called at was inhabited by an old widow and her only daughter. The daughter had been grievously afflicted with disease of the heart, and quite incapable of helping herself during the last eleven years. The poor worn girl sat upon an old tattered kind of sofa, near the fire, panting for breath in the close atmosphere. She sat there in feverish helplessness, sallow and shrunken, and unable to bear up her head. It was a painful thing to look at her. She had great difficulty in uttering a few words. I can hardly guess what her age may be now; I should think about twenty- five. Mr Toulmin, one of the visitors who accompanied me to the place, reminded the young woman of his having called upon them there more than four years ago, to leave some bedding which had been bestowed upon an old woman by a certain charity in the town. He saw no more of them after that, until the present hard times began, when he was deputed by the Relief Committee to call at that distressed corner amongst others in his own neighbourhood; and when he first opened the door, after a lapse of four years, he was surprised to find the same young woman, sitting in the same place, gasping painfully for breath, as he had last seen her. The old widow had just been able to earn what kept soul and body together in her sick girl and herself, during the last eleven years, by washing and such like work. But even this resource had fallen away a good deal during these bad times; there are so many poor creatures like herself, driven to extremity, and glad to grasp at any little bit of employment which can be had. In addition to what the old woman could get by a day's washing now and then, she received 1s. 6d. a week from the parish. Think of the poor old soul trailing about the world, trying to "scratch a living" for herself and her daughter by washing; and having to hurry home from her labour to attend to that sick girl through eleven long years. Such a life is a good deal like a slow funeral. It is struggling for a few breaths more, with the worms crawling over you. And yet I am told that the old woman was not accustomed to "make a poor mouth," as the saying goes. How true it is that "a great many people in this world have only one form of rhetoric for their profoundest experiences, namely--to waste away and die." Our next visit was to an Irish family. There was an old woman in, and a flaxen-headed lad about ten years of age. She was sitting upon a low chair,--the only seat in the place,--and the tattered lad was kneeling on the ground before her, whilst she combed his hair out. "Well, missis, how are you getting on amongst it?" "Oh, well, then, just middlin', Mr T. Ye see, I am busy combin' this boy's hair a bit, for 'tis gettin' like a wisp o' hay." There was not a vestige of furniture in the cottage, except the chair the old woman sat on. She said, "I did sell the childer's bedstead for 2s. 6d.; an' after that I sold the bed from under them for 1s. 6d., just to keep them from starvin' to death. The childer had been two days without mate then, an' faith I couldn't bear it any longer. After that I did sell the big pan, an' then the new rockin' chair, an' so on, one thing after another, till all wint entirely, barrin' this I am sittin' on, an' they wint for next to nothin' too. Sure, I paid 9s. 6d. for the bed itself, which was sold for 1s. 6d. We all sleep on straw now." This family was seven in number. The mill at which they used to work had been stopped about ten months. One of the family had found employment at another mill, three months out of the ten, and the old man himself had got a few days' work in that time. The rest of the family had been wholly unemployed, during the ten months. Except the little money this work brought in, and a trifle raised now and then by the sale of a bit of furniture when hunger and cold pressed them hard, the whole family had been living upon 5s. a week for the last ten months. The rent was running on. The eldest daughter was twenty- eight years of age. As we came away Mr Toulmin said to me, "Well, I have called at that house regularly for the last sixteen weeks, and this is the first time I ever saw a fire in the place. But the old man has got two days' work this week--that may account for the fire." It was now close upon half-past seven in the evening, at which time I had promised to call upon the Secretary of the Trinity Ward Relief Committee, whose admirable letter in the London Times, attracted so much attention about a month ago. I met several members of the committee at his lodgings, and we had an hour's interesting conversation. I learnt that, in cases of sickness arising from mere weakness, from poorness of diet, or from unsuitableness of the food commonly provided by the committee, orders were now issued for such kind of "kitchen physic" as was recommended by the doctors. The committee had many cases of this kind. One instance was mentioned, in which, by the doctor's advice, four ounces of mutton chop daily had been ordered to be given to a certain sick man, until further notice. The thing went on and was forgotten, until one day, when the distributor of food said to the committeeman who had issued the order, "I suppose I must continue that daily mutton chop to so-and- so?" "Eh, no; he's been quite well two months?" The chop had been going on for ninety-five days. We had some talk with that class of operatives who are both clean, provident, and "heawse-preawd," as Lancashire folk call it. The Secretary told me that he was averse to such people living upon the sale of their furniture; and the committee had generally relieved the distress of such people, just as if they had no furniture, at all. He mentioned the case of a family of factory operatives, who were all fervent lovers of music, as so many of the working people of Lancashire are. Whilst in full work, they had scraped up money to buy a piano; and, long after the ploughshare of ruin had begun to drive over the little household, they clung to the darling instrument, which was such a source of pure pleasure to them, and they were advised to keep it by the committee which relieved them. "Yes," said another member of the committee," but I called there lately, and the piano's gone at last." Many interesting things came out in the course of our conversation. One mentioned a house he had called at, where there was neither chair, table, nor bed; and one of the little lads had to hold up a piece of board for him to write upon. Another spoke of the difficulties which "lone women" have to encounter in these hard times. "I knocked so-and-so off my list," said one of the committee, "till I had inquired into an ill report I heard of her. But she came crying to me; and I found out that the woman had been grossly belied." Another (Mr Nowell) told of a house on his list, where they had no less than one hundred and fifty pawn tickets. He told, also, of a moulder's family, who had been all out of work and starving so long, that their poor neighbours came at last and recommended the committee to relieve them, as they would not apply for relief themselves. They accepted relief just one week, and then the man came and said that he had a PROSPECT of work; and he shouldn't need relief tickets any longer. It was here that I heard so much about anonymous letters, of which I have given you three samples. Having said that I should like to see the soup kitchen, one of the committee offered to go with me thither at six o'clock the next morning; and so I came away from the meeting in the cool twilight. Old Preston looked fine to me in the clear air of that declining day. I stood a while at the end of the "Bull" gateway. There was a comical-looking little knock-kneed fellow in the middle of the street --a wandering minstrel, well known in Preston by the name of "Whistling Jack." There he stood, warbling and waving his band, and looking from side to side,--in vain. At last I got him to whistle the "Flowers of Edinburgh." He did it, vigorously; and earned his penny well. But even "Whistling Jack" complained of the times. He said Preston folk had "no taste for music." But he assured me the time would come when there would be a monument to him in that town. CHAPTER VII. About half-past six I found my friend waiting at the end of the "Bull" gateway. It was a lovely morning. The air was cool and clear, and the sky was bright. It was easy to see which was the way to the soup kitchen, by the stragglers going and coming. We passed the famous "Orchard," now a kind of fairground, which has been the scene of so many popular excitements in troubled times. All was quiet in the "Orchard" that morning, except that, here, a starved-looking woman, with a bit of old shawl tucked round her head, and a pitcher in her hand, and there, a bare-footed lass, carrying a tin can, hurried across the sunny space towards the soup kitchen. We passed a new inn, called "The Port Admiral." On the top of the building there were three life-sized statues--Wellington and Nelson, with the Greek slave between them--a curious companionship. These statues reminded me of a certain Englishman riding through Dublin, for the first time, upon an Irish car. "What are the three figures yonder?" said he to the car-boy, pointing to the top of some public building. "Thim three is the twelve apostles, your honour," answered the driver. "Nay, nay," said the traveller,"that'll not do. How do you make twelve out of three?" "Bedad," replied the driver, "your honour couldn't expect the whole twelve to be out at once such a murtherin' wet day as this." But we had other things than these to think of that day. As we drew near the baths and washhouses, where the soup kitchen is, the stream of people increased. About the gate there was a cluster of melancholy loungers, looking cold and hungry. They were neither going in nor going away. I was told afterwards that many of these were people who had neither money nor tickets for food--some of them wanderers from town to town; anybody may meet them limping, footsore and forlorn, upon the roads in Lancashire, just now-- houseless wanderers, who had made their way to the soup kitchen to beg a mouthful from those who were themselves at death's door. In the best of times there are such wanderers; and, in spite of the generous provision made for the relief of the poor, there must be, in a time like the present, a great number who let go their hold of home (if they have any), and drift away in search of better fortune, and, sometimes, into irregular courses of life, never to settle more. Entering the yard, we found the wooden sheds crowded with people at breakfast--all ages, from white-haired men, bent with years, to eager childhood, yammering over its morning meal, and careless till the next nip of hunger came. Here and there a bonny lass had crept into the shade with her basin; and there was many a brown-faced man, who had been hardened by working upon the moor or at the "stone-yard." "Theer, thae's shap't that at last, as how?" said one of these to his friend, who had just finished and stood wiping his mouth complacently. "Shap't that," replied the other, "ay, lad, aw can do a ticket and a hafe (three pints of soup) every morning." Five hundred people breakfast in the sheds alone, every day. The soup kitchen opens at five in the morning, and there is always a crowd waiting to get in. This looks like the eagerness of hunger. I was told that they often deliver 3000 quarts of soup at this kitchen in two hours. The superintendent of the bread department informed me that, on that morning, he had served out two thousand loaves, of 3lb. 11oz. each. There was a window at one end, where soup was delivered to such as brought money for it instead of tickets. Those who came with tickets--by far the greatest number-- had to pass in single file through a strong wooden maze, which restrained their eagerness, and compelled them to order. I noticed that only a small proportion of men went through the maze; they were mostly women and children. There was many a fine, intelligent young face hurried blushing through that maze--many a bonny lad and lass who will be heard of honourably hereafter. The variety of utensils presented showed that some of the poor souls had been hard put to it for things to fetch their soup in. One brought a pitcher; another a bowl; and another a tin can, a world too big for what it had to hold. "Yo mun mind th' jug," said one old woman; "it's cracked, an' it's noan o' mine." "Will ye bring me some?" said a little, light- haired lass, holding up her rosy neb to the soupmaster. "Aw want a ha'poth," said a lad with a three-quart can in his hand. The benevolent-looking old gentleman who had taken the superintendence of the soup department as a labour of love, told me that there had been a woman there by half-past five that morning, who had come four miles for some coffee. There was a poor fellow breakfasting in the shed at the same time; and he gave the woman a thick shive of his bread as she went away. He mentioned other instances of the same humane feeling; and he said, "After what I have seen of them here, I say, 'Let me fall into the hands of the poor.'" "They who, half-fed, feed the breadless, in the travail of distress; They who, taking from a little, give to those who still have less; They who, needy, yet can pity when they look on greater need; These are Charity's disciples,--these are Mercy's sons indeed." We returned to the middle of the town just as the shopkeepers in Friargate were beginning to take their shutters down. I had another engagement at half-past nine. A member of the Trinity Ward Relief Committee, who is master of the Catholic school in that ward, had offered to go with me to visit some distressed people who were under his care in that part of the town. We left Friargate at the appointed time. As we came along there was a crowd in front of Messrs Wards', the fishmongers. A fine sturgeon had just been brought in. It had been caught in the Ribble that morning. We went in to look at the royal fish. It was six feet long, and weighed above a hundred pounds. I don't know that I ever saw a sturgeon before. But we had other fish to fry; and so we went on. The first place we called at was a cellar in Nile Street. "Here," said my companion, "let us have a look at old John." A gray-headed little man, of seventy, lived down in this one room, sunken from the street. He had been married forty years, and if I remember aright, he lost his wife about four years ago. Since that time, he had lived in this cellar, all alone, washing and cooking for himself. But I think the last would not trouble him much, for "they have no need for fine cooks who have only one potato to their dinner." When a lad, he had been apprenticed to a bobbin turner. Afterwards he picked up some knowledge of engineering; and he had been "well off in his day." He now got a few coppers occasionally from the poor folk about, by grinding knives, and doing little tinkering jobs. Under the window he had a rude bench, with a few rusty tools upon it, and in one corner there was a low, miserable bedstead, without clothing upon it. There was one cratchinly chair in the place, too; but hardly anything else. He had no fire; be generally went into neighbours' houses to warm himself. He was not short of such food as the Relief Committees bestow. There was a piece of bread upon the bench, left from his morning meal; and the old fellow chirruped about, and looked as blithe as if he was up to the middle in clover. He showed us a little thing which he had done "for a bit ov a prank." The number of his cellar was 8, and he had cut out a large tin figure of 8, a foot long, and nailed it upon his door, for the benefit of some of his friends that were getting bad in their eyesight, and "couldn't read smo' print so low deawn as that." "Well, John," said my companion, when we went in, "how are you getting on?" "Oh, bravely," replied he, handing a piece of blue paper to the inquirer, "bravely; look at that!" Why, this is a summons," said my companion. "Ay, bigad is't, too," answered the old man. "Never had sich a thing i' my life afore! Think o' me gettin' a summons for breakin' windows at seventy year owd. A bonny warlock, that, isn't it? Why, th' whole street went afore th' magistrates to get mo off." "Then you did get off, John?" "Get off! Sure, aw did. It wur noan o' me. It wur a keaw jobber, at did it. . . . Aw'll tell yo what, for two pins aw'd frame that summons, an' hang it eawt o' th' window; but it would look so impudent." Old John's wants were inquired into, and we left him fiddling among his rusty tools. We next went to a place called Hammond's Row--thirteen poor cottages, side by side. Twelve of the thirteen were inhabited by people living, almost entirely, upon relief, either from the parish or from the Relief Committee. There was only one house where no relief was needed. As we passed by, the doors were nearly all open, and the interiors all presented the same monotonous phase of destitution. They looked as if they had been sacked by bum-bailiffs. The topmost house was the only place where I saw a fire. A family of eight lived there. They were Irish people. The wife, a tall, cheerful woman, sat suckling her child, and giving a helping hand now and then to her husband's work. He was a little, pale fellow, with only one arm, and he had an impediment in his speech. He had taken to making cheap boxes of thin, rough deal, afterwards covered with paper. With the help of his wife he could make one in a day, and he got ninepence profit out of it--when the box was sold. He was working at one when we went in, and he twirled it proudly about with his one arm, and stammered out a long explanation about the way it had been made; and then he got upon the lid, and sprang about a little, to let us see how much it would bear. As the brave little tattered man stood there upon the box-lid, springing, and sputtering, and waving his one arm, his wife looked up at him with a smile, as if she thought him "the greatest wight on ground." There was a little curly-headed child standing by, quietly taking in all that was going on. I laid my hand upon her head; and asked her what her name was. She popped her thumb into her mouth, and looked shyly about from one to another, but never a word could I get her to say. "That's Lizzy," said the woman; "she is a little visitor belongin' to one o' the neighbours. They are badly off, and she often comes in. Sure, our childer is very fond of her, an' so she is of them. She is fine company wid ourselves, but always very shy wid strangers. Come now, Lizzy, darlin'; tell us your name, love, won't you, now?" But it was no use; we couldn't get her to speak. In the next cottage where we called, in this row, there was a woman washing. Her mug was standing upon a stool in the middle of the floor; and there was not any other thing in the place in the shape of furniture or household utensil. The walls were bare of everything, except a printed paper, bearing these words: "The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." We now went to another street, and visited the cottage of a blind chairmaker, called John Singleton. He was a kind of oracle among the poor folk of the neighbourhood. The old chairmaker was sitting by the fire when we went in; and opposite to him sat "Old John," the hero of the broken windows in Nile Street. He had come up to have a crack with his blind crony. The chairmaker was seventy years of age, and he had benefited by the advantage of good fundamental instruction in his youth. He was very communicative. He said he should have been educated for the priesthood, at Stonyhurst College. "My clothes were made, an' everything was ready for me to start to Stonyhurst. There was a stagecoach load of us going; but I failed th' heart, an' wouldn't go--an' I've forethought ever sin'. Mr Newby said to my friends at the same time, he said, 'You don't need to be frightened of him; he'll make the brightest priest of all the lot--an' I should, too. . . . I consider mysel' a young man yet, i' everything, except it be somethin' at's uncuth to me." And now, old John, the grinder, began to complain again of how badly he had been used about the broken windows in Nile Street. But the old chairmaker stopped him; and, turning up his blind eyes, he said, "John, don't you be foolish. Bother no moor abeawt it. All things has but a time." CHAPTER VIII. A man cannot go wrong in Trinity Ward just now, if he wants to see poor folk. He may find them there at any time, but now he cannot help but meet them; and nobody can imagine how badly off they are, unless he goes amongst them. They are biding the hard time out wonderfully well, and they will do so to the end. They certainly have not more than a common share of human frailty. There are those who seem to think that when people are suddenly reduced to poverty, they should become suddenly endowed with the rarest virtues; but it never was so, and, perhaps, never will be so long as the world rolls. In my rambles about this ward, I was astonished at the dismal succession of destitute homes, and the number of struggling owners of little shops, who were watching their stocks sink gradually down to nothing, and looking despondingly at the cold approach of pauperism. I was astonished at the strings of dwellings, side by side, stript, more or less, of the commonest household utensils--the poor little bare houses, often crowded with lodgers, whose homes had been broken up elsewhere; sometimes crowded, three or four families of decent working people in a cottage of half-a-crown a-week rental; sleeping anywhere, on benches or on straw, and afraid to doff their clothes at night time because they had no other covering. Now and then the weekly visitor comes to the door of a house where he has regularly called. He lifts the latch, and finds the door locked. He looks in at the window. The house is empty, and the people are gone- -the Lord knows where. Who can tell what tales of sorrow will have their rise in the pressure of a time like this--tales that will never be written, and that no statistics will reveal. Trinity Ward swarms with factory operatives; and, after our chat with blind John, the chairmaker, and his ancient crony the grinder from Nile Street, we set off again to see something more of them. Fitful showers came down through the day, and we had to shelter now and then. In one cottage, where we stopped a few minutes, the old woman told us that, in addition to their own family, they had three young women living with them--the orphan daughters of her husband's brother. They had been out of work thirty-four weeks, and their uncle--a very poor man--had been obliged to take them into his house, "till sich times as they could afford to pay for lodgin's somewheer else." My companion asked whether they were all out of work still. "Naw," replied the old woman, "one on 'em has getten on to wortch a few days for t' sick (that is, in the place of some sick person). Hoo's wortchin' i' th' cardreawn at 'Th' Big-un.'" (This is the name they give to Messrs Swainson and Birley's mill.) The next place we called at was the house of an old joiner. He was lying very ill upstairs. As we drew up to the door, my companion said, "Now, this is a clean, respectable family. They have struggled hard and suffered a great deal, before they would ask for relief." When we went in, the wife was cleaning her well-nigh empty house. "Eh," said she," I thought it wur th' clubman comin', an' I wur just goin' to tell him that I had nothin' for him." The family was seven in number--man, wife, and five children. The husband, as I have said, was lying ill. The wife told me that they had only 6s. a-week coming in for the seven to live upon. My companion was the weekly visitor who relieved them. She told me that her husband was sixty- eight years old; she was not forty. She said that her husband was not strong, and he had been going nearly barefoot and "clemmed" all through last winter, and she was afraid he had got his death of cold. They had not a bed left to lie upon. "My husband," said she,"was a master joiner once, an' was doin' very well. But you see how we are now." There were two portraits--oil paintings--hanging against the wall. "Whose portraits are these?" said I. "Well; that's my master--an' this is me," replied she. "He would have 'em taken some time since. I couldn't think o' sellin' 'em; or else, yo see, we've sold nearly everything we had. I did try to pawn 'em, too, thinkin' we could get 'em back again when things came round; but, I can assure yo, I couldn't find a broker anywhere that would tak' 'em in." "Well, Missis," said my companion, "yo have one comfort; you are always clean." "Eh, bless yo!" replied she, "I couldn't live among dirt! My husban' tells me that I clean all the luck away; but aw'm sure there's no luck i' filth; if there is, anybody may tak' it for me." The rain had stopt again; and after my friend had made a note respecting some additional relief for the family, we bade the woman good day. We had not gone far before a little ragged lass looked up admiringly at two pinks I had stuck in my buttonhole, and holding up her hand, said, "Eh, gi' me a posy!" My friend pointed to one of the cottages we passed, and said that the last time he called there, he found the family all seated round a large bowl of porridge, made of Indian meal. This meal is sold at a penny a pound. He stopped at another cottage and said, "Here's a house where I always find them reading when I call. I know the people very well." He knocked and tried the latch, but there was nobody in. As we passed an open door, the pleasant smell of oatcake baking came suddenly upon me. It woke up many memories of days gone by. I saw through the window a stout, meal-dusted old woman, busy with her wooden ladle and baking-shovel at a brisk oven. "Now, I should like to look in there for a minute or two, if it can be done," said I. "Well," replied my friend, "this woman is not on our books; she gets her own living in the way you see. But come in; it will be all right; I know her very well." I was glad of that, for I wanted to have a chat with her, and to peep at the baking. "Good morning, Missis," said he; "how are you?" "Why, just in a middlin' way." "How long is this wet weather going to last, think you?" "Nay, there ye hev me fast;--but what brings ye here this mornin'?" said the old woman, resting the end of her ladle on the little counter; "I never trouble sic like chaps as ye." "No, no," replied my friend; "we have not called about anything of that kind." "What, then, pray ye?" "Well, my friend, here, is almost a stranger in Preston; and as soon as ever he smelt the baking, he said he should like to see it, so I took the liberty of bringing him in." "Oh, ay; come in, an' welcome. Ye're just i' time, too; for I've bin sat at t' back to sarra (serve) t' pigs." "You're not a native of Lancashire, Missis," said I. "Why, wheer then? come, now; let's be knowin', as ye're so sharp." "Cumberland," said I. "Well, now; ye're reight, sewer enough. But how did ye find it out, now?" "Why, you said that you had been out to sarra t' pigs. A native of Lancashire would have said 'serve' instead of 'sarra.'" "Well, that's varra queer; for I've bin a lang time away from my awn country. But, whereivver do ye belang to, as ye're so bowd wi' me?" said she, smiling, and turning over a cake which was baking upon the oven. I told her that I was born a few miles from Manchester. "Manchester! never, sewer;" said she, resting her ladle again; "why, I lived ever so long i' Manchester when I was young. I was cook at th' Swan i' Shudehill, aboon forty year sin." She said that, in those days, the Swan, in Shudehill, was much frequented by the commercial men of Manchester. It was a favourite dining house for them. Many of them even brought their own beefsteak on a skewer; and paid a penny for the cooking of it. She said she always liked Manchester very well; but she had not been there for a good while. "But," said she, "ye'll hev plenty o' oatcake theer--sartin." "Not much, now," replied I; "it's getting out o' fashion." I told her that we had to get it once a week from a man who came all the way from Stretford into Manchester, with a large basketful upon his head, crying "Woat cakes, two a penny!" "Two a penny!" said she; "why, they'll not be near as big as these, belike." "Not quite," replied I. "Not quite! naw; not hauf t' size, aw warnd! Why, th' poor fellow desarves his brass iv he niver gev a farthin' for th' stuff to mak 'eni on. What! I knaw what oatcake bakin' is." Leaving the canny old Cumberland woman at her baking, we called at a cottage in Everton Gardens. It was as clean as a gentleman's parlour; but there was no furniture in sight except a table, and, upon the table, a fine bush of fresh hawthorn blossom, stuck in a pint jug full of water. Here, I heard again the common story--they had been several months out of work; their household goods had dribbled away in ruinous sales, for something to live upon; and now, they had very little left but the walls. The little woman said to me, "Bless yo, there is at thinks we need'n nought, becose we keepen a daycent eawtside. But, I know my own know abeawt that. Beside, one doesn't like to fill folk's meawths, iv one is ill off." It was now a little past noon, and we spent a few minutes looking through the Catholic schoolhouse, in Trinity Ward--a spacious brick building. The scholars were away at dinner. My friend is master of the school. His assistant offered to go with us to one or two Irish families in a close wynd, hard by, called Wilkie's Court. In every case I had the great advantage of being thus accompanied by gentlemen who were friendly and familiar with the poor we visited. This was a great facility to me. Wilkie's Court is a little cul de sac, with about half-a-dozen wretched cottages in it, fronted by a dead wall. The inhabitants of the place are all Irish. They were nearly all kept alive by relief from one source or other; but their poverty was not relieved by that cleanliness which I had witnessed in so many equally poor houses, making the best use of those simple means of comfort which are invaluable, although they cost little or nothing. In the first house we called at, a middle-aged woman was pacing slowly about the unwholesome house with a child in her arms. My friend inquired where the children were. "They are in the houses about; all but the one poor boy." "And where is he?" said I. "Well, he comes home now an' agin; he comes an' goes; sure, we don't know how. . . . Ah, thin, sir," continued she, beginning to cry, "I'll tell ye the rale truth, now. He was drawn away by some bad lads, an' he got three months in the New Bailey; that's God's truth. . . . Ah, what'll I do wid him," said she, bursting into tears afresh; "what'll I do wid him? sure, he is my own!" We did not stop long to intrude upon such trouble as this. She called out as we came away to tell us that the poor crayter next door was quite helpless. The next house was, in some respects, more comfortable than the last, though it was quite as poor in household goods. There was one flimsy deal table, one little chair, and two half-penny pictures of Catholic saints pinned against the wall. "Sure, I sold the other table since you wor here before," said the woman to my friend; "I sold it for two-an'-aightpence, an' bought this one for sixpence." At the house of another Irish family, my friend inquired where all the chairs were gone. "Oh," said a young woman," the baillies did fetch uvverything away, barrin' the one sate, when we were livin' in Lancaster Street." "Where do you all sit now, then?" "My mother sits there," replied she, "an' we sit upon the flure." "I heard they were goin' to sell these heawses," said one of the lads, "but, begorra," continued he, with a laugh, "I wouldn't wonder did they sell the ground from under us next." In the course of our visitation a thunder storm came on, during which we took shelter with a poor widow woman, who had a plateful of steeped peas for sale, in the window. She also dealt in rags and bones in a small way, and so managed to get a living, as she said, "beawt troublin' onybody for charity." She said it was a thing that folk had to wait a good deal out in the cold for. It was market-day, and there were many country people in Preston. On my way back to the middle of the town, I called at an old inn, in Friargate, where I listened with pleasure a few minutes to the old- fashioned talk of three farmers from the Fylde country. Their conversation was principally upon cow-drinks. One of them said there was nothing in the world like "peppermint tay an' new butter" for cows that had the belly-ache. "They'll be reet in a varra few minutes at after yo gotten that into 'em," said he. As evening came on the weather settled into one continuous shower, and I left Preston in the heavy rain, weary, and thinking of what I had seen during the day. Since then I have visited the town again, and I shall say something about that visit hereafter. CHAPTER IX. The rain had been falling heavily through the night. It was raw and gusty, and thick clouds were sailing wildly overhead, as I went to the first train for Preston. It was that time of morning when there is a lull in the streets of Manchester, between six and eight. The "knocker-up" had shouldered his long wand, and paddled home to bed again; and the little stalls, at which the early workman stops for his half-penny cup of coffee, were packing up. A cheerless morning, and the few people that were about looked damp and low spirited. I bought the day's paper, and tried to read it, as we flitted by the glimpses of dirty garret-life, through the forest of chimneys, gushing forth their thick morning fumes into the drizzly air, and over the dingy web of Salford streets. We rolled on through Pendleton, where the country is still trying to look green here and there, under increasing difficulties; but it was not till we came to where the green vale of Clifton open out, that I became quite reconciled to the weather. Before we were well out of sight of the ancient tower of Prestwich Church, the day brightened a little. The shifting folds of gloomy cloud began to glide asunder, and through the gauzy veils which lingered in the interspaces, there came a dim radiance which lighted up the rain-drops "lingering on the pointed thorns;" and the tall meadow grasses were swaying to and fro with their loads of liquid pearls, in courtesies full of exquisite grace, as we whirled along. I enjoyed the ride that raw morning, although the sky was all gloom again long before we came in sight of the Ribble. I met my friend, in Preston, at half-past nine; and we started at once for another ramble amongst the poor, in a different part of Trinity Ward. We went first to a little court, behind Bell Street. There is only one house in the court, and it is known as "Th' Back Heawse." In this cottage the little house-things had escaped the ruin which I had witnessed in so many other places. There were two small tables, and three chairs; and there were a few pots and a pan or two. Upon the cornice there were two pot spaniels, and two painted stone apples; and, between them, there was a sailor waving a union jack, and a little pudgy pot man, for holding tobacco. On the windowsill there was a musk-plant; and, upon the table by the staircase, there was a rude cage, containing three young throstles. The place was tidy; and there was a kind-looking old couple inside. The old man stood at the table in the middle of the floor, washing the pots, and the old woman was wiping them, and putting them away. A little lad sat by the fire, thwittling at a piece of stick. The old man spoke very few words the whole time we were there, but he kept smiling and going on with his washing. The old woman was very civil, and rather shy at first; but we soon got into free talk together. She told me that she had borne thirteen children. Seven of them were dead; and the other six were all married, and all poor. "I have one son," said she; "he's a sailmaker. He's th' best off of any of 'em. But, Lord bless yo; he's not able to help us. He gets very little, and he has to pay a woman to nurse his sick wife. . . . This lad that's here,--he's a little grandson o' mine; he's one of my dowter's childer. He brings his meight with him every day, an' sleeps with us. They han bod one bed, yo see. His father hasn't had a stroke o' work sin Christmas. They're badly off. As for us--my husband has four days a week on th' moor,--that's 4s., an' we've 2s. a week to pay out o' that for rent. Yo may guess fro that, heaw we are. He should ha' been workin' on the moor today, but they've bin rain't off. We've no kind o' meight i' this house bod three-ha'poth o' peas; an' we've no firin'. He's just brokken up an owd cheer to heat th' watter wi'. (The old man smiled at this, as if he thought it was a good joke.) He helps me to wesh, an' sick like; an' yo' know, it's a good deal better than gooin' into bad company, isn't it? (Here the old man gave her a quiet, approving look, like a good little lad taking notice of his mother's advice.) Aw'm very glad of a bit o' help," continued she,"for aw'm not so terrible mich use, mysel'. Yo see; aw had a paralytic stroke seven year sin, an' we've not getten ower it. For two year aw hadn't a smite o' use all deawn this side. One arm an' one leg trail't quite helpless. Aw drunk for ever o' stuff for it. At last aw gat somethin' ov a yarb doctor. He said that he could cure me for a very trifle, an' he did me a deal o' good, sure enough. He nobbut charged me hauve-a-creawn. . . . We never knowed what it was to want a meal's meight till lately. We never had a penny off th' parish, nor never trouble't anybody till neaw. Aw wish times would mend, please God! . . . We once had a pig, an' was in a nice way o' gettin' a livin'. . . . When things began o' gooin' worse an' worse with us, we went to live in a cellar, at sixpence a week rent; and we made it very comfortable, too. We didn't go there because we liked th' place; but we thought nobody would know; an, we didn't care, so as we could put on till times mended, an' keep aat o' debt. But th' inspectors turned us out, an' we had to come here, an' pay 2s. a week. . . . Aw do NOT like to ask for charity, iv one could help it. They were givin' clothin' up at th' church a while sin', an' some o' th' neighbours wanted me to go an' ax for some singlets, ye see aw cannot do without flannels,--but aw couldn't put th' face on." Now, the young throstles in the cage by the staircase began to chirp one after another. "Yer yo at that! "said the old man, turning round to the cage; "yer yo at that! Nobbut three week owd!" "Yes," replied the old woman; "they belong to my grandson theer. He brought 'em in one day --neest an' all; an' poor nake't crayters they were. He's a great lad for birds." "He's no worse nor me for that," answered the old man; "aw use't to be terrible fond o' brids when aw wur yung." After a little more talk, we bade the old couple good day, and went to peep at the cellar where they had crept stealthily away, for the sake of keeping their expenses close to their lessening income. The place was empty, and the door was open. It was a damp and cheerless little hole, down in the corner of a dirty court. We went next into Pole Street, and tried the door of a cottage where a widow woman lived with her children less than a week before. They were gone, and the house was cleared out. "They have had neither fire nor candle in that house for weeks past," said my companion. We then turned up a narrow entry, which was so dark and low overhead that my companion only told me just in time to "mind my hat!" There are several such entries leading out of Pole Street to little courts behind. Here we turned into a cold and nearly empty cottage, where a middle-aged woman sat nursing a sick child. She looked worn and ill herself, and she had sore eyes. She told me that the child was her daughter's. Her daughter's husband had died of asthma in the workhouse, about six weeks before. He had not "addled" a penny for twelve months before he died. She said, "We hed a varra good heawse i' Stanley Street once; but we hed to sell up an' creep hitherto. This heawse is 2s. 3d. a week; an' we mun pay it, or go into th' street. Aw nobbut owed him for one week, an' he said, 'Iv yo connot pay yo mun turn eawt for thoose 'at will do.' Aw did think o' gooin' to th' Board," continued she, "for a pair o' clogs. My een are bad; an' awm ill all o'er, an' it's wi' nought but gooin' weet o' my feet. My daughter's wortchin'. Hoo gets 5s. 6d. a week. We han to live an' pay th' rent, too, eawt o' that." I guessed, from the little paper pictures on the wall, that they were Catholics. In another corner behind Pole Street, we called at a cottage of two rooms, each about three yards square. A brother and sister lived together here. They were each about fifty years of age. They had three female lodgers, factory operatives, out of work. The sister said that her brother had been round to the factories that morning, "Thinking that as it wur a pastime, there would haply be somebody off; but he couldn't yer o' nought." She said she got a trifle by charing, but not much now; for folks were "beginnin' to do it for theirsels." We now turned into Cunliffe Street, and called upon an Irish family there. It was a family of seven--an old tailor, and his wife and children. They had "dismissed the relief," as he expressed it, "because they got a bit o' work." The family was making a little living by ripping up old clothes, and turning the cloth to make it up afresh into lads' caps and other cheap things. The old man had had a great deal of trouble with his family. "I have one girl," said he, "who has bothered my mind a dale. She is under the influence o' bad advice. I had her on my hands for many months; an', after that, the furst week's wages she got, she up, an' cut stick, an' left me. I have another daughter, now nigh nineteen years of age. The trouble I have with her I am content with; because it can't be helped. The poor crayter hasn't the use of all her faculties. I have taken no end o' pains with her, but I can't get her to count twenty on her finger ends wid a whole life's tachein'. Fortune has turned her dark side to me this long time, now; and, bedad, iv it wasn't for contrivin', an' workin' hard to boot, I wouldn't be able to keep above the flood. I assure ye it goes agin me to trouble the gentlemen o' the Board; an' so long as I am able, I will not. I was born in King's County; an' I was once well off in the city of Waterford I once had 400 pounds in the bank. I seen the time I didn't drame of a cloudy day; but things take quare turns in this world. How-an-ever, since it's no better, thank God it's no worse. Sure, it's a long lane that has never a turn in it." CHAPTER X. "There's nob'dy but the Lord an' me That knows what I've to bide." --NATTERIN NAN. The slipshod old tailor shuffled after us to the door, talking about the signs of the times. His frame was bowed with age and labour, and his shoulders drooped away. It was drawing near the time when the grasshopper would be a burden to him. A hard life had silently engraved its faithful records upon that furrowed face; but there was a cheerful ring in his voice which told of a hopeful spirit within him still. The old man's nostrils were dusty with snuff, and his poor garments hung about his shrunken form in the careless ease which is common to the tailor's shopboard. I could not help admiring the brave old wrinkled workman as he stood in the doorway talking about his secondhand trade, whilst the gusty wind fondled about in his thin gray hair. I took a friendly pinch from his little wooden box at parting, and left him to go on struggling with his troublesome family to "keep above the flood," by translating old clothes into new. We called at some other houses, where the features of life were so much the same that it is not necessary to say more than that the inhabitants were all workless, or nearly so, and all living upon the charitable provision which is the only thin plank between so many people and death, just now. In one house, where the furniture had been sold, the poor souls had brought a great stone into the place, and this was their only seat. In Cunliffe Street, we passed the cottage of a boilermaker, whom I had heard of before. His family was four in number. This was one of those cases of wholesome pride in which the family had struggled with extreme penury, seeking for work in vain, but never asking for charity, until their own poor neighbours were at last so moved with pity for their condition, that they drew the attention of the Relief Committee to it. The man accepted relief for one week, but after that, he declined receiving it any longer, because he had met with a promise of employment. But the promise failed him when the time came. The employer, who had promised, was himself disappointed of the expected work. After this; the boilermaker's family was compelled to fall back upon the Relief Committee's allowance. He who has never gone hungry about the world, with a strong love of independence in his heart, seeking eagerly for work from day to day, and coming home night after night to a foodless, fireless house, and a starving family, disappointed and desponding, with the gloom of destitution deepening around him, can never fully realise what the feelings of such a man may be from anything that mere words can tell. In Park Road, we called at the house of a hand-loom weaver. I learnt, before we went in, that two families lived here, numbering together eight persons; and, though it was well known to the committee that they had suffered as severely as any on the relief list, yet their sufferings had been increased by the anonymous slanders of some ill-disposed neighbours. They were quiet, well- conducted working people; and these slanders had grieved them very much. I found the poor weaver's wife very sensitive on this subject. Man's inhumanity to man may be found among the poor sometimes. It is not every one who suffers that learns mercy from that suffering. As I have said before, the husband was a calico weaver on the hand- loom. He had to weave about seventy-three yards of a kind of check for 3s., and a full week's work rarely brought him more than 5s. It seems astonishing that a man should stick year after year to such labour as this. But there is a strong adhesiveness, mingled with timidity, in some men, which helps to keep them down. In the front room of the cottage there was not a single article of furniture left, so far as I can remember. The weaver's wife was in the little kitchen, and, knowing the gentleman who was with me, she invited us forward. She was a wan woman, with sunken eyes, and she was not much under fifty years of age. Her scanty clothing was whole and clean. She must have been a very good-looking woman sometime, though she seemed to me as if long years of hard work and poor diet had sapped the foundations of her constitution; and there was a curious changeful blending of pallor and feverish flush upon that worn face. But, even in the physical ruins of her countenance, a pleasing expression lingered still. She was timid and quiet in her manner at first, as if wondering what we had come for; but she asked me to sit down. There was no seat for my friend, and he stood leaning against the wall, trying to get her into easy conversation. The little kitchen looked so cheerless and bare that dull morning that it reminded me again of a passage in that rude, racy song of the Lancashire weaver, "Jone o' Greenfeelt"-- "Owd Bill o' Dan's sent us th' baillies one day, For a shop-score aw owed him, at aw couldn't pay; But, he were too lat, for owd Billy at th' Bent Had sent th' tit an' cart, an' taen th' goods off for rent,-- They laft nought but th' owd stoo; It were seats for us two, An' on it keawr't Margit an' me. "Then, th' baillies looked reawnd 'em as sly as a meawse, When they see'd at o'th goods had bin taen eawt o' th' heawse; Says tone chap to tother, 'O's gone,--thae may see,'-- Says aw, 'Lads, ne'er fret, for yo're welcome to me!' Then they made no moor do, But nipt up wi' owd stoo, An' we both letten thwack upo' th' flags. "Then aw said to eawr Margit, while we're upo' the floor, 'We's never be lower i' this world, aw'm sure; Iv ever things awtern they're likely to mend, For aw think i' my heart that we're both at th' fur end; For meight we ban noan, Nor no looms to weighve on, An' egad, they're as good lost as fund.'" We had something to do to get the weaver's wife to talk to us freely, and I believe the reason was, that, after the slanders they had been subject to, she harboured a sensitive fear lest anything like doubt should be cast upon her story. "Well, Mrs," said my friend, "let's see; how many are you altogether in this house?" "We're two families, yo know," replied she; "there's eight on us all altogether." "Well," continued he,"and how much have you coming in, now?" He had asked this question so oft before, and had so often received the same answer, that the poor soul began to wonder what was the meaning of it all. She looked at us silently, her wan face flushed, and then, with tears rising in her eyes, she said, tremulously, "Well, iv yo' cannot believe folk--" My friend stopped her at once, and said, "Nay, Mrs_, you must not think that I doubt your story. I know all about it; but my friend wanted me to let you tell it your own way. We have come here to do you good, if possible, and no harm. You don't need to fear that." "Oh, well," said she, slowly wiping her moist forehead, and looking relieved," but yo know, aw was very much put about o'er th' ill-natur't talk as somebody set eawt." "Take no notice of them," said my friend; "take no notice. I meet with such things every day." "Well," continued she," yo know heaw we're situated. We were nine months an' hesn't a stroke o' wark. Eawr wenches are gettin' a day for t' sick, neaw and then, but that's all. There's a brother o' mine lives with us,--he'd a been clemmed into th' grave but for th' relief; an' aw've been many a time an' hesn't put a bit i' my meawth fro mornin' to mornin' again. We've bin married twenty-four year; an' aw don't think at him an' me together has spent a shillin' i' drink all that time. Why, to tell yo truth, we never had nought to stir on. My husband does bod get varra little upo th' hand-loom i' th' best o' times--5s. a week or so. He weighves a sort o' check--seventy-three yards for 3s." The back door opened into a little damp yard, hemmed in by brick walls. Over in the next yard we could see a man bustling about, and singing in a loud voice, "Hard times come again no more." "Yon fellow doesn't care much about th' hard times, I think," said I. "Eh, naw," replied she. "He'll live where mony a one would dee, will yon. He has that little shop, next dur; an' he keeps sellin' a bit o' toffy, an' then singin' a bit, an' then sellin' a bit moor toffy,--an' he's as happy as a pig amung slutch." Leaving the weaver's cottage, the rain came on, and we sat a few minutes with a young shoemaker, who was busy at his bench, doing a cobbling job. His wife was lying ill upstairs. He had been so short of work for some time past that he had been compelled to apply for relief. He complained that the cheap gutta percha shoes were hurting his trade. He said a pair of men's gutta percha shoes could be bought for 5s. 6d., whilst it would cost him 7s. 6d. for the materials alone to make a pair of men's shoes of. When the rain was over, we left his house, and as we went along I saw in a cottage window a printed paper containing these words, "Bitter beer. This beer is made of herbs and roots of the native country." I know that there are many poor people yet in Lancashire who use decoctions of herbs instead of tea--mint and balm are the favourite herbs for this purpose; but I could not imagine what this herb beer could be, at a halfpenny a bottle, unless it was made of nettles. At the cottage door there was about four-pennyworth of mauled garden stuff upon an old tray. There was nobody inside but a little ragged lass, who could not tell us what the beer was made of. She had only one drinking glass in the place, and that had a snip out of the rim. The beer was exceedingly bitter. We drank as we could, and then went into Pump Street, to the house of a "core-maker," a kind of labourer for moulders. The core-maker's wife was in. They had four children. The whole six had lived for thirteen weeks on 3s. 6d. a week. When work first began to fall off, the husband told the visitors who came to inquire into their condition, that he had a little money saved up, and he could manage a while. The family lived upon their savings as long as they lasted, and then were compelled to apply for relief, or "clem." It was not quite noon when we left this house, and my friend proposed that before we went farther we should call upon Mrs G_, an interesting old woman, in Cunliffe Street. We turned back to the place, and there we found "In lowly shed, and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame." In a small room fronting the street, the mild old woman sat, with her bed in one corner, and her simple vassals ranged upon the forms around. Here, "with quaint arts," she swayed the giddy crowd of little imprisoned elves, whilst they fretted away their irksome schooltime, and unconsciously played their innocent prelude to the serious drama of life. As we approach the open door-- "The noises intermix'd, which thence resound, Do learning's little tenement betray; Where sits the dame disguised in look profound, And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around." The venerable little woman had lived in this house fourteen years. She was seventy-three years of age, and a native of Limerick. She was educated at St Ann's School, in Dublin, and she had lived fourteen years in the service of a lady in that city. The old dame made an effort to raise her feeble form when we entered, and she received us as courteously as the finest lady in the land could have done. She told us that she charged only a penny a-week for her teaching; but, said she, "some of them can't pay it." "There's a poor child," continued she, "his father has been out of work eleven months, and they are starving but for the relief. Still, I do get a little, and I like to have the children about me. Oh, my case is not the worst, I know. I have people lodging in the house who are not so well off as me. I have three families living here. One is a family of four; they have only 3s. a-week to live upon. Another is a family of three; they have 6s. a-week from a club, but they pay me 2s. a- week. for rent out of that. . . . . I am very much troubled with my eyes; my sight is failing fast. If I drop a stitch when I'm knitting, I can't see to take it up again. If I could buy a pair of spectacles, they would help me a good dale; but I cannot afford till times are better." I could not help thinking how many kind souls there are in the world who would be glad to give the old woman a pair of spectacles, if they knew her. CHAPTER XI. We talked with the old schoolmistress in Cunliffe Street till it was "high twelve" at noon, and then the kind jailer of learning's little prison-house let all her fretful captives go. The clamorous elves rushed through the doorway into the street, like a stream too big for its vent, rejoicing in their new-found freedom and the open face of day. The buzz of the little teaching mill was hushed once more, and the old dame laid her knitting down, and quietly wiped her weak and weary eyes. The daughters of music were brought low with her, but, in the last thin treble of second childhood, she trembled forth mild complaints of her neighbours' troubles, but very little of her own. We left her to enjoy her frugal meal and her noontide reprieve in peace, and came back to the middle of the town. On our way I noticed again some features of street life which are more common in manufacturing towns just now than when times are good. Now and then one meets with a man in the dress of a factory worker selling newspapers, or religious tracts, or back numbers of the penny periodicals, which do not cost much. It is easy to see, from their shy and awkward manner, that they are new to the trade, and do not like it. They are far less dexterous, and much more easily "said," than the brisk young salesmen who hawk newspapers in the streets of Manchester. I know that many of these are unemployed operatives trying to make an honest penny in this manner till better days return. Now and then, too, a grown-up girl trails along the street, "with wandering steps and slow," ragged, and soiled, and starved, and looking as if she had travelled far in the rainy weather, houseless and forlorn. I know that such sights may be seen at any time, but not near so often as just now; and I cannot help thinking that many of these are poor sheep which have strayed away from the broken folds of labour. Sometimes it is an older woman that goes by, with a child at the breast, and one or two holding by the skirt of her tattered gown, and perhaps one or two more limping after, as she crawls along the pavement, gazing languidly from side to side among the heedless crowd, as if giving her last look round the world for help, without knowing where to get it, and without heart to ask for it. It is easy to give wholesale reasons why nobody needs to be in such a condition as this; but it is not improbable that there are some poor souls who, from no fault of their own, drop through the great sieve of charity into utter destitution. "They are well kept that God keeps." May the continual dew of Heaven's blessing gladden the hearts of those who deal kindly with them! After dinner I fell into company with some gentlemen who were talking about the coming guild--that ancient local festival, which is so clear to the people of Preston, that they are not likely to allow it to go by wholly unhonoured, however severe the times may be. Amongst them was a gray-haired friend of mine, who is a genuine humorist. He told us many quaint anecdotes. One of them was of a man who went to inquire the price of graves in a certain cemetery. The sexton told him that they were 1 pound on this side, and 2 pounds on the other side of the knoll. "How is it that they are 2 pounds on the other side?" inquired the man. "Well, becose there's a better view there," replied the sexton. There were three or four millowners in the company, and, when the conversation turned upon the state of trade, one of them said, "I admit that there is a great deal of distress, but we are not so badly off yet as to drive the operatives to work for reasonable wages. For instance, I had a labourer working for me at 10s. a-week; he threw up my employ, and went to work upon the moor for 1s. a-day. How do you account for that? And then, again, I had another man employed as a watchman and roller coverer, at 18s. a-week. I found that I couldn't afford to keep him on at 18s., so I offered him 15s. a-week; but he left it, and went to work on the moor at 1s. a-day; and, just now, I want a man to take his place, and cannot get one." Another said, "I am only giving low wages to my workpeople, but they get more with me than they can make on the moor, and yet I cannot keep them." I heard some other things of the same kind, for which there might be special reasons; but these gentlemen admitted the general prevalence of severe distress, and the likelihood of its becoming much worse. At two o'clock I sallied forth again, under convoy of another member of the Relief Committee, into the neighbourhood of Messrs Horrocks, Miller, and Co.'s works. Their mill is known as "Th' Yard Factory." Hereabouts the people generally are not so much reduced as in some parts of the town, because they have had more employment, until lately, than has been common elsewhere. But our business lay with those distressed families who were in receipt of relief, and, even here, they were very easy to find. The first house we called at was inhabited by a family of five--man and wife and three children. The man was working on the moor at one shilling a-day. The wife was unwell, but she was moving about the house. They had buried one girl three weeks before; and one of the three remaining children lay ill of the measles. They had suffered a great deal from sickness. The wife said, "My husband is a peawer-loom weighver. He had to come whoam ill fro' his wark; an' then they shopped his looms, (gave his work to somebody else,) an' he couldn't get 'em back again. He'll get 'em back as soon as he con, yo may depend; for we don't want to bother folk for no mak o' relief no lunger than we can help." In addition to the husband's pay upon the moor, they were receiving 2s. a week from the Committee, making altogether 8s. a week for the five, with 2s. 6d. to pay out of it for rent. She said, "We would rayther ha' soup than coffee, becose there's moor heytin' in it." My friend looked in at the door of a cottage in Barton Street. There was a sickly-looking woman inside. "Well, missis," said my friend, jocularly, "how are you? because, if you're ill, I've brought a doctor here." "Eh," replied she, "aw could be ill in a minute, if aw could afford, but these times winnot ston doctors' bills. Besides, aw never were partial to doctors' physic; it's kitchen physic at aw want. Han yo ony o' that mak' wi' yo?" She said," My husban' were th' o'erlooker o' th'weighvers at "Owd Tom's.' They stopt to fettle th' engine a while back, an' they'n never started sin'. But aw guess they wi'n do some day." We had not many yards to go to the next place, which was a poor cottage in Fletcher's Row, where a family of eight persons resided. There was very little furniture in the place, but I noticed a small shelf of books in a corner by the window. A feeble woman, upwards of seventy years old, sat upon a stool tending the cradle of a sleeping infant. This infant was the youngest of five children, the oldest of the five was seven years of age. The mother of the three-weeks-old infant had just gone out to the mill to claim her work from the person who had been filling her place during her confinement. The old woman said that the husband was "a grinder in a card-room when they geet wed, an' he addled about 8s. a week; but, after they geet wed, his wife larn't him to weighve upo' th' peawer-looms." She said that she was no relation to them, but she nursed, and looked after the house for them. "They connot afford to pay mo nought," continued she, "but aw fare as they fare'n, an' they dunnot want to part wi' me. Aw'm not good to mich, but aw can manage what they wanten, yo see'n. Aw never trouble't noather teawn nor country i' my life, an' aw hope aw never shall for the bit o' time aw have to do on." She said that the Board of Guardians had allowed the family 10s. a week for the two first weeks of the wife's confinement, but now their income amounted to a little less than one shilling a head per week. Leaving this house, we turned round the corner into St Mary's Street North. Here we found a clean-looking young working man standing shivering by a cottage door, with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in well-mended fustian, and he had a cloth cap on his head. His face had a healthy hunger-nipt look. "Hollo," said my friend, "I thought you was working on the moor." "Ay," replied the young man, "Aw have bin, but we'n bin rain't off this afternoon." "Is there nobody in?" said my friend. "Naw, my wife's gone eawt; hoo'll not be mony minutes. Hoo's here neaw." A clean little pale woman came up, with a child in her arms, and we went in. They had not much furniture in the small kitchen, which was the only place we saw, but everything was sweet and orderly. Their income was, as usual in relief cases, about one shilling a head per week. "You had some lodgers," said my friend. "Ay," said she,"but they're gone." "How's that?" "We had a few words. Their little lad was makin' a great noise i' the passage theer, an' aw were very ill o' my yed, an' aw towd him to go an' play him at tother side o' th' street,--so, they took it amiss, an' went to lodge wi' some folk i' Ribbleton Lone." We called at another house in this street. A family of six lived there. The only furniture I saw in the place was two chairs, a table, a large stool, a cheap clock, and a few pots. The man and his wife were in. She was washing. The man was a stiff built, shock- headed little fellow, with a squint in his eye that seemed to enrich the good-humoured expression of his countenance. Sitting smiling by the window, he looked as if he had lots of fun in him, if he only had a fair chance of letting it off. He told us that he was a "tackler" by trade. A tackler is one who fettles looms when they get out of order. "Couldn't you get on at Horrocks's?" said my friend. "Naw," replied he; "they'n not ha' men-weighvers theer." The wife said," We're a deal better off than some. He has six days a week upo th' moor, an' we'n 3s. a week fro th' Relief Committee. We'n 2s. 6d. a week to pay eawt on it for rent; but then, we'n a lad that gets 4d. a day neaw an' then for puttin' bobbins on; an' every little makes a mickle, yo known." "How is it that your clock's stopt?" said I. "Nay," said the little fellow; "aw don't know. Want o' cotton, happen,--same as everything else is stopt for." Leaving this house we met with another member of the Relief Committee, who was overlooker of a mill a little way off. I parted here with the gentleman who had accompanied me hitherto, and the overlooker went on with me. In Newton Street he stopped, and said, "Let's look in here." We went up two steps, and met a young woman coming out at the cottage door. "How's Ruth?" said my friend. "Well, hoo is here. Hoo's busy bakin' for Betty." We went in. "You're not bakin' for yourselves, then?" said he. "Eh, naw," replied the young woman," it's mony a year sin' we had a bakin' o' fleawr, isn't it, Ruth?" The old woman who was baking turned round and said, "Ay; an' it'll be mony another afore we han one aw deawt." There were three dirty-looking hens picking and croodling about the cottage floor. "How is it you don't sell these, or else eat 'em?" said he. "Eh, dear," replied the old woman, "dun yo want mo kilt? He's had thoose hens mony a year; an' they rooten abeawt th' heawse just th' same as greadley Christians. He did gi' consent for one on 'em to be kilt yesterday; but aw'll be hanged iv th' owd cracky didn't cry like a chylt when he see'd it beawt yed. He'd as soon part wi' one o'th childer as one o'th hens. He says they're so mich like owd friends, neaw. He's as quare as Dick's hat-bant 'at went nine times reawnd an' wouldn't tee. . . . We thought we'd getten a shop for yon lad o' mine t'other day. We yerd ov a chap at Lytham at wanted a lad to tak care o' six jackasses an' a pony. Th' pony were to tak th' quality to Blackpool, and such like. So we fettled th' lad's bits o' clooas up and made him ever so daycent, and set him off to try to get on wi' th' chap at Lytham. Well, th' lad were i' good heart abeawt it; an' when he geet theer th' chap towd him at he thought he wur very likely for th' job, so that made it better,--an' th' lad begun o' wearin' his bit o' brass o' summat to eat, an' sich like, thinkin' he're sure o' th' shop. Well, they kept him there, dallyin', aw tell yo, an' never tellin' him a greadley tale, fro Sunday till Monday o' th' neet, an' then,--lo an' behold,--th' mon towd him that he'd hire't another; and th' lad had to come trailin' whoam again, quite deawn i'th' meawth. Eh, aw wur some mad! Iv aw'd been at th' back o' that chap, aw could ha' punce't him, see yo!" "Well," said my friend, "there's no work yet, Ruth, is there?" "Wark! naw; nor never will be no moor, aw believe." "Hello, Ruth!" said the young woman, pointing through the window, "dun yo know who yon is?" "Know? ay," replied the old woman; "He's getten aboon porritch neaw, has yon. He walks by me i'th street, as peart as a pynot, an' never cheeps. But, he's no 'casion. Aw know'd him when his yure stickt out at top ov his hat; and his shurt would ha' hanged eawt beheend, too,--like a Wigan lantron,--iv he'd had a shurt." CHAPTER XII. "Oh, reason not the deed; our basest beggars Are in the poorest things superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's." --King Lear. A short fit of rain came on whilst we were in the cottage in Newton Street, so we sat a little while with Ruth, listening to her quaint tattle about the old man and his feathered pets; about the children, the hard times, and her own personal ailments;--for, though I could not help thinking her a very good-hearted, humorous old woman, bravely disposed to fight it out with the troubles of her humble lot, yet it was clear that she was inclined to ease her harassed mind now and then by a little wholesome grumbling; and I dare say that sometimes she might lose her balance so far as to think, like "Natterin' Nan," "No livin' soul atop o't earth's bin tried as I've bin tried: there's nob'dy but the Lord an' me that knows what I've to bide." Old age and infirmity, too, had found Ruth out, in her penurious obscurity; and she was disposed to complain a little, like Nan, sometimes, of "the ills that flesh is heir to:"- "Fro' t' wind i't stomach, rheumatism, Tengin pains i't gooms, An' coughs, an' cowds, an' t' spine o't back, I suffer martyrdom. "Yet nob'dy pities mo, or thinks I'm ailin' owt at all; T' poor slave mun tug an' tew wi't wark, Wolivver shoo can crawl." Old Ruth was far from being as nattle and querulous as the famous ill-natured grumbler so racily pictured by Benjamin Preston, of Bradford; but, like most of the dwellers upon earth, she was a little bit touched with the same complaint. When the rain was over, we came away. I cannot say that the weather ever "cleared up" that day; for, at the end of every shower, the dark, slow-moving clouds always seemed to be mustering for another downfall. We came away, and left the "cant" old body "busy bakin' for Betty," and "shooing" the hens away from her feet, and she shuffled about the house. A few yards lower in Newton Street, we turned up a low, dark entry, which led to a gloomy little court behind. This was one of those unhealthy, pent-up cloisters, where misery stagnates and broods among the "foul congregation of pestilential vapours" which haunt the backdoor life of the poorest parts of great towns. Here, those viewless ministers of health--the fresh winds of heaven--had no free play; and poor human nature inhaled destruction from the poisonous effluvia that festered there. And, in such nooks as this, there may be found many decent working people, who have been accustomed to live a cleanly life in their humble way in healthy quarters, now reduced to extreme penury, pinching, and pining, and nursing the flickering hope of better days, which may enable them to flee from the foul harbour which strong necessity has driven them to. The dark aspect of the day filled the court with a tomb-like gloom. If I remember aright, there were only three or four cottages in it. We called at two of them. Before we entered the first, my friend said, "A young couple lives here. They are very decent people. They have not been here long; and they have gone through a great deal before they came here." There were two or three pot ornaments on the cornice; but there was no furniture in the place, save one chair, which was occupied by a pale young woman, nursing her child. Her thin, intelligent face looked very sad. Her clothing, though poor, was remarkably clean; and, as she sat there, in the gloomy, fireless house, she said very little, and what she said she said very quietly, as if she had hardly strength to complain, and was even half-ashamed to do so. She told us, however, that her husband had been out of work six months. "He didn't know what to turn to after we sowd th' things," said she; "but he's takken to cheer-bottomin', for he doesn't want to lie upo' folk for relief, if he can help it. He doesn't get much above a cheer, or happen two in a week, one week wi' another, an' even then he doesn't olez get paid, for folks ha' not brass. It runs very hard with us, an' I'm nobbut sickly." The poor soul did not need to say much; her own person, which evinced such a touching struggle to keep up a decent appearance to the last, and everything about her, as she sat there in the gloomy place, trying to keep the child warm upon her cold breast, told eloquently what her tongue faltered at and failed to express. The next place we called at in this court was a cottage kept by a withered old woman, with one foot in the grave. We found her in the house, sallow, and shrivelled, and panting for breath. She had three young women, out of work, lodging with her; and, in addition to these, a widow with her two children lived there. One of these children, a girl, was earning 2s. 6d. a week for working short time at a mill; the other, a lad, was earning 3s. a week. The rest were all unemployed, and had been so for several months past. This 5s. 6d. a week was all the seven people had to live upon, with the exception of a trifle the sickly old woman received from the Board of Guardians. As we left the court, two young fellows were lounging at the entry end, as if waiting for us. One of them stepped up to my friend, and whispered something plaintively, pointing to his feet. I did not catch the reply; but my friend made a note, and we went on. Before we had gone many yards down the street a storm of rain and thunder came on, and we hurried into the house of an old Irishwoman close by. My friend knew the old woman. She was on his list of relief cases. "Will you let us shelter a few minutes, Mrs _?" said he. "I will, an' thank ye," replied she. "Come in an' sit down. Sure, it's not fit to turn out a dog. Faith, that's a great storm. Oh, see the rain! Thank God it's not him that made the house that made the pot! Dear, dear; did ye see the awful flash that time? I don't like to be by myself, I am so terrified wi' the thunder. There has been a great dale o' wet this long time." "There, has," replied my friend; "but how have ye been getting on since I called before?" "Well," said the old woman, sitting down, "things is quare with us as ever they can be, an' that you know very well." There was a young woman reared against the table by the window. My friend turned towards her, and said, "Well, and how does the Indian meal agree with you?" The young woman blushed, and smiled, but said nothing; but the old woman turned sharply round and replied, "Well, now, it is better nor starvation; it is chape, an' it fills up--an' that's all." "Is your son working?" inquired my friend. "Troth, he is," replied she. "He does be gettin' a day now an' again at the breek- croft in Ribbleton Lone. Faith, it is time he did somethin', too, for he was nine months out o' work entirely. I am got greatly into debt, an' I don't think I'll ever be able to get over it any more. I don't know how does poor folk be able to spind money on drink such times as thim; bedad, I cannot do it. It is bard enough to get mate of any kind to keep the bare life in a body. Oh, see now; but for the relief, the half o' the country would die out." "You're a native of Ireland, missis," said I. "Troth, I am," replied she; "an' had a good farm o' greawnd in it too, one time. Ah! many's the dark day I went through between that an' this. Before thim bad times came on, long ago, people were well off in ould Ireland. I seen them wid as many as tin cows standin' at the door at one time. . . . Ah, then! but the Irish people is greatly scattered now! . . . But, for the matter of that, folk are as badly off here as anywhere in the world, I think. I dunno know how does poor folk be able to spind money for dhrink. I am a widow this seventeen year now, an' the divle a man or woman uvver seen me goin' to a public-house. I seen women goin' a drinkin' widout a shift to their backs. I dunno how the divvle they done it. Begorra, I think, if I drunk a glass of ale just now, my two legs would fail from under me immadiately--I am that wake." The old woman was a little too censorious, I think. There is no doubt that even people who are starving do drink a little sometimes. The wonder would be if they did not, in some degree, share the follies of the rest of the world. Besides, it is a well-known fact, that those who are in employ, are apt, from a feeling of misdirected kindness, to treat those who are out of work to a glass of ale or two, now and then; and it is very natural, too, that those who have been but ill-fed for a long time are not able to stand it well. After leaving the old Irishwoman's house, we called upon a man who had got his living by the sale of newspapers. There was nothing specially worthy of remark in this case, except that he complained of his trade having fallen away a good deal. "I used to sell three papers where I now sell one," said he. This may not arise from there being fewer papers sold, but from there being more people selling them than when times were good. I came back to Manchester in the evening. I have visited Preston again since then, and have spent some time upon Preston Moor, where there are nearly fifteen hundred men, principally factory operatives, at work. Of this I shall have something to say in my next paper. CHAPTER XIII. "The rose of Lancaster for lack of nurture pales." --BLACKBURN BARD. It was early on a fine morning in July when I next set off to see Preston again; the long-continued rains seemed to be ended, and the unclouded sun flooded all the landscape with splendour. All nature rejoiced in the change, and the heart of man was glad. In Clifton Vale, the white-sleeved mowers were at work among the rich grass, and the scent of new hay came sweetly through our carriage windows. In the leafy cloughs and hedges, the small birds were wild with joy, and every garden sent forth a goodly smell. Along its romantic vale the glittering Irwell meandered, here, through nooks, "o'erhung wi' wildwoods, thickening green;" and there, among lush unshaded pastures; gathering on its way many a mild whispering brook, whose sunlit waters laced the green land with freakish lines of trembling gold. To me this ride is always interesting, so many points of historic interest line the way; but it was doubly delightful on that glorious July morning. And I never saw Fishergate, in Preston, look better than it did then. On my arrival there I called upon the Secretary of the Trinity Ward Relief Committee. In a quiet bye- street, where there are four pleasant cottages, with little gardens in front of them, I found him in his studious nook, among books, relief tickets, and correspondence. We had a few minutes' talk about the increasing distress of the town; and he gave me a short account of the workroom which has been opened in Knowsley Street, for the employment of female factory operatives out of work. This workroom is managed by a committee of ladies, some of whom are in attendance every day. The young women are employed upon plain sewing. They have two days' work a week, at one shilling a day, and the Relief Committee adds sixpence to this 2s. in each case. Most of them are merely learning to sew. Many of them prove to be wholly untrained to this simple domestic accomplishment. The work is not remunerative, nor is it expected to be so; but the benefit which may grow out of the teaching which these young women get here--and the evil their employment here may prevent, cannot be calculated. I find that such workrooms are established in some of the other towns now suffering from the depression of trade. Some of these I intend to visit hereafter. I spent an interesting half-hour with the secretary, after which I went to see the factory operatives at work upon Preston Moor. Preston Moor is a tract of waste land on the western edge of the town. It belongs to the corporation. A little vale runs through a great part of this moor, from south-east to north-west; and the ground was, until lately, altogether uneven. On the town side of the little dividing vale the land is a light, sandy soil; on the other side, there is abundance of clay for brickmaking. Upon this moor there are now fifteen hundred men, chiefly factory operatives, at work, levelling the land for building purposes, and making a great main sewer for the drainage of future streets. The men, being almost all unused to this kind of labour, are paid only one shilling per day; and the whole scheme has been devised for the employment of those who are suffering from the present depression of trade. The work had been going on several months before I saw it, and a great part of the land was levelled. When I came in sight of the men, working in scattered gangs that fine morning, there was, as might be expected, a visible difference between their motions and those of trained "navvies" engaged upon the same kind of labour. There were also very great differences of age and physical condition amongst them--old men and consumptive-looking lads, hardly out of their teens. They looked hard at me as I walked down the central line, but they were not anyway uncivil. "What time is 't, maister?" asked a middle-aged man, with gray hair, as he wiped his forehead. "Hauve- past ten," said I. "What time says he?" inquired a feeble young fellow, who was resting upon his barrow. "Hauve-past ten, he says," replied the other. "Eh; it's warm!" said the tired lad, lying down upon his barrow again. One thing I noticed amongst these men, with very rare exceptions, their apparel, however poor, evinced that wholesome English love of order and cleanliness which generally indicates something of self-respect in the wearer--especially among poor folk. There is something touching in the whiteness of a well- worn shirt, and the careful patches of a poor man's old fustian coat. As I lounged about amongst the men, a mild-eyed policeman came up, and offered to conduct me to Jackson, the labour-master, who had gone down to the other end of the moor, to look after the men at work at the great sewer--a wet clay cutting--the heaviest bit of work on the ground. We passed some busy brickmakers, all plastered and splashed with wet clay --of the earth, earthy. Unlike the factory operatives around them, these men clashed, and kneaded, and sliced among the clay, as if they were working for a wager. But they were used to the job, and working piece-work. A little further on, we came to an unbroken bit of the moor. Here, on a green slope we saw a poor lad sitting chirruping upon the grass, with a little cloutful of groundsel for bird meat in his hand, watching another, who was on his knees, delving for earth-nuts with an old knife. Lower down the slope there were three other lads plaguing a young jackass colt; and further off, on the town edge of the moor, several children from the streets hard by, were wandering about the green hollow, picking daisies, and playing together in the sunshine. There are several cotton factories close to the moor, but they were quiet enough. Whilst I looked about me here, the policeman pointed to the distance and said, "Jackson's comin' up, I see. Yon's him, wi' th' white lin' jacket on." Jackson seems to have won the esteem of the men upon the moor by his judicious management and calm determination. I have heard that he had a little trouble at first, through an injurious report spread amongst the men immediately before he undertook the management. Some person previously employed upon the ground had "set it eawt that there wur a chap comin' that would make 'em addle a hauve-a-creawn a day for their shillin'." Of course this increased the difficulty of his position; but he seems to have fought handsomely through all that sort of thing. I had met him for a few minutes once before, so there was no difficulty between us. "Well, Jackson," said I, "heaw are yo gettin' on among it?" "Oh, very well, very well," said he," We'n more men at work than we had, an' we shall happen have more yet. But we'n getten things into something like system, an' then tak 'em one with another th' chaps are willin' enough. You see they're not men that have getten a livin' by idling aforetime; they're workin' men, but they're strange to this job, an' one cannot expect 'em to work like trained honds, no moor than one could expect a lot o' navvies to work weel at factory wark. Oh, they done middlin', tak 'em one with another." I now asked him if he had not had some trouble with the men at first. "Well," said he, "I had at first, an' that's the truth. I remember th' first day that I came to th' job. As I walked on to th' ground there was a great lump o' clay coom bang into my earhole th' first thing; but I walked on, an' took no notice, no moor than if it had bin a midge flyin' again my face. Well, that kind o' thing took place, now an' then, for two or three days, but I kept agate o' never mindin'; till I fund there were some things that I thought could be managed a deal better in a different way; so I gav' th' men notice that I would have 'em altered. For instance, now, when I coom here at first, there was a great shed in yon hollow; an' every mornin' th' men had to pass through that shed one after another, an' have their names booked for th' day. The result wur, that after they'd walked through th' shed, there was many on 'em walked out at t'other end o' th' moor straight into teawn a-playin' 'em. Well, I was determined to have that system done away with. An', when th' men fund that I was gooin' to make these alterations, they growled a good deal, you may depend, an' two or three on 'em coom up an' spoke to me abeawt th' matter, while tother stood clustered a bit off. Well; I was beginnin' to tell 'em plain an' straight-forrud what I would have done, when one o' these three sheawted out to th' whole lot, "Here, chaps, come an' gether reawnd th' devil. Let's yer what he's for!" 'Well,' said I, 'come on, an' you shall yer,' for aw felt cawmer just then, than I did when it were o'er. There they were, gethered reawnd me in a minute,--th' whole lot,--I were fair hemmed in. But I geet atop ov a bit ov a knowe, an' towd 'em a fair tale,-- what I wanted, an' what I would have, an' I put it to 'em whether they didn't consider it reet. An' I believe they see'd th' thing in a reet leet, but they said nought about it, but went back to their wark, lookin' sulky. But I've had very little bother with 'em sin'. I never see'd a lot o' chaps so altered sin' th' last February, as they are. At that time no mortal mon hardly could walk through 'em 'beawt havin' a bit o' slack-jaw, or a lump o' clay or summat flung a-him. But it isn't so, neaw. I consider th' men are doin' very weel. But, come; yo mun go deawn wi' me a-lookin' at yon main sewer." CHAPTER XIV. "Oh, let us bear the present as we may, Nor let the golden past be all forgot; Hope lifts the curtain of the future day, Where peace and plenty smile without a spot On their white garments; where the human lot Looks lovelier and less removed from heaven; Where want, and war, and discord enter not, But that for which the wise have hoped and striven-- The wealth of happiness, to humble worth is given. "The time will come, as come again it must, When Lancashire shall lift her head once more; Her suffering sons, now down amid the dust Of Indigence, shall pass through Plenty's door; Her commerce cover seas from shore to shore; Her arts arise to highest eminence; Her products prove unrivall'd, as of yore; Her valour and her virtue--men of sense And blue-eyed beauties--England's pride and her defence." --BLACKBURN BARD. Jackson's office as labour-master kept him constantly tramping about the sandy moor from one point to another. He was forced to be in sight, and on the move, during working hours, amongst his fifteen hundred scattered workmen. It was heavy walking, even in dry weather; and as we kneaded through the loose soil that hot forenoon, we wiped our foreheads now and then. "Ay," said he, halting, and looking round upon the scene, "I can assure you, that when I first took howd o' this job, I fund my honds full, as quiet as it looks now. I was laid up for nearly a week, an' I had to have two doctors. But, as I'd undertakken the thing, I was determined to go through with it to th' best o' my ability; an' I have confidence now that we shall be able to feight through th' bad time wi' summat like satisfaction, so far as this job's consarned, though it's next to impossible to please everybody, do what one will. But come wi' me down this road. I've some men agate o' cuttin' a main sewer. It's very little farther than where th' cattle pens are i' th' hollow yonder; and it's different wark to what you see here. Th' main sewer will have to be brought clean across i' this direction, an' it'll be a stiffish job. Th' cattle market's goin' to be shifted out o' yon hollow, an' in another year or two th' whole scene about here will be changed." Jackson and I both remembered something of the troubles of the cotton manufacture in past times. We had seen something of the "shuttle gatherings," the "plug-drawings," the wild starvation riots, and strikes of days gone by; and he agreed with me that one reason for the difference of their demeanour during the present trying circumstances lies in their increasing intelligence. The great growth of free discussion through the cheap press has done no little to work out this salutary change. There is more of human sympathy, and of a perception of the union of interests between employers and employed than ever existed before in the history of the cotton trade. Employers know that their workpeople are human beings, of like feelings and passions with themselves, and like themselves, endowed with no mean degree of independent spirit and natural intelligence; and working men know better than beforetime that their employers are not all the heartless tyrants which it has been too fashionable to encourage them to believe. The working men have a better insight into the real causes of trade panics than they used to have; and both masters and men feel more every day that their fortunes are naturally bound together for good or evil; and if the working men of Lancashire continue to struggle through the present trying pass of their lives with the brave patience which they have shown hitherto, they will have done more to defeat the arguments of those who hold them to be unfit for political power than the finest eloquence of their best friends could have done in the same time. The labour master and I had a little talk about these things as we went towards the lower end of the moor. A few minutes' slow walk brought us to the spot, where some twenty of the hardier sort of operatives were at work in a damp clay cutting. "This is heavy work for sich chaps as these," said Jackson; "but I let 'em work bi'th lump here. I give'em so much clay apiece to shift, and they can begin when they like, an' drop it th' same. Th' men seem satisfied wi' that arrangement, an' they done wonders, considerin' th' nature o'th job. There's many o'th men that come on to this moor are badly off for suitable things for their feet. I've had to give lots o' clogs away among'em. You see men cannot work with ony comfort among stuff o' this sort without summat substantial on. It rives poor shoon to pieces i' no time. Beside, they're not men that can ston bein' witchod (wetshod) like some. They haven't been used to it as a rule. Now, this is one o'th' finest days we've had this year; an' you haven't sin what th' ground is like in bad weather. But you'd be astonished what a difference wet makes on this moor. When it's bin rain for a day or two th' wark's as heavy again. Th' stuff's heavier to lift, an' worse to wheel; an' th' ground is slutchy. That tries 'em up, an' poo's their shoon to pieces; an' men that are wakely get knocked out o' time with it. But thoose that can stand it get hardened by it. There's a great difference; what would do one man's constitution good will kill another. Winter time 'll try 'em up tightly. . . Wait there a bit," continued he, "I'll be with you again directly." He then went down into the cutting to speak to some of his men, whilst I walked about the edge of the bank. From a distant part of the moor, the bray of a jackass came faint upon the sleepy wind. "Yer tho', Jone," said one of the men, resting upon his spade; "another cally-weighver gone!" " Ay," replied Jone, "th' owd lad's deawn't his cut. He'll want no more tickets, yon mon!" The country folk of Lancashire say that a weaver dies every time a jackass brays. Jackson came up from the cutting, and we walked back to where the greatest number of men were at work. "You should ha' bin here last Saturday," said he; "we'd rather a curious scene. One o' the men coom to me an' axed if I'd allow 'em hauve-an-hour to howd a meetin' about havin' a procession i' th' guild week. I gav' 'em consent, on condition that they'd conduct their meetin' in an orderly way. Well, they gethered together upo' that level theer; an' th' speakers stood upo' th' edge o' that cuttin', close to Charnock Fowd. Th' meetin' lasted abeawt a quarter ov an hour longer than I bargained for; but they lost no time wi' what they had to do. O' went off quietly; an' they finished with 'Rule Britannia,' i' full chorus, an' then went back to their wark. You'll see th' report in today's paper." This meeting was so curious, and so characteristic of the men, that I think the report is worth repeating here:--"On Saturday afternoon, a meeting of the parish labourers was held on the moor, to consider the propriety of having a demonstration of their numbers on one day in the guild week. There were upwards of a thousand present. An operative, named John Houlker, was elected to conduct the proceedings. After stating the object of the assembly, a series of propositions were read to the meeting by William Gillow, to the effect that a procession take place of the parish labourers in the guild week; that no person be allowed to join in it except those whose names were on the books of the timekeepers; that no one should receive any of the benefits which might accrue who did not conduct himself in an orderly manner; that all persons joining the procession should be required to appear on the ground washed and shaven, and their clogs, shoes, and other clothes cleaned; that they were not expected to purchase or redeem any articles of clothing in order to take part in the demonstration; and that any one absenting himself from the procession should be expelled from any participation in the advantages which might arise from the subscriptions to be collected by their fellow-labourers. These were all agreed to, and a committee of twelve was appointed to collect subscriptions and donations. A president, secretary, and treasurer were also elected, and a number of resolutions agreed to in reference to the carrying out of the details of their scheme. The managing committee consist of Messrs W. Gillow, Robert Upton, Thomas Greenwood Riley, John Houlker, John Taylor, James Ray, James Whalley, Wm. Banks, Joseph Redhead, James Clayton, and James McDermot. The men agreed to subscribe a penny per week to form a fund out of which a dinner should be provided, and they expressed themselves confident that they could secure the gratuitous services of a band of music. During the meeting there was great order. At the conclusion, a vote of thanks was accorded to the chairman, to the labour master for granting them three-quarters of an hour for the purpose of holding the meeting, and to William Gillow for drawing up the resolutions. Three times three then followed; after which, George Dewhurst mounted a hillock, and, by desire, sang 'Rule Britannia,' the chorus being taken up by the whole crowd, and the whole being wound up with a hearty cheer." There are various schemes devised in Preston for regaling the poor during the guild; and not the worst of them is the proposal to give them a little extra money for that week, so as to enable them to enjoy the holiday with their families at home. It was now about half-past eleven. "It's getting on for dinner time," said Jackson, looking at his watch. "Let's have a look at th' opposite side yonder; an' then we'll come back, an' you'll see th' men drop work when the five minutes' bell rings. There's many of 'em live so far off that they couldn't well get whoam an' back in an hour; so, we give'em an hour an' a half to their dinner, now, an' they work half an' hour longer i'th afternoon." We crossed the hollow which divides the moor, and went to the top of a sandy cutting at the rear of the workhouse. This eminence commanded a full view of the men at work on different parts of the ground, with the time-keepers going to and fro amongst them, book in hand. Here were men at work with picks and spades; there, a slow-moving train of full barrows came along; and, yonder, a train of empty barrows stood, with the men sitting upon them, waiting. Jackson pointed out some of his most remarkable men to me; after which we went up to a little plot of ground behind the workhouse, where we found a few apparently older or weaker men, riddling pebbly stuff, brought from the bed of the Ribble. The smaller pebbles were thrown into heaps, to make a hard floor for the workhouse schoolyard. The master of the workhouse said that the others were too big for this purpose--the lads would break the windows with them. The largest pebbles were cast aside to be broken up, for the making of garden walks. Whilst the master of the workhouse was showing us round the building, Jackson looked at his watch again, and said, "Come, we've just time to get across again. Th' bell will ring in two or three minutes, an' I should like yo to see 'em knock off." We hurried over to the other side, and, before we had been a minute there, the bell rung. At the first toll, down dropt the barrows, the half-flung shovelfuls fell to the ground, and all labour stopt as suddenly as if the men had been moved by the pull of one string. In two minutes Preston Moor was nearly deserted, and, like the rest, we were on our way to dinner. CHAPTER XV. AMONG THE WIGAN OPERATIVES "There'll be some on us missin', aw deawt, Iv there isn't some help for us soon." --SAMUEL LAYCOCK. The next scene of my observations is the town of Wigan. The temporary troubles now affecting the working people of Lancashire wear a different aspect there on account of such a large proportion of the population being employed in the coal mines. The "way of life" and the characteristics of the people are marked by strong peculiarities. But, apart from these things, Wigan is an interesting place. The towns of Lancashire have undergone so much change during the last fifty years that their old features are mostly either swept away entirely, or are drowned in a great overgrowth of modern buildings. Yet coaly Wigan retains visible relics of its ancient character still; and there is something striking in its situation. It is associated with some of the most stirring events of our history, and it is the scene of many an interesting old story, such as the legend of Mabel of Haigh Hall, the crusader's dame. The remnant of "Mab's Cross" still stands in Wigan Lane. Some of the finest old halls of Lancashire are now, and have been, in its neighbourhood, such as Ince Hall and Crooke Hall. It must have been a picturesque town in the time of the Commonwealth, when Cavaliers and Roundheads met there in deadly contention. Wigan saw a great deal of the troubles of that time. The ancient monument, erected to the memory of Colonel Tyldesley, upon the ground where he fell at the battle of Wigan Lane, only tells a little of the story of Longfellow's puritan hero, Miles Standish, who belonged to the Chorley branch of the family of Standish of Standish, near this town. The ingenious John Roby, author of the "Traditions of Lancashire," was born here. Round about the old market-place, and the fine parish church of St Wilfred, there are many quaint nooks still left to tell the tale of centuries gone by. These remarks, however, by the way. It is almost impossible to sunder any place entirely from the interest which such things lend to it. Our present business is with the share which Wigan feels of the troubles of our own time, and in this respect it is affected by some conditions peculiar to the place. I am told that Wigan was one of the first--if not the very first--of the towns of Lancashire to feel the nip of our present distress. I am told, also, that it was the first town in which a Relief Committee was organised. The cotton consumed here is almost entirely of the kind from ordinary to middling American, which is now the scarcest and dearest of any. Preston is almost wholly a spinning town. In Wigan there is a considerable amount of weaving as well as spinning. The counts spun in Wigan are lower than those in Preston; they range from 10's up to 20's. There is also, as I have said before, another peculiar element of labour, which tends to give a strong flavour to the conditions of life in Wigan, that is, the great number of people employed in the coal mines. This, however, does not much lighten the distress which has fallen upon the spinners and weavers, for the colliers are also working short time--an average of four days a week. I am told, also, that the coal miners have been subject to so many disasters of various kinds during past years, that there is now hardly a collier's family which has not lost one or more of its most active members by accidents in the pits. About six years ago, the river Douglas broke into one of the Ince mines, and nearly two hundred people were drowned thereby. These were almost all buried on one day, and it was a very distressing scene. Everywhere in Wigan one may meet with the widows and orphans of men who have been killed in the mines; and there are no few men more or less disabled by colliery accidents, and, therefore, dependent either upon the kindness of their employers, or upon the labour of their families in the cotton factories. This last failing them, the result may be easily guessed. The widows and orphans of coal miners almost always fall back upon factory labour for a living; and, in the present state of things, this class of people forms a very helpless element of the general distress. These things I learnt during my brief visit to the town a few days ago. Hereafter, I shall try to acquaint myself more deeply and widely with the relations of life amongst the working people there. I had not seen Wigan during many years before that fine August afternoon. In the Main Street and Market Place there is no striking outward sign of distress, and yet here, as in other Lancashire towns, any careful eye may see that there is a visible increase of mendicant stragglers, whose awkward plaintiveness, whose helpless restraint and hesitancy of manner, and whose general appearance, tell at once that they belong to the operative classes now suffering in Lancashire. Beyond this, the sights I first noticed upon the streets, as peculiar to the place, were, here, two "Sisters of Mercy," wending along, in their black cloaks and hoods, with their foreheads and cheeks swathed in ghastly white bands, and with strong rough shoes upon their feet; and, there, passed by a knot of the women employed in the coal mines. The singular appearance of these women has puzzled many a southern stranger. All grimed with coaldust, they swing along the street with their dinner baskets and cans in their hands, chattering merrily. To the waist they are dressed like men, in strong trousers and wooden clogs. Their gowns, tucked clean up, before, to the middle, hang down behind them in a peaked tail. A limp bonnet, tied under the chin, makes up the head- dress. Their curious garb, though soiled, is almost always sound; and one can see that the wash-tub will reveal many a comely face amongst them. The dusky damsels are "to the manner born," and as they walk about the streets, thoughtless of singularity, the Wigan people let them go unheeded by. Before I had been two hours in the town, I was put into communication with one of the active members of the Relief Committee, who offered to devote a few hours of the following day to visitation with me, amongst the poor of a district called "Scholes," on the eastern edge of the town. Scholes is the "Little Ireland" of Wigan, the poorest quarter of the town. The colliers and factory operatives chiefly live there. There is a saying in Wigan --that, no man's education is finished until he has been through Scholes. Having made my arrangements for the next day, I went to stay for the night with a friend who lives in the green country near Orrell, three miles west of Wigan. Early next morning, we rode over to see the quaint town of Upholland, and its fine old church, with the little ivied monastic ruin close by. We returned thence, by way of "Orrell Pow," to Wigan, to meet my engagement at ten in the forenoon. On our way, we could not help noticing the unusual number of foot-sore, travel-soiled people, many of them evidently factory operatives, limping away from the town upon their melancholy wanderings. We could see, also, by the number of decrepid old women, creeping towards Wigan, and now and then stopping to rest by the wayside, that it was relief day at the Board of Guardians. At ten, I met the gentleman who had kindly offered to guide me for the day; and we set off together. There are three excellent rooms engaged by the good people of Wigan for the employment and teaching of the young women thrown out of work at the cotton mills. The most central of the three is the lecture theatre of the Mechanics' Institution. This room was the first place we visited. Ten o'clock is the time appointed for the young women to assemble. It was a few minutes past ten when we got to the place; and there were some twenty of the girls waiting about the door. They were barred out, on account of being behind time. The lasses seemed very anxious to get in; but they were kept there a few minutes till the kind old superintendent, Mr Fisher, made his appearance. After giving the foolish virgins a gentle lecture upon the value of punctuality, he admitted them to the room. Inside, there were about three hundred and fifty girls mustered that morning. They are required to attend four hours a day on four days of the week, and they are paid 9d. a day for their attendance. They are divided into classes, each class being watched over by some lady of the committee. Part of the time each day is set apart for reading and writing; the rest of the day is devoted to knitting and plain sewing. The business of each day begins with the reading of the rules, after which, the names are called over. A girl in a white pinafore, upon the platform, was calling over the names when we entered. I never saw a more comely, clean, and orderly assembly anywhere. I never saw more modest demeanour, nor a greater proportion of healthy, intelligent faces in any company of equal numbers. CHAPTER XVI. "Hopdance cries in Tom's belly for two white herrings. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee." --King Lear. I lingered a little while in the work-room, at the Mechanics' Institution, interested in the scene. A stout young woman came in at a side door, and hurried up to the centre of the room with a great roll of coarse gray cloth, and lin check, to be cut up for the stitchers. One or two of the classes were busy with books and slates; the remainder of the girls were sewing and knitting; and the ladies of the committee were moving about, each in quiet superintendence of her own class. The room was comfortably full, even on the platform; but there was very little noise, and no disorder at all. I say again that I never saw a more comely, clean, and well conducted assembly than this of three hundred and fifty factory lasses. I was told, however, that even these girls show a kind of pride of caste amongst one another. The human heart is much the same in all conditions of life. I did not stay long enough to be able to say more about this place; but one of the most active and intelligent ladies connected with the management said to me afterwards, "Your wealthy manufacturers and merchants must leave a great deal of common stuff lying in their warehouses, and perhaps not very saleable just now, which would be much more valuable to us here than ever it will be to them. Do you think they would like to give us a little of it if we were to ask them nicely?" I said I thought there were many of them who would do so; and I think I said right. After a little talk with the benevolent old superintendent, whose heart, I am sure, is devoted to the business for the sake of the good it will do, and the evil it will prevent, I set off with my friend to see some of the poor folk who live in the quarter called "Scholes." It is not more than five hundred yards from the Mechanics' Institution to Scholes Bridge, which crosses the little river Douglas, down in a valley in the eastern part of the town. As soon as we were at the other end of the bridge, we turned off at the right hand corner into a street of the poorest sort--a narrow old street, called "Amy Lane." A few yards on the street we came to a few steps, which led up, on the right hand side, to a little terrace of poor cottages, overlooking the river Douglas. We called at one of these cottages. Though rather disorderly just then, it was not an uncomfortable place. It was evidently looked after by some homely dame. A clean old cat dosed upon a chair by the fireside. The bits of cottage furniture, though cheap, and well worn, were all there; and the simple household gods, in the shape of pictures and ornaments, were in their places still. A hardy-looking, brown-faced man, with close-cropped black hair, and a mild countenance, sat on a table by the window, making artificial flies, for fishing. In the corner over his head a cheap, dingy picture of the trial of Queen Catherine, hung against the wall. I could just make out the tall figure of the indignant queen, in the well-known theatrical attitude, with her right arm uplifted, and her sad, proud face turned away from the judgment-seat, where Henry sits, evidently uncomfortable in mind, as she gushes forth that bold address to her priestly foes and accusers. The man sitting beneath the picture, told us that he was a throstle-overlooker by trade; and that he had been nine months out of work. He said, "There's five on us here when we're i'th heawse. When th' wark fell off I had a bit o' brass save't up, so we were forced to start o' usin' that. But month after month went by, an' th' brass kept gettin' less, do what we would; an' th' times geet wur, till at last we fund ersels fair stagged up. At after that, my mother helped us as weel as hoo could,--why, hoo does neaw, for th' matter o' that, an' then aw've three brothers, colliers; they've done their best to poo us through. But they're nobbut wortchin' four days a week, neaw; besides they'n enough to do for their own. Aw make no acceawnt o' slotchin' up an' deawn o' this shap, like a foo. It would sicken a dog, it would for sure. Aw go a fishin' a bit neaw an' then; an' aw cotter abeawt wi' first one thing an' then another; but it comes to no sense. Its noan like gradely wark. It makes me maunder up an' deawn, like a gonnor wi' a nail in it's yed. Aw wish to God yon chaps in Amerikey would play th' upstroke, an' get done wi' their bother, so as folk could start o' their wark again." This was evidently a provident man, who had striven hard to get through his troubles decently. His position as overlooker, too, made him dislike the thoughts of receiving relief amongst the operatives whom he might some day be called upon to superintend again. A little higher up in Amy Lane we came to a kind of square. On the side where the lane continues there is a dead brick wall; on the other side, bounding a little space of unpaved ground, rather higher than the lane, there are a few old brick cottages, of very mean and dirty appearance. At the doors of some of the cottages squalid, untidy women were lounging; some of them sitting upon the doorstep, with their elbows on their knees, smoking, and looking stolidly miserable. We were now getting near where the cholera made such havoc during its last visit,--a pestilent jungle, where disease is always prowling about, "seeking whom it can devour." A few sallow, dirty children were playing listlessly about the space, in a melancholy way, looking as if their young minds were already "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and unconsciously oppressed with wonder why they should be born to such a miserable share of human life as this. A tall, gaunt woman, with pale face, and thinly clad in a worn and much-patched calico gown, and with a pair of "trashes" upon her stockingless feet, sat on the step of the cottage nearest the lane. The woman rose when she saw my friend. "Come in," said she; and we followed her into the house. It was a wretched place; and the smell inside was sickly. I should think a broker would not give half-a-crown for all the furniture we saw. The woman seemed simple-minded and very illiterate; and as she stood in the middle of the floor, looking vaguely round she said, "Aw can hardly ax yo to sit deawn, for we'n sowd o' th' things eawt o'th heawse for a bit o' meight; but there is a cheer theer, sich as it is; see yo; tak' that." When she found that I wished to know something of her condition--although this was already well known to the gentleman who accompanied me--she began to tell her story in a simple, off-hand way. "Aw've had nine childer," said she; "we'n buried six, an' we'n three alive, an' aw expect another every day." In one corner there was a rickety little low bedstead. There was no bedding upon it but a ragged kind of quilt, which covered the ticking. Upon this quilt something lay, like a bundle of rags, covered with a dirty cloth. "There's one o' th' childer, lies here, ill," said she. "It's getten' th' worm fayver." When she uncovered that little emaciated face, the sick child gazed at me with wild, burning eyes, and began to whine pitifully. "Husht, my love," said the poor woman; "he'll not hurt tho'! Husht, now; he's noan beawn to touch tho'! He's noan o'th doctor, love. Come, neaw, husht; that's a good lass!" I gave the little thing a penny, and one way and another we soothed her fears, and she became silent; but the child still gazed at me with wild eyes, and the forecast of death on its thin face. The mother began again, "Eh, that little thing has suffered summat," said she, wiping her eyes; "an', as aw towd yo before, aw expect another every day. They're born nake't, an' th' next'll ha' to remain so, for aught that aw con see. But, aw dar not begin o' thinkin' abeawt it. It would drive me crazy. We han a little lad o' mi sister's livin' wi' us. Aw had to tak' him when his mother deed. Th' little thing's noather feyther nor mother, neaw. It's gwon eawt a beggin' this morning wi' my two childer. My mother lives with us, too," continued she; "hoo's gooin' i' eighty-four, an' hoo's eighteen pence a week off th' teawn. There's seven on us, o'together, an' we'n had eawr share o' trouble, one way an' another, or else aw'm chetted. Well, aw'll tell yo' what happened to my husban' o' i' two years' time. My husban's a collier. Well, first he wur brought whoam wi' three ribs broken--aw wur lyin' in when they brought him whoam. An' then, at after that, he geet his arm broken; an' soon after he'd getten o'er that, he wur nearly brunt to deeath i' one o'th pits at Ratcliffe; an' aw haven't quite done yet, for, after that, he lee ill o'th rheumatic fayver sixteen week. That o' happen't i' two years' time. It's God's truth, maister. Mr Lea knows summat abeawt it--an' he stons theer. Yo may have a like aim what we'n had to go through. An' that wur when times were'n good; but then, everything o' that sort helps to poo folk deawn, yo known. We'n had very hard deed, maister--aw consider we'n had as hard deed as anybody livin', takkin' o' together." This case was an instance of the peculiar troubles to which colliers and their families are liable; a little representative bit of life among the poor of Wigan. From this place we went further up into Scholes, to a dirty square, called the "Coal Yard." Here we called at the house of Peter Y_, a man of fifty-one, and a weaver of a kind of stuff called, "broad cross-over," at which work he earned about six shillings a week, when in full employ. His wife was a cripple, unable to help herself; and, therefore, necessarily a burden. Their children were two girls, and one boy. The old woman said, "Aw'm always forced to keep one o'th lasses a-whoam, for aw connot do a hond's turn." The children had been brought up to factory labour; but both they and their father had been out of work nearly twelve months. During that time the family had received relief tickets, amounting to the value of four shillings a week. Speaking of the old man, the mother said, "Peter has just getten a bit o' wark again, thank God. He's hardly fit for it; but he'll do it as lung as he can keep ov his feet." CHAPTER XVII. "Lord! how the people suffer day by day A lingering death, through lack of honest bread; And yet are gentle on their starving way, By faith in future good and justice led." --BLACKBURN BARD. It is a curious thing to note the various combinations of circumstance which exist among the families of the poor. On the surface they seem much the same; and they are reckoned up according to number, income, and the like. But there are great differences of feeling and cultivation amongst them; and then, every household has a story of its own, which no statistics can tell. There is hardly a family which has not had some sickness, some stroke of disaster, some peculiar sorrow, or crippling hindrance, arising within itself, which makes its condition unlike the rest. In this respect each family is one string in the great harp of humanity--a string which, touched by the finger of Heaven, contributes a special utterance to that universal harmony which is too fine for mortal ears. From the old weaver's house in "Coal Yard" we went to a place close by, called "Castle Yard," one of the most unwholesome nooks I have seen in Wigan yet, though there are many such in that part of the town. It was a close, pestilent, little cul de sac, shut in by a dead brick wall at the far end. Here we called upon an Irish family, seven in number. The mother and two of her daughters were in. The mother had sore eyes. The place was dirty, and the air inside was close and foul. The miserable bits of furniture left were fit for nothing but a bonfire. "Good morning, Mrs K_," said my friend, as we entered the stifling house; "how are you geting on?" The mother stood in the middle of the floor, wiping her sore eyes, and then folding her hands in a tattered apron; whilst her daughters gazed upon us vacantly from the background. "Oh, then," replied the woman, "things is worse wid us entirely, sir, than whenever ye wor here before. I dunno what will we do whin the winter comes." In reply to me, she said, "We are seven altogether, wid my husband an' myself. I have one lad was ill o' the yallow jaundice this many months, an' there is somethin' quare hangin' over that boy this day; I dunno whatever shall we do wid him. I was thinkin' this long time could I get a ricommind to see would the doctor give him anythin' to rise an appetite in him at all. By the same token, I know it is not a convanient time for makin' appetites in poor folk just now. But perhaps the doctor might be able to do him some good, by the way he would be ready when times mind. Faith, my hands is full wid one thing an' another. Ah, thin; but God is good, after all. We dunno what is He goin' to do through the dark stroke is an' us this day." Here my friend interrupted her, saying, "Don't you think, Mrs K_, that you would be more comfortable if you were to keep your house cleaner? It costs nothing, you know, but a little labour; and you have nothing else to do just now." "Ah, then," replied she; "see here, now. I was just gettin' the mug ready for that same, whenever ye wor comin' into the yard, I was. "Here she turned sharply round, and said to one of the girls, who was standing in the background, "Go on, wid ye, now; and clane the flure. Didn't I tell ye many a time this day?" The girl smiled, and shuffled away into a dingy little room at the rear of the cottage. "Faith, sir," continued the woman, beating time with her hand in the air; "faith, sir, it is not aisy for a poor woman to manage unbiddable childer." "What part of Ireland do you come from, Mrs K_?" said I. She hesitated a second or two, and played with her chin; then, blushing slightly, she replied in a subdued tone, "County Galway, sir." "Well," said I, "you've no need to be ashamed of that." The woman seemed reassured, and answered at once, "Oh, indeed then, sir, I am not ashamed--why would I? I am more nor seventeen year now in England, an' I never disguised my speech, nor disowned my country--nor I never will, aither, plase God." She had said before that her husband was forty- five years of age; and now I inquired what age she was. "I am the same age as my husband," replied she. "Forty-five," said I. "No, indeed, I am not forty-five," answered she; "nor forty naither." "Are you thirty-eight?" "May be I am; I dunno. I don't think I am thirty-eight naither; I am the same age as my husband." It was no use talking, so the subject was dropped. As we came away, the woman followed my friend to the door, earnestly pleading the cause of some family in the neighbourhood, who were in great distress. "See now," said she, "they are a large family, and the poor crayters are starvin'. He is a shoemaker, an' he doesn't be gettin' any work this longtime. Oh, indeed, then, Mr Lea, God knows thim people is badly off." My friend promised to visit the family she had spoken of, and we came away. The smell of the house, and of the court altogether, was so sickening that we were glad to get into the air of the open street again. It was now about half-past eleven, and my friend said, "We have another workroom for young women in the schoolroom of St Catherine's Church. It is about five minutes' walk from here; we have just time to see it before they break up for dinner." It was a large, square, brick building, standing by the road side, upon high ground, at the upper end of Scholes. The church is about fifty yards east of the schoolhouse. This workroom was more airy, and better lighted than the one at the Mechanics' Institution. The floor was flagged, which will make it colder than the other in winter time. There were four hundred girls in this room, some engaged in sewing and knitting, others in reading and writing. They are employed four days in the week, and they are paid ninepence a day, as at the other two rooms in the town. It really was a pleasant thing to see their clear, healthy, blond complexions; their clothing, so clean and whole, however poor; and their orderly deportment. But they had been accustomed to work, and their work had given them a discipline which is not sufficiently valued. There are people who have written a great deal, and know very little about the influence of factory labour upon health,--it would be worth their while to see some of these workrooms. I think it would sweep cobwebs away from the corners of their minds. The clothing made up in these workrooms is of a kind suitable for the wear of working people, and is intended to be given away to the neediest among them, in the coming winter. I noticed a feature here which escaped me in the room at the Mechanics' Institution. On one side of the room there was a flight of wooden stairs, about six yards wide. Upon these steps were seated a number of children, with books in their hands. These youngsters were evidently restless, though not noisy; and they were not very attentive to their books. These children were the worst clad and least clean part of the assembly; and it was natural that they should be so, for they were habitual beggars, gathered from the streets, and brought there to be taught and fed. When they were pointed out to me, I could not help thinking that the money which has been spent upon ragged schools is an excellent investment in the sense of world-wide good. I remarked to one of the ladies teaching there, how very clean and healthy the young women looked. She said that the girls had lately been more in the open air than usual. "And," said she, speaking of the class she was superintending, "I find these poor girls as apt learners as any other class of young people I ever knew." We left the room just before they were dismissed to dinner. A few yards from the school, and by the same roadside, we came to a little cottage at the end of a row. "We will call here," said my friend; "I know the people very well. "A little, tidy, good-looking woman sat by the fire, nursing an infant at the breast. The house was clean, and all the humble furniture of the poor man's cottage seemed to be still in its place. There were two shelves of books hanging against the walls, and a pile of tracts and pamphlets, a foot deep, on a small table at the back of the room. I soon found, however, that these people were going through their share of the prevalent suffering. The family was six in number. The comely little woman said that her husband was a weaver of "Cross-over;" and I suppose he would earn about six or seven shillings a week at that kind of work; but he had been long out of work. His wife said, "I've had to pop my husban's trousers an' waistcoat many a time to pay th' rent o' this house." She then began to talk about her first-born, and the theme was too much for her. "My owdest child was thirteen when he died," said she. "Eh, he was a fine child. We lost him about two years sin'. He was killed. He fell down that little pit o' Wright's, Mr Lea, he did." Then the little woman began to cry, "Eh, my poor lad! Eh, my fine little lad! Oh dear,--oh dear o' me!" What better thing could we have done than to say nothing at such a moment. We waited a few minutes until she became calm, and then she began to talk about a benevolent young governess who used to live in that quarter, and who had gone about doing good there, amongst "all sorts and conditions of men," especially the poorest. "Eh," said she; "that was a good woman, if ever there was one. Hoo teached a class o' fifty at church school here, though hoo wur a Dissenter. An' hoo used to come to this house every Sunday neet, an' read th' Scripturs; an' th' place wur olez crammed--th' stairs an o'. Up-groon fellows used to come an' larn fro her, just same as childer--they did for sure--great rough colliers, an' o' mak's. Hoo used to warn 'em again drinkin', an' get 'em to promise that they wouldn't taste for sich a time. An' if ever they broke their promise, they olez towd her th' truth, and owned to it at once. They like as iv they couldn't for shame tell her a lie. There's one of her scholars, a blacksmith--he's above fifty year owd--iv yo were to mention her name to him just now, he'd begin a-cryin', an' he'd ha' to walk eawt o'th heause afore he could sattle hissel'. Eh, hoo wur a fine woman; an' everything that hoo said wur so striking. Hoo writes to her scholars here, once a week; an' hoo wants 'em to write back to her, as mony on 'em as con do. See yo; that's one ov her letters!" CHAPTER XVIII. "Come, child of misfortune, come hither! I'll weep with thee, tear for tear." --TOM MOORE. The weaver's wife spoke very feelingly of the young governess who had been so good to the family. Her voice trembled with emotion as she told of her kindnesses, which had so won the hearts of the poor folk thereabouts, that whenever they hear her name now, their tongues leap at once into heart-warm praise of her. It seems to have been her daily pleasure to go about helping those who needed help most, without any narrowness of distinction; in the spirit of that "prime wisdom" which works with all its might among such elements as lie nearest to the hand. Children and gray-haired working men crowded into the poor cottages to hear her read, and to learn the first elements of education at her free classes. She left the town, some time ago, to live in the south of England; but the blessings of many who were ready to perish in Wigan will follow her all her days, and her memory will long remain a garden of good thoughts and feelings to those she has left behind. The eyes of the weaver's wife grew moist as she told of the old blacksmith, who could not bear to hear her name mentioned without tears. On certain nights of the week he used to come regularly with the rest to learn to read, like a little child, from that young teacher. As I said in my last, she still sends a weekly letter to her poor scholars in Wigan to encourage them in their struggles, and to induce as many of them as are able to write to her in return. "This is one of her letters," said the poor woman, handing a paper to me. The manner of the handwriting was itself characteristic of kind consideration for her untrained readers. The words stood well apart. The letters were clearly divided, and carefully and distinctly written, in Roman characters, a quarter of an inch long; and there was about three- quarters of an inch of space between each line, so as to make the whole easier to read by those not used to manuscript. The letter ran as follows:--"Dear friends,--I send you with this some little books, which I hope you will like to try to read; soon, I hope, I shall be able to help you with those texts you cannot make out by yourselves. I often think of you, dear friends, and wish that I could sometimes take a walk to Scholefield's Lane. This wish only makes me feel how far I am from you, but then I remember with gladness that I may mention you all by name to our one Father, and ask Him to bless you. Very often I do ask Him, and one of my strongest wishes is that we, who have so often read His message of love together, may all of us love the Saviour, and, through Him, be saved from sin. Dear friends, do pray to Him. With kind love and best wishes to each one of you, believe me always, your sincere friend, __." I have dwelt a little upon this instance of unassuming beneficence, to show that there is a great deal of good being done in this world, which is not much heard of, except by accident. One meets with it, here and there, as a thirsty traveller meets with an unexpected spring in the wilderness, refreshing its own plot of earth, without noise or ostentation. My friend and I left the weaver's cottage, and came down again into a part of Scholes where huddled squalor and filth is to be found on all sides. On our way we passed an old tattered Irishwoman, who was hurrying along, with two large cabbages clipt tight in her withered arms. "You're doin' well, old lady," said I. "Faith," replied she, "if I had a big lump ov a ham bone, now, wouldn't we get over this day in glory, anyhow. But no matter. There's not wan lafe o' them two fellows but will be clane out o' sight before the clock strikes again." The first place we called at in this quarter was a poor half-empty cottage, inhabited by an old widow and her sick daughter. The girl sat there pale and panting, and wearing away to skin and bone. She was far gone in consumption. Their only source of maintenance was the usual grant of relief from the committee, but this girl's condition needed further consideration. The old widow said to my friend, "Aw wish yo could get me some sort o' nourishment for this lass, Mr Lea; aw cannot get it mysel', an' yo see'n heaw hoo is." My friend took a note of the case, and promised to see to it at once. When great weltering populations, like that of Lancashire, are thrown suddenly into such a helpless state as now, it is almost impossible to lay hold at once of every nice distinction of circumstances that gives a speciality of suffering to the different households of the poor. But I believe, as this time of trouble goes on, the relief committees are giving a more careful and delicate consideration to the respective conditions of poor families. After leaving the old widow's house, as we went farther down into the sickly hive of penury and dirt, called "Scholes," my friend told me of an intelligent young woman, a factory operative and a Sunday- school teacher, who had struggled against starvation, till she could bear it no longer; and, even after she had accepted the grant of relief, she "couldn't for shame" fetch the tickets herself, but waited outside whilst a friend of hers went in for them. The next house we visited was a comfortable cottage. The simple furniture was abundant, and good of its kind, and the whole was remarkably clean. Amongst the wretched dwellings in its neighbourhood, it shone "like a good deed in a naughty world." On the walls there were several Catholic pictures, neatly framed; and a large old-fashioned wooden wheel stood in the middle of the floor, with a quantity of linen yarn upon it. Old Stephen I__ and his cosy goodwife lived there. The old woman was "putting the place to rights" after their noontide meal; and Stephen was "cottering" about the head of the cellar steps when we went in. There were a few healthy plants in the windows, and everything gave evidence of industry and care. The good-tempered old couple were very communicative. Old Stephen was a weaver of diaper; and, when he had anything to do, he could earn about eight shillings a week. "Some can get more than that at the same work," said he; "but I am gettin' an old man, ye see. I shall be seventy-three on the 10th of next October, and, beside that, I have a very bad arm, which is a great hindrance to me." "He has had very little work for months, now," said his wife; "an' what makes us feel it more, just now, is that my son is over here on a visit to us, from Oscott College. He is studying for the priesthood. He went to St John's, here, in Wigan, for five years, as a pupil teacher; an' he took good ways, so the principals of the college proposed to educate him for the Church of Rome. He was always a good boy, an' a bright one, too. I wish we had been able to entertain him better. But he knows that the times are again us. He is twenty-four years of age; an' I often think it strange that his father's birthday and his own fall on the same day of the month--the 10th of October. I hope we'll both live to see him an ornament to his profession yet. There is only the girl, an' Stephen, an' myself left at home now, an' we have hard work to pull through, I can assure ye; though there are many people a dale worse off than we are." From this place we went up to a street called "Vauxhall Road." In the first cottage we called at here the inmates were all out of work, as usual, and living upon relief. There happened to be a poor old white-haired weaver sitting in the house,--an aged neighbour out of work, who had come in to chat with my friend a bit. My friend asked how he was getting on. "Yo mun speak up," said the woman of the house, "he's very deaf." "What age are yo, maister?" said I. "What?" "How old are yo?" "Aw'm a beamer," replied the old man, "a twister-in,--when there's ought doin'. But it's nowt ov a trade neaw. Aw'll tell yo what ruins me; it's these lung warps. They maken 'em seven an' eight cuts in, neaw an' then. There's so mony 'fancies' an' things i' these days; it makes my job good to nought at o' for sich like chaps as me. When one gets sixty year owd, they needen to go to schoo again neaw; they getten o'erta'en wi' so many kerly-berlies o' one mak and another. Mon, owd folk at has to wortch for a livin' cannot keep up wi' sich times as these,--nought o'th sort." "Well, but how do you manage to live?" "Well, aw can hardly tell,--aw'll be sunken iv aw can tell. It's very thin pikein'; but very little does for me, an' aw've nought but mysel'. Yo see'n, aw get a bit ov a job neaw an' then, an' a scrat amung th' rook, like an owd hen. But aw'll tell yo one thing; aw'll not go up yon, iv aw can help it,--aw'll not." ("Up yon" meant to the Board of Guardians.) "Eh, now," said the woman of the house, "aw never see'd sich a man as him i' my life. See yo, he'll sit an' clem fro mornin' to neet afore he'll ax oather relief folk or onybody else for a bite." In the same street we called at a house where there was a tall, pale old man, sitting sadly in an old arm-chair, by the fireside. The little cottage was very sweet and orderly. Every window was cleaned to its utmost nook of glass, and every bit of metal was brightened up to the height. The flagged floor was new washed; and everything was in its own place. There were a few books on little shelves, and a Bible lay on the window-sill; and there was a sad, chapel-like stillness in the house. A clean, staid-looking girl stood at a table, peeling potatoes for dinner. The old man said, "We are five, altogether, in this house. This lass is a reeler. I am a weighver; but we'n bin out o' wark nine months, now. We'n bin force't to tak to relief at last; an' we'n getten five tickets. We could happen ha' manage't better,--but aw'm sore wi' rheumatism, yo see'n. Aw've had a bit o' weighvin' i'th heawse mony a day, but aw've th' rheumatic so bad i' this hond--it's hond that aw pick wi'--that aw couldn't bide to touch a fither with it, bless yo. Aw have th' rheumatic all o'er mo, nearly; an' it leads one a feaw life. Yo happen never had a touch on it, had yo?" "Never." "Well; yo're weel off. When is this war to end, thinken yo?" "Nay; that's a very hard thing to tell." " Well, we mun grin an' abide till it's o'er, aw guess. It's a mad mak o' wark. But it'll happen turn up for best i'th end ov o'." CHAPTER XIX. "Mother, heaw leets we han no brade,-- Heawever con it be? Iv aw don't get some brade to eat, Aw think 'at aw mun dee." --Hungry Child. It was about noon when we left the old weaver, nursing his rheumatic limbs by the side of a dim fire, in his chapel-like little house. His daughter, a tall, clean, shy girl, began to peel a few potatoes just before we came away. It is a touching thing, just now, to see so many decent cottages of thrifty working men brought low by the strange events of these days; cottages in which everything betokens the care of well-conducted lives, and where the sacred fire of independent feeling is struggling through the long frost of misfortune with patient dignity. It is a touching thing to see the simple joys of life, in homes like these, crushed into a speechless endurance of penury, and the native spirit of self-reliance writhing in unavoidable prostration, and hoping on from day to day for better times. I have seen many such places in my wanderings during these hard days--cottages where all was so sweet and orderly, both in person and habitation, that, but for the funereal stillness which sat upon hunger-nipt faces, a stranger would hardly have dreamt that the people dwelling there were undergoing any uncommon privation. I have often met with such people in my rambles,--I have often found them suffering pangs more keen than hunger alone could inflict, because they arose from the loss of those sweet relations of independence which are dear to many of them as life itself. With such as these--the shy, the proud, the intelligent and uncomplaining endurers--hunger is not the hardest thing that befalls:- "When the mind's free, The body's delicate; the tempest in their minds Doth from their senses take all else, Save what beats there." People of this temper are more numerous amongst our working population than the world believes, because they are exactly of the kind least likely to be heard of. They will fight their share of the battle of this time out as nobly as they have begun it; and it will be an ill thing for the land that owns them if full justice is not done to their worth, both now and hereafter. In the same street where the old weaver lived, we called upon a collier's family--a family of ten in number. The colliers of Wigan have been suffering a good deal lately, among the rest of the community, from shortness of labour. It was dinner-time when we entered the house, and the children were all swarming about the little place clamouring for their noontide meal. With such a rough young brood, I do not wonder that the house was not so tidy as some that I had seen. The collier's wife was a decent, good-tempered- looking woman, though her face was pale and worn, and bore evidence of the truth of her words, when she said, "Bless your life, aw'm poo'd to pieces wi' these childer!" She sat upon a stool, nursing a child at the breast, and doing her best to still the tumult of the others, who were fluttering about noisily. "Neaw, Sammul," said she, "theaw'll ha' that pot upo th' floor in now,--thae little pousement thae! Do keep eawt o' mischief,--an' make a less din, childer, win yo: for my yed's fair maddle't wi' one thing an' another . . . Mary, tak' th' pon off th' fire, an' reach me yon hippin' off th' oondur; an' then sit tho deawn somewheer, do,--thae'll be less bi th' legs." The children ranged seemingly from about two months up to fourteen years of age. Two of the youngest were sitting upon the bottom step of the stairs, eating off one plate. Four rough lads were gathered round a brown dish, which stood upon a little deal table in the middle of the floor. These four were round-headed little fellows, all teeming with life. "Yon catched us eawt o'flunters, (out of order,)" said the poor woman when we entered; "but what con a body do?" We were begging that she would not disturb herself, when one of the lads at the table called out, "Mother; look at eawr John. He keeps pushin' me off th' cheer!" "Eh, John," replied she; "I wish thy feyther were here! Thae'rt olez tormentin' that lad. Do let him alone, wilto--or else aw'll poo that toppin' o' thine, smartly--aw will! An' do see iv yo connot behave yorsels!" "Well," said John; "he keeps takkin' my puddin'!" "Eh, what a story," replied the other little fellow; "it wur thee, neaw!" " Aw'll tell yo what it is," said the mother, "iv yo two connot agree, an' get your dinner quietly, aw'll tak that dish away; an' yo'st not have another bite this day. Heaw con yo for shame!" This quietened the lads a little, and they went on with their dinner. At another little table under the back window, two girls stood, dining off one plate. The children were all eating a kind of light pudding, known in Lancashire by the name of "Berm-bo," or, "Berm-dumplin'," made of flour and yeast, mixed with a little suet. The poor woman said that her children were all "hearty-etten," (all hearty eaters,) especially the lads; and she hardly knew what to make for them, so as to have enough for the whole. "Berm-dumplin'," was as satisfying as anything that she could get, and it would "stick to their ribs" better than "ony mak o' swill;" besides, the children liked it. Speaking of her husband, she said, "He were eawt o' wark a good while; but he geet a shop at last, at Blackrod, abeawt four mile off Wigan. When he went a-wortchin' to Blackrod, at first, nought would sarve but he would walk theer an' back every day, so as to save lodgin' brass,--an sich like. Aw shouldn't ha' care't iv it had nobbut bin a mile, or two even; for aw'd far rayther that he had his meals comfortable awhoam, an' his bits o' clooas put reet; but Lord bless yo,--eight mile a day, beside a hard day's wark,--it knocked him up at last,--it were so like. He kept sayin', 'Oh, he could do it,' an' sich like; but aw could see that he were fair killin' hissel', just for the sake o' comin' to his own whoam ov a neet; an' for th' sake o' savin' two or three shillin'; so at last aw turned Turk, an' made him tak lodgin's theer. Aw'd summut to do to persuade him at first, an' aw know that he's as whoam-sick as a chylt that's lost its mother, just this minute; but then, what's th' matter o' that,--it wouldn't do for mo to have him laid up, yo known. . . . Oh, he's a very feelin' mon. Aw've sin him when he couldn't finish his bit o' dinner for thinkin' o' somebody that were clemmin'." Speaking of the hardships the family had experienced, she said, "Eh, bless yo! There's some folk can sit i'th heawse an' send their childer to prow eawt a-beggin' in a mornin', regilar,--but eawr childer wouldn't do it,--an', iv they would, aw wouldn' let 'em,-- naw, not iv we were clemmin' to deeoth,--to my thinkin'." The woman was quite right. Among the hard-tried operatives of Lancashire I have seen several instances in which they have gone out daily to beg; and some rare cases, even, in which they have stayed moodily at home themselves and sent their children forth to beg; and anybody living in this county will have noticed the increase of mendicancy there, during the last few months. No doubt professional beggars have taken large advantage of this unhappy time to work upon the sympathies of those easy givers who cannot bear to hear the wail of distress, however simulated--who prefer giving at once, because it "does their own hearts good," to the trouble of inquiring or the pain of refusing,--who would rather relieve twenty rogues than miss the blessing of one honest soul who was ready to perish,--those kind-hearted, free-handed scatterers of indiscriminate benevolence who are the keen-eyed, whining cadger's chief support, his standing joke, and favourite prey; and who are more than ever disposed to give to whomsoever shall ask of them in such a season as this. All the mendicancy which appears on our streets does not belong to the suffering operatives of Lancashire. But, apart from those poor, miserable crawlers in the gutters of life, who live by habitual and unnecessary beggary, great and continued adversity is a strong test of the moral tone of any people. Extreme poverty, and the painful things which follow in its train--these are "bad to bide" with the best of mankind. Besides, there are always some people who, from causes within themselves, are continually at their wits' end to keep the wolf from the door, even when employment is plentiful with them; and there are some natures too weak to bear any long strain of unusual poverty without falling back upon means of living which, in easy circumstances, they would have avoided, if not despised. It is one evil of the heavy pressure of the times; for there is fear that among such as these, especially the young and plastic, some may become so familiar with that beggarly element which was offensive to their minds at first--may so lose the tone of independent pride, and become "subdued to what they work in, like the dyer's hand,"--that they may learn to look upon mendicancy as an easy source of support hereafter, even in times of less difficulty than the present. Happily, such weakness as this is not characteristic of the English people; but "they are well kept that God keeps," and perhaps it would not be wise to cramp the hand of relief too much at a time like this, to a people who have been, and will be yet, the hope and glory of the land. CHAPTER XX. "Poor Tom's a-cold! Who gives anything to poor Tom?" --King Lear. One sometimes meets with remarkable differences of condition in the households of poor folk, which stand side by side in the same street. I am not speaking of the uncertain shelters of those who struggle upon the skirts of civilisation, in careless, uncared-for wretchedness, without settled homes, or regular occupation,--the miserable camp followers of life's warfare,--living habitually from hand to mouth, in a reckless wrestle with the world, for mere existence. I do not mean these, but the households of our common working people. Amongst the latter one sometimes meets with striking differences, in cleanliness, furniture, manners, intellectual acquirements, and that delicate compound of mental elements called taste. Even in families whose earnings have been equal in the past, and who are just now subject alike to the same pinch of adversity, these disparities are sometimes very great. And, although there are cases in which the immediate causes of these differences are evident enough in the habits of the people, yet, in others, the causes are so obscure, that the wisest observer would be most careful in judging respecting them. I saw an example of this in a little bye- street, at the upper end of Scholes--a quarter of Wigan where the poorest of the poor reside, and where many decent working people have lately been driven for cheap shelter by the stress of the times. Scholes is one of those ash-pits of human life which may be found in almost any great town; where, among a good deal of despised stuff, which by wise treatment might possibly be made useful to the world, many a jewel gets accidentally thrown away, and lost. This bye-street of mean brick cottages had an unwholesome, outcast look; and the sallow, tattered women, lounging about the doorways, and listlessly watching the sickly children in the street, evinced the prevalence of squalor and want there. The very children seemed joyless at their play; and everything that met the eye foretold that there was little chance of finding anything in that street but poverty in its most prostrate forms. But, even in this unpromising spot, I met with an agreeable surprise. The first house we entered reminded me of those clean, lone dwellings, up in the moorland nooks of Lancashire, where the sweet influences of nature have free play; where the people have a hereditary hatred of dirt and disorder; and where, even now, many of the hardy mountain folk are half farmers, half woollen weavers, doing their weaving in their own quiet houses, where the smell of the heather and the song of the wild bird floats in at the workman's window, blent with the sounds of rindling waters,--doing their weaving in green sequestered nooks, where the low of kine, and the cry of the moorfowl can be heard; and bearing the finished "cuts" home upon their backs to the distant town. All was so bright in this little cottage,--so tidy and serene,--that the very air seemed clearer there than in the open street. The humble furniture, good of its kind, was all shiny with "elbow grease," and some parts of it looked quaint and well-preserved, like the heirlooms of a careful cottage ancestry. The well polished fire-irons, and other metal things, seemed to gather up the diffuse daylight and fling it back in concentrated radiances that illuminated the shady cottage with cheerful beauty. The little shelf of books, the gleaming window, with its healthy pot flowers, the perfect order, and the trim sweetness of everything, reminded me, as I have said, of the better sort of houses where simple livers dwell, up among the free air of the green hills--those green hills of Lancashire, the remembrance of which will always stir my heart as long as it can stir to anything. This cottage, in comparison with most of those which I had seen in Scholes, looked like a glimpse of the star-lit blue peeping through the clouds on a gloomy night. I found that it was the house of a widower, a weaver of diaper, who was left with a family of eight children to look after. Two little girls were in the house, and they were humbly but cleanly clad. One of them called her father up from the cellar, where he was working at his looms. He was a mild, thoughtful-looking man, something past middle age. I could not help admiring him as he stood in the middle of the floor with his unsleeved arms folded, uttering quiet jets of simple speech to my friend, who had known him before. He said that he hardly ever got anything to do now, but when he was at work he could make about 7s. 2d. a week by weaving two cuts. He was receiving six tickets weekly from the Relief Committee, which, except the proceeds of a little employment now and then, was all that the family of nine had to depend upon for food, firing, clothes, and rent. He said that he was forced to make every little spin out as far as it would; but it kept him bare and busy, and held his nose "everlastingly deawn to th' grindlestone." But he didn't know that it was any use complaining about a thing that neither master nor man could help. He durst say that he could manage to grin and bide till things came round, th' same as other folk had to do. Grumbling, in a case like this, was like "fo'in eawt wi' th' elements," (quarrelling with a storm.) One of his little girls was on her knees, cleaning the floor. She stopped a minute, to look at my friend and me. "Come, my lass," said her father, "get on wi' thi weshin'." "I made application for th' watchman's place at Leyland Mill," continued he, "but I wur to lat. . . . There's nought for it," continued he, as we came out of the house, "there's nought for it but to keep one's een oppen, an' do as weel as they con, till it blows o'er." A few yards from this house, we looked in at a slip of a cottage, at the corner of the row. It was like a slice off some other cottage, stuck on at the end of the rest, to make up the measure of the street; for it was less than two yards wide, by about four yards long. There was only one small window, close to the door, and it was shrouded by a dingy cotton blind. When we first entered, I could hardly see what there was in that gloomy cell; but when the eyes became acquainted with the dimness within, we found that there was neither fire nor furniture in the place, except at the far end, where an old sick woman lay gasping upon three chairs, thinly covered from the cold. She was dying of asthma. At her right hand there was another rickety chair, by the help of which she raised herself up from her hard bed. She said that she had never been up stairs during the previous twelve months, but had lain there, at the foot of the stairs, all that time. She had two daughters. They were both out of the house; and they had been out of work a long time. One of them had gone to Miss B_'s to learn to sew. "She gets her breakfast before she starts," said the old woman, "an' she takes a piece o' bread with her, to last for th' day." It was a trouble to her to talk much, so we did not stop long; but I could not help feeling sorry that the poor old soul had not a little more comfort to smooth her painful passage to the grave. On our way from this place, we went into a cottage near the "Coal Yard," where a tall, thin Irishwoman was washing some tattered clothes, whilst her children played about the gutter outside. This was a family of seven, and they were all out of work, except the father, who was away, trying to make a trifle by hawking writing-paper and envelopes. This woman told us that she was in great trouble about one of her children--the eldest daughter, now grown up to womanhood. "She got married to a sailor about two year ago," said she, "an' he wint away a fortnit after, an' never was heard of since. She never got the scrape ov a pen from him to say was he alive or dead. She never heard top nor tail of him since he wint from her; an' the girl is just pinin' away." Poor folk have their full share of the common troubles of life, apart from the present distress. The next place we visited was the "Fleece Yard," another of those unhealthy courts, of which there are so many in Scholes--where poverty and dirt unite to make life doubly miserable. In this yard we went up three or four steps into a little disorderly house, where a family of eleven was crowded. Not one of the eleven was earning anything except the father, who was working for ls. 3d. a day. In addition to this the family received four tickets weekly from the Relief Committee. There were several of the children in, and they looked brisk and healthy, in spite of the dirt and discomfort of the place; but the mother was sadly "torn down" by the cares of her large family. The house had a sickly smell. Close to the window, a little, stiff built, bullet-headed lad stood, stript to the waist, sputtering and splashing as he washed himself in a large bowl of water, placed upon a stool. By his side there was another lad three or four years older, and the two were having a bit of famous fun together, quite heedless of all else. The elder kept ducking the little fellow's head into the water, upon which the one who was washing himself sobbed, and spat, and cried out in great glee, "Do it again, Jack!" The mother, seeing us laugh at the lads, said, "That big un's been powin' tother, an' th' little monkey's gone an' cut every smite o' th' lad's toppin' off. "" Well," said the elder lad, "Aw did it so as nobody can lug him. "And it certainly was a close clip. We could see to the roots of the little fellow's hair all over his round, hard head. "Come," said the mother, "yo two are makin' a nice floor for mo. Thae'll do, mon; arto beawn to lother o' th' bit o' swoap away that one has to wash wi'; gi's howd on't this minute, an' go thi ways an' dry thisel', thae little pouse, thae." We visited several other places in Scholes that day, but of these I will say something hereafter. In the evening I returned home, and the thing that I best remember hearing on the way was an anecdote of two Lancashire men, who had been disputing a long time about something that one of them knew little of. At last the other turned to him, and said, "Jem; does thae know what it is that makes me like thee so weel, owd brid?" "Naw; what is it?" "Why; it's becose thae'rt sich a ___ foo!" "Well," replied the other, "never thee mind that;" and then, alluding to the subject they had been disputing about, he said, "Thae knows, Joe, aw know thae'rt reet enough; but, by th' men, aw'll not give in till mornin'." CHAPTER XXI. "Here, take this purse, thou whom the Heaven's plagues Have humbled to all strokes." --King Lear. In the afternoon of the last day I spent in Wigan, as I wandered with my friend from one cottage to another, in the long suburban lane called "Hardy Butts," I bethought me how oft I had met with this name of "Butts "connected with places in or close to the towns of Lancashire. To me the original application of the name seems plain, and not uninteresting. In the old days, when archery was common in England, the bowmen of Lancashire were famous; and it is more than likely that these yet so-called "Butts" are the places where archery was then publicly practised. When Sir Edward Stanley led the war-smiths of Lancashire and Cheshire to Flodden Field, the men of Wigan are mentioned as going with the rest. And among those "fellows fearce and freshe for feight," of whom the quaint old alliterative ballad describes the array:- "A stock of striplings strong of heart, Brought up from babes with beef and bread, From Warton unto Warrington From Wigan unto Wiresdale--" and, from a long list of the hills, and cloughs, and old towns of the county--the bowmen of Lancashire did their share of work upon that field. The use of the bow lingered longer in Lancashire than in some parts of the kingdom--longer in England generally than many people suppose. Sir Walter Scott says, in a note to his "Legend of Montrose:" "Not only many of the Highlanders in Montrose's army used these antique missiles, but even in England the bow and quiver, once the glory of the bold yeomen of that land, were occasionally used during the great civil wars." But I have said enough upon this subject in this place. My friend's business, and mine, in Wigan, that day, was connected with other things. He was specially wishful that I should call upon an acquaintance of his, who lived in "Hardy Butts," an old man and very poor; a man heavily stricken by fortune's blows, yet not much tamed thereby; a man "steeped to the lips" in poverty, yet of a jocund spirit; a humorist and a politician, among his humble companions. I felt curious to see this "Old John," of whom I heard so much. We went to the cottage where he lived. There was very little furniture in the place, and, like the house itself, it was neither good nor clean; but then the poverty-stricken pair were very old, and, so far as household comfort went, they had to look after themselves. When we entered, the little wrinkled woman sat with her back to us, smoking, and gazing at the dirty grate, where a few hot cinders glowed dimly in the lowmost bars. "Where's John?" said my friend. "He hasn't bin gone eawt aboon five minutes," said she, turning round to look at us, "Wur yo wantin' him?" "Yes, I should like to see him." She looked hard at my friend again, and then cried out, "Eh, is it yo? Come, an' sit yo deawn! aw'll go an' see iv aw can root him up for yo!" But we thought it as well to visit some other houses in the neighbourhood, calling at old John's again afterwards; so we told the old woman, and came away. My friend was well known to the poor people of that neighbourhood as a member of the Relief Committee, and we had not gone many yards down "Hardy Butts" before we drew near where three Irishwomen were sitting upon the doorsteps of a miserable cottage, chattering, and looking vacantly up and down the slutchy street. As soon as they caught sight of my friend, one of the women called out, "Eh, here's Mr Lea! Come here, now, Mr Lea, till I spake to ye. Ah, now; couldn't ye do somethin' for old Mary beyant there? Sure the colour of hunger's in that woman's face. Faith, it's a pity to see the way she is,--neither husband nor son, nor chick nor child, nor bit nor sup, barrin' what folk that has nothin' can give to her,--the crayter." " Oh, indeed, then, sir," said another, "I'll lave it to God; but that woman is starvin'. She is little more nor skin an' bone,--and that's goin' less. Faith, she's not long for this world, any how. . . . Bridget, ye might run an' see can she come here a minute. . . . But there she is, standin' at the corner. Mary! Come here, now, woman, till ye see the gentleman." She was a miserable- looking creature; old, and ill, and thinly-clothed in rags, with a dirty cloth tied round her head. My friend asked her some questions, which she answered slowly, in a low voice that trembled with more than the weakness of old age. He promised to see to the relief of her condition immediately-- and she thanked him, but so feebly, that it seemed to me as if she had not strength enough left to care much whether she was relieved or not. But, as we came away, the three Irishwomen, sitting upon the door- steps, burst forth into characteristic expressions of gratitude. "Ah! long life to ye, Mr Lea! The prayer o' the poor is wid ye for evermore. If there was ony two people goin' to heaven alive, you'll be wan o' them. . . That ye may never know want nor scant,--for the good heart that's batein' in ye, Mr Lea." We now went through some of the filthy alleys behind "Hardy Butts," till we came to the cottage of a poor widow and her two daughters. The three were entirely dependent upon the usual grant of relief from the committee. My friend called here to inquire why the two girls had not been to school during the previous few days; and whilst their mother was explaining the reason, a neighbour woman who had seen us enter, looked in at the door, and said, "Hey! aw say, Mr Lea!" "Well, what's the matter?" " Whaw, there's a woman i'th next street at's gettin' four tickets fro th' relief folk, reggilar, an' her husban's addlin' thirty shillin' a week o' t' time, as a sinker--he is for sure. Aw 'm noan tellin' yo a wort ov a lie. Aw consider sick wark as that's noan reet--an' so mony folk clemmin' as there is i' Wigan." He made a note of the matter; but he told me afterwards that such reports were often found to be untrue, having their origin sometimes in private spite or personal contention of some kind. In the next house we called at, a widow woman lived, with her married daughter, who had a child at the breast. The old woman told her story herself; the daughter never spoke a word, so far as I remember, but sat there, nursing, silent and sad, with half-averted face, and stealing a shy glance at us now and then, when she thought we were not looking at her. It was a clean cottage, though it was scantily furnished with poor things; and they were both neat and clean in person, though their clothing was meagre and far worn. I thought, also, that the old woman's language, and the countenances of both of them, indicated more natural delicacy of feeling, and more cultivation, than is common amongst people of their condition. The old woman said, "My daughter has been eawt o' work a long time. I can make about two shillings and sixpence a-week, an' we've a lodger that pays us two shillings a week; but we've three shillings a-week to pay for rent, an' we must pay it, too, or else turn out. But I'm lookin' for a less heawse; for we cannot afford to stop here any longer, wi' what we have comin' in, --that is, if we're to live at o'." I thought the house they were in was small enough and mean enough for the poorest creature, and, though it was kept clean, the neighbourhood was very unwholesome. But this was another instance of how the unemployed operatives of Lancashire are being driven down from day to day deeper into the pestilent sinks of life in these hard times. "This child of my daughter's," continued the old woman, in a low tone, "this child was born just as they were puttin' my husband into his coffin, an' wi' one thing an' another, we've had a deal o' trouble. But one half o'th world doesn't know how tother lives. My husban' lay ill i' bed three year; an' he suffered to that degree that he was weary o' life long before it were o'er. At after we lost him, these bad times coom on, an' neaw, aw think we're poo'd deawn as nee to th' greawnd as ony body can be. My daughter's husband went off a-seekin' work just afore that child was born,--an' we haven't heard from him yet." My friend took care that his visit should result in lightening the weight of the old woman's troubles a little. As we passed the doors of a row of new cottages at the top end of "Hardy Butts," a respectable old man looked out at one of the doorways, and said to my friend, "Could aw spake to yo a minute?" We went in, and found the house remarkably clean, with good cottage furniture in it. Two neighbour children were peeping in at the open door. The old man first sent them away, and then, after closing the door, he pointed to a good-looking young woman who stood blushing at the entrance of the inner room, with a wet cloth in her hands, and he said, "Could yo do a bit o' summat to help this lass till sich times as hoo can get wark again? Hoo's noather feyther nor mother, nor nought i'th world to tak to, but what aw can spare for her, an' this is a poor shop to come to for help. Aw'm uncle to her." "Well," said my friend, "and cannot you manage to keep her?" "God bless yo!" replied the old man, getting warm, "Aw cannot keep mysel'. Aw will howd eawt as lung as aw can; but, yo know, what'll barely keep one alive 'll clem two. Aw should be thankful iv yo could give her a bit o' help whol things are as they are." Before the old man had done talking, his niece had crept away into the back room, as if ashamed of being the subject of such a conversation. This case was soon disposed of to the satisfaction of the old man; after which we visited three other houses in the same block, of which I have nothing special to say, except that they were all inhabited by people brought down to destitution by long want of work, and living solely upon the relief fund, and upon the private charity of their old employers. Upon this last source of relief too little has been said, because it has not paraded itself before the public eye; but I have had opportunities for seeing how wide and generous it is, and I shall have abundant occasion for speaking of it hereafter. On our way back, we looked in at "Old John's" again, to see if he had returned home. He had been in, and he had gone out again, so we came away, and saw nothing of him. Farther down towards the town, we passed through Acton Square, which is a cleaner place than some of the abominable nooks of Scholes, though I can well believe that there is many a miserable dwelling in it, from what I saw of the interiors and about the doorways, in passing. The last house we called at was in this square, and it was a pleasing exception to the general dirt of the neighbourhood. It was the cottage of a stout old collier, who lost his right leg in one of Wright's pits some years ago. My friend knew the family, and we called there more for the purpose of resting ourselves and having a chat than anything else. The old man was gray-haired, but he looked very hale and hearty--save the lack of his leg. His countenance was expressive of intelligence and good humour; and there was a touch of quiet majesty about his massive features. There was, to me, a kind of rude hint of Christopher North in the old collier's appearance. His wife, too, was a tall, strong-built woman, with a comely and a gentle face --a fit mate for such a man as he. I thought, as she moved about, her grand bulk seemed to outface the narrow limits of the cottage. The tiny house was exceedingly clean, and comfortably furnished. Everything seemed to be in its appointed place, even to the sleek cat sleeping on the hearth. There were a few books on a shelf, and a concertina upon a little table in the corner. When we entered, the old collier was busy with the slate and pencil, and an arithmetic before him; but he laid them aside, and, doffing his spectacles, began to talk with us. He said that they were a family of six, and all out of work; but he said that, ever since he lost his leg, the proprietors of the pit in which the accident happened (Wright's) had allowed him a pension of six shillings a week, which he considered very handsome. This allowance just kept the wolf from their little door in these hard times. In the course of our conversation I found that the old man read the papers frequently, and that he was a man of more than common information in his class. I should have been glad to stay longer with him, but my time was up; so I came away from the town, thus ending my last ramble amongst the unemployed operatives of Wigan. Since then the condition of the poor there has been steadily growing worse, which is sure to be heard of in the papers. CHAPTER XXII. AN INCIDENT BY THE WAYSIDE. "Take physic, pomp! Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel; That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the Heavens more just." --King Lear. On the Saturday after my return from Wigan, a little incident fell in my way, which I thought worth taking note of at the time; and perhaps it may not be uninteresting to your readers. On that day I went up to Levenshulme, to spend the afternoon with an old friend of mine, a man of studious habits, living in a retired part of that green suburb. The time went pleasantly by whilst I was with the calm old student, conversing upon the state of Lancashire, and the strange events which are upheaving the civilised world in great billows of change,--and drinking in the peaceful charm which pervaded everything about the man and his house and the scene which it stood in. After tea, he came with me across the fields to the "Midway Inn," on Stockport Road, where the omnibuses call on their way to Manchester. It was a lovely evening, very clear and cool, and twilight was sinking upon the scene. Waiting for the next omnibus, we leaned against the long wooden watering-trough in front of the inn. The irregular old building looked picturesque in the soft light of declining day, and all around was so still that we could hear the voices of bowlers who were lingering upon the green, off at the north side of the house, and retired from the highway by an intervening garden. The varied tones of animation, and the phrases uttered by the players, on different parts of the green, came through the quiet air with a cheery ring. The language of the bowling-green sounds very quaint to people unused to the game. "Too much land, James!" cries one. "Bravo, bully-bowl! That's th' first wood! Come again for more!" cries another. "Th' wrong bias, John!" "How's that?" "A good road; but it wants legs! Narrow; narrow, o' to pieces!" These, and such like phrases of the game, came distinctly from the green into the highway that quiet evening. And here I am reminded, as I write, that the philosophic Doctor Dalton was a regular bowler upon Tattersall's green, at Old Trafford. These things, however, are all aside from the little matters which I wish to tell. As we stood by the watering-trough, listening to the voices of the bowlers, and to the occasional ringing of bells mingled with a low buzz of merriment inside the house, there were many travellers went by. They came, nearly all of them, from the Manchester side; sometimes three or four in company, and sometimes a lonely straggler. Some of them had poor-looking little bundles in their hands; and, with a few exceptions, their dress, their weary gait, and dispirited looks led me to think that many of them were unemployed factory operatives, who had been wandering away to beg where they would not be known. I have met so many shame-faced, melancholy people in that condition during the last few months, that, perhaps, I may have somewhat over judged the number of these that belongs to that class. But, in two or three cases, little snatches of conversation, uttered by them as they went by, plainly told that, so far as the speakers went, it was so; and, at last, a little thing befell, which, I am sure, represented the condition of many a thousand more in Lancashire just now. Three young women stopped on the footpath in front of the inn, close to the place where we stood, and began to talk together in a very free, open way, quite careless of being overheard. One of them was a stout, handsome young woman, about twenty-three. Her dress was of light printed stuff, clean and good. Her round, ruddy arms, her clear blond complexion, and the bright expression of her full open countenance, all indicated health and good-nature. I guessed from her conversation, as well as from her general appearance, that she was a factory operative in full employ--though that is such a rare thing in these parts now. The other two looked very poor and downhearted. One was a short, thick-set girl, seemingly not twenty years of age; her face was sad, and she had very little to say. The other was a thin, dark-haired, cadaverous woman, above thirty years of age, as I supposed; her shrunk visage was the picture of want, and her frank, child-like talk showed great simplicity of character. The weather had been wet for some days previous; and the clothing of the two looked thin, and shower-stained. It had evidently been worn a good while; and the colours were faded. Each of them wore a shivery bit of shawl, in which their hands were folded, as if to keep them warm. The handsome lass, who seemed to be in good employ, knew them both; but she showed an especial kindness towards the eldest of them. As these two stood talking to their friend, we did not take much notice of what they were saying until two other young women came slowly from townwards, looking poor, and tired, and ill, like the first. These last comers instantly recognised two of those who stood talking together in front of the inn, and one of them said to the other, "Eh, sitho; there's Sarah an' Martha here! . . . Eh, lasses; han yo bin a-beggin' too?" "Ay, lass; we han;" replied the thin, dark complexioned woman; "Ay, lass; we han. Aw've just bin tellin' Ann, here. Aw never did sich a thing i' my life afore--never! But it's th' first time and th' last for me,--it is that! Aw'll go whoam; an' aw'll dee theer, afore aw'll go a-beggin' ony moor, aw will for sure! Mon, it's sich a nasty, dirty job; aw'd as soon clem! . . . See yo, lasses; we set off this mornin'--Martha an' me, we set eawt this mornin' to go to Gorton Tank, becose we yerd that it wur sich a good place. But one doesn't know wheer to go these times; an' one doesn't like to go a-beggin' among folk at they known. Well, when we coom to Gorton we geet twopence-hawpenny theer; an' that wur o'. Neaw, there's plenty moor beggin' besides us. Well, at after that twopence-hawpenny, we geet twopence moor, an' that's o' at we'n getten. But, eh, lasses, when aw coom to do it, aw hadn't th' heart to as for nought; aw hadn't for sure. . . . Martha an' me's walked aboon ten mile iv we'n walked a yard; an' we geet weet through th' first thing; an' aw wur ill when we set off, an' so wur Martha, too; aw know hoo wur, though hoo says nought. Well; we coom back through t' teawn; an' we were both on us fair stagged up. Aw never were so done o'er i' my life, wi' one thing an' another. So we co'de a- seein' Ann here; an' hoo made us a rare good baggin'--th' lass did. See yo; aw wur fit to drop o'th flags afore aw geet that saup o' warm tay into mo--aw wur for sure! An' neaw, hoo's come'd a gate wi' us hitherto, an' hoo would have us to have a glass o' warm ale a- piece at yon heawse lower deawn a bit; an' aw dar say it'll do mo good, aw getten sich a cowd; but, eh dear, it's made mo as mazy as a tup; an' neaw, hoo wants us to have another afore we starten off whoam. But it's no use; we mun' be gooin' on. Aw'm noan used to it, an' aw connot ston it. Aw'm as wake as a kittlin' this minute." Ann, who had befriended them in this manner, was the handsome young woman who seemed to be in work; and now, the poor woman who had been telling the story, laid her hand upon her friend's shoulder and said, "Ann, thae's behaved very weel to us o' roads; an' neaw, lass, go thi ways whoam, an' dunnut fret abeawt us, mon. Aw feel better neaw, aw do for sure. We's be reet enough to-morn, lass. Mon, there's awlus some way shap't. That tay's done me a deeol o' good. . . . Go thi ways whoam, Ann; neaw do; or else aw shan't be yezzy abeawt tho!" But Ann, who was wiping her eyes with her apron, replied, "Naw, naw; aw will not go yet, Sarah!" . . . And then she began to cry, "Eh, lasses; aw dunnot like to see yo o' this shap--aw dunnot for sure! Besides, yo'n bin far enough today. Come back wi' me. Aw connot find reawm for both on yo; but thee come back wi' me, Sarah. Aw'll find thee a good bed: an' thae'rt welcome to a share o' what there is--as welcome as th' fleawers i May--thae knows that. Thae'rt th' owdest o' th' two; an thae'rt noan fit to trawnce up an' deawn o' this shap. Come back to eawr heawse; an' Martha'll go forrud to Stopput, (Stockport,)--winnot tho, Martha! . . . Thae knows, Martha," continued she, "thae knows, Martha, thae munnot think nought at me axin' Sarah, an' noan o' thee. Yo should both on yo go back iv aw'd reawm,--but aw haven't. Beside, thae'rt younger an' strunger than hoo is." " Eh, God bless tho, lass," replied Martha, "aw know o' abeawt it. Aw'd rayther Sarah would stop, for hoo'll be ill. Aw can go forrud by mysel', weel enough. It's noan so fur, neaw." But, here, Sarah, the eldest of the three, laid her hand once more upon the shoulder of her friend, and said in an earnest tone, "Ann! it will not do, my lass! Go aw MUN! I never wur away fro whoam o' neet i my life,--never! Aw connot do it, mon! Beside, thae knows, aw've laft yon lad, an' never a wick soul wi' him! He'd fret hissel' to deoth this neet, mon, if aw didn't go whoam! Aw couldn't sleep a wink for thinkin' abeawt him! Th' child would be fit to start eawt o'th heawse i'th deead time o'th neet a-seechin' mo,--aw know he would! . . . Aw mun go, mon: God bless tho, Ann; aw'm obleeged to thee o' th' same. But, thae knows heaw it is. Aw mun goo!" Here the omnibus came up, and I rode back to Manchester. The whole conversation took up very little more time than it will take to read it; but I thought it worth recording, as characteristic of the people now suffering in Lancashire from no fault of their own. I know the people well. The greatest number of them would starve themselves to that degree that they would not be of much more physical use in this world, before they would condescend to beg. But starving to death is hard work. What will winter bring to them when severe weather begins to tell upon constitutions lowered in tone by a starvation diet--a diet so different to what they have been used to when in work? What will the 1s. 6d. a-head weekly do for them in that hard time? If something more than this is not done for them, when more food, clothing, and fire are necessary to everybody, calamities may arise which will cost England a hundred times more than a sufficient relief--a relief worthy of those who are suffering, and of the nation they belong to--would have cost. In the meantime the cold wings of winter already begin to overshadow the land; and every day lost involves the lives, or the future usefulness, of thousands of our best population. CHAPTER XXIII. WANDERING MINSTRELS; OR, WAILS OF THE WORKLESS POOR. "For whom the heart of man shuts out, Straightway the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence, 'mid the world's loud din. And one of his great charities Is music; and it doth not scorn To close the lids upon the eyes Of the weary and forlorn." --JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL. There is one feature of the distress in Lancashire which was seen strikingly upon the streets of our large towns during some months of 1862. I allude to the wandering minstrelsy of the unemployed. Swarms of strange, shy, sad-looking singers and instrumental performers, in the work-worn clothing of factory operatives, went about the busy city, pleading for help in touching wails of simple song--like so many wild birds driven by hard weather to the haunts of man. There is something instructive, as well as affecting, in this feature of the troubled time. These wanderers are only a kind of representative overflow of a vast number whom our streets will never see. Any one well acquainted with Lancashire, will know how widespread the study of music is among its working population. Even the inhabitants of our large towns know something more about this now than they knew a few months ago. I believe there is no part of England in which the practice of sacred music is so widely and lovingly pursued amongst the working people as in the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire. There is no part of England where, until lately, there have been so many poor men's pianos, which have been purchased by a long course of careful savings from the workman's wages. These, of course, have mostly been sold during the hard times to keep life in the owner and his family. The great works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart have solaced the toil of thousands of the poorest working people of Lancashire. Anybody accustomed to wander among the moorlands of the country will remember how common it is to hear the people practising sacred music in their lonely cottages. It is not uncommon to meet working men wandering over the wild hills, "where whip and heather grow," with their musical instruments, to take part in some village oratorio many miles away. "That reminds me," as tale-tellers say, of an incident among the hills, which was interesting, though far from singular in my experience. Up in the forest of Rosendale, between Derply Moor and the wild bill called Swinshaw, there is a little lone valley, a green cup in the mountains, called "Dean." The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music, that they are known all through the vales of Rosendale as "Th' Deighn Layrocks," or "The Larks of Dean." In the twilight of a glorious Sunday evening, in the height of summer, I was roaming over the heathery waste of Swinshaw, towards Dean, in company with a musical friend of mine, who lived in the neighbouring clough, when we saw a little crowd of people coming down a moorland slope, far away in front of us. As they drew nearer, we found that many of them had musical instruments, and when we met, my friend recognised them as working people living in the district, and mostly well known to him. He inquired where they had been; and they told him that they had "bin to a bit ov a sing deawn i'th Deighn." "Well," said he, "can't we have a tune here?" "Sure, yo con, wi' o' th' plezzur i'th world," replied he who acted as spokesman; and a low buzz of delighted consent ran through the rest of the company. They then ranged themselves in a circle around their conductor, and they played and sang several fine pieces of psalmody upon the heather-scented mountain top. As those solemn strains floated over the wild landscape, startling the moorfowl untimely in his nest, I could not help thinking of the hunted Covenanters of Scotland. The all-together of that scene upon the mountains, "between the gloaming and the mirk," made an impression upon me which I shall not easily forget. Long after we parted from them we could hear their voices, softening in sound as the distance grew, chanting on their way down the echoing glen, and the effect was wonderfully fine. This little incident upon the top of Swinshaw is representative of things which often occur in the country parts of Lancashire, showing how widespread the love of music is among the working classes there. Even in great manufacturing towns, it is very common, when passing cotton mills at work, to hear some fine psalm tune streaming in chorus from female voices, and mingling with the spoom of thousands of spindles. The "Larks of Dean," like the rest of Lancashire operatives, must have suffered in this melancholy time; but I hope that the humble musicians of our county will never have occasion to hang their harps upon the willows. Now, when fortune has laid such a load of sorrow upon the working people of Lancashire, it is a sad thing to see so many workless minstrels of humble life "chanting their artless notes in simple guise" upon the streets of great towns, amongst a kind of life they are little used to. There is something very touching, too, in their manner and appearance. They may be ill-shod and footsore; they may be hungry, and sick at heart, and forlorn in countenance, but they are almost always clean and wholesome-looking in person. They come singing in twos and threes, and sometimes in more numerous bands, as if to keep one another in countenance. Sometimes they come in a large family all together, the females with their hymn-books, and the men with their different musical instruments,--bits of pet salvage from the wrecks of cottage homes. The women have sometimes children in their arms, or led by the hand; and they sometimes carry music-books for the men. I have seen them, too, with little handkerchiefs of rude provender for the day. As I said before, they are almost invariably clean in person, and their clothing is almost always sound and seemly in appearance, however poor and scanty. Amongst these poor wanderers there is none of the reckless personal negligence and filth of hopeless reprobacy; neither is there a shadow of the professional ostentation of poverty amongst them. Their faces are sad, and their manners very often singularly shame- faced and awkward; and any careful observer would see at a glance that these people were altogether unused to the craft of the trained minstrel of the streets. Their clear, healthy complexion, though often touched with pallor, their simple, unimportunate demeanour, and the general rusticity of their appearance, shows them to be "Suppliants who would blush To wear a tatter'd garb, however coarse; Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth; Who ask with painful shyness, and refused, Because deserving, silently retire." The females, especially the younger ones, generally walk behind, blushing and hiding themselves as much as possible. I have seen the men sometimes walk backwards, with their faces towards those who were advancing, as if ashamed of what they were doing. And thus they went wailing through the busy streets, whilst the listening crowd looks on them pityingly and wonderingly, as if they were so many hungry shepherds from the mountains of Calabria. This flood of strange minstrels partly drowned the slang melodies and the monotonous strains of ordinary street musicians for a while. The professional gleeman "paled his ineffectual fire" before these mournful songsters. I think there never was so much sacred music heard upon the streets of Manchester before. With the exception of a favourite glee now and then, their music consisted chiefly of fine psalm tunes--often plaintive old strains, known and welcome to all, because they awaken tender and elevating remembrances of life. "Burton," "French," "Kilmarnock," "Luther's Hymn," the grand "Old Hundred," and many other fine tunes of similar character, have floated daily in the air of our city, for months together. I am sure that this choice does not arise from the minstrels themselves having craft enough to select "a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse." It is the kind of music which has been the practice and pleasure of their lives, and it is a fortuitous thing that now, in addition to its natural plaintiveness, the sad necessity of the times lends a tender accompaniment to their simplest melody. I doubt very much whether Leech's minor tunes were ever heard upon our streets till lately. Leech was a working man, born near the hills, in Lancashire; and his anthems and psalm tunes are great favourites among the musical population, especially in the country districts. Leech's harp was tuned by the genius of sorrow. Several times lately I have heard the tender complaining notes of his psalmody upon the streets of the city. About three months ago I heard one of his most pathetic tunes sung in the market-place by an old man and two young women. The old man's dress had the peculiar hue and fray of factory work upon it, and he had a pair of clogs upon his stockingless feet. They were singing one of Leech's finest minor tunes to Wesley's hymn:- "And am I born to die, To lay this body down? And must my trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown? A land of deepest shade, Unpierced by human thought; The dreary country of the dead Where all things are forgot." It is a tune often sung by country people in Lancashire at funerals; and, if I remember right, the same melody is cut upon Leech's gravestone in the old Wesleyan Chapel-yard, at Rochdale. I saw a company of minstrels of the same class going through Brown Street, the other day, playing and singing, "In darkest shades, if Thou appear, My dawning is begun." The company consisted of an old man, two young men, and three young women. Two of the women had children in their arms. After I had listened to them a little while, thinking the time and the words a little appropriate to their condition, I beckoned to one of the young men, who came "sidling" slowly up to me. I asked him where they came from, and he said, "Ash'n." In answer to another question, he said, "We're o' one family. Me an' yon tother's wed. That's his wife wi' th' chylt in her arms, an' hur wi' th' plod shawl on's mine." I asked if the old man was his father. "Ay," replied he, "we're o' here, nobbut two. My mother's ill i' bed, an' one o' my sisters is lookin' after her." " Well, an' heaw han yo getten on?" said I. "Oh, we'n done weel; but we's come no moor," replied he. Another day, there was an instrumental band of these operatives playing sacred music close to the Exchange lamp. Amongst the crowd around, I met with a friend of mine. He told me that the players were from Staleybridge. They played some fine old tunes, by desire, and, among the rest, they played one called "Warrington. "When they had played it several times over, my friend turned to me and said, "That tune was composed by a Rev. Mr Harrison, who was once minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, in Manchester; and, one day, an old weaver, who had come down from the hills, many miles, staff in hand, knocked at the minister's door, and asked if there was 'a gentleman co'de' Harrison lived theer?' 'Yes.' 'Could aw see him?' 'Yes.' When the minister came to the door, the old weaver looked hard at him, for a minute, and said, 'Are yo th' mon 'at composed that tune co'de Worrington?' 'Yes,' replied the minister, 'I believe I am.' 'Well,' said the old weaver, 'give me your hond! It's a good un!' He then shook hands with him heartily again, and saying, 'Well, good day to yo,' he went his way home again, before the old minister could fairly collect his scattered thoughts." I do not know how it is that these workless minstrels are gradually becoming rarer upon the streets than they were a few months ago. Perhaps it is because the unemployed are more liberally relieved now than they were at first. I know that now many who have concealed their starving condition are ferreted out and relieved as far as possible. Many of these street wanderers have gone home again disgusted, to pinch out the hard time in proud obscurity; and there are some, no doubt, who have wandered away to other parts of England. Of these last, we may naturally expect that a few may become so reconciled to a life of wandering minstrelsy that they may probably never return to settled labour again. But "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Let us trust that the Great Creator may comfort and relieve them, "according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions." LETTER AND SPEECHES UPON THE COTTON FAMINE LETTERS OF A LANCASHIRE LAD ON THE COTTON FAMINE. The following extracts are from the letters of Mr. John Whittaker, "A Lancashire Lad," one of the first writers whose appeals through the press drew serious attention to the great distress in Lancashire during the Cotton Famine. There is no doubt that his letters in The Times, and to the Lord Mayor of London, led to the Mansion House Fund. In The Times of April 14, 1862, appeared the first of a series of letters, pleading the cause of the distressed operatives. He said:- "I am living in the centre of a vast district where there are many cotton mills, which in ordinary times afford employment to many thousands of 'hands,' and food to many more thousands of mouths. With rare exceptions, quietness reigns at all those mills. . . . It may be that our material atmosphere is somewhat brighter than it was, but our social atmosphere is much darker and denser. Hard times have come; and we have had them sufficiently long to know what they mean. We have fathers sitting in the house at mid-day, silent and glum, while children look wistfully about, and sometimes whimper for bread which they cannot have. We have the same fathers who, before hard times came, were proud men, who would have thought 'beggar' the most opprobrious epithet you could have hit them with; but who now are made humble by the sight of wife and children almost starving, and who go before 'relief committees,' and submit to be questioned about their wants with a patience and humility which it is painful, almost schocking, to witness, And some others of these fathers turn out in the morning with long besoms as street-sweepers, while others again go to breaking stones in the town's yard or open road-side, where they are unprotected from the keen east winds, which add a little more to the burden of misery which they have to bear just now. But, harder even than this, our factory-women and girls have had to turn out; and, plodding a weary way from door to door, beg a bit of bread or a stray copper, that they may eke out the scanty supply at home. Only the other day, while taking a long stroll in the country lying about the town in which I live, I met a few of these factory-girls, and was stopped by their not very beggar-like question of 'Con yo help us a bit?' They were just such as my own sisters; and as I saw and heard them, I was almost choked as I fancied my sisters come to such a pass as that. 'Con yo help us a bit?' asked these factory girls. . . . I have heard of ladies whose whole lives seem to be but a changing from one kind of pleasure to another; who suffer chiefly from what they call ennui, (a kind of disease from which my sisters are not likely to suffer at all,) and to whom a new pleasure to enjoy would be something like what a new world to conquer would be to Alexander. Why should they not hear our Lancashire girls' cry of 'Con yo help us a bit?' Why should not they be reminded that these girls in cotton gowns and wooden clogs are wending their way towards the same heaven--or, alas, towards the same hell--whither wend all the daughters of Eve, no matter what their outer condition and dress? Why should not they be asked to think how these striving girls have to pray daily, 'Lead us not into temptation,' while temptations innumerable stand everywhere about them? Those of us who are men would rather do much than let our sisters go begging. May not some of us take to doing more to prevent it? I remember some poetry about the 'Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin,' and know that they hunt oftener together than singly. We have felt the fangs of the first: upon how many of us will the second pounce?" In a second letter, inserted in The Times of April 22, 1862, the same writer says:--"Even during the short time which has elapsed since I wrote last week, many things have combined to show that the distress is rapidly increasing, and that there is a pressing need that we should go beyond the borders of our own county for help. . . . I remember what I have read of the Godlike in man, and I look with a strange feeling upon the half-famished creatures I see hourly about me. I cannot pass through a street but I see evidences of deep distress. I cannot sit at home half-an-hour without having one or more coming to ask for bread to eat. But what comes casually before me is as nothing when compared with that deeper distress which can only be seen by those who seek it. . . . There have been families who have been so reduced that the only food they have had has been a porridge made of Indian meal. They could not afford oatmeal, and even of their Indian meal porridge they could only afford to have two meals a day. They have been so ashamed of their coarser food that they have done all that was possible to hide their desperate state from those about them. It has only been by accident that it has been found out, and then they have been caught hurriedly putting away the dishes that contained their loathsome food. A woman, whose name I could give, and whose dwelling I could point to, was said not only to be in deep distress, but to be also ill of fever. She was visited. On entering the lower room of the house, the visitors saw that there was not a scrap of furniture; the woman, fever-stricken, sat on an orange-box before a low fire; and to prevent the fire from going quite out, she was pulling her seat to pieces for fuel bit by bit. The visitors looked upstairs. There was no furniture there-- only a bit of straw in a corner, which served as the bed of the woman's four children. In another case a woman, who was said to be too weak to apply for relief, was visited. Her husband had been out of work a long time by reason of his illness; he was now of a fashion recovered, and had gone off to seek for work. He left his wife and three children in their cellar-home. The wife was very near her confinement, and had not tasted food for two or three days. . . . There are in this town some hundreds of young single women who have been self-dependent, but who are now entirely without means. Nearly all of these are good English girls, who have quietly fought their own life-battle, but who now have hard work to withstand the attacks this grim poverty is making. I am told of a case in which one of these girls was forced to become one of that class of whom poor Hood sang in his 'Bridge of Sighs.' She was an orphan, had no relations here, and was tossed about from place to place till she found her way to a brothel. Thank God, she has been rescued. Our relief fund has been the means of relieving her from that degradation; but cannot those who read my letter see how strong are the temptations which their want places in the way of these poor girls!" On 25th April a number of city merchants, most of whom were interested in the cotton manufacture, waited upon the Lord Mayor of London, with a view to interest him, and through him the public at large, in the increasing distress among the operative population in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. Previous to this, the "Lancashire Lad" had made a private appeal, by letter, to the Lord Mayor, in which he said:- "Local means are nearly exhausted, and I am convinced that if we have not help from without, our condition will soon be more desperate than I or any one else who possesses human feelings can wish it to become. To see the homes of those whom we know and respect, though they are but working men, stripped of every bit of furniture--to see long-cherished books and pictures sent one by one to the pawn-shop, that food may be had--and to see that food almost loathsome in kind, and insufficient in quantity,--are hard, very hard things to bear. But those are not the worst things. In many of our cottage homes there is now nothing left by the pawning of which a few pence may be raised, and the mothers and sisters of we 'Lancashire lads' have turned out to beg, and ofttimes knock at the doors of houses in which there is as much destitution as there is in our own; while the fathers and the lads themselves think they are very fortunate if they can earn a shilling or two by street-sweeping or stone breaking. . . . Will you not do for us what you have done for others--become the recipient of whatever moneys those who are inclined to help us may send to you?" The Lord Mayor, having listened to the deputation, read them the personal appeal, and, "before separating, the deputation engaged to form themselves into a provisional committee, to correspond with any local one which circumstances might render it desirable to set on foot in some central part of the distressed districts." Immediately afterwards, the Lord Mayor, on taking his seat in the justice-room, stated that "he was ready, with the assistance of the gentlemen of the deputation, to act in the way desired. . . . He could not himself take any part in the distribution. All he could do was to be the medium of transmission; and as soon as he knew that some organisation had been formed, either in the great city of Manchester, or in some other part of Lancashire, in which the public might feel confidence, he should be ready to send the small sums he had already received, and any others that might be intrusted to him from time to time." And thus originated the first general subscription for the cotton operatives, and which, before it closed, reached the magnificent sum of 528 pounds,336, 9s. 9d. MR COBDEN'S SPEECH ON THE COTTON FAMINE. On the 29th of April 1862, a meeting of gentlemen residents, called by Thomas Goadsby, Esq., Mayor of Manchester, was held in the Town Hall of that city, to consider the propriety of forming a relief committee. '"The late Mr Richard Cobden, M.P., attended, and recommended a bold appeal to the whole country, declaring with prophetic keenness of vision that not less than 1,000,000 pounds would be required to carry the suffering operatives through the crisis, whilst the subscriptions up to that date amounted only to 180,000 pounds." On the motion of a vote of thanks to the Mayor of Manchester, who was retiring from the mayoralty, Mr Cobden said:- "Before that resolution is passed, I will take the opportunity of making an observation. I have had the honour of having my name added to this committee, and the first thing I asked of my neighbour here was--'What are the functions of the general committee?' And I have heard that they amount to nothing more than to attend here once a month, and receive the report of the executive committee as to the business done and the distribution of the funds. I was going to suggest to you whether the duties of the general committee might not be very much enlarged--whether it might not be employed very usefully in increasing the amount of subscriptions. I think all our experience must have taught us that, with the very best cause in the world in hand, the success of a public subscription depends very much upon the amount of activity in those who solicit it; and I think, in order to induce us to make a general and national effort to raise additional funds in this great emergency, it is only necessary to refer to and repeat one or two facts that have been stated in this report just read to us. I find it stated that it is estimated that the loss of wages at present is at the rate of 136,094 pounds per week, and there is no doubt that the savings of the working classes are almost exhausted. Now, 136,094 pounds per week represents upwards of 7,000,000 pounds sterling per annum, and that is the rate at which the deduction is now being made from the wages of labour in this district. I see it stated in this report that the resources which this committee can at present foresee that it will possess to relieve this amount of distress are 25,000 pounds a month for the next five months, which is at the rate of 300,000 pounds per annum; so that we foresee at present the means of affording a relief of something less than five per cent upon the actual amount of the loss of wages at present incurred by the working classes of this country. But I need not tell honourable gentlemen present, who are so practically acquainted with this district, that that loss of seven millions in wages per annum is a very imperfect measure of the amount of suffering and loss which will be inflicted on this community three or four months hence. It may be taken to be 10,000,000 pounds; and that 10,000,000 pounds of loss of wages before the next spring is by no means a measure of the loss this district will incur; for you must take it that the capitalists will be incurring also a loss on their fixed machinery and buildings; and though perhaps not so much as that of the labourer, it will be a very large amount, and possibly, in the opinion of some people, will very nearly approach it. That is not all: Mr Farnall has told us that at present the increase of the rates in this district is at the rate of 10,000 pounds per week. That will be at the rate of half a million per annum, and, of course, if this distress goes on, that rate must be largely increased, perhaps doubled. This shows the amount of pressure which is threatening this immediate district. I have always been of opinion that this distress and suffering must be cumulative to a degree which few people have ever foreseen, because your means of meeting the difficulty will diminish just in proportion as the difficulty will increase. Mr Farnall has told us that one-third of the rateable property will fall out of existence, as it were, and future rates must be levied upon two-thirds. But that will be by no means the measure of the condition of things two or three months hence, because every additional rate forces out of existence a large amount of saleable property; and the more you increase your rates the more you diminish the area over which those rates are to be productive. This view of the case has a very important bearing, also, upon the condition of the shop-keeping class as well as the classes of mill-owners and manufacturers who have not a large amount of floating capital. There is no doubt but a very large amount of the shopkeeping class are rapidly falling into the condition of the unemployed labourers. When I was at Rochdale the other day, I heard a very sorrowful example of it. There was a poor woman who kept a shop, and she was threatened with a distraint for her poor-rate. She sold the Sunday clothes of her son to pay the poor-rate, and she received a relief- ticket when she went to leave her rate. That is a sad and sorrowful example, but I am afraid it will not be a solitary one for a long time. Then you have the shopkeeping class descending to the rank of the operatives. It must be so. Withdraw the custom of 7,000,000 pounds per annum, which has ceased to be paid in wages, from the shopkeepers, and the consequence must present itself to any rational mind. We have then another class--the young men of superior education employed in warehouses and counting-houses. A great number of these will rapidly sink to the condition in which you find the operative classes. All this will add to the distress and the embarrassment of this part of the kingdom. Now, to meet this state of things you have the poor-law relief, which is the only relief we can rely upon, except that which comes from our own voluntary exertions. Well, but any one who has read over this report of Mr Farnall, just laid before us, must see how inadequate this relief must be. It runs up from one shilling and a half-penny in the pound to one shilling and fourpence or one shilling and fivepence; there is hardly one case in which the allowance is as much as two shillings per week for each individual--I won't call them paupers-- each distressed individual. Now, there is one point to which I would wish to bring the attention of the committee in reference to this subject--it is a most important one, in my appreciation. In ordinary times, when you give relief to the poor, that relief being given when the great mass of workpeople are in full employment, the measure of your relief to an isolated family or two that may be in distress is by no means the measure of the amount of their subsistence, because we all know that in prosperous times, when the bulk of the working people are employed, they are always kind to each other. The poor, in fact, do more to relieve the poor than any other class. A working man and his family out of employment in prosperous times could get a meal at a neighbour's house, just as we, in our class, could get a meal at a neighbour's house if it was a convenience to us in making a journey. But recollect, now the whole mass of the labouring and working population is brought down to one sad level of destitution, and what you allow them from the poor-rates, and what you allow them from these voluntary subscriptions, are actually the measure of all that they will obtain for their subsistence. And that being so general, producing a great depression of spirits, as well as physical prostration, you are in great danger of the health and strength of this community suffering, unless something more be done to meet the case than I fear is yet provided for it. All this brings me to this conclusion--that something more must be done by this general committee than has been done, to awaken the attention of the public generally to the condition of this part of the country. It is totally exceptional. The state of things has no parallel in all history. It is impossible you could point out to me another case, in which, in a limited sphere, such as we have in Lancashire, and in the course of a few months, there has been a cessation of employment at the rate of 7,000,000 pounds sterling per annum in wages. There has been nothing like it in the history of the world for its suddenness, for the impossibility of dealing with it, or managing it in the way of an effective remedy. Well, the country at large must be made acquainted with these facts. How is that to be done? It can only be by the diffusion of information from this central committee. An appeal must be made to the whole country, if this great destitution is to be met in any part by voluntary aid. The nation at large must be made fully acquainted with the exigency of the case, and we must be reminded that a national responsibility rests upon us. I will, therefore, suggest that this general committee should be made a national committee, and we shall then get rid of this little difficulty with the Lord Mayor. We shall want all the co-operation of the Lord Mayor and the city of London; and I say that this committee, instead of being a Manchester or Lancashire central committee, should be made a national committee; that from this should go forth invitations to all parts of the country, beginning with the lords-lieutenant, inviting them to be vice-presidents of this committee. Let the noble Lord continue to be at the head of the general committee--the national committee--and invite every mayor to take part. We are going to have new mayors in the course of the week, and, though I am sorry to lose our present one, yet when new mayors come in, they may be probably more ready to take up a new undertaking than if they had just been exhausted with a years labour. Let every mayor in the kingdom be invited to become a member of this committee. Let subscription-circulars be despatched to them asking them to organise a committee in every borough; and let there be a secretary and honorary secretary employed. Through these bodies you might communicate information, and counteract those misrepresentations that have been made with regard to the condition of this district. You might, if necessary, send an ambassador to some of those more important places; but better still, if you could induce them to send some one here to look into the state of things for themselves; because I am sure if they did, so far from finding the calumnies that have been uttered against the propertied classes in this county being well founded, they would find instances--and not a few--of great liberality and generosity, such as I think would surprise any one who visited this district from the southern part of the kingdom. This would only be done by an active effort from the centre here, and I submit that we shall not be doing justice to this effort unless we give to the whole country an opportunity of co-operating in that way, and throw upon every part of the kingdom a share of the responsibility of this great crisis and emergency. I submit that there is every motive why this community, as well as the whole kingdom, should wish to preserve this industrious population in health and in the possession of their energies. There is every motive why we should endeavour to keep this working population here rather than drive them away from here, as you will do if they are not sufficiently fed and clothed during the next winter. They will be wanted again if this district is to revive, as we all hope and believe it will revive. Your fixed capital here is of no use without the population. It is of no use without your raw material. Lancashire is the richest county in the kingdom when its machinery is employed; it is the poorest county in the kingdom when its machinery and fixed capital are paralysed, as at present. Therefore, I say it is the interest, not only of this community, but of the kingdom, that this population should be preserved for the time--I hope not a distant time--when the raw material of their industry will be supplied to this region. I submit; then, to the whole kingdom--this district as well as the rest--that it will be advisable, until Parliament meets, that such an effort should be made as will make a national subscription amount probably to 1,000,000 pounds. Short of that, it would be utterly insufficient for the case; and I believe that, with an energetic appeal made to the whole country, and an effort organised such as I have indicated, such an amount might be raised." SPEECH OF THE EARL OF DERBY AT THE COUNTY MEETING, ON THE 2D DECEMBER 1863. THE EARL OF SEFTON IN THE CHAIR. The thirteen hundred circulars issued by the Earl of Sefton, Lord- Lieutenant of Lancashire, "brought together such a gathering of rank, and wealth, and influence, as is not often to be witnessed; and the eloquent advocate of class distinctions and aristocratic privileges (the Earl of Derby) became on that day the powerful and successful representative of the poor and helpless." Called upon by the chairman, the Earl of Derby said:- "My Lord Sefton, my Lords and Gentlemen,--We are met together upon an occasion which must call forth the most painful, and at the same time ought to excite, and I am sure will excite, the most kindly feelings of our human nature. We are met to consider the best means of palliating--would to God that I could say removing!--a great national calamity, the like whereof in modern times has never been witnessed in this favoured land--a calamity which it was impossible for those who are the chief sufferers by it to foresee, or, if they had foreseen, to have taken any steps to avoid--a calamity which, though shared by the nation at large, falls more peculiarly and with the heaviest weight upon this hitherto prosperous and wealthy district--a calamity which has converted this teeming hive of industry into a stagnant desert of compulsory inaction and idleness- -a calamity which has converted that which was the source of our greatest wealth into the deepest abyss of impoverishment--a calamity which has impoverished the wealthy, which has reduced men of easy fortunes to the greatest straits, which has brought distress upon those who have hitherto been somewhat above the world by the exercise of frugal industry, and which has reduced honest and struggling poverty to a state of absolute and humiliating destitution. Gentlemen, it is to meet this calamity that we are met together this day, to add our means and our assistance to those efforts which have been so nobly made throughout the country generally, and, I am bound to say, in this county also, as I shall prove to you before I conclude my remarks. Gentlemen, I know how impossible it is by any figures to convey an idea of the extent of the destitution which now prevails, and I know also how impatient large assemblies are of any extensive use of figures, or even of figures at all; but at the same time, it is impossible for me to lay before you the whole state of the case, in opening this resolution, and asking you to resolve with regard to the extent of the distress which now prevails, without trespassing on your attention by a few, and they shall be a very few, figures, which shall show the extent, if not the pressure, throughout this district, of the present distress. And, gentlemen, I think I shall best give you an idea of the amount of distress and destitution which prevails, by very shortly comparing the state of things which existed in the districts to which I refer in the month of September 1861, as compared with the month of September 1862, and with that again only about two weeks ago, which is the latest information we have--up to the 22d of last month. I find then, gentlemen, that in a district comprising, in round numbers, two million inhabitants--for that is about the number in that district--in the fourth week of September 1861, there were forty-three thousand five hundred persons receiving parochial relief; in the fourth week of September 1862, there were one hundred and sixty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-eight persons receiving parochial relief; and in the short space which elapsed between the last week of September and the third week of November the number of one hundred and sixty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-eight had increased to two hundred and fifty-nine thousand three hundred and eighty-five persons. Now, gentlemen, let us in the same periods compare the amount which was applied from the parochial funds to the relief of pauperism. In September 1861, the amount so applied was 2259 pounds; in September 1862, it was 9674 pounds. That is by the week. What is now the amount? In November 1862 it was 17,681 pounds for the week. The proportion of those receiving parochial relief to the total population was two and three-tenths per cent in September 1861, and eight and five-tenths per cent in September 1862, and that had become thirteen and five-tenths percent in the population in November 1862. Here, therefore, is thirteen per cent of the whole population at the present moment depending for their subsistence upon parochial relief alone. Of these two hundred and fifty-nine thousand--I give only round numbers--there were thirty-six thousand eight hundred old or infirm; there were nearly ninety-eight thousand able-bodied adults receiving parochial relief, and there were under sixteen years of age nearly twenty-four thousand persons. But it would be very far from giving you an estimate of the extent of the distress if we were to confine our observations to those who are dependent upon parochial relief alone. We have evidence from the local committees, whom we have extensively employed, and whose services have been invaluable to us, that of persons not relieved from the poor-rates there are relieved also by local committees no fewer in this district than one hundred and seventy-two thousand persons--making a total of four hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-five persons out of two millions, or twenty-one and seven-tenths per cent on the whole population--that is, more than one in every five persons depend for their daily existence either upon parochial relief or public charity. Gentlemen, I have said that figures will not show sufficiently the amount of distress; nor, in the same manner, will figures show, I am happy to say, the amount that has been contributed for the relief of that distress. But let us take another test; let us examine what has been the result, not upon the poor who are dependent for their daily bread upon their daily labour, and many of whom are upon the very verge of pauperism, from day to day, but let us take a test of what has been the effect upon the well-to- do artisan, upon the frugal, industrious, saving men, who have been hitherto somewhat above the world, and I have here but an imperfect test, because I am unable to obtain the whole amount of deposits withdrawn from the savings banks, the best of all possible tests, if we could carry the account up to the present day; but I have only been able to obtain it to the middle of June last, when the distress could hardly be said to have begun, and yet I find from seven savings banks alone in this county in six months--and those months in which the distress had not reached its present height, or anything like it--there was an excess of withdrawals of deposits over the ordinary average to the amount of 71,113 pounds. This was up to June last, when, as I have said, the pressure had hardly commenced, and from that time it as been found impossible to obtain from the savings banks, who are themselves naturally unwilling to disclose this state of affairs--it has been found impossible to obtain such further returns as would enable us to present to you any proper estimate of the excess of withdrawals at present; but that they have been very large must necessarily be inferred from the great increase of distress which has taken place since the large sum I have mentioned was obtained from the banks, as representing the excess of ordinary withdrawals in June last. Now, gentlemen, figure to yourselves, I beg of you, what a state of things that sum of 71,113 pounds, as the excess of the average withdrawals from the savings banks represents; what an amount of suffering does it picture; what disappointed hopes; what a prospect of future distress does it not bring before you for the working and industrious classes? Why, gentlemen, it represents the blighted hopes for life of many a family. It represents the small sum set apart by honest, frugal, persevering industry, won by years of toil and self-denial, in the hope of its being, as it has been in many cases before, the foundation even of colossal fortunes which have been made from smaller sums. It represents the gradual decay of the hopes for his family of many an industrious artisan. The first step in that downward progress which has led to destitution and pauperism is the withdrawal of the savings of honest industry, and that is represented in the return which I have quoted to you. Then comes the sacrifice of some little cherished article of furniture--the cutting off of some little indulgence--the sacrifice of that which gave his home an appearance of additional comfort and happiness--the sacrifice gradually, one by one, of the principal articles of furniture, till at last the well-conducted, honest, frugal, saving working man finds himself on a level with the idle, the dissipated, and the improvident--obliged to pawn the very clothes of his family- -nay, the very bedding on which he lies, to obtain the simple means of subsistence from day to day, and encountering all that difficulty and all that distress with the noble independence that would do anything rather than depend upon public or even on private charity, and in his own simple but emphatic language declaring, 'Nay, but we'll CLEM first.' And, gentlemen, this leads me to observe upon a more gratifying point of view, that is, the noble manner, a manner beyond all praise, in which this destitution has been borne by the population of this great county. It is not the case of ordinary labourers who find themselves reduced a trifle below their former means of subsistence, but it is a reduction in the pecuniary comfort, and almost necessaries, of men who have been in the habit of living, if not in luxury, at least in the extreme of comfort--a reduction to two shillings and three shillings a week from sums which had usually amounted to twenty-five shillings, or thirty shillings, or forty shillings; a cutting off of all their comforts, cutting off all their hopes of future additional comfort, or of rising in life-- aggravated by a feeling, an honourable, an honest, but at the same time a morbid feeling, of repugnance to the idea of being indebted under these circumstances to relief of any kind or description. And I may say that, among the difficulties which have been encountered by the local relief committees--no doubt there have been many of those not among the most deserving who have been clamorous for the aid held out to them--but one of the great difficulties of local relief committees has been to find out and relieve struggling and really-distressed merit, and to overcome that feeling of independence which, even under circumstances like these, leads them to shrink from being relieved by private charity. I know that instances of this kind have happened; I know that cases have occurred where it has been necessary to press upon individuals, themselves upon the point of starvation, the necessity of accepting this relief; and from this place I take the opportunity of saying, and I hope it will go far and wide, that in circumstances like the present, discreditable as habitual dependence upon parochial relief may be, it is no degradation, it is no censure, it is no possible cause of blame, that any man, however great his industry, however high his character, however noble his feeling of self-dependence, should feel himself obliged to have recourse to that Christian charity which I am sure we are all prepared to give. Gentlemen, I might perhaps here, as far as my resolution goes, close the observations I have to make to you. The resolution I have to move, indeed, is one which calls for no extensive argument; and a plain statement of facts, such as that I have laid before you, is sufficient to obtain for it your unanimous assent. The resolution is:- "'That the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and the adjoining counties are suffering from an extent of destitution happily hitherto unknown, which has been borne by the working classes with a patient submission and resolution entitling them to the warmest sympathy of their fellow-countrymen.' "But, gentlemen, I cannot, in the first place, lose the opportunity of asking this great assembly with what feelings this state of things should be contemplated by us who are in happier circumstances. Let me say with all reverence that it is a subject for deep national humiliation, and, above all, for deep humiliation for this great county. We have been accustomed for years to look with pride and complacency upon the enormous growth of that manufacture which has conferred wealth upon so many thousands, and which has so largely increased the manufacturing population and industry of this country. We have seen within the last twelve or fourteen years the consumption of cotton in Europe increase from fifty thousand to ninety thousand bales a week; we have seen the weight of cotton goods exported from this country in the shape of yarn and manufactured goods amount to no less than nine hundred and eighty-three million pounds in a single year. We have seen, in spite of all opposing circumstances, this trade constantly and rapidly extending; we have seen colossal fortunes made; and we have as a county, perhaps, been accustomed to look down on those less fortunate districts whose wealth and fortunes were built upon a less secure foundation; we have reckoned upon this great manufacture as the pride of our country, and as the best security against the possibility of war, in consequence of the mutual interest between us and the cotton-producing districts. We have held that in the cotton manufacture was the pride, the strength, and the certainty of our future national prosperity and peace. I am afraid we have looked upon this trade too much in the spirit of the Assyrian monarch of old. We have said to ourselves:-- 'Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of my kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?' But in the hour in which the monarch used these words the word came forth, 'Thy kingdom is departed from thee!' That which was his pride became his humiliation; that which was our pride has become our humiliation and our punishment. That which was the source of our wealth--the sure foundation on which we built--has become itself the instrument of our humiliating poverty, which compels us to appeal to the charity of other counties. The reed upon which we leaned has gone through the hand that reposed on it, and has pierced us to the heart. But, gentlemen, we have happier and more gratifying subjects of contemplation. I have pointed to the noble conduct which must make us proud of our countrymen in the mmiufacturing districts; I have pointed to the noble and heroic submission to difficulties they could never foresee, and privations they never expected to encounter; but again, we have another feeling which I am sure will not be disappointed, which the country has nobly met--that this is an opportunity providentially given to those who are blessed with wealth and fortune to show their sympathy--their practical, active, earnest sympathy--with the sufferings of their poorer brethren, and, with God's blessing, used as I trust by God's blessing it will be, it may be a link to bind together more closely than ever the various classes in this great community, to satisfy the wealthy that the poor have a claim, not only to their money, but to their sympathy-- to satisfy the poor also that the rich are not overbearing, grinding tyrants, but men like themselves, who have hearts to feel for suffering, and are prompt to use the means God has given to them for the relief of that suffering. Gentlemen, a few words more, and I will not further trespass on your attention. But I feel myself called on, as chairman of that executive committee to which my noble friend in the chair has paid so just a compliment, to lay before you some answer to objections which have been made, and which in other counties, if not in this, may have a tendency to check the contributions which have hitherto so freely flowed in. Before doing so, allow me to say (and I can do it with more freedom, because in the, earlier stages of its organisation I was not a member of that committee) it is bare justice to them to say that there never was an occasion on which greater or more earnest efforts were made to secure that the distribution of those funds intrusted to them should be guarded against all possibility of abuse, and be distributed without the slightest reference to political or religious opinions; distributed with the most perfect impartiality, and in every locality, through the instrumentality of persons in whom the neighbourhood might repose entire confidence. Such has been our endeavour, and I think to a great extent we have been successful. I may say that, although the central executive committee is composed of men of most discordant opinions in politics and religion, nothing for a single moment has interfered with the harmony--I had almost said with the unanimity--of our proceedings. There has been nothing to produce any painful feelings among us, nor any desire on the part of the representatives of different districts to obtain an undue share for the districts they represented from the common fund. But there are three points on which objection has being taken to the course we have adopted. One has been, that the relief we have given has not been given with a sufficiently liberal hand; the next--and I think I shall show you that these two are inconsistent, the one answering the other--is, that there has not been a sufficient pressure on the local rates; and the third is, that Lancashire has not hitherto done its duty with reference to the subscriptions from other parts of the country. Allow me a few words on each of these subjects. First, the amount to which we have endeavoured to raise our subscriptions has been to the extent of from two shillings to two shillings and sixpence weekly per head; in this late cold weather an additional sixpence has been provided, mainly for coal and clothing. Our endeavour has been to raise the total income of each individual to at least two shillings or two shillings and sixpence a week. Now, I am told that this is a very inadequate amount, and no doubt it is an amount very far below that which many of the recipients were in the habit of obtaining. But in the first place, I think there is some misapprehension when we speak of the sum of two shillings a week. If anybody supposes that two shillings a week is the maximum to each individual, he will be greatly mistaken. Two shillings a head per week is the sum we endeavoured to arrive at as the average receipt of every man, woman, and child receiving assistance; consequently, a man and his wife with a family of three or four small children would receive, not two shillings, but ten or twelve shillings from the fund--an amount not far short of that which in prosperous times an honest and industrious labourer in other parts of the country would obtain for the maintenance of his family. I am not in the least afraid that, if we had fixed the amount at four shillings or five shillings per head, such is the liberality of the country, we should not have had sufficient means of doing so. But were we justified in doing that? If we had raised their income beyond that of the labouring man in ordinary times, we should have gone far to destroy the most valuable feeling of the manufacturing population--namely, that of honest self-reliance, and we should have done our best, to a great extent, to demoralise a large portion of the population, and induce them to prefer the wages of charitable relief to the return of honest industry. But then we are told that the rates are not sufficiently high in the distressed districts, and that we ought to raise them before we come on the fund. In the first place, we have no power to compel the guardians to raise the rates beyond that which they think sufficient for the maintenance of those to be relieved, and, naturally considering themselves the trustees of the ratepayers, they are unwilling, and, indeed, ought not to raise the amount beyond that which is called for by absolute necessity. But suppose we had raised the relief from our committee very far beyond the amount thought sufficient by the guardians, what would have been the inevitable result? Why, that the rates which it is desired to charge more heavily would have been relieved, because persons would have taken themselves off the poor-rates, and placed themselves on the charitable committee, and therefore the very object theso objectors have in view in calling for an increase of our donations would have been defeated by their own measure. I must say, however, honestly speaking all I feel, that, with regard to the amount of rates, there are some districts which have applied to us for assistance which I think have not sufficient pressure on their rates. Where I find, for example, that the total assessment on the nett rateable value does not exceed ninepence or tenpence in the pound, I really think such districts ought to be called upon to increase their rates before applying for extraneous help. But we have urged as far as we could urge--we have no power to command the guardians to be more liberal in the rate of relief, and to that extent to raise the rates in their districts. And now a word on the subject of raising rates, because I have received many letters in which it has been said that the rates are nothing--'they are only three shillings or four shillings in the pound, while we in the agricultural districts are used to six shillings in the pound. We consider that no extraordinary rate, and it is monstrous,' they say, 'that the accumulated wealth of years in the county of Lancashire should not more largely contribute to the relief of its own distress.' I will not enter into an argument as to how far the larger amount of wages in the manufacturing districts may balance the smaller--amount of wages and the larger amount of poor-rates in the agricultural districts. I don't wish to enter into any comparison; I have seen many comparisons of this kind made, but they were full of fallacies from one end to the other. I will not waste your time by discussing them; but I ask you to consider the effect of a sudden rise of rates as a charge upon the accumulated wealth of a district. It is not the actual amount of the rates, but it is the sudden and rapid increase of the usual rate of the rates that presses most heavily on the ratepayers. In the long run, the rates must fall on real property, because all bargains between owner and occupier are made with reference to the amount of rates to be paid, and in all calculations between them, that is an element which enters into the first agreement. But when the rate is suddenly increased from one shilling to four shillings, it does not fall on the accumulated wealth or on the real property, but it falls on the occupier, the ratepayer--men, the great bulk of whom are at the present moment themselves struggling upon the verge of pauperism. Therefore, if in those districts it should appear to persons accustomed to agricultural districts that the amount of our rates was very small, I would say to them that any attempt to increase those rates would only increase the pauperism, diminish the number of solvent ratepayers, and greatly aggravate the distress. In some of the districts I think the amount of the rates quite sufficient to satisfy the most ardent advocate of high rates. For example, in the town of Ashton they have raised in the course of the year one rate of one shilling and sixpence, another of one shilling and six-pence, and a third of four shillings and sixpence, which it is hoped will carry them over the year. They have also, in addition to these rates, drawn largely on previous balances, and I am afraid have largely added to their debt. The total of what has been or will be expended, with a prospect of even a great increase, in that borough exceeds eleven shillings and elevenpence in the pound for the relief of the poor alone. And, gentlemen, this rate of four shillings and sixpence about to be levied, which ought to yield about 32,000 pounds, it is calculated will not yield 24,000 pounds. In Stockport the rate is even higher, being twelve shillings or more per pound, and there it is calculated that at the next levy the defalcations will be at least forty per cent, according to the calculation of the poor-law commissioner himself. To talk, then, of raising rates in such districts as these would be absolute insanity; and even in districts less heavily rated, any sudden attempt considerably to increase the rate would have the effect of pauperising those who are now solvent, and to augment rather than diminish the distress of the district. The last point on which I would make an observation relates to the objection which has been taken to our proceedings, on the ground that Lancashire has not done its duty in this distress, and that consequently other parts of the country have been unduly called on to contribute to that which I don't deny properly and primarily belongs to Lancashire. Gentlemen, it is very hard to ascertain with any certainty what has been done by Lancashire, because, in the first place, the amount of local subscriptions and the amount of public contributions by themselves give no fair indication of that which really has been done by public or private charity. I don't mean to say that there are not individuals who have grossly neglected their duty in Lancashire. On the other hand, we know there are many, though I am not about to name them, who have acted with the most princely munificence, liberality, and generous feeling, involving an amount of sacrifice of which no persons out of this county can possibly have the slightest conception. I am not saying there are not instances of niggard feeling, though I am not about to name them, which really it was hardly possible to believe could exist. Will you forgive me if I trespass for a few moments by reading two or three extracts from confidential reports made to us every week from the different districts by a gentleman whose services were placed at our disposal by the Government? These reports being, as I have said, confidential, I will not mention the names of the persons, firms, or localities alluded to, though in some instances they may be guessed at. This report was made to us on the 25th of November, and I will quote some of the remarks made in it. The writer observes:--'It must not be inferred when such remarks are absent from the reports that nothing is done. I have great difficulty sometimes in overcoming the feeling that my questions on these points are a meddlesome interference in private matters.' Bearing that remark in mind, I say here are instances which I am sure reflect as much credit on the individuals as on the interest they represent and the county to which they belong. I am sure I shall be excused for trespassing on your patience by reading a few examples. He says, under No.1,--'Nearly three thousand operatives out of the whole, most of them the hands of Messrs __ and Mr __, at his own cost, employs five hundred and fifty-five girls in sewing five days a week, paying them eightpence a day; sends seventy-six youths from thirteen to fourteen years old, and three hundred and thirty-two adults above fifteen, five days a week to school, paying them from fourpence to eightpence per day, according to age. He also pays the school pence of all the children. Mr __ has hitherto paid his people two days' wages a week, but he is now preparing to adopt a scheme like Mr __ to a great extent. I would add that, in addition to wages, Mr __ gives bread, soup, socks, and clogs. 2. Mr __ has at his own expense caused fifty to sixty dinners to be provided for sick persons every day. These consist of roast beef or mutton, soup, beef-tea, rice-puddings, wine, and porter, as ordered; and the forty visitors distribute orders as they find it necessary. Ostensibly all is done in the name of the committee; but Mr __ pays all the cost. An admirable soup kitchen is being fitted up, where the poor man may purchase a good hot meal for one penny, and either carry it away or consume it on the premises. 3. Messrs __ are giving to their hands three days' wages (about 500 pounds a week.) Messrs __ and __ are giving their one hundred and twenty hands, and Messrs their two hundred and thirty hands, two days' wages a week. I may mention that Messrs __ are providing for all their one thousand seven hundred hands. 4. A great deal of private charity exists, one firm having spent 1400 pounds in money, exclusive of weekly doles of bread. 5. Messrs __ are providing all their old hands with sufficient clothing and bedding to supply every want, so that their subscription of 50 pounds is merely nominal. 6. The ladies of the village visit and relieve privately with money, food, or clothing, or all, if needed urgently. In a few cases distraint has been threatened, but generally the poor are living rent free. 7. Payment of rent is almost unknown. The agent for several landlords assures me he could not from his receipts pay the property-tax, but no distraints are made. 8. The bulk of the rents are not collected, and distraints are unknown. 9. The millowners are chiefly cottage-owners, and are asking for no rents.' That leads me to call your attention to the fact that, in addition to the sacrifices they are making, the millowners are themselves to a large extent the owners of cottages, and I believe, without exception, they are at the present moment receiving no rent, thereby losing a large amount of income they had a right to count upon. I know one case which is curious as showing how great is the difficulty of ascertaining what is really done. It is required in the executive committee that every committee should send in an account of the local subscriptions. We received an application from a small district where there was one mill, occupied by some young men who had just entered into the business. We returned a refusal, inasmuch as there was no local subscription; but when we came to inquire, we found that from last February, when the mill closed, these young men had maintained the whole of their hands, that they paid one-third of the rates of the whole district, and that they were at that moment suffering a yearly loss of 300 pounds in the rent of cottages for which they were not drawing a single halfpenny. That was a case in which we thought it right in the first instance to withhold any assistance, because there appeared to be no local subscription, and it shows how persons at a distance may be deceived by the want apparently of any local subscription. But I will throw out of consideration the whole of those amounts--the whole of this unparalleled munificence on the part of many manufacturers which never appears in any account whatever--I will throw out everything done in private and unostentatious charity--the supplies of bedding, clothing, food, necessaries of every description, which do not appear as public subscriptions, and will appeal to public subscriptions alone; and I will appeal to an authority which cannot, I think, be disputed--the authority of the commissioner, Mr Farnall himself, whose services the Government kindly placed at our disposal, and of whose activity, industry, and readiness to assist us, it is difficult to speak in too high terms of praise. A better authority could not be quoted on the subject of the comparative support given in aid of this distress in Lancashire and other districts. I find that, excluding altogether the subscriptions in the Lord Mayor's Mansion House list--of which we know the general amount, but not the sources from which it is derived, or how it is expended--but excluding it from consideration, and dealing only with the funds which have been given or promised to be administered through the central executive committee, I find that, including some of the subscriptions which we know are coming in this day, the total amount which has been contributed is about 540,000 pounds. Of that amount we received--and it is a most gratifying fact--40,000 pounds from the colonies; we received from the rest of the United Kingdom 100,000 pounds; and from the county of Lancaster itself, in round numbers, 400,000 pounds out of 540,000 pounds. Now, I hope that these figures, upon the estimate and authority of the Government poor-law commissioner, will be sufficient, at all events, to do away with the imputation that Lancashire, at this crisis, is not doing its duty. But if Lancashire has been doing its duty--if it is doing its duty--that is no reason why Lancashire should relax its efforts; and of that I trust the result of this day's proceedings will afford a sufficient testimony. We are not yet at the height of the distress. It is estimated that at the present moment there are three hundred and fifty-five thousand persons engaged in the different manufactories. Of these forty thousand only are in full work; one hundred and thirty-five thousand are at short work, and one hundred and eighty thousand are out of work altogether. In the course of the next six weeks this number is likely to be greatly increased; and the loss of wages is not less than 137,000 pounds a week. This, I say then, is a state of things that calls for the most active exertions of all classes of the community, who, I am happy to say, have responded to the call which has been made upon them most nobly, from the Queen down to the lowest individual in the community. At the commencement of the distress, the Queen, with her usual munificence, sent us a donation of 2000 pounds. The first act of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, upon attaining his majority, was to write from Rome, and to request that his name should be put down for 1000 pounds. And to go to the other end of the scale, I received two days ago, from Lord Shaftesbury, a donation of 1200 pounds from some thousands of working men, readers of a particular periodical which he mentioned, the British Workman. To that sum Lord Shaftesbury stated many thousands of persons had subscribed, and it embraced contributions even from the brigade of shoe-black boys. On the part of all classes there has been the greatest liberality displayed; and I should be unjust to the working men, I should be unjust to the poor in every district, if I did not say that in proportion to their means they have contributed more than their share. In no case hardly which has come to my knowledge has there been any grudging, and in many cases I know that poor persons have contributed more than common prudence would have dictated. These observations have run to a greater extent than I had intended; but I thought it desirable that the whole case, as far as possible, should be brought before you, and I have only now earnestly to request that you will this day do your part towards the furtherance of the good work. I have no apprehension, if the distress should not last over five or six months more, that the spontaneous efforts of individuals and public bodies, and contributions received in every part of the country, will fall short of that which is needed for enabling the population to tide over this deep distress; and I earnestly hope that, if it be necessary to apply to Parliament, as a last resource, the representatives of the country will not grudge their aid; yet I do fervently hope and believe that, with the assistance of the machinery of that bill passed in Parliament last session, (the Rate in Aid Act,) which will come into operation shortly after Christmas, but could not possibly be brought into operation sooner, I do fervently hope and believe that this great manufacturing district will be spared the further humiliation of coming before Parliament, which ought to be the last resource, as a claimant, a suppliant for the bounty of the nation at large. I don't apprehend that there will be a single dissentient voice raised against the resolution which I have now the honour to move." SONGS OF DISTRESS, CHIEFLY WRITTEN DURING THE COTTON FAMINE. STANZAS TO MY STARVING KIN IN THE NORTH. BY ELIZA COOK. Sad are the sounds that are breaking forth From the women and men of the brave old North! Sad are the sights for human eyes, In fireless homes, 'neath wintry skies; Where wrinkles gather on childhood's skin, And youth's "clemm'd" cheek is pallid and thin; Where the good, the honest--unclothed, unfed, Child, mother, and father, are craving for bread! But faint not, fear not--still have trust; Your voices are heard, and your claims are just. England to England's self is true, And "God and the People" will help you through. Brothers and sisters! full well ye have stood, While the gripe of gaunt Famine has curdled your blood! No murmur, no threat on your lips have place, Though ye look on the Hunger-fiend face to face; But haggard and worn ye silently bear, Dragging your death-chains with patience and prayer; With your hearts as loyal, your deeds as right, As when Plenty and Sleep blest your day and your night, Brothers and sisters! oh! do not believe It is Charity's GOLD ALONE ye receive. Ah, no! It is Sympathy, Feeling, and Hope, That pull out in the Life-boat to fling ye a rope. Fondly I've lauded your wealth-winning hands, Planting Commerce and Fame throughout measureless lands; And my patriot-love, and my patriot-song, To the children of Labour will ever belong. Women and men of this brave old soil! I weep that starvation should guerdon your toil; But I glory to see ye--proudly mute-- Showing SOULS like the HERO, not FANGS like the brute. Oh! keep courage within; be the Britons ye are; HE, who driveth the storm hath His hand on the star! England to England's sons shall be true, And "God and the People" will carry ye through! THE SMOKELESS CHIMNEY BY A LANCASHIRE LADY {1} (E.J.B.) STRANGER! who to buy art willing, Seek not here for talent rare; Mine's no song of love or beauty, But a tale of want and care. Traveller on the Northern Railway! Look and learn, as on you speed; See the hundred smokeless chimneys, Learn their tale of cheerless need. Ah! perchance the landscape fairer Charms your taste, your artist-eye; Little do you guess how dearly Costs that now unclouded sky. "How much prettier is this county!" Says the careless passer-by; "Clouds of smoke we see no longer, What's the reason?--Tell me why. "Better far it were, most surely, Never more such clouds to see, Bringing taint o'er nature's beauty, With their foul obscurity." Thoughtless fair one! from yon chimney Floats the golden breath of life; Stop that current at your pleasure! Stop! and starve the child--the wife. Ah! to them each smokeless chimney Is a signal of despair; They see hunger, sickness, ruin, Written in that pure, bright air. "Mother! mother! see! 'twas truly Said last week the mill would stop; Mark yon chimney, nought is going, There's no smoke from 'out o'th top!' "Father! father! what's the reason That the chimneys smokeless stand? Is it true that all through strangers, We must starve in our own land?" Low upon her chair that mother Droops, and sighs with tearful eye; At the hearthstone lags the father, Musing o'er the days gone by. Days which saw him glad and hearty, Punctual at his work of love; When the week's end brought him plenty, And he thanked the Lord above. When his wages, earned so justly, Gave him clothing, home, and food; When his wife, with fond caresses, Blessed his heart, so kind and good. Neat and clean each Sunday saw them, In their place of prayer and praise, Little dreaming that the morrow Piteous cries for help would raise. Weeks roll on, and still yon chimney Gives of better times no sign; Men by thousands cry for labour, Daily cry, and daily pine. Now the things, so long and dearly Prized before, are pledged away; Clock and Bible, marriage-presents, Both must go--how sad to say! Charley trots to school no longer, Nelly grows more pale each day; Nay, the baby's shoes, so tiny, Must be sold, for bread to pay. They who loathe to be dependent Now for alms are forced to ask Hard is mill-work, but, believe me, Begging is the bitterest task. Soon will come the doom most dreaded, With a horror that appals; Lo! before their downcast faces Grimly stare the workhouse walls. Stranger, if these sorrows touch you, Widely bid your bounty flow; And assist my poor endeavours To relieve this load of woe. Let no more the smokeless chimneys Draw from you one word of praise; Think, oh, think upon the thousands Who are moaning out their days. Rather pray that peace, soon bringing Work and plenty in her train, We may see these smokeless chimneys Blackening all the land again. 1862. THE MILL-HAND'S PETITION. The following verses are copied from "Lancashire Lyrics," edited by John Harland, Esq., F.S.A. They are extracted from a song "by some 'W.C.,' printed as a street broadside, at Ashton-under-Lyne, and sung in most towns of South Lancashire." We have come to ask for assistance; At home we've been starving too long; An' our children are wanting subsistence; Kindly aid us to help them along. CHORUS. For humanity is calling; Don't let the call be in vain; But help us; we're needy and falling; And God will return it again. War's clamour and civil commotion Has stagnation brought in its train; And stoppage bring with it starvation, So help us some bread to obtain. For humanity is calling. The American war is still lasting; Like a terrible nightmare it leans On the breast of a country, now fasting For cotton, for work, and for means. And humanity is calling. CHEER UP A BIT LONGER. {2} BY SAMUEL LAYCOCK. Cheer up a bit longer, mi brothers i' want, There's breeter days for us i' store; There'll be plenty o' tommy an' wark for us o' When this 'Merica bother gets o'er. Yo'n struggled reet nobly, an' battled reet hard, While things han bin lookin' so feaw; Yo'n borne wi' yo're troubles and trials so long, It's no use o' givin' up neaw. Feight on, as yo' han done, an' victory's sure, For th' battle seems very nee won, Be firm i' yo're sufferin', an' dunno give way; They're nowt nobbut ceawards'at run. Yo' know heaw they'n praised us for stondin' so firm, An' shall we neaw stagger an' fo? Nowt o'th soart;--iv we nobbut brace up an' be hard, We can stond a bit longer, aw know. It's hard to keep clemmin' an' starvin' so long; An' one's hurt to see th' little things fret, Becose there's no buttercakes for 'em to eat; But we'n allus kept pooin' thro' yet. As bad as toimes are, an' as feaw as things look, We're certain they met ha' bin worse; We'n had tommy to eat, an' clooas to put on; They'n only bin roughish, aw know. Aw've begged on yo' to keep up yo're courage afore, An' neaw let me ax yo' once moor; Let's noan get disheartened, there's hope for us yet, We needn't dispair tho' we're poor. We cannot expect it'll allus be foine; It's dark for a while, an' then clear; We'n mirth mixed wi' sadness, an' pleasure wi' pain, An' shall have as long as we're here. This world's full o' changes for better an' wur, An' this is one change among th' ruck; We'n a toime o' prosperity,--toime o' success, An' then we'n a reawnd o' bad luck. We're baskin' i' sunshine, at one toime o'th day, At other toimes ceawerin' i'th dark; We're sometoimes as hearty an' busy as owt, At other toimes ill, an' beawt wark. Good bless yo'! mi brothers, we're nobbut on th' tramp, We never stay long at one spot; An' while we keep knockin' abeawt i' this world, Disappointments will fall to eawer lot: So th' best thing we can do, iv we meon to get thro', Is to wrastle wi' cares as they come; We shall feel rayther tired,--but let's never heed that,-- We can rest us weel when we get whoam. Cheer up, then, aw say, an' keep hopin' for th' best, An' things 'll soon awter, yo'll see; There'll be oceans o' butties for Tommy an' Fred, An' th' little un perched on yo're knee. Bide on a bit longer, tak' heart once ogen, An' do give o'er lookin' so feaw; As we'n battled, an' struggled, an' suffered so long, It's no use o' givin' up neaw. FRETTIN'. (From "Phases of Distress--Lancashire Rhymes.") BY JOSEPH RAMSBOTTOM. Fro' heawrs to days--a dhreary length-- Fro' days to weeks one idle stons, An' slowly sinks fro' pride an' strength To weeny heart an' wakely honds; An' still one hopes, an' ever tries To think 'at better days mun come; Bo' th' sun may set, an' th' sun may rise,-- No sthreak o' leet one finds a-whoam. Aw want to see thoose days again, When folk can win whate'er they need; O God! to think 'at wortchin' men Should be poor things to pet an' feed! There's some to th' Bastile han to goo, To live o'th rates they'n help'd to pay; An' some get "dow" {3} to help 'em through; An' some are taen or sent away. What is there here, 'at one should live, Or wish to live, weigh'd deawn wi' grief, Through weary weeks an' months, 'at give Not one short heawr o' sweet relief? A sudden plunge, a little blow, Would end at once mi' care an' pain! An' why noa do't?--for weel aw know Aw's lose bo' ills, if nowt aw gain. An' why noa do't? It ill 'ud tell O' thoose wur laft beheend, aw fear; It's wring, at fust, to kill mysel', It's wring to lyev mi childer here. One's like to tak' some thowt for them-- Some sort o' comfort one should give; So one mun bide, an' starve, an' clem, An' pine, an' mope, an' fret, an' live. TH' SHURAT WEAVER'S SONG. {4} BY SAMUEL LAYCOCK. TUNE--"Rory O'More." Confound it! aw ne'er wur so woven afore; My back's welly brocken, mi fingers are sore; Aw've been starin' an' rootin' amung this Shurat, Till aw'm very near getten as bloint as a bat. Aw wish aw wur fur enough off, eawt o'th road, For o' weavin' this rubbitch aw'm getten reet sto'd; Aw've nowt i' this world to lie deawn on but straw, For aw've nobbut eight shillin' this fortnit to draw. Neaw, aw haven't mi family under mi hat; Aw've a woife and six childer to keep eawt o' that; So aw'm rayther amung it just neaw, yo may see-- Iv ever a fellow wur puzzle't, it's me! Iv aw turn eawt to steal, folk'll co' me a thief; An' aw conno' put th' cheek on to ax for relief; As aw said i' eawr heawse t'other neet to mi wife, Aw never did nowt o' this mak' i' my life. O dear! iv yon Yankees could nobbut just see, Heaw they're clemmin' an' starvin' poor weavers loike me, Aw think they'd soon sattle their bother, an' strive To send us some cotton to keep us alive. There's theawsan's o' folk, just i'th best o' their days, Wi' traces o' want plainly sin i' their faze; An' a futur afore 'em as dreary an' dark; For, when th' cotton gets done, we's be o' eawt o' wark. We'n bin patient an' quiet as lung as we con; Th' bits o' things we had by us are welly o' gone; Mi clogs an' mi shoon are both gettin' worn eawt, An' my halliday clooas are o' gone "up th' speawt!" Mony a time i' my days aw've sin things lookin' feaw, But never as awkard as what they are neaw; Iv there isn't some help for us factory folk soon, Aw'm sure 'at we's o' be knock'd reet eawt o' tune. GOD HELP THE POOR. {5} BY SAMUEL BAMFORD. God help the poor, who in this wintry morn, Come forth of alleys dim and courts obscure; God help yon poor, pale girl, who droops forlorn, And meekly her affliction doth endure! God help the outcast lamb! she trembling stands, All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands; Her mournful eyes are modestly down cast, Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast; Her bosom, passing fair, is half reveal'd, And oh! so cold the snow lies there congeal'd; Her feet benumb'd, her shoes all rent and worn;-- God help thee, outcast lamb, who stand'st forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! an infant's feeble wail Comes from yon narrow gate-way! and behold A female crouching there, so deathly pale, Huddling her child, to screen it from the cold!-- Her vesture scant, her bonnet crush'd and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold. And there she bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold! And now she sudden darts a ravening look, As one with new hot bread comes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, hapless one forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! Behold yon famish'd lad No shoes, no hose, his wounded feet protect; With limping gait, and looks so dreamy-sad, He wanders onward, stopping to inspect Each window, stored with articles of food; He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal. Oh! to his hungry palate, viands rude Would yield a zest the famish'd only feel! He now devours a crust of mouldy bread-- With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn, Unmindful of the storm which round his head Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn God help the poor! God help the poor! Another have I found A bow'd and venerable man is he; His slouched hat with faded crape is bound, His coat is gray, and threadbare, too, I see; "The rude winds" seem to "mock his hoary hair;" His shirtless bosom to the blast is bare. Anon he turns, and casts a wistful eye, And with scant napkin wipes the blinding spray; And looks again, as if he fain would spy Friends he hath feasted in his better day Ah! some are dead, and some have long forborne To know the poor; and he is left forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor who in lone valleys dwell, Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell! Yet little cares the world, nor seeks to know The toil and want poor weavers undergo. The irksome loom must have them up at morn; They work till worn-out nature will have sleep; They taste, but are not fed. Cold snow drifts deep Around the fireless cot, and blocks the door; The night-storm howls a dirge o'er moss and moor! And shall they perish thus, oppress'd and lorn? Shall toil and famine hopeless still be borne!-- No! GOD will yet arise, and HELP THE POOR! TICKLE TIMES. BY EDWIN WAUGH. Neaw times are so tickle, no wonder One's heart should be deawn i' his shoon, But, dang it, we munnot knock under To th' freawn o' misfortin to soon; Though Robin looks fearfully gloomy, An' Jamie keeps starin' at th' greawnd, An' thinkin' o'th table 'at's empty, An' th' little things yammerin' reawnd. Iv a mon be both honest an' willin', An' never a stroke to be had, An' clemmin' for want ov a shillin',-- It's likely to make him feel sad; It troubles his heart to keep seein' His little brids feedin' o'th air; An' it feels very hard to be deein', An' never a mortal to care. But life's sich a quare bit o' travel,-- A warlock wi' sun an' wi' shade,-- An' then, on a bowster o' gravel, They lay'n us i' bed wi' a spade; It's no use o' peawtin' an' fratchin'; As th' whirligig's twirlin' areawn'd, Have at it again; an' keep scratehin', As lung as your yed's upo' greawnd. Iv one could but feel i'th inside on't, There's trouble i' every heart; An' thoose that'n th' biggest o'th pride on't, Oft leeten o'th keenest o'th smart. Whatever may chance to come to us, Let's patiently hondle er share,-- For there's mony a fine suit o' clooas That covers a murderin' care. There's danger i' every station, I'th palace, as weel as i'th cot; There's hanker i' every condition, An' canker i' every lot; There's folk that are weary o' livin', That never fear't hunger nor cowd; An' there's mony a miserly crayter 'At's deed ov a surfeit o' gowd. One feels, neaw 'at times are so nippin', A mon's at a troublesome schoo', That slaves like a horse for a livin', An, flings it away like a foo; But, as pleasur's sometimes a misfortin, An' trouble sometimes a good thing,-- Though we liv'n o'th floor, same as layrocks, We'n go up, like layrocks, to sing. THE END JOHN HEYWOOD, PRINTER, MANCHESTER. WAUGH'S POEMS AND LANCASHIRE SONGS. 5s. CONTENTS. POEMS. The Moorland Flower--To the Rose-Tree on my Window Sill--Keen Blows the North Wind--Now Summer's Sunlight Glowing--The Moorland Witch-- The Church Clock--God Bless Thee, Old England--All on a Rosy Morn of June--Glad Welcome to Morn's Dewy Hours--Alas, how Hard it is to Smile--Ye Gallant Men of England--Here's to my Native Land--What Makes your Leaves Fall Down--Oh, had she been a Lowly Maid--The Old Bard's Welcome Home--Oh, Come Across the Fields--Oh, Weave a Garland for my Brow--The Wanderer's Hymn--Alone upon the Flowery Plain-- Life's Twilight--Time is Flying--The Moorlands--The Captain's Friends--The World--To a Married Lady--Cultivate your Men--Old Man's Song--Bide on--Christmas Song--Love and Gold--When Drowsy Daylight-- Mary--To the Spring Wind--Nightfall--To a Young Lady--Poor Travellers all--The Dying Rose--Lines--The Man of the Time-- Christmas Morning. SONGS IN THE DIALECT. Come Whoam to thi Childer an' Me--What ails Thee, my Son Robin--God Bless these Poor Folk--Come, Mary, Link thi Arm i Mine--Chirrup -- The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine--Tickle Times--Jamie's Frolic--Owd Pinder--Come, Jamie, let's Undo thi Shoon--The Goblin Parson--While Takin' a Wift o' my Pipe--God Bless thi Silver Yure--Margit's Coming. WAUGH'S LANCASHIRE SONGS. Cloth, neat, 1s. CONTENTS. Come Whoam to thi Childer an' Me--What ails Thee, my Son Robin--God Bless these Poor Folk--Come, Mary, Link thi Arm i' Mine--The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine--Come, Jamie, let's Undo thi Shoon--Aw've Worn my Bits o' Shoon Away--Chirrup--Bonny Nan--Tum Rindle--Tickle Times--Jamie's Frolic--Owd Pinder--The Goblin Parson--While Takin' a Wift o' my Pipe--Yesterneet--God Bless thi Silver Yure--Margit's Coming--Eawr Folk--Th' Sweetheart Gate--Gentle Jone--Neet Fo'--A Lift on th' Way. WAUGH'S LANCASHIRE SONGS. In sheets, 1d. each. CONTENTS. Come Whoam to thi Childer an' Me--What ails Thee, my Son Robin--God Bless these Poor Folk--Come, Mary, Link thi Arm i' Mine--The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine--Come, Jamie, let's Undo Thi Shoon--While Takin' a Wift o' my Pipe--God Bless thi Silver Yure--Aw've Worn my Bits o' Shoon Away --Yesterneet--Owd Enoch--Chirrup --Tickle Times-- Jamie's Frolic--Owd Pinder--Th' Goblin Parson--Margit's Coming--Eawr Folk--Th' Sweetheart Gate--Gentle Jone--Neet Fo'--Bonnie Nan--A Lift on th' Way--Tum Rindle--Buckle to. WAUGH'S. The Birtle Carter's Tale about Owd Bodle. 3d. WAUGH'S. The Goblin's Grave. 3d. WAUGH'S. Chapel Island: An Adventure on the Ulverstone Sands. 1d. WAUGH'S. Norbreck: A Sketch on the Lancashire Coast. 1d. WAUGH'S. Birth-Place of Tim Bobbin. 6d. WAUGH'S. Rambles in the Lake Country and its Borders. Cloth, neat. 2s. 6d. WAUGH'S. Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities. 1s. WAUGH'S. Fourteen Days in Scotland. 1s. WAUGH'S. Wandering Minstrels; or, Wails of the Workless Poor. 1d. WAUGH'S. The Barrel Organ. With Illustrations. 3d. WAUGH'S. Tattlin Matty. 3d. WAUGH'S. The Dead Man's Dinner. 3d. WAUGH'S. Over Sands to the Lakes. 6d. WAUGH'S. Sea-Side Lakes and Mountains of Cumberland. 6d. WAUGH'S. Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine. 3s. 6d. WAUGH'S. Tufts of Heather from the Northern Moors. 5s. Footnotes: {1} These stanzas are extracted, by permission, from the second volume of "Lancashire Lyrics," edited by John Harland, Esq., F.S.A. "They were written by a lady in aid of the Relief Fund. They were printed on a card, and sold, principally at the railway stations. Their sale there, and elsewhere, is known to have realised the sum of 160 pounds. Their authoress is the wife of Mr Serjeant Bellasis, and the only daughter of the late William Garnett, Esq. of Quernmore Park and Bleasdale, Lancashire."--Notes in "Lancashire Lyrics." {2} From "Lancashire Lyrics," edited by John Harland, Esq., F.S.A. {3} Dole; relief from charity. {4} "During what has been well named 'The Cotton Famine,' amongst the imports of cotton from India, perhaps the worst was that denominated 'Surat,' from the city of that name in the province of Guzerat, a great cotton district. Short in staple, and often rotten, bad in quality, and dirty in condition, (the result too often of dishonest packers,) it was found to be exceedingly difficult to work up; and from its various defects, it involved considerable deductions, or 'batings,' for bad work, from the spinners' and weavers' wages. This naturally led to a general dislike of the Surat cotton, and to the application of the word 'Surat' to designate any inferior article. One action was tried at the assizes, the offence being the applying to the beverage of a particular brewer the term of 'Surat beer.' Besides the song given above, several others were written on the subject. One called 'Surat Warps,' and said to be the production of a Rossendale rhymester, (T. N., of Bacup,) appeared in Notes and Queries of June 3, 1865, (third series, vol. vii., p. 432,) and is there stated to be a great favourite amongst the old 'Deyghn Layrocks,' (Anglice, the 'Larks of Dean,' in the forest of Rossendale,) 'who sing it to one of the easy-going psalm-tunes with much gusto.' One verse runs thus:- " 'I look at th' yealds, and there they stick; I ne'er seen the like sin' I wur wick! What pity could befall a heart, To think about these hard-sized warps!' Another song, called 'The Surat Weyver,' was written by William Billington of Blackburn. It is in the form of a lament by a body of Lancashire weavers, who declare that they had " 'Borne what mortal man could bear, Affoore they'd weave Surat.' But they had been compelled to weave it, though " 'Stransportashun's not as ill As weyvin rotten Su'.' The song concludes with the emphatic execration, " 'To hell wi' o' Surat!'" --Note in "Lancashire Lyrics," vol. ii., edited by John Harland, Esq., F.S.A. {5} These beautiful lines, by the veteran Samuel Bamford, of Harperhey, near Manchester, author of "Passages in the Life of a Radical," &c., are copied from the new and complete edition of his poems, entitled "Homely Rhymes, Poems, and Reminiscences," published by Alexander Ireland & Co., Examiner and Times Office, Pall Mall, Manchester. Price 3s. 6d., with a portrait of the author. 
14117	----	WANTED, A YOUNG WOMAN TO DO HOUSEWORK Business Principles Applied to Housework by C. HÉLÈNE BARKER Author of _Automobile French_ New York Moffat, Yard & Company 1915 PREFACE This little book is not a treatise on Domestic Science. The vacuum cleaner and the fireless cooker are not even mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed without doing it one's self. If the propositions that she advances seem at first startling, the writer begs only for a patient hearing, for she is convinced by strong reasons and abundant experience, that liberty in the household, like social and political liberty, can never come except from obedience to just law. C.H.B. CONTENTS PART I CAUSES OF THE PRESENT UNSATISFACTORY CONDITION OF DOMESTIC LABOR Ignorance and Inefficiency in the Home 1 Difficulty of Obtaining Women to Do Housework 11 The Disadvantages of Housework Compared with Work in Factories, Stores, and Offices 19 PART II BUSINESS PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO HOUSEWORK Living Outside Place of Employment 31 Housework Limited to 8 Hours a Day 47 Housework Limited to 6 Days a Week 61 The Observance of Legal Holidays 75 Extra Pay for Overtime 81 PART III EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME Eight Hour Schedules for One Employee 93 Eight Hour Schedules for Two Employees 109 Eight Hour Schedules for Three Employees 121 PART I CAUSES OF THE PRESENT UNSATISFACTORY CONDITION OF DOMESTIC LABOR Ignorance and inefficiency in the home. Difficulty of obtaining women to do housework. The disadvantages connected with housework compared with work in factories, stores, and offices. IGNORANCE AND INEFFICIENCY IN THE HOME The twentieth-century woman, in spite of her progressive and ambitious theories about woman's sphere of activity, has allowed her housekeeping methods to remain almost stationary, while other professions and industries have moved forward with gigantic strides. She does not hesitate to blazon abroad with banners and pennants her desire to share with man the responsibility for the administration of the State, but she overlooks the disquieting fact that in the management of her own household, where her authority is absolute, she has failed to convince the world of her power to govern. When confronted with this accusation, she asserts that the maintenance of a home is neither a business nor a profession, and that in consequence it ought not to be compared with them nor be judged by the same standards. Is it not due perhaps to this erroneous idea that housekeeping is a failure to-day? For the fact that it is a failure cannot be hidden, and that it has been a failure for many years past is equally true. Recent inventions, and labor saving utensils, have greatly facilitated housework, yet housekeeping is still accompanied with much dissatisfaction on the part of the employer and the employee. There are only a few women to-day who regard domestic science in the light of a profession, or a business, although in reality it is both. For what is a profession if it be not the application of science to life? And does not work which one follows regularly constitute a business? Many women, however, do not regard housekeeping even as a serious occupation, and few have devoted as much time, thought, and energy to mastering the principles of domestic economy as of late years women of all classes of society have willingly given to the study of the rules and ever changing intricacies of auction bridge. Some consider their time too valuable to devote to domestic and culinary matters, and openly boast of their ignorance. Outside engagements, pleasures, philanthropic schemes, or work, monopolize their days, and the conduct of the house devolves upon their employees. The result is rarely satisfactory. It is essential that the woman who is at the head of any concern, be it a business, a profession, or a home, should not only thoroughly understand its every detail, but in order to make it a success she must give it her personal attention each day for at least a portion of her time. It is a popular impression that the knowledge of good housekeeping, and of the proper care of children, comes naturally to a woman, who, though she had no previous training or preparation for these duties, suddenly finds them thrust upon her. But how many women can really look back with joy to the first years of their housekeeping? Do they not remember them more with a feeling of dismay than pleasure? How many foolish mistakes occurred entailing repentance and discomfort! And how many heart-burnings were caused, and even tears shed, because in spite of the best intentions, everything seemed to go wrong? And why? Simply because of ignorance and inefficiency in the home, not only of the employee, but of the employer also. That an employee is ignorant and unskilled in her work is often excusable, but there is absolutely no excuse for a woman who has time and money at her command, to be ignorant of domestic science, when of her own free will she undertakes the responsibilities of housekeeping. Nearly all women take interest in the furnishing of their homes, and give their personal attention to it with the result that as a rule they excel in household decoration, and often produce marvels of beauty and taste with the expenditure of relatively small amounts of money. Marketing is also very generally attended to in person by the housewife, but she is using the telephone more and more frequently as a substitute for a personal visit to butcher and grocer, and this is greatly to her disadvantage. The telephone is a very convenient instrument, especially in emergency, or for ordering things that do not vary in price. But when prices depend upon the fluctuations of the market, or when the articles to be purchased are of a perishable nature, it must be remembered that the telephone is also a very convenient instrument for the merchant who is anxious to get rid of his bad stock. The remaining branches of housekeeping apparently do not interest the modern housewife. She entrusts them very generally to her employees, upon whose skill and knowledge she blindly relies. Unfortunately skill and knowledge are very rare qualities, and if the housewife herself be ignorant of the proper way of doing the work in her own home, how can she be fitted to direct those she places in charge of it, or to make a wise choice when she has to select a new employee? Too often she engages women and young girls without investigating their references of character or capability, and when time proves what an imprudent proceeding she has been party to, she simply attributes the consequent troubles to causes beyond her control. If the housewife were really worthy of her name she would be able not only to pick out better employees, but to insist upon their work being properly done. To-day she is almost afraid to ask her cook to prepare all the dishes for the family meals, nor does she always find some one willing to do the family washing. She is obliged to buy food already cooked from the caterer or baker, because her so-called "cook" was not accustomed to bake bread and rolls, or to make pies and cakes, or ice cream, for previous employers, from whom nevertheless she received an excellent reference as cook. Of course in cities it is easy to buy food already cooked or canned and to send all the washing to the laundry, but it helps to raise the "high cost of living" to alarming proportions, and it also encourages ignorance in the most important branches of domestic economy. In spite of the "rush of modern life," a woman who has a home ought to be willing to give some part of her time to its daily supervision. Eternal vigilance is the price of everything worth having. If she gave this she would not have so many tales of woe to relate about the laziness, neglectfulness, and stupidity of her cook and housemaids. There is not a single housewife to-day who has not had many bitter experiences. One who desires information upon this subject has only to call on the nearest friend. To the uninterested person, to the onlooker, the helplessness of the woman who is at the head of the home, her inability to cope with her domestic difficulties, is often comic, sometimes pathetic, sometimes almost tragic. The publications of the day have caricatured the situation until it has become an outworn jest. The present system of housekeeping can no longer stand. One of two things must occur. Either the housewife must adopt business principles in ruling her household, or she will find before many more years elapse there will be no longer any woman willing to place her neck under the domestic yoke. If the principles set forth in the following pages can be popularized in a comprehensive plan of which all the parts can be thoroughly understood both by the housewife and her employee, ignorance and inefficiency in the home will be presently abolished. DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING WOMEN TO DO HOUSEWORK The present unsatisfactory condition of domestic labor in private houses is not confined to any special city or country; it is universal. Each year the difficulty of obtaining women to do housework seems to increase and the demand is so much greater than the supply, that ignorant and inefficient employees are retained simply because it is impossible to find others more competent to replace them. There is hardly a home to-day where, at one time or another, the housewife has not gone through the unenviable experience of being financially able and perfectly willing to pay for the services of some one to help her in her housekeeping duties, and yet found it almost impossible to get a really competent and intelligent employee. As a rule, those who apply for positions in housework are grossly ignorant of the duties they profess to perform, and the well trained, clever, and experienced workers are sadly in the minority. Women and young girls who face the necessity of self support, or who wish to lead a life of independence, no longer choose housework as a means of earning a livelihood. It is evident that there is a reason, and a very potent one, that decides them to accept any kind of employment in preference to the work offered them in a private home. Wages, apparently, have little to do with their decision, nor other considerations which must add very much to their material welfare, such as good food in abundance, and clean, well ventilated sleeping accommodations, for these two important items are generally included at present in the salaries of household employees. Concessions, too, are frequently made, and favors bestowed upon them by many of their employers, yet few young girls, and still fewer women are content to work in private families. It is a deplorable state of affairs, and women seem to be gradually losing their courage to battle with this increasingly difficult question: How to obtain and retain one's domestic employees? The peace of the family and the joy and comfort of one's home should be a great enough incentive to awaken the housewife to the realization that something must be wrong in her present methods. It is in vain that she complains bitterly, on all occasions, of the scarcity of good servants, asserting that it is beyond her comprehension why work in factories, stores, and offices, should be preferred to the work she offers. Is it beyond her comprehension? Or has she never considered in what way the work she offers differs from the work so eagerly accepted? Does she not realize that the present laws of labor adopted in business are very different from those she still enforces in her own home? Why does she not compare housework with all other work in which women are employed, and find out why housework is disdained by nearly all self supporting women? Instead of doing this, she sometimes avoids the trouble of trying to keep house with incompetent employees by living in hotels, or non-housekeeping apartments; but for the housewife who does not possess the financial means to indulge herself thus, or who still prefers home life with all its trials to hotel life, the only alternative is to submit to pay high wages for very poor work or to do a great part of the housework herself. In both cases the result is bad, for in neither does the family enjoy the full benefit of home, nor is the vexatious problem, so often designated as the "servant question," brought any nearer to a solution. The careful study of any form of labor invariably reveals some need of amelioration, but in none is there a more urgent need of reform than in domestic labor in private homes. It is more for the sake of the housewife than for her employee that a reform is to be desired. The latter is solving her problem by finding work outside the home, while the former is still unduly harassed by household troubles. With a few notable exceptions, only those who are unqualified to compete with the business woman are left to help the householder, and the problem confronting her to-day is not so much how to change inefficient to efficient help, but how to obtain any help at all. The spirit of independence has so deeply entered into the lives of women of all classes, that until housework be regulated in such a way as to give to those engaged in it the same rights and privileges as are granted to them in other forms of labor, the best workers will naturally seek employment elsewhere. THE DISADVANTAGES OF HOUSEWORK COMPARED WITH WORK IN FACTORIES, STORES, AND OFFICES Housework, when carefully compared with work performed by women in factories, stores, and offices, shows to a remarkable degree how many old fashioned ways of conducting her household still cling to the modern housewife. The methods that made housekeeping a success in the time of our ancestors are not adapted to the present needs of a society in which women who earn their own living are occupying so much more important positions than formerly. Large stores and factories, requiring the coöperation of many employees, have done more to open new avenues of work for women than could have been dreamed of in former times, when it was the custom for each family to produce at home as much as possible, if not all, that was necessary for its own consumption. Women, as a rule, are not taught self reliance, and many who hesitate to leave their homes to earn a livelihood, find that by doing work in stores, factories, or offices, they are not utterly separated from their families. The work may be harder than they anticipated and the pay small, but there is always the hope of promotion and of a corresponding increase of wages. Business hours are frequently long, but they are limited, and after the day's work is over, the remainder of the twenty-four hours is at the disposal of the employees, who can still enjoy the happiness and freedom associated with the life of their own social circle. Besides they have one day out of seven as a day of rest, and many legal holidays come annually to relieve the overstrain. With housework it is very different. The woman who accepts the position of a household employee in a private home must usually make up her mind to leave her family, to detach herself from all home ties, and to take up her abode in her employer's house. It is only occasionally, about once a week for a few hours at a time, that she is allowed to make her escape. It is a recognized fact that a change of environment has a beneficial effect upon every one, but a domestic employee must forego this daily renewal of thought and atmosphere. Even if she does not know that she needs it in order to keep her mental activities alive, the result is inevitable: to one who does nothing but the same work from early morning until late at night and who never comes in contact with the outside world except four times a month, the work soon sinks to mere drudgery. As to promotion in housework it seems to be almost unknown. Considering the many responsible positions waiting to be filled in private families, nothing could be more desirable than to instil into one's employees the ambition to rise. An employee who has passed through all the different branches of domestic science, from the lowest to the highest in one family, must be far better fitted to occupy the highest position in that family than one who applies for the position with the training and experience gained only in other families where the mode of living may be very different. Since there is no chance of promotion and in consequence of receiving better pay, the domestic employee is often tempted to seek higher wages elsewhere, and thus the desire "to make a change," so disastrous to the peace of mind of the housewife, is engendered in her employees. In domestic labor the hours of work are longer than in any other form of employment, for they are unlimited. Moreover, instead of having one day out of seven as a day of rest, only half a day is granted beginning usually about three o'clock in the afternoon, or even later. And legal holidays bring no relief, for they are practically unknown to the household employee. The only way women engaged in housework in private families can obtain a real holiday is by being suddenly called away "to take care of a sick aunt." There is an old saying containing certain words of wisdom about "all work and no play" that perhaps explains the dullness so often met with in domestic help. The hardest thing to submit to, however, from the point of view of the woman employed in housework, is the lack of freedom outside of working hours. This prevents her from taking part in her former social life. She is not allowed to go out even for an hour or two every day to see her relatives and friends. To ask them to visit her in her employer's kitchen is not a very agreeable alternative either to herself or her employer, and even then she is obliged to be on duty, for she must still wear her uniform and hold herself in readiness to answer the bell until the family for whom she works retires for the night. With such restrictions it is not surprising that the majority of women feel that they are losing "caste" if they accept positions in private families. There are two more causes to which this feeling of the loss of caste may be attributed. One is the habit of calling household employees by their first name or by their surname without the prefix of "Miss"; the other is the custom of making them eat in their employer's kitchen. These are minor details, perhaps, but nevertheless they count for much in the lives of women who earn their own living, and anything, however small, that tends to raise one's self respect, is worthy of consideration. Perhaps, too, while the word "servant" (a noble word enough in its history and its moral connotation) carries with it a stigma, a sense of degradation, among the working women, it should be avoided. Briefly summed up, then, the present disadvantages of housework compared with work in factories, stores, and offices, are as follows: Enforced separation from one's family. Loss of personal freedom. Lack of promotion. Unlimited hours of work. No day of rest each week. Non-observance of legal holidays. Loss of caste. In the present comparison of housework with work in factories, stores, and offices, a recital of the advantages of domestic service, even under the present method of housekeeping, must not be omitted, for such advantages are important, although unfortunately they do not outweigh the present disadvantages. To the woman whose home ties have been disrupted by death or discord, and to the newly arrived immigrant especially, housework is a great boon, inasmuch as besides good wages, all meals and a room to sleep in are given her. Moreover housework is the only form of labor where unskilled work can command high wages. This, however, is much more fortunate for the employee than for her employer. Housework in itself is certainly _not worse_ than any other kind of manual work in which women are engaged; it is often more interesting and less fatiguing. It also helps a woman more than any other occupation to prepare herself for her natural sphere of life:--that of the home maker. A girl who has spent several years in a well ordered family helping to do the housework, is far better fitted to run her own home intelligently and on economic lines than a girl who has spent the same number of years behind a counter, or working in a factory or an office. Again, work in a private house is infinitely more desirable, from the point of view of the influence of one's surroundings, than daily labor in a factory or store. The variety of domestic duties, the freedom of moving about from one room to another, of sitting or standing to do one's work, are much to be preferred to the work that compels the worker to stand or sit in one place all day long. If it be admitted, then, that housework is in itself a desirable and suitable occupation for women who must earn their living by manual labor, it can not be the work itself, but the conditions surrounding it that make it so distasteful to the modern working woman. PART II BUSINESS PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO HOUSEWORK Living outside place of employment. Housework limited to eight hours a day. Housework limited to six days a week. The observance of legal holidays. Extra pay for overtime. LIVING OUTSIDE PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT There are many housewives who are very much opposed to the adoption of a plan enabling household employees to live outside their place of employment. They claim that it is wiser to keep them under constant supervision day and night in order to prevent the introduction of disease or the acquisition of bad habits. There is more risk of disease being introduced into the home, and of bad habits being contracted by allowing one's children to associate with other children in schools, public or private, and by letting them play in the streets and public parks, where they mingle with more or less undesirable companions, than by having the housework performed by employees who come each day to their work and return to their homes at night when their duties are over. Nevertheless no sensible parents would keep their children shut up in the house, only allowing them to go out of doors for a few hours once a week, for fear of contagion or contamination, and yet this is just what the housewife has been doing for years with her household employees under the firm impression that she was protecting them as well as herself. Present statistics, however, upon the morality and immorality of women who belong to what is at present termed the "servant class," prove only too clearly that the "protection" provided by the employer's home does not protect. The shelter thus given serves too often to encourage a life of deception, especially as in reality the housewife knows but little of what takes place "below stairs." The "servants' quarters" are, as a rule, far enough away from the other rooms of the house for much to transpire there without the knowledge of the "mistress of the house," but who has not heard her complain of the misconduct of her employees? Startling discoveries have been made at the most unexpected times and from the most unexpected quarters. One lady found her maid was in the habit of going out at night after the family had retired, and leaving the front door unlocked in order to regain admittance in the early morning without arousing the family. Another housewife discovered one day that her cook's husband, whose existence until then was unknown, had been coming for several months to her house for his dinner. Every householder finds that in the late evening her "servants" entertain their numerous "cousins" and friends at her expense. Moreover, they do not hesitate to use the best china, glass, and silver for special parties and draw upon the household supplies for the choicest meats and wines. And because they cannot go out in the day time, it is not unusual to find some friend or relative comes to spend the entire day with them, and in consequence the housewife not only feeds her "help" but a string of hangers-on as well. Why should she be surprised that she does not get an adequate return for the amount of money she spends? And these things take place, not only during the temporary absence of the employer, but even while she is sitting peacefully in the library and listening to a parlor lecture on the relations of capital and labor. Women say tearfully or bravely on such occasions: "What can be done to make servants better? They are getting worse every day." And the housewife (one might almost call her by Samuel Pepys's pleasing phrase, "the poor wretch") then pours out to any sympathetic ear endless recitals of aggravating, worrying, nerve-racking experiences. Instead of putting an end to such a regrettable state of affairs that would never be tolerated by any business employer, she seems content to bewail her fate and clings still more steadfastly to obsolete methods. Why does she not adopt the methods of the business man in dealing with his employees? The advisability of having household employees live outside their place of employment is so apparent that it ought to appeal to every one. There would be no longer the necessity of putting aside and of furnishing certain rooms of the house for their accommodation: a practice which in the majority of families is quite a serious inconvenience and always an expense. In small homes where only one maid is kept, it may not make much difference to give up one room to her, but where several employees are needed, it means very often that many rooms must be used as sleeping apartments for them, frequently too a sitting room or a special dining room is given them. This is not all, for the rooms must be furnished and kept clean and warm, and supplied with an unlimited amount of gas and electricity. In many families the boarding and lodging of household employees cause as much anxiety and expense to the housewife as to provide for her own family. And why does she do it? Why does she consent to take upon herself so much extra trouble for nothing? For, although she offers good food and a bed besides excellent wages to all who work for her, she is the most poorly served of all employers to-day. In the great feudal castles of the Middle Ages it was not deemed safe for women to venture forth alone, even in the daytime, and so those engaged in housework were naturally compelled to live under their Master's roof, eating at his table and sitting "below the salt." But the Master and the Serf of feudal times disappeared long ago, only the Mistress and her "servants" remain. To-day, however, "servants" no longer sit at their employer's table; they remain in the kitchen, where as a rule they are given to eat what is left from the family meals. Some housewives, from motives of kindness and consideration for the welfare of those in their employ, have special meals prepared for them and served in a dining-room of their own at hours which do not conflict with the meals of the family. But this does not always meet with gratitude or even due appreciation; the disdainful way in which Bridget often complains of the food too generously provided for her is well known. A chambermaid came one day to her employer and said she did not wish to complain but thought it better to say frankly that she was not satisfied with what she was getting to eat in her house: she wanted to have roast beef for dinner more often, at least three or four times a week, for she did not care to eat mutton, nor steak, and never ate pork, nor could she, to quote her own words "fill up on bread and vegetables as the other girls did in the kitchen." Then, and only then, did her employer wake up with a start to the realization of the true position every housewife occupies in the eyes of her household employees. They evidently regard her in the light of a caterer; she does the marketing not only for her family but for them too. She pays a cook high wages, not only to cook meals for herself and family, but for her employees also. For the first time in her life, this housewife asked herself the following questions: Why should she allow her household employees to live in her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense? Why should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a private bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow them to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an ironing board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no business employer, man or woman, ever does it? Was it simply because her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother had been in the habit of doing it? This awakening was the beginning of the end of all the trouble and expense which she had endured for so many years in connection with the boarding and lodging of her "servants." To-day she has no "servants"; she has household employees who come to her house each day, just as other employees go each day to their place of employment. They take no meals in her house, and her housekeeping expenses have diminished as much as her own comfort has increased. Her employees are better and more efficient than any she ever had under the old régime, and nothing could persuade her to return to her former methods of housekeeping. The cost of providing meals for domestic employees varies according to the mode of living of each individual family, and of late it has been the subject of much discussion. Some important details, however, seem to be generally overlooked, for the cost of the food is the only thing usually considered by the average housewife. To this first expense must be added the cost of pots and pans for cooking purposes; even under careful management, kitchen utensils are bound to wear out and must be replaced. Then there is the cost of the extra fuel or gas or electricity required to cook the food, nor must one forget to count the extra work of the cook to prepare the meals, and of the kitchen maid or of some other maid to wash up the dishes after each meal served to employees. There is also the expense of buying kitchen plates and dishes, glasses, cups and saucers, knives and forks, etc. Every housewife is in the habit of providing kitchenware for the use of her employees. The total sum of all these items would astonish those who think that the actual expense of giving meals to household employees is not a very great one and is limited to the cost of the food they eat; even this last expense is considerably augmented by the careless and wasteful way in which provisions are generally handled by those who do not have to pay for them. When ways and means are discussed among housewives to reduce the present "high cost of living," it would be well to advise all women to try the experiment of having their household employees live outside their place of employment. The result from an economic point of view alone is amazing, and the relief it brings the housewife who is no longer obliged to provide food and sleeping accommodations for her employees is so great that one wonders why she has been willing to burden herself with these responsibilities for so many years. There was once a time when women did not go out alone to eat in a restaurant, but to-day one sees about as many women as men eating their midday meal in public. If women engaged in general business prove themselves thus capable of self care, there seems to be no reason why household employees, who often receive higher wages than shop girls and stenographers, should not be able to do the same. They would enjoy their meals more outside, albeit the food given them in their employer's house is undoubtedly of a better quality; the change of surroundings and the opportunity of meeting friends, of leaving their work behind them, would compensate them. In any event, it is clearly proved by the scarcity of women applying for positions in private houses that these two advantages only to be obtained in domestic labor--board and lodging--do not attract the working woman of the present day. The joy of eating the bread of independence is an old and deeply rooted feeling. There is an ancient fable of Æsop about the Dog and the Wolf which portrays this sentiment in a very quaint and delightful manner. (Sir Roger l'Estrange's translation.) THE DOG AND THE WOLF There was a Hagged Carrion of a _Wolf_, and a Jolly Sort of a Gentile _Dog_, with Good Flesh upon's Back, that fell into Company together upon the King's High-Way. The _Wolf_ was wonderfully pleas'd with his Companion, and as Inquisitive to Learn how be brought himself to That Blessed State of Body. Why, says the _Dog_, I keep my Master's House from Thieves, and I have very Good Meat, Drink, and Lodging for my pains. Now if you'll go along with Me, and do as I do, you may fare as I fare. The _Wolf_ Struck up the Bargain, and so away they Trotted together: But as they were Jogging on, the _Wolf_ spy'd a Bare Place about the _Dog's_ Neck where the Hair was worn off. Brother (says he) how comes this I prethee? Oh, That's Nothing, says the _Dog_, but the Fretting of my _Collar_ a little. Nay, says T'other, if there be a _Collar_ in the Case, I know Better Things than to sell my Liberty for a Crust. THE MORAL ...'Tis a Comfort to have Good Meat and Drink at Command, and Warm Lodging: But He that sells his Freedom for the Cramming of his Belly, has but a Hard Bargain of it. In modern business enterprises, there is hardly a single instance of an employer who is willing to board his employees, nor would he consider for a moment the proposition of allowing them to remain at their place of employment all night and of providing sleeping accommodations for them. Neither in consideration of benefiting them, nor with the view of benefiting himself by thus making sure of having them on hand for work early the next morning, would he ever consent to such an arrangement. When he needs some one to watch over his interests in the night time, he engages a night watchman, a very much more economical plan than to provide lodging for all his employees. Why should the housewife be the only employer to assume the burden of a double responsibility toward her employees? Perhaps in the country, where it might be impossible for them to live outside her home, such a necessity might arise, but in cities and suburban towns, there is absolutely no valid reason why household employees should sleep, eat, and live under their employer's roof. It is a custom only, and truly a custom that would be "more honored in the breach than in the observance." HOUSEWORK LIMITED TO EIGHT HOURS A DAY In the home woman's work is said to be never ended. If this be true, it is the fault of the woman who plans the work, for in all the positions of life, work can be carried on indefinitely if badly planned. It is the essential thesis of this little volume that the domestic labor of women should be limited to a fixed number of hours per day in private houses. It is not unusual at the present day for a woman to work twelve, or fourteen hours a day, or even longer, when she earns her living as a household employee. A man's mental and physical forces begin to wane at the end of eight, nine, or ten hours of constant application to the same work, and a woman's strength is not greater than a man's. The truth of the proposition, abstractly considered, has been long acknowledged and nowadays requires no argument. When a woman accepts a position in business, she is told exactly how many hours a day she must work, but when a woman is engaged to fill a domestic position in a family, the number of hours she is expected to give her employer is never specified. She is simply told that she must be on duty early in the morning before the family arises, and that she may consider herself off duty as soon as the family for whom she is working has withdrawn for the night. Is it surprising that under such conditions working women are not very enthusiastic over the domestic proposition to-day? A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to housework as to any other enterprise. Work in business is generally divided into two periods. Yet this division can not always be effected, and in railroad and steamship positions, in post offices, upon trolley lines, in hotels, in hospitals, and in other cases too numerous to mention, where work must follow a continuous round, the working hours are divided into more than two periods, according to the nature of the work and the interests of the employer, not however exceeding a fixed number of hours per day or per week. It would be far better for the housewife as well as for her employees, if the housework were limited in a similar way. But with the introduction of the eight-hour law in the home, certain new conditions would have to be rigidly enforced in order to ensure success. Firstly, the employee should be made to understand that during the eight hours of work agreed upon, she must be engaged in actual work for her employer. Secondly, when an employee is off duty, she should not be allowed to remain with or to talk to the other employee or employees who are still on duty. When her work is finished, she ought to leave her employer's house. The non-observance of either of these two points produces a demoralizing effect. Thirdly, a general knowledge of cooking, and serving meals, of cleaning and taking proper care of the rooms of a house, of attending correctly to the telephone and the door bell, of sewing, of washing and ironing, and of taking care of children, should be insisted upon from all household employees. There are many housewives who will state that this last condition is impossible, that it is asking too much from one employee; and since it is hard to-day to find a good cook, it will be still harder to find one who understands other household work as well. But those who jump to these conclusions have never tried the experiment. It is not only possible but practicable. Judging from the ordinary intelligence displayed by the average cook and housemaid in the majority of private homes to-day, it ought not to seem incredible that the duties of both could be easily mastered by young women of ordinary ability. A woman who knows how to prepare and cook a meal, may easily learn the correct way of serving it, and the possession of this knowledge ought not to prevent her from being capable of sweeping a room, or making a bed, or taking care of children. It is above all in families where only a few employees are kept, that the housewife will quickly realize how much it is to her immediate advantage to employ women who know how to do all kinds of housework, instead of having those who make a specialty of one particular branch. The specialization of work in private houses has been carried to such an extreme that it has become one of the greatest drawbacks to successful housekeeping in small families. Under this system of specialization, a household employee is not capable in emergency of taking up satisfactorily the work of another. Even if she be able to do it, she often professes ignorance for fear it may prolong her own hours of labor, or because, as she sometimes frankly admits, she does not consider it "her place." The chambermaid does not know how to cook, the cook does not know how to do the chamberwork, the waitress, in her turn, can do neither cooking nor chamberwork, and the annoyance to the whole family caused by the temporary absence of one of its regular employees is enough to spoil for the time being all the traditional comforts of home. In hotels and public institutions, and in large private establishments, where the work demands a numerous staff of employees, the specialization of the work is the only means for its successful accomplishment, but in the average home requiring from one to four or five employees no system could be worse from an economic point of view, nor less conducive to the comfort of the family. Specialization produces another bad effect, for it prevents the existence of the feeling of equality among employees in the same house. Each "specialist" speaks rather disparagingly of the other's work, regardless of the relative position her own special "art" may occupy to the unprejudiced mind. An amusing instance of this was recently shown at a country place near New York, when "the lady of the manor" asked a friend to send some one down from the city to help with the housework during the temporary absence of her maid. The friend could not find any one at the domestic employment agencies willing to go, but at last through the Charity Organization Society, she heard of a woman temporarily out of employment, who had been frequently employed as scrubwoman on the vacation piers. When the work was offered her, she accepted it immediately. Arriving at her new employer's house, she began at once to scrub the floors, and when the work was completed, she sat on a chair and took no further notice of anything. The next day, having no more floors to scrub, the same general lack of interest was manifested. She was asked to wash the dishes after dinner. She replied that she was not used to "dishwashing," and did not know how to do it. She was persuaded, however, to make the attempt, but performed her new task very reluctantly. The following morning she said she felt "lonely" and would return at once to the city. As the train came in sight to bear her back to her accustomed surroundings, she gave a snort of relief, and exclaimed: "I'm a scrubwoman, I am. I ain't going to do no fancy dishwashing, no, not for no one; I'm a scrubwoman." And she clambered up into the train with the alacrity of a woman whose dignity had received a hard blow. The above illustration is typical of the spirit subjected to the system of specialization, and shows how unwise it is to encourage it in the home where all branches of housework could be easily made interchangeable. Under the new system of limiting housework to eight hours a day, the housewife must insist that all applicants be willing and able to perform any part of the housework she may assign, and their duties ought not to be specified otherwise than by the term HOUSEWORK. The employee who refuses to wait on the table during the absence of the waitress, or to cook, or to do the laundry work, or to answer the telephone, or to carry packages from her employer's automobile to the library, because she does not consider it "her place to do these things," should be instantly discharged. These very important conditions being understood and conceded, the choice and arrangement of the eight hours' work must necessarily lie with each individual housewife. Each family is different and has different claims upon its time. The "rush hours" of social life are sometimes in the evening, and sometimes in the afternoon, and again in some families, especially where there are small children, the breakfast hour seems the most complicated of the day. All these details have to be carefully thought of when making an eight hour schedule. At the end of this book a set of schedules is placed. Any intelligent housewife can understand them, imitate them, and in many instances improve them. They are merely given as elementary examples. According to the number of employees she engages, the housewife will have eight, sixteen, or twenty-four hours of work to distribute among them, and to meet her peculiar needs she will find it necessary at the outset to devote some hours to a satisfactory scheme. After testing several, she will probably have to begin all over again before she finally succeeds in evolving one that is available. But the problem is interesting in itself, and always admits of a solution. It may not be amiss to make this final suggestion for the woman who is willing to give the new plan a fair trial: she should follow the example of the business man when he is in need of new employees, and advertise for help, stating hours of work, and requesting that all applications be made by letter. This disposes rapidly of the illiterate, and in the majority of cases, a woman who writes a good, legible, and accurate hand, is more apt to be efficient in her work than one who sends in a dirty, careless, ill-expressed and badly spelled application. Through advertising one comes into touch with many women it would be impossible to reach otherwise. It is also the most advantageous way of bringing the employer and employee together, inasmuch as it dispenses entirely with the services of a third person, who, naturally can not be expected to offer gratuitous service. The plan of limiting housework to eight hours a day is not an idle theory; it has been in successful operation for several years. Yet it is not easy to change the habit of years. There are many housewives who would loudly declare it impossible to conform to such business rules in the household; and many of the older generation of cooks and housemaids would agree. But when such a plan has been generally adopted, the domestic labor problem will be solved, and it does not appear that in the present state of social organization, it can be solved in any other way. HOUSEWORK LIMITED TO SIX DAYS A WEEK Under the present system of housekeeping, there is not one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five that a domestic employee has the right to claim as a day of rest, not even a legal holiday. It is remarkable that this fact, showing so forcibly one of the greatest disadvantages connected with housework, should attract so little attention. No one seems to care about the fate of the "servant girl," as she is so often disdainfully called. During six days of the week she works on the average fourteen hours a day, but no one stops to notice that she is tired. On the seventh day, instead of resting as every other employee has the right to do, her work is merely reduced to nine, eight, or perhaps seven hours; and yet she needs a day of rest as much as every other woman who earns her bread. The rights of the domestic employee are ignored on all sides apparently. In public demonstrations of dissatisfaction between employers and employees the most oppressed class of the working people--the women who do housework--has never yet been represented. This is probably due to two causes: the first is because women dissatisfied with housework are rapidly finding positions in business where they enjoy rights and privileges denied them in domestic labor; and the second is because the great majority of women engaged in housework are foreign-born. These women learn quickly to understand and speak English, but they do not often read and write it, and as they are kept in close confinement in their employer's house, they have rarely the opportunity of hearing about the emancipation of the modern working woman. Most of them are of a very humble origin, and being debarred from business positions on account of their ignorance and inexperience, they are thankful to earn money in any kind of employment regardless of the length of working hours. Their children, however, who are American born and enjoy better educational advantages, do not follow in their footsteps when the time comes for them to earn their living. They become stenographers, typewriters, dressmakers, milliners, shirt waist makers, cash-girls, saleswomen, etc.; in fact any occupation where work is limited to a fixed number of hours a day and confined to six days a week, is considered more desirable than housework. The result is that the housewife is compelled to take for her employees only those who are rejected by every other employer; the capable, independent, intelligent American woman is hardly ever seen in domestic service. In Washington, D.C., a law (the La Follette Eight Hour Law for Women in the District of Columbia) was recently passed limiting to eight hours a day and six days a week practically all work in which women are industrially employed; "hotel servants" are included under the provisions of this law, but "domestic servants in private homes" are expressly excluded. If this new law be considered a just and humane measure for women who are business employees, and if business houses be compelled to observe it, one naturally wonders why it should not prove to be an equally just and humane law for women who work in private families, and why should not the home be compelled to observe it too? Instead of being a barrier to progress, the home ought to coöperate with the state in the enforcement of laws for the amelioration of the condition of working women. The home, being presided over by a woman, presumably of some education and intelligence, should be a most fitting place in which to apply a law designed to protect women against excessive hours of labor. Why should housework in private homes be an exception to all other work? Is it because some housewives say, in self justification and frequently without an accurate knowledge of what it is to do housework week after week without one day's release, that housework is easier than other work? Is it easier? Is it not sometimes harder? However, it is not a question of housework being harder or easier than other work, but of the desirability of having it limited to eight hours a day and six days a week. Why should the housewife be allowed to remain in such a state of apathy in regard to the physical welfare of her household employees? "Six days shalt thou labor" has all the sanction of scripture, of morals, and of common experience. It is only fair that women who work in private families should have one day out of seven as a day of rest, even as their more fortunate sisters in the business world. If by adopting such a law in the home the housewife found that her work was performed far more efficiently and willingly than at present, would it not be as much to her advantage as to the advantage of those she employs to limit the hours of household labor to six days a week? Many housewives may object to this proposition inasmuch as the work in a home can not be suspended even for a day. But when two or more employees work in a private home, it is very easy to plan the housework so that each employee may have a different day of the week as a "day of rest," without the comfort of the family being disturbed by the temporary absence of one of the employees. It is only in families where one employee is kept that it may make a very serious difference to the housewife when her "maid-of-all-work" is away for one entire day each week. Nevertheless the comfort of an employer ought not to outweigh justice to an employee. There are many ways of regulating the housework, as will be seen in the schedules at the end of this book, in order to give one day of freedom each week to household employees without causing much inconvenience to the housewife. By continuing to refuse this privilege to women employed in domestic labor, housekeeping is becoming more and more complicated. Already it is such a common occurrence in some cities and in many parts of the country, not to find any woman willing to do housework, that many housewives are beginning to think that their future comfort in all household matters will depend entirely upon new labor saving devices and upon the help of the community rather than upon the increased knowledge and skill of domestic employees. There exists a prevailing impression, too, that housework has lost its dignity, and that at this period of the world's social history, it is impossible to restore it for women have stepped above it. But this is not true. The fact is that housework has remained stationary while other work has gained in freedom and dignity. Without noisy protestations, or indignant speeches delivered in public, women have slowly and silently, one by one, deserted housework as a career on account of the narrowing, servile, and unjust conditions inseparable from it at the present day. Let these conditions be removed and new regulations based upon modern business principles take their place, and then it will be seen that housework has never lost its dignity, and the very women who abandoned it will be the first to choose it again as a means of earning their livelihood. As a proof of this, the following experience may be cited of a New Work woman who wished to obtain a domestic employee for general housework. She went to several employment agencies and at the end of a week she had seen four applicants; three were foreigners and spoke English so brokenly that they could never have been left in charge of a telephone. Not one of the four was worth considering after investigating their references, and these were the only women she could find willing to do general housework. Upon the advice of a friend, the perplexed housewife advertised in one of the daily newspapers, but only a few women applied for the position and these were far from being satisfactory. She then inserted another advertisement expressed in the following words: "Wanted: a young woman to help with housework, eight hours a day, six days a week, sleep home. Apply by letter only." This last clause was added to prevent any one from applying for the position who could not write English, as it was absolutely necessary that the person engaged to do the housework should be capable of attending correctly to the telephone. On the same day the advertisement appeared, eighty-five applications by letter were received, and twenty more came the following day. All who wrote expressed their willingness to fill the position of a domestic employee and to do anything in the way of housework under the new conditions specified in the advertisement. Only one stated she would do no washing. Many who replied to this advertisement had occupied positions, which according to the present standard, were far superior to housework; many, too, were married women, experienced in all household work, and most anxious to accept a position in a private family, a position that did not break up their own home life. The housewife was bewildered by the unexpected result of her advertisement: the tables were turned at last. Instead of being one of many looking in vain for a good domestic employee, she found that she had now the advantage of being able to choose from more than a hundred applicants one who would best suit her own peculiar needs. The same advertisement has been inserted at different times and has always brought the same remarkable result: from one hundred to one hundred and sixty answers each time. It is true that all who present themselves may not be efficient, but efficiency speedily comes to the front when upon it alone depends a desirable position. Two very important facts came to light through the help of this advertisement; one was to find so many women eager to do housework when it was limited to eight hours a day and six days a week, and the other was to hear that they were willing to board and lodge themselves, as well as work, for the same wages that "servants" are accustomed to receive, although to the latter the housewife invariably gives gratis all food and sleeping accommodations. These two facts alone prove beyond a doubt that by applying business principles to housework all objections to it as a means of earning a livelihood are removed. It is quite likely that for a time the old fashioned "mistress," and the old fashioned "servant" will continue to cling to past customs; but once it is proved that domestic labor limited to eight hours a day and six days a week, brings a better, more intelligent, more efficient class of employees to the home, the most obdurate employer will change her mind. No legislation is needed. If all who are trying to solve the "servant question" will begin to practice the new plan in their own homes, the future will take care of itself and the old ways will die a natural death. THE OBSERVANCE OF LEGAL HOLIDAYS IN THE HOME The pleasure brought by the advent of a holiday into the lives of the working people can hardly be overestimated, and it is doubtful if holidays would ever have become legalized had they not proved of distinct value to the masses. To have one day each week free from the steady grind of one's dally work is a great relief, but to have a holiday is something still better, for it usually means a day set apart for general rejoicing. Why do all housewives persistently disregard the right of the household employee to have legal holidays? The reason generally brought forward is that many families need their employees more on a holiday than on any other day. In many cases this is quite true on account of family reunions or the entertaining of friends, but very often the housewife could easily dispense with the services of her employees on a holiday. She does not do it, however, or only occasionally, because it is not the custom to grant holidays to women who work in private homes. If it be impossible, on account of the exigencies of home life, to grant all legal holidays to household employees, there are many different ways of planning the housework so that other days may be given instead. Sometimes the day before or the day after a holiday will give as much pleasure as the day itself. A woman who is at the head of a home has many opportunities of coming into close contact with her employees; she can easily ascertain their wishes in this respect and act accordingly. It is more the fact of being entitled to a holiday than to have it on a certain day that ought to be emphasized. Domestic employees would be benefited by having these extra days of liberty, just as much as all other employees. A trial is all that is necessary to show how much better a household employee will work after having a holiday. She returns to her duties with renewed strength and the knowledge that she is no longer forced to play the rôle of Cinderella gives her a fresh interest in life. Unfortunately the housewife has been accustomed for so many years to have her "servants" work for her all day long on every day of the week, with only a few hours off duty "on every other Sunday and on every other Thursday," that she is rather inclined to resent such an innovation as the observance of legal holidays in domestic labor. She fails to perceive that by her present attitude she shows herself in a very unfavorable light as an employer, for the lack of holidays is decidedly one of the reasons for which housework is shunned to-day. Business men have evolved a satisfactory and workable plan by which their employees are neither overworked nor deprived of all legal holidays, although frequently the work they are engaged in can not be suspended day or night even for an hour. It remains for women of the leisure class, and to this class belong all those who can afford to pay to have their housework done for them, to adopt a similar plan in their homes. EXTRA PAY FOR OVERTIME When the plan for limiting housework to eight hours a day is discussed for the first time, the following question invariably arises: What is to be done when anything unusual happens to break the routine of the regular work, as for instance, when sickness occurs, when friends arrive unexpectedly, when a dinner party is given? Sickness, of course, is unavoidable, but as a rule a trained nurse or an extra household assistant is called in to help. Many times, however, this is not absolutely necessary, or perhaps the family can not afford to have outside help, and the extra work caused by sickness usually falls upon the domestic employee whose hours of labor are more or less prolonged in consequence. What ought to be done in such an event? There is but one answer: Work that can not be accomplished within the regular working hours already agreed upon should be paid for as "overtime." When it is a question of work being prolonged beyond the eight hours a day by the entertaining of friends, one can only say that this ought not to happen if the housewife planned her working schedule carefully. She alone is responsible for her social engagements; she alone can make a schedule that will enable her to have her friends come to luncheon or dinner without prolonging the day's work beyond the hours agreed upon between herself and her employees. When friends arrive unexpectedly, however, or when a dinner party or a big social function takes place in the home, an eight hour schedule may be the cause of great inconvenience, unless a previous agreement has been made to meet just such occasions. It is certain that some compensation is due to all domestic employees for the extra long hours of work caused by unusual events in the home life of their employers, and many ways have been devised already to remunerate them. In modern social life a custom of long standing still exists which makes it almost compulsory for this remuneration to come out of the pocket, not of the hostess, but of her guests. The unfortunate custom of giving "tips" is not generally criticised very openly, but when viewed in the light of reason and justice, it seems to be a very poor way of trying to remove one of the present hardships connected with domestic labor. Why should the housewife depend upon the generosity of her guests to help her pay her household employees? She never demurs at the extra expense entailed in giving luncheons and dinners in her friends' honor, nor in taking them to places of interest and amusement. Why then should she object to giving a little more money to her household employees upon whose work the success of her hospitality so largely depends? There are many women who entertain extensively, but they never recompense a household employee for any extra work that may be demanded from her on that account. They consider themselves fully justified in exacting extra long hours of work because of the high wages they pay, especially as it frequently happens that while the work is more on some days, it is less on others, and they think in consequence that their employees have no cause for complaint. It is a mistake, however, to think that an employee who is obliged to be on duty and has little or nothing to do on one day, is really compensated for the extra hours of work she has been compelled to give on other days. A saleswoman who on certain days has no customers or only a few, is just as much "on duty" as if her work filled all her time, and it is the same with a domestic employee. Indeed it is generally conceded to be more irksome to remain idle at one's post than to be actively engaged in work. But on the other hand, there are many housewives who feel that they ought to give their employees more pay for extra work especially when it is connected with the entertaining of friends, and the following ways of rewarding them have been tried with more or less success. One plan that gained favor with several families was to give ten cents to the cook and ten cents to the waitress every time a guest was invited to a meal: ten cents for each guest. At the end of a month the ten cent pieces had amounted to quite a sum of money. Another plan that was tried in a small family was to give fifty cents to the cook and fifty cents to each of the two waitresses for every dinner party that took place, regardless of the number of guests. Still another plan was to give at the end of the month, a two dollar, five dollar, or ten dollar bill to an employee who had given many extra hours of satisfactory work to her employer. All these plans are good in a certain sense, inasmuch as they show that women are awakening to the realization that some compensation is due to household employees for the extra long hours of work frequently unavoidable in family life. But unfortunately these plans lack stability, for they depend altogether upon the generosity and kindness of different employers, instead of upon a just and firmly established business principle. And now comes the question: What method of payment for overtime will produce a permanently satisfactory result? The only one that appears just and is applicable to all cases is to pay each employee one and a half times as much per hour for extra work as for regular work. In this way each employee is paid for overtime in just proportion to the value of her regular services. For instance, when a household employee receives $20, $30, or $40 per month, that is to say $5, $7.50, or $10 per week, for working eight hours a day and six days a week, she is receiving approximately 10, 15, or 20 cents per hour for her regular work. By giving her one and one half times as much for extra work, she ought to receive 15, 22-1/2, or 30 cents per hour for every hour she works for her employer after the completion of her regular eight hours' work. This plan has never failed to bring satisfaction, and it has the advantage of placing the employer and the employee on an equally delightful footing of independence. The performance of extra work is no longer regarded as a matter of obligation on one side, and of concession on the other, but as a purely business transaction. Some housewives fear that the regular work would be intentionally prolonged beyond all measure if it became an established rule to pay extra for work performed overtime. This could be easily checked, however, by paying extra only for work that was necessitated by unusual events in the family life. In families where only one employee is kept, naturally the occasions for asking her to work overtime arise more frequently than in families where there are two or more employees, especially if there be small children in the family. Yet these occasions need not come very often, if the housewife bears in mind that even with only one employee, she has eight hours every day at her own disposal; she ought to plan her outside engagements accordingly. Her liberty from household cares during these eight hours can only be gained though by having efficient and trustworthy assistants in her home, and she can never obtain these unless she abandons her old fashioned methods of housekeeping. She must grant to household employees the same rights and privileges given to business employees; she must apply business principles to housework. A great power lies in the hands of the modern housewife, a power as yet only suspected by a few, which, if properly wielded, can raise housework from its present undignified position to the place it ought to occupy, and that is in the foremost rank of manual labor for women. PART III EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME Eight hour schedules for one employee. Eight hour schedules for two employees. Eight hour schedules for three employees. EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR ONE EMPLOYEE The schedules given in the following pages have been in actual practice for a sufficient length of time to prove that they can be relied on to produce satisfactory results, although no doubt many housewives will find that some of them must be modified to meet special requirements in their homes. Two very important points must always be borne in mind in order to obtain the greatest advantage from an eight hour schedule, especially in families where only one employee is engaged to do the housework. The first point is this: the housewife ought only to make her working schedule _after_ she has carefully studied her own comfort and convenience in regard to the hours she considers the most important of the day for her to have help in her housework. The second point is for the housewife to reserve for herself the entire freedom of the eight hours during which her employee is on duty, for then she can place, or she ought to be able to, the full responsibility of the housekeeping upon her employee. By adhering strictly to these two points, the housewife will soon perceive that she can dispense with the services of her employee for the remaining hours of the day without much inconvenience to herself or her family. She may even find it more pleasant than otherwise to be relieved from the sight and sound of household work, for at least a few hours a day, when she is in her own home. Possibly the housewife who has but one employee will not accept with alacrity the proposition of allowing her to be off duty for an entire day once a week, for unless she be willing to do the necessary work herself on that day, she must engage a special person to take the place of her regular employee. But many families engage a woman to come once a week to help with the washing and house-cleaning, especially when they have only one household employee. If this woman came on the day the regular employee was away, she could relieve the housewife of all the housework that could not be postponed until the next day. SCHEDULE NO. I When only one employee is engaged in a private home, her services are needed more at meal time than at any other time of the day, especially if small children are in the family. As the hours for the three principal meals are about the same everywhere, the following schedule is a very useful one. From 7 A.M. to 10 A.M. 3 hours From 12 M. to 3 P.M. 3 hours From 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. 2 hours ------- 8 hours In the morning from seven to ten o'clock, the employee had ample time to prepare and serve breakfast and wash up the dishes afterwards, and do the chamberwork. The three hours from noon until three o'clock were filled with duties that varied considerably each day. Luncheon was served at one o'clock; it was but a light meal easy to cook and easy to serve, therefore the time from two to three o'clock was usually devoted to ironing, or mending, or cleaning silver, or polishing brasses, or preparing some of the dishes in advance either for dinner that evening or for luncheon the next day. Two hours were sufficient to cook and serve dinner and wash up the dishes afterwards. A woman came once a week, on the day the employee was off duty, to do the family washing and assist with the general housework. She also did some of the ironing; the rest of the ironing was done the next day by the regular employee. This schedule has been tested, not merely once for a few months, but several times, and not with the same employee, but with different employees, and it has always been most satisfactory. It may seem doubtful to those who have never had their housework done on schedule time that the work can be completed in the time stated, but the greatest incentive that an employee can have to work quickly and well, is to know that her position is as good as any she can find elsewhere, and that when her work is over she is free to do exactly as she pleases with the remainder of her time. SCHEDULE NO. II The following schedule is very different from the preceding one, inasmuch as the housewife did not consider it necessary for her employee to be on duty in the middle of the day. There were no children in this family and as the housewife was alone in the day time, she very frequently went out for luncheon. She concluded therefore that it was the best time of the day for her to dispense with the services of her employee, whose working hours were arranged thus: From 7:30 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. 4 hours From 4:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours By half past eleven in the morning, all the usual housework was finished, and the employee went home; she returned at half past four in the afternoon, in time to attend to five o'clock tea and dinner. Once a week, on alternate Saturdays and Sundays, she had a "day of rest." On these days the housewife got breakfast ready herself, after which she did as much or as little of the regular work as she chose. It is not difficult to reduce housework to a minimum on special occasions. The family, which was a small one, consisting of three adults, usually went out to dinner on these alternate Saturdays and Sundays. SCHEDULE NO. III In this schedule, the employee's work is divided into two periods, with one hour for rest between. The family consisted of a man and his wife, who lived in an apartment. The hours of work were as follows: From 12 M. to 3 P.M. 3 hours From 4 P.M. to 9 P.M. 5 hours ------- 8 hours The housewife was very fond of entertaining, and she chose an employee who was an excellent cook and a very good waitress. In consequence she was able to place the entire responsibility of luncheons and dinners on her, and on days when no guests were present all the house-cleaning was done. As the employee did not report on duty before noon, the housewife was obliged to get breakfast herself. However this was a very simple matter, for her employee always set the table for breakfast the night before. The next morning it was very easy for the housewife, with the aid of an electric heater on the breakfast table, to heat the cereal, boil the water for the coffee, and broil the bacon or scramble the eggs, or indeed to prepare any of the usual breakfast dishes. The employee did all the washing, ironing and mending each week, and although she came to her work only at noon, she accomplished as much work during her eight hours as if she began earlier in the day. SCHEDULE NO. IV Many schedules were tried before a really satisfactory one was finally chosen for a family of six: mother, father, four small children. The eldest child was seven years old, and there was only one household employee to help with the work. They lived in the country, and breakfast had to be served promptly at 7:30 A.M., on account of taking the early morning train to town. Naturally, with only one employee, the housewife was compelled to do some of the housework herself, and until the following schedule was adopted, she had been in the habit of rising early, dressing the children, and getting breakfast ready herself. Her employee arrived later in the day and remained until after dinner at night. The comfort and general welfare of the mother were increased to such a remarkable degree by the new schedule, however, that it is well worth special attention. The hours were as follows: From 6:30 A.M. to 10:30 A.M. 4 hours From 11:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours Immediately upon arriving at the house, the employee went to the children and took complete charge of all of them. The two oldest dressed themselves, but of course the other two required help. After dressing them, she prepared breakfast. The cereal was always cooked the day before, and as a gas stove was used for cooking purposes, it was not hard to have breakfast ready promptly every morning at 7:30. Then the employee, having had her own breakfast before leaving her home, worked steadily until 10:30 A.M. During this time, the only work the mother felt she ought to do was to go out with her two youngest children; the other two went to school. She was always home again by 10:30, when her employee stopped working. The employee lived too far away to go home for lunch, and as there was no place in the neighborhood where she could go for lunch, she always brought it with her and ate it in her employer's house. During the hour she was off duty, the mother attended to some household duties herself, and she also bathed the two children, and put them to bed for their morning nap. At 11:30, her employee reappeared on duty, and took full charge of the house and children until 3:30 P.M.; her work for the day was then over and she went home. This schedule makes the mother stay home after half past three, but by that time all the real housework had been done by her employee. To give the children their supper and to put them to bed leisurely, was much easier work than to rise early and dress them hurriedly in the morning, and to get breakfast ready for the entire family. It was not much trouble to get dinner herself in the evening for her husband and herself only. The house was quiet, the children asleep, and there was no necessity of hurrying as in the morning. When she wished to give a dinner party, or to receive her friends, or to go to any entertainment in the afternoon after 3:30, she asked her employee to give her extra hours of work for which she paid extra. Once a week her employee had a "day of rest," and on this day another woman was engaged to take her place. This schedule enabled the mother to have many hours each day absolutely free from the children and household cares. EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR TWO EMPLOYEES It is much easier to plan an eight hour schedule for two employees than for one, and there is no limit to the number of different ways in which the sixteen hours of work may be divided, subdivided, and arranged to please the individual housewife. With two employees, it is no longer necessary for the housewife to remain at home while one is off duty, even for an hour, for one relieves the other without any cessation of work. Even on the seventh day, "the day of rest," the housewife can always arrange to have her work done without doing it herself, in spite of the absence of one of her employees. When a schedule is finally agreed upon, however, it must be rigidly enforced, for it is more important to keep to the hours specified when there are two employees than when there is only one. Although the housewife may be tempted to claim the privilege of changing her hours very often to please herself, since she is the employer, if she value her peace of mind, she will refrain from doing it. Only when the inevitable, the unforeseen, occurs should she make a change in her regular schedule. When one employee is off duty all day, the other employee can remain on duty the entire day; naturally this plan necessitates more than eight hours of work on that day, probably two or three more hours, but if on the day after or the day before, the employee be allowed to work two or three hours less than eight hours, the average of eight hours a day and six days a week is maintained. Another example of what the housewife can do when one of her employees is off duty the entire day, is to make her other employee follow schedule No. 1. This enables her to keep to eight hours a day and at the same time the housewife does none of the housework herself. SCHEDULE NO. V With two employees it is a wise plan to arrange a schedule that makes the work of one employee commence the moment the work of the other ceases. This tends to promote punctuality without requiring special supervision on the part of the housewife. The following schedule is admirably adapted to the every day life of the average family with two employees: _First Employee_ From 7 A.M. to 11 A.M. 4 hours From 12 M. to 4 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours _Second Employee_ From 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. 4 hours From 4 P.M. to 8 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours All the washing, ironing, and mending of the family were done by the two employees, and they also took care of the children when necessary. Besides being good cooks, they were both excellent waitresses; in consequence it made no difference which one was on duty at meal time. One employee only was in charge of breakfast; she came at seven o'clock in the morning, and worked steadily until eleven o'clock, when the second employee arrived. She then went out for her lunch, returning at twelve, and remaining on duty until four o'clock in the afternoon. She was then free for the remainder of the day. The second employee, as soon as she arrived at 11 A.M., went through the house and finished any work that was not completed by the first employee. She worked without stopping until 3 P.M., then went away for her lunch; she returned at 4 P.M. to relieve the first employee whose work was over at four o'clock. The second employee remained on duty until 8 P.M.; she cooked and served dinner so quickly and efficiently that the housewife who had always been accustomed to have two employees, a "cook" and a "waitress," on duty for dinner every night, found to her great surprise that one efficient household employee, working on schedule time, accomplished in the same time the work of two of her former "servants." SCHEDULE NO. VI In this schedule the housewife wanted both her employees to help her with her two children. With this end in view, she made all the work of the house interchange with the care of the children; in consequence when one employee was off duty, the other could always be relied on to help with the children. This proved to be a very successful schedule, for it relieved the mother from being obliged to sit in the nursery as she was compelled to do every time her former "nurse" went downstairs to her meals, or had her "afternoon off." But when the mother wished to be with her children, and that was very often, the employee who was in the nursery at the time, left the room immediately to attend to other household duties. Both employees were on duty at 7 A.M., a most necessary arrangement where there are small children in a family. The first employee prepared and served breakfast for the family, while the other employee took full charge of the children, giving them their breakfast in the nursery, and taking them out afterwards for a walk. At 10 A.M., she returned with the children, and she was then off duty for two hours. The mother generally chose this time to be with her children; if however, she had any other engagement, the first employee was on duty until noon and could be called upon to look after them. _First Employee_ From 7 A.M. to 12 M. 5 hours From 5 P.M. to 8 P.M. 3 hours ------- 8 hours _Second Employee_ From 7 A.M. to 10 A.M. 3 hours From 12 M. to 5 P.M. 5 hours ------- 8 hours SCHEDULE NO. VII There are many families who may object to all the preceding schedules on account of the early hour in the evening for household employees to be off duty. When the housewife has never had her housework done on schedule time by an efficient employee, she may well think it impossible to have the dinner dishes washed up and everything put away in order by 8 P.M. However some families do not begin dinner before half past seven, or eight o'clock, or even later, but in these families, it is not unusual for the breakfast hour to be very late also. In consequence nothing is easier than to make a schedule for the day's work begin late and end late, without making any other alteration in it. The following schedule, however, combines an early breakfast and a late dinner, in a family where only two employees were kept: _First Employee_ From 7 A.M. to 12 M. 5 hours From 5 P.M. to 8 P.M. 3 hours ------- 8 hours _Second Employee_ From 12 M. to 5 P.M. 5 hours From 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. 3 hours (or from 8 to 11 P.M.) ------- 8 hours EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR THREE EMPLOYEES The greater the number of household employees, the easier it is to make a satisfactory working schedule. But the temptation to specialize the work is greater, and should be carefully guarded against. It is just as necessary with three employees as with one for the housewife to insist that each one be capable and willing to do all kinds of work in the home, including sewing and taking care of children. With three employees, the housewife ought to make them take turns in cooking and serving one of the three meals each day. This enables them to become familiar with the dining room and with the different dishes for each course; it also removes any feeling of embarrassment which naturally might be felt by an employee who is rarely called upon to cook or serve a meal. To have an expert needlewoman in the house is a great boon to the housewife, and when she has three employees who can sew in her home, she ought to insist upon a great deal of sewing and mending being done by each one of them. It is rare that the "servant" of to-day is a good sewer; in fact the housewife would hesitate to ask her to do even the ordinary mending, but when one engages household employees on an eight hour schedule, and when there are a hundred women to choose from, it is not hard to find several who sew well. SCHEDULE NO. VIII It is so easy to plan the housework for three employees that one schedule as an example seems quite sufficient, and the only thing that the housewife must remember is to make all the work interchangeable. _First Employee_ From 7 A.M. to 11 A.M. 4 hours From 12 M. to 4 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours _Second Employee_ From 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. 4 hours From 4 P.M. to 8 P.M. 4 hours ------- 8 hours _Third Employee_ From 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. 3 hours From 6 P.M. to 11 P.M. 5 hours ------- 8 hours CONCLUSION In conclusion it seems that a few words are necessary about families who need the services of an employee at night as well as in the day time. There are many mothers who do not wish or who are not able to take care of their children at night, and in consequence it is absolutely necessary to have an attendant. The present custom is to have the nurse or maid sleep in the same room as the baby, or in a room adjoining the children's bedroom, so as to be within call. But a woman who has worked all day, or even eight hours a day, should not have her sleep disturbed at night by taking care of children. No woman can be fit for her work the next day if she has not been able to secure the average amount of sleep necessary to health. In many cases it has been proved that when a child does not sleep well at night, the nurse has taken upon herself the responsibility of giving it "soothing syrup" so as to keep it quiet. This is hardly to be wondered at when one considers the strain under which the nurse is kept day and night by taking care of a small child; besides the average nurse is generally ignorant of the harm caused by so-called "soothing syrups." If a child be sick, the mother should call in a trained nurse, that is if she can afford it, and when she has several employees, she can usually afford this extra expense. If the child or children be well, and the mother desires some one to attend to them at night, she should engage a woman who has no occupation during the day and who is willing to work at night. She should make a point of choosing one who sews well, so that the services of a seamstress might be combined with the duties of a night nurse. There is always some mending to do in all families and a woman who is clever with her needle might make herself very useful to her employer. Thousands of women sew by artificial light in dressmaking establishments and factories; in all probability just as many women could be found to sew by artificial light in private homes. Perhaps at first the novelty of working at night might deter women from taking a position similar to the one suggested above, but a woman who was really in need of work would not let the unusual hours prevent her from accepting it, Many men work at night and it is not unlikely that many women would be willing to do it too. Women are not as timid as they were reputed to be in former years; they would neither scream nor faint nowadays at the sight of a little mouse scampering across the floor. Indeed quite recently the newspapers reported that a woman whose husband had just died had accepted the position of a night watchman, and she filled her new rôle so successfully that on one occasion she managed to seize a burglar and handed him over to a policeman. This proposition of engaging a woman to work at night is only a suggestion, however, offered to those who find it absolutely necessary to have a domestic employee in their house at night. It remains to be proved if it could be carried out successfully. But the great changes in housekeeping described in the preceding chapters are not mere suggestions nor theories of what might be done: each reform has already been put into actual practice. The result has been so extraordinary that one is impelled to believe that the only way to solve the Servant Problem is to apply business principles to housework in private homes. Naturally such a revolution from methods now in vogue can not be wrought in a day, and the transitional period may be one of some difficulty and confusion for employer and employee alike who have spent a large portion of their lives under the old régime. But the revolution is imperative, and the ultimate benefit beyond calculation. 
20041	----	UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION WASHINGTON MEN'S SEWED STRAW HATS REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES INVESTIGATION OF THE COSTS OF PRODUCTION OF MEN'S SEWED STRAW HATS IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN THE PRINCIPAL COMPETING FOREIGN COUNTRIES WITH APPENDIX PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1926 UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION Office: Eighth and E Streets NW., Washington, D. C. COMMISSIONERS THOMAS O. MARVIN, _Chairman_. ALFRED P. DENNIS, _Vice Chairman_. EDWARD P. COSTIGAN. HENRY H. GLASSIE. A. H. BALDWIN. EDGAR B. BROSSARD. JOHN F. BETHUNE, _Secretary_. ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON, D. C. AT 5 CENTS PER COPY CONTENTS Page Introductory: Reference to files 1 Rates of duty 1 History of investigation 1 Scope of investigation 2 Information obtained in the investigation: Domestic production 2 Kinds of hats produced 3 Organization 3 Labor conditions 3 Imports 4 Effect of imports 6 Principal competing country 7 Foreign production-- Types of hats produced 8 Organization 8 Working hours and wages 8 Costs of production-- Methods of obtaining cost data 9 Description of cost items-- Material 9 Labor 9 Overhead 9 Selling expense-- (_a_) Domestic 9 (_b_) Foreign 9 Tables showing cost comparisons 10 Competitive conditions-- Transportation and marketing costs 11 Formal statement of conclusions 11 Summary of conclusions 13 Separate statement of Commissioner Costigan, in part concurring and in part dissenting, in the investigation of men's sewed straw hats: Both higher and lower duties indicated by the commission's cost figures 15 Determining the dividing line for tariff purposes between higher and lower priced hats 15 Some omissions from and doubtful features in the commission's report 16 Representativeness of samples 16 Importers' selling expenses omitted 17 Deficiencies in comparative overhead data 18 Appendix: Proclamation by the President 21 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL JULY 17, 1925. The PRESIDENT, _The White House_, _Washington, D. C._ MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: Herewith I have the honor to transmit the report of the Tariff Commission in the investigation, for the purposes of section 315 of the tariff act of 1922, of the costs of production in the United States and in the principal competing foreign country of men's sewed straw hats. Included in the report is a "Separate statement of Commissioner Costigan, in part concurring and in part dissenting, in the investigation of men's sewed straw hats." Respectfully, THOMAS O. MARVIN, _Chairman_. UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION WASHINGTON MEN'S SEWED STRAW HATS JULY 17, 1925. _To the President_: The United States Tariff Commission respectfully submits the following report upon an investigation of the differences in costs of production of men's sewed straw hats in the United States and in competing foreign countries, for the purposes of section 315 of Title III of the tariff act of 1922. INTRODUCTORY _Reference to files._--The basic documents in connection with the investigation on men's sewed straw hats are in the files of the Tariff Commission and are available to the President. They include the transcripts of the public hearings and the original cost schedules and other data. These include confidential data, the disclosure of which is forbidden by section 708 of the revenue act of 1916: SEC. 708. It shall be unlawful for any member of the United States Tariff Commission, or for any employee, agent, or clerk of said commission, or any other officer or employee of the United States, to divulge, or to make known in any manner whatever not provided for by law, to any person, the trade secrets or processes of any person, firm, copartnership, corporation, or association embraced in any examination or investigation conducted by said commission, or by order of said commission, or by order of any member thereof. * * * _Rates of duty:_ Act of 1922--Not blocked or trimmed } 60 per cent. } Par. 1406. Blocked or trimmed } } Act of 1913--Not blocked or trimmed } 25 per cent. } Par. 335. Blocked or trimmed } 40 per cent. } Act of 1909--Not trimmed } 35 per cent. } Par. 422. Trimmed } 50 per cent. } _History of the investigation._--On May 29, 1924, the commission ordered an investigation of men's sewed straw hats for the purposes of section 315 of Title III of the tariff act of 1922, and on the same date ordered a preliminary hearing for June 12, 1924. An application was received from the National Association of Men's Straw Hat Manufacturers of America requesting an investigation looking toward an increase in the rate of duty on men's sewed straw hats, now dutiable at 60 per cent ad valorem under paragraph 1406 of the tariff act of 1922. The domestic field work was carried on during the period August to October, 1924, and the foreign work in Italy and England during the period October, 1924, to February, 1925. After due notice, as prescribed by law, public hearings were held in the offices of the commission on June 12, 1924, and on May 4, 1925. The latter hearing was continued on May 14, 15, and 16, 1925. Oral argument was waived and the date for filing briefs was set for June 6, 1925. _Scope of the investigation._--Costs of production were obtained for hats sold in the straw hat season of 1924 by companies whose fiscal years ended at or about June 30, 1924. This period was the latest for which cost data could be obtained at the time the investigation was made. Domestic costs were obtained from 19 concerns in Maryland, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The total production of these concerns amounted to 718,265 dozen hats. Of this number, 553,253 dozen were men's sewed straw hats. The 19 concerns produce approximately 85 per cent of the men's sewed straw hats in the United States and include makers of cheap, medium, and high-priced hats. They include nonmembers as well as members of the national association. Costs were obtained in Italy from five concerns and in England from three concerns exporting men's sewed straw hats to the United States. Both domestic and foreign straw hat factories are characterized by lack of standardization in production. Variations exist in the quality of the hats manufactured by different establishments, because of variations in the type and quality of the braid, in the quality of the trimming materials, such as leather sweat and silk bands, and in the amount of hand labor employed in the finishing processes. Because of these variations, it was considered inadvisable to compare the average costs of production of all hats of the domestic concerns with the average of all foreign hats. Evidence submitted at the preliminary hearing and data in the possession of the commission indicated that competition between domestic and foreign straw hats centered chiefly on three types, split sennits of 13/15 millimeter braid, improved sennits of 16/18 millimeter braid, and flatfoot sennits of 16/18 millimeter braid. The commission's cost comparisons were therefore confined to hats of these specifications. INFORMATION OBTAINED IN THE INVESTIGATION From the commission's investigation of men's sewed straw hats, conducted as indicated above, the following information has been obtained: DOMESTIC PRODUCTION The manufacture of men's straw hats has been conducted on a commercial scale in the United States for upward of 50 years. The industry is centered in and around New York City, in a number of cities in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in Baltimore, Md. Statistics of production of men's sewed straw hats are not available, since the census of manufactures does not distinguish between men's and women's hats nor between sewed hats and woven hats. Domestic manufacturers estimate that the value of the men's straw hats produced in 1914 was $12,000,000, or about 45 per cent of the total production of all straw hats. In 1920 the value of the total production of men's straw hats was estimated at $20,000,000, of which about $12,000,000 was men's sewed hats. At the preliminary hearing it was estimated that the average annual production of men's sewed straw hats in recent years amounted to 800,000 dozen. There are about 40 manufacturers of men's sewed straw hats in the United States. The majority are well established firms. The production of men's sewed straw hats for the season 1923-24 of 19 factories for which costs were obtained was 553,253 dozen. The factories may be classified as follows: TABLE 1.--_Domestic straw-hat factories grouped according to annual production_ ------------------------------------+--------+------------+---------- | Number | Production | Per cent | | | of total ------------------------------------+--------+------------+---------- | | _Dozen_ | Group I. Factories with annual | | | production of | | | 50,000 dozen and over | 4 | 265,767 | 48.0 Group II. Factories with annual | | | production of | | | 25,000-49,000 dozen | 4 | 122,936 | 22.2 Group III. Factories with annual | | | production of less | | | than 25,000 dozen | 11 | 164,550 | 29.8 +--------+------------+---------- Total production | | 553,253 | 100.0 ------------------------------------+--------+------------+---------- _Kinds of hats produced._--There are two general types of men's straw hats produced by the domestic manufacturers: (1) Woven hats, such as panamas, etc. The bodies of these hats are imported in the rough and are shaped, finished, and trimmed in this country. (2) Sewed hats. All of the operations necessary in the manufacture of a sewed straw hat, with the exception of plaiting the braids, are performed in the United States. This investigation relates to sewed hats only. _Organization of production._--The manufacture of straw hats is essentially a factory business and with few exceptions each concern carries on all of the major operations connected with the production of hats in a single establishment. Plaiting of straw braid is a separate industry, the domestic hat manufacturers being dependent upon foreign sources for their supply of braids. The bleaching of straw braids is performed by some of the hat manufacturers in their own establishments; others have the bleaching done by outside concerns which specialize in this class of work. Some firms make the tips (the inside linings of the hats) in their own establishments; others buy the complete tip, or have certain operations, such as printing or stamping, performed by outside shops. _Labor conditions._--The hours of labor of employees in domestic straw hat factories in 1923-24 varied from 42 to 54 weekly. Wages are based both on piece and time work. Time wages ranged from $15 to $40 per week, according to the character of the work performed. The production of straw hats is to some extent seasonal. Orders are received in the late summer for delivery in the following spring. Production on these orders begins in September and the factories are usually busiest in the early months of the year. The summer is a slack season and factories operate with reduced labor force or close altogether for several weeks. The following table shows the monthly variations in the total number of employees of 18 domestic factories in the season 1923-24: TABLE 2.--_Employees in 18 domestic straw-hat factories, season of 1923-24_ ---------------+-----------++----------------+----------- | Number of || | Number of Month | employees || Month | employees ---------------+-----------++----------------+----------- 1923 | || 1924 | July | 1,116 || January | 3,331 August | 1,775 || February | 3,371 September | 2,542 || March | 3,403 October | 2,765 || April | 3,380 November | 3,221 || May | 3,117 December | 3,291 || June | 1,871 ---------------+-----------++----------------+----------- IMPORTS The quantities and values of sewed straw hats imported into the United States were not separately shown in official statistics prior to the tariff act of 1922, in which sewed straw hats were given a separate classification. Table 3 shows the imports for consumption of sewed straw hats from the principal countries of origin, by months, for the calendar years 1923 and 1924. Total imports increased from 93,309 dozen in 1923, valued at $779,989, to 164,041 dozen in 1924, valued at $1,179,929, a gain of approximately 75 per cent in quantity and 50 per cent in value. TABLE 3.--_Imports for consumption of men's sewed straw hats[1] from Italy, England, Germany, and other countries, by months, calendar years 1923 and 1924_ (Source: Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States) -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ | Italy | England | Germany | Other | Total | | | | countries| | | | | [2] | +----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ Month | 1923 | 1923 | 1923 | 1923 | 1923 -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ January | 51,225 | 9,734 | 2,460 | 26,606 | 90,025 February | 53,644 | 9,235 | 8 | 4,756 | 67,643 March | 54,102 | 55,920 | 7,420 | 51,305 | 168,747 April | 66,552 | 46,222 | 1,931 | 84,684 | 199,389 May | 78,602 | 68,989 | 80 | 31,888 | 179,559 June | 38,658 | 42,776 | 1,960 | 4,414 | 87,808 July | 23,049 | 6,717 | 848 | 11,685 | 42,299 August | 1,796 | 1,250 | 1,504 | 1,041 | 5,591 September | 120 | 960 | 1,272 | 102 | 2,474 October | 53,129 | 396 | 3,411 | 331 | 57,267 November | 77,962 | 2,718 | 8,929 | 7,524 | 97,133 December | 78,372 | 1,647 | 21,334 | 20,415 | 121,768 +----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ Total number | 577,211 | 246,584 | 51,157 | 244,751 | 1,119,703 Dozen | 48,101 | 20,549 | 4,263 | 20,396 | 93,309 +==========+==========+==========+==========+============ | | | | | Total Value | $289,215 | $256,769 | $32,503 | $201,502 | $779,989 | | | | | Average | | | | | value per | | | | | dozen | $6.01 | $12.50 | $7.62 | $9.88 | $8.36 +==========+==========+==========+==========+============ Per cent | | | | | of hats | | | | | imported | | | | | from each | | | | | country | 51.50 | 22.00 | 4.60 | 21.90 | 100.0 -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ | Italy | England | Germany | Other | Total | | | | countries| | | | | [2] | +----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ Month | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ January | 35,754 | 50,087 | 19,829 | 34,754 | 140,424 February | 114,644 | 35,024 | 25,372 | 57,429 | 232,469 March | 97,899 | 46,435 | 50,126 | 40,669 | 235,129 April | 192,007 | 119,031 | 85,421 | 49,935 | 446,394 May | 113,593 | 54,874 | 85,884 | 34,047 | 288,398 June | 59,840 | 37,208 | 6,873 | 14,769 | 118,690 July | 22,505 | 1,533 | 720 | 41,367 | 66,125 August | 4,000 | 820 | 2,795 | 41,689 | 49,304 September | 427 | 706 | 7,377 | 10,550 | 19,060 October | 37,809 | 318 | 4,541 | 34,528 | 77,196 November | 82,313 | 2,640 | 959 | 44,471 | 130,383 December | 100,353 | 4,723 | 5,332 | 54,516 | 164,924 +----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ Total number | 861,144 | 353,399 | 295,229 | 458,724 | 1,968,496 Dozen | 71,762 | 29,450 | 24,602 | 38,227 | 164,041 +----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ | | | | | Total Value | $427,706 | $282,402 | $180,054 | $289,767 | $1,179,929 | | | | | Average | | | | | value per | | | | | dozen | $5.96 | $9.59 | $7.32 | $7.57 | $7.19 +==========+==========+==========+==========+============ Per cent | | | | | of hats | | | | | imported | | | | | from each | | | | | country | 43.75 | 17.95 | 15.00 | 23.30 | 100.00 -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------ [1: Including men's, women's, and children's.] [2: Including withdrawals from warehouse.] A comparison of the imports for the first four months of 1925 with those for the corresponding period in 1924 is shown in Table 4. A significant feature of this table is the increase in imports from Italy and the decrease of imports from both the United Kingdom and Germany. It should be noted also that the average foreign[a] value per dozen of Italian hats decreased while the average foreign[a] value of hats imported from England and other countries increased. [Footnote a: Values upon which duties were assessed as computed from data given in Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States.] TABLE 4.--_Imports for consumption of men's sewed straw hats[1] from Italy, United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries, by months, January-April, inclusive, 1924 and 1925._ (Source: Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States) ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- | Italy | United | Germany | Other | Total | | Kingdom | | countries | | | | | [2] | +----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- Month | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 | 1924 ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ January | 35,754 | 50,087 | 19,829 | 34,754 | 140,424 February | 114,644 | 35,024 | 25,372 | 57,429 | 232,469 March | 97,899 | 46,435 | 50,126 | 40,669 | 235,129 April | 192,007 | 119,031 | 85,421 | 49,935 | 446,394 +----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- Total number| 440,304 | 250,577 | 180,748 | 182,787 | 1,054,416 Dozen | 36,692 | 20,882 | 15,062 | 15,232 | 87,868 +==========+==========+==========+===========+=========== | | | | | Total value | $228,452 | $201,291 | $102,366 | $123,775 | $655,884 | | | | | Average | | | | | value | | | | | per dozen | 6.23 | 9.64 | 6.80 | 8.13 | 7.46 +==========+==========+==========+===========+=========== Per cent | | | | | of hats | | | | | imported | | | | | from each | | | | | country | 41.76 | 23.76 | 17.14 | 17.34 | 100.00 ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- | Italy | United | Germany | Other | Total | | Kingdom | | countries | | | | | [2] | +----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- Month | 1925 | 1925 | 1925 | 1925 | 1925 ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ | _Number_ January | 212,292 | 8,995 | 12,070 | 6,104 | 239,461 February | 189,736 | 31,776 | 7,697 | 22,580 | 251,789 March | 207,218 | 61,755 | 3,828 | 24,482 | 297,283 April | 260,145 | 45,711 | 40,479 | 10,545 | 356,880 +----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- Total number| 869,391 | 148,237 | 64,074 | 63,711 | 1,145,413 Dozen | 72,449 | 12,353 | 5,340 | 5,309 | 95,451 +==========+==========+==========+===========+=========== | | | | | Total value | $395,298 | $161,422 | $40,923 | $78,222 | $675,865 | | | | | Average | | | | | value | | | | | per dozen | 5.46 | 13.07 | 7.66 | 14.73 | 7.08 +==========+==========+==========+===========+=========== Per cent | | | | | of hats | | | | | imported | | | | | from each | | | | | country | 75.90 | 12.94 | 5.60 | 5.56 | 100.00 ------------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------- [1: Including men's, women's, and children's.] [2: Including withdrawals from warehouse.] TABLE 5.--_Imports at the port of New York of men's sewed straw hats from Italy[1] classified according to foreign value, including packing January-June, 1924_ [In dozens] ----------------+-------------------------+------------------------- | Sennits[2] | Fancies[3] Value +-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- |Trimmed|Untrimmed| Total |Trimmed|Untrimmed| Total ----------------+-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- $2.99 and less | | 18 | 18 | | 60 | 60 $3.00-$3.49 | 6 | 38 | 44 | | 219 | 219 $3.50-$3.99 | 255 | 23 | 278 | 1 | 250 | 251 $4.00-$4.49 | 2,518 | 28 | 2,546 | 196 | 2,909 | 3,105 $4.50-$4.99 | 1,617 | 24 | 1,641 | 61 | 477 | 538 $5.00-$5.49 | 1,671 | 4 | 1,675 | 427 | 711 | 1,138 $5.50-$5.99 | 1,687 | 1 | 1,688 | 608 | 89 | 697 $6.00-$6.49 | 1,313 | | 1,313 | 2,831 | 182 | 3,013 $6.50-$6.99 | 2,657 | 1 | 2,658 | 2,537 | 33 | 2,570 $7.00-$7.49 | 740 | | 740 | 996 | 15 | 1,011 $7.50-$7.99 | 255 | | 255 | 939 | 3 | 942 $8.00-$8.49 | 147 | | 147 | 470 | 6 | 476 $8.50-$8.99 | 165 | | 165 | 261 | 5 | 266 $9.00-$9.49 | 10 | | 10 | 165 | 1 | 166 $9.50-$9.99 | 30 | | 30 | 107 | | 107 $10.00-$10.49 | 39 | | 39 | 56 | 1 | 57 $10.50-$10.99 | 46 | | 46 | 34 | | 34 $11.00 and over | 63 | 3 | 66 | 10 | 12 | 22 +-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- Total |13,219 | 140 |13,359 | 9,699 | 4,973 |14,672 ----------------+-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- [In dozens] ----------------+-------------------------+------------------------- | Miscellaneous[4] | Grand total Value +-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- |Trimmed|Untrimmed| Total |Trimmed|Untrimmed| Total ----------------+-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- $2.99 and less | | | | | 78 | 78 $3.00-$3.49 | 50 | | 50 | 56 | 257 | 313 $3.50-$3.99 | 570 | | 570 | 826 | 273 | 1,099 $4.00-$4.49 | 622 | | 622 | 3,336 | 2,937 | 6,273 $4.50-$4.99 | 680 | | 680 | 2,358 | 501 | 2,859 $5.00-$5.49 | 1,715 | | 1,715 | 3,813 | 715 | 4,528 $5.50-$5.99 | 1,095 | 58 | 1,153 | 3,390 | 148 | 3,538 $6.00-$6.49 | 1,826 | 10 | 1,836 | 5,970 | 192 | 6,162 $6.50-$6.99 | 879 | 1 | 880 | 6,073 | 35 | 6,108 $7.00-$7.49 | 433 | | 433 | 2,169 | 15 | 2,184 $7.50-$7.99 | 346 | 17 | 363 | 1,540 | 20 | 1,560 $8.00-$8.49 | 598 | | 598 | 1,215 | 6 | 1,221 $8.50-$8.99 | 231 | | 231 | 657 | 5 | 662 $9.00-$9.49 | 420 | | 420 | 595 | 1 | 596 $9.50-$9.99 | 46 | | 46 | 183 | | 183 $10.00-$10.49 | 203 | | 203 | 298 | 1 | 299 $10.50-$10.99 | 56 | | 56 | 136 | | 136 $11.00 and over | 527 | 1 | 528 | 600 | 16 | 616 +-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- Total |10,297 | 87 |10,384 |33,215 | 5,200 |38,415 ----------------+-------+---------+-------+-------+---------+------- [1: Taken from original invoices. Fractional dozen omitted in this table.] [2: Split, improved, and flatfoot.] [3: Fancy straw and sennit, fancy.] [4: Including hats the type of which is not specified in the invoice. Probably many sennits and fancies.] In Table 5, imports of Italian hats at the port of New York in the six months January-June, 1924, have been classified according to foreign values shown on consular invoices. There is a marked concentration of imports in the value groups between $4 and $7 per dozen. About 90 per cent of all the sennit hats and 80 per cent of the total importations had foreign values of less than $7 per dozen. TABLE 6.--_Percentage of men's sewed straw hats imported at the port of New York from Italy with a foreign value less than that specified, January-June_, 1924 --------------+------------+------------+------------------+----------- Foreign value | Sennits[1] | Fancies[2] | Miscellaneous[3] | Total less than-- | | | | --------------+------------+------------+------------------+----------- | _Per cent_ | _Per cent_ | _Per cent_ | _Per cent_ $9.50 | 98.6 | 98.5 | 92.0 | 96.8 $9.00 | 98.6 | 97.4 | 87.9 | 95.2 $8.50 | 97.3 | 95.6 | 85.7 | 93.5 $8.00 | 91.2 | 92.3 | 79.9 | 90.3 $7.50 | 94.3 | 85.9 | 76.4 | 86.3 $7.00 | 88.8 | 79.0 | 72.3 | 80.6 $6.50 | 68.9 | 61.5 | 63.8 | 64.7 $6.00 | 9.1 | 40.9 | 46.1 | 48.6 $5.50 | 46.4 | 36.2 | 35.0 | 39.4 $5.00 | 33.9 | 28.4 | 18.5 | 27.6 $4.50 | 21.6 | 24.8 | 12.0 | 20.2 --------------+------------+------------+------------------+----------- [1: Split, improved, and flatfoot.] [2: Fancy straw and sennit, fancy.] [3: Including hats the type of which is not specified in the invoice.] The imports at the port of New York of hats from England are classified in Table 7. It is evident that the bulk of the English importations are not competitive with Italian hats. Only 28 per cent of the imports from England had a foreign value of less than $7 per dozen. TABLE 7.--_Imports at the port of New York of men's sewed straw hats from England,[1] classified according to foreign value, including packing, January-June_, 1924 ------------------+--------- Foreign value | Dozen ------------------+--------- $6.50-$6.99 | 2,631 $7.00-$7.49 | ... $7.50-$7.99 | ... $8.00-$8.49 | ... $8.50-$8.99 | 3,340 $9.00-$9.49 | 1,260 $9.50-$9.99 | 1,044 $10.00-$10.49 | 98 $10.50-$10.99 | ... $11.00 and up | 948 | ===== Total | 9,521 ------------------+--------- [1: These data cover 9,521 dozen hats out of a total of approximately 10,730 dozen imported from England, or 89 per cent. They represent the larger invoices (several over 1,000 dozen) and hence are not so evenly distributed as are the Italian hats.] _Effect of imports._--The effect of the increasing imports of straw hats on the production and sales of domestic firms was discussed at the public hearings before the Tariff Commission. Evidence was introduced showing that the production of 19 factories decreased from 468,424 dozen in the eight months August, 1923, to March, 1924, to 391,189 dozen in the corresponding months of 1924-25. Seventeen firms showed decreased production and two firms reported increases. Meanwhile imports of foreign hats increased from 74,355 dozen to 102,450 dozen. Imports from Italy increased from 38,000 dozen to 70,000; imports from England decreased from 12,000 dozen to 9,000. Representatives of several domestic firms stated that their losses of business were directly attributable to inability to meet prices quoted by importers of Italian hats.[1] [Footnote 1: See Transcript of Public Hearings, May 16, 1925, pp. 408, 420.] Representatives of the importers, on the other hand, called attention to the increasing competition of small firms in and around New York City with larger and longer established firms located principally in Baltimore. Some of the new firms operate on small capital and specialize in cheap hats which are directly competitive with the cheapest Italian hats. Others produce a somewhat better hat, such as is sold by chain stores. The rate of business failure among the newer firms is unusually high. Although the membership of the group of producers of cheap hats is fluctuating, its total output of hats each year is a factor in the competitive situation. A relatively new development in the distribution of straw hats is the chain stores. Sales of such stores, estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 dozen straw hats yearly, include Italian and English hats but are principally of domestic manufacture. In some cases a chain-store organization has established factories and thus has instituted direct competition with manufacturing firms already established. Chain stores also have furnished capital to small manufacturers, contracting for the bulk of their output. Thus the change in marketing methods has a bearing on the failure of the older establishments to keep pace in the volume of their sales with the national expansion in straw hat consumption. PRINCIPAL COMPETING COUNTRY Table 3, on page 4, shows that in the calendar year 1923 imports of sewed straw hats from Italy amounted to 48,101 dozen, or 51 per cent of total imports. The average value per dozen of these Italian hats was $6.01. During this same period imports from England amounted to 20,549 dozen or 22 per cent of total imports, at an average value of $12.50 per dozen. During the calendar year 1924 imports from Italy amounted to 71,762 dozen, or 44 per cent of the total, at an average value of $5.96 per dozen. Imports from England were 29,450 dozen, or approximately 18 per cent of the total, at an average value of $9.59. Total imports increased from 93,309 dozen in 1923, valued at $779,989, to 164,041 dozen in 1924, valued at $1,179,929, a quantitative gain of approximately 75 per cent. The latest available import data covering the months of January-April, 1925, are shown in Table 4, on page 5. For these four months imports from Italy amounted to 72,449 dozen, or about 76 per cent of the total, and the average value of Italian hats imported declined from $6.23 per dozen, on the comparable four months' period in 1924, to $5.46 per dozen in 1925. Imports from the United Kingdom for this same period were 12,353 dozen, or about 13 per cent of the total, and it should be noted that the average value increased from $9.64 to $13.07 per dozen. Italy, is, therefore, for the purposes of section 315, the principal competing country. FOREIGN PRODUCTION The center of production in Italy is Signa, near Florence. It was estimated (1924) that 1,500 persons were employed in the Signa district in establishments producing men's straw hats. The employees were about evenly divided between men and women. In England the principal centers of straw-hat production are St. Albans and Luton, towns near London. No estimate was obtained of the number of factories in operation, the volume of production, or the number of persons employed. The English manufacturers of men's straw hats in 1923-24 were suffering a business depression, and some of them were changing over to the manufacture of women's hats. _Types of hats produced in foreign factories._--Neither the English nor the Italian factories producing men's straw hats confine their business exclusively to men's sewed straw hats. Some of them also block and trim woven-hat bodies, such as panamas; some make women's and children's hats, and others produce, or deal in, felt hats. Nor is production of sewed straw hats confined to those made of sennit braids; hats are made of other braids as well. _Organization of foreign production._--The sennit braids used in the Italian straw hats exported to the United States are not made in Italy but are of Japanese origin, as are also the sennit braids used in the sewed straw hats made in the United States and in England.[2] [Footnote 2: Milan and fancy braids are plaited by Italian women in their homes, but this industry is not to be confused with the manufacture of sewed hats, the subject of this investigation.] In general, the foreign straw-hat factories do not bleach straw braids in their own establishments. In Italy, however, one concern not only bleached its own braids but also bleached braids for other straw-hat manufacturers. With respect to hats, some of the unfinished bodies, usually leghorns, are made by women in their homes. But men's sewed straw hats, the subject of this investigation, are produced in factories or in small workshops. The latter generally operate on a contract basis for the larger manufacturers or shippers. The workshops which own their own equipment are organized to produce from 25 to 200 dozen sewed hats per week. In the making of the shell or body of the hat the contractors are paid on the basis of the number delivered to and accepted by the principal. The contractors furnish their own sewing cotton, gelatin, and other materials, except braid, used in making the shells or bodies of the hats. The trimming of straw hats is also to some extent performed on a contract basis. The establishments visited in England generally perform all the operations of making and trimming hats in their own establishments, although at times "outworkers" are employed. _Working hours and wages._--The labor employed in the manufacture of sewed straw hats is well organized in both Italy and England. The rates of wages and hours of labor, both of factory workers and of employees of contractors, are determined by collective bargaining. A minimum wage scale for both pieceworkers and timeworkers became effective in Italy October 27, 1924. The labor of women and children in Italy is limited to 48 hours per week (decree of March 15, 1923). The employment of children under 12 years of age in shops and factories is prohibited. COSTS OF PRODUCTION _Methods of obtaining cost data._--Costs of the domestic Italian and English hats were obtained by representatives of the commission. In the United States they were given access to the books and records of the manufacturers. Domestic costs of materials, labor, and overhead are based on actual records. In both Italy and England representatives of the commission were given access to manufacturers' books showing estimates of their costs. The estimates of material and labor costs were verified from original records. Estimates of general administrative and factory expense were expressed as percentages of the combined cost of labor and materials or of sales. Access to records from which the latter estimates could be verified was not permitted. DESCRIPTION OF COST ITEMS _Material._--Material includes costs of braid, of bleaching, and of trimming materials and sundries, and also the cartons in which the hats are packed. _Labor._--The amount charged to the individual hat for labor includes all labor costs connected with its manufacture. The amount of direct labor on each hat was first determined. The indirect labor charge for each hat was determined by applying to its direct labor charge the percentage which total indirect labor for the factory bore to the total direct labor. _Overhead._--In each domestic factory the total overhead charges were obtained and the ratio of these charges to the total direct labor cost of the respective factory was computed. This ratio, expressed as a percentage of direct labor, was applied to the direct labor cost of individual hats to determine the overhead charge to be apportioned to each hat. SELLING EXPENSE (_a_) _Domestic._--The ratio of total selling expense in each factory to total manufacturing cost (material, labor, and overhead) was first determined. This ratio (expressed as a percentage of total manufacturing cost) applied to the manufacturing cost of the selected hat determined its proper share of the total selling expense. Firms organized to deal directly with retailers uniformly had higher selling expenses than those whose products were marketed chiefly through jobbers. The average selling expense of the selected hats was $1.64 per dozen, or 10.8 per cent of the average manufacturing cost. In selling expense is included the charge for cases and other packing material. (_b_) _Foreign._--Costs of selling hats to importers in the United States are included in the general overhead expenses reported by foreign companies, but are an inconsiderable item when compared with manufacturing costs. No expenses of the offices maintained in this country by foreign manufacturers have been included. TABLES SHOWING COST COMPARISONS In Table 8 are shown the costs of domestic and Italian men's sewed straw hats, irrespective of the type of braid used in their manufacture. In Table 9 are shown similar cost data for domestic and English hats. In both tables costs are shown with and without transportation charges on foreign hats, and ad valorem rates of duty necessary to equalize differences in foreign and domestic costs have been computed. TABLE 8.--_Rates of duty necessary to equalize differences in costs of production of men's sewed straw hats in the United States and in Italy, the principal competing country_ -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ Item | Domestic[1] | Italian[2] -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ (_a_) Cost (transportation not included): | _Per dozen_ | _Per dozen_ Material cost | $6.44 | $4.35 Labor | 4.60 | .87 Overhead | 1.70 | .76 +-------------+------------ Total manufacturing cost | 12.74 | 5.98 +=============+============ Difference | | 6.76 Foreign valuation[3] | | 6.42 American selling price[4] | 13.28 | | | Ad valorem duty necessary to equalize | | on basis of-- | | _Per cent_ Foreign valuation | | 105 American selling price | | 51 +=============+============ | | (_b_) Cost (transportation on Italian | | hats to New York included): | | _Per dozen_ Total manufacturing cost | 12.74 | $5.98 Transportation to New York--Inland | | freight, ocean freight, marine | | insurance, consular fee | | 1.10 +-------------+------------ Cost, including transportation to | | New York for Italian hats | 12.74 | 7.08 Difference | | 5.66 Foreign valuation[3] | | 6.42 | | Ad valorem duty necessary to equalize | | on basis of-- | | _Per cent_ Foreign valuation | | 88 -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ [1: Average costs of 15 domestic hats selling to jobbers at $10.55 to $15.52.] [2: Average cost of 15 Italian hats whose imported cost plus duty ranged from $8.51 to $13.10.] [3: Average of wholesale selling prices reported by foreign manufacturers.] [4: Average of wholesale selling prices to jobbers reported by domestic manufacturers.] TABLE 9.--_Rates of duty necessary to equalize differences in costs of production of men's sewed straw hats in the United States and in England_ -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ Item | Domestic[1] | English[2] -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ (_a_) Cost (transportation not included): | _Per dozen_ | _Per dozen_ Material cost | $8.34 | $5.47 Labor | 5.85 | 1.84 Overhead | 1.87 | 2.01 +-------------+------------ Total manufacturing cost | 16.06 | 9.32 +=============+============ Difference | | 6.74 Foreign valuation[3] | | 9.73 Ad valorem duty necessary to equalize | | on basis of-- | | _Per cent_ Foreign valuation | | 69 +=============+============ (_b_) Cost (transportation on English hats | | to New York included): | | _Per dozen_ Total manufacturing cost | 16.06 | $9.32 Transportation to New York--Inland | | freight, ocean freight, marine | | insurance, consular fee | | 1.35 +-------------+------------ Cost, including transportation to New | | York for English hats | 16.06 | 10.67 Difference | | 5.39 Foreign valuation[3] | | 9.73 | | Ad valorem duty necessary to equalize | | on basis of-- | | _Per cent_ Foreign valuation | | 55 -------------------------------------------+-------------+------------ [1: Average costs of eight domestic hats selling to jobbers at $16.74 to $22.50.] [2: Average costs of eight English hats whose landed costs duty paid ranged from $15.64 to $18.60.] [3: Average of selling prices reported by foreign manufacturers.] COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS Styles for men's straw hats are set about one year in advance. Sample hats are manufactured in May and June and orders are taken by manufacturers in July, August, and September for hats to be delivered the following spring. This custom of the trade makes it possible for foreign manufacturers to copy and offer in competition the same styles as those made by American manufacturers. Imported hats have a wide range of styles and prices, including not only sewed hats of sennit braid but also those of fancy braids, and woven body hats such as leghorns. Domestic hats also comprise a wide range of styles and prices. Within this range there is a more or less definitely limited field in which imports compete directly with domestic merchandise. TRANSPORTATION AND MARKETING COSTS Before the Italian or English hats enter into competition in the domestic wholesale market with hats of domestic manufacture expenses for transportation, marine insurance, and consular fees must be incurred. In the season 1923-24 the charges specified amounted to approximately $1.10 per dozen for Italian hats and $1.35 per dozen for English hats.[3] Such expenses are set forth in the lower half of Tables 8 and 9. [Footnote 3: Computed from consular invoices for hats imported at the port of New York in the six months, January-June, 1924.] The methods of marketing foreign and domestic hats are similar, but because of minor differences in terms of sale, etc., it was not found practicable to institute a mathematical comparison of selling costs. Some domestic firms deal only with jobbers, others only with retailers. A few of the largest firms sell to both jobbers and retailers. When the manufacturer dispenses with the services of jobbers his selling costs are, of course, increased. Foreign straw hats are distributed principally by importing jobbers. Such firms are usually engaged also in the marketing of domestic hats and in some instances are manufacturers or have financial interests in domestic factories. Foreign factories occasionally deal directly with large retailers in this country. In such cases it is usual for the retailer's representative to travel abroad to inspect samples and place orders. One large Italian factory maintains a New York office through which it deals directly with domestic retailers. FORMAL STATEMENT OF CONCLUSIONS (1) Italy is the principal competing country. While Commissioners Costigan and Dennis agree with this conclusion, they are also of opinion that, with respect to hats valued at more than $9.50 per dozen in the country of exportation, Great Britain is shown to be the principal competing country. (2) The average cost of production in the United States, as shown by the cost data for the season 1923-24, of men's sewed straw hats sold to jobbers for $10.55 to $16.52 per unit of one dozen is $12.74. The average cost of production, not including transportation costs, of imported men's sewed straw hats whose landed costs, duty paid, range from $8.51 to $13.10 per dozen, and which are like or similar to the domestic hats above described, is $5.98 per dozen. The difference in said costs of production, transportation costs not included, is $6.76 per dozen. The cost of production of the imported hats, including transportation costs from the foreign factory to the dock at New York, is $7.08 per dozen, and the difference in said costs is $5.66 per dozen. (3) The average selling price of such imported men's sewed straw hats, in the country of exportation, as shown by said cost data, is $6.42 per dozen. The American selling price, as defined in subdivision (_f_) of section 402 of the tariff act of 1922, of similar competitive articles manufactured or produced in the United States, is $13.28 per dozen. (4) If transportation costs be not included, the differences in costs of production in the United States and in said principal competing country are greater than the amount of the present duty of 60 per cent ad valorem increased by the total maximum increase authorized under section 315, subdivision (_a_), of said act, and said differences in costs of production in the United States and in said principal competing country can not be equalized by proceeding under the provisions of said subdivision (_a_); that is to say, by increasing to the extent of 50 per cent the existing ad valorem duty applied to the value of the imported article in the country of exportation. (5) If transportation costs be included, the rate of duty shown by the differences in costs of production, necessary to equalize said differences, upon men's sewed straw hats valued at $9.50 or less per dozen in the country of exportation, is a rate of 88 per cent ad valorem based on the valued in the country of exportation, as defined in section 402 of said act. (6) If transportation costs be not included, the rate of duty shown by the differences in said costs of production, necessary to equalize said differences, upon men's sewed straw hats valued at $9.50 or less per dozen in the country of exportation, is a rate of 50 per cent ad valorem based upon the American selling price, as defined in said section 402, of similar competitive articles manufactured or produced in the United States. (7) The average cost of production in the United States, as shown by the cost data for the season 1923-24, of men's sewed straw hats sold to jobbers for $16.74 to $22.50 per unit of one dozen is $16.06. The average cost of production, not including transportation costs, of imported men's sewed straw hats whose landed costs, duty paid, range from $15.64 to $18.60 per dozen, and which are like or similar to the domestic hats above described, is $9.32 per dozen. The difference in said costs of production, transportation costs not included, is $6.74 per dozen. The cost of production of the imported hats, including transportation costs, is $10.67 per dozen, and the difference in said costs is $5.39 per dozen. (8) The average selling price of such imported men's sewed straw hats, in the country of exportation, as shown by said cost data, is $9.73 per dozen. (9) If transportation costs be included, the rate of duty shown by the differences in costs of production necessary to equalize said differences upon men's sewed straw hats valued at more than $9.50 per dozen in the country of exportation is a rate of 55 per cent ad valorem based upon the value of such hats in the country of exportation. (10) If transportation costs be not included, the rate of duty shown by the differences in costs of production necessary to equalize said differences upon men's sewed straw hats valued at more than $9.50 per dozen in the country of exportation is, according to a mathematical calculation, 69 per cent ad valorem based upon the value of such hats in the country of exportation. Commissioners Marvin, Glassie, and Baldwin are, however, of the opinion that the existing rate of 60 per cent ad valorem substantially equalizes differences in costs of production in respect of hats valued above $9.50 per dozen in the country of exportation. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS On the basis of the facts presented the commission agrees that the data indicate an increase in tariff rates, if the differences in costs of production are to be equalized between lower-priced grades of foreign hats and comparable products of American factories. In respect of such hats, Italy is the principal competing country. The commission further agrees that foreign hats sold in the United States on a basis of quality rather than price are the higher-priced hats which at this time are not keenly competitive with the products of the American industry. With respect to such higher-priced hats, Commissioners Costigan and Dennis are of opinion that Great Britain is shown to be the principal competing county, and that under the law the data indicate that the duty should be reduced. The commission agrees that $9.50 per dozen, foreign valuation, represents a fair breaking point for customs purposes between lower-grade hats competing on a price basis and hats of superior material and workmanship competing on a quality basis. Under section 315 of the tariff act of 1922 there is an undetermined legal question with respect to including transportation expense in estimating foreign production costs. Commissioners Costigan, Dennis, and Baldwin agree that under subdivision (c) of section 315 a fair estimate of foreign costs should include the expense of transporting the foreign product to the principal competitive market or markets in this country. For hats whose foreign value is not in excess of $9.50 per dozen the rate of 88 per cent ad valorem is indicated as the correct duty for equalizing costs, with transportation included. Chairman Marvin and Commissioner Glassie agree that under the law costs of production do not include transportation costs on either side. If transportation costs be not included in the foreign costs of production shown by this investigation, the rate indicated by the cost data would be 105 per cent on foreign valuation. This rate being in excess of the maximum permissible under subdivision (a) of section 315, resort must be had under subdivision (b) of section 315 to the American selling price basis of valuation in order to equalize the differences in production costs. For hats whose foreign valuation is not in excess of $9.50 per dozen the rate of duty thus indicated by the cost difference is 50 per cent on the American selling price. As to hats with a foreign valuation above $9.50 per dozen, if foreign transportation be included, the present duty of 60 per cent on the basis of foreign valuation is in excess of the difference in cost of production and the rate of duty indicated is 55 per cent on the basis of foreign valuation. If foreign transportation be not included, the rate of duty indicated is 69 per cent on the basis of foreign valuation. The figures are shown in detail in Table 9, on page 10. In the accompanying report the above conclusions will be found more formally stated for the purposes of a proclamation. Respectfully submitted. THOMAS O. MARVIN, _Chairman_. EDWARD P. COSTIGAN, HENRY H. GLASSIE, ALFRED P. DENNIS, A. H. BALDWIN, _Commissioners_. SEPARATE STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER COSTIGAN, IN PART CONCURRING AND IN PART DISSENTING, IN THE INVESTIGATION OF MEN'S SEWED STRAW HATS While I concur with my associates in transmitting the commission's data in the investigation of men's sewed straw hats, a differentiation of views must be expressed with respect to certain conclusions which may be drawn from such data. _Both higher and lower duties indicated by the commission's cost figures._--Under the provisions of section 315 of the tariff act of 1922, the information secured by the commission and summarized in this report points not only to an increased duty on lower-priced hats but also to a decreased duty on higher-priced hats. It is submitted that no satisfactory reason can be assigned under the present record for failing to recommend such a simultaneous upward and downward change in the present rate of duty by the use of the provisions for flexibility in the tariff act of 1922. Under the controlling statute all commissioners are agreed that a clear distinction exists between the bulk of the lower-priced hats coming from Italy and the lesser but considerable quantity of higher-priced hats imported from Great Britain. This feature of the commission's summarized data is particularly presented in Tables 5, 6, and 7, in which are shown the sources, volume, and foreign values of imported hats. Table 8 presents American and Italian costs of lower-priced hats; Table 9, cost data for higher-priced hats in the United States and Great Britain. Table 8 indicates that, in lieu of the present duty of 60 per cent on foreign value, a duty of 88 per cent on foreign value is required to equalize the costs incurred with respect to the lower-priced hats; and Table 9, that a duty of 55 per cent on foreign value will suffice to equalize such costs in the case of the higher-priced hats. In other words, the record establishes the need, if competitive costs are to be equalized under section 315, for creating two classes of men's sewed straw hats, with a different principal competing country and a separate rate of duty for each class. Under the circumstances, to confine the findings of the commission to an increased duty on lower-priced hats is, in one important particular, to fall short of the statutory responsibility undertaken when the commission ordered an investigation of the adequacy of the present 60 per cent ad valorem duty as a measure of equalized costs in the United States and foreign countries. A partial conclusion from the commission's data, where, as here, a comprehensive conclusion is clearly warranted, would appear to be discriminatory and fail to fulfill the scientific and impartial purposes of the provisions of section 315. _Determining the dividing line for tariff purposes between higher and lower priced hats._--The above tables sufficiently demonstrate that the great bulk of men's sewed straw hats, imported at the port of New York during the period of investigation, came from Italy and had a foreign value of $7 or less per dozen, and much the larger part of the higher-priced hats came from England and had a foreign value of $8.50 or more per dozen. The separation into classes of lower and higher priced hats, with different duties for each class tends to result in an overstatement of the values of the lower-priced imports in order to obtain the benefit of the lower duty on high-priced imports. There is also a tendency of the higher-priced imports to increase in volume. To meet the changed situation a higher "breaking point" than the $7 value is desirable. For example, with a 90 per cent duty, a hat whose foreign value is $7 per dozen would cost, landed, duty and transportation paid, $14.40. If the rate of 60 per cent remain on hats in the higher bracket, as certain commissioners suggest that it continue to do, instead of the $7 hat it might be profitable to import a hat worth $8.25 per dozen, which would enter, duty paid and transportation included, for $14.30. Adopting and applying the same method to hats having an invoice value of $7.50 or less per dozen, a breaking point of approximately $9.10 would make it unprofitable to bring in higher-priced hats in order to obtain the benefit of a 55 per cent rate of duty. A breaking point of approximately $9.50 would therefore appear to be safely calculated to prevent overvaluation with respect to the great bulk of low-priced men's sewed straw hats now being imported. _Some omissions from and doubtful features in the commission's report._--Although from the point of view of equalizing foreign and domestic costs under the provisions of section 315, the data of the commission on their face point to an increase from 60 to 88 per cent ad valorem, complete frankness compels the statement that the conclusion arrived at is not free from difficulties; that the record is not unequivocal; and that a strong case might be made for not advancing the duty to the full extent thus indicated. Since the application of the cost-of-production standard under section 315 is still in its experimental stages, it may promote accuracy and help to bring about scientific amendments of the present law to illustrate in this investigation the possible danger of using the commission's figures to fortify different and inconsistent conclusions. The data obtained by the commission in the straw-hat investigation are unsatisfactory in the following particulars: _Representativeness of samples._--In selecting hats assumed to be representative of American production, it was found impracticable to determine the respective percentages of production of cheap, medium-priced, and high-priced hats. In consequence there is some reason to believe that the limited figures secured with respect to cheap American hats has tended to exaggerate American costs beyond what an exactly representative selection would have shown. Figures were secured for only a few producers of cheap American hats, and while it is impossible to say what weight should be given to such cheap American production, expert opinion is not wanting in support of the view that because of the method of sampling employed, American costs as a whole have been unduly elevated for comparison with Italian costs. While it is too late to make any exact mathematical adjustment on this account, it is only fair to urge distinct caution in accepting at their face value and following to their inexorable conclusions the comparisons based on the domestic and foreign data. Probably the most important principle of sampling employed by the commission's agents when confronted with the problem of selecting for cost comparison a few types of hats from the many manufactured was the choice of those types of hats with respect to which the domestic industry has been suffering the keenest competition. It must be clear that the selection of such hats tended to show the widest cost divergence for the two countries, since it was to be expected that the severest competition would have been experienced when the relatively higher-cost hats of the United States met the relatively lower-cost hats of Italy. Nor could it be said that such hats as were chosen were the only "similar competitive articles," since the foreign manufacturers can and do produce all types and styles sold in the United States. The fact that the American industry earned approximately 10 per cent on its invested capital (even after the payment of large salaries) must be chiefly explained by the profits earned on hats with respect to which there was no such acute competition. Obviously such more profitable hats strengthened the domestic industry's competitive resistance. _Importers' selling expenses omitted._--Through inadvertence, but none the less unfortunately, the selling expenses of importers were not obtained by the commission. There was considerable testimony at the commission's public hearing to the effect that a relatively heavy burden rests on such importers in selling such straw hats in the United States. (See Transcript of Public Hearing, pp. 110-116.) The American manufacturers' costs of marketing their hats to the jobbers were secured by the commission's representatives, but the selling expenses of importers of foreign hats (without which Italian hats could not reach American jobbers) were not secured: thus, the complete picture of the competitive cost situation is not presented in the commission's report. The significance of this omission is considerable. Under the provisions of subdivision (c) of section 315 the statutory mandate to consider much "advantages and disadvantages in competition" is unavoidable, and, while it is probably not reasonable to reject the commission's findings as a whole because of this record defect, some allowance would be reasonable falling short of the extreme conclusions to which the data would otherwise point. In answer to the argument that the domestic industry has so well withstood the competition offered by what seem to be extremely low-cost Italian hats, it has been urged that the Italian producers are far from their market and that jobbers prefer a source of supply more conveniently at hand. This statement involves the admission of a competitive disadvantage suffered by the foreign producer, which is clearly not capable of being measured. However, the one statistically measurable marketing disadvantage of the foreign producer, referred to, was unfortunately neglected when the commission's data were assembled. As has been suggested, costs secured, though not used, for the American producer included his expense of placing his hats in condition ready for delivery to the jobber, but only those Italian costs were obtained which with transportation added bring the product to the docks at New York. Importers must incur the expense of handling and reselling before the product is ready for the jobbers. In so far as such importers perform the jobbers' functions, the objections stated may not be valid, but any importers' costs of reselling to jobbers should undoubtedly have been collected and considered. It may further be noted that some American manufacturers actually sell their hats to retailers. Such domestic selling expenses were secured by the commission on its schedules, and there is reason to believe that certain overhead items in the assembled costs are probably larger than they would otherwise be because of the imperfect allocation of selling and manufacturing expenses. _Deficiencies in comparative overhead data._--More striking in some respects than the failure to secure importers' selling expenses is the contrast exhibited in the commission's report between overhead expenses in the United States and abroad. The foreign overhead expenses are mere estimates, since the commission's representatives were refused access to the original books and records by practically every foreign firm. It accordingly became necessary to resort to estimates based on flat percentages of prime costs or sales price. These were in fact submitted by Italian manufacturers and used by the commission's representatives. It now develops that these percentages have never been analyzed or justified. Indeed, there is no definite record of what expense items were included or neglected in such percentages. The overhead expenses in the United States include very considerable salaries paid to officers of the domestic manufacturing concerns, and the question is presented whether, as some accountants maintain, such salaries should not be charged exclusively to selling rather than manufacturing expenses, since such officers usually pay more attention to the selling end of the business. In the commission's records it appears that about 85 per cent of the total officers' salaries was charged to manufacturing and about 15 per cent to selling. The importance in cost investigations of scrutinizing high salaries should be evident, as they might easily be, although, in this instance it is not suggested that they have been, used to conceal profits. It is worthy of note that the average salaries allowed by the commission's representatives in the domestic costs of all the hats manufactured amounted to 69 cents per dozen--nearly as much as the entire average Italian overhead charge. It is to be remembered, as already stated, that this average amount does not include the additional item allowed in the selling expense for officers' salaries. It is of interest to note, further, that the American firms which complain most of Italian competition showed the largest salary accounts. One firm, in fact, had a salary expense, included in manufacturing cost, of more than $1 per dozen hats. Nevertheless, even after the payment of such salaries, it has been shown that the industry as a whole earned approximately 10 per cent on the invested capital during the period covered by the commission's investigation. It would be obviously difficult to determine what salaries should reasonably be allowed, but, in view of such a showing, it might be argued with force that, as has been done in other investigations when data unsatisfactory for a fair comparison have been secured, such data on both sides should be excluded from the final calculation. To illustrate, the commission in the present investigation has eliminated the item of interest here and in Italy, since adequate data for the Italian industry were unobtainable. If this principle were followed in the matter of overhead, a conclusion might reasonably be based on the comparison of material and labor costs here and in Italy plus transportation from Italy to our principal market or markets. To illustrate the possibility, already mentioned, of diverse conclusions from the commission's record, the difference between the material and labor costs here and in Italy, with transportation included, is shown in the following table: ------------------------------------------------+--------+-------- |Domestic|Italian ------------------------------------------------+--------+-------- Material costs | $6.44 | $4.35 Labor | 4.60 | .87 +--------+-------- Total | 11.04 | 5.22 +--------+-------- Difference | $5.82 Transportation to New York | 1.10 +----------------- Final difference | 4.72 +================= Foreign selling value | 6.42 +================= | _Per cent_ Ad valorem duty required to equalize | on basis of foreign selling value | 74 Present duty | 60 ------------------------------------------------+----------------- The failure to consider interest on investment in the overhead introduces another difficulty of some importance. If rents actually paid are included in costs, equality of treatment demands that interest on capital invested in plants owned, and therefore not rented, should be considered. In the costs of 14 of the American companies investigated the rent charge amounted to $0.29 per dozen for all styles of hats. It appears that there is no information to show that any one of the Italian companies covered rented its factory; therefore, the failure to include interest on the capital invested in the Italian factories may have overestimated the relative strength of Italian competition. The failure to include interest on invested capital in the Italian costs might justify the exclusion of the rent item from the American overhead costs. It will, of course, be argued that to disregard all overhead costs in both the foreign and domestic figures in the way suggested would fail to measure the domestic disadvantage arising from relatively higher overhead expenses. There are, however, two considerations, discussed in detail in this statement, which tend to compensate for any inaccuracy which the above findings might imply. They are (1) the method of sampling employed by the commission; and (2) the failure to consider certain of the Italian industries' marketing expenses. _Conclusions._--The principal significance of the foregoing discussion is to be found in the conclusion that, in recommending under the law an increase in the present rate of duty on lower-priced hats from 60 to 88 per cent on foreign value, the statute is being liberally construed from the point of view of the domestic industry, in the effort to arrive at an equalization of costs in the United States and abroad. Regardless of the legal question as to whether transportation should or should not be included, any higher duty on any of the hats investigated than 88 per cent on foreign value--particularly so high a duty as 105 per cent, or the equivalent 50 per cent on American selling price, which has been suggested by certain commissioners--involves such a grave departure from the economic purposes sought to be promoted by section 315 as to make it highly desirable that the present investigation be reopened before any such increase in duty is proclaimed. Reviewing, therefore, the whole record in this investigation and dismissing, though not without hesitation, the foregoing argument in favor of a lower rate of duty than 88 per cent, foreign value, on the lower-priced hats, it is submitted that under the law the data collected by the commission in this investigation warrant formal findings of fact to the following effect: 1. The classification for men's sewed straw hats in paragraph 1406 of the tariff act of 1922 should be changed to provide separate rates of duty for imported hats of different foreign values. 2. The present rate of duty should be increased to 88 per cent on imported hats having a foreign value of less than $9.50 per dozen. 3. The present rate of duty should be decreased to 55 per cent on imported hats having a foreign value of $9.50 or more per dozen. EDWARD P. COSTIGAN, _Commissioner_. JULY 15, 1925. APPENDIX A PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INCREASING THE RATE OF DUTY ON MEN'S SEWED STRAW HATS Whereas in and by section 315 (a) of Title III of the act of Congress approved September 21, 1922, entitled "An act to provide revenue, to regulate commerce with foreign countries, to encourage the industries of the United States, and for other purposes," it is, among other things, provided that whenever the President, upon investigation of the differences in costs of production of articles wholly or in part the growth or product of the United States and of like or similar articles wholly or in part the growth or product of competing foreign countries, shall find it thereby shown that the duties fixed in this act do not equalize the said differences in costs of production in the United States and the principal competing country he shall, by such investigation, ascertain said differences and determine and proclaim the changes in classifications or increases or decreases in rates of duty provided in said act shown by said ascertained differences in such costs of production necessary to equalize the same; Whereas in and by section 315 (c) of said act it is further provided that in ascertaining the differences in costs of production, under the provisions of subdivisions (a) and (b) of said section, the President, in so far as he finds it practicable, shall take into consideration (1) the differences in conditions in production, including wages, costs of material, and other items in costs of production of such or similar articles in the United States and in competing foreign countries; (2) the differences in the wholesale selling prices of domestic and foreign articles in the principal markets of the United States; (3) advantages granted to a foreign producer by a foreign government, or by a person, partnership, corporation, or association in a foreign country; and (4) any other advantages or disadvantages in competition; Whereas, under and by virtue of said section of said act, the United States Tariff Commission has made an investigation to assist the President in ascertaining the differences in costs of production of and of all other facts and conditions enumerated in said section with respect to the articles included within the class or kind of articles provided for in paragraph 1406 of Title I of said tariff act of 1922, namely, men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, being wholly or in part the growth or product of the United States, and of and with respect to like or similar articles wholly or in part the growth or product of competing foreign countries; Whereas in the course of said investigation hearings were held, of which reasonable public notice was given and at which parties interested were given reasonable opportunity to be present, to produce evidence, and to be heard; Whereas the President upon said investigation of said differences in costs of production of men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, wholly or in part the growth or product of the United States and of like or similar articles wholly or in part the growth or product of competing foreign countries, has thereby found-- That no change in the existing rate of duty is required to equalize differences in costs of production in the United States and in the principal competing country, with respect to men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, valued at more than $9.50 per dozen; That the principal competing country for men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, valued at $9.50 or less per dozen, is Italy; And that the duty fixed in said title and act does nor equalize the differences in costs of production in the United States and in said principal competing country, namely, Italy, in respect of such men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, valued at $9.50 or less per dozen, and has ascertained and determined the increased rate of duty necessary to equalize the same. Now, therefore, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, do hereby determine and proclaim that the increase in the rate of duty provided in said act upon men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, valued at $9.50 or less per dozen, shown by said ascertained differences in said costs of production necessary to equalize the same is as follows: An increase in said duty on men's straw hats, whether wholly or partly manufactured, not blocked or blocked, not trimmed or trimmed, if sewed, valued at $9.50 or less per dozen from 60 per cent ad valorem to 88 per cent ad valorem. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this twelfth day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fiftieth. [SEAL.] CALVIN COOLIDGE. By the President: FRANK B. KELLOGG, _Secretary of State_. [Transcriber's Note: Original tables presenting data for the years 1923 and 1924 in adjacent columns under each country header have been broken into two parts; one for each year, with headers and rows duplicated.] 
2052	----	BUSINESS*** Transcribed from the 1889 George Bell & Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS IS NOBODY'S BUSINESS or, PRIVATE ABUSES, PUBLIC GRIEVANCES: EXEMPLIFIED In the Pride, Insolence, and exorbitant Wages of our Women, Servants, Footmen, &c. WITH A Proposal for Amendment of the same; as also for clearing the Streets of those Vermin called Shoe-Cleaners, and substituting in their stead many Thousands of industrious Poor, now ready to starve. With divers other Hints of great Use to the Public. Humbly submitted the Consideration of our Legislature, and the careful Perusal of all Masters and Mistresses of Families. BY ANDREW MORETON, Esq. The Fifth Edition, with the Addition of a Preface. LONDON: Printed for W. MEADOWS, in Cornhill; and sold by T. WARNER, at the Black Boy in Pater-Noster Row; A. DODD, without Temple Bar; and E. NUTT, at the Royal Exchange. 1725. Price Six Pence.] THE PREFACE Since this little book appeared in print, it has had no less than three answers, and fresh attacks are daily expected from the powers of Grub- street; but should threescore antagonists more arise, unless they say more to the purpose than the forementioned, they shall not tempt me to reply. Nor shall I engage in a paper war, but leave my book to answer for itself, having advanced nothing therein but evident truths, and incontestible matters of fact. The general objection is against my style; I do not set up for an author, but write only to be understood, no matter how plain. As my intentions are good, so have they had the good fortune to meet with approbation from the sober and substantial part of mankind; as for the vicious and vagabond, their ill-will is my ambition. It is with uncommon satisfaction I see the magistracy begin to put the laws against vagabonds in force with the utmost vigour, a great many of those vermin, the japanners, having lately been taken up and sent to the several work-houses in and about this city; and indeed high time, for they grow every day more and more pernicious. My project for putting watchmen under commissioners, will, I hope, be put in practice; for it is scarce safe to go by water unless you know your man. As for the maid-servants, if I undervalue myself to take notice of them, as they are pleased to say, it is because they overvalue themselves so much they ought to be taken notice of. This makes the guilty take my subject by the wrong end, but any impartial reader may find, I write not against servants, but bad servants; not against wages, but exorbitant wages, and am entirely of the poet's opinion, The good should meet with favour and applause, The wicked be restrain'd by wholesome laws. The reason why I did not publish this book till the end of the last sessions of parliament was, because I did not care to interfere with more momentous affairs; but leave it to the consideration of that august body during this recess, against the next sessions, when I shall exhibit another complaint against a growing abuse, for which I doubt not but to receive their approbation and the thanks of all honest men. EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS IS NOBODY'S BUSINESS This is a proverb so common in everybody's mouth, that I wonder nobody has yet thought it worth while to draw proper inferences from it, and expose those little abuses, which, though they seem trifling, and as it were scarce worth consideration, yet, by insensible degrees, they may become of injurious consequence to the public; like some diseases, whose first symptoms are only trifling disorders, but by continuance and progression, their last periods terminate in the destruction of the whole human fabric. In contradiction therefore to this general rule, and out of sincere love and well meaning to the public, give me leave to enumerate the abuses insensibly crept in among us, and the inconveniences daily arising from the insolence and intrigues of our servant-wenches, who, by their caballing together, have made their party so considerable, that everybody cries out against them; and yet, to verify the proverb, nobody has thought of, or at least proposed a remedy, although such an undertaking, mean as it seems to be, I hope will one day be thought worthy the consideration of our king, lords, and commons. Women servants are now so scarce, that from thirty and forty shillings a year, their wages are increased of late to six, seven, nay, eight pounds per annum, and upwards; insomuch that an ordinary tradesman cannot well keep one; but his wife, who might be useful in his shop or business, must do the drudgery of household affairs; and all this because our servant- wenches are so puffed up with pride nowadays, that they never think they go fine enough: it is a hard matter to know the mistress from the maid by their dress; nay, very often the maid shall be much the finer of the two. Our woollen manufacture suffers much by this, for nothing but silks and satins will go down with our kitchen-wenches; to support which intolerable pride, they have insensibly raised their wages to such a height as was never known in any age or nation but this. Let us trace this from the beginning, and suppose a person has a servant- maid sent him out of the country, at fifty shillings, or three pounds a year. The girl has scarce been a week, nay, a day in her service, but a committee of servant-wenches are appointed to examine her, who advise her to raise her wages, or give warning; to encourage her to which, the herb- woman, or chandler-woman, or some other old intelligencer, provides her a place of four or five pounds a year; this sets madam cock-a-hoop, and she thinks of nothing now but vails and high wages, and so gives warning from place to place, till she has got her wages up to the tip-top. Her neat's leathern shoes are now transformed into laced ones with high heels; her yarn stockings are turned into fine woollen ones, with silk clocks; and her high wooden pattens are kicked away for leathern clogs; she must have a hoop too, as well as her mistress; and her poor scanty linsey-woolsey petticoat is changed into a good silk one, for four or five yards wide at the least. Not to carry the description farther, in short, plain country Joan is now turned into a fine London madam, can drink tea, take snuff, and carry herself as high as the best. If she be tolerably handsome, and has any share of cunning, the apprentice or her master's son is enticed away and ruined by her. Thus many good families are impoverished and disgraced by these pert sluts, who, taking the advantage of a young man's simplicity and unruly desires, draw many heedless youths, nay, some of good estates, into their snares; and of this we have but too many instances. Some more artful shall conceal their condition, and palm themselves off on young fellows for gentlewomen and great fortunes. How many families have been ruined by these ladies? when the father or master of the family, preferring the flirting airs of a young prinked up strumpet, to the artless sincerity of a plain, grave, and good wife, has given his desires aloose, and destroyed soul, body, family, and estate. But they are very favourable if they wheedle nobody into matrimony, but only make a present of a small live creature, no bigger than a bastard, to some of the family, no matter who gets it; when a child is born it must be kept. Our sessions' papers of late are crowded with instances of servant-maids robbing their places, this can be only attributed to their devilish pride; for their whole inquiry nowadays is, how little they shall do, how much they shall have. But all this while they make so little reserve, that if they fall sick the parish must keep them, if they are out of place, they must prostitute their bodies, or starve; so that from clopping and changing, they generally proceed to whoring and thieving, and this is the reason why our streets swarm with strumpets. Thus many of them rove from place to place, from bawdy-house to service, and from service to bawdy-house again, ever unsettled and never easy, nothing being more common than to find these creatures one week in a good family, and the next in a brothel. This amphibious life makes them fit for neither, for if the bawd uses them ill, away they trip to service, and if the mistress gives them a wry word, whip they are at a bawdy-house again, so that in effect they neither make good whores nor good servants. Those who are not thus slippery in the tail, are light of finger; and of these the most pernicious are those who beggar you inchmeal. If a maid is a downright thief she strips you, it once, and you know your loss; but these retail pilferers waste you insensibly, and though you hardly miss it, yet your substance shall decay to such a degree, that you must have a very good bottom indeed not to feel the ill effects of such moths in your family. Tea, sugar, wine, &c., or any such trifling commodities, are reckoned no thefts, if they do not directly take your pewter from your shelf, or your linen from your drawers, they are very honest: What harm is there, say they, in cribbing a little matter for a junket, a merry bout or so? Nay, there are those that when they are sent to market for one joint of meat, shall take up two on their master's account, and leave one by the way, for some of these maids are mighty charitable, and can make a shift to maintain a small family with what they can purloin from their masters and mistresses. If you send them with ready money, they turn factors, and take threepence or fourpence in the shilling brokerage. And here let me take notice of one very heinous abuse, not to say petty felony, which is practised in most of the great families about town, which is, when the tradesman gives the house-keeper or other commanding servant a penny or twopence in the shilling, or so much in the pound, for everything they send in, and which, from thence, is called poundage. This, in my opinion, is the greatest of villanies, and ought to incur some punishment, yet nothing is more common, and our topping tradesmen, who seem otherwise to stand mightily on their credit, make this but a matter of course and custom. If I do not, says one, another will (for the servant is sure to pick a hole in the person's coat who shall not pay contribution). Thus this wicked practice is carried on and winked at, while receiving of stolen goods, and confederating with felons, which is not a jot worse, is so openly cried out against, and severely punished, witness Jonathan Wild. And yet if a master or mistress inquire after anything missing, they must be sure to place their words in due form, or madam huffs and flings about at a strange rate, What, would you make a thief of her? Who would live with such mistrustful folks? Thus you are obliged to hold your tongue, and sit down quietly by your loss, for fear of offending your maid, forsooth! Again, if your maid shall maintain one, two, or more persons from your table, whether they are her poor relations, countryfolk, servants out of place, shoe-cleaners, charwomen, porters, or any other of her menial servants, who do her ladyship's drudgery and go of her errands, you must not complain at your expense, or ask what has become of such a thing, or such a thing; although it might never so reasonably be supposed that it was altogether impossible to have so much expended in your family; but hold your tongue for peace sake, or madam will say, You grudge her victuals; and expose you to the last degree all over the neighbourhood. Thus have they a salve for every sore, cheat you to your face, and insult you into the bargain; nor can you help yourself without exposing yourself, or putting yourself into a passion. Another great abuse crept in among us, is the giving of veils to servants; this was intended originally as an encouragement to such as were willing and handy, but by custom and corruption it is now grown to be a thorn in our sides, and, like other good things, abused, does more harm than good; for now they make it a perquisite, a material part of their wages, nor must their master give a supper, but the maid expects the guests should pay for it, nay, sometimes through the nose. Thus have they spirited people up to this unnecessary and burthensome piece of generosity unknown to our forefathers, who only gave gifts to servants at Christmas-tide, which custom is yet kept into the bargain; insomuch that a maid shall have eight pounds per annum in a gentleman's or merchant's family. And if her master is a man of free spirit, who receives much company, she very often doubles her wages by her veils; thus having meat, drink, washing, and lodging for her labour, she throws her whole income upon her back, and by this means looks more like the mistress of the family than the servant-wench. And now we have mentioned washing, I would ask some good housewifely gentlewoman, if servant-maids wearing printed linens, cottons, and other things of that nature, which require frequent washing, do not, by enhancing the article of soap, add more to housekeeping than the generality of people would imagine? And yet these wretches cry out against great washes, when their own unnecessary dabs are very often the occasion. But the greatest abuse of all is, that these creatures are become their own lawgivers; nay, I think they are ours too, though nobody would imagine that such a set of slatterns should bamboozle a whole nation; but it is neither better nor worse, they hire themselves to you by their own rule. That is, a month's wages, or a month's warning; if they don't like you they will go away the next day, help yourself how you can; if you don't like them, you must give them a month's wages to get rid of them. This custom of warning, as practised by our maid-servants, is now become a great inconvenience to masters and mistresses. You must carry your dish very upright, or miss, forsooth, gives you warning, and you are either left destitute, or to seek for a servant; so that, generally speaking, you are seldom or never fixed, but always at the mercy of every new comer to divulge your family affairs, to inspect your private life, and treasure up the sayings of yourself and friends. A very great confinement, and much complained of in most families. Thus have these wenches, by their continual plotting and cabals, united themselves into a formidable body, and got the whip hand of their betters; they make their own terms with us; and two servants now, will scarce undertake the work which one might perform with ease; notwithstanding which, they have raised their wages to a most exorbitant pitch; and, I doubt not, if there be not a stop put to their career, but they will bring wages up to 201. per annum in time, for they are much about half way already. It is by these means they run away with a great part of our money, which might be better employed in trade, and what is worse, by their insolent behaviour, their pride in dress, and their exorbitant wages, they give birth to the following inconveniences. First, They set an ill example to our children, our apprentices, our covenant servants, and other dependants, by their saucy and insolent behaviour, their pert, and sometimes abusive answers, their daring defiance of correction, and many other insolences which youth are but too apt to imitate. Secondly, By their extravagance in dress, they put our wives and daughters upon yet greater excesses, because they will, as indeed they ought, go finer than the maid; thus the maid striving to outdo the mistress, the tradesman's wife to outdo the gentleman's wife, the gentleman's wife emulating the lady, and the ladies one another; it seems as if the whole business of the female sex were nothing but an excess of pride, and extravagance in dress. Thirdly, The great height to which women-servants have brought their wages, makes a mutiny among the men-servants, and puts them upon raising their wages too; so that in a little time our servants will become our partners; nay, probably, run away with the better part of our profits, and make servants of us _vice versa_. But yet with all these inconveniences, we cannot possibly do without these creatures; let us therefore cease to talk of the abuses arising from them, and begin to think of redressing them. I do not set up for a lawgiver, and therefore shall lay down no certain rules, humbly submitting in all things to the wisdom of our legislature. What I offer shall be under correction; and upon conjecture, my utmost ambition being but to give some hints to remedy this growing evil, and leave the prosecution to abler hands. And first it would be necessary to settle and limit their wages, from forty and fifty shillings to four and five pounds per annum, that is to say, according to their merits and capacities; for example, a young unexperienced servant should have forty shillings per annum, till she qualifies herself for a larger sum; a servant who can do all household work, or, as the good women term it, can take her work and leave her work, should have four pounds per annum; and those who have lived seven years in one service, should ever after demand five pounds per annum, for I would very fain have some particular encouragements and privileges given to such servants who should continue long in a place; it would incite a desire to please, and cause an emulation very beneficial to the public. I have heard of an ancient charity in the parish of St. Clement's Danes, where a sum of money, or estate, is left, out of the interest or income of which such maid-servants, who have lived in that parish seven years in one service, receive a reward of ten pounds apiece, if they please to demand it. This is a noble benefaction, and shows the public spirit of the donor; but everybody's business is nobody's; nor have I heard that such reward has been paid to any servant of late years. A thousand pities a gift of that nature should sink into oblivion, and not be kept up as an example to incite all parishes to do the like. The Romans had a law called _Jus Trium Liberorum_, by which every man who had been a father of three children, had particular honours and privileges. This incited the youth to quit a dissolute single life and become fathers of families, to the support and glory of the empire. In imitation of this most excellent law, I would have such servants, who should continue many years in one service, meet with singular esteem and reward. The apparel of our women-servants should be next regulated, that we may know the mistress from the maid. I remember I was once put very much to the blush, being at a friend's house, and by him required to salute the ladies, I kissed the chamber-jade into the bargain, for she was as well dressed as the best. But I was soon undeceived by a general titter, which gave me the utmost confusion; nor can I believe myself the only person who has made such a mistake. Things of this nature would be easily avoided, if servant-maids were to wear liveries, as our footmen do; or obliged to go in a dress suitable to their station. What should ail them, but a jacket and petticoat of good yard-wide stuff, or calimanco, might keep them decent and warm. Our charity children are distinguished by their dress, why then may not our women-servants? why may they not be made frugal per force, and not suffered to put all on their backs, but obliged to save something against a rainy day? I am, therefore, entirely against servants wearing of silks, laces, and other superfluous finery; it sets them above themselves, and makes their mistresses contemptible in their eyes. I am handsomer than my mistress, says a young prinked up baggage, what pity it is I should be her servant, I go as well dressed, or better than she. This makes the girl take the first offer to be made a whore, and there is a good servant spoiled; whereas, were her dress suitable to her condition, it would teach her humility, and put her in mind of her duty. Besides the fear of spoiling their clothes makes them afraid of household- work; so that in a little time we shall have none but chambermaids and nurserymaids; and of this let me give one instance; my family is composed of myself and sister, a man and a maid; and, being without the last, a young wench came to hire herself. The man was gone out, and my sister above stairs, so I opened the door myself; and this person presented herself to my view, dressed completely, more like a visitor than a servant-maid; she, not knowing me, asked for my sister; pray, madam, said I, be pleased to walk into the parlour, she shall wait on you presently. Accordingly I handed madam in, who took it very cordially. After some apology, I left her alone for a minute or two; while I, stupid wretch! ran up to my sister, and told her there was a gentlewoman below come to visit her. Dear brother, said she, don't leave her alone, go down and entertain her while I dress myself. Accordingly, down I went, and talked of indifferent affairs; meanwhile my sister dressed herself all over again, not being willing to be seen in an undress. At last she came down dressed as clean as her visitor; but how great was my surprise when I found my fine lady a common servant-wench. My sister understanding what she was, began to inquire what wages she expected? She modestly asked but eight pounds a year. The next question was, what work she could do to deserve such wages? to which she answered, she could clean a house, or dress a common family dinner. But cannot you wash, replied my sister, or get up linen? she answered in the negative, and said, she would undertake neither, nor would she go into a family that did not put out their linen to wash, and hire a charwoman to scour. She desired to see the house, and having carefully surveyed it, said, the work was too hard for her, nor could she undertake it. This put my sister beyond all patience, and me into the greatest admiration. Young woman, said she, you have made a mistake, I want a housemaid, and you are a chambermaid. No, madam, replied she, I am not needlewoman enough for that. And yet you ask eight pounds a year, replied my sister. Yes, madam, said she, nor shall I bate a farthing. Then get you gone for a lazy impudent baggage, said I, you want to be a boarder not a servant; have you a fortune or estate that you dress at that rate? No, sir, said she, but I hope I may wear what I work for without offence. What you work, interrupted my sister, why you do not seem willing to undertake any work; you will not wash nor scour; you cannot dress a dinner for company; you are no needlewoman; and our little house of two rooms on a floor, is too much for you. For God's sake what can you do? Madam, replied she pertly; I know my business; and do not fear a service; there are more places than parish churches; if you wash at home, you should have a laundrymaid; if you give entertainments, you must have a cookmaid; if you have any needlework, you should have a chambermaid; and such a house as this is enough for a housemaid in all conscience. I was pleased at the wit, and astonished at the impudence of the girl, so dismissed her with thanks for her instructions, assuring her that when I kept four maids she should be housemaid if she pleased. Were a servant to do my business with cheerfulness, I should not grudge at five or six pounds per annum; nor would I be so unchristian to put more upon any one than they can bear; but to pray and pay too is the devil. It is very hard, that I must keep four servants or none. In great families, indeed, where many servants are required, those distinctions of chambermaid, housemaid, cookmaid, laundrymaid, nurserymaid, &c., are requisite, to the end that each may take her particular business, and many hands may make the work light; but for a private gentleman, of a small fortune, to be obliged to keep so many idle jades, when one might do the business, is intolerable, and matter of great grievance. I cannot close this discourse without a gentle admonition and reproof to some of my own sex, I mean those gentlemen who give themselves unnecessary airs, and cannot go to see a friend, but they must kiss and slop the maid; and all this is done with an air of gallantry, and must not be resented. Nay, some gentlemen are so silly, that they shall carry on an underhand affair with their friend's servant-maid, to their own disgrace, and the ruin of many a young creature. Nothing is more base and ungenerous, yet nothing more common, and withal so little taken notice of. D-n me, Jack, says one friend to another, this maid of yours is a pretty girl, you do so and so to her, by G-d. This makes the creature pert, vain, and impudent, and spoils many a good servant. What gentleman will descend to this low way of intrigue, when he shall consider that he has a footboy or an apprentice for his rival, and that he is seldom or never admitted, but when they have been his tasters; and the fool of fortune, though he comes at the latter end of the feast, yet pays the whole reckoning; and so indeed would I have all such silly cullies served. If I must have an intrigue, let it be with a woman that shall not shame me. I would never go into the kitchen, when the parlour door was open. We are forbidden at Highgate, to kiss the maid when we may kiss the mistress; why then will gentlemen descend so low, by too much familiarity with these creatures, to bring themselves into contempt? I have been at places where the maid has been so dizzied with these idle compliments that she has mistook one thing for another, and not regarded her mistress in the least; but put on all the flirting airs imaginable. This behaviour is nowhere so much complained of as in taverns, coffeehouses, and places of public resort, where there are handsome bar- keepers, &c. These creatures being puffed up with the fulsome flattery of a set of flesh-flies, which are continually buzzing about them, carry themselves with the utmost insolence imaginable; insomuch, that you must speak to them with a great deal of deference, or you are sure to be affronted. Being at a coffeehouse the other day, where one of these ladies kept the bar, I had bespoke a dish of rice tea; but madam was so taken up with her sparks, she had quite forgot it. I spake for it again, and with some temper, but was answered after a most taunting manner, not without a toss of the head, a contraction of the nostrils, and other impertinences, too many to enumerate. Seeing myself thus publicly insulted by such an animal, I could not choose but show my resentment. Woman, said I, sternly, I want a dish of rice tea, and not what your vanity and impudence may imagine; therefore treat me as a gentleman and a customer, and serve me with what I call for: keep your impertinent repartees and impudent behaviour for the coxcombs that swarm round your bar, and make you so vain of your blown carcase. And indeed I believe the insolence of this creature will ruin her master at last, by driving away men of sobriety and business, and making the place a den of vagabonds and rakehells. Gentlemen, therefore, ought to be very circumspect in their behaviour, and not undervalue themselves to servant-wenches, who are but too apt to treat a gentleman ill whenever he puts himself into their power. Let me now beg pardon for this digression, and return to my subject by proposing some practicable methods for regulating of servants, which, whether they are followed or not, yet, if they afford matter of improvement and speculation, will answer the height of my expectation, and I will be the first who shall approve of whatever improvements are made from this small beginning. The first abuse I would have reformed is, that servants should be restrained from throwing themselves out of place on every idle vagary. This might be remedied were all contracts between master and servant made before a justice of peace, or other proper officer, and a memorandum thereof taken in writing. Nor should such servant leave his or her place (for men and maids might come under the same regulation) till the time agreed on be expired, unless such servant be misused or denied necessaries, or show some other reasonable cause for their discharge. In that case, the master or mistress should be reprimanded or fined. But if servants misbehave themselves, or leave their places, not being regularly discharged, they ought to be amerced or punished. But all those idle, ridiculous customs, and laws of their own making, as a month's wages, or a month's warning, and suchlike, should be entirely set aside and abolished. When a servant has served the limited time duly and faithfully, they should be entitled to a certificate, as is practised at present in the wool-combing trade; nor should any person hire a servant without a certificate or other proper security. A servant without a certificate should be deemed a vagrant; and a master or mistress ought to assign very good reasons indeed when they object against giving a servant his or her certificate. And though, to avoid prolixity, I have not mentioned footmen particularly in the foregoing discourse, yet the complaints alleged against the maids are as well masculine as feminine, and very applicable to our gentlemen's gentlemen; I would, therefore, have them under the very same regulations, and, as they are fellow-servants, would not make fish of one and flesh of the other, since daily experience teaches us, that "never a barrel the better herring." The next great abuse among us is, that under the notion of cleaning our shoes, above ten thousand wicked, idle, pilfering vagrants are permitted to patrol about our city and suburbs. These are called the black-guard, who black your honour's shoes, and incorporate themselves under the title of the Worshipful Company of Japanners. Were this all, there were no hurt in it, and the whole might terminate in a jest; but the mischief ends not here, they corrupt our youth, especially our men-servants; oaths and impudence are their only flowers of rhetoric; gaming and thieving are the principal parts of their profession; japanning but the pretence. For example, a gentleman keeps a servant, who among other things is to clean his master's shoes; but our gentlemen's gentlemen are above it nowadays, and your man's man performs the office, for which piece of service you pay double and treble, especially if you keep a table, nay, you are well off if the japanner has no more than his own diet from it. I have often observed these rascals sneaking from gentlemen's doors with wallets or hats' full of good victuals, which they either carry to their trulls, or sell for a trifle. By this means, our butcher's, our baker's, our poulterer's, and cheesemonger's bills are monstrously exaggerated; not to mention candles just lighted, which sell for fivepence a pound, and many other perquisites best known to themselves and the pilfering villains their confederates. Add to this, that their continual gaming sets servants upon their wits to supply this extravagance, though at the same time the master's pocket pays for it, and the time which should be spent in a gentleman's service is loitered away among these rakehells, insomuch that half our messages are ineffectual, the time intended being often expired before the message is delivered. How many frequent robberies are committed by these japanners? And to how many more are they confederates? Silver spoons, spurs, and other small pieces of plate, are every day missing, and very often found upon these sort of gentlemen; yet are they permitted, to the shame of all our good laws, and the scandal of our most excellent government, to lurk about our streets, to debauch our servants and apprentices, and support an infinite number of scandalous, shameless trulls, yet more wicked than themselves, for not a Jack among them but must have his Gill. By whom such indecencies are daily acted, even in our open streets, as are very offensive to the eyes and ears of all sober persons, and even abominable in a Christian country. In any riot, or other disturbance, these sparks are always the foremost; for most among them can turn their hands to picking of pockets, to run away with goods from a fire, or other public confusion, to snatch anything from a woman or child, to strip a house when the door is open, or any other branch of a thief's profession. In short, it is a nursery for thieves and villains; modest women are every day insulted by them and their strumpets; and such children who run about the streets, or those servants who go on errands, do but too frequently bring home some scraps of their beastly profane wit; insomuch, that the conversation of our lower rank of people runs only upon bawdy and blasphemy, notwithstanding our societies for reformation, and our laws in force against profaneness; for this lazy life gets them many proselytes, their numbers daily increasing from runaway apprentices and footboys, insomuch that it is a very hard matter for a gentleman to get him a servant, or for a tradesman to find an apprentice. Innumerable other mischiefs accrue, and others will spring up from this race of caterpillars, who must be swept from out our streets, or we shall be overrun with all manner of wickedness. But the subject is so low, it becomes disagreeable even to myself; give me leave, therefore, to propose a way to clear the streets of these vermin, and to substitute as many honest industrious persons in their stead, who are now starving for want of bread, while these execrable villains live, though in rags and nastiness, yet in plenty and luxury. I, therefore, humbly propose that these vagabonds be put immediately under the command of such taskmasters as the government shall appoint, and that they be employed, punished, or rewarded, according to their capacities and demerits; that is to say, the industrious and docible to wool-combing, and other parts of the woollen manufacture, where hands are wanted, as also to husbandry and other parts of agriculture. For it is evident that there are scarce hands enow in the country to carry on either of these affairs. Now, these vagabonds might not only by this means be kept out of harm's way, but be rendered serviceable to the nation. Nor is there any need of transporting them beyond seas, for if any are refractory they should be sent to our stannaries and other mines, to our coal works and other places where hard labour is required. And here I must offer one thing never yet thought of, or proposed by any, and that is, the keeping in due repair the navigation of the river Thames, so useful to our trade in general; and yet of late years such vast hills of sand are gathered together in several parts of the river, as are very prejudicial to its navigation, one which is near London Bridge, another near Whitehall, a third near Battersea, and a fourth near Fulham. These are of very great hindrance to the navigation; and indeed the removal of them ought to be a national concern, which I humbly propose may be thus effected. The rebellious part of these vagabonds, as also other thieves and offenders, should be formed into bodies under the command of proper officers, and under the guard and awe of our soldiery. These should every day at low water carry away these sandhills, and remove every other obstruction to the navigation of this most excellent and useful river. It may be objected that the ballast men might do this; that as fast as the hills are taken away they would gather together again, or that the watermen might do it. To the first, I answer, that ballast men, instead of taking away from these hills, make holes in other places of the river, which is the reason so many young persons are drowned when swimming or bathing in the river. Besides, it is a work for many hands, and of long continuance; so that ballast men do more harm than good. The second objection is as silly; as if I should never wash myself, because I shall be dirty again, and I think needs no other answer. And as to the third objection, the watermen are not so public-spirited, they live only from hand to mouth, though not one of them but finds the inconvenience of these hills, every day being obliged to go a great way round about for fear of running aground; insomuch that in a few years the navigation of that part of the river will be entirely obstructed. Nevertheless, every one of these gentlemen- watermen hopes it will last his time, and so they all cry, The devil take the hindmost. But yet I judge it highly necessary that this be made a national concern, like Dagenham breach, and that these hills be removed by some means or other. And now I have mentioned watermen, give me leave to complain of the insolences and exactions they daily commit on the river Thames, and in particular this one instance, which cries aloud for justice. A young lady of distinction, in company with her brother, a little youth, took a pair of oars at or near the Temple, on April day last, and ordered the men to carry them to Pepper Alley Stairs. One of the fellows, according to their usual impertinence, asked the lady where she was going? She answered, near St. Olave's church. Upon which he said, she had better go through the bridge. The lady replied she had never gone through the bridge in her life, nor would she venture for a hundred guineas; so commanded him once more to land her at Pepper Alley Stairs. Notwithstanding which, in spite of her fears, threats, and commands; nay, in spite of the persuasion of his fellow, he forced her through London Bridge, which frightened her beyond expression. And to mend the matter, he obliged her to pay double fare, and mobbed her into the bargain. To resent which abuse, application was made to the hall, the fellow summoned, and the lady ordered to attend, which she did, waiting there all the morning, and was appointed to call again in the afternoon. She came accordingly, they told her the fellow had been there, but was gone, and that she must attend another Friday. She attended again and again, but to the same purpose. Nor have they yet produced the man, but tired out the lady, who has spent above ten shillings in coach-hire, been abused and baffled into the bargain. It is pity, therefore, there are not commissioners for watermen, as there are for hackney coachmen; or that justices of the peace might not inflict bodily penalties on watermen thus offending. But while watermen are watermen's judges, I shall laugh at those who carry their complaints to the hall. The usual plea in behalf of abusive watermen is, that they are drunk, ignorant, or poor; but will that satisfy the party aggrieved, or deter the offender from reoffending? Whereas were the offenders sent to the house of correction, and there punished, or sentenced to work at the sandhills aforementioned, for a time suitable to the nature of their crimes, terror of such punishments would make them fearful of offending, to the great quiet of the subject. Now, it maybe asked, How shall we have our shoes cleaned, or how are these industrious poor to be maintained? To this I answer that the places of these vagabonds may be very well supplied by great numbers of ancient persons, poor widows, and others, who have not enough from their respective parishes to maintain them. These poor people I would have authorised and stationed by the justices of the peace or other magistrates. Each of these should have a particular walk or stand, and no other shoe-cleaner should come into that walk, unless the person misbehave and be removed. Nor should any person clean shoes in the streets, but these authorised shoe-cleaners, who should have some mark of distinction, and be under the immediate government of the justices of the peace. Thus would many thousands of poor people be provided for, without burthening their parishes. Some of these may earn a shilling or two in the day, and none less than sixpence, or thereabouts. And lest the old japanners should appear again, in the shape of linkboys, and knock down gentlemen in drink, or lead others out of the way into dark remote places, where they either put out their lights, and rob them themselves, or run away and leave them to be pillaged by others, as is daily practised, I would have no person carry a link for hire but some of these industrious poor, and even such, not without some ticket or badge, to let people know whom they trust. Thus would the streets be cleared night and day of these vermin; nor would oaths, skirmishes, blasphemy, obscene talk, or other wicked examples, be so public and frequent. All gaming at orange and gingerbread barrows should be abolished, as also all penny and halfpenny lotteries, thimbles and balls, &c., so frequent in Moorfields, Lincoln's-inn-fields, &c., where idle fellows resort, to play with children and apprentices, and tempt them to steal their parents' or master's money. There is one admirable custom in the city of London, which I could wish were imitated in the city and liberties of Westminster, and bills of mortality, which is, no porter can carry a burthen or letter in the city, unless he be a ticket porter; whereas, out of the freedom part of London, any person may take a knot and turn porter, till he be entrusted with something of value, and then you never hear of him more. This is very common, and ought to be amended. I would, therefore, have all porters under some such regulation as coachmen, chairmen, carmen, &c.; a man may then know whom he entrusts, and not run the risk of losing his goods, &c. Nay, I would not have a person carry a basket in the markets, who is not subject to some such regulation; for very many persons oftentimes lose their dinners in sending their meat home by persons they know nothing of. Thus would all our poor be stationed, and a man or woman able to perform any of these offices, must either comply or be termed an idle vagrant, and sent to a place where they shall be forced to work. By this means industry will be encouraged, idleness punished, and we shall be famed, as well as happy for our tranquillity and decorum. 
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17090	----	Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net [Illustration: MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1908, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PREFACE Probably in the life of everyone there comes a time when he is inclined to go over again the events, great and small, which have made up the incidents of his work and pleasure, and I am tempted to become a garrulous old man, and tell some stories of men and things which have happened in an active life. In some measure I have been associated with the most interesting people our country has produced, especially in business--men who have helped largely to build up the commerce of the United States, and who have made known its products all over the world. These incidents which come to my mind to speak of seemed vitally important to me when they happened, and they still stand out distinctly in my memory. Just how far any one is justified in keeping what he regards as his own private affairs from the public, or in defending himself from attacks, is a mooted point. If one talks about one's experiences, there is a natural temptation to charge one with traveling the easy road to egotism; if one keeps silence, the inference of wrong-doing is sometimes even more difficult to meet, as it would then be said that there is no valid defence to be offered. It has not been my custom to press my affairs forward into public gaze; but I have come to see that if my family and friends want some record of things which might shed light on matters that have been somewhat discussed, it is right that I should yield to their advice, and in this informal way go over again some of the events which have made life interesting to me. There is still another reason for speaking now: If a tenth of the things that have been said are true, then these dozens of able and faithful men who have been associated with me, many of whom have passed away, must have been guilty of grave faults. For myself, I had decided to say nothing, hoping that after my death the truth would gradually come to the surface and posterity would do strict justice; but while I live and can testify to certain things, it seems fair that I should refer to some points which I hope will help to set forth several much-discussed happenings in a new light. I am convinced that they have not been fully understood. All these things affect the memories of men who are dead and the lives of men who are living, and it is only reasonable that the public should have some first-hand facts to draw from in making up its final estimate. When these Reminiscences were begun, there was of course no thought that they should ever go so far as to appear between the covers of a book. They were not prepared with the idea of even an informal autobiography, there was little idea of order or sequence, and no thought whatever of completeness. It would have been a pleasure as well as a satisfaction to dwell with some fulness upon the stories of daily and intimate companionship which existed for so many years with my close partners and associates, but I realize that while these experiences have always been to me among the great pleasures of my life, a long account of them would not interest the reader, and thus it happens that I have but mentioned the names of only a few of the scores of partners who have been so active in building up the business interests with which I have been associated. J.D.R. _March_,1909. CONTENTS I. Some Old Friends II. The Difficult Art of Getting III. The Standard Oil Company IV. Some Experiences in the Oil Business V. Other Business Experiences and Business Principles VI. The Difficult Art of Giving VII. The Benevolent Trust--The Value of the Cooperative Principle in Giving CHAPTER I SOME OLD FRIENDS Since these Reminiscences are really what they profess to be, random and informal, I hope I may be pardoned for setting down so many small things. In looking back over my life, the impressions which come most vividly to my mind are mental pictures of my old associates. In speaking of these friends in this chapter, I would not have it thought that many others, of whom I have not spoken, were less important to me, and I shall hope to refer to this subject of my early friends in a later chapter. It is not always possible to remember just how one first met an old friend or what one's impressions were, but I shall never forget my first meeting with Mr. John D. Archbold, who is now a vice-president of the Standard Oil Company. At that time, say thirty-five or forty years ago, I was travelling about the country visiting the point where something was happening, talking with the producers, the refiners, the agents, and actually getting acquainted. One day there was a gathering of the men somewhere near the oil regions, and when I came to the hotel, which was full of oil men, I saw this name writ large on the register: _John D. Archbold, $4.00 a bbl._ He was a young and enthusiastic fellow, so full of his subject that he added his slogan, "$4.00 a bbl.," after his signature on the register, that no one might misunderstand his convictions. The battle cry of $4.00 a barrel was all the more striking because crude oil was selling then for much less, and this campaign for a higher price certainly did attract attention--it was much top good to be true. But if Mr. Archbold had to admit in the end that crude oil is not worth "$4,00 a bbl.," his enthusiasm, his energy, and his splendid power over men have lasted. He has always had a well-developed sense of humour, and on one serious occasion, when he was on the witness stand, he was asked by the opposing lawyer: "Mr. Archbold, are you a director of this company?" "I am." "What is your occupation in this company?" He promptly answered, "To clamour for dividends," which led the learned counsel to start afresh on another line. I can never cease to wonder at his capacity for hard work. I do not often see him now, for he has great affairs on his hands, while I live like a farmer away from active happenings in business, playing golf, planting trees; and yet I am so busy that no day is long enough. Speaking of Mr. Archbold leads me to say again that I have received much more credit than I deserve in connection with the Standard Oil Company. It was my good fortune to help to bring together the efficient men who are the controlling forces of the organization and to work hand in hand with them for many years, but it is they who have done the hard tasks. The great majority of my associations were made so many years ago, that I have reached the age when hardly a month goes by (sometimes I think hardly a week) that I am not called upon to send some message of consolation to a family with whom we have been connected, and who have met with some fresh bereavement. Only recently I counted up the names of the early associates who have passed away. Before I had finished, I found the list numbered some sixty or more. They were faithful and earnest friends; we had worked together through many difficulties, and had gone through many severe trials together. We had discussed and argued and hammered away at questions until we came to agree, and it has always been a happiness to me to feel that we had been frank and aboveboard with each other. Without this, business associates cannot get the best out of their work. It is not always the easiest of tasks to induce strong, forceful men to agree. It has always been our policy to hear patiently and discuss frankly until the last shred of evidence is on the table, before trying to reach a conclusion and to decide finally upon a course of action. In working with so many partners, the conservative ones are apt to be in the majority, and this is no doubt a desirable thing when the mere momentum of a large concern is certain to carry it forward. The men who have been very successful are correspondingly conservative, since they have much to lose in case of disaster. But fortunately there are also the aggressive and more daring ones, and they are usually the youngest in the company, perhaps few in number, but impetuous and convincing. They want to accomplish things and to move quickly, and they don't mind any amount of work or responsibility. I remember in particular an experience when the conservative influence met the progressive--shall I say?--or the daring side. At all events, this was the side I represented in this case. ARGUMENTS VERSUS CAPITAL One of my partners, who had successfully built up a large and prosperous business, was resisting with all his force a plan that some of us favoured, to make some large improvements. The cost of extending the operations of this enterprise was estimated at quite a sum--three million dollars, I think it was. We had talked it over and over again, and with several other associates discussed all the pros and cons; and we had used every argument we could command to show why the plan would not only be profitable, but was indeed necessary to maintain the lead we had. Our old partner was obdurate, he had made up his mind not to yield, and I can see him standing up in his vigorous protest, with his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back, as he shouted "No." It's a pity to get a man into a place in an argument where he is defending a position instead of considering the evidence. His calm judgment is apt to leave him, and his mind is for the time being closed, and only obstinacy remains. Now these improvements had to be made--as I said before, it was essential. Yet we could not quarrel with our old partner, but a minority of us had made up our minds that we must try to get him to yield, and we resolved to try another line of argument, and said to him: "You say that we do not need to spend this money?" "No," he replied, "it will probably prove to be many years before such a sum must be spent. There is no present need for these facilities you want to create, and the works are doing well as they are--let's let well enough alone." Now our partner was a very wise and experienced man, older and more familiar with the subject than some of us, and all this we admitted to him; but we had made up our minds, as I have said, to carry out this idea if we could possibly get his approval, and we were willing to wait until then. As soon as the argument had calmed down, and when the heat of our discussion had passed, the subject was brought up again. I had thought of a new way to approach it. I said: "I'll take it, and supply this capital myself. If the expenditure turns out to be profitable the company can repay me; and, if it goes wrong, I'll stand the loss." That was the argument that touched him. All his reserve disappeared and the matter was settled when he said: "If that's the way you feel about it, we'll go it together. I guess I can take the risk if you can." It is always, I presume, a question in every business just how fast it is wise to go, and we went pretty rapidly in those days, building and expanding in all directions. We were being confronted with fresh emergencies constantly. A new oil field would be discovered, tanks for storage had to be built almost over night, and this was going on when old fields were being exhausted, so we were therefore often under the double strain of losing the facilities in one place where we were fully equipped, and having to build up a plant for storing and transporting in a new field where we were totally unprepared. These are some of the things which make the whole oil trade a perilous one, but we had with us a group of courageous men who recognized the great principle that a business cannot be a great success that does not fully and efficiently accept and take advantage of its opportunities. How often we discussed those trying questions! Some of us wanted to jump at once into big expenditures, and others to keep to more moderate ones. It was usually a compromise, but one at a time we took these matters up and settled them, never going as fast as the most progressive ones wished, nor quite so carefully as the conservatives desired, but always made the vote unanimous in the end. THE JOY OF ACHIEVEMENT The part played by one of my earliest partners, Mr. H.M. Flagler, was always an inspiration to me. He invariably wanted to go ahead and accomplish great projects of all kinds, he was always on the active side of every question, and to his wonderful energy is due much of the rapid progress of the company in the early days. It was to be expected of such a man that he should fulfil his destiny by working out some great problems at a time when most men want to retire to a comfortable life of ease. This would not appeal to my old friend. He undertook, single handed, the task of building up the East Coast of Florida. He was not satisfied to plan a railroad from St. Augustine to Key West--a distance of more than six hundred miles, which would have been regarded as an undertaking large enough for almost any one man--but in addition he has built a chain of superb hotels to induce tourists to go to this newly developed country. Further than this, he has had them conducted with great skill and success. This one man, by his own energy and capital, has opened up a vast stretch of country, so that the old inhabitants and the new settlers may have a market for their products. He has given work to thousands of these people; and, to crown all, he has undertaken and nearly completed a remarkable engineering feat in carrying his road on the Florida Keys into the Atlantic Ocean to Key West, the point set out for years ago. Practically all this has been done after what most men would have considered a full business life, and a man of any other nationality situated as he was would have retired to enjoy the fruits of his labour. I first knew Mr. Flagler as a young man who consigned produce to Clark & Rockefeller. He was a bright and active young fellow full of vim and push. About the time we went into the oil business Mr. Flagler established himself as a commission merchant in the same building with Mr. Clark, who took over and succeeded the firm of Clark & Rockefeller. A little later he bought out Mr. Clark and combined his trade with his own. Naturally, I came to see more of him. The business relations which began with the handling of produce he consigned to our old firm grew into a business friendship, because people who lived in a comparatively small place, as Cleveland was then, were thrown together much more often than in such a place as New York. When the oil business was developing and we needed more help, I at once thought of Mr. Flagler as a possible partner, and made him an offer to come with us and give up his commission business. This offer he accepted, and so began that life-long friendship which has never had a moment's interruption. It was a friendship founded on business, which Mr. Flagler used to say was a good deal better than a business founded on friendship, and my experience leads me to agree with him. For years and years this early partner and I worked shoulder to shoulder; our desks were in the same room. We both lived on Euclid Avenue, a few rods apart. We met and walked to the office together, walked home to luncheon, back again after luncheon, and home again at night. On these walks, when we were away from the office interruptions, we did our thinking, talking, and planning together. Mr. Flagler drew practically all our contracts. He has always had the faculty of being able to clearly express the intent and purpose of a contract so well and accurately that there could be no misunderstanding, and his contracts were fair to both sides. I can remember his saying often that when you go into an arrangement you must measure up the rights and proprieties of both sides with the same yardstick, and this was the way Henry M. Flagler did. One contract Mr. Flagler was called upon to accept which to my surprise he at once passed with his O.K. and without a question. We had concluded to purchase the land on which one of our refineries was built and which was held on a lease from John Irwin, whom we both knew well. Mr. Irwin drew the contract for the purchase of this land on the back of a large manila envelope that he picked up in the office. The description of the property ran as such contracts usually do until it came to the phrase "the line runs south to a mullen stalk," etc. This seemed to me a trifle indefinite, but Mr. Flagler said: "It's all right, John. I'll accept that contract, and when the deed comes in, you will see that the mullen stalk will be replaced by a proper stake and the whole document will be accurate and shipshape." Of course it turned out exactly as he said it would. I am almost tempted to say that some lawyers might sit at his feet and learn things about drawing contracts good for them to know, but perhaps our legal friends might think I was partial, so I won't press the point. Another thing about Mr. Flagler for which I think he deserves great credit was that in the early days he insisted that, when a refinery was to be put up, it should be different from the flimsy shacks which it was then the custom to build. Everyone was so afraid that the oil would disappear and that the money expended in buildings would be a loss that the meanest and cheapest buildings were erected for use as refineries. This was the sort of thing Mr. Flagler objected to. While he had to admit that it was possible the oil supply might fail and that the risks of the trade were great, he always believed that if we went into the oil business at all, we should do the work as well as we knew how; that we should have the very best facilities; that everything should be solid and substantial; and that nothing should be left undone to produce the finest results. And he followed his convictions of building as though the trade was going to last, and his courage in acting up to his beliefs laid strong foundations for later years. There are a number of people still alive who will recall the bright, straightforward young Flagler of those days with satisfaction. At the time when we bought certain refineries at Cleveland he was very active. One day he met an old friend on the street, a German baker, to whom he had sold flour in years gone by. His friend told him that he had gone out of the bakery business and had built a little refinery. This surprised Mr. Flagler, and he didn't like the idea of his friend investing his little fortune in a small plant which he felt sure would not succeed. But at first there seemed nothing to do about it. He had it on his mind for some days. It evidently troubled him. Finally he came to me and said: "That little baker man knows more about baking than oil refining, but I'd feel better if we invited him to join us--I've got him on my conscience." I of course agreed. He talked to his friend, who said he would gladly sell if we would send an appraiser to value his plant, which we did, and then there arose an unexpected difficulty. The price at which the plant was to be purchased was satisfactory, but the ex-baker insisted that Mr. Flagler should advise him whether he should take his pay in cash or Standard Oil certificates at par. He told Mr. Flagler that if he took it in cash it would pay all his debts, and he would be glad to have his mind free of many anxieties; but if Mr. Flagler said the certificates were going to pay good dividends, he wanted to get into and keep up with a good thing. It was rather a hard proposition to put up to Mr. Flagler, and at first he declined to advise or express any opinion, but the German stuck to him and wouldn't let him shirk a responsibility which in no way belonged to him. Finally Mr. Flagler suggested that he take half the amount in cash and pay 50 per cent. on account of his debts, and put the other half in certificates, and see what happened. This he did, and as time went on he bought more certificates, and Mr. Flagler never had to apologize for the advice he gave him. I am confident that my old partner gave this affair as much time and thought as he did to any of his own large problems, and the incident may be taken as a measure of the man. THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIPS But these old men's tales can hardly be interesting to the present generation, though perhaps they will not be useless if even tiresome stories make young people realize how, above all other possessions, is the value of a friend in every department of life without any exception whatsoever. How many different kinds of friends there are! They should all be held close at any cost; for, although some are better than others, perhaps, a friend of whatever kind is important; and this one learns as one grows older. There is the kind that when you need help has a good reason just at the moment, of course, why it is impossible to extend it. "I can't indorse your note," he says, "because I have an agreement with my partners not to." "I'd like to oblige you, but I can explain why at the moment," etc., etc. I do not mean to criticize this sort of friendship; for sometimes it is a matter of temperament; and sometimes the real necessities are such that the friend cannot do as he would like to do. As I look back over my friends, I can remember only a few of this kind and a good many of the more capable sort. One especial friend I had. His name was S.V. Harkness, and from the first of our acquaintance he seemed to have every confidence in me. One day our oil warehouses and refinery burned to the ground in a few hours--they were absolutely annihilated. Though they were insured for many hundred thousands of dollars, of course, we were apprehensive about collecting such a large amount of insurance, and feared it might take some time to arrange. That plant had to be rebuilt right away, and it was necessary to lay the financial plans. Mr. Harkness was interested with us in the business, and I said to him: "I may want to call upon you for the use of some money. I don't know that we shall need it, but I thought I'd speak to you in advance about it." He took in the situation without much explaining on my part. He simply heard what I had to say and he was a man of very few words. "All right, J.D., I'll give you all I've got." This was all he said, but I went home that night relieved of anxiety. As it turned out, we received the check of the Liverpool, London & Globe Insurance Company for the full amount before the builders required the payments; and while we didn't need his money, I never shall forget the whole-souled way in which he offered it. And this sort of experience was not, I am grateful to say, rare with me. I was always a great borrower in my early days; the business was active and growing fast, and the banks seemed very willing to loan me the money. About this time, when our great fire had brought up some new conditions, I was studying the situation to see what our cash requirements would be. We were accustomed to prepare for financial emergencies long before we needed the funds. Another incident occurred at this time which showed again the kind of real friends we had in those days, but I did not hear the full story of it until long years after the event. There was one bank where we had done a great deal of business, and a friend of mine, Mr. Stillman Witt, who was a rich man, was one of the directors. At a meeting, the question came up as to what the bank would do in case we wanted more money. In order that no one might doubt his own position on the subject, Mr. Witt called for his strong-box, and said: "Here, gentlemen, these young men are all O.K., and if they want to borrow more money I want to see this bank advance it without hesitation, and if you want more security, here it is; take what you want." We were then shipping a large quantity of oil by lake and canal, to save in transportation, and it took additional capital to carry these shipments; and we required to borrow a large amount of money. We had already made extensive loans from another bank, whose president informed me that his board of directors had been making inquiries respecting our large line of discounts, and had stated that they would probably want to talk with me on the subject. I answered that I would be very glad of the opportunity to meet the board, as we would require a great deal more money from the bank. Suffice it to say, we got all we wanted, but I was not asked to call for any further explanations. But I fear I am telling too much about banks and money and business. I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money's sake. If I were forty years younger, I should like to go into business again, for the association with interesting and quick-minded men was always a great pleasure. But I have no dearth of interests to fill my days, and so long as I live I expect to go on and develop the plans which have been my inspiration for a lifetime. During all the long period of work, which lasted from the time I was sixteen years old until I retired from active business when I was fifty-five, I must admit that I managed to get a good many vacations of one kind or another, because of the willingness of my most efficient associates to assume the burdens of the business which they were so eminently qualified to conduct. Of detail work I feel I have done my full share. As I began my business life as a bookkeeper, I learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were. When there was a matter of accounting to be done in connection with any plan with which I was associated in the earlier years, I usually found that I was selected to undertake it. I had a passion for detail which afterward I was forced to strive to modify. At Pocantico Hills, New York, where I have spent portions of my time for many years in an old house where the fine views invite the soul and where we can live simply and quietly, I have spent many delightful hours, studying the beautiful views, the trees, and fine landscape effects of that very interesting section of the Hudson River, and this happened in the days when I seemed to need every minute for the absorbing demands of business. So I fear after I got well started, I was not what might be called a diligent business man. This phrase, "diligent in business," reminds me of an old friend of mine in Cleveland who was devoted to his work. I talked to him, and no doubt bored him unspeakably, on my special hobby, which has always been what some people call landscape gardening, but which with me is the art of laying out roads and paths and work of that kind. This friend of thirty-five years ago plainly disapproved of a man in business wasting his time on what he looked upon as mere foolishness. One superb spring day I suggested to him that he should spend the afternoon with me (a most unusual and reckless suggestion for a business man to make in those days) and see some beautiful paths through the woods on my place which I had been planning and had about completed. I went so far as to tell him that I would give him a real treat. "I cannot do it, John," he said, "I have an important matter of business on hand this afternoon." "That may all be," I urged, "but it will give you no such pleasure as you'll get when you see those paths--the big tree on each side and ----" "Go on, John, with your talk about trees and paths. I tell you I've got an ore ship coming in and our mills are waiting for her." He rubbed his hands with satisfaction--"I'd not miss seeing her come in for all the wood paths in Christendom." He was then getting $120 to $130 a ton for Bessemer steel rails, and if his mill stopped a minute waiting for ore, he felt that he was missing his life's chance. Perhaps it was this same man who often gazed out into the lake with every nerve stretched to try to see an ore ship approaching. One day one of his friends asked him if he could see the boat. "No-o, no-o," he reluctantly admitted, "but she's most in sight." This ore trade was of great and absorbing interest at Cleveland. My old employer was paid $4 a ton for carrying ore from the Marquette regions fifty years ago, and to think of the wickedness of this maker of woodland paths, who in later years was moving the ore in great ships for eighty cents a ton and making a fortune at it. All this reminds me of my experiences in the ore business, but I shall come to that later. I want to say something about landscape gardening, to which I have devoted a great deal of time for more than thirty years. THE PLEASURES OF ROAD PLANNING Like my old friend, others may be surprised at my claim to be an amateur landscape architect in a small way, and my family have been known to employ a great landscape man to make quite sure that I did not ruin the place. The problem was, just where to put the new home at Pocantico Hills, which has recently been built. I thought I had the advantage of knowing every foot of the land, all the old big trees were personal friends of mine, and with the views of any given point I was perfectly familiar--I had studied them hundreds of times; and after this great landscape architect had laid out his plans and had driven his lines of stakes, I asked if I might see what I could do with the job. In a few days I had worked out a plan so devised that the roads caught just the best views at just the angles where in driving up the hill you came upon impressive outlooks, and at the ending was the final burst of river, hill, cloud, and great sweep of country to crown the whole; and here I fixed my stakes to show where I suggested that the roads should run, and finally the exact place where the house should be. "Look it all over," I said, "and decide which plan is best." It was a proud moment when this real authority accepted my suggestions as bringing out the most favoured spots for views and agreed upon the site of the house. How many miles of roads I have laid out in my time, I can hardly compute, but I have often kept at it until I was exhausted. While surveying roads, I have run the lines until darkness made it impossible to see the little stakes and flags. It is all very vain of me to tell of these landscape enterprises, but perhaps they will offset the business talks which occupy so much of my story. My methods of attending to business matters differed from those of most well-conducted merchants of my time and allowed me more freedom. Even after the chief affairs of the Standard Oil Company were moved to New York, I spent most of my summers at our home in Cleveland, and I do still. I would come to New York when my presence seemed necessary, but for the most part I kept in touch with the business through our own telegraph wires, and was left free to attend to many things which interested me--among others, the making of paths, the planting of trees, and the setting out of little forests of seedlings. Of all the profitable things which develop quickly under the hand, I have thought my young nurseries show the greatest yield. We keep a set of account books for each place, and I was amazed not long ago at the increase in value that a few years make in growing things, when we came to remove some young trees from Westchester County to Lakewood, New Jersey. We plant our young trees, especially evergreens, by the thousand--I think we have put in as many as ten thousand at once, and let them develop, to be used later in some of our planting schemes. If we transfer young trees from Pocantico to our home in Lakewood, we charge one place and credit the other for these trees at the market rate. We are our own best customers, and we make a small fortune out of ourselves by selling to our New Jersey place at $1.50 or $2.00 each, trees which originally cost us only five or ten cents at Pocantico. In nursery stock, as in other things, the advantage of doing things on a large scale reveals itself. The pleasure and satisfaction of saving and moving large trees--trees, say, from ten to twenty inches in diameter, or even more in some cases--has been for years a source of great interest. We build our movers ourselves, and work with our own men, and it is truly surprising what liberties you can take with trees, if you once learn how to handle these monsters. We have moved trees ninety feet high, and many seventy or eighty feet. And they naturally are by no means young. At one time or another we have tried almost all kinds of trees, including some which the authorities said could not be moved with success. Perhaps the most daring experiments were with horse-chestnuts. We took up large trees, transported them considerable distances, some of them after they were actually in flower, all at a cost of twenty dollars per tree, and lost very few. We were so successful that we became rather reckless, trying experiments out of season, but when we worked on plans we had already tried, our results were remarkably satisfactory. Taking our experiences in many hundreds of trees of various kinds in and out of season, and including the time when we were learning the art, our total loss has been something less than 10 per cent., probably more nearly 6 or 7 per cent. A whole tree-moving campaign in a single season has been accomplished with a loss of about 3 per cent. I am willing to admit that in the case of the larger trees the growth has been retarded perhaps two years, but this is a small matter, for people no longer young wish to get the effects they desire at once, and the modern tree-mover does it. We have grouped and arranged clumps of big spruces to fit the purposes we were aiming for, and sometimes have completely covered a hillside with them. Oaks we have not been successful with except when comparatively young, and we don't try to move oaks and hickories when they have come near to maturity; but we have made some successful experiments with bass wood, and one of these we have moved three times without injury. Birches have generally baffled us, but evergreens, except cedars, have been almost invariably successfully handled. This planning for good views must have been an early passion with me. I remember when I was hardly more than a boy I wanted to cut away a big tree which I thought interfered with the view from the windows of the dining-room of our home. I was for cutting it down, but some other members of the family objected, though my dear mother, I think, sympathized with me, as she said one day: "You know, my son, we have breakfast at eight o'clock, and I think if the tree were felled some time before we sat down to table, there would probably be no great complaint when the family saw the view which the fallen tree revealed." So it turned out. CHAPTER II THE DIFFICULT ART OF GETTING To my father I owe a great debt in that he himself trained me to practical ways. He was engaged in different enterprises; he used to tell me about these things, explaining their significance; and he taught me the principles and methods of business. From early boyhood I kept a little book which I remember I called Ledger A--and this little volume is still preserved--containing my receipts and expenditures as well as an account of the small sums that I was taught to give away regularly. Naturally, people of modest means lead a closer family life than those who have plenty of servants to do everything for them. I count it a blessing that I was of the former class. When I was seven or eight years old I engaged in my first business enterprise with the assistance of my mother. I owned some turkeys, and she presented me with the curds from the milk to feed them. I took care of the birds myself, and sold them all in business-like fashion. My receipts were all profit, as I had nothing to do with the expense account, and my records were kept as carefully as I knew how. We thoroughly enjoyed this little business affair, and I can still close my eyes, and distinctly see the gentle and dignified birds walking quietly along the brook and through the woods, cautiously stealing the way to their nests. To this day I enjoy the sight of a flock of turkeys, and never miss an opportunity of studying them. My mother was a good deal of a disciplinarian, and upheld the standard of the family with a birch switch when it showed a tendency to deteriorate. Once, when I was being punished for some unfortunate doings which had taken place in the village school, I felt called upon to explain after the whipping had begun that I was innocent of the charge. "Never mind," said my mother, "we have started in on this whipping, and it will do for the next time." This attitude was maintained to its final conclusion in many ways. One night, I remember, we boys could not resist the temptation to go skating in the moonlight, notwithstanding the fact that we had been expressly forbidden to skate at night. Almost before we got fairly started we heard a cry for help, and found a neighbour, who had broken through the ice, was in danger of drowning. By pushing a pole to him we succeeded in fishing him out, and restored him safe and sound to his grateful family. As we were not generally expected to save a man's life every time we skated, my brother William and I felt that there were mitigating circumstances connected with this particular disobedience which might be taken into account in the final judgment, but this idea proved to be erroneous. STARTING AT WORK Although the plan had been to send me to college, it seemed best at sixteen that I should leave the high school in which I had nearly completed the course and go into a commercial college in Cleveland for a few months. They taught bookkeeping and some of the fundamental principles of commercial transactions. This training, though it lasted only a few months, was very valuable to me. But how to get a job--that was the question. I tramped the streets for days and weeks, asking merchants and storekeepers if they didn't want a boy; but the offer of my services met with little appreciation. No one wanted a boy, and very few showed any overwhelming anxiety to talk with me on the subject. At last one man on the Cleveland docks told me that I might come back after the noonday meal. I was elated; it now seemed that I might get a start. I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should lose this one opportunity that I had unearthed. When finally at what seemed to me the time, I presented myself to my would-be employer: "We will give you a chance," he said, but not a word passed between us about pay. This was September 26, 1855. I joyfully went to work. The name of the firm was Hewitt & Tuttle. In beginning the work I had some advantages. My father's training, as I have said, was practical, the course at the commercial college had taught me the rudiments of business, and I thus had a groundwork to build upon. I was fortunate, also, in working under the supervision of the bookkeeper, who was a fine disciplinarian, and well disposed toward me. When January, 1856, arrived, Mr. Tuttle presented me with $50 for my three months' work, which was no doubt all that I was worth, and it was entirely satisfactory. For the next year, with $25 a month, I kept my position, learning the details and clerical work connected with such a business. It was a wholesale produce commission and forwarding concern, my department being particularly the office duties. Just above me was the bookkeeper for the house, and he received $2,000 a year salary in lieu of his share of the profits of the firm of which he was a member. At the end of the first fiscal year when he left I assumed his clerical and bookkeeping work, for which I received the salary of $500. As I look back upon this term of business apprenticeship, I can see that its influence was vitally important in its relations to what came after. To begin with, my work was done in the office of the firm itself. I was almost always present when they talked of their affairs, laid out their plans, and decided upon a course of action. I thus had an advantage over other boys of my age, who were quicker and who could figure and write better than I. The firm conducted a business with so many ramifications that this education was quite extensive. They owned dwelling-houses, warehouses, and buildings which were rented for offices and a variety of uses, and I had to collect the rents. They shipped by rail, canal, and lake. There were many different kinds of negotiations and transactions going on, and with all these I was in close touch. Thus it happened that my duties were vastly more interesting than those of an office-boy in a large house to-day. I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Gradually the auditing of accounts was left in my hands. All the bills were first passed upon by me, and I took this duty very seriously. One day, I remember, I was in a neighbour's office, when the local plumber presented himself with a bill about a yard long. This neighbour was one of those very busy men. He was connected with what seemed to me an unlimited number of enterprises. He merely glanced at this tiresome bill, turned to the bookkeeper, and said: "Please pay this bill." As I was studying the same plumber's bills in great detail, checking every item, if only for a few cents, and finding it to be greatly to the firm's interest to do so, this casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me. I had trained myself to the point of view doubtless held by many young men in business to-day, that my check on a bill was the executive act which released my employer's money from the till and was attended with more responsibility than the spending of my own funds. I made up my mind that such business methods could not succeed. Passing bills, collecting rents, adjusting claims, and work of this kind brought me in association with a great variety of people. I had to learn how to get on with all these different classes, and still keep the relations between them and the house pleasant. One particular kind of negotiation came to me which took all the skill I could master to bring to a successful end. We would receive, for example, a shipment of marble from Vermont to Cleveland. This involved handling by railroad, canal, and lake boats. The cost of losses or damage had to be somehow fixed between these three different carriers, and it taxed all the ingenuity of a boy of seventeen to work out this problem to the satisfaction of all concerned, including my employers. But I thought the task no hardship, and so far as I can remember I never had any disagreement of moment with any of these transportation interests. This experience in conducting all sorts of transactions at such an impressionable age, with the helping hand of my superiors to fall back upon in an emergency--was highly interesting to me. It was my first step in learning the principle of negotiation, of which I hope to speak later. The training that comes from working for some one else, to whom we feel a responsibility, I am sure was of great value to me. I should estimate that the salaries of that time were far less than half of what is paid for equivalent positions to-day. The next year I was offered a salary of $700, but thought I was worth $800. We had not settled the matter by April, and as a favourable opportunity had presented itself for carrying on the same business on my own account, I resigned my position. In those days, in Cleveland, everyone knew almost everyone else in town. Among the merchants was a young Englishman named M.B. Clark, perhaps ten years older than I, who wanted to establish a business and was in search of a partner. He had $2,000 to contribute to the firm, and wanted a partner who could furnish an equal amount. This seemed a good opportunity for me. I had saved up $700 or $800, but where to get the rest was a problem. I talked the matter over with my father, who told me that he had always intended to give $1,000 to each of his children when they reached twenty-one. He said that if I wished to receive my share at once, instead of waiting, he would advance it to me and I could pay interest upon the sum until I was twenty-one. "But, John," he added, "the rate is ten." At that time, 10 per cent. a year interest was a very common rate for such loans. At the banks the rate might not have been quite so high; but of course the financial institutions could not supply all the demands, so there was much private borrowing at high figures. As I needed this money for the partnership, I gladly accepted my father's offer, and so began business as the junior partner of the new firm, which was called Clark & Rockefeller. It was a great thing to be my own employer. Mentally I swelled with pride--a partner in a firm with $4,000 capital! Mr. Clark attended to the buying and selling, and I took charge of the finance and the books. We at once began to do a large business, dealing in carload lots and cargoes of produce. Naturally we soon needed more money to take care of the increasing trade. There was nothing to do but to attempt to borrow from a bank. But would the bank lend to us? THE FIRST LOAN I went to a bank president whom I knew, and who knew me. I remember perfectly how anxious I was to get that loan and to establish myself favourably with the banker. This gentleman was T.P. Handy, a sweet and gentle old man, well known as a high-grade, beautiful character. For fifty years he was interested in young men. He knew me as a boy in the Cleveland schools. I gave him all the particulars of our business, telling him frankly about our affairs--what we wanted to use the money for, etc., etc. I waited for the verdict with almost trembling eagerness. "How much do you want?" he said. "Two thousand dollars." "All right, Mr. Rockefeller, you can have it," he replied. "Just give me your own warehouse receipts; they're good enough for me." As I left that bank, my elation can hardly be imagined. I held up my head--think of it, a bank had trusted me for $2,000! I felt that I was now a man of importance in the community. For long years after the head of this bank was a friend indeed; he loaned me money when I needed it, and I needed it almost all the time, and all the money he had. It was a source of gratification that later I was able to go to him and recommend that he should make a certain investment in Standard Oil stock. He agreed that he would like to do so, but he said that the sum involved was not at the moment available, and so at my suggestion I turned banker for him, and in the end he took out his principal with a very handsome profit. It is a pleasure to testify even at this late date to his great kindness and faith in me. STICKING TO BUSINESS PRINCIPLES Mr. Handy trusted me because he believed we would conduct our young business on conservative and proper lines, and I well remember about this time an example of how hard it is sometimes to live up to what one knows is the right business principle. Not long after our concern was started our best customer--that is, the man who made the largest consignments--asked that we should allow him to draw in advance on current shipments before the produce or a bill of lading were actually in hand. We, of course, wished to oblige this important man, but I, as the financial member of the firm, objected, though I feared we should lose his business. The situation seemed very serious; my partner was impatient with me for refusing to yield, and in this dilemma I decided to go personally to see if I could not induce our customer to relent. I had been unusually fortunate when I came face to face with men in winning their friendship, and my partner's displeasure put me on my mettle. I felt that when I got into touch with this gentleman I could convince him that what he proposed would result in a bad precedent. My reasoning (in my own mind) was logical and convincing. I went to see him, and put forth all the arguments that I had so carefully thought out. But he stormed about, and in the end I had the further humiliation of confessing to my partner that I had failed. I had been able to accomplish absolutely nothing. Naturally, he was very much disturbed at the possibility of losing our most valued connection, but I insisted and we stuck to our principles and refused to give the shipper the accommodation he had asked. What was our surprise and gratification to find that he continued his relations with us as though nothing had happened, and did not again refer to the matter. I learned afterward that an old country banker, named John Gardener, of Norwalk, O., who had much to do with our consignor, was watching this little matter intently, and I have ever since believed that he originated the suggestion to tempt us to do what we stated we did not do as a test, and his story about our firm stand for what we regarded as sound business principles did us great good. About this time I began to go out and solicit business--a branch of work I had never before attempted. I undertook to visit every person in our part of the country who was in any way connected with the kind of business that we were engaged in, and went pretty well over the states of Ohio and Indiana. I made up my mind that I could do this best by simply introducing our firm, and not pressing for immediate consignments. I told them that I represented Clark & Rockefeller, commission merchants, and that I had no wish to interfere with any connection that they had at present, but if the opportunity offered we should be glad to serve them, etc., etc. To our great surprise, business came in upon us so fast that we hardly knew how to take care of it, and in the first year our sales amounted to half a million dollars. Then, and indeed for many years after, it seemed as though there was no end to the money needed to carry on and develop the business. As our successes began to come, I seldom put my head upon the pillow at night without speaking a few words to myself in this wise: "Now a little success, soon you will fall down, soon you will be overthrown. Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head--go steady." These intimate conversations with myself, I am sure, had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity, and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions. My loans from my father were many. Our relations on finances were a source of some anxiety to me, and were not quite so humorous as they seem now as I look back at them. Occasionally he would come to me and say that if I needed money in the business he would be able to loan some, and as I always needed capital I was glad indeed to get it, even at 10 per cent. interest. Just at the moment when I required the money most he was apt to say: "My son, I find I have got to have that money." "Of course, you shall have it at once," I would answer, but I knew that he was testing me, and that when I paid him, he would hold the money without its earning anything for a little time, and then offer it back later. I confess that this little discipline should have done me good, and perhaps did, but while I concealed it from him, the truth is I was not particularly pleased with his application of tests to discover if my financial ability was equal to such shocks. INTEREST AT 10 PER CENT. These experiences with my father remind me that in the early days there was often much discussion as to what should be paid for the use of money. Many people protested that the rate of 10 per cent. was outrageous, and none but a wicked man would exact such a charge. I was accustomed to argue that money was worth what it would bring--no one would pay 10 per cent., or 5 per cent., or 8 per cent. unless the borrower believed that at this rate it was profitable to employ it. As I was always the borrower at that time, I certainly did not argue for paying more than was necessary. Among the most persistent and heated discussions I ever had were those with the dear old lady who kept the boarding-house where my brother William and I lived when we were away from home at school. I used to greatly enjoy these talks, for she was an able woman and a good talker, and as she charged us only a dollar a week for board and lodging, and fed us well, I certainly was her friend. This was about the usual price for board in the small towns in those days, where the produce was raised almost entirely on the place. This estimable lady was violently opposed to loaners obtaining high rates of interest, and we had frequent and earnest arguments on the subject. She knew that I was accustomed to make loans for my father, and she was familiar with the rates secured. But all the arguments in the world did not change the rate, and it came down only when the supply of money grew more plentiful. I have usually found that important alterations in public opinion in regard to business matters have been of slow growth along the line of proved economic theory--very rarely have improvements in these relationships come about through hastily devised legislation. One can hardly realize how difficult it was to get capital for active business enterprises at that time. In the country farther west much higher rates were paid, which applied usually to personal loans on which a business risk was run, but it shows how different the conditions for young business men were then than now. A NIMBLE BORROWER Speaking of borrowing at the banks reminds me of one of the most strenuous financial efforts I ever made. We had to raise the money to accept an offer for a large business. It required many hundreds of thousands of dollars--and in cash--securities would not answer. I received the message at about noon and had to get off on the three-o'clock train. I drove from bank to bank, asking each president or cashier, whomever I could find first, to get ready for me all the funds he could possibly lay hands on. I told them I would be back to get the money later. I rounded up all of our banks in the city, and made a second journey to get the money, and kept going until I secured the necessary amount. With this I was off on the three-o'clock train, and closed the transaction. In these early days I was a good deal of a traveller, visiting our plants, making new connections, seeing people, arranging plans to extend our business--and it often called for very rapid work. RAISING CHURCH FUNDS When I was but seventeen or eighteen I was elected as a trustee in the church. It was a mission branch, and occasionally I had to hear members who belonged to the main body speak of the mission as though it were not quite so good as the big mother church. This strengthened our resolve to show them that we could paddle our own canoe. Our first church was not a very grand affair, and there was a mortgage of $2,000 on it which had been a dispiriting influence for years. The holder of the mortgage had long demanded that he should be paid, but somehow even the interest was barely kept up, and the creditor finally threatened to sell us out. As it happened, the money had been lent by a deacon in the church, but notwithstanding this fact, he felt that he should have his money, and perhaps he really needed it. Anyhow, he proposed to take such steps as were necessary to get it. The matter came to a head one Sunday morning, when the minister announced from the pulpit that the $2,000 would have to be raised, or we should lose our church building. I therefore found myself at the door of the church as the congregation came and went. As each member came by I buttonholed him, and got him to promise to give something toward the extinguishing of that debt. I pleaded and urged, and almost threatened. As each one promised, I put his name and the amount down in my little book, and continued to solicit from every possible subscriber. This campaign for raising the money which started that morning after church, lasted for several months. It was a great undertaking to raise such a sum of money in small amounts ranging from a few cents to the more magnificent promises of gifts to be paid at the rate of twenty-five or fifty cents per week. The plan absorbed me. I contributed what I could, and my first ambition to earn more money was aroused by this and similar undertakings in which I was constantly engaged. But at last the $2,000 was all in hand and a proud day it was when the debt was extinguished. I hope the members of the mother church were properly humiliated to see how far we had gone beyond their expectations, but I do not now recall that they expressed the surprise that we flattered ourselves they must have felt. The begging experiences I had at that time were full of interest. I went at the task with pride rather than the reverse, and I continued it until my increasing cares and responsibilities compelled me to resign the actual working out of details to others. CHAPTER III THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY It would be surprising if in an organization which included a great number of men there should not be an occasional employee here and there who acted, in connection with the business or perhaps in conducting his own affairs, in a way which might be criticized. Even in a comparatively small organization it is wellnigh impossible to restrain this occasional man who is over-zealous for his own or his company's advancement. To judge the character of all the members of a great organization or the organization itself by the actions of a few individuals would be manifestly unfair. It has been said that I forced the men who became my partners in the oil business to join with me. I would not have been so short-sighted. If it were true that I followed such tactics, I ask, would it have been possible to make of such men life-long companions? Would they accept, and remain for many years in positions of the greatest trust, and finally, could any one have formed of such men, if they had been so browbeaten, a group which has for all these years worked in loyal harmony, with fair dealing among themselves as well as with others, building up efficiency and acting in entire unity? This powerful organization has not only lasted but its efficiency has increased. For fourteen years I have been out of business, and in eight or ten years went only once to the company's office. In the summer of 1907 I visited again the room at the top of the Standard Oil Company's building, where the officers of the company and the heads of departments have had their luncheon served for many years. I was surprised to find so many men who had come to the front since my last visit years ago. Afterward I had an opportunity to talk with old associates and many new ones, and it was a source of great gratification to me to find that the same spirit of coöperation and harmony existed unchanged. This practice of lunching together, a hundred or more at long tables in most intimate and friendly association, is another indication of what I contend, slight as it may seem to be at first thought. Would these people seek each other's companionship day after day if they had been forced into this relation? People in such a position do not go on for long in a pleasant and congenial intimacy. For years the Standard Oil Company has developed step by step, and I am convinced that it has done well its work of supplying to the people the products from petroleum at prices which have decreased as the efficiency of the business has been built up. It gradually extended its services first to the large centres, and then to towns, and now to the smallest places, going to the homes of its customers, delivering the oil to suit the convenience of the actual users. This same system is being followed out in various parts of the world. The company has, for example, three thousand tank wagons supplying American oil to towns and even small hamlets in Europe. Its own depots and employees deliver it in a somewhat similar way in Japan, China, India, and the chief countries of the world. Do you think this trade has been developed by anything but hard work? This plan of selling our products direct to the consumer and the exceptionally rapid growth of the business bred a certain antagonism which I suppose could not have been avoided, but this same idea of dealing with the consumer directly has been followed by others and in many lines of trade, without creating, so far as I recall, any serious opposition. This is a very interesting and important point, and I have often wondered if the criticism which centred upon us did not come from the fact that we were among the first, if not the first, to work out the problems of direct selling to the user on a broad scale. This was done in a fair spirit and with due consideration for everyone's rights. We did not ruthlessly go after the trade of our competitors and attempt to ruin it by cutting prices or instituting a spy system. We had set ourselves the task of building up as rapidly and as broadly as possible the volume of consumption. Let me try to explain just what happened. To get the advantage of the facilities we had in manufacture, we sought the utmost market in all lands--we needed volume. To do this we had to create selling methods far in advance of what then existed; we had to dispose of two, or three, or four gallons of oil where one had been sold before, and we could not rely upon the usual trade channels then existing to accomplish this. It was never our purpose to interfere with a dealer who adequately cultivated his field of operations, but when we saw a new opportunity or a new place for extending the sale by further and effective facilities, we made it our business to provide them. In this way we opened many new lines in which others have shared. In this development we had to employ many comparatively new men. The ideal way to supply material for higher positions is, of course, to recruit the men from among the youngest in the company's service, but our expansion was too rapid to permit this in all cases. That some of these employees were over-zealous in going after sales it would not be surprising to learn, but they were acting in violation of the expressed and known wishes of the company. But even these instances, I am convinced, occurred so seldom, by comparison with the number of transactions we carried on, that they were really the exceptions that proved the rule. Every week in the year for many, many years, this concern has brought into this country more than a million dollars gold, all from the products produced by American labour. I am proud of the record, and believe most Americans will be when they understand some things better. These achievements, the development of this great foreign trade, the owning of ships to carry the oil in bulk by the most economical methods, the sending out of men to fight for the world's markets, have cost huge sums of money, and the vast capital employed could not be raised nor controlled except by such an organization as the Standard is to-day. To give a true picture of the early conditions, one must realize that the oil industry was considered a most hazardous undertaking, not altogether unlike the speculative mining undertakings we hear so much of to-day. I well remember my old and distinguished friend, Rev. Thomas W. Armitage, for some forty years pastor of a great New York church, warning me that it was worse than folly to extend our plants and our operations. He was sure we were running unwarranted risks, that our oil supply would probably fail, the demand would decline, and he, with many others, sometimes I thought almost everybody, prophesied ruin. None of us ever dreamed of the magnitude of what proved to be the later expansion. We did our day's work as we met it, looking forward to what we could see in the distance and keeping well up to our opportunities, but laying our foundations firmly. As I have said, capital was most difficult to secure, and it was not easy to interest conservative men in this adventurous business. Men of property were afraid of it, though in rare cases capitalists were induced to unite with us to a limited extent. If they bought our stock at all, they took a little of it now and then as an experiment, and we were painfully conscious that they often declined to buy new stock with many beautiful expressions of appreciation. The enterprise being so new and novel, on account of the fearfulness of certain holders in reference to its success, we frequently had to take stock to keep it from going begging, but we had such confidence in the fundamental value of the concern that we were willing to assume this risk. There are always a few men in an undertaking of this kind who would risk all on their judgment of the final result, and if the enterprise had failed, these would have been classed as visionary adventurers, and perhaps with good reason. The 60,000 men who are at work constantly in the service of the company are kept busy year in and year out. The past year has been a time of great contraction, but the Standard has gone on with its plans unchecked, and the new works and buildings have not been delayed on account of lack of capital or fear of bad times. It pays its workmen well, it cares for them when sick, and pensions them when old. It has never had any important strikes, and if there is any better function of business management than giving profitable work to employees year after year, in good times and bad, I don't know what it is. Another thing to be remembered about this so-called "octopus" is that there has been no "water" introduced into its capital (perhaps we felt that oil and water would not have mixed); nor in all these years has any one had to wait for money which the Standard owed. It has suffered from great fires and losses, but it has taken care of its affairs in such a way that it has not found it necessary to appeal to the general public to place blocks of bonds or stock; it has used no underwriting syndicates or stock-selling schemes in any form, and it has always managed to finance new oil field operations when called upon. It is a common thing to hear people say that this company has crushed out its competitors. Only the uninformed could make such an assertion. It has and always has had, and always will have, hundreds of active competitors; it has lived only because it has managed its affairs well and economically and with great vigour. To speak of competition for a minute: Consider not only the able people who compete in refining oil, but all the competition in the various trades which make and sell by-products--a great variety of different businesses. And perhaps of even more importance is the competition in foreign lands. The Standard is always fighting to sell the American product against the oil produced from the great fields of Russia, which struggles for the trade of Europe, and the Burma oil, which largely affects the market in India. In all these various countries we are met with tariffs which are raised against us, local prejudices, and strange customs. In many countries we had to teach the people--the Chinese, for example--to burn oil by making lamps for them; we packed the oil to be carried by camels or on the backs of runners in the most remote portions of the world; we adapted the trade to the needs of strange folk. Every time we succeeded in a foreign land, it meant dollars brought to this country, and every time we failed, it was a loss to our nation and its workmen. One of our greatest helpers has been the State Department in Washington. Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls have aided to push our way into new markets to the utmost corners of the world. I think I can speak thus frankly and enthusiastically because the working out of many of these great plans has developed largely since I retired from the business fourteen years ago. The Standard has not now, and never did have a royal road to supremacy, nor is its success due to any one man, but to the multitude of able men who are working together. If the present managers of the company were to relax efforts, allow the quality of their product to degenerate, or treat their customers badly, how long would their business last? About as long as any other neglected business. To read some of the accounts of the affairs of the company, one would think that it had such a hold on the oil trade that the directors did little but come together and declare dividends. It is a pleasure for me to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work these men are doing, not only for the company they serve, but for the foreign trade of our country; for more than half of all the product that the company makes is sold outside of the United States. If, in place of these directors, the business were taken over and run by anyone but experts, I would sell my interest for any price I could get. To succeed in a business requires the best and most earnest men to manage it, and the best men rise to the top. Of its origin and early plans I will speak later. THE MODERN CORPORATION Beyond question there is a suspicion of corporations. There may be reason for such suspicion very often; for a corporation may be moral or immoral, just as a man may be moral or the reverse; but it is folly to condemn all corporations because some are bad, or even to be unduly suspicious of all, because some are bad. But the corporation in form and character has come to stay--that is a thing that may be depended upon. Even small firms are becoming corporations, because it is a convenient form of partnership. It is equally true that combinations of capital are bound to continue and to grow, and this need not alarm even the most timid if the corporation, or the series of corporations, is properly conducted with due regard for the rights of others. The day of individual competition in large affairs is past and gone--you might just as well argue that we should go back to hand labour and throw away our efficient machines--and the sober good sense of the people will accept this fact when they have studied and tried it out. Just see how the list of stockholders in the great corporations is increasing by leaps and bounds. This means that all these people are becoming partners in great businesses. It is a good thing--it will bring a feeling of increased responsibility to the managers of the corporations and will make the people who have their interests involved study the facts impartially before condemning or attacking them. On this subject of industrial combinations I have often expressed my opinions; and, as I have not changed my mind, I am not averse to repeating them now, especially as the subject seems again to be so much in the public eye. The chief advantages from industrial combinations are those which can be derived from a coöperation of persons and aggregation of capital. Much that one man cannot do alone two can do together, and once admit the fact that coöperation, or, what is the same thing, combination, is necessary on a small scale, the limit depends solely upon the necessities of business. Two persons in partnership may be a sufficiently large combination for a small business, but if the business grows or can be made to grow, more persons and more capital must be taken in. The business may grow so large that a partnership ceases to be a proper instrumentality for its purposes, and then a corporation becomes a necessity. In most countries, as in England, this form of industrial combination is sufficient for a business co-extensive with the parent country, but it is not so in America. Our Federal form of government making every corporation created by a state foreign to every other state, renders it necessary for persons doing business through corporate agency to organize corporations in some or many of the different states in which their business is located. Instead of doing business through the agency of one corporation they must do business through the agencies of several corporations. If the business is extended to foreign countries, and Americans are not to-day satisfied with home markets alone, it will be found helpful and possibly necessary to organize corporations in such countries, for Europeans are prejudiced against foreign corporations, as are the people of many of our states. These different corporations thus become coöperating agencies in the same business and are held together by common ownership of their stocks. It is too late to argue about advantages of industrial combinations. They are a necessity. And if Americans are to have the privilege of extending their business in all the states of the Union, and into foreign countries as well, they are a necessity on a large scale, and require the agency of more than one corporation. The dangers are that the power conferred by combination may be abused, that combinations may be formed for speculation in stocks rather than for conducting business, and that for this purpose prices may be temporarily raised instead of being lowered. These abuses are possible to a greater or less extent in all combinations, large or small, but this fact is no more of an argument against combinations than the fact that steam may explode is an argument against steam. Steam is necessary and can be made comparatively safe. Combination is necessary and its abuses can be minimized; otherwise our legislators must acknowledge their incapacity to deal with the most important instrument of industry. In the hearing of the Industrial Commission in 1899, I then said that if I were to suggest any legislation regarding industrial combinations it would be: First, Federal legislation under which corporations may be created and regulated, if that be possible. Second, in lieu thereof, state legislation as nearly uniform as possible, encouraging combinations of persons and capital for the purpose of carrying on industries, but permitting state supervision, not of a character to hamper industries, but sufficient to prevent frauds upon the public. I still feel as I did in 1899. THE NEW OPPORTUNITIES I am far from believing that this will adversely affect the individual. The great economic era we are entering will give splendid opportunity to the young man of the future. One often hears the men of this new generation say that they do not have the chances that their fathers and grandfathers had. How little they know of the disadvantages from which we suffered! In my young manhood we had everything to do and nothing to do it with; we had to hew our own paths along new lines; we had little experience to go on. Capital was most difficult to get, credits were mysterious things. Whereas now we have a system of commercial ratings, everything was then haphazard and we suffered from a stupendous war and all the disasters which followed. Compare this day with that. Our comforts and opportunities are multiplied a thousand fold. The resources of our great land are now actually opening up and are scarcely touched; our home markets are vast, and we have just begun to think of the foreign peoples we can serve--the people who are years behind us in civilization. In the East a quarter of the human race is just awakening. The men of this generation are entering into a heritage which makes their fathers' lives look poverty-stricken by comparison. I am naturally an optimist, and when it comes to a statement of what our people will accomplish in the future, I am unable to express myself with sufficient enthusiasm. There are many things we must do to attain the highest benefit from all these great blessings; and not the least of these is to build up our reputation throughout the whole world. The great business interests will, I hope, so comport themselves that foreign capital will consider it a desirable thing to hold shares in American companies. It is for Americans to see that foreign investors are well and honestly treated, so that they will never regret purchases of our securities. I may speak thus frankly, because I am an investor in many American enterprises, but a controller of none (with one exception, and that a company which has not been much of a dividend payer), and I, like all the rest, am dependent upon the honest and capable administration of the industries. I firmly and sincerely believe that they will be so managed. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN You hear a good many people of pessimistic disposition say much about greed in American life. One would think to hear them talk that we were a race of misers in this country. To lay too much stress upon the reports of greed in the newspapers would be folly, since their function is to report the unusual and even the abnormal. When a man goes properly about his daily affairs, the public prints say nothing; it is only when something extraordinary happens to him that he is discussed. But because he is thus brought into prominence occasionally, you surely would not say that these occasions represented his normal life. It is by no means for money alone that these active-minded men labour--they are engaged in a fascinating occupation. The zest of the work is maintained by something better than the mere accumulation of money, and, as I think I have said elsewhere, the standards of business are high and are getting better all the time. I confess I have no sympathy with the idea so often advanced that our basis of all judgments in this country is founded on money. If this were true, we should be a nation of money hoarders instead of spenders. Nor do I admit that we are so small-minded a people as to be jealous of the success of others. It is the other way about: we are the most extraordinarily ambitious, and the success of one man in any walk of life spurs the others on. It does not sour them, and it is a libel even to suggest so great a meanness of spirit. In reading the newspapers, where so much is taken for granted in considering things on a money standard, I think we need some of the sense of humour possessed by an Irish neighbour of mine, who built what we regarded as an extremely ugly house, which stood out in bright colours as we looked from our windows. My taste in architecture differed so widely from that affected by my Irish friend, that we planted out the view of his house by moving some large trees to the end of our property. Another neighbour who watched this work going on asked Mr. Foley why Mr. Rockefeller moved all these big trees and cut off the view between the houses. Foley, with the quick wit of his country, responded instantly: "It's invy, they can't stand looking at the ividence of me prosperity." In my early days men acted just as they do now, no doubt. When there was anything to be done for general trade betterment, almost every man had some good reason for believing that his case was a special one different from all the rest. For every foolish thing he did, or wanted to do, for every unbusiness-like plan he had, he always pleaded that it was necessary in his case. He was the one man who had to sell at less than cost, to disrupt all the business plans of others in his trade, because his individual position was so absolutely different from all the rest. It was often a heart-breaking undertaking to convince those men that the perfect occasion which would lead to the perfect opportunity would never come, even if they waited until the crack o' doom. Then, again, we had the type of man who really never knew all the facts about his own affairs. Many of the brightest kept their books in such a way that they did not actually know when they were making money on a certain operation and when they were losing. This unintelligent competition was a hard matter to contend with. Good old-fashioned common sense has always been a mighty rare commodity. When a man's affairs are not going well, he hates to study the books and face the truth. From the first, the men who managed the Standard Oil Company kept their books intelligently as well as correctly. We knew how much we made and where we gained or lost. At least, we tried not to deceive ourselves. My ideas of business are no doubt old-fashioned, but the fundamental principles do not change from generation to generation, and sometimes I think that our quick-witted American business men, whose spirit and energy are so splendid, do not always sufficiently study the real underlying foundations of business management. I have spoken of the necessity of being frank and honest with oneself about one's own affairs: many people assume that they can get away from the truth by avoiding thinking about it, but the natural law is inevitable, and the sooner it is recognized, the better. One hears a great deal about wages and why they must be maintained at a high level, by the railroads, for example. A labourer is worthy of his hire, no less, but no more, and in the long run he must contribute an equivalent for what he is paid. If he does not do this, he is probably pauperized, and you at once throw out the balance of things. You can't hold up conditions artificially, and you can't change the underlying laws of trade. If you try, you must inevitably fail. All this may be trite and obvious, but it is remarkable how many men overlook what should be the obvious. These are facts we can't get away from--a business man must adapt himself to the natural conditions as they exist from month to month and year to year. Sometimes I feel that we Americans think we can find a short road to success, and it may appear that often this feat is accomplished; but real efficiency in work comes from knowing your facts and building upon that sure foundation. Many men of wealth do not retire from business even when they can. They are not willing to be idle, or they have a just pride in their work and want to perfect the plans in which they have faith, or, what is of still more consequence, they may feel the call to expand and build up for the benefit of their employees and associates, and these men are the great builders up in our country. Consider for a moment how much would have been left undone if our prosperous American business men had sat down with folded hands when they had acquired a competency. I have respect for all these reasons, but if a man has succeeded, he has brought upon himself corresponding responsibilities, and our institutions devoted to helping men to help themselves need the brain of the American business man as well as part of his money. Some of these men, however, are so absorbed in their business affairs that they hardly have time to think of anything else. If they do interest themselves in a work outside of their own office and undertake to raise money, they begin with an apology, as if they are ashamed of themselves. "I am no beggar," I have heard many of them say, to which I could only reply: "I am sorry you feel that way about it." I have been this sort of beggar all my life and the experiences I have had were so interesting and important to me that I will venture to speak of them in a later chapter. CHAPTER IV SOME EXPERIENCES IN THE OIL BUSINESS During the years when I was just coming to man's estate, the produce business of Clark & Rockefeller went on prosperously, and in the early sixties we organized a firm to refine and deal in oil. It was composed of Messrs. James and Richard Clark, Mr. Samuel Andrews, and the firm of Clark & Rockefeller, who were the company. It was my first direct connection with the oil trade. As the new concern grew the firm of Clark & Rockefeller was called upon to supply a large special capital. Mr. Samuel Andrews was the manufacturing man of the concern, and he had learned the process of cleansing the crude oil by the use of sulphuric acid. In 1865 the partnership was dissolved; it was decided that the cash assets should be collected and the debts paid, but this left the plant and the good-will to be disposed of. It was suggested that they should go to the highest bidder among ourselves. This seemed a just settlement to me, and the question came up as to when the sale should be held and who would conduct it. My partners had a lawyer in the room to represent them, though I had not considered having a legal representative; I thought I could take care of so simple a transaction. The lawyer acted as the auctioneer, and it was suggested that we should go on with the sale then and there. All agreed, and so the auction began. I had made up my mind that I wanted to go into the oil trade, not as a special partner, but actively on a larger scale, and with Mr. Andrews wished to buy that business. I thought that I saw great opportunities in refining oil, and did not realize at that time that the whole oil industry would soon be swamped by so many men rushing into it. But I was full of hope, and I had already arranged to get financial accommodation to an amount that I supposed would easily pay for the plant and good-will. I was willing to give up the other firm of Clark & Rockefeller, and readily settled that later--my old partner, Mr. Clark, taking over the business. The bidding began, I think, at $500 premium. I bid a thousand; they bid two thousand; and so on, little by little, the price went up. Neither side was willing to stop bidding, and the amount gradually rose until it reached $50,000, which was much more than we supposed the concern to be worth. Finally, it advanced to $60,000, and by slow stages to $70,000, and I almost feared for my ability to buy the business and have the money to pay for it. At last the other side bid $72,000. Without hesitation I said $72,500. Mr. Clark then said: "I'll go no higher, John; the business is yours." "Shall I give you a check for it now?" I suggested. "No," Mr. Clark said, "I'm glad to trust you for it; settle at your convenience." The firm of Rockefeller & Andrews was then established, and this was really my start in the oil trade. It was my most important business for about forty years until, at the age of about fifty-six, I retired. The story of the early history of the oil trade is too well known to bear repeating in detail. The cleansing of crude petroleum was a simple and easy process, and at first the profits were very large. Naturally, all sorts of people went into it: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker began to refine oil, and it was only a short time before more of the finished product was put on the market than could possibly be consumed. The price went down and down until the trade was threatened with ruin. It seemed absolutely necessary to extend the market for oil by exporting to foreign countries, which required a long and most difficult development; and also to greatly improve the processes of refining so that oil could be made and sold cheaply, yet with a profit, and to use as by-products all of the materials which in the less-efficient plants were lost or thrown away. These were the problems which confronted us almost at the outset, and this great depression led to consultations with our neighbors and friends in the business in the effort to bring some order out of what was rapidly becoming a state of chaos. To accomplish all these tasks of enlarging the market and improving the methods of manufacture in a large way was beyond the power or ability of any concern as then constituted. It could only be done, we reasoned, by increasing our capital and availing ourselves of the best talent and experience. It was with this idea that we proceeded to buy the largest and best refining concerns and centralize the administration of them with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency. The business grew faster than we had anticipated. This enterprise, conducted by men of application and ability working hard together, soon built up unusual facilities in manufacture, in transportation, in finance, and in extending markets. We had our troubles and set-backs; we suffered from some severe fires; and the supply of crude oil was most uncertain. Our plans were constantly changed by changed conditions. We developed great facilities in an oil centre, erected storage tanks, and connected pipe-lines; then the oil failed and our work was thrown away. At best it was a speculative trade, and I wonder that we managed to pull through so often; but we were gradually learning how to conduct a most difficult business. FOREIGN MARKETS Several years ago, when asked how our business grew to such large proportions I explained that our first organization was a partnership and afterward a corporation in Ohio. That was sufficient for a local refining business. But, had we been dependent solely upon local business, we should have failed long since. We were forced to extend our markets into every part of the world. This made the sea-board cities a necessary place of business, and we soon discovered that manufacturing for export could be more economically carried on there; hence refineries were established at Brooklyn, at Bayonne, at Philadelphia, at Baltimore, and necessary corporations were organized in the different states. We soon discovered, as the business grew, that the primary method of transporting oil in barrels could not last. The package often cost more than the contents, and the forests of the country were not sufficient to supply cheaply the necessary material for an extended time. Hence we devoted attention to other methods of transportation, adopted the pipe-line system, and found capital for pipe-line construction equal to the necessities of the business. To operate pipe-lines required franchises from the states in which they were located--and consequently corporations in those states--just as railroads running through different states are forced to operate under separate state charters. To perfect the pipe-line system of transportation required many millions of capital. The entire oil business is dependent upon the pipe-line. Without it every well would be less valuable and every market at home and abroad would be more difficult to serve or retain, because of the additional cost to the consumer. The expansion of the whole industry would have been retarded without this method of transportation. Then the pipe-line system required other improvements, such as tank-cars upon railroads, and finally the tank-steamer. Capital had to be furnished for them and corporations created to own and operate them. Everyone of the steps taken was necessary if the business was to be properly developed, and only through such successive steps and by a great aggregation of capital is America to-day enabled to utilize the bounty which its land pours forth, and to furnish the world with light. THE START OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY In the year 1867 the firms of William Rockefeller & Co., Rockefeller & Andrews, Rockefeller & Co., and S.V. Harkness and H.M. Flagler united in forming the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler. The cause leading to the formation of this firm was the desire to unite our skill and capital in order to carry on a business of greater magnitude with economy and efficiency in place of the smaller business that each had heretofore conducted separately. As time went on and the possibilities became apparent, we found further capital to be necessary; then we interested others and organized the Standard Oil Company, with a capital of $1,000,000. Later we saw that more money could be utilized, found persons who were willing to invest with us, and increased our capital to $2,500,000, in 1872, and afterward in 1874 to $3,500,000. As the business grew, and markets were obtained at home and abroad, more persons and capital were added to the business, and new corporate agencies were obtained or organized, the object being always the same--to extend our operations by furnishing the best and cheapest products. I ascribe the success of the Standard Oil Company to its consistent policy of making the volume of its business large through the merit and cheapness of its products. It has spared no expense in utilizing the best and most efficient method of manufacture. It has sought for the best superintendents and workmen and paid the best wages. It has not hesitated to sacrifice old machinery and old plants for new and better ones. It has placed its manufactories at the points where they could supply markets at the least expense. It has not only sought markets for its principal products, but for all possible by-products, sparing no expense in introducing them to the public in every nook and corner of the world. It has not hesitated to invest millions of dollars in methods for cheapening the gathering and distribution of oils by pipe-lines, special cars, tank-steamers, and tank-wagons. It has erected tank-stations at railroad centres in every part of the country to cheapen the storage and delivery of oil. It has had faith in American oil and has brought together vast sums of money for the purpose of making it what it is, and for holding its market against the competition of Russia and all the countries which are producers of oil and competitors against American products. THE INSURANCE PLANS Here is an example of one of the ways in which we achieved certain economies and gained real advantage. Fires are always to be reckoned with in oil refining and storage, as we learned by dear experience, but in having our plants distributed all over the country the unit of risk and possible loss was minimized. No one fire could ruin us, and we were able thus to establish a system of insuring ourselves. Our reserve fund which provided for this insurance could not be wiped out all at once, as might be the case with a concern having its plants together or near each other. Then we studied and perfected our organization to prevent fires, improving our appliances and plans year after year until the profit on this insurance feature became a very considerable item in the Standard earnings. It can easily be seen that this saving in insurance, and minimizing the loss by fire affected the profits, not only in refining, but touched many other associated enterprises: the manufacture of by-products, the tanks and steamers, the pumping-stations, etc. We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. The company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization. We educated our own men; we trained many of them from boyhood; we strove to keep them loyal by providing them full scope for their ability; they were given opportunities to buy stock, and the company itself helped them to finance their purchases. Not only here in America, but all over the world, our young men were given chances to advance themselves, and the sons of the old partners were welcomed to the councils and responsibilities of the administration. I may say that the company has been in all its history, and I am sure it is at present, a most happy association of busy people. I have been asked if my advice is not often sought by the present managers. I can say that if it were sought it would be gladly given. But the fact is that since I retired it has been very little required. I am still a large stockholder, indeed I have increased my holdings in the company's stock since I relinquished any part in its management. WHY THE STANDARD PAYS LARGE DIVIDENDS Let me explain what many people, perhaps, fully appreciate, but some, I am sure, do not. The Standard pays four dividends a year: the first in March, which is the result of the busiest season of the whole twelvemonth, because more oil is consumed in winter than at other seasons, and three other dividends later, at about evenly divided periods. Now, these dividends run up to 40 per cent. on the capital stock of $100,000,000, but that does not mean that the profit is 40 per cent. on the capital invested. As a matter of fact, it represents the results of the savings and surplus gained through all the thirty-five or forty years of the workings of the companies. The capital stock could be raised several hundred per cent. without a penny of over-capitalization or "water"; the actual value is there. If this increase had been made, the rate would represent a moderate dividend-paying power of about 6 to 8 per cent. A NORMAL GROWTH Study for a moment the result of what has been a natural and absolutely normal increase in the value of the company's possessions. Many of the pipe-lines were constructed during a period when costs were about 50 per cent. of what they are now. Great fields of oil lands were purchased as virgin soil, which later yielded an immense output. Quantities of low-grade crude oil which had been bought by the company when it was believed to be of little value, but which the company hoped eventually to utilize, were greatly increased in value by inventions for refining it and for using the residues formerly considered almost worthless. Dock property was secured at low prices and made valuable by buildings and development. Large unimproved tracts of land near the important business centres were acquired. We brought our industries to these places, made the land useful, and increased the value, not only of our own property, but of the land adjacent to it to many times the original worth. Wherever we have established businesses in this and other countries we have bought largely of property. I remember a case where we paid only $1,000 or so an acre for some rough land to be used for such purposes, and, through the improvements we created, the value has gone up 40 or 50 times as much in 35 or 40 years. Others have had similar increases in the value of their properties, but have enlarged their capitalization correspondingly. They have escaped the criticism which has been directed against us, who with our old-fashioned and conservative notions have continued without such expansion of capitalization. There is nothing strange or miraculous in all this; it was all done through this natural law of trade development. It is what the Astors and many other large landholders did. If a man starts in business with $1,000 capital and gradually increases his property and investment by retaining in his concern much of his earnings, instead of spending them, and thus accumulates values until his investment is, say, $10,000, it would be folly to base the percentage of his actual profits only on the original $1,000 with which he started. Here, again, I think the managers of the Standard should be praised, and not blamed. They have set an example for upbuilding on the most conservative lines, and in a business which has always been, to say the least, hazardous, and to a large degree unavoidably speculative. Yet no one who has relied upon the ownership of this stock to pay a yearly income has been disappointed, and the stock is held by an increasing number of small holders the country over. THE MANAGEMENT OF CAPITAL We never attempted, as I have already said, to sell the Standard Oil stock on the market through the Stock Exchange. In the early days the risks of the business were great, and if the stock had been dealt in on the Exchange its fluctuations would no doubt have been violent. We preferred to have the attention of the owners and administrators of the business directed wholly to the legitimate development of the enterprise rather than to speculation in its shares. The interests of the company have been carefully conserved. We have been criticized for paying large dividends on a capitalization which represents but a small part of the actual property owned by the company. If we had increased the capitalization to bring it up to the real value, and listed the shares on the Exchange, we might have been criticized then for promoting a project to induce the public to invest. As I have indicated, the foundations of the company were so thoroughly established, and its affairs so conservatively managed, that, after the earlier period of struggle to secure adequate capital and in view of the trying experiences through which we then passed, we decided to pursue the policy of relying upon our own resources. Since then we have never been obliged to lean very heavily upon the financial public, but have sought rather to hold ourselves in position not only to protect our own large and important interests, but to be prepared in times of stress to lend a helping hand to others. The company has suffered from the statements of people who, I am convinced, are not familiar with all the facts. As I long ago ceased to have any active part in the management of its affairs perhaps I may venture the opinion that men who devote themselves to building up the sale of American products all over the world, in competition with foreign manufacturers should be appreciated and encouraged. There have been so many tales told about the so-called speculations of the Standard Oil Company that I may say a word about that subject. This company is interested only in oil products and such manufacturing affairs as are legitimately connected therewith. It has plants for the making of barrels and tanks; and building pumps for pumping oil; it owns vessels for carrying oil, tank-cars, pipes for transporting oil, etc., etc.--but it is not concerned in speculative interests. The oil business itself is speculative enough, and its successful administration requires a firm hand and a cool head. The company pays dividends to its stockholders which it earns in carrying on this oil trade. This money the stockholders can and do use as they think fit, but the company is in no way responsible for the disposition that the stockholders make of their dividends. The Standard Oil Company does not own or control "a chain of banks," nor has it any interest directly or indirectly in any bank. Its relations are confined to the functions of ordinary banking, such as other depositors have. It buys and sells its own exchange; and these dealings, extending over many years, have made its bills of exchange acceptable all over the world. CHARACTER THE ESSENTIAL THING In speaking of the real beginning of the Standard Oil Company, it should be remembered that it was not so much the consolidation of the firms in which we had a personal interest, but the coming together of the men who had the combined brain power to do the work, which was the actual starting-point. Perhaps it is worth while to emphasize again the fact that it is not merely capital and "plants" and the strictly material things which make up a business, but the character of the men behind these things, their personalities, and their abilities; these are the essentials to be reckoned with. Late in 1871, we began the purchase of some of the more important of the refinery interests of Cleveland. The conditions were so chaotic and uncertain that most of the refiners were very desirous to get out of the business. We invariably offered those who wanted to sell the option of taking cash or stock in the company. We very much preferred to have them take the stock, because a dollar in those days looked as large as a cart-wheel, but as a matter of business policy we found it desirable to offer them the option, and in most cases they were even precipitate in their choice of the cash. They knew what a dollar would buy, but they were very sceptical in regard to the possibilities of resurrecting the oil business and giving any permanent value to these shares. These purchases continued over a period of years, during which many of the more important refineries at Cleveland were bought by the Standard Oil Company. Some of the smaller concerns, however, continued in the business for many years, although they had the same opportunity as others to sell. There were always, at other refining points which were regarded as more favourably located than Cleveland, many refineries in successful operation. THE BACKUS PURCHASE All these purchases of refineries were conducted with the utmost fairness and good faith on our part, yet in many quarters the stories of certain of these transactions have been told in such form as to give the impression that the sales were made most unwillingly and only because the sellers were forced to make them by the most ruthless exertion of superior power. There was one transaction, viz., the purchase of the property of the Backus Oil Company, which has been variously exploited, and I am made to appear as having personally robbed a defenceless widow of an extremely valuable property, paying her therefor only a mere fraction of its worth. The story as told is one which makes the strongest appeal to the sympathy and, if it were true, would represent a shocking instance of cruelty in crushing a defenceless woman. It is probable that its wide circulation and its acceptance as true by those who know nothing of the facts has awakened more hostility against the Standard Oil Company and against me personally than any charge which has been made. This is my reason for entering so much into detail in this particular case, which I am exceedingly reluctant to do, and for many years have refrained from doing. Mr. F.M. Backus, a highly respected citizen of Cleveland and an old and personal friend of mine, had for several years prior to his death in 1874 been engaged in the lubricating oil business which was carried on after his death as a corporation known as the Backus Oil Company. In the latter part of 1878, our company purchased certain portions of the property of this company. The negotiations which led to this purchase extended over several weeks, being conducted on behalf of Mrs. Backus, as the principal stockholder, by Mr. Charles H. Marr, and on behalf of our company by Mr. Peter S. Jennings. I personally had nothing to do with the negotiations except that, when the matter first came up, Mrs. Backus requested me to call at her house, which I did, when she spoke of selling the property to our company and requested me to personally conduct the negotiations with her with reference to it. This I was obliged to decline to do, because, as I then explained to her, I was not familiar with the details of the business. In that conversation I advised her not to take any hasty action, and when she expressed fears about the future of the business, stating, for example, that she could not get cars to transport sufficient oil, I said to her that, though we were using our cars and required them in our business, yet we would loan her any number she needed, and do anything else in reason to assist her, and I did not see why she could not successfully prosecute her business in the future as in the past. I told her, however, that if after reflection she desired to pursue negotiations for the sale of her property some of our people, familiar with the lubricating oil business, would take up the question with her. As she still expressed a desire to have our company buy her property, negotiations were taken up by Mr. Jennings, and the only other thing that I had to do with the matter was that when our experts reported that in their judgment the value of the works, good will, and successorship which we had decided to buy were worth a certain sum, I asked them to add $10,000, in order to make doubly sure that she received full value. The sale was consummated, as we supposed, to the entire satisfaction of Mrs. Backus, and the purchase price which had been agreed upon was paid. To my profound astonishment, a day or two after the transaction had been closed, I received from her a very unkind letter complaining that she had been unjustly treated. After investigating the matter I wrote her the following letter: November 13, 1878. DEAR MADAM: I have held your note of the 11th inst., received yesterday, until to-day, as I wished to thoroughly review every point connected with the negotiations for the purchase of the stock of the Backus Oil Company, to satisfy myself as to whether I had unwittingly done anything whereby you could have any right to feel injured. It is true that in the interview I had with you I suggested that if you desired to do so, you could retain an interest in the business of the Backus Oil Company, by keeping some number of its shares, and then I understood you to say that if you sold out you wished to go entirely out of the business. That being my understanding, our arrangements were made in case you concluded to make the sale that precluded any other interests being represented, and therefore, when you did make the inquiry as to your taking some of the stock, our answer was given in accordance with the facts noted above, but not at all in the spirit in which you refer to the refusal in your note. In regard to the reference that you make as to my permitting the business of the Backus Oil Company to _be taken_ from you, I say that in this as in all else you have written in your letter of the 11th inst., you do me most grievous wrong. It was but of little moment to the interests represented by me whether the business of the Backus Oil Company was purchased or not. I believe that it was for your interest to make the sale, and am entirely candid in this statement, and beg to call your attention to the time, some two years ago, when you consulted Mr. Flagler and myself as to selling out your interests to Mr. Rose, at which time you were desirous of selling at _considerably less price_, and upon time, than you have now received in cash, and which sale you would have been glad to have closed if you could have obtained satisfactory security for the deferred payments. As to the price paid for the property, it is certainly three times greater than the cost at which we could now construct equal or better facilities; but wishing to take a liberal view of it, I urged the proposal of paying $60,000, which was thought much too high by some of our parties. I believe that if you would reconsider what you have written in your letter, to which this is a reply, you must admit having done me great injustice, and I am satisfied to await upon your innate sense of right for such admission. However, in view of what seems to be your present feeling, I now offer to restore to you the purchase made by us, you simply returning the amount of money which we have invested, and leaving us as though no purchase has been made. Should you not desire to accept this proposal, I offer to you 100, 200 or 300 shares of the stock at the same price that we paid for the same, with this addition, that if we keep the property we are under engagement to pay into the treasury of the Backus Oil Company any amount which added to the amount already paid would make a total of $100,000 and thereby make the shares $100 each. That you may not be compelled to hastily come to a conclusion, I will leave open for three days these propositions for your acceptance or declination, and in the meantime believe me, Yours very truly, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. Neither of these offers was accepted. In order that this may not rest on my unsupported assertion, I submit the following documents: The first is a letter from Mr. H.M. Backus, a brother of Mrs. Backus's deceased husband, who had been associated with the business and had remained with the company after his death. The letter was written without any solicitation whatever on my part, but I have since received permission from Mr. Backus to print it. It is followed by extracts from affidavits made by the gentleman who conducted the negotiations on behalf of Mrs. Backus. I have no wish to reprint the complimentary allusion to myself in Mr. Backus's letter, but have feared to omit a word of it lest some misunderstanding ensue: BOWLING GREEN, OHIO, September 18, '03. MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Cleveland, Ohio. I do not know whether you will ever receive this letter or not, whether your secretary will throw it into the waste-basket or not, but I will do my part and get it off my mind, and it will not be my fault if you do not receive or read it. Ever since the day that my deceased brother's wife, Mrs. F.N. Backus, wrote you the unjust and unreasonable letter in reference to the sale of the property of the old Backus Oil Company, in which I had a small interest, I have wanted to write you and record my disapproval of that letter. I lived with my brother's family, was at the house the day you called to talk the matter of the then proposed purchase of the property with Mrs. Backus by her request, as she told Mr. Jennings that she wanted to deal through you. I was in favour of the sale from the first. I was with Mrs. Backus all through the trouble with Mr. Rose and with Mr. Maloney, did what I could to encourage her, and to prevent Mr. Rose from getting the best of her. Mrs. Backus, in my opinion, is an exceptionally good financier, but she does not know and no one can convince her that the best thing that ever happened to her financially was the sale of her interest in the Backus Oil Company to your people. She does not know that five more years of the then increasing desperate competition would have bankrupted the company, and that with the big debt that she was carrying on the lot on Euclid Avenue, near Sheriff Street, she would have been swamped, and that the only thing that ever saved her and the oil business generally was the plan of John D. Rockefeller. She thinks that you literally robbed her of millions, and feeds her children on that diet three times a day more or less, principally more, until it has become a mania with her, and no argument that any one else can suggest will have any effect upon her. She is wise and good in many ways, but on that one subject she is one-sided, I think. Of course, if we could have been assured of continued dividends, I would have been opposed to selling the business, but that was out of the question. I know of the ten thousand dollars that was added to the purchase price of the property at your request, and I know that you paid three times the value of the property, and I know that all that ever saved our company from ruin was the sale of its property to you, and I simply want to ease my mind by doing justice to you by saying so. After the sale to your company I was simple enough to go to Buffalo and try it again, but soon met with defeat and retired with my flag in the dust. I then went to Duluth, and was on the top wave, till the real-estate bubble broke, and I broke with it. I have had my ups and downs, but I have tried to take my medicine and look pleasant instead of sitting down under a juniper tree and blaming my losses to John D. Rockefeller. I suppose I would have put off writing this letter for another year or more as I have done so long, had it not been for a little chat that I had with Mr. Hanafin, Superintendent of the Buckeye Pipe Line Company, a day or two since when I was relating the sale, etc., of the old B.O. Co.'s business, and in that way revived the intention that had lain dormant since the last good resolution in regard to writing it was made. But it's done now, and off my mind. With much respect and admiration to John D. Rockefeller I remain, Yours truly, H.M. BACKUS. It appears from the affidavits that the negotiations were conducted on behalf of Mrs. Backus and her company by Charles H. Marr, who had been in the employ of the Backus Company for some time, and by Mr. Maloney, who was the superintendent of the company from the time of its organization and was also a stockholder; and on behalf of the Standard Oil Company by Mr. Peter S. Jennings. There has been an impression that the Standard Oil Company purchased for $79,000 property which was reasonably worth much more, and that this sacrifice was occasioned by threats and compulsion. Mr. Jennings requested Mr. Marr to submit a written proposition giving the price put by the Backus Company upon the several items of property and assets which it desired to sell. This statement was furnished and was annexed to Mr. Jennings's affidavit. The Standard Oil Company finally decided not to purchase all of the assets of the company, but only the oil on hand, for which it paid the full market price, amounting to about $19,000, and the item "works, good-will, and successorship," which were offered by Mr. Marr at $71,000, and for which the Standard offered $60,000, which was promptly accepted. Mr. Marr made affidavit as follows: "Charles H. Marr, being duly sworn, says that, in behalf of the Backus Oil Company, he conducted the negotiations which led to the sale of its works, good-will, and stock of oils and during same when said company had offered to sell its entire stock for a gross sum, to wit, the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000), which was to include cash on hand, accrued dividends, accounts, etc., said Jennings requested said company to submit an itemized proposition fixing values upon different articles proposed to be sold, and that he, after full consideration with Mrs. Backus and with her knowledge and consent, submitted the written proposition attached to said Jennings's affidavit; that the same is in his handwriting, and was copied at the office of the American Lubricating Oil Company from the original by himself at the request of said Jennings, and said original was submitted by affiant to Mrs. Backus. "That she was fully cognizant of all the details of said negotiations and the items and values attached thereto in said proposition, consulted with at every step thereof, none of which were taken without her advice, as she was by far the largest stockholder in said Backus Oil Company, owning about seven-tenths (7/10) of said company's stock, and she fully approved of said proposition, and accepted the offer of said Jennings to pay sixty thousand dollars ($60,000) for the item works, good-will, and successorship without any opposition, so far as affiant knows. And affiant says that the amount realized from the assets of the Backus Oil Company, including purchase price, has been about one hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars ($133,000), and a part of its assets have not yet been converted into money as affiant is informed." Mr. Marr, who was, it will be remembered, the widow's representative, refers to the negotiations leading up to the purchase and says: "But affiant says that nothing that was said by Mr. Jennings or anybody else during their progress could be construed into a threat, nor did anything that was said or done by said Jennings hasten or push forward said trade." He also says: "Affiant says that the negotiations extended over a period of from two to three weeks ... and during their pendency that Mrs. Backus frequently urged affiant to bring the same to a conclusion as she was anxious to dispose of said business and relieve herself from further care and responsibility therewith. And when the said offer of purchase by said Jennings upon the terms aforesaid was conveyed to her by affiant, she expressed herself as entirely satisfied therewith." Mr. Maloney made an affidavit that he was superintendent of the Backus Oil Company from the time of its organization, and also a stockholder in the company, and had been associated in business with Mr. Backus for many years previous to his death; that he took part in the negotiations for the sale, representing Mrs. Backus in the matter. After speaking of the negotiations, he says: "Finally, after consultation, the proposition was made by her to dispose of the works, good-will, and successorship for $71,000. A few days after the proposal was made to her to pay the sum of $60,000 for works and good-will, and to take the oil on hand at its market price, which proposition she accepted, and the sale was concluded. "During these negotiations Mrs. Backus was anxious to sell, and was entirely satisfied with the sale after it was concluded. I know of the fact that about a year and a half previous she had offered to sell out the stock of the Backus Oil Company at from 30 to 33 per cent. less than she received in the sale referred to, and the value of the works and property sold had not increased in the meantime. I was well acquainted with the works of the Backus Oil Company and their value. I could at the time of the sale have built the works new for $25,000. There were no threats nor intimidations, nor anything of the kind used to force the sale. The negotiations were pleasant and fair, and the price paid in excess of the value, and satisfactory to Mrs. Backus and all concerned for her." So far as I can see, after more than 30 years have elapsed, there was nothing but the most kindly and considerate treatment of Mrs. Backus on the part of the Standard Oil Company. I regret that Mrs. Backus did not take at least part of her pay in Standard certificates, as we suggested she should do. THE QUESTION OF REBATES Of all the subjects which seem to have attracted the attention of the public to the affairs of the Standard Oil Company, the matter of rebates from railroads has perhaps been uppermost. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, of which I was president, did receive rebates from the railroads prior to 1880, but received no advantages for which it did not give full compensation. The reason for rebates was that such was the railroads' method of business. A public rate was made and collected by the railroad companies, but, so far as my knowledge extends, was seldom retained in full; a portion of it was repaid to the shippers as a rebate. By this method the real rate of freight which any shipper paid was not known by his competitors nor by other railroad companies, the amount being a matter of bargain with the carrying company. Each shipper made the best bargain that he could, but whether he was doing better than his competitor was only a matter of conjecture. Much depended upon whether the shipper had the advantage of competition of carriers. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, being situated at Cleveland, had the advantage of different carrying lines, as well as of water transportation in the summer; taking advantage of those facilities, it made the best bargains possible for its freights. Other companies sought to do the same. The Standard gave advantages to the railroads for the purpose of reducing the cost of transportation of freight. It offered freights in large quantity, car-loads and train-loads. It furnished loading facilities and discharging facilities at great cost. It provided regular traffic, so that a railroad could conduct its transportation to the best advantage and use its equipment to the full extent of its hauling capacity without waiting for the refiner's convenience. It exempted railroads from liability for fire and carried its own insurance. It provided at its own expense terminal facilities which permitted economies in handling. For these services it obtained contracts for special allowances on freights. But notwithstanding these special allowances, this traffic from the Standard Oil Company was far more profitable to the railroad companies than the smaller and irregular traffic, which might have paid a higher rate. To understand the situation which affected the giving and taking of rebates it must be remembered that the railroads were all eager to enlarge their freight traffic. They were competing with the facilities and rates offered by the boats on lake and canal and by the pipe-lines. All these means of transporting oil cut into the business of the railroads, and they were desperately anxious to successfully meet this competition. As I have stated we provided means for loading and unloading cars expeditiously, agreed to furnish a regular fixed number of car-loads to transport each day, and arranged with them for all the other things that I have mentioned, the final result being to reduce the cost of transportation for both the railroads and ourselves. All this was following in the natural laws of trade. PIPE-LINES VS. RAILROADS The building of the pipe-lines introduced another formidable competitor to the railroads, but as oil could be transported by pumping through pipes at a much less cost than by hauling in tank-cars in a railroad train the development of the pipe-line was inevitable. The question was simply whether the oil traffic was sufficient in volume to make the investment profitable. When pipe-lines had been built to oil fields where the wells had ceased to yield, as often happened, they were about the most useless property imaginable. An interesting feature developed through the relations which grew up between the railroads and the pipe-lines. In many cases it was necessary to combine the facilities of both, because the pipes reached only part of the way, and from the place where they ended the railroad carried the oil to its final destination. In some instances a railroad had formerly carried the oil the entire distance upon an agreed rate, but now that this oil was partly pumped by pipe-lines and partly carried by rail, the freight payment was divided between the two. But, as a through rate had been provided, the owners of the pipe-line agreed to remit a part of its charges to the railroad, so we had cases where the Standard paid a rebate to the railroad instead of the reverse--but I do not remember having heard any complaint of this coming from the students of these complicated subjects. The profits of the Standard Oil Company did not come from advantages given by railroads. The railroads, rather, were the ones who profited by the traffic of the Standard Oil Company, and whatever advantage it received in its constant efforts to reduce rates of freight was only one of the many elements of lessening cost to the consumer which enabled us to increase our volume of business the world over because we could reduce the selling price. How general was the complicated bargaining for rates can hardly be imagined; everyone got the best rate that he could. After the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, it was learned that many small companies which shipped limited quantities had received lower rates than we had been able to secure, notwithstanding the fact that we had made large investments to provide for terminal facilities, regular shipments, and other economies. I well remember a bright man from Boston who had much to say about rebates and drawbacks. He was an old and experienced merchant, and looked after his affairs with a cautious and watchful eye. He feared that some of his competitors were doing better than he in bargaining for rates, and he delivered himself of this conviction: "I am opposed on principle to the whole system of rebates and drawbacks--unless I am in it." CHAPTER V OTHER BUSINESS EXPERIENCES AND BUSINESS PRINCIPLES Going into the iron-ore fields was one of those experiences in which one finds oneself rather against the will, for it was not a deliberate plan of mine to extend my cares and responsibilities. My connection with iron ores came about through some unfortunate investments in the Northwest country. These interests had included a good many different industries, mines, steel mills, paper mills, a nail factory, railroads, lumber fields, smelting properties, and other investments about which I have now forgotten. I was a minority stockholder in all these enterprises, and had no part in their management. Not all of them were profitable. As a matter of fact, for a period of years just preceding the panic of 1893, values were more or less inflated, and many people who thought they were wealthy found that the actual facts were quite different from what they had imagined when the hard experiences of that panic forced upon them the unpalatable truth. Most of these properties I had not even seen, having relied upon the investigation of others respecting their worth; indeed, it has never been my custom to rely alone upon my own knowledge of the value of such plants. I have found other people who knew much better than I how to investigate such enterprises. Even at this time I had been planning to relieve myself of business cares, and the panic only caused me to postpone taking the long holiday to which I had been looking forward. I was fortunate in making the acquaintance of Mr. Frederick T. Gates, who was then engaged in some work in connection with the American Baptist Education Society, which required him to travel extensively over the country, north, south, east, and west. It occurred to me that Mr. Gates, who had a great store of common sense, though no especial technical information about factories and mills, might aid me in securing some first-hand information as to how these concerns were actually prospering. Once, as he was going South, I suggested that he look over an iron mill in which I had some interest which happened to be on his route. His report was a model of what such a report should be. It stated the facts, and in this case they were almost all unfavourable. A little later he happened to be going West, and I gave him the name and address of property in that region in which I held a minority interest. I felt quite sure that this particular property was doing well, and it was somewhat of a shock to me to learn through his clear and definite account that it was only a question of time before this enterprise, too, which had been represented as rolling in money, would get into trouble if things kept on as they were going. NURSING THE COMMERCIALLY ILL I then arranged with Mr. Gates to accept a position whereby he could help me unravel these tangled affairs, and become, like myself, a man of business, but it was agreed between us that he should not abandon his larger and more important plans for working out some philanthropic aspirations that he had. Right here I may stop to give credit to Mr. Gates for possessing a combination of rare business ability, very highly developed and very honourably exercised, overshadowed by a passion to accomplish some great and far-reaching benefits to mankind, the influence of which will last. He is the chairman of the General Education Board and active in many other boards, and for years he has helped in the various plans that we have been interested in where money was given in the hope that it would do something more than temporary service. Mr. Gates has for many years been closely associated with my personal affairs. He has been through strenuous times with me, and has taken cares of many kinds off my shoulders, leaving me more time to play golf, plan roads, move trees, and follow other congenial occupations. His efforts in the investigations in connection with our educational contributions, our medical research, and other kindred works have been very successful. During the last ten or twelve years my son has shared with Mr. Gates the responsibility of this work, and more recently Mr. Starr J. Murphy has also joined with us to help Mr. Gates, who has borne the heat and burden of the day, and has well earned some leisure which we have wanted him to enjoy. But to return to the story of our troubled investments: Mr. Gates went into the study of each of these business concerns, and did the best he could with them. It has been our policy never to allow a company in which we had an interest to be thrown into the bankruptcy court if we could prevent it; for receiverships are very costly in many ways and often involve heavy sacrifices of genuine values. Our plan has been to stay with the institution, nurse it, lend it money when necessary, improve facilities, cheapen production, and avail ourselves of the opportunities which time and patience are likely to bring to make it self-sustaining and successful. So we went carefully through the affairs of these crippled enterprises in the hard times of 1893 and 1894, carrying many of them for years after; sometimes buying the interests of others and sometimes selling our own interest, but all or nearly all escaped the expenses and humiliation of bankruptcy, receivership, and foreclosure. Before these matters were entirely closed up we had a vast amount of experience in the doctoring of the commercially ill. My only excuse for dwelling upon the subject at this late day is to point out the fact to some business men who get discouraged that much can be done by careful and patient attention, even when the business is apparently in very deep water. It requires two things: some added capital, put in by one's self or secured from others, and a strict adherence to the sound natural laws of business. THE ORE MINES Among these investments were some shares in a number of ore mines and an interest in the stocks and bonds of a railroad being built to carry the ore from the mines to lake ports. We had great faith in these mines, but to work them the railroad was necessary. It had been begun, but in the panic of 1893 it and all other developments were nearly ruined. Although we were minority holders of the stock, it seemed to be "up to us" to keep the enterprise alive through the harrowing panic days. I had to loan my personal securities to raise money, and finally we were compelled to supply a great deal of actual cash, and to get it we were obliged to go into the then greatly upset money market and buy currency at a high premium to ship west by express to pay the labourers on the railroad and to keep them alive. When the fright of the panic period subsided, and matters became a little more settled, we began to realize our situation. We had invested many millions, and no one wanted to go in with us to buy stock. On the contrary, everybody else seemed to want to sell. The stock was offered to us in alarming quantities--substantially all of the capital stock of the companies came without any solicitation on our part--quite the contrary--and we paid for it in cash. We now found ourselves in control of a great amount of ore lands, from some of which the ore could be removed by a steam shovel for a few cents a ton, but we still faced a most imperfect and inadequate method of transporting the ore to market. When we realized that events were shaping themselves so that to protect our investments we should be obliged to go into the business of selling in a large way, we felt that we must not stop short of doing the work as effectively as possible; and having already put in so much money, we bought all the ore land that we thought was good that was offered to us. The railroad and the ships were only a means to an end. The ore lands were the crux of the whole matter, and we believed that we could never have too many good mines. It was a surprise to me that the great iron and steel manufacturers did not place what seemed to be an adequate value on these mines. The lands which contained a good many of our best ore mines could have been purchased very cheaply before we became interested. Having launched ourselves into the venture, we decided to supply ore to every one who needed it, by mining and transporting with the newest and most effective facilities, and our profits we invested in more ore lands. Mr. Gates became the president of the various companies which owned the mines and the railroad to the lake to transport the ores, and he started to learn and develop the business of ore mining and transportation. He not only proved to be an apt scholar, but he really mastered the various complexities of the business. He did all the work, and only consulted me when he wished to; yet I remember several interesting experiences connected with the working out of these problems. BUILDING THE SHIPS After this railroad problem was solved, it was apparent that we needed our own ships to transport the ore down the lakes. We knew absolutely nothing of building ships for ore transportation, and so, following out our custom, we went to the man who, in our judgment, had the widest knowledge of the subject. He was already well known to us, but was in the ore transportation business on a large scale on his own account and, of course, the moment we began to ship ore we realized that we would become competitors. Mr. Gates got into communication with this expert, and came with him one evening to my house in New York just before dinner. He said he could stay only a few minutes, but I told him that I thought we could finish up our affairs in ten minutes and we did. This is the only time I remember seeing personally any one on the business of the ore company. All the conferences, as I said before, were carried on by Mr. Gates, who seemed to enjoy work, and he has had abundant privileges in that direction. We explained to this gentleman that we were proposing to transport our ore from these Lake Superior lands ourselves, and that we should like to have him assume charge of the construction of several ships, to be of the largest and most approved type, for our chance of success lay in having boats which could be operated with the greatest efficiency. At that time the largest ships carried about five thousand tons, but in 1900, when we sold out, we had ships that carried seven thousand or eight thousand tons, and now there are some that transport as much as ten thousand tons and more. This expert naturally replied that as he was in the ore-carrying trade himself, he had no desire to encourage us to go into it. We explained to him that as we had made this large investment, it seemed to us to be necessary for the protection of our interests to control our own lake carriers, so we had decided to mine, ship, and market the ore; that we came to him because he could plan and superintend the construction of the best ships for us, and that we wanted to deal with him for that reason; that notwithstanding that he represented one of the largest firms among our competitors, we knew that he was honest and straightforward; and that we were most anxious to deal with him. EMPLOYING A COMPETITOR He still demurred, but we tried to convince him that we were not to be deterred from going into the trade, and that we were willing to pay him a satisfactory commission for looking after the building of the ships. Somebody, we explained, was going to do the work for us, and he might as well have the profit as the next man. This argument finally seemed to impress him and we then and there closed an agreement, the details of which were worked out afterward to our mutual satisfaction. This gentleman was Mr. Samuel Mather of Cleveland. He spent only a few minutes in the house, during which time we gave him the order for about $3,000,000 worth of ships and this was the only time I saw him. But Mr. Mather is a man of high business honour, we trusted him implicitly although he was a competitor, and we never had occasion to regret it. At that time there were some nine or ten shipbuilding companies located at various points on the Great Lakes. All were independent of each other and there was sharp competition between them. Times were pretty hard with them; their business had not yet recovered from the panic of 1893, they were not able to keep their works in full operation; it was in the fall of the year and many of their employees were facing a hard winter. We took this into account in considering how many ships we should build, and we made up our minds that we would build all the ships that could be built and give employment to the idle men on the Great Lakes. Accordingly we instructed Mr. Mather to write to each firm of shipbuilders and ascertain how many ships they could build and put in readiness for operation at the opening of navigation the next spring. He found that some companies could build one, some could build two, and that the total number would be twelve. Accordingly we asked him to have constructed twelve ships, all of steel, all of the largest capacity then understood to be practicable on the Great Lakes. Some of them were to be steamships and some consorts, for towing, but all were to be built on substantially the same general pattern, which was to represent the best ideals then prevalent for ore-carrying ships. In giving such an order he was exposed, of course, to the risk of paying very high prices. This would have been certain if Mr. Mather had announced in advance that he was prepared to build twelve ships and asked bids on them. Just how he managed it I was not told until long after, and though it is now an old story of the lakes I repeat it as it may be new to many. Mr. Mather kept the secret of the number of ships he wished to construct absolutely to himself. He sent his plans and specifications, each substantially a duplicate of the others, to each of the firms, and asked each firm to bid on one or two ships as the case might be. All naturally supposed that at most only two ships were to be built, and each was extremely eager to get the work, or at least one of the two vessels. On the day before the contracts were to be let, all the bidders were in Cleveland on the invitation of Mr. Mather. One by one they were taken into his private office for special conference covering all the details preparatory to the final bid. At the appointed hour the bids were in. Deep was the interest on the part of all the gentlemen as to who would be the lucky one to draw the prize. Mr. Mather's manner had convinced each that somehow he himself must be the favoured bidder, yet when he came to meet his competitors in the hotel lobby the beams of satisfaction which plainly emanated from their faces also compelled many heart searchings. At last the crucial hour came, and at about the same moment each gentleman received a little note from Mr. Mather, conveying to him the tidings that to him had been awarded a contract sufficient to supply his works to their utmost capacity. They all rushed with a common impulse to the hotel lobby where they had been accustomed to meet, each bent on displaying his note and commiserating his unsuccessful rivals, only to discover that each had a contract for all he could do, and that each had been actually bidding against nobody but himself. Great was the hilarity which covered their chagrin when they met and compared notes and looked into each others' faces. However, all were happy and satisfied. But it may be said in passing that these amiable gentlemen all united subsequently in one company, which has had a highly satisfactory career, and that we paid a more uniform price for our subsequent purchases of ships after the combination had been made. A LANDSMAN FOR SHIP MANAGER With these ships ordered, we were fairly at the beginning of the ore enterprise. But we realized that we had to make some arrangement to operate the ships, and we again turned to our competitor, Mr. Mather, in the hope that he would add this to his cares. Unfortunately, because of his obligations to others, he felt that this was impractical. I asked Mr. Gates one day soon after this: "How are we to get some one to run these big ships we have ordered? Do you know of any experienced firm?" "No," said Mr. Gates, "I do not know of any firm to suggest at the moment, but why not run them ourselves?" "You don't know anything about ships, do you?" "No," he admitted, "but I have in mind a man who I believe could do it, although when I tell you about him I fear you will think that his qualifications are not the best. However, he has the essentials. He lives up the state, and never was on a ship in his life. He probably wouldn't know the bow from the stern, or a sea-anchor from an umbrella, but he has good sense, he is honest, enterprising, keen, and thrifty. He has the art of quickly mastering a subject even though it be new to him and difficult. We still have some months before the ships will be completed, and if we put him to work now, he will be ready to run the ships as soon as they are ready to be run." "All right," I said, "let's give him the job," and we did. That man was Mr. L.M. Bowers; he came from Broome County, New York. Mr. Bowers went from point to point on the lakes where the boats were building, and studied them minutely. He was quickly able to make valuable suggestions about their construction, which were approved and adopted by the designers. When the vessels were finished, he took charge of them from the moment they floated, and he managed these and the dozens which followed with a skill and ability that commanded the admiration of all the sailors on the lakes. He even invented an anchor which he used with our fleet, and later it was adopted by other vessels, and I have heard that it is used in the United States Navy. He remained in his position until we sold out. We have given Mr. Bowers all sorts of hard tasks since we retired from the lake traffic and have found him always successful. Lately the health of a member of his family has made it desirable for him to live in Colorado, and he is now the vigorous and efficient vice-president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The great ships and the railroad put us in possession of the most favourable facilities. From the first the organization was successful. We built up a huge trade, mining and carrying ore to Cleveland and other lake ports. We kept on building and developing until finally the fleet grew until it included fifty-six large steel vessels, This enterprise, in common with many other important business undertakings in which I was interested, required very little of my personal attention, owing to my good fortune in having active, competent, and thoroughly reliable representatives who assumed so largely the responsibilities of administration. It gives me pleasure to state that the confidence which I have freely given to business men with whom I have been associated has been so fully justified. SELLING TO THE STEEL COMPANY The work went on uninterruptedly and prosperously until the formation of the United States Steel Corporation. A representative of this corporation came to see us about selling the land, the ore, and the fleet of ships. The business was going on smoothly, and we had no pressing need to sell, but as the organizer of the new company felt that our mines and railroads and ships were a necessary part of the scheme, we told him we would be pleased to facilitate the completion of the great undertaking. They had, I think, already closed with Mr. Carnegie for his various properties. After some negotiation, they made an offer which we accepted, whereby the whole plant--mines, ships, railway, etc.--should become a part of the United States Steel Corporation. The price paid was, we felt, very moderate considering the present and prospective value of the property. This transaction bids fair to show a great profit to the Steel Company for many years, and as our payment was largely in the securities of the company we had the opportunity to participate in this prosperity. And so, after a period of about seven years, I went out of all association with the mining, the transporting, and the selling of iron ore. FOLLOW THE LAWS OF TRADE Going over again in my mind the events connected with this ore experience that grew out of investments that seemed at the time, to say the least, rather unpromising, I am impressed anew with the importance of a principle I have often referred to. If I can make this point clear to the young man who has had the patience to follow these Reminiscences so far, it will be a satisfaction to me and I hope it may be a benefit to him. The underlying, essential element of success in business affairs is to follow the established laws of high-class dealing. Keep to broad and sure lines, and study them to be certain that they are correct ones. Watch the natural operations of trade, and keep within them. Don't even think of temporary or sharp advantages. Don't waste your effort on a thing which ends in a petty triumph unless you are satisfied with a life of petty success. Be sure that before you go into an enterprise you see your way clear to stay through to a successful end. Look ahead. It is surprising how many bright business men go into important undertakings with little or no study of the controlling conditions they risk their all upon. Study diligently your capital requirements, and fortify yourself fully to cover possible set-backs, because you can absolutely count on meeting set-backs. Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions. The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed; you must have a larger ambition. There is no mystery in business success. The great industrial leaders have told again and again the plain and obvious fact that there can be no permanent success without fair dealing that leads to wide-spread confidence in the man himself, and that is the real capital we all prize and work for. If you do each day's task successfully, and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about, and keep your head clear, you will come out all right, and will then, perhaps, forgive me for moralizing in this old-fashioned way. It is hardly necessary to caution a young man who reads so sober a book as this not to lose his head over a little success, or to grow impatient or discouraged by a little failure. PANIC EXPERIENCES I had desired to retire from business in the early nineties. Having begun work so young, I felt that at fifty it was due me to have freedom from absorption in active business affairs and to devote myself to a variety of interests other than money making, which had claimed a portion of my time since the beginning of my business career. But 1891-92 were years of ominous outlook. In 1893 the storm broke, and I had many investments to care for, as I have already related. This year and the next was a trying period of grave anxiety to everyone. No one could retire from work at such a time. In the Standard we continued to make progress even through all these panic years, as we had large reserves of cash on account of our very conservative methods of financing. In 1894 or 1895 I was able to carry out my plans to be relieved from any association with the actual management of the company's affairs. From that time, as I have said, I have had little or no part in the conduct of the business. Since 1857 I can remember all the great panics, but I believe the panic of 1907 was the most trying. No one escaped from it, great or small. Important institutions had to be supported and carried through the time of distrust and unreasoning fear. To Mr. Morgan's real and effective help I should join with other business men and give great praise. His commanding personality served a most valuable end. He acted quickly and resolutely when quickness and decision were the things most needed to regain confidence, and he was efficiently seconded by many able and leading financiers of the country who coöperated courageously and effectively to restore confidence and prosperity. The question has been asked if I think we shall revive quickly from the panic of October, 1907. I hesitate to speak on the subject, since I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet; but as to the ultimate outcome there is, of course, no doubt. This temporary set-back will lead to safer institutions and more conservative management upon the part of everyone, and this is a quality we need. It will not long depress our wonderful spirit of initiative. The country's resources have not been cut down nor injured by financial distrust. A gradual recovery will only tend to make the future all the more secure, and patience is a virtue in business affairs as in other things. Here again I would venture to utter a word of caution to business men. Let them study their own affairs frankly, and face the truth. If their methods are extravagant, let them realize the facts and act accordingly. One cannot successfully go against natural tendencies, and it is folly to fail to recognize them. It is not easy for so impressionable and imaginative a people as we Americans are to come down to plain, hard facts, yet we are doing it without loss of self-esteem or prestige throughout the world. CHAPTER VI THE DIFFICULT ART OF GIVING It is, no doubt, easy to write platitudes and generalities about the joys of giving, and the duty that one owes to one's fellow men, and to put together again all the familiar phrases that have served for generations whenever the subject has been taken up. I can hardly hope to succeed in starting any new interest in this great subject when gifted writers have so often failed. Yet I confess I find much more interest in it at this time than in rambling on, as I have been doing, about the affairs of business and trade. It is most difficult, however, to dwell upon a very practical and business-like side of benefactions generally, without seeming to ignore, or at least to fail to appreciate fully, the spirit of giving which has its source in the heart, and which, of course, makes it all worth while. In this country we have come to the period when we can well afford to ask the ablest men to devote more of their time, thought, and money to the public well-being. I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to define exactly what this betterment work should consist of. Every man will do that for himself, and his own conclusion will be final for himself. It is well, I think, that no narrow or preconceived plan should be set down as the best. I am sure it is a mistake to assume that the possession of money in great abundance necessarily brings happiness. The very rich are just like all the rest of us; and if they get pleasure from the possession of money, it comes from their ability to do things which give satisfaction to someone besides themselves. LIMITATIONS OF THE RICH The mere expenditure of money for things, so I am told by those who profess to know, soon palls upon one. The novelty of being able to purchase anything one wants soon passes, because what people most seek cannot be bought with money. These rich men we read about in the newspapers cannot get personal returns beyond a well-defined limit for their expenditure. They cannot gratify the pleasures of the palate beyond very moderate bounds, since they cannot purchase a good digestion; they cannot lavish very much money on fine raiment for themselves or their families without suffering from public ridicule; and in their homes they cannot go much beyond the comforts of the less wealthy without involving them in more pain than pleasure. As I study wealthy men, I can see but one way in which they can secure a real equivalent for money spent, and that is to cultivate a taste for giving where the money may produce an effect which will be a lasting gratification. A man of business may often most properly consider that he does his share in building up a property which gives steady work for few or many people; and his contribution consists in giving to his employees good working conditions, new opportunities, and a strong stimulus to good work. Just so long as he has the welfare of his employees in his mind and follows his convictions, no one can help honouring such a man. It would be the narrowest sort of view to take, and I think the meanest, to consider that good works consist chiefly in the outright giving of money. THE BEST PHILANTHROPY The best philanthropy, the help that does the most good and the least harm, the help that nourishes civilization at its very root, that most widely disseminates health, righteousness, and happiness, is not what is usually called charity. It is, in my judgment, the investment of effort or time or money, carefully considered with relation to the power of employing people at a remunerative wage, to expand and develop the resources at hand, and to give opportunity for progress and healthful labour where it did not exist before. No mere money-giving is comparable to this in its lasting and beneficial results. If, as I am accustomed to think, this statement is a correct one, how vast indeed is the philanthropic field! It may be urged that the daily vocation of life is one thing, and the work of philanthropy quite another. I have no sympathy with this notion. The man who plans to do all his giving on Sunday is a poor prop for the institutions of the country. The excuse for referring so often to the busy man of affairs is that his help is most needed. I know of men who have followed out this large plan of developing work, not as a temporary matter, but as a permanent principle. These men have taken up doubtful enterprises and carried them through to success often at great risk, and in the face of great scepticism, not as a matter only of personal profit, but in the larger spirit of general uplift. DISINTERESTED SERVICE THE ROAD TO SUCCESS If I were to give advice to a young man starting out in life, I should say to him: If you aim for a large, broad-gauged success, do not begin your business career, whether you sell your labour or are an independent producer, with the idea of getting from the world by hook or crook all you can. In the choice of your profession or your business employment, let your first thought be: Where can I fit in so that I may be most effective in the work of the world? Where can I lend a hand in a way most effectively to advance the general interests? Enter life in such a spirit, choose your vocation in that way, and you have taken the first step on the highest road to a large success. Investigation will show that the great fortunes which have been made in this country, and the same is probably true of other lands, have come to men who have performed great and far-reaching economic services--men who, with great faith in the future of their country, have done most for the development of its resources. The man will be most successful who confers the greatest service on the world. Commercial enterprises that are needed by the public will pay. Commercial enterprises that are not needed fail, and ought to fail. On the other hand, the one thing which such a business philosopher would be most careful to avoid in his investments of time and effort or money, is the unnecessary duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent in increasing needless competition as wasted, and worse. The man who puts up a second factory when the factory in existence will supply the public demand adequately and cheaply is wasting the national wealth and destroying the national prosperity, taking the bread from the labourer and unnecessarily introducing heartache and misery into the world. Probably the greatest single obstacle to the progress and happiness of the American people lies in the willingness of so many men to invest their time and money in multiplying competitive industries instead of opening up new fields, and putting their money into lines of industry and development that are needed. It requires a better type of mind to seek out and to support or to create the new than to follow the worn paths of accepted success; but here is the great chance in our still rapidly developing country. The penalty of a selfish attempt to make the world confer a living without contributing to the progress or happiness of mankind is generally a failure to the individual. The pity is that when he goes down he inflicts heartache and misery also on others who are in no way responsible. THE GENEROSITY OF SERVICE Probably the most generous people in the world are the very poor, who assume each other's burdens in the crises which come so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the tenement falls ill and the neighbour in the next room assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbours supply food to his children from their own scanty store. How often one hears of cases where the orphans are taken over and brought up by the poor friend whose benefaction means great additional hardship! This sort of genuine service makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant indeed. The Jews have had for centuries a precept that one-tenth of a man's possessions must be devoted to good works, but even this measure of giving is but a rough yardstick to go by. To give a tenth of one's income is wellnigh an impossibility to some, while to others it means a miserable pittance. If the spirit is there, the matter of proportion is soon lost sight of. It is only the spirit of giving that counts, and the very poor give without any self-consciousness. But I fear that I am dealing with generalities again. The education of children in my early days may have been straightlaced, yet I have always been thankful that the custom was quite general to teach young people to give systematically of money that they themselves had earned. It is a good thing to lead children to realize early the importance of their obligations to others but, I confess, it is increasingly difficult; for what were luxuries then have become commonplaces now. It should be a greater pleasure and satisfaction to give money for a good cause than to earn it, and I have always indulged the hope that during my life I should be able to help establish efficiency in giving so that wealth may be of greater use to the present and future generations. Perhaps just here lies the difference between the gifts of money and of service. The poor meet promptly the misfortunes which confront the home circle and household of the neighbour. The giver of money, if his contribution is to be valuable, must add service in the way of study, and he must help to attack and improve underlying conditions. Not being so pressed by the racking necessities, it is he that should be better able to attack the subject from a more scientific standpoint; but the final analysis is the same: his money is a feeble offering without the study behind it which will make its expenditure effective. Great hospitals conducted by noble and unselfish men and women are doing wonderful work; but no less important are the achievements in research that reveal hitherto unknown facts about diseases and provide the remedies by which many of them can be relieved or even stamped out. To help the sick and distressed appeals to the kind-hearted always, but to help the investigator who is striving successfully to attack the causes which bring about sickness and distress does not so strongly attract the giver of money. The first appeals to the sentiments overpoweringly, but the second has the head to deal with. Yet I am sure we are making wonderful advances in this field of scientific giving. All over the world the need of dealing with the questions of philanthropy with something beyond the impulses of emotion is evident, and everywhere help is being given to those heroic men and women who are devoting themselves to the practical and essentially scientific tasks. It is a good and inspiring thing to recall occasionally the heroism, for example, of the men who risked and sacrificed their lives to discover the facts about yellow fever, a sacrifice for which untold generations will bless them; and this same spirit has animated the professions of medicine and surgery. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH How far may this spirit of sacrifice properly extend? A great number of scientific men every year give up everything to arrive at some helpful contribution to the sum of human knowledge, and I have sometimes thought that good people who lightly and freely criticize their actions scarcely realize just what such criticism means. It is one thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction and put forth words of cynical wisdom, and another to plunge into the work itself and through strenuous experience earn the right to express strong conclusions. For my own part, I have stood so much as a placid onlooker that I have not had the hardihood even to suggest how people so much more experienced and wise in those things than I should work out the details even of those plans with which I have had the honour to be associated. There has been a good deal of criticism, no doubt sincere, of experiments on living dumb animals, and the person who stands for the defenceless animal has such an overwhelming appeal to the emotions that it is perhaps useless to allude to the other side of the controversy. Dr. Simon Flexner, of the Institute for Medical Research, has had to face exaggerated and even sensational reports, which have no basis of truth whatever. But consider for a moment what has been accomplished recently, under the direction of Dr. Flexner in discovering a remedy for epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis. It is true that in discovering this cure the lives of perhaps fifteen animals were sacrificed, as I learn, most of them monkeys; but for each one of these animals which lost its life, already scores of human lives have been saved. Large-hearted men like Dr. Flexner and his associates do not permit unnecessary pain to defenceless animals. I have been deeply interested in the story of a desperate experiment to save a child's life, told in a letter written by one of my associates soon after the event described; and it seems worthy of repeating. Dr. Alexis Carrel has been associated with Dr. Flexner and his work, and his wonderful skill has been the result of his experiments and experiences. A WONDERFUL SURGICAL OPERATION "Dr. Alexis Carrel, one of the Institute's staff, has been making some interesting studies in experimental surgery, and has successfully transplanted organs from one animal to another, and blood vessels from one species to another. He had the opportunity recently of applying the skill thus acquired to the saving of a human life under circumstances which attracted great interest among the medical fraternity of this city. One of the best known of the younger surgeons in New York had a child born early last March, which developed a disease in which the blood, for some reason, exudes from the blood vessels into the tissues of the body, and ordinarily the child dies of this internal hemorrhage. When this child was five days old it was evident that it was dying. The father and his brother, who is one of the most distinguished men in the profession, and one or two other doctors were in consultation with reference to it, but considered the case entirely hopeless. "It so happened that the father had been impressed with the work which Dr. Carrel had been doing at the Institute, and had spent several days with him studying his methods. He became convinced that the only possibility of saving the child's life was by the direct transfusion of blood. While this has been done between adults, the blood vessels of a young infant are so delicate that it seemed impossible that the operation could be successfully carried on. It is necessary not only that the blood vessels of the two persons should be united together, but it must be done in such a way that the interior lining of the vessels, which is a smooth, shiny tissue, should be continuous. If the blood comes in contact with the muscular coat of the blood vessels, it will clot and stop the circulation. "Fortunately, Dr. Carrel had been experimenting on the blood vessels of some very young animals, and the father was convinced that if any man in the country could perform the operation successfully, it would be he. "It was then the middle of the night. But Dr. Carrel was called on, and when the situation was explained to him, and it was made clear that the child would die anyhow, he readily consented to attempt the operation, although expressing very slight hope of its successful outcome. "The father offered himself as the person whose blood should be furnished to the child. It was impossible to give anæsthetics to either of them. In a child of that age there is only one vein large enough to be used, and that is in the back of the leg, and deep seated. A prominent surgeon who was present exposed this vein. He said afterward that there was no sign of life in the child, and expressed the belief that the child had been, to all intents and purposes, dead for ten minutes. In view of its condition he raised the question whether it was worth while to proceed further with the attempt. The father, however, insisted upon going on, and the surgeon then exposed the radial artery in the surgeon's wrist, and was obliged to dissect it back about six inches, in order to pull it out far enough to make the connection with the child's vein. "This part of the work the surgeon who did it afterward described as the 'blacksmith part of the job.' He said that the child's vein was about the size of a match and the consistency of wet cigarette paper, and it seemed utterly impossible for anyone to successfully unite these two vessels. Dr. Carrel, however, accomplished this feat. And then occurred what the doctors who were present described as one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of surgery. The blood from the father's artery was released, and began to flow into the child's body, amounting to about a pint. The first sign of life was a little pink tinge at the top of one of the ears, then the lips, which had become perfectly blue, began to change to red, and then suddenly, as though the child had been taken from a hot mustard bath, a pink glow broke out all over its body, and it began to cry lustily. After about eight minutes the two were separated. The child at that time was crying for food. It was fed, and from that moment began to eat and sleep regularly, and made a complete recovery. "The father appeared before a legislative committee at Albany, in opposition to certain bills which were pending at the last session to restrict animal experimentation, and told this incident, and said at the close that when he saw Dr. Carrel's experiments he had no idea that they would so soon be available for saving human life; much less did he imagine that the life to be saved would be that of his own child." THE FUNDAMENTAL THING IN ALL HELP If the people can be educated to help themselves, we strike at the root of many of the evils of the world. This is the fundamental thing, and it is worth saying even if it has been said so often that its truth is lost sight of in its constant repetition. The only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man is that which he does for himself. Money which comes to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit and often a curse. That is the principal objection to speculation--it is not because more lose than gain, though that is true--but it is because those who gain are apt to receive more injury from their success than they would have received from failure. And so with regard to money or other things which are given by one person to another. It is only in the exceptional case that the receiver is really benefited. But, if we can help people to help themselves, then there is a permanent blessing conferred. Men who are studying the problem of disease tell us that it is becoming more and more evident that the forces which conquer sickness are within the body itself, and that it is only when these are reduced below the normal that disease can get a foothold. The way to ward off disease, therefore, is to tone up the body generally; and, when disease has secured a foothold, the way to combat it is to help these natural resisting agencies which are in the body already. In the same way the failures which a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, or mind, or character, will, or temperament. The only way to overcome these failings is to build up his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of what is within him, may overcome the weakness which was the cause of the failure. It is only those efforts the man himself puts forth that can really help him. We all desire to see the widest possible distribution of the blessings of life. Many crude plans have been suggested, some of which utterly ignore the essential facts of human nature, and if carried out would perhaps drag our whole civilization down into hopeless misery. It is my belief that the principal cause for the economic differences between people is their difference in personality, and that it is only as we can assist in the wider distribution of those qualities which go to make up a strong personality that we can assist in the wider distribution of wealth. Under normal conditions the man who is strong in body, in mind, in character, and in will need never suffer want. But these qualities can never be developed in a man unless by his own efforts, and the most that any other can do for him is, as I have said, to help him to help himself. We must always remember that there is not enough money for the work of human uplift and that there never can be. How vitally important it is, therefore, that the expenditure should go as far as possible and be used with the greatest intelligence! I have been frank to say that I believe in the spirit of combination and coöperation when properly and fairly conducted in the world of commercial affairs, on the principle that it helps to reduce waste; and waste is a dissipation of power. I sincerely hope and thoroughly believe that this same principle will eventually prevail in the art of giving as it does in business. It is not merely the tendency of the times developed by more exacting conditions in industry, but it should make its most effective appeal to the hearts of the people who are striving to do the most good to the largest number. SOME UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES At the risk of making this chapter very dull, and I am told that this is a fault which inexperienced authors should avoid at all hazards, I may perhaps be pardoned if I set down here some of the fundamental principles which have been at the bottom of all my own plans. I have undertaken no work of any importance for many years which, in a general way, has not followed out these broad lines, and I believe no really constructive effort can be made in philanthropic work without such a well-defined and consecutive purpose. My own conversion to the feeling that an organized plan was an absolute necessity came about in this way. About the year 1890 I was still following the haphazard fashion of giving here and there as appeals presented themselves. I investigated as I could, and worked myself almost to a nervous break-down in groping my way, without sufficient guide or chart, through this ever-widening field of philanthropic endeavour. There was then forced upon me the necessity to organize and plan this department of our daily tasks on as distinct lines of progress as we did our business affairs; and I will try to describe the underlying principles we arrived at, and have since followed out, and hope still greatly to extend. It may be beyond the pale of good taste to speak at all of such a personal subject--I am not unmindful of this--but I can make these observations with at least a little better grace because so much of the hard work and hard thinking are done by my family and associates, who devote their lives to it. Every right-minded man has a philosophy of life, whether he knows it or not. Hidden away in his mind are certain governing principles, whether he formulates them in words or not, which govern his life. Surely his ideal ought to be to contribute all that he can, however little it may be, whether of money or service, to human progress. Certainly one's ideal should be to use one's means, both in one's investments and in benefactions, for the advancement of civilization. But the question as to what civilization is and what are the great laws which govern its advance have been seriously studied. Our investments not less than gifts have been directed to such ends as we have thought would tend to produce these results. If you were to go into our office, and ask our committee on benevolence or our committee on investment in what they consider civilization to consist, they would say that they have found in their study that the most convenient analysis of the elements which go to make up civilization runs about as follows: 1st. Progress in the means of subsistence, that is to say, progress in abundance and variety of food-supply, clothing, shelter, sanitation, public health, commerce, manufacture, the growth of the public wealth, etc. 2nd. Progress in government and law, that is to say, in the enactment of laws securing justice and equity to every man, consistent with the largest individual liberty, and the due and orderly enforcement of the same upon all. 3rd. Progress in literature and language. 4th. Progress in science and philosophy. 5th. Progress in art and refinement. 6th. Progress in morality and religion. If you were to ask them, as indeed they are very often asked, which of these they regard as fundamental, they would reply that they would not attempt to answer, that the question is purely an academic one, that all these go hand in hand, but that historically the first of them--namely, progress in means of subsistence--had generally preceded progress in government, in literature, in knowledge, in refinement, and in religion. Though not itself of the highest importance, it is the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of civilization is built, and without which it could not exist. Accordingly, we have sought, so far as we could, to make investments in such a way as will tend to multiply, to cheapen, and to diffuse as universally as possible the comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely, in cheapness, ease of acquirement, and universality of means of subsistence, our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world, though we are behind other countries, perhaps, in most of the others. It may be asked: How is it consistent with the universal diffusion of these blessings that vast sums of money should be in single hands? The reply is, as I see it, that, while men of wealth control great sums of money, they do not and cannot use them for themselves. They have, indeed, the legal title to large properties, and they do control the investment of them, but that is as far as their own relation to them extends or can extend. The money is universally diffused, in the sense that it is kept invested, and it passes into the pay-envelope week by week. Up to the present time no scheme has yet presented itself which seems to afford a better method of handling capital than that of individual ownership. We might put our money into the Treasury of the Nation and of the various states, but we do not find any promise in the National or state legislatures, viewed from the experiences of the past, that the funds would be expended for the general weal more effectively than under the present methods, nor do we find in any of the schemes of socialism a promise that wealth would be more wisely administered for the general good. It is the duty of men of means to maintain the title to their property and to administer their funds until some man, or body of men, shall rise up capable of administering for the general good the capital of the country better than they can. The next four elements of progress mentioned in the enumeration above, namely, progress in government and law, in language and literature, in science and philosophy, in art and refinement, we for ourselves have thought to be best promoted by means of the higher education, and accordingly we have had the great satisfaction of putting such sums as we could into various forms of education in our own and in foreign lands--and education not merely along the lines of disseminating more generally the known, but quite as much, and perhaps even more, in promoting original investigation. An individual institution of learning can have only a narrow sphere. It can reach only a limited number of people. But every new fact discovered, every widening of the boundaries of human knowledge by research, becomes universally known to all institutions of learning, and becomes a benefaction at once to the whole race. Quite as interesting as any phase of the work have been the new lines entered upon by our committee. We have not been satisfied with giving to causes which have appealed to us. We have felt that the mere fact that this or the other cause makes its appeal is no reason why we should give to it any more than to a thousand other causes, perhaps more worthy, which do not happen to have come under our eye. The mere fact of a personal appeal creates no claim which did not exist before, and no preference over other causes more worthy which may not have made their appeal. So this little committee of ours has not been content to let the benevolences drift into the channels of mere convenience--to give to the institutions which have sought aid and to neglect others. This department has studied the field of human progress, and sought to contribute to each of those elements which we believe tend most to promote it. Where it has not found organizations ready to its hand for such purpose, the members of the committee have sought to create them. We are still working on new, and, I hope, expanding lines, which make large demands on one's intelligence and study. The so-called betterment work which has always been to me a source of great interest had a great influence on my life, and I refer to it here because I wish to urge in this connection the great importance of a father's keeping in close touch with his children, taking into his confidence the girls as well as the boys, who in this way learn by seeing and doing, and have their part in the family responsibilities. As my father taught me, so I have tried to teach my children. For years it was our custom to read at the table the letters we received affecting the various benevolences with which we had to do, studying the requests made for worthy purposes, and following the history and reports of institutions and philanthropic cases in which we were interested. CHAPTER VII THE BENEVOLENT TRUST--THE VALUE OF THE CO�PERATIVE PRINCIPLE IN GIVING Going a step farther in the plan of making benefactions increasingly effective which I took up in the last chapter under the title of "The Difficult Art of Giving," I am tempted to take the opportunity to dwell a little upon the subject of combination in charitable work, which has been something of a hobby with me for many years. If a combination to do business is effective in saving waste and in getting better results, why is not combination far more important in philanthropic work? The general idea of coöperation in giving for education, I have felt, scored a real step in advance when Mr. Andrew Carnegie consented to become a member of the General Education Board. For in accepting a position in this directorate he has, it seems to me, stamped with his approval this vital principle of coöperation in aiding the educational institutions of our country. I rejoice, as everybody must, in Mr. Carnegie's enthusiasm for using his wealth for the benefit of his less fortunate fellows and I think his devotion to his adopted land's welfare has set a striking example for all time. The General Education Board, of which Mr. Carnegie has now become a member, is interesting as an example of an organization formed for the purpose of working out, in an orderly and rather scientific way, the problem of helping to stimulate and improve education in all parts of our country. What this organization may eventually accomplish, of course, no one can tell, but surely, under its present board of directors, it will go very far. Here, again, I feel that I may speak frankly and express my personal faith in its success, since I am not a member of the board, and have never attended a meeting, and the work is all done by others. There are some other and larger plans thought out on careful and broad lines, which I have been studying for many years, and we can see that they are growing into definite shape. It is good to know that there are always unselfish men, of the best calibre, to help in every large philanthropic enterprise. One of the most satisfactory and stimulating pieces of good fortune that has come to me is the evidence that so many busy people are willing to turn aside from their work in pressing fields of labour and to give their best thoughts and energies without compensation to the work of human uplift. Doctors, clergymen, lawyers, as well as many high-grade men of affairs, are devoting their best and most unselfish efforts to some of the plans that we are all trying to work out. Take, as one example of many similar cases, Mr. Robert C. Ogden, who for years, while devoting himself to an exacting business, still found time, supported by wonderful enthusiasm, to give force by his own personality to work done in difficult parts of the educational world, particularly to improving the common school system of the South. His efforts have been wisely directed along fundamental lines which must produce results through the years to come. Fortunately my children have been as earnest as I, and much more diligent, in carefully and intelligently carrying out the work already begun, and agree with me that at least the same energy and thought should be expended in the proper and effective use of money when acquired as was exerted in the earning of it. The General Education Board has made, or is making, a careful study of the location, aims, work, resources, administration, and educational value, present and prospective, of the institutions of higher learning in the United States. The board makes its contributions, averaging something like two million dollars a year, on the most careful comparative study of needs and opportunities throughout the country. Its records are open to all. Many benefactors of education are availing themselves of these disinterested inquiries, and it is hoped that more will do so. A large number of individuals are contributing to the support of educational institutions in our country. To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste. I am told by those who have given most careful study to this problem that it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate to our needs if the money had been properly directed to that end. Many of the good people who bestow their beneficence on education may well give more thought to investigating the character of the enterprises that they are importuned to help, and this study ought to take into account the kind of people who are responsible for their management, their location, and the facilities supplied by other institutions round about. A thorough examination such as this is generally quite impossible for an individual, and he either declines to give from lack of accurate knowledge, or he may give without due consideration. If, however, this work of inquiry is done, and well done, by the General Education Board, through officers of intelligence, skill, and sympathy, trained to the work, important and needed service is rendered. The walls of sectarian exclusiveness are fast disappearing, as they should, and the best people are standing shoulder to shoulder as they attack the great problems of general uplift. ROMAN CATHOLIC CHARITIES Just here it occurs to me to testify to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church, as I have observed in my experience, has advanced a long way in this direction. I have been surprised to learn how far a given sum of money has gone in the hands of priests and nuns, and how really effective is their use of it. I fully appreciate the splendid service done by other workers in the field, but I have seen the organization of the Roman Church secure better results with a given sum of money than other Church organizations are accustomed to secure from the same expenditure. I speak of this merely to point the value of the principle of organization, in which I believe so heartily. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the centuries of experience which the Church of Rome has gone through to perfect a great power of organization. Studying these problems has been a source of the greatest interest to me. My assistants, quite distinct from any board, have an organization of sufficient size to investigate the many requests that come to us. This is done from the office of our committee in New York. For an individual to attempt to keep any close watch of single cases would be impossible. I am called upon to explain this fact many times. To read the hundreds of letters daily received at our office would be beyond the power of any one man, and surely, if the many good people who write would only reflect a little, they must realize that it is impossible for me personally to consider their applications. The plan that we have worked out, and I hope improved upon year after year, has been the result of experience, and I refer to it now only as one contribution to a general subject which is of such great moment to earnest people; and this must be my excuse for speaking so frankly. THE APPEALS THAT COME The reading, assorting, and investigating of the hundreds of letters of appeal which are received daily at my office are attended to by a department organized for this purpose. The task is not so difficult as at first it might seem. The letters are, to be sure, of great variety, from all sorts of people in every condition of life, and indeed, from all parts of the world. Four-fifths of these letters are, however, requests for money for personal use, with no other title to consideration than that the writer would be gratified to have it. There remain numbers of requests which all must recognize as worthy of notice. These may be divided, roughly, as follows: The claims of local charities. The town or city in which one lives has a definite appeal to all its citizens, and all good neighbours will wish to coöperate with friends and fellow townsmen. But these local charities, hospitals, kindergartens, and the like, ought not to make appeal outside the local communities which they serve. The burden should be carried by the people who are on the spot and who are, or should be, most familiar with local needs. Then come the national and international claims. These properly appeal especially to men of large means throughout the country, whose wealth admits of their doing something more than assist in caring for the local charities. There are many great national and international philanthropic and Christian organizations that cover the whole field of world-wide charity; and, while people of reputed wealth all receive appeals from individual workers throughout the world for personal assistance, the prudent and thoughtful giver will, more and more, choose these great and responsible organizations as the medium for his gifts and the distribution of his funds to distant fields. This has been my custom, and the experience of every day serves only to confirm its wisdom. The great value of dealing with an organization which knows all the facts, and can best decide just where the help can be applied to the best advantage, has impressed itself upon me through the results of long years of experience. For example, one is asked to give in a certain field of missionary work a sum, for a definite purpose--let us say a hospital. To comply with this request will take, say, $10,000. It seems wise and natural to give this amount. The missionary who wants this money is working under the direction of a strong and capable religious denomination. Suppose the request is referred to the manager of the board of this denomination, and it transpires that there are many good reasons why a new hospital is not badly needed at this point, and by a little good management the need of this missionary can be met by another hospital in its neighbourhood; whereas another missionary in another place has no such possibility for any hospital facilities whatever. There is no question that the money should be spent in the place last named. These conditions the managers of all the mission stations know, although perhaps the one who is giving the money never heard of them, and in my judgment he is wise in not acting until he has consulted these men of larger information. It is interesting to follow the mental processes that some excellent souls go through to cloud their consciences when they consider what their duty actually is. For instance, one man says: "I do not believe in giving money to street beggars." I agree with him, I do not believe in the practice either; but that is not a reason why one should be exempt from doing something to help the situation represented by the street beggar. Because one does not yield to the importunities of such people is exactly the reason one should join and uphold the charity organization societies of one's own locality, which deal justly and humanely with this class, separating the worthy from the unworthy. Another says: "I don't give to such and such a board, because I have read that of the money given only half or less actually gets to the person needing help." This is often not a true statement of fact, as proved again and again, and even if it were true in part it does not relieve the possible giver from the duty of helping to make the organization more efficient. By no possible chance is it a valid excuse for closing up one's pocketbook and dismissing the whole subject from one's mind. INSTITUTIONS AS THEY RELATE TO EACH OTHER Surely it is wise to be careful not to duplicate effort and not to inaugurate new charities in fields already covered, but rather to strengthen and perfect those already at work. There is a great deal of rivalry and a vast amount of duplication, and one of the most difficult things in giving is to ascertain when the field is fully covered. Many people simply consider whether the institution to which they are giving is thoughtfully and well managed, without stopping to discover whether the field is not already occupied by others; and for this reason one ought not to investigate a single institution by itself, but always in its relation to all similar institutions in the territory. Here is a case in point: A number of enthusiastic people had a plan for founding an orphan asylum which was to be conducted by one of our strongest religious denominations. The raising of the necessary funds was begun, and among the people who were asked to subscribe was a man who always made it a practice to study the situation carefully before committing himself to a contribution. He asked one of the promoters of the new institution how many beds the present asylums serving this community provided, how efficient they were, where located, and what particular class of institution was lacking in the community. To none of these questions were answers forthcoming, so he had this information gathered on his own account with the purpose of helping to make the new plan effective. His studies revealed the fact that the city where the new asylum was to be built was so well provided with such institutions that there were already vastly more beds for children than there were applicants to fill them, and that the field was well and fully covered. These facts being presented to the organizers of the enterprise, it was shown that no real need for such an institution existed. I wish I might add that the scheme was abandoned. It was not. Such charities seldom are when once the sympathies of the worthy people, however misinformed, are heartily enlisted. It may be urged that doing the work in this systematic and apparently cold-blooded way leaves out of consideration, to a large extent, the merits of individual cases. My contention is that the organization of work in combination should not and does not stifle the work of individuals, but strengthens and stimulates it. The orderly combination of philanthropic effort is growing daily, and at the same time the spirit of broad philanthropy never was so general as it is now. THE CLAIM OF HIGHER EDUCATION The giver who works out these problems for himself will, no doubt, find many critics. So many people see the pressing needs of every-day life that possibly they fail to realize those which are, if less obvious, of an even larger significance--for instance, the great claims of higher education. Ignorance is the source of a large part of the poverty and a vast amount of the crime in the world--hence the need of education. If we assist the highest forms of education--in whatever field--we secure the widest influence in enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge; for all the new facts discovered or set in motion become the universal heritage. I think we cannot overestimate the importance of this matter. The mere fact that most of the great achievements in science, medicine, art, and literature are the flower of the higher education is sufficient. Some great writer will one day show how these things have ministered to the wants of all the people, educated and uneducated, high and low, rich and poor, and made life more what we all wish it to be. The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities--a search for cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source. My interest in the University of Chicago has been enhanced by the fact that while it has comprehensively considered the other features of a collegiate course, it has given so much attention to research. DR. WILLIAM R. HARPER The mention of this promising young institution always brings to my mind the figure of Dr. William R. Harper, whose enthusiasm for its work was so great that no vision of its future seemed too large. My first meeting with Dr. Harper was at Vassar College, where one of my daughters was a student. He used to come, as the guest of Dr. James M. Taylor, the president, to lecture on Sundays; and as I frequently spent week-ends there, I saw and talked much with the young professor, then of Yale, and caught in some degree the contagion of his enthusiasm. When the university had been founded, and he had taken the presidency, our great ambition was to secure the best instructors and to organize the new institution, unhampered by traditions, according to the most modern ideals. He raised millions of dollars among the people of Chicago and the Middle West, and won the personal interest of their leading citizens. Here lay his great strength, for he secured not only their money but their loyal support and strong personal interest--the best kind of help and coöperation. He built even better than he knew. His lofty ideals embodied in the university awakened a deeper interest in higher education throughout the Central West, and stirred individuals, denominations, and legislatures to effective action. The world will probably never realize how largely the present splendid university system of the Central Western States is due indirectly to the genius of this man. With all his extraordinary power of work and his executive and organizing ability, Dr. Harper was a man of exquisite personal charm. We count it among the rich and delightful experiences of our home-life that Dr. and Mrs. Harper could occasionally spend days together with us for a brief respite from the exacting cares and responsibilities of the university work. As a friend and companion, in daily intercourse, no one could be more delightful than he. It has been my good fortune to contribute at various times to the University of Chicago, of which Dr. Harper was president, and the newspapers not unnaturally supposed at such times that he used the occasions of our personal association to secure these contributions. The cartoonists used to find this a fruitful theme. They would picture Dr. Harper as a hypnotist waving his magic spell, or would represent him forcing his way into my inner office where I was pictured as busy cutting coupons and from which delightful employment I incontinently fled out of the window at sight of him; or they would represent me as fleeing across rivers on cakes of floating ice with Dr. Harper in hot pursuit; or perhaps he would be following close on my trail, like the wolf in the Russian story, in inaccessible country retreats, while I escaped only by means of the slight delays I occasioned him by now and then dropping a million-dollar bill, which he would be obliged to stop and pick up. These cartoons were intended to be very amusing, and some of them certainly did have a flavour of humour, but they were never humorous to Dr. Harper. They were in fact a source of deep humiliation to him, and I am sure he would, were he living, be glad to have me say, as I now do, that during the entire period of his presidency of the University of Chicago, he never once either wrote me a letter or asked me personally for a dollar of money for the University of Chicago. In the most intimate daily intercourse with him in my home, the finances of the University of Chicago were never canvassed or discussed. The method of procedure in this case has been substantially the same as with all other contributions. The presentation of the needs of the university has been made in writing by the officers of the university, whose special duty it is to prepare its budgets and superintend its finances. A committee of the trustees, with the president, have annually conferred, at a fixed time, with our Department of Benevolence, as to its needs. Their conclusions have generally been entirely unanimous and I have found no occasion hitherto seriously to depart from their recommendations. There have been no personal interviews and no personal solicitations. It has been a pleasure to me to make these contributions, but that pleasure has arisen out of the fact that the university is located in a great centre of empire; that it has rooted itself in the affections and interest of the people among whom it is located; that it is doing a great and needed work--in fine, that it has been able to attract and to justify the contributions of its patrons East and West. It is not personal interviews and impassioned appeals, but sound and justifying worth, that should attract and secure the funds of philanthropy. The people in great numbers who are constantly importuning me for personal interviews in behalf of favourite causes err in supposing that the interview, were it possible, is the best way, or even a good way, of securing what they want. Our practice has been uniformly to request applicants to state their cases tersely, but nevertheless as fully as they think necessary, in writing. Their application is carefully considered by very competent people chosen for this purpose. If, thereupon, personal interviews are found desirable by our assistants, they are invited from our office. Written presentations form the necessary basis of investigation, of consultation, and comparison of views between the different members of our staff, and of the final presentation to me. It is impossible to conduct this department of our work in any other way. The rule requiring written presentation as against the interview is enforced and adhered to not, as the applicant sometimes supposes, as a cold rebuff to him, but in order to secure for his cause, if it be a good one, the careful consideration which is its due--a consideration that cannot be given in a mere verbal interview. THE REASON FOR CONDITIONAL GIFTS It is easy to do harm in giving money. To give to institutions which should be supported by others is not the best philanthropy. Such giving only serves to dry up the natural springs of charity. It is highly important that every charitable institution shall have at all times the largest possible number of current contributors. This means that the institution shall constantly be making its appeals; but, if these constant appeals are to be successful, the institution is forced to do excellent work and meet real and manifest needs. Moreover, the interest of many people affords the best assurance of wise economy and unselfish management as well as of continued support. We frequently make our gifts conditional on the giving of others, not because we wish to force people to do their duty, but because we wish in this way to root the institution in the affections of as many people as possible who, as contributors, become personally concerned, and thereafter may be counted on to give to the institution their watchful interest and coöperation. Conditional gifts are often criticized, and sometimes, it may be, by people who have not thought the matter out fully. Criticism which is deliberate, sober, and fair is always valuable and it should be welcomed by all who desire progress. I have had at least my full share of adverse criticism, but I can truly say that it has not embittered me, nor left me with any harsh feeling against a living soul. Nor do I wish to be critical of those whose conscientious judgment, frankly expressed, differs from my own. No matter how noisy the pessimists may be, we know that the world is getting better steadily and rapidly, and that is a good thing to remember in our moments of depression or humiliation. THE BENEVOLENT TRUSTS To return to the subject of the Benevolent Trusts, which is a name for corporations to manage the business side of benefactions. The idea needs, and to be successful must have, the help of men who have been trained along practical lines. The best men of business should be attracted by its possibilities for good. When it is eventually worked out, as it will be in some form, and probably in a better one than we can now forecast, how worthy it will be of the efforts of our ablest men! We shall have the best charities supported generously and adequately, managed with scientific efficiency by the ablest men, who will gladly he held strictly accountable to the donors of the money, not only for the correct financing of the funds, but for the intelligent and effective use of every penny. To-day the whole machinery of benevolence is conducted upon more or less haphazard principles. Good men and women are wearing out their lives to raise money to sustain institutions which are conducted by more less or unskilled methods. This is a tremendous waste of our best material. We cannot afford to have great souls who are capable of doing the most effective work slaving to raise the money. That should be a business man's task, and he should be supreme in managing the machinery of the expenses. The teachers, the workers, and the inspired leaders of the people should be relieved of these pressing and belittling money cares. They have more than enough to do in tilling their tremendous and never fully occupied field, and they should be free from any care which might in any wise divert them from that work. When these Benevolent Trusts come into active being, such organizations on broad lines will be sure to attract the brains of the best men we have in our commercial affairs, as great business opportunities attract them now. Our successful business men as a class, and the exceptions only prove the truth of the assertion, have a high standard of honour. I have sometimes been tempted to say that our clergymen could gain by knowing the essentials of business life better. The closer association with men of affairs would, I think, benefit both classes. People who have had much to do with ministers and those who hold confidential positions in our churches have at times had surprising experiences in meeting what is sometimes practised in the way of ecclesiastical business, because these good men have had so little of business training in the work-a-day world. The whole system of proper relations, whether it be in commerce, or in the Church, or in the sciences, rests on honour. Able business men seek to confine their dealings to people who tell the truth and keep their promises; and the representatives of the Church, who are often prone to attack business men as a type of what is selfish and mean, have some great lessons to learn, and they will gladly learn them as these two types of workers grow closer together. The Benevolent Trusts, when they come, will raise these standards; they will look the facts in the face; they will applaud and sustain the effective workers and institutions; and they will uplift the intelligent standard of good work in helping all the people chiefly to help themselves. There are already signs that these combinations are coming, and coming quickly, and in the directorates of these trusts you will eventually find the flower of our American manhood, the men who not only know how to make money, but who accept the great responsibility of administering it wisely. A few years ago, on the occasion of the decennial anniversary of the University of Chicago, I was attending a university dinner, and having been asked to speak I had jotted down a few notes. When the time arrived to stand up and face these guests--men of worth and position--my notes meant nothing to me. As I thought of the latent power of good that rested with these rich and influential people I was greatly affected. I threw down my notes and started to plead for my Benevolent Trust plan. "You men," I said, "are always looking forward to do something for good causes. I know how very busy you are. You work in a treadmill from which you see no escape. I can easily understand that you feel that it is beyond your present power carefully to study the needs of humanity, and that you wait to give until you have considered many things and decided upon some course of action. Now, why not do with what you can give to others as you do with what you want to keep for yourself and your children: Put it into a Trust? You would not place a fortune for your children in the hands of an inexperienced person, no matter how good he might be. Let us be as careful with the money we would spend for the benefit of others as if we were laying it aside for our own family's future use. Directors carry on these affairs in your behalf. Let us erect a foundation, a Trust, and engage directors who will make it a life work to manage, with our personal coöperation, this business of benevolence properly and effectively. And I beg of you, attend to it _now_, don't wait." I confess I felt most strongly on the subject, and I feel so now. 
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15595	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 15595-h.htm or 15595-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/5/9/15595/15595-h/15595-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/5/9/15595/15595-h.zip) +-------------------------------------------------------+ | | | OTHER VOCATIONAL | | GUIDANCE BOOKS | | | | J. ADAMS PUFFER, Editor | | | | _VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE--THE TEACHER AS A COUNSELOR_ | | By J. Adams Puffer | | | | _A VOCATIONAL READER_ | | By C. Park Pressey | | | | _VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR THE PROFESSIONS_ | | By Edwin Tenney Brewster | | | +-------------------------------------------------------+ "Vocational guidance seeks the largest realization of the possibilities of every child and youth, measured in terms of worthy service." [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. CAMP FIRE GIRLS The lessons of patriotism, kindness, and industry taught by the Camp Fire Girls' organization make it a power for good] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS by MARGUERITE STOCKMAN DICKSON Author of _From the Old World to the New_, _A Hundred Years of Warfare. 1689-1789_, _Stories of Camp and Trail_, _Pioneers and Patriots in American History_ Rand Mcnally & Company Chicago New York 1919 THE CONTENTS PAGE A Foreword ix PART I. PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD CHAPTER I. WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY 3 II. THE IDEAL HOME 18 III. ESTABLISHING A HOME 27 IV. RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY 49 PART II. GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL V. THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED 75 VI. TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD 86 VII. TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING 102 VIII. THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE 122 IX. THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 130 X. THE GIRL'S WORK 151 XI. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 163 XII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS AS AFFECTING HOMEMAKING 194 XIII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS DETERMINED BY TRAINING 203 XIV. MARRIAGE 218 Suggested Readings 241 The Index 243 A LIST OF THE PORTRAITS PAGE LOUISA M. ALCOTT 221 RUTH MCENERY STUART 223 LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY 225 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 227 COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY 229 JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER 231 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 233 ALICE FREEMAN PALMER 235 AMELIA E. BARR 237 A FOREWORD Fortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a book on the vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. Dickson has the all-round life experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and sympathetic approach to the delicate, intricate, and complex problems of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world. Mrs. Dickson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city of New York. She then became the partner of a superintendent of schools in the business of making a home. In these early homemaking years there came from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a series of historical books for the grades which have placed her among the leading educational writers of the country. During the long sickness of her husband she filled for a while two administrative positions--homemaker and superintendent of schools. Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan for their own life work. With the broad training of homemaker, wife, mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. Dickson has the combination of experiences to enable her to introduce teachers and mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life careers for our girls. The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used as a textbook for the girls themselves in connection with civic and vocational courses. The only difficulty with the book for a text is that it is so attractively written on such vital problems that the student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson. J. ADAMS PUFFER "Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to every individual of the chance to attain his highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide." PART I PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD "How to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of vocational guidance." VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS CHAPTER I WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY Any scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic questions: first, What do we desire those being educated to become? second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire them to be? In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally into two great divisions. One concerns itself with ideals; the other, with methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we may always reach back to these fundamental ideas: What do we want to make? How shall we make it? Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first: What ought girls to be? And with this simple question we are plunged immediately into a vortex of differing opinions. Girls ought to be--or ought to be in the way of becoming--whatever the women of the next generation should be. So far all are doubtless agreed. We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating the question, making it: What ought women to be? Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an all-absorbing topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the very heart of controversy. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Suffrage parade in Washington. Women will parade or even fight for their rights] It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes entirely the unrest which this controversy has brought. Even the most conservative and "old-fashioned" of women know that their daughters are living in a world already changed from the days of their own young womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but "woman in industry" is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's arraignment of existing marriage and sex relations, but they cannot fail to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care little about the suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing echoes of strife over the subject of "votes for women." And however much or little women are personally conscious of the significance of these questions, the questions are nevertheless of vital import to them all. The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her presence in various ways. We may prophesy the outcome of her uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime--she is here! Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The radicals would have us believe that the question of woman's status in the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says one, the "man's world" must be transformed into a human world, with no baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human qualities, shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The work of the world--with the single exception of childbearing--is not man's work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be liberated from the overemphasized feminine. Let women live and work as men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the accident of sex. Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored institution of marriage which must feel the blow of the iconoclast. Reform marriage, and the whole woman question will adjust itself. Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the aristocracy of the future." Let the woman be free forever from the drudgery of family life, free from the slavery of the marriage relation, free to "live," to "work," to have a "career." Men and women were intended to be in all things the same, except for the slight difference of sex. Let us throw away the cramping folly of the ages and let woman take her place beside man. Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as masculine and feminine types approach each other, we shall see degeneracy. Men and women were never intended to be alike. Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no progress. Without the conservatives our social fabric would scarcely hold. Between the two extremes, however, in this as in all things, stands the great middle class, believing and urging that not social upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the world remedy for unrest; that not new careers, but better adjustment of old ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power, even though that be their just due, but the better use of powers that women have long possessed, is most needed for the betterment of mankind. It is not the province of this book to enter into controversy with either radical or reactionary, but rather to search for truth which may be used for adjusting to fuller advantage the relation of woman to society. First of all must be recognized the fact that the "woman movement" deserves the thoughtful attention of every teacher or other social worker, and indeed of every thoughtful man or woman. The movement can no longer be considered in the light of isolated surface outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social undercurrents which are stirring the whole world. In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any department of educational work we are bound to make, the fact is immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked changes. Conditions once favorable to the existence of the home as a sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions have arisen, compelling the home, like other permanent institutions, to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them. Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home existed. The home, in those days, was the place where work was done. With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution in the place and manner of work. The father of the family has been forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home workshop to the mechanically equipped factory. One by one, many of the housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the processes of cloth making are practically unknown outside the factory. Knitting has become largely a machine industry. Ready-made clothing has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of food, the housekeeper may, if she chooses, have a large part of her work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen shopkeeper. Even the care of her children, after the years of infancy, has been partly assumed by the state. The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its excuse for being. Among the poorer classes, women, like their husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their homes, have followed the work to the factory. As a result we have many thousands of them away from their homes through long days of toil. Among persons of larger income, removal of the home industries to the factory has resulted in increased leisure for the woman--with what results we shall later consider. Practically the only constructive work left which the woman may not shift if she will to other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of children and, to at least some degree, their care in early years. The interests once centered in the home are now scattered--the father goes to shop or office, the children to school, the mother either to work outside the home or in quest of other occupation and amusement to which leisure drives her. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Glove making. Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the factories] A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the increased educational aspirations of women. Once the accepted and frankly anticipated career for a woman was marriage and the making of a home. Her education was centered upon this end. To-day all this is changed. A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in all points like her brother's, and the career she plans and prepares for may be almost anything he contemplates. She may, or may not, enter upon the career for which she prepares. Marriage may--often does--interfere with the career, although nearly as often the career seems to interfere with marriage. Under the new alignment of ideals, there is less interest shown in homemaking and more in "the world's work," with a decided feeling that the two are entirely incompatible. [Illustration: Keystone View Co. Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of women are away from their homes through long days of toil] The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no longer marries simply because no other career is open to her; when she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us, to have children--the only remaining work which, in these days, definitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no longer inseparably connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that their "careers" are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs] A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since the agricultural communities constantly feed the towns, the menace concerns the country-as well as the city-dweller. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying material and social needs outside the home] Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit must be saved, we shall do well to admit at once that the old-time home was an institution suited to its own day, but that we cannot now call it back to being. Nor would we wish to do so. There is no possible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, bake, brew, preserve, clean, _if_ the products she formerly made can be produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the home. There is danger, however, of generalizing too soon in regard to these industries. There is little doubt that in some directions, at least, the factory method has not yet brought really satisfactory results. How many women can give you reasons _why_ they believe that it no longer "pays" to do this or that at home as they once did? Do the factories always turn out as good a product as the housekeeper? If they do, does the housekeeper obtain that product with as little expenditure as when she made it? If she spends more, can she show that the leisure she has thus bought has been a wise purchase? Is she justified in accepting vague generalizations to the effect that it is better economy to buy than to make, or should she test for herself, checking up her individual conditions and results? The fact is that the pendulum has swung away from the "homemade" article, and most of us have not taken the trouble to investigate whether we are benefited or harmed. It may be that investigation will show us that the pendulum has swung too far, and that, in spite of factories mechanically equipped to serve us, some work may be done much more advantageously at home. It is even possible, and in some lines of work we know that it is a fact, that homes may be mechanically equipped at very little cost to rival and even to outclass the factory in producing certain kinds of products for home consumption. Spinning, weaving, and knitting are doubtless best left in the hands of the factory worker. But, under present conditions, buying ready made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and unsatisfactory method if the elements of worth, wear, finish, and individuality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically all foodstuffs "ready made" presents a complex and disturbing problem to the fastidious and conscientious housewife. There is at least a possibility that it would be as well for the home of to-day to retain or resume, systematize, and perfect some of the industries that are slipping or have already slipped from its grasp. It is possible to reduce some processes to a too purely mechanical basis. [Illustration: Keystone View Co. Linen-mill workers. Spinning and weaving, whether of cotton, linen, silk, or wool, are more satisfactorily done by factory workers than in the home] A woman lived in our town who wasn't very wise. She had a reputation for making homemade pies. And when she found her pies would sell, with all her might and main She opened up a factory, and spoiled it all again. Nonsense? Yes--but with a strong element of sense, nevertheless. Entirely aside, however, from the industrial status of the home, unless we are to see a practical cessation of childbearing and rearing, homes must apparently continue to exist. No one has yet found a substitute place for this particular industry. It is a commonly accepted fact that young children do better, both mentally and physically, in even rather poor homes than in a perfectly planned and conducted institution. And we need go no farther than this in seeking a sufficient reason for saving the home. This one is enough to enlist our best service in aid of homemaking and home support. From earliest ages woman has been the homemaker. No plan for the preservation of the home or for its evolution into a satisfactory social factor can fail to recognize her vital and necessary connection with the problem. Therefore in answer to the question "What ought woman to be?" we say boldly, "A homemaker." Reduced to simplest terms, the conditions are these: if homes are to be made more serviceable tools for social betterment, women must make them what they ought to be. Consequently homemaking must continue to be woman's business--_the_ business of woman, if you like--a considerable, recognized, and respected part of her "business of being a woman." Nor may we overlook the fact that it is only in this work of making homes and rearing offspring that either men or women reach their highest development. Motherhood and fatherhood are educative processes, greater and more vital than the artificial training that we call education. In teaching their children, even in merely living with their children, parents are themselves trained to lead fuller lives. "The central fact of the woman's life--Nature's reason for her--is the child, his bearing and rearing. There is no escape from the divine order that her life must be built around this constraint, duty, or privilege, as she may please to consider it."[1] It is the fashion among some women to assume that it is time all this were changed, and that therefore it will be changed. They look forward to seeing womankind released from this "constraint, duty, or privilege," and yet see in their prophetic vision the race moving on to a future of achievement. The fact, however, ignore it as we may, cannot be gainsaid: no man-made or woman-made "emancipation" will change nature's law. It was well that after centuries of repression and subjection woman sought emancipation. She needed it. But the wildest flight of fancy cannot long conceal the ultimate fact. Woman is the mother of the race. "The female not only typifies the race, but, metaphor aside, she _is_ the race."[2] Emancipation can never free her from this destiny. In the United States, where woman has the largest freedom to enter the industrial world and maintain herself in entire independence, the percentage of those who marry is higher than in the countries where woman is a slave. Ninety per cent of the mature women in our country become homemakers for a certain period, and probably over 90 per cent are assistant homemakers for another period of years before or after marriage. Any vocational counselor who fails to reckon first with the homemaking career of girls is therefore blind to the facts of life. All education, all training, must be considered in its bearing on the one vocation, homemaking. The time will come when the occupations of boys and men must likewise be considered in relation to homemaking, but that problem is not the province of this book. Women will bear and rear the children of the future, just as they have borne and reared the children of the past. But _under what conditions_--the best or those less worthy? And _what women_--again, the best or those less worthy? Has woman been freed from subjection, from an inferior place in the scheme of life, only to become so intoxicated with a personal freedom, with her own personal ambition, that she fails to see what emancipation really means? Will she be contented merely to imitate man rather than to work out a destiny of her own? We think not. When the first flush of freedom has passed, the pendulum will turn again and woman will find a truer place than she knows now or has known. Two obstacles to the successful pursuit of her ultimate vocation stand prominently before the young woman of to-day: first, the instruction of the times has imbued her with too little respect for her calling; second, her education teaches her how to do almost everything except how to follow this calling in the scientific spirit of the day. She may scorn housework as drudgery, but no voice is raised to show her that it may be made something else. With the advent of vocational guidance, vocational training of necessity follows close behind. And with vocational training must come a proper appreciation, among the other businesses of life, of this "business of being a woman." Must we then educate the girl to be a homemaker, and keep her out of the industrial life which has claimed her so swiftly and in which she has found so much of her emancipation? No, we could not, if we would, keep her from the outside life. We must rather recognize her double vocation and, difficult though it seem, must educate her for both phases of her "business." She will be not only the better woman, but the better worker, because of the very breadth of her vocational horizon. Training for homemaking, then, must go hand in hand with training for some phase of industrial life. Vocational guides must consider not only inclination and temperament, but physical condition and the supply and demand of the industrial world. They will consider the girl not merely as an industrial worker, but as a potential homemaker. They will, therefore, also study the effect of various vocations upon homemaking capabilities. How then shall the teaching of this double vocation be approached? How shall we, as teachers of girls, make them capable of becoming homemakers? How shall we make them see that homemaking and the world's work may go hand in hand, so that they will desire in time to turn from their industrial service to the later and better destiny of making a home? This book offers its contribution toward answering these questions. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Ida M. Tarbell, _The Business of Being a Woman_.] [Footnote 2: Lester F. Ward, _Pure Sociology_.] CHAPTER II THE IDEAL HOME That we may understand, and to some extent formulate, the problem which we would have girls trained to solve, we must of necessity study homes. What must girls know in order to be successful homemakers? A historical survey of the home leads us to the conclusion that although times have changed, and homes have changed, and indeed all outward conditions have changed, the spiritual ideal of home is no different from what it has always been. The home is the seat of family life. Its one object is the making of healthy, wise, happy, satisfied, useful, and efficient people. The home is essentially a spiritual factory, whether or not it is to remain to any degree whatever a material one. "Home will become an atmosphere, a 'condition in which,' rather than 'a place where,'" says Nearing in his _Woman and Social Progress_. "The home is a factory to make citizenship in," writes Mrs. Bruère. But although this spiritual significance of home has always existed, we are sometimes inclined to overlook the fact. Because conditions have changed, and because our external ideals of home have changed and are still changing, we fail to see that the foundation of home life is still unchanged. "I sometimes think that many women don't consciously know _why_ they are running their homes," says Mrs. Frederick, author of _The New Housekeeping_. We might add that many of those who do know, or think they know, are struggling to attain to purely trivial or fundamentally wrong ideals. It seems wise, then, for us to face at the outset the question "What is the ideal home?" [Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co. An attractive living room in which there is that atmosphere of peace so conducive to a happy family life] Laying aside all preconceived notions, and remembering that changes are coming fast in these days, let us look for the ideals which may be common to all homes, in city or country, among rich or poor. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A well-arranged kitchen forms an important part of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home] First of all, the home must be comfortable, and its whole atmosphere must be that of peace. In no other way can the tension of modern life be overcome. This implies order and cleanliness, beauty, warmth, light, and air; but it implies far more. It means a home planned for the people who will occupy it, and so planned that father's needs, and mother's, and the children's, will all be met. What does each member of the family require of the house? A place to _live in_. And that means far more than eating and sleeping and having a place for one's clothes. There must be not only a place for everything, but a place for everybody in the ideal house. The boys who wish to dabble in electricity, the girls who wish to entertain their friends in their own way, the tired father who wishes to read his newspaper "in peace," the younger children who want to pop corn or blow bubbles or play games, all must be planned for. There will be no room too good for use, and no furnishings so delicate that mother worries over family contact with them. There will be a minimum of "keeping up appearances" and a maximum of comfort and cheer. There will be little formal entertaining, but many spontaneous good times. In addition to being comfortable, the ideal home must be convenient. There will be places for things, and every appliance for making work easy. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Contrast this old-fashioned kitchen with the modern one shown on the opposite page] The ideal mother, who is the mainspring of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home, will be scientifically trained for her position. Her "domestic science" will no longer be open to the criticism that it is not science at all, nor will she feel that her business is unworthy of scientific treatment. Always she will keep before her the object of her work--to make of her family, _including herself_, good, happy, efficient people. She will not be overburdened with housework, for overworked mothers have neither time nor strength for the higher aspects of their work. She will know how to feed bodies, but also how to develop souls. She will clothe her children hygienically, but she will teach them to value more the more important vestments of modesty and gentleness and courtesy. She will require obedience, but, as their years increase, the requirement will be less and less obedience to authority and more and more obedience to a right spirit within. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. The wise mother will teach her children the true value of work by making them wish to work with her] She will work for her children and will make them wish to work with her, teaching them the true value of work and sacrifice. She will play with them, for their pleasure and development, and she will also play, in her own way, for her own rejuvenation and her soul's good. She will study each member of her family as an individual problem, and, abandoning forever the idea of pressing any child's soul into the mold that she might choose, will rather strive to aid its growth toward its natural ideal. She will strive to hold and to be worthy of her children's confidence, that they may turn to her in those times that try their souls. But she will always respect the personal liberty of either child or husband to live his own life. She will interest herself in the interests of husband and children, that she may remain a vital factor in their lives; and she will make the home so delightful as to reduce to a minimum the scattering influences that tend to destroy home life. She will weave intangible but indestructible ties of affection, holding all together and to herself. She will keep her interest in the outside world, so that she may better prepare her children to live in it and may resist the narrowing influence of her enforced temporary withdrawal. She will take some part in civic work and social uplift, and, when her years of child rearing are ended, in the leisure of middle age she will return to the less circumscribed life of her youth, bending her matured energies to the world's work. The father of this ideal family will be first of all a man happy in his work. The plodding, weary slave to distasteful labor can be ideal neither as husband nor as father. Overworked fathers are quite as impossible in our scheme as overburdened mothers. In ideal conditions the father will have time, strength, and willingness to be more of a factor in the home life than he sometimes is at the present time. More than that, his early education will have included definite preparation for homemaking, so that his coöperation will be intelligent and therefore helpful. He will know more than he does now about the cost of living and he will assist in making a preliminary division of the year's income upon an intelligent basis. He will recognize the necessity for equipment for the homemaking business and will contribute his share of thought and labor to improving the home plant. He will be a companion as well as adviser to his boys and girls and will retain their respect and love by his sympathetic understanding and his remembrance of the boy's point of view. In all his dealings with his children he will be careful that interference with his comfort and convenience or the wounding of his pride by their shortcomings does not obscure his sense of justice. He will be a student of child nature and will keep in view the ultimate good and usefulness of his child. He will regard his fatherhood as his greatest service to the state. [Illustration: Pals. The wise father will be companion as well as adviser to his children] The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal home will grow as naturally as plants in a well-cared-for garden. With examples of courtesy and kindness, of cheerful work and health-producing play, ever before them in the lives of their parents, they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness. Their educational problems will be met by the combined effort of teachers and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will dictate the choice of their life work. That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training for more efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking ideals and problems. If we are to teach our girls and our boys to be homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know. If we are to counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the true value of the homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life presents to the scientifically trained mind. Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction; and we may pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of good homes. Her whole outlook may be changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with her teaching, her influence. If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking would appeal to them quite naturally as the ultimate vocation. Indeed, we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most unlovely conditions in their childhood homes. The task of mother, teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter is a complicated one. Some girls are not fitted by nature to be homemakers. Some may with careful training overcome inherent defects which stand in the way of their success. Some have the natural endowment, but have their eyes fixed on other careers. Some have unhappy ideals to overcome. The fact, however, confronts us that at some time in their lives a very large majority of these girls will be homemakers. It is the part of those who have charge of them in their formative years to do two things for them: first, to train them so that they may understand the tasks of the homemaker and perform them creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls who seem fitted for this high vocation to desire it, and to choose it for at least part of their mature lives. CHAPTER III ESTABLISHING A HOME Certain very definite attempts are being made in these days to meet the evident lack of homemaking knowledge in the rising generation. And since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do better than to analyze as carefully as possible the various lines of knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon her life work. What are the problems of homemaking? And how far can we provide the girl with the necessary equipment to make her an efficient worker in her chosen vocation? Country life and city life are apparently so far removed from each other as to present totally different problems to the homemaker and to the vocational educator of girls. And yet underlying the successful management of both urban and rural homes are the same principles of domestic economy and of social efficiency. The principles are there, however widely their application may differ. While we may wisely train country girls for country living, and city girls to face the problems of urban life, we must not lose sight of the fact that country girls often become homemakers in the city and that city girls are often found establishing homes in the country. Nor should we overlook the truth that some study of home conditions in other than familiar surroundings will broaden the girl's knowledge and fit her in later life to make conditions subservient to that knowledge. Both rural and urban homemakers must be taught to appreciate their advantages and to make the most of them. They must also learn to face their disadvantages and to work intelligently toward overcoming them. The country homemaker has no immediate need of studying the problems of congestion in population which menace the millions of city-dwellers. The country home has plenty of room and an abundance of pure air. Yet it is often true that country homes are poorly ventilated and that much avoidable sickness results from this fact. The country home is often set in the midst of great natural beauty, yet misses its opportunity to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense. Its very isolation is sometimes a cause of the lack of attention to its appearance to the passerby. The farmer's wife has an advantage in the matter of fresh vegetables, eggs, and poultry, but the city housekeeper has the near-by market and finds the question of sanitation, the preservation of food, and the disposal of waste far easier of solution. The city housewife is often troubled in regard to the source of her milk supply; the country-dweller has plenty of fresh milk, but frequently finds it difficult to be sure of pure water. The country homemaker often lacks the conveniences which make housekeeping easier; the city woman is often misled, by the ease of obtaining the ready-made article, into buying inferior products in order to avoid the labor of producing. The family in the farming community often has meager social life and lack of proper recreations; the city-dweller is made restless and improvident by an excess of opportunities for certain sorts of amusement. Thus each type of community has its own problems. But practically all of these problems fall under certain general heads which both city and country homemakers should consider as part of their education. The present turning of thought toward training in these directions is most promising for the homes of the future. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A country home which, though set in the midst of natural beauty, yet fails to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense] [Illustration: Courtesy of Mrs. Joseph E. Wing In contrast to the illustration above, this home shows what a few artistic touches may do to enhance the natural beauty of the surroundings] It is one of the misfortunes of existing conditions that the city and the country are not better acquainted with each other. Scorn frequently takes the place of understanding. The town or village girl goes out to teach in the country school, knowing little of country living and less of country homes. It is difficult, if not impossible, for such a teacher to be an influence for good. Especially as she approaches the homemaking problem is she without the knowledge which must underlie successful work. It is important that the city girl under such conditions should make a special effort to study country life and country homes in a sympathetic, helpful spirit. Perhaps our analysis of homemaking problems can take no more practical form than to follow from its hypothetical beginning the making of an actual home. No more inspiring moment comes in the lives of most men and women than that in which the first step is taken toward making their first home. There is an instinctive recognition of the greatness of the occasion. But ignorance will dull the glow of inspiration and wrong standards will lead to wreck of highest hopes. Let us, therefore, be practical and definite and face the facts. A home is to be established. The first question is: Where? To a certain extent circumstances must answer this question. The character and place of employment of the breadwinner, the income, social relations already established, school, church, library, market, water and sanitary conditions, must all be considered. Yet even these regulating conditions must receive intelligent treatment. How many young homemakers have any definite idea as to what proportion of the income may safely be expended for shelter? How many can tell the relative advantages of renting and owning? [Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co. A tenement district. One of the greatest disadvantages in urban life is the overcrowding in tenement houses] Probably the first consideration in selection is likely to be whether the home is to be permanent or merely temporary. When the occupation is likely to be permanent, the greatest comfort and well-being will usually result from establishing early a permanent home; and this involves a long look ahead to justify the selection of a site. Not only must health and convenience be considered, but future questions relative to the expanding requirements of the homemakers and to the education and proper upbringing of a family as well. Then, too, young people must usually begin modestly from a financial standpoint, and they are therefore cut off from certain locations which they may perhaps desire and which they might hope to attain in later years. In the country, where the livelihood is often gained directly from the land, a new element enters into selection and must to some extent take precedence over others. Soil considerations aside, however, we have health, beauty, social environment, educational advantages, and expense to consider; and we should establish certain standards in these directions for our young people to measure by. Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions, but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the neighborhood. Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty. They must recognize the value also of desirable social environment--that is, of such moral and intellectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the homemakers and safe for the future family. They will, it is hoped, learn that a merely fashionable neighborhood is not necessarily a desirable environment. The church, the school, the library, and proper recreation centers are also to be considered in one's social outlook. They are all distinctly worth paying for, as also is a good road. With the site selected, the great problem of building next confronts the homemaker. Here again the principles of selection should be sufficiently known to young people, boys and girls alike, to save them from the mistakes so commonly made and frequently so regretted. The people who can afford to employ an architect to design their homes are in a decided minority, and the only way to insure good houses for the less well-to-do majority is to see that the less well-to-do do not grow up without instruction as to what good houses are. The great tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased simplicity and toward a quality which we may call "livableness." This tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching. In general, the good house is plain, substantial, convenient, and suited to its surroundings. Efficient housekeeping is largely conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries, the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like. Housekeeping is made up of accumulated details of work, and adequate preparation for comfort in working can be made only when the house is in process of construction. Not less are the higher and more abstract duties of the homemaker served by the kind of house she lives and works in. In a hundred details the homemaker should be able to increase the efficiency of the "place to make citizens in." A common mistake in building produces a house which adds to, rather than lessens, the burdens of its inmates. More often than not this is the result of a misapprehension of what houses are for. There are many large mansions in our villages and cities built for show and display of wealth in which no one will live today. These houses are being torn down and sold for junk. The modern home is built for one purpose only, a home. We must therefore teach our boys and girls that houses are for shelter, work, comfort, and rest, and to satisfy our sense of beauty, not to serve as show places nor to establish for us a standing in the community proportionate to the size of our buildings. We must teach them to measure their house needs and to avoid the uselessly ornate as well as the hopelessly ugly. We must teach them to consider ease of upkeep a distinctly valuable factor in building. But most of all must the homemaker be taught that the comfort and well-being of the family come first in the making of plans. Few persons possess sufficient originality to think out new and valuable arrangements for houses; therefore we must see that their minds are rendered alert to discover successful arrangements in the houses they are constantly seeing and to adapt these arrangements to their own needs. Unless their minds are awakened in this direction, the majority will merely see the house problem in large units, overlooking the finer points of detail which mean comfort or the opposite. I recall spending a considerable number of drawing periods in my grammar-school days upon copying drawings of houses. I recall that we became sufficiently conversant with such terms as front elevation, side elevation, and floor plan to feel that we were deep in technical knowledge. But I do not recall that anyone suggested any question as to the suitability of these houses for homes, or opened our minds to consideration of the fact that house building was a proper concern for our minds. It was merely a case in which educative processes failed to function. They do things better now in many schools. But we should not rest until all of our prospective homemakers have opportunity to obtain practical instruction in home planning and building. Matters pertaining to heating, ventilating, and plumbing are easily taught as resting upon certain definite, well-understood principles. Here the personal element is less to be considered, and scientific knowledge may be passed on with some degree of authority. Our courses in physics, chemistry, and hygiene can be made thoroughly practical without losing any of their scientific value. Especially in our rural schools should matters of this sort receive careful and adequate treatment. In times past it was considered inevitable that the country-dweller should lack the advantages, found in most city houses, of a plentiful supply of water, radiated heat for the whole house, proper disposal of waste, and arrangements for cold storage. We know now that these things are obtainable at less cost than we had supposed; and we know also that it is not lack of means, but lack of knowledge, which forces many to do without them. In many a farm home the doctor's bills for one or two winters would pay for installing proper systems of heat and ventilation. Everything that tends to increase the comfort and safety of home life must be taught, as well as everything that tends to lessen the labor of keeping a family clean, warm, and properly fed. Accurate figures should be obtained to set before the boys and girls who will be homemakers, showing the cost, in time, labor, and money, of running a heating plant for the house as compared with several stoves scattered about in the dwelling. To accompany these we must have more figures, showing the comparative time spent in doing the necessary work incidental to the operation of each type of apparatus. We must consider the comparative cleanliness of both types of heating plants, with their effect, first, upon the health of the family, and secondly, upon the amount of cleaning necessary to keep the house in proper condition. We must compare types of stoves with one other, hot-air, steam, and hot-water plants with one another, and various kinds of fuels, both as to cost and as to efficacy. The water question is one of real interest to both city-and country-dweller, although the chances are that the country-dweller knows less about his source of supply than the city-dweller can know if he chooses to investigate. The city-dweller should know whence and by what means the water flows from his faucet, if for no other reason than that he may do his part in seeing that the money spent by his city or town brings adequate return to the taxpayer. For the rural homemaker, of course, the problem usually becomes an individual one. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A dangerous well. The rural homemaker must make sure that his water supply is at a safe distance from contaminating impurities] Is the water supply adequate? Is the water free from harmful bacteria? Is the source a safe distance from contaminating impurities? Are we obtaining the water for household and farm purposes without more labor than is compatible with good management? Is not running water as important for the house as for the barn? How much water does an ordinary family need for all purposes in a day? How much time does it take to pump and carry this quantity by hand or to draw it from a well? How much strength and nerve force are thus expended that might be saved for more important work? Does lack of time or strength cause the homekeeper to "get along" with less water in the house than is really needed? Is there any natural means at hand for pumping the water--any "brook that may be put to work," any gravity system that may be installed? If not, are there mechanical means available that would really pay for themselves in increased water, time, and comfort for all the family? [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Where water must be pumped and carried by hand much strength and nerve force are expended which might be kept for more important work] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A "brook put to work" may be utilized in supplying water to a farmhouse] From a consideration of water supply we pass naturally to questions of the disposal of waste, and here again is found a subject too often neglected both in town and in rural communities. In the city the problems are not individual ones in the main, but rather questions of the best management and use of the public utilities concerned. Does the average city householder know what becomes of the waste removed from his door by the convenient arrival of the ash man, the garbage man, the rubbish man? Does he know whether this waste is disposed of in the most sanitary way? Does he consider whether it is removed in such a way as to be inoffensive and without danger to the people through whose streets it is carried? Does he know anything of the cost to the city of waste disposal? Is it merely an expense, and a heavy one, for him in common with other taxpayers to bear? Or is the business made to pay for itself? If not, is it possible to make it pay? Does any community make the waste account balance itself at the end of the year? [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. An objectionable garbage wagon. Disposal of waste is a subject too often neglected both in urban and in rural communities] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. This new covered garbage wagon subjects the public to no danger] In the country, once more we face the individual problem rather than that of the community. Here proper provision for the disposal of waste often necessitates more knowledge of the subject than is possessed by the homemaker, or sometimes it requires the installation of apparatus whose cost seems prohibitive. A careful consideration of these matters will possibly disclose the fact that a smaller expenditure may accomplish the desired purpose. Or, if this is not true, it may be found that the end accomplished is worth the expenditure of what seemed a prohibitive sum. A water closet, for instance, has not only a sanitary but a moral value. We must somehow educate people to understand and to believe that the basis of family health and usefulness is proper living conditions, and that some system of sewage and garbage disposal is a necessary step toward proper living conditions. With the urban population these matters are removed from personal and immediate consideration, but every rural homemaker must face his own problems, with the knowledge that since his conditions are individual his solution must be equally his own. In the matters pertaining to decoration within the house as well as beautifying its surroundings, the country-and the city-dweller meet on equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials and workmanship suited to their purses. They must learn that expense is not necessarily a synonym for beauty; they must know the characteristics of fabrics and other decorative materials; and they must be trained to recognize the qualities for which expenditure of money and effort are worth while. In the designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings. All unwittingly the child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the midst of attractive surroundings. Many of our rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds. Some, of them go farther and interest their pupils in attacking the problem of improving outside conditions at home. Every child whose mind is thus turned in the direction of attractive home grounds has unconsciously taken a step toward one branch of efficient homemaking. If it were possible to give pupils the foundation principles of landscape gardening, they might learn to see with a trained eye the problems they will otherwise attack blindly. [Illustration: An example of the newer architecture. An artistic approach to a school has a daily effect on the mind of the child] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Rural school with flower bed. Many of the rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds] With the house built and ready for its furniture, the selection of the latter becomes both part of the scheme of decoration and part also of the domestic plans for securing comfort and inspiring surroundings. The same principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and suitability, are called into requisition. The trained housewife will have an eye toward future dusting and will choose the less ornate articles. The same person, in her capacity as the mother of citizens, will see that chairs are comfortable to sit in, that tables and desks are the right height for work, that book cases and cabinets are sufficient in number and size to take care of the family treasures. She will use pictures sparingly and choose them to inspire. Perhaps, most of all, the woman with the trained mind will know how to avoid a superfluity of furniture in her rooms. She will be educated to the beauty of well-planned spaces and will not feel obliged to fill every nook and corner with chairs or tables or sofas or other pieces of furniture which merely "fill the space." [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. An artistic living room. The principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and suitability, must all be considered in the furnishing of a home] Before furnishing is considered complete, the housekeeper must take into account the matter of operating apparatus. Perhaps a large part of this important department of house equipment has been built into the house. The water system, the sewer connection or its substitute, and the lighting apparatus are already installed, so that the turn of a switch or a faucet, the pull of a chain, sets one or all to work for us. We are now to consider whether we shall buy a vacuum cleaner or a broom and dustpan; a washing machine and electric flatiron or the services of a washerwoman, or shall telephone the laundry to call for the wash. Shall we invest in a "home steam-canning outfit" at ten dollars, or make up a list for the retailer of the products of the canning factory? Shall we have a sewing machine, or plan to buy our clothing from "the store"? Once upon a time practically the only labor-saving device possible to the housekeeping woman was another woman. To-day many devices are offered to take her place. Our homemaker must know about them, and must compare their value with the older piece of operating machinery, the domestic servant. She must know what it costs to keep a servant, in money, in responsibility, and in all the various ways which cannot be reduced to figures. Already the pros and cons of the "servant question" have caused much and long-continued agitation. The woman of the future should be taught to approach the matter with a scientific summing up of the facts and with a readiness to lift domestic service to a standardized vocation or to abandon it altogether in favor of the "labor-saving devices" and the "public utilities." Certain of our home-efficiency experts assure us that all "industries in the home are doomed." If this is true, the domestic servant must of necessity cease to exist. Most persons, however, cannot yet see how "public utilities" will be able to do all of our work. We may send the washing out, but we cannot send out the beds to be made, the eggs to be boiled, or the pictures, chairs, and window sills to be dusted. The table must be set at home, and the dishes washed there, until we approach the day of communal eating places, which, as we all know, will be difficult to utilize for infants and the aged, for invalids, and for the vast army of those who are averse to faring forth three times daily in search of food. For a long time yet the domestic servant, _or her substitute_, will be with us, doing the work that even so great a power as "public utilities" cannot remove from the home. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Contrast the bad taste displayed in the furnishing of this hopelessly inartistic room with the simplicity shown in that on page 43] At present there is much to indicate that the servant's substitute, in the form of various labor-saving devices, will eventually fill the place of the already vanishing domestic worker. Whether this proves to be the case will rest largely with these girls whom we are educating to-day. The pendulum is swinging rather wildly now, but by their day of deciding things it may have settled down to a steady motion so that their push will send it definitely in one direction or the other. There is no inherent reason why making cake should be a less honorable occupation than making underwear or shoes; why a well-kept kitchen should be a less desirable workroom than a crowded, noisy factory. But under existing conditions the comparison from the point of view of the worker is largely in favor of the factory. Among the facts to be faced by the homemaker who wishes to intercept the flight of the housemaid and the cook are these: 1. Hours for the domestic worker must be definite, as they are in shop or factory work. 2. The working day must be shortened. 3. Time outside of working hours must be absolutely the worker's own. 4. The worker must either live outside the home in which she works, or must have privacy, convenience, comfort, and the opportunity to receive her friends, as she would at home. In short, the houseworker must have definite work, definite hours, and outside these must be free to live her own life, in her own way, and among her own friends, as the factory girl lives hers when her day's work is done. That women are already awaking to these responsibilities is shown by the increasing number who choose the labor-saving devices in place of the flesh-and-blood machine. Many of these women will tell you that they make this choice to avoid the personal responsibility involved in having a resident worker in the house. There _is_ comfort in not having to consider "whether or not the vacuum cleaner likes to live in the country," or the bread mixer "has a backache," or the electric flatiron desires "an afternoon off to visit its aunt." It is the same satisfaction we feel in urging the automobile to greater speed regardless of the melting heat, the pouring rain, or the number of miles it has already traveled to-day. Perhaps the future will see machines for household work so improved and multiplied that we can escape altogether this perplexing personal problem of "the woman who works for us." Whether or not we escape this problem when we patronize the laundry, the bakeshop, the underwear factory, is a matter for further thought. To many it seems a simpler matter to face the problem of one cook, one laundress, than to investigate conditions in factory, bakery, and laundry, to agitate, to "use our influence," to urge legislation, to follow up inspectors and their reports, to boycott the bakery, to be driven into the establishment of a coöperative laundry whether we will or no, in order to fulfill our obligations to the "women who work for us" in these various places. True, our duty to womankind requires that we do all these things to a certain extent so long as the public utilities exist, but with the multiplication of utilities to a number sufficient to do a large portion of our work, it would seem that women would be left little time for anything else than their supervision and regulation. Problems relating to the establishing of a home would once have been considered far from the province of the teacher in the public school. Formerly we taught our children a little of everything except how to live. Now we are realizing that the teacher should be a constructive social force. Living is a more complicated thing than it once was, and the school must do its share in fitting the children for their task. All these matters we have been considering--the selection of a home site, building, decorating, furnishing, sanitation, and all the rest--represent constructive social work the teacher may do, which, if she passes it by, may not be done at all. College courses should prepare the teacher for such work, but even the girl who is not college-trained will find, if she seeks it, help sufficient for her training. And the work awaits her on every hand. CHAPTER IV RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY With a home established, the problems confronting the homemaker become those of administration. The "place for making citizens" is built and ready. The making of citizens must begin. One of the fundamental requisites for the efficient operation of the home plant is that the homemaker shall have a firm grasp upon the financial part of the business. To estimate the number of homes wrecked every year by lack of this economic knowledge is of course impossible; but you can call up without effort many cases in which this lack was at least a contributing element to the wreck. Keeping expenditures within the income is only the _ABC_ of the financial knowledge required, although, like other _ABC_'s, it is essential to the acquirement of deeper knowledge. It is not enough that the housekeeper merely succeeds in keeping out of debt. She must know what to expect in return for the money that she spends, and she must know whether or not she gets it. She must have definitely in mind the results she expects, and she must know why she spends for certain objects rather than for others. In the days of famine and fear, the individual was fortunate who had food, shelter, and a skin to wrap about his shivering shoulders. In these days it is not enough to have merely these things. Certain standards of civilized life must be met, and we shall find that it requires judgment and skill to apportion our funds properly. The common needs of civilized mankind are usually roughly classified as follows: food; shelter; clothing; operating expenses, including service, heat, light, water, repairs, refurnishing, and the general upkeep of the plant; advancement, including education, recreation, travel, charity, church, doctor, dentist, savings. The exact proportion of any income devoted to each of these is of course a matter conditioned by the needs of the particular family as well as by its tastes and desires. Figures are obtainable which throw light upon proportions found advisable in what are considered typical cases. We may learn the minimum amount of money which will feed a man in New York or in various other cities and towns. We may find estimates as to the prices of a "decent living" in various parts of the country. Home-economics experts will furnish us with figures which may be used as a basis for apportioning this amount among departments of household expenses. That the figures offered by these experts differ more or less widely need not disturb us. It is perhaps too early in such work for final authoritative estimates. The following apportionment is taken from Chapin's _The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City_ and has to do with the minimum income required for normal living for a family of father, mother, and three children on Manhattan Island: Food $359.00 Housing 168.00 Fuel and light 41.00 Clothing 113.00 Carfare 16.00 Health 22.00 Insurance 18.00 Sundry items 74.00 ------- $811.00 "Families having from $900 to $1,000 a year," concludes Dr. Chapin, "are able, in general, to get food enough to keep body and soul together, and clothing and shelter enough to meet the most urgent demands of decency." Regarding incomes below $900, he says, "Whether an income between $800 and $900 can be made to suffice is a question to which our data do not warrant a dogmatic answer." The two apportionments given below have been made by the federal government and concern the maintenance of a normal standard in two industrial sections of the country. In each case the family is assumed to be, as in Dr. Chapin's estimate,[1] made up of father, mother, and three children. Fall River, Georgia and Mass. North Carolina Food $312.00 $286.67 Housing 132.00 44.81 Clothing 136.80 113.00 Fuel and light 42.75 49.16 Health 11.65 16.40 Insurance 18.40 18.20 Sundry items 78.00 72.60 ------- ------- $731.90 $600.74 These estimates do no more than suggest the minimum upon which the various items of living expense can be met and the proportion to each account. People who can do more upon their incomes than merely live must look farther for help. Mrs. Bruère in her _Increasing Home Efficiency_ offers the following as a minimum schedule[3] for efficient living: Food $ 344.93 Shelter 144.00 Clothing 100.00 Operation 150.00 Advancement 312.00 Incidentals 46.85 ------- $1,097.78 "When the income is over $1,200," Mrs. Bruère adds, "the family has passed the line of mere decency in living and entered the realm of choice. Their budget need not show how the entire income _must_ be spent, but how it may be spent to gain whatever special end the family has in view." That any estimated schedule for any income will fit exactly the needs of any family of father, mother, and three children in any given town in the United States no one supposes, but it is at least a basis upon which to work. And perhaps the main point from an educational standpoint is that it is a schedule at all. The happy-go-lucky, spend-as-you-go style of housekeeping does not constitute efficiency. The homemaking expert we are training will have a better plan. She will have been long familiar with the idea of apportioning incomes. She will have applied the tests of efficient decision to her personal income before she has to attack the problem of spending for a family. The ideal homemaker of the future will be a woman who has had a personal income, and preferably one that she has earned herself and learned how to spend before she enters upon matrimony and motherhood. By the less scientific plan of merely recording what one has spent, when the spending is over, it is more than likely that some departments of home expenditure will gain at the expense of others. If we can afford only $150 for rent, and we pay $200, it is evident that we must go without some portion of the food or clothing or advancement that we need. If we dress extravagantly, we must pay for our extravagance by sacrificing efficient living in some other direction. The budget is not entirely or even in large measure for the sake of saving, but rather for the sake of spending wisely. When women become as businesslike in the administration of home finances as they must be to succeed in business life, or as men usually are in their business relations, home administration will be placed upon a secure financial footing and will gain immeasurably in dignity thereby. Feeding and clothing a family are perhaps the fundamentals of the homemaker's daily tasks. And upon neither of them will the application of scientific principles be wasted. It is not enough that we merely set food before our families in sufficient quantity to appease the clamoring appetite. Children and adults may suffer from malnutrition even though their consumption of food is normal in quantity three times a day. No housewife is properly fitted for her task unless she has some knowledge of dietetics. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Teaching housewives food values. No housewife in these days need lack the knowledge of dietetics which will fit her for her task] Many a notable housewife who has perhaps never even heard of dietetics has nevertheless a practical working knowledge of some or many of its principles. There are traditions among housewives that we should serve certain foods at the same meal or should cook certain foods together. Often these time-honored combinations rest upon the soundest of dietetic principles. On the other hand, many cooks feed their families by a hit-or-miss method which as often as not violates all the laws of scientific feeding, and which farmers long ago discarded in the feeding of their cows. [Illustration: Blackburn College students preparing dinner. Fortunately girls may study dietetics in the school that teaches them the law of gravity and the rules for forming French plurals] Fortunately the girl who so desires may now learn something of these feeding laws in the same school that teaches her the law of gravitation or the rules for forming French plurals. Fortunately, also, the girls of to-day seem inclined to undertake such study. It is not too much to expect that the girl of the future will be able to set before her family meals scientifically planned or food wisely and economically purchased, well cooked, and attractively served. Nor is it too much to expect that teachers will be able to do these things and to instruct others how to do them. That this ideal requires considerable and varied knowledge is clear at the outset. The serving of a single meal involves: (1) knowledge of food values, (2) skill in making a "balanced ration," (3) knowledge of market conditions, (4) skill in buying, with special reference to personal tastes and financial conditions, (5) knowledge of the chemistry of cooking, (6) skill in applying chemical knowledge, (7) skill in adapting knowledge of cooking to existing conditions, (8) knowledge of serving a meal and practice in service. The fact that a large proportion of deaths is directly due to digestive troubles is certainly food for thought. Such a statement alone would warrant action of some sort looking toward increased knowledge of food values and food preparation. It is not necessarily because people live upon homemade food that their digestions are impaired, as we so often hear stated nowadays, but because we have taken it for granted that, given a stove, a saucepan, and a spoon, any woman could instinctively combine flour, water, and yeast into food. There is little dependence upon instinct in producing the bread of commerce. Bakers' bread is scientifically made, no doubt; but there is no reason why the homemade article may not also be a product of science. And there will always be this difference between the baker and the housewife: the baker's profit must be expressed in dollars and cents, while that of the housewife will be represented in increased force and efficiency in the family that she feeds. With such differing ends in view, the processes and results of each must continue to differ as widely as we know they do at present. It is now some years since Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote of woman's work: Six hours a day the woman spends on food, Six mortal hours! * * * * * Till the slow finger of heredity Writes on the forehead of each living man, Strive as he may: "His mother was a cook!" [Illustration: A Blackburn College student mixing bread. There is no reason why homemade bread may not be the product of science] Many women now doubtless spend less time on cooking than when Mrs. Gilman wrote; perhaps her scorn has borne fruit. But the implication that being a cook is unworthy loses all its force unless it can be shown that "his mother was _nothing but_ a cook." Even so, there are worse things one might be. It is true that women should not spend six hours out of the working day on merely one department of their household work. Yet the ill-fed family is out of the race for a place among the efficient. Let us then teach the coming woman to use less time, more science, and all the labor-savers there are available, and still accomplish the same, or perhaps better, results. That the question of clothing is equally fundamental, perhaps few of us will acknowledge. Yet we must not underrate its importance. Food furnishes the fuel with which to support the fires of life. Clothes, however, contribute not only to comfort and health, but to mental well-being and self-respect. So long as we mingle with our fellow men in civilized communities, raiment will continue to require "taking thought." That much of the feminine part of the population devotes an undue amount of thought to certain aspects of the clothing question we cannot deny. It is equally certain that many women, if not most women, devote too little thought to other phases of the problem. Present conditions seem to indicate that the average woman, of any class of society, places the "prevailing mode" first in her personal clothing problems. How to be "in style" absorbs much attention and time. Surely it is overshadowing other very important considerations relating to dress. When American women have awakened to the real importance of these considerations, we shall observe a better proportion in studying the clothes question. As a scientific foundation upon which to build her practical knowledge of how to clothe herself and her family, the girl of the future must be trained to an understanding of (1) the hygiene of clothes, (2) art expressed in clothes, (3) the psychology of clothes, (4) ethics as affected by clothes, (5) personality as expressed by clothes. There is no stage of life in which hygiene, art, psychology, and ethics do not apply to clothes. The practical knowledge built upon these as a foundation will guide the girl in choosing clothes which are suitable to the occasion for which they are designed, are not extravagant in either price or style, give good value for the money expended, express the individuality of the wearer, and exert an influence uplifting rather than the reverse upon the community at large. [Illustration: Class in dressmaking at Blackburn College. With women scientifically trained in the matter of clothing, we shall do away with much of the absurdity of dress] With such a girl, the fact that "they" are wearing this or that will be always a minor consideration. With women trained in matters of clothing, we shall no longer be confronted by the absurdity of identical styles for thick and thin, short and tall, middle-aged and young, rich and poor. We shall no longer see dress dominating, as it does to-day, the entire lives of thousands of women. From the woman of wealth who spends a fortune every season upon her wardrobe, all the way down the money scale to the young girl who strains every nerve and spends every cent she can earn to buy and wear "the latest style," slavery to fashion is an evil gigantic in its proportions and far-reaching in its results. We have no right to interfere with the woman's instinct to make herself beautiful. Rather we should encourage it, and should carefully instruct her in her impressionable years as to what real beauty is. It is almost safe to say that at present the principle by which the modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris." The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of "Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy the copies. The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the copy. Every copy is made of less worthy material than its model, of gaudier colors, with cheaper trimmings, until we have the pitiful spectacle of girls who earn barely enough to keep body and soul together spending their money for garments neither suitable nor durable--sleazy, shabby after a single wearing, short-lived--yet for a few ephemeral minutes "up to date." How far this heartbreaking habit of imitation extends in the poor girl's life we can hardly say. She marries, and buys furniture, crockery, and lace curtains cheap and unsuitable, like her clothes, always imitations and soon gone, to be superseded by more of the same sort. What thoughtful woman desires to feel herself part of an influence which leads to so much that is insincere, uneconomical, wasteful both of raw material and of the infinitely more important material which makes women's souls? What teacher of young girls has a right to hold back from setting her hand against the formation of habits so undesirable? And what of the vast output of the factories which turn out cheap cloth, cheaper trimmings, imitations of silk, imitations of velvet, ribbons which will scarcely survive one tying, shoes with pasteboard soles, and all the other intrinsically worthless products which now find ready sale? When women have been educated to a standard of taste, of suitability, of quality, which will forbid the use of cheap imitations of elegant and costly articles, will not the world gain in bringing such factories to the making of products of real worth instead of their present output? The mother of the future will bring to bear upon the clothing question not only more knowledge, but more serious thought, than she does to-day. For the children she must provide comfortable, serviceable play clothes in generous quantity, that they may pursue their development unhampered in either body or mind. She must know the hygiene of childhood and the psychology of children's clothes. For the growing girls there must be a proper recognition of the growing interest in adornment, avoiding the Scylla of vanity on one hand and the Charybdis of unhappy consciousness of being "different from the other girls" on the other. For the sons there must be careful provision for the athletic life so dear to the boy, together with due recognition of the approaching dignities of manhood, with special care for the small details which mark the well-groomed man. As in the matter of the food supply, there must be knowledge of markets and skill in buying. And, as in that case, there should be knowledge of the process of transforming materials into the finished product. Processes involving a great degree of technical skill, such as the tailor's art, the average woman will not attempt; but the simpler forms of garment making present no special difficulty to those who wish to try them or who find it expedient to do so. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Buying clothing ready made. The question of buying clothing ready made or of making it will find individual solution according to means, inclination, and ability] A wholesale assumption that it is only a question of a short time before all garment making will be done in the factory is probably without warrant. We read again and again of late, "The day of buying instead of making _is here_! We may like it or not like it, but the fact remains, _it is here_!" And then we look all about us, and find that the day is apparently not here for at least several thousands of people of whom we have personal knowledge. That discovery gives us courage to look farther. We find paper-pattern companies flourishing; dress goods selling in the retail departments as they have always sold; seamstresses fully occupied; and we conclude that for some time yet the question of buying or making will find individual solution, according to means, inclination, and ability. What we wish to guard against in the upbringing of our future mothers is the necessity of buying because of a lack of the ability to make. The woman trained to a knowledge of the making of garments is the only woman who can intelligently decide the question for her own household. The others are forced to a decision by their own limitations. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. In a community preserving kitchen questions of food supply may sometimes be solved and community interests unified] Passing from the elemental needs, shelter, warmth, food, and clothing, we enter upon the most complex of woman's duties--adjustment of her home to community conditions and provision for her family's share in community life. That these more abstract problems frequently overlap the concrete ones already enumerated need not be said. It is impossible, even if we so desire, to live "to ourselves alone." We shall undoubtedly stand for something in the community, whether consciously or otherwise. If it were given us to know the extent of our influence, we should probably be appalled at the crossing and recrossing of the lines emanating from our daily lives. In some households there are definite aims in the direction of community life. These differ widely. In many the question seems to be entirely, "What can I get from the community?" in some, "What can I give?" in a few, "What can I share?" Of the three, the last is without doubt the one which contributes most to community well-being. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A community Christmas tree. Even the younger children may be given the opportunity to take part in community work] The ordinary family of necessity touches community life at one time or another at certain well-defined points. The efficient homemaker must therefore make intelligent provision for these points of contact with the community. Church and charity organizations have always been recognized in American life as community matters and have provided community meeting places and community work. Through them, especially in earlier days, women often found their only common activities. The school furnished the same common ground for the children. In the present time of multiplied activity these organizations still stand in the foreground. In them, both young and old find perhaps their best opportunity for "team work." A parish in which all pull together is perhaps as rare as a school in which every child truly desires to learn. Yet neither is beyond the possibilities. To keep each family in a proper attitude toward these community institutions is part of the homemaker's work--and a delicate task it often is. It is not enough for a mother to adopt a cast-iron policy of indiscriminate approval of pastor or teacher, although that is often recommended. Do you remember your resentment as a child of the inflexible judgment "The teacher _must_ be right"? Really there is no "must" about it, and the child knows that as well as we. The mother, therefore, who is able to review the matter in dispute calmly, justly, and withal sympathetically, and who indorses the teacher's action after such review, is a better conserver of the public peace than the prejudging mother. Or suppose she fails to indorse the teacher's course. We have always been led to expect that this failure ruins forever the teacher's influence with the child. There are some of us, however, who doubt the immediate destruction of a wise influence, even if we should say, "No, I do not think I should have punished you in just that way. But perhaps you have not told me all that occurred. Or perhaps you overlook the fact that you had annoyed Miss ---- until, being human like the rest of us, she lost her temper. Is it fair for you to treat your teacher in such a way that you cause her to lose her self-control?" It is usually possible for the wise mother to turn her fire upon the child's own error without outraging the childish sense of justice by indorsing something which does not really deserve indorsement. There is, perhaps, no way in which the mother of a family can do so much for the community institutions as by keeping up her own interest in them and thus stimulating the other members of the family to a willingness to do their part in the work of uplift. Where everybody is really interested and working, the first great stumbling block in the way of public enterprises has already been surmounted. In the case of the school, however, the well-trained mother will find additional work to do. We who have been teachers know how vainly we have sought for intimate acquaintance on the part of parents with the school. And we who have been mothers know something of the difficulties in the way of gaining such intimate acquaintance. In spite of, or perhaps because of, my long years of schoolroom experience, I am quite unable to conquer my reluctance to knock at a classroom door. There is an aloofness about being a school visitor which most mothers feel and few enjoy. However, it is possible to gain so much of sympathetic understanding by persistent visiting that I have found it worth while to disregard my reluctance. So often we hear mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the visitor arrives at an inopportune moment, finding the children in the midst of work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat of an unusually hot day. What the visitor needs to do is not to visit once a year, but to get acquainted with the school as she does with her next-door neighbor or her mother-in-law. Having done this, she may attend the meetings of the parent-teacher association with a consciousness of knowing something of the problems to be met and solved. Until she has formed such acquaintance she deals with unknown quantities and is therefore in danger of erroneous conclusions. [Illustration: Mothers visiting a school garden. Mothers need to visit the schools often in order to know something of the problems to be met and solved by the teachers] It is interesting to see how completely both teacher and pupils take to their hearts the mother who really does get acquainted them. How easy it is to appeal to her for advice and help; and what a sense of familiar ownership she comes to have in the school. It is no longer merely "what my child is learning" or whether "my children are getting what they ought to get in school," but rather "what _we_ are doing in our school." The activities of women in the church usually follow along well-worn paths. The women help as they have always helped by their attendance at service, by their ladies' aid society or guild, by their missionary society, and by their aid to the poor of the town. Many struggling churches depend almost solely upon their women's work for support. That the woman whose problems we are studying should enter upon her church duties armed with wisdom is quite as necessary as that she should be earnest and enthusiastic. The church is not primarily a neighborhood social center. It is first of all a means for spiritual uplift. It must not, in a multiplicity of humanitarian activities, lose its character of spiritual guide. Its women will therefore be animated by a spiritual conception of the church and will base their activities in church work upon such a conception. The church built upon such a foundation will be foremost among local forces devoted to community service and will be a true force in the individual lives of its people. The women of the church need to use the church as an effective instrument for community betterment--not merely material welfare, but actual increase in spiritual worth. Perfunctory church attendance has little part in such a program. It calls rather for intelligent understanding of church problems and an application of spiritual ideals to everyday life. Outside the organizations common to all communities the homekeeper finds that she must keep in touch with her particular neighborhood through its social life. It is here that her children are growing up, here that they find their friends, here that they give and take knowledge of themselves, of people, of ways to enjoy life and to meet its problems. Here perhaps they will find their life mates and will start out to be homemakers themselves. The mother of a family must know her community thoroughly. She must do her share toward making it a safe place and a pleasant place in which her children and other children may grow up, and in which she and her husband, other women and their husbands, may spend their lives. The mother who knows her children's friends, who makes them welcome at her house, who "gets acquainted" with their qualities good and bad, who is a "big sister" to them all, will not find herself shut out from her children's social life. If all the mothers were "big sisters" and all the fathers were "big brothers," neighborhood society would be a safer thing than it sometimes is. Nor should all the social life center about the young people. The woman's club, the village improvement society, the men's civic league, all have their places. Club life will menace neither the man nor the woman whose first interest is the home; and every man and woman needs the stimulus of contact with other minds. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A road in DeKalb, Illinois, before improvements were made. Through the agency of improvement societies, homemakers may often bring about community reforms] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. The same road after repairs were made through the efforts of members of the community] Sometimes it will happen that the homemaker finds work to be done in the line of community reform. Perhaps the roads are out of repair, or the cemetery is neglected, or the school building insanitary. Perhaps the water supply is not properly guarded, or milk inspection not thoroughly looked after. Perhaps industrial conditions in the town are not what they should be. Perhaps laws are not being enforced. New conditions require new laws. There may be loafing places on streets and in stores which are dangerous. The billiard halls may need a thorough moral cleaning and a moral man placed in charge. The public dance halls may need proper chaperonage. The moving pictures need state and national censorship to eliminate the careless suggestions leading toward both vice and crime. The homemaker must know under such circumstances how to stir public opinion, how to make use of her existing organizations, how to set on foot the various movements necessary for reform. In connection with the subject of the homemaker's place in the community we must return to the thought of woman as the buyer for the home and of her consequent influence upon the economic standards of the community. It is not unusual in these days to read or hear such statements as the following: "The woman was no longer producer and consumer.... She became the consumer and her entire economic function changed.... The housewife is the buying agent for the home." Like many statements in regard to woman and her function, this seems overdrawn, since woman in her capacity as homemaker is still a producer as well as a consumer in thousands of cases. That she will become, economically, _merely_ a buying agent, some of us not only doubt, but should consider a certain misfortune, should it occur. The fact remains, however, that as buyer of both raw materials and finished products the woman spends a very large percentage (some say nine-tenths) of the money taken in by the retail merchants of the country. This gives, or should give her, a commanding position in the producing world. If the women of America should definitely decide to-day that they would buy no more corn flakes, or mercerized crochet cotton, or silk elastic, the factories now so busy turning out these products would be shut down to-morrow until they could be converted to other uses. Women often fail to realize their power in this direction. When they do realize it, they are able to accomplish quietly all sorts of reforms in the mercantile and industrial worlds. There need be no crusade against adulterated foods other than real education and the refusal of homemakers to buy from merchants who carry them in stock. The same remedy will apply to overworked and underpaid workers, to insanitary shops and factories. That it is the woman's duty to control these matters is a necessary conclusion when we consider her power as the "spender of the family income." Who else has this power as she has it? We have already noted how this power might be used to regulate not only the quality but the character of products in the factories. If women merely passed by the outlandish hats, the high heels, the hobble skirts, of fashion, their stay would necessarily be short. The woman, therefore, _if she choose_, is absolutely the controller of production along most lines of food and raiment. That she shall use this controlling power wisely is one of her obligations. And to meet the obligation she must be wisely trained. It would seem that the homemaker, as we have conceived her, has a part in most of the concerns of the community. We speak of "woman and citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women have already applied their housecleaning knowledge and skill to the smaller near-by problems of civic life. As time goes on they must render the same service to state and nation. We shall soon see nation-wide "votes for women," in our own country, at least. But whether we do or not, or until we do, woman and citizenship are, as they have always been, closely linked together. In every community relation the homemaker is the good, or indifferent, or bad citizen; and in every home relation she is the citizen still, and, more than that, the mother of future citizens. In spite of the "uneasy women" who feel that the home offers insufficient scope for their intellectual powers, the executive ability required to run a home smoothly and well is of no mean order. "This being a mother is a complicated business," as one mother of my acquaintance expresses it. Can we afford to have homemaking underrated as a vocation, to be avoided or entered into lightly, often with neither natural aptitude nor training to serve as guide to the "complications"? It would seem not. We must then consider "guidance toward homemaking" as a necessary part of a girl's education and as a possible solution of the home problems on every hand. We have thus far in this book concerned ourselves with making plain our ideal of girlhood and womanhood and with considering the problems which our girl and woman, when we have done our best to prepare her, will have to meet. We have thus far not concerned ourselves with the questions of how, when, and where the work of preparation is to be done. A clear vision of the end to be attained, not obscured by thought of the means used in reaching it, seems a necessity. From this we may pass on to careful, detailed consideration of agencies and methods. Knowing what we desire our girls to be, we may enlist all the forces which react upon girls to make them into what we desire. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: No studies of present-day conditions are available. The proportion spent for food, clothing, etc., will remain nearly the same. It is safe to multiply the above estimates by two to obtain the actual cost of living in the year 1919.] PART II GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL "A vocational guide is one who helps other people to find themselves. Vocational guidance is the science of this self-discovery." CHAPTER V THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED The three agencies most vitally concerned in this problem of "woman making" are necessarily the home, the church, and the school--the home and the church, because of their vital interest in the personal result; the school, because, whatever public opinion has demanded, schools have never been able to turn out merely educated human beings, but always boys and girls, prospective men and women. And so they must continue to do. Nature reasserts itself with every coming generation. This being so, we must continue to "make women." If we desire to make homemaking women, the most economical way to accomplish this is to use the already existing machinery for making women of some sort. We cannot begin too soon, nor continue our efforts too faithfully. The school cannot leave the whole matter to the home, nor can the home safely assume that the "domestic science" course or courses will do all that is needed for the girl. Being a woman is a complex, many-sided business for which training must be broad and long-continued. The teacher has perhaps scarcely realized her responsibilities or her opportunities in this matter. For years, and in fact until very recently, the whole tendency in education for girls has been toward a training which ignores sex and ultimate destiny. The teachers themselves were so trained and are therefore the less prepared to see the necessity for any special teaching along these lines. They may even resent any demand for specialized instruction for girls. Yet we are confronted by the fact that the majority of girls do marry, and that many of this majority are woefully lacking in the knowledge and training they should have. Nor are these girls exclusively from the poor and ignorant classes. There is no question about the responsibility of the school in the matter. The state which "trains for citizenship" cannot logically ignore the necessity for training the mothers of future citizens. "While I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every opportunity which she can fill," says G. Stanley Hall in _Adolescence_, "and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, I insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to independence and self-support; and matrimony and motherhood, if it come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best provided for." This criticism, of existing educational conditions is quite as applicable to schools for younger girls as to those which Dr. Hall has in mind. There is no reason why both school and college may not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great work of their lives. Through all the lower grades of school life, and to a certain extent through the whole course, the methods of instruction used will be largely indirect. The child will-seldom be told, "This is to teach you how to keep house." I can think of no field in which this indirect method will produce greater results than the one we are considering. [Illustration: Montavilla School garden, Portland, Oregon, where boys and girls raise vegetables for serving in the lunchroom. Here the science of growing things is taught as part of the "training for citizenship"] [Illustration: Lunchroom where vegetables grown in the Montavilla School garden are prepared and eaten] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A model school home. One way of teaching children how to "keep house" is by means of the model home where they are given instruction in all the duties of the homemaker] The teacher, in most cases, must begin her homemaking training by realizing that her own example is by the very nature of things opposed to the homemaking principle, the unmarried teacher being the rule in most of our schools. Her first care, then, must be to counteract her own example. Her references to home life must be always of the most appreciative and even reverent sort. If, as is quite possible, she comes from unsatisfactory conditions in her own home, she must be doubly careful lest her prejudices be passed on to her pupils. She will find ways in which to let it be understood that her ideals of home life are not wanting, although she has not as yet--perhaps for some reason never will--become a homemaker. I have sometimes thought that teachers, in their effort to impress children in more direct ways, lose sight of the great effect of their unconscious influence. After all, it is what the teacher does, rather than what she says, that impresses; and what she _is_, regulates what she does. The teacher must, therefore, have the right attitude toward homemaking and domestic life. It may be of the greatest value in determining the force of her influence in this direction for the children to catch intimate little glimpses of her domestic accomplishments, of her sewing, or of her cooking, or of her quick knowledge and deft handling of emergency cases. The teacher whose influence is felt most and lasts longest is the one whose "motherliness" supplements her academic acquirements and supplies a sympathetic understanding of the child. [Illustration: Canning tomatoes at the Montavilla School. In such a class the mothers of future citizens are given training in one of the fundamental needs of the home--scientific cooking] [Illustration: Lunchroom where children benefit by the scientific cooking of the vegetables they grow] With innate motherliness as a basis, the teacher must build up a careful understanding not only of child nature, but of man and woman nature as the developed product of child growth. She must be a student of the "woman question" as a vital problem, always recognizing that the whole social structure inevitably depends upon the status of woman in the world. She must face without flinching her responsibilities in sex matters. She may, or may not, be called upon to furnish sex instruction to the girls under her care, but no rules can free her from her moral responsibility in striving to keep the sex atmosphere clean and invigorating. The "conspiracy of silence" on these subjects is broken, and we must accept the fact that modesty does not require an assumed or a real ignorance of the most wonderful of nature's laws. "The idea that celibacy is the 'aristocracy of the future' is soundly based if the Business of Being a Woman rests on a mystery so questionable that it cannot be frankly and truthfully explained by a girl's mother the moment her interest and curiosity seek satisfaction."[4] And what the mother should tell, the teacher must know. Practical use of the teacher's carefully worked-out theories will be made all along the line of the girl's, and to a certain degree the boy's, education. The indirect teaching of the primary grades will give place in the higher grades to more direct dealing with the science, or, better, sciences, upon which homemaking rests. The classroom becomes a "school of theory." The home stands in the equally vital position of a laboratory in which the girl sees the theory worked out and in time performs her own experiments. The finest teaching presupposes perfect coöperation between school and home. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Mothers' and daughters' meeting on sewing day. Coöperation between the home and the school makes for the best teaching of domestic science] The first duty of the mother, like that of the teacher, is to preserve always a right attitude toward home life. The girl who grows up in an ideal home will be likely to look forward to making such a home some day. Or, if the home is not in all respects ideal, the father or mother who nevertheless recognizes ideal homes as possible may show the girl directly or otherwise how to avoid the mischance of a less than perfect home. The prevalence of divorce places before young men and women sad examples of mismating, of incompetent homemakers, of wrecked homes. We can scarcely estimate the blow struck at ideals of marriage in the minds of girls and boys by these flaunted failures. Nor can we even guess how many boys and girls are led to a cynical attitude toward all marriage by their daily suffering in families where parents have missed the real meaning of "home." However practical we may become, therefore--and we must be practical in this matter--we must never overlook the need for parents to give home life an atmosphere of charm. No one else can take their place in doing this. Hence it is their first duty to make homemaking seem worth while. The home must take the lead also in giving the idea of homemaking as a definite and scientific profession. The school may teach the science, but unless the home shows practical application of the scientific principles, it would be much like teaching agriculture without showing results upon real soil. Skillful teachers recognize the home as a valuable adjunct to their school equipment and are able by wise coöperation to use it to its full value. The home, in its character of laboratory for the school of domestic theory, must possess certain qualifications. Like all laboratories, it should be well equipped. This does not mean necessarily with expensive outfit, but with at least the best that means will allow. It implies that the home shall be recognized as a teaching institution quite as much as the school. Like other laboratories, it must be a place of experiment, not merely a preserver of tradition. The efficient laboratory presupposes an informed and open-minded presiding genius. [Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman First crop of radishes and lettuce at the Alameda Park School, Portland, Oregon, June, 1916. Even in the primary grades children may learn much about the science of growing things] [Illustration: Bringing exhibits to a school fair in Tacoma, Washington. Skillful teachers who recognize the home as a valuable adjunct to the school equipment encourage the children to make gardens at home] The greatest service that the home can render in the cause of training girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own individual girl--her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations. Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future. Combined with the observations recorded by her teacher during year after year of the girl's school life, this study offers the strongest arguments for or against this or that career. Frequent and sympathetic conferences between parent and teacher become a necessity. There is then less likelihood of opposing counsel when the girl seeks guidance toward her life work. It is quite probable that, while the school undertakes to lay a general foundation for homemaking efficiency, the home, when it reaches the full measure of its power and responsibility, will be best fitted to help the girl to specialize in the direction most suited to her individual power. It can, if it will, _give_ the girl individual opportunities such as the mere fact of numbers forbids the school to give. The special work of the church in training the girl is necessarily that which has to do with her spiritual concept of life, the strengthening of her moral fiber. Here school, home, and church must each contribute its share. None of them can undertake alone so important and delicate a task. Any attempt to make arbitrary divisions in the work of these three agencies is bound to be at least a partial failure. Conditions differ so widely that we can only say of much of the work, "at school or church or in the home," or, better, "at school and church and home in coöperation." Each must supplement the efforts of the other, and where one fails, the other must take up the task. It really matters little where the work is done, provided that it _is_ done. The ensuing chapters of this book are written in the hope that they may bring the vital problems of girl training and girl guidance home to both teacher and parent; and especially that they may convince both of the value of coöperation in the inspiring work of helping our daughters to make the most of their lives. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: Ida M. Tarbell, _The Business of Being a Woman_.] CHAPTER VI TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD "Children are the home's highest product." That means at the outset that we have children because we believe in them, and that we train them, as the skilled workman shapes his wood and clay, to achieve the greatest result of which the human material is capable. A factory's output can be standardized. An engine's power can be measured. But he who trains a child can never fully know the mind he works with nor the result he attains. We do know, however, that if it is subject to certain influences, trained by certain laws, _the chances are_ that this mind which we cannot fully know will react in a certain way. To attempt in a chapter to outline a system of training for children would be an attempt doomed to certain failure. Books are written on this subject, and the shelves of the child-study and child-training department in the libraries are rapidly filling. What I have in mind here is rather a single line of the child's development--that which leads toward making him a useful factor in the home life of which he forms a part. The boy or girl who fills successfully a place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake successfully the greater task of founding a home of his own. In the days of infancy and early childhood, training for boys and girls may be more nearly identical than in later life. A large part of the differentiation in the work and play of little boys and girls would seem to be quite artificial. We give dolls to girls and drums to boys, but only because of some preconceived notion of our own. The girls will drum as loudly and the boys care for the baby quite as tenderly, until some one ridicules them and they learn to simulate a scorn for "boys' things" and "girls' things" which they do not really feel. Throughout this chapter, therefore, it is to be assumed that the training suggested is quite as applicable and quite as necessary for one sex as for the other. Young mothers sometimes ask the family doctor, "When shall I begin to train the baby to eat at regular intervals, to go to sleep without rocking, in general to accept the plan of life we outline for him?" The answer seldom varies: "Before he is twenty-four hours old." It is therefore evident that all the basic principles of living, whether physical or mental, must have their foundations far back in the child's young life. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Helping with the housework. The boy or girl who successfully fills a place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake successfully the greater task of founding a home of his or her own] As a basis for all the rest, we must work for health. A truly successful life, rounded and full, presupposes health. Regular habits, nourishing food, plenty of sleep, are axiomatic in writings treating of the care of young children, yet it is surprising how often these rules are violated. "It is easier" to give the child what he wants or what the others are having; easier to let him sit up than to put him to bed; easier to regard the moment than the years ahead. [Illustration: Already well started on his education] Aside from the physical foundation, the training that we are to give our little children will probably be based upon our conception of what they need to make them good sons and daughters, good brothers and sisters, good friends, good husbands and wives, and good fathers and mothers. In other words, it is the social aspect of life that we have in mind, and our social ideals. Whatever the boy "wants to be when he grows up," he is sure to have social relations with his kind. Whether the girl marries or remains single, she cannot entirely escape these relations. Indeed they are thrust upon both boy and girl already. What then do they need to enable them to be successful in the human relations of living? We might enumerate here a long list of virtues that will help, but, since long lists shatter concentration, let us narrow them to four: (1) sympathy, (2) self-control, (3) unselfishness, (4) industry. I do not mean to say that, with these four qualities only, a man will make a successful merchant or farmer, or that a woman will become a good housekeeper or a skillful teacher. But I do mean that in family relations these four qualities are worth more than intellectual attainments or any sort of manual skill. It is really astonishing to see how much these four will cover. We desire thrift--what is thrift but self-control? Tolerance--what but sympathy--the "put yourself in his place" feeling? Courtesy--what but unselfishness? Let us, then, in the child's early years concentrate upon sympathy, self-control, unselfishness, and industry. You will doubtless remember Cabot's summary of the four requirements of man[5]--work, play, love, and worship. Suppose we could write on the wall of every nursery in the land: Sympathy } { Work Self-control } in { Play Unselfishness } { Love Industry } { Worship Would not this writing on the wall be a fruitful reminder to the mothers? The period of early childhood is the one in which the home may act with least interference as the child's teacher. Later, whether she will or no, the mother must share the work of training with the school, the church, and that indefinite influence we class vaguely as society. During these few early years, then, the mother must use her opportunity well. It will soon be gone. How shall she teach such abstract virtues as sympathy, unselfishness, self-control? Recognizing the fact that the little child acts merely as his instinct and feelings prompt, she must make all training at this stage of his life take the form of developing the instincts. Probably the strongest of these at this time is imitation. Consequently most of the teaching must take advantage of the imitative instinct. The first care should be to surround the child with the qualities we desire him to possess. The mother who scolds, gives way to temper, or is unwilling or unable to control her own emotions and acts can hope for little self-control in her child. In the same way the father who kicks the dog or lashes his horse or is hard and cold in his dealings with his family may expect only that his child will begin life by imitating his undesirable qualities. This necessary supervision of the child's environment is a strong argument for direct oversight of little children by the mother. It is often difficult even for her to keep an ideal example before the child; and if she leaves it to hired caretakers, they seldom realize its necessity or are willing to take the pains she would herself. Especially is this true of the young and ignorant girls who are often seen in sole charge of little children. This first step being merely passive education, it is not enough. We must not only set an example; we must go farther and strive to get from the child acts or attitudes of mind based upon these examples. Let us take first the quality of sympathy, which is closely allied to reflex imitation. It is difficult to say just when the child merely reflects the emotions of those about him and when he consciously thinks of others as having feelings like his own. This conscious thought is, of course, the foundation of real sympathy, and it comes early in the child's life--probably before the fourth year. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Stories that broaden the child's conception of the lives and feelings of others are of value in training for sympathy] A little girl of three was greatly interested and pleased at the appearance of a roast chicken upon the family dinner table. She chattered about the "birdie" as she had done before on similar occasions. But when the carving knife was lifted over it, she astonished everyone by her terrified cry of "Don't cut the birdie. Hurt the birdie." No explanation or excuse satisfied her, and it was finally necessary to remove the platter and have the carving done out of her sight. Most children are naturally sympathetic _when they have experienced or can imagine_ the feelings of others. The cruelty of children, is usually due to their absorption in their own feelings without a _realization_ of the pain they inflict. Training for sympathy then must consist of enlargement of experience and cultivation of imagination. Some mothers do not talk enough with their children. They talk _to_ them--that is, they reprimand or direct them, but do not carry on conversations, as they might do greatly to the child's advantage. Telling stories is one of the most fruitful methods of training at this age. Even "this little pig went to market" has possibilities in the hands of a skillful mother. The bedtime story is a definite institution in many families. It deserves to be so in all. Beginning with the nursery rimes, the stories will gradually broaden in theme, and if their dramatic possibilities are at all realized by the story-teller, the children will broaden in their conception of the lives and feelings of others. Sympathy will thus in most cases be a plant of natural and easy growth. Intercourse with other children and with the older members of the child's family will also furnish constant material for the thoughtful mother. The baby bumps its head, and the mother soothes it with gentle, loving words. It is more than likely that the three-or four-year-old will express his sympathy also. Surely he will if the mother says, "Poor baby. See the great bump. How it must hurt!" Or perhaps "big sister" is happy on her birthday. Again, the three-year-old is likely to show happiness also, and the wise mother will help the child by a timely word to take the step from reflex imitation of happiness to true sympathy. Nor must we overlook the occasions when some one in the nursery has been "naughty" and must be punished. "Poor Bobby! He is sad because he cannot play with us this morning. He feels the way you did when you were naughty and had to sit so still in your little chair. I am sorry for Bobby--aren't you? We hope he will be good next time, don't we?" [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Kindergarten games afford the intercourse with other children necessary to the child's development] Teaching self-control is quite a different matter from the foregoing, and one which requires infinitely more work and patience. The first step is, however, the same. If you would have sympathy, show sympathy. If you would have self-control in a child, control yourself. Remember the strength of the imitative instinct. Next, strive to obtain control in the young child in some small matter where control is easy. Any normal child will learn that control _pays_--_if you make it pay_. Encourage the hungry child to stop crying while you prepare his food, but prepare it quickly, or he will begin to cry again to make you hurry. Mothers usually work hard to teach control of bodily functions, but often far less to obtain control of mental and moral conditions. Obedience, considered from time immemorial the chief virtue of childhood, is really only of value as it conduces to self-control in later life. The wise parent, therefore, while requiring obedience for the convenience of the family and the safety of the child, will lay far more stress upon teaching the child to control himself. The work must be done almost entirely by indirect methods during the early years. Offering artificial rewards and dealing out artificial punishments are the crudest forms of encouraging effort. The natural reward and the inevitable natural punishment are far better when they can be employed. [Illustration: Courtesy of the United Charities of Chicago A group of children at the Mary Crane Nursery, Chicago. Children acquire self-control by learning to help themselves] The child who overcomes his tendency to play before or during his dressing may be rewarded by some special morning privilege which will automatically regulate itself. In our family it is the joyful task of bringing in and distributing the morning mail. The child not dressed "on time" necessarily loses the privilege. We are not punishing, but "we can't wait." Lack of control of temper presupposes solitude. "People can't have cross children about." Quarrels inevitably bring cessation of group play or work--solitude again. The child's love of approbation may also be made of great assistance. Always we must remember that doing _what we tell him to do_ is not after all the main thing. It is doing the right thing, being willing to do the right thing, and being able to hold back the impulse to do the wrong thing, that count. We are working "to train self-directed agents, not to make soldiers." Unselfishness is a plant of slow growth. Indeed it is properly not a childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some because she always gives you part of hers," is often effective. Just as in the case of self-control, the child will learn to overcome his innate selfishness "if it pays" to do so. It may seem wrong to encourage any but the highest motive, but a habit of unselfish acts, resting upon a desire to win the approbation of others, is a better foundation upon which to build than no foundation at all. Purely disinterested or altruistic motives do not appear in the normal child much before the age of adolescence, and by that time selfishness, which accords so well with the individualistic instincts of the child, will have hardened into a fixed habit if not vigorously checked. Care must be taken to _lead_ the child toward unselfish acts, but not to _force_ them upon him. The common courtesies of life we may require, but, beyond that, example, tactful suggestion, wisely chosen stories, and judicious praise will do far more than force. The idea of kindness may be grasped by young children and, together with the great ideal of service, should be emphasized in their home life and in their intercourse with other children. The "only child" suffers most from lack of opportunity to learn these two great needs of his best self--kindness and service. Occasions should be systematically made for such a child (indeed for all children) to meet other children on some common ground. Playthings should be shared, help given and received, and the idea of interdependence brought out. "We must help each other" should be emphasized from early childhood. Much must be made of the little helps the child is able to give in the home--bringing slippers for father, going on little errands about the house for mother, picking up his own playthings, hanging up his coat and hat, caring for the welfare of the family pets. Careful provision should be made for the child's convenience in performing these little services. There must be places for the toys, low hooks for the wraps, and constant encouragement and recognition of the small helper. Some day he may help you because he loves to help. Now he loves to be praised for helping. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Helping the little sister. Children will learn unselfishness and kindness if they are early taught to help one another] Activity is a natural and absorbing part of a child's life. He is always doing something. It remains for the parent to direct this restless movement and to transform some of it into useful labor. Work, in the sense of accomplishing results for the satisfaction and benefit of the parent, is quite foreign to our plan for training the young child. But work for the child's own satisfaction and for the formation of the habit of industry must occupy our attention in large measure. The child's playthings should from his earliest days be chosen in recognition of his desire to do things and make things. The shops are filled with showy toys, mechanical and otherwise, and children find the toyshop a veritable fairyland. But once satiated with the sight of any particular toy, however cunningly devised--and satiety comes soon--the child forsakes the gorgeous plaything for his blocks, or paper and a pair of scissors, or even his mother's clothespins. He can do something with these. The Montessori materials are perhaps the most thoughtfully planned in this direction of anything now obtainable; and no one having the care of young children should be without some knowledge of this now famous method. All the materials have this advantage: they offer definite problems and consequently afford the child the joy of accomplishment. A few of the occupations of life afford us unending enjoyment at every stage of the doing, but not many. It is rather the achievement of our end, the "lust of finishing," which carries us through the tiresome details of our work. The child must therefore be early introduced to the joy of accomplishment. Instead of unending toys, give him something to work with. He will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and he will find not only joy but real development in their use. At first the child's work will consist of fragmentary efforts, but at a remarkably early age he will show evidence of a power of concentration and persistence which will make possible the accomplishment of finished undertakings. He begins to know what he wants to do and to exhibit considerable ingenuity in finding and combining materials. Most of all, he wants to imitate the activities he sees around him. In the strain of modern life a widespread restlessness seems to have seized mankind. Whatever people do, they want to be doing something else, and the pathway of the average individual is strewn with crude beginnings, half-finished jobs, abandoned work. The child very easily falls into line with this tendency of his elders. Hence he needs definite encouragement to see clearly what he has in hand and to bring his industrial attempts to a worth-while conclusion. Avoid, even with a little child, that inconsiderate habit of "grown-ups" of calling the little worker away whenever you desire his attention or help, quite regardless of the damage you may do to his work by your untimely interruption. Keep the child, as far as possible, too, from undertaking tasks too difficult or requiring too much time for completion. Discourage aimless handling of tools. A cheerful "What are you making?" sometimes crystallizes hitherto rambling desires. A timely suggestion often meets with enthusiastic response. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Helping in the home tasks. Wisely directed activity will teach the child both unselfishness and industry] The working outfit of a child under school age may or may not include kindergarten or Montessori material. Balls, blocks, pencils and paper, paste, colored crayons, scissors, a blackboard, a cart, a wheelbarrow, stout little garden tools, a sand tray or, better, in summer an outdoor sandpile, will furnish endless work and endless delight to a child or group of children. It is not so much what sort of material we use as the way in which we use it. Even at this age the child longs to be a producer, to "make things"; and his best development requires that we train this inclination. There is a prevalent notion that women especially are no longer required to be producers and that all our energies should be bent toward the sole task of making them intelligent consumers. There is, however, a joy in producing without which no life is really complete. And no scheme of education can be a true success which ignores or neglects the necessity of producing. The joy of work, the delight in achievement, should be the keynote of all industrial training. This should be kept constantly in view. To most people there is something wonderfully appealing about the innocence of the little child. We watch with delight the marvelous development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near when the child must begin his long course of training in school. Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come the child has already received a considerable part of his education; that the habits which will make or mar his future are often firmly implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. An elaborate plan for the little child's training would probably be abandoned even if undertaken, since elaborate plans involve endless work. If, however, we attempt no more than I have outlined in this chapter, we have some reasonable chance of success. Given good health, with regular bodily habits, as a physical foundation, the child will have had much done for him if we have begun to build the habits of sympathy, self-control, industry, and service which will purify and sweeten the family relations of later years and make the one-time child worthy himself to undertake the important task of home building. It is naturally a matter for regret that the teacher into whose hands the child comes first at school usually knows so little of the home training he has had or failed to have. Children whose parents have made little or no attempt to teach these fundamental qualities which we have had under discussion are sometimes forever handicapped unless the teacher can supply the deficiency. Children who have made a good beginning may lose much of what they have been taught unless the teacher recognizes and holds them to the ideal. The kindergarten or primary teacher needs to know the homes of her pupils; and the time is not far distant when the school will recognize the home as after all the first grade in school life. Then mothers will receive the inspiration of contact with the teachers and their ideals, not alone when their children reach school age, but from the time the first child arrives in the home. The Sunday school has its "cradle roll." The day school may emulate its example. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Cabot, _What Men Live By_.] CHAPTER VII TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING Going to school marks an epoch in every child's life. Hitherto, however wide or narrow the child's contact with the world has been, the mother has been, at least nominally and in most cases actually, the controlling power. Now she gives her child over for an increasingly large part of every day to outside influence. More and more we are coming to see that the evolution of a successful homemaker requires that the school as well as the home keep the homemaking ideal before it. And so the best schools of the country are doing. The greatest needs of the little girl's early school days would seem to be a definite understanding between teacher and mother of the share each should assume in the homemaking training. This necessitates personal conferences or mothers' meetings, or both. The little girl of primary-school age points the way for both teacher and mother by her adaptation and imitation of home activities in her play. In primary grades girls are approaching the height of the doll interest, which Hall and others place at eight or nine years. A doll's house, therefore, may be made the source of almost infinite enjoyment and profit in these grades. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that no primary room is complete without one. Nor is there any reason why any school should remain without one, since its making is the simplest of processes. Four wooden boxes, of the same size, obtained probably from the grocer, the dry-goods merchant, or the local shoe dealer, will make a most satisfactory house if placed in two tiers of two each, with the open sides toward the front. This gives four rooms, which may be furnished as kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom. Windows may be cut in the ends or back, if the boys of the school are sufficiently expert with tools or if outside assistance can be secured for an hour or so. The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's advice and help, rather than to find it completely equipped and therefore merely a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities, and perhaps for the first time these little girls look with seeing eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select, curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do. [Illustration: The little girl adapts and imitates home activities in play] It is perhaps scarcely necessary to call to mind the educational advantages possible in the planning and making of bedding, draperies, table linen, towels, couches and pillows, window seats, and other furnishings, as well as in the ingenuity brought into play in evolving kitchen utensils and in stocking the cupboards with the necessities for housekeeping. The free interchange of ideas should be encouraged, and the spirit of seeking the best fostered. The conspicuous results in this work are two: we secure the child's attention to details of housekeeping, and we build up a foundation ideal of what housekeeping equipment should be. Children in poorly equipped homes may find the most practical of training in this way. My experience has been that teachers have only to begin this work in order to arouse enthusiasm in any class of little girls. Once begun, it carries itself along. There should be no compulsion in this work. Choice and not necessity must be the rule in all our training for homemaking. To compel a child's attention to that which she will later do voluntarily, if at all, will at the very outset defeat our purpose. [Illustration: Making furniture for a doll's house affords educational advantages in emphasizing the details of housekeeping] The finest sort of coöperation arises in this work when parents are led to provide the little girl at home with a doll's house fashioned like the one at school. Perhaps they may go a step farther and find space for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere. Coöperation among the children means interchange of ideas, materials, and labor, most helpful to social ideals. From the furnishing of the doll's house it is easy to pass to plays involving the activities of home life. Children delight in sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, arranging cupboards and pantries, and making beds in their miniature houses, and if their efforts are wisely directed, orderly habits easily begin to form. In all these varieties of work the children must be led to feel that there is a right way, and that only that way is good enough, even for play. The great result of all play housekeeping is the formation of ideals. It is just as easy to learn at seven or eight the most efficient way of washing dishes as it is to defer that knowledge until years of inefficient work harden into inefficient habits. The teacher will find abundant and interesting studies in household efficiency in recently published books to inspire her guidance of the children's activity. The step from washing play dishes at school to washing real dishes at home is easily taken, and children are delighted to take it. Here again the school and home may--indeed must, for best results--work together. Some schools are giving school credit for home work along domestic lines. That there are complex elements entering into the successful working out of such a plan one must admit. A school giving credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home dishes according to school methods may encounter adverse comment from certain parents who are quick to resent outside "management." Nevertheless, home practice in accordance with school theory is the ideal of any coöperative education in the mechanics of housekeeping; therefore some scheme must be worked out whereby the girls will practice at home, and, having learned to do by doing, will continue to do in the families where their doing will be a help. Let us consider for a moment the present condition of the school-credit-for-home-work idea. Schemes are being worked out in various places, under one or the other of the following plans. _Plan I_ (often known as the Massachusetts plan). Each pupil, with the advice of his teacher and the consent of his parents, selects some one definite piece of work to do at home regularly, under direction of the school and with some study at school of the practical problems involved. School credit depends upon approval by the teacher on the occasion of a visit of inspection to the home. _Plan II_ (sometimes called the Oregon plan). This is more directly concerned with the cultivation of a helpful spirit than with perfect technique or broad knowledge. No attempt is made to correlate home and school work. Credit is given merely for the fact that the dishes were washed, the table set, or the baby bathed, the fact being properly certified by the parent. Whether the work was acceptably done or not rests entirely with the parent. In the carrying out of the latter plan blanks are usually issued to be filled out and handed in once a week or once a month. Each task carries a certain value in school credit. That either of these plans possesses certain weaknesses doubtless even their makers would admit. But they are at least opening wedges. A plan might be worked out whereby little girls are taught one household task at a time, through their play housekeeping, after which credit may be given for satisfactory performance of the task at home. Later another household duty may be taught, and put into practice, with credit, at home, thus building up a body of known duties for which the little house-helper has been duly trained. For its highest efficiency such a plan would require more than consent on the part of mothers. Its success would depend upon coöperative leadership and its value upon the acceptance, for school credit, of only that work done in conformity with school ideals. But at all events, whether school credit be given or not, the stimulus of interest in home tasks may be given strength by the teacher's wise suggestion, and thoughtful consideration of the matter in teachers' and mothers' meetings will insure coöperation of the most helpful sort. The tactful teacher will find ways to suggest to mothers that children be held up at home to the ideals of efficiency she has been at pains to put before them at school. The suggestion has been recently made by several thoughtful educators that the noon hour, in schools where children do not go home for dinner, be made use of for the simplest of cooking lessons. The children who at seven are quite content to play house soon pass into the stage where they wish to see results from their work. They want to "make things," real things, that they or some one can use. Children of nine or ten can learn to cook cereals and eggs in various ways, to make cocoa, and to prepare other simple dishes. Their pride and delight in these accomplishments are intense. These activities are equally suited to the small rural school and to the consolidated schools which are happily taking the place of the one-room buildings. In both, the teacher may find the lunch hour a real educational force if it is used aright. If the teacher allows and guides these efforts in the schoolroom, she must keep in mind her "ideal of efficiency." Accurate measurements, logical processes, elimination of awkward and unnecessary movements, care in following directions, neatness, and precision are the real lessons to be learned. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A school garden. The possibilities for good through school-garden work are numberless] School gardens are perhaps already too familiar to require more than a word. Their possibilities for good are numberless. In them many children get their first insight into the joys of making things grow and are led by this joy to undertake the care of a home garden and to beautify the home surroundings as they had never thought of doing before. School-garden work leads to beautifying the school grounds, with resulting pride and interest in the school. Accompanying the activities we have suggested, teachers will find a wide field in attractive stories of helpful coöperative home life. Extracts from many of Miss Alcott's stories, the Cratchits' Christmas dinner from Dickens' _Christmas Carol_, and many other delightful glimpses of home life can be read, or, better, dramatized, with little effort and with good results. It may seem that the homemaking training here suggested for younger children is too desultory, too slight, in fact, to affect the situation much. But let us consider. Homemaking is an art, coming more and more to be based on a foundation of science. For it is undoubtedly true that, while the pessimists are telling us that the home is doomed, we who are optimists see coming toward us a great wave of homemaking knowledge which if seized upon will put the homemaker's art upon a surer foundation than it has ever been. The elements of housekeeping are the _ABC_ of homemaking. We shall do well to teach them early, incidentally, and with no undue exaggeration of their place in the scheme of living. We simply familiarize the girl, by long and quiet contact, with the tools of the homemaker, for future scientific use, just as we teach the multiplication facts for later use in the science of mathematics. A definite list of the simple homemaking tasks suitable for little girls to undertake may not be out of place here: 1. Setting the table. (A card list of table necessities is useful. Such a list may be given each little girl when she undertakes home practice work.) 2. Clearing the table. 3. Washing the dishes. 4. Sweeping the kitchen. Sweeping the piazza. 5. Dusting. 6. Making beds and caring for bedrooms. 7. Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets. 8. Simple cooking. 9. Hemming towels and table linen. 10. Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins. As the child grows older, methods of teaching grow increasingly direct. Even here we shall perhaps not talk a great deal about "preparing for homemaking." But we shall see that the tools grow increasingly familiar, and that ideals once taught are retained and added to. We shall see that our science, our mathematics, our art, all contribute to the acquirement of homemaking knowledge. We shall give a practical turn to these more or less abstract subjects. Sewing and cooking classes are by this time a recognized part of grammar-school courses in many city schools. That they are not so firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already crowded condition of the school program. The ideal remedy is the substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room buildings. Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been enthusiastically received and supported. No one wishes to go back to the old way. But in many localities the consolidated school has not come and cannot be immediately looked for; and in these places the need of the homemaking work is just as great. The teacher must find the way to give these girls what they need. If no other way presents itself, the teacher will do well to ask the help of the mothers of the neighborhood. Perhaps one who is an expert needlewoman will give an hour or two a week in the school or at her own home to carrying out the sewing course which the teacher cannot crowd into her own already overcrowded program. Perhaps another will do the same for the cooking, making her own kitchen for one afternoon a week an annex of the school. It is important, however, when such arrangements are made that they be recognized as school work, and if possible the courses followed should be planned and supervised by the regular teacher of the school. Thus only can they be held to standardized accomplishment. The inadequacy of the "one-portion" method of teaching girls to cook has aroused serious thought, and remedies of various sorts have been applied. You know, perhaps, the story of the Chicago cooking-school student who "had to make seven omelets in succession at home last night" because one egg would not make enough omelet for the family. The first remedy tried was cooking for the school lunch room. This was, however, usually going from one extreme to the other, since the lunch room is as a rule maintained only in large schools. "Institutional cooking," some one calls it. Instead of one egg-cooking, it became one-hundred-egg cooking, and the difficulty of the average student in adapting school methods to family use was not by any means at an end. The Central High School of Newark, New Jersey, has solved its problem by putting its girls to work, not at the task of providing the sandwiches, soups, and other luncheon dishes for its large lunch room, but at providing "family dinners" at twenty-five cents a plate for the faculty of the school. Other schools follow similar plans. The grammar-school girls of Leominster, Massachusetts, serve luncheon to a limited number every day at their domestic science house. Here the girls do the marketing, cook and serve the meal, and keep the various rooms of the house in order. In Montclair, New Jersey, work of this same sort is done. In each of these cases the cooking is done as it would have to be in the home, not for one person, nor for hundreds, but for approximately a family-sized group. Sewing courses also grow more and more practical. In some schools the girls make their own graduating dresses as a final test of their ability. Courses are definite, and girls completing them will have definite knowledge of everyday processes of hand sewing. The schools which add to their hand-sewing courses well-planned practice in the use of the sewing machine are further adding to the accomplishment of their girls. Those which go farther still and teach garment planning and making may consider their sewing courses fairly complete. [Illustration: Teachers' luncheon cooked and served by pupils at the Clinton Kelly School, Portland, Oregon. Other schools have adopted similar plans for teaching girls how to cook] The formation of ideals must go hand in hand with practice in manual processes. The girl must learn to know good work when she sees it, to know a properly constructed garment from one carelessly put together, and to value good work and construction. Time was when domestic science meant sewing and cooking, and these alone. That time, however, is past. The care of a house is practically taught in many schools throughout the country by the maintenance of a model apartment in or near the school building. In Public School No. 7, New York City, grammar-school girls, many of whom are of foreign parentage and tradition, are thus introduced to the American ideal of living. The school is thus establishing standards of equipment, of food, of service, of comfortable living, that tend to Americanize quite as much as the establishment of standards of speech, of business methods, or of civic duties. The work done in this school is typical of that prevailing in hundreds of towns and cities. [Illustration: A girls' sewing class. Work in sewing offers unlimited possibilities] The question arises: How much of her housekeeping training should a girl receive before entering upon her high-school course? After careful consideration it seems wise to urge that the greater part of the practical household work be taught during the period from eleven to fourteen. This does not imply that homemaking training should cease at fourteen, but rather that after that age attention shall be centered upon the more difficult aspects of the subject--upon "household economics" rather than the skillful doing of household tasks. In view, however, of the fact that the majority of girls never reach the high school, every bit of household science which they can grasp should be given them in the elementary school. Knowing how to do is only part of the housekeeper's work. Knowing what and when to do is quite as important. Elementary study of food values is quite as comprehensible as elementary algebra. Home sanitation and decoration are no harder to understand than commercial geography. The principles of infant feeding and care may be grasped by any girl who can successfully study civil government or grammar. Shall we then crowd out commercial geography or government or grammar to make room for these homemaking studies? Not necessarily, although, if it came to a choice, much might be said for the practical studies in learning to live. Fortunately it need not come to a choice. There is room for both. We must, however, learn to adapt existing courses to the requirements of girls. [Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman A model school home where all the practical details of housekeeping are taught] [Illustration: A domestic science class at work in the model school home shown above] There is arithmetic, for instance. Most of us have already learned to skip judiciously the pages in the textbook which deal with compound proportion, averaging payments, partial payments, and cube root. Now we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the "easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from the point of view of their usefulness to a family; mortgaging homes, what it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified; the accumulation of interest in a savings account; the comparative financial advantage of renting and owning a home; the cost of building houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying conditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses, and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have not usually tried to apply it to the education of the prospective homemaker. Take the one question of the "installment plan." Where, if not in the public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced young people of the land by this method of doing business? And where in the public school if not in the arithmetic class? Consider the possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the "easy plan," of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in advance. The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in fighting this possibility, but "applied arithmetic" can be a most effective weapon. In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and their cost. We may learn whether it is best to buy American-made macaroni or the imported variety; whether French silks and gloves are superior to those made in America; what "shoddy" is, what we may expect from it if we buy it, how much it is worth in comparison with long-wool fabrics, how to know whether shoddy is being offered us when we buy. Countless other matters concerning the markets and products of the world will repay the same sort of treatment. [Illustration: One of the class exercises in the model school home shown on page 115] [Illustration: The correct serving of meals forms part of the class work in this same home] Food questions are opened up by study of our meat, vegetable, and fruit supply. Every town may make this a personal and immediate problem. From whom did Mr. Blank, the local grocer, obtain his canned tomatoes? It is sometimes possible to follow up those canned tomatoes to their source. In one investigation of this sort they were found to have passed through six hands. The arithmetic class may pass upon the question of profits and comparative cost between this and the "producer-to-consumer" method. The art work of the schools may also contribute generously to the body of homemaking knowledge. For the average girl the designing and making of Christmas cards and book covers, or even the prolonged study of great paintings, is a less productive use of time than the designing of cushion covers, curtains, bureau scarfs, or candle shades. In a certain town in New England considerable effort was expended in bringing about the introduction of art work in the schools a few years ago. A normal-school art graduate took charge of the work. It has now been abandoned because "the children took so little interest." And really, if you knew the conditions, you could not blame them They studied art and copied art and tried to cultivate an artistic sense in ways as remote from their daily lives as could apparently be contrived. And the pity of it all is that here were girls whose homes, whose personal dress, were crying out for the application of art; whose artistic sense was growing of failing to grow according as their individual conditions would allow; and the public school has passed its opportunity by. Art, as applied to school work, is divided usually into appreciative and creative work. We place before children the best in picture and sculpture and music. Why do we not teach them also the foundation principles of good taste in matters less remote from the lives of many of them? Why not teach the girl something of artistic color combination? Why not apply the test of art to the lines of woman's attire? Why not study the contour of heads and styles of hairdressing? Happily, in these days, these things also are being done. We have "manual arts" rooms and teachers by whose aid girls are taught to use the principles of design they study in their everyday planning of everyday things. A visitor to the Central School of Auburn, Washington, reports interesting work going on in such a room. On the blackboard was written: The general aim of design work--order and beauty. The three principles governing design are: Balance--Harmony--Rhythm. Balance: opposition of equal forms. Rhythm: movement in direction--joint action--motion. Harmony: similarity. In the room were girls doing various sorts of work--coloring designs on fabrics for curtains and pillow covers; making original designs for crocheted lace; hemstitching draperies; preparing color material for a primary room; while on a table in the center of the room were many finished articles, made by the girls and carrying out their principles of design--"not one of which," says the visitor, "but would serve a useful purpose in home or office." House building, interior decorating, and furnishing are all worthy of serious attention in the art course. Simplicity, harmony, and suitability may well be taught as the principles of good taste. Girls must learn these principles somewhere to make the most of their homes by and by. And again the public school, and probably the elementary school, must do the work. Physiology and hygiene are already contributing to the knowledge which makes for human betterment, but they also can be made to contribute much more than they have sometimes done. The physiology of infancy must be widely and insistently taught. With proper education she [the young mother] would know the meaning of the words food and sleep; she would know something of their overwhelming importance upon the future being and career of her child, who in his turn is to be one of the world's citizens with full capacity for good or evil. Knowing what were normal functions, she would be able to recognize and guard against deviations from them. No day would pass in which she would not find opportunity to exercise self-restraint, keen observation and sensible knowledge in furthering the normal and healthful evolution of her child.[6] The "little mother" classes in settlement houses, in community social centers, and in some public schools are doing excellent work in beginning this knowledge of infancy. No elementary school can really afford to miss the opportunity such work holds out. Have we any right to let a girl approach the care of her child with less than the best that modern science can offer in this most important and exacting work of her life? If not, it is again the public school which alone can be depended upon to do the work, and we must get at least the beginning of it done before the girl escapes us at the close of her elementary-school course. If you are impatient with a program which presupposes that practically all women will be homemakers and mothers, either trained or otherwise, let me remind you that the majority of women do marry, that most of these and many of the unmarried do become homemakers, and that it will be far safer for society to train the few--less than 10 per cent--who never enter the career than to pursue the economically wasteful plan of assuming educationally that no women will be homemakers, or that if they are they can successfully undertake the most complicated, difficult, and most important profession open to women with no preparation at all, or with only what they have unconsciously absorbed at home in the brief pauses of the education which did not educate them for life. The education for homemaking will never lose sight of the fact that girls must really be prepared for a double vocation, since it is a question whether or not they will become homemakers, and they must at all events be prepared for the years intervening between school and home. On the contrary, the education which prepares the homemaker will exercise special care in training for those intervening years, or for life work if it should prove to be such. Of all distinctly vocational training, it is only fair, however, that the homemaking training should come first, as a foundation for all later work. Whether the girl thus trained ever presides over a home of her own or not, the training will have made her a broader woman and a better worker, with a finer understanding of the universal business of her sex. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 6: Oppenheim.] CHAPTER VIII THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE While we are occupied in teaching the girl the "ways and means" by which she is later to carry on the business of homemaking, we must not overlook the fact that, although ways and means are vitally necessary, it is after all the spirit of the girl which will supply the motive power to make the home machinery run. With this in view we must so plan the girl's training as to secure not only the concrete knowledge of doing things, but also the more abstract qualities which will equip her for her work. False ideals and ignorance of housekeeping processes are responsible for thousands of homekeeping failures; but lack of fairness, of good temper, patience, humor, courage, courtesy, stability, perseverance, and initiative must be held accountable for thousands more. For these qualities, then, the girl must be definitely and painstakingly trained. In other words, we must work for the highest type of woman, spiritually as well as industrially. It may seem that definite instruction in such abstract qualities as good temper or stability or fairness is difficult or perhaps impossible to Secure. Since, however, all the girl's intercourse with her kind affords daily opportunity for practice of these qualities, instruction may easily accompany and become a part of her daily life. The lack of these qualities handicaps the girl even in her school life and shows there plainly the handicap that, unless help is given her, she will suffer for life. Her school work offers ample opportunity for the cultivation of patience and perseverance. Teachers must combat vigorously the "give-up" spirit, and the troublesome "changing her mind" which leads the girl along a straight path from "trying another" essay subject or embroidery stitch as soon as difficulties present themselves to trying another husband when the first domestic cloud arises. Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult art of getting along with the world. The educational value of games is largely found in their social training. Experience teaches that children require long and patient instruction to enable them to play games. They have to learn fairness, courtesy, good temper; honesty, kindness, sympathy. They have to learn to be good losers and to consider the fun of playing a better end than winning the game. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult art of getting on with the world] Games must be carefully distinguished from the more general term play. All play not solitary has recognized social value; games, because the idea of contest is involved, have a special value of their own. Close observation of young children in their games, especially when unsupervised, shows us self supreme. According to temperament, the child either pushes his way savagely to the goal or furtively seeks to win by cunning and craft. He must win, regardless of the process. How many of these unsupervised games end in "I sha'n't play," in angry bursts of tears, or even in blows! How many fail upon close scrutiny to show some less assertive child, who never wins, who is never "chosen," who might better not be playing at all than never to "have his turn"! [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Hunter High School girls playing hockey in Central Park, New York. The educational value of games lies in the fact that they teach fair play, self-control, and proper consideration of others] During the individualistic period games must be for the satisfaction of individualistic desires. Team work must await a later development of child nature. But while each child may play to win, his future welfare demands that his efforts be in harmony with certain principles. 1. He must respect the rules of the game. 2. He must "play fair." 3. He must control anger, jealousy, boastfulness, and other of the more elemental emotions. 4. He must consider the handicaps suffered by some players, and see that they get a "square deal." Girls' games and boys' games at this period happily show little differentiation. Almost any game not prejudicial to health serves to call into action the moral forces we strive to cultivate. The game to a certain extent typifies the larger life--the life of effort, contest, striving to win. Self-control and proper consideration of others in the one must serve as a help in fitting for the other. [Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman Drill work as well as games is beneficial to health and also teaches self-control] Teachers are often inclined to overlook or undervalue the training of girls in games. The fact is that girls especially need this training as the woman's sphere in present-day life is widening. Men have always had contact with the world. Women have in times past had to content themselves with a single interest involving contest--the social game. How far we may safely go in utilizing the game element--that is, the contest or competition element--in school work is a question for thought. The "rules of the game" are less easy to enforce here; jealousies are harder to control; handicaps are more in evidence and less easy to make allowance for in contests; the discouragement of failure may have more serious results. The mere fact of class grouping involves a natural competition, healthful and beneficial and wisely preparatory for future living. More emphasis than this upon rivalry may produce feverish and unhealthful conditions, far removed from the mental poise we desire for our girls. The school can give the girl few things finer than the ability to attack work quietly and yet with determination and a sense of power to meet and overcome obstacles. The school and the playground form the growing girl's community life. In them she must learn to practice community virtues, to shun community evils, and to accept community responsibilities. For her the school and the playground are society. Here she will take her first lessons in the pride of possessions, in the prestige accompanying them, in the struggle for social supremacy, in doubtful ideals brought from all sorts of doubtful sources. Here she will find exaggerated notions of "style" and its value, impure English, whispered uncleanness in regard to sex matters, and surreptitious reading of forbidden books. Here also she will find worthier examples--clean, pure thought, honesty and fair dealing, pride of achievement rather than of externals, fine ideals exemplified in the best homes. And no finer or more delicate task lies before teacher and mother than the guidance of the girl in her choice. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A school playground. The school and the playground form the growing girl's community life] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A model playground. The model playgrounds in the parks are doing much to aid the playground movement] Going to school is rightly considered an epoch in the child's life. No longer confined to the narrow circle of home and family friends, the child may lose all the tiny beginnings of desired virtues in this larger life. Or, on the contrary, when the school recognizes and continues home training, or supplies what has not been given, these foundation virtues may be so applied to the old problems in new places as to form a foundation for the life conduct of the girl and the woman that is to be. Take the question of sex knowledge, so widely agitated of late. We cannot guard our girls against contact with some who will exert a harmful influence. We can only forearm them by natural, gradual information on this subject as their young minds reach out for knowledge, so that sex knowledge comes, as other knowledge comes, without solemnity or sentimentality on the one hand or undue mystery and a hint of shame on the other. No course in sex hygiene can take the place of this early gradual teaching, answering each question as it comes, in a perfectly natural way, and with due regard for the child's wonder at all of nature's marvelous processes. The little girl _who knows_ presents no possibilities to the perverted mind which seeks to astonish and excite her. And if she knows because "my mother told me," the guard is as nearly perfect as can be devised. Upon this foundation the formal course in sex hygiene may be built. Such a course will then be a scientific summing up, with application to personal ideals and requirements. It can easily, safely, and wisely be deferred until the adolescent period. Teachers and mothers can find scarcely any field more worthy of their thoughtful concentration than the cultivation of good temper in the girls under their care. The number of marriages rendered failures, the number of homes totally wrecked, by sulking or nagging or outbursts of ill-temper, can probably not be estimated. Neither can we count the number of innocent people in homes not apparently wrecked whose lives are rendered more or less unhappy by association with the woman of uncertain temper. Think of the families in which some undesirable trait of this sort seems to pass from generation to generation, accepted by each member calmly as an inheritance not to be thrown off. "It's my disposition," one will tell you with a sigh. "Mother was just the same." Surely the time to combat these undesirable traits is in childhood, and probably the first step is for the mother, who looks back to her mother as "being just the same," to stop talking or thinking about inherited traits and at least to present an outward show of good temper for the child to see. Then there is the teacher, who is under a strain and who finds annoyances in every hour which tend to destroy her equanimity. Her serenity, if she can accomplish it, will prove an excellent example. And little by little the mother and the teacher who have accomplished self-control for themselves may teach self-control and the beauties of good temper to the little girls who live in the atmosphere they create. CHAPTER IX THE ADOLESCENT GIRL Adolescence, the critical period of the training of the boy and girl, presents a complexity of problems before which parents and teachers alike are often at a loss. The adolescent period, the growing-up stage of the girl's life, is physically the time of rapid and important bodily changes. New cells, new tissue, new glands, are forming. New functions are being established. The whole nervous system is keyed to higher pitch than at any previous time. Excessive drain upon body or nerve force at this time must mean depletion either now or in the years of maturity. But, on the other hand, the keynote of the girl's adolescent mental life is _awakening_. Her whole nature calls out for a larger, fuller, more intense life. Home, school, society, dress, all take on new aspects under the transforming power of the new sex life stirring and perfecting itself within. The world is beckoning to the emerging woman, and her every instinct leads her to follow the beckoning hand. Now, if ever, the girl needs the influence and guidance of some wise and sympathetic woman friend. It may be--let us hope it is--her mother; or, failing that, her teacher; or, better than either alone, both mother and teacher working in sympathetic harmony. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Camp Fire Girls. Outdoor life is one of the best means of safeguarding the girl's health] The first care demanded for the maturing girl is the safeguarding of her health. School demands at this age are likely to be excessive under existing systems of instruction. In many ways the secondary school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or, perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the closest coöperation between parents and teachers can afford either of them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the other must be made every time the combination is effected. Some schools content themselves with asking for a record of time spent on school work at home. Many parents merely acquiesce in the girl's statement that she does or doesn't have to study to-night, and the matter rests. Other schools and other parents go into the question with more or less detail, but usually quite independently of each other in the investigation. It is only very recently that anything like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and recorded to throw light upon the home-study question. School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to which class their girl belongs? The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities outside the school. They may help at home much or little or not at all. They may have absorbing social interests or practically none. They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from causes over which the school has no control. There is no question about the value of definite information on all of these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best understanding of the child. The modern physician keeps a carefully tabulated record of his patient's history and condition. The school should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to such record. It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl's health is menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the remaining portion of the twenty-four hours. No mother has a right to accuse the school of breaking down her daughter's health unless she is duly careful that the girl has a proper amount of sleep, exercise in the open air, and hygienic clothing, and that her life outside the school is not of the sort that we describe in these days as "strenuous." It is this strenuous life which our girls must be taught to avoid. Any daily or weekly program which is crowded with activities is a dangerous program for developing girlhood. The very atmosphere of many modern homes is charged with the spirit of haste, and parents scarcely realize that the daughter's time is too full, because their own is too full also. They have no time to stop and realize anything. A quiet home is an essential help in preserving a girl's health and well-being. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood A mountain camp. Good health is conserved by outdoor games and exercise] It need scarcely be said that the children of a family should be troubled as little as possible with the worries of their elders. Parents are often unaware how much of the family burden their sons and daughters are secretly bearing, or how long sometimes they continue to struggle under the burden after it has mercifully slipped from father's or mother's shoulders. Good health means buoyancy, a springing to meet the future with a tingle of joy in facing the unknown. The adolescent period is essentially an unfolding time, in which probably for the first time choice seems to present itself in a large way in ordering the girl's life. In school she is confronted with a choice of studies or of courses. To make these choices she must look farther ahead and ask herself many questions as to the future. What is she to be? Nor is she loath to face this question. Some of the very happiest of the girl's dreams at this time are concerned with that problematical future. There was a day when girls dreamed only of husbands, children, and homes. Then, as the pendulum swung, they dreamed of careers, a hand in the "world's work." Now they dream of either or both, or they halt confused by the wide outlook. But of one thing we may be sure--our girl is dreaming, and she seldom tells her dreams. It is during this period in a girl's life that she is most likely to chafe at restraint, to picture a wonderful life outside her home environment, and to demand the opportunity to make her own choice. As she goes on through high school, she longs more and more for "freedom," quite unconscious of the fact that what seems freedom in her elders is, in reality, often farthest removed from that elusive condition. Her imagination is taking wild flights in these days. Sometimes we catch fleeting glimpses of its often disordered fancies, although oftener we see only the most docile of exteriors standing guard over an inner self of which we do not dream. The wise mother and the wise teacher are they whose adolescent memories, longings, misapprehensions, and mistakes are not forgotten, but are being sympathetically and understandingly searched for light in guiding the girls whose guardians they are. They recognize once and for all that normal girls are filled with what seem abnormal notions, desires, and ideals. They recall how little they used to know of life, and the pitfalls they barely escaped, if they did escape. Thus only can they keep close to the girl in spirit and help her as they once needed help. They respect her longing for freedom of choice and they teach her how to choose. It is of little use to attempt to clip the wings of the girl's imagination, however riotous. The wings are safely hidden from our profaning touch. Instead we must teach her to dream true dreams and to choose real things rather than shams. [Illustration: A study room. The life of the adolescent girl is by no means bounded by the schoolroom walls] At this time the girl's life often seems to the casual observer to be bounded by her schoolroom walls. As a matter of fact, however, school work appeals to her much less than it has probably done earlier or than it will do in her college days. Dress is becoming an absorbing subject. "The boys," however little you may think it, are seldom far from her thoughts. Intimate friendship with another adolescent girl perhaps affords an outlet, beneficial or otherwise, for the crowding life which is too precious to bear the unsympathetic touch of the world of her elders. Or perhaps the girl becomes solitary in her habits, living in a world of romance found in books or in her own dreams, impatient with the world about her, feeling sure she is "misunderstood." What can home, school, and society in general do for the adolescent girl, that her awakening may be sweet and sane, that her future usefulness may not be impaired or her life embittered by wrong choice at the brink of womanhood? Any wise plan for the training of girls "in their teens" must include provision for: 1. Outdoor play and exercise. In the country this is much more easily accomplished. City problems bearing on this question are among the most acute of all concerning boys and girls. 2. Systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom. Thus the girl acquires habits of concentration and industry that she will need all her life. 3. Some manual work in kitchen, garden, sewing room, or workshop. Here the girl's natural tastes and inclination may be discovered and trained. 4. Food for the imagination. Books, music, pictures, inspiring plays. The Campfire Girls' movement is valuable in its imaginative aspect. 5. Attention to dress. Laying the foundation for wise lifelong habits. 6. Healthful social intercourse under the best conditions with boys and with other girls, both at home and at school. Croquet, tennis, skating, offer fine opportunities for such intercourse. "Parties," dancing, present more difficulties, but have their value under right conditions. Not all "fun" should include the boys. Athletic contests between girls do much to develop a neglected side of girl nature. 7. Companionship with her mother, or some other woman of experience. Nothing can quite take the place of this. The girl is sailing out upon an uncharted sea. She needs the help of someone who has sailed that way before. [Illustration: A botanical laboratory in Portland, Oregon. Through systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom the girl acquires habits of concentration and industry] 8. Preparation for marriage and motherhood. Much that the girl should know can come to her through no other medium than that indicated in the preceding paragraph--confidential intercourse with the woman of mature years. For the sake of the girls who fail to find this woman elsewhere every school for adolescent girls should have on its faculty a woman who will "mother" its girls. 9. Acquaintance with the lives of some of the great women of history, as well as of some who have lived inspiring lives in the girl's own country and time. A long list of such women might be made. 10. Some unoccupied time. Our girl must not be permitted to acquire the bad habit of rushing through life. 11. Study of vocations and avocations for women. Avocations--the work which serves as play--should be wisely studied, and some avocation adopted by every girl. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A quiet retreat. Every girl needs some unoccupied time in order that she may not acquire the habit of rushing] Part of this training girls everywhere in this country may get if the opportunities open to them are seized. The proportion of purely mental work and of handwork will vary according to the locality in which the girl finds herself. In general, however, such matters receive more consideration than the more complex ones of direct social bearing. How a girl shall dress, with whom and under what conditions she shall find her social life, what she shall know of herself, of woman in general, of the opposite sex, what her relations with her mother shall be--these things are more often than not left to chance or to the girl's untrained inclination. The dress question rests fundamentally upon the personal question, What do clothes mean to the girl? Behind that we usually find what clothes mean to her mother, to her teachers, to the women who have a part in her social life. Instinct teaches the girl to adorn her person. Environment is largely responsible for the sort of adornment she will choose. To bring the matter at once to a practical basis, what standards shall we set up for our girls to see, to admire, and to adopt as their own? "Well dressed" may be interpreted to mean simply, or serviceably, or conspicuously, or becomingly, or fashionably, or cheaply, or appropriately, according to the standard of the person who uses the term. It would necessarily be impossible to establish a common standard for any considerable group of women, since individual conditions must govern individual choice. A wise standard for girls and their mothers, however, will conform to certain principles, even though the application of the principles be widely different. These principles may be expressed somewhat as follows: 1. Beauty in dress is expressed in line, color, and adaptation to personal appearance, not in expense. 2. Fitness depends upon the occasion and upon the relation of cost to the wearer's income. 3. Simplicity conduces to beauty, fitness, and to ease of upkeep. 4. Upkeep, including durability and cleansing possibilities, is as important a consideration in selecting clothes as in selecting buildings and automobiles. Freshness outranks elegance. 5. Individuality should be the keynote of expression in dress. Conformity to the foregoing principles in establishing a personal standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving to reach some other woman's standard which bears again and again such bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, is a fallacy, in spite of its general acceptance. We might as well expect blue eyes, straight noses, or number three shoes to form the basis of a social group. The mother or the teacher who bases her instruction in this matter on the assumption that pretty clothes of necessity breed vanity and all its attendant evils is merely sowing the seed of her influence upon stony ground when once the girl discovers her belief. Nature is telling the girl to make herself beautiful. It is not only useless but wrong to set ourselves against this instinct. Instead we must show her what beauty in clothes means, and how to attain it without paying for it more than she can afford, in money, in time, or in sacrifice of her spiritual self. The school does its share when it teaches the general theory of beauty, with practical illustration in study of line and color schemes. The individual teacher and the mother have to impart the far more delicate lessons concerning influence and cost--mental, moral, and spiritual--in other words, the psychology of clothes. Our girl must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an "up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price. The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above style; the silk petticoat may be bought at the cost of mother's or father's sacrifice of something needed far more; the trimming on the hat may have cost the life of a beautiful mother bird and the slow starvation of her nestlings. Nothing the girl wears costs money only. She must also learn that fine clothes are out of place on a girl whose body is not finely cared for; that money is better expended for quality than for show; and, most of all, that clothes are secondary matters, when all is said. Wisdom and sympathy and tact are never more needed than in this sort of teaching. The principles of good dressing cannot be laid down baldly and coldly, like mathematical rules, for the guidance of a girl palpitating with youthful and beauty-loving instincts. The mother who says, merely, "Certainly not. You don't need them. I never had silk stockings when I was a girl," is failing to meet her obligations quite as much as the mother who allows her daughter to appear at school in a costume suited only to some formal evening function. There are mothers of each of these sorts. The wise mother whose daughter has developed a sudden scorn for the stockings she has worn contentedly enough hitherto does not dismiss the subject in the "certainly not" way, however kindly spoken. She treats her daughter's request seriously, asks a few questions, in the answers to which "the other girls" will probably figure largely, and talks it over. "Of course, there is the first cost to consider. The price of three or four pairs of silk stockings would give you a dozen pairs of fine cotton. Yes, I know there are cheaper silk ones to be had, but their quality is poor. We should scarcely want you to wear coarse, poorly made ones. And of course you know silk ones do not last so long. They are pretty, and pleasant to wear, and cool, I know. How would it do to have silk ones to wear with your new party dress, and keep on with the cotton ones for school? We don't want to be overdressed in business hours, you know. Then, it seems to me, it is a little hard on the really poor girls at school if the rest of you are inclined to overdress. They are so likely to get into the habit of spending their money for cheap imitations of what you other girls wear--or if they are too sensible for that they are probably unhappy because they have to look different. Wouldn't it be kinder not to wear expensive things to school at all?" The object is not so much to keep the girl from having unsuitable garments as to teach her to see all sides of the clothes question, to realize her responsibilities, and to learn to choose wisely for herself. It is highly desirable that mothers keep up their own standards of dress as they approach middle life and their daughters enter the adolescent period. Some women even make the mistake of dressing shabbily that they may gown their daughters resplendently. They are educating their daughters to a false standard and to a selfish life. Teachers also probably seldom realize how wide an influence they may exercise upon their adolescent girl pupils in the matter of dress. Many a girl forms her standard and her ideal from what her teacher wears. Teachers must accept their responsibility and make good use of the opportunities it gives them. It is approximately at the time of her awakening to the beautifying instinct that the girl begins to take a special interest in social matters. Here again she needs wise guidance, and usually more _guidance_ and less _direction_ than most girls get. The American mother is prone in social questions to trust her daughter too much, or not enough, and to train her very little. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Skating offers fine opportunity for healthful social intercourse] In many cases adolescent society centers about the school. There are the everyday walks and talks of the boys and girls, the games and meets and contests, with their attendant social features, the literary societies and debating clubs, the school parties and dances. The school thus comes to assume a considerable part in the boy's and girl's social training, much more than was the case twenty or even ten years ago; and the whole trend of educational movement in this matter is toward doing more even than it now does. In some cases schools have merely drifted into this social work, without definite aims and without conspicuously good results, just as some parents have drifted into acceptance of the situation, with little oversight and a comfortable shifting of responsibility. [Illustration: Games form an important part of the adolescent girl's life] When this sort of school and this sort of parent happen to be the joint guardians of a girl's social training, it usually happens that the girl discovers some things by a painful if not heartbreaking trial-and-error method, and other things she quite fails to discover at all. Most of all, she needs her mother at this time--a wise, interested, companionable mother, who knows much about what goes on at school parties and at school generally, but who never forces confidences and, indeed, who never needs to; an elder sister sort of mother, who helps. And she needs also teachers who supervise and chaperon social affairs with a full realization that social training is in progress and that lives are being made or marred. There are schools and there are mothers who look upon every phase of school life as contributing to the educative process, and these find in the social affairs of the school their opportunities to teach some vital lessons. Some schools are lengthening the free time between periods, merely for the purpose of adding to the informal social intercourse between pupils. Wise teachers as well as wise mothers will see that the social phase of school life, especially in the evening, is not overdone. Not only health but future usefulness and happiness suffer if the girl "goes out" so much that going out becomes the rule and staying at home the exception. It is not usually, however, the social affairs of the school alone which cause the girl to develop the habit of too many evenings away from home. It is the school party plus the church social, plus the moving pictures, plus the girls' club, plus the theater, plus choir practice, plus the informal evening at her chum's, plus a dozen other dissipations, that in the course of a few years change a quiet, home-loving little schoolgirl into a gadding, overwrought, uneasy woman. Unless one has tried it, it is perhaps hard to realize how difficult it is for an individual mother to regulate social custom in her community even for her own daughter without causing the girl unhappiness and possibly destroying her delight in her home. No girl enjoys leaving the party at ten when "the other girls" stay until twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman's club or the mothers' club or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may profitably discuss the question, and may set about the creation of the sentiment required. Quite as important as "How often shall she go?" is the question "With whom is she going?" There are two ways of approaching the problem here involved. One requires more knowledge for the girl herself, that she may better judge what constitutes a worthy companion. The other is reached by the better training of boys, that more of them may develop into the sort of young men with whom we may trust our daughters. Parents who take the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the boys in their daughter's social circle will find themselves better able to aid the girl in her choice of friends. The very best place for this getting acquainted is the girl's own home, to which, therefore, young people should often be informally invited. Nor should parents neglect occasional opportunities to observe their daughter's friends in other environment--at the church social or supper, at entertainments, at school, or on the street. Fortunately the revolt against a dual standard of purity for men and women holds promise of a larger proportion of clean, controlled, trustworthy boys. It will never be quite safe, however, to trust either our boys or our girls to resist instincts implanted by nature and restrained only by the artificial barriers of society, unless we keep their imaginations busy, and unless we implant ideals of conduct high enough to make them desire self-control for ends which seem beautiful and good to themselves. The adolescent period is especially favorable for the formation of ideals, and a high conception of love and marriage will probably prove the truest safeguard our boys and girls can have. The reading of the period is of special importance. At no other time of life will altruism, self-sacrifice, high ideals of honor and of love, make so strong an appeal as now. Adolescent reading must make the most of this fact. Some of the great love stories of literature and biography should be read, especially one or two which involve the putting aside of desire at the call of a higher motive. At least one story involving the world-old theme of the betrayed woman--_The Scarlet Letter_, perhaps, or _Adam Bede_--should be "required reading" for every adolescent girl, and should after reading be the subject of thoughtful and loving discussion by the girl and her mother in one of the confidential chats which should be frequent between them. Girls must learn from their mothers and teachers to distrust the boy who shows any inclination to take liberties, and they must also learn that girls, consciously or more often otherwise, daily put temptation in the way of boys who desire to do right, and invite liberties from the other sort. Restraint, in dress, in carriage, in manners, and in conversation, _must be made to seem right and desirable to the girl_, for her own sake and no less for the good of the other sex. This of course means that teachers must set fine examples before the girl in their own dress and deportment. To counteract the dangerous tendencies which have become intensified by the wholesale breaking of social customs during the war, it is necessary that parents and teachers give very careful attention to the dress of girls and to the demeanor of boys and girls of the adolescent period. Many teachers are improperly dressed and setting the wrong example. Many parents are dressing carelessly and sending their girls to high school improperly dressed. The boys are tempted--yes, are forced--to observe the bodies of their girl classmates, in study-rooms, halls, laboratories, and on playgrounds. These girls who are immodestly dressed are not only exposing themselves to danger and inviting familiarities, but are tempting the boys to go wrong. Many of the tragedies in our schools can be traced to this source. To handle this very serious and very difficult problem it is necessary that all mothers of high-school boys and girls organize and cooperate with principals and teachers. The task is gigantic, for the customs and suggestions which are responsible for present-day conditions are many and permeate our magazines, books, moving pictures, dances, and nearly all social gatherings. Many superintendents, teachers, and parents have been very seriously studying these social and moral problems and making plans to start reforms at once in the public schools. The most practical method thus far presented appears to be the requirement of uniform dress for all girls in the upper grades and in high school. This custom is already established in some of our best private schools. Uniform dress has a very democratic training which commends it. It is less expensive than the present varied styles. It is practical, for it avoids discrimination which would lead to many private difficulties. The girl has now reached the time when her bits of knowledge of sex matters, gained gradually since the first stirrings of curiosity in her little girlhood, should be gathered, summarized, and given practical application to the mature life she will soon enter upon. Thoughtful investigation does not lead to the conclusion that girls need especially a detailed physiological presentation of the subject so much as a study of the psychological aspects of the sex life. Personal purity is primarily a matter of mind. Girls who all their lives have been familiar with the mystery of birth, who at puberty have been instructed in the delicacy of the sexual organs and processes and in the care they must exercise to bring them to normal development, are now ready to be taught the vital necessity of subordinating the animal to the spiritual in the sex life. It may seem unwise and unnecessary to put before young girls so dark and distressing a subject as the social evil. Yet I know of no way to combat this evil without teaching all girls what must be avoided. When girls realize that the social evil 1. Rests upon a foundation of purely unrestrained animal instinct; 2. That a single sexual misstep has ruined thousands upon thousands of girls' lives; 3. That ignorance or the one misstep has led thousands to a permanent life of shame; 4. That such a life means, sooner or later, sorrow, impaired or destroyed health, disgrace, and early death to its woman victims; 5. That the social evil destroys the efficiency and the moral worth of men; 6. That it sets free deadly disease germs to permeate society, causing untold misery among the innocent, then, and not until then, can they be taught 1. To recognize and fear animal instinct unrestrained by higher motive; 2. To guard their own instincts; 3. To hold men to a high standard of social purity and to help them attain it. Nor does this teaching necessitate morbid consideration of the subject. It will, in fact, in many cases clear away the morbid curiosity and surreptitious seeking after information in which untaught girls indulge. Skillfully and delicately taught this knowledge as an important and serious part of woman's work, girls will be sweeter and more womanly for the knowledge of their responsibility to society and to their unborn offspring. Schools that attempt such a course for girls are finding their chief difficulty in discovering people properly endowed by nature and properly trained to teach it. To give such work into any but the wisest hands invites disaster. To make it a study of the physical basis of sexual life is disaster in itself. Service, through making one's self a pure member of society, and through helping others to keep the same standard--this must be the keynote of the teaching, an education toward social efficiency and social uplift. CHAPTER X THE GIRL'S WORK The adolescent girl, already the product of a general training which has aimed at all-round development of body, mind, and spirit, is now ready for the specializing which shall place her in tune with the world of industry and help her to make for herself a permanent and useful place in society. Henceforward the girl's training must face her double possibilities. She must not be allowed to have an eye single to making an industrial place for herself; nor can those who educate her fail to see the double work she must do. Any consideration of the subject of girls' work outside the home or work in the home for financial return must begin with a general survey of the field of industry, discovering what women have done and are doing, together with the effects of gainful occupation upon the character and efficiency of women. The United States Census reports for 1910 give the following figures: Number of Females Ten Years and Over Year Engaged in Gainful Occupations 1880 2,647,157 1890 4,005,532 1900 5,319,397 1910 8,075,772 It is thus seen that gainful occupations for women have increased greatly in the thirty years covered by the report. At present 21.2 per cent of all females, or 23.4 of all over ten years of age, are engaged in work for wages. Further tabulation brings out the fact that, whereas the age period from twenty-one to forty-four shows the largest percentage of men employed in gainful work, women show the largest proportion of their numbers so employed during the age period from sixteen to twenty. Evidently the girls are at work. The figures follow: MALES TEN YEARS AND OVER FEMALES TEN YEARS AND OVER Age Period Per Cent Age Period Per Cent 10-13 16.6 10-13 8.0 14-15 41.4 14-15 19.8 16-20 79.2 16-20 39.9 21-44 96.7 21-44 26.3 45 and over 85.9 45 and over 15.7 Compare with these figures the following table: AGES AT WHICH WOMEN MARRY[7] 11.2 per cent, or 1/9, of all women marry before 20 47.3 " " " 1/2 " " " " " 25 72.4 " " " 3/4 " " " " " 30 83.3 " " " 5/6 " " " " " 35 88.8 " " " 8/9 " " " " " 45 92.1 " " " 11/12 " " " " " 55 93.3 " " " 14/15 " " " " " 65 93.8 " " " 15/16 " " " " " 100 It will be observed that since the percentage of women at work decreases after twenty, the number of women who marry and presumably become homemakers is very largely increased. These figures would seem to indicate that girls go to work early, that as yet industry does not largely prevent marriage, and that marriage does in many or most cases stop women's industrial careers. Inquiry as to what women are doing in the industrial world elicits important facts. It would seem that Olive Schreiner's "For the present we take all labor for our province" is very nearly a bare statement of attested fact. The Census report includes 509 closely classified occupations. Women are found in all but 43. Even allowing for the inaccuracy of such figures, and passing over the occupations which take in only an occasional woman, it is seen that "woman's sphere" can no longer be arbitrarily defined. The following facts and figures for women give us food for thought: Farm laborers (working out) 337,522 Iron and steel industries 29,182 Chemical industries 15,577 Clay, glass, and stone industries 11,849 Electrical supply factories 11,041 Lumber and furniture industries 17,214 Steam railroad laborers 3,248 [Illustration: Photograph by C. Park Pressey The 1910 Census showed over three hundred and thirty thousand women employed as farm laborers. This number did not include wives or daughters of farm-owners] The foregoing facts concern occupations which were once associated entirely with men. If we enter the ranks of more womanly work we shall find: Dressmakers 447,760 Milliners 122,070 Sewers and sewing-machine operators 231,106 Telephone operators 88,262 Nurses 187,420 Clerks and saleswomen in stores 362,081 Stenographers and typists 263,315 Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants 187,155 Cooks 333,436 Laundresses (not in laundries) 520,004 Teachers 478,027 These are of course merely a few among the four hundred and fifty kinds of work in which women are found. Any survey of women's work comes close to a general survey of industry. We shall find that in some occupations the proportion of men is much larger than that of women. In others women have made rapid strides. The accompanying diagram shows that in professional service, in domestic and personal service, and in clerical occupations women are found in largest numbers. In domestic and personal service the women outnumber the men more than two to one. In professional service there are four women to five men, a large proportion of the women being teachers. In the clerical occupations we have one woman to each two men, in manufacturing one woman to six men, in agriculture one woman to seven men, and in trade one to eight. The occupations for women have been changed somewhat by the new industrial conditions forced upon us by the war, but it is very probable that in a few years the industrial world will return to its normal status before the war for both men and women. [Illustration: Proportions of men and women in the United States engaged in special occupations] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Farmerettes. During the World War women at home and abroad rendered especially valuable services in agricultural work] If it is true that women are claiming and will continue to claim "all labor" for their province, the claim must rest upon one of two assumptions: Either women are physically, mentally, and morally identical in their capabilities with men, or differences in physical, mental, and moral make-up must be considered as not affecting work. Most of us are not yet ready to agree to either of these premises. We must therefore believe that some occupations are more suitable for one sex than for the other. The fact is, however, that only a small group of radical thinkers have made the opposite claim. Women are found, it is true, in a large number of the occupations in which men are found. But they are there for some other reason than that they claim all labor as their sphere. Some are driven by the stern necessity of doing whatever work is at hand; some by ignorance of their unfitness, or of the unfitness of the work for them; some by the spirit of the age which says, "Come, be free. Try these things that men do. See if they suit you. Find your sphere." Probably, however, this last reason for entering unsuitable occupations is the one least often underlying the choice. Girls select vocations in the main as boys do. Until very lately chance has been the ruling element far oftener than anything else. Studies in industry are now for the first time giving us adequate information as to requirements for efficiency, working conditions, wages, living possibilities, and the effects, moral and physical, of various occupations upon both men and women. The problems arising out of the crossing and recrossing of these various elements are as yet but vaguely understood. The great gain lies in the fact that their solution is being sought. The community is of necessity interested in workingwomen as it is in workingmen. Without these workers the community does not exist. When they are ill-paid, overworked, underfed, discontented, or inefficient, the community necessarily suffers. When they work under proper conditions, the community shares their prosperity. It is thus coming to be seen that the condition of workers is the concern of all the members of the community. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Factory workers. Sewers and sewing-machine operators to the number of over 230,000, according to the 1919 Census, are employed in the United States] In the case of the woman worker, however, and especially of the young woman worker, the community has a further interest because of the service that women render as the mothers of the next and indeed of all future generations. If, then, it is shown that women are physically unfit for certain occupations that men may follow with safety, it becomes the business of the community to protect women, even against themselves if necessary, and to deter them from entering such lines of work. The community must make use of various agencies in bringing about the proper relations between women and their work. It may use legislation, thereby securing, for example, factory inspectors to improve the sanitary and moral conditions in the places where women and girls are employed. It may use the school, the library, and various civic improvement forces to inform both girls and their parents as to conditions under which girls should work. It may employ vocational guides to make proper connections between women and their work. For all these agencies to do satisfactory work, the first requisite is knowledge of conditions. This means skillful work upon a vast and rapidly increasing body of facts, and wide dissemination of the results of such work. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Unemployed utilizing their spare time to make themselves more efficient. The community may make use of the schools for such purposes] We may not stop here to consider what legislatures have done and are doing to improve conditions, other than to mention that the number of hours that women may work is restricted in some states, as is night work, and that a minimum wage is required in some. Our question, however, is not so much what is forbidden women in the way of work, as what women and girls will choose to do of the work which is not forbidden. Facts as to what women are doing concern us mainly as material from which to deduce information of value to the girls who have not yet chosen. A serious obstacle to wise choice on the part of young girls who are pushing into industrial occupations is the uncertainty of their continuing as workers outside the home. The average length of the girl's industrial life is computed to be only about five years. She enters upon work at an age when it is often impossible to tell whether she will marry or remain single. She is usually unable to know whether or not she will desire to marry. The great majority of girls have therefore no stable conditions upon which to build a choice. The work girls choose and their instability in the work they enter upon are direct results of these unstable conditions. Many girls feel the need of little or no training, and apply for any work obtainable, merely because they anticipate that their industrial career will soon be over. A government report on the condition of woman and girl wage-earners in the United States gives the following facts concerning 1,391 women working in stores: Average length of service 5.17 years Average wage: First year $4.69 per week Second year 5.28 " " Tenth year 9.81 " " Among 3,421 factory women investigated: Average length of service 4.46 years Average wage: First year $4.62 per week Second year 5.34 " " Tenth year 8.48 " " These stores and factories were presumably filled by girls who seized the most available source of a weekly wage regardless of all but the pay envelope. Few of them remained more than five years, and those who did remain did not receive adequate increase in their pay by the tenth year for workers of ten years' experience. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A cotton-mill worker. Unfortunately in the factories girls are too often influenced by the pay envelope rather than by any special fitness for the work they are to do] The whole industrial situation as it concerns women would indicate that women even more than men show lack of discrimination in seeking to place themselves, and that the sources of information for them have been few if not entirely lacking. Happily these conditions are changing. We have now to teach girls to avail themselves of the information and the guidance at hand and to learn to discriminate in their choice of work. Girls must realize that unskillful, mechanical work, done always with a mental reservation that it is merely a temporary expedient, keeps women's wages low, destroys confidence in female capacity, and has definite bearing not only on the individual woman's earning capacity, but on her character as well. Girls must learn to choose in such a way that their work may be an opening into a life career or may be an enlightening prelude to marriage and the making of a home. Some of the women who uphold the doctrine of equality between the sexes make the mistake of thinking and of teaching that there can be no equality without identical work. They take the attitude that unless women do all the sorts of work that men do, they are unjustly deprived of their rights. Our contention is rather that women have higher rights than that of identical work with men. They, above all other workers, should have the right of intelligent choice of work which they can do to the advantage of themselves, their offspring, and the community. Such a choice will ignore the question of sex as a drawback, accepting it, on the other hand, merely as a condition which, like other conditions, complicates but does not necessarily hamper choice. No girl need feel hampered by her sex because she chooses not to do work which fails either to utilize her peculiar gifts or to lead in what seems to her a profitable direction. No girl should feel that her industrial experience, however short, has nothing to contribute to the home life of which she dreams. No girl need waste the knowledge and skill gained in industrial life when she abandons gainful occupation for the home. Homemaking education, with industrial experience, ought to make the ideal preparation for life work. This, however, can be true only when the girl's industrial experience is of the right sort. Girls must therefore be led to choose the developing occupation. It is a part of the world's economy to lead them to this choice. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: From Puffer, _Vocational Guidance_, based on Census figures.] CHAPTER XI THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS It is well at the outset to recognize that vocation choosing is at best a complicated matter which, to be successfully carried out, demands not only much information, but information from different viewpoints. It is not enough to insure a living, even a good living, in the work a girl chooses. We must take into consideration the girl's effect upon society as a teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker; and no less, in view of her evident destiny as mother of the race, must we consider society's effect upon her, as it finds her in the place she has chosen. In other words, will she serve society to the best of her ability, and will her service fit her to be a better homemaker than she would have been had no vocation outside the home intervened between her school training and her final settling in a home of her own making? This double question must find answer in consideration of vocations from each of several viewpoints. We may classify occupations open to girls (1) from the standpoint of the girl's fitness, physical and psychological; (2) from the standpoint of industrial conditions, the sanitary, mental, and moral atmosphere, and the rewards obtainable; (3) as factors increasing, decreasing, or not affecting the girl's possible home efficiency or the likelihood of taking up home life; (4) from the standpoint of the girl's education; (5) from the standpoint of service to society. Our first classification concerns the girl's fitness for this or that work. The everyday work of the world in which our girls are to find a part may be separated into three fairly well-marked classes: making things, distributing things, and service. The first question we must ask concerning a girl desirous of finding work is, then: Toward which of these classes does her natural ability and therefore probably her inclination tend? Natural handworkers make poor saleswomen; natural traders or saleswomen are likely to be uninterested and ineffective handworkers. The girl whose interests are all centered in people must not be condemned to spend her life in the production of things; nor, as is far more common, must the girl who can make things, and enjoys making them, spend her life in merely handling the things other people have made, as she strives to make connection between these things and the people who want them. Then there is the girl who is efficient and who finds her pleasure in "doing things for people." Service--and we must remember that service is a wide term, and that no stigma should attach to the class of workers which includes the teacher, the physician, and the minister--is clearly the direction in which such a girl's vocational ambition should be turned. It would be idle to assert that all women are suited to marriage, motherhood, and domestic life, although there is little doubt that early training may develop in some a suitability which would otherwise remain unsuspected. When, however, early training fails to bring out any inclination toward these things, we may well consider seriously before we exert the weight of our influence toward them. Home-mindedness shows itself in many ways, and it should have been a matter of observation years before the girl faces the choice of a vocation. It is usually of little avail to attempt to turn the attention of the girl who is definitely not thus minded toward the domestic life. On the other hand, the girl who is naturally so minded will respond readily to suggestions leading toward the occupations which require and appeal to her domestic nature. The great majority of girls, however, are not definitely conscious of either home-mindedness or the opposite. They are in fact not yet definitely cognizant of any natural bent. It is these girls who are especially open to the influence of environment, of what may prove temporary inclination, or of false notions of the advantage of certain occupations in choosing a life work. These are the girls, too, who are likely to drift into marriage as they are likely to drift into any other occupation, and whose previous vocation may have added to or perfected their homemaking training or, on the other hand, may have developed in them habits and traits which will effectually kill their usefulness in the home life. These, then, are the girls who are most of all in need of wise assistance in choosing that which may prove to be a temporary vocation or may become a life work. The temporary idea must be combated vigorously in the girl's mind. Many an unwise choice would have been avoided had the girl really faced the possibility of making the work she undertook a life work. The temporary idea makes inefficient workers and discontented women. There is in most cases, especially among the fairly well-to-do, no dearth of assistance offered to the young girl in making her choice. Much of the advice, unfortunately, is not based on real knowledge either of vocations or of the girl. Knowledge is absolutely necessary to successful judgment in this delicate matter. From a large number of letters written by high-school girls let me quote the following typical answers to the question: Why have you chosen the vocation for which you are preparing? "Ever since I could walk my uncle has been making plans for me in music." "My first ambition was to be a stenographer, but my father objected. My father's choice was for me to be a teacher, and before long it was mine too." "My ambition until my Junior year in High School was to be a teacher. From that time until now my ambition is to be a good stenographer. My reason for changing is due partly to my friends and parents. My parents do not want me to be a teacher, as they consider it too hard a life." "I have been greatly influenced by my teacher, who thinks I have a chance [as a dramatic art teacher]. I am willing to take her word for it.". "Mother says it is a very ladylike occupation" [stenography]. "My music instructor wishes for me to become a concert player, or at least a good music teacher, and I now think I wish the same." These answers all show the customary ease of throwing out advice, and also the undue significance attached by girls to these probably inexpert opinions. Parents often fail in their attempts to launch their children successfully. Sometimes they attempt unwisely to thrust a child into an occupation merely because "it is ladylike," or the "vacation is long," or "the pay is good," regardless of the child's aptitude or limitations. Quite often they await inspiration in the form of some revelation of the child's desires, regardless of the demand of society for such service as the child may elect to supply or the effect of the vocation upon the child's health or character. Undue sacrifice on the part of parents has without question swelled the ranks of mediocre physicians and lawyers and clergymen. It has doubtless produced thousands of teachers who cannot teach, nurses who are quite unsuited to the sick-room, and office workers who have not the rudiments of business ability. It would seem that truly successful guidance in a girl's search for a vocation can come, like much of her training, only from wise coöperation of school and home. Teacher and parent see the girl from different angles. Their combined judgment will consequently have double value. As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care, with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts. The record should cover: 1. _Physical characteristics_: Height; weight; lung capacity; sight; hearing; condition of nasal passages; condition of teeth; bodily strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness. 2. _Health history_: Time lost from school by illness; school work as affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation; any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect health and therefore vocational possibilities. 3. _Mental characteristics_: The quality of school work; studious or active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide; studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences, if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis of life work. 4. _Moral characteristics_: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact; combativeness; leader or follower. 5. _Heredity_: Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these, with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special abilities in family noted. 6. _Vocational ambitions_. 7. _Family resources for special training_. Without some such record as this--and it need scarcely be said that the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special needs--teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly equipped for giving advice as to the girl's future. And yet it is common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the future to which they may lead. "You certainly ought to go on the stage," chorus the admiring friends of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class. And sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a worth-while actress. "Why don't you study art?" say the friends of another girl; or, "You like to take care of sick people. Why don't you train for nursing?" or, "You're so fond of books. I should think you would be a librarian"--quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose her vocation from the great outdoors. Knowledge of the girl must, however, be supplemented by a wide knowledge of vocations to be of real value to the teacher or parent who is preparing to give vocational counsel. Final choice may be reached only after the girl and the vocation are brought into comparative scrutiny, and their mutual fitness determined. In rare cases the choice may be made by the swift process of observing a great talent which, in the absence of serious objections, must govern the life work. Oftener the process is one of elimination, or of building up from a general foundation of the girl's abilities and limitations, and her possibilities for training sufficient to make her an efficient worker in the line chosen. A knowledge of vocations presupposes, first of all, a grasp of the essentials of the work, and hence the characteristics required in the worker to perform it. What sort of girl is needed to make an efficient teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker? How may we recognize this potential teacher without resorting to a clumsy, time-wasting, trial-and-error method? These are matters with which schools and vocational guides all over the country are occupying themselves. Perhaps we cannot do better than to examine somewhat these requirements for some occupations toward which girls most often incline. THE PRODUCING GROUP The girl who is by nature a maker of things may be a factory worker, a needlewoman, a baker, a poultry farmer, a milliner, a photographer, or an artist with brush or with voice, or in dramatic work. She is still one who makes things. We see at once how wide a range of industry may open to her. How shall we know this type of girl? First of all, by her interest in things rather than in people. With the exception of, the singer and the dramatic artist, whose production is of an intangible sort, the girl who makes things is a handworker by choice. The extent to which her handwork is touched by the imaginative instinct of course measures the distance that she may make her way up the ladder of productive work. The girl's school record will usually show her best work with concrete materials. She draws or sews well, has excellent results in the cooking class, works well in the laboratory. At home she finds enjoyment in "making things" of one sort or another. She displays ingenuity, perhaps, in meeting constructive problems. If so, that must be considered in finding her place. Handwork for women includes a wide range of occupations. Let us now examine some of these kinds of work. [Illustration: _In the packing room of a wholesale house. The untrained girl finds it easy to obtain factory work_] _Factory work._ This term covers many departments of manufacturing industries. In the main, however, they may be classed together, since in practically all of them the worker contributes only one small portion of the work incidental to the making of candy, or artificial flowers, or coats, or pickles, or shoes, or corsets, or underwear, or anyone of a hundred different products, some one or several of which may be found in nearly every American town. The great advantage of factory work, as the untrained girl sees it, is that it is usually easy to obtain and that it promises some return even from the start. Hence a large proportion of untrained girls who leave school as soon as the law allows enter the factories near their homes. The great disadvantages of factory work, laying aside for a moment many minor disadvantages, are that it not only requires no skill in the beginner, but that it produces little if any skill even with years of work and offers practically no advancement for a large proportion of the workers. It should therefore, be reserved for girls of less keen intelligence, and other girls should if possible be guided toward other occupations. Teachers must make themselves thoroughly familiar with working conditions in local factories, since there will always be girls who, because of their own limitations or the limitations of their environment, will find themselves obliged to take up factory work. Under the teacher's guidance girls should make definite studies and prepare detailed reports of local conditions with respect to working hours, character of work, wages, possible advancement, dangers to health, moral conditions, advantages over other occupations open to girls with no more training, and disadvantages. Girls should at least go into factory work with their eyes open, that they may pass their days in the best surroundings available. _Dressmaking_. The possibilities for the girl entering upon work connected with dressmaking with the ultimate object of becoming a dressmaker herself are far wider than in the case of the machine worker in shop or factory. The immediate return for the untrained girl is far less, but the farsighted girl must learn to look beyond the immediate present. Not all girls, however, will make good dressmakers. Not all, even of the producing type of girl, will do so. Certain definite qualities are required. The girl who would succeed as a dressmaker must possess ingenuity, imagination, and the visualizing type of mind. She must see the end from the beginning, and must be able to find the way to produce that which she visualizes. She must be a keen observer. She must have confidence in her own power to create. She must possess manual dexterity, artistic ideas, and, if she aims at a business of her own, a pleasing personality and keen business sense. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A millinery class. Millinery requires of the girl a certain degree of creative ability] _Millinery_. Millinery requires in its workers the same general type of mind required for dressmaking, and in addition a certain millinery faculty or creative ability. The girl who can make and trim hats usually discovers her own talent fairly early in life. _Arts and crafts._ This somewhat elastic term we use to include a wide range of occupations which have to do with articles of use or ornament which are handmade and which require skill in designing or in carrying out designs. Embroidery, lace making, rug and tapestry weaving, basketry, china painting, wood and leather work, handwork in metals, bookbinding, and the designing and painting of cards for various occasions are familiar examples of this kind of work. Photography, map making, designing of wall paper and fabrics, costume designing and illustrating, making of signs, placards, diagrams, working drawings, advertising illustrations, book and magazine illustrating, landscape gardening and architecture, interior decorating, are other lines offering work to men and women alike. The range of work here is no greater than the range of qualities which may be happily and usefully employed in arts and crafts. All branches of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of artistic sense and deftness of manual touch. An accurate, observant eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive habit of mind make the foundation of success. In some lines a fine sense of color values must underlie good work, in others the ability to draw easily. All work of this sort requires the ability to do careful, painstaking, and persevering work. Given this ability and the artistic sense before mentioned, the girl's work may be determined by some special talent, by the special training possible for her, or by the openings possible in her chosen line of work within comparatively easy access. [Illustration: Photograph by C. Park Pressey A youthful farmer. The Census figures for the year 1910 report one-fifth of all women employed in gainful occupations as engaged in the pursuit of agriculture and animal husbandry] _Agriculture._ The Census figures which report one-fifth of all women gainfully employed as engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry are somewhat startling until we observe that southern negro women make up a very large number of the farm workers reported. Even aside from these, however, there are many women who are finding work in gardening, poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, and the like. The girl who is fitted to take up work of this sort is usually the girl who has grown up on the farm or at least in the country and who has a sympathy with growing things. She is essentially the "outdoor girl." She must be willing to study the science of making things grow. She must be able to keep accounts, that she may know what she is doing and what her profits are. Above all, she must have no false pride about "dirty work." Properly such a girl should have entered upon her career even before she has finished her formal education, so that "going to work" means merely enlarging her work to occupy her time more fully and to bring in as soon as possible a living income. In this sort of work the girl possessing initiative and an independent spirit will naturally do best, since there are comparatively few opportunities for such work under supervision. Care must, however, be exercised by vocational guides in suggesting, and by girls in choosing, the independent career. Usually it is the girl who has shown promise in independent work at school or at home that will make a success of such work later in life. The girl who relaxes when the pressure of compulsion is removed will not be a success as "her own boss." It goes without saying that the girl who does well as her own superior officer will be happier to do work upon her own initiative than merely to carry out the plans made by others. Agricultural work will sometimes offer her exactly the conditions she desires. Many successful farm-owners are women, and their work compares favorably with that of men. _Food production_. It is common, in these days, to meet the assertion that the preparation of food, once woman's undisputed work, has been almost if not quite removed from her hands; and that, even where she may still contribute to this work, she must do so in the factory, the bakery, the packing house, or the delicatessen shop. There are, nevertheless, still many women who are fitted for cooking and kindred pursuits who will not find an outlet for their abilities in any of the places mentioned. In the main, factory production of food is like factory production of other things--a highly differentiated process, in which the individual worker finds little satisfaction for her desire to "make things" and little, if any, opportunity to contribute from her ability to the final result. In the canning factory she may sit all day before an ever-moving procession of beans or peas, from which she removes any unsuitable for cooking. Or it may be an endless procession of cans, upon which she rapidly lays covers as they pass. In the pickle factory she may pack tiny cucumbers into bottles. In the packing house she may perform the task of painting cans. None of these occupations is more than mere unskilled labor. None is suitable for the girl who likes to cook, and who can cook. The number of such girls is already fairly large and will undoubtedly increase as the domestic science classes of our schools do more and better work. [Illustration: An up-to-date factory. In the factory the work is necessarily routine, and the individual worker finds very little satisfaction for her desire to make things] Opposed to the theoretical statement that food is or at least to-morrow will be prepared entirely in the public-utility plants outside the home is the practical fact that home-cooked food, home-preserved fruits and jellies, and home-canned vegetables and meats find ready sale and that women who can produce these things do find it profitable to do so. There is, consequently, a field for some girls in such work. [Illustration: Cooking class at Benson Polytechnic School for Girls, Portland, Oregon. In spite of the statement that foods will be prepared in the public utility plants, the trained, accurate worker may find a ready sale for home-cooked foods] Not all girls, on the other hand, who have taken the domestic science course are fitted to take up this work, even if a market could be found for their work. Only the expert, that is, the precise, accurate, painstaking cook, can secure uniform results day after day. Only the rapid worker can do enough to insure pay for her time. Only the girl with a keen sense of taste can properly judge results and devise successful combinations. Only a business woman can buy to advantage and compute ratios of expense and return. This combination, of course, is not to be found every day. THE DISTRIBUTING GROUP _Salesmanship_. Passing from the class of work which has to do with making things to that group of occupations which has to do with the distribution of various products to the consumer, we shall naturally consider, first of all, the saleswoman. In any given group of young and untrained girls drawn as in our schools from varying environment and heredity, the _natural_ saleswomen will probably be in the minority. I do not mean that girls may not often express a desire to "work in a store" as apparently the easiest and most immediate employment for the untrained girl. This may or may not indicate that the girl has a commercial mind. The girl who is really interested in commercial undertakings is easily distinguished from her fellow workers in any salesroom. She is not the girl who lingers in conversation with the girl next to her while a customer waits, or who gazes indifferently over the customer's head while the latter makes her choice from the goods laid before her. To the real saleswoman every customer is a possibility, every sale a victory, and every failure to sell distinctly a defeat. The fact that we see so few girls and women of this type behind the counters in our shopping centers is sufficient indication that many girls would have been better placed in other occupations. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Hardware section of a department store. Salesmanship offers large opportunities to the real saleswoman, who considers every customer a possibility] We find, however, in 1910, the number of saleswomen reported as 257,720, together with 111,594 "clerks" in stores, many of whom the report states are "evidently saleswomen" under another name. There are also about 4,000 female proprietors, officials, managers, and floorwalkers in stores, and 2,000 commercial travelers. This gives us a large number of women who are engaged in the sale of goods. For the girl of the commercial mind, salesmanship in some form presents certain possibilities, although there is far less chance for her to rise in this work than for a boy. She must begin at the most rudimentary work, as cash or errand girl, and her progress will necessarily be slow. She will require an ability to handle with some skill elementary forms of arithmetic, an alert and observing mind, an interest in and some knowledge of human nature, and good health to endure the confinement of the long day. She will be fortunate if she finds a place in one of the stores in which a continuation school is conducted. At such a school in Altman's department store in New York the girls pursue a regular course designed to be especially helpful in their work, and are graduated with all due formality, in which both public-school and store officials take part. Such a school helps girls to feel a pride in their work and to feel that they are under observation by those who will recognize and reward real endeavor. Filene's in Boston and Wanamaker's in New York and Philadelphia are other notable examples of such schools. In a government report previously quoted we find interesting figures as to the possibility of advancement for the saleswoman. In a study of twenty-six of the largest department stores in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, employing more than 35,000 women, the workers were classed as follows: Per Cent Cash girls, messengers, bundle girls, etc 13.2 Saleswomen 46.2 Buyers and assistant buyers 1.2 Office and other employees 39.4 "It will be seen," adds the report, "that the opportunity for reaching the coveted position of buyer or assistant buyer is small." The disadvantages and dangers of salesmanship for girls, other than small pay and improbability of much advancement, we shall consider in a later chapter. We may say here, however, that these disadvantages and dangers, for the really commercially minded girl, are to a certain extent neutralized by her nature and possibilities. She is the girl whose mind is more or less concentrated on "the selling game." Her nerves are less worn because of a certain exhilaration in her work. She is the girl who passes beyond the underpaid stage and is able to live decently and to rise to a position of some responsibility, partly because of her concentration and partly because she has been able to resist the influences about her which make for mediocrity or worse. _Office work_. The girl emerging from high school and looking for work is usually on the lookout for what in a boy we call a "white-collar job." Especially in the case where the girl has been kept in school at more or less sacrifice on the part of her parents, both they and the girl feel that the extra years of schooling entitle her to a "high-class" occupation of some kind. Girls are far less willing than boys to "begin at the bottom" and work up through the various stages of apprenticeship to ultimate positions near the top. They resent being asked to take the "overall" job and fear mightily to soil their hands. [Illustration: Office girls at work. The successful office worker must be neat and accurate and have a temperament in which pleasure in arrangement takes precedence over joy in production] Twenty-five years ago a large proportion of high-school graduates went at once into the teaching force, where they succeeded (or not) in "learning to do by doing," without professional training of any sort. Now, however, teaching as a profession is in many places fortunately reserved for the girls who prepare in college or normal school; and a larger proportion of girls who cannot have this professional training are looking for other occupations. Office work attracts a large number, and, with present-day business courses in high schools, many girls find employment as stenographers, typists, cashiers in small establishments, bookkeepers, or general office assistants. In any of these positions girls without special training or experience must begin at very low wages. Whether they rise to higher ones depends to some extent at least upon the girls themselves. What sort of girl shall we encourage to enter office work? Not the girl whose talent lies in making things, for to her the routine of the office will be a weary and endless treadmill entirely barren of results; nor the girl who requires the stimulus of people to keep her alert and keyed to her best work; nor the girl who cannot be happy at indoor work. Office work seems to require a temperament in which pleasure in arrangement takes precedence over joy in production; in which neatness, accuracy, and precision afford satisfaction even in monotonous tasks. Coupled with these a mathematical bent gives us the cashier or accountant or bookkeeper; mental alertness and manual dexterity, the stenographer; a talent for organization, the secretary. Girls who enter upon office work directly from high school must be content with rudimentary tasks and must beware lest they remain at a low level in the office force. Girls with more training may begin somewhat farther up, the best positions usually going to those whose general education and equipment are greatest. Stenographers are more valuable in proportion as their knowledge of spelling, sentence formation, and letter writing is reinforced by a feeling for good English and an ability to relieve their superiors of details in outlining correspondence. It is not enough that bookkeepers know one or several systems of keeping business records, or that cashiers manipulate figures rapidly and well. More important than these fundamental requirements is the determination to grasp the details of the business as conducted in the office in which they find themselves and to adapt their work to the needs of the person whose work they do. General knowledge and the ability to think not only supplement, but easily become more valuable than, technical training. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. The successful secretary must have a talent for organization] A careful study of local conditions as they affect office positions will enable girls and their guides to have a better conception of requirements and rewards in this field. A valuable study of conditions among office girls in Cleveland has recently been published which sheds considerable light on the ultimate industrial fate of the overyoung and poorly trained office worker. A more general study is found in the volume on _Women in Office Service_ issued by the Women's Educational Union of Boston. THE SERVICE GROUP The third, or service, group of workingwomen covers without doubt the widest range of all. Here we find the domestic helper (or servant, as she has usually been called), the telephone operator, the librarian, the teacher, the nurse, the physician, the lawyer, the social worker, the clergyman or minister. All degrees of training are represented, and many varieties of work, from the simplest to the most complex. Strictly speaking, service has to do with personal attendance and help, but it is constantly overlapping other lines of work. The household assistant is not only a helper, but at times a producer; the telephone operator and the librarian are distributors as well as public helpers; the secretary is an office worker, although she is a personal assistant to her employer as well. For successful work in any of these lines, however, a girl must possess certain definite characteristics, to which her peculiar talent or tendency may give the determining direction as she chooses her work. In service of any sort the girl is brought into constant relation with people. Hence she must be the sort of girl to whom people and not things are the chief interest of life. She should have an agreeable personality, that she may give pleasure with her service; she needs tact, that she may keep the atmosphere about her unruffled; she needs to find pleasure for herself in service, seeing always the end rather than merely the often wearisome details of work. Beyond these general qualities we must begin at once to make subdivisions, since the additional traits necessary to make a girl successful in one line of service differ often widely from those required in any other line. We must therefore take up some of the lines of work in more or less detail. _Domestic work_. The untrained girl who naturally falls into the service group has a rather poor outlook for congenial and successful work as conditions exist. With ability which she perhaps does not possess, and with training which she cannot afford, she would naturally become a teacher, a nurse, a private secretary, a librarian, or a social worker. Without training, she finds little except domestic service open to her; and domestic service finds little favor with girls, or with students of vocational possibilities for girls. These are unfortunate facts. For the untrained girl of merely average abilities, with no pronounced talent or inclination, but with an interest in persons and a pleasure in doing things for people, helping in the tasks of homemaking ought to prove suitable work. It is, however, the one vocation for the untrained girl which requires her to live in the home of her employer, thus curtailing her independence, rendering her hours of work long and uncertain, and cutting off the natural social environment possible if she returned to her own home at the end of the day's work. The social position of girls in domestic service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a self-respecting girl to bear. It is in large part a reflection upon her sacrifice of independence. The derisive slang term "slavey" expresses the generally prevalent public contempt. It is small wonder that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings than most noisy, ill-smelling factories. Almost all the conditions surrounding the domestic worker are such that it is practically impossible to say except of each place considered by itself whether or not it is a suitable and desirable place for a girl, or whether work and wages are fair. Practically no progress has been made in standardizing household work. The factory girl knows what she is to do and when she is to do it and how long her day is to be. The housework girl seldom knows any of these things with any degree of certainty. Any plan which will make it possible to regulate these matters according to some recognized standard, and which will enable domestic workers to live at home, going to and from their work at regular hours as shop, factory, and office employees do, will help very materially to solve the problem of opening another desirable vocation to the untrained girl. The untrained girl who is willing to accept a difficult and trying position in a private kitchen with the idea of making her work serve her as a training school for better work in the future may make a success of her life after all. Such a girl will have good observing powers and ability to follow directions and gauge the success of results. She will have adaptability, patience, and a very definite ambition. For domestic service may be a stepping stone. For the high-school girl a better opening may sometimes be found as a mother's helper. Many women who find the ordinary household helper unsatisfactory give employment to girls of refinement and high-school training who are capable of assisting either with household tasks or with the care of children. Girls in such positions are usually made "one of the family," and are sometimes very happily situated. Their earnings are often more than those of other girls of their intelligence and training who are in offices or stores; but there is of course little chance of advancement, and there is still the prejudice against domestic work to be reckoned with. Here, as with household assistants, the greatest drawback is probably lack of standardization of work and of working conditions. The girl who wishes to become a "mother's helper" must have a natural refinement and some knowledge of social usage if she is to be a sharer in the family life of her employer. She must use excellent English, must know how to dress quietly and suitably, and must not only _know how_ to keep herself in the background of family life, but must be _willing_ to remain somewhat in the shadows. Probably no better field for the investigation of these trying questions could be found than the high school. The ranks of employers of domestic help are being constantly recruited from the girls who were the high-school students of yesterday and have now taken their places as housekeepers. The high school then, where the problem may be approached in an impersonal manner quite impossible later when the question has become a personal one, is the proper place in which to study the domestic service question and to attempt its standardization. The higher positions involving domestic work are more in the nature of supervisory employment. Many women are employed as matrons in hospitals, boarding schools, and other institutions, as housekeepers in hotels, club buildings, or in large private establishments. These positions of course call for women who are not only thoroughly familiar with the work to be done, but are skilled in managing their subordinates who do the actual work. They require women who have administrative ability, knowledge of keeping accounts, proper standards of living and of service, and initiative. For the woman who has a desire to enter business for herself there are openings in the line of domestic work. From time immemorial women have managed lodging and boarding houses, sometimes with good returns. They are also the owners and managers of tea rooms, restaurants, laundries, dyeing and cleaning establishments, hairdressing and manicure shops, and day nurseries. All these occupations can be followed successfully only by the woman of business ability and some technical knowledge. They require not only knowledge but aptitude on the part of the worker. They are usually undertaken only by women of some experience, and are the result of some earlier choice rather than the choice of the vocation-seeking girl. [Illustration: The true teacher represents a high type of social worker] _Teaching_. The teacher differs from the person who has merely an interest in human kind in the abstract, because she has a special interest in one particular class of human beings--those who are most distinctly in the process of making. She is interested in children, or she should not be teaching. This, however, is not enough. The girl who wishes to teach must possess certain well-defined characteristics. Her health must be good, and her nerve force stable. Temperamentally she must be enthusiastic and optimistic, but capable of sustained effort even in the face of apparent failure. Her outlook must be broad, and her patience unfailing. Intellectually she must be a student, and if she possess considerable initiative and originality in her study, so much the better. She must not, however, become a student of mathematics or history or languages to the exclusion of the more absorbing study of her pupils, nor even to so great a degree as she studies them. The true teacher represents a high type of social worker. Many girls enter upon the work of teaching badly handicapped by the lack of some of these essential qualities and are in consequence never able to rise to real understanding and accomplishment of their work. Teaching in these days is a broad vocation, covering many different lines of work; probably no occupation for girls is so well known with both its conditions and rewards as this. In general, more girls than are by nature fitted for the work stand ready to undertake it. There is nevertheless difficulty for school officials in finding real teachers enough to fill their positions. For the right girl, teaching has much to offer. _Library work_. The librarian in these modern days is a most important public servant, and many openings in library work are to be found. The services to be performed range from purely routine work to a very high type of constructive service for the community. In the small libraries an "all-round" type of worker is required. In the larger ones specialties may be followed. In these larger libraries there are to be found permanent places for the routine workers. In smaller ones each worker should be in line for even the highest type of constructive work. The routine worker in the library is merely an office worker, and the same girl who would do well at the mechanical tasks of an office will do well here. The real librarian is of a different sort. She must have the neatness, precision, and accuracy of the office worker, to be sure; but to these she must add a broad conception of the place of the library in the community, and must display initiative and originality in bringing it to occupy that place. She must know books; she must know people. She must be in touch with current history, and be alert to place library material bearing upon it at the disposal of the people. She must have quick sympathies, tact, the teaching spirit (carefully concealed), and much administrative ability. And she must be trained for her work. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A well-equipped library. The successful librarian must be scientifically trained for her work] _Nursing_. The nurse is in many ways like the teacher, and the girl who has the right temperament for successful teaching will usually make a successful nurse, temperamentally considered. Her mental traits, or perhaps more exactly her habits of thought, may be somewhat different. The teacher must be able to attend to many things; the nurse must be able to concentrate on one. Originality and initiative are less to be desired, since the nurse is not usually in charge of her case directly, but rather subject to the doctor's orders. She must, nevertheless, be resourceful in emergencies, and of good judgment always. She should be calm as well as patient, quiet in speech and movement, a keen observer, and willing to accept responsibility. Absolute obedience and loyalty to her superiors is expected, and a high conception of the ethics of her calling. Underlying all these qualifications, the nurse must have not only good health but physical strength. [Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co. During the World War nursing offered to women perhaps the largest opportunities for service. Here is shown Princess Mary of England in the Great Ormond Street Hospital, London] _Social work_. This term covers many occupations which overlap the work of the teacher, the nurse, the secretary, the house mother or matron, and even that of the physician and lawyer. The field of work is a large one, including settlement leaders and assistants, workers in social and community centers and recreation centers, vacation playgrounds, public and private charities, district nurses and visiting nurses sent out by various agencies, deaconesses and other church visitors, Young Women's Christian Association leaders and helpers, missionaries, welfare workers in large manufacturing or mercantile establishments, probation officers, and many others. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Settlement work at Greenwich House, New York. The settlement worker to succeed must be truly altruistic] The social worker must of course have the same suitability for teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her best as a social worker. It sometimes seems as though no field was so exactly suited to the abilities of the married woman who has time for service, or the mother whose children are grown, leaving her free again to teach or nurse the sick or bring justice to the little child as she was trained to do in her youth. Less common vocations for women--but still often chosen after all--are reserved for those whose abilities are so specialized and so striking that they compel a choice. Singers, artists with brush or pen, the natural actress, the journalist or author, need usually no one to guide their choice. Our great difficulty here is not to open the girl's eyes to her opportunity, but to restrain the one who has not measured her ability correctly from attempting that which she cannot perform. The same is true of girls who aspire to be physicians, lawyers, or ministers. Some few succeed in all these vocations. Many more have not the scientific habits of mind, the stability, or the endurance to make a successful fight for recognition against great odds. Many girls mistake what may be a pleasant and satisfying avocation for a life work. For the girl who will not be held back, there may be a life of achievement ahead, with fame and all the other accompaniments of successful public life; or there may be the disappointments of unrealized ambition. We must see that girls face this possibility with the other. CHAPTER XII THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS AS AFFECTING HOMEMAKING Choice of vocation is far from being a simple matter for either boy or girl; but for the girl who recognizes homemaking as woman's work, double possibilities complicate her problem more than that of the boy. _The girl must prepare for life work in the home, or life work outside the home, or a period of either followed by the other, or perhaps a combination of both during some part or even all of her mature life_. It is the part of wisdom for us to study vocations in their relation to homemaking. Will the girl who works in the factory, for instance, or who becomes a teacher or a lawyer or a physician, be as good a homemaker as she would have been had she chosen some other occupation? Will she perhaps be a better homemaker for her vocational experience? Or will her life in the industrial world unfit her for life in the home or turn her inclination away from the homemaker's work? These questions have somehow fallen into the background in the steady increase of girls as industrial workers. "Good money" has usually come first, and after that other considerations of social advantage, working conditions, or local demand. Marriage and motherhood are still recognized as normal conditions for most women, but we let their industrial life step in between their homemaking preparation in home and school, with the result that many lose physical fitness or mental aptitude or inclination for the home life. We treat marriage as an incident, even though it occurs often enough to be for most women the rule rather than the exception. At some time in their lives, 93.8 per cent of all women marry. The first broad classification of vocations in their relation to homemaking is: (1) those which are favorable to homemaking, (2) those which are unfavorable, (3) those which are neutral. It must, however, be recognized at the outset that few hard-and-fast lines between these groups can be drawn, and that "the personal equation" is as important a factor here as in most personal questions. It is true, nevertheless, that helpful deductions may be drawn from facts which it is possible to gather concerning the physical, mental, and moral results of pursuing certain occupations as a prelude to marriage and the making of a home. In a general way, economic independence, that is, the earning of her own living by a girl for several years before marriage, tends to increase her knowledge of the value of money and to make her a better financial manager. Probably this same independence makes a girl slightly less anxious to marry, especially since in most cases she has hitherto been expected to give up her personal income in exchange for an extremely uncertain system of sharing what the husband earns. Independence of any sort is reluctantly laid aside by those who have possessed it. This very reluctance on the part of girls ought to be a force in the direction of economic independence of wives, a most desirable and necessary condition for society to bring about. Gainful occupation has then much to recommend it and little to be said against it as part of the training for matrimony. Certain occupations, however, are so essentially favorable to the girl's homemaking ability and to her probable inclination to make a home of her own that we do not hesitate to recommend them as the best directions for girls' vocational work to take, _other things being equal._ We have already said that the girl distinctly not home-minded is more safely left to her own inclinations. She would not be a success as a homemaker under any circumstances. Other girls may be made or marred by the years which intervene between their school and home life. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood The value of domestic work of any sort as a preparation for homemaking is generally admitted without argument.] The value of domestic work of any sort as a preparation for homemaking is generally admitted without argument. Closely in touch with a home throughout her maturing years, the girl may undertake her own housekeeping problems with ease and efficiency. Conditions as they often exist, however, especially for the younger and untrained domestic worker, do not allow the girl to obtain other experience quite as necessary if she is to become not merely a housekeeper but a true homemaker. The untrained girl who enters upon domestic work at fourteen or fifteen should have opportunity--indeed the opportunity should be thrust upon her--of attending a continuation school, where the special aim should be to counteract the narrowing tendency of work which revolves about so small an orbit. Ideals of home life are either lacking or distorted in the minds of many working girls, and when such girls become wives and mothers they strive for the wrong things or they fall back without striving at all, taking merely what comes. They fail to be forces for good in their family life. [Illustration: Demonstration by teacher in domestic science. Teaching affords excellent preparation for the prospective homemaker.] Teaching and nursing may be grouped together as excellent preparation for the prospective homemaker. It may be contended that the teacher and the hospital nurse spend years outside the home environment and that their minds are turned to other problems than those of housekeeping. This contention is undoubtedly true; and if we were striving merely to make housekeepers, it might be worthy of serious consideration. The home, however, as we have defined it, is a place in which to make people, and both the nurse and the teacher serve a long apprenticeship in this sort of manufacture. Expert workers in either line concern themselves with the bodies and the minds of their pupils or patients. They, together with physicians, lawyers, and social workers, have opportunities which can scarcely be equaled for learning by observation and experiment about the human relations that will confront them in their own homes. They learn to be resourceful and to meet the emergencies of which life is full; they have the advantage of trained minds to set to work upon the administrative problems which underlie successful home life. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Women medical students. Physicians and surgeons have unusual opportunities for learning by observation and experiment about the human relations that will confront them in their own homes] A question may arise as to the physical fitness for marriage and motherhood of the girl who has given her nerve force to the exacting and often depleting work of nurse, teacher, or physician. It is unquestionably true that nurses and teachers do often wear out after comparatively few years at their vocation, although of the majority the opposite is true. This merely means that conditions surrounding these vocations should be studied with a view to their improvement, if necessary, since we believe the vocations to be suited to women and women to the vocations. Office work may prove an excellent training for certain phases of homemaking work. Neatness, accuracy, precision, the doing again and again of constantly recurring tasks, all find their place and use in the housekeeper's routine. The calm atmosphere of the well-kept office even when typewriters and calculating machines are rattling is a better preparation for an orderly home than the rush of the department store or the factory. Purely routine workers, who put little or no thought into their daily tasks, will enter upon homemaking lacking the initiative that homemakers need. But the able office worker is not merely a follower of routine. The greatest lack of office work as preparation for a homemaking career is that the girl's interests during so large a part of her day are led away from the home and all that pertains to it. She works neither with people nor with the things which go to make homes. Probably, on the whole, office work in a general way may be classed as a neutral occupation, which neither adds to, nor reduces, in any great degree the girl's possibilities as a homemaker. Salesmanship for girls, especially in the great department stores of the cities, is a vocation of at least doubtful advantage for the home-minded girl to pursue as a step in her training for managing her own home. In the quiet of the village store, with few associates in work, and with one's neighbors and fellow townsmen for customers, salesmanship takes on a somewhat different aspect. But the city store means usually hurry, excitement, nerve strain, a long day, with quite probably reaction to excessive gayety and hence more nerve strain at night. It means spending one's days among great collections of finery which tend to assume undue importance in the girl's eyes. It means constant association with people who spend, until spending seems the only end in life. It means almost always pay lower than is consistent with decent living if the girl must depend alone upon her own earnings. And none of these things tends toward steady, skillful, contented wifehood and motherhood in later years. This question of underpaid work is of course not found alone in the department store. But, wherever it is found, we may be sure that it tends on the one hand toward marriage as a way of escape from present want, and on the other toward inefficiency in the relation so lightly assumed. The factory girl is in many respects in a position parallel to that of the saleswoman. She earns too little to make comfortable living possible. She too must leave home early and return late, wearied by the monotony of a day in uninteresting surroundings, with neither energy nor inclination for anything other than complete relaxation and "fun." This desire for relaxation leads her often away from a crowded, ill-supported home in the evenings, until the habit settles into a confirmed disposition. This is a decided handicap for a homemaker. Coupled with the mental inertia resulting from years of mechanical work without thought, it provides poor material from which to make steady, responsible, efficient women. We have already noted, however, that factories differ widely. It follows of necessity that the girls who work in them come from their work with all grades of ability. The actress, the artist, and the literary woman are usually spoken of as far removed from the true domestic type. This I cannot believe to be true, except in individual cases. All these women, as makers of finished products, stand far nearer to the traditional type of woman than many others we might name. The life of the actress tends more than the others perhaps to break home ties, but in the case of real talent in any direction ordinary rules do not apply. The actress, the artist, and the writer are much more likely to carry on their work after marriage than the teacher, the office worker, or even the factory woman. Many of them succeed to a remarkable degree in doing two things well. Many more, of course, are less successful, but we must not overlook the fact that the failures are more noised abroad than the successes. It is a matter for regret that most women, upon leaving an industrial career for marriage, drop so completely out of touch with their former work. In the case of the untrained woman, who has received little and given little in her work, it is a matter of no moment; but when years have been given to skilled labor, it is economic waste to have the skill lost and the process forgotten. Many times the woman finds herself after a short life in the home obliged to earn a living once more for herself or it may be for a family. She returns to her teaching or her office work or a position in the library; but she is no longer, at least for a considerable time, the expert she once was. Why should not the former teacher keep up her interest in educational literature and the new ideas in what might have been her life work? Would it not be well for the one-time stenographer to keep a gentle hold upon the quirks and quirls which once brought to her her weekly salary? A young mother of my acquaintance who was a concert violinist of much ability has found no time for more than a year to practice, "since baby came," and thousands of dollars spent in making her a player are being thrown away. To some this might seem the right thing. She has found "the home her sphere." To others it seems a serious waste. We advocate often that the middle-aged woman who has reared her children should return in some way to the work of the world outside the home. In the case of the trained woman her training should be made of use in such return. She should, however, beware lest her tools are rusty from disuse. We may not perhaps leave the questions involved in a discussion of vocations as they affect homemaking without noticing that certain occupations are considered especially dangerous to the moral stability of girls. Nursing, private secretaryship, and domestic service present dangers in direct proportion as they bring about isolated companionship for the girl and a male employer. Girls must not enter these employments without the knowledge of how to protect themselves from lowering influences. CHAPTER XIII THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS DETERMINED BY TRAINING The question of vocation choosing begins to make itself felt far down in the grammar school, first among the retarded and backward children who are old for their grades and are merely waiting and marking time until the law will allow them to leave school and go to work. These children are usually either mentally subnormal or handicapped by foreign birth and so unable to grasp the education which is being offered them. As soon as they are released the girls go to the factory, to the store, or to help with some one's baby or with the housework. No other places are open to them, and their possibilities in any place are few. They cannot rise because they are mentally untrained. The upper grades of the grammar school lose annually many children who would be able to profit by the help the school offers to those who can remain. Some drop out because they see no need of remaining when the factory will employ them without further knowledge. Others chafe at spending time on what seems to them, and what sometimes is, quite unrelated to the life they will lead and the work they will do. Some leave reluctantly, because their help is needed in financing a large family. Many go gladly, because they will begin to earn and to have some of the things they ardently desire. And until yesterday the school paid little attention to their going, regarding it as one of the necessary evils. Still less attention did it pay to what these pupils became after they left. The school's responsibility ended at its outer door. Now that these conditions are being changed, the school is finding responsibilities and opportunities on every hand. The foreign-born are taken out of the regular grades where they cannot fit, and are taught English by themselves first of all. The subnormal children are studied for latent vocational possibilities, and where minds are deficient, hands are the more carefully trained for suitable work. Courses are being revised with a view to holding in school the boy or girl who wants practical training for practical work. Secondary schools have taken their eyes off college requirements long enough to consider fitting the majority of their pupils to face life without the college. Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the concern of the school. Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some idea of the goal to be reached. What are the options that the grammar-school teacher may present to the girls under her care? First of all, as we have already said, the school records must be kept with care and discrimination, so that the teacher may know the girl to whom she speaks. With the records in hand, she will ask herself the following questions: 1. Is further training at the expense of the girl's family possible? Do the girl's abilities warrant effort on her parents' part to give her further opportunity? 2. Could the girl's parents continue to pay her living expenses during further training if the training were furnished at the expense of the state? 3. Could the girl obtain training in return for her personal service, either with or without pay? 4. Would the girl be able to repay in skill acquired the expense of her training, whether borne by herself, her parents, or the state? [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. A flower-making class for girls of various ages. There is no reason why vocational work should not begin in the grammar school] Lines between obtainable work for the trained and the untrained girl are fairly sharply drawn, and the possibilities for each type must be clearly understood by the guide. If it is evident that training cannot be obtained before the girl must begin to earn, the choice is necessarily a narrow one. The factories in the neighborhood should be thoroughly studied, and, under the guidance of the teacher, girls should prepare detailed reports with respect to their working conditions. The "blind-alley" job should be plainly labeled, that it may not catch the girl unaware. Girls who must take up factory work should at least be enabled to choose among factories intelligently, and if possible should be fortified with an avocation that will supply them with the interest their daily task fails to inspire and that will provide an anchor against the instability toward which the factory girl tends. [Illustration: Millinery class in a trade school. Where trade schools do not offer such training, there are opportunities for apprentice work for girls] The possibilities for apprentice work with dressmakers or milliners or in other handwork should also be made known. Girls begin here, as in the factory, at simple and monotonous tasks, but the possibilities of advancement are far greater and mental development is unquestionably more likely. The ability acquired by such workers, as they progress, to undertake and carry through a complete piece of work is not only satisfying to the workers themselves, but of value in later years. They learn to analyze their constructive problems and to work out the various steps of the work to its ultimate conclusion--a knowledge which the factory girl never attains. Some few girls will need to be shown the possibilities which lie in independent productive work. For the girl who has talent or even merely deftness in manual work, coupled with initiative and some degree of originality, such work may bring a better return than working for others. Most girls, however, lack courage to start upon independent work, especially if they are in immediate need of earning and are untrained. It often happens, however, that they do not appraise at its true value the training they have received. The grammar-school girl, under present methods of teaching, is often fully qualified to do either plain cooking or plain sewing, but since she does not desire to enter domestic service, she considers these accomplishments very little or not at all in counting her assets for earning. Some girls have found ready employment and good returns in home baking, in canning fruit and vegetables, or in mending, making simple clothes for little children, or in making buttonholes and doing other "finishing work" for busy housewives. Work of these sorts, undertaken in a small way, has often assumed the proportions of a business, requiring all of a young woman's time and paying her quite as well as and often better than less interesting work in shop or factory. A girl of my acquaintance earns a comfortable living at home with her crochet needle. Another has paid her way through high school and college by raising sweet peas. The untrained girl who loves an outdoor life has fewer opportunities than other girls unless she is capable of independent work. If she is capable of this and has sufficient ability to study her work, gardening and poultry or bee culture may open the way for her to work and be happy. School gardens, poultry clubs, and canning clubs have shown many a girl what she may do in these ways. [Illustration: Courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture Some girls have built up a good business canning fruits and vegetables at home] Many times too little is realized of the possibilities of these grammar-school girls who are crowded by necessity into the working ranks. We cannot shirk our responsibilities in regard to them, however, although they escape from our school systems and bravely take up the burden of their own lives. Quite as many of these girls as of more favored ones will marry and be among the mothers of the next generation. The work they do in the interval between school and home will leave its impress even more strongly than upon the girl whose school life lasts longer and who is therefore older as well as better equipped when she enters upon her work. Few of these younger girls in times past can be said to have done anything other than drift into work which would make or spoil their lives and perhaps those of their children after them. It is well that the responsibility of the school toward them is being recognized and met. [Illustration: A prosperous poultry farm. Poultry farming opens the way for the girl who loves an outdoor life to work in the open and be happy] A distinct duty of the grammar-school teacher is to make known the facts concerning short cuts for grammar-school girls to office work. Unscrupulous business "colleges" sometimes mislead these immature girls into believing that a short course taken in their school will enable the girls to fill office positions. Facts are at hand which show the futility of attempting office work under such conditions, and teachers should be very careful to see that all the facts are in the possession of their pupils. In the early days of high schools usually the only distinction, if any, in courses was "general" and "classical." To-day we have many courses, or in the larger cities different schools fit boys and girls for varying paths in life. The college-preparatory course or the classical high school leads to college. The commercial course or school leads to office work. The manual training or industrial or practical arts course or high school leads to efficient handwork. The trade school leads to definite occupations. The difficulty now is to help girls choose intelligently which course or school will best meet their requirements. This involves vocation study in the grammar school. [Illustration: Benson Polytechnic School for Girls, Portland, Oregon. The trade school leads to definite occupations. The girl with mechanical ability may find her vocation in millinery, dressmaking, or the various sewing-machine trades] The girl who terminates her formal education with her graduation from high school may find herself not very much better placed, apparently, than the girl who has dropped out of school farther back. Many openings into desirable occupations are still closed to her. Often her opportunities, however, are much greater than they seem. All facts go to show that the high-school girl makes more rapid progress in efficiency, and therefore in pay, than the younger girl, even when she seems to begin at the same work. Some fields, too, are open to her that are not usually possible for the grammar-school girl. In office work the high-school girl who has specialized in her training may make a very creditable showing. Many thousands of high-school graduates are received into telephone exchanges where with a brief period of practice they become efficient workers. A very few high-school girls become teachers in country schools without further training, but the number is decreasing every year. If she meets the age requirement, the high-school girl may enter a training school for nurses, gaining her specialized training in return for her services to the hospital. The high-school girl who can spare time and money for some further training finds a larger field open; but, to make the most of what high school has to offer, her plans should be made as early as possible in the high-school course--at the very beginning if it can be managed. The girl must know what further training she is making ready for, must choose electives in high school to help her make ready, or possibly to offset the specializing of this later work by some general culture she may otherwise miss entirely. Vocation study, therefore, and vocational guidance must be quite as much a part of the course for the girl who will "train" for her special work as for the girl who goes directly from the secondary school to her vocation. One high-school Senior writes: "My special vocation has not yet been chosen, but if it becomes necessary for me to earn my own living I should like to be either a nurse, a teacher, milliner, or director of a cafeteria. I would probably choose the position that was open at the time." Here we have the girl who is in no hurry to choose, and who probably has a more or less vague notion of the comparative conditions, requirements, and rewards of the four vocations she mentions. In contrast to this, listen to a high-school student who has been studying herself and her possible vocation in much detail in class work. She says: "I find that I have made good school records only in subjects where I had materials I could see and handle. I have never done well in arithmetic or mathematics, but in drawing, physics, elementary biology, and domestic science I made good marks. I do not like to sew, because it tires me to sit still. I enjoy cooking and marketing. "I like to plan meals and to make up new recipes. I hear that hospitals and institutions employ women at very good salaries to buy all the foodstuffs used in their kitchens. The expert dietitian also plans meals and arranges dietaries. I learn that Teachers College, Columbia, has courses of study leading to this profession, and I have written to ask for full information." In the class of which this girl is a member, each girl is considering her future as this one is doing. Each gathers all available data in regard to the vocation she is studying. Her reports become a part of the class records. She makes as full a report as possible as to the duties and responsibilities of the occupation, the schools or training classes that prepare for it, the length and cost of preparation, possibilities of employment, salaries paid, and other details. Since training cannot alter fundamentals, but merely builds upon the girl's nature and heredity, the same classifications obtain in the choice of the girl who can have training as in that of the girl who goes untrained to her vocation. There are still the producers, the distributors, and those who serve; and it is still important that the girl should find a place in the right group. The producers will include the designers, the interior decorators, the expert dietitians, the municipal inspectors of food and housing, rural consulting housekeepers, state or country canning-club agents, the women who organize and carry on model laundries, either coöperative or otherwise, the managers of manufacturing enterprises, the farmers, the photographers, the artists, the journalists, and the authors. The distributors are chiefly represented by the higher type of office workers, who are the "idea thinkers" of the business world, since they neither make nor handle products, but merely manipulate the symbols which stand for the products they seldom if ever see. The women who manage buying and selling enterprises for themselves usually belong to the trained group. The service group among trained women is a large one, including nurses, teachers, doctors' and dentists' assistants, various social workers, librarians, secretaries and other confidential office assistants, directors or "house mothers" in school and college dormitories and in institutions, dentists, physicians, lawyers, ministers. Within the group there is wide range of choice, differing qualifications are necessary, and varying training is to be undertaken. Girls, with the help of a vocational expert, should analyze their physical and mental qualities and habits, and should study somewhat exhaustively the vocation for which they seem to find themselves fitted. "I should like to be a nurse, or a teacher, or a milliner, or the manager of a cafeteria" will not do, since those vocations presuppose some years of widely differing training. Perhaps the girl will narrow the choice to nursing or teaching. Then she must place over against each other the two professions--special qualifications required, length and cost of training, personal obstacles to be overcome, and especially the demand and supply of nurses and teachers in her locality. Upon these depends the girl's chance to succeed when she is fitted and launched. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. The children's ward in a hospital. The nurse must be resourceful and possess good judgment] The student who takes up college work, not as a specialized training, but as a completion of her general education, stands somewhat by herself. Such a girl may perhaps put off vocational decision until she is part way through her college years. The college sometimes awakens ambitions and brings to light abilities not hitherto discovered; and even when this does not occur, the choice may be made from the highest and most responsible positions filled by women. From the college girls we draw our high-school teachers and college instructors, our doctors, lawyers, and preachers, in so far as these professions are filled by women. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Among the many vocations belonging to the service group teaching is one of the most popular] We are confronted by the statement, made again and again and reinforced by formidable rows of figures, that the more training a girl receives, the less she is inclined to marry or, if she does marry, to have children. The fact seems undeniable that in our larger eastern women's colleges, at least, not more than half the graduates marry up to the age of forty, which we may accept as the probable limit of the marriage age for the average woman. The natural inference is that a college education in some way prevents or discourages marriage. This may or may not be true. To be quite fair, the statistics should cover the coeducational colleges as well as the colleges for women alone. Also some attempt should be made to discover how the likelihood of marriage is affected by the age at which girls finish their college course. Do the younger girls of a college class marry, while the older ones do not? Are the younger married graduates more often mothers than the older ones, or do they have more children? [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. The influence of the librarian extends far beyond the walls of the library] If it is true that training is interfering with marriage and motherhood for our girls, the next step is not necessarily, as some modern hysterical students of the question seem to suggest, that we immediately cut out the training which, in case they do marry, will make them far more valuable wives, mothers, and members of the community; but rather so to time and place the training, and if necessary so to alter its character, that any such tendency away from marriage will be removed and that the trained women of the college and professional school shall be available for the great work of mothering the nation of the future. A final word as to the place of the vocational guide in the choosing of vocations may not be amiss. That every teacher should consider himself or herself a helper in this most important work we must agree; but that any teacher must walk carefully, and use the guiding hand but sparingly, is equally true. The object of vocational help is not merely to keep the "square peg" out of the "round hole." The girl arbitrarily placed in a suitable occupation may never discover why she is there, and may be handicapped all her life by a deep conviction that she fits somewhere else. "Know thyself" is a good old maxim yet. The teacher or vocational guide is fitted by the place of observation she holds to help the girl to study herself and the possibilities that life holds out to such as she thus finds herself to be. The final choice should be made by the girl. CHAPTER XIV MARRIAGE Marriage may, or may not, in these days, be the opening door into the homemaker's career. Many a young woman is a homemaker before she marries. On the other hand, women sometimes marry without any thought of making a home. But, after all, it is safe to assume that marriage and homemaking do go hand in hand. The great majority of wives become managers of homes of one sort or another. Shall we then frankly educate our girls for marriage--"dangle a wedding ring ever before their eyes"? Or shall we regard marriages as "made in heaven" and keep our hands off the whole matter? The proportion of marriages in the United States which terminate in divorce was in 1910 one in twelve. Divorce in this country is now three times as common as forty years ago. The success or failure of marriages cannot, however, be measured merely by the divorce test. We cannot avoid the knowledge that many other unhappy unions are endured until release comes with death. When we say unhappy marriages, we mean not only those which become unendurable, but all those in which marriage impedes the development and hence the efficiency of either party to the contract. Unhappy marriages include not only the mismated, but also those whose unhappiness in married life is due to their own or their mate's misconception of what marriage really means. It is obviously impossible even to estimate the number of marriages which are happy or unhappy; but we are safe in saying that the processes of adjustment in many cases are far harder than they ought to be, and that many marriages which seemingly ought to bring happiness fail of real success. In view of the fact that so many marriages fall short of what they might be, it would seem that some sort of assistance to the girl in choosing a husband and to the young man in choosing a wife would be wise, such as the instruction we give boys and girls to enable them to be successful in the industrial world. In short, it is not enough to prepare girls for homemaking by making all our references to marriage indirect. Young men and women are entitled to more knowledge of marriage, its rights, privileges, and duties; they need to realize that in these days of complex living marriage is a difficult relation which requires their best energies and wisest thought. The modern marriage differs from the marriage of earlier centuries in direct proportion as the status of woman has changed. The ancient marriage, and indeed the medieval one, and the marriage of our own grandmother's time began with submission and usually ended with subjection. But the modern marriage at its best is a spiritual and material partnership. It is the modern marriage at its best and otherwise with which we have to do. Half a century ago girls married at eighteen or even earlier, took charge of their households, were mothers of good-sized families at twenty-eight or thirty, and were frequently grandmothers at forty. Nowadays early marriage is the exception. For years the marriage age has been steadily rising, until some students profess to be alarmed at a prospect of marriage disappearing, the maternal instinct becoming lost by disuse, and the race finally becoming extinct. However, the maximum marriage age, at least for the present, seems to have been reached, and statistics show a slight dropping within the last two or three years. The forces operating to fix the marriage age are exceedingly complex. The higher education of girls has undoubtedly been a large factor in the postponement of marriage. Its effect has been wrought in a variety of ways. The increasing years in schoolroom and lecture hall have been directly responsible in many cases. The ambitions aroused account for many more. The increased ability of girls to earn their own living and public acceptance of their doing so have practically removed "marriage as a trade" from the consideration of girls and their parents. Girls no longer need to marry in order to transfer the burden of their support from father to husband. Instead they may "go to work." And once at work they are often reluctant to give up a personal income for the uncertainties of sharing what a husband earns. Then, too, the broadening effect of education makes marriage in the abstract a less absorbing, momentous subject for the girl's thoughts. Also the rebound toward selfishness coincident with woman's "emancipation" leads girls to put off what they are sometimes led to consider a sacrifice of themselves. The tragedies of the divorce courts are directly responsible for many a girlish determination not to marry, a determination which is broken only when the first zest of mature life has passed and when the woman begins to long for the home ties she has resolved to deny herself and decides to take the risk. The increased cost of living and the ever-increasing responsibilities of rearing, educating, and launching a family of children lead many young people to postpone marriage until they can command a larger income. The strain of modern industrial life, with its fierce competitions and its early discard of the elderly and unfit, finds many girls who would otherwise marry burdened with the care of parents who can ill spare the daughter's help. [Illustration: The Halliday Historic Photograph Co. LOUISA M. ALCOTT Miss Alcott's lifelong devotion to the interests of her family is a well-known story. She made a happy home for them, and at the same time attained marked success in the literary field.] If all these obstacles to early marriage could be overcome, the question of the wisest time for marrying might be approached fairly and squarely on its merits. Too early marriage means immaturity in choice, with the possibility always of unfortunate mistakes and sad awakening. Too late marriage, on the other hand, means settled convictions which often result in that incompatibility which seeks relief in divorce. The plasticity of youth at least _promises_ adaptability. The mature judgment of later years ought to afford a wise choice. Between extreme youth then and a too settled maturity is the wise time. In order to approach the ideal in the marriage relation, the time of marriage should be so placed that the girl is (1) physically fit, (2) fully educated, (3) broadened by some experience with the world. She must not be too old to bear children safely, or to rear them sympathetically as they approach the difficult years. She must not be physically worn by excessive industrial service, nor with enthusiasms burned out by the same cause. Probably between twenty-two and twenty-five the girl reaches the height of physical fitness. She may also by that time have completed a liberal education, and she may even have done that and also have put her training to useful service. It would be better if girls completed their college courses earlier than most do. However, since the great majority of girls do not have a college education, the generally increased age of marriage cannot rightfully be laid, as many seem to lay it, at the doors of the college women. Schemes of education in the future will undoubtedly try to remedy the defect of present systems in this respect. If most girls could finish their training in college or professional school at twenty, as some do now, the world would be rewarded by earlier marriages and probably more of them. There would be more children, reared by younger and more enthusiastic mothers. The more difficult professions, which could not be successfully undertaken by the girl of twenty, would then be reserved, as they generally are now, for the women whose ambition is unusually strong and absorbing. Attempts are frequently made to show that ambition is becoming an inordinately prominent quality in all women, but there are few facts to support so wide a contention. [Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson RUTH MCENERY STUART Mrs. Stuart was one of those in whom the talent for homemaking and the talent for creative literary work existed side by side. On her husband's plantation in Arkansas she found many of the types for the characters in her stories] The girl graduate of twenty, reinforced by from two to five years of work in the vocation she has chosen, is usually fit, physically and mentally, for marriage. More than that, she may by that age, usually, be trusted to know what she wants, even in a husband, if she is ever going to know. In the day when girls married nearly always "in their teens," wise choice of a husband called for selection of a man considerably older than the girl herself. This disparity is less common in these days, and is really less desirable than it once was. The girl of the earlier time reached maturity of mind earlier than the girl of to-day with her prolonged education, and much earlier than the boy of her day did. He was still being educated in school or as an apprentice, and was hardly ready to undertake the responsibility of a family at an age when the girl's scanty education was long since completed and it was considered high time that her support was laid upon a husband's shoulders. It used to be said, "Men keep their youth better than women," so that any disparity in age at the time of marriage was soon lost. This is no longer true as it was once. The early marriage, with early and excessive childbearing, overwork, and the numerous restrictions that custom laid upon her, were responsible for woman's loss of youth. These conditions no longer exist. The woman of forty or fifty can now usually hold her own with the man of her own age in point of youth. [Illustration: LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY Madame Homer's great success in the difficult art of operatic singing has by no means interfered with her career as a homemaker.] Another consideration in favor of more nearly equal age lies in the fact that formerly men did not look for wives who were their mental equals. They did not really desire mental equals as wives. To-day they do, or, if there still lingers in the minds of some of them the old notion that wives must be clinging vines, the lingering notion will soon be gone. The marriage of equality possesses too many advantages for both parties to be thrown aside. The wife who can think, who is mature enough to be capable of real partnership, is the wife surely of to-morrow, if not of to-day. Among the forces that control marriage may be mentioned (1) physical attraction, (2) continued social relationships, (3) dissimilarity, (4) affection, (5) barter. It is usually difficult to say of any marriage that any one of these forces alone caused the mating. It may have been physical attraction together with everyday companionship; or physical attraction and dissimilarity or strangeness, resulting in what we know as love at first sight. Or it may have been affection of slow growth, or affection with an element of appreciation of worldly advantage, or it may have been a little physical attraction with a great deal of desire for social position or wealth, or, ugliest of all, it may have been pure barter, without personal attraction of any sort. For these worldy advantages you offer, I will sell you my body and my soul. To secure the finest marriages for girls we must insure three conditions: (1) high ideals of marriage among our adolescents, (2) better knowledge of men, and (3) wise companionships during the years from fourteen to twenty-five. [Illustration: MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON The South is justly proud of this poet of no mean rank who gave herself unstintedly to her home duties and responsibilities] Physical attraction on one or both sides is undoubtedly the greatest force in marriage selection. It is only when physical attraction exerts its influence upon a girl whose ideal of a husband is low or vague or incorrect that the danger is great. Physical attraction is not love, but it may be--often it is--the basis of love when it exists between two who are suited to a life together. Generally speaking, girls will find married life easier, and their husbands will find life more satisfactory, when the two have been reared with approximately the same ideals. The girl who falls in love with a man largely because he is "different" from the boys among whom she has grown up often finds that very difference a stumbling block to domestic happiness. Marriages across such chasms where there should be common ground are more hazardous than between those whose education, social training, friends, and beliefs are of the same type. When they do succeed, they undoubtedly are the richer for the variety of experience husband and wife have to give each other; and, too, they show an adaptability on the part of one or both which argues well for continued happiness. Commonly, however, they do not succeed. There are, also, deeper matters than these to be considered. Is this man or this woman worthy of lifelong devotion? Is the love he offers or she offers in return for the love you offer, the love that gives or the love that merely takes? Has he been a success at something, anything, that counts? Has he a sense of responsibility in marriage and the burdens it brings? Does he desire a home? Do his views as to children reflect man's natural desire to found a family or merely the selfish desire for the freedom and luxury which the absence of children may make possible? Has he a right to approach fatherhood--is his body physically and morally clean? [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY Colonel Roosevelt's own family was preëminently one in which the father shared with the mother a keen sense of the responsibilities of marriage and the highest ideals of home life] These are serious questions with which to weight the wings of a young man's or a young woman's fancy. But the attraction which cannot stand before them is not safe as a basis for marriage. Many a young man or woman has willfully turned closed eyes to the selfishness or the irresponsibility which will later wreck a home, because attraction blinded common sense. Barter, the lowest form of marriage, exists and has always existed whenever the material benefits that either husband or wife expects to derive from the connection are the impelling forces in the union. The woman desires wealth, social position, a title--or perhaps nothing more than security from poverty or the necessity of work outside the home, or perhaps no more than the mere security of a home itself. The man in other cases desires wealth, or social position, or a wife who will grace his fine home, or some business connection which the marriage will afford. And upon these things men and women build, or attempt to build, the foundations of home life. It is not true of course that every girl of moderate means, or without means, who marries a man of wealth does so because of his money. Nor is it always true when the cases are reversed. Love may be as real between those two as between any others. But when it is true that the marriage is an exchange of commodities, it is no different from prostitution under other circumstances. In fact, it is prostitution under cover, without acceptance of the stigma which for centuries has been the portion of voluntary selling of the body to him who cares to buy. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER In the life of Mrs. Howe was exemplified the identity of ideals of husband and wife. They worked side by side in the literary field and in their philanthropic and reform work] Eugenics, a modern science which aims at race regeneration, lays down many laws and restrictions for those who are selecting their mates. By the following of these laws and restrictions in the selection of husbands and wives, undesirable traits in the offspring are to be weeded out and desirable; ones are to be fostered and increased. That these laws should be studied with the care used by breeders of plants and animals goes without saying. That if they are followed strictly the number of marriages would be materially reduced, at least for a considerable time, is doubtless true. That marriages in which eugenics has played the major part in selection will present new problems is probably equally true. If marriages were mere temporary unions, for the purpose of obtaining offspring, eugenic principles could not be too exactly nor too coldly applied to the selection of mates. But since marriage implies living together and becoming, or continuing to be, worthy members of the community, and since the offspring are fashioned no less by the conditions of their upbringing than by heredity, selection of mates must involve more than looking for eugenically perfect fathers and mothers for the generations yet unborn. Eugenics, however, is in infancy as a science, and, like the human infants it would protect, must react to the environment in which it finds itself and must feel the chastening hand of time before its value can be known. Agitation in the direction of allowing posterity to be "well born" can never be out of place. What being well born is and how it shall be attained is a worthy subject of research. As a cold, exact science, however, eugenics can never hope for application without some consideration of the personal equation which makes marriage at its best not a mating merely, but a joining of souls. Choosing a husband or a wife is, after all, merely the beginning of the marriage problem. Good husbands are not discovered, but made, from originally good or perhaps indifferent or in rare cases from even poor material, by the reaction of married life upon what was previously mere "man." Even so with wives. [Illustration: CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE Mrs. Crane, an expert on sanitation, has successfully applied the principles of good housekeeping to civic affairs in many cities, and has thus made women more of a factor in the community at large] The successful marriage presupposes unselfishness, even carried if necessary to the point of sacrifice, but it must be unselfishness for two, not for one alone. Neither the "child wife" who must be carried as a burden, nor the complacent husband who forms the center of a smoothly revolving little world patiently turned by a silent wife, has any part in the marriage of equality--the only marriage worthy of the name. The successful marriage calls also for freedom--again for two. Women sometimes hesitate to marry because the old idea of marriage involved loss of individuality, and they have little faith in men's readiness to accept any other idea. Men, on the other hand, fear to marry because the "new woman" demands so much for herself--development, a career, a chance to work out her own ideals of life. The man sees little in this for himself but the "second fiddle" which woman for centuries played to his first. Ideal marriages, however, do take place in which there is no sacrifice of personality--in which, indeed, each lives a fuller life than would have been possible without the marriage. For this to be realized, there must be full recognition of the responsibility of each for his or her own deeds, and a standing aside while each works out his destiny. This does not mean a separation of interests nor an abandonment of common counsel. It means merely that in individual matters each must have the freedom enjoyed before marriage took place. It must mean for women some sort of economic independence, and in addition a spiritual independence such as men enjoy. When this freedom is cheerfully given, and in return the wife gives a like liberty to the husband, the great incentive to concealments and deceptions or to nagging and controversy is removed. The petty annoyances of the day are lessened, trust is increased, and both man and woman find their strength increased rather than depleted by the relation. [Illustration: Courtesy of George Herbert Palmer ALICE FREEMAN PALMER Mrs. Palmer's was one of the ideal marriages in which husband and wife each lived a fuller life than would have been possible without the marriage. Happy in her home life, Mrs. Palmer yet had time to achieve a brilliant success in administrative educational work] Common interests are an almost certain safeguard in most marriages. Common duties are more often than not a source of difficulty. An untold number of matrimonial ventures fail because of inadequate responsibility in adjustment of expenses to income. Many more are rendered inharmonious by failure of parents to agree as to the management of children. In both these directions increased knowledge will do much to secure harmonious action. Family traditions are more than likely to clash when they are adopted as principles of family discipline. "Children must mind," says the father, in memory and emulation of his father's method with him. "Children must not be coerced," says the mother, who has been reared by a different method. Clearly a course in child psychology would have been of value to these parents in determining a common procedure. There is probably no subject upon which either father or mother finds it so hard to yield to the other's way as upon this. Each feels, and rightly, that the material to be trained is so precious, and that failure, if it comes, will be so stupendous, that neither dares do what seems wrong to his own mind. Nothing but common knowledge and a predetermined policy can solve this problem so near to the root of success or failure in marriage itself. Girls are commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before undertaking the serious duty of establishing and maintaining a lifelong partnership. There has been little in their lives to prepare them for long-continued relations of any sort. On the other hand, the same girls have equally little idea of what they have a right to expect of marriage for themselves. Much of the necessary adjustment is left to chance. [Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson AMELIA E. BARR Far from interfering with her career, Mrs. Barr's home interests were the inspiration for it. Thrown on her own resources by the death of her husband, who sacrificed himself in a yellow fever epidemic in Texas, Mrs. Barr took up writing to make a living for her children] Scarcely any phase of woman's part in marriage is arousing more attention at present than the question of childbearing. Women, and especially educated women, are accused of sterility or of intentionally avoiding motherhood. They are said to believe that children interfere with their careers, that they can render greater service to the world in public work than in childbearing. They "prefer idleness and luxury to the care of a family." The "maternal instinct is fading." They threaten us with "race suicide," the "extinction of mankind," a silent world given over to dumb beasts who have not yet learned the principles of "birth control" and "family limitation." Thus on the one hand. On the other: "The world is better served by the small family well reared than by the large one necessarily less well cared for." "Women are not merely the instruments of nature for multiplying mankind. They have a right to some time for living their own lives." "The maternal instinct has not faded, but merely come under control of a wisdom which directs that it shall not bring forth what it cannot care for." And so on, with added arguments for either side. In all these discussions of birth control the fathers or the husbands who desire not to be fathers are usually left in the background. As a matter of fact, however, men as well as women desire luxury and freedom from the care of a family. It is a general sign of the times, not a characteristic of one sex alone. Men as well as women fear for their ability to care for and educate large families. With the demands of our present complex existence bearing heavily upon them, one can scarcely wonder at the hesitation of either man or woman to add again and again to their already pressing cares. There is but one remedy--not to cut off education for women, as some suggest, but to learn the joys of a simpler life which will afford people time and strength and means to bear and rear their young. To this end let us teach our girls and our boys something of the essentials of a useful and a happy life, and teach them how to eliminate the non-essentials which waste their time and spirit. Who can best instruct the girl in what we may call the ethics of marriage? Her mother? Usually the mother's viewpoint is too personal. Her teacher? Most of her teachers are unmarried and know little more about the subject than she does herself. A specially selected married teacher? Perhaps, but only if she is a deep student of human nature and of marriage from a scientific standpoint. An ideal course for every girl somewhere before her education can be considered complete would cover "woman's life" as (1) industrial worker, (2) wife, (3) mother, (4) citizen, (5) civic force. Here, without undue "dangling of the wedding ring," girls might study marriage as an important phase of woman's life. Such a course, simplified or elaborated to suit the circumstances of the girls who participate, might well be given in all girls' schools and colleges, in continuation schools, in settlement-house clubs and classes, in rural clubs and neighborhood centers. For, reduced to its simplest terms, marriage in the tenement rests upon the same principles as marriage in the mansion. Happily married, or happy unmarried, with her life work stretching before her, the girl enters upon her heritage of work. We have trained her to be a homemaker, but we need feel no regret in regard to her training if she finds her life work in an office or a schoolroom or a hospital. She may never "keep house," although we hope that she will some time help to make a home. But, whether she becomes a homemaker or not, a true understanding and appreciation of the value of the home and a knowledge of the principles underlying its maintenance will make her a broader woman and a better worker than she could otherwise be. In the home, or wherever she may be, she cannot fail to show the girls who are growing up about her what home means to her and what it means to the race. And in her hands we may safely leave the future of the home. SUGGESTED READINGS GENERAL BOOKS WHICH INTRODUCE THE READER TO THE LARGER PHASES OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT BRU�RE, MARTHA B. and ROBERT W. _Increasing Home Efficiency_. New York: Macmillan. COLQUHOUN, MRS. A. _The Vocations of Woman_. New York: Macmillan. GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS. _Women and Economics_. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. KEY, ELLEN. _Love and Marriage_. New York: Putnam. SCHREINER, OLIVE. _Woman and Labor_. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. SPENCER, ANNA GARLIN. _The Challenge of Womanhood._ TARBELL, IDA M. _The Business of Being a Woman_. New York: Macmillan. Some of these books are conservative, others very radical. They are recommended, not because the writer agrees with them, but because every mother and teacher who acts as a vocational counselor should know both conservative and radical points of view. MORE DISTINCTLY VOCATIONAL BOOKS BLOOMFIELD, MEYER. _Readings in Vocational Guidance_. Boston: Ginn & Co. The following articles in this book are especially recommended: "The Value, during Education, of the Life-Career Motive." By CHARLES W. ELIOT. "Selecting Young Men for Particular Jobs." By HERMAN SCHNEIDER. "The Permanence of Interests and Their Relation to Abilities." By EDWARD L. THORNDIKE. "Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years of Age." By HARRIET HAZEN DODGE. BREWER, J.M. _Vocational-Guidance Movement_. New York: Macmillan. BREWSTER, EDWIN T. _Vocational Guidance for the Professions._ Chicago: Rand McNally & Co. BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C. _Bulletin 1913, No. 17._ "A Trade School for Girls." _Bulletin 1914, No. 4._ "The School and a Start in Life." _Bulletin 1914, No. 14._ "Vocational Guidance Association." Papers presented at the organization meeting, October, 1913. _Annual Reports_ of the Commissioner of Education: 1911, chapter viii, "A School for Homemakers." 1914, chapter xiii, "Education for the Home." 1915, chapter xii, "Home Economics." 1915, chapter xiv, "Home Education." 1916, chapter xvii, "Education in the Home." BUTLER, ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY. _Women and the Trades._ New York: Charities Publication Committee. ----. _Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores._ New York: Survey Associates. DAVIS, JESSE BUTTRICK. _Vocational and Moral Guidance._ Boston: Ginn & Co. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR, Washington, D.C.: _Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor._ Contains nineteen volumes on "Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States." The most comprehensive study of conditions of women in industry before the war. _Bulletin No. 175._ "Summary of the Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States." Gives in condensed form the findings in the nineteen volumes. GOWIN and WHEATLEY. _Occupations._ Boston: Ginn & Co. HOLLINGWORTH, H.L. _Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods._ New York: D. Appleton & Co. LASELLE and WILEY. _Vocations for Girls._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. LEAKE, ALBERT H. _The Vocational Education of Girls and Women._ New York: Macmillan. MCKEEVER, A. _Training the Girl._ New York: Macmillan. PRESSEY, C. PARK. _A Vocational Reader._ Chicago: Rand McNally & Co. This book shows the teacher the kind of stories that can be used for inspiration for grade-school girls. PUFFER, J. ADAMS. _Vocational Guidance_. Chicago: Rand McNally.& Co. WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL UNION OF BOSTON: _Vocations for the Trained Woman_. _The Public Schools and Women in Office Service_. THE INDEX Acting as a preparation for homemaking, 201 Adolescent girl, 130-150. _See also_ Girl Agriculture, possibilities in and qualifications for, 173 ff. Arithmetic applied to household problems, 114 ff. Art courses as education for homemaking, 40, 118 f. Artist, work of, as a preparation for homemaking, 201 Arts and crafts, possibilities in and qualifications for, 173 Auburn, Washington, Central School, manual arts courses in, 119 Bibliography, 241 f. Bruère, Martha B., quoted, 18, 51 f. Budgets, 50 ff. Building problems, 32 ff. Census, statistics regarding women in industry, 151, 152, 153, 154 Chapin, Dr., quoted, 50 f. Child: imitative instinct as influencing training of, 90, 102 training for habits of industry, 96 ff. training for self-control, 93 ff. training for sympathy, 90 f. training for unselfishness, 95 f. training the little, 86-101 Church: as a means of betterment in the community, 67 girl influenced by, 84 f. homemaking as influenced by, 84 f. women and the, 67 Citizenship, woman and, 71 f. Clothing (_see also_ Dress): problems of, in the home, 57 ff. problems of, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff., 147 f. Community: church as a means of betterment in, 67 home, relation between, and, 62 ff. working women, relation to, 157 ff. Consolidated school, 110 Continuation schools, 179 f. Cooking classes in grammar schools, 110 f. Decoration of the home, 40 Department stores: continuation schools in, 179 f. statistics concerning women employed in, 180 Dietetics, knowledge of, necessary to the homemaker, 54 ff. Divorce, dangers of, 82, 218, 220 Doll's house as a means of teaching the child mechanics of housekeeping, 102-121 Domestic work: as a preparation for homemaking, 196 f. as a vocation, possibilities in and qualifications for, 185 f. Dress (_see also_ Clothing): principles of selection, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff. problems of, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff., 147 f. Dressmaking, possibilities in and qualifications for, 171 f. Education: for homemaking, 25 f. of women, effect on home life, 8 ff. Educational agencies involved in "woman making," 75-85 Eugenics as influencing marriage, 230 Factory work: as a preparation for homemaking, 200 f. possibilities in and qualifications for, 170 f. Father, characteristics of the ideal, 23 f. Feeding problems in the home, 53 ff. Financial knowledge necessary for homemaking, 49 ff. Food production, possibilities in and qualifications for work in, 175 ff. Food questions, study of, in schools, 118 Frederick, Mrs., quoted, 18 Furniture, principles governing selection of, 42 Games, training afforded by, 123 ff. Geography applied to household problems, 116 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, quoted, 56 Girl: adolescent, 130-150 church's influence upon, 84 ff. dress problems of the adolescent, 139 ff., 147 f. educational agencies involved in training the, 75-85 health of adolescent, methods of safeguarding, 130 ff. inner life of, 122-129 plan for training adolescent, 136 ff. school center of society of, 129 ff., 143 ff. teaching the mechanics of housekeeping to, 102-121 work of, 151-217 Grammar school, part played in vocational guidance, 204 ff. Hall, G. Stanley, quoted, 76 Handwork, classification of, 170 ff. Health of adolescent girl, methods of safeguarding, 130 ff. Heating apparatus, 35 f. High school, part played in vocational guidance, 211 ff. Home: as a means of training for homemaking, 81 ff. building problems in, 32 ff. clothing problems in, 57 ff. community, relation to, 62 ff. decoration of, 40 establishing a, 27-48 feeding problems in, 53 ff. furniture, principles governing selection of, 42 heating problems in, 35 f. income in, apportionment of, 50 ff. industrial revolution, effect of, on, 7 ff. industries in, 12 ff. labor-saving devices in, 44 ff. running the domestic machinery, 49-72 servant question in, 44 ff. site for, selection of, 31 f. the ideal, 18-26 urban conditions as affecting, 10 f. waste disposal in, 37 ff. water supply in, 36 f. women, effect of education of, on, 8 ff. Homemaking: community problems in country and city affecting, 28, 30 dietetics, knowledge of, necessary to, 54 ff. education for, 25 f. educational agencies involved in training for, 75-85 financial knowledge necessary for, 49 ff. home's influence in training for, 81 ff. tasks suitable for the small child, 109 teacher's responsibility in training for, 78, 80 f. the real business of woman, 14 ff. vocations as affecting, 194-202 (_see also_ the specific vocations) Home work, school credit for, 105 ff. Housekeeping: tasks suitable for the small child, 109 teaching the mechanics of, 102-121 Hygiene, study of, as a preparation for homemaking, 120 Income, apportionment of, 50 ff. Industrial revolution, effects of, on home life, 7 ff. Industries (_see also_ Vocations): in the home, 12 ff. women in, Census statistics concerning, 151, 152, 153, 154 women's wage statistics, 160 Industry, teaching the child habits of, 96 ff. Imitation, evils of, 59 f. Imitative instinct, influence of, in training the child, 90, 102 Labor-saving devices in the home, 44 ff. Leominster, Massachusetts, a school lunch room, 111 Library work, possibilities in and qualifications for, 189 f. Literary work as a preparation for homemaking, 201 Marriage, 218-240 age of, for women, 152, 219 f. factors influencing, 226 f. ideals of, 226 f. Massachusetts plan of school credit for home work, 106 Millinery, possibilities in and qualifications for, 172 Montclair, New Jersey, school lunchroom, 111 Montessori materials as means of teaching habits of industry, 98 Mother (_see also_ Woman): characteristics of the ideal, 21 ff. community institutions, relation to, 65 ff. school, duty to, 65 ff. Nearing, Scott, quoted, 18 Newark, New Jersey, Central High School, lunch room in, 111 New York City, Public School No. 7, model school home, 113 Nursing: as a preparation for homemaking, 197 ff. possibilities in and qualifications for, 190 f. Occupations. _See_ Vocations; _see also_ the specific occupations Office work: as a preparation for homemaking, 199 possibilities in and qualifications for, 180 ff. Oppenheim, quoted, 120 Oregon plan of school credit for home work, 106 Physiology, study of, as preparation for homemaking, 120 Puffer, J. Adams, quoted, 152, 155 Reading for the adolescent girl, 146 f. Reform, woman's opportunities in, 68, 70 f. Salesmanship: as a preparation for homemaking, 200 possibilities in and qualifications for, 178 ff. School: art courses contributing to homemaking knowledge, 118 f. consolidated, 110 continuation, 179 f. cooking classes in, 110 f. homemaking, duty to educate for, 35, 47 f., 76 ff. mothers' relation to, 65 ff. sewing classes in grammar, 110, 111 f. vocational guidance, responsibility in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff. School credit for home work, 105 ff. School gardens, 108 Schreiner, Olive, quoted, 152 Servant question, 44 ff. Sewing classes in grammar schools, 110, 111 f. Sex knowledge, instruction in, 80, 128, 148 ff. Social work, possibilities in and qualifications for, 191 ff. Society: school and playground center of girls', 126 ff., 143 ff. woman's place in, 3-17 Suffrage, 71 Tarbell, Ida M., quoted, 15 Teacher: as a vocational guide, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff. homemaking, responsibility of, in training for, 75 ff., 78, 80 f. Teaching: as a preparation for homemaking, 197 ff. possibilities in and qualifications for, 188 f. Urban conditions as affecting home life, 10 f. Vocational guidance: considerations in, 163 ff., 194 ff. grammar school's part in, 204 ff. high school's part in, 211 ff. need for, 161 f. object of, 216 school's part in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff. teacher's part in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff. Vocations (_see also_ the specific vocations): as affecting homemaking, 194-202 choice of, considerations in, 163 ff., 194 ff. classification of, 163-193 determined by training, 203-217 distributing group, 178-183 producing group, 169-177 service group, 184-193 Wage statistics, 160 Ward, Lester F., quoted, 15 Waste disposal, 37 ff. Water supply, 36 f. Womanhood, present-day ideals of, 1-72 Woman (_see also_ Mother): and citizenship, 71 f. as buyer, 70 f. church, relation to, 67 community's relation to working, 157 ff. education of, effect on home life, 8 ff. in industry, Census statistics, 151, 152, 153, 154 marriage age 152, 219 f. reform, opportunities in, 68, 70 f. society, place in, 3-17 status of, views concerning, 5 f. the real business of, 14 ff. wage statistics, 160 
12171	----	Proofreading Team. WOMEN WORKERS IN SEVEN PROFESSIONS A SURVEY OF THEIR ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS EDITED FOR THE STUDIES COMMITTEE OF THE FABIAN WOMEN'S GROUP BY EDITH J. MORLEY 1914 PREFATORY NOTE The task of collecting and editing the various essays of which this book is comprised, has not been altogether easy. Some literary defects and absence of unity are, by the nature of the scheme, inevitable: we hope these are counterbalanced by the collection of first-hand evidence from those in a position to speak authoritatively of the professions which they follow. _Experientia docet_, and those who desire to investigate the conditions of women's public work in various directions, as well as those who are hesitating in their choice of a career, may like carefully to weigh these opinions formed as a result of personal experience. For other defects in selection, arrangement, proportion and the like, I am alone responsible. I have, from the first, been conscious that many people were better suited to the editorial task than myself--women with more knowledge of social and economic problems, and, perhaps, with more leisure. But at the moment no one seemed to be available, and I was persuaded to do what I could to carry out the wishes of the Studies Committee of the Fabian Women's Group. If I have in any measure succeeded, it is owing to the generous help and unvarying kindness I have received in all directions. In the first place, I would express my gratitude to the members of the Studies Committee, and more particularly to Mrs Charlotte Wilson, the fount and inspiration of the whole scheme, to Mrs Pember Reeves, and to Mrs Bernard Shaw. My indebtedness to all the contributors for their promptitude, patience, and courtesy, it is impossible to exaggerate. I hope it will not be thought invidious if I say that without Dr Murrell's sub-editorship of the Medical and Nursing Sections, and the unstinted and continual help of Dr O'Brien Harris, the book could not have appeared at all. The latter's paper on "Secondary School Teaching" has had the benefit of criticism and suggestions from one of the most notable Head-Mistresses of her day--Mrs Woodhouse, whose experience of work in the schools of the Girls' Public Day School Trust was kindly placed at the author's disposal. Similarly, some of the details mentioned in the section on "Acting," were kindly supplied by Mrs St John Ervine. Lastly--for it is impossible to mention all who have assisted--I wish to thank Miss Ellen Smith for her unsparing secretarial labours, and Miss M.G. Spencer and Miss Craig, of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women, for the Table which appears at the end of Section I. This is unique as an exhaustive summary of a mass of information, hitherto not easily accessible to the general public. EDITH J. MORLEY. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, READING, _December_ 1913. CONTENTS PREFATORY NOTE. By the Editor FOREWORDS. ON BEHALF OF THE STUDIES COMMITTEE OF THE FABIAN WOMEN'S GROUP I. THE TEACHING PROFESSION I. INTRODUCTION. By EDITH J. MORLEY, Oxford Honour School of English Language and Literature. Professor of English Language, University College, Reading. Fellow and Lecturer of University of London King's College for Women II. WOMEN AT THE UNIVERSITIES AND UNIVERSITY TEACHING AS A PROFESSION. By EDITH J. MORLEY III. SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING. By (Mrs) M. O'BRIEN HARRIS, D.Sc., London, Hon. Member of Somerville College, Oxford. Headmistress of the County Secondary School, South Hackney IV. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHING. By (Mrs) KATE DICE, C.T., Class Teacher in the service of the London County Council, Hon. Sec. of the Fabian Education Group V. TEACHING IN SCHOOLS FOR THE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY DEFECTIVE. By (Mrs) JESSIE E. THOMAS, C.T., Class Teacher at the London County Council School for Physically Defective Children, Turney Road, Dulwich VI. THE TEACHING OF GYMNASTICS. By MARY HANKINSON, Hon. Sec. of the Ling Association. Diploma of the Dartford Physical Training College VII. THE TEACHING OF DOMESTIC SUBJECTS. By (Mrs) MARGARET M'KILLOP, M.A. (Dublin). Oxford Honour Schools of Natural Science and of Mathematics Fellow and Tutor of University of London King's College for Women; and E. BEATRICE HOGG, first-class Diploma, National Training School of Cookery. Instructress, London County Council Probationary and Training Centres, Examiner in Domestic Subjects to the City and Guilds of London Institute, the Nautical School of Cookery, etc. Some time Hon. Sec. London Branch, Assistant Teachers of Domestic Subjects TABLE I. SHOWING THE COST AND DURATION OF EDUCATION IN ARTS AND SCIENCE, AND THE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR WOMEN STUDENTS AT THE VARIOUS BRITISH UNIVERSITIES. Reprinted (with additions), by special permission, from the pamphlet, "Openings for University Women," published by the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women for the Students' Careers Association TABLE II. SHOWING SOME ADDITIONAL POST-GRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIPS IN ARTS AND SCIENCE AVAILABLE FOR WOMEN STUDENTS, AWARDED BY BODIES OTHER THAN UNIVERSITIES OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. Compiled (with additions) by special permission, from the "Report on the Opportunities for Post-Graduate Work open to Women" published by the Federation of University Women II. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION INCLUDING DENTISTRY. Sub-Editor: CHRISTINE M. MURRELL, M.D., B.S., London, Assistant Medical Officer of Health (Special Schools) London County Council; Lecturer and Examiner on Adolescence, Health, First Aid, Infant Care, etc., London County Council and Battersea Polytechnic, Honorary Medical Officer, Paddington Creche, and for Infant Consultations, North Marylebone; late Medical Registrar and Electrician and late Resident House Physician, Royal Free Hospital I. MEDICINE AND SURGERY. By the Sub-Editor II. DENTAL SURGERY. By (Mrs) Eva M. HANDLEY READ, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., L.S.A., L.D.S. Dental Surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, the Margaret M'Donald Baby Clinic, and the Cripple Hostel Camberwell III. THE NURSING PROFESSION TOGETHER WITH MIDWIFERY AND MASSAGE. Sub-Editor: CHRISTINE M. MURRELL PREFACE. By the Sub-Editor I. GENERAL SURVEY AND INTRODUCTION. By E.M. Musson. Matron of the General Hospital, Birmingham II. NURSING IN GENERAL HOSPITALS. By E.M. MUSSON III. NURSING IN PRIVATE HOMES AND Co--OPERATIONS. By GERTRUDE TOWNEND, Sister in her own Nursing Home; late Deputy-Sister, St. Bartholomew's Hospital; late Matron, Royal Ear Hospital, Dean Street IV. NURSING IN POOR LAW INFIRMARIES. By ELEANOR C. BARTON, President of the Poor Law Infirmary Matrons' Association V. NURSING IN FEVER HOSPITALS. By S.G. VILLIERS, Matron of the South-West Fever Hospital VI. DISTRICT NURSING. By AMY HUGHES, General Superintendent of the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses VII. NURSING IN SCHOOLS AND NURSES AS INSPECTORS. By H.L. PEARSE VIII. NURSING IN HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE. By a Matron of one of them IX. NURSING IN THE COLONIES. By A. FRICKER, Matron of the Colonial Hospital, Trinidad, under the Colonial Nursing Association X. NURSING IN THE ARMY AND NAVY. By the Sub-Editor XI. PRISON NURSING. By the Sub-Editor XII. MIDWIFERY AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN (OTHER THAN DOCTORS). By ANNIE M'CALL, M.D., Senior Medical Officer and Lecturer, Clapham Maternity Hospital and School of Midwifery; late Lecturer in and Demonstrator of Operative Midwifery, London School of Medicine for Women; Examiner, Central Midwives' Board; Vice-Chairman of the Committee of the London County Council for the Supervision of Midwives in the County of London XIII. MASSAGE. By EDITH M. TEMPLETON, Secretary of the Incorporated Society of Trained Masseuses IV. WOMEN AS SANITARY INSPECTORS AND HEALTH VISITORS. By (Mrs) F.J. GREENWOOD, Sanitary Inspector, Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, late Chief Woman Inspector, Sheffield; Associate Royal Sanitary Institute; Certificate, Central Midwives' Board; Diploma, National Health Society V. WOMEN IN THE CIVIL SERVICE I. THE HIGHER GRADES: PRESENT POSITION AND PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE. By a Woman Civil Servant II. THE LOWER GRADES AND THE PRESENT POSITION. By Another Woman Civil Servant VI. WOMEN CLERKS AND SECRETARIES. By (Mrs) ELSPETH KEITH ROBERTSON SCOTT VII. ACTING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN. By LENA ASHWELL APPENDIX I. SCHEME OF WORK OF THE FABIAN WOMEN'S GROUP APPENDIX II. LATEST CENSUS RETURNS OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE SEVEN PROFESSIONS CONSIDERED IN THIS BOOK FOREWORDS ON BEHALF OF THE STUDIES COMMITTEE OF THE FABIAN WOMEN'S GROUP The present economic position of women bristles with anomalies. It is the outcome of long ages of semi-serfdom, when women toiled continuously to produce wealth, which, if they were married, they could enjoy only at the good pleasure of their lords,--ages when the work of most women was conditioned and subordinated by male dominance. Yet in those days the working housewife commanded the consideration always conceded to a bread-winner--even when dependent. In modern times women's economic position has been undermined by the helpless dependence engendered amongst the well-to-do by "parasitism" resulting from nineteenth-century luxury--to quote the striking word of Olive Schreiner. Similarly, dependence has been forced upon large sections of women-folk amongst the manual workers by the loss of their hold upon land and by the decay of home industries. Now a new force is at work: the revolt of the modern woman against parasitism and dependence in all their forms; her demand for freedom to work and to choose her sphere of work, as well as for the right to dispose of what she gains. Six years ago some women of the Fabian Society, deeply stirred by the tremendous social import of this movement, banded themselves together to unravel the tangled skein of women's economic subjection and to discover how its knots were tied. The first step was to get women to speak out, to analyse their own difficulties and hindrances as matters boldly to be faced. Whatever the truth may turn out to be with regard to natural and inevitable differences of faculty between men and women, it is at least certain that difference of sex, like any other persistent condition of individual existence, implies some difference of outlook. The woman's own standpoint--that is the first essential in understanding her position, economic or other: the trouble is that she has but recently begun to realise that she inevitably has a standpoint, which is not that of her husband, or her brother, or of the men with whom she works, or even that which these persons imagine must naturally be hers. Her point of view is her own, and it is essential to social progress that she shall both recognise this fact and make it understood. The aim of the Fabian Women's Group was to elicit women's own thoughts and feelings on their economic position, and to this end we invited women of experience and expert knowledge, from various quarters and of many types of thought, to discourse of what they best knew to audiences of women. After the lectures, the questions raised were discussed in all their bearings by women speaking amongst women without diffidence or prejudice. In this manner the physical disabilities of women as workers have been explained clearly by women doctors, and carefully and frankly weighed and considered; the part taken by women in producing the wealth of this country in past times has been set forth by students of economic history, and much scattered material of great value unearthed, and for the first time brought together concerning a subject hitherto deemed negligible by the male historian. Lastly, women employed in or closely connected with each leading occupation or group of occupations to-day--from the professions to the sweated industries--are being asked to describe and to discuss with us the economic conditions they have directly experienced or observed.[1] It is hoped in time to complete and shape for publication all the material accumulated during these six years. We make a beginning with this book of essays on the economic position of women in seven of the leading professions at present open to them. Some of the papers appear almost in the form in which they were first read to the group and its women visitors: when the original lectures did not fully cover the ground, they have been revised, altered, expanded, or re-written, or essays by new writers have been substituted for those originally presented. Thus the papers on "Teaching in Secondary Schools" by Dr O'Brien Harris and that on "Teaching in Elementary Schools" by Mrs Dice, take the place of an address on "The Life of a Teacher," by Miss Drummond, President of the Incorporated Association of Assistant Mistresses. This paper was withdrawn at the writer's request, but many valuable points from her lecture, which she generously placed at the disposal of the Editor, have been embodied. The other papers in the Education Section are all new. Similarly, in the section which deals with the profession of Nursing, Miss Hughes' paper on "District-Nursing" is the only one which is based on a lecture given to the group; the other articles are all supplementary. Together, we believe they form a unique and almost exhaustive description of the profession. That the volume might be made as useful as possible, the same method has been followed throughout. The paper and discussion at the group meeting have formed the nucleus from which a thorough treatment of the subject has been developed. We hope and believe that this book may help to arouse deeper interest in the vigour and energy with which professional women are now striving to make good their economic position; that it may serve to enlist active sympathy with their struggle against the special difficulties and hindrances which beset them, and make plain the value to society of the work they can do. We also believe that the information here brought together may be useful in helping young women to choose and prepare for their life-work. No pains have been spared to make the book as accurate as possible, and to bring it in every case up to date. It should be clearly emphasised that each contributor to this volume has expressed her own opinions freely and independently, and that the writers have been selected because they are leading members of their respective professions, not because they represent a particular school of thought. We have endeavoured to get our material from the most authoritative quarters, irrespective of the personal views of those who have supplied it. All the writers have given generously of their time and labour in order that they might contribute to an investigation of profound social and national importance--the clear presentation of the economic position of women as it appears to women themselves. Widely different as are the professional interests and divergent the opinions of the writers of these essays, no one can, as we think, read consecutively the various sections of the book without arriving at the conclusion that, on certain fundamental questions, there is substantial agreement among them. Almost all, as a result of their professional experience, definitely express the conviction that women need economic independence and political emancipation: nowhere is there any hint of opposition to either of these ideals. The writers are unanimous in their insistence upon the importance--to men as well as to women--of equal pay for equal work, irrespective of sex. Wherever the subject of the employment of married women is mentioned--and it crops up in most of the papers--there is adverse comment on the economically unsound, unjust, and racially dangerous tendency in many salaried professions to enforce upon women resignation on marriage. It is clear that professional women are beginning to show resentment at the attempt to force celibacy upon them: they feel themselves insulted and wronged as human beings when, being physically and mentally fit, they are not permitted to judge for themselves in this matter. Apart from their righteous indignation, it may be suggested that, even from the ratepayers' point of view, the normal disabilities of motherhood, with the consequent leave of absence, would probably in the long run be less expensive than the dismissal, at the zenith of their powers, of experienced workers, who have to be replaced by younger and less efficient women. It is, moreover, a truism that the best work is produced by the most contented worker. A fundamentally happy woman, continually strengthened and refreshed by affectionate companionship, is obviously better able to endure the strain of professional work than her unmarried sister, who at best, is deprived of the normal joys of fully--developed womanhood. The action of Central and Local Authorities and of other employers who make marriage a disability for their women employèes, is alluded to by our contributors with an indignation, the more striking for the studied calm with which it is expressed.[2] The future as foreshadowed in these papers seems to us bright with hope. In spite of difficulties, opposition, rebuffs, and prejudice, professional women workers are slowly but surely advancing in status and in recognition. They are gaining courage to train themselves to claim positions of responsibility and command, and to refuse, if occasion arises, to be subordinated, on the ground of their womanhood, to men less able than themselves. They are learning by experience,--many have already learned,--the need for co-operation and loyalty to one another. While they are thus gaining new and valuable qualities, they have never lost, in spite of many hardships, the peculiar joy and lofty idealism in work which are, in part, a reaction from ages of economic and personal dependence. [Footnote 1: For an analysis of the whole scheme of work of the Fabian Women's Group, _see_ Appendix I.] [Footnote 2: In Western Australia the following Amendment, 340A., to the Criminal Code has passed the third reading in the Legislative Assembly, and is expected to pass the Legislative Council before this book appears:-- (1) Any person, who, either as principal or agent--_(a)_ Makes or enters into or enforces or seeks to enforce any rule, order, regulation, contract, agreement or arrangement in restraint of or with intent to restrain, prevent or hinder the marriage of _any person (N.B._ A woman is a "person" in Western Australia) who is in his employment or in the employment of his principal, and is of the age of twenty-one years or upwards; or _(b)_ Dismisses or threatens to dismiss any person from his employment or the employment of his principal, or alters or threatens to alter, any such person's position to the prejudice of such person by reason of the fact that such person has married or intends to marry, or with a view to restrain, prevent, or hinder such person from getting married; is guilty of an offence, and is liable to imprisonment for three months, or to a fine not exceeding five hundred pounds. (2) The provisions of this section shall apply to corporations so far as they are capable of being applied.] WOMEN WORKERS IN SEVEN PROFESSIONS SECTION I THE TEACHING PROFESSION "All stood thus far Upon equal ground: that we were brothers all In honour, as in one community." I INTRODUCTION Until recently, girls who desired to earn their livelihood drifted naturally into teaching, which was often the last refuge of the destitute. Even nowadays, it is taken too much for granted that some form of teaching is the obvious opening for educated women, who aspire to economic independence. But, thanks to various causes and developments, it is now almost universally recognised that teaching is a profession, and one which can be entered only by candidates, who are properly equipped and trained. In a book such as this, it may then be assumed that the elderly governess, driven to teach by poverty and lack of friends, with no qualifications but gentility, good manners, good principles, and a humble mind, is a figure which is mercifully becoming less and less common. It is still necessary, however, to insist on the fact that brains and education and training are not by themselves sufficient to produce a successful teacher. Quite literally, teaching is a "calling" as well as a profession: the true candidate must have a vocation; she must mount her rostrum or enter her class-room with a full conviction of the importance of her mission, and of her desire to undertake it. This earnest purpose should not, however, destroy her sense of humour and of proportion; it is possible to take oneself and one's daily routine of work too seriously, a fault which does not tend to impress their importance on a scoffing world. No girl should become a teacher because she does not know how else to gain her living. The profession is lamentably overstocked with mediocrities, lacking enthusiasm and vigour, drifting more and more hopelessly from one post to another. But there is plenty of room for keen and competent women, eager to learn and to teach, and this is true of all branches of the profession. No work can well be more thankless, more full of drudgery and of disappointment than that of a teacher who has missed her vocation. Few lives can be more full of happy work and wide interests than those of teachers who rejoice in their calling. Yet there is need to call attention to certain drawbacks which are common to all branches of the profession. As a class, teachers are badly paid, and many are overworked. The physical and mental strain is inevitably severe: in many cases this is unnecessarily increased by red-tape regulations that involve loss of time and temper and an amount of clerical work, which serves no useful purpose. Teachers need to concentrate their energies on essentials: of these the life intellectual is the most important, and this, however elementary the standard of work demanded in class. No one can teach freshly unless she is at the same time learning, and widening her own mental horizon. Too many forms to fill up, too many complicated registers to keep, too many meetings to attend--these things stultify the mind and crush the spirit. They are not a necessary accompaniment of State or municipal control, though sometimes under present conditions it is hard to believe that they are not the inevitable concomitants of official regulations. Anything which tends to make teachers' lives more narrow, is opposed to the cause of education. This truth should be instilled into all official bosoms. Wherever the State or the local authority intervenes, wherever public money has been granted, there regular inspection obviously becomes inevitable, but the multiplication of inspectors, each representing a different authority, is not necessary or sensible. At present, in all grant-aided institutions, whatever their status, inspectors do not cease from troubling, and teachers as well as administrative officers, though weary, find no rest.[1] This is as detrimental to the pupil as to the teacher, for it lowers the intellectual standard by substituting form for matter and the letter for the spirit. Thus the inspector of an art-school who enquires only about what are officially termed "student-hours," and not at all about the work therein accomplished, does not make for artistic efficiency either in teacher or taught. Yet this instance is of very recent occurrence, and there are countless parallel cases. No wonder the Universities demand freedom from State control; no wonder Training Colleges and subsidised secondary as well as elementary schools groan under its tender mercies. The present forms taken by this control are mostly obnoxious to all practical educationists. They arise from lack of trust in the teaching profession on the part of administrators--a mistrust which it is of primary importance to allay by increased efficiency, independence, and organisation. Nationalisation of the schools is necessary, if a real highway of education is to be established: it must be obtained without irritating conditions which make freedom, experiment, and progress too often impossible. The task before the teaching profession is to retain full scope for initiative and experiment, whilst working loyally under a public body. This should be specially the work of the socialist teacher, while the socialist administrator and legislator must see that their side of the work leaves full room for individuality. In the following section it is obviously impossible adequately to consider all branches of the teaching profession, and it has therefore been thought the wisest course to select the leading varieties of work in which women teachers are engaged and to treat them in some detail. The writers of the various articles express their own points of view, gained by practical first-hand experience of the work they describe. Allowance must, perhaps, in some cases be made for personal enthusiasm, or for the depression that arises from thwarted efforts and unfulfilled ideals. At any rate no attempt has been made to co-ordinate the papers or to give them any particular tendency. As a result, certain deductions may be made with some confidence. Women teachers of experience are convinced of the manifold attractions of their profession, and at the same time are alive to its disadvantages as well as to its possibilities. Alike in University, secondary school, and elementary school there is the joy of service, and the power to train, "To riper growth the mind and will. "And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's inner deeps, When one that loves, but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?" Of all teachers, perhaps she who elects to work in an elementary school is in this respect most fortunate and most rich in opportunities, since, to many of her children, she is the one bright spot in their lives, the one person who endeavours to understand and to stimulate them to the effort which all normal children enjoy. For her, too, particularly if her work lies in a poor district, there is the opportunity, if she care to take it, for all kinds of social interests. There will, of course, be much to sadden her in such experiences, but at least they will add a sense of reality to her teaching which will keep her in close touch with life. She will find that there are compensations for hard work and red-tape regulations, even for low remuneration and slowness of promotion. Nor must it be forgotten that, inadequate as is her salary, it contrasts not unfavourably with that of other occupations for women, _e.g._ clerkships and the Civil Service, in which the work is in itself less attractive. As compared with the assistant mistress in a secondary school, her lot is not altogether unenviable. If she has shorter holidays, larger classes, and at the worst, but by no means inevitably, a lower stipend, these facts must be counterbalanced by remembering that she has comparatively few corrections, much less homework, and no pressure of external examining bodies, that her tenure is far less insecure, and that her training and education have been to a very large extent borne by the State or by local authorities. The following table gives the approximate cost of College education for elementary teachers-in-training. If it be compared with the expenses that have to be met by other students from private sources (_vide_ p. 7, or, in greater detail, pp. 82 _et seq_.), it will be seen that the elementary teacher begins her career with a substantial subsidy from the State. _Elementary Teachers_. The following is a typical table of annual cost at a University College which provides for two-year and for three-year students. The training is obtainable at slightly lower cost to students in some other colleges. Grants by Board of Fees payable by students Education to College. to College. Tuition. Maintenance. Tuition. Maintenance. Women students £13 £20 £12 From £12 to in residence £22 according to accommodation. (It is to be noted that the Government maintenance grant for men students in residence is £40, which can be made practically to cover expenses.) Women students £13 £20 £12 ... living at home (paid to student) Men students receive _£25 _maintenance grant. Apparently the Government policy, as evidenced by its maintenance grants, is to discourage women students from entering residential colleges. Yet it is a well-known fact that the wear and tear involved in living at home is far greater than at college--especially for women--and the educational advantages correspondingly fewer than those resulting from residence. County Councils frequently provide "free places" at local colleges, together, in some cases, with supplementary bursaries for maintenance. Non-resident students--_e.g._, in London--seldom have any out-of-pocket expenses for their actual education. Nor must it be forgotten that education up to college age is free to junior county scholars and to bursars, who also receive small grants towards maintenance. _College Fees for other than Elementary Teachers-in-Training_[2] Oxford and Cambridge Colleges From £90 to £105 a year for a minimum of 3 years (of 24 weeks). Other Residential Universities and Colleges From £52 to £90 or £110 a year for a minimum of 3 years (of 30 to 35 weeks). Non-residential Colleges From £20 to £55 a year for a minimum of 3 years. (The cost of maintenance must be reckoned at about £40 a year, as a minimum.) Students who desire to do advanced work will need at least one, and probably two, additional years at the University, while all women who intend to teach in schools ought also to spend one year in training. A large number of County Councils provide "senior" scholarships to cover or partially to cover college fees. In some counties only one or two such scholarships are given annually, and there is severe competition: in others they are comparatively easy to obtain, though there are never enough for all candidates who desire a University education. Most of these scholarships are not renewable for a fourth year of training--an extremely short-sighted policy on the part of the authorities. At practically every University, entrance or other scholarships and exhibitions are awarded annually. Competition for these is usually very severe, and they are extremely difficult to gain. At Oxford and Cambridge only quite exceptional candidates can hope to secure scholarships at the women's colleges. Moreover, scholarships seldom cover the complete cost of maintenance and tuition; at Oxford and Cambridge they never do so. Most secondary teachers, then, must incur liabilities varying from £60 to £350, apart from school, holiday, and personal expenses, before they obtain their first degree. On the other hand, a graduate with good testimonials can very often obtain her professional training at comparatively small cost by means of a bursary: with luck, she may get maintenance as well as free tuition. Every year, however, as training is more widely recognised as essential, the proportion of scholarships available becomes smaller. With the advent of the new Teachers' Register, which makes training indispensable after 1918, girls will more and more often be obliged to find means to pay for their own training. At present it is often possible to borrow for this purpose from loan societies specially formed to meet the needs of women preparing to enter professions. The training for kindergarten and lower-form mistresses is less expensive, arduous, and lengthy. Students are required to give evidence of having received a good secondary education; they can then take their First Froebel Certificate after one year, and their Higher Froebel Certificate after about two years' training. The cost of such training varies from £30 to £58 non-resident; £120 to £150 resident. If they elect to go to the House of Education at Ambleside, the training is for two years, and is specially suited to those who wish to teach in private families. The cost amounts to £90 a year, including residence, which is obligatory. Kindergarten assistant-mistresses usually obtain from £90 to £100 salary for part-day work, while for whole-day work the rate is the same as that of their colleagues. Mistresses in charge of a large kindergarten department often receive additions to their stipend if they are willing to train student-mistresses for Froebel examinations. The Ambleside students usually teach small private classes, or accept posts as resident governesses in families. Their remuneration varies in accordance with the work done, but it is usually about the same as that received by kindergarten and lower-form mistresses. The stipends of other secondary teachers are considered in the article by Dr O'Brien Harris (see p. 32). It should be noted that in good private schools where the standard of teaching is equally high, the salaries are approximately on the same scale as in public schools. But private schools vary enormously in standing. When they are inferior, the teachers are paid miserable pittances, and are often worth no more than they receive. Such schools, however, are rapidly decreasing in number, since they cannot survive competition with public State-aided schools. The best private schools, on the other hand, supply a real need, and, as a large proportion of their pupils do not enter for public examinations, it is possible in them, to make valuable experiments which could not easily be tried in larger subsidised institutions. In boarding-schools, the conditions do not markedly differ from those obtaining in day-schools. The chief danger is lest the teachers should suffer from the strain of supervision-duties in addition to their work in school. But in the better schools this is avoided by the appointment of house-mistresses, the teaching staff living apart from the girls, either in lodgings or in a hostel of their own. When they "live in," the value of their board for the school terms is usually reckoned at about £40 a year, which is deducted from the ordinary salary of an assistant. The cost of living in a mistresses' house is usually higher, but there are many counterbalancing advantages, the chief of which is complete freedom when school duties are over. It would not be surprising if all women who have incurred the heavy expenses of preparation for a teaching career, were dissatisfied with the very small return they may expect by way of salary. Certainly if we judged by the standard of payment, the profession might well appear unimportant. Men and women alike receive inadequate remuneration in all its branches, but, as in other callings, women are worse paid than men. One might imagine that the training of girls was less arduous or less important than that of boys, since no one suggests that women teachers are less conscientious or less competent than their male colleagues. Now that at every stage co-education of the sexes is becoming less unusual, it is wise policy in the interests of men as well as of women, to make the standard of remuneration depend, not on the sex of the worker, but on the quality of the work. Otherwise men will gradually be driven from the profession, as is already the tendency in the United States of America and, to some extent, in elementary teaching in this country. Needless to say, the women's salaries need levelling up: it would be hopeless policy to reduce the men's maxima to those of the women. In many secondary schools and in at any rate some elementary ones, there is too great a discrepancy between the salary of the head and that of the assistants. Here again, teachers might endeavour to arrive at some united expression of opinion. All would probably agree that the profession should be entered for the sake of the work itself, and not on the remote chance of becoming a head-mistress. But while the difference in salary is very great, it is inevitable that ambitious teachers must aspire to headships, even though they be better suited to class work. Finally, it may be repeated, that with all its drawbacks, the teaching profession has much to recommend it to those who desire to make it their life-work. It is not suited to all comers: it makes heavy demands on mind and body and heart; it gives little material return. But it gives other returns in generous measure. For teachers it is less difficult than for most people to preserve their faith in human nature, less impossible, even in the midst of daily routine, to believe in the dignity of labour, and to illuminate it with the light of enthusiasm and aspiration. "... whether we be young or old Our destiny, our being's heart and home, Is with infinitude, and only there; With hope it is, hope that can never die, Effort, and expectation and desire, And something evermore about to be." [Footnote 1: The ideal inspector is, of course, a help and not a hindrance to the teacher, acting as a propagator of new ideas and bringing into touch with one another, workers who are widely separated. But the reach of most inspectors far exceeds their grasp.] [Footnote 2: See table at end of section, p. 82.] II WOMEN AT THE UNIVERSITIES AND UNIVERSITY TEACHING AS A PROFESSION When a girl is about to leave school at the age of seventeen or eighteen, she is often as little able to determine what profession she wishes to adopt, as is her brother in similar case. If she is intelligent, well-trained and eager to study, her natural impulse is to go to college, and to get there, it is still usually the line of least resistance to say that she wishes to become a teacher. When there are pecuniary difficulties in the way, the decision must be taken still earlier. The unfortunate child in the elementary school used to be compelled to make her choice at the age of twelve or thirteen, often to find later on, when the first barriers of pupil-teaching and King's Scholarship were surmounted, that she was not really suited to her profession or that continued study was uncongenial. Even now, when the system is different and better, children are bound too early by a contract they find it hard to break. It cannot be too often insisted that every intelligent child who is worthy of a junior or senior scholarship, is not therefore of necessity predestined to the profession of teaching--a profession so arduous, so full of drudgery and of disappointment that it should be entered by those only who are sure of their mission, and full of the spirit that makes learning and teaching a lasting joy. There should be other paths from elementary and secondary school to the University than that which leads to the teacher's platform. Moreover, granted that the desire to teach is a real one, and that the girl has aptitude, it ought still to be unnecessary to choose a particular branch of the profession before she has become an under-graduate. A University career means, among other things, the discovery of new powers, new interests, and opportunities; sometimes it brings with it the painful conviction that aspiration has outstripped capacity. The bright girl who has excelled at school, may find that she is unfitted for independent honour work: she is not necessarily worse on that account, but she must substitute some other plan for her ambition to become a "specialist." The slow plodder who could never trust her memory at school, may, at College, discover unsuspected powers of investigation and co-ordination which mark her out for some branch of higher study. The University, the first contact with a more independent and larger life, is the "testing-place for young souls": students should enter its portals as free women, the world all before them where to choose. In many cases not until the first degree is taken, has the proper time come to determine finally the profession which is to be adopted. This is the ideal--for most people admittedly a far away one at present. But even now, the would-be teacher should not be asked to decide earlier than this on the particular branch of the profession which she is to enter. The average pass graduate will do best to fit herself as an all-round form mistress: there should be no reason to determine in what type of school, elementary or secondary. The training required should be the same if the classes were, as they ought to be, of manageable size, and the equipment in both types of institution equally good. Teachers in both kinds of school would benefit if the present absurd division between them ceased to exist. Children under fourteen require similar discipline whatever their social status: even if the subjects taught are to differ somewhat--a matter which is controversial and need not be discussed here--the teachers need similar training and the same kind and amount of academic education. Until these are secured, there can be no real equality of opportunity for the elementary school child: only the very best intellects in the class of 60 can hope to compete with the average individually educated child in the form of 20 or 30--and this is true whatever the merits and enthusiasm of the teacher. Some girls will welcome the larger opportunities for social service which are open to the elementary school-teacher: others will prefer and be better suited to the conditions of the secondary school. Clearly, the student, whose expenses have been defrayed by the Government on condition that she enters its service, must fulfil her undertaking: but that should not in itself limit her to one type of school in these days of grant-aided institutions.[1] The new four-year course makes it possible for her, as for independent students, to train in the year subsequent to taking a degree--an essential reform if the old over-strain and rush are to be avoided. It is generally accepted, and in girls' secondary schools commonly acted upon, that professional training for one year after graduation, is indispensable. The teacher is born, not made, but she needs help if she is to avoid mistakes equally disastrous to herself and her pupils: she requires some knowledge of child-character, some acquaintance with the history and theory of education, some leisure to formulate, some opportunity to consider the aims as well as the methods of her teaching. We have, perhaps, passed beyond the stage when it is necessary further to discuss the value and effect of training. It is still desirable to emphasise the fact that the untrained woman teacher finds it increasingly difficult to obtain satisfactory and well-paid school posts.[2] Girls should endeavour by every means in their power to secure this fourth year at college, which is essential to their competency and to security of employment. It would also be well to impress on county councils that their work is but half done if they continue to refuse a renewal of scholarships for training to those who have taken a degree. Students who have graduated with honours will have to decide before they begin to train, whether they wish to become specialist teachers and whether they have sufficient intellectual capacity to do so. Generally speaking, a student who has obtained third-class honours will do better to prepare herself for ordinary form work; she is not likely to obtain control of the teaching of her own subject in a first-rate school, though doubtless she will often get the opportunity to take some classes under the direction of the specialists. Graduates in high honours will usually desire to devote themselves mainly to the subject in which they have proved their ability, and their training must be adapted to their end. Modern language or English specialists will need practical training in phonetics, for example: mathematicians require to study modern methods of teaching their subject, and so forth. The best training colleges, of course, provide for such cases; in this respect, University training-departments have the advantage over others, since they can secure the services of experts for the discussion of their own subjects. There remains, lastly, the case of the student who, while definitely desiring to teach, wishes at the same time to go on with her own work, to undertake research or advanced or independent study. Such an one will aim at a University or College appointment, in the hope of pursuing her own work under congenial conditions. At Oxford and Cambridge a woman is, at this stage and always, definitely at a disadvantage by reason of her sex. For her there are scarcely any fellowships or post-graduate scholarships, and too often the promising scholar is caught up in the whirl of teaching for her daily bread at the very moment when it is most necessary for her to have leisure and ease of mind. Few things are more required in women's education at the moment than liberal endowments for post-graduate study. The comparatively new Federation of University Women Graduates has done good work by making a list[3] of the opportunities available for women graduates, either by open competition or otherwise, at the various Universities and elsewhere: it has also founded, and twice awarded, an annual fellowship for a woman who has already published a distinguished contribution to learning. But much more is needed in this direction if women are to have the same chances as men to qualify themselves for the higher university appointments. At almost all the new Universities men and women are nominally alike eligible for every teaching post. In practice, women are rarely if ever selected for the higher positions. Sex prejudice undoubtedly counts for something in this result. It may be assumed that, with two candidates of equal merit, preference will certainly be given to the man: indeed, it is certain that a woman must be exceptionally qualified and far more distinguished than her male competitors to stand a chance of a professorial appointment even in the most liberal of co-education universities--Manchester, for example, where the conditions are exceptionally good. This fact should not deter _fully qualified_ women from applying for professorial chairs. The power of suggestion is very great, and it is well to accustom appointment committees to the consideration of women's claims: in time it may appear less strange to choose a strong woman candidate than to reject her in favour of a less qualified male applicant. It must be confessed, however, that the case does not at present often arise. The girl who has had a brilliant undergraduate career, and who has real capacity for advanced study, exists in her hundreds. But in almost every case when she is not financially independent, at best after an interval of preparation for her M.A., she accepts a junior lectureship or demonstratorship, and from that time onwards is swallowed up in the vortex of teaching and routine work. Often she makes heroic efforts and succeeds in producing independent results, but, so far, to nothing like the extent that would be commensurate with the promise of her undergraduate achievement. Generally she is too conscientious about detail, too interested in her students individually and collectively, to secure sufficient time for her own studies. If a lecturer be known to teach between twenty and thirty hours a week, it is tolerably, though not entirely, safe to assume that it is a woman who is so foolish. In so doing, she is destroying her chances of advancement--intellectual and professional--and is laying her whole sex open to the charge of being unsuited to university work except in its lower branches. It is certain that the number of University appointments open to women is on the increase, and that there is no present likelihood that the demand for qualified women will remain stationary. On the other hand, the necessary qualifications, personal as well as intellectual, are high; the work is hard, though attractive, and it is in every respect undesirable that those whose talents can better be exerted in other branches of the profession should endeavour to obtain College posts. Roughly speaking such openings are of four kinds :-- (1) Administrative posts. These are usually the reward of long and successful service in junior appointments. The heads of the various women's University Colleges are often, but by no means invariably, well paid, and may look forward to a salary ranging from £400 to £1,000. Such posts are obviously few in number and entail hard work and grave responsibility. They necessarily preclude much time for research, or even for teaching. The corresponding, but much less responsible, influential, and well-paid position in a co-educational University is that of Dean or Tutor of Women Students. This post is usually, and should always be held by a woman of senior academic standing, whose position in the class-room or laboratory commands as much respect as her authority outside. The Dean or Tutor is responsible for the welfare and discipline of all women students, and is nowadays usually a member of the Senate or academic governing body. Sometimes she is also Warden of a Women's Hostel, but this is obviously undesirable if there be more than one Hall of Residence, lest she may appear to favour her own students at the expense of the others. (2) Professorial posts and Staff Lectureships.[4] These are almost entirely confined to Women's Colleges, though there are a very few exceptions to this rule. The University of London has established University Professorships and Readerships at the various constituent Women's Colleges.[5] One of the former and several of the latter are held by women who have been appointed after open competition. In addition, a woman, Mrs Knowles, holds a University Readership at the co-educational London School of Economics. There are also one or two women professors at the newer Universities, but these as a rule retain their positions by right of past service in a struggling institution, not as a result of open competition, when University status had been attained and reasonable stipends were offered to new-comers. The National University of Ireland has, however, appointed several women professors at its various constituent Colleges. Salaries probably range from £300 to £700, the better paid posts as yet very seldom falling to women. (3) Lectureships, assistant lectureships, and demonstratorships. These are usually open to women in practice as well as in theory, though much depends on the personal idiosyncrasy of the head of the department, and on the importance of the post and the salary offered. But since it is, unhappily, often easy to secure an able woman for the same stipend as that which must be offered to an inexperienced man, fresh from college, difficulties are not, as a rule, placed in the way of such appointments. The salary begins at about £150 (sometimes less), and rises normally to about £200 or £250. A few senior and independent lectureships are better remunerated. (4) Closely allied with University work is the work of training teachers. In Training-Colleges, and in University training-departments there is a constant demand for lecturers and mistresses of method. These posts, which are remunerated on about the same scale as other University lectureships, are well suited to those whose interest lies mainly in purely educational matters. Girls who have obtained good degrees, but who do not wish to devote themselves entirely to scholarship, will find here an attractive and ever-extending sphere of influence. Lecturers in Training-Colleges must, of course, themselves hold a University teaching-diploma: they should have school experience of various kinds, and they must be enthusiastic in the cause of training and of teaching. For competent and broad-minded women there are many openings in this branch of the profession, and there is much scope for independent and original work in many directions. The training of teachers, as well as actual teaching, is of the nature of scientific, experimental, and observational work. Lecturers in Training-Colleges most of all, but to a large extent teachers of every degree, must be students of psychology and of human nature. Mistresses of Method are well aware that the ideal type of training has not yet been evolved: they are seeking new ways of carrying on their work and experimenting with new methods at the same time as they are guiding others along paths already familiar to themselves. This absence of finality, characteristic of the teaching profession as a whole, and constituting one of its chief attractions, is especially noticeable in all work connected with the training of teachers. Senior appointments at all properly constituted Universities are of life tenure--nominally until the age of sixty-five, though probably earlier retirement will be made possible. They are made by the Council, which usually entrusts the election either to the Senate or to a committee, on which are representatives of both the Council and the Senate. Unfortunately this procedure is not universal, and the teachers are not invariably consulted in their official capacity. Junior appointments, while subject to ratification by the Council, are usually made in the first instance by the head of the department concerned, usually, but not invariably, after consultation with the Dean of the Faculty or the Vice-Chancellor. They are sometimes of three years' tenure with or without possible extension, sometimes subject merely to terminal notice on either side. In the last four or five years contributory pension schemes for the professorial body and for permanent assistants in receipt of a specified income (usually £250 or £200 and upwards) have been compulsorily established at all British Universities in receipt of a Government grant. In June 1913, the Advisory Committee on the Distribution of Exchequer Grants to Universities and University Colleges laid on the table of the House of Commons a scheme which came into force on 29th September, and is compulsory on every member of the staff entering a University after that date at a salary of £300 or upwards. Members appointed at salaries of between £200 and £300 have the option of joining the scheme, while those appointed at salaries of between £160 and £200 may join with the consent of the institution. Members of existing schemes are entitled to join under similar conditions. Special facilities are given for the transference of policies from one University to another, since the view is taken that the teachers in all the Universities constitute a profession comparable with the Civil Service, and that transference from one University to another should not be accompanied by a financial penalty any more than is transference from one Government office to another. A competent girl who can bide her time can usually get a footing in some University. Her future advancement will depend on her value to the institution, on her original writing and research even more than on her teaching, work on committees and influence with the students. Largely, too, it will depend on her tact and popularity with her colleagues: to a very considerable extent it still rests also on conditions over which she has no control, and which are part and parcel of the slow recognition of a woman's right to compete on equal terms with men. It seems, as far as can be judged, that future opportunities are likely to occur when the right candidates for posts are there in sufficient numbers to make their exclusion on the ground of sex, already seldom explicitly stated, impossible or inexpedient. Meanwhile it is probable that individual women will continue, in some cases, to suffer injustice, while in others, by virtue of their unquestionable attainments and strength of personality, they may attain the positions they desire. Slow progress is not altogether bad for the ultimate cause of women at the Universities: nothing could injure that cause so much as mistakes at the initial stage. An important appointment given to the wrong woman, or to one in any respect inferior to her colleagues, would be used as an argument against further experiment for many years. University women teachers can best help to secure equality of opportunity by rendering themselves indispensable members of the body corporate. In their case much is required of those to whom little is given. Above all they must avoid the temptation to live entirely in the absorbing interests of the present: they must remember that it is the business of a University to make contributions to learning as well as to teach. Secondly, they must insist on equality of payment and status when there is any disposition, overt or acknowledged, to differentiate on the score of sex. It is not right to yield on these points, for an important principle is at stake. On the other hand the time and place for insistence must be wisely selected, and any claim made must be incontrovertible on the score of justice and practicability. Lastly, women on committees and elsewhere are not justified in keeping unduly in the background. When they have something worth contributing to the discussion, it is not modesty but lack of business capacity, which makes them silent. "Mauvaise honte" is as much out of place as undue pertinacity. Women who are unwilling or unable to assert themselves when necessary, are not in place at a co-educational University. Most women, however, will derive intellectual stimulus from the free interchange of opinion, possible only when both sexes are working happily together, with common interests and common aims. If relatively too much space in this article has been given to women's work at mixed Universities, the excuse lies ready to hand. In Women's Colleges there is, of course, no sex bar, and the way lies clear from the bottom to the top of the ladder. Conditions of appointment, tenure, and work do not greatly differ from those described, except in so far as the stipends tend to be lower, especially for more responsible posts, when these are ordinarily occupied by women. It is a sign of the times that in at least one Women's College in a mixed University, it has been recently necessary to rule that posts are open to men as well as to women, unless it is specially stated to the contrary. Thus, when the power is theirs, women also may be unwisely tempted to erect a new form of sex barrier. To do so would be to play into the hands of those enemies who are always raising the voice against equal pay for equal work. The most suitable candidate for a post is the one who should be selected, irrespective of sex. It is this principle that women are endeavouring to establish. They must do so by scrupulous fairness when the power is theirs: by making themselves indisputably most fitted, when they are knocking at the closed door. One further topic needs discussion in this section--the continued employment of married women in University posts. At present there is no universal rule, and every case has to be judged on its merits. Every lecturer who marries, can and ought to help to form the precedent that continuance of professional work is a matter for her own decision and is not one that concerns governing bodies. Already a good many women, mothers as well as wives, have set the good example and have established their own position, sometimes without question, sometimes as the result of a difficult struggle. It is clear that Universities, with their long vacations, and with their established recognition of long absences for specified purposes, have less ground than most employers to raise difficulties for married women. Thus the holder of an A.K. scholarship may travel for a year, in order, by the wise provision of the founder, to enlarge his or her mind and bring back new experience to University organisation, research, and teaching. The woman who fulfils the claims of sex, and to do so journeys into the realm where life and death struggle for victory, cannot thereby be unfitted for the profession for which she has qualified. Enlargement of mind and new experience will help her too, in the daily routine. It is for her alone to decide whether new claims and old can be reconciled. If in practice in an individual case they cannot, then and only then has the University or College a right to interfere, and on no other ground than that the work suffers. Since women workers are as a rule only too conscientious, this contingency is unlikely often to arise. [Footnote 1: Her local authority may, however, have claims upon her, if she has promised to teach in an elementary school.] [Footnote 2: Trained teachers only, men and women, will be admitted to the new Register.] [Footnote 3: See tables at the end of this section, pp. 82 to 136.] [Footnote 4: On the Continent even in Germany, and in the U.S.A. several women have been elected to University chairs.] [Footnote 5: Dr Benson, Staff Lecturer at Royal Holloway College, was raised to the status of University Professor of Botany in 1912 without open competition; Dr Spurgeon was appointed to the new University Chair of English Literature, tenable at Bedford College as from 1st September 1913, after open competition. These professorships are the only two held by women at the University of London but there are several women Readers.] III SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING The girls' secondary day schools of this country, largely built up in the first place by the individual pioneer work of broad-minded women during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, are now in most cases coming, if not under State control, at least into the sphere of State influence. These women educationists in some cases worked on old foundations, in others obtained from guilds or governors a share for girls' education of funds previously allocated to various benefactions or to the education of boys only. Private enterprise, individual or, as in the case of the Girls' Public Day School Company, collective, added schools in most important towns. Thus by the beginning of the twentieth century there was provision for a large number of girls of the middle class up to eighteen years of age, in schools which as High Schools were analogous to the Grammar Schools for boys dating to a corresponding burst of educational activity rather more than three centuries earlier. Dependent on the fees of their pupils or on special funds or endowments, these schools could not, for the classes unable to pay a fee, adequately supplement the elementary schools of the country, which provide for such children education at most up to fourteen or fifteen years of age. The Education Act of 1902, therefore, placed education beyond this age in the hands of local authorities, the Board of Education supplementing the rates by grants for secondary education--so that publicly owned schools have been started by municipalities and County Councils, while other institutions receive grants on certain conditions. Schools of all the types mentioned and a few others, providing education at least from ten to sixteen (or eighteen) years of age, are known as secondary schools, and it is to work in them that this article refers.[1] Various as may be their origins, and different their aims, the teachers in them form a fairly homogeneous group, with definite points in common, resulting from the requirements of the Board of Education for the earning of the grant now paid to most of these schools, or for the register in force for a short time--as well as from the co-ordinating influence of membership of the Headmistresses' or the Assistant Mistresses' Associations and other professional and educational bodies, and of educational literature from the publications of the Board of Education downwards. It would be well if for this, as for other parts of educational work, people of middle age, or in fact all whose school days lie in the past, would dismiss their ideas gained from schools of even the end of the nineteenth century, and realise that the daily life of a school to-day is, in most cases, very different from that which they have in their minds. The time-table and the class-room work may not appear dissimilar to the casual observer, but a difference there is, nevertheless. The chief alteration, however, is that a girl's education is increasingly carried on by many agencies other than these. In the school society rather than in the class-room lesson, at net-ball and hockey rather than in the drill lesson, on the school stage or in the school choir she learns, rather than is taught, her most valuable lessons. Examinations still exist, it is true; but these come later in a girl's school life, and are more frequently based on the school curriculum and held in the school than used to be the case. What does all this new life mean in the work of the teacher and her preparation for it? Miss Drummond, President of the Incorporated Association of Assistant Mistresses, spoke thus on the subject[2]:-- "In a lesson in a good school there is most often a happy give and take between the teacher and the class. The teacher guides, but every girl is called on to take her part and put forward individual effort. The homework is no longer mere memorizing from some dry little manual, but requires thought and gives scope for originality. The whole results in a rigorous mental discipline, real stimulus to power of original thought, eager enthusiasm in learning.... It means an enormously increased demand upon the teacher." Again, "it must not be thought, however, that the work of the school is limited to lesson hours. We aim not only at giving a definite intellectual equipment but at producing independence and self-reliance together with that public spirit which enables a girl quite simply and without self-consciousness to take her part in the life of a community." Besides games, which may be organised by a special mistress (see p. 59) or by ordinary members of the school staff, "there are nearly always several societies, run again by the girls as far as possible, but almost always with the inspiration and sympathy of some mistress at the back of them. Thus there are social guilds of various kinds. These vary from mere working parties for philanthropic purposes to large organisations which embrace a number of activities.... Of something the same kind are the archaeological and scientific, the literary and debating societies.... These societies are among the most interesting and important parts of the work of a teacher, as they are also among the most exacting. Games and societies together tend to lengthen the hours of a school day, but even on leaving school, her work is not finished. There are always corrections to be done.... Still this is not all if lessons are to be kept as alive and stimulating as they should be. First and foremost, it is absolutely essential that the teacher should not be jaded. She must get relaxation, she must mix with other people and exchange ideas, she must go about and keep in touch with all kinds of activities. But at the same time she has to read in her own subject, she has to keep up with modern methods of teaching, she has to think out her various lessons."[3] Just as the headmaster of a public school often seeks for a cricketer rather than a classical scholar for his staff, so the headmistress thinks not only of academic attainments but seeks for an assistant who can keep going a school society or a magazine (while leaving it in the hands of the girls), who enjoys acting and stage management, who can take responsibility for a dozen girls on a week's school journey (the nearest approach to camping out--and experience of this would perhaps be a recommendation!). She wants some one not merely to teach or manage or discipline girls, but a woman who can share the life of the girls, or at least understand it well enough to let them live it. Not that the intellectual side is unimportant. A University degree is normally required in an assistant and this involves a three or four years' course of considerable expense (see p. 7). An honours degree is often essential--always, nowadays, in the case of a headmistress. Whilst well-trained foreigners hold an important place in some schools, modern languages are more frequently taught by an Englishwoman who has lived abroad rather than by a foreign governess; even English, happily, is no longer entrusted to any one not specially qualified. As will be seen from the article on domestic work, the graduate in chemistry has in this a promising field, while the botanist or zoologist and the geologist have the basis on which to specialise in nature-study or geography. This, however, usually comes after the preliminary general academic training. It is well to keep up a many-sided interest apart from bread-and-butter subjects, not only in view of demands that may be made on one, but because the intellectual woman will best qualify by developing her own powers as far as possible. If of the right calibre, she can afterwards readily take up even a new subject and make it her own. A good secondary school needs that some of its mistresses should have the habits and tastes of the scholar who loves work for its own sake, or rather for the sake of truth. A woman with strong well-trained intellectual power need not fear the competition of even the capable woman of action indicated in the preceding paragraph. Both qualifications may, in fact, exist in the same person. The woman with brains is indeed needed in the schools. The work of women's education was but begun by the illustrious pioneers to whom reference has already been made. There are to-day many new problems to solve, new difficulties caused by the very success of the older generation. On the one hand it was necessary that women should at first, by following the same lines as men, prove their powers on common ground; now they must find whether there are special fields for them, and how, if these exist, they may best be occupied. They need no longer be afraid to emphasise what was good in the old-fashioned education of girls. Might not, for example, elocution and caligraphy with advantage re-appear as good reading aloud and beautiful penmanship? just as physical training carries on the lessons of deportment and the Domestic Science course revives the lessons of the still-room, the kitchen, and the store. On the other hand, under the existing pressure to relieve the burden of childhood, women must see to it that the mothers of the coming generation are not sacrificed to the earliest stages of the lives of their children that are to be. The motherhood of women and their home-making powers are indeed to be developed, but not at the expense of their own lives and their citizenship. Women educators, then, must take what is good in boys' education, what has been good in girls', and must utilise both. This work is great, and it is specially difficult because legislation and administration are almost entirely in the hands of men. Now men are apt to take for granted either that girls should be treated just like boys, or that they are entirely different and are to be brought up on different lines; and women who see the truth there is in both of these propositions are hindered alike by the men who hold the one and those who hold the other. The pioneer girls' schools of the nineteenth century did much experimental work and established the right of individual initiative and a distinct line of work for each school. Perhaps special gratitude is due in respect of this to the governing body of the Girls' Public Day School Trust, since its schools were numerous enough soon to create a tradition requiring for their Headmistresses great initiatory power and considerable freedom. "This freedom," writes a recently retired Headmistress of thirty-six years' standing (Mrs Woodhouse, late of Clapham High School), "was of the greatest value as leading to differentiation of type and character of school. It ensured a spirit of joy in work for the whole staff; for the Headmistress and her band of like-minded colleagues were co-workers in experiments towards development and sharers in the realisation of ideals. The vitality thus secured has been appreciated at its true value by His Majesty's Inspectors when in recent years they have come into touch with these schools, and as far as my experience goes, they have left such initiative untouched." The danger resulting from the progress made in education during the twentieth century is that secondary schools, coming as nearly all now do under the cognizance if not the control of the Board of Education, may become too much office-managed and State-regulated, thus losing life in routine. The task of resisting this, of working loyally with local and central government departments, and yet of keeping the school a living organism and not merely a moving machine is one requiring by no means ordinary ability. Is there not here a call to women of the highest power and academic standing? It is true that the direct facing of these wider problems does not fall to the lot of the assistant mistress in her earlier years. But the ambitious aspirant to a profession looks to the possibility of a judgeship or bishopric in choosing his life-work. The capable woman then will look at all the possibilities in the teaching profession. Long before she is Headmistress she will have made her mark in her school--for not only the numerous activities mentioned but also the organisation of ordinary school work require initiative and self-reliance. The head of a large school is only too glad to hand over to a competent assistant the organisation of her own department and its co-ordination with other school activities. Just because there are now openings in other branches of work for women of the highest power, those of this type should give teaching some consideration. Since it has ceased to be the only avenue for trained and educated women, it is no longer so crowded with them, and as in other callings, there is plenty of room at the top. In addition to a degree, the qualification of training is a strong recommendation.[4] It involves, as a rule, a year after graduation, in special colleges such as exist in Oxford, Cambridge, or London, or in the Secondary Training Department of one or other of the local Universities. The expense varies, usually meaning a fee of about £10 to £30 in addition to cost of living; so that a fairly expensive year intervenes between graduation and the commencement of a salary. Alternatives to a training-college course have been recently suggested by the Board of Education, and may shortly be available. During the training period the intending teacher must, if this is not already determined, decide on the special branch for which she wishes to prepare, according to her qualifications and the needs of schools. If actual teaching experience can first be obtained for two or three years, it enables earning to begin at once and greatly increases the value of the training taken subsequently. The secondary teacher thus spends from three to five years in academic and professional training; and in accordance with current economic ideas should receive a salary proportionate to the outlay involved. The scheme of salaries approved by the Assistant Mistresses' Association in January 1912 suggests £120 as the initial minimum salary (non-residential) for a mistress with degree and training, rising in ten years to £220 in ordinary cases, to £250 where "positions of special responsibility" are occupied. £100 to £180 is suggested for non-graduates. "These salaries are higher than those provided by the Girls' Public Day School Trust, and other governing bodies outside the London County Council. In most cases £120 to £130 a year may be taken as a fair average for an assistant mistress."[5] Headmistresses' salaries vary from £200 to, at least in one exceptional case, £1,500. They often depend in part on capitation fees. The Headmistresses' Association considers that the minimum should be £300. In secondary schools as in other grades of educational work the salaries of women are lower than those of men, as may be illustrated by the London County Council scale of salaries. Men: Assistants . . £150-£300 (or £350) Heads . . £400-£600 (or £800) Women: Assistants . . £120-£220 (or £250) Heads . . £300-£450 (or £600) The difference between the salaries of heads and assistants is in many cases greater than is desirable. Things being as they are, it is well that there should be some prizes to attract ability into the profession. On the other hand, a woman, whose best work is that of an assistant, should not be tempted to give it up for the salary of a headmistress. The assistant has the opportunity for closer and more personal touch with her girls, being intimately responsible for a smaller number; she has also better opportunities for working out the teaching of her subject and improving its technique. Education would gain if more of the ablest teachers, specially successful in one or other of these directions, were left in a position to continue this work, instead of feeling obliged to substitute for it the perhaps uncongenial task of organisation on a large scale, and that contact with visitors, organisers, inspectors, committees, and the public, which occupies the time of the heads of schools. The truth of this is, I am told, better appreciated in Germany than in this country. Since local authorities took over the work, secondary teachers have gained considerably both as regards salaries and tenure. They are now, as a rule, better paid than elementary teachers, which was not always the case before 1902. The tenure of the teacher varies in different schools. It is now less common than formerly for the appointment and dismissal of the staff to be entirely in the hands of the Headmistress; and assistants are thus safe-guarded against possible unfair and arbitrary action. The Headmistress,[6] however, has almost invariably a preponderating voice in the selection of her staff--as is right if the school is to be a living organism, not merely one of a series of machines with interchangeable parts; but the power of dismissal, if in her hands, is usually safe-guarded by the right of appeal to the appointing body--local authority or board of governors as the case may be. This right of appeal should be universal, and formal agreements should in all cases be made. (A model form of agreement has been drawn up by the Association of Assistant Mistresses.) Pensions are not generally provided for secondary teachers; but a national pension scheme for them is under consideration, and there is hope that it will not be long delayed. The poorer members of the teaching profession come under the National Health Insurance Act and are provided for by the University, Secondary and Technical Teachers' Insurance Society which already numbers eleven thousand members. This society also offers, in its Dividend Section, to those not compulsorily insured the opportunity for voluntary insurance against sickness. Association among secondary teachers has been considerably furthered by the desire to qualify for membership in the Insurance Society. The distinctive associations for secondary mistresses are the Headmistresses' Association and the Association of Assistant Mistresses in Public Secondary Schools. These are concerned with general educational as well as professional problems, and their opinion is sought at times by the Board of Education with regard to proposed regulations. Each of them is represented on the recently established Registration Council, which has just reported (November 1913). Membership of the Teachers' Guild of Great Britain and Ireland, of the College of Preceptors, and of the National Union of Teachers is also open to secondary teachers. In the last-named they may join hands with the great body of elementary teachers; in the first two organisations with private teachers also. There are also associations for teachers of certain subjects, the Ling Association and the Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects. Membership of such bodies as the Historical, Geographical and various Scientific Associations is valuable because not confined to teachers. Though the President of the Association of Assistant Mistresses has said that "there would be a strong feeling against definite organisation for the purpose of forcing up rates of remuneration,"[7] yet that body has investigated the scales of pay offered by local authorities, and writes in protest when posts are advertised at low rates. Under present conditions the principle of general equality of income, not yet being considered as a serious proposition, it is surely economically right for the teaching profession to claim remuneration sufficient to give it a status corresponding to the worth and dignity of its work. Above all, women not entirely dependent on their earnings, and therefore in a position to resist under-payment, should not act as blacklegs and keep down the rate for others dependent for a livelihood on their occupation. Under-payment for teachers means a narrower, more anxious life than should be theirs who are to live in the strongly electric atmosphere of a body of girls and young women and yet keep a calm serenity of spirit--a life less full than is essential for those who have to give at all times freely of their best. Similarly, in order that the fullest possible life may be open to the woman teacher, it seems desirable that continuance in the profession after marriage should be more usual than it is. Again, from the point of view of the pupils this is desirable. Mrs Humphrey Ward is not the only opponent of women's suffrage to state that the atmosphere of girls' schools suffers from the preponderating spinster element. Suffragists may for once join hands with her and urge that the married woman is in some ways better suited for young people than her unmarried colleague.[8] Often the most valuable years of a woman's life are lost to the school by her enforced retirement at marriage. She gives to it her younger, less experienced years, when she knows less of the world, less of the problems of the household, less of the outlook of the parents. It must be remembered that the parents' point of view is important if there is to be right co-operation between home and school. To the teacher-mother there will come an altogether new power of understanding, which should ultimately compensate the school for broken time during the earlier years of the life of her children. Provision for absence in these cases might well render more possible provision for a "rest-term" or a _Wanderjahr_, such as should be possible to all mistresses at intervals in their teaching career. Mistresses are not as a rule aware that under most existing agreements they may claim to continue their work after marriage. They would in a large number of cases be rendering a service to girls' education by doing so. Many secondary teachers will welcome the idea that they need not abandon either the career they have chosen or the prospect of their fullest development as women. The teaching profession would thus retain many valuable members now lost to it on marriage, and the ranks of married women be recruited by many well suited to be the mothers of citizens. The career of teaching adolescent girls gives to those following it, in the daily routine, many experiences which others seek for in leisure hours. The woman among girls has the privilege of handing on to them the keys to the intellectual treasuries where she has enriched herself, of setting their feet in the paths which have led her to fruitful fields. She may watch over the birth and growth of the reasoning powers of her pupils and guide them to their intellectual victories, initiating them into the great fellowship of workers for truth. It is interesting but it is not easy work. We have seen that the material recompense of the teacher is not great, and if she looks for other return she will too often be disappointed. And yet there is compensation. Here as elsewhere he that saveth his life shall lose it; but he that loseth his life shall indeed find it. [Footnote 1: "A secondary school ... is a school which provides a progressive course of general education suitable for pupils of an age-range at least as wide as from twelve to seventeen" (Board of Education, Circular 826).] [Footnote 2: Lecture on "The Life of a Teacher" given to the Fabian, Women's Group, 1912.] [Footnote 3: Miss I.M. Drummond, _loc, cit._] [Footnote 4: By the Conditions of Registration issued November 1913, one year's training will be required for all entering the profession after the end of 1918.] [Footnote 5: Miss I.M. Drummond _loc. cit._ For example, a science graduate with special qualifications in geography, three years' experience, and a training diploma has recently been appointed to a leading London High School at a salary of £110, with no agreement for yearly or other augmentation. [EDITOR].] [Footnote 6: The practice of the Girl's Public Day School Trust, largely followed by other governing bodies, is to give the Head the right of nomination, and of dismissal during the probationary period subject to the veto, rarely exercised, of the Committee.] [Footnote 7: Miss I.M. Drummond _loc. cit._] [Footnote 8: This is surely a better solution than that proposed in the November 1913, Educational Supplement to the _Times_. The suggestion is there made that the "conventual system" prevailing in some girls' boarding-schools should be changed by having Headmasters instead of Headmistresses. The writer apparently fails to realise that one of the greatest difficulties in co-educational schools is to attract the right sort of mistress, because there is no prospect that she may ultimately attain a headship. The same danger will inevitably arise in any schools which introduce Headmasters. If the masculine element is desirable, and we agree that this may well be so, the obvious course is either to have some male assistants, or to have married house-mistresses, on the analogy of the married house-master at boys' schools. A still better solution, in our opinion, is co-education, with pupils of both sexes, a mixed staff, and a joint Headmaster and Headmistress. In many of the new County and Municipal Secondary Schools this innovation has been successfully adopted, though the Senior Mistress is unfortunately in all cases definitely subordinate to the Headmaster. [EDITOR.]] IV ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHING Progressive women to-day resent the social system which requires them to be economically dependent upon others. They realise that social service needs labour of a highly skilled variety, and they therefore demand, on the one hand, training for their work as a guarantee of their efficiency in its performance, and, on the other hand, monetary payment and security of tenure as guarantees to them of economic independence. As a natural corollary to woman's lack of political power, there are no spheres of professional work in which prevailing conditions are in these respects completely satisfactory. Perhaps the teaching service in the State schools comes nearest to complying with progressive demands: at any rate Government recognises the need for training, and, to a large extent, meets its cost; a salary, more or less adequate, is paid in return for the teaching given, and security of tenure is, with few exceptions, assured. Again, the work done in the State schools is now generally and rightly regarded as of first-rate importance to the community, and therefore as meriting national gratitude in the form of Government superannuation. Popular prejudice against compulsory education, once so strong, may now be said to have disappeared, and the work of the pioneers who endeavoured to create a public opinion in its favour, has borne fruit. To-day the parents' attitude towards the teacher is normally one of friendly co-operation and respect, with the result that the latter is fast becoming a powerful factor in shaping and influencing the democracy. The school is extending its influence in every sphere which touches on the social, physical, intellectual, and spiritual well-being of the people. Activities which, until recently,[1] were associated only with institutions distinctly religious in character, are now regularly connected with the work of primary schools. Thus the teacher has every opportunity for the exercise of public spirit, within school and without. He is daily confronted with the problem of evolving and developing an educated democracy, which will demand and obtain proper conditions of life. The nature of the work asked of the teachers in primary schools, has led to insistence by the State on the necessity for their professional training, as well as for their academic proficiency. These requirements have met with the counter-demand on the part of the teachers in State schools, for State registration. When this Register,[2] now in process of creation, has become an accomplished fact, one of the chief remaining obstacles to the progress of the teaching service will be removed. It is now time to turn to the conditions of training, service, and remuneration prevailing in English and Welsh elementary schools. The Scotch service differs in some respects, while the state of primary education and the position of elementary teachers in Ireland[3] are altogether worse than in Great Britain. The Board of Education recognises the following grades of men and women teachers in public elementary schools: pupil teachers, bursars and student teachers, uncertificated teachers, and certificated teachers. Women, over eighteen years of age, who have been vaccinated, may, without any other qualifications, be engaged as supplementary teachers, although the Board cannot entertain any application for the recognition of men in this capacity. A supplementary teacher may teach (I) infants' classes, that is to say, classes in which the majority of the scholars are under eight years of age, or (2) the lowest class of older scholars in a school or department in a rural parish, if the average attendance in the school does not exceed 100. The number of supplementary teachers employed in the schools of England and Wales in the year 1910-11 was 14,454. If we turn to uncertificated teachers, we find that during the year 1909-10 there were 45,549 employed in the schools of England and Wales, and that this number was increased by 182 during the year 1910-11. Of the uncertificated teachers of England in the year 1910-11, 5,106 were men and 35,222 were women. The vast majority of rural schools have only one certificated teacher on the staff, and in hundreds of rural schools the head teacher is not certificated. The following statistics with regard to certificated teachers have been taken from the published return of the Board of Education, 1910-11:[4]-- England. Wales. Men. Women. Men. Women. Trained 22,134 30,410 2,260 1810 Untrained 9,060 33,121 539 1598 These figures show that of men teachers, 70 per cent. in England and 81 per cent. in Wales are trained, while of women teachers only 46 per cent. in England and 51 per cent. in Wales are trained. These statistics are indicative of the urgent need for total abolition of uncertificated and supplementary teachers, since the recognition of these grades offers a direct incentive to girls just to bridge over the period between leaving school and getting married, without qualifying even for what ought to be regarded as the lowest ranks of the profession. This fact is at once realised, when one contrasts the percentage of women teachers who are untrained, viz., 54 per cent, in England, 49 per cent, in Wales, with the corresponding figures for men teachers, viz., 30 per cent, in England and 29 per cent, in Wales. Every candidate for teachership, who has passed through a Training College, is required by the Board of Education to serve in a recognised school--a woman for five out of the first eight years after leaving College; a man for seven out of the first ten years after leaving College--or pay the whole or part of the Government grant in respect of College training. But, notwithstanding this agreement, enforceable under Act of Parliament,[5] the Board of Education neither takes steps to find employment for such candidates in the State schools of the country, nor admits any responsibility on its part for the conditions under which teachers are employed. By the Education Act of 1902, local authorities, of which there are 318, were made chiefly responsible for the work of education, and it is these local authorities who lay down the conditions of appointment. This refusal by the Board of Education of responsibility for appointments and conditions of appointment to teaching posts, leaves it for local authorities to fix scales of salaries, and to decide such questions as, for example, whether married women teachers shall be employed. The grave effect of this state of things on the economic interests of the teachers of the country cannot be too much emphasised, having regard to the fact that local authorities are bodies composed mainly of men elected on a rate-saving principle. The salaries paid to bursars and student teachers are insufficient to cover charges for maintenance, clothes, books, etc. Speaking generally, a quite substantial sum must also be found during each year of the collegiate course, for college expenses and for board and lodging during vacations, so that a candidate's parents must hold themselves financially responsible for her during the various stages of her training, except in so far as the cost is covered by scholarship and maintenance grants. Women candidates are in this respect far worse off than their male colleagues, as, at every stage of their training, they receive a smaller maintenance grant. At a residential college, while men receive £40, women receive £20; at a non-residential college the grant for men is £25, for women £20. As the whole supply of teachers for each year leaves the Training Colleges in July,[6] it follows that many of these must wait for varying periods before finding employment: during these periods the burden of maintenance must again be borne by the parents. The need for legislation in the economic interests of teachers is borne out by the fact that highly trained students of good character are unable to find employment, even at low salaries. Of 4,384 teachers who left the training colleges in July 1908, at least 1,226 were, three months later, without employment, and 259 were known to be without employment even twelve months later; whilst of the 4,386 students who left the Training Colleges in July 1909, 1,528 were still without employment in October 1909. These figures are for both sexes, but by far the larger number of teachers are women. These facts explain why it is that local authorities, bent on keeping down the rates, have been enabled to obtain the services of certificated teachers at the scale of salaries which they advertise for uncertificated teachers: in fact many fully qualified certificated teachers have been forced to work for a rate of payment lower than that received by an unskilled labourer; a natural corollary to this condition of things is that many would-be teachers refuse to expend time and money on training. This state of affairs has had one other effect which is of vital importance when the economic position of women teachers is being considered, namely, that local authorities, in order to appease the popular outcry against this apparently overstocked market, have been led to sanction regulations for the compulsory retirement of women teachers on marriage. Happily the London County Council has not succumbed to this temptation, and there are other equally enlightened authorities. But constant watchfulness is needed in order to prevent retrogression in this matter. Young teachers, anxiously awaiting promotion, sometimes foolishly resist the appointment or retention of married women. This is a suicidal policy, to be resisted at all costs, both in the interests of the teachers and of the children. Salaries are bound to remain low, while women are forced to consider their profession in the light of a stop-gap until marriage, and not as a life-work. Moreover, there are real dangers in entrusting girls' education entirely to unmarried women. The salaries of assistant teachers vary very considerably. In no single instance is a woman teacher paid the same rate of salary as a man of the same professional status. This is true even when the work is identical in character, as is the case in mixed schools and pupil teachers' centres. One of the results of this inequality of payment is that women teachers are often employed to teach the lower classes in boys' schools, and some rural schools are staffed entirely by women, not because the woman teacher is deemed more suitable for the work, but because her labour is cheaper; hence the need, in the teaching profession, for recognition of the principle of "equal pay for equal work." Without it, the status of the woman becomes lower than that of the man, inferior or unqualified women are appointed, and men are driven from the profession. Only when there is equality of pay can there be security that the best candidate will be appointed, irrespective of sex. The following table taken from the latest returns of the Board of Education contrasts the number of women and men employed in the elementary schools of England, and the number of women and men employed in the better paid higher elementary schools of the country, for the year 1910-11. Higher Elementary Elementary Schools Schools. No. of Head Teachers (certificated) Men : 12,477 : 36 " " " " Women : 16,648 : 4 " Assistant " " Men : 18,659 : 161 " " " Women : 46,881 : 117 " " (uncertificated) Men : 5,091 : 4 " " " Women : 34,910 : 2 An examination of statistics with regard to the salaries of teachers in England, taken from the same returns, year 1910-11, shows that-- I. Average salaries (Elementary Schools) were:-- £ s. d. Head Teachers (Certificated) Men 176 3 11 " " " Women 122 18 1 " " (uncertificated) Men 94 8 0 " " " Women 68 3 5 Assistant Teachers (certificated) Men 127 9 11 " " " Women 92 8 6 " " (uncertificated) Men 65 2 11 " " " Women 54 14 1 II. (1) 67.93 per cent. of the certificated head masters receive less than £200 per annum. (2) 93.9 per cent. of the certificated head mistresses receive less than £200 per annum. (3) 93.38 per cent. of the certificated assistant masters receive less than £200 per annum. (4) 97.73 per cent. of the certificated assistant mistresses receive less than £150 per annum. III. The salaries of certificated teachers (England) were:-- Head Teachers. Assistant Teachers. Men. Women. Men. Women. Under £50 1 2 2 352 Totals £50 and under £100 394 4,967 3,838 29,915 " 100 " " 150 4,506 8,032 9,933 15,548 " 150 " " 200 3,575 2,631 3,651 1,065 " 200 " " 250 2,395 742 1,235 1 " 250 " " 300 963 209 ---- ---- " 300 " " 350 422 65 ---- ---- " 350 " " 400 125 ---- ---- ---- " 400 " " 450 93 ---- ---- ---- " 450 " " 500 2 ---- ---- ---- " 560 1 ---- ---- ---- IV. The salaries of uncertificated teachers are usually lower than the wage of a skilled artisan--the average for men _head_ teachers being below £100, and for women _head_ teachers below £70, whilst 7,855 assistant teachers receive less than £50. V. Supplementary teachers usually receive, of course without board or lodging, a salary equal to the money-wage of an average domestic servant. They are commonly less well qualified than is she, for the work undertaken. The chances of promotion to a headship are obviously so few, that the certificated teacher will probably remain an assistant all her life. Chances of head-teacherships are being still further reduced by the amalgamation of departments under a head _master_. In the schools of many large urban education authorities, less than 1 per cent. of the assistant teachers obtain promotion in twelve months. The total number applying for the 163 places to be filled in the last promotion list that was formed by the London Education Authority, was 2,337, so that, as a direct result of the publication of that list, 2,174 teachers resumed their work after the summer vacation of 1911 with feelings of less hopefulness with regard to their future prospects. The issue of a promotion list is in itself a fact to be deplored, seeing that it acts as a check to mental alertness. For the 2,174 unsuccessful candidates for inclusion, their application has now either destroyed hope, or suspended any chances of its realisation for at least two years. There is a consciousness in the unsuccessful applicant of somehow being worth less than she was before, since she is now an assistant mistress without potentiality for head teachership. This feeling does not promote good work. The issue of a promotion list is from every point of view bad policy, and although its direct action is confined to London, its sphere of indirect influence is very far-reaching, since London County Council applicants for country posts are often asked whether they have been included in it. The essential qualification in a mistress of an elementary school is ability to teach a great variety of subjects: she must be qualified for and prepared to teach all the subjects which make up the curriculum of her school. The diversity of these will be seen from the subjects taught in an average typical elementary school:-- _Girls' Department_.--Reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, literature, history, geography, nature study, hygiene, physical training, drawing (including brush-work), needlework (including cutting-out), knitting, scripture. _Infants' Department_.--Reading, writing, number, kindergarten and other varied occupations, physical exercises (dancing and games), needlework and knitting, singing, drawing, painting, modelling, recitation, oral composition, dramatising stories, scripture. The ordinary day is divided into two sessions: the morning session lasting from 9 A.M. to 12 noon, and the afternoon session from 2 P.M. to 4 P.M. (infants), 4.30 P.M. (girls). The strain of a teacher's life in an elementary school, and the deadening influence of routine work will be realised when it is stated that, besides teaching all the subjects above-mentioned, she is in front of her class of sixty pupils during the whole of the two sessions each day, from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. In addition to the purely teaching work the mistress has to take her share in the various activities which are now centring in the school--Care Committees, After-Care Committees, the feeding of necessitous children, the cleansing of children, medical inspection, and so forth. There are also such social activities as old girls' clubs, school journeys and school parties, in which she has to co-operate; finally, the strain is not lessened by the fact that she has to satisfy two sets of inspectors, viz., those of the Board of Education and those of the local authority who require her to keep special report books, varying in character and in the amount of detail required, according to the idiosyncrasies of the particular inspectors who may happen to be allocated to her district. In spite of the building regulations of the Board of Education, many school premises are far from satisfactory with regard to lighting, ventilation, construction, and often even cleanliness; these defects naturally have their effect on the health of the teachers, so that notwithstanding medical inspection during training and the rejection of the unfit, an alarming number of cases of consumption has been reported to the Benevolent Fund of the National Union of Teachers. In addition to this, the strain (already referred to) under which teachers in the Metropolitan and larger urban districts work, is resulting in an increasing number of nervous breaksdown. The conditions under which a teacher works in a school in a rural district are so unsatisfactory that they deserve special mention. There are 245 schools in Wales and 2,199 in England with an average attendance of less than 40; such schools are staffed by a head teacher, assisted, in all probability, only by a supplementary teacher. Education suffers in these circumstances as a result of the number and the manysidedness of the responsibilities which devolve upon the head teacher; while the consciousness of her inability to realise her ideals will re-act unfavourably upon her health. Another factor that must be borne in mind is that these rural schools, being small, should, to secure efficiency, be proportionately expensive for up-keep. In order to keep the cost of maintenance as low as possible, however, the remuneration offered to teachers in rural schools is so small as to be a national disgrace. To this must be further added the fact that many rural teachers are compelled to live 5, 10, and even 15 miles away from a railway station, so that the cost of living is much more than it would be in town. Thus it is that rural schools which should cost more for up-keep than large urban schools, work out at a smaller figure per scholar.[7] Not only is her salary low, but a mistress in a rural school often has to live in a state of semi-isolation from social and intellectual activities. It should excite no surprise, therefore, that mistresses are reluctant to apply for such posts. This difficulty of shortage of supply is having a sinister and subtle effect on the economic interests of married women teachers, for, owing to the difficulty in obtaining assistant teachers in rural districts, it frequently happens that where the head teacher is a master, his wife, who may be a fully qualified certificated teacher, has to act as his assistant and receive the pay of a supplementary teacher. During her years of service, each mistress in an elementary school is required to contribute £2, 8s. per annum to the Government Superannuation Fund. These contributions purchase a small annuity to which the Government add a pension at the rate of 10s. for each year of service. When she becomes qualified for a pension, the mistress must surrender her certificate and cease to practise as a teacher, so that, if we assume she has begun work at the age of twenty and has continued teaching to the age of sixty-five, she will, after forty-five years of recorded service, receive a pension of £22, 10s. per annum, plus the annuity which her contributions will have purchased. It should, however, be mentioned that London and a few other towns have established complementary schemes whereby teachers, though contributing more, obtain pensions more commensurate with their salaries. Under the Government scheme, the superannuation allowance cannot become payable until the teacher has attained the age of sixty-five years, and, even then, it can be obtained only by a teacher whose years of recorded service are not less than half the number of years which have elapsed since she became certificated; thus, if the mistress, being certificated at the age of twenty, marries and, by the regulations of the local authority, is forced to resign, she forfeits all claim to the Government contribution, unless she has completed twenty-two years of recorded service: nor are her contributions returned to her. Teachers in elementary schools are well organised for the purpose of self-protection. The National Union of Teachers is a powerful body, having a membership of 78,000 men and women teachers. It is directly represented in Parliament, both on the Liberal and Labour sides, and owes its influence largely to the voting power of its members.[8] When the National Insurance Act of 1912 came into force, there were 85,000 elementary teachers to whom its clauses applied, and who therefore found it advisable to join an approved society. For this purpose the Teachers' Provident Society of the National Union of Teachers was re-organised as an approved society under the Act. In addition to providing protection for its members, the National Union of Teachers, by means of its Benevolent and Orphan Fund, helps those, who, through ill-health or other causes are in need of assistance. It also maintains two orphanages--one for boys in London, and one for girls in Sheffield. At the present time there is a strong probability of a dearth of qualified teachers for elementary schools in the near future. There are several factors which have been influential in bringing about this state of affairs--one is, the uncertainty of employment, even after a long and comparatively costly training. This defect will be remedied only when a rational method of regulating the supply of teachers is established, so that each candidate may be certain that, if she qualifies, she will be guaranteed employment. Many desirable persons are debarred from entering the teaching profession, because the rate of remuneration is low, considering the responsibility of the work; and this drawback is still further emphasised by the very inadequate pension which is offered at the close of the teacher's career. This difficulty can be overcome only when the main burden of the cost of education is removed from local taxation and placed on the national exchequer. Another factor which tends to make the teaching profession unattractive, is the very strenuous life which it entails under modern conditions. Again, so far as women are concerned, there is not complete security of tenure, though apart from the regulation that obtains under some local authorities, requiring women to resign on marriage, teachers in elementary schools, owing to the efforts of their various organisations, possess far greater security of tenure than teachers in any other branch of the profession. Another point in favour of the teachers in elementary schools, is their freedom from the burden of extraneous duties, and from the nightmare of external examinations. When schools can be more generously staffed, so that, for example, the number of assistant teachers exceeds the number of classes to be taught, a good deal will have been done to relieve the strain under which teachers are at present working. Finally, when education authorities and the public generally, become sufficiently enlightened to realise that it is uneconomical to dismiss a teacher when she marries _i.e._, when by her experience she is most capable of preparing her pupils for life--then women will be encouraged to enter the teaching profession, and to realise that they must equip themselves as well as possible for what is to be their life-work. [Footnote 1: In this connection, the work of the Care-Committees, now an integral feature of the elementary education system, must not be forgotten. It will be fully considered in a later volume of this series. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 2: The conditions for registration were issued on 22nd November 1913, after this book had gone to press. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 3: _Vide_ Article on Education in Ireland, by May Starkie in _The New Statesman Supplement_ on "The Awakening of Ireland," 12th July 1913. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 4: Since this paper was written, a fresh report (Code 6707) has been published by the Board of Education. The statistical tables do not materially differ from those given above.] [Footnote 5: On the other hand, the Board seldom proceeds against teachers who have broken their bond. [Editor.]] [Footnote 6: The experiment of ending the College course for certain students at Easter, is now being made. But the movement is too young, and the Colleges experimenting are too few, to make it possible to draw deductions. At any rate it looks like a move in the right direction.] [Footnote 7: This is a matter, the investigation of which should be included in Mr Lloyd George's Land Campaign. There is an obvious connection between the status of the agricultural labourer and the inefficiency of rural schools. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 8: The women members are in a large majority, but, being women, do not, as yet, possess the vote. Their peculiar interests, of course, do not obtain representation.] V TEACHING IN SCHOOLS FOR THE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY DEFECTIVE The particular branch of teaching which forms the subject of this paper--namely, that carried on in schools for mentally or physically defective children--affords scope for a lifetime of very happy work to women who are really fitted for it. The qualifications required by teachers in these schools are the ordinary certificates accepted by the Board of Education, but, in practice, a preference is given to women who have taken up studies which bear on their particular work. For instance, it is obvious that a good grounding in psychology, physiology, and hygiene is especially valuable in schools of this description, and proofs of the successful study of these subjects undoubtedly carry weight in deciding appointments to these schools. Also, it is unusual to appoint young teachers, coming straight from Training Colleges, with very little practical experience in dealing with children, though under special circumstances such appointments are occasionally made. The large majority of women appointed to the London mentally defective or physically defective schools are, however, teachers of several years' standing, who are also under the age limit of thirty-five. The salary of assistant teachers in the London special schools is £10 a year more than the salary such assistants would be getting in the ordinary Council schools. This extra pay only obtains until the normal maximum salary of assistant mistresses is reached, _i.e._, £150, so that the monetary advantage is confined to reaching the maximum a little earlier than would otherwise be the case. With regard to head teachers, the extra salary varies with the size of the school, £10 being allowed for a one-class centre, £20 for a two-, three-, or four-class centre, and £30 for a five- or six-class centre. Schools of six classes are unusual; the majority of schools contain three or four classes. Elder mentally defective boys from several neighbouring schools are frequently grouped together in a special centre under masters, and there are a few schools specially for elder mentally defective girls, naturally under mistresses. For elder physically defective girls there are centres in London where they may be specially trained in blousemaking and fine needlework. These centres have, in addition to an ordinary teacher, a trade mistress duly qualified in the particular branch of work undertaken. The age of compulsory retirement from teaching in special schools is sixty-five, as in the case of ordinary schools. For both branches of the service married women are eligible. The hours of work in mentally defective schools are from 9.30 to 12 and from 2 to 4. In physically defective schools the hours are nominally from 9.30 to 12, and 1.30 to 3, but in practice they are longer, as the children begin to arrive at school in their ambulances by 8.45, and in the afternoon the last children rarely leave till an hour after the time of stopping actual lessons. It is usual to arrange things so that the teacher who comes "early" one week, is free to come "late" the next, and it is also usually taken in turns to stay late in the afternoons. The short dinner recess is due to the fact that most of the children necessarily have their dinner at school, so there is no reason to allow the usual two hours for going home and coming back. During the dinner-hour the children are in charge of the school nurse and the ambulance attendants. Work in both sorts of special school has its own particular difficulties. One great drawback is the impossibility of adequate classification. In a small three-class centre, there will be children from five years old up to sixteen years. That, of course, in physically defective schools means that the work usually divided among all the classes of an ordinary infant school must be done in the lowest class, the second class must take the work of standards I. to III., while the highest class must take that of standards IV. to VII. It is true that the special schools have a great advantage over ordinary schools in that the classes never contain more than twenty-five children, but even granted the small numbers, the need for taking several groups in a class makes the work very exhausting. The more successful the teacher, that is to say, the more truly she draws out the individual powers of each child, the harder does her work become, for she tends more and more to have a class of children working at varying stages. In the mentally defective schools it is not possible to reach the work of the higher standards, so that there is not the _same_ difficulty, but there is the even greater one of dealing with different standards of defect, instead of different standards of attainment. Another difficulty encountered in the physically defective schools is the interrupted school-life. Children will frequently drop out for three months, six months, or a year at a time in order to have some operation performed in hospital, or to go to a convalescent home, or because of an attack of illness. Both branches of the special schools are faced with the peculiar difficulty of the "spoilt" child--the lame girl who, by reason of her helplessness, has been indulged and waited on by the healthy members of her family; the ill-balanced boy whose brain-storms have been so disturbing that any opposition to his will has been shirked. It must not be thought that these children are in the majority at special schools, but they do form a certain proportion of the children there; they give much trouble, and they call for a great deal of tact and patience. Patience is so continually needed in special-school work that women who are not particularly patient would find themselves definitely unfit for it. Indeed, although patience and the hopeful spirit do not figure on the list of qualifications demanded of candidates, they might well head it, for most certainly an irritable or despondent woman could not find any work for which she was more unsuited, or in which she was more likely to be miserable and unsuccessful. A further difficulty of the special-school teacher lies in the "all-round" demands made on her. The children she must teach, are defective in mind or body, or both. Some will respond to one subject, some to another; some will make poor progress with headwork, but will do excellent handwork. The teacher must be able to help each child along its own path, and must be familiar with the various forms of simple handwork as well as with the more usual school subjects. Basket-weaving, clay-modelling, raffia-work, fretwork, bent-ironwork, strip-woodwork, rug-making, painting, and brush-work, as well as different forms of needlework and embroidery, are all branches of handwork helpful in different degrees to these children. The importance of handwork to them is felt so keenly, that the special-schools time-tables usually show a morning devoted to headwork followed by an afternoon occupied by handwork. But as well as the difficulties attendant on teaching in special-schools, there are some very real advantages. Foremost, perhaps, is the opportunity it affords of knowing and understanding each child in a way that is not possible when the class consists of sixty children. Very closely allied with this, is the great advantage of freedom in the preparation of syllabuses, in the choice of subject matter and the manner of teaching it. Time-tables must be approved by the proper authorities, and the superintendents and inspectors must be satisfied as to the character of a teacher's work, but, when those conditions are fulfilled, originality on the part of teachers is welcomed, and completely happy relations between teacher and children are possible. It can be readily understood that with a class numbering twenty-five, each child can take a much larger and much more active share in the work, can be free to express his own views, ask his own questions and work out his own ideas in a way impossible with a class of sixty. When, in addition, it is remembered that the teacher is free to frame her plans of work according to the actual needs of the children, as shown to her through discussions and questions, the reason why the work attracts women in spite of its obvious difficulties is apparent. The real thought and care spent by the education authorities on these schools must have struck every one who has worked in them. If we compare what is now done for these deficient children with what was done some fifteen years ago, the stage of progress at which we have arrived is nothing short of wonderful. Yet every one must also be convinced that things are not well, so long as the supply of children for these special schools continues to grow; those who work in them can see two ways in which that supply might be checked. Teachers in mentally defective schools continually mourn the sad fact that the children under their care have been guarded from wrong, and guided to right along happy paths of busy interest until they are sixteen, only to be turned adrift into the world at an age when, more than ever before in their lives, they need a kindly and wise influence "to strengthen or control." For want of some further plan of continued supervision, the patient work of years is too often rendered nugatory, and the child slips back into the very slough from which the school had hoped to save it. It must be remembered that the defect in many children in these mentally defective schools shows itself as a lack of self-control, a want of mental balance, a missing sense of moral values, an incapacity for concentration--the very characteristics which render their unhappy possessors the easiest prey to the evil-minded. Teachers who know both the good to which the child can attain when properly safe-guarded, and also the evil into which it will too probably fall when left alone, are very anxious to see some step taken which will ensure that every child who needs continued control shall have it.[1] Teachers in physically defective schools can also see the need for prevention of defect rather than its mere alleviation. The more usual forms of defect are missing limbs, tuberculous troubles (notably in joints), heart cases, paralysis, cases of chorea, and cases of general debility. The list must not be taken as complete, for there are, of course, various unusual forms of defect too. It sometimes happens that after a stay of some time in a physically defective school, a child becomes so much better that it is able to return to the greater strain of an ordinary school; on the other hand, it is often apparent, that if certain children had been admitted earlier to the physically defective school, their particular trouble might have been greatly minimised, if not altogether avoided. What then appears to be needed is an intermediary type of school to which children might be drafted who are not as yet absolutely defective, but who are liable to become so. Children of tubercular tendencies, who should be guarded against falls or blows more carefully than normal children; those highly-strung nervous children who, if exposed to the strain of ordinary school life run the risk of chorea; children suffering from the after-effects of diseases such as rheumatic or scarlet fever, who need particularly to avoid over-exertion or too violent exercise; children of such marked general debility that their power of resisting disease is abnormally low--all these, if neglected, tend to become qualified candidates for the physically defective schools. If they could attend a school designed to suit their needs, they would in many cases be quite able to return, after varying periods, to their places in the ordinary schools. The open-air schools are an attempt to meet this need on the very best lines, but there are far too many of these border-line children for the available accommodation. If the great expense entailed by new schools of this description be considered, it seems not unreasonable, while waiting for them, to allow the admission of these children to the invalid schools already working, by simply making the term "physically defective" elastic enough to include a latent as well as a developed defect. Whatever the apparent expense of such measures may be, any extension of the preventive side of this work cannot but be a real economy.[2] There is just one other point for the consideration of women who think of taking up work in special schools. They should be thoroughly strong and healthy, or they will prove unequal to a strain which tells at times even on the strongest. But to women of good health who possess the right temperament, these schools offer a field of useful and congenial work. [Footnote 1: Something in this direction will be achieved by the new Act, to which, however, there are counterbalancing grave objections which cannot be considered here. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 2: Open-air schools, and school sleeping camps such as those established experimentally in various urban slum-districts, are other efforts to meet the needs of physically defective children. Teachers in open-air schools in provincial towns, work under approximately similar conditions to those described by Mrs Thomas. [Editor.]] VI THE TEACHING OF GYMNASTICS No school of any importance is considered properly equipped unless the staff includes a gymnastic and games mistress. Several systems of gymnastics are practised in England, but the Swedish system is steadily proving its superiority; so much is this felt that a number of teachers who have previously taken a two years' course of training in some other system, are at the present time taking, or have just completed, a second two years' course in the Swedish system. As long ago as 1878 the London School Board introduced the Swedish system into its schools, but it was not till 1885 that the first physical training college was opened in this country, and this was for women only. In 1903 this system was adopted for the navy, and in 1906 for the army; it has also been adopted in the Government schools and Training Colleges, as well as in all the principal private schools and colleges for girls, and in many boys' schools, including, among others, Eton, Winchester, Clifton, and Repton. The following remarks, therefore, apply only to the Swedish system. Until 1885, the rationally trained teacher of gymnastics was unknown in England, and the physical training of the girls in this country was monopolised by dancing mistresses and drill sergeants, most of whom were ignorant of the laws which govern the human body. In that year Madame Osterberg started a Physical Training College for women students at Hampstead, the college being removed to Dartford Heath, Kent, in 1895. Since then similar institutions have been opened at Bedford, Erdington, Chelsea, etc., and there is a growing army of women qualified to teach gymnastics and games, and in many cases dancing and swimming. These trained teachers have studied Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene; they have themselves experienced what they teach others; they have been trained to observe, and deal gently and carefully with growing girlhood. They have also studied deformities such as spinal curvature, round shoulders, and flat feet, and are able to take all such cases under their special care. The course of training lasts from two to three years, and the cost in a residential college, is about £100 a year. To ensure success as teachers, students should be tactful, observant, and sympathetic; they should be medically fit, and physically suited to the work, and should produce evidence of a good general education. The requirements of the colleges vary as to educational qualification, some being satisfied with a school-leaving certificate while others demand Matriculation. This raising of the standard is a step in the right direction and may hasten the time when the gymnastic teacher will be thought worthy of a University degree or diploma. The training includes theoretical as well as practical work, and the idea which used to be prevalent, is now practically exploded, that a girl who could not pass examinations but who was fairly good at gymnastics or games might make a good gymnastic teacher. The theoretical subjects include Physiology, Hygiene, Anatomy, Theory of Movements, Psychology, and a certain amount of Pathology; whilst the practical side includes Educational Gymnastics and Teaching, Remedial Gymnastics and Massage, Games (hockey, cricket, lacrosse, lawn tennis, net-ball, and gymnasium games), Swimming and Dancing. Dancing is becoming more and more, a necessary part of the equipment for the successful gymnastic teacher, who must be able to teach the ordinary ball-room dances as well as Morris and country dances. A typical week's work in the second year's course in one of the colleges includes six hours' Gymnastics; five hours' Remedial Gymnastics, and five hours' actual treatment under supervision, of patients in the clinic; six hours' Anatomy, two hours' Physiology, two hours' Hygiene, two hours' Vaulting, three and a half hours' Dancing. In addition to this, four afternoons (from 2 to 4 P.M.) are devoted to games; class singing-lessons are given twice a week for half an hour, in addition to a quarter of an hour's practice every day, and each student teaches in the elementary schools three half hours a week, and also gets some practice in the high school. Add to all this the time required for private study, and it will be seen that the work is fairly strenuous and that none but strong, healthy girls should undertake it. After the course of training the gymnastic teacher usually takes a post in a school, and having had a few years' experience, may then become an organiser or inspector to an education committee, a trainer in an elementary training college or physical training college, the head of the gymnastic department of a school clinic, or she may prefer to start a private practice, holding classes, treating cases of deformity, and also acting as visiting gymnastic teacher or games-coach to schools in the neighbourhood. The rate of remuneration varies according to the kind of work undertaken; the initial salary in schools is usually £60 to £80 per annum resident, or £100 to £120 non-resident. Organisers and inspectors command a much higher salary; the three Government inspectors start at £200 rising to £400 with first-class travelling expenses, and the four woman-organisers employed by the London County Council Education Committee start at £175, rising by £10 a year to £240 plus actual travelling expenses. Some women do well in private practice, making from £200 to £300 a year. The salaries of the gymnastic teachers in the London County Council secondary schools are fixed at £130 a year with no possibility of advancement, and, though this may compare favourably with the initial salaries of other teachers on the staff, it must be remembered that the teaching life of a gymnastic teacher is shorter and there are no headmistress-ships to which to look forward. The few "plums" of the profession are the inspectorships of the Government and of the more important education committees. For the latter, women have often to compete with men, and even in cases where both men and women inspectors are employed--the men doing the same work in the boys' schools as the women do in the girls'--the men's salaries are considerably higher, despite the fact that most women give up professional work on marriage, either voluntarily or compulsorily, and have therefore a shorter time in which to recover the cost of their training, whereas if they do not marry, they have to make provision for old age and in many cases to contribute to the support of others besides themselves. With regard to this employment of women after marriage, there would seem to be no reason why the principals or assistants of colleges or institutes, or the women with private practices should not continue their work; but in schools, even where the terms of the appointment do not demand resignation on marriage, it is not customary for married teachers to be employed. Up to the present, the supply of trained gymnastic teachers has scarcely satisfied the demand, and fresh openings are from time to time created. When physical exercises were made compulsory in all the elementary schools, the class teacher had and still has, to give this instruction to her class, but there has been an increasing demand for organisers to teach the elementary school teacher and superintend her work. This has also led to specialist teachers being appointed to all the elementary training colleges and pupil teachers' centres. Then came medical inspection, and with it the need for school clinics, which could not be complete without a department for treating curvatures, flat feet, etc., and giving breathing exercises, especially after the removal of adenoids. Though these clinics are only in the experimental stage they are sure to expand, and it is expected that a large number of trained gymnastic teachers will be required for them. Further it is possible, and may be found desirable, that specialist teachers should be appointed for groups of elementary schools, so relieving the class teachers of this part of their work. Large secondary and private schools often appoint two, three, or four trained teachers who are jointly responsible for gymnastics, games, dancing, swimming, and the treatment of deformities throughout the school. Besides all these openings a considerable number of gymnastic teachers find work in the colonies, especially in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. To band together the teachers of Swedish gymnastics and to guard their interests generally, the Ling Association was founded in 1899. Though it is open to men and women, very few men have joined, as the number of men with the necessary qualifications is very small. Members must have trained for at least two years at a recognised college, and it was not till 1912 that the first training college for men was opened in England. With a view to standardising the training and diplomas of gymnastic teachers, the Ling Association in 1904 started a diploma-examination. Though the syllabus drawn up is practically the same as those used in the different colleges, most of the colleges still grant their own diplomas at the end of the course. It is hardly possible at present, to specify the usual age of retirement for gymnastic teachers, but when a woman becomes too old for regular school teaching she can organise, supervise, and inspect, or continue to practise remedial work which includes massage. Most of the gymnastic teachers who come within the scope of the Insurance Act have joined the University, Secondary and Technical Teachers' Provident Society. VII THE TEACHING OF DOMESTIC SUBJECTS There are several reasons why instruction in the domestic arts and in the management of a house has not until quite recently formed part of the curriculum in girls' secondary schools. In the first years of the existence of these schools, no handicraft was encouraged except needlework, and this was soon almost crowded out of the time-table. It was assumed that household management was taught by the mother. There was a second assumption made even more confidently than the first, that a well-informed young woman with an active brain would find no difficulty in arranging her domestic affairs. This theory was founded on still another assumption--that there would always be on hire a sufficiency of servants already well trained for their work. It is obvious nowadays that the mistresses of the first two decades of high-school teaching, being the first college-bred women, were suffering from a reaction against domestic interests, and the manner in which these had absorbed the old-fashioned woman. Their best pupils were at once destined for college; they were considered too good for mere domestic life, and were prepared for careers, mostly for teaching. This tendency was naturally accentuated by the fact that all mistresses were single women, with little prospect of any but a celibate life. In the earlier stages of girls' education, then, it was the teacher who urged the promising girl to have a career; but the more recent development is that the parents, harassed by increasing economic pressure, and encouraged by the instances they meet of successful professional women, press more and more strongly for their girls to be educated for professions, whether they are exceptionally gifted or not. It is recognised in almost all grades of the middle class that the chance of a daughter marrying, and, further, the chance of her marriage being an assured provision for her maintenance throughout life, is by no means a certainty. These considerations must militate against the appearance of domestic subjects in the school time-table, but there are others working in exactly the opposite direction. These are the increase in house rent and general rise in prices which make economy in domestic affairs, and good management, more valued; the dearth of servants; and the decay of the old traditions of housekeeping. Another factor is the new cult of hygiene, and increased interest in diet, shown especially by the inhabitants of large towns, who bewail their lack of energy and fitness. If the home is to establish itself as an acknowledged success in modern conditions, it ought to be run by women with brains. It is now becoming acknowledged that the work needs the application of the scientific method of thinking. It may be true that home-making in the non-material sense is an art, but housekeeping nowadays is a science; and so much a science that a woman who has the chance of making herself an expert will be tempted to make housekeeping a career, and to undertake the job on a much larger scale than is needed in the ordinary house. Thus, while there was practically no teaching of domestic subjects in girls' secondary schools until about seven years ago, a demand for teachers of the kind has sprung up very recently, and is rapidly increasing. The headmistress anxious to undertake something of the sort has had many difficulties to face in the immediate past. The only teachers of domestic arts whom she could engage had received a very different education from the other members of her staff. If their whole time were not taken up with teaching their subject, they had few or no subsidiary subjects to offer, nor were they prepared for those curiously mingled clerical and pastoral duties which fall to the lot of a form mistress. In general education they might, indeed, be obviously below the girls in the upper forms, whose general culture had been sedulously cultivated for years. If teachers of this kind were, nevertheless, not to be kept for selected "stupid girls," it was possible (1) to introduce domestic work of the simple handicraft nature into the middle school, leaving it out of the upper school where there was a greater pressure on the time-table, or (2) to organise a post-school domestic course for girls who were not preparing for a profession. The type of woman offering herself as a teacher in domestic arts has meanwhile been changing and developing, owing to the fact that a marked advance has taken place in the facilities for training. The minimum qualifications now required by most education authorities are diplomas for cookery, laundry-work, and housewifery, granted by a training school recognised by the Board of Education. It is advisable to take a fuller course which includes needlework and dressmaking. Most training schools for domestic arts provide a two or three year-course, according to the subjects taken. The three-year course, including cookery, laundry-work, housewifery, dressmaking, and needlework, costs about £75. Scholarships are offered both by the training schools and by public bodies. These cover the whole normal period of training, and an extension course for scientific study. The subjects included are the principles and processes involved in cookery, laundry-work, and household management, the last comprising such diverse matters as the selection and furnishing of various types of houses, repairing furniture, the choice and care of household linens, simple upholstery, management of income, first-aid, home-nursing, and the care of infants and young children. Many training-schools arrange for their students to gain experience in a crêche or similar institution, and to visit homes of various types. Practical experience is gained in housekeeping and catering, superintending the arrangements for meals, ordering stores and keeping accounts. Voice production and blackboard drawing are also taught, while science is studied concurrently with the above. The course in science embraces some Theoretical and Practical Chemistry, Physics, Physiology, Hygiene (personal and school hygiene and preventive measures), and the Theory and Practice of Education. Domestic Science students gain teaching experience not only in the various departments of the training-school, but also in elementary and secondary schools; happily the training is the same for those intending to take up either elementary or secondary teaching. Thus it is seen that the present-day teacher of household arts is much more fitted to train the well-educated girl to organise household matters, than was her predecessor. Not only is manipulative skill acquired, but scientific reasons for processes and methods are outlined, and improvements are suggested. There is, however, still the danger that the student's training in science has been so subordinated to the acquirement of manipulative skill that her knowledge of scientific facts is not sufficiently based on scientific training and method. Much, then, is to be urged in favour of the woman with a science degree taking courses in domestic arts, but it is essential for her to attain a high standard of practical work. It has sometimes been found that a very academic and scientific method of treatment has tended to lower the standard of manipulative skill. Nevertheless qualified graduates find themselves, at the moment, greatly in demand. The economical headmistress must always be on the look out for an acquisition to her staff who will, like Count Smorltork's politics, "surprise in herself many branches." If the headmistress can solve her difficulty about her domestic arts teacher by engaging a college-bred woman, with a degree to put on the prospectus, all sorts of ordinary subjects for her odd hours and undertaking to teach cooking as well, she will jump at the chance, and pay her £10 to £20 more salary than the ordinary assistant-mistress. She will economise greatly by the arrangement. If she has some amount of money to back her schemes, and a large school to administer, she will prefer two people to one composite one. But she will beg them to collaborate and to work together. She will not expect the woman with the science degree and a brief subsequent training in the arts to have the manipulative skill of the one who has done something like one thousand hours of actual practice, according to the prescription of the Board of Education. She will ask the former to show the girls how modern science is connected with the modern house, and how the scientific way of thinking helps in keeping a house, as it does in keeping one's own health and fitness. During the past five years one secondary school after another has taken up Domestic Arts as a school subject. The initiative usually comes from the headmistress, and is a matter of personal judgment, so that the introduction is still an experiment on trial, and the method of trial varies. Before giving some indication of the methods tried, we must return to the demand for teachers. It will be clear from what has been said, that a science graduate who has studied and practised household arts and cooking, or a trained teacher of Domestic Arts who has also some science certificate and a high standard of general education, will at this moment command a higher salary than the ordinary secondary schoolmistress, and is practically certain of a post. But either of these individuals requires an unusually long period of training, for which most people have neither the time nor the spare capital. One woman's college in London has started courses of its own in "Home Science and Economics," and awards a three-year certificate to its students; also a diploma for science graduates who take a year's course, and a certificate to Domestic Arts teachers who take a closely related year's course. This is King's College for Women, which has just obtained the formal approval of London University for its three years' curriculum. In a very short time arrangements will be made to grant a University Diploma to the students who have taken this course, the fee for which amounts to 30 guineas a session. A scholarship, covering the cost of tuition, is from time to time awarded to undergraduate students, and there is also a one-year post-graduate Gilchrist scholarship of 50 guineas. The name of "Household and Social Science" is recommended by the Royal Commissioners for the new co-ordination of subjects. Various American universities and colleges give diplomas of the same kind: and the New Zealand University has just initiated one. The three-year course at King's College for Women may possibly be modified by the University authorities: at present it consists of two years' training in various branches of pure science, and a third year in which these branches are applied to household matters of all kinds. For instance, the usual type of academic course of Inorganic, Organic, and Physical Chemistry gives place in the third year to the study of food, cooking utensils and cookers, soap and other cleansing materials, and woven materials. Biology and Physiology give place to household Bacteriology and Hygiene. Practice in Housewifery and Cooking occupies one day per week throughout the three years. A very important feature in this course is the introduction of Economics. As with the natural sciences, two years' study of ordinary Economics, chiefly industrial, is followed by a year of Economics applied to the household, in which an attempt is made to show the present and past relations of the household to society. King's College for Women is the first institution in England to see the great importance of studying the connection of domestic life with the outside industrial world, instead of treating it as an isolated phenomenon. This is the outline of the three-year course: students are encouraged to stay a fourth year for special work; the appointments which they take up at the end of three or four years are not always as teachers, but in various other vocations which need not be specified here. As teachers, the holders of these certificates are subject, of course, to a double fire of criticism. The science specialist thinks they do not know enough science, and points out that, beyond a few elementary facts in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology soon picked up in an elementary training in these subjects, there stretches a region of very abstruse science which cannot be attacked except by specialists in Organic Chemistry, in the Physiology of Nutrition, and so on. But it is now suggested that many scientific problems connected with domestic subjects are waiting for solution. If some of these were solved, they would bridge the gulf between the elementary and the abstruse, but they must show themselves of sufficient interest to investigators. Here is a field for work eminently suited to the scientific woman with a practical turn of mind. Meanwhile, the cookery diplomée thinks, often justifiably, that the new teachers have not had sufficient practice in the art of cooking. Criticism of this kind is inevitable whenever a new co-ordination of subjects is attempted, and it will keep the new arrangement on its trial until it can justify itself. The question at issue in this case, as probably readers will have divined if they are interested in the problem, is whether the whole method and tradition of teaching housekeeping ought not to be under revision, so that it may in a few years be a "subject" vastly different from the traditional handing-on and practising of receipts. Once the barrier is broken down between the scientifically trained and the domestic woman, the whole aspect of affairs changes. It is a sign of the change that the training-colleges and cookery-schools, besides introducing more Chemistry, Hygiene, and Physiology into their curricula, are definitely asking that the teachers they employ for these subjects, shall be women with science degrees as well as some knowledge of domestic arts. For instance, at the Gloucester School of Cookery at least one former teacher had taken the Natural Science Tripos at Girton as well as Domestic Science Certificates: at Battersea Polytechnic a recent appointment is that of a Domestic Science diplomée, who subsequently took a science degree at Armstrong College, while at the National Training School of Cookery, one member of Staff is at present a science graduate, who subsequently obtained the King's College for Women Diploma in Home Science and Economics. Again, the new Government report just issued on handwork in secondary schools, while in many ways non-committal, distinctly prefers special training for teachers of Domestic Subjects following on a good general education--_i.e._, a University degree plus technical qualifications, rather than a teaching diploma in Domestic Subjects plus a little science. There is, then, likely to be an increasing number of openings for women who can afford the double training. Schools of housecraft to give all-round training to educated women, are springing up in all parts of the United Kingdom: in those which are attached to Polytechnics and similar institutions the fullest advantage is taken of the pure and technical science teaching available in their laboratories. To those who look for a real advance in household science the weak point of the present situation is the want of proper correlation and standardisation of the work going on. The Board of Education does not examine; it accepts the diploma given by any one of a fairly large number of domestic science schools. In consequence, teachers from different quarters may be using quite different processes and methods in laundry work, cooking, or housekeeping. It is time some fundamental things were agreed upon, and although standardising must not be allowed to become stereotyping, at present constructive generalisation is needed, as well as the upsetting of out-grown traditions. In this context it would be well to discuss a question more properly to be taken at the end of this paper--the connection between the teaching in elementary schools and that in secondary schools. There is no reason to introduce differentiation in the training of the teachers: it is obvious, for instance, that the recent development of including economics in that training, is of extraordinary value to the elementary school teacher. But it is difficult to correlate the instruction given in the management of a middle-class household, with from eight to twenty rooms, and from one to a dozen servants, with that given in the management of a workman's cottage or of a flat without assistance. The connection which does need systematising and establishing is between the management of a middle-class house and the training of domestic servants, which ought naturally to form part of the trade or technical after-school work for elementary scholars. Here again, if training is to be followed by certificates, and the domestic servant is to be in the smallest degree an expert, some standardisation of training is necessary. We may, of course, find that domestic service becomes so much a matter of expert work that it is taken up on a large scale by middle-class girls, but that can hardly be prophesied yet, although the "lady servant" is an existing phenomenon. It is, of course, also possible that a modern curriculum of "Household and Social Science" may attract a certain number of men of the suitable type of mind. The attitude of the community is changing so rapidly that one may hope those fears to be groundless which speak of "relegating women back to the limited sphere of domesticity," and thereby losing so much that has been gained with regard to their education. We must now return to give a few particulars which have been passed over. Any information on this subject is, however, liable to be very soon out of date. A secondary school that elects to teach cooking and laundry work will want a specially fitted room, which will cost about as much as a simple science laboratory, and will be arranged in as close connection with the science laboratory as is convenient. This means serious expense, and the headmistress is naturally anxious to have considerable use made of the room. Thus she will be led to introduce the subject into a large proportion of the classes, instead of limiting it to one or two middle-school forms, or to a selected part of the upper-school. She may, however, try to solve the economic problem by making it a post-school course for which special fees are charged. Certain schools, notably Clapham and Croydon High Schools and Cheltenham Ladies' College are able to make a very important feature of this type of course. To make it a success, the prestige of the school, its influence over girls and their parents, must be great and commanding. Otherwise, unless the girls are aiming definitely at some professional work after the course, there is a tendency to laxness in attendance, or to the relinquishment of the work in the middle, which tendency is engendered by the nature of the subject. The mother's excuse for getting her grown-up girl's company and help will naturally be, "Gladys can boil the potatoes at home instead of at school." A valid answer will be that Gladys is being taught to free her mind from the eternal English boiled potato by learning many other ways of treating it, and at the same time learning its proper place in a diet. Failing the post-school course, the admittance of domestic subjects to a notable place in the general school curriculum leads to great stress being laid on the teaching of the elements of Physical Science. The eminently "feminine" subject, Botany, gives place to Physics and Chemistry in the middle-school, followed by Physiology and Hygiene in the upper-school. The subjects are to be illustrated whenever convenient, by reference to home life. A student choosing her science subjects at College should bear these in mind as likely to be at present of the best market value. Though it is very true that a practical woman who is a good teacher will nowadays connect any science subject with home life, still a parallel course of domestic arts will draw chiefly on the lessons given in these four. Another fact worthy of notice is that a married woman who is anxious to continue her former profession of science teaching will not as a rule have to suffer the usual unfavourable handicap. That a married woman should teach the domestic subjects is quite a reasonable proposition to many who would exclude her from most professions: if she be also a mother it may even count as an asset instead of a disadvantage. The Delegacy for Oxford Local Examinations has been the first, as far as we know, to set a paper in domestic science to senior candidates. There has been a demand for it in the London Matriculation, but objection has been raised on the score of its being a smattering and a soft option. The Oxford Delegacy has introduced two new headings--Domestic Science and Hygiene--and sets two papers under each, without any practical work. The first paper is the same under both headings--Elementary Physics and Chemistry, and the preparation for this is intended to be made at least one school year before the preparation for the second paper. It should be noted that the Hygiene paper is for boys and girls; it includes a little Physiology, Personal Hygiene, and Hygiene of Buildings. The Domestic Science paper is for girls only; it has several details in common with that in Hygiene, but its main features are the simple outlines of the chemistry of foods and of cleansing substances. In a few years the suitability of these subjects for both sexes may have impressed the community. We may notice, lastly, the arrangements made for instruction in Domestic Subjects in elementary schools.[1] This is given in a specially equipped Centre attached to a public elementary school, the girls from that and other schools attending either for a half or whole day weekly during their last two years at school. In some cases for about fifteen weeks before they leave school, girls give half the week to Domestic Subjects. This experiment has been so successful, that it is likely to be extended in the future. A carefully graded syllabus is followed; due proportion of time is given to theory and demonstration as well as to practical work. Each girl is required to do a certain amount of work by herself, and much thought has been expended in order to make the lessons as useful as possible. The care of infants and young children is receiving increased attention, and it is hoped that much may be done to mitigate evils of wrong feeding and treatment. As far as possible, the teaching in the Centres is correlated with that in the schools. Where there are science laboratories the experiments are made on food-stuffs, changes wrought by application of heat in various ways, the chemistry of common objects, and so on. The opportunity for definite science training in connection with Domestic Subjects teaching in elementary schools is still very small, and will probably remain so while the school-leaving age is fourteen. The problem before the teacher in some instances is to combat not only an entire ignorance of the home arts, but also, in poor districts, an active experience of household mismanagement and vicious habits. The teaching in these cases has to be intensely practical, and to aim chiefly at character-building; the manual work of the subject has been found of the greatest educational value in this respect. Though the training of all Domestic Subjects' teachers should reach the same standard of scientific knowledge, yet the actual work to be done in different types of schools is thus seen to be necessarily widely divergent in character. In higher elementary or "central" schools, where the pupils normally remain until the end of the school year in which they reach the age of fifteen, Domestic Subjects' teaching may have a much wider scope than at the ordinary Centre, as the pupils are at a very intelligent age, and represent the best of the elementary scholars. A special syllabus is prepared according to the individual need of each school, by the Domestic Subjects' teacher and the headmistress; the instruction is a very definite part of the curriculum, and the teacher a member of the school staff. In London and other large towns, and with certain County Councils, the Centre is under the general supervision of the headmistress of the school to which it is attached, but technical details are entirely in the hands of the teacher of Domestic Subjects and of the superintendent who visits periodically. In some rural areas, the conditions are not so satisfactory. Frequently one teacher has to serve several villages, visiting them for instruction on certain days. The accommodation in such places is often sadly deficient, and much ingenuity and resource are needed to overcome difficulties which do not occur when the Centre is well-equipped and in continuous use, and the teacher, as she should be, a regular member of the school staff. On leaving school, there are many scholarships open to the girls for further training, (_a_)for a home course, (_b_) for domestic service, (_c_) for the trades of laundress, needlewoman, dressmaker, and cook. These scholarships are held at Technical Institutes, or Trade Schools, and the training given is admirable in kind. A qualified teacher who wishes to take up elementary school work will have no difficulty, if physically fit, in obtaining a post under a County Council or other educational authority at a salary of £80 per annum, usually rising by annual increments to £120. The maximum is not so high as that for teachers of ordinary subjects, and pensions are not universal, though most councils make fairly adequate provision for retirement, breakdown, and ill-health. There is at present very little direct promotion open to the Domestic Subjects' teacher in elementary schools. In London there are practising-centres for students in training, and training centres for teachers during the probationary period, the managers of which hold very responsible posts that carry extra salary. The inspecting staff is usually chosen from teachers of experience, but this is necessarily limited in numbers, vacancies occurring only rarely. The salary attached to these posts is from £150 to £300. Many good posts in the Colonies have been obtained by Domestic Subjects' teachers in elementary schools. Some teachers have become foreign missionaries, Children's Care Committee visitors, or home mission workers and visitors. Some have established model laundries, others have taken charge of students' hostels and boarding-houses; while many have been successful in the needle-trades, luncheon and tea-rooms, and in lecturing and demonstrating for gas and electric companies. Several organisations for self-protection and the advancement of the profession are open to teachers of Domestic Subjects. The Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects was founded in 1896, and has done valuable work for the members. It is affiliated to the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes, and is thus enabled to obtain good legal advice. A representative has been appointed to sit on the Council for the Registration of Teachers. The Association is helping to educate public opinion, and to review and consider the pedagogy of domestic subjects in all classes of schools. Domestic Subjects' teachers are also admitted to membership of other Teachers' Associations, which safeguard the interest of their members and offer advantages for training and travelling. Members of the Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects have the right to join for the purposes of the Insurance Act the "Approved" section of the Secondary, Technical and University Teachers' Provident Society. The London County Council has secured "exception" from the Act for their Domestic Subjects' teachers, their allowance for sick leave being better than the provisions of the Act. The Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects has obtained special terms for members from two assurance companies for deferred annuities or endowment assurances. The London Teachers' Association has also a provident section. We have seen that Domestic Arts may now claim a position of importance in both the elementary and secondary school curricula, and that the teaching of these subjects may rank as a profession in which there is a great deal of scope. The attitude of mind towards these subjects has much changed during the last few years, largely owing to the efforts of those who have taken them up as subjects of scientific study. Much, however, remains to be done, both in organising the teaching in schools, and in the training of teachers in domestic subjects. Only those who have had scientific training, are competent to put the work on a sound scientific basis. [Footnote 1: An interesting sidelight on economic conditions is afforded by the instructions issued by the London County Council for the guidance of teachers of Domestic Subjects (Syllabus of Instruction in Domestic Economy. Revised, March 1912). The girls are to be taught account-keeping in order to "cultivate a well-balanced sense of proportion in spending and saving. ... Weekly incomes suitable for consideration in London, to begin with, are 35s., £3, and 28s. taken in that order." The number in family is supposed to be six, _i.e.,_ parents and four children. The obvious inference is that experts do not find it possible to deal satisfactorily with cases in which there are, say, six children and an income of 25s. An income of £1 a week is not even mentioned, though many a London school-girl must know "in the last three years of her school-life" that her mother has not more than this to spend. Translated into concrete quantities of food, clothing, and rent, this "living wage" is found insufficient for daily needs. The teacher therefore is encouraged to ignore the economic conditions of most of her pupils. [EDITOR]. ] TABLE I. Cost and duration of courses for the first degree in the Faculties of Arts and Science, together with Scholarships in those Faculties available for Women at the Universities and University Colleges[1] of the United Kingdom. _NOTES_. 1. Scholarships, etc., printed in _italics_ are available for Women only. 2. Scholarships, etc., printed in #black type# are not restricted to graduates of any one University. 3. County Council and Borough Scholarships are included only when tenable at a specified University or College. Particulars of others should in each case be obtained from the respective Director or Secretary of the Education Committee. 4. No scholarship or prize is included of which the value is less than £15. [Footnote 1: University Colleges are those in receipt of a Government Grant and doing work of a University standard. Thus the Polytechnics and Colleges such as the Albert Memorial College, Exeter, are not included, although they prepare students for degree examinations.] #ENGLAND#. UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honours (M.A., M.Sc.) in Arts or Science: 4 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: 54 guineas for the course. Cost of Tuition in Science: From 47 guineas to £186, 2s. for the course, according to subjects chosen. Cost of Residence (optional): From 40 to 55 guineas per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Entrance(2) Not more than £25 1 year Fentham's Trust £75 3 years Awarded on to candidates who have resided for 5 years in the City of Birmingham University(2) £30 1 year Science University(2) £30 1 year Arts University(15) Free tuition and not more than £30 maintenance 4 years Theodore Mander £24 2-3 years Open to sons and daughters of burgesses of Wolverhampton, and awarded to those intending to take Degree Courses in the Faculties of Science of Commerce Polytechnic(2) £45 _circa_ 3 years Ascough £36 _circa_ 1 year Chemistry (renewable) George Henry £45 3 years Classics Marshall German £50 -- Offered each year for 5 years from 1913. Education Committee £50 3 years Major(5) Corbett £28 _circa_ 1 year For 2nd year students. Mathematics. #Post-Graduate# University(4) £50 1 year Arts and Science Research(4) £50 1 year Arts and Science Priestley(3) £96 _circa_ 1 year Chemistry Research (renewable) 1851 Exhibition £150 2 years Scientific Research UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass or Honours: 3 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: 18 guineas per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: 20 guineas per annum. Cost of Residence (optional) at Clifton Hill House: 40 guineas per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Bursaries, variable Tuition fees and in number maintenance grant 1 year Awarded (to children of Bristol ratepayers only) according to qualification Vincent Stuckey Lean Interest on Science Scholarship £1,000 1 year #Post-Graduate.# _Catherine Winkworth_ £30 1 year Arts _Catherine Winkworth_ £30 1 year Science Capper Pass Scholarship £25 1 year Metallurgy Hugh Conway Scholarship £20 1 year English Literature UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. The only University Scholarships for which women are eligible are the Arnold Gerstenberg Studentship (income of £2,000) for Philosophical Research and the Benn W. Levy Studentship for Research in Biological Chemistry (£100 a year). Scholarships at Girton and Newnham are for women only. The University does not grant degrees to women. GIRTON COLLEGE. Duration of Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. (Pass candidates are not accepted.) Cost of Course: £105 per annum, including tuition, examinations, and residence. For out-students the fees are £12 a term. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. _Jane Agnes Chessar_ Not less than £88 4 years Classics _Russell Gurney_ £40 3 years History _Sir Francis Goldsmid_ £45 3 years _Mary Anne Leighton_ About £16 3 years _Barbara Leigh Smith_ About £44 3 years _Bodichon_ _Todd Memorial_ About £35 3 years _Higgins_ £40 3 years _Henry Tomkinson_ At least £20 3 years _Clothworkers_ £60 3 years _Skinners_ £50 3 years _Gilchrist_ £50 3 years Also tenable at Newnham _Queen's School,_ £30 3 years _Chester_ _Dove_ £20 3 years For girls from St. Leonard's School, St. Andrew's. Classics #For Certified Students# _Gilchrist Studentship_ £100 1 year For Professionals. Open to Students at Newnham and Girton _Old Girtonians'_ Not less than _Studentship_ £48 1 year _John Elliot Cairnes_ Not less than £58 1 year For research in Political Economy or Economic History _Sir Arthur Arnold_ £30 1 year _Harkness_ About £70 1 year Geology. Also tenable at Newnham. Awarded biennially #Fellowships.# _Pfeiffer_ £120 2 years #Girton College# £300 Various Open to students of all Universities #Prizes.# _Gamble_ Interest on £500 _Therese Montifiore_ Interest on £1,700 NEWNHAM COLLEGE. Duration of Course in Arts or Science: 3 years (Pass candidates are not accepted). Cost of Course: From £90 to £105 per annum, including tuition, examinations, and residence. For out-students the fees are £12 a term. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. _College_(2) £50 3 years _Clothworhers_ £50 3 years _College_(1 or more) £35 3 years _Classical_ £50 3 years Also tenable at Girton _Modern Languages_ £50 3 years Also tenable at Girton _Liverpool Clough_ £50 2-3 years For those entering the teaching profession, only _Gilchrist_ £50 3 years Also tenable at Girton _Mary Ewart_ £100 3 years For students who have been in residence three terms _Harkness_ £70 1 year Geology. Also tenable at Girton. Awarded biennially #Certificated Students# _Arthur Hugh Clough_ £40 1 year _Mary Ewart_ £150 1 year Travelling scholarship _Gilchrist_ £100 1 year Tenable only by those entering a profession. Held alternate years at Newnham and Girton #Bathurst# £75 or under 1 year Awarded from time to time for proficiency in Natural Science. Not restricted to Newnham students _Marion Kennedy_ £80 1 year Holder eligible for 2nd _Studentship_ year #Fellowships.# _Associates_(2) £100 1 year Awarded alternate years _Mary Bateson_ £100 1 year _"N"_ £100 1 year #Prizes.# _Creighton_ £15 Awarded for an essay on _Memorial_ History or Archaeology UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM. DURHAM COLLEGE. Duration of Course in Arts: Pass 2 years; Honours, 3 years. Duration of Course in Science: Pass and Honours, 3 years. Cost of Tuition, Arts and Science: £21 per annum. Cost of Residence in Abbey House (optional): From £12 to £16 a term. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Foundation Scholarships £70 1 year May be renewed. Arts Foundation Scholarships £40 1 year May be renewed Foundation Scholarships £30 1 year May be renewed Entrance Exhibitions(2) £20 1 year May be renewed Pears Scholarship £50 3 years Arts _Scholarships_(2) £70 1 year _Scholarships_(2) £30 1 year Exhibitions(2) £20 2 years Persons of limited means #Undergraduate.# Scholarships(2) £30 1 year 2nd year students Scholarships(2) £30 1 year 2nd year students Gisborne Scholarship £30 1 year 2nd year students University Classical £30 1 year Scholarship University Mathematical £30 1 year Scholarship University Hebrew £20 1 year Scholarship Thorp Scholarship £20 1 year Newby Scholarship £18 2 or 3 yrs. Arts Scholarships(3) £20 1 year Modern B.A. #Prizes.# Gibson £20 Essay ARMSTRONG COLLEGE, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course in Arts or Science: 3 to 4 years. Cost of Tuition: £20 per annum. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Exhibition £20 1-2 years Science Exhibition £15 1-2 years Science Exhibitions(2) £15 1-2 years Arts Newcastle-upon-Tyne Free admission to a Open to candidates Corporation degree course resident in Newcastle. Exhibitions(10) 2 years Arts (renewable) Newcastle-upon-Tyne Free admission to a Open to candidates Corporation degree course resident in Newcastle. Exhibitions(10) 2 years Arts (renewable) Newcastle-upon-Tyne Free admission to a Open to candidates Corporation degree course resident in Newcastle. Exhibitions(10) 2 years Science (renewable) Gateshead Corporation Free admission to a Open to candidates Exhibitions(10) degree course resident in Gateshead. 2 years (renewable) #Undergraduate.# Junior Pemberton £30 and remission of Awarded on the results of two-thirds of the the first B.Sc. class fees 1 year examination Thomas Young Hall £20 with remission of Awarded on the results two-thirds of the of the first B.Sc. class fees 3 years examination Nathaniel Clerk £15 1 year Awarded on the results of the first B.Sc. examination Senior Pemberton £40 and fees 1 year Candidates must have passed the first B.Sc. examination #Post-Graduate.# Research Studentships(2) £62, 10s 1 year 1851 Exhibition £150 2 years Science 1851 Exhibition Probationary Bursaries £70 1 year Science Research Johnston Chemical £60 1 year Open to Bachelors of Science of any British University of not more than 3 years' standing #Fellowships.# College £125 1 year Pemberton £120 3 years Open to graduates in Science of Durham University of not more than 6 years' standing from their first degree UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS. Duration of Pass Course, Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course, Arts or Science: 3 to 4 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £19 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £27 per annum. Cost of Residence at University Hall (optional): From £32 to £41 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Emsley £20 2 years Edward Baines £20 2 years Charles Wheatley £25 3 years Arts William Summers £35 3 years Arts Brown £40 2 years Science (renewable) Senior City(14) £50 3 years Open to candidates of not (renewable) less than 17 and not more than 30 years of age County Major £55 _circa_ 3 years Open to candidates of not (West Riding)(14) less than 16 and not more than 30 years of age Free Studentships Tuition Fees 3 years (West Riding) Major (North Riding)(4) £60 1-3 years Open to women of not less than 16 and not more than 20 years of age Scholarships (East £60 1-3 years Riding) Salt £20 2 years Arts City Council Not specified #Post-Graduate.# 1851 Exhibition £150 2 years Science University (limited £25 1-2 years Awarded ordinarily on number) Final Honours Examinations Gilchrist £80 1 year Modern Languages John Rutson £70 1 year Arts (renewable) #Fellowships.# University £100 1 year UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course in Arts: 3 to 4 years. Duration of Honour Course in Science: 4 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £19 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £25 per annum. Cost of Residence in University Hall (optional): From 35 to 50 guineas a session. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Bibby(2) £20 3 years Open to candidates of not more than 18 years of age Morris Ranger £20 3 years _Ladies' Educational £30 3 years Open to women of not less Association_ than 16 and not more than 19 years of age Elizabeth James £40 3 years Arts or Law Tate (Arts) £35 3 years Open to candidates who have been educated in one of the schools of Liverpool or the neighbourhood and who are not more than 18 years of age Tate (Science)(3) £35 3 years Senior City(8) £30 and free admission Open to candidates of not to lectures less than 16 and not more 3 years than 19 years of age Senior City Technical(2) £50 and free admission Open to candidates of not to lectures less than 16 and not more than 25 years of age 3 years Derby(2) £35 3 years One without limit of age, one for candidates of not more than 18 years of age Canning £28 3 years} Iliff £20 3 years} Arts including Mathematics, or B.Sc. Honours in Mathematics William Rathbone £20 3 years} Gossage £70 _circa_ 3 years Open to pupils of schools in the Borough of Widnes Lundie Memorial £15 3 years Wallasey Borough £35 3 years Open to candidates under Council 19 years of age W.P. Sinclair Interest on £1,000 Arts or Honour School of 3 years Mathematics Henry Deacon £50 3 years Open to candidates of not more than 19 years of age who intend studying in the Honour School of Chemistry Sheridan Muspratt £50 2 years Chemistry Thomas Hornby £20 1 year Greek (renewable) Korbach £20 1 year Undergraduates reading (renewable) German in the Honour School of Modern Languages or graduates wishing to proceed with German study or research Henry Warren Meade-King Interest on £1,000 Economics 2 years Holt Travelling £50 1 year Architecture Isaac Roberts(2) £50 1 year Science. Open to graduates (renewable) and under-graduates Sir John Willox £50 2 years Chemistry #Post-Graduate# Korbach £20 1 year __See above, undergraduate_ (renewable) _scholarship of same name_ Gilchrist £80 1 year Modern Languages Isaac Roberts(2) £50 1 year _See above, undergraduate_ _scholarship of same name_ 1851 Exhibition £150 2 years Tenable at any University in England and abroad, and to be used for Science Research work University(2) £25 1 year 1851 Exhibition Bursary £70 1 year Derby £45 _circa_ 1 year Mathematics (renewable) Owen-Templeman Interest on £450 1 year (renewable) Celtic Stanley Jones Interest on £1,300 Economics #Fellowships.# University -- 1 year Charles Beard £75 1 year History Oliver Lodge Interest on £2,650 Physics 1 year UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. The duration of the Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours, is 3 years. (_See_ under separate Colleges for Fees.) All students of the University are eligible for University Scholarships, Exhibitions, and Prizes in accordance with the regulations laid down in each case. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #University Undergraduate.# Exhibitions(5) £40 2 years Arts and Science Scholarships(19) £50 1 year Arts and Science Mitchell Exhibitions(4) 2 of £25} 1 year For candidates from the 2 of £20}(renewable) city of London _Si Dunstan Exhibitions_ £60 3 years For residents in London of _for Women_(3) restricted means _Gilchrist_ £40 2 years One in Arts, one in _Scholarships, for_ Science (the latter may _Women_(2) be increased by £10) #University Post-Graduate.# The Lindley Studentship £100 For research in Physiology (awarded every 3rd year) The University £50 For research Studentship in (undergraduates are also Physiology eligible) George Smith Studentship £100 + £5 worth Awarded to the best of books Internal Candidate for B.A. Honours in English on condition of preparation for M.A. _Gilchrist Studentship_ £100 For graduates in Honours _for Women_ who undertake to prepare for and practise some profession Gilchrist Studentship in £80 For internal graduates in Modern Languages Honours (French or German) who undertake to follow abroad a course of preparation for the profession of Modern Language Teacher Carpenter Medal (or its £20 Awarded every 3 years for pecuniary equivalent) a Thesis in experimental Psychology presented for a Doctor's Degree Ouseley Memorial £50 Oriental Languages, not Scholarships(3) restricted to graduates Gilchrist Scholarships(2)£50 Oriental Languages, not restricted to graduates Grants are also made from the Dixon Fund in aid of scientific investigations. BEDFORD COLLEGE FOR WOMEN. Cost of Tuition in Arts: 27 guineas per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: From 27 to 38 guineas per annum. Cost of Residence in College (optional): From 58 to 68 guineas per annum. All Scholarships at Bedford College are open to women only. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Undergraduate.# _Reid Scholarships_(2) £30 3 years Arts _Clift Scholarship_ £30 3 years Arts _Courtauld Scholarship_ £30 3 years Arts _Henry Tate Scholarship_ £50 3 years Science _Arnott Scholarship_ £50 3 years Science _Pfeiffer_ _Scholarships_(2) £50 3 years _Reid Scholarship_ £60 3 years _Jane Benson_ _Scholarship_ £60 2 years Awarded biennially to a student of Bedford High School #Post-Graduate# _Reid Fellowship_ £50 2 years Awarded biennially either to an Arts or a Science graduate EAST LONDON COLLEGE. Cost of Tuition in Arts or Science: £10, 10s. per annum. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Drapers' Company(2) £40 3 years Arts. Candidates must not exceed 19 years of age Drapers' Company(2) £40 3 years Science. Candidates must not exceed 19 years of age #Post-Graduate.# Research Studentship Conditions not yet published UNIVERSITY OF LONDON KING'S COLLEGE FOR WOMEN. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £25, 4s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £31, 10s. per annum. Cost of Residence in King's Hall (optional): From £17, 10s. to £26, 5s. per term. All Scholarships, etc., except the three which are specified, are open to both men and women, and are tenable by the former at King's College, Strand. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# _Skinners' Company_ £40 3 years Arts _Scholarship_ _Merchant Taylors'_ £40 3 years Arts or Science _Scholarship_ Sambrooke Scholarship £25 2 years Classics Sambrooke Scholarship £25 2 years Science #Undergraduate.# Inglis Scholarship £30 1 year English or History in alternate years Sambrooke Exhibition £50 1 year Classics #Post-Graduate.# Inglis Studentship £100 1 year Awarded on the result of the B.A. Honours Examination in English and in History in alternate years. The selected Student is required to prepare for M.A. and to give some assistance in teaching Layton Research £150 2 years Science Studentship Gilchrist Scholarship £52, 10S 1 year For graduates intending to in Home Science take the Post-Graduate Diploma in Home Science and Economics. For women only #Prizes.# Carter Prize £15 in books and gold English Verse medal Carter Prize £15 in books and gold Botany medal ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLEGE. Cost of Residence and Tuition: £100 per annum. Cost of Tuition for out-students: £12 per term. All Scholarships at Royal Holloway College are for women only. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# _Founder's_ £60 3 years _Scholarships_(4) _Entrance_ £50 3 years _Scholarships_(8) _Martin Holloway_ £35 3 years _Several Bursaries_ Not exceeding £30 3 years #Undergraduate.# _Driver_(3) £30 3 years For students who have been at least three terms in residence _Christie_ £60 2 years For History #Post-Graduate.# _Several_ Varying 1 year For students wishing to _Studentships_ in amount take up post-graduate work #Prizes.# _R.C._ _Christie, Esq._ £21 French literature _Martin Holloway._ £15, 15s. ------------------------------------------------------------- UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. Cost of Tuition in Arts: From £24, 3s. to £42 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £35 per annum. Cost of Residence in College Hall (optional): From £53 to £82 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Andrews Entrance £30 1 year Arts and Science. Age Scholarships(3) limit, 18 Campbell Clarke £40 3 years English Language and Entrance Scholarship Literature. Age limit, 18 Goldsmid £30 3 years Science. Age limit, 18 Rosa Morison £30 3 years Arts. Age limit, 18 Member's Scholarship £30 3 years Classics West £30 1 year English and English History Morris £16 2 years St Pancras College fees for Limited to candidates born 3 years in St Pancras Campbell Clarke £40 2 or 3 years English Language and Literature #Undergraduate.# Andrews Scholarships £30 1 year Arts and Science Derby Zoological £60 2 years Ellen Watson Memorial £15 1 year Science. Candidates must be under 21 Fielden Research £50 1 or 2 years Research in German _Eleanor Grove_ £30 1 year Research in German (may be renewed) John Oliver Hobbes £20 1 year Modern English Literature Hollier £60 1 year Greek and Hebrew Jews' Commemoration £15 2 years Arts or Science Joseph Hume £20 1 year Jurisprudence and Political Economy Malden Medal and £20 1 year Proficiency in Greek Scholarship Mayer de Rothschild £40 1 year Pure Mathematics John Stuart Mill £20 1 or 2 years Philosophy of Mind or Logic _Rosa Morison_ £30 1 year English Language and Literature Ricardo £20 3 years Awarded every third year for Political Economy Tuffnell £100 2 years Science. Candidates must be under 24 #Post-Graduate.# George Jessel £50 1 year Research in Mathematics Studentship Jevons Memorial £35 1 or 2 years Research in Political Economy Physics Research £60} 1 year Studentships(2) £40} Quain £150 3 years English. Awarded every third year Quain £100 3 years Biology. Awarded every third year #Prizes.# Quain £50 English Essay WESTFIELD COLLEGE. Cost of Residence and Tuition: £35 a term. Cost of Tuition for Out-students: £15 a term. All Scholarships at Westfield College are for women only. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# _Draper's Company_(2) £50 3 years Candidates must be under age of 20 _Amy Sanders Stephens_ £50 3 years _College Scholarships_ £35 to £50 3 years (2 or more) UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours: 3 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £18 per session. Cost of Tuition in Science: Pass, from £20 to £30 per annum. Honours, from £12, 12S. to £45 per annum. Cost of Residence in Ashburne Hall or Langdale Hall (optional): From £40 to £52, 10S. per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Rogers £40 2 years Biennial. Classics Seaton £40 2 years Biennial. Mathematics Dalton £40 2 years Mathematics Hulme £35 3 years English and History Jones £35 2 years History James Gaskill £35 2 years Mathematics and Chemistry John Buckley £30 3 years Mathematics and Science Grace Calvert £30 2 years Science. Biennial Bleackley £15 3 years Science (not till 1915) Theodores £15 1 year French and German _Dora Muir_ £30 3 years _Alice Fay_ £25 Not more than 3 years _Ashburne Hall_ £60 3 years _Marjory Lees_ £40 3 years _Old Ashburnians_ £30 1-3 years Jevons £70 1 year Economic Science (once in six years) Russian £60 1st year} 2 years £25 2nd year} Bishop Fraser £40 2 years Classics Oliver Heywood £50 2 years Classics Dieschfield £30 1 year Robert Platt £50 1-2 years Zoology and Botany Robert Platt £50 2 years Physiology Education(2) £50 1 year Intending Teachers Faulkner (Arts) and £100 1 year Beyer (Science)(3) Victoria £40 1 year Classics Wellington £30 1 year Greek. Biennial Walters £30 1 year French. German Bradford £35 1 year History Shuttleworth £45 1 year Political Economy Dalton £35 1 year Mathematics Derby £30 1 year Mathematics Heginbottom £15 1 year Physics Dalton £50 2 years Chemical Mercer £30 1 year Chemistry #Post-Graduate.# Roscoe £50 1 year History (renewable) Gilchrist £80 1 year Modern Languages Graduate £25 1 year One in each Honours School in Arts and Science Travelling £60 for 1st year, Russian and £75 for 2nd year #1851 Exhibition# £150 2 years Science Schuster £50 1 year Engineering or Chemistry #Fellowships.# John Harling £125 1-2 years Physics, English Honorary Schunk £100 1 year Chemistry Jones £150 2 years History John Bright £100 2 years Public Health(2) £50 1 year #Prizes.# Lee Greek Testament £15 Senior Warburton £30 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. Duration of Course in Arts or Science: 3 to 4 years. (Pass candidates are not accepted at the Women's Colleges.) Women are not eligible for any University Scholarships or Prizes. All Scholarships at the Women's Colleges are for women only. The University does not grant degrees to women. SOMERVILLE COLLEGE. Combination Fee: From £84 to £105 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. _Entrance £40-£60 3 years Scholarships_(3) _Entrance £20-£30 3 years Exhibitions_(2) _Shaw Lefevre_ £50 Awarded only to students in residence #Certificated Students.# #Mary Ewart Travelling# #Scholarship# £100-£200 Awarded occasionally, and open to women graduates of Durham and Dublin, as well as to all certificated students of the Women's Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge LADY MARGARET HALL. Cost of Tuition: £27 per annum. Cost of Residence (obligatory): From £65 to £75 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# _Jephson Scholarship_ £50 3 years _College Scholarship_ £40 3 years _College Scholarship_ £35 3 years ST HILDA'S HALL. Cost of Tuition: £26, 5s. per annum. Cost of Residence (obligatory): £75 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# _College Scholarship_ £50 3 years _College Scholarship_ £30 3 years _Hay Scholarship_ £25-£45 3 years _Cheltenham Scholarship_ varies in amount Open only to pupils of 3 years Cheltenham Ladies College ST HUGH'S COLLEGE. Combination Fee: From £70 to £95 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# __Old Students'_ £30 3 years _Scholarship_ _College Scholarship_ £30 3 years _College Scholarship_ £25 3 years _Clara Evelyn Mordan_ _Scholarship_ £40 3 years Awarded every third year SOCIETY OF HOME STUDENTS. Cost of Tuition: From £24 to £30 per annum. The Society of Home Students provides for the education of students who are not in residence at any College. It undertakes to prepare students for pass as well as honours examinations. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. _Ottley Scholarship_ £40 3 years Open only to pupils of Worcester High School. _Gilchrist Travelling_ £100 1 year Open to certificated women students at Oxford UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours: 3 years. Cost of Tuition varies according to subjects chosen. Cost of Residence in the University Hostel (optional): From 29 to 43 guineas per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Fifth £30 3 years Arts, Science Corporation £30 3 years Arts, Science Town Trustees(2) £50 3-4 years Tenable at Sheffield, Oxford and Cambridge Education Committee £15, 1st year} £20, 2nd year}3 years £25, 3rd year} Town Trustees(4) £50 3 years Open only to candidates under 19 years of age educated in Sheffield Education Committee £50 3 years Applied Science Earnshaw[1] £50 at least 1 year Open to inhabitants of the or more City of Sheffield, and tenable at any University in the United Kingdom. Awarded for Mathematics or Classics. Mechanics' Institute £50 and free admission to lectures 1-2 years Whitworth Exhibitions(30)£50 3 years Awarded on the results of Examinations of the Board of Education Whitworth(4) £25 3 years Awarded on the results of Examinations of the Board of Education Technical £20, 1st year; £25, 2nd year; £30, 3rd year; and free admission to lectures 3 years Education Committee £50 3 years Arts Education Committee(4) £50 3 years Pure or Applied Science #Post-Graduate# Frederick Clifford £50 _circa_ 2 years Open to graduates residing within a radium of 40 miles of the University #1851 Exhibition# £150 2 years Science #Fellowships.# Sorby Interest on £15,503, Chemistry. Next award 1914 16s. 6d. 5 years Town Trustees £75 1 year [Footnote 1: This does not appear to come under either of the categories of County and Borough Scholarship alluded to in Note 3, p. 28. The Editor therefore includes it here.] UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM. Students read for the external degrees of the University of London. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £12, 12s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £18 per annum. Cost of Residence at Hylton House (optional): £30 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Scholarships(3) £30 1 year Arts and Science. For (renewable) students not over 19 years of age Studentships Remission of fees 1 year (renewable) _Parker Senior_ £25-£50 3 years For daughters of residents _Exhibitions_ in Nottingham County Council College and travelling Open to candidates under Scholarships fees, and books 19, ordinarily resident in the County #Undergraduate.# Weinberg Scholarship £15 1 year For students in need of pecuniary assistance College Studentships £10 to £18 1 year For students in need of pecuniary assistance #Post-Graduate.# Science Research(2) £50 and free admission 1 year Heymann Research £35 1 year May be divided between two candidates. Preference given to students in the Faculty of Arts #1851 Exhibition# £150 2 years For Research work in #Scholarship# Science. Tenable at any University. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, READING. Students read for the external degrees of the University of London. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £20. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: From £20 to £24 per annum. (There is a reduction for local students.) Cost of Residence in St Andrew's Hall, Wessex Hall and St George's Hostel (obligatory for students not residing with parents or guardians): From £32 to £42 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Open Scholarships-- £69} 2 years Science Major(2) £65} (renewable) Arts Minor(2) Remission of College fees 2 years (renewable) County Borough of Reading-- Minor Scholarships(2) Remission of College For candidates educated fees. 1 year in Borough of Reading (renewable) _St Andrew's Hall._ £40 2 years (renewable) _St Andrew's Hall_ Amount variable Students in need of _Bursaries_ pecuniary assistance _Exhibition_ Remission of College For graduates, whether fees 1 year already students of the College of not. Secondary Education Course HARTLEY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, SOUTHAMPTON. Students read principally for the external degrees of the University of London. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £20 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £24 per annum. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# College(2) £26, 8s., 1st year} £34, 8s., 2nd year} 3 £36, 8s., 3rd year}years College(2) £26, 8s., 1st year} 2 £34, 8s., 2nd year}years Exhibitions(4) £15 and £18 3 years Open to candidates between the ages of 16 and 19 Thomas Godolphin £23 1 year Open to candidates who Rooper have been educated for at least 2 years at a Public Elementary School in the late Mr. Rooper's Inspectorial District #IRELAND.# UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. TRINITY COLLEGE. Duration of Arts Course, Pass and Honours, 4 years. Duration of Science Course: Pass, 4 years; Honours, 5 years. Cost of Tuition: £16. 16s. per annum. Cost of Residence in Trinity Hall (for women not residing with their parents or guardians): From £11 to £15 a term. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Exhibitions(12) £20 (6)} 2 years Examination results £15 (6)} of Irish Board of Intermediate Education Junior Exhibitions(16) £20 (12)} 2 years Candidates under 19 £15 (4) } Sizarships(10) College fees Students in need of pecuniary assistance Non-foundation £30 5 years Arts or Science Scholarship James Patrick Kidd £80 4 years Arts or Science _Irish Society_ £60 3 years Open only to pupils of an _Scholarship_ Intermediate School in Londonderry or Coleraine #Undergraduate.# Senior Exhibitions(16) £20} 2 years Arts or Science £15} Lloyd Exhibition £16 2 years Mathematics Mullins Exhibition £17 3 years Classics Ekenhead Scholarship £32 3 years Science. Open only to natives of Antrim FitzGerald Memorial £50 1 year Research in Science Scholarship Blake National History £85 4 years Scholarship #Prizes.# Bishop Law's Mathematics £20 Algebra and Trigonometry McCullogh £30 and £20 Mathematics Townsend Memorial £22 Mathematics Vice Chancellor's £20 Classics Ferrar Memorial £18 Classics Marshal Porter Memorial Interest on £500 Classics Wray Prize £30 Mental and Moral Philosophy Cobden Prize £20 Essay on Political Economy Hebrew Chaldee and £40 Syriac Ferguson Memorial £20 Celtic Literature M'CREA MAGEE COLLEGE LONDONDERRY. (In connection with the University of Dublin.) Duration of Course in Arts: Pass, 3 years 9 months to 4 years; Honours 4 years. Duration of Course in Science, Pass and Honours: 4 years. Cost of Course in Arts or Science: From £32, 12s. to £50. 8s. for the course. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. Bigger £30 1 year Grocers' Company £25 1 year M'Crea Science £25 1 year Mathematics and Physics Adams' Bursary £15 1 year M'Crea Science £30 1 year Mathematics and Physics Grocers' Company £25 1 year Findlater £25 1 year Irish Society £20 1 year Mabel £20 1 year Modern Literature NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND. All students of the University are eligible for University Scholarships in accordance with the regulations laid down in each case. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #University Undergraduate.# Dr Henry Hutchinson £30 3 years Awarded on results of Stewart Literary First Examination in Arts Scholarship Tipperary County £50 3 years Council #University Post-Graduate.# Coyne Memorial £32 1 year Awarded in alternate years Scholarship for Essay on Political Science University Travelling £200 2 years In Arts and Science Studentships(3) subjects in rotation UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours: 3 years. Cost of Arts Course: £28, 10s. Cost of Science Course: Variable, according to subjects chosen. Cost of Residence in Loreto Hall or St Mary's Dominican Hall (optional): From £30 to £40 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance#. Scholarships(4) £50 1 year Scholarships(4) £40 1 year Scholarships(4) £30 1 year Scholarships(4) £20 1 year #Undergraduate.# Scholarships(4) £50 2 years Arts and Science. For 2nd year students Scholarships(4) £40 2 years Arts and Science. For 2nd year students Scholarships(4) £30 2 years Arts and Science. For 2nd year students Scholarships(4) £20 2 years Arts and Science. For 2nd year students First Class Exhibitions £20 1 year Result of Examination in (4) 2nd year #Post-Graduate.# Scholarships(5) £60 1 year Result of B.A. and B.Sc. Honours Examination Scholarship £30 1 year Scholarships(2) £15 1 year First Class Exhibitions £20 1 year Result of B.A. and B.Sc. (3) Examination UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, GALWAY. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £15 per annum. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance#. College(4) £30 1 year College(8) £25 1 year #Under-Graduate#. College, 2nd year £30 1 year Arts College, 2nd year(3) £25 1 year Arts College, 2nd year £30 1 year Science College, 2nd year(2) £25 1 year Science Blayney £30 1 year Scholars must attend Honours Courses Dr and Mrs W.A. Browne £32 1 year Modern Languages #Post-Graduate.# College(4) £60 1 year #Prizes.# Irish £15 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, CORK. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £9 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science varies according to subjects chosen. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate# College Scholarships(12) £20-£40 1 year Honan Scholarships(3) £50 3-5 years To candidates born in one of the counties of Munster other than Clare Cork County Council(10) £24 3 years Kerry County Council(2) £50 3 years Open to candidates of not more than 19 years of age Kerry County Council(3) £30 -- Open to candidates of not more than 19 years of age Waterford County £50 3 years Open to candidates of not Council(3) more than 19 years of age Waterford County £50 3 years Open to candidates of not Borough(2) more than 19 years of age College Scholarships(8) £20-£40 2-3 years Open to 2nd year students #Post-Graduate Scholarships.# Studentships (2) £150 3 years QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, BELFAST. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours: 3 years. Cost of Tuition varies according to subjects chosen, but does not exceed £11, 11s. per annum for the Arts Course. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate# Entrance(12) £40 1 year Arts, Science, and Medicine Second and Third Year £40 2 years Arts and Science Porter £20 1-3 years Porter £40 1 year Sullivan £40 _circa_ 1 year Open to pupils of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution Sullivan(2) £40 _circa_ 3 years Open to teachers in Irish National Schools Sir Hercules Pakenham £20 1 year Science Emily Lady Pakenham £20 1 year Arts Reid-Harwood £40 _circa_ 1 year Modern Languages Andrews Studentship £36, 10s. 2 years Awarded alternate years for Chemical and Physical Science Blayney £27 1 year Arts County Borough(4) £40 3 years Arts, Science, Medicine, Law, Commerce Antrim(2) £40 3 years Tenable at any University in Ireland Donegal(2) £45 3 years Tenable at any University in Ireland Kildare(4) £50 3 years Tenable at any University in Ireland by non-Roman Catholic students King's County £50 3 years Tenable by non-Roman Catholics Monaghan(3) £50 3 years Tenable at any University in Ireland by a non-Roman Catholic student Monaghan Bursaries(2) £25 3 years Tenable at any University in Ireland by a non-Roman Catholic student Westmeath(3) £50 3 years Tenable in the National University of Ireland or in Queen's University, Belfast Wexford(3) £50 3 years Tenable in any University or College in Ireland by a non-Roman Catholic student Wexford Bursaries(2) £25 3 years Tenable in any University or College in Ireland by a non-Roman Catholic student #Post-Graduate#. Studentships(5) £50 1 year Arts Studentships(4) £50 1 year Science Dunville Studentships(2) £50 1st year } £100 2nd year}2 years Physical Science and Biological Science Purser £108 1 year Mathematics Studentship £80 1 year Arts ALEXANDRA COLLEGE, DUBLIN. Students read for the Examinations of the University of Dublin, the National University of Ireland, and Queen's University, Belfast. Duration of Course in Arts or Science, Pass and Honours: 3 to 4 years. Cost of Tuition: From £17 per annum. Cost of Residence in Alexandra Hall: From £58 to £68 per annum. Alexandra College is for women only. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate#. _Skinners' Entrance_ £22 total value Candidates must be under _Scholarship_ 17 on 1st. Jan. _Governess Association_ £42 total value Candidates must be under _Scholarship_ 17 on 1st. Jan. _Pfeiffer Entrance_ £30 total value Candidates must be under _Scholarship_ 17 on 1st. Jan. _Stearne Scholarships(2)_£20 total value Candidates must be under 17 on 1st. Jan. _Wilson Suffern_ £15 Candidates must be under 17 _Skinners' Senior_ £27 total value Awarded in alternate years _Scholarship_ _Pfeiffer Senior_ £30 total value _Scholarship_ _Pfeiffer Literature_ £30 total value _Jellicoe Memorial_ £24 total value _Scholarship (Governess_ _Association)_ _Jellicoe Memorial_ £25 total value _Trench Memorial_ £15 total value _(Senior)_ _Trench Memorial_ £15 total value Candidates must be under _(Junior)_ 17 _R.P. Graves Memorial_ £15 total value #SCOTLAND#. SCHOLARSHIPS TENABLE _AT ANY_ SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. David Anderson(2) £30 4 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Duart £32 3 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Maclean £25 4 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts James Stewart £35 3 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Strang-Steel £30 4 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Glenbuck £27 3 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Ferguson Bursaries £25 to £30 4 years Restricted to candidates from specified schools or districts Louson £20 4 years Dumfries £30 3 years Spence(2) £30 1st year} 2 years For 2nd year Arts students £40 2nd year} Menzies £45 4 years Tenable at St Andrews, Glasgow, or Edinburgh Patrick A. Lowson £70 2 years Tenable at any University in the United Kingdom Cowan £30 for 2 years } Tenable alternately at £20 for 3rd year} Edinburgh and Glasgow 3 years SCHOLARSHIPS, ETC., OPEN TO STUDENTS _OF ANY_ SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Undergraduate#. Franco-Scottish Society £15 1 year For students wishing to Travelling Scholarships study in France Spence Bursaries -- -- _See above,_ Scholarships tenable at any Scottish University James Stewart Bursary -- -- _See ante,_ Scholarships tenable at any Scottish University #Post-Graduate#. Ferguson Scholarships(3) £80 2 years Arts and Science. Open to Masters of Arts Carnegie Research £150 2 years Arts, Science, Medicine Fellowships Carnegie Research £100 1 year Arts, Science, Medicine Scholarships 1851 Science Scholarship £150 2 years Tenable at any approved institution Shaw Philosophical £150 5 years Mental Philosophy. Open to Fellowship Arts Graduates _George Heriot_ £30 1 year Open to graduates of _Bursary for Women_ the United Kingdom for training as teachers. Tenable at St. George's Training College, Edinburgh UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honours Course in Arts or Science: 5 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts : £10, 10s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science : £21 per annum. There is no Hall of Residence. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate.# Adam(9) £20 (3)} Arts £15 (6)} 4 years Campbell(6) £18 4 years Arts Cargill(8) £20 4 years Arts Crombie(8) £15 4 years Arts Fullerton(9) £15 4 years Arts Gammie £35 2 years French and German Gordon and Cuming £20 4 years Hutton(7) £29 (2) } Competitors must not be £20 (3) } 4 years under 14 £18 (2) } Macpherson(3) £20 4 years Arts. Gaelic-speaking candidates. Mather(4) £15 4 years Arts Melvill(2) £15 4 years Arts Milne and Fraser £20 4 years Arts Moir(14) £20 (4) } 4 years Arts £15 (10) } Red Hyth, Smith and £25 4 years Arts or Science Short Reid and Cruden £20 4 years Arts Rolland £25 4 years Arts Rose £20 4 years Arts Simpson(5) £30 4 years Arts Highland Society of £15 3 years Gaelic-speaking candidates London #Post-Graduate#. Robert Fletcher £30 2 years Mathematics Fullerton, Moir, and £100 (4) } 2 years Arts Gray(7) £75 (3) } 3 years Fullerton £100 2 years Science Knox Income on £2,000 Arts 1 year Reid Scholarships --- 1 year Amount not specified. Arts or Science Croom Robertson £200 3 years Arts Fellowship James Day Scholarship £100 1 year Graduate in Arts intending to take up teaching Fullerton Scholarship £100 2 years Science #Prizes# Arnott Interest on £1,000 Natural Philosophy Dr Black £28 Latin Blackwell £20 English Essay Caithness £20 History Greig £30 Natural Philosophy Simpson and Boxill £65 and £28 Mathematics Simpson £65 Greek UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course in Arts: 4 years. Duration of Honour Course in Science: 5 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10, 10s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £15, 15s. per annum for 5 years for M.A. and B.Sc. £21 per annum for B.Sc. only. Cost of Residence in Muir Hall (optional): From £10 to £13, 10s. a term. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Bursaries.# George Heriot Bursary £20 3 years Arts or Science Heriot High School £30 3 years University R. Johnstone Bursary £19, 13s. 4 years Chrystie Bursary £18 4 years Pringle and Wardrop £19, 4s. 4 years Bursary Mitchell and Shortt £27, 5s. 4 years Dundas £36 4 years Fraser £22, 4s. 7 years Arts Grant £45 4 years Arts Stuart £17, 12S 3 years Arts or Science Jardine £42, 12S. 6d. 4 years Arts or Science. Limited to natives of Scotland Bruce(4) £40 (1) } 4 years £30 (3) } Patrick £45 4 years Ayrshire Club £30 2 years Peebleshire Society £20 4 years Arts or Science Rhind £20 4 years Bruce of Grangehill and £35 (3) } 3 years Arts. 1st and 2nd year Falklands Bursaries £20 (2) } 3 years Students Horsliehill Scott £39, 16s 2 years 3rd year Arts Students Harrison £25, 18s. 6d. 2 years 3rd year Arts Students Border Counties and £30 (1) } 4 years Arts or Science. For Walter Scott £20 (1) } students having attended schools in certain specified counties. Natives of Argyllshire, Bute, or Western Islands Argyllshire £20 3 years Arts or Science. For students having attended schools in certain specified counties. Natives of Argyllshire, Bute, or Western Islands Ardvorlich £15, 13s 4 years Arts. Students must come from certain specified parishes Sibbald £30 3 years Arts and Science. Specified parishes Edinburgh Angus Club-- £25 4 years Preference given to Dalhousie Bursary candidates from the County Orkney and Zetland £40 3 years For natives of Orkney and Zetland Grierson(5) £20(4) } 4 years Preference given to £24(1) } natives of parishes of Cranford or Leadhills Lanarkshire £20(4) 4 years Johnstone of Harthope £17,2s. 4 years Natives of Moffat, Bursary Peebles, and students of name of Alexander or Johnstone preferred Marshall £36,18s. 4 years Restricted Fothringham and Forrest £24 4 years Restricted Marquess of Zetland £40 3 years Arts. For natives of County of Orkney and Zetland Thomson £25 4 years Patterson £16 2 years In Anglo-Saxon Grammar or Literature John Welsh(8) £20 4 years Mathematics and Classics Mackinnon(3) £22,4s.6d. 3 years Arts. Gaelic-speaking students Whitelaw(3) £24,12s. 3 years Arts Renton £19,11s. 1 year Student must be between age of 16 and 21. Arts and Science Newton £23,5s. 2 years Natural Philosophy and Mathematics Mann £29,6s.6d. 3 years Candidates must reside in Nairn Allan £30 3 years Arts or Science James Fairbairn £33,4s.6d. 4 years Jardine or Thorlieshope £40,10s. 4 years Open to natives of Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire Mackenzie £22 4 years Maclaurin £91,12s.8d. 4 years Restricted to students of name of founder Bailie Cousin's £32,15s. 3 years Maule £21,2s. 6 years Donald Fraser £50 1 year For Science Research work Baxter of Balgavies £30 3 years For students educated at High School, Dundee Masterton Memorial £30 3 years For sons and daughters of ministers of United Free Church London Inverness-shire £18 3 years Preference to students of Association County of Inverness Lanfine £35 2 years Auchairne £53,15s.4d. 3 years Natives of County of Ayr Edinburgh Morayshire £20 3 years Arts or Science. Natives Club of County of Moray #Undergraduate#. Vans Dunlop £100 3 years Arts and Science Fettes Exhibition(2) £60 4 years Skirving £50 3 years Mackay Smith £27 2 years Natural Philosophy Nichol Foundation £50 1 year Laboratory Work Hope Prize £30 1 year Chemistry Misses Baxter of £40 1 or 2 years Men and women educated in Balgavies High School of Dundee #Fellowships.# Guthrie £86 4 years Classical Literature Hamilton £100 3 years Philosophy Edmonstonne Aytoun £85 3 years English Literature Falconer Memorial £123 2 years Science #Post-Graduate.# Pitt Club Classical £76 4 years Mackenzie Club Classical £118 4 years Sir David Baxter £68 4 years Mathematical Sir David Baxter £68 4 years Philosophical John Edward Baxter £100 3 years Arts and Science Drummond Mathematical £103 3 years Bruce of Grangehill and £100 3 years Classical Falklands Bruce of Grangehill and £100 3 years Mental Philosophy Falklands Bruce of Grangehill and £100 3 years Mathematics Falklands Gray £97 2 years Arts or Science Rhind £95 2 years Graduates and undergraduates of not more than 3 years standing. Arts Charles Maclaren £110 3 years Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Neil Arnott £40 1 year Experimental Physics George Scott(Travelling) £40 1 year To enable graduates to travel for purpose of Research Macpherson £85 1 year For study of Celtic Kirk Patrick £64 1 year History C.B. Black £74 2 years Greek. Open to graduates and undergraduates George Heriot's £100 1 year To graduates intending to Travelling become teachers of Modern Languages Baxter Physical Science £80 2 years Baxter Natural Science £80 2 years #Prizes.# Ellis £30 Physiology Lord Rector's £26.5s. Essay Bruce of Grangehill and £20 Logic and Metaphysics Falkland Scott and Dunbar £15 Greek Cousin £15 Essay Blackie Celtic £60 UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. QUEEN MARGARET COLLEGE. Duration of Arts Course: Pass, 3 years; Honours, 4 years. Duration of Science Course, Pass and Honours: 3-4 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10, 10s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £63 the course of 3 or 4 years. Cost of Residence at Queen Margaret Hall (optional): From 17s. to 25s. a week without lunch. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Barbour (Kilbarchan)(1) £25 3 years Arts. Candidates must not be over 18 John Clark(24) £30 4 years Arts Crawford and Brown(1) £19, 13s. 4d 4 years Arts Forfar(5) £58 4 years Arts Forrester(1) £20 3 years Arts Foundation(2) £20 4 years Arts Gartmore(1) £22 3 years Arts General Council(5) £20 2 or 3 years Arts Glasgow City Education £25 4 or 2 years Arts Endowments(10) £50 George Grant(1) £40 3 or 4 years Arts George Grant Junior(1) £40 4 years Arts Hamilton Educational £20 3 years Arts. Competitors to Trust(3) pupils from public or State-aided schools in burgh and parish of Hamilton. Hastie(1) £27 4 years Highland Society, £20 3 years Glasgow (12) Hill(6) £20 3 years Arts. For pupils in School Board district of Govan James Laing(8) £25 4 years Arts. For candidates educated at least 3 years in schools in County of Stirling Lanfine(6) £27 2 years Lorimer(4) £25 and £17 3 years Mathematics Alexander Manderson(1) £15 3 years Arts. Natives of the Lower Ward of Renfrewshire Marshall Trust(20) £30 4 years Arts. Pupils from public or State-aided schools in Lanarkshire or Stirlingshire Sir Walter Scott £25 4 years A. and B. Stewart(13) £20 3 years Arts Stewart(3) £15 4 years Arts King Williams(2) £15 3 years Arts Ayrshire Society(4) £15 3 years Arts or Science. For descendants of Society or natives of Aryshire and Glasgow Denny(4) £30 4 years Arts or Science. Students over 14 who have been 2 years at Dumbarton Burgh Academy Dumfriesshire Society(2) £15 4 years Arts or Science Hart(2) £30 5 years Arts or Science. Preference to students born in Ayrshire Pratt(2) £20 4 years Arts or Science #Undergraduate.# Will. Houldsworth £150 2 years Research in Science Mackay Smith £48 2 years Natural Philosophy and Chemistry MacKinnin £60 1 year Science and Modern Languages Thomson Experimental £20 1 year Science #Post-Graduate.# Breadalbane (2) £56 3 years Arts or Science George A. Clark £170 4 years Arts or Science John Clark £50 4 years Arts Alexander Donaldson £44 2 years Chemistry Robert Donaldson £66 2 years Science Eglinton £65 2 years Arts William Euing £80 5 years Arts Luke £95 3 years Arts Metcalfe £120 3 years Arts Reid Stuart £60 3 years Arts Walter Scott £80 2 years Arts Mackinnon £60 1 year Geology, Natural History, Modern Languages Examination as for Final Hons. Degree #Prizes# Arnott £25 and £15 Examination Cobden £20 Essay Findlater £38 Examination Gladstone Historical £25 Examination Henderson £21 Essay William Jack £35 Thesis for D.Sc. Kelvin £35 Thesis for D.Sc. Macfarlan and Cook £21 Examination MacKenzie £25 Essay Reid £25 Original Research Watson £50 Examination UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS. UNITED COLLEGES. Duration of Pass Course in Arts: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course in Arts: 4 years. Duration of Pass and Honour Courses in Science: 4 to 5 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10, 10S. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £15, 15s. per annum. Cost of Residence in University Hall (optional): From £45 to £75 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate.# Foundation Bursaries(4) £20 4 years Foundation Bursary(1) £50 4 years Patrick Kidd £32 3 years William Byers £39 3 or 4 years Preference given to students of Mairs and Strathmartine. Arts Russell(6) £30 (5) } 3 years Arts and Science £40 (1) } Simson(6) £20 (5) } 3 years £30 (1) } _Valentine_ £25 3 years Restricted to women residing in the County of Fife, Ross or Cromarty, or in village of Findhorn, Morayhire Fife, Clackmannan, and £5 3 or 4 years Restricted to students Kinross Bursary coming from the above counties Wilkie £19 4 years Henry £15 4 years Madras £20 4 years Fairweather £25 3 years Arts or Science. For pupils from any school in Dundee Blyth(2) £20 3 years George Scott £27 3 or 4 years Arts. Restricted to applicants who are natives of the Parishes of Dull, Weem, Logierait in Perthshire Wood of Orkie £20 3 or 4 years Restricted to pupils who have attended public or state-aided schools in the Parishes of Newburn, Kilconquhar, Scoonie, Largo, Kennoway, Elie, Largoward _Lumsden_ £35 1 to 3 years For women students educated at St Leonard's School, St Andrews Ramsay £40 4 years Baxter(2) £21 2 years For 2nd year students Cheape(2) £23 3 years For 2nd year students Thomas Thow £50 1 year Arts. For 2nd year students natives of and resident in Dundee or the County of Forfar Stephen Williamson £47 1 year For 4th year Honours students Smeaton £20 1 year For 4th year Honours students #Post-Graduate.# Bruce and Falkland £50 2 years Berry £80 1 year May be continued for 2nd year. Arts or Science Grants(6) £20 1 year For students entering on Course of Training for Secondary Teachers #Prizes.# Miller(2) £30 Arts and Science Arnott(2) £20 and £10 Chancellor's £21 Essay DUNDEE COLLEGE. Duration of Course in Arts: Pass, 3 years; Honours, 4 years. Duration of Course in Science: Pass or Honours: 3 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10, 10s. per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £21 per annum. Cost of Residence in Mayfield Hostel (optional): £1 per week. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance.# Armitstead £20-£15 1 year David Myles -- -- Entrance Scholarships(9) £15 1 year Educational Endowment £25 3 years #Undergraduate.# Bursaries(11) £15 to £20 1 year For second and third year Bursaries(8) £15 to £20 1 year For fourth and subsequent years Bute Bursary Income of £1,000 3 years #Post-Graduate.# William Strong(2 Income of £3,240 or more) 1 year #Prizes.# Gladstone Memorial £20 (in books) Essay WALES UNIVERSITY OF WALES Scholarships, etc., not connected exclusively with one College. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Undergraduate#. Price Davies £30 2 years Tenable at Aberystwyth or Scholarship(2) Bangor #Post-Graduate#. University £125 2 years Fellowships(3) University £65 2 years Awarded on nomination by Studentships(6) the Colleges Eyton Williams £65 2 years Studentships(6) #Isaac Roberts# £150 1 year Open to graduates of any #Scholarship# (renewable) University in the United Kingdom. Science. Tenable at Cardiff 1851 Science Scholarship £150 2 years Tenable at any approved institution Gilchrist Modern £80 1 year Open to graduates Language Studentship intending to teach Modern Languages. Tenable abroad ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. Duration of Pass Course in Arts or Science: 3 years. Duration of Honour Course in Arts or Science: 3 to 4 years. Cost of Tuition in Arts: £12 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £16 per annum. Cost of Residence in Alexandra Hall (optional): From £11,11s. to £17, 17s. per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate#. David Davies £40 1 year Entrance (renewable) Open £40 1 year Entrance (renewable) Visitor's £15 1 year Entrance (renewable) Commercial Travellers of £20 1 year Entrance North Wales (renewable) Scholarship(1) £20 1 year Confined to students (renewable) intending to proceed to the Degree of B.Sc. in Agriculture and Rural Economy Brereton £15 1 year Entrance (renewable) _Elizabeth Davies_ £20 1 year Entrance. (renewable) Limited to women natives of Cardiganshire or Carmarthenshire Cynddelw Welsh £20 1 year For students undertaking Scholarship to pursue a course of Welsh study Humphreys Owen £20 1 year (renewable) For natives of Montgomeryshire #Post-Graduate.# Keeling Resewell £40 1 year Scholarship Thomas Davies £54 1 year For Research work in Chemistry or Agriculture UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NORTH WALES (BANGOR). Cost of Tuition in Arts or Science: £12 per annum. Cost of Residence in University Hall (optional): £25 to £42 per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Undergraduate.# Eyton Williams £40 3 years Eyton Williams £30 3 years Eyton Williams £20 3 years Exhibition Piercey £30 3 years Confined to candidates from Flintshire or Denbighshire Richard Hughes £50 1 year Isaac Roberts(2) £50 Not less than 1 yr. #Post-Graduate.# Osborne Morgan £40 Not more Open to past and present than 3 years students UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE (CARDIFF). Cost of Tuition in Arts: £10 to £12 per annum. Cost of Tuition in Science: £10 to £16 per annum. Cost of Residence in Aberdare Hall (optional): £34 to £43, 10s. per annum. Scholarships, Bursaries, and Prizes. Name. Value and Tenure. Remarks. #Entrance and Under-graduate.# Drapers' Company £35 1 year Science (renewable) Sir Alfred Thomas £20 3 years _Caroline Williams_ £25 3 years College £25 3 years Craddock Wells(5) £20 and 1 year Open to candidates under fees 19 years of age Studentships Fees and Open only to natives of maintenance Glamorgan and Monmouth, grant 3 years the City of Cardiff and the County Borough of Newport #Post-Graduate.# Catherine Buckton £40 1 year TABLE II. In addition to the University Post-Graduate Studentships mentioned in the above table, the following Research Scholarships in Arts and Science, not restricted to graduates of any one University, are open to women:-- TABLE II. In addition to the University Post-Graduate Studentships mentioned in the above table, the following Research Scholarships in Arts and Science, not restricted to graduates of any one University, are open to women:-- Subject. Title. By whom awarded. Restrictions (if any). Annual Value and Duration Subject not fixed. A.K. Travelling A Board of Trustees who receive nominations British Subjects who are £600 and £60 for Fellowship from Vice-Chancellors of Universities in the University graduates books; 2 awarded United Kingdom, the President of the Royal annually for 1 year Society, and the President of the British Academy Physical Science McKinnon Research Royal Society -- £150 for 2 years Fellowship Biological Science McKinnon Research Royal Society -- £150 for 2 years Fellowship Bio-Chemistry -- Lister Institute of Preventive Medecine -- £150 for 1 year, renewable for a 2nd year. Bacteriology -- Lister Institute of Preventive Medecine -- £150 for 1 year, renewable for a 2nd year. Physiology George Henry Lewes Special Trustees; application to Professor Investigator must be in need £200 for 3 years (renewable) Scholarship Langley, Cambridge of pecuniary help to prosecute research Philosophy George Henry Lewes University of Toronto Graduates who have specialised £50 for 1 year Scholarship in Philosophy Subject not fixed. _Price Fellowship_ Federation of University Women Women graduates who have £120 for 1 year already published the results of independent research Natural Science Research Studentship Board of Agriculture and Fisheries Science graduates who are £150 for 3 years, part prepared to research in of which must be spent subjects under the purview abroad, and all 3 at of the Board, and afterwards approved institutions to adopt a career in agricultural science Economics _Shaw Research_ London School of Economics -- £105 for 2 years Economics Hutchinson Research London School of Economics -- £105 for 1 year Natural Sciences _The Ellen Richards_ American Association for Advancement of Thesis 1,000 dollars _Research Prize_ Research Work by Women. Hon. Sec., (£204, 10s.) Mrs A.D. Mead, 283 Wayland Avenue, Providence, R.I. SECTION II THE MEDICAL PROFESSION INCLUDING DENTISTRY I MEDICINE AND SURGERY It may be safely claimed that, although there is still much to be done, in medicine women have gained as good a position as in any other branch of labour. One of the most important considerations in discussing any branch of women's work is what sort of women are suited for it. The following are the chief requisites for the medical profession:-- (1) The first and most important qualification is enthusiasm. It is impossible to follow this profession with success, unless it is work for which one has not only aptitude but also natural taste. It necessitates a very strenuous life, and many unpleasant details of work, which are unimportant to a person to whom the occupation is acceptable as a whole, but which would be quite insuperably disagreeable to any one to whom the total idea of life embodied in it was unattractive. (2) Another very important qualification is a knowledge of men and things. A doctor must never forget that she is dealing primarily with human nature; certainly human nature which may be for a time unhinged, or the mechanism of which may not be working smoothly, but nevertheless with the human individual as a whole. The so-called "bedside" manner which is the butt for so much ridicule is not so purely ridiculous as one might be tempted to think. Its basis is to be found in this very knowledge of human nature which is so essential, although the superstructure is often nothing more than vapid futility. In addition to this the ideal doctor should possess a trained scientific mind, and, of the two, the former is infinitely the more important, although the latter is very valuable, not only for itself, but for the training which it gives in "tidy" thinking. (3) Good health. A sick doctor is an anomaly and many people prefer to be indifferently treated by some one who is cheerful and healthy, rather than have the most expert advice from a woeful person. (4) A good general education is essential. This should include a certain amount of Latin, which is needed throughout medical work. The student must also possess the necessary capacity for acquiring knowledge. It is very usual to find among the general public--women in particular--an idea that a tremendous amount of a vague quality which they describe as "cleverness" is necessary in order to follow one of the learned professions. Certainly this is not so in medicine. It is, however, necessary to be possessed of average intelligence and a good memory, and it is difficult for people to pass the qualifying examinations if they have for many years given up "school work"--_i.e._, the habit of learning large numbers of new facts. (5) Money. For three reasons: (i.) The training is expensive, (ii.) It is also strenuous, making a certain amount of margin for suitable recreation very desirable, (iii.) Earning capacity, although ultimately high, so far as women are concerned, is much delayed, and the work itself is one of considerable nerve-strain. It is, therefore, very important that economic worry should, if possible, be avoided. Medicine is one of the few professions in which women receive as high remuneration as men. A very strenuous battle was fought between the public authorities and medical women on the subject of equal pay for equal work. All sorts of dodges have been used to get cheap woman labour, but, so far, the victory has been almost completely on the side of medical women. By the word "almost" is meant the fact, that if two or three posts of varying grades and remunerations are created under a health authority the woman nearly always gets the lowest, whatever her qualifications and experience. With this exception the victory has been complete, and this has been entirely due to two things:-- (1) The very able support given by the British Medical Association, which practically served as a Trade Union for doctors, stated the lowest rate of remuneration to be accepted, and kept a black list of posts which were advertised at salaries below this rate. The Association has throughout supported with absolute consistency, the principle of equal pay for equal work for the two sexes, and has helped us as medical women to fight many battles. (2) The other factor has been the public spirit of the medical women concerned, without which nothing could have been done. One of the forms of public service most essential at the present day and for which the individual gets neither honour nor even thanks, is that of refusing "black leg" labour. It is generally admitted by those who have to deal with the question of salaries and conditions of work under public authorities, that medical women, as a whole, have shown at least as great public spirit as men in refusing unsatisfactory terms. To lose a post which would give one enough for one's own needs and which would mean so much more in the way of experience and adequate scope for one's energies, and to refuse it simply because it would lower the market rate of pay, is a very fine thing to do. Unless, however, this high tone is maintained the position of medical women will become as bad as that of some other working women. If, on the other hand, it can be maintained, the position already gained may be used as a very powerful lever in raising the rate of pay in other departments of women's work. There is sufficient support for us amongst medical men. Everything, therefore, depends upon the _personnel_ of the women doctors, and, as things become easier for the students, it becomes more and more difficult to convince the new recruits of the strenuousness of the fight in earlier years and of the need for constant vigilance and self-sacrifice at the present time. Those who fought so nobly in the past have earned the lasting respect and gratitude of those who come after them. An account of their labours has been written by Mrs Isabel Thorne, and is called a "Sketch of the Foundation and Development of the London School of Medicine for Women."[1] It reads like a romance and shows the absolute determination and pluck which were needed by the women in order to gain their point. As one learns of the rebuffs and indignities which they endured, it reminds one of the struggle which is at the present time going on for the parliamentary vote. There is one thing which makes one inclined to "back the women every time," and that is their stupendous patience. A very short _résumé_ of the facts may not be out of place here. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, English by birth but resident in America, succeeded in 1858 after much difficulty in obtaining the degree of M.D. of the University of Geneva, United States of America. She then applied to have her name placed upon the register of duly qualified medical practitioners of the General Medical Council of Great Britain and Ireland, and it was discovered to the dismay of the authorities that she could not be refused. The next step was taken by Miss Garrett, now Dr Garrett Anderson. She decided to qualify herself for the medical examinations of the Society of Apothecaries, London, who also, owing to the wording of their charter, were unable to refuse her, and in 1865 she successfully passed the required tests. In order, however, to prevent a recurrence of such "regrettable incidents," the society made a rule that in future no candidates should be admitted to their examinations unless they came from a recognised medical school, and, as no such school would admit women, this closed their doors. In the meantime Miss Jex-Blake had applied to Edinburgh University for medical education, but had been refused on the score that it was impossible to make such alterations "in the interests of one lady." Mrs Thorne, Miss Chaplin, Miss Pechey, and Mrs de Lacy Evans then decided to join Miss Jex-Blake, thus making five instead of one. They were allowed to matriculate, but forced to form separate classes and to guarantee 100 guineas for each class. They were not, however, allowed to receive scholarships, to which their work would have entitled them, on the score that they were women. Mrs Thorne states that their "success in the examination lists was their undoing," as, owing to this, and to the fact that they were unjustly debarred from receiving the distinctions that they had gained, a great deal of bad feeling was aroused. As the agitation increased, the efforts of these pioneers to obtain a qualifying course for women in Edinburgh, were supported by a committee of sympathisers, which speedily rose to five hundred members, and, after a severe struggle, the question of clinical teaching in the Infirmary was settled partially in the women's favour in 1872. Later, the question of the validity of the original resolutions admitting women to the University was raised and decided against them. They had, therefore, been four years at the University and were finally excluded. This, however, proved to be only temporary as, in later years, the University reopened its medical degrees to women; but not in time to allow of the return of these courageous pioneers. In the meantime Dr Garrett Anderson, having taken her degree in Paris, had been steadily working in London, forming the nucleus of the present New Hospital for Women, and the pioneers from Edinburgh came to London and helped her to start a school of medicine for women. This was successfully accomplished owing to the kind help of many people, both within and without the profession, but no clinical teaching could be obtained, as all the big London hospitals were closed to women students. Finally, however, arrangements were made with the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road. It had no men's medical school attached to it, and the admission of women to the hospital was due to the kind intervention of the Rt. Hon. J. Stansfeld, M.P., who met the Chairman of the hospital, Mr James Hopgood, while away on a holiday, and induced him to persuade the hospital authorities to give the dangerous experiment a trial. So seriously was it regarded, that the women students had to guarantee an indemnity to the hospital of 300 guineas annually in addition to their fees, as it was felt that the general support might decrease by, at least, this amount when the public became aware that there were medical women studying at the hospital! This was soon found not to be the case, and the yearly indemnity was generously remitted by the hospital authorities, the students simply paying the usual fees for instruction. In connection with this subject, it may be of interest to note that to-day the presence of medical women at the hospital is evidently found by the authorities to be an important means of gaining the sympathy of the general public, for appeals for funds may frequently be seen in London omnibuses stating, as the ground for an appeal, the fact that this is the only general hospital in London where women medical students are trained. The medical school which began in a small Georgian house has now a fine block of buildings with all modern appliances, and the hospital is, at the time that this book goes to press, undergoing extensive alterations and additions, including enlargement of the students' quarters. The success of this pioneer work has been sufficiently amazing, but it is most important that every one should realise that the fight is still going on. Not a day passes but somebody tries to get medical women to work either for less pay or under less honourable conditions than those required by their medical brethren, and one of the most trying parts of work in this profession at the present time is the constant alertness required both for detecting and defeating these attempts. That they should be made is not surprising, when we remember the lower market value attached to women's work in almost every other occupation. Practical examples of the sort of attempts made, may be of service. _Example 1._--A medical woman went as _locum tenens_ for a practitioner in a country town during the South African War. The practitioner himself was at the time absolutely incapacitated by a severe form of influenza, complicated by ocular neuralgia which made work absolutely impossible. Owing to the War, he was quite unable to get a man to act as _locum tenens_. A woman consented to help him in his extremity, at considerable inconvenience both to herself and to the people with whom she was working at the time. She carried on the practice during the depth of the winter, having on some occasions to go out in the snow-sleigh and frequently to drive in an open trap at night in the deadly cold. She carried on the work with such conspicuous success that her "chief" asked her to stay on as his assistant when he was convalescent. For this he offered her £85 a year, living in, saying, without any shame, that he knew that this was not the price that any man would command, but that it was plenty for a woman. He was bound to admit that he had lost no patient through her, that he charged no lower fees when she went to a case than when he did, that she did half the work while acting as his assistant, and that she had kept his practice together for him while he was ill. Fortunately, owing to the fact that she had behind her means of subsistence without her salary, she was able to refuse his unsatisfactory offer, although at considerable violence to her feelings, for she had made many friends in the neighbourhood. _Example 2_.--A husband and wife, both medical, went to settle in a town in the north of England. They both practised, the qualifications of both were excellent, but the woman was the more brilliant of the two, having better degrees and more distinctions. Both applied to be admitted to the local medical society. The man was, of course, accepted, the woman refused on the score of her sex, this meaning that she would be cut off from all opportunity of hearing medical papers and discussing medical subjects with her colleagues. During the next few months a local friendly society was anxious to obtain a medical officer and was offering terms regarded as insufficient by the local doctors. Among others approached by this society was the medical woman in question. Directly the officials of the medical society, which had banned her when her own benefit was concerned, heard that she had been approached by the friendly society, they elected her without asking her consent to the very society from which they had previously excluded her, in order that she might be unable to take the post in question, whereby they might have financially suffered. _Example 3_.--The exclusion from medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators. For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had applied. They were loud in their denunciations of the woman in question, but owing to the fact that her men colleagues had not recognised her professionally in other ways, she was quite unaware of her offence for several months after undertaking her new duties. _Example 4_.--Men and women are sometimes appointed on apparently equal terms and conditions to posts which are not, however, really equal, in that there is a chance of promotion for the men but none for the women. _Example 5_.--In another town in the north of England men and women appointed to do the work of school medical inspection on equal terms recently considered that they were not sufficiently remunerated. They met and decided that they would together apply for better terms. A rumour was then set abroad that the authority under whom they worked would certainly not consider such an increase in expenditure. In this crisis the men on the staff, although they had so far joined with their women colleagues in sending up their petition, sent up another of their own, without informing or consulting the women at all, in which they said that they considered it was time that this equality of remuneration for both sexes should cease. They begged the authority to neglect their public appeal, but to grant instead increased remuneration to the men, and the men only. One of the reasons given for this suggestion on the part of the men was that their liabilities were greater. The result of enquiry, however, proved that of the three men, one only was engaged to be married, the other two had no one dependent upon them; whereas of the three women, two were supporting other people--one being a married woman separated from her husband and with two children to support and educate. _Example 6_.--The following is an instance of the way in which the Government is sometimes responsible for encouraging women's "black leg" labour. Dr Leslie Mackenzie in his evidence given recently before the Civil Service Commission said that the Treasury refused to allow the Scottish Local Government Board to have a woman medical inspector at a medical inspector's salary, but permitted them to engage a woman with medical qualifications at a woman inspector's salary, which was, of course, much less. Sad to relate a woman was found to accept this post. These examples have been given because it is necessary that a woman intending to adopt the profession of medicine should know the sort of work, quite apart from the treatment of her cases, which a medical woman, worth her salt, has to do. It may be asked how it is, if these difficulties are still constantly arising, that our pioneers were so successful? For several reasons: first, because they were in the best sense women of the world: they understood when to be firm and when to give way. They understood mankind. Secondly, they had an assured position. This is probably the most essential condition of all for success. Before decent terms and conditions of work can be demanded, the worker must be in such a position financially that she can, if necessary, refuse the work in question, and if possible the employer must be aware of this fact. So often women enter the labour market only when driven by stark necessity, that it is unfortunately the easiest thing in the world to exploit them. People of either sex faced by starvation for themselves or those dependent on them must take the first thing that offers if the conditions be in any way bearable. In my opinion, next to the parliamentary vote, the most powerful lever in raising the condition of women will be the entrance into the labour market of a considerable number of women so trained in Economics that they will always "play the game," and at the same time sufficiently remote from want to be able to resist the sweating employer. Some people discourage women of independent means from entering the labour market through the mistaken idea that if such women work they are taking away the chance of some other women who are in need. In case any reader may be in doubt on this question, I should like to point out that it is the groups of workers among whom no such economically independent individuals are to be found, that are always exploited by the unscrupulous employer; they are such easy prey. What really makes women workers afraid of their independent sisters is that extremely pernicious system of payment euphemistically known as "pocket-money." This should be swept off the face of the earth. Even the richer woman has some rights, notably the right to work, and I would suggest that she has this particular, and certainly not unimportant function of raising the rate of remuneration. From my knowledge of her, I consider that she is most anxious to do nothing but good to her fellows. The only thing she needs in order to become a help instead of a menace to her poorer sisters is knowledge of the rules that govern the economic labour market. Owing to the necessary expense and prolonged training for the medical profession it has probably attracted a larger proportion of working women who were not subject to immediate economic stress than most other branches of work, and it is, in my opinion, due to the presence of such women, that the conditions in it as a whole are so satisfactory. Having discussed the sort of woman suitable for the medical profession, I now pass on to a consideration of the course of training which must be taken in order to fit her for the work. Before beginning her training, the student has to decide what medical qualification she will take. Her choice lies between (1) A degree of one of the universities, and (2) A diploma. It is essential to go to some University or Examining Board which admits women and not to one, such as Oxford or Cambridge, where women are denied the degree to which their work entitles them. As a matter of fact, women medical students are not accepted at Oxford and Cambridge. It is not possible to practise medicine, in a satisfactory way unless one is actually in possession of the qualification. Any one who does so, however well trained, ranks as a quack, and is not legally entitled to sign death certificates nor to recover fees. The degrees open to women in medicine, as in other branches of learning, are those of London, Glasgow, Trinity College, Dublin, and, in fact, of all the Universities of the United Kingdom except the two just mentioned. Qualifying diplomas other than degrees are those granted by:-- (1) The Conjoint Examining Board of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of England. (2) The Royal Colleges of Scotland. (3) The Royal Colleges of Ireland. (4) The Society of Apothecaries of London. The authorities at the Women's Medical School strongly advise students to take a degree, and that the best open to them, namely, in Great Britain, that of London for the south, or one of the good Scottish Universities for the north. Their reason for this advice is that they feel that it is extremely important that medical women should rank as high as possible in their profession. At London University there are no sex restrictions. A woman is eligible not only to take the examinations on equal terms with a man, but all the rights and honours (except, of course, the Parliamentary vote) are also open to her. Women may vote for and sit upon the Senate, become members of Convocation and take any of the exhibitions, medals, or scholarships which are offered to candidates at examinations. For this reason women feel attached and like to belong to the London University, and to do it honour. Having decided which qualification she wishes to take, the candidate applies to be entered as a medical student at a definite school. If she elects to work in _London_ she must follow the course of study at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women at 8 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square. At _Glasgow_ the students are all entered at the Women's College (Queen Margaret's). The medical course is taken in conjunction with men students. At the Royal Infirmary some wards are open to women for clinical instruction. At _Dublin_ the students are admitted to the degrees and diplomas in medicine, surgery, and midwifery on the same conditions as men. A special anatomical department with dissecting room, etc., has been erected by the Board of Trinity College for them. At _Edinburgh_ the arrangements for women students are largely separate from those for the men. The degrees are open to them. At _Durham_ the degrees are open to women, and most of their work is done with the men. The same applies to _Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham,_ and _Sheffield_. The course takes from five to six years, but it is wise to allow the longer time. The preliminary examination in general subjects is taken before admission to the medical school. After this, the first year at the medical school is spent in scientific study, such as Biology, Inorganic Chemistry, etc. Having passed her first scientific examination, the student proceeds to the study of the human individual, and deals for the next two years with Anatomy, which includes dissection, Physiology, the study of drugs in Materia Medica and Pharmacology, and Organic Chemistry. When the examination in these subjects has been satisfactorily negotiated, she passes on to medical work proper, the study of disease and the result of accident in the living person--in other words, she walks the wards of the hospital and undertakes duties as clerk to physicians and dresser to surgeons, from whom she receives instruction in medicine, surgery, and pathology. Special branches are also studied, such as midwifery, women's diseases, and affections of the throat, ear, eye, and skin. The treatment of minor accidents also receives special attention. During the whole of this time the student also attends regular courses of lectures on these subjects, and she then takes her final examination. If this be a degree examination, she becomes, on passing it, Bachelor of Medicine, or M.B., and Bachelor of Surgery, Ch.B. or B.S. Having obtained a diploma, she is generally entitled to style herself a Member or Licentiate of the college of which she has passed the qualifying examination, for example, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. or L.S.A. On application, she is then placed upon the Medical Register, and is known as a registered medical practitioner. The cost of the training is approximately as follows :-- _For a London Degree._ Fee at the Medical School for Women, if paid as a composition fee in five yearly instalments of £28, £51, £45, £40, and £15; Total:--£179, or, if the whole sum is paid on entrance to the school, £160. In addition there is a fee of three guineas for the special study of fevers. These fees include everything in the way of material, except books and instruments for which it is wise to allow another £30. The examination fees of the university are £25. These amounts make no allowance for any failures, and consequent revision of work, and re-entry for examination. In reckoning the expense, the necessary cost of living for the six years must also be included. For those students whose homes are not in London there are flats and boarding-houses where it is possible to live very reasonably. Suitable board and residence can be obtained from about 25s. a week. _For the Diploma of the Conjoint Board._ The school fees are the same; the examination fees are, however, higher, namely £42. For other qualifications, the school fees are £20 less for the course. Certain scholarships are available for students, of which all particulars can be obtained from the secretary of each school. When a woman becomes a registered medical practitioner, she is for the first time legally entitled to treat patients herself, and is entrusted with responsibility. As in most other branches of knowledge in the world, while she has simply been learning and carrying out her duties under authority, she has had no opportunity of really testing her own knowledge. It is, therefore, very generally felt amongst newly qualified medical practitioners that they need more experience before undertaking quite independent medical work. This experience is best gained by taking hospital posts. By this is meant positions of moderate responsibility, such as that of resident house physician or resident house surgeon in a hospital, where the newly qualified doctor is under the authority of an experienced visiting "chief," but is expected to deal with ordinary incidents as they may arise, to realise the relative importance of different symptoms, and report those that matter to the visiting physician or surgeon. It is at this stage that the doctor must decide whether she wishes to become (a) a "specialist" in some particular branch of medicine or surgery, (b) a general practitioner, or (c) whether she wishes to work in the public service. (a) If she wishes to be a specialist she must so arrange her future work as to gain experience in the branch which she selects. For this purpose it is necessary to take posts at special hospitals, and ultimately to become a member of the staff of some hospital in the department chosen. Here women find that they are heavily handicapped. The only hospital of any size in London of which the members of staff are all women is the New Hospital, Euston Road, and this admits only of a small staff, giving opportunities to comparatively few women for special experience. The Royal Free Hospital, where women take their training as students, has now two women on its staff in the department for gynaecology. It has also a woman anaesthetist, and some of the minor posts, such as clinical assistant to the outpatients, pathologist, etc., are open to them. All the physicians, the surgeons, and the assistant physicians and surgeons are, however, men. Of the hospitals for special ailments in London, none so far admits women to the staff, and it has only recently become possible for them even to form part of the medical audience at the outpatients' department at some of these special hospitals. No London Hospital for Diseases of Women and Midwifery (except that of Dr M'Call), or for Diseases of Children (except one recently started by women), or for Diseases of the Eye, or for Diseases of the Ear, Nose and Throat, or for Diseases of the Nervous System, admits women to its staff, although several of them allow women to take appointments as clinical assistants, pathologists, anaesthetists, and other minor posts. Their admission to the full staff is, perhaps, merely a question of time, and of the naturally slow movement of the British mind towards admitting women to positions of responsibility. There has, however, been of late years a tendency on the part of medical women themselves to take this matter into their own hands, and new women's hospitals are being started about London where the staff is exclusively composed of women. (b) If, on the other hand, the newly qualified doctor decides to become a general practitioner, her course is much simpler. She takes such posts as are available, which she thinks will aid her general knowledge of medicine. Then she selects a neighbourhood, puts up a plate, and waits. This course also involves delayed earning capacity, as she must be prepared to face outlay for several years without much return. During this time she generally augments the income which she gets from her private practice by other part-time paid work, notably by giving lectures in first aid, etc., by school inspection, where part-time officers are appointed, and other such work. She also generally does a certain amount of voluntary work on that most pernicious system of giving her services in order to get known. It is in this way that doctors are everywhere so terribly exploited. When they are _all_ so busy doing work which they think will bring them into the public view, this becomes of no particular use to any of them, and the only people who benefit, and at the same time scoff, are the members of the general public, who become so used to getting the doctor to work for nothing or next to nothing, that it comes as a shock when they have to pay. It is a healthy sign that the long-suffering doctor is at last beginning to show symptoms of fight, and in the future it may be hoped that doctors, like lawyers, will not be required to give their services free to the community. It may be true that if a man will not work neither shall he eat, but the converse should also be true, that if a man works he should eat, and at present it is not by any means always true of the doctor. (c) Should she decide to enter the public service, she will still require to take a certain number of posts, especially those dealing with eyes, ears, and skin, and must also obtain the Diploma of Public Health. To gain this diploma she will need to devote several months to post-graduate study in that subject before taking the necessary examination. The chief posts at present open in the public service to a woman are:-- (1) School medical officer, or assistant medical officer of health. (2) Assistant medical officer in some asylums and poor law infirmaries. There is one woman inspector of prisons who is a medical woman, but she is not a medical inspector and was not appointed in that capacity. It is much to be hoped that women prison medical officers will speedily be appointed on equal terms with their medical colleagues. The conditions for women prisoners from the standpoint of health are, at the present time, extremely unsatisfactory. The tendency is to employ more and more women in the public service, and therefore the opportunities are likely rapidly to become more numerous. The Act, under which medical school inspection was made obligatory, particularly mentioned the suitability of women for much of this work. It is therefore becoming usual all over the country to have at least one woman school doctor, and in some districts there are several on the staff. This work is not extremely arduous, is free from the heavy strain of private practice, and, if the school medical officer is allowed reasonable freedom in her work, may be made of much interest. It is, however, somewhat monotonous, and has the great disadvantage that at present the stimulus of promotion is largely absent, as the higher administrative posts are almost universally in the hands of men. This is a disadvantage which will also be gradually, perhaps rapidly removed as the prejudice against women in authority dies down. After having practised medicine for some years, further degrees indicating experience are open to the medical practitioner; thus, if she has taken the Bachelorship of Medicine she may, after the lapse of three or four years, enter for her Doctorate. This is gained either by a further examination or by writing a thesis on some subject of original research. If she has taken the Diploma of the Royal Colleges, it is open to her to sit for the Fellowship in Surgery or Membership in Medicine. She is also open to election to the Fellowship in Medicine. It is extremely difficult to give anything like an adequate idea of the remuneration to be obtained in medicine, as it varies tremendously. The first posts, which are taken soon after qualification, if really first-rate in the experience which they give, seldom include any salary at all, though board and lodging are provided. Posts which rank as slightly inferior to these, but still give a considerable amount of experience, are often associated with honoraria varying from about £50 to £150 a year, including board and lodging. (a) If we turn again to our three sub-divisions we find that a specialist or consultant cannot expect to earn her working expenses for a good many years. She must have one room at least in a certain specialist quarter of the town, known as the consultants' area, and there the rents are usually high, in London about £150 a year, in the provinces slightly less. We have already stated that she requires some hospital post; for this she will receive no remuneration, but if the hospital where she works has a medical school attached to it, she may expect to get a certain number of patients through the recommendation of students whom she teaches at the hospital. There is generally also some teaching at the hospitals, for which the students pay definite fees. She may also augment her income by lectures and work of that description. She will probably find it necessary to write papers on her special branch of work and on the cases which come under her observation, but for this she will very seldom be paid. It is, therefore only possible for a girl with some monetary resources independent of her work, to take up successfully a special branch of medicine. If she elect to become a surgeon, a hospital post is an absolute necessity, and her income will, as in the case of the medical specialist, be delayed. Eventually, however, if she is successful, it is greater than that to be obtained on the medical side. The fees are high, and therefore money can be made more speedily in this branch of the work. People, however, hesitate as a rule to trust a very young surgeon, so she will at first get her work chiefly as assistant to her seniors and must be content to wait some years for the much bigger fees which she will get as principal. Ultimately she should make £1,000 to £2,000 a year. (b) If she elect to become a general practitioner, her outlay at first is probably as great as that of the specialist, if not greater, but the return is quicker, and a great deal depends upon the choice of a neighbourhood. If she chooses an upper middle class district she also, like the specialist, must be content to wait, and in fact she is ill-advised to choose such a neighbourhood unless she can rely on some good social introductions. If she choose a district partly middle and partly lower middle class her return will be infinitely quicker. She may expect to cover her expenses in the course of two or three years. The work is, however, incessant and rather harassing. If she select a working-class neighbourhood and have a dispensary, her return will be still quicker, such places frequently paying their expenses in the first or second year. The people are nice to deal with, and the work is interesting, but it is apt to be very distressing for two reasons--(1) that owing to the poverty of the patients they can so seldom be attended under conditions in which they have a fair chance of recovery, and (2) there is apt to be an appreciable amount of dirt. The most varying reports are given as to the incomes to be made in private practice and it is almost impossible to get at the truth, because it is obviously to everybody's interest to make them appear as high as possible. A woman's practice also is admittedly rather a specialist one. She does not get the general local practice of the ordinary practitioner, but instead certain selected women who want to consult a member of their own sex. These often live at considerable distances, thus making the work more difficult to arrange and the travelling more expensive than in the case of the ordinary medical man. It is rare for a woman to be able to buy a practice. She must generally build it up for herself, as it is of little or no use for her to buy a man's practice, and there are only very few women's available. Generally, it may be stated that a woman covers her expenses by about the third or fourth year after starting, and she may ultimately make, according to the district and her success, anything between £400 and £1,500 a year. Frequently two medical women settle together, which seems to be a very good arrangement. (c) If she elect to enter the public service her outlay is very small. Beyond equipping herself for this work in certain special branches already described, all that is necessary is that she should be able to keep herself until she obtains a suitable post. The salary given for whole time work in the public service should not be less than £250 a year rising to £400 or £500 a year. In most cases the school doctor gets the school holidays, including the whole of every Saturday. English women who go to India, do so generally in connection with either (1) a missionary society, or (2) a hospital under the Dufferin Fund. (1) Many missionary societies engage medical women to treat the native women. Salaries, of course, differ, but are, on the whole, low, as the aim of a missionary is not supposed, primarily, to be financial gain. Generally somewhere about £110 in English money is given, with an allowance for carriage and house including the chief items of furniture. Leave is also granted with second class return fare every five years--in some missions every three years. The medical experience is excellent, the opportunities of doing good professional work are practically unlimited, and the professional position of the doctor quite untrammelled. She is assisted, usually, by good nurses, under a proper scheme, these being Indian girls superintended by fully trained English sisters. (2) Under the Dufferin Fund[2] things are very different. It is somewhat difficult to speak of this branch of the work, as it is, at the present time, the subject of enquiry, and it may be legitimately expected that it will, before long, be put on a more satisfactory basis. The fund was originally started by Lady Dufferin as the direct result of a command by the late Queen Victoria, and it was intended to provide the services of medical women for the Purdah women of India who, owing to the strictness of their rules, were not infrequently debarred from the full benefit of medical treatment by men. Unfortunately, however, the doctor in charge of most of the Dufferin Hospitals is under the local senior civil surgeon, who is a man. As he has the right, if he wishes to exercise it, of seeing any of the patients, and doing any of the operations or other treatment necessary, it is obvious that the hospitals are of little or no use to Purdah women, as they have no guarantee against treatment by a man. There is also no security of tenure for the doctor who is not allowed to be present at the meetings of the governing body, and may find herself dismissed or transferred from a good post to a bad one at short notice. The remuneration varies roughly between £250 and £500 a year, with house but no carriage allowance. The doctor is entitled to add to her salary by private practice. In some towns this is a considerable item, whereas in others it is quite negligible. There is no definite furlough allowance, and the doctor may be removed from her post and required to keep herself on very little for a considerable period of time before being appointed to another hospital. All this causes a severe drain on the resources of doctors without private means. The staff is also frequently inefficient, and the nursing is sometimes very indifferent, being undertaken by Eurasian girls under partly trained women who have never been "home." In the practice of medicine as in all other branches of women's labour, the question of the effect of marriage upon work is a very important and difficult one. In its general aspect it lies at the very heart of the whole question of the working woman. Its effect on the medical woman varies according to the branch of her profession which she selects. If she wishes to become _(a)_ a specialist or _(b)_ a general practitioner, she has perfect freedom of choice as to what she will do in the event of marriage; and some women retire while others continue their work. The latter is a much more desirable course from the point of view of medical women as a whole. The medical woman who is married can, better than any one else, render to society certain services in her profession, and it is desirable that these should not be lost. In any event no woman need retire from her work on marriage, though it is, of course, most important that the married medical woman should not deny to herself and to her husband the normal healthy joy of having children. To continue in practice, however, while bearing a child requires a certain amount of expenditure, as such a doctor will need to retire from practice for at least two or three months, probably longer, and is therefore put to the expense of engaging a _locum tenens._ This ought, however, to be possible when both husband and wife are earning incomes. From the point of view of society as a whole, it is waste that any one who has had such a long and arduous training as that required for the medical profession should not use it in service to the community. There is a form of selfishness not sufficiently recognised, which consists not in acquiring goods but in acquiring knowledge without rendering it again in service to one's fellow men and women. Should the doctor decide _(c)_ to enter the public service, the question will probably not be in her own control as there is an ever-increasing tendency on the part of public authorities to insist on single women or widows only among the medical women whom they employ. There is a big fight to be waged here--one of the many that our pioneers have left for us and our successors. The lack of social instinct which lies behind this edict is amazing. What can be more anti-social than that a young, healthy, and highly-trained woman should have to decide between marriage and executing that public work for which she has with great labour fitted herself? In at least some cases of which the writer is aware, the demand that a doctor shall retire on marriage, has led to a decision against matrimony, and this is not surprising, although very serious as a general problem. The great need of society at the present day is that the most healthy and well-trained young men and women should be induced to found families, and public authorities by this bar put on the trained woman, are doing their best to hinder marriage. Medical women have, for their protection, societies of registered medical women in London and in the north of England and also in Scotland, these working more or less in touch with one another. In common with other medical societies they have meetings at which the advances in medical science are discussed, and they also act in a modified way as Trade Unions, Members of these societies can always gain information from them as to the recognised rate of pay in any particular branch of the work which they may wish to undertake. Reference has already been made to the excellent work which has been done by the British Medical Association in uniting the men and women of the profession and helping both to keep up the salary rate. Without this aid the women's associations would have been comparatively helpless, as they would have erred in ignorance, though certainly not by intention. The gratitude of medical women to this association cannot therefore be overstated, and I think I am justified in saying that the same is true with regard to medical men. If their chief "Union" had not admitted women we might unwittingly have become a danger to our medical colleagues as black-leg labour. This has been almost universally the case in other work which women have taken up, and one cannot help wishing that men in other branches of labour might speedily realise the fact that women cannot be stopped from working, and that the only wise thing, from the men's point of view as well as from the women's, is to admit all to their unions that they may fight shoulder to shoulder for better labour conditions, and not against each other. An example of a case where this was realised has already been quoted under Example 2, page 144. With regard to the opportunities for post-graduate study:--At first all the men's medical societies were closed to women, the provincial societies being among the first to recognise their women medical colleagues. London, being in this as in all things conservative, took many years to move, and did so very grudgingly; but now nearly all the important medical societies admit women, in this falling into line with the learned professions generally. The Royal Medical Society, London, at first admitted women to its separate sections only, while denying them the Fellowship, with which would have gone that mysterious power which men so deeply resent our possessing--the power to vote on matters of its internal economy. The authorities of this society have, however, recently admitted medical women on perfectly equal terms with men to their Fellowship--a privilege for which we are deeply grateful, as post-graduate knowledge of recent investigations is absolutely essential to good work. In conclusion, the general position of medical women at present may be shortly summarised as follows:-- Their legal status is _absolutely identical_ with that of men in every respect, by which is meant that by being placed upon the Medical Register they have every privilege, duty, and responsibility which they would have if they were men. In obtaining this and allowing many other things to be settled by their successors our pioneers showed their tremendous wisdom. We have in the medical profession, what women are now claiming in the State, the abolition of legal sex disqualification. With this firm platform upon which to stand, it entirely depends upon medical women themselves what position they will gain in their profession. All other disabilities and disqualifications are minor and remediable. This absolute equality of medical men and women before the law includes the rights to (1) Practise in any department of medicine in which their services may be demanded. (2) Recover fees if necessary. (3) Sign death certificates. (4) Sign any certificates for which a medical signature is essential. Under this latter heading a curious anomaly arises. If a man is signed up as a lunatic, he is, for so long as he remains a lunatic, debarred from using his Parliamentary vote, and, as may be seen from the above, a medical woman's signature is as valid as that of a man for this disfranchising certificate of lunacy. The State, therefore, at the present time allows that a medical woman may be sufficiently learned and reliable to disfranchise a man, though she be not sufficiently learned and reliable to vote herself. The Insurance Act concerned medical women only in the same way that it affected their men colleagues. The sole reason, therefore, for mentioning it in this paper is that it affords an indication of two things:-- (1)that the Government therein makes no sex distinction in the profession; (2)that the bogey of sex cleavage, so often mentioned by the timorous in the political world, is here, as always where it is put to the test, proved to be without foundation. Unfortunately, the Insurance Act divided the medical profession into two parties; women, no more than men, were unanimous on the subject and some were to be found on either side. Women are still debarred from the full use of their medical powers in the following ways:-- (1) The demand for their services from the general public is at present not so great nor so universal as that for men. This is not surprising when it is realised for how short a time there have been medical women; however, the demand on the part of the public is very rapidly increasing, naturally, of course, amongst their own sex. (2) As in other work the tendency is to restrict women to the lower branches of public work, or to the so-called "blind alley" occupations. This can only be cured by public demand, and some improvement is to be noted in this respect. There is, however, no doubt that general practice affords at present the most unrestricted field for a medical woman's activity, because there she suffers from no limitations except those of her own personality in relation to society. Any patients who are inclined to trust her are absolutely free to do so, and it is open to her to demand what fees her services are found to be worth. If, on the other hand, she enters the public service she may admittedly qualify herself in every way by attainments and experience in the lower ranks for one of the higher administrative posts and be barred simply by sex disqualification. This also will no doubt in time improve, and the pioneer work that it implies may attract many, but the progress is necessarily slower. (3) She is still debarred from full opportunity for specialist work. (See efforts being made by women themselves to obviate this by the starting of women's hospitals, p. 149.) Finally, then, the medical profession should attract women of good average capacity and general education, good health and certain, even if moderate, means. Above all do they need public spirit, which will make them anxious to maintain and improve the excellent position medical women have so far obtained. It is a very widely interesting life, bringing those who adopt it out of the study into direct touch with human affairs. [Footnote 1: Publisher, G. Sharrow, 28A Devonshire Street, Portland Place, W.] [Footnote 2: Quite recently the outline of a new scheme was put before a meeting at the Women's Medical School in London by the Director-General of the Indian Medical Service. Under this scheme the Women's Medical Service in India would not be upon the same footing as the Indian Medical Service (I.M.S.) for men, but would remain as at present, a Dufferin Association. It would, however, receive a Government grant of £10,000 yearly, and proper arrangements would be made for pay, furlough, promotion, and security of tenure. The scheme is open to criticism on some points, but, as a whole, it marks a considerable advance on the previous conditions of service in this department of women's work, and may be welcomed as a genuine if somewhat belated attempt on the part of the Government to deal fairly with an urgent question.] II DENTAL SURGERY It is not sufficiently well-known that dental surgery as a profession, opens up a practically unexplored and lucrative work for women. The training in the British Isles can be carried out in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, each of these cities granting their Licentiate of Dental Surgery. In London, the National Dental Hospital, and the London School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital) have special facilities for women students, including special bursaries and scholarships, while dental and medical studies can be carried on concurrently. The course of study includes the passing of a Professional Preliminary Examination or Matriculation, followed by two years' mechanical work, and two years' hospital practice. The student can be articled to a qualified dental practitioner for mechanics, or can obtain tuition at the Dental Hospital. This branch includes the preparation of models, vulcanite and metal dentures, crowns, and bridges, etc. The Dental Hospital course for two years includes lectures on Physics and Chemistry, Dental Anatomy and Surgery, Metallurgy and Materia Medica. At the same time practical work is done--extractions, fillings, crowns, bridges, dentures, and the regulation of children's teeth. At the medical school and hospital, lectures on Anatomy, Physiology, Surgery, and Medicine must be attended, and dissections on the human body, and clinics in the ward must be completed. At the end of each year examinations in the subjects are taken, the whole course covering a minimum time of four years. The qualification of the Licentiate of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is now open to women. The composite fee for training extending over four years, is about £200, but an additional sum of at least £100 is required for incidental expenses. Should the woman student desire to confine herself to dental mechanics this would materially lessen the expense. The average wage for a good male mechanic is £120 per annum. Hospitals can be joined at the age of nineteen, and it is advisable to begin study soon after leaving school or college. If it is possible, a woman should obtain a medical qualification as well as the L.D.S. Much of the work can be taken at the same time as the dental course. A medical degree enlarges a dentist's sphere of usefulness and interest and adds to her _locus standi_: on the other hand, it necessitates two or three years' extra study, and the fees are increased by several hundred pounds. The woman dentist will probably find it necessary to start practice on her own account as soon as she is qualified, as it is not likely she will be able to obtain an assistantship with men practitioners, but there are an increasing number of posts open to women, such as dental surgeon to school clinics or to factories. These posts offer the same salaries to men and women. Smaller part-time appointments, with an honorarium attached, can be obtained, and are especially useful to the newly qualified practitioner who is building up a practice. It is essential for the woman who intends to succeed in this profession to have excellent physical and mental health, though great muscular strength is not necessary. During student life and in practice, every care should be taken of the general health--exercise in the open air being especially necessary, though this should not be too energetic in character. It is a well-known fact that male dentists doing careful and conscientious work, cannot, as a rule, stand the strain for many hours daily after they have reached middle age, and the intending student should consider this point. The prolonged hours of standing in a cramped position, the confined space, the exactitude required for minute and painful operations, are some of the causes of this overstrain. Great self-control and will power must be exercised as the patients, especially children, are frequently nervous, and confidence must be imparted to them if the work is to be well done. The British Dental Association and the Odontological Society are both open to women, and male practitioners have always displayed the utmost courtesy though some prejudice must be expected. The general public apparently welcome the advent of women dentists as the few qualified women in London and the Provinces have excellent practices. It is curious, however, to note that few Englishwomen have taken up the profession, there being about twelve practising in the United Kingdom, though in Germany, Russia, and the United States there are great numbers of women practitioners. With regard to restrictions from which women at present suffer, one dental hospital only is open to women in London, and, until recently, no posts could be obtained. But as more women qualify, these disadvantages will probably be removed. It is also extremely difficult to obtain mechanical work in private work-rooms. Women should bear in mind that they require exactly the same facilities for study as men, and try to get admittance to all hospitals and posts on an equal basis--_i.e._, the salary should be equal for equal work, and a smaller fee should not be accepted. In deciding whether a practice should be started in London or a provincial town, the question of capital must be carefully considered, as it is improbable that the expenses will be met during the first year of practice. The upkeep necessarily varies with the locality chosen, and a minimum capital of £150 is desirable. Pioneer women must be prepared to do their work conscientiously, and to the utmost of their ability, and they must always remember that their work will be very severely criticised. This necessitates frequent inspection of both the clothing and persons of the children. Certain cases which are found to need attention are also visited in their homes. The school nurse is so much alone in her work that she requires to be very experienced and her powers of observation to be highly trained in order to enable her to detect signs of ill-health in its early stages. Firmness and kindness are constantly required in dealing with parents, and tact and consideration in her dealings with all with whom her work brings her in contact. In the London area the salary begins at £80 rising by £2, 10s. yearly to £85, and then by £5 yearly to £105. Uniform and travelling expenses, within the county, are provided. The nurse is required to contribute to the superannuation fund from which she can ultimately draw a pension if she remains all her working life in the service of the Council. The hours of work are from 9 A.M. to 4.30 P.M. five days weekly, and from 9 to 12.30 on Saturdays. Clerical work must be done out of school hours. Holidays are arranged during the school holidays. There are 128 nurses working under one Superintendent, two Assistant-Superintendents, and four Divisional Assistant-Superintendents. _B_. There are 42 nurses attached to schools for the physically defective whose special duties are concerned with the care of the crippled and delicate children who attend these schools. Certain special precautions against injury and strain are necessary for these children, and the nurse receives instructions concerning these from the visiting doctor. The salary is the same as that mentioned above, and the nurses get the school holidays. At open-air schools the nurse's work is somewhat similar to that in the schools for the physically defective. _C_. There are 8 nurses now working under the Infant Life Protection Act. All women who undertake the care of an infant for payment have to be registered. Of such children, a large proportion is illegitimate. It is the duty of the nurses to visit every such case. Each nurse has an area allotted to her; the work is arduous and responsible as the visitor has full powers under an Act of Parliament summarily to remove the child if the conditions required by the Act are not complied with. The nurse who undertakes this work should have been trained in maternity work (and if possible have been examined by the Central Midwives' Board). She should also have her certificate from the Sanitary Institute as she is expected to report on the sanitation of the premises as well as on the condition of the child. There is a considerable amount of clerical work in connection with these posts. The salary of these nurses is good, compared with the usual salaries for nurses--£120 to £150, with a further rise to £200 after ten years of service. The superannuation fund, which is compulsory for all permanent officers, yields a provision of not less than one-third of the average rate of pay in a case of complete breakdown in health after ten or more years in the service of the council. The retiring age, apart from breakdown, is sixty-five years. The conditions of work in the Provinces are much the same in general outline as those described above, which prevail in London, except that in the country the nurse often undertakes in addition the work done in London by Care Committees and Attendance Officers. This, although it increases her work also increases its variety. VIII NURSING IN HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE Mental nursing as a profession for educated women has much to recommend it. It is of absorbing interest to those of a sympathetic nature and of a scientific turn of mind, and it develops all the finer qualities, self-control, patience, tact, and common-sense. It gives scope for originality and accomplishments of every kind. The work itself is difficult, and is the one of all the many branches of nursing which demands the closest personal devotion and service, great as is the necessity for these in all forms of a nurse's work. Mental nurses are employed in (1) county asylums, (2) mental hospitals, (3) private work. (1) _County Asylums_--These may take from 1,000 to 2,000 patients each. They are usually situated in the country with healthy surroundings and large grounds, and they are generally placed within reasonable access to some town. Probationer nurses are received for training from twenty-one years of age. They must be of good health and physique. A nurse who is successful in this branch of work should be able to obtain her certificate from the Medico Psychological Board at the end of three years' training. The salary is £19 the first year, with an annual increase of £1 up to £35. Free board, lodging, washing, medical attendance, are also supplied and uniform after three months' trial. The hours on duty are from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M., with two hours off for meals. Nurses get leave from 8 P.M. to 10 P.M. daily and one day weekly; they also have fourteen days' holiday after the first twelve months, increasing subsequently to three weeks a year. The duties of the nurse in an asylum consist of the care of the patients, the supervision of the cleanliness of the wards and linen, and also of the work done by the patients in the various departments--the needleroom, laundry, kitchen, corridors, etc. It is obvious that in view of the number of patients, individual attention is practically impossible. Entertainments of all kinds are provided for the help and amusement of the patients, and nurses are expected to assist in arranging these. Consequently any one with a gift for music, acting, singing, or other accomplishment is an acquisition to the staff. (2) _Registered Mental Hospitals_.--These, owing to their different circumstances, vary much in their conditions of service. Most of them are training-schools and receive probationers of good education, from twenty-two years of age, for a course of training. This consists of lectures by the Medical Staff and Matron, the subjects receiving most attention being Elementary Anatomy, Physiology, and Psychology; and there is, of course, practical training in the nursing of mental cases: in some hospitals a course of Massage and Swedish Drill are added in the fourth year. Salaries are on the whole lower than in the County Asylums, beginning at anything from £15 rising to £19 in the third year with a bonus of £3 on passing the final examination of the Medico-Psychological Board. There must, however, be set against this lower rate of remuneration, the fact that these mental hospitals are often situated more centrally than the county asylums, thus making less expenditure necessary for travelling to and from the hospital when out on leave. The usual free board, lodging, washing, medical attendance, and uniform are also given after three months' satisfactory service. The hours of duty are from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. with two hours off for meals, etc. Leave during a month varies with the different hospitals, but is usually two whole days, three half days, four evenings from 6 P.M. to 10 P.M., and four evenings from 8 P.M. to 10 P.M.: there is also annual leave of fourteen days after the first twelve months, increasing to three weeks after three years' service. The work in a mental hospital is totally different from that in large asylums. As there are fewer patients, individual treatment is the rule, and the nurse gets more intimate knowledge of her patients' condition, which she may thus do much to ameliorate. Owing to the homelike freedom allowed, nurses need to be specially patient and tactful. In return for this, however, by their much closer companionship with their patients they gain the opportunity of thoroughly knowing and therefore sympathising with and guiding them, and on this, successful treatment largely depends. The majority of the patients in these hospitals are suffering from acute forms of insanity, and this adds both to the strenuousness and to the interest of the nursing work: the fact that such patients frequently recover, acts as a great incentive to the work. Private asylums are on a different basis and do not as a rule offer training. A trained nurse may hope for promotion to posts as Sister of a ward, Night Superintendent, Assistant Matron, or Matron. These posts demand personal attributes in addition to good training--_e.g._, powers of organisation and administration, a knowledge of housekeeping, laundry work, etc. For the higher posts, training in general nursing is essential. In all forms of mental nursing it is undoubtedly a great advantage if the nurse has had a preliminary general training before entering on the special branch of the work. The conditions for private mental cases are the same as those described under private nursing for general work (see page 184). The fees, however, compare very favourably with those obtained for general work, being almost universally higher. The great disadvantage is that the hours are very long and the work necessarily exhausting. Much has been done of recent years to improve the conditions of service for workers in institutions, and there is still room for amelioration. Particularly is this so with regard to the long hours on duty and insufficient leave, due, chiefly, to shortage of staff. Increase is also urgently needed in the salaries in every department so that the nurses may be able to make provision for old age. When, as now, so many of them are dependent on a pension as the only provision for their old age, they are bound to stay at one institution for the whole or nearly the whole of their lives--an arrangement which is not to the benefit of either party, for "change is necessary to progress, and the tendency is, from long years of service in one place, to narrow and lose the adaptability of earlier years." More arrangements are needed for the recreation of the nurses when off duty, especially in institutions situated in the country. Swimming baths would be a real boon; the beneficial effects of this form of exercise upon both nerves and body being too well known to need further comment. Its value also in promoting mutual helpfulness is by no means negligible. Reading-rooms, apart from the general common-room, are very valuable, as are also tennis courts where they can be arranged. All these, of course, mean expense, but, if the better class woman is to be attracted to the work, her interests must be considered. Moreover, healthful recreations, apart from their benefit to the nurse herself, must re-act favourably on the patients. IX NURSING IN THE COLONIES Colonial nursing is usually undertaken by those who possess the spirit of adventure, and do not mind the prospect of pioneering work. Love of novelty, strong interest in fresh scenes and peoples, a desire to make more money than can in most cases be made in England, help a nurse in colonial work, provided that work really means her life, and she loves it. But let it be emphatically stated that the nurses who are _not_ wanted in the colonies, in any capacity, are those who are failures in their work in England, or who simply leave the dull work of the old country with the object of having a good time abroad. Such women may do immense harm in countries where it is essential to the Empire that English people should be looked up to with respect and admiration, and where almost the most important part of an English nurse's work (_quite_ the most important _if_ she is working in a hospital), is to make the native nurses, of whatever race they may happen to be, see the dignity and possibilities of their profession, and be stirred with the desire to become proficient themselves. No special training is required for colonial work. A thorough all-round training, including midwifery, a high standard of nursing ethics, a knowledge of hospital organisation, and good business abilities are needed. The rest is chiefly a matter of temperament and constitution. It goes without saying that a nurse for foreign climates, whether tropical, as in the majority of colonial posts, or subject to extremes of heat and cold, such as in Canada, must be physically strong; she should also be of an even temper and philosophical disposition, easily adaptable to climate, conditions, circumstances, and racial peculiarities. The nature of the work will vary greatly with the locality and the kind of post undertaken. The colonial nurse who does private work will find patients and their needs much the same all the world over; she must, however, be prepared for anything, and ready to make the best of all things in emergencies. In tropical hospitals it is altogether another matter. If the nurse taking a Matron's post in such a hospital is the first European to have occupied that post, she will probably have every detail to organise and put in order, from providing dusters for use in the wards, to arranging off-duty time for the nurses. She will mostly likely see at once that everything wants altering, and yet she will have to "make haste slowly," _very_ slowly, or she will have everything in a ferment, and every one in open rebellion against her. If she is working in the East, she will have the endless complications of caste and race and religion to deal with, and will have for some time, to learn vastly more than she teaches. Her success or failure will depend very largely upon how she gets on with the medical department--in other words, upon her own tact and common-sense, and whether she can so approve herself to the various medical officers that they will loyally back her up in her attempts at reform. Once things are established in working order, it is a question of constant supervision, day by day, for in no tropical hospital is it possible to expect that native nurses will do their work well and conscientiously, without the constant example and supervision of their trained Matron and Sisters. Colonial posts are chiefly to be obtained through the Colonial Nursing Association, of which offices are at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington. Salaries vary considerably, according to climate and the nature of the work. In very unhealthy climates, such as the west coast of Africa, the salary is high, and the risks proportionately so. Private nurses, and those holding subordinate posts in hospitals get salaries varying from £60, which is the minimum, to £120 a year. An Assistant Matron may in some few cases get a salary increasing to £150 or £200. In a large hospital there is the ordinary chance of promotion--a Sister may be made Assistant Matron, or an Assistant Matron become Matron; but most colonial posts are simply for a certain term of years, at the expiration of which the nurse seeks fresh fields, her passage, both out and home, being paid. If, however, there should be a desire on both sides for a renewal of the engagement, the nurse can usually obtain an increase of salary. A Matron's salary will vary from £100 to £250, in large Government hospitals in the Colonies where, it must be borne in mind, leave entails a journey to England, and a very expensive passage. In colonial posts there is usually six weeks leave yearly (which may be taken as three months together in the second year), but in most places there is no bracing climate within a reasonable distance. This, of course, does not apply to India and Ceylon, where the hills are easily accessible. Each Government has its own arrangements with regard to pensions; some posts include pensions, but not all. The retiring age is usually sixty years. There is, unfortunately, no pension obtainable from the Colonial Nursing Association itself. This is certainly one respect in which it would be well if an alteration could be made; it is a question of funds and has already been brought forward for consideration. There would be vastly more inducement for really capable nurses, no longer very young (the age limit for joining is thirty-five) to join the Colonial Nursing Association, and serve their country in foreign dependencies, if they were assured of even a small pension after ten years' hard work in trying climates. X NURSING IN THE ARMY AND NAVY The training required by Army and Navy nurses is that for general work. Additional experience according to the branch of the service which the nurse wishes to enter is also useful. Only fully trained nurses are appointed. Some of the tending of the sick is done by the men themselves, under supervision. In the _Military Service_ the salaries are as follows: Matron-in-Chief, £305; ordinary Matron, from £75 to £150; Sister, from £50 to £65; Staff Nurse, from £40 to £45, with allowance for board, washing, etc., and arrangements for leave and pension after twenty years' service. In the _Naval Service _the arrangements are slightly different, but the salaries work out at about the same. Foreign service is obligatory. There is also a small Army Nursing Reserve, but this is quite inadequate for purposes of defence, and great efforts have recently been made to supplement it by voluntary organisations, such as the British Red Cross Society. XI PRISON NURSING This is, at the present time, carried out by the ordinary staff of prison warders. There are all over England not more than two or three trained nurses among them, and it is most desirable that properly trained women should be in charge of prison infirmary wards, just as much as in the infirmary wards of workhouses. Prisoners are just as likely to suffer from disease as other people, and they surely do not forfeit all claim to expert care, simply because they have, perhaps in a moment of weakness, yielded to temptation. To one form of illness needing specially expert nursing, they are peculiarly liable--mental disease. It is almost impossible to gauge the amount of good which might be done both for the individual and for society by providing trained nurses to attend to these unfortunate people. XII MIDWIFERY AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN (OTHER THAN DOCTORS) This is not a paper to discuss the suitability of women for midwifery. All through the ages it has been done by women, until early in the nineteenth century in England and its colonies, it gradually became customary for men-doctors to attend such cases; apart from this, the work of midwifery has never been in the hands of men, except when abnormal cases have required the assistance of a doctor with knowledge of anatomy and skilled in instrumental delivery. Even before the passing of the Midwives Act in 1902, statistics proved that three-quarters of all confinements in this country were attended by women. Continental countries have been alive to the need for training the women who did this work. For instance, in the great General Hospital in Vienna with its 3,000 beds, 550 beds were kept apart for maternity wards, and of these, 200 were reserved for the State training of midwives--a course of _one_ year's duration being obligatory, with _daily_ lectures on every detail in midwifery from the Professor of Obstetrics. The present writer attended these lectures daily for six months in 1885, and was made to feel the importance in teaching of "hammering" at essentials and of questioning, so that the lecturer might discover whether he were talking above the head of the least clever of the audience. England's population increased so steadily and rapidly during the nineteenth century, that it seemed to trouble no one that countless lives of mothers and babies were lost during the perils of child-birth; it remained the only civilised country of Europe where a woman could practise as a midwife without any training at all. For nearly twenty years before the passing of the Midwives Act in 1902, a small band of devoted women laboured in season and out of season urging on Parliament the need of a bill requiring a _minimum_ of three months' theoretical and practical training and an examination before trusting a woman with the lives of mother and child. This historical fact alone is a sufficiently cogent reason for the now ever-increasing demand on the part of women for the parliamentary vote. The Central Midwives Board (C.M.B.), a body of eight members (experts elected by various bodies, such as the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the British Nurses' Association, the Midwives' Institute, etc.), now exercises supervision over the midwives of the whole of England and Wales, though local supervising authorities also take cognisance of midwives' work and investigate cases of malpractice and the like. The address of the Central Midwives' Board is Caxton House, Westminster. The training for the examination of the Central Midwives' Board is based on the method pursued in medical education in English-speaking countries, viz., there is not one uniform course, but each of the training schools attached to hospitals follows out its own plan of training, each hospital having been approved by the Central Midwives' Board as giving an adequate training for its examination. There are now seven maternity hospitals in London, where women students may train in midwifery. Of these, only one--the Clapham Maternity Hospital (with its training school founded by Mrs Meredith in 1885)--is, and always has been, entirely officered by women. Here the course advised is six months, viz., three months in the hospital (Monthly Nursing), and three months in the hospital and district doing Midwifery proper. During this time over 200 cases may be seen, and nearly 100 cases attended personally. The cost of this training is £35 to £40, which includes board and residence for twenty-six weeks. Students previously trained elsewhere may take one months' extra training at a cost of ten guineas. Private doctors and midwives may also take pupils if recognised as teachers by the Board. Midwifery training is now required not only by those who are going to act as midwives, but also by most missionaries, all fully trained nurses (for matrons' posts or colonial posts) and by health visitors and inspectors before obtaining appointments. But it should be borne in mind, especially in considering the present condition and future prospects of Midwifery as a profession, that even now a large though ever-decreasing proportion of registered midwives are still ignorant women who have never passed the Central Midwives' Board or any other examination, and have had no teaching from any one more experienced or better informed than themselves. For when the Midwives' Act came into force in 1903, it was necessary to move slowly, and so a clause was inserted, permitting women who had been in _bonâ-fide_ practice for more than one year before 1902 to continue their work under inspection and supervision (with many attempts at teaching them by means of simple lectures and demonstrations). This plan, or some similar one, was necessary, not only in the interests of the midwives themselves, a set of decent and kindly, if ignorant women, who would have been ruined by too sudden a change, but also because a large number of mothers in England would have been left with no one to help them in their time of need unless they were prepared to run the risk of breaking the law. This, until recently, respectable English women disliked to do. It is important to remember this fact, when considering the present and future prospects of the midwife. The untrained woman used to charge 5s. or 7s. 6d. for her services, and the fact that her name had been enrolled on the Government Register, that she was subject to the supervision of an inspector, without having spent anything on her change of status beyond the 10s. registration fee, did not suggest the need of any particular change in her scale of charges. Thus 7s. 6d. per case, unfortunately still remains the very common fee for midwifery, though this now involves, under the rules of the Midwives' Board, not only the long hours of watchful care at the birth, but ten days of daily visits to supervise both mother and baby, with careful records of pulse and temperature, etc., kept in a register. Naturally, the general public who employ midwives--viz., the poorer classes--do not differentiate between the trained certificated midwife and the untrained _bonâ-fide_ midwife whose name is on the register, and thus the scale of charges remains very low and the profession, as one for educated women, is thereby greatly injured. Granted an intelligent woman is willing to give six months' work and study and £35 to £40 for her training, what chance has she of earning a decent living? If she could command 15s. or 17s. 6d. per case afterwards, she could make a decent living, given fairly hard work and the acceptance of real responsibility. If she had 100 cases a year, she would earn £75 at 15s. per case, and so on. This rise in the fees payable to midwives has just been made possible by the National Insurance Act of 1911, the framers of which appear to have recognised the necessary result of the Midwives' Act of 1902. As the _bonâ-fide_ midwife, who has received no training, gradually dies out, it becomes necessary to provide the means of paying trained midwives, whom the people are obliged to employ in place of the old ones, but who would soon be non-existent were the means of paying them not also provided by the State. A 30s. maternity benefit is now given for every confinement of an insured person or the wife of an insured person. As the patient may have free choice of doctor or midwife, it seems possible, now that it has been established that the benefit shall go direct to the mother or her nominee, that hereafter the greater part of it may be paid over to the person who can supply that most necessary item of the treatment, i.e., good and intelligent midwifery with nursing care of mother and child. Therefore, it is the right moment for the careful, well-trained popular midwife definitely to raise her fees to all "insured" patients, being still willing to help the poor at a low fee as before. It should be remembered that in about one-tenth of all her cases, medical help will be required, but this case could probably be guarded against by an insurance fund, if properly organised. We frankly admit that as things now stand--apart from the possibility of the maternity benefit being made to help her--midwifery is financially but a poor profession. But to an enthusiastic lover of her kind, who has other means or prospects for her future than the proceeds of her profession, there is much that is attractive in this most useful calling. Now let us turn to a consideration of the poor mother. Dr Matthews Duncan in 1870 put the puerperal mortality at 1 in 100 for in-patients and 1 in 120 for patients in their own homes--shocking figures for a physiological event! Miss Wilson, a member of the Central Midwives Board, stated in 1907 that the average mortality of English women, from puerperal fever, a preventable disease, is 47 in 10,000 or _1 in 213_, but that in three of the best lying-in hospitals this figure has been reduced to less than _1 in 3,000_. To quote Miss Alice Gregory in her article on this subject in _The Nineteenth Century_ for January 1908: "We feel there is something hopelessly wrong somewhere. It becomes indeed a burning question: By what means have the Maternity Hospitals so marvellously reduced their death rate?" The answer is not now far to seek in the opinion of the writer, who has worked continuously at Midwifery since 1st May 1884. It is probably wholly contained in the three following points:-- (1) All that makes for scrupulous asepsis in every detail for the surroundings of the mother. (2) The absence of "Meddlesome Midwifery." (3) Pre-maternity treatment, a factor which the writer considers to be of great importance, and of which she would like to have much more experience. By this is meant the building up of the future mother's health by improved hygiene and careful, wise dieting and exercising and bathing during the last three months of pregnancy, which enables many a stumbling-block to be removed out of the way. Hence, the utility of pre-maternity wards wisely used. This is, one knows, a "counsel of perfection"; but every expectant mother should and could be taught how to treat herself wisely at this time. These three points are all in favour of the well-trained midwife. (1) _Scrupulous Asepsis_, if intelligently taught, can be learned in six months' training, though one feels bound to add it requires moral "grit" in the character to make one unswervingly faithful in observing it. The midwife, too, should run no risk of carrying infection from others, as a doctor might do. (2) "Meddlesome Midwifery" is not so much a temptation for the midwife as the doctor, though she also may want to do too much. Patience combined with accurate knowledge when interference is urgently needed, is part of her training. (3) The midwife who becomes a wise friend to her patients will be just the one to whom the mother will gladly apply early, and who will know if it is advisable to send for skilled medical advice. Contracted pelvis, threatened eclampsia, and antepartum haemorrhage are typical cases, which lose half their terror if diagnosed and treated early. If ever it is recognised that good midwifery is at the root of the health of the nation and the new maternity benefit is made to help in obtaining it, it will at once become worth while for educated and intelligent women to take to the profession seriously. A practice could then be worked by sets of two or three midwives in co-operation, and with proper organisation as regards an insurance fund for securing operative midwifery from medical practitioners when necessary. There is ample room for a much larger body of trained midwives than exists at present, if the health and welfare of the nation are to be secured, while the women themselves could, under these conditions, earn a sufficient livelihood. Trained nurses also specialise in midwifery. They take the full course of training described above, completing this by passing the Central Midwives' Board Examination. They do not practise for themselves, but work only under doctors, thus replacing the monthly nurse. The improvement in health and comfort of both mother and child, when nursed by some one thoroughly competent, is very marked. The fees which they receive for this work are usually 12 to 14 guineas for the month, and in some cases may rise to 18 guineas. XIII MASSAGE This work demands a healthy body and cheerful mind, a love of the work, endurance, and much tact in dealing with the nervous cases for which this form of treatment is found to be beneficial. It may be undertaken either (1) As a separate profession, or (2) As an additional qualification by trained nurses. The training must be good and adequate to ensure any success as a masseuse, so great care should be exercised in the choice of a school. The many training schools advertised are of varying degrees of efficiency, and those prepared to train in a few weeks, or by correspondence only, are obviously unsatisfactory. On application to the secretary of the Incorporated Society of Trained Masseuses, information can be obtained with regard to the training schools in London and the Provinces where a course of instruction in massage is given, which is accepted by the society as adequate. The society itself is an independent examining body which insists on a satisfactory standard for massage workers. It holds two examinations yearly and grants a certificate to successful candidates. No one may enter for the examination unless she can show that she has received her training at one of the schools approved by the society. Adequate training in massage includes a course of not less than six months in Elementary Anatomy and Physiology, the Theory and Practice of Massage and a course of bandaging. Students usually attend the classes from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., lectures being given in the morning, demonstrations and practical work on "model patients" in the afternoon hours. Sufficiently advanced students are allowed to attend at hospitals or infirmaries to see--and themselves to carry out under the teacher's supervision--the treatment ordered for the patients by the doctor. In this way all students have opportunity during their training of seeing and giving treatment to the various cases which they may have to deal with as qualified masseuses when working under private doctors. Some training schools give their own certificate after training, and this is useful as a guarantee of the training taken. It is not, however, such an assurance of efficiency to the medical profession or the general public as the certificate gained after examination by an independent examining body. There is also a further examination held by the society once yearly in Medical Gymnastics. The minimum time to expend on this is a further six months after qualifying as a masseuse, so that it takes a year to gain the double qualification. In addition to supplying the independent examination in these subjects, the society watches over the interests of the masseuses. All its members are bound to observe the rules of the society. The result of this is threefold. (1) The doctor is assured that the masseuse will not undertake cases on her own diagnosis, but work only under qualified direction. (2) The public is assured that the masseuse is a trustworthy woman as well as an efficient worker. (3) The masseuse herself is protected from undesirable engagements. This is of considerable importance. The training for the examination previously mentioned is from 10 to 15 guineas for those taking the course. There is generally some reduction made for nurses. The further course in Medical Gymnastics costs from 20 guineas. From this it will be seen that the whole training is comparatively inexpensive; it is, however, not a profession to be entered lightly. London is already overstocked and the better openings at the present time are to be found in the Provinces, in Scotland and the Colonies. It is well to start, if possible, in a town where the masseuse is already known either to the doctors, or to some influential residents. Much depends on the individuality of the masseuse, and one who is prepared to give all her time to the work, taking every call that comes, may reasonably expect to make in her first year from £50 to £100. By the third year a steady connection should be formed, bringing in an income of £150 to £250. This cannot, however, be expected unless the masseuse has some introductions to start her in her work. Fees in the country vary from 3s. 6d. to 7s. a visit, and in London and some other places they rise to 10s. 6d. for an hour or less. Hospital and nursing-home appointments are most useful as experience for the masseuse in her first year; they should be tried before she finally decides where to start work. Such appointments are residential, and the salaries offered vary from £30 to £70 a year. It must not be forgotten that, owing to the short and comparatively inexpensive training, very many women take up this work, so that the above excellent results are not realised unless the masseuse has good introductions. The value of a thoroughly reliable society such as that mentioned cannot be over-estimated, not only for its certificate, but also on account of the information it can give as to the respectability of posts advertised for masseuses. Many of these are unfortunately merely blinds for undesirable houses. [SUB-EDITOR.] SECTION IV WOMEN AS SANITARY INSPECTORS AND HEALTH VISITORS The introduction of women into the public health service is a modern development, although they have been engaged in it longer than is usually known. Women who are employed in Public Health Work hold office under Local Sanitary Authorities, and their work must not be confused with that of the Women Home Office Officials, who were first appointed in 1895; these inspect factories and workshops, but their powers and duties are of a different character. For instance, the Women Home Office Inspectors deal, amongst other things, with the cleanliness of factories, but not with the cleanliness of workshops, and with the heating of workshops, while the ventilation of the same workshops is under the control of the local sanitary officials. Glasgow was the first county borough to utilise the services of Women Health Officials, for in May 1870 four "Female Visitors," afterwards known as Assistant Sanitary Inspectors, were appointed in connection with the Public Health Department. Their duties were: "by persuasion principally, to induce the women householders to keep the interiors of their dwellings in a clean and sanitary condition, and to advise generally how best this can be maintained." They possessed the same right of entry to premises as the men inspectors, and were required to hold the certificate of the Incorporated Sanitary Association of Scotland. They reported certain nuisances, but themselves dealt with others, such as "dirty homes or dirty bedding, clothing, and furnishing." The work of Women Health Officials in England, dates from the passing of the Factory and Workshops Act of 1891, when certain duties with regard to workshops, which had previously been performed by the Home Office Inspectors, were laid upon Sanitary Authorities. In the opinion of Dr Orme Dudfield, late Medical Officer of Health for Kensington: "It soon became apparent that, not only was systematic inspection necessary, but also that many of the duties involved were of so special and delicate a nature that they could not be satisfactorily discharged by male inspectors." He therefore recommended the appointment of two Women Inspectors of Workshops in Kensington. In the meantime the city of Nottingham had appointed a Woman Inspector of Workshops in May 1892, and in accordance with Dr Dudfield's recommendation two Women Inspectors were appointed in Kensington in 1893. These ladies were appointed as inspectors of workshops _only_. They did not hold Sanitary Certificates, nor had they the status of Sanitary Inspectors. In practice, this entailed a visit by a male inspector every time it was necessary to serve a legal notice for the abatement of any contravention of the Factory and Workshops' Act. Therefore, when these ladies resigned upon their appointment as Factory Inspectors, it was decided to appoint the in-coming ladies as Sanitary Inspectors, with power to deal with these matters themselves. It was, however, Islington which appointed the first woman with the legal status of Sanitary Inspector in 1895. By 1901, eleven women had been appointed in the Metropolitan area as Sanitary Inspectors, nearly all of them exclusively engaged in the inspection of workshops. Since that time the number of women appointed by Local Sanitary Authorities has increased considerably, both in London and the Provinces. The exact number outside London is only known approximately, as no register exists which is available to the public. It is to be hoped that this information may be obtainable from the last census returns. The figures with regard to London are published annually by the London County Council, and there are now forty-one Women Sanitary Inspectors in the Metropolitan area. Sanitary inspectors in London, whether men or women, are required to hold the certificate of the Sanitary Inspectors' Examination Board, the examination for which is the same for men and women.[1] Outside London no definite qualification is required by the Local Government Board, but it is usual in county and municipal boroughs for a sanitary certificate to be demanded from candidates for the position of Inspector of Nuisances (the term used outside London for Sanitary Officials). Men and Women Sanitary Inspectors possess equal rights of entry to premises and equal statutory powers for enforcing compliance with the law. The duties of Women Sanitary Inspectors have become very varied and numerous during the past ten years; they differ considerably according to locality and to the opinions of the local Medical Officer of Health. Broadly speaking, before 1905 women in London were mainly engaged in the inspection of workshops, whereas in the Provinces (with the exception of Nottingham, Leicester, and Manchester) they were engaged in house-to-house visitation in the poorer parts of the towns, with a view to the promotion of cleanliness, giving advice to mothers concerning the feeding and care of infants and young children, and the detection of sanitary defects. The inspection of workshops in the Provinces was a later development. These varied duties have called for special qualifications, and, in addition to certificates in sanitation, Women Sanitary Inspectors usually hold qualifications in nursing or midwifery. The general education of the women who take up this profession is, on the whole, superior to that of the men. Most of the women have had a high school education, and many are University graduates, while the men, as a rule, come from the elementary schools. The duties of a Woman Sanitary Inspector are sufficiently varied to avoid monotony, and may comprise any or all of the following:-- _A_. (1) The inspection of factories in order to see that suitable and sufficient sanitary accommodation is provided for women, in accordance with the requirements of the Public Health Acts. (2) The carrying out of the provisions of the Public Health and Factory and Workshops Acts, with regard to the registration and inspection of _(a)_ laundries, workshops, and workplaces (including kitchens of hotels and restaurants) where women are employed; _(b)_ Outworkers' premises. (3) The inspection of tenement houses and houses let in lodgings, and the enforcement of the bye-laws of the Sanitary Authority affecting these. (4) House-to-house inspection in the poorer parts of the district. (5) The inspection of public lavatories for women. (6) The carrying out of duties and inspection concerning (_a_) Notifiable infectious diseases, such as scarlet fever. (_b_) Non-notifiable infectious diseases such as measles. (_c_) The notification of consumption. (7) Taking samples under the Food and Drugs Acts. (This work is rarely given to women.) For many of the above duties, women are obviously better fitted than men, but for the following most important group of duties men are practically disqualified by reason of their sex:-- _B_. Health visiting. Work in connection with the reduction of infantile mortality :-- (1) Notification of Births Act, 1907. Visiting infants and giving advice to mothers about the feeding and general management of young children. (2) Advising expectant mothers on the management of their health and as to the influence of ante-natal conditions on their infants. (3) Work in connection with milk depôts and infant consultations. (4) Promotion of general cleanliness in the home and discovery of sanitary defects remediable under the Public Health Acts. (5) Investigation of deaths of infants under one year of age. (6) Lecturing at mothers' meetings. (7) Organisation of voluntary Health Workers in the district and arrangement of their work. _C._ The following duties may also be required in the Provinces:-- (1) Work relating to the administration of the Midwives' Act, 1902 (where the County Council have delegated their powers to the District Council). (2) The inspection of shops under the Shop Hours Act, 1892-94, and the Seats for Shop-Assistants Act, 1899. The work described under _C._ 1 and 2, is performed in London (except in the City) by special inspectors appointed by the London County Council, who also inspect employment agencies where sleeping accommodation is provided and carry out certain duties under the Children's Act. (3) Work in connection with the medical inspection of school children (performed in London by the London County Council school nurses). The duties of Men Sanitary Inspectors are very clearly defined, and differ considerably from those of the women. Men are mainly engaged in the inspection and reconstruction of drains, the detection of structural defects in the houses of the working classes, the carrying out of bye-laws with regard to tenement houses, the investigation of cases of notifiable infectious diseases, the inspection of workshops and factories, the enforcement of the law with regard to the sale of foods and drugs and the abatement of smoke nuisances. As will be seen from the duties enumerated above, Women Inspectors, as a general rule, are brought into very close and intimate contact with the homes of the people, and this necessitates the exercise of much tact and patience. The large demands thus made upon their powers of persuasion and teaching capacity, involve a considerable strain upon their nervous energy as well as their physical strength. The work of the Men Inspectors, on the other hand, being of a more official character, does not involve the same strain. There is no uniformity of practice with regard to hours of work, holidays, remuneration or superannuation, either within or without the metropolitan area. Each Local Authority makes its own arrangements. Many have no superannuation scheme and give no pensions. Men and women working for the same Authority usually work under the same conditions as to hours and holidays: the rate of remuneration, however, is by no means the same. The salaries of Women Sanitary Inspectors within the Metropolitan area range from £100 to £200 per annum, the latter figure being reached only in two boroughs and in the City of London: whilst the salaries of the men range from £150 to £350. The average maximum salary of the women is £150, and the average maximum salary of the men is £205. Outside London, the salaries of both men and women are lower, those of the women ranging from £65 to £100, a few rising to £150. Payments are made monthly, and a month's notice can be demanded on leaving, though it is frequently not enforced. Another unjust distinction frequently made between men and women is that the latter are generally compelled to retire upon marriage, thus enforcing celibacy on some of our most capable women. The hours of work are usually from 9 A.M. to 5 or 6 P.M. and to 1 P.M. on Saturdays. If we consider the nature of the work, the holidays appear most inadequate--viz.: only from two to three weeks per annum are allowed in London, and from ten to fourteen days in many provincial towns. The Health Visitor, as a public official, was not known until 1899, when several were appointed by the City Council of Birmingham. The name "Health Visitor" was thought to be more feminine and suitable than that of Inspector, and it was imagined that she would in consequence be better received in the homes of the people. As a private society in Manchester had previously engaged women of an inferior class and education with the title of "Health Visitor," this designation was deprecated by women already in the profession. Many smaller provincial towns, however, followed the example of Birmingham, and appointed Health Visitors instead of Women Sanitary Inspectors. It was not until later that the Health Visitor was introduced into London, and in the following way:-- In the Metropolitan area (exclusive of the City) half of the salary of all Sanitary Inspectors is paid out of the County Rate, and their duties are defined in Sections 107 and 108 of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891. As Medical Officers of Health and the public generally became more and more interested in the question of infant mortality, Women Inspectors were employed to investigate infant deaths, to visit houses where a birth had taken place and advise mothers on infant care, to manage milk depôts, to weigh babies, and to assist at infant consultations, and to do a great deal of work which hitherto had not been considered the work of a Sanitary Inspector. There was never any question as to the value of the work done nor of the efficiency with which it was performed, but the Local Government Board Auditor took the view that it did not come within the scope of the order of 1891, defining the duties of a Sanitary Inspector, and he refused to sanction the payment out of the County Rate of half the salary of those women who were engaged in Health Visiting work. In March 1905, the borough of Kensington solved the difficulty for itself by appointing a Health Visitor and paying the whole of her salary out of the Local Rate; but less wealthy boroughs felt unable to do this. It was work which the Sanitary Authorities wanted to undertake; it was work which the London County Council and the Local Government Board were desirous of seeing performed, but this technical difficulty stood in the way. It was overcome by the inclusion in the London County Council General Powers' Act of 1908, of Section 7, which empowered Sanitary Authorities in the Metropolitan area to appoint Health Visitors, and this enabled the London County Council to contribute half their salaries out of the County Rate. As a matter of fact, at the present time (November 1913) the whole of the salary of Health Visitors in London is being paid out of the Local Rate, as the Exchequer contribution account is completely depleted by the payment of the moiety of the salary of Sanitary Inspectors. The essential difference between a Woman Sanitary Inspector and a Health Visitor is that the Woman Sanitary Inspector is a statutory officer with a legal position, having definite rights of entry and certain statutory powers for enforcing the Public Health Acts, while a Health Visitor is a purely advisory officer, with no legal status or right of entry or power to carry out any of the provisions of the Public Health Acts. In actual practice, the title of Inspector has in no way proved an obstacle to successful health visiting, as may be demonstrated by an enquiry into the work now being carried on by Women Sanitary Inspectors in Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Bradford, London, and other places. On the contrary, it has enabled officials to obtain an entry into dirty and insanitary places and to expose cases of neglect, which might otherwise have remained undiscovered. The Health Visitor is usually paid a lower salary than the Woman Sanitary Inspector; this ranges in London from £100 to £120; in the provinces it may be as low as £65 per annum, and rarely rises above £100. The hours of work and holidays are, as a rule, the same as for Women Sanitary Inspectors. The difference in salary has proved a great temptation to Local Authorities in London to appoint Health Visitors when Women Sanitary Inspectors would have been more useful and efficient officers. Indeed, it is to be deplored that very few members of Local Authorities understood the advantages to be gained by the appointment of the more highly qualified official. The immediate effect of Section 7 was that several boroughs, having no women officials, proceeded to appoint Health Visitors; other boroughs, which possessed Women Sanitary Inspectors, also appointed Health Visitors. Seven or eight boroughs re-appointed their women officials in the dual capacity of Sanitary Inspector and Health Visitor so that the work in those cases went on as before. An indirect effect has been the almost complete cessation of the appointment of Women Sanitary Inspectors and the diminution in their number in some boroughs by the lapse of appointments on resignation or marriage. The inspection of workshops where women are employed has, in several instances, fallen back into the hands of Men Inspectors, whose unsuitability for this work first called women in England into the Public Health Service. In September 1909 the Local Government Board issued the following order with regard to Health Visitors in London:-- "Art. 1. Qualifications. A woman shall be qualified to be appointed a Health Visitor if she (_a_) is a duly qualified medical practitioner ; or (_b_) is a duly qualified nurse with three years' training in a hospital or infirmary, being a training school for nurses and having a resident physician or surgeon; or (_c_) is certified under the Midwives' Act, 1902; or (_d_) has had six months' nursing experience in a hospital receiving children as well as adults, and holds the certificate of the Royal Sanitary Institute for Health Visitors and School Nurses, or the Diploma of the National Health Society; or (_e_) has discharged duties similar to those presented in the regulations in the services of a Sanitary Authority and produces such evidence as suffices to prove her competency; or (_f_) has a competent knowledge and experience of the theory and practice of nurture, and the care and management of young children, of attendance on women in and immediately after child-birth, and of nursing attendance in cases of sickness or other mental or bodily infirmity. "Art. 2. Every appointment must be confirmed by the Board. "Art. 6. Enables a Sanitary Authority to determine the appointment of a Health Visitor by giving her three months' notice, and no woman may be appointed unless she agrees to give three months' notice previous to resigning the office or to forfeit a sum to be agreed. "Art. 8. Outlines the duties of the Health Visitor but prohibits her from discharging duties pertaining to the position of a Sanitary Inspector (unless with the consent of the Board she holds the dual appointment). "Art. 9. The Board's approval is required to the salary to be paid to the Health Visitor, and an allowance in respect of clothing, where uniform or other distinctive dress is required, may be made." The Board in their circular letter state that they consider that, in consideration of the importance of the duties and of the salaries often paid to Women Sanitary Inspectors in London, the salary ought not to be less than £100 per annum. It will be seen from the above that it is quite possible for a Health Visitor to be appointed practically without any qualification for the position, and with absolutely no knowledge of Public Health Law and sanitation. It is, therefore, apparent that there are two classes of women officials in connection with Public Health Departments, one on the same footing as the men, with equal powers and responsibilities, but remunerated at a much lower rate, and another with a lower status and a still lower rate of remuneration. The duties of the second class may be performed equally well by the first, but the duties of the first cannot be performed by the second. The introduction of the Health Visitor has therefore lowered the status of the Public Health Service. The remedy for this state of affairs is for competent woman officials in the future to be appointed in the dual capacity of Sanitary Inspector and Health Visitor at an adequate remuneration, and for the order of 1891 defining the duties of a Sanitary Inspector to be expanded to meet the developments which have been taking place in the Public Health Acts since that date. There are two organisations which Women Sanitary Inspectors may join:-- (1) The Women Sanitary Inspectors' Association, which includes as members Women Sanitary Inspectors and Health Visitors holding recognised certificates in sanitation. (Health Visitors holding official appointments but without these recognised certificates in sanitation may become associates.) (2) The Sanitary Inspectors' Association, which is composed of a large number of Men Sanitary Inspectors and a few Women Sanitary Inspectors. This is not open to Health Visitors. There is no approved society for Sanitary Inspectors under the Insurance Act. The income of the majority of Men Inspectors exempts them from the operation of the Act, but a large number of Men and Women Inspectors receiving less than £160 per annum, have joined the approved society of the National Association of Local Government Officers. To sum up, we may say that on the whole the life of a Health Official is a healthy and suitable one for a woman of average physique; it demands great activity, with many hours spent out of doors, and whoever undertakes it must be prepared for surprises and difficulties. She may find herself in an office staffed entirely by men, with chief, committee, and council composed entirely of men--indeed everything looked at from the male standpoint. She either works singly or in small groups of two or three, except in a few large towns where the women officials may number from ten to twenty. Thus isolated and scattered, it is extremely difficult for the Women Health Officials to form an effective organisation. What is accomplished under one Authority may have little or no effect upon another. One condition which presses heavily on many women is the shortness of the holidays. The work is always arduous, particularly in poor districts where one is brought face to face with poverty, disease, and suffering, and from two to three weeks is not sufficient for rest and recuperation, particularly as the years pass on. The creation of public opinion and the advent of a greater number of women on Municipal Councils and Health Committees is greatly needed to improve the conditions under which women officials work, and to support their reasonable demands.[2] [Footnote 1: Full particulars of this can be obtained from the Secretary, Sanitary Inspectors' Examination Board, Adelaide Buildings, London Bridge.] [Footnote 2: The above article considers under the term "Health Visitors" such women only as are serving under public Municipal Authorities. Unfortunately, since it gives rise to confusion, the name is also used in connection with officials privately appointed by various charitable institutions. These have no universally recognised standard of attainments: some of the so-called "Health Visitors" are without any qualifications, others, _e.g._, those employed by the Jewish Board of Guardians, are fully trained and do excellent work, comparable with that performed by Hospital Almoners. We hope, in a later volume of this series, to publish an article on their duties and position.[EDITOR.]] SECTION V WOMEN IN THE CIVIL SERVICE I THE HIGHER GRADES: PRESENT POSITION AND PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE The claim that women should be allowed to enter not only the lower but the higher branches of the Civil Service is being freely made at the present time. It is very generally felt that posts in which the holder has to execute judgment and to decide on administrative matters should be open to women as well as to men. Many reasons are urged for admitting women more freely to a share in the responsible work of the Service, but the true basis of their claim lies in this--that the most successful form of government and the happiest condition for the governed can only be attained, in the State as in the family, when masculine and feminine influences work in harmony. It is not, perhaps, widely known that women have already made their way into many branches of the Service and have done invaluable work therein. Perhaps the strongest argument that can be urged in favour of their admission into yet other branches of the Service will be found in the following brief survey of the appointments held and the work already done by them in various directions. _The Local Government Boards_ The credit of being the first Government Department to appoint a Woman Inspector belongs to the English Local Government Board. As far back as 1873, yielding to the pressure of public opinion, that Board appointed a Woman Inspector, with full powers to inspect workhouses, and district schools. During the short period of her appointment, this lady did excellent work, and called attention to much needed reforms in the education of girls in Poor Law Schools. Unfortunately, owing to a breakdown in health, she was obliged to resign her appointment in November 1874, and the Local Government Board, either repenting of its enlightened action, or not appreciating the aid of a woman even in matters concerning the welfare of women and girls, refrained from appointing a woman to succeed her. It was not until 1885 that another Woman Inspector was appointed, and then her work was restricted to the inspection of Poor Law Children boarded out beyond the Union to which they belonged. In 1896, once more by reason of the pressure of public opinion, a woman was appointed as an Assistant Inspector of Poor Law Institutions in the Metropolis. In 1898 a second Inspector of Boarded-out Children was appointed, and in 1903 the number of Inspectors was increased to three, each Inspector having a district assigned to her. Four years ago the total number of Women Inspectors was increased to seven, and the scope of their duties somewhat widened, as will be seen below. There is now one Superintendent Inspector at a salary of £400 to £450, and six Inspectors at £250 to £350. Candidates for these inspectorships must have had considerable administrative experience. They must hold a certificate of three years' training as a Nurse, and the Central Midwives' Board's certificate is considered desirable. These qualifications have only been required since 1910. The duties assigned to the Women Inspectors include (1) the inspection of boarded-out children, both within and beyond the Poor Law Unions to which they belong; and (2) the inspection of Poor Law Institutions--_i.e._, infirmaries, sick wards of workhouses, maternity wards, and workhouse nurseries: also of Certified Homes, Cottage Homes, and Scattered Homes. The duties of the Women Inspectors in connection with the boarding-out of Poor Law Children include the visiting of officials of Boarding-Out Committees, and of homes in which children are boarded out; the Inspector visits a sufficient number of children and homes to enable her to satisfy herself that the duties of the Boarding-Out Committee are carried out in a satisfactory manner, and makes a report to the Board thereon. Women Inspectors arrange their own inspections of boarded-out children within a prescribed district. Each of the fourteen districts into which the country is divided for Poor Law purposes is placed under the care of a General Inspector (male), whilst the half dozen Women Inspectors are available for duty in these districts, but only at the invitation of the General Inspector. If an Inspector omits to arrange for these visits it is possible for his district to remain unvisited by a Woman Inspector for an indefinite period. When it is remembered that there are still 194 Unions without a woman on the Board of Guardians, the present arrangement, by which the Women Inspectors can only inspect Poor Law Institutions on sufferance, is seen to be indefensible and the need for reform in this direction urgent. There is one Assistant Woman Inspector, who is a highly qualified medical woman, in the Public Health Department of the Board. She has been in office only a few months, but it has been remarked in more than one quarter that the enhanced value of the recent report of the Board's Medical Officer on Infant Mortality is due to her co-operation. The jurisdiction of the Local Government Board in London is confined to England and Wales--Scotland and Ireland having their own Boards in Edinburgh and Dublin respectively. The Local Government Board for Scotland appointed a Woman Inspector for the first time about three years ago, at a salary of £200 a year. She is a fully qualified medical woman. Her duties include both Poor Law Work (_e.g._ the inspection of children in poor-houses or boarded out, enquiries into complaints of inadequate relief to widows) and Public Health Work (_e.g._ enquiries into any special incidence of disease). The Local Government Board for Ireland employs two Women Inspectors, one at a salary of £200-10-£300 and the other at a salary of £200, to inspect boarded-out children. There are no prescribed qualifications for these posts; but they have always been, and still are, held by highly qualified women--distinguished graduates and experienced in social work; one is a doctor of medicine. Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Local Government Board for Ireland, said in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service that he would like to have one or two women doctors to go round the work-houses and to visit the female wards, but the salaries offered by the Treasury to women doctors seemed to him too low to attract well qualified women. _The Home Office_ It was about twenty years ago that the Home Office began to realise that the ever-increasing number of women and girl workers in factories and workshops made it imperative that women as well as men inspectors should be appointed if the Factory Acts intended for the protection of workers were to be effectually enforced. There was no doubt even from the first about the usefulness of these Women Inspectors, but in ten years' time the number appointed for the whole of the United Kingdom had only increased to eight. At the beginning of the present year, 1913, they numbered eighteen, and only within the last few months has this number been increased to twenty. There is one Woman Inspector of Prisons at a salary of £300-15-£400. (The lowest salary received by Men Inspectors is £600-20-£700.) There is also one Woman Assistant Inspector of Reformatories and Industrial Schools. Her salary is £200-10-£300, whilst that of Men Assistant Inspectors is £250-15-£400. Women Factory Inspectors are appointed in the same way as men. A register of candidates is kept in the office, in which the name of every applicant is entered. When a vacancy occurs a selection is made from the list, and the best qualified candidates are interviewed by a Committee of Selection, consisting of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, the Private Secretary, the Chief Inspector of Factories and the Chief Woman Inspector. Generally speaking, about one half of the candidates interviewed are selected to sit for an examination in general subjects. At the end of two years' probation a qualifying examination in Factory Law and Sanitary Science must be passed. The Principal Woman Inspector is responsible to the Chief Inspector of Factories for the administration of the Women Inspectors' work throughout the United Kingdom. Women Inspectors are stationed at Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Belfast. The work of the Women Inspectors is so organised as to be entirely separate from that of the Men Inspectors, although they cover the same ground. The nature and scope of the women's work is so generally known that it is perhaps unnecessary to describe it in much detail. Investigations into cases of accident affecting women and girl workers or into complaints as to the conditions under which they work are promptly made by the Women Inspectors. Women Inspectors (equally with men) have power to enter and inspect all factory and workshop premises where women and girls are employed. They are empowered to enforce the provisions of the Factory and Truck Acts and to prosecute in cases of breach of the law. They conduct their own prosecutions. The reports of the Women Inspectors evoked much appreciative comment during a recent debate in the House of Commons. Some interesting remarks on their work are also to be found in the evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service by Sir Edward Troup, K.C.B., Permanent Under-Secretary of the Home Office. The number of Women Inspectors at present employed is not nearly large enough to cope with the work that needs to be done. It must be remembered that the staff enumerated above is responsible for the inspection of factories and workshops in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England, and that the number of women engaged in industrial work has increased during the last five years from about one and a half millions to two millions. The necessity of increasing the number of Women Inspectors has frequently been urged upon the Government in the House of Commons and in the press, and it seems probable that the Government must soon yield to this pressure. The following extract from the _Women's Trade Union League Quarterly Review_, July 1913, may be of interest in this connection:-- "That the Women Inspectors' staff in particular is far below the numerical strength which would enable it to cope adequately--we do not say completely--with the task presented to it, has long been patent to every one who knows anything of the industrial world and the part taken in it by the woman worker. But in 1912 promotions and resignations left gaps in the already meagre ranks which for some time were not filled even by recruits, with the result that the number of inspections was necessarily reduced in proportion. To those who realise, as we do, the importance of the women inspectors' visits, both in detecting infringements of the law and in making clear its provisions and their value to the employer and worker alike, this decrease, even for a time, of the opportunities which Miss Anderson's staff enjoy of exercising their beneficent and educative influence seems altogether deplorable. The recent promise of the Home Secretary to increase that staff by two is very welcome, but we cannot pretend to think that such an increase will meet the need which these pages reveal." There is one Woman Inspector of Prisons, a qualified medical woman, who acts also as Assistant Inspector of State and Certified Inebriate Reformatories. Her salary is £300-15-£400, whilst the lowest salary received by Men Inspectors is £600-20-£700. There is one Woman Assistant Inspector of Reformatories and Industrial Schools in Great Britain. Her salary is £200-10-£300, whilst that of Men Assistant Inspectors is £250-15-£400. _The Board of Trade_ The first woman to be admitted to the higher branches of the Board of Trade was appointed as a Labour Correspondent in 1893. In 1903 she became the Senior Investigator for Women's Industries, the salary of the post being fixed at £450. A Senior Investigator's Assistant was also appointed at a salary of £120-10-£200, but the salary has now been increased to £200-£300. These posts are open only to University women with high honours. The Senior Investigator, with the help of her Assistant, undertakes special enquiries into the conditions in women's industries. Perhaps her most important function is to originate investigations concerning women, which will yield information likely to be useful to the Department in the future, when some particular question comes up for discussion or decision. For instance, when the question of bringing laundries within the scope of the Trade Boards Act was under discussion, the investigations previously made by the Women Investigators into wages and conditions proved invaluable. There are also three Women Investigators appointed in connection with the Trade Boards. Their duty is to assist in the collection of information relating to the scheduled trades, in all of which a large number of women is employed. They may be called upon to help in the preliminary work involved in setting up new Trade Boards. They explain as far as necessary the provisions of the Act to the working women concerned get nominations of workers to sit on those Boards and otherwise assist the Boards in carrying out their functions. They also conduct inspections to see that the law is carried out. All these appointments are made by the President of the Board of Trade on the recommendation of the Civil Service Commissioners. _Labour Exchanges_ The establishment of Labour Exchanges under the Board of Trade some years ago gave occasion for the appointment of a considerable number of women to responsible posts. On the organising staff at the Central Office there is a Principal Woman Officer at £400-15-£450, who is responsible for the organisation of the women's work in all the Labour Exchanges. She has an Assistant at £150-£7, 10s.--£200. A woman also acts as Secretary to the large London Juvenile Advisory Committee. She has the acting rank of an Assistant Divisional Officer, although her salary (£300-15-£400) is less than that received by men Assistant Divisional Officers. There are nine Senior Organising Officers with salaries of £250-10-£350, six of whom are women. The three men holding these appointments deal with Juvenile work only, whereas some of the women are in charge of both Women's and Juvenile work. Of the five Junior Organising Officers at £200--£7, 10s.--£250, three are women. The nine Assistant Organising Officers at £150--£7, 10s.--£200 are all women. All these officers are engaged in organising the work of the Juvenile and Women's Departments all over the country, and inspecting local offices. There are also twenty secretaries to Juvenile Advisory Committees, who may be either men or women. The salary for these posts is £150-5--£200. In the Divisional Offices there are some staff posts open to women at a salary of £200 to £300. Their work is purely clerical, and is concerned with Unemployment Insurance. The original appointments in this branch of the Board of Trade were made by a Selection Committee on which the Civil Service Commissioners were represented. Applications were invited by advertisement, and a large number of candidates was interviewed. The more recent appointments have been filled by candidates who have first appeared before a Board, and have then passed a qualifying examination, conducted by the Civil Service Commission. _Board of Education_ The Board of Education (or the Education Department, as it was then called) was established in consequence of the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. Its jurisdiction was and still is limited to England and Wales. Notwithstanding that it was responsible to Parliament for regulating the conduct of public elementary education all over the country, and that in those schools there were hundreds of women teachers and thousands of little girl pupils, it seems not to have occurred to the Department to call in the aid of women either as inspectors or administrators until the appointment in 1884 of a Directress of Needlework. A Directress of Cookery was added in 1891, and laundry work was brought under her supervision in 1893. It was only when the passing of the Education Act of 1893 had brought other forms of education--secondary, technical, and scientific--more completely under the supervision of the Department that the need for Women Inspectors began to be felt. In justice to the Department it must be said that having once realised the need, they did not meet it grudgingly. The first Women Inspectors were appointed in 1904, and by the spring of 1905 there were no less than twelve, one of whom was appointed as Chief. Since then the number has been steadily increasing, and there are now 45--a much more satisfactory rate of progress than that of the Women Factory Inspectors. _Educational Inspectors._--There are now 1 Chief Woman Inspector, at a salary of £650; 45 Inspectors, 8 at £400-10-£500, and 35 at £200-15-£400. The method of appointment of Women Inspectors' is similar to that of men--_i.e._, by nomination of the President of the Board of Education. The Chief Woman Inspector first interviews candidates, weighs their qualifications, and reports upon them to the Secretary. There is no examination on appointment. Besides academic qualifications, which are the same as those of men, many of the Inspectors have special qualifications, as well as having had practical experience in teaching. A special class of work is allotted to each Inspector: about 17 of them are occupied in inspecting Girls' and Infants' Public Elementary Schools: 15 are responsible for Domestic Subject Centres in Elementary Schools: 4 for Girls' and Mixed Secondary Schools: 3 for Training Colleges (women's and mixed): and 3 again for Domestic and Trade Courses and Girls' Clubs. In the case of secondary schools, the Women Inspectors pay special attention to women's subjects, but they also take part in full inspections. They are not in charge of districts, and therefore do not carry on the miscellaneous correspondence with the Local Education Authorities which falls to the lot of a District Inspector. In relation to domestic subjects, however, the Women Inspectors are practically in charge of districts, and deal directly with Local Education Authorities. They inspect the work done by girls, and look into the organisation of the schools with regard to health, suitability of curricula, etc. In the case of elementary schools, the Women Inspectors are attached to the various districts and are directed by the District Inspectors (men) as occasion requires, to deal with infants' and mixed schools, and to carry out routine inspections of public elementary schools. _Medical Inspectors._--There are one Senior Medical Officer at £600-£800; one Junior Medical Officer at £400-20-£500; and also three Inspectors of Physical Exercises at £200-15-£400. The Women Medical Inspectors take part in the work of the medical branch in the same way as men; Physical Exercises come under their jurisdiction. The Board of Education also employs three women on the permanent staff of the Department of Special Enquiries and Reports. The salaries are £100-£7, 10s-£180, and the posts are pensionable. The duties consist partly of library work and partly of giving assistance in the general intelligence work of the office. The Right Hon. A.H. Dyke Acland said in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service that he did not see why at the Board of Education the same sort of women who become good inspectors and headmistresses should not take part in the administrative work of the office. _Scotch Education Department_ The first Woman Inspector was appointed by the Scotch Education Department in 1902, and two others were appointed in 1910. Their scale of salary is £200-15-£400. They are strictly specialist inspectors for domestic economy subjects, cookery, laundry, etc., for which they have qualifications including experience in teaching and inspecting such subjects. Specially qualified women are occasionally employed by the Department to inspect girls' schools, and are paid a fee according to the time occupied. _National Education Board, Ireland_ Two Women Inspectors are employed by the Irish National Education Board. Their salary is £150-10-£300, the same as that of Men Junior Inspectors; Men Senior Inspectors receive £300-20-£700. There are two Women Organisers, whose duty it is to organise weak schools. There are also 14 Organisers of Domestic Economy; their work is similar to that of Inspectors; they travel about and have authority in the schools; they do not inspect general subjects, but confine themselves to cookery, laundry and domestic science. There are also six Women Organisers of Kindergarten. _The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries._ This Department has recently employed a few women upon various kinds of scientific work. Three women are appointed as Assistant Naturalists in the Fishery Branch, at a salary of £150 per annum, and two as Junior Assistant Naturalists at £2 per week. They are appointed on the nomination of the President, without examination, but they must possess the necessary scientific qualifications and have taken a recognised course of study. These posts are non-pensionable. The Fishery Branch deals with questions relating to the natural history and diseases of fish, fish-hatcheries and laboratories, the protection of undersized fish, the effect of methods of capture, international investigations, and grants in aid of fishery research. The women are engaged upon the same work as men, except that they do not write technical reports and are not liable to be called upon for sea duty. In the Herbarium and Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew there are two Women Assistants at £150-10-£300 (the Men Assistants' scale is £150-15-£300). Scientific qualifications are required for these posts, and there is an examination by the Civil Service Commission. The Library is maintained for official consultative work, to supply the basis of an accurate nomenclature throughout the establishment and as an aid to research. The Herbarium aims at representing the entire vegetation of the earth with especial regard to that of British possessions. A scheme for preparing a complete series of floras of India and the Colonies was sanctioned by the Government in 1856, and has been steadily prosecuted ever since. The principle work of the staff is the correct identification of the specimens which reach Kew from every part of the world, and their incorporation in the Herbarium. It is visited for the purposes of study and research by botanists from every country. The scientific work in the various branches of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries would seem to afford some scope for women of scientific attainment. Sir T. Elliott, formerly Permanent Secretary to the Board, in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, said he considered that women could do good work in many directions, and that their help might be especially valuable in entomology. _The Public Trustee's Office._ The Public Trustee's office was established in 1908, under the Act of 1906. Two Women Inspectors--or more correctly speaking, Visitors--are now employed, one of whom receives a salary of £200 and the other £180. These Visitors are attached to the special Department set up to take charge of children (1) left by will to the guardianship of the Public Trustee, or (2) who have been awarded damages in the High Court either for injury or for the loss of parents or guardians. As regards the first-named, the Public Trustee has express powers under his rules to act either as sole guardian or co-trustee. In these cases the Women Visitors assist the Public Trustee in discharging his trust. They visit the children, go thoroughly into the circumstances of each case, consulting with relatives and family solicitors. Schools are chosen, holidays arranged, careers decided upon, apprenticeship or training provided for; medical attendance is secured and even clothing attended to. In all cases concerning children in which an action for damages has been brought under the Common Law or under Lord Campbell's Act, the money awarded as compensation is paid over to the Public Trustee, unless the judge otherwise directs. A large part of the Women Visitors' work consists of supervising these compensation cases. It is important to see that the money is spent upon the children, and in the manner most likely to promote their future welfare--_e.g._, in providing education or special training. In the case of injured children, proper medical attention is secured and any instruments or artificial limbs which may be necessary. It is becoming increasingly the practice, when funds are raised locally to help special cases, to place the money collected in the hands of the Public Trustee, instead of appointing local trustees. Where the beneficiaries of such funds are women or children--very often they are widows--it becomes the duty of the Women Visitors to find out on the spot how the money can best be applied, and to advise the Public Trustee accordingly. In all cases the supervision is continued as long as it is required, but where relatives are found to be competent and willing to take charge of children the responsibility is left to them. Such work, concerned as it is with the young and the helpless, seems peculiarly suited to women. The Public Trustee in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, stated that the women already appointed had proved themselves "most efficient." _The National Health Insurance Commissions._ The Inspectors appointed by the National Health Insurance Commissions are so recent an institution that it is not yet possible to say whether the work to be performed by this Department will afford scope for the employment of a large number of educated women. It is satisfactory to note, however, that the salaries of men and women more nearly approximate to equality than in any previous appointments. The salaries of the Women Commissioners in all four countries are the same as those of the men, viz., £1,000 per annum. The English Commission has 10, the Scotch 1, and the Irish 1 Woman Inspector at £300-10-£400. Men Inspectors begin at the same salary but rise to £500. The English Commission has 25, the Welsh 3, the Scotch 5, and the Irish 4 Assistant Women Inspectors at £100-10-£300. Men Assistant Inspectors begin at the same salary, but after two years they rise by £15 to £350. The English Commission has 19, the Welsh 1, the Scotch 5, and the Irish 5 Women Health Insurance Officers, on a scale of salary £80-5-£110, after two years rising by £7, 10s. to £150. This scale is precisely the same as that of Men Health Insurance Officers. The duties of Men and Women Inspectors and Officers under the National Health Insurance Commission are identical in character and scope. The primary function of these officers is to impose upon the whole adult population the new conditions created by the Act--_i.e._, they have to ensure the proper payment of contributions in respect of all persons liable to be insured. Trades are assigned to Men or Women Inspectors according as a trade employs men or women in greater numbers. The Insurance Commissioners work through the Inspectors in all matters that are more susceptible to local treatment than to treatment by correspondence. The Inspectors obtain information and make local enquiries as to the facts in cases submitted to the Commissioners for determination under various sections of the Act. An interesting account of the very varied duties which fall to the lot of these Officers will be found in the first "Report on the Administration of the National Insurance Act," Part I., which has recently been published. The following extract from that Report will give some idea of the work done by the Women Inspectors, and the estimate which has been formed of it. "Inasmuch as the Insurance Commission is the first Government Department in which a woman staff has been appointed from the outset, special mention may be made of one portion of the work carried out by the women inspectors during the past year. The enquiry held in the autumn by Mr Pope on the objections raised to the inclusion of married women outworkers within the provisions of Part I. of the Act necessitated much careful investigation among employers and outworkers in a large number of trades all over the country, such as tailoring, glove-making, lace manufacture, carding of hooks and eyes, pins and needles, buttons and fish-hooks at Birmingham, net-making at Bridport, chain-making at Cradley Heath, straw hat-making at Luton, chair-making, box-making, and boot, shoe, and hosiery manufacture. This investigation was undertaken by the women staff. The enquiry entailed hundreds of visits, both in the poorest parts of industrial towns and in remote country districts, and in interviews with employers and workers great tact and patience were required. Of the evidence given by the women inspectors, Mr Pope reports that they 'one and all gave evidence with extreme moderation, impartiality and discretion. The conspicuous fairness and the success with which they had collected information were frequently a matter of commendation from employers, who informed me that the enquiry had afforded them information about their own trades which years of work in it had not made known to them.'" _The General Post Office_ This paper would not be complete without some reference to the large number--now nearly 3,000--of women clerks employed by the General Post Office, all of whom enter the service by open competition, either as girl clerks between sixteen and eighteen years of age or as women clerks between eighteen and twenty. Their duties are necessarily of a clerical nature, and in their earlier years at least they can hardly, perhaps, be included in the "higher grades." Yet the supervisory posts which become necessary wherever large numbers of workers are employed call for considerable administrative ability and are proportionately better remunerated. All women clerks are eligible for these posts, and indeed they are never filled in any other way. The highest post open to a woman clerk in the General Post Office is that of Superintendent at the _Savings Bank,_ the present holder of which is on a scale of £350-20-£600. There are 4 Deputy Superintendents at £270-15-£330; 13 Assistant Superintendents at £210-10-£260; and 53 Principal Clerks at £150-10-£200. The Savings Bank has the largest group of women clerks--numbering 1,210--of any department, and of these 150 are in the first class. The next largest group of Women Clerks is in the _Money Order Department;_ in this office the women outnumber the men in the proportion of 5 to 1. They number 592, of whom 67 are in the first class. There is one Superintendent at £350-20-£500; 1 Deputy Superintendent at £270-15-£330; 5 Assistant Superintendents at £210-10-£260; and 24 Principal Clerks at £150-10-£200. The _Accountant General's Department_ has 1 Superintendent at £280-15-£400; 3 Assistant Superintendents at £210-10-£260; and 3 Principal Clerks at £150-10-£200. The staff of clerks numbers 416, of whom 57 are in the first class. The _London Telephone Service_ has 1 Assistant Superintendent at £210-10-£260 and 5 Principal Clerks at £150-10-£200, with a staff of 278 clerks, of whom 21 are in the first class. The _Accountants Offices_ are the only ones in Edinburgh and Dublin which employ women as Clerks. In Dublin there is 1 Superintendent at £210-10-£250 and 2 Assistant Superintendents at £150-10-£170. Of the staff of 61 clerks, 7 are first class. In Edinburgh there is 1 Superintendent at £200-10-£250, and 1 Assistant Superintendent at £150-10-£190. Of the staff of 69, 8 are in the first class. In consequence of the employment of so large a number of women, the General Post Office found it necessary many years ago to employ a Woman Medical Officer. The present holder of this office receives a salary of £350-20-£500. She has the help of two Assistants, whose salary is £180-15-£300. A few posts which may properly be deemed "higher" are also open to Women Counter Clerks and Telegraphists. In the London Postal District there are 3 Supervisors at £180-10-£250, 50 Assistant Supervisors (first class) at £140-6-£170 and 61 Assistant Supervisors (second class) at £115-5-£130. In the _Central Telegraph Office_ the Chief Supervisor of Women Telegraphists receives a salary of £180-10-£300 (not a large salary for supervising a staff numbering nearly 1,000), the 13 Supervisors receive £180-10-£250, and the 35 Assistant Supervisors £140-6-£170. The _Postal District and Telegraph Offices_ in Dublin and Edinburgh have each one Woman Supervisor of Counter and Telegraph Clerks at £140-6-£875. In Dublin there are 12 and in Edinburgh 6 Assistants at £110-5-£135. There are also a number of Supervisors in the provinces whose rates of pay vary from £149-6-£175 to £115-5-£135, according to the size of the district. The _Telephone Service_ also offers a few important posts to women. In the London Telephone Service a Woman Superintendent is appointed at £200-10-£300, 9 Supervisors at £159-6-£190, and 40 Assistant Supervisors at £110-5-£145. There are about 3,600 Women Telephonists employed within the London postal area. The salaries of Supervisors in the provinces vary from £125-5-£150 to £105-5-£120, according to the size of the district. The variety of work, which is now efficiently performed by women in the various departments above enumerated, seems to prove conclusively that when other branches are opened to them they will be equally successful. In the statements recently submitted to the Royal Commission of the Civil Service on behalf of various women's organisations, the reasons for throwing open to women the more highly paid and responsible posts were admirably set forth. On behalf of the Association of Headmistresses it was stated by Miss R. Oldham:-- "In asking that in future some of the more highly paid and responsible posts in the Civil Service should be thrown open to women, the Headmistresses are conscious of the fact that modern economic conditions have evolved the woman who must of necessity, as well as by choice, become self-supporting. The professions of teaching, medicine, art, and literature offer openings with adequate remuneration for the highly educated young woman of to-day. Those lower branches of the Civil Service which, with a few exceptions, alone are open to women do not supply posts of enough responsibility and administrative power to prove attractive to able women of secondary school and university education, many of whom, in the opinion of the Headmistresses are fitted, both by their education and by their natural ability, to fill positions of equal responsibility with their brothers. "They desire to submit the following reasons why women should be considered eligible for positions of administrative responsibility in the service of the State :-- "(1) Women have shown by their success in positions of great responsibility that they are capable of undertaking high administrative work. "(2) Women have special gifts for social investigation and inquiry, and special knowledge in many important subjects, which ought to be used in the service of the State. "(3) Under present conditions of women's employment in the Service, the ablest and most highly qualified women do not enter it. "(4) The presence of a large number of women in the lower branches of the Civil Service makes it desirable that there should be women employed in higher and more responsible posts. This would have the effect of ensuring good discipline and judicious promotion. "(5) The present almost total exclusion of women from high and responsible posts has the effect of discrediting them as applicants for such posts outside the Service. Private employers when asked to give women opportunities for rising to posts of responsibility, are able to point to the failure of the Government to do so." In the statement submitted by Mrs W.L. Courtney on behalf of the Council on Women's Employment in the Civil Service the claim was made:-- "That women should be eligible for first division appointments, or equivalent appointments, in suitable offices, such as the Education Office, the Local Government Board, the Home Office, the Insurance Commission, and the Board of Trade. It has already been found necessary to appoint women to responsible posts in the Inspectorate of each of these offices, and the same reasons which justify those appointments point also to the desirability of appointing women to positions in the corresponding internal administrative service." There is another point to be remembered in this connection; it is important that the recommendations made by Women Inspectors should have the chance of being considered and acted upon by women in an administrative capacity, as well as by men. Otherwise there is danger that the women's point of view put forward by an Inspector may be overlooked or her recommendations brushed aside. Miss Penrose, Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, in her statement for the Royal Commission, said: "In branches of the Service, such as the Home Office, the Local Government Board, and the Board of Trade, in which a good deal of work is done, or should be done, by women because it is concerned with women, I think it would be an advantage to have one or more women on the general administrative staff, which deals with the work of the departments as a whole. "If a board which deals with human beings, does not employ women except to carry out the policy of the Board, after that policy has been initiated, shaped and embodied in regulations, it may not infrequently be found that regulations unsuitable in some respects to be applied to women have been drafted, or that unnecessary differences of treatment have been created. Just as in so far as women look at things from a different angle it is important that their point of view should be at the service of a department at as early a stage as possible." An illustration of this may be found in the draft Order for the regulation of Poor Law Institutions which is now before the public. This draft has been drawn up by a departmental committee of the Local Government Board, composed entirely of men, notwithstanding that it will regulate the administration of institutions staffed by women and having large numbers of women and children as inmates. It is not surprising to find that the draft Order meets with the disapproval of many women engaged in poor law work. The Council on Women's Employment also claimed:-- "That women should be made eligible or considered for appointment-- "As scientific specialists, especially museum assistants and keepers. The area of choice would thus be enlarged in cases where there is sometimes a very small number of suitable candidates. Women have been notably successful in original work in various departments of botany, and have done valuable original work in bacteriology and archaeology. They are already employed as scientific specialists in certain departments and in temporary work for the British Museum, though hitherto excluded from its permanent service. "As librarians, keepers of records and papers, and assistants to the holders of these offices, and to positions requiring qualifications for statistical work and historical knowledge, such as those in the Public Record Office. "That appointments in suitable offices should be opened to women between the ages of 19 and 24, who have either passed or can pass an examination equivalent to that of male second division clerks, or clerks of the intermediate class, according to the practice of the department in filling its appointments. It seems desirable that the abilities of women who would otherwise be occupied in business, teaching, secretarial and clerical, and other work, much of which is closely comparable with that of second division and intermediate clerks, should be available for the work of the Civil Service, especially in the offices already mentioned in connection with the first division appointments." These claims, pertinent as they are, and strongly as they should be urged, need to be extended still further. Women claim to be admitted to share in the administrative work, not only of those departments directly concerned with women, but also in those in which the work concerns equally men and women as citizens--_e.g._, the Treasury, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Inland Revenue. No one could argue that the work of these departments is unsuitable for women, any more than is the work of the General Post Office, in which they have so conspicuously succeeded. Even the War Office, with the charge of so many soldiers' wives and children living in barracks, removed from the jurisdiction of all civic services, and the control of so large a number of Army Nurses, needs women amongst its administrators. The claim must also be made quite clearly, that in throwing open these posts to women, the same method of recruiting must be employed as for men, and the remuneration must be at the same rate. In asking for these opportunities women are simply asking that the sex disability which at present bars them from the majority of posts in the service, may be removed. They do not seek admission in some special way, nor do they wish to undercut men by accepting lower salaries. They ask that the sex barrier may be removed in the case of both Class I. and Class II. appointments--in other words, that these appointments may be open to them on the same conditions as they are or may be open to men. In the case of the majority of the appointments hitherto held by women, some care has been taken to put them on a different footing from those of men; in these instances it is not easy to compare the work of women with that of men, or to urge the claim of women to be paid at the same rate as men for work of equal value. There are, however, some conspicuous instances--_e.g._, of the Factory Inspectors and Inspectors of Schools--in which no such differentiation is possible and in which the only reason for paying the women less than the men seems to be that given by the ex-Permanent Secretary of the Treasury in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, "that women ought to be got as cheaply as possible, and that if they can be got for less, they ought not to be paid the same as men." There seems some ground for believing that official opinion in this matter is undergoing modification, since in the case of later appointments--_e.g._, in the Labour Exchanges and in the National Health Insurance Commission--the tendency has been to approximate the salaries of women much more closely to those of men and even in some instances to make them identical. It is therefore reasonable to hope that the principle of equal pay for equal work will, before long, be extended to appointments of longer standing, in which its application would be no less just than in the case of new appointments. II THE LOWER GRADES AND THE PRESENT POSITION So far as the position of its women workers is concerned, the State is very far from being the model employer it sometimes professes to be. When one considers the very wide disparity existing between the salaries for similar work of women and of men, one realises to what an enormous extent the Exchequer, and, consequently, the taxpayer, has benefited by the economies practised at the expense of the women Civil Servants ever since their introduction in the early seventies. There is not a shadow of doubt that economy was the motive for their employment, but even economy would not have justified the continued increase in their numbers, had they not exhibited what has been called by a high official, "remarkable efficiency," and also the very desirable qualities of docility, patience, and conscientiousness. When the Government first took over the telegraphs from the private companies, it found women in their employ, and decided to retain them in the service. Women Telegraphists and Counter Clerks are now a very large body numbering in London about 2,000, and in the Provinces about 5,000,--a total of 7,000 women as compared with 16,000 men. The duties of men and women telegraphists are more closely comparable than their respective work in any other class in the Civil Service, practically the only differentiation being that women are debarred from night duty. They are also generally exempt from Sunday duty, excessive late duty, and special duties in connection with race meetings, although the Hobhouse Committee in 1907 recommended that women should do the Sunday work if required. (As, however, payment for this is made at a higher rate, there is usually no lack of volunteers.) Their scale of salary in the Central Telegraph Office is 18s. a week at eighteen years of age, rising to a maximum of 40s. The men's scale is 20s. rising to 65s. When the necessary technical qualifications are acquired, an allowance of 3s. a week carried beyond the maximum and pensionable, is now given to both sexes alike. Formerly the technical allowance for women was 1s. 6d. per week only, and this would appear to account for the lower proportion of women who have qualified for the technical increment. There appears to be a tendency to stereotype certain kinds of work for men only, in order to justify the differentiation in pay, but in point of fact, most of the work now exclusively allotted to male telegraphists was at one time done by women. The work done by men and women Counter Clerks is identical. The women in the Telegraph Service have no separate organisation, but combine with the men in the Postal Telegraph Clerks' Association, which has a large number of branches, and carries on a very active campaign for improvement in pay and conditions of service. Equal pay for equal work is one of the planks in its platform, and formed part of the case put forward before the Select Committee on Post Office Servants last year. Women Clerks are employed in the great financial Services of the General Post Office, the Savings Bank Department, Money Order Department (including the Postal Order Branch), Accountant-General's Department, and the Controller's Office of the London Telephone Service, as well as in the Accountant's Departments of the General Post Offices in Edinburgh and Dublin. In all, they number nearly 3,000. It may, perhaps, be of interest to go into the history of this class. Women Clerks were first introduced into the General Post Office in 1871 by Mr Scudamore, who considered that as women were more "fault-finding" than men, they might well be used as "a check on the somewhat illiterate postmasters of the United Kingdom in the interests of a somewhat long-suffering public." Entry was at first by nomination, but in 1881 the appointment of Women Clerks was thrown open to the public by competitive examination by Mr Fawcett, who was then Postmaster General. This step met with some opposition, and Queen Victoria even caused a letter to be written to Mr Fawcett expressing her strong disapproval of the change. The Postmaster-General, however, carried his point, and fixed the scale of salary at £65, rising by £3 per annum to £80. When the working day was increased from six to seven hours, the maximum was raised to £100. The revisions of the Tweedmouth Inter-Departmental Committee came into force in 1897, involving many concessions to the male staff, and simultaneously the minimum salary of the Women Clerks was, without any warning, reduced for new entrants to £55 per annum, and the increment for the first six years was reduced to £2, 10s. Realising the defencelessness of their position, the Women Clerks formed an Association in 1901, and so strong was the case for improvement which they were able to bring before the Hobhouse Parliamentary Committee of 1906, that in spite of considerable misrepresentation of their work in the evidence given by Heads of Departments, they were able not only to get back the 1881 minimum of £65, but were awarded further an increased increment of £5 throughout the scale and a rise of £10 in the maximum. This was the position until December 1911, when a tentative scheme was introduced in the Money Order Department to hand over all the simpler duties to a new class of Assistant Women Clerks with an eight-hour day and a wage of 18s. rising to 34s. a week. The Association of Post Office Women Clerks, the basis of which is "equal pay and opportunities for women with men in the Civil Service," and which therefore necessarily stands for simplification of the classes of employment, regarded the restriction of a fresh grade of women to yet another water-tight compartment at a low wage as in itself an evil. But apart from this, they looked upon the scheme as a deliberate evasion of the Hobhouse Committee's recommendations. So strong was the criticism levelled at the new scheme, both by Members of Parliament and the Press, that the Postmaster-General, Mr Herbert Samuel, consented to refer the matter to the Select Committee on the Post Office (known as the Holt Committee)[1], which was appointed in the early part of 1912, and he gave an undertaking that no more appointments to the new grade should be made in the Money Order Department until the Committee had reported, The value of this concession was considerably lessened by its limited application, and the fact that many Assistant Women Clerks were subsequently appointed to the London Telephone Service, clearly indicated the intention of the authorities to proceed with the development of the scheme in a Department which provided an easier field of operation in the shape of new work and a new staff taken over from the National Telephone Company. In 1897 the class of Girl Clerks was created, to undertake some of the simpler duties in the Savings Bank Department, hitherto performed by Women Clerks. They were subsequently introduced into the Money Order Department and the Controller's Office of the London Telephone Service, and there are approximately 250 now employed. They take the same examination as Women Clerks, but at a lower age--sixteen to eighteen--and are grouped apart for the purpose of marking. Their hours of duty are seven daily, and their salary £42, raising by £3 per annum, to £48. They are in reality a probationary class, and become Women Clerks automatically after two years' service. The introduction of this class was not considered by the Department to be an administrative success, as the obligation to make them Women Clerks in two years prevented their being employed in sufficiently large numbers to effect any appreciable economy. The scheme for the introduction of the grade of Assistant Woman Clerk involved the abolition of the Girl Clerk. The Women Clerks are an analogous grade to the Male Clerks of the Second Division who are common to the whole Civil Service, and they do practically the same class of work. The examinations for the two classes are somewhat severe in character and are roughly comparable.[2] There is, however, a wide disparity in the salaries paid, as will be seen from the following comparison:-- SECOND DIVISION CLERKS. £70 by £7, 10s. per an. to £130 thence by £10 per an. to £200 thence by £10 per an. to £300 (Efficiency Bar at £130 and £200) Above the salary of £300 advancement to higher posts by promotion. WOMEN CLERKS. _Second Class_-- £65 by £5 per an. to £100 (No Efficiency Bar) _First Class _(by promotion)-- £115 by £5 to £140 Above the rank of First Class Clerk there are certain higher posts which constitute a percentage of 4.6 of the total number of First and Second Class Clerks. The existence of this double standard of payment for the same kind of work is not only an injustice to the women concerned, but is a standing menace to the men, who rightly consider that the presence of women as a blackleg class keeps down their wages and reduces their prospect of promotion. A sense of irritation and dissatisfaction is thus engendered between the two sexes. The maintenance of separate staffs of similar status but with different rates of remuneration, enables the department to play off one against the other, for the existence of a lower paid class makes it increasingly difficult for the Men Clerks to substantiate a claim for better pay themselves. The standard of their work is raised by the "moving-down" or "degrading" of duties, without any improvement in pay such as they would probably be able to obtain if women were not involuntarily undercutting them. Women fully sympathise with their male colleagues, whose prospects are injured in this way, but they insist that the only solution of the difficulty is equal treatment and fair and open competition. The Association of Clerks of the Second Division supported the Women Clerks' claim for equal pay for equal work in their evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, and it is gratifying that, in spite of the determined policy of the department to adhere as far as possible to the absurd segregation of the sexes, the two organised bodies of Men and Women Clerks are on excellent terms. In 1883 the class of Women Sorters was instituted, its original scale of pay ranging from 12s. per week, increasing by annual increments of 1s. to 20s. per week. In 1885 a first class was created with a maximum of 30s. per week. The Tweedmouth Committee of 1897 abolished the classification, and substituted therefor an efficiency bar at 21s., so that, unless incompetent, all the Women Sorters have a right to proceed to the maximum of 30s. Since the salary was fixed at that figure, the work of the Sorters has greatly improved in character. Originally introduced for the purpose of sorting, arranging, and filing the multitudinous kinds of official documents and papers, they have by degrees taken over more and more of the simpler duties formerly performed by the Women Clerks, until, at the present day, it is no exaggeration to say that nearly one-half of their duties consists of elementary clerical work. The Women Sorters are recruited from an examination of the same standard as that hitherto applied to Telegraphists, and the Women Sorters' Association claims that the principle of equality between Sorters and Telegraphists, which was recommended to the department by the Tweedmouth Committee in 1897, should be applied to the Women Sorters. Prior to 1900, vacancies occurring in the female staff at the Returned Letter Office were filled by transferred Women Telegraphists, but since that date, vacancies have been filled by successful candidates at the Women Sorters' examinations, who are awarded the Women Telegraphists' scale of pay. There is, therefore, the anomaly of two different scales of pay being given to successful candidates in the Women Sorters' examinations. The Women Sorters also claim some outlet, or prospect of advancement, other than that provided by the "Senior Sorterships," of which there are a few in each department, carrying a supervising allowance of 3s. a week; this claim has been partly met by the apportionment of the new posts of Assistant Women Clerks previously mentioned. Women Telephone Operators are a large and rapidly growing class, recruited entirely by nomination followed by a qualifying examination. They number at the present time about 4,000, including Supervisors. The growing use of the telephone is replacing the telegraph, and is likely to make of this class a serious rival to the grade of Telegraphist. In this connection, it is important to recognise that the change is likely to entail an enormous increase in the use of cheap labour. The maximum salary of the Telephonist in London is only 28s. per week. The work is extremely exacting and exhausting to the nervous system, so much so, that it is an absolute necessity for the maintenance of health that proper and adequate rest-room accommodation should be provided, and that the operators should be equipped with apparatus of the proper type. The classes already mentioned have, until the present year (1913), been recruited solely for the Post Office, but the class of Women Typists, numbering about 600, are a Treasury Class, and are common to the whole Civil Service, the conditions of entry varying according to the Department. In the Post Office alone, are Typists recruited by open competitive examination. The scale of salary is 20s. a week, rising in three years to 26s.: they then have the option of qualifying in shorthand, after which they can rise to 31s. per week. In the Post Office, however, the number allowed to qualify in this way is limited to 50 per cent. of the staff. The supervising posts are: Superintendent, 35s. a week, and Chief Superintendent, 40s. a week. No higher positions are open to Typists anywhere, no matter how good their qualifications and educational equipment. The Association of Civil Service Typists claim some avenue of promotion to clerical work in the Departments in which they serve. There are also about 650 women employed by the Board of Trade in the Labour Exchange Service. With the exception of about 180, who were transferred from the Post Office for Unemployment Insurance Work under Part II. of the National Insurance Act, these women were admitted by the new method of recruitment adopted by the Civil Service Commissioner under Clause VII. of the Order in Council of January 1910. Under this system, applications are invited, and a certain number of apparently suitable candidates are interviewed by a committee of selection, and those chosen for appointment are subsequently required to pass a qualifying examination. The educational standard of this examination, for both men and women, is so low that it appears to be designed, not for the purpose of selecting candidates of good general education, but merely to eliminate the illiterate. The scale of salary for these posts is the same for women as for men, and is as follows:-- Lower Grade £60, rising by increments of £5 per annum to £105. Higher Grade £110, rising by increments of £5 per annum to £150. There are also a few higher appointments. Women are, however, under a particular disability in that they must wait for a vacancy in the Higher Grade before passing on beyond £105, whilst in the case of the Men Clerks there is no such stoppage, officers being allowed to proceed straight on, if certified efficient. It will, no doubt, have been observed that the post of Women Clerk is the highest in the Service open to women by competitive examination, and with the exception of some sixteen or eighteen appointments in the Board of Education, Women Clerks have hitherto been recruited for the Post Office alone. They are now being recruited from this examination for the National Health Insurance Commissions. The exclusion of Women Clerks from the numerous State Departments such as the Home Office, Local Government Board, Inland Revenue, etc., is mainly traditional, as they are not excluded by the wording of the Order in Council of 10th January 1910 (paragraph 5, Part I.) which states that "all appointments ... shall be made by means of competitive examinations according to regulations framed, or to be from time to time framed by the Commissioners, and approved by the Treasury, _open to all persons_(of the requisite age, health, character, and other qualifications prescribed in the said regulations) who may be desirous of attending the same...." In this passage the word "persons" is interpreted to mean men only, but as other professions are yielding to the pressure of modern economic conditions and are opening their doors to women, it is time that the State considered the advisability of profiting by the services of women eminently fitted to perform clerical, organising, and administrative duties, many of whom may possess the special qualifications needed for the work in various Government Departments. The present limitation of the employment of women, and their lack of prospects of advancement constitutes a serious grievance. Whilst many avenues are open to men to improve their condition in the early years of service, if they possess the necessary ability and enterprise, women have no such opportunities, and have practically no chance of advancement except by way of supervision in their own grade. Moreover, if we look at this question from the point of view of advantage to the community, we find that the present mode of staffing the higher posts of the service from the male sex narrows the field of selection. It is in the interests of the public that the best type of officer should be secured, and not merely the best male available, and the unrestricted admission of women to the higher classes in the Civil Service, and their payment on the same terms as men would make for the greater efficiency of the Department, by securing the services of highly qualified women, who at present are not attracted by the small salaries and the meagre prospects offered. It must also be realised by heads of families that they have a right to expect that the service of the State--a dignified, secure, and independent profession--should be open to their daughters as well as to their sons. Furthermore, as the revenue, out of which the salaries of Civil Servants are paid, is collected from women as well as from men, women should have an equal right to earn those salaries. Economy in working and simplification of administration would be attained by abolishing the separate examinations, and allowing men and women to enter for the same examinations on equal terms. There are certain advantages attached to service under the State, which are taken into account when salaries are fixed, but the value of these privileges to the staff is frequently over-estimated by the outsider. For instance, security of tenure and the prospect of a pension at retirement, often act as a deterrent to clever and enterprising officers who, but for the sacrifice involved, would throw up their appointment and seek more remunerative and promising employment outside. Again, the medical attendance provided by the Post Office is, in the case of the women employed in the Headquarters Departments, only available in practice when they are well enough to attend at the office to wait on the Medical Officer there. In theory, every employée is entitled to the services of a Medical Officer at her own home in case of serious illness, but, in fact, the Women Medical Officers are too few to be able to give the necessary individual attention. As an instance of this, it may be stated that to one Department, numbering 1,800 women, the part time of one doctor only, is allotted. Other advantages are a steadily progressing scale of salary, provided that efficient service is rendered; annual leave with pay; a reasonable working day--seven hours for the clerical force and the typists, and eight hours for the other classes; in most Departments payment is made for overtime; a pension on compulsory retirement after ten years' service, except in the case of women retired on marriage, when a gratuity is given after six years' service, amounting to one month's salary for every year of service up to twelve years. A compassionate allowance is also given on the same basis for both sexes, in cases where an officer is compelled to retire through ill-health before completing ten years' service. Sick pay is granted up to a maximum of six months on full pay and six months on half pay. The full period of leave is not, however, always allowed before retirement. It is given only at the discretion of the Department, if there is a chance of complete recovery; officers have no definite claim to it. Although these are distinct advantages to the staff, it must not be overlooked that it is essential for the State to offer some inducements of this kind, in order to obtain a staff more or less permanent who will regard their employment as a career. It is most important for the proper conduct of a Government office that the officials should have a lasting interest in their work, and a share in the successful administration of the Department. Women Civil Servants are under the Superannuation Act of 1859 as regards their pensions, and receive an amount equal to one-sixtieth of their annual salary at retirement, for every year of service. Under the Courtney Scheme of 1909, the basis of calculation is one-eightieth instead of one-sixtieth, and the reduction in the pension is compensated by a cash payment at retirement, or, in the event of death occurring whilst in harness, a cash payment is made to the next-of-kin. Women secured their exclusion from the provisions of the latter scheme at their own request, as it was felt that the larger pension was of more value to them than the cash payment at death or retirement; moreover their pensions were already too small to admit of further diminution. It is a general rule throughout the Service that a woman must retire on marriage; as already mentioned, a compensating-bonus is granted in respect of the loss of pension thereby sustained. A married woman has no definite claim to return to her employment, should she again desire to earn her own living, and only if widowed is she allowed, in certain circumstances, to return to the Service. Should any other misfortune overtake her, or should she for any other reason wish to become economically independent, she is not allowed to earn her living by means of her own profession of Civil Servant. This rule of the Service undoubtedly acts as a deterrent to marriage for, according to the statistics published, only about 3 per cent. of the whole female staff annually leave to be married. It need hardly be pointed out that in the present state of the law of the land, when no portion of a husband's income is secured to his wife as a right, a woman will not lightly throw up her means of livelihood with no prospect of returning to it should she so desire, in order to take her chance of happiness with a man whom the law permits to hold her in subjection body and soul. There is another aspect of the question: Women Civil Servants have to pass a strict medical examination before entering the Service; they have to furnish satisfactory evidence of respectability, of the health of their antecedents, and of a certain standard of education. They are therefore what is known as "selected lives": if these women are forced to remain celibate as a condition of their employment, it is a distinct loss to the nation of a specially selected class of potential mothers. In these days, when the declining birthrate is causing some concern to our statesmen, it would surely be worth their while to consider how far they are themselves contributing to the condition of affairs which they deplore, by maintaining this rigid regulation for the sake of a worn-out sentiment. The compulsory resignation on marriage is a definite wrong both to the women concerned and to the community at large, for women of selected health and intellect are discouraged from marriage by this regulation. Pending the final settlement of this question which is likely to be a very controversial one, the difficulty might be met by a modification of the existing rule allowing married women who have been Civil Servants to return to their employment should they again desire to earn their own living by means of the only profession for which they have qualified. Women in the Civil Service are in a peculiar position with regard to their rights as citizens. They are handicapped by all the rules governing the political action of men, while they are without the means of maintaining their status as wage-earners. Although they are prohibited by reason of their sex, from taking part in any Parliamentary election as voters, they are nevertheless bound by the rules of the Civil Service which were drawn up when Civil Servants were first enfranchised. These rules state that "now officers have been relieved of the electoral disabilities to which they were formerly subject, they are eligible to be placed on the Parliamentary Register and to vote at a parliamentary election. Nevertheless, it is expected of them as Public Servants that they should maintain a certain reserve in political matters and not put themselves forward on one side or the other." This rule has been interpreted by the Department to mean that no Woman Civil Servant may take an active part in any Suffrage Society which interferes in party politics. Thus women are forced to accept a subservient position, and are also prevented from taking direct steps to raise their status. The principle of equal pay for equal work, if conceded without equal opportunities, is liable to be evaded, and must be safeguarded by statute, and there is no guarantee that any improvement gained will be permanent until women have political power to enforce their demands, for the masculine point of view dominates every Government Department and colours all administration. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that women are handicapped by being, to a large degree, dependent on reports of their work emanating from male Heads of Departments who are in many cases prejudiced, sometimes unconsciously, against their employment. Heads of Departments do not as a rule take the same amount of personal interest as a private employer in the women under their control, and so these are frequently the victims of caprice. If the person in authority at a particular office happens to object to employing women, he actually opposes their appointment in that office, and deprives them of the chance of displaying their ability. Whilst they have more than their fair share of routine work, and are excluded from practically all the higher posts, they are on that account actually accused of possessing less initiative, less administrative ability, and less power of acting in sudden emergencies than men. It is indeed a vicious circle. They are prevented by their sex from acquiring these qualities in the ordinary course of their duties and excluded from the examinations for admission to those posts in which such qualities would be of use. It is then seriously urged by responsible officials of the Civil Service as an argument against their admittance to superior appointments, that they are lacking in the necessary qualifications. Such unreasonable and unfair criticism creates bitterness in the minds of the women, who find themselves, in a large number of cases, saddled with domestic responsibilities as great or greater than those of the officials who would seek to drive them back into the home, and who endeavour to prevent them from rising to any decent positions in their profession. An encouraging sign, however, is the enlightened attitude shown by some of the members of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service; the pertinent enquiries made of the Heads of Departments regarding the position of women tend to show that the question will, at least, receive consideration, and that the evidence placed before the Commission by the women's organisations will not be without its effect on the administration of the Civil Service in the future. The recognition by the male staff in the Civil Service of the importance of the principle of equal pay for equal work is a sign of advance which should be welcomed by all who have the cause of women at heart. This increased enlightenment was evidenced at the Annual Conference of the Civil Service Federation held at the Guildhall on the 11th October last. Delegates were present, representing approximately 100,000 Civil Servants, and the following resolution, which is important enough to be quoted in full, was passed by a majority of 31 votes to 10. "That this Council expresses its conviction that equal pay for equal work is the only solution of the problem of male and female labour in the Civil Service, and considers that the establishment of this principle is the only alternative to the competition of cheapness which is the result of the existing double standard of payment, and is affecting so injuriously the conditions of service of both men and women. It therefore pledges itself to endeavour to obtain the abolition of the sex disability." Women in the Service are realising more and more that their strength lies in effective combination. A new organisation has recently sprung into being as a result of the introduction of Women Clerks into the Board of Trade and the National Health Insurance Service, the Federation of Civil Service Women Clerks having been formed for the purpose of working for the larger interests of the women in the various clerical departments of the Civil Service. The general policy of the Federation will be to afford a ready means of communication between various sections of the Service for the purpose of taking joint action when necessary in the interests of the whole body of Women Clerks, and to enable them to concentrate more effectively on the larger issues connected with the claim for equality of opportunity for women with men in the Civil Service. * * * * * This article will not be complete without some reference to the Report of the Holt Committee which is engaging the attention of the Postmaster General at the present time. When the Report was published in August last, it was generally agreed that the women had been badly treated. The demand for equality of remuneration with the male staff which was put forward by the Women Telegraphists and the Women Clerks has been completely ignored. The Women Sorters are awarded an increase of 2s. a week in the maximum salary, and, as a set off, it is proposed that they shall undertake a larger portion of the minor clerical duties now performed by Women Clerks. The immediate supervision of the Women Sorters is to be met by the establishment of the Senior Sorters (who at present receive a supervising allowance of 3s. a week) as a regular supervising class with a fixed scale of salary, viz., 32s. per week rising by 1s. 6d. to 38s. The ultimate supervision remains in the hands of the Women Clerks. The Committee recommended the abandonment of the tentative new grade of Female Assistant Clerks on the ground that there is no need for a class intermediate between the Women Sorters and the Girl and Women Clerks. A further recommendation, causing widespread dissatisfaction, is that the hours of duty shall be increased by three and a half hours per week. The eight-hour day for manipulative work and the seven-hour day for clerical work has hitherto been the standard working day in the Post Office, and the suggested increase with no compensating rise in salary apart from an immediate increment, not to be carried above the maximum of the scale, has been rejected by all classes with indignation.[3] The Women Telegraphists get nothing, the Women Telephonists nothing, the Women Clerks of the First and Second classes, £10 and £5 increase in the maximum salary respectively. The Women Counter Clerks and Telegraphists in the provinces get nothing, although the men of the same class get 2s. a week increase in the maximum. It is understood from a reliable source that the higher officials of the Post Office admit that the women on the whole have been scurvily treated, and it is confidently expected that the Postmaster General will modify and improve some of the proposals when the final revision of the Report is undertaken. Apart from the various class interests, the only recommendation that can be regarded as in any way satisfactory to women is the abolition of the grade of Assistant Women Clerks as at present constituted. The only form in which the new grade could be at all acceptable would be in substitution for the grades of Girl Clerk and Women Sorter with a scale of salary comparable to the Male Assistant Clerk, in accordance with the claim placed before the Holt Commission and before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. The insertion of a new water-tight compartment such as the Department proposed, between the Women Sorters and Women Clerks would be dangerous to the interests, and detrimental to the expansion of both, while the present restriction of women to rank and file work continues. It would press the Sorters still further down in the scale by depriving them of all opportunity of succeeding to clerical work, as the recruitment of the Assistant Clerks from their ranks would inevitably be very small; and it would also injure the prospects of promotion of the Women Clerks by decreasing their numbers and by depriving them of higher posts due to growth of work and increase of staff. This latter result was clearly foreseen by the Department when the scheme was first promulgated. Moreover, it would be a blow to the general status of women in the Post Office by depreciating the value of their work and lowering the standard of their employment. It is a matter for congratulation, therefore, that the Select Committee have advised the abolition of the new grade, and the Postmaster General, having agreed in the House of Commons to refer the matter to the arbitrament of the Parliamentary Committee, can hardly repudiate their decision. [Footnote 1: See the end of the article for the Report of the Holt Committee.] [Footnote 2: The women are pressing for identical examinations. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 3: The Postmaster General has recently (December 1913), conceded the point, and has promised that there shall be no increase in the hours of duty in the Post Office Service; concessions about pay have been refused. [EDITOR.]] SECTION VI WOMEN CLERKS AND SECRETARIES The salary of the woman secretary of the best class, whether working privately or for a firm, seems to be £100 to £150 a year. Generally speaking, this is exactly what it was twenty years ago. It would seem that the highest salaries are those given by City men to confidential clerks (sometimes relatives), who are either good accountants or good linguists. The head of an influential typing office and registry in London informed me that the highly paid posts of translators to City firms are usually filled by German girls. The woman receiving £200 to £250 is a very rare person. I know only of one who receives £5 a week, and that is from an American firm in London. She does private secretarial work, but has no book-keeping and no foreign correspondence. Some years ago I knew of another woman, private secretary to the head of a large publishing firm, who had £200 a year. She was an efficient French correspondent, an able, all-round woman, and had been with the firm for twenty years. There are now two clerks in her place at much lower salaries. There seems to be a tendency to employ two cheap clerks in place of one expensive one. People unacquainted with the facts, seldom realise how small is the remuneration of capable secretaries. I am acquainted with the work of a woman who has the following qualifications: verbatim shorthand, neat typing and sound knowledge of secretarial and business work, including book-keeping; she is methodical and conscientious in her work, has had some years' City Experience, three years in the shorthand and typing offices in the Houses of Parliament and with peers and members. She is asking 45s. a week, and would take 40s. "with prospects." Well-paid posts seem to be exceptional. A woman with an intimate knowledge of City conditions, who was chief accountant to an important firm for sixteen years, informs me that £175 is the highest salary she has ever known a woman clerk to receive. The lowest on record seems to be 5s. a week. There is a woman running a typing office in the City who hires out shorthand typists at this figure to business firms. She employs a staff of from fifteen to twenty girls. Similarly, an industrial insurance company, nine months ago, opened a new department to deal with the work of the new Act. They engaged fifty girl clerks at 10s. with a superintendent, also a woman, at 30s. a week. There is sometimes difficulty in getting accurate information with regard to payments. The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic. A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at one of the biggest schools for training clerks, informed me that everything depended on the clerk. He said the girls who were getting 10s. a week were not worth more, and that there were "many" women clerks getting from £300 to £350. I said I was delighted to hear this as I had had difficulty in running to earth the woman clerk with £200, and had not before heard of the higher salaries. I took out my notebook and begged for particulars. He then said he knew of "one" of their diplomées working for a firm of florists, who had a salary of £300: she was able to correspond in English, French, German, and Spanish. I asked if he would kindly give me her name and address that I might interview her, but he said he could not possibly do that, as any woman clerk who allowed herself to be interviewed would be certain to lose her post. The manager of a business in Manchester, who employs five shorthand typists, pays them from 15s. to 30s. He admits that it is impossible for the girls to live on their salaries unless they are at home with their parents, as is the case with all of them. But he says that it is unreasonable to expect him to give more than the market rates, and that for 30s. he gets excellent service. He suggests that the only way to raise wages is for the clerks to organise. The principal of a high class typing office in the City, a woman of experience, who trains only a select number of educated girls, never allows a pupil from her school to begin at less than 25s. a week with a prospect of speedy increase. She pays her own translator £3, 5s. a week, and four members of her staff are paid at the rate of £160 a year. Mr Elvin, Secretary of the Union of Clerks, tries to enforce a minimum wage of 35s. a week as the beginning salary for an expert shorthand typist, and this may be regarded as the present Trade Union rate. Mr Elvin's difficulty is chiefly with the girls themselves. They are so accustomed to the idea of women being paid less than men that it is not easy to get them to insist on equal pay. In one case he was asked to supply a woman secretary for a certain post. He agreed to find a suitable person if the firm would guarantee a commencing salary of 35s. a week. After some demur this was conceded, and he sent to a well-known school for three competent clerks that he might examine them and recommend the best of the three. After the test he asked them, in turn, what salary they expected. They were all over twenty-one years of age and all competent. One mentioned 25s., the second 23s., and the third £1 a week. On being asked, they said they knew they were worth more, but they thought that, as they were women, they would not get it. Where there is no one to safeguard the interests of the clerk, an employer, on the look-out for cheap labour, finds it easily enough. The head of a big firm offered a French girl, an expert shorthand writer in three languages, 15s. a week, with a possible rise after three months. She finally accepted a post at 30s. a week as she could get nothing better through registries or by advertisement. Unless a girl has a claim on a school where she has trained, or has influential friends, it is very difficult for her to get a post suited to her needs in London. The whole profession seems to be in a chaotic condition, and the chances through advertisement are haphazard and unsatisfactory. Employment bureaux maintain that there are more good posts than there are qualified women to fill them, but individual secretaries are timid about giving up unsatisfactory posts as they do not know how to get better. Take the case of a private secretary to a Member of Parliament. He loses his seat, retires to the country, and gives up his London secretary. He gives her a number of introductions. These lead to nothing, and she is forced into the competition of the City. Her particular training is of no use in a commercial office, and her value falls to 30s. a week. A woman with an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting 12s. and the other 25s. a week. The private secretary who lives in, has usually excellent food and pleasant surroundings, but in some cases the life is a solitary one. Unless there is a governess or other educated employeé in the household, she has no companionship. The salary varies from £30 to £120 and sometimes more. There is apparently no fixed rate. One lady writes: "For two years I lived in the house of Sir----, the most hopelessly isolated and uninteresting existence, within the four walls of his study. A secretary should certainly stick out for a free week-end once a month when living in. Isolation is horribly bad for one." The secretary living in with congenial literary or medical people, where she is made one of the family circle, has a happier time, but the payment is not high. Apart from salary, the conditions in which the woman clerk works are by no means ideal. Twenty years ago, in a far northern city, there was a flourishing new school where over thirty girls of from fifteen to twenty were being taught shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, and all that goes to the making of a fully-equipped clerk. This school was the first experiment of the kind in an enterprising community. As the pupils qualified, with Pitman certificates of varying degrees of speed, at the end of six months or longer, the way in which old-fashioned lawyers accepted the innovation of attractive young women on their clerical staff, seemed almost magical. Decorum relegated the young women to separate rooms from the rest of the employeés, and the formality in the bearing of heads of departments towards these pioneer females must have been gratifying to Mrs Grundy. So superior to human exigencies seemed these dignified men, that the subject of lavatory accommodation for young women, mewed up from 9 to 1 and from 2 to 5.30, was not mentioned. Woman's modesty, if it were to reach the high standard made for her by man, had to come before her health or comfort. Although typists of all grades have multiplied by thousands[1] during the past twenty years--in London alone there are over 25,000 women clerks and secretaries--there is still need for adequate inspection of sanitary accommodation for women workers of this class. Apart altogether from sanitary accommodation, common sense would seem to suggest that, in the case of any one who has to turn out decent typing, a regular supply of hot water is a necessity for washing hands that may have to change a ribbon or do the many little messy jobs that typing involves. In a lecture before the Fabian Women's Group in February 1912, Miss Florence, of the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, said: "With regard to the sanitary conditions--these as a rule are bad, especially where there is only one woman. The difficulty has been shirked by the women themselves in a great many cases.... I do not see how these can be altered except by improving the status and position of women, so that they may become strong enough to say they will not have it if it is too bad." Who is to dictate what is "too bad"? Surely the only remedy is to have a proper standard of decency enforced by law. Women as a rule are fools on this subject, and will endure almost any discomfort, rather than complain. In giving evidence before the Royal Commission, in May last year, concerning the conditions of employment and their effect on the health of Civil Service female typists and shorthand writers, Miss Charlesworth, Honorary Secretary of the Civil Service Typists' Association, said: "The statistics as regards sickness relating to our class are almost too small to be of very much use.... I may say from experience that they are greatly influenced by the conditions under which the work is done. In my own department (Local Government Board) our average absence from sickness in the old office, where we were much overcrowded, varied between ten and fourteen days a year, while in our new office the average has steadily gone down from twelve to a fraction over six last year.... It is very striking that there has been that reduction in the average number of days' absence per year from sickness, from twelve to six in four years while we have been working under better conditions ... that means a less number of typing machines in one room, more light to work by and more air--better rooms to work in." This evidence is interesting, as the worst conditions that could possibly exist in the lofty rooms of a Government office, where everything is on a big scale and there is a certain standard of comfort, must be superior to the majority of commercial offices, especially in London, where space is so expensive. Think of four girls taking shorthand notes by telephone in a room with thirty typewriting machines working at once! There are no figures available with regard to the health of women clerks generally. The common ailments are neuritis, anaemia, and nervous breakdown. Typing is also a strain on the eyesight and hearing. Miss Charlesworth says that in her experience it is the girls who are not suited for the work who suffer most from ill-health. One typing office and school, of high repute for excellence of work, had rooms so dark that electric light was always used in one or other of them during part of the day. No sun ever entered the work-rooms. The salaries were good, but overtime was paid at only 6d. an hour. There was a sort of compulsion, too, to work overtime; some of the best typists, occasionally even stayed all night during excessive rushes of work. No holidays were paid for, and it was regarded as disloyalty on the part of a clerk to stay away for sickness. There was an instance of a girl being dismissed because she stayed away a fortnight owing to influenza. This particular firm recently moved into bigger, brighter rooms, not out of humanity to its staff, but because the lease had run out. Where competition is as keen as in the typing business, it is often the case that the comfort of employeés is considered as little as is compatible with running the place at a profit. There seems to be no inspection, and there is no law to say how many typists may be worked together, or what limit of noise shall be endured by them. Everything is ruled by the individual standard of decency of the employer. Many well-educated girls enter typing offices for the excellent practical training to be had, and for the short time they remain they are willing to put up with severe discipline and some personal discomfort. There are, of course, typing offices with as high a level of comfort and decency as the most exacting law would prescribe. Many of the big engineering firms and City houses have most comfortable and even luxurious quarters for their women clerks. In old days in the above-mentioned northern school, it was possible to get complete teaching as a clerk--excellent teaching, too--for a guinea a term. There were some shorthand typists whose training cost them only that initial guinea and the fees of the supplementary course of evening classes, 5s. and 10s. according to the number of subjects. In London at that time a year's course in the same subjects cost as much as 60 guineas at some of the chief typing schools. The fee nowadays, at one of the foremost London schools for a secretarial course for six months only, is 60 guineas; a year's course is £100.[2] This includes book-keeping and shorthand correspondence in one foreign language, besides shorthand and typing, etc. The best testimony shows that a year is altogether too long for an intelligent well-educated girl of eighteen or more to spend on technical training.[3] Mr James Oliphant, writing in _The School World_ for July 1913 on the subject of secretarial training for girls, says: ".... It is to be noted that the curriculum in girls' schools is of a much more reasonable character than that which is commonly provided for boys, and that the more completely it is fitted to supply a good general education, the better it would be adapted to the special needs of those who wish to become clerks or secretaries. It would seem eminently desirable that such aspirants should continue at the secondary school between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, being provided with a specialised course of study ... but whenever it is possible it would be well to insist that no subject should be included which is not generally educative in the widest sense. The acquisition of such mechanical arts as stenography and typewriting should be relegated to technical colleges where, according to general testimony, proficiency can be gained by well-educated girls in a period varying from six to nine months. 'Commercial correspondence' is an abomination; a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary forms of letter-writing should be imparted in every course of English composition ... while the special jargon of each business or office can be readily acquired by any intelligent girl when it becomes necessary." There is every variety of price at the various technical training schools all over the country, from a guinea to £100. With regard to the training given in non-technical schools, the capable head of a well-equipped West End typing office writes: "It is a pity the ordinary schools are taking it up. I know of at least one so-called secondary school which makes a speciality of 'Commercial Training.' The girls who take up the subject are quite the wrong kind, with absolutely no real education,... and are ready to accept anything in the way of salary. The really good schools where the girls remain till they are 18 or 19 give a better training, of course.... But I do not think the schools have any right to undertake a specialised vocational training; it must lower the standard. Every other profession has its special training after a good general education has been acquired." The best-known societies for protecting the interests of women clerks and secretaries are, the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries at 12 Buckingham Street, Strand, and the National Union of Clerks at 186-188 Bishopsgate Street. These are the only approved societies under the National Insurance Act. The Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries has been in existence for eight years, and during the last year has more than trebled its members, the clerks' attitude towards combination having recently changed somewhat, in London at any rate. The Association has a devoted secretary and does excellent work. Its aims are: (1) To raise the status of women clerks and secretaries, and to encourage a higher standard of practical training. (2) To secure a just remuneration for all grades. (3) To render legal aid and give advice to members, and to benefit generally the clerical and secretarial profession for women. (4) To maintain a registry for women clerks and secretaries, and to watch for openings for members of the Association. (5) To establish and maintain an Approved Society under the National Insurance Act, 1911, for the benefit of Women Clerks and Secretaries. The Association is not yet, however, strong enough to form a recognised union able to fix a minimum education qualification for membership. An important conference was held by this Association in May last at the University of London. Every speaker emphasised the need for better and wider education before taking up the profession, and there was unanimity of opinion that no girl should be allowed to start the technical part until she was at least sixteen. A remark of Mrs W.L. Courtney, who was one of the speakers, is well worth quoting: "One of the cleverest women I ever knew, who was an amateur indexer, said to me one day, 'It does not matter in doing this work about being clever; what matters is to have lived.'" There is not much chance then for the school-girl of sixteen.[4] The National Union of Clerks is conducted with energy and enlightenment. It has increased its membership by nearly 8,000 in the last twelve months, and one of the best reasons it offers women clerks for joining, is that it is the only National Society for Clerks that has always accepted women as members on equal terms as men. There are 1,000 women in a membership of 10,000. Notwithstanding the hard work these two societies are doing, there is nothing like the response there should be from women clerks. It is only the exceptional woman clerk who has yet developed anything like a corporate conscience. The reason is partly that she is often an isolated being. Where there is a large number of clerks together, as in the Civil Service, there is no lack of the right spirit. Here are a few of the causes of the overstocking of the clerical market by women. Almost any one can be a clerk of a kind. The training is cheap and easily obtainable. Many parents want their children to bring in money early, and this seems an easy way. A large percentage of young girls (in 1907-1909, 87 per cent.) who fail to pass Civil Service examinations, try to become clerks. Some time ago there was an article in a daily newspaper entitled "The Passing of the 15s.-a-week-Girl." She is with us in larger numbers than ever, however, and she has added to her numbers a 10s.-a-week-girl and even a cheaper girl, as we have seen. We meet her daily in Tube and 'bus, looking remarkably attractive, in spite of foolish shoes and a bad habit of eating four-penny lunches. The chief charge some of her fellow clerks have against her, apart from her inferior work, is that she only makes use of typing as a road to marriage. The other class of offender is the daughter of well-to-do parents. Typing is regarded as a ladylike employment, and parents, who would never expect their daughters to be self-supporting, are glad for them to earn pocket money or just enough for dress. According to Mr Elvin of the National Union of Clerks, even in prosperous times there are always 3 per cent. of unemployed clerks. In bad times the percentage must be greater. Whether the times are good or bad, young girls with the most elementary education are being turned out by hundreds from typing schools. The only remedy is that the output of clerks should be restricted; no one should be allowed to become a clerk who has not reached a certain standard of efficiency. The parents are the chief offenders. Many of them do not seem to have the necessary energy or intelligence to find out for what their daughters are best fitted. Advisory Committees are wanted in connection with all elementary and secondary schools. Of the girl typists and shorthand writers who resigned from the Civil Service from 1894 to 1906 for various causes, 17 per cent. left to take up other work. The lady superintendent in one of the Civil Service typing rooms pointed out a girl and said: "That girl would have made an excellent milliner or a kindergarten teacher, but she is not at all suited for this work." The chief grievance of the really efficient woman clerk and secretary is that she has not enough scope. One woman writes: "If the various firms and professions who employ girls as typists were to give them an insight into the business, whatever it might be, it would add enormously to the enthusiasm of the worker. In America they do this very often. The wonderful Miss Alice Duckin, the lady skyscraper builder, was once a typist. When she entered the firm they allowed her full scope to develop, and she mastered the building trade and is now the chief partner of Messrs Duckin and Lass. There is one firm of lawyers in London who allow their typists to attend the Law Courts, and give them work to do which is usually reserved for men. Only under such conditions can the profession expand." There is often a chance for a secretary in a newspaper office to develop into a journalist. But there are instances when the private secretary, who begins writing for the paper on which she is employed, is told that she was engaged not as a contributor but as an efficient secretary. One girl who had been for ten years private secretary to a literary man in London, horrified her relatives, and gave her employer a shock, by suddenly throwing up her much-envied post and entering herself at a hospital for a particularly strenuous kind of nursing. Her salary as secretary was 35s. a week; she had a comfortable room of her own to work in, a good annual holiday, and other blessings. Her chief said "good morning" and "good evening" to her, but she saw no one else, and frequently she had technical German translations in the evenings, for which she got nothing extra. Her chief did not know German, and thought she did the translations as easily as she wrote shorthand. Her whole work was moderately interesting, but the dullness of her life became insupportable. Another private secretary at the end of fifteen years in an excellent post, opened a tea-shop. An Edinburgh woman sends the following interesting statement:-- "Secretarial work seems to me one of the most congenial for educated women. In Edinburgh the prospects are excellent. The headmasters and mistresses of all the large schools, medical men, dentists, university professors, managing editors of our great printing and publishing houses, several of whom are editing encylopaedias, need a fair number of women secretaries. And there is not a sufficient supply for the law offices of which Edinburgh has such a large number. "The conditions are in need of some kind of organised supervision, particularly where everything depends on an individual employer. In my first post with a medical specialist, for instance, my time was never my own; my work began at 9 and often did not end at midnight. Sunday work was quite common; there were no Saturday afternoons off, but I had free hours here and there which it was impossible to utilise. "Another post I had was ideal. I worked for two men, for one of whom I spent the morning in a pathological laboratory. Here I did nothing but research work and writing. In the afternoon I did general correspondence and assistant editing of one of the medical journals. I had free evenings and Saturday afternoons. It is an excellent plan to work for two men, as it gives variety and may often be more remunerative, although for myself I never had more than £100 a year. There is lack of organisation in this profession, and posts are difficult to get by registry or advertisement. I have never found a Women's Employment Bureau of any use whatever. I have got everything by personal recommendation." A common grievance seems to be the amount of overtime imposed on many clerks, sometimes paid for, but often obligatory whether paid for or not. There is a naive arrangement in the Civil Service Typing Department. It seems that the typists are allowed 9d. or 10d. an hour for overtime up to a limit of fifteen hours a month, but any overtime beyond that is not paid for. In the Minutes of Evidence before the Royal Commission we read:-- "_Commissioner_. Is any other time beyond that (15 hours a month) ever exacted? "_Superintendent_. Yes. "_Commissioner_. Are they ever required to work longer than that? "_Superintendent_. Yes. "_Commissioner_. And are they not paid for it? "_Superintendent_. No. "_Commissioner_. What is the reason for that? "_Superintendent_. The Treasury laid it down in their minute. "_Commissioner_. Have you questioned it? "_Superintendent_. Yes, we have many times asked the Treasury to allow the department to pay for more, but so far as I know, in no case has it been allowed, and at this present time (May 1912), in the London Telephone Service all shorthand-typists and typists and superintendents are doing a great deal of overtime, but only 15 hours in a month of 4 weeks is paid for. Superintendents are not paid at all for overtime. The only reason, apparently, for the limitation is that the salaries are so close that if shorthand-typists were paid for more overtime than 15 hours they would be earning more than the superintendents." It seems impossible to tell as yet how the working of the National Insurance Act will affect women clerks. The secretary of the Information Bureau of the Woman's Institute says that, as far as she knows, good offices continue to pay their clerks their salaries in cases of illness, only making a deduction of the 7s. 6d. paid as insurance money. To sum up, there is urgent need for better organisation among clerks and secretaries. They should be graded in some way, so that the efficient who are out of work may easily be brought in touch with employers. The societies reach only a small proportion of the workers, many of whom do not even know of their existence. It must be remembered that a difficulty in the way of men and women clerks combining, is that women of good education, sometimes in possession of degrees, find themselves in competition with men of an inferior social class. A large proportion of the best secretaries are the daughters of professional men. The average woman clerk is invariably a person of better education and manners than the male clerk at the same salary. In the next place, better sanitation and better working conditions must be secured. Only last year, a firm employing hundreds of men and a dozen women, had no separate lavatory for the women. It is to the interest of the employer of women clerks to look after their health and to provide rest rooms. Anti-feminists are positive as to women's "inferior physique," but their practice as employers is too often inconsistent with their opinions. Most important of all, women clerks and secretaries want more scope. After ten years of clerking and secretarying they find that they are up against a dead wall. There is no prospect of advancement, and no call on their initiative. In private secretarial work this is not always the fault of the employer; it is often inherent in the nature of the work. Unless the secretary has, say, literary or journalistic ability and develops in that way, she is worth little more to her chief, if he is a literary man, after fifteen years than she was at the end of ten. There may be progress from a less desirable to a more desirable post, but there can be no advancement in the work itself. As a training, however, a private post is incomparable. With the woman who works for a commercial firm, it is a different matter. Women of the best type who do this work, have a right to complain when they are without chance of promotion. They feel that they should be given the same opportunity of rising in the business, whatever it may be, as is open to any intelligent office boy. The reply of the employer is, that while the office boy, if promoted and given increasing pay, may be expected to stay with the firm for a lifetime, there is not the same certainty of continuity of service from women clerks, who may at any time leave to get married. There are cases, however, where women have stayed on after marriage when it has been made worth their while. One woman who entered a firm as a young girl, continued with the firm after marriage, and is now, as a widow, working for the same employers. There is no reason why such cases should be exceptional. The calling, the conditions of which we have been considering, suffers from its accessibility to the half trained and undisciplined of various social grades. When, however, the righteous complaint of the employer against the incompetent and scatter-brained has been heard, the fact remains that among women clerks and secretaries there is an exceptionally large proportion who give, for a moderate return and limited prospects of advancement, conscientious, loyal, and skilful service. [Footnote 1: See Appendix II., p. 317.] [Footnote 2: Satisfactory secretarial training may be obtained in London from reliable teachers for a fee of 25 guineas for a year's course. It is, however, necessary to make searching enquiries before arranging to enter any school, as some of these neither give a sound training, nor obtain posts for their pupils as their advertisements promise. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 3: First rate secretarial preparation includes more than merely technical instruction. It gives a sound business training as well, and, in addition, insists on one or more foreign languages. A girl who hopes to become something more than a shorthand-typist ought not to scamp her professional training: this should, of course, follow her school-course--_i.e._, not begin until she is seventeen or eighteen. Graduates, who have specialised in foreign languages, may also advantageously prepare for the better secretarial posts. [EDITOR.]] [Footnote 4: Apart from monetary prospects altogether, no girl should be allowed to enter the profession until she is old enough and wise enough to protect herself, should need arise, from the undesirable employer, who may insult her with unwelcome attentions. The possibility of such annoyance is an additional reason for all clerks to join a Trade Union, which helps individuals to insist on proper conditions of work. [EDITOR.]] SECTION VII ACTING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN I do not know that the first actress who ever faced the public told her friends that _the_ profession was not all paint and glitter, because being a pioneer, and so treading on the corns of custom, she was held as an unwomanly creature, and had unpleasant things thrown at her, as well as words. So her impressions are not recorded. But when women had settled down into the work, and were allowed to represent themselves in the theatre (a privilege not as yet accorded to them elsewhere), they announced practically and forcibly that all that glittered was not gold, and that a successful, much-loved heroine did not invariably tread the rosy path without finding the proverbial thorns. The word "hardship" often repeated by successful artists, is accepted by the public as a truism, which affects their attitude towards the stage as a career about as much as the statement that the world is round, when in their eyes it appears disappointingly flat. Yet the word "hardship" has a meaning which most hurts those who have most capacity for pain, and who are specially sensitive to humiliations, disappointments, and discomforts--artists. But there are compensations, urges the outsider: good pay, congenial work, and fame. If there are hardships what a glittering prize compensates for the suffering! Let us at once grant the compensations which the few achieve. The few make world-wide reputations, large salaries, and many devoted friends: their life is full of interesting and successful work. But the average individual is in the great majority, and the many spend all and obtain nothing, trying to obtain a bargain which is no bargain: a bargain in which there is something to sell and no one to buy--even our average actress has something to sell, something worth buying--composed of talent, ambition, long study, and application. There are, of course, many more successful women in the theatre than there used to be, owing to the tremendous opening up of this means of livelihood; but though the successful are more abundant, there is, alas! no doubt a growing number of unsuccessful workers in this very much over-crowded market. In fact, it is becoming a profession in which it is only possible to survive if the worker has some private means, or a supplementary trade. I believe that this question of a supplementary trade requires consideration, and am, myself, at present working on the subject, in the hope that a scheme may be evolved to ensure those willing to work an opportunity of gaining a livelihood during the long "resting" periods. This waiting for work is almost universally the largest part of an actress's life; and any satisfaction in the magnitude of the wages which may be obtained must always be balanced by the knowledge that an enormous number of weeks must be taken into consideration, when work is quite unattainable. Here is one of the gravest disabilities of the profession. Only continuous work can develop the powers of any artist, and this is particularly true of the art of the theatre. Under the present conditions an artist is, with an entire want of reason, raised to a pinnacle of importance when playing a good part in a successful play; but she may with equal suddenness be dashed into a gulf of failure and non-productiveness, also without reason. There have been many artists, who at the end of a brilliant run of a successful play, to the success of which they have largely contributed, have found themselves forgotten by the powers that be, and have discovered with bitter disappointment that a successful run may result in being left utterly ignored, without a single offer of work. The Christmas pantomime and the summer season cut down the actor's year to forty weeks. From information which I was able to obtain from the Actor's Association, the average yearly income of an actor is £70. From this, £37 may be deducted for travelling and other expenses. For though the actual railway fare is usually paid, no allowance is made for conveyance of luggage from station to lodgings, and the constant change of quarters naturally makes the weekly expenditure on a higher scale. On these figures the average weekly earnings of an actor would be 12s. 6d., or 1s. 9d. per day. This is the average income of an actor when working, but under present conditions, the average day for an average actress is one in which she looks for work. So let us take the average day of the average actress, and see how she spends it. After leaving her tiny, grubby back room in Bloomsbury (time and fares prohibit a bigger, better room in the suburbs), where she has cleaned her own shoes, ironed her blouse and sewn in frilling before starting, she walks down to an agent. The waiting-room there has a couple of forms, which are already filled, and groups of girls have been standing for some time. They have all had insufficient breakfasts, badly served and ill-cooked; they all wear cheap and uncomfortable shoes, too thin for wet pavements; they are all obliged to put on a desperately photographic pose and expression, in case the agent's eyes light on them. One or two, better dressed and more self-possessed, secure interviews and pass out by another door. No information about the part is to be procured, they are all there "on the chance." At half past one the agent comes out for lunch, saying, as he passes through the room, "No use waiting, ladies; no one else wanted to-day." Our average friend has stayed for three hours, knowing no one to speak to, and leaves no nearer her goal for her morning's congenial work. She lunches on sandwiches and tea, re-arranges her hat and veil, and starts out with fresh hope to use her one letter of introduction to the manager of a West End theatre. She hands it to a door-keeper, who may possibly be considerate, but cannot offer her a chair. There is no waiting-room; she waits in a draughty, tiny passage, stage hands constantly squeezing by her. There is a rehearsal; she must wait, or come back in an hour's time. She walks round and looks into the shops in Leicester Square, and returns thoroughly fatigued and a little pale, at four o'clock. She is shown into an office, and by virtue of her letter of introduction is asked to sit down. A few questions are put to her about her past work: she does not know what part the manager has in mind, and puts forward inept qualifications. In two or three minutes the important man has formed his opinion of her face, carriage, expression, and has decided if he will remember her or not. Her name being average, the odds are that he will not; but he murmurs, "If anything turns up, I will let you know," and her big chance is over. There is nothing approaching an audition, such as a singer gets. It is the only opportunity afforded her, this poor and hopeless method of proving her capacity as an actress. It leaves her poorer for the day's outlay in food. She walks back to the little room, her foothold in London--the great art market. This is a "congenial" day's work, which may be repeated for weeks, and it occurs on an average in every three months. The adventure of it stales very quickly. Let there be no mistake in the mind of the reader. This is not only the experience of a would-be actress, a well-trained, medal-laden aspirant from one of the good dramatic schools, but is one of the bitter and frequent experiences of the thoroughly capable, trained, and occasionally well-salaried actress, who has failed to arrive, during her eighteen to twenty years of experience, at the much coveted, and supposedly safe position at the top of the theatrical ladder. Suppose our average actress is lucky, and her letter of introduction gains her a small part in the London production. Into her three lines she tries to crowd all she can of what she has learned from teachers and experience. It is her opportunity. She has stepped forward amongst those fortunate ones whose names are mentioned in the programme. She starts for rehearsal happily enough from the little room in Bloomsbury, passes the door-keeper without question, and takes up her stand in the wings. There she stays three hours. She has companionship in hushed whispers, and the right to exist. At two o'clock her act has not yet been reached, and the artists are allowed to leave the theatre for half an hour to get lunch. As she is not paid for rehearsals, she cannot afford more than sixpence for a meal; so her repast is necessarily a light one. At five, rehearsal is dismissed, and she has gone through her part twice. Five minutes would cover her actual acting for the day; and having stood about for nearly six hours she walks back home to her room. As the play nears production, the rehearsal hours lengthen, and the lunch times shorten. Her own hoard of savings offer her less and less to spend on food, and when finally the play is produced--let us face the worst--it not infrequently occurs that the run of the piece may end in three weeks. She has rehearsed for four weeks, has been glad to accept £2 for her tiny part, and out of that short run, which represents £6, she must save enough to tide her over the next few weeks, or perhaps months, until she gets her next engagement, more unpaid rehearsals, and perhaps another short run. There is always wearing anxiety, and the unpleasing, thankless, humiliating searching for work, under the most distasteful conditions possible. There is now an effort being made by a few of the London managers to pay a percentage on salaries for rehearsing. The movement, I think, is partially due to the Insurance Act, which, of course, touches all the low paid labour in the theatre. This effort, though obviously of importance, can hardly as yet be considered as quite satisfactory. The payments for five weeks' rehearsals are 6s. on the £1, 1s. salaries, which include dancers, walkers-on, etc.: and 12s. 6d. a week on salaries of £3. In each case, of course, the threepence insurance has to be deducted, and it must be quite clear that no woman can live on 5s. 9d., much less make a good appearance, unless she has other means of support. She may get an engagement to tour for a limited number of weeks. If so, she gazes in despair at her small wardrobe, trying to puzzle out three costumes to be used in the play, for actresses going on tour have usually to provide their own dresses. A friend of mine played the leading part on the tour of a West End production. She had to find all her own dresses, hats, shoes, stockings, etc., and her salary was £3, 10s. a week. In a "boiled-down" version she played twice nightly for £5 a week, and found four dresses, two hats, an evening cloak, besides the shoes, stockings, gloves, etc., incidental to a well dressed part. Another soubrette on a salary of £2, 5s. paid her fare both on joining and leaving the company, and was obliged to provide two dresses, one evening dress and cloak, shoes, stockings, etc. The average salaries in melodrama are £4 a week, out of which must be provided many dresses. The "heavy lead" or "adventuress" type, generally magnificently attired, gets about £3 a week. In London, of course, in the West End productions, dresses are provided, but the engagement is not for a definite period as it would be on a tour, and a curious difficulty arises through this arrangement, since the actress who has once been beautifully dressed has a natural and very comprehensible predilection thenceforward to continue to be so delightfully gowned. Her own opinion as to what a dress should cost almost invariably, after a London engagement, ceases to be on a level with what her yearly income should permit. Clothes assume a horrible importance not known in other trades, since her appearance may mean her livelihood as a worker; for do we not know of engagements which have been made when the angle of a hat has exactly coincided with the mood of the manager who is engaging his company? So our little average actress, starting off on tour, patches and manoeuvres to have a satisfactory appearance, and is painfully self-conscious of deficiencies when the eyes of the manager, or the more well-to-do sharers of the dressing-room, appear to enquire too closely into details. One of my first successes was a triumphant one for my sister; since an evening blouse, ingeniously concocted from a table-centre, received some long notices in the Press. Theatrical lodgings, when one's salary is 25s. a week, are not always the most pleasing in the town. Rheumatic fever and other unpleasant illnesses have been contracted from damp beds, when the landlady, in her desire to live up to the degree of cleanliness expected of her, returns the sheets too quickly to the so-lately vacated bed; because, with one company leaving in the morning, and another arriving at tea-time, there are not many hours to clean out a room, and wash and iron the only pair. The lodgings are usually extremely bad and dirty, and generally in the least attractive and most unsavoury quarters of the town. The food is generally unappetising and cooked with very little intelligence. There have been many cases of women finding themselves in disreputable houses; and even recommended lodgings have been found empty on arrival, the police having raided them. I feel very strongly that the only comfortable and dignified way to meet this difficulty is to have a regular chain of clubs, on the principle of the Three Arts Club. Recently, in the correspondence of a leading "Daily," I read a letter in which a man wrote that actresses on tour were able to perfect themselves as wives and housekeepers. This throws a curious side-light on the ignorance of people in general with regard to the theatre. Actresses may, and do, become admirable workers, wives, and housekeepers; but this is rather from the hardships of their lives than from any possibility of developing a natural aptitude for housekeeping whilst travelling week after week from town to town, and living in rooms where the cleaning and cooking are done by the landlady. As all domestic work is undertaken by the people who let the rooms, the days go slowly, and there is absolutely nothing of interest to do. If our average actress is with a successful play, her engagement may be a long one; and she lives through the discomforts, buoyed up by the hope of further opportunities, and a swelling account at the Post Office. The happiest of all existences, for an actress, despite hard work and much study, is in a repertory theatre. The opportunities are great; ambition is not thwarted at every step; the day is filled with hard study, but the nights result in greater or smaller achievement. Everybody with whom she comes in contact is working as hard and earnestly as she is. Life invigorating, progressive, uplifting, is hers. To-night she is conscious she was not quite her best, but next week, when the play is done again, she will work to make that point real, she will laugh more naturally, cry more movingly, progress a little further on the way to realise her dream of perfect expression, free from worry and anxiety, free to work. Having achieved a certain amount of experience on tour and in London, and being more or less proficient in her profession, does not, however, ensure an increase in the actor's value. A domestic servant receives a character, which is, if satisfactory, a sure means of employment; a teacher, inspector, etc., has a certificate which is a pronouncement of efficiency; but however great the achievement of the theatre there is no lasting sign of your work, and the want of definite aim is mentally demoralising. I have heard men say, and I think not unjustly, that as many of these women are practically "on the rocks," they will do anything for money; and this brings one to a question which looms largely when considering unskilled trades. The unskilled, pleasure-loving, short-sighted but ambitious girl, is apt to lose her sense of values, and to be an easy and sometimes very willing victim. If she be attractive, the eye of a powerful person may alight upon her, and several shades of temptations are placed before her. Not only money, and the advantages which an outward show of prosperity may bring with it; not only amusements and luxuries; but a much more dangerous and difficult temptation, which is not possible in other trades, is placed before the worker--the offer of greater opportunities in her work, the opportunities which an "understudy" may bring in its train; the opportunity of a small part; the gratification of ambition. There is no more immorality than in other trades, but there is an amount of humiliating and degrading philandering, a mauling sensuality which is more degrading than any violent abduction. To be immoral a certain amount of courage is required; but the curse of modern theatrical conditions is this corrupt debauchery. Many girls have come to me explaining their difficulties, and many in asking my advice ended up with the persistent cry of the modern woman, "I do so want to get on!" This is a transitional stage in the world, as well as in the theatre. When women are more intelligent and independent, there will not be the same amount of selling themselves for the necessities of existence. They will be able to secure the necessities, and a large number of the luxuries, for themselves--one of the reasons, doubtless, why the reactionaries cry out so loudly against the woman's movement. People love power over others; they love to control their destinies; and there is a very large number of men who drift towards the theatre, and like to consider the poor little butterflies as creatures of a different species from their wives and daughters--a species provided by a material Providence, who supplies their other appetites. The poor little butterflies are glad, for a short time, to put up with stupidity and egoism for the sake of a temporary relief from sordid discomfort and gloom. Of course, I am not speaking of the women who, without economic pressure, lead an illicit life. There are a few of these women who are more than able to protect themselves, and occasionally avenge their sisters. Of course, there are also theatres which are obviously dependent for their great success upon this "oldest profession in the world": theatres where a fairly good salary is offered with the suggestion that it is as well to sup at some well-known restaurant, at least three times a week; to drive to the theatre in a motor car, and to be dressed by one of the famous dressmakers, whose names are given with the salary. There are theatres where an eye is kept on the number of stalls which are filled by the employed. But on the tours of these successes, the managers are often very strict in their regulations, and do everything to prevent those employed from supplementing their incomes in this manner. There are, unfortunately, too many women who still believe in dependence, so the supply is quite as great as the demand. To the real artist who is deeply centred in her work, this particular evil is of practically little importance. A great belief in her own powers enables her to push aside opportunities which are not genuine. Men are also human, and if met frankly and straightforwardly in work, or for that matter, out of it, are as capable of honest, helpful good fellowship as any woman. In fact, the work of the theatre, which employs men and women, on more or less equal terms, is a splendid place to find out that humanity is not limited to sexual problems, and that the spirit of work removes these limitations, and gives place to a healthy, invigorating atmosphere of _camaraderie_. It is quite a false idea that a move in the wrong direction is in any way necessary to success. Something must be said with regard to the sanitation and ventilation of the theatre. Though there has been latterly a great effort to improve the dressing-rooms in the new buildings, there is still a great deal to be remedied. Here is a description of a dressing-room used by a young artist in a modern West End theatre. "We were seven in a room which just held seven small toilet tables on a shelf running round the wall, and a narrow walking space from the door to the window in between. This dressing-room was two floors below the level of the street, and the one window opened on a passage covered with thick glass, so that there was no direct air channel. Next door was a man's urinal used by about forty men--actors, stage hands, and scene shifters. A pipe from this place came through the dressing-room; the smell sometimes, even in the winter, was overpowering; and we ourselves bought Sanitas and kept sprinkling it on the floor of the room and the passage. Added to this was the fact that the stairs from the stage led straight down facing the entrance of this men's urinal, and not infrequently the door would be open and shut as we came down, and it was altogether very objectionable." The report of a young artist who toured for some time with a comedy sketch in the music halls shows equally bad conditions. This sketch was sent out by a first rate London management, and the halls visited were on the first-class tours. She told me that in one of the largest towns in England the Music Hall had only one ladies' lavatory, which was on the stage exactly behind the back-drop. A horse was necessary for an Indian sketch on the same bill in which the comedy sketch was played, and the recess by the lavatory was found to be the only safe place to stable the horse. The door of the ladies' lavatory was therefore nailed up for the week. Should anyone wish, she could, on explaining to the ushers in the front of the house, receive a pass of admission to the ladies' cloakroom, but to reach the front of the house meant a walk of four minutes round a complete block, and, even if it had not been winter time, it is almost impossible for any actress, when once dressed for her part, to go into the street without attracting a great deal of notice, and also very likely entirely spoiling her appearance, as theatrical "make-up" is only meant for the dry atmosphere of the theatre. On this same tour, in a famous south coast resort, this lady had to dress in an underground dressing-room with twelve others, and the only lavatory for women's use was opposite the stage-door box, where all letters were called for, and the stage hands lounged about the whole evening. In the most important town on this tour the dressing-room in which she was directed to dress had, for its sole ventilation, the door by which one entered, exactly facing the one general lavatory. The aperture, high up in the wall, opened into another room where, during this week, fifty cocks and hens, used in an animal turn, were kept. It would be quite impossible to describe the sickening smell which all this meant. The only thoroughly clean, sanitary hall which she visited, was in Scotland. In almost all the theatres, even where the conditions are considered above criticism, the lavatories reserved for the ladies are, by a curious arrangement, generally on the floor where most of the actors dress. They are almost invariably difficult to use, for as the dressing-rooms are usually allotted by men, there is little consideration of women's comfort in this matter. It is a curious side-light on the intelligence of men that they almost universally seem to think that women, by a special Providence, are exempt from these natural laws; and almost all women are still too Early Victorian to insist upon some change. Many of the old theatres in London and the provinces suffer from want of proper ventilation; and many of them are appallingly, incredibly dirty. In the provinces dressing-rooms are sometimes dripping with damp; and it is not an uncommon experience to share the room with mice and other vermin. It is only possible for me to touch very lightly on employment by the cinematograph firms; but from the enquiries I have made, the usual payment seems to be roughly from 5s. to 7s. 6d. a day, the workers finding their own clothes: 10s. 6d. if the workers can ride and swim: 3s. a day for walking on, when light meals are provided. There is a form of application to be filled in, which demands the following particulars:-- Height. Bust measurement. Waist measurement. Skirt length. Age. Line of work. Remarks. Ride horseback. Cycle. Swim. The pictures take about ten days to prepare, and as a supplementary trade, undoubtedly this work is of value to the actress. An evil which attacks the theatre of the present day is the horrible mantle of respectability which has settled on the profession. Respectability in Art is a blight which undermines, and the moment any worker or profession of workers is accepted on equal terms by the non-workers of the community, misery invariably ensues. It is impossible for a non-worker to comprehend the life of a worker, or to make any margin for the work, which, if we judge by the example of their own lives, they evidently despise. The restrictions which all honest work brings, along with its compensations, are annoying to ornamental parasites; and the contempt for restrictions is apt subtly to undermine the mind of the worker. There is no doubt that for the average actress, when such an enormous number of people are rushing into the theatrical profession, there is little security. The life of a successful actress is undoubtedly one of the very best, so far, open to women. It is not a fact that the best and greatest actresses are always the successful ones: but it is a truth that all the successful ones have some natural qualifications which have enabled them to gain that position. Then what is the matter with the theatre? and why has it become such a miserable life for the average worker? It is an unskilled trade, and the people who have control of the trade have a contempt for the average worker. They believe they can teach in a few weeks, what they have not, in years, succeeded in mastering themselves. The unfortunate worker is taught like a parrot, used for a short time, and then thrown on the scrap-heap of the unfit for the theatre, when the theatre has unfitted them for more honourable work. The employer is at the present moment a man, and a man will offer a salary of 30s. a week to a woman, because she will take 30s.: but he will not offer that sum to an actor. There is a subtle assumption that because women will take less, they are not entirely dependent on their work; and a manager will sometimes offer a large salary to a woman who drives up in a motor car, magnificently dressed, most obviously not dependent on her earnings; whilst the accomplished actress, without these powerful assets, and obviously dependent on her work, is paid practically a third of that salary. Let us sincerely hope that this transitional stage from the days when each town had its own theatre, and engagements were always for the season, to the waste and despair of the present conditions of the mass of the workers in the theatre of this country, may give place to some system which will select the fit from the unfit, and give them a permanent engagement with a proper clause of notice on either side, such as that to which workers in other trades are entitled. More care in selection; more belief that an actress, if she be of any use, can represent a diversity of types; a shutting of the doors on those who are obviously unfitted, however cheap their labour may be, would be salvation to the women who are trying to earn their bread in the theatre. For it is time we ceased to grovel before this misused word "Art," which covers the wasteful cruelty the present conditions in the theatre permit. APPENDIX I SCHEME OF WORK OF THE FABIAN WOMEN'S GROUP The Group was formed by some women members of the Fabian Society in 1908, chiefly with the object of studying the problem of women's economic independence in relation to socialism. The work was mapped out on the following lines, to which the Group has adhered:-- _Part I.--Differences in Ability for Productive Work Involved in Difference of Sex Function._ Division 1.--Natural disabilities of women when not actively engaged in childbearing. Division 2.--Natural disabilities of women when actively so engaged. _Part II.--Women's Economic Independence in Relation to Social Conditions._ Division 1.--Women as productive workers and as consumers in the past. Division 2.--Women as productive workers and as consumers in the present. _Part III.--Practical Steps towards such Modification of Social Conditions as will enable Women:_ (_a_) Freely to use and develop their physical and mental capacities in productive work, while remaining free and fully able to exercise their special function of childbearing. (_b_) Each personally to receive her individual share of the social wealth. Two Summaries of the lectures and discussions arising out of Part I. were issued for private circulation in 1910. Copies, 1d. each, can now be procured through the Fabian Office, 3 Clement's Inn, W.C. Fifteen papers of the Historical Series, Part II., Division I, have already been given, and the subjects considered in them have nearly covered the field of material at present available for the rough preliminary enquiry, in which the Group has led the way. When the series is finished, it is hoped to shape the material into essay form for publication. The present volume is the outcome of lectures and discussions arising out of Part II., Division 2. It is hoped that it may prove to be the first of a Series dealing with this part of the investigations undertaken by the Women's Group. APPENDIX II LATEST CENSUS RETURNS[1] OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE SEVEN PROFESSIONS CONSIDERED IN THIS BOOK Total. Unmarried. Married. Widowed. I. Teachers 187,283 171,480 11,798 4,005 II. Physicians, Surgeons 477 382 76 19 and Registered Practitioners III. Midwives, Sick Nurses, 83,662 55,288 11,867 16,507 Invalid Attendants IV. Poor Law, Municipal, 19,437 14,439 2,514 2,484 Parish, etc., Officers V. National Government 31,538 25,843 3,410 2,285 Employeés VI. Commercial or Business 117,057 114,429 1,733 895 Clerks VII. Actresses 9,171 5,259 3,540 372 In a volume which may be issued by the Census Office in February, some sub-divisions of the above headings will be made. Thus (1) teachers employed by Local Authorities will be separated from those in other schools; (2) the number of dentists (not included above) will be given; (3) the number of midwives will be shown separately; (4) Poor Law will be distinguished from other Local Government Service; (5) Post Office Servants will be distinguished from other Civil Servants; (6) clerks will, as far as possible, be classified according to the industry with which they are connected; (7) actresses in music-halls will, as far as possible, be distinguished from those in theatres. [Footnote 1: In connection with these returns of 1911, it must be remembered that a large number of women workers resisted the census in that year as a protest against their exclusion from citizenship. The above figures are, therefore, though official, unavoidably an understatement.] 
14798	----	made available by the Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14798-h.htm or 14798-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/7/9/14798/14798-h/14798-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/7/9/14798/14798-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through the Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University. See http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/ text-idx?c=hearth;idno=4282542 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls by SUE AINSLIE CLARK and EDITH WYATT New York The Macmillan Company 1911 [Illustration: Photograph by Lewis Hine] TO FLORENCE KELLEY THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE This book is composed of the economic records of self-supporting women living away from home in New York. Their chronicles were given to the National Consumers' League simply as a testimony to truth; and it is simply as a testimony to truth that these narratives are reprinted here. The League's inquiry was initiated because, three years ago in the study of the establishment of a minimum wage, only very little information was obtainable as to the relation between the income and the outlay of self-supporting women workers. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers' budgets as they were available from young women interviewed in their rooms, boarding places, and hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. Clark had collected and written these accounts, I supplemented them further in the same manner; and rearranged them in a series of articles for Mr. S.S. McClure. The budgets fell naturally into certain industrial divisions; but, as will be seen from the nature of the inquiry, the records were not exhaustive trade-studies of the several trades in which the workers were engaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of the yearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever the facts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed as to express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some industrial change. In two instances in the course of the serial publication of the budgets such industrial changes were undertaken and are now in progress. The firm of Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly day of rest, with pay, for all permanent women-employees who wish this privilege. The change was made first in one department and then extended through a plan supplied by the National Civic Federation to all the departments of the store. The Manhattan Laundrymen's Association, the Brooklyn Laundrymen's Association, and the Laundrymen's Association of New York State held a conference with the Consumers' League after the publication of the Laundry report, and asked to cooperate with the League in obtaining the establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, additional factory inspection, and the placing of hotels and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. Largely through the efforts of the Laundrymen's Association of New York State, a bill defining as a factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power passed both houses of the last legislature at Albany. A standard for a fair house was discussed and agreed upon at the conference. It is the intention of the League to publish within the year a white list of the New York steam laundries conforming to this standard in wages, hours, and sanitation. The New York of the workers is not the New York best known to the country at large. The New York of Broadway, the New York of Fifth Avenue, of Central Park, of Wall Street, of Tammany Hall,--these are by-words of common reference; and when two years ago the daily press printed the news of the strike of thirty thousand shirt-waist makers in the metropolis, many persons realized, perhaps for the first time, the presence of a new and different New York--the New York of the city's great working population. The scene of these budgets is a corner of this New York. The authors of the book are many more than its writers whose names appear upon the title-page. The second chapter is chiefly the word-of-mouth tale of Natalya Perovskaya, one of the shirt-waist workers, a household tale of adventure repeated just as it was told to the present writer and to her hostess' family and other visitors during a call on the East Side on a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is almost entirely the contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, three young college-bred women from Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley, respectively, who made an inquiry for the National Consumers' League in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam laundries of New York. The fifth chapter is composed largely from a chronicle of the New York cloak makers' strike written by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, one of the most efficient leaders in attaining the final settlement last fall between the employers and the seventy thousand members of the Cloak Makers' Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave the definition of "Scientific Management" which prefaces the last chapter. It is a pleasure to acknowledge help of several kinds received from Mrs. Florence Kelley, Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the Consumers' League; from Miss Neumann, of the Woman's Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis p. Brandeis; from Miss Willa Siebert Cather of _McClure's Magazine_; and from Mr. S.S. McClure. To record rightly any little corner of contemporary history is a communal rather than an individual piece of work. While no title so pompous as that of a cathedral could possibly be applied except with great absurdity to any magazine article, least of all to these quiet, journalistic records, yet the writing of any sincere journalistic article is more comparable, perhaps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in expression. If the account is to have any genuine social value as a narrative of contemporary truth, it will be evolved as the product of numerous human intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, so to speak, from many authors, from many authentic sources. Unstandardized conditions in women's work are so frequently mentioned in the first six chapters that their connection with the last chapter will be sufficiently clear. What is the way out of the unstandardized and unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for multitudes of women workers? Legislation is undoubtedly one way out. Trade organization is undoubtedly one way out. But legislation is ineffectual unless it is strongly backed by conscientious inspection and powerful enforcement. In the great garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of their victories, the trade orders have gone in such numbers to other cities that neither the spirit of the shirt-waist makers' strike nor the wisdom of the Cloak Makers' Preferential Union Agreement have since availed to provide sufficient employment for the workers. Further, neither legislation nor trade organization are permanently valuable unless they are informed by justice and understanding. In the same manner, unless it is informed by these qualities, the new plan of management outlined in the last chapter is incapable of any lasting and far-reaching industrial deliverance. But it provides a way out, hitherto untried. With an account of this way as it appears to-day our book ends, as a testimony to living facts can only end, not with the hard-and-fast wall of dogma, but with an open door. EDITH WYATT. CHICAGO, March 19, 1911. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN CHAPTER II THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE CHAPTER III THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS. (UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL WORK) CHAPTER IV THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS. (MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN SPEEDING) CHAPTER V THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP CHAPTER VI WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK CHAPTER VII SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK CHAPTER I THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN I One of the most significant features of the common history of this generation is the fact that nearly six million women are now gainfully employed in this country. From time immemorial, women have, indeed, worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire sex, living at ease at home heretofore, had suddenly been thrown into an unwonted activity, as many quoters of the census seem to believe. For the domestic labor in which women have always engaged may be as severe and prolonged as commercial labor. But not until recently have women been employed in multitudes for wages, under many of the same conditions as men, irrespective of the fact that their powers are different by nature from those of men, and should, in reason, for themselves, for their children, and for every one, indeed, be conserved by different industrial regulations. What, then, are the fortunes of some of these multitudes of women gainfully employed? What do they give in their work? What do they get from it? Clearly ascertained information on those points has been meagre. About two years ago the National Consumers' League, through the initiative of its Secretary, Mrs. Florence Kelley, started an inquiry on the subject of the standard of living among self-supporting women workers in many fields, away from home in New York. Among these workers were saleswomen, waist-makers, hat makers, cloak finishers, textile workers in silk, hosiery, and carpets, tobacco workers, machine tenders, packers of candy, drugs, biscuits, and olives, laundry workers, hand embroiderers, milliners, and dressmakers. The Consumers' League had printed for this purpose a series of questions arranged in two parts. The first part covered the character of each girl's work--the nature of her occupation, wages, hours, overtime work, overtime compensation, fines, and idleness. The second part of the questions dealt with the worker's expenses--her outlay for shelter, food, clothing, rest and recreation, and her effort to maintain her strength and energy. In this way the League's inquiry on income and outlay was so arranged as to ascertain, not only the worker's gain and expense in money, but, as far as possible, her gain and expense in health and vitality. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark.[1] The account of the income and outlay of self-supporting women away from home in New York may be divided, for purposes of record, into the chronicles of saleswomen, shirt-waist makers, women workers whose industry involves tension, such as machine operatives, and women workers whose industry involves a considerable outlay of muscular strength, such as laundry workers. Among these the narrative of the trade fortunes of some New York saleswomen is placed first. Mrs. Clark's inquiry concerning the income and outlay of saleswomen has been supplemented by portions of the records of another investigator for the League, Miss Marjorie Johnson, who worked in one of the department stores during the Christmas rush of 1909-1910. Further informal reports made by the shop-girls in the early summer of 1910 proved that the income and expenditures of women workers in the stores had remained practically unchanged since the winter of Mrs. Clark's report. So that it would seem that the budgets, records of the investigator, and statements given by the young women interviewed last June may be reasonably regarded as the most truthful composite photograph obtainable of the trade fortunes of the army of the New York department-store girls to-day.[2] The limitations of such an inquiry are clear. The thousands of women employed in the New York department stores are of many kinds. From the point of view of describing personality and character, one might as intelligently make an inquiry among wives, with the intent of ascertaining typical wives. The trade and living conditions accurately stated in the industrial records obtained have undoubtedly, however, certain common features. Among the fifty saleswomen's histories collected at random in stores of various grades, those that follow, with the statements modifying them, seem to express most clearly and fairly, in the order followed, these common features--low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of seasonal work. One of the first saleswomen who told the League her experience in her work was Lucy Cleaver, a young American woman of twenty-five, who had entered one of the New York department stores at the age of twenty, at a salary of $4.50 a week. II In the course of the five years of her employment her salary had been raised one dollar. She stood for nine hours every day. If, in dull moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the seats lawfully provided for employees, she was at once ordered by a floor-walker to do something that required standing. During the week before Christmas, she worked standing over fourteen hours every day, from eight to twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six in the afternoon, and half past six in the evening till half past eleven at night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long periods that some of the girls forego eating at noon in order to give themselves the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this overtime the store gave her $20, presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas gift. The management also allowed a week's vacation with pay in the summer-time and presented a gift of $10. After five years in this position she had a disagreement with the floor-walker and was summarily dismissed. She then spent over a month in futile searching for employment, and finally obtained a position as a stock girl in a Sixth Avenue suit store at $4 a week, a sum less than the wage for which she had begun work five years before. Within a few weeks, dullness of trade had caused her dismissal. She was again facing indefinite unemployment. Her income for the year had been $281. She lived in a large, pleasant home for girls, where she paid only $2.50 a week for board and a room shared with her sister. Without the philanthropy of the home, she could not have made both ends meet. It was fifteen minutes' walk from the store, and by taking this walk twice a day she saved carfare and the price of luncheon. She did her own washing, and as she could not spend any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17; 2 pairs of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, $4.98; underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, $194.50. This leaves a balance of $86.50. This money had paid for necessaries not itemized,--stockings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare, vacation expenses, every little gift she had made, and all recreation. She belonged to no benefit societies, and she had not been able to save money in any way, even with the assistance given by the home. So much for her financial income and outlay. After giving practically all her time and force to her work, she had not received a return sufficient to conserve her health in the future, or even to support her in the present without the help of philanthropy. She was ill, anæmic, nervous, and broken in health. Before adding the next budget, two points in Lucy Cleaver's outlay should, perhaps, be emphasized in the interest of common sense. The first is the remarkable folly of purchasing 24 waists at 98 cents each. In an estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the working girls' clubs of St. George's last year,[3] the girls agreed that comfort and a presentable appearance could be maintained, so far as expenditure for waists was concerned, on $8.50 a year. This amount allowed for five shirt-waists at $1.20 apiece, and one net waist at $2.50. In extenuation of Lucy Cleaver's weak judgment as a waist purchaser, and the poor child's one absurd excess, it must, however, be said that the habit of buying many articles of poor quality, instead of fewer articles of better quality, is frequently a matter, not of choice, but of necessity. The cheap, hand-to-mouth buying which proves paradoxically so expensive in the end is no doubt often caused by the simple fact that the purchaser has not, at the time the purchase is made, any more money to offer. Whatever your wisdom, you cannot buy a waist for $1.20 if you possess at the moment only 98 cents. The St. George's girls made their accounts on a basis of an income of $8 a week. Lucy Cleaver never had an income of more than $5.50 a week, and sometimes had less. The fact that she spent nearly three times as much as they did on this one item of expenditure, and yet never could have "one net waist at $2.50" for festal occasions, is worthy of notice. The other point that should be emphasized is the fact that she did her own washing. The more accurate statement would be that she did her own laundry, including the processes, not only of rubbing the clothes clean, but of boiling, starching, bluing, and ironing. This, after a day of standing in other employment, is a vital strain more severe than may perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the powerful wrists and muscular waists of accustomed washerwomen, and are in most instances no better fitted to perform laundry work than washerwomen would be to make sales and invoice stock. But custom requires exactly the same freshness in a saleswoman's shirt-waist, ties, and collars as in those of women of the largest income. The amount the girls of the St. George's Working Club found it absolutely necessary to spend in a year for laundering clothes was almost half as much as the amount spent for lodging and nearly two-thirds as much as the amount originally spent for clothing. Where this large expense of laundry cannot be met financially by saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer personal strength. One department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her position was in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, after a day's standing in the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at home till twelve at night. It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous helpless shifts of the younger salesgirls, that, living, as most of them do, in a semidependence, on either relatives or charitable homes, it is almost impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of money for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most practical spender encountered among the saleswomen was a widow, Mrs. Green, whose accounts will be given below, who was for years the manager of her own household and resources, and not a wage-earner until fairly late in life. This helplessness of a semidependent and uneducated girl may be further illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, who had been working in the department stores for three years and a half. She was at first employed as a check girl in a Fourteenth Street store, at a wage of $2.62-1/2 a week; that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a month. Her working day was nine and a half hours long through most of the year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened to from twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment in any form. She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but her wages still remained $2.62-1/2 a week. She lived with her grandmother of eighty, working occasionally as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave all her earnings for three years. It was then considered better that she should go to live with an aunt, to whom she paid the nominal board of $1.15 a week. As her home was in West Hoboken, she spent two and a half hours every day on the journey in the cars and on the ferry. During the weeks of overtime Alice could not reach home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be obliged to rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and a half of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By walking from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, fares cost her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week carfare (which was still not enough to convey her the whole distance from her aunt's to the store) and the $1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay the aunt for her niece's food and lodging) consumed all her earnings except 20 cents a week. Alice was eager to become more genuinely self-dependent. She left the establishment of her first employment and entered another store on Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning and from a quarter to one till a quarter past six in the afternoon on all days except Saturday, when the closing hour was half past nine. After she had $4 a week instead of $2.62-1/2, Alice abandoned her daily trip to West Hoboken and came to live in New York. Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a charitably supported home for girls. She ate no breakfast. Her luncheon consisted of coffee and rolls for 10 cents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee and rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to have it done. Her regular weekly expenditure was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; board, $1.40; washing, 21 cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97; total, $4. Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond her strength. She was pale, ill, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future health. Her experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promotion in some of the department stores. III It is significant in this point to compare the annals of this growing girl with those of a saleswoman of thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been at work for twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting mill she had remained for five years, and had been promoted rapidly to a weekly wage of $12. The hours, however, were very long, from ten to thirteen hours a day. The lint in the air she breathed so filled her lungs that she was unable, in her short daily leisure, to counteract its effect. At the end of five years, as she was coughing and raising particles of lint, she was obliged to rest for a year. Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, she obtained a position in the shoe department in one of the large stores, where she was not "speeded up," and her daily working time of nine hours was less severe than that of the knitting mill. In summer she had a Saturday half-holiday. There was a system of fines for lateness; but on the rare occasions of her own tardiness it had not been enforced. The company was also generous in grafting five-o'clock passes, which permitted a girl to leave at five in the afternoon, with no deduction from her wage for the free hour. She had been with this establishment for six years, earning $6 a week; and she had given up hope of advancing. Miss Carr said that her work in the shoe department was exhausting, because of the stooping, the frequent sitting down and rising, and the effort of pulling shoes on and off. In the summer preceding the fall when she told of her experience in the store, she had, in reaching for a box of shoes, strained her heart in some way, so that she lost consciousness immediately, and was ill for seven weeks. She failed to recuperate as rapidly as she should have done, because she was so completely devitalized by overwork. The firm was very good to her at this time, sending a doctor daily until she was in condition to go to the country. It then paid her expenses for two weeks in a country home of the Young Women's Christian Association, and during the three remaining weeks of her stay paid her full wage. Miss Carr praised this company's general care of the employees. A doctor and nurse were available without charge if a girl were ill in the store. A social secretary was employed. Miss Carr lived in a furnished room with two other women, each paying a dollar a week rent. She cared nothing for her fellow-lodgers; her only reason for spending her time with them in such close quarters was her need of living cheaply. She cooked her breakfast and supper in the crowded room, at an expense of $1.95 a week. She said that her "hearty" meal was a noon dinner, for which she paid in a restaurant 15 cents a day. After her experience in the summer, she realized that she should assure herself of income in case of illness. She joined a benefit society, to which she paid 50 cents a month. This promised a weekly benefit of $4 a week for thirteen weeks, and $200 at death. She paid also 10 cents a week for insurance in another company. The room was within walking distance of the store, so that she spent nothing for carfare. The services and social life of a church were her chief happiness. Besides her contributions to its support, she had spent only $1 a year on "good times." She did her own washing. Her outlay in health in these years had been extreme. She was very worn, thin, and wrinkled with hard work, severe economies, and anxiety, although she was still in what should have been the prime of life. Her weekly budget was: lodging, $1; board, $1.95; luncheons, $1.05; insurance, 21 cents; clothing, contributions to church, occasional carfare, and other expenses, $1.79; total, $6. Miss Carr said that her firm was generous in many of its policies, but she felt it profoundly discouraging not to advance to a wage that would permit decent living. In connection with Miss Carr's budget the benefit system of New York stores should be mentioned. In many of the large department stores, monthly dues, varying with the wage of the employee, are deducted from the pay of each, although in many cases she does not know what the return for the dues is to be. These dues assure to her, while she remains in the store's employ, a weekly benefit in case of illness, and a death benefit. But if she leaves the store, or is discharged, the management retains the amount she has been forced to pay to it, and gives no return whatever in case of her subsequent sickness or death. While she is in the store's employ, the sick benefit varies from one-half the girl's wage to a regular payment of $5 a week for from five to thirteen weeks, according to the particular rules in each store. The employee must be ill five days or a week in order to draw it. Otherwise she is docked for absence. The Mutual Benefit Fund of the New York Association of Working Girls' Societies has in this respect a better policy than the stores. Members of the clubs pay 55 cents a month for a benefit of $5 for six weeks in any one year, and 20 cents a month for a benefit of $3. Cessation of membership in a club does not terminate connection with the benefit fund, unless the reason for leaving is unsatisfactory to the board. Women not members of clubs may, under certain conditions, join the benefit fund as associate members, and pay 50 cents a month for a benefit of $5 a week, 30 cents for a benefit of $3 a week, or 80 cents for a benefit of $8 a week. These amounts are severally payable for six weeks in any one year. A number of the stores have trained nurses and doctors in their employ, to whom the girls may go if they are ill. Several of the stores have recreation rooms; several have summer homes; several have employees' restaurants, where a really nourishing meal can be obtained for 15 cents. Miss Carr, struggling against overwhelming odds, lived within $6 without charitable aid. With her experience may be compared those of two other older saleswomen, who were wholly self-supporting. Mrs. Green, a shrewd-appearing woman of thirty-five, had been wage-earning only two years. She began work in Philadelphia in a commission house as a saleswoman and corset fitter. Here she was able to save from her salary. She also saved very carefully the wardrobe she had before she entered business. With these reserves, she came to New York to work in department stores for the purpose of gaining experience in salesmanship and a more thorough knowledge of corsets. She expected to be able to command a high salary as soon as she had thus increased her competence. She went at first to a new and attractive Sixth Avenue store, where, working eight hours and a quarter a day, she earned $10 a week. Laid off at the end of five months, she was idle a month before finding employment at another Sixth Avenue store. In applying here she told the employer that she would not work for less than $12 a week. He offered her $9, and a commission on all sales beyond $400 a week. She refused, and the firm finally gave her what she asked. It proved that her choice was wise, for she found that in her very busiest week, when she was exhausted from the day's rush, her sales never reached $400 a week, so that she would have received no income at all from the proffered commission. She had a small room alone in an attractive hotel for working girls. For this and breakfasts and dinners she paid $5.10 a week. Luncheons cost, in addition, about $1.50 a week. She paid 50 cents a week for washing, besides doing some herself. Riding to and from work nearly every day increased her weekly expense 50 cents. This left her $4.40 a week for clothing and sundries. Mrs. Green seemed extravagantly dressed; she said, however, that she contrived to have effective waists and hats by making and trimming them herself, and by purchasing materials with care at sales. In dressing economically without sacrificing effect she was aided palpably by skill and deftness. She was in good health; and, though she did not save, she had not spent, even in her idle month, any of the reserve fund she had accumulated before she began to work. Another self-supporting saleswoman aided by her experience in domestic economy was Zetta Weyman, a young woman of twenty-eight, who had begun to work for wages at the age of eleven; at this time she still attended school, but did housework out of school hours. When she was older, she was employed as a maid in the house of a very kind and responsive couple, who gave her free access to their interesting library, where she read eagerly. A trip to Europe had been especially stimulating. Her employer was considerate, and tried to make it possible for her to benefit by the experience. Throughout this period she had been observant of dress and manner among the cultured people she saw, and had applied what she learned to her own dress and conduct. At twenty-six, wishing for larger opportunities than those she could have in personal service, she obtained work in a department store at $7 a week. Here she soon advanced to $10 in a department requiring more than average intelligence. At the end of two years she was very much interested in her work. It made demands upon her judgment, and offered opportunity for increasing knowledge and heightening her value to the company. She expected soon to receive a larger wage, as she considered her work worth at least $15 a week. Aside from underpay, she thought she was fairly treated. She greatly appreciated two weeks' vacation with full wages. Zetta gave $2.50 a week for a furnished hall bedroom and the use of a bath-room. The warmth from the single gas-jet was the sole heat. She made coffee in her room for breakfast; a light luncheon sufficed; and dinner in a restaurant cost 25 to 35 cents a day. She was often entertained at dinner, by friends. She usually rode to work, and walked home, eight blocks, spending thus 30 cents a week carfare. All living expenses for the week came to about $6. She paid for six years $24 a year on an insurance policy which promised her $15 a week in case of illness, and was cumulative, making a return during the life of the holder; $290 would be due from it in about a year. Zetta said that she was extravagant in her expense for clothing, but she considered that her social position depended upon her appearance. She was very attractive looking. Her manner had quiet and grace, and there was something touching, even moving, in the dignity of her pure, clear English, acquired in the teeth of a fortune that forced her to be a little scullion and cook at the age of eleven. She was dressed with taste and care at the time of the interview. Through watching sales and through information obtained from heads of departments, she contrived to buy clothing of excellent quality, silk stockings, and well-cut suits comparatively cheaply. By waiting until the end of the season, she had paid $35, the winter before, for a suit originally costing $70; $35 was more than she had intended to spend, but the suit was becoming and she could not resist the purchase. She managed to have pretty and well-designed hats for from $2 to $5, because a friend trimmed them. She spent her vacation with relatives on a farm in the country. Railroad fares and the occasional purchase of a magazine were her only expenditures for pleasure. But she had many "good times" going to the beaches in the summer with friends who paid her way. She considered that with careful planning a girl could live in fair comfort for $10 a week. But she saved nothing. The drawback she mentioned in her own arrangements--the best she could obtain for her present wage--was not the cold of her hall bedroom, warmed only by the gas-jet, but that she had no suitable place for receiving men friends. She was obliged to turn to trolley rides and walks and various kinds of excursions,--literally to the streets,--for hospitality, when she received a man's visit. She spoke frequently of one man with whom she had many "good times." She could not take him to her room. Trolley rides, and walks in winter, would pall. She hated park benches as a resort for quiet conversation. Where, then, was she to see him? Although she disapproved of it, she and another girl who had a larger and more attractive room than her own had received men there. Zetta's income for the year had been $520. She had spent $130 for rent; $105 for dinners; $55 for breakfasts, luncheons, and washing; $195 for clothing, summer railway fares, and incidentals; $15 for carfare; and $20 for insurance. IV Zetta's interest in her daily occupation is somewhat unusual in the trade chronicles of the shop-girls. One frequently hears complaint of the inefficiency and inattention of New York saleswomen and their rudeness to plainly dressed customers. While this criticism contains a certain truth, it is, of course, unreasonable to expect excellence from service frequently ill paid, often unevenly and unfairly promoted, and, except with respect to dress, quite unstandardized. Further, it must be remembered that the world in which the shop-girl follows her occupation is a world of externals. The fortunes, talents, tastes, eager human effort spent in shop-window displays on Fifth Avenue, the shimmer and sparkle of beautiful silks and jewels, the prestige of "carriage trade," the distinction of presence of some of the customers and their wealth and their freedom in buying--all the worldliness of the most moneyed city of the United States here perpetually passes before the eyes of Zettas in their $1.20 muslin waists so carefully scrubbed the midnight before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 cents. Is it surprising that they should adopt the New York shop-window-display ideal of life manifested everywhere around them? The saleswomen themselves are the worst victims of their unstandardized employment; and the fact that they spend long years of youth in work involving a serious outlay of their strength, without training them in concentration or individual responsibility or resourcefulness, but apparently dissipating these powers, seems one of the gravest aspects of their occupation. A proud and very pretty pink-cheeked little English shop-girl, with clear hazel eyes, laid special stress upon unevenness of promotion, in telling of her fortunes in this country. She was sitting, as she spoke, in the parlor of a Christian "home," which, like that of many others where shop-girls live, was light and clean, but had that unmistakably excellent and chilling air so subtly imparted by the altruistic act of furnishing for others--the air that characterizes spare rooms, hotel parlors, and great numbers of settlement receiving rooms. "I had always wanted to come to America," she said in her quick English enunciation. "And I saved something and borrowed ten pounds of my brother, and came. Oh, it was hard the first part of the time I was here. I remember, when I first came in at the door of this house, and registered, one of the other shop-girls here was standing at the desk. I had on a heavy winter coat, just a plain, rough-looking coat, but it's warm. That girl gave me such a look, a sort of sneering look--oh, it made me hot! But that's the way American shop-girls are. I never have spoken to that girl. "I got down to 50 cents before I had a job. There was one store I didn't want to go to. It was cheap, and had a mean name. One afternoon, when it was cold and dark, I walked up to it at last; and it looked so horrid I couldn't go in. There was another cheap store just beyond it, and another. All the shoppers were hurrying along. Oh, it was a terrible time that afternoon, terrible, standing there, looking at those big, cheap New York stores all around me. "But at last I went in, and they took me on. It wasn't so bad, after all. In about two months I had a chance to go to a better store. I like it pretty well. But I can't save anything. I had $8 a week. Now I have $9. I pay $4.50 a week here for board and lodging, but I always live up to my salary, spending it for clothes and washing. Oh, I worry and worry about money. But I've paid back my $50. I have a nice silk dress now, and a new hat. And now I've got them," she added, with a laugh, "I haven't got anywhere to wear them to. I look forward to Sunday through the week days; but when Sunday comes, I like Monday best. "Though I think it doesn't make much difference how you do in the store about being promoted. A girl next me who doesn't sell half as much as I do gets $12 where I have $9; and the commission we have on sales in Christmas week wasn't given to me fairly. The store is kind in many ways, and lets the girls sit down every minute when customers aren't there, and has evening classes and club-rooms. But yet the girls are discouraged about not having promotions fairly and not having commissions straight. Right is right."[4] The charmlessness of existence noticeable in most of the working girls' homes was emphasized by a saleswoman in the china department of a Broadway department store, Kate McCray, a pretty young Irishwoman of about twenty-three, who was visited in a hotel she said she didn't like to mention to people, for fear they would think it was queer. "You see, it's a boat, a liner that a gentleman that has a large plantation gave for a hotel for working girls. It seems peculiar to some people for a girl to be living on the river." Miss McCray paid $3.50 a week board at the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. Her salary was $8 a week. She had been in the same department for four years, and considered it wrong that she received no promotion. She could save nothing, as she did none of her own washing on account of its inroads of fatigue, and she was obliged to dress well. She was, however, in excellent health and especially praised the store's policy of advising the girls to sit down and to rest whenever no customers were present. It was misty and raining on the occasion of my visit to the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, a liner anchored in the East River; and Miss McCray conducted me into the cabin to a large party of boys, elderly women, and children, most of them visitors like myself, and all listening to a powerful-wristed youth happily playing, "You'll Come Back and Hang Around," with heavily accented rag-time, on an upright piano. "About seventy girls board on this boat. That young lady going into the pantry now is a stenographer--such a bright girl." Absorbed in the spectacle of a hotel freedom which permitted a guest to go to a pantry at will, whatever the force of her brightness, I followed Miss McCray about the boat. It was as if the hotel belonged to the girls, while in the Christian homes it had been as if everything belonged, not to the girls, but to benevolent though carefully possessive Christians. Miss McCray praised highly the manager and his wife. "About twenty men and boys stay on a yacht anchored right out here. They board on this boat, and go to their own boat when the whistle blows at ten o'clock," she continued, leading me to the smoking-room, where she introduced a number of very young gentlemen reading magazines and knocking about gutturally together. They, too, seemed proud of their position as boarders, proud of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. They were nice, boyish young fellows, who might have been young mechanicians. She showed me the top deck with especial satisfaction as we came out into the fresh, rainy air. The East River shipping and an empty recreation pier rose black on one side, with the water sparkling in jetted reflection between; and on the other quivered all the violet and silver lights of the city. There were perhaps half a dozen tents pitched on deck. "Some of the girls sleep outdoors up here," said Miss McCray in her gentle voice. "They like it so, they do it all winter long. Have plenty of cover, and just sleep here in the tents. Oh, we all like it! Some of the men that were here first have married; and they like it so well, they keep coming back here with their wives to see us. It's so friendly," said the girl, quietly; "and no matter how tired I am when I come here in the evening, I sit out on the deck, and I look at the water and the lights, and it seems as if all my cares float away." The good humor of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, its rag-time, its boarders from the yacht, the charm of the row of tents with the girls in them sleeping their healthful sleep out in the midst of the river wind, the masts, the chimneys, stars, and city lights, all served to deepen the impression of the lack of normal pleasure in most of the shop-girls' lives. This starvation in pleasure, as well as low wages and overwork, subjects the women in the stores to a temptation readily conceivable. The girls in the stores are importuned, not only by men from without these establishments, but also, to the shame of the managements, by men employed within the stores. The constant close presence of this gulf has more than one painful aspect. On account of it, not only the poor girls who fall suffer, but also the girls who have the constant sense of being "on guard," and find it wise, for fear of the worst suspicion, to forego all sorts of normal delights and gayeties and youthful pleasures. Many girls said, "I keep myself to myself"; "I don't make friends in the stores very fast, because you can't be sure what any one is like." This fear of friendship among contemporaries sharing the same fortune, fear, indeed, of the whole world, seemed the most cruel comment possible on the atmosphere of the girls' lives in their occupation. Another kind of meanness in human relations was abundantly witnessed by Miss Johnson, the League's inquirer, who worked in one of the stores during the week of Christmas good-will. The "rush" had begun when Miss Johnson was transferred in this Christmas week from the neckwear to the muffler department on the first floor of one of the cheaper stores. All the girls stood all day long--from eight to twelve and from one to eight at night on the first days; from one at noon to ten and eleven at night, as the season progressed; and, on the last dreadful nights, from noon to the following midnight. The girls had 35 cents supper money. Except for that, all this extra labor was unpaid for. The work was incessant. The girls were nervous, hateful, spiteful with one another. The manager, a beautiful and extremely rough girl of nineteen, swore constantly at all of them. The customers were grabbing, insistent, unreasonable from morning to evening, from evening to midnight. Behind the counter, with the advance of the day, the place became an inferno of nervous exhaustion and exasperation. In the two weeks of Miss Johnson's service one customer once thanked her; and one tipped her 5 cents for the rapid return of a parcel. Both these acts of consideration took place in the morning. Miss Johnson said that this was fortunate for her, as, at one word of ordinary consideration toward the end of her long day's work, she thought she must have burst into tears. There was a little bundler in the department, Catriona Malatesta, a white, hungry-looking little North Italian of fourteen with a thin chin and a dark-shadowed, worried face. She had an adored sick sister of four, besides six other younger brothers and sisters, and a worshipped mother, to whom she gave every cent of her wages of three dollars and a half a week. An older brother, a day laborer, paid the rent and provided food for all of them. Every other family expense was met by Catriona's three dollars and a half, so that she was in the habit of spending only five cents for her own lunch, and, on the nights of overtime, five cents for her own dinner, in order to take home the extra thirty cents; and every day she looked whiter and older. At the beginning of the week before Christmas, the store raised Catriona's wage to four dollars. Her mother told her she might have the extra half dollar for herself for Christmas. Though Catriona had worked for some months, this was the first money of her own she had ever had. With pride she told the department how it was to be spent. She was going to surprise her mother with a new waist for Christmas, a waist Catriona had seen in the store marked down to forty-nine cents. A ten per cent discount was allowed to employees, so that the waist would cost forty-five cents. With the remaining five cents Catriona would buy her sick Rosa a doll. All her life Rosa had wanted a doll. Now, at last, she could have one. On the day when she received the money, Catriona kept it close at hand, in a little worn black leather purse, in a shabby bag hanging from her arm, and not out of sight for an instant. Her purchases were to be made in the three-quarters of an hour allowed for supper. The time Catriona consumed in eating her five-cent meal was never long, so that, even allowing for prolonged purchasing, her absence of an hour was strange. "D---- your soul, where in hell have you been all this time, Catie?" the manager screamed at her, angrily, without glancing at her, when she came back at last. Catriona looked more anxious and white than ever before. Her face was stained with weeping. "I lost my purse," she said in a dazed, unsteady voice. "It was gone when I opened my bag in the lunch-room. I've looked for it everywhere." There was a sudden breathless change in the air of the department. You could have heard a pin drop. "Better go down to the basement and wash your face," said the manager, awkwardly, with unbelievable gentleness. "Well," she continued suddenly, the minute Catriona was out of ear-shot, "I'm not so poor but I can help to make _that_ up." She took a dollar bill from her pocket-book. Every one contributed something, though several girls went without their supper for this purpose, and one girl walked home four miles after midnight. Altogether they could give nearly ten dollars. The manager sidled awkwardly toward Catriona, when she came back from washing her face. "Here, kid," she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money into the little girl's hand. Catriona, pale and dazed, looked up at her--looked at the money, with a shy excitement and happiness dawning in her eyes. Then she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one laughed, and sent her off again to wash her face. That night everything was different in the department. There had been a real miracle of transfiguration. The whole air of intercourse was changed. All the girls were gentle and dignified with each other. Catriona's eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her careworn air was gone. She was a child again. She had never had any physical loveliness before; but on that night hundreds of passing shoppers looked with attention at the delight and beauty of her face. On the next day everything went on as before. The girls snapped at each other and jostled each other. The beautiful manager swore. One girl came, looking so ill that Miss Johnson was terrified. "Can't you stop, Kitty? You look so sick. For heaven's sake, go home and rest." "I can't afford to go home." Cross and snappish as the girls were, they managed to spare Kitty, and to stand in front of her to conceal her idleness from the floor-walker, and give her a few minutes' occasional rest sitting down. She went through the first hours of the morning as best she might, though clearly under pressure of sharp suffering. But at about ten the floor-walker, for whom it must be said that he was responsible for the sales and general presentability of the department, saw her sitting down. "Why aren't you busy?" he called. "Get up." At midnight on Christmas eve, as the still crowd of girls walked wanly out of the great store into the brilliant New York street, some one said, "How are you, Kitty?" She made no reply for a minute. Then she said wretchedly, "Oh--I hope I'll be dead before the next Christmas." V The sheer and causeless misery this girl endured was, of course, attributable, not only to the long hours and to the standing demanded by her occupation, but to the fact that this occupation was continued at a period when the normal health of great numbers of women demands reasonable quiet and rest. With a few honorable exceptions[5] it may be said to be the immemorial custom of department stores in this country to treat women employees, in so far as ability to stand and to stand at all seasons goes, exactly as if they were men. The expert testimony collected by the publication secretary of the National Consumers' League, Miss Josephine Goldmark, for the brief which obtained the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, gives the clearest possible record of the outlay of communal strength involved in these long hours of standing for women. _Report of "Lancet" Sanitary Commission on Sanitation in the Shop_. 1892 Without entering upon the vexed question of women's rights, we may nevertheless urge it as an indisputable physiological fact that, when compelled to stand for long hours, women, especially young women, are exposed to greater injury and greater suffering than men. _British Sessional Papers_. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Committee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill Witness, W. Abbott, M.D. "Does their employment injuriously affect them, as child-bearing women in after years?" "According to all scientific facts, it would do so." "And you, as a medical man of a considerable number of years' experience, would not look to girls who have been worked so many hours in one position as the bearers of healthy, strong children?" "I should not." "Then it naturally follows, does it not, that this is a very serious matter in the interest of the nation as a whole, apart from the immediate injury to the person concerned?" "Yes. As regards the physical condition of the future race." _British Sessional Papers_. Vol. XII, 1895. Report from the Select Committee on Shops. Early Closing Bill Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of the University of Oxford, Fellow of the College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons, attached to London Hospital and Brompton, Hospital. "Would this be a fair way of putting it: It is not the actual work of people in shops, but having to be there and standing about in bad air; it is the long hours which is the injurious part of it?" "Quite so; the prolonged tension." _Official Information from the Reports of the [German] Factory Inspectors_. Berlin, Bruer, 1898 The inspector in Hesse regards a reduction of working hours to ten for women in textile mills as "absolutely imperative," as the continuous standing is very injurious to the female organism. _Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography_. Berlin, September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Fatigue Resulting from Occupation. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908 Doctor Emil Roth: "My experience and observations do not permit me to feel any uncertainty in believing that the injury to health inflicted upon even fully capable workers by the special demands of a periodically heightened rush of work is never compensated for. Under this head we may consider the demands of all seasonal work, ... as also the special rush season in shops before Christmas." _Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its Importance and Legal Regulation_. Preface by Etienne Bauer. Night Work of Women in Industry in Austria. Ilse Von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903 The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals, but it is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of work injurious, but also that a single isolated instance of overstrain may be harmful to a woman all the rest of her life. _Proceedings of the French Senate_, July 7, 1891. Report on the Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls, and Women. When I ask, when we ask, for a lessening of the daily toil of women, it is not only of the women that we think, it is not principally of the women, it is of the whole human race. It is of the father, it is of the child, it is of society, which we wish to reëstablish on its foundation, from which we believe it has perhaps swerved a little. In New York State, the hours of labor of adult women (women over twenty-one) in mercantile establishments are not limited in any way by law. The law concerning seats in stores is as follows:-- Seats for Women in Mercantile Establishments Chairs, stools, or other suitable seats shall be maintained in mercantile establishments for the use of female employees therein, to the number of at least one seat for every three females employed, and the use thereof by such employees shall be allowed at such times and to such extent as may be necessary for the preservation of their health. The enforcement of this law is very difficult. The mercantile inspectors can compel the requisite number of seats. They have successfully issued one hundred and fourteen orders on this point[6] to the stores within the year 1909. But the use of these seats to such extent as may be necessary for the preservation of the health of the women employees is another matter. For fear of being blacklisted by the merchants, the saleswomen will not testify in court in those cases where employers practically forbid the use of seats, by requesting the employees to do something requiring a standing position whenever they sit down. So that in these cases the inspectors cannot bring prosecution successfully, on account of lack of sufficient evidence. Further, in one store the management especially advises the saleswomen to be seated at every moment when the presence of a customer does not require her to stand. But the saleswoman's inability to attract possible customers while she is seated still keeps her standing, in order not to diminish her sales. Curiously enough, it would seem that the shopping public of a nation professedly democratic will not buy so much as a spool of thread from a seated woman. There is, of course, much work for women[7]--such as ironing for instance--in which standing is generally considered absolutely necessary. Salesmanship is not work of this character. It is primarily custom that demands the constant standing seen in the stores; and, until shoppers establish a habit of buying of shop-girls who are seated, and the stores provide enough seats for all saleswomen and permit them to sell when seated, the present system of undermining the normal health of women clerks will continue unchecked. The New York State law in regard to the work of the younger women (minors)--in mercantile establishments is as follows:-- Hours of Labor of Minors[8] No female employee between sixteen and twenty-one years of age shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work in or in connection with any mercantile establishment more than sixty hours in any one week; or more than ten hours in any one day, unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day of some one day of the week; or before seven o'clock in the morning or after ten o'clock in the evening of any day. _This section does not apply to the employment of persons sixteen years of age or upward, between the eighteenth day of December and the following twenty-fourth day of December, both inclusive_.[9] That is to say, that, for the holiday season, the time of all others when it might seem wise and natural to protect the health of the younger women working in the great metropolitan markets, for that season, of all others, the State specifically provides that the strength of its youth is to have no legal safeguard and may be subjected to labor without limit. Substantially, all the present legal protection for workers in the stores was obtained in 1896, after the investigation of mercantile establishments conducted in 1895 by the Rinehart Commission.[10] Ever since, an annual attempt has been made to perfect the present law and to secure its enforcement, which had been left in the hands of the local Boards of Health, and was practically inoperative until 1908. Enforcement was then transferred to the Labor Commissioner, and has since that time been actively maintained. The hearings on the law relative to mercantile establishments are held in Albany in a small room in the Capitol before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and the Assembly Commission on Labor. These hearings are very fiery. The Support is represented by Attorney Mornay Williams, and Mrs. Nathan, Mrs. Kelley, Miss Stokes, Miss Sanford, and Miss Goldmark of the New York and National Consumers' Leagues, and delegates from the Child Labor Committee, the Working-Girls' Clubs, and the Woman's Trade-Union League. Both men and women speak fox the amendment.[11] The Support's effort for legislation limiting hours has regularly been opposed by the Retail Dry-Goods Merchants' Association, which yearly sends an influential delegation to Albany. "These ladies have been coming here for sixteen years," said one of the merchants, resentfully, last spring. Looking around, and observing changes in the faces watching him among adherents of the Support, he added: "Well, perhaps not the _same_ ladies. But they have come." "These ladies are professional agitators," said another merchant at another hearing. "Why, they even misled Mr. Roosevelt, when he was Governor, into recommending the passage of their bill." Such are some of the reasons offered by the opposition for not limiting women's hours of labor in mercantile establishments. Among the several common features of the experiences of these New York saleswomen, low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of seasonal work, the consideration of this last common condition is placed last because its consequences seem the most far-reaching. Looking back at these common features in the lives of these average American working girls, one has a sudden sense that the phenomenon of the New York department stores represents a painful failure in democracy. What will the aspect of the New York department stores be in the future? For New York doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of the most picturesque and most frequented harbors of the Seven Seas. Doubtless many women still will work in its markets. What will their chances in life be? First, it may be trusted that the State law will not forever refuse to protect these women and their future, which is also the future of the community, from the danger of unlimited hours of labor. Then, the fact that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the saleswomen has been standardized and their wages raised, the fact that in a store in Boston the employees have become responsible factors in the business, and the fact that a school of salesmanship has been opened in New York seem to indicate the possibility of a day when salesmanship will become standardized and professional, as nursing has within the last century. Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not forever acquiesce in pursuing their trade in utterly machinal activity, without any common expression of their common position. Very arresting is the fact that, year after year, the Union women go to Albany to struggle for better chances in life for the shop-women who cannot at present wisely make this struggle for themselves. The fact that the Union women fail is of less moment than that they continue to go. But what have the organized women workers, the factory girls who so steadfastly make this stand for justice for the shop-girls, attained for themselves in their fortunes by their Union? It was for an answer to this question that we turned to the New York shirt-waist makers, whose income and outlay will be next considered in this little chronicle of women's wages. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: In the last six months further accounts from working women in the trades mentioned in New York have been received by Miss Edith Wyatt, Vice-President of the Consumers' League of Illinois. Aside from the facts ascertained through the schedules filled by the workers, and through Mrs. Clark's and Miss Wyatt's visits to them, information has been obtained through Miss Helen Marot, Secretary of the New York Woman's Trade-Union League, Miss Marion MacLean, Director of the Sociological Investigation Committee of the Young Women's Christian Association of the United States, Miss May Matthews, Head Worker of Hartley House, Miss Hall, Head Worker of the Riverside Association, Miss Rosenfeld, Head Worker of the Clara de Hirsch Home, the Clinton Street Headquarters of the Union, the St. George Working Girls' Clubs, the Consumers' League of the City of New York, and the offices or files of the _Survey_, the _Independent_, the _Call_, and the _International Socialist Review_.] [Footnote 2: It remains to be said that there are both among saleswomen and among women in business for the department stores, buyers, assistant buyers, receivers of special orders, advertisers, and heads of departments, earning salaries of from twenty dollars to two hundred dollars a week. But this experience does not represent the average fortune the League was interested in learning.] [Footnote 3: Here are the estimates made by the St. George's Working Girls' Club of the smallest practicable expenditure for self-supporting girls in New York: General expense per week: room, $2; meals, $3; clothes, $1.25; washing, 75 cents; carfare, 60 cents; pleasures, 25 cents; church, 10 cents; club, 5 cents: total $8. Itemized account of clothing for the year at $1.25 a week, or $65 a year: 2 pair of shoes at $2, and mending at $1.50, $5.50; 2 hats at $2.50, $5; 8 pair of stockings at 12-1/2 cents, $1; 2 combination suits at 50 cents, $1; 4 shirts at 12-1/2 cents, 50 cents; 4 pairs of drawers at 25 cents, $1; 4 corset covers at 25 cents, $1; 1 flannel petticoat, 25 cents; 2 white petticoats at 75 cents, $1.50; 5 shirt-waists at $1.20, $6; 1 net waist, $2.50; 2 corsets at $1, $2; gloves, $2; 2 pairs rubbers at 65 cents, $1.30; 1 dozen handkerchiefs at 5 cents, 60 cents; 3 nightgowns at 50 cents, $1.50; 1 sweater, $2; 2 suits at $15, $30: total, $65.65.] [Footnote 4: This worker later, however, in the winter of 1911, considered she had been paid and promoted fairly.] [Footnote 5: Macy and Company of New York give to those of their permanent women employees who desire it a monthly day of rest with pay. The Daniels and Fisher Company of Denver refund to any woman employee who requests it the amount deducted for a monthly day of absence for illness. This excellent rule is, however, said to represent here rather a privilege than a practice, and not to be generally taken advantage of, because not generally understood. The present writer has not been able to learn of other exceptions.] [Footnote 6: Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 127.] [Footnote 7: See page 16 (foot-note), "Scientific Management as applied to Women's Work."] [Footnote 8: This statement does not include the excellent New York Child Labor Law for children under sixteen, which allows of no exception at Christmas time.] [Footnote 9: Italics ours.] [Footnote 10: A New York State Commission, appointed for this purpose in the year 1895, through the efforts of the Consumers' League of the city of New York.] [Footnote 11: For fear of a permanent loss of position the saleswomen themselves have never been urged to appear in support of this legislation, nor, except in a few instances where this difficulty has been nullified, have they been present at these hearings.] CHAPTER II THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE I Among the active members of the Ladies Waist Makers' Union in New York, there is a young Russian Jewess of sixteen, who may be called Natalya Urusova. She is little, looking hardly more than twelve years old, with a pale, sensitive face, clear dark eyes, very soft, smooth black hair, parted and twisted in braids at the nape of her neck, and the gentlest voice in the world, a voice still thrilled with the light inflections of a child. She is the daughter of a Russian teacher of Hebrew, who lived about three years ago in a beech-wooded village on the steppes of Central Russia. Here a neighbor of Natalya's family, a Jewish farmer, misunderstanding that manifesto of the Czar which proclaimed free speech, and misunderstanding socialism, had printed and scattered through the neighborhood an edition of hand-bills stating that the Czar had proclaimed socialism, and that the populace must rise and divide among themselves a rich farm two miles away. Almost instantly on the appearance of these bills, this unhappy man and a young Jewish friend who chanced to be with him at the time of his arrest were seized and murdered by the government officers--the friend drowned, the farmer struck dead with the blow of a cudgel. A Christian mob formed, and the officers and the mob ravaged every Jewish house in the little town. Thirty innocent Jews were clubbed to death, and then literally cut to pieces. Natalya and her family, who occupied the last house on the street, crept unnoticed to the shack of a Roman Catholic friend, a woman who hid sixteen Jewish people under the straw of the hut in the fields where she lived, in one room, with eight children and some pigs and chickens. Hastily taking from a drawer a little bright-painted plaster image of a wounded saint, this woman placed it over the door as a means of averting suspicion. Her ruse was successful. "Are there Jews here?" the officer called to her, half an hour afterward, as the mob came over the fields to her house. "No," said the woman. "Open the door and let me see." The woman flung open the door. But, as he was quite unsuspecting, the officer glanced in only very casually; and it was in utter ignorance that the rage of the mob went on over the fields, past the jammed little room of breathless Jews. As soon as the army withdrew from the town, Natalya and her family made their way to America, where, they had been told, one had the right of free belief and of free speech. Here they settled on the sixth floor of a tenement on Monroe Street, on the East Side of New York. Nothing more different from the open, silent country of the steppes could be conceived than the place around them. The vista of the New York street is flanked by high rows of dingy brick tenements, fringed with jutting white iron fire-escapes, and hung with bulging feather-beds and pillows, puffing from the windows. By day and by night the sidewalks and roads are crowded with people,--bearded old men with caps, bare-headed wigged women, beautiful young girls, half-dressed babies swarming in the gutters, playing jacks. Push carts, lit at night with flaring torches, line the pavements and make the whole thronged, talking place an open market, stuck with signs and filled with merchandise and barter. Everybody stays out of doors as much as possible. In summer-time the children sleep on the steps, and on covered chicken coops along the sidewalk; for, inside, the rooms are too often small and stifling, some on inner courts close-hung with washing, some of them practically closets, without any opening whatever to the outer air. Many, many of Natalya's neighbors here are occupied in the garment trade. According to the United States census of 1900, the men's clothing made in factories in New York City amounted to nearly three times as much as that manufactured in any other city in the United States. The women's clothing made in factories in New York City amounted to more than ten times that made in any other city; the manufacture of women's ready-made clothing in this country is, indeed, almost completely in the hands of New York's immense Jewish population.[12] As soon after her arrival as her age permitted, Natalya entered the employment of a shirt-waist factory as an unskilled worker, at a salary of $6 a week. Mounting the stairs of the waist factory, one is aware of heavy vibrations. The roar and whir of the machines increase as the door opens, and one sees in a long loft, which is usually fairly light and clean, though sometimes neither, rows and rows of girls with heads bent and eyes intent upon the flashing needles. They are all intensely absorbed; for if they be paid by the piece, they hurry from ambition, and if they be paid by the week, they are "speeded up" by the foreman to a pace set by the swiftest workers. In the Broadway establishment, which may be called the Bruch Shirt-waist Factory, where Natalya worked, there were four hundred girls--six hundred in the busy season. The hours were long--from eight till half past twelve, a half hour for lunch, and then from one till half past six. Sometimes the girls worked until half past eight, until nine. There were only two elevators in the building, which contained other factories. There were two thousand working people to be accommodated by these elevators, all of whom began work at eight o'clock in the morning; so that, even if Natalya reached the foot of the shaft at half past seven, it was sometimes half past eight before she reached the shirt-waist factory on the twelfth floor. She was docked for this inevitable tardiness so often that frequently she had only five dollars a week instead of six. This injustice, and the fact that sometimes the foreman kept them waiting needlessly for several hours before telling them that he had no work for them, was particularly wearing to the girls. Natalya was a "trimmer" in the factory. She cut the threads of the waists after they were finished--a task requiring very little skill. But the work of shirt-waist workers is of many grades. The earnings of makers of "imported" lingerie waists sometimes rise as high as $25 a week. Such a wage, however, is very exceptional, and, even so, is less high than might appear, on account of the seasonal character of the work. The average skilled waist worker, when very busy, sometimes earns from $12 to $15 a week. Here are the yearly budgets of some of the better paid workers, more skilled than Natalya--operatives receiving from $10 to $15 a week. Rachael, a shirt-waist operative of eighteen, had been at work three years. She had begun at $5 a week and her skill had increased until in a very busy week she could earn from $14 to $15 by piece-work. "But," she said, "I was earning too much, so I was put back at week's work, at $11 a week. The foreman is a bad, driving man. Ugh! he makes us work fast--especially the young beginners." Rachael, too, had been driven out of Russia by Christian persecution. Her little sister had been killed in a massacre. Her parents had gone in one direction, and she and her two other sisters had fled in another to America. Here in New York she lived in a tenement, sharing a room with two other girls, and, besides working in the shirt-waist factory, did her own washing, made her own waists, and went to night school. Her income was seriously depleted by the seasonal character of her work. Out of the twelve months of the year, for one month she was idle, for four months she had only three or four days' work a week, for three months she had five days' work a week, and for four months only did she have work for all six days. Unhappily, during these months she developed a severe cough, which lost her seven weeks of work, and gave her during these weeks the expense of medicine, a doctor, and another boarding place, as she could not in her illness sleep with her two friends. Her income for the year had been $348.25. Her expenses had been as follows: rent for one-third of room at $3.50 a month, $42; suppers with landlady at 20 cents each, $63; other meals, approximately, $90; board while ill, seven weeks at $7, $49; doctor and medicine (about) $15; clothing, $51.85; club, 5 cents a week, $2.60; total, $313.45, thus leaving a balance of $34.80. Shoes alone consumed over one-half of the money used for clothing. They wore out with such amazing rapidity that she had needed a new pair once a month. At $2 each, except a best pair, costing $2.60, their price in a year amounted to $24.60.[13] In regard to Rachael's expenditure and conservation in strength, she had drawn heavily upon her health and energy. Her cough continued to exhaust her. She was worn and frail, and at eighteen her health was breaking. Anna Klotin, another older skilled worker, an able and clever Russian girl of twenty-one, an operative and trimmer, earned $12 a week. She had been idle twelve weeks on account of slack work. For four weeks she had night work for three nights a week, and payment for this extra time had brought her income up to $480 for the year. Of this sum she paid $312 ($6 a week) for board and lodging alone in a large, pleasant room with a friendly family on the East Side. To her family in Russia she had sent $120, and she had somehow contrived, by doing her own washing, making her own waists and skirts, and repairing garments left from the previous year, to buy shoes and to pay carfare and all her other expenses from the remaining $48. She had bought five pairs of shoes at $2 each, and a suit for $15. Fanny Wardoff, a shirt-waist worker of twenty, who had been in the United States only a year, helped her family by supporting her younger brother. For some time after her arrival in this country the ill effects of her steerage voyage had left her too miserable to work. She then obtained employment as a finisher in a skirt factory, where her best wage was $7. But her earnings in this place had been so fluctuating that she was uncertain what her total income had been before the last thirteen weeks. At the beginning of this time she had left the skirt factory and become a finisher in a waist factory, where she earned from $10 to $12 a week, working nine and a half hours a day. Her place to sleep, and breakfast and dinner, in a tenement, cost $2.50 a week. She paid the same for her younger brother, who still attended school. The weekly expense was palpably increased by 60 cents a week for luncheon and 30 cents for carfare to ride to work. She walked home, fifteen blocks. Her clothing, during the eight months of work, had cost about $40. Of this, $8 had been spent for four pairs of shoes. Two ready-made skirts had cost $9, and a jacket $10. Her expense for waists was only the cost of material, as she had made them herself. She spent 35 cents a week for the theatre, and economized by doing her own washing. Here are the budgets of some shirt-waist operatives earning from $7 to $10 a week, less skilled than the workers described above, but more skilled than Natalya. Irena Kovalova, a girl of sixteen, supported herself and three other people, her mother and her younger brother and sister, on her slight wage of $9 a week. She was a very beautiful girl, short, but heavily built, with grave dark eyes, a square face, and a manner more mature and responsible than that of many women of forty. Irena Kovalova had not been out of work for one whole week in the year she described. She had never done night work; but she had almost always worked half a day on Sunday--except in slack weeks. She was not certain how many of these there had been; but there had been enough slack time to reduce her income for her family for the year to $450. They had paid $207 rent for four rooms on the East Side, and had lived on the remaining $243, all of which Irena had given to her mother. Her mother helped her with her washing, and she had worn the clothes she had the year before, with the exception of shoes. She had been forced to buy four pairs of these at $2 a pair. They all realized that if Irena could spend a little more for her shoes they would wear longer. "But for shoes," she said, with a little laugh, "two dollars--it is the most I ever could pay." She was a girl of unusual health and strength, and though sometimes very weary at night and troubled with eye strain from watching the needle, it was a different drain of her vitality that she mentioned as alarming. She was obliged to work at a time of the month when she normally needed rest, and endured anguish at her machine at this season. She had thought, she said gravely, that if she ever had any money ahead, she would try to use it to have a little rest then. Molly Zaplasky, a little Russian shirt-waist worker of fifteen, operated a machine for fifty-six hours a week, did her own washing, and even went to evening school. She had worked for five months, earning $9 a week for five weeks of this time, and sometimes $6, sometimes $7, for the remainder. She and her sister Dora, of seventeen, also a shirt-waist maker, had a room with a cousin's family on the East Side. Dora had worked a year and a half. She, too, earned $9 a week in full weeks. But there had been only twenty-two such weeks in that period. For seventeen weeks she had earned $6 a week. For four weeks she had been idle because of slackness of work, and for nine weeks recently she had been too ill to work, having developed tuberculosis. Dora, too, did her own washing. She made her own waists, and went to evening school. She had paid $2.75 a week for partial board and for lodging. The food, not included in her board, cost about $1 a week. The little Molly had paid for Dora's board and lodging in her nine weeks' illness. Dora, who had worked so valiantly, was quietly expecting just as valiantly her turn in the long waiting list of applicants for the Montefiore Home for consumptives. She knew that the chance of her return to Molly was very slight. Her expenditure for food, shelter, and clothing for the year had been as follows: room and board (exclusive of nine weeks' illness), $161.25; clothing, $41.85; total, $203.10. As her income for the year had been $297.50, this left a balance of $94.40 for all other expenses. Items for clothing had been: suit, $12; jacket, $4.50; a hat, $2.50; shoes (two pairs), $4.25; stockings (two pairs a week at 15 cents), $15.60; underwear, $3; total, $41.85. One point should be accentuated in this budget--the striking cost of stockings, due to the daily walk to and from work and the ill little worker's lack of strength and time for darning. The outlay for footwear in all the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the fact that much of their work is done sitting. Here are the budgets of some of the shirt-waist makers who were earning Natalya's wage of $6 a week, or less than this wage. Rea Lupatkin, a shirt-waist maker of nineteen, had been in New York only ten months, and was at first a finisher in a cloak factory. Afterward, obtaining work as operator in a waist factory, she could get $4 in fifty-six hours on a time basis. She had been in this factory six weeks. Rea was paying $4 a month for lodging in two rooms of a tenement-house with a man and his wife and baby and little boy. She saved carfare by a walk of three-quarters of an hour, adding daily one and a half hours to the nine and a half already spent in operating. Her food cost $2.25 a week so that, with 93 cents a week for lodging, her regular weekly cost of living was $3.18, leaving her 82 cents for every other expense. In spite of this, and although she had been forced to spend $3 for examination of her eyes and for eyeglasses, Rea contrived to send an occasional $2 back to her family in Europe. Ida Bergeson, a little girl of fifteen, was visited at half past eight o'clock one evening, in a tenement on the lower East Side. The gas was burning brightly in the room; several people were talking; and this frail-looking little Ida lay on a couch in their midst, sleeping, in all the noise and light, in complete exhaustion. Her sister said that every night the child returned from the factory utterly worn out, she was obliged to work so hard and so fast. Ida received the same wage as Natalya--$6 a week. She worked fifty-six hours a week--eight more than the law allows for minors. She paid $4 a week for board and a room shared with the anxious older sister, who told about her experience. Ida needed all the rest of her $2 for her clothing. She did her own washing. As the inquirer came away, leaving the worn little girl sleeping in her utter fatigue, she wondered with what strength Ida could enter upon her possible marriage and motherhood--whether, indeed, she would struggle through to maturity. Katia Halperian, a shirt-waist worker of fifteen, had been in New York only six months. During twenty-one weeks of this time she was employed in a Wooster Street factory, earning for a week of nine-and-a-half-hour days only $3.50. Katia, like Natalya, was a "trimmer." After paying $3 a week board to an aunt, she had a surplus of 50 cents for all clothing, recreation, doctor's bills, and incidentals. To save carfare she walked to her work--about forty minutes' distance. Her aunt lived on the fourth floor of a tenement. After working nine and a half hours and walking an hour and twenty minutes daily, Katia climbed four flights of stairs and then helped with the housework. Sonia Lavretsky, a girl of twenty, had been self-supporting for four years. She lived in a most wretched, ill-kept tenement, with a family who made artificial flowers. She had been totally unable to find work for the last five months, but this family, though very poor, had kept her with them without payment through all this time. She had been three months an operative, putting cuffs on waists. Working on a time basis, she earned $3 the first week and $4 the second. She was then put on piece-work, and in fifty-four hours and a half could earn only $3. Laid off, she found employment at felling cloaks, earning from $3 to $6 a week. But after twelve weeks, trade in this place also had grown dull. During her idle time she became "run down" and was ill three weeks. Fortunately, a brother was able to pay her doctor's bills, until he also was laid off during part of her idle time. When Sonia had any money she gave her landlady, for part of a room in the poor tenement with the flower-makers, $3.50 a month, and about $2.50 a week for food. Before her dull season and slack work began, she had paid 20 cents a week dues to a self-education society and social club. Her brother had given her all the clothing she had. The burden of her support evidently fell heavily upon him and upon the poverty-stricken family of her hostess. And Sonia was in deep discouragement. She was about to go away from New York in hopes of finding work in Syracuse. Getta Bursova, an attractive Russian girl of twenty, had worked for eight years--ever since she was twelve. She had been employed as a waist operative for six years in London and for two in New York. Here she worked nine and a half hours daily in a factory on Nineteenth Street, earning $5 to $6 a week. Of this wage she paid her sister $4 a week for food and lodging in an inside tenement room in very poor East Side quarters, so far from her work that she was obliged to spend 60 cents a week for carfare. In her busy weeks she had never more than $1.40 a week left, and often only 60 cents, for her clothing and every other expense. Getta had been idle, moreover, for nearly six months. During this time she had been supported by her sister's family. In spite of this defeat in her fortunes, her presence had a lovely brightness and initiative, and her inexpensive dress had a certain daintiness. She was eager for knowledge, and through all her busy weeks had paid 10 cents dues to a self-education society. Nevertheless, her long dull season was a harassing burden and disappointment both for herself and her sister's struggling family. Betty Lukin, a shirt-waist maker of twenty, had been making sleeves for two years. For nine months of the year she earned from $6 to $10 a week; for the remaining three months only $2 a week. Her average weekly wage for the year would be about $6. Of this she spent $3 a week for suppers and a place in a tenement to sleep, and about 50 cents a week for breakfast and luncheon--a roll and a bit of fruit or candy from a push cart. Her father was in New York, doing little to support himself, so that many weeks she deprived herself to give him $3 or $4. She spent 50 cents a week to go to the theatre and 10 cents for club dues. She had, of course, very little left for dress. She looked ill clad, and she was, naturally, improperly nourished and very delicate. Two points in Betty's little account are suggestive: one is that she could always help her father. In listening to the account of an organizer of the Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a man who had known some 40,000 garment workers, I exclaimed on the hardships of the trade for the number of married men it contained, and was about to make a note of this item when he eagerly stopped me. "Wait, wait, please," he cried generously. "When you put it down, then put this down, too. It is just the same for the girls. The most of them are married to a family. They, too, take care of others." To this truth, Betty's expense of $3 to $4 for her father from her average wage of $6, and little Molly's item of nine weeks' board and lodging for her sister, bear eloquent testimony. On the girls' part they were mentioned merely as "all in the day's work," and with the tacit simplicity of that common mortal responsibility which is heroic. The other fact to be remarked in Betty's account is that she spent 60 cents a week for club dues and the theatre, and only 50 cents for all her casual sidewalk breakfasts and luncheons from the push carts. Such an eager hunger for complete change of scene and thought, such a desire for beauty and romance as these two comparative items show, appear in themselves a true romance. Nearly all the Russian shirt-waist makers visit the theatre and attend clubs and night classes, whatever their wage or their hours of labor. Most of them contribute to the support of a family. These shirt-waist makers, all self-supporting, whose income and outlay are described above, were all--with the exception of Irena Kovalova, who supported a family of four--living away from home. Natalya lived with her mother and father. She did not do her own washing, though she made her own waists and those of her sister and mother. But her story is given because in other ways--in casual employment, long hours, unfair and undignified treatment from her employers, and in the conditions of her peaceable effort to obtain juster and better terms of living--her experience has seemed characteristic of the trade fortunes of many of the forty thousand shirt-waist makers employed in New York for the last two years. In conditions such as described above, Natalya and other shirt-waist makers were working last fall, when one day she saw a girl, a piece-worker, shaking her head and objecting sadly to the low price the foreman was offering her for making a waist. "If you don't like it," said the foreman, with a laugh, "why don't you join your old 'sisters' out on the street, then?" Natalya wondered with interest who these "sisters" were. On making inquiry, she found that the workers in other shirt-waist factories had struck, for various reasons of dissatisfaction with the terms of their trade. The factories had continued work with strike breakers. Some of the companies had stationed women of the street and their cadets in front of the shops to insult and attack the Union members whenever they came to speak to their fellow-workers and to try to dissuade them from selling their work on unfair terms. Some had employed special police protection and thugs against the pickets. There is, of course, no law against picketing. Every one in the United States has as clear a legal right to address another person peaceably on the subject of his belief in selling his work as on the subject of his belief in the tariff. But on the 19th of October ten girls belonging to the Union, who had been talking peaceably on the day before with some of the strike breakers, were suddenly arrested as they were walking quietly along the street, were charged with disorderly conduct, arraigned in the Jefferson Market Court, and fined $1 each. The chairman of the strikers from one shop was set upon by a gang of thugs while he was collecting funds, and beaten and maimed so that he was confined to his bed for weeks. A girl of nineteen, one of the strikers, as she was walking home one afternoon was attacked in the open daylight by a thug, who struck her in the side and broke one of her ribs. She was in bed for four weeks, and will always be somewhat disabled by her injury. These and other illegal oppressions visited on the strikers roused a number of members of the Woman's Trade-Union League to assist the girls in peaceful picketing. Early in November, a policeman arrested Miss Mary E. Dreier, the President of the Woman's Trade-Union League, because she entered into a quiet conversation with one of the strike breakers. Miss Dreier is a woman of large independent means, socially well known throughout New York and Brooklyn. When the sergeant recognized her as she came into the station, he at once discharged her case, reprimanded the officer, and assured Miss Dreier that she would never have been arrested if they had known who she was. This flat instance of discrimination inspired the officers of the Woman's Trade-Union League to protest to Police Commissioner Baker against the arbitrary oppression of the strikers by the policemen. He was asked to investigate the action of the police. He replied that the pickets would in future receive as much consideration as other people. The attitude of the police did not, however, change. It was to these events, as Natalya Urusova found, that the foreman of the Bruch factory had referred when he asked the girls, with a sneer, why they didn't join their "sisters." Going to the Union headquarters on Clinton Street, she learned all she could about the Union. Afterward, in the Bruch factory, whenever any complaints arose, she would say casually, in pretended helplessness, "But what can we do? Is there any way to change this?" Vague suggestions of the Union headquarters would arise, and she would inquire into this eagerly and would pretend to allow herself to be led to Clinton Street. So, little by little, as the long hours and low wages and impudence from the foreman continued, she induced about sixty girls to understand about organization and to consider it favorably. On the evening of the 22d of November, Natalya, and how many others from the factory she could not tell, attended a mass meeting at Cooper Union, of which they had been informed by hand-bills. It was called for the purpose of discussing a general strike of shirt-waist workers in New York City. The hall was packed. Overflow meetings were held at Beethoven Hall, Manhattan Lyceum, and Astoria Hall. In the Cooper Union addresses were delivered by Samuel Gompers, by Miss Dreier, and by many others. Finally, a girl of eighteen asked the chairman for the privilege of the floor. She said: "I have listened to all the speeches. I am one who thinks and feels from the things they describe. I, too, have worked and suffered. I am tired of the talking. I move that we go on a general strike." The meeting broke into wild applause. The motion was unanimously indorsed. The chairman, Mr. Feigenbaum, a Union officer, rapped on the table. "Do you mean faith?" he called to the workers. "Will you take the old Jewish oath?" Thousands of right hands were held up and the whole audience repeated in Yiddish:[14] "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise." This was the beginning of the general shirt-waist strike. A committee of fifteen girls and one boy was appointed at the Cooper Union meeting, and went from one to the other of the overflow meetings, where the same motion was offered and unanimously indorsed. II "But I did not know how many workers in my shop had taken that oath at that meeting. I could not tell how many would go on strike in our factory the next day," said Natalya, afterward. "When we came back the next morning to the factory, though, no one went to the dressing-room. We all sat at the machines with our hats and coats beside us, ready to leave. The foreman had no work for us when we got there. But, just as always, he did not tell when there would be any, or if there would be any at all that day. And there was whispering and talking softly all around the room among the machines: 'Shall we wait like this?' 'There is a general strike,' 'Who will get up first?' 'It would be better to be the last to get up, and then the company might remember it of you afterward, and do well for you,' But I told them," observed Natalya, with a little shrug, "'What difference does it make which one is first and which one is last?' Well, so we stayed whispering, and no one knowing what the other would do, not making up our minds, for two hours. Then I started to get up." Her lips trembled. "And at just the same minute all--we all got up together, in one second. No one after the other; no one before. And when I saw it--that time--oh, it excites me so yet, I can hardly talk about it. So we all stood up, and all walked out together. And already out on the sidewalk in front the policemen stood with the clubs. One of them said, 'If you don't behave, you'll get this on your head.' And he shook his club at me. "We hardly knew where to go--what to do next. But one of the American girls, who knew how to telephone, called up the Woman's Trade-Union League, and they told us all to come to a big hall a few blocks away. After we were there, we wrote out on paper what terms we wanted: not any night work, except as it would be arranged for in some special need for it for the trade; and shorter hours; and to have wages arranged by a committee to arbitrate the price for every one fairly; and to have better treatment from the bosses. "Then a leader spoke to us and told us about picketing quietly, and the law.[15] "Our factory had begun to work with a few Italian strike breakers.[16] The next day we went back to the factory, and saw five Italian girls taken in to work, and then taken away afterward in an automobile. I was with an older girl from our shop, Anna Lunska. The next morning in front of the factory, Anna Lunska and I met a tall Italian man going into the factory with some girls. So I said to her: 'These girls fear us in some way. They do not understand, and I will speak to them, and ask them why they work, and tell them we are not going to harm them at all--only to speak about our work.' "I moved toward them to say this to them. Then the tall man struck Anna Lunska in the breast so hard, he nearly knocked her down. She couldn't get her breath. And I went to a policeman standing right there and said, 'Why do you not arrest this man for striking my friend? Why do you let him do it? Look at her. She cannot speak; she is crying. She did nothing at all,' Then he arrested the man; and he said, 'But you must come, too, to make a charge against him.' The tall Italian called a man out of the factory, and went with me and Anna Lunska and the three girls to the court." But when Natalya and Anna reached the court, and had made their charge against the tall Italian, to their bewilderment not only he, but they, too, were conducted downstairs to the cells. He had charged them with attacking the girls he was escorting into the factory. "They made me go into a cell," said Natalya, "and suddenly they locked us in. Then I was frightened, and I said to the policeman there, 'Why do you do this? I have done nothing at all. The man struck my friend. I must send for somebody.' "He said, 'You cannot send for any one at all. You are a prisoner.' "We cried then. We were frightened. We did not know what to do. "After about an hour and a half he came and said some one was asking for us. We looked out. It was Miss Violet Pike. A boy I knew had seen us go into the prison with the Italian, and not come out, and so he thought something was wrong and he had gone to the League and told them. "So Miss Pike had come from the League; and she bailed us out; and she came back with us on the next day for our trial." On the next morning the case against the tall Italian was rapidly examined, and the Italian discharged. He was then summoned back in rebuttal, and Natalya and Anna's case was called. Four witnesses, one of them being the proprietor of the factory, were produced against them, and stated that Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the Italian was escorting. At the close of the case against Natalya and Anna, Judge Cornell said:[17] "I find the girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile for me to fine them. Some charitable women would pay their fines or they could get a bond. I am going to commit them to the workhouse under the Cumulative Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity of thinking over what they have done." "Miss Violet Pike came forward then," said Natalya, "and said, 'Cannot this sentence be mollified?' "And he said it could not be mollified. "They took us away in a patrol to the Tombs. "We waited in the waiting-room there. The matron looked at us and said, 'You are not bad girls. I will not send you down to the cells. You can do some sewing for me here.' But I could not sew. I felt so bad, because I could not eat the food they gave us at noon for dinner in the long hall with all the other prisoners. It was coffee with molasses in it, and oatmeal and bread so bad that after one taste we could not swallow it down. Then, for supper, we had the same, but soup, too, with some meat bones in it. And even before you sat down at the table these bones smelled so it made you very sick. But they forced you to sit down at the table before it, whether you ate or drank anything or not. And the prisoners walked by in a long line afterward and put their spoons in a pail of hot water, just the same whether they had eaten anything with the spoons or not. "Then we walked to our cells. It was night, and it was dark--oh, so dark in there it was dreadful! There were three other women in the cell--some of them were horrid women that came off the street. The beds were one over the other, like on the boats--iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket. But it was so cold you had to put both over you; and the iron springs underneath were bare, and they were dreadful to lie on. There was no air; you could hardly breathe. The horrid women laughed and screamed and said terrible words. "Anna Lunska felt so sick and was so very faint, I thought what should we do if she was so much worse in the night in this terrible darkness, where you could see nothing at all. Then I called through the little grating to a woman who was a sentinel that went by in the hall all through the night, 'My friend is sick. Can you get me something if I call you in the night?' "The woman just laughed and said, 'Where do you think you are? But if you pay me, I will come and see what I can do.' "In a few minutes she came back with a candle, and shuffled some cards under the candlelight, and called to us, 'Here, put your hand through the grate and give me a quarter and I'll tell you who your fellows are by the cards.' Then Anna Lunska said, 'We do not care to hear talk like that,' and the woman went away. "All that night it was dreadful. In the morning we could not eat any of the breakfast. They took us in a wagon like a prison with a little grating, and then in a boat like a prison with a little grating. As we got on to it, there was another girl, not like the rest of the women prisoners. She cried and cried. And I saw she was a working girl. I managed to speak to her and say, 'Who are you?' She said, 'I am a striker. I cannot speak any English.' That was all. They did not wish me to speak to her, and I had to go on. "From the boat they made us go into the prison they call Blackwell's Island. Here they made us put on other clothes. All the clothes they had were much, much too large for me, and they were dirty. They had dresses in one piece of very heavy, coarse material, with stripes all around, and the skirts are gathered, and so heavy for the women. They almost drag you down to the ground. Everything was so very much too big for me, the sleeves trailed over my hands so far and the skirts on the ground so far, they had to pin and pin them up with safety-pins. "Then we had the same kind of food I could not eat; and they put us to work sewing gloves. But I could not sew, I was so faint and sick. At night there was the same kind of food I could not eat, and all the time I wondered about that shirt-waist striker that could not speak one word of English, and she was all alone and had the same we had in other ways. When we walked by the matron to go to our cells at night, at first she started to send Anna Lunska and me to different cells. She would have made me go alone with one of the terrible women from the street. But I was so dreadfully frightened, and cried so, and begged her so to let Anna Lunska and me stay together, that at last she said we could. "Just after that I saw that other girl, away down the line, so white, she must have cried and cried, and looking so frightened. I thought, 'Oh, I ought to ask for her to come with us, too' But I did not dare. I thought, 'I will make that matron so mad that she will not even let Anna Lunska and me stay together,' So I got almost to our cell before I went out of the line and across the hall and went back to the matron and said: 'Oh, there is another Russian girl here. She is all alone. She cannot speak one word of English. Please, please couldn't that girl come with my friend and me?' "She said, 'Well, for goodness' sake! So you want to band all the strikers together here, do you? How long have you known her?' "I said, 'I never saw her until to-day.' "The matron said, 'For the land's sake, what do you expect here?' but she did not say anything else. So I went off, just as though she wasn't going to let that girl come with us; for I knew she would not want to seem as though she would do it, at any rate. "But, after we were in the cell with an Irish woman and another woman, the door opened, and that Russian girl came in with us. Oh, she was so glad! "After that it was the same as the night before, except that we could see the light of the boats passing. But it was dark and cold, and we had to put both the quilt and the blanket over us and lie on the springs, and you must keep all of your clothes on to try to be warm. But the air and the smells are so bad. I think if it were any warmer, you would almost faint there. I could not sleep. "The next day they made me scrub. But I did not know how to scrub. And, for Anna Lunska, she wet herself all over from head to foot. So they said, very cross, 'It seems to us you do not know how to scrub a bit. You can go back to the sewing department.' On the way I went through a room filled with negresses, and they called out, 'Look, look at the little kid,' And they took hold of me, and turned me around, and all laughed and sang and danced all around me. These women, they do not seem to mind at all that they are in prison. "In the sewing room the next two days I was so sick I could hardly sew. The women often said horrid things to each other, and I sat on the bench with them. There was one woman over us at sewing that argued with me so much, and told me how much better it was for me here than in Russian prisons, and how grateful I should be. "I said, 'How is that, then? Isn't there the same kind of food in those prisons and in these prisons? And I think there is just as much liberty.'" On the last day of Natalya's sentence, after she was dressed in her own little jacket and hat again and just ready to go, one of the most repellent women of the street said to her, "I am staying in here and you're going out. Give me a kiss for good-by." Natalya said that this woman was a horror to her. "But I thought it was not very nice to refuse this; so I kissed her a good-by kiss and came away." The officers guarded the girls to the prison boat for their return to New York. There, at the ferry, stood a delegation of the members of the Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union waiting to receive them. Such is the account of one of the seven hundred arrests made during the shirt-waist strike, the chronicle of a peaceful striker. As the weeks went on, however, in spite of the advice of the Union officers, there were a few instances of violence on the part of the Union members. Among thirty thousand girls it could not be expected that every single person should maintain the struggle in justice and temperance with perfect self-control. In two or three cases the Union members struck back when they were attacked. In a few cases they became excited and attacked strike breakers. In one factory, although there was no violence, the workers conducted their negotiations in an unfair and unfortunate manner. They had felt that all their conditions except the amount of wages were just, and they admired and were even remarkably proud of the management, a firm of young and well-intentioned manufacturers. Early in the general strike, however, they went out without a word to the management, without even signifying to it in any way the point they considered unjust. The management did not send to inquire. After a few days it resumed work with strike breakers. The former employees began picketing. The management sent word to them that it would not employ against them, so long as they were peaceful and within the law, any of the means of intimidation that numbers of the other firms were using--special police and thugs. The girls sent word back that they would picket peacefully and quietly. But afterward, on their own admission, which was most disarming in its candor, they became careless and "too gay." They went picketing in too large numbers and were too noisy. Instantly the firm employed police. Before this, however, the girls had begun to discuss and to realize the unintelligence of their behavior in failing to send a committee to the management to describe their position clearly and to obtain terms. They now appointed and instructed such a committee, came rapidly to terms with the management, and have been working for them in friendly relations ever since. While in general the strike was both peaceful in conduct and just in demand and methods of demand on the part of the strikers, these exceptions must, of course, be mentioned in the interests of truth. Further, it would convey a false impression to imply that every striker arrested had as much sense and force of character as Natalya Urusova. Natalya was especially protected in her ordeal by a vital love of observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these qualities she could spend night after night locked up with the women of the street, in her funny, enormous prison clothes, and remain as uninfluenced by her companions as if she had been some blossoming geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cellar as a convenience for a few minutes, and then carried out again to her native fresh air. But such qualities as hers cannot be demanded of all very young and unprotected girls, and to place them wantonly with women of the streets has in general an outrageous irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently implied by the experience of a girl of Natalya's individual penetration and self-reliance. III In the period since the strike began many factories had been settling upon Union terms. But many factories were still on strike, and picketing on the part of the Union was continuing, as well as unwarranted arrests, like Natalya's, on the part of the employers and the police. The few exceptions to the general rule of peaceful picketing have been stated. Over two hundred arrests were made within three days early in December. On the 3d of December a procession of ten thousand women marched to the City Hall, accompanying delegates from the Union and the Woman's Trade-Union League, and visited Mayor McClellan in his office and gave him this letter:-- HONORABLE GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, Mayor of the City of New York. We, the members of the Ladies' Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a body of thirty thousand women, appeal to you to put an immediate stop to the insults and intimidations and to the abuses to which the police have subjected us while we have been picketing. This is our lawful right. We protest to you against the flagrant discrimination of the Police Department in favor of the employers, who are using every method to incite us to violence. We appeal to you directly in this instance, instead of to your Police Commissioner. We do this because our requests during the past six months have had no effect in decreasing the outrages perpetrated upon our members, nor have our requests been granted a fair hearing. Yours respectfully, S. SHINDLER, Secretary. The Mayor thanked the committee for bringing the matter to his attention, and promised to take up the complaint with the Police Commissioner. But the arrests and violence of the police continued unchecked. On the 5th of December the Political Equality League, at the instigation of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, held a packed meeting for the benefit of the Shirt-waist Makers' Union. Many imprisoned girls were present, and gave to the public clear, straightforward stories of the treatment they had received at the hands of the city. The committee of the meeting had offered the Mayor and other city officials a box, but they refused to be present. Again the arrests and violence continued without protection for the workers. Nevertheless their cause was constantly gaining, and although all attempts at general arbitration were unsuccessful, more and more employers settled with the operatives. They continued to settle during December and January until the middle of February. All but thirteen of the shops in New York had then made satisfactory terms with the Union workers. It was officially declared that the strike was over. Natalya's shop had settled with the operatives on the 23d of January, and she went back to work on the next day. She had an increase of $2 a week in wages--$8 a week instead of $6. Her hours were now fifty-two a week instead of sixty--that is to say, nine and one-half hours a day, with a Saturday half-holiday. But she has since then been obliged to enter another factory on account of slack work. Among the more skilled workers than Natalya in New York to-day, Irena Kovalova, who supports her mother and her younger brother and sister, has $11 a week instead of $9. She is not obliged to work on Sunday, and her factory closes at five o'clock instead of six on Saturday. "I have four hours less a week," she said with satisfaction. The family have felt able to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material for a suit, costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this for Irena as a present. Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, Anna Klotin, who sent $120 home to her family last year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8 a week, and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her former $12 a week. Hers was one of the thirteen factories that did not settle. Of their one hundred and fifty girls, they wished about twenty of their more skilled operators to return to them under Union conditions, leaving the rest under the old long hours of overtime and indeterminate, unregulated wages. Anna was one of the workers the firm wished to retain on Union terms, but she felt she could not separate her chances in her trade from the fortunes of her one hundred and thirty companions. She refused to return under conditions so unjust for them. She has stayed on in her boarding place, as her landlady, realizing Anna's responsible character, is always willing to wait for money when work is slack. She has bought this year only two pairs of shoes, a hat for 50 cents, and one or two muslin waists, which she made herself. She has lived on such work as she could find from time to time in different factories. Anna did not grudge in any way her sacrifice for the less skilled workers. "In time," she said, "we will have things better for all of us." And the chief regret she mentioned was that she had been unable to send any money home since the strike. The staunchest allies of the shirt-waist makers in their attempt to obtain wiser trade conditions were the members and officers of the Woman's Trade-Union League, whose response and generosity were constant from the beginning to the end of the strike. The chronicle of the largest woman's strike in this country is not yet complete. A suit is now pending against the Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union for conspiracy in restraint of trade, brought by the Sittomer Shirt-waist Co. A test suit is pending against Judge Cornell for false imprisonment, brought by one of the shirt-waist strikers. The whole outcome of the strike in its effect on women's wages in the shirt-waist trade, their income and outlay in their work, both financially and in vitality, cannot, of course, yet be fully known. The statement that there has been a general rise of wages must be modified in other ways than that suggested by the depletion of Anna Klotin's income in the year since the strike. In factories where price on piece-work is subject to arbitration between a Union committee of the workers and the firm, the committee is not always able to obtain a fair price for labor. One of the largest factories made a verbal agreement to observe Union conditions, but it signed no written contract, and has since broken its word. It discriminates against Union members, and it insists on Sunday work and on night work for more than two nights a week. Further, during the seventeen weeks of the strike many shirt-waist orders ordinarily filled in New York were placed with New Jersey and Pennsylvania firms. The present New York season has been unusually dull, and now, on this writing, early in August, many girls are discouraged on account of the slight amounts they earn through slack work. "But that is not the fault of the employers," said one of the workers. "You must be reasonable for them. You cannot ask them for work they are not able to obtain to give you." Her remark is quoted both from its wisdom and for another purpose. She was the girl who will always be disabled by the attack of her employer's thug. Her quiet and instinctive mention of the need of justice in considering conditions for employers had for the listener who heard her a most significant, unconscious generosity and nobility. Looking back upon the shirt-waist strike nearly a year afterward, its profoundest common value would appear to an unprejudiced onlooker to be its spirit. Something larger than a class spirit, something fairer than a mob spirit, something which may perhaps be called a mass spirit, manifested itself in the shirt-waist makers' effort for better terms of life. "The most remarkable feature of the strike," says a writer in the _Call_,[18] "is the absence of leaders. All the girls seem to be imbued with a spirit of activity that by far surpasses all former industrial uprisings. One like all are ready to take the chairmanship, secretaryship, do picket duty, be arrested, and go to prison." There has never before been a strike quite like the shirt-waist makers' strike. Perhaps there never will be another quite like it again. When every fair criticism of its conduct has been faced, and its errors have all been admitted, the fact remains that the New York strike said, "All for one and one for all," with a magnetic candor new and stirring in the voice of the greatest and the richest city of our country--perhaps new in the voice of the world. Wonderful it is to know that in that world to-day, unseen, unheard, are forces like those of that ghetto girl who, in the meanest quarter of New York, on stinted food, in scanty clothes, drained with faint health and overwork, could yet walk through her life, giving away half of her wage by day to some one else, enjoying the theatre at night, and, in the poorest circumstances, pouring her slight strength out richly like a song for pleasure and devotion. Wonderful it is to know that when Natalya Urusova was in darkness, hunger, fright, and cold on Blackwell's Island, she still could be responsibly concerned for the fortunes of a stranger and had something she could offer to her nobly. Wonderful to know that, after her very bones had been broken by the violence of a thug of an employer, one of these girls could still speak for perfect fairness for him with an instinct for justice truly large and thrilling. Such women as that ennoble life and give to the world a richer and altered conception of justice--a justice of imagination and the heart, concerned not at all with vengeance, but simply with the beauty of the perfect truth for the fortunes of all mortal creatures. Besides the value to the workers of the spirit of the shirt-waist strike, they gained another advantage. This was of graver moment even than an advance in wages and of deeper consequences for their future. They gained shorter hours. What, then, are the trade fortunes of some of those thousands of other women, other machine operatives whose hours and wages are now as the shirt-waist makers' were before the shirt-waist strike? What do some of these other women factory workers, unorganized and entirely dependent upon legislation for conserving their strength by shorter working hours, give in their industry? What do they get from it? For an answer to these questions, we turn to some of the white goods sewers, belt makers, and stitchers on children's dresses, for the annals of their income and outlay in their work away from home in New York. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: _Union Label Bulletin_, Vol. 2, No. I, p. 1.] [Footnote 13: This expense would at this date probably be heavier, as the working girls at one of the St. George's Working Girls' Clubs estimated early this summer that shoes of a quality purchasable two years ago at $2 would now cost $2.50.] [Footnote 14: Constance Leupp, in the _Survey_.] [Footnote 15: The circular of advice issued a little later by the Union reads as follows:-- RULES FOR PICKETS Don't walk in groups of more than two or three. Don't stand in front of the shop; walk up and down the block. Don't stop the person you wish to talk to; walk along side of him. Don't get excited and shout when you are talking. Don't put your hand on the person you are speaking to. Don't touch his sleeve or button. This may be construed as a "technical assault." Don't call any one "scab" or use abusive language of any kind. Plead, persuade, appeal, but do not threaten. If a policeman arrest you and you are sure that you have committed no offense, take down his number and give it to your Union officers.] [Footnote 16: In the factories where the Russian and Italian girls worked side by side, their feeling for each other seems generally to have been friendly. After the beginning of the strike an attempt was made to antagonize them against each other by religious and nationalistic appeals. It met with little success. Italian headquarters for Italian workers wishing organizations were soon established. Little by little the Italian garment workers are entering the Union.] [Footnote 17: Extract from the court stenographer's minutes of the proceedings in the Per trial.] [Footnote 18: Therese Malkiel, December 22.] CHAPTER III THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS [Unskilled and Seasonal Factory Work] I Besides the accounts of the waist makers, the National Consumers' League received in its inquiry specific chronicles from skilled and from unskilled factory workers, both hand workers and machine operatives--among others, packers of drugs, biscuits, and olives, cigarette rollers, box makers, umbrella makers, hat makers, glove makers, fur sewers, hand embroiderers, white goods workers, skirt makers, workers on men's coats, and workers on children's dresses. As will be seen, the situation occupied and described by any individual girl may in a year or five years be no longer hers, but that of some other worker. So that the synthesis of these chronicles is presented, not as a composite photograph of the industrial experiences in any one trade, but rather as an accurate kinetoscope view of the yearly life of chance passing factory workers. For the purposes of record these annals may be loosely divided into those of unskilled and seasonal factory workers, and those whose narratives expressed the effects of monotony and fatigue, from speeding at their tasks. This division must remain loose to convey a truthful impression. For the same self-supporting girl has often been a skilled and an unskilled worker, by hand, at a machine, and in several industries. Discouragement at the lack of opportunity to advance was expressed by almost all the narrators of their histories who were engaged in unskilled factory work. Among them, Emily Clement, an American girl, was one of the first workers who gave the League an account of her experience. Emily was tending an envelope machine, at a wage of $6 a week. She was about twenty years old; and before her employment at the envelope machine she had worked, at the age of fourteen, for a year in a carpet mill; then for two years in a tobacco factory; and then for two years had kept house for a sister and an aunt living in an East Side tenement. She still lived with them, sharing a room with her sister, and paying $3 a week for her lodging, with board and part of her washing. She did the rest of her washing, and made some of her sister's clothes and all of her own. This skill had enabled her to have for $5.20, the cost of the material, the pretty spring suit she wore--a coat, skirt, and jumper, of cloth much too thin to protect her from the chill of the weather, but stylishly cut and becoming. In idle times she had done a little sewing for friends, for her income had been quite inadequate. During the twenty-two weeks she had been in the factory she had had full work for eleven and one-half weeks, at $6; half-time for eight and one-half weeks, at $3; and two weeks of slack work, in each of which she earned only $1.50. She had no money at all to spend for recreation; and, in her hopelessness of the future and her natural thirst for pleasure, she sometimes accepted it from chance men acquaintances met on the street. Another unskilled worker of twenty, Sarina Bashkitseff, intended to escape from her monotonous work and low wage by educating herself in a private evening school. For this she contrived to save $4 a month out of her income of $4 a week. Sarina packed powders in a drug factory from eight to six o'clock, with three-quarters of an hour for lunch. She was a beautiful and brilliant girl, who used to come to work in the winter dressed in her summer coat, with a little woollen under-jacket to protect her from the cold, and a plain cheap felt hat, much mocked at by the American girls. Sarina scorned the mental scope of these girls; scorned to spend for dress, money with which she could learn to read "Othello" and "King Lear" in the original; and scorned to spend in giggling the lunch hour, in which she might read in Yiddish newspapers the latest tidings of the struggle in Russia. In the drug factory, and in her East Side hall bedroom, she lived in a world of her own--a splendid, generous world of the English tragedies she studied at night school, and of the thrilling hopes and disappointments of the Russian revolution. She had been in New York a year. In this time she had worked in an artificial flower factory, earning from $2 to $2.25 a week; then as a cutter in a box factory, where she had $3 a week at first, and then $5, for ten hours' work a day. She left this place because the employer was very lax about payment, and sometimes cheated her out of small amounts. She then tried finishing men's coats; but working from seven-thirty to twelve and from one to six daily brought her only $3 a week and severe exhaustion.[19] From her present wage of $4 she spent 60 cents a week for carfare and $4.25 a month for her share of a tenement hall bedroom. Although she did not live with them, her mother and father were in New York, and she had her dinners with them, free of cost. Her luncheon cost her from 7 to 10 cents a day, and her breakfast consisted of 1-1/2 cents' worth of rolls. All that made Sarina Bashkitseff's starved and drudging days endurable for her was her clear determination to escape from them by educating herself. Her fate might be expressed in Whitman's words, "Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune." Whatever her circumstances, few persons in the world could ever be in a position to pity her. Marta Neumann, another unskilled factory worker, an Austrian girl of nineteen, was also trying to escape from her present position by educating herself at night school, but was drained by cruel homesickness. Marta had spent all her youth, since her childhood, at home,--four years in New York,--in factory work, without the slightest prospect of advancement. Her work was of the least skilled kind--cutting off the ends of threads from men's suspenders, and folding and placing them in boxes. She earned at first $3 a week, and had been advanced to $5 by a 50-cent rise at every one of the last four Christmases since she had left her mother and father. But she knew she would not be advanced beyond this last price, and feared to undertake heavier work, as, though she had kept her health, she was not at all strong. She worked from eight to six, with half an hour at noon. On Saturday the factory closed at five in winter and at one in summer. Her income for the year had been $237.50. She had spent $28.50 for carfare; $13 for a suit; $2 for a hat; and $2 for a pair of shoes she had worn for ten months. Her board and lodging with a married sister had cost her $2.50 a week, less in one way than with strangers. But she slept with part of her sister's family, did her own washing and her sister's, scrubbed the floor, and rose every day at half past five to help with the work and prepare her luncheon before starting for the factory at seven. Marta could earn so little that she had never been able to save enough to make her deeply desired journey back to Austria to see her mother and father. Although both their children were in the new country, her mother and father would not be admitted under the immigration law, because her father was blind. The lack of opportunity to rise, among older unskilled factory workers, may be illustrated by the experience of Mrs. Hallett, an American woman of forty, a slight, gentle-voiced little widow, who had been packing candies and tying and labelling boxes for sixteen years. In this time she had advanced from a wage of $4 a week to a wage of $6, earned by a week of nine-hour days, with a Saturday half-holiday. However, as with Marta, this had represented payment from the company for length of service, and not an advance to more skilled or responsible labor with more outlook. In Mrs. Hallett's case this was partly because the next step would have been to become a clerk in one of the company's retail stores, and she was not strong enough to endure the all-day standing which this would require. Mrs. Hallett liked this company. The foreman was considerate, and a week's vacation with pay was given to the employees. Mrs. Hallett lived in an excessively small, unheated hall bedroom, on the fourth floor of an enormous old house filled with the clatter of the elevated railroad. On the night of the inquirer's call, she was pathetically concerned lest her visitor should catch cold because "she wasn't used to it." She lighted a small candle to show her the room, furnished with one straight hard chair, a cot, and a wash-stand with a broken pitcher, but with barely space besides for Mrs. Clark and her kind, public-spirited little hostess. They sat, drowned at times in the noise of the elevated, in almost complete darkness, as Mrs. Hallett insisted on making a vain effort to extract some heat for her guest from the single gas-jet, by attaching to it an extremely small gas-stove. For this room, which was within walking distance of the candy factory, Mrs. Hallett paid $1.75 a week. Her breakfast of coffee and rolls in a bakery near by cost her 10 cents daily. She apportioned 15 or 25 cents each for her luncheon or dinner at restaurants. In her hungriest and most extravagant moments she lunched for 30 cents. Her allowance for food had to be meagre, because, as she had no laundry facilities, she was obliged to have her washing done outside. Sometimes she contrived to save a dollar a week toward buying clothing. But this meant living less tidily by having less washing done, or going hungrier. During the last year her expense for clothing had been a little more than $23: summer hat, $1; winter hat, $1.98; best hat, $2; shoes (2 pairs at $2.98, 2 pairs rubbers), $7.16; wrap (long coat), $2.98; skirt (a best black brilliantine, worn two years), at $5.50, $2.75; underskirt (black sateen), 98 cents; shirtwaist (black cotton, worn every day in the year), 98 cents; black tights, 98 cents; 2 union suits at $1.25 (one every other year), $1.25; 6 pairs stockings at 25 cents, $1.50; total, $23.56. She said with deprecation that she sometimes went to the theatre with some young girl friends, paying 25 cents for a seat, "because I like a good time now and then." These trade fortunes represent as clearly as possible the usual industrial experience of the women workers in unskilled factory labor who gave accounts of their income and outlay in their work away from home in New York. II The chronicles printed below, taken from establishments of different kinds and grades, express as clearly as possible the several features most common to the trade fortunes the workers described--uncertain and seasonal employment, small exploitations, monotony in occupation, and fatigue from speeding. Because of uncertain and seasonal employment, machine operatives in the New York sewing industries frequently change from one trade to another. This had been the experience of Yeddie Bruker, a young Hungarian white-goods worker living in the Bronx. The tenements of the Bronx appear as crowded as those of the longer-settled neighborhoods of Manhattan, the lower East Side, Harlem, Chelsea, and the cross streets off the Bowery, where so many self-supporting factory workers live. These newer-built lodgings, too, have close, stifling halls, and inner courts hung thick with washing. Here, too, you see, through the windows, flower makers and human hair workers at their tasks; and in the entries, hung with Hungarian and German signs, the children sit crowded among large women with many puffs of hair and a striking preference for frail light pink and blue princess dresses. These blocks of Rumanian and Hungarian tenement districts, their fire-escapes hung with feather beds and old carpets, and looking like great overflowing waste-baskets, are scattered in among little bluff ledges, scraggy with walnut brush, some great rocks still unblasted, and several patches of Indian corn in sloping hillside empty lots--small, strange heights of old New York country, still unsubmerged by the wide tide of Slav and Austrian immigration. In this curious and bizarre neighborhood, Yeddie Bruker and her sister lived in a filthy tenement building, in one room of an extremely clean little flat owned by a family of their own nationality. Yeddie was a spirited, handsome girl of twenty-one, though rather worn looking and white. At work for six years in New York, she had at first been a machine operative in a large pencil factory, where she fastened to the ends of the pencils the little corrugated tin bands to which erasers are attached. Then she had been a belt maker, then a stitcher on men's collars, and during the last four years a white-goods worker. In the pencil factory of her first employment there was constant danger of catching her fingers in the machinery; the air was bad; the forewoman was harsh and nagging, and perpetually hurrying the workers. The jar of the wheels, the darkness, and the frequent illnesses of workers from breathing the particles of the pencil-wood shavings and the lead dust flying in the air all frightened and preyed upon her. She earned only $4 a week for nine and one-half hours' work a day, and was exhausting herself when she left the place, hastened by the accident of a girl near her, who sustained hideous injuries from catching her hair in the machinery. In the collar factory she again earned $4 a week, stitching between five and six dozen collars a day. The stitch on men's collars is extremely small, almost invisible. It strained her eyes so painfully that she was obliged to change her occupation again. As an operative on neckwear, and afterward on belts, she was thrown out of work by the trade seasons. These still leave her idle, in her present occupation as a white-goods worker, for more than three months in every year. In the remaining nine months, working with a one-needle machine on petticoats and wash dresses, in a small factory on the lower East Side, she has had employment for about four days in the week for three months, employment for all the working days in the week for another three months, and employment with overtime three nights in a week and an occasional half day on Sunday, for between two and three months. Legal holidays and a few days of illness made up the year. In full weeks her wage is $8. Her income for the year had been $366, and she had been able to save nothing. She had paid $208 for her board and lodging, at the rate of $4 a week; a little more than $100 for clothing; $38 for carfare, necessitated by living in the Bronx; $3 for a doctor; $2.60 to a benefit association, which assures her $3 a week in case of illness; $5 for the theatre; and $6 for Union dues. Her work was very exhausting. Evenly spaced machine ruffling on petticoats is difficult, and she had a great deal of this work to do. She sewed with a one-needle machine, which carried, however, five cottons and was hard to thread. It may be said here that the number of needles does not necessarily determine the difficulty of working on sewing-machines; two-needle machines are sometimes harder to run than five or even twelve-needle machines, because they are more cheaply and clumsily constructed and the material is held less firmly by the metal guide under the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, that were tired by the stitching, but her shoulders and her back, from the jar of the machines. Every month she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed every cent she made, she never remained at home, when the factory was open. One of the most trying aspects of machine-speeding, in the sewing trades, is the perpetual goading and insistence of the foremen and forewomen, frequently mentioned by other workers besides Yeddie. Two years ago, in a waist and dress factory where 400 operatives--more than 300 girls and about 20 men--were employed for the company by a well-known subcontractor, Jake Klein, a foreman asked Mr. Klein to beset some of the girls for a degree of speed he said he was unwilling to demand. The manager discharged him. He asked to speak to the girls before he went away. The manager refused his request. As Mr. Klein turned to the girls, his superior summoned the elevator man, who seized Klein's collar, overpowered him, and started to drag him over the floor toward the stairs. "Brothers and sisters," Klein called to the operatives, "will you sit by and see a fellow-workman used like this?" In one impulse of clear justice, every worker arose, walked out of the shop with Jake Klein, and stayed out till the company made overtures of peace. This adventure, widely related on the East Side, serves to show the latent fire, kindled by the accumulation of small overbearing oppressions, which smolders in many sewing shops. The uncertainty of employment characterizing the sewing trades fell heavily on Sarah Silberman, a delicate little Austrian Jewish girl of seventeen, who finished and felled women's cloaks. She had always lived in poverty. She had worked in a stocking factory in Austria when she was a little thing of nine, and had been self-supporting ever since she was fourteen, machine-sewing in Vienna and London and New York. She had been in New York for about a year, lodging, or rather sleeping at night, in the tenement kitchen of some distant cousins of hers, practically strangers. The kitchen opened on an air-shaft, and it was used, not only as a kitchen, but as a dining room and living-room. For the first four months after her arrival Sarah earned about $5 a week, working from nine and one-half to ten hours a day as a finisher of boys' trousers. From this wage she paid $3 a week for her kitchen sleeping space and breakfast and supper. Luncheon cost her 7 cents a day. She had been able to buy so very little clothing that she had kept no account of it. She did her own washing, and walked to work. She had never had any education until she came to America, and she now attended a night school, in which she was keenly interested. She was living in this way when her factory closed. She then searched desperately for employment for two weeks, finding it at last in a cloak factory[20] where she was employed from half past seven in the morning until half past six or seven in the evening, with a respite of only a few minutes at noon for a hasty luncheon. Her wage was $3 a week. Working her hardest, she could not keep the wolf from the door, and was obliged to go hungry at luncheon time or fail to pay the full rent for her place to sleep in the kitchen. Sarah was very naturally unstrung and nervous in this hardness of circumstance and her terror of destitution. As she told her story, she sobbed and wrung her hands. In the next six months she had better occupation, however, in spasmodically busy shops, where the hours were shorter than in the cloak factory, and she managed to earn an average wage of $6 a week. She was then more serene; she said she had "made out good." During her six weeks of better pay at $6 a week, however, which so few people would consider "making out good," she had suffered an especially mean exploitation. She applied at an underwear factory which constantly advertises, in an East Side Jewish paper, for operatives. The management told her they would teach her to operate if she would work for them two weeks for nothing and would give them a dollar. She gave them the dollar; but on the first day in the place, as she received no instructions, and learned through another worker that after her two weeks of work for nothing were over she would not be employed, she came away, losing the dollar she had given to the firm. Another worker who was distressed by the dull season, and had witnessed unjust impositions, was Katia Markelov, a young operative on corsets. She was a tiny, grave-looking girl of nineteen, very frail, with smooth black hair, a lovely refinement of manner, and a very sweet smile. Like many other operatives, she wore glasses. Katia was a good manager, and an industrious and clever student, a constant attendant at night school. In the factory where she was employed she earned about $10 a week as a week worker, a skilled worker making an entire corset, after it was cut and before it was trimmed. But she had only twelve full weeks' work in the year; for two and a half months she was entirely idle, and for the remaining six and a half months she worked from two to five days a week. Her income for the year had been about $346. Katia worked with a one-needle machine in a small factory off lower Broadway. Before that she had been employed as a week worker in a Fifth Avenue corset factory, which may be called Madame Cora's. Shortly before Katia left this establishment, Madame Cora changed her basis of payment from week work to piece-work. The girls' speed increased. Some of the more rapid workers who had before made $10 were able to make $12. On discovering this, Madame Cora cut their wages, not by frankly returning to the old basis, but by suddenly beginning to charge the girls for thread and needles. She made them pay her 2 cents for every needle. Thread on a five-needle machine, sometimes with two eyes in each of the needles, stitches up very rapidly. The girls were frequently obliged to pay from a dollar and a half to two dollars a week for the thread sewed into Madame Cora's corsets, and for needles. They rebelled when Madame Cora refused to pay for these materials herself. From among the three hundred girls, thirty girls struck, went to Union headquarters, and asked to be organized. But Madame Cora simply filled their places with other girls who were willing to supply her with thread for her corsets, and refused to take them back. Katia did not respect Madame Cora's methods, and had left before the strike. Katia spent $2.50 a week for breakfast and dinner and for her share of a room with a congenial friend, another Russian girl, in Harlem. The room was close and opened on an air-shaft, but was quiet and rather pleasant. She paid from $1.25 to $1.50 for luncheons, and, out of the odd hundred dollars left from her income, had contrived, by doing her own washing and making her own waists, to buy all her clothing, and to spend $5 for books and magazines, $7 for grand opera, which she deeply loved, and $30 for an outing. On account of her cleverness Katia was less at the mercy of unjust persons than some of the less skilful and younger girls. Among these, Molly Davousta, another young machine operative, was struggling to make payments to an extortionate ticket seller, who had swindled her in the purchase of a steamboat ticket. When Molly was thirteen, her mother and father, who had five younger children, had sent her abroad out of Russia, with the remarkable intention of having her prepare and provide a home for all of them in some other country. Like Dick Whittington, the little girl went to London, though to seek, not only her own fortune, but that of seven other people. After she had been in London for four years, her father died. She and her next younger sister, Bertha, working in Russia, became the sole support of the family; and now, learning that wages were better in America, Molly, like Whittington, turned again and came to New York. Here she found work on men's coats, at a wage fluctuating from $5 to $9 a week. She lived in part of a tenement room for a rent of $3 a month. For supper and Saturday meals she paid $1.50 a week. Other food she bought from groceries and push carts, at a cost of about $2 a week. As she did her own washing, and walked to work, she had no other fixed expenses, except for shoes. Once in every two months these wore to pieces and she was forced to buy new ones; and, till she had saved enough to pay for them, she went without her push cart luncheon and breakfast. In this way she lived in New York for a year, during which time she managed to send $90 home, for the others. Her sister Bertha, next younger than herself, had then come to New York, and obtained work at sewing for a little less than $6 a week. Between them, in the following six months, the two girls managed to buy a passage ticket from Russia to New York for $42, and to send home $30. This, with the passage ticket and two other tickets, which they purchased on the instalment plan from a dealer, at a profit to him of $20, brought all the rest of the family into New York harbor--the girls' mother, their three younger sisters of fifteen, fourteen, and eight, and a little brother of seven. Five months afterward Molly and Bertha were still making payments for these extortionate tickets. In New York, the sister of fifteen found employment in running ribbons into corset covers, earning from $1 to $1.50 a week. The fourteen-year-old girl was learning operating on waists. The family of seven lived in two rooms, paying for them $13.50 a month; their food cost $9 or $10 a week; shoes came to at least $1 a week; the girls made most of their own clothing, and for this purpose they were paying $1 a month for a sewing-machine; and they gave $1 a month for the little brother's Hebrew schooling. Molly was seen in the course of a coat makers' strike. She wept because the family's rent was due and she had no means of paying it. She said she suffered from headache and from backache. Every month she lost a day's work through illness. She was only nineteen years old. By working every hour she could make a fair wage, but, owing to the uncertain and spasmodic nature of the work, she was unable to depend upon earning enough to maintain even a fair standard of living. A point that should be accentuated in Molly Davousta's account is the price of shoes. No one item of expense among working girls is more suggestive. The cost of shoes is unescapable. A girl may make over an old hat with a bit of ribbon or a flower, or make a new dress from a dollar's worth of material, but for an ill-fitting, clumsy pair of shoes she must pay at least $2; and no sooner has she bought them than she must begin to skimp because in a month or six weeks she will need another pair. The hour or two hours' walk each day through streets thickly spread, oftener than not, with a slimy, miry dampness literally dissolves these shoes. Long after up-town streets are dry and clean, those of the congested quarters display the muddy travesty of snow in the city. The stockings inside these cheap shoes, with their worn linings, wear out even more quickly than the shoes. It is practically impossible to mend stockings besides walking to work, making one's waists, and doing one's washing. All Molly Davousta's cares, her anxiety about shoes and her foreboding concerning seasonal work, were increased by her position of family responsibility. In the same way, in the course of her seasonal work, family responsibility pressed on Rita Karpovna. She was a girl of nineteen, who had come to America a few years before with her older brother, Nikolai. Together they were to earn their own living and make enough money to bring over their widowed mother, a little brother, and a sister a year or two younger than Rita. Soon after she arrived, she found employment in finishing men's vests, at $6 or $7 a week, for ten hours' work a day. Living and saving with her brother, she contrived to send home $4 a month. Between them, Nikolai and Rita brought over their mother and the little brother. But, very soon after they were all settled together, their mother died. They were obliged to put the little brother into an institution. Then Nikolai fell from a scaffolding and incapacitated himself, so that, after his partial recovery, his wage was sufficient only for his own support, near his work. Rita now lived alone, spending $3.50 a month for a sleeping place in a tenement, and for suppers $1.25 a week. Her luncheons and breakfasts, picked up anywhere at groceries or push carts, amounted, when she was working, to about 12 cents a day. At other times she often went without both meals. For in the last year her average wage had been reduced to $4.33 a week by over four months and a half of almost complete idleness. Through nine weeks of this time she had an occasional day of work, and for nine weeks none at all. When she was working, she paid 60 cents a week carfare, 25 cents a month to the Union, of which she was an enthusiastic member, and 10 cents a month to a "Woman's Self-Education Society." The Union and this club meant more to Rita than the breakfasts and luncheons she dispensed with, and more, apparently, than dress, for which she had spent only $20 in a year and a half. Some months afterward, Mrs. Clark received word that Rita had solved many of her difficulties by a happy marriage, and could hope that many of her domestic anxieties were relieved. The chief of these, worry over the situation of her younger sister, still in Russia, had been enhanced by her observations of the unhappiness of a friend, another girl, working in the same shop--a tragedy told here because of its very serious bearing on the question of seasonal work. Rita's younger sister was in somewhat the same position as this girl, alone, without physical strength for her work, and, indeed, so delicate that it was doubtful whether her admission to the United States could be secured, even if Rita could possibly save enough for her passage money. The friend in the shop, hard pressed by the dull season, had at last become the mistress of a man who supported her until the time of the birth of their child, when he left her resourceless. Slack and dull seasons in factory work must, of course, expose the women dependent on their wage-earning powers, most of them young and many of them with great beauty, to the greatest dangers and temptations.[21] Especially at the mercy of the seasons were some of the fur sewers, and the dressmakers, and milliners working, not independently, but in factories and workshops. Helena Hardman, an Austrian girl, a fur sewer, had been employed for only twenty weeks in the year. She sewed by hand on fur garments in a Twelfth Street shop, for $7 a week, working nine hours a day, with a Saturday half-holiday. The air and odors in the fur shop were very disagreeable, but had not affected her health. At the end of the twenty weeks she had been laid off, and had looked unsuccessfully for work for seventeen weeks, before she found employment as an operative in an apron factory. Here, however, in this unaccustomed industry, by working as an operative nine hours a day for five days a week, and six hours on Saturday, she could earn only $3 or $4. She paid $4 a week for board and a tenement room shared with another girl. She had been obliged to go in debt to her landlady for part of her long idle time, after her savings had been exhausted. During this time she had been unable to buy any clothing, though her expense for this before had been slender: a suit, $18; a hat, $3; shoes, $3; waists, $3; and underwear, $2.50. She looked very well, however, in spite of the struggle and low wages necessitated by learning a secondary trade. The dull season is tided over in various ways. A few fortunate girls go home and live without expense. Many live partly at the expense of philanthropic persons, in subsidized homes. In these ways they save a little money for the dull time, and also store more energy from their more comfortable living. On the horizon of the milliner the dull season looms black. All the world wants a new hat, gets it, and thinks no more of hats or the makers of hats. On this account a fast and feverish making and trimming of hats, an exhausting drain of the energy of milliners for a few weeks, is followed by weeks of no demand upon their skill. Girl after girl told the investigator that the busy season more than wore her out, but that the worry and lower standard of living of the dull season were worse. The hardship is the greater because the skilled milliner has had to spend time and money for her training. Many of these girls try to find supplementary work, as waitresses in summer hotels, or in some other trade. A great difficulty here is the overlapping of seasons. The summer hotel waitress is needed until September, at least, but the milliner must begin work in August. To obtain employment in a non-seasonal industry, it is often necessary to lie. In each new occupation it is necessary to accept a beginner's wage. Regina Siegerson had come alone, at the age of fifteen, from Russia to New York, where she had been for seven years. The first winter was cruel. She supported herself on $3 a week. She had been forced to live in the most miserable of tenements with "ignorant" people. She had subsisted mainly by eating bananas, and had worn a spring jacket through the cold winter. It seemed, however, that no hardship had ever prevented her from attending evening school, where her persistence had taken her to the fourth year of high school. She was thinking of college at the time of the interview. Regina was a Russian revolutionist, and keenly thirsting for knowledge. She talked eagerly to the inquirer about Victor Hugo, Gorky, Tolstoy, and Bernard Shaw. With no less interest she spoke of the trade fortunes of milliners in New York, and her own last year's experience. She had worked through May, June, and July as a trimmer, making $11 in a week of nine hours a day, with Saturday closing at five. During August and September and the first weeks in October she had only six weeks' work, as a maker in a ready-to-wear hat factory, situated on the lower West Side over a stable, where she made $10 in a week of nine hours a day. Regina and a girl friend had managed to furnish a two-room tenement apartment with very simple conveniences, and there they kept house. Rent was $10.50 a month; gas for heating and cooking, $1.80; and food for the two, about $5 a week. As Regina did her own washing, the weekly expense for each was but $3.67, less than many lodgers pay for very much less comfort. The greatest pleasure the girls had in their little establishment was the opportunity it gave them for entertaining friends. Before, it had been impossible for them to see any one, except in other people's crowded living-rooms, or on the street. Regina was engaged to a young apothecary student, whom she expected to marry in the spring. Like her, he was in New York without his family, and he took his meals at the two girls' little flat with them. Regina's father, who was living in Russia with a second wife, had sent her $100 when she wrote him of her intended marriage. This, and about $40 saved in the six weeks of earning $10, were her reserve fund in the long dull season. The inquirer saw Regina again a few days before Thanksgiving. She was still out of work, but was learning at home to do some mechanical china decorating for the Christmas trade. Among the milliners, several girls were studying to acquire, not only a training in a secondary trade, but the better general education which Frances Ashton, a young American girl of twenty, had obtained through better fortunes. Her father, a professional man, had been comfortably situated. Without anticipating the necessity of supporting herself, she had studied millinery at Pratt Institute for half a year. Then, because it was rather a lark, she had gone to work in New York. Most of her wage was spent for board and recreation, her father sending her an allowance for clothes. After a year, his sudden death made it necessary for her to live more economically, as her inheritance was not large. The expenses of an attack of typhoid one summer, and of an operation the next year, entirely consumed it. In the year she described, she had been a copyist in one of the most exclusive shops on Fifth Avenue. The woman in charge was exceptionally considerate, keeping the girls as long as possible. She used to weep when she was obliged to dismiss them, for she realized the suffering and the temptation of the long idle period. However, the season had lasted only three or three and a half months at a time, from February 1 to May 15, and from August 18 to December 4. During the six busy weeks in the spring and the autumn, while the orders were piling up, work was carried on with feverish intensity. The working day lasted from eight-thirty until six, with an hour at noon for luncheon. Many employees, however, stayed until nine o'clock, receiving $1, besides 30 cents supper money, for overtime. But by six o'clock Frances was so exhausted that she could do no more, and she always went home at that hour. In addition to her thirty weeks in the Fifth Avenue order establishment, Frances had two weeks' work in a wholesale house, where the season began earlier; so that she had been employed for thirty-two weeks in the year, and idle for twenty. She was a piece-worker and she had earned from $8 to $14 a week. The twenty idle weeks had been filled with continuous futile attempts to find anything to do. Application at department stores had been ineffectual, so had answered advertisements. She said she had lost all scruples about lying, because, the moment it was known that she wanted a place during the dull season only, she had no chance at all. Frances lived in one of the pleasantest and most expensive subsidized homes for working girls, paying for board, and a large, delightful room shared with two other girls, $4.50 a week. Although she walked sometimes from work, carfare usually amounted to 50 cents a week. Laundering two sets of underwear and one white waist a week cost 60 cents. Thus, for a reasonable degree of cleanliness and comfort, partly provided by philanthropic persons, she spent $5.60 a week aside from the cost of clothing. She dressed plainly, though everything she had was of nice quality. She said she could spend nothing for pleasure, because of her constant foreboding of the dull season, and the necessity of always saving for her apparently inevitable weeks of idleness. She was, at the time she gave her account, extremely anxious because she did not know how she was to pay another week's board. Yet she had excellent training and skill, the advantage of living comfortably and being well nourished, and the advantage of a considerate employer, who did as well as she could for her workers, under the circumstances. Something, then, must be said about these circumstances--this widespread precariousness in work, against which no amount of thrift or industriousness or foresight can adequately provide. Where industry acts the part of the grasshopper in the fable, it is clearly quite hopeless for workers to attempt to attain the history of the ant. Among the factory workers, the waist makers' admirable efforts for juster wages were, as far as yearly income was concerned, largely ineffectual, on account of this obstacle of slack and dull seasons, whose occurrence employers are as powerless as employees to forestall. These chronicles, showing the effect of seasonal work on the fortunes of some self-supporting operatives and hand workers in New York factories and workshops, concern only one corner of American industry, in which, as every observer must realize, there are many other enormous fields of seasonal work. These histories are nevertheless clear and authentic instances of a strange and widespread social waste. Neither trade organization nor State legislation for shorter hours is primarily directed toward a more general regular and foresighted distribution of work among all seasonal trades and all seasonal workers. Until some focussed, specific attempt is made to secure such a distribution, it seems impossible but that extreme seasonal want, from seasonal idleness, will be combined with exhausting seasonal work from overtime or exhausting seasonal work in speeding, in a manner apparently arranged by fortune to devastate human energy in the least intelligent manner possible. Further effects of speeding and of monotony in this labor were described by other self-supporting factory workers whose chronicles, being also concerned with industry in mechanical establishments, will be placed next. [Illustration: Photograph by Lewis Hine "Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound;-- But where is what I started for so long ago, And why is it still unfound?" --WALT WHITMAN.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: See Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Volume II, Men's Ready-made Clothing, pages 141-157; 160-165; 384-395.] [Footnote 20: The income and outlay of other cloak makers will be separately presented.] [Footnote 21: In the first report of the New York Probation Association the statement is made that out of 300 girls committed by the courts during the year to the charge of Waverley House, 72 had been engaged in factory work. Of these many had been at one time or other employed as operatives. On questioning the probation worker, Miss Stella Miner, who had lived with them and knew their stories most fully, it was learned, however, that almost every one of these girls had gone astray while they were little children, had been remanded by courts to the House of the Good Shepherd, where they had learned machine operating, and on going out of its protection to factories had drifted back again to their old ways of life. How far their early habit and experience had dragged these young girls in its undertow cannot of course, be known. The truth remains that factory work, when it is seasonal, must increase temptation by its economic pressure.] CHAPTER IV THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY-WORKERS [Monotony and Fatigue in Speeding] One of the strangest effects of the introduction of machinery into industry is that instead of liberating the human powers and initiative of workers from mechanical drudgery, it has often tended to devitalize and warp these forces to the functions of machines.[22] This stupefying and wearying effect of machine-work from concentration and intensity of application and attention was frequently mentioned by the factory workers in their accounts. Tina Levin, a young girl eighteen years old, had worked two years in an underwear factory in New York; and before her arrival in America, six years in an underwear factory in Russia. She had come from abroad to her fiancé, Ivan Levin, whom she had recently married. She still worked in the underwear factory, although she was not entirely self-supporting. She and her young husband met the League's Inquirer at a Jewish Girls' Self-Education Club, where they gave between them the account of Tina's self-supporting years. Before her marriage, Tina had worked at a machine ten hours a day for an underwear manufacturer on Canal Street. In the height of the season the shop often worked overtime until 8 o'clock, two or three nights a week. Besides this, many of the girls took hand work home, where they sewed till eleven or twelve o'clock. But Tina was so exhausted by her long day that she never did this. Working as hard as possible, she earned $7, and sometimes $8 a week, during the six busy months. For part of this time she lived a full hour-and-a-half's car ride from the factory. So that with dressing, and eating two meals at her lodging, when she was at the machine twelve hours a day, she had only about six hours sleep. At least half the year was so dull that she could earn only $3 or $3.50 a week; and she was so worn out that every month she was utterly unable to work for three or four days. This loss had reduced her income by $32. She had been obliged to pay $9 for medicine. Her income for the year had been about $262. For board and lodging in a tenement she had paid $3.50 a week; for carfare 60 cents a week; and she had sent $5 home in the year; and given $9 for medicine; $36 for the dentist; and $1 a month to the Jewish Girls' Self-Education Society. She had less than $10 left for dress for the year. But her lover had helped her with many presents; and had given her many good times and pleasures, besides those obtainable at the Jewish Girls' Self-Education Society. Tina had the advantage of a knowledge of English. This lack of opportunity to learn the tongue of the country in which she lived was poignantly regretted by another machine operative, Fanny Leysher, a white-goods operative of twenty-one who had been in America four years. She lived in one room of a tenement off the Bowery, where she boarded and lodged for $4 a week. She worked in a factory within walking distance, earning $7 a week in the busy season. Fanny was a pretty, fair girl, with a graceful presence, a wistful smile, and the charm peculiar to blond Russians with long gray eyes. She looked, however, painfully frail and white. In the factory she had worked for four years, first at time work, then at piece-work. She could earn $7 a week by stitching up and down the fronts and stitching on the belts of 108 corset covers--9 dozen a day. This was the most she could possibly complete. The unremitting speeding and close attention this amount of stitching required left her too exhausted at six o'clock to be able to attend night school, or to learn English. She suffered greatly from headache and from backache. Fanny worked in this way for forty-one weeks of the year. For six weeks she worked three days in the week. For two weeks the factory closed. For three weeks she had been ill. She was a girl of quick nervous intelligence, eager for life and with a nice sense of quality. When she talked of her inability to go to night school because of her frailness and weariness, tears flooded her eyes. Her room was very nicely kept, and she had on a shelf a novel of Sudermann's and a little book of Rosenthal's sweat shop verses. Everything she wore was put on carefully and with good taste. Her dress showed the quickest adaptability, and in correctness, and simplicity of line and color might have belonged to a college freshman "with every advantage." It was a little trim delft-blue linen frock with a white piqué collar and a loose blue tie. She had tan stockings and low russet shoes. Fanny belonged to the Working-man's Circle. She said she went as often as she could possibly afford it to the theatre. And when she was asked what plays she liked, she replied with an unforgettable keenness and eagerness, "Oh, I want nothing but the best. Only what will tell me about real life." She said she had spent too much money for dress last year; but she had been able to buy clothing of a quality which she thought would last her for a long time. The little plain gold watch in her list she had partly needed and partly had been unable to resist. One of the three summer dresses costing $14 was her blue linen dress, for which she had given $7. She expected to wear it for two summers with alterations. Last year's suit cleaned $ 3 Shoes 11 Hat 10 Dresses (1 winter, $10; 3 summer, $14) 24 Coat 9 Every-day hat 4.50 Muslin (for white waists and corset covers made by herself) 5 Umbrella 2 Gloves 2 Pocket-book 1 Watch 11 ______ $82.50 Painful as it was in some ways to see Fanny Leysher, who liked "nothing but the best," pouring her life force into stitching 108 corset covers a day, she yet seemed less helpless than some still younger workers. Minna Waldemar, a girl of sixteen, an operative in an umbrella factory, had been in the United States for six months. For five months of this time she had been stitching the seams and hems of umbrella covers for 35 cents a hundred. Her usual output was about 200 a day. By working very fast, she could in a full day make 300, but when she did, it left her thumb very sore. Minna paid $3 a month for sleeping space in a tenement; $1.75 a week for suppers; and for breakfasts and luncheons, from 15 to 30 cents a day. She wore a black sateen waist, which had cost $1. A suit had cost $8; a hat, $3; and a pair of shoes, $2. Working her hardest and fastest, she had not received enough money to pay for even these meagre belongings, and was obliged to have assistance from her brother, her only relative in New York. Every line of Minna's little figure looked overworked. This was true, too, of Sadie, a little underfed, grayish Austrian girl of seventeen, who had come to New York as the advance guard of her family. In the last year since her arrival, two and one-half years before, she had first been employed for seven months in a neckwear factory, where she earned from $2.50 a week to $6 and $7 on piece-work. In two very busy weeks she had earned $9 a week. After the slack season, the factory closed. Hunting desperately for a way to make money, Sadie found employment as an operative on children's dresses, running a foot-power machine in a tenement work-room for $2.50 a week. In the second week her wage was advanced to $3 and continued at this for the next three or four months. After this, the demand for neckwear had increased again. She had returned to the neckwear factory, and was earning $6 a week. Her busiest days were eleven hours long, and her others nine. She spent nothing for pleasure. She could send nothing to her family. In the course of two years and a half she had bought one hat for $3 and a suit for $12. She went to night school, but was generally so weary that she could learn really nothing. She did her own washing, and for $3 a month she rented a sleeping space in the kitchen of a squalid, crowded East Side tenement. It was the living-room of her poverty-stricken landlady's family; and she had to wait until they all left it, sometimes late at night, before she dragged her bed out of an obscure corner and flung it on the floor for her long-desired sleep. Supper with the landlady cost her 20 cents a night. Sadie's breakfasts and dinners depended absolutely upon her income and her other expenses. As in the weeks when she was earning $3 she had only 90 cents for fourteen meals a week and her clothing, and in the weeks when she earned $2.50, only 40 cents a week for fourteen meals and her clothing, her depleted health is easily understood. Sadie's custom of paying rent and yet dragging a pallet out of the corner and finding or waiting for a place to throw it in, like a little vagrant, is very characteristic of East Side tenements. She paid $36 a year for lodging, and yet can scarcely be said to have received for this sum any definite space at all under a roof-tree, honestly provided for her as her own, but simply the chance of getting such a place when she could. If she had attempted to find a better and less expensive place for sleeping, in a less congested quarter of the city, she would have been obliged to pay, besides her rent, a sum at least half as large, for transportation. In the same way, for this really very large sum of $15 or $20 paid yearly to the city railroads, she would not have received in their cars any definite place at all, honestly provided for her as her own, but simply a chance of getting a foothold when she could on a cross-town car or the Bronx elevated during the rush hours. The yearly sums paid to the car companies by factory workers too exhausted to walk home are very striking in these budgets. Tina Levin had paid nearly $30--more than she had spent for her clothing during the year. This expense of carfare and the wretched conditions in transportation which most of the car companies supply to the workers compelled to use their lines in rush hours is a difficulty scarcely less than that of New York rents and congestion, and inseparably connected with them. Anna Flodin, a girl of eighteen, forced by illness to leave the congested quarters of New York for the Bronx, did not attempt to return to work until she was able to live again within walking distance of the factory. Anna Flodin was a pale, quiet girl with smooth black hair and a serious, almost poignant expression. All her life had been one of poverty, a sheer struggle to keep the wolf from the door. She spoke no English, though she could understand a little. She stitched regularly in the busy season 1568 yards of machine sewing daily in fastening belts to cheap corset covers. The forewoman gave her in the course of the day 28 bundles, each containing 28 corset covers with the belts basted to the waist lines and the loose ends of the belts basted ready to finish. The instant Anna failed to complete this amount, or seemed to drop behind in the course of the day, the forewoman blamed her, and threatened to reduce her wage. Anna worked in this manner ten hours a day, for $6 a week. If she were five minutes late, she was docked for half an hour. She was docked for every needle she broke in the rapid pace she was obliged to keep, and in the first year she was obliged to pay out of her wage, which had then been only $5 a week, for all the many hundred yards of thread she stitched into the white-goods company's output. In order to complete 784 yards of belting a day--over 1600 yards of stitching, for she fastened both edges of the belt--she was forced, of course, to work as fast as she could feed and guide belts under the needle. She had strong eyes. But her back ached from the stooping to guide the material, and she suffered cruelly from pain in her shoulders. There had been seventeen weeks of this work. Then there had been ten weeks of two or three days' work a week, when it seemed impossible to earn enough to live on. Then, ten weeks when the factory closed. Then she had an illness lasting over two months, which began a few weeks after the factory closed. She said the doctor had told her that her illness was consumption and that he had cured it. It must have been, of course, not consumption or not arrested in that space of time. But, during it, she had paid him $28.50 and given $22.50 for her board and lodging, with an uncle in the Bronx, and for milk and eggs. Almost as soon as she was declared able to return to stitching seven hundred belts a day, she hurried back to work. But within a few days the girls struck against the company's practice of making them buy thread, and were out for five weeks. At the end of this time they won their point. Altogether her income for the year had been about $150; and the severity and amount of labor she had given in earning it had left her cruelly spent. She could not possibly live on this amount, as board and lodging alone had cost her $3 a week--$126 for the year. She had been obliged to borrow $50 for her treatment in her illness; and she had not yet paid back this sum. Besides, her landlady had trusted her for some board bills she had not yet paid. For clothing she had spent $26.59,--one dress for $7; one hat for $2; one jacket for $6; two pairs of shoes at $2; a pair for $4; 36 pairs of stockings at 10 cents a pair for $3.60; three waists at 98 cents each for $2.94; and three suits of winter underwear for $1.05. But she said winter underwear of this quality failed to keep her really warm. In the evening she was too tired to leave the tenement for night school or for anything else. She did her own washing. In the course of a year her only pleasure had been a trip to the theatre for 35 cents. Anna Flodin lived in a very poor tenement off the Bowery; and she told her experiences in her work, in spite of her muteness and struggle to express herself, with a sort of public spirit, and an almost ambassadorial dignity, which was inexpressibly touching. That spirit--a fine freedom from personal self-consciousness and clear interest in testifying to the truth about women's work, and wages, and expenditure of strength--was evinced by countless girls. None, indeed, were pressed for any facts they did not wish to give, nor sought, unless they wished to help in the inquiry. But perhaps because it arose from such an immured depth of youth spent in foreboding poverty, the voice of Anna Flodin's chronicle was distinctively thrilling. She told her experience in her work with great clearness, sitting in a little dark, clean room in a tenement, looking out on a filthy, ill-smelling inner court. The only brightening of her grave, young face throughout her story and our questions was her smile when she spoke of her one visit to the theatre, and another change of expression when she spoke of the other girls in the shop, in connection with the strike about thread. She was a member of the Union. In the shop there were girls not members who were willing to continue to buy the management's thread indefinitely. Anna Flodin said quietly, with a look of quick scorn, that she would never have anything to do with such girls. Her mute life and mechanical days could make one understand in her with every sympathy all kinds of unreasoning prejudices and aversions. She was very young; and it was partly her youth which deepened all the sense of dumb oppression and exhaustion her still presence and appealing eyes imparted. There is a great deal of talk about the danger and sadness of dissipation in youth. Too little is said of the fact that such an enclosing monotony and stark poverty of existence as Anna Flodin's is in youth sadness itself, as cruel to the pulses in its numb passage as the painful sense of wreck. All tragedies are not those of violence, but of depletion, too, and of starvation. The drain and exhaustion experienced after a day of speeding at a machine was described by another worker, a girl of good health and lively mind, who afterwards found more attractive employment. She said that in her factory days she used to walk home, a distance of a mile, at nine o'clock, after her work was done, with a cousin. The cousin was another clever and spirited Russian girl of the same age. They had a hundred things to talk about, but as they left the factory, one would almost always say to the other: "Please do not speak to me on my way home. I am so tired I can scarcely answer." Instantly after supper they went to bed. In the morning they hurried through breakfast to be at the factory at eight, to go through the round of the day before. "We only went from bed to work, and from work to bed again," one of the girls said, "and sometimes if we sat up a little while at home, we were so tired we could not speak to the rest, and we hardly knew what they were talking about. And still, although there was nothing for us but bed and machine, we could not earn enough to take care of ourselves through the slack season." It is significant to compare with the account of these ill-paid operatives, exhausted from speeding, the chronicle of a skilled worker in a belt-factory, Theresa Luther, earning $17 a week. She was a young German-American Protestant woman of 27, born in New York. After her father died, she instantly helped her older brother shoulder the support of the family, as readily as though she had been a capable and adventurous boy. Strong, competent, and high-spirited, Miss Luther was a tall girl, fair-haired, with dark blue eyes, and a very beautiful direct glance. Her father had been a wood-carver, an artist responsible for some of the most interesting work in his craft done in New York. Theresa, too, had dexterity with her hands. At the age of fifteen she entered a leather belt factory as a "trimmer." She was so quick that she earned almost immediately $7 a week, a remarkable wage for a beginner of fifteen. Soon she was permitted to fold and pack. Not long afterwards, overhearing a forewoman lamenting the absence of machine operatives, she observed that she could run a sewing-machine at home. The forewoman, amused, placed her at the machine. After that she had stitched belts for eleven years, though not in the same factory. Leather belt stitching is at once heavy and skilled work. The row of stitching is placed at the very edge of the belt. The slightest deviation from a straight line in the stitch spoils the entire piece of work. Running the needle-point through the leather is hard, and requires so much strength that the stitching through the doubled leather, necessitated by putting on the buckle, can be performed only by men. Theresa used to complete two gross of belts a day. She and other Americans in the factory were hard-pressed by some Russian girls, who could finish in a day four gross of very badly sewed belts with enormous stitches and loose threads. When the forewoman blamed Theresa for finishing less work than these girls, she freely expressed her contempt for their slovenly belts. She had a strong handicraft pride, and it was pleasant to see her instinctive scorn in quoting the forewoman's reply that "None of them (the badly made belts) ever came back"--as though their selling quality were the one test of their workmanship. She had left the factory because of a complete breakdown from long hours of overwork. In one winter she had been at the machine seventy-one hours a week for ten weeks. After this severe experience, she had a long prostration and was depleted, exhausted, in a sort of physical torpor in which she was unable to do anything for months. On her recovery she entered another factory, where the hours are not so excessive, the treatment is fair, and she has now an excellent position as forewoman at $18 a week. Theresa was a very earnest, clear-minded girl, with strong convictions concerning the bad effect of excessive hours for working women. At the time when the hearing on the New York State Labor Law was held at Albany last spring, she had been active in obtaining a petition, signed by a body of New York working girls and placed in the hands of Labor Commissioner Williams, to aid in securing a shortening of their present legal hours. Theresa had advanced beyond the drudgery of her trade to one of its better positions by extraordinary ability. Some of the skilled machine operatives, like some of the unskilled factory workers, were buoyed through the monotony of their present calling by the hope of leaving it for another occupation. Alta Semenova, a Polish glove maker, twenty years old, worked nine hours a day at a machine for $7 a week, and studied five evenings a week in a private evening school, for which she paid $4 a month tuition. She lived in a small hall bedroom with an admired girl friend. Each paid $4.25 a month rent. Her food amounted to $2.90 a week. Saturday evening she spent in doing her washing. She lived near enough to the factory to walk to work in five or ten minutes. She paid 25 cents a month for Union dues. Alta was working for "counts" toward entering college or Cooper Union. In spare moments she read the modern Russians. During her year in New York she has mastered sufficient English to read Shakespeare in the original. In a few years she will be a teacher. Alta was an eager Russian revolutionist. She had the student's passion, and her head was full of plans for a life of intellectual work. These chronicles of the income and outlay of some New York factory workers have described monotony and speeding in machine-work. The annals of the New York factory workers presented below describe monotony and speeding in hand-work. Yetta Sigurdin, an Austrian girl nineteen years old, had been in New York three years, and in the last year and a half had been employed in a tobacco factory, a Union shop, as a skilled roller, on piece-work. Her hours were eight a day. In a full day, Yetta could roll 2200 cigarettes. So her best wage was about $12 a week. The average was, however, not more than $8, as the factory had been idle four weeks, and very dull for five months, though busy for the remaining six. Yetta looked very robust and happy. She seemed comfortable in her work and with her income, in spite of the extra labor of washing some of her own clothes and making her own waists. This, no doubt, was due largely to her sane and reasonable working hours, and partly to the fact that her work did not require the intensity of watching and application demanded by rapid machine-work. Indeed in some Union tobacco factories the rollers sometimes make up a sum among themselves to pay a reader by the hour to read aloud to them while they are at work. Yetta paid $3 a week for room, breakfast, and supper in a tenement. It was in an extremely poor neighborhood, but was fresh, pleasant, and well aired. Her dinners cost about $1.50 a week. She did part of her washing and part was included in the charge for board. Her Union fee was 15 cents a week. The members of the Cigarette Makers' Union pay a weekly due of 5 cents for the support of a sanatorium in Colorado for tubercular tobacco workers. Yetta contributed to this sanatorium and gave a 10-cent monthly fee for Union agitation. She estimated the cost of her clothing at about $82 for the year. A winter suit cost $14; a spring suit, $15; a summer dress, $5; and a winter dress, $18. Six pairs of shoes cost $15. She could not remember the items of the rest of her expenditure for dress. Part of it was for underwear and part of it for material for waists she had made herself. In spite of the monotony and speed of Yetta's work, it did not exhaust her powers of living, because it neither required intense application nor was pursued beyond a reasonable number of hours. Barbara Cotton, an American woman of thirty-two, a skilled hand-worker in an electrical goods factory, had been self-supporting for more than eighteen years, spending the last nine in her present employment. In the electrical goods factory she separated layers of mica until it was split into the thinnest possible sheets. She was paid by the number she succeeded in splitting. The constant repetition of an act of such accuracy for nine hours a day had strained her eyes excessively and made her extremely nervous. For six months of these nine-hour days, she earned $8 or $8.50 a week. During the other six months there was no work on Saturdays, and she earned about $7 a week. She had a week's vacation with pay. She had lost during the year she described two months' work from illness, due to her run-down condition. This she said, however, was not caused by her work, but by combining with it, in an emergency, the care of the children of a sister, who had been sick. Miss Cotton belonged to a benefit society and through her own illness she had received an allowance of $5 a week. Her income for the year had been about $367, an average of $7.06 a week. Miss Cotton had tried living in boarding-houses and furnished rooms, and although the expense was about the same, the places were much less attractive in every way than the hotel for working girls where she was staying at the time of the interview. For half of a room a little larger than an ordinary hall bedroom and for breakfasts and dinners, she paid $4.50 a week. Luncheons in addition cost her $1 a week. As she was within walking distance of work, she had no other expense but 35 cents for part of her washing. The rest she did herself. She bought very little clothing, as out of the $1.15 a week she had left after paying every necessary expense, she generously helped to support a sick sister and niece. After eighteen years of hard, steady work--nine years of it skilled work--she had saved nothing except in the form of benefit fees, and she had no prospect of saving. Although she was nervously worn, and her eyesight was strained, she was less exhausted by her industrial experience than Katherine Ryan, an Irish worker of forty-five, who had been cutting and sewing trimmings for six years in an appliqué factory. Eight and a quarter hours of this work a day exhausted her. She received $7 a week. Her eyes were fast failing her from the close watch she had to keep on her scissors to guard against cutting too far. She often went to bed at eight or half past eight o'clock, worn out by one day's task and eager to be fresh for the next, for she was hard pressed by the competition of young eyes and quick fingers. Newer workers were given finer and more profitable work to do. In spite of her faithfulness, and straining for speed, she was laid off two months earlier in the last season than in any previous year, and newer helpers were retained. She thought the forewoman was prejudiced against her, and naturally could not understand the truth that from the standpoint of modern industry she was aged at forty-five. She had been paying $3 a week for board in a philanthropic home, and there she was permitted to stay and to pay for her board and lodging when she had no money by helping with the housework. Miss Ryan, however, had exhausted herself less rapidly than Elena and Gerda Nakov, two young Polish women of thirty-three and twenty-nine, skilled hand-workers on children's dresses. Elena had come from South Russia to seek her fortunes when she was sixteen years old. Her mother and father were dead. She had been educated by an uncle, with whom her younger sister, Gerda, remained. According to the testimony of Elena's brother-in-law, the kind-hearted husband of a married sister living in New York, and also according to the testimony of Gerda, Elena at sixteen was a very beautiful girl. She was small, but very strong and well knit, with a fresh, glowing color, deep gray eyes, and heavy reddish gold hair, growing low upon her forehead in a widow's peak. Elena first found work as a cigarette roller, earning $4 a week. Here she was subjected to constant insolence and scurrilous language from the foreman and the men working with her. Her eyes turned black with contempt when she spoke of this offence--"Oh" she exclaimed, "I thought, 'I am poor, but I will never in my life be so poor as to stand things like that.'" She left the tobacco factory and found employment as a neckwear worker. Here, too, she earned $4, but the season grew dull, and she entered a small factory, where she worked on children's dresses, embroidering, buttonholing, faggoting, and feather-stitching. In this craft she proved to have such deftness, nicety of touch, and speed that she could do in an hour twice as much as most of the other girls and women in the factory. She sewed from eight to six, with half an hour for lunch. She always took work home and sometimes she sewed for half of Sunday, for living expenses consumed all of her $4 a week. Her stomach had failed her in the intensity of her occupation and from the insufficient food she was able to purchase, and she needed all the extra money she could earn for doctor's bills and medicine. She was thin, spent, worn, and pale, when Gerda came over from Russia, four years after Elena had arrived. Gerda was a strong, attractive girl, with good health, dark curling hair, and a lovely color. Entering the same factory with Elena, she soon became almost as able as her sister in fine sewing, and almost as ill. She earned $3 a week. The factory was owned by a young German widow, Mrs. Mendell, an extremely attractive, pretty, and skilful person, appearing in her office an agreeable and well-educated young woman, and able to produce the most engaging little dresses, caps, and undermuslins for children, at a high profit, by paying extremely small wages to skilled immigrant seamstresses. In her workroom, Mrs. Mendell alternately terrorized and flattered the girls. She speeded them constantly. Unless they had done as much work as she wished to accomplish through the day, she refused to speak to them. She made the younger girls put on her boots, and dress her when she changed her office frock for the clothes in which she motored home at night. And in the morning she punished girls who had not finished as much work as she wished over night by giving them the worst paid and hardest sewing in the factory. One night she sent Elena and Gerda home with two great bundles of infants' bands--shoulder-straps and waistbands--to be made ready to be fastened to long skirts the next morning. They were all to be feather-stitched around the shoulder-bands and upper edges of the waist-bands, three buttons sewed on, and three buttonholes made in each. This was to be done for 2-1/2 cents a piece--a quarter a dozen. In the morning after she had completed this work, Elena felt so nervous and ill when she went to the factory, that as she handed Mrs. Mendell back the bundle and received the quarter, she burst into tears. She told Mrs. Mendell she was sick. She could not live and work as she was working. Gerda's eyes were always strained. Their wages must be raised. Mrs. Mendell replied with calm and self-approbation, that she herself stayed in the factory all day, but she never complained in any such way. However, she raised Elena's wages 50 cents. At this time the two girls lived in a tiny, inner room with one window, on an air-shaft in an East Side tenement. For this they paid $8 a month. It was scarcely more than a closet, holding one chair, one table, and a bed; and so small that Elena and Gerda could scarcely squeeze in between their meagre furnishings. They did their own washing, cooked their own breakfasts on the landlady's stove, prepared a lunch they took with them to the factory, and paid 20 cents a night apiece for dinner. Almost all the money they had left, after their lodging and board and the barest necessities for clothing were paid for, went for medicines and doctors. Their clothing was so poor that they were ashamed to go out on Sunday--when everybody else put on "best dresses"--and would sit in their room all day. However, in the evenings they sometimes went to see relatives in the Bronx, and on one of these occasions they had a piece of good fortune of the oddest character. On the elevated road on which they happened to be riding there was an accident--a collision. They were neither of them injured; but they saw the collision, and were summoned as witnesses for the road. They were obliged to spend several mornings away from making children's dresses, waiting to give their testimony in the criminal court, which they found highly pleasant and recreative. However, after all, the road settled with the prosecutors before the girls were ever called on for their testimony, and the case never came to trial. But the railroad gave Elena and Gerda for the time they had spent on its behalf a check for $20. At this they determined to move to better quarters. The factory, besides, had grown and moved into larger rooms farther up-town (though its workrooms had always been well lighted and ventilated), so that the girls were obliged to spend more than they could afford for carfare. With the $20 they furnished their room in Harlem. They were in a wild, disreputable neighborhood, of which the girls remained quite independent. But the rooms were airy and attractive. Having now their own furnishings, they paid only $8 a month for all this added space and comfort, so that they could continue to live in these accommodations, but only with severe effort and industry on Elena's part. For Gerda's optic nerve was now so affected by strain, and she suffered so from indigestion, faintness, and illness, that she was unable to go to the factory. She kept the house, doing some sewing at home. Elena's wages during the next six years, by struggle after struggle with Mrs. Mendell, were raised to $7 a week after her thirteen years of service. But she was nearly frantic with alarm over her failing health. She was thin and frail, and eating almost nothing from gastritis. At last a woman physician she saw told her she must stop work or she would die. Her stomach was almost completely worn out. This doctor sent her to a hospital, and visited Gerda and sent her, too, to a hospital. This was four years ago. But both the young women are so broken down that no efforts of public or private philanthropic medical care in the state and the city have been able to restore their health. The doctors in whose charge they have been say that these young women's strength is simply worn out from these years of overwork and strain and poor and scanty food, and that they can never again be really well. They leave the hospitals or sanatoria for a few weeks of wage-earning, six, at the most, to return again ill and unable to do any work at all. Their life is now indeed a curious modern pilgrimage among the various forms of charitable cure and the great charitable institutions of the community which is entirely unable to return to them the strength they have lost in its industries. It may be pointed out that the exhaustion of these two workers has involved a loss and expense not only to themselves, but to the factory management, which has been obliged to employ in Elena's place two other less skilful embroiderers, and to the taxpayers and the philanthropists of New York who support charity hospitals and vacation homes. These chronicles express as clearly as possible, in the order followed, monotony and speeding in factory work among younger and older women, operatives and hand-workers. While one of the strangest results of the introduction of machinery into modern industry is that instead of liberating the human powers and initiative of the workers, it has often tended to devitalize and warp these forces to the functions of machines, yet this result is so strange that it cannot seem inevitable. Speeding for long hours at machines, rather than machine labor itself, appears most widely responsible for the fatigue described by the operatives whose trade histories have been narrated. Further, speeding and long hours were responsible for the most drastic experience of exhaustion related among all the factory workers encountered--the experience of Elena and Gerda Nikov, who were employed not at machines, but in handiwork so delicate it might with more accuracy be called a handicraft. The exhaustion of these workers was partly attributable to their custom of pursuing their trade not only in factory hours, but outside the factory, at home. Within the last year, the most widely constructive effort to abolish sweated home labor from the needle trades ever undertaken in this country has been initiated by the New York cloak makers, to whom we next turned for an account of their industrial fortunes. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 22: These testimonies are cited from the brief for the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, prepared by Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark. _Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss Factory Workers._ Dr. Fridlion Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Professor of Hygiene. "Instead of becoming wearied by personal labor, as in earlier stages of industry, it is to-day the unremitting, tense concentration of watching the machine, the necessary rapidity of motion, that fatigues the worker." _Dangerous Trades._ Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P. London. 1902. "The introduction of steam has revolutionized industry.... While machinery has, in some senses, lightened the burden of human toil it has not diminished fatigue in man. While the machinery pursues its relentless course, and insensitive to fatigue, human beings are conscious, especially towards the end of the day, that the competition is unequal, for their muscles are becoming tired and their brains jaded. Present-day factory labor is too much a competition of sensitive human nerve and muscle against insensitive iron." _Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography_, Berlin, September, 1907. Fatigue Resulting from Occupation. Dr. Emil Roth, Regierungsrat, Potsdam. "With the progressive division of labor, work has become more and more mechanical. A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, especially neurasthenia, must be ascribed to this monotony--to the absence of spontaneity or joy in work." _Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases_, Milan, 1906. Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to Certain Forms of Labor. Professor Crisafuli. "When only one brain-centre works, it becomes overfatigued much more easily than if the functions were alternately performed by the various centres. "Here, then, is another factor in overfatigue due to the _monotony_ of work, interrupted only at long intervals. "This monotony is the determining cause of local disturbances and endangers the entire organism."] CHAPTER V THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP Forty million dollars are invested in New York in the making of women's cloaks, skirts, and suits. One hundred and eighty million dollars' worth of these garments are produced in New York in a year.[23] Between sixty and seventy thousand organized men and women in the city are employed in these industries. The Union members constitute ninety-five per cent of the workers engaged in the trade, and about ten thousand of these members are women.[24] It seems at first strange to find that the multitudinous fields of the metropolitan needle trades,--industries traditionally occupied by sewing women,--are, in fact, far more heavily crowded with sewing men. There is, however, a division of labor, the men doing practically all the cutting, machine sewing, and pressing, and in many cases working at hand-finishing; the women practically never cutting, machine sewing, or pressing, and in all cases working at hand-finishing. A general strike involving all these men and women in the cloak making trade was declared on the 8th of July, 1910. The industry had for years burdened both its men and women workers with certain grave difficulties--an unstandardized wage, the subcontracting system, competition with home work, and long seasonal hours. The subcontracting system bore most severely on the women in the trade, as the greater proportion of the finishers were women, and before the strike nearly every finisher was employed by a subcontractor. The wages paid to finishers in the same shop, whether they were girls or men, were the same. But as compared with cutters, basters, and operators the finishers both before and since the strike had always been paid relatively below their deserts. Wages were lowered, not only by the unstandardized rates prevalent through the sub-subcontracting system, but also by the practice of sending hand-finishing out of the factories and shops to be done at home. When inquiry was made of numerous self-supporting girls employed as cloak finishers, most of them said that at the end of the working day they were too exhausted to carry any sewing home. But work had been carried away by various strong girls in the trade, and by old men, and by young men to their families. Among the women cloak finishers, Rose Halowitch, a delicate little Russian girl of seventeen, a helper in a cloak factory, who gave her account to the Consumers' League, about two years and a half ago received a wage of from $3.50 to $6 a week. In busy weeks she would work from eight in the morning till eight at night, with only one stop of an hour for her insufficient noon lunch, for which she could afford to spend only 6 or 7 cents. Among the home workers Rhetta Salmonsen, a Russian woman of forty, the mother of four children, used to finish at night the cloaks brought to her by her husband, who worked through the day as an operator in a cloak factory. Between them they would earn $12 and $15 in busy weeks. In these weeks there were some occasions when Mrs. Salmonsen would do the housework till her husband came home late at night. After clearing away his supper and putting the children to bed, she would start felling seams at midnight; and in order to complete the cloaks he had brought before he returned to the shop in the morning, she would sew until she saw the white daylight coming in at the tenement window, and it was time for her to prepare breakfast again. With all this industry, as her husband had been ill and there had been three months of either slack work or idleness, the family had fallen in debt. Rent, food, and shoes alone had cost them $400. This left less than $100 a year for all the other clothing and expenses of six people in New York. Against such a standard of living as this, then, cloak finishers were obliged to compete as long as they attempted to underbid the hours and prices of home work. Among the stronger girls who had taken work home, Ermengard Freiburg, a powerful young Galician woman of twenty-eight, who had been finishing cloaks ever since she was eleven, had earned $1 in the first week and had advanced rapidly to $3 a week. In the last years, however, she had not carried any work home. She had sewed on piece-work from eight in the morning to six at night with an hour for lunch and no night work or overtime. She had earned from $20 to $25 a week in the busy weeks when the better pieces of work were more plentiful; and in the slack weeks $6 and $7. Ermengard had no complaint whatever to make about her own trade fortunes. All her concern and conversation were for the numbers of women cloak makers who lacked her own wonderful strength. Successful without education, she was astonishingly destitute of the wearisome fallacy of complacent self-reference characteristic of many people of uncommon ability. During the past year she had twice been discharged for organizing the workers in cloak factories where she was employed. In the first establishment subcontracting had made conditions too hard for most of the women; and in the second, wages were too low for a decent livelihood for most of the workers. These instances serve to express in the industry and lives of women cloak workers the subcontracting system, long seasonal hours, home work, and an unstandardized wage--the features under discussion in the cloak making trade in the spring of 1910. The whole cloak making trade of New York presents, for an outside observer, the kaleidoscopic interest of a population not static. The cutter of one decade is the employer of another decade. In the general strike of the cloakmakers in 1896 nearly all the manufacturers were German. In the strike of last summer nearly all the manufacturers were Galician and Russian. This aspect of the New York needle trades must be borne in mind in realizing those occurrences in the last strike which led to the present joint effort of both manufacturers and workers to standardize the wage scale, to regulate seasonal hours, to abolish the subcontracting system and home work, and to establish the preferential Union shop throughout the metropolitan industry. Dr. Henry Moskowitz, an effective non-partisan leader in achieving the settlement of the strike, was an eye-witness and student of all its crises, and the outline of its history below is mainly drawn from his chronicle and observation. Between the cloak makers and the manufacturers of New York a contest waged in numerous strikes had continued for twenty-five years. The agreements reached at the close of these strikes had been only temporary, because the cloak makers were never able to maintain a Union strong enough to hold the points won at the close of the struggle. The cloak makers had always proved themselves heroic strikers, but feeble Unionists, lacking sustained power. Again and again, men and women who had been sincerely ready to risk starvation for the justice of their claims during the fight would in peace become indifferent, fail to attend Union meetings, fail to pay Union dues; and the organization, strong in the time of defeat through the members' zeal, would weaken through their negligence in the critical hour of an ill-established success. The main contestants in this struggle had been the cloak makers on one side, and on the other the manufacturers belonging to the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers' Protective Association. The majority of the manufacturers in the association are men of standing in the trade, controlling large West Side establishments, and supplying fifty per cent of the New York output, though they represent only a small percentage of the cloak houses of New York. These cloak houses altogether number between thirteen and fourteen hundred, most of them on the East Side and the lower West Side, manufacturing cheap and medium-grade clothing. Such smaller houses had frequently broken the strikes of the last twenty-five years by temporary agreements in which they afterwards proved false to the workers. Many small dealers had become rich merchants through such strike harvests. On this account the cloak makers naturally distrusted employers' agreements. On the other hand, in many instances in the settlement of former strikes, cloak makers had made with certain dealers secret terms which enabled them to undersell their competitors. For this reason the manufacturers naturally distrusted cloak makers' agreements. With this mutual suspicion, the strike of 1910 began in June in two houses, an East Side and a West Side house. From the first house the workers went out because of the subcontracting system, and from the second practically on account of lockout. On the 3d of July, a mass meeting of 10,000 cloakmakers gathered in Madison Square Garden. It was decided that the question of a general strike should be put to the vote of the 10,000 Union members. Balloting continued at the three polls of the three Union offices for two succeeding days. Of these 10,000, all but about 600 voted in favor of the strike, and of these 600 the majority afterward declared that they, too, were in sympathy with the action. The wide prevalence of the difficulties which led to the decision of the 10,000 workers assembled at Madison Square Garden was evinced by the fact that within the next week an army of over 40,000 men and women in the New York garment trade joined the Cloak and Suit Makers' Union. These crowds poured into the three Union offices, filled the building entries, the streets before them, reached sometimes around the block--great processions of Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, Germans, Italians, Galicians, and Russians, the last two nationalities in the greatest numbers, men and women who had been driven out of Europe by military conscription, by persecution and pillage, literally by fire and sword, bearded patriarchs, nicely dressed young girls with copies of Sudermann and Gorky under their arms, shawled, wigged women with children clinging to their skirts, handsome young Jews who might have stood as models for clothiers' advertisements--cutters, pressers, operators, finishers, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors; for these, too, struck with all the rest. In watching these sewing men and sewing women streaming through the Union office on Tenth Street--an office hastily improvised in an old dwelling-house in a large room, evidently formerly a bedroom, and still papered with a delicate design of white and blue stripes, and a border of garlands of rosebuds--it seemed to an onlooker that almost no economic procession could ever before have comprised elements so very catholic and various. Who could lead such a body? How could the position of their great opponents, from day to day, be made known to them? As a matter of fact, no one man can be said to have led the 60,000 New York cloak makers. In the absence of such control, the corps of more prominent Union officers and their attorney, Meyer London, and through these men the multitudes of the Union members, were virtually guided by an East Side Yiddish paper, the _Vorwärts_. In the meantime, while these multitudes were flocking into the Union early in July, the Cloak Manufacturers' Association, representing beforehand about seventy-five houses, had by the inclusion of many smaller firms extended its membership to twelve hundred establishments.[25] Soon after the formation of the alliance, it became apparent to the smaller firms that the larger ones were not in any haste for settlement. The latter felt that they could beat their opponents by a waiting game; while the smaller firms, with their lesser capital, scarcely more able than their workers to exist through a prolonged beleaguering of the cloak makers, felt that the present stand of the larger manufacturers involved, not only beating the Unionists, but driving themselves, the weaker manufacturers, out of the industry. One by one, they left the association, sought the Union headquarters, and settled with the cloak makers. The profit reaped by these firms starting to work induced others to meet the workers' demands. By the end of July and the first week in August, six hundred smaller firms, employing altogether 20,000 cloakmakers, had settled.[26] In many instances the men and women marched back to their work with bands of music playing and with flying flags and banners. In July two attempts were made, on behalf of the cloak makers, by the State Board of Arbitration to induce the manufacturers to meet the Union members and to arbitrate with them. These attempts failed because the Union insisted on the question of the closed shop as essential. The manufacturers refused to arbitrate the question of the closed shop. At this juncture a public-spirited retailer of Boston, Mr. Lincoln Filene, entered the controversy. Mr. Filene resolved that, as a large consumer, he and his class had no right to shirk their responsibility by passively acquiescing in sweat-shop conditions. As an intermediary between the wholesaler and the public, the retailer had an important part in the conflict, not only because he suffered directly from the temporary paralysis of the industry, but also because his indifference to the claims of the worker for a just wage, sanitary factory conditions, abolition of home work, and for a decent working-day was equivalent to an active complicity in the guilt of the manufacturer. Through Mr. Filene's intervention, the manufacturers and the Union officials agreed to confer, and to request Mr. Louis Brandeis of Boston to act as chairman. Mr. Brandeis had, at the outset, the confidence of both parties. Each side recognized in him that combination of wide legal learning and a social economic sense which had made him an effective participant in the development of the progressive political and industrial policies of the nation. The employers welcomed Mr. Brandeis because they had faith in his sense of fairness. The cloak makers welcomed him because of his brilliant and signal service to the entire trade-union movement and to American working women in securing from the United States Supreme Court the decision which declared constitutional the ten-hour law for the women laundry workers of Oregon. The conference that was to have determined the industrial fortunes of more than 40,000 New York workers for the following year opened on Thursday morning, July 28, in a small room in the Metropolitan Life Building. Mr. Brandeis was in the chair. On one side of a long table sat the ten representatives of the cloak makers, including their attorney, a member of the _Vorwärts_ staff, and the Secretary of the International Garment Workers' Union, all these three men of middle age, intellectual faces, and sociological education, keenly identified with the ideas and principles of the workers; three or four rather younger representatives of the cloak makers, alert and thoroughly Americanized; and three older men, who had fought throughout the quarter-of-a-century contest, men with the sort of trade education that nothing but a working experience can give, deeply imbued with the traditions of that struggle, a hostility to "scabs," a distrust (too often well founded) of employers, and an unshaken belief in the general panacea of the closed shop--a subject which was, by agreement, to remain undiscussed in the conference. All these men, with the exception of their attorney, Mr. London, had cut and sewed on the benches of the garment trade. On the other side of the table sat the ten representatives of the manufacturers, some of them men of wide culture and learning, versed in philosophies, and prominent members of the Ethical Society, some of them New York financiers who had come from East Side sweat shops. Perhaps the most eager opponent of the closed shop in their body was a cosmopolitan young manufacturer, a linguist and "literary" man, interested in "style" from every point of view, who had introduced into the New York trade from abroad a considerable number of the cloak designs now widely worn throughout America. This man felt the keenest personal pride in his output. He is said at one time to have remarked, _"Le cloak c'est moi"_ And, bizarre as it may seem to an outsider, a really sincere reason of his against accepting workmen on the recommendation of the Union was that the cloak manufacturer as an artist should adopt toward his workers "the attitude of Hammerstein to his orchestra." One of the manufacturers had been a strike leader in 1896. "Your bitterest opponent of fourteen years ago sits on the same side of the table with you now," said one of the older cloak makers, in a deep, intense voice, as the men took their places. Mr. Brandeis opened the conference with these words: "Gentlemen, we have come together in a matter which we must all recognize is a very serious and an important business--not only to settle this strike, but to create a relation which will prevent similar strikes in the future. That work is one which, it seems to me, is approached in a spirit that makes the situation a very hopeful one, and I am sure, from my conferences with counsel of both parties[27] and with individual members whom they represent, that those who are here are all here with that desire." Up to a certain point in the conference, which lasted for three days, this seemed to be true. The manufacturers agreed to abolish home work, to abolish subcontracting, to give a weekly half-holiday, besides the Jewish Sabbath, during June, July, and August, and to limit overtime work to two hours and a half a day during the busy season, with no work permitted after half past eight at night, or before eight in the morning. Beyond this, the question of hours was left to arbitration. Also, the question of wages was left to arbitration. The last subject to be dealt with at the Brandeis conference was the general method of enforcing agreements between the Manufacturers' Association and the Union. It was in this discussion that the question of the closed shop and the open shop came before the conference. Though the Union leaders had agreed to eliminate the discussion of the closed shop before they entered into negotiations, it was almost impossible for them to refrain from suggesting it as a means of enforcing agreements. As one of the cloak makers, one of the old leaders of the labor movement in America, said: "This organization of cloak makers in the city of New York can only control the situation where Union people are employed. They have absolutely no control of the situation where non-union people are employed. They cannot enforce any rules, nor any discipline of any kind, shape, or description, and if we are to coöperate in any way that will be absolutely effective, then the ... Manufacturers' Association, ... it seems to me, should see that the necessary first step is that they shall run Union shops."[28] The Union shop the speaker had in mind, the Union shop advocated by the _Vorwärts_ and desired, as it proved, by a majority of the workers, was a different matter from the closed shop, which constitutes a trade monopoly by limiting the membership of a trade to a certain comparatively small number of workers. The institution of the closed shop is by intention autocratic and exclusive. The institution of the Union shop is by intention democratic and inclusive. With the cloak makers' organization, entrance into the Union was almost a matter of form. There were no prohibitive initiation fees, or dues, as in other unions. They offered every non-union man and woman an opportunity to join their ranks. The manufacturers contended that they had no objection to the voluntary enlistment of non-union men in Union ranks; but they would not insist that all their workers belong to the Union. This deadlock was reached on the third day of the conference. At this point Mr. Brandeis brought before the meeting the opinion that "an effective coöperation between the manufacturers and the Union ... would involve, ... of necessity, a strong Union." "I realize," he said, ... "from a consideration of ... general Union questions, that in the ordinary open shop, where that prevails, there is great difficulty in building up the Union. I felt, therefore, particularly in view of the fact that so many of the members of the Garment Workers' Union are recent members, that to make an effective Union it was necessary that you should be aided ... by the manufacturers, ... and that aid could be effectively ... given by providing that the manufacturers should, in the employment of labor hereafter, give preference to Union men, where the Union men were equal in efficiency to any non-union applicants.... That presented in the rough what seemed to me a proper basis for coming together.... I think, if such an arrangement as we have discussed can be accomplished, it will be the greatest advance, not only that unionism has made in this country, but it would be one of the greatest advances that has generally been made in improving the condition of the working-man, for which unionism is merely an instrument." This, then, was the first public presentation of the idea of the preferential shop. Mr. Brandeis, as a result of close study of labor disputes and a rich experience in settling strikes, had reached the conclusion that the position of the adherents of the closed as well as those of the open shop was economically and socially untenable. The inherent objection to the closed shop, he contends, is that it creates an uncontrolled and irresponsible monopoly of labor. On the other hand, the so-called open shop, even if conducted with fairness and honesty on the part of the employer, is apt to result in a disintegration of the Union. It has been a frequent experience of organized labor that, even after a strike has been won, men drop out of the Union and leave the burden of Union obligation to the loyal minority, who, weakened in numbers, face not only a loss of what the strike has gained, but a retrogression of those Union standards that have been the result of past struggles and sacrifices. By the preferential Union plan, when an employer obliges himself to prefer Union to non-union men, a Union man in good standing, that is, a Union man who has paid his dues and met his Union obligations, is insured employment to a limited extent, and the dues represent a premium paid by him for such employment. It was not an easy task to secure assent to this idea from the manufacturers, for Mr. Brandeis made it clear that, while the plan did not oblige the manufacturers to coerce men into joining the Union, it clearly placed them on record in favor of a trade-union, and obliged them to do nothing, directly or indirectly, to injure the Union, and positively to do everything in their power, outside of coercion, to strengthen the Union. In Mr. Brandeis' appeal to the Union representatives he referred to the history of the Cloak Makers' Union as a telling illustration of the futility of their past policy. He pointed out that the membership of the Union during a strike was no test of its strength--a Union's solidity rested upon its membership in time of peace. Were they not justified in assuming that what had occurred in the past of the Cloak Makers' Union would occur in the future, and that its membership would dwindle to a small number of the faithful? How could their organization be permanently strengthened? Cloak making, as a seasonal trade, offered a fair field for proving the efficiency of the preferential plan, for in the slack season the manufacturers must, by its terms, prefer Union men. The industrial situation provided a test of this good faith. The Union leaders could then effectively show the non-union worker the advantage of the union membership. The final formation of the preferential union shop as presented to both sides by Mr. Brandeis, Mr. London, and Mr. Cohen, in the Brandeis conference, was this: "The manufacturers can and will declare in appropriate terms their sympathy with the Union, their desire to aid and strengthen the Union, and their agreement that, as between Union and non-union men of equal ability to do the job, the Union men shall be given the preference." The manufacturers were willing to make this agreement. But the representatives of the Union received it with a natural suspicion bred by years of oppression. "Can the man who has ground us down year after year suddenly be held by a sentiment for the organization he has fought for a quarter of a century?" they asked. "Between Union and non-union men, will he candidly give the preference to Union men of equal ability? Will he not rather, since the question of ability is a matter of personal judgment and is left to his judgment, prefer the non-union man, and justify his preference by a pretence, in each case, that he considers the skill of the non-union man superior?" Nevertheless, a majority of the leaders of the cloak makers were willing to try the plan.... A minority refused. This minority was influenced partly by its certain knowledge that the 40,000 cloak makers would never accept an agreement based on the idea of the preferential Union shop, and partly by its complete distrust of the good will of the manufacturers. The minority was trusted and powerful. It won. The conference broke. The _Vorwärts_ printed a statement that the preferential shop was the "open shop with honey." The news of the Brandeis conference reached the cloak makers through the bulletins of this paper; and during its progress and after its close, frantic crowds stood before the office on the lower East Side, waiting for these bulletins, eager for the victory of the closed shop, the panacea for all industrial evils. After the decision of the leaders, after the breaking of the conference, the cloak makers who had settled gave fifteen per cent of their wages to support those standing out for the closed shop, and volunteered to give fifty per cent. The _Vorwärts_ headed a subscription list with $2000 for the strikers, and collected $50,000. A furore for the closed shop arose. Young boys and bearded old men and young women came to the office and offered half their wages, three-quarters of their wages. One boy offered to give all his wages and sell papers for his living. Every day the office was besieged by committees, appointed by the men and women in the settled shops, asking to contribute to the cause more than the percentage determined by the Union. These were men and women accustomed to enduring hardships for a principle, men and women who had fought in Russia, who were revolutionists, willing to make sacrifices, eager to make sacrifices. Their blind faith was the backbone of the strike. This furore was continuing when, in the third week in August, the loss of contracts by the manufacturers and the general stagnation of business due to the idleness of 40,000 men and women, normally wage-earners, induced a number of bankers and merchants of the East Side to bring pressure for a settlement of the strike. Louis Marshall, an attorney well known in New York in Jewish charities, assembled the lawyers of both sides. They drew up an agreement in which the preferential union shop again appeared as the basis of future operations, formulated as in the Brandeis conference. The _Vorwärts_ printed the result of the Marshall conference with deep concern. It maintained a neutral attitude. The editorials urged that the readers consider the whole document soberly, discuss it freely in local meetings, and vote for themselves, on their own full understanding, after mature conviction on each point. Tremendous crowds surged around the _Vorwärts_ office. They almost mobbed the East Side leaders, with their voluble questioning about the preferential Union shop. Thousands of men and women and children called out pleas and reproaches and recriminations in an avid personal demonstration possible only to their race. "Oh, you wouldn't sell us out?" they cried desperately. "You wouldn't sell us out? You are our hope." Imagine what these days of doubt, of an attempt to understand, meant to these multitudes, knowing no industrial faith but that of the closed shop which had failed them absolutely, wanderers from a strange country, turning wildly to their leaders, who could only tell them that they must determine their own fates, they must decide for themselves. These leaders have been blamed at once for their autocracy and for not mobilizing and informing and directing these multitudes more clearly and firmly. Their critics failed to conceive the remarkably various economic and political histories of the enormous concourse of human beings engaged in the needle trades of New York. However that may be, when the workers and their families surged around the _Vorwärts_ office and asked the leaders if they had betrayed them, Schlesinger, the business manager, and the old strike leaders addressed them from the windows, and said to the people, with painful emotion: "You are our masters. What you decide we will report back to the association lawyers. What you decide shall be done." Terrible was the position of these men. Well they knew that the winter was approaching; that the closed shop could not win; that the workers could not hear the truth about the preferential Union shop, and that the man who stood avowedly for the preferential shop, now the best hope of victory for the Union, would be called a traitor to the Union. In great anxiety, the meetings assembled. The workers had all come to the same conclusion. They all rejected the Marshall agreement. Soon after this, the tide of loyalty to the closed shop was incited to its high-water mark by the action of Judge Goff, who, as a result of a suit of one of the firms of the Manufacturers' Association, issued an injunction against peaceful picketing, on the part of the strikers, on the ground that picketing for the closed shop was an action of conspiracy in constraint of trade, and therefore unlawful. The manufacturers were now, naturally, more deeply distrusted than ever on the East Side.[29] The doctrine of the closed shop became almost ritualistic. Early in September, one of the Labor Day parades was headed by an aged Jew, white-bearded and fierce-eyed,--a cloak maker who knew no other words of English than those he uttered,--who waved a purple banner and shouted at regular intervals: "Closed shop! Closed shop!" That man represented the spirit of thousands of immigrants who have recently become trade-unionists in America. Impossible to say to such a man that the idea of the closed shop had been an enemy to the spread of trade-unionism in this country by its implication of monopolistic tyranny. Impossible, indeed, to say anything to Unionists whose reply to every just representation is, "Closed shop"; or to employers whose reply to every just representation is, "We do not wish other people to run our business." This reply the Marshall conference still had to hear for some days. It was now the first week in September. There was great suffering among the cloak makers. On the manufacturers' side, contracts heretofore always filled by certain New York houses, in this prolonged stoppage of their factories were finally lost to them and placed with establishments in other important cloak making centres--Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and even abroad. Two or three large Union houses settled for terms, in hours and wages, which were satisfactory to every one concerned, though lower than the demands on these points listed in the cloak makers' first letter. Curiously enough, wages and hours had been left to arbitration, had never been thoroughly considered in the whole situation before. Neither the workers nor the employers had clearly stated what they really would stand for on these vital points. No one, not even the most wildly partisan figures on either side, supposed that the first demands as to wages and hours represented an ultimatum. The debaters in the Marshall conference now agreed on feasible terms on these points,[30] though, curiously enough, the rates for piece-work were left to the arbitration of individual shops. In spite of this fact, the majority of the workers are paid by piece-work. The former clauses of the agreement relating to the abolition of home work and of subcontracting remained practically as they had stood before.[31] As for the idea of the preferential Union shop, it had undoubtedly been gaining ground. Naturally, at first, appearing to the _Vorwärts'_ staff and to many ardent unionists as opposed to unionism, it had now assumed a different aspect. This was the final formulation of the preferential Union shop in the Marshall agreement: "Each member of the Manufacturers' Association is to maintain a Union shop, a 'Union shop' being understood to refer to a shop where Union standards as to working conditions prevail, and where, when hiring help, Union men are preferred, it being recognized that, since there are differences of skill among those employed in the trade, employers shall have freedom of selection between one Union man and another, and shall not be confined to any list nor bound to follow any prescribed order whatsoever. "It is further understood that all existing agreements and obligations of the employer, including those to present employees, shall be respected. The manufacturers, however, declare their belief in the Union, and that all who desire its benefits should share in its burdens." As will be seen, this formulation signified that the Union men available for a special kind of work in a factory must be sought before any other men. The words "non-union man," the words arousing the antagonism of the East Side, are not mentioned. But whether the preference of Union men is or is not insisted on as strongly as in the Brandeis agreement must remain a matter of open opinion. This formulation was referred to the strike committee. It was accepted by the strike committee, and went into force on September 8. The _Vorwärts_ posted the news as a great Union victory. At the first bulletin, the news ran like wildfire over the East Side. Multitudes assembled; men, women, and children ran around Rutgers Square, in tumult and rejoicing. The workers seized London, the unionists' lawyer, and carried him around the square on their shoulders, and they even made him stand on their shoulders and address the crowd from them. People sobbed and wept and laughed and cheered; and Roman Catholic Italians and Russian Jews, who had before sneered at each other as "dagoes" and "sheenies," seized each other in their arms and called each other brother. Now that the men and women have returned to their shops, it remains for all the people involved--the manufacturers, the workers, the retailers, and the interested public--to make a dispassionate estimate of this new arrangement. Is the preferential shop so delicate a fabric as to prove futile? Has it sustaining power? Will the final agreement prove, at last, to be a Union victory? Will both sides act in good faith--the manufacturers always honestly preferring Union men, the Union leaders always maintaining a democratic and an inclusive Union, without autocracy or bureaucratic exclusion? Undoubtedly there will be failures on both sides. But the New York cloak makers' strike may be historical, not only for its results in the cloak industry, but for its contribution to the industrial problems of the country. No outsider can read the statement of the terms of the manufacturers' preference without feeling that a joint agreement committee should have been established to consider cases of alleged unfair discrimination against Union workers. On the other hand, no outsider can hear without a feeling of uneasiness such an assertion as was made to one of the writers--that strike breakers had been obliged to pay an initiation fee of one hundred dollars to enter the Cloak Makers' Union. There is undoubtedly, on both sides, need of patience and a long educational process to change the attitude of hostility and bitterness engendered by over twenty years of a false policy of antagonism. But never before, in the cloak makers' history, have the men and women gone back to work after a strike holding their heads as high as they do to-day.[32] It can be reasonably believed that their last summer's struggle will achieve a permanent gain for the workers' industrial future. This narrative of the industrial fortunes of the women cloak makers in New York in the last year is given for its statement of the effects of the struggle for the Preferential Union Shop on their trade histories, and for its account of their gains as workers in the same trade with men. These cloak makers' gains were local. What national gains have American working women been able to obtain? For an answer to this question we turned to the results of the National Consumers' League inquiry concerning the fortunes of women workers in laundries and its chronicle of the decision of the Federal Supreme Court on the point of their hours of labor. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 23: Printed statement of the Cloak, Skirt, and Suit Manufacturers' Protective Association, July 11, 1910.] [Footnote 24: Estimate of the Waverly Place Office of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, November 26 to 30.] [Footnote 25: For this account of the position of different cloak manufacturers the writers wish to acknowledge the kindness of Miss Mary Brown Sumner of the _Survey_.] [Footnote 26: These were the most important clauses of these early settlements as regards women workers:-- I. The said firm hereby engages the Union to perform all the tailoring, operating, pressing, finishing, cutting, and buttonhole-making work to be done by the firm in the cloak and suit business during one year ... from date; and the Union agrees to perform said work in a good and workmanlike manner. II. During the continuance of this agreement, operators shall be paid in accordance with the annexed price list. The following is the scale of wages for week hands: ... skirt makers, not less than $24 per week; skirt basters, not less than $15 per week; skirt finishers, not less than $12 per week; buttonhole makers, not less than $1.10 per hundred buttonholes. III. A working week shall consist of forty-eight hours in six working-days. IV. No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth day of November and the fifteenth day of January and during the months of June and July. During the rest of the year employees may be required to work overtime, provided all the employees of the firm, as well as all the employees of the outside contractors of the firm, are engaged to the full capacity of the factories. No overtime shall be permitted on Saturday nor on any day for more than two and a half hours, nor before 8 A.M. or after 8 P.M. For overtime work the employees shall receive double the usual pay. No contracting or subcontracting shall be permitted by the firm inside its factory, and no operator or finisher shall be permitted more than one helper. XIII. No work shall be given employees to be done at their homes. XV. Only members of respective locals above named shall be employed by the firm to do the said work.] [Footnote 27: Mr. London for the cloak makers, and Mr. Cohen for the manufacturers.] [Footnote 28: Stenographic minutes of the Brandeis conference.] [Footnote 29: This decision met with disapproval, not only on the East Side. The New York _Evening Post_ said: "Justice Goff's decision embodies rather strange law and certainly very poor policy. One need not be a sympathizer with trade-union policy, as it reveals itself to-day, in order to see that the latest injunction, if generally upheld, would seriously cripple such defensive powers as legitimately belong to organized labor." And the _Times_: "This is the strongest decision ever handed down against labor."] [Footnote 30: These are the clauses of the Marshall agreement on wage scale and hours of labor which affect women workers. The term "sample makers" includes, of course, sample makers of cloaks. The week workers among the cloak makers are principally the sample makers. But the greater proportion of the workers in the cloak factories are piece-workers. This explains why there is no definite weekly wage schedule listed for cloak workers as such. Sample makers, $22; sample skirt makers, $22; skirt basters, $14; skirt finishers, $10; buttonhole makers, Class A, a minimum of $1.20 per 100 buttonholes; Class B a minimum of 80 cents per 100 buttonholes. As to piece-work, the price to be paid is to be agreed upon by a committee of the employees in each shop and their employer. The chairman of said price committee of the employees shall act as the representative of the employees in their dealings with the employer. The weekly hours of labor shall consist of 50 hours in 6 working days, to wit, nine hours on all days except the sixth day, which shall consist of five hours only. No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth day of November and the fifteenth day of January, or during the months of June and July, except upon samples. No overtime work shall be permitted on Saturdays, except to workers not working on Saturdays, nor on any day or more than two and one-half hours, nor before 8 A.M., nor after 8.30 P.M. For overtime work all week workers shall receive double the usual pay.] [Footnote 31: There has been practically no complaint on the part of the workers or the public concerning the sanitary conditions of the larger houses. At present the strike settlement has established a joint board of sanitary control, composed of three representatives of the public, Dr. W.J. Scheffelin, chairman, Miss Wald of the Nurses' Settlement, and Dr. Henry Moskowitz of the Down-town Ethical Society; two representatives of the workers, Dr. George Price, Medical Sanitary Inspector of the New York Department of Health, 1895-1904, and Mr. Schlesinger, Business Manager of the _Vorwärts_; and two representatives of the manufacturers, Mr. Max Meier and Mr. Silver. The work of this committee will be the enforcement of uniform sanitary conditions in all shops, including the more obscure and smaller establishments.] [Footnote 32: This statement is written in the last week of September, 1910.] CHAPTER VI WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK (This article is composed of the reports of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, supplemented with an account of the Federal Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the Oregon Ten-Hour Law for laundry workers.) What do self-supporting women away from home in New York give in their work, and what do they get from it, when their industry involves a considerable outlay of muscular strength? For a reply to this question the National Consumers' League turned to the reports of women's work as machine ironers and hand ironers, workers at mangles, folders, and shakers of sheets and napkins from wringers in the steam laundries of New York. For, although the labor at the machines in the laundry wash-rooms is done by men, and all work in laundries consists largely of machine tending, still women's part in the industry can be performed only by unusually strong women.[33] In the winter of 1907-1908 the National Consumers' League had received from different parts of New York a series of letters filled with various complaints against specified laundries in this city--complaints stating that hours were long and irregular, wages unfair, the laundries dirty, and the girls seldom allowed to sit down, and containing urgent pleas to the women of the Consumers' League to help the women laundry workers. After consulting some of the laundry women, the League determined to secure through a special inquiry a well-ascertained statement of conditions as a basis for State factory legislation for uniform improvements. A few months before, the constitutionality of the present New York legislation, as well as of almost all of the State legislation concerning the hours of work of adult women in this country, had been virtually determined by the decision of the Federal Supreme Court in regard to the ten-hour law for women laundry workers in Oregon. The opinion of the National Supreme Court, which practically confirmed the passed New York laundry laws and made future laws for fair regulation for the women workers seem practicable, will be given after the account of women's work in laundries in New York. Miss Carola Woerishofer conducted the inquiry, which was confined to steam laundries, as hand laundries were more favorably described by many reliable authorities. Among these, the large laundries were commercial laundries, such as we all patronize, and hotel and hospital laundries. The features chiefly observed in all these establishments were sanitation, the danger of injury, and wages and hours of labor. For the account of the hospital and hotel laundries the Consumers' League of the city of New York obtained the services of Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood of Smith College and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins of Wellesley College. As a means of investigating commercial laundries, Miss Woerishofer, answering advertisements as they came, worked in laundries in trade employed in nearly every branch of the industry in which women are engaged throughout the borough of Manhattan. Her report follows. I "Naturally, the first question which faced me was that of finding a job. For this I turned to the laundry want 'ads' in the newspapers. To my surprise, as my investigation was made in the summer, which is, curiously enough, by far the slackest season in New York commercial laundries, I was never without work for more than a day at a time, although I changed continually, for the sake of experience, averaging about a week in a place. "The first establishment to which I went was known as a model laundry. It was large and well ventilated and had a dry floor. These sanitary conditions may be said to be fairly typical. In only one laundry did I find a girl who was compelled to stand in a wet place, though water overflowed sometimes into the girls' quarters from the wash-rooms, where the men worked. In some of these wash-rooms the water is at times ankle-deep, a condition due only to bad drainage, as other wash-rooms are absolutely dry. Whatever the condition of the work-rooms, the women's dressing-rooms frequently had insanitary plumbing, and were verminous and unhealthful. In one laundry the water supply was contaminated, smelling and tasting offensively when it came from the faucet, and worse after it had passed through the cooler. The women here at first kept bottles of soda-water. Some old women had beer. But on a series of hot days, with hours from half past seven to twelve, and from one till any time up to ten at night, 10 cents' worth of beer or soda-water a day did not go far to alleviate thirst, and soon drank a big hole in a wage of $5 a week. A complaint was sent to the Board of Health. After nearly three weeks, the Board of Health replied that the complaint must be sent to the Water Department. From the Water Department no reply could possibly come for several weeks more. And in the meantime, all the women workers in the laundry, impelled by intolerable thirst, drank the contaminated water. "The work-room where I was employed had, on the whole, plenty of windows. These were left open. But when a room is large and full of machinery, artificial light is needed all day, and the outside air does not come in very far to drive away the heat and the dampness. On going out at noon from a laundry where I had dipped shirts in hot starch all the morning at a breakneck pace, I was struck by the coolness of the day. That night I discovered that the thermometer had been registering 96° in the shade. A few fans should be put in each laundry. They could be run by the power that runs the machines. "In the 'model laundry,' I worked at first at a mangle, running spreads and sheets and towels between two revolving cylinders. Here I found there was danger of slipping my fingers too far under the cylinders in the process of feeding. The mangle had a guard, to be sure,--a flexible metal bar about three-quarters of an inch above the feeding-apron in front of the cylinder. But I learned that this acted as a warning rather than a protection. 'Once you get your fingers in, you never get them out,' Jenny, the Italian girl beside me, said repeatedly. The Italian girls Anglicized their names, and Jenny had probably been Giovanna at home. "At the collar machine, at which I was stationed after lunch, there was an adequate guard where the collars were slipped in. Where they came out, however, they had to be pushed in rapid succession under the farther side of a burning hot cylinder with no guard at all. To avoid touching the cylinder with my arm in this process, I was obliged either to raise it unnaturally high, or to stand on tiptoe. 'You didn't get burned to-day or yesterday,' said Jenny, 'but you sure will sometime. Everybody does on that machine.' "In the ironing of collars and cuffs by machinery, there is continual risk of burns on hands and arms. At a sleeve-ironing machine, in another place I received some slight burn every day. And when I asked the girls if this were because I was 'green,' they replied that every one got burned at that machine all the time. Each burn is due to 'carelessness,' but if the girls were to be careful, they would have to focus their minds on self-protection instead of the proper accomplishment of their task, and would also have to work at a lower rate of speed than the usual output of the laundries demands. A graver danger than that from hot surfaces and from slightly protected gas flames is from unguarded belts and gears. "At mangles, too, the danger is grave. What the girls call 'millionaire work'--work that has to come out straight--in contrast with 'boarding-house work," must be shoved up to within a quarter of an inch of the cylinder. Fingers once caught in such mangles are crushed. Consider, in connection with these two facts, the high rate of speed at which the girls feed the work into the machine, and the precarious character of their task will be realized. However, in many laundries, good mangles for table and bed linen are in use, which either have a stationary bar in front of the first cylinder, or else have the first roll, whether connected or not with the power, attached to a lever, and so constructed as to lift the pressure immediately from the finger, should it be slipped underneath.[34] "For the purpose of inspecting the machinery I visited with different factory inspectors, through the courtesy extended by the Department of Labor, all, so far as I was able to determine, of the commercial steam laundries in the borough of Manhattan. Out of sixty laundries inspected, I found that twenty-six had either unguarded or inadequately guarded mangles, collar presses, and collar dampeners, or else unguarded or inadequately guarded gears and belts. In a laundry visited when the boss was out, we conferred with the engineer about one particularly bad mangle. "'What's this machine for? To cut girls' hands off?' asked the inspector. "'Well,', said the engineer, 'it came pretty near finishing up the last girl we had here--caught her arm in an apron-string and got both hands under the roll--happened over two months ago. Fingers cut off one hand, and all twisted and useless on the other.' "Instead of having the machine guarded, after this mutilation, the owner had employed a man to take chances here, instead of a girl. "This and all the illegal defects discovered were ordered remedied by the factory inspectors. But New York labor legislation, no matter how excellent, cannot be enforced, with the present number of inspectors. An inspector will arrive on one day; will discover that rules are violated; will impose a fine; will return in the next week and discover that rules are not violated; will, perforce, return to another part of the field; and after that the violation will continue as if he had never observed it. "Further, it is difficult for the inspector to discover, through employees, violations of the State laws enacted in their interest, as they risk being discharged for complaints. In addition, moreover, to this danger, bringing a charge means that the complainant must go to court, thus losing both time and money. A union organization would be the only possible means of settling the matter. Made up of the workers themselves, it is always present to observe violations; and it offers to the workers the advantage of reporting to the State, not as individuals, but as a body. The coöperative spirit present among almost all of the laundry workers should make organization entirely feasible.[35] "On entering a new situation I found, as a rule, cordiality and friendly interest. On several occasions it was expressed by this social form:-- "'Say, you got a feller?' "'Sure. Ain't you got one?' "'Sure.' "The girls are really very kind to one another, helping one another in their work, and by loans of lunch and money. "In one place a woman with a baby to support--a shaker earning $4.50 a week, and heavily in debt--used to borrow weekly a few pennies apiece from all the girls around her to pay her rent. And the pennies were always forthcoming, although the girls had hardly more than she had, and knew quite well that they were seldom returned. There was a great deal of swearing among the women in almost all of the laundries, but it was of an entirely good-natured character. "While there was a natural division of labor, there was also an artificial one, created during lunch hours. A deep-rooted feeling of antagonism and suspicion exists between the Irish and the Italians, each race clubbing together from the different departments in separate bands. "Aside from this distinction, there is another social cleavage--the high-wage earners sitting apart from the low-wage earners, through natural snobbishness. In one laundry, the high-wage earners, though they often treated the $5 girls to stray sardines, cake, etc., were in the habit of sending young girls to the delicatessen shop to get their lunches, and also to the saloon for beer. Then the girl had to hurry out on the street in her petticoat and little light dressing-sack that she wore for work, for they gave her no time to change. For this service the girl would get 10 cents a week from each of the women she did errands for. They did not--the boss starcher explained to me with quiet elegance--think of such a thing as drinking beer behind the boss's back, but they 'just didn't want him to know.' "The same difficulties in enforcing the law about protected machinery in laundries exist in the enforcing of the law requiring that adult women in laundries shall not work more than sixty hours in a week. Just as in the case of protected machinery, these difficulties might be partly removed through trade organization. "Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, and on heavy days, when the work is steady, except at lunch time, very few women get a chance to sit down during any part of the day. The chief difference between laundry work and that of other factories is in the irregularity of the hours. A manufacturer knows more or less at the beginning of the week how much work his factory will have to do, and can usually distribute overtime, or engage or lay off extra girls, according to his knowledge. The laundryman can never estimate the amount of work to be done until the laundry bundles are actually on the premises. He can never tell when the hotels, restaurants, steamboats, and all the small 'hand' laundries, whose family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars and table and bed linen he finishes, will want their washing back. Hard as this is for the employer, it is still harder for the workers. The small hand laundry can seldom keep customers waiting longer than from Monday till Saturday. On this account, the steam laundry will be obliged to rush all of its work for the 'hand' laundry through in one or two days. I found some steam laundries in which no work at all is done on Monday or Saturday, but in the busy season the place keeps running regularly on the other four days from seven in the morning till half past eleven and twelve at night. Very seldom is there any compensation for these long hours. Few of the laundries pay overtime. Of these, some dock the girls proportionately for every hour less than sixty a week they work. No laundries in which I worked, except one, give supper money. A piece-worker at least gets some advantage to counterbalance long hours. But the week worker not only lacks recompense for actual labor, but is often put to greater expense. "She does not know when her long day is coming, so she must buy her supper, when supper is waiting for her at home. She is often so tired that she must spend 5 cents for carfare, instead of walking. Seven cents is a fair average spent upon supper--2 cents for bread and 5 cents for sausage, cheese, or meat. If overtime is worked three nights a week, the girl is out of pocket 36 cents--not a small item in wages of $4.50 and $5 a week, where every penny counts. Often, also, she either has not extra money or she forgets to bring it. Then she has to share some one else's lunch. The girls are always willing to divide, however slight their own provisions. I once saw a 1-cent piece of cake shared by four girls. "There are two kinds of long hours: those due to bad systematizing of laundry work, creating long waits between lots; and those due to very heavy work. In regard to the first kind, it must be said that the shirt starchers, who are the main sufferers from waiting for work, are the best paid, and hence are not as indignant at frequent overtime as the week workers are. Besides, though obliged to stay in the work-room, they are frequently seated throughout their waiting time, which sometimes lasts for four or five hours. I saw one woman about to be confined, who sometimes starched shirts until two in the morning, after arriving at the laundry at half past seven on the morning before. "The other kind of long hours involves constant standing, and is most apt to occur in laundries where only mangle work is done. These laundries do not tend to work late at night, but they more frequently violate the sixty-hour law than the others do. Work is almost absolutely steady. The women stand on their feet ten and twelve hours, with just half an hour or an hour for lunch, and work with extreme speed. "If your job is shaking the wrinkles out of towels and sheets, this in itself is violent exercise. The air is hot and damp because you stand near the washers. You are hurried at a furious rate. When you finish one lot, you have to roll heavy baskets, and dump them upon your table, and then go on shaking and shaking again, only to do more heavy loading and dumping. One girl always had a headache late in the afternoon. After standing ten or twelve hours, there are few whose feet or backs do not ache. The effect on the feet is perhaps the chief ground of complaint. Some merely wear rags about their feet, others put on old shoes or slippers, which they slit up in front and at the sides. The girls who press skirts by machine and those who do the body ironing have to press down on pedals in order to accomplish their tasks, and find this, as a rule, harder than standing still. An occasional worker, however, pronounces it a relief. But several I met had serious internal trouble which they claimed began after they had started laundry work. Few laundries give holidays with pay. Some give half a day on the legal holidays. In the others, 'shaking' and 'body ironing' and all the hard, heavy processes of laundry work continue straight through Christmas day, straight through New Year's day, straight through the Fourth of July, just as at other times. "In recompense for these long hours of standing, the piece-worker often has fairly high payment financially. But the opposite is true of the week worker. In the down-town laundries, where the wage scale runs lower, the amount is usually inadequate for the barest need. "The payment in laundries is extremely varied. The wages of the majority of women I talked to in laundries amounted to between $8 and $4.50 a week. But wages ranged from the highest exceptional instances in piece-work, in hand starching and in hand ironing, at $25 a week, for a few weeks in the year, down to $3 a week. "High wages generally involved long hours. For instance, in one laundry, young American women between twenty and thirty were employed as hand starchers at piece-work. They made $10 a week, when times were slack, by working once or twice a week, from seven in the morning until eleven at night. In busy times they sometimes made $22 a week by working occasionally from seven o'clock one morn till two o'clock the following morning.[36] "Although Italians, Russians, Irish, Polish, Germans, Americans, and Swedes are employed in New York laundries, the greater part of the work is done by Irish and Italians. The Irish receive the higher prices, the Italians the lower prices. The best-paid work, the hand starching of shirts and collars and the hand ironing, is done by Irish women, by colored women, and by Italian and Jewish men. The actual process of hand starching may be learned in less than one hour. Speed in the work may be acquired in about ten days. On the other hand, to learn the nicer processes of the ill-paid work of feeding and folding at the mangle--the passing of towels and napkins through the machine without turning in or wrinkling the edges, the passing of table-covers between cylinders in such a way that the work will never come out in a shape other than square--to learn these nicer processes requires from thirteen to fifteen days. The reason for the low wages listed for mangle work seems to lie only in nationality. Mangle work, as a rule, is done by Italians. In two laundries I found, working side by side with American and Irish girls, Italians, who were doing exactly the same work, and were paid less, solely because they were Italians. The employer said he never paid the Italians more than $4 a week. "In the next best-paid work after hand starching, the work of hand ironing, paying roughly from $8 to $18 a week, Italian women are practically never employed. "The worst part of mangle work, the shaking, is done by young girls and by incapable older women of many nationalities. One of the ill-paid girls, who had $4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, who never let her delay payment a day. She had only $1 a week left for every other expense. This girl was 'keeping company' with a longshoreman, who had as much as $25 in good weeks. She had been engaged to him, and had broken her engagement because he drank--'he got so terribly drunk.' But when I saw her she was in such despair with her low wage, her hard hours of standing, and only $5 a week ahead of her, that she was considering whether she should not swallow her well-founded terror of the misery his dissipation might bring upon them, and marry him, after all. "The shakers are the worst paid and the hardest worked employees. The young girls expect to become folders and feeders. The older women are widows with children, or women with husbands sick or out of work or in some way incapacitated. Indeed, many of all these laundry workers, probably a larger proportion than in any other trade, are widows with children to support. 'The laundry is the place,' said one of the women, 'for women with bum husbands, sick, drunk, or lazy.' The lower the pay and the damper and darker the laundry, the older and worse off these women seem to be. "The low wages and long hours of the great majority of the women workers, the gradual breaking and loss of the normal health of many lives through undernourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, the most serious danger in the laundries. The loss of a finger, the maiming of a hand, even the mutilation of the poor girl who lost the use of both of her hands--the occasional casualties for a few girls in the laundries--are, though so much more salient, far less grave than the exhaustion and underpayment of the many. "This, then, is the situation in general for women workers in the commercial laundries. With respect to sanitation, the heat is excessive wherever ironing is done by machinery. Many of the rooms are full of steam. Some of the laundries have insanitary toilet and cloak rooms. With respect to danger of injury, in a large proportion of places there is unguarded or inadequately guarded machinery. In respect to hours of labor, these often extend over the sixty-hour limit in rush seasons. The hours are not only long, but irregular. A twelve to fourteen-hour working-day is not infrequent. In a few places closing on Mondays and Saturdays, or open for short hours on Mondays, the working-day runs up on occasions to seventeen hours. Almost all the laundry work is done standing. Wages for the majority of the workers are low." The League's conclusions in regard to legislation will be placed at the close of the following accounts of the laundries of the large New York hospitals and hotels, the first report being written by Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, the second report by Miss Mary Alden Hopkins. II "By a decision of the District Attorney, hotel and hospital laundries, provided they do no outside work, do not come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. Women may work far beyond the sixty-hour limit on seven days of the week without any interference on the part of the government. Nor is there any authority that can force hospitals and hotel keepers to guard their machinery. "While the hospitals did not, as a rule, exceed legal hours, were excellent as a rule in point of sanitation, and paid better wages than the commercial laundries to all but the more skilled workers, the machinery was adequately guarded in only one of the eight hospital laundries where I worked. "In some, the belt that transfers the power was left unscreened, to the danger of passing workers. In others the mangle guard was insufficient. In all the hospitals I heard of casualties. Fingers had been mashed. A hand had been mashed. An arm had been dragged out. Unguarded machinery was, of course, a striking inconsistency, more inexcusable in the hospitals than in hotels or in commercial laundries. For hospitals are not engaged in a gainful pursuit, regardless of all humanitarian considerations. On the contrary, they are not only avowedly philanthropic in aim, but are carried on solely in the cause of health. "The living-in system prevails in the hospitals, and wages are paid partly in board and lodging. The laundry workers share the dormitories and dining rooms of the other hospital employees. The dormitories were in every case furnished with comfortable beds, and chiffonniers or bureaus and adequate closet space were provided. Miss Hopkins and I did not sleep in, but had our beds assigned us, and used our dormitory rights merely for a cloak room. Here we lingered after hours to gossip, and here we often retired at noon to stretch out for a few minutes' relaxation of our aching muscles. The dormitories varied in size. Each hospital had several large and several small ones. In most cases these dormitories were on upper floors. In one they occupied the basement. Here, however, a wide sunken alley skirted the house wall and gave the windows a fairly good access to the air. "In all but two hospitals the food was excellent and the meals decently served. There were eggs and milk in abundance. The soups were delicious, the meats of fair quality and well cooked. There were plenty of vegetables, and the desserts were appetizing. We sat, as a rule, at long tables accommodating from ten to twenty. Sometimes we had table-cloths and napkins; sometimes a white oil-cloth sufficed. We were waited on by maids. "In most of the hospitals there is a fifteen or twenty-minute rest in the morning and in the afternoon, when milk, tea, and bread and butter are served. These oases of rest and nourishment were of extraordinary value to us in resisting fatigue. Their efficiency in keeping workers in condition is a humane and practical feature of the laundries which should be sharply emphasized. "There was little variation in wages between the different grades of workers. As a rule, only two prices obtained--one for all the manglers and plain ironers, another for the starchers and shirt and fancy ironers. In one laundry the wage fell as low as $10 a month. In the others it was $14 and $15 for the lower grade of work, and $16 and $20 for the higher. One of the laundries gave board, but no room, and here the universal price was $20 a month. "As to hours, three of the hospitals had an eight-hour day; four had a nine-and-a-half-hour day. In one of these there was no work on Saturday afternoon, so that the weekly hours were forty-four. Another hospital worked seventy-two hours a week, with no recompense in the form of overtime pay. Generally the catchers at the mangles sat at their work. In one hospital the feeders also sat, using high stools. We wondered why this was not more often the custom. The difference in vigor in our own cases when we worked sitting was marked. Sitting, we escaped unwearied; standing all day left us numb with fatigue. In only one hospital was artificial light necessary in the work-room. The rooms, as a rule, were well ventilated and the air fresh when one came into them. "We often noticed that the workers in the hospital laundries were far less contented than those in the other classes of laundries. It was not surprising that they lacked enthusiasm for their work, for laundering is not an interesting task; but, with conditions far beyond any other type of laundry, it was strange that the hospital workers should be the most shifting, faultfinding, and dispirited laundresses we encountered. Part of this we attributed to the depressing effect of an atmosphere of sickness, part to the fact that workers living out are doubtless stimulated by the diversion of having a change of scene--of seeing at least two sets of people, and, above all, generally by some special sympathy and concern for their individual fortunes. In the last hospital laundry where we worked, one conducted by the Sisters of Charity, though the hours were long and the wages were only $10 a month, there was an exceptional air of cheerfulness and interest among the workers. This was due to no special privileges of theirs, but to the contagious spirit of personal interest and kindness inherent in all the Sisters in charge. "The bitterness that characterized workers living in the hospitals was observed by Miss Hopkins among the laundry workers living in the hotels." III "The twenty-one hotels where we conducted our inquiry were extremely varied, ranging from a yellow brick house near the Haymarket, with red and blue ingrain carpets and old-fashioned bells that rang a gong when one twisted a knob, to the mosaic floors and the pale, shaded electric lights of the most costly establishments in New York. "As to the sanitation of the twenty hotels visited, only six had their laundries above ground. All the others were in basements or in cellars. In most of these the ventilation was faulty and the air at times intolerably hot. It is a striking fact--showing what intelligent modern regulation can accomplish--that one laundry two stories underground in New York was so high-ceiled and the summer cold-air apparatus so complete that it was comfortable even in the hot months. In most of the hotel laundries there were seats for the takers-off. Only three of the laundries had wet floors; only three were dirty; only one had an insanitary lavatory and toilet room. "In regard to the danger of injury, of the nineteen mangles that I inspected for dangerous conditions, six were insufficiently protected. It is the custom in most hotels, when an article winds around the cylinder of the mangle, to pluck it off while the mangle is in motion. The women sometimes climb up on the mangle and reach over, in imminent danger of becoming entangled either by their dresses catching or by pitching forward. The machinery of hotel laundries is even less carefully guarded than is that of a commercial laundry, and in some establishments is, besides, dangerously crowded. This was the case in one laundry in a hotel cellar. I worked here at the ironing-table on a consignment of suits from the navy-yard. As work came in from outside the hotel, the establishment should have been under the State inspection. The rooms were narrow. There was a ventilating fan, placed very low, near where the girls hung their wraps, and as soon as I came in, they warned me that it caught up in its blades and destroyed anything that came near it. The belting of the machines was unboxed. A blue flame used sometimes to blow out four inches beyond the body-ironer, directly into the narrow space where the girls had to pass before it. In connection with the danger from machinery, danger from employees' elevators should be noted. In one hotel I rode forty-four times on an elevator where the guard door was closed only once, though the car was often crowded, and twice I saw girls narrowly escape injury from catching their skirts on the landing doors and the latches. In another hotel, inexperienced elevator boys were broken in on dangerous cars containing signs that read: 'This elevator shall not carry more than fifteen persons.' The cars were used, not only for people, but for trunks and heavy trucks of soiled linen. On one trip a car carried one of these enormous trucks, two trunks, and twelve girls; on another trip there were twenty-two people. "At eight of the hotels wages were paid partly in board and lodging. The money wages are given below:-- WORKERS LIVING IN PER MONTH Ironers on flannels, stockings, and plain work $22 Ironers--skilled workers on family wash 25-30 Shakers 14-16 All beginners 14-16 WORKERS LIVING OUT PER WEEK Ironers $7 and upward Shakers 6 and upward Feeders 6 and upward Folders 6 and upward Starchers (shirt), piece-work wages, average. 8 Starchers (collars and cuffs) 15 and upward "The eight hotels varied widely in living conditions. The food was reasonably well cooked, but, like most hotel fare, monotonous, and destitute of fresh vegetables and of sweets. One of the results of this is that the women spend a large part of their wages for fruit and other food to supplement their unsatisfactory meals. Only two hotels planned meals intelligently. "The dining rooms were usually below the street-level, and varied in ventilation, crowding, and disorder. In one the waiters were Greek immigrants, who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons and no collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending streams of water over the charwomen. The dirty dishes would be piled into large tin tubs with a clatter, and pulled out rasping over the floor. The charwomen would beg the waiters to clear the tables, which looked as if garbage-cans had been emptied upon them. The steward could not enforce his authority. There was constant noise and disorder in the room. In another dining room, that of a pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the river, where a breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, the employees were seated in one of the restaurant dining rooms after the noon rush hour was over, served by the regular waiters, and given attractive and varied fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests. 'They have respect for the help here,' said one of the women. "The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper stories. One room in an expensive modern hotel, where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers, was aired only by three windows on an inner court. The room looked fresh and pleasant because of its white paint and blue bedspreads; but it was badly ventilated, both by condition and because the girls would keep the windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent cause of poor ventilation in other dormitories and in work-rooms. "The hours of work were irregular, and varied in different places. In one large laundry I worked over ten hours for seven days in the week--more than seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours seemed to be the usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen-minute rest pauses for tea, morning and afternoon; two gave them once a day. These rests are of incalculable relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, so that the hours were: 7.20 to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement gave very short work periods, but during them the women were able to work vigorously; and they accomplished an astounding amount. "However, in most of the hotel laundries the women were tired all the time. They dragged themselves out of bed at the last possible minute. They lay in their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as soon as the work was over in the evening. Some did not go out into the air for days at a time. The greatest suffering from any one physical cause came from feet. 'Feet' was the constant subject of conversation. But the women had no idea what was the trouble with their feet, and, in many cases, accepted as inevitable discomfort that could have been alleviated by foot-baths, care, plates, and proper shoes. Colds hung on endlessly. Sore throats were common. A girl who fed doilies into a mangle complained that constantly watching a moving apron made her eyes 'sore,' so that she could not see distinctly and sometimes fed in several doilies at a time without noticing it. The lack of air undoubtedly had a profound influence on the women's vigor. In the old hotel near the river, where the laundry had sixteen windows, the women were in capital health. "In general, the older hotels, in spite of their more insanitary dressing-rooms and less well-guarded machines, were more considerate of their workers. But in one of the newer, more expensive hotels a sick girl is attended by the hotel physician, and is provided with soup, milk, etc. Her pay is not docked. She is treated with genuine sympathy. Here I once overheard a woman telling the boss that she was ill and asking permission to go to the dormitory. He gave the permission without question. None of the women ever abused his kindness. The women here were in fairly good shape, except, it must be admitted, for the extreme fatigue which seems to sweep over almost all the laundry women, and which arises from their hours of standing. "I used to notice one girl who was as light on her feet as a kitten, and who seemed tireless; but every noon, as soon as she had finished her lunch, she would wrap herself up in a blanket and lie motionless for the whole period. One evening a woman stumbled into a dormitory, sat down on a trunk, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and, as she rubbed her swollen foot, cursed long and methodically all her circumstances--cursed the other workers who had held back work by their slowness; cursed the manager, who had asked of her extra work; cursed the dormitory and the laundry; cursed the whole world. At the first word of sympathy I offered her, she paused, and said with quiet truth, 'Dear heart, we're all tired.' "Here are my notes for one day:-- When I went into the dormitory a little before half past seven, several of the girls were dragging themselves out of bed to dress. These went to work without breakfast, needing an extra half hour of rest more than they craved food. Two stayed in bed. One had an ulcerated tooth extracted the night before. I asked the other if she were sick. She groaned. "I'll get up just as soon as the pains are gone out of my stomach." Within an hour she was in the laundry, carrying armfuls of men's working-suits to the drying-closet. She worked until half past eight that night. All the morning I stood beside Old Sallie, who kept asking, "What time is it now, dear?" because she could not see the clock. At noon, as we sat or lay on the beds in the dormitory, one of the girls said, "My God! I wish I could stay in bed this afternoon." In the afternoon I stood beside Theresa, who kept repeating: "It is so long to work until half past five! If I could only go to bed at half past five!" I walked out to supper with a girl named Kate, who had sprained her ankle a week ago. I said, "Hasn't the doctor seen it?" She turned on me. "My God! when do I get time to see a doctor?" She has a bad humor on her face, which is scarlet, and sometimes, in the morning, covered with fine white scale. She obtains relief by wiping her cheeks with the damp napkins she shakes. After supper I went up to the dormitory for a minute. Here I found a cousin of Theresa's giving her some tea in bed, where I urged her to stay. The cousin shook her head. "Ah, na," she said, "she must na' give up; she's new yet at the job--they wou'na like her to be sick." Theresa arose and crawled back to the shaking-table, to work until seven o'clock. Throughout the evening I stood beside a girl, whose foot, when she walked, hurt her "'way to the top of her head." She said, "I've been on it ever since half past seven." On my way back to the dormitory at half past eight, one of the girls told me how her arms ached and her legs ached. In the dormitory, the girl who had been in bed all day was sobbing and feverish. She had a sore throat, and was spitting blood. She had been lying there all day, with no care, except to have tea and toast brought to her by a maid. In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it could have been true. Watching these women has been like seeing animals tortured. "Such a day of long hours as this generally follows some large festivity. The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry girls underground. "All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,--indeed, as will be seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of most progessive intent,--but simply by the unregulated conditions of the laundries." IV Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital laundries of New York. It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of these twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood found some of the same unfortunate features that characterized commercial and hotel laundries in existence in hospital laundries, which are quite outside trade. After the New York City Consumers' League had received the inquirers' report, it determined that the wisest and most effective course it could take for securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would be an effort for the passage of the following legislation:[37]-- First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory inspectors. Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more than ten hours during any one day. Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. A New York State law now exists providing for proper sanitation and plumbing and clean drinking water for employees in factories and laundries.[38] A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is generated be so ventilated as to render the steam harmless, so far as is practicable.[39] A law exists requiring the provision of suitable seats for the use of female employees in factories and laundries; and this law should cover the installation of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.[40] The establishment of juster wages, as well as the observance of all these laws, and of the sixty-hour-a-week law, might be most practically furthered by the existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by stronger governmental provision for inspection. V It has been said that the unfortunate features observed in the laundry business in New York seemed to be due primarily to lack of general regulation. In February 1911, the Laundrymen's Association of New York State (President, Mr. J.A. Beatty), the Manhattan Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. J.A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) conferred with the Consumers' League, and asked to coöperate with it in obtaining additional factory inspection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, and the placing of hotel and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the State Labor laws. The League agreed to print on a published white list the names of the laundries conforming within a year to a common standard determined on at the conference. These are the main points agreed upon and endorsed. WHITE LIST STANDARD FOR LAUNDRIES Physical Conditions 1. Wash rooms are either separated from other work-rooms or else adequately ventilated so that the presence of steam throughout the laundry is prevented. 2. Work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each other and conform in all respects to the present sanitary laws. 3. All machinery is guarded. 4. Proper drains under washing and starching machines, so that there are no wet floors. 5. Seats adjusted to the machines are provided for at the a. Collar ironer feeder. b. Collar ironer catcher. c. Collar dampener feeder. d. Collar dampener catcher. e. Collar straightener. f. Collar starcher feeder. g. Collar starcher catcher. h. Handkerchief flat-work feeder and catcher. i. Folders on small work. j. Collar shaper. k. Collar seam-dampener. l. Straight collar shaper. 6. The ordinances of the city and laws of the State are obeyed in all particulars. Wages 1. Equal pay is given for equal work irrespective of sex, and no woman who is eighteen years of age or over and who has had one year's experience receives less than $6 a week. This standard includes piece-workers. Hours 1. The normal working week does not exceed 54 hours, and on no day shall work continue after 9 P.M. 2. When work is continued after 7 P.M. 20 minutes is allowed for supper and supper money is given. 3. Half holidays in each week during two summer months. 4. A vacation of not less than one week with pay is given during the summer season. 5. All overtime work, beyond the 54 hours a week standard, is paid for. 6. Wages paid and premises closed on the six legal holidays, viz: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, Decoration Day and Labor Day. The Laundrymen's Association of New York State appeared with the Consumers' League at Albany at the last legislative session, and repeatedly sent counsel to the capitol in support of a bill defining as a factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power. The association's support was able and determined. The bill has now passed both houses. Such responsible action as this on the part of the commercial laundry employers of the State of New York, Brooklyn, and Manhattan is in striking contrast with the stand taken by the Oregon commercial laundry employers in the matter of laundry employees' legal hours of industry. VI The constitutionality of the present New York law concerning the hours of labor of adult women in factories, laundries, and mechanical establishments was virtually determined by the Federal decision in regard to the Oregon Ten-Hour Day Law for working-women. About three years ago the State of Oregon enacted a law of practically the same bearing as the New York law on the same subject, though superior in that it limited the hours of labor of adult women in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries to ten hours during the twenty-four hours of any one day, where the New York law, of the same provision in other respects, limits the hours of labor of adult women to sixty in a week. The laundries and the State of Oregon agreed to carry a test case to the Federal Supreme Court to determine the new law's constitutionality. Mr. Curt Muller of Oregon employed a working woman in his laundry for more than ten hours. Information was filed against him by an inspector. Mr. Muller's trial resulted in a verdict against him, and a sentence of a ten-dollar fine. He appealed the case to the State Supreme Court of Oregon, which affirmed his conviction. Mr. Muller then appealed the case to the Federal Supreme Court. In the defence of the law before the Federal Supreme Court, the National Consumers' League had the good fortune to obtain, in coöperation with the State of Oregon, the services of Louis D. Brandeis, the most distinguished services that could have been received, generously rendered as a gift. This fact alone may serve to indicate the vital character of the case, and the importance, for industrial justice in the future, of securing a favorable verdict for the laundry workers. The argument of Mr. Muller was that the Oregon Ten-Hour Law was unconstitutional: First, because the statute attempted to prevent persons from making their own contracts, and thus violated the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.[41] Next, because the statute did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated and was class legislation. And, finally, because the statute was not a valid exercise of the police power; that is to say, there was no necessary or reasonable connection between the limitations described by the act and the public health and welfare. Mr. Brandeis' brief replied that, first, the guaranty of freedom of contract was legally subject to such reasonable restraint of action as the State may impose in the exercise of the police power for the protection of the general health and welfare. It submitted that certain facts of common knowledge established conclusively that there was reasonable ground for holding that to permit women in Oregon to work in a mechanical establishment or factory or laundry more than ten hours in one day was dangerous to public welfare. These facts of common knowledge, collected by Miss Josephine Goldmark, the Publication Secretary of the National Consumers' League, were considered under two heads: first, that of American and foreign legislation restricting the hours of labor for women; and, second, the world's experience, upon which the legislation limiting the hours of labor for women is based. These facts comprised the governmental restrictions of the number of hours employers may require women to labor, from twenty States of the United States, and from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Italy, and Germany. The laws were followed by authoritative statements from over ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statistics, commissioners of hygiene, and government inspectors, both in this country and in all the civilized countries of Europe, asseverating that long hours of labor are dangerous for women, primarily because of their special physical organization. In reply to the second allegation,--that the act in question was class legislation, as it did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated,--the plaintiff answered that the specific prohibition of more than ten hours' work in a laundry was not an arbitrary discrimination against that trade; because the present character of the business and its special dangers of long hours afford strong reasons for providing a legal limitation of the hours of work in that industry as well as in manufacturing and mechanical establishments. Statements from industrial and medical authorities described conclusively the present character of the laundry business. Mr. Brandeis finally submitted that, in view of all these facts, the present Oregon statute was within Oregon's police power, as its public health and welfare did require a legal limitation of the hours of women's work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments and in laundries. Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was won. Here are, in part, the words of the decision:-- It may not be amiss in the present case, before examining the constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation as well as expressions of opinion from other judicial sources. In the brief filed by Mr. Brandeis ... is a copious collection of all these matters. The ... legislation and opinions referred to ... are significant of a widespread belief that woman's physical structure and the special functions she performs in consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted to toil. Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even a consensus of present public opinion.... At the same time, when a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to which a special constitutional limitation goes is affected by the truth in respect to the fact, a widespread and long-continued belief concerning it is worthy of consideration. We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general knowledge.... That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity, continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon her body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race. Nobody knowing the actual strain upon women laundry workers, no one who had seen them lying motionless and numb with fatigue at the end of a long day, or foregoing food itself for the sake of rest, could listen unmoved to these thrilling words of the greatest court of our country. The most eloquent characteristic of the Supreme Court's affirmation was the fact that it was essentially founded simply upon clear, human truth, firmly and widely ascertained, founded on a respect, not only for the past, but for the future of the whole nation. Too often does one hear that "law has nothing to do with equity," till one might believe that law was made for law's sake, and not as a means of deliverance from injustice. "The end of litigation is justice. We believe that truth and justice are more sacred than any personal consideration." Such was the conception of the office of the law expressed by Justice Brewer twenty years before, on his appointment to the Supreme Bench. It was this conception of law that made the determination of the Oregon case a great decision in our country's history. From time immemorial, women as well as men have been workers of the world. The vital feature of the statement that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country is not the "entrance" of multitudinous women into industry, but the fact that their industry, being now carried on in public instead of private, has been acknowledged and paid. This acknowledgment has led to the establishment of juster terms for women's labor by the Federal Supreme Court. Such an establishment, as the opinion of the court affirmed, is surely a distinct gain, not only for women, but for children, for men, for the race. When the preparation of food and clothing, the traditional household labor of women, passed in large measure from household fires and spinning-wheels into the canning factories and garment trades with the invention of machinery, women simply continued their traditional labor outside their houses instead of inside them.[42] The accounts of the laundry, the shirt-waist and the cloak making trades in New York seem to show that, where men and women engage in the same field of activity, their work is, by a natural division, not competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to a man. The chronicles of what self-supporting women have given and received in their work in wage and in vitality, these working girls' budgets obtained by the Consumers' League, will not have told their story truly unless they have evoked with their narrative the presence of that impersonal sense of right instinctive in the factory girls who go year after year to Albany to fight against the long Christmas season hours for the shop-girls, in the cloak makers in their effort to stop sweated home work, in the responsible common-sense of countless working women. So that the fact that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country may finally tend to secure wiser adjustments and fairer returns for the labor, not only of women, but of all the workers of the world. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 33: Its severity may be indicated by an account of the work a machine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the passage of the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, when conditions in that State were as they now are in the hotel and hospital laundries of New York. Miss Radway used to iron five hundred shirt bosoms a day. Holding the loose part of the shirt up above her head to prevent the muslin from being caught in the iron, she pressed the bosom in a machine manipulated by three heavy treads--by bearing all of her weight on her right foot stamping down on a pedal to the right; then by bearing all her weight on her left foot, stamping down a pedal to the left; then by pressing down both pedals with a jump. To iron five hundred shirt bosoms required three thousand treads a day.] [Footnote 34: State Labor Law, paragraph 81.--Protection of Employees Operating Machinery: "... If a machine or any part thereof is in a dangerous condition or is not properly guarded, the use thereof may be prohibited by the Commissioner of Labor, and a notice to that effect shall be attached thereto. Such notice shall not be removed until the machine is made safe and the required safeguards are provided, and in the meantime such unsafe or dangerous machinery shall not be used."] [Footnote 35: Here is a letter from the Secretary of the Women's Trade-Union League, stating the results of organization in the West in the laundry trade: "The laundry workers in San Francisco eight years ago were competing with the Chinese laundries. The girls working in the laundries there received about $10 a month, with the privilege of 'living in.' Three days in the week they began work at 6 A.M. and worked until 2 A.M. the next morning. The other three days they worked from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. Since organization, they have established the nine-hour day and the minimum wage of $7. They have extended their organization almost the entire length of the Pacific Coast."] [Footnote 36: Perhaps a better survey of the standard of wages for all departments of laundry work in which women are employed can be given by the table below. By the word "standard" I mean the usual wage of a worker of average skill who has been at work in a laundry for a period of at least one year. Hand starching (shirts) $12 Hand ironing 10 Hand starching (collars) 9 Hand washing 8 Machine ironing 7 Feeders 6 Folders 6 Catchers 5 Machine starching (shirts) 5 Collar ironing 5 Machine starching (collars) 4.50 Shakers 4.50] [Footnote 37: One of the suggestions the inquirers had made, in regard to danger of injury, was the recommendation of the passage of the State Compensation Act, drafted by the joint conference of the Central Labor Bodies of the city of New York. This act became a law in September, 1910, but has since then (July 22, 1911) been declared unconstitutional.] [Footnote 38: Laws of New York, Chapter 229, section 1, paragraph 88. Became a law May 6, 1910.] [Footnote 39: Laws of New York, Chapter 31 of the Consolidated Laws, as amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86. Inquirers' suggestion: This law would be simpler to enforce if an amending clause required that, in laundries, washing be done in a separate room from the rest of the work.] [Footnote 40: Laws of New York, Chapter 3 of the Consolidated Laws, as amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86.] [Footnote 41: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States: nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."] [Footnote 42: Jane Addams, "Democracy and Social Ethics."] CHAPTER VII SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK Within the last thirty years a new method of conducting work, called Scientific Management, has been established in various businesses in the United States, including "machine shops and factories, steel work and paper mills, cotton mills and shoe shops, in bleacheries and dye works, in printing and bookbinding, in lithographing establishments, in the manufacture of type-writers and optical instruments, in constructing and engineering work--and to some extent--the manufacturing departments of the Army and Navy."[43] Three of the enterprises to a greater or less degree reorganized by this new system in this country employ women workers. These establishments are a New Jersey cotton mill, a bleachery in Delaware, and a cloth finishing factory in New England. The reduction of costs for the owning firms inaugurating Scientific Management has already received a wide publicity. It is the object of this account to present as clear a chronicle as has been obtainable of the effect the methods of Scientific Management have had on the fortunes of the workers--more especially on the hours, the wages, and the general health of the women workers in these houses who have so far experienced its training.[44] What, then, are the new principles of management which have been inaugurated? What is Scientific Management? The expression may perhaps best be defined to lay readers by a lay writer by means of an outline of the growth of its working principles in this company--an outline traced as far as possible in the words of the engineers creating the system, whose courtesy in the matter is here gratefully acknowledged. I In 1881, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, the widely reverenced author of "The Art of Cutting Metals" and of "Shop Management," then a young man of 21, closed, in grave discouragement, a long, hard, and victorious contest of his conducted as gang boss of the machinists of the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania. In the course of the last three years, as he narrates in his book "Academic and Industrial Efficiency":[45]-- By discharging workers, lowering the wages of the more stubborn men who refused to make any improvement, lowering the piece-work rate, and by other such methods, he (the writer) succeeded in very materially increasing the output of the machines, in some cases doubling the output, and had been promoted from one gang boss-ship to another until he became the foreman of the shop.... For any right-minded man, however, this success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations which he is forced to maintain with all those around him. Life which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth living.... Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he decided to make a determined effort in some way to change the system of management so that the interests of the workmen and the management should become the same instead of antagonistic.... He therefore obtained the permission from Mr. William Sellers, the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to spend some money in a careful scientific study of the time required to do various kinds of work. Lack of information on the part of both workers and the management as to the quickest time in which a piece of work can be done constitutes what has been the most formidable obstacle in the path of all progress toward improved industrial conditions.... Every wasteful operation, every mistake, every useless move has to be paid for by somebody, and in the long run both the employer and the employee have to bear a proportionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time in which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be called the "Standard Time," for the job.... Under all the ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely shrouded in mist. Through a period of about twelve years the simplest operations in the shop were now timed, observed, and studied by graduates from science courses, different university men, engaged by Mr. Taylor, until a general law had been discovered regarding the exertion of physical energy a first-class worker could employ "and thrive under." It was found that the worker's resistance of fatigue in lifting and carrying the load depended, not on the amount of strength in terms of horse-power which he was obliged to exert to elevate and sustain the load, but on the proportion of his day spent in rest. For instance, a pig-iron handler, lifting and carrying pigs weighing 92 pounds each, could lift and carry 47 tons of iron in a day without undue fatigue if fifty-seven per cent of his working hours were spent in rest, and forty-three per cent were spent in work. If he lifted and put in place a number of pigs amounting to half that tonnage, he might work without undue fatigue for a greater part of the day. Under a certain far lighter load he could work without fatigue all day long, with no rest whatever. With accurate time-study as a basis, the "quickest time" for each job is at all times in plain sight of both employers and workmen, and is reached with accuracy, precision, and speed.[46] OPERATION--WHEELBARROW EXCAVATION. Date, March 10, 189__ KEY: A: Op. B: Time C: Av. D: No. Shov. E: Total time min. F: Total picking min. G: Total shoveling and wheeling min. H: Times per barrow min. I: No obs J: Times per barrow min. K: Time per pc. per shovel min. L: No. shovels per barrow min. M: Time wheeling 100 ft. min. |A| B | C | D |A| B | C | D |A | B |C | D |A |B |C --------------------+-+----+----+---+-+-----+-----+---+--+----+--+---+--+--+- Department-- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Construction |a|1.37|1.37|15 |a|1.12 |1.12 |12 |a'|1.86| |11 | | | Men--Mike Flaherty |b|1.56|0.19| |b|1.39 |0.27 | |a'|1.81| |13 | | | |c|1.82|0.26| |c|1.58 |0.19 | |a'|2.14| |16 | | | Materials--Sand | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | requiring no pick |d|1.97|0.15| |d|1.70 |0.12 | |a'|1.98| |14 | | | Materials--Hard | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | clay in bank |e|1.97|0.15| |e|1.92 |0.22 | | | | | | | | Implements--No. 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | shovel; | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Contractors' | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | wooden | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | wheelbarrow |f|2.36|0.09| |f|2.36 |0.09 | | | | | | | | Conditions--Day-work| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | for a contractor. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | By previous | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | observation |a|1.24|1.24|13 |a|2.05 |0.13 |13 | | | | | | | An average barrow | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | load of sand is | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2.32 cu. ft. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | measured in cut |b|1.36|0.12| |b|1.38 |0.15 | | | | | | | | An average barrow | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | load of clay is | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2.15 cu. ft. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | measured in cut |c|1.59|0.23| |c|1.60 |0.22 | | | | | | | | |d|1.83|0.24| |d|1.78 |0.18 | | | | | | | | |e|2.08|0.25| |e|2.05 |0.27 | | | | | | | | |f|2.23|0.25| |f|2.23 |0.18 | | | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time | Complete | | | | | Detail | | | | | | Operations | E | F | G | H | Operations |I | J | K | L | M ------+-------------+---+---+---+----+-------------+--+-----+-----+----+----- 7 A.M.|Commenced | | | | | | | | | | |loading sand | | | | | | | | | | 9.02 |43 loads |122| |122|2.84|a--Filling |4 |1.240|0.094|13.2| |wheeled to a | | | | | barrow with | | | | | |distance of | | | | | sand | | | | | |50 ft. | | | | | | | | | | 9.50 |Picking | 48| | | |b--Starting |4 |0.182| | | |hard clay | | | | | | | | | | 11.39 |29 loads clay|109| | | |c--Wheeling |4 |0.225| | |0.450 |wheeled to a | | | | | full--50 ft.| | | | | |distance of | | | | | | | | | | |50 ft. | | | | | | | | | | 11.46 |Picking clay | 7|55 | |1.67|d--Dumping |4 |0.172| | | |again | | | | | & turning | | | | | 12.01 |4 loads clay | 15| |124|3.76|e--Returning |4 |0.260| | |0.520 |wheeled to a | | | | | empty--50 | | | | | |distance of | | | | | ft. | | | | | |50 ft. | | | | | | | | | | | |301| | | |f--Dropping |4 |0.162| | | | | | | | | barrow & | | | | | | | | | | | starting | | | | | | | | | | | to shovel | | | | | | | | | | |g-- | |2.241| | | | | | | | |h-- | | | | | | | | | | |i-- | | | | | | | | | | |j-- | | | | | | | | | | |k-- | | | | | | | | | | |l-- | | | | | | | | | | |m-- | | | | | | | | | | |a'--Filling | | | | | | | | | | | barrow with | | | | | | | | | | | clay |4 |1.948|0.144|3.5 | ------+-------------+---+---+---+----+-------------+--+-----+-----+----+---- NOTE.--Comparison of "Detail" with "Complete" operations shows that about 27 per cent of the total time was taken in rest and other necessary delays. About the same quantity loose as at the start. Observer: JAMES MONROE. Here is an account of the effect the result of this time-study and these tests in strength produced on the output and wage of a group of men at the Bethlehem Steel Co., whose work Mr. Taylor reorganized after that of the Midvale Steel Company:-- The opening of the Spanish War found some 80,000 tons of pig-iron piled in small piles in an open field adjoining the Bethlehem Steel Company's works. Prices for pig-iron had been so low that it could not be sold at a profit, and was therefore stored. With the opening of the Spanish War the price of the pig-iron rose, and this large accumulation of iron was sold. The ...steel company's ...pig-iron gang ...consisted of about 75 men ...good average pig-iron handlers, under an excellent foreman ...A railroad switch was run out into the field, right along the edge of the piles of pig-iron. An inclined plane was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank, and dropped it on the end of the car. We found that this gang were loading on the average of about 12-1/2 tons per man per day in this manner. We were surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 tons per day, instead of 12-1/2 tons, which were being handled. This task seemed so very large that we were obliged to go over our work several times before we were sure we were absolutely right.... The task which faced us as managers under the modern scientific plan ...was ...to see that the 80,000 tons of pig-iron were loaded on the cars at the rate of 47 tons per man per day in place of 12-1/2 tons.... It was further our duty to see that this work was done without bringing on a strike among the men, without any quarrel with the men, and to see that the men were happier and better contented with loading at the new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading at the old rate of 12-1/2 tons. The first step was the scientific selection of the workmen.... Under ...scientific management ...it is an inflexible rule to talk to and deal with only one man at a time, since we are not dealing with men in masses, but are trying to develop each individual man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity. The 75 men in the gang were carefully watched and studied for three or four days, at the end of which time we had picked out four men who were believed to be physically able to handle pig-iron at the rate of 47 tons per day. A careful study was then made of each of these men.... Finally one man was selected from among the four as the most likely man to start with. This man, who had been receiving $1.15 a day, agreed to follow for $1.85 a day the directions of the time-student, who had determined the proportion and intervals of rest necessary for the regular accomplishment of the task, without overstrain or undue fatigue. The worker started to carry his accustomed load and at regular intervals was told by the time-student, observing the proper period for rest and work with a watch: "Now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down and rest. Now, walk--now, rest, etc." [Illustration: Courtesy of _Industrial Engineering_ THE NEW METHOD OF PROVIDING THE BRICKLAYER WITH MATERIAL] He walked when he was told to walk and rested when he was told to rest, and at half past five in the afternoon had his 47-1/2 tons loaded on the car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and to do the task that was set him during the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem.... Throughout this time, he averaged a little more than $1.85 a day; whereas he had never received more than $1.15 a day, which was the ruling wage at that time in Bethlehem.... One man after another was picked out and trained to handle pig-iron at the rate of 47-1/2 tons a day, until all of the pig-iron was handled at this rate, and all of this gang were receiving sixty per cent more wages than other men around them. A very brilliant and extended investigation concerning the elimination of waste of human energy and labor by motion-study has been made independently of Mr. Taylor by Mr. Frank Gilbreth, whose discoveries in the field have already cut down the effort of the labor of bricklaying two-thirds. The two accompanying photographs show what Scientific Management and motion-study did in one case to serve the worker by an orderly and convenient arrangement of his material. These extremely simple processes of bricklaying and carrying pig-iron have been selected as instances of the procedure of Scientific Management, because they reveal one of its most illuminating qualities. Scientific Management makes an art of all work. It gives the most primitive manual task its right dignity, and turns knowledge, science, and the powers of direction from the position of tyrants of labor to that of its servitors. Scientific Management, then, besides eliminating waste in human energy, or rather by way of eliminating this waste, eliminates waste in equipment, waste in machine power, and evolves through an extended planning department such better appliances, such an improved programme of work and recording of individual work as has been only very imperfectly indicated here. For an instance of the elimination of waste in equipment the account of the saving effected for one establishment by an efficient use of its belting may be narrated. This was the work of Mr. Harrington Emerson, widely known as a counselling engineer. In the '70's Mr. Emerson had become interested in the subject of Efficiency Engineering by his study of the successful conduct of the German Army during the Franco-Prussian War; and he has since then reorganized numerous large enterprises in accordance with the principles derived from his inquiry. Among these establishments was a machine shop where the belting[47] "had cost (for maintenance and renewals) at one of the main shops about $12,000 a year--or $1000 a month--and it was so poorly installed and supervised that there was an average of 12 breakdowns every working-day, each involving more or less disorganization of the plant in its part or as a whole." The workmen in charge of the belts now received directions as to their charge from a general foreman, who received directions from an efficiency engineer. This engineer had derived his general information on the subject from a man who had made a special study of belts for nine years. He laid down a few general rules, requiring accurate records of breakdown, repair, and installation, full authority and responsibility for the special worker on belts, a better grade of work in installation and better operation of the belts. Under this method "the number of breakdowns declined from 12 each working-day to an average of 2 a day, not one of them serious ...and due to original defective installation, which it was impossible to remedy without unjustifiable expense.... The cost of maintaining belts fell from $1000 a month to $300 a month." This elimination of waste of human power, and in connection with it the elimination of waste of equipment and of machine power, have, then, in the course of the last thirty years, been studied and applied in this country in the way roughly outlined by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Gilbreth, Mr. Gantt, Mr. Sanford Thompson, Mr. Barth, Mr. Cook, and Mr. Hathaway; and in somewhat the same manner by Mr. Harrington Emerson, Mr. Edward Emerson, Mr. W.J. Power, Mr. Arion, Mr. Playfair, and Mr. Chipman. These engineers have developed methods which have made it possible for them to reorganize the various businesses mentioned which have consulted them, and to decrease their costs and increase their profits. It will be seen at once that the procedure of Scientific Management in determining by scientific analysis the rate of speed and the working conditions under which machine power and human energy can be at once most productively and continuously employed, is really new, and differs radically from former business management, however ably systematized. "But these," said Mr. Taylor, in speaking of the methods of Scientific Management, "are incidents in the course of Scientific Management. Its great underlying purpose is the achievement of prosperity for the workers and for the employers." Mr. Taylor's definition of prosperity, given on another occasion, is one of the finest the present writer has ever heard. "By a man's prosperity, I mean his best use of his highest powers." It may be asked, after the efficiency of workers has been increased by scientific study, what provision is made by scientific study for their increased compensation. While Mr. Taylor was at the Bethlehem Steel Company, Mr. Henry L. Gantt, then engaged with him in reorganizing the Bethlehem Steel Works, first applied the Bonus and Task system of compensation, which may be described loosely as a premium paid if a certain predetermined amount be accomplished in a certain time. Its general principles are these:[48]-- 1. "A scientific investigation in detail of each piece of work and the determination of the best method and the shortest time in which the work can be done." 2. "A teacher capable of teaching the best methods and shortest time." 3. "Reward for both teacher and pupil, when the latter is successful."[49] II About five years ago Mr. Gantt was consulted concerning the application of Scientific Management in a New England Cloth Finishing house. The installation of the new system here began on the eve of a strike which the workers lost. The history of this strike and its causes is not a part of this account. Only these facts concerning it bear upon the present subject. The strike started among the men folders, then folding 155 pieces of cloth a day for $10 a week on week wages, and asking for ten per cent increase of wage without increase of output. The women folders' wage on lighter work was $7.50. As will be seen, this request was met by Scientific Management. The wage was increased far beyond ten per cent. The output was increased, both by improved mechanical methods, and by a standard of more expert work, to from 447 to 887 pieces a day. The engineers of Scientific Management had not on either one side or the other any part whatever in the strike. But undoubtedly one of its contributing causes was a distrust aroused by the rumor that a new system of work was to be inaugurated. The Cloth Finishing establishment bleaches, starches, and calenders dimities, muslins, percales, and shirtings, and folds and wraps them for shipping. The factory has good light and good air and an excellent situation in open, lightly rolling country. About two hundred young women, Americans, Scotch, English, and French-Canadians are now employed here on the bonus and task system, most of them whom I saw living with their families in very attractive houses in pleasant villages near. One or two were on the gloomy, muddy little streets of a French-Canadian mill town. These girls, too, were in well-built houses and not living in crowded conditions. But all their surroundings were dingy and disagreeable. At the Cloth Finishing factory and both the other establishments, every opportunity for the fullest inquiry among workers as to the result of the system for them was offered by the owning companies. Difficulties in the industry for the workers were frequently pointed out by managers; and the addresses and names of the less well-paid workers and those in the harder positions were supplied as freely as information about the more fortunate effects of the system. Both this firm and that of the cotton mill are anxious to obtain first-class work through first-class working conditions as rapidly as trade conditions will allow. The first process at which women are employed is that of keeping cloth running evenly through a tentering machine. The machine holds on tenter hooks--the hooks of the metaphorical reference--the damp cloth brought from the process of bleaching, and rolls it through evenly into a drier, where it slips off. There are two kinds of tentering machines. At one kind two girls sit, each watching an edge of the cloth and keeping it straight on the tenter hooks, so it will feed evenly. The newer machines run in such a manner that one girl who may either stand or sit can watch both edges. Because of the nearness of the drying closet, the air would be hot and dry here but that outside air is driven in constantly by fans through pipes with vents opening close to the workers. The tentering machines used to run slowly. This slowness enhanced the natural monotony and wearisomeness of the work. The girls used to receive wages of $6 a week, and to rest three-quarters of an hour in the morning and three-quarters of an hour in the afternoon, with the same period for dinner at noon in the middle of a ten-and-one-half hour day. After Scientific Management was introduced, the girls sat at the machine only an hour and twenty minutes at a time. They then had a twenty-minute rest, and these intervals of work and rest were continued throughout the day by an arrangement of spelling with "spare hands." The machines were run at a more rapid rate than before. The girl's task was set at watching 32,000 yards in a day; and if she achieved the bonus, as she did without any difficulty, she could earn $9 a week. The output of the tentering machines was increased about sixty per cent. The girls at the tentering machines praised the bonus system eagerly. They said they could not bear to return to the former method of work; that now the work was easier and more interesting than before, and the payment and the hours were better. One of the "spare hands" showed me, as a memento of a new era at tenter-hooking machines, the written slip of paper the efficiency engineer had given to her, explaining to her how to arrange the intervals of rest, and to start the "rest" with a different girl on each Saturday--a five-hour day--so that the same girls would not have three intervals of rest every Saturday. But in another part of the factory the girls at the tentering machines had wished to lump their rest intervals and to take them altogether in fifty-minute periods in the middle of the morning and of the afternoon. Here the "spare hands" intervals at the machines fell awkwardly, and they were obliged to work for an unduly long time. The girls became exhausted with the monotony in these longer stretches of work; and further wearied themselves by embroidering and sewing on fancy work in the long rest periods. Here the girls were much less contented than in the other departments.[50] After the cloth is dry and passed through calendering machines where men are employed, it is run into yard lengths by a yarding machine or "hooker." At the yarding machines the girls stand under the frame holding the wooden arms that measure off the cloth back and forth. The workers here used to earn $7.50 a week. They watch the machine, mark defects in some kinds of cloth, by inserting slips of paper, stop the machine when the material runs out, and lift the pile of measured cloth to a table where it is taken up by the cutters and folders and inspectors. After the bonus system was introduced at the machines where the heavier material is measured, the yarding machines were all elevated to small platforms, so that the pile when finished would be on a level with an adjacent table, and the worker need not lift and carry the heavy weight of cloth to the table, but could slide the work. The machine was run more rapidly. The task was increased to about 35,000 yards, or from about 155 pieces to about 610. The wage with the bonus was now about $10 on full time, and the hours were lessened 45 minutes, as at the tentering machines. The worker stops the yarding machine by throwing her weight on her right foot, on a pedal to the right. The girls interviewed said they did not feel this as a strain, as there was a knack in doing it easily. On consulting a neighborhood physician it was found that within the last ten years, however, several women, both at the yarding and tentering machines, had strained themselves, probably by the tread at the yarding machine and by the slightly twisted seated position the older tentering machines necessitated. The number of these cases traceable to any one process of work had not increased under the new system. The whole number of these cases in the factory had, on the other hand, either decreased under the new system, or else had not come under this doctor's care. He believed, however, that there was a reduction of the cases, and that this reduction was attributable to the better general health achieved by shorter hours, better ventilation, and better working conditions and appliances. [Illustration: Courtesy of _Industrial Engineering_ THE USUAL METHOD OF PROVIDING THE BRICKLAYER WITH MATERIAL] The increased task at the yarding machine seems to have increased the danger of accidents. A knife extends from the side of the machine; and when the girl's attention is concentrated on her work, she sometimes puts her fingers too near the blade, and cuts them, though no instance was known here of the loss of a finger or of serious injury. The girls stand all day at the yarding machine and at most of the succeeding processes of preparation. These are various arrangements of inspecting, counting yards, folding in "book folds," of doubled-over material, or "long folds" of the full width, ticketing and stamping, tying selvages together with silk thread, or tying them to wrapping paper by means of a little instrument called a knot-tier--this process is called knotting--tying with ribbons, pasting on strips of silver tissue ribbon, further ticketing and stamping, and running the sets of tickets indicating the several yards in each piece through an adding machine, which then produces on a stamped card the total number of yards in each consignment, before it is finally rushed away for shipment. The process of inspection is different for different qualities of material. Before the material is bleached, the number of yards and the character of treatment for each piece are specified on stamped orders issued from the planning room and sent with the cloth through the processes of production. It may as well be said here, that several girls have been promoted from manual work to work in this planning room, where they stamp orders, on a bonus at different rates, giving them a wage of about $10 a week in full time on office hours of 8 hours a day.[51] The inspector receiving the bales from the yarding machines now counts off the number of yards and cuts the bale in accordance with these directions. Some material she inspects yard by yard for imperfections and dirt. After marking the yards on the cut piece, she sends it on to the folder if it is clean, and if it is spotted, to girls who wash out the spots and press the cloth.[52] On other material, imperfections are marked by the girl at the yarding machine, by the insertion of slips of paper. As the inspector has less to do on these pieces, she not only counts and cuts, but folds them. Before the introduction of the bonus system, one girl used to fold, inspect, and ticket. She used also to carry her material from a table near the yarding machine. Boys now bring the material except where at the yarding machines for heavier stuffs it is pushed along the table. The hours, as for almost all of the bonus workers, have been shortened by 45 minutes. The wages which were $7.50 a week are now between $10 and $11 on full time. Almost all the workers here said they greatly preferred the bonus system and would greatly dislike to return to other work. But in dealing with the heavier materials the work was tiring, and more tiring under the new system than before, as the number of pieces lifted had been increased. It was said while there was every intention of fairness on the part of the management in arranging the work; it was sometimes not evenly distributed in slack times, the same girls being laid off repeatedly and the same girls chosen to work repeatedly instead of in alternation. In the further processes of folding, some of the work and the lifting to the piles of the sheer, book-folded stuff is light, but requires great deftness; other parts of the work and the lifting to the piles are heavier.[53] The wage before the bonus was introduced was $7.50 a week, and with the bonus rose to $11 a week, in full time. As with the inspectors, the work was now brought to the folders, and the hours were shortened by 45 minutes. Here there was great variation in the account of the system. One of the folders on light work, a wonderfully skilful young woman, who had folded 155 pieces a day before, and now folded 887, could run far beyond her task without exhaustion and earn as much as $15 a week. She and some of the expert workers paused in the middle of the morning for 10 or 15 minutes' rest and ate some fruit or other light refreshment, and sometimes took another such rest in the afternoon. Another strong worker, employed on heavy material, though she liked the bonus system, and said "it couldn't be better," had remained at work at about the same wages as before, because she was a little ahead of the others before and earned $8 a week; and now, as there was hardly more than enough of her kind of work to occupy her for more than four days a week, she still earned about $8. One folder was made very nervous by a constant fear that she would not earn her bonus. She always did complete the necessary amount; but when the system was first introduced, she had been sleepless night after night. Though this sleeplessness had passed away, she still took a nerve tonic to brace her through her work; and this was the case with another folder. The mothers of both these girls urged them to return to week work. But this was of poor quality--odds and ends--and the girls disliked it, and persisted in the new system. In tying ribbons around the bolts of material, the girls sit at work. Their wages had been $1 a day for tying ribbons around 600 pieces; and now, on a bonus for 1200 pieces, is at times for quick workers, as high as $11. But the ribbon tying was not steady work. It is applied to only some of the material, and the task and bonus here are intermittent. The girls who knot, or run silk threads through the selvages, paste on tinsel ribbon, and wrap are younger than the other workers. Their wages before had been from $5.80 to $6 a week. Now they are in some cases over $8; in others about $7; in others about $6. The work reaches them in better condition than before. They said it was more interesting, and the chief difficulty was in lifting occasionally a greater number of heavy pieces in piling. Seats were provided for these workers except for those at tinselling; and if they found they were able to complete the task easily, they sat at the work. At the heavier work, the girl at yarding, the folder, knotter, and ticketer, all worked tandem, and if the girl at yarding loses her bonus, all the girls lose the bonus. In the last process of stamping tickets and ticketing, the girls work without one superfluous motion, with a deftness very attractive to see; and both here and at book folding justify the claim made by Scientific Management that speed is a function of quality. The wages here had been $6 before, and were now in full time from $9 to $10. As the task before had been combined with various other processes, it was, as in other cases, impossible to determine how much the work of each worker had been increased. The present task was that of ticketing 39 bundles of 5 pieces each hourly, with different rates for different amounts of tickets, and was not considered at all a strain. But at the ticketing connected with the adding machines the work was not differentiated so carefully. More of the heavy work came to these ticketers, and the lifting was sometimes too exhausting. But the work was better than in former times, and the wages of from $9 to $10 were thought just, if a higher rate had been added for the heavier work here. III All this work described at the tenter hooking, the yarding, the folding, inspection, and ticketing, was of a different character from that carried on under the bonus and task system in a large room where sheets and pillowcases were manufactured. This work afforded the only instance of an application of Scientific Management to the processes involved in the great needle trades and was, on that account, of special interest. The white cloth is brought on trucks to the girls, who tear it into lengths, in accordance with written orders received with each consignment. They snip the cloth with scissors, place the cut against the edge of an upright knife, set at a convenient height on a bench, and pull the two sides of the cloth so that the knife tears through evenly to the end; then they stamp the material, fold it over, and place it on a truck to be carried to the machine sewer. The weekly wages before the bonus was introduced had been $5.98 and were now with the bonus $6.75, though workers sometimes tore more than the 1190 sheets required by the task and made from $7 to $7.50 by a week's work. The quick workers occasionally stopped for 10 or 12 minutes in the morning and ate a light lunch. The task was severe for the muscles of the hand and forearm, and apt to cause swollen fingers and strained wrists, though the girls bound their wrists to prevent this. All the work was done standing. The loosened starch flying here was annoying, both to the tearers and the girls at the sewing-machines. Since the time of the inquiry, all the girls engaged in tearing have been relieved and transferred to other positions, and the work of tearing has been done by men. Here the sheets are turned back and hemmed by workers who sew tandem, one girl finishing the broader hem and the other the narrower one, their task being 620 sheets a day. The girls at the machines formerly earned $7.50, and now earn with the machine set at the higher rate of speed from $8 to $11. They stop for 10 minutes in the morning, and clean the machines and clear away the litter around them. The sewing and stooping are monotonous, and the work on bonus here is apt to cause nervousness, because of uncertainty occasioned by frequent breakages in the machines.[54] There is a room at one side of the department, where the girls were to rest when they had completed their tasks. But the present foreman, not understanding the system, comes to the rest room and hurries them out again, even after the 620 sheets are finished.[55] One of the girls in the department, an Italian girl, who used to run far beyond the task at the machine, had fallen ill under the strain of the work, or at least left the factory looking extremely ill and saying that she had broken down and could not remain. Another unfortunate result of the speed at the sewing-machines is that the girls are more apt than before to run the needles through their fingers. The folding in this department is also exhausting, and the management is trying to find a better system of conducting this process than that now employed. The folders here stoop and pick up the sheets and fold them lengthwise and crosswise. The task is 1200 a day; and the wage with the bonus comes to between $6 and $7 a week. But after the bonus is earned, payment is, for some reason, not suitably provided on work beyond the task. One worker said she used to fold one or two pieces above the amount without any objection, but lately she had folded as many as 200 beyond, without payment. From the folders the sheets are carried away to a mangle, where they are folded over again by young girls. The work is light, but the payment of $5.80 to $6 for 770 pieces an hour is low. The mangle is well guarded. By an excellent arrangement here, the material is piled on a small elevator, so that the girl at the mangle does not have to stoop or lift, but easily adjusts the elevator, so that she can feed the mangle from the pile at her convenience. The girl at a mangle can earn from $7 to $8 and is not tired in any way by her work. The final stamping and wrapping in paper and tying with cord are done at a rate of 25 pieces an hour, for a wage coming to $6 a week, by young girls; and the situation is otherwise about the same as with the other wrappers. Except at the mangle, the operation of the sheet and pillow-case factory was unsatisfactory to the management, who had begun to study the department for reorganization just before the time of the inquiry. Competition had so depressed the price of the manufacture of sheets that the commission men, for whom these processes described were executed, paid 25 cents a dozen sheets for the work. This does not, of course, include the initial cost of the material. It means, however, that all of the following kinds of machine tending and manual labor on a sheet were to be done for 2-1/2 cents:-- Tearing; (men workers) Hemming; (women workers) Folding; (women workers) Mangling; (women workers) Book-folding; (women workers) Wrapping; (women workers) Ticketing; (women workers) The management lost in its payment for labor here, and yet felt the work was too hard for its workers, and should be changed. Alterations in the rest periods are now being introduced. For the girls the system of operation at the time of the inquiry in the sheet and pillow-case factory, except on the mangle, was undoubtedly more exhausting than the old method, though their wages had been increased and their hours shortened. In general in the Cloth Finishing establishment Scientific Management had increased wages. It had shortened hours. In regard to health and fatigue, outside the sheet factory, when the general vague impression that the new system was more exhausting than the other was sifted down, the grist of fact remaining was small, and consisted of the instances mentioned. About forty young women told me their experience of the work. Sometimes their mothers and their fathers talked with me about it. Every one whose health had suffered under the new task had been exhausted by some old difficulty which had remained unremedied. This point will be considered in relation to the industry of the other women workers in the other houses after the accounts of their experience of Scientific Management. IV There are over 600 workers in the New Jersey cotton mill. Of these 188 are women. One hundred and ten of the women workers are at present engaged under the bonus and task system, though the management expects to employ eventually under this system all of its workers, and is in this establishment markedly in sympathy with Scientific Management. The mill is a large, well-lighted brick structure, with fields around it, and another factory on one side, on the outskirts of a factory town. The establishment is composed of a larger and newer well-ventilated building, with washed air blown through the work-rooms; and an older building, where the part of the work is carried on which necessitates both heat and dampness to prevent the threads from breaking. The cotton, which is of extremely fine quality, comes into the picker building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of a very delicate web, which, after being run through a trumpet and between rollers, forms a "sliver" of the size of two of one's fingers, from which it issues in a long strand. This strand or sliver Is threaded into a machine with other ends of slivers and rolled out again in one stronger strand; and this doubling and drawing process is innumerably repeated, till the final roving is fed into a machine that gives it a twist once in an inch and winds it on a bobbin. There are three kinds or stages of twisting and winding roving on these machines, and at the last, the "speeders," women are employed. Up to this point all the workers have been men. These speeders are in the carding rooms, which are large and high, filled with great belts geared from above, and machines placed in long lanes, where the operatives stand and walk at their work. Humidifying pipes pass along the room, with spray issuing from their vents. The lint fibres are constantly brushed and wiped up by the workers, but there is still considerable lint in the air. The heat, the whir of the machines, the heaviness of the atmosphere, and the lint are at first overpowering to a visitor. While many of the girls say that they grow accustomed to these conditions, others cannot work under them, and go away after a few days' or sometimes a few hours' trial.[56] The speeders stand at one end of a long row of 160 bobbins and watch for a break in the parallel lines of 160 threads, and twist the two ends together when this occurs. The greater number of the speeders used to earn $6 a week. But two or three women, on piece-work, earned about $9 and did nearly twice as much as the other workers. The speeders had helpers who used to assist them to thread the back of the machine and to remove and place the bobbins in front. The change or "doff" occupied about 20 minutes. It generally occurred five times in the day of the better worker and thus consumed an hour and forty minutes of her working time. The hours in the cotton mill are ten and a half a day with five and a half on Saturday,--58 hours a week. In order to ascertain the proper task for the speeders, a time-study was made of the work of one of the abler workers, who may be called Mrs. MacDermott, a strong and skilful Scotch woman, who had been employed at speeding in the mill for 14 years. Mrs. MacDermott was employed to teach the other speeders how to accomplish the same amount in the same time. The girls now thread the back of the machines with her help. Mrs. MacDermott, the speeder tender herself, and the doff boys, all working together, remove the bobbins and fill the frame, thus accomplishing the change in 7 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The girls are paid, while learning better methods from Mrs. MacDermott, at their old rate of a dollar a day. If they accomplish the task allotted, they receive a dollar a week more flat-rate, a bonus equivalent to a few cents a pound on each pound received by the management; and this brings the wage to $1.65 a day, or between $8 and $10 a week. The work tires the girls no more than it did before. They receive about thirty per cent more wages, and the management receives from the speeders nearly twice as great an output as before. Mrs. MacDermott's wage as a teacher has been raised to $12. From the speeders, the doff boys send the roving--called fine roving in the mill, because the other rovings in preceding operations are coarser--upstairs in the older building to the spinners. Spinning is a more difficult task than speeding. Two rovings are here twisted together by the machines. The spinners have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, or six "sides." Spinners formerly worked at piece-work rates and by watching eight sides, and frequently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn about $9. After a time-study was taken, the task was set at six sides, and doffs as called for by a schedule. With the bonus the girls' weekly wage comes to about $10. In the spinning department there is a school for spinners. The heads receive a dollar for every graduate who learns to achieve the task and bonus. The yarn is carried from the spinners to the spoolers, and wound from bobbins to spools for convenience in handling. The work of the spool tenders seemed to the present writer to be the severest work for women in this cotton mill. The bobbins run out very rapidly, and require constant change. The girls watch the thread for breakages just as at the other machines. In replacing the bobbins and fastening the broken threads with a knot tier, the girls have to stoop down almost to the floor. Before the time-study was taken, the girls were watching 75 bobbins, hurrying up and down the sides, bending up and down perpetually at this work. Some of the spool tenders had $6 a week on piece-work; others, more experienced workers, were able to earn $10.50 at piece-work, although the work was frequently unsatisfactory and had loose ends. A little Italian girl, who may be called Lucia, an extremely rapid worker, used to run wildly from one end of the frame to the other, and in the summer-time fainted several times at her work from exhaustion. A time-study was taken from the work of a very deft young Polish girl, and from Lucia. The other spoolers were taught to work with the same rapidity, and were soon able to earn with the bonus and the work done beyond the task a sum which brought their wage up to nearly $12 a week. This lasted for about two months. But the work was so improperly done and the spools were so full of loose and untied ends, etc., that the number of spindles to be tended was reduced from 75 to 50, and the machines were run at a lower rate of speed. The task was changed accordingly so that the worker's wage, simply with the bonus, was as it had been before. But she was unable to overrun the task as far as she had, formerly. By the workers' constant attention, the work now improved in quality, but the limit of quantity, was, of course, lower. The wages with the bonus dropped back to a smaller excess, or $1.47 a day. This was, of course, disheartening, though Lucia said it was better, she was so much less tired by the work than she had been before. But the work is still undoubtedly very wearying and difficult. The spoolers still give incessant attention to their work, still do their best, and yet make by close application far less than they had grown accustomed to expect whether justly or unjustly.[57] The task is now 12 doffs a day--each doff requiring a change of 208 bobbins. So that in changing bobbins alone the girls have to stoop down over 2000 times a day, without counting all the stooping for knot tying, which the forewoman said would about equal the labor of bending and working at bobbin changing. She had talked with the management about having the frames raised, so as to eliminate this exhausting process of stooping to work for the spoolers. This change had been made in two machines and will doubtless be extended.[58] At the further twisting and plying of the cotton, the processes succeeding the spooling, men are employed. From these the yarn goes to the winding room in the newer building, where better air and temperature are possible than in the carding and spinning rooms. The winding room is large and light. At one side stand the warps, very tall and interesting to see, with their lines of delicate filament and high tiers of bobbins. In the winding room girls are engaged at machines which wind the yarn from spools back to bobbins for filling in the looms and also for the warp. In winding the filling bobbins the girls watch the thread from eighteen bobbins, and replace and stop bobbins by pressing on foot pedals. The worker had made from $7 to $7.50 a week before a time-study was taken and the task increased. She can now make from $8 to $10.50 a week. The work is lightened for her by the fact that whereas she formerly placed the bobbins on the warp, doffers now do this for her. But the increased stamping of the pedals made necessary by the larger task is very tiring. There are no women on bonus in the weave room, where the warp and the filling are now carried. After the woven product comes from the weaving room--an extremely heavy, strong stuff of the highest grade, used for filter cloth and automobile tires--it is hung in a large finishing room in the newer building over a glass screen lighted with sixteen electric lights which shine through the texture of the material and reveal its slightest defect. After it has been rolled over the screen, it is sent to girls who remedy these defects by needlework. It is again run over the lighted screen by the inspectors and returned to the girls if there are still defects. Before the bonus system was applied, the girls had made $5.04 a week, and finished about 5 rolls a day. After the system was applied, they made from $7 to $8 and did sometimes 10 and sometimes 12 rolls a day. But, in spite of the greatest care on Mr. Gantt's part in standardizing the quality in this department, here, as with the spool tenders, requirement as to quality had recently caused a temporary drop in wages. This change in requirement was occasioned, not as at the spool tending by the negligence of the workers, but by the somewhat unreasonable caprice of a customer. Knots in the texture, formerly sewed down as they were, are now cut and fastened differently. To learn this process meant just as hard work for the girls, and put them back temporarily to their old day rate,[59] though they were recently becoming sufficiently quick in the new process to earn the bonus as well as before. By and large, the wages of the women workers in the cotton mill had been increased by Scientific Management. Their hours had not been affected. These were in all instances 10-1/2 a day and 5-1/2 on Saturday. There was no overtime. But on five nights in the week, women preparing yarn for the following day worked at speeding and spinning from six at night until six in the morning, with half an hour for lunch at midnight. This arrangement had always been the custom of the mill. The girls go home at six for breakfast, sleep until about half past four, rise, dress, and have supper, and go to work in the mill again at six. The night workers I visited had worked at night in other mills in New England before they worked in New Jersey. Their sole idea of work, indeed, was night work; and if it were closed in one mill, they sought it in another. One of the youngest girls, a clever little Hungarian of 17, who had been only 3 years in this country and could barely speak English, knew America simply as a land of night work and of Sundays, and had spent her whole life here like a little mole. The present owner, the superintendent, and the head of the planning department all seriously disliked night work for women, and said they were anxious to dispense with it. But they had not been able to arrange their output so as to make this change, though they intended to inaugurate it as rapidly as possible. Concerning the health and conservation of the strength of the women workers in the mill under Scientific Management, the task of the speeders and of the women at cloth inspection tired the girls no more than it had before. In the spool tending and the winding, as the two most exhausting operations in each process, the stooping and the stamping of the pedals, had been increased by the heightened task, the exhaustion of the workers was heightened. But the work of the excitable little spool tender mentioned was finally so arranged as to leave her in better health than in the days when she was employed on piece-work, and the management was now endeavoring to eliminate the stooping at the bobbins. At spinning almost all the spinners found the work easier than before, probably because Scientific Management demands that machine supervision and assistance shall be the best possible. It must be remembered that the adjustment of conditions in the mill here is comparatively new. Almost all the girls said: "They don't drive you at the mill. They make it as easy for you as they can." It was of special value to observe the operation of Scientific Management in an establishment where all the industrial conditions are difficult for women. As in the white goods sewing for the Cloth Finishing establishment, these industrial conditions are unfortunately controlled to a great extent by competition and by custom for both the employer and the employees. The best omen for the conservation of the health of the women workers under Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the entire equity and candor shown by the management in facing situations unfavorable for the women workers' health and their sincere intention of the best practicable readjustments. V The application of Scientific Management to women's work in the Delaware Bleachery was very limited, extending only to about 12 girls, all employed in folding and wrapping cloth.[60] The factory, on the outskirts of a charming old city in Delaware, is an enormous, picturesque cement pile, reaching like a bastion along the Brandywine River, with its windows overlooking the wooded bank of the stream. The girls stand in a large room, before tables piled with great bolts of material, and stamp tickets and style cards, fasten them to the roll, fold over the raw edges of the material in a lap, tie two pieces of ribbon around the bolt, wrap it in paper, stamp and attach other tickets, and tie it up with cord to be shipped. Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls in all the operations, different tasks were set for different weights of material; and if the task was accomplished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly speaking, to a quarter of the worker's hourly wage. The arrangement of the different processes was so different for each worker, after and before the system was installed, that none of the girls could compare the different amounts of work she completed at the different times. But the whole output, partly through a better routing of the work to the tables, and by paying the boys who brought it a bonus of 5 cents for each worker who made her bonus, was increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent. The girls' hours were decreased from 10-1/4 a day with frequent overtime up to nine at night to 9-1/4 a day with no overtime, the Saturday half-holiday remaining unchanged. Here is a list of the changes in the week wages. The work at the time of the inquiry was slack. Sometimes there were only a few hours in the day of wrapping of a kind on which the task and bonus was applied. Besides, these workers were in the midst of an establishment managed by another system. The bonus was given on the basis of the former wage. And this remained lower in the case of workers employed fewer years by the firm, though sometimes their task was the same as that of workers employed longer. Where the girls wrapped both the heavier and the lighter materials, the allotment of these was in the hands of a sub-foreman, who, instead of being in the new position of a teacher rewarded for helping each worker to make her bonus, was in the old position of a distributor of favors. The slackness of the work had led the management, in a good-willed attempt to provide as well as possible for the employees, to place several girls from other departments under this sub-foreman. One of these less strong and experienced girls, at the time of the inquiry, was receiving such an amount of heavy work that she could wrap only enough of the task to enable her to earn from $3 to $5 a week. The firm's policy was paternalistic, and while in many ways it had a genuine kindness, it was not in general sympathy with Scientific Management, though the superintendent is a thorough and consistent supporter of the new system. But he had not been able, single handed, to achieve all the necessary adjustments, in spite of the decided increase of output the new methods had already obtained for the company. | PER WEEK | FORMERLY ----------------------------------------+-------------+--------- Folding and ticketing on light material | $5 to 6 | $4.84 Folding and ticketing on light material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 Wrapping light material | 6 to 7 | 4.56 Wrapping light material | 7 to 8 | 4.84 Wrapping light and heavy material | 6 to 6.50 | 4.56 Wrapping light and heavy material | | combined with napkin tying | 6 to 7 | 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | 4.59 | 4.56 work) | (once 6.69) | Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | | work) | 5 | 4.56 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | | work) | 3 to 5 | 7 |(in another department) ----------------------------------------+-------------+--------- Even considering slackness, these increases per week for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases the work was light, cannot but seem small. All the girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places. All but one were with their families. The city has an open market. People of all grades of income go to market properly with market-baskets, choose food of excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through the winter. The ladies of the house, the girls' mothers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn apple-butter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row of glass jars. But the girls' wages could not pay for such living conditions. The girl who was boarding, and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing left for other expenses.[61] In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lifting of heavier pieces of cloth. Two of the girls had suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, by straining themselves in this way. One of them was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well again. The other girl was away for two months, and though she is now at work, had not fully regained her health. The company had at once obtained employment less straining for the first of these girls, and the second said that the firm had always been fair with her in arranging the work. It was said that it had been Mr. Gantt's intention to have the heavier lifting done by men and boys, instead of combining it with the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the new system. But the department had never fully carried out its intention, and unfortunately since Mr. Gantt's departure rather more of the heavy material had been ordered from the house than before. The general good will of the firm, the picturesque factory site, the pleasant work-rooms, and the attractive living conditions of the Delaware workers gave them an extraordinary opportunity to pursue their labor healthfully. But because of its incomplete adoption, Scientific Management, though it had shortened hours, and in most cases had raised wages, had proven of less potential value to the workers than to those in the more difficult industrial situation obtaining in the cotton mill. VI In general, then, Scientific Management for women workers in this country may be said as far as it has been applied to have increased wages, to have shortened hours, and to have resulted fortunately for the health of women workers in some instances and unfortunately in others. Wherever a process presented a difficulty which remained unremedied, if the task were multiplied, the difficulty, of course, was multiplied. No matter how greatly the weight of a wagon is lightened, if there is a hole in the road of its passage, and the road is now to be travelled sixty times a day, instead of twenty times, as before, the physical difficulty from this hole is not only trebled, but while it may be endured with patience twenty times, is not only a muscular, but a nervous strain at the sixtieth. This was the situation in regard to all unrelieved heavy lifting wherever cloth was manipulated, the situation in regard to the stooping for the spool tenders, the stamping at the winding machine, and the stooping and breakages at the sewing-machine. But these points, instead of being ignored by the management, were seriously regarded by the employers as inimical to their own best interests in combination with those of their employees, and in all the establishments were in process of adjustment. In the present writer's judgment this adjustment would have been inaugurated earlier in several processes and would have been more rapid and effective for both the employer's interest and that of the women workers if the women workers' difficulties had been fairly and clearly specified through trade organization. Such an organization would also be of value in preventing danger of injury for workers whose attention under Scientific Management should be concentrated on their tasks, and of value in supporting the tendency of Scientific Management to pay work absolutely according to the amount accomplished by the worker, and not under a certain specified rate for this amount. Scientific Management as applied to women's work in this country is, of course, very recent. This synthesis of its short history is collected from the statements made by about eighty of the women workers, by Mr. Gantt, and by the owner, superintendent, and head of the planning department of the cotton mill, by the superintendent and one of the owners of the Cloth Finishing factory, and the superintendent and one of the owners of the Bleachery. The account should be supplemented by several general observations. The first is that it is difficult to determine where the health of a worker has been strained by industry and where by other causes. Quite outside any of the narratives mentioned were those of two young women employed under Scientific Management whose health was hopelessly broken. Both of these poor girls were subject to wrong and oppressive maltreatment at home. Indeed, from oppression at home, one of the girls had repeatedly found refuge and protection in the consideration shown to her by the establishment where she worked. It was not she who blamed the new way of management for her breakdown, but people whose impression of her situation was vague and lacked knowledge. The whole tendency of Scientific Management toward truth about industry, toward justice, toward a clear personal record of work, established without fear or favor, had inspired something really new and revolutionary in the minds of both the managers and the women workers where the system had been inaugurated. Nearly all of them wished to tell and to obtain, as far as they could, the actual truth about the experiment everywhere. Almost no one wished to "make out a case." This expressed sense of candor and coöperation on both sides seemed to the present writer more stirring and vital than the gains in wages and hours, far more serious even than the occasional strain on health which the imperfect installation of Scientific Management had sometimes caused. These strains on women's health in industry in America--stooping and monotony in all the needle trades, jumping on pedals in machine tending, dampness and heat in cotton production, the standing without pause for many hours a day throughout the month, the lifting of heavy weights in packing and in distribution--all these industrial strains for women constitute grave public questions affecting the good fortune of the whole nation and not to be answered in four years, nor by one firm. It is undoubtedly the tendency of Scientific Management to relieve all these strains. No one can see even in part the complications of contemporary factory work, the hundred operations of human hands and muscles required for placing a single yard of cotton cloth on the market, the thousand threads spinning and twisting, the thousand shuttles flying, the manifold folding and refolding and wrapping and tying, the innumerable girls working, standing, walking by these whirring wheels and twisting threads and high piled folding tables, without feeling strongly that ours is indeed an industrial civilization, and that the conditions of industry not only completely control the lives of uncounted multitudes, but affect in some measure every life in this country to-day. No finer dream was ever dreamed than that the industry by which the nation lives should be so managed as to secure for the men and women engaged in it their real prosperity, their best use of their highest powers. By and large, the great task of common daily work our country does to-day is surely not so managed, either by intent or by result, either for the workers or for the most "successful" owners of dividends. How far Scientific Management will go toward realizing its magnificent dream in the future will be determined by the greatness of spirit and the executive genius with which its principles are sustained by all the people interested in its inauguration, the employers, the workers, and the engineers. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 43: Brief on behalf of Traffic Committee of Commercial Organizations of Atlantic Seaboard, p. 70. Louis D. Brandeis.] [Footnote 44: Fourteen years ago Scientific Management was applied to women's work in a Rolling Machine Company in Massachusetts. Here the women's hours were reduced from 10-1/2 day to 8-1/2; their wages were increased about 100 per cent; and their output about 300 per cent. All the women had two days' rest a month with pay. The work consisted in inspecting ball-bearings for bicycles. Their department of the business, however, closed twelve years ago. Accurate facts other than those listed concerning the workers' experience as to hours, wages, and general health under Scientific Management are at this date too few to be valuable.] [Footnote 45: "Academic and Industrial Efficiency," by F.W. Taylor and Morris Llewellyn Cook.] [Footnote 46: The specialistic and detailed care necessary for practical and exact time-study may be indicated by the reproduction below of a method of record used by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson in timing wheelbarrow excavations. (Explanation. The letters _a_, _b_, _c_, etc., indicate elementary units of the operation: "Filling barrow" = (_a_); "starting" = (_b_); "wheeling full" = (_c_), etc.)] [Footnote 47: "Efficiency." Harrington Emerson.] [Footnote 48: "Work, Wages and Profits," pp. 110 to 111. H.L. Gantt.] [Footnote 49: While the bonus system as a means of compensation has been used very often in connection with the Scientific Management, it must not, however, be supposed that this method of compensation is alone and in itself Scientific Management. In fact, as employed without Scientific Management, it is to be regarded with some apprehension.] [Footnote 50: The work in this department was, besides, rather slack at the time of year when I visited the factory, and wages for some of these workers were $6 a week, as low as they had been before the bonus was introduced.] [Footnote 51: The girl who directs them and issues the orders receives a bonus for every stamper earning a bonus and earns on full time from $12 to $15.] [Footnote 52: These girls are not employed under the bonus and task system. But it is interesting to observe that they may either sit or stand to iron, as they prefer.] [Footnote 53: The men folders at the heaviest work here now receive with the bonus from $14 to $17 a week.] [Footnote 54: A worker does not lose her regular wage if she is stopped by a breakage. Her time-card is altered. And she has credit on a time basis for the period while the machine is not running. A breakage in the first machine of a tandem pair stops both sewers. But a breakage in the second means that work piles up for the second sewer, and unless she makes it up, she will prevent her companion from earning a bonus, though not a time wage.] [Footnote 55: The management, on learning of this, said the practice would be stopped at once.] [Footnote 56: "The cotton as it grows in the field becomes more or less filled with blown dust.... Lint is given off in all processes up to and including spinning.... The only practical way to keep down the dust in all of these operations is by frequent sweeping and mopping the floor and wiping off the machinery." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 365. "What degree of moisture is safely permissible from the standpoint of the operatives' health is an unsettled question.... When the operative after a day's work in a humid and relaxing atmosphere goes into one relatively drier, the assault on the delicate membrane of the air-passages is sharp. The effect of these changes is greatly to lower the vital resistance and make the worker especially susceptible to pulmonary, bronchial, or catarrhal affections. It is very possible that the dust and lint present in the mill have been credited with effects which are due in part to these atmospheric conditions." Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States. Vol. I, p. 362.] [Footnote 57: Besides, work had lately been slack, and this had further decreased the wages.] [Footnote 58: Since visiting the New Jersey cotton mill, the present writer has seen spool tenders at work at a machine requiring no stooping, and provided with a board below the bobbins, placed at such a height, that the worker can relieve her position while standing by resting her weight against the board, above one knee and then above the other.] [Footnote 59: At the same time work was slack so that week wages had dropped to $3 and $4.] [Footnote 60: One of the girls issues batches of tickets. Another girl unfolds one end of certain of the packages, and inserts a ticket and stamps an outside label, to accord with the invoice system of some of the purchasers. These girls had received before $5.40 and $4.84 a week, respectively, and now receive, the one $5.73, and the other between $5 and $6.] [Footnote 61: All the firms have rest rooms for the girls. The Delaware firm and the New Jersey cotton mill have pleasant lunch-rooms, where an excellent lunch is provided at cost.] * * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------+ | The following pages contain advertisements of a few of | | the Macmillan books on kindred subjects | +--------------------------------------------------------+ _Some Ethical Gains through Legislation_ By FLORENCE KELLEY, Secretary of the National Consumers' League This interesting volume has grown out of the author's experience in philanthropic work in Chicago and New York, and her service for the State of Illinois and for the Federal Government in investigating the circumstances of the poorer classes, and conditions in various trades. The value of the work lies in information gathered at close range in a long association with, and effort to improve the condition of, the very poor. 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11424	----	Team. [Illustration: A Factory or a Home?] THE TRADE UNION WOMAN BY ALICE HENRY MEMBER OF OFFICE EMPLOYÉS' ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO. No. 12755. AND FORMERLY EDITOR OF _LIFE AND LABOR_ ILLUSTRATED 1915 TO THE TRADE UNION WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA PREFACE This brief account of trade unionism in relation to the working-women of the United States has been written to furnish a handbook of the subject, and to supply in convenient form answers to the questions that are daily put to the writer and to all others who feel the organization of women to be a vital issue. To treat the subject exhaustively would be impossible without years of research, but meanwhile it seemed well to furnish this short popular account of an important movement, in order to satisfy the eager desire for information regarding the working-woman, and her attitude towards the modern labor movement, and towards the national industries in regard to which she plays so essential a part. Women are doing their share of their country's work under entirely novel conditions, and it therefore becomes a national responsibility to see that the human worker is not sacrificed to the material product. Many of the difficulties and dangers surrounding the working-woman affect the workingman also, but on the other hand, there are special reasons, springing out of the ancestral claims which life makes upon woman, arising also out of her domestic and social environment, and again out of her special function as mother, why the condition of the wage-earning woman should be the subject of separate consideration. It is impossible to discuss intelligently wages, hours and sanitation in reference to women workers unless these facts are borne in mind. What makes the whole matter of overwhelming importance is the wasteful way in which the health, the lives, and the capacity for future motherhood of our young girls are squandered during the few brief years they spend as human machines in our factories and stores. Youth, joy and the possibility of future happiness lost forever, in order that we may have cheap (or dear), waists or shoes or watches. Further, since the young girl is the future mother of the race, it is she who chooses the father of her children. Every condition, either economic or social, whether of training or of environment, which in any degree tends to limit her power of choice, or to narrow its range, or to lower her standards of selection, works out in a national and racial deprivation. And surely no one will deny that the degrading industrial conditions under which such a large number of our young girls live and work do all of these, do limit and narrow the range of selection and do lower the standards of the working-girl in making her marriage choice. Give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her have the chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent, normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She will not be tempted to passively accept any man who offers himself, just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony and deprivation. So far, women and girls, exploited themselves, have been used as an instrument yet further to cheapen and exploit men. In this direction things could hardly reach a lower level than they have done. Now the national conscience has at length been touched regarding women, and we venture to hope that in proportion as women have been used to debase industrial standards, so in like degree as the nation insists upon better treatment being accorded her, the results may so react upon the whole field of industry that men too may be sharers in the benefits. But there is a mightier force at work, a force more significant and more characteristic of our age than even the awakened civic conscience, showing itself in just and humane legislation. That is the spirit of independence expressed in many different forms, markedly in the new desire and therefore in the new capacity for collective action which women are discovering in themselves to a degree never known before. As regards wage-earning working-women, the two main channels through which this new spirit is manifesting itself are first, their increasing efforts after industrial organization, and next in the more general realization by them of the need of the vote as a means of self-expression, whether individual or collective. Thus the trade union on the one hand, offering to the working-woman protection in the earning of her living, links up her interests with those of her working brother; while on the other hand, in the demand for the vote women of all classes are recognizing common disabilities, a common sisterhood and a common hope. This book was almost completed when the sound of the war of the nations broke upon our ears. It would be vain to deny that to all idealists, of every shade of thought, the catastrophe came as a stupefying blow. "It is unbelievable, impossible," said one. "It can't last," added another. Reaction from that extreme of incredulity led many to take refuge in hopeless, inactive despair and cynicism. Even the few months that have elapsed have enabled both the over-hopeful and the despairing to recover their lost balance, and to take up again their little share of the immemorial task of humanity, to struggle onward, ever onward and upward. What had become of the movement of the workers, that they could have permitted a war of so many nations, in which the workers of every country involved must be the chief sufferers? The labor movement, like every other idealist movement, contains a sprinkling of unpopular pessimistic souls, who drive home, in season and out of season, a few unpopular truths. One of these unwelcome truths is to the effect that the world is not following after the idealists half as fast as they think it is. Reformers of every kind make an amount of noise in the world these days out of all proportion to their numbers. They deceive themselves, and to a certain extent they deceive others. The wish to see their splendid visions a reality leads to the belief that they are already on the point of being victors over the hard-to-move and well-intrenched powers that be. As to the quality of his thinking and the soundness of his reasoning, the idealist is ahead of the world all the time, and just as surely the world pays him the compliment of following in his trail. But only in its own time and at its own good pleasure. It is in quantity that he is short. There is never enough of him to do all the tasks, to be in every place at once. Rarely has he converts enough to assure a majority of votes or voices on his side. So the supreme crises of the world come, and he has for the time to step aside; to be a mere onlooker; to wait in awe-struck patience until the pessimist beholds the realization of his worst fears; until the optimist can take heart again, and reviving his crushed and withered hopes once more set their fulfillment forward in the future. In spite of all, the idealist is ever justified. He is justified today in Europe no less than in America; justified by the ruin and waste that have come in the train of following outworn political creeds, and yielding to animosities inherited from past centuries; justified by the disastrous results of unchecked national economic competition, when the age of international coöperation is already upon us; justified by the utter contempt shown by masculine rulers and statesmen for the constructive and the fostering side of life, typified and embodied in the woman half of society. No! our ideals are not changed, nor are they in aught belittled by what has occurred. It is for us to cherish and guard them more faithfully, to serve them more devotedly than ever. Even if we must from now on walk softly all the days of our life, and prepare to accept unresentfully disappointment and heart-sickening delay, we can still draw comfort from this: Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all. Meanwhile we sit, as it were, facing a vast stage, in front of us a dropped curtain. From behind that veil there reaches our strained ears now and then a cry of agony unspeakable, and again a faint whisper of hope. But until that curtain is raised, after the hand of the war-fiend is stayed; until we can again communicate, each with the other as human beings and not as untamed, primitive savages, we can know in detail little that has happened, and foresee nothing that may hereafter happen. That some of America's industrial and social problems will be affected radically by the results of the European war goes without saying; how, and in what degree, it is impossible to foretell. Meanwhile our work is here, and we have to pursue it. Whatever will strengthen the labor movement, or the woman movement, goes to strengthen the world forces of peace. Let us hold fast to that. And conversely, whatever economic or ethical changes will help to insure a permanent basis for world peace will grant to both the labor movement and the woman movement enlarged opportunity to come into their own. ALICE HENRY, Chicago, July, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EARLY TRADE UNIONS AMONG WOMEN II. WOMEN IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR III. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ORGANIZATION IV. THE WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE V. THE HUGE STRIKES VI. THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN AND ORGANIZATION. VII. THE WOMAN ORGANIZER VIII. THE TRADE UNION IN OTHER FIELDS IX. WOMEN AND THE VOCATIONS X. WOMAN AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING XI. THE WORKING WOMAN AND MARRIAGE XII. THE WORKING WOMAN AND THE VOTE XIII. TRADE-UNION IDEALS AND POLICIES APPENDIX I AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT EMPLOYÉS INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN AND CHICAGO FEDERATION OF LABOR APPENDIX II. THE HART, SCHAFFNER AND MARX LABOR AGREEMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Factory or a Home? In a Basement Sweatshop Girl Gas Blowers A Bindery Interior of One of the Largest and Best Equipped Waist and Cloak Factories in New York City A Contrast INTRODUCTION It was a revolutionary change in our ways of thinking when the idea of development, social as well as physical, really took hold of mankind. But our minds are curiously stiff and slow to move, and we still mostly think of development as a process that has taken place, and that is going to take place--in the future. And that change is the very stuff of which life consists (not that change is taking place at this moment, but that this moment is change), that means another revolution in the world of thought, and it gives to life a fresh meaning. No one has, as it appears to me, placed such emphasis upon this as has Henri Bergson. It is not that he emphasizes the mere fact of the evolution of society and of all human relations. That, he, and we, may well take for granted. It has surely been amply demonstrated and illustrated by writers as widely separated in their interpretation of social evolution as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx. But with the further thought in mind that, alike in the lowliest physical organism or in the most complex social organism, life itself is change, we view every problem of life from another angle. To see life steadily and see it whole is one stage. Bergson bids us see life on the move, ever changing, growing, evolving, a creation new every moment. For students of society this means that we are to aim at the understanding of social processes, rather than stop short with the consideration of facts; facts are to be studied because they go to make up processes. We are not to stop short with the study of conditions, but go on to find out what tendencies certain conditions encourage. All social and industrial questions therefore are to be interpreted in their dynamic rather than in their static aspects. In the Labor Museum of Hull House is shown a very ingenious diagram, representing the development on the mechanical side of the process of spinning, one of the oldest of the arts. It consists of a strip of cardboard, about a yard long, marked off into centuries and decades. From 2000 B.C. up to A.D. 1500 the hand spindle was the only instrument used. From 1500 up to the middle of the eighteenth century the spinning-wheel was used as well. From the middle of the eighteenth century up till today has been the period of the application of steam to spinning machinery. The profound symbolism expressed by the little chart goes beyond the interesting fact in the history of applied physics and mechanics which it tells, on to the tremendous changes which it sums up. The textile industries were primarily women's work, and with the mechanical changes in this group of primitive industries were inextricably bound up changes far more momentous in the social environment and the individual development of the worker. Yet, if a profoundly impressive story, it is also a simple and plain one. It is so easy to understand because we have the help of history to interpret it to us, a help that fails us completely when, instead of being able to look from a distance and see events in their due proportions and in their right order, we are driven to extract as best we can a meaning from occurrences that happen and conditions that lie before our very eyes. That we cannot see the wood for the trees was never more painfully true than when we first try to tell a clear story amid the clatter and din of our industrial life. Past history is of little assistance in interpreting the social and industrial development, in which we ourselves are atoms. Much information is to be obtained, though piecemeal and with difficulty, but especially as relates to women, it has not yet been classified and ordered and placed ready to hand. The industrial group activities of women are the inevitable, though belated result of the entry of women into the modern industrial system, and are called forth by the new demands which life is making upon women's faculties. We cannot stop short here, and consider these activities mainly in regard to what has led up to them, nor yet as to what is their extent and effect today. Far more important is it to try to discover what are the tendencies, which they as yet faintly and imperfectly, often confusedly, express. In the labor movement of this country woman has played and is playing an important part. But in its completeness no one knows the story, and those who know sections of it most intimately are too busy living their own parts in that story, to pause long enough to be its chroniclers. For to be part of a movement is more absorbing than to write about it. Whom then shall we ask? To whom shall we turn for even an imperfect knowledge of the story, at once noble and sordid, tragic and commonplace, of woman's side of the labor movement? To whom, you would say, but to the worker herself? And where does the worker speak with such clearness, with such unfaltering steadiness, as through her union, the organization of her trade? In the industrial maze the individual worker cannot interpret her own life story from her knowledge of the little patch of life which is all her hurried fingers ever touch. Only an organization can be an interpreter here. Fortunately for the student, the organization does act as interpreter, both for the organized women who have been drawn into the labor movement and for those less fortunate who are still struggling on single-handed and alone. The organized workers in one way or another come into fairly close relations with their unorganized sisters. Besides, the movement in its modern form is still so young that there is scarcely a woman worker in the unions who did not begin her trade life as an unorganized toiler. Speaking broadly, the points upon which the trade-union movement concentrates are the raising of wages, the shortening of hours, the diminution of seasonal work, the abolition or regulation of piece-work, with its resultant speeding up, the maintaining of sanitary conditions, and the guarding of unsafe machinery, the enforcement of laws against child-labor, the abolition of taxes for power and working materials such as thread and needles, and of unfair fines for petty or unproved offenses--and with these, the recognition of the union to insure the obtaining and the keeping of all the rest. A single case taken from a non-union trade (a textile trade, too) must serve to suggest the reasons that make organization a necessity. Twenty-one years ago in the bag and hemp factories of St. Louis, girl experts turned out 460 yards of material in a twelve-hour day, the pay being 24 cents per bolt (of from 60 to 66 yards). These girls earned $1.84 per day (on the bolt of from 60 to 66 yards). Four years ago a girl could not hold her job under 1,000 yards in a ten-hour day. "The fastest possible worker can turn out only 1,200 yards, and the price has dropped to 15 cents per hundred yards. The old rate of 24 cents per bolt used to net $1.80 to a very quick worker. The new rate to one equally competent is but $1.50. Workers have to fill a shuttle every minute and a half or two minutes. This necessitates the strain of constant vigilance, as the breaking of the thread causes unevenness, and for this operators are laid off for two or three days. The operators are at such a tension that they not only stand all day, but may not even bend their knees. The air is thick with lint, which the workers inhale. The throat and eyes are terribly affected, and it is necessary to work with the head bound up, and to comb the lint from the eyebrows. The proprietors have to retain a physician to attend the workers every morning, and medicine is supplied free, as an accepted need for everyone so engaged. One year is spent in learning the trade, and the girls last at it only from three to four years afterwards. Some of them enter marriage, but many of them are thrown on the human waste-heap. One company employs nearly 1,000 women, so that a large number are affected by these vile and inhuman conditions. The girls in the trade are mostly Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, who have not long been in this country. In their inexperience they count $1.50 as good wages, although gained at ever so great a physical cost." These are intolerable conditions, and that tens of thousands are enduring similar hardships in the course of earning a living and contributing their share towards the commercial output of the country only aggravates the cruelty and the injustice to the helpless and defrauded girls. It is not an individual problem merely. It is a national responsibility shared by every citizen to see that such cruelty and such injustice shall cease. No system of commercial production can be permanently maintained which ignores the primitive rights of the human workers to such returns for labor as shall provide decent food, clothing, shelter, education and recreation for the worker and for those dependent upon him or her, as well as steadiness of employment, and the guarantee of such working conditions as shall not be prejudicial to health. If the community is not to be moved either by pity or by a sense of justice then perhaps it will awake to a realization of the national danger involved when so many of the workers, and especially when so many of the girls and women work under circumstances ruinous to health, and affording, besides, small chance for all-round normal development on either the individual or the social side. These are evils whose results do not die out with the generation primarily involved, but must as well through inheritance as through environment injure the children of the workers, and their offspring yet unborn. The passing away from the individual worker of personal control over the raw material and the instruments of production, which has accompanied the advent of the factory system, means that some degree of control corresponding to that formerly possessed by the individual should be assured to the group of workers in the factory or the trade. Such control is assured through the collective power of the workers, acting in coöperation in their trade union. One reason why the woman worker is in so many respects worse off than the man is because she has so far enjoyed so little of the protection of the trade union in her work. Why she has not had it, and why more and more she desires it, is what I will try to show in the following pages. There is one criticism, to which almost every writer dealing with a present-day topic, lies exposed. That is, why certain aspects of the subject, or certain closely related questions, have either not been dealt with at all, or touched on only lightly. For instance, the subject of the organization of wage-earning women is indeed bound up with the industrial history of the United States, with the legal and social position of women, with the handicaps under which the colored races suffer, and with the entire labor problem. In answer I can but plead that there had to be some limits. These are all matters which have been treated by many others, and I intentionally confined myself to a section of the field not hitherto covered. Though the greatest care has been taken to avoid errors, some mistakes have doubtless crept in and the author would be glad to have these pointed out. I acknowledge gratefully what I owe to others, whether that help has come to me through books and periodical literature or through personal information from those possessing special expert knowledge. No one can ever begin to repay such a debt, but such thanks as are possible, I offer here. The brief historical sketch of the early trade unions is based almost entirely upon the "History of Women in Trade Unions," Volume X, of the "Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," issued by the Commissioner of Labor, then Mr. Charles P. Neill. Dr. John B. Andrews deals with the earlier period, and he shows how persistent have been the efforts of working-women to benefit themselves through collective action. "Organization," he writes, "among working-women, contrary to the general impression, is not new. Women, from the beginning of the trade-union movement in this country have occupied an important place in the ranks of organized labor. For eighty years and over, women wage-earners in America have formed trade unions and gone on strike for shorter hours, better pay, and improved conditions. The American labor movement had its real beginning about the year 1825. In that year the tailoresses of New York formed a union." The history of women in trade unions he divides into four periods: (1) the beginnings of organization, extending from 1825 to about 1840; (2) the development of associations interested in labor reform, including the beginnings of legislative activity, 1840 to 1860; (3) the sustained development of pure trade unions, and the rise of the struggle over the suffrage, 1860 to 1880; and (4) the impress and educative influence of the Knights of Labor, 1881 to date, and the present development under the predominant leadership of the American Federation of Labor. THE TRADE UNION WOMAN I EARLY TRADE UNIONS AMONG WOMEN 1825-1840 The earliest factory employment to engage large numbers of women was the cotton industry of New England, and the mill hands of that day seem to have been entirely native-born Americans. The first power loom was set up in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814, and the name of the young woman weaver who operated it was Deborah Skinner. In 1817 there were three power looms in Fall River, Massachusetts; the weavers were Sallie Winters, Hannah Borden and Mary Healy. The first form of trade-union activity among wage-earning women in the United States was the local strike. The earliest of these of which there is any record was but a short-lived affair. It was typical, nevertheless, of the sudden, impulsive uprising of the unorganized everywhere. It would hardly be worth recording, except that in such hasty outbursts of indignation against the so unequal distribution of the burdens of industry lies the germ of the whole labor movement. This small strike took place in July, 1828, in the cotton mills of Paterson, New Jersey, among the boy and girl helpers over the apparently trifling detail of a change of the dinner hour from twelve o'clock to one. Presently there were involved the carpenters, masons and machinists in a general demand for a ten-hour day. In a week the strike had collapsed, and the leaders found themselves out of work, although the point on which the young workers had gone out was conceded. It was among the mill operatives of Dover, New Hampshire, that the first really important strike involving women occurred. This was in December of the same year (1828). On this occasion between three hundred and four hundred women went out. The next we hear of the Dover girls is six years later, when eight hundred went out in resistance to a cut in wages. These women and girls were practically all the daughters of farmers and small professional men. For their day they were well educated, often teaching school during a part of the year. They prided themselves on being the "daughters of freemen," and while adapting themselves for the sake of earning a living to the novel conditions of factory employment, they were not made of the stuff to submit tamely to irritating rules of discipline, to petty despotism, and to what they felt was a breach of tacit agreement, involved in periodical cutting of wages. Although most of them may have but dimly understood that factory employment required the protection of a permanent organization for the operatives, and looked to the temporary combination provided by the strike for the remedy of their ills, still there was more in the air, and more in the minds of some of the girl leaders than just strikes undertaken for the purpose of abolishing single definite wrongs. That employers recognized this, and were prepared to stifle in the birth any efforts that their women employés might make towards maintaining permanent organizations, is evident by the allusions in the press of the day to the "ironclad oath" by which the employé had to agree, on entering the factory, to accept whatever wage the employer might see fit to pay, and had to promise not to join any combination "whereby the work may be impeded or the company's interest in any work injured." Also we find that no general gathering of organized workingmen could take place without the question of the inroad of women into the factories being hotly debated. All the speakers would be agreed that the poorly paid and overworked woman was bringing a very dangerous element into the labor world, but there was not the same unanimity when it came to proposing a remedy. Advice that women should go back into the home was then as now the readiest cure for the evil, for even so early as this the men realized that the underpayment of women meant the underpayment of men, while the employment of women too often meant the dis-employment of men. But it was not long before the more intelligent understood that there was some great general force at work here, which was not to be dealt with nor the resultant evils cured by a resort to primitive conditions. Soon there were bodies of workingmen publicly advocating the organization of women into trade unions as the only rational plan of coping with a thoroughly vicious situation. Meanwhile such a powerful organ as the _Boston Courier_ went so far as to say that the girls ought to be thankful to be employed at all. If it were not for the poor labor papers of that day we should have little chance of knowing the workers' side of the story at all. During the next few years many women's strikes are recorded among cotton operatives, but most of them, though conducted with spirit and intelligence, seemed to have ended none too happily for the workers. It is nevertheless probable that the possibility that these rebellious ones might strike often acted as a check upon the cotton lords and their mill managers. Indeed the strikes at Lowell, Massachusetts, of 1834 and 1836 involved so large a number of operatives (up to 2,500 girls at one time), and these were so brave and daring in their public demands for the right of personal liberty and just treatment that the entire press of the country gave publicity to the matter, although the orthodox newspapers were mostly shocked at the "wicked misrepresentations" of the ringleaders in this industrial rebellion. The 1836 strike at the Lowell mills throws a curious light upon the habits of those days. Something analogous to the "living-in" system was in force. In 1825 when the Lowell mills were first opened, the companies who owned the mills provided boarding-houses for their girl operatives, and the boarding-house keepers had in their lease to agree to charge them not more than $1.25 per week. (Their wages are said to have rarely exceeded $2.50 per week.) But in these thirteen years the cost of living had risen, and at this rate for board the boarding-house keepers could no longer make ends meet, and many were ruined. The mill-owners, seeing what desperate plight these women were in, agreed to deduct from the weekly rent a sum equivalent to twelve cents per boarder, and they also authorized the housekeepers to charge each girl twelve cents more. This raised the total income of the housekeepers to practically one dollar and fifty cents per head. As there was no talk of raising wages in proportion, this arrangement was equivalent to a cut of twelve cents per week and the girls rebelled and went out on strike to the number of twenty-five hundred. In all probability, however, it was not only the enforced lessening of their wages, but some of the many irritating conditions as well that always attend any plan of living-in, whether the employé be a mill girl, a department-store clerk or a domestic servant, that goaded the girls on, for we hear of "dictation not only as to what they shall eat and drink and wherewithal they shall be clothed, but when they shall eat, drink and sleep." The strikers paraded through the streets of Lowell, singing, Oh, isn't it a pity that such a pretty girl as I Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? Oh! I cannot be a slave, For I'm so fond of liberty That I cannot be a slave. The girls appealed to the memories, still green, of the War of Independence. "As our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the British ministry, so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us." With this and many similar appeals they heartened one another. But before the close of October, 1836, the strike was broken and the girls were back at work on the employers' terms. Still an echo of the struggle is heard in the following month at the Annual Convention of the National Trades Union, where the Committee on Female Labor recommended that "they [the women operatives] should immediately adopt energetic measures, in the construction of societies to support each other." Almost every difficulty that the working-woman has to face today had its analogue then. For instance, speeding up: "The factory girls of Amesbury have had a flare-up and turned out because they were told they must tend two looms in future without any advance of wages." A pitiful account comes from eastern Pennsylvania, where the cotton industry had by this time a footing. Whole families would be in the mill "save only one small girl to take care of the house and provide the meals." Yet the wages of all the members were needed to supply bare wants. The hours in the mills were cruelly long. In the summer, "from five o'clock in the morning until sunset, being fourteen hours and a half, with an intermission of half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner, leaving thirteen hours of hard labor." Out of repeated and vain protests and repeated strikes, perhaps not always in vain, were developed the beginnings of the trade-union movement of Pennsylvania, the men taking the lead. The women, even where admitted to membership in the unions, seem to have taken little part in the ordinary work of the union, as we only hear of them in times of stress and strike. The women who worked in the cotton mills were massed together by the conditions of their calling, in great groups, and a sense of community of interest would thus, one would think, be more easily established. Women engaged in various branches of sewing were, on the other hand, in much smaller groups, but they were far more widely distributed. One result of this was that meeting together and comparing notes was always difficult and often impossible. Even within the same town, with the imperfect means of transit, with badly made and worst lit streets, one group of workers had little means of knowing whether they were receiving the same or different rates of pay for the same work, or for the same number of work hours. So much sewing has always been done in the homes of the workers that it is a matter of surprise to learn that the very first women's trade union of which we have any knowledge was formed, probably in some very loose organization, among the tailoresses of New York in the year 1825. Six years later the tailoresses of New York were again clubbed together for self-protection against the inevitable consequences of reduced and inadequate wages. Their secretary, Mrs. Lavinia Waight, must have been a very new woman. She, unreasonable person, was not content with asking better wages for her trade and her sex, but she even wanted the vote for herself and her sisters. Indeed, from the expression she uses, "the duties of legislation," she perhaps even desired that women should be qualified to sit in the legislature. In this same year, 1831, there was a strike of tailoresses reported to include sixteen hundred women, and they must have remained out several weeks. This was not, like so many, an unorganized strike, but was authorized and managed by the United Tailoresses' Society, of which we now hear for the first time. We hear of the beginning of many of these short-lived societies, but rarely is there any record of when they went under, or how. Innumerable organizations of a temporary character existed from time to time in the other large cities, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the distinguished honor of being the home of Matthew Carey, who was instrumental in starting the first public inquiry into the conditions of working-women, as he was also the first in America to make public protest against the insufficient pay and wretched conditions imposed upon women, who were now entering the wage-earning occupations in considerable numbers. He assisted the sewing-women of all branches to form what was practically a city federation of women's unions, the first of its kind. One committee was authorized to send to the Secretary of War a protest against the disgracefully low prices paid for army clothing. Matthew Carey was also held responsible, rightly or wrongly, for an uprising in the book-binding establishments of New York. All this agitation among workers and the general public was having some effect upon the ethical standards of employers, for a meeting of master book-binders of New York disowned those of their number who paid "less than $3 a week." An occasional word of support and sympathy, too, filters through the daily press. The _Commercial Bulletin_ severely criticized the rates the Secretary of War was paying for his army clothing orders, while the _Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, speaking of a strike among the women umbrella sewers of New York, commented thus: "In this case we decidedly approve the turn-out. Turning out, if peaceably conducted, is perfectly legal, and often necessary, especially among female laborers." The next year we again find Matthew Carey helping the oppressed women. This time it is with a letter and money to support the ladies' Association of Shoe Binders and Corders of Philadelphia, then on strike. Shoe-binding was a home industry, existing in many of the towns, and open to all the abuses of home-work. Lynn, Massachusetts, was then and for long after the center of the shoe trade, and the scene of some of the earliest attempts of home-workers to organize. 1840-1860 Nothing in the history of women's organizations in the last century leaves a more disheartening impression than the want of continuity in the struggle, although there was never a break nor a let-up in the conditions of low wages, interminably long hours, and general poverty of existence which year in and year out were the lot of the wage-earning women in the manufacturing districts. Although based in every instance upon a common and crying need, the successive attempts of women at organization as a means of improving their industrial condition are absolutely unrelated to one another. Not only so, but it is pathetic to note that the brave women leaders of women in one generation cannot even have known of the existence of their predecessors in the self-same fight. They were not always too well informed as to the conditions of their sister workers in other cities or states, where distance alone severed them. But where time made the gap, where they were separated by the distance of but one lifetime, sometimes by a much shorter period, the severance seems to have been to our way of thinking, strangely complete, and disastrously so. Students had not begun to be interested in the troubles of everyday folk, so there were no records of past occurrences of the same sort that the workers could read. To hunt up in old files of newspapers allusions to former strikes and former agreements is a hard, slow task for the trained student of today; for those girls it was impossible. We have no reason to believe that the names of Lavinia Waight and Louisa Mitchell, the leaders of New York tailoresses in 1831, were known to Sarah Bagley or Huldah Stone, when in 1845 they stirred Lowell. Each of the leaders whose names have come down to us, and all of their unknown and unnamed followers had to take their courage in their hands, think out for themselves the meaning of intolerable conditions, and as best they could feel after the readiest remedies. To these women the very meaning of international or even interstate trade competition must have been unknown. They had every one of them to learn by bitter experience how very useless the best meant laws might be to insure just and humane treatment, if the ideal of an out-of-date, and therefore fictitious, individual personal liberty were allowed to overrule and annul the greatest good of the greatest number. This second period was essentially a seedtime, a time of lofty ideals and of very idealist philosophy. The writers of that day saw clearly that there was much that was rotten in the State of Denmark, and they wrought hard to find a way out, but they did not realize the complexity of society any more than they recognized the economic basis upon which all our social activities are built. They unquestionably placed overmuch stress upon clearing the ground in patches, literally as well as metaphorically. Hence it was that so many plans for general reform produced so little definite result, except on the one hand setting before the then rising generation a higher standard of social responsibility which was destined deeply to tinge the after conduct and social activities of that generation, and on the other hand much social experimenting upon a small scale which stored up information and experience for the future. For instance the work done in trying out small coöperative experiments like that of Brook Farm has taught the successors of the first community builders much that could only be learned by practical experience, and not the least important of those lessons has been how not to do it. The land question, which could have troubled no American when in earlier days he felt himself part proprietor in a new world, was beginning to be a problem to try the mettle of the keenest thinkers and the most eager reformers. And even so early as the beginning of this second period there was to be seen on the social horizon a small cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, which was to grow and grow till in a few years it was to blot out of sight all other matters of public concern. This was the movement for the abolition of slavery. Till that national anachronism was at least politically and legally cleared out of the way, there was no great amount of public interest or public effort to be spared for any other subject. And yet were there any, on either side of that great question, who guessed that the passing of that even then belated institution was to give rise to and leave in its train problems quite as momentous as the abolition of slavery, and far more tremendous in their scope and range? By these problems we have been faced ever since, and continue to be faced by them today. To grant to any set of people nominal freedom, and deny them economic freedom is only half solving the difficulty. To deny economic freedom to the colored person is in the end to deny it to the white person, too. The immediate cause which seems to have brought about the downfall of the labor organizations of the first period (1825-1840) was the panic of 1837, and the long financial depression which succeeded. We read, on the other side of the water, of the "Hungry Forties," and although no such period of famine and profound misery fell to the lot of the people of the United States, as Great Britain and Ireland suffered, the influence of the depression was long and widely felt in the manufacturing districts of the Eastern states. Secondarily the workers were to know of its effects still later, through the invasion of their industrial field by Irish immigrants, starved out by that same depression, and by the potato famine that followed it. These newcomers brought with them very un-American standards of living, and flooded the labor market with labor unskilled and therefore cheaper than the normal native supply. When the year 1845 came it is to be inferred that the worst immediate effects of the financial distress had passed, for from then on the working-women made repeated efforts to improve their condition. Baffled in one direction they would turn in another. As earlier, there is a long series of local strikes, and another long succession of short-lived local organizations. It is principally in the textile trade that we hear of both strikes and unions, but also among seamstresses and tailoresses, shoemakers and capmakers. New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Fall River and Lowell all contributed their quota of industrial uprisings among the exasperated and sorely pressed workers, with a sad similarity in the stories. In a class by themselves, however, were the female labor reform associations, which for some years did excellent work in widely separated cities. These were strictly trade unions, in spite of their somewhat vague name. They seem to have drawn their membership from the workers in the local trades. That of Lowell, perhaps the best known, originated among the mill girls, but admitted other workers. Lowell, as usual, was to the fore in the quality of its women leaders. The first president of the Association was the brilliant and able Sarah G. Bagley. She and other delegates went before the Massachusetts legislative committee in 1845, and gave evidence as to the conditions in the textile mills. This, the first American governmental investigation, was brought about almost solely in response to the petitions of the working-women, who had already secured thousands of signatures of factory operatives to a petition asking for a ten-hour law. The Lowell Association had their correspondent to the _Voice of Industry_, and also a press committee to take note of and contradict false statements appearing in the papers concerning factory operatives. They had most modern ideas on the value of publicity, and neglected no opportunity of keeping, the workers' cause well in evidence, whether through "factory tracts," letters to the papers, speeches or personal correspondence. They boldly attacked legislators who were false to their trust, and in one case, at least, succeeded in influencing an election, helping to secure the defeat of William Schouler, chairman of that legislative committee before which the women delegates had appeared, which they charged with dishonesty in withholding from the legislature all the most important facts brought forward by the trade-union witnesses. Other female labor reform associations existed about this period in Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire. The first-named was particularly active in securing the passage of the too soon wrecked ten-hour law. In New York a similar body of women workers was organized in 1845 as the Female Industrial Association. The sewing trades in many branches, cap-makers, straw-workers, book-folders and stitchers and lace-makers were among the trades represented. In Philadelphia the tailoresses in 1850 formed an industrial union. It maintained a coöperative tailoring shop, backed by the support of such coöperative advocates as George Lippard, John Shedden, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. In 1853 the Industrial Union published a report of its activities, showing that in two years the business had paid away in wages to tailoresses more than four thousand dollars. In the men's conventions of this time a number of women besides the redoubtable Sarah Bagley took an active part, being seated as delegates from their own labor reform associations. At the meeting in 1846 of the New England Workingmen's Association, for instance, Miss Huldah J. Stone, of Lowell, was elected recording secretary, and Mrs. C.N.M. Quimby was appointed one of the board of six directors. At all the meetings of the New England Congress, which met several times a year, the women's point of view was well presented by the delegates from the various trades. The National Industrial Congress, organized first in New York in 1845, and which met yearly for the next ten years, was supposed to stand for all the interests of the workingman and woman, but gave most of its attention to the land question and other subjects of general reform. This scattered the energies of the organizations and weakened their power as trade unions. But in the long anti-slavery agitation, which was just then rising to its height on the eve of the Civil War, even the land question was forgotten, and the voice of the trade unionists, speaking for man or woman, was utterly unheeded. Imperfect as are the accounts that have come down to us, it is clear that this second generation of trade unionists were educating themselves to more competent methods of handling the industrial problem. The women workers of Pittsburgh coöperated with the women of New England in trying to obtain from the manufacturers of their respective centers a promise that neither group would work their establishments longer than ten hours a day--this, to meet the ready objection so familiar in our ears still, that the competition of other mills would make the concession in one center ruinous to the manufacturers who should grant it. This was the crowning effort of the Pittsburgh mill-workers to obtain improvement. Strikes for higher wages had failed. Strikes for a ten-hour day had failed. And now it is pitiful to write that even this interstate coöperation on the part of the girls for relief by a peaceful trade agreement failed, too, the employers falling back upon their "undoubted right" to run their factories as many hours as they pleased. The women then appealed to the legislatures, and between 1847 and 1851, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania all passed ten-hour laws.[A] But they were not passed simultaneously, which gave the employers in the particular state dealt with, the excuse that under such legislation they could not face interstate competition in their business, and since every law contained a saving clause permitting contracting out by individual employers and employés, all these beneficial acts were so much waste paper. The manufacturers expressed themselves as willing enough to stand for the shorter work-day, but absolutely declined to risk the loss of their business in competing with those rival manufacturers who might take advantage of the "saving clause." [Footnote A: In the same year, 1847, a ten-hour law was passed in New Hampshire and in Great Britain, with, however, very different outcome, for in Great Britain the law was enforced, there being no complication of state and national control there.] For nearly fifty years after this period, the right to overwork and the "right" to be overworked remained untouched by legislative interference. And yet the need for labor legislation, restricting hours, and for uniform federal legislation was as clearly evident then as it is to us today, to meet the industrial needs and to satisfy the undoubted rights of the working folk of the twentieth century. 1860-1880 The organization of labor upon a national basis really began during this period. During the ten years from 1863 to 1873 there existed more than thirty national trade unions. Of these only two, the printers and the cigar-makers, admitted women to their membership. But in addition the women shoemakers had their own national union, the Daughters of St. Crispin. Women's unions of all sorts were represented in the National Labor Union. From this body women's local unions received every possible encouragement. As far as I can understand, the National Labor Union carried on little active work between conventions, but at these gatherings it stood for equal pay for equal work, although, as it appears to us, inconsistently and short-sightedly the delegates refused to incorporate into their resolutions the demand for the ballot as a needful weapon in the hands of women in their strivings after industrial equality. The need for industrial equality had been forced upon the apprehension of men unionists after they had themselves suffered for long years from the undercutting competition of women. That women needed to be strong politically in order that they might be strong industrially was a step beyond these good brothers. There were also two state labor unions, composed solely of women, the Massachusetts Working-Women's League, and the Working-Women's Labor Union for the state of New York. But most of the organization work among women was still local in character. The New England girl was now practically out of the business, driven out by the still more hardly pushed immigrant. With her departure were lost to the trades she had practiced the remnants of the experience and the education several generations of workers had acquired in trade unionism and trade-union policy and methods. Still, at intervals and under sore disadvantages the poor newcomers did some fighting on their own account. Although they were immigrants they were of flesh and blood like their predecessors, and they naturally rebelled against the ever-increasing amount of work that was demanded of them. The two looms, formerly complained of, had now increased to six and seven. The piece of cloth that used to be thirty yards long was now forty-two yards, though the price per piece remained the same. But strike after strike was lost. A notable exception was the strike of the Fall River weavers in 1875. It was led by the women weavers, who refused to accept a ten per cent. cut in wages to which the men of the organization (for they were organized) had agreed. The women went out in strike in the bitter month of January, taking the men with them. The leaders selected three mills, and struck against those, keeping the rest of their members at work, in order to have sufficient funds for their purposes. Even so, 3,500 looms and 156,000 spindles were thrown idle, and 3,125 strikers were out. The strike lasted more than two months and was successful. Progress must have seemed at the time, may even seem to us looking back, to be tantalizingly slow, but far oftener than in earlier days do the annals of trade unionism report, "The strikers won." Another feature is the ever-increasing interest and sympathy shown in such industrial risings of the oppressed by a certain few among the more fortunate members of society. One strike of cap-makers (men and women), was helped to a successful issue by rich German bankers and German societies. The account of the condition of women in the sewing trades during the sixties makes appalling reading. The wonder is not that the organizations of seamstresses during those years were few, short-lived, and attended with little success, but that among women so crushed and working at starvation wages any attempt at organization should have been possible at all. A number of circumstances combined to bring their earnings below, far below, the margin of subsistence. It was still the day of pocket-money wages, when girls living at home would take in sewing at prices which afforded them small luxuries, but which cut the remuneration of the woman who had to live by her needle to starvation point. It was still the period of transition in the introduction of the sewing-machine. The wages earned under these circumstances were incredibly low. The true sweating system with all its dire effects upon the health of the worker, and threatening the very existence of the home, was in full force. The enormous amount of work which was given out in army contracts to supply the needs of the soldiers then on active service in the Civil War, was sublet by contractors at the following rates. The price paid by the Government for the making of a shirt might be eighteen cents. Out of that all the worker would receive would be seven cents. And cases are cited of old women, presumably slow workers, who at these rates could earn but a dollar and a half per week. Even young and strong workers were but little better off. From innumerable cases brought to light $2 and $3 a week seem to have been a common income for a woman. Some even "supported" (Heaven save the mark!) others out of such wretched pittances. Aurora Phelps, of Boston, a born leader, in 1869, gave evidence that there were then in Boston eight thousand sewing-women, who did not earn over twenty-five cents a day, and that she herself had seen the time when she could not afford to pay for soap and firing to wash her own clothes. She said that she had known a girl to live for a week on a five-cent loaf of bread a day, going from shop to shop in search of the one bit of work she was able to do. For by this time division of work had come in, and the average machine operator was paid as badly as the hand needlewoman. The circumstance that probably more than any other accentuated this terrible state of affairs was the addition to the ranks of the wage-earners of thousands of "war widows." With homes broken up and the breadwinner gone, these untrained women took up sewing as the only thing they could do, and so overstocked the labor market that a new "Song of the Shirt" rose from attic to basement in the poorer districts of all the larger cities. As early as 1864 meetings were held in order to bring pressure upon the officials who had the giving out of the army contracts, to have the work given out direct, and therefore at advanced prices to the worker. Only three months before his death, in January, 1865, these facts reached President Lincoln, and were referred by him to the quartermaster with a request that "he should hereafter manage the supplies of contract work for the Government, made up by women, so as to give them remunerative wages for labor." During these years a number of small unions were formed, some as far west as Detroit and Chicago, but in almost every case the union later became a coöperative society. Some of them, we know, ceased to exist after a few months. Of others the forming of the organization is recorded in some labor paper, and after a while the name drops out, and nothing more is heard of it. Ten years later, in New York, there was formed a large, and for several years very active association of umbrella-sewers. This organization so impressed Mrs. Patterson, a visiting Englishwoman, that when she returned home, she exerted herself to form unions among working-women and encouraged others to do the same. It was through her persistence that the British Women's Trade Union League came into existence. If the conditions in the sewing trades were at this period the very worst that it is possible to imagine, so low that organization from within was impossible, while as yet the public mind was unprepared to accept the alternative of legislative interference with either hours or wages, there were other trades wherein conditions were far more satisfactory, and in which organization had made considerable progress. The Collar Laundry Workers of Troy, New York, had in 1866 about as bad wages as the sewing-women everywhere, but they were spared the curse of homework, as it was essentially a factory trade. The collars, cuffs and shirts were made and laundered by workers of the same factories. How early the workers organized is not known, but in the year 1866 they had a union so prosperous that they were able to give one thousand dollars from their treasury towards the assistance of the striking ironmolders of Troy, and later on five hundred dollars to help the striking bricklayers of New York. They had in course of time succeeded in raising their own wages from the very low average of two dollars and three dollars per week to a scale ranging from eight dollars to fourteen dollars for different classes of work, although their hours appear to have been very long, from twelve to fourteen hours per day. But the laundresses wanted still more pay, and in May, 1869, they went on strike to the number of four hundred, but after a desperate struggle, in which they were supported by the sympathy of the townspeople, they were beaten, and their splendid union put out of existence. Miss Kate Mullaney, their leader, was so highly thought of that in 1868 she had been made national organizer of women for the National Labor Union, the first appointment of the kind of which there is any record. She tried to save what she could out of the wreck of the union by forming the Coöperative Linen, Collar and Cuff Factory, and obtained for it the patronage of the great department store of A.T. Stewart, in Broadway. The experiences of the women printers have been typical of the difficulties which women have had to face in what is called a man's trade of the highly organized class. The tragic alternative that is too often offered to women, just as it is offered to any race or class placed at an economic disadvantage, of being kept outside a skilled trade, through the short-sighted policy of the workers in possession, or of entering it by some back door, whether as mere undersellers or as actual strike-breakers, is illustrated in all its phases in the printing trade. As early as 1856 the Boston Typographical Union seriously considered discharging any member found working with female compositors. This feeling, though not always so bluntly expressed, lasted for many years. It was not singular, therefore, that under these circumstances, employers took advantage of such a situation, and whenever it suited them, employed women. These were not even non-unionists, seeing that as women they were by the men of their own trade judged ineligible for admission to the union. It is believed that women were thus the means of the printers losing many strikes. In 1864 the proprietor of one of the Chicago daily papers boasted that he "placed materials in remote rooms in the city and there secretly instructed girls to set type, and kept them there till they were sufficiently proficient to enter the office, and thus enabled the employer to take a 'snap judgment' on his journeymen." After this a wiser policy was adopted by the typographical unions. The keener-sighted among their members began not only to adopt a softer tone towards their hardly pressed sisters in toil, but made it clear that what they were really objecting to was the low wage for which women worked. The first sign of the great change of heart was the action of the "Big Six," of New York, which undertook all the initial expenses of starting a women's union. On October 12, 1868, the Women's Typographical Union No. 1 was organized, with Miss Augusta Lewis as president. Within the next three years women were admitted into the printers' unions of Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston. Meantime, the Women's Typographical No. 1 was growing in numbers and influence, and was evidently backed by the New York men's union. It obtained national recognition on June 11, 1869, by receiving a charter from the International Typographical Union of North America. It was represented by two delegates at the International Convention held in Cincinnati in 1870. One of these delegates was Miss Lewis herself. She was elected corresponding secretary of the International Union, and served, we are told, with unusual ability and tact. It is less encouraging to have to add, that since her day, no woman has held an international office. The two contrary views prevailing among men unionists: that of the man who said, "Keep women out at all hazards--out of the union, and therefore out of the best of the trade, but out of the trade, altogether, if possible," and that of the man who resigned himself to the inevitable and contented himself with urging equal pay, and with insisting upon the women joining the union, were never more sharply contrasted than in the cigar-making trade. We actually find the International Union, which after 1867 by its constitution admitted women, being openly defied in this vital matter by some of its own largest city locals. These were the years during which the trade was undergoing very radical changes. From being a home occupation, or an occupation carried on in quite small establishments, requiring very little capital, it was becoming more and more a factory trade. The levying by the government of an internal revenue tax on cigars, and the introduction of the molding machine, which could be operated by unskilled girl labor, seem to have been the two principal influences tending towards the creation of the big cigar-manufacturing plant. The national leaders recognized the full gravity of the problem, and met it in a tolerant, rational spirit. Not so many of the local bodies. Baltimore and Cincinnati cigar-makers were particularly bitter, and the "Cincinnati Cigar-makers' Protective Union was for a time denied affiliation with the International Union on account of its attitude of absolute exclusion towards women." In 1887 the Cincinnati secretary (judging from his impatience we wonder if he was a very young man) wrote: "We first used every endeavor to get women into the union, but no one would join, therefore we passed the resolution that if they would not work with us we would work against them; but I think we have taught them a lesson that will serve them another time." This unhappy spirit Cincinnati maintained for several years. The men were but building up future difficulties for themselves, as is evident from the fact that in Cincinnati itself there were by 1880 several hundred women cigar-makers, and not one of them in a union. As the Civil War had so profoundly affected the sewing trades, so it was war, although not upon this continent, that added to the difficulties of American cigar-makers. In the Austro-Prussian War, the invading army entered Bohemia and destroyed the Bohemian cigar factories. The workers, who, as far as we know, were mostly women, and skilled women at that, emigrated in thousands to the United States, and landing in New York either took up their trade there or went further afield to other Eastern cities. This happened just about the time that the processes of cigar-making were being subdivided and specialized, so presently a very complicated situation resulted. Finding the control of their trade slipping away from them, the skilled men workers in the New York factories went out on strike, and many of the Bohemian women, being also skilled, followed them, and so it came about that it was American girls upon whom the manufacturers had to depend as strike-breakers. Their reliance was justified. With the aid of these girls, as well as that of men strike-breakers, the employers gained the day. To what extent even the more intelligent trade-union leaders felt true comradeship for their women co-workers it is difficult to say. The underlying thought may often have been that safety for the man lay in his insisting upon just and even favorable conditions for women. Even under conditions of nominal equality the woman was so often handicapped by her physique, by the difficulty she experienced in obtaining thorough training, and by the additional claims of her home, that the men must have felt they were likely to keep their hold on the best positions anyhow, and perhaps all the more readily with the union exacting identical standards of accomplishment from all workers, while at the same time claiming for all identical standards of wages. There is certainly something of this idea in the plan outlined by President Strasser of the International Cigar-makers, and he represented the advance guard of his generation, in his annual report in the year 1879. "We cannot drive the females out of the trade but we can restrict this daily quota of labor through factory laws. No girl under eighteen should be employed more than eight hours per day; all overwork should be prohibited; while married women should be kept out of factories at least six weeks before and six weeks after confinement." But it is a man's way out, after all, and it is the man's way still. There is the same readiness shown today to save the woman from overwork before and after confinement, although she may be thereby at the same time deprived of the means of support, while there is no hint of any provision for either herself or the baby, not to speak of other children who may be dependent upon her. In many quarters today there is the same willingness to stand for equal pay, but very little anxiety to see that the young girl worker be as well trained as the boy, in order that the girl may be able with reason and justice to demand the same wage from an employer. II WOMEN IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR So little trace is left in the world of organized labor today of that short-lived body, the Knights of Labor, that it might be thought worthy of but slight notice in any general review. But women have peculiar reason to remember the Knights, and to be grateful to them, for they were the first large national organization to which women were admitted on terms of equality with men, and in the work of the organization itself, they played an active and a notable part. From the year 1869 till 1878 the Knights of Labor existed as a secret order, having for its aim the improvement of living conditions. Its philosophy and its policy were well expressed in the motto, taken from the maxims of Solon, the Greek lawgiver: "That is the most perfect government in which an injury to one is the concern of all." The career of the Knights of Labor, however, as an active force in the community, began with the National Convention of 1878, from which time it made efforts to cover the wage-earning and farming classes, which had to constitute three-fourths of the membership. The organization was formed distinctly upon the industrial and not upon the craft plan. That is, instead of a local branch being confined to members of one trade, the plan was to include representatives of different trades and callings. That the fundamental interests of the wage-earner and the farmer were identical, was not so much stated as taken for granted. In defining eligibility for membership there were certain significant exceptions made; the following, being considered as pursuing distinctly antisocial occupations, were pointedly excluded: dealers in intoxicants, lawyers, bankers, stock-brokers and professional gamblers. Women were first formally admitted to the order in September, 1881. It is said that Mrs. Terence V. Powderly, wife of the then Grand Master Workman, was the first to join. It is not known that any figures exist showing the number of women who at any one time belonged to the Knights of Labor, but Dr. Andrews estimates the number, about the year 1886, when the order was most influential, at about 50,000. Among this 50,000 were a great variety of trades, but shoe-workers must have predominated, and many of these had received their training in trade unionism among the Daughters of St. Crispin. The Knights evidently took the view that the woman's industrial problem must to a certain extent be handled apart from that of the men, and more important still, that it must be handled as a whole. This broad treatment of the subject was shown when at the convention of 1885 it was voted, on the motion of Miss Mary Hannafin, a saleswoman of Philadelphia, that a committee to collect statistics on women's work be appointed. This committee consisted of Miss Hannafin and Miss Mary Stirling, also of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Lizzie H. Shute, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who were the only women delegates to the Convention. At the next convention, held in 1886 in Richmond, Virginia, there were sixteen women delegates, out of a total of six hundred. Mr. Terence V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman, appointed the sixteen women as a committee to receive and consider the report of this previously appointed special committee of three. The result of their deliberations was sufficiently remarkable. They set an example to their sex in taking the free and independent stand they did. For they announced that they had "formed a permanent organization, the object of which will be to investigate the abuses to which our sex is subjected by unscrupulous employers, to agitate the principle which our order teaches of equal pay for equal work and abolition of child labor." They also recommended that the expenses of this new woman's department and the expenses of a woman investigator should be borne by the order. The report was adopted and the memorable Woman's Department of the Knights of Labor was created. Memorable for the purpose and the plan that underlay its foundation, it was also memorable for the character and achievements of the brilliant, able and devoted woman who was chosen as general investigator. Mrs. Leonora Barry was a young widow with three children. She had tried to earn a living for them in a hosiery mill at Amsterdam, New York. For herself her endeavor to work as a mill hand was singularly unfortunate, for during her first week she earned but sixty-five cents. But if she did not during that week master any of the processes concerned in the making of machine-made stockings, she learned a good deal more than this, a good deal more than she set out to learn. She learned of the insults young girls were obliged to submit to on pain of losing their jobs, and a righteous wrath grew within her at the knowledge. During this hard time also she heard first of the Knights of Labor, and having heard of them, she promptly joined. As she was classified at the 1886 convention as a "machine hand," it is probable that she had by this time taken up her original trade. For four years Mrs. Barry did fine work. She combined in a remarkable degree qualities rarely found in the same individual. She followed in no one's tracks, but planned out her own methods, and carried out a campaign in which she fulfilled the duties of investigator, organizer and public lecturer. This at a time when the means of traveling were far more primitive than they are today; and not in one state alone, for she covered almost all the Eastern half of the country. We know that she went as far west as Leadville, Colorado, because of the touching little story that is told of her visit there. In that town she had founded the Martha Washington Assembly of the Knights of Labor, and when she left she was given a small parcel with the request that she would not open it until she reached home. But, as she tells it herself, My woman's curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the package, and found therein a purse which had been carried for fifteen years by Brother Horgan, who was with us last year, and inside of that a little souvenir in the shape of five twenty-dollar gold pieces. You say that I was the instrument through whose means the Martha Washington Assembly was organized. This is partially true, but it is also true that the good and true Knights of Leadville are as much the founder as I am. She possessed a social vision, and saw the problems of the wrongs of women in relation to the general industrial question, so that in her organizing work she was many-sided. The disputes that she was forever settling, the apathy that she was forever encountering, she dealt with in the tolerant spirit of one to whom these were but incidents in the growth of the labor movement. In dealing with the "little ones" in that movement we hear of her as only patient and helpful and offering words of encouragement, however small the visible results of her efforts might be. But towards those set in high places she could be intensely scornful, as for instance when she is found appealing to the order itself, asking that "more consideration be given, and more thorough educational measures be adopted on behalf of the working-women of our land, the majority of whom are entirely ignorant of the economic and industrial question, which is to them of vital importance, and they must ever remain so while the selfishness of their brothers in toil is carried to such an extent as I find it to be among those who have sworn to demand equal pay for equal work. Thus far in the history of our order that part of our platform has been but a mockery of the principle intended." Mrs. Barry started out to make regular investigations of different trades in which women were employed, in order that she might accurately inform herself and others as to what actual conditions were. But here she received her first serious check. She had no legal authority to enter any establishment where the proprietor objected, and even in other cases, where permission had been given, she discovered afterwards to her dismay that her visits had led to the dismissal of those who had in all innocence given her information, as in the case quoted of Sister Annie Conboy, a worker in a mill, in Auburn, New York. But little was gained by shutting out such a bright and observant woman. Mrs. Barry's practical knowledge of factory conditions was already wide and her relations with workers of the poorest and most oppressed class so intimate that little that she wanted to know seems to have escaped her, and she was often the channel through which information was furnished to the then newly established state bureaus of labor. Baffled, however, in the further carrying out of her plans for a thorough, and for that day, nation-wide investigation, she turned her attention mainly to education and organizing, establishing new local unions, helping those already in existence, and trying everywhere to strengthen the spirit of the workers in striving to procure for themselves improved standards. In her second year of work Mrs. Barry had the assistance of a most able headquarters secretary, Mary O'Reilly, a cotton mill hand from Providence, Rhode Island. During eleven months there were no fewer than three hundred and thirty-seven applications for the presence of the organizer. Out of these Mrs. Barry filled two hundred and thirteen, traveling to nearly a hundred cities and towns, and delivering one hundred public addresses. She was in great demand as a speaker before women's organizations outside the labor movement, for it was just about that time that women more fortunately placed were beginning to be generally aroused to a shamefaced sense of their responsibility for the hard lot of their poorer sisters. Thus she spoke before the aristocratic Century Club of Philadelphia, and attended the session of the International Women's Congress held in Washington, D.C., in March and April, 1887. The wages of but two dollars and fifty cents or three dollars for a week of eighty-four hours; the intolerable sufferings of the women and child wage-earners recorded in her reports make heart-rending reading today, especially when we realize how great in amount and how continuous has been the suffering in all the intervening years. So much publicity, however, and the undaunted spirit and unbroken determination of a certain number of the workers have assuredly had their effect, and some improvements there have been. Speeding up is, in all probability, worse today than ever. It is difficult to compare wages without making a close investigation in different localities and in many trades, and testing, by a comparison with the cost of living, the real and not merely the money value of wages, but there is a general agreement among authorities that wages on the whole have not kept pace with the workers' necessary expenditures. But in one respect the worker today is much better off. At the time we are speaking of, the facts of the wrong conditions, the low wages, the long hours, and the many irritating tyrannies the workers had to bear, only rarely reached the public ear. Let us thank God for our muck-rakers. Their stories and their pictures are all the while making people realize that there is such a thing as a common responsibility for the wrongs of individuals. Here is a managerial economy for you. The girls in a corset factory in Newark, New Jersey, if not inside when the whistle stopped blowing (at seven o'clock apparently) were locked out till half-past seven, and then they were docked two hours for waste power. In a linen mill in Paterson, New Jersey, we are told how in one branch the women stood on a stone floor with water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly against the breast. They had in the coldest weather to go home with underclothing dripping because they were allowed neither space nor a few moments of time in which to change their clothing. Mrs. Barry's work, educating, organizing, and latterly pushing forward protective legislation continued up till her marriage with O.R. Lake, a union printer, in 1890, when she finally withdrew from active participation in the labor movement. Mrs. Barry could never have been afforded the opportunity even to set out on her mission, had it not been for the support and coöperation of other women delegates. The leaders in the Knights of Labor were ahead of their time in so freely inviting women to take part in their deliberations. It was at the seventh convention, in 1883, that the first woman delegate appeared. She was Miss Mary Stirling, a shoe-worker from Philadelphia. Miss Kate Dowling, of Rochester, New York, had also been elected, but did not attend. Next year saw two women, Miss Mary Hannafin, saleswoman, also from Philadelphia, and Miss Louisa M. Eaton, of Lynn, probably a shoe-worker. During the preceding year Miss Hannafin had taken an active part in protecting the girls discharged in a lock-out in a Philadelphia shoe factory, not only against the employer, but even against the weakness of some of the men of her own assembly who were practically taking the side of the strike-breakers, by organizing them into a rival assembly. The question came up in the convention for settlement, and the delegates voted for Miss Hannafin in the stand she had taken. It was upon her initiative, likewise, at the convention in the following year, that the committee was formed to collect statistics of women's work, and in the year after (1886), it was again Miss Hannafin, the indefatigable, backed by the splendid force of sixteen women delegates, who succeeded in having Mrs. Barry appointed general investigator. One of the most active and devoted women in the Knights of Labor was Mrs. George Rodgers, then and still of Chicago. For a good many years she had been in a quiet way educating and organizing among the girls in her own neighborhood, and had organized a working-women's union there. For seven years she attended the state assembly of the Knights of Labor, and was judge of the district court of the organization. But it is by her attendance as one of the sixteen women at the 1886 National Convention, which was held in Richmond, Virginia, that she is best remembered. She registered as "housekeeper" and a housekeeper she must indeed have been, with all her outside interests a busy housemother. There accompanied her to the gathering her baby of two weeks old, the youngest of her twelve children. To this youthful trade unionist, a little girl, the convention voted the highest numbered badge (800), and also presented her with a valuable watch and chain, for use in future years. One cannot help suspecting that such an unusual representation of women must have been the reward of some special effort, for it was never repeated. Subsequent conventions saw but two or three seated to plead women's cause. At the 1890 convention, the occasion on which Mrs. Barry sent in her letter of resignation, there was but one woman delegate. She was the remarkable Alzina P. Stevens, originally a mill hand, but at this time a journalist of Toledo, Ohio. The men offered the now vacant post of general investigator to her, but she declined. However, between this period and her too early death, Mrs. Stevens was yet to do notable work for the labor movement. During the years that the Knights of Labor were active, the women members were not only to be found in the mixed assemblies, but between 1881 and 1886 there are recorded the chartering of no fewer than one hundred and ninety local assemblies composed entirely of women. Even distant centers like Memphis, Little Rock and San Francisco were drawn upon, as well as the manufacturing towns in Ontario, Canada. Besides those formed of workers in separate trades, such as shoe-workers, mill operatives, and garment-workers, there were locals, like the federal labor unions of today, in which those engaged in various occupations would unite together. Some of the women's locals existed for a good many years, but a large proportion are recorded as having lapsed or suspended after one or two years. Apart from the usual difficulties in holding women's organizations together, there is no doubt that many locals, both of men and of women, were organized far too hastily, without the members having the least understanding of the first principles of trade unionism, or indeed of any side of the industrial question. The organizers attempted far too much, and neglected the slow, solid work of preparation, and the no less important follow-up work; this had much to do with the early decline of the entire organization. The women's end of the movement suffered first and most quickly. From 1890 on, the women's membership became smaller and smaller, until practical interest by women and for women in the body wholly died out. But the genuine workers had sown seed of which another movement was to reap the results. The year 1886 was the year of the first meeting of the American Federation of Labor as we know it. With its gradual development, the growth of the modern trade-union movement among women is inextricably bound up. III THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ORGANIZATION As the Knights of Labor declined, the American Federation of Labor was rising to power and influence. It was at first known as the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, and organized under its present name in 1886. For some time the Knights of Labor and the younger organization exchanged greetings and counsel, and some of the leaders cherished the expectation that the field of effort was large enough to give scope to both. The American Federation of Labor, being a federation of trade unions, kept well in view the strengthening of strictly trade organizations. The Knights, as we have seen, were on the other hand, far more loosely organized, containing many members, both men and women, and even whole assemblies, outside of any trade, and they were therefore inclined to give a large share of their attention to matters of general reform, outside of purely trade-union or labor questions. It was the very largeness of their program which proved in the end a source of weakness, while latterly the activities of the organization became clogged by the burden of a membership with no intelligent understanding of the platform and aims. But although the absence of adequate restrictions on admission to membership, and the ease of affiliation, not to speak of other reasons, had led to the acceptance of numbers of those who were only nominally interested in trade unionism, it had also permitted the entry of a band of women, not all qualified as wage-workers, but in faith and deed devoted trade unionists, and keenly alive to the necessity of bringing the wage-earning woman into the labor movement. The energies of this group were evidently sadly missed during the early years of the American Federation of Labor. The present national organization came into existence in 1881, under the style and title of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada. It reorganized at the convention of 1886, and adopted the present name, the American Federation of Labor. It was built up by trade-union members of the skilled trades, and to them trade qualifications and trade autonomy were essential articles of faith. This was a much more solid groundwork upon which to raise a labor movement. But at first it worked none too well for the women, although as the national organizations with women members joined the Federation the women were necessarily taken in, too. Likewise they shared in some, at least, of the benefits and advantages accruing from the linking together of the organized workers in one strong body. But the unions of which the new organization was composed in these early days were principally unions in what were exclusively men's trades, such as the building and iron trades, mining and so on. In the trades, again, in which women were engaged, they were not in any great numbers to be found in the union of the trade. So the inferior position held by women in the industrial world was therefore inevitably reflected in the Federation. It is true that time after time, in the very earliest conventions, resolutions would be passed recommending the organization of women. But matters went no further. In 1882 Mrs. Charlotte Smith, president and representative of an organization styled variously the Women's National Labor League, and the Women's National Industrial League, presented a memorial to the Convention of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the Federation's name at that time), asking for the advice, assistance and coöperation of labor organizations. She mentioned that in 1880, there were recorded 2,647,157 women as employed in gainful occupations. A favorable resolution followed. At the convention of 1885, she was again present, and was accorded a seat without a vote. On her request again the delegates committed themselves to a resolution favoring the organization of women. In 1890 Delegate T.J. Morgan, of Chicago, introduced, and the convention passed, a resolution, favoring the submission to Congress of an amendment extending the right of suffrage to women. At this convention appeared the first fully accredited woman delegate, Mrs. Mary Burke, of the Retail Clerks, from Findlay, Ohio. A resolution was introduced and received endorsement, but no action followed. It asked for the placing in the field of a sufficient number of women organizers to labor in behalf of the emancipation of women of the wage-working class. In 1891 there were present at the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor Mrs. Eva McDonald Valesh and Miss Ida Van Etten. A committee was appointed with Mrs. Valesh as chairman and Miss Van Etten as secretary. They brought in a report that the convention create the office of national organizer, the organizer to be a woman at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year and expenses, to be appointed the following January, and that the constitution be so amended that the woman organizer have a seat on the Executive Board. The latter suggestion was not acted upon. But Miss Mary E. Kenney of the Bindery Women (now Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan) was appointed organizer, and held the position for five months. She attended the 1892 convention as a fully accredited delegate. Naturally she could produce no very marked results in that brief period, and the remark is made that her work was of necessity of a pioneer and missionary character rather than one of immediate results--a self-evident commentary. Later women were organizers for brief periods, one being Miss Anna Fitzgerald, of the National Women's Label League. As years passed on, and the American Federation of Labor grew by the affiliation of almost all the national trade unions, it became the one acknowledged central national body. Along with the men, such women as were in the organizations came in, too. But it was only as a rare exception that we heard of women delegates, and no woman has ever yet had a seat upon the Executive Board, although women delegates have been appointed upon both special and standing committees. The responsibility for this must be shared by all. It is partly an outgrowth of the backward state of the women themselves. They are at a disadvantage in their lack of training, their lower wages and their unconsciousness of the benefits of organization; also owing to the fact that such a large number of women are engaged in the unskilled trades that are hardest to organize. On the other hand, neither the national unions, the state and central bodies, nor the local unions have ever realized the value of the women membership they actually have, nor the urgent necessity that exists for organizing all working-women. To their own trade gatherings even, they have rarely admitted women delegates in proportion to the number of women workers. Only now and then, even today, do we find a woman upon the executive board of a national trade union, and when it comes to electing delegates to labor's yearly national gathering, it is men who are chosen, even in a trade like the garment-workers, in which there is a great preponderance of women. Of the important international unions with women members there are but two which have a continuous, unbroken history of over fifty years. These are the Typographical Union, dating back to 1850, and the Cigar Makers' International Union, which was founded in 1864. Other international bodies, founded since, are: Boot and Shoe Workers' Union. 1889 Hotel and Restaurant Employés Union. 1890 Retail Clerks' International Protective Association. 1890 United Garment Workers of America. 1891 International Brotherhood of Bookbinders. 1892 Tobacco Workers' International Union. 1895 International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. 1900 Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers International U'n. 1900 United Textile Workers' Union. 1901 International Glove Workers' Union of N. America. 1902 One group of unions, older than any of these, dating back to 1885, are the locals of the hat trimmers. These workers belong to no national organization, and it is only recently that they have been affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. They are not, as might be judged from the title, milliners; they trim and bind men's hats. They coöperate with the Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers and Operators. In New York the hat trimmers and the workers in straw are combined into one organization, under the name of the United Felt, Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers' and Operators' Union of Greater New York. The Hat Trimmers are almost wholly a women's organization, and their affairs are controlled almost entirely by women. The various locals coöperate with and support one another. But in their stage of organization this group of unions closely resembles the local unions, whether of men or women, which existed in so many trades before the day of nation-wide organizations set in. Eventually it must come about that they join the national organization. Outside of New York there are locals in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The parent union is that of Danbury, Connecticut. The girl hat-trimmers, under the leadership of Melinda Scott, of Newark and New York, have during the last ten years improved both wages and conditions and have besides increased their numbers and aided in forming new locals in other centers. They are known in the annals of organized labor chiefly for the loyalty and devotion they showed during the strike of the Danbury hatters in 1909. They not only refused, to a girl, to go back to work, when that would have broken the strike, but time after time, when money was collected and sent to them, even as large a sum as one thousand dollars, they handed it over to the men's organizations, feeling that the men, with wives and children dependent upon them, were in even greater need than themselves. "Seeing the larger vision and recognizing the greater need, these young women gave to the mother and the child of their working brothers. Although a small group, there is none whose members have shown a more complete understanding of the inner meaning of trade unionism, or a finer spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of their fellows." When we try to estimate the power of a movement, we judge it by its numbers, by its activities, and by its influence upon other movements. As to the numbers of women trade unionists, we have very imperfect statistics upon which to base any finding. If the statistics kept by the Labor Bureau of the state of New York can be taken as typical of conditions in other parts of the country, and they probably can, the proportion of women unionists has not at all kept pace with the increasing numbers of men organized. In 1894 there were in that state 149,709 men trade unionists, and 7,488 women. In 1902 both had about doubled their numbers--these read: men, 313,592; women, 15,509. By 1908, however, while there were then of men, 363,761, the women had diminished to 10,698. Since then, we have to note a marked change, beginning with 1910, and continuing ever since. In 1913 the unionized men reached 568,726, and the women 78,522. The increase of men in the organized trades of the state during the twelvemonth preceding September 30, 1913, was twenty per cent., while of women it was one hundred and eleven per cent. This enormous increase, more than doubling the entire union strength among women, is mainly due to the successful organization in the garment trades in New York City. So far there has been no adequate investigation covering the activities of women in the labor world during the last or modern period. We know that after the panic of 1893, which dealt a blow to trade unionism among men, the movement among women was almost at a standstill. We may feel that the international unions have failed to see the light, and have mostly fallen far short of what they might have done in promoting the organization of women workers; but we must acknowledge with thankfulness the fact that they have at least kept alive the tradition of trade unionism among women, and have thus prepared the way for the education and the organization of the women workers by the women workers themselves. As to legislation, the steady improvement brought about through the limitation of hours, through modern sanitary regulations, and through child-labor laws, has all along been supported by a handful of trade-union women, working especially through the national organizations, in which, as members, they made their influence felt. There were always brave souls among the women, and chivalrous souls, here and there among the men, and the struggles made to form and keep alive tiny local unions we shall probably never know, for no complete records exist. The only way in which the ground can be even partially covered is by a series of studies in each locality, such as the one made by Miss Lillian Matthews, through her work in San Francisco. In this connection it must be remembered that those uprisings among women of the last century, were after all local and limited in their effects and range. Most of them bore no relation to national organization of even the trade involved, still less to an all-embracing, national labor organization, such as the American Federation of Labor. In these earlier stages, when organization of both men and women was mainly local, women's influence, when felt at all, was felt strongly within the locality affected, and it is therefore only there that we hear about it. Still, twenty-five years ago, the day of national organization had already dawned. To organize a trade on a national scale is at best a slow process, and it naturally takes a much longer time for women to influence and enter into the administrative work of a national union, than of a separate local union, which perhaps they have helped to found. They are therefore too apt to lose touch with the big national union, and even with its local branch in their own city. It is almost like the difference between the small home kitchen, with whose possibilities a woman is familiar, and the great food-producing factory, run on a business scale, whose management seems to her something far-removed and unfamiliar. It was not until 1904, when the National Women's Trade Union League was formed out of unions with women members, that women workers, as women, can be said to have begun national organization at all. The account of that body is reserved for another chapter. Meanwhile as instances of the many determined localized efforts among women to raise wages and better conditions, there follow here outlines of the formation of the Working Women's Society in New York, the successful organization of the Laundry Workers in San Francisco, and of the splendid but defeated struggle of the girls in the packing plants of Chicago. In 1886 a small body of working-women, of whom Leonora O'Reilly was one, began holding meetings on the. East Side of New York City, to inquire into and talk over bad conditions, and see how they could be remedied. They were shortly joined by some women of position, who saw in this spontaneous effort one promising remedy, at least for some of the gross evils of underpayment, overwork and humiliation suffered by the working-women and girls of New York, in common with those in every industrial center. Among those other women who thus gave their support, and gave it in the truly democratic spirit, were the famous Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Robert Abbé, Miss Arria Huntingdon and Miss L.S. Perkins, who was the first treasurer of the little group. Mrs. Lowell's long experience in public work, and her unusual executive ability were of much value at first. The result of the meetings was the formation of the Working Women's Society. They held their first public meeting on February 2, 1888. In their announcement of principles they declared "the need of a central society, which shall gather together those already devoted to the cause of organization among women, shall collect statistics and publish facts, shall be ready to furnish information and advice, and, above all, shall continue and increase agitation on this subject." Among their specific objects were "to found trade organizations, where they do not exist, and to encourage and assist existing labor organizations, to the end of increasing wages and shortening hours." Another object was to promote the passing and the enforcement of laws for the protection of women and children in factories, and yet another the following up of cases of injustice in the shops. The Working Women's Society gave very valuable aid in the feather-workers' strike. Without the Society's backing the women could never have had their case put before the public as it was. Again, it was through their efforts, chiefly, that the law was passed in 1890, providing for women factory inspectors in the state of New York. It is stated that this was the first law of the kind in the world, and that the British law, passed shortly afterwards, was founded upon its provisions. Not limiting itself to helping in direct labor organization, and legislation, the Working Women's Society undertook among the more fortunate classes a campaign of sorely needed education, and made upon them, at the same time, a claim for full and active coöperation in the battle for industrial justice. This was done through the foundation of the Consumers' League of New York, now a branch of the National Consumers' League, which has done good and faithful service in bringing home to many some sense of the moral responsibility of the purchaser in maintaining oppressive industrial conditions, while, on the other hand it has persistently striven for better standards of labor legislation. It was through the Consumers' League, and especially through the ability and industry of its notable officer, Josephine Goldmark, that the remarkable mass of information on the toxic effects of fatigue, and the legislation to check overwork already in force in other countries was brought together in such complete form, as to enable Louis Brandeis to successfully defend the ten-hour law for women, first for Oregon, and afterwards for Illinois. The Working Women's Society did its work at a time when organization for women was even more unpopular than today. It did much to lessen that unpopularity, and to hearten its members for the never-ending struggle. All its agitation told, and prepared the way for the Women's Trade Union League, which, a decade later, took up the very same task. In the year 1900, the status of the steam-laundry-workers of San Francisco was about as low as could possibly be imagined. White men and girls had come into the trade about 1888, taking the place of the Chinese, who had been the first laundrymen on the West Coast. Regarding their treatment, Miss Lillian Ruth Matthews writes: The conditions surrounding the employment of these first white workers were among those survivals from the eighteenth century, which still linger incongruously in our modern industrial organization. The "living-in" system was the order, each laundry providing board and lodging for its employés. The dormitories were wretched places, with four beds in each small room. The food was poor and scanty, and even though the girls worked till midnight or after, no food was allowed after the evening meal at six o'clock. Half-an-hour only was allowed for lunch. Early in the morning, the women were routed out in no gentle manner and by six o'clock the unwholesome breakfast was over, and every one hard at work.... The girls were physically depleted from their hard work and poor nourishment. Their hands were "blistered and puffed, their feet swollen, calloused, and sore." One girl said, "Many a time I've been so tired that I hadn't the courage to take my clothes off. I've thrown myself on the bed and slept like dead until I got so cold and cramped that at two or three in the morning I'd rouse up and undress and crawl into bed, only to crawl out again at half-past five." As to wages, under the wretched "living-in" system the girls received but eight dollars and ten dollars a month in money. But even those who lived at home in no instance received more than twenty-five dollars a month, and in many cases widows with children to support would be trying to do their duty by their little ones on seventeen dollars and fifty cents a month. In the summer of 1900, letters many of them anonymous, were received both by the State Labor Commissioner and by the newspapers. A reporter from the _San Francisco Examiner_ took a job as a laundry-worker, and published appalling accounts of miserable wages, utter slavery as to hours and degrading conditions generally. Even the city ordinance forbidding work after ten at night (!) was found to be flagrantly violated, the girls continually working till midnight, and sometimes till two in the morning. The first measure of improvement was the passing of a new ordinance, forbidding work after seven in the evening. The workers, however, promptly realized that the more humane regulation was likely to be as ill enforced as the former one had been unless there was a union to see that it was carried out. About three hundred of the men organized, and applied to the Laundry Workers' International Union for a charter. The men did not wish to take the women in, but the executive board of the national organization, to their everlasting credit, refused the charter unless the women were taken in as well. Even so, a great many of the women were too frightened to take any steps themselves, as the employers were already threatening with dismissal any who dared to join a union, but the most courageous of the girls, with the help of some of the best of the men resolved to go on. Hannah Mahony, now Mrs. Hannah Nolan, Labor Inspector, took up the difficult task of organizing. So energetic and successful was she, that in sixteen weeks the majority of the girls, as well as the men, had joined the new union. It was all carried out secretly, and only when they felt themselves strong enough did they come out into the open with a demand for a higher wage-scale and shorter hours. By April 1, 1901, the conditions in the laundry industry were effectually revolutionized. The boarding system was abolished, wages were substantially increased and the working day was shortened; girls who had been receiving $8 and $10 a month were now paid $6 and $10 a week; ten hours was declared to constitute the working day and nine holidays a year were allowed. For overtime the employés were to be paid at the rate of time and a half. An hour was to be taken at noon, and any employé violating this rule was to be fined. The fine was devised as an educative reminder of the new obligation the laborers were under to protect one another, and to raise the standard of the industry upon which they must depend for a living, so fearful was the union that old conditions might creep insidiously back upon workers unaccustomed to independence. The next step was the nine-hour day, and this in good time was obtained too, but only as the result of the power of the strong, well-managed union. The union was just five years old, when unheard-of disaster fell on San Francisco, the earthquake and fire. Well indeed did the members stand the test. Like their fellow-unionists, the waitresses, they made such good use of their trade-union solidarity, and showed such courage, wisdom and resource, that the union became even more to the laundry-workers than it had been before this severe trial of its worth. Two-thirds of the steam laundries had been destroyed, likewise the union headquarters. Yet within a week all the camps and bread lines had been visited, and members requested to register at the secretary's home, and called together to a meeting. Temporary headquarters were found and opened as a relief station, where members were supplied with clothing and shoes. Within another week the nine laundries that had escaped the fire resumed work, the employés going back under the old agreement. By the time the next April came round nine of the burnt laundries were rebuilt, all on the most modern scale as to design and fittings, and equipped with the very newest machinery. But still there were only eighteen steam laundries to meet all San Francisco's needs, and therefore business was very brisk. So in April, 1907, it seemed good to the union leaders to try for better terms when renewing their agreement. When they made their demand for the eight-hour day as well as for increased wages, the proprietors refused, and eleven hundred workers went out, the entire working force of fourteen laundries. The other four laundries, with but two hundred workers altogether, had the old agreement signed up, and kept on working. The strike lasted eleven weeks, and cost the union over $24,000. Meanwhile the Conciliation Committee of the Labor Council, after many conferences and much effort succeeded in arranging a compromise, the working week to be fifty-one hours, with a sliding scale under which the eight-hour day would be reached in April, 1910. Work before seven in the morning was prohibited, all time after five o'clock was considered overtime, and must be paid for at time-and-a-half rate. The passing of the eight-hour law in May, 1911, suggested to some ingenious employers a method of getting behind their own agreement, at least to the extent of utilizing their plant to the utmost. They accordingly proposed to free themselves from any obligation to pay overtime, as long as the eight consecutive hours were not exceeded. The leaders of the union saw the danger lurking under this suggestion, in that it might mean all sorts of irregular hours, or even a two-shift system, involving perpetual night work, and going home from work long distances in the middle of the night. After many months of haggling, the union won its point. All work after five o'clock was to be paid at overtime rate, with the exception of Monday, when the closing time was made six. This because in all laundries there is apt to be delay in starting work on Monday, as hardly any work can be done until the drivers have come in from their first round, with bundles of soiled linen. This arrangement remained in force at time of writing. As regards wages, Miss Matthews estimates the average increase in the twelve years since the Steam Laundry Workers' Union was first formed at about thirty per cent. With the exception of the head marker, and the head washer at the one end, each at twenty-two dollars and fifty cents per week, and the little shaker girl on the mangle at seven dollars per week at the other, wages range from eighteen dollars down to eight dollars, more than the scale, however, being paid, it is said, to every worker with some skill and experience. Apprentices are allowed for in the union agreement. The union does not permit its members to work at unguarded machinery, hence accidents are rare, and for such as do happen, usually slight ones, like burns, the union officials are inclined to hold the workers themselves responsible. All of the steam laundries in San Francisco, now thirty-two in number, are unionized, including the laundries operated in one of the largest hotels. The union regards with just pride and satisfaction the fine conditions, short hours and comparatively high wages which its trade enjoys, as well as the improved social standards and the spirit of independence and coöperation which are the fruit of these many years of union activity. But outside the labor organization, and at once a sad contrast and a possible menace, lie two groups of businesses, the French laundries and the Japanese laundries. The former are mostly conducted on the old, out-of-date lines of a passing domestic industry, housed in made-over washrooms and ironing rooms, equipped with little modern machinery, most of the work being done by hand, and the employés being often the family or at least the relatives of the proprietor. In their present stage it is quite difficult to unionize these establishments and they do cut prices for the proprietors of the steam laundries. But both steam laundries and French laundries, both employers and workers, both unionists and non-unionists are at least found in agreement in their united opposition to the Japanese laundries, from whose competition all parties suffer, and in this they are backed by the whole of organized labor. The possibility of unionizing the Japanese laundries is not even considered. The story of the Steam Laundry Workers' Union of San Francisco is an encouraging lesson to those toilers in any craft who go on strike. But it also holds for them a warning. A successful strike is a good thing, for the most part, but its gains can be made permanent only if, when the excitement of the strike is over, the workers act up to their principles and keep their union together. The leaders must remember that numbers alone do not make strength, that most of the rank and file, and not unfrequently the leaders too, need the apprenticeship of long experience before any union can be a strong organization. The union's choicest gift to its membership lies in the opportunity thus offered to the whole of the members to grow into the spirit of fellowship. A few words should be said here of another strike among laundry-workers, this time almost entirely women, which although as bravely contested, ended in complete failure. This was the strike of the starchers in the Troy, New York, shirt and collar trade. In the Federal Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners, Mr. W.P.D. Bliss gives a brief account of it. In 1905 the starchers had their wages cut, and at the same time some heavy machinery was introduced. The starchers went out, and organized a union, which over one thousand women joined. They kept up the struggle from June, 1905, throughout a whole summer, autumn and winter till March, 1906. It was up till that time, probably the largest women's strike that had ever taken place in this country and was conducted with uncommon persistence and steadiness of purpose. They were backed by the international union, and appointing a committee visited various cities, and obtained, it is said, about twenty-five thousand dollars in this way for the support of their members. Many meetings and street demonstrations were held in Troy, and much bitter feeling existed between the strikers and the non-union help brought in. The strike at length collapsed; the firms continued to introduce more machinery, and the girls had to submit. Mr. Bliss concludes: "The Troy union was broken up and since then has had little more than a nominal existence." During the nineties there were a number of efforts made to organize working-women in Chicago. Some unions were organized at Hull House, where Mrs. Alzina P. Stevens and Mrs. Florence Kelley were then residents. Mrs. George Rodgers (K. of L.), Mrs. Robert Howe, Dr. Fannie Dickenson, Mrs. Corinne Brown, Mrs. T.J. Morgan, Mrs. Frank J. Pearson, Mrs. Fannie Kavanagh and Miss Lizzie Ford were active workers. Miss Mary E. Kenney (Mrs. O'Sullivan), afterwards the first woman organizer under the American Federation of Labor, was another. She was successful in reaching the girls in her own trade (book-binding), besides those in the garment trades and in the shoe factories, also in bringing the need for collective bargaining strongly before social and settlement workers. Chicago has long been the largest and the most important among the centers of the meat-packing industry. None of the food trades have received more investigation and publicity, and the need for yet more publicity, and for stricter and yet stricter supervision is perpetually being emphasized. But most of the efforts that have been made to awake and keep alive a sense of public rights and responsibility in the conducting of huge institutions like the Chicago packing-plants, have centered on the danger to the health of the consumer through eating diseased or decomposed meat. The public cares little, and has not troubled to learn much about the conditions of the workers, without whom there could be no stockyards and no meat-packing industry. Not that some of the investigators have not tried to bring this point forward. It was the chief aim of Upton Sinclair, when he wrote "The Jungle," and yet even he discovered to his dismay that, as he bitterly phrased it, he had hoped to strike at the heart of the American people, and he had only hit them in their stomach. But that is a story by itself. Let us go back to the brave struggle begun by the women in the packing-plants in the year 1902 to improve their conditions by organizing. For a great many years prior to this, women had been employed in certain branches of the work, such as painting cans and pasting on labels. But towards the close of the nineties the packers began to put women into departments that had always been staffed by men. So it was when girls began to wield the knife that the men workers first began to fear the competition of the "petticoat butchers." The idea of organizing the girls, were they painters or butchers, as a way of meeting this new menace, did not occur to them. At this time, in the fall of 1902, the oldest and best workers were Irish girls, with all the wit and quickness of their race. Especially was Maggie Condon a favorite and a leader. She was an extremely quick worker. With the temperament of an idealist, she took a pride in her work, liked to do it well, and was especially successful in turning out a great amount of work. Quicker and quicker she became till, on the basis of the good wages she was making, she built up dreams of comfort for herself and her family. One of her choicest ambitions was to be able to afford a room of her own. But just so surely as she reached the point where such a luxury would be possible, just so surely would come the cut in wages, and she had to begin this driving of herself all over again. Three times this happened. When her well and hardly earned twenty-two dollars was cut the third time Maggie realized that this was no way to mend matters. The harder she worked, the worse she was paid! And not only was she paid worse, she who as one of the best workers could stand a reduction better than most, but the cut went all down the line, and affected the poorest paid and the slowest workers as well. Hannah O'Day was not one of the quick ones. Her strength had been too early sapped. There was no child-labor law in Illinois when she should have been at school, and at eleven she was already a wage-earner. Along with the rest she also had suffered from the repeated cuts that the pace-making of the ones at the top had brought about. It was evident that something must be done. Maggie Condon, Hannah O'Day and some of the others, began, first to think, and then to talk over the matter with one another. They knew about the Haymarket trouble. There were rumors of a strike the men had once had. They had heard of the Knights of Labor, and wrote to someone, but nothing came of it. So one day, when there was more than usual cause for irritation and discouragement, what did Hannah O'Day do but tie a red silk handkerchief to the end of a stick. With this for their banner and the two leaders at their head, a whole troop of girls marched out into Packingtown. The strike ended as most such strikes of the unorganized, unprepared for, and unfinanced sort, must end, in failure, in the return to work on no better terms of the rank and file, and in the black-listing of the leaders. But the idea of organization had taken root, and this group of Irish girls still clung together. "We can't have a union," said one, "but we must have something. Let us have a club, and we'll call it the Maud Gonne Club." This is touching remembrance of the Irish woman patriot. Time passed on, and one evening during the winter of 1903 Miss Mary McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, was talking at a Union Label League meeting, and she brought out some facts from what she knew of the condition of the women workers in the packing-houses, showing what a menace to the whole of the working world was the underpaid woman. This got into the papers, and Maggie Condon and her sister read it, and felt that here was a woman who understood. And she was in their own district, too. So it came about that the Maud Gonne Club became slowly transformed into a real union. This took quite a while. The girls interested used to come over once a week to the Settlement, where Michael Donnelly was their tutor and helper. Miss McDowell carefully absented herself, feeling that she wanted the girls to manage their own affairs, until it transpired that they wished her to be there, and thought it strange that she should be so punctilious. After that she attended almost every meeting. When they felt ready, they obtained the charter with eight charter members and were known as Local 183 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. Little by little the local grew in numbers. One July night the meeting was particularly well attended and particularly lively, none the less so that the discussion was carried on to the accompaniment of a violent thunderstorm, the remarks of the excitable speakers being punctuated by flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. The matter under consideration was to parade or not to parade on the coming Labor Day. The anxious question to decide was whether they could by their numbers make an impression great enough to balance the dangers of the individual and risky publicity. The vote was cast in favor of parading. When the day came the affair was an entire success. Two wagons gaily trimmed were filled with girls in white dresses, carrying banners and singing labor songs. The happy results were seen at subsequent meetings of the union, for after that other girls from other than the Irish group came in fast, peasant girls, wearing their shawls, and colored girls, till, when the union was six months old, it had five hundred members. The initiation of the first colored girl was a touching occasion. Hannah O'Day had been present at one of the men's meetings, on an evening when it had been a colored man who at the ceremony of initiation had presented white candidates for membership, and the sense of universal brotherhood had then come over her as a sort of revelation. And there were others who felt with her. One night, Hannah being doorkeeper at her own union meeting, a colored girl applied to be admitted. Hannah called out: "A colored sister is at the door; what'll I do with her." It was the young president herself, Mollie Daley, though she had been brought up to think of colored folks as "trash," who, with a disregard of strict parliamentary law, but with a beautiful cordiality, broke in with: "I say, admit her at once, and let yez give her a hearty welcome." The girl who was very dark, but extremely handsome, had been not a little nervous over the reception that might await her. She was quite overcome when she found herself greeted with hearty applause. On another occasion, on the question being asked from the ritual: "Any grievances?" a sensitive colored girl arose, and said a Polish girl had called her names. The Polish girl defended herself by saying: "Well, she called me Polak, and I won't stand for that." The president summoned them both to the front. "Ain't you ashamed of yourselves?" She proceeded: "Now shake and make up, and don't bring your grievances here, unless they're from the whole shop." The girls had good training in union principles from the first, so that if their phrases were sometimes a trifle crude, they were none the less the expression of genuine good sense. For instance, some complaint would be brought forward, and in the early days the question would come: "Is this your own kick, or is it all of our kick?" A sound distinction to make, quite as sound as when later on, the officers having learned the formal phrases, they would put it in another way, and say: "Is this a private grievance or is it a collective grievance?" Instead of the old hysterical getting mad, and laying down their tools and walking out, when things did not go right, grievances were now taken to the union, and discussed, and if supported by the body, taken to the foreman and managers by the business agent, Maud Sutter. From the beginning the women delegates from Local 183 to the Packing Trades Council of Chicago were on an equality with the men, and girl delegates attended the convention of the National Association at Cincinnati and also at St. Louis. It is sad to record that through no fault of their own, the girls' organization met an early downfall. It passed out of existence after the stockyards' strike of 1904, being inevitably involved in the defeat of the men, and going down with them to disaster. The Irish leadership that produced such splendid results, is now, in any case, not there to be called upon, as the girls now employed in the packing-plants of Chicago are practically all immigrant girls from eastern Europe. When the present system of unorganized labor in the trade is abolished, as some day it must be, it will only be through a fresh beginning among an altogether different group, that it will be possible to reach the women. But the spirit that permeated Local 183 has never wholly died in the hearts of those who belonged to it, and it springs up now and then in quarters little expected, calling to remembrance Maggie Condon's reason for pushing the union of which she was a charter member and the first vice-president. "Girls, we ought to organize for them that comes after us." IV THE WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE One of the least encouraging features of trade unionism among women in the United States has been the small need of success which has attended efforts after organization in the past, especially the lack of permanence in such organizations as have been formed. In the brief historical review it has been shown how fitful were women's first attempts in this direction, how limited the success, and how temporary the organizations themselves. It is true there is an essential difference between the loose and momentary coöperation of unorganized workers aiming at the remedying of special grievances, and disbanding their association whenever that particular struggle is over, and a permanent organization representing the workers' side all the time and holding them in a bond of mutual helpfulness. Most of the strikes of women during the first half of the last century, like many today, sprang from impatience with intolerable burdens, and the "temporary union," often led by some men's organization, merely dissolved away with the ending of the strike, whether successful or not. But altogether apart from such sporadic risings as these, there were, as we have seen, from a very early period, genuine trade unions composed of working-women. The Women's Trade Union League is the first organization which has attempted to deal with the whole of the problems of the woman in industry on a national scale. As we have seen, there have been, besides the many women's unions, and the men's unions to which women have been and are admitted, the large body, the Women's National Union Label League, and a number of women's auxiliaries in connection with such unions as the Switchmen, the Machinists, and the Typographical Union. The Women's Union Label League has, however, devoted most of its energies to encouraging the purchase and use of union-made products. The women's auxiliaries have been formed from the wives of men from that particular union. They have often maintained a fund for sick and out-of-work members and their families, and have besides furnished a social environment in which all could become better acquainted, and they would besides take an active part in the entertainment of a national convention, whenever it came to their city. But except indirectly, none of these associations have aided in the organization of women wage-earners, still less have taken it for their allotted task. Perhaps earlier, the formation of such a body as the National Women's Trade would have been impracticable. But it certainly responds to the urgent needs of today, and is, after all, but a natural development of the trade-union movement, with especial reference to the crying needs of women and children in the highly specialized industries. The individual worker, restless under the miseries of her lot, and awakening also, it may be, to a sense of the meaning of our industrial system, learns to see the need of the union of her trade. When she does so, she has taken a distinct step forward. If an extensive trade, the local is affiliated with the international, but neither local nor international, as we shall see, as yet grant to the woman worker the same attention as they give to the man, because to men trade unionists the men's problems are the chief and most absorbing. So what more natural than that women belonging to various unions should come together to discuss the problems that are common to them all as women workers, whatever their trade, and aid one another in their difficulties, coöperate in their various activities, and thus, also, be able to present to their brothers the collective expression of their needs? Upon this simple basis is the local Women's Trade Union League formed. Linking together the organized women of the same city, it brings them, through the National League, into touch and communication with the trade-union women in other cities. While it is true that organization can neither be imposed nor forced upon any group, it is no less true that when girls are ready such a compact body, founded upon so broad a basis, can bring about results both in the line of education and organization which no other branch of the labor movement is equipped or fitted to do. And many labor leaders, who have sadly enough acknowledged that the labor movement that did not embrace women was like a giant carrying one arm in a sling, have already gratefully admitted that such a league of women's unions can produce results under circumstances where men, unaided, would have been helpless. For the origin of the Women's Trade Union League, we must go back to 1874, when Mrs. Emma Patterson, the wife of an English trade unionist and herself deeply impressed with the deplorable condition of women wage-earners everywhere, was on a visit to the United States. The importance of combination as a remedy was freshly brought home to her through what she saw of the women's organizations then most prominent and flourishing in New York, the Parasol and Umbrella Makers' Union, the Women's Typographical Union, and the Women's Protective Union. She returned to England with a plan for helping women workers to help themselves. Shortly afterwards she and others whom she interested formed the Women's Protective and Provident League, the title later on being changed to the bolder and more radical British Women's Trade Union League, a federation of women's unions, with an individual membership as well. It is known to the public on this side of the water through the visits of Mary Macarthur, its very able secretary. This body had been in existence nearly thirty years before the corresponding organization was formed in this country. About 1902 Mr. William English Walling had his attention drawn to what the British Women's Trade Union League was accomplishing among some of the poorest working-women in England. He mentioned what he had learned to others. Among the earliest to welcome the idea of forming such a league was Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, a bindery-worker of Boston, long in touch with the labor movement. In the fall of 1903 the American Federation of Labor was holding its annual convention in that city. The presence of so many labor leaders seemed to make the moment a favorable one. A meeting of those interested was called in Faneuil Hall on November 14. Mr. John O'Brien, president of the Retail Clerks' International Protective Union, presided. Among the trades represented were the Ladies' Garment Workers, the United Garment Workers, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, Clerks, Shoe Workers and Textile Workers. The National Women's Trade Union League was organized and the following officers elected: president, Mrs. Mary Morton Kehew, Boston; vice-president, Miss Jane Addams, Chicago; secretary, Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Boston; treasurer, Miss Mary Donovan, Boot and Shoe Workers; board members, Miss Mary McDowell, Chicago; Miss Lillian D. Wald, New York; Miss Ellen Lindstrom, United Garment Workers; Miss Mary Trites, Textile Workers; Miss Leonora O'Reilly, Ladies' Garment Workers. The one main purpose of the new league, as of its British prototype, was from the first the organization of women into trade unions, to be affiliated with the regular labor movement, in this case with the American Federation of Labor, and the strengthening of all such organizations as already existed. While, as in England, the backbone of the League was to consist of a federation of women's unions, provision was made for taking into individual membership not only trade unionists, but those women, and men too, who, although not wage-earners themselves, believed that the workers should be organized and were unwilling that those who toil should suffer from unjust conditions. A branch of the National Women's Trade Union League was formed in Chicago in January, 1904; another in New York in March of the same year, and a third in Boston in June of the same year. With these three industrial centers in line, the new campaign was fairly begun. The first three years were occupied mainly with preparatory work, becoming known to the unions and the workers, and developing activities both through the office and in the field. Early in 1907 Mrs. Raymond Robins, of Chicago, became National President, a position which she has held ever since. To the tremendous task of aiding the young organization till it was at least out of its swaddling clothes she brought boundless energy and a single-minded devotion which admitted of attention to no rival cause. Being a woman of independent means, she was able to give her time entirely to the work of the League. She would be on the road for weeks at a time, speaking, interviewing working-women, manufacturers or legislators, all the while holding the threads, organization here, legislation there. But the first opportunity for the Women's Trade Union League to do work on a large scale, work truly national in its results, came with the huge strikes in the sewing trades of 1909-1911. To these a separate chapter is devoted. It is sufficient here to say that the backing given by the National League and its branches in New York, in Philadelphia and in Chicago was in great part responsible for the very considerable measure of success which has been the outcome of these fierce industrial struggles. On the whole, the strikers gained much better terms than they could possibly have done unassisted. Almost entirely foreigners, they had no adequate means of reaching with their story the English-speaking and reading public of their city. The Leagues made it their particular business to see that the strikers' side of the dispute was brought out in the press and in meetings and gatherings of different groups. It is related of one manufacturer, whose house was strike-bound, that he was heard one day expressing to a friend in their club his bewilderment over the never-ending publicity given to this strike in the daily newspapers, adding that it was a pity; these affairs were always better settled quietly. To win even from failure success, to win for success permanence, was the next aim of the League, and nowhere has this constructive policy of theirs brought about more significant results than in the aid which they were able to give to the workers in the sewing trades. In New York it was the League which made possible the large organizations which exist today among the cloak-makers, the waist-makers and other white-goods-workers. The League support during the great strikes, and its continued quiet work after the strikes were over, first showed the public that there was power and meaning in this new development, this new spirit among the most oppressed women workers. The attitude of the League also convinced labor men that this was no dilettante welfare society, but absolutely fair and square with the labor movement. The Chicago League, after helping in the same way in the garment-workers' strike which is now in its fifth year, contributed towards bringing about the agreement between the firm of Hart, Schaffner and Marx, Chicago, and their employés, an agreement controlling the wages and the working conditions of between 7,000 and 10,000 men and women, the number varying with the season and the state of trade. The plan of preference to unionists, which gives to this form of contract the name of the "Preferential Shop," had its origin in Australia, where it is embodied in arbitration acts, but in no single trade there had it been applied on such a huge scale. The Protocol of Peace, which is a trade agreement similar to that of the Hart, Schaffner and Marx employés, and which came into force first in the cloak and suit industry in New York after the strike of 1913, affects, it is stated, the enormous number of 300,000 workers.[A] [Footnote A: In May, 1915, the Protocol was set aside by the cloak and suit manufacturers. A strike impended. Mayor Mitchel called a Council of Conciliation, Dr. Felix Adler as chairman. Their report was accepted by the union and finally by the employers, and industrial peace was restored.] Just as sound and important work is being done all the time with many smaller groups. For instance, the straw-and panama-hat-makers of New York tried to organize and were met by a number of the manufacturers with a black list. A general strike was declared on February 14, 1913. The League members were able to give very valuable aid to the strikers by assisting in picketing and by attending the courts when the pickets were arrested. This strike had to be called off, and was apparently lost, but the union remains and is far stronger than before the strike took place. But better results even than this were gained in the strike in the potteries in Trenton, New Jersey. The Central Labor Union of Trenton and all the trade-union men in the city gave splendid coöperation to the strikers. They handed over the girls to the care of Miss Melinda Scott, the League organizer, and under her directions the inexperienced unionists did fine work and helped to bring about a satisfactory settlement. This success gave heart of grace to the girls in certain woolen and silk mills of Trenton. Wages there were appalling. They varied from two dollars and fifty cents to eleven dollars. Many children, nominally fourteen, but looking very young, were employed. The owner of the factory at length consented to meet the workers with the League organizer in conference at the New York headquarters, and after several weeks the strike was settled on the workers' terms. The New York organizer also helped the Boston League in the strike of the paper factories of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The cause of the strike here was an arrangement under which eight girls could be got to do the work of twelve. Here the workers actually stood up for a share of the profits under the new arrangement, or else that the discharged girls should be reinstated. The manufacturers chose the latter alternative. The Candy Workers' Union in Boston was also formed through the Women's Trade Union League. The girls had walked all over Boston for two days asking policemen, carmen and anyone else who would listen to them how to form a union. They had no umbrellas, and their shoes were dripping with the wet. They were Jewish, Italian and American girls. As a result of the organization formed they obtained a very material raise in wages, the better allotment of work in the slack season and the taking up of all disputed questions between the manufacturers and the union. From experience gained during these gigantic industrial wars, the National League has laid down definite conditions under which its locals may coöperate with unions in time of strike. These take part only in strikes in which women are involved, and then only after having been formally invited to assist, and on the understanding that two League representatives may attend all executive meetings of the strikers' union. It has been found that the lines in which the aid of the Women's Trade Union League is of most value to any exploited group are these: (1) organization and direction of public opinion; (2) patrolling the streets; (3) fair play in the courts; (4) help in the raising of funds through unions and allies; (5) where workers are unorganized, help in the formation of trade-union organization. The League workers thus make it their business to open up channels of publicity, at least giving the papers something to talk about, and reaching with the strikers' side of the story, churches, clubs, and other associations of well-meaning citizens, who are not at all in touch with organized labor. Allies, in particular, can do much to preserve traditions of fair play, in regard to the use of the streets for peaceful picketing. By providing bonds for girls arrested, lawfully or unlawfully, and by attending in person such cases when these come up in court, they are standing for the principles of democracy. In addition, the local leagues are willing to take charge of the arrangements under which girls are sent to other unions, asking for moral and financial aid. Men trade unionists long ago discovered how irresistible a pleader the young girl can be, but they are not always equally impressed with the need of safeguarding the girls, often little more than children, chosen for these trying expeditions, and sent off alone, or at best, two together, to distant industrial centers. The working-girl needs no chaperon, but equally with her wealthier sister, she does require and ought to receive motherly care and oversight. She is perhaps leaving home for the first time, and there should be someone to see to it that when she arrives in a strange city a comfortable and convenient lodging-place has been found for her. She should be shown how to conserve her strength in finding her way from one locality to another in following up the evening meetings of unions, and she should have some woman to turn to if she should become sick. Points, all of these, the busy secretaries of central labor bodies may very easily overlook, accustomed as they are to deal with mature men, in the habit of traveling about the country, who may surely be left to take care of themselves. The activities of the local leagues vary in detail in the different cities. In all there are monthly business meetings, the business run by the girls, with perhaps a speaker to follow, and sometimes a program of entertainment. Lectures on week evenings, classes and amusements are provided as far as workers and funds permit. The first important work among newly arrived women immigrants in the Middle West was done by the Chicago League, and this laid the groundwork for the present Immigrants' Protective League. Headquarters are a center for organizing, open all the time to receive word of struggling unions, helping out in difficulties, counseling the impulsive, and encouraging the timid. When a group of workers see for themselves the need of organization, a body of experienced women standing ready to mother a new little union, the hospitable room standing open, literally night and day, can afford the most powerful aid in extending organization among timid girls. If courage and daring are needed in this work, courage to stand by the weak, daring to go out and picket in freezing weather with unfriendly policemen around, patience is if possible more essential in the organizer's make-up. It often takes months of gentle persistence before the girls, be they human-hair-workers or cracker-packers, or domestic workers or stenographers, see how greatly it is to their own interest to join or to form a labor organization. Many locals formed with so much thought and after so much pains, drop to pieces after a few months or a year or two. That is a universal experience in the labor movement everywhere. But it does not therefore follow that nothing has been gained. Even a group so loosely held together that it melts away after the first impulse of indignation has died out is often successful in procuring shorter hours or better wages or improved conditions for the trade or shops of their city. Besides each individual girl has had a little bit of education in what coöperation means, and what collective bargaining can do. The League itself is a reminder, too, that all working-girls have many interests in common, whatever their trade. But besides aiding in the forming of new locals, the Women's Trade Union League can be a force strengthening the unions already established. Each of the leagues has an organization committee, whose meetings are attended by delegates from the different women's trades. These begin mostly as experience meetings, but end generally in either massing the effort of all on one particular union's struggle, or in planning legislative action by which all women workers can be benefited. In New York and Boston, Chicago and St. Louis and Kansas City the local leagues have in every case had a marked effect upon industrial legislation for women. They have been prime movers in the campaigns for better fire protection in the factories in both New York and Chicago, and for the limitation of hours of working-women in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Missouri, and for minimum-wage legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois. In every one of these states the Women's Trade Union League has first of all provided an opportunity for the organized women of different trades to come together and decide upon a common policy; next, to coöperate with other bodies, such as the State Federation of Labor, and the city centrals, the Consumers' League, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the women's clubs, in support of such humane legislation. Much of the actual lobbying necessary has been done by the girls themselves, and they have exercised a power out of all proportion to their numbers or the tiny treasury at their disposal. No arguments of sociologists were half so convincing to legislators or so enlightening to the public as those of the girls who had themselves been through the mill. "Every hour I carry my trays I walk a mile," said Elizabeth Maloney of the Waitresses' Union. "Don't you think that eight hours a day is enough for any girl to walk?" When we turn to the National League itself, if there is less to record of actual achievement, there are possibilities untold. Never before have all the work of this country had an organization, open to all, with which to express themselves on a national scale. Early in 1905 the Executive Board of the League appointed a committee with Mary McDowell chairman to secure the coöperation of all organizations interested in the welfare of woman in demanding a federal investigation and report upon the conditions of working-women and girls in all the principal industrial centers. Miss McDowell called to her aid all the forces of organized labor, the General Federation of Women's Clubs and other women's associations, the social settlements and church workers. So strengthened and supported, the committee then went to Washington, and consulted with President Roosevelt and the then Commissioner of Labor, Dr. Charles P. Neill. Miss McDowell, more than any other one person, was responsible for the passing in 1907 of the measure which authorized and the appropriation which made possible the investigation which during the next four years the Department of Commerce and Labor made. The result of that investigation is contained in the nineteen volumes of the report. The first gatherings of any size at which League members met and conferred together were the interstate conferences, held simultaneously in Boston, New York and Chicago, the first in the summer of 1907 and the second in 1908. The former was the first interstate conference of women unionists ever held in the United States, and it was therefore a most notable event. Especially was it interesting because of the number of women delegates who came from other states, and from quite distant points, Boston drawing them from the New England states, New York from its own extensive industrial territory, and Chicago from the Middle West. Inspired by what she heard in Chicago, Hannah Hennessy went back to found the St. Louis Women's Trade Union League. It was at the first interstate conference, also, that a committee was appointed to wait upon the American Federation of Labor Executive Board, during the Norfolk Convention in November, 1907. The Illinois State Committee of the Women's Trade Union League, whose fine legislative work helped to secure the passage of the present ten-hour law for women, also grew out of the discussion which came up in the Chicago conference. The lines on which the League is developing can be observed through the work done and reported upon at the biennial conventions of which five have been held. The first, at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907, was an informal gathering of but seven delegates, women who had been attending the convention of the American Federation of Labor of that year. Subsequent conventions have taken place every two years since then. These have been held in Chicago, Boston and St. Louis and New York respectively. On each occasion about seventy delegates have reported. They are certainly a picked lot of girls. They are trained, trained not in fancy debate, but in practical discussion. They have met with employers in trade conferences where an error in statement or a hasty word might mean a cut in wages or an increase in hours for two years to come. They have met with their fellow-workers in union meetings, where, if a girl aspires to lead her sisters or brothers, she has to show both readiness of wit and good-humored patience in differing from the others. These women are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every one of them, and not one can be evaded. Industrial legislation, judicial decisions, the right to organize, the power to vote, are to the awakened working-woman not just academic questions, but something that affects her wages, her hours. They may mean enough to eat, time to rest, and beyond these home happiness and social freedom. In two directions especially can the growing importance of the women's trade-union movement be observed: on the one hand in the incessant appeals, coming from all over the continent, to the National League, for advice and assistance in organizing women into the local unions of their trade; on the other in the degree in which it is gradually coming to be recognized by public men, by politicians, by business men, as well as by students and thinkers, that it is to organized women they must turn, whenever they want an authoritative expression as to the working-women's needs and desires. Two sets of resolutions discussed and passed by the fourth biennial convention of the National Women's Trade Union League, held in 1913, were afterwards published broadcast over the country, and have been of marked educational value. The one pleaded for the speedy enfranchisement of women for these reasons: because the most costly production and the most valuable asset of any nation is its output of men and women; because the industrial conditions under which more than six million girls and women are forced to work is an individual and social menace; and because working-women as an unenfranchised class are continually used to lower the standards of men. The League in particular protested against the ill-judged activities of the anti-suffrage women, "a group of women of leisure, who by accident of birth have led sheltered and protected lives, and who never through experience have had to face the misery that low wages and long hours produce." This stirring, appeal made a profound impression on suffragists and anti-suffragists alike, in the labor world, and amid the general public. It was of course hotly resented by that small group of women of privilege, who think they know better than working-women what are the needs of working-women. Its deep significance lay in that it was a voice from the voiceless millions. It gave many pause to think and catch, as they had never caught before, the vital meaning underlying the demand for the vote. The other series of resolutions expressed no less forcefully the women's consciousness of the intimate connection between education and labor, and pressed home the fact that organized laboring-women are watchful of the work being done in our public schools, and are anxious that it should be brought and kept up to the level of present-day needs. As is mentioned elsewhere, these resolutions laid special stress upon the necessity of making all courses of industrial training coeducational, of including in them the history of the evolution of industry, and the philosophy of collective bargaining, and of insuring that all boys and girls, before they leave school to go to work, have a knowledge of the state and federal laws that exist for their protection. These resolutions were sent to 1,075 boards of education in the United States. Replies have been received from twenty-six boards in fifteen states. Of these fourteen already have vocational training in their schools, two are planning such training, and six referred the resolutions to committees. Of those having training in the schools, thirteen have courses open to both boys and girls, and one has courses for girls exclusively, but is planning to open a school for boys. The National League for four years published its own magazine, _Life and Labor_, with a double function; on the one hand as the organ of the League activities, and the expression of the members' views; on the other as a running diary of what was happening in the world of working-women, for the information of students and of all interested in sociological matters. In the chapter on The Woman Organizer allusion is made to the efforts of the League to train women as trade-union organizers. Miss Louisa Mittelstadt, of Kansas City, and Miss Myrtle Whitehead, of Baltimore, belonging to different branches of the Brewery Workers, came to Chicago to be trained in office and field work, and are now making good use of their experience. One was sent by the central labor body, and the other by the local league. Miss Fannie Colin was a third pupil, a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers, from New York City. A word in conclusion regarding some of the typical leaders who are largely responsible for the policy of the League, and are to be credited in no small measure with its successes. After Mrs. Raymond Robins, the national president, already spoken of, and standing beside her as a national figure comes Agnes Nestor, of Irish descent, and a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, upon whose slight shoulders rest alike burdens and honors. Both she bears calmly. She is a glove-worker, and the only woman president of an international union. She is both a member of the National Executive Board of the Women's Trade Union League, and the president of the Chicago League, and she has served as one of the two women members of the Federal Commission on Industrial Education. She has done fine work as a leader in her own city of Chicago, but neither Chicago, nor even Illinois, can claim her when the nation calls. Melinda Scott is English by birth, belongs to New York, and has achieved remarkable results in her own union of the hat-trimmers. It is not during the exciting stage of a perhaps spectacular strike that Miss Scott shines; it is during the weary time when only patience and endurance can hold the girls together, and afterwards, when, whether the strike is lost or won, enthusiasm is apt to flag, and when disputes bid fair to break down the hardly won agreement. Initiated at sixteen into the Knights of Labor, Leonora O'Reilly took the vows that she has ever since kept in the spirit and in the letter. After many years spent as a garment-worker, she became a teacher in the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. She was one of the charter members of the New York Women's Trade Union League and has always been one of its most effective speakers. Leonora and her Celtic idealism have made many converts. Russia in America is embodied in Rose Schneidermann. She is the living representative of the gifts that the Slavic races, and especially the Russian Jew, have contributed to American life. Coming here in childhood, her life has been spent in New York. As an example of her achievements, for four years she worked untiringly among the white-goods-workers of New York, until they were strong enough to call a general strike, a strike which was so successful that they won a great part of their demands, and ever since have held their union together, seven thousand strong. Penetrated with the profound sadness of her people, and passionately alive to the workers' wrongs, Rose Schneidermann can stir immense audiences, and move them to tears as readily as to indignation. For her all the hope of the world's future is embodied in two movements, trade unionism on the one hand and socialism on the other. [Illustration: IN A BASEMENT SWEATSHOP Women picking rags collected from households. These rags have neither been cleaned nor disinfected and give off dust at every handling.] [Illustration: GIRL GAS BLOWERS. KANSAS CITY] The New York League owes much of its success to Mary Dreier, the sister of Mrs. Raymond Robins. She was its president for several years, and by her perseverance and devotion, did much to build up the organization in its early days. The rest of the League leaders must be summed up even more briefly. Mary Anderson, a member of the Boot and Shoe Workers' International Board, is of Scandinavian origin, and has all the steadfastness of the Swedes. Another very excellent organizer and much-loved trade unionist is Emma Steghagen, also of the Boot and Shoe Workers, and for seven years secretary of the Chicago League. She may be called the League veteran, for her association with trade unionism began with the Knights of Labor. Others are Mary McEnerney, Mary Haney, Hilda Svenson. Elizabeth Maloney, she of the snapping eyes and fervent heart, marshals her waitresses through strike after strike against grinding employers, or she eloquently pleads their cause, whether in the state legislature, or with her own International, at the convention of the Hotel and Restaurant Employés, if the men show themselves a bit forgetful, as they sometimes do, of the girls' interest. Nelle Quick, bindery woman, has been transferred from her trade-union activities in St. Louis to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the state of Missouri. From among clerical workers came into the League women who have left their mark, Helen Marot and Alice Bean, of New York, and Mabel Gillespie, of Boston, while Stella Franklin, the Australian, for long held the reins of the national office in Chicago. Gertrude Barnum, who graduated into trade unionism from settlement work, and Josephine Casey, of the Elevated Railroad Clerks, are two who were long actively associated with the Woman's Trade Union League, but of late years both have been organizers under the International of the Ladies' Garment Workers. Among the allies, the non-wage-earners, are Mary Dreier, president of the New York League, who was also the only woman member of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission; Mrs. Glendower Evans, notable for her service in advancing legislation for the minimum wage; Mary McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, mother of the stockyards folk, beloved of the Poles and the Bohemians and the Ruthenians, who cross the ocean to settle on the desolate banks of Bubbly Creek. Mrs. D.W. Knefler, of St. Louis, did pioneering work for girlish trade unionism in that conservative city. Miss Gillespie, the Secretary of the Boston Women's Trade Union League, has been for years its main standby. Working in coöperation with the young president, Miss Julia O'Connor, of the Telephone Operators, her influence in the labor movement is an important factor in the Massachusetts situation. She is a member of the State Minimum Wage Commission. Young as is the League, some most heroic members have already passed into the unseen. Adelaide Samuels was a teacher in the public schools who, in the day of very small things for the New York League, acted as treasurer and chairman of the label committee. In her scant leisure she worked patiently towards the end that girls in the poorest trades should win for themselves the power of making the collective bargain. She died before she could have seen any tangible results from her efforts. Hannah Hennessy, who carried away from the first interstate conference in Chicago a vision in her heart of a Women's Trade Union League in every large city, a few years later laid down her life as the result of the hardships endured while picketing on behalf of the Marx and Haas strikers. Her youth had slipped away, and her strength had been sapped by weary years as an ill-paid garment-worker, so that exposure to cold and wet found her power of resistance gone, and a few weeks later she was no more. At the other end of the social scale, but thrilled with the same unselfish desire to better the conditions of the girl toilers, stood Carola Woerishofer, the rich college girl, who, once she was committed to the cause, never spared herself, picketing today, giving bonds tomorrow for the latest prisoner of the strike, spending a whole hot summer in a laundry, that she might know first-hand what the toiler pays that we may wear clean clothes. And so on, until the last sad scene of all, when on duty as inspector of the New York State Immigration Bureau, her car capsized, and Carola Woerishofer's brief, strenuous service to humanity was ended. From yet another group came Frances Squire Potter, formerly professor of English Literature in the University of Minnesota, who a few years ago became profoundly impressed with the unfair and oppressive conditions under which working-women live and toil. Thus was she led far away from academic fields, first into suffrage work, and later into the National Women's Trade Union League. Until her health gave way, about a year before her death, she acted as official lecturer for the League. Through her unique gifts as a speaker, and her beautiful personality, she interpreted the cause of the working-woman to many thousands of hearers. She was also departmental editor of _Life and Labor_, the League's magazine. Great have been the vicissitudes of the labor movement among men, but for many years now, the tendency towards national cohesion has been growing. This tendency has been greatly strengthened by the rapid development, and at the same time, the cheapening of the means of transport and communication between distant regions of the country. In the advantages arising from this general growth of the labor movement, both in its local activities and on its national side, women workers have indeed shared. This is true, both on account of the direct benefits accruing to them through joining mixed organizations, or being aided by men to form separate organizations of their own, and also through the vast assistance rendered by organized labor in obtaining protective legislation for the most utterly helpless and exploited toilers, for example, the child-labor laws which state after state has placed upon the statute book, sanitary regulations, and laws for the safeguarding of machinery dangerous to workers. Still, compared with the extensive movement among men, in which the women have been more or less a side issue, feminine trade unionism has been but fitful in its manifestations, and far indeed from keeping pace with the rate at which women have poured into the industrial field. The youth of a large number of the girl workers, and the fact that, as they grow up, so many of them pass out of the wage-earning occupations, marriage, and the expectation of marriage, the main obstacles that stand in the way today in getting women to organize and to hold their unions together, furnish also the underlying causes of the want of continuity of the trade-union movement among women since it first began in the United States in the early part of the last century. The too frequent change in the personnel of the members, and therefore in the composition of the union itself, means an absence of the permanence of spirit which is an essential condition for the handing on in unbroken succession of standards of loyalty and esprit de corps. It is continuity that has rendered possible all human progress, through the passing on from all of us to our successors, of each small acquirement, of each elevation of standard. Where, but for such continuity would be the college spirit, that descends upon and baptizes the newcomer as he enters the college gates? Where, but for continuity would be the constantly rising standards of morality and social responsibility? Where, but for continuity would be national life and all that makes patriotism worthy? Where, indeed, would be humanity itself? The average man is a wage-earner, and as such a fit subject for organization. If extensive groups of men remain unorganized, the responsibility lies partly on the trade unions, and is partly conditioned by our social and political environment. But either way, a man is a trade unionist or he is not. The line is clear cut, and trade unions therefore admit no one not actually a worker in their own trade. But it is not so with women. Outside the wage-earning groups there is the great bulk of married women, and a still considerable, though ever-lessening number of single women, who, although productive laborers, are yet, owing to the primitive and antiquated status of home industry, not acknowledged as such in the labor market. Not being remunerated in money, they are not considered as wage-earners. (Witness the census report, which, in omitting those performing unpaid domestic duties from the statistics of gainful occupations, does but reflect the tragic fact that woman's home work has no money value and confirms the popular impression that "mother doesn't work.") Yet another force to be reckoned with in estimating the difficulties which stand in the way of unionizing women is the widespread hostility to trade unionism, as expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, and through public speakers, both religious and secular. The average girl, even more than the average man, is sensitive to public opinion, as expressed through such accepted channels of authority. The standards of public opinion have been her safeguard in the past, and she still looks to them for guidance, not realizing how often such commonly accepted views are misinterpretations of the problems she herself has to face today. In the middle of the last century, a period that was most critical for men's unions in England, a number of leaders of public thought, men of influence and standing in the community, such as Charles Kingsley, Frederick Denison Maurice and others, came to the help of the men by maintaining their right to organize. In the United States, during the corresponding stage of extreme unpopularity, Horace Greeley, Charles A. Dana and Wendell Phillips extended similar support to workingmen. We today are apt to forget that women's unions with us are just now in the very same immature stage of development, as men's unions passed through half a century ago. The labor men of that day had their position immensely strengthened by just such help afforded from outside their immediate circle. It is therefore not strange that women's unions, at their present stage of growth, should be in need of just such help. To sum up, in addition to all the difficulties which have to be met by men in the labor movement, women are at a disadvantage through the comparative youth and inexperience of many female workers, through their want of trade training, through the assumption, almost universal among young girls, that they will one day marry and leave the trade, and through their unconscious response to the public opinion which disapproves of women joining trade unions. It is then the lack of permanence, of continuity in spirit and in concerted action, produced by all these causes, working together, and the difficulties in the way of remedying this lack of permanence, which this young organization, the National Women's Trade Union League of America, has fully and fairly recognized, and which, with a courage matched to its high purpose, it is facing and trying to conquer. The Women's Trade Union League, while essentially a part of the labor movement, has yet its own definite rôle to play, and at this point it is well to note the response made by organized labor in supporting the League's efforts. It works under the endorsement of both the American Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, and has received in its undertakings the practical support, besides, of many of the most influential of the international unions, in occupations as different as those of the shoe-workers, the carpenters and the miners. The rank and file of the local organizations, in city after city, have given the same hearty and unqualified approval to the League's pioneering work, in bringing the unorganized women and girls into the unions, and in carrying on a constant educative work among those already organized. As an instance of this openly expressed approval, take the cordial coöperation which the Chicago League has ever received from the Chicago Federation of Labor and its allied locals. But, owing to the complexity of women's lives, the varied and inconsistent demands that are made upon their energies, the organization of the League has to be somewhat different from that of any body which labor men would have formed for themselves. Locally the relationship varies. In St. Louis the League has never been represented in the central body by its own delegates, but by members representing primarily their own organizations, such as Bindery Women and Boot and Shoe Workers. In Boston, New York and Chicago each League is represented by its own delegates. In Kansas City, Missouri, again, not only are the delegates of the League seated in the central body, but every union of men in it pays a per capita tax into the funds of the Kansas City Women's Trade Union League. The National League receives a certain amount of financial support from the American Federation of Labor, and from a number of the international unions, several of the latter being affiliated with the League. State federations, city central bodies, and local unions in different parts of the country give similar coöperation and money support. As the labor movement is organized, it collects into suitable groups the different classes of wage-earners. But the average housekeeping, married woman, although both worker and producer, is not a wage-earner, although more and more, as the home industries become specialized is she becoming a wage-earner for at least part of her time. But, as our lives are arranged at present the largest proportion of married women and a considerable number of single women are ineligible for admission as members of any trade union. Are they therefore to be shut out from the labor movement, and from participation in its activities, no matter how closely their own interests are bound up with it, no matter how intensely they are in sympathy with its aims, no matter though as single girls they may have been members of a union? We have noted already how much stronger the labor movement would be if the women and girls engaged in the trades were brought in through organization. Still further would organized men be advantaged if their movement were reinforced by this great body of home-keeping women, vast in numbers, and with their untouched reserves of energy and experience. Again, it is only by making room for such women within the labor movement that women can be represented in sufficient numbers in the councils of labor. As long as there was no recognized way of admitting the home woman to even a tiny corner of the labor field, as long as entry was restricted solely to the wage-earning woman, there seemed no chance of women being ever in anything but a hopeless minority in either local or international union, and that minority, too, composed so largely of young and inexperienced girls. Is it any wonder, then, that the interests of the working-girls have suffered, and that, as a ready consequence, workingmen's interests have suffered, too. The Women's Trade Union League is also bringing into touch with the labor movement other women's organizations, and especially winning their increased coöperation in the campaigns for legislation. It is largely through the ally[A] membership that the Women's Trade Union League has been able to reach the public ear as well as to attract assistance and coöperation, especially from the suffragists and the women's clubs. The suffragists have always been more or less in sympathy with labor organizations, while outside labor circles, the largest body to second the efforts of organized labor in the direction of humanity has been the women's clubs, whether expressing themselves through the General Federation, or through local activity in their home towns. An immense group of women thus early became committed to an active opposition to the employment of children either in factories, or under the even more dangerous and demoralizing conditions which await mere babies in the street or in tenement homes. [Footnote A: An ally is a man or a woman of any class not a worker in any organized trade who believes in the organization of women and subscribes to the following League platform. 1. Organization of all workers into trade unions. 2. Equal pay for equal work. 3. Eight-hour day. 4. A living wage. 5. Full citizenship for women.] There is a similar movement going on within the National Young Women's Christian Association. The reason for this stand being taken by women's organizations was characteristic. The impelling force that urged those women on was something far deeper than mere philanthropy. It was the acceptance by a whole group of women of the old responsibilities of motherhood, in the new form that these must take on if new conditions are to be met. It was as if the motherhood of the country had said in so many words: "Social conditions are changing, but we are still the mothers of the new generation. Society is threatened with this calamity, that they will pass beyond our care before the needs and claims of childhood have been satisfied. As individuals we are now powerless. Let us see what coöperation will do to right conditions that are fast slipping beyond our control." But how unconscious the vast number of women of this type were, either of the true nature of the force they were obeying or the point whither they were tending, was graphically illustrated at the Biennial Federation of Women's Clubs in St. Paul, in 1906, when a woman protested from the floor against the appointment of a committee to deal with industrial conditions. She added that she was all in favor of the Federation working against child labor, but they had no call to interfere in industrial questions. This is an illustration of how the rank and file of the clubwomen became committed to industrial reform as part of their program, and incidentally, although there were those among their leaders who well knew whither the movement was tending. The Women's Trade Union League represents one of the forces that is leading on the most conservative among them to stand forth for industrial justice consciously and deliberately, while the League's special aims are brought the nearer to accomplishment by the support of this other group of women. The Women's Trade Union League is, and as long as it fulfills its present function, will surely remain, a federation of trade unions with women members, but it finds a niche and provides an honorable and useful function for the wives of workingmen, for ex-trade-union women, and for others who endorse trade unionism and gladly give their support to a constructive work, aiming at strengthening the weakest wing of labor, the unorganized, down-driven, underpaid working-girls. If the League is to be an organization open to, and aiming at including eventually the great majority of working-women, it must be so flexible as to admit the woman who works in the home without formal wages, as well as the woman who works for an employer for wages. Both are in many respects upon the same footing in relation to society. Both are earners and producers. Both require the help of organization. Both should be an integral part of the labor movement. Both therefore may be consistently received as dues-paying members into Women's Trade Union Leagues, even although we are still too confused and puzzled to permit of housewives forming their own unions, and therefore such members have to be received as allies. In thus leaving open a door, however, through which all working-women may enter the League, the founders were mindful of the fact, and have it embodied in the constitution, that the main strength must lie in the increasing number of wage-earning girls and women who are socially developed up to the point of being themselves organized into trade unions. The League has so far grown, and can in the future grow normally, only so far as it is the highest organized expression of the ideals, the wishes and the needs of the wage-earning girl. As for the woman of wealth, I should be the last to question her right to opportunities for self-development, or to deny her the joy of assisting her sorely driven sisters to rise out of the industrial mire, and stand erect in self-reliant independence. But if the League is to grow until it becomes the universal expression of the woman's part in organized labor, then the privilege of assisting with financial help the ordinary activities of the League can be hers only during the infancy of the body. No organization can draw its nurture permanently from sources outside of itself, although many a movement has been nursed through its early stages of uncertainty and struggle by the aid of the sympathetic and understanding outsider. V THE HUGE STRIKES In September, 1909, the name of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company, which has since become a word of such ill omen, was known to few outside the trade. The factory had not then been wrapped in the flames and smoke of the Asch fire, that was to cut short the lives of one hundred and forty-three workers, and to blight the existence and mar the happiness of many more. But by a not altogether inexplicable coincidence, it had been among the employés of this very firm that the smoldering flames of human discontent broke out, that were to grow into the "Strike of the Forty Thousand," a strike that proved to be but the first of a long series of revolts among the foreign garment-workers of the largest cities in the East and the Middle West. It is true that in such an extensive trade as that of making ready-made clothes, with its low wages and its speeding-up, its sweating and its uncertainty of employment, there is always a strike on somewhere. At that very time, there were in progress two strikes of quite respectable size: one in Boston, under the Ladies' Tailors' and Dressmakers' Union, and the other in St. Louis, where the long-drawn-out Marx and Haas strike involving the makers of men's ready-made clothing, was in its first stage. But outside of labor circles, these strikes were attracting no particular attention. The public were not even aware of what was happening, and would have been entirely indifferent if they had known. The turning out of ladies' ready-made waists is an immense business in New York. The trade, like other branches of garment-making, is largely in the hands of Jewish employers. The workers are principally recently arrived foreigners, Russian and other Slavic Jews, Italians and other immigrants from eastern Europe. They are in an overwhelming majority women, or, to be more accurate, girls. During all the earlier part of the year 1909 the Ladies' Waist Makers' Union No. 25 had been showing quite undue activity and unwelcome persistence in preaching unionism and its advantages among all and sundry of these foreign girls, and with quite unusual success. The managers of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company awoke one morning to a sense of what was happening. To quote from a writer in _The Outlook_: One of the firm appeared before the girls and told them in kind phrases that the company was friendly to the union, and that they desired to encourage it, and that they might better give assistance, they would like to know what girls belonged to it. The girls, taken in by this speech, acknowledged their membership; only, instead of a few that the company had thought to discover and weed out, it developed that one hundred and fifty girls were members. That evening they were told, in the same kind way, that, because of a lull in the trade, due to an uncertainty as to fashions in sleeves, there was for the time being no more work. The girls took their discharge without suspicion; but the next morning they saw in the newspaper advertisements of the company asking for shirt-waist operators at once. Their eyes opened by this, the girls picketed the shop, and told the girls who answered the advertisement that the shop was on strike. The company retaliated by hiring thugs to intimidate the girls, and for several weeks the picketing girls were being constantly attacked and beaten. These mêlées were followed by wholesale arrests of strikers, from a dozen to twenty girls being arrested daily. Out of ninety-eight arrested all but nineteen were fined in sums of from one to ten dollars. With the aid of the police and a complaisant bench the Triangle Company had been successful in its attempt to empty the young union's treasury, and had likewise intimidated the workers till their courage and spirit were failing them. The manufacturers had accomplished their object. At this stage the New York Women's Trade Union League took up the battle of the girls. Every morning they stationed allies in front of the factory, to act as witnesses against illegal arrest, and to prevent interference with lawful picketing. The wrath of the police was then turned upon the League. First one and then another ally was arrested, this performance culminating in the unlawful arrest of Mary Dreier, president of the League. The police were sadly fooled upon this occasion, and their position was not in any degree strengthened, when they angrily, and just as unreasonably freed their prisoner, as soon as they discovered her identity. "Why didn't you tell me you was a rich lady? I'd never have arrested you in the world." This was good copy for the newspapers, and the whole story of wrongful discharge, unlawful arrest and insulting treatment of the strikers by the police began to filter into the public mind through the columns of the daily press. It was shown that what had happened in the case of the Triangle employés had been repeated, with variations, in the case of many other shops. Respectable and conservative citizens began to wonder if there might not be two sides to the story. They learned, for instance, of the unjust "bundle" system, under which the employer gives out a bundle of work to a girl, and when she returns the completed work, gives her a ticket which she can convert into cash on pay day. If the ticket, a tiny scrap of paper, should be lost, the girl had no claim on the firm for the work she had actually done. Again, some employers had insisted that they paid good wages, showing books revealing the astonishing fact that girls were receiving thirty dollars, thirty-five dollars, and even forty dollars per week. Small reason to strike here, said the credulous reader, as he or she perused the morning paper. But the protest of the libelled manufacturer lost much of its force, when it was explained that these large sums were not the wage of one individual girl, but were group earnings, paid to one girl, and receipted for by her, but having to be shared with two, three or four others, who had worked with and under the girl whose name appeared on the payroll. Monday, November 22, was a memorable day. A mass meeting had been called in Cooper Union to consider the situation. Mr. Gompers was one of the speakers. At the far end of the hall rose a little Jewish girl, and asked to be heard. Once on the platform, she began speaking in Yiddish, fast and earnestly. She concluded by saying she was tired of talking, and so would put the motion for a general strike of the whole trade. One who was present, describing the tense dramatic moment that followed, writes: "The audience unanimously endorsed it. 'Do you mean faith?' said the chairman. 'Will you take the old Jewish oath,' And up came 2,000 Jewish hands with the prayer, 'If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither and drop off at the wrist from this arm I now raise.'" The girl was Clara Lemlich, from the Leiserson factory. She did not complain for herself, for she was a fairly well-paid worker, making up to fifteen dollars in the rush season, but for her much poorer sisters. The response within that hall typified the response next day outside. I quote the words of an onlooker: From every waist-making factory in New York and Brooklyn, the girls poured forth, filling the narrow streets of the East Side, crowding the headquarters at Clinton Hall, and overflowing into twenty-four smaller halls in the vicinity. It was like a mighty army, rising in the night, and demanding to be heard. But it was an undisciplined army. Without previous knowledge of organization, without means of expression, these young workers, mostly under twenty, poured into the Union. For the first two weeks from 1,000 to 1,500 joined each day. The clerical work alone, involved in, registering and placing recruits was almost overwhelming. Then halls had to be rented and managed, and speakers to be procured. And not for one nationality alone. Each hall, and there were twenty-four, had to have speakers in Yiddish, Italian and English. Every member of the League was pressed into service. Still small halls were not enough. Lipzin's Theatre was offered to the strikers, and mass meetings were held there five afternoons a week. Meanwhile committees were appointed from each shop to settle upon a price list. As the quality of work differed in different shops, a uniform wage was impossible and had to be settled by each shop individually. When the hundreds of price lists were at last complete, meetings were arranged for each shop committee and their employers. Again the price list was discussed, and a compromise usually effected. In almost every shop, however, an increase of from 15 to 20 per cent. was granted. Apart from wages, the contract insured significant improvements. Besides calling for recognition of the union it demanded full pay for legal holidays, limited night work during the rush season to eight P.M., abolished all Sunday work, did away with the inside contracting system, under which one girl took out work for several, and provided for a fair allotment of work in slack seasons. After one hundred and ninety firms had signed up, and the majority of the strikers had returned to their shops, an attempt was made to settle with the still obdurate employers through arbitration, at the suggestion of the National Civic Federation. Meanwhile picketing was going on; the pickets were being punished, not only with heavy fines, thus depleting the union's treasury, but with terms in the workhouse. Some of these criminals for principle were little girls in short skirts, and no attempt was made to separate them when in confinement from disorderly characters. But what was the result? The leaders saw to it that a photograph was taken of such a group, with "Workhouse Prisoners" pinned across the breast of each, and worn as a badge of honor, a diploma of achievement, and the newspapers were but too glad to print the picture. When that spirit of irrepressible energy and revolt once possesses men or women, punishment is converted into reward, disgrace transmuted into honor. This it was, more even than the story of the wrongs endured, which had its effect on the public. In the rebound of feeling the illegality of the police behavior was admitted. The difficulties put in the way of the courageous little pickets led to the forming of parades, and the holding of meetings even in a class of society where no one had counted on receiving sympathy. The ladies of the rich and exclusive Colony Club learned from the girls themselves of the many disadvantages connected with waist-making. For instance that in the off season there was little regular work at all; and that all the time there were the fines and breakages. One girl told how she had been docked for a tucking foot, which, as she said, just wore out on her, "It wasn't really my fault," she concluded, "and I think the boss should look out for his own foots." Said another: "When a girl comes five minutes late at my shop, she is compelled to go home. She may live outside of the city, it does not matter, she must go home and lose a day. "We work eight days in the week. This may seem strange to you who know that there are only seven days in the week. But we work from seven in the morning till very late at night, when there's a rush, and sometimes we work a week and a half in one week." The socialist women did yeoman service, protecting the pickets, attending the trials, speaking at meetings and taking a full share of the hard work. The organized suffragists and clubwomen were drawn into the thick of the fight. They spread the girls' story far and wide, raised money, helped to find bonds, and were rewarded by increased inspiration for their own propaganda. The enormous extent of the strike, being, as it was, by far the largest uprising of women that has ever taken place upon this continent, while adding proportionately to the difficulties of conducting it to a successful issue, yet in the end deepened and intensified the lesson it conveyed. In the end about three hundred shops signed up, but of these at least a hundred were lost during the first year. This was due, the workers say, partly to the terrible dullness in the trade following the strike, and partly to the fact that they were not entirely closed shops. Since then, however, the organization has grown in strength. It was one of these coming under the protocol, covering the Ladies' Garment Workers, in so many branches, which was agreed to after the strikes in the needle trades of the winter of 1913. The name was changed from Ladies' Waist Makers, to Ladies' Waist and Dress Makers. But the waist-makers' strike was not confined to New York. With the opening of their busy season, the New York manufacturers found themselves hard pressed to fill their orders, and they were making efforts to have the work done in other cities, not strike-bound. One of the cities in which they placed their orders was Philadelphia. It was with small success, however, for the spirit of unrest was spreading, and before many weeks were over, most of the Philadelphia waist-makers had followed the example of their New York sisters. The girls were in many respects worse off in Philadelphia than in New York itself. Unions in the sewing trades were largely down and out there, and public opinion was opposed to organized labor. When the disturbance did come, it was not so much the result of any clever policy deliberately thought out, as it was the sudden uprising and revolt of exasperated girls against a system of persistent cutting down extending over about four years. A cent would be taken off here, and a half-cent there, or two operations would be run into one, and the combined piece of work under one, and that a new, name would bring a lower rate of pay. The practice of paying for oil needles, cotton and silk had been introduced, a practice most irritating with its paltry deduction from a girl's weekly wage. Next there was a system of fines for what was called "mussing" work. Every one of these so-called improvements in discipline was deftly utilized as an excuse for taking so much off the girls' pay. Patience became exhausted and the girls just walked out. Two-thirds of the waist-makers in the city walked out. Of these about eighty-five per cent., it is believed, were Jewish girls, the rest made up of Italians with a few Poles. The girls who did not go out were mostly Americans. One observer estimated at the time that about forty per cent. of those in the trade were under twenty years of age, running down to children of twelve. When the workers, with no sort of warning or explanation, or making any regular preliminary demands, just quit, it upset matters considerably. A little girl waist-maker may appear to be a very insignificant member of the community, but if you multiply her by four thousand, her absence makes an appreciable gap in the industrial machine, and its cogs fail to catch as accurately as heretofore. So that even the decent manufacturers felt pretty badly, not so much about the strike itself, as its, to them, inexplicable suddenness. Such men were suffering, of course, largely for the deeds of their more unscrupulous fellow-employers. One manufacturer, for instance, had gained quite a reputation for his donations to certain orphanages. These were to him a profitable investment, seeing that the institutions served to provide him with a supply of cheap labor. He had in his shop many orphans, who for two reasons could hardly leave his employ. They had no friends to whom to go, and they were also supposed to be under obligations of gratitude to their benefactor-employer. One of his girl employés, to whom he paid seven dollars a week, turned out for that wage twelve dollars' worth of work. This fact the employer admitted, justifying himself by saying that he was supporting her brother in an orphanage. It was a hard winter, and the first week of the strike wore away without a sign of hope. Public opinion was slow to rouse, and the newspapers were definitely adverse. The general view seemed to be that such a strike was an intolerable nuisance, if not something worse. At length the conservative _Ledger_ came out with a two-column editorial, outlining the situation, and from then on news of the various happenings, as they occurred, could be found in all the papers. But the girls were unorganized. There was no money, and they faced the first days of the new year in a mood of utter discouragement. Organizers from the International of the Ladies' Garment Workers had, however, come on from New York to take charge. The strikers were supported by the Central Labor Union of Philadelphia, under the leadership of the capable John J. Murphy, and representatives of the National Women's Trade Union League, in the persons of Mrs. Raymond Robins and Miss Agnes Nestor, were already on the scene. In the struggle itself, the New York experiences were repeated. The fight went on slowly and stubbornly. Arrests occurred daily and still more arrests. Money was the pressing need, not only for food and rent, but to pay fines and to arrange for the constantly needed bonds to bail out arrested pickets. At length a group of prominent Philadelphia women headed by Mrs. George Biddle, enlisted the help of some leading lawyers, and an advisory council was formed for the protection of legal rights, and even for directing a backfire on lawbreaking employers by filing suits for damages. With such interest and such help money, too, was obtained. The residents of the College Settlement, especially Miss Anna Davies, the head resident, and Miss Anne Young, the members of the Consumers' League, the suffragists and the clubwomen all gave their help. These women were moved to action by stories such as those of the little girl, whom her late employer had been begging to return to his deserted factory. "The boss, he say to me, 'You can't live if you not work.' And I say to the boss, 'I live not much on forty-nine cents a day.'" As in New York, the police here overreached themselves in their zeal, and arrested a well-known society girl, whom they caught walking arm-in-arm with a striking waist-maker. Result, the utter discomfiture of the Director of Public Safety, and triumph for the fortunate reporters who got the good story. An investigation into the price of food, made just then by one of the evening newspapers came in quite opportunely, forcing the public to wonder whether, after all, the girls were asking for any really higher wage, or whether they were not merely struggling to hold on to such a wage as would keep pace with the increasing prices of all sorts of food, fuel, lighting, the commonest clothing and the humblest shelter. The strike had gone on for some weeks, when an effort was made to obtain an injunction forbidding the picketing of the Haber factory. This was finally to crush the strike and down the strikers. But in pressing for an injunction the manufacturers came up against a difficulty of their own making. The plea that had all along been urged upon the union had been the futility of trying to continue a strike that was not injuring the employers. "For," they had many times said, "we have plenty of workers, our factories are going full blast." Whereas the Haber witnesses in the injunction suit were bringing proof of how seriously the business was being injured through the success of the girl pickets in maintaining the strike, and, the money loss, they assured the court was to be reckoned up in thousands of dollars. This inconsistency impressed the judge, and the strikers had the chance of telling their story in open court. "Strikers' Day" was a public hearing of the whole story of the strike. That night both sides got together, and began to discuss a working agreement. After twenty-five hours of conference between representatives of the Shirt Waist Makers' Union and of the Manufacturers' Association, an agreement was arrived at, giving the workers substantial gains; employment of all union workers in the shops without discrimination; a fifty-two-and-a-half-hour week and no work on Saturday afternoon; no charges for water, oil, needles or ordinary wear and tear on machinery; wages to be decided with the union for each particular shop, and all future grievances to be settled by a permanent Board of Arbitration; the agreement to run till May 1, 1911. The workers' success was, unfortunately, not lasting. Owing to the want of efficient local leadership, the organization soon dropped to pieces. That gone, there was nothing left to stand between the toilers and the old relentless pressure of the competitive struggle, ever driving the employers to ask more, and ever compelling the wage-earners to yield more. The Philadelphia shirt-waist strike of 1910 furnishes a sad and convincing proof of how little is gained by the mere winning of a strike, however bravely fought, unless the strikers are able to keep a live organization together, the members coöperating patiently and steadily, so as to handle the fresh shop difficulties which every week brings, in the spirit of mutual help as well as self-help. These first Eastern strikes in the garment trades, although local in their incidence, were national in their effects. There had been so much that was dramatic and unusual in the rebellion of the workers, and it had been so effectively played up in the press of the entire country that by the time spring arrived and the strikes were really ended, and ended in both cities with very tangible benefits for the workers, there was hardly anyone who had not heard something about the great strikes, and who had not had their most deeply rooted opinions modified. It was an educational lesson on the grand scale. But the effects did not stop here. The impression upon the workers themselves everywhere was wholly unexpected. They had been encouraged and heartened to combine and thus help one another to obtain some measure of control over workshop and wages. The echoes of the shirt-waist strikes had hardly died away, when there arose from another group of dissatisfied workers, the self-same cry for industrial justice. There is no doubt that the Chicago strike which began among the makers of ready-made men's clothing in September, 1910, was the direct outcome of the strikes in New York and Philadelphia. While the Western uprising had many features in common with these, yet it presented difficulties all its own, and in its outcome won a unique success. Not only was the number of workers taking part greater than in the previous struggles, but, owing to the fact of a large number of the strikers being men, and a big proportion of these heads of families, the poverty and intense suffering resulting from months of unemployment extended over a far larger area. Also the variety of nationalities among the strikers added to the difficulties of conducting negotiations. Every bit of literature put out had to be printed in nine languages. And lastly, the want of harmony between certain of the national leaders of the union involved, and the deep distrust felt by some of the local workers and the strikers for a section of them provided a situation which for complexity it would be hard to match. That the long-continued struggle ended with so large a measure of success for the workers was in part owing to the extraordinary skill and unwearied patience displayed in its handling, and in part to the close and intimate coöperation between the local strike leaders, both men and women, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Chicago Women's Trade Union League. Much also had been learned from recent experience in the strikes immediately preceding. The immediate cause of the first striker going out was a cut in the price of making pockets, of a quarter of a cent. That was on September 22 in Shop 21, in the Hart, Schaffner and Marx factories. Three weeks later the strike had assumed such proportions that the officers of the United Garment Workers' District Council No. 6 were asking the Women's Trade Union League for speakers. The League organized its own Strike Committee to collect money, assist the pickets and secure publicity. At the instance of the League also an independent Citizens' Committee was formed. In time of sorest need was found efficient leadership. The garment-workers of Chicago, in their earlier struggles with the manufacturers, had had no such powerful combination to assist them as came to their aid now, when a Joint Strike Conference controlled the situation, with representatives upon it from the United Garment Workers of America International Executive Board, from the Chicago District Council of the same organization, from the Special Order Garment Workers, the Ready Made Garment Workers, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Women's Trade Union League. The American Federation of Labor sent their organizer, Emmett Flood, the untiringly courageous and the ever hopeful. The first step to be taken was to place before the public in clear and simple form the heterogeneous mass of grievances complained of. The Women's Trade Union League invited about a dozen of the girls to tell their story over a simple little breakfast. Within a week the story told to a handful was printed and distributed broadcast, prefaced, as it was, by an admirable introduction by the late Miss Katharine Coman, of Wellesley College, who happened to be in Chicago, and who was acting as chairman of the grievance committee. The Citizens' Committee, headed by Professor George Mead, followed with a statement, admitting the grievances and justifying the strike. From then on the story lived on the front page of all the newspapers, and speakers to address unions, meetings of strikers, women's clubs and churches were in constant demand. Here again, the suffragist and the socialist women showed where their sympathies lay and of what mettle they were made. Visiting speakers, such as Miss Margaret Bondfield and Mrs. Philip Snowden, took their turn also. The socialist women of Chicago issued a special strike edition of the _Daily Socialist_. With the help of the striking girls as "newsies" they gathered in the city on one Saturday the handsome sum of $3,345. Another group of very poor Poles sent in regularly about two hundred dollars per week, sometimes the bulk of it in nickels and dimes. A sewing gathering composed of old ladies in one of the suburbs sewed industriously for weeks on quilts and coverings for the strikers. Some small children in a Wisconsin village were to have had a goose for their Christmas dinner, but hearing of little children who might have no dinner, sent the price of the bird, one dollar and sixty-five cents, into the strikers' treasury. At first strike pay was handed out every Friday from out of the funds of the United Garment Workers. But on Friday, November 11, the number of applicants for strike pay was far beyond what it was possible to handle in the cramped office quarters. Through some misunderstanding, which has to this day never been explained, the crowd, many thousands of men, women and children, were denied admittance to the large wheat pit of the Open Board of Trade, which, it was understood, had been reserved for their use. It was a heart-rending sight, as from early morning till late afternoon they waited in the halls and corridors and outside in the streets. At first in dumb patience and afterwards in bewilderment, but all along with unexampled gentleness and quietness. At this point, Mr. John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, took hold of a situation already difficult, and which might soon have become dangerous. He explained to the crowd that everyone would be attended to in their various district halls, and that all vouchers already out would be redeemed. This relieved the tension, but the Joint Strike Committee were driven to take over at once the question of relief, so that none should be reduced to accept that hunger bargain, which, as Mrs. Robins put it, meant the surrender of civilization. With such an immense number of strike-bound families to support, the utmost economy of resources was necessary, and it was resolved hereafter to give out as little cash as possible, but to follow the example of the United Mine Workers and others and open commissary stations. This plan was carried out, and more than any other one plan, saved the day. Benefits were handed over, in the form of groceries on a fixed ration scale. As far as we know, such a plan had never before been adapted to the needs of women and children, nor carried out by organized labor for the benefit of a large unorganized group. Of the economy of the system there is no question, seeing that a well-organized committee can always purchase supplies in quantities at wholesale price, sometimes at cost price, and frequently can, as was done in this instance, draw upon the good feeling of merchants and dealers, and receive large contributions of bread, flour, coal and other commodities. Commissary stations were established in different localities. Here is a sample ration as furnished at one of the stores, although, thanks to the kindness of friends, the allowance actually supplied was of a much more varied character: Bread 18 loaves Coffee 1 lb. Sugar 5 lbs. Beans 5 lbs. Oatmeal 2 pkgs. (large) Ham 10 lbs. For Italians, oatmeal was replaced by spaghetti, and Kosher food for those of the orthodox Jewish faith was arranged for through orders upon local grocery stores and kosher butchers in the Jewish quarter. The tickets entitling to supplies were issued through the shop chairman at the local halls to those strikers known to be in greatest need. The commissary plan, however, still left untouched such matters as rent, fuel, gas, and likewise the necessities of the single young men and girls. Also the little babies and the nursing mothers, who needed fresh milk, had to be thought of and provided for. There were certain strictly brought up, self-respecting little foreign girls who explained with tears that they could not take an order on a restaurant where there were strange people about, because "it would not be decent," a terrible criticism on so many of our public eating places. So a small separate fund was collected which gave two dollars a week per head, to tide over the time of trouble for some of these sorely pressed ones. There was a committee on milk for babies, and another on rent, and the League handled the question of coal. With these necessities provided for, the strikers settled down to a test of slow endurance. Picketing went on as before, and although arrests were numerous, and fines followed in the train of arrests, the police and the court situation was at no time so acute as it had been in either New York or Philadelphia. The heroism shown by many of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate. Small inconveniences were made light of. Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated room, and so have a shelter over their heads "till the strike was over." A League member found her way one bitter afternoon in December to one home where lay an Italian woman in bed with a new-born baby and three other children, aged three, four and five years respectively, surrounding her. There was neither food nor fuel in the house. On the bed were three letters from the husband's employer, offering to raise his old pay from fifteen to thirty dollars per week, if he would go back to work and so help to break the strike. The wife spoke with pride of the husband's refusal to be a traitor. "It is not only bread we give the children. We live not by bread alone. We live by freedom, and I will fight for it though I die to give it to my children." And this woman's baby was one of 1,250 babies born into strikers' homes that winter. To me those long months were like nothing so much as like living in a besieged city. There was the same planning for the obtaining of food, and making it last as long as possible, the same pinched, wan faces, the same hunger illnesses, the same laying of little ones into baby graves. And again, besides the home problems, there was the same difficulty of getting at the real news, knowing the meaning of what was going on, the same heart-wearing alternations of hope and dread. Through it all, moreover, persisted the sense that this was something more than an industrial rising, although it was mainly so. It was likewise the uprising of a foreign people, oppressed and despised. It was the tragedy of the immigrant, his high hopes of liberty and prosperity in the new land blighted, finding himself in America, but not of America. By the end of November the manufacturers were beginning to tire of watching their idle machinery, and the tale of unfilled orders grew monotonous. There began to be grumbles from the public against the disastrous effects upon business of the long-continued struggle. Alderman Merriam succeeded in having the City Council bring about a conference of the parties to the strike "to the end that a just and lasting settlement of the points in controversy may be made." Messrs Hart, Schaffner and Marx, a firm employing in forty-eight shops between eight and nine thousand workers, agreed to meet with the committee and the labor leaders. After long hours of conferring a tentative agreement was at length arrived at, signed by the representatives of all parties, approved by the Chicago Federation of Labor, and, when referred to the army of strikers for their confirmation, was by them _rejected_. Indeed the great majority refused even to vote upon it at all. This was indeed a body blow to the hopes of peace. For the unfavorable attitude of the strikers there were, however, several reasons. The agreement, such as it was, did not affect quite a fourth of the whole number of workers who were out, and a regular stampede back to work of the rest, with no guarantee at all, was greatly to be dreaded. Again, a clause discriminating against all who it should be decided had been guilty of violence during the strike, gave deep offense. It was felt to be adding insult to injury, to allude to violence during a struggle conducted so quietly and with such dignity and self-restraint. But a further explanation lay in the attitude of mind of the strikers themselves. The idea of compromise was new to them, and the acceptance of any compromise was a way out of the difficulty, that was not for one moment to be considered. Thus it came about that a settlement that many an old experienced organization would have accepted was ruled quite out of court by these new and ardent converts to trade unionism, who were prepared to go on, facing destitution, rather than yield a jot of what seemed to them an essential principle. Organized labor, indeed, realized fully the seriousness of the situation. The leaders had used their utmost influence to have the agreement accepted, and their advice had been set aside. What view, then, was taken of this development of these central bodies and by the affiliated trades of the city, who were all taxing themselves severely both in time and money for the support of the strike? The democracy of labor was on this occasion indeed justified of its children, and the supreme right of the strikers to make the final decision on their own affairs and abide by the consequences was maintained. Plans were laid for continuing the commissary stores, and just at this stage there was received from the United Garment Workers the sum of $4,000 for the support of the stores. The strikers were also encouraged to hold out when on January 9 the firm of Sturm-Mayer signed up and took back about five hundred workers. Also, a committee of the state Senate began an inquiry into the strike, thus further educating the public into an understanding of the causes lying back of all the discontent, and accounting for much of the determination not to give in. All the same, the prospects seemed very dark, and the strikers and their leaders had settled down to a steady, dogged resistance. It was like nothing in the world so much as holding a besieged city, and the outcome was as uncertain, and depended upon the possibility of obtaining for the beleaguered ones supplies of the primitive necessaries of life, food and fuel. And the fort was held until about the middle of January came the news that Hart, Schaffner and Marx had opened up negotiations, and presently an agreement was signed, and their thousands of employés were back at work. They were back at work under an agreement, which, while it did not, strictly speaking, recognize the union, did not discriminate against members of the union. Nay, as the workers had to have representation and representatives, it was soon found that in practice it was only through their organization that the workers could express themselves at all. This is not the place in which to enlarge upon the remarkable success which has attended the working out of this memorable agreement. It is enough to say that ever since all dealings between the firm and their employés have been conducted upon the principle of collective bargaining. The agreement with Messrs. Hart, Schaffner and Marx was signed on January 14, 1911, and the Joint Conference Board then bent all its efforts towards some settlement with houses of the Wholesale Clothiers' Association and the National Tailors' Association for the twenty or thirty thousand strikers still out. Suddenly, without any warning the strike was terminated. How and why it has never been explained, even to those most interested in its support. All that is known is that on February 3 the strike was called off at a meeting of the Strikers' Executive Committee, at which Mr. T.A. Rickert, president of the United Garment Workers of America, and his organizers, were present. This was done, without consulting the Joint Conference Board, which for fourteen weeks had had charge of the strike, and which was composed of representatives from the United Garment Workers of America, the Garment Workers' local District Council, the strikers' own Executive Committee, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the Women's Trade Union League. This meant the close of the struggle. Three out of the four commissary stations were closed the following day, and the fourth a week later. As regards the great mass of strikers then left, it was but a hunger bargain. They had to return to work without any guarantee for fair treatment, without any agency through which grievances could be dealt with, or even brought before the employers. And hundreds of the workers had not even the poor comfort that they could go back. Business was disorganized, work was slack, and the Association houses would not even try to make room for their rebellious employés. The refusal of work would be made more bitter by the manner of its refusal. Several were met with the gibe, "You're a good speaker, go down to your halls, they want you there." One employer actually invited a returned striker into his private office, shook hands with him as if in welcome, and then told him it was his last visit, he might go! The beginning of the present stage of the industrial rebellion among working-women in the United States may be said to have been made with the immense garment-workers' strikes. All have been strikes of the unorganized, the common theory that strikes must have their origin in the mischief-breeding activities of the walking delegate finding no confirmation here. They were strikes of people who knew not what a union was, making protest in the only way known to them against intolerable conditions, and the strikers were mostly very young women. One most significant fact was that they had the support of a national body of trade-union women, banded together in a federation, working on the one hand with organized labor, and on the other bringing in as helpers large groups of outside women. Such measure of success as came to the strikers, and the indirect strengthening of the woman's cause, which has since borne such fruit, was in great part due to the splendid reinforcement of organized labor, through the efforts of this league of women's unions. I need touch but lightly on the strikes in other branches of the sewing trades, where the history of the uprising was very similar. In July, 1910, 70,000 cloak-makers of New York were out on strike for nine weeks asking shorter hours, increase of wages; and sanitary conditions in their workshops. All these and some minor demands were in the end granted by the Manufacturers' Association, who controlled the trade, but the settlement nearly went to pieces on the rock of union recognition. An arrangement was eventually arrived at, on the suggestion of Mr. Louis Brandeis, that the principle of preference to unionists, first enforced in Australia, should be embodied in the agreement. Under this plan, union standards as to hours of labor, rates of wages and working conditions prevail, and, when hiring help, union men of the necessary qualifications and degree of skill must have precedence over non-union men. With the signing of the agreement the strike ended. January, 1913, saw another group of garment-workers on strike in New York. This time there were included men and women in the men's garment trades, also the white-goods-workers, the wrapper and kimono-makers, and the ladies' waist-and dress-makers. There is no means of knowing how many workers were out at any one time, but the number was estimated at over 100,000. The white-goods-workers embraced the very youngest girls, raw immigrants from Italy and Russia, whom the manufacturers set to work as soon as they were able to put plain seams through the machine, and this was all the skill they ever attained. These children from their extreme youth and inexperience were peculiarly exposed to danger from the approaches of cadets of the underworld, and an appeal went out for a large number of women to patrol the streets, and see that the girls at least had the protection of their presence. The employers belonging to the Dress and Waist Manufacturers' Association made terms with their people, after a struggle, under an agreement very similar to that described above in connection with the cloak-makers. One of the most satisfactory results of the strikes among the garment-workers has been the standardizing of the trade wherever an agreement has been procured and steadily adhered to. It is not only that hours are shorter and wages improved, and the health and safety of the worker guarded, and work spread more evenly over the entire year, but the harassing dread of the cut without notice, and of wholesale, uncalled-for dismissals is removed. Thus is an element of certainty and a sense of method and order introduced. Above all, home-work is abolished. In an unstandardized trade there can be no certainty as to wages and hours, while there is a constant tendency to level down under the pressure of unchecked competition from both above and below. There is too frequent breaking of factory laws and ignoring of the city's fire and health ordinances, because the unorganized workers dare not, on peril of losing their jobs, insist that laws and ordinances were made to be kept and not broken. Also, in any trade where a profit can be made by giving out work, as in the sewing trades, we find, unless this is prevented by organization or legislation, an enormous amount of home-work, ill-paid and injurious to all, cutting down the wages of the factory hands, and involving the wholesale exploitation of children. Home-work the unions will have none of, and therefore, wherever the collective bargain has been struck and kept, there we find the giving out of work from the factory absolutely forbidden, the home guarded from the entrance of the contractor, motherhood respected, babyhood defended from the outrage of child labor, and a higher standard of living secured for the family by the higher and securer earnings of the normal breadwinners. Everywhere on the continent the results of these strikes have been felt, women's strikes as they have been for the most part. The trade unionists of this generation have been encouraged in realizing how much fight there was in these young girls. All labor has been inspired. In trade after trade unorganized workers have learned the meaning of the words "the solidarity of labor," and it has become to them an article of faith. Whether it has been button-workers in Muscatine, or corset-workers in Kalamazoo, shoe-workers in St. Louis, or textile-workers in Lawrence, whether the struggle has been crowned with success or crushed into the dust of failure, the workers have been heartened to fight the more bravely because of the thrilling example set them by the garment-workers, and have thus brought the day of deliverance for all a little nearer hand. Again, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the public has been taught many lessons. The immense newspaper publicity, which could never have been obtained except for a struggle on a stupendous scale, has proved a campaign of education for young and old, for business man and farmer, for lawyer and politician, for housewife and for student. It has left the manufacturer less cocksure of the soundness of his individualist philosophy. More often is he found explaining and even apologizing for industrial conditions, which of yore he would have ignored as non-existent. He can no longer claim from the public his aforetime undisputed privilege of running his own business as he pleases, without concern for either the wishes or the welfare of employés and community. The results are also seen in the fact that it is now so much easier to get the workers' story across the footlights in smaller local struggles, such as those of the porcelain-workers in Trenton and! the waitresses in Chicago; in the increasing success in putting through legislation for the limitation of hours and the regulation of wages for the poorest paid in state after state. By state or by nation one body after another is set the task of doing something towards accounting for the unceasing industrial unrest, towards solving the general industrial problem. Even if to some of us the remedial plans outlined seem to fall far short of the mark, they still are a beginning and are a foretaste of better things ahead. The conferences and discussions on unemployment are an admission, however belated, that a society which has, in the interests of the privileged classes, permitted the exploitation of the worker, must face the consequences, bear some of the burden, and do its share towards preventing the continuance of the evil. We do not cure smallpox by punishing the patient, nor do we thus prevent its recurrence among others. We handle the disease both by treating the sick person himself, and by finding the causes that lead to its spread, and arresting these. Industrial eruptive diseases have to be dealt with in like fashion, the cause sought for, and the social remedy applied fearlessly. V THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN AND ORGANIZATION The melting-pot of the races is also the melting-pot of nationalities. The drama that we are witnessing in America is a drama on a more tremendous scale than can ever have been staged in the world before. By the unawakened and so-called pure American the incoming Italian or Jew is regarded as an outsider, who may be graciously permitted to hew wood and draw water, to forge steel in a rolling-mill or to sew in a factory, to cut ice or make roads for the rest of us, and who may, on the other hand, be given the cold shoulder more or less politely, generally less, when it comes to acquaintanceship, to the simple democratic social intercourse which we share with those whom we admit as our equals. I, too, am an immigrant, although an English-speaking and Anglo-Saxon immigrant. Therefore I am accepted among Americans as one of themselves. But there comes to me often a bitter sense of separation from my fellow-immigrants, a separation by not one wall, but many. First, the wall we none of us can help, the wall raised by difference of language. Next, the wall raised by different manners and customs. This we might try to scale oftener than we do. Again, there are separating walls, harder than these either to surmount or to lay low, walls of provincial arrogance and crass self-satisfaction, and the racial pride that is mostly another name for primitive ignorance. An ordinary city-dwelling American or an English-speaking foreigner earning a living in business or in one of the professions or even in some of the skilled trades might live a lifetime in the United States and never meet non-Americanized foreigners socially at all. In church or club or on the footing of private entertainment these first-comers and their friends keep themselves to themselves. And although among us such race-defined limits are less hard and fast than, say, the lines of class in old European countries, still there they are. The less enlightened do not even think about the immigrant within our shores at all. Those somewhat more advanced will talk glibly about the Americanization of the foreigner that is going on all the time. So is it. That is true, but the point here to be noted is that the desirable and inevitable process of the Americanization of the foreigner, and his assimilation by and into the American nation takes place outside the charmed circles wherein these good respectable folks dwell; takes place in spite of their indifference; takes place without their active assistance, without their coöperation, save and except so far as that coöperation is unconscious and unavoidable. The Americanizing process takes place in the street, in the cars, in the stores, in the workshop, at the theater, and the nickel show, in the wheatfield and on the icefield; best and quickest of all in the school, and nowhere so consciously as in the trade union, for all that section of foreigners whom organized labor has been able to reach and draw into its fold. Carried out for the most part in crude and haphazard fashion the process goes on, only in the vast majority of cases it is far slower than it need be. Too many are but little touched, or touched only in painful ways by the Americanizing process, especially the married women who stay in their homes. Their lot is so often a tragedy. They have lost their own country and yet have not gained another. Even this is not the worst. The younger folks are in some fashion made over into American men and women. And here comes in the crucial question which concerns something more than universality of opportunity, quality of opportunity. These little Poles and Ruthenians and Bohemians are finally made over into Americans. Their life-contribution will be given to the generation now growing up, of which they will form a part. We want that contribution to be as fine as possible. They cannot give more than they themselves are. And what they are to be in very large part we are making them. Will they not be all the finer citizens-to-be if we come closer to them and to their parents in the warm friendly social relations of life? The plane of social intercourse is the last to be transformed by democracy. Here is it that aristocratic and undemocratic limitations hamper us the longest. Here we are still far behind the fine, free and admirable planing out of differences, and rounding off of angles and making over of characters that is part of the democracy of the street and the marketplace. Here between strangers is the closest physical nearness. Here the common need to live and earn a living supplies a mutual education through the very acts of serving and being served, of buying and selling and using the common thoroughfares and means of transportation. And that basic democracy of the street and the marketplace is all between strangers. It is the very fact that this blending of peoples, this rubbing off of racial angles, takes place in and through the commonplace surroundings of everyday life, that blinds most to the greatness and the wonder of the transformation and to the pressing importance of the right adjustments being made, and made early. But to the observer whose eyes are not holden, there comes a sense that he is every day witnessing a warfare of Titans, that in these prosaic American communities it is world powers that are in clash and in conflict while in preparation for the harmony to be. Upon careful consideration it would appear that the immigrant problem is only a slightly varied expression of the general social and economic problem. It focuses public attention because the case of the immigrant is so extreme. For instance, whatever conditions, industrial or civic, press hardly upon the American worker, these conditions press with yet greater hardship upon the alien. The alien and his difficulties form therefore a first point of contact, the point where the social reformer begins with his suggestions for improvement. The very same thought unconsciously forms the basis of many of the proposed methods of dealing with the immigrant, however startlingly these may differ from one another in expression. On the one hand we have such suggestions as that of Mr. Paul Kellogg, which he called "A Labor Tariff, A Minimum Wage for the Immigrant." It does not take very acute reasoning to perceive that if such a proposal were ever to become law, it would not be very long before there would have to be a universal minimum wage for everyone. On the other hand, Mr. Edward B. Whitney in his Memorandum appended to the Report of the Commission of the State of New York argues thus in discussing the claim made by the majority of the Commission that certain special help and protection is needed by the alien. He asks "whether, if a further extension of this kind of state charity is to be made, it would not be better to take up something for the benefit of our own citizens or for the benefit of citizen and alien alike." Mr. Whitney is entirely logical. Only progress rarely takes place for logical reasons, or on lines dictated by logic, but it does in almost all cases follow the line of least resistance, and the wise progressive accepts gratefully whatever he can get, without being too anxious as to whether it seems to be logically the next step or not. The immigrant has hitherto been used as an excuse to permit the dehumanizing of our cities; he has been used industrially as an instrument to make life harder for the hardly pressed classes of workers whom he joined on his arrival here. That such has been his sorry function has been his misfortune as well as theirs. Would it not be equally natural and far more fair to utilize his presence among us to raise our civic and economic and industrial standards? It is no new story, this. Out of every social problem we can construct a stepping-stone to something better and higher than was before. The most that we know of health has been learned through a study of the misadjustments that bring about disease. What has been done educationally to assist the defective, the handicapped and the dependent has thrown a flood of light upon the training of the normal child. Through work undertaken in the first instance for the benefit of the exceptions, the minority, the whole community has benefited. In this connection no one will deny that immigrants, both men and women, have their handicaps. In the great majority of instances they are handicapped by an upbringing among primitive conditions, by their unavoidable ignorance of our language and our customs, and by a quite natural mental confusion as to our standards of conduct, to them so curiously exacting in some respects as, for instance, where the schooling of their children is concerned, so incomprehensibly lax in others, say, in the unusual freedom accorded to those same children when grown but a little older. We shall find that whatever we do for the immigrant will be, in the end, so much accomplished for the good of all. Let us lessen this unfair pressure upon him, as far as we can, and we shall surely find that in helping him to help himself, we have, at the same time, benefited all workers. It is easy to see that the great strikes in the sewing and textile trades of the last few years have proved a searchlight especially into women's industrial conditions, educating the whole public by informing them of the terrible price paid for our comfort by the makers of the commonest articles of household purchase and use, the sacrifice of youth, health, happiness, and life itself demanded by any industry which exacts of the employés cruelly long hours of work at an exhausting speed, and which for such overwork pays them wretchedly. These uprisings have besides stimulated to an encouraging degree the forming of an intelligent public opinion upon the problem of the immigrant, and a wholesomely increased sense of responsibility towards the immigrant. And indeed it was time. Miss Grace Abbott, director of the Chicago League for the Protection of Immigrants, tells a story, illustrating how very unintelligent an educated professional man can be in relation to immigrant problems. "Not long ago," she says, "I listened to a paper by a sanitary engineer, on the relation between the immigrant and public health. It was based on a study of typhoid fever in a certain city in the United States. He showed that most typhoid epidemics started among our foreign colonies, and spread to other sections. This, he explained, is because the foreigner has been accustomed to a pure water supply, and is therefore much more susceptible to typhoid than the American who has struggled since birth against the diseases which come from polluted water. "Instead, then, of urging this as an additional reason for giving us all decent water, he drew the remarkable conclusion that in the interests of the public health, some new basis for the exclusion of immigrants must be adopted. In this way," Miss Abbott adds, "most discussions on the immigrant are diverted, and leave the fundamental problems quite untouched. For whether we adopt a literary and physique test, increase the head-tax, and do all the other things suggested by the restrictionists, thousands of immigrants will continue to come to us every year." Apart from general considerations, these gigantic industrial upheavals have afforded to the public-spirited citizen an unsurpassed opportunity of understanding and appreciating the industrial problem as it affects and is affected by the immigrant girl and young woman. A few of us, here and there, from personal and trade experience knew the facts years ago as well as they are generally known today. But not all the Government reports, not an army of investigators could have imparted this knowledge to the public, and impressed upon them the sordid suffering of the working and living conditions of the foreign woman in the sewing trades in any great American city. For in strikes of such magnitude, where whole groups of the participators themselves lived for months in a white heat of idealism and enthusiasm, life-stories are no longer dragged out of shy retiring girls, but are poured out in a burning flood by those very same girls, now quite transformed by the revolution through which they have passed, and by the new ideas of liberty and sisterhood with which they are possessed. I speak of the woman worker here, because it is she who is my concern at present, and in all the now historic strikes she has played a very large part. Indeed in the first of these risings, in the shirtwaist strikes of 1909-1910 in New York and Philadelphia, very few men workers were involved, and in the huge Chicago strike, 1910-1911, among the makers of men's ready-made clothing, although there the girl strikers numbered only about one-fourth of the whole, even that fourth made up the very respectable total of, it is believed, somewhere around 10,000 individuals, the population of a small city. Indeed it would give most Americans pause to be told that in this same Chicago strike the whole of the workers, men and women together, numbered more than the troops that Washington was able to place in the field at any one time during the War of Independence. Most of these strikes have been strikes of unorganized workers, who did not know even of the existence of a union till after they had gone out, and therefore with no idea of appealing to an organization for even moral support. In Chicago the strikers belonged to nine different nationalities, speaking as many different languages, so it is clear that the pressure must have been indeed irresistible that forced so many thousands with apparently no common meeting-ground or even common means of communication out of the shops into the street. When the organized strike, they know why. When the unorganized of one nationality and one tongue strike, they can tell one another why. Yet these people struck in spots all over the city almost simultaneously, although in most cases without any knowledge by one group that other groups were also resisting oppression and making a last stand against any further degradation of their poor standards of living. Amid every variety of shop grievance, and with the widest possible difference in race, language and customs, they shared two disadvantageous conditions: industrially they were oppressed, and socially they were subject races. Therefore they were one people, in spite of their nine nationalities. These two conditions acted and reacted upon one another complicating and intensifying the struggle. But because of this very intensity it has been easier for the onlooker to separate out the real questions at issue, easier for the sympathetic American to come into wholesome and human relationship with this large body of his brothers and sisters. To him they could be one group, for their interests were one, and they had been too long separated from him and from one another by the accidents of birth and speech. So the searchlight turned on then on the sewing trades has since cast its enlightening beams on industrial conditions in other trades, in which, too, one race is perpetually played off against another with the unfailing result of cuts in wages and lowering of standards of living. All tests of admission to secure some measure of selection among new arrivals are but experiments in an untried field. We have no tests but rough-and-ready ones, and even these are often inconsistent with one another. For instance, for a good many years now the immigration inspectors have taken such precautions as they could against the admission of the insane, but it is only recently that modified Binet tests have been used to check the entry of a socially far more injurious class, the congenitally feebleminded. Those who have worked extensively among newly arrived foreign girls find that they arrive here with, as a rule, much less idea of what awaits them, what will be expected of them, and the difficulties and even dangers they may encounter, than the men. When the Chicago Women's Trade Union League began its immigration department a few years ago, it was found that three dollars was about the average sum which a girl had in her pocket when she reached the city of her destination. Ten dollars was felt to be a fortune, while I have since heard of young girls landing alone in a great city, and without a single cent with which to leave the depot. It is often said, why do their mothers let them go away (sixteen and eighteen are common ages) so young, so inexperienced? It must be remembered that many of the Polish and Lithuanian girls, for example, come from small villages. The mothers themselves have never seen a big city, and have not the remotest conception of any place of more than five hundred inhabitants, where the distances are short, and where everyone knows everyone else. They have no idea of the value of money, when it comes to earning and spending it in America. Three dollars a week is to mother, as to daughter, an ample sum for the young traveler. It often happens that many of the young immigrants have had letters from those who had preceded them. But we know what human nature is. The person who succeeds proudly writes home the good news. The still more successful person is able to take a trip home and display the visible signs of his or her wealth. The unsuccessful, as a rule, either does not write at all, or writing, does not admit the humiliating truth. In the ignorance and inexperience of the young foreign girl the white slaver finds his easiest prey, and the betrayer is too often the man speaking her own tongue. On this terrible subject the nation, like other nations, is beginning to wake up to its responsibilities in relation to the immigrant girl as in relation to other girls. This special danger to young womanhood is so linked with other social questions that I merely allude to it here, because of the certainty I entertain that much even of this danger would lessen if the trade-union movement among women were so strong and so extensive that any woman, young or old, could travel from place to place as a member of a truly world-wide organization. Then she would have a better chance of arriving well posted as to ways of earning her living, and of finding friends in every city and every town and village. It may be urged that there exist already organizations world-wide in their scope, such as the religious associations, for the very purpose of safeguarding wandering girlhood. There are, and they accomplish a notable amount of good. But their appeal is not universal; they never have money or workers enough to cope adequately with a task like this, and they are not built upon the sound economic basis of the trade union. The immigrant problem was not encountered by the first factory workers here, who were American-born. So we find the earliest leaders in the trade organization of women were wholly drawn from the daughters of the native settlers. They felt and spoke always as free-women, "the daughters of freemen." When this class of girls withdrew from the factories, they gave place to the Irish immigrant, in some respects a less advanced type than themselves. I have briefly traced some of the economic reasons which affected the rise, growth and eventual passing away of the various phases of trade unionism among women in this country. The progress of these was radically modified by the influx into the trades of workers from one nation after another; by the passing from a trade or a group of trades of body after body of the old workers, starved out or giving way before the recent arrivals, whose pitiful power to seize the jobs of the others and earn some sort of a living, has lain in their very weakness and helplessness. So the first Irish girls who came into the factory life of New England were peasants, with no knowledge of city life, but quick and ready to learn. They went into the new occupations, and picked up the new ways of doing things. And by the time they had grasped the meaning of this strange industrial world in which they found themselves, they were in the relentless grasp of machine-controlled industry. Under untold handicaps they had to begin at the very beginning, and start rebellions on their own account. From the sixties on we can detect the preponderance of Irish names in the annals of early trade unionism. When they had adapted themselves to their conditions, for they quickly became Americanized, they showed in the trade unions which they organized the remarkable qualities for political leadership which the Irish and Irish-Americans have ever since displayed in this country. The important rôle which Irish and Irish-American men have played in the councils of American trade unionism is well known, and their power today remains very great. So as regards the women, by glancing over the past we can readily trace the influence of the Irish girl, in the efforts after organization, unsuccessful as these often were. It was Maggie McNamara who led the Brooklyn Female Burnishers' Association in 1868. It was during the sixties that Kate Mullaney was leading her splendid body of Troy laundresses, and twenty years later we find Leonora Barry, another Irish girl, as the leading spirit among the women of the Knights of Labor. Except in isolated instances, no other race has come to the front among working-women until recently. We read of German women and Bohemian women as faithful unionists. But Germans, Bohemians and Scandinavians advanced or lost ground along with the others. By this time, moreover, the nation had become more habituated to absorbing immigrants from various nations, and the distinction between races was less accentuated after a few years' residence. On the part of the Germans and Scandinavians, amalgamation has been so speedy, and in the end so complete, that most of those who have been here some time, and invariably the children of the first-comers, are Americans through and through. With the foreign peoples that we have with us today, the situation is somewhat different. Certain general principles are common to the course of all these migrations. They originate, on the one hand, in economic pressure, complicated not unfrequently with religious wars or persecutions, and on the other, in the expectation of better times in a new country. They meet the demands of a new country, asking for labor, and are further subject to the inducements of agents. Under our haphazard social arrangements, the newly arrived often meet wretched conditions, and have no means of knowing how they are being used to lower yet further wages for themselves and others. Always, whatever their own descent and history, the older inhabitants feel resentment, knowing no more than their unfortunate rivals what is the underlying reason of the trouble. Milder forms of antagonism consist in sending the immigrant workers "to Coventry," using contemptuous language of or to them, as we hear every day in "dago" or "sheeny," and in objections by the elders to the young people associating together, while the shameful use that is continually made of the immigrants as strike-breakers may rouse such mutual indignation that there are riots and pitched battles as a consequence. The first indignant efforts to exclude the intruders are vain. More and more do experienced trade unionists admit this, and plead for the acceptance of the inevitable, and turn all their energies towards the organization of the unwelcome rivals. Scabs they must be, if left alone. Better take them in where they can be influenced and controlled, and can therefore do less damage. Here is where the help of the foreign organizer is so essential to overcome the indifference and quell the misgivings of the strangers in a situation where the influence of the employer is almost always adverse. At length the immigrant gains a footing; he is left in possession, either wholly or partly, and amalgamation to a great degree takes place. A generation grows up that knew not the sad rivalry of their fathers, for fresh industrial rivalries on different grounds have replaced the old, as sharply cut, but not on race lines. Every one of these stages can be seen today in all the industrial centers and in many rural ones, with one people or another. While the tendency of the organized labor movement, both in the United States and in Canada, is towards restriction, whether exercised directly through immigration laws, or indirectly through laws against the importation of contract labor, there exist wide differences of opinion among trade unionists, and in the younger groups are many who recognize that there are limits beyond which no legislation can affect the issue, and that even more important than the conditions of admission to this new world is the treatment which the worker receives after he passes the entrance gate. If it is necessary in the interests of those already in this country to guard the portals carefully, it is equally necessary for the welfare of all, that the community through their legislators, both state and national, should accept the responsibility of preventing the ruthless exploitation of immigrants in the interest of private profit. Exploited and injured themselves, these become the unconscious instruments of hardly less ruthless exploitation and injury to their fellows in the competitive struggle for a bare subsistence. Such exploitation could be in some degree checked through the authorities assuming control, and especially by furnishing to the new arrivals abundant information and advice, acquainting them with the state of the labor market in different localities and at different times. It is for the authorities also to see that the transportation of newly arrived foreigners from place to place is rendered secure; to encourage their early instruction in the language and laws of the country and the ordinances of the city, along with enlightenment as to the resources in time of trouble, which lie open to the poorest, if they but know where to turn. In the first number of the _Immigrants in America Review_, the editor, Frances A. Kellor, points out what an unusual opportunity has been granted to America to formulate a definite program with reference to alien residents. Now is the time, she insists, to perfect laws, establish systems and improve conditions, when, owing to the European War, but few immigrants are arriving, and therefore, when no great rush of people demand expedients. "Now is the time to build, to repair, to initiate, so we may obviate the necessity for expedients." The writer shows that efforts ought to be directed along seven lines, and the work on these seven lines should be closely coördinated. 1. _Transportation_. The safe transportation of admitted aliens to their destination. 2. _Employment_. Security of employment, and adequate coördinated, regulated labor-market organization. 3. _Standards of living_. Making it possible for the immigrant to adopt and maintain better standards of living, by removal of discriminations in localities, housing and sanitation, and by preventing overcrowding. 4. _Savings_. Information regarding savings banks, loan funds, agricultural colonies, and legislation regarding the same. 5. _Education_. Reduction of illiteracy, the teaching of civics, and extension of opportunity of education and industrial training. 6. _Citizenship_. Higher and simpler naturalization requirements, and processes, and placing the legal status of the alien upon a just and consistent foundation. 7. _Public Charges_. National and state coöperation in the care of any who may become public charges. No one can suppose that every Greek boy desires to become a shoeblack, or that every Scandinavian girl is fitted for domestic service and for nothing else; that every Slavic Jewess should become a garment-worker; that every Italian man should work on the roads; that the Lithuanian and Hungarian, no matter what their training or their ability, should be compelled to go into the steel-rolling mills. All this because they land speaking no English, and not knowing how to place themselves in occupations better adapted to their inclinations and qualifications. No one knows how many educated and trained men and women are thus turned into hewers of wood and drawers of water, to the ruin of their own lives and the loss of the community. The unregulated private employment office, the padrone and the sweat-shop are the agencies who direct the newcomers to jobs, whether it be in the city or out in the country camp. Many of the new arrivals would gladly take up agriculture, if they knew where to go, and were safeguarded against imposition--having a fee taken, for instance, and then landed several hundred miles away, penniless, to find all the jobs gone. The immigrant on landing is very much like the child leaving school to go to work, and requires vocational guidance just as sorely. The needs of the alien are closely related to the general question of unemployment. He suffers in an acute degree from the want of system in the regularization of industry, and the fact that we have failed to recognize unemployment, and all irregularity of employment as a condition to be met and provided against by industry and the community. Americans take credit to themselves that so many immigrants do well, succeed, become prosperous citizens and members of society, but wish to shoulder none of the blame when the alien falls down by the way, or lives under such home conditions that his babies die, and his older children fall out of their grades, drift into the street trades or find their way into the juvenile court. Americans forget how many of all these evil results are due to the want of social machinery to enable the alien to fit into his new surroundings, or the neglect to set such social machinery agoing where it already exists. In the small towns it is not unusual for health ordinances to be strictly enforced in the English-speaking localities, and allowed to remain a dead letter in the immigrant districts. In Chicago it was in the stockyards district that garbage was dumped for many years; garbage, the product of other wards, that the residents of those other wards insisted be removed from their back-doors. How much of the high infant death-rate among stockyards families has been due to the garbage exposed and decaying, so carefully brought there, from the fine residential districts? Legally the alien suffers under a burden of disabilities of which he is usually wholly unaware, until he has broken some law or regulation devised, it would appear, often for his discomfiture, rather than for anyone's else benefit. These laws and regulations, in themselves sometimes just and sometimes unjust, make up a mass of the most inconsistent legislation. State laws, varying from state to state, and city ordinances equally individual limit the employment of aliens on public work. Peddlers' and fishers' licenses come under similar restrictions; so with the owning of property, the right to leave property by will, say, to a wife and children in Europe, and the right even to protection of life, in violation of treaty rights. "The state courts have never punished a single outrage of this kind" [violence at the hands of a mob]. The federal government, Miss Kellor states, makes a payment to a victim's heirs out of a secret service fund "if the ambassador is persistent, and threatens to withdraw from Washington if the murder of his countrymen is not to be punished." These are all most serious handicaps, and certainly the need for investigation of all laws, the codifying of many, and the abolition of some is urgent. If some of these handicaps were lifted from the immigrant, complaint against under-cutting competition of cheap foreign labor would largely cease, and the task of organizers among the foreign workers would be much simplified, even while we are waiting for the day when it will be possible for all to obtain work without turning others out of their jobs, which can only come about when we produce intelligently for the use of all, instead of for the profit of the exceptional few. Here and there work on the lines sketched out is beginning, even though much of it is as yet unrelated to the rest. The community is making headway, in the acknowledgment by various states, headed by New York, of the just claim of the immigrant, once he is admitted within our borders, to the protection of the government. For long after the Federal authorities took over the control of immigration, their concern was limited to some degree of restriction over the entry of foreigners, and the enforcement of deportation, when such was considered necessary. Quite a fresh departure, however, was made in the year 1910, when the state of New York, following the recommendations of its State Commission on Immigration (1909), established its Bureau of Industries and Immigration, which really grew out of the activities of a private society. Other communities are also realizing their responsibility. California established a permanent Commission on Immigration and Housing in 1913, and the Investigating Commissions of Massachusetts and New Jersey recommended similar agencies in their reports to the legislatures in 1914. New York has already accomplished excellent results, and more important still, has shown the direction, in which other states may both follow and coöperate. A few years more may see us with interstate legislation insuring the better care and protection of immigrants all over the country, interstate legislation being the curiously indirect method which the United States has hit upon to overcome the imperfections and deficiencies of its national instrument of government. One of these days may even find the Federal House at Washington taking over, in other lines besides that of foreign workers, the functions outlined for it in the first instance by the daughter states. The United States Government has recently entered a new field in the passage of a law, authorizing the protection of immigrants in transit to their destination, and providing for the establishment of a station in Chicago, where the immigrants will go on their arrival, and will thus be protected from the gross frauds from which they have so long suffered. The present administration also promises an experiment in the development of the Bureau of Information in the Immigration Department. It is not so easy for any of us to give the same dispassionate consideration to the problem that is with us as to that which has long been settled, and has passed away into the calm atmosphere of history. And truly, there are complications in the present situation which our fathers had not to face. And first, the much greater dissimilarity in training, mental outlook, social customs, and in the case of the men and women from eastern Europe, not to speak of Asia, the utter unlikeness in language, makes mutual knowledge and understanding much more difficult, and the growth of mutual confidence, therefore, much slower. No one has yet analyzed the effects upon the nervous system of the migrating worker, of the unsettlement of habits, and the change of surroundings and social environment, working in connection with the changed climatic conditions, and the often total change in food. This is one phase of the immigrant problem which deserves the most careful study. And when, as too often in the case of the Russian Jew, this complete alteration of life is piled on top of the persecutions so many of them have endured, and the shocks so many have sustained before leaving their native land, the normal, usual effects of the transition are emphasized and exaggerated, and it may take a generation or longer before complete Americanization and amalgamation is brought about. The longer such a change is in being consummated, the more is the new generation likely to retain some of their most characteristic qualities permanently; to retain and therefore to impress these upon the dominant race, in this case upon the American nation, through association, and finally, through marriage. Especially is this a probable result where we find such vitality and such intensely prepotent power as among the Jews. In reference to trade-union organization among women, while each nationality presents its own inherent problem, there is equally no doubt but that each will in the future make its own special contribution towards the progress and increased scope of the movement among the women workers. As matters are developing today, the fulfillment of this promise of the future has already begun most markedly among the Slavic Jewesses, especially those from Russia. These young women have already brought, and are every day bringing into the dreary sweatshop and the speeded-up factory a spirit of fearlessness and independence both in thought and action, which is having an amazing effect upon the conditions of factory industry in the trades where they work. So also, supporting and supported by the men of their own race, these Russian Jewish girls, many of them extremely young, are inspiring their fellow-workers and interpenetrating the somewhat matter-of-fact atmosphere of American trade unionism with their own militant determination and enthusiasm. With most, the strike has been their initiation into trade unionism, often the general strike in their own trade, the strike on a scale hitherto unparalleled in trades where either the whole or a very considerable proportion of the workers are women. Some again, especially among the leaders, approach unionism through the ever open door of socialism. If I speak here of the women of the Slavic Jewish race, it is not that I wish to ignore the men. I have to leave them on one side, that is all. These girls add to courage and enthusiasm, such remarkable gifts of intellect and powers of expression as to make them a power wherever they have become awakened to the new problems that face them here and now, and to their own responsibilities in relation thereto. They are essentially individualists. They do not readily or naturally either lean upon others or coöperate with others, nor yet confide in others. They come here with a history generations long of ill-treatment and persecution. Many thousands of them have witnessed their dearest tortured, outraged and killed with the narrowest possible escape from some similar fate themselves. To most any return to their native country is completely barred, and they do not therefore nurse the hope, so inveterately cherished by the Italians, for instance, that they may some day be able to go back. When the Russian Jewish girl first hears of a trade union, she has usually been some years in one of our cities, working in a factory or a sweatshop, let us say as a garment-worker. The religious and social liberty which she has here learnt to consider her due has stimulated her desire for further freedom, while the tremendous industrial pressure under which she earns her daily bread stirs the keenest resentment. One day patience, Jewish girlish patience, reaches its limit. A cut in wages, exhausting overtime, or the insults of an overbearing foreman, and an unpremeditated strike results. It may be small, poorly managed, and unsuccessful. The next time things may go better, and the girls come in touch with a union, and take their first lessons in the meaning of collective bargaining. (What is passing in the minds of the rank and file at this stage I am not certain. The obscurities of their psychology are more difficult to fathom.) But I am sure that to the leaders of the young protestants it is not so much in the light of a tower of refuge that the trade union presents itself, but rather as an instrument by means of which they believe that they can control a situation which has become unbearable. As happens to many endowed with the gift of leadership, they travel much farther than they had any idea of when they set out. As time goes on, if they are real leaders, they learn to understand human nature in its varied aspects, the human nature of bosses, as well as the human nature of their fellow-wage-earners. After a year or two as presidents or secretaries of their local, you will hear these fiery-tongued little orators preaching endurance, in order to gain an end not obtainable today, aye, even advising compromise, they to whom the very word compromise had erstwhile been impossible. This implies no loss of principle, no paltering with loyalty, but merely putting in practice the wisdom of the experienced statesman. Nearly all, sooner or later, embrace the socialist philosophy, and many are party members. In that philosophy they find a religious sanction in their most determined struggles after victory, and unfailing support and consolation in the hour of defeat. As for the rank and file, with them, too, something of the same mental processes probably goes on in a minor degree; but they are much longer in learning their lesson, and meanwhile are often exceedingly hard to direct. They are impulsive beyond belief. It used once to be remarked that Jewish girls were the easiest of all to organize during a strike, and the hardest of all to hold in the union afterwards. This is fortunately not so true today, now that there are a few trained leaders of their own race, whom they trust, and who understand their moods, and know, better than most Americans, how to handle them. The alien is forever being resented as an obstacle, even if an unconscious one, in the way of organization. Yet as far as women are concerned, it is to this group of aliens in particular that is due the recent tremendous impulse towards organization among the most poorly paid women. In the sewing trades, and in some other trades, such as candy-making, it is the American girls who have accepted conditions, and allowed matters to drift from bad to worse. It is the foreign girl, and especially the Slavic Jewess who has been making the fight for higher wages, shorter hours, better shop management, and above all, for the right to organize; and she has kept it up, year after year, and in city after city, in spite of all expectations to the contrary. One of the indirect benefits of the colossal strikes in the sewing trades in which these Jewish girls have played so conspicuous a part has been the increasing degree in which those of differing nationalities have come to understand one another, as men and women having common difficulties and common rights, as all alike members of the great working people. Through sore trial many have learnt the meaning of "class consciousness," who never heard of the word. The new spirit is beginning to touch the Italian girl, and as time goes on, she, too, will be brought into the fold of unionism. To meet with large success, we need as leaders and organizers, Italians, both men and women, of the type of Arthur Carotti, as capable and devoted. The Italian girl is guarded in her home as is the girl of no other race, and this works both for good and for evil. The freedom of the streets, accorded so unquestioningly to their girls by the parents of other nationalities, is conscientiously denied to the Italian girl. No respectable family would permit their daughters to go to any sort of an evening gathering, to attend church or dance or union meeting, unless accompanied by father, mother or brother. While no one can help deeply respecting the principles of family affection and responsibility which dictate this code of manners, there is equally no blinking the fact that it raises a most serious barrier in the way of organizing girls of Italian parentage. Nor on the other hand is it of the least avail to protect the girl against the evils of the industrial system of which the whole family form a part. In especial it does not serve to shield her from the injurious effects of cruel overwork. In no class of our city population do we find more of this atrocious evil, misnamed homework than among Italian families, and whether it is sewing, artificial-flower-or feather-making or nut-picking, neither grown daughters nor little children are spared here. Along with the mother and under her eye, the whole group work day after day, and often far into the night at occupations in themselves harmless enough under proper conditions, but ruinous to health and happiness when permitted to intrude under the family roof. For the wrong of home-work is not to be measured even by the injury suffered by the workers themselves. All parasitic trades, such as these, lower wages in the open market. The manufacturer is continually impelled to cut down wages in his shops to keep pace with the competition of the ill-remunerated home-worker. As I have said above, I believe that every race that has settled down here in this America has some special contribution to bestow, which will work for good to the whole labor movement. I have instanced the case of the Slavic Jewess as one who has certainly arrived. From others the gift has still to come. From the Italian girl it will come in good time, for they are beginning to enter the unions now, and from the lips of their own fellow-countrywomen even Italian mothers will learn to accept for their daughters the gospel they will not listen to from foreigners like ourselves. The most severely handicapped of all the nationalities so far, to my thinking, is the Polish. They are what is called pure Slavs, that is, with no Jewish blood. They are peasant girls and cannot be better described than they are in a pamphlet on "The Girl Employed in Hotels and Restaurants," published by the Juvenile Protective League to Chicago. In these places Polish girls are chosen for the following reasons: 1. Because they come of strong peasant stock, and accomplish a large amount of work. 2. They are very thorough in what they do. 3. They are willing to take low wages. 4. They are very submissive, that is, they never protest. 5. They are ignorant of the laws of this country, and are easily imposed upon. 6. They never betray their superiors, no matter what they see. What a scathing indictment of the American people is set forth in this brief summing up! The trades that swallow up these strong, patient, long-enduring creatures are work in the meat-canning plants, and dish-washing and scrubbing in restaurants and hotels. These really valuable qualities of physical strength and teachableness, unbalanced by any sense of what is due to themselves, let alone their fellow-workers, prove their industrial ruin. It is only when they are fortunate enough to get into a better class of work, and when they chance upon some well-organized establishment and are drawn into the union as a matter of course that we find Polish girls in unions at all. Intellectually they are not in the running with the Russian Jewess and the peasant surroundings of their childhood have offered them few advantages. One evening, for instance, there were initiated into a glove-workers' local seventeen new Polish members. Of these two only were able to read and write English, and of the remainder not more than half were able to read and write Polish. As to what is to be the later standing and the ultimate contribution of the Polish girl, I cannot hazard a guess. I only know that she possesses fine qualities which we are not utilizing and which we may be obliterating by the cruel treatment so many thousands of Polish girls are receiving at our hands. I cannot see any prospect of organizing them in any reasonable numbers at present. The one thing we can do to alleviate their hard lot is to secure legislation--legislation for shorter hours and for the minimum wage. Their suspiciousness is perhaps the chief barrier in the way of social elevation of the Poles. That Poles can be organized is shown by the remarkable success of the Polish National Alliance and kindred societies. Their capacity for coöperation is seen in their establishment of their own coöperative stores. VII THE WOMAN ORGANIZER The problems that face the woman organizer are many and complex. They are the harder to handle, inasmuch as there is very little assistance to be had from any body of tradition on the subject among women workers. The movement for organization among women is still so inchoate. The woman organizer turns to the more experienced men leaders, and finds that often, even with the best will in the world, they cannot help her. The difficulties she meets with are, in detail, so different from theirs that she has to work out her own solutions for herself. It is indeed a blind alley in which she has so often to move. The workers are young and ignorant, therefore, by all odds, they require the protection of both legislation and organization. Again, the workers are young and ignorant, and therefore they have not learnt the necessity for such protection. Their wages are in most cases low, too low for decent self-support. But just because their wages are so inadequate for bare needs it is in many cases all the more difficult to induce them to deduct from such scanty pay the fifty cents a month which is the smallest sum upon which any organization can pay its way and produce tangible benefits for its members. Left to her own devices, the solution of her financial difficulties which the average girl finds is always to lessen her expenses so as to manage on the lessening wage that is inevitable in all trades if not resisted. To find a cheaper room, to take one more girl into her room, to spend a few cents a day less for food--these are the near-hand economies that first present themselves to the girlish mind. This is on the economizing side. When it comes to trying to earn more, to work longer hours is surely the self-evident way of increasing the contents of the weekly pay envelope. The younger and inexperienced the worker, the more readily is she fooled into believing that the more work she turns out, under a piece-work system, the more money will she earn, not only in that week but in the succeeding weeks. To this child-like and simple code of worldly wisdom and of ethics, the policy advised by the organizer is indeed entirely foreign. To some very good girls, indeed, it seems ethically wrong not to work your hardest, or, as they say, do your best, especially when you are urged to. To more, it seems a silly, not to say impossible plan, not to try and earn as big a wage as possible. But the organizer comes in and she approaches the question from the other end. She does not talk about a standard of living, but she preaches it all the time. It is her business and her vocation to bring the girls to see that the first step towards getting more wages is to want more wages, to ask for more wages, and then, seeing that the single girl has no power of bringing about this result by herself, to show them that they must band together with the determination to make their wage square with their ideas of living, and not think that they must forever square their mode of living with their wage. In the acceptance into the mind of this idea is involved a complete revolution. It is in making of this ideal theory a living force, by helping girls to put it into practice in everyday shop life that the girl organizer has her special work cut out for her. And here she necessarily contrasts favorably with the average man organizer when he tries to deal with girls, because she understands the girl's work and the girl's problems better, and the girl knows that she does. I have taken wages as the prime subject of the organizer's activities only because wages form the crux of the whole question. There, without any deceiving veils falling between, we come close up to the real point at issue between the employer and the employed, between the employé and the community, the standard of living that is possible, as measured by the employé's share of the product of labor. But in practice, money wages form only one element of the standard of living problem, although the one around which least confusion gathers. Whatever form the demands of labor organizations may take, the essence of the demand is the same: better terms for the worker always, however temporary circumstances or technical details may obscure the issue. That this holds of reductions in hours of work has become a truism among trade unionists, who recognize that any reduction of hours of work eventually, though not perhaps immediately, results in a readjustment of wages, whether week-workers or piece-workers or both be involved, till the original money wage at any rate is reached, supposing, of course, that no other influence enters in as an element to lessen rates of pay. The question of equal pay for equal work involves indeed much more complicated issues, as regards both the individual worker and the whole body of women workers in the trade or branch of the trade affected. But even here, the underlying purpose is the same, the assuring, to the total number of workers whose labor has gone into the production, of a certain amount of finished marketable work, of an increased, or at the least, not a lessened share of the product of their toil. It is not to be questioned that if women are permitted to work at the same operations as men for a lesser remuneration, the man's wage must go down. In addition, he may, even at the lowered rate, lose his job, as the employer may cherish the not altogether groundless hope that he may cut down the women's wage yet further and employ yet more women, and yet fewer men. In the same way the provision of better sanitary conditions, the fencing off of dangerous machinery, the prohibition usually of dangerous processes or of the use of dangerous materials, such as lead or white phosphorus, all involve an addition small or large, to the cost of manufacture. If, however, there be in all these instances an increase in the cost of manufacture there are also results to the well-being of the workers, which, if they could be measured in money, would be out of all proportion to the money cost to the employer or to the purchasing community. But again, it is the maintenance of the workers' ideal standard of living which causes the trade union to demand that their share of the product of their toil shall not be lessened by needless or avoidable risks to life or limb or health. I have taken these demands in the order, in which, generally speaking, the organizer can induce the young girl worker to consider them in her own case. Better pay makes by far the easiest appeal, whether it be to the very young girl with her eager desire for a good time or to her older sister upon whom, quite surely, years have laid some of life's increasing burdens. Next in order of attractiveness came shorter hours, especially if the wage-earners can be assured that wages will stay where they are. But nothing short of both years and trade experience, apparently, will impress upon the worker all that is implied in those words that we write so easily and pronounce so glibly--sanitary conditions. The young girls have all the blessed, happy-go-lucky care-free-ness of children, the children they are in years. They start out on their wage-earning career with the abounding high spirits and the stores of vitality of extreme youth. They are proud of their new capacity to earn, to begin to keep themselves and to help the mother and the others, and at first it does not seem to them as if anything could break them down or kill them. They do not at first associate bad air with headaches or sore throats, nor long standing with backaches, nor following the many needles of a power sewing-machine with eye trouble. The dangerous knife-edge on the revolving wheel, or the belting that may catch hair or clothing is to them only an item in the shop-furnishings, that they hope may not catch them napping. All along the progress of labor organization has been exceedingly slow among women as compared with men, and has been far indeed from keeping pace with the rate at which increasing numbers of women have poured into the industrial field. So that it was not strange that well-meaning labor men, judging from personal experiences or arguing from analogy, came to the conclusion, paralyzing indeed to their own strivings after an all-inclusive, nation-wide organization of the workers, that women could not be organized. Or if such a labor man did not like to put it quite so bluntly, even to himself, he would shake his head, and regretfully remark that women did not make good trade unionists. If someone less experienced or more hopeful came along with plans for including or for helping women, the veteran trade unionist had too often a number of facts to bring forward, the bald accuracy of which was not to be disputed, of how in his own trade the women were scabbing on the men by working for a lower wage, or that they were so indifferent about the meetings, or worse still, how that women's local did so fine during the strike, and then just went to pieces, and now there wasn't any local at all. "Facts are not to be explained away," he would conclude. No, they are not to be explained away, but some facts may be explained, and not unfrequently the explanation is based upon some other fact, which has been overlooked. With the present question, the one important fact which explains a good deal is the youth of so many women workers. This by no means disposes of each particular situation with its special difficulties, but it does help to explain the general tendency among the women to be neglectful of meetings and to let their local go to pieces, which so distracts our friend. This new competitor with men, whom we think of and speak of as a woman, is in many cases not a woman at all, but only a girl, very often only a child. From this one fact arises a whole class, of conditions, with resulting problems and difficulties totally different from any the man trade unionist has to deal with among men. The first and most palpable difficulty is that the majority of workers are yet at the play age. They are still at the stage when play is one of the rightful conditions under which they carry on their main business of growing up. Many of them are not ready to be in the factory at all. Certainly not for eight, ten or twelve hours a day. And so those young things, after an unthankful and exhausting day's toil, are not going to attend meetings unless these can be made attractive to them. And the meeting that may appear entirely right and even attractive to the man of thirty or forty will be tiresome and boring past endurance to the girl of sixteen or eighteen. Then there are other huge difficulties to encounter. The very first principles of coöperative action and mutual responsibility are unknown to the great majority of the young workers. Too rarely does it happen, that in her own home the girl has learnt anything about trade unionism, at least trade unionism for women. The greater number of girls are not the daughters of factory mothers. The mother, whether American or foreign-born, grew up herself in simpler conditions, and does not begin to comprehend the utterly changed environment in which her little daughter has to work when she enters a modern factory. If American, she may; have married just out of her father's home, and if foreign-born she may have been tending silkworms or picking grapes in Italy, or at field-work in Poland or Hungary. Very different occupations these from turning raw silk into ribbon or velvet in an Eastern mill, or labelling fruit-jars in an Illinois cannery. Again, neither in the public nor in the parochial school are the workers-to-be taught anything concerning the labor movement or the meaning of collective bargaining. Even if they should have attained the eighth grade with its dizzy heights of learning, the little teaching they have received in civics has not touched upon either of the most vital problems of our day, the labor movement or the woman movement. The mere youth, however, of the girl workers is not in itself the chief or the most, insuperable difficulty. If these girls were boys we might look forward to their growing up in the trade, gaining experience and becoming ever more valuable elements in the union membership. But after a few years the larger percentage of the girls marry and are lost to the union and to unionism for good. Nay, a girl is often such a temporary hand that she does not even remain out her term of working years in one trade, but drifts into and out of half-a-dozen unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and works for twenty different employers in the course of a few years. The head of a public-school social center made it her business to inquire of fifty girls, all over sixteen, and probably none over eighteen how long each had held her present job. Two only had been over a year at the one place. The rest accounted for such short periods as four months, six weeks, two weeks, at paper-box-making, candy-packing or book-binding with, of course, dull seasons and periods of unemployment between. In the organized trades conditions are not quite so exasperating, but even in these the short working term of the girl employé means an utter lack of continuity in the membership of the trade and therefore of the union. The element of permanence in men's organizations is in great measure the result of the fact that men, whether they remain in one particular trade or shift to another, are at least in industry for life as wage-earners, unless indeed they pass on into the employing or wage-paying class. But instead of seeing in the temporary employment of so many girls only another reason why they need the protection and the educational advantages of organization, we have been too contented to let ill alone, and all alike, the girl, the workingman, and the community are suffering for this inertia. In this connection the first and most important matter to take up is that of women organizers, for women workers will never be enrolled in the labor movement of America in adequate numbers except through women organizers. And where are these today? A most emphatic presentation of the practical reasons why the man organizer can rarely handle effectively young women workers, and why therefore women are absolutely necessary if the organization on any large scale is to be successful, was made before the Convention of the American Federation of Labor in Toronto in 1909. The speaker was Mr. Thomas Rumsey of Toledo. He described his own helplessness before the problem. He told, how, to begin with, it was not possible for a man to have that readiness of access to the girl workers when in their own homes and in their leisure hours which the woman organizer readily obtained. "If a girl is living at home," he said, "it is not quite, so awkward, but if she is in lodgings I can't possibly ask to see her in her own room. If I talk to her at all it will be out on the street, which is not pleasant, especially if it is snowing or freezing or blowing a gale. It is not under these conditions that a girl is likely to see the use of an organization or be attracted by its happier and more social side." Then he went on to say that he himself often did not know what best to say to his girl when he had caught her. He was ignorant, perhaps almost as ignorant as an outsider, of the conditions under which she did her work. He might know or be able to find out her wages and hours; he might guess that there was fining and speeding up, but he would know nothing of the details, and on any sanitary question or any moral question he would be utterly at sea. He could neither put the questions nor get the answers, nor in any way win the girl's confidence. Therefore, Mr. Rumsey concluded, if the American Federation of Labor is going to acknowledge its responsibilities in the great field of labor propaganda among women it must seriously take up the question of organizing women by women. On a similar basis of reasoning it is easy to see that in the great majority of cases the successful organization of the women in any particular trade can be best carried out by one of themselves, a woman from their own trade. Not only do the girls believe that she understands their difficulties better than anyone else, but in most instances she does indeed bring to her work that exact knowledge of details and processes which gives the girls confidence that she can fairly state their case, that she will not, through technical ignorance, ask for impossibilities, nor on the other hand permit herself to be browbeaten by a foreman or superintendent because she does not know anything about the quality of material used, the peculiarities of a machine or the local or seasonal needs of the trade. Employers and managers also quickly recognize when organizers know whereof they talk. They, like the employés, realize that with such competent and efficient organizers or business agents they, too, are on firmer ground, even though they may not always acknowledge it. To these sound general rules there are exceptions. There are cases where a man organizer can be invaluable, especially in some great, even if temporary, crisis. Also, there are in the American labor movement a few women who possess a genius for organizing on the very broadest lines. So profound is their sympathy with all their sisters, so thorough their grasp of general principles, so quick their perception of details, so intimate their knowledge of human nature and so sound and cool their judgment that they can be sent far afield into trades quite foreign to those of which they have had personal experience, and make a success of it. But such as these are rare and, when found, to be prized and cherished. The ordinary everyday way of drawing the women workers into the union and into the labor movement would be to have in every trade women from that trade at work all the time organizing their fellow-workers and holding them in the organization. When the preliminary difficulties of organization have been met and overcome, when the new union has been set on its feet or the old one strengthened, there remains for the girl leader to keep her forces together. The commonest complaint of all is that women members of a trade union do not attend their meetings. It is indeed a very serious difficulty to cope with, and the reasons for this poor attendance and want of interest in union affairs have to be fairly faced. At first glance it seems curious that the meetings of a mixed local composed of both men and girls, should have for the girls even less attraction than meetings of their own sex only. But so it is. A business meeting of a local affords none of the lively social intercourse of a gathering for pleasure or even of a class for instruction. The men, mostly the older men, run the meeting and often are the meeting. Their influence may be out of all proportion to their numbers. It is they who decide the place where the local shall meet and the hour at which members shall assemble. The place is therefore often over a saloon, to which many girls naturally and rightly object. Sometimes it is even in a disreputable district. The girls may prefer that the meeting should begin shortly after closing time so that they do not need to go home and return, or have to loiter about for two or three hours. They like meetings to be over early. The men mostly name eight o'clock as the time of beginning, but business very often will not start much before nine. Then, too, the men feel that they have come together to talk, and talk they do while they allow the real business to drag. Of course, the girls are not interested in long discussions on matters they do not understand and in which they have no part and naturally they stay away, and so make matters worse, for the men feel they are doing their best for the interests of the union, resent the women's indifference, and are more sure than ever that women do not make good unionists. Among the remedies proposed for this unsatisfactory state of affairs is compulsory attendance at a certain number of meetings per year under penalty of a fine or even losing of the card. (A very drastic measure this last and risky, unless the trade has the closed shop.) Where the conditions of the trade permit it by far the best plan is to have the women organized in separate locals. The meetings of women and girls only draw better attendances, give far more opportunity for all the members to take part in the business, and beyond all question form the finest training ground for the women leaders who inconsiderable numbers are needed so badly in the woman's side of the trade-union movement today. Those trade-union women who advocate mixed locals for every trade which embraces both men and women are of two types. Some are mature, perhaps elderly women, who have been trade unionists all their lives, who have grown up in the same locals with men, who have in the long years passed through and left behind their period of probation and training, and to whose presence and active coöperation the men have become accustomed. These women are able to express their views in public, can put or discuss a motion or take the chair as readily as their brothers. The other type is represented by those individual women or girls in whom exceptional ability takes the place of experience, and who appreciate the educational advantages of working along with experienced trade-union leaders. I have in my mind at this moment one girl over whose face comes all the rapture of the keen student as she explains how much she has learnt from working with men in their meetings. She ardently advocates mixed locals for all. For the born captain the plea is sound. Always she is quick enough to profit by the men's experience, by their ways of managing conferences and balancing advantages and losses in presenting a wage-scale or accepting an agreement. At the same time she is not so overwhelmed by their superiority, born of long practice in handling such situations, but that she retains her own independence of judgment and clearness of vision, and at the fitting moment will rise and place the woman's point of view before her male co-workers. Oh yes, for herself she is right, and for the coming woman she is right, too. But the risk is rather that she and such as she pressing on in their individual advancement will outstep the rank and file of their sisters at the present stage while trade unionism among women is still so young a movement, and one which under the most hopeful circumstances will have to fulfill for many years the task of receiving, teaching and assimilating vast numbers of young and quite untrained, in many cases non-English-speaking girls. The mixed local for all mixed trades is, I believe, the ultimate goal which women trade unionists ought to keep in mind. But with the average girl today the plan does not work. The mixed local does not, as a general rule, offer the best training-class for new girl recruits, in which they may obtain their training in collective bargaining or coöperative effort. To begin with, they are often so absurdly young that they stand in the position of children put into a class at school two or three grades ahead of their capacity and expected to do work for which they have had no preparation through the earlier grades. Many of the discussions that go on are quite above the girls' heads. And even when a young girl has something to say and wishes to say it, want of practice and timidity often keep her silent. It is to be regretted, too, that some trade-union men are far from realizing either the girls' needs in their daily work or their difficulties in meetings, and lecture, reprove or bully, where they ought to listen and persuade. The girls, as a rule, are not only happier in their own women's local, but they have the interest of running the meetings themselves. They choose their own hall and fix their own time of meeting. Their officers are of their own selecting and taken from among themselves. The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end. Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer. But there are other and broader reasons still why it is women who should in the main be the leaders and teachers of women in the trade union, that newest and best school for the working-women. Women have always been the teachers of the race. It was in the far-back ages with motherhood as their normal school that primitive women learnt their profession and handed on to their daughters their slowly acquired skill. Whenever woman has been left to self-development on her own lines her achievements have always been in the constructive direction. Always she has been busy helping to make some young thing grow, whether the object of her solicitous attention were a wild grass, a baby, or an art. What does education mean but the drawing forth of latent qualities? Is not the best teacher the one who calls these forth? Are not women teachers, trained, wise, and patient, urgently needed in the labor movement of our day? Just now, when the number of young girls in industry is so great, the girls need them, we know. Possibly the men also would be the gainers through their influence. The labor movement is a constant fight, it is true, but it is also a school of development. In the near future we hope it will mean to all workers even more than a discipline, a storehouse of culture, a provider of joy and of pleasure, of care in sickness, of support in adversity, and best of all, a preparation for and a hastener on of that coöperative commonwealth for which more and more of us ever watch and pray. The need for the woman organizer admitted, the demand for women organizers becomes pressing. And where are they to be found? The reply is that they are not to be found, not yet. If the organizers were to be obtained such requests would be increased fourfold. But the material is ready to hand. The born organizer, with initiative, resource, courage and patience exists in every trade, in every city, and she comes of every race. But on the one hand she is untrained, and on the other cannot stop to receive training unless for a little while she is relieved from the pressing necessity of earning her living. The problem of how to provide women organizers in response to the demand for such workers, with its solution, was admirably put by Mrs. Raymond Robins, in her presidential address before the Fourth Biennial Convention of the National Women's Trade Union League in St. Louis, in June, 1913, when she said: The best organizers without question are the trade-union girls. Many a girl capable of leadership and service is held within the ranks because neither she as an individual nor her organization has money enough to set her free for service. Will it be possible for the National Women's Trade Union League to establish a training-school for women organizers, even though in the beginning it may be only a training-class, offering every trade-union girl a scholarship for a year? The course finally outlined included a knowledge of the principles of trade unionism, and their practical application in field-work, a knowledge of labor legislation, of parliamentary law, and practice in writing and speaking. In the following year, 1914, the League was able to give several months of training to three trade-union girls. Cordial coöperation was received from both the University of Chicago and North-western University. For the present no further students have been received, because of the need of larger financial resources to maintain classes in session regularly. The need for a training-school is attested by the constant demands for women organizers received at the headquarters of the League from central labor bodies and men's unions, and by the example of the thorough training given to young women taking up work in other fields somewhat analogous. Such a school for women might very well prove in this country the nucleus of university extension work in the labor movement for both men and women, similar to that which has been so successfully inaugurated in Great Britain, and which is making headway in Canada and in Australia. At the Seattle Convention of the American Federation of Labor held in November, 1914, a resolution was passed levying an assessment of one cent upon the entire membership to organize women. Efforts were mainly concentrated upon workers in the textile industry, to which special organizers, both men and women, were assigned. There is no trade which has worse conditions, and consequently wages and regularity of employment are immediately affected adversely by any industrial depression. Women in the labor movement will have to make their own mistakes and earn their own experience. I have dwelt elsewhere upon the many advantages that accrue to women and girls from belonging to an organization so vital and so bound up with some of our most fundamental needs, as the trade union. On the very surface it is evident that in such a body working-women learn to be more business-like, to work together in harmony, to share loyally the results of their united action, whether these spell defeat or success. If they err, they promptly learn of their mistakes from their, fellow-workers, men or women, from employers, and from their families. Here, however, is perhaps the place to call attention to one markedly feminine tendency, which should be discouraged in these early days lest in process of time it might even gain the standing of a virtue, and that is the inclination among the leaders to indulge in unlimited overwork in all their labor activities. Labor men overwork too, but not, as a rule, to the same degree, nor nearly so frequently as women. Do not mistake. Women do not fall into this error because they are trade unionists, or because they are inspired by the labor movement or by the splendid ideals or by the aspiration after a free womanhood. No! Trade-union and socialist and suffrage women overwork because they are women, because through long ages the altruistic side has been overdeveloped. They have brought along with them into their public work the habit of self-sacrifice, and that overconscientiousness in detail which their foremothers acquired during the countless generations when obedience, self-immolation and self-obliteration were considered women's chief duties. Personally these good sisters are blameless. But that does not in the least alter the hard fact that such overdevotion is an uneconomical expenditure of nervous energy. When a wiser onlooker, wise with the onlooker's wisdom, urges moderation even in overwork, there is put forward the pathetic plea, variously worded: "So much to do, so little time to do it." I have never heard that hard-to-be-met argument so well answered as by a woman physician, who gave these reasons to her patient, one of the overdevoted ilk. "Agreed," she said, "there is so much to do that you cannot possibly do it all, nor the half, nor the tenth, nor the fiftieth part of it. Furthermore, the struggle is going on for a long, long time, and there are occasions ahead when your aid will be needed as badly or more badly than today. And when that hour comes, if you do not take care of yourself now, you will not be there to furnish the help others require. Not that I think you are dangerously ill, but I'm reminding you that, at the rate you are going, your working years, the years during which your energy and your initiative will last, are going to be few, so pull up and go slow! "You are a leader, and you are so, partly at least, because you are a highly trained person. It has taken many years to train you up to this pitch of efficiency. You can handle agreements, at a pinch you can draft a bill. You are a favorite and influential speaker. You are invaluable in a strike, and you have often prevented strikes. We all want you to go on doing all these things. Now, tell me, which is the most valuable to the whole labor movement, a few years of your activity, or many years?" That puts the matter in a nutshell. I do not wish to overlook the fact that there are exceptional occasions when overwork to the extent of breakdown or even death is justified, or to have it supposed that I think mere life our most valuable possession, or that there may not be many a time when truly to save your life is to lose it. But I repeat that habitual, everyday overwork, is uneconomical, injurious to the cause we serve, and likely to lessen rather than heighten the efficiency of the indispensable leaders when the supreme test comes. VIII THE TRADE UNION IN OTHER FIELDS When we begin! to survey the vast field of industry covered by different occupations we get the same sense of confusion that comes to us when we look at an ant-heap. The workers are going hither and thither, with apparently no ordered plan, with no unity or community of purpose that we can discover. But those who have given time and patience to the task have been able to read order even in the chaos of the ant-hill. And so may we, with our far more complex human ant-hill, if we will set to work. The material for such a study lies ready to our hand in bewildering abundance; but to make any practical studies which shall aid the workers and the thinking public to follow the line of least resistance in raising standards of wages and of status as well will be the work of many years and of many minds. Even today there are some general indications of how the workers are going to settle their own problems. Some foreign critics and some critics at home are very severe upon the backwardness of the labor movement in the United States, and in these criticisms there is a large element of truth. Yet there is one difficulty under which we labor on this continent, which these critics do not take into consideration. That is the primal one of the immense size of the country, along with all the secondary difficulties involved in this first one. There has never been any other country even attempting a task so stupendous as ours--to organize, to make one, to obtain good conditions for today, to insure as good and better conditions for tomorrow, for the wage-earning ones out of a population of over ninety millions spread over three million square miles. And with these millions of human beings of so many different races, with no common history and often no common language, this particular task has fallen to the lot of no other nation on the face of this earth. Efforts at organization of the people and by the people, are perpetually being undermined. Capitalism is nationally fairly well organized, so that there has been all the time more and more agreement among the great lords of finance, not to trespass on one another's preserves. But it is not so with the workers. Even in trades where there exists a formal national organization, there will be towns and states where it will either be non-existent or extremely weak, so that workers, especially the unskilled, as they drift from town to town in search of work, tend to pass out of, rather than into, the union of their trade. And thus members of every trade organization live in dread of the inroad into their city or their state of crowds of unorganized competitors for their particular kind of employment. Why, if it were Great Britain or Germany, by the time we had organized one state, we should have organized a whole country. But the big country is ours, and the big task must be shouldered. It is only natural that trade-union organization should have progressed furthest in those occupations which, as industries, are the most highly developed. The handicrafts of old, the weaving and the carving and the pottery, have through a thousand inventions become specialized, and the work of the single operative has been divided up into a hundred processes. These are the conditions, and this the environment under which the workers most frequently organize. The operations have become more or less defined and standardized, and the operatives are more readily grouped and classified. Also, even amid all the noise and clatter of the factory, they have opportunity for becoming acquainted, sometimes while working together, or at the noon hour, or when going to or coming from work. There are still few enough women engaged in factory work who have come into trade unions, but the path has at least been cleared, both by the numbers of men who have shown the way, and by the increasing independence of women themselves. Similar reasoning applies to the workers in the culinary trades. These also are the modern, specialized forms of the old domestic arts of cooking and otherwise preparing and serving food. The workers, the cooks and the waitresses, have their separate, allotted tasks; they also have opportunities of even closer association than the factory operatives. These opportunities, which may be used among the young folks to exchange views on the latest nickel show, to compare the last boss with the present one, may also, among the older ones, mean talking over better wages and hours and how to get them, and here may spring up the beginnings of organization. The number of women organized into trade unions is still insignificant, compared with those unreached by even a glimmering of knowledge as to what trade unionism means. The movement will not only have to become stronger numerically in the trades it already includes. It must extend in other directions, taking in the huge army of the unskilled and the semi-skilled, outside of those trades, so as to cover the fruit-pickers in the fields and the packers in the canneries, the paper-box-makers, the sorters of nuts and the knotters of feathers, those who pick the cotton from the plant, as well as those who make the cotten into cloth. Another group yet to be enrolled are the hundreds of thousands of girls in stores, engaged in selling what the girls in factories have made, and still other large groups of girls in mercantile offices who are indirectly helping on the same business of exchange of goods for cash, and cash for goods, and who are just as truly part of the industrial world and of commercial life. But the pity is that the girl serving at the counter and the girl operating the typewriter do not know this. Take two other great classes of women, who have to be considered and reckoned with in any wide view of the wage-earning woman. These are nurses and teachers. The product of their toil is nothing that can be seen or handled, nothing that can be readily estimated in dollars and cents. But it must none the less be counted to their credit in any estimate of the national wealth, for it is to be read in terms of sound bodies and alert minds. Large numbers of women and girls are musicians, actresses and other theatrical employés. The labor movement needs them all, and, although few of them realize it, they need the labor movement. These are professions with great prizes, but the average worker makes no big wage, has no assurance of steadiness of employment, of sick pay when out of work, or of such freedom while working as shall bring out the very best that is in her. In almost all of these occupations are to be found the beginnings of organization on trade-union lines. The American Federation of Musicians is a large and powerful body, of such standing in the profession that the entire membership of the Symphony Orchestras in all the large cities of the United States and Canada (with the single exception of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) belongs to it. Women, so far, although admitted to the Federation, have had no prominent part in its activities. Nurses and attendants in several of the state institutions of Illinois have during the last two years formed unions. Already they have had hours shortened from the old irregular schedule of twelve, fourteen and even sixteen hours a day to an eight-hour workday for all, as far as practicable. The State Board is also entirely favorable to concede higher wages, one day off in seven, and an annual vacation of two weeks on pay, but cannot carry these recommendations out without an increased appropriation from the legislature. There are now eight small associations of stenographers and bookkeepers and other office employés, one as far west as San Francisco, while there is at least one court reporters' union. The various federations of school-teachers have worked to raise school and teaching standards as well as their own financial position. They have besides, owing to the preponderance of women in the teaching profession, made a strong point of the justice of equal pay for equal work. Women teachers are perhaps in a better position to make this fight for all their sex than any other women. The fact that so many bodies of teachers have one after another affiliated with the labor movement has had a secondary result in bringing home to teachers the needs of the children, the disadvantages under which so many of them grow up, and still more the handicap under which most children enter industry. So it has come about that the teaching body in several cities has been roused to plead the cause of the workers' children, and therefore of the workers, and has brought much practical knowledge and first-hand information before health departments, educational authorities, and legislators. Yet another angle from which the organization of teachers has to be considered is that they are actually, if not always technically, public employés. Every objection that can be raised against the organization of public employés, if valid at all, is valid here. Every reason that can be urged why public employés should be able to give collective expression to their ideas and their wishes has force here. The domestic servant, as we know her, is but a survival in culture from an earlier time, and more primitive environment. As a personal attendant, with no limitation of hours, without defined and standardized duties, and taking out part of her wages in the form of board and lodging, also at no standardized valuation, she will have to be improved out of existence altogether. On the other hand as a skilled worker, she fills an important function in the community, satisfying permanent human needs, preparing food to support our bodies, and making clean and beautiful the homes wherein we dwell. Surely humanity is not so stupid that arrangements cannot be planned by which domestic workers can have their own homes, like other people, hours of leisure, like other workers, and organizations through which they may express themselves. The main difficulty in the immediate future is that the very reason why organization is so urgently needed by domestic workers is the reason why it is so difficult to form organizations, the individual isolation in which the girls live and work. The desire for common action assuredly is there; one little group after another are meeting and talking over their difficulties, and planning how they can overcome them. The obstacles in the way of forming unions of domestic workers are tremendous. What such groups need, above all, is a union headquarters, with comfortable and convenient rooms, in which girls could meet their friends during their times off, or in which they could just rest, if they wanted to, for many have no friend's house to go to during their precious free days. Such a headquarters should conduct an employment agency. Other activities would probably grow out of such a center, and the workers coöperating would help towards the solving of that domestic problem which is their concern even more intimately than it is that of those whom, as things are, they so unwillingly serve. That the finest type of women are already awake, and nearing the stage when they themselves recognize the need of organization, is evident from the fact that in Chicago, Buffalo and Seattle, there lately sprang up almost simultaneously, small associations of household workers formed to secure regular hours and better living conditions. There is no class of women or girls more urgently in need of a radical change in their economic condition than department-store clerks. To this need even the public has of late become somewhat awakened, thanks mainly to a troop of investigators and to the writers in the magazines, who on the one hand have roused nation-wide horror by means of revelations regarding the white-slave traffic, and on the other have brought to that same national audience painful enlightenment as to the chronic starvation of both soul and body endured by so many brave and patient young creatures, who on four, five or six dollars a week just manage to exist, but who in so doing, are cheated of all that makes life worth living in the present, and are disinherited of any prospect of home, health and happiness in the future. This story has been told again and again. Yet the public has not yet learned to relate it to any effectual remedy. Undoubtedly organization has done a great deal for this class in other countries, notably in England and in Germany, and in this country also, in the few cities where it has been brought about. But meanwhile their numbers are increasing, and it hardly seems human for us to wait while all these young lives are being ruined in the hope that a few years hence the department-store clerks succeeding them may be able to save themselves through organization, when there is another remedy at hand. That remedy is legislation to cover thoroughly hours, wages and conditions of work. No one suggests depending exclusively on laws. One reason, probably, why the freeing of the negro slave has been so often merely a nominal freeing is because he was able to play so small a part himself in the gaining of his freedom. It was a gift, truly, from the master race. But no one, surely, would use that argument in reference to children, and an immense proportion of the department-store employés are but children, children between fourteen and eighteen, and in some states much younger. One hears of occasional instances in which even children have banded together and gone on strike. School-children have done it. The little button-sewers of Muscatine, Iowa, formed a juvenile union during the long strike of 1911. But these are such exceptional instances that they can hardly count in normal times. And that such a large body of children and very young girls are included among department-store employés adds immensely to the difficulty of gaining over the grown-up women to organization. [Illustration: A BINDERY Hand folders on platform. Machine folder and hand gatherers below.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ONE OF THE LARGEST AND BEST EQUIPPED WAIST AND CLOAK FACTORIES IN NEW YORK CITY] Perhaps at some future time children may mature mentally earlier. If along with this, education is more efficient, and the civic duty of a common responsibility for the good of all is taught universally in our schools, even the child at fourteen may become class-conscious, and willing to fight and struggle for a common aim. But if that day ever comes, it will be in the far future, and let us hope that then childish energies may be free to find other channels of expression and childish coöperation be exerted for happier aims. The child of today is often temporarily willful and disobedient, but on the whole he (and more often she) is pathetically patient and long-suffering under all sorts of hardships and injustices, and has no idea of anything like an industrial rebellion. Indeed overwork and ill-usage have upon children the markedly demoralizing effect of cowing them permanently, so that in oppressing a child you do more than deprive him of his childhood, you weaken what ought to be the backbone of his maturity. But improve conditions, whether by law or otherwise, and you will have a more independent "spunky" child, a better prospect of having him, when grown up, a more wholesomely natural rebel. Indeed more or less, this applies to human beings of any age. As regards the minimum wage, the objection raised by certain among the conservative labor leaders has been that it will retard organization and check independence of spirit. This reasoning seems quite academic, in view of the fact that it is the most oppressed workers who are usually the least able and willing to assert themselves. Give them shorter hours or better wages, and they will soon be pleading for still shorter hours and yet higher wages. Wherever the regulation of wages, through that most democratic method, that of wages boards composed of representatives of workers and employers, has been attempted, organization has been encouraged, and this plan of legalized collective bargaining has been applied to trade after trade. In Victoria, Australia, the birthplace of the system, and the state where it has been longest in force, and more fully developed than anywhere else, the number of trades covered has grown in less than twenty years from the four experimental trades of shoemaking, baking, various departments of the clothing trades and furniture-making to 141 occupations, including such varied employments as engravers, plumbers, miners and clerical workers. It is hardly necessary to say that minimum wages boards in Australia control the wages of men as well as of women. This question, however, does not enter into practical labor statesmanship in the United States today, but the minimum wage for women is a very live issue, and its introduction in state after state is supported by the working-women, both speaking as individuals and through their organizations. The objections of employers to any regulation of wages is partly economic, as they fear injury to trade, a fear not sustained by Australian experience, or by the experience of employers in trades in this country, in which wages have been raised and are largely controlled by strong labor organizations. In especial, employers object to an unequal burden imposed upon the state or states first experimenting with wages boards. This has no more validity than a similar objection raised against any and all interference between employer and employé, whether it be limitation of hours, workmen's compensation acts or any other industrial legislation. It is only that another adjustment has to be made, one of the many that any trade and any employer has always to be making to suit slightly changing circumstances. And often the adjustment is much less, and the advantage to the employer arising from having more efficient and contented employés greater than anticipated. Competition is then not for the cheapest worker, but for the most efficient. Public responsibility for social and economic justice is likely to be quickened and maintained by the very existence of these permanent boards created not so much to remedy acute evils as to establish in the industry conditions more nearly equitable. It has ever been found that in regard to ordinary factory legislation, organized employés were the best inspectors to see that the law was enforced. This principle holds good in even a more marked degree, where the representatives of the workers have themselves a say in the decision, as is the case during the long sessions of a wages board, where all who take part in the discussions and in the final agreement are experts in the trade, and intimately acquainted with the practical details of the industry. The very same misgivings as are felt and expressed by employers and by the public regarding the effect of legislation for the regulation of wages have been heard on every occasion when any legal check has been proposed upon the downward pressure upon the worker, inevitable under our system of competition for trade and markets. What a cry went up from the manufacturers of Great Britain when a bill to check the ruthless exploitation of babies in the cotton mills was introduced into the House of Commons. The very same arguments of interference with trade, despotic control over the right of the employé to bargain as an individual, are urged today, no matter how often their futility and irrelevance have been exposed. The question of organization and the white alien has been dealt with in another chapter, but organization cannot afford to stop even here. It will never accomplish all that trade unionists desire and what the workers need until those of every color, the Negro, the Indian, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindoo are included. The southern states are very imperfectly organized, and trade unionism on any broad scale will never be achieved there until the colored workers are included. In this the white workers, neither in the North nor in the South, have yet recognized their plain duty. It is not the American Federation itself which is directly responsible, but the national and local unions in the various trades, who place difficulties in the way of admitting colored members. "Ordinarily," writes Dr. F.E. Wolfe in his "Admission to Labor Unions," published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, "the unimpeded admission of Negroes can be had only where the local white unionists are favorable. Consequently, racial antipathy and economic motive may, in any particular trade, nullify the policies of the national union." This applies even in those cases where the national union itself would raise no barrier. I think it may be safely added that there are practically no colored women trade unionists, the occasional exception but serving to emphasize our utter neglect, as regards organization, of the colored woman. Yet another world waiting to be conquered is the Dominion of Canada, Canada with its vast area and its still small population, yet with its cities, from Montreal to Vancouver, facing the very same industrial problems as American cities, from New York to San Francisco. The organization of women is, so far, hardly touched in any of the provinces. One encouraging circumstance, and significant of the intimate connection between the two halves of North America, is the fact that the international union of each trade includes those dwelling both in the United States and in Canada; these internationals are in their turn, for the most part affiliated with both the American Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada. Whenever, then, the women of Canada seriously begin to unionize, advance will be made through these existing international organizations. As mentioned elsewhere, the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress of Canada has endorsed the work of the National Women's Trade Union League of America, and seats a fraternal delegate from the League at its conventions. It can only be a question of time, and of increasing industrial pressure, when an active trade-union movement will spring up among Canadian women. Among those who advocate and are prepared to lead in such a movement are the President of the Trades and Labor Congress, Mr. J.C. Watters, Mr. James Simpson of the Toronto _Industrial Banner_, Mrs. Rose Henderson of Montreal, Mr. J.W. Wilkinson, President of the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council, and Miss Helena Gutteridge, also of Vancouver. The President of the National Women's Trade Union League, in her opening address before the New York convention in June, 1915, summed up the situation as to the sweated trades tellingly: For tens of thousands of girl and women workers the average wage in sweated industries still is five, eight and ten cents an hour, and these earnings represent, on the average, forty weeks' work out of a fifty-two week year. Further, in the report of the New York State Factory Investigation Commission we find that out of a total of 104,000 men and women 13,000 receive less than $5.00 a week, 34,000 less than $7.00 a week, 68,000 less than $10.00 a week and only 17,000 receive $15.00 a week or more. These low wages are not only paid to apprentices either in factories or stores but to large numbers of women who have been continuously in industry for years. Again, the New York State Factory Investigating Commission tells us that half of those who have five years' experience in stores are receiving less than $8.00 a week, and only half of those with ten years' experience receive $10.00 a week. Dr. Howard Woolston of the Commission has pointed out: "Even for identical work in the same locality, striking differences in pay are found. In one wholesale candy factory in Manhattan no male laborer and no female hand-dipper is paid as much as $8 a week, nor does any female packer receive as much as $5.50. In another establishment of the same class in the same borough every male laborer gets $8 or over, and more than half the female dippers and packers exceed the rates given in the former plant. Again, one large department store in Manhattan pays 86 per cent. of its saleswomen $10 or over; another pays 86 per cent. of them less. When a representative paper-box manufacturer learned that cutters in neighboring factories receive as little as $10 a week, he expressed surprise, because he always pays $15 or more. This indicates that there is no well-established standard at wages in certain trades. The amounts are fixed by individual bargain, and labor is 'worth' as much as the employer agrees to pay." It has been estimated by the Commission that to raise the wages of two thousand girls in the candy factories from $5.75 to $8.00 a week, the confectioners in order to cover the cost will have to charge eighteen cents more per hundred pounds of candy. It is also estimated that if work shirts cost $3.00 a dozen, and the workers receive sixty cents for sewing them we can raise the wages ten per cent. and make the labor cost sixty-six cents. The price of those dozen shirts has been raised to $3.06. The cost of labor in the sweated industries is a small fraction of the manufacturing cost. In the face of such evidence is there anyone who can still question that individual bargaining is a menace against the social order and that education and equipment in organization and citizenship become a social necessity? Women unionists, like men in the labor movement, are continually asked to support investigations into industrial conditions, investigations and yet more investigations. They are asked to give evidence before boards and commissions, they are asked to furnish journalists and writers of books with information. They have done so willingly, but there is a sense coming over many of us that we have had investigations a-plenty; and that the hour struck some time ago for at least beginning to put an end to the conditions of needless poverty and inexcusable oppression, which time after time have been unearthed. No one who heard Mrs. Florence Kelley at the Charities and Corrections Conference in St. Louis in 1910 can forget the powerful plea she made to social workers that they should not be satisfied with investigation. Not an investigation has ever been made but has told the same story, monotonous in its lesson, only varying in details; workers, and especially women workers, are inadequately paid. Further she considers that investigations would be even more thorough and drastic if the investigators, the workers and the public knew that something would come out of the inquiry beyond words, words, words. Investigation alone never remedied any evil, never righted any injustice. Yet as far as the community are concerned, average men and women seem quite content when the investigation has been made, and stop there. What is wrong? Will no real improvement take place till the workers are strong enough individually and collectively to manage their own affairs, and through organization, coöperation, and political action, or its equivalent insure adequate remuneration, and prevent overwork, speeding up, and dangerous and insanitary conditions? In a degree investigation has prepared the way for legislation. Legislation will undoubtedly play even a bigger part than it has done in the protection of the workers. Almost all laws for which organized labor generally works affect women as well as men, whether they are anti-injunction statutes, or workmen's compensation acts, or factory laws. But there is another class of laws, specially favoring women, about which women have naturally more decided opinions than men. These are laws as to hours, and more recently as to wages, which are or are to be applicable to women alone. A just and common-sense argument extends special legislative protection to women, because of their generally exploited and handicapped position; but the one strong plea used in their behalf has been health and safety, the health and safety of the future mothers of society. At this point we pause. In all probability such protection will be found so beneficial to women that it will be eventually extended to men. One group of laws in which labor is vitally interested is laws touching the right of the workers to organize. Many of the most important judicial decisions in labor cases have turned upon this point. In this are involved the right to fold arms, and peacefully to suggest to others to do the same; the right to band together not to buy non-union goods, and peacefully to persuade others not to buy. One angle from which labor views all law-making is that of administration. A law may be beneficial. It is in danger on two sides. The first the risk of being declared unconstitutional, a common fate for the most advanced legislation in this country; or, safe on that side, it may be so carelessly or inefficiently administered as to be almost useless. In both cases, strong unions have a great influence in deciding the fate and the practical usefulness of laws. Whether in the making, the confirming, or the administering of laws, the trade unions form the most important channel through which the wishes of the workers can be expressed. Organized labor does not speak only for trade unionists; it necessarily, in almost every case, speaks for the unorganized as well, partly because the needs of both are usually the same, and partly because there is no possible method by which the wishes of the working people can be ascertained, save through the accepted representatives of the organized portion of the workers. An excellent illustration of how business can and does adjust itself to meet changing legal demands is seen in what happened when the Ten-Hour Law came in force in the state of Illinois in July, 1909. The women clerks on the elevated railroads of Chicago, who had been in the habit of working twelve hours a day for seven days a week at $1.75 a day, were threatened with dismissal, and replacement by men. But what happened? At first they had to accept as a compromise a temporary arrangement under which they received eleven hours' pay for ten hours' work. Their places were not, however, filled by men, and now, they are receiving for their ten-hour day $1.90 or 15 cents more than they had previously been paid for a twelve-hour day, and in addition they now are given every third Sunday off duty. This showed the good results of the law, particularly when there was a strong organization behind the workers. Mercantile establishments came in under the amended Ten-hour Law two years later. The new law was, on the whole, wonderfully well observed in Chicago, and as far as I have been able to learn, in the smaller towns as well. There were some violations discovered, and plenty more, doubtless, remained undiscovered. But the defaulting employers must have been very few compared with the great majority of those who met its requirement faithfully and intelligently. The proprietors and managers of the large Chicago department stores, for instance, worked out beforehand a plan of shifts by which they were able to handle the Christmas trade, satisfy their customers, and at the same time, dismiss each set of girls at the end of their ten-hour period. To meet the necessities of the case a staff of extra hands was engaged by each of the large department stores. This was a common arrangement. The regular girls worked from half-past eight till seven o'clock, with time off for lunch. The extra hands came on in the forenoon at eleven o'clock and worked till ten in the evening, with supper-time off. Certain of the stores varied the plan somewhat, by giving two hours for lunch. These long recesses are not without their disadvantages. They mean still a very long day on the stretch, and besides, where is a girl to spend the two hours? She cannot go home, and it is against the law for her to be in the store, for in the eye of the law, if she remains on the premises, she is presumably at work, and if at work, therefore being kept longer than the legal ten hours. That a law which had been so vigorously opposed should on the whole have been observed so faithfully in the second largest city in the United States, that it should in that city have stood the test, at its very initiation, of the rush season, is a fact full of hope and encouragement for all who are endeavoring to have our laws keep pace with ideals of common justice. Some time afterwards the constitutionality of the law was tested in the courts. Since then, complaints have died away. There is no record of trading establishments having been compelled to remove to another state, and we no longer even hear of its being a ruinous handicap to resident manufacturers. Even reactionary employers are now chiefly concerned in putting off the impending evil, as they regard it, of an eight-hour day, which they know cannot be very far off, as it has already arrived on the Pacific Coast. If the acquiescence of Illinois employers was satisfactory, the effect upon the girls was remarkable and exceeded expectations. During that Christmas week, the clerks were tired, of course, but they were not in the state of exhaustion, collapse, and physical and nervous depletion, which they had experienced in previous years. This bodily salvation had been expected. It was what organized women had pleaded for and bargained for, what the defending lawyers, Mr. Louis D. Brandeis and Mr. William J. Calhoun had urged upon the judges, when the Supreme Court of Illinois had been earlier called upon to pass upon the validity of the original ten-hour law, although department-store employés had not been included within the scope of its protection. But the girls were more than not merely worn-out to the point of exhaustion. Most of them were more alive than they had ever been since first they started clerking. They were happy, and surprised beyond measure at their own good fortune. Those juniors who could just remember how different last Christmas had been, those seniors whose memories held such searing recollections of many preceding Christmases, were one in their rejoicing and wonderment. They caught a dim vision of a common interest. Here was something which all could share. That one was benefited did not mean another's loss. From girl after girl I heard the same story. I would ask them how they were getting on through the hard time this year. "Oh," a girl would answer, "it wasn't so bad at all. You see we've got the ten-hour law, and we can't work after the time is up. It's just wonderful. Why, I'm going to enjoy Christmas this year. I'm tired, but nothing like I've always been before. Last Christmas Day I couldn't get out of bed, I ached so, and I couldn't eat, either." And yet, while the girls, thanks to the new law, were having something like decent, though by no means ideal hours of work, the young elevator boys, in the same store were working fourteen hours and a half, day in, day out. So imperfect yet are the results of much that is accomplished! There are now two states, Mississippi and Oregon, which have ten-hour laws, applying to both men and women, and including the larger proportion of the workers. There are also federal statutes, state laws and municipal ordinances limiting the hours and granting the eight-hour day to whole groups of workers, either in public or semi-public employ, or affecting special occupations such as mining. Thus it is clear, that for both sexes there is now abundant legal precedent for any shortening of hours, which has its place in a more advanced social and industrial development. IX WOMEN AND THE VOCATIONS The profound impression that has been left upon contemporary thought by the teaching of Lester Ward and those who have followed him, that woman is the race, has been felt far and wide outside the sphere of those branches of science, whose students he first startled with the thought. His idea is indeed revolutionary as far as our immediate past and our present social arrangements and sex relations are concerned, but is natural, harmonious and self-explanatory if we regard life, the life of our own day, not as standing still, but as in a state of incessant flux and development, and if we are at all concerned to discover the direction whither these changes are driving us. It indeed may well have been that the formal enunciation of the primary importance of woman in the social organism has played its own part in accelerating her rise into her destined lofty position, though in the main, any philosophy can be merely the explanation and the record of an evolution wherein we are little but passive factors. This much is certain, that the insistent driving home by this school of thinkers of woman, woman, woman, as the center and nucleus whence is developed the child and the home, and all that civilization stands for, and whose rights as an independent human being are therefore to be held of supreme importance in the normal evolution of the race, has served as an incessant reminder to practical workers and reformers in the sphere of education as well as to leaders of the woman movement. Especially has this been true when tackling the problems more immediately affecting women, because these are the truly difficult problems. Whatever touches man's side of life alone is comparatively simple and easily understood, and therefore easier of solution. So in the rough and ready, often cruel, solutions which nature and humanity have worked out for social problems, it has always been the man whose livelihood, whose education and whose training have been first considered, and whose claims have been first satisfied. For this there are several reasons. Man's possession of material wealth, and his consequent monopoly of social and political power have naturally resulted in his attending to his own interests first. The argument, too, that man was the breadwinner and the protector of the home against all outside antagonistic influences, which in the past he has generally been, furnished another reason why, when any class attained to fresh social privileges, it was the boy and the man of that class, rather than the woman and the girl, who benefited by them first. The woman and the girl would come in a poor second, if indeed they were in at the dividing of the spoils at all. There is, however, another reason, and one of profound significance, which I believe has hardly been touched upon at all, why woman has been thus constantly relegated to the inferior position. Her problems are, as I said above, far more difficult of settlement. Because of her double function as a member of her own generation and as the potential mother of the next generation, it is impossible to regard her life as something simple and single, and think out plans for its arrangement, as we do with man's. So in large measure we have only been following the line of least resistance, in taking up men's difficulties first. We have done so quite naturally, because they are not so overwhelmingly hard to deal with, and have attacked woman's problems, and striven to satisfy her needs, only when we could find time to get round to them. This is most strikingly exemplified in the realm of education. Take the United States alone. It was ever to the boy that increasing educational advantages were first offered. In the year 1639 the authorities of the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, hesitated as to whether girls should be admitted to the apparently just established school. The decision was left "to the discretion of the elders and seven men." The girls lost. In "Child Life in Colonial Days" Mrs. Annie Grant is quoted. She spent her girlhood in Albany, N.Y., sometime during the first half of the eighteenth century. She says it was very difficult at that time to procure the means of instruction in those districts. The girls learned needlework from their mothers and aunts; they learnt to read the Bible and religious tracts in Dutch; few were taught writing. Similar accounts come from Virginia. Was it university education that was in question, how many university-trained men had not American colleges turned out before Lucy Stone was able to obtain admission to Oberlin? Harvard was opened in 1636. Two hundred years elapsed before there was any institution offering corresponding advantages to girls. Oberlin granted its first degree to a woman in 1838. Mount Holyoke was founded in 1837, Elmira in 1855 and Vassar in 1865. That a perfectly honest element of confusion and puzzle did enter into the thought of parents and the views of the community, it would be vain to deny. These young women were incomprehensible. Why were they not content with the education their mothers had had, and with the lives their mothers had led before them? Why did they want to leave comfortable homes, and face the unknown, the hard, perhaps the dangerous? How inexplicable, how undutiful! Ah! It was the young people who were seeing furthest into the future; it was the fathers and mothers who were not recognizing the change that was coming over the world of their day. If then, for the combination of reasons outlined, women have always lagged in the rear as increasing educational advantages of a literary or professional character have been provided or procured for boys, it is not strange, when, in reading over the records of work on the new lines of industrial education, trade-training and apprenticeship we detect the very same influences at work, sigh before the same difficulties, and recognize the old weary, threadbare arguments, too, which one would surely think had been sufficiently disproved before to be at least distrusted in this connection. This, however, must surely be the very last stand of the non-progressivists in education as regards the worker. The ideals of today aim at education on lines that will enable every child, boy and girl alike, born in or brought into any civilized country, to develop all faculties, and that will simultaneously enable the community to benefit from this complete, all-round development of every one of its members. There is one consideration to which I must call attention, because, when recognized, it cannot but serve as the utmost stimulus to our efforts to arrange for vocational education for girls on the broadest lines. It is this. Whatever general, national or state plans prove the most complete and satisfactory for girls, will, speaking generally, at the same time be found to have solved the problem for the boy as well. The double aim, of equipping the girl to be a mother as well as human being, is so all-inclusive and is therefore so much more difficult of accomplishment, that the simpler training necessary for a boy's career will be automatically provided for at the same time. Therefore the boy is not likely to be at a disadvantage under such a coeducational system as is here implied. For it is to nothing short of coeducation that the organized women of the United States are looking forward, coeducation on lines adapted to present-day wants. What further contributions the far-off future may hold for us in the never wholly to be explored realm of human education in its largest acceptance, we know not. Until we have learned the lesson of today, and have set about putting it in practice, such glimpses of the future are not vouchsafed to us. In such an age of transition as ours, any plan of vocational training intended to include girls must be a compromise with warring facts, and will therefore have to face objections from both sides, from those forward-looking ones who feel that the domestic side of woman's activities is overemphasized, and from those who still hark back, who would fain refuse to believe that the majority of women have to be wage-earners for at least part of their lives. These latter argue that by affording to girls all the advantages of industrial training granted or which may be granted to boys, we are "taking them out of the home." As if they were not out of the home already! This assumption will appear to most readers paradoxical, if indeed it does not read as a contradiction in terms. A little thought, however, will show that it is just because we are all along assuming the economic primacy of the boy, that the girl has been so disastrously neglected. It is true that the boy is also a potential father, and that his training for that lofty function is usually ignored and will have to be borne in mind, though no one would insist that training for fatherhood need occupy a parallel position with training for motherhood. But popular reasoning is not content with accepting this admission; it goes on to draw the wholly unwarranted conclusion that while the boy ought to be thoroughly taught on the wage-earning side, and while such teaching should cover all the more important occupations, to which he is likely to be called, the girl's corresponding training shall as a matter of course be quite a secondary matter, fitting her only for a limited set of pursuits, many of these ranking low in skill and opportunities of advancement, and necessarily among the most poorly paid; these being all occupations which we choose to assume girls will enter, such as sewing or box-making. Only recently have girls been prepared for the textile trades, though they have always worked in these, first in the home and since then in the factories. Still less is any preparation thought of for the numberless occupations that necessity and a perpetually changing world are all the while driving girls to take up. There were in 1910, 8,075,772 women listed as wage-earners in the United States. Would it not be as well, if a girl is to be a wage-earner, that she should have at least as much opportunity of learning her trade properly, as is granted to a boy? Setting aside for the moment the fact that girls are already engaged in so many callings, it is poor policy and worse economy to argue that because a girl may be but a few years a wage-earner, it is therefore not worth while to make of her an efficient, capable wage-earner. That is fair to no one, neither to the girl herself nor to the community. The girl deserves to be taken more seriously. Do this, and it will then be clear that a vocational system wide enough and flexible enough to fit the girl to be at once a capable mother-housekeeper, and a competent wage-earner, will be a system adequate to the vocational training of the boy for life-work in any of the industrial pursuits. It is self-evident that the converse would not hold. And first, to those readers of advanced views who will think that I am conceding even too much in thus consenting apparently to sink the human activities of the woman in those of the mother during the greater part of maturity. Touching the question of personal human development, I concede nothing, as I assert nothing, but I accept present-day facts, and desire to make such compromise with them as shall clear the way for whatever forms of home and industrial life shall evolve from them most naturally and simply. We may observe with satisfaction and hopefulness that the primitive collection of unrelated industries which have so long lingered in the home to the detriment of both and which have confused our thoughts as to which were the essential and permanent, and which the merely accidental and temporary functions of the home, are gradually coming within the range of the specialized trades, and as such are freeing the home from so much clutter and confusion, and freeing the woman from so many fettering bonds. But the process is a slow one, and again, it may not even go on indefinitely. There may be a limit in the process of specializing home industries. So far as it has gone, different classes of women are very unequally affected by it. In the United States, where these changes have gone on faster and further than anywhere else, the two classes whose occupations have been most radically modified have been, first and chiefly, the young girl from fourteen to twenty-four, of every class, and next the grownup woman, who has taken up one of the professions now for the first time open to women, and this almost irrespective of whether she is married or single. As to the young girl, the transformation of the home plus industries to the home, pure and simple, a place to live in and rest in, to love in and be happy in, has so far already been effected, that in the home of the artisan and the tradesman there is not now usually sufficient genuine, profitable occupation for more than one growing or grown girl as assistant to her mother. For two reasons the other daughters will look out of doors for employment. The first reason is that under rearranged conditions of industry, there is nothing left for them to do at home. The second is not less typical of these altered conditions. The father cannot, even if he would, afford to keep them at home as non-producers. If the processes of making garments and preparing food are no longer performed by the members of the family for one another, the outsiders who do perform them must be remunerated, and that not in kind, as, for example, with board and lodging and clothing, but in money wages, in coin. And their share of the money to enable this complicated system of exchange of services to be carried out, must be earned by the unmarried daughters of the house through their working in turn at some wage-earning occupation, also outside. The young woman who has entered medicine, or law, or dentistry, who paints pictures or writes books, is on very much the same economic basis as the young working-girl. She, too, is accepted as part of the already established order of things, and the present generation has grown up in happy ignorance of the difficulties experienced by the pioneers in all these professions in establishing their right to independent careers. The professional woman who has married finds herself so far on a less secure foundation. Every professional woman who has children has to work out for herself the problem of the mutual adjustment of the claims of her profession and her family, but so many have solved the difficulties and have made the adjustment that it seems only a question of time when every professional woman may accept the happiness of wifehood and motherhood when it is offered to her without feeling that she has to choose once for all between a happy marriage and a successful professional career. Not a few professional women, writers, and speakers, have gone on to infer that a similar solution was at hand for the working-girl on her marriage. Not yet is any such adjustment or rather readjustment of domestic and industrial activities in sight for her. Whatever changes may take place in the environment of the coming American woman, the present generation of working-girls as they marry are going to find their hands abundantly filled with duties within the walls of their own little homes. We know today how the health and the moral welfare of children fare when young mothers are prematurely forced back into the hard and exhausting occupations from which marriage has withdrawn them. Again, the factory conditions of modern industry have been brought to their present stage with one end in view--economy of time and material with the aim of cheapening the product. The life and the smooth running of the human machine, when considered at all, has been thought of last, and in this respect America is even one of the most backward of the civilized nations. Hence factory life is hard and disagreeable to the worker. Especially to the young girl is it often unendurable. A girl who has been some years in a factory rarely wants her young sister to come into it, too. She herself is apt to shift from one shop to another, from trade to trade, always in the hope that some other work may prove less exhausting and monotonous than that with which she is familiar by trying experience. Two forces tend to drive girls early out of industrial life: on the one hand, the perfectly normal instinct of self-protection in escaping from unnatural and health-ruining conditions and on the other the no less normal impulse leading to marriage. But oftener than we like to think, the first is the overmastering motive. Let us now take up the objections of those far more numerous to whom the provision of trade-training for girls seems superfluous, when not harmful, and who especially shrink from the suggestion of coeducation. To satisfy them, let us marshal a few facts and figures. Of every kind of education that has been proposed for girls, whether coeducational or not, we have always heard the same fears expressed. Such education would make the girl unwomanly, it would unfit her for her true functions, a man could not wish to marry her, and so on. The first women teachers and doctors had indeed a hard time. After being admitted to the profession only at the point of the sword, so to speak, they had to make good, and in face of all prejudice, prove their ability to teach or to cure, so as to keep the path open for those who were to follow after them. No similar demand should be logically made of the working-girl today when she demands coeducation on industrial lines. For she is already in the trades from which you propose so futilely to exclude her, by denying her access to the technical training preparatory to them, and for fitting her to practice them. Take some other occupations which employ women in great numbers: textile mill operatives, saleswomen, tobacco-workers, cigar-workers, boot-and shoe-workers, printers, lithographers, and pressmen, and book-binders. You can hardly say that these are exceptions, for here are the figures, from the occupational statistics of the census of 1910.[A] [Footnote A: The statement that appeared in the report on "Occupations" in the census returns of 1910, that there were but nine occupations in which women were not employed, has been widely commented upon. An explanation appearing in the corresponding volume of the census report for 1910 shows the great difficulties that enumerators and statisticians experience in getting at exact facts, wherever the situation is both complex and confused. The census officials admit their inability to do so in the present instance, although they have revised the figures with extreme care. With all possible allowance for error, women still appear in all but a minority of employments. The classification of occupations is on a different basis, and the number of divisions much larger; yet even now out of four hundred and twenty-nine separately listed, women are returned as engaged in all but forty-two. On the other hand there is only one trade which does not embrace men, that of the (untrained) midwife.] Textile mill operatives 330,766 Saleswomen 250,438 Tobacco-workers and cigar-makers 71,334 Boot- and shoe-makers and repairers 61,084 Printers, lithographers and pressmen 27,845 Book-binders 22,012 Just here we can see a rock ahead. In the very prospects that we rejoice over, of the early introduction of public industrial training, we can detect an added risk for the girl. If such technical instruction is established in one state after another, but planned primarily to suit the needs of boys only, and the only teaching afforded to girls is in the domestic arts, and in the use of the needle and the pastebrush for wage-earning, where will our girls be when a few years hence the skilled trades are full of her only too well-trained industrial rivals? In a greater degree than even today, the girl will find herself everywhere at a disadvantage for lack of the early training the state has denied to her, while bestowing it upon her brother, and the few industrial occupations for which instruction is provided will be overcrowded with applicants. That women should take such an inferior position in the trades they are in today is regrettable enough. But far more important is it to make sure that they obtain their fair share of whatever improved facilities are provided for "the generation knocking at the door" of life. Working-women or women intimately acquainted with working-women's needs, should have seats on all commissions, boards and committees, so that when schemes of state industrial training are being planned, when schools are built, courses outlined, the interests of girls may be remembered, and especially so that they be borne in mind, when budgets are made up and appropriations asked for. If not, it will only be one other instance of an added advantage to the man proving a positive disadvantage to the woman. You cannot benefit one class and leave another just as it was. Every boon given to the bettered class increases the disproportion and actually helps to push yet further down the one left out. Among the many influences that make or mar the total content of life for any class, be that class a nation, a race, an industrial or economic group, there is one, the importance of which has been all too little realized. That influence we may call expectance. It is impossible for anyone to say how far a low standard of industrial or professional attainment held out before the girl at her most impressionable age, a standard that to some degree, therefore, develops within her, as it exists without her, ends in producing the very inefficiency it begins by assuming. But psychology has shown us that suggestion or expectance forms one element in the developing of faculty, and this whether it be manual dexterity, quickness of memory or exercise of judgment and initiative. In all probability, too, this element of expectance has indirect as well as direct effects, and the indirect are not the least fruitful in results. To illustrate: it is certain that if we start out by assuming that girls are poor at accounts, that they cannot understand machinery, that they are so generally inefficient as to be worth less wages than boys, any such widespread assumption will go a long way to produce the ignorant and incompetent and inefficient creatures it presupposes girls to be. But it will do more than this. Such poor standards alike of performance and of wages will not end with the unfortunate girls themselves. They will react upon parents, teachers, and the community which so largely consists of the parents and which employs the teachers. Those preëssentials and antecedents of the competent worker, training, trainers, and the means and instruments of training, will not be forthcoming. What is the use of providing at great expense industrial training for girls, when the same money, spent upon boys, would produce more efficient workers? What is the use of giving girls such training, when they are presumably by nature unfitted to benefit by it? X WOMEN AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING The United States started its national existence with an out-of-doors people. Until comparatively recent years, the cities were small, and the great bulk of the inhabitants lived from the natural resources of the country, that is to say, from the raw products of the mines and the forests, and the crops grown upon the plains by a most primitive and wasteful system of agriculture. But the days have forever gone when a living can be snatched, so to speak, from the land in any of these ways. The easily gotten stores of the mines and forests are exhausted; the soil over many millions of acres has been robbed of its fertility. The nation is now engaged in reckoning up what is left in the treasury of its natural resources, estimating how best to conserve and make profitable use of what is left. The nation might have done this sooner, but there was in the West always fresh land to open up and in the East, after a time, a new source of income in the factory industries, that were more and more profitably absorbing capital and labor. So that although pioneer conditions gradually passed away, and it became less easy to wrest a living from plain or mountain or mine, the idea of finding out what was wrong, improving methods of agriculture, conserving the forest wealth by continual replanting or working the less rich mines at a profit through new processes, or the utilization of by-products, did not at first suggest itself. When, on the other hand, we turn to the manufacturing occupations, we find that they have followed an analogous, though not precisely similar, course of evolution. Certainly from the first the manufacturers showed themselves far ahead of their fellows in the economical management of the raw material, in the adoption of every kind of labor and time-saving device and in the disposal of refuse. But in their way they have been just as short-sighted. They carried with them into the new occupations the very same careless habits of national extravagance. They, too, went ahead in a similar hustling fashion. This time the resources that were used up so recklessly were human resources, the strength and vitality of the mature man, the flesh and blood of little children, their stores of energy and youthful joy and hope. By overwork or accident, the father was cut off in his strong manhood, the boy was early worn out, and the young girl's prospects of happy motherhood were forever quenched. There are now signs of a blessed reaction setting in here, too, and it is largely owing to the efforts of organized labor. The principles of conservation and of a wise economy, which are re-creating the plains of the West and which will once more clothe with forests the slopes of the mountains, are at work in the realm of industry. Not a year passes but that some state or another does not limit anew the hours during which children may work, or insist upon shorter hours for women, or the better protection from dangerous machinery, or the safeguarding of the worker in unhealthy occupations. Organized labor, ever running ahead of legislation in its standards of hours and sanitary conditions, provides a school of education and experiment for the whole community, by procuring for trade unionists working conditions which afterwards serve as the model for enlightened employers, and as a standard that the community in the end must exact for the whole body of workers. But more must be done than merely keeping our people alive, by insisting they shall not be killed in the earning of their bread. Leaders of thought and many captains of industry have at last grasped the fact that the worker, uneducated and not trained in any true sense, is at once a poor tool and a most costly one. Other countries add their quota of experience, to back up public opinion and legislative action. Hence the demand heard from one end of the land to the other for industrial training. The public everywhere after a century of modern factory industry are at length beginning to have some definite ideas regarding industrial training for boys who are to supply the human element in the factory scheme. (Regarding girls, they still grope in outer darkness.) For many years economists were accustomed to express nothing but satisfaction over the ever-advancing specialization of industry. They saw only the cheapening of the product, the vast increase in the total amount produced, and the piling up of profits, and they beheld in all three results nothing but social advantage. Verily both manufacturer and consumer were benefited. When the more thoughtful turned their attention to the actual makers through whose labors the cloth and the shoes and the pins of specialized industry were produced, they satisfied themselves that the worker must also be a sharer in the benefits of the new system; for, said they, everyone who is a worker is also a consumer. Even though the worker who is making shoes has to turn out twenty times as much work for the same wages, still as a consumer he shares in the all-round cheapening of manufactured articles, and is able to buy clothes and shoes and pins so much the cheaper. That the cost of living on the whole might be greater, that the wage of the worker might be too low to permit of his purchasing the very articles into the making of which his own labor had gone, did not occur to these _à priori_ reasoners. It has taken a whole century of incredibly swift mechanical advance, associated at the same time with the most blind, cruel, and brutal waste of child life and adult life, to arrive at the beginning of an adjustment between the demands of machine-driven industry and the needs and the just claims of the human workers. We have only just recovered from the dazed sense of wonderment and pride of achievement into which modern discoveries and inventions, with the resultant enormous increase of commerce and material wealth, plunged the whole civilized world. We are but beginning to realize, what we had well-nigh totally overlooked, that even machine-driven industry with all that it connotes, enormously increased production of manufactured goods, and the spread of physical comfort to a degree unknown before among great numbers, is not the whole of national well-being; that by itself, unbalanced by justice to the workers, it is not even an unmixed boon. I have tried to follow up the evolution of our present industrial society on several parallel lines: how industry itself has developed, how immigration affects the labor problem as regards the woman worker, and the relation of women to the vocations in the modern world. Let us now glance at our educational systems and see how they fit in to the needs of the workers, especially of the working-women. For our present purpose I will not touch on education as we find it in our most backward states, but rather as it is in the most advanced, since it is from improvement in these that we may expect to produce the best results for the whole nation. Free and compulsory public education was established to supply literary and cultural training at a time when children still enjoyed opportunities of learning in the home, and later in small shops something of the trades they were to practice when grown-up. I know of a master plumber, who twenty years ago, as a child of eleven, made friends with the blacksmith and the tinsmith in the little village where he lived, and taught himself the elements of his trade at the blacksmith's anvil and with the tinsmith's tools. At fourteen that boy knew practically a great deal about the properties of metals, could handle simple tools deftly, and was well prepared to learn his trade readily when the time came. As the most intelligent city parents cannot as individuals furnish their children with similar chances today, we must look to the public schools, which all citizens alike support, to take up the matter, and supply methodically and deliberately, that training of the eye and hand, and later that instruction in wage-earning occupations which in former days, as in the case quoted, the child obtained incidentally, as it were, in the mere course of growing up. On the literary side, it is true, schools are improving all the time. History is now taught by lantern slides, showing the people's lives, instead of by a list of dates in a catechism. Geography is illustrated in the garden plot of the school playground. But in responding to the new claims which a new age and a changed world are making upon them, schools and teachers are only beginning to wake up. The manual training gradually being introduced is a hopeful beginning, but nothing more. The most valuable and important work of this kind is reserved for the upper grades of the grammar schools and for certain high schools, and the children who are able to make use of it are for the most part the offspring of comfortably off parents, enjoying all sorts of educational privileges already. Education, publicly provided, free and compulsory, therefore presumably universal, was established primarily for the benefit of the workers' children, yet of all children it is they who are at this moment receiving the least benefit from it. Many circumstances combine to produce this unfortunate result. The chief direct cause is poverty in the home. So many families have to live on such poor wages--five and six hundred dollars a year--that the children have neither the health to profit by the schooling nor the books nor the chance to read books at home when the home is one or perhaps two rooms. The curse of homework in cities ties the children down to willowing feathers or picking nuts or sewing on buttons, or carrying parcels to and from the shop that gives out the work, deprives them of both sleep and play, makes their attendance at school irregular, and dulls their brains during the hours they are with the teacher. In the country the frequently short period of school attendance during the year and the daily out-of-school work forced from young children by poverty-harassed parents has similar disastrous results. Even in those states which have compulsory attendance up to fourteen, many children who are quite normal are yet very backward at that age. The child of a foreign-speaking parent, for instance, who never hears English spoken at home, needs a longer time to reach the eighth grade than the child of English-speaking parents. Chicago is fairly typical of a large industrial city, and there the City Club found after investigation that forty-three per cent. of the pupils who enter the first grade do not reach the eighth grade; forty-nine per cent. do not go through the eighth grade; eleven per cent. do not reach the sixth grade, and sixteen per cent. more do not go through the sixth grade. A child who goes through the eighth grade has some sort of an equipment (on the literary side at least) with which to set out in life. He has learned how to read a book or a newspaper intelligently, and how to express himself in writing. If he is an average child he has acquired a good deal of useful information. He will remember much of what he has learned, and can turn what knowledge he has to some account. But the child who leaves school in the fifth or sixth grade, or, perhaps, even earlier, is apt to have no hold on what he has been taught, and it all too soon passes from his memory, especially if he has in his home surroundings no stimulus to mental activity. Poor little thing! What a mockery to call this education, so little as it has fitted him to understand life and its problems! What he has learned out of school, meanwhile, as often as not, is harmful rather than beneficial. The school door closes and the factory gate stands open wide. The children get their working papers, and slip out of the one, and through the other. At once, as we arrange matters, begins the fatal effect of handing over children, body and soul, into the control of industry. After a few days or weeks of wrapping candy, or carrying bundles or drawing out bastings, the work, whatever it is, becomes but a mere mechanical repetition. A few of the muscles only, and none of the higher faculties of observation, inquiry and judgment come into play at all, until, at the end of two years the brightest school-children have perceptibly lost ground in all these directions. Two of the most precious years of life are gone. The little workers are not promoted from performing one process to another more difficult. They are as far as ever from any prospect of learning a trade in any intelligent fashion. The slack season comes on. The little fingers, the quick feet are not required any longer. Once more there is a scurrying round to look for a job, less cheerfully this time, the same haphazard applying at another factory for some other job, that like the first needs no training, like the first, leads nowhere, but also like the first, brings in three or four dollars a week, perhaps less. A teacher at a public-school social center inquired of a group of fifty girls, cracker-packers, garment-workers and bindery girls, how long each had been in her present situation. Only one had held hers eighteen months. No other had reached a year in the same place. The average appeared to be about three or four months. Worse still is another class of blind-alley occupation. These are the street trades. The newsboy, the messenger and the telegraph boy often make good money to begin with. Girls, too, are being employed by some of the messenger companies. These are all trades, that apart from the many dangers inseparable from their pursuit, spell dismissal after two or three years at most, or as soon as the boy reaches the awkward age. The experience gained is of no use in any other employment, and the unusual freedom makes the messenger who has outgrown his calling averse to the discipline of more regular occupations. What a normal vocational education can be, and a normal development of occupation, is seen in the professions, such as law and medicine. The lawyer and the doctor are, it is true, confining themselves more and more to particular branches of their respective callings, and more and more are they becoming experts in the branch of law or medicine selected. The lawyer specializes in criminal cases or in damage suits, in commercial or constitutional law; he is a pleader or a consultant. The doctor may decide to be a surgeon, or an oculist, an anesthetist or a laboratory worker. And the public reap the benefit in more expert advice and treatment. But the likeness between such professional specialization and the dehumanizing and brain-deadening industrial specialization, which is the outgrowth of the factory system, is one in name only as was admirably put by Samuel Gompers, when presiding over the Convention of the American Federation of Labor at Toronto in 1909. "It must be recognized that specialists in industry are vastly different from specialists in the professions. In the professions, specialists develop from all the elements of the science of the profession. Specialists in industry are those who know but one part of a trade, and absolutely nothing of any other part of it. In the professions specialists are possessed of all the learning of their art; in industry they are denied the opportunity of learning the commonest elementary rudiments of industry other than the same infinitesimal part performed by them perhaps thousands of times over each day." When the speaker emphasized these points of unlikeness, he was at the same time, and in the same breath, pointing out the direction in which industry must be transformed. Training in the whole occupation must precede the exercise of the specialty. Furthermore, as all professional training has its cultural side, as well as its strictly professional side, so the cultural training of the worker must ever keep step with his vocational training. The motto of the school should be, "We are for all," for it is what teachers and the community are forever forgetting. Think of the innumerable foundations in the countries of the old world, intended for poor boys, which have been gradually appropriated by the rich. Of others again, supposed to be for both boys and girls, from which the girls have long been excluded. The splendid technical schools of this country, nominally open to all boys, at least, are by their very terms closed to the poor boy, however gifted. To give to him that hath is the tendency against which we must ever guard in planning and administering systems of public education. With many, perhaps most, educational institutions, as they grow older, more and more do they incline to improve the standards of their work, technically speaking, but to bestow their benefits upon comparatively fewer and fewer recipients. I would not be understood to deprecate original research, or the training of expert professional workers in any field, still less as undervaluing thoroughness in any department of teaching. But I plead for a sense of proportion, that as long as the world is either so poor or its wealth and opportunities so unequally distributed, a certain minimum of vocational training shall be insured to all. We recognize the need for thorough training in the case of the coming original investigator, and the expert professional, and they form the minority. We do not recognize the at least equally pressing need for the thorough training of the whole working population, and these make up the vast majority. In so far as the pre-vocational work in primary schools, the manual work and technical training in high schools, the short courses, the extension lectures and the correspondence instruction of universities are meeting this urgent popular need, just so far are they raising all work to a professional standard, just so far are they bringing down to the whole nation the gifts of culture and expert training that have hitherto been the privilege of the few. I have often noticed college professors, in turning over the leaves of a university calendar or syllabus of lectures, pass lightly over the pages recounting the provision made for short courses, summer schools, extension or correspondence work, and linger lovingly over the fuller and more satisfactory program outlined for the teacher or the professional worker. The latter is only apparently the more interesting. Take Wisconsin's College of Agriculture, for example. It sends forth yearly teachers and original investigators, but quite as great and important a product are the hundreds of farmers and farmers' sons who come fresh from field and dairy to take their six weeks' training in the management of cattle or of crops, and to field and dairy return, carrying away with them the garnered experience of others, as well as increased intelligence and self-reliance in handling the problems of their daily toil. Anna Garlin Spencer, in her "Woman and Social Culture," points out how our much-lauded schools of domestic economy fail to benefit the schoolgirl, through this very overthoroughness and expensiveness how they are narrowed down to the turning out of teachers of domestic economy and dietitians and other institutional workers. Domestic economy as a wage-earning vocation cannot be taught too thoroughly, but what every girl is entitled to have from the public school during her school years is a "short course" in the simple elements of domestic economy, with opportunity for practice. It is nothing so very elaborate that girls need, but that little they need so badly. Such a course has in view the girl as a homemaker, and is quite apart from her training as a wage-earner. When again we turn to that side, matters are not any more promising. If the boy of the working classes is badly off for industrial training, his sister is in far worse case. Some provision is already made for the boy, and more is coming his way presently, but of training for the girl, which shall be adequate to fit her for self-support, we hear hardly anything. We have noted that women are already in most of the trades followed by men, and that the number of this army of working, wage-earning women is legion; that they are not trained at all, and are so badly paid that as underbidders they perpetually cut the wages of men. Nay, the young working-girl is even "her own worst competitor--the competitor against her own future home, and as wife and mother she may have to live on the wage she herself has cheapened." And to face a situation like this are we making any adequate preparation? With how little we are satisfied, let me illustrate. In the address of Mrs. Raymond Robins as president of the National Women's Trade Union League of America before their Fourth Biennial Convention in St. Louis, in June, 1913, she told how "in a curriculum of industrial education we find that under the heading 'Science' boys study elementary physics, mechanics and electricity, and girls the action of alkalies, and the removal of stains. While under 'Drawing' we read, 'For boys the drawing will consist of the practical application of mechanical and free-hand work to parts of machinery, house plans, and so forth. Emphasis will be placed upon the reading of drawings, making sketches of machine parts quickly and accurately. For the girls the drawing will attempt to apply the simple principles of design and color to the work. The girls will design and stencil curtains for the dining-and sewing-rooms and will make designs for doilies for the table. They will plan attractive spacing for tucks, ruffles and embroidery for underwear.' Women have entered nearly three hundred different occupations and trades in America within the past quarter of a century, three hundred trades and occupations, and they are to qualify for these by learning to space tucks attractively." In the very valuable Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, published in 1910, which is devoted to industrial education, there is but one chapter dealing with girls' industrial schools, in itself a commentary upon the backwardness of the movement for industrial education where girls are affected. It is true that the schools included under this heading do not account for all the school trade-training given to girls in this country, for the classification of industrial schools, where there is no general system, is very difficult, and under no plan of tabulation can there be an all-inclusive heading for any one type. For instance a school for colored girls might be classified either as a school for Negroes or as a school for girls, as a public school, a philanthropic school, or an evening school, and a school giving trade-training to boys might also include girls. The writer of this most exhaustive report, however, states definitely that "trade schools for girls are rare, and even schools offering them industrial courses as a part of their work are not common." It is impossible to consider vocational training without bearing in mind the example of Germany. Germany has been the pioneer in this work and has laid down for the rest of us certain broad principles, even if there are in the German systems some elements which are unsuitable to this country. These general principles are most clearly exemplified in the schools of the city of Munich. Indeed, when people talk of the German plan, they nearly always mean the Munich plan. What it aims at is: 1. To deal in a more satisfactory way with the eighty or ninety per cent. of children who leave school for work at fourteen, and to bridge over with profit alike to the child, the employer and the community the gap between fourteen and sixteen which is the unsolved riddle of educators everywhere today. 2. To retain the best elements of the old apprenticeship system, though in form so unlike it. The boy (for it mainly touches boys) is learning his trade and he is also working at his trade, and he has cultural as well as industrial training, and this teaching he receives during his working hours and in his employer's time. 3. To provide teachers who combine ability to teach, with technical skill. 4. To insure, through joint boards on which both employers and workmen are represented, even if these boards are generally advisory, only an interlocking of the technical class and the factory, without which any system of vocational instruction must fall down.[A] [Footnote A: As to how far this is the case, there is a difference of opinion among authorities. Professor F.W. Roman, who has made so exhaustive a comparative study of vocational training in the United States and Germany, writes: "In Germany, there is very little local control of schools, or anything else. The authority in all lines is highly centralized." (The Industrial and Commercial Schools of the United States and Germany, 1915, p. 324.) Dr. Kerchensteiner is quoted by the Commercial Club of Chicago as saying, in a letter to Mr. Edwin G. Cooley, that the separate administrative school-boards of Munich form an essential part of the city's school-system.] 5. To maintain a system which shall reach that vast bulk of the population, who, because they need technical training most urgently, are usually the last to receive it. Many of the most advanced educators in this country join issue with the usual German practice on some most important points. These consider that it is not sufficient that there be a close interlocking of the technical school and class and the factory. It is equally essential that vocational education, supported by public funds, shall be an integral part of the public-school system, of which it is indeed but a normal development, and therefore that we must have a unit and not a dual system. Only thus can we insure that vocational education will remain education at all and not just provide a training-school for docile labor as an annex and a convenient entrance hall to the factory system. Only thus can we insure democracy in the control of this new branch of public activity. Only thus can the primary schools be kept in touch with the advanced classes, so that the teacher, from the very kindergarten up, may feel that she is a part of a complete whole. Then indeed will all teachers begin to echo the cry of one whom I heard say: "You ask us to fit the children for the industries. Let us see if the industries are fit for the children." Another point in which we must somewhat modify any European model is in the limited training provided for girls. A country which is frankly coeducational in its public schools, state universities and professional colleges, must continue to be so when installing a new educational department to meet the changed and changing conditions of our time. The parliament of organized labor in the United States has taken a liberal view and laid down an advanced program on the subject of vocational training. In 1908 the American Federation of Labor appointed a committee on industrial education consisting of nineteen members, of whom two were women, Agnes Nestor, International Secretary of the Glove Workers' Union, and Mrs. Raymond Robins, President of the National Women's Trade Union League of America. Its very first report, made in 1909, recommended that the Federation should request the United States Department of Commerce and Labor to investigate the subject of industrial education in this country and abroad. The report of the American Federation of Labor itself, includes a digest of the United States Bureau of Labor's report, and was published as Senate Document No. 936. It is called "The Report of the Committee on Industrial Education of the American Federation of Labor, compiled and edited by Charles H. Winslow." Whatever narrowness and inconsistency individual trade unionists may be charged with regarding industrial education, the leaders of the labor movement give it their endorsement in the clearest terms. For instance, this very report, comments those international unions which have already established supplemental trade courses, such as the Typographical Union, the Printing Pressmen's Union, and the Photo Engravers' Union, and other local efforts, such as the School for Carpenters and Bricklayers in Chicago and the School for Carriage, Wagon, and Automobile Workers of New York City. All trade unions which have not adopted a scheme of technical education are advised to take the matter up. On the question of public-school training, the American Federation of Labor is no less explicit and emphatic, favoring the establishment of schools in connection with the public-school system in which pupils between fourteen and sixteen may be taught the principles of the trades, with local advisory boards, on which both employers and organized labor should have seats. But by far the most fundamental proposal is the following. After outlining the general instruction on accepted lines, they proceed as follows: "The shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that trade, and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the philosophy of collective bargaining." The general introduction of such a plan of training would mean that the young worker would start out on his wage-earning career with an intelligent understanding of the modern world, and of his relations to his employer and to his fellow-laborers, instead of, as at present, setting forth with no knowledge of the world he is entering, and moreover, with his mind clogged with a number of utterly out-of-date ideas, as to his individual power of control over wages and working conditions.[A] [Footnote A: History, as it is usually taught, is not considered from the industrial viewpoint, nor in the giving of a history lesson are there inferences drawn from it that would throw light upon the practical problems that are with us today, or that are fast advancing to meet us. When a teacher gives a lesson on the history of the United States, there is great stress laid upon the part played by individual effort. All through personal achievements are emphasized. The instructor ends here, on the high note that personal exertion is the supreme factor of success in life, failing unfortunately to point out how circumstances have changed, and that even personal effort may have to take other directions. Of the boys and girls in the schools of the United States today between nine and fourteen years of age, over eight millions in 1910, how many will leave school knowing the important facts that land is no longer free, and that the tools of industry are no more, as they once were, at the disposal of the most willing-worker? And that therefore (Oh, most important therefore!) the workers must work in coöperation if they are to retain the rights of the human being, and the status signified by that proud name, an American citizen.] If we wish to know the special demands of working-women there is no way so certain as to consult the organized women. They alone are at liberty to express their views, while the education they have had in their unions in handling questions vital to their interests as wage-earners, and as leaders of other women gives clearness and definiteness to the expression of those views. If organized women can best represent the wage-earners of their sex, we can gain the best collective statement of their wishes through them. At the last convention of the National Women's Trade Union League in June, 1913, the subject of industrial education received very close attention. The importance of continuation schools after wage-earning days have commenced was not overlooked. An abstract of the discussion and the chief resolutions can be found in the issue of _Life and Labor_ for August, 1913. After endorsing the position taken up by the American Federation of Labor, the women went on to urge educational authorities to arm the children, while yet at school, with a knowledge of the state and federal laws enacted for their protection, and asked also "that such a course shall be of a nature to equip the boy and girl with a full sense of his or her responsibility for seeing that the laws are enforced," the reason being that the yearly influx of young boys and girls into the industrial world in entire ignorance of their own state laws is one of the most menacing facts we have to face, as their ignorance and inexperience make exploitation easy, and weaken the force of such protective legislation as we have. Yet another suggestion was that "no working certificates be issued to a boy or girl unless he or she has passed a satisfactory examination in the laws which have been enacted by the state for their protection." In making these claims, organized working-women are keeping themselves well in line with the splendid statement of principles enunciated by that great educator, John Dewey: The ethical responsibility of the school on the social side must be interpreted in the broadest and freest spirit; it is equivalent to that training of the child which will give him such possession of himself that he may take charge of himself; may not only adapt himself to the changes that are going on, but have power to shape and direct them. When we ask for coeducation on vocational lines, the question is sure to come up: For how long is a girl likely to use her training in a wage-earning occupation? It is continually asserted and assumed she will on the average remain in industry but a few years. The mature woman as a wage-earner, say the woman over twenty-five, we have been pleased to term and to treat as an exception which may be ignored in great general plans. Especially has this been so in laying out schemes for vocational training, and we find the girl being ignored, not only on the usual ground that she is a girl, but for the additional, and not-to-be-questioned reason that it will not pay to give her instruction in any variety of skilled trades, because she will be but a short time in any occupation of the sort. Hence this serves to increase the already undue emphasis placed upon domestic training as all that a girl needs, and all that her parents or the community ought to expect her to have. This is only one of the many cases when we try to solve our new problems by reasoning based upon conditions that have passed or that are passing away. In this connection some startling facts have been brought forward by Dr. Leonard P. Ayres in the investigations conducted by him for the Russell Sage Foundation. He tried to find the ages of all the women who are following seven selected occupations in cities of the United States of over 50,000 population. The occupations chosen were those in which the number of women workers exceeds one for every thousand of the population. The number of women covered was 857,743, and is just half of all the women engaged in gainful employment in those cities. The seven occupations listed are housekeeper, nursemaid, laundress, saleswoman, teacher, dressmaker and servant. No less than forty-four per cent. of the housekeepers are between twenty-five and forty-four. Of dressmakers there are fifty-one per cent. between these two ages; of teachers fifty-eight per cent.; of laundresses forty-nine per cent., while the one occupation of which a little more than half are under twenty-five years is that of saleswoman, and even here there are barely sixty-one per cent., leaving the still considerable proportion of thirty-nine per cent. of saleswomen over the age of twenty-five. It is pretty certain that these mature women have given more than the favorite seven years to their trade. It is to be regretted that the investigation was not made on lines which would have included some of the factory occupations. It is difficult to see why it did not. Under any broad classification there must be more garment-workers, for instance, in New York or Chicago, than there are teachers. However, we have reason to be grateful for the fine piece of work which Dr. Ayres has done here. The _Survey_, in an editorial, also quotes in refutation of the seven-year theory, the findings of the commission which inquired into the pay of teachers in New York. The commissioners found that forty-four per cent. of the women teachers in the public schools had been in the service for ten years or more, and that only twenty-five per cent. of the men teachers had served as long a term. It can hardly be doubted that the tendency is towards the lengthening of the wage-earning life of the working-woman. A number of factors affect the situation, about most of which we have as yet little definite information. There is first, the gradual passing of the household industries out of the home. Those women, for whom the opportunity to be thus employed no longer is open, tend to take up or to remain longer in wage-earning occupations. The changing status of the married woman, her increasing economic independence and its bearing upon her economic responsibility, are all facts having an influence upon woman as a wage-earning member of the community, but how, and in what degree, they affect her length of service, is still quite uncertain. It is probable too, that they affect the employment or non-employment of women very differently in different occupations, but how, and in what degree they do so is mere guess-work at present. Much pains has been expended in arguing that any system of vocational training should locally be co-related with the industries of the district. Vain effort! For it appears that the workers of all ages are on the move all the time. Out of 22,027 thirteen-year-old boys in the public schools of seventy-eight American cities, only 12,699, or a little more than half, were living in the places of their birth. And considering the _wanderlust_ of the young in any case, is anything more probable than that the very first thing a big proportion of this advancing body of "vocationally trained" young men and women will want to do will be to try out their training in some other city? And why should they not? If there has ever been voiced a tenderer plea for a universal education that shall pass by no child, boy or girl, than that of Stitt Wilson, former Socialist Mayor of Berkeley, I do not know it. If there has ever been outlined a finer ideal of an education fitting the child, every child, to take his place and fill his place in the new world opening before him, I have not heard of it. He asks that we should submit ourselves to the leadership of the child--his needs, his capacities, his ideal hungers--and in so doing we shall answer many of the most disturbing and difficult problems that perplex our twentieth-century civilization. Even in those states which make the best attempt at educating their children, from three-fourths to nine-tenths, according to the locality, leave the schools at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and the present quality of the education given from the age of twelve to sixteen is neither an enrichment in culture, nor a training for life and livelihood. It is too brief for culture, and is not intended for vocation. Mr. Wilson makes no compromise with existing conditions; concedes not one point to the second-rate standards that we supinely accept; faces the question of cost, that basic difficulty which most theoretical educators waive aside, and which the public never dreams of trying to meet and overcome. Here are some of his proposals. The New Education [he writes] will include training and experience in domestic science, cookery and home-making; agriculture and horticulture; pure and applied science, and mechanical and commercial activities with actual production, distribution and exchange of commodities. Such training for three to six millions of both sexes from the age of twelve to twenty-one years will require land, tools, buildings of various types, machinery, factory sites by rail and water, timber, water and power sources. As all civilization is built upon the back of labor, and as all culture and leisure rests upon labor, and is not possible otherwise, so all cultural and liberal education, as generally understood, shall be sequent to the productive and vocational. The higher intellectual education should grow out of and be earned by productive vocational training. Hence our schools should be surrounded by lands of the best quality obtainable, plots of 10, 50, 100 and more acres. These lands should be the scene of labor that would be actually productive and not mere play.... In such a school the moral elements of labor should be primary, viz.: joy to the producer, through industry and art; perfect honesty in quality of material and character of workmanship; social coöperation, mutualism, and fellowship among the workers or students; and last, but not least, justice--that is, the full product of labor being secured to the producer. He plans to make the schools largely self-supporting, partly through land endowments easier to obtain under the system of taxation of land values that is possibly near at hand in the Golden State, for which primarily the writer is planning. The other source of income would be from the well-directed labor of the students themselves, particularly the older ones. He quotes Professor Frank Lawrence Glynn, of the Vocational School at Albany, New York, as having found that the average youth can, not by working outside of school hours, but in the actual process of getting his own education, earn two dollars a week and upward. Elsewhere, Mr. Wilson shows that the beginnings of such schools are to be found in operation today, in some of the best reform institutions of the country. For all who desire university training, this would open the door. They would literally "work their way" through college. One university' president argues for some such means of helping students: "We need not so much an increase of beneficiary funds as an increase of the opportunities for students to earn their living." This is partly to enable them to pay; for their courses and thereby acquire an education, but chiefly because through supporting themselves they gain self-confidence and therefore the power of initiative.[A] [Footnote A: "The social and educational need for vocational training is equally urgent. Widespread vocational training will democratize the education of the country: (1) by recognizing different tastes and abilities, and by giving an equal opportunity to all to prepare for their lifework; (2) by extending education through part-time and evening instruction to those who are at work in the shop or on the farm." Report of the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Instruction, 1914, page 12.] XI THE WORKING WOMAN AND MARRIAGE It is a lamentable fact that the wholesome and normal tendency towards organization which is now increasingly noticeable among working-women has so far remained unrelated to that equally normal and far more deeply rooted and universal tendency towards marriage. As long as the control of trade unionism among women remained with men, no link between the two was likely to be forged; the problem is so entirely apart from any that men unionists ever have to face themselves. It is true that with a man the question of adhering to a union alike in times of prosperity or times of stress may be complicated by a wife having a "say-so," through her enthusiasm or her indifference when it means keeping up dues or attending meetings; yet more, when belonging to a union may mean being thrown out of work or ordered on strike, just when there has been a long spell of sickness or a death with all the attendant expenses, or when perhaps a new baby is expected or when the hard winter months are at hand and the children are lacking shoes and clothes. Still, roughly speaking, a man worker is a unionist or a non-unionist just the same, be he single or married. But how different it is with a girl! The counter influence exerted by marriage upon organization is not confined to those girls who leave the trade, and of course the union, if they have belonged to one, after they have married. The possibility of marriage and especially the exaggerated expectations girls entertain as to the improvement in their lot which marriage will bring them is one of the chief adverse influences that any organization composed of women or containing many women members has to reckon with, an influence acting all the time on the side of those employers who oppose organization among their girls. It has been the wont of many men unionists in the past and is the custom of not a few today, to accept at its face value the girl's own argument: "What's the use of our joining the union? We'll be getting married presently." It is much the same feeling, although unspoken, that underlies the ordinary workingman's unwillingness to see women enter his trade and his indifference to their status in the trade once they have entered it. The man realizes that this rival of his is but a temporary worker, and he often, too often, excuses himself tacitly, if not in words, from making any effort to aid her in improving her position or from using his influence and longer experience to secure for her any sort of justice, forgetting that the argument, "She'll soon get married" is a poor one at best, seeing that as soon as one girl does marry her place will immediately be filled by another, as young, as inexperienced as she had been, and as utterly in need of the protection that experienced and permanent co-workers could give her. The girl, although she guesses it not, is only too frequently made the instrument of a terrible retribution; for the poor wage, which was all that she in her individual helplessness was able to obtain for herself, is used to lower the pay of the very man, who, had he stood by her, might have helped her to a higher wage standard and at the same time preserved his own. Again, the probability of the girl marrying increases on all sides the difficulties encountered in raising standards alike of work and of wages. Bound up with direct payment are those indirect elements of remuneration or deduction from remuneration covered by length of working-hours and by sanitary conditions, since whatever saps the girl's energy or undermines her health, whether overwork, foul air, or unsafe or too heavy or overspeeded machinery, forms an actual deduction from her true wages, besides being a serious deduction from the wealth-store, the stock of well-being, of the community. Up till comparatively recent times the particular difficulties I have been enumerating did not exist, since, under the system of home industries universal before the introduction of steam-power, there was not the same economic competition between men and women, nor was there this unnatural gap between the occupation of the woman during her girlhood and afterwards in her married life. In the majority of cases, indeed, she only continued to carry on under her husband's roof the very trades which she had learned and practiced in the home of her parents. And this applied equally to the group of trades which we still think of as part of the woman's natural home life, baking and cooking and cleaning and sewing, and to that other group which have become specialized and therefore are now pursued outside the home, such as spinning and weaving. It was true also in large part of the intrinsically out-of-door employments, such as field-work. In writing about a change while the process is still going on, it is extremely difficult to write so as not to be misunderstood. For there are remote corners, even of the United States, where the primitive conditions still subsist, and where woman still bears her old-time relation to industry, where the industrial life of the girl flows on with no gap or wrench into the occupational life of the married woman. Through wifehood and motherhood she indeed adds to her burdens, and complicates her responsibilities, but otherwise she spends her days in much the same fashion as before, with some deduction, often, alas, inadequate, to allow for the bearing and rearing of her too frequent babies. Also in the claims that industry makes upon her in her relation to the productive life of the community, under such primitive conditions, her life rests upon the same basis as before. As a telling illustration of that primitive woman's occupations, as she carries them on among us today, the following will serve. Quite recently a friend, traveling in the mountainous regions of Kentucky, at the head of Licking Creek, had occasion to call at a little mountain cabin, newly built out of logs, the chinks stopped up with clay, evidently the pride and the comfort of the dwellers. It consisted of one long room. At one end were three beds. In the center was the family dining-table, and set out in order on one side a number of bark-seated hickory chairs made by the forest carpenters. On the other a long bench, probably intended for the younger members of the family. Facing the door, as the visitor entered, was a huge open fireplace, with a bar across, whence hung three skillets of kettles for the cooking of the food. The only occupant of the cabin at that hour in the afternoon was an old woman. She was engaged in combing into smoothness with two curry-combs a great pile of knotted wool, washed, but otherwise as it came off the sheep's back. The wool was destined to be made into blankets for the household. The simple apparatus for the carrying-out of the whole process was there at hand, for the spinning-wheel stood back in a corner of the room, while the big, heavy loom had, for convenience' sake, been set up on the porch. That old woman's life may be bare and narrow enough in many ways, but at least she is rich and fortunate in having the opportunity for the exercise of a skilled trade, and in it an outlet for self-expression, and even for artistic taste in the choice of patterns and colors. Far different the lot of the factory worker with her monotonous and mindless repetition of lifeless movements at the bidding of the machine she tends. The Kentucky mountain woman was here practicing in old age the art she had acquired in her girlhood. Those early lessons which had formed her industrial education, were of life-long value, both in enriching her own life, and by adding to her economic and therefore social value, alike as a member of her own household, and as a contributor to the wealth of the little community. We once had, universally, and there still can be found in such isolated regions, an industrial arrangement, soundly based upon community and family needs, and even more normally related to the woman's own development, better expressing many sides of her nature than do the confused and conflicting claims of the modern family and modern industry render possible for vast numbers today. And this, although wide opportunity for personal and individual development was so sadly lacking, and the self-abnegation expected from women was so excessive, that the intellectual and emotional life must often have been a silent tragedy of repression. Among our modern working-women in urban localities, we find today no such settled plan for thus directing the activities of women to meet modern needs and conditions. Neither home nor school furnishes our girls with a training fitting them for a rich and varied occupational life. The pursuits into which most of them drift or are driven, do indeed result in the production of a vast amount of manufactured goods, food, clothing, house and personal furnishings of all sorts, and of machinery with which may be manufactured yet more goods. Much of this product is both useful and beneficial to us all, but there are likewise mountains of articles fashioned, neither useful nor beneficial, nor resulting in any sort of use, comfort or happiness to anyone: adulterated foods, shoddy clothes, and toys that go to pieces in an hour. Certainly the girl worker of this twentieth century produces per head, and with all allowances made for the cost of the capital invested in factory and machinery, and for superintendence, far and away more in amount and in money value than did her girl ancestor of a hundred years ago, or than her contemporary girl ancestor of today in the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, or than her other sister, the farmer's daughter in agricultural regions, who still retains hold of and practices some of the less primitive industries. But the impulse to congratulate ourselves upon this vastly increased product of labor is checked when we take up the typically modern girl's life at a later stage. We have observed already that her life during her first fourteen years is utterly unrelated to the next period, which she spends in store or factory. The training of her childhood has been no preparation for the employments of her girlhood. She is but an unskilled hand, the last cog in a machine, and if these prove but seven lean years for her, it is only what we might expect. When they are ended, and married life entered upon, we are again struck by the absence of any relation between either of these two life-periods and the stage preceding, and by the fact that at no time is any intelligent preparation made either for a wage-earning or a domestic career. This means an utter dislocation between the successive stages of woman's life, a dislocation, the unfortunate results of which, end not with the sex directly affected, but bring about a thousand other evils, the lowering of the general wage standard, the deterioration of home life, and serious loss to the children of the coming generation. As far as we know, such a dislocation in the normal development of women's lives never took place before on any large scale. I am speaking of it here solely in relation to the sum of the well-being of the whole community. As it affects the individual girl and woman herself it has been dealt with under other heads. The cure which the average man has to propose is pithily summed up in the phrase: "Girls ought to stay at home." The home as woman's sole sphere is even regarded as the ultimate solution of the whole difficulty by many men, who know well that it is utterly impracticable today. A truer note was struck by John Work, when addressing himself specially to socialist men: It would be fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the millions of wage-earning women to understand that we did not intend to let them continue earning their own living, but proposed to compel them to become dependent upon men. They price what little independence they have, and they want more of it. It would be equally fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the married women to understand that they must remain dependent upon men. It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times that they are chafing under the galling chains of dependence. * * * * * Far from shutting women out of the industries, socialism will do just the opposite. It will open up to every woman a full and free opportunity to earn her own living and receive her full earnings. This means the total cessation of marrying for a home. The degree of irritation that so many men show when expressing themselves on the subject of women in the trades is the measure of their own sense of incompetence to handle it. The mingled apathy and impatience with which numbers of union men listen to any proposal to organize the girls with whom they work arises from the same mental attitude. "These girls have come into our shop. We can't help it. We didn't ask them. They should be at home. Let them take care of themselves." The inconsistency of such a view is seen when we consider that in the cities at least an American father (let alone a foreign-born father) is rarely found nowadays objecting to his own girls going out to work for wages. He expects it, unless one or more are needed by their mother at home to help with little ones or to assist in a small family store or home business. He takes it as a matter of course that his girls go to work as soon as they leave school, just as his boys do. And yet the workman in a printing office, we will say, whose own daughter is earning her living as a stenographer or teacher, will resent the competition of women type-setters, and will both resent and despise those daughters of poorer fathers, who have found their way into the press or binding-rooms. Unionists or non-unionists, such men ignore the fact that all these girls have just as much right to earn an honest living at setting type, or folding or tipping and in so doing to receive the support and protection of any organization there is, as their own daughters have to take wages for the hours they spend in schoolroom or in office. The single men but echo the views of the older ones when such unfortunately is the shop tone, and may be even more indifferent to the girls' welfare and to the bad economic results to all workers of our happy-go-lucky system or no-system. I do not wish to be understood as accepting either the girl's present economic position or the absorption in purely domestic occupations of the workingman's wife as a finality. It is a transitional stage that we are considering. I look forward to a time, I believe it to be rapidly approaching, when the home of the workingman, like everyone's else home, will be truly the home, the happy resting-place, the sheltering nest of father, mother and children, and when through the rearrangement of labor, the workingman's wife will be relieved from her monotonous existence of unrelieved domestic drudgery and overwork, disguised under the name of wifely and maternal duties, when the cooking and the washing, for instance, will be no more part of the home life in the humblest home than in the wealthiest. The workingman's wife will then share in the general freedom to occupy part of her time in whatever occupation she is best fitted for, and, along with every other member of the community she will share in the benefits arising from the better organisation of domestic work. However, this blessed change has not yet come to pass, and of all city-dwellers, the wife of the workingman seems to be furthest away from the benefits of the transformation. Therefore, in considering the connection between the girl's factory life and her probable occupational future in married life, I have purposely avoided dwelling upon what is bound to arrive some time in the future, and have tried to face facts as they exist today, dealing as far as possible with the difficulties of the generation of girls now in the factories, those about to enter, and those passing out, remembering only, with a patience-breeding sense of relief, that the conditions of today may not necessarily be the conditions of tomorrow. I therefore accept in its full meaning domesticity, as practiced by the most domestic woman, and as preached by the domestic woman's most ardent advocate among men. Nor am I expressing resentment at the fact that when a girl leaves the machine-speeded work of the factory, it is only to take up the heavy burden of the workingman's wife, as we know it. She must be wife and mother, and manager of the family income, and cook and laundress and housemaid and seamstress. The improvement of her position and the amelioration of her lot can only come slowly, through social changes, as expressed in the woman movement, and through the widening scope of the principle of specialization. Even today, without any such radical changes as are foreshadowed above, the gap between schooldays and working years, between working years and married life, can to some extent be bridged over if we plan to do so from the beginning. As has been shown, organized women are already advocating some such orderly plan for the girl's school training, as should blend book-learning with manual instruction and simple domestic accomplishments. But also, in order to deal justly and fairly by the girl, any reasonable scheme of things would also presuppose such strict control of the conditions of industry, that hours would be reasonably short, that in the building and running of machinery there should be borne in mind always the safety and health of the workers, instead of, as today, expecting almost all the adaptation to be on the part of the worker, through pitting the flexible, delicate, and easily injured human organism against the inflexible and tireless machine. Other essential conditions would be the raising of the standard of living, and therefore of remuneration, for all, down to the weakest and least skilled, and the insistence upon equal pay for equal work, tending to lessen the antagonism between men and women on the industrial field. Thus doubly prepared and adequately protected the girl would pass from her wage-earning girlhood into home and married life a fresher, less exhausted creature than she usually is now. Further, she would be more likely to bring to the bearing and rearing of her children a constitution unenfeebled by premature overwork and energies unsapped by its monotonous grind. Again, her understanding of industrial problems would make her a more intelligent as well as a more sympathetic helpmate. Hand in hand, husband and wife would more hopefully tackle fresh industrial difficulties as these arose, and they would do so with some slight sense of the familiarity that is the best armor in life's battle. Besides there is the other possibility, all too often realized, that lies in the background of every such married woman's consciousness. She may be an ideally domestic woman, spending her time and strength on her home and for the Welfare of her husband and children, yet through no fault of hers, her home may be lost to her, or if not lost, at least kept together only by her own unremitting efforts as a wage-earner. It often happens that marriage in course of time proves to be anything but an assurance of support. Early widowed, the young mother herself may have to earn her children's bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard and a spendthrift. In any of these circumstances, the responsibility and the burden of supporting the entire family usually falls upon the wife. Is it strange that the group so often drift into undeserved pauperism, sickness and misery, perhaps later on, even into those depths of social maladjustment that bring about crime? The poorly paid employment of office-cleaning is sadly popular among widows and deserted wives, because, being followed during the evening, and sometimes night hours, it leaves a mother free during the day to attend to her cooking and housework and sewing, and be on the spot to give the children their meals. Free! The irony of it! Free, that is, to work sixteen hours or longer per day, and free to leave her little ones in a locked-up room, while she earns enough to pay the rent and buy the food. Ask any such widowed mother what she is thinking of, as she plies mop and scrubbing-brush after the offices are closed and the office force gone home, and she will tell you how she worries for fear something may have happened to the baby while she is away. She wonders whether she left the matches out of the reach of four-year-old Sammy; and Bessie, who isn't very strong, is always so frightened when the man on the floor above comes home late and quarrels with his wife. The theory on which the poor woman was paid her wages when as a single girl she used to draw her weekly pay-envelope, that a fair living wage for a woman is what is barely sufficient to support herself, rather falls down when a whole household has to be kept out of a girl's miserable pay. All these difficulties would be eased for such overburdened ones, if their early training had been such as to leave them equipped to meet the vicissitudes of fortune on fairer terms, and if the conditions of industrial life, allotting equal pay to workers of both sexes, had also included reasonable opportunities for advancement to higher grades of work with proportionately increased pay. Meanwhile, married women, less handicapped than these, are experimenting on their own account, and are helping to place the work of wives as wage-earners on a more settled basis. The wife of the workingman who has no children, and who lives in a city finds she has not enough to do in the little flat which is their home. The stove in winter needs little attention; there is not enough cooking and cleaning to fill up her time, and as for sewing she can buy most of their clothing cheaper than she can make it. But any little money she can earn will come in useful; so she tries for some kind of work, part-time work, if she can find it. In every big city there are hundreds of young married women who take half-time jobs in our department stores or who help to staff the lunch-rooms or wash up or carry trays, or act as cashiers in our innumerable restaurants. As half-day girls such waitresses earn their three or four dollars a week, besides getting their lunch. Very frequently they do not admit to their fellow-workers that they are married, for the single girl with her own hard struggle on her hands is apt to resent such competition. A worker who is in a position to accept voluntarily a half-time job of this sort is one who must have some other means of meeting part of her living expenses. A home in the background is such an aid. The increasingly large number of part-time workers, lessen, the others reckon, the number of jobs to be had by the ones that have to work all day, and may tend also to lower wages, since any partly subsidized worker can afford to take less than the girl who has to support herself out of her earnings. The latter has never heard of parasitic trades, and yet in her heart she knows there is something not quite right here, something that she blindly feels she would like to put an end to. She is quite right in resisting any lowering of wages, but she will have to accept this inroad into the trades of these exceptionally placed married women. She will have to throw her efforts into another channel, using organization to raise the position of working-women generally into dignified industrial independence. For this still limited number of half-time married women workers are but the leaf on the stream, showing the direction events are taking. As specialization goes on, as the domestic industries are more and more taken out of our homes, as the gifted and trained teacher more and more shares in the life of the child, more and more will the woman after she marries continue to belong to the wage-earning class by being a part-time worker. To propose eliminating the present (sometimes unfair) competition of the married woman with the single girl, by excluding her from any or every trade is as futile as the resentment of men against all feminine rivals in industry. We have been observing, so far, how the lives of women have been modified, often, not for the better, by the industrial revolution. Let us glance now in passing at the old home industries themselves, and note what is still happening. One after another has been taken, not merely out of the home, where they all originated, but out of the hands of the sex who invented and developed them. Trade after trade has thus been taken over from the control of women, and appropriated and placed on a modern business basis by men. I make no criticism upon this transference beyond remarking that you hear no howl about it from the supplanted ones, as you never fail to do over the converse process, when male workers are driven out of occupations to make way for women, whose cheapness makes them so formidable an industrial competitor. But whichever way it works, sex discrimination usually bodes no good to the lasting interest of any of the workers. When a trade passes out of the status of a home industry, and takes on the dignity of an outside occupation, women are rarely in a position to take hold of it in its new guise. We find men following it, partly because they are more accustomed to think in terms of professional skill, and partly because they are in the business swim, and can more easily gain command of the capital necessary to start any new enterprise. Men then proceed to hire the original owners as employés, and women lose greatly in their economic status. This is the general rule, though it is by no means wholly the sex line that divides the old-fashioned houseworker from the specialized professional, though this habitual difference in standing between groups of different sex does tend to blur fundamental issues. The economic struggle in its bare elements would be easy to follow compared with the complex and perpetually changing forms in which it is presented to us. But the home industries are not yet fully accounted for and disposed of. Some of the household occupations, essential once to the comfort and well-being of the family, are shrinking in importance, prior to vanishing before our eyes, because now they do not for the most part represent an economical expenditure of energy. Meanwhile, however, they linger on, a survival in culture, and in millions of homes today the patient housewife is striving with belated tools to keep her family fed and clothed and her house spotless. Take the cleaning process, for example, and watch what is happening. Dr. Helen Sumner draws attention to the fact that we ourselves are witnessing its rapid transformation. It is being taken out of the hands of the individual houseworker, who is wont to scrub, sweep and dust in the intervals between marketing, cooking, laundry-work or sewing, and by whom it is performed well or ill, but always according to the standards of the individual household, which means that there are no accepted standards in sweeping, scrubbing and dusting. House-cleaning is becoming a specialized, skilled trade, performed by the visiting expert and his staff of professionally trained employés. Even if as yet these skilled and paid workers enter an ordinary home only at long intervals, when the mystic process of spring cleaning seems to justify the expense, the day is plainly in sight when the usual weekly cleaning will be taken over by these same visitors. At present the abruptness of the change is broken for us by the introduction into the market, and the use by the house-mother of various hand-driven machines, a vast improvement upon the old-fashioned broom, and accustoming women to the idea of new and better methods of getting rid of dirt. Few realize the tremendous import of this comparatively insignificant invention, the atmospheric cleaner, or what a radical change it is bringing about in the thoughts of the housewife, whose ideas on the domestic occupations so far have been mostly as confused as those of the charwoman, who put up on her door the sign: "Scrubbing and Window-Cleaning Done Here." In the same way the innumerable electric appliances of today are simplifying the labors of the housewife; but their chief value is that through them she is becoming accustomed to the thought of change, and being led on to distinguish between the housework that can be simplified, and still done at home, and the much larger proportion which must sooner or later be relegated to the professional expert, either coming in at intervals or performing the task elsewhere. And this is true, fortunately, of women in the country as well as in the cities. We have traveled a long way during the last hundred and fifty years or so, and in that time have witnessed the complete transference from home to factory of many home industries, notably spinning and weaving, and soap-and candle-making. Others like the preparation of food are still in process of transference. The factory industries are the direct and legitimate offspring of the primitive home industries, and their growth and development are entirely on the lines of a normal evolution. [Illustration: _Courtesy of The Pine Mountain Settlement_ Primitive Industry. Kentucky mountain woman at her spinning-wheel. 1913] [Illustration: _Courtesy of The Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy_ Italian Woman Home Finisher] But there is another form of industry that is a ghastly hybrid, the "home-work" that has been born of the union of advanced factory methods and primitive home appliances. Such a combination could never have come into existence, had the working classes at the time of the inception of machine-driven industry possessed either an understanding of what was happening, or the power to prevent their own exploitation. The effects of this home-work are in every way deadly. There is not a single redeeming feature about the whole business. Like the spinner or the weaver of olden times, the sewing-machine operator or the shirt-finisher of the present day provides her own workroom, lighting and tools, but unlike her, she enjoys no freedom in their use, nor has she any control over the hours she works, the prices she asks or the class of work she undertakes. With the home-worker hard-driven by her sister in poverty, and driving her in turn, helpless both in their ignorance under the modern Juggernaut that is destroying them, pushed ever more cruelly by relentless competition, the last stronghold, the poor little home itself, goes down. The mother has no time to care for her children, nor money wherewith to procure for them the care of others. In her frantic desire to keep them alive, she holds the whip over her own flesh and blood, who have to spend their very babyhood in tying feather-flues or pulling out bastings. Home-work, this unnatural product of nineteenth-century civilization, as an agency for summarily destroying the home is unparalleled. Nor do its blighting effects end with homes wrecked, and children neglected, stunted and slain. The proud edifice of modern industry itself, on whose account homes are turned into workshops, children into slaves, and mothers into slave-drivers, is undermined and degraded by this illegitimate competition, the most powerful of all factors in lowering wages, and preventing organization among regular factory hands. The matter lies in a nutshell. Industry which originated in the home could be safely carried on there only as long as it remained simple and the operations thereof such as one individual could complete. As soon as through the invention of power-driven machinery industry reached the stage of high specialization and division of labor, at once it became a danger to the home, and the home a degradation to it. It was at the call of specialized industry that the factory came into existence, and only in the factory can it be safely housed. A similar and, if it were possible, a worse form of family and group slavery prevails outside of the cities in the poorer farming regions and in the cotton states. It is harder to reach and to handle, and there is cause to fear that it is increasing. Especially in the busy season when the corn has to be harvested or the cotton picked the mother is considered as a toiler first, and she is to have her babies and look after her poor little home and her children as a mere afterthought. The children are contributors to the family support from the time they can toddle and schooling comes a bad second in making the family arrangements. One reason for this growing evil is the threatening degradation and disappearance of the independent farmer class, who made up what would have been called in England formerly the yeomanry of this country, and their replacement by a poor peasantry degraded by the wretched terms upon which they are driven to snatch a bare existence from a patch of land to which they are tied by lease, by mortgage or by wages, and which they have neither the money nor the knowledge to cultivate to advantage. The Federal Commission on Industrial Relations has brought to light some startling facts in this phase of our social life, as in many others. I can refer to the evidence of but one witness. She speaks for many thousands. This is as it is quoted in the daily press. Picture for the moment the drama staged at Dallas. Mrs. I. Borden Harriman of New York is presiding over the commission. Mrs. Levi Stewart, the wife of a tenant farmer, is on the witness stand. Mrs. Stewart is a shrinking little woman with "faded eyes and broken body." She wears a blue sunbonnet. Her dress of checkered material has lost its color from long use. In a thin, nervous voice she answers the questions of the distinguished leader of two kinds of "society." "Do you work in the fields?" Mrs. Harriman began. "Yes, ma'am." "How old were you when you married?" "Fifteen." "How old was your husband?" "Eighteen." "Did you work in the fields when you were a child?" "Oh, yes'm, I picked and I chopped." "Have you worked in the fields every year?" "I do in pickin' and choppin' times." "And you do the housework?' "There ain't no one else to do it." "And the sewing?" "Yes, ma'am. I make all the clothes for the children and myself. I make everything I wear ever since I was married." "Do you make your hats?" "Yes, ma'am. I make my hats. I had only two since I was married." "And how long have you been married?" "Twenty years." "Do you do the milking?" "Most always when we can afford a cow." "What time do you get up in the morning?" "I usually gits up in time to have breakfast done by 4 o'clock in summer time. In the winter time we are through with breakfast by sun-up." "Did you work in the fields while you were carrying your children?" "Oh, yes, sometimes; sometimes almost nigh to birthin' time." "Is this customary among the tenant farmers' wives you have known?" The answer was an affirmative nod. Let us now once more consider the home, and compare factory operations with the domestic arts. There is no doubt that in cooking, for instance, the housewife finds scope for a far higher range of qualifications than the factory girl exercises in preparing tomatoes in a cannery, or soldering the cans after they are filled with the cooked fruit. The housewife has first of all to market and next to prepare the food for cooking. She has to study the proper degree of heat, watch the length of time needed for boiling or baking in their several stages, perhaps make additions of flavorings, and serve daintily or can securely. There is scarcely any division of housework which does not call for resource and alertness. Unfortunately, however, although these qualities are indeed called for, they are not always called forth, because the houseworker is not permitted to concentrate her whole attention and interest upon any one class of work, but must be constantly going from one thing to another. Hence women have indeed acquired marvelous versatility, but at what a heavy cost! The houseworker only rarely acquires perfect skill and deftness or any considerable speed in performing any one process. Her versatility is attained at the price of having no standards of comparison established, and worse than all, at the price of working in isolation, and therefore gaining no training in team-work, and so never having an inkling of what organized effort means. Our factory systems, on the other hand, go to the other extreme, being so arranged that the majority of workers gain marvelous dexterity, and acquire a dizzying rate of speed, while they are apt to lose in both resourcefulness and versatility. They do not, however, suffer, to anything like the same degree, from isolation, and factory life, even where the employers are opposed to organization, does open a way to the recognition of common difficulties and common advantages, and therefore leads eventually in the direction of organization. In the factory trades the workers have to some extent learnt to be vocal. It is possible for an outsider to learn something of the inner workings of an establishment. Upon the highly developed trades, the searchlight of official investigation is every now and then turned. From statistics we know the value of the output. We are also learning a good deal about the workers, the environment that makes for health or invalidism, or risk to life, and we are in a fair way to learn more. The organized labor movement furnishes an expression, although still imperfect, of the workers' views, and keeps before the public the interests of the workers, even of the unorganized groups. But with the domestic woman all this is reversed. In spite of the fact that in numbers the home women far exceed the wage-earners, the value of their output has been ignored, and as to the conditions under which it is produced, not even the most advanced and progressive statisticians have been able to arrive at any estimate. Of sentiment tons have been lavished upon the extreme importance of the work of the housewife in the home, sometimes, methinks, with a lingering misgiving that she might not be too well content, and might need a little encouragement to be induced to remain there. What adulation, too, has been expended upon the work of even the domestic servant, with comparisons in plenty unfavorable to the factory occupations into which girls still persist in drifting. Yet in freedom and in social status, two of the tests by which to judge the relative desirability of occupations, the paid domestic employments take inferior ranks. Again, they offer little prospect of advance, for they lead nowhere. Further, as noted in an earlier chapter in the census reports all women returning themselves as engaged in domestic duties (not being paid employés), were necessarily not listed as gainfully employed. Yet it is impossible to believe that compared with other ways of employing time and energy, the hours that women spend in cooking and cleaning for the family, even if on unavoidably primitive lines, have no value to the community. Or again, that the hours a mother spends in caring for her baby, later on in helping with the lessons, and fitting the children for manhood or womanhood, have no value in the nation's account book. I will be reminded that this is an unworthy way of reckoning up the inestimable labors of the wife and mother. Perhaps so. Yet personally, I should much prefer a system of social economics which could estimate the items at a fair, not excessive value, and credit them to the proper quarter. A well-known woman publicist recently drew attention to the vast number of the women engaged in domestic life, and expressed regret that organizations like the National Women's Trade Union League confined their attention so exclusively to the women and girls employed in factories and stores, who, even today, fall so far short numerically of their sisters who are working in the home or on the farm. The point is an interesting one, but admits of a ready explanation. Every movement follows the line of least resistance, and a movement for the industrial organization of women must first approach those in the most advanced and highly organized industries. As I have shown, we really know very much more about the conditions of factory workers than of home-workers. The former have, in a degree, found their voice, and are able to give collective expression to their common interests. The League recently urged upon the Secretary for Labor, the recognition, as an economic factor, of the work of women in the household trades; the classification of these occupations, whether paid or unpaid, on a par with other occupations, and lastly, that there be undertaken a government investigation of domestic service. In this connection a long step forward has just been taken through the inquiries, which during the last two years, the Department of Agriculture has been making as to the real position of women on the farm, and has been making them of the women themselves. This came about through a letter addressed to the Secretary from Mr. Clarence Poe, Raleigh, North Carolina, under date of July 9, 1913, in which he said: "Have some bulletins for the farmer's wife, as well as for the farmer himself. The farm woman has been the most neglected factor in the rural problem, and she has been especially neglected by the National Department of Agriculture. Of course, a few such bulletins are printed, but not enough." A letter was accordingly sent out from Washington to the housewives of the department's 55,000 volunteer crop correspondents, on the whole a group of picked women. They were invited to state both their personal views and the results of discussions with women neighbors, their church organization or any women's organization to which they might belong. To this letter 2,225 relevant replies were received, many of these transmitting the opinions of groups of women in the neighborhood. The letter asked "how the United States Department of Agriculture can better meet the needs of farm housewives." Extracts from the replies with comments have been published in the form of four bulletins. Many of the letters make tragic reading: the want of any money of their own; the never-ending hours; the bad roads and poor schools; neglect in girlhood and at times of childbirth. A great many thoughtless husbands will certainly be awakened to a sense of neglected opportunities, as well as to many sins of commission. The bulletins contain appendices of suggestions how farm women can help one another, and how they may gain much help from the certainly now thoroughly converted Department of Agriculture, through farmer's institutes for women, through demonstrations and other extension work under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, and through the formation of women's and girls' clubs. It is of the utmost importance to society, as well as to herself, that the whole economic status of the married woman, performing domestic duties, should be placed upon a sounder basis. It is not as if the unsatisfactory position of the average wife and mother could confine its results to herself. Compared with other occupations, hers fulfills none of the conditions that the self-respecting wage-earner demands. The twenty-four-hour day, the seven-day week, no legal claim for remuneration, these are her common working conditions. Other claims which a husband can and usually does make upon her I leave unnoticed; also the unquestioned claim of her children upon her time and strength. Marital duties, as they are evasively termed, could not be exacted from any wage servant. Moreover, the very existence of children whom the married pair have called into being is but an argument, on the one hand, for the father taking a larger share in their care, and on the other, for the lightening of the mother's multifarious burden by the better organization of all household work, as well as everything that belongs to child culture and care. The poor working conditions she suffers under, and the uncertainty of her position, reduce many a woman's share in the married partnership to that of an employé in a sweated trade. This kind of marriage, therefore, like all other sweated trades tends to lower the general market value of women's work. This is casting no reflection upon the hundreds of thousands of husbands who do their part fairly, who share and share alike whatever they have or earn with their wives. How many a workingman regularly hands over to his wife for the support of the home the whole of his earnings with perhaps the barest deduction, a dollar or two, or sometimes only a few cents, for small personal expenditures. Many wives enjoy complete power over the family purse. Or the married pair decide together as to how much they can afford to spend on rent and food and clothing, and when sickness or want of work face them, they meet the difficulty together. The decisions made, it is the wife who has the whole responsibility for the actual spending. But though so often a man does fulfill in spirit as in letter his promise to support, as well as to love and honor the girl he has married, there is very little in the laws of any country to compel him. And because the man can slip the collar more easily than the woman can, the woman's position is rendered still more uncertain. If she were an ordinary wage-worker, we should say of her that her occupation was an unstandardized one, and that individually she was too dependent upon the personal goodwill of another. Therefore, like all other unstandardized callings, marriage, considered as an occupation, tends to lower the general market value of woman's work. Conversely, Cicely Hamilton in "Marriage as a Trade," points out that the improvements in the economic position of the married woman, which have come about in recent years, are partly at least due to the successful efforts of single women to make themselves independent and self-supporting. But during the process of transition, and while single women are forging farther and farther ahead, many a married woman is finding herself between the upper and the nether millstone. And unfortunately precisely in the degree that the paid domestic worker is able to make better arrangements in return for her services, whether as resident or as visiting employé, many housemothers are likely for a time to find conditions press yet more severely upon themselves. They will soon have no one left upon whom they can shift their own burdens of overwork, as they have so frequently done in the past. Sooner or later they will be driven to take counsel with their fellows, and will then assuredly plan some method of organizing housewives for mutual help and coöperation, and for securing from society some fairer recognition of the true value of the contribution of the domestic woman to the wealth of the community. It is not strange that she with whom industry had its rise and upon whom all society rests should be the last to benefit by the forces of reorganization which are spiritually regenerating the race and elevating it to a level never before reached. The very function of sex, whose exercise enters into her relation with her husband, has complicated what could otherwise have been a simple partnership. The helplessness of her children and their utter dependence upon her, which should have furnished her with an additional claim for consideration, have only tied her more closely and have prevented her from obtaining that meed of justice from society which a less valuable servant had long ago won. But in the sistership of womanhood, now for the first time admitted and hopefully accepted, fortunate and unfortunate clasp hands, and go forward to aid in making that future the whole world awaits today. XII THE WORKING WOMAN AND THE VOTE Olive Schreiner, in "Woman and Labor," lays it down as almost axiomatic that "the women of no race or class will ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their relation to society, however intense their suffering, and however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of society requires their submission; that whenever there is a general attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or changing conditions of society have made women's acquiescence no longer necessary or desirable." If this be so, it can only be accepted as the application to women of a statement which could be made equally of all the down-trodden races and classes of humanity. The one reason that makes me hesitate about accepting it as a complete explanation of the age-long submission of the oppressed is that we are all rather too ready to accept an explanation that explains away (shall I say?) or at least justifies the suffering of others. The explanation fits so well. Does it not fit too well? Probably Olive Schreiner did not intend it to cover the whole ground. In one detail, in any case, I take exception to it. An oppressed class or race or sex may often suffer intensely and go on suffering and submitting, but not _after_ they have gained a clear perception of the intensity of those sufferings, for then the first stage of rebellion has already begun. Not one of us who has grown to middle age but can remember, looking back to her own girlhood, how meekly and as a matter of course women of all classes accepted every sort of suffering as part of the lot of woman, especially of the married woman, whether it was excessive child-bearing, pain in childbirth, physical overwork, or the mental suffering arising out of a penniless and dependent condition, with the consequent absolute right of the husband to the custody and control of the children of the union. And in all nations and classes where this state of affairs still continues, the women have as yet no clear intellectual perception of the keenness and unfairness of their suffering. They still try to console themselves with believing and allowing others to suppose that after all, things are not so bad; they might be worse. These poor women actually hypnotize themselves into such a belief. Have you not heard a mother urge a daughter or a friend to submit uncomplainingly to the most outrageous domestic tyranny, for is not hers after all the common fate of woman? No clear perception there! This argument in no way touches the exceptional woman or man, belonging to an oppressed class. Such a woman, for instance, as the Kaffir woman spoken of by Olive Schreiner in this passage, is the rare exception. But so far Olive Schreiner is undoubtedly right. When the revolt at length takes place it is in answer to an immediate and pressing need of the whole community. When the restrictions upon a class have become hurtful to the whole, when their removal is called for because society is in need of the energies thus set free, then takes place a more or less general uprising of the oppressed and restricted ones, apparently entirely spontaneous and voluntary, in reality having its origin partly at least in the claim which society is making upon the hitherto restricted class to take up fuller social responsibilities. When observing then the modern change of attitude among women, towards life, we can therefore only conclude that such an immediate and pressing need is felt by society today, a claim neither to be ignored nor denied. On this reasoning, then, and observing the eager demand of women everywhere for increased freedom and independence, we can only draw the conclusion that the whole world is dimly recognizing an immediate and pressing need for the higher services of women, services which they cannot render unless freed legally, politically and sexually. It is this immense and universal social claim which has been responded to by the whole organized movement among women, industrial as well as educational and political. In order to understand the relation of the organized suffrage movement to the question of improving women's industrial and economic conditions and status, we have to consider the changed conditions of society under which we live, and we will have to recognize that the demand for the vote in different countries and at different times may or may not coincide with the same social content. Psychologically, indeed, as well as practically, the vote connotes all sorts of different implications to the women of today, contemporaries though they are. It was with an appreciation of these complexities that Professor W.I. Thomas has pointed out that in his opinion suffragists often place too great stress upon primitive woman's political power, and ignore the fact that women held an even more important relation to the occupational than to the political life of those early days, and that in her occupational value is to be traced the true source of her power and therefore her real influence in any age. While agreeing with Professor Thomas that some suffrage arguments do on the surface appear inconsistent with historical facts, I believe the inconsistency to be more formal than real. As the centuries pass a larger and still larger proportion of human affairs passes away from individual management and comes under social and community control. As this process goes on, more and more does the individual, whether man or woman, need the power to control socially the conditions that affect his or her individual welfare. In our day political power rightly used, gives a socialized control of social conditions, and for the individual it is embodied in and is expressed by the vote. To go back only one hundred years. The great bulk of men and women were industrially much more nearly on a level than they are today. A poor level, I grant you, for with the exception of the privileged classes, few and small were the political powers and therefore the social control of even men. But every extension of political power as granted to class after class of men has, as far as women are concerned, had the fatal effect of increasing the political inequality between men and women, thus placing women, though not apparently, yet relatively and actually upon a lower level. Again, the status of woman has been crushingly affected by the contemporaneous and parallel change which has passed over her special occupations; so that the conditions under which she works today are decidedly less than ever before by purely personal relationships and more by such impersonal factors as the trade supply of labor, and interstate and international competition. This change has affected woman in an immeasurably greater degree than man. The conditions of industrial life are in our day in some degree controllable by political power so that at this point woman again finds herself civilly and industrially at greater disadvantage than when her status in all these respects depended principally upon her individual capacity to handle efficiently problems arising within an area limited by purely personal relationships. To alter so radically the conditions of daily life and industry, and not merely to leave its control in the hands of the old body of voters, but to give over into the hands of an enlarged and fresh body of voters, and these voters inevitably the men of her own class who are her industrial competitors, that degree of control represented by the vote and to refuse it to women is to place women (though not apparently, yet actually and relatively) upon a distinctly lowered level. So that what suffragists are asking for is in reality not so much a novel power, as it is liberty to possess and use the same new instrument of social control as has been already accorded to men. Without that instrument it is no mere case of her standing still. She is in very truth retrogressing, as far as effective control over the conditions under which she lives her life, whether inside the home or outside of it. In this instinctive desire not to lose ground, to keep up both with altered social claims of society upon women and with the improved political equipment of their brothers, is to be found the economic crux of women's demand for the vote in every country and in every succeeding decade. In the course of human development, the gradual process of the readjustment of human beings to changed social and economic conditions is marked at intervals by crises wherein the struggle always going on beneath the surface between the new forces and existing conditions wells up to the surface and takes on the nature of a duel between contending champions. If this is true of one class or of one people, how much more is it true when the change is one that affects an entire sex. There have been occasions in history and there occur still today instances when economic conditions being such that their labor was urgently needed and therefore desired, it was easy for newcomers to enter a fresh field of industry, and give to a whole class or even to a whole sex in one locality an additional occupation. Such very evidently was the case with the first girls who went into the New England cotton mills. Men's occupations at that time in America lay for the most part out of doors, and there was therefore no sense of rivalry experienced, when the girls who used to spin at home began to spin on a large scale and in great numbers in a factory. It is far different where women have been forced by the economic forces driving them from behind to make their slow and painful way into a trade already in the possession of men. Of course the wise thing for the men to do in such a case is to bow to the logic of events, and through their own advantageous position as first in the field and through whatever organizations they may possess use all their power to place their new women rivals on an equal footing with themselves and so make it impossible for the women to become a weakening and disintegrating force in the trade. The women being thus more or less protected by the men from the exploitation of their own weakness it is then for them to accept the position, as far as they are able, stand loyally by the men, meet factory conditions as they find them, being the latest comers, and proceed afterwards to bring about such modifications and improvements as may seem to them desirable. Unfortunately this in a general way may stand for a description of everything that has not taken place. The bitter and often true complaints made by workmen that women have stolen their trade, that having learnt it, well or ill, they are scabs all the time in their acceptance of lower wages and worse conditions, relatively much worse conditions, and that they are often strike-breakers when difficulties arise, form a sad commentary upon the men's own short-sighted conduct. To women, driven by need to earn their living in unaccustomed ways, men have all too often opened no front gate through which they could make an honest daylight entrance into a trade, but have left only side-alleys and back-doors through which the guiltless intruders could slip in. Organized labor today, however, is on record as standing for the broader policy, however apathetic the individual unions and the individual trade unionists may often be. A dramatic presentation of one of these very complicated situations is found in the experience of Miss Susan B. Anthony in the printers' strike in New York in 1869. By some this incident has been interpreted to show a wide difference of outlook between those women who were chiefly intent on opening up fresh occupational possibilities for women, and those who, coming daily face to face with the general industrial difficulties of women already in the trades, recognized the urgent need of trade organization for women if the whole standard of the trades wherein they were already employed was not to be permanently lowered. While there is no such general inference to be drawn, the occurrence does place in a very strong light the extreme complexity of the question and the need that then existed, the need that still exists for closer coöperation between workers approaching the problem of the independence of the wage-earning woman from different sides. The files of the _Revolution_, which Miss Anthony, in conjunction with Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Parker Pillsbury, published from 1868 to 1870, are full of the industrial question. Though primarily the paper stood for the suffrage movement, the editors were on the best of terms with labor organizations and they were constantly urging working-women to organize and coöperate with men trade unionists, and in especial to maintain constantly their claim to equal pay for equal work. But just about the time of our story, in the beginning of 1869, Miss Anthony seems to have been especially impressed with the need of trade-schools for girls, that they might indeed be qualified to deserve equal pay, to earn it honestly if they were to ask for it; for we find her saying: "The one great need of the hour is to qualify women workers to _really earn_ equal wages with men. We must have _training-schools for women_ in all the industrial avocations. Who will help the women will help ways and means to establish them." Just then a printers' strike occurred and Miss Anthony thought she saw in the need of labor on the part of the employers an opportunity to get the employers to start training-schools to teach the printing trade to girls, in her enthusiasm for this end entirely oblivious of the fact that it was an unfortunate time to choose for making such a beginning. She attended an employers' meeting held at the Astor House and laid her proposal before them. The printers felt that they were being betrayed, and by one, too, whom they had always considered their friend. On behalf of organized labor Mr. John J. Vincent, secretary of the National Labor Union, made public protest. Miss Anthony's reply to Mr. Vincent, under date February 3, 1869, published in the New York _Sun_, and reprinted in the _Revolution_, is very touching, showing clearly enough that in her eagerness to supply the needed thorough trade-training for young girls, she had for the moment forgotten what was likely to be the outcome for the girls themselves of training, however good, obtained in such a fashion. She had also forgotten how essential it was that she should work in harmony with the men's organizations as long as they were willing to work with her. Though not saying so in so many words, the letter is a shocked avowal that, acting impulsively, she had not comprehended the drift of her action, and it amounts to a withdrawal from her first position. She writes: Sir: You fail to see my motive in appealing to the Astor House meeting of employers, for aid to establish a training school for girls. It was to open the way for a thorough drill to the hundreds of poor girls, to fit them to earn equal wages with men everywhere and not to undermine "Typographical No. 6." I did not mean to convey the impression that "women, already good compositors should work for a cent less per thousand ems than men," and I rejoice most heartily that Typographical Union No. 6 stands so nobly by the Women's Typographical Union No. 1 and demands the admission of women to all offices under its control, and I rejoice also that the Women's Union No. 1 stands so nobly and generously by Typographical Union No. 6 in refusing most advantageous offers to defeat its demands. My advice to all the women compositors of the city, is now, as it has ever been since last autumn, to join the women's union, for in union alone there is strength, in union alone there is protection. Every one should scorn to allow herself to be made a tool to undermine the just prices of men workers; and to avoid this union is necessary. Hence I say, girls, stand by each other, and by the men, when they stand by you. With this the incident seems to have closed, for nothing more is heard of the employers' training-school.[A] [Footnote A: This illustrates well the cruel alternative perpetually placed before the working-woman and the working-woman's friends. She is afforded little opportunity to learn a trade thoroughly, and yet, if she does not stand by her fellow men workers, she is false to working class loyalty. That the women printers of New York were between the devil and the deep sea is evidenced by the whole story told in Chapter XXI of "New York Typographical Union No. 6," by George Stevens. In that is related how about this time was formed a women printers' union, styled "Women's Typographical No. 1," through the exertions of a number of women compositors with Augusta Lewis at their head. Miss Lewis voiced the enthusiastic thanks of the women when, a few months later, the union received its charter from the International Typographical Union at its next convention in June, 1869. A different, and a sadder note runs through Miss Lewis's report to the convention in Baltimore in 1871, in describing the difficulties the women labored under. "A year ago last January, Typographical Union No. 6 passed a resolution admitting union girls in offices under the control of No. 6. Since that time we have never obtained a situation that we could not have obtained if we had never heard of a union. We refuse to take the men's situations when they are on strike, and when there is no strike, if we ask for work in union offices we are told by union foremen 'that there are no conveniences for us.' We are ostracized in many offices because we are members of the union; and though the principle is right, the disadvantages are so many that we cannot much longer hold together.... No. 1 is indebted to No. 6 for great assistance, but as long as we are refused work because of sex we are at the mercy of our employers, and I can see no way out of our difficulties." In 1878 the International enacted a law that no further charter be granted to women's unions, although it was not supposed to take effect against any already in existence. Women's Typographical No. 1, already on the downward grade, on this dissolved. But not till 1883 did the women printers in New York begin to join the men's union, and there have been a few women members in it ever since. But how few in proportion may be judged from the figures on September 30, 1911. Total membership 6,969, of whom 192 were women. I believe this to be typical of the position of the woman compositor in other cities.] I have given large space to this incident, because it is the only one of the kind I have come across in Miss Anthony's long career. Page after page of the _Revolution_ is full of long reports of workingmen's conventions which she or Mrs. Stanton attended.[A] At these they were either received as delegates or heard as speakers, advocating the cause of labor and showing how closely the success of that cause was bound up with juster treatment towards the working-woman. Many indeed must have been the labor men, who gained a broader outlook upon their own problems and difficulties through listening to such unwearied champions of their all but voiceless sex. [Footnote A: Mrs. Stanton's first speech before the New York legislature, made in 1854, was a demand that married working-women should have the right to collect their own wages. She and the workers with her succeeded in having the law amended. Up till then a married woman might wash all day at the washtub, and at night the law required that her employer should, upon demand, hand over her hard-earned money to her husband, however dissolute he might be.] To the more conservative among the workingmen the uncompromising views of these women's advocates must have been very upsetting sometimes, and always very unconventional. We find that in a workingmen's assembly in Albany, New York, when one radical delegate moved to insert the words "and working-women" into the first article of the Constitution, he felt bound to explain to his fellow-delegates that it was not his intention to offer anything that would reflect discredit upon the body. He simply wanted the females to have the benefit of their trades and he thought by denying them this right a great injustice was done to them. The speaker who followed opposed the discussion of the question. "Let the women organize for themselves." The radicals, however, rose to the occasion. Mr. Graham in a long speech said it was a shame and a disgrace for this body, pretending to ask the elevation of labor to neglect or refuse to help this large, deserving, but down-trodden class. Mr. Topp said he would be ashamed to go home and say he had attended this assembly if it overlooked the claims of the female organizations. The resolution to include the women was carried with applause. At the National Labor Congress held in Germania Hall, New York, the _Revolution_ of October 1, 1868, had noted the admission of four women delegates as marking a new era in workingmen's conventions. These were: Katherine Mullaney, president of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, N.Y.; Mrs. Mary Kellogg Putnam, representing Working Women's Association No. 2 of New York City; Miss Anthony herself, delegate from Working Women's Association No. 1, New York City; and Mary A. Macdonald, from the Working Women's Protective Labor Union, Mount Vernon, New York. Mrs. Stanton, after a long and exciting debate, was declared a delegate, but the next day, to please the malcontents, the National Labor Congress made clear by resolution that it did not regard itself as endorsing her peculiar ideas or committing itself to the question of female suffrage, but simply regarded her as a representative from an organization having for its object "the amelioration of the condition of those who labor for a living." "Worthy of Talleyrand" is Miss Anthony's sole comment. The connection between the woman movement and the labor movement is indeed close and fundamental, but that must not be taken to imply that the workingman and the woman of whatever class have not their own separate problems to handle and to solve as each sees best. The marriage relation between two individuals has often been wrecked by assuming as the basis of their common life that man and wife are one and that the husband is that one. And so the parallel assumption that all the working-woman's wrongs will naturally be righted by redress if their righting is left in the hands of her working brother for many years led to a very curious and unfortunate neglect of suffrage propaganda among working-women, and on the part of working-women and to a no less unfortunate ignorance of industrial problems, also, on the part of many suffragists, whether those affecting workingmen and women alike or the women only. It was not so in the early days. The instances given above show how close and friendly were the relations between labor leaders and suffrage pioneers. What has been said of Miss Anthony applied equally to the other great women who carried the suffrage banner amid opprobrium and difficulty. The change came that comes so often in the development of a great movement. One of the main objects which the pioneers had had in view somehow slipped out of the sight of their successors. The earliest move of the advanced women of America had been for equal rights of education, and there success has been greatest and most complete and thorough. But it was almost exclusively the women who were able to enter the professions who gained the benefits of this campaign for equal educational and consequently equal professional opportunities. The next aim of the leaders in the woman movement of the last century had been to accord to woman equality before the law. This affecting primarily and chiefly woman in her sex relations, had its permanent results in reference to the legal status of the married woman and the mother, bearing at the same time secondarily upon the safety and welfare of the child; hence in the different states a long series of married women's property acts, equal guardianship acts, modifications of the gross inequalities of the divorce law, and the steady raising of the age of protection for girls. At least that was the position ten years ago. But today the tide has turned. Partly is this due to the growth of industrial organization among women, a development that has followed the ever-increasing need of mutual protection. Trade unionism has helped to train the working-woman to listen to the suffrage gospel, though therein she has often been slower than the workingman, her better educated brother. On the other hand a great many influences have combined to wake up the suffragist of our day to the true meaning and value of what she was asking. Especially has the work of the National Women's Trade Union League and the campaign of publicity it has conducted on behalf of the working-woman, both within and without its membership, focused attention upon the woman in industry as a national responsibility. Then again the tremendous strikes in which such large numbers of women and girls have been involved were an education to others than the strikers--to none more than to the suffrage workers who coöperated with the ill-used girl strikers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. An influence of even more universal appeal, if of less personal intensity, has been the suffrage movement in Great Britain. That movement has educated the public of this country, as they never would have been educated by any movement confined to this country alone. Inside the ranks of enrolled suffragists it has been an inspiration, showering upon their cause a new baptism of mingled tears and rejoicing. In calmer mood we have learned from our British sisters much regarding policies adapted to modern situations, and they have assuredly shown us all sorts of new and original methods of organization and education. The immense and nation-wide publicity given by the press of the United States to the more striking and sensational aspects of the British movement and all the subsequent talk and writing in other quarters has roused to sex-consciousness thousands of American women of all classes who had not been previously interested in the movement for obtaining full citizenship for themselves and their daughters. These women also aroused, and men, too, have furnished the huge audiences which have everywhere greeted such speakers as Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Philip Snowden, when in person they have presented the mighty story of the transatlantic struggle. There is no difficulty nowadays in gathering suffrage audiences anywhere, for the man and the woman walking along the street supply them to the open-air speaker in the large city and the little country town as one by one city and town take up the new methods. Even more close to lasting work for all the issues that affect the community through placing upon women an ordered civic responsibility are the plans for the organizing under different names of woman suffrage parties and civic leagues which blend the handling of local activities everywhere with a demand for the ballot in keeping with the needs of the modern community. No clear-eyed woman can work long in this sort of atmosphere without realizing how unequally social burdens press, how unequally social advantages are allotted, whether the burdens come through hours of work, inadequate remuneration, sanitary conditions, whether in home or in factory, and whether the advantages are obtainable through public education, vocational training, medical care, or in the large field of recreation. So important does work through organization, appear to me that, remembering always that tendencies are more important than conditions, it would seem in some respects a more wholesome and hopeful situation for women to be organized and working for one of their common aims, even though that aim be for the time being merely winning of the vote, rather than to have the vote, and with it working merely as isolated individuals, and with neither the power that organization insures nor the training that it affords. But with what we know nowadays there should be no need for any such unsatisfactory alternative. It would be much more in keeping with the modern situation if the object of suffrage organizations were to read, not "to obtain the vote" but "to obtain political, legal and social equality for women." Then as each state, or as the whole country (we hope by and by) obtains the ballot, so might the organizations go on in a sense as if nothing had happened. And nothing would have happened, save that a great body of organized women would be more effective than ever. The members would individually be equipped with the most modern instrument of economic and social expression. The organizations themselves would have risen in public importance and esteem and therefore in influence. Moreover, and this is the most important point of all, they would be enrolled among those bodies, whose declared policy would naturally help in guiding the great bulk of new and untrained feminine voters. In the early days of the woman movement, the leaders, I believe, desired as earnestly and as keenly saw the need for legal and social or economic equality as we today with all these years of experience behind us. But the unconscious assumption was all the time that given political equality every other sort of equality would readily and logically follow. Even John Stuart Mill seems to have taken this much for granted. Not indeed that he thought that with universal enfranchisement the millennium would arrive for either men or women. But even to his clear brain and in his loyal and chivalrous heart, political freedom for women did appear as one completed stage in development, an all-inclusive boon, as it were, in due time bringing along by irrefragable inference equality on every other plane, equality before the law and equality in all social and sexual relations. Looking back now, we can see that whatever thinkers and statesmen fifty years ago may have argued for as best meeting the immediate needs of the hour, the organized suffrage movement in all the most advanced countries should long ago have broadened their platform, and explicitly set before their own members and the public as their objective not merely "the vote," but "the political, legal and social equality of women." We are not abler, not any broader-minded nor more intellectually daring than those pioneers, but we have what they had not, the test of results. Let us briefly glance at what has been the course of events in those states and countries which were the earliest to obtain political freedom for their women. In none of the four suffrage states first enfranchised in this country, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Colorado, in Australia or in New Zealand, did any large proportion of women ask for or desire their political freedom. In that there is nothing strange or exceptional. Those who see the need of any reform so clearly that they will work for it make up comparatively a small proportion of any nation or of any class. Women are no exception. Note Australia. As the suffrage societies there, as elsewhere, had been organized for this one purpose, "to obtain the vote," with the obtaining of the vote all reason for their continued existence ceased. The organizations at once and inevitably went to pieces. The vote, gained by the efforts of the few, was now in the hands of great masses of women, who had given little thought to the matter previously, who were absolutely unaware of the tremendous power of the new instrument placed in their hands. A whole sex burst into citizenship, leaderless and with no common policy upon the essential needs of their sex. Except in Victoria, where the state franchise lagged behind till 1909, the women of Australia have been enfranchised for over twelve years, and yet it is only recently that they are beginning to get together as sister women. Those leaders who all along believed in continuous and organized work by women for the complete freeing of the sex from all artificial shackles and unequal burdens are now justified of their belief. New young leaders are beginning to arise, and there are signs that the rank and file are beginning to march under these leaders towards far-off ends that are gradually being defined more clearly from the mists of these years. But they have much ground to make up. Only so lately as 1910 there were leading women in one of the large labor conferences who protested against women entering the legislature, using against that very simple and normal step in advance the very same moss-grown arguments as we hear used in this country against the conferring of the franchise itself. Nowadays, it is true, no quite similar result is likely to happen in any state or country which from now on receives enfranchisement, for the reason that there are now other organizations, such as the General Federation of Women's Clubs here, and the active women's trade unions, and suffrage societies on a broad basis and these are every day coming in closer touch with one another and with the organized suffrage movement. But neither women's trade unions nor women's clubs can afford to neglect any means of strengthening their forces, and a sort of universal association having some simple broad aim such as I have tried to outline would be an ally which would bring them into communication with women outside the ranks of any of the great organizations, for it alone would be elastic enough to include all women, as its appeal would necessarily be made to all women. The universal reasons for equipping women with the vote as with a tool adapted to her present day needs, and the claims made upon her by the modern community, the reasons, in short why women want and are asking for the vote, the universal reasons why men, even good men, cannot be trusted to take care of women's interests, were never better or more tersely summed up than in a story told by Philip Snowden in the debate in the British House of Commons on the Woman Suffrage Bill of 1910, known as the Conciliation Bill. He said that after listening to the objections urged by the opponents of the measure, he was reminded of a man who, traveling with his wife in very rough country, came late at night to a very poor house of accommodation. When the meal was served there was nothing on the table but one small mutton chop. "What," said the man in a shocked tone, "have you nothing at all for my wife?" XIII TRADE UNION IDEALS AND POLICIES Trade unionism does not embrace the whole of industrial democracy, even for organized labor and even were the whole of labor organized, as we hope one of these days it will be, but it does form one of the elements in any form of industrial democracy as well as affording one of the pathways thither. The most advanced trade unionists are those men and women who recognize the limitations of industrial organization, but who value it for its flexibility, for the ease with which it can be transformed into a training-school, a workers' university, while all the while it is providing a fortified stronghold from behind whose shelter the industrial struggle can be successfully carried on, and carried forward into other fields. If we believe, as all, even non-socialists, must to some extent admit, that economic environment is one of the elemental forces moulding character and deciding conduct, then surely the coming together of those who earn their bread in the same occupation is one of the most natural methods of grouping that human beings can adopt. There are still in the movement in all countries those of such a conservative type that they look to trade organization as we know it today as practically the sole factor in solving the industrial problem. In order to fulfill its important functions of protecting the workers, giving to them adequate control over their working conditions, and the power of bargaining for the disposal of their labor power through recognized representatives, trade-union organization must be world-wide. Organizations of capital are so, or are becoming so, and in order that the workers may bargain upon an equal footing, they must be in an equally strong position. Now is the first time in the history of the world that such a plan could be even dreamt of. Rapid means of communication and easy methods of transport have made it possible for machine-controlled industry to attract workers from all over the world to particular centers, and in especial to the United States, and this has taken place without any regard as to where there was the best opening for workers of different occupations or as to what might be the effects upon the standards of living of the workers of artificially fostered migrations, and haphazard distribution of the newcomers. It is sadly true of the labor movement, as of all other movements for social advance, that it lags behind the movements organized for material success and private profit. It lags behind because it lacks money, money which would keep more trained workers in the field, which would procure needed information, which would prevent that bitterest of defeats, losing a strike because the strikers could no longer hold out against starvation. The labor movement lacks money, partly because money is so scarce among the workers; they have no surplus from which to build up the treasury as capital does so readily, and partly because so many of them do not as yet understand that alone they are lost, in organization they have strength. While they need the labor movement, just as much does the labor movement need them. More and more, however, are the workers acknowledging their own weakness, at the same time that they remember their own strength. As they do so, more and more will they adopt capital's own magnificent methods of organization to overcome capital's despotism, and be able to stand out on a footing of equality, as man before man. One tendency, long too much in evidence in the labor movement generally, and one which has still to be guarded against, is to take overmuch satisfaction in the unionizing of certain skilled trades or sections of trades, and to neglect the vast bulk of those already handicapped by want of special skill or training, by sex or by race. I have heard discussions among labor men which illustrate this. The platform of the Federation of Labor is explicit, speaking out on this point in no doubtful tone, but there are plenty of labor men, and labor women who make their own particular exceptions to a rule that should know of none. I have heard men in the well-paid, highly skilled, splendidly organized trades speak even contemptuously of the prospect of organizing the nomad laborers of the land, recognizing no moral claim laid upon themselves by the very advantages enjoyed by themselves in their own trade, advantages in which they took so much pride. That is discouraging enough, but more discouraging still was it to gather one day from the speech of one who urged convincingly that while both for self-defense and for righteousness' sake, the skilled organized workers must take up and make their own the cause of the unskilled and exploited wanderers, that he too drew his line, and that he drew it at the organization of the Chinese.[A] [Footnote A: I am not here discussing the unrestricted admission of Orientals under present economic conditions. I merely use the illustration to press the point, that organized labor should include in its ranks all workers already in the United States. A number of the miners in British Columbia are advocates of the organization of the Chinese miners in that province.] Others again, while they do not openly assert that they disapprove of the bringing of women into the trade unions, not only give no active assistance towards that end, but in their blindness even advocate the exclusion of women from the trades, and especially from their own particular trade. The arguments which they put forward are mostly of these types: "Girls oughtn't to be in our trade, it isn't fit for girls"; or, "Married women oughtn't to work"; or, "Women folks should stay at home," and if the speaker is a humane and kindly disposed man, he will add, "and that's where they'll all be one of these days, when we've got things straightened out again." As instances of this attitude on the part of trade-union men who ought to know better, and its results, the pressmen in the printing shops of our great cities are well organized, and the girls who feed the presses, and stand beside the men and work with them, are mostly outside the protection of the union. Some of the glass-blowers are seriously arguing against the suggestion of organizing the girls who are coming into the trade in numbers. "Organization won't settle it. That's no sort of a solution," say the men; "they're nice girls and would be much better off in some other trade." Just as if girls went into hard and trying occupations from mere contrariness! It is too late in the day, again, to shut the door on the women who are going in as core-makers in the iron industry, but the men in the foundries think they can do it. Men who act and talk like this have yet much to learn of the true meaning and purposes of labor organization. Wherever, then, we find this spirit of exclusion manifested, whether actively as in some of the instances I have cited, or passively in apathetic indifference to the welfare of the down-trodden worker, man or woman, American or foreign, white or colored, there is no true spirit of working-class solidarity, only a self-seeking acceptance of a limited and antiquated form of labor organization, quite out of keeping with twentieth-century conditions and needs. This does not make for advance ultimately in any branch of labor, but is one of the worst retarding influences to the whole movement. In former ages the principles of democracy could only extend within one class after another. The democracy of our day is feeling after a larger solution; the democracy of the future cannot know limits or it will be no democracy at all. It has been pointed out many times that the rich are rich, not so much in virtue of what they possess, but in virtue of what others do not possess. The ratio of the difference between the full pocket and many empty pockets represents the degree in which the one rich man or woman is able to command the services of many poor men and women. We all recognize these crude differences and regret the results to society. But after all is the case so very much bettered when for rich and poor, we read skilled and unskilled, when we have on the one hand a trade whose members have attained their high standing through the benefits of years of training, a strong union, high initiation fees, perhaps limitation of apprentices? I am neither praising nor criticizing any methods of trade protection. All of them are probably highly beneficial to those within the charmed circle of the highly organized trades. But if, in the very midst of the general state of industrial anarchy and oppression which the unskilled workers have to accept, it is possible to find trades in which organization has been so successful in maintaining good conditions, this is partly because the number of such artisans, so skilled and so protected, has always been limited. And let us ask ourselves what are the effects of these limitations upon those outside the circle, whether those excluded from the trade or from the organization because of the demands exacted, or those debarred by poverty or other circumstances from learning any skilled trade at all. Unquestionably the advantages of the highly protected ones are not won solely from the employers. Some part of their industrial wealth is contributed by the despised and ignored outsiders. Some proportion of their high wages is snatched from the poor recompense of the unskilled. Women are doubly sufferers, underpaid both as women and as unskilled workers. It is not necessary to subscribe to the old discredited wage-fund theory, in order to agree with this. Just here lies the chief danger of the craft form of organization as a final objective. If the trade-union movement is ever to be wholly effective and adequate to fulfill its lofty aims, it must cease to look upon craft organization as a final aim. The present forms of craft organization are useful, only so long as they are thought of as a step to something higher, only in so far as the craft is regarded as a part of the whole. Were this end ever borne in mind, we should hear less of jurisdictional fights, and there would be more of sincere endeavor and more of active effort among the better organized workers to share the benefits of organization with all of the laboring world. The more helpless and exploited the group, the keener would be the campaign, the more unsparing the effort on the part of the more fortunate sons of toil. Against such a narrow conservatism, however, there are other forces at work, both within and without the regularly organized labor movement, one of them aiming at such reorganization of the present unions as shall gradually merge the many craft unions into fewer and larger bodies.[A] This process is evolutionary, and constructive, but slow, and meanwhile the exploited workers cry in their many tongues, "O Lord, how long!" or else submit in voiceless despair. [Footnote A: The United Mine Workers are essentially on an industrial basis; they take in all men and boys working in and about the mine.] Is it any wonder that under these conditions of industrial anarchy and imperfect organization of labor power a new voice is heard in the land, a voice which will not be stilled, revolutionary, imperious, aiming frankly at the speedy abolition of organized governments, and of the present industrial system? This is the movement known in Europe as syndicalism, and on this continent represented by the Industrial Workers of the World, usually termed the I.W.W. Their program stands for the one big union of all the workers, the general strike and the gaining possession and the conducting of the industries by the workers engaged in them. They deprecate the making of agreements with employers, and acknowledge no duty in the keeping of agreements. The year 1911 will be remembered among word-historians as the year when the word "syndicalism" became an everyday English word. It had its origin in the French word "syndicalisme," which is French for trade unionism, just as French and Belgian trade unions are "syndicats." But because for reasons that cannot be gone into here so many of the French trade unionists profess this peculiarly revolutionary philosophy, there has grown up out of and around the word "syndicalisme" a whole literature with writers like George Sorel and Gustave Hervé as the prophets and exponents of the new movement. So the word "syndicalism," thus anglicized, has come to signify this latest form of trade-union organization and action. Although sabotage, interfering with output, clogging machinery, blocking transportation and so forth have been advocated and practiced by extreme syndicalists, such do not seem to me to form an essential and lasting element in syndicalist activity, any more than we find the wholesale destruction of machinery as carried on by displaced workmen a hundred years ago, has remained an accepted method of trade-union action, although such acts may easily form incidents in the progress of the industrial warfare to which syndicalists are pledged. Neither at Lawrence, Massachusetts, nor later at Paterson, New Jersey, did the Industrial Workers of the World, or the large bodies of strikers whom they led set any of these destructive practices in operation. Syndicalism is the latest despairing cry of the industrially vanquished and down-trodden, and is not to be suppressed by force of argument, whether the argument comes from the side of the employer or the fellow-workman. Only with the removal of the causes can we expect this philosophy of despair to vanish, for it is the courage of despair that we witness in its converts. The spirit they display lies outside the field of blame from those who have never known what it means to lose wife and children in the slow starvation of the strike or husband and sons in the death-pit of a mine, and themselves to be cheated life-long of the joys that ought to fall to the lot of the normal, happiness-seeking human being, from birth to death. The syndicalists will have done their work if they rouse the rest of us to a keener sense of our responsibilities. When the day comes that every worker receives the full product of his toil, the reasons for existence of this form of revolutionary activity will have passed away. Of one thing the present writer is convinced. That this newest form of the industrial struggle, however crude it may appear, however blind and futile in some of its manifestations, is destined to affect profoundly the course of the more orthodox trade-union movement. The daring assumptions that labor is the supreme force, that loyalty to the working world is the supreme virtue, and failure in that loyalty the one unpardonable sin, has stirred to the very depths organized labor of the conservative type, has roused to self-questioning many and many a self-satisfied orthodox trade unionist, inspiring him with loftier and more exacting ideals. He has been thrilled, as he had never been thrilled before with a realization of the dire need of the submerged and unorganized millions, and of the claims that they have upon him. Verily, in the face of such revelations, satisfaction in the fine organization of his own particular trade receives a check. The good of his own union as his highest aim sinks into insignificance, though regarding it as a means to an end, he may well go back to his workshop and his union card, intending to do for his fellow-craftsmen in his shop and in his trade more than ever before. The very activities of the I.W.W. during the last two or three years, side by side with the representatives of the American Federation of Labor on the same strike fields, and often carrying out opposition tactics, have for the first time in their lives given many furiously to think out policies and plans of campaign. From such shocks and stimuli are born thinkers and original tacticians, especially among the younger men and women. Wherever syndicalists have actively taken part in labor struggles, there has been the bitterest antagonism between them and the regular labor bodies. The latter ever bear in mind the risks of a divided front, and they have just reason to dread the "dual" organization as the most completely disruptive influence that can weaken labor's forces, and play into the employers' hands. Of this experience there have been too many instances in the United States. Syndicalists condemn agreements as a device of the enemy. It is true that agreements may be so managed as to prove a very weak reed for the workers to depend on in time of trouble. We have had many instances within the last few years of the disintegrating effect on the labor movement of agreements made between the employers and sections of their employés, which while protecting these particular sections leave other employés of the same firms out in the cold, either because the latter have no agreement at all, or because it is worded differently, or, most common defect of all, because it terminates upon a different date, three months, say, or a year later. It was on this rock that the printing pressmen struck during the huge newspaper fight in Chicago which lasted the whole summer of 1912, ending in a defeat costly to the conqueror, as well as to the conquered and whose echoes are still to be heard in discussions between representatives of the organizations and the sub-organizations involved. Though the fight was lost by the pressmen, the dispute between the unions involved is not settled yet, and the two principles at stake, loyalty to the interest of their fellow-workers and the duty of keeping a pledge made to employers, are as far as ever from being reconciled. The solution ahead is surely the strengthening of organizations so that failing a common agreement one branch or one craft will be in a position to refuse to sign one of these non-concurrent agreements, or any sort of agreement, which will leave other workers at a palpable disadvantage. The demand for the speedy taking over of the direct control of industries by the workers appears to me to ignore alike human limitations and what we know of the evolution of society. But great hope is to be placed in the coöperative movement, with the gradual establishment of factories and stores by organizations of the workers themselves. The condemnation of political activity, too, is, as I see it, out of line with the tendencies of social evolution, which demands organization and specialized skill in managing the affairs of the largest community as of the smallest factory. The strength and value of syndicalism is rather in criticism than in constructive results. In almost every paragraph in the platform we can detect a criticism of some weak point in the labor movement, in political socialism, or in the existing social framework we are consenting to accept and live under. So far in every country where it has risen into notice syndicalism has been more of a free-lance body than a regular army, and it may be that that is what syndicalists will remain. Up to the present they have shown no particular constructive ability. But they may develop great leaders, and with development work out plans to meet the new problems that will crowd upon them. Even if they should not, and should pass away as similar revolutionary groups have passed before, they will have hastened tremendously the closer knitting together of all groups of trade unionists. On the one hand they have already stirred up socialists to a better understanding and more candid admission of their own shortcomings in the political field, and on the other, they have already made labor more fearless and aggressive, and therefore more venturesome in the claims it makes, and more ready and resourceful in its adaptation of new methods to solve modern difficulties. Before leaving the syndicalists, I would call attention to a change that is coming over the spirit of some of their leaders, as regards immediate plans of action. From a recent number of _La Guerre Sociale_, edited by Gustave Hervé, the _Labour Leader_ (England), quotes an article attributed to Hervé himself, in which the writer says: "Because it would be a mistake to expect to achieve everything by means of the ballot-box, it does not follow that we can achieve nothing thereby." Another syndicalist of influence has been advocating the establishment of training-schools for the workers, in preparation for the day when they are to take over the industries. Vocational instruction this upon the great scale! Ramsay McDonald, by no means an indulgent critic of syndicalism, does not believe that Sorel really anticipates the general strike as the inauguration of the new order, but as a myth, which will lead the people on to the fulfillment of the ideal that lies beyond and on the other side of all anticipated revolutionary action. It is time now to consider the tendencies towards growth and adaptation to modern needs that have been, and are at work, within the American Federation of Labor, and among those large outside organizations on the outer edge of the Federation, as it were, such as the brotherhoods of railroad trainmen. These tendencies, are, speaking generally, towards such reorganization as will convert many small unions into fewer, larger, and therefore stronger bodies, and towards the long-delayed but inevitable organization of the workers on the political field. Such reorganization is not always smooth sailing, but the process is an education in itself. The combination or the federation of existing organizations is but the natural response of the workers to the ever-growing complexity of modern industrial life. Ever closer organization on the part of the employers, the welding together of twenty businesses into one corporation, of five corporations into one trust, of all the trusts in the country into one combine, have to be balanced by correspondingly complete organization on the part of the workers. There is this difference of structure, however, between the organization of employers and that of the employed. The first is comparatively simple, and is ever making for greater simplicity. Without going into the disputed question of how far the concentration of business can be carried, and of whether or not the small business man is to be finally pushed out of existence, it is beyond question that every huge business, for example, each one of our gigantic department stores, includes and represents an army of small concerns, which it has replaced, which have either been bought up or driven to the wall. In either case the same amount of trade, which it once took hundreds of separate small shopkeepers to handle, is now handled by the one firm, under the one management. Such welding together makes for the economy in running expenses which is its first aim. But it also makes for simplicity in organization. It is evidently far easier for the heads of a few immense businesses to come together than it was for the proprietors of the vast agglomeration of tiny factories, stores and offices which once covered the same trade area, or to be quite accurate, a much smaller trade area, to do so. But if, at the one end of the modern process of production and distribution, we find this tendency towards a magnificent simplicity, at the other, the workers' end, we have the very same aim of economy of effort and the cheapening of production resulting in an enormously increased complexity. The actual work performed by each worker is simplified. But the variety of processes and the consequent allotting of the workers into unrelated groups make for social complexity; render it not easier, but much harder for the workers to come together and to see and make others see through and in spite of all this apparent unlikeness of occupation, common interests and a common need for coöperative action. Again, take a factory, such as a cotton mill. The one firm, before marketing its product, will have employed in its preparation and final disposal till it reaches the consumer, groups engaged in very different occupations, spinners, weavers, porters, stenographers, salesmen, and so on. The industry which furnished employment to one, or at most, to two groups, has been cut up into a hundred subdivisions, but the workers have still many interests in common, and they need to cling together or suffer from all the disadvantages of unorganized or semi-organized occupations. The first unions were naturally craft unions. The men working in the same shop, and at the same processes got together, and said: "We who do this work must get to know the fellows in the other shops; we must just stick together, make common demands and support one another." As industry became more highly specialized, there slipped in, especially during the last fifty years or so, a disintegrating tendency. The workers in what had been one occupation, found themselves now practicing but a small fraction of what had been their trade. They were performing new processes, handling novel tools and machinery unheard of before. The organizations became divided up into what were nominally craft unions, in reality only process unions. Or if a new organization was formed, it was but a mere clipping off the whole body of operatives. And these unions, too, would probably have their international organization, to which they could turn to come in touch with brother workers, similarly qualified and employed. There is necessarily involved an element of weakness in any organization, however extensive, built up upon so limited a foundation, unless the membership has other local and occupational affiliations as well. So, to meet this defect, there have been formed all sorts of loose aggregations of unions, and almost every day sees fresh combinations formed to meet new needs as these arise. Within the wide bounds of the American Federation itself exist the state federations, also city federations, which may include the unions in adjoining cities, even though these are in different states, such as the Tri-City Federation, covering Davenport, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois. The district councils, again, are formed from representatives of allied trades or from widely different branches of the same trade, such as the councils of the building trades, and the allied printing trades. There are the international unions (more properly styled continental) covering the United States and the Dominion of Canada. With these are affiliated the local unions of a trade or of a whole industry, sometimes, from all over the continent of North America. Among these the most catholic in membership are such broadly organized occupations as the united mine-workers, the garment-workers, the ladies' garment-workers, the iron, steel and tin-plate workers. An international union composed of separate unions of the one trade, or a state or a city federation of local unions of many trades, bears the same relation to the component single unions as does the union itself to the individual workers; so we find that all these various and often changing expressions of the trade-union principle are accepted and approved of today. Even more significant are other groupings which may be observed forming among the rank and file of the union men and women themselves. Sometimes these groups combine with the full approval of the union leaders, local and international. Sometimes they are more in the nature of an insurgent body, either desiring greater liberty of self-government for themselves, or questioning the methods of the organization's leaders, and desiring to introduce freer, more democratic and more modern methods into the management of the parent organization. This may take the form of a district council, and in at least one noteworthy instance, the employés of one large corporation send their representatives to a joint board, for purposes of collective bargaining. The railway unions within the American Federation of Labor, one of the largest and most powerful bodies of union men in the United States feel the need of some method of grouping which shall link together the men's locals and the internationals into which the locals are combined. This is seen in the demand made by the men for the acknowledgment by the railways of the "system federation." The reason some of the more radical men were not found supporting the proposal was not that they objected to a broader form of organization, but because they considered the particular plan outlined as too complicated to be effective. There is one problem pressing for decisive solution before very long, and it concerns equally organized labor, governments and public bodies and the community as a whole. That is, the relations that are to exist between governing bodies in their function as employer, and the workers employed by them. So far all parties to this momentous bargain are content to drift, instead of thinking out the principles upon which a peaceful and permanent solution can be found for a condition of affairs, new with this generation, and planning in concert such arrangements as shall insure even-handed justice to all three parties. It is true that governments have always been employers of servants, ever since the days when they ceased to be masters of slaves, but till now only on a limited scale. But even on this limited scale no entirely satisfactory scheme of civil-service administration has anywhere been worked out. Of late years more and more have the autocratic powers of public bodies as employers been considerably clipped, but on the other hand, the ironclad rules which make change of occupation, whether for promotion or otherwise, necessary discipline and even deserved dismissal, so difficult to bring about, have prejudiced the outside community whom they serve against the just claims of an industrious and faithful body of men and women. And the very last of these just claims, which either governing bodies or communities are willing to grant, is liberty to give collective expression to their common desires. The question cannot be burked much longer. Every year sees public bodies, in the United States as everywhere else, entering upon new fields of activity. In this country, municipal bodies, state governments, and even the Federal Government, are in this way perpetually increasing the number of those directly in their employ. The establishment of the parcel post alone must have added considerably to the total of the employés in the Postal Department. It cannot be very many years before some of the leading monopolies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, will pass over to national management, with again an enormous increase in the number of employés. Schools are already under public control, and one city after another is taking up, if not manufacture or production, at least distribution as in the case of water, lighting, ice, milk or coal. This is no theoretical question as to whether governmental bodies, large and small, local and national, should or should not take over these additional functions of supplying community demands. The fact is before us now. They are doing it, and in the main, doing it successfully. But what they are not doing, what these very employés are not doing, what organized labor is not doing, what the community is not doing, is to plan intelligently some proper method of representation, by which the claims, the wishes and the suggestions of employés may receive consideration, and through which, on the other hand, the governing body as board of management, and the public, as in the long last the real employer, shall also have their respective fights defined and upheld. The present position is exactly as if a sovereign power had conquered a territory, and proposed to govern it, not temporarily, but permanently, as a subject province. We know that this is not the modern ideal in politics, and it ought not to be assumed as the right ideal when the territory acquired is not a geographical district, but a new function. In this connection, moreover, the criticisms of our candid friends the syndicalists are not to be slighted. Their solution of the problem, that the workers should come into actual, literal possession and management of the industries, whether publicly or privately owned, may appear to us hopelessly foolish and impractical, but their misgivings regarding an ever-increasing bureaucratic control over a large proportion of the workers, who are thus made economically dependent upon an employer, because that employer chances also to hold the reins of government, have already ample justification. The people have the vote, you will say? At least the men have. Proposals to deprive public employés of the vote have been innumerable, and in not a few instances have been enacted into law. There are whole bodies of public employés in many countries today who have no vote. The late Colonel Waring was far-sighted beyond his day and generation. When he took over the Street Cleaning Department of New York, which was in an utterly demoralized condition, he saw that reasonable self-government among his army of employés was going to help and not to hinder his great plans, and it was not only with his full consent, but at his suggestion and under his direction, that an organization was formed among them, which gave to the dissatisfied a channel of expression, and to the constructive minds opportunity to improve the work of the department, as well as continually to raise the status of the employé. All such organizations to be successful permanently and to be placed on a solid basis must join their fortunes with the labor movement, and this is the last pill that either a conservative governing body or the public themselves are willing to swallow. They use exactly the same argument that private employers used universally at one time, but which we hear less of today--the right of the employer to run his own business in his own way. Very many people, who see nothing wicked in a strike against a private employer, consider that no despotic conduct on the part of superiors, no unfairness, no possible combination of circumstances, can ever justify a strike of workers who are paid out of the public purse. Much also is made of the fact that most of such functions which governments have hitherto undertaken are directly associated with pressing needs, such as street-car and railroad service, water and lighting supplies, and the same line of reasoning will apply, perhaps in even a higher degree, to future publicly owned and controlled enterprises. This helps yet further to strengthen the idea that rebellion, however sorely provoked, is on the part of public employés a sort of high treason, the reasons for which neither deserve nor admit of discussion. The greatest confusion of thought prevails, and no distinction is drawn between the government as the expression and embodiment of the forces of law, order and protection to all, as truly the voice of the people, and the government, through its departments, whether legislative, judicial or administrative, as just a plain common employer, needing checks and control like all other employers. The problem of the public ownership of industries in relation to employés might well be regarded in a far different light. It holds indeed a proud and honorable position in social evolution. It is the latest and most complex development of industry, and as such the heads of such enterprises should be eager to study the development of the earlier and simpler forms of industry in relation to the labor problem, and to study them just as conscientiously and gladly as they study and adopt scientific and mechanical improvements in their various departments. But no. We are all of us just drifting. Every now and then the question comes before us, unfortunately rarely as a matter for cool and sane discussion, but usually arising out of some dispute. Both sides are then in an embittered mood. There may be a strike on. The employés may be in the wrong, but any points on which they may yield are merely concessions wrung from them by force of superior strength, for the employing body unfailingly assumes rights and privileges beyond those of the ordinary employer. In particular, discontented employés are invariably charged with disloyalty, and lectured upon their duty to the public. As if the public owed nothing to them! More democratic methods of expressing the popular will, giving us legislation, and in consequence administration more in harmony with the interests of the workers as a whole, and therefore in the end reacting for the advantage of the community at large, will assuredly do much to remove some of these difficulties. This is one reason why direct legislation and such "effective voting" as proportional representation should be earnestly advocated and supported by organized labor on all possible occasions. But that we may make full and wise use of such additional powers of democratic expression in placing public employment upon a sounder footing, it is necessary that we should give the subject the closest attention and consideration both in its general principles, and in details as they present themselves. If not, satisfaction in the growth of publicly controlled industry may be marred through the sense that the public are being served at an unfair cost to an important section of the workers. All of these problems touch women as well as men; and if they are to be solved on a just as well as a broad basis women must do their share towards the solving. Needless to say, women in industry suffer as much or more than their brothers from whatever makes for reaction in the labor movement. It is therefore fortunate for the increasing numbers of wage-earning women that progressive forces are at work, too. From one angle, the very activity of Women's Trade Union Leagues in the cities where they are established is to be regarded as one expression of the widespread and growing tendency towards such complete organization of the workers as shall correspond to modern industrial conditions. Mrs. Gilman is never tired of reiterating that we live in a man-made world, and that the feminine side in either man or woman will never have a chance for development until this is a human-made world. And before this can come about woman must be free from the economic handicap that shackles her today. The organization of labor is one of the most important means to achieve this result. It is not only in facing the world outside, and in relation to the employer and the consumer that woman organized is stronger and in every way more effective than woman unorganized. The relation in which she stands to her brother worker is very different, when she has behind her the protection and with her the united strength of her union, and the better a union man he is himself the more readily and cheerfully will he appreciate this, even if he has occasionally to make sacrifices to maintain unbroken a bargain in which both are gainers. But at first, in the same way as the average workingman is apt to have an uncomfortable feeling about the woman entering his trade, even apart from the most important reason of all, that she is wont to be a wage-cutter, the average trade-union man retains a somewhat uneasy apprehension when he finds women entering the union. As they become active, women introduce a new element. They may not say very much, but it is gradually discovered that they do not enjoy meeting over saloons, at the head of two or three flights of grimy backstairs, or where the street has earned a bad name. Woman makes demands. Leaders that even the decenter sort of men would passively accept, because they are put forward, since they are such smart fellows, or have pull in trade-union politics, she will have none of, and will quietly work against them. The women leaders have an uncomfortable knack of reminding the union that women are on the map, as it were. It is at a psychological moment that she is making herself felt in the councils of organized labor. Just as the labor movement is itself being reorganized, with the modern development of the union and of union activity; just as woman herself is coming into her own; just as we are passing through the transition period from one form of society to another; and just as we catch a glimpse of a distant future in which the world will become, for the first time, one. From the very fact that they are women, women trade unionists have their own distinct contribution to make to the movement. The feminine, and especially the maternal qualities that man appreciates so in the home, he is learning (some men have learnt already) to appreciate in the larger home of the union. In speaking thus, I freely, if regretfully, admit that the rartk and file of both sexes are far indeed from playing their full part. We have still to depend more largely than is quite fitting or democratic upon the leaders as standard-bearers. It is also true that there are women who are willing to accept low ideals in unionism as in everything else. Their influence is bound to pass. If women are to make their own peculiar contribution to the labor movement, it will be by working in glad coöperation with the higher idealism of the men leaders. And when the day comes (may its coming be hastened!) that women are even only as extensively organized as men are today, the organization of men will indeed proceed by leaps and bounds. It will not be by arithmetical, but by geometrical progression, that the union will count their increases, for it is the masses of unskilled, unorganized, ill-paid women and girl workers today, who in so many trades today increase the difficulties of the men tenfold. That dead weight removed, they could make better terms for themselves and enroll far more men into their ranks. What increase of power, what new and untried forces women may bring with them into the common store, just what these may be, and the manner of their working out, it is too early to say. But the future was never so full of hope as today, not because conditions are not cruelly hard, and problems not baffling, but, because, over against these conditions, and helping-to solve these problems, are ranged the great forces of evolution, ever on the side of the workers, slowly building up the democracy of the future. APPENDIX I This document, which is the contract under which a union waitress works, is typical. AGREEMENT Between the Hotel and Restaurant Employés' International Alliance Affiliated with the American and the Chicago Federation of Labor. This contract made and entered into this 10th day of April, 1914, by and between the H.R.E.I.A. affiliated with the American and Chicago Federation of Labor of the City of Chicago, County of Cook and State of Illinois, party of the first part, and: Chicago, Illinois, party of the second part. Party of the first part agrees to furnish good, competent and honest craftsmen, and does hereby agree to stand responsible for all loss incurred by any act of their respective members in good standing while in line of duty. The Business Agents of the allied crafts shall have the privilege of visiting and interviewing the employés while on duty, their visits to be timed to such hours when employés are not overly busy. The second party agrees to employ only members in good standing in their respective unions, of cooks, and waitresses, except when the unions are unable to furnish help to the satisfaction of the ... which choice shall be at the discretion of the above company. Then the employer may employ any one he desires, provided the employé makes application to become a member of the union within three days after employment. Chefs, and Head Waitresses must be members of their respective craft organizations. WAITRESSES RESTAURANTS Steady Waitresses, 6 days, 60 hours $8.00 per week Lunch and Supper Waitresses, 7 days, 42 hours or less 6.50 per week Dinner Waitresses, 6 days, 3 hours 4.00 per week Extra Supper Waitresses, 6 days, 3 hours 4.00 per week Night Waitresses, 6 days, 60 hours 9.00 per week Extra Girls, 10 hours a day 1.50 per day Extra Girls, Sundays and Holidays 2.00 per day Head Waitresses, 6 days, 60 hours 10.00 per week Ushers, 6 days, 60 hours or less 9.00 per week Ushers, dinner, 6 days, 6 hours or less 5.00 per week Dog watch Waitresses, 6 days, 60 hours 9.00 per week BANQUETS Three (3) hours or less, $1.50. Any waitress working extra after midnight serving a banquet, dinner, etc., shall receive 50 cents per hour or fraction of an hour, except the steady night and dog watch waitresses. Waitresses shall do no porter work. Overtime shall be charged at the rate of 25 cents per hour or fraction of an hour. Waitresses shall not be reprimanded in the presence of guests. Waitresses walking out during meals shall be fined $1.00. Waitresses after being hired and failing to report for duty shall be fined $1.00. Employés shall be furnished with proper quarters to change their clothing and there shall be no charge for same. No profane language shall be used to employés. There shall be only one split in a ten-hour watch in restaurants. If employers desire special uniforms they must furnish same free of charge. Employer shall pay for the laundry of all working linen and furnish same for waitresses. No member shall be permitted to leave the place of employment during working hours except in case of sickness when a substitute shall be furnished at the earliest possible moment. Employés shall report for duty at least 15 minutes before the hour called for. They shall be furnished with good, wholesome food. All hours shall be the maximum. Head Waitresses and Head Waiters are required to give business agent a list of employés the first week of each month. Members must wear their working buttons. There shall be no charge for breakage unless breaking is wilful or gross carelessness. It is agreed that waitresses shall clean silverware once a day. THIS CONTRACT shall remain in effect until May 1, 1916, unless there is a violation of trade union principles. ARBITRATION During the term of this contract, should any differences arise between parties of the first and second part of any causes which cannot be adjusted between them, it shall be submitted to an Arbitration Committee of five, two selected by the party of the first part and two by the party of the second part, and the fifth by the four members of said committee, and while this matter is pending before said committee for adjustment, there shall be no lockout or strike, and the decision of the committee on adjustment shall be final and shall supplement or modify the agreement. This CONTRACT shall remain in effect until May 1, 1916. --SIGNED-- PARTY OF THE FIRST PART ... PARTY OF THE SECOND PART [NOTE. The dog watch waitress has part day and part night work. She is on duty usually from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m., and again from 5 p.m. till midnight, in some non-union restaurants till one o'clock in the morning. The above agreement calls for not more than one split in a ten-hour watch, otherwise a waitress might be at call practically all day long and yet be only ten hours at work. A.H.] APPENDIX II THE HART, SCHAFFNER AND MARX LABOR AGREEMENTS [The following brief abstract covers the essential points in the successive agreements between Hart, Schaffner and Marx, clothing manufacturers, of Chicago, and their employés, and is taken from the pamphlet compiled by Earl Dean Howard, chief deputy for the firm, and Sidney Hillman, chief deputy for the garment workers.] The conditions upon which the strikers returned to work, as defined in the agreement dated January 14, 1911, summed up, were: 1. All former employés to be taken back within ten days. 2. No discrimination of any kind because of being members, or not being members, of the United Garment Workers of America. 3. An Arbitration Committee of three members to be appointed; one from each side to be chosen within three days; these two then to select the third. 4. Subject to the provisions of this agreement, said Arbitration Committee to take up, consider and adjust grievances, if any, and to fix a method for settlement of grievances (if any) in the future. The finding of the said Committee, or a majority thereof, to be binding upon both parties. The Arbitration Committee, or Board, consisted of Mr. Carl Meyer, representing the firm, and Clarence Darrow, representing the employés. The office of chairman was not filled until December, 1912, when Mr. J.E. Williams was chosen. The Board settled the questions around which the dispute had arisen, and an agreement for two years between the firm and the workers was signed. For some time the Board continued to handle fresh complaints, but it gradually became apparent that the Board, composed of busy men, could not hear all the minor grievances. The result of a conference was the organization of a permanent body, the Trade Board, to deal with all such matters, as these arose, or before they arose, reserving to both parties the right of appeal to the Arbitration Board. The plan can be judged from the following clauses in the constitution of the Trade Board: TRADE BOARD The Trade Board shall consist of eleven members who shall, if possible, be practical men in the trade; all of whom, excepting the chairman, shall be employés of said corporation; five members thereof shall be appointed by the corporation, and five members by the employés. The members appointed by the corporation shall be certified in writing by the corporation to the chairman of the board, and the members appointed by the employés shall be likewise certified in writing by the joint board of garment workers of Hart Schaffner & Marx to said chairman. Any of said members of said board, except the chairman, may be removed and replaced by the power appointing him, such new appointee to be certified to the chairman in the same manner as above provided for. DEPUTIES The representatives of each of the parties of the Trade Board shall have the power to appoint deputies for each branch of the trade, that is to say, for cutters, coat makers, trouser makers and vest makers. APPEAL TO ARBITRATION BOARD In case either party should desire to appeal from any decision of the Trade Board, or from any change of these rules by the Trade Board, to the Board of Arbitration, they shall have the right to do so upon filing a notice in writing with the Trade Board of such intention within thirty days from the date of the decision, and the said Trade Board shall then certify said matter to the Board of Arbitration, where the same shall be given an early hearing by a full Board of three members. The Trade Board was accordingly organized, with Mr. James Mullenbach, Acting Superintendent of the United Charities of Chicago, as chairman. When the time approached for the renewal of the agreement, the closed or open shop was the point around which all discussions turned. Eventually, neither was established, but instead the system of preference to unionists was adopted. It was thus expressed: 1. That the firm agrees to this principle of preference, namely, that they will agree to prefer union men in the hiring of new employés, subject to reasonable restrictions, and also to prefer union men in dismissal on account of slack work, subject to a reasonable preference to older employés, to be arranged by the Board of Arbitration, it being understood that all who have worked for the firm six months shall be considered old employés. 2. All other matters shall be deliberated on and discussed by the parties in interest, and if they are unable to reach an agreement, the matter in dispute shall be submitted to the Arbitration Board for its final decision. Until an agreement can be reached by negotiation by the parties in interest, or in case of their failure to agree, and a decision is announced by the Arbitration Board, the old agreement shall be considered as being in full force and effect. This came in force May 1, 1913. The chairman of the Arbitration Board, making a statement, three months later, in August, 1913, after defining the principle to be "such preference as will make an efficient organization for the workers, also an efficient, productive administration for the company," went on: In handing down the foregoing decisions relating to preference which grew out of a three months' consideration of the subject, and after hearing it discussed at great length and from every angle, the Board is acutely conscious that it is still largely an experiment, and that the test of actual practice may reveal imperfections, foreseen and unforeseen, which cannot be otherwise demonstrated than by test. It therefore regards them as tentative and subject to revision whenever the test of experiment shall make it seem advisable. The Board also feels that unless both parties coöperate in good faith and in the right spirit to make the experiment a success, no mechanism of preferential organization, however cunningly contrived, will survive the jar and clash of hostile feeling or warring interests. It hands down and publishes these decisions therefore in the hope that with the needed coöperation they may help to give the workers a strong, loyal, constructive organization, and the Company a period of peaceful, harmonious and efficient administration and production which will compensate for any disadvantage which the preferential experiment may impose. The published pamphlet, under date January 28, 1914, concludes: There have been no cases appealed from the Trade Board to the Board of Arbitration since January, 1913. During the last six months of 1913 there were not more than a dozen Trade Board Cases. So many principles have been laid down, and precedents established by both of these bodies, that the chief deputies are in all cases able to reach an agreement without appeal to a higher authority. A gradual change has taken place in the method of dealing with questions which present new principles, or which represent questions never before decided. The Board of Arbitration has appointed Mr. Williams as a committee to investigate and report, with the understanding that if an agreement can be reached by both parties without arbitrators, or, if the parties are willing to accept the decision of the Chairman, then no further meeting of the Board of Arbitration will be required. This method has proved to be exceedingly satisfactory to both sides and has resulted in a form of government which has gradually taken the place of formal arbitration. In most cases, the Chairman is able by thorough sifting of the evidence on each side, to suggest a method of conciliation which is acceptable to both parties. A further experience of the System up till July, 1915, only confirms the above statement. BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF BOOKS AND REPORTS AND PERIODICAL LITERATURE SUGGESTED FOR READING AND REFERENCE ABBOTT, EDITH. Women in Industry. New York, 1909. ADAMS, T.H., and SUMNER, H.L. Labor Problems. New York, 1909. ADDAMS, JANE. The Spirit of Youth in City Streets. New York, 1909. ANDREWS, JOHN B. A Practical Plan for the Prevention of Unemployment in America. New York, 1914. ---- and BLISS, W.P.D. History of Women in Trade Unions in the United States. Vol. X of the United States Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners. BEBEL, AUGUST. Woman in the Past, Present and Future (Trans.). New York, 1885. BOWEN, LOUISE DE KOVEN. Safeguards for City Youth at Work and at Play. New York, 1915. BRANDEIS, L.D. _Curt Miller_ v. _The State of Oregon_. Brief for defendants. Supreme Court of the United States. New York, 1908. ---- _Frank C. Stettler and others_ v. _The Industrial Welfare Commission of the State of Oregon_. Brief and arguments for the defendants in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon. Consumers' League, New York, 1915. ---- and GOLDMARK, JOSEPHINE. Brief and Arguments for appellants in the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois. National Consumers' League, New York, 1909. BRECKINRIDGE, SOPHONISBA P. Legislative Control of Women's Work. _Journal of Political Economy_. XIV. 107-109. BROOKS, JOHN GRAHAM. The Social Unrest. New York, 1903. BROWN, ROME G. The Minimum Wage. Minneapolis, 1914. BUSBEY. Women's Trade Union Movement in Great Britain. U.S. Department of Labor. Bul. No. 83. BUTLER, ELIZABETH B. Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores. New York, 1913. ---- Women in the Trades. New York, 1909. CANADA. Department of Labor. Report of Royal Commission on Strike of Telephone Operators. Ottawa, 1907. CLARK, SUE AINSLIE, and WYATT, EDITH. Making Both Ends Meet. New York, 1911. CLARK, VICTOR S. The Labor Movement in Australia. New York, 1907. COMMONS, JOHN R. Races and Immigrants in America. New York, 1907. ---- ANDREWS, JOHN B., SUMNER, HELEN L., and OTHERS. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Cleveland, 1910. ---- and OTHERS. Trade Unionism and Labor Problems. Boston, 1905. COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA. Legislative Regulation of Wages. Year Book, No. 5, 1901-1911. pp. 1065-1069. COOLEY, E.G. See publications of Commercial Club of Chicago on vocational education. DEVINE, EDWARD T. Social Forces. New York. DEWEY, JOHN. Schools of Tomorrow. New York, 1915. ---- The School and Society. DORR, RHETA CHILDE. What Eight Million Women Want. Boston, 1910. ELY, RICHARD T. The Labor Movement in America. New York, 1905. GILMAN, CHARLOTTE P. Concerning Children. Boston, 1900. ---- Women and Economics. New York, 1905. HAMILTON, CICELY. Marriage as a Trade. HARD, WILLIAM. The Women of Tomorrow. New York, 1911. HENDERSON, CHARLES RICHMOND. Citizens in Industry. New York, 1915. HERRON, BELVA M. Progress of Labor Organization Among Women. University of Illinois studies, Vol. 1, No. 10. Urbana, 1908. HILLMAN, SIDNEY, and HOWARD, EARL DEAN. Hart, Schaffner and Marx Labor Agreements. Chicago, 1914. HOBSON, JOHN A. Evolution of Modern Capitalism. London, 1904. ---- Problems of Poverty, London, 1906. HOURWICH, ISAAC A. Immigration and Labor. New York, 1912. HUMPHREY, J.R. Proportional Representation. London, 1911. ILLINOIS STATE FEDERATION OF LABOR. Report of Committee on Vocational Education, 1914. JACOBI, ABRAHAM. Physical Cost of Women's Work. New York, 1907. KELLEY, FLORENCE. Modern Industry in Relation to the Family. New York, 1915. ---- Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation. New York, 1906. KELLOR, FRANCES A. Out of Work. New York, 1915 ed. KERCHENSTEINER, G.M.A. Idea of the Industrial School (Trans.). New York, 1913. ---- Schools and the Nation (Trans.). London, 1914. KEY, ELLEN. The Woman Movement (Trans.). New York, 1912. KIRKUP, THOMAS. History of Socialism. London, 1906. LAGERLÖF, SELMA. Home and the State (Trans.). New York, 1912. LEAVITT, FRANK M. Examples of Industrial Education. Boston, 1912. LEVINE, Louis. Syndicalism in France. New York, 1914. MACLEAN, ANNIE MARION. Wage Earning Women. New York, 1910. MAROT, HELEN. American Labor Unions. New York, 1914. MASON, OTIS T. Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. 1894. MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSION ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. Reports, 1909. MATTHEWS, LILLIAN R. Women in Trade Unions in San Francisco. University of California, 1913. MITCHELL, JOHN. Organized Labor. Philadelphia, 1903. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS. Preliminary report on the Minimum Wage. New York. NEARING, SCOTT. Wages in the United States, 1908 to 1910. New York, 1911. OLIVER, THOMAS. Dangerous Trades. London, 1902. PATTEN, SIMON N. The New Basis of Civilization. New York, 1907. PEIXOTTO, JESSICA B. Women of California as Trade Unionists. _Association of Collegiate Alumnae_, Dec., 1908. PRESCOTT and HALL. Immigration and Its Effects. New York, 1900. PUTNAM, EMILY JAMES. The Lady. New York, 1910. RAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER. Christianity and the Social Crisis. New York, 1907. ---- Christianizing the Social Order. New York, 1912. RHINELANDER, W.S. Life and Letters of Josephine Shaw Lowell. New York, 1911. RICHARDSON, DOROTHY. The Long Day. New York, 1905. ROGERS, J.E. THOROLD. Six Centuries of Work and Wages. ROMAN, F.W. Industrial and Commercial Schools of the United States and Germany. New York, 1915. ROSS, EDWARD ALSWORTH. Sin and Society. Boston, 1907. RUSSELL, CHARLES EDWARD. Why I Am a Socialist. New York, 1910. RYAN, JOHN A. A Living Wage in Its Ethical and Economic Aspects. New York, 1906. SALMON, LUCY M. Progress in the Household. Boston, 1906. SCHREINER, OLIVE. Woman and Labour. London and New York, 1911. SIMONS, A.M. Social Forces in American History. SNEDDEN, DAVID M. Problems of Educational Readjustment. New York, 1913. ---- The Problem of Vocational Education. Boston, 1910. SNOWDEN, PHILIP. The Living Wage. London and New York, 1912. SOMBART, WERNER. Socialism and the Social Movement (Trans.). New York, 1909. SPARGO, JOHN. Socialism. New York, 1909. Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism. New York, 1913. ---- and ARNER, G.B.L. Elements of Socialism. New York, 1912. SPENCER, ANNA GARLIN. Woman and Social Culture. New York, 1913. SUMNER, HELEN L. History of Women in Industry in the United States. Vol. IX of the United States Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners. 1910. THOMAS, W.I. Sex and Society. University of Chicago Press, 1907. VAN KLEECK, MARY. Artificial Flower Making. Women in the Bookbinding Trade. Russell Sage Foundation publications, 1912. VAN VORST, BESSIE and MARIE. The Woman Who Toils. New York, 1903. WARD, LESTER F. Pure Sociology (especially Chapter XIV). New York. WEBB, SIDNEY. Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 20, No. 12., Dec., 1912. ---- and BEATRICE. History of Trade Unionism. London, 1907. WELLS, H.G. New Worlds for Old. New York, 1909. WEYL, WALTER E. The New Democracy. New York, 1910. WILLETT, M.H. Employment of Women in the Clothing Trades. Columbia University. New York, 1902. WILSON, JENNIE L. Legal and Political Status of Women in the United States. WINSLOW, CHARLES H.; Editor. Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the United States Bureau of Labor, Industrial Training. WOLFE, F.E. Admission to Labor Unions. Johns Hopkins University Press. MINIMUM WAGE, THE CASE FOR. By Louis D. Brandeis, M.B. Hammond, John A. Hobson, Florence Kelley, Esther Packard, Elizabeth C. Watson, Howard B. Woolston. _The Survey_, Feb. 6, 1915. _Periodicals and Reports_ _American Federationist, A.F. of L. Newsletter_, and other publications of the American Federation of Labor. Washington, D.C. _American Legislation Review_ and other publications of the American Association for Labor Legislation. New York. _Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_. Philadelphia. _Child Labor Bulletin, The_ (National), and other publications of the National Child Labor Committee, New York. Commercial Club of Chicago. Publications on Vocational Training. _Crisis, The_. New York. _Economic Review_. _Forerunner, The_. New York. _Immigrant in America Review, The_. New York. _Journal of Political Economy, The_. University of Chicago Press. _Journal of Sociology, The_. University of Chicago Press. _Labour Leader, The_. Manchester, England. _Labour Woman, The_, and other publications of the National Women's Labour League. London. _Life and Labor_, and other publications of the National Women's Trade Union League of America. Chicago; and of the local leagues in Boston, Chicago, New York and elsewhere. _Masses, The_. New York. National Consumers' League, Publications of. New York. National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, Publications of. New York. _New Republic, The_. New York. New York State Factory Investigation Commission, Reports. New York. _New York Sunday Call, The_. New York. _Political Science Quarterly_. Columbia University. _Public, The_. Chicago. _Quarterly Journal of Economics_. Harvard University. _Survey, The_. New York. _Union Labor Advocate_. Woman's Department, up to Dec., 1910. United States Bureau of Education. Bulletins on vocational education. ---- Census of 1910. Occupational statistics. ---- Children's Bureau. Bulletins. ---- Department of Agriculture. Bulletins for Women on the Farm. ---- Department of Labor, Bulletins. ---- Industrial Relations Commission Reports. ---- Women and Child Wage Earners, Report on Conditions of. 19 Volumes. _Woman's Industrial News, The_. London. _Woman's Journal, The_. Boston. INDEX Abbé, Mrs. Robert Abbott, Grace Abolition movement Addams, Jane American Federation of Labor Anderson, Mary Andrews, John B. Anthony, Susan B. Ayres, Leonard P., quoted Bagley, Sarah G. Barry, Leonora Bean, Alice Bergson, Henri Biddle, Mrs. George Bliss, W.P.D., quoted Bondfield, Margaret Borden, Hannah _Boston Courier_ Brandeis, Louis D. Brown, Corinne Burke, Mrs. Mary Calhoun, William J. Canada Capital and labor organization compared Carey, Matthew Casey, Josephine Chinese Cohn, Fannie Collective bargaining Collective grievances Colored workers Coman, Katharine _Commercial Bulletin_ Condon, Maggie Conservation movement Consumers' League Conventions, labor Coöperative efforts Cost of living Daley, Mollie Dana, Charles A. Davies, Anna Democracy, and education and public ownership evolution of Dewey, John, quoted Dickenson, Fannie Direct legislation Domestic science profession Donnelly, Michael Donovan, Mary Dorchester, Mass., early schools of Dreier, Mary E. Economic basis of trade union Economic status of women Education, according to grade percentage early, of girls Glynn, Frank L., on, quoted in labor questions of the immigrant poverty the chief check to _See also_ Vocational education "Effective voting" Efficiency and expectance Elmira College Employers' associations Equal pay Evans, Mrs. Glendower Fitzgerald, Anna Fitzpatrick, John Flood, Emmet Franklin, Stella General Federation of Women's Clubs Gillespie, Mabel Goldmark, Josephine Gompers, Samuel quoted Graham, Mr. Grant, Annie Greeley, Horace Gutteridge, Helena Hamilton, Cicely, quoted Hannafin, Mary Harriman, Mrs. J. Borden Harvard University Health and shorter hours Henderson, Rose Home industries, development of Home-work, and child labor and Italians as social anachronism Hours _See also_ Limitation of hours Huge Strikes agreements in Citizens' Committee in Huge Strikes, close of immigrants in Joint Strike Conference Board in picketing in results of Triangle Shirt Waist Co. United Garment Workers Women's Trade Union League in Hull House Huntingdon, Arria Immigrants, Americanization of discrimination against domestic policy regarding education of employment of exploitation of federal and state care of handicaps of haphazard distribution of Juvenile Protective League, quoted, regarding Immigrants, League for the Protection of Immigrants Polish girls as, peculiarly exploited _Immigrants in America Review_ Immigration, probable causes of Industrial Relations, Federal Commission on Industrial rivalry between men and women Industrial struggle, new forms of the Industrial Workers of the World Industry, children and degraded machine-controlled public ownership the latest development of standards in Investigations, by City Club, Chicago by Federal Commission on Industrial Relations by Knights of Labor by New York State Factory Investigating Commission Federal (Women and Child Wage Earners) first governmental I.W.W. Japanese laundry workers Kavanagh, Fannie Kehew, Mary Morton Kelley, Florence Kellogg, Paul Kellor, Frances A., quoted Kenney, Mary E. Kerchensteiner, Georg, quoted Kingsley, Charles Knefler, Mrs. D.W. Knights of Labor Labor legislation, administration of laws under needed for stores objections to providing for women factory inspectors women affected by _See also_ Limitation of hours; minimum wage Labor movement, backwardness of development of Irish in _Labour Leader_ Lemlich, Clara Lewis, Augusta _Life and Labor_ Limitation of hours, and department-store clerks and elevated railroad clerks Limitation of hours, declared constitutional eight-hour law regarding, in California effects of, on health first law for, in Great Britain for public employés including men and boys organized women support relation of, to wages ten-hour law regarding, in Illinois Lippard, George "Living-in" system Lowell, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mass. Macarthur, Mary R. Macdonald, Mary A. McDonald, J. Ramsay, quoted McDowell, Mary E. McNamara, Maggie Mahoney, Hannah (Mrs. Nolan) Maloney, Elizabeth Marot, Helen Marriage, an unstandardized trade and factory life and organization Marriage, and the working-woman Married woman, as a half-time worker as a wage-earner economic status of incongruous position of Married women and the labor movement Matthews, Lillian, quoted Maud Gonne Club Maurice, F.D. Mead, George H. Merriam, Charles E. Mill, John Stuart Minimum wage, employers' objections to for the immigrant in Australia Mitchell, Louisa Mittelstadt, Louisa Morgan, T.J. Morgan, Mrs. T.J. Mott, Lucretia Mullaney, Kate Murphy, John J. National and other central labor bodies: Amalgamated Meat Cutters' and Butchers' Workmen of North America American Federation of Musicians Boot and Shoe Workers' Union British Women's Trade Union League Cigar Makers' International Union Daughters of St. Crispin International Brotherhood of Bookbinders International Glove Workers' Union International Ladies' Garment Workers International Typographical Union Massachusetts Working Women's League National Industrial Congress National Labor Congress National Labor Union national trade unions, more than thirty from 1863 to 1873 National Trades Union New England Congress, policies of railroad brotherhoods railway unions Retail Clerks International Union Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers' International Union Trades and Labor Congress of Canada United Felt, Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers United Garment Workers United Mine Workers United Textile Workers Women's Department, Knights of Labor Women's Labor Reform Associations Women's National Labor League Women's state labor unions Women's Trade Union League Women's Union Label League Working Women's Labor Union for the State of N.Y. National Civic Federation National Consumers' League National Young Women's Christian Association Neill, Charles P. Nestor, Agnes New York State Factory Investigating Committee _New York Sun_ Northwestern University Oberlin College O'Brien, John Occupations, and locality blind-alley trades boot and shoe workers button workers children's employments department-store clerks dish-washing domestic work dressmakers employés in state institutions garment-workers. _See_ sewing trades glass-blowers hat-workers house-cleaning developments laundry workers and laundresses mine-workers musicians nurses semi-skilled tobacco-and cigar-workers unskilled waitresses O'Connor, Julia O'Day, Hannah O'Reilly, Leonora O'Reilly, Mary Organization, and minimum wage craft form of eventually international in unskilled trades industrial form of of colored races of department-store clerks of Italians of Orientals of Slavic Jewesses of women, by men of women backward O'Sullivan, Mary E. _See_ Mary E. Kenney _Outlook_, quoted Overwork and fatigue Pankhurst, Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Emma Pearson, Mrs. Frank J. Perkins, L.S. _Philadelphia Ledger_ Phillips, Wendell Pillsbury, Parker Poe, Clarence Polish National Alliance Popular disapproval of women's trade unions Potter, Frances Squire Powderly, Mrs. Terence V. Powderly, Terence V. Power loom, first Preferential shop Proportional representation Protection for young trade-union girls Protocol of peace Public employés Public ownership, the latest development of industry Putnam, Mrs. Mary Kellogg Quick, Nelle Quimby, Mrs. C.N.M. _Revolution, The_ Rickert, T.A. Robins, Mrs. Raymond quoted Rodgers, Mrs. George Roman, F.W., quoted Roosevelt, Theodore Rumsey, Thomas Russell Sage Foundation Sabotage Samuels, Adelaide San Francisco earthquake _San Francisco Examiner_ Sanitation Schneidermann, Rose Schreiner, Olive Scott, Melinda Secretary for Labor Sewing machine introduced Sewing trades, early conditions in war orders for _See also_ Huge strikes Shedden, John Shute, Mrs. Lizzie H. Simpson, James Sinclair, Upton Slavery, family and group Smith, Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith-Lever Act Snowden, Mrs. Philip Snowden, Philip Social advance Socialism, and economic independence and socialists Sorel, George Southern mountain women Specialization and economy in home industries in house-cleaning Specialization, trade and professional, compared Speeding up Spencer, Anna Garlin, quoted Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Steghagen, Emma Stevens, Alzina P. Stevens, George, quoted Stewart, Mrs. Levi Stirling, Mary Stone, Huldah J. Stone, Lucy Strasser, President Strike, American girl strikebreakers in general Marx & Haas of Danbury Hatters of Fall River weavers of laundry-workers, (S.F.) (Troy) of packing-plant employés of printers work, after _See also_ Huge strikes. Sumner, Helen L. _Survey, The_, quoted Sutter, Maud Symphony orchestras Syndicalism Thomas, W. L, quoted Topp, Mr. Trade agreement a typical Hart, Schaffner and Marx Trade unions, aims of, xx and factory inspection and standard of living and women members as training schools conservative and radical compared city federations of craft form of dues of exclusiveness of federation of in other fields industrial form of interstate coöperation of women of juvenile union locals of women's, best training school one big union outside support for relations between labor bodies reorganization of women membership of supported by labor men United States Agricultural Department United States Agricultural Department, and immigration census of, occupations under industrial development of _See also_ Investigations United Tailoresses' Society University of Chicago Valesh, Eva McDonald Van Etten, Ida Vassar College Vincent, John J. Vocational education, and the immigrant as part of public system A.F. of L. on co-education only solution of Commercial Club of Chicago, on domestic economy ideal plan for in Germany original form of tendencies of experts women's share in, inadequate _Voice of Industry_ Vote, the Wages Wages group N.Y. Commission evidence regarding Waight, Lavinia Wald, Lillian D. Walling, William English War orders Ward, Lester F. Watters, J.C. Whitehead, Myrtle Whitney, Edward B. Wilkinson, J.W. Wilson, J. Stitt, quoted Winslow, Charles H. Winters, Sallie Woerishofer, Carola Wolfe, F.E., quoted Woman, as the organizer as the race double function of Woman suffrage, and civic work, and education Woman suffrage, and great strikes and industrial struggle and social control indorsed by, A.F. of L. labor conventions movement for, in Great Britain organization of women voters under organized women and Women, and vocational training and vocations compulsory underbidders in meat-packing plants non-wage-earning Woolston, Howard B., quoted Work, John M., quoted Working Women's Society Young, Anne 
14458	----	Social Science Text-Books EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES BY SELIG PERLMAN, PH.D. Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of Wisconsin; Co-author of the History of Labour in the United States New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1922 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. October, 1922. AUTHOR'S PREFACE The present _History of Trade Unionism in the United States_ is in part a summary of work in labor history by Professor John R. Commons and collaborators at the University of Wisconsin from 1904 to 1918, and in part an attempt by the author to carry the work further. Part I of the present book is based on the _History of Labour in the United States_ by Commons and Associates (Introduction: John R. Commons; Colonial and Federal Beginnings, to 1827: David J. Saposs; Citizenship, 1827-1833: Helen L. Summer; Trade Unionism, 1833-1839: Edward B. Mittelman; Humanitarianism, 1840-1860: Henry E. Hoagland; Nationalization, 1860-1877: John B. Andrews; and Upheaval and Reorganization, 1876-1896: by the present author), published by the Macmillan Company in 1918 in two volumes. Part II, "The Larger Career of Unionism," brings the story from 1897 down to date; and Part III, "Conclusions and Inferences," is an attempt to bring together several of the general ideas suggested by the History. Chapter 12, entitled "An Economic Interpretation," follows the line of analysis laid down by Professor Commons in his study of the American shoemakers, 1648-1895.[1] The author wishes to express his strong gratitude to Professors Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons for their kind aid at every stage of this work. He also wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Edwin E. Witte, Director of the Wisconsin State Legislative Reference Library, upon whose extensive and still unpublished researches he based his summary of the history of the injunction; and to Professor Frederick L. Paxson, who subjected the manuscript to criticism from the point of view of General American History. S.P. FOOTNOTE: [1] See his _Labor and Administration_, Chapter XIV (Macmillan, 1913). CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v PART I. THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL CHAPTER 1 LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR (1) Early Beginnings, to 1827 8 (2) Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832 9 (3) The Period of the "Wild-Cat" Prosperity, 1833-1837 18 (4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862 29 2 THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 42 3 THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 68 4 REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 81 5 THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE FINAL FAILURE OF PRODUCERS' COOPERATION 106 6 STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 130 7 TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 146 PART II. THE LARGER CAREER OF UNIONISM 8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES, 1898-1914 163 (1) The Miners 167 (2) The Railway Men 180 (3) The Machinery and Metal Trades 186 (4) The Employers' Reaction 190 (5) Legislation, Courts, and Politics 198 9 RADICAL UNIONISM AND A "COUNTER-REFORMATION" 208 10 THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 226 11 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 245 PART III. CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES 12 AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 265 13 THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR 279 14 WHY THERE IS NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 285 15 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND TRADE UNIONISM 295 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 PART I THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE U.S. CHAPTER 1 LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR (1) _Early Beginnings, to 1827_ The customary chronology records the first American labor strike in 1741. In that year the New York bakers went out on strike. A closer analysis discloses, however, that this outbreak was a protest of master bakers against a municipal regulation of the price of bread, not a wage earners' strike against employers. The earliest genuine labor strike in America occurred, as far as known, in 1786, when the Philadelphia printers "turned out" for a minimum wage of six dollars a week. The second strike on record was in 1791 by Philadelphia house carpenters for the ten-hour day. The Baltimore sailors were successful in advancing their wages through strikes in the years 1795, 1805, and 1807, but their endeavors were recurrent, not permanent. Even more ephemeral were several riotous sailors' strikes as well as a ship builders' strike in 1817 at Medford, Massachusetts. Doubtless many other such outbreaks occurred during the period to 1820, but left no record of their existence. A strike undoubtedly is a symptom of discontent. However, one can hardly speak of a beginning of trade unionism until such discontent has become expressed in an organization that keeps alive after a strike, or between strikes. Such permanent organizations existed prior to the twenties only in two trades, namely, shoemaking and printing. The first continuous organization of wage earners was that of the Philadelphia shoemakers, organized in 1792. This society, however, existed for less than a year and did not even leave us its name. The shoemakers of Philadelphia again organized in 1794 under the name of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers and maintained their existence as such at least until 1806. In 1799 the society conducted the first organized strike, which lasted nine or ten weeks. Prior to 1799, the only recorded strikes of any workmen were "unorganized" and, indeed, such were the majority of the strikes that occurred prior to the decade of the thirties in the nineteenth century. The printers organized their first society in 1794 in New York under the name of The Typographical Society and it continued in existence for ten years and six months. The printers of Philadelphia, who had struck in 1786, neglected to keep up an organization after winning their demands. Between the years 1800 and 1805, the shoemakers and the printers had continuous organizations in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. In 1809 the shoemakers of Pittsburgh and the Boston printers were added to the list, and somewhat later the Albany and Washington printers. In 1810 the printers organized in New Orleans. The separation of the journeymen from the masters, first shown in the formation of these organizations, was emphasized in the attitude toward employer members. The question arose over the continuation in membership of those who became employers. The shoemakers excluded such members from the organization. The printers, on the other hand, were more liberal. But in 1817 the New York society put them out on the ground that "the interests of the journeymen are _separate_ and in some respects _opposite_ to those of the employers." The strike was the chief weapon of these early societies. Generally a committee was chosen by the society to present a price list or scale of wages to the masters individually. The first complete wage scale presented in this country was drawn up by the organized printers of New York in 1800. The strikes were mainly over wages and were generally conducted in an orderly and comparatively peaceful manner. In only one instance, that of the Philadelphia shoemakers of 1806, is there evidence of violence and intimidation. In that case "scabs" were beaten and employers intimidated by demonstrations in front of the shop or by breaking shop windows. During a strike the duties of "picketing" were discharged by tramping committees. The Philadelphia shoemakers, however, as early as 1799, employed for this purpose a paid officer. This strike was for higher wages for workers on boots. Although those who worked on shoes made no demands of their own, they were obliged to strike, much against their will. We thus meet with the first sympathetic strike on record. In 1809 the New York shoemakers, starting with a strike against one firm, ordered a general strike when they discovered that that firm was getting its work done in other shops. The payment of strike benefits dates from the first authenticated strike, namely in 1786. The method of payment varied from society to society, but the constitution of the New York shoemakers, as early as 1805, provided for a permanent strike fund. The aggressive trade unionism of these early trade societies forced the masters to combine against them. Associations of masters in their capacity as merchants had usually preceded the journeymen's societies. Their function was to counteract destructive competition from "advertisers" and sellers in the "public market" at low prices. As soon, however, as the wage question became serious, the masters' associations proceeded to take on the function of dealing with labor--mostly aiming to break up the trade societies. Generally they sought to create an available force of non-union labor by means of advertising, but often they turned to the courts and brought action against the journeymen's societies on the ground of conspiracy. The bitterness of the masters' associations against the the journeymen's societies perhaps was caused not so much by their resistance to reductions in wages as by their imposition of working rules, such as the limitation of the number of apprentices, the minimum wage, and what we would now call the "closed shop." The conspiracy trials largely turned upon the "closed shop" and in these the shoemakers figured exclusively.[2] Altogether six criminal conspiracy cases are recorded against the shoemakers from 1806 to 1815. One occurred in Philadelphia in 1806; one in New York in 1809; two in Baltimore in 1809; and two in Pittsburgh, the first in 1814 and the other in 1815. Each case was tried before a jury which was judge both of law and fact. Four of the cases were decided against the journeymen. In one of the Baltimore cases judgment was rendered in favor of the journeymen. The Pittsburgh case of 1815 was compromised, the shoemakers paying the costs and returning to work at the old wages. The outcome in the other cases is not definitely known. It was brought out in the testimony that the masters financed, in part at least, the New York and Pittsburgh prosecutions. Effective as the convictions in court for conspiracy may have been in checking the early trade societies, of much greater consequence was the industrial depression which set in after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. The lifting of the Embargo enabled the foreign traders and manufacturers to dump their products upon the American market. The incipient American industries were in no position to withstand this destructive competition. Conditions were made worse by past over investment and by the collapse of currency inflation. Trade unionism for the time being had to come to an end. The effect on the journeymen's societies was paralyzing. Only those survived which turned to mutual insurance. Several of the printers' societies had already instituted benefit features, and these now helped them considerably to maintain their organization. The shoe-makers' societies on the other hand had remained to the end purely trade-regulating organizations and went to the wall. Depression reached its ebb in 1820. Thereafter conditions improved, giving rise to aggressive organizations of wage earners in several industries. We find strikes and permanent organizations among hatters, tailors, weavers, nailers, and cabinet makers. And for the first time we meet with organizations of factory workers--female workers. Beginning with 1824 and running through 1825, the year which saw the culmination of a period of high prices, a number of strikes occurred in the important industrial centers. The majority were called to enforce higher wages. In Philadelphia, 2900 weavers out of about 4500 in the city were on strike. But the strike that attracted the most public attention was that of the Boston house carpenters for the ten-hour day in 1825. The Boston journeymen carpenters chose the most strategic time for their strike. They called it in the spring of the year when there was a great demand for carpenters owing to a recent fire. Close to six hundred journeymen were involved in this struggle. The journeymen's demand for the ten-hour day drew a characteristic reply from the "gentlemen engaged in building," the customers of the master builders. They condemned the journeymen on the moral ground that an agitation for a shorter day would open "a wide door for idleness and vice"; hinted broadly at the foreign origin of the agitation; declared that all combinations intending to regulate the value of labor by abridging the working day were in a high degree unjust and injurious to the other classes in the community; announced their resolution to support the masters at the sacrifice of suspending building altogether; and bound themselves not to employ any journeyman or master who might enforce the ten-hour day. The strike failed. The renewed trade-union activities brought forth a fresh crop of trials for conspiracy.[3] One case involved Philadelphia master shoemakers who combined to reduce wages, two were against journeymen tailors in Philadelphia and Buffalo and the fourth was a hatters' case in New York. The masters were acquitted and the hatters were found guilty of combining to deprive a non-union man of his livelihood. In the Philadelphia tailors' case, the journeymen were convicted on the charge of intimidation. Of the Buffalo tailors' case it is only known that it ended in the conviction of the journeymen. (2) _Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832_ So far we have dealt only with trade societies but not yet with a labor movement. A labor movement presupposes a feeling of solidarity which goes beyond the boundaries of a single trade and extends to other wage earners. The American labor movement began in 1827, when the several trades in Philadelphia organized the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations, which was, so far as now known, the first city central organization of trades in the world. This Union, originally intended as an economic organization, changed to a political one the following year and initiated what was probably the most interesting and most typically American labor movement--a struggle for "equality of citizenship." It was brought to a head by the severe industrial depression of the time. But the decisive impulse came from the nation-wide democratic upheaval led by Andrew Jackson, for which the poorer classes in the cities displayed no less enthusiasm than the agricultural West. To the wage earner this outburst of democratic fervor offered an opportunity to try out his recently acquired franchise. Of the then industrial States, Massachusetts granted suffrage to the workingmen in 1820 and New York in 1822. In Pennsylvania the constitution of 1790 had extended the right of suffrage to those who paid any kind of a state or county tax, however small. The wage earners' Jacksonianism struck a note all its own. If the farmer and country merchant, who had passed through the abstract stage of political aspiration with the Jeffersonian democratic movement, were now, with Jackson, reaching out for the material advantages which political power might yield, the wage earners, being as yet novices in politics, naturally were more strongly impressed with that aspect of the democratic upheaval which emphasized the rights of man in general and social equality in particular. If the middle class Jacksonian was probably thinking first of reducing the debt on his farm or perchance of getting a political office, and only as an after-thought proceeding to look for a justification in the Declaration of Independence, as yet the wage earner was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for the remedies which would square reality with the idea. Hence it was that the aspiration toward equal citizenship became the keynote of labor's earliest political movement. The issue was drawn primarily between the rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and employes. While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks "persons not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers, brokers, rich men, etc.," they did not draw the line on employers as such, master workmen and independent "producers." The workingmen's bill of complaints, as set forth in the Philadelphia _Mechanic's Free Press_ and other labor papers, clearly marks off the movement as a rebellion by the class of newly enfranchised wage earners against conditions which made them feel degraded in their own eyes as full fledged citizens of the commonwealth. The complaints were of different sorts but revolved around the charge of the usurpation of government by an "aristocracy." Incontrovertible proof of this charge was found in special legislation chartering banks and other corporations. The banks were indicted upon two counts. First, the unstable bank paper money defrauded the wage earner of a considerable portion of the purchasing power of his wages. Second, banks restricted competition and shut off avenues for the "man on the make." The latter accusation may be understood only if we keep in mind that this was a period when bank credits began to play an essential part in the conduct of industry; that with the extension of the market into the States and territories South and West, with the resulting delay in collections, business could be carried on only by those who enjoyed credit facilities at the banks. Now, as credit generally follows access to the market, it was inevitable that the beneficiary of the banking system should not be the master or journeyman but the merchant for whom both worked.[4] To the uninitiated, however, this arrangement could only appear in the light of a huge conspiracy entered into by the chartered monopolies, the banks, and the unchartered monopolist, the merchant, to shut out the possible competition by the master and journeyman. The grievance appeared all the more serious since all banks were chartered by special enactments of the legislature, which thus appeared as an accomplice in the conspiracy. In addition to giving active help to the rich, the workingmen argued, the government was too callous to the suffering of the poor and pointed to the practice of imprisonment for debt. The Boston Prison Discipline Society, a philanthropic organization, estimated in 1829 that about 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United States. Many of these were imprisoned for very small debts. In one Massachusetts prison, for example, out of 37 cases, 20 were for less than $20. The Philadelphia printer and philanthropist, Mathew Carey, father of the economist Henry C. Carey, cited a contemporary Boston case of a blind man with a family dependent on him imprisoned for a debt of six dollars. A labor paper reported an astounding case of a widow in Providence, Rhode Island, whose husband had lost his life in a fire while attempting to save the property of the man who later caused her imprisonment for a debt of 68 cents. The physical conditions in debtors' jails were appalling, according to unimpeachable contemporary reports. Little did such treatment of the poor accord with their newly acquired dignity as citizens. Another grievance, particularly exasperating because the government was responsible, grew in Pennsylvania out of the administration of the compulsory militia system. Service was obligatory upon all male citizens and non-attendance was punished by fine or imprisonment. The rich delinquent did not mind, but the poor delinquent when unable to pay was given a jail sentence. Other complaints by workingmen went back to the failure of government to protect the poorer citizen's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The lack of a mechanic's lien law, which would protect his wages in the case of his employer's bankruptcy, was keenly felt by the workingmen. A labor paper estimated in 1829 that, owing to the lack of a lien law on buildings, not less than three or four hundred thousand dollars in wages were annually lost. But the most distinctive demands of the workingmen went much further. This was an age of egalitarianism. The Western frontiersmen demanded equality with the wealthy Eastern merchant and banker, and found in Andrew Jackson an ideal spokesman. For a brief moment it seemed that by equality the workingmen meant an equal division of all property. That was the program which received temporary endorsement at the first workingmen's meeting in New York in April 1829. "Equal division" was advocated by a self-taught mechanic by the name of Thomas Skidmore, who elaborated his ideas in a book bearing the self-revealing title of "_The Rights of Man to Property: being a Proposition to make it Equal among the Adults of the Present Generation: and to Provide for its Equal Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on Arriving at the Age of Maturity_," published in 1829. This Skidmorian program was better known as "agrarianism," probably from the title of a book by Thomas Paine, _Agrarian Justice, as Opposed to Agrarian Law and to Agrarian Monopoly_, published in 1797 in London, which advocated equal division by means of an inheritance tax. Its adoption by the New York workingmen was little more than a stratagem, for their intention was to forestall any attempts by employers to lengthen the working day to eleven hours by raising the question of "the nature of the tenure by which all men hold title to their property." Apparently the stratagem worked, for the employers immediately dropped the eleven-hour issue. But, although the workingmen quickly thereafter repudiated agrarianism, they succeeded only too well in affixing to their movement the mark of the beast in the eyes of their opponents and the general public. Except during the brief but damaging "agrarian" episode, the demand for free public education or "Republican" education occupied the foreground. We, who live in an age when free education at the expense of the community is considered practically an inalienable right of every child, find it extremely difficult to understand the vehemence of the opposition which the demand aroused on the part of the press and the "conservative" classes, when first brought up by the workingmen. The explanation lies partly in the political situation, partly in the moral character of the "intellectual" spokesmen for the workingmen, and partly in the inborn conservatism of the tax-paying classes upon whom the financial burden would fall. That the educational situation was deplorable much proof is unnecessary. Pennsylvania had some public schools, but parents had to declare themselves too poor to send their children to a private school before they were allowed the privilege of sending them there. In fact so much odium attached to these schools that they were practically useless and the State became distinguished for the number of children not attending school. As late as 1837 a labor paper estimated that 250,000 out of 400,000 children in Pennsylvania of school age were not in any school. The Public School Society of New York estimated in a report for 1829 that in New York City alone there were 24,200 children between the ages of five and fifteen years not attending any school whatever. To meet these conditions the workingmen outlined a comprehensive educational program. It was not merely a literary education that the workingmen desired. The idea of industrial education, or training for a vocation, which is even now young in this country, was undoubtedly first introduced by the leaders of this early labor movement. They demanded a system of public education which would "combine a knowledge of the practical arts with that of the useful sciences." The idea of industrial education appears to have originated in a group of which two "intellectuals," Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright, were the leading spirits. Robert Dale Owen was the eldest son of Robert Owen, the famous English manufacturer-philanthropist, who originated the system of socialism known as "Owenism." Born in Scotland, he was educated at Hofwyl, Switzerland, in a school conducted by Emmanuel von Fellenberg, the associate of the famous Pestalozzi, as a self-governing children's republic on the manner of the present "Julior Republics." Owen himself said that he owed his abiding faith in human virtue and social progress to his years at Hofwyl. In 1825 Robert Dale left England to join his father in a communistic experiment at New Harmony, Indiana, and together they lived through the vicissitudes which attended that experiment. There he met Frances Wright, America's first suffragist, with whom he formed an intimate friendship lasting through many years. The failure at New Harmony convinced him that his father had overlooked the importance of the anti-social habits which the members had formed before they joined; and he concluded that those could be prevented only by applying a rational system of education to the young. These conclusions, together with the recollections of his experience at Hofwyl, led him to advocate a new system of education, which came to be called "state guardianship." State guardianship was a demand for the establishment by the state of boarding schools where children should receive, not only equal instruction, general as well as industrial, but equal food and equal clothing at the public expense. Under this system, it was asserted, public schools would become "not schools of charity, but schools of the nation, to the support of which all would contribute; and instead of being almost a disgrace, it would become an honor to have been educated there." It was urged as an especial advantage that, as children would be clothed and cared for at all times, the fact that poor parents could not afford to dress their children "as decently as their neighbors" would not prevent their attendance. State guardianship became the battle cry of an important faction in the Workingmen's party in New York. Elsewhere a less radical program was advocated. In Philadelphia the workingmen demanded only that high schools be on the Hofwyl model, whereas in the smaller cities and towns in both Pennsylvania and New York the demand was for "literary" day schools. Yet the underlying principle was the same everywhere. A labor candidate for Congress in the First Congressional District of Philadelphia in 1830 expressed it succinctly during his campaign. He made his plea on the ground that "he is the friend and indefatigable defender of a system of general education, which will place the citizens of this extensive Republic on an equality; a system that will fit the children of the poor, as well as the rich, to become our future legislators; a system that will bring the children of the poor and the rich to mix together as a band of Republican brethren." In New England the workingmen's movement for equal citizenship was simultaneously a reaction against the factory system. To the cry for a Republican system of education was added an anti-child labor crusade. One who did more than any other to call attention to the evils of the factory system of that day was a lawyer by the name of Seth Luther, who, according to his own account, had "for years lived among cotton mills, worked in them, travelled among them." His "_Address to the Working Men of New England on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America, with Particular Reference to the Effect of Manufacturing (as now conducted) on the Health and Happiness of the Poor, and on the Safety of our Republic_" was delivered widely and undoubtedly had considerable influence over the labor movement of the period. The average working day in the best factories at that time was nearly thirteen hours. For the children who were sent into the factories at an early age these hours precluded, of course, any possibility of obtaining even the most rudimentary education. The New England movement was an effort to unite producers of all kinds, including not only farmers but factory workers with mechanics and city workingmen. In many parts of the State of New York the workingmen's parties included the three classes--"farmers, mechanics, and working men,"--but New England added a fourth class, the factory operatives. It was early found, however, that the movement could expect little or no help from the factory operatives, who were for the most part women and children. The years 1828, 1829, and 1830 were years of political labor movements and labor parties. Philadelphia originated the first workingmen's party, then came New York and Boston, and finally state-wide movements and political organizations in each of the three States. In New York the workingmen scored their most striking single success, when in 1829 they cast 6000 votes out of a total of 21,000. In Philadelphia the labor ticket polled 2400 in 1828 and the labor party gained the balance of power in the city. But the inexperience of the labor politicians coupled with machinations on the part of "designing men" of both older parties soon lost the labor parties their advantage. In New York Tammany made the demand for a mechanics' lien law its own and later saw that it became enacted into law. In New York, also, the situation became complicated by factional strife between the Skidmorian "agrarians," the Owenite state guardianship faction, and a third faction which eschewed either "panacea." Then, too, the opposition parties and press seized upon agrarianism and Owen's alleged atheism to brand the whole labor movement. The labor party was decidedly unfortunate in its choice of intellectuals and "ideologists." It would be, however, a mistake to conclude that the Philadelphia, New York, or New England political movements were totally without results. Though unsuccessful in electing their candidates to office, they did succeed in placing their demands to advantage before the public. Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up independently the fight for free public education and carried it to success. In Pennsylvania, public schools, free from the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York City the public school system was established in 1832. The same is true of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and of others. (3) _The Period of the "Wild-cat" Prosperity, 1833-1837_ With the break-up of the workingmen's parties, labor's newly acquired sense of solidarity was temporarily lost, leaving only the restricted solidarity of the isolated trade society. Within that limit, however, important progress began to be made. In 1833, there were in New York twenty-nine organized trades; in Philadelphia, twenty-one; and in Baltimore, seventeen. Among those organized in Philadelphia were hand-loom weavers, plasterers, bricklayers, black and white smiths, cigar makers, plumbers, and women workers including tailoresses, seamstresses, binders, folders, milliners, corset makers, and mantua workers. Several trades, such as the printers and tailors in New York and the Philadelphia carpenters, which formerly were organized upon the benevolent basis, were now reorganized as trade societies. The benevolent New York Typographical Society was reduced to secondary importance by the appearance in 1831 of the New York Typographical Association. But the factor that compelled labor to organize on a much larger scale was the remarkable rise in prices from 1835 to 1837. This rise in prices was coincident with the "wild-cat" prosperity, which followed a rapid multiplication of state banks with the right of issue of paper currency--largely irredeemable "wild-cat" currency. Cost of living having doubled, the subject of wages became a burning issue. At the same time the general business prosperity rendered demands for higher wages easily attainable. The outcome was a luxuriant growth of trade unionism. In 1836 there were in Philadelphia fifty-eight trade unions; in Newark, New Jersey, sixteen; in New York, fifty-two; in Pittsburgh, thirteen; in Cincinnati, fourteen; and in Louisville, seven. In Buffalo the journeymen builders' association included all the building trades. The tailors of Louisville, Cincinnati, and St. Louis made a concentrated effort against their employers in these three cities. The wave of organization reached at last the women workers. In 1830 the well-known Philadelphia philanthropist, Mathew Carey, asserted that there were in the cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore about 20,000 women who could not by constant employment for sixteen hours out of twenty-four earn more than $1.25 a week. These were mostly seamstresses and tailoresses, umbrella makers, shoe binders, cigar makers, and book binders. In New York there was in 1835 a Female Union Association, in Baltimore a United Seamstresses' Society, and in Philadelphia probably the first federation of women workers in this country. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a "Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity for the Protection and Promotion of Female Industry" operated during 1833 and 1834 among the shoe binders and had at one time 1000 members, who, like the seamstresses, were home workers and earned scanty wages. Where nearly every trade was in motion, it did not take long to discover a common direction and a common purpose. This was expressed in city "trades' unions," or federations of all organized trades in a city, and in its ascendency over the individual trade societies. The first trades' union was organized August 14, 1833, in New York. Baltimore followed in September, Philadelphia in November, and Boston in March 1834. New York after 1820 was the metropolis of the country and also the largest industrial and commercial center. There the house carpenters had struck for higher wages in the latter part of May 1833, and fifteen other trades met and pledged their support. Out of this grew the New York Trades' Union. It had an official organ in a weekly, the _National Trades' Union_, published from 1834 to 1836, and a daily, _The Union_, issued in 1836. Ely Moore, a printer, was made president. Moore was elected a few months later as the first representative of labor in Congress. In addition, trades' unions were organized in Washington; in New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey; in Albany, Troy, and Schenectady, New York; and in the "Far West"--Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Except in Boston, the trades' unions felt anxious to draw the line between themselves and the political labor organizations of the preceding years. In Philadelphia, where as we have seen, the formation of an analogous organization, the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations of 1828, had served as a preliminary for a political movement, the General Trades' Union took especial precaution and provided in the constitution that "no party, political or religious questions shall at any time be agitated in or acted upon in the Union." Its official organ, the _National Laborer_, declared that "_the Trades' Union never will be political_ because its members have learned from experience that the introduction of politics into their societies has thwarted every effort to ameliorate their conditions." The repudiation of active politics did not carry with it a condemnation of legislative action or "lobbying." On the contrary, these years witnessed the first sustained legislative campaign that was ever conducted by a labor organization, namely the campaign by the New York Trades' Union for the suppression of the competition from prison-made goods. Under the pressure of the New York Union the State Legislature created in 1834 a special commission on prison labor with its president, Ely Moore, as one of the three commissioners. On this question of prison labor the trade unionists clashed with the humanitarian prison reformers, who regarded productive labor by prisoners as a necessary means of their reform to an honest mode of living; and the humanitarian won. After several months' work the commission submitted what was to the Union an entirely unsatisfactory report. It approved the prison-labor system as a whole and recommended only minor changes. Ely Moore signed the report, but a public meeting of workingmen condemned it. The rediscovered solidarity between the several trades now embodied in the city trades' unions found its first expression on a large scale in a ten-hour movement. The first concerted demand for the ten-hour day was made by the workingmen of Baltimore in August 1833, and extended over seventeen trades. But the mechanics' aspiration for a ten-hour day--perhaps the strongest spiritual inheritance from the preceding movement for equal citizenship,[5] had to await a change in the general condition of industry to render trade union effort effective before it could turn into a well sustained movement. That change finally came with the prosperous year of 1835. The movement was precipitated in Boston. There, as we saw, the carpenters had been defeated in an effort to establish a ten-hour day in 1825,[6] but made another attempt in the spring of 1835. This time, however, they did not stand alone but were joined by the masons and stone-cutters. As before, the principal attack was directed against the "capitalists," that is, the owners of the buildings and the real estate speculators. The employer or small contractor was viewed sympathetically. "We would not be too severe on our employers," said the strikers' circular, which was sent out broadcast over the country, "they are slaves to the capitalists, as we are to them." The strike was protracted. The details of it are not known, but we know that it won sympathy throughout the country. A committee visited in July the different cities on the Atlantic coast to solicit aid for the strikers. In Philadelphia, when the committee arrived in company with delegates from New York, Newark, and Paterson, the Trades' Union held a special meeting and resolved to stand by the "Boston House Wrights" who, "in imitation of the noble and decided stand taken by their Revolutionary Fathers, have determined to throw off the shackles of more mercenary tyrants than theirs." Many societies voted varying sums of money in aid of the strikers. The Boston strike was lost, but the sympathy which it evoked among mechanics in various cities was quickly turned to account. Wherever the Boston circular reached, it acted like a spark upon powder. In Philadelphia the ten-hour movement took on the aspect of a crusade. Not only the building trades, as in Boston, but most of the mechanical branches were involved. Street parades and mass meetings were held. The public press, both friendly and hostile, discussed it at length. Work was suspended and after but a brief "standout" the whole ended in a complete victory for the workingmen. Unskilled laborers, too, struck for the ten-hour day and, in the attempt to prevent others from taking their jobs, riotous scenes occurred which attracted considerable attention. The movement proved so irresistible that the Common Council announced a ten-hour day for public servants. Lawyers, physicians, merchants, and politicians took up the cause of the workingmen. On June 8 the master carpenters granted the ten-hour day and by June 22 the victory was complete. The victory in Philadelphia was so overwhelming and was given so much publicity that its influence extended to many smaller towns. In fact, the ten-hour system, which remained in vogue in this country in the skilled trades until the nineties, dates largely from this movement in the middle of the thirties. The great advance in the cost of living during 1835 and 1836 compelled an extensive movement for higher wages. Prices had in some instances more than doubled. Most of these strikes were hastily undertaken. Prices, of course, were rising rapidly but the societies were new and lacked balance. A strike in one trade was an example to others to strike. In a few instances, however, there was considerable planning and reserve. The strike epidemic affected even the girls who worked in the textile factories. The first strike of factory girls on record had occurred in Dover, New Hampshire, in 1828. A factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey, which occurred in the same year, occasioned the first recorded calling out of militia to quell labor disturbances. There the strikers were, however, for the most part men. But the factory strike which attracted the greatest public attention was the Lowell strike in February, 1834, against a 15 percent reduction in wages. The strike was short and unsuccessful, notwithstanding that 800 striking girls at first exhibited a determination to carry their struggle to the end. It appears that public opinion in New England was disagreeably impressed by this early manifestation of feminism. Another notable factory strike was one in Paterson in July 1835. Unlike similar strikes, it had been preceded by an organization. The chief demand was the eleven-hour day. The strike involved twenty mills and 2000 persons. Two weeks later the employers reduced hours from thirteen and a half to twelve hours for five days and to nine hours on Saturday. This broke the strike. The character of the agitation among the factory workers stamps it as ephemeral. Even more ephemeral was the agitation among immigrant laborers, mostly Irish, on canals and roads, which usually took the form of riots. As in the preceding period, the aggressiveness of the trade societies eventually gave rise to combative masters' associations. These, goaded by restrictive union practices, notably the closed shop, appealed to the courts for relief. By 1836 employers' associations appeared in nearly every trade in which labor was aggressive; in New York there were at least eight and in Philadelphia seven. In Philadelphia, at the initiative of the master carpenters and cordwainers, there came to exist an informal federation of the masters' associations in the several trades. From 1829 to 1842 there were eight recorded prosecutions of labor organizations for conspiracy. The workingmen were convicted in two cases; in two other cases the courts sustained demurrers to the indictments; in three cases the defendants were acquitted after jury trials; and the outcome of one case is unknown. Finally, in 1842, long after the offending societies had gone out of existence under the stress of unemployment and depressions, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts handed down a decision, which for forty years laid to rest the doctrine of conspiracy as applied to labor unions.[7] The unity of action of the several trades displayed in the city trades' unions engendered before long a still wider solidarity in the form of a National Trades' Union. It came together in August 1834, in New York City upon the invitation of the General Trades' Union of New York. The delegates were from the trades' unions of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, and Newark. Ely Moore, then labor candidate for Congress, was elected president. An attempt by the only "intellectual" present, a Doctor Charles Douglass, representing the Boston Trades' Union, to strike a political note was immediately squelched. A second convention was held in 1835 and a third one in 1837. The National Trades' Union played a conspicuous part in securing the ten-hour day for government employes. The victory of the ten-hour principle in private employment in 1835 generally led to its adoption by states and municipalities. However, the Federal government was slow to follow the example, since Federal officials were immune from the direct political pressure which the workingmen were able to use with advantage upon locally elected office holders. In October 1835, the mechanics employed in the New York and Brooklyn Navy Yards petitioned the Secretary of the Navy for a reduction of the hours of labor to ten. The latter referred the petition to the Board of Navy Commissioners, who returned the petition with the opinion that it would be detrimental to the government to accede to their request. This forced the matter into the attention of the National Trades' Union. At its second convention in 1835 it decided to petition Congress for a ten-hour day for employes on government works. The petition was introduced by the labor Congressman from New York, Ely Moore. Congress curtly replied, however, that it was not a matter for legislation but "that the persons employed should redress their own grievances." With Congress in such a mood, the hopes of the workingmen turned to the President. A first step was made in the summer of 1836, when the workers in the Navy Yard at Philadelphia struck for a ten-hour day and appealed to President Jackson for relief. They would have nothing further to do with Congress. They had supported President Jackson in his fight against the United States Bank and now sought a return favor. At a town meeting of "citizens, mechanics, and working men," a committee was appointed to lay the issue before him. He proved indeed more responsive than Congress and ordered the ten-hour system established. But the order applied only to the localities where the strike occurred. The agitation had been chiefly local. Besides Philadelphia and New York the mechanics secured the ten-hour day in Baltimore and Annapolis, but in the District of Columbia and elsewhere they were still working twelve or fourteen hours. In other words, the ten-hour day was secured only where trade societies existed. But the organized labor movement did not rest with a partial success. The campaign of pressure on the President went on. Finally, although somewhat belatedly, President Van Buren issued on March 31, 1840, the famous executive order establishing the ten-hour day on government work without a reduction in wages. The victory came after the National Trades' Union had gone out of existence and should be, more correctly, correlated with a labor political movement. Early in 1837 came a financial panic. The industrial depression wiped out in a short time every form of labor organization from the trade societies to the National Trades' Union. Labor stood defenseless against the economic storm. In this emergency it turned to politics as a measure of despair. The political dissatisfaction assumed the form of hostility towards banks and corporations in general. The workingmen held the banks responsible for the existing anarchy in currency, from which they suffered both as consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there was something uncanny and threatening about corporations with their continuous existence and limited liability. Even while their attention had been engrossed by trade unionism, the workingmen were awake to the issue of monopoly. Together with their employers they had therefore supported Jackson in his assault upon the largest "monster" of them all--the Bank of the United States. The local organizations of the Democratic party, however, did not always remain true to faith. In such circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunction with their masters, frequently extended their support to the "insurgent" anti-monopoly candidates in the Democratic party conventions. Such a revolt took place in Philadelphia in 1835; and in New York, although Tammany had elected Ely Moore, the President of the General Trades' Union of New York, to Congress in 1834, a similar revolt occurred. The upshot was a triumphant return of the rebels into the fold of Tammany in 1837. During the next twenty years, Tammany came nearer to being a workingmen's organization than at any other time in its career. (4) _The Long Depression, 1837-1862_ The twenty-five years which elapsed from 1837 to 1862 form a period of business depression and industrial disorganization only briefly interrupted during 1850-1853 by the gold discoveries in California. The aggressive unions of the thirties practically disappeared. With industry disorganized, trade unionism, or the effort to protect the standard of living by means of strikes, was out of question. As the prospect for immediate amelioration became dimmed by circumstances, an opportunity arrived for theories and philosophies of radical social reform. Once the sun with its life-giving heat has set, one begins to see the cold and distant stars. The uniqueness of the period of the forties in the labor movement proceeds not only from the large volume of star-gazing, but also from the accompanying fact that, for the first and only time in American history, the labor movement was dominated by men and women from the educated class, the "intellectuals," who thus served in the capacity of expert astrologers. And there was no lack of stars in the heaven of social reform to occupy both intellectual and wage earner. First, there was the efficiency scheme of the followers of Charles Fourier, the French socialist, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the Associationists. Theirs was a proposal aiming directly to meet the issue of the prevailing industrial disorganization and wasteful competition. Albert Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and the Brook Farm enthusiasts and "Associationists" of the forties, made famous by their intimate association with Ralph Waldo Emerson, had much in common with the present-day efficiency engineers. This "old" efficiency of theirs, like the new one, was chiefly concerned with increasing the production of wealth through the application of the "natural" laws of human nature. With the enormous increase in production to be brought about by "Fourierism" and "Association," the question of justice in distribution was relegated to a secondary place. Where they differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they believed efficiency would be attained if only the human instincts or "passions" were given free play, while the efficiency engineers of today trust less to unguided instinct and more to "scientific management" of human "passions." Midway between trade unionism and the simon-pure, idealistic reform philosophies stood producers' and consumers' cooperation. It had the merit of being a practical program most suitable to a time of depression, while on its spiritual side it did not fail to satisfy the loftiest intellectual. It was the resultant of the two most potent forces which acted upon the movement of the forties, the pressure of an inadequate income of the wage earner and the influence of the intellectuals. During no other period has there been, relatively speaking, so much effort along that line. Although, as we shall see, the eighties were properly the era of producers' cooperation on a large scale, the self-governing workshop had always been familiar to the American labor movement. The earliest attempt, as far as we have knowledge, occurred in Philadelphia in 1791, when the house carpenters out on strike offered by way of retaliation against their employers to undertake contracts at 25 percent less than the price charged by the masters. Fourteen years later, in 1806, the journeymen cordwainers of the same city, following their conviction in court on the charge of conspiracy brought in by their masters, opened up a cooperative shoe warehouse and store. As a rule the workingmen took up productive cooperation when they had failed in strikes. In 1836 many of the trade societies began to lose their strikes and turned to cooperation. The cordwainers working on ladies' shoes entered upon a strike for higher wages in March 1836, and opened three months later a "manufactory" or a warehouse of their own. The handloom weavers in two of the suburbs of Philadelphia started cooperative associations at the same time. At the end of 1836 the hand-loom weavers of Philadelphia proper had two cooperative shops and were planning to open a third. In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the journeymen cordwainers opened a shop after an unsuccessful strike early in 1836; likewise the tailors of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville. In New York the carpenters had done so already in 1833, and the painters of New York and Brooklyn opened their shops in 1837. Before long the spirit became so contagious that the Trades' Union of Philadelphia, the city federation of trade societies, was obliged to take notice. Early in 1837 a conference of about 200 delegates requested each trade society to submit estimates for a shop to employ ten members. However, further steps were prevented by the financial panic and business depression. The forties witnessed several similar attempts. When the iron molders of Cincinnati failed to win a strike in the autumn of 1847, a few of their number collected what funds they could and organized a sort of joint-stock company which they called "The Journeymen Molders' Union Foundry." Two local philanthropists erected their buildings. In Pittsburgh a group of puddlers tried to raise money by selling stock to anyone who wished to take an interest in their cooperative venture. The cooperative ventures multiplied in 1850 and 1851, following a widespread failure of strikes and were entered upon with particular readiness by the German immigrants. Among the Germans was an attitude towards producers' cooperation, based more nearly on general principles than the practical exigencies of a strike. Fresh from the scenes of revolutions in Europe, they were more given to dreams about reconstructing society and more trustful in the honesty and integrity of their leaders. The cooperative movement among the Germans was identified with the name of Wilhelm Weitling, the well-known German communist, who settled in America about 1850. This movement centered in and around New York. The cooperative principle met with success among the English-speaking people only outside the larger cities. In Buffalo, after an unsuccessful strike, the tailors formed an association with a membership of 108 and in October 1850, were able to give employment to 80 of that number. Again, following an unsuccessful Pittsburgh strike of iron founders in 1849, about a dozen of the strikers went to Wheeling, Virginia, each investing $3000, and opened a cooperative foundry shop. Two other foundries were opened on a similar basis in Stetsonville, Ohio, and Sharon, Pennsylvania. These associations of iron founders, however, might better be called association of small capitalists or master-workmen. During the forties, consumers' or distributive cooperation was also given a trial. The early history of consumers' cooperation is but fragmentary and, so far as we know, the first cooperative attempt which had for its exclusive aim "competence to purchaser" was made in Philadelphia early in 1829. A store was established on North Fifth Street, which sold goods at wholesale prices to members, who paid twenty cents a month for its privileges. In 1831 distributive cooperation was much discussed in Boston by a "New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other Working Men." A half dozen cooperative attempts are mentioned in the Cooperator, published in Utica in 1832, but only in the case of the journeymen cordwainers of Lynn do we discover an undertaking which can with certainty be considered as an effort to achieve distributive cooperation. Several germs of cooperative effort are found between 1833 and 1845, but all that is known about them is that their promoters sought to effect a saving by the purchase of goods in large quantities which were then broken up and distributed at a slight advance above original cost in order to meet expenses. The managers were unpaid, the members' interest in the business was not maintained, and the stores soon failed, or passed into the possession of private owners. It was the depression of 1846-1849 which supplied the movement for distributive cooperation with the needed stimulus, especially in New England. Although the matter was discussed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois, yet in none of the industrial centers of these States, except perhaps in New York, was it put into successful operation. In New England, however, the conditions were exceptionally favorable. A strike movement for higher wages during a partial industrial revival of 1843-1844 had failed completely. This failure, added to the fact that women and girls were employed under very unsatisfactory conditions, strengthened the interest of humanitarians in the laboring people and especially in cooperation as a possible means of alleviating their distress. Under the stimulus of these agitations, the New England Protective Union was formed in 1845. Until 1849, however, it bore the name of the Working Men's Protective Union. As often happens, prosperity brought disunion and, in 1853, a schism occurred in the organization due to personal differences. The seceders formed a separate organization known as the American Protective Union. The Working Men's Protective Union embodied a larger conception of the cooperative idea than had been expressed before. The important thought was that an economy of a few dollars a year in the purchase of commodities was a poor way out of labor difficulties, but was valuable only as a preparation for something better. Though the resources of these laborers were small, they began the work with great hopes. This business, starting so unpretentiously, assumed larger and increasing proportions until in October, 1852, the Union embraced 403 divisions of which 167 reported a capital of $241,712 and 165 of these announced annual sales amounting to $1,696,825. Though the schism of 1853, mentioned above, weakened the body, the agent of the American Protective Union claimed for the divisions comprising it sales aggregating in value over nine and one-fourth millions dollars in the seven years ending in 1859. It is not possible to tell what might have been the outcome of this cooperative movement had the peaceful development of the country remained uninterrupted. As it happened, the disturbed era of the Civil War witnessed the near annihilation of all workingmen's cooperation. It is not difficult to see the causes which led to the destruction of the still tender plant. Men left their homes for the battle field, foreigners poured into New England towns and replaced the Americans in the shops, while share-holders frequently became frightened at the state of trade and gladly saw the entire cooperative enterprise pass into the hands of the storekeeper. This first American cooperative movement on a large scale resembled the British movement in many respects, namely open membership, equal voting by members irrespective of number of shares, cash sales and federation of societies for wholesale purchases, but differed in that goods were sold to members nearly at cost rather than at the market price. Dr. James Ford in his _Cooperation in New England, Urban and Rural_,[8] describes two survivals from this period, the Central Union Association of New Bedford, Massachusetts, founded in 1848, and the Acushnet Cooperative Association, also of New Bedford, which began business in 1849. But the most characteristic labor movement of the forties was a resurgence of the old Agrarianism of the twenties. Skidmore's "equal division" of all property appealed to the workingmen of New York because it seemed to be based on equality of opportunity. One of Skidmore's temporary associates, a Welshman by the name of George Henry Evans, drew from him an inspiration for a new kind of agrarianism to which few could object. This new doctrine was a true Agrarianism, since it followed in the steps of the original "Agrarians," the brothers Gracchi in ancient Rome. Like the Gracchi, Evans centered his plan around the "ager publicum"--the vast American public domain. Evans began his agitation about 1844. Man's right to life, according to Evans, logically implied his right to use the materials of nature necessary for being. For practical reasons he would not interfere with natural resources which have already passed under private ownership. Evans proposed instead that Congress give each would-be settler land for a homestead free of charge. As late as 1852 debaters in Congress pointed out that in the preceding sixty years only 100,000,000 acres of the public lands had been sold and that 1,400,000,000 acres still remained at the disposal of the government. Estimates of the required time to dispose of this residuum at the same rate of sale varied from 400 or 500 to 900 years. With the exaggerated views prevalent, it is no wonder that Evans believed that the right of the individual to as much land as his right to live calls for would remain a living right for as long a period in the future as a practical statesman may be required to take into account. The consequences of free homesteads were not hard to picture. The landless wage earners could be furnished transportation and an outfit, for the money spent for poor relief would be more profitably expended in sending the poor to the land. Private societies and trade unions, when laborers were too numerous, could aid in transporting the surplus to the waiting homesteads and towns that would grow up. With the immobility of labor thus offering no serious obstacle to the execution of the plan, the wage earners of the East would have the option of continuing to work for wages or of taking up their share of the vacant lands. Moreover, mechanics could set up as independent producers in the new settlements. Enough at least would go West to force employers to offer better wages and shorter hours. Those unable to meet the expenses of moving would profit by higher wages at home. An equal opportunity to go on land would benefit both pioneer and stay-at-home. But Evans would go still further in assuring equality of opportunity. He would make the individual's right to the resources of nature safe against the creditors through a law exempting homesteads from attachment for debts and even against himself by making the homestead inalienable. Moreover to assure that right to the American people _in perpetuo_ he would prohibit future disposal of the public land in large blocks to moneyed purchasers as practiced by the government heretofore. Thus the program of the new agrarianism: free homesteads, homestead exemption, and land limitation. Evans had a plan of political action, which was as unique as his economic program. His previous political experiences with the New York Workingmen's party had taught him that a minority party could not hope to win by its own votes and that the politicians cared more for offices than for measures. They would endorse any measure which was supported by voters who held the balance of power. His plan of action was, therefore, to ask all candidates to pledge their support to his measures. In exchange for such a pledge, the candidates would receive the votes of the workingmen. In case neither candidate would sign the pledge, it might be necessary to nominate an independent as a warning to future candidates; but not as an indication of a new party organization. Evans' ideas quickly won the adherence of the few labor papers then existing. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune endorsed the homestead movement as early as 1845. The next five years witnessed a remarkable spread of the ideas of the free homestead movement in the press of the country. It was estimated in 1845 that 2000 papers were published in the United States and that in 1850, 600 of these supported land reform. Petitions and memorials having proved of little avail, the land reformers tried Evans' pet plan of bargaining votes for the support of their principles. Tammany was quick to start the bidding. In May, 1851, a mass-meeting was held at Tammany Hall "of all those in favor of land and other industrial reform, to be made elements in the Presidential contest of 1852." A platform was adopted which proclaimed man's right to the soil and urged that freedom of the public lands be endorsed by the Democratic party. Senator Isaac A. Walker of Wisconsin was nominated as the candidate of the party for President. For a while the professional politician triumphed over the too trusting workingman reformer. But the cause found strong allies in the other classes of the American community. From the poor whites of the upland region of the South came a similar demand formulated by the Tennessee tailor, Andrew Johnson, later President of the United States, who introduced his first homestead bill in 1845. From the Western pioneers and settlers came the demand for increased population and development of resources, leading both to homesteads for settlers and land grants for railways. The opposition came from manufacturers and landowners of the East and from the Southern slave owners. The West and East finally combined and the policy of the West prevailed, but not before the South had seceded from the Union. Not the entire reform was accepted. The Western spirit dominated. The homestead law, as finally adopted in 1862, granted one hundred and sixty acres as a free gift to every settler. But the same Congress launched upon a policy of extensive land grants to railways. The homestead legislation doubtless prevented great estates similar to those which sprang of a different policy of the Australian colonies, but did not carry out the broad principles of inalienability and land limitation of the original Agrarians. Their principle of homestead exemption, however, is now almost universally adopted. Thus the homestead agitation begun by Evans and a group of wage earners and farmers in 1844 was carried to victory, though to an incomplete victory. It contained a fruitful lesson to labor in politics. The vested interests in the East were seen ultimately to capitulate before a popular movement which at no time aspired toward political power and office, but, concentrating on one issue, endeavored instead to permeate with its ideas the public opinion of the country at large. Of all the "isms" so prevalent during the forties, "Agrarianism" alone came close to modern socialism, as it alone advocated class struggle and carried it into the political field, although, owing to the peculiarity of the American party structure, it urged a policy of "reward your friends, and punish your enemies" rather than an out and out labor party. It is noteworthy that of all social reform movements of the forties Agrarianism alone was not initiated by the intellectuals. On the other hand, another movement for legislative reform, namely the shorter-hour movement for women and children working in the mills and factories, was entirely managed by humanitarians. Its philosophy was the furthest removed from the class struggle idea. For only a short year or two did prosperity show itself from behind the clouds to cause a mushroom growth of trade unions, once in 1850-1851 and again in 1853-1854, following the gold discoveries in California. During these few years unionism disentangled itself from humanitarianism and cooperationism and came out in its wholly modern form of restrictive craft unionism, only to be again suppressed by the business depressions that preceded and followed the panic of 1857. Considered as a whole, however, the period of the forties and fifties was the zenith in American history of theories of social reform, of "panaceas," of humanitarianism. The trade union wave of the fifties was so short lived and the trade unionists were so preoccupied with the pressing need of advancing their wages to keep pace with the soaring prices caused by the influx of California gold, that we miss the tendency which was so strong in the thirties to reach out for a wider basis of labor organization in city trades' unions, and ultimately in a National Trades' Union. On the other hand, the fifties foreshadowed a new form of expansion of labor organization--the joining together in a nation-wide organization of all local unions of one trade. The printers[9] organized nationally in 1850, the locomotive engineers and the hat-finishers in 1854; and the iron molders, and the machinists and blacksmiths in 1859; in addition there were at least a half dozen less successful attempts in other trades. FOOTNOTES: [2] See below, 147-148. [3] See below, 148-149. [4] See below, 270-272. [5] The workingmen felt that they required leisure to be able to exercise their rights of citizens. [6] The ship carpenters had been similarly defeated in 1832. [7] For a detailed discussion of these trials see below, 149-152. [8] Published in 1916 by the Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 16-18. [9] The printers had organized nationally for the first time in 1836, but the organization lasted less than two years; likewise the cordwainers or shoemakers. But we must keep in mind that what constituted national organization in the thirties would pass only for regional or sectional organization in later years. CHAPTER 2 THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 The few national trade unions which were formed at the close of the fifties did not constitute by themselves a labor movement. It needed the industrial prosperity caused by the price inflation of the Civil War time to bring forth again a mass movement of labor. We shall say little of labor's attitude towards the question of war and peace before the War had started. Like many other citizens of the North and the Border States the handful of organized workers favored a compromise. They held a labor convention in Philadelphia, in which a great labor leader of the sixties, William H. Sylvis, President of the International Molders' Union, took a prominent part and pronounced in favor of the compromise solution advanced by Congressman Crittenden of Kentucky. But no sooner had Fort Sumter been fired upon by the secessionists than labor rallied to the support of the Federal Union. Entire local unions enlisted at the call of President Lincoln, and Sylvis himself assisted in recruiting a company composed of molders. The first effect of the War was a paralysis of business and an increase of unemployment. The existing labor organizations nearly all went to the wall. The period of industrial stagnation, however, lasted only until the middle of 1862. The legal tender acts of 1862 and 1863 authorized the issue of paper currency of "greenbacks" to the amount of $1,050,000,000, and immediately prices began to soar. For the next sixteen years, namely until 1879, when the government resumed the redemption of greenbacks in gold, prices of commodities and labor expressed in terms of paper money showed varying degrees of inflation; hence the term "greenback" period. During the War the advance in prices was due in part to the extraordinary demand by the government for the supply of the army and, of course, to speculation. In July 1863, retail prices were 43 percent above those of 1860 and wages only 12 percent above; in July 1864, retail prices rose to 70 percent and wages to 30 percent above 1860; and in July 1865, prices rose to 76 percent and wages only to 50 percent above the level of 1860. The unequal pace of the price movement drove labor to organize along trade-union lines. The order observed in the thirties was again followed out. First came a flock of local trade unions; these soon combined in city centrals--or as they came to be called, trades' assemblies--paralleling the trades' union of the thirties; and lastly, came an attempt to federate the several trades' assemblies into an International Industrial Assembly of North America. Local trade unions were organized literally in every trade beginning in the second half of 1862. The first trades' assembly was formed in Rochester, New York, in March 1863; and before long there was one in every town of importance. The International Industrial Assembly was attempted in 1864, but failed to live up to the expectations: The time had passed for a national federation of city centrals. As in the thirties the spread of unionism over the breadth of the land called out as a counterpart a widespread movement of employers' associations. The latter differed, however, from their predecessors in the thirties in that they made little use of the courts in their fight against the unions. The growth of the national trade unions was a true index of the condition of business. Four were organized in 1864 as compared to two organized in 1863, none in 1862, and one in 1861. During 1865, which marked the height of the intense business activity, six more national unions were organized. In 1866 industry entered upon a period of depression, which reached its lowest depth in 1867 and continued until 1869. Accordingly, not a single national union was organized in 1866 and only one in 1867. In 1868 two new national labor unions were organized. In 1869 two more unions were formed--a total of seven for the four depressed years, compared with ten in the preceding two prosperous years. In the summer of 1870 business became good and remained good for approximately three years. Nine new national unions appeared in these three years. These same years are marked also by a growth of the unions previously organized. For instance, the machinists and blacksmiths, with only 1500 members in 1870, had 18,000 in 1873. Other unions showed similar gains. An estimate of the total trade union membership at any one time (in view of the total lack of reliable statistics) would be extremely hazardous. The New York _Herald_ estimated it in August 1869, to be about 170,000. A labor leader claimed at the same time that the total was as high as 600,000. Probably 300,000 would be a conservative estimate for the time immediately preceding the panic of 1873. Although the strength of labor was really the strength of the national trade unions, especially during the depression of the later sixties, far greater attention was attracted outside as well as inside the labor movement by the National Labor Union, a loosely built federation of national trade unions, city trades' assemblies, local trade unions, and reform organizations of various descriptions, from philosophical anarchists to socialists and woman suffragists. The National Labor Union did not excel in practical activity, but it formed an accurate mirror of the aspirations and ideals of the American mechanics of the time of the Civil War and after. During its six years' existence it ran the gamut of all important issues which agitated the labor movement of the time. The National Labor Union came together in its first convention in 1866. The most pressing problem of the day was unemployment due to the return of the demobilized soldiers and the shutting down of war industries. The convention centered on the demand to reduce the working day to eight hours. But eight hours had by that time come to signify more than a means to increase employment. The eight-hour movement drew its inspiration from an economic theory advanced by a self-taught Boston machinist, Ira Steward. And so naturally did this theory flow from the usual premises in the thinking of the American workman that once formulated by Steward it may be said to have become an official theory of the labor movement. Steward's doctrine is well expressed by a couplet which was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that period: "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Steward believed that the amount of wages is determined by no other factor than the worker's standard of living. He held that wages cannot fall below the standard of living not because, as the classical economists said, it would cause late marriages and a reduction in the supply of labor, but solely because the wage earner will refuse to work for less than enough to maintain his standard of living. Steward possessed such abundant faith in this purely psychological check on the employer that he made it the cornerstone of his theory of social progress. Raise the worker's standard of living, he said, and the employer will be immediately forced to raise wages; no more can wages fall below the level of the worker's standard of living than New England can be ruled against her will. The lever for raising the standard of living was the eight-hour day. Increase the worker's leisure and you will increase his wants; increase his wants and you will immediately raise his wages. Although he occasionally tried to soften his doctrine by the argument that a shorter work-day not only does not decrease but may actually increase output, his was a distinctly revolutionary doctrine; he aimed at the total abolition of profits through their absorption into wages. But the instrument was nothing more radical than a progressive universal shortening the hours. So much for the general policy. To bring it to pass two alternatives were possible: trade unionism or legislation. Steward chose the latter as the more hopeful and speedy one. Steward knew that appeals to the humanity of the employers had largely failed; efforts to secure the reform by cooperation had failed; the early trade unions had failed; and there seemed to be no recourse left now but to accomplish the reduction of hours by legislative enactment. In 1866 Steward organized the Grand Eight-Hour League of Massachusetts as a special propagandist organization of the eight-hour philosophy. The League was a secret organization with pass words and obligations, intended as the central organization of a chain of subordinate leagues in the State, afterwards to be created. Of a total of about eighty local leagues in existence from 1865 to 1877, about twenty were in Massachusetts, eight elsewhere in New England, at least twenty-five in Michigan, four or five in Pennsylvania, about seven in Illinois, as many in Wisconsin, and smaller numbers in Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, and California. Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Pennsylvania had each a Grand Eight-Hour League. Practically all of these organizations disappeared soon after the panic of 1873. The National Labor Union centered on the passage of an eight-hour law for employes of the Federal government. It was believed, perhaps not without some justice, that the effect of such law would eventually lead to the introduction of the same standard in private employment--not indeed through the operation of the law of supply and demand, for it was realized that this would be practically negligible, but rather through its contagious effect on the minds of employes and even employers. It will be recalled that, at the time of the ten-hour agitation of the thirties, the Federal government had lagged about five years behind private employers in granting the demanded concession. That in the sixties the workingmen chose government employment as the entering wedge shows a measure of political self-confidence which the preceding generation of workingmen lacked. The first bill in Congress was introduced by Senator Gratz Brown of Missouri in March 1866. In the summer a delegation from the National Labor Union was received by President Andrew Johnson. The President pointed to his past record favorable to the workingmen but refrained from any definite promises. Finally, an eight-hour bill for government employes was passed by the House in March 1867, and by the Senate in June 1868. On June 29, 1868, President Johnson signed it and it went into effect immediately. The result of the eight-hour law was not all that the friends of the bill hoped. The various officials in charge of government work put their own interpretations upon it and there resulted much diversity in its observance, and consequently great dissatisfaction. There seemed to be no clear understanding as to the intent of Congress in enacting the law. Some held that the reduction in working hours must of necessity bring with it a corresponding reduction in wages. The officials' view of the situation was given by Secretary Gideon Wells. He pointed out that Congress, by reducing the hours of labor in government work, had forced upon the department of the Navy the employment of a larger number of men in order to accomplish the necessary work; and that at the same time Congress had reduced the appropriation for that department. This had rendered unavoidable a twenty percent reduction in wages paid employes in the Navy Yard. Such a state of uncertainty continued four years longer. At last on May 13, 1872, President Grant prohibited by proclamation any wage reductions in the execution of the law. On May 18, 1872, Congress passed a law for the restitution of back pay. The expectations of the workingmen that the Federal law would blaze the way for the eight-hour system in private employment failed to materialize. The depression during the seventies took up all the impetus in that direction which the law may have generated. Even as far as government work is concerned forty years had to elapse before its application could be rounded out by extending it to contract work done for the government by private employers. We have dealt at length with this subject because it marked an important landmark. It demonstrated to the wage earners that, provided they concentrated on a modest object and kept up a steady pressure, their prospects for success were not entirely hopeless, hard as the road may seem to travel. The other and far more ambitious object of the workingman of the sixties, that of enacting general eight-hour laws in the several States, at first appeared to be within easy reach--so yielding political parties and State legislatures seemed to be to the demands of the organized workmen. Yet before long these successes proved to be entirely illusory. The year 1867 was the banner year for such State legislation. Eight-hour laws were passed in Illinois, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Missouri, and New York. California passed such a law in 1868. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, and Minnesota bills were introduced but were defeated. Two common features characterized these laws, whether enacted or merely proposed to the legislatures. There were none which did not permit of longer hours than those named in the law, provided they were so specified in the contract. A contract requiring ten or more hours a day was perfectly legal. The eight-hour day was the legal day only "when the contract was silent on the subject or where there is no express contract to the contrary," as stated in the Wisconsin law. But the greatest weakness was a lack of a provision for enforcement. New York's experience is typical and characteristic. When the workingmen appealed to Governor Fenton to enforce the law, he replied that the act had received his official signature and he felt that it "would be an unwarrantable assumption" on his part to take any step requiring its enforcement. "Every law," he said, "was obligatory by its own nature, and could derive no additional force from any further act of his." In Massachusetts, however, the workingmen succeeded after hard and protracted labor in obtaining an enforceable ten-hour law for women--the first effective law of its kind passed in any American State. This law, which was passed in 1874, provides that "no minor under the age of eighteen years, and no woman over that age" shall be employed more than ten hours in one day or sixty hours in any one week in any manufacturing establishment in the State. The penalty for each violation was fixed at fifty dollars. The repeated disappointments with politics and legislation led in the early seventies to a revival of faith in trade unionism. Even in the early sixties we find not a few unions, national and local, limiting their hours by agreement with employers. The national unions, however, for the most part left the matter to the local unions for settlement as their strength or local conditions might dictate. In some cases the local unions were advised to accept a reduction of wages in order to secure the system, showing faith in Steward's theory that such reduction could not be permanent. The movement to establish the eight-hour day through trade unionism reached its climax in the summer of 1872, when business prosperity was at its height. This year witnessed in New York City a general eight-hour strike. However, it succeeded in only a few trades, and even there the gain was only temporary, since it was lost during the years of depression which followed the financial panic of 1873. To come back to the National Labor Union. At the second convention in 1867 the enthusiasm was transferred from eight-hour laws to the bizarre social reform philosophy known as "greenbackism." "Greenbackism" was, in substance, a plan to give the man without capital an equal opportunity in business with his rich competitor. It meant taking away from bankers and middlemen their control over credit and thereby furnishing credit and capital through the aid of the government to the producers of physical products. On its face greenbackism was a program of currency reform and derived its name from the so-called "greenback," the paper money issued during the Civil War. But it was more than currency reform--it was industrial democracy. "Greenbackism" was the American counterpart of the contemporary radicalism of Europe. Its program had much in common with that of Lassalle in Germany who would have the state lend its credit to cooperative associations of workingmen in the confident expectation that with such backing they would drive private capitalism out of existence by the competitive route. But greenbackism differed from the scheme of Lassalle in that it would utilize the government's enormous Civil War debt, instead of its taxing power, as a means of furnishing capital to labor. This was to be done by reducing the rate of interest on the government bonds to three percent and by making them convertible into legal tender currency and convertible back into bonds, at the will of the holder of either. In other words, the greenback currency, instead of being, as it was at the time, an irredeemable promise to pay in specie, would be redeemable in government bonds. On the other hand, if a government bondholder could secure slightly more than three percent by lending to a private borrower, he would return his bonds to the government, take out the corresponding amount in greenbacks and lend it to the producer on his private note or mortgage. This would involve, of course, the possible inflation of legal tender currency to the amount of outstanding bonds. But inflation was immaterial, since all prices would be affected alike and meanwhile the farmers, the workingmen, and their cooperative establishments would be able to secure capital at slightly more than three percent instead of the nine or twelve percent which they were compelled to pay at the bank. Thereby they would be placed on a competitive level with the middleman, and the wage earner would be assisted to escape the wage system into self-employment. Such was the curious doctrine which captured the leaders of the organized wage earners in 1867. The way had indeed been prepared for it in 1866, when the wage earners espoused producers' cooperation as the only solution. But, in the following year, 1867, they concluded that no system of combination or cooperation could secure to labor its natural rights as long as the credit system enabled non-producers to accumulate wealth faster than labor was able to add to the national wealth. Cooperation would follow "as a natural consequence," if producers could secure through legislation credit at a low rate of interest. The government was to extend to the producer "free capital" in addition to free land which he received with the Homestead Act. The producers' cooperation, which offered the occasion for the espousal of greenbackism, was itself preceded by a movement for consumers' cooperation. Following the upward sweep of prices, workmen had begun toward the end of 1862 to make definite preparations for distributive cooperation. They endeavored to cut off the profits of the middleman by establishing cooperative grocery stores, meat markets, and coal yards. The first substantial effort of this kind to attract wide attention was the formation in December 1862, of the Union Cooperative Association of Philadelphia, which opened a store. The prime mover and the financial secretary of this organization was Thomas Phillips, a shoemaker who came from England in 1852, fired with the principles of the Rochdale pioneers, that is, cash sales, dividends on purchases rather than on stock, and "one man, one vote." By 1866 the movement had extended until practically every important industrial town between Boston and San Francisco had some form of distributive cooperation. This was the high tide of the movement. Unfortunately, the condition of the country was unfavorable to these enterprises and they were destined to early collapse. The year 1865 witnessed disastrous business failures. The country was in an uncertain condition and at the end of the sixties the entire movement had died out. From 1866 to 1869 experiments in productive cooperation were made by practically all leading trades including the bakers, coach makers, collar makers, coal miners, shipwrights, machinists and blacksmiths, foundry workers, nailers, ship carpenters, and calkers, glass blowers, hatters, boiler makers, plumbers, iron rollers, tailors, printers, needle women, and molders. A large proportion of these attempts grew out of unsuccessful strikes. The most important undertakings were among the workers in iron, undoubtedly due in large measure to the indefatigable efforts of William H. Sylvis, the founder of the Iron Molders' International Union. At the close of 1869 members of the Iron Molders' International Union owned and operated many cooperative foundries chiefly in New York and Pennsylvania. The first of the foundries established at Troy in the early summer of 1866 was followed quickly by one in Albany and then during the next eighteen months by ten more--one each in Rochester, Chicago, Quincy, Louisville, Somerset, Pittsburgh, and two each in Troy and Cleveland. The original foundry at Troy was an immediate financial success and was hailed with joy by those who believed that under the name of cooperationists the baffled trade unionists might yet conquer. The New York _Sun_ congratulated the iron molders of Troy and declared that Sylvis had checkmated the association of stove manufacturers and, by the establishment of this cooperative foundry, had made the greatest contribution of the year to the labor cause. But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the others, show how far from a successful solution of the labor problem is productive cooperation. Although this "Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association" was planned with great deliberation and launched at a time when the regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed by strikes, and although it was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it failed as did the others in furnishing permanent relief to the workers as a class. At the end of the third year of this enterprise, the _American Workman_ published a sympathetic account of its progress unconsciously disclosing its fatal weakness, namely, the inevitable tendency of cooperators to adopt the capitalistic view. The writer of this account quotes from these cooperators to show that "the fewer the stockholders in the company the greater its success." A similar instance is furnished by the Cooperative Foundry Company of Rochester. This venture has also been a financial success, though a partial failure as a cooperative enterprise. When it was established in 1867 all employes were stockholders and profits were divided as follows: Twelve percent on capital and the balance in proportion to the earnings of the men. But the capitalist was stronger than the cooperative brother. Dividends on capital were advanced in a few years to seventeen and one-half percent, then to twenty-five, and finally the distribution of any part of the profits in proportion to wages was discontinued. Money was made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884 amounted to forty percent on the capital. At that time about one-fifth of the employes were stockholders. Also in this case cooperation did not prevent the usual conflict between employer and employe, as is shown in a strike of three and a half months' duration. It is interesting to notice that one of the strikers, a member of the Molders' Union, owned stock to the amount of $7000. The machinists, too, throughout this period took an active interest in cooperation. Their convention which met in October, 1865, appointed a committee to report on a plan of action to establish a cooperative shop under the auspices of the International Union. The plan failed of adoption, but of machinists' shops on the joint-stock plan there were a good many. Two other trades noted for their enthusiasm for cooperation at this time were the shoemakers and the coopers. The former, organized in the Order of St. Crispin, then the largest trade union in the country, advocated cooperation even when their success in strikes was at its height. "The present demand of the Crispin is steady employment and fair wages, but his future is self-employment" was one of their mottoes. During the seventies they repeatedly attempted to carry this motto into effect. The seventies also saw the beginning of the most successful single venture in productive cooperation ever undertaken in this country, namely, the eight cooperative cooperage shops in Minneapolis, which were established at varying intervals from 1874 to 1886. The coopers took care to enforce true cooperation by providing for equal holding of stock and for a division of ordinary profits and losses in proportion to wages. The cooper shops prospered, but already ten years later four out of the eight existing in 1886 had passed into private hands. In 1866 when the eight-hour demand was as yet uppermost, the National Labor Union resolved for an independent labor party. The espousal of greenbackism in 1867 only reenforced that resolution. The leaders realized only too well that neither the Republican nor Democratic party would voluntarily make an issue of a scheme purporting to assist the wage earner to become an independent producer. Accordingly, the history of the National Labor Union became largely the history of labor's first attempt to play a lone political hand on a national scale. Each annual session of the National Labor Union faithfully reaffirmed the decision to "cut loose" from the old parties. But such a vast undertaking demanded time. It was not until 1872 that the National Labor Union met as a political convention to nominate a national ticket. From the first the stars were inauspicious. Charges were made that political aspirants sought to control the convention in order to influence nominations by the Republican and Democratic parties. A "greenback" platform was adopted as a matter of course and the new party was christened the National Labor and Reform Party. On the first formal ballot for nomination for President, Judge David Davis of Illinois, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered. On the third ballot Davis was nominated. Governor J. Parker of New Jersey was nominated for Vice-President. At first Judge Davis accepted the nomination, but resigned after the Democrats had nominated Horace Greeley. The loss of the candidate spelled the death of the party. The National Labor Union itself had been only an empty shell since 1870, when the national trade unions, disaffected with the turn towards politics, withdrew. Now, its pet project a failure, it, too, broke up. In 1873, on the eve of the financial panic, the national trade unions attempted to reconstruct a national labor federation on a purely trade-union basis in the form of a National Industrial Congress. But the economic disaster of the panic nipped it in the bud just as it cut off the life of the overwhelming majority of the existing labor organizations. Another attempt to get together on a national basis was made in the National Labor Congress at Pittsburgh in 1876. But those who responded were not interested in trade unionism and, mirroring the prevailing labor sentiment during the long years of depressions, had only politics on their mind, greenback or socialist. As neither greenbacker nor socialist would meet the other half-way, the attempt naturally came to naught. Greenbackism was popular with the working people during the depressed seventies because it now meant to them primarily currency inflation and a rise of prices and, consequently, industrial prosperity--not the phantastic scheme of the National Labor Union. Yet in the Presidential election of 1876 the Greenback party candidate, Peter Cooper, the well known manufacturer and philanthropist, drew only a poor 100,000, which came practically from the rural districts only. It was not until the great strikes of 1877 had brought in their train a political labor upheaval that the greenback movement assumed a formidable form. The strikes of 1877, which on account of the wide area affected, the degree of violence displayed, and the amount of life and property lost, impressed contemporaries as being nothing short of social revolution, were precipitated by a general ten percent reduction in wages on the three trunk lines running West, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the New York Central, in June and July 1877. This reduction came on top of an earlier ten percent reduction after the panic. The railway men were practically unorganized so that the steadying influence of previous organization was totally lacking in the critical situation of unrest which the newly announced wage reduction created. One must take also into account that in the four terrible years which elapsed since the panic, America had developed a new type of a man--the tramp--who naturally gravitated towards places where trouble was expected. The first outbreak occurred at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on July 17, the day after the ten percent reduction had gone into effect. The strike spread like wildfire over the adjacent sections of the Baltimore & Ohio road, the strikers assuming absolute control at many points. The militia was either unwilling or powerless to cope with the violence. In Baltimore, where in the interest of public safety all the freight trains had stopped running, two companies of militia were beleaguered by a mob to prevent their being dispatched to Cumberland, where the strikers were in control. Order was restored only when Federal troops arrived. But these occurrences fade into insignificance when compared with the destructive effects of the strike on the Pennsylvania in and around Pittsburgh. The situation there was aggravated by a hatred of the Pennsylvania railway corporation shared by nearly all residents on the ground of an alleged rate discrimination against the city. The Pittsburgh militia fraternized with the strikers, and when 600 troops which arrived from Philadelphia attempted to restore order and killed about twenty rioters, they were besieged in a roundhouse by a furious mob. In the battle the railway yards were set on fire. Damages amounting to about $5,000,000 were caused. The besieged militia men finally gained egress and retreated fighting rear-guard actions. At last order was restored by patrols of citizens. The strike spread also to the Erie railway and caused disturbances in several places, but not nearly of the same serious nature as on the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania. The other places to which the strike spread were Toledo, Louisville, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco. The strikes failed in every case but their moral effect was enormous. The general public still retained a fresh memory of the Commune of Paris of 1871 and feared for the foundations of the established order. The wage earners, on the other hand, felt that the strikers had not been fairly dealt with. It was on this intense labor discontent that the greenback agitation fed and grew. Whereas in 1876 the greenback labor vote was negligible, notwithstanding the exhortations by many of the former trade union leaders who turned greenback agitators, now, following the great strikes, greenbackism became primarily a labor movement. Local Greenback-Labor parties were being organized everywhere and a national Greenback-Labor party was not far behind in forming. The continued industrial depression was a decisive factor, the winter of 1877-1878 marking perhaps the point of its greatest intensity. Naturally the greenback movement was growing apace. One of the notable successes in the spring of 1878 was the election of Terence V. Powderly, later Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor, as mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Congressional election in the autumn of 1878 marked the zenith of the movement. The aggregate greenback vote cast in the election exceeded a million, and fourteen Representatives were sent to Congress. In New England the movement was strong enough to poll almost a third of the total vote in Maine, over 8 percent of the total vote in both Connecticut and New Hampshire, and from 4 to 6 percent, in the other States. In Maine the greenbackers elected 32 members of the upper house and 151 members of the lower house and one Congressman, Thompson Murch of Rochland, who was secretary of the National Granite Cutters' Union. However, the bulk of the vote in that State was obviously agricultural. In Massachusetts, the situation was dominated by General Benjamin F. Butler, lifelong Republican politician, who had succeeded in getting the Democratic nomination for governor and was endorsed by the Greenback convention. He received a large vote but was defeated for office. But just as the Greenback-Labor movement was assuming promising proportions a change for the better in the industrial situation cut under the very roots of its existence. In addition, one month after the election of 1878, its principal issue disappeared. January 1, 1879, was the date fixed by the act for resumption of redemption of greenbacks in gold and on December 17, 1878, the premium on gold disappeared. From that day on, the greenback became a dead issue. Another factor of great importance was the large increase in the volume of the currency. In 1881 the currency, which had averaged about $725,000,000 for the years 1876-1878, reached over $1,111,000,000. Under these conditions, all that remained available to the platform-makers and propagandists of the party was their opposition to the so-called "monopolistic" national banks with their control over currency and to the refunding of the bonded debt of the government. The disappearance of the financial issue snapped the threads which had held together the farmer and the wage-worker. So long as depression continued, the issue was financial and the two had, as they thought, a common enemy--the banker. The financial issue once settled, or at least suspended, the object of the attack by labor became the employer, and that of the attack by the farmer--the railway corporation and the warehouse man. Prosperity had mitigated the grievances of both classes, but while the farmer still had a great deal to expect from politics in the form of state regulation of railway rates, the wage earners' struggle now turned entirely economic and not political. In California, as in the Eastern industrial States, the railway strikes of 1877 precipitated a political movement. California had retained gold as currency throughout the entire period of paper money, and the labor movement at no time had accepted the greenback platform. The political issue after 1877 was racial, not financial, and the weapon was not merely the ballot, but also "direct action"--violence. The anti-Chinese agitation in California, culminating as it did in the Exclusion Law passed by Congress in 1882, was doubtless the most important single factor in the history of American labor, for without it the entire country might have been overrun by Mongolian labor and the labor movement might have become a conflict of races instead of one of classes.[10] The seventies witnessed another of those recurring attempts of consumers' cooperation already noticed in the forties and sixties. This time the movement was organized by the "Sovereigns of Industry," a secret order, founded at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1874 by one William H. Earle. The spirit of the Order was entirely peaceful and unobtrusive as expressed in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Purposes which reads as follows: "The Order of the Sovereigns of Industry is an association of the industrial or laboring classes, without regard to race, sex, color, nationality, or occupation; not founded for the purpose of waging any war of aggression upon any other class, or for fostering any antagonism of labor against capital, or of arraying the poor against the rich; but for mutual assistance in self-improvement and self-protection." The scheme of organization called for a local council including members from the town or district, a state council, comprising representatives from the local councils and a National Council in which the States were represented. The president of the National Council was the founder of the Order, William H. Earle. Success accompanied the efforts of the promoters of the Sovereigns of Industry for a few years. The total membership in 1875-1876 was 40,000, of whom seventy-five percent were in New England and forty-three percent in Massachusetts. Though the Order extended into other States and even reached the territories, its chief strength always remained in New England and the Middle States. During the last period of its existence a national organ was published at Washington, but the Order does not appear to have gained a foothold in any of the more Southern sections of the country. In 1875, 101 local councils reported as having some method of supplying members with goods, 46 of whom operated stores. The largest store belonged to the council at Springfield, Massachusetts, which in 1875 built the "Sovereign Block" at a cost of $35,500. In his address at the fourth annual session in Washington, President Earle stated that the store in Springfield led all the others with sales amounting to $119,000 for the preceding year. About one-half of the councils failed to report, but at the Congress of 1876 President Earle estimated the annual trade at $3,000,000. Much enthusiasm accompanied the progress of the movement. The hall in "Sovereign Block" at Springfield was dedicated amid such jubilation as marks an event thought to be the forerunner of a new era. There is indeed a certain pathos in the high hopes expressed in the Address of Dedication by President Earle, for, though the Order continued to thrive until 1878, shortly after a decline began, and dissolution was its fate in 1880. The failure of the Sovereigns marked the latest attempt on a large scale[11] to inoculate the American workingmen with the sort of cooperative spirit which proved so successful in England.[12] This failure of distributive cooperation to gain the strong and lasting foothold in this country that it has abroad has been accounted for in various ways by different writers. Great emphasis has been laid upon the lack of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject of cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and wage-earning classes, the lack of business ability among wage earners, and the altogether too frequent venality and corruption among cooperators. Probably the lack of adequate leadership has played as important a part as any. It is peculiar to America that the wage earner of exceptional ability can easily find a way for escaping into the class of independent producers or even employers of labor. The American trade union movement has suffered much less from this difficulty. The trade unions are fighting organizations; they demand the sort of leader who is of a combative spirit, who possesses the organizing ability and the "personal magnetism" to keep his men in line; and for this kind of ability the business world offers no particular demand. On the other hand, the qualifications which go to make a successful manager of a cooperative store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail and business punctuality always will be in great demand in the business world. Hence, when no barrier is interposed in the form of preempted opportunities or class bias, the exceptional workingman who possesses these qualifications will likely desert his class and set up in business for himself. In England, fortunately for the cooperative movement, such an escape is very difficult. The failure of consumers' cooperation in America was helped also by two other peculiarly American conditions. European economists, when speaking of the working class, assume generally that it is fixed in residence and contrast it with capital, which they say is fluid as between city and city and even between country and country. American labor, however, native as well as immigrant, is probably more mobile than capital; for, tradition and habit which keep the great majority of European wage earners in the place where their fathers and forefathers had lived before them are generally absent in this country, except perhaps in parts of New England and the South. It is therefore natural that the cooperative spirit, which after all is but an enlarged and more generalized form of the old spirit of neighborliness and mutual trust, should have failed to develop to its full strength in America. Another condition fatal to the development of the cooperative spirit is the racial heterogeneity of the American wage-earning class, which separates it into mutually isolated groups even as the social classes of England and Scotland are separated by class spirit. As a result, we find a want of mutual trust which depends so much on "consciousness of kind." This is further aggravated by competition and a continuous displacement in industry of nationalities of a high standard of living by those of a lower one. This conflict of nationalities, which lies also at the root of the closed shop policy of many of the American trade unions, is probably the most effective carrier that there is to a widespread growth of the cooperative spirit among American wage earners. This is further hindered by other national characteristics which more or less pervade all classes of society, namely, the traditional individualism--the heritage of puritanism and the pioneer days, and the emphasis upon earning capacity with a corresponding aversion to thrift. FOOTNOTES: [10] The National Labor Union came out against Chinese immigration in 1869, when the issue was brought home to the Eastern wage earners following the importation by a shoe manufacturer in North Adams, Massachusetts, of Chinese strike breakers. [11] There were many cooperative stores in the eighties and a concerted effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempted as late as 1919 under the pressure of the soaring cost of living. [12] Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its most ardent champions could have desired. Such is the picture presented by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the following glowing terms: "The organization of industry by Associations of Consumers offers, as far as it goes, a genuine alternative to capitalist ownership, because it supersedes the capitalist power, whether individual or joint-stock, alike in the control of the instruments of production by which the community lives, and in the absorption of the profits, which otherwise support a capitalist class. The ownership and control are vested in, and the profits are distributed among, the whole community of consumers, irrespective of their industrial wealth. Through the device of dividend on purchases the Cooperative Movement maintains an open democracy, through the control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist traders and speculators. By this same device on purchases, and the automatic accumulation of part of the profit in the capital of each society and in that of the Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to the personal wealth of the manual working class, and has, alike in Great Britain, and in other countries, afforded both a valuable financial reserve to the wage earners against all emergencies and an instrument for their elevation from the penury to which competition is always depressing them. By making possible the upgrowth of great business enterprises in working class hands, the Cooperative Movement has, without divorcing them from their fellows, given to thousands of the manual workers both administrative experience and a well-grounded confidence; and has thus enabled them to take a fuller part in political and social life than would otherwise have been probable."--_New Statesman_, May 30, 1916. "Special Supplement on the Cooperative Movement." Indeed the success of the consumer's cooperative movement in European countries has been marvellous, even measured by bare figures. In all Europe in 1914, there were about 9,000,000 cooperators of whom one-third lived in Great Britain and not less than two and a half millions in Germany. In England and Scotland alone, the 1400 stores and two Wholesale Cooperative Societies controlled in 1914 about 420 million dollars of retail distributive trade and employed nearly 50,000 operatives in processes of production in their own workshops and factories. CHAPTER 3 THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR With the practical disintegration of the organized labor movement in the seventies, two nuclei held together and showed promise of future growth. One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a small trade union movement grouped around the International Cigar Makers' Union. The "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," while it first became important in the labor movement after 1873, was founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, a tailor who had been educated for the ministry, as a secret organization. Secrecy was adopted as a protection against persecutions by employers. The principles of the Order were set forth by Stephens in the secret ritual. "Open and public association having failed after a struggle of centuries to protect or advance the interest of labor, we have lawfully constituted this Assembly," and "in using this power of organized effort and cooperation, we but imitate the example of capital heretofore set in numberless instances;" for, "in all the multifarious branches of trade, capital has its combinations, and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the dust." However, "we mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital." The remedy consists first in work of education: "We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created." The next remedy was legislation: "We shall, with all our strength, support laws made to harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil." Next in order were mutual benefits. "We shall use every lawful and honorable means to procure and retain employ for one another, coupled with a just and fair remuneration, and, should accident or misfortune befall one of our number, render such aid as lies within our power to give, without inquiring his country or his creed." For nine years the Order remained a secret organization and showed but a slow growth. In 1878 it was forced to abolish secrecy. The public mind was rendered uneasy by the revolutionary uprising of workingmen of Paris who set up the famous "Commune of Paris" of 1871, by the destructive great railway strikes in this country in 1877 and, lastly, by a wave of criminal disorders in the anthracite coal mining region in Eastern Pennsylvania,[13] and became only too prone to attribute revolutionary and criminal intents to any labor organization that cloaked itself in secrecy. Simultaneously with coming out into the open, the Knights adopted a new program, called the Preamble of the Knights of Labor, in place of the vague Secret Ritual which hitherto served as the authoritative expression of aims. This Preamble recites how "wealth," with its development, has become so aggressive that "unless checked" it "will inevitably lead to the pauperisation and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses." Hence, if the toilers are "to enjoy the blessings of life," they must organize "every department of productive industry" in order to "check" the power of wealth and to put a stop to "unjust accumulation." The battle cry in this fight must be "moral worth not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness." As the "action" of the toilers ought to be guided by "knowledge," it is necessary to know "the true condition of the producing masses"; therefore, the Order demands "from the various governments the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics." Next in order comes the "establishment of cooperative institutions productive and distributive." Union of all trades, "education," and producers' cooperation remained forever after the cardinal points in the Knights of Labor philosophy and were steadily referred to as "First Principles," namely principles bequeathed to the Order by Uriah Stephens and the other "Founders."[14] These idealistic "First Principles" found an ardent champion in Terence V. Powderly, a machinist by trade and twice mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on a labor ticket, who succeeded Stephens in 1878 to the headship of the Order. Powderly bore unmistakably the stamp of this sort of idealism throughout all the time when he was the foremost labor leader in the country. Unlike Samuel Gompers, who came to supplant him about 1890, he was foreign to that spirit of combative unionism which accepts the wage system but concentrates on a struggle to wrest concessions from the employers. Even when circumstances which were largely beyond his control made Powderly a strike leader on a huge scale, his heart lay elsewhere--in circumventing the wage system by opening to the worker an escape into self-employment through cooperation. Producers' cooperation, then, was the ambitious program by which the Order of the Knights of Labor expected to lead the American wage-earning class out of the bondage of the wage system into the Canaan of self-employment. Thus the Order was the true successor of the cooperative movement in the forties and sixties. Its motto was "Cooperation of the Order, by the Order, and for the Order." Not scattered local initiative, but the Order as a whole was to carry on the work. The plan resembled the Rochdale system of England in that it proposed to start with an organization of consumers--the large and ever-growing membership of the Order. But it departed radically from the English prototype in that instead of setting out to save money for the consumer, it primarily aimed to create a market for the productive establishments which were to follow. Consumers' cooperation was to be but a stepping stone to producers' self-employment. Eventually when the Order had grown to include nearly all useful members of society--so the plan contemplated--it would control practically the whole market and cooperative production would become the rule rather than the exception. So far, therefore, as "First Principles" went, the Order was not an instrument of the "class struggle," but an association of idealistic cooperators. It was this pure idealism which drew to the Order of the Knights of Labor the sympathetic interest of writers on social subjects and university teachers, then unfortunately too few in number, like Dr. Richard T. Ely[15] and President John Bascom of Wisconsin. The other survival in the seventies of the labor movement of the sixties, which has already been mentioned, namely the trade union movement grouped around the Cigar Makers' Union, was neither so purely American in its origin as the Knights of Labor nor so persistently idealistic. On the contrary, its first membership was foreign and its program, as we shall see, became before long primarily opportunist and "pragmatic." The training school for this opportunistic trade unionism was the socialist movement during the sixties and seventies, particularly the American branch of the International Workingmen's Association, the "First _Internationale_," which was founded by Karl Marx in London in 1864. The conception of _economic_ labor organization which was advanced by the _Internationale_ in a socialistic formulation underwent in the course of years a process of change: On the one hand, through constant conflict with the rival conception of _political_ labor organization urged by American followers of the German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, and on the other hand, through contact with American reality. Out of that double contact emerged the trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor. The _Internationale_ is generally reputed to have been organized by Karl Marx for the propaganda of international socialism. As a matter of fact, its starting point was the practical effort of British trade union leaders to organize the workingmen of the Continent and to prevent the importation of Continental strike-breakers. That Karl Marx wrote its _Inaugural Address_ was merely incidental. It chanced that what he wrote was acceptable to the British unionists rather than the draft of an address representing the views of Giuseppe Mazzini, the leader of the "New Italy" and the "New Europe," which was submitted to them at the same time and advocated elaborate plans of cooperation. Marx emphasized the class solidarity of labor against Mazzini's harmony of capital and labor. He did this by reciting what British labor had done through the Rochdale system of cooperation without the help of capitalists and what the British Parliament had done in enacting the ten-hour law of 1847 against the protest of capitalists. Now that British trade unionists in 1864 were demanding the right of suffrage and laws to protect their unions, it followed that Marx merely stated their demands when he affirmed the independent economic and political organization of labor in all lands. His _Inaugural Address_ was a trade union document, not a _Communist Manifesto_. Indeed not until Bakunin and his following of anarchists had nearly captured the organization in the years 1869 to 1872 did the program of socialism become the leading issue. The philosophy of the _Internationale_ at the period of its ascendency was based on the economic organization of the working class in trade unions. These must precede the political seizure of the government by labor. Then, when the workingmen's party should achieve control, it would be able to build up successively the socialist state on the foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade unions. This conception differed widely from the teaching of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassallean socialism was born in 1863 with Lassalle's _Open Letter_ to a workingmen's committee in Leipzig. It sprang from his antagonism to Schultze-Delizsch's[16] system of voluntary cooperation. In Lassalle's eagerness to condemn the idea of the harmony of capital and labor, which lay at the basis of Schultze's scheme for cooperation, he struck at the same time a blow against all forms of non-political organization of wage earners. Perhaps the fact that he was ignorant of the British trade unions accounts for his insufficient appreciation of trade unionism. But no matter what the cause may have been, to Lassalle there was but one means of solving the labor problem-political action. When political control was finally achieved, the labor party, with the aid of state credit, would build up a network of cooperative societies into which eventually all industry would pass. In short, the distinction between the ideas of the _Internationale_ and of Lassalle consisted in the fact that the former advocated trade unionism prior to and underlying political organization, while the latter considered a political victory as the basis of socialism. These antagonistic starting points are apparent at the very beginning of American socialism as well as in the trade unionism and socialism of succeeding years. Two distinct phases can be seen in the history of the _Internationale_ in America. During the first phase, which began in 1866 and lasted until 1870, the _Internationale_ had no important organization of its own on American soil, but tried to establish itself through affiliation with the National Labor Union. The inducement held out to the latter was of a practical nature, the international regulation of immigration. During the second phase the _Internationale_ had its "sections" in nearly every large city of the country, centering in New York and Chicago, and the practical trade union part of its work receded before its activity on behalf of the propaganda of socialism. These "sections," with a maximum membership which probably never exceeded a thousand, nearly all foreigners, became a preparatory school in trade union leadership for many of the later organizers and leaders of the American Federation of Labor: for example, Adolph Strasser, the German cigar maker, whose organization became the new model in trade unionism, and P.J. McGuire, the American-born carpenter, who founded the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and who was for many years the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor. Fate had decreed that these sections of a handful of immigrants should play for a time high-sounding parts in the world labor movement. When, at the World Congress of the International Workingmen's Association at the Hague in 1872, the anarchist faction led by Bakunin had shown such strength that Marx and his socialist faction deemed it wise to move the General Council out of mischief's way, they removed it to New York and entrusted its powers into the hands of the faithful German Marxians on this side of the Atlantic. This spelled the end of the _Internationale_ as a world organization, but enormously increased the stakes of the factional fights within the handful of American Internationalists. The organization of the workers into trade unions, the _Internationale's_ first principle, was forgotten in the heat of intemperate struggles for empty honors and powerless offices. On top of that, with the panic of 1873 and the ensuing prolonged depression, the political drift asserted itself in socialism as it had in the labor movement in general and the movement, erstwhile devoted primarily to organization of trade unions, entered, urged on by the Lassalleans, into a series of political campaigns somewhat successful at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth his while. Strasser had been elected president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1877, in the midst of a great strike in New York against the tenement-house system. The president of the local New York union of cigar makers was at the time Samuel Gompers, a young man of twenty-seven, who was born in England and came to America in 1862. In his endeavor to build up a model for the "new" unionism and in his almost uninterrupted headship of that movement for forty years is indicated Gompers' truly representative character. Born of Dutch-Jewish parents in England in 1850, he typifies the cosmopolitan origins of American unionism. His early contact in the union of his trade with men like Strasser, upon whom the ideas of Marx and the International Workingmen's Association had left an indelible stamp, and his thorough study of Marx gave him that grounding both in idealism and class consciousness which has produced many strong leaders of American unions and saved them from defection to other interests. Aggressive and uncompromising in a perpetual fight for the strongest possible position and power of trade unions, but always strong for collective agreements with the opposing employers, he displays the business tactics of organized labor. At the head of an organization which denies itself power over its constituent unions, he has brought and held together the most widely divergent and often antagonistic unions, while permitting each to develop and even to change its character to fit the changing industrial conditions. The dismal failure of the strike against the tenement house system in cigar making brought home to both Strasser and Gompers the weakness of the plan of organization of their union as well as that of American trade unions in general. They consequently resolved to rebuild their union upon the pattern of the British unions, although they firmly intended that it should remain a militant organization. The change involved, first, complete authority over the local unions in the hands of the international officers; second, an increase in the membership dues for the purpose of building up a large fund; and, third, the adoption of a far-reaching benefit system in order to assure stability to the organization. This was accomplished at the convention held in August, 1879. This convention simultaneously adopted the British idea of the "equalization of funds," which gave the international officers the power to order a well-to-do local union to transfer a portion of its funds to another local union in financial straits. With the various modifications of the feature of "equalization of funds," the system of government in the Cigar Makers' International Union was later used as a model by the other national and international trade unions. As Strasser and men of his ilk grew more and more absorbed in the practical problems of the everyday struggle of the wage-earners for better conditions of employment, the socialistic portion of their original philosophy kept receding further and further into the background until they arrived at pure trade unionism. But their trade unionism differed vastly from the "native" American trade unionism of their time, which still hankered for the haven of producers' cooperation. The philosophy which these new leaders developed might be termed a philosophy of pure wage-consciousness. It signified a labor movement reduced to an opportunistic basis, accepting the existence of capitalism and having for its object the enlarging of the bargaining power of the wage earner in the sale of his labor. Its opportunism was instrumental--its idealism was home and family and individual betterment. It also implied an attitude of aloofness from all those movements which aspire to replace the wage system by cooperation, whether voluntary or subsidized by government, whether greenbackism, socialism, or anarchism. Perhaps the most concise definition of this philosophy is to be found in Strasser's testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in 1883: "_Q._ You are seeking to improve home matters first? "_A._ Yes, sir, I look first to the trade I represent; I look first to cigars, to the interests of men who employ me to represent their interest. "_Chairman_: I was only asking you in regard to your ultimate ends. "_Witness_: We have no ultimate ends. We are going on from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate objects--objects that can be realized in a few years. "By Mr. Call: _Q._ You want something better to eat and to wear, and better houses to live in? "_A._ Yes, we want to dress better and to live better, and become better citizens generally. "_The Chairman_: I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought that you are a mere theoriser, I do not look upon you in that light at all. "_The Witness_: Well, we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists, and I have to represent the organization here. We are all practical men." Another offshoot of the same Marxian _Internationale_ were the "Chicago Anarchists."[17] The _Internationale_, as we saw, emphasized trade unionism as the first step in the direction of socialism, in opposition to the political socialism of Lassalle, which ignored the trade union and would start with a political party outright. Shorn of its socialistic futurity this philosophy became non-political "business" unionism; but, when combined with a strong revolutionary spirit, it became a non-political revolutionary unionism, or syndicalism. The organization of those industrial revolutionaries was called the International Working People's Association, also known as the "Black" or anarchist International, which was formed at Pittsburgh in 1883. Like the old _Internationale_ it busied itself with forming trade unions, but insisted that they conform to a revolutionary model. Such a "model" trade union was the Federation of Metal Workers of America, which was organized in 1885. It said in its Declaration of Principles that the entire abolition of the present system of society can alone emancipate the workers, but under no consideration should they resort to politics; "our organization should be a school to educate its members for the new condition of society, when the workers will regulate their own affairs without any interference by the few. Since the emancipation of the productive classes must come by their own efforts, it is unwise to meddle in present politics.... All _direct_ struggles of the laboring masses have our fullest sympathy." Alongside the revolutionary trade unions were workers' armed organizations ready to usher in the new order by force. "By force," recited the Pittsburgh Manifesto of the Black International, "our ancestors liberated themselves from political oppression, by force their children will have to liberate themselves from economic bondage. It is, therefore, your right, it is your duty, says Jefferson,--to arms!" The following ten years were to decide whether the leadership of the American labor movement was to be with the "practical men of the trade unions" or with the cooperative idealists of the Knights of Labor. FOOTNOTES: [13] After the defeat of a strong anthracite miners' union in 1869, which was an open organization, the fight against the employers was carried on by a secret organization known as the Molly Maguires, which used the method of terrorism and assassination. It was later exposed and many were sentenced and executed. [14] The Preamble further provides that the Order will stand for the reservation of all lands for actual settlers; the "abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor, the removal of unjust technicalities, delays, and discriminations in the administration of justice, and the adopting of measures providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing, or building pursuits"; the enactment of a weekly pay law, a mechanics' lien law, and a law prohibiting child labor under fourteen years of age; the abolition of the contract system on national, state, and municipal work, and of the system of leasing out convicts; equal pay for equal work for both sexes; reduction of hours of labor to eight per day; "the substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever and wherever employers and employees are willing to meet on equitable grounds"; the establishment of "a purely national circulating medium based upon the faith and resources of the nation, issued directly to the people, without the intervention of any system of banking corporations, which money shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, public or private". [15] Dr. Ely in his pioneer work, _The Labor Movement in America_, published in 1886, showed a most genuine sympathy for the idealistic strivings and gropings of labor for a better social order. He even advised some of his pupils at the Johns Hopkins University to join the Knights of Labor in order to gain a better understanding of the labor movement. [16] Schultze-Delizsch was a German thinker and practical reformer of the liberal school. [17] The Anarchists who were tried and executed after the Haymarket Square bomb in Chicago in May, 1886. See below, 91-93. CHAPTER 4 REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 With the return of business prosperity in 1879, the labor movement revived. The first symptom of the upward trend was a rapid multiplication of city federations of organized trades, variously known as trade councils, amalgamated trade and labor unions, trades assemblies, and the like. Practically all of these came into existence after 1879, since hardly any of the "trades' assemblies" of the sixties had survived the depression. As was said above, the national trade unions existed during the sixties and seventies in only about thirty trades. Eighteen of these had either retained a nucleus during the seventies or were first formed during that decade. The following is a list of the national unions in existence in 1880 with the year of formation: Typographical (1850), Hat Finishers (1854), Iron Molders (1859), Locomotive Engineers (1863), Cigar Makers (1864), Bricklayers and Masons (1865), Silk and Fur Hat Finishers (1866), Railway Conductors (1868), Coopers (1870), German-American Typographia (1873), Locomotive Firemen (1873), Horseshoers (1874), Furniture Workers (1873), Iron and Steel Workers (1876), Granite Cutters (1877), Lake Seamen (1878), Cotton Mill Spinners (1878), New England Boot and Shoe Lasters (1879). In 1880 the Western greenbottle blowers' national union was established; in 1881 the national unions of boiler makers and carpenters; in 1882, plasterers and metal workers; in 1883, tailors, lithographers, wood carvers, railroad brakemen, and silk workers. An illustration of the rapid growth in trade union membership during this period is given in the following figures: the bricklayers' union had 303 in 1880; 1558 in 1881; 6848 in 1882; 9193 in 1883. The typographical union had 5968 members in 1879; 6520 in 1880; 7931 in 1881; 10,439 in 1882; 12,273 in 1883. The total trade union membership in the country, counting the three railway organizations and those organized only locally, amounted to between 200,000 and 225,000 in 1883 and probably was not below 300,000 in the beginning of 1885. A distinguishing characteristic of the trade unions of this time was the predominance in them of the foreign element. The Illinois Bureau of Labor describes the ethnical composition of the trade unions of that State during 1886, and states that 21 percent were American, 33 percent German, 19 percent Irish, 10 percent British other than Irish, 12 percent Scandinavian, and the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 percent. The strong predominance of the foreign element in American trade unions should not appear unusual, since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship system, the United States had been drawing its supply of skilled labor from abroad. The Order of the Knights of Labor, despite its "First Principles" based on the cooperative ideal, was soon forced to make concessions to a large element of its membership which was pressing for strikes. With the advent of prosperity, the Order expanded, although the Knights of Labor played but a subordinate part in the labor movement of the early eighties. The membership was 20,151 in 1879; 28,136 in 1880; 19,422 in 1881; 42,517 in 1882; 51,914 in 1883; showing a steady and rapid growth, with the exception of the year 1881. But these figures are decidedly deceptive as a means of measuring the strength of the Order, for the membership fluctuated widely; so that in the year 1883, when it reached 50,000 no less than one-half of this number passed in and out of the organization during the year. The enormous fluctuation, while reducing the economic strength of the Order, brought large masses of people under its influence and prepared the ground for the upheaval in the middle of the eighties. It also brought the Order to the attention of the public press. The labor press gave the Order great publicity, but the Knights did not rely on gratuitous newspaper publicity. They set to work a host of lecturers, who held public meetings throughout the country adding recruits and advertising the Order. The most important Knights of Labor strike of this period was the telegraphers' strike in 1883. The telegraphers had a national organization in 1870, which soon collapsed. In 1882 they again organized on a national basis and affiliated with the Order as District Assembly 45.[18] The strike was declared on June 19, 1883, against all commercial telegraph companies in the country, among which the Western Union, with about 4000 operators, was by far the largest. The demands were one day's rest in seven, an eight-hour day shift and a seven-hour night shift, and a general increase of 15 percent in wages. The public and a large portion of the press gave their sympathy to the strikers, not so much on account of the oppressed condition of the telegraphers as of the general hatred that prevailed against Jay Gould, who then controlled the Western Union Company. This strike was the first in the eighties to call the attention of the general American public to the existence of a labor question, and received considerable attention at the hands of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. By the end of July, over a month after the beginning of the strike, the men who escaped the blacklist went back to work on the old terms. From 1879 till 1882 the labor movement was typical of a period of rising prices. It was practically restricted to skilled workmen, who organized to wrest from employers still better conditions than those which prosperity would have given under individual bargaining. The movement was essentially opportunistic and displayed no particular class feeling and no revolutionary tendencies. The solidarity of labor was not denied by the trade unions, but they did not try to reduce the idea to practice: each trade coped more or less successfully with its own employers. Even the Knights of Labor, the organization _par excellence_ of the solidarity of labor, was at this time, in so far as practical efforts went, merely a faint echo of the trade unions. But the situation radically changed during the depression of 1884-1885. The unskilled and the semi-skilled, affected as they were by wage reductions and unemployment even in a larger measure than the skilled, were drawn into the movement. Labor organizations assumed the nature of a real class movement. The idea of the solidarity of labor ceased to be merely verbal and took on life! General strikes, sympathetic strikes, nationwide boycotts and nation-wide political movements became the order of the day. The effects of an unusually large immigration joined hands with the depression. The eighties were the banner decade of the entire century for immigration. The aggregate number of immigrants arriving was 5,246,613--two and a half millions larger than during the seventies and one million and a half larger than during the nineties. The eighties witnessed the highest tide of immigration from Great Britain and the North of Europe and the beginning of the tide of South and East European immigration. However, the depression of 1883-1885 had one redeeming feature by which it was distinguished from other depressions. With falling prices, diminishing margins of profit, and decreasing wages, the amount of employment was not materially diminished. Times continued hard during 1885, a slight improvement showing itself only during the last months of the year. The years 1886 and 1887 were a period of gradual recovery, and normal conditions may be said to have returned about the middle of 1887. Except in New England, the old wages, which had been reduced during the bad years, were won again by the spring of 1887. The year 1884 was one of decisive failure in strikes. They were practically all directed against reductions in wages and for the right of organization. The most conspicuous strikes were those of the Fall River spinners, the Troy stove mounters, the Cincinnati cigar makers and the Hocking Valley coal miners. The failure of strikes brought into use the other weapon of labor--the boycott. But not until the latter part of 1884, when the failure of the strike as a weapon became apparent, did the boycott assume the nature of an epidemic. The boycott movement was a truly national one, affecting the South and the Far West as well as the East and Middle West. The number of boycotts during 1885 was nearly seven times as large as during 1884. Nearly all of the boycotts either originated with, or were taken up by, the Knights of Labor. The strike again came into prominence in the latter half of 1885. This coincided with the beginning of an upward trend in general business conditions. The strikes of 1885, even more than those of the preceding year, were spontaneous outbreaks of unorganized masses. The frequent railway strikes were a characteristic feature of the labor movement in 1885. Most notable was the Gould railway strike in March, 1885. On February 26, a cut of 10 percent was ordered in the wages of the shopmen of the Wabash road. A similar reduction had been made in October, 1884, on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas. Strikes occurred on the two roads, one on February 27 and the other March 9, and the strikers were joined by the men on the third Gould road, the Missouri Pacific, at all points where the two lines touched, making altogether over 4500 men on strike. The train service personnel, that is, the locomotive engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors, supported the strikers and to this fact more than to any other was due their speedy victory. The wages were restored and the strikers reemployed. But six months later this was followed by a second strike. The road, now in the hands of a receiver, reduced the force of shopmen at Moberly, Missouri, to the lowest possible limit, which virtually meant a lockout of the members of the Knights of Labor in direct violation of the conditions of settlement of the preceding strike. The General Executive Board of the Knights, after a futile attempt to have a conference with the receiver, declared a boycott on Wabash rolling stock. This order, had it been carried out, would have affected over 20,000 miles of railway and would have equalled the dimensions of the great railway strike of 1877. But Jay Gould would not risk a general strike on his lines at this time. According to an appointment made between him and the executive board of the Knights of Labor, a conference was held between that board and the managers of the Missouri Pacific and the Wabash railroads, at which he threw his influence in favor of making concessions to the men. He assured the Knights that in all troubles he wanted the men to come directly to him, that he believed in labor organizations and in the arbitration of all difficulties and that he "would always endeavor to do what was right." The Knights demanded the discharge of all new men hired in the Wabash shops since the beginning of the lockout, the reinstatement of all discharged men, the leaders being given priority, and an assurance that no discrimination against the members of the Order would be made in the future. A settlement was finally made at another conference, and the receiver of the Wabash road agreed, under pressure by Jay Gould, to issue an order conceding the demands of the Knights of Labor. The significance of the second Wabash strike in the history of railway strikes was that the railway brotherhoods (engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors), in contrast with their conduct during the first Wabash strike, now refused to lend any aid to the striking shopmen, although many of the members were also Knights of Labor. But far more important was the effect of the strike upon the general labor movement. Here a labor organization for the first time dealt on an equal footing with probably the most powerful capitalist in the country. It forced Jay Gould to recognize it as a power equal to himself, a fact which he conceded when he declared his readiness to arbitrate all labor difficulties that might arise. The oppressed laboring masses finally discovered a powerful champion. All the pent-up feeling of bitterness and resentment which had accumulated during the two years of depression, in consequence of the repeated cuts in wages and the intensified domination by employers, now found vent in a rush to organize under the banner of the powerful Knights of Labor. To the natural tendency on the part of the oppressed to exaggerate the power of a mysterious emancipator whom they suddenly found coming to their aid, there was added the influence of sensational reports in the public press. The newspapers especially took delight in exaggerating the powers and strength of the Order. In 1885 the New York _Sun_ detailed one of its reporters to "get up a story of the strength and purposes of the Knights of Labor." This story was copied by newspapers and magazines throughout the country and aided considerably in bringing the Knights of Labor into prominence. The following extract illustrates the exaggerated notion of the power of the Knights of Labor. "Five men in this country control the chief interests of five hundred thousand workingmen, and can at any moment take the means of livelihood from two and a half millions of souls. These men compose the executive board of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor of America. The ability of the president and cabinet to turn out all the men in the civil service, and to shift from one post to another the duties of the men in the army and navy, is a petty authority compared with that of these five Knights. The authority of the late Cardinal was, and that of the bishops of the Methodist Church is, narrow and prescribed, so far as material affairs are concerned, in comparison with that of these five rulers. "They can stay the nimble touch of almost every telegraph operator; can shut up most of the mills and factories, and can disable the railroads. They can issue an edict against any manufactured goods so as to make their subjects cease buying them, and the tradesmen stop selling them. "They can array labor against capital, putting labor on the offensive or the defensive, for quiet and stubborn self-protection, or for angry, organized assault, as they will." Before long the Order was able to benefit by this publicity in quarters where the tale of its great power could only attract unqualified attention, namely, in Congress. The Knights of Labor led in the agitation for prohibiting the immigration of alien contract laborers. The problem of contract immigrant labor rapidly came to the front in 1884, when such labor began frequently to be used to defeat strikes. Twenty persons appeared to testify before the committee in favor of the bill, of whom all but two or three belonged to the Knights of Labor. The anti-contract labor law which was passed by Congress on February 2, 1885, therefore, was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Knights of Labor. The trade unions gave little active support, for to the skilled workingmen the importation of contract Italian and Hungarian laborers was a matter of small importance. On the other hand, to the Knights of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was a strong menace. Although the law could not be enforced and had to be amended in 1887 in order to render it effective, its passage nevertheless attests the political influence already exercised by the Order in 1885. The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the dramatic exaggeration of the prowess of the Order by press and even by pulpit were largely responsible for the psychological setting that called forth and surrounded the great upheaval of 1886. This upheaval meant more than the mere quickening of the pace of the movement begun in preceding years and decades. It signalled the appearance on the scene of a new class which had not hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the unskilled. All the peculiar characteristics of the dramatic events in 1886 and 1887, the highly feverish pace at which organizations grew, the nation-wide wave of strikes, particularly sympathetic strikes, the wide use of the boycott, the obliteration, apparently complete, of all lines that divided the laboring class, whether geographic or trade, the violence and turbulence which accompanied the movement--all of these were the signs of a great movement by the class of the unskilled, which had finally risen in rebellion. This movement, rising as an elemental protest against oppression and degradation, could be but feebly restrained by any considerations of expediency and prudence; nor, of course, could it be restrained by any lessons from experience. But, if the origin and powerful sweep of this movement were largely spontaneous and elemental, the issues which it took up were supplied by the existing organizations, namely the trade unions and the Knights of Labor. These served also as the dykes between which the rapid streams were gathered and, if at times it seemed that they must burst under the pressure, still they gave form and direction to the movement and partly succeeded in introducing order where chaos had reigned. The issue which first brought unity in this great mass movement was a nation-wide strike for the eight-hour day declared for May 1, 1886. The initiative in this strike was taken not by the Order but by the trade unionists and on the eve of the strike the general officers of the Knights adopted an attitude of hostility. But if the slogan failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the national leaders of the Knights, it nevertheless found ready response in the ranks of labor. The great class of the unskilled and unorganized, which had come to look upon the Knights of Labor as the all-powerful liberator of the laboring masses from oppression, now eagerly seized upon this demand as the issue upon which the first battle with capital should be fought. The agitation assumed large proportions in March. The main argument for the shorter day was work for the unemployed. With the exception of the cigar makers, it was left wholly in the hands of local organizations. The Knights of Labor as an organization figured far less prominently than the trade unions, and among the latter the building trades and the German-speaking furniture workers and cigar makers stood in the front of the movement. Early in the strike the workingmen's cause was gravely injured by a bomb explosion on Haymarket Square in Chicago, attributed to anarchists, which killed and wounded a score of policemen. The bomb explosion on Haymarket Square connected two movements which had heretofore marched separately, despite a certain mutual affinity. For what many of the Knights of Labor were practising during the upheaval in a less drastic manner and without stopping to look for a theoretical justification, the contemporary Chicago "anarchists,"[19] the largest branch of the "Black International," had elevated into a well rounded-out system of thought. Both syndicalism and the Knights of Labor upheaval were related chapters in the revolutionary movement of the eighties. Whether in its conscious or unconscious form, this syndicalism was characterized by an extreme combativeness, by the ease with which minor disputes grew into widespread strikes involving many trades and large territories, by a reluctance, if not an out and out refusal, to enter into agreements with employers however temporary, and lastly by a ready resort to violence. In 1886 the membership of the Black International probably was about 5000 or 6000 and of this number about 1000 were English speaking. The circumstances of the bomb explosion were the following. A strikers' meeting was held near the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago, late on the third of May. About this time strike-breakers employed in these works began to leave for home and were attacked by strikers. The police arrived in large numbers and upon being received with stones, fired and killed four and wounded many. The same evening the International issued a call in which appeared the word _"Revenge"_ with the appeal: "Workingmen, arm yourselves and appear in full force." A protest mass meeting met the next day on Haymarket Square and was addressed by Internationalists. The police were present in numbers and, as they formed in line and advanced on the crowd, some unknown hand hurled a bomb into their midst killing and wounding many. It is unnecessary to describe here the period of police terror in Chicago, the hysterical attitude of the press, or the state of panic that came over the inhabitants of the city. Nor is it necessary to deal in detail with the trial and sentence of the accused. Suffice it to say that the Haymarket bomb showed to the labor movement what it might expect from the public and the government if it combined violence with a revolutionary purpose. Although the bomb outrage was attributed to the anarchists and not generally to the strikers for the eight-hour day, it did materially reduce the sympathy of the public as well as intimidate many strikers. Nevertheless, _Bradstreet's_ estimated that no fewer than 340,000 men took part in the movement; 190,000 actually struck, only 42,000 of this number with success, and 150,000 secured shorter hours without a strike. Thus the total number of those who secured with or without strikes the eight-hour day was something less than 200,000. But even those who for the present succeeded, whether with or without striking, soon lost the concession, and _Bradstreet's_ estimated in January, 1887, that, so far as the payment of former wages for a shorter day's work is concerned, the grand total of those retaining the concession did not exceed, if it equalled, 15,000. American labor movements have never experienced such a rush to organize as the one in the latter part of 1885 and during 1886. During 1886 the combined membership of labor organizations was exceptionally large and for the first time came near the million mark. The Knights of Labor had a membership of 700,000 and the trade unions at least 250,000, the former composed largely of unskilled and the latter of skilled. The Knights of Labor gained in a remarkably short time--in a few months--over 600,000 new members and grew from 1610 local assemblies with 104,066 members in good standing in July 1885, to 5892 assemblies with 702,924 members in July 1886. The greatest portion of this growth occurred after January 1, 1886. In the state of New York there were in July 1886, about 110,000 members (60,809 in District Assembly 49 of New York City alone); in Pennsylvania, 95,000 (51,557 in District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, alone); in Massachusetts, 90,000 (81,191 in District Assembly 30 of Boston); and in Illinois, 32,000. In the state of Illinois, for which detailed information for that year is available, there were 204 local assemblies with 34,974 members, of which 65 percent were found in Cook County (Chicago) alone. One hundred and forty-nine assemblies were mixed, that is comprised members of different trades including unskilled and only 55 were trade assemblies. Reckoned according to country of birth the membership was 45 percent American, 16 percent German, 13 percent Irish, 10 percent British, 5 percent Scandinavian, and the remaining 2 percent scattered. The trade unions also gained many members but in a considerably lesser proportion. The high water mark was reached in the autumn of 1886. But in the early months of 1887 a reaction became visible. By July 1, the membership of the Order had diminished to 510,351. While a share of this retrogression may have been due to the natural reaction of large masses of people who had been suddenly set in motion without experience, a more immediate cause came from the employers. Profiting by past lessons, they organized strong associations. The main object of these employers' associations was the defeat of the Knights. They were organized sectionally and nationally. In small localities, where the power of the Knights was especially great, all employers regardless of industry joined in a single association. But in large manufacturing centers, where the rich corporation prevailed, they included the employers of only one industry. To attain their end these associations made liberal use of the lockout, the blacklist, and armed guards and detectives. Often they treated agreements entered into with the Order as contracts signed under duress. The situation in the latter part of 1886 and in 1887 had been clearly foreshadowed in the treatment accorded the Knights of Labor on the Gould railways in the Southwest in the early part of 1886. As already mentioned, at the settlement of the strike on the Gould system in March 1885, the employes were assured that the road would institute no discriminations against the Knights of Labor. However, it is apparent that a series of petty discriminations was indulged in by minor officials, which kept the men in a state of unrest. It culminated in the discharge of a foreman, a member of the Knights, from the car shop at Marshall, Texas, on the Texas & Pacific Road, which had shortly before passed into the hands of a receiver. A strike broke out over the entire road on March 1, 1886. It is necessary, however, to note that the Knights of Labor themselves were meditating aggressive action two months before the strike. District Assembly 101, the organization embracing the employes on the Southwest system, held a convention on January 10, and authorized the officers to call a strike at any time they might find opportune to enforce the two following demands: first, the formal "recognition" of the Order; and second, a daily wage of $1.50 for the unskilled. The latter demand is peculiarly characteristic of the Knights of Labor and of the feeling of labor solidarity that prevailed in the movement. But evidently the organization preferred to make the issue turn on discrimination against members. Another peculiarity which marked off this strike as the beginning of a new era was the facility with which it led to a sympathetic strike on the Missouri Pacific and all leased and operated lines. This strike broke out simultaneously over the entire system on March 6. It affected more than 5000 miles of railway situated in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Nebraska. The strikers did not content themselves with mere picketing, but actually took possession of the railroad property and by a systematic "killing" of engines, that is removing some indispensable part, effectively stopped all the freight traffic. The number of men actively on strike was in the neighborhood of 9000, including practically all of the shopmen, yardmen, and section gangs. The engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors took no active part and had to be forced to leave their posts under threats from the strikers. The leader, one Martin Irons, accurately represented the feelings of the strikers. Personally honest and probably well-meaning, his attitude was overbearing and tyrannical. With him as with those who followed him, a strike was not a more or less drastic means of forcing a better labor contract, but necessarily assumed the aspect of a crusade against capital. Hence all compromise and any policy of give and take were excluded. Negotiations were conducted by Jay Gould and Powderly to submit the dispute to arbitration, but they failed and, after two months of sporadic violence, the strike spent itself and came to an end. It left, however, a profound impression upon the public mind, second only to the impression made by the great railway strike of 1877; and a Congressional committee was appointed to investigate the whole matter. The disputes during the second half of 1886 ended, for the most part, disastrously to labor. The number of men involved in six months, was estimated at 97,300. Of these, about 75,300 were in nine great lockouts, of whom 54,000 suffered defeat at the hands of associated employers. The most important lockouts were against 15,000 laundry workers at Troy, New York, in June; against 20,000 Chicago packing house workers; and against 20,000 knitters at Cohoes, New York, both in October. The lockout of the Chicago butcher workmen attracted the most attention. These men had obtained the eight-hour day without a strike during May. A short time thereafter, upon the initiative of Armour & Company, the employers formed a packers' association and, in the beginning of October, notified the men of a return to the ten-hour day on October 11. They justified this action on the ground that they could not compete with Cincinnati and Kansas City, which operated on the ten-hour system. On October 8, the men, who were organized in District Assemblies 27 and 54, suspended work, and the memorable lockout began. The packers' association rejected all offers of compromise and on October 18 the men were ordered to work on the ten-hour basis. But the dispute in October, which was marked by a complete lack of ill-feeling on the part of the men and was one of the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke out in the plant of Swift & Company on November 2 and became general throughout the stockyards on November 6. The men demanded a return to the eight-hour day, but the packers' association, which was now joined by Swift & Company, who formerly had kept aloof, not only refused to give up the ten-hour day, but declared that they would employ no Knights of Labor in the future. The Knights retaliated by declaring a boycott on the meat of Armour & Company. The behavior of the men was now no longer peaceable as before, and the employers took extra precautions by prevailing upon the governor to send two regiments of militia in addition to the several hundred Pinkerton detectives employed by the association. To all appearances, the men were slowly gaining over the employers, for on November 10 the packers' association rescinded its decision not to employ Knights, when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master Workman Powderly ordering the men back to work. Powderly had refused to consider the reports from the members of the General Executive Board who were on the ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead by the advice of a priest who had appealed to him to call off the strike and thus put an end to the suffering of the men and their families. New York witnessed an even more characteristic Knights of Labor strike and on a larger scale. This strike began as two insignificant separate strikes, one by coal-handlers at the Jersey ports supplying New York with coal and the other by longshoremen on the New York water front; both starting on January 1, 1887. Eighty-five coal-handlers employed by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, members of the Knights of Labor, struck against a reduction of 2-1/2 cents an hour in the wages of the "top-men" and were joined by the trimmers who had grievances of their own. Soon the strike spread to the other roads and the number of striking coal-handlers reached 3000. The longshoremen's strike was begun by 200 men, employed by the Old Dominion Steamship Company, against a reduction in wages and the hiring of cheap men by the week. The strikers were not organized, but the Ocean Association, a part of the Knights of Labor, took up their cause and was assisted by the longshoremen's union. Both strikes soon widened out through a series of sympathetic strikes of related trades and finally became united into one. The Ocean Association declared a boycott on the freight of the Old Dominion Company and this was strictly obeyed by all of the longshoremen's unions. The International Boatmen's Union refused to allow their boats to be used for "scab coal" or to permit their members to steer the companies' boats. The longshoremen joined the boatmen in refusing to handle coal, and the shovelers followed. Then the grain handlers on both floating and stationary elevators refused to load ships with grain on which there was scab coal, and the bag-sewers stood with them. The longshoremen now resolved to go out and refused to work on ships which received scab coal, and finally they decided to stop work altogether on all kinds of craft in the harbor until the trouble should be settled. The strike spirit spread to a large number of freight handlers working for railroads along the river front, so that in the last week of January the number of strikers in New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, reached approximately 28,000; 13,000 longshoremen, 1000 boatmen, 6000 grain handlers, 7500 coal-handlers, and 400 bag-sewers. On February 11, August Corbin, president and receiver of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, fearing a strike by the miners working in the coal mines operated by that road, settled the strike by restoring to the eighty-five coal-handlers, the original strikers, their former rate of wages. The Knights of Labor felt impelled to accept such a trivial settlement for two reasons. The coal-handlers' strike, which drove up the price of coal to the consumer, was very unpopular, and the strike itself had begun to weaken when the brewers and stationary engineers, who for some obscure reason had been ordered to strike in sympathy, refused to come out. The situation was left unchanged, as far as the coal-handlers employed by the other companies, the longshoremen, and the many thousands of men who went out on sympathetic strike were concerned. The men began to return to work by the thousands and the entire strike collapsed. The determined attack and stubborn resistance of the employers' associations after the strikes of May 1886, coupled with the obvious incompetence displayed by the leaders, caused the turn of the tide in the labor movement in the first half of 1887. This, however, manifested itself during 1887 exclusively in the large cities, where the movement had borne in the purest form the character of an uprising by the class of the unskilled and where the hardest battles were fought with the employers. District Assembly 49, New York, fell from its membership of 60,809 in June 1886, to 32,826 in July 1887. During the same interval, District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, decreased from 51,557 to 11,294, and District Assembly 30, Boston, from 81,197 to 31,644. In Chicago there were about 40,000 Knights immediately before the packers' strike in October 1886, and only about 17,000 on July 1, 1887. The falling off of the largest district assemblies in 10 large cities practically equalled the total loss of the Order, which amounted approximately to 191,000. At the same time the membership of the smallest district assemblies, which were for the most part located in small cities, remained stationary and, outside of the national and district trade assemblies which were formed by separation from mixed district assemblies, thirty-seven new district assemblies were formed, also mostly in rural localities. In addition, state assemblies were added in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, with an average membership of about 2000 each. It thus becomes clear that by the middle of 1887, the Great Upheaval of the unskilled and semi-skilled portions of the working class had already subsided beneath the strength of the combined employers and the unwieldiness of their own organization. After 1887 the Knights of Labor lost its hold upon the large cities with their wage-conscious and largely foreign population, and became an organization predominantly of country people, of mechanics, small merchants, and farmers,--a class of people which was more or less purely American and decidedly middle class in its philosophy. The industrial upheaval in the middle of the eighties had, like the great strike of 1877, a political reverberation. Although the latter was heard throughout the entire country, it centered in the city of New York, where the situation was complicated by court interference in the labor struggle. A local assembly of the Knights of Labor had declared a boycott against one George Theiss, a proprietor of a music and beer garden. The latter at first submitted and paid a fine of $1000 to the labor organization, but later brought action in court against the officers charging them with intimidation and extortion. The judge, George C. Barrett, in his charge to the jury, conceded that striking, picketing, and boycotting as such were not prohibited by law, if not accompanied by force, threats, or intimidation. But in the case under consideration the action of the pickets in advising passers-by not to patronize the establishment and in distributing boycott circulars constituted intimidation. Also, since the $1000 fine was obtained by fear induced by a threat to continue the unlawful injury to Theiss inflicted by the "boycott," the case was one of extortion covered by the penal code. It made no difference whether the money was appropriated by the defendants for personal use or whether it was turned over to their organization. The jury, which reflected the current public opinion against boycotts, found all of the five defendants guilty of extortion, and Judge Barrett sentenced them to prison for terms ranging from one year and six months to three years and eight months. The Theiss case, coming as it did at a time of general restlessness of labor and closely after the defeat of the eight-hour movement, greatly hastened the growth of the sentiment for an independent labor party. The New York Central Labor Union, the most famous and most influential organization of its kind in the country at the time, with a membership estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000, placed itself at the head of the movement in which both socialists and non-socialists joined. Henry George, the originator of the single tax movement, was nominated by the labor party for Mayor of New York and was allowed to draw up his own platform, which he made of course a simon-pure single tax platform. The labor demands were compressed into one plank. They were as follows: The reform of court procedure so that "the practice of drawing grand jurors from one class should cease, and the requirements of a property qualification for trial jurors should be abolished"; the stopping of the "officious intermeddling of the police with peaceful assemblages"; the enforcement of the laws for safety and the sanitary inspection of buildings; the abolition of contract labor on public work; and equal pay for equal work without distinction of sex on such work. The George campaign was more in the nature of a religious revival than of a political election campaign. It was also a culminating point in the great labor upheaval. The enthusiasm of the laboring people reached its highest pitch. They felt that, baffled and defeated as they were in their economic struggle, they were now nearing victory in the struggle for the control of government. Mass meetings were numerous and large. Most of them were held in the open air, usually on the street corners. From the system by which one speaker followed another, speaking at several meeting places in a night, the labor campaign got its nickname of the "tailboard campaign." The common people, women and men, gathered in hundreds and often thousands around trucks from which the shifting speakers addressed the crowd. The speakers were volunteers, including representatives of the liberal professions, lawyers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and labor leaders. At such mass meetings George did most of his campaigning, making several speeches a night, once as many as eleven. The single tax and the prevailing political corruption were favorite topics. Against George and his adherents were pitted the powerful press of the city of New York, all the political power of the old parties, and all the influence of the business class. George's opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, an anti-Tammany Democrat whom Tammany had picked for its candidate in this emergency, and Theodore Roosevelt, then as yet known only as a courageous young politician. The vote cast was 90,000 for Hewitt, 68,000 for George, and 60,000 for Roosevelt. There is possible ground for the belief that George was counted out of thousands of votes. The nature of the George vote can be sufficiently gathered from an analysis of the pledges to vote for him. An apparently trustworthy investigation was made by a representative of the New York Sun. He drew the conclusion that the vast majority were not simply wage earners, but also naturalized immigrants, mainly Irish, Germans, and Bohemians, the native element being in the minority. While the Irish were divided between George and Hewitt, the majority of the German element had gone over to Henry George. The outcome was hailed as a victory by George and his supporters and this view was also taken by the general press. In spite of this propitious beginning the political labor movement soon suffered the fate of all reform political movements. The strength of the new party was frittered away in doctrinaire factional strife between the single taxers and the socialists. The trade union element became discouraged and lost interest. So that at the next State election, in which George ran for Secretary of State, presumably because that office came nearest to meeting the requirement for a single taxer seeking a practical scope of action, the vote in the city fell to 37,000 and in the whole State amounted only to 72,000. This ended the political labor movement in New York. Outside of New York the political labor movement was not associated either with the single tax or any other "ism." As in New York it was a spontaneous expression of dissatisfaction brought on by failure in strikes. The movement scored a victory in Milwaukee, where it elected a mayor, and in Chicago where it polled 25,000 out of a total of 92,000. But, as in New York, it fell to pieces without leaving a permanent trace. FOOTNOTES: [18] See the next chapter for the scheme of organization followed by the Order. [19] See above, 79-80. CHAPTER 5 THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE FINAL FAILURE OF PRODUCERS' COOPERATION We now come to the most significant aspect of the Great Upheaval: the life and death struggle between two opposed principles of labor organization and between two opposed labor programs. The Upheaval offered the practical test which the labor movement required for an intelligent decision between the rival claims of Knights and trade unionists. The test as well as the conflict turned principally on "structure," that is on the difference between "craft autonomists" and those who would have labor organized "under one head," or what we would now call the "one big union" advocates. As the issue of "structure" proved in the crucial eighties, and has remained ever since, the outstanding factional issue in the labor movement, it might be well at this point to pass in brief review the structural developments in labor organization from the beginning and try to correlate them with other important developments. The early[20] societies of shoemakers and printers were purely local in scope and the relations between "locals" extended only to feeble attempts to deal with the competition of traveling journeymen. Occasionally, they corresponded on trade matters, notifying each other of their purposes and the nature of their demands, or expressing fraternal greetings; chiefly for the purpose of counteracting advertisements by employers for journeymen or keeping out dishonest members and so-called "scabs." This mostly relates to printers. The shoemakers, despite their bitter contests with their employers, did even less. The Philadelphia Mechanics' Trades Association in 1827, which we noted as the first attempted federation of trades in the United States if not in the world, was organized as a move of sympathy for the carpenters striking for the ten-hour day. During the period of the "wild-cat" prosperity the local federation of trades, under the name of "Trades' Union,"[21] comes to occupy the center of the stage in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and appeared even as far "West" as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. The constitution of the New York "Trades' Union" provided, among other things, that each society should pay a monthly per capita tax of 6-1/4 cents to be used as a strike fund. Later, when strikes multiplied, the Union limited the right to claim strike aid and appointed a standing committee on mediation. In 1835 it discussed a plan for an employment exchange or a "call room." The constitution of the Philadelphia Union required that a strike be endorsed by a two-thirds majority before granting aid. The National Trades' Union, the federation of city trades' unions, 1834-1836, was a further development of the same idea. Its first and second conventions went little beyond the theoretical. The latter, however, passed a significant resolution urging the trade societies to observe a uniform wage policy throughout the country and, should the employers combine to resist it, the unions should make "one general strike." The last convention in 1836 went far beyond preceding conventions in its plans for solidifying the workingmen of the country. First and foremost, a "national fund" was provided for, to be made up of a levy of two cents per month on each of the members of the trades' unions and local societies represented. The policies of the National Trades' Union instead of merely advisory were henceforth to be binding. But before the new policies could be tried, as we know, the entire trade union movement was wiped out by the panic. The city "trades' union" of the thirties accorded with a situation where the effects of the extension of the market were noticeable in the labor market, and little as yet in the commodity market; when the competitive menace to labor was the low paid out-of-town mechanic coming to the city, not the out-of-town product made under lower labor costs selling in the same market as the products of unionized labor. Under these conditions the local trade society, reenforced by the city federation of trades, sufficed. The "trades' union," moreover, served also as a source of reserve strength. Twenty years later the whole situation was changed. The fifties were a decade of extensive construction of railways. Before 1850 there was more traffic by water than by rail. After 1860 the relative importance of land and water transportation was reversed. Furthermore, the most important railway building during the ten years preceding 1860 was the construction of East and West trunk lines; and the sixties were marked by the establishment of through lines for freight and the consolidation of connecting lines. The through freight lines greatly hastened freight traffic and by the consolidations through transportation became doubly efficient. Arteries of traffic had thus extended from the Eastern coast to the Mississippi Valley. Local markets had widened to embrace half a continent. Competitive menaces had become more serious and threatened from a distance. Local unionism no longer sufficed. Consequently, as we saw, in the labor movement of the sixties the national trade union was supreme. There were four distinct sets of causes which operated during the sixties to bring about nationalization; two grew out of the changes in transportation, already alluded to, and two were largely independent of such changes. The first and most far-reaching cause, as illustrated by the stove molders, was the competition of the products of different localities side by side in the same market. Stoves manufactured in Albany, New York, were now displayed in St. Louis by the side of stoves made in Detroit. No longer could the molder in Albany be indifferent to the fate of his fellow craftsman in Louisville. With the molders the nationalization of the organization was destined to proceed to its utmost length. In order that union conditions should be maintained even in the best organized centers, it became necessary to equalize competitive conditions in the various localities. That led to a well-knit national organization to control working conditions, trade rules, and strikes. In other trades, where the competitive area of the product was still restricted to the locality, the paramount nationalizing influence was a more intensive competition for employment between migratory out-of-town journeymen and the locally organized mechanics. This describes the situation in the printing trade, where the bulk of work was newspaper and not book and job printing. Accordingly, the printers did not need to entrust their national officers with anything more than the control of the traveling journeymen and the result was that the local unions remained practically independent. The third cause of concerted national action in a trade union was the organization of employers. Where the power of a local union began to be threatened by an employers' association, the next logical step was to combine in a national union. The fourth cause was the application of machinery and the introduction of division of labor, which split up the established trades and laid industry open to invasion by "green hands." The shoemaking industry, which during the sixties had reached the factory stage, illustrates this in a most striking manner. Few other industries experienced anything like a similar change during this period. Of course, none of the causes of nationalization here enumerated operated in entire isolation. In some trades one cause, in other trades other causes, had the predominating influence. Consequently, in some trades the national union resembled an agglomeration of loosely allied states, each one reserving the right to engage in independent action and expecting from its allies no more than a benevolent neutrality. In other trades, on the contrary, the national union was supreme in declaring industrial war and in making peace, and even claimed absolute right to formulate the civil laws of the trade for times of industrial peace. The national trade union was, therefore, a response to obvious and pressing necessity. However slow or imperfect may have been the adjustment of internal organizations to the conditions of the trade, still the groove was defined and consequently the amount of possible floundering largely limited. Not so with the next step, namely the national federation of trades. In the sixties we saw the national trade unions join with other local and miscellaneous labor organizations in the National Labor Union upon a political platform of eight-hours and greenbackism. In 1873 the same national unions asserted their rejection of "panaceas" and politics by attempting to create in the National Labor Congress a federation of trades of a strictly economic character. The panic and depression nipped that in the bud. When trade unionism revived in 1879 the national trade unions returned to the idea of a national federation of labor, but this time they followed the model of the British Trades Union Congress, the organization which cares for the legislative interests of British labor. This was the "Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada," which was set up in 1881. It is easy to understand why the unions of the early eighties did not feel the need of a federation on economic lines. The trade unions of today look to the American Federation of Labor for the discharge of important economic functions, therefore it is primarily an economic organization. These functions are the assistance of national trade unions in organizing their trades, the adjustment of disputes between unions claiming the same "jurisdiction," and concerted action in matters of especial importance such as shorter hours, the "open-shop," or boycotts. None of these functions would have been of material importance to the trade unions of the early eighties. Existing in well-defined trades, which were not affected by technical changes, they had no "jurisdictional" disputes; operating at a period of prosperity with full employment and rising wages, they did not realize a necessity for concerted action; the era of the boycotts had not yet begun. As for having a common agency to do the work of organizing, the trade unions of the early eighties had no keen desire to organize any but the skilled workmen; and, since the competition of workmen in small towns had not yet made itself felt, each national trade union strove to organize primarily the workmen of its trade in the larger cities, a function for which its own means were adequate. The new organization of 1881 was a loose federation of trade and labor unions with a legislative committee at the head, with Samuel Gompers of the cigar makers as a member. The platform was purely legislative and demanded legal incorporation for trade unions,[22] compulsory education for children, the prohibition of child labor under fourteen, uniform apprentice laws, the enforcement of the national eight-hour law, prison labor reform, abolition of the "truck" and "order" system, mechanics' lien, abolition of conspiracy laws as applied to labor organizations, a national bureau of labor statistics, a protective tariff for American labor, an anti-contract immigrant law, and recommended "all trade and labor organizations to secure proper representation in all law-making bodies by means of the ballot, and to use all honorable measures by which this result can be accomplished." Although closely related to the present American Federation of Labor in point of time and personnel of leadership, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada was in reality the precursor of the present state federations of labor, which as specialized parts of the national federation now look after labor legislation. Two or three years later it became evident that the Federation as a legislative organization proved a failure.[23] Manifestly the trade unions felt no great interest in national legislation. The indifference can be measured by the fact that the annual income of the Federation never exceeded $700 and that, excepting in 1881, none of its conventions represented more than one-fourth of the trade union membership of the country. Under such conditions the legislative influence of the Federation naturally was infinitesimal. The legislative committee carried out the instructions of the 1883 convention and communicated to the national committees of the Republican and Democratic parties the request that they should define their position upon the enforcement of the eight-hour law and other measures. The letters were not even answered. A subcommittee of the legislative committee appeared before the two political conventions, but received no greater attention. It was not until the majority of the national trade unions came under the menace of becoming forcibly absorbed by the Order of the Knights of Labor that a basis appeared for a vigorous federation. The Knights of Labor were built on an opposite principle from the national trade unions. Whereas the latter started with independent crafts and then with hesitating hands tried, as we saw, to erect some sort of a common superstructure that should express a higher solidarity of labor, the former was built from the beginning upon a denial of craft lines and upon an absolute unity of all classes of labor under one guiding head. The subdivision was territorial instead of occupational and the government centralized. The constitution of the Knights of Labor was drawn in 1878 when the Order laid aside the veil of secrecy to which it had clung since its foundation in 1869. The lowest unit of organization was the local assembly of ten or more, at least three-fourths of whom had to be wage earners at any trade. Above the local assembly was the "district assembly" and above it the "General Assembly." The district assembly had absolute power over its local assemblies and the General Assembly was given "full and final jurisdiction" as "the highest tribunal" of the Order.[24] Between sessions of the General Assembly the power was vested in a General Executive Board, presided over by a Grand Master Workman. The Order of the Knights of Labor in practice carried out the idea which is now advocated so fervently by revolutionary unionists, namely the "One Big Union," since it avowedly aimed to bring into one organization "all productive labor." This idea in organization was aided by the weakness of the trade unions during the long depression of the seventies, which led many to hope for better things from a general pooling of labor strength. But its main appeal rested on a view that machine technique tends to do away with all distinctions of trades by reducing all workers to the level of unskilled machine tenders. To its protagonists therefore the "one big union" stood for an adjustment to the new technique. First to face the problem of adjustment to the machine technique of the factory system were the shoemakers. They organized in 1867 the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin, mainly for the purpose of suppressing the competitive menace of "green hands," that is unskilled workers put to work on shoe machines. At its height in 1872, the Crispins numbered about 50,000, perhaps the largest union in the whole world at that time. The coopers began to be menaced by machinery about the middle of the sixties, and about the same time the machinists and blacksmiths, too, saw their trade broken up by the introduction of the principle of standardized parts and quantity production in the making of machinery. From these trades came the national leaders of the Knights of Labor and the strongest advocates of the new principle in labor organization and of the interests of the unskilled workers in general. The conflict between the trade unions and the Knights of Labor turned on the question of the unskilled workers. The conflict was held in abeyance during the early eighties. The trade unions were by far the strongest organizations in the field and scented no particular danger when here or there the Knights formed an assembly either contiguous to the sphere of a trade union or even at times encroaching upon it. With the Great Upheaval, which began in 1884, and the inrushing of hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled and unskilled workers into the Order, a new situation was created. The leaders of the Knights realized that mere numbers were not sufficient to defeat the employers and that control over the skilled, and consequently the more strategic occupations, was required before the unskilled and semi-skilled could expect to march to victory. Hence, parallel to the tremendous growth of the Knights in 1886, there was a constantly growing effort to absorb the existing trade unions for the purpose of making them subservient to the interests of the less skilled elements. It was mainly that which produced the bitter conflict between the Knights and the trade unions during 1886 and 1887. Neither the jealousy aroused by the success of the unions nor the opposite aims of labor solidarity and trade separatism gives an adequate explanation of this conflict. The one, of course, aggravated the situation by introducing a feeling of personal bitterness, and the other furnished an appealing argument to each side. But the struggle was one between groups within the working class, in which the small but more skilled group fought for independence of the larger but weaker group of the unskilled and semi-skilled. The skilled men stood for the right to use their advantage of skill and efficient organization in order to wrest the maximum amount of concessions for themselves. The Knights of Labor endeavored to annex the skilled men in order that the advantage from their exceptional fighting strength might lift up the unskilled and semi-skilled. From the point of view of a struggle between principles, this was indeed a clash between the principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade separatism, but, in reality, each of the principles reflected only the special interest of a certain portion of the working class. Just as the trade unions, when they fought for trade autonomy, really refused to consider the unskilled men, so the Knights of Labor overlooked the fact that their scheme would retard the progress of the skilled trades. The Knights were in nearly every case the aggressors, and it is significant that among the local organizations of the Knights inimical to trade unions, District Assembly 49, of New York, should prove the most relentless. It was this assembly which conducted the longshoremen's and coal miners' strike in New York in 1887 and which, as we saw,[25] did not hesitate to tie up the industries of the entire city for the sake of securing the demands of several hundred unskilled workingmen. Though District Assembly 49, New York, came into conflict with not a few of the trade unions in that city, its battle royal was fought with the cigar makers' unions. There were at the time two factions among the cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling itself the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic in nature and composed of more recent immigrants and less skilled workers. District Assembly 49 of the Knights of Labor took a hand in the struggle to support the Progressive Union and by skillful management brought the situation to the point where the latter had to allow itself to be absorbed into the Knights of Labor. The events in the cigar making trade in New York brought to a climax the sporadic struggles that had been going on between the Order and the trade unions. The trade unions demanded that the Knights of Labor respect their "jurisdiction" and proposed a "treaty of peace" with such drastic terms that had they been accepted the trade unions would have been left in the sole possession of the field. The Order was at first more conciliatory. It would not of course cease to take part in industrial disputes and industrial matters, but it proposed a _modus vivendi_ on a basis of an interchange of "working cards" and common action against employers. At the same time it addressed separately to each national trade union a gentle admonition to think of the unskilled workers as well as of themselves. The address said: "In the use of the wonderful inventions, your organization plays a most important part. Naturally it embraces within its ranks a very large proportion of laborers of a high grade of skill and intelligence. With this skill of hand, guided by intelligent thought, comes the right to demand that excess of compensation paid to skilled above the unskilled labor. But the unskilled labor must receive attention, or in the hour of difficulty the employer will not hesitate to use it to depress the compensation you now receive. That skilled or unskilled labor may no longer be found unorganized, we ask of you to annex your grand and powerful corps to the main army that we may fight the battle under one flag." But the trade unions, who had formerly declared that their purpose was "to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to beggary," evinced no desire to be pressed into the service of lifting up the unskilled and voted down with practical unanimity the proposal. Thereupon the Order declared open war by commanding all its members who were also members of the cigar makers' union to withdraw from the latter on the penalty of expulsion. Later events proved that the assumption of the aggressive was the beginning of the undoing of the Order. It was, moreover, an event of first significance in the labor movement since it forced the trade unions to draw closer together and led to the founding in the same year, 1886, of the American Federation of Labor. Another highly important effect of this conflict was the ascendency in the trade union movement of Samuel Gompers as the foremost leader. Gompers had first achieved prominence in 1881 at the time of the organization of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. But not until the situation created by the conflict with the Knights of Labor did he get his first real opportunity, both to demonstrate his inborn capacity for leadership and to train and develop that capacity by overcoming what was perhaps the most serious problem that ever confronted American organized labor. The new Federation avoided its predecessor's mistake of emphasizing labor legislation above all. Its prime purpose was economic. The legislative interests of labor were for the most part given into the care of subordinate state federations of labor. Consequently, the several state federations, not the American Federation of Labor, correspond in America to the British Trades Union Congress. But in the conventions of the American Federation of Labor the state federations are represented only nominally. The Federation is primarily a federation of national and international (including Canada and Mexico) trade unions. Each national and international union in the new Federation was acknowledged a sovereignty unto itself, with full powers of discipline over its members and with the power of free action toward the employers without any interference from the Federation; in other words, its full autonomy was confirmed. Like the British Empire, the Federation of Labor was cemented together by ties which were to a much greater extent spiritual than they were material. Nevertheless, the Federation's authority was far from being a shadowy one. If it could not order about the officers of the constituent unions, it could so mobilize the general labor sentiment in the country on behalf of any of its constituent bodies that its good will would be sought even by the most powerful ones. The Federation guaranteed to each union a certain jurisdiction, generally coextensive with a craft, and protected it against encroachments by adjoining unions and more especially by rival unions. The guarantee worked absolutely in the case of the latter, for the Federation knew no mercy when a rival union attempted to undermine the strength of an organized union of a craft. The trade unions have learned from experience with the Knights of Labor that their deadliest enemy was, after all, not the employers' association but the enemy from within who introduced confusion in the ranks. They have accordingly developed such a passion for "regularity," such an intense conviction that there must be but one union in a given trade that, on occasions, scheming labor officials have known how to checkmate a justifiable insurgent movement by a skillful play upon this curious hypertrophy of the feeling of solidarity. Not only will a rival union never be admitted into the Federation, but no subordinate body, state or city, may dare to extend any aid or comfort to a rival union. The Federation exacted but little from the national and international unions in exchange for the guarantee of their jurisdiction: A small annual per capita tax; a willing though a not obligatory support in the special legislative and industrial campaigns it may undertake; an adherence to its decisions on general labor policy; an undertaking to submit to its decision in the case of disputes with other unions, which however need not in every case be fulfilled; and lastly, an unqualified acceptance of the principle of "regularity" relative to labor organization. Obviously, judging from constitutional powers alone, the Federation was but a weak sort of a government. Yet the weakness was not the forced weakness of a government which was willing to start with limited powers hoping to increase its authority as it learned to stand more firmly on its own feet; it was a self-imposed weakness suggested by the lessons of labor history. By contrast the Order of the Knights of Labor, as seen already, was governed by an all-powerful General Assembly and General Executive Board. At a first glance a highly centralized form of government would appear a promise of assured strength and a guarantee of coherence amongst the several parts of the organization. Perhaps, if America's wage earners were cemented together by as strong a class consciousness as the laboring classes of Europe, such might have been the case. But America's labor movement lacked the unintended aid which the sister movements in Europe derived from a caste system of society and political oppression. Where the class lines were not tightly drawn, the centrifugal forces in the labor movement were bound to assert themselves. The leaders of the American Federation of Labor, in their struggle against the Knights of Labor, played precisely upon this centrifugal tendency and gained a victory by making an appeal to the natural desire for autonomy and self-determination of any distinctive group. But originally perhaps intended as a mere "strategic" move, this policy succeeded in creating a labor movement which was, on fundamentals, far more coherent than the Knights of Labor even in the heyday of their glory. The officers and leaders of the Federation, knowing that they could not command, set themselves to developing a unified labor will and purpose by means of moral suasion and propaganda. Where a bare order would breed resentment and backbiting, an appeal, which is reinforced by a carefully nurtured universal labor sentiment, will eventually bring about common consent and a willing acquiescence in the policy supported by the majority. So each craft was made a self-determining unit and "craft autonomy" became a sacred shibboleth in the labor movement without interfering with unity on essentials. The principle of craft autonomy triumphed chiefly because it recognized the existence of a considerable amount of group selfishness. The Knights of Labor held, as was seen, that the strategic or bargaining strength of the skilled craftsman should be used as a lever to raise the status of the semi-skilled and unskilled worker. It consequently grouped them promiscuously in "mixed assemblies" and opposed as long as it could the demand for "national trade assemblies." The craftsman, on the other hand, wished to use his superior bargaining strength for his own purposes and evinced little desire to dissipate it in the service of his humbler fellow worker. To give effect to that, he felt obliged to struggle against becoming entangled with undesirable allies in the semi-skilled and unskilled workers for whom the Order spoke. Needless to say, the individual self-interest of the craft leaders worked hand in hand with the self-interest of the craft as a whole, for had they been annexed by the Order they would have become subject to orders from the General Master Workman or the General Assembly of the Order. In addition to platonic stirrings for "self-determination" and to narrow group interest, there was a motive for craft autonomy which could pass muster both as strictly social and realistic. The fact was that the autonomous craft union could win strikes where the centralized promiscuous Order merely floundered and suffered defeat after defeat. The craft union had the advantage, on the one hand, of a leadership which was thoroughly familiar with the bit of ground upon which it operated, and, on the other hand, of handling a group of people of equal financial endurance and of identical interest. It has already been seen how dreadfully mismanaged were the great Knights of Labor strikes of 1886 and 1887. The ease with which the leaders were able to call out trade after trade on a strike of sympathy proved more a liability than an asset. Often the choice of trades to strike bore no particular relation to their strategic value in the given situation; altogether one gathers the impression that these great strikes were conducted by blundering amateurs who possessed more authority than was good for them or for the cause. It is therefore not to be wondered at if the compact craft unions led by specialists scored successes where the heterogeneous mobs of the Knights of Labor had been doomed from the first. Clearly then the survival of the craft union was a survival of the fittest; and the Federation's attachment to the principle of craft autonomy was, to say the least, a product of an evolutionary past, whatever one may hold with reference to its fitness in our own time. Whatever reasons moved the trade unions of the skilled to battle with the Order for their separate and autonomous existence were bound sooner or later to induce those craftsmen who were in the Order to seek a similar autonomy. From the very beginning the more skilled and better organized trades in the Knights sought to separate from the mixed "district assemblies" and to create within the framework of the Order "national trade assemblies."[26] However, the national officers, who looked upon such a move as a betrayal of the great principle of the solidarity of all labor, were able to stem the tide excepting in the case of the window glass blowers, who were granted their autonomy in 1880. The obvious superiority of the trade union form of organization over the mixed organization, as revealed by events in 1886 and 1887, strengthened the separatist tendency. Just as the struggle between the Knights of Labor and the trade unions on the outside had been fundamentally a struggle between the unskilled and the skilled portions of the wage-earning class, so the aspiration toward the national trade assembly within the Order represented the effort of the more or less skilled men for emancipation from the dominance of the unskilled. But the Order successfully fought off such attempts until after the defeat of the mixed district assemblies, or in other words of the unskilled class, in the struggle with the employers. With the withdrawal of a very large portion of this class, as shown in 1887,[27] the demand for the national trade assembly revived and there soon began a veritable rush to organize by trades. The stampede was strongest in the city of New York where the incompetence of the mixed District Assembly 49 had become patent. At the General Assembly in 1887 at Minneapolis all obstacles were removed from forming national trade assemblies, but this came too late to stem the exodus of the skilled element from the order into the American Federation of Labor. The victory of craft autonomy over the "one big union" was decisive and complete. The strike activities of the Knights were confessedly a deviation from "First Principles." Yet the First Principles with their emphasis on producers' cooperation were far from forgotten even when the enthusiasm for strikes was at its highest. Whatever the actual feelings of the membership as a whole, the leaders neglected no opportunity to promote cooperation. T.V. Powderly, the head of the Order since 1878, in his reports to the annual General Assembly or convention, consistently urged that practical steps be taken toward cooperation. In 1881, while the general opinion in the Order was still undecided, the leaders did not scruple to smuggle into the constitution a clause which made cooperation compulsory. Notwithstanding Powderly's exhortations, the Order was at first slow in taking it up. In 1882 a general cooperative board was elected to work out a plan of action, but it never reported, and a new board was chosen in its place at the Assembly of 1883. In that year, the first practical step was taken in the purchase by the Order of a coal mine at Cannelburg, Indiana, with the idea of selling the coal at reduced prices to the members. Soon thereafter a thorough change of sentiment with regard to the whole matter of cooperation took place, contemporaneously with the industrial depression and unsuccessful strikes. The rank and file, who had hitherto been indifferent, now seized upon the idea with avidity. The enthusiasm ran so high in Lynn, Massachusetts, that it was found necessary to raise the shares of the Knights of Labor Cooperative Shoe Company to $100 in order to prevent a large influx of "unsuitable members." In 1885 Powderly complained that "many of our members grow impatient and unreasonable because every avenue of the Order does not lead to cooperation." The impatience for immediate cooperation, which seized the rank and file in practically every section of the country, caused an important modification in the official doctrine of the Order. Originally it had contemplated centralized control under which it would have taken years before a considerable portion of the membership could realize any benefit. This was now dropped and a decentralized plan was adopted. Local organizations and, more frequently, groups of members with the financial aid of their local organizations now began to establish shops. Most of the enterprises were managed by the stockholders, although, in some cases, the local organization of the Knights of Labor managed the plant. Most of the cooperative enterprises were conducted on a small scale. Incomplete statistics warrant the conclusion that the average amount invested per establishment was about $10,000. From the data gathered it seems that cooperation reached its highest point in 1886, although it had not completely spent itself by the end of 1887. The total number of ventures probably reached two hundred. The largest numbers were in mining, cooperage, and shoes. These industries paid the poorest wages and treated their employes most harshly. A small amount of capital was required to organize such establishments. With the abandonment of centralized cooperation in 1884, the role of the central cooperative board changed correspondingly. The leading member of the board was now John Samuel, one of those to whom cooperation meant nothing short of a religion. The duty of the board was to educate the members of the Order in the principles of cooperation; to aid by information and otherwise prospective and actual cooperators; in brief, to coordinate the cooperative movement within the Order. It issued forms of a constitution and by-laws which, with a few modifications, could be adopted by any locality. It also published articles on the dangers and pitfalls in cooperative ventures, such as granting credit, poor management, etc., as well as numerous articles on specific kinds of cooperation. The Knights of Labor label was granted for the use of cooperative goods and a persistent agitation was steadily conducted to induce purchasers to give a preference to cooperative products. As a scheme of industrial regeneration, cooperation never materialized. The few successful shops sooner or later fell into the hands of an "inner group," who "froze out" the others and set up capitalistic partnerships. The great majority went on the rocks even before getting started. The causes of failure were many: Hasty action, inexperience, lax shop discipline, internal dissensions, high rates of interest upon the mortgage of the plant, and finally discriminations instigated by competitors. Railways were heavy offenders, by delaying side tracks and, on some pretext or other, refusing to furnish cars or refusing to haul them. The Union Mining Company of Cannelburg, Indiana, owned and operated by the Order as its sole experiment of the centralized kind of cooperation, met this fate. After expending $20,000 in equipping the mine, purchasing land, laying tracks, cutting and sawing timber on the land and mining $1000 worth of coal, they were compelled to lie idle for nine months before the railway company saw fit to connect their switch with the main track. When they were ready to ship their product, it was learned that their coal could be utilized for the manufacture of gas only, and that contracts for supply of such coal were let in July, that is nine months from the time of connecting the switch with the main track. In addition, the company was informed that it must supply itself with a switch engine to do the switching of the cars from its mine to the main track, at an additional cost of $4000. When this was accomplished they had to enter the market in competition with a bitter opponent who had been fighting them since the opening of the mine. Having exhausted their funds and not seeing their way clear to securing additional funds for the purchase of a locomotive and to tide over the nine months ere any contracts for coal could be entered into, they sold out to their competitor. But a cause more fundamental perhaps than all other causes of the failure of cooperation in the United States is to be found in the difficulties of successful entrepreneurship. In the labor movement in the United States there has been a failure, generally speaking, to appreciate the significance of management and the importance which must be imputed to it. Glib talk often commands an undeserved confidence and misleads the wage earner. Thus by 1888, three or four years after it had begun, the cooperative movement had passed the full cycle of life and succumbed. The failure, as said, was hastened by external causes and discrimination. But the experiments had been foredoomed anyway,--through the incompatibility of producers' cooperation with trade unionism. The cooperators, in their eagerness to get a market, frequently undersold the private employer expecting to recoup their present losses in future profits. In consequence, the privately employed wage earners had to bear reductions in their wages. A labor movement which endeavors to practice producers' cooperation and trade unionism at the same time is actually driving in opposite directions. FOOTNOTES: [20] See Chapter 1. [21] In the thirties the term "union" was reserved for the city federations of trades. What is now designated as a trade union was called trade society. In the sixties the "Union" became the "trades' assembly." [22] See below, 152-154. [23] See below, 285-290, for a discussion why American labor looks away from legislation. [24] The Constitution read as follows: "It alone possesses the power and authority to make, amend, or repeal the fundamental and general laws and regulations of the Order; to finally decide all controversies arising in the Order; to issue all charters.... It can also tax the members of the Order for its maintenance." [25] See above, 98-100. [26] The "local assemblies" generally followed in practice trade lines, but the district assemblies were "mixed." [27] See above, 100-101. CHAPTER 6 STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 The Great Upheaval of 1886 had, as we saw, suddenly swelled the membership of trade unions; consequently, during several years following, notwithstanding the prosperity in industry, further growth was bound to proceed at a slower rate. The statistics of strikes during the later eighties, like the figures of membership, show that after the strenuous years from 1885 to 1887 the labor movement had entered a more or less quiet stage. Most prominent among the strikes was the one of 60,000 iron and steel workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West, which was carried to a successful conclusion against a strong combination of employers. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers stood at the zenith of its power about this time and was able in 1889, by the mere threat of a strike, to dictate terms to the Carnegie Steel Company. The most noted and last great strike of a railway brotherhood was the one of the locomotive engineers on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. The strike was begun jointly on February 27, 1888, by the brotherhoods of locomotive engineers and locomotive firemen. The main demands were made by the engineers, who asked for the abandonment of the system of classification and for a new wage scale. Two months previously, the Knights of Labor had declared a miners' strike against the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, employing 80,000 anthracite miners, and the strike had been accompanied by a sympathetic strike of engineers and firemen belonging to the Order. The members of the brotherhoods had filled their places and, in retaliation, the former Reading engineers and firemen now took the places of the Burlington strikers, so that on March 15 the company claimed to have a full contingent of employes. The brotherhoods ordered a boycott upon the Burlington cars, which was partly enforced, but they were finally compelled to submit. The strike was not officially called off until January 3, 1889. Notwithstanding the defeat of the strikers, the damage to the railway was enormous, and neither the railways of the country nor the brotherhoods since that date have permitted a serious strike of their members to occur. The lull in the trade union movement was broken by a new concerted eight-hour movement managed by the Federation, which culminated in 1890. Although on the whole the eight-hour movement in 1886 was a failure, it was by no means a disheartening failure. It was evident that the eight-hour day was a popular demand, and that an organization desirous of expansion might well hitch its wagon to this star. Accordingly, the convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1888 declared that a general demand should be made for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. The chief advocates of the resolution were the delegates of the carpenters, who announced a readiness to lead the way for a general eight-hour day in 1890. The Federation at once inaugurated an aggressive campaign. For the first time in its history it employed special salaried organizers. Pamphlets were issued and widely distributed. On every important holiday mass meetings were held in the larger cities. On Labor Day 1889, no less than 420 such mass meetings were held throughout the country. Again the Knights of Labor came out against the plan. The next year the plan of campaign was modified. The idea of a general strike for the eight-hour day in May 1890, was abandoned in favor of a strike trade by trade. In March 1890, the carpenters were chosen to make the demand on May 1 of the same year, to be followed by the miners at a later date. The choice of the carpenters was indeed fortunate. Beginning with 1886, that union had a rapid growth and was now the largest union affiliated with the Federation. For several years it had been accumulating funds for the eight-hour day, and, when the movement was inaugurated in May 1890, it achieved a large measure of success. The union officers claimed to have won the eight-hour day in 137 cities and a nine-hour day in most other places. However, the selection of the miners to follow on May 1, 1891, was a grave mistake. Less than one-tenth of the coal miners of the country were then organized. For years the miners' union had been losing ground, with the constant decline of coal prices. Some months before May 1, 1891, the United Mine Workers had become involved in a disastrous strike in the Connelsville coke region, and the plan for an eight-hour strike was abandoned. In this manner the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the convention of the Federation in 1888 came to an end. Apart from the strike of the carpenters in 1890, it had not led to any general movement to gain the eight-hour work day. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workingmen had won reduced hours of labor, especially in the building trades. By 1891 the eight-hour day had been secured for all building trades in Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. In New York and Brooklyn the carpenters, stone-cutters, painters, and plasterers worked eight hours, while the bricklayers, masons, and plumbers worked nine. In St. Paul the bricklayers alone worked nine hours, the remaining trades eight. In 1892 the labor movement faced for the first time a really modern manufacturing corporation with its practically boundless resources of war, namely the Carnegie Steel Company, in the strike which has become famous under the name of the Homestead Strike. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, with a membership of 24,068 in 1891, was probably the strongest trade union in the entire history of the American labor movement. Prior to 1889 the relations between the union and the Carnegie firm had been invariably friendly. In January 1889, H.C. Frick, who, as owner of the largest coke manufacturing plant, had acquired a reputation of a bitter opponent of organized labor, became chairman of Carnegie Brothers and Company. In the same year, owing to his assumption of management, as the union men believed, the first dispute occurred between them and the company. Although the agreement was finally renewed for three years on terms dictated by the Association, the controversy left a disturbing impression upon the minds of the men, since during the course of the negotiations Frick had demanded the dissolution of the union. Negotiations for the new scale presented to the company began in February 1892. A few weeks later the company presented a scale to the men providing for a reduction and besides demanded that the date of the termination of the scale be changed from July 1 to January 1. A number of conferences were held without result; and on May 30 the company submitted an ultimatum to the effect that, if the scale were not signed by June 29, they would treat with the men as individuals. At a final conference which was held on June 23, the company raised its offer from $22 per ton to $23 as the minimum base of the scale, and the union lowered its demand from $25, the rate formerly paid, to $24. But no agreement could be reached on this point nor on others and the strike began June 29 upon the definite issue of the preservation of the union. Even before the negotiations were broken up, Frick had arranged with the Pinkerton detective agency for 300 men to serve as guards. These men arrived at a station on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh near midnight of July 5. Here they embarked on barges and were towed up the river to Pittsburgh and taken up the Monangahela River to Homestead, which they approached about four o'clock on the morning of July 6. The workmen had been warned of their coming and, when the boat reached the landing back of the steel works, nearly the whole town was there to meet them and to prevent their landing. Passion ran high. The men armed themselves with guns and gave the Pinkertons a pitched battle. When the day was over, at least half a dozen men on both sides had been killed and a number were seriously wounded. The Pinkertons were defeated and driven away and, although there was no more disorder of any sort, the State militia appeared in Homestead on July 12 and remained for several months. The strike which began in Homestead soon spread to other mills. The Carnegie mills at 29th and 33d Streets, Pittsburgh, went on strike. The strike at Homestead was finally declared off on November 20, and most of the men went back to their old positions as non-union men. The treasury of the union was depleted, winter was coming, and it was finally decided to consider the battle lost. The defeat meant not only the loss by the union of the Homestead plant but the elimination of unionism in most of the mills in the Pittsburgh region. Where the great Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow. The power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor movement learned the lesson that even its strongest organization was unable to withstand an onslaught by the modern corporation. The Homestead strike stirred the labor movement as few other single events. It had its political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890. Many of the votes which would otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate for President went in 1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran on an anti-protective tariff issue. It is not unlikely that the latter's victory was materially advanced by the disillusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat. In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic. The panic and the ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive test of the strength and stability of the American labor movement. Gompers in his presidential report at the convention of 1899, following the long depression, said: "It is noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial crisis the trade unions were literally mowed down and swept out of existence, the unions now in existence have manifested, not only the power of resistance, but of stability and permanency," and he assigned as the most prominent cause the system of high dues and benefits which had come into vogue in a large number of trade unions. He said: "Beyond doubt the superficial motive of continued membership in unions organized upon this basis was the monetary benefits the members were entitled to; but be that as it may, the results are the same, that is, _membership is maintained, the organization remains intact during dull periods of industry, and is prepared to take advantage of the first sign of an industrial revival_." Gompers may have overstated the power of resistance of the unions, but their holding power upon the membership cannot be disputed. The aggregate membership of all unions affiliated with the Federation remained near the mark of 275,000 throughout the period of depression from 1893 to 1897. At last the labor movement had become stabilized. The year 1894 was exceptional for labor disturbances. The number of employes involved reached nearly 750,000, surpassing even the mark set in 1886. However, in contradistinction to 1886, the movement was defensive. It also resulted in greater failure. The strike of the coal miners and the Pullman strike were the most important ones. The United Mine Workers began their strike in Ohio on April 21. The membership did not exceed 20,000, but about 125,000 struck. At first the demand was made that wages should be restored to the level at which they were in May 1893. But within a month the union in most regions was struggling to prevent a further reduction in wages. By the end of July the strike was lost. The Pullman strike marks an era in the American labor movement because it was the only attempt ever made in America of a revolutionary strike on the Continental European model. The strikers tried to throw against the associated railways and indeed against the entire existing social order the full force of a revolutionary labor solidarity embracing the entire American wage-earning class brought to the point of exasperation by unemployment, wage reductions, and misery. That in spite of the remarkable favorable conjuncture the dramatic appeal failed to shake the general labor movement out of its chosen groove is proof positive of the completion of the stabilization process which had been going on since the early eighties. The Pullman strike began May 11, 1894, and grew out of a demand of certain employes in the shops of the Pullman Palace Car Company, situated at Pullman, Illinois, for a restoration of the wages paid during the previous year. In March 1894, the Pullman employes had voted to join the American Railway Union. The American Railway Union was an organization based on industrial lines, organized in June 1893, by Eugene V. Debs. Debs, as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, had watched the failure of many a strike by only one trade and resigned this office to organize all railway workers in one organization. The American Railway Union was the result. Between June 9 and June 26 the latter held a convention in Chicago. The Pullman matter was publicly discussed before and after its committee reported their interviews with the Pullman Company. On June 21, the delegates under instructions from their local unions, feeling confident after a victory over the Great Northern in April, unanimously voted that the members should stop handling Pullman cars on June 26 unless the Pullman Company would consent to arbitration. On June 26 the railway strike began. It was a purely sympathetic strike as no demands were made. The union found itself pitted against the General Managers' Association, representing twenty-four roads centering or terminating in Chicago, which were bound by contracts with the Pullman Company. The association had been organized in 1886, its main business being to determine a common policy as to traffic and freight rates, but incidentally it dealt also with wages. The strike soon spread over an enormous territory. Many of the members of the brotherhoods joined in, although their organizations were opposed to the strike. The lawless element in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity to rob, burn, and plunder, so that the scenes of the great railway strike of 1877 were now repeated. The damages in losses of property and business to the country have been estimated at $80,000,000. On July 7, E.V. Debs, president, and other principal officers of the American Railway Union were indicted, arrested, and held under $10,000 bail. On July 13 they were charged with contempt of the United States Court in disobeying an injunction which enjoined them, among other things, from compelling or inducing by threats railway employes to strike. The strike had already been weakening for some days. On July 12, at the request of the American Railway Union, about twenty-five of the executive officers of national and international labor unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor met in conference in Chicago to discuss the situation. Debs appeared and urged a general strike by all labor organizations. But the conference decided that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the interests of labor to extend the strike any further than it had already gone," and advised the strikers to return to work. On July 13, the American Railway Union, through the Mayor of Chicago, offered the General Managers' Association to declare the strike off, provided the men should be restored to their former positions without prejudice, except in cases where they had been convicted of crime. But the Association refused to deal with the union. The strike was already virtually beaten by the combined moral effect of the indictment of the leaders and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops, which President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest of Governor Altgeld of Illinois. The labor organizations were taught two important lessons. First, that nothing can be gained through revolutionary striking, for the government was sufficiently strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.[28] Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly falling labor market and court prosecutions were powerful allies of those socialistic and radical leaders inside the Federation who aspired to convert it from a mere economic organization into an economic-political one and make it embark upon the sea of independent politics. The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it submitted to the consideration of affiliated unions a "political programme." The preamble to the "programme" recited that the English trade unions had recently launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their economic action." The eleven planks of the program demanded: compulsory education; the right of popular initiative in legislation; a legal eight-hour work-day; governmental inspection of mines and workshops; abolition of the sweating system; employers' liability laws; abolition of the contract system upon public work; municipal ownership of electric light, gas, street railway, and water systems; the nationalization of telegraphs, telephones, railroads, and mines; "the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution"; and the referendum upon all legislation. Immediately after the convention of 1893 affiliated unions began to give their endorsement to the political program. Not until comparatively late did any opposition make itself manifest. Then it took the form of a demand by such conservative leaders as Gompers, McGuire, and Strasser, that plank 10, with its pledge in favor of "the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution," be stricken out. Notwithstanding this, the majority of national trade unions endorsed the program. During 1894 the trade unions were active participants in politics. In November, 1894, the _Federationist_ gave a list of more than 300 union members candidates for some elective office. Only a half dozen of these, however, were elected. It was mainly to these local failures that Gompers pointed in his presidential address at the convention of 1894 as an argument against the adoption of the political program by the Federation. His attitude clearly foreshadowed the destiny of the program at the convention. The first attack was made upon the preamble, on the ground that the statement therein that the English trade unions had declared for independent political action was false. By a vote of 1345 to 861 the convention struck out the preamble. Upon motion of the typographical union, a substitute was adopted calling for the "abolition of the monopoly system of land holding and the substitution therefor of a title of occupancy and use only." Some of the delegates seem to have interpreted this substitute as a declaration for the single tax; but the majority of those who voted in its favor probably acted upon the principle "anything to beat socialism." Later the entire program was voted down. That sealed the fate of the move for an independent labor party. The American Federation of Labor was almost drawn into the whirlpool of partisan politics during the Presidential campaign of 1896. Three successive conventions had declared in favor of the free coinage of silver; and now the Democratic party had come out for free coinage. In this situation very many prominent trade union leaders declared publicly for Bryan. President Gompers, however, issued a warning to all affiliated unions to keep out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this Secretary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation, charged President Gompers with acting in collusion with the Democratic headquarters throughout the campaign in aid of Bryan's candidacy. After a lengthy secret session the convention approved the conduct of Gompers. Free silver continued to be endorsed annually down to the convention of 1898, when the return of industrial prosperity and rising prices put an end to it as a demand advocated by labor. The depressed nineties demonstrated conclusively that a new era had arrived. No longer was the labor movement a mere plaything of the alternating waves of prosperity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it had centered on economic or trade-union action during prosperity only to change abruptly to "panaceas" and politics with the descent of depression. Now the movement, notwithstanding possible changes in membership, and persistent political leanings in some portions of it, as a whole for the first time became stable in purpose and action. Trade unionism has won over politics. This victory was synchronous with the first successful working out of a national trade agreement and the institutionalization of trade unionism in a leading industry, namely stove molding. While one of the earliest stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering a local field was a bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in 1887, the era of trade agreements really dates from the national system established in the stove foundry industry in 1891. It is true also that the iron and steel workers had worked under a national trade agreement since 1866. However, that trade was too exceptionally strong to be typical. The stove industry had early reached a high degree of development and organization. There had existed since 1872 the National Association of Stove Manufacturers, an organization dealing with prices and embracing in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of the country. The stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike the manufacturers in practically all other industries at that time, controlled in a large measure their own market. Furthermore, the product had been completely standardized and reduced to a piecework basis, and machinery had not taken the place of the molders' skill. It consequently was no mere accident that the stove industry was the first to develop a system of permanent industrial peace. But, on the other hand, this was not automatically established as soon as the favorable external conditions were provided. In reality, only after years of struggle, of strikes and lockouts, and after the two sides had fought each other "to a standstill," was the system finally installed. The eighties abounded in stove molders' strikes, and in 1886 the national union began to render effective aid. The Stove Founders' National Defense Association was formed in 1886 as an employers' association of stove manufacturers. The Defense Association aimed at a national labor policy; it was organized for "resistance against any unjust demands of their workmen, and such other purposes as may from time to time prove or appear to be necessary for the benefit of the members thereof as employers of labor." Thus, after 1886, the alignment was made national on both sides. The great battle was fought the next year. March 8, 1887, the employes of the Bridge and Beach Manufacturing Company in St. Louis struck for an advance in wages and the struggle at once became one between the International Union and the National Defense Association. The St. Louis company sent its patterns to foundries in other districts, but the union successfully prevented their use. This occasioned a series of strikes in the West and of lockouts in the East, affecting altogether about 5000 molders. It continued thus until June, when the St. Louis patterns were recalled, the Defense Association having provided the company with a sufficient number of strike-breakers. Each side was in a position to claim the victory for itself; so evenly matched were the opposing forces. During the next four years disputes in Association plants were rare. In August 1890, a strike took place in Pittsburgh and, for the first time in the history of the industry, it was settled by a written trade agreement with the local union. This supported the idea of a national trade agreement between the two organizations. Since the dispute of 1887, negotiations with this object were from time to time conducted, the Defense Association invariably taking the initiative. Finally, the national convention of the union in 1890 appointed a committee to meet a like committee of the Defense Association. The conference took place March 25, 1891, and worked out a complete plan of organization for the stove molding industry. Every year two committees of three members each, chosen respectively by the union and the association, were to meet in conference and to draw up general laws for the year. In case of a dispute arising in a locality, if the parties immediately concerned were unable to arrive at common terms, the chief executives of both organizations, the president of the union and the president of the association, were to step in and try to effect an adjustment. If, however, they, too, failed, a conference committee composed of an equal number of members from each side was to be called in and its findings were to be final. Meanwhile the parties were enjoined from engaging in hostilities while the matter at dispute was being dealt with by the duly appointed authorities. Each organization obligated itself to exercise "police authority" over its constituents, enforcing obedience to the agreement. The endorsement of the plan by both organizations was practically unanimous, and has continued in operation without interruption for thirty years until the present day. Since the end of the nineties the trade agreement has become one of the most generally accepted principles and aspirations of the American labor movement. However, it is not to be understood that by accepting the principle of the trade agreement the labor movement has committed itself to unlimited arbitration of industrial disputes. The basic idea of the trade agreement is that of collective bargaining rather than arbitration. The two terms are not always distinguished, but the essential difference is that in the trade agreement proper no outside party intervenes to settle the dispute and make an award. The agreement is made by direct negotiation between the two organized groups and the sanction which each holds over the head of the other is the strike or lockout. If no agreement can be reached, the labor organization as well as the employers' association, insists on its right to refuse arbitration, whether it be "voluntary" or so-called "compulsory." The clarification of the conception of the trade agreement was perhaps the main achievement of the nineties. Without the trade agreement the labor movement could hardly come to eschew "panaceas" and to reconstitute itself upon the basis of opportunism. The coming in of the trade agreement, whether national, sectional, or local, was also the chief factor in stabilizing the movement against industrial depressions. FOOTNOTE: [28] See below, 159-160. CHAPTER 7 TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS While it was in the nineties that trade unionists first tasted the sweets of institutionalization in industry through "recognition" by employers, it was also during the later eighties and during the nineties that they experienced a revival of suspicion and hostility on the part of the courts and a renewal of legal restraints upon their activities, which were all the more discouraging since for a generation or more they had practically enjoyed non-interference from that quarter. It was at this period that the main legal weapons against trade unionism were forged and brought to a fine point in practical application. The history of the courts' attitude to trade unionism may therefore best be treated from the standpoint of the nineties. The subject of court interference was not altogether new in the eighties. We took occasion to point out the effect of court interference in labor disputes in the first and second decades of the nineteenth century and again in the thirties. Mention was made also of the court's decision in the Theiss boycott case in New York in 1886, which proved a prime moving factor in launching the famous Henry George campaign for Mayor. And we gave due note to the role of court injunctions in the Debs strike of 1894 and in other strikes. Our present interest is, however, more in the court doctrines than in their effects: more concerned with the development of the legal thought underlying the policies of the courts than with the reactions of the labor movement to the policies themselves. The earliest case on record, namely the Philadelphia shoemakers' strike case in 1806,[29] charged two offences; one was a combination to raise wages, the other a combination to injure others; both offences were declared by the judge to be forbidden by the common law. To the public at large the prosecution seemed to rest solely upon the charge that the journeymen combined to raise wages. The defense took advantage of this and tried to make use of it for its own purposes. The condemnation of the journeymen on this ground gave rise to a vehement protest on the part of the journeymen themselves and their friends. It was pointed out that the journeymen were convicted for acts which are considered lawful when done by masters or merchants. Therefore when the next conspiracy case in New York in 1809 was decided, the court's charge to the jury was very different. Nothing was said about the illegality of the combinations to raise wages; on the contrary, the jury was instructed that this was not the question at issue. The issue was stated to be whether the defendants had combined to secure an increase in their wages by unlawful means. To the question what means were unlawful, in this case the answer was given in general terms, namely that "coercive and arbitrary" means are unlawful. The fines imposed upon the defendants were only nominal. A third notable case of the group, namely the Pittsburgh case in 1815, grew out of a strike for higher wages, as did the preceding cases. The charges were the same as in those and the judge took the identical view that was taken by the court in the New York case. However, he explained more fully the meaning of "coercive and arbitrary" action. "Where diverse persons," he said, "confederate together by direct means to impoverish or prejudice a third person, or to do acts prejudicial to the community," they are engaged in an unlawful conspiracy. Concretely, it is unlawful to "conspire to compel an employer to hire a certain description of persons," or to "conspire to prevent a man from freely exercising his trade in a particular place," or to "conspire to compel men to become members of a particular society, or to contribute toward it," or when persons "conspire to compel men to work at certain prices." Thus it was the effort of the shoemakers' society to secure a closed shop which fell chiefly under the condemnation of the court. The counsel for the defense argued in this case that whatever is lawful for one individual is lawful also for a combination of individuals. The court, however, rejected the arguments on the ground that there was a basic difference between an individual doing a thing and a combination of individuals doing the same thing. The doctrine of conspiracy was thus given a clear and unequivocal definition. Another noteworthy feature of the Pittsburgh case was the emphasis given to the idea that the defendants' conduct was harmful to the public. The judge condemned the defendants because they tended "to create a monopoly or to restrain the entire freedom of the trade." What a municipality is not allowed to do, he argued, a private association of individuals must not be allowed to do. Of the group of cases which grew out of the revival of trade union activity in the twenties, the first, a case against Philadelphia master shoemakers, was decided in 1821, and the judge held that it was lawful for the masters, who had recently been forced by employes to a wage increase, to combine in order to restore wages to their "natural level." But he also held that had the employers combined to depress wages of journeymen below the level fixed by free competition, it would have been criminal. Another Pennsylvania case resulted from a strike by Philadelphia tailors in 1827 to secure the reinstatement of six discharged members. As in previous cases the court rejected the plea that a combination to raise wages was illegal, and directed the attention of the jury to the question of intimidation and coercion, especially as it affected third parties. The defendants were found guilty. In a third, a New York hatters' case of 1823, the charge of combining to raise wages was entirely absent from the indictment. The issue turned squarely on the question of conspiring to injure others by coercion and intimidation. The hatters were adjudged guilty of combining to deprive a non-union workman of his livelihood. The revival of trade unionism in the middle of the thirties brought in, as we saw, another crop of court cases. In 1829 New York State had made "conspiracy to commit any act injurious to public morals or to trade or commerce" a statutory offence, thus reenforcing the existing common law. In 1835 the shoemakers of Geneva struck to enforce the closed shop against a workman who persisted in working below the union rate. The indictment went no further than charging this offence. The journeymen were convicted in a lower court and appealed to the Supreme Court of the State. Chief Justice Savage, in his decision condemning the journeymen, broadened the charge to include a conspiracy to raise wages and condemned both as "injurious to trade or commerce" and thus expressly covered by statute. The far-reaching effects of this decision came clearly to light in a tailor's case the next year. The journeymen were charged with practising intimidation and violence, while picketing their employers' shops during a prolonged strike against a reduction in wages. Judge Edwards, the trial judge, in his charge to the jury, stigmatized the tailors' society as an illegal combination, largely basing himself upon Judge Savage's decision. The jury handed in a verdict of guilty, but recommended mercy. The judge fined the president of the society $150, one journeyman $100, and the others $50 each. The fines were immediately paid with the aid of a collection taken up in court. The decisions produced a violent reaction among the workingmen. They held a mass-meeting in City Hall Park, with an estimated attendance of 27,000, burned Judge Savage and Judge Edwards in effigy, and resolved to call a state convention to form a workingmen's party. So loud, indeed, was the cry that justice had been thwarted that juries were doubtless influenced by it. Two cases came up soon after the tailors' case, the Hudson, New York, shoemakers' in June and the Philadelphia plasterers' in July 1836. In both the juries found a verdict of not guilty. Of all journeymen indicted during this period the Hudson shoemakers had been the most audacious ones in enforcing the closed shop. They not only refused to work for employers who hired non-society men, but fined them as well; yet they were acquitted. Finally six years later, in 1842, long after the offending trade societies had gone out of existence under the stress of unemployment and depression, came the famous decision in the Massachusetts case of Commonwealth _v._ Hunt. This was a shoemakers' case and arose out of a strike. The decision in the lower court was adverse to the defendants. However, it was reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The decision, written by Chief Justice Shaw, is notable in that it holds trade unions to be legal organizations. In the earlier cases it was never in so many words held that trade unions were unlawful, but in all of them there were suggestions to this effect. Now it was recognized that trade unions are _per se_ lawful organizations and, though men may band themselves together to effect a criminal object under the disguise of a trade union, such a purpose is not to be assumed without positive evidence. On the contrary, the court said that "when an association is formed for purposes actually innocent, and afterwards its powers are abused by those who have the control and management of it to purposes of oppression and injustice, it will be criminal in those who misuse it, or give consent thereto, but not in other members of the association." This doctrine that workingmen may lawfully organize trade unions has since Commonwealth _v._ Hunt been adopted in nearly every case. The other doctrine which Justice Shaw advanced in this case has been less generally accepted. It was that the members of a union may procure the discharge of non-members through strikes for this purpose against their employers. This is the essence of the question of the closed shop; and Commonwealth _v._ Hunt goes the full length of regarding strikes for the closed shop as legal. Justice Shaw said that there is nothing unlawful about such strikes, if they are conducted in a peaceable manner. This was much in advance of the position which is taken by many courts upon this question even at the present day. After Commonwealth _v._ Hunt came a forty years' lull in the courts' application of the doctrine of conspiracy to trade unions. In fact so secure did trade unionists feel from court attacks that in the seventies and early eighties their leaders advocated the legal incorporation of trade unions. The desire expressed for incorporation is of extreme interest compared with the opposite attitude of the present day. The motive behind it then was more than the usual one of securing protection for trade union funds against embezzlement by officers. A full enumeration of other motives can be obtained from the testimony of the labor leaders before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in 1883. McGuire, the national secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, argued before the committee for a national incorporation law mainly for the reason that such a law passed by Congress would remove trade unions from the operation of the conspiracy laws that still existed though in a dormant state on the statute books of a number of Slates, notably New York and Pennsylvania. He pleaded that "if it (Congress) had not the power, it shall assume the power; and, if necessary, amend the constitution to do it." Adolph Strasser of the cigar makers raised the point of protection for union funds and gave as a second reason that it "will give our organization more stability, and in that manner we shall be able to avoid strikes by perhaps settling with our employers, when otherwise we should be unable to do so, because when our employers know that we are to be legally recognized that will exercise such moral force upon them that they cannot avoid recognizing us themselves." W.H. Foster, the secretary of the Legislative Committee of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, stated that in Ohio the law provided for incorporation at a slight cost, but he wanted a national law to "legalize arbitration," by which he meant that "when a question of dispute arose between the employers and the employed, instead of having it as now, when the one often refuses to even acknowledge or discuss the question with the other, if they were required to submit the question to arbitration, or to meet on the same level before an impartial tribunal, there is no doubt but what the result would be more in our favor than it is now, when very often public opinion cannot hear our cause." He, however, did not desire to have compulsory arbitration, but merely compulsory dealing with the union, or compulsory investigation by an impartial body, both parties to remain free to accept the award, provided, however, "that once they do agree the agreement shall remain in force for a fixed period." Like Foster, John Jarrett, the President of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, argued for an incorporation law before the committee solely for its effect upon conciliation and arbitration. He, too, was opposed to compulsory arbitration, but he showed that he had thought out the point less clearly than Foster. The young and struggling trade unions of the early eighties saw only the good side of incorporation without its pitfalls; their subsequent experience with courts converted them from exponents into ardent opponents of incorporation and of what Foster termed "legalized arbitration." During the eighties there was much legislation applicable to labor disputes. The first laws against boycotting and blacklisting and the first laws which prohibited discrimination against members who belonged to a union were passed during this decade. At this time also were passed the first laws to promote voluntary arbitration and most of the laws which allowed unions to incorporate. Only in New York and Maryland were the conspiracy laws repealed. Four States enacted such laws and many States passed laws against intimidation. Statutes, however, played at that time, as they do now, but a secondary role. The only statute which proved of much importance was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. When Congress passed this act in 1890, few people thought it had application to labor unions. In 1893-1894, as we shall see, however, this act was successfully invoked in several labor controversies, notably in the Debs case. The bitterness of the industrial struggle during the eighties made it inevitable that the labor movement should acquire an extensive police and court record. It was during that decade that charges like "inciting to riot," "obstructing the streets," "intimidation," and "trespass" were first extensively used in connection with labor disputes. Convictions were frequent and penalties often severe. What attitude the courts at that time took toward labor violence was shown most strikingly, even if in too extreme a form to be entirely typical, in the case of the Chicago anarchists.[30] But the significance of the eighties in the development of relations of the courts to organized labor came not from these cases which were, after all, nothing but ordinary police cases magnified to an unusual degree by the intensity of the industrial struggle and by the excited state of public opinion, but in the new lease of life to the doctrine of conspiracy as affecting labor disputes. During the eighties and nineties there seemed to have been more conspiracy cases than during all the rest of the century. It was especially in 1886 and 1887 that organized labor found court interference a factor. At this time, as we saw, there was also passed voluminous state legislation strengthening the application of the common law doctrine of conspiracy to labor disputes. The conviction of the New York boycotters in 1886 and many similar convictions, though less widely known, of participants in strikes and boycotts were obtained upon this ground. Where the eighties witnessed a revolution was in a totally new use made of the doctrine of conspiracy by the courts when they began to issue injunctions in labor cases. Injunctions were an old remedy, but not until the eighties did they figure in the struggles between labor and capital. In England an injunction was issued in a labor dispute as early as 1868;[31] but this case was not noticed in the United States and had nothing whatever to do with the use of injunctions in this country. When and where the first labor injunction was issued in the United States is not known. An injunction was applied for in a New York case as early as 1880 but was denied.[32] An injunction was granted in Iowa in 1884, but not until the Southwest railway strike in 1886 were injunctions used extensively. By 1890 the public had yet heard little of injunctions in connection with labor disputes, but such use was already fortified by numerous precedents. The first injunctions that attained wide publicity were those issued by Federal courts during the strike of engineers against the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad[33] in 1888 and during the railway strikes of the early nineties. Justification for these injunctions was found in the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Often the State courts used these Federal cases as precedents, in disregard of the fact that there the issuance of injunctions was based upon special statutes. In other cases the more logical course was followed of justifying the issuance of injunctions upon grounds of equity. But most of the acts which the courts enjoined strikers from doing were already prohibited by the criminal laws. Hence organized labor objected that these injunctions violated the old principle that equity will not interfere to prevent crime. No such difficulties arose when the issuance of injunctions was justified as a measure for the protection of property. In the Debs case,[34] when the Supreme Court of the United States passed upon the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes, it had recourse to this theory. But the theory of protection to property also presented some difficulties. The problem was to establish the principle of irreparable injury to the complainant's property. This was a simple matter when the strikers were guilty of trespass, arson, or sabotage. Then they damaged the complainant's physical property and, since they were usually men against whom judgments are worthless, any injury they might do was irreparable. But these were exceptional cases. Usually injunctions were sought to prevent not violence, but strikes, picketing, or boycotting. What is threatened by strikes and picketing is not the employer's physical property, but the relations he has established as an employer of labor, summed up in his expectancy of retaining the services of old employes and of obtaining new ones. Boycotting, obviously, has no connection with acts of violence against physical property, but is designed merely to undermine the profitable relations which the employer had developed with his customers. These expectancies are advantages enjoyed by established businesses over new competitors and are usually transferable and have market value. For these reasons they are now recognized as property in the law of good-will and unfair competition for customers, having been first formulated about the middle of the nineteenth century. The first case which recognized these expectancies of a labor market was Walker _v._ Cronin,[35] decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1871. It held that the plaintiff was entitled to recover damages from the defendants, certain union officials, because they had induced his employes, who were free to quit at will, to leave his employ and had also been instrumental in preventing him from getting new employes. But as yet these expectancies were not considered property in the full sense of the word. A transitional case is that of Brace Bros. _v._ Evans in 1888.[36] In that case an injunction against a boycott was justified on the ground that the value of the complainant's physical property was being destroyed when the market was cut off. Here the expectancies based upon relations which customers and employes were thought of as giving value to the physical property, but they were not yet recognized as a distinct asset which in itself justifies the issuance of injunctions. This next step was taken in the Barr[37] case in New Jersey in 1893. Since then there have been frequent statements in labor injunction cases to the effect that both the expectancies based upon the merchant-function and the expectancies based upon the employer-function are property. But the recognition of "probable expectancies" as property was not in itself sufficient to complete the chain of reasoning that justifies injunctions in labor disputes. It is well established that no recovery can be had for losses due to the exercise by others of that which they have a lawful right to do. Hence the employers were obliged to charge that the strikes and boycotts were undertaken in pursuance of an unlawful conspiracy. Thus the old conspiracy doctrine was combined with the new theory, and "malicious" interference with "probable expectancies" was held unlawful. Earlier conspiracy had been thought of as a criminal offence, now it was primarily a civil wrong. The emphasis had been upon the danger to the public, now it was the destruction of the employer's business. Occasionally the court went so far as to say that all interference with the business of employers is unlawful. The better view developed was that interference is _prima facie_ unlawful but may be justified. But even this view placed the burden of proof upon the workingmen. It actually meant that the court opened for itself the way for holding the conduct of the workingmen to be lawful only when it sympathized with their demands. During the eighties, despite the far-reaching development of legal theories on labor disputes, the issuance of injunctions was merely sporadic, but a veritable crop came up during 1893-1894. Only the best-known injunctions can be here noted. The injunctions issued in the course of the Southwest railway strike in 1886 and the Burlington strike in 1888 have already received mention. An injunction was also issued by a Federal court during a miners' strike at Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, in 1892.[38] A famous injunction was the one of Judges Taft and Rickes in 1893, which directed the engineers, who were employed by connecting railways, to handle the cars of the Ann Arbor and Michigan railway, whose engineers were on strike.[39] This order elicited much criticism because it came close to requiring men to work against their will. This was followed by the injunction of Judge Jenkins in the Northern Pacific case, which directly prohibited the quitting of work.[40] From this injunction the defendants took an appeal, with the result that in Arthur _v._ Oakes[41] it was once for all established that the quitting of work may not be enjoined. During the Pullman strike numerous injunctions, most sweeping in character, were issued by the Federal courts upon the initiative of the Department of Justice. Under the injunction which was issued in Chicago arose the famous contempt case against Eugene V. Debs,[42] which was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision of the court in this case is notable, because it covered the main points of doubt above mentioned and placed the use of injunctions in labor disputes upon a firm legal basis. Another famous decision of the Supreme Court growing out of the railway strikes of the early nineties was in the Lennon case[43] in 1897. Therein the court held that all persons who have actual notice of the issuance of an injunction are bound to obey its terms, whether they were mentioned by name or not; in other words, the courts had evolved the "blanket injunction." At the end of the nineties, the labor movement, enriched on the one side by the lessons of the past and by the possession of a concrete goal in the trade agreement, but pressed on the other side by a new form of legal attack and by the growing consolidation of industry, started upon a career of new power but faced at the same time new difficulties. FOOTNOTES: [29] See above, 6. [30] See above, 91-93. [31] Springhead Spinning Co. _v._ Riley, L.R. 6 E. 551 (1868). [32] Johnson Harvester Co. _v._ Meinhardt, 60 How. Pr. 171. [33] Chicago, Burlington, etc., R.R. Co. _v._ Union Pacific R.R. Co., U.S. Dist. Ct., D. Neb. (1888). [34] In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895). [35] 107 Mass. 555 (1871). [36] 5 Pa. Co. Ct. 163 (1888). [37] Barr _v._ Trades' Council, 53 N.J.E. 101 (1894). [38] Coeur d'Alène Mining Co. _v._ Miners' Union, 51 Fed. 260 (1892). [39] Toledo, etc. Co. _v._ Penn. Co., 54 Fed. 730 (1893). [40] Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. _v._ N.P.R. Co., 60 Fed. 803 (1895). [41] 64 Fed. 310 (1894). [42] In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1894). [43] In re Lennon, 166 U.S. 548 (1897). PART II THE LARGER CAREER OF UNIONISM CHAPTER 8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES, 1898-1914 When, in 1898, industrial prosperity returned, there came with it a rapid expansion of labor organization. At no time in its history, prior to the World War, not excepting the Great Upheaval in the eighties, did labor organizations make such important gains as during the following five years. True, in none of these years did the labor movement add over half a million members as in the memorable year of 1886; nevertheless, from the standpoint of permanence, the upheaval during the eighties can scarcely be classed with the one which began in the late nineties. During 1898 the membership of the American Federation of Labor remained practically stationary, but during 1899 it increased by about 70,000 (to about 350,000); in 1900, it increased by 200,000; in 1901, by 240,000; in 1902, by 237,000; in 1903, by 441,000; in 1904, by 210,000, bringing the total to 1,676,000. In 1905 a backward tide set in; and the membership decreased by nearly 200,000 during that year. It remained practically stationary until 1910, when the upward movement was resumed, finally bringing the membership to near the two million mark, to 1,996,000, in 1913. If we include organizations unaffiliated with the Federation, among them the bricklayers[44] and the four railway brotherhoods, with about 700,000 members, the union membership for 1913 will be brought near a total of 2,700,000. A better index of progress is the proportion of organized workers to organizable workers. Two such estimates have been made. Professor George E. Barnett figures the organizable workers in 1900 at 21,837,000; in 1910 at 30,267,000. On this basis wage earners were 3.5 percent organized in 1900 and 7 percent in 1910.[45] Leo Wolman submits more detailed figures for 1910. Excluding employers, the salaried group, agricultural and clerical workers, persons engaged in personal or domestic service, and those below twenty years of age (unorganizable workers), the organizable total was 11,490,944. With an estimated trade union strength of 2,116,317 for 1910 the percentage of the organized was 18.4.[46] Excluding only employers and salaried persons, his percentage was 7.7, which compares closely with Professor Barnett's. Of greater significance are Wolman's figures for organization by industries. These computations show that in 1910 the breweries had 88.8 percent, organized, printing and book binding 34.3 percent, mining 30.5 percent, transportation 17.3 percent, clothing 16.9 percent, building trades 16.2 percent, iron and steel 9.9 percent, metal 4.7 percent, and textile 3.7 percent.[47] By separate occupations, railway conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers were from 50-100 percent organized; printers, locomotive firemen, molders and plasterers, from 30-50 percent; bakers, carpenters, plumbers, from 15-30 percent organized.[48] Accompanying the numerical growth of labor organizations was an extension of organization into heretofore untouched trades as well as a branching out into new geographical regions, the South and the West. On the whole, however, though the Federation was not unmindful of the unskilled, still, during the fifteen years after 1898 it brought into its fold principally the upper strata of semi-skilled labor. Down to the "boom" period brought on by the World War, the Federation did not comprise to any great extent either the totally unskilled, or the partially skilled foreign-speaking workmen, with the exception of the miners and the clothing workers. In other words, those below the level of the skilled trades, which did gain admittance, were principally the same elements which had asserted their claim to organization during the stormy period of the Knights of Labor.[49] The new accretions to the American wage-earning class since the eighties, the East and South Europeans, on the one hand, and the ever-growing contingent of "floaters" of native and North and West European stock, on the other hand, were still largely outside the organization. The years of prosperity brought an intensified activity of the trade unions on a scale hitherto unknown. Wages were raised and hours reduced all along the line. The new strength of the trade unions received a brilliant test during the hard times following the financial panic of October 1907, when they successfully fought wage reductions. As good a test is found in the conquest of the shorter day. By 1900 the eight-hour day was the rule in the building trades, in granite cutting and in bituminous coal mining. The most spectacular and costly eight-hour fight was waged by the printers. In the later eighties and early nineties, the Typographical Union had endeavored to establish a nine-hour day in the printing offices. This was given a setback by the introduction of the linotype machine during the period of depression, 1893-1897. In spite of this obstacle, however, the Typographical Union held its ground. Adopting the policy that only journeymen printers must operate the linotype machines, the union was able to meet the situation. And, furthermore, in 1898, through agreement with the United Typothetæ of America, the national association of employers in book and job printing, the union was able to gain the nine-hour day in substantially all book and job offices. In 1903 the union demanded the eight-hour day in all printing offices to become effective January 1, 1906. To gain an advantage over the union, the United Typothetæ, late in the summer of 1905, locked out all its union men. This at once precipitated a strike for the eight-hour day. The American Federation of Labor levied a special assessment on all its members in aid of the strikers. By 1907 the Typographical Union won its demand all along the line, although at a tremendous cost of money running into several million dollars, and in 1909 the United Typothetæ formally conceded the eight-hour day. Another proof of trade union progress is found in the spread of trade agreements. The idea of a joint partnership of organized labor and organized capital in the management of industry, which, ever since the fifties, had been struggling for acceptance, finally showed definite signs of coming to be materialized. (1) _The Miners_ In no other industry has a union's struggle for "recognition" offered a richer and more instructive picture of the birth of the new order with its difficulties as well as its promises than in coal mining. Faced in the anthracite field[50] by a small and well knitted group of employers, generally considered a "trust," and by a no less difficult situation in bituminous mining due to cut-throat competition among the mine operators, the United Mine Workers have succeeded in a space of fifteen years in unionizing the one as well as the other; while at the same time successfully and progressively solving the gigantic internal problem of welding a polyglot mass of workers into a well disciplined and obedient army. The miners' union attained its first successes in the so-called central bituminous competitive field, including Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. In this field a beginning had been made in 1886 when the coal operators and the union entered into a collective agreement. However, its scope was practically confined to Ohio and even that limited agreement went under in 1890.[51] With the breakdown of this agreement, the membership dwindled so that by the time of a general strike in 1894, the total paid-up membership was barely 13,000. This strike was undertaken to restore the wage-scale of 1893, but during the ensuing years of depression wages were cut still further.[52] The turn came as suddenly as it was spectacular. In 1897, with a membership which had dropped to 10,000 and of which 7000 were in Ohio and with an empty treasury, the United Mine Workers called a general strike trusting to a rising market and to an awakened spirit of solidarity in the majority of the unorganized after four years of unemployment and distress. In fact the leaders had not miscalculated. One hundred thousand or more coal miners obeyed the order to go on a strike. In Illinois the union had but a handful of members when the strike started, but the miners struck to a man. The tie-up was practically complete except in West Virginia. That State had early become recognized as the weakest spot in the miners' union's armor. Notwithstanding the American Federation of Labor threw almost its entire force of organizers into that limited area, which was then only beginning to assume its present day importance in the coal mining industry, barely one-third of the miners were induced to strike. A contributing factor was a more energetic interference from the courts than in other States. All marching upon the highways and all assemblages of the strikers in large gatherings were forbidden by injunctions. On one occasion more than a score of men were sentenced to jail for contempt of court by Federal Judge Goff. The handicap in West Virginia was offset by sympathy and aid from other quarters. Many unions throughout the country and even the general public sent the striking miners financial aid. In Illinois Governor John R. Tanner refused the requests for militia made by several sheriffs. The general strike of 1897 ended in the central competitive field after a twelve-weeks' struggle. The settlement was an unqualified victory for the union. It conceded the miners a 20 percent increase in wages, the establishment of the eight-hour day, the abolition of company stores, semi-monthly payments, and a restoration of the system of fixing Interstate wage rates in annual joint conferences with the operators, which meant official recognition of the United Mine Workers. The operators in West Virginia, however, refused to come in. The first of these Interstate conferences was held in January, 1898, at which the miners were conceded a further increase in wages. In addition, the agreement, which was to run for two years, established for Illinois the run-of-mine[53] system of payment, while the size of the screens of other states was regulated; and it also conceded the miners the check-off system[54] in every district, save that of Western Pennsylvania.[55] Such a comprehensive victory would not have been possible had it not been for the upward trend which coal prices had taken. But great as was the union's newly discovered power, it was spread most unevenly over the central competitive field. Its firmest grip was in Illinois. The well-filled treasury of the Illinois district has many times been called upon for large contributions or loans, to enable the union to establish itself in some other field. The weakest hold of the United Mine Workers has been in West Virginia. At the end of the general strike of 1897, the West Virginia membership was only about 4000. Moreover, a further spread of the organization met with unusual obstacles. A large percentage of the miners of West Virginia are Negroes or white mountaineers. These have proven more difficult to organize than recent Southern and Eastern European immigrants, who formed the majority in the other districts. And yet West Virginia as a growing mining state soon assumed a high strategic importance. A lower wage scale, the better quality of its coal, and a comparative freedom from strikes have made West Virginia a formidable competitor of the other districts in the central competitive field. Consequently West Virginia operators have been able to operate their mines more days during the year than elsewhere; and despite the lower rates per ton, the West Virginia miners have earned but little less annually than union miners in other States. But above all the United Mine Workers have been handicapped in West Virginia as nowhere else by court interference in strikes and in campaigns of organization. In 1907 a temporary injunction was granted at the behest of the Hitchman Coal and Coke Company, a West Virginia concern, restraining union organizers from attempting to organize employes who signed agreements not to join the United Mine Workers while in the employ of the company. The injunction was made permanent in 1913. The decree of the District Court was reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1914, but was sustained by the United States Supreme Court in March 1917.[56] Recently the United States Steel Corporation became a dominant factor in West Virginia through its ownership of mines and lent additional strength to the already strong anti-union determination of the employers. Very early the United Mine Workers established a reputation for strict adherence to agreements made. This faithfulness to a pledged word, which justified itself even from the standpoint of selfish motive, in as much as it gained for the union public sympathy, was urged upon all occasions by John Mitchell, the national President of the Union. The first test came in 1899, when coal prices soared up rapidly after the joint conference had adjourned. Although they might have won higher wages had they struck, the miners observed their contracts. A more severe test came in 1902 during the great anthracite strike.[57] A special union convention was then held to consider whether the bituminous miners should be called out in sympathy with the hard pressed striking miners in the anthracite field. By a large majority, however, the convention voted not to strike in violation of the agreements made with the operators. The union again gave proof of statesmanly self-control when, in 1904, taking into account the depressed condition of industry, it accepted without a strike a reduction in wages in the central competitive field. However, as against the miners' conduct in these situations must be reckoned the many local strikes or "stoppages" in violation of agreements. The difficulty was that the machinery for the adjustment of local grievances was too cumbersome. In 1906 the trade agreement system encountered a new difficulty in the friction which developed between the operators of the several competitive districts. On the surface, the source of the friction was the attempt made by the Ohio and Illinois operators to organize a national coal operators' association to take the place of the several autonomous district organizations. The Pittsburgh operators, however, objected. They preferred the existing system of agreements under which each district organization possessed a veto power, since then they could keep the advantage over their competitors in Ohio and Indiana with which they had started under the original agreement of 1898. The miners in this emergency threw their power against the national operators' association. A suspension throughout most districts of the central competitive field followed. In the end, the miners won an increase in wages, but the Interstate agreement system was suspended, giving place to separate agreements for each district. In 1908 the situation of 1906 was repeated. This time the Illinois operators refused to attend the Interstate conference on the ground that the Interstate agreement severely handicapped Illinois. As said before, ever since 1897 payment in Illinois has been upon the run-of-mine basis; whereas in all other States of the central competitive field the miners were paid for screened coal only. With the operators of each State having one vote in the joint conference, it can be understood why the handicap against Illinois continued. Theoretically, of course, the Illinois operators might have voted against the acceptance of any agreement which gave an advantage to other States; however, against this weighed the fact that the union was strongest in Illinois. The Illinois operators, hence, preferred to deal separately with the United Mine Workers. Accordingly, an Interstate agreement was drawn up, applying only to Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In 1910, the Illinois operators again refused to enter the Interstate conference, but this time the United Mine Workers insisted upon a return to the Interstate agreement system of 1898. On April 1, 1910, operations were suspended throughout the central competitive field. By July agreements had been secured in every State save Illinois, the latter State holding out until September. This long struggle in Illinois was the first real test of strength between the operators and the miners since 1897. The miners' victory made it inevitable that the Illinois operators should eventually reenter the Interstate conference. In 1912, after repeated conferences, the net result was the restoration of the Interstate agreement as it existed before 1906. The special burden of which the Illinois operators had been complaining was not removed; yet they were compelled by the union to remain a party to the Interstate agreement. The union justified its special treatment of the operators in Illinois on the ground that the run-of-mine rates were 40 percent below the screened coal rates, thus compensating them amply for the "slack" for which they had to pay under this system. The Federal report on "Restriction of Output" of 1904 substantiated the union's contention. Ultimately, the United Mine Workers unquestionably hoped to establish the run-of-mine system throughout the central competitive field. The union, incidentally to its policy of protecting the miners, has considerably affected the market or business structure of the industry. An outstanding policy of the union has been to equalize competitive costs over the entire area of a market by means of a system of grading tonnage rates paid to the miner, whereby competitive advantages of location, thickness of vein, and the like were absorbed in higher labor costs. This doubtless tended to eliminate cut-throat competition and thus stabilize the industry. On the other hand, it may have hindered the process of elimination of unprofitable mines, and therefore may be in some measure responsible for the present-day overdevelopment in the bituminous mining industry, which results in periodic unemployment and in idle mines. In the anthracite coal field in Eastern Pennsylvania the difficulties met by the United Mine Workers were at first far greater than in the bituminous branch of the industry. First, the working population was nearly all foreign-speaking, and the union thus lacked the fulcrum which it found in Illinois with its large proportion of English-speaking miners accustomed to organization and to carrying on a common purpose. Secondly, the employers, instead of being numerous and united only for joint dealing with labor, as in bituminous mining, were few in number besides being cemented together by a common selling policy on top of a common labor policy. In consequence, the union encountered a stone wall of opposition, which its loose ranks found for many years well-nigh impossible to overcome. During the general strike of 1897 the United Mine Workers made a beginning in organizing the anthracite miners. In September 1900, they called a general strike. Although at that time the union had only 8000 members in this region, the strike order was obeyed by over 100,000 miners; and within a few weeks the strike became truly general. Probably the union could not have won if it had to rely solely on economic strength. However, the impending Presidential election led to an interference by Senator Mark Hanna, President McKinley's campaign manager. Through him President John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers was informed that the operators would abolish the objectionable sliding scale system of wage payments, increase rates 10 percent and agree to meet committees of their employes for the adjustment of grievances. This, however, did not carry a formal recognition of the union; it was not a trade agreement but merely an unwritten understanding. A part of the same understanding was that the terms which had been agreed upon should remain in force until April, 1901. At its expiration the identical terms were renewed for another year, while the negotiations bore the same informal character. During 1902 the essential instability of the arrangement led to sharp friction. The miners claimed that many operators violated the unwritten agreement. The operators, on their part, charged that the union was using every means for practically enforcing the closed shop, which was not granted in the understanding. In the early months of 1902 the miners presented demands for a reduction of the hours of labor from 10 to 9, for a twenty percent increase in wages, for payment according to the weight of coal mined, and for the recognition of the union. The operators refused to negotiate, and on May 9 the famous anthracite strike of 1902 began. It is unnecessary to detail the events of the anthracite strike. No other strike is better known and remembered. More than 150,000 miners stood out for approximately five months. The strike was financed by a levy of one dollar per week upon all employed miners in the country, which yielded over $2,000,000. In addition several hundred thousand dollars came in from other trade unions and from the public generally. In October, when the country was facing a most serious coal famine, President Roosevelt took a hand. He called in the presidents of the anthracite railroads and the leading union officials for a conference in the White House and urged arbitration. At first he met with rebuff from the operators, but shortly afterward, with the aid of friendly pressure from New York financiers, the operators consented to accept the award of a commission to be appointed by himself. This was the well-known Anthracite Coal Strike Commission. Its appointment terminated the strike. Not until more than a half year later, however, was the award of the Commission made. It conceded the miners a 10 percent increase in wages, the eight and nine-hour day, and the privilege of having a union check-weighman at the scale where the coal sent up in cars by the miners is weighed. Recognition was not accorded the union, except that it was required to bear one-half of the expense connected with the maintenance of a joint arbitration board created by the Commission. When this award was announced there was much dissatisfaction with it among the miners. President Mitchell, however, put forth every effort to have the union accept the award. Upon a referendum vote the miners accepted his view. The anthracite coal strike of 1902 was doubtless the most important single event in the history of American trade unionism until that time and has since scarcely been surpassed. To be sure, events like the great railway strike of 1877 and the Chicago Anarchist bomb and trial in 1886-1887 had equally forced the labor question into public attention. What distinguished the anthracite coal strike, however, was that for the first time a labor organization tied up for months a strategic industry and caused wide suffering and discomfort to the public without being condemned as a revolutionary menace to the existing social order calling for suppression by the government; it was, on the contrary, adjudged a force within the preserves of orderly society and entitled to public sympathy. The public identified the anthracite employers with the trust movement, which was then new and seemingly bent upon uprooting the traditional free American social order; by contrast, the striking miners appeared almost as champions of Old America. A strong contributory factor was the clumsy tactics of the employers who played into the hands of the leaders of the miners. The latter, especially John Mitchell, conducted their case with great skill. Yet the award of the Commission fell considerably short of what the union and its sympathizers outside the ranks of labor hoped for. For by refusing to grant formal recognition, the Commission failed to constitute unionism into a publicly recognized agency in the management of industry and declared by implication that the role of unionism ended with a presentation of grievances and complaints. For ten years after the strike of 1902 the union failed to develop the strength in the anthracite field which many believed would follow. Certain proof of the weakness of the union is furnished by the fact that the wage-scale in that field remained stationary until 1912 despite a rising cost of living. The wages of the anthracite miners in 1912 were slightly higher than in 1902, because coal prices had increased and the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission had reestablished a sliding scale system of tonnage rates. A great weakness, while the union still struggled for existence, was the lack of the "check-off." Membership would swell immediately before the expiration of the agreement but diminish with restoration of quiet. With no immediate outlook for a strike the Slav and Italian miners refused to pay union dues. The original award was to be in force until April 1, 1906. In June, 1905, the union membership was less than 39,000. But by April 1, 1906, one-half of the miners were in the union. A month's suspension of operations followed. Early in May the union and the operators reached an agreement to leave the award of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission in force for another three years. The following three years brought a duplication of the developments of 1903-1906. Again membership fell off only to return in the spring of 1909. Again the union demanded formal recognition, and again it was refused. Again the original award was extended for three more years. In the winter of 1912, when the time for renewing the agreement again drew near, the entire membership in the three anthracite districts was slightly above 29,000. Nevertheless, the union demanded a twenty percent raise, a complete recognition of the union, the check-off, and yearly agreements, in addition to a more expeditious system of settling local grievances to replace the slow and cumbersome joint arbitration boards provided by the award of the Commission. A strike of 180,000 anthracite miners followed on April 1, 1912, during which the operators made no attempt to run their mines. The strike ended within a month on the basis of the abolition of the sliding scale, a wage increase of approximately 10 percent, and a revision of the arbitration machinery in local disputes. This was coupled with a somewhat larger degree of recognition, but by no means a complete recognition. Nor was the check-off system granted. Strangest of all, the agreement called for a four-year contract, as against a one-year contract originally demanded by the union. In spite of the opposition of local leaders, the miners accepted the agreement. President White's chief plea for acceptance was the need to rebuild the union before anything ambitious could be attempted. After 1912 the union entered upon the work of organization in earnest. In the following two years the membership was more than quadrupled. With the stopping of immigration due to the European War, the power of the union was greatly increased. Consequently, in 1916, when the agreement was renewed, the miners were accorded not only a substantial wage increase and the eight-hour day but also full recognition. The United Mine Workers have thus at last succeeded in wresting a share of industrial control from one of the strongest capitalistic powers of the country; while demonstrating beyond doubt that, with intelligent preparation and with sympathetic treatment, the polyglot immigrant masses from Southern and Eastern Europe, long thought to be impervious to the idea of labor organization, can be changed into reliable material for unionism. The growth of the union in general is shown by the following figures. In 1898 it was 33,000; in 1900, 116,000; in 1903, 247,000; in 1908, 252,000; and in 1913, 378,000.[58] (2) _The Railway Men_ The railway men are divided into three groups. One group comprises the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Order of Railroad Conductors, the Brotherhood of Firemen and Enginemen, and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. These are the oldest and strongest railway men's organizations and do not belong to the American Federation of Labor. A second group are the shopmen, comprising the International Association of Machinists; the International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop Forgers, and Helpers; the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America; the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance; the Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and the International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen and Oilers. A third and more miscellaneous group are the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, the Order of Railway Telegraphers, the Switchmen's Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad Shop Laborers, and the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen. The organizations comprised in the latter two groups belong to the American Federation of Labor. For the period from 1898 to the outbreak of the War, the organizations, popularly known as the "brotherhoods," namely, those of the engineers, conductors, firemen, and trainmen, are of outstanding importance. The brotherhoods were unique among American labor organizations in that for many years they practically reproduced in most of their features the sort of unionism typified by the great "Amalgamated" unions of the fifties and sixties in England.[59] Like these unions the brotherhoods stressed mutual insurance and benefits and discouraged when they did not actually prohibit striking. It should, however, be added that the emphasis on insurance was due not to "philosophy," but to the practical consideration that, owing to the extra hazardous nature of their occupations, the men could get no insurance protection from ordinary commercial insurance companies. By the end of the eighties the brotherhoods began to press energetically for improvements in employment conditions and found the railways not disinclined to grant their demands in a measure. This was due in great measure to the strategic position of these trades, which have it in their power completely to tie up the industry when on strike, causing enormous losses to the carriers.[60] Accordingly, they were granted wages which fairly placed them among the lower professional groups in society as well as other privileges, notably "seniority" in promotion, that is promotion based on length of service and not on a free selection by the officials. Seniority was all the more important since the train personnel service is so organized that each employe will pass several times in the regular course of his career from a lower to a higher rung on the industrial ladder.[61] For instance, a typical passenger train engineer starts as fireman on a freight train, advances to a fireman on a passenger train, then to engineer on a freight train, and finally to engineer on a passenger train. A similar sequence is arranged in advancing from brakeman to conductor. Along with seniority the brotherhoods received the right of appeal in cases of discharge, which has done much to eliminate discrimination. Since they were enjoying such exceptional advantages relative to income, to the security of the job, and to the stability of their organization, it is not surprising, in view of the limited class solidarity among American laboring men in general, that these groups of workers should have chosen to stand alone in their wage bargaining and that their refusal to enter "entangling alliances" with other less favored groups should have gone even to the length of staying out of the American Federation of Labor. This condition of relative harmony between employer and employe, notwithstanding the energetic bargaining, continued for about fifteen years until it was disturbed by factors beyond the control of either railway companies or brotherhoods. The steady rise in the cost of living forced the brotherhoods to intensify their demands for increased wages. At the same time an ever tightening regulation of railway rates by the Federal government since 1906 practically prevented a shift of increased costs to the shipper. "Class struggles" on the railways began in earnest. The new situation was brought home to the brotherhoods in the course of several wage arbitration cases in which they figured.[62] The outcome taught them that the public will give them only limited support in their efforts to maintain their real income at the old high level compared with other classes of workers. A most important case arose from a "concerted movement" in 1912[63] of the engineers and firemen on the 52 Eastern roads for higher wages. Two separate arbitration boards were appointed. The engineers' board consisted of seven members, one each for the interests involved and five representing the public. The award was unsatisfactory to the engineers, first, because of the meager raise in wages and, second, because it contained a strong plea to Congress and the country to have all wages of all railway employes fixed by a government commission, which implied a restriction of the right to strike. The award in the firemen's case, which was decided practically simultaneously with the engineers', failed to satisfy either side. The conductors and trainmen on the Eastern roads were next to move "in concert" for increased wages. The roads refused and the brotherhoods decided by a good majority to quit work. This threatened strike occasioned the passage of the so-called Newlands bill as an amendment to the Erdman Act, with increased powers to the government in mediation and with more specified conditions relative to the work of the arbitration boards chosen for each occasion. Whereupon both sides agreed to submit to arbitration. The award allowed an increase in wages of seven percent, or less than one-half of that demanded, but disallowed a plea made by the men for uniformity of the wage scales East and West, and denied the demanded time and a half for overtime. The men accepted but the decision added to their growing opposition to the principle of arbitration. Another arbitration case, in 1914, involving the engineers and firemen on the Western roads led the brotherhoods to come out openly against arbitration. The award was signed only by the representatives on the board of the employers and the public. A characteristic aftermath of this case was an attack made by the unions upon one of the "neutrals" on the board. His impartiality was questioned because of his relations with several concerns which owned large amounts of railroad securities. Therefore, when in 1916 the four brotherhoods together demanded the eight-hour day, they categorically refused to consider arbitration.[64] The evolution to a fighting unionism had become complete. While the brotherhoods of the train service personnel were thus shifting their tactics, they kept drawing nearer to the position held by the other unions in the railway service. These had rarely had the good fortune to bask in the sunshine of their employers' approval and "recognition." Some railways, of the more liberal sort, made agreements with the machinists and with the other shop unions. On the whole, however, the hold of these organizations upon their industry was of a precarious sort. To meet their strong opponents on a basis nearer to equality, they started about 1904 a movement for "system federations,"[65] that is, federations of all organized trades through the length of a given railway system as, for instance, the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Illinois Central Railroad. In turn the creation of system federations sharpened the employers' antagonism. Some railway systems, like the Illinois Central, might be willing to enter into agreements with the separate crafts, but refused to deal with a federation of crafts. In 1912, stimulated by a dispute on the Illinois Central Railroad and on the Harriman lines in general, involving the issue of system federations, a Federation of System Federations was formed by forty systems upon an aggressive program. In 1908 a weak and rather tentative Railway Employes' Department had been launched by the American Federation of Labor. The Federation of Federations was thus a rival organization and "illegal" or, at best, "extra-legal" from the standpoint of the American Federation of Labor. The situation, however, was too acute to permit the consideration of "legality" to enter. An adjustment was made and the Federation of System Federations was "legitimatized" through fusion with the "Department," to which it gave its constitution, officers, and fighting purpose, and from which it took only its name. This is the now well-known Railway Employes' Department of the American Federation of Labor (embracing all important national unions of the railway workers excepting the four brotherhoods), and which, as we shall see, came into its own when the government took over the railways from their private owners eight months after America's entry into the World War. (3) _The Machinery and Metal Trades_ Unlike the miners and the railway brotherhoods, the unions in the machinery and metal trades met with small success in their efforts for "recognition" and trade agreements. The outstanding unions in the industry are the International Association of Machinists and the International Molders' Union, with a half dozen smaller and very small unions.[66] The molders' International united in the same union the stove molders, who as was seen had been "recognized" in 1891, and the molders of parts of machinery and other foundry products. The latter found the National Founders' Association as their antagonist or potential "co-partner" in the industry. The upward swing in business since 1898, combined with the growth of trade unionism and with the successful negotiation of the Interstate agreement in the soft coal mining industry, created an atmosphere favorable to trade agreements. For a time "recognition" and its implications seemed to all concerned, the employer, the unions, and the public, a sort of cure-all for industrial disputes. Accordingly, in March 1899, the National Founders' Association (organized in the previous year and comprising foundrymen engaged principally in machinery manufacturing and jobbing) and the International Molders' Union of North America met and drew up the following tersely worded agreement which became known as the New York Agreement: "That in event of a dispute arising between members of the respective organizations, a reasonable effort shall be made by the parties directly at interest to effect a satisfactory adjustment of the difficulty; failing to do which, either party shall have the right to ask its reference to a Committee of Arbitration which shall consist of the President of the National Founders' Association and the President of the Iron Molders' Union or their representatives, and two other representatives from each organization appointed by the respective Presidents. "The finding of this Committee of Arbitration by majority vote shall be considered final in so far as the future action of the respective organizations is concerned. "Pending settlement by the Committee, there shall be no cessation of work at the instance of either party to the dispute. The Committee of Arbitration shall meet within two weeks after reference of dispute to them." The agreement was a triumph for the principle of pure conciliation as distinct from arbitration by a third party. Both sides preferred to run the risk of a possible deadlock in the conciliation machinery to throwing decisions into the hands of an umpire, who would be an uncertain quantity both as regards special bias and understanding of the industry. The initial meeting of the arbitration committee was held in Cleveland, in May 1899, to consider the demand by the unions at Worcester, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, for a minimum wage which the employers had refused. In each city one member of the National Founders' Association was involved and the men in these firms went to work pending the arbitration decision, while the others stayed out on strike. The meeting ended inauspiciously. The founders and molders seemed not to be able to settle their difficulties. Each side stood fast on its own principles and the arbitration committees regularly became deadlocked. The question of a minimum wage was the most important issue. From 1899 to 1902 several joint conventions were held to discuss the wage question. In 1899 a settlement was made, which, however, proved of short duration. In November 1902, the two organizations met, differed, and arranged for a sub-committee to meet in March 1903. The sub-committee met but could reach no agreement. The two organizations clashed also on the question of apprentices. The founders contended that, because there were not enough molders to fill the present demand, the union restrictions as to the employment of apprentices should be removed. The union argued that a removal of the restriction would cause unlimited competition among molders and eventually the founders could employ them at their own price. They likewise failed to agree on the matter of classifying molders. Owing to the stalling of the conciliation machinery many strikes occurred in violation at least of the spirit of the agreement. July 1, 1901, the molders struck in Cleveland for an increase in wages; arbitration committees were appointed but failed to make a settlement. In Chicago and San Francisco strikes occurred for the same reason. It was at last becoming evident that the New York agreement was not working well. In the autumn of 1903 business prosperity reached its high watermark and then came a sharp depression which lessened the demand for molders. Early in 1904 the National Founders' Association took advantage of this situation to reduce wages and finally practically abrogated the New York agreement. In April, 1904, the founders and molders tried to reach a decision as to how the agreement could be made effective, but gave it up after four days and nights of constant consideration. The founders claimed that the molders violated the agreement in 54 out of the 96 cases that came up during the five years of its life; and further justified their action on the ground that the union persistently refused to submit to arbitration by an impartial outsider the issues upon which the agreement was finally wrecked. An agreement similar to the New York one was concluded in 1900 between the National Metal Trades' Association and the International Association of Machinists. The National Metal Trades' Association had been organized in 1899 by members of the National Founders' Association, whose foundries formed only a part of their manufacturing plants. The spur to action was given by a strike called by the machinists in Chicago and other cities for the nine-hour day. After eight weeks of intense struggle the Association made a settlement granting a promise of the shorter day. Although hailed as one of the big agreements in labor history, it lasted only one year, and broke up on the issue of making the nine-hour day general in the Association shops. The machinists continued to make numerous agreements with individual firms, especially the smaller ones, but the general agreement was never renewed. Thereafter the National Metal Trades' Association became an uncompromising enemy of organized labor. In the following ten years both molders and machinists went on fighting for control and engaged in strikes with more or less success. But the industry as a whole never again came so near to embracing the idea of a joint co-partnership between organized capital and labor as in 1900. (4) _The Employers' Reaction_ With the disruption of the agreement systems in the machinery producing and foundry industries, the idea of collective bargaining and union recognition suffered a setback; and the employers' uneasiness, which had already steadily been feeding on the unions' mounting pressure for control, now increased materially. As long, however, as business remained prosperous and a rising demand for labor favored the unions, most of the agreements were permitted to continue. Therefore, it was not until the industrial depression of 1907-1908 had freed the employers' hands that agreements were disrupted wholesale. In 1905 the Structural Erectors' Association discontinued its agreements with the Structural Iron Workers' Union, causing a dispute which continued over many years. In the course of this dispute the union replied to the victorious assaults of the employers by tactics of violence and murder, which culminated in the fatal explosion in the _Los Angeles Times_ Building in 1911. In 1906 the employing lithographers discontinued their national agreement with the lithographers' union. In 1907 the United Typothetæ broke with the pressmen, and the stove founders with the stove mounters and stove polishers. In 1908 the agreements between the Lake Carriers and Lumber Carriers (both operating on the Great Lakes) and the seafaring and water front unions were terminated. In the operation of these unsuccessful agreements the most serious stumbling blocks were the union "working rules," that is to say, the restrictive rules which unions strove to impose on employers in the exercise of their managerial powers in the shop, and for which the latter adopted the sinister collective designation of "restriction of output." Successful trade unionism has always pressed "working rules" on the employer. As early as the first decade of the nineteenth century, the trade societies then existing tried to impose on the masters the closed shop and restrictions on apprenticeship along with higher wages and shorter hours. As a union advances from an ephemeral association to a stable organization more and more the emphasis is shifted from wages to working rules. Unionists have discovered that on the whole wages are the unstable factor, going up or down, depending on fluctuating business conditions and cost of living; but that once they have established their power by making the employer accept their working rules, high wages will ultimately follow. These working rules are seldom improvisations of the moment, but, crude and one-sided as they often are, they are the product of a long labor experience and have taken many years to be shaped and hammered out. Since their purpose is protective, they can best be classified with reference to the particular thing in the workingman's life which they are designed to protect: the standard of living of the trade group, health, the security of the worker's job, equal treatment in the shop and an equal chance with other workmen in promotion, the bargaining power of the trade group, as a whole, and the safety of the union from the employer's attempts to undermine it. We shall mention only a few of these rules by way of illustration. Thus all rules relating to methods of wage payment, like the prohibition of piece work and of bonus systems (including those associated with scientific management systems), are primarily devices to protect the wage earner's rate of pay against being "nibbled away" by the employer; and in part also to protect his health against undue exertion. Other rules like the normal (usually the eight-hour) day with a higher rate for overtime; the rule demanding a guarantee of continuous employment for a stated time or a guarantee of minimum earnings, regardless of the quantity of work available in the shop; again the demand for the sharing of work in slack times among all employes; and further, when layoffs become necessary, the demand of recognition by the employer of a right to continuous employment based on "seniority" in the shop;--all these have for their common aim chiefly the protection of the job. Another sort of rules, like the obstruction to the splitting up of trades and the restrictions on apprenticeship, have in view the protection of the bargaining power of the craft group--through artificially maintaining an undiminished demand for skilled labor, as well as through a reduction of the number of competitors, present and future, for jobs. The protection of the union against the employer's designs, actual or potential, is sought by an insistence on the closed union shop, by the recognition of the right of appeal to grievance boards in cases of discharge to prevent anti-union discrimination, and through establishing a seniority right in promotion which binds the worker's allegiance to his union rather than to the employer. With these rigid rules, partly already enforced on the employer by strikes or threats to strike and partly as yet unrealized but energetically pushed, trade unionism enters the stage of the trade agreement. The problem of industrial government then becomes one of steady adjustment of the conflicting claims of employer and union for the province of shop control staked out by these working rules. When the two sides are approximately equal in bargaining strength (and lasting agreements are possible only when this condition obtains), a promising line of compromise, as recent experience has shown, has been to extend to the unions and their members in some form that will least obstruct shop efficiency the very same kind of guarantees which they strive to obtain through rules of their own making. For instance, an employer might induce a union to give up or agree to mitigate its working rules designed to protect the job by offering a _quid pro quo_ in a guarantee of employment for a stated number of weeks during the year; and likewise, a union might hope to counteract the employer's natural hankering for being "boss in his own business," free of any union working rules, only provided it guaranteed him a sufficient output per unit of labor time and wage investment. However, compromises of this sort are pure experiments even at present--fifteen to twenty years after the dissolution of those agreements; and they certainly require more faith in government by agreement and more patience than one could expect in the participants in these earlier agreements. It is not surprising, therefore, that the short period of agreements after 1898 should in many industries have formed but a prelude to an "open-shop" movement.[67] After their breach with the union, the National Founders' Association and the National Metal Trades' Association have gone about the business of union wrecking in a systematic way. They have maintained a so-called "labor bureau," furnishing men to their members whenever additional help was needed, and keeping a complete card system record of every man in the employ of members. By this system occasion was removed for employers communicating with the business agents of the various unions when new men were wanted. The associations have had in their regular pay a large number of non-union men, or "strike-breakers," who were sent to the shop of any member whose employes were on strike. In addition to these and other national organizations, the trade unions were attacked by a large and important class of local employers' associations. The most influential association of this class was the Employers' Association of Dayton, Ohio. This association had a standing strike committee which, in trying to break a strike, was authorized to offer rewards to the men who continued at work, and even to compensate the employer for loss of production to the limit of one dollar per day for each man on strike. Also a system was adopted of issuing cards to all employes, which the latter, in case of changing employment, were obliged to present to the new employer and upon which the old employer inscribed his recommendation. The extreme anti-unionism of the Dayton Association is best attested by its policy of taking into membership employers who were threatened with strikes, notwithstanding the heavy financial obligations involved. Another class of local associations were the "Citizens' Alliances," which did not restrict membership to employers but admitted all citizens, the only qualification being that the applicant be not a member of any labor organization. These organizations were frequently started by employers and secured cooperation of citizens generally. In some places there were two associations, an employers' and a Citizens' Alliance. A good example of this was the Citizens' Alliances of Denver, Colorado, organized in 1903. These "Citizens' Alliances," being by virtue of mixed membership more than a mere employers' organization, claimed in time of strikes to voice the sentiment of the community in general. So much for the employers' counter attacks on trade unions on the strictly industrial front. But there were also a legal front and a political front. In 1902 was organized the American Anti-Boycott Association, a secret body composed mainly of manufacturers. The purpose of the organization was to oppose by legal proceedings the boycotts of trade unions, and to secure statutory enactments against the boycott. The energies of the association have been devoted mainly to taking certain typical cases to the courts in order thereby to create legal precedents. The famous Danbury Hatters' Case, in which the Sherman Anti-Trust law was invoked against the hatters' union, was fought in the courts by this Association. The employers' fight on the political front was in charge of the National Association of Manufacturers. This association was originally organized in 1895 for the pursuit of purely trade interests, but about 1903, under the influence of the Dayton, Ohio, group of employers, turned to combating trade unions. It closely cooperated with other employers' associations in the industrial and legal field, but its chief efforts lay in the political or legislative field, where it has succeeded through clever lobbying and manipulations in nullifying labor's political influence, especially in Congress. The National Association of Manufacturers saw to it that Congress and State Legislatures might not weaken the effect of court orders, injunctions and decisions on boycotts, closed shop, and related matters. The "open-shop movement" in its several aspects, industrial, legal, and political, continued strong from 1903 to 1909. Nevertheless, despite most persistent effort and despite the opportunity offered by the business depression which followed the financial panic of 1907, the results were not remarkable. True, it was a factor in checking the rapid rate of expansion of unionism, but it scarcely compelled a retrogression from ground already conquered. It is enough to point out that the unions managed to prevent wage reductions in the organized trades notwithstanding the unemployment and distress of 1907-1908. On the whole trade unionism held its own against employers in strictly competitive industry. Different, however, was the outcome in industries in which the number of employers had been reduced by monopolistic or semi-monopolistic mergers. The steel industry is the outstanding instance.[68] The disastrous Homestead strike of 1892[69] had eliminated unionism from the steel plants of Pittsburgh. However, the Carnegie Steel Company was only a highly efficient and powerful corporation, not yet a "trust." The panic of 1893 dealt another blow to the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers. The steel mills of Alleghany County, outside Pittsburgh, were all put upon a non-union basis before 1900. In Pittsburgh, the iron mills, too, became non-union between 1890 and 1900. There remained to the organization only the iron mills west of Pittsburgh, the large steel mills of Illinois, and a large proportion of the sheet, tin, and iron hoop mills of the country. In 1900 there began to be whisperings of a gigantic consolidation in the steel industry. The Amalgamated officials were alarmed. In any such combination the Carnegie Steel Company, an old enemy of unionism, would easily be first and would, they feared, insist on driving the union out of every mill in the combination. Then it occurred to President Shaffer and his associates that it might be a propitious time to press for recognition while the new corporation was forming. Anxious for public confidence and to float their securities, the companies could not afford a labor controversy. Accordingly, when the new scales were to be signed in July 1901, the Amalgamated Association demanded of the American Tin Plate Company that it sign a scale not only for those mills that had been regarded as union but for all of its mills. This was agreed, provided the American Sheet Steel Company would agree to the same. The latter company refused, and a strike was started against the American Tin Plate Company, the American Sheet Steel Company, and the American Steel Hoop Company. In conferences held on July 11, 12, and 13 these companies offered to sign for all tin mills but one, for all the sheet mills that had been signed for in the preceding year and for four other mills that had been non-union, and for all the hoop mills that had been signed for in the preceding year. This highly advantageous offer was foolishly rejected by the representatives of the union; they demanded all the mills or none. The strike then went on in earnest. In August, President Shaffer called on all the men working in mills of the United States Steel Corporation to come out on strike. By the middle of August it was evident that the Association had made a mistake. Instead of finding their task easier because the United States Steel Corporation had just been formed, they found that corporation ready to bring all its tremendous power to bear against the organization. President Shaffer offered to arbitrate the whole matter, but the proposal was rejected; and at the end of August the strike was declared at an end. The steel industry was apparently closed to unionism.[70] (5) _Legislation, Courts, and Politics_ While trade unionism was thus on the whole holding its ground against the employers and even winning victories and recognition, its influence on National and State legislation failed for many years to reflect its growing economic strength. The scant success with legislation resulted, on the one hand, from the very expansion of the Federation into new fields, which absorbed nearly all its means and energy; but was due in a still greater measure to a solidification of capitalist control in the Republican party and in Congress, against which President Roosevelt directed his spectacular campaign. A good illustration is furnished by the attempt to get a workable eight-hour law on government work. In the main the leaders of the Federation placed slight reliance upon efforts to shorten the working day through legislation. The movement for shorter hours by law for women, which first attained importance in the nineties, was not the work of organized labor but of humanitarians and social workers. To be sure, the Federation has supported such laws for women and children workers, but so far as adult male labor was concerned, it has always preferred to leave the field clear for the trade unions. The exception to the rule was the working day on public work. The Federal eight-hour day law began to receive attention from the Federation towards the end of the eighties. By that time the status of the law of 1868 which decreed the eight-hour day on Federal government work[71] had been greatly altered. In a decision rendered in 1887 the Supreme Court held that the eight-hour day law of 1868 was merely directory to the officials of the Federal government, but did not invalidate contracts made by them not containing an eight-hour clause. To counteract this decision a special law was passed in 1888, with the support of the Federation, establishing the eight-hour day in the United States Printing Office and for letter carriers. In 1892 a new general eight-hour law was passed, which provided that eight-hours should be the length of the working day on all public works of the United States, whether directed by the government or under contract or sub-contract. Within the next few years interpretations rendered by attorney generals of the United States practically rendered the law useless. In 1895 the Federation began to press in earnest for a satisfactory eight-hour law. In 1896 its eight-hour bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously. In the Senate it was introduced by Senator Kyle, the chairman of the committee on Education and Labor. After its introduction, however, hearings upon the bill were delayed so long that action was prevented during the long session. In the short session of 1898-1899 the bill met the cruel fate of having its introducer, Senator Kyle, submit a minority report against it. Under the circumstances no vote upon the bill could be had in the Senate. In the next Congress, 1899-1901, the eight-hour bill once more passed the House of Representatives only to be lost in the Senate by failure to come to a vote. In 1902, the bill again unanimously passed the House, but was not even reported upon by the Senate committee. In the hearings upon the eight-hour bill in that year the opposition of the National Manufacturers' Association was first manifested. In 1904 the House Labor Committee sidetracked a similar bill by recommending that the Department of Commerce and Labor should investigate its merits. Secretary Metcalf, however, declared that the questions submitted to his Department with reference to the eight-hour bill were "well-nigh unintelligible." In 1906 the House Labor Committee, at a very late stage in the session, reported "favorably" upon the eight-hour bill. At the same time it eliminated all chances of passage of the bill through the failure of a majority of the members of the committee to sign the "favorable" report made. This session of Congress, also, allowed a "rider" to be added to the Panama Canal bill, exempting the canal construction from the provisions of the eight-hour law. In the next two Congresses no report could be obtained from the labor committees of either House upon the general eight-hour day bill, despite the fact that President Roosevelt and later President Taft recommended such legislation. In the sessions of the Congress of 1911-1913 the American Federation of Labor hit upon a new plan. This was the attachment of "riders" to departmental appropriation bills requiring that all work contracted for by these departments must be done under the eight-hour system. The most important "rider" of this character was that attached to the naval appropriation bill. Under its provisions the Attorney-General held that in all work done in shipyards upon vessels built for the Federal government the eight-hour rule must be applied. Finally, in June 1912, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate passed the eight-hour bill supported by the American Federation of Labor with some amendments, which the Federation did not find seriously objectionable; and President Taft signed it. Still better proof of the slight influence of the Federation upon government is furnished by the vicissitudes of its anti-injunction bills in Congress. The Federation had been awakened to the seriousness of the matter of the injunction by the Debs case. A bill of its sponsoring providing for jury trials in "indirect" contempt cases passed the Senate in 1896 only to be killed in the House. In 1900 only eight votes were recorded in the House against a bill exempting labor unions from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; it failed, however, of passage in the Senate. In 1902 an anti-injunction bill championed by the American Federation of Labor passed the House of Representatives. That was the last time, however, for many years to come when such a bill was even reported out of committee. Thereafter, for a decade, the controlling powers in Congress had their faces set against removal by law of the judicial interference in labor's use of its economic strength against employers. In the meantime, however, new court decisions made the situation more and more critical. A climax was reached in 1908-1909. In February 1908, came the Supreme Court decision in the Danbury Hatters' case, which held that members of a labor union could be held financially responsible to the full amount of their individual property under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for losses to business occasioned by an interstate boycott.[72] By way of contrast, the Supreme Court within the same week held unconstitutional the portion of the Erdman Act which prohibited discrimination by railways against workmen on account of their membership in a union.[73] One year later, in the Buck's Stove and Range Company boycott case, Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison, the three most prominent officials of the American Federation of Labor, were sentenced by a lower court in the District of Columbia to long terms in prison for violating an injunction which prohibited all mention of the fact that the plaintiff firm had ever been boycotted.[74] Even though neither these nor subsequent court decisions had the paralyzing effect upon American trade unionism which its enemies hoped for and its friends feared, the situation called for a change in tactics. It thus came about that the Federation, which, as was seen, by the very principles of its program wished to let government alone,--as it indeed expected little good of government,--was obliged to enter into competition with the employers for controlling government; this was because one branch of the government, namely the judicial one, would not let it alone. A growing impatience with Congress was manifested in resolutions adopted by successive conventions. In 1902 the convention authorized the Executive Council to take "such further steps as will secure the nomination--and the election--of only such men as are fully and satisfactorily pledged to the support of the bills" championed by the Federation. Accordingly, the Executive Council prepared a series of questions to be submitted to all candidates for Congress in 1904 by the local unions of each district. The Federation was more active in the Congressional election of 1906. Early in the year the Executive Council urged affiliated unions to use their influence to prevent the nomination in party primaries or conventions of candidates for Congress who refused to endorse labor's demands, and where both parties nominated refractory candidates to run independent labor candidates. The labor campaign was placed in the hands of a Labor Representation Committee, which made use of press publicity and other standard means. Trade union speakers were sent into the districts of the most conspicuous enemies of labor's demands to urge their defeat. The battle royal was waged against Congressman Littlefield of Maine. A dozen union officials, headed by President Gompers, invaded his district to tell the electorate of his insults to organized labor. However, he was reelected, although with a reduced plurality over the preceding election. The only positive success was the election of McDermott of the commercial telegraphers' union in Chicago. President Gompers, however, insisted that the cutting down of the majorities of the conspicuous enemies of labor's demands gave "more than a hint" of what organized labor "can and may do when thoroughly prepared to exercise its political strength." Nevertheless the next Congress was even more hostile than the preceding one. The convention of the Federation following the election approved the new tactics, but was careful at the same time to declare that the Federation was neither allied with any political party nor had any intention of forming an independent labor party. In the Presidential election of 1908, however, the Federation virtually entered into an alliance with the Democrats. At a "Protest Conference" in March, 1908, attended by the executive officers of most of the affiliated national unions as well as by the representatives of several farmers' organizations, the threat was uttered that organized labor would make a determined effort in the coming campaign to defeat its enemies, whether "candidates for President, for Congress, or other offices." The next step was the presentation of the demands of the Federation to the platform committees of the conventions of both parties. The wording of the proposed anti-injunction plank suggests that it had been framed after consultation with the Democratic leaders, since it omitted to demand the sweeping away of the doctrine of malicious conspiracy or the prohibition of the issuance of injunctions to protect business rights, which had regularly been asked by the American Federation of Labor since 1904. In its place was substituted an indefinite statement against the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes where none would be allowed if no labor dispute existed and a declaration in favor of jury trial on the charge of contempt of court. The Republicans paid scant attention to the planks of the Federation. Their platform merely reiterated the recognized law upon the allowance of equity relief; and as if to leave no further doubt in the minds of the labor leaders, proceeded to nominate for President, William H. Taft, who as a Federal judge in the early nineties was responsible for some of the most sweeping injunctions ever issued in labor disputes. A year earlier Gompers had characterized Taft as "the injunction standard-bearer" and as an impossible candidate. The Democratic platform, on the other hand, _verbatim_ repeated the Federation plank on the injunction question and nominated Bryan. After the party conventions had adjourned the _American Federationist_ entered on a vigorous attack upon the Republican platform and candidate. President Gompers recognized that this was equivalent to an endorsement of Bryan, but pleaded that "in performing a solemn duty at this time in support of a political party, labor does not become partisan to a political party, but partisan to a principle." Substantially, all prominent non-Socialist trade-union officials followed Gompers' lead. That the trade unionists did not vote solidly for Bryan, however, is apparent from the distribution of the vote. On the other hand, it is true that the Socialist vote in 1908 in almost all trade-union centers was not materially above that of 1904, which would seem to warrant the conclusion that Gompers may have "delivered to Bryan" not a few labor votes which would otherwise have gone to Debs. In the Congressional election of 1910 the Federation repeated the policy of "reward your friends, and punish your enemies." However, it avoided more successfully the appearance of partisanship. Many progressive Republicans received as strong support as did Democratic candidates. Nevertheless the Democratic majority in the new House meant that the Federation was at last "on the inside" of one branch of the government. In addition, fifteen men holding cards of membership in unions, were elected to Congress, which was the largest number on record. Furthermore William B. Wilson, Ex-Secretary of the United Mine Workers, was appointed chairman of the important House Committee on Labor. The Congress of 1911-1913 with its Democratic House of Representatives passed a large portion of the legislation which the Federation had been urging for fifteen years. It passed an eight-hour law on government contract work, as already noted, and a seaman's bill, which went far to grant to the sailors the freedom of contract enjoyed by other wage earners. It created a Department of Labor with a seat in the Cabinet. It also attached a "rider" to the appropriation bill for the Department of Justice enjoining the use of any of the funds for purposes of prosecuting labor organizations under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and other Federal laws. In the presidential campaign of 1912 Gompers pointed to the legislation favorable to labor initiated by the Democratic House of Representatives and let the workers draw their own conclusions. The corner stone of the Federation's legislative program, the legal exemption of trade unions from the operation of anti-trust legislation and from court interference in disputes by means of injunctions, was yet to be laid. By inference, therefore, the election of a Democratic administration was the logical means to that end. At last, with the election of Woodrow Wilson as President and of a Democratic Congress in 1912, the political friends of the Federation controlled all branches of government. William B. Wilson was given the place of Secretary of Labor. Hereafter, for at least seven years, the Federation was an "insider" in the national government. The road now seemed clear to the attainment by trade unions of freedom from court interference in struggles against employers--a judicial _laissez-faire_. The political program initiated in 1906 seemed to be bearing fruit. The drift into politics, since 1906, has differed essentially from that of earlier periods. It has been a movement coming from "on top," not from the masses of the laborers themselves. Hard times and defeats in strikes have not very prominently figured. Instead of a movement led by local unions and by city centrals as had been the case practically in all preceding political attempts, the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor now became the directing force. The rank and file seem to have been much less stirred than the leaders; for the member who held no union office felt less intensely the menace from injunctions than the officials who might face a prison sentence for contempt of court. Probably for this reason the "delivery" of the labor vote by the Federation has ever been so largely problematical. That the Federation leaders were able to force the desired concessions from one of the political parties by holding out a _quid pro quo_ of such an uncertain value is at once a tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark of the instability of the general political alignment in the country. FOOTNOTES: [44] The bricklayers became affiliated in 1917. [45] "The Growth of Labor Organizations in the United States, 1897-1914," in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Aug., 1916, p. 780. [46] "The Extent of Trade Unionism," in _Annals of American Academy of Political Science_, Vol. 69, p. 118. [47] _Ibid._ [48] "The Extent of Trade Unionism," in _Annals of American Academy of Political Science_, Vol. 69, p. 118. [49] The "federal labor unions" (mixed unions) and the directly affiliated local trade unions (in trades in which a national union does not yet exist) are forms of organization which the Federation designed for bringing in the more miscellaneous classes of labor. The membership in these has seldom reached over 100,000. [50] A small but immensely rich area in Eastern Pennsylvania where the only anthracite coal deposits in the United States are found. [51] At a conference at Columbus, Ohio, in January, 1886, coal operators from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois met the organized miners and drew up an agreement covering the wages which were to prevail throughout the central competitive field from May 1, 1886, to April 30, 1887. The scale established would seem to have been dictated by the wish to give the markets of the central competitive field to the Ohio operators. Ohio was favored in the scale established by this first Interstate conference probably because more than half of the operators present came from that State, and because the chief strength of the miners' union also lay in that State. To prevent friction over the interpretation of the Interstate agreement, a board of arbitration and conciliation was established. This board consisted of five miners and five operators chosen at large, and one miner and operator more from each of the States of this field. Such a board of arbitration and conciliation was provided for in all of the Interstate agreements of the period of the eighties. This system of Interstate agreement, in spite of the cut-throat competition raging between operators, was maintained for Pennsylvania and Ohio practically until 1890, Illinois having been lost in 1887, and Indiana in 1888. It formed the real predecessor of the system established in 1898 and in vogue thereafter. [52] See above, 136. [53] The run-of-mine system means payment by weight of the coal as brought out of the mine including minute pieces and impurities. [54] The check-off system refers to collection of union dues. It means that the employer agrees to deduct from the wage of each miner the amount of his union dues, thus constituting himself the union's financial agent. [55] In that district the check-off was granted in 1902. [56] Hitchman Coal and Coke Company _v._ Mitchell, 245 U.S. 232. [57] See below, 175-177. [58] The actual membership of the union is considerably above these figures, since they are based upon the dues-paying membership, and miners out on strike are exempted from the payment of all dues. The number of miners who always act with the union is much larger still. Even in non-union fields the United Mine Workers have always been successful in getting thousands of miners to obey their order to strike. [59] See Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 205 ff. [60] This was demonstrated in the bitterly fought strike on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1888. (See above, 130-131.) [61] Seniority also decides the assignment to "runs," which differ greatly in desirability, and it gives preference over junior employes in keeping the job when it is necessary to lay men off. [62] The first arbitration act was passed by Congress in 1888. In 1898 it was superseded by the well known Erdman Act, which prescribed rules for mediation and voluntary arbitration. [63] Concerted movements began in 1907 as joint demands upon all railways in a single section of the country, like the East or the West, by a single group of employes; after 1912 two or more brotherhoods initiated common concerted movements, first in one section only, and at last covering all the railways of the country. [64] See below, 230-233. [65] Long before this, about the middle of the nineties, the first system federations were initiated by the brotherhoods and were confined to them only; they took up adjustment of grievances and related matters. [66] The International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, the Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders, the Pattern Makers' League, the International Union of Stove Mounters, the International Union of Metal Polishers, Platers, Brass and Silver Workers, the International Federation of Draftsmen's Unions, and the International Brotherhood of Foundry Employes. [67] Professor Barnett attributes the failure of these agreements chiefly to faulty agreement machinery. The working rules, he points out, are rules made by the national union and therefore can be changed by the national union only. At the same time the agreements were national only in so far as they provided for national conciliation machinery; the fixing of wages was left to local bodies. Consequently, the national employers' associations lacked the power to offer the unions an indispensable _quid pro quo_ in higher wages for a compromise on working rules. ("National and District Systems of Collective Bargaining in the United States," in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, May, 1912, pp. 425 ff.) [68] The following account is taken from Chapter X of the _Steel Workers_ by John A. Fitch, published by the Russell Sage Foundation. [69] See above, 133-135. [70] The opposition of the Steel Corporation to unionism was an important factor in the disruption of the agreement systems in the structural iron-erecting industry in 1905 and in the carrying industry on the Great Lakes in 1908; in each of these industries the Corporation holds a place of considerable control. [71] See above, 47-49. [72] Loewe _v._ Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274 (1908). [73] Adair _v._ U.S., 208 U.S. 161 (1908). [74] 36 Wash. Law Rep. 436 (1909). Gompers was finally sentenced to imprisonment for thirty days and the other two defendants were fined $500 each. These penalties were later lifted by the Supreme Court on a technicality, 233 U.S. 604 (1914). CHAPTER 9 RADICAL UNIONISM AND A "COUNTER-REFORMATION" For ten years after 1904, when it reached its high point, the American Federation of Labor was obliged to stay on the defensive--on the defensive against the "open-shop" employers and against the courts. Even the periodic excursions into politics were in substance defensive moves. This turn of events naturally tended to detract from the prestige of the type of unionism for which Gompers was spokesman; and by contrast raised the stock of the radical opposition. The opposition developed both in and outside the Federation. Inside it was the socialist "industrialist" who advocated a political labor party on a socialist platform, such as the Federation had rejected when it defeated the "program" of 1893,[75] together with a plan of organization by industry instead of by craft. Outside the Federation the opposition marched under the flag of the Industrial Workers of the World, which was launched by socialists but soon after birth fell into the hands of syndicalists. However, fully to understand the issue between conservatives and radicals in the Federation after 1905, one needs to go back much earlier for the "background." The socialist movement, after it had unwittingly assisted in the birth of the opportunistic trade unionism of Strasser and Gompers,[76] did not disappear, but remained throughout the eighties a handful of "intellectuals" and "intellectualized" wage earners, mainly Germans. These never abandoned the hope of better things for socialism in the labor movement. With this end in view, they adopted an attitude of enthusiastic cooperation with the Knights of Labor and the Federation in their wage struggle, which they accompanied, to be sure, by a persistent though friendly "nudging" in the direction of socialism. During the greater part of the eighties the socialists were closer to the trade unionists than to the Knights, because of the larger proportion of foreign born, principally Germans, among them. The unions in the cigar making, cabinet making, brewing, and other German trades counted many socialists, and socialists were also in the lead in the city federations of unions in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other cities. In the campaign of Henry George for Mayor of New York in 1886, the socialists cooperated with him and the labor organizations. When, however, the campaign being over, they fell out with George on the issue of the single tax, they received more sympathy from the trade unionists than George; though one should add that the internal strife caused the majority of the trade unionists to lose interest in either faction and in the whole political movement. The socialist organization went by the name of the Socialist Labor party, which it had kept since 1877. Its enrolled membership was under 10,000, and its activities were non-political (since it refrained from nominating its own tickets) but entirely agitational and propagandist. The socialist press was chiefly in German and was led by a daily in New York. So it continued until there appeared on the scene an imperious figure, one of those men who, had he lived in a country with conditions more favorable to socialism than the United States, would doubtless have become one of the world's outstanding revolutionary leaders. This man was Daniel DeLeon. DeLeon was of South American ancestry, who early immigrated to New York. For a time he was teacher of languages at Columbia College; later he devoted himself thoroughly to socialist propaganda. He established his first connection with the labor movement in the George campaign in 1886 and by 1890 we find him in control of the socialist organization. DeLeon was impatient with the policy of slow permeation carried on by the socialists. A convinced if not fanatical Marxian, his philosophy taught him that the American labor movement, like all national labor movements, had, in the nature of things, to be socialist. He formed the plan of a supreme and last effort to carry socialism into the hosts of the Knights and the Federation, failing which, other and more drastic means would be used. By 1895 he learned that he was beaten in both organizations; not, however, without temporarily upsetting the groups in control. For, the only time when Samuel Gompers was defeated for President of the Federation was in 1894, when the socialists, angered by his part in the rejection of the socialist program at the convention,[77] joined with his enemies and voted another man into office. Gompers was reelected the next year and the Federation seemed definitely shut to socialism. DeLeon was now ready to go to the limit with the Federation. If the established unions refused to assume the part of the gravediggers of capitalism, designed for them, as he believed, by the very logic of history, so much the worse for the established trade unions. Out of this grew the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as a life and death rival to the Federation. From the standpoint of socialism no more unfortunate step could have been taken. It immediately stamped the socialists as wilful destroyers of the unity of labor. To the trade unionists, yet fresh from the ordeal of the struggle against the Knights of Labor, the action of the socialists was an unforgivable crime. All the bitterness which has characterized the fight between socialist and anti-socialist in the Federation verily goes back to this gross miscalculation by DeLeon of the psychology of the trade union movement. DeLeon, on his part, attributed the action of the Federation to a hopelessly corrupt leadership and, since he failed to unseat it by working from within, he now felt justified in striking at the entire structure. The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was a failure from the outset. Only a small portion of even the socialist-minded trade unionists were willing to join in the venture. Many trade union leaders who had been allied with the socialists now openly sided with Gompers. In brief, the socialist "revolution" in the American labor world suffered the fate of all unsuccessful revolutions: it alienated the moderate sympathizers and forced the victorious majority into taking up a more uncompromising position than heretofore. Finally, the hopelessness of DeLeon's tactics became obvious. One faction in the Socialist Labor party, which had been in opposition ever since he assumed command, came out in revolt in 1898. A fusion took place between it and another socialist group, the so-called Debs-Berger Social Democracy,[78] which took the name of the Social Democratic Party. Later, at a "Unity Congress" in 1901, it became the Socialist Party of America. What distinguished this party from the Socialist Labor party (which, although it had lost its primacy in the socialist movement, has continued side by side with the Socialist party of America), was well expressed in a resolution adopted at the same "Unity" convention: "We recognize that trade unions are by historical necessity organized on neutral grounds as far as political affiliation is concerned." With this program, the socialists have been fairly successful in extending their influence in the American Federation of Labor so that at times they have controlled about one-third of the votes in the conventions. Nevertheless the conservatives have never forgiven the socialists their "original sin." In the country at large socialism made steady progress until 1912, when nearly one million votes were cast for Eugene V. Debs, or about 1/16 of the total. After 1912, particularly since 1916, the socialist party became involved in the War and the difficulties created by the War and retrogressed. For a number of years DeLeon's failure kept possible imitators in check. However, in 1905, came another attempt in the shape of the Industrial Workers of the World. As with its predecessor, impatient socialists helped to set it afoot, but unlike the Alliance, it was at the same time an outgrowth of a particular situation in the actual labor movement, namely, of the bitter fight which was being waged by the Western Federation of Miners since the middle nineties. Beginning with a violent clash between miners and mine owners in the silver region of Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, in the early nineties, the mining States of the West became the scene of many labor struggles which were more like civil wars than like ordinary labor strikes. A most important contributing cause was a struggle, bolder than has been encountered elsewhere in the United States, for control of government in the interest of economic class. This was partly due to the absence of a neutral middle class, farmers or others, who might have been able to keep matters within bounds. The Western Federation of Miners was an organization of workers in and around the metaliferous mines. It also included workers in smelters. It held its first convention in 1893 in Butte, Montana. In 1894 the men employed in the Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold fields demanded a minimum wage of three dollars for an eight-hour day. After four months the strike resulted in a victory for the union. Other strikes occurred in 1896 and 1897 at Leadville, in 1899 in the Coeur d'Alène mining district, and in 1901 at Rossland and Fernie, British Columbia, and also in the San Juan district in California. The most important strike of the Western Federation of Miners, however, began in 1903 at Colorado City, where the mill and smeltermen's union quit work in order to compel better working conditions. As the sympathetic strike was a recognized part of the policy of the Western Federation of Miners, all the miners in the Cripple Creek region were called out. The eight-hour day in the smelters was the chief issue. In 1899 the Colorado legislature had passed an eight-hour law which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the State. To overcome this difficulty, an amendment to the State constitution was passed in 1902 by a large majority, but the legislature, after having thus received a direct command to establish the eight-hour law, adjourned without taking action. Much of the subsequent disorder and bloodshed in the Cripple Creek region during 1903-1904 is traceable to this failure on the part of the legislature to enact the eight-hour law. The struggle in Colorado helped to convince the Western miners that agreements with their employers were futile, that constitutional amendments and politics were futile, and from this they drew the conclusion that the revolutionary way was the only way. William D. Haywood, who became the central figure in the revolutionary movement of the Industrial Workers of the World since its launching in 1905, was a former national officer of the Western Federation of Miners and a graduate of the Colorado school of industrial experience.[79] Even before 1905 the Western Federation of Miners, which was out of touch with the American Federation of Labor for reasons of geography and of difference in policy and program, attempted to set up a national labor federation which would reflect its spirit. An American Labor Union was created in 1902, which by 1905 had a membership of about 16,000 besides the 27,000 of the miners' federation. It was thus the precursor of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. In the latter the revolutionary miners from the West joined hands with radical socialists from the East and Middle West of both socialist parties, the Socialist party of America and DeLeon's Socialist Labor party. We shall forbear tracing here the complicated internal history of the I.W.W., that is the friction which immediately arose between the DeLeonites and the other socialists and later on the struggle between the socialists and the syndicalist-minded labor rebels from the West. Suffice it to say that the Western Federation of Miners, which was its very heart and body, convinced of the futility of it all, seceded in 1907. In 1911 it joined the American Federation of Labor and after several hard-fought strikes, notably in Michigan in 1913, it practically became assimilated to the other unions in the American Federation of Labor. The remnant of the I.W.W. split in 1908 into two rival Industrial Workers of the World, with headquarters in Detroit and Chicago, respectively, on the issue of revolutionary political versus non-political or "direct" action. As a rival to the Federation of Labor the I.W.W. never materialized, but on the one hand, as an instrument of resistance by the migratory laborers of the West and, on the other hand, as a prod to the Federation to do its duty to the unorganized and unskilled foreign-speaking workers of the East, the I.W.W. will for long have a part to play. In fact, about 1912, it seemed as though the I.W.W. were about to repeat the performance of the Knights of Labor in the Great Upheaval of 1885-1887. Its clamorous appearance in the industrial East, showing in the strikes by the non-English-speaking workers in the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Paterson, New Jersey, and Little Falls, New York, on the one hand, and on the other, the less tangible but no less desperate strikes of casual laborers which occurred from time to time in the West, bore for the observer a marked resemblance to the Great Upheaval. Furthermore, the trained eyes of the leaders of the Federation espied in the Industrial Workers of the World a new rival which would best be met on its own ground by organizing within the Federation the very same elements to which the I.W.W. especially addressed itself. Accordingly, at the convention of 1912, held in Rochester, the problem of organizing the unskilled occupied a place near the head of the list. But after the unsuccessful Paterson textile strikes in 1912 and 1913, the star of the Industrial Workers of the World set as rapidly as it had risen and the organization rapidly retrogressed. At no time did it roll up a membership of more than 60,000 as compared with the maximum membership of 750,000 of the Knights of Labor. The charge made by the I.W.W. against the Federation of Labor (and it is in relation to the latter that the I.W.W. has any importance at all) is mainly two-fold: on aim and on method. "Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,'" reads the Preamble, "We must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system.' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown." Then on method: "We find that the centering of management in industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade union unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of the workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars.... These conditions must be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization founded in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or a lockout is in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all." Lastly, "By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." This meant "industrialism" versus the craft autonomy of the Federation. "Industrialism" was a product of the intense labor struggles of the nineties, of the Pullman railway strike in 1894, of the general strike of the bituminous miners of 1898, and of a decade long struggle and boycott in the beer-brewing industry. Industrialism meant a united front against the employers in an industry regardless of craft; it meant doing away with the paralyzing disputes over jurisdiction amongst the several craft unions; it meant also stretching out the hand of fellowship to the unskilled worker who knowing no craft fitted into no craft union. But over and above these changes in structure there hovered a new spirit, a spirit of class struggle and of revolutionary solidarity in contrast with the spirit of "business unionism" of the typical craft union. Industrialism signified a challenge to the old leadership, to the leadership of Gompers and his associates, by a younger generation of leaders who were more in tune with the social ideas of the radical intellectuals and the labor movements of Europe than with the traditional policies of the Federation. But there is industrialism and industrialism, each answering the demands of a _particular stratum_ of the wage-earning class. The class lowest in the scale, the unskilled and "floaters," for which the I.W.W. speaks, conceives industrialism as "one big union," where not only trade but even industrial distinctions are virtually ignored with reference to action against employers, if not also with reference to the principle of organization. The native floater in the West and the unskilled foreigner in the East are equally responsive to the appeal to storm capitalism in a successive series of revolts under the banner of the "one big union." Uniting in its ranks the workers with the least experience in organization and with none in political action, the "one big union" pins its faith upon assault rather than "armed peace," upon the strike without the trade agreement, and has no faith whatsoever in political or legislative action. Another form of industrialism is that of the middle stratum of the wage-earning group, embracing trades which are moderately skilled and have had considerable experience in organization, such as brewing, clothing, and mining. They realize that, in order to attain an equal footing with the employers, they must present a front coextensive with the employers' association, which means that all trades in an industry must act under one direction. Hence they strive to assimilate the engineers and machinists, whose labor is essential to the continuance of the operation of the plant. They thus reproduce on a minor scale the attempt of the Knights of Labor during the eighties to engulf the more skilled trade unions. At the same time the relatively unprivileged position of these trades makes them keenly alive to the danger from below, from the unskilled whom the employer may break into their jobs in case of strikes. They therefore favor taking the unskilled into the organization. Their industrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their own trade consideration than by an altruistic desire to uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the organization of the unskilled is required by the broader interests of the wage-earning class. However, their long experience in matters of organization teaches them that the "one big union" would be a poor medium. Their accumulated experience likewise has a moderating influence on their economic activity, and they are consequently among the strongest supporters inside the American Federation of Labor of the trade agreement. Nevertheless, opportunistic though they are in the industrial field, their position is not sufficiently raised above the unskilled to make them satisfied with the wage system. Hence, they are mostly controlled by socialists and are strongly in favor of political action through the Socialist party. This form of industrialism may consequently be called "socialist industrialism." In the annual conventions of the Federation, industrialists are practically synonymous with socialists. The best examples of the "middle stratum" industrialism are the unions in the garment industries. Enthusiastic admirers have proclaimed them the harbingers of a "new unionism" in America. One would indeed be narrow to withhold praise from organizations and leaders who in spite of a most chaotic situation in their industry have succeeded so brilliantly where many looked only for failure. Looking at the matter, however, from the wider standpoint of labor history, the contribution of this so-called "new unionism" resides chiefly, first, in that it has rationalized and developed industrial government by collective bargaining and trade agreements as no other unionism, and second, in that it has applied a spirit of broadminded all-inclusiveness to all workers in the industry. To put it in another way, its merit is in that it has made supreme use of the highest practical acquisition of the American Federation of Labor--namely, the trade agreement--while reinterpreting and applying the latter in a spirit of a broader labor solidarity than the "old unionism" of the Federation. As such the clothing workers point the way to the rest of the labor movement. The first successful application of the "new unionism" in the clothing trades was in 1910 by the workers on cloaks and suits in the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union of America, a constituent union of the American Federation of Labor. They established machinery of conciliation from the shop to the industry, which in spite of many tempests and serious crises, will probably live on indefinitely. Perhaps the greatest achievement to their credit is that they have jointly with the employers, through a Joint Board of Sanitary Control, wrought a revolution in the hygienic conditions in the shops. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America have won great power in the men's clothing industry, through aggressive but constructive leadership. The nucleus of the union seceded from the United Garment Workers, an A.F. of L. organization, in 1914. The socialistic element within the organization was and still is numerically dominating. But in the practical process of collective bargaining, this union's revolutionary principles have served more as a bond to hold the membership together than as a severe guide in its relations with the employers.[80] As a result, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers attained trade agreements in all the large men's clothing centers. The American Federation of Labor, however, in spite of this union's success, has persistently refused to admit it to affiliation, on account of its original secessionist origin from a chartered international union. The unions of the clothing workers have demonstrated how immigrants (the majority in the industry are Russian and Polish Jews and Italians) may be successfully organized on the basis of a broad minded industrialism. On the issue of industrialism in the American Federation of Labor the last word has not yet been said. It appears, though, that the matter is being solved slowly but surely by a silent "counter-reformation" by the old leaders. For industrialism, or the adjustment of union structure to meet the employer with ranks closed on the front of an entire industry, is not altogether new even in the most conservative portion of the Federation, although it has never been called by that name. Long before industrialism entered the national arena as the economic creed of socialists, the unions of the skilled had begun to evolve an industrialism of their own. This species may properly be termed craft industrialism, as it sought merely to unite on an efficient basis the fighting strength of the unions of the skilled trades by devising a method for speedy solution of jurisdictional disputes between overlapping unions and by reducing the sympathetic strike to a science. The movement first manifested itself in the early eighties in the form of local building trades' councils, which especially devoted themselves to sympathetic strikes. This local industrialism grew, after a fashion, to national dimensions in the form of the International Building Trades' Council organized in St. Louis in 1897. The latter proved, however, ineffective, since, having for its basic unit the local building trades' council, it inevitably came into conflict with the national unions in the building trades. For the same reason it was barred from recognition of the American Federation of Labor. The date of the real birth of craft industrialism on a national scale, was therefore deferred to 1903, when a Structural Building Trades' Alliance was founded. The formation of the Alliance marks an event of supreme importance, not only because it united for the first time for common action all the important national unions in the building industry, but especially because it promulgated a new principle which, if generally adopted, was apparently destined to revolutionize the structure of American labor organizations. The Alliance purported to be a federation of the "basic" trades in the industry, and in reality it did represent an _entente_ of the big and aggressive unions. The latter were moved to federate not only for the purpose of forcing the struggle against the employers, but also of expanding at the expense of the "non-basic" or weak unions, besides seeking to annihilate the last vestiges of the International Building Trades' Council. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, probably the most aggressive union in the American Federation of Labor, was the leader in this movement. From the standpoint of the Federation, the Structural Alliance was at best an extra-legal organization, as it did not receive the latter's formal sanction, but the Federation could scarcely afford to ignore it as it had ignored the International Building Trades' Council. Thus in 1908 the Alliance was "legitimatized" and made a "Department" of the American Federation of Labor, under the name of the Building Trades' Department, with the settlement of jurisdictional disputes as its main function. It was accompanied by departments of metal trades, of railway employes, of miners, and by a "label" department. It is not, however, open to much doubt that the Department was not a very successful custodian of the trade autonomy principle. Jurisdictional disputes are caused either by technical changes, which play havoc with official "jurisdiction," or else by a plain desire on the part of the stronger union to encroach upon the province of the weaker one. When the former was the case and the struggle happened to be between unions of equal strength and influence, it generally terminated in a compromise. When, however, the combatants were two unions of unequal strength, the doctrine of the supremacy of the "basic" unions was generally made to prevail in the end. Such was the outcome of the struggle between the carpenters and joiners on the one side and the wood workers on the other and also between the plumbers and steam fitters. In each case it ended in the forced amalgamation of the weaker union with the stronger one, upon the principle that there must be only one union in each "basic" trade. In the case of the steam fitters, which was settled at the convention at Rochester in 1912, the Federation gave what might be interpreted as an official sanction of the new doctrine of one union in a "basic" trade. Notwithstanding these official lapses from the principle of craft autonomy, the socialist industrialists[81] are still compelled to abide by the letter and the spirit of craft autonomy. The effect of such a policy on the coming American industrialism may be as follows: The future development of the "department" may enable the strong "basic" unions to undertake concerted action against employers, while each retains its own autonomy. Such indeed is the notable "concerted movement" of the railway brotherhoods, which since 1907 has begun to set a type for craft industrialism. It is also probable that the majority of the craft unions will sufficiently depart from a rigid craft standard for membership to include helpers and unskilled workers working alongside the craftsmen. The clearest outcome of this silent "counter-reformation" in reply to the socialist industrialists is the Railway Employes' Department as it developed during and after the war-time period.[82] It is composed of all the railway men's organizations except the brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, telegraphers, and several minor organizations, which on the whole cooperate with the Department. It also has a place for the unskilled laborers organized in the United Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad Shop Laborers. The Railway Employes' Department therefore demonstrates that under craft unionism the unskilled need not be left out in the cold. It also meets the charge that craft unionism renders it easy for the employers to defeat the unions one by one, since this Department has consolidated the constituent crafts into one bargaining and striking union[83] practically as well as could be done by an industrial union. Finally, the Railway Employes' Department has an advantage over an industrial union in that many of its constituent unions, like the machinists', blacksmiths', boiler-makers', sheet metal workers', and electrical workers', have large memberships outside the railway industry, which might by their dues and assessments come to the aid of the railway workers on strike. To be sure, the solidarity of the unions in the Department might be weakened through jurisdictional disputes, which is something to be considered. However, when unions have gone so far as to confederate for joint collective bargaining, that danger will probably never be allowed to become too serious. FOOTNOTES: [75] See above, 139-141. [76] See above, 76-79. [77] See above, 139-141. [78] Eugene V. Debs, after serving his sentence in prison for disobeying a court injunction during the Pullman strike of 1894, became a convert to socialism. It is said that his conversion was due to Victor Berger of Milwaukee. Berger had succeeded in building up a strong socialist party in that city and in the State of Wisconsin upon the basis of a thorough understanding with the trade unions and was materially helped by the predominance of the German-speaking element in the population. In 1910 the Milwaukee socialists elected a municipal ticket, the first large city to vote the socialists into office. [79] In 1907 Haywood was tried and acquitted with two other officers of the Western Federation of Miners at Boisé, Idaho, on a murder charge which grew out of the same labor struggle. This was one of the several sensational trials in American labor history, on a par with the Molly Maguires' case in the seventies, the Chicago Anarchists' in 1887, and the McNamaras' case in 1912. [80] The same applies to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. [81] Except the miners, brewers, and garment workers. [82] See above, 185-186. [83] This refers particularly to the six shopmen's unions. CHAPTER 10 THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET The outbreak of the War in Europe in August 1914 found American labor passing through a period of depression. The preceding winter had seen much unemployment and considerable distress and in the summer industrial conditions became scarcely improved. In the large cities demonstrations by the unemployed were daily occurrences. A long and bloody labor struggle in the coal fields of Colorado, which was slowly drawing to an unsuccessful end in spite of sacrifices of the heaviest kind, seemed only to set into bold relief the generally inauspicious outlook. Yet the labor movement could doubtless find solace in the political situation. Owing to the support it had given the Democratic party in the Presidential campaign of 1912, the Federation could claim return favors. The demand which it was now urging upon its friends in office was the long standing one for the exemption of labor unions from the operation of the anti-trust legislation and for the reduction to a minimum of interference by Federal Courts in labor disputes through injunction proceedings. During 1914 the anti-trust bill introduced in the House by Clayton of Alabama was going through the regular stages preliminary to enactment and, although it finally failed to embody all the sweeping changes demanded by the Federation's lobbyists, it was pronounced at the time satisfactory to labor. The Clayton Act starts with the declaration that "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce" and specifies that labor organizations shall not be construed as illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under Federal anti-trust laws. It further proceeds to prescribe the procedure in connection with the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes as, for instance, limiting the time of effectiveness of temporary injunctions, making notice obligatory to persons about to be permanently enjoined, and somewhat limiting the power of the courts in contempt proceedings. The most vital section of the Act relating to labor disputes is Section 20, which says "that no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or from attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do; or from paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person employed in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from peacefully assembling in a lawful manner, or for lawful purposes, or from doing any act or things which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto; nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States." The government was also rendering aid to organized labor in another, though probably little intended, form, namely through the public hearings conducted by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. This Commission had been authorized by Congress in 1912 to investigate labor unrest after a bomb explosion in the _Los Angeles Times_ Building, which was set off at the order of some of the national officers of the structural iron workers' union, incidental to a strike. The hearings which were conducted by the able and versatile chairman, Frank P. Walsh, with a particular eye for publicity, centering as they did around the Colorado outrages, served to popularize the trade union cause from one end of the country to the other. The report of the Commission or rather the minority report, which was signed by the chairman and the three labor members, and was known as the "staff" report, named _trade unionism_ as the paramount remedy--not compulsory arbitration which was advocated by the employer members, nor labor legislation and a permanent governmental industrial commission proposed by the economist on the commission. The immediate practical effects of the commission were _nil_, but its agitational value proved of great importance to labor. For the first time in the history of the United States the employing class seemed to be arrayed as a defendant before the bar of public opinion. Also, it was for the first time that a commission representing the government not only unhesitatingly pronounced the trade union movement harmless to the country's best interests but went to the length of raising it to the dignity of a fundamental and indispensable institution. The Commission on Industrial Relations on the whole reflected the favorable attitude of the Administration which came to power in 1912. The American Federation of Labor was given full sway over the Department of Labor and a decisive influence in all other government departments on matters relating to labor. Without a political party of its own, by virtue only of its "bargaining power" over the old parties, the American Federation of Labor seemed to have attained a position not far behind that of British labor after more than a decade of independent political action. Furthermore, fortunately for itself, labor in America had come into a political patrimony at a time when the country was standing on the threshold of a new era, during which government was destined to become the arbiter of industry. The War in Europe did not immediately improve industrial conditions in America. The first to feel its effects were the industries directly engaged in the making of munitions. The International Association of Machinists, the organization of the now all-important munition workers, actually had its membership somewhat decreased during 1915, but in the following year made a 50 percent increase. The greater part of the new membership came from the "munitions towns," such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, where, in response to the insatiable demand from the Allied nations, new enormous plants were erected during 1915 and shipment of munitions in mass began early the next year. Bridgeport and surrounding towns became a center of a successful eight-hour movement, in which the women workers newly brought into the industry took the initiative. The Federation as a whole lost three percent of its membership in 1915 and gained seven percent during 1916. On its War policy the Federation took its cue completely from the national government. During the greater part of the period of American neutrality its attitude was that of a shocked lover of peace who is desirous to maintain the strictest neutrality if the belligerents will persist in refusing to lend an ear to reason. To prevent a repetition of a similar catastrophe, the Federation did the obvious thing, pronouncing for open and democratized diplomacy; and proposed to the several national trade union federations that an international labor congress meet at the close of the war to determine the conditions of peace. However, both the British and Germans declined. The convention in 1915 condemned the German-inspired propaganda for an embargo on shipments to all belligerents and the fomenting of strikes in munitions-making plants by German agents. The Federation refused to interpret neutrality to mean that the American wage earner was to be thrown back into the dumps of depression and unemployment, from which he was just delivered by the extensive war orders from the Allied governments. By the second half of 1916 the war prosperity was in full swing. Cost of living was rising rapidly and movements for higher wages became general. The practical stoppage of immigration enabled common labor to get a larger share than usual of the prosperity. Many employers granted increases voluntarily. Simultaneously, a movement for the eight-hour day was spreading from strictly munitions-making trades into others and was meeting with remarkable success. But 1916 witnessed what was doubtless the most spectacular move for the eight-hour day in American history--the joint eight-hour demand by the four railway brotherhoods, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen. The effectiveness acquired by trade unionism needs no better proof than the remarkable success with which these four organizations, with the full support of the whole labor movement at their back and aided by a not unfriendly attitude on the part of the national Administration, brought to bay the greatest single industry of the country and overcame the opposition of the entire business class. The four brotherhoods made a joint demand for an eight-hour day early in 1916.[84] The railway officials claimed that the demand for the reduction of the work-day from ten to eight hours with ten hours' pay and a time and a half rate for overtime was not made in good faith. Since, they said, the employes ought to have known that the railways could not be run on an eight-hour day, the demand was but a covert attempt to gain a substantial increase in their wages, which were already in advance of any of the other skilled workers. On the other hand, the brotherhoods stoutly maintained during their direct negotiations with the railway companies and in the public press that their demand was a _bona fide_ demand and that they believed that the railway business did admit of a reorganization substantially on an eight-hour basis. The railway officials offered to submit to arbitration the demand of the men together with counter demands of their own. The brotherhoods, however, fearing prejudice and recalling to mind past disappointments, declined the proposal and threatened to tie up the whole transportation system of the country by a strike on Labor Day. When the efforts at mediation by the United States Board of Mediation and Conciliation came to naught, President Wilson invited to Washington the executives of the several railway systems and a convention of the several hundred division chairmen of the brotherhoods and attempted personal mediation. He urged the railway executives to accept the eight-hour day and proposed that a commission appointed by himself should investigate the demand for time and a half overtime. This the employes accepted, but the executives objected to giving the eight-hour day before an investigation was made. Meantime the brotherhoods had issued their strike order effective on Labor Day and the crisis became imminent. To obviate the calamity of a general strike, at a time when the country was threatened with troubles on the Mexican frontier and with the unsettled submarine controversy with Germany ready to flare up any moment, the President went before Congress and asked for a speedy enactment of an eight-hour law for train operatives without a reduction in wages but with no punitive overtime. He coupled it with a request for an authorisation of a special commission to report on the operation of such a law for a period of six months, after which the subject might be reopened. Lastly, he urged an amendment to the Newlands Act making it illegal to call a strike or a lockout pending an investigation of a controversy by a government commission. Spurred on by the danger of the impending strike, Congress quickly acceded to the first two requests by the President and passed the so-called Adamson law.[85] The strike was averted, but in the immediately following Presidential campaign labor's "hold-up" of the national government became one of the trump issues of the Republican candidate. This episode of the summer of 1916 had two sequels, one in the courts and the other one in a negotiated agreement between the railways and the brotherhoods. The former brought many suits in courts against the government and obtained from a lower court a decision that the Adamson law was unconstitutional. The case was then taken to the United States Supreme Court, but the decision was not ready until the spring of 1917. Meantime the danger of a strike had been renewed. However, on the same day when the Supreme Court gave out its decision, the railways and brotherhoods had signed, at the urging of the National Council of Defense, an agreement accepting the conditions of the Adamson law regardless of the outcome in court. When the decision became known it was found to be in favor of the Adamson law. The declaration of war against Germany came a few days later and opened a new era in the American labor situation. Previous to that, on March 12, 1917, when war seemed inevitable, the national officers of all important unions in the Federation met in Washington and issued a statement on "American Labor's Position in Peace or in War." They pledged the labor movement and the influence of the labor organizations unreservedly in support of the government in case of war. Whereas, they said, in all previous wars "under the guise of national necessity, labor was stripped of its means of defense against enemies at home and was robbed of the advantages, the protections, and guarantees of justice that had been achieved after ages of struggle"; and "labor had no representatives in the councils authorized to deal with the conduct of the war"; and therefore "the rights, interests and welfare of workers were autocratically sacrificed for the slogan of national safety"; in this war "the government must recognize the organized labor movement as the agency through which it must cooperate with wage earners." Such recognition will imply first "representation on all agencies determining and administering policies of national defense" and "on all boards authorized to control publicity during war time." Second, that "service in government factories and private establishments, in transportation agencies, all should conform to trade union standards"; and that "whatever changes in the organization of industry are necessary upon a war basis, they should be made in accord with plans agreed upon by representatives of the government and those engaged and employed in the industry." Third, that the government's demand of sacrifice of their "labor power, their bodies or their lives" be accompanied by "increased guarantees and safe-guards," the imposing of a similar burden on property and the limitation of profits. Fourth, that "organization for industrial and commercial service" be "upon a different basis from military service" and "that military service should be carefully distinguished from service in industrial disputes," since "the same voluntary institutions that organized industrial, commercial and transportation workers in times of peace will best take care of the same problems in time of war." For, "wrapped up with the safety of this Republic are ideals of democracy, a heritage which the masses of the people received from our forefathers, who fought that liberty might live in this country--a heritage that is to be maintained and handed down to each generation with undiminished power and usefulness." We quote at such length because this document gives the quintessence of the wise labor statesmanship which this crisis brought so clearly to light. Turning away from the pacifism of the Socialist party, Samuel Gompers and his associates believed that victory over world militarism as well as over the forces of reaction at home depended on labor's unequivocal support of the government. And in reality, by placing the labor movement in the service of the war-making power of the nation they assured for it, for the time being at least, a degree of national prestige and a freedom to expand which could not have been conquered by many years of the most persistent agitation and strikes. The War, thus, far from being a trial for organized labor, proved instead a great opportunity. For the War released organized labor from a blind alley, as it were. The American Federation of Labor, as we saw, had made but slow progress in organization after 1905. At that time it had succeeded in organizing the skilled and some of the semi-skilled workers. Further progress was impeded by the anti-union employers especially in industries commonly understood to be dominated by "trusts." In none of the "trustified" industries, save anthracite coal, was labor organization able to make any headway. And yet the American Federation of Labor, situated as it is, is obliged to stake everything upon the power to organize.[86] The war gave it that all-important power. Soon after the Federal government became the arbiter of industry--by virtue of being the greatest consumer, and by virtue of a public opinion clearly outspoken on the subject--we see the Taft-Walsh War Labor Board[87] embody "the right to organize" into a code of rules for the guidance of the relations of labor and capital during War-time, along with the basic eight-hour day and the right to a living wage. In return for these gifts American labor gave up nothing so vital as British labor had done in the identical situation. The right to strike was left unmolested and remained a permanent threat hanging over slow moving officialdom and recalcitrant employers. And the only restraint accepted by labor was a promise of self-restraint. The Federation was not to strike until all other means for settlement had been tried, nor was it to press for the closed shop where such had not existed prior to the War declaration. But at the same time no employer was to interpose a check to its expansion into industries and districts heretofore unorganized. Nor could an employer discipline an employe for joining a union or inducing others to join. In 1916, when the President established the National Council of Defense, he appointed Samuel Gompers one of the seven members composing the Advisory Commission in charge of all policies dealing with labor and chairman of a committee on labor of his own appointment. Among the first acts of the Council of Defense was an emphatic declaration for the preservation of the standards of legal protection of labor against the ill-advised efforts for their suspension during War-time. The Federation was given representation on the Emergency Construction Board, the Fuel Administration Board, on the Woman's Board, on the Food Administration Board, and finally on the War Industries Board. The last named board was during the war the recognized arbiter of the country's industries, all labor matters being handled by its labor representative. The Department of Labor, which in the War emergency could rightly be considered the Federation's arm in the Administration, was placed in supreme charge of general labor administration. Also, in connection with the administration of the military conscription law, organized labor was given representation on each District Exemption Board. But perhaps the strongest expression of the official recognition of the labor movement was offered by President Wilson when he took time from the pressing business in Washington to journey to Buffalo in November 1917, to deliver an address before the convention of the American Federation of Labor. In addition to representation on boards and commissions dealing with general policies, the government entered with the Federation into a number of agreements relative to the conditions of direct and indirect employment by the government. In each agreement the prevalent trade union standards were fully accepted and provision was made for a three-cornered board of adjustment to consist of a representative of the particular government department, the public and labor. Such agreements were concluded by the War and Navy departments and by the United States Emergency Fleet Corporation. The Shipping Board sponsored a similar agreement between the shipping companies and the seafaring unions; and the War Department between the leather goods manufacturers and leather workers' union. When the government took over the railways on January 1, 1918, it created three boards of adjustment on the identical principle of a full recognition of labor organizations. The spirit with which the government faced the labor problem was shown also in connection with the enforcement of the eight-hour law. The law of 1912 provided for an eight-hour day on contract government work but allowed exceptions in emergencies. In 1917 Congress gave the President the right to waive the application of the law, but provided that in such event compensation be computed on a "basic" eight-hour day. The War and Navy departments enforced these provisions not only to the letter but generally gave to them a most liberal interpretation. The taking over of the railways by the government revolutionized the railway labor situation. Under private management, as was seen, the four brotherhoods alone, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen enjoyed universal recognition, the basic eight-hour day (since 1916), and high wages. The other organizations of the railway workers, the shopmen, the yardmen, the maintenance of way men, the clerks, and the telegraphers were, at best, tolerated rather than recognized. Under the government administration the eight-hour day was extended to all grades of workers, and wages were brought up to a minimum of 68 cents per hour, with a considerable though not corresponding increase in the wages of the higher grades of labor. All discrimination against union men was done away with, so that within a year labor organization on the railways was nearing the hundred percent mark. The policies of the national railway administration of the open door to trade unionism and of recognition of union standards were successfully pressed upon other employments by the National War Labor Board. On March 29, 1918, a National War Labor Conference Board, composed of five representatives of the Federation of Labor, five representatives of employers' associations and two joint chairmen, William H. Taft for the employers and Frank P. Walsh for the employes, reported to the Secretary of Labor on "Principles and Policies to govern Relations between Workers and Employers in War Industries for the Duration of the War." These "principles and policies," which were to be enforced by a permanent War Labor Board organized upon the identical principle as the reporting board, included a voluntary relinquishment of the right to strike and lockout by employes and employers, respectively, upon the following conditions: First, there was a recognition of the equal right of employes and employers to organize into associations and trade unions and to bargain collectively. This carried an undertaking by the employers not to discharge workers for membership in trade unions or for legitimate trade union activities, and was balanced by an undertaking of the workers, "in the exercise of their right to organize," not to "use coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join their organizations, nor to induce employers to bargain or deal therewith." Second, both sides agreed upon the observance of the _status quo ante bellum_ as to union or open shop in a given establishment and as to union standards of wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. This carried the express stipulation that the right to organize was not to be curtailed under any condition and that the War Labor Board could grant improvement in labor conditions as the situation warranted. Third, the understanding was that if women should be brought into industry, they must be allowed equal pay for equal work. Fourth, it was agreed that "the basic eight-hour day was to be recognized as applying in all cases in which the existing law required it, while in all other cases the question of hours of labor was to be settled with due regard to government necessities and the welfare, health, and proper comfort of the workers." Fifth, restriction of output by trade unions was to be done away with. Sixth, in fixing wages and other conditions regard was to be shown to trade union standards. And lastly came the recognition of "the right of all workers, including common laborers, to a living wage" and the stipulation that in fixing wages, there will be established "minimum rates of pay which will insure the subsistence of the worker and his family in health and reasonable comfort." The establishment of the War Labor Board did not mean that the country had gone over to the principle of compulsory arbitration, for the Board could not force any party to a dispute to submit to its arbitration or by an umpire of its appointment. However, so outspoken was public opinion on the necessity of avoiding interruptions in the War industries and so far-reaching were the powers of the government over the employer as the administrator of material and labor priorities and over the employes as the administrator of the conscription law that the indirect powers of the Board sufficed to make its decision prevail in nearly every instance. The packing industry was a conspicuous case of the "new course" in industrial relations. This industry had successfully kept unionism out since an ill-considered strike in 1904, which ended disastrously for the strikers. Late in 1917, 60,000 employes in the packing houses went on strike for union recognition, the basic eight-hour day, and other demands. Intervention by the government led to a settlement, which, although denying the union formal recognition, granted the basic eight-hour day, a living wage, and the right to organize, together with all that it implied, and the appointment of a permanent arbitrator to adjudicate disputes. Thus an industry which had prohibited labor organization for fourteen years was made to open its door to trade unionism.[88] Another telling gain for the basic eight-hour day was made by the timber workers in the Northwest, again at the insistence of the government. What the aid of the government in securing the right to organize meant to the strength of trade unionism may be derived from the following figures. In the two years from 1917 to 1919 the organization of the meat cutters and butcher workmen increased its membership from less than 10,000 to over 66,000; the boilermakers and iron shipbuilders from 31,000 to 85,000; the blacksmiths from 12,000 to 28,000; the railway clerks from less than 7000 to over 71,000; the machinists from 112,000 to 255,000; the maintenance of way employes from less than 10,000 to 54,000; the railway carmen from 39,000 to 100,000; the railway telegraphers from 27,000 to 45,000; and the electrical workers from 42,000 to 131,000. The trades here enumerated--mostly related to shipbuilding and railways--accounted for the greater part of the total gain in the membership of the Federation from two and a half million members in 1917 to over three and a third in 1919. An important aspect of the cooperation of the government with the Federation was the latter's eager self-identification with the government's foreign policy, which went to the length of choosing to play a lone hand in the Allied labor world. Labor in America had an implicit faith in the national government, which was shared by neither English nor French labor. Whereas the workers in the other Allied Nations believed that their governments needed to be prodded or forced into accepting the right road to a democratic peace by an international labor congress, which would take the entire matter of war and peace out of the diplomatic chancellories into an open conference of the representatives of the workers, the American workers were only too eager to follow the leadership of the head of the American nation. To this doubtless was added the usual fervor of a new convert to any cause (in this instance the cause of the War against Germany) and a strong distrust of German socialism, which American labor leaders have developed during their drawn-out struggle against the German-trained socialists inside the Federation who have persistently tried to "capture" the organization. When on January 8, 1918, President Wilson enunciated his famous Fourteen Points, the Federation of course gave them an enthusiastic endorsement. In the autumn of 1918 Gompers went to Europe and participated in an Inter-Allied labor conference. He refused, however, to participate in the first International Labor and Socialist Congress called since the War, which met at Berne, Switzerland, in March 1919, since he would not sit with the Germans while their country was not formally at peace with the United States. The convention of the Federation in June 1919 gave complete endorsement to the League of Nations Pact worked out at Versailles,--on general grounds and on the ground of its specific provisions for an international regulation of labor conditions designed to equalize labor standards and costs. Contrasting with this was the position of British labor, which regarded the Pact with a critical eye, frankly confessing disillusionment, but was willing to accept it for the sake of its future possibilities, when the Pact might be remodelled by more liberal and more democratic hands. The contrast in outlook between the mild evolutionism of the American Federation of Labor and the social radicalism of British labor stood out nowhere so strongly as in their respective programs for Reconstruction after the War. The chief claim of the British Labor party for recognition at the hands of the voter at the General Election in December 1918, was its well-thought-out reconstruction program put forth under the telling title of "Labour and the New Social Order." This program was above all a legislative program. It called for a thoroughgoing governmental control of industry by means of a control of private finance, natural resources, transportation, and international trade. To the workingmen such control would mean the right to steady employment, the right to a living wage, and the appropriation of economic surpluses by the state for the common good--be they in the form of rent, excessive profits, or overlarge personal incomes. Beyond this minimum program loomed the cooperative commonwealth with the private capitalist totally eliminated. Such was the program of British labor. What of the Reconstruction program of American labor? First of all, American labor thought of Reconstruction as a program to be carried out by the trade union, not by the government. Moreover, it did not see in Reconstruction the great break with the past which that meant to British labor. The American Federation of Labor applied to Reconstruction the same philosophy which lies at the basis of its ordinary, everyday activity. It concerned itself not with any far-reaching plan for social reorganization, but with a rising standard of living and an enlarged freedom for the union. The American equivalent of a government-guaranteed right to employment and a living wage was the "right to organize." Assure to labor that right, free the trade unions of court interference in strikes and boycotts, prevent excessive meddling by the government in industrial relations--and the stimulated activities of the "legitimate" organizations of labor, which will result therefrom, will achieve a far better Reconstruction than a thousand paper programs however beautiful. So reasoned the leaders of the American Federation of Labor. During the period of War, they of course gladly accepted directly from the government the basic eight-hour day and the high wages, which under other circumstances they could have got only by prolonged and bitter striking. But even more acceptable than these directly bestowed boons was the indirect one of the right to organize free from anti-union discriminations by employers. Having been arrested in its expansion, as we saw, by anti-union employers and especially "trusts," the American Federation of Labor took advantage of the War situation to overflow new territory. Once entrenched and the organization well in hand, it thought it could look to the future with confidence. FOOTNOTES: [84] For the developments which led up to this joint move see above, 182-184. [85] Congress ignored the last-named recommendation which would have introduced in the United States the Canadian system of "Compulsory Investigation." [86] See below, 283-287. [87] See below, 238-240. [88] The unions again lost their hold upon the packing industry in the autumn of 1921. CHAPTER 11 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS The Armistice with Germany came suddenly and unexpectedly. To the organized workers the news was as welcome as to other citizens. But, had they looked at the matter from a special trade union standpoint, they would probably have found a longer duration of the War not entirely amiss. For coal had been unionized already before the War, the railways first during the War, but the third basic industry, steel, was not touched either before or during the War. However, it was precisely in the steel industry that opposition to unionism has found its chief seat, not only to unionism in that industry alone but to unionism in related or subsidiary industries as well. The first three months after the Armistice the general expectation was for a set-back in business conditions due to the withdrawal of the enormous government War-time demand. Employers and trade unions stood equally undecided. When, however, instead of the expected slump, there came a prosperity unknown even during the War, the trade unions resumed their offensive, now unrestrained by any other but the strictly economic consideration. As a matter of fact, the trade unions were not at all free agents, since their demands, frequent and considerable though they were, barely sufficed to keep wages abreast of the soaring cost of living. Through 1919 and the first half of 1920 profits and wages were going up by leaps and bounds; and the forty-four hour week,--no longer the mere eight-hour day,--became a general slogan and a partial reality. Success was especially notable in clothing, building, printing, and the metal trades. One cannot say the same, however, of the three basic industries, steel, coal, and railways. In steel the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week continued as before for approximately one-half of the workers and the unions were preparing for a battle with the "Steel Trust." While on the railways and in coal mining the unions now began to encounter opposition from an unexpected quarter, namely, the government. When in the summer of 1919 the railway shopmen demanded an increase in their wages, which had not been raised since the summer of 1918, President Wilson practically refused the demand, urging the need of a general deflation but binding himself to use all the powers of the government immediately to reduce the cost of living. A significant incident in this situation was a spontaneous strike of shopmen on many roads unauthorized by international union officials, which disarranged the movement of trains for a short time but ended with the men returning to work under the combined pressure of their leaders' threats and the President's plea. In September 1919, the United States Railroad Administration and the shopmen's unions entered into national agreements, which embodied the practices under the Administration as well as those in vogue on the more liberal roads before 1918, including recognition and a large number of "working rules." These "national agreements" became an important issue one year later, when their abolition began to be pressed by the railway executives before the Railroad Labor Board, which was established under the Transportation Act of 1920. In the summer of 1919 employers in certain industries, like clothing, grew aware of a need of a more "psychological" handling of their labor force than heretofore in order to reduce a costly high labor turnover and no less costly stoppages of work. This created a veritable Eldorado for "employment managers" and "labor managers," real and spurious. Universities and colleges, heretofore wholly uninterested in the problem of labor or viewing training in that problem as but a part of a general cultural education, now vied with one another in establishing "labor management" and "labor personnel" courses. One phase of the "labor personnel" work was a rather wide experimentation with "industrial democracy" plans. These plans varied in form and content, from simple provision for shop committees for collective dealing, many of which had already been installed during the War under the orders of the War Labor Board, to most elaborate schemes, some modelled upon the Constitution of the United States. The feature which they all had in common was that they attempted to achieve some sort of collective bargaining outside the channels of the established trade unions. The trade unionists termed the new fashioned expressions of industrial democracy "company unions." This term one may accept as technically correct without necessarily accepting the sinister connotation imputed to it by labor. The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union firmly established itself by formal agreement on the men's clothing "markets" of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New York. The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union rose to 175,000. Employers in general were complaining of increased labor unrest, a falling off of efficiency in the shop, and looked askance at the rapid march of unionization. The trade unions, on their part, were aware of their opportunity and eager for a final recognition as an institution in industry. As yet uncertainty prevailed as to whether enough had survived of the War-time spirit of give and take to make a struggle avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter conflict of classes. A partial showdown came in the autumn of 1919. Three great events, which came closely together, helped to clear the situation: The steel strike, the President's Industrial Conference, and the strike of the soft coal miners. The great steel strike, prepared and directed by a Committee representing twenty-four national and international unions with William Z. Foster as Secretary and moving spirit, tried in September 1919 to wrest from the owners of the steel mills what the railway shopmen had achieved in 1918 by invitation of the government, namely, "recognition" and the eight-hour day. Three hundred thousand men went out on strike at the call of the committee. The industry came to a practical standstill. But in this case the twenty-four allied unions were not dealing with a government amenable to political pressure, nor with a loosely joined association of employers competing among themselves. Furthermore, the time had passed when the government had either the will or the power to interfere and order both sides to arbitrate their dispute. On the contrary, the unions were now dealing unaided with the strongest capitalist aggregation in the world. At the request of President Wilson, Gompers had urged the strike committee to postpone the strike until after the meeting of the national industrial conference called by the President in October, but the committee claimed that it could not have kept the men back after a summer of agitation and feverish organization had they even tried. The President's conference, modelled upon a similar conference which met earlier in Great Britain, was composed of three groups of representatives equal in number, one for capital, one for labor, and one for the general public. Decisions, to be held effective, had to be adopted by a majority in each group. The labor representation, dominated of course by Gompers, was eager to make the discussion turn on the steel strike. It proposed a resolution to this effect which had the support of the public group, but fearing a certain rejection by the employer group the matter was postponed. The issue upon which the alignment was effected was industrial control and collective bargaining. All three groups, the employer and public groups and of course the labor group, advocated collective bargaining,--but with a difference. The labor group insisted that collective bargaining is doomed to be a farce unless the employes are allowed to choose as their spokesmen representatives of the national trade union. In the absence of a powerful protector in the national union, they argued, the workers in a shop can never feel themselves on a bargaining equality with their employer, nor can they be represented by a spokesman of the necessary ability if their choice be restricted to those working in the same plant. The employers, now no longer dominated by the War-time spirit which caused them in 1917 to tolerate an expansion of unionism, insisted that no employer must be obliged to meet for the purpose of collective bargaining with other than his own employes.[89] After two weeks of uncertainty, when it had become clear that a resolution supported by both labor and public groups, which restated the labor position in a milder form, would be certain to be voted down by the employer group, the labor group withdrew from the conference, and the conference broke up. The period of the cooperation of classes had definitely closed. Meantime the steel strike continued. Federal troops patrolled the steel districts and there was no violence. Nevertheless, a large part of the country's press pictured the strike by the steel workers for union recognition and a normal workday as an American counterpart of the Bolshevist revolution in Russia. Public opinion, unbalanced and excited as it was over the whirlpool of world events, was in no position to resist. The strike failed. Nothing made so clear to the trade unionists the changed situation since the War ended as the strike of the bituminous coal miners which began November 1. The miners had entered, in October 1917, into a wage agreement with the operators for the duration of the War. The purchasing power of their wages having become greatly reduced by the ever rising cost of living, discontent was general in the union. A further complication arose from the uncertain position of the United States with reference to War and Peace, which had a bearing on the situation. The miners claimed that the Armistice had ended the War. The War having ended, the disadvantageous agreement expired with it. So argued the miners and demanded a sixty percent increase in tonnage rates, a corresponding one for yardmen and others paid by the day or hour, and a thirty-hour week to spread employment through the year. The operators maintained that the agreement was still in force, but intimated a readiness to make concessions if they were permitted to shift the cost to the consumer. At this point, the Fuel Administration, a War-time government body, already partly in the process of dissolution, intervened and attempted to dictate a settlement at a fourteen percent increase, which was entirely unacceptable to the union. The strike continued and the prospect of a dire coal famine grew nearer. To break the deadlock, on motion of Attorney-General Palmer, Judge Anderson of Indianapolis, under the War-time Lever Act, issued an injunction forbidding the union officials to continue conducting the strike. The strike continued, the strikers refusing to return to work, and a Bituminous Coal Commission appointed by the President finally settled it by an award of an increase of twenty-seven percent. But that the same Administration which had given the unions so many advantages during the War should now have invoked against them a War-time law, which had already been considered practically abrogated, was a clear indication of the change in the times. In a strike by anthracite coal miners in the following year an award was made by a Presidential board of three, representing the employers, the union, and the public. The strikers, however, refused to abide by it and inaugurated a "vacation-strike," the individual strikers staying away on a so-called vacation, nominally against the will of the union officers. They finally returned to work. Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for considerable anti-union propaganda in the press. Public sentiment long favorable to labor became definitely hostile.[90] In Kansas the legislature passed a compulsory arbitration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to adjudicate trade disputes. Simultaneously an "anti-Red" campaign inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer contributed its share to the public excitement and helped to prejudice the cause of labor more by implication than by making direct charges. It was in an atmosphere thus surcharged with suspicion and fear that a group of employers, led by the National Association of Manufacturers and several local employers' organizations, launched an open-shop movement with the slogan of an "American plan" for shops and industries. Many employers, normally opposed to unionism, who in War-time had permitted unionism to acquire scope, were now trying to reconquer their lost positions. The example of the steel industry and the fiasco of the President's Industrial Conference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment into action. Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained unsettled and fraught with danger. The problem was bound up with the general problem as to what to do with the railways. Many plans were presented to Congress, from an immediate return to private owners to permanent government ownership and management. The railway labor organizations, that is, the four brotherhoods of the train service personnel and the twelve unions united in the Railway Employes' Department of the American Federation of Labor, came before Congress with the so-called Plumb Plan, worked out by Glenn E. Plumb, the legal representative of the brotherhoods. This plan proposed that the government take over the railways for good, paying a compensation to the owners, and then entrust their operation to a board composed of government officials, union representatives, and representatives of the technical staffs.[91] So much for ultimate plans. On the more immediate wage problem proper, the government had clearly fallen down on its promise made to the shopmen in August 1919, when their demands for higher wages were refused and a promise was made that the cost of living would be reduced. Early in 1920 President Wilson notified Congress that he would return the roads to the owners on March 1, 1920. A few days before that date the Esch-Cummins bill was passed under the name of the Transportation Act of 1920. Strong efforts were made to incorporate in the bill a prohibition against strikes and lockouts. In that form it had indeed passed the Senate. In the House bill, however, the compulsory arbitration feature was absent and the final law contained a provision for a Railroad Labor Board, of railway, union, and public representatives, to be appointed by the President, with the power of conducting investigations and issuing awards, but with the right to strike or lockout unimpaired either before, during, or after the investigation. It was the first appointed board of this description which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the railway employes for higher wages.[92] No sooner had the roads been returned under the new law, and before the board was even appointed, than a strike broke out among the switchmen and yardmen, whose patience had apparently been exhausted. The strike was an "outlaw" strike, undertaken against the wishes of national leaders and organized and led by "rebel" leaders risen up for the occasion. For a time it threatened not only to paralyze the country's railway system but to wreck the railway men's organizations as well. It was finally brought to an end through the efforts of the national leaders, and a telling effect on the situation was produced by an announcement by the newly constituted Railroad Labor Board that no "outlaw" organization would have standing before it. The Board issued an award on July 20, retroactive to May 1, increasing the total annual wage bill of the railways by $600,000,000. The award failed to satisfy the union, but they acquiesced. When the increase in wages was granted to the railway employes, industry in general and the railways in particular were already entering a period of slump. With the depression the open-shop movement took on a greater vigor. With unemployment rapidly increasing employers saw their chance to regain freedom from union control. A few months later the tide also turned in the movement of wages. Inside of a year the steel industry reduced wages thirty percent, in three like installments; and the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week, which had figured among the chief causes of the strike of 1919 and for which the United States Steel Corporation was severely condemned by a report of a Committee of the Interchurch World Movement,[93] has largely continued as before. In the New York "market" of the men's clothing industry, where the union faces the most complex and least stable condition mainly owing to the heterogeneous character of the employing group, the latter grasped the opportunity to break with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union. By the end of the spring of 1921 the clothing workers won their struggle, showing that a union built along new lines was at least as efficient a fighting machine as any of the older unions. It was this union also and several local branches of the related union in the ladies' garment industry, which realized the need of assuring to the employer at least a minimum of labor efficiency if the newly established level of wages was not to be materially lowered. Hence the acceptance of the principle of "standards of production" fixed with the aid of scientific managers employed jointly by the employers and the union. The spring and summer of 1921 were a time of widespread "readjustment" strikes, or strikes against cuts in wages, especially in the building trades. The building industry went through in 1921 and 1922 one of its periodic upheavals against the tyranny of the "walking delegates" and against the state of moral corruption for which some of the latter shared responsibility together with an unscrupulous element among the employers. In San Francisco, where the grip of the unions upon the industry was strongest, the employers turned on them and installed the "open-shop" after the building trades' council had refused to accept an award by an arbitration committee set up by mutual agreement. The union claimed, however, in self-justification that the Committee, by awarding a _reduction_ in the wages of fifteen crafts while the issue as originally submitted turned on a demand by these crafts for a _raise_ in wages, had gone outside its legitimate scope. In New York City an investigation by a special legislative committee uncovered a state of reeking corruption among the leadership in the building trades' council and among an element in the employing group in connection with a successful attempt to establish a virtual local monopoly in building. Some of the leading corruptionists on both sides were given court sentences and the building trades' council accepted modifications in the "working rules" formulated by the counsel for the investigating committee. In Chicago a situation developed in many respects similar to the one in San Francisco. In a wage dispute, which was submitted by both sides to Federal Judge K.M. Landis for arbitration, the award authorized not only a wage reduction but a revision of the "working rules" as well. Most of the unionists refused to abide by the award and the situation developed into literal warfare. In Chicago the employers' side was aggressively upheld by a "citizens' committee" formed to enforce the Landis award. The committee claimed to have imported over 10,000 out-of-town building mechanics to take the places of the strikers. In the autumn of 1921 the employers in the packing industry discontinued the arrangement whereby industrial relations were administered by an "administrator,"[94] Judge Alschuler of Chicago, whose rulings had materially restricted the employers' control in the shop. Some of the employers put into effect company union plans. This led to a strike, but in the end the unions lost their foothold in the industry, which the War had enabled them to acquire. By that time, however, the open-shop movement seemed already passing its peak, without having caused an irreparable breach in the position of organized labor. Evidently, the long years of preparation before the War and the great opportunity during the War itself, if they have failed to give trade unionism the position of a recognized national institution, have at least made it immune from destruction by employers, however general or skillfully managed the attack. In 1920 the total organized union membership, including the 871,000 in unions unaffiliated with the American Federation of Labor, was slightly short of 5,000,000, or over four million in the Federation itself. In 1921 the membership of the Federation declined slightly to 3,906,000, and the total organized membership probably in proportion. In 1922 the membership of the Federation declined to about 3,200,000, showing a loss of about 850,000 since the high mark of 1920. The legal position of trade unions has continued as uncertain and unsatisfactory to the unions, as if no Clayton Act had been passed. The closed shop has been condemned as coercion of non-unionists. Yet in the Coppage case[95] the United States Supreme Court found that it is not coercion when an employer threatens discharge unless union membership is renounced. Similarly, it is unlawful for union agents to attempt organization, even by peaceful persuasion, when employes have signed contracts not to join the union as a condition of employment.[96] A decision which arouses strong doubt whether the Clayton Act made any change in the status of trade unions was given by the Supreme Court in the recent Duplex Printing case.[97] In this decision the union rested its defense squarely on the immunities granted by the Clayton Act. Despite this, the injunction was confirmed and the boycott again declared illegal, the court holding that the words "employer and employes" in the Act restrict its benefits only to "parties standing in proximate relation to a controversy," that is to the employes who are immediately involved in the dispute and not to the national union which undertakes to bring their employer to terms by causing their other members to boycott his goods. The prevailing judicial interpretation of unlawful union methods is briefly as follows: Strikes are illegal when they involve defamation, fraud, actual physical violence, threats of physical violence, or inducement of breach of contract. Boycotts are illegal when they bring third parties into the dispute by threats of strikes, or loss of business, publication of "unfair lists,"[98] or by interference with Interstate commerce. Picketing is illegal when accompanied by violence, threats, intimidation, and coercion. In December 1921 the Supreme Court declared mere numbers in groups constituted intimidation and, while admitting that circumstances may alter cases, limited peaceful picketing to one picket at each point of ingress or egress of the plant.[99] In another case the Court held unconstitutional an Arizona statute, which reproduced _verbatim_ the labor clauses of the Clayton Act;[100] this on the ground that concerted action by the union would be illegal if the means used were illegal and therefore the law which operated to make them legal deprived the plaintiff of his property without due process of law. In June 1922, in the Coronado case, the Court held that unions, although unincorporated, are in every respect like corporations and are liable for damages in their corporate capacity, including triple damages under the Sherman Anti-Trust law, and which may be collected from their funds. We have already pointed out that since the War ended the American labor movement has in the popular mind become linked with radicalism. The steel strike and the coal miners' strike in 1919, the revolt against the national leaders and "outlaw" strikes in the printing industry and on the railways in 1920, the advocacy by the organizations of the railway men of the Plumb Plan for nationalization of railways and its repeated endorsement by the conventions of the American Federation of Labor, the resolutions in favor of the nationalization of coal mines passed at the conventions of the United Mine Workers, the "vacation" strike by the anthracite coal miners in defiance of a government wage award, the sympathy expressed for Soviet Russia in a number of unions, notably of the clothing industry, have led many to see, despite the assertions of the leaders of the American Federation of Labor to the contrary, an apparent drift in the labor movement towards radicalism, or even the probability of a radical majority in the Federation in the not distant future. The most startling shift has been, of course, in the railway men's organizations, which have changed from a pronounced conservatism to an advocacy of a socialistic plan of railway nationalization under the Plumb Plan. The Plumb Plan raises the issue of socialism in its American form. In bare outline the Plan proposes government acquisition of the railroads at a value which excludes rights and privileges not specifically granted to the roads in their charters from the States. The government would then lease the roads to a private operating corporation governed by a tri-partite board of directors equally representing the consuming public, the managerial employes, and the classified employes. An automatic economy-sharing scheme was designed to assure efficient service at low rates calculated to yield a fixed return on a value shorn of capitalized privileges. The purpose of the Plumb Plan is to equalize the opportunities of labor and capital in using economic power to obtain just rewards for services rendered to the public. In this respect it resembles many of the land reform and other "panaceas" which are scattered through labor history. Wherein it differs is in making the trade unions the vital and organized representatives of producers' interests entitled to participate in the direct management of industry. An ideal of copartnership and self-employment was thus set up, going beyond the boundaries of self-help to which organized labor had limited itself in the eighties. But it is easy to overestimate the drift in the direction of radicalism. The Plumb Plan has not yet been made the _sine qua non_ of the American labor program. Although the American Federation of Labor endorsed the principle of government ownership of the railways at its conventions of 1920 and 1921, President Gompers, who spoke against the Plan, was reelected and again reelected. And in obeying instructions to cooperate with brotherhood leaders, he found that they also thought it inopportune to press Plumb Plan legislation actively. So far as the railway men themselves are concerned, after the Railroad Labor Board set up under the Esch-Cummins act had begun to pass decisions actually affecting wages and working rules, the pressure for the Plumb Plan subsided. Instead, the activities of the organizations, though scarcely lessened in intensity, have become centered upon the issues of conditions of employment. The drift towards independent labor politics, which many anticipate, also remains quite inconclusive. A Farmer-Labor party, launched in 1920 by influential labor leaders of Chicago (to be sure, against the wishes of the national leaders), polled not more than 350,000 votes. And in the same election, despite a wide dissatisfaction in labor circles with the change in the government's attitude after the passage of the War emergency and with a most sweeping use of the injunction in the coal strike, the vote for the socialist candidate for President fell below a million, that is behind the vote of 1912, notwithstanding a doubling of the electorate with women's suffrage. Finally, the same convention of the American Federation of Labor, which showed so much sympathy for the ideas of the Plumb Plan League, approved a rupture with the International Trade Union Federation, with headquarters in Amsterdam, Holland, mainly on account of the revolutionary character of the addresses issued by the latter. FOOTNOTES: [89] The most plausible argument in favor of the position taken by the employing group is that no employer should be forced to decide matters as intimately connected with the welfare of his business as the ones relating to his labor costs and shop discipline with national union leaders, since the latter, at best, are interested in the welfare of the trade as a whole but rarely in the particular success of _his own_ particular establishment. [90] The turn in public sentiment really dated from the threat of a strike for the eight-hour day by the four railway brotherhoods in 1916, which forced the passage of the Adamson law by Congress. The law was a victory for the brotherhoods, but also extremely useful to the enemies of organized labor in arousing public hostility to unionism. [91] See below, 259-261, for a more detailed description of the Plan. [92] The Transportation Act included a provision that prior to September 1, 1920, the railways could not reduce wages. [93] A Protestant interdenominational organization of influence, which investigated the strike and issued a report. [94] The union had not been formally "recognized" at any time. [95] Coppage _v._ Kansas, 236 U.S. (1915). [96] Hitchman Coal and Coke Co. _v._ Mitchell et al, 245 U.S. 229 (1917). [97] Duplex Printing Press Co. _v._ Deering, 41 Sup. Ct. 172 (1921). [98] Montana allows the "unfair list" and California allows all boycotts. [99] American Steel Foundries of Granite City, Illinois, _v._ Tri-City Central Trades' Council, 42 Sup. Ct. 72 (1921). [100] Truax et al. _v._ Corrigan, 42 Sup. Ct. 124 (1921). PART III CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES CHAPTER 12 AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION To interpret the labor movement means to offer a theory of the struggle between labor and capital in our present society. According to Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism, the efficient cause in all the class struggles of history has been technical progress. Progress in the mode of making a living or the growth of "productive forces," says Marx, causes the coming up of new classes and stimulates in each and all classes a desire to use their power for a maximum class advantage. Referring to the struggle between the class of wage earners and the class of employers, Marx brings out that modern machine technique has concentrated the social means of production under the ownership of the capitalist, who thus became absolute master. The laborer indeed remains a free man to dispose of his labor as he wishes, but, having lost possession of the means of production, which he had as a master-workman during the preceding handicraft stage of industry, his freedom is only an illusion and his bargaining power is no greater than if he were a slave. But capitalism, Marx goes on to say, while it debases the worker, at the same time produces the conditions of his ultimate elevation. Capitalism with its starvation wages and misery makes the workers conscious of their common interests as an exploited class, concentrates them in a limited number of industrial districts, and forces them to organize for a struggle against the exploiters. The struggle is for the complete displacement of the capitalists both in government and industry by the revolutionary labor class. Moreover, capitalism itself renders effective although unintended aid to its enemies by developing the following three tendencies: First, we have the tendency towards the concentration of capital and wealth in the hands of a few of the largest capitalists, which reduces the number of the natural supporters of capitalism. Second, we observe a tendency towards a steady depression of wages and a growing misery of the wage-earning class, which keeps revolutionary ardor alive. And lastly, the inevitable and frequent economic crises under capitalism disorganize it and hasten it on towards destruction. The last and gravest capitalistic industrial crisis will coincide with the social revolution which will bring capitalism to an end. The wage-earning class must under no condition permit itself to be diverted from its revolutionary program into futile attempts to "patch-up" capitalism. The labor struggle must be for the abolition of capitalism. American wage earners have steadily disappointed several generations of Marxians by their refusal to accept the Marxian theory of social development and the Marxian revolutionary goal. In fact, in their thinking, most American wage earners do not start with any general theory of industrial society, but approach the subject as bargainers, desiring to strike the best wage bargain possible. They also have a conception of what the bargain ought to yield them by way of real income, measured in terms of their customary standard of living, in terms of security for the future, and in terms of freedom in the shop or "self-determination." What impresses them is not so much the fact that the employer owns the employment opportunities but that he possesses a high degree of bargaining advantage over them. Viewing the situation as bargainers, they are forced to give their best attention to the menaces they encounter as bargainers, namely, to the competitive menaces; for on these the employer's own advantage as a bargainer rests. Their impulse is therefore not to suppress the employer, but to suppress those competitive menaces, be they convict labor, foreign labor, "green" or untrained workers working on machines, and so forth. To do so they feel they must organize into a union and engage in a "class struggle" against the employer. It is the employer's purpose to bring in ever lower and lower levels in competition among laborers and depress wages; it is the purpose of the union to eliminate those lower levels and to make them stay eliminated. That brings the union men face to face with the whole matter of industrial control. They have no assurance that the employer will not get the best of them in bargaining unless they themselves possess enough control over the shop and the trade to check him. Hence they will strive for the "recognition" of the union by the employer or the associated employers as an acknowledged part of the government of the shop and the trade. It is essential to note that in struggling for recognition, labor is struggling not for something absolute, as would be a struggle for a complete dispossession of the employer, but for the sort of an end that admits of relative differences and gradations. Industrial control may be divided in varying proportions,[101] reflecting at any one time the relative ratio of bargaining power of the contesting sides. It is labor's aim to continue increasing its bargaining power and with it its share of industrial control, just as it is the employer's aim to maintain a _status quo_ or better. Although this presupposes a continuous struggle, it is not a revolutionary but an "opportunist" struggle. Once we accept the view that a broadly conceived aim to control competitive menaces is the key to the conduct of organized labor in America, light is thrown on the causes of the American industrial class struggles. In place of looking for these causes, with the Marxians, in the domain of technique and production, we shall look for them on the market, where all developments which affect labor as a bargainer and competitor, of which technical change is one, are sooner or later bound to register themselves. It will then become possible to account for the long stretch of industrial class struggle in America prior to the factory system, while industry continued on the basis of the handicraft method of production. Also we shall be able to render to ourselves a clearer account of the changes, with time, in the intensity of the struggle, which, were we to follow the Marxian theory, would appear hopelessly irregular. We shall take for an illustration the shoe industry.[102] The ease with which shoes can be transported long distances, due to the relatively high money value contained in small bulk, rendered the shoe industry more sensitive to changes in marketing than other industries. Indeed we may say that the shoe industry epitomized the general economic evolution of the country.[103] We observe no industrial class struggle during Colonial times when the market remained purely local and the work was custom-order work. The journeyman found his standard of life protected along with the master's own through the latter's ability to strike a favorable bargain with the consumer. This was done by laying stress upon the quality of the work. It was mainly for this reason that during the custom-order stage of industry the journeymen seldom if ever raised a protest because the regulation of the craft, be it through a guild or through an informal organization, lay wholly in the hands of the masters. Moreover, the typical journeyman expected in a few years to set up with an apprentice or two in business for himself--so there was a reasonable harmony of interests. A change came when improvements in transportation, the highway and later the canal, had widened the area of competition among masters. As a first step, the master began to produce commodities in advance of the demand, laying up a stock of goods for the retail trade. The result was that his bargaining capacity over the consumer was lessened and so prices eventually had to be reduced, and with them also wages. The next step was even more serious. Having succeeded in his retail business, the master began to covet a still larger market,--the wholesale market. However, the competition in this wider market was much keener than it had been in the custom-order or even in the retail market. It was inevitable that both prices and wages should suffer in the process. The master, of course, could recoup himself by lowering the quality of the product, but when he did that he lost a telling argument in bargaining with the consumer or the retail merchant. Another result of this new way of conducting the business was that an increased amount of capital was now required for continuous operation, both in raw material and in credits extended to distant buyers. The next phase in the evolution of the market rendered the separation of the journeymen into a class by themselves even sharper as well as more permanent. The market had grown to such dimensions that only a specialist in marketing and credit could succeed in business, namely, the "merchant-capitalist." The latter now interposed himself permanently between "producer" and consumer and by his control of the market assumed a commanding position. The merchant-capitalist ran his business upon the principle of a large turn-over and a small profit per unit of product, which, of course, made his income highly speculative. He was accordingly interested primarily in low production and labor costs. To depress the wage levels he tapped new and cheaper sources of labor supply, in prison labor, low wage country-town labor, woman and child labor; and set them up as competitive menaces to the workers in the trade. The merchant-capitalist system forced still another disadvantage upon the wage earner by splitting up crafts into separate operations and tapping lower levels of skill. In the merchant-capitalist period we find the "team work" and "task" system. The "team" was composed of several workers: a highly skilled journeyman was in charge, but the other members possessed varying degrees of skill down to the practically unskilled "finisher." The team was generally paid a lump wage, which was divided by an understanding among the members. With all that the merchant-capitalist took no appreciable part in the productive process. His equipment consisted of a warehouse where the raw material was cut up and given out to be worked up by small contractors, to be worked up in small shops with a few journeymen and apprentices, or else by the journeyman at his home,--all being paid by the piece. This was the notorious "sweatshop system." The contractor or sweatshop boss was a mere labor broker deriving his income from the margin between the piece rate he received from the merchant-capitalist and the rate he paid in wages. As any workman could easily become a contractor with the aid of small savings out of wages, or with the aid of money advanced by the merchant-capitalist, the competition between contractors was of necessity of the cut-throat kind. The industrial class struggle was now a three-cornered one, the contractor aligning himself here with the journeymen, whom he was forced to exploit, there with the merchant-capitalist, but more often with the latter. Also, owing to the precariousness of the position of both contractor and journeyman, the class struggle now reached a new pitch of intensity hitherto unheard of. It is important to note, however, that as yet the tools of production had not undergone any appreciable change, remaining hand tools as before, and also that the journeyman still owned them. So that the beginning of class struggles had nothing to do with machine technique and a capitalist ownership of the tools of production. The capitalist, however, had placed himself across the outlets to the market and dominated by using all the available competitive menaces to both contractor and wage earner. Hence the bitter class struggle. The thirties witnessed the beginning of the merchant-capitalist system in the cities of the East. But the situation grew most serious during the forties and fifties. That was a period of the greatest disorganization of industry. The big underlying cause was the rapid extension of markets outrunning the technical development of industry. The large market, opened first by canals and then by railroads, stimulated the keenest sort of competition among the merchant-capitalists. But the industrial equipment at their disposal had made no considerable progress. Except in the textile industry, machinery had not yet been invented or sufficiently perfected to make its application profitable. Consequently industrial society was in the position of an antiquated public utility in a community which persistently forces ever lower and lower rates. It could continue to render service only by cutting down the returns to the factors of production,--by lowering profits, and especially by pressing down wages. In the sixties the market became a national one as the effect of the consolidation into trunk lines of the numerous and disconnected railway lines built during the forties and fifties. Coincident with the nationalized market for goods, production began to change from a handicraft to a machine basis. The former sweatshop boss having accumulated some capital, or with the aid of credit, now became a small "manufacturer," owning a small plant and employing from ten to fifty workmen. Machinery increased the productivity of labor and gave a considerable margin of profits, which enabled him to begin laying a foundation for his future independence of the middleman. As yet he was, however, far from independent. The wider areas over which manufactured products were now to be distributed, called more than ever before for the services of the specialist in marketing, namely, the wholesale-jobber. As the market extended, he sent out his traveling men, established business connections, and advertised the articles which bore his trade mark. His control of the market opened up credit with the banks, while the manufacturer, who with the exception of his patents possessed only physical capital and no market opportunities, found it difficult to obtain credit. Moreover, the rapid introduction of machinery tied up all of the manufacturers' available capital and forced him to turn his products into money as rapidly as possible, with the inevitable result that the merchant was given an enormous bargaining advantage over him. Had the extension of the market and the introduction of machinery proceeded at a less rapid pace, the manufacturer probably would have been able to obtain greater control over the market opportunities, and the larger credit which this would have given him, combined with the accumulation of his own capital, might have been sufficient to meet his needs. However, as the situation really developed, the merchant obtained a superior bargaining power and, by playing off the competing manufacturers one against another, produced a cut-throat competition, low prices, low profits, and consequently a steady and insistent pressure upon wages. This represents the situation in the seventies and eighties. For labor the combination of cut-throat competition among employers with the new machine technique brought serious consequences. In this era of machinery the forces of technical evolution decisively joined hands with the older forces of marketing evolution to depress the conditions of the wage bargain. It is needless to dilate upon the effects of machine technique on labor conditions--they have become a commonplace of political economy. The shoemakers were first among the organized trades to feel the effects. In the later sixties they organized what was then the largest trade union in the world, the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin,[104] to ward off the menace of "green hands" set to work on machines. With the machinists and the metal trades in general, the invasion of unskilled and little skilled competitors began a decade later. But the main and general invasion came in the eighties, the proper era from which to date machine production in America. It was during the eighties that we witness an attempted fusion into one organization, the Order of the Knights of Labor, of the machine-menaced mechanics and the hordes of the unskilled.[105] With the nineties a change comes at last. The manufacturer finally wins his independence. Either he reaches out directly to the ultimate consumer by means of chains of stores or other devices, or else, he makes use of his control over patents and trade marks and thus succeeds in reducing the wholesale-jobber to a position which more nearly resembles that of an agent working on a commission basis than that of the _quondam_ industrial ruler. The immediate outcome is, of course, a considerable increase in the manufacturer's margin of profit. The industrial class struggle begins to abate in intensity. The employer, now comparatively free of anxiety that he may be forced to operate at a loss, is able to diminish pressure on wages. But more than this: the greater certainty about the future, now that he is a free agent, enables him to enter into time agreements with a trade union. At first he is generally disinclined to forego any share of his newly acquired freedom by tying himself up with a union. But if the union is strong and can offer battle, then he accepts the situation and "recognizes" it. Thus the class struggle instead of becoming sharper and sharper with the advance of capitalism and leading, as Marx predicted, to a social revolution, in reality, grows less and less revolutionary and leads to a compromise or succession of compromises,--namely, collective trade agreements. But the manufacturer's emancipation from the middleman need not always lead to trade agreements. In the shoe industry this process did not do away with competition. In other industries such an emancipation was identical with the coming in of the "trust," or a combination of competing manufacturers into a monopoly. As soon as the "trust" becomes practically the sole employer of labor in an industry, the relations between labor and capital are thrown almost invariably back into the state of affairs which characterized the merchant-capitalist system at its worst, but with one important difference. Whereas under the merchant-capitalist system the employer was _obliged_ to press down on wages and fight unionism to death owing to cut-throat competition, the "trust," its strength supreme in both commodity and labor market, can do so and usually does so _of free choice_. The character of the labor struggle has been influenced by cyclical changes in industry as much as by the permanent changes in the organization of industry and market. In fact, whereas reaction to the latter has generally been slow and noticeable only over long periods of time, with a turn in the business cycle, the labor movement reacted surely and instantaneously. We observed over the greater part of the history of American labor an alternation of two planes of thought and action, an upper and a lower. On the upper plane, labor thought was concerned with ultimate goals, self-employment or cooperation, and problems arising therefrom, while action took the form of politics. On the lower plane, labor abandoned the ultimate for the proximate, centering on betterments within the limits of the wage system and on trade-union activity. Labor history in the past century was largely a story of labor's shifting from one plane to another, and then again to the first. It was also seen that what determined the plane of thought and action at any one time was the state of business measured by movements of wholesale and retail prices and employment and unemployment. When prices rose and margins of employers' profits were on the increase, the demand for labor increased and accordingly also labor's strength as a bargainer; at the same time, labor was compelled to organize to meet a rising cost of living. At such times trade unionism monopolized the arena, won strikes, increased membership, and forced "cure-alls" and politics into the background. When, however, prices fell and margins of profit contracted, labor's bargaining strength waned, strikes were lost, trade unions faced the danger of extinction, and "cure-alls" and politics received their day in court. Labor would turn to government and politics only as a last resort, when it had lost confidence in its ability to hold its own in industry. This phenomenon, noticeable also in other countries, came out with particular clearness in America. For, as a rule, down to the World War, prices both wholesale and retail, fluctuated in America more violently than in England or the Continent. And twice, once in the thirties and again in the sixties, an irredeemable paper currency moved up the water mark of prices to tremendous heights followed by reactions of corresponding depth. From the war of 1812, the actual beginning of an industrial America, to the end of the century, the country went through several such complete industrial and business cycles. We therefore conveniently divide labor and trade union history into periods on the basis of the industrial cycle. It was only in the nineties, as we saw, that the response of the labor movement to price fluctuations ceased to mean a complete or nearly complete abandonment of trade unionism during depressions. A continuous and stable trade union movement consequently dates only from the nineties. The cooperative movement which was, as we saw, far less continuous than trade unionism, has also shown the effects of the business cycle. The career of distributive cooperation in America has always been intimately related to the movements of retail prices and wages. If, in the advance of wages and prices during the ascending portion of the industrial cycle, the cost of living happened to outdistance wages by a wide margin, the wage earners sought a remedy in distributive cooperation. They acted likewise during the descending portion of the industrial cycle, when retail prices happened to fall much less slowly than wages. Producers' cooperation in the United States has generally been a "hard times" remedy. When industrial prosperity has passed its high crest and strikes have begun to fail, producers' cooperation has often been used as a retaliatory measure to bring the employer to terms by menacing to underbid him in the market. Also, when in the further downward course of industry the point has been reached where cuts in wages and unemployment have become quite common, producers' cooperation has sometimes come in as an attempt to enable the wage earner to obtain both employment and high earnings bolstered through cooperative profits. FOOTNOTES: [101] The struggle for control, as carried on by trade unions, centers on such matters as methods of wage determination, the employer's right of discharge, hiring and lay-off, division of work, methods of enforcing shop discipline, introduction of machinery and division of labor, transfers of employes, promotions, the union or non-union shop, and similar subjects. [102] The first trade societies were organized by shoemakers. (See above, 4-7.) [103] See Chapter on "American Shoemakers," in _Labor and Administration_, by John R. Commons (Macmillan, 1913). [104] See Don D. Lescohier, _The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin_. [105] See above, 114-116. CHAPTER 13 THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR The puzzling fact about the American labor movement is, after all, its limited objective. As we saw before, the social order which the typical American trade unionist considers ideal is one in which organized labor and organized capital possess equal bargaining power. The American trade unionist wants, first, an equal voice with the employer in fixing wages and, second, a big enough control over the productive processes to protect job, health, and organization. Yet he does not appear to wish to saddle himself and fellow wage earners with the trouble of running industry without the employer. But materialistic though this philosophy appears, it is nevertheless the product of a long development to which the spiritual contributed no less than the material. In fact the American labor movement arrived at an opportunist trade unionism only after an endeavor spread over more than seventy years to realize a more idealistic program. American labor started with the "ideology" of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Intended as a justification of a political revolution, the Declaration was worded by the authors as an expression of faith in a social revolution. To controvert the claims of George III, Thomas Jefferson quoted Rousseau. To him Rousseau was in all probability little more than an abstract "beau idéal," but Rousseau's abstractions were no mere abstractions to the pioneer American farmer. To the latter the doctrine that all men are born free and equal seemed to have grown directly out of experience. So it appeared, two or three generations later, to the young workmen when they for the first time achieved political consciousness. And, if reality ceased to square with the principles of the Declaration, it became, they felt, the bounden duty of every true American to amend reality. Out of a combination of the principles of individual rights, individual self-determination, equality of opportunity, and political equality enumerated and suggested in the Declaration, arose the first and most persistent American labor philosophy. This philosophy differed in no wise from the philosophy of the old American democracy except in emphasis and particular application, yet these differences are highly significant. Labor read into the Declaration of Independence a condemnation of the wage system as a permanent economic régime; sooner or later in place of the wage system had to come _self-employment_. Americanism to them was a social and economic as well as a political creed. Economic self-determination was as essential to the individual as political equality. Just as no true American will take orders from a king, so he will not consent forever to remain under the orders of a "boss." It was the _uplifting_ force of this social ideal as much as the propelling force of the changing economic environment that molded the American labor program. We find it at work at first in the decade of the thirties at the very beginning of the labor movement. It then took the form of a demand for a free public school system. These workingmen in Philadelphia and New York discovered that in the place of the social democracy of the Declaration, America had developed into an "aristocracy." They thought that the root of it all lay in "inequitable" legislation which fostered "monopoly," hence the remedy lay in democratic legislation. But they further realized that a political and social democracy must be based on an educated and intelligent working class. No measure, therefore, could be more than a palliative until they got a "Republican" system of education. The workingmen's parties of 1828-1831 failed as parties, but humanitarians like Horace Mann took up the struggle for free public education and carried it to success. If in the thirties the labor program was to restore a social and political democracy by means of the public school, in the forties the program centered on economic democracy, on equality of economic opportunity. This took the form of a demand of a grant of public land free of charge to everyone willing to brave the rigors of pioneer life. The government should thus open an escape to the worker from the wage system into self-employment by way of free land. After years of agitation, the same cry was taken up by the Western States eager for more settlers to build up their communities and this combined agitation proved irresistible and culminated in the Homestead law of 1862. The Homestead law opened up the road to self-employment by way of free land and agriculture. But in the sixties the United States was already becoming an industrial country. In abandoning the city for the farm, the wage earner would lose the value of his greatest possession--his skill. Moreover, as a homesteader, his problem was far from solved by mere access to free land. Whether he went on the land or stayed in industry, he needed access to reasonably free credit. The device invented by workingmen to this end was the bizarre "greenback" idea which held their minds as if in a vise for nearly twenty years. "Greenbackism" left no such permanent trace on American social and economic structure as "Republican education" or "free land." The lure of "greenbackism" was that it offered an opportunity for self-employment. But already in the sixties, it became clear that the workingman could not expect to attain self-employment as an individual, but if at all, it had to be sought on the basis of producers' cooperation. In the eighties, it became doubly clear that industry had gone beyond the one-man-shop stage; self-employment had to stand or fall with the cooperative or self-governing workshop. The protagonist of this most interesting and most idealistic striving of American labor was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," which reached its height in the middle of the eighties. The period of the greatest enthusiasm for cooperation was between 1884 and 1887; and by 1888 the cooperative movement had passed the full cycle of life and succumbed. The failure of cooperation proved a turning point in the evolution of the American labor program. Whatever the special causes of failure, the idealistic unionism, for which the ideas of the Declaration of Independence served as a fountain head, suffered in the eyes of labor, a degree of discredit so overwhelming that to regain its old position was no longer possible. The times were ripe for the opportunistic unionism of Gompers and the trade unionists. These latter, having started in the seventies as Marxian socialists, had been made over into opportunistic unionists by their practical contact with American conditions. Their philosophy was narrower than that of the Knights and their concept of labor solidarity narrower still. However, these trade unionists demonstrated that they could win strikes. It was to this practical trade unionism, then, that the American labor movement turned, about 1890, when the idealism of the Knights of Labor had failed. From groping for a cooperative economic order or self-employment, labor turned with the American Federation of Labor to developing bargaining power for use against employers. This trade unionism stood for a strengthened group consciousness. While it continued to avow sympathy with the "anti-monopoly" aspirations of the "producers," who fought for the opportunity of self-employment, it also declared that the interests of democracy will be best served if the wage earners organized by themselves. This opportunist unionism, now at last triumphant over the idealistic unionism induced by America's spiritual tradition, soon was obliged to fight against a revolutionary unionism which, like itself, was an offshoot of the socialism of the seventies. At first, the American Federation of Labor was far from hostile to socialism as a philosophy. Its attitude was rather one of mild contempt for what it considered to be wholly impracticable under American conditions, however necessary or efficacious under other conditions. When, about 1890, the socialists declared their policy of "boring from within," that is, of capturing the Federation for socialism by means of propaganda in Federation ranks, this attitude remained practically unchanged. Only when, dissatisfied with the results of boring from within, the socialists, now led by a more determined leadership, attempted in 1895 to set up a rival to the Federation in the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, was there a sharp line drawn between socialist and anti-socialist in the Federation. The issue once having become a fighting issue, the leaders of the Federation experienced the need of a positive and well rounded-out social philosophy capable of meeting socialism all along the front instead of the former self-imposed super-pragmatism. By this time, the Federation had become sufficiently removed in point of time from its foreign origin to turn to the social ideal derived from pioneer America as the philosophy which it hoped would successfully combat an aggressive and arrogant socialism. Thus it came about that the front against socialism was built out from the immediate and practical into the ultimate and spiritual; and that inferences drawn from a reading of Jefferson's Declaration, with its emphasis on individual liberty, were pressed into service against the seductive collectivist forecasts of Marx. CHAPTER 14 WHY THERE IS NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR PARTY The question of a political labor party hinges, in the last analysis, on the benefits which labor expects from government. If, under the constitution, government possesses considerable power to regulate industrial relations and improve labor conditions, political power is worth striving for. If, on the contrary, the power of the government is restricted by a rigid organic law, the matter is reversed. The latter is the situation in the United States. The American constitutions, both Federal and State, contain bills of rights which embody in fullness the eighteenth-century philosophy of economic individualism and governmental _laissez-faire_. The courts, Federal and State, are given the right to override any law enacted by Congress or the State legislatures which may be shown to conflict with constitutional rights. In the exercise of this right, American judges have always inclined to be very conservative in allowing the legislature to invade the province of economic freedom. At present after many years of agitation by humanitarians and trade unionists, the cause of legislative protection of child and woman laborers seems to be won in principle. But this progress has been made because it has been shown conclusively that the protection of these most helpless groups of the wage-earning class clearly falls within the scope of public purpose and is therefore a lawful exercise of the state's police power within the meaning of the constitution. However, adult male labor offers a far different case. Moreover, should the unexpected happen and the courts become converted to a broader view, the legislative standards would be small compared with the standards already enforced by most of the trade unions. Consequently, so far as adult male workers are concerned (and they are of course the great bulk of organized labor), labor in America would scarcely be justified in diverting even a part of its energy from trade unionism to a relatively unprofitable seeking of redress through legislatures and courts.[106] But this is no more than half the story. Granting even that political power may be worth having, its attainment is beset with difficulties and dangers more than sufficient to make responsible leaders pause. The causes reside once more in the form of government, also in the general nature of American politics, and in political history and tradition. To begin with, labor would have to fight not on one front, but on forty-nine different fronts.[107] Congress and the States have power to legislate on labor matters; also, in each, power is divided between an executive and the two houses of the legislature. Decidedly, government in America was built not for strength but for weakness. The splitting up of sovereignty does not especially interfere with the purposes of a conservative party, but to a party of social and industrial reform it offers a disheartening obstacle. A labor party, to be effective, would be obliged to capture all the diffused bits of sovereignty at the same time. A partial gain is of little avail, since it is likely to be lost at the next election even simultaneously with a new gain. But we have assumed here that the labor party had reached the point where its trials are the trials of a party in power or nearing power. In reality, American labor parties are spared this sort of trouble by trials of an anterior order residing in the nature of American politics. The American political party system antedates the formation of modern economic classes, especially the class alignment of labor and capital. Each of the old parties represents, at least in theory, the entire American community regardless of class. Party differences are considered differences of opinion or of judgment on matters of public policy, not differences of class interest. The wage earner in America, who never had to fight for his suffrage but received it as a free gift from the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democratic movements and who did not therefore develop the political class consciousness which was stamped into the workers in Europe by the feeling of revolt against an upper ruling class, is prone to adopt the same view of politics. Class parties in America have always been effectively countered by the old established parties with the charge that they tend to incite class against class. But the old parties had on numerous occasions, as we saw, an even more effective weapon. No sooner did a labor party gain a foothold, than the old party politician, the "friend of labor," did appear and start a rival attraction by a more or less verbal adherence to one or more planks of the rising party. Had he been, as in Europe, a branded spokesman of a particular economic class or interest, it would not have been difficult to ward him off. But here in America, he said that he too was a workingman and was heart and soul for the workingman. Moreover, the workingman was just as much attached to an old party label as any average American. In a way he considered it an assertion of his social equality with any other group of Americans that he could afford to take the same "disinterested" and tradition-bound view of political struggles as the rest. This is why labor parties generally encountered such disheartening receptions at the hands of workingmen; also why it was difficult to "deliver the labor vote" to any party. This, on the whole, describes the condition of affairs today as it does the situations in the past. In the end, should the workingman be pried loose from his traditional party affiliation by a labor event of transcendent importance for the time being, should he be stirred to political revolt by an oppressive court decision, or the use of troops to break a strike; then, at the next election, when the excitement has had time to subside, he will usually return to his political normality. Moreover, should labor discontent attain depth, it may be safely assumed that either one or the other of the old parties or a faction therein will seek to divert its driving force into its own particular party channel. Should the labor party still persist, the old party politicians, whose bailiwick it will have particularly invaded, will take care to encourage, by means not always ethical but nearly always effective, strife in its ranks. Should that fail, the old parties will in the end "fuse" against the upstart rival. If they are able to stay "fused" during enough elections and also win them, the fidelity of the adherent of the third party is certain to be put to a hard and unsuccessful test. To the outsider these conclusions may appear novel, but labor in America learned these lessons through a long experience, which began when the first workingmen's parties were attempted in 1828-1832. The limited potentialities of labor legislation together with the apparent hopelessness of labor party politics compelled the American labor movement to develop a sort of non-partisan political action with limited objectives thoroughly characteristic of American conditions. Labor needs protection from interference by the courts in the exercise of its economic weapons, the strike and the boycott, upon which it is obviously obliged to place especial reliance. In other words, though labor may refuse to be drawn into the vortex of politics for the sake of positive attainments, or, that is to say, labor legislation, it is compelled to do so for the sake of a _negative_ gain--a judicial _laissez-faire_. That labor does by pursuing a policy of "reward your friends" and "punish your enemies" in the sphere of politics. The method itself is an old one in the labor movement; we saw it practiced by George Henry Evans and the land reformers of the forties as well as by Steward and the advocates of the eight-hour day by law in the sixties. The American Federation of Labor merely puts it to use in connection with a new objective, namely, freedom from court interference. Although the labor vote is largely "undeliverable," still where the parties are more or less evenly matched in strength, that portion of the labor vote which is politically conscious of its economic interests may swing the election to whichever side it turns. Under certain conditions[108] labor has been known even to attain through such indirection in excess of what it might have won had it come to share in power as a labor party. The controversy around labor in politics brings up in the last analysis the whole problem of leadership in labor organizations, or to be specific, the role of the intellectual in the movement. In America his role has been remarkably restricted. For a half century or more the educated classes had no connection with the labor movement, for in the forties and fifties, when the Brook Farm enthusiasts and their associates took up with fervor the social question, they were really alone in the field, since the protracted trade depression had laid all labor organization low. It was in the eighties, with the turmoil of the Knights of Labor and the Anarchist bomb in Chicago, that the "intellectuals" first awakened to the existence of a labor problem. To this awakening no single person contributed more than the economist Professor Richard T. Ely, then of Johns Hopkins University. His pioneer work on the _Labor Movement in America_ published in 1886, and the works of his many capable students gave the labor movement a permanent place in the public mind, besides presenting the cause of labor with scientific precision and with a judicious balance. Among the other pioneers were preachers like Washington Gladden and Lyman Abbott, who conceived their duty as that of mediators between the business class and the wage earning class, exhorting the former to deal with their employes according to the Golden Rule and the latter to moderation in their demands. Together with the economists they helped to break down the prejudice against labor unionism in so far as the latter was non-revolutionary. And though their influence was large, they understood that their maximum usefulness would be realized by remaining sympathetic outsiders and not by seeking to control the course of the labor movement. In recent years a new type of intellectual has come to the front. A product of a more generalized mental environment than his predecessor, he is more daring in his retrospects and his prospects. He is just as ready to advance an "economic interpretation of the constitution" as to advocate a collectivistic panacea for the existing industrial and social ills. Nor did this new intellectual come at an inopportune time for getting a hearing. Confidence in social conservatism has been undermined by an exposure in the press and through legislative investigations of the disreputable doings of some of the staunchest conservatives. At such a juncture "progressivism" and a "new liberalism" were bound to come into their own in the general opinion of the country. But the labor movement resisted. American labor, both during the periods of neglect and of moderate championing by the older generation of intellectuals, has developed a leadership wholly its own. This leadership, of which Samuel Gompers is the most notable example, has given years and years to building up a united fighting _morale_ in the army of labor. And because the _morale_ of an army, as these leaders thought, is strong only when it is united upon one common attainable purpose, the intellectual with his new and unfamiliar issues has been given the cold shoulder by precisely the trade unionists in whom he had anticipated to find most eager disciples. The intellectual might go from success to success in conquering the minds of the middle classes; the labor movement largely remains closed to him. To make matters worse the intellectual has brought with him a psychology which is particularly out of fit with the American labor situation. We noted that the American labor movement became shunted from the political arena into the economic one by virtue of fundamental conditions of American political institutions and political life. However, it is precisely in political activity where the intellectual is most at home. The clear-cut logic and symmetry of political platforms based on general theories, the broad vistas which it may be made to encompass, and lastly the opportunity for eloquent self-expression offered by parliamentary debates, all taken together exert a powerful attraction for the intellectualized mind. Contrast with this the prosaic humdrum work of a trade union leader, the incessant wrangling over "small" details and "petty" grievances, and the case becomes exceedingly clear. The mind of the typical intellectual is too generalized to be lured by any such alternative. He is out of patience with mere amelioration, even though it may mean much in terms of human happiness to the worker and his family. When in 1906, in consequence of the heaping up of legal disabilities upon the trade unions, American labor leaders turned to politics to seek a restraining hand upon the courts,[109] the intellectuals foresaw a political labor party in the not distant future. They predicted that one step would inevitably lead to another, that from a policy of bartering with the old parties for anti-injunction planks in their platforms, labor would turn to a political party of its own. The intellectual critic continues to view the political action of the American Federation of Labor as the first steps of an invalid learning to walk; and hopes that before long he will learn to walk with a firmer step, without feeling tempted to lean upon the only too willing shoulders of old-party politicians. On the contrary, the Federation leaders, as we know, regard their political work as a necessary evil, due to an unfortunate turn of affairs, which forces them from time to time to step out of their own trade union province in order that their natural enemy, the employing class, might get no aid and comfort from an outside ally. Of late a _rapprochement_ between the intellectual and trade unionist has begun to take place. However, it is not founded on the relationship of leader and led, but only on a business relationship, or that of giver and receiver of paid technical advice. The role of the trained economist in handling statistics and preparing "cases" for trade unionists before boards of arbitration is coming to be more and more appreciated. The railway men's organizations were first to put the intellectual to this use, the miners and others followed. From this it is still a far cry to the role of such intellectuals as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, G.D.H. Cole and the Fabian Research group in England, who have really permeated the British labor movement with their views on labor policy. However, there is also a place for the American intellectual as an ally of trade unionism, not only as its paid servant. The American labor movement has committed a grave and costly error because it has not made use of the services of writers, journalists, lecturers, and speakers to popularize its cause with the general public. Some of its recent defeats, notably the steel strike of 1919, were partly due to the neglect to provide a sufficient organization of labor publicity to counteract the anti-union publicity by the employers. FOOTNOTES: [106] This assumes that the legislative program of labor would deal primarily with the regulation of labor conditions in private employment analogous to the legislative program of the British trade unions until recent years. Should labor in America follow the newer program of labor in Britain and demand the taking over of industries by government with compensation, it is not certain that the courts would prove as serious a barrier as in the other case. However, the situation would remain unchanged so far as the difficulties discussed in the remainder of this chapter are concerned. [107] For the control of the national government and of the forty-eight State governments. [108] Such as a state of war; see above, 235-236. [109] See above, 203-204. CHAPTER 15 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND TRADE UNIONISM The rise of a political and economic dictatorship by the wage-earning class in revolutionary Russia in 1917 has focussed public opinion on the labor question as no other event ever did. But one will scarcely say that it has tended to clarity of thought. On the one hand, the conservative feels confirmed in his old suspicions that there is something inherently revolutionary in any labor movement. The extreme radical, on the other hand, is as uncritically hopeful for a Bolshevist upheaval in America as the conservative or reactionary is uncritically fearful. Both forget that an effective social revolution is not the product of mere chance and "mob psychology," nor even of propaganda however assiduous, but always of a new preponderance of power as between contending economic classes. To students of the social sciences, it is self-evident that the prolonged rule of the proletariat in Russia in defiance of nearly the whole world must be regarded as a product of Russian life, past and present. In fact, the continued Bolshevist rule seems to be an index of the relative fighting strength of the several classes in Russian society--the industrial proletariat, the landed and industrial propertied class, and the peasantry. It is an irony of fate that the same revolution which purports to enact into life the Marxian social program should belie the truth of Marx's materialistic interpretation of history and demonstrate that history is shaped by both economic and non-economic forces. Marx, as is well known, taught that history is a struggle between classes, in which the landed aristocracy, the capitalist class, and the wage earning class are raised successively to rulership as, with the progress of society's technical equipment, first one and then another class can operate it with the maximum efficiency. Marx assumed that when the time has arrived for a given economic class to take the helm, that class will be found in full possession of all the psychological attributes of a ruling class, namely, an indomitable will to power, no less than the more vulgar desire for the emoluments that come with power. Apparently, Marx took for granted that economic evolution is inevitably accompanied by a corresponding development of an effective will to power in the class destined to rule. Yet, whatever may be the case in the countries of the West, in Russia the ruling classes, the gentry and the capitalists, clearly failed in the psychological test at the critical time. This failure is amply attested by the manner in which they submitted practically without a fight after the Bolshevist coup _d'état_. To get at the secret of this apparent feebleness and want of spunk in Russia's ruling class one must study a peculiarity of her history, namely, the complete dominance of Russia's development by organized government. Where the historian of the Western countries must take account of several independent forces, each standing for a social class, the Russian historian may well afford to station himself on the high peak of government and, from this point of vantage, survey the hills and vales of the society which it so thoroughly dominated. Apolitism runs like a red thread through the pages of Russian history. Even the upper layer of the old noble class, the "Boyars," were but a shadow of the Western contemporary medieval landed aristocracy. When the several principalities became united with the Czardom of Muscovy many centuries ago, the Boyar was in fact no more than a steward of the Czar's estate and a leader of a posse defending his property; the most he dared to do was surreptitiously to obstruct the carrying out of the Czar's intentions; he dared not try to impose the will of his class upon the crown. The other classes were even more apolitical. So little did the several classes aspire to domination that they missed many golden opportunities to seize and hold a share of the political power. In the seventeenth century, when the government was exceptionally weak after what is known as the "period of troubles," it convoked periodical "assemblies of the land" to help administer the country. But, as a matter of fact, these assemblies considered themselves ill used because they were asked to take part in government and not once did they aspire to an independent position in the Russian body politic. Another and perhaps even more striking instance we find a century and a half later. Catherine the Great voluntarily turned over the local administration to the nobles and to that end decreed that the nobility organize themselves into provincial associations. But so little did the nobility care for political power and active class prerogative that, in spite of the broadest possible charters, the associations of nobles were never more than social organizations in the conventional sense of the word. Even less did the commercial class aspire to independence. In the West of Europe mercantilism answered in an equal measure the needs of an expanding state and of a vigorous middle class, the latter being no less ardent in the pursuit of gain than the former in the pursuit of conquest. In Russia, on the other hand, when Peter the Great wanted manufacturing, he had to introduce it by government action. Hence, Russian mercantilism was predominantly a state mercantilism. Even where Peter succeeded in enlisting private initiative by subsidies, instead of building up a class of independent manufacturers, he merely created industrial parasites and bureaucrats without initiative of their own, who forever kept looking to the government. Coming to more recent times, we find that the modern Russian factory system likewise owes its origin to governmental initiative, namely, to the government's railway-building policy. The government built the railways for strategic and fiscal reasons but incidentally created a unified internal market which made mass-production of articles of common consumption profitable for the first time. But, even after Russian capitalism was thus enabled to stand on its own feet, it did not unlearn the habit of leaning on the government for advancement rather than relying on its own efforts. On its part the autocratic government was loath to let industry alone. The government generously dispensed to the capitalists tariff protection and bounties in the form of profitable orders, but insisted on keeping industry under its thumb. And though they might chafe, still the capitalists never neglected to make the best of the situation. For instance, when the sugar producers found themselves running into a hole from cut-throat competition, they appealed to the Minister of Finances, who immediately created a government-enforced "trust" and assured them huge dividends. Since business success was assured by keeping on the proper footing with a generous government rather than by relying on one's own vigor, it stands to reason that, generally speaking, the capitalists and especially the larger capitalists, could develop only into a class of industrial courtiers. And when at last the autocracy fell, the courtiers were not to be turned overnight into stubborn champions of the rights of their class amid the turmoil of a revolution. To be sure, Russia had entered the capitalistic stage as her Marxians had predicted, but nevertheless her capitalists were found to be lacking the indomitable will to power which makes a ruling class. The weakness of the capitalists in the fight on behalf of private property may be explained in part by their want of allies in the other classes in the community. The Russian peasant, reared in the atmosphere of communal land ownership, was far from being a fanatical defender of private property. No Thiers could have rallied a Russian peasant army for the suppression of a communistic industrial wage-earning class by an appeal to their property instinct. To make matters worse for the capitalists, the peasant's strongest craving was for more land, all the land, without compensation! This the capitalists, being capitalists, were unable to grant. Yet it was the only sort of currency which the peasant would accept in payment for his political support. In November, 1917, when the Bolsheviki seized the government, one of their first acts was to satisfy the peasant's land hunger by turning over to his use all the land. The "proletariat" had then a free hand so far as the most numerous class in Russia was concerned. Just as the capitalist class reached the threshold of the revolution psychologically below par, so the wage-earning class in developing the will to rule outran all expectations and beat the Marxian time-schedule. Among the important contributing factors was the unity of the industrial laboring class, a unity broken by no rifts between highly paid skilled groups and an inferior unskilled class, or between a well-organized labor aristocracy and an unorganized helot class. The economic and social oppression under the old régime had seen to it that no group of laborers should possess a stake in the existing order or desire to separate from the rest. Moreover, for several decades, and especially since the memorable days of the revolution of 1905, the laboring class has been filled by socialistic agitators and propagandists with ideas of the great historical role of the proletariat. The writer remembers how in 1905 even newspapers of the moderately liberal stamp used to speak of the "heroic proletariat marching in the van of Russia's progress." No wonder then that, when the revolution came, the industrial wage earners had developed such self-confidence as a class that they were tempted to disregard the dictum of their intellectual mentors that this was merely to be a bourgeois revolution--with the social revolution still remote. Instead they listened to the slogan "All power to the Soviets." The idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" reached maturity in the course of the abortive revolution of 1905-1906. After a victory for the people in October, 1905, the bourgeoisie grew frightened over the aggressiveness of the wage-earning class and sought safety in an understanding with the autocracy. An order by the Soviet of Petrograd workmen in November, 1905, decreeing the eight-hour day in all factories sufficed to make the capitalists forego their historical role of champions of popular liberty against autocracy. If the bourgeoisie itself will not fight for a democracy, reasoned the revolutionary socialists, why have such a democracy at all? Have we not seen the democratic form of government lend itself to ill-concealed plutocracy in Europe and America? Why run at all the risk of corruption of the post-revolutionary government at the hands of the capitalists? Why first admit the capitalists into the inner circle and then spend time and effort in preventing them from coming to the top? Therefore, they declined parliamentarism with thanks and would accept nothing less than a government by the representative organ of the workers--the Soviets. If we are right in laying the emphasis on the relative fighting will and fighting strength of the classes struggling for power rather than on the doctrines which they preach and the methods, fair or foul, which they practice, then the American end of the problem, too, appears in a new light. No longer is it in the main a matter of taking sides for or against the desirability of a Bolshevist rule or a dictatorship by the proletariat, but a matter of ascertaining the relative strength and probable behavior of the classes in a given society. It is as futile to "see red" in America because of Bolshevism in Russia as to yearn for Bolshevism's advent in the United States. Either view misses the all-important point that so far as social structure is concerned America is the antipodes of Russia, where the capitalists have shown little fighting spirit, where the tillers of the soil are only first awakening to a conscious desire for private property and are willing to forego their natural share in government for a gift of land, and where the industrial proletariat is the only class ready and unafraid to fight. Bolshevism is unthinkable in America, because, even if by some imaginable accident the government were overthrown and a labor dictatorship declared, it could never "stay put." No one who knows the American business class will even dream that it would under any circumstances surrender to a revolution perpetrated by a minority, or that it would wait for foreign intervention before starting hostilities. A Bolshevist _coup d'état_ in America would mean a civil war to the bitter end, and a war in which the numerous class of farmers would join the capitalists in the defense of the institution of private property.[110] But it is not only because the preponderance of social power in the United States is so decisively with private property that America is proof against a social upheaval like the Russian one. Another and perhaps as important a guarantee of her social stability is found in her four million organized trade unionists. For, however unjustly they may feel to have been treated by the employers or the government; however slow they may find the realization of their ideals of collective bargaining in industry; their stakes in the existing order, both spiritual and material, are too big to reconcile them to revolution. The truth is that the revolutionary labor movement in America looms up much bigger than it actually is. Though in many strikes since the famous textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1911, the leadership was revolutionary, it does not follow that the rank and file was animated by the same purpose. Given an inarticulate mass of grievously exploited workers speaking many foreign tongues and despised alike by the politician, the policeman, and the native American labor organizer; given a group of energetic revolutionary agitators who make the cause of these workers their own and become their spokesmen and leaders; and a situation will clearly arise where thousands of workmen will be apparently marshalled under the flag of revolution while in reality it is the desire for a higher wage and not for a realization of the syndicalist program that reconciles them to starving their wives and children and to shedding their blood on picket duty. If they follow a Haywood or an Ettor, it is precisely because they have been ignored by a Golden or a Gompers. Withal, then, trade unionism, despite an occasional revolutionary facet and despite a revolutionary clamor especially on its fringes, is a conservative social force. Trade unionism seems to have the same moderating effect upon society as a wide diffusion of private property. In fact the gains of trade unionism are to the worker on a par with private property to its owner. The owner regards his property as a protective dyke between himself and a ruthless biological struggle for existence; his property means liberty and opportunity to escape dictation by another man, an employer or "boss," or at least a chance to bide his time until a satisfactory alternative has presented itself for his choice. The French peasants in 1871 who flocked to the army of the government of Versailles to suppress the Commune of Paris (the first attempt in history of a proletarian dictatorship), did so because they felt that were the workingmen to triumph and abolish private property, they, the peasants, would lose a support in their daily struggle for life for the preservation of which it was worth endangering life itself. And having acquired relative protection in their private property, small though it might be, they were unwilling to permit something which were it to succeed would lose them their all. Now with some exceptions every human being is a "protectionist," provided he does possess anything at all which protects him and which is therefore worth being protected by him in turn. The trade unionist, too, is just such a protectionist. When his trade union has had the time and opportunity to win for him decent wages and living conditions, a reasonable security of the job, and at least a partial voice in shop management, he will, on the relatively high and progressive level of material welfare which capitalism has called into being, be chary to raze the existing economic system to the ground on the chance of building up a better one in its place. A reshuffling of the cards, which a revolution means, might conceivably yield him a better card, but then again it might make the entire stack worthless by destroying the stakes for which the game is played. But the revolution might not even succeed in the first round; then the ensuing reaction would probably destroy the trade union and with it would go the chance of a recovery of the original ground, modest though that may have been. In practice, therefore, the trade union movements in nearly all nations[111] have served as brakes upon the respective national socialist movements; and, from the standpoint of society interested in its own preservation against catastrophic change, have played and are playing a role of society's policemen and watch-dogs over the more revolutionary groups in the wage-earning class. These are largely the unorganized and ill-favored groups rendered reckless because, having little to lose from a revolution, whatever the outcome might be, they fear none. In America, too, there is a revolutionary class which, unlike the striking textile workers in 1911-1913, owes its origin neither to chance nor to neglect by trade union leaders. This is the movement of native American or Americanized workers in the outlying districts of the West or South--the typical I.W.W., the migratory workers, the industrial rebels, and the actors in many labor riots and lumber-field strikes. This type of worker has truly broken with America's spiritual past. He has become a revolutionist either because his personal character and habits unfit him for success under the exacting capitalistic system; or because, starting out with the ambitions and rosy expectations of the early pioneer, he found his hopes thwarted by a capitalistic preemptor of the bounty of nature, who dooms to a wage-earner's position all who came too late. In either case he is animated by a genuine passion for revolution, a passion which admits no compromise. Yet his numbers are too few to threaten the existing order. In conclusion, American trade unionism, no matter whether the American Federation of Labor keeps its old leaders or replaces them by "progressives" or socialists, seems in a fair way to continue its conservative function--so long as no overpowering open-shop movement or "trustification" will break up the trade unions or render them sterile. The hope of American Bolshevism will, therefore, continue to rest with the will of employers to rule as autocrats. FOOTNOTES: [110] Though writers and public speakers of either extreme have often overlooked the fundamental consideration of where the preponderance of social power lies in their prognostications of revolutions, this has not escaped the leaders of the American labor movement. The vehemence with which the leaders of the American Federation of Labor have denounced Sovietism and Bolshevism, and which has of late been brought to a high pitch by a fear lest a shift to radicalism should break up the organization, is doubtless sincere. But one cannot help feeling that in part at least it aimed to reassure the great American middle class on the score of labor's intentions. The great majority of organized labor realize that, though at times they may risk engaging in unpopular strikes, it will never do to permit their enemies to tar them with the pitch of subversionism in the eyes of the great American majority--a majority which remains wedded to the régime of private property and individual enterprise despite the many recognized shortcomings of the institution. [111] Notably in Germany since the end of the World War. BIBLIOGRAPHY The first seven chapters of the present work are based on the _History of Labour in the United States_ by John R. Commons and Associates,[112] published in 1918 in two volumes by the Macmillan Company, New York. The major portion of the latter was in turn based on _A Documentary History of the American Industrial Society_, edited by Professor Commons and published in 1910 in ten volumes by Clark and Company, Cleveland. In preparing chapters 8 to 11, dealing with the period since 1897, which is not covered in the _History of Labour_, the author used largely the same sort of material as that in the preparation of the above named works; namely, original sources such as proceedings of trade union conventions, labor and employer papers, government reports, etc. There are, however, many excellent special histories relating to the recent period in the labor movement, especially histories of unionism in individual trades or industries, to which the author wishes to refer the reader for more ample accounts of the several phases of the subject, which he himself was of necessity obliged to treat but briefly. The following is a selected list of such works together with some others relating to earlier periods: BARNETT, GEORGE E., _The Printers--A Study in American Trade Unionism_, American Economic Association, 1909. BING, ALEXANDER M., _War-Time Strikes and their Adjustment_, Dutton and Co., 1921. BONNETT, CLARENCE E., _Employers' Associations in the United States_, Macmillan, 1922. BRISSENDEN, PAUL F., _The I.W.W.--A Study in American Syndicalism_, Columbia University, 1920. BROOKS, JOHN G., _American Syndicalism: The I.W.W._, Macmillan, 1913. BUDISH AND SOULE, _The New Unionism in the Clothing Industry_, Harcourt, 1920. CARLTON, FRANK T., _Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States, 1820-1850_, University of Wisconsin, 1908. DEIBLER, FREDERICK S., _The Amalgamated Wood Workers' International Union of America_, University of Wisconsin, 1912. FITCH, JOHN L., _The Steel Workers_, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911. HOAGLAND, HENRY E., _Wage Bargaining on the Vessels of the Great Lakes_, University of Illinois, 1915. ------, _Collective Bargaining in the Lithographic Industry_, Columbia University, 1917. INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT, Commission of Inquiry, Report on the Steel Strike of 1919, Harcourt, 1920. LAIDLER, HARRY, _Socialism in Thought and Action_, Macmillan, 1920. ROBBINS, EDWIN C., _Railway Conductors--A Study in Organized Labor_, Columbia University, 1914. SCHL�TER, HERMAN, _The Brewing Industry and the Brewery Workmen's Movement in America_, International Union of Brewery Workmen, 1910. SUFFERN, ARTHUR E., _Conciliation and Arbitration in the Coal Mining Industry in America_, Mifflin, 1915. SYDENSTRICKER, EDGAR, _Collective Bargaining in the Anthracite Coal Industry_, Bulletin No. 191 of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1916. WOLMAN, LEO, _The Boycott in American Trade Unions_, Johns Hopkins University, 1916. _Labor Encyclopedias_: AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, _History, Encyclopedia, Reference Book_, American Federation of Labor, 1919. BROWNE, WALDO R., _What's What in the Labor Movement_, Huebsch, 1921. FOOTNOTE: [112] See Author's Preface. 
15204	----	Proofreading Team. WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS: _THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE_. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "PRISONERS OF POVERTY," "PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD," "THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," ETC. With an Introduction BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D. _Professor of Political Economy and Director of the School of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis._ BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1893. _Copyright, 1893_, BY HELEN CAMPBELL. University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. A BOOK FOR Alice, FRIEND, HELPER, AND COMRADE. INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD T. ELY, DIRECTOR OF SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON. The importance of the subject with which the present work deals cannot well be over-estimated. Our age may properly be called the Era of Woman, because everything which affects her receives consideration quite unknown in past centuries. This is well. The motive is twofold: First, woman is valued as never before; and, second, it is perceived that the welfare of the other half of the human race depends more largely upon the position enjoyed by woman than was previously understood. The earlier agitation for an enlarged sphere and greater rights for woman was to a considerable extent merely negative. The aim was to remove barriers and to open the way. It is characteristic of the earlier days of agitation for the removal of wrongs affecting any class, that the questions involved appear to be simple, and easily repeated formulas ample to secure desired rights. Further agitation, however, and more mature reflection always show that what looks like a simple social problem is a complex one. "If women's wages are small, open new careers to them." As simple as this did the problem of women's wages once appear; but when new avenues of employment were rendered accessible to women, it was found, in some instances, that the wages of men were lowered. A consequence which can be seen in different industrial centres is that a man and a wife working together secure no greater wages than the man alone in industries in which women are not employed. Now, if the result of opening new employments to women is to force all members of the family to work for the wages which the head of the family alone once received, it is manifest that we have a complicated problem. Another result of wage-earning by women, which has been observed here and there, is the scattering of the members of the family and the break-down of the home. A recent and careful observer among the chief industrial centres of Saxony, Germany, has told us that factory work has there resulted in the dissolution of the family, and that family life, as we understand it, scarcely exists. We have demoralization seen in the young; and in addition to that, we discover that the employment of married women outside the home results in the impaired health and strength of future generations. The conclusion by no means follows that we should go backward, and try to restrict the industrial sphere of woman. It has been well said that revolutions do not go backward; we have to go farther forward to keep the advantages which have been attained, and at the same time lessen the evils which the new order has brought with it. Further action is required; but in order that this action may bring desired results, it must be based upon ample knowledge. The natural impulse when we see an evil is to adopt direct methods looking to an immediate cure; but such direct methods which at once suggest themselves generally fail to bring relief. The effective remedies are those which use indirect methods based upon scientific knowledge. If a sympathetic man takes to heart physical suffering, which he can see on every side, he must feel inclined to relieve the distressed at once, and feel impatient if he is hindered in his benevolent impulses; yet we know that he will accomplish far more in the end, if he patiently devotes years to study in medical schools and practice in hospitals before he attempts to give relief to the diseased. We need study quite as much to cure the ills of the social body; and the present work gives us a welcome addition to the positive information upon which wise action must depend. Mrs. Campbell has been favorably known for years on account of her valuable contributions to the literature of social science, and it gives the present writer great pleasure to have the privilege of introducing this book to the public with a word of commendation. MADISON, WISCONSIN, _August 29, 1893._ AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The pages which follow were prepared originally as a prize monograph for the American Economic Association, receiving an award from it in 1891. The restriction of the subject to a fixed number of words hampered the treatment, and it was thought best to enlarge many points which in the allotted space could have hardly more than mention. Acting on this wish, the monograph has been nearly doubled in size, but still must be counted only an imperfect summary, since facts in these lines are in most cases very nearly unobtainable, and, aside from the few reports of Labor Bureaus, there are as yet almost no sources of full information. But as there is no existing manual of reference on this topic, the student of social questions will accept this attempt to meet the need, till more facts enable a fuller and better presentation of the difficult subject. NEW YORK, _August, 1893._ CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER I. A LOOK BACKWARD 25 II. EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY 57 III. EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR WOMEN 77 IV. RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE PRESENT TIME 95 V. LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN RELATION TO WOMEN 111 VI. PRESENT WAGE-RATES IN THE UNITED STATES 126 VII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS 142 VIII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL WORKERS 161 IX. GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES 188 X. GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES 199 XI. SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES 212 XII. REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS 249 APPENDIX. FACTORY INSPECTION LAW 275 AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN PREPARING THIS BOOK 291 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WOMAN'S LABOR AND OF THE WOMAN QUESTION 294 INDEX 305 WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS; THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE. INTRODUCTION The one great question that to-day agitates the whole civilized world is an economic question. It is not the production but the distribution of wealth; in other words, the wages question,--the wages of men and women. Nowhere do we find any suggestion that capital and the landlord do not receive a _quid pro quo_. Instead, the whole labor world cries out that the capitalist and the landlord are enslaving the rest of the world, and absorbing the lion's share of the joint production. So long as it is a question of production only, there is perfect harmony. Both unite in agreeing that to produce as much as possible is for the interest of each. The conflict begins with distribution. It is no longer a war of one nation with another; it is internecine war, destroying the foundations of our own defences, and making enemies of those who should be brothers. It is impossible for even the most dispassionate or indifferent observer to blink these facts. Proclaim as we may that there is no antagonism between capital and labor,--that their interests are one, and that conditions and opportunities for the worker are always better and better,--practical thinkers and workers deny this conclusion. Wealth has enormously increased, in a far greater ratio than population. Does the laborer receive his due proportion of this increase? One must unhesitatingly answer no. In a country whose life began in the search for freedom, and which professes to give equal opportunity to all, more startling inequality exists than in any other in the civilized world. One of our ablest lawyers, Thomas G. Shearman, has lately written:-- "Our old equality is gone. So far from being the most equal people on the face of the earth, as we once boasted that we were, ours is now the most unequal of civilized nations. We talk about the wealth of the British aristocracy and about the poverty of the British poor. There is not in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland so striking a contrast, so wide a chasm, between rich and poor as in these United States of America. There is no man in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland who is as wealthy as one of some half-a-dozen men who could be named in this country; and there are few there who could be poorer than some that could be found in this country. It is true that there is a larger number of the extremely poor in Great Britain and Ireland than there is in this country, but it is not true that there is any more desperate poverty in any civilized country than ours; and it is unquestionably not true that there is any greater mass of riches concentrated in a few hands in any country than this." This for America. For England the tale is much the same. "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with its passionate demand that the rich open their eyes to see the misery, degradation, and want seething in London slums, is but another putting of the words of the serious, scientific observer of facts, Huxley himself, who has described an East End parish in which he spent some of his earliest years. Over that parish, he says, might have been written Dante's inscription over the entrance to the Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." After speaking of its physical misery and its supernatural and perfectly astonishing deadness, he says that he embarked on a voyage round the world, and had the opportunity of seeing savage life in all conceivable conditions of savage degradation; and he writes:-- "I assure you I found nothing worse, nothing more degrading, nothing so hopeless, nothing nearly so intolerably dull and miserable as the life I left behind me in the East End of London. Were the alternative presented to me, I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of those people in Christian London. Nothing would please me better--not even to discover a new truth--than to contribute toward the bettering of that state of things which, unless wise and benevolent men take it in hand, will tend to become worse, and to create something worse than savagery,--a great Serbonian bog, which in the long run will swallow up the surface crust of civilization." In a year and more of continuous observation and study of working conditions in England and on the Continent, some of which will find place later, my own conclusion was the same. The young emperor of Germany, hotheaded, obstinate, and self-willed as he may be, is working it would seem from as radical a conviction of deep wrong in the distributive system. The Berlin Labor Conference, whose chief effort seems to have been against child-labor and in favor of excluding women from the mines, or at least reducing hours, and forbidding certain of the heavier forms of labor, is but an echo of the great dock-strikes of London and the cry of all workers the world over for a better chance. The capitalist seeks to hold his own, the laborer demands larger share of the product; and how to render unto each his due is the great politico-economic question,--the absorbing question of our time. We have found, then, that the problem is economic, and concerns distribution only. There is no complaint that the capitalist fails to secure his share. On the contrary, even among the well-to-do, deep-seated alarm is evidenced at the rise and progress of innumerable trusts and syndicates, eliminating competition, which restricts production and raises prices. They make their own conditions; drive from the field small tradesmen and petty industries, or absorb them on their own terms. Rings of every description in the political and the working world combine for general spoliation, and the honest worker's money jingles in every pocket but his own. Granting all that may be urged as to the capitalists' investment of brain-power and acquired skill, as well as of money with all the risks involved, they are the inactive rather than the active factors in production. They give of their store, while labor gives of its life. Their view is to be reconstructed, and profit-sharing become as much a part of any industry as profit-making. This is a growing conviction; nor can we wonder that realization of its justice and its possibilities has been a matter of very recent consideration. An often repeated formula becomes at last ingrained in the mental constitution, and any question as to its truth is a sharp shock to the whole structure. We have been so certain of the surpassing advantages of our own country, so certain that liberty and a chance were the portion of all, that to confront the real conditions in our great cities is to most as unreal as a nightmare. We have conceded at last, forced to it by the concessions of all students of our economic problems, that the laborer does not yet receive his fair share of the world's wealth; and the economic thought of the whole world is now devoted to the devising of means by which he may receive his due. There is no longer much question as to facts; they are only too palpable. Distribution must be reorganized, and haste must be made to discover how. It is the wages problem, then, with which we are to deal,--the wages of men and women; and we must look at it in its largest, most universal aspects. We must dismiss at once any prejudice born of the ignorance, incompetency, or untrustworthiness of many workers. Character is a plant of slow growth; and given the same conditions of birth, education, and general environment it is quite possible we should have made no better showing. We have to-day three questions to be answered:-- 1. Why do men not receive a just wage? 2. Why are women in like case? 3. Why do men receive a greater wage than women? First, Why do not men receive a greater wage than they do? can be answered only suggestively, since volumes may be and have been written on all the points involved. For skilled and unskilled labor alike, the differences in industrial efficiency go far toward regulating the wage, and have been grouped under six heads by General Frances A. Walker, whose volume on the Wages Question is a thoughtful and careful study of the problem from the beginning. These heads are--1. "Peculiarities of stock and breeding. 2. The meagreness or liberality of diet. 3. Habits voluntarily or involuntarily formed respecting cleanliness of the person, and purity of the air and water. 4. The general intelligence of the laborer. 5. Technical education and industrial environment. 6. Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing out of self-respect and social ambition and the laborer's interest in his work." With this in mind, we must accept the fact that the value of the laborer's services to the employer is the net result of two elements,--one positive, one negative; namely, work and waste. Under this head of waste come breakage, undue wear and tear of implements, destruction or injury of materials, the cost of supervision of idle or blundering men, and often the hindrance of many by the fault of one. Modern processes involve so much of this order of waste that often there is doubt if work is worth having or not, and the unskilled laborer is either rejected or receives only a boy's wage. The various schools of political economists differ widely as to the facts which have formulated themselves in what is known as the iron law of wages; this meaning that wages are said to tend increasingly to a minimum which will give but a bare living. For skilled labor the law may be regarded as elastic rather than iron. For unskilled, it is as certainly the tendency, which, if constantly repeated and so intensified, would end as law. Many standard economists regard it as already fixed; and writers like Lasalle, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Marx heap every denunciation upon it. Were the fact actually established, no words could be too strong or too bitter to define this new form of slavery. The standard of life and comfort affects the wages of labor, and there is constant effort to make the wage correspond to this standard. It is an unending and often bitter struggle, nowhere better summed up than by Thorold Rogers in his "Six Centuries of Work and Wages,"--a work upon which economists, however different their conclusions, rely alike for facts and figures. We must then admit in degree the tendency of wages to a minimum, especially those of unskilled labor, and accept it as one more motive for persistent effort to alter existing conditions and prevent any such culmination. Take now, in connection with the six heads mentioned as governing the present efficiency of labor, the five enumerated by Adam Smith in his summary of causes for differences in wages: 1. "The agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves. 2. The easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them. 3. The constancy or inconstancy of employment in them. 4. The small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them. 5. The probability or improbability of success in them." These are conditions which affect the man's right to large or small wage; but all of them presuppose that men are perfectly free to look over the whole industrial field and choose their own employment,--they presuppose the perfect mobility of labor. Let us see what this means. The theoretical mobility of labor rests upon the assumption that laborers of every order will in all ways and at all times pursue their economic interests; but the actual fact is that so far from seeking labor under the most perfect conditions for obtaining it, nearly half of all humankind are "bound in fetters of race and speech and religion and caste, of tradition and habit and ignorance of the world, of poverty and ineptitude and inertia, which practically exclude them from the competitions of the world's industry." "Man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported," was written by Adam Smith long ago; and this stands in the way of really free and unhampered competition. Mr. Frederick Harrison, one of the clearest thinkers of the day, has well defined the difference between the seller and the producer of a commodity. He says:-- "In most cases the seller of a commodity can send it or carry it from place to place, and market to market, with perfect ease. He need not be on the spot; he generally can send a sample; he usually treats by correspondence. A merchant sits in his counting-room, and by a few letters and forms transports and distributes the subsistence of a whole city from continent to continent. In other cases, as the shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of passing multitudes supplies the want of locomotion for him. This is a true market. Here competition acts rapidly, fully, simply, fairly. It is totally otherwise with a day laborer who has no commodity to sell. He must himself be present at every market, which means costly, personal locomotion. He cannot correspond with his employer; he cannot send a sample of his strength, nor do employers knock at his cottage door." It is plain, then, that many causes are at work to depress the wages even of skilled workers, far more than can be enumerated here. If this is true for men, how much more strongly can limitations be stated for women, as we ask, "Why do not women receive a better wage?" Many of the reasons are historical, and must be considered in their origin and growth. Taking her as worker to-day, precisely the same general causes are in operation that govern the wages of men, with the added disability of sex, always in the way of equal mobility of labor. Wherever for any reason there is immobility of labor, there is always lowering of the wage rate. The trades and general industries for which women are suited are highly localized. They focus in the cities and large towns, and women must seek them there. Great manufactories drain the surrounding country; yet even with these opportunities an analysis of the industrial statistics of the United States by General Walker showed that the women workers of the country made up but seven per cent of the entire population. Eagerly as they seek work, it is far more difficult for them to obtain it than for men. They require to be much more mobile and active in their move toward the labor market, yet are disabled by timidity, by physical weakness, and by their liability to insult or outrage arising from the fact of sex. Men who would secure a place tramp from town to town, from street to street, or shop to shop, persisting through all rebuffs, till their end is accomplished. They go into suspicious and doubtful localities, encounter strangers, and sleep among casual companions. In this fashion they relieve the pressure at congested points, and keep the mass fluid. For women, save in the slight degree included in the country girl's journey to town or city where cotton or woollen mills offer an opening for work, this course is impossible. Ignorant, fearful, poor, and unprotected, the lions in her way are these very facts. Added to this natural disqualification, comes another,--in the lack of sympathy for her needs, and in the prejudice which hedges about all her movements. In every trade she has sought to enter, men have barred the way. In a speech made before the House of Commons in 1873, Henry Fawcett drew attention to the persistent resistance of men to any admission of women on the same terms with themselves. He said:-- "We cannot forget that some years ago certain trade-unionists in the potteries imperatively insisted that a certain rest for the arm which they found almost essential to their work should not be used by women engaged in the same employment. Not long since, the London tailors, when on a strike, having never admitted a woman to their union, attempted to coerce women from availing themselves of the remunerative employment which was offered them in consequence of the strike. But this jealousy of woman's labor has not been entirely confined to workmen. The same feeling has extended itself through every class of society. Last autumn a large number of post-office clerks objected to the employment of women in the Post-Office." Driven by want, they had pressed into agricultural labor as well, and found equal opposition there also. Mr. Fawcett in the same speech calls attention to the fact of the non-admission of women to the Agricultural Laborers' Union, on the ground that "the agricultural laborers of the country do not wish to recognize the labor of women." There is more or less reason for such feeling. It arises in part from the newness of the occasion, since in the story of labor as a whole, soon to be considered by us in detail, it is only the last fifty years that have seen women taking an active part. We have already seen that mobility of labor is one of the first essentials, and that women are far more limited in this respect than men. This brings us to the final question,--Why do men receive a larger wage than women? The conditions already outlined are in part responsible, but with them is bound up another even more formidable. Custom, the law of many centuries, has so ingrained its thought in the constitution of men that it is naturally and inevitably taken for granted that every woman who seeks work is the appendage of some man, and therefore, partially at least, supported. Other facts bias the employer against the payment of the same wage. The girl's education is usually less practical than the boy's; and as most, at least among the less intelligent class, regard a trade as a makeshift to be used as a crutch till a husband appears, the work involved is often done carelessly and with little or no interest. With unintelligent labor wastage is greater, and wages proportionately lower; and here we have one chief reason for the difference. Others will disclose themselves as we go on. Unskilled labor then, it is plain, must be in evil case, and it is unskilled laborers that are in the majority. For men this means pick and spade at such rates as may be fixed; for women the needle, and its myriad forms of cheap production; and within these ranks is no sense of real economic interest, but the fiercest and blindest competition among themselves. Mere existence is to a large extent all that is possible, and it is fought for with a fury in strange contrast to the apparent worth of the thing itself. It is this battle with which we have to do; and we must go back to the dawn of the struggle, and discover what has been its course from the beginning, before any future outlook can be determined. The theoretical political economist settles the matter at once. Whatever stress of want or wrong may arise is met by the formula, "law of supply and demand." If labor is in excess, it has simply to mobilize and seek fresh channels. That hard immovable facts are in the way, that moral difficulties face one at every turn, and that the ethical side of the problem is a matter of comparatively recent consideration, makes no difference. Let us discover what show of right is on the economist's side, and how far present conditions are a necessity of the time. It is women on whom the facts weigh most heavily, and whose fortunes are most tangled in this web woven from the beginning of time, and from that beginning drenched with the tears and stained by the blood of workers in all climes and in every age. As women we are bound, by every law of justice, to aid all other women in their struggle. We are equally bound to define the nature, the necessities, and the limits of such struggle; and it is to this end that we seek now to discover, through such light as past and present may cast, the future for women workers the world over. I. A LOOK BACKWARD. The history of women as wage-earners is actually comprised within the limits of a few centuries; but her history as a worker runs much farther back, and if given in full, would mean the whole history of working humanity. The position of working women all over the civilized world is still affected not only by the traditions but by the direct inheritance of the past, and thus the nature of that inheritance must be understood before passing to any detailed consideration of the subject under its various divisions. It is the conditions underlying history and rooted in the facts of human life itself which we must know, since from the beginning life and work have been practically synonymous, and in the nature of things remain so. In the shadows of that far remote infancy of the world where from cave-dweller and mere predatory animal man by slow degrees moved toward a higher development, the story of woman goes side by side with his. For neither is there record beyond the scattered implements of the stone age and the rude drawings of the cave-dwellers, from which one may see that warfare was the chief life of both. The subjugation of the weaker by the stronger is the story of all time; the "survival of the fittest," the modern summary of that struggle. Naturally, slavery was the first result, and servitude for one side the outcome of all struggle. Physical facts worked with man's will in the matter, and early rendered woman subordinate physically and dependent economically. The origin of this dependence is given with admirable force and fulness by Professor Lester F. Ward in his "Dynamic Sociology":[1]-- In the struggle for supremacy, "woman at once became property, since anything that affords its possessor gratification is property. Woman was capable of affording man the highest of gratifications, and therefore became property of the highest value. Marriage, under the prevailing form, became the symbol of transfer of ownership, in the same manner as the formal seizing of lands. The passage from sexual service to manual service on the part of women was perfectly natural.... And thus we find that the women of most savage tribes perform the manual and servile labor of the camp." "The basis of all oppression is economic dependence on the oppressor," is the word of a very keen thinker and worker in the German Reichstag to-day; and he adds: "This has been the condition of women in the past, and it still is so. Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed." Science has demonstrated that in all rude races the size and weight of the brain differ far less according to sex than is the case in civilized nations. Physical strength is the same, with the advantage at times on the side of the woman, as in certain African tribes to-day, over which tribes this fact has given them the mastery. Primeval woman, all attainable evidence goes to show, started more nearly equal in the race, but became the inferior of man, when periods of child-bearing rendered her helpless and forced her to look to him for assistance, support, and protection. When the struggle for existence was in its lowest and most brutal form, and man respected nothing but force, the disabled member of society, if man, was disposed of by stab or blow; if woman, and valuable as breeder of fresh fighters, simply reduced to slavery and passive obedience. Marriage in any modern sense was unknown. A large proportion of female infants were killed at birth. Battle, with its recurring periods of flight or victory, made it essential that every tribe should free itself from all _impedimenta_. It was easier to capture women by force than to bring them up from infancy, and thus the childhood of the world meant a state in which the child had little place, save as a small, fierce animal, whose development meant only a change from infancy and its helplessness to boyhood and its capacity for fight. Out of this chaos of discordant elements, struggling unconsciously toward social form, emerged by slow degrees the tribe and the nation, the suggestions of institutions and laws and the first principles of the social state. Master and servant, employer and employed, became facts; and dim suspicions as to economic laws were penetrating the minds of the early thinkers. The earliest coherent thought on economic problems comes to us from the Greeks, among whom economic speculation had begun almost a thousand years before Christ. The problem of work and wages was even then forming,--the sharply accented difference between theirs and ours lying in the fact that for Greek and Roman and the earlier peoples in the Indies economic life was based upon slavery, accepted then as the foundation stone of the economic social system. Up to the day when Greek thought on economic questions formulated, in Aristotle's "Politics" and "Economics," the first logical statement of principles, knowledge as to actual conditions for women is chiefly inferential. When a slave, she was like other slaves, regarded as soulless; and she still is, under Mohammedanism. As lawful wife she was physically restrained and repressed, and mentally far more so. A Greek matron was one degree higher than her servants; but her own sons were her masters, to whom she owed obedience. A striking illustration of this is given in the Odyssey. Telemachus, feeling that he has come to man's estate, invades the ranks of the suitors who had for years pressed about Penelope, and orders her to retire to her own apartments, which she does in silence. Yet she was honored above most, passive and prompt obedience being one of her chief charms. Deep pondering brought about for Aristotle a view which verges toward breadth and understanding, but is perpetually vitiated by the fact that he regards woman as in no sense an individual existence. If all goes well and prosperously, women deserve no credit; if ill, they may gain renown through their husbands, the philosopher remarking: "Neither would Alcestis have gained such renown, nor Penelope have been deemed worthy of such praise, had they respectively lived with their husbands in prosperous circumstances; and it is the sufferings of Admetus and Ulysses which have given them everlasting fame." This is Aristotle's view of women's share in the life they lived; yet gleams of something higher more than once came to him, and in the eighth chapter of the "Economics," he adds: "Justly to love her husband with reverence and respect, and to be loved in turn, is that which befits a wife of gentle birth, as to her intercourse with her own husband." Ulysses, in his address to Nausicaa, says:-- "There is no fairer thing Than when the lord and lady with one soul One home possess." Aristotle, charmed at the picture, dilates on this "mutual concord of husband and wife, ... not the mere agreement upon servile matters, but that which is justly and harmoniously based on intellect and prudence."[2] Side by side with this picture of a state known to a few only among the noblest, must be placed the lament of "Iphigenia in Tauris": "The condition of women is worse than that of all human beings. If man is favored by fortune, he becomes a ruler, and wins fame on the battlefield; and if the gods have ordained him his fortune, he is the first to die a fair death among his people. But the joys of woman are narrowly compassed: she is given unasked, in marriage, by others, often to strangers; and when she is dragged away by the victor through the smoking ruins, there is none to rescue her." Thucydides, who had already expressed the opinion quoted by many a modern Philistine,--"The wife who deserves the highest praise is she of whom one hears neither good nor evil outside her own house,"--anticipates a later verdict, in words that might have been the foundation of Iphigenia's lament:-- "Woman is more evil than the storm-tossed waves, than the heat of fire, than the fall of the wild cataract! If it was a god who created woman, wherever he may be, let him know that he is the unhappy author of the greatest ills." This was a summary of the Greek view as a whole. Sparta trained her girls and boys alike in childhood; but the theories of Lycurgus, admirable at some points, were brutal and short-sighted at others, and Sparta demonstrated that the extinction of all desire for beauty or ease or culture brings with it as disastrous results as its extreme opposite. It is Athens that sums up the highest product of Greek thought, and that represents a civilization which from the purely intellectual side has had no successor. Yet even here was almost absolute obtuseness and indifference, on the part of the aristocracy, to the intolerable bondage of the masses. "The people," as spoken of by their historians and philosophers, mean simply a middle class, the humblest member of which owned at least one slave. The slaves themselves, the real "masses," had no political or social existence more than the horses with which they were sent to the river to drink. In any scheme of political economy Aristotle's words, in the first book of the "Politics," were the keynote: "The science of the master reduces itself to knowing how to make use of the slave. He is the master, not because he is the owner of the man, but because he knows how to make use of his property." In fact, according to this chivalrous philosopher, the man was the head of the family in three distinct capacities; for he says: "Now a freeman governs his slave in the manner the male governs the female, and in another manner the father governs his child; and these have the different parts of the soul within them, but in a different manner. Thus a slave can have no deliberative faculty; a woman but a weak one, a child an imperfect one." That liberty could be their right appears to have been not even suspected. Yet out from these dumb masses of humanity, regarded less than brutes, toiling naked under summer sun or in winter cold, chained in mines, men and women alike, and when the whim came, massacred in troops, sounded at intervals a voice demanding the liberty denied. It was quickly stifled. The record is there for all to read; stifled again and again, from Drimakos the Chian slave to Spartacus at Rome, yet each protest from this unknown army of martyrs was one step onward toward the emancipation to come. In each revolution, however small, two parties confronted each other,--the people who wished to live by the labor of others, the people who wished to live by their own labor,--the former denying in word and deed the claim of the latter. Such conditions, as we proved in our own experience of slavery, benumb spiritual perception and make clear vision impossible; and it is plain that if the mass of workers had neither political nor social place, woman, the slave of the slave, had even less. Her wage had never been fixed. That she had right to one had entered no imagination. To the end of Greek civilization a wage remained the right of free labor only. The slave, save by special permit of the master, had right only to bare subsistence; and though men and women toiled side by side, in mine or field or quarry, there was, even with the abolition of slavery, small betterment of the condition of women. The degradation of labor was so complete, even for the freeman, that the most pronounced aversion to taking a wage ruled among the entire educated class. Plato abhorred a sophist who would work for wages. A gift was legitimate, but pay ignoble; and the stigma of asking for and taking pay rested upon all labor. The abolition of slavery made small difference, for the taint had sunk in too deeply to be eradicated. A curse rested upon all labor; and even now, after four thousand years of vacillating progress and retrogression, it lingers still. The ancients were, in the nature of things, all fighters. Even when slavery for both the Aryan and Semitic races ended, two orders still faced each other: aristocracy on the one side, claiming the fruits of labor; the freeman on the other, rebelling against injustice, and forming secret unions for his own protection,--the beginning of the co-operative principle in action. Thus much for the Greek. Turn now to the second great civilization, the Roman. During the first centuries after the founding of Rome the Roman woman had no rights whatever, her condition being as abject as that of the Grecian. With the growth of riches and of power in the State, more social but still no legal freedom was accorded. The elder Cato complained of the allowing of more liberty, and urged that every father of a family should keep his wife in the proper state of servility; but in spite of this remonstrance, a movement for the better had begun. Under the Empire, woman acquired the right of inheritance, but she herself remained a minor, and could dispose of nothing without the consent of her guardian. Sir Henry Maine[3] calls attention to the institution known to the oldest Roman law as the "Perpetual Tutelage of Women," under which a female, though relieved from her parent's authority by his decease, continues subject through life. Various schemes were devised to enable her to defeat ancient rules; and by their theory of "Natural Law," the jurisconsults had evidently assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of their code of equity. Few more significant words or words more teeming with importance on the actual economic condition of women have ever been written than those of the great jurist whose name counts as almost final authority. "Ancient law," he writes, "subordinates the woman to her blood relations, while a prime phenomenon of modern jurisprudence has been her subordination to her husband." Under the modified laws as to marriage, he goes on to state, there came a time "when the situation of the Roman female, unmarried or married, became one of great personal and proprietary independence; for the tendency of the later law, as already hinted, was to reduce the power of the guardian to a nullity, while the form of marriage in fashion conferred on the husband no compensating superiority." These were the final conditions for the Roman, whose power, sapped by long excesses, was even then trembling to its fall. Already the barbarians threatened them, and at various points had penetrated the Empire, showing to the amazed Romans morals absolutely opposed to their own. The German races contented themselves with one wife; and Tacitus wrote of them: "Their marriages are very strict. No one laughs at vice, nor is immorality regarded as a sign of good breeding. The young men marry late,--they marry equal in years and in health, and the strength of the parent is transmitted to the children." This has a rosier aspect than facts warrant. For the Germans, as for other barbarians of that epoch, the patriarchal family was the social order, and the head of the family the lord of the community. Wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law were excluded from leadership, though in spite of this there is record of a woman as being occasionally at the head of a tribe,--a circumstance chronicled by Tacitus with much disgust. While from the West this gigantic wave of powerful but uncultured life was flowing in, from the East had come another. Early Christianity had already established itself, and its ascetic teachings made another element in the contradictions of the time. Up to this date slavery had been the foundation of society, and any amelioration in the condition of women had applied only to the patrician class. The Carpenter of Nazareth set his seal upon the sacredness of labor, and taught first not only the rights but the immeasurable value of even the weakest human soul. Women were ardent converts to the new gospel. Hoping with all the wretched for redemption and deliverance from present evils, they became eager and devoted adherents. Their missionary zeal was a powerful agent in the early days of Christianity. "In the first enthusiasm of the Christian movement," says Principal Donaldson, in his notable article on "Women among the Early Christians," in the "Fortnightly Review," "women were allowed to do whatever they were fitted to do." All this within a few generations came to an end. Widows of sixty and over retained the power which had been given, and a new order arose,--deaconesses who were not allowed marriage. Neither widows nor deaconesses could teach, the Church being especially jealous in this respect and in substantial agreement with Sophocles, who said, "Silence is a woman's ornament." Tertullian waxes furious over the thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message-woman, her economic dependence upon man being absolute. Social problems remained chiefly untouched. No objection was made to the existence of slavery. In this gospel of love the Christian slave became the brother of all, and kindliness was his right; but their faith demanded contentment with all present ills, since a glorious future was to compensate them. A Christian slave-woman was the property of her master, who had absolute power over her; but no objection seems to have been made to this. In the mean time many doubts as to marriage seem to have arisen. Paul had set his seal on the subjection of women, and Peter followed suit. Antagonism to marriage grew and intensified, till hardly a Father of the early Church but fulminated against it. Fiercest, loudest, and most heeded of all, the voice of Tertullian still sounds down the ages. This is his address to women: "Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die." Clement of Alexandria supplemented this verdict with one as bitter, and Cyprian and the rest echoed the general anathema. As marriage grew thus more and more degraded, the number of the women in the world steadily increased, and posterity in like ratio deteriorated. The summary of Principal Donaldson, in the article already referred to, is the keynote to the whole situation. "The less spiritual classes of the people, the laymen, being taught that marriage might be licentious, and that it implied an inferior state of sanctity, were rather inclined to neglect matrimony for more loose connections; and it was these people alone that then peopled the world. It was the survival of the unfittest. The noble men and women, on the other hand, who were dominated by the loftiest aspirations and exhibited the greatest temperance, self-control, and virtue, left no children." Sir Henry Maine comes to the same conclusion, and deplores the fact of the loss of liberty for women, adding: "The prevalent state of religious sentiment may explain why it is that modern jurisprudence, forged in the furnace of barbarian conquest, and formed by the fusion of Roman jurisprudence with patriarchal usage, has absorbed among its rudiments much more than usual of those rules concerning the position of women which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization." And he adds words which come from a man who is a good Christian as well as a profound student: "No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law." Passing now to the Middle Ages, we find conditions curiously involved. The exaltation of celibacy as the true condition for the religious, and the consequent enormous increase of convents, placed fresh barriers in the way of marriage; and the Church having attracted the gentle and devoted among the women and the more intelligent among the men, the reproduction of the species was for the most part still left to the brutal and ignorant, thus leading to a survival of the unfittest to aid in any advancement of the race. The number of women far exceeded that of men, who died not only from constant feuds and struggles, but from many pestilences, which naturally, in a day when sanitary laws were unknown, ravaged the country. Dr. Karl Bücher, commenting on the relation of this fact to the life of women at that time, notes that from 1336 to 1400 thirty-two years of plague occurred, forty-two between 1400 and 1500, and thirty between 1500 and 1600. In addition to the convents, which received the well-to-do, many towns established Bettina institutions, houses of God, where destitute women were cared for; but it was impossible for all who sought admittance to be provided for. The feudal system, with its absolute power over its serfs, had driven thousands into open revolt; and beggars, highwaymen, and robbers made life perilous and trade impossible. The towns banded together for protection of life and industry, and thus developed the guild of the Middle Ages. Relieved from the fear of free-booting barons, no less dangerous than the hordes of organized robbers, these guilds grew populous and powerful. Licentiousness did not, however, lessen. Luther thundered against it, before his own revolt came; and the Reformation demanded marriage as the right and privilege of a people falsely taught its debasing and unholy nature. We count the days of chivalry as the paradise of women. Chivalry was for the few, not the many; for the mass of women was still the utter degradation of a barbarous past, and the burden of grinding laws resulting from it. With the Reformation, Germany ceased to be the centre of European traffic; and Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England took the lead in quick succession, England retaining it to the present time. German commerce and trade steadily declined; and as the guilds saw their importance and profits lessen, they made fresh and more stringent regulations against all new-comers. Competitors of every order were refused admission. Heavy taxes on settlement, costly master-examinations, limitations of every trade to a certain number of masters and journeymen, forced thousands into dependence from which there was no escape. Looking at the time as a whole, one sees clearly how old distinctions had become obliterated. Wealth found new definitions. The Church had made poverty the highest state, and insisted, as she does in part to-day, that the suffering and deprivation of one class were ordained of God to draw out the sympathies of the other. The rich must save their souls by alms and endowments, and contentment and acquiescence were to be the virtues of the poor. Insensibly this view was modified. Charlemagne, whose extraordinary personal power and common-sense moulded men at will, set an example no monarch had ever set before. He ordered the sale of eggs from his hens and the vegetables from his gardens; and, scorn it as they might, his sneering nobles insensibly modified their own thought and action. Commerce brought the people and products of new countries face to face. The lines of caste, as sharply defined within the labor world as without, were gradually dimmed or obliterated. The practice of credit and exchange, largely the creation of the persecuted Jews, made easy the interchange of commodities. Saint Louis himself organized industry, and divided the trades into brotherhoods, put under the protection of the saints from the tyranny of the barons and of the feudal system which had weighted all industry. Reform began in the year 1257, in the "Institutions" of Saint Louis,--a set of clear and definite rules for the development of public wealth and the general good of the people. In their first joy at this escape from long-continued oppression, many of the towns of the Middle Ages had admitted women to citizenship on an equal footing with men. In 1160 Louis le Jeune, of France, granted to Theci, wife of Yves, and to her heirs, the grand-mastership of the five trades of cobblers, belt-makers, sweaters, leather-dressers, and purse-makers. In Frankfort and the Silesian towns there were female furriers; along the middle Rhine many female bakers were at work. Cologne and Strasburg had female saddlers and embroiderers of coats-of-arms. Frankfort had female tailors, Nuremburg female tanners, and in Cologne were several skilled female goldsmiths. Twelve hundred years of struggle toward some sort of justice seemed likely at this point to be lost, for with the opening of the thirteenth century each and all of the guilds proceeded to expel every woman in the trades. It is a curious fact in the story of all societies approaching dissolution, that its defenders adopt the very means best adapted to hasten this end. Each corporation dreaded an increase of numbers, and restricted marriages, and reduced the number of independent citizens. Many towns placed themselves voluntarily under the rule of princes who in turn were trying to subjugate the nobility, and so protected the towns and accorded all sorts of rights and privileges. The Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to 1648, decimated the German population, and reduced still further the possibility of marriage for many. Forced out of trades, women had only the lowest, most menial forms of trade labor as resort, and their position was to all appearance nearly hopeless. In spite of this, certain trades were practically woman's. Embroidery of church vestments and hangings had been brought to the highest perfection. Lace-making had been known from the most ancient times; and Colbert, the famous financier and minister for Louis XIV., gave a privilege to Madame Gilbert, of Alençon, to introduce into France the manufacture of both Flemish and Venetian Point, and placed in her hands for the first expenses 150,000 francs. The manufacture spread over every country of Europe, though in 1640 the Parliament of Toulouse sought to drive out women from the employment, on the plea that the domestic were her only legitimate occupations. A monk came to the rescue, and demonstrated that spinning, weaving, and all forms of preparing and decorating stuffs had been hers from the beginning of time, and thus for a season averted further action. The monk had learned his lesson better than most of the workmen who sought to curtail woman's opportunities. In the chronicles of that time there is full description of the workshops which formed part of every great estate, that known as the _gynæceum_ being devoted to the women and children, who spun, wove, made up, and embroidered stuffs of every order. The Abbey of Niederalteich had such a _gynæceum_, in which twenty-two women and children worked, while that of Stephenswert employed twenty-four; co-operation in such labor having been found more advantageous than isolated work. Before the tenth century these workshops had been established at many points. If part of a feudal manor, the wife of its lord acted often as overseer; if attached to some abbey, a general overlooker filled the same place. In the convents manual labor came into favor; and the spinning, weaving, and dyeing of stuffs occupied a large part of the life. Apprenticeship for both male and female was finally well established, and many women became the successful heads of prosperous industries. The wage was, as it is to-day, the merest pittance; but any wage whatever was an advance upon the conditions of earlier servitude. Life had small joy for women in those days we call the "good old times." Take the married woman, the house-mother of that period. She not only lived in the strictest retirement, but her duties were so complex and manifold that, to quote Bebel, "a conscientious housewife had to be at her post from early in the morning till late at night in order to fulfil them. It was not only a question of the daily household duties that still fall to the lot of the middle-class housekeeper, but of many others from which she has been entirely freed by the modern development of industry, and the extension of means of transport. She had to spin, weave, and bleach; to make all the linen and clothes, to boil soap, to make candles and brew beer. In addition to these occupations, she frequently had to work in the field or garden and to attend to the poultry and cattle. In short, she was a veritable Cinderella, and her solitary recreation was going to church on Sunday. Marriages only took place within the same social circles; the most rigid and absurd spirit of caste ruled everything, and brooked no transgression of its law. The daughters were educated on the same principles; they were kept in strict home seclusion; their mental development was of the lowest order, and did not extend beyond the narrowest limits of household life. And all this was crowned by an empty and meaningless etiquette, whose part it was to replace mind and culture, and which made life altogether, and especially that of a woman, a perfect treadmill of labor." How was it possible that a condition as joyless and fruitless as this should be the accepted ideal of womanhood? Already the question is answered. For ages her identity had been merged in that of the man by whose side she worked with no thought of recompense. She toiled early and late, filling the office of general helper on the same terms; and even to-day, under our own eyes, the wife of many a farmer goes through her married life often not touching five dollars in cash in an entire year. Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. Intellectual qualities, forever at a discount, repressed development save in rarest cases. The mass of women had neither power nor wish to protest; and thus the few traces we find of their earliest connection with labor show us that they accepted bare subsistence as all to which they were entitled, and were grateful if they escaped the beating which the lower order of Englishman still regards it as his right to give. Even in our own country and our own time this theory is not altogether extinct. The papers only recently contained an account of the brutal beating of a woman by a man. The woman in remonstrating cried, "You have no right to beat me! I am not your wife!" During the Middle Ages, and indeed well into the nineteenth century, possession of property by women was confined to the unmarried, the entire control and practical ownership passing to the husband upon marriage. Change comes at last to even the most fossilized thought. One by one, social institutions clung to with fiercest tenacity fell away. Barbaric independence had followed Greek and Roman slavery, which in turn was succeeded by feudal servitude, to reappear once more in the affranchised communes. Each experiment had its season, and sunk into the darkness of the past, to give place to a new one, which must transmit to posterity the principal and interest of all preceding ones. But though progress when taken in the mass is plain, the individual years in each generation show small trace of it. Even as late as the sixteenth century, the workman fared little better than the brutes. Erasmus tells us that their houses had no chimneys, and their floors were bare ground; while Fortescue, who travelled in France at the same time, reports a misery and degradation which have had vivid portraiture in Taine's "Ancien Régime." A flood of wealth poured in on the discovery of the New World. The invention of gunpowder put a new face upon warfare, and that of printing made possible the cheap and wide dissemination of long-smouldering ideas. Economic problems perplexed every country, and on all sides methods of solving them were put in action. Sully, who found in Henry IV. of France an ardent supporter of his wishes for her prosperity, had altered and systematized taxes, and introduced a multitude of reforms in general administration; and later, Colbert did even more notable work. The Italian Republics had made their noble code of commercial rules and maxims. The Dutch had given to the world one of the most wonderful examples of what man may accomplish by sheer pluck and persistent hard work, and commercial institutions founded on a principle of liberty; and neither the terror of the Spanish rule nor the jealousy of England had destroyed her power. Credit, banking, all modern forms of exchange were coming into use; and agriculture, which the feudal system had kept in a state of torpor, awakened and became a productive power. Side by side with this were gigantic speculations, like that of John Law and the East India Company, with the helpless ruin of its collapse. The time was ripe for the formulation of some system of economic laws; and two men who had long pondered them, De Gournay and Quesnay, made the first attempt to explain the meaning of wealth and its distribution. After Quesnay and his system, still holding honorable place, came Turgot; after Turgot, Adam Smith; and thenceforward halt is impossible, and economic science marches on with giant strides. In all this progress woman had shared many of the material benefits, but her industrial position had altered but slightly. Driven from the trades, she had passed into the ranks of agricultural laborers; and Thorold Rogers, in his "Work and Wages," records her early work in this direction. France held the most enlightened view, and even then women took active part in business, and had a position unknown in any other country; but they had no place in any system of the economists, nor did their labor count as a force to be enumerated. Slowly machinery was making its way, feared and hated by the lower order of workers, eyed distrustfully and uncertainly by the higher. Men and women struggling for bare subsistence had become active competitors, till, in 1789, a general petition entitled "Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King" was signed by hundreds of French workers, who, made desperate by starvation and underpay, demanded that every business which included spinning, weaving, sewing, or knitting should be given to women exclusively. Side by side with the wave of political revolution, strongest for France and America, came the industrial revolution; and the opening of the nineteenth century brought with it the myriad changes we are now to face. FOOTNOTES: [1] Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science as based upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences. By Lester F. Ward, A.M., vol. i. p. 649. [2] Economics, book i. chap. ix. [3] Ancient Law, p. 147. II. EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY. For nearly a century and a half, dating from the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, the condition of laboring women was that of the same class in all struggling colonies. There were practically no women wage-earners, save in domestic service, where a home and from thirty to a hundred dollars a year was accounted wealth, the latter sum being given in a few instances to the housekeepers in great houses. Each family represented a commonwealth, and its women gave every energy to the crowding duties of a daily life filled with manifold occupations. The farmer--for all were farmers--was often blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter, and more or less proficient in every trade whose offices were called for in the family life. The farmer's wife spun and wove the cloth he wore and the linen that made his household furnishing, and was dyer and dresser, brewer and baker, seamstress, milliner, and dressmaker. The quickness, adaptiveness to new conditions, and the fertility of resource which are recognized as distinguishing the American, were born of the colonial struggle, especially of the final one which separated us forever from English rule. The wage of the few women found in labor outside the home was gauged by that which had ruled in England. For unskilled labor, as that employed occasionally in agriculture, this had been from one shilling and sixpence for ordinary field work to two shillings a week paid in haying and harvest time. For hoeing corn or rough weeding there is record of one shilling per week, and this is the usual wage for old women. To this were added various allowances which have gradually fallen into disuse. A full record of these and of rates in general will be found in "Six Centuries of Work and Wages."[4] Unskilled labor during the whole colonial period--meaning by this such labor as that of the men who sawed wood, dug ditches, or mended roads, mixed mortar for the mason, carried boards to the carpenter, or cut hay in harvest time--brought a wage of seldom more than two shillings a day, fifteen shillings a week making a man the envy of his fellows, while six or seven was the utmost limit for women of the same order. On this pittance they lived as they could. Sand did duty as carpet for the floor. The cupboard knew no china, and the table no glass. Coal and matches were unknown; they had never seen a stove. The meals of coarsest food were eaten from wooden or pewter dishes. Fresh meat was seldom eaten more than once a week. A pound of salt pork was tenpence, and corn three shillings a bushel. Clothing was as coarse as the food, and imprisonment for the slightest debt was the shadow hanging over every family where illness or any other cause had hindered earning. Boys and girls in the poorer families were employed by the owners of cattle to watch and keep them within bounds, countless troubles arising from their roaming over the unfenced fields. Andover, Mass., being from the beginning of a thrifty turn of mind, passed, soon after the founding of the town, an ordinance which still stands on the town records:-- "The Court did herupon order and decree that in every towne the chosen men are to take care of such as are sett to keep cattle, that they may be sett to some other employment withall, as spinning upon the rock, knitting and weaving tape, &c." Spinning-classes were also formed; the General Court of Massachusetts ordering these in 1656, this being part of the general effort to begin some form of manufactures. But fishing to load ships, and shipbuilding to carry cured fish absorbed the energies of the growing population; and these vessels brought textiles and manufactured goods from the cheapest markets everywhere and anywhere.[5] These "homespun" industries soon showed a tendency toward division. By 1669 much weaving was done outside the home as custom work; and there is record of one Gabriel Harris who died in 1684 leaving four looms and tacklings and a silk loom as part of the small fortune he had accumulated in this way.[6] His six children and some hired women assisted in the work. In 1685 Joseph, the son of Roger Williams, entered in an account book now extant,[7] a credit to "Sarah badkuk [Babcock], for weven and coaming wisted." This work was, however, chiefly in the hands of men. The records of Pepperell, Mass., show that many women saved their pin money, and sent out little ventures in the ships built at home and sailing to all ports with fish. These ventures included articles of clothing, embroideries, and anything that it seemed might be made to yield some return. There were also women of affairs, some of whom took charge of large industries. Thus Weeden, in his "Economic and Social History of New England," quotes from an interesting memorandum left by Madam Martha Smith, a widow of St. George's Manor, Long Island,[8] which shows her practical ability. In January, 1707, "my company" killed a yearling whale, and made twenty-seven barrels of oil. The record gives her success for the year, and the tax she paid to the authorities at New York,--fifteen pounds and fifteen shillings, a twentieth part of her year's gains. Other women oversaw the curing of the fish; but there is no record of the wage beyond the general one which for the earliest days of the colony gives rates for women as from four to eight pence a day without food. These rates followed almost literally those of England at that time. Half of the day's earnings were accounted an equivalent for diet, and contractors for feeding gangs in agriculture, among sailors, or wherever the system was adopted, allowed seven and one-half pence per day a head for men and women alike. Women servants received ten shillings a year wages, and an allowance of four shillings additional for clothing. The working day still remained as fixed by the law late in the fifteenth century,--from five A.M. to eight P.M., from March to September, with half an hour for breakfast, and an hour and a half for dinner. These rates gradually altered, but for women hardly at all, the wages during the eighteenth century ranging from four to six pounds a year. The colony, however, gave opportunities unknown to the mother country, and gardening and the cultivation of small vegetables seem to have fallen much into the hands of women.[9] They had studied the best methods for hotbeds, and grew early vegetables in these, the first record of this being in 1759. Gloves were by this time made at home, buttons covered, and many small industries conducted, all connected with the manufacture and making up of clothing. Patriotic spinning occupied many; and the "Boston News-Letter" has it that often seventy linen-wheels were employed at one gathering. The agitation caused by the Stamp Act turned the attention of all women to the production of cloth as a domestic business. Worcester, Mass., in 1780 formed an association for the spinning and weaving of cotton, and a jenny was bought by subscription.[10] Prices by this time had risen, and in 1776 the Andover records mention that a Miss Holt was paid eighteen shillings for spinning seventy-two skeins, and seven shillings eleven pence for weaving nineteen yards of cloth. Women generally could spin two skeins of linen yarn a day; but there is record of one, a Miss Eleanor Fry of East Greenwich, R.I., who spun seven skeins and one knot in one day,--an amount sufficient to make twelve large lawn handkerchiefs such as were then imported from England. Within four years another Rhode Island family of Newport are recorded in 1768 as having "manufactured nine hundred and eighty yards of woolen cloth, besides two coverlids (coverlets), and two bed-ticks, and all the stocking yarn of the family." The Council of East Greenwich fixed prices at that time at rates which seem purely arbitrary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus for spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins to the pound, the price was not to exceed sixpence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer work in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was the same per skein. Weaving plain flannel or tow or linen brought fivepence per yard; common worsted and linen, one penny a yard; and other linens in like proportion.[11] Silk growing and weaving had been the result of the silkworm cocoons sent over by James the First, who offered bounties of money and tobacco for spun and woven silk according to weight. Three women were famous before the Revolution as silk growers and weavers,--Mrs. Pinckney, Grace Fisher, and Susanna Wright; and at all points where the mulberry-tree was indigenous or could be made to grow, fortune was regarded as assured. The project failed; but the efforts then made paved the way for present experiment, and even better success than that already attained. The manufacture of straw goods, amounting now to many million dollars yearly, owes its origin to a woman,--Miss Betsey Metcalf, who in 1789, when hardly more than a child, discovered the secret of bleaching and braiding the meadow grass of Dedham, her native town. Others were taught, and a regular business of supplying the want for summer hats and bonnets was organized, and has grown to its present large proportions. At this period women widowed by the fortune of war or forced by the absence of all the male members of the family on the field, were often found in business. The mother of Thomas Perkins of Salem, one of the great American merchants, left widowed in 1778, took her husband's place in the counting-house, managed business, despatched ships, sold merchandise, wrote letters, all with such commanding energy that the solid Hollanders wrote to her as to a man.[12] The record of one day's work of Mary Moody Emerson, born in 1777, reads:-- "Rose before light every morn; read Butler's Analogy; commented on the Scriptures; read in a little book Cicero's Letters--a few touches of Shakespeare--washed, carded, cleaned house and baked."[13] There is another woman no less busy, a member of the distinguished Nott family, who did work in her house and helped her boys in the fields. In midwinter, with neither money nor wool in the house, one of the boys required a new suit. The mother sheared the half-grown fleece from a sheep, and in a week had spun, wove, and made it into clothing, the sheep being protected from cold by a wrappage made of braided straw. Details like this would be out of place here did they not serve to accent the fact of the concentration of industries under the home roof, and the necessity that existed for this. But a change was near at hand, and it dates from the first bale of cotton grown in the country. In the early years of the eighteenth century not a manufacturing town existed in New England, and for the whole country it was much the same. A few paper-mills turned out paper hardly better in quality than that which comes to us to-day about our grocery packages. In a foundry or two iron was melted into pigs or beaten into bars and nails. Cocked hats and felts were made in one factory. Cotton was hardly known.[14] De Bow, in his "Industrial Resources of the United States," tells us that a little had been sent to Liverpool just before the battle of Lexington; but linen took the place of all cotton fabrics, and was spun at every hearth in New England. In the eight bales of cotton, grown on a Georgia plantation, sent over to Liverpool in 1784, and seized at the Custom House on the ground that so much cotton could not be produced in America, but must come from some foreign country, lay the seed of a new movement in labor, in which, from the beginning, women have taken larger part than men. By 1800 cotton had proved itself a staple for the Southern States, and even the second war with England hardly hindered the planters. In 1791 two million pounds had been raised; in 1804 forty-eight million; the invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793, stimulating to the utmost the enthusiasm of the South over this new road to fortune. It is with the birth of the cotton industry that the work and wages of women begin to take coherent shape; and the history of the new occupation divides itself roughly into three periods. The first includes the ten or fifteen years prior to 1790, and may be called the experimental period; the second covers the time from 1790 to 1811, in which the spinning-system was established and perfected; and the third the years immediately following 1814, in which came the introduction of the power loom and the growth of the modern factory system. The experimental stage found an enthusiastic worker in the person of Tench Coxe, known often as the "Father of American Industries," whose interest in the beginning was philanthropic rather than commercial. Bent upon employment for idle and destitute workmen, he exhibited in Philadelphia in 1775 the first spinning-jenny seen in America. He had already incorporated the "United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures," and they at once secured the machine and made ready to operate it. Four hundred women were very speedily at work at hand spinning and weaving; and though the company presently turned its attention to woollen fabrics, a large proportion of women was still employed. Till the building of the great mill at Waltham, Mass., in which every form of the improved machinery found place, spinning was the only work of the factories. All the yarn was sent out among the farmers to be woven into cloth, the current prices paid for this being from six to twelve cents a yard. American cotton was poor, and the product of a quality inferior to the coarsest and heaviest-unbleached of to-day; but experiment soon altered all this. To manufacture the raw product in this country was a necessity. For England this had begun in 1786; but she guarded so jealously all inventions bearing upon it that none found their way to us. Our machinery was therefore of the most imperfect order, the work chiefly of two young Scotch mechanics. In 1788 a company was formed at Providence, R.I., for making "homespun cloth," their machinery being made in part from drawings from English models. Carding and roving were all done by hand labor; and the spinning-frame, with thirty-two spindles, differed little from a common jenny, and was worked by a crank turned by hand. Even at this stage England was determined that America should have neither machinery nor tools, and still held to the act passed in 1789 which enforced a penalty of five hundred pounds for any one who exported, or tried to export, "blocks, plates, engines, tools, or utensils used in or which are proper for the preparing or finishing of the calico, cotton, muslin, or linen printing manufacture, or any part thereof." Nothing could have more stimulated American invention; but there were many struggles before the thought finally came to all interested, that it might be possible to condense the whole operation with all its details under one roof,--a project soon carried out. Thus far all had been tentative; but the building in 1790 at Pawtucket, R.I., of the first large factory with improved machinery gave the industry permanent place. Another mill was erected in the same State in 1795, and two more in Massachusetts in 1802 and 1803. In the three succeeding years ten more were built in Rhode Island and one in Connecticut, altogether fifteen in number, working about 8,000 spindles and producing in a year some 300,000 pounds of yarn. At the end of the year 1809 eighty-seven additional mills had been put up, making about 80,000 spindles in operation. Eight hundred spindles employed forty persons,--five men and thirty-five women and children. The first authoritative record as to the progress of the manufacture, numbers employed, etc., was made in a report to the House of Representatives in the spring session of 1816. In the previous year 90,000 bales had been manufactured as against 1,000 in 1800. The capital invested was $40,000, and the relative number of males and females employed is also recorded,-- Males employed from the age of 17 and upward 10,000 Women and female children 66,000 Boys under 17 years of age 24,000 For these women spinning was the only work. Hand-looms still did all the weaving, nor was it possible to obtain any plan of the power looms,--then in use in England, and a recent invention. Another mill had been built in 1795; and thus the first definite and profitable occupation for women in this country dates back to the close of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century, the history of its phases having been written by Tench Coxe. The village tailoress had long gone from house to house, earning in the beginning but a shilling a day, and this sometimes paid in kind; and in towns a dressmaker or milliner was secure of a livelihood. But work for the many was unknown outside of household life; and thus wage rates vary with locality, and are in most cases inferential rather than matter of record. Cotton would seem, from the beginning of manufacturing interests, to have monopolized New England; but other industries had been very early suggested. In May, 1640, the General Court of Massachusetts made an order for the encouragement by bounties of the manufacture of linen and woollen as well as cotton. In 1638 a company of Yorkshiremen came over and settled in Rowley, Mass., where they built the first fulling-mill in the United States. Fustians and the ordinary homespun cloth were woven; but few women were employed, the work being far heavier than the weaving of cotton. It was hoped that broadcloths as good as those imported could be made; but American wool proved less susceptible of high finish, though of better wearing quality than the English. Various grades of cloth, with shawls, were manufactured; but the growth of the industry was slow, and constantly hampered by heavy duties and much interference. In 1770 the entire graduating class at Harvard College were dressed in black broadcloth made in this country, the weaving of which had been done in families. Yarn was sent to these after the wool had been made ready in the mills, and the census of the United States for 1810 gives the number of yards woven in this way as 9,528,266. What proportion of women were engaged we have no means of knowing; but the census of 1860 shows that New England had 65 per cent of the total number then at work. The cotton manufacture had but 38 per cent of males as against 62 per cent of females; while in woollen, males were 60 per cent. In New England 10,743 women were in woollen-mills; in the Middle States, 4,540; and in the South, 689. For the West no returns are given. Many more would be included in the Southern returns were it not that most of the weaving is still a home industry, this resulting from the sparseness and scattered nature of the population. Knitting formed one of the earliest means of earning for women, the demand for hose of every description being beyond the power of the family to supply. Knitting-machines of various orders were in use on the Continent, and had been brought into England; but any attempt to employ them here was for a long time unsuccessful. Yarn was spun especially for this purpose, usually with a double thread, and in the year 1698 Martha's Vineyard exported 9,000 pairs. The German and English settlers of Pennsylvania brought many handknitting machines with them, and were rivals of New England; but Virginia led, and the census of 1810 credits her with over half of the hand-knit pairs exported, Connecticut coming next. In Pennsylvania the women earned half a crown a pair for the long hose, and this in the opening of the eighteenth century; and the State still retains it as a household industry. The percentage for the United States of women engaged in it by the last census is 61,100. The early stages of the industry employed very few women, the processes involving too heavy labor; and out of 159 workers in the first mills, only eight were women, these being employed in carding and fulling. According to our last census, 10,743 are employed in New England mills alone; but the proportion remains far below that of the cotton-mills, and at many points in the South and remote territories it is still a household industry in which all share. Until well on in the nineteenth century the factory and the domestic system were still interwoven, nor had there been intelligent definition of the actual meaning of this system until Ure formulated one:-- "The factory system in technology is simply the combined operation of many orders of work-people in tending with assiduous skill a series of productive machines, continuously impelled by a central power."[15] A central power controlling an army of workers had been the dream of all mechanicians; and Ure formulated this also:-- "It is the idea of a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object,--all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving force." This was the result brought about by the gradual extension of the factory system. The objections made from the beginning, and still made, with such answers as experience has suggested, find place later on. FOOTNOTES: [4] By Thorold Rogers. [5] Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England, vol. i. p. 304. [6] Caulkins, p. 273. [7] Rider's Book Notes, vol. ii. p. 7. [8] Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25, 1773. [9] Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25, 1773. [10] Barry's Massachusetts, vol. xi. p. 193. [11] Weeden's Social and Economic History of New England, vol. ii. p. 790. [12] Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1798-1835, p. 353. [13] Atlantic Monthly, December, 1883, p. 773. [14] For further detail, see McMaster's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 62. [15] Philosophy of Manufactures, by Andrew Ure, M.D., p. 13. III. EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR WOMEN. Lack not only of machinery but of any facilities for its manufacture hampered and delayed the progress of the factory movement in the United States; but these difficulties were at last overcome, and in 1813 Waltham, Mass., saw what is probably the first factory in the world that combined under one roof every process for converting raw cotton into finished cloth. Manufacturing, even when most hampered by the burden of taxation then imposed and the heavy duties and other restrictions following the long war, began under happier conditions than have ever been known elsewhere. Unskilled labor had smallest place, and of this class New England had for long next to no knowledge. Her workers in the beginning were recruited from the outlying country; and the women and girls who flocked into Lowell, as in the earliest years they had flocked into Pawtucket, were New-Englanders by birth and training. This meant not only quickness and deftness of handling, but the conscientious filling of every hour with the utmost work it could be made to hold. The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full record in the little magazine called the "Lowell Offering," published by them for many years. Lucy Larcom has also lately given her "Recollections," one of the most valuable and characteristic pictures of the life from year to year, and it tallies with the summary made by Dickens in his "American Notes." Beginning as a child of eleven, whose business was simply to change bobbins, she received a wage of one dollar a week, with one dollar and a quarter for board, the allowance made by most of the corporations while the system of boarding-houses in connection with the factories lasted. The oldest corporation, known as the Merrimack, introduced this system, and for many years retained oversight of all in its employ. With increasing competition and the increase of the foreign element, alteration of methods began, and Lowell lost its characteristic features. In the beginning the conditions of factory labor for New England at the point where work was initiated, were, as compared with those of England, almost idyllic. The Lowell workers came from New England farms, many of them for the sake of being near libraries and schools, and thus securing larger opportunities for self-culture. The agricultural class then outranked merchants and mechanics. There were no class distinctions, and the workers shared in the best social life of Lowell. The factory was an episode rather than a career; and the buildings themselves were kept as clean as the nature of the work admitted, growing plants filling the windows; and the swift-flowing Merrimac turning the wheels. In 1841 the girls had to their credit in the savings-banks established by the corporations over one hundred thousand dollars; and many of them shared their earnings with brothers who sought a college education, or lifted the mortgages on the home farms. At the International Council of Women, held in Washington in 1888, Mrs. H.H. Robinson, after telling how she entered the Lowell Mills as a "doffer," when a child, gave a brilliant description of the intellectual life and interests of the workers. She remained in the mill till married, and said: "I consider the Lowell Mills as my _alma mater_, and am as proud of them as most girls of the colleges in which they have been educated." With the growth of the factory system under very different conditions from that of Lowell, there were as different results. Factories had risen, at every available point in New England, all of them thronged by women and girls. But great cities were still unknown; and the first census, that for 1790, showed that hardly four per cent of the people were in them. The tide set toward the factory towns as strongly as it now does toward the cities, though factory labor for the most part was of almost incredible severity. The length of a day's labor varied from twelve to fifteen hours, the mills of New England running generally thirteen hours a day the year round. Several mills are on record, the day in one of which was fourteen hours, and in the other fifteen hours and ten minutes, this latter being the Eagle Mill at Griswold, Conn.; and previous to 1858 there were many others where hours were equally long. Work began at five in the morning, or at some points a little later; and there is a known instance of a mill in Paterson, N.J., in which women and children were required to be at work by half-past four in the morning. In most of the New England factories, the operatives were taxed for the support of religion. The Lowell Company dismissed them if often absent from church, and their lives without and within the factory were regulated as minutely as if in the cloister. Women and children were urged on by the cowhide; and the first inspection of the factories, notably in Connecticut, revealed a state of things hardly less harrowing than that which had brought about the passage of the first Factory Acts in England. At the same time wages were very inadequate. In twelve hours' daily labor the weavers of Baltimore were able to earn from sixty to seventy cents a day, the wage of the women being half or a third this amount; and they declared it not enough to pay the expenses of schooling for the children. With the increase of production and the growing competition of manufacturers, wages were steadily forced downward. Less and less attention was paid to the comfort or well-being of the operatives, and many factories were unfit working-places for human beings. Overseers, whose duty it was to keep up the utmost rate of speed, flogged children brutally; and the treatment was so barbarous that a boy of twelve at Mendon, Mass., drowned himself to escape factory labor. Windows were often nailed down, and their raising forbidden even in the hottest weather. The most formidable and trustworthy arraignment of these conditions is to be found in a pamphlet printed in 1834, the full title of which is as follows: "An Address to the Working-men of New England, on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America." The author of this pamphlet, a mechanic of some education, stirred to the heart by the abuses he saw, made an exhaustive examination of the New England mills; and he gives many details of the hours of labor, the wages of employees, and the abuses of power which he found everywhere among unscrupulous manufacturers. The principal value of his work lies in this, and in his reprint of original documents like the "General Rules of the Lowell Manufacturing Company," and "The Conditions on which Help is hired by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, Dover, N.H." These conditions were so oppressive that in several cases revolt took place,--usually unsuccessful, as no organization existed among the women, and they were powerless to effect any marked change for the better. By 1835 chiefly the poorer order of workers filled the mills, but even skilled labor made constant complaint of cruelties and injustices. Not only were there distressing cases of cruelty to children, but outrage of every kind had been found to exist among the women workers, whose wage had been lowered till nearly at the point known to-day as the subsistence point. Parents then, as now, gave false returns of age, and caught greedily at the prospect of any earning by their children; and any specific enactments as to schooling, etc., were still delayed. These evils were not confined to New England, but existed at every point where manufacturing was carried on. But New England was first to decide on the necessity for some organized remonstrance and resistance, and the first meeting to this end was held in February, 1831. Of this there is no record; but the second, held in September, 1832, is given in the first "Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor," issued in 1870. Boston sent thirty delegates, and the workingmen of New York City addressed a letter to the workers of the United States, showing that the same causes of unrest and agitation existed at all points. "These evils," they said, "arise from the moral obliquity of the fastidious, and the cupidity of the avaricious. They consist in an illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the laboring classes, an unjust estimation of their moral, physical, and intellectual powers, and unwise misapprehension of the effects which would result from the cultivation of their minds and the improvement of their condition, and an avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious services, at the lowest possible rate of wages for which they can be induced to work." The evils protested against here did not lessen as time went on. Irish emigration had begun in 1836, and speedily drove out American labor, which was in any case insufficient for the need. A lowered wage was the immediate consequence, the foreigner having no standard of living that included more than bare necessaries. At this distance from the struggle it is easy to see that the new life was educational for the emigrant, and also forced the American worker into new and often broader channels. But for those involved such perception was impossible, and the new-comers were regarded with something like hatred. English and German emigrants followed, to give place in their turn to the French-Canadian, who at present in great degree monopolizes the mills. In the beginning little or no effort was made toward healthful conditions of work and life, or more than the merest hint of education. England, in which far worse conditions had existed, had, early in the century, seen the necessity of remedial legislation. But though the first English Factory Act was passed in 1802, it was not till 1844 that women and children were brought under its provisions. The first one, known as the Health and Morals Act, was the result of the discovery made first by voluntary, then by appointed inspectors, that neither health nor morals remained for factory-workers, and that hopeless deterioration would result unless government interfered at once. Hideous epidemic diseases, an extinction of any small natural endowment of moral sense, and a daily life far below that of the brutes, had showed themselves as industries and the attendant competition developed; and the story in all its horror may be read in English Bluebooks and the record of government inspectors, and made accessible in the works of Giffen, Toynbee, Engels, and other names identified with reform. The bearing of these acts upon legislation in our country is so strong that a summary of the chief points must find mention here. In the Act of 1802 the hours of work, which had been from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, were fixed at twelve. All factories were required to be frequently whitewashed, and to have a sufficient number of windows, though these provisions applied only to apprenticed operatives. In 1819 an act forbade the employment of any child under nine years of age, and in 1825 Saturday was made a half-holiday. Night work was forbidden in 1831, and for all under eighteen the working day was made twelve hours, with nine for Saturday. By 1847 public opinion demanded still more change for the better, and the day was made ten hours for working women and young persons between thirteen and eighteen years, though they were allowed to work between six A.M. and six P.M., with an allowance of an hour and a half at mealtime. Our own evils, while in many points far less, still were in the same direction. Here and there a like evasion of responsibility and of the provisions of the law was to be found. Even when a corps of inspectors were appointed, they were bribed, hoodwinked, and generally put off the track, while the provisions in regard to the shielding of dangerous machinery, cleanliness, etc., were ignored by every possible method. Were law obeyed and its provisions thoroughly carried out, English factory operatives would be better protected than those of any other country, America not accepted. Sanitary conditions are required to be good. All factories are to be kept clean, as any effluvia arising from closets, etc., renders the owners liable to a fine. The generation of gas, dust, etc., must be neutralized by the inventions for this purpose, so that operatives may not be harmed thereby. Any manufacturer allowing machinery to remain unprotected is to be prosecuted; and there are minute regulations forbidding any child or young person to clean or walk between the fixed and traversing part of any self-acting machine while in motion. At least two hours must be allowed for meals, nor are these to be taken in any room where manufacturing is going on. For this country such provisions were long delayed, nor have we even now the necessary regulations as to the protection of machinery. In the early days, though many mills were built by men who sought honestly to provide their employees with as many alleviations as the nature of the work admitted, many more were absolutely blind to anything but their own interest. With the disabilities resulting we are to deal at another point. It is sufficient to say here, that the struggle for factory-workers became more and more severe, and has remained so to the present day. The increase of women workers in this field had been steady. In 1865 women operatives in the factories of Massachusetts were 32,239, or nineteen per cent of men operatives. In 1875 they were 83,207, or twenty-six per cent; and the increase since that date has been in like proportion. From the time of their first employment in mills the increase has been on themselves over three hundred per cent. In Massachusetts mills women and children are from two thirds to five sixths of all employed, and the proportion in all the manufacturing portions of New England is nearly the same. In judging the factory system as a whole, it is necessary to glance at the conditions of home work preceding it. These are given in full detail in historical and economical treatises, notably in Lecky's "History of the Eighteenth Century," and in Dr. Kay's "Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes." A list of the more important authorities on the subject will be found in the general bibliography at the end. The conditions that prevailed in other countries were less strenuous with us, but the same objections to the domestic system held good at many points. In weaving, the looms occupied large part of the family living space, and overcrowding and all its evils were inevitable. Drunkenness was more common, as well as the stealing of materials by dishonest workers. Time was lost in going for material and in returning it, and only half as much was accomplished. Homes were uncared for and often filthy, and the work was done in half-lighted, airless rooms. These conditions are often reproduced in part even to-day in buildings not adapted to their present use; but as a whole it is certain that the homes of factory-workers are cleaner, that regulation has proved beneficial, that light and air are furnished in better measure, and that overcrowding has become impossible. This applies only to textile manufactures, where machines must have room. In an admirable chapter on the "Factory System," prepared by Colonel Carroll D. Wright for the Tenth Census of the United States, he takes up in detail the objections urged against it. These are as follows:-- A. The factory system necessitates the employment of women and children to an injurious extent, and consequently its tendency is to destroy family life and ties and domestic habits, and ultimately the home. B. Factory employments are injurious to health. C. The factory system is productive of intemperance, unthrift, and poverty. D. It feeds prostitution, and swells the criminal list. E. It tends to intellectual degeneracy. Under "A" there is small defence to be made. The employment of married women is fruitful of evil, and the proportion of these in Massachusetts is 23.8 per cent. Wherever this per cent is high, infant mortality is very great, being 23.5 per cent for Massachusetts and 19 per cent for Connecticut and New Hampshire. The "Labor Bureau Reports" for New Jersey treat the subject in detail, and are strongly opposed to the employment of mothers of young children outside the home; and the conclusion is the same at other points. In the matter of general injury to health, under "B," it is stated that many factories are far better ventilated and lighted than the homes of the operatives. Ignorant employees cannot be impressed with the need of care on these points, and the air in their homes is foul and productive of disease. A cotton-mill is often better ventilated than a court-room or a lecture-room. A well-built factory allows not less than six hundred cubic feet of air space to a person, thirty to sixty cubic feet a minute being required. Ranke, in his "Elements of Physiology," makes it thirty-five a minute. The homes of operatives have steadily improved in character; and wherever there is an intelligent class of operatives, regulations are obeyed, and sanitary conditions are fair and often perfect, while the tendency is toward more and more care in every respect. Operatives' homes are often better guarded against sanitary evils than those of farmers or the ordinary laborer. Under "C" it is shown conclusively that the factory has diminished intemperance,--Reybaud's "History of the Factory Movement" giving full statistics on this point, as well as in regard to the growth of banks and benefit societies. The standard of living is higher here, but there are countless evidences of thrift and a general rise in condition. In the matter of prostitution, under "D," it is shown that but eight per cent of this class come from the factory, twenty-nine per cent being from domestic service. In Lynn, Mass., a town chosen for illustration because of the large percentage of factory operatives, it was found that but seven per cent of those arrested were from this class; and this is true of all points where the foreign-born element is not largely in the majority. Last comes the question of intellectual degeneracy, under "E." On this point it is hardly fair to make comparison of the present worker with the Lowell girl of the first period of factory labor, since she came from an educated class, and was distinctively American. Taking workers as a whole, a vast advance shows itself. Regularity and fixed rule have often been the first education in this direction; and the life, even with all its drawbacks, has the right to be regarded as an educational force, and the first step in this direction for a large proportion of the workers in it. There are points where the arraignment of Alfred, in his "History of the Factory Movement," is still true.[16] He speaks of it as a "system which jested with civilization, laughed at humanity, and made a mockery of every law of physical and moral health and of the principles of natural and social order." The "Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885" shows that the charge might still be righteously brought; and Mr. Bishop gives the same testimony in his reports for New Jersey. Evil is still part of the system, and well-nigh inseparable from the methods of production and the conditions of competition; but that there are evils is recognized at all points, and thus their continuance will not and cannot be perpetuated. FOOTNOTE: [16] Alfred's History of the Factory Movement, vol. i. p. 27. IV. RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE PRESENT TIME. Defeat and discouragement attend well-nigh every step of the attempt to reach any conclusions regarding women workers in the early years of the century. It is true that 1832 witnessed an attempt at an investigation into their status, but the results were of slight value, actual figures being almost unattainable. The census of 1840 gave more, and that of 1850 showed still larger gain. In that of 1840 the number of women and children in the silk industry was taken; but while the same is true of the later one, there is apparently no record of them in any printed form. The New York State Census for the years 1845 and 1855 gave some space to the work of women and children, but there is nothing of marked value till another decade had passed. It is to the United States Census for 1860 that we must look for the first really definite statements as to the occupations of women and children. Scattered returns of an earlier date had shown that the percentage of those employed in factories was a steadily increasing one, but in what ratio was considered as unimportant. In fact, statistics of any order had small place, nor was their need seriously felt, save here and there, in the mind of the student. To comprehend the blankness of this period in all matters relating to social and economic questions, it is necessary to recall the fact that no such needs as those of the mother country pressed upon us. To those who looked below the surface and watched the growing tide of emigration, it was plain that they were, in no distant day, to arise; but for the most part, even for those compelled to severest toil, it was taken for granted that full support was a certainty, and that the men or women who did not earn a comfortable living could blame no one but themselves. There were other reasons why any enumeration of women workers seemed not only superfluous but undesirable. For the better order, prejudice was still strong enough against all who deviated from custom or tradition to make each new candidate for a living shrink from any publicity that could be avoided. Society frowned upon the woman who dared to strike out in new paths, and thus made them even more thorny than necessity had already done. It is impossible for the present, with its full freedom of opportunity, to realize, or credit even, the difficulties of the past, or even of a period hardly more than a generation ago. It was of this time that Dr. Emily Blackwell, one of the pioneers in higher work for women, wrote:-- "Women were hindered at every turn by endless restraint in endless minor detail of habit, custom, tradition, etc.... Most women who have been engaged in any new departure would testify that the difficulties of the undertaking lay far more in these artificial hindrances and burdens than in their own health, or in the nature of the work itself." It was this shrinking from publicity, among all save the most ordinary workers, by this time largely foreign, that made one difficulty in the way of census enumerators. By 1860 it had become plain that an enormous increase in their numbers was taking place, and that no just idea of this increase could be formed so long as industrial statistics were made up with no distinction as to sex. The spread of the factory system and the constant invention of new machinery had long ago removed from homes the few branches of the work that could be carried on within them. Processes had divided and subdivided. The mill-worker knew no longer every phase of the work implied in the production of her web, but became more and more a part of the machine itself. This was especially true of all textile industries,--cotton or woollen, with their many ramifications,--and becomes more so with each year of progress. Cotton and woollen manufactures, with the constantly increasing subdivisions of all the processes involved, counted their thousands upon thousands of women workers. Another industry had been one of the first opened to women, much of its work being done at home. Shoemaking, with all its processes of binding and finishing, had its origin for this country in Massachusetts, to the ingenuity and enterprise of whose mechanics is due the fact that the United States has attained the highest perfection in this branch. Lynn, Mass., as far back as 1750, had become famous for its women's shoes, the making of which was carried on in the families of the manufacturers. At first no especial skill was shown; but in 1750 a Welsh shoemaker, named John Adam Dagyr, settled there and acquired great fame for himself and the town for his superior workmanship. In 1788 the exports of women's shoes from Lynn were one hundred thousand pairs, while in 1795 over three hundred thousand pairs were sent out, and by 1870 the number had reached eleven million. Beginning with the employment of a few dozen women, twenty other towns took up the same industry, and furnish their quota of the general return. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor gives, in its report for 1873, the number of women employed as 11,193, with some six hundred female children. Maine and New Hampshire followed, and both have a small proportion of women workers engaged in the industry, while it has gradually extended, New England always retaining the lead, till New York, Philadelphia, and many Western and Southern towns rank high in the list of producers. As in every other trade, processes have divided and subdivided. Sewing-machines did away with the tedious binding by hand, which had its compensations, however, in the fact that it was done at home. There is only incidental record of the numbers employed in this industry till the later census returns; but the percentage outside of Massachusetts remained a very small one, as even in Maine the total number given in the Report of the Bureau of Labor for 1887 is but 533, an almost inappreciable per cent of the population. The returns of the census of 1880 give the total number of women in this employment as 21,000, the proportion still remaining largest for New England. Straw-braiding was another of the early trades, and the first straw bonnet braided in the United States was made by Miss Betsey Metcalf, of Providence, R.I., in 1789. For many years straw-plaiting was done at home; but the quality of our material was always inferior to that grown abroad, our climate making it much more brittle and difficult to handle. The wage at first was from two to three dollars a week; but as factories were established where imported braid was made up, the sum sometimes reached five dollars. The census of 1860 gave the total number of women employed as 1,430. According to the census of 1870, nine States had taken up this industry, Massachusetts employing the largest number, and Vermont the least, the total number being 12,594; while in 1880 the number had risen to 19,998. Up to the time of the Civil War, aside from factory employments, the trades open to women were limited, and the majority of their occupations were still carried on at home, or with but few in numbers, as in dressmaking-establishments, millinery, and the like. With the new conditions brought about at this time, and the vast number of women thrown upon their own resources, came the flocking into trades for which there had been no training, and which had been considered as the exclusive property of men. A surplus of untrained workers at once appeared, and this and general financial depression brought the wage to its lowest terms; but when this had in part ended, the trades still remained open. At the close of the war some hundred were regarded as practicable. Ten years later the number had more than doubled, and to-day we find over four hundred occupations; while, as new inventions arise, the number of possibilities in this direction steadily increases. The many considerations involved in these facts will be met later on. General conditions of trades as a whole are given in the census returns, though even there hardly more than approximately, little work of much real value being accomplished till the formation of the labor bureaus, with which we are soon to deal. Every allowance, however, is to be made for the Census Bureau, which found itself almost incapable of overcoming many of the lions in the way. The tone of the remarks on this point in that for 1860 is almost plaintive, nor is it less so in the next; but methods have clarified, and the work is far more authoritative than for long seemed possible. Innumerable difficulties hedged about the enumerators for 1860. Rooted objection to answering the questions in detail was not one of the least. Unfamiliarity with the newer phases of the work was another, and thus it happened that the volume when issued was full of discrepancies. The tables of occupations, for example, characterized but a little over two thousand persons as connected with woollen and worsted manufacture; while the tables of manufactures showed that considerably more than forty thousand persons were engaged, upon the average, in these branches of manufacturing industry. The returns gave the number of women employed in various branches of manufacture as two hundred and eighty-five thousand, but stated that the figures were approximate merely, it being impossible to secure full returns. It was found that three and a half per cent of the population of Massachusetts were in the factories, and nearly the same proportion in Connecticut and Rhode Island; but details were of the most meagre description, and conclusions based upon them were likely to err at every point. Its value was chiefly educative, since the failure it represents pointed to a change in methods, and more preparation than had at any time been considered necessary in the officials who had the matter in charge. The census for 1870 reaped the benefits of the new determination; yet even of this General Walker was forced to write: "This census concludes that from one to two hundred thousand workers are not accounted for, from the difficulty experienced in getting proper returns. The nice distinctions of foreign statisticians are impossible." And he adds:-- "Whoever will consider the almost utter want of apprenticeship in this country, the facility with which pursuits are taken up and abandoned, and the variety and, indeed, seeming incongruity of the numerous industrial offices that are frequently united in one person, will appreciate the force of this argument.... The organization of domestic service in the United States is so crude that no distinction whatever can be successfully maintained. A census of occupations in which the attempt should be made to reach anything like European completeness in this matter would result in the return of tens of thousands of 'housekeepers' and hundreds of thousands of 'cooks,' who were simply 'maids of all work,' being the single servants of the families in which they are employed."[17] This census gives the total number of women workers, so far as it could be determined, as 1,836,288. Of these, 191,000 were from ten to fifteen years of age; 1,594,783, from sixteen to fifty-nine; and 50,404, sixty years and over, the larger proportion of the latter division being given as engaged in agricultural employments. In the first period of age, females pursuing gainful occupations are to males as one to three; in the second, one to six; and in the third, one to twelve. The actual increase over the numbers given in the census for 1860 is 1,551,288. The reasons for this almost incredible variation have already been suggested; and their operation became even stronger in the interval between that of 1870 and 1880. By this time methods were far more skilful and returns more minute, and thus the figures are to be accepted with more confidence than was possible with the earlier ones. The factory system, extending into almost every trade, brought about more and more differentiation of occupations, some two hundred of which were by 1880 open to women. Comparing the rates of increase during the period between 1860 and 1870, women wage-earners had increased 19 per cent, the increase for men being but 6/97. Among the women, 6.7 per cent were engaged in agriculture, 33.4 in personal service, 7.3 in trade and transportation, and 16.5 in manufactures. In 1880 women engaged in gainful occupations formed 5.28 of the total population, and 14.68 of females over ten years of age. The present rate is not yet[18] determined; but while figures will not be accessible for some months to come, it is stated definitely that the increase will indicate nearer ten than five per cent. The total number employed is given for this census as 2,647,157. The occupations are divided into four classes: first, agriculture; second, professional and personal services; third, trade and transportation; fourth, manufactures, mechanical and mining industries. In agriculture, 594,510 women were at work; in professional and personal services, this including domestic service, 1,361,295; trade and transportation, this including shop-girls, etc., had 59,364; while 631,988 were engaged in the last division of manufacturing, etc. Of girls from ten to fifteen years of age, agriculture had 135,862; professional and personal services, 107,830; trade, 2,547; and manufacturing, etc., 46,930. From sixteen to fifty-nine years of age there were in agriculture 435,920; in professional and personal services, 1,215,189; trade and transportation, 54,849; and manufacturing, etc., 577,157. From sixty years and upward the four classes were divided as follows: Agriculture, 22,728; professional, etc., 38,276; trade, etc., 1,968; and manufacturing, etc., 7,901. Even for this record numbers must be added, since many women work at home and make no return of the trade they have chosen, while many others are held by pride from admitting that they work at all. But the addition of a hundred thousand for the entire country would undoubtedly cover this discrepancy in full; nor are these numbers too large, though it is impossible to more than approximate them. Suggestive as these figures are, they are still more so when we come to their apportionment to States. They become then a history of the progress of trades, and women's share in them; and a glance enables one to determine the proportion employed in each. In the table which follows, industries are condensed under a general head, no mention being made of the many subdivisions, each ranking as a trade, but going to make up the business as a whole. It is the result of statistics taken in fifty of the principal cities, and includes only those industries in which women have the largest share.[19] =================================================================== | Total |Per Cent |Per Cent | | Number. |of Males.| of |Children. | | |Females. | ---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+--------- Book-binding | 10,612 | 4,831 | 4,553 | 616 Carpet-weaving | 20,371 | 4,960 | 4,207 | 833 Men's Clothing | 160,813 | 4,801 | 5,037 | 159 Women's Clothing | 25,192 | 1,030 | 8,833 | 137 Cotton Goods | 185,472 | 3,457 | 4,914 | 1,629 Men's Furnishing Goods | 11,174 | 1,140 | 8,560 | 300 Hosiery and Knitting | 28,885 | 2,602 | 6,130 | 1,268 Millinery and Lace | 25,687 | 1,120 | 8,637 | 243 Shirts | 6,555 | 1,481 | 8,000 | 513 Silk and Silk Goods | 31,337 | 2,992 | 5,232 | 1,776 Straw Goods | 10,948 | 2,991 | 6,850 | 154 Tobacco | 32,756 | 4,544 | 3,290 | 2,166 Umbrellas and Canes | 3,608 | 4,169 | 5,152 | 679 Woollen Goods | 86,504 | 54,544 | 3,395 | 1,174 Worsted Goods | 18,800 | 5,431 | 5,038 | 1,540 =================================================================== In obtaining these averages, it was found necessary to equalize the returns of Pittsburg and Philadelphia, the former having but 4.55 per cent of women workers, while Philadelphia had 31. This resulted from the fact that the industries of Philadelphia are the manufacturing of textiles and other goods, which employ women chiefly; while Pittsburg has principally iron and steel mills. New York was found to have 31 per cent of women workers; Lowell, Mass., had 47.42, and Manchester, N.H., 53; Pittsburg and Wilmington, Del., having the lowest percentage. The gain of women in trades over the census of 1870 was sixty-four per cent, the total percentage of women workers for the whole country being forty-nine. The ten years just ended show a still larger percentage; and many of the trades which a decade since still hesitated to admit women, are now open, those regarded as most peculiarly the province of men having received many feminine recruits. These isolated or scattered instances hardly belong here, and are mentioned simply as indications of the general trend. Wise or unwise, experiment is the order of the day, its principal service in many cases being to test untried powers, and break down barriers, built up often by mere tradition, and not again to rise till women themselves decide when and where. Taking States in their alphabetical order, the census of 1880 gives the number of working-women for each as follows:[20]-- Alabama, 124,056. Arizona, 471. Arkansas, 30,616. California, 28,200. Colorado, 4,779. Connecticut, 48,670. Dakota, 2,851. Delaware, 7,928. District of Columbia, 19,658. Florida, 17,781. Georgia, 152,322. Idaho, 291. Illinois, 106,101. Indiana, 51,422. Iowa, 44,845. Kansas, 54,422. Louisiana, 95,052. Maine, 33,528. Massachusetts, 174,183. Michigan, 55,013. Minnesota, 25,077. Mississippi, 110,416. Missouri, 62,943. Montana, 507. Nebraska, 10,455. Nevada, 403. New Hampshire, 30,128. New Jersey, 66,776. New Mexico, 2,262. New York, 360,381. North Carolina, 86,976. Ohio, 112,639. Oregon, 2,779. Pennsylvania, 216,980. Rhode Island, 29,859. South Carolina, 120,087. Tennessee, 56,408. Texas, 58,943. Utah, 2,877. Vermont, 16,167. Washington Territory, 1,060. West Virginia, 11,508. Wisconsin, 46,395. Wyoming, 464. FOOTNOTES: [17] Remarks on Tables of Occupations, Ninth Census of the United States, Population and Social Statistics, p. 663. [18] June, 1893. [19] The table is copied with minute care from that given in the last census; and while it shows one or two deficiencies, the writer is in no sense responsible for them, its accuracy, as a whole, not being affected by the slight discrepancy referred to. [20] The tables in this department of the census for 1890 are not yet ready for the public; but the department states that the increase in women wage-earners averages about ten per cent. V. LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN RELATION TO WOMEN. The difficulties encountered by the enumerators of the United States Census, and the growing conviction that much more minute and organized effort must be given if the real status of women workers was to be obtained, had already been matter of grave discussion. The labor question pressed upon all who looked below the surface of affairs; and very shortly after the census of 1860 a proposition was made in Boston to establish there a formal bureau of labor, whose business should be to fill in all the blanks that in the general work were passed over. Many facts, all pointing to the necessity of some such organization, lay before the men who pondered the matter,--factory abuses of many orders, the startling increase of pauperism and crime, with other causes which can find small space here. With difficulty consent was obtained to establish a bureau which should inquire into the causes of all this; and the first report was given to the public in 1870. It was descriptive rather than statistical, and necessarily so. Methods were still a matter of question and experiment. The public had small interest in the project, and it was essential to outline, not only the work to be done, but the reasons for its need. Naturally, then, the volume touched upon many abuses,--children in factories, and the factory system as a whole; the homes of workers, and their needs in sanitary and other directions; and toward the end a few pages of special comment on the hard lives of working-women as a whole. The report for 1871 followed the same lines, giving more detail to each. That for 1872 took up various phases of women's work,[21] with some of the general conditions then existing. For the following year elaborate tables of the cost of living were given, and are invaluable as matters of reference; and in 1874 came a no less important contribution to social science in the report on the "Homes of Working-People." Those of working-women were of course included, but there was still no description of many of the conditions known to hedge them about. Each inquiry, however, turned attention more and more in this direction, and emphasized the need of some work given exclusively to women workers. In 1875 attention was directed to the health of working-women, and a portion of the report was devoted to the special effects of certain forms of employment upon the health of women,[22] the education of children, the conditions of families, etc. That for 1876 discussed the question of wives' earnings, and gave tables of what proportion they made; and that for 1877 took up "Pauperism and Crime," in the growing amount of which it was claimed by many that the worker had large share. In 1878 large space was given to education and the work of the young, for whom the half-time system was urged. The conjugal condition of wives and mothers was also considered, and the bearing of their work upon the home. The financial distress of the period had affected wages, and the report for 1879 considered the effect of this, with the condition of the "unemployed," the tramp question, and other phases of the problem. With 1880 and the ending of the first decade of work in this direction came a fuller report on the social life of workingmen and the divorces in Massachusetts; 1881 made a plea for uniform hours, and 1882 was devoted to wages, prices, and profits, and further details of the life of operatives within their homes; and 1883 found reason again to go over the question of wages and prices. I have given this detail because, when one views the work of the bureau as a whole, it will be seen that each year formed one step toward the final result, which has been of most vital bearing upon all since accomplished in the same direction for women. Until the appearance of the report for 1884, on the "Working-Girls of Boston," there had been no absolute and authoritative knowledge as to their lives, their earnings, and their status as a whole. Their numbers were equally unknown, nor was there interest in their condition, save here and there among special students of social science. On the other hand there was a popular impression that the ranks of prostitution were recruited from the manufactory, and that a certain stigma necessarily rested upon the factory-worker and indeed upon working-girls as a class. Six divisions had been found essential to the thorough handling of the subject; and these divisions have formed the basis of all work since done in the same lines, whether in State bureaus or in that of the United States, soon to find mention here. It was under the direction of Colonel Carroll D. Wright that the Massachusetts Bureau did its careful and scientific work; and he represents the most valuable labor in this direction that the country has had, deserving to rank in this matter, as Tench Coxe still does in the manufacturing system, as the "Father" of the labor-bureau system. The six divisions settled upon as essential to any general system of reports were as follows:-- 1. Social Condition. 2. Occupations, Places in which Employed. 3. Hours of Labor, Time Lost, etc. 4. Physical and Sanitary Condition. 5. Economic Condition. 6. Moral Condition. The Tenth Census of the United States gave the number of women employed in the city of Boston as 38,881, 20,000 of whom were in occupations other than domestic service. Each year, as we have already seen, had touched more and more nearly upon the facts bound up in their lives, but it had become necessary to determine with an accuracy that could not be brought in question precisely the facts given under the six headings. To the surprise of the special agents detailed for this work, who had anticipated disagreeables of every order, the girls themselves took the liveliest interest in the matter, answered questions freely, and gave every facility for the fullest searching into each phase involved. American girls were found to form but 22.3 per cent of the whole number of working-women in Massachusetts, of whom but 58.4 per cent had been born in that State. The results reached in this report may be regarded as a summary, not only of conditions for Boston, but for all the large manufacturing towns of New England, later inquiry justifying this conclusion. The average age of working-girls was found to be 24.81 years, and the average at which they began work, 16.81; the average time actually at work, 7.49 years, and the average number of occupations followed 178, the time spent in each being 4.43 years. Of the whole, 85 per cent were found to do their own housework and sewing, either wholly or in part. But 22 per cent were allowed any vacation, and but 3.9 per cent received pay during that time, the average vacation being 1.87 weeks. A little over 26 per cent worked the full year without loss of time, while an average of 12.32 weeks was lost by 73 per cent. The average time worked by all during the year was 42.95 weeks. In personal service 26.5 per cent worked more than ten hours a day; in trade, 19.5 per cent were so employed, and in manufactures 5.6 per cent. In all occupations 8.9 per cent worked more than ten hours a day, and 8.6 per cent more than sixty hours a week. In the matter of health 76.2 per cent of the whole number employed were in good health. The average weekly earnings for the average time employed, 42.95 weeks, was $6.01, and the average weekly earnings of all the working-girls of Boston for a whole year were $4.91. The average weekly income, including earnings, assistance, and income from extra work done by many, was $5.17 a year. The average yearly income from all sources was $269.70, and the average yearly expenses for positive needs $261.30, leaving but $7.77, on the average, as a margin for books, amusements, etc. Those making savings are 11 per cent of the whole, their average savings being $72.15 per year. A few run in debt, the average debt being $36.60 for the less than 3 per cent incurring debt. Of the total average yearly expenses, these percentages being based upon the law laid down by Dr. Engels of Prussia, as to percentage of expenses belonging to subsistence, 63 per cent must be expended for food and lodging, and 25 per cent for clothing,--a total of 88 per cent of total expenses for subsistence and clothing, leaving but 12 per cent of total expense to be distributed to the other needs of living. These are, briefly summed up, the results of the investigation, in which the single workers constituted 88.9 of the whole, and the married but 6 per cent, widows making up the number. It is impossible in these limits to give further detail on these points, all readers being referred to the report itself. The same questions that had first sought answer in New England were even more pressing in New York. As in most subjects of deep popular or scientific importance, the sense of need for more data by which to judge seemed in the air; and already the Labor Bureau of the State of New York, under the efficient guidance of Mr. Charles F. Peck, had begun a course of inquiries of the same nature. For years, beginning with the New York "Tribune," in the days when Margaret Fuller worked for it and touched at times upon social questions,--always in the mind of Horace Greeley, its founder,--there had been periodical stirs of feeling in behalf of sewing-women. It was known that the enormous influx of foreign labor naturally massed at this point, more than could ever be possible elsewhere, had brought with it evils suspected, but still not yet defined in any sense to be trusted. Indications on the surface were seriously bad, but actual investigation had never tested their nature or degree. The report of the bureau for 1885, which was given to the public in 1886, met with a degree of interest and study not usually accorded these volumes, and roused public feeling to an unexpected extent. Mr. Peck brought to the work much the same order of interest that had marked that of Colonel Wright, and wrote in his introduction to the report the summary of the situation for New York City:-- "By reason of its immense population, its numerous and extensive manufactures, its wealth, its poverty, and general cosmopolitan character, New York City presents a field for investigation into the subject of 'Working-Women, their Trades, Wages, Home and Social Conditions,' unequalled by any other centre of population in America. It opens up a wider and more diversified field for inquiry, study, and classification of the various industries in which women seek employment, than can be found even in European cities, with but few if any exceptions. It is for such reasons that the inquiry of the bureau into this special subject has been largely confined to the city named." Two hundred and forty-seven trades are given in this report, in which some two hundred thousand women were found to be engaged, this being exclusive of domestic service. The divisions of the subject were substantially those adopted by the Massachusetts Bureau; but the numbers and complexity of conditions made the inquiry far more difficult. Its results and their bearings will find place later on. It is sufficient now to say that the two may be regarded as summarizing all phases of work for women, and as an index to the difficulties at all other points in the country. The Bureau of Labor for Connecticut sent out its first report in the same year (1885), and included investigations and statistics in the same lines, though, for reasons specified, in much more limited degree. That for 1886 for the same State took up in detail some points in regard to the work of both women and children, which, for want of both time and space, had been omitted in the first, their returns coinciding in all important particulars with those of the other bureaus. In 1886 the California Bureau of Labor touched the same points, but only incidentally, in its general analysis of the labor question. In the following year, however, the report covering the years 1887 and 1888 took up the question under the same aspects as those handled in the special reports on this topic, and gave full treatment of the wages, lives, and general conditions for working-women. It included, also, the facts, so far as they could be ascertained, of the nature, wages, and conditions of domestic service in California,--the first attempt at treating this difficult subject with any accuracy. The apprentice system, and an important chapter on manual training and its bearings make this report one of the most valuable, from the social point of view, that has been given, though where all are invaluable it is hard to characterize one above another. Mr. Tobin, for California, and Mr. Hutchins, for Iowa, seemed moved at the same time in much the same way,--the Iowa report for 1887 treating the many questions involved with that largeness which has thus far distinguished work in this direction. Kansas, in the report for 1888, gave general conditions, women being treated incidentally; and Minnesota, in the report for the years 1887 and 1888, gave a chapter on working-women, wages, etc. Colorado followed, giving in the report for 1887 and 1888, under the management of Commissioner Rice, a chapter on women wage-workers, in which space is given to certified complaints of the women themselves, as to what they consider the disabilities of their special trades. Domestic service, with some of its abuses, was also considered, and is of much value. These reports sum up the work so far done in the West, where labor bureaus are of recent growth. The spirit of inquiry is, however, equally alive; and each year will see minuter detail and a deeper scientific spirit. Maine, in the report for 1888, took up many questions of general interest, with their incidental bearings on the work of women; and in 1889 came another report from Kansas, in which the labor commissioner, Mr. Frank Betton, gave large space to an investigation conducted under many difficulties, but covering the ground very fully. A very full report from Michigan, under Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, was issued in 1892, nearly two hundred pages being given to an exhaustive examination into the conditions of women wage-earners in the State, its methods owing much to the work which had preceded it. With this background of admirable work always, no matter what might be the limitations, making each report a little broader in purpose and minuter in detail, the way was plain for something even more comprehensive. This was furnished by the Bureau of Labor of the United States, which had changed its name, and become, in June, 1887, the Department of Labor, a part of the Department of the Interior. This report--the fourth from the bureau, and issued in 1888--was entitled "Working-Women in Large Cities," and included investigations made in twenty-two cities, from Boston to San Francisco and San José. All that long experience had demonstrated as most important in such work was brought to bear. The investigation covered manual labor in cities, excluding textile industries, save incidentally as these had already been treated, as well as domestic service. Textile factories are usually outside of large cities, and it was the object to discover the opportunities of employment in the way of manual labor in cities themselves. Three hundred and forty-three distinct industries showed themselves, and others were found which were not included, it being safe to say that some four hundred may be considered open to women. As before stated, many are simply subdivisions, made by the constantly increasing complexity of machinery. The agents of the department carried their work into the lowest and worst places in the cities named, because in such places are to be found women who are struggling for a livelihood in most respectable callings,--living in them as a matter of necessity, since they cannot afford to live otherwise, but leaving them whenever wages are sufficient to admit of change. It is this report which forms the summary of all the work that has preceded it, and that gives the truest exponent of all present conditions. It is only necessary to add to it the summaries of the State reports at other points, to see the aspect of the question as a whole; and thus we are ready to consider by its aid the general rates of wages and of the status of the trades of every nature in which women are now engaged. FOOTNOTES: [21] Report for 1872, pp. 59-108. [22] Report for 1875, pp. 67-112. VI. PRESENT WAGE-RATES IN THE UNITED STATES. Under this heading it is proposed to include, not only the trades just specified as coming under the investigations recorded in "Working-Women in Large Cities," but also such data as can be gleaned from all the labor reports which have given any attention to this phase of the labor question. Naturally, then, we turn to the report of the Massachusetts Bureau for 1881, the first statement of these points, and compare it with the results obtained in the last report from Washington, as well as with the returns from the various States where investigation of the question has been made. Exceptionally favorable conditions would seem to belong to the year in which the report for 1884 appeared. The financial distress of 1877, with its results, had passed. New industries of many orders had opened up for women, and trade in all its forms called for workers and gave almost constant employ, save in the few occupations which have a distinct season, and oblige those engaged in them to divide their time between two if a living is assured. A distinction must at once be made in the definition of earnings. In speaking of them, there are necessarily three designations,--wages, earnings, and income. Wages represent the actual pay per week at the time employed, with no reference to the number of weeks' employment during the year. Earnings are the total receipts for any year from wages. Thus, for example, a girl is paid $5 a week wages, and works forty weeks of her year. Her earnings would then be for the year $200, though her wages of $5 per week would indicate that she earned $260 a year; while in fact her average weekly earnings would be for the whole year $3.84. Income is her total receipts for the year from all sources: wages, extra work, help from friends or from investments; in fact, any receipts from which expenses can be paid. In preparing the tables of these reports, the highest, the lowest, the average, and the general average were brought into a final comparison. Often but one wage is given, and it then becomes naturally both highest and lowest; but all figures are made to indicate an entire occupation or branch of industry, and not a few high or low paid employees in that branch. It is only with the final comparison that we are able to deal, the reader being referred to the reports themselves for the invaluable details given at full length and including many hundred pages. The divisions of occupations are the same as those of the tenth census, and the tables are made on the same system. To determine the general conditions for the twenty thousand at work, it was necessary to have accurate detail as to one thousand; and, in fact, 1,032 were interviewed. Directly after the work in this direction had ended, and before the report was ready for publication, a general reduction of ten per cent in wages took place, and this must be kept in mind in dealing with the returns recorded. In this, recapitulation is given in full, and, as will be seen, includes all occupations open to women. RECAPITULATION. ======================================================================== | BOSTON. |OTHER PARTS OF MASS.| OTHER STATES. |----------------+--------------------+---------------- | Number|Average | Number | Average | Number| Average | | Weekly | | Weekly | | Weekly | |Earnings| | Earnings | |Earnings |-------+--------+---------+----------+-------+-------- Government and | | | | | | professional | 7 | $5 57 | 5 | $6 40 | 10 | $6 28 Domestic and | | | | | | personal office | 178 | 5 94 | 27 | 5 33 | 21 | 4 69 Trade and | | | | | | transportation | 221 | 5 00 | 4 | 9 25 | 4 | 7 25 Manufactures and | | | | | | mechanical | | | | | | industries | 1,293 | 6 22 | 72 | 7 06 | 49 | 7 58 |-------+--------+---------+----------+-------+-------- All occupations | 1,699 | $6 03 | 108 | $6 68 | 84 | $6 69 ======================================================================== The commissioners of the New York State Bureau of Labor followed a slightly different method. The returns are no less minute, but are given under the heading of each trade, two hundred and forty-seven of which were investigated. The wages of workwomen for the entire year run from $3.50 to $4 a week, the general average not being given, though later returns make it $5.85. This is, however, for skilled labor; and as a vast proportion of women workers in New York City are engaged in sewing, the poorest paid of all industries, we must accept the first figures as nearer the truth. An expert on shirts receives as high as $12 a week, in some cases $15; but in slop work, and under the sweating-system, wages fall to $2.50 or $3 per week, and at times less. Mr. Peck found cloakmakers working on the most expensive and perfectly finished garments for 40 cents a day, a full day's pay being from 50 to 60 cents.[23] In other cases a day's work brought in but 25 cents, and seventeen overalls of blue denim gave a return of 75 cents. Two and a half cents each is paid for the making of boys' gingham waists, with trimming on neck and sleeves, including the button-holes; and the women who made these sat sixteen hours at the sewing-machine, with a result of 25 cents.[24] This was for irregular work. Women employed on clothing in general, working for reputable firms, receive from $4.50 to $6 per week. In the tobacco manufacture, in which great numbers are employed, $9 is the lowest actual earnings, and $20 the highest per week. In cigarettes, the pay ranges from $4 to $15 per week. In dry-goods, with ten divisions of employment,--cashiers, bundle-girls, saleswomen, floor-walkers, seamstresses, cloakmakers, cash-girls, stock-girls, milliners, and sewing-girls,--the lowest sum per week is $1.50, paid to cash-girls, and the highest paid to floor-walkers, $16. On the east side of the city, shop girls receive often as low as $3 per week; in a few cases specified, $2.50 per week.[25] In laundry-work, which includes several divisions, wages weekly range from $7.50 to $10, though ironers of special excellence sometimes make from $12 to $15 per week. In millinery the wages are from $6 to $7 per week. In preserving and fruit-canning wages are from $3.50 to $10, the average worker earning about $5 per week. Mr. Peck states that in fashion trades the two distinct seasons bring the year's earnings to about six months. "Learners" in the trades coming under this head receive $1.50 per week. Saleswomen suffer also from season trade, as it necessitates reduction of force. The better class of workers receive from $8 to $15 per week, while heads of departments range from $25 to $50, or even higher, for exceptional merit. These cases are of the rarest, however, the wage as an average falling below that of Boston. But three State reports cover the same dates as these already quoted (1885 and 1886),--Connecticut, New Jersey, and California, the former being for 1885. In this, women's wages are given incidentally in general tables, and must be disentangled to find any average. In artificial flowers the highest wage is given as $7, and the lowest $3, the average being $5. In blankets and woollen goods the highest is $12.50 and the lowest $6, an average of $9 per week. In factory work of all orders, wages range from $6 to $9.75 per week, the average paid to women and girls being $7.50 per week. In clothing, including underwear, wages are from $3 to $15 per week, and the average annual income of women in these trades is given as $300 per year. In cloakmaking the lowest wage is $3, the highest $9, and the average $7.50. The average wage for San Francisco is given as $6.95, and that for the whole State is about $6. The Connecticut report for 1885 gives simply the yearly wage in various trades. Reason for this is found in the fact that it was the first, and could thus deal with the subject only tentatively. Clothing is given as producing for women a yearly average of $229, and shirts $237. Factory work gave $207, paper boxes $227, and woollen goods $245. In the report for 1886, the lowest average wage is reported as found in the making of wearing apparel; but the average for the State was found to be a trifle over $6.50 per week. The report from New Jersey makes the lowest wages $3 per week, and the highest $10, the average being $5. This report covers ground more fully and in more varied directions than any one of the same period, though there is only incidental reference to the work of women as a whole, the returns being given in the general tables of wages. Wages and the cost of living are compared, and the chapter under this head is one of the most valuable in the summary of reports as a whole. The report for 1886 gives the same general average of wages for the State, but adds an exhaustive treatment of "Earnings, Cost of Living, and Prices." Maine sent out its first annual report in 1887, and gives the wages of women workers as $3.58 for the lowest, and $15.20 for the highest, the annual earnings ranging from $104 to $520. The report from the same State for 1889 takes up the subject of working-women in detail, giving their home or boarding conditions, sanitary conditions, their own remarks on trades, wages, etc., and the aspect of their labor as a whole. The average wage remains the same. Rhode Island, in its Third Annual Report for 1889, under the direction of Commissioner Almon K. Goodwin, gives the average wage for the State as $5.87, and devotes the bulk of its space to working-women, with full returns from the entire State. For the same year California, by its labor commissioner, Mr. John J. Tobin, gives an equally exhaustive statement of the conditions of women wage-earners in that State. The lowest weekly wage given is $5, and the highest $11. Plain cooks receive from $25 to $40 a month with board and lodging, and domestic servants from $15 to $25 with board. In cloak-making the lowest wage is $3, and the highest $7.50; and in shirt-making the lowest is $2.50, and the highest $6. General clothing and underwear range from $4.50 to $6, and other trades average a trifle higher wage than in New England. The chapter on domestic service is suggestive and important, and the whole treatment makes the report a necessity to all who would understand the situation in detail. This, however, is so true of all that have touched upon the subject that it appears invidious to single out any one alone. They must be taken together. With each year the scientific value of each increases, and there appears to be distinct emulation among the commissioners as to which shall embody the most in the returns made and the general treatment of the whole. The first report from Colorado, issued in 1888, Mr. James Rice commissioner, devotes a chapter to women wage-earners, with an additional one on domestic service and its drawbacks. The average wage for the State is given as $6; and the commissioner states that notwithstanding the general impression that higher wages are paid in Colorado than at any other point save California, actual returns show that the average sums in several occupations are less than that paid to persons similarly employed in cities along the Atlantic seaboard. Kansas, in its fifth annual report issued in 1889, gives a section to working-women. The commissioner, Mr. Frank Betton, considers the returns imperfect, great difficulty having been experienced in securing them. The average weekly wage is given as $5.17. Expenses are carefully analyzed, and there is a report of the remarks of employers, as well as from a number of those employed. In the report from Iowa for 1887, Commissioner Hutchins laments that so few women have been willing to fill out blanks of returns. The wage returns given range from $3.75 to $9. The report for 1889 makes mention of continued difficulties in securing returns, and gives the annual earnings of women as from $100 to $440. The tables include cost of living and many other essential particulars. Wisconsin, in the report for 1884, has a chapter on working-girls. It gives the average weekly income in personal services as $5.25; in trade, $4.18; in manufactures, $5.22, and the general average for the year as $5.17. Minnesota, whose first report, under the supervision of Commissioner John Lamb, appeared in 1888 for the years 1887 and 1888, found little or no room for statistics, but included a chapter on working-women, with a few admirable tables of age, nativity, home and working conditions, etc. Minute inquiry was made as to cost of living, clothing, etc.; and the results form a chapter of painful interest, that on domestic service being equally suggestive. Clothing, as usual, represents the lowest average wage, $3.66 per week, the highest being $8.50, and the general average a trifle over $6. Michigan, in 1890, under its labor commissioner, Mr. Henry A. Robinson, added to the list one of the most thorough studies yet made of general conditions. The agents of the bureau, trained for the work, made personal visits to working-women and girls to the number of 13,436, this representing one hundred and thirty-seven distinct industries and three hundred and seventy-eight occupations. The blanks prepared for filling out contained one hundred and twenty-nine questions, classified as follows: Social, 28; industrial, 12; hours of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21, with seven others as to dress, societies, church attendance, with remarks and suggestions from the workers themselves. As usual, in such cases, employers here and there objected to any investigation, fearing labor organizations were at the bottom of it; but the majority allowed free examination. The report is very full, and gives a clear and full view of the individual lives of this body of women workers. The average wage proved to be $4.81 per week, the average income for the year being $216.45. The average income of teachers and those in public positions was $457.27. This is the showing, State by State, so far as bureaus have reported. Many States have made no move in this direction; but interest is now thoroughly aroused, and the subject is likely to find treatment in all, this depending somewhat, however, on the character of the State industries and the numbers at work in each. Manufacturing necessarily brings with it conditions that in the end compel inquiry; and for most of the Southern States such industries are still new, while the West has not yet found the same occasion as the East for full knowledge of the problems involved in woman's work and wages. We come now to the most elaborate and far-reaching inquiry yet made,--the work of the United States Bureau of Labor under Commissioner Wright, entitled "Working-Women in Large Cities." Twenty-two of these are reported upon after one of the most rigorous examinations ever undertaken; and the average wage of each tallies with the rates given in the States to which they belong. Taken alphabetically, the list is as follows:-- AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS, BY CITIES. Atlanta $4.95 | New Orleans $4.31 Baltimore 4.18 | New York 5.85 Boston 5.64 | Philadelphia 5.34 Brooklyn 5.76 | Providence 5.51 Buffalo 4.27 | Richmond 3.83 Charleston, S.C. 4.22 | St. Louis 5.19 Chicago 5.74 | St. Paul 6.62 Cincinnati 4.50 | San Francisco 6.91 Cleveland 4.63 | San José 6.11 Indianapolis 4.57 | Savannah 4.90 Louisville 4.51 | ---- Newark 5.20 | All Cities 5.24 In addition to these figures, it seems well to give the average yearly earnings of women in some of the most profitable industries, those being chosen which are seldom affected by "seasons":-- Artificial flowers, $277.53; awnings and tents, $276.46; bookbinding, $271.31; boots and shoes, $286.60; candy, $213.59; carpets, $298.53; cigar boxes, $267.36; cigar factory, $294.66; cigarette factory, $266.12; cloak factory, $291.76; clothing factory, $248.36; cotton-mills, $228.32; dressmaking, $278.37; dry-goods stores, $368.84; jewelry factory, $263.80; men's furnishing-goods factory, $232.24; millinery, $345.95; paper-box factory, $240.47; plug-tobacco factory, $235.67; printing-office, $300; skirt factory, $265.40; smoking-tobacco factory, $238.70. These, so far as they have been collected and tabulated by the various labor bureaus, are the returns for the United States as a whole. The reports for the following years of 1891 and 1892 were expected to be far more general, but this has not proved to be the case. AVERAGE WAGE PER STATE. Maine $5.50 Massachusetts 6.68 Connecticut 6.50 Rhode Island 5.87 New York 5.85 New Jersey 5.00 California 6.00 Colorado 6.00 Kansas 5.17 Wisconsin 5.17 Minnesota 6.00 All cities 5.24 FOOTNOTES: [23] Third Annual Report of New York Bureau of Labor, p. 162. These are Mr. Peck's figures; but the United States report gives the average for skilled labor as $5.85 per week, and adds that the unskilled earns far less. [24] Ibid. p. 165. [25] New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Third Annual Report, p. 27. VII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS. So far as opportunity is concerned, it is the United States only that offers a practically unlimited field to women workers, to whom some four hundred trades and occupations are now open. Comparison with other countries is, however, essential, if we would judge fairly of conditions as a whole; and thus we turn first to that other English-speaking race, and the English worker at home. At once we are faced with the impossibility of gathering much more than surface indications, since in no other country is there any counterpart to our admirable system of investigation and tabulation, each year more and more systematic and thorough. In spite of the fact that factory laws had their birth in England, and that the whole system of child labor--the early horrors of which find record in thousands of pages of special reports from inspectors appointed by government--has been through their means modified and improved, there are, even now, no sources of information as to numbers at work or the characteristics of special industries. The census must be the chief dependence; and here we find the enormous proportions to which the employment of women has attained. In 1861 these returns gave for England and Wales 1,024,277 women at work. Twenty years later the number had doubled, half a million being found in London alone. This does not include all, since, as Mr. Charles Booth notes in his recent "Labor and Life of the People," many employed women do not return their employments. Mr. Booth's work is a purely private enterprise, assisted by devoted co-workers, and by trained experts employed at his own expense. For the final estimate must be added general census returns, and the recent reports on the sweating-system in London and other English cities. Beginning with factory operatives and their interests, nothing is easier than to follow the course of legislation on their behalf. The "Life of Lord Shaftesbury" is, in itself, the history of the movement for the protection of women and children,--a movement begun early in the present century, and made imperative by the hideous disclosures of oppression and outrage, not only among factory operatives, but the women and children in mining and other industries. Active as were his efforts and those of his colleagues, it is only within a generation that the fruit of their labor is plainly seen. As late as 1844, at the time Engel's notable book on "The Condition of the Working-Class in England" appeared, the labor of children of four and five years was still permitted; and women and children alike worked in mines, in brickyards, and other exposed and dangerous employments for the merest pittance. The pages of Engel's book swarm with incidents of individual and class misery; and while he admits fully, in the appendix prepared in 1886, that many of the evils enumerated have disappeared, he adds that for the mass of workers "the state of misery and insecurity in which they live now is as low as ever, perhaps lower." Year by year, in spite of constant agitation and the unceasing effort of Lord Shaftesbury to alter the worst abuses, these evils remained, and faced the examiner into social problems, slight ameliorations here and there serving chiefly to throw into darker relief the misery of the situation. Not only the philanthropist but officials joined hands; and in the proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, each year added to the number and importance of the protests against an iniquitous system. Chief among these protests ranked that against the overwork of pregnant mothers, through which, as one of the most able opponents of existing evils, W. Stanley Jevons, wrote, "infinite, irreparable wrong is done to helpless children," adding that the appalling infant mortality of the manufacturing districts attracted far less attention and interest in the public mind than the death of a single murderer. At nearly the same time Mr. F.W. Lowndes gave the fruit of long research in a paper read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled "The Destruction of Infancy;"[26] and this was supplemented by testimony from experts, the Statistical Society adding weighty testimony to the same effect.[27] From these and other official testimony it was found that in nineteen manufacturing towns,[28] out of 1,023,896 children [Forty-first Report of the Registrar-General, p. 36] born, 82,259 died in infancy. The rate of mortality varied from 59.4 in Portsmouth through an ascending scale, being in London 78.6 and in Liverpool the almost incredible proportion of 103.6 per thousand. In a rural country infant mortality does not exceed from thirty-five to forty per thousand. The Report of the Select Committee on the Protection of Infant Life was filled with details so horrible that only the sworn testimony of experts made them credited at all.[29] Dr. Hunter's report on rural mortality shows that when mothers are employed in what are known as "field gangs" for out-of-door work, leaving their children in the charge of old women too weak for such labor as their own, that infants died like sheep. Godfrey's Cordial was the chief engine of destruction; the corps of inspectors who reported to the Government finding infants in all stages of prostration, from the overdoses of the popular specific warranted to render any attention from nurse or mother quite unnecessary. As to the direct effects of factory or out-door labor on pregnant mothers, out of 10,000 births among factory mothers, there died from 1863-75 of children under one year of age, in Portsmouth 1,459, Liverpool 2,189, London 1,591, and other towns with textile industries 1,940. Statistics taken in Germany and at other points all went to show that in the matter of out-door labor at the harvest season, when all women-workers are in the fields, the deaths of nursing infants were three times as great as in the other nine months. For details and deduction from these facts the reader is referred to the reports themselves. "I go so far," wrote Mr. Jevons, "as to advocate the ultimate complete exclusion of mothers of children under the age of three years from factories and workshops;" and his conviction voiced that of every examiner into the situation as it stood at that time. The Factory and Workshop Act came as partial solution to the many problems; and though regarded by the working-class as a mass of arbitrary restrictions whose usefulness they denied and in whose benefits they had no faith, it has actually proved the Great Charter of the working-classes. There are points still to be altered,--modifications made necessary by the constant change in methods of production, as well as in the enlarging sense of the ethical principles involved. But our own legislation is still far behind it at many points, and its work is done efficiently and thoroughly. Laws had been made, one by one, fifteen standing on the Statute Books in 1878, when all were abrogated, their essential features being codified in the Act as it stands to-day,--a genuine industrial code in one hundred and seven sections. Up to this date violation of its provisions had been incessant; but determined enforcement brought about a uniform working day, protection of dangerous machinery, proper ventilation, improved sanitary conditions, an interdict on Sunday labor, and many other reforms in administration. Fourteen years have seen next to no change in the Act, and the condition of women and child workers in factories and workshops has come to be regarded as the best that modern systems of production admit. These workers, whose numbers now mount to hundreds of thousands, are a class apart, and for them legislation has accomplished all that legislation seems able to do in alleviating social miseries. Content with the results achieved, need of further effort in other directions failed of recognition, and apathy became the general condition. It was during this season of repose that the public mind received first one shock and then another. "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" appalled all who read; and leaf by leaf the new book of revelations disclosed always deeper depths of misery and want among all workers with the needle,--from the days of the fig-leaf the symbol of grinding toil and often hopeless misery. Not alone from professional agitators, so called, but from philanthropists of every order, came the cry for help. The Factory and Workshop Act had not touched home labor. The sweating-system, born of modern conditions, had risen unsuspected, and ran riot, not only in East London, but even in back alleys of the sacred west, and in the swarming southwest region beyond London Bridge. The London "Lancet," the most authoritative medical journal of the world, conservative as it has always been, has at last found that it must join hands with socialist and anarchist, "scientific" or otherwise, with philanthropists of every order, against the new evil and its horrors. Rich and poor alike were involved. The virus of the deadly conditions under which the garments took shape was implanted in every stitch that held them together, and transferred itself to the wearer. Not only from London, but from every city of England, came the same cry; and the public faced suddenly an abyss of misery whose existence had been unknown and unsuspected, and the causes of which seemed inexplicable. For many months of the year just ended (1892) parliamentary investigation has gone on. Report after report has been made to its committees; and as testimony from accredited sources poured in, incidentally a flood of light has been let in upon many forms of work outside the clothing-manufacturer. To-day, in four huge volumes of some thousand pages each, one may read the testimony, heart-sickening in every detail,--a noted French political economist, the Comte d'Haussonville, describing it, in a recent article in "La Revue des deux Mondes" as "The Martyrology of English Industries." In such conditions inspection is inoperative. An army of inspectors would not suffice where every house represents from one to a dozen workshops under its roof, in each of which sanitary conditions are defied, and the working day made more often fourteen and sixteen hours than twelve. Even for this day a starvation wage is the rule; the sewing-machine operative, for example, while earning a wage of fifteen or eighteen pence, furnishing her own thread and being forced to pay rental on the machine. A portion of a wage table is given here as illustrative of rates, and used as a reference table before the preparation of Mr. Booth's book, which gives much the same figures:-- Making paper bags, 4-1/2d. to 5-1/2d. per thousand; possible earnings, 5s. to 6s. per week. Button-holes, 3d. a dozen; possible earnings, 8s. a week. Shirts, 2d. each, worker finding her own cotton; can get six done between 8 A.M. and 11 P.M. Sack sewing, 6d. for twenty-five; 8d. to 1s. 6d. per hundred. Possible earnings, 8s. per week. Pill-box making, 9s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 8s. per week. Shirt button-hole making, 1d. a dozen; can do three or four dozen a day. Whip-making, 1s. a dozen; can do a dozen a day. Trousers finishing, 3d. to 5d. each, finding one's own cotton; can do four a day. Shirt-finishing, 3d. to 4d. a dozen; possible earnings, 6s. a week. Outside of the cities, where the needle is almost the sole refuge of the unskilled worker, every industry is invaded. A recent report as to English nail and chain workers shows hours and general conditions to be almost intolerable, while the wage averages eightpence a day. In the mines, despite steady action concerning them, women are working by hundreds for the same rate. In short, from every quarter comes in repeated testimony that the majority of working Englishwomen are struggling for a livelihood; that a pound a week is a fortune, and that the majority live on a wage below subsistence point. The enormous influx of foreign population is partly responsible for these conditions, but far less than is popularly supposed; since the Jews, most often accused, are in many cases juster employers than the Christians, and suffer from the same causes. For all alike, legislation is powerless to reach certain ingrained evils, and the recent sweating-commission ended its report with the words:-- "We express the firm hope that the faithful exposure of the evils that we have been called upon to unveil, will have the effect of leading capitalists to lend greater attention to the conditions under which work is done, which furnishes the merchandise they demand. When legislation has attained the limit beyond which it can no longer be useful, the amelioration of the condition of workers can result only from the increasing moral sense of those who employ them." This conclusion, it may be added, is in full accord with that given in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., as well as with that of our most serious workers at home; our own government examination into the sweating-system, now embodied in a Congressional Report accessible to all, being simply confirmation of every point made in that for England. As a summary of many working conditions in London, I add part of a report made by an indefatigable student of social conditions, Margaret Harkness, associated now with Mr. Charles Booth, and as able an observer as her cousin and co-worker, Miss Beatrice Potter, whose report on the sweating-system makes part of Mr. Booth's first volume:[30]-- "I have, for the last six months, been attempting to find out something about the hours and wages of girls who work at various trades in the city. Had I known how difficult the task would be, I should probably never have attempted it. Last time I heard of Mr. Besant he was sitting in his office, overwhelmed with figures and facts. He said then that he did not expect to publish anything about the work of girls and women in the United Kingdom under a year or eighteen months. I do not wonder at it. Apart from the method of his inquiry, I know how exceedingly difficult it is to arrive at the truth; the tact and patience it needs to make such investigations. Employees and employers take very different views of the same circumstances; one must listen to both, and then split the difference. "There are at the present time absolutely no figures to go upon if one wishes to learn something about the hours and wages of girls who follow certain occupations in the city. The factory inspectors (admirable men, but very much overworked) come, with the most naive delight, to visit any person who has information to give about the people over whose interests they are supposed to watch with fatherly interest. Clergymen shake their heads, or refer one to homes and charities. One has to find out the truth for one's self. Both employers and employees must be visited. Even then one must wait days and weeks to inspire them with confidence, for thus alone can one obtain a thorough knowledge of things as they really are, and arrive at facts unbiassed by prejudice. "So far I have found that there are, at least, two hundred trades at which girls work in the city. Some employ hundreds of hands, and some only fifty or sixty. Printers give the greatest amount of work, perhaps; but there are at least two hundred other occupations in which girls earn a living; namely, brush-makers, button-makers, cigarette-makers, electric-light fitters, fur-workers, India-rubber-stamp machinist, magic-lantern-slide makers, perfumers, portmanteau-makers, spectacle-makers, surgical-instrument makers, tie-makers, etc. These girls can be roughly divided into two classes,--those who earn from 8s. to 14s., and those who earn from 4s. to 8s. per week. Taking slack time into consideration, it is, I think, safe to say that 10s. is the average weekly wage of the first class, and 4s. 6d. that of the second class. Their weekly wage often falls below this, and sometimes rises above it. The hours are almost invariably from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M., with one hour for dinner and a half-holiday on Saturday. I know few cases in which such girls work less; a good many in which over-time reaches to ten or eleven at night; a few in which over-time means all night. There is little to choose between the two classes. The second are allowed by their employers to wear old clothes and boots; the first must make 'a genteel appearance.' "I often hear rich women say, 'Oh, working-girls cannot be very poor; they wear such smart feathers.' If these women knew how the girls have to stint in underclothing and food in order to make what their employers call 'a genteel appearance,' I think they would pass quite another verdict. I will give two typical cases: A girl living just over Blackfriars Bridge, in one small room, for which she pays 5s., earns 10s. a week in a printer's business. She works from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., then returns home to do all the washing, cleaning, cooking, etc., that is necessary in a one-room establishment. She has an invalid mother dependent on her efforts, and is out-patient herself at one of the London hospitals. She was sixteen last Christmas. Another girl, who lives in two cellars near Lisson Grove, with father, mother, and six brothers and sisters, earns 3s. 6d. a week in a well-known factory. She is seventeen years old, but does not look more than ten or eleven. Every morning she walks a mile to her work, arriving at eight o'clock; every evening she walks a mile back, reaching home about seven o'clock. If she arrives at the factory five minutes late, she is fined 7d. If she stays away a whole day, she is 'drilled,'--that is, kept without work a whole week. Her father has been out of employment for six months; so her weekly 3s. 6d. goes into the family purse. Her food consists of three slices of bread and butter, which she takes to the factory for dinner; one slice of bread and butter and some weak tea for supper and breakfast. These cases are not picked. They are to be found scattered all over London. Many and many a family is at the present time being kept by the labor of one or two such girls, who can at the most earn a few shillings. When one thinks what the life of a young girl is in happy families, all the joyousness of which she is capable, until sorrow sets its seal on her, one's heart aches for the sad lives of these girls in the city. 'And still her voice comes ringing Across the soft still air, And still I hear her singing, "Oh, life, thou art most fair!"' "A young girl is capable of feeling in one brief hour more intense delight than a boy of her age experiences in a fortnight. Yet all this joyousness is ruthlessly stamped upon by competition, and thousands of girls in London have no enjoyment except to gaze at monstrosities in penny gaffs, or to dance on dirty pavements; and generally these poor things are too tired even to do that. It is strange that the public take so little interest in these girls, considering they must become mothers of future citizens. 'The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity.' What sort of daughters are these girls with their pinched faces and stunted bodies likely to give England? What will posterity say of the girl labor that now goes on in the city? I have seen strong men weeping because they have no bread to give their children; I know at the London docks chains have been replaced by wooden barriers, because starving men behind pressed so hard on starving men in front, that the latter were nearly cut in two by the iron railings; I have watched a contractor mauled when he had no work to give, and have myself been nearly killed by a brick-bat that was hurled at a contractor's head by a man whose family was starving: but I deliberately say of all the victims of our present competitive system I pity these girls the most. They are so fragile. Honest work is made for them almost impossible; and if they slip, no one gives them a second chance, they are kicked and spat upon by the public. I know that the girl-labor question is but a portion of the larger labor question, that nothing can be done for them at present; but I wish that they were not the victims of the _laissez-faire_ policy in two ways instead of one; I wish that their richer sisters were not so terribly apathetic about them." For Scotland, industries, wages, and general conditions are much the same as those of England. Factory life has been at many points improved, and the superior thrift and education of the working-class shows in the large amount of their savings. But Glasgow has faced conditions almost as terrible as those given in "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with a result not yet attained by the latter city, having destroyed hundreds of foul tenements to make room for improved dwellings. For Ireland, though Irish linen, poplins, and woollens are the synonym of excellence, the proportion of women workers in these industries is comparatively small. In a few counties in the south Irish lace is made, but the women are chiefly agricultural laborers. Thanks to the efforts of Parnell, in 1885, there was formed "The Association for the Promotion of Irish Industries," then chiefly destroyed by the "Act of Union" which permitted England to levy protective tariffs on all Irish manufactures. Statistics on these points are hidden in English Blue-books, and we have no very reliable data as to the number of women and children employed. The efforts of the Countess of Aberdeen, during the term of her husband as Viceroy of Ireland, and of the Countess of Dunraven on the Dunraven estates in the county of Limerick, have done much to re-establish the lace industry,--with such success that the work compares favorably with that of some of the French convents. In Wales, as in the North of England, women and children are employed in the mines, and there is constant evasion of the laws regulating hours, with a wage as inadequate as the work is heavy. Heavy woollens and corduroy employ a small proportion in their manufacture, wage and hours being the same as those of England. FOOTNOTES: [26] "The Destruction of Infants," by Mr. F.W. Lowndes, M.R.C.S., British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report for 1870, p. 586. [27] Journal of the Statistical Society, Sept., 1870, vol. xxxiii. pp. 323-326. [28] Parliamentary Paper, No. 372, July 20, 1871: Collected Series, vol. vii. p. 606. [29] Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1863, pp. 454-462. Parliamentary Paper, 1864, No. 3,416, vol. xxviii. [30] Labor and Life of the People, vol. i.: East London. Edited by Charles Booth, p. 564. VIII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL WORKERS. For France the census of 1847 showed a list of 959 women workers in Paris earning sixty centimes a day; 100,000 earning from sixty centimes to three francs, and 626 earning over three francs. That for 1869 showed 17,203, earning from fifty centimes to one franc twenty-five centimes daily; 11,000 of these workers being furnished lodging, food, and washing. Of the entire number 88,340 earned from one franc fifty centimes to four francs a day; 767 earned from four francs fifty centimes to ten francs daily, most of the latter class being heads of work rooms or shops. The rise in wages affected the better orders of worker, but left the sewing-woman's wage nearly unchanged. Levasseur[31] tells us that toward the end of the reign of Louis Philippe the wage of a woman varied ordinarily from twelve to twenty-five sous, exceptionally from twenty to forty; that of children being from six to fifteen sous; of men from thirty sous for ordinary laborers, to forty or forty-five for skilled work. The census for 1851 gave for Paris 112,891 workwomen, 60,000 of whom were sewers. Convent sewing, that of the prisons and reformatories, and the competition of women who had homes and worked simply for pin-money, kept the wage at a minimum; and these conditions still operate toward that end, precisely as they do for all countries where the needle is a means of support, the evil being felt most severely in our cities. The facts in the life of a French seamstress are much the same as those of the Englishwoman. To earn two francs a day she must make eight chemises, working from fourteen to sixteen hours daily to accomplish this. The income of the average sewer does not exceed, at the best, five hundred francs, and most usually falls below. Rents are so high that a garret requires not less than one hundred francs a year. In his researches into conditions, Jules Simon[32] found that this sum compelled deprivations of every order. Expenses were as follows: Rent, 100 francs; clothing, bedding, etc., 115 francs; washing, 36 francs; heat and light, 36 francs. These sums amounted to 286.50 francs, the amount remaining for food being 215.50 or a little less than twelve sous a day,--the amount expended by two of our own seamstresses in New York in 1887, the items being given by the earner.[33] Existence on French soil, whether in Paris, the manufacturing towns, or the provinces, has come to mean something very different from the facts of a generation ago. Then, with wages hardly above "subsistence point," the thrifty Frenchwoman not only lived, but managed to put by a trifle each month. Wages have risen, but prices have at the same time advanced. Every article of daily need is at the highest point,--sugar, which the London workwoman buys at a penny a pound, being twelve cents a pound in Paris; and flour, milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear that shivering is the law for all save the wealthy; and rents are no less dear, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the most for the scant sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, chiefly chiccory, make one meal; bread alone is the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for Sunday. Hours are frightfully long, the disabilities of the French needleworker being in many points the same as those of her English sister. In short, even skilled labor has many disabilities, the saving fact being that unskilled is in far less proportion than across the Channel, the present system of education including many forms of industrial training. Generations of freer life than that of England, and many traditions in her favor give certain advantages to the woman born on French soil. It is taken for granted that she will after marriage share her husband's work or continue her own, and her keen intelligence is relied upon to a degree unknown to other nations. Repeated wars, and the enrolment of all her men for fixed periods of service, have developed the capacity of women in business directions, and they fill every known occupation. The light-heartedness of her nation is in her favor, and she has learned thoroughly how to extract the most from every centime. There is none of the hopeless dowdiness and dejection that characterize the lower order of Englishwoman. Trim, tidy, and thrifty, the Frenchwoman faces poverty with a smiling courage that is part of her strength, this look changing often for the older ones into a patience which still holds courage. Thus far there is no official report of the industries in which they are engaged, and figures must be drawn from unofficial sources. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political economist, in his history of "The Labor of Women in the Nineteenth Century," computes the number of women at work in the manufactories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, as nearly one million; and outside of this is the enormous number of lace-makers and general workers in all occupations. There are over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment for Swiss lace-workers is the same. During the Congrès Féministe held in the autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent, an ardent champion of women wage-earners, presented statistics, chiefly from private sources, showing that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France, there are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages or dividends nearly $500,000,000 a year. Their wage is much less in proportion to the work they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty-five per cent of the entire sum spent in wages. In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing business on an independent footing; and of 3,858 suits judged in 1892 by the Workingman's Council, 1,674 concerned women. In spite of these numbers and the abuses known to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has refused practically to extend to women workers the law for the regulation of the conditions of work in workshops. The refusal is disguised under the form of adjournment of the matter, the reason assigned being that the grievances of women are by no means ripe enough for discussion. Women themselves are not at all of the same mind; and the result has already been a move toward definite organization of trades, and united action for all women engaged in them,--a step hitherto regarded as impossible. The first effect of this has been a protest from Paris shopgirls against the action of the Chamber of Deputies, and the formation of committees whose business will be to enlist the interest and co-operation of women throughout the entire country,--a slow process, but one that will mean both education and final release from some at least of the worst disabilities now weighting all women workers. "La femme devenue ouvrière, n'est plus une femme," wrote Jules Simon in a burst of despair at the conditions of the Paris workwoman; and he repeated the word as his investigations extended to manufacturing France, and he found everywhere the home in many cases abolished, the _crèche_ taking its place till the child, vitally dependent upon a care that included love, gave up the struggle for existence, rendering its tiny quota to the long list of infant mortality. M. Leroy-Beaulieu had described years before the practical extinction of the family and the government interference[34] brought about by the discoveries made by the government inspecting committee, upon whom consternation seized as they found decadence of morals, enfeebled physique, and that the ordinary girl-worker at sixteen or seventeen could not sew a seam, or make a broth, or care for a child's needs or the simplest demands of a home. Appalled at these conditions, France set about the organization of industrial schools, and these have altered the whole face of affairs. Generations of abuses had made, up to the time of the investigation, the history of the working-class in France. One of their best-known scientific observers, the statistician Villermé, examined in person, and as one of the government inspecting committee reported on the condition of dwellings in Lille, Amiens, and other manufacturing towns of France. The weavers and spinners of Lille lived in caves, of which thirty-six hundred were found occupied by families,--father, mother, and children as soon as old enough, employed in the mills, and returning at night to these dens, where filth and darkness periodically did their work of decimation, and where infant mortality had reached the maximum. Horrified at the discoveries made, three thousand of these dwellings were at once destroyed. But for unknown and quite inscrutable reasons six hundred were allowed to remain and receive double the original number of tenants.[35] Years passed before the last cave was filled up, the children born in them providing an enormous percentage for prison and galleys. At Douai, Rouen, Roubaix, and many other points, such hideous filth marked the homes of the working-class that Villermé reported: "The walls are covered with a thousand layers of ordure." The women, exhausted and depleted by a day's labor of from twelve to fourteen hours, had no time to think of cleanliness. In fact, its meaning had never been taught; and though industrial schools increase, hours are now shortened, and inspection is active, it remains true that almost the same conditions perpetuate themselves at many points,--the descriptions given by the great realist, Zola, of women and children in the mines, and the hideousness of their home life, being very literal and unexaggerated fact. As to conditions of the work itself, many trades and occupations require for their proper carrying on methods and surroundings absolutely destructive to health. In all preparation of hemp and oakum dust is excessive; far beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself breeds consumption. In the spinning of flax great heat and water are both necessities. "Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules Simon, "than a linen-spinner's surroundings. Water covers the brick floor. The odor of the linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty-five Reaumur fill the workroom with an intolerable stench. The majority of the workwomen, obliged to put off most of their garments, are huddled together in this pestilential atmosphere, imprisoned in the machines, pressed one against the other, their bodies streaming with sweat, their feet bare to the ankle; and when a day, nominally of twelve hours but really of thirteen and a half, is over, they quit the workroom for home, the rags they wear barely protecting them from cold and damp." Details of the same order abound in the work of the political economist M. Leroy-Beaulieu,[36] who seeks at all points to give the most favorable impression possible. In each and every case the great authorities appear to be of one mind as to the disastrous effects upon the children born to these mothers. That the _crèche_ is now practically a part of every factory makes little or no difference. "The _crèche_," writes Jules Simon, "abolishes maternity in all save its pains. The working mother is defrauded of her own means of growth, bound up in the training of the child; and the child loses its right to be loved and guarded by love." In short, for all continental countries, as well as for England and our women, the question of child labor and the destiny of the child are inextricably bound up in that of the working mother, and are vital factors in working out the problem of woman as a wage-earner. What proportion of wage-earning women recruit the ranks of prostitution, is a question often asked. In Paris, which is in one sense the focus of French labor, its many opportunities drawing to it a large contingent from the provinces, it is popularly supposed that the ranks of the sewing-women give large proportion to houses of prostitution. This opinion is the prevailing one for all large cities, whether in Europe or America, yet is disproved on all sides. For Paris Parent-Duchalet states that in the statistics given by the prefecture of police, in a table including forty-one categories, women with no occupation had first rank as prostitutes, domestic service giving the second, and sewing-women the smallest proportion. This is the more surprising when one considers that their wage is often below the point of subsistence, and that temptation of every order waits upon them. At the best the wage falls far below that of men, even when both engage in the same work. The present movement toward organization is the first step toward a general bettering of all trades and their wage; and for fullest details of this, and work in connection with the admirable Bourse du Travail, one of its most important features of working life to-day in Paris, the reader must turn to the reports themselves, beginning with the first one, issued in 1887-88.[37] The same facts may be said to form the story of labor in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Italy, and at all points where women or children are at work, whether in factory or mine or workshop. For Belgium the situation is summed up in a very important and minute report of the government inquiry commission into the labor of women and children,--the first made in 1867 and followed by one in 1874, the latest having been made in 1891.[38] A comprehensive law, promulgated Nov. 2, 1892, and regulating the labor of women and children in factories and mines, was amended in May, 1893, by the addition of very specific regulations as to all employments affecting health and morals. The Presidential decree consists of two parts,--the first dealing with the employment of women and children in connection with machinery when in motion, or in which the dangerous parts are not fully protected, in glass-blowing and in carrying weights. The second part of the decree consists of three tables, of which A enumerates certain industries, chiefly the manufacture of acids, dyes, chemicals, etc., also manures and glass, crystal, and metal polishing, in which female and child labor are prohibited; B those in which children under eighteen must not work, chiefly the manufacture of explosives; and C, a large variety of other industries in which female and child labor is only allowed conditionally. The great majority of these are industries involving special risk through the disengagement of dust-particles or vapors; while a few are ranked as dangerous, owing to risk of fire and the contraction of special diseases, etc. Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, has known some of the worst abuses discoverable on continental soil, thousands of women and children in her mines having toiled from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with often no Sunday rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In "Germinal," Zola, who spent months observing every phase of their life, has given a picture, unsurpassed in any literature, of the misery and degradation of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more; but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes discernible. Passing to Germany, a good two-thirds of the women are at work in field or shop or home, the proportion of women in agriculture being larger than in any other country of Europe. Her schools furnish better training than those of any other nation. In all these points Prussia leads, though till recently legislation has been in behalf of child-workers, and women have been practically ignored. But factory regulations are minute and extended; and the questions involved in the labor of women, and its bearing on health, longevity, etc., are now coming under consideration. In Silesia, as early as 1868, women were excluded from the salt-mines; and the Labor Congress of 1889 brought about many changes of the laws on this point for Belgium and Germany. In Italy, in which country industrial education is now receiving much attention, the labor of women, continuous, severe, and underpaid, as it is known to be, finds small mention, save among special students of social questions. Russia has practically no data from which judgment can be formed. In short, it is only in English-speaking countries that really efficient action as to the labor of women has taken place; while even for them the work has but begun, and new and more radical forms will be necessary for any real progress toward final betterment. Toward such end the labor bureaus of our own country are working diligently; and it is with them that we have next to do, the investigations already made and incorporated in their reports being full of suggestion for future workers. The census of 1882 gave for Germany, in a population of 45,222,113 persons, 23,071,364 women, of whom 1,109,530 were widows, and 5,467,730 unmarried, a large proportion of both these classes being self-supporting. An immense number of these were agricultural laborers. In Prussia in 1867 the census gave the number of women agricultural laborers as 1,054,213. Woman's wage for a day's labor, always twelve and often fourteen hours, is from twenty to twenty-five cents, about a third of that received by men doing the same work. Brassey, the great railroad contractor, found throughout Germany that her wage was always a third and often a quarter less than that of men. For united Germany the description given by Villermé in 1836 is still true for many points. "The misery in which the cotton spinners and weavers of the upper Rhine live," he writes, "is so profound that it produces the saddest results. In the families of manufacturers, drapers, merchants, etc., half the children born attain their nineteenth year, this same half ceasing to exist before the age of two years in the families of weavers and workers at cotton-spinning." As to numbers employed in trades and industries, it is difficult to secure them with exactness. The census of 1871 reported three tenths of the population as agricultural, the males employed in agriculture being 2,338,174, and the females 4,426,573. Household service had 840,000 women on its rolls. In 1875 the cotton-mills employed in weaving and spinning 95,934 women; the woollen manufacture, nearly 193,000; linen, hemp, and jute, 190,000. The labor of women and children was hardly recognized, and statistics had to be disentangled as best they might be from general tables of occupations. Through the persistent efforts of the Centre in the German Reichstag, a gradual betterment of the working-classes has been brought about, and thus indirectly that of women and children,--the first combined and determined effort being made in 1889, when three bills were brought up for discussion. The first made the working-day not to exceed eleven hours; the second demanded the suspension of industrial labor on Sunday, save in exceptional cases, when five hours' labor was to be allowed; the third concerned the labor of women and children, and with some modifications is practically the law to-day. Night and Sunday labor in mines, smelting-works, rolling-mills, and dockyards is entirely forbidden, nor can married women work more than ten hours a day. The Federal Council has the right also to forbid the employment of women and children in all factories and establishments where health and morals are exposed to exceptional dangers. At the period at which the investigations which brought about the agitation of the question were made, the number of child laborers had increased in two years from 155,000 to 192,000, children hardly more than babies being in the factories. At present the law forbids the employment of any child under twelve, and not less than three hours' schooling daily is compulsory. Abuses exist at all points, women workers in mines faring, even with shortened day, in very evil case,--the wage at or below subsistence point and the general conditions of the most hopeless order. Constant agitation goes on in the Reichstag, and organization among the women themselves will in time bring about needed reforms; but as a whole the German woman is in many points less considered than the women of any other civilized nation. Though Italy is pre-eminently an agricultural country, and men, women, and children are alike employed in agricultural pursuits, there has been no trustworthy record of numbers engaged. In manufacturing there are more statistics, but interest in the woman's share in labor is of recent date. In the silk manufacture, in which Italy ranks second only to China, and far beyond all other competitors, 81,165 women and 25,373 children were employed in 1877, chiefly in unwinding cocoons, the number at present having increased nearly ten per cent. In the cotton industry there were employed, at the time of the same census, 2,696 women and 2,520 children; and a proportionate increase in numbers has taken place. In the flax and hemp industries nearly seventy thousand workers used hand-looms at home, the larger proportion of these being women. In the factories it was found that 2,565 women and 1,227 children were at work as spinners, and 3,394 women and 1,020 children as weavers. Women are steadily employed in the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets, in jute in many forms, in cigar and cigarette making, and in many other industries, cheap clothing leading. Of the thirty millions and more of population, not quite half are women; and of these nearly half are wage-earners, the majority in unrecorded forms of labor,--chiefly household service or the care of their own homes, with some petty industry adding its mite to the yearly income. But industrial training has but begun for Italy. The wage is pitiably low, the conditions of living hard and full of privation; nor can these facts alter till better education and organization have been brought about. The latest Italian census is not yet published; but proofs of tables of the comparative wage for twenty years in some of the principal industries have been sent me through the courtesy of Signor Luigi Bodio, the minister of agriculture, commerce, and general statistics. From these tables it is found that the daily wage of women cotton-spinners has risen from sixty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891, this being the equivalent of one lire twenty-six centissimi. The wage for weaving has risen from eighty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891. Spoolers in 1871 received eighty-eight centimes as against one franc thirty centimes in 1891. In hemp-spinning the wage has fallen from ninety to eighty centimes, but has risen from ninety-eight centimes to one franc thirty centimes for twisting; the wage in the cases cited being a little more than a third that of men. In paper-making experienced workers now receive one franc fifty-two centimes as against sixty-six centimes in 1871; and in making of stearine candles one franc as against seventy-eight centimes in 1871. Running through the tables of every industry, the average is about the same,--the wage for women, even when doing the same work, hardly more than a third that for men, and the amount for either at bare subsistence point. In Russia the woman's wage is but a fifth that of men, with working conditions, save at a few points where the work of Professor Janzhul and his confrères has told, at the very worst,--the day being from twelve to sixteen hours long even in the best-managed factories, while in the village industries, which, owing to the peculiar conditions of Russian life, make up the larger proportion of her industries, it is for many workers almost unending, the merest respite being given for sleep. As yet but few authentic figures as to the numbers employed are given, though on the first investigation into domestic industries made a few years since it was found that over 890,000 were engaged in them, and also at the same time in agriculture. Manufacturing in Russia concentrates about Moscow and St. Petersburg, which represent more than two fifths of the whole production of the empire. The requirements of nine tenths of the Russian people are met by domestic manufacture in the villages, and home-weaving for the market employs over two hundred thousand workers, other textiles, leather, etc., being dealt with in the same way. In the other northern countries of Europe,--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,--manufactures are at a minimum, fisheries and agriculture being the chief industries. Women are employed in both; and in the few factories there is a small proportion of women and children, working at a wage much less than that given to men. Sweden has a most admirable system of industrial education; and Norway and Denmark, though far less in population, have adopted the same methods. But the limitations of all wage-earning women are felt here in the same manner as elsewhere, the summary for all countries being much the same. The Northern workwoman has the advantage of training and of as keen a sense of economy as the Frenchwoman; but her wage is most usually at or below subsistence point, and her difficulties are those of the worker in general,--long hours, insufficient pay, and fierce competition. As to the present laws concerning the length of the working-day, a general abstract is found in a return issued in reply to an address from the House of Commons, an abstract of which was given in "St. James' Gazette":-- "In France the hours of adult labor are regulated by a series of decrees, of which the earliest, promulgated September, 1848, enacts that the workingman's day in manufactories and mills shall not exceed twelve hours of 'effective' or actual labor. A decree issued in May, 1851, made exceptions, so that more hours might be worked in certain trades. In 1885 a circular was issued stating that the limit of twelve hours _per diem_ was not to be imposed where hand-power was employed, but was to be confined to manufactories and mills in which the motive power was machinery. No workshops were to come under the clauses of the act that did not employ more than twenty hands in any one shed. The report says: 'It is likewise to be borne in mind that there is in France no compulsory observance of Sunday, and no day of habitual rest.' "The reports of the French inspectors of labor appear to show that the Act of 1848 is very loosely interpreted. It is even doubtful whether the section limiting the actual working-day to twelve hours was intended to include or exclude hours of rest. Practically the legal time is made to exclude rest. This makes the working-day so much the longer. Thus one of the French inspectors states that the hours of attendance in factories under the Act of 1848 are from five in the morning until seven in the evening, or a total of fourteen hours, out of which there are twelve hours of 'effective labor.' But the same authority also states that 'effective' time often extends to thirteen and fourteen hours in many weaving-establishments. Finally, we are told that, as a rule, it may be taken that Frenchmen employed in factories are present in the shops at least fourteen hours out of every twenty four. "Among the countries having no laws affecting the hours of adult labor, Germany is conspicuous. Employers, however, cannot force their servants to work on Sundays and feast-days. Employment of youthful or female labor in certain kinds of factories, which is attended with special danger to health or morals, is forbidden, or made conditional on certain regulations, by which night labor for female work-people is especially forbidden. In Germany, as in other countries also, women may not be employed in factories for a certain time after childbirth. In Hesse-Darmstadt the medium duration of labor is from ten to twelve hours,--the cases in which the latter time is exceeded being, however, more frequent than those in which the former is not exceeded. The normal work-day throughout Saxony in all the principal branches of industry is from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M., with half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for supper. In the manufacturing industry there are departures from these hours, the period of work in spinning and weaving mills not infrequently being twelve hours. "In Austria the law provides that the duration of work for factory hands shall not exceed eleven hours out of the twenty-four, 'exclusive' of the periods of rest. These are not to be less in the aggregate than an hour and a half. The rule can be modified by the minister of commerce, in conjunction with the minister of the interior, allowing longer hours. The hours have been so extended to twelve hours in certain industries, such as spinning-mills, and even to thirteen in silk manufactories. Sunday rest is enforced. In Hungary there is no limit laid down by law, but the hours are not generally longer than in Austria. "Concerning the actual hours of adult labor in Belgium, some difficulty is said to be experienced in getting at the facts. The evidence given before a Belgian royal commission showed that railway guards are sometimes on duty for fifteen and even nineteen and a half hours at a stretch; and the Brussels tram-way-drivers are at work from fifteen to seventeen hours daily, with a rest of only an hour and a half at noon. Brick-makers work during the summer months sixteen hours a day. In the sugar refineries the average hours are from twelve to thirteen for men and from nine to ten for women. The cabinetmakers, both at Ghent and Brussels, assert that they have often to work seventeen hours a day. "In Switzerland the law provides that a normal working-day shall not exceed eleven hours, reduced on Saturdays and public holidays to ten. Power is reserved for prolonging the working-day in certain circumstances. Except in cases of absolute necessity Sunday labor is prohibited, and in establishments where uninterrupted labor is required, each working hand must have one free Sunday out of two. Women cannot under any circumstances be employed in night or Sunday labor. Italy has not legislated for adults, but has made regulations for child labor. Sweden is in the same position. Spain and Portugal have done nothing. The general rule in the latter country, applying to old and young, is to work from sunrise to sunset, an hour and a half being allowed for meals. In the Netherlands a law was recently promulgated to prevent excessive and dangerous work by grown-up women and young persons. In Turkey the working-day lasts from sunrise to sunset, with certain intervals for repose and refreshment. In Russia, where there are no laws affecting the hours of adult labor, the normal working-day in industrial establishments averages twelve hours, though it is often extended to fourteen and even sixteen." FOOTNOTES: [31] Histoire des Classes Ouvriers en France depuis 1789 jusqu'à nos Jours, par E. Levasseur. [32] L'Ouvrière, par Jules Simon. [33] Prisoners of Poverty, p. 118. [34] Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siècle, par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. [35] L'Ouvrière, p. 158. [36] Le Travail des Femmes aux XIX. Siècle. [37] Annuaire de la Bourse du Travail. Volumes from 1887 to 1892 inclusive. [38] Rapport sur l'Enquête faite au nom de l'Académie Royale de Médecine de Belgique, par la commission chargée d'étudier la question de l'emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrain des mines, Bruxelles, 1868. Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des enfants, dans les manufactures, les mines, etc, etc. Bruxelles, 1874. CHAPTER IX. GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES. The summary already made of the work of bureaus of labor and their bearing upon women wage-earners includes some points belonging under this head which it still seemed advisable to leave where they stand. The work of the Massachusetts Bureau gave the keynote, followed by all successors, and thus required full outlining; and it is from that, as well as successors, that general conditions are to be determined. A brief summary of such facts as each State has investigated and reported upon will be given, with the final showing of the latest and most general report,--that from the United States Bureau of Labor for 1889. Beginning with New England and taking State by State in the usual geographical order, that of Maine for 1888 leads. Work here was done by a special commissioner appointed for the purpose, and the chief towns and cities in the State were visited. No occupation was excluded. The foreign element of the State is comparatively small. There is no city in which overcrowding and its results in the tenement-house system are to be found. Factories are numerous, and the bulk of Maine working-women are found in them; the canning industry employs hundreds, and all trades have their proportion of workers. For all of them conditions are better in many ways than at almost any other point in New England, many of them living at home and paying but a small proportion of their wages toward the family support. A large proportion of the factories have boarding-houses attached, which are run by a contractor. A full inspection of these was made, and the report pronounces them to be better kept than the ordinary boarding-house, with liberal dietary and comfortable rooms. Many of the women owned their furniture, and had made "homes" out of the narrow quarters. These were the better-paid class of workers. Several of the factories have "Relief Associations," in which the employees pay a small sum weekly, which secures them a fixed sum during illness or disability. The conditions, as a whole, in factory are more nearly those of Massachusetts during the early days of the Lowell mills than can be found elsewhere. Taking the State as a whole, though the average wage is nearly a dollar less a week than that of Massachusetts, its buying power is somewhat more, from the fact that rents are lower and the conditions of living simpler, though this is true only of remote towns. Massachusetts follows; and here, as in Maine, there is general complaint that many of the girls live at home, pay little or no board, and thus can take a lower wage than the self-supporting worker. In the large stores employees are hired at the lowest possible figure; and many girls who are working for from four to five dollars per week state that it is impossible to pay for room and board with even tolerably decent clothing. Hundreds who want pin-money do work at a price impossible to the self-supporting worker, many married women coming under this head; and bitter complaint is made on this point. At the best the wage is at a minimum, and only the most rigid economy renders it possible for the earner to live on it. That there is not greater suffering reflects all honor on the army of hard-working women, pronounced by the commissioner to be as industrious, moral, and virtuous a class as the community owns. "Homes" of every order have been established in Boston and in other large towns in the State; and as they give board at the lowest rate, they are filled with girls. They are rigid as to rules and regulations, and not in favor, as a rule, with the majority. A very slight relaxing of lines and more effort to make them cheerful would result in bringing many who now remain outside; but in any case they can reach but a small proportion. In unskilled labor there is little difference among the workers. All alike are half starved, half clothed, overworked to a frightful degree; the report specifying numbers whose day's work runs from fourteen to sixteen hours, and with neither time to learn some better method of earning a living, nor hope enough to spur them on in any new path. This class is found chiefly among sewing-women on cheap clothing, bags, etc.; and there is no present means of reaching them or altering the conditions which surround them. Connecticut factories are subject to the same general laws as those governing like work in Maine and Massachusetts. Over thirty thousand women and girls are engaged in factory work, and ten thousand children,--chiefly girls, women being twenty-five per cent of all employed in factories. Legislation has lessened or abolished altogether some of the worst features of this life, and there are special mills which have won the highest reputation for just dealing and care of every interest of their employees. But the same reasons that affect general conditions for all workers exist here also, and produce the same results, not only in factory labor, but in all other industries open to women. The fact that there are no large cities, and thus little overcrowding in tenements, and that there is home life for a large proportion of the workers, tells in their favor. Factory boarding-houses fairly well kept abound; but the average wage, $6.50, is a trifle lower than that of Massachusetts, and implies more difficulty in making ends meet. Many of the worst abuses in child labor arose in Connecticut, and the reports for both 1885 and 1886 state that for both women and children much remains to be done. Clothing here, as elsewhere, is synonymous with overwork and underpay, the wage being below subsistence point; and want of training is often found to be a portion of the reason for these conditions. In Rhode Island, as in all the New England States, the majority of the factories are in excellent condition, the older ones alone being open to the objections justly made both by employees and the reports of the Labor Bureau. The wage falls below that of Connecticut, while the general conditions of living are practically the same, the statements made as to the first applying with equal force to the last. Manufactures are the chief employment, the largest number of women workers being found in these. Of all of them the commissioner reports: "They work harder and more hours than men, and receive much less pay."[39] The fact of no large cities, and thus no slums, is in the worker's favor; but limitations are in all other points sharp and continuous. New York follows, and for the State at large the same remarks apply at every point. It is New York City in which focuses every evil that hedges about women workers, and in a degree not to be found at any other portion of the country. These will be dealt with in the proper place. The average wage, so far as the State is concerned, gives the same result as those already mentioned. Manufacturing gives large employment; and this is under as favorable conditions as in New England, though the average wage is nearly a dollar less than that of Massachusetts, while expenses are in some ways higher. The incessant tide of foreign labor tends steadily to lower the wage-rate, and the struggle for mere subsistence is the fact for most. In New York City, while there is a large proportion of successful workers, there is an enormous mass of the lowest order. No other city offers so varied a range of employment, and there is none where so large a number are found earning a wage far below the "life limit." The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined. That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is the one most over-crowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in one of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence; often the need of work for older women arises from the death or evil habits of the natural head of the family, and fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that at times the only clothing left is on the back of the worker in the last stages of demoralization. Employment in a respectable place thus becomes impossible, and the sole method of securing work is through the middlemen or sweaters, who ask no questions and require no reference, but make as large a profit as can be wrung from the helplessness and bitter need of those with whom they reckon. The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support is limited to the needle, whether in machine or handwork, are fourfold: first, her own incompetency must very often head the list, and prevent her from securing first-class work; second, middlemen or sweaters lower the price to starvation point; third, contract work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and fourth, she is underbid from still another quarter,--that of the countrywoman living at home, who takes the work at any price offered. The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 contains a mass of evidence so fearful in its character, and demonstrating conditions of life so tragic for the worker, and so shameful on the part of the employer, that general attention was for the time aroused. It is impossible here to make more than this general statement referring all readers to the report itself for full detail. Thousands herded together in tenement houses and received a daily wage of from twenty-five to sixty cents, the day's labor being often sixteen hours long. "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" found its parallel here, nor has there been any diminution of the numbers involved, though at some points conditions have been improved. But the facts recorded in the report are practically the same to-day; and the income of many workers falls below two dollars a week, from which sum food, clothing, light, fuel, and rent are to be provided for. The sum and essence of every wrong and injustice that can hedge about the worker is found at this point, and remains a problem to every worker among the poor, the solving of which will mean the solution of the whole labor question. New Jersey reports have from the beginning followed the phases of the labor movement with a keen intelligence and interest. They give general conditions as much the same as those of New York State. The wage-rate is but $5; and Newark especially, a city which is filled with manufacturing establishments of every order, reproduces some of the evil conditions of New York City, though in far less degree. Taking the State as a whole, legislation has done much to protect the worker, and other reforms are persistently urged by the bureau. They are needed. In the official report of conditions among the linen-thread spinners of Paterson we find: "In one branch of this industry women are compelled to stand on a stone floor in water the year round, most of the time barefoot, with a spray of water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly against the breast; and the coldest night in winter, as well as the warmest in summer, these poor creatures must go to their homes with water dripping from their underclothing along their path, because there could not be space or a few moments allowed them wherein to change their clothing."[40] Thus much for the East; and we turn to the West, where some of the most practical and suggestive forms of investigation are now in full operation. FOOTNOTES: [39] Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics of Rhode Island, 1889, p. 22. [40] Report of the Bureau of Labor for the State of New Jersey, 1888. X. GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES. The reports from Kansas and Wisconsin give a wage but slightly above that of New Jersey, the weekly average being $5.27. Of the 50,000 women at work in 1889,--the number having now nearly doubled,--but 6,000 were engaged in manufacturing, the larger portion being in domestic service. Save in one or two of the larger towns and cities, there is no overcrowding, and few of the conditions that go with a denser population and sharper competition. Kansas gives large space to general conditions, and, while urging better pay, finds that her working-women are, as a whole, honest, self-respecting, moral members of the community. Factory workers are few in proportion to those in other occupations; and this is true of most of the Western States, where general industries are found rather than manufactures. The report from Colorado for 1889 includes in its own returns certain facts discovered on investigation in Ohio and Indiana, and matched by some of the same nature in Colorado. The methods of Eastern competition had been adopted, and Commissioner Rice reports:-- "In one of the large cities of Ohio the labor commissioners of that State discovered that shirts were being made for 36 cents a dozen; and that the rules of one establishment paying such wages employing a large number of females, required that the day's labor should commence and terminate with prayer and thanksgiving." In Indiana matters appear even worse. By personal investigation, it was found that the following rates of wages were being paid in manufacturing establishments in Indianapolis: For making shirts, 30 to 60 cents a dozen; overalls, 40 to 60 cents a dozen pairs; pants, 50 cents to $1.25 per dozen pairs. "In our own State," writes the commissioner, "owing to Eastern competition on the starvation wage plan, are found women and girls working for mere subsistence, though the prices paid here are a shade higher. It is found that shirts are made at 80 cents a dozen, and summer dresses from 25 cents upward." Prices are higher here than at almost any other portion of the United States, and thus the wage gives less return. In spite of the general impression that women fare well at this point, the report gives various details which seem to prove abuses of many orders. It made special investigation into the conditions of domestic service, that in hotels and large boarding-houses being found to be full of abuses, though conditions as a whole were favorable. In so new a State there are few manufacturing interests; and the factories investigated are many of them reported as showing an almost criminal disregard of the comfort and interests of the employees. Aside from this, the report indicates much the same general conditions as prevail in other States. In Minnesota, with its average wage of $6 per week, there are few factories,--manufacturing being confined to clothing, boots and shoes, and a few other forms. Domestic service has the largest number of women employed, and stores and trades absorb the remainder. There is no overcrowding save here and there in the cities, as in St. Paul or Minneapolis, where girls often club together in rooming. While many of the workers are Scandinavian, many are native born; and for the latter there is often much thrift and a comfortable standard of living. The same complaints as to lowness of wage, resulting from much the same causes as those specified elsewhere, are heard; and in the clothing manufacture wages are kept at the lowest possible point As a whole, the returns indicate more comfort than in Colorado, but leave full room for betterment. The chapter on "Domestic Service" shows many strong reasons why girls prefer factory or general work to this; and as the views of heads of employment agencies are also given, unusual opportunity is afforded for forming just judgment in the matter. Next on the list comes the report from California for 1887 and 1888. The resources of the bureau were so limited that it was impossible to obtain returns for the whole State, and the commissioner therefore limited his inquiry to a thorough investigation of the working-women of San Francisco, in number about twenty thousand. The State has but one cotton-mill, but there are silk, jute, woollen, corset, and shirt factories, with many minor industries. Home and general sanitary conditions were all investigated, the bureau following the general lines pursued by all. Wages are considered at length; and Commissioner Tobin states that the rate paid to women in California "does not compare favorably with the rates paid to women in the Eastern States, as do the wages of men, for the reason that Chinese come more into competition with women than with men. This is especially the case among seamstresses, and in nearly all our factories ... in other lines of labor the wages paid to females in this State are generally higher than elsewhere." Rent, food, and clothing cost more in California than in the Eastern States. The wage-tables show that the tendency is to limit a woman's wage to a dollar a day, even in the best paid trades, and as much below this as labor can be obtained. In shirt-making, Commissioner Tobin states that she is worse off than in any of the Eastern States. Clothing of all orders pays as little as possible, the best workwomen often making not over $2.87 per week. Even at these starvation rates, girls prefer factory work to domestic service; and as this phase was also investigated, we have another chapter of most valuable and suggestive information. In spite of low wages and all the hardship resulting, working women and girls as a whole are found to be precisely what the reports state them to be,--hard-working, honest, and moral members of the community. General conditions are much the same as those of Colorado, the summary for all the States from which reports have come being that the average wage is insufficient to allow of much more than mere subsistence. The labor reports for the State of Missouri for 1889 and 1890 do not deal directly with the question of women wage-earners; but indirectly much light is thrown by the investigation, in that for 1889, into the cost of living and the home conditions of many miners and workers in general trades; while that for 1890 covers a wider field, and gives, with general conditions for all workers, detailed information as to many frauds practised upon them. The commissioner, Lee Merriweather, is so identified with the interests of the worker, whether man or woman, that a formal report from him on women wage-earners would have had especial value. Last on the list of State reports comes an admirable one from Michigan, prepared by Labor Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, issued in February, 1892, which devotes nearly two hundred pages to women wage-earners, and gives careful statistics of 137 different trades and 378 occupations. Personal visits were made to 13,436 women and girls living in the most important manufacturing towns and cities of the State; and the blanks, which were prepared in the light of the experience gained by the work of other bureaus, contained 129 questions, classified as follows: social, 28; industrial, 12; hours of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21; and seven other questions as to dress, societies, church attendance, with remarks and suggestions by the women workers. The result is a very minute knowledge of general conditions, the series of tables given being admirably prepared. In those on the hours of labor it is found that domestic service exacts the greatest number of hours; one class returning fourteen hours as the rule. In this lies a hint of the increasing objection to domestic service,--longer hours and less freedom being the chief counts against it. The final summary gives the average wage for the State as $4.86; the highest weekly average for women workers employed as teachers or in public positions being $10.78. The remarks and suggestions of the women themselves are extraordinarily helpful. Outside the cities organization among them is unknown; but it is found that those trades which are organized furnish the best paid and most intelligent class of girls, who conceived at once the benefits of a labor bureau, and answered fully and promptly. The hours of work in all industries ranged from nine to ten, and the wage paid was found to be a little more than fifty per cent less than that of men engaged in the same work. A large proportion supported relatives, and general conditions as to living were of much the same order of comfort and discomfort as those given in other reports. The fact that this report is the latest on this subject, and more minute in detail than has before been possible, makes it invaluable to the student of social conditions; and it is entertaining reading, even for the average reader. We come now to the final report, in some ways a summary of all,--that of the United States Labor Department at Washington, and the work for 1889. In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of this bureau, the average age at which girls began work was found to be 15 years and 4 months. Charleston, S.C., gives the highest average, it being there 18 years and 7 months, and Newark, N.J., the lowest,--14 years and 7 months. The average period in which all had been engaged in their present occupations is shown to be 4 years and 9 months; while of the total number interviewed, 9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to earn a living. As against the opinion often expressed that foreign workers are in the majority, we find that of the whole number given, 14,120 were native born. Of the foreign born, Ireland is most largely represented, having 936; and Germany comes next, with 775. In the matter of parentage, 12,907 had foreign-born mothers. The number of single women included in the report is 15,387; 745 were married, and 2,038 widowed, from which it is evident that, as a rule, it is single women who are fighting the industrial fight alone. They are not only supporting themselves, but are giving their earnings largely to the support of others at home. More than half--8,754--do this; and 9,813, besides their occupation, help in the home housekeeping. Of the total number, 4,928 live at home, but only 701 of them receive aid or board from their families. The average number in these families is 5.25, and each contains 2.48 workers. Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions, 15,831 reported. Of these, 10,458 were educated in American public schools, and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 the Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage, comprehending 3,209, do not attend church at all. In home conditions 12,120 report themselves as "comfortable," while 4,692 give home conditions as "poor." "Poor," to the ordinary observer, is to be interpreted as wretched, including overcrowding, and all the numberless evils of tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A side light is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn less than $100 a year, and this class has an average of 86.5 lost days for the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of earnings, the lost time decreases, the 2,147 who earn from $200 to $450 losing but 37.8; while 398, earning from $350 to $500 a year, lost but 18.3 days. Deliberate cruelty and injustice on the part of the employer are encountered only now and then; but competition forces the working in as inexpensive a manner as possible, and thus often makes what must sum up as cruelty and injustice necessary to the continued existence of the employer as an industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond tolerable, and very often intolerable. Inspection,--the efficiency of which has greatly increased,--the demand by the organized charities at all points for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of popular interest are bringing about a few improvements, and will bring more; but the mass everywhere are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that accompany ignorance--want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and improvidence--are all in the count against the lowest order of worker; but the better class, and indeed the large proportion of the lower, are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely dreary lives. It is a popular belief, already referred to elsewhere, that the working-women form a large proportion of the numbers who fill houses of prostitution; and that "night-walkers" are made up chiefly from the same class. Nothing could be further from the truth,--the testimony of the fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor being in the same line as that of all in which investigation of the subject has been made, and all confirming the opinion given. The investigation of the Massachusetts Bureau in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest number, classed by occupations, came from the lowest order of worker, those employed in housework and hotels; and the next largest was found among seamstresses, employees of shirt-factories, and cloak-makers, all of these industries in which under pay is proverbial. The great majority, receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on the sum, but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without. More than this, since the deepening interest in their lives, and the formation of working-girls' clubs and societies of many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting-rooms, pay for instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and disabled members. This is the summary of conditions as a whole, and we pass now to the specific evils and abuses in trades and general industries. XI. SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES. "Has civilization civilized?" is the involuntary question, as one by one the fearful conditions hedging about workers on either side of the sea become apparent. At once, in any specific investigation, we face abuses for which the system of production rather than the employer is often responsible, and for which science has as yet found either none or but a partial remedy. Alike in England and on the Continent work and torture become synonyms, and flesh and blood the cheapest of all nineteenth-century products. The best factory system swarms with problems yet unsolved; the worst, as it may be found in many a remote district of the Continent and even in England itself, is appalling in both daily fact and final result. It would seem at times as if the workshop meant only a form of preparation for the hospital, the workhouse, and the prison, since the workers therein become inoculated with trade diseases, mutilated by trade appliances, and corrupted by trade associates, till no healthy fibre, mental, moral, or physical, remains. In the nail and chain making districts of England, Sundays are often abolished where these furnaces flame, and such rest as can be stolen comes on the cinder-heaps. But these workers are few compared with the myriads who must battle with the most insidious and most potent of enemies,--the dust of modern manufacture. There is dust of heckling flax, with an average of only fourteen years of work for the strongest; dust of emery powder, that has been known to destroy in a month; dust of pottery and sand and flint, so penetrating that the medical returns give cases of "stone" for new-born babes; dust of rags foul with dirt and breeding fever in the picker; dust of wools from diseased animals, striking down the sorter. Wood, coal, flour, each has its own, penetrating where it can never be dislodged; and a less tangible enemy lurks in poisonous paints for flowers or wall-paper, and in white lead, the foundation of other paints,--blotching the skin of children, and ending for many in blindness, paralysis, and hideous sores. This is one form; and side by side with it comes another, dealt with here and there, but as a rule ignored,--vapors as deadly as dust; vapors of muriatic acid from pickling tins; of choking chlorine from bleaching-rooms; of gas and phosphorus, which even now, where strongest preventives are used, still pull away both teeth and jaws from many a worker in match-factories; while acids used in cleaning, bleaching-powders, and many an industry where women and children chiefly are employed, eat into hands and clothing, and make each hour a torture. With the countless forms of machinery for stamping and rolling and cutting and sawing, there is yet, in spite of all the safeguards the law compels, the saying still heard in these shops: "It takes three fingers to make a stamper." Carelessness often; but where two must work together, as is necessary in tending many of these machines, the partner's inattention is often responsible, and mutilation comes through no fault of one's own. Add to all these the suffering of little children taught lace-making at four, sewing on buttons or picking threads far into the night, and driven through the long hours that they may add sixpence to the week's wage, and we have a hint of the grewsome catalogue of the human woe born of human need and human greed. For the United States there is a steadily lessening proportion of these evils, and we shall deal chiefly with those found in existence by the respective bureaus of labor at the time when their investigations were made. Private and public investigation made before their organization had brought to light in Connecticut, and at many points in New England, gross abuses both in child labor and that of woman and girl workers. It is sufficient, however, for our purpose to refer the reader to the mention of these contained in the first report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, as well as to Dr. Richard T. Ely's "History of the Labor Movement in America," and to pass at once to the facts contained in the fifteenth report from Massachusetts. The ventilation of factories and of workrooms in general is one of the first points considered. Naturally, facts of this order would be found in the testimony only of the more intelligent. Where factories are new and built expressly for their own purposes, ventilation is considered, and in many is excellent. But in smaller ones and in many industries the structures used were not intended for this purpose. Closely built buildings shut off both light and air, which must come wholly from above, thus preventing circulation, and producing an effect both depressing and wearing. The agents in a number of cases found employees packed "like sardines in a box;" thirty-five persons, for example, in a small attic without ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded rooms, with no ventilation save from windows, causing bad draughts and much sickness, and others in basements where dampness was added to cold and bad air. In many cases the nature of the trade compelled closed windows, and no provision was made for ventilation in any other way. In one case girls were working in "little pens all shelved over, without sufficient light or air, windows not being open, for fear of cooling wax thread used on sewing-machines."[41] For a large proportion of the workrooms visited or reported upon was a condition ranging from dirty to filthy. In some where men and women were employed together in tailoring, the report reads: "Their shop is filthy and unfit to work in. There are no conveniences for women; and men and women use the same closets, wash-basins, and drinking-cups, etc."[42] In another a water-closet in the centre of the room filled it with a sickening stench; yet forty hands were at work here, and there are many cases in which the location of these closets and the neglect of proper disinfectants make not only workrooms but factories breeding-grounds of disease. Lack of ventilation in almost all industries is the first evil, and one of the most insidious. Other points affecting health are found in the nature of certain of the trades and the conditions under which they must be carried on. Feather-sorters, fur-workers, cotton-sorters, all workers on any material that gives off dust, are subject to lung and bronchial troubles. In soap-factories the girls' hands are eaten by the caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fingers are often raw and bleeding. In making buttons, pins, and other manufactures of this nature, there is always liability of getting the fingers jammed or caught. For the first three times the wounds are dressed without charge. After that the person injured must pay expenses. In these and many other trades work must be so closely watched that it brings on weakness of the eyes, so that many girls are under treatment for this. In bakeries the girls stand from ten to sixteen hours a day, and break down after a short time. Boots and shoes oblige being on the feet all day; and this is the case for saleswomen, cash-girls, and all factory-workers. In type-founderies the air is always filled with a fine dust produced by rubbing, and the girls employed have no color in their faces. In paper-box making constant standing brings on the same difficulties found among all workers who stand all day; and they complain also of the poison often resulting from the coloring matter used in making the boxes. In book-binderies, brush-manufactories, etc., the work soon breaks down the girls. In the clothing-business, where the running of heavy sewing-machines is done by foot-power, there is a fruitful source of disease; and even where steam is used, the work is exhausting, and soon produces weakness and various difficulties. In food preparations girls who clean and pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre employed by the fishermen. Others in "working-stalls" stand in cold water all day, and have the hands in cold water; and in laundries, confectionery establishments, etc., excessive heat and standing in steam make workers especially liable to throat and lung diseases, as well as those induced by continuous standing. Straw goods produce a fine dust, and cause a constant hacking among the girls at work upon them; and the acids used in setting the colors often produce "acid sores" upon the ends of the fingers. In match-factories, as already mentioned, even with the usual precautions, necrosis often attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away. Sores, ulcerations, and suffering of many orders are the portion of workers in chemicals. In many cases a little expenditure on the part of the employer would prevent this; but unless brought up by an inspector, no precautions are taken. The question of seats for saleswomen comes up periodically, has been at some points legislated upon, and is in most stores ignored or evaded. "The girls look better,--more as if they were ready for work," is the word of one employer, who frankly admitted that he did not mean they should sit; and this is the opinion acted upon by most. Insufficient time for meals is a universal complaint; and nine times out of ten, the conveniences provided are insufficient for the numbers who must use them, and thus throw off offensive and dangerous effluvia. It is one of the worst evils in shop life, not only for Massachusetts, but for the entire United States, that in all large stores, where fixed rules must necessarily be adopted, girls are forced to ask men for permission to go to closets, and often must run the gauntlet of men and boys. All physicians who treat this class testify to the fact that many become seriously diseased as the result of unwillingness to subject themselves to this ordeal. One of the ablest factory-inspectors in this country, or indeed in any country, Mrs. Fanny B. Ames of Boston, reports this as one of the least regarded points in a large proportion of the factories and manufacturing establishments visited, but adds that it arises often from pure ignorance and carelessness, and is remedied as soon as attention is called to it. Taking up the other New England reports in which reference to these evils is found, the testimony is the same. Law is often evaded or wholly set aside,--at times through carelessness, at others wilfully. The most exhaustive treatment of this subject in all its bearings is found in the report of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor for 1889, the larger portion of it being devoted to the fullest consideration of the hygiene of occupation, the diseases peculiar to special trades, and general sanitary condition and methods of working, not only in "dangerous, unhealthy, or noxious trades," but in all. Commissioner Bishop, from whose report quotations have already been made (p. 197), gives many instances of working under fearful conditions, absolutely destructive to health and often to morals; and the report may be regarded as one of the most authoritative words yet spoken in this direction. The Factory Inspection Law for the State of New York, in detail much the same as that of Massachusetts, is sufficiently full and explicit to secure to all workers better conditions than any as yet attained save in isolated cases. There is, however, constant violation of its most vital points; and this must remain true for all States, until the number of inspectors is made in some degree adequate to the demand. At present they are not only seriously overworked, but find it impossible to cover the required ground. The law which stands at present as the demand to be made by all factory-workers and all interested in intelligent legislation, will be found in the Appendix. Destructive to health and morals as are often the factories and workshops in which women must work, they play far less part in their lives than the homes afforded by the great cities, where the poor herd in quarters,--at their best only tolerable shelters, at their worst unfit for man or beast. It is the tenement-house question that in these words presents itself for consideration, and that makes part of the general problem. Taking New York as illustrative of some of the worst forms of over-crowding, though Boston and Chicago are not far behind, we turn to the work of one of the closest and most competent of observers, Dr. Annie S. Daniel, for many years physician in charge of out-practice for the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. The report of this practice for 1891 includes a series of facts bearing vitally on every phase of woman's labor. Known as an expert in these directions, her testimony was called for in the examination of 1893 into the sweating-system of New York, made by a congressional committee and now on record in a report to be had on application to the New York Congressmen at Washington.[43] For years she has watched the effects of child-labor, taking hundreds of measurements of special cases, and studying the effects of the life mothers and children alike were compelled to live. "The medical problems," she writes, "which present themselves to the physician are so closely connected with the social problems that it is impossible to study one alone. The people are sick because of insufficient food and clothing and unsanitary surroundings, and these conditions exist because the people are poor. They are often poor _because they have no work_." At another point, commenting on drinking among the poor, she writes: "Drinking among the women is increasing. In the majority of cases we have studied, it has been the effect of poverty, not the cause." In the region between Houston Street and Canal Street, known now to be the most thickly populated portion of the inhabited globe, every house is a factory; that is, some form of manufacture is going on in every room. The average family of five adds to itself from two to ten more, often a sewing-machine to each person; and from six or seven in the morning till far into the night work goes on,--usually the manufacture of clothing. Here contagious diseases pass from one to another. Here babies are born and babies die, the work never pausing save for death and hardly for that. In one of these homes Dr. Daniel found a family of five making cigars, the mother included. "Two of the children were ill of diphtheria. Both parents attended to these children; they would syringe the nose of each child, and without washing their hands return to their cigars. We have repeatedly observed the same thing when the work was manufacturing clothing and undergarments to be bought as well by the rich as by the poor. Hand-sewed shoes, made for a fashionable Broadway shoe-store, were sewed at home by a man in whose family were three children sick with scarlet-fever. And such instances are common. Only death or lack of work closes tenement-house manufactories ... When we consider that stopping this work means no food and no roof over their heads, the fact that the disease may be carried by their work cannot be expected to impress the people." Farther on in the report, she adds: "The people can neither be moral nor healthy until they have decent homes." Yet the present wage-rate makes decent homes impossible; and though Brooklyn and Boston have a few model tenement-houses, New York has none, the experiment of making over in part a few old ones hardly counting save in intention. Into these homes respectable, ambitious, hard-working girls and women are compelled to go. That they live decent lives speaks worlds for the intrinsic goodness and purity of nature which in the midst of conditions intolerable to every sense still preserves these characteristics. That they must live in such surroundings is one of the deepest disgraces of civilization. As to wages, concerning which there seems to be a general opinion that steady rise has gone on, we find Dr. Daniel giving the rates for many years. She writes:-- "Wages have steadily decreased. Among the women who earned the whole or part of the income, finishing pantaloons was the most common occupation. For this work, in 1881, they received ten to fifteen cents a pair; for the same work in 1891, three to five, at the most ten cents a pair. The women doing this work claim that wages are reduced because of the influx of Italian women, but few Italian women do the poor quality of trousers. While we are glad to note some excellent sanitary changes in the tenement-house construction, the people we believe to be just as poor, just as overcrowded and wretched to-day, as in 1881 and 1853, the only difference being that there are a greater number of people who are poor now." These statements apply in great part to unskilled labor; but there is always in these houses a large proportion of skilled labor disabled by sickness or other causes and out of work for the time being. The wage at best for skilled labor is given by the Labor Commissioner as $5.29. Let any one study the possibilities of this sum per week, and the wonder will arise, not why living is not easier, but how it goes on at all. Specific evils speak for themselves, and are gradually being eliminated. They are before the eyes, and the least experienced student may gauge their bearing and judge their effects. But wider-reaching than any or all the worst abuses of the worst trades is the wrong done to the child and to family life as a whole, by the continuous labor of married women in factories, or at any occupation which demands, for ten hours or more a day, unremitting toil. At all points where scientific observation has been made the expert lifts up a warning voice. It is the future of the race that is in question. Child labor, while not entering directly into our present examination, is, as has already been said, inextricably bound up with the question of woman's work and wages. The two must be studied together; and for our own country there are already admirable monographs on this subject,[44] two authoritative ones coming from the American Economic Association, and one hardly less so from a close and keen observer whose scientific training gives her equal right to form conclusions.[45] A dispassionate observer, Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, whose conclusions are founded on long investigation and deduction, years ago wrote words which he has at various times emphasized and repeated, and which sum up the evils to which the infancy of the children of overworked mothers is subject, as well as the consequences to the State in which they are born, and which faces the results of the system which produces them. He writes as follows:-- "We can help evolution by the aid of its own highest and latest product,--science. When all the teaching of medical and social science lead us to look upon the absence of the mother from the home as the cause of the gravest possible evils, can we be warranted in standing passively by, allowing this evil to work itself out to the bitter end, by the process of natural selection? Something might perhaps be said in favor of the present apathetic mode of viewing this question, if natural selection were really securing the survival of the fittest, so that only the weakly babes were killed off, and the strong ones well brought up. But it is much to be feared that no infants ever really recover from the test of virtual starvation to which they are so ruthlessly exposed. The vital powers are irreparably crippled, and the infant grows up a stunted, miserable specimen of humanity, the prey to every physical and moral evil."[46] It is hardly necessary to go on specifying special violations of sanitary law or special illustrative cases. The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 is a magazine of such cases,--a summary of all the horrors that the worst conditions can include. Aside from the revolting pictures of the life lived from day to day by the workers themselves, it gives in detail case after case of rapacity and over-reaching on the part of the employers; and parallel ones may be found in every labor report which has touched upon the subject. In New York a "Working Woman's Protective Union," formed more than twenty-five years ago, has done unceasing work in settling disputed claims and collecting wages unjustly withheld. No case is entered on their books which has not been examined by their lawyer, and thus only well grounded complaints find record; but with even these precautions the records show nearly fifty thousand adjudicated since they began work. Many cities have special committees, in the organized charities, who seek to cover the same ground, but who find it impossible to do all that is required. From East and West alike, complaints are practically the same. It is not only women in trades, but those in domestic service, who are recorded as suffering every form of oppression and injustice. Colorado and California, Kansas and Wisconsin, speak the same word. With varying industries wrongs vary, but the general summary is the same. The system of fines, while on general principles often just, has been used by unscrupulous employers to such a degree as to bring the week's wages down a third or even half. It is impossible to give illustrative instances in detail; but all who deal with girls, in clubs and elsewhere, report that the system requires modification. On the side of the employers, and as bearing also on the evils which are most marked among women workers, we may quote from the Government Report, "Working Women in Large Cities":-- "Actual ill-treatment by employers seems to be infrequent.... Foreigners are often found to be more considerate of their help than native-born men, and the kindest proprietor in the world is a Jew of the better class. In some shops week-workers are locked out for the half-day if late, or docked for every minute of time lost, an extra fine being often added. Piece workers have great freedom as to hours, and employers complain much of tardiness and absenteeism. The mere existence of health and labor laws insures privileges formerly unheard of; half-holidays in summer, vacation with pay, and shorter hours are becoming every year more frequent, better workshops are constructed, and more comfortable accommodations are being furnished." This is most certainly true, but more light shows the shadows even more clearly; and the fact remains that every force must be brought to bear, to remedy the evils depicted in the reports of the bureaus quoted here. The general conditions of working-women in New York retail stores were reported upon, in 1890, by a committee from the Working-Woman's Society, at 27 Clinton Place, New York. The report was read at a mass meeting held at Chickering Hall, May 6, 1890; and its statements represent general conditions in all the large cities of the United States. It is impossible to give more than the principal points of the report; but readers can obtain it on application to the Secretary of the Association.[47] These are as follows:-- Hours are often excessive, and employees are not paid for over-time. Many stores give no half-holiday, and keep open on Saturdays till ten and eleven o'clock in the evening, and at the holiday season do this for three or four weeks nightly. Sanitary conditions are usually bad, and include bad ventilation, unsanitary arrangements, and indifference to the considerations of decency. Toilet arrangements in many stores are horrible, and closets for male and female are often side by side, with only slight partition between. One hand-basin and towel serve for all. Often water for drink can be obtained only from the attic. Numbers of children under age are employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond their strength, an investigation having shown that over one hundred thousand children under the legal age of fourteen were at work in factories, workshops, and stores. Service for a number of years often meets with no consideration, but is regarded as a reason for dismissal. It is the rule in some stores to keep no one over five years, lest they come to feel that they have some claim on the firm; and when a saleswoman is dismissed from one house, she finds it almost impossible to obtain employment in another. The wages are reduced by excessive fines, employers placing a value upon time lost that is not given to services rendered. The fines run from five to thirty cents for a few minutes' tardiness. In some stores the fines are divided at the end of the year between the timekeeper and the superintendent, and there is thus every temptation to injustice. The report concludes:-- "We find that, through low wages, long hours, unwholesome sanitary conditions, and the discouraging effect of excessive fines, not only is the physical condition injured, but the tendency is to injure the moral well-being. It is simply impossible for a woman to live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities." These were the conditions which, in 1889, led to the formation of the little society which, though limited in numbers, has done admirable and efficient work, its latest effort being to secure from the Assembly at Albany a bill making inspection of stores and shops as obligatory as that of factories. It was through the concerted effort of its members that the Factory Inspection Act became a law, though not without violent opposition. The bill originated in the Working-Woman's Society, was drawn up there, sent to Albany by its delegates, and passed without the aid of money. There are eleven thousand factories in New York State, and only one inspector to investigate their condition; while in England, scarce larger in territory, forty-one inspectors are appointed by the Government. The Andrus bill, adding to the power of factory inspectors, raising the working age of children to fourteen years, and prohibiting night work for girls under twenty-one and boys under eighteen, was sent with the Factory Bill to the Central Labor Union, and the women were largely instrumental in obtaining the passage of the measure. Why such determined opposition still meets every attempt to bring about the same inspection for mercantile establishments cannot be determined; but thus far, though admitted to be necessary, the act has at each reading been laid upon the table. Another effort will be made in the coming winter of 1893-94. In spite, however, of much agitation of all phases of woman's work, it is only some wrong as startling as that involved in the sweating-system that seems able to arouse more than a temporary interest. One of the most able and experienced women inspectors of the United States Bureau of Labor, Miss de Grafenried, has lately written:-- "It is an open question whether woman's pay is not falling, cost and standards of living considered. Could partly supported labor and children be eliminated, shop employees would get higher rates. Still there are other economic anomalies that affect women's wages. 'Wholesalers' and manufacturers shut up their factories and 'give out' everything--umbrellas, coats, hair-wigs, and shrouds--to be made,--they know not in what den, or wrung they care not from what misery ... Again, wages are depressed by over-stimulating piece-work; and its unscrupulous use by proprietors who hesitate to confess to paying women only $3 or $4 a week, yet who scale prices so that only experts can earn that sum. Many employers cut rates as soon as, by desperate exertions, operatives clear $5 a week. Then, underbidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of low wages. Massachusetts has 20 per cent of her workers unemployed." These conditions, while varying as to numbers, are practically the same for the work of women in all parts of the United States, and are matters of increasing perplexity and sorrow to every searcher into these problems. At its best, woman's work in industries is intermittent, since it is only textile work that continues the year round; dress and cloak making, shoe and umbrella making, fur-sewing and millinery, have specific seasons, in the intervals between which the worker waits and starves, or, if too desperate, goes upon the streets, driven there by the wretched competitive system, the evils of which increase in direct ratio to the longing for speedy wealth. In short, matters are at that point where only radical change of methods can better the situation, even the most conservative observer, relying most thoroughly upon evolution, feeling something more than evolution must work if justice is to have place in the present social scheme. It is at this point that some consideration of domestic service naturally presents itself. Though regarded often as no part of the labor question, there can be no other head under which to range it, since the last census gives over a million persons engaged in this occupation, the lowest rough estimate of wages being $160,000,000 and the support included forming a sum at least as large. It is through the hands of the domestic servant that a large part of the finished products of other forms of labor must pass, and the economic aspects of the question grow in importance with every year of the changing conditions of American life. In no other occupation is a just consideration of the points involved so difficult a task, since the mistress who faces the incompetence, insubordination, and all the other trials involved in the relation, suffers too keenly from the sense of individual wrong to treat the matter in the large. Till it is so treated, however, understanding for both sides is impossible, and to bring about such understanding is the first necessity for all. From the employer's standpoint the advantages to be stated are as follows: First and most obvious is the fact that wages are not only relatively but absolutely high; for aside from the actual cash there are also board, lodging, fuel, light, and laundry, all of which the worker in trades must provide for herself. There is no capital required, as for type-writer, sewing-machine, or any appliances for work, nor is the girl forced to expend anything in preparation, since under the present system housekeepers take her untrained fresh from Castle Garden, and willingly give the needed instruction, at the same time paying the same wage as that given to competent service. Professor Lucy Salmon, of Vassar, who has devoted much time to this subject, reports that, on examination of testimony from three thousand employees, it is found that on a wage of $3.25 a week it is possible to save annually nearly $150 "in an occupation involving no outlay, no investment of capital, and few or no personal expenses." The wages received are relatively higher than those of other occupations; for in Professor Salmon's comparison of wages received by three thousand country and the same number of city employees it was found that of six thousand teachers in the public schools the average salary actually paid is less than that paid to the average cook in a large city. The second advantage lies in the healthfulness of the work, which includes not only regularity but variety; the third, that a home, at least in all externals, is insured; the fourth, that a training which makes the worker more fit for married life is certain; and a fifth, that the work is congenial and easy for those whose tastes lie in this direction. These are the facts that are constantly urged upon the army of under-paid, half-starving needlewomen in our great cities, and no less upon another army of girls in shops and factories, who are implored to consider the advantages of domestic service and to give up their unnecessary battle with the limitations hedging in every other form of labor. Astonishment that the girls prefer the factory and shop is unending, nor is it regarded as possible that substantial reason may and must exist for such choice. As a means of arriving at some solution of the problem, some six hundred employees of every order were interviewed, under circumstances which made their replies perfectly free and full; and the results tallied exactly with others obtained by an inquiry in the Philadelphia Working-Woman's Guild, a society then representing seventy-two distinct occupations. A report of this inquiry was made by Mrs. Eliza S. Turner, the President of the Guild, and is given as the most suggestive view of the whole subject yet secured. She writes as follows:-- "Why do not intelligent, refined girls more frequently choose house service as a support?" The replies here given are as nearly as possible _verbatim_: 1. Loss of freedom. This is as dear to women as to men, although we don't get so much of it. The day of a saleswoman or a factory hand may be long, but when it is done she is her own mistress; but in service, except when she is actually out of the house, she has no hour, no minute, when her soul is her own. 2. Hurts to self-respect. One thing that makes housework unpleasant--chamber-work, for instance, and waiting on table--is that it is a kind of personal service, one human being waiting on another. The very thing you would do without a thought in your own home for your own family seems menial when it is demanded by a stranger. 3. The very words, "service" and "servant," are hateful. It is all well enough to talk about service being divine, but that is not the way the world looks at it. 4. Say that a young woman well brought up undertakes to do chamber-work; she is obliged to associate with the other girls, no matter how uncongenial they may be, what may be their language or personal habits or table manners. If she tries to keep to herself, the rest think she is taking airs, and combine to make her life unbearable. 5. Or say she takes a place for general housework; to be alone in the midst of others is crushing,--quite different from being alone in one's own lodgings. 6. I suppose a soldier doesn't mind being ordered around by his captain; but in a family the mistress and maid are so mixed up that it is much harder to keep the lines from tangling. It takes a very superior person, on both sides, to do it. 7. I knew an educated woman--a lady--who tried it as a sort of upper housemaid. The work was easy, the pay good, and she never had a harsh word; but they just seemed unconscious of her existence. She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, would come in and stand before her to have her take their umbrellas or help them off with their coats, and sometimes without speaking to her or even looking at her. There was something so humiliating about it that she couldn't stand it, but went back to slop shop sewing. 8. Many mistresses have no standard of the amount of work a girl ought to do. They know nothing about housework themselves. If a girl is deliberate and saves herself, they call her slow; if she is ambitious, and gets her work done early, and they see her sitting down in working-hours, they conclude that she is not earning her wages, and hunt up some extra job for her. No matter if you can't find anything undone, if she is found sitting about she _must_ be lazy. 9. Some employers think that after the more violent work is done, it is only a rest for the girl to look after the child awhile. They don't seem to realize that if the mother finds it such a relief to get rid of her own child for an hour or so, it is likely to be still less interesting to take care of somebody else's child. 10. Many people think the position of a child's nurse is very light work indeed,--mostly just sitting around; so they don't hesitate to give her the care of one or two children all day, not even arranging for her to get her meals without the oversight of them; and then most likely put the baby to sleep with her at night. Any one minute of such a day may not be heavy, but to have it for twenty-four hours is enough to wear out the strongest human being ever made. 11. I knew a school-teacher who thought more active occupation would better suit her health; she took a place as child's nurse. She loved children, and found no objection to the work; but soon the employer concluded to put her in a _bonne's_ cap and apron. My friend would have worn and liked a nurse's uniform, but she objected to a family livery. On this question they parted; and her employer hired an uncouth, ignorant woman to be her child's companion and to give it its first impressions. 12. In most houses, however elegant, the girls have no home privacy; they must sleep, not only in the same room, but most frequently in the same bed; it is rarely thought necessary to make that room pleasant or even warm for them to dress by or to sit in to do their own sewing. The little tastes and notions of each member of the family, down to the youngest, are provided for; but a "girl" is not supposed to have any. She is just a "girl," as a gridiron is a gridiron, an article bought for the convenience of the family. If she suits, use her till she is worn out and then throw her away. 13. To go into house service, even from the most wretched slop or factory work, is to lose caste in our own world; it may be a very narrow world, but it is all to us. A saleswoman or cashier or teacher is ashamed to associate with servants. 14. The very words, "No followers," would keep us out of such occupation. No self-respecting young woman is going to put herself in a position where she is not allowed to entertain her friends, both male and female; nor where, if allowed, the only place thought fit for them is the kitchen. Now, the above is not theory, but testimony, taken by the present writer from the lips of intelligent working-girls, many of whom would be better off at housework than at their present occupations, except for the objections. And from a consideration thereof results this query: Given a certain number of young women of a class superior to the imported, willing to take service under the following conditions, how many housekeepers would agree to the conditions?-- 1. The heaviest work, as washing, carrying coal, scrubbing pavements, and the like, to be provided for, if this be asked, with consequent deduction in wages. 2. In families, where practicable, certain hours of absolute freedom while in the house, especially with the child's nurse. 3. Such a way of speaking, both to and of your house help, as testifies to the world that you really do consider housework as respectable as other occupations. 4. A well-warmed, well-furnished room, with separate beds when desired; and the use of a decent place and appointments at meals. 5. The privilege of seeing friends, whether male or female; of a better part of the house than the kitchen in which to receive them; and security from espionage during their visits,--this accompanied by proper restrictions as to evening hours, and under the condition that the work is not neglected. 6. No livery, if objected to. Turning from this informal examination of the subject to the few labor reports which have taken up the matter, it becomes plain that domestic service is in many points more undesirable than any other occupation open to women. The Labor Commissioner of Minnesota reports, while stating all the advantages of the domestic servant over the general worker, that "only a fifth of those who employ them are fit to deal with any worker, injustice and oppression characterizing their methods." Figures and detailed statements bear him out in this conclusion. The Colorado Commissioner gives even more details, and comes to the same conclusion; and though other reports do not take up the subject in detail, their indications are the same. The first general and rational presentation of the subject in all its bearings, both for employed and employer, has lately been made during the Woman's Congress at Chicago, May, 1893, in which the Domestic Science section discussed every phase of wrongs and remedies.[48] The latter sum up in the formation of bureaus of employment in every large city, fixed rates, and full preparatory training. A keen observer of social facts has stated: The intelligence offices of New York alone receive from servants yearly over three million dollars, and are notoriously inefficient. This, or even half of it, would provide a great centre with training-schools, lodgings for all who needed them, and a system by which fixed rates were made according to the grade of efficiency of the worker. Till household service comes under the laws determining value, as well as hours and all other points involved in the wage for a working-day, it will remain in the disorganized and hopeless state which at present baffles the housekeeper, and deters self-respecting women and girls from undertaking it. To bring about some such organization as that suggested will most quickly accomplish this; and there seems already hope that the time is not distant when every city will have its agency corresponding to the great Bourse du Travail in Paris, but even more comprehensive in scope. Co-operation within certain limited degrees, so that private home life will not be infringed upon, must necessarily make part of such a scheme, and has already been tried with success at various points in the West; but details can hardly be given here. It is sufficient to add that with such new basis for this form of occupation the "servant question" will cease to be a terror, and the most natural occupation for women will have countless recruits from ranks now closed against it. FOOTNOTES: [41] Fifteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p. 68. [42] Ibid. [43] House of Representatives Report No. 2309: Report of the Committee on Manufactures on the Sweating-System, House of Representatives, January, 1893. [44] Child Labor. By William F. Willoughby, A.B. Child Labor. By Miss Clare de Grafenried, Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. v. no. 2. [45] Our Toiling Children. By Florence Kelley, W.C.T.U. Publishing Association, Chicago. [46] Married Women in Factories. By W. Stanley Jevons, Contemporary Review, vol. xli. pp. 37-53. [47] Miss Alice Woodbridge, Secretary of the Working-Woman's Society, 27 Clinton Place, New York. [48] The association then formed, and from which much is hoped, made the following summary of its objects:-- "The objects of this Association shall be: 1. To awaken the public mind to the importance of establishing a Bureau of Information where there can be an exchange of wants and needs between employer and employed in every department of home and social life. 2. To promote among members of the Association a more scientific knowledge of the economic value of various foods and fuels; a more intelligent understanding of correct plumbing and drainage in our homes, as well as need for pure water and good light in a sanitarily built house. 3. To secure skilled labor in every department of women's work in our homes,--not only to demand better trained cooks and waitresses, but to consider the importance of meeting the increasing demand for those competent to do plain sewing and mending." XII. REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS. The student of social problems who faces the misery of the lowest order of worker, and the sharp privation endured by many even of the better class, is apt, in the first fever of amazement and indignation, to feel that some instant force must be brought to bear, and justice secured, though the heavens fall. It is this sense of the struggle of humanity out of which have been born Utopias of every order, from the "Republic" of Plato to the dream in "Looking Backward." Not one of these can be spared; and that they exist and find a following larger and larger, is the surest evidence of the soul at the bottom of each. But for those who take the question as a whole, who see how slow has been the process of evolution, and how impossible it is to hasten one step of the unfolding that humankind is still to know, it is the ethical side that comes uppermost, and that first demands consideration. Taking the mass of the lowest order of workers at all points, the first aim of any effort intended for their benefit is to disentangle the individual from the mass. It is not charity that is to do this. "Homes" of every variety open their doors; but in all of them still lurks the suspicion of charity; and even when this has no active formulation in the worker's mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other proffering a substitute, in a charity which is to reflect credit on the giver and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name is associated with the work of organized charities throughout the country,--Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. It is doubtful if there is any woman in the country better fitted, by long experience and almost matchless common-sense, to speak authoritatively. She writes:-- "So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have discharged all their obligations to men and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst.... I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the insult added to the injury done to the mass of the people, by insufficient payment for work." Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. The difficulty of fixing this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at once; since education for not only the employer but the public as a whole is demanded. To bring this about is a slow process. It is a transition period in which we live. Material conditions born of phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners:-- "From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization,--the principle and formula even of social progress,--that mechanical engines are to perform every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task; but this general gain is a loss for the particular, and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms." Take the fact here stated, and add to it all that is implied in modern competitive conditions, and we see the true nature of the task that awaits us. To do away with this competition would not accomplish the end desired. To guide it and bring it into intelligent lines is part of the general education. Profit-sharing is an indispensable portion of the justice to be done; and this, too, implies education for both sides, and would go far toward lessening burdens. We cannot abolish the factory, but hours can be shortened; the labor of married women with young children forbidden, as well as that of children below a fixed age. Industrial education will prevent the possibility of another generation owning so many incompetent and untrained workers, and technical schools in general are already raising the standard and helping to secure the same end. Our present methods mean waste in every direction, and trusts and syndicates have already demonstrated how much may be saved to the producer if intelligent combination can be brought about. Competition can never wholly be set aside, since within reasonable limits it is the spur of invention and a part of evolution itself. But if wise co-operation be once adopted, the enormous friction and waste of present methods ceases,--the waste of human life as well as of material. One cheering token of progress is the increased discussion as to methods of training and the necessity of organization among women themselves. Ten years ago only a voice here and there suggested the need of either. In 1885, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Miss Sarah Harland, lecturer on Mathematics at Newnham College, insisted that educated gentlewomen must have larger opportunity for paying work. The three qualifications in all work she stated to be: (1) Organization on a large scale; (2) Permanency; (3) Giving returns that will enable the salaries paid to compete with those of teachers. She regarded dressmaking as the trade which could most readily organize and meet the other conditions specified, and millinery as the trade which would come next. Until such organization and its results have gradually altered present conditions, it will be true for all workers, on both sides of the sea, that not health alone but life itself are continuously endangered by the facts hedging about all labor. Dr. Stevens, the head of St. Luke's Insane Asylum in London, in a paper read before the Social Science Association, said:-- "It may be stated with great confidence that a prolific cause for the rapid and extensive increase of insanity in this country is to be found in the unceasing toil and anxiety to which the working-classes are subjected, this cause developing the disease in the existing generation, or, what is quite as frequently the case, transmitting to the offspring idiocy, insanity, or some imperfectly developed sensorium or nervous system. The agitated, overworked, and harassed parent is not in a condition to transmit a healthy brain to his child."[49] Accepted as true in 1857, the words are not less so to-day, when cheap labor swarms, and the unemployed number their millions. How best to combine and to what ends, is the lesson taught in every form of the new movement for organization among women. To learn how to work together and what power lies in combination, has been the lesson of all clubs. Among men it has counted as one of the chief educating forces, but for women every circumstance has fostered the distrust of each other which belongs to all undeveloped natures. For the lowest order of worker even, the "Working-Woman's Journal," published in London and the organ of the Working-Woman's Protective Union, has for the last year recorded, from month to month, the gradual progress of the idea of combination, and the new hope it has brought to all who have gone into trades unions. With us there has been equal need and equal ignorance of all that such combinations have to give. They mean arbitration rather than strikes, and the compelling of ignorant and unjust employers to consider the situation from other points of view than their own. They compel also the same attitude from men in the same trades, who often are as strong opponents of a better chance for their associates among women workers in the same branches, as the most prejudiced employer. Six points are urged by the Working-Woman's Society of New York, all in the lines indicated here. Its purposes and aims, as given in the prospectus, are as follows:-- 1. To encourage women in the various trades to protect their mutual interests by organization. 2. To use all possible means to enforce the existing laws relating to the protection of women and children in factories and shops, investigating all reported violations of such laws; also to promote, by all suitable means, further legislation in this direction. 3. To work for the abolition of tenement-house manufacture, especially in the cigar and clothing trades. 4. To investigate all reported cases of cruel treatment on the part of employers and their managers to their women and children employees, in withholding money due, in imposing fines, or in docking wages without sufficient reason. 5. To found a labor bureau for the purpose of facilitating the exchanging of labor between city and country, thus relieving the over-crowded occupations now filled by women. 6. To publish a journal in the interests of working-women. 7. To secure equal pay for both sexes for equal work. These points are the same as those made by the few clubs which have taken up the question of woman's work and wages; but thus far only this society has formulated them definitely. Working-girls' clubs, friendly societies, and guilds are giving to the worker new thoughts and new purposes. The Convention of Working-Girls' Clubs held in New York in April, 1890, showed the wide-reaching influence they had attained, and the new ideals opening before the worker. It showed also with equal force the roused sense of responsibility toward them, and the eager interest and desire for their betterment in all ways. Where they themselves touched upon their needs, there were direct statements in the same line as many already quoted, which called for better pay, better conditions, shorter hours, and fewer fines. Following the points given above came another presentation, the result of still further and long-continued investigation; and as the methods of the search and its results are practicable for all towns and cities where women are at work, the statement prepared for the Society is given in full:-- "We would call your attention to the condition of the women and children in the large retail houses in this city,--conditions which tend to injure both physically and morally, not only these women and children, but working-women in general. The general idea is that saleswomen are employed from eight A.M. to six P.M., but they are really engaged in the majority of stores for such a time as the firm requires them; which means in the Grand Street stores, until ten, eleven, and twelve o'clock on Saturday night _all the year round_, the Saturday half-holiday not being observed in summer; and in the majority of houses that stock must be arranged after six P.M., the time varying, according to season, from fifteen minutes to five hours, _and this without supper or extra pay_; thus compelling women and children to go long distances late at night, and rendering them liable to insult and immoral influences. "Excessive fines are imposed in many stores,--fines varying from ten to thirty cents for ten minutes' tardiness in the morning or lunch hour, and for all mistakes. Cases are known of girls who have been fined a full week's pay at the end of the week. In one store the fines amounted to $3,000 in a year, and the sum was divided between the superintendent and timekeeper; and the superintendent was heard to charge the timekeeper with not being strict enough in his duties. "Bad sanitary conditions, bad ventilation and toilet arrangements are common, and the sanitary laws are not observed. Children under age are employed at work far beyond their strength, often far into the night. The average wages do not exceed $4.50; and in one of our largest stores the average wage is $2.40, in another $2.90. The tendency in all stores is to secure the cheapest help; for this reason school-girls just graduated are much sought for, as they, having homes, can afford to work for less. But a large proportion of the saleswomen either pay board or help support a family; and how can this be done on $4.50 per week? The cheapest board in dark stuffy attics or tenement houses is $3.00, fuel and washing extra; and no woman can pay doctor's bills and maintain a respectable appearance on what remains. How then does she live? There are two ways of answering: The story of a woman who worked in one of our large houses is one way. This woman earned $3.00 per week; she paid $1.50 for her room; her breakfast consisted of a cup of coffee; she had no lunch; she had but one meal a day. Many saleswomen must be in this condition. The other answer is that given by more than one employer, who when saleswomen complain of the low wages offered, reply: 'Oh, well, get yourself a gentleman friend; _most of our girls have them_.' Not long since a member of our society received a letter from a salesman in a certain house which read thus: 'In the name of God cannot something be done for the saleswomen? I am a salesman in----, and I have walked in disguise at night upon certain streets to be accosted by girls in my own department,--girls whose salaries are so low it was impossible to live upon them." A painter told us that in working in the houses of ill-repute in the vicinity of Twenty-third Street, he was astonished at the number of women whom he recognized as saleswomen in different stores who frequented these houses. But what are they to do? They are women without trade or profession, thrown upon their own resources, obliged to make a good appearance, and unable to do so and yet have sufficient food. We must all concede that virtue and honor in woman are natural, and very few women resort to such ways unless forced to do so; certainly not, when they yet have sufficient pride to wish to maintain the appearance of respectability. If men's wages fall below a certain limit, they become tramps, thieves, and robbers; but woman's wages _have no limit_, since she can always work for less than she can subsist upon, the _paths of shame being open to her_. And the beggarly pittance for which one class of women work becomes the standard of wages for all women, and throws them out upon the world, there to find a sure market. But we do not wish to insinuate, in stating these facts, that the majority of saleswomen resort to evil ways; on the contrary, they are the exception who do so. We know the majority of women prefer to suffer, and do suffer, rather than do so. But can we allow a few to fall? We of the Working-Women's Society believe that we are so far our sisters' keepers that we are responsible for their position. "We believe that the payment and condition of those who work (through their employers) for us is our affair, and we have no right to remain in an ignorance that involves or may involve their misery. We believe we have no right, having obtained such knowledge, to refrain from seeking to remedy it, and urging all to assist us to do so. "In this belief we call your attention to the proposed 'Consumers' League,' the members of which shall pledge themselves to deal at those stores where just conditions exist. "We have gotten together a number of facts which we shall be glad to present to you with our estimate of a fair house, or one which under existing conditions is eligible to admission to a white list." Preceding this appeal and the public meetings which ensued, came, in 1890, the formation of the Consumers' League, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell its President. Quiet and inconspicuous as its work has been, the best retail mercantile houses in New York have accepted its prospectus as just, and stand now upon the "White List," which numbers all merchants who seek to deal justly and fairly with their employees. "What constitutes a Fair House" expresses all the needs and formulates the most vital demands of the working-woman; and the results already accomplished speak for themselves. As a guide to other workers, it is given here in full:-- STANDARD OF A FAIR HOUSE. +Wages.+ A fair house is one in which equal pay is given for work of equal value, irrespective of sex. In the departments where women only are employed, in which the minimum wages are six dollars per week for experienced adult workers, and fall in few instances below eight dollars. In which wages are paid by the week. In which fines, if imposed, are paid into a fund for the benefit of the employees. In which the minimum wages of cash-girls are two dollars per week, with the same conditions regarding weekly payments and fines. +Hours.+ A fair house is one in which the hours from eight A.M. to six P.M. (with three quarters of an hour for lunch) constitute the working-day, and a general half-holiday is given on one day of each week during at least two summer months. In which a vacation of not less than one week is given with pay during the summer season. In which all over-time is compensated for. +Physical Conditions.+ A fair house is one in which work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each other, and conform in all respects to the present sanitary laws. In which the present law regarding the providing of seats for saleswomen is observed, and the use of seats permitted. +Other Conditions.+ A fair house is one in which humane and considerate behavior toward employees is the rule. In which fidelity and length of service meet with the consideration which is their due. In which no children under fourteen years of age are employed. +Membership.+ The condition of membership shall be the approval by signature of the object of the Consumers' League; and all persons shall be eligible for membership excepting such as are engaged in the retail business in this city, either as employer or employee. The members shall not be bound never to buy at other shops. The names of the members of the Consumers' League shall not be made public. Later, one of the ablest workers in this field, Mrs. Florence Kelley, formulated a basis for every society of working-women, as follows: I. To bring out of the chaos of competition the order of co-operation. II. To organize all wages-earning women. III. To disseminate the literature of labor and co-operation. IV. To institute a label which shall enable the purchaser to discriminate in favor of goods produced under healthful conditions. V. 1. Abolition of child labor to the age of sixteen. 2. Compulsory education to the age of sixteen. 3. Prohibition of employment of minors more than eight hours daily. 4. Prohibition of employment of minors at dangerous occupations. 5. Appointment of women inspectors, one for every thousand women and children employed. 6. Healthful conditions of work for women and children. The foregoing to be obtained by legislation. The following to be obtained by organization:-- 1. Equal pay for equal work with men. 2. A minimal rate which will enable the least paid to live upon her earnings. A little later, the statement which follows, became necessary:-- "Certain abuses exist in the dry-goods houses affecting the well-being of the saleswomen and children employed, which we believe can be remedied. In fact, in different stores some of them have been remedied, which gives us courage to bring these matters to your attention. "We find the hours are often excessive, and that these women and children are not paid for over-time. "We find that in many houses the saleswomen work under unwholesome conditions; these comprise bad ventilation, unsanitary toilet arrangements, and an indifference to considerations of decency. "The wages, which are low, we find are often reduced by excessive fines; that employers place a value on time lost that they fail to give for service rendered. "We find that numbers of children under age are employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond their strength. "We find that long and faithful service does not meet with the consideration that is its due; on the contrary, having served a certain number of years is a reason for dismissal. "Because of the foregoing low wages, the discouraging result of excessive fines, long hours, and unwholesome sanitary conditions, not only the physical system is injured, but--the result we most deplore, and of which we have incontrovertible proof--the tendency _is to injure the moral well-being_. "We believe that to call attention to these evils is to go far toward remedying them, and that the power to do this lies largely in the hands of the purchasing classes. "We think that 'the payment and condition of those who work--through their employers--for us, is our affair, and that we have no right to remain in ignorance of the conditions that involve or may involve their misery.'" Two points still remain untouched, both of them vital elements in the just working of the social scheme,--profit-sharing, and a board of conciliation and arbitration for the adjustment of all difficulties between employer and employed. For every detail bearing upon the education bound up in even the attempt at profit-sharing, as well as for the actual and successful results in this direction, the reader is referred to an excellent little monograph on the subject, "Sharing the Profits," by Miss Mary Whiton Calkins, A.M., and for very full and elaborate treatment of the question, to the invaluable volume by N.P. Gilman, "Profit-Sharing between Employer and Employed." In all cases where the experiment has had fair trial, it has resulted in a marked increase of interest in the work itself; an actual lessening of the cost of production, and of general wear and tear, because of this increased interest; and a far more friendly feeling between employer and employed. It is certain that justice requires immediate attention to every phase of this question, and that its adoption is the first step in the right direction. For the second point, we have as yet in this country only an occasional attempt at arbitration, yet its need becomes more and more apparent with every fresh difficulty in the field of labor. A little volume by Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, at the time of writing,[50] going through the press, who has given much time to a study of the question, contains the latest results of English and French legislation, and of special action in this direction. Any history of the movement as a whole, hardly has place in these pages. It is sufficient to say that the system had practically no consideration till 1850, when the first Board of Arbitration was formed in England, owing its existence to the determined efforts of two men. Mr. Rupert Kettle, lawyer and judge, approached it from the legal side; Mr. Murdella, a manufacturer, and himself sprung from the working-classes, went straight "to the practical and moral end implied by the word 'conciliation,' ... both routes of this noble emulation converging, each affording strength to the common conclusions." The Nottingham lace manufacture, in which numbers of women and children as well as men are employed, has, for thirty years and more, been governed by a Board of Arbitration, the result being an end of strikes and all difficulties of like nature. If no more were accomplished than the bringing about a better understanding between employer and employed, it would mean much, since mutual suspicion and distrust rule for both. Organization among women, and the sense of mutual dependence given by it, lead naturally to the formation of a board able to judge dispassionately and disinterestedly of the questions naturally arising, many of which, however, are at once dissipated on the adoption of the system of profit-sharing. The practical steps already taken sum up in the forms just given; and there remains only the question constantly asked as to the final effect upon wages of woman's entrance into public life, this question usually shaping itself under three heads:-- 1. Why are they in the field? 2. How does their work compare in efficiency with that of men? 3. What is likely to be the final effect on wage of their entrance into active life? The first phase has already had full answer in the general survey of trades and their rise and growth. As to the second, personal observation, long continued and minute, added to the very full knowledge to be obtained from the reports of the various State bureaus of labor, goes to prove beyond question that, given the same grade of intelligence, the work of women is fully equal to that of men. Descending in the scale to untrained labor in all its forms, the woman is at times of less value than the man. The Knights of Labor, however, settled definitely that this was seldom the case, and in their constitution demanded equal pay for equal work. For both sexes machinery is more and more superseding the labor of each; and as women and children are quite capable of running much of it, this fact, of course, brings the general wage to their standard. This, added to various physiological and social reasons, makes woman often a less dependable worker than man, and tends to keep wages at a minimum. As to the final effect on wages, I regard the whole aspect of things as purely transitional, and must answer from personal conviction in the matter. The entire movement appears to me a part of the natural evolution from barbaric law and restriction, and a necessary demonstration of the spiritual equality of the sexes. I regard it also as the nurse and developer of many small virtues in which women are especially deficient,--punctuality, unvarying quality of work, a sense of business honor and of personal fidelity, each to all and all to each. But I cannot feel that it is a permanent state, or that when the essential has been accomplished women will have the same need or the same desire that now rules. I believe that wages must necessarily fluctuate and tend to the mere point of subsistence when either child labor or the lowest grade of woman's labor exists, and that the only way out of the complications we face is in an alteration of ideals. Statistics and general reports show the demoralization of family life where such work goes on, and the fact that in the long run the workman loses rather than gains where his family share his labor. The lowering of wage may be considered, then, as in one sense remedial, and the present state of things as in part the mere action of inevitable and inescapable law. But it is impossible to make this plain in present limits. Having passed through every stage of feeling,--sick pity, burning indignation, and tempestuous desire for instant action,--I have come at last to regard all as our education in justice and a demand for training in such wise as shall render unskilled labor more and more impossible. So long as it exists, however, I see no outlook but the fluctuating and uncertain wage, the natural result of the existence of the lowest order of workers. For them as for us it is the development of the individual from the mass that is the chief end of any real civilization. No Utopias of any past or present can bring this at once. "Each man to himself and each woman to herself, such is the word of the past and the present, and the true word of immortality." "No one can acquire for another, not one; No one can grow for another, not one." Despair might easily be the outcome of a first glance at these conditions; but the stir at all points is assurance of a better day to come. Legislation can do much. The appointment of women inspectors, lately brought about for New York, is imperative at all points, since women will tell women the evils they would never mention to men. Law can also demand decent sanitary conditions, and affix a penalty for every violation. Beyond this, and the awakening of the public conscience as to what is owed the honest worker, little can be said. Enlightenment, a better chance at every point for the struggling mass,--that is the work for each and all of them, and for those who would aid the constant demand, and labor for justice in its largest sense and its most rigorous application. With justice on both sides, abuses die of pure inanition. The tenement-house system, every evil that hedges about special trades, every wrong born of cupidity and ignorance, and all base features of trade at its worst, end once for all, and we see the end and aim of the social life, whether for employer or employed. A generation ago Mazzini wrote:-- "The human soul, not the body, should be the starting-point of all our efforts, since the body without the soul is only a carcass, whilst the soul, wherever it is found free and holy, is sure to mould for itself such a body as its wants and vocation require." It is this soul-moulding that is given chiefly into the hands of women. It is through them that the higher ideal of life, its purpose and its demands, is to be made known. No present scheme of general philanthropy can touch this need. It is growth in the human soul itself that will mean justice from the employer to each and every worker, and from the worker in equal measure to the employer; and this justice can be implanted in the child as certainly as many another virtue, into the knowledge and love of which we grow but slowly. Never has deeper interest followed every movement for the understanding and bettering of conditions. Never was there stronger ground for hope that, in spite of the worst abuses existing, man's will is to join hands at last with natural evolution toward higher forms. Faith and hope alike find their assurance in the increasing sense of the solidarity of human kind, and the spirit of brotherhood more and more discernible, which, as it grows, must end all oppression, conscious and unconscious. The old days of darkness are dying. Man knows at last that-- "Laying hands on another, To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt;" and in knowing it, the first step is taken in the new life wherein all are brothers; and the law of love, slowly as it may work, ends forever the long conflict between employer and employed. FOOTNOTES: [49] Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1857, p. 554. [50] July, 1893. APPENDIX. * * * * * FACTORY INSPECTION LAW. PASSED MAY 18, 1886; AMENDED MAY 25, 1887; AMENDED JUNE 15, 1889; AMENDED MAY 21, 1890; AMENDED MAY 18, 1892. * * * * * CHAPTER 409, LAWS OF 1886 (AS AMENDED BY CHAPTER 673, LAWS OF 1892). An act to Regulate the Employment of Women and Children in Manufacturing Establishments, and to Provide for the Appointment of Inspectors to Enforce the Same. * * * * * _The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows_: SECTION I. No person under eighteen years of age, and no woman under twenty-one years or age, employed in any manufacturing establishment, shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work therein more than sixty hours in any one week, or more than ten hours in any one day, unless for the purpose of making a shorter work-day on the last day of the week, nor more hours in any one week than will make an average of ten hours per day for the whole number of days in which such person or such woman shall so work during such week; and in no case shall any person under eighteen years of age, or any woman under twenty-one years of age, work in any such establishment after nine o'clock in the evening or before six o'clock in the morning of any day. Every person, firm, corporation, or company employing any person under eighteen years of age, or any woman under twenty-one years of age, in any manufacturing establishment, shall post and keep posted in a conspicuous place in every room where such help is employed, a printed notice stating the number of hours of labor per day required of such persons for each day of the week, and the number of hours of labor exacted or permitted to be performed by such persons shall not exceed the number of hours of labor so posted as being required. The time of beginning and ending the day's labor shall be the time stated in such notice; provided that such women under twenty-one and persons under eighteen years of age may begin after the time set for beginning, and stop before the time set in such notice for the stopping of the day's labor; but they shall not be permitted or required to perform any labor before the time stated on the notices as the time for beginning the day's labor, nor after the time stated upon the notices as the hour for ending the day's labor. The terms of the notice stating the hours of labor required shall not be changed after the beginning of labor on the first day of the week without the consent of the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector. When, in order to make a shorter work-day on the last day of the week, women under twenty-one and youths under eighteen years of age are to be required, permitted, or suffered to work more than ten hours in any one day, in a manufacturing establishment, it shall be the duty of the proprietor, agent, foreman, superintendent, or other person employing such persons, to notify the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, in charge of the district, in writing, of such intention, stating the number of hours of labor per day which it is proposed to permit or require, and the date upon which the necessity for such lengthened day's labor shall cease, and also again forward such notification when it shall actually have ceased. A record of the amount of over-time so worked, and of the days upon which it was performed, with the names of the employees who were thus required or permitted to work more than ten hours in any one day, shall be kept in the office of the manufacturing establishment, and produced upon the demand of any officer appointed to enforce the provisions of this act. § 2. No child under fourteen years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment within this State. It shall be the duty of every person employing children to keep a register, in which shall be recorded the name, birthplace, age and place of residence of every person employed by him under the age of sixteen years; and it shall be unlawful for any proprietor, agent, foreman, or other person in or connected with a manufacturing establishment to hire or employ any child under the age of sixteen years to work therein without there is first provided and placed on file in the orifice an affidavit made by the parent or guardian, stating the age, date, and place of birth of said child; if said child have no parent or guardian, then such affidavit shall be made by the child, which affidavit shall be kept on file by the employer, and which said register and affidavit shall be produced for inspection on demand made by the Inspector, Assistant Inspector, or any of the deputies appointed under this act. There shall be posted conspicuously in every room where children under sixteen years of age are employed, a list of their names with their ages respectively. No child under the age of sixteen years shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment who cannot read and write simple sentences in the English language, except during the vacation of the public schools in the city or town where such minor lives. The Factory Inspector, Assistant Inspector, and Deputy Inspectors shall have power to demand a certificate of physical fitness from some regular physician, in the case of children who may seem physically unable to perform the labor at which they may be employed, and shall have power to prohibit the employment of any minor that cannot obtain such a certificate. § 3. No person, firm, or corporation shall employ or permit any child under the age of fifteen years to have the care, custody, management of, or to operate any elevator, or shall employ or permit any person under the age of eighteen years to have the care, custody, management, or operation of any elevator running at a speed of over two hundred feet a minute. § 4. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, or lessee of any manufacturing establishment where there is any elevator, hoisting-shaft, or well-hole, to cause the same to be properly and substantially inclosed or secured, if in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory Inspector, it is necessary to protect the lives or limbs of those employed in such establishment. It shall also be the duty of the owner, agent, or lessee of each of such establishments to provide or cause to be provided, if, in the opinion of the Inspector, the safety of persons in or about the premises should require it, such proper trap or automatic doors, so fastened in or at all elevator ways as to form a substantial surface when closed, and so constructed as to open and close by action of the elevator in its passage, either ascending or descending, but the requirements of this section shall not apply to passenger elevators that are closed on all sides. The Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, and Deputy Factory Inspectors may inspect the cables, gearing, or other apparatus of elevators in manufacturing establishments, and require that the same be kept in a safe condition. § 5. Proper and substantial hand-rails shall be provided on all stairways in manufacturing establishments, and where, in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or Deputy Factory Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory Inspector, it is necessary, the steps of said stairs in all such establishments shall be substantially covered with rubber, securely fastened thereon, for the better safety of persons employed in said establishments. The stairs shall be properly screened at the sides and bottom, and all doors leading in or to such factory shall be so constructed as to open outwardly where practicable, and shall be neither locked, bolted, nor fastened during working-hours. § 6. If, in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy Factory Inspector, it is necessary to insure the safety of the persons employed in any manufacturing establishment, three or more stories in height, one or more fire-escapes, as may be deemed by the Factory Inspector as necessary and sufficient therefor, shall be provided on the outside of such establishment, connecting with each floor above the first, well fastened and secured and of sufficient strength, each of which fire-escapes shall have landings or balconies, not less than six feet in length and three feet in width, guarded by iron railings not less than three feet in height, and embracing at least two windows at each story and connecting with the interior by easily accessible and unobstructed openings, and the balconies or landings shall be connected by iron stairs, not less than eighteen inches wide, the steps not to be less than six inches tread, placed at a proper slant, and protected by a well-secured hand-rail on both sides with a twelve-inch-wide drop-ladder from the lower platform reaching to the ground. Any other plan or style of fire-escape shall be sufficient, if approved by the Factory Inspector; but if not so approved, the Factory Inspector may notify the owner, proprietor, or lessee of such establishment or of the building in which such establishment is conducted, or the agent or superintendent or either of them, in writing, that any such other plan or style of fire-escape is not sufficient, and may, by an order in writing, served in like manner, require one or more fire-escapes, as he shall deem necessary and sufficient, to be provided for such establishment, at such locations and of such plan and style as shall be specified in such written order. Within twenty days after the service of such order, the number of fire-escapes required in such order for such establishment shall be provided therefor, each of which shall be either of the plan and style and in accordance with the specifications in said order required, or of the plan and style in this section above described and declared to be sufficient. The windows or doors to each fire-escape shall be of sufficient size, and be located as far as possible consistent with accessibility, from the stairways and elevator hatchways or openings, and the ladder thereof shall extend to the roof. Stationary stairs or ladders shall be provided on the inside of such establishment from the upper story to the roof, as a means of escape in case of fire. § 7. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, superintendent, or other person having charge of such manufacturing establishment, or of any floor or part thereof, to report in writing to the Factory Inspector all accidents or injury done to any person in such factory, within forty-eight hours of the time of the accident, stating as fully as possible the extent and cause of such injury, and the place where the injured person has been sent, with such other information relative thereto as may be required by the Factory Inspector. The Factory Inspector or Assistant Factory Inspector and Deputy Factory Inspectors under the supervision of the Factory Inspector, are hereby authorized and empowered to fully investigate the causes of such accidents, and to require such precautions to be taken as will in their judgment prevent the recurrence of similar accidents. § 8. It shall be the duty of the owner of any manufacturing establishment, or his agents, superintendent, or other person in charge of the same, to furnish and supply, or cause to be furnished and supplied therein, in the discretion of the Factory Inspector, or of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy Factory Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory Inspector, where machinery is used, belt-shifters or other safe mechanical contrivances, for the purpose of throwing on or off belts or pulleys; and wherever possible machinery therein shall be provided with loose pulleys; all vats, pans, saws, planers, cogs, gearing, belting, shafting, set-screws, and machinery of every description therein shall be properly guarded, and no person shall remove or make ineffective any safeguard around or attached to any planer, saw, belting, shafting or other machinery, or around any vat or pan, while the same is in use, unless for the purpose of immediately making repairs thereto, and all such safeguards shall be promptly replaced. By attaching thereto a notice to that effect, the use of any machinery may be prohibited by the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or by a Deputy Factory Inspector, unless such notice is disapproved by the Factory Inspector, should such machinery be regarded as dangerous. Such notice must be signed by the Inspector who issues it, and shall only be removed after the required safeguards are provided, and the unsafe or dangerous machine shall not be used in the mean time. Exhaust fans of sufficient power shall be provided for the purpose of carrying off dust from emery wheels and grindstones, and dust-creating machinery therein. No person under eighteen years of age and no woman under twenty-one years of age shall be allowed to clean machinery while in motion. § 9. A suitable and proper washroom and water-closets shall be provided in each manufacturing establishment, and such water-closets shall be properly screened and ventilated, and be kept at all times in a clean condition; and if women or girls are employed in any such establishment, the water-closets used by them shall have separate approaches and be separate and apart from those used by men. All water-closets shall be kept free of obscene writing and marking. A dressing-room shall be provided for women and girls, when required by the Factory Inspector, in any manufacturing establishment in which women and girls are employed. § 10. Not less than sixty minutes shall be allowed for the noonday meal in any manufacturing establishment in this State. The Factory Inspector, the Assistant Factory Inspector, or any Deputy Factory Inspector shall have power to issue written permits in special cases, allowing shorter meal-time at noon, and such permit must be conspicuously posted in the main entrance of the establishment, and such permit may be revoked at any time the Factory Inspector deems necessary, and shall only be given where good cause can be shown. § 11. The walls and ceilings of each workroom in every manufacturing establishment shall be lime-washed or painted, when in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy Factory Inspector, unless disapproved of by the Factory Inspector, it shall be conducive to the health or cleanliness of the persons working therein. § 12. Any officer of the Factory Inspection Department, or other competent person designated for such purpose by the Factory Inspector, shall inspect any building used as a workshop or manufacturing establishment or anything attached thereto, located therein or connected therewith, outside of the cities of New York and Brooklyn, which has been represented to be unsafe or dangerous to life or limb. If it appears upon such inspection that the building or anything attached thereto, located therein or connected therewith is unsafe or dangerous to life or limb, the Factory Inspector shall order the same to be removed or rendered safe and secure; and if such notification be not complied with within a reasonable time, he shall prosecute whoever may be responsible for such delinquency. § 13. No room or rooms, apartment or apartments, in any tenement or dwelling-house, shall be used for the manufacture of coats, vests, trousers, knee-pants, overalls, cloaks, furs, fur-trimmings, fur-garments, shirts, purses, feathers, artificial flowers, or cigars, excepting by the immediate members of the family living therein. No person, firm, or corporation shall hire or employ any person to work in any one room or rooms, apartment or apartments, in any tenement or dwelling-house, or building in the rear of a tenement or dwelling-house, at making in whole or in part any coats, vests, trousers, knee-pants, fur, fur-trimmings, fur-garments, shirts, purses, feathers, artificial flowers, or cigars, without first obtaining a written permit from the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, which permit may be revoked at any time the health of the community or of those employed therein may require it, and which permit shall not be granted until an inspection of such premises is made by the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, and the maximum number of persons allowed to be employed therein shall be stated in such permit. Such permit shall be framed and posted in a conspicuous place in the room or in one of the rooms to which it relates. § 14. Not less than two hundred and fifty cubic feet of air space shall be allowed for each person in any workroom where persons are employed during the hours between six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, and not less than four hundred cubic feet of air space shall be provided for each person in any workroom where persons are employed between six o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the morning. By a written permit the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, with the consent of the Factory Inspector, may allow persons to be employed in a room where there are less than four hundred cubic feet of air space for each person employed between six o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the morning, provided such room is lighted by electricity at all times during such hours while persons are employed therein. There shall be sufficient means of ventilation provided in each workroom of every manufacturing establishment; and the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, and Deputy Factory Inspectors, under the direction of the Factory Inspector, shall notify the owner, agent, or lessee, in writing, to provide, or cause to be provided, ample and proper means of ventilating such workroom, and shall prosecute such owner, agent, or lessee, if such notification be not complied with within twenty days of the service of such notice. § 15. Upon the expiration of the term of office of the present Factory Inspector, and upon the expiration of the term of office of each of his successors, the Governor shall, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint a Factory Inspector; and upon the expiration of the term of office of the present Assistant Factory Inspector, and upon the expiration of the term of office of each of his successors, the Governor shall, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint an Assistant Factory Inspector. Each Factory Inspector and Assistant Factory Inspector shall hold over and continue in office, after the expiration of his term of office, until his successor shall be appointed and qualified. The Factory Inspector is hereby authorized to appoint from time to time not exceeding sixteen persons to be Deputy Factory Inspectors, not more than eight of whom shall be women; and he shall have power to remove the same at any time. The term of office of the Factory Inspector and of the Assistant Factory Inspector shall be three years each. Annual salaries shall be paid in equal monthly instalments, as follows: To the Factory Inspector, three thousand dollars; to the Assistant Factory Inspector, two thousand five hundred dollars; to each Deputy Factory Inspector, one thousand two hundred dollars. All necessary travelling and other expenses incurred by the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, and the Deputy Factory Inspectors in the discharge of their duties shall be paid monthly by the Treasurer upon the warrant of the Comptroller, issued upon proper vouchers therefor. A sub-office may be opened in the city of New York at an expense of not more than one thousand five hundred dollars a year. The reasonable necessary travelling and other expenses of the Deputy Factory Inspectors while engaged in the performance of their duties shall be paid upon vouchers approved by the Factory Inspector and audited by the Comptroller. § 16. It shall be the duty of the Factory Inspector, and the Assistant Factory Inspector, and of each of the Deputy Factory Inspectors under the supervision and direction of the Factory Inspector, to cause this act to be enforced, and to cause all violators of this act to be prosecuted; and for that purpose they and each of them are hereby empowered to visit and inspect at all reasonable hours, and as often as shall be practicable and necessary, all manufacturing establishments in this State. It shall be unlawful for any person to interfere with, obstruct, or hinder, by force or otherwise, any officer appointed to enforce the provisions of this act, while in the performance of his or her duties, or to refuse to properly answer questions asked by such officer with reference to any of the provisions hereof. The Factory Inspector may divide the State into districts, and assign one or more Deputy Factory Inspectors to each district, and transfer them from one district to another as the best interests of the State may, in his judgment, require. Any Deputy Factory Inspector may be appointed to act as Clerk in the main office of the Factory Inspector, which shall be furnished in the Capitol, and set apart for the use of the Factory Inspector. The Assistant Factory Inspector and Deputy Factory Inspectors shall make reports to the Factory Inspector from time to time, as may be required by the Factory Inspector, and the Factory Inspector shall make an annual report to the Legislature during the month of January of each year. The Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, and each Deputy Factory Inspector shall have the same powers as a Notary Public to administer oaths and take affidavits in matters connected with the enforcement of the provisions of this act. § 17. The District Attorney of any county of this State is hereby authorized, upon the request of the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy Factory Inspector, or of any other person of full age, to commence and prosecute to termination before any Recorder, Police Justice, or court of record, in the name of the people of the State, actions or proceedings against any person or persons reported to him to have violated the provisions of this act. § 18. The words "manufacturing establishment," wherever used in this act, shall be construed to mean any mill, factory, or workshop, where one or more persons are employed at labor. § 19. A copy of this act shall be conspicuously posted and kept posted in each workroom of every manufacturing establishment in this State. § 20. Any person who violates or omits to comply with any of the provisions of this act, or who suffers or permits any child to be employed in violation of its provisions, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars for the first offence, and not more than one hundred dollars for the second offence, or imprisonment for not more than ten days, and for the third offence a fine of not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and not more than thirty days' imprisonment. § 21. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed. § 22. This act shall take effect immediately. AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN PREPARING THIS BOOK. * * * * * United States Census, from 1790 to 1880 inclusive. Reports of the State Bureaus of Labor Statistics as follows:-- Maine, 1889. Massachusetts, 1870 to 1889 inclusive. Connecticut, 1881. Rhode Island, 1889. New York, 1885. New Jersey, 1885, 1886, and 1889. Iowa, 1887 and 1889. Kansas, 1889. Wisconsin, 1883-84 and 1887. Colorado, 1889. Minnesota, 1889. California, 1888. Nebraska, 1887-90. Michigan, 1892. Reports of the Factory Inspectors for various States. Working Women in Large Cities: Report of the United States Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., 1889. The Labor Movement in America. By Richard T. Ely. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York. The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class. By Francis A. Walker. Henry Holt & Co., New York. The Labor Problem. Edited by W.E. Barnes. Harper & Brothers, New York. On Labor. By W.T. Thornton. Macmillan & Co., London, 1869. Profit-Sharing between Employer and Employed. By N.P. Gilman. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston. Sharing the Profits. By Mary Whiton Calkins, A.M. Ginn & Co., Boston. Artisans and Machinery. By P. Gaskell. London, 1836. Condition of the Laboring Classes in England. By F. Engel. Leipzig and New York. Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus dem geschicht. Standpunkte. By Wilhelm Roscher. Various Reports of Commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the Factory Acts in England. Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siècle. By Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Paris, 1870. London Labor and the London Poor. By Henry Mayhew. Charles Griffen & Co., London. The Industrial Revolution. By Arnold Toynbee. London. The Philosophy of Wealth. By John B. Clark. Ginn & Co., Boston. Economic Writings of Emil de Lavelaye. Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science. Various Treatises on Political Economy. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Senior, Cairnes, Ely, Perry, Walker, etc. Prisoners of Poverty. By Helen Campbell. Roberts Bros., Boston. Applied Christianity. By Washington Gladden. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston. Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, London. Read for Factory Inspection and Legislation. Problems of To-Day. By Richard T. Ely. T.Y. Crowell & Co., New York. Social Studies. By the Rev. R. Heber Newton. G.P. Putnam's Son, New York. Social Problems. By Henry George. Studies in Modern Socialism. By Edwin Brown, D.D. Appleton & Co., New York. Dynamic Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. D. Appleton & Co., New York. Labor and Life of the People. Vols. 1 & 2: East London. By Charles Booth. Williams & Norgate, London, 1889 & 1892. Thirty Years of Labor: 1859 to 1889. By T.V. Powderly. Das Kapital. By Karl Marx. How the Other Half Live. By Jacob Riis. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. General Reports and Review Articles on the questions involved. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WOMAN'S LABOR AND OF THE WOMAN QUESTION. * * * * * GERMANY. Ausser den amtlichen Veröffentlichungen der verschiedenen Länder, über Berufs-und Bevölkerungstatistik vgl G. Schmoller, Thatsachen der Arbeitsteilung, Jahrb. f. Ges. und Berw. Bd 13, 1889. Buchsenschutz, Besitz und Erwerb in griechischen Alterthum. Halle, 1869. Franz Bernhoft, Ueber die Stellung der Frauen in Alterthum, Nord und Süd. Bd. 39, 1884. K. 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Spyri, Die Betheiligung des weiblichen Geschlechts am öffentlichen Unterricht in der Schweiz. Sep.-Abdr. der schweizer. Zeitschrift f. Gemeinnützigkeit, Jahrg. 1873, Zurich. Rüdinger, Vorläufige Mittheilung über die Unterschiede der Grosshirnwindungen nach dem Geschlecht, Beiträge zur Anthropologie und Urgeschichte Bayerns, Bd. 1, 1887. J. Pierstorff, Litteratur zur Frauenfrage. Jahrb. f. Nat. N.F. Bd. 7. 1883. Während des Druckes erschienen: Ed. von Hartmann, Die Jungfernfrage, Gegenwart 1891, Nr. 34 und 35. W. Stieda, Frauenarbeit. Jahrb. f. Nat., Dritte Folge, 11, 2, 1891. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ON THE WOMAN QUESTION AND THAT OF WOMAN'S LABOR. Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières depuis 1788. Paris, 1867. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Le travail des femmes au XIX. siècle. Paris, 1873. Jules Simon, L'ouvrière, 2^me édition. Paris, 1870. Villermé, Tableau de l'état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie. Paris, 1840. Kuborn, Rapport sur l'enquête faite au nom de l'académie royale de medicine de Belgique par la commission chargée d'étudier la question de l'emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrains des mines. Bruxelles, 1868. Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures, les mines, etc., etc. Bruxelles, 1874. Condorcet, Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven à un citoyen de Virginie, 1787. OEuvres complètes, Brunswick, 1804. The same, Sur l'admission des femmes au droit de cité. Journal de la société de 1789, v. 3, VII. 1790. Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des femmes depuis les Romains jusqu'à nos jours. Paris, 1843. Legouvé, Histoire morale de la femme. Paris, 1848; 4^me édition, 1884. Michelet, La femme. Paris, 1860. Proudhon, La justice dans l'église et dans la révolution, 1858. Oeuvres anciennes, Paris, 1868-76. Tome 22-26. Jenny d'Hericourt, La femme affranchie. Bruxelles, 1860. Juliette Lamber, Idées antiproudhoniennes sur l'amour, la femme et le mariage, 2^me édition. Paris, 1862. Leon Giraud, Essai sur la condition de la femme en Europe et en Amérique. Paris, 1883. Eugène Pelletan, La famille. La mère. Paris, 1865. Actes du Congrès international des droits des femmes. Paris, 1878. Comte de Franqueville, Les droits des femmes en Angleterre, Compte rendu de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Paris, 1891. ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY. Working Women in Large Cities, 4th annual Report of the Commission of Labor. Washington, 1878. Theodore Stanton, The Woman Question in Europe. London, 1884. Helen Campbell, Prisoners of Poverty, 1887. Prisoners of Poverty Abroad, 1889. Woman's Work in America, edited by Annie Nathan Meyer. New York, 1891. Sophia Jex-Blake, Medical Women. Edinburgh, 1871. A. Huntley, Women and Medicine. London, 1886. John Stuart Mill, Subjection of Women. London, 1869. Eliza W. Farnham, Woman and her Era. New York, 1869. Lester F. Ward, Dynamic Sociology, vol. i. pp. 597-664. Maria S. Child, History and Condition of Women in various Ages and Nations. Boston, 1840. INDEX. Abuses, in factories, 112; in dry-goods stores, 265. (_See_ also Fines, Factories, Hours.) Age, average, of working-women in Massachusetts, 116. Agricultural labor, women press into, 21. Agricultural Laborers' Union, women denied admission to, 21. Alabama, women workers in, 110. Alfred's "History of the Factory Movement," 93. American girls, percentage of, employed in Massachusetts, 116. Andover ordinances, 60. Appendix, 275. Apprentices, 49, 122. Arbitration, 266. Aristotle, "Politics" and "Economics," 29; views of women, 30. Arizona, working-women in, 110. Arkansas, working-women in, 110. Atlanta, Ga., weekly wage in, 139 Austria, hours of labor in, 185. Authorities consulted, 291. Bakeries, girls in, 218. Baltimore, Md., weekly wage in, 139. Beating, 52. Beaulieu, Paul Leroy, 165, 167, 251. Belgium, inquiry commission, 174; hours of labor in, 186. Berlin Labor Conference, 11. Betton, Frank, investigation of conditions in Kansas, 123. Bibliography, 294. Bishop, Commissioner, 221. "Bitter Cry of Outcast London," 9, 136. Blackwell, Dr. Emily, on restraints on women workers, 97. Book-binding, women and children employed in, 108. Boston, weekly wage in, 139; establishment of labor bureau in, 111; report on working-girls of, 114; women employed in, 116. Brain, relative sizes and weights of man's and woman's, 27. Brassey, Lord, 176. Broadcloth, weaving of, by women, 73. Brooklyn, N.Y., weekly wage in, 139. Bücher, Dr. Carl, 43. Buffalo, N.Y., weekly wage in, 139. California, average wage in, 141; women workers in, 110; first labor-bureau report, 121. Calkins, Mary W., on profit-sharing, 267. Capital has no complaint, 7, 11. Capitalist, and landlord absorb lion's share, 7; investment of skill and risk, 12. Carpet-weaving, women employed in, 108. Celibacy, 43. Census Bureau, difficulties in work of, 102; discrepancies in reports, 103. Charity adds insult to injury, 251. Charlemagne, 45. Charleston, S.C., weekly wage in, 139. Chicago, weekly wage in, 139. Child labor, efforts against, 11; in Prussia, 175, 178. Chivalry, 44. Cigar-making, women and children employed in, 108. Cincinnati, weekly wage in, 139. Cities, women's trades focussed in, 19. Clement of Alexandria, on women, 41. Cleveland, O., weekly wage in, 139. Clothing-trade, women employed in, 108. Colbert, 54. Colorado, women workers in, 110; labor-bureau reports, 122; weekly wage in, 141. Commodity, labor as a, 17. Competition, among needle-workers, 22; should be controlled, 252, 253. Conciliation, arbitration and, 266. Conditions, general, in Maine, 189; Massachusetts, 190; Connecticut, 192; Rhode Island, 193; New Jersey, 197; Kansas, 199; Wisconsin, 199; Colorado, 200; Indiana, 200; Minnesota, 201; California, 202; Missouri, 204; Michigan, 205; in New York stores, 232. Congrès Féministe, 165. Connecticut, women workers in, 110; labor bureau organized, 121; average wage, 141. Cotton, first bale of, 67; industry, 68; in Italy, 179; machinery and mills, 70, 71. Cotton-goods trade, women in, 108. Coxe, Tench, 68, 72, 115. Credit, 54. Crime and pauperism in labor reports, 113. Criminal list fed by factory system, 91. Custom hampers women workers, 22. Cyprian, 41. Dakota, working-women in, 110. Daniel, Dr. Annie S., 223, 225, 226. Deaconesses, 39. De Gournay, 54. Delaware, women workers in, 110. Diet, effect oil industrial efficiency, 14. Distribution of wealth, conflict over, 7, 8. District of Columbia, working-women in, 110. Divorces in Massachusetts labor reports, 114. Domestic service, 57, 237; in California, 122; in Colorado, 122; advantages of, 239; disadvantages, 241; employers of, 245; Woman's Congress on, 246. Donaldson, Principal, 39. Dress-making, 254. Drimakos, 34. Dry-goods houses, abuses in, 265. Dust in modern manufacture, 213, 218, 219. Dynamic Sociology, 26. Earnings, definition of, 127; average of working-women in Massachusetts, 117. Economic question, the question of the day, 7; dependence, 27; Greek thought, 29. Education, technical, as affecting efficiency, 14; of girls less practical than of boys, 23; industrial, in Italy, 175; in Sweden, 183; compulsory, 178; demanded for the employer and the public, 251. Efficiency, differences in, regulate wages, 14; affected by education, 14. Embroidery, 48. Emerson, Mary Moody, 66. Emigration, Irish, 84; increase of, 96. Employment, fluctuation in, affects wages, 16. Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., 151. Engels, Dr., on proportion of subsistence to total expenses, 118. Evils recognized, 94. Evolution, woman's industrial activity in harmony with, 270. Expenses, average of working-women in Massachusetts, 118. Factory, system, 75, 90; girls, 78; Lowell girls, 79; laws, 81, 85, 235, 275; conditions, 82, 84; hours, 86; women in, 89; employments, effects of, 91; ventilation, 92; inspection, 222, 275; married women in, 229; movement, 92, 93. Fair house, standard of, 262. Families, condition of, 113. Family life, demoralization of, 271. Fawcett, Henry, opposition to women in trades, 20. Fines, system of, 230, 233; in stores, 258. Florida, women workers in, 110. Fortescue, 53. France, hours of labor in, 183. Fry, Eleanor, 63. Fuller, Margaret, 119. Furriers, 46. Georgia, women workers in, 110. Germany, attitude of Emperor William, 11; hours of labor in, 185. "Germinal," 174. Gilman, N.P., on profit-sharing, 267. Gloves, home manufacture of, 63. Godfrey's Cordial in infant mortality, 147. Greeley, Horace, 119. Guilds, 45; expulsion of women from, 47. Habits, personal, as affecting efficiency, 14. Half-time system for children, 113. Harkness, Margaret, 154. Harland, Sarah, on work for uneducated women, 253. Harrison, Frederick, 17, 18. Health, in factory employments, 91; of working-women in Massachusetts, 113. Homes, of working-people, 112; for girls, 191; in cities, 222, 226, 250. Hosiery and knitting, women employed in, 108. Hours of labor, in Massachusetts, 117; in Michigan, 206; in stores, 258. Huxley, Thomas, description of London parish, 9, 10. Idaho, working-women in, 110. Ideals, alteration of, called for, 271. Illinois, women workers in, 110. Immobility of labor, 18, 19. Income, defined, 127; average, in Massachusetts, 116. Indiana, women workers in, 110. Indianapolis, average wage in, 139. Individual development, 272. Industrial, education, 252; efficiency, 14. Industries open to women in the United States, 124. Infant mortality, 147. Insanity among workers, 254. Intellectual degeneracy of factory operatives, 91, 93. Intelligence, effect on efficiency, 14; effect of factory system on, 91. Intemperance produced by factory system, 91. Iowa, women workers in, 110; labor bureau, 122. "Iphigenia in Tauris," 31. Irish, emigration, 84; industries, 159. Iron law of wages, defined and denounced, 15; applicable to unskilled labor, 15. Jevons, W.S., 147. Justice, education in, 271; a soul-growth, 273, 274. Kansas, women workers in, 110; labor bureau, 122; average wage in, 89. Kay, Dr., 89. Kelley, Florence, 264. Kettle, Rupert, on arbitration, 268. Knights of Labor, on women's work, 270. Knitting, 74; and hosiery trades, women in, 108. Labor, degradation of, 35; unskilled in colonies, 58; child, 86; effect of out-door, on pregnant mothers, 147; unskilled, a cause of low wages, 271; bureaus, their work in relation to women, 110 (_see_ also under each State); Father of, 115; mobility of, 17; Congress in Belgium, 175; hours of, in Germany, 185, in France, 183, in Austria, 185, in Belgium, 186, in Switzerland, 186. Laborer does not receive his share, 13. Lace-making, women employed in, 48, 108; in Ireland, 159; in Nottingham, 268. Lecky, W.H., 89. Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 165, 167, 251. Levasseur, E., 161. Lille, cave-dwellers in, 168. "London, Bitter Cry of Outcast," 9, 196; poverty, 9, 10. Louis le Jeune, 46. Louis, Saint, "Institutions" of, 46. Louisiana, women workers in, 110. Louisville, Ky., weekly wage in, 139. Love, law of, ends conflict, 274. Lowell factory-girl, 93. Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 267. Luther, 44. Lynn, Mass., shoe-making industry of, 99. Machinery, effects on woman's labor, 252. Maine, Sir Henry, 42. Maine, women employed in, 110; in shoe-making, 99; labor bureau, 123; average wages, 139. Manual training, in California, 122. (_See_ also education.) Marriage, 27, 38. Married women in factories, 91, 118. Massachusetts, Bureau of Labor reports, 99, 101, 111; census of women workers in, 110, 116; average wages in, 139. Match-making dangers, 221. Mazzini on freedom, 273. Men oppose admission of women to trades, 20. Men's furnishing-goods, women employed in, 108. Michigan, women workers in, 110. Millinery, women employed in, 108; readily organized trade, 254. Mines, women in, 174. Minnesota, women employed in, 110; labor bureau, 122; average wage, 141. Mississippi, working-women in, 110. Missouri, women workers in, 110. Mobility of labor, 17. Modern processes involve risk, 115. Montana, working-women in, 110. Mundella, Arthur, on arbitration, 268. Nebraska, working-women in, 110. Needle, resource of unskilled woman laborers, 22. Nevada, women workers in, 110. Newark, average wage in, 139. New England, shoe operatives in, 100. New Hampshire, women in shoe-making industry in, 99; total women workers, 110. New Jersey, factory evils in, 94; women workers employed, 110; average wage, 141. New Mexico, working-women in, 110. New Orleans, average wages in, 139. New York, Labor Bureau reports, 94, 119; factory evils, 94; total women workers in State, 110; average wage in, 141. New York City, average wage in, 139; percentage of women workers in, 109; "Tribune" stirs in sewing-women's behalf, 119. North Carolina, total women employed in, 110. Nott, Mrs., 66. Nottingham lace manufacture, 268. Offices, intelligence, 247. Ohio, women employed in, 110. Oregon, working-women in, 110. Organization among women, in France, 166; in cities, 206; in England, 253, 255. Parent-Duchalet, 171. Pauperism and crime in labor reports, 113. Pay, just, the first remedy, 25; equal for both sexes, 257. Peck, Charles F., work in New York, 119. Pennsylvania, working-women in, 110. Perkins, Mrs. Thomas, 65. Philadelphia, average weekly wage in, 139. Plato, 35. Post-office, employment of women in, objected to, 21. Potter, Beatrice, 154. Poverty, no more desperate in Europe than in the United States, 9, in London, 9,10; produced by factory system, 91. Prejudice, born of ignorance, etc., to be dismissed, 13. Profit-sharing between employer and employed, 267. Prostitution, fed by factory system, 91, 92; by domestic service, 93; statistics in, 171, 210; recruited from factories, 114. Providence, average weekly wage in, 139. Quesnay, 54. Question of the day, the economic one, 7. Questions, three, to be answered, 13. Ranke, on air required, 92. Remedies, just pay the first, 251. Reports, labor, six divisions of, 115. (_See_ also under various States.) Reybaud's "History of the Factory Movement," 92. Rhode Island, working-women in, 110; average wage in, 141. Rice, Commissioner, deals with women wage-earners in Colorado report, 122, 123. Richmond, Va., average weekly wage in, 139. Robinson, Henry A., Michigan Labor Bureau work, 123. Robinson, Mrs. H.H., 79. Rogers, Thorold, 55; value of his work, 15, 16. Saleswomen, 131. San Francisco, average weekly wage in, 139. Sanitary conditions of factories and of operatives' homes, 92. San José, average weekly wage in, 139. Savannah, average weekly wage in, 139. Savings of Massachusetts working-women, 118. Seamstresses, in Paris, 163; in New York, 163. Seats in shops, 220. Sewing-women, feeling stirred in behalf of, 119. Sex, disability of, in the way of mobility of labor, 18. "Sharing the Profits," by Mary W. Calkins, 267. Shearman, T.G., on irregularity of conditions in the United States, 8. Shirt-making, women in, 108. Shoe-making, women in, 98, 99. Silk-growing, 64, 65. Silk industry, women and children in, 95, 108. Silk manufactory, women and children in, in Italy, 179. Simon, Jules, 163. Single and married, proportion of, among working-women, 118. Smith, Adam, 54; summary of causes for difference in wages, 16. Social life of working-people, 114. Society, women workers frowned on by, 97. Solidarity of humanity, 274. Soul-moulding, Mazzini on, 273. South Carolina, working-women in, 110. Spinning-classes, 60; patriotic, 63. Statistics inadequate as to early conditions, 75. Stevens, Dr., on increase of insanity, 254. Stores, condition of women and children in, 258. St. Louis, average weekly wage in, 139. St. Paul, average weekly wage in, 139. Straw-braiding in New England, 68, 100, 101; straw-goods trade, women in, 108. Sully, 53. Supply and demand, 23. Sweating-system, 150, 235; parliamentary investigation of, end of report on, 153. Tacitus, 38. Technical education, as affecting efficiency, 14. Tenement-house manufacture, 256. Tennessee, working-women in, 110. Tertullian, 40. Texas, working-women in, 110. Textile industries, women in, 98. Thucydides, opinion of, 32. Tobacco trade, women in, 110. Trades, admission of women to, barred by men, 20; women employed in, 108. Tramp question, in labor reports, 113. Trusts, alarm caused by growth of, 11. Turgot, 54. Tutelage, perpetual, of women, 36. Umbrellas and canes, women employed in, 108. Unemployed, condition of, 113. Union, Working-Women's Protective, 230. United States, Labor Bureau Reports on working-women, 124. Unskilled labor, in majority, 22; fierce competition in, 22; surplus of, following Civil War, 101. Utah, working-women in, 110. Vacations of working-women in Massachusetts, 117. Value of laborer's service to employer, elements of, 14. Vapors, dangers of, in manufacture, 214. Vegetables, cultivation of, by women, 263. Vermont, working-women in, 110. Vincent, Madame, 165. Villermé, 169, 176. Wage rates, present, in United States, 126. Wages, why men receive more than women, 14, 21; effect of industrial efficiency on, 14; iron law of, 15; effort to make standard of life conform to, 15; tendency to a minimum, 16; Adam Smith for causes of difference in, 16; in stores, 259; final effect of woman's work on, 270; not fixed, 35; field, 58; eighteenth-century, 62; in France, 161; in Russia, 181; New York, 129; decrease in, 226; in clothing, 130; in Connecticut, 133; in Italy, 181; in California, 134; Colorado, 135; Iowa, 136; Kansas, 136; Maine, 134; Minnesota, 135; Michigan, 138; Rhode Island, 134; average, per State, 141; average, for all cities, 141; average, by cities, 139; definition of, 127. Wages question the question of the day, 7. Wales, women in industries in, 160. Walker, Gen. F.A., on differences in efficiency, 14; difficulties of census enumeration, 104. Ward, Lester F., 26. Wealth, ratio of increase greater than that of population, 8; greater aggregation of, in the United States than in Great Britain, 9. Weavers of Baltimore, 81. Weaving, colonial, 60. West Virginia, working-women in, 110. Widows, proportion of, among other workers, 118. Windows, nailing down of, 62. Wisconsin, average wage in, 141; working-women in, 110. Wives' earnings, 113. Woman, primeval, 27; Roman, 36; property of, 52; petition of, in France, 55; International Council of, 79. Women-workers, percentage of, in Philadelphia, Pittsburg, New York, Lowell, Manchester, Wilmington, Del., 108, 109; according to States, 110; of Boston, 114, 116; industries open to, in large cities, 124; development of her intelligence necessary, 251; in German mines, 11; why their wages are less than men's, 14; their trades highly localized, 19; entrance into trades barred by men, 20; increase of, in the United States, 98; total numbers of, in the United States, in 1860, 103; in 1870, 105; in 1880, 105; occupations according to Census of 1880, 106. Woollen and cotton industries, 98, 108. Working-girls' clubs, conditions of, 257. Working-Woman's Journal, 255. Working-Women's Protective Union, 255. Working-Women's Society of New York, its aims, 256. Worsted and woollen trades, women and children in, 108. Wright, Carroll D., 115. Wyoming, working-women in, 110. 
15218	----	[Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the costume of the pickle factory] [Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe factory] * * * * * THE WOMAN WHO TOILS _Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_ BY MRS. JOHN VAN VORST and MARIE VAN VORST _ILLUSTRATED_ NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1903 * * * * * DEDICATION To Mark Twain In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him kin with the whole world:-- this book is inscribed by BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST. * * * * * PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT _Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_ WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902. _My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_: _I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country--that is, the question of race suicide, complete or partial_. _An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be "independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial qualities without which there can be no strong races--the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those the acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people_. _Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one quality will save a nation. But there are certain great qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future_. _There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble with the situation you set forth is one of character, and therefore we can conquer it if we only will._ _Very sincerely yours,_ _THEODORE ROOSEVELT._ * * * * * PREFATORY NOTE A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same title in _Everybody's Magazine_. Nearly a third of the volume has not been published in any form. * * * * * CONTENTS By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST CHAPTER PAGE I. Introductory 1 II. In a Pittsburg Factory 7 III. Perry, a New York Mill Town 59 IV. Making Clothing in Chicago 99 V. The Meaning of It All 155 By MARIE VAN VORST CHAPTER PAGE VI. Introductory 165 VII. A Maker of Shoes at Lynn 169 VIII. The Southern Cotton Mills 215 The Mill Village The Mill IX. The Child in the Southern Mills 275 * * * * * LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes, _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning," 12 "Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the lives consumed, and vanishing again," 58 "They trifle with love," 70 After Saturday night's shopping, 84 Sunday evening at Silver Lake, 96 "The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards," 102 In a Chicago theatrical costume factory, 114 Chicago types, 128 The rear of a Chicago tenement, 144 A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory, 172 One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper," an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week, 172 "Learning" a new hand, 184 The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass., 196 "Fancy gumming," 210 An all-round, experienced hand, 210 "Mighty mill--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate," 220 "The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type," 240 * * * * * THE WOMAN WHO TOILS CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY BY MRS. JOHN VAN VORST * * * * * CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper and the lower, the educated and the uneducated--and a further variety of opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in every way. Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who consider the poor as objects of charity, to be treated sentimentally, or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality upon earth. It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral, spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that occurred to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined, 1st. By nature, 2d. By family life, 3d. By social laws; what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new society as manifested by its working girls. After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are condemned to slow death--mental, moral, physical death! If into their prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain. * * * * * IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY * * * * * CHAPTER II IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616 inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose despots are the employers--the multi-millionaire patrons--and whose serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons, the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also, thousands of separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change. The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied, and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love of art, and of classic forms, the desire to embellish--all that was inspired by culture of the beautiful; the Renaissance in America is the rebirth of man's originality in the invention of the useful, the virgin power of man's wits as quickened in the crude struggle for life. Florence is _par excellence_ the place where we can study the Italian Renaissance; Pittsburg appealed to me as a most favourable spot to watch the American Renaissance, the enlivening of energies which give value to a man devoid of education, energies which in their daily exercise with experience generate a new force, a force that makes our country what it is, industrially and economically. So it was toward Pittsburg that I first directed my steps, but before leaving New York I assumed my disguise. In the Parisian clothes I am accustomed to wear I present the familiar outline of any woman of the world. With the aid of coarse woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the ordinary type. I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the fortunate--I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate. I am to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and sorrows. I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the gateman says a respectful "To the right" or "To the left," and trusts to his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: "Now you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry--just put those three cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman is standing and he'll direct you to your train." This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their manual training, ignorant on all subjects. My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic. Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues; occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of the mills. I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his arm. [Illustration: "THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE SOOT FALLS SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING"] In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom. At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and I answer as best I can. "What is it you want?" "Board and work in a factory." "Have you ever worked in a factory?" "No, ma'am." "Have you ever done any housework?" She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming prisoners and reasoning with the poor. "Yes, ma'am, I have done housework." "What did you make?" "Twelve dollars a month." "I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?" "No, ma'am." "Are you making anything now?" "No, ma'am." "Can you afford to pay board?" "Yes, as I hope to get work at once." She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three o'clock I find the waif boarding-house. The matron is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make herself dreaded. In the distance I can hear a shrill, nasal orchestra of children's voices. I am cold and hungry. I have as yet no job. The noise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter--to snap my fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate. Something within me calls _Courage_! I take a room at three dollars a week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman. I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life, but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt letters: "_Women Employees_." The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a thousand. Each number means a workman--each tick of the clock a moment of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the window of the glass cage. It opens. "Do you need any girls?" I ask, trying not to show my emotion. "Ever worked in a factory?" "No, sir; but I'm very handy." "What have you done?" "Housework," I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself. "Well," he says, looking at me, "they need help up in the bottling department; but I don't know as it would pay you--they don't give more than sixty or seventy cents a day." "I am awfully anxious for work," I say. "Couldn't I begin and get raised, perhaps?" "Surely--there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it, and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good workers." The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not come in vain. I have a place! When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order. Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs. "_Quit rocking_!" the false mother cries at them. "You make my head ache. Most of 'em have no parents," she explains to me. "None of 'em have homes." Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for, growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance; each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated. The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This "Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't bring me no toys." And then with pride, "My mamma buys rice and tea and lots of things," and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, "My mamma comes in the street cars, only," sadly, "she don't never come." Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without. At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and, gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the short outlines of their lives. "I've been to the hospital," says one, "and so's Lily. I drank a lot of washing soda and it made me sick." Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. "I had typhoy fever--I was in the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the lights--it was just evening--and a man came in and he took one of the babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing, and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another time," Lily goes on, "there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle." Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image the violent and brutal side of existence--the only one with which they are acquainted. At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open into a long room with a slanting roof. It serves as nursery and parlour. In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are seated with babies on their knees. They have the meek look of those who doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures of the overworked. Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high foreheads. One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother's arms; one is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes through a scarlet mask. The corners of the room are filled with the drones--those who "work for a bite of grub." The cook, her washing done, has piled her aching bones in a heap; her drawn face waits like an indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue. Mary, the woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison's walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over them--dull and silent, they deaden her face. And Jennie, the charwoman, is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body? Her arms, long and withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is twisted and her head bowed toward earth. A stranger to rest, she seems a mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a task. What could be hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was a total absence of beauty in everything--not a line of grace, not a pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade the tenement. It was probable my comrades felt at no time the discomfort I did, but the harm done them is not the physical suffering their condition causes, but the moral and spiritual bondage in which it holds them. They are not a class of drones made differently from us. I saw nothing to indicate that they were not born with like _capacities_ to ours. As our bodies accustom themselves to luxury and cleanliness, theirs grow hardened to deprivation and filth. As our souls develop with the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal--an intellectual, esthetic and moral ideal--their souls diminish under the oppression of a constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as false. From all I saw I am convinced that, _given their relative preparation_ for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys are the same as ours in kind and in degree. * * * * * When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me as I went to bed: "If you want to wash," she said, "you'd better wash now; you can't have no water in your room, and there won't be nobody up when you leave in the morning." My evening bath is supplemented by a whisk of the sponge at five. Without it is black--a more intense black than night's beginning, when all is astir. The streets are silent, an occasional train whirls past, groups of men hurry hither and thither swinging their arms, rubbing their ears in the freezing air. Many of them have neither overcoats nor gloves. Now and then a woman sweeps along. Her skirts have the same swing as my own short ones; under her arm she carries a newspaper bundle whose meaning I have grown to know. My own contains a midday meal: two cold fried oysters, two dried preserve sandwiches, a pickle and an orange. My way lies across a bridge. In the first gray of dawn the river shows black under its burden of ice. Along its troubled banks innumerable chimneys send forth their hot activity, clouds of seething flames, waving arms of smoke and steam--a symbol of spent energy, of the lives consumed and vanishing again, the sparks that shine an instant against the dark sky and are spent forever. As I draw nearer the factory I move with a stream of fellow workers pouring toward the glass cage of the timekeeper. He greets me and starts me on my upward journey with a wish that I shall not get discouraged, a reminder that the earnest worker always makes a way for herself. "What will you do about your name?" "What will you do with your hair and your hands?" "How can you deceive people?" These are some of the questions I had been asked by my friends. Before any one had cared or needed to know my name it was morning of the second day, and my assumed name seemed by that time the only one I had ever had. As to hair and hands, a half-day's work suffices for their undoing. And my disguise is so successful I have deceived not only others but myself. I have become with desperate reality a factory girl, alone, inexperienced, friendless. I am making $4.20 a week and spending $3 of this for board alone, and I dread not being strong enough to keep my job. I climb endless stairs, am given a white cap and an apron, and my life as a factory girl begins. I become part of the ceaseless, unrelenting mechanism kept in motion by the poor. The factory I have chosen has been built contemporaneously with reforms and sanitary inspection. There are clean, well-aired rooms, hot and cold water with which to wash, places to put one's hat and coat, an obligatory uniform for regular employees, hygienic and moral advantages of all kinds, ample space for work without crowding. Side by side in rows of tens or twenties we stand before our tables waiting for the seven o'clock whistle to blow. In their white caps and blue frocks and aprons, the girls in my department, like any unfamiliar class, all look alike. My first task is an easy one; anybody could do it. On the stroke of seven my fingers fly. I place a lid of paper in a tin jar-top, over it a cork; this I press down with both hands, tossing the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite of myself I hurry; I cannot work fast enough--I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling, washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment for the simple work assigned to me. One hour passes, two, three hours; I fit ten, twenty, fifty dozen caps, and still my energy keeps up. The forewoman is a pretty girl of twenty. Her restless eyes, her metallic voice are the messengers who would know all. I am afraid of her. I long to please her. I am sure she must be saying "_How well the new girl works_." Conversation is possible among those whose work has become mechanical. Twice I am sent to the storeroom for more caps. In these brief moments my companions volunteer a word of themselves. "I was out to a ball last night," the youngest one says. "I stayed so late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning." "That's nothing," another retorts. "There's hardly an evening we don't have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest." And on my second trip the pale creature with me says: "I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last Friday week. It's awful lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I miss her _dreadful_. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it." "Oh, no, you won't," the answer comes from a girl with short skirts. "You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind." Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks, blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in hearts heretofore light with youth. When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites--news to tell. We herd down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The ménu varies little: bread and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally a sausage, a bit of cheese or a piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and "sociables." At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled; bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the monotony of it, the never-ending supply of work to be begun and finished, begun and finished, begun and finished! Now and then some one cuts a finger or runs a splinter under the flesh; once the mustard machine broke--and still the work goes on, on, on! New girls like myself, who had worked briskly in the morning, are beginning to loiter. Out of the washing-tins hands come up red and swollen, only to be plunged again into hot dirty water. Would the whistle never blow? Once I pause an instant, my head dazed and weary, my ears strained to bursting with the deafening noise. Quickly a voice whispers in my ear: "You'd better not stand there doin' nothin'. If _she_ catches you she'll give it to you." On! on! bundle of pains! For you this is one day's work in a thousand of peace and beauty. For those about you this is the whole of daylight, this is the winter dawn and twilight, this is the glorious summer noon, this is all day, this is every day, this is _life_. Rest is only a bit of a dream, snatched when the sleeper's aching body lets her close her eyes for a moment in oblivion. Out beyond the chimney tops the snowfields and the river turn from gray to pink, and still the work goes on. Each crate I lift grows heavier, each bottle weighs an added pound. Now and then some one lends a helping hand. "Tired, ain't you? This is your first day, ain't it?" The acid smell of vinegar and mustard penetrates everywhere. My ankles cry out pity. Oh! to sit down an instant! "Tidy up the table," some one tells me; "we're soon goin' home." Home! I think of the stifling fumes of fried food, the dim haze in the kitchen where my supper waits me; the children, the band of drifting workers, the shrill, complaining voice of the hired mother. This is home. I sweep and set to rights, limping, lurching along. At last the whistle blows! In a swarm we report; we put on our things and get away into the cool night air. I have stood ten hours; I have fitted 1,300 corks; I have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents. The impressions of my first day crowd pell-mell upon my mind. The sound of the machinery dins in my ears. I can hear the sharp, nasal voices of the forewoman and the girls shouting questions and answers. A sudden recollection comes to me of a Dahomayan family I had watched at work in their hut during the Paris Exhibition. There was a magic spell in their voices as they talked together; the sounds they made had the cadence of the wind in the trees, the running of water, the song of birds: they echoed unconsciously the caressing melodies of nature. My factory companions drew their vocal inspiration from the bedlam of civilization, the rasping and pounding of machinery, the din which they must out-din to be heard. For the two days following my first experience I am unable to resume work. Fatigue has swept through my blood like a fever. Every bone and joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than where I am; at the broom factory they employ only men. I decide to continue with tin caps and pickle jars. My whole effort now is to find a respectable boarding-house. I start out, the thermometer near zero, the snow falling. I wander and ask, wander and ask. Up and down the black streets running parallel and at right angles with the factory I tap and ring at one after another of the two-story red-brick houses. More than half of them are empty, tenantless during the working hours. What hope is there for family life near the hearth which is abandoned at the factory's first call? The sociableness, the discipline, the division of responsibility make factory work a dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls, impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes: sport, college education, machinery--each is a factor in the gradual transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a collection of individuals with separate interests and aims outside the home. I pursue my search. It is the dinner hour. At last a narrow door opens, letting a puff of hot rank air blow upon me as I stand in the vestibule questioning: "Do you take boarders?" The woman who answers stands with a spoon in her hand, her eyes fixed upon a rear room where a stove, laden with frying-pans, glows and sputters. "Come in," she says, "and get warm." I walk into a front parlour with furniture that evidently serves domestic as well as social purposes. There is a profusion of white knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already I feel at home. "Want board, do you?" the woman asks. "Well, we ain't got no place; we're always right full up." My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on again. "I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want," the woman calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out. The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take "mealers" only, some only "roomers," some "only gentlemen." I begin to understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between city and country factory life that there is between university life in a capital and in a country town. A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman. Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist. "Do you take boarders?" "Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room," she continues, opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring: "My husband was killed on the railroad last week. He lived three hours. They took him to the hospital--a boy come running down and told me. I went up as fast as I could, but it was too late; he never spoke again. I guess he didn't know what struck him; his head was all smashed. He was awful good to me--so easy-going. I ain't got my mind down to work yet. If you don't like this here room," she goes on listlessly, "maybe you could get suited across the way." Thompson Seton tells us in his book on wild animals that not one among them ever dies a natural death. As the opposite extreme of vital persistence we have the man whose life, in spite of acute disease, is prolonged against reason by science; and midway comes the labourer, who takes his chances unarmed by any understanding of physical law, whose only safeguards are his wits and his presence of mind. The violent death, the accidents, the illnesses to which he falls victim might be often warded off by proper knowledge. Nature is a zealous enemy; ignorance and inexperience keep a whole class defenseless. The next day is Saturday. I feel a fresh excitement at going back to my job; the factory draws me toward it magnetically. I long to be in the hum and whir of the busy workroom. Two days of leisure without resources or amusement make clear to me how the sociability of factory life, the freedom from personal demands, the escape from self can prove a distraction to those who have no mental occupation, no money to spend on diversion. It is easier to submit to factory government which commands five hundred girls with one law valid for all, than to undergo the arbitrary discipline of parental authority. I speed across the snow-covered courtyard. In a moment my cap and apron are on and I am sent to report to the head forewoman. "We thought you'd quit," she says. "Lots of girls come in here and quit after one day, especially Saturday. To-day is scrubbing day," she smiles at me. "Now we'll do right by you if you do right by us. What did the timekeeper say he'd give you?" "Sixty or seventy a day." "We'll give you seventy," she says. "Of course, we can judge girls a good deal by their looks, and we can see that you're above the average." She wears her cap close against her head. Her front hair is rolled up in crimping-pins. She has false teeth and is a widow. Her pale, parched face shows what a great share of life has been taken by daily over-effort repeated during years. As she talks she touches my arm in a kindly fashion and looks at me with blue eyes that float about under weary lids. "You are only at the beginning," they seem to say. "Your youth and vigour are at full tide, but drop by drop they will be sapped from you, to swell the great flood of human effort that supplies the world's material needs. You will gain in experience," the weary lids flutter at me, "but you will pay _with your life_ the living you make." There is no variety in my morning's work. Next to me is a bright, pretty girl jamming chopped pickles into bottles. "How long have you been here?" I ask, attracted by her capable appearance. She does her work easily and well. "About five months." "How much do you make?" "From 90 cents to $1.05. I'm doing piece-work," she explains. "I get seven-eighths of a cent for every dozen bottles I fill. I have to fill eight dozen to make seven cents. Downstairs in the corking-room you can make as high as $1.15 to $1.20. They won't let you make any more than that. Me and them two girls over there are the only ones in this room doing piece-work. I was here three weeks as a day-worker." "Do you live at home?" I ask. "Yes; I don't have to work. I don't pay no board. My father and my brothers supports me and my mother. But," and her eyes twinkle, "I couldn't have the clothes I do if I didn't work." "Do you spend your money all on yourself?" "Yes." I am amazed at the cheerfulness of my companions. They complain of fatigue, of cold, but never at any time is there a suggestion of ill-humour. Their suppressed animal spirits reassert themselves when the forewoman's back is turned. Companionship is the great stimulus. I am confident that without the social _entrain_, the encouragement of example, it would be impossible to obtain as much from each individual girl as is obtained from them in groups of tens, fifties, hundreds working together. When lunch is over we are set to scrubbing. Every table and stand, every inch of the factory floor must be scrubbed in the next four hours. The whistle on Saturday blows an hour earlier. Any girl who has not finished her work when the day is done, so that she can leave things in perfect order, is kept overtime, for which she is paid at the rate of six or seven cents an hour. A pail of hot water, a dirty rag and a scrubbing-brush are thrust into my hands. I touch them gingerly. I get a broom and for some time make sweeping a necessity, but the forewoman is watching me. I am afraid of her. There is no escape. I begin to scrub. My hands go into the brown, slimy water and come out brown and slimy. I slop the soap-suds around and move on to a fresh place. It appears there are a right and a wrong way of scrubbing. The forewoman is at my side. "Have you ever scrubbed before?" she asks sharply. This is humiliating. "Yes," I answer; "I have scrubbed ... oilcloth." The forewoman knows how to do everything. She drops down on her knees and, with her strong arms and short-thumbed, brutal hands, she shows me how to scrub. The grumbling is general. There is but one opinion among the girls: it is not right that they should be made to do this work. They all echo the same resentment, but their complaints are made in whispers; not one has the courage to openly rebel. What, I wonder to myself, do the men do on scrubbing day. I try to picture one of them on his hands and knees in a sea of brown mud. It is impossible. The next time I go for a supply of soft soap in a department where the men are working I take a look at the masculine interpretation of house cleaning. One man is playing a hose on the floor and the rest are rubbing the boards down with long-handled brooms and rubber mops. "You take it easy," I say to the boss. "I won't have no scrubbing in my place," he answers emphatically. "The first scrubbing day, they says to me 'Get down on your hands and knees,' and I says--'Just pay me my money, will you; I'm goin' home. What scrubbing can't be done with mops ain't going to be done by me.' The women wouldn't have to scrub, either, if they had enough spirit all of 'em to say so." I determined to find out if possible, during my stay in the factory, what it is that clogs this mainspring of "spirit" in the women. I hear fragmentary conversations about fancy dress balls, valentine parties, church sociables, flirtations and clothes. Almost all of the girls wear shoes with patent leather and some or much cheap jewelry, brooches, bangles and rings. A few draw their corsets in; the majority are not laced. Here and there I see a new girl whose back is flat, whose chest is well developed. Among the older hands who have begun work early there is not a straight pair of shoulders. Much of the bottle washing and filling is done by children from twelve to fourteen years of age. On their slight, frail bodies toil weighs heavily; the delicate child form gives way to the iron hand of labour pressed too soon upon it. Backs bend earthward, chests recede, never to be sound again. * * * * * After a Sunday of rest I arrive somewhat ahead of time on Monday morning, which leaves me a few moments for conversation with a piece-worker who is pasting labels on mustard jars. She is fifteen. "Do you like your job?" I ask. "Yes, I do," she answers, pleased to tell her little history. "I began in a clothing shop. I only made $2.50 a week, but I didn't have to stand. I felt awful when papa made me quit. When I came in here, bein' on my feet tired me so I cried every night for two months. Now I've got used to it. I don't feel no more tired when I get home than I did when I started out." There are two sharp blue lines that drag themselves down from her eyes to her white cheeks. "Why, you know, at Christmas they give us two weeks," she goes on in the sociable tone of a woman whose hands are occupied. "I just didn't know what to do with myself." "Does your mother work?" "Oh, my, no. I don't have to work, only if I didn't I couldn't have the clothes I do. I save some of my money and spend the rest on myself. I make $6 to $7 a week." The girl next us volunteers a share in the conversation. "I bet you can't guess how old I am." I look at her. Her face and throat are wrinkled, her hands broad, and scrawny; she is tall and has short skirts. What shall be my clue? If I judge by pleasure, "unborn" would be my answer; if by effort, then "a thousand years." "Twenty," I hazard as a safe medium. "Fourteen," she laughs. "I don't like it at home, the kids bother me so. Mamma's people are well-to-do. I'm working for my own pleasure." "Indeed, I wish I was," says a new girl with a red waist. "We three girls supports mamma and runs the house. We have $13 rent to pay and a load of coal every month and groceries. It's no joke, I can tell you." The whistle blows; I go back to my monotonous task. The old aches begin again, first gently, then more and more sharply. The work itself is growing more mechanical. I can watch the girls around me. What is it that determines superiority in this class? Why was the girl filling pickle jars put on piece-work after three weeks, when others older than she are doing day-work at fifty and sixty cents after a year in the factory? What quality decides that four shall direct four hundred? Intelligence I put first; intelligence of any kind, from the natural penetration that needs no teaching to the common sense that every one relies upon. Judgment is not far behind in the list, and it is soon matured by experience. A strong will and a moral steadiness stand guardians over the other two. The little pickle girl is winning in the race by her intelligence. The forewomen have all four qualities, sometimes one, sometimes another predominating. Pretty Clara is smarter than Lottie. Lottie is more steady. Old Mrs. Minns' will has kept her at it until her judgment has become infallible and can command a good price. Annie is an evenly balanced mixture of all, and the five hundred who are working under the five lack these qualities somewhat, totally, or have them in useless proportions. Monday is a hard day. There is more complaining, more shirking, more gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other, but in all they say there is not a word of value--nothing that would interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration of the French _ouvriere_. The Old World generations ago divided itself into classes; the lower class watched the upper and grew observant and appreciative, wise and discriminating, through the study of a master's will. Here in the land of freedom, where no class line is rigid, the precious chance is not to serve but to live for oneself; not to watch a superior, but to find out by experience. The ideal plays no part, stern realities alone count, and thus we have a progressive, practical, independent people, the expression of whose personality is interesting not through their words but by their deeds. When the Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain, the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to adopt the twang. No allusion is made to my pronunciation except by one girl, who says: "I knew you was from the East. My sister spent a year in Boston and when she come back she talked just like you do, but she lost it all again. I'd give anything if I could talk _aristocratic_." I am beginning to understand why the meager lunches of preserve-sandwiches and pickles more than satisfy the girls whom I was prepared to accuse of spending their money on gewgaws rather than on nourishment. It is fatigue that steals the appetite. I can hardly taste what I put in my mouth; the food sticks in my throat. The girls who complain most of being tired are the ones who roll up their newspaper bundles half full. They should be given an hour at noon. The first half of it should be spent in rest and recreation before a bite is touched. The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste. So long as I remain in the bottling department there is little variety in my days. Rising at 5:30 every morning, I make my way through black streets to offer my sacrifice of energy on the altar of toil. All is done without a fresh incident. Accumulated weariness forces me to take a day off. When I return I am sent for in the corking-room. The forewoman lends me a blue gingham dress and tells me I am to do "piece"-work. There are three who work together at every corking-table. My two companions are a woman with goggles and a one-eyed boy. We are not a brilliant trio. The job consists in evening the vinegar in the bottles, driving the cork in, first with a machine, then with a hammer, letting out the air with a knife stuck under the cork, capping the corks, sealing the caps, counting and distributing the bottles. These operations are paid for at the rate of one-half a cent for the dozen bottles, which sum is divided among us. My two companions are earning a living, so I must work in dead earnest or take bread out of their mouths. At every blow of the hammer there is danger. Again and again bottles fly to pieces in my hand. The boy who runs the corking-machine smashes a glass to fragments. "Are you hurt?" I ask, my own fingers crimson stained. "That ain't nothin'," he answers. "Cuts is common; my hands is full of 'em." The woman directs us; she is fussy and loses her head, the work accumulates, I am slow, the boy is clumsy. There is a stimulus unsuspected in working to get a job done. Before this I had worked to make the time pass. Then no one took account of how much I did; the factory clock had a weighted pendulum; now ambition outdoes physical strength. The hours and my purpose are running a race together. But, hurry as I may, as we do, when twelve blows its signal we have corked only 210 dozen bottles! This is no more than day-work at seventy cents. With an ache in every muscle, I redouble my energy after lunch. The girl with the goggles looks at me blindly and says: "Ain't it just awful hard work? You can make good money, but you've got to hustle." She is a forlorn specimen of humanity, ugly, old, dirty, condemned to the slow death of the overworked. I am a green hand. I make mistakes; I have no experience in the fierce sustained effort of the bread-winners. Over and over I turn to her, over and over she is obliged to correct me. During the ten hours we work side by side not one murmur of impatience escapes her. When she sees that I am getting discouraged she calls out across the deafening din, "That's all right; you can't expect to learn in a day; just keep on steady." As I go about distributing bottles to the labelers I notice a strange little elf, not more than twelve years old, hauling loaded crates; her face and chest are depressed, she is pale to blueness, her eyes have indigo circles, her pupils are unnaturally dilated, her brows contracted; she has the appearance of a cave-bred creature. She seems scarcely human. When the time for cleaning up arrives toward five my boss sends me for a bucket of water to wash up the floor. I go to the sink, turn on the cold water and with it the steam which takes the place of hot water. The valve slips; in an instant I am enveloped in a scalding cloud. Before it has cleared away the elf is by my side. "Did you hurt yourself?" she asks. Her inhuman form is the vehicle of a human heart, warm and tender. She lifts her wide-pupiled eyes to mine; her expression does not change from that of habitual scrutiny cast early in a rigid mould, but her voice carries sympathy from its purest source. There is more honour than courtesy in the code of etiquette. Commands are given curtly; the slightest injustice is resented; each man for himself in work, but in trouble all for the one who is suffering. No bruise or cut or burn is too familiar a sight to pass uncared for. It is their common sufferings, their common effort that unites them. When I have become expert in the corking art I am raised to a better table, with a bright boy, and a girl who is dignified and indifferent with the indifference of those who have had too much responsibility. She never hurries; the work slips easily through her fingers. She keeps a steady bearing over the morning's ups and downs. Under her load of trials there is something big in the steady way she sails. "Used to hard work?" she asks me. "Not much," I answer; "are you?" "Oh, yes. I began at thirteen in a bakery. I had a place near the oven and the heat overcame me." Her shoulders are bowed, her chest is hollow. "Looking for a boarding place near the factory, I hear," she continues. "Yes. You live at home, I suppose." "Yes. There's four of us: mamma, papa, my sister and myself. Papa's blind." "Can't he work?" "Oh, yes, he creeps to his job every morning, and he's got so much experience he kind o' does things by instinct." "Does your mother work?" "Oh, my, no. My sister's an invalid. She hasn't been out o' the door for three years. She's got enlargement of the heart and consumption, too, I guess; she 'takes' hemorrhages. Sometimes she has twelve in one night. Every time she coughs the blood comes foaming out of her mouth. She can't lie down. I guess she'd die if she lay down, and she gets so tired sittin' up all night. She used to be a tailoress, but I guess her job didn't agree with her." "How many checks have we got," I ask toward the close of the day. "Thirteen," Ella answers. "An unlucky number," I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion. "Are you superstitious?" she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the pickle jars. "I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having presentiments, and they come true, too." Here is a mystic, I thought; so I continued: "And what about dreams?" "Oh!" she cried. "Dreams! I have the queerest of anybody!" I was all attention. "Why, last night," she drew near to me, and spoke slowly, "I dreamed that mamma was drunk, and that she was stealing chickens!" Such is the imagination of this weary worker. The whole problem in mechanical labour rests upon economy of force. The purpose of each, I learned by experience, was to accomplish as much as possible with one single stroke. In this respect the machine is superior to man, and man to woman. Sometimes I tried original ways of doing the work given me. I soon found in every case that the methods proposed by the forewoman were in the end those whereby I could do the greatest amount of work with the least effort. A mustard machine had recently been introduced to the factory. It replaced three girls; it filled as many bottles with a single stroke as the girls could fill with twelve. This machine and all the others used were run by boys or men; the girls had not strength enough to manipulate them methodically. The power of the machine, the physical force of the man were simplifying their tasks. While the boy was keeping steadily at one thing, perfecting himself, we, the women, were doing a variety of things, complicated and fussy, left to our lot because we had not physical force for the simpler but greater effort. The boy at the corking-table had soon become an expert; he was fourteen and he made from $1 to $1.20 a day. He worked ten hours at one job, whereas Ella and I had a dozen little jobs almost impossible to systematize: we hammered and cut and capped the corks and washed and wiped the bottles, sealed them, counted them, distributed them, kept the table washed up, the sink cleaned out, and once a day scrubbed up our own precincts. When I asked the boy if he was tired he laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by _nature_ a more valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had given us a handicap at the start. For a few days there is no vacancy at the corking-tables. I am sent back to the bottling department. The oppressive monotony is one day varied by a summons to the men's dining-room. I go eagerly, glad of any change. In the kitchen I find a girl with skin disease peeling potatoes, and a coloured man making soup in a wash-boiler. The girl gives me a stool to sit on, and a knife and a pan of potatoes. The dinner under preparation is for the men of the factory. There are two hundred of them. They are paid from $1.35 up to $3 a day. Their wages begin above the highest limit given to women. The dinner costs each man ten cents. The $20 paid in daily cover the expenses of the cook, two kitchen maids and the dinner, which consists of meat, bread and butter, vegetables and coffee, sometimes soup, sometimes dessert. If this can pay for two hundred there is no reason why for five cents a hot meal of some kind could not be given the women. They don't demand it, so they are left to make themselves ill on pickles and preserves. The coloured cook is full of song and verse. He quotes from the Bible freely, and gives us snatches of popular melodies. We have frequent calls from the elevator boy, who brings us ice and various provisions. Both men, I notice, take their work easily. During the morning a busy Irish woman comes hurrying into our precincts. "Say," she yells in a shrill voice, "my cauliflowers ain't here, are they? I ordered 'em early and they ain't came yet." Without properly waiting for an answer she hurries away again. The coloured cook turns to the elevator boy understandingly: "Just like a woman! Why, before I'd _make a fuss_ about cauliflowers or anything else!" About eleven the head forewoman stops in to eat a plate of rice and milk. While I am cutting bread for the two hundred I hear her say to the cook in a gossipy tone: "How do you like the new girl? She's here all alone." I am called away and do not hear the rest of the conversation. When I return the cook lectures me in this way: "Here alone, are you?" "Yes." "Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get along nicely and not kill yourself with work either. Just stick at it and they'll do right by you. Lots o' girls who's here alone gets to fooling around. Now I like everybody to have a good time, and I hope you'll have a good time, too, but you mustn't carry it too far." My mind went back as he said this to a conversation I had had the night before with a working-girl at my boarding-house. "Where is your home?" I asked. She had been doing general housework, but ill-health had obliged her to take a rest. She looked at me skeptically. "We don't have no homes," was her answer. "We just get up and get whenever they send us along." And almost as a sequel to this I thought of two sad cases that had come close to my notice as fellow boarders. I was sitting alone one night by the gas stove in the parlour. The matron had gone out and left me to "answer the door." The bell rang and I opened cautiously, for the wind was howling and driving the snow and sleet about on the winter air. A young girl came in; she was seeking a lodging. Her skirts and shoes were heavy with water. She took off her things slowly in a dazed manner. Her short, quick breathing showed how excited she was. When she spoke at last her voice sounded hollow, her eyes moved about restlessly. She stopped abruptly now and then and contracted her brows as though in an appeal for merciful tears; then she continued in the same broken, husky voice: "I suppose I'm not the only one in trouble. I've thought a thousand times over that I would kill myself. I suppose I loved him--but I _hate_ him now." These two sentences, recurring, were the story's all. The impotence of rebellion, a sense of outrage at being abandoned, the instinctive appeal for protection as a right, the injustice of being left solely to bear the burden of responsibility which so long as it was pleasure had been shared--these were the thoughts and feelings breeding hatred. She had spent the day in a fruitless search for her lover. She had been to his boss and to his rooms. He had paid his debts and gone, nobody knew where. She was pretty, vain, homeless; alone to bear the responsibility she had not been alone to incur. She could not shirk it as the man had done. They had both disregarded the law. On whom were the consequences weighing more heavily? On the woman. She is the sufferer; she is the first to miss the law's protection. She is the weaker member whom, for the sake of the race, society protects. Nature has made her man's physical inferior; society is obliged to recognize this in the giving of a marriage law which beyond doubt is for the benefit of woman, since she can least afford to disregard it. Another evening when the matron was out I sat for a time with a young working woman and her baby. There is a comradeship among the poor that makes light of indiscreet questions. I felt only sympathy in asking: "Are you alone to bring up your child?" "Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "I'll never go home with _him_." I looked at _him_: a wizened, four-months-old infant with a huge flat nose, and two dull black eyes fixed upon the gas jet. The girl had the grace of a forest-born creature; she moved with the mysterious strength and suppleness of a tree's branch. She was proud; she felt herself disgraced. For four months she had not left the house. I talked on, proposing different things. "I don't know what to do," she said. "I can't never go home with _him_, and if I went home without him I'd never be the same. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to _him_." Her head bowed over the child; she held him close to her breast. But to return to the coloured cook and my day in the kitchen. I had ample opportunity to compare domestic service with factory work. We set the table for two hundred, and do a thousand miserable slavish tasks that must be begun again the following day. At twelve the two hundred troop in, toil-worn and begrimed. They pass like locusts, leaving us sixteen hundred dirty dishes to wash up and wipe. This takes us four hours, and when we have finished the work stands ready to be done over the next morning with peculiar monotony. In the factory there is stimulus in feeling that the material which passes through one's hands will never be seen or heard of again. On Saturday the owner of the factory comes at lunch time with several friends and talks to us with an amazing _camaraderie_. He is kindly, humourous and tactful. One or two missionaries speak after him, but their conversation is too abstract for us. We want something dramatic, imaginative, to hold our attention, or something wholly natural. Tell us about the bees, the beavers or the toilers of the sea. The longing for flowers has often come to me as I work, and a rose seems of all things the most desirable. In my present condition I do not hark back to civilized wants, but repeatedly my mind travels toward the country places I have seen in the fields and forests. If I had a holiday I would spend it seeing not what man but what God has made. These are the things to be remembered in addressing or trying to amuse or instruct girls who are no more prepared than I felt myself to be for any preconceived ideal of art or ethics. The omnipresence of dirt and ugliness, of machines and "stock," leave the mind in a state of lassitude which should be roused by something natural. As an initial remedy for the ills I voluntarily assumed I would propose amusement. Of all the people who spoke to us that Saturday, we liked best the one who made us laugh. It was a relief to hear something funny. In working as an outsider in a factory girls' club I had always held that nothing was so important as to give the poor something beautiful to look at and think about--a photograph or copy of some _chef d'oeuvre_, an _objet d'art_, lessons in literature and art which would uplift their souls from the dreariness of their surroundings. Three weeks as a factory girl had changed my beliefs. If the young society women who sacrifice one evening every week to talk to the poor in the slums about Shakespeare and Italian art would instead offer diversion first--a play, a farce, a humourous recitation--they would make much more rapid progress in winning the confidence of those whom they want to help. The working woman who has had a good laugh is more ready to tell what she needs and feels and fears than the woman who has been forced to listen silently to an abstract lesson. In society when we wish to make friends with people we begin by entertaining them. It should be the same way with the poor. Next to amusement as a means of giving temporary relief and bringing about relations which will be helpful to all, I put instruction, in the form of narrative, about the people of other countries, our fellow man, how he lives and works; and, third, under this same head, primitive lessons about animals and plants, the industries of the bees, the habits of ants, the natural phenomena which require no reasoning power to understand and which open the thoughts upon a delightful unknown vista. My first experience is drawing to its close. I have surmounted the discomforts of insufficient food, of dirt, a bed without sheets, the strain of hard manual labour. I have confined my observations to life and conditions in the factory. Owing, as I have before explained, to the absorption of factory life into city life in a place as large as Pittsburg, it seemed to me more profitable to centre my attention on the girl within the factory, leaving for a small town the study of her in her family and social life. I have pointed out as they appeared to me woman's relative force as a worker and its effects upon her economic advancement. I have touched upon two cases which illustrate her relative dependence on the law. She appeared to me not as the equal of man either physically or legally. It remained to study her socially. In the factory where I worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days. The women's highest wages were lower than the man's lowest. Both were working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of labourers taking part in the competition. In the masculine category I met but one class of competitor: the bread-winner. In the feminine category I found a variety of classes: the bread-winner, the semi-bread-winner, the woman who works for luxuries. This inevitably drags the wage level. The self-supporting girl is in competition with the child, with the girl who lives at home and makes a small contribution to the household expenses, and with the girl who is supported and who spends all her money on her clothes. It is this division of purpose which takes the "spirit" out of them as a class. There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is not equally vital to them all. It is not only nature and the law which demand protection for women, but society as well. In every case of the number I investigated, if there were sons, daughters or a husband in the family, the mother was not allowed to work. She was wholly protected. In the families where the father and brothers were making enough for bread and butter, the daughters were protected partially or entirely. There is no law which regulates this social protection: it is voluntary, and it would seem to indicate that civilized woman is meant to be an economic dependent. Yet, on the other hand, what is the new force which impels girls from their homes into the factories to work when they do not actually need the money paid them for their effort and sacrifice? Is it a move toward some far distant civilization when women shall have become man's physical equal, a "free, economic, social factor, making possible the full social combination of individuals in collective industry"? This is a matter for speculation only. What occurred to me as a possible remedy both for the oppression of the woman bread-winner and also as a betterment for the girl who wants to work though she does not need the money, was this: the establishment of schools where the esthetic branches of industrial art might be taught to the girls who by their material independence could give some leisure to acquiring a profession useful to themselves and to society in general. The whole country would be benefited by the opening of such schools as the Empress of Russia has patronized for the maintenance of the "petites industries," or those which Queen Margherita has established for the revival of lace-making in Italy. If there was such a counter-attraction to machine labour, the bread-winner would have a freer field and the non-bread-winner might still work for luxury and at the same time better herself morally, mentally and esthetically. She could aid in forming an intermediate class of labourers which as yet does not exist in America: the hand-workers, the _main d'oeuvre_ who produce the luxurious objects of industrial art for which we are obliged to send to Europe when we wish to beautify our homes. The American people are lively, intelligent, capable of learning anything. The schools of which I speak, founded, not for the manufacturing of the useful but of the beautiful, could be started informally as classes and by individual effort. Such labour would be paid more than the mechanical factory work; the immense importation from abroad of objects of industrial art sufficiently proves the demand for them in this country; there would be no material disadvantage for the girl who gave up her job in a pickle factory. Her faculties would be well employed, and she could, without leaving her home, do work which would be of esthetic and, indirectly, of moral value. I was discouraged at first to see how difficult it was to help the working girls as individuals and how still more difficult to help them as a class. There is perhaps no surer way of doing this than by giving opportunities to those who have a purpose and a will. No amount of openings will help the girl who has not both of these. I watched many girls with intelligence and energy who were unable to develop for the lack of a chance a start in the right direction. Aside from the few remedies I have been able to suggest, I would like to make an appeal for persistent sympathy in behalf of those whose misery I have shared. Until some marvelous advancement has been made toward the reign of justice upon earth, every man, woman and child should have constantly in his heart the sufferings of the poorest. On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass, they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their bargains cheap; from us, the coöperators who enable them to have the luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd to our work in the winter dawn; think of us as we bend over our task all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your material demands; think of us--be merciful. [Illustration: "WAVING ARMS OF SMOKE AND STEAM, A SYMBOL OF SPENT ENERGY, OF THE LIVES CONSUMED, AND VANISHING AGAIN" Factories on the Alleghany River at the 16th Street bridge, just below the pickle works] * * * * * PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN * * * * * CHAPTER III PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN No place in America could have afforded better than Pittsburg a chance to study the factory life of American girls, the stimulus of a new country upon the labourers of old races, the fervour and energy of a people animated by hope and stirred to activity by the boundless opportunities for making money. It is the labourers' city _par excellence_; and in my preceding chapters I have tried to give a clear picture of factory life between the hours of seven and six, of the economic conditions, of the natural social and legal equipment of woman as a working entity, of her physical, moral and esthetic development. Now, since the time ticked out between the morning summoning whistle to that which gives release at night is not half the day, and only two-thirds of the working hours, my second purpose has been to find a place where the factory girl's own life could best be studied: her domestic, religious and sentimental life. Somewhere in the western part of New York State, one of my comrades at the pickle works had told me, there was a town whose population was chiefly composed of mill-hands. The name of the place was Perry, and I decided upon it as offering the typical American civilization among the working classes. New England is too free of grafts to give more than a single aspect; Pittsburg is an international bazaar; but the foundations of Perry are laid with bricks from all parts of the world, held together by a strong American cement. Ignorant of Perry further than as it exists, a black spot on a branch of a small road near Buffalo, I set out from New York toward my destination on the Empire State Express. There was barely time to descend with my baggage at Rochester before the engine had started onward again, trailing behind it with world-renowned rapidity its freight of travelers who, for a few hours under the car's roof, are united by no other common interest than that of journeying quickly from one spot to another, where they disperse never to meet again. My Perry train had an altogether different character. I was late for it, but the brakeman saw me coming and waved to the engineer not to start until my trunk was checked and safely boarded like myself. Then we bumped our way through meadows quickened to life by the soft spring air; we halted at crossroads to pick up stray travelers and shoppers; we unloaded plowing machines and shipped crates of live fowl; we waited at wayside stations with high-sounding names for family parties whose unpunctuality was indulgently considered by the occupants of the train. My companions, chiefly women, were of the homely American type whose New England drawl has been modified by a mingling of foreign accents. They took advantage of this time for "visiting" with neighbours whom the winter snows and illnesses had rendered inaccessible. Their inquiries for each other were all kindliness and sympathy, and the peaceful, tolerant, uneventful way in which we journeyed from Rochester to Perry was a symbol of the way in which these good people had journeyed across life. Perry, the terminus of the line, was a frame station lodged on stilts in a sea of surrounding mud. When the engine had come to a standstill and ceased to pant, when the last truck had been unloaded, the baggage room closed, there were no noises to be heard except those that came from a neighbouring country upon whose peace the small town had not far encroached; the splash of a horse and buggy through the mud, a monotonous voice mingling with the steady tick of the telegraph machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools, rakes and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in resuming my toil-worn clothes had led me to make certain modifications which I feared in so small a town as Perry might relegate me to the class I had voluntarily abandoned. The man in rubber boots looked me over as I approached, bag in hand, and to my salutation he replied: "Going down to the mill, I suppose. There's lots o' ladies comes in the train every day now." He was the perfection of tact; he placed me in one sentence as a mill-hand and a lady. "I'll take you down as far as Main Street," he volunteered, giving me at once a feeling of kindly interest which "city folks" have not time to show. We found our way by improvised crossings through broad, soft beds of mud. Among the branches of the sap-fed trees which lined the unpaved streets transparent balls of glass were suspended, from which, as twilight deepened, a brilliant artificial light shot its rays, the perfection of modern invention, over the primitive, unfinished little town of Perry, which was all contrast and energy, crudity and progress. "There's a lot of the girls left the mill yesterday," my companion volunteered. "They cut the wages, and some of the oldest hands got right out. There's more than a thousand of 'em on the pay-roll, but I guess you can make good money if you're ready to work." We had reached Main Street, which, owing to the absence of a trolley, had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the Perry population. "Follow the boardwalk!" was the simple command I received. "Keep right along until you come to the mill." I presently fell in with a drayman, who was calling alternately to his horse as it sucked in and out of the mud and to a woman on the plank walk. She had on a hat with velvet and ostrich plumes, a black frock, a side bag with a lace handkerchief. She was not young and she wore spectacles; but there was something nervous about her step, a slight tremolo as she responded to the drayman, which suggested an adventure or the hope of it. The boardwalk, leading inevitably to the mill, announced our common purpose and saved us an introduction. "Going down to get work?" was the question we simultaneously asked of each other. My companion, all eagerness, shook out the lace handkerchief in her side bag and explained: "I don't have to work; my folks keep a hotel; but I always heard so much about Perry I thought I'd like to come up, and," she sighed, with a flirt of the lace handkerchief and a contented glance around at the rows of white frame houses, "I'm up now." "Want board?" the drayman called to me. "You kin count on me for a good place. There's Doctor Meadows, now; he's got a nice home and he just wants two boarders." The middle-aged woman with the glasses glanced up quickly. "Doctor Meadows of Tittihute?" she asked. "I wont go there; he's too strict. He's a Methodist minister. You couldn't have any fun at all." I followed suit, denouncing Doctor Killjoy as she had, hoping that her nervous, frisky step would lead me toward the adventure she was evidently seeking. "Well," the drayman responded indulgently, "I guess Mr. Norse will know the best place for you folks." We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot, the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. Tall, lank and meager, with a wrinkled face and a furtive mustache, Mr. Norse made his rounds with a list of complaints and comments in one hand, a pencil in the other and a black cap on his head which tipped, indulgent, attentive to hear and overhear. His manner was professional. He looked at us, placed us, told us to return at one o'clock, recommended a boarding-house, and, on his way to some other case, sent a small boy to accompany us on future stretches of boardwalk to our lodgings. The street we followed ended in a rolling hillside, and beyond was the mysterious blue that holds something of the infinite in its mingling of clouds and shadows. The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings. The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock with a rusty bell marked the hour from a shelf on the wall, and out of the kitchen, seen in vista, came a spluttering sound of frying food. Our hostess took us into the parlour. Several family pictures of stony-eyed women and men with chin beards, and a life-sized Frances Willard in chromo, looked down at our ensuing interview. Board, lodging, heat and light we could have at $2.75 a week. Before the husky clock had struck twelve, I was installed in a small room with the middle-aged woman from Batavia and a second unknown roommate. Now what, I asked myself, is the mill's attraction and what is the power of this small town? Its population is 3,346. Of these, 1,000 work in the knitting-mill, 200 more in a cutlery factory and 300 in various flour, butter, barrel, planing mills and salt blocks. Half the inhabitants are young hands. Not one in a hundred has a home in Perry; they have come from all western parts of the State to work. There are scarcely any children, few married couples and almost no old people. It is a town of youthful contemporaries, stung with the American's ambition for independence and adventure, charmed by the gaiety of being boys and girls together, with an ever possible touch of romance which makes the hardest work seem easy. Within the four board walls of each house, whose type is repeated up and down Perry streets, there is a group of factory employees boarding and working at the mill. Their names suggest a foreign parentage, but for several generations they have mingled their diverse energies in a common effort which makes Americans of them. As I lived for several weeks among a group of this kind, who were fairly representative, I shall try to give, through a description of their life and conversation, their personalities and characteristics, their occupations out of working hours, a general idea of these unknown toilers, who are so amazingly like their more fortunate sisters that I became convinced the difference is only superficial--not one of kind but merely of variety. The Perry factory girl is separated from the New York society girl, not by a few generations, but by a few years of culture and training. In America, where tradition and family play an unimportant part, the great educator is the spending of money. It is through the purchase of possessions that the Americans develop their taste, declare themselves, and show their inherent capacity for culture. Give to the Perry mill-hands a free chance for growth, transplant them, care for them, and they will readily show how slight and how merely a thing of culture the difference is between the wild rose and the American beauty. What were my first impressions of the hands who returned at noon under the roof which had extended unquestioning its hospitality? Were they a band of slaves, victims to toil and deprivation? Were they making the pitiful exchange of their total vitality for insufficient nourishment? Did life mean to them merely the diminishing of their forces? On the contrary, they entered gay, laughing young, a youth guarded intact by freedom and hope. What were the subjects of conversation pursued at dinner? Love, labour, the price paid for it, the advantages of town over country life, the neighbour and her conduct. What was the appearance of my companions? There was nothing in it to shock good taste. Their hands and feet were somewhat broadened by work, their skins were imperfect for the lack of proper food, their dresses were of coarse material; but in small things the differences were superficial only. Was it, then, in big things that the divergence began which places them as a lower class? Was it money alone that kept them from the places of authority? What were their ambitions, their perplexities? What part does self-respect play? How well satisfied are they, or how restless? What can we learn from them? What can we teach them? We ate our dinner of boiled meat and custard pie and all started back in good time for a one o'clock beginning at the mill. For the space of several hundred feet its expressionless red brick walls lined the street, implacable, silent. Within all hummed to the collective activity of a throng, each working with all his force for a common end. Machines roared and pounded; a fine dust filled the air--a cloud of lint sent forth from the friction of thousands of busy hands in perpetual contact with the shapeless anonymous garments they were fashioning. There were, on their way between the cutting-and the finishing-rooms, 7,000 dozen shirts. They were to pass by innumerable hands; they were to be held and touched by innumerable individuals; they were to be begun and finished by innumerable human beings with distinct tastes and likings, abilities and failings; and when the 7,000 dozen shirts were complete they were to look alike, and they were to look as though made by a machine; they were to show no trace whatever of the men and the women who had made them. Here we were, 1,000 souls hurrying from morning until night, working from seven until six, with as little personality as we could, with the effort to produce, through an action purely mechanical, results as nearly as possible identical one to the other, and all to the machine itself. [Illustration: "THEY TRIFLE WITH LOVE"] What could be the result upon the mind and health of this frantic mechanical activity devoid of thought? It was this for which I sought an answer; it is for this I propose a remedy. At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr. Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could make; I was offered the favourite work in the mill--shirt finishing, at thirty cents a day and all I could make; and when I shook my head to see how far I could exploit my indifference and said, "Thirty cents is too little," Mr. Norse's answer was: "Well, I suppose you, like the rest of us, are trying to earn a living. I will guarantee you seventy-five cents a day for the first two weeks, and all you can make over it is yours." My apprenticeship began under the guidance of an "old girl" who had been five years in the mill. A dozen at a time the woolen shirts were brought to us, complete all but the adding of the linen strips in front where the buttons and buttonholes are stitched. The price of this operation is paid for the dozen shirts five, five and a half and six cents, according to the complexity of the finish. My instructress had done as many as forty dozen in one day; she averaged $1.75 a day all the year around. While she was teaching me the factory paid her at the rate of ten cents an hour. A touch of the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I sewed frantically into the middle of shirts. I watched my needle, impotent as it flew up and down, and when by chance I made a straight seam I brought it to so sudden a stop that the thread raveled back before my weary eyes. When my back and fingers ached so that I could no longer bend over the work, I watched my comrades with amazement. The machine was not a wild animal in their hands, but an instrument that responded with niceness to their guidance. Above the incessant roar and burring din they called gaily to each other, gossiping, chatting, telling stories. What did they talk about? Everything, except domestic cares. The management of an interior, housekeeping, cooking were things I never once heard mentioned. What were the favourite topics, those returned to most frequently and with surest interest? Dress and men. Two girls in the seaming-room had got into a quarrel that day over a packer, a fine looking, broad-shouldered fellow who had touched the hearts of both and awakened in each an emotion she claimed the right to defend. The quarrel began lightly with an exchange of unpleasant comment; it soon took the proportions of a dispute which could not give itself the desired vent in words alone. The boss was called in. He made no attempt to control what lay beyond his power, but applying factory legislation to the case, he ordered the two Amazons to "register out" until the squabble was settled, as the factory did not propose to pay its hands for the time spent in fights. So the two girls "rang out" past the timekeeper and took an hour in the open air, hand to hand, fist to fist, which, as it happens to man, had its calming effect. We stitched our way industriously over the 7,000 dozen. Except for the moments when some girl called a message or shouted a conversation, there was nothing to occupy the mind but the vibrating, pulsing, pounding of the machinery. The body was shaken with it; the ears strained. The little girl opposite me was a new hand. Her rosy cheeks and straight shoulders announced this fact. She had been five months in the mill; the other girls around her had been there two years, five years, nine years. There were 150 of us at the long, narrow tables which filled the room. By the windows the light and air were fairly good. At the centre tables the atmosphere was stagnant, the shadows came too soon. The wood's edge ran within a few yards of the factory windows. Between it and us lay the stream, the water force, the power that had called men to Perry. There, as everywhere in America, for an individual as for a place, the attraction was industrial possibilities. As Niagara has become more an industrial than a picturesque landscape, so Perry, in spite of its serene and beautiful surroundings, is a shrine to mechanical force in whose temple, the tall-chimneyed mill, a human sacrifice is made to the worshipers of gain. My _vis-à-vis_ was talkative. "Say," she said to her neighbour, "Jim Weston is the worst flirt I ever seen." "Who's Jim Weston?" the other responded, diving into the box by her side for a handful of gray woolen shirts. "Why, he's the one who made my teeth--he made teeth for all of us up home," and her smile reveals the handiwork of Weston. "If I had false teeth," is the comment made upon this, "I wouldn't tell anybody." "I thought some," continues the implacable new girl, unruffled, "of having a gold filling put in one of my front teeth. I think gold fillings are so pretty," she concludes, looking toward me for a response. This primitive love of ornament I found manifest in the same medico-barbaric fancy for wearing eye-glasses. The nicety of certain operations in the mill, performed not always in the brightest of lights, is a fatal strain upon the eyes. There are no oculists in Perry, but a Buffalo member of the profession makes a monthly visit to treat a new harvest of patients. Their daily effort toward the monthly finishing of 40,000 garments permanently diminishes their powers of vision. Every thirty days a new set of girls appears with glasses. They wear them as they would an ornament of some kind, a necklace, bracelet or a hoop through the nose. When the six o'clock whistle blew on the first night I had finished only two dozen shirts. "You've got a good job," my teacher said, as we came out together in the cool evening air. "You seem to be taking to it." They size a girl up the minute she comes in. If she has quick motions she'll get on all right. "I guess you'll make a good finisher." Once more we assembled to eat and chat and relax. After a moment by the kitchen pump we took our places at table. Our hostess waited upon us. "It takes some grit," she explained, "and more grace to keep boarders." Except on Sundays, when all men might be considered equals in the sight of the Lord, she and her husband did not eat until we had finished. She passed the dishes of our frugal evening meal--potatoes, bread and butter and cake--and as we served ourselves she held her head in the opposite direction, as if to say, "I'm not looking; take the biggest piece." It was with my roommates I became the soonest acquainted. The butcher's widow from Batavia was a grumbler. "How do you like your job?" I asked her as we fumbled about in the dim light of our low-roofed room. "Oh, Lordy," was the answer, "I didn't think it would be like this. I'd rather do housework any day. I bet you won't stay two weeks." She was ugly and stupid. She had been married young to a butcher. Left alone to battle with the world, she might have shaken out some of her dullness, but the butcher for many years had stood between her and reality, casting a still deeper shadow on her ignorance. She had the monotony of an old child, one who questions constantly but who has passed the age when learning is possible. The butcher's death had opened new possibilities. After a period of respectful mourning, she had set out, against the wishes of her family, with a vague, romantic hope that was expressed not so much in words as in a certain picture hat trimmed with violet chiffon and carried carefully in a bandbox by itself, a new, crisp sateen petticoat, and a golf skirt she had sat up until one o'clock to finish the night before she left home. It was inevitable that the butcher's widow should be disappointed. There was too much grim reality in ten-hour days spent over a machine in the stifling mill room to feed a sentimentalist whose thirty odd years were no accomplice to romance. She grumbled and complained. Secret dissatisfaction preyed upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no _arrière pensée_. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty cents a day. She left us and went back to do housework in Batavia. My other roommate was of the Madonna type. In our class she would have been called an invalid. Her hands trembled, she was constantly in pain, and her nerves were rebellious without frequent doses of bromide. We found her one night lying in a heap on the bed, her moans having called us to her aid. It was the pain in her back that never stopped, the ache between her shoulders, the din of the machines in her ears, the vibration, the strain of incessant hours upon her tired nerves. We fixed her up as best we could, and the next day at quarter before seven she was, like the rest of us, bending over her machine again. She had been a school-teacher, after passing the necessary examination at the Geneseo Normal School. She could not say why school-teaching was uncongenial to her, except that the children "made her nervous" and she wanted to try factory work. Her father was a cheese manufacturer up in the Genesee Valley. She might have lived quietly at home, but she disliked to be a dependent. She was of the mystic, sentimental type. She had a broad forehead, straight auburn hair, a clear-cut mouth, whose sharp curves gave it sweetness. Though her large frame indicated clearly an Anglo-Saxon lineage, there was nothing of the sport about her. She had never learned to skate or swim, but she could sit and watch the hills all day long. Her clothes had an esthetic touch. Mingled with her nervous determination there was a sentimental yearning. She was an idealist, impelled by some controlling emotion which was the mainspring of her life. Little by little we became friends. Our common weariness brought us often together after supper in a listless, confidential mood before the parlour stove. We let the conversation drift inevitably toward the strong current that was marking her with a touch of melancholy, like all those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror, reflecting visions that have no place in reality. We talked about blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man's name; and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form. Her voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related the story. It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like herself. Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning. She slipped a gold locket from a chain on her throat. It framed her hero's picture, the source of her courage, the embodiment of her heroic energy: a man of thirty, who had failed at everything; good-looking, refined, a personage in real life who resembled the inhabitants of her enchanted mirror. In the story she told there were stars and twilight, summer evenings, walks, talks, hopes and vague projects. Any practical questions I felt ready to ask would have sounded coarse. The little school-teacher with shattered nerves embodied a hope that was more to her than meat and drink and money. She was of those who do not live by bread alone. Among the working population of Perry there are all manner of American characteristics manifest. In a country where conditions change with such rapidity that each generation is a revelation to the one which preceded it, it is inevitable that the family and the State should be secondary to the individual. We live with our own generation, with our contemporaries. We substitute experience for tradition. Each generation lives for itself during its prime. As soon as its powers begin to decline it makes way with resignation for the next: "We have had our day; now you can have yours." Thus in the important decisions of life, the choosing of a career, matrimony or the like, the average American is much more influenced by his contemporaries than by his elders, much more stimulated or determined by the friends of his own age than by the older members of his family. This detaching of generations through the evolution of conditions is inevitable in a new civilization; it is part of the country's freedom. It adds fervour and zest and originality to the effort of each. But it means a youth without the peace of protection; an old age without the harvest of consolation. The man in such a battle as life becomes under these circumstances is better equipped than the woman, whose nature disarms her for the struggle. The American woman is restless, dissatisfied. Society, whether among the highest or lowest classes, has driven her toward a destiny that is not normal. The factories are full of old maids; the colleges are full of old maids; the ballrooms in the worldly centres are full of old maids. For natural obligations are substituted the fictitious duties of clubs, meetings, committees, organizations, professions, a thousand unwomanly occupations. I cannot attempt to touch here upon the classes who have not a direct bearing on our subject, but the analogy is striking between them and the factory elements of which I wish to speak. I cannot dwell upon details that, while full of interest, are yet somewhat aside from the present point, but I want to state a fact, the origin of whose ugly consequences is in all classes and therefore concerns every living American woman. Among the American born women of this country the sterility is greater, the fecundity less than those of any other nation in the world, unless it be France, whose anxiety regarding her depopulation we would share in full measure were it not for the foreign immigration to the United States, which counteracts the degeneracy of the American.[1] The original causes for this increasing sterility are moral and not physical. When this is known, does not the philosophy of the American working woman become a subject of vital interest? Among the enemies to fecundity and a natural destiny there are two which act as potently in the lower as in the upper classes: the triumph of individualism, the love of luxury. America is not a democracy, the unity of effort between the man and the woman does not exist. Men were too long in a majority. Women have become autocrats or rivals. A phrase which I heard often repeated at the factory speaks by itself for a condition: "She must be married, because she don't work." And another phrase pronounced repeatedly by the younger girls: "I don't have to work; my father gives me all the money I need, but not all the money I _want_. I like to be independent and spend my money as I please." [Footnote 1: George Engelman, M.D., "The Increasing Sterility of American Women," from the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 5, 1901.] What are the conclusions to be drawn? The American-born girl is an egoist. Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of mill drudgery) is for herself. She works for luxury until the day when a proper husband presents himself. Then, she stops working and lets him toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall not be diminished by increasing family demands. In those cases where the woman continues to work after marriage, she chooses invariably a kind of occupation which is inconsistent with child-bearing. She returns to the mill with her husband. There were a number of married couples at the knitting factory at Perry. They boarded, like the rest of us. I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby while I was in the town. I can think of no better way to present this love of luxury, this triumph of individualism, this passion for independence than to continue my account of the daily life at Perry. On Saturday night we drew our pay and got out at half-past four. This extra hour and a half was not given to us; we had saved it up by beginning each day at fifteen minutes before seven. In reality we worked ten and a quarter hours five days in the week in order to work eight and a half on the sixth. By five o'clock on Saturdays the village street was animated with shoppers--the stores were crowded. At supper each girl had a collection of purchases to show: stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons, elaborate hairpins. Many of them, when their board was paid, had less than a dollar left of the five or six it had taken them a week to earn. "I am not working to save," was the claim of one girl for all. "I'm working for pleasure." This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better food. I watched her as she put her things into the trunk. She had a quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for a confidence. "You got a letter to-night, didn't you?" I asked innocently. "Was it the one you wanted?" "My, yes," she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths of her trunk. "It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano this fall." "Well, of course," I said eagerly, "you will accept him?" She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised. "No, my! no," she answered, shaking her head. "I don't want to be married." "But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and you have already been 'going with him' three years." "Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am. He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I left, but he let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I got my independence." What part did the love of humanity play in this young egoist's heart? She was living, as she had so well explained it, "not to save, but to give herself pleasure"; not to spare others, but to exercise her will in spite of them. Tenderness, reverence, gratitude, protection are the feelings which one generation awakens for another. Among the thousand contemporaries at Perry, from the sameness of their ambitions, there was inevitable rivalry and selfishness. The closer the age and capacity the keener the struggle. [Illustration: AFTER SATURDAY NIGHT'S SHOPPING] There are seven churches in Perry of seven different denominations. In this small town of 3,000 inhabitants there are seven different forms of worship. The church plays an important part in the social life of the mill hands. There are gatherings of all sorts from one Sunday to another, and on Sunday there are almost continuous services. There are frequent conversions. When the Presbyterian form fails they "try" the Baptist. There is no moral instruction; it is all purely religious; and they join one church or another more as they would a social club than an ordained religious organization. Friday was "social" night at the church. Sometimes there was a "poverty" social, when every one put on shabby clothes, and any one who wore a correct garment of any sort was fined for the benefit of the church. Pound socials were another variety of diversion, where all the attendants were weighed on arriving and charged a cent admission for every pound of avoirdupois. The most popular socials, however, were box socials, and it was to one of these I decided to go with two girls boarding in the house. Each of us packed a box with lunch as good as we could afford--eggs, sandwiches, cakes, pickles, oranges--and arrived with these, we proceeded to the vestry-room, where we found an improvised auctioneer's table and a pile of boxes like our own, which were marked and presently put up for sale. The youths of the party bid cautiously or recklessly, according as their inward conviction told them that the box was packed by friend or foe. My box, which, like the rest, had supper for two, was bid in by a tall, nice-looking mill hand, and we installed ourselves in a corner to eat and talk. He was full of reminiscence and had had a checkered career. His first experience had been at night work in a paper mill. He worked eleven hours a night one week, thirteen hours a night the next week, in and out of doors, drenched to the skin. He had lost twenty-five pounds in less than a year, and his face was a mere mask drawn over the irregular bones of the skull. "I always like whatever I am doing," he responded at my protestation of sympathy. "I think that's the only way to be. I never had much appetite at night. They packed me an elegant pail, but somehow all cold food didn't relish much. I never did like a pail.... How would you like to take a dead man's place?" he asked, looking at me grimly. I begged him to explain. "One of my best friends," he began, "was working alongside of me, and I guess he got dizzy or something, for he leaned up against the big belt that ran all the machinery and he was lifted right up in the air and tore to pieces before he ever knew what struck him. The boss came in and seen it, and the second question he asked, he says, 'Say, is the machinery running all right?' It wasn't ten minutes before there was another man in there doing the dead man's work." I began to undo the lunch-box, feeling very little inclined to eat. We divided the contents, and my friend, seeing perhaps that I was depressed, told me about the "shows" he had been to in his wanderings. "Now, I don't care as much for comedy as some folks," he explained. "I like 'Puddin' Head Wilson' first rate, but the finest thing I ever seen was two of Shakespeare's: 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Julius Cæsar.' If you ever get a chance I advise you to go and hear them; they're great." I responded cordially, and when we had exhausted Shakespeare I asked him how he liked Perry people. "Oh, first rate," he said. "I've been here only a month, but I think there's too much formality. It seems to me that when you work alongside of a girl day after day you might speak to her without an introduction, but they won't let you here. I never seen such a formal place." I said very little. The boy talked on of his life and experiences. His English was good except for certain grammatical errors. His words were well chosen. There was between him and the fortunate boys of a superior class only a few years of training. The box social was the beginning of a round of gaieties. The following night I went with my box-social friend to a ball. Neither of us danced, but we arrived early and took good places for looking on. The barren hall was dimly lighted. In the corner there was a stove; at one end a stage. An old man with a chin beard was scattering sand over the floor with a springtime gesture of seed sowing. He had his hat on and his coat collar turned up, as though to indicate that the party had not begun. By and by the stage curtain rolled up and the musicians came out and unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs and asked for _sol la_ from an esthetic young lady pianist, with whom they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made an official _entrée_ from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the first two-step struck up there were eight or ten couples on the floor. They held on to each other closely, with no outstretched arms as is the usual form, and they revolved very slowly around and around the room. The young men had smooth faces, patent leather boots, very smart cravats and a sheepish, self-conscious look. The girls had elaborate constructions in frizzed hair, with bows and tulle; black trailing skirts with coloured ruffled under-petticoats, light-coloured blouses and fancy belts. They seemed to be having a very good time. On the way home we passed a brightly lighted grocery shop. My friend looked in with interest. "Goodness," he said, "but those Saratoga chips look good. Now, what would you order," he went on, "if you could have anything you liked?" We began to compose a ménu with oysters and chicken and all the things we never saw, but it was not long before my friend cried "Mercy! Oh, stop; I can't stand it. It makes me too hungry." The moon had gone under a cloud. The wooden sidewalks were rough and irregular, and as we walked along toward home I tripped once or twice. Presently I felt a strong arm put through mine, with this assurance: "Now if you fall we'll both fall together." After four or five days' experience with a machine I began to work with more ease and with less pain between my shoulders. The girls were kind and sympathetic, stopping to help and encourage the "new girl." One of the shirt finishers, who had not been long in the mill herself, came across from her table one day when I was hard at work with a pain like a sword stab in my back. "I know how you ache," she said. "It just makes me feel like crying when I see how you keep at it and I can guess how tired you are." Nothing was so fatiguing as the noise. In certain places near the eyelet and buttonhole machines it was impossible to make one's neighbour hear without shouting. My teacher, whose nerves, I took it, were less sensitive than mine, expressed her sensations in this way: "It's just terrible sitting here all day alone, worrying and thinking all by yourself and hustling from morning until night. Lots of the girls have nervous prostration. My sister had it and I guess I'm getting it. I hear the noise all night. Quite a few have consumption, too, from the dust and the lint." The butcher's widow, the school-teacher and I started in at about the same time. At the end of two weeks the butcher's widow had long been gone. The school-teacher had averaged seventy-nine cents a day and I had averaged eighty-nine. My best day I finished sixteen dozen shirts and netted $1.11. My board and washing cost me three dollars, so that from the first I had a living insured. There was one negress in the factory. She worked in a corner quite by herself and attended to menial jobs, such as sweeping and picking up scraps. A great many of the girls and boys took correspondence courses in stenography, drawing, bookkeeping, illustrating, etc., etc. The purely mechanical work of the mill does not satisfy them. They are restless and ambitious, exactly the material with which to form schools of industrial art, the class of hand-workers of whom I have already spoken. One of the girls who worked beside us as usual in the morning, left a note on her machine at noon one day to say that she would never be back. She was going up to the lake to drown herself, and we needn't look for her. Some one was sent in search. She was found sitting at the lake's edge, weeping. She did not speak. We all talked about it in our leisure moments, but the work was not interrupted. There were various explanations: she was out of her mind; she was discouraged with her work; she was nervous. No one suggested that an unfortunate love affair be the cause of her desperate act. There was not a word breathed against her reputation. I would have felt impure in proposing what to me seemed most probable. The mill owners exert, as far as possible, an influence over the moral tone of their employees, assuming the right to judge their conduct both in and out of the factory and to treat them as they see fit. The average girls are self-respecting. They trifle with love. The attraction they wish to exert is ever present in their minds and in their conversation. The sacrifices they make for clothes are the first in importance. They have superstitions of all kinds: to sneeze on Saturday means the arrival of a beau on Sunday; a big or little tea leaf means a tall or a short caller, and so on. There is a book of dreams kept on one table in the mill, and the girls consult it to find the interpretation of their nocturnal reveries. They are fanciful, sentimental, cold, passionless. The accepted honesty of married life makes them slow to discard the liberty they love, to dismiss the suitors who would attend their wedding as one would a funeral. There is, of course, another category of girl, who goes brutally into passionate pleasures, follows the shows, drinks and knocks about town with the boys. She is known as a "bum," has sacrificed name and reputation and cannot remain in the mill. We discussed one night the suitable age for a girl to become mistress of herself. The boy of the household maintained that at eighteen a girl could marry, but that she must be twenty-one before she could have her own way. All the girls insisted that they could and did boss themselves and had even before they were eighteen. Two chums who boarded in my house gave a charming illustration of the carelessness and the extravagance, the independence and love of it which characterizes feminine America. One of these was a _deracinee_, a child with a foreign touch in her twang; a legend of other climes in the dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a _mondaine_. She had the social gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the _glissey mortel n'appuyez jamais_ attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days of Esther. When the other girls waited feverishly for love letters, she was opening a pile of invitations to socials and theatre parties. Discreet and condescending, she received more than she gave. As soon as the posters were out for a Tuesday performance of "Faust," preparations began in the household to attend. Saturday shopping and supper were hurried through and by six o'clock Lorraine was at the sewing machine tucking chiffon for hats and bodices. After ten hours' work in the mill, she began again, eager to use the last of the spring twilight, prolonged by a quarter moon. There was a sudden, belated gust of snow; in the blue mist each white frame house glowed with a warm, pink light from its parlour stove. Lorraine's fingers flew. A hat took form and grew from a heap of stuff into a Parisian creation; a bolero was cut and tucked and fitted; a skirt was ripped and stitched and pressed; a shirt-waist was started and finished. For two nights the girls worked until twelve o'clock so that when the "show" came they might have something new to wear that nobody had seen. This must have been the unanimous intention of the Perry populace, for the peanut gallery was a bower of fashion. Styles, which I had thought were new in Paris, were familiarly worn in Perry by the mill hands. White kid gloves were _en regle_. The play was "Faust." All allusions to the triumph of religion over the devil; all insinuations on the part of Mephistopheles in regard to the enviable escape of Martha's husband and of husbands in general, from prating women in general; all invocations of virtue and moral triumph, were greeted with bursts of applause. Between the acts there was music, and the ushers distributed showers of printed advertisements, which the audience fell at once to reading as though they had nothing to talk about. I heard only one hearty comment about the play: "That devil," said Lorraine, as we walked home together, "was a corker!" I have left until the last the two friends who held a place apart in the household: the farmer and his wife, the old people of another generation with whom we boarded. They had begun life together forty years ago. They lived on neighbouring farms. There was dissension between the families such as we read of in "Pyramus and Thisbe," "Romeo and Juliet." The young people contrived a means of corresponding. An old coat that hung in the barn, where nobody saw it, served as post-office. Truman pleaded his cause ardently and won his Louisa. They fixed a day for the elopement. A fierce snowstorm piled high its drifts of white, but all the afternoon long the little bride played about, burrowing a path from the garden to her bedroom window, and when night came and brought her mounted hero with it, she climbed up on to the saddle by his side and rode away to happiness, leaving ill nature and quarrels far behind. Side by side, as on the night of their wedding ride, they had traversed forty years together. Ill health had broken up their farm home. When Truman could no longer work they came in to Perry to take boarders, having no children. The old man never spoke. He did chores about the house, made the fire mornings, attended to the parlour stove; he went about his work and no one ever addressed a word to him; he seemed to have no more live contact with the youth about him than driftwood has with the tree's new shoots. He had lived his life on a farm; he was a land captain; he knew the earth's secrets as a ship's captain knows the sea's. He paced the mild wooden pavements of Perry, booted, and capped for storm and wind, deep snow and all the inimical elements a pioneer might meet with. His new false teeth seemed to shine from his shaggy gray beard as a symbol of this new town experience in a rough natural existence, out of keeping, ill assorted. Tempted to know what his silence hid, I spent an hour with him by the kitchen stove one Sunday afternoon. His memory went easily back to the days when there were no railroads, no telegraphs, no mills. He was of a speculative turn of mind: "I don't see," he said, "what makes men so crazy after gold. They're getting worse all the time. Gold ain't got no real value. You take all the gold out of the world and it wouldn't make no difference whatever. You can't even make a tool to get a living with, out of gold; but just do away with the iron, and where would you be?" And again, he volunteered: "I think Mr. Carnegie would have done a deal nobler if he had paid his men a little more straight along. He wouldn't have had such a name for himself. But don't you believe it would have been better to have paid those men more for the work they were doing day by day than it is now to give pensions to their families? I know what I think about the matter." [Illustration: SUNDAY EVENING AT SILVER LAKE The mill girls' excursion resort. A special train and 'busses run on Sundays, and "everybody" goes.] I asked him how he liked city life. "Give me a farm every time," was his answer. "Once you've seen a town you know it all. It's the same over and over again. But the country's changing every day in the year. It's a terrible thing, being sick," he went on. "It seems sometimes as though the pain would tear me to pieces when I walk across the floor. I wasn't no good on the farm any more, so my wife took a notion we better come in town and take boarders." Thus it was with this happily balanced couple; as his side grew heavier she took on more ballast and swung even with him. She had the quick adaptability common to American women. During the years of farm life religious meetings and a few neighbours had kept her in touch with the outside world. The church and the kitchen were what she had on the farm; the church and the kitchen were what she had in town; family life supplemented by boarders, a social existence kept alive by a few faithful neighbours. She had retained her activity and sympathy because she was intelligent, because she lived with the _young_. The man could not make himself one of another generation, so he lived alone. He had lost his companions, the "cow kind and the sheep kind"; he had lost control over the earth that belonged to him; he was disused; he suffered; he pined. But as they sat together side by side at table, his look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back over a long vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to those about--years that had glorified confidence in this life as it passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come. * * * * * MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO * * * * * CHAPTER IV MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House, asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was pinned in a black silk bag. It was the first day of May. A hot wind blew eddies of dust up and down the electric car tracks; the streets were alive with children; a group swarmed in front of each doorstep, too large to fit into the house behind it. Down the long, regular avenues that stretched right and left there was a broken line of tenements topped by telegraph wires and bathed in a soft cloud of black soot falling from a chimney in the neighbourhood. The sidewalks were a patchwork of dirt, broken paving-stones and wooden boards. The sunshine was hot and gloomy. There were no names on the corner lamps and the house numbers were dull and needed repainting. It was already late in the afternoon: I had but an hour or two before dark to find a lodging. The miserable, overcrowded tenement houses repelled me, yet I dreaded that there should not be room among them for one more bread-winner to lodge. I hailed a cluster of children in the gutter: "Say," I said, "do you know where Mrs. Hicks lives to?" They crowded around, eager. The tallest boy, with curly red hair and freckles, pointed out Mrs. Hicks' residence, the upper windows of a brick flat that faced the world like a prison wall. After I had rung and waited for the responding click from above, a cross-eyed Italian woman with a baby in her arms motioned to me from the step where she was sitting that I must go down a side alley to find Mrs. Hicks. Out of a promiscuous heap of filth, a broken-down staircase led upward to a row of green blinds and a screen door. Somebody's housekeeping was scattered around in torn bits of linen and tomato cans. The screen door opened to my knock and the Hicks family gushed at me--ever so many children of all ages and an immense mother in an under-waist and petticoat. The interior was neat; the wooden floors were scrubbed spotless. I congratulated myself. Mrs. Hicks clucked to the family group, smiled at me, and said: "I never took a boarder in my life. I ain't got room enough for my own young ones, let alone strangers." [Illustration: "THE BREATH OF THE BLACK, SWEET NIGHT REACHED THEM, FETID, HEAVY WITH THE ODOUR OF DEATH AS IT BLEW ACROSS THE STOCKYARDS"] There were two more names on my list. I proceded to the nearest and found an Irish lady living in basement rooms ornamented with green crochet work, crayon portraits, red plaid table-cloths and chromo picture cards. She had rheumatism in her "limbs" and moved with difficulty. She was glad to talk the matter over, though she had from the first no intention of taking me. From my then point of view nothing seemed so desirable as a cot in Mrs. Flannagan's front parlour. I even offered in my eagerness to sleep on the horsehair sofa. Womanlike, she gave twenty little reasons for not taking me before she gave the one big reason, which was this: "Well, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind having you myself, but I've got three sons, and you know _boys is queer_." It was late, the sun had set and only the twilight remained for my search before night would be upon me and I would be driven to some charity refuge. I had one more name, and climbed to find its owner in a tenement flat. She was a German woman with a clubfoot. Two half-naked children incrusted with dirt were playing on the floor. They waddled toward me as I asked what my chances were for finding a room and board. The mother struck first one, then the other, of her offspring, and they fell into two little heaps, both wailing. From a hole back of the kitchen came the sympathetic response of a half-starved shaggy dog. He howled and the babes wailed while we visited the dusky apartment. There was one room rented to a day lodger who worked nights, and one room without a window where the German family slept. She proposed that I share the bed with her that night until she could get an extra cot. Her husband and the children could sleep on the parlour lounge. She was hideous and dirty. Her loose lips and half-toothless mouth were the slipshod note of an entire existence. There was a very dressy bonnet with feathers hanging on a peg in the bedroom, and two gala costumes belonging to the tearful twins. "I'll come back in an hour, thank you," I said. "Don't expect me if I am not here in an hour," and I fled down the stairs. Before the hour was up I had found, through the guidance of the Irish lady with rheumatism, a clean room in one street and board in another. This was inconvenient, but safe and comparatively healthy. My meals were thirty-five cents a day, payable at the end of the week; my room was $1.25 a week, total $3.70 a week. My first introduction to Chicago tenement life was supper at Mrs. Wood's. I could hear the meal sputtering on the kitchen stove as I opened the Wood front door. Mrs. Wood, combining duties as cook and hostess, called to me to make myself at home in the front parlour. I seated myself on the sofa, which exuded the familiar acrid odour of the poor. Opposite me there was a door half open leading into a room where a lamp was lighted. I could see a young girl and a man talking together. He was sitting and had his hat on. She had a halo of blond hair, through which the lamplight was shining, and she stood near the man, who seemed to be teasing her. Their conversation was low, but there was a familiar cry now and then, half vulgar, half affectionate. When we had taken our places at the table, Mrs. Wood presented us. "This is Miss Ida," she said, pointing to the blonde girl; "she's been boarding over a year with me, and this," turning to the young man who sat near by with one arm hanging listlessly over the back of a chair, "this is Miss Ida's intended." The other members of the household were a fox terrier, a canary and "Wood"--Wood was a man over sixty. He and Mrs. Wood had the same devoted understanding that I have observed so often among the poor couples of the older generation. This good little woman occupied herself with the things that no longer satisfy. She took tender care of her husband, following him to the door with one hand on his shoulder and calling after him as he went on his way: "Good-by; take care of yourself." She had a few pets, her children were married and gone, she had a miniature patch of garden, a trust in the church guild--which took some time and attention for charitable works, and she did her own cooking and housework. "And," she explained to me in the course of our conversation at supper, "I never felt the need of joining these University Settlement Clubs to get into society." Wood and his wife were a good sort. Miss Ida was kind in her inquiries about my plans. "Have you ever operated a power machine?" she asked. "Yes," I responded--with what pride she little dreamed. "I've run an electric Singer." "I guess I can get you a job, then, all right, at my place. It's piece-work; you get off at five, but you can make good money." I thanked her, not adding that my Chicago career was to be a checkered one, and that I was determined to see how many things I could do that I had never done before. But social life was beginning to wear on Miss Ida's intended. He took up his hat and swung along toward the door. I was struggling to extract with my fork the bones of a hard, fried fish. Mrs. Wood encouraged me in a motherly tone: "Oh, my, don't be so formal; take your knife." "Say," called a voice from the door, "say, come on, Ida, I'm waiting for you." And the blonde fiancée hurried away with an embarrassed laugh to join her lover. She was refined and delicate, her ears were small, her hands white and slender, she spoke correctly with a nasal voice, and her teeth (as is not often the case among this class, whose lownesses seem suddenly revealed when they open their mouths) were sound and clean. The man's smooth face was all commonness and vulgarity. "He's had appendicitis," Mrs. Wood explained when we were alone. "He's been out of work a long time. As soon as he goes to his job his side bursts out again where they operated on him. He ain't a bit strong." "When are they going to be married?" I asked. "Oh, dear me, they don't think of that yet; they're in no hurry." "Will Miss Ida work after she's married?" "No, indeed." Did they not have their share of ideal then, these two young labourers who could wait indefinitely, fed by hope, in their sordid, miserable surroundings? I returned to my tenement room; its one window opened over a narrow alley flanked on its opposite side by a second tenement, through whose shutters I could look and see repeated layers of squalid lodgings. The thermometer had climbed up into the eighties. The wail of a newly born baby came from the room under mine. The heat was stifling. Outdoors in the false, flickering day of the arc lights the crowd swarmed, on the curb, on the sidewalk, on the house steps. The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards. Shouts, calls, cries, moans, the sounds of old age and of infancy, of despair and of joy, mingled and became the anonymous murmur of a hot, human multitude. The following morning I put ten cents in my pocket and started out to get a job before this sum should be used up. How huge the city seemed when I thought of the small space I could cover on foot, looking for work! I walked toward the river, as the commercial activity expressed itself in that direction by fifteen-and twenty-story buildings and streams of velvet smoke. Blocks and blocks of tenements, with the same dirty people wallowing around them, answered my searching eyes in blank response. There was an occasional dingy sign offering board and lodging. After I had made several futile inquiries at imposing offices on the river front I felt that it was a hopeless quest. I should never get work unknown, unskilled, already tired and discouraged. My collar was wilted in the fierce heat; my shabby felt sailor hat was no protection against the sun's rays; my hands were gloveless; and as I passed the plate glass windows I could see the despondent droop of my skirt, the stray locks of hair that blew about free of comb or veil. A sign out: "Manglers wanted!" attracted my attention in the window of a large steam laundry. I was not a "mangler," but I went in and asked to see the boss. "Ever done any mangling?" was his first question. "No," I answered, "but I am sure I could learn." I put so much ardour into my response that the boss at once took an interest. "We might give you a place as shaker; you could start in and work up." "What do you pay?" "Four dollars a week until you learn. Then you would work up to five, five and a half." Better than nothing, was all I could think, but I can't live on four a week. "How often do you pay?" "Every Tuesday night." This meant no money for ten days. "If you think you'd like to try shaking come round Monday morning at seven o'clock." Which I took as my dismissal until Monday. At least I had a job, however poor, and strengthened by this thought I determined to find something better before Monday. The ten-cent piece lay an inviting fortune in my hand. I was to part with one-tenth of it in exchange for a morning newspaper. This investment seemed a reckless plunge, but "nothing venture, nothing have," my pioneer spirit prompted, and soon deep in the list of _Wanted, Females_, I felt repaid. Even in my destitute condition I had a choice in mind. If possible I wanted to work without machinery in a shop where the girls used their hands alone as power. Here seemed to be my heart's content--a short, concise advertisement, "Wanted, hand sewers." After a consultation with a policeman as to the whereabouts of my future employer, it became evident that I must part with another of my ten cents, as the hand sewers worked on the opposite side of the city from the neighbourhood whither I had strayed in my morning's wanderings. I took a car and alighted at a busy street in the fashionable shopping centre of Chicago. The number I looked for was over a steep flight of dirty wooden stairs. If there is such a thing as luck it was now to dwell a moment with one of the poorest. I pushed open a swinging door and let myself into the office of a clothing manufacturer. The owner, Mr. F., got up from his desk and came toward me. "I seen your advertisement in the morning paper." "Yes," he answered in a kindly voice. "Are you a tailoress?" "No, sir; I've never done much sewing except on a machine." "Well, we have machines here." "But," I almost interrupted, beginning to fear that my training at Perry was to limit all further experience to an electric Singer, "I'd rather work with my hands. I like the hand-work." He looked at me and gave me an answer which exactly coincided with my theories. He said this, and it was just what I wanted him to say. "If you do hand-work you'll have to use your mind. Lots of girls come in here with an idea they can let their thoughts wander; but you've got to pay strict attention. You can't do hand-work mechanically." "All right, sir," I responded. "What do you pay?" "I'll give you six dollars a week while you're learning." I could hardly control a movement of delight. Six dollars a week! A dollar a day for an apprentice! "But"--my next question I made as dismal as possible--"when do you pay?" "Generally not till the end of the second week," the kindly voice said; "but we could arrange to pay you at the end of the first if you needed the money." "Shall I come in Monday?" "Come in this afternoon at 12:30 if you're ready." "I'm ready," I said, "but I ain't brought no lunch with me, and it's too late now to get home and back again." The man put his hand in his pocket and laid down before me a fifty-cent piece, advanced on my pay. "Take that," he said, with courtesy; "get yourself a lunch in the neighbourhood and come back at half-past twelve." I went to the nearest restaurant. It was an immense bakery patronized by office girls and men, hard workers who came for their only free moment of the day into this eating-place. Everything that could be swallowed quickly was spread out on a long counter, behind which there were steaming tanks of tea, coffee and chocolate. The men took their food downstairs and the ladies climbed to the floor above. I watched them. They were self-supporting women--independent; they could use their money as they liked. They came in groups--a rustling frou-frou announced silk underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, masses of trimming weighed down their broad-brimmed picture hats, fancy veils, kid gloves, silver side-bags, embroidered blouses and elaborate belt buckles completed the detail of their showy costumes, the whole worn with the air of a manikin. What did these busy women order for lunch? Tea and buns, ice-cream and buckwheat cakes, apple pie _a la mode_ and chocolate were the most serious ménus. This nourishing food they ate with great nicety and daintiness, talking the while about clothes. They were in a hurry, as all of them had some shopping to do before returning to work, and they each spent a prinking five minutes before the mirror, adjusting the trash with which they had bedecked themselves exteriorly while their poor hard-working systems went ungarnished and hungry within. This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away. It is in this class that campaigns can be made, directly and indirectly, by preaching and by example. What sort of women are those who sacrifice all on the altar of luxury? It is a prostitution to sell the body's health and strength for gewgaws. What harmony can there be between the elaborate get-up of these young women and the miserable homes where they live? The idolizing of material things is a religion nurtured by this class of whom I speak. In their humble surroundings the love of self, the desire to possess things, the cherished need for luxuries, crowd out the feelings that make character. They are but one manifestation of the egoism of the unmarried American woman. For what and for whom do they work? Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward a ruinous goal. They scorn the hand-workers; they feel themselves a _noblesse_ by comparison. They are the American snobs whose coat of arms marks not a well-remembered family but prospective luxuries.... Married, they bring as a portion thriftless tastes, to satisfy which more than one business man has wrecked his career. They work like men; why should they not live as men do, with similar responsibilities? What should we think of a class of masculine clerks and employees who spent all their money on clothes? The boss was busy when I got back to the clothing establishment. From the bench where I waited for orders I could take an inventory of the shop's productions. Arrayed in rows behind glass cases there were all manner of uniforms: serious uniforms going to the colonies to be shot to pieces, militia uniforms that would hear their loudest heart-beats under a fair head; drum-majors' hats that would never get farther than the peaceful lawn of a military post; fireman's hats; the dark-blue coat of a lonely lighthouse guardian; the undignified short jacket of a "buttons." All that meant parade and glory, the uniforms that make men identical by making each proud of himself for his brass buttons and gold lace. Even in the heavy atmosphere of the shop's rear, though they appeared somewhat dingy and tarnished, they had their undeniable charm, and I thought with pity of the hands that had to sew on plain serge suits. [Illustration: IN A CHICAGO THEATRICAL COSTUME FACTORY] As soon as the boss saw me, the generous Mr. F. who advanced me the fifty cents smiled at the skeptical Mr. F. who had never expected to see me again. One self said to the other: "I told you so!" and all the kindly lines in the man's face showed that he had looked for the best even in his inferiors and that he had found mankind worth trusting. He was the most generous employer I met with anywhere; I also took him to be the least businesslike. But, as though quickly to establish the law of averages, his head forewoman counterbalanced all his mercies by her ferocious crossness. She terrorized everybody, even Mr. F. It was to her, I concluded, that we owed our $6 a week. No girl would stay for less; it was an atelier chiefly of foreign employees; the proud American spirit would not stand the lash of Frances' tongue. She had been ten years in the place whose mad confusion was order to her. Mr. F. did not dare to send her away; he preferred keeping a perpetual advertisement in the papers and changing hands every few days. The workroom on our floor was fifty or sixty feet long, with windows on the street at one end and on a court at the other. The middle of the room was lighted by gas. The air was foul and the dirt lay in heaps at every corner and was piled up under the centre tables. It was less like a workshop than an old attic. There was the long-accumulated disorder of hasty preparation for the vanities of life. It had not at all the aspect of a factory which makes a steady provision of practical things. There were odds and ends of fancy costumes hanging about--swords, crowns, belts and badges. Under the sewing machines' swift needles flew the scarlet coats of a regiment; gold and silver braid lay unfurled on the table; the hand-workers bent over an armful of khaki; a row of young girls were fitting military caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite, a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is very handsome with dark eyes and fine features, and he has the "average figure," so that he serves as manikin for the atelier; and I find him alternately a workman in overalls and a Turkish magnate with turban and flowing robes. It is into this atmosphere of toil and unreality that I am initiated as a hand sewer. Something of the dramatic and theatrical possesses the very managers themselves. Below, a regiment waits impatient for new brass buttons; we sew against time and break all our promises. Messengers arrive every few minutes with fresh reports of rising ire on the part of disappointed customers. Down the stairs pell-mell comes an elderly partner of the firm with a gold-and-purple crown on his head and after him follows the kindly Mr. F. in an usher's jacket. "If you don't start now," he calls, "that order'll be left on our hands." Amid such confusion the regular rhythm of the needle as it carries its train of thread across the yards of coloured cloth is peaceful, consoling. I have on one side of me a tailor who speaks only Polish, on the other side a seamstress who speaks only German. Across the frontier I thus become they communicate with signs, and I get my share of work planned out by each. Every woman in the place is cross except the girl next to me. She has only just come in and the poison of the forewoman has not yet stung her into ill nature. She is, like all the foreigners, neatly, soberly dressed in a sensible frock of good durable material. The few Americans in the shop have on elaborate shirt-waists in light-coloured silks with fancy ribbon collars. We are well paid, there is no doubt of it. We begin work at 8 A.M. and have a generous half-hour at noon. Most of the girls are Germans and Poles, and they have all received training as tailoresses in their native countries. To the sharp onslaught of Frances' tongue they make no response except in dogged silent obedience, whereas the dressy Americans with their proper spirit of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command. Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears. Frances is ubiquitous. She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse, she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F., and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little Polish girl, in tears. This latter comes to me, her face wrought with emotion. She was receiving nine dollars a week; it is her first place in America. This sudden dismissal, its injustice, requires an explanation. She cannot speak a word of English and asks me to put my poor German at her service as interpreter. Mr. F. is clearly a man who advocates everything for peace, and as there is for him no peace when Frances is not satisfied, we gain little by our appeal to him except a promise that he will attend later to the troubles of the Polish girl. But later, as earlier, Frances triumphs, and I soon bid good-by to my seatmate and watch her tear-stained face disappear down the dingy hallway. She was a skilled tailoress, but she could not cut out men's garments, so Frances dismissed her. I wonder when my turn will come, for I am a green hand and yet determined to keep the American spirit. For the sake of justice I will not be downed by Frances. It is hard to make friends with the girls; we dare not converse lest a fresh insult be hurled at us. For every mistake I receive a loud, severe correction. When night comes I am exhausted. The work is easy, yet the moral atmosphere is more wearing than the noise of many machines. My job is often changed during the week. I do everything as a greenhorn, but I work hard and pay attention, so that there is no excuse to dismiss me. "I am only staying here between jobs," the girl next me volunteers at lunch. "My regular place burnt out. You couldn't get _me_ to work under _her_. I wouldn't stand it even if they do pay well." She is an American. "You're lucky to be so independent," says a German woman whose dull silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature. "I'm glad enough to get the money. I was up this morning at five, working. There's myself and my mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make. My husband is sick. He's in Arizona." "What were you doing at five?" I asked. "I have a trade," she answers. "I work on hair goods. It don't bring me much, but I get in a few hours night and morning and it helps some. There's so much to pay." She was young, but youth is no lover of discomfort. Hardships had chased every vestige of _jeunesse_ from her high, wrinkled brow and tired brown eyes. Like a mirror held against despair her face reflected no ray of hope. She was not rebellious, but all she knew of life was written there in lines whose sadness a smile now and again intensified. Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and tobacco smoke. The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe. Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across the city, held tightly under my arm, become, before eating, a block of food, a composite meal in which I can distinguish original bits of ham sandwich and apple pie. The work, however, does not seem hard to me. I sew on buttons, rip trousers, baste coat sleeves--I do all sorts of odd jobs from eight until six, without feeling, in spite of the bad air, any great physical fatigue which ten minutes' brisk walk does not shake off. But never have the hours dragged so; the moral weariness in the midst of continual scolding and abuse are unbearable. Each night I come to a firm decision to leave the following day, but weakly I return, sure of my dollar and dreading to face again the giant city in search of work. About four one afternoon, well on in the week, Frances brings me a pair of military trousers; the stripes of cloth at the side seam are to be ripped off. I go to work cheerfully cutting the threads and slipping one piece of cloth from the other. Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below, which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift first the upper, then the under thread. I begin by cutting a long hole in the trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it. She has frightened me into dishonesty. Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other stitch. While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers. I killed it. It was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table. Then I put down the trousers and drew away my chair. It was useless saying anything to the girl next me. She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word; but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances' husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do. "There's bedbugs in them clothes," I said. "I won't work on 'em. No, sir, not if she sends me away this very minute." In a great hurry Frances passed me twice. She called out angrily both times without waiting for an answer: "Why don't you finish them pants?" Frances was a German. She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes, which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair. She had no lips whatever. Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade. Her eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and nasal. On her third round she faced me with the same question: "Why don't you finish them pants?" "Because," I answered this time, "there's bedbugs in 'em and I ain't goin' to touch 'em!" "Oh! my!" she taunted me, in a sneering voice, "that's dreadful, ain't it? Bedbugs! Why, you need only just look on the floor to see 'em running around anywhere!" I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed to me. "Mike!" she called to the presser in the corner, "will you have this _young lady's_ card made out." She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I joined a group of girls who were sewing badges. We had made up all description of political badges--badges for the court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with black-and-silver "in memoriam" badges, to be worn as a last tribute to some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to the grave under the emblem that had united them. We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living. At six the power was turned off, the machine hands went home, there was still an unfinished heap of black badges. I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for dressing-room. Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice: "You darsn't leave till you've finished them badges." How could I feel the slavery they felt? My nerves were sensitive; I was unaccustomed to their familiar hardships. But on the other hand, my prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money lined. They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as physical fatigue. There was nothing between them and starvation except the success of their daily effort. What opposition could the German woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited to be fed beside her own? With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing darkness, I started down the stairs. A hand was laid on my arm, and I looked up and saw Mike's broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward me. "I suppose you understand," he said, "that there'll be no more work for you." "Yes," I answered, "I understand," and we exchanged a glance that meant we both agreed it was Frances' fault. In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had advanced me. He seemed surprised at this. "I'm sorry," he said, in his gentle voice, "that we couldn't arrange things." "I'm sorry, too," I said. But I dared not add a word against Frances. She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me. I remembered a remark the German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl: "People ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living." At the end of this somewhat agitating day I returned to my tenement lodgings as to a haven of rest. There was one other lodger besides myself: she was studying music on borrowed money at four dollars a lesson. Obviously she was a victim to luxury in the same degree as the young women with whom I had lunched at the bakery. Nothing that a rich society girl might have had been left out of her wardrobe, and borrowed money seemed as good as any for making a splurge. Miss Arnold was something of a snob, intellectual and otherwise. It was evident from my wretched clothes and poor grammar that I was not accustomed to ladies of her type, but, far from sparing me, she humiliated me with all sorts of questions. "I'm tired of taffeta jackets, aren't you?" she would ask, apropos of my flimsy ulster. "I had taffeta last year, with velvet and satin this winter; but I don't know what I'll get yet this summer." After supper, on my return, I found her sitting in the parlour with Mrs. Brown. They never lighted the gas, as there was an electric lamp which sent its rays aslant the street and repeated the pattern of the window curtains all over Mrs. Brown's face and hands. Drawn up on one end of the horsehair sofa, Miss Arnold, in a purple velvet blouse, chatted to Mrs. Brown and me. "I'm from Jacksonville," she volunteered, patting her masses of curly hair. "Do you know anybody from Jacksonville? It's an elegant town, so much wealth, so many retired farmers, and it's such an educational centre. Do you like reading?" she asked me. "I don't get time," is my response. "Oh, my!" she rattles on. "I'm crazy about reading. I do love blank verse--it makes the language so choice, like in Shakespeare." Mrs. Brown and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world on the tenement horsehair sofa. "In case you don't like your work," she Lady Bountifuls me, "I can get you a stylish place as maid with some society people just out of Chicago--friends of mine, an elegant family." "I don't care to live out," I respond, thanking her. "I like my Sundays and my evenings off." Mrs. Brown pricks up her ears at this, and I notice that thereafter she keeps close inquiry as to how my Sundays and evenings are spent. But the bell rings. Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone, begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource among the poor. If she had had any infirmity--a wooden leg or a glass eye--she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had been spared intact she chose second best. "I've had lots of shocks," she said, rocking back and forth in a squeaky rocking-chair. The light from over the way flickered and gleamed. Mrs. Brown's broad, yellow face and gray hair were now brilliant, now somber, as she rocked in and out of the silver rays. Her voice was a metallic whine, and when she laughed against her regular, even, false teeth there was a sound like the mechanical yelp of a toy cat. Married at sixteen, her whole life had been Brown on earth below and God in His heaven above. Childless, she and Brown had spent over fifty years together. It was natural in the matter of shocks the first she should tell me about was Brown's death. The story began with "a breakfast one Sunday morning at nine o'clock.... Brown always made the fire, raked down the ashes, set the coffee to boil, and when the toast and eggs were ready he called me. And that wasn't one morning, mind you--it was every morning for fifty years. But this particular morning I noticed him speaking strange; his tongue was kind o' thick. He didn't hardly eat nothing, and as soon as I'd done he got up and carried the ashes downstairs to dump 'em. When he come up he seemed dizzy. I says to him, 'Don't you feel good?' but he didn't seem able to answer. He made like he was going to undress. He put his hand in his pocket for his watch, and he put it in again for his pocketbook; but the second time it stayed in--he couldn't move it no more; it was dead and cold when I touched it. He leaned up against the wall, and I tried to get him over on to the sofa. When I looked into his eyes I see that he was gone. He couldn't stand, but I held on to him with all my force; I didn't let his head strike as he went down. _When he fell we fell together_." Her voice was choked; even now after three years as she told the story she could not believe it herself. Presently when she is calm again she continues the recital of her shocks--three times struck by lightning and once run over. Her simple descriptions are straightforward and dramatic. As she talks the wind blows against the windows, the shutters rattle and an ugly white china knob, against which the curtains are draped, falls to the floor. Tenderly, amazed, she picks it up and looks at it. "Brown put that up," she says; "there hasn't no hand touched it since his'n." Proprietor of this house in which she lives, Mrs. Brown is fairly well off. She rents one floor to an Italian family, one to some labourers, and one to an Irishman and his wife who get drunk from time to time and rouse us in the night with tumult and scuffling. She has a way of disappearing for a week or more and returning without giving any account of herself. Relations are strained, and Mrs. Brown in speaking of her says: "I don't care what trouble I was in, I wouldn't call in that Irish woman. I don't have anything to do with her. I'd rather get the Dago next door." And hereafter follows a mild tirade against the Italians--the same sentiments I have heard expressed before in the labouring centres. [Illustration: CHICAGO TYPES] "They're kind folks and good neighbours," Mrs. Brown explains, "but they're different from us. They eat what the rest of us throw away, and there's no work they won't do. They're putting money aside fast; most of 'em owns their own houses; but since they've moved into this neighbourhood the price of property's gone down. I don't have nothing to do with 'em. We don't any of us. They're not like us; they're different." Without letting a day elapse I started early the following morning in search of a new job. The paper was full of advertisements, but there was some stipulation in each which narrowed my possibilities of getting a place, as I was an unskilled hand. There was, however, one simple "Girls wanted!" which I answered, prepared for anything but an electric sewing machine. The address took me to a more fashionable side of the city, near the lake; a wide expanse of pale, shimmering water, it lay a refreshing horizon for eyes long used to poverty's quarters. Like a sea, it rolled white-capped waves toward the shore from its far-away emerald surface where sail-freighted barks traveled at the wind's will. Free from man's disfiguring touch, pure, immaculate, it appeared bridelike through a veil of morning mist. And at its very brink are the turmoil and confusion of America's giant industries. In less than an hour I am receiving wages from a large picture frame company in East Lake Street. Once more I have made the observation that men are more agreeable bosses than women. The woman, when she is not exceptionally disagreeable, like Frances, is always annoying. She bothers and nags; things must be done her way; she enjoys the legitimate minding of other people's business. Aiming at results only, the masculine mind is more tranquil. Provided you get your work done, the man boss doesn't care what methods you take in doing it. For the woman boss, whether you get your work done or not, you must do it her way. The overseer at J.'s picture frame manufactory is courteous, friendly, considerate. I have a feeling that he wishes me to coöperate with him, not to be terrorized and driven to death by him. My spirits rise at once, my ambition is stimulated, and I desire his approval. The work is all done by the piece, he explains to me, telling me the different prices. The girls work generally in teams of three, dividing profits. Nothing could be more modern, more middle-class, more popular, more philistine than the production of J.'s workrooms. They are the cheap imitations fed to a public hungry for luxury or the semblance of it. Nothing is genuine in the entire shop. Water colours are imitated in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are imitated in applications of pressed brass. Great works of art are belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest pocket. Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby's crib in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the piano in the front parlour. The range of subjects covers a familiar list of comedies or tragedies--the partings before war, the interior behind prison bars, the game of marbles, the friendly cat and dog, the chocolate girl, the skipper and his daughter, etc., etc. My job is easy, but slow. With a hammer and tacks I fasten four tin mouldings to the four corners of a gilt picture frame. Twenty-five cents for a hundred is the pay given me, and it takes me half a day to do this many; but my comrades don't allow me to get discouraged. "You're doing well," a red-haired _vis-a-vis_ calls to me across the table. And the foreman, who comes often to see how I am getting along, tells me that the next day we are to begin team-work, which pays much better. The hours are ten a day: from seven until five thirty, with twenty-five minutes at noon instead of half an hour. The extra five minutes a day mount up to thirty minutes a week and let us off at five on Saturdays. The conversation around me leads me to suppose that my companions are not downtrodden in any way, nor that they intend letting work interfere with happiness. They have in their favour the most blessed of all gifts--youth. The tragic faces one meets with are of the women breadwinners whose burdens are overwhelming and of the children in whom physical fatigue arrests development and all possibility of pleasure. My present team-mates and those along the rest of the room are Americans between fourteen and twenty-four years of age, full of unconscious hope for the future, which is natural in healthy, well-fed youth, taking their work cheerily as a self-imposed task in exchange for which they can have more clothes and more diversions during their leisure hours. The profitable job given us on the following day is monotonous and dirty, but we net $1.05 each. There is a mechanical roller which passes before us, carrying at irregular intervals a large sheet of coloured paper covered with glue. My _vis-à-vis_ and I lay the palms of our right hands on to the glue surface and lift the sheet of paper to its place on the table before us, over a stiff square of bristol board. The boss of the team fixes the two sheets together with a brush which she manipulates skilfully. We are making in this way the stiff backs which hold the pictures into their frames. When we have fallen into the proper swing we finish one hundred sheets every forty-five minutes. We could work more rapidly, but the sheets are furnished to us at this rate, and it is so comfortable that conversation is not interrupted. The subjects are the same as elsewhere--dress, young men, entertainments. The girls have "beaux" and "steady beaux." The expression, "Who is she going with?" means who is her steady beau. "I've got Jim Smith _now_, but I don't know whether I'll keep him," means that Jim Smith is on trial as a beau and may become a "steady." They go to Sunday night subscription dances and arrive Monday morning looking years older than on Saturday, after having danced until early morning. "There's nothing so smart for a ball," the mundane of my team tells us, "as a black skirt and white silk waist." About ten in the morning most of us eat a pickle or a bit of cocoanut cake or some titbit from the lunch parcel which is opened seriously at twelve. The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week. The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best. Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom I speak often call me "dear" in answering. Under the trellis of the elevated road the "cables" clang their way. Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge over the rough pavements. The sidewalks are crowded with people who are dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke. The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles, followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses' hoofs have died away. Excitement for a moment supersedes business. The fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed against policemen's arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the perpetual veil of soot. I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger. Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days. The numbers correspond. But there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies. The employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and promises to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand. Another boss printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the following Monday at three dollars a week. A kindly forelady in a large printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants only trained workers. "I'm real sorry," she says. "You're from the East, aren't you? I notice you speak with an accent." By this time it is after three in the afternoon; my chances are diminishing as the day goes on and others apply before me. There is one more possibility at a box and label company which has advertised for a girl to feed a Gordon press. I have never heard of a Gordon press, but I make up my mind not to leave the label company without the promise of a job for the very next day. The stairway is dingy and irregular. My spirits are not buoyant as I open a swinging door and enter a room with a cage in the middle, where a lady cashier, dressed in a red silk waist, sits on a high stool overlooking the office. Three portly men, fat, well nourished, evidently of one family, are installed behind yellow ash desks, each with a lady typewriter at his right hand. I go timidly up to the fattest of the three. He is in shirt sleeves, evidently feeling the heat painfully. He pretends to be very busy and hardly looks up when I say: "I seen your ad. in the paper this morning." "You're rather late," is his answer. "I've got two girls engaged already." "Too late!" I say with an intonation which interrupts his work for a minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from tragedy to a good-humoured smile, I ask: "Say, are you sure those girls'll come? You can't always count on us, you know." He laughs at this. "Have you ever run a Gordon press?" "No, sir; but I'm awful handy." "Where have you been working?" "At J.'s in Lake Street." "What did you make?" "A dollar a day." "Well, you come in to-morrow about eleven and I'll tell you then whether I can give you anything to do." "Can't you be sure now?" Truly disappointed, my voice expresses the eagerness I feel. "Well," the fat man says indulgently, "you come in to-morrow morning at eight and I'll give you a job." The following day I begin my last and by far my most trying apprenticeship. The noise of a single press is deafening. In the room where I work there are ten presses on my row, eight back of us and four printing machines back of them. On one side of the room only are there windows. The air is heavy with the sweet, stifling smell of printer's ink and cheap paper. A fine rain of bronze dust sifts itself into the hair and clothes of the girls at our end of the room, where they are bronzing coloured advertisements. The work is all done standing; the hours are from seven until six, with half an hour at noon, and holiday at one thirty on Saturdays. It is to _feed_ a machine that I am paid three dollars a week. The expression is admirably chosen. The machine's iron jaws yawn for food; they devour all I give, and when by chance I am slow they snap hungrily at my hand and would crush my fingers did I not snatch them away, feeling the first cold clutch. It is nervous work. Each leaf to be printed must be handled twice; 5,000 circulars or bill-heads mean 10,000 gestures for the printer, and this is an afternoon's work. Into the square marked out for it by steel guards the paper must be slipped with the right hand, while the machine is open; with the left hand the printed paper must be pulled out and a second fitted in its place before the machine closes again. What a master to serve is this noisy iron mechanism animated by steam! It gives not a moment's respite to the worker, whose thoughts must never wander from her task. The girls are pale. Their complexions without exception are bad. We are bossed by men. My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious, he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me. There is some complaining _sotto voce_ of the other boss, who, it appears, is a hard taskmaster. Both are very young, both chew tobacco and expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor. While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of ill-repute. He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings. He is communicative. "Do you like your job?" he asks. "Yes, first rate." "They don't pay enough. I give notice last week and got a raise. I guess I'll stay on here until about August." "Then where are you going?" "Going home," he answers. "I've been away from home for seven years. I run away when I was thirteen and I've been knocking around ever since, takin' care of myself, makin' a livin' one way or another. My folks lives in California. I've been from coast to coast--and I tell you I'll be mighty glad to get back." "Ever been sick?" "Yes, twice. It's no fun. No matter how much licking a boy gets he ought never to leave home. The first year or so you don't mind it so much, but when you've been among strangers two years, three years, all alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own folks." "Are you saving up?" I ask. He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice. "I'll be able to leave here in August," he explains, when he has finished spitting, "for Omaha. In three months I can save up enough to get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to San Francisco. I tell you," he adds, returning to his work, "a person ought never to leave home." He had nine months of work and privation before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years. With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full speed homeward toward those we love! Nine months, two hundred and seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait. He was manly. He had the spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy's life. He had not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound. His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle where he worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a nonentity--a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without individual brilliancy, added to the general luster. The first day I had a touch of pride in getting easily ahead of the new girl who started in when I did. From my machine I could see only the back of her head; it was shaking disapproval at every stroke she made and had to make over again. She had a mass of untidy hair and a slouchy skirt that slipped out from her belt in the back. If not actually stupid, she was slow, and the foreman and the girl who took turns teaching her exchanged glances, meaning that they were exhausting their patience and would readily give up the job. I was pleased at being included in these glances, and had a miserable moment of vanity at lunch time when the old girls, the habitués, came after me to eat with them. The girl with the untidy hair and the long skirt sat quite by her self. Without unfolding her newspaper bundle, she took bites of things from it, as though she were a little ashamed of her lunch. My moment of vanity had passed. I went over to her, not knowing whether her appearance meant a slipshod nature or extreme poverty. As we were both new girls, there was no indiscretion in my direct question: "Like your job?" I could not understand what she answered, so I continued: "Ever worked before?" She opened her hands and held them out to me. In the palm of one there was a long scar that ran from wrist to forefinger. Two nails had been worn off below the quick and were cracked through the middle. The whole was gloved in an iron callous, streaked with black. "Does that look like work?" was her response. It was almost impossible to hear what she said. Without a palate, she forced the words from her mouth in a strange monotone. She was one of nature's monstrous failures. Her coarse, opaque skin covered a low forehead and broad, boneless nose; her teeth were crumbling with disease, and into her full lower lip some sharp tool had driven a double scar. She kept her hand over her mouth when she talked, and except for this movement of self-consciousness her whole attitude was one of resignation and humility. Her eyes in their dismal surroundings lay like clear pools in a swamp's midst reflecting blue sky. "What was you doing to get your hands like that?" I asked. "Tipping shoe-laces. I had to quit, 'cause they cut the pay down. I could do twenty-two gross in a day, working until eight o'clock, and I didn't care how hard I worked so long as I got good pay--$9 a week. But the employer'd been a workman himself, and they're the worst kind. He cut me down to $4 a week, so I quit." "Do you live home?" "Yes. I give all I make to my mother, and she gives me my clothes and board. Almost anywhere I can make $7 a week, and I feel when I earn that much like I was doing right. But it's hard to work and make nothing. I'm slow to learn," she smiled at me, covering her mouth with her hand, "but I'll get on to it by and by and go as fast as any one; only I'm not very strong." "What's the matter with you?" "Heart disease for one thing, and then I'm so nervous. It's kind of hard to have to work when you're not able. To-day I can hardly stand, my head's aching so. They make the poor work for just as little as they can, don't they? It's not the work I mind, but if I can't give in my seven a week at home I get to worrying." Now and then as she talked in her inarticulate pitiful voice the tears added luster to her eyes as her emotions welled up within her. The machines began to roar and vibrate again. The noon recess was over. She went back to her job. Her broad, heavy hands began once more to serve a company on whose moderate remuneration she depended for her daily bread. Her silhouette against the window where she stood was no longer an object for my vain eyes to look upon with a sense of superiority. I could hear the melancholy intonation of her voice, pronouncing words of courage over her disfigured underlip. She was one of nature's failures--one of God's triumphs. Saturday night my fellow lodger, Miss Arnold, and I made an expedition to the spring opening of a large dry-goods shop in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Brown's. I felt rather humble in my toil-worn clothes to accompany the young woman, who had an appearance of prosperity which borrowed money alone can give. But she encouraged me, and we started together for the principal street of the quarter whose history was told in its show-case windows. Pawnshops and undertakers, bakeries and soda-water fountains were ranged side by side on this highway, as the necessity for them is ranged with incongruous proximity in the existence of those who live pell-mell in moral and material disorder after the manner of the poor. There was even a wedding coach in the back of the corner undertaker's establishment, and in the front window a coffin, small and white, as though death itself were more attractive in the young, as though the little people of the quarter were nearer Heaven and more suggestive of angels than their life-worn elders. The spotless tiny coffin with its fringe and satin tufting had its share of the ideal, mysterious, unused and costly; in the same store with the wedding coach, it suggested festivity: a reunion to celebrate with tears a small pilgrim's right to sleep at last undisturbed. The silver rays of the street lamps mingled with the yellow light of the shop windows, and on the sidewalk there was a cosmopolitan public. Groups of Italian women crooned to each other in their soft voices over the bargains for babies displayed at the spring opening; factory girls compared notes, chattered, calculated, tried to resist, and ended by an extravagant choice; the German women looked and priced and bought nothing; the Hungarians had evidently spent their money on arriving. From the store window wax figures of the ideal woman, clad in latest Parisian garb, with golden hair and blue eyes, gazed down benignly into the faces uplifted with envy and admiration. Did she not plainly say to them "For $17 you can look as I do"? The store was apparently flourishing, and except for such few useful articles as stockings and shirts it was stocked with trash. Patronized entirely by labouring men and women, it was an indication to their needs. Here, for example, was a stand hung with silk dress skirts, trimmed with lace and velvet. They were made after models of expensive dress-makers and were attempts at the sort of thing a Mme. de Rothschild might wear at the Grand Prix de Paris. Varying from $11 to $20, there was not one of the skirts made of material sufficiently solid to wear for more than a few Sunday outings. On another counter there were hats with extravagant garlands of flowers, exaggerated bows and plumes, wraps with ruffles of lace and long pendant bows; silk boleros; a choice of things never meant to be imitated in cheap quality. [Illustration: THE REAR OF A CHICAGO TENEMENT] I watched the customers trying on. Possessed of grace and charm in their native costumes, hatless, with gay-coloured shawls on their shoulders, the Italian women, as soon as they donned the tawdry garb of the luxury-loving labourer, were common like the rest. In becoming prosperous Americans, animated by the desire for material possession which is the strength and the weakness of our countrymen, they lost the character that pleases us, the beauty we must go abroad to find. Miss Arnold priced everything, compared quality and make with Jacksonville productions, and decided to buy nothing, but in refusing to buy she had an air of opulence and taste hard to please which surpassed the effect any purchase could have made. Sunday morning Mrs. Brown asked me to join her and Miss Arnold for breakfast They were both in slippers and dressing-gowns. We boiled the coffee and set the table with doughnuts and sweet cakes, which Miss Arnold kept in a paper bag in her room. "I hardly ever eat, except between meals," she explained. "A nibble of cake or candy is as much as I can manage, my digestion is so poor." "Ever since Brown died," the widow responded, "I've had my meals just the same as though he were here. All I want," she went on, as we seated ourselves and exchanged courtesies in passing the bread and butter, "all I want is somebody to be kind to me. I've got a young niece that I've tried to have with me. I wrote to her and says: 'Your auntie's heart's just crying out for you!' And I told her I'd leave her all I've got. But she said she didn't feel like she could come." As soon as breakfast is over the mundane member of the household starts off on a day's round of visits. When the screen door has shut upon her slender silhouette, Mrs. Brown settles down for a chat. She takes out the brush and comb, unbraids her silver locks and arranges them while she talks. "Miss Arnold's always on the go; she's awful nervous. These society people aren't happy. Life's not all pleasure for them. You can be sure they have their ups and downs like the rest of us." "I guess that's likely," is my response. "They don't tell the truth always, in the first place. They say there's got to be deceit in society, and that these stylish people pretend all sorts of things. Well, then, all I say is," and she pricks the comb into the brush with emphasis, "all I say is, you better keep out of society." She had twisted her gray braids into a coil at the back of her head, and dish-washing is now the order of the day. As we splash and wipe, Mrs. Brown looks at me rather closely. She is getting ready to speak. I can feel this by a preliminary rattle of her teeth. "You're a new girl here," she begins; "you ain't been long in Chicago. I just thought I'd tell you about a girl who was workin' here in the General Electric factory. She was sixteen--a real nice-lookin' girl from the South. She left her mother and come up here alone. It wasn't long before she got to foolin' round with one of the young men over to the factory. They were both young; they didn't mean no harm; but one day she come an' told me, cryin' like anythin', that she was in trouble, and her young man had slipped off up to Michigan." Here Mrs. Brown stopped to see if I was interested, and as I responded with a heartfelt "Oh, my!" she went on: "Well, you ought to have seen that girl's sufferin', her loneliness for her mother. I'd come in her room sometimes at midnight--the very room you have now--and find her on the floor, weepin' her heart out. I want to tell you never to get discouraged. Just you listen to what happened. The gentleman from the factory got a sheriff and they started up north after the young man, determined to get him by force if they couldn't by kindness. Well, they found him and they brought him back; he was willin' to come, and they got everythin' fixed up for the weddin' without tellin' her a thing about it, and one day she was sittin' right there," she pointed to the rocking chair in the front parlour window, "when he come in. He was carryin' a big bunch of cream roses, tied with long white ribbons. He offered 'em to her, but she wouldn't look at them nor at him. After awhile they went together into her room and talked for half an hour, and when they come back she had consented to marry him. He was real kind. He kept askin' me if she had cried much and thankin' me for takin' care of her. They were married, and when the weddin' was over she didn't want to stay with him. She said she wanted her mother, but we talked to her and told her what was right, and things was fixed up between them." She had taken down from its hook in the corner sunlight the canary bird and his cage. She put them on the table and prepared to give the bird his bath and fresh seed. "You see," she said, drawing up a chair, "that's what good employers will do for you. If you're working in a good place they'll do right by you, and it don't pay to get down-hearted." I thanked her and showed the interest I truly felt in the story. Evidently I must account for my Sundays! It was with the bird now that Mrs. Brown continued her conversation. He was a Rip Van Winkle in plumage. His claws trailed over the sand of the cage. Except when Mrs. Brown had a lodger or two with her, the bird was the only living thing in her part of the tenement. "I've had him twenty-five years," she said to me. "Brown give him to me. I guess I'd miss him if he died." And presently she repeated again: "I don't believe I even know how much I'd miss him." On the last evening of my tenement residence I was sitting in a restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew must be open, as I felt a cold wind. The lake brought capricious changes of the temperature: the thermometer had fallen the night before from seventy to thirty. I turned to see who the newcomer might be. The sight of him set my heart beating faster. The restaurant keeper was questioning the man to find out who he was.... He was evidently nobody--a fragment of anonymous humanity lashed into _debris_ upon the edge of a city's vortex; a remnant of flesh and bones for human appetites to feed on; a battleground of disease and vice; a beggar animated by instinct to get from others what he could no longer earn for himself; the type _par excellence_ who has worn out charity organizations; the poor wreck of a soul that would create pity if there were none of it left in the world. He was asking for food. The proprietor gave him the address of a free lodging-house and turned him away. He pulled his cap over his head; the door opened and closed, letting in a fresh gale of icy air. The man was gone. I turned back to my supper. Scientific philanthropists would have means of proving that such men are alone to blame for their condition; that this one was in all probability a drunkard, and that it would be useless, worse than useless, to help him. But he was cold and hungry and penniless, and I knew it. I went as swiftly as I could to overtake him. He had not traveled far, lurching along at a snail's pace, and he was startled when I came up to him. One of his legs was longer than the other; it had been crushed in an accident. They were not pairs, his legs, and neither were his eyes pairs; one was big and blind, with a fixed pupil, and the other showed all his feelings. Across his nose there was a scar, a heavy scar, pale like the rest of his face. He was small and had sandy hair. The directors of charity bureaus could have detected perhaps a faint resemblance to the odour of liquor as he breathed a halo of frosty air over his scraggly red beard. Through the weather-beaten coat pinned over it his bare chest was visible. "It's a cold night!" I began. "Are you out of a job?" With his wistful eye he gave me a kind glance. "I've been sick. There's a sharp pain right in through here." He showed me a spot under his arm. "They thought at the hospital that I 'ad consumption. But," his face brightened, "I haven't got it." He showed in his smile the life-warrant that kept him from suicide. _He wanted to live._ "Where did you sleep last night?" I asked. "It was a cold night." "To tell you the truth," he responded in his strong Scotch accent, "I slept in a wagon." I proposed that we do some shopping together; he looked at me gratefully and limped along to a cheap clothing store, kept by an Italian. The warmth within was agreeable; there was a display of garments hung across the ceiling under the gas-light. My companion waited, leaning against the glass counter, while I priced the flannel shirts. To be sure, my own costume promised little bounty. The price of the shirt was seventy-five cents, and as soon as he heard this the poor man said: "Oh, you mustn't spend as much as that." Looking first at the pauper, then at me, the Italian leaned over and whispered to me, "I think I understand. You can have the shirt for sixty, and I'll put in a pair of socks, too." Thus we had become a fraternity; all were poor, the stronger woe helping the weaker.... When his toilet was complete the poor man looked half a head taller. "Shall I wrap up your old cap for you?" the salesman asked, and the other laughed a broken, long-disused laugh. "I guess I won't need it any more," he said, turning to me. His face had changed like the children's valentines that grow at a touch from a blank card to a glimpse of paradise. Once in the street again we shook hands. I was going back to my supper. He was going, the charity directors would say, to pawn his shirt and coat. The man had evidently not more than a few months to live; I was leaving Chicago the following day. We would undoubtedly never meet again. As his bony hand lay in mine, his eyes looked straight at me. "Thank you," he said, and his last words were these: "I'll stand by you." It was a pledge of fraternity at parting. There was no material substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity; of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases; of those whose charity is tolerant and maternal, patient with the helpless, prepared for disappointments; not looking for results, ever ready to begin again, so long as the paradox of suffering and inability are linked together in humanity. * * * * * THE MEANING OF IT ALL * * * * * CHAPTER V THE MEANING OF IT ALL Before concluding the recital of my experiences as a working girl, I want to sum up the general conclusions at which I arrived and to trace in a few words the history of my impressions. What, first of all, was my purpose in going to live and work among the American factory hands? It was not to gratify simple curiosity; it was not to get material for a novel; it was not to pave the way for new philanthropic associations; it was not to obtain crude data, such as fill the reports of labour commissioners. My purpose was to _help_ the working girl--to help her mentally, morally, physically. I considered this purpose visionary and unpractical, I considered it pretentious even, and I cannot say that I had any hope of accomplishing it. What did I mean by _help_? Did I mean a superficial remedy, a palliative? A variety of such remedies occurred to me as I worked, and I have offered them gladly for the possible aid of charitable people who have time and money to carry temporary relief to the poor. It was not relief of this kind that I meant by _help_. I meant an _amelioration in natural conditions_. I was not hopeful of discovering any plan to bring about this amelioration, because I believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked, that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and that they can therefore be corrected. It is with hope for the material betterment of the breadwinning woman, for the moral advancement of the semi-breadwinner and the esthetic improvement of the country, that I submit what seems a rational plan. For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death. My own physical sufferings were acute. My heart was torn with pity. I revolted against a society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and bodies. Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on human lives. To every new impression I responded with indiscriminate compassion. It is impossible for the imagination to sustain for more than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like myself is obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells, the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling. The mind cannot grasp what it means to be frantic with pain in the shoulders and back before nine in the morning, and to watch the clock creep around to six before one has a right to drop into the chair that has stood near one all day long. Yet it is not until the system has become at least in a great measure used to such physical effort that one can judge without bias. When I had grown so accustomed to the work that I was equal to a long walk after ten hours in the factory; when I had become so saturated with the tenement smell that I no longer noticed it; when any bed seemed good enough for the healthy sleep of a working girl, and any food good enough to satisfy a hungry stomach, then and then only I began to see that in the great unknown class there were a multitude of classes which, aside from the ugliness of their esthetic surroundings and the intellectual inactivity which the nature of their occupation imposes, are not all to be pitied: they are a collection of human individuals with like capacities to our own. The surroundings into which they are born furnish little chance for them to develop their minds and their tastes, but their souls suffer nothing from working in squalour and sordidness. Certain acts of impulsive generosity, of disinterested kindness, of tender sacrifice, of loyalty and fortitude shone out in the poverty-stricken wretches I met on my way, as the sun shines glorious in iridescence on the rubbish heap that goes to fertilize some rich man's fields. My observations were confined chiefly to the women. Two things, however, regarding the men I noticed as fixed rules. They were all breadwinners; they worked because they needed the money to live; they supported entirely the woman, wife or mother, of the household who did not work. In many cases they contributed to the support of even the wage-earning females of the family: the woman who does not work when she does not need to work is provided for. The women were divided into two general classes: Those who worked because they needed to earn their living, and those who came to the factories to be more independent than at home, to exercise their coquetry and amuse themselves, to make pin money for luxuries. The men formed a united class. They had a purpose in common. The women were in a class with boys and with children. They had nothing in common but their physical inferiority to man. The children were working from necessity, the boys were working from necessity; the only industrial unit complicating the problem were the girls who worked without being obliged to--the girls who had "all the money they needed, but not all the money they wanted." To them the question of wages was not vital. They could afford to accept what the breadwinner found insufficient. They were better fed, better equipped than the self-supporting hand; they were independent about staying away from the factory when they were tired or ill, and they alone determined the reputation for irregularity in which the breadwinners were included. Here, then, it seemed to me, was the first chance to offer help. The self-supporting woman should be in competition only with other self-supporting industrial units. The problem for her class will settle itself, according to just and natural laws, when the purpose of this class is equally vital to all concerned. Relief, it seemed to me, could be brought to the breadwinner by separating from her the girl who works for luxuries. How could this be done? There is, I believe, a way in which it can be accomplished naturally. The non-self-supporting girls must be attracted into some field of work which requires instruction and an especial training, which pays them as well while calling into play higher faculties than the brutalizing machine labour. This field of work is industrial art: lace-making, hand-weaving, the fabrication of tissues and embroideries, gold-smithery, bookbinding, rug-weaving, woodcarving and inlaying, all the branches of industrial art which could be executed by woman in her home, all the manual labour which does not require physical strength, which would not place the woman, therefore, as an inferior in competition with man, but would call forth her taste and skill, her training and individuality, at the same time being consistent with her destiny as a woman. The American factory girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world, to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give their time and their money to lifting the non-breadwinners from the slavish, brutalizing machines at which they work, ignorant of anything better, and placing them by education, by cultivation, in positions of comparative freedom--freedom of thought, taste and personality. Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed. Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted. There is not a factory which would not furnish some material. The recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions. Who will act as mediator? I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and the girl who works for luxuries. * * * * * MARIE VAN VORST INTRODUCTORY VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS * * * * * CHAPTER VI INTRODUCTORY There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism have always had much to say in praise of the "beauty of toil." Carlyle has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal holidays as the sole respite--to find at the month's end that the only possible economics are pleasures--one is at least better fitted to comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was possible, to live as she lived, work as she worked. In thus approaching her I believed that I could share her ambitions, her pleasures, her privations. Working by her side day after day, I hoped to be a mirror that should reflect the woman who toils, and later, when once again in my proper sphere of life, to be her expositor in an humble way--to be a mouthpiece for her to those who know little of the realities of everlasting labour. I have in the following pages attempted to solve no problem--I have advanced no sociologic schemes. Conclusions must be drawn by those who read the simple, faithful description of the woman who toils as I saw her, as I worked beside her, grew to understand in a measure her point of view and to sympathize with her struggle. MARIE VAN VORST. Riverdale-on-Hudson, 1902. * * * * * A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN * * * * * CHAPTER VII A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN "Those who work neither with their brains nor their hands are a menace to the public safety."--Roosevelt. Well and good! In the great mobs and riots of history, what class is it which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot, the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is _the labourer's head_ upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the vortex of the crowd. _That those who labour with their hands may have no cause to menace society, those who labour with their brains shall strive to encompass._ Evils in any system American progress is sure to cure. Shops such as the Plant shoe factory in Boston, with its eight-hour labour, ample provision for escape in case of fire, its model ventilating, lavish employment of new machinery--tells on the great manufacturing world. Reason, human sympathy, throughout history have been enemies to slavery or its likeness: reason and sympathy suggest that time and place be given for the operative man and woman to rest, to benefit by physical culture, that the bowed figures might uplift the flabby muscles. Time is securely past when the manufacturers' greed may sweat the labourers' souls through the bodies' pores in order that more stuff may be turned out at cheaper cost. The people through social corporations, through labour unions, have made their demands for shorter hours and better pay. * * * * * LYNN Luxuries to me are what necessities are to another. A boot too heavy, a dress ill-hung, a stocking too thick, are annoyances which to the self-indulgent woman of the world are absolute discomforts. To omit the daily bath is a little less than a crime in the calendar; an odour bordering on the foul creates nausea to nostrils ultra-refined; undue noises are nerve exhausting. If any three things are more unendurable to me than others, they are noises, bad smells and close air. I am in no wise unique, but represent a class as real as the other class whose sweat, bone and fiber make up a vast human machine turning out necessities and luxuries for the market. [Illustration: A DELICATE TYPE OF BEAUTY--At work in a Lynn shoe factory] [Illustration: ONE OF THE SWELLS OF THE FACTORY: A very expert "vamper," an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week] The clothes I laid aside on December 18, 1901, were as follows: Hat $ 40 Sealskin coat 200 Black cloth dress 150 Silk underskirt 25 Kid gloves 2 Underwear 30 ---- $ 447 The clothes I put on were as follows: Small felt hat $ .25 Woolen gloves .25 Flannel shirt-waist 1.95 Gray serge coat 3.00 Black skirt 2.00 Underwear 1.00 Tippet 1.00 ---- $9.45 * * * * * When I outlined to my friends my scheme of presenting myself for work in a strange town with no introduction, however humble, and no friends to back me, I was assured that the chances were that I would in the end get nothing. I was told that it would be impossible to disguise my class, my speech; that I would be suspected, arouse curiosity and mistrust. * * * * * One bitter December morning in 1901 I left Boston for Lynn, Mass. The route of my train ran close to marshes; frozen hard ice many feet thick covered the rocks and hillocks of earth, and on the dazzling winter scene the sun shone brilliantly. No sooner had I taken my place in my plain attire than my former personality slipped from me as absolutely as did the garments I had discarded. I was Bell Ballard. People from whose contact I had hitherto pulled my skirts away became my companions as I took my place shoulder to shoulder with the crowd of breadwinners. Lynn in winter is ugly. The very town itself seemed numbed and blue in the intense cold well below zero. Even the Christmas-time greens in the streets and holly in the store windows could not impart festivity to this city of workers. The thoroughfares are trolley lined, of course, and a little beyond the town's centre is a common, a white wooden church stamping the place New England. Lynn is made up of factories--great masses of ugliness, red brick, many-windowed buildings. The General Electric has a concern in this town, but the industry is chiefly the making of shoes. The shoe trade in our country is one of the highest paying manufactures, and in it there are more women employed than in any other trade. Lynn's population is 70,000; of these 10,000 work in shoe-shops. The night must not find me homeless, houseless. I went first to a directory and found the address of the Young Women's Christian Association: a room upstairs in a building on one of the principal streets. Here two women faced me as I made my appeal, and I saw at once displayed the sentiments of kindness thenceforth to greet me throughout my first experience--qualities of exquisite sympathy, rare hospitality and human interest. "I am looking for work. I want to get a room in a safe place for the night." I had not for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing less in the older woman's face. "Work in the shops?" "Yes, ma'am." The simple fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops aroused her sympathy. She said earnestly: "You must not go anywhere to sleep that you don't know about, child." She wrote an address for me on a slip of paper. "Go there; I know the woman. If she can't take you, why, come back here. I'll take you to my own house. I won't have you sleep in a strange town just _anywheres_! You might get into trouble." She was not a matron; she was not even one of the staff of managers or directors. She was only a woman who had come in to ask some question, receive some information; and thus in marvelous friendliness she turned and outstretched her hand--I was a stranger and this was her welcome. I had proved a point at the first step; help had been extended. If I myself failed to find shelter I could go to her for protection. I intended to find my lodging place if possible without any reference or any aid. Out of the town proper in a quiet side street I saw a little wooden tenement set back from the road. "Furnished Room to Rent," read the sign in the window. A sweet-faced woman responded to the bell I had rung. One glance at me and she said: "Ve only got a 'sheep' room." At the compliment I was ill-pleased and told her I was looking for a _cheap_ room: I had come to Lynn to work. Oh! that was all right. That was the kind of people she received. I followed her into the house. I must excuse her broken English. She was French. Ah! was she? That made my way easier. I told her I was from Paris and a stranger in this part of the country, and thenceforth our understanding was complete. In 28 Viger Street we spoke French always. My room in the attic was blue-and-white papered; a little, clean, agreeable room. Madam begged that I would pardon the fact that my bed had no sheets. She would try to arrange later. She also insinuated that the "young ladies" who boarded with her spoiled all her floor and her furniture by slopping the water around. I assured her that she should not have to complain of me--I would take care. The room was $1.25 a week. Could I pay her in advance? I did so, of course. I would have to carry up my water for washing from the first floor morning and night and care for my room. On the landing below I made arrangements with the tenant for board at ten cents a meal. Madame Courier was also a French Canadian, a mammoth creature with engaging manners. "Mademoiselle Ballard has work?" "Not yet." "Well, if you don't get a job my husband will speak for you. I have here three other young ladies who work in the shops; they'll speak for you!" Before the door of the first factory I failed miserably. I could have slunk down the street and gladly taken the first train away from Lynn! My garments were heavy; my skirt, lined with a sagging cotton goods, weighed a ton; the woolen gloves irritated. The shop fronted the street, and the very sight through the window of the individuals representing power, the men whom I saw behind the desks, frightened me. I could not go in. I fairly ran through the streets, but stopped finally before a humbler shop--where a sign swung at the door: "Hands Wanted." I went in here and opened a door on the third floor into a small office. I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk, twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the revolving desk-chair. "I want work. Got any?" "Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?" (I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.) "Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest." "Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?" "It's gluein' suspender straps." "Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!" He smiled, indulgent of this whim. "They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.) "Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!" "Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come back." He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the suspender straps, tempting me with them. "What you ever done?" "Nothing. I'm green!" "That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?" "Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all." "Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in no time." ... Preston's! That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps! I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my judgment. A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office help: "But I am green; I can't do office work." Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--" He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of refusing applicants for work. "Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings." "You'll give me a chance, then?" "Yes, I will!" It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander houseless. With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determined before nightfall to be at work in a Lynn shoe-shop. It was now noon, streets filled with files and lines of freed operatives. Into a restaurant I wandered with part of the throng, and, with excitement and ambition for sauce, ate a good meal. Factories had received back their workers when I applied anew. This time the largest building, one of the most important shops in Lynn, was my goal. At the door of Parsons' was a sign reading: "_Wanted, Vampers_." A vamper I was not, but if any help was wanted there was hope. My demand for work was greeted at the office this time with--"Any signs out?" "Yes." (What they were I didn't deem it needful to say!) The stenographer nodded: "Go upstairs, then; ask the forelady on the fifth floor." Through the big building and the shipping-room, where cases of shoes were were being crated for the market, I went, at length really within a factory's walls. From the first to the fifth floor I went in an elevator--a freight elevator; there are no others, of course. This lift was a terrifying affair; it shook and rattled in its shaft, shook and rattled in pitch darkness as it rose between "safety doors"--continuations of the building's floors. These doors open to receive the ascending elevator, then slowly close, in order that the shaft may be covered and the operatives in no danger of stepping inadvertently to sudden death. I reached the fifth floor and entered into pandemonium. The workroom was in full working swing. At least five hundred machines were in operation and the noise was startling and deafening. I made my way to a high desk where a woman stood writing. I knew her for the forelady by her "air"; nothing else distinguished her from the employees. No one looked up as I entered. I was nowhere a figure to attract attention; evidently nothing in my voice or manner or aspect aroused supposition that I was not of the class I simulated. Now, into my tone, as I spoke to the forelady bending over her account book, I put all the force I knew. I determined she should give me something to do! Work was everywhere: some of it should fall to my hand. "Say, I've got to work. Give me anything, anything; I'm green." She didn't even look at me, but called--shrieked, rather--above the machine din to her colleagues: "Got anything for a green hand?" The person addressed gave me one glance, the sole and only look I got from any one in authority in Parsons'. "Ever worked in a shoe-shop before?" "No, ma'am." "I'll have you learned _pressin'_; we need a _presser_. Go take your things off, then get right down over there." I tore off my outside garment in the cloak-room, jammed full of hats and coats. I was obliged to stack my belongings in a pile on the dirty floor. Now hatless, shirt-waisted, I was ready to labour amongst the two hundred bond-women around me. Excitement quite new ran through me as I went to the long table indicated and took my seat. My object was gained. I had been in Lynn two hours and a half and was a working-woman. On my left the seat was vacant; on my right Maggie McGowan smiled at me, although, poor thing, she had small cause to welcome the green hand who demanded her time and patience. She was to "learn me pressin'," and she did. Before me was a board, black with stains of leather, an awl, a hammer, a pot of foulest-smelling glue, and a package of piece-work, ticketed. The branch of the trade I learned at Parsons' was as follows: Before me was outspread a pile of bits of leather foxings, back straps, vamps, etc. Dipping my brush in the glue, I gummed all the extreme outer edges. When the "case" had been gummed, the first bits were dry, then the fingers turned down the gummed edges of the leather into fine little seams; these seams are then plaited with the awl and the ruffled hem flattened with the hammer--this is "pressing." The case goes from presser to the seaming machine. The instruments turn in my awkward fingers. I spread glue where it should not be: edges designated for its reception remain innocent. All this means double work later. "_Twict the work_!" my teacher remarks. Little by little, however, the simplicity of the manual action, the uniformity, the mechanical movement declare themselves. I glance from time to time at my expert neighbours, compare our work; in an hour I have mastered the method--skill and rapidity can be mine only after many days; but I worked alone, unaided. As raw edges, at first defying my clumsiness, fell to fascinating rounds, as the awl creased the leather into the fluting folds, as the hammer mashed the gummed seam down, I enjoyed the process; it was kindergarten and feminine toil combined, not too hard; but it was only the beginning! Meanwhile my teacher, patient-faced, lightning-fingered, sat close to me, reeking perspiration, tired with the ordeal of instructing a greenhorn. With no sign of exhausted patience, however, she gummed my vamps with the ill-smelling glue. "This glue makes lots of girls sick! In the other shops where I worked they just got sick, one by one, and quit. I stuck it out. The forelady said to me when I left: 'My! I never thought anybody could stand it's long's you have.'" I asked, "What would you rather do than this?" She didn't seem to know. "I don't do this for fun, though! Nor do you--I bet you!" (I didn't--but not quite for her reason.) As I had yet my room to make sure of, I decided to leave early. I told Maggie McGowan I was going home. "Tired already?" There was still an hour to dark. As I explained to her my reasons she looked at my amateur accomplishment spread on the board before us. I had only pressed a case of shoes--three dozen pairs. "I guess I'll have to put it on my card," she soliloquized, "'cause I learned you." "Do--do----" "It's only about seven cents, anyway." "Three hours' work and that's all I've made?"[2] [Footnote 2: An expert presser can do as many as 400 shoes a day. This is rare and maximum.] She regarded me curiously, to see how the amount tallied with my hope of gain and wealth. "Yet you tell me I'm not stupid. How long have you been at it?" [Illustration: "LEARNING" A NEW HAND Miss P., an experienced "gummer" on vamp linings, is a New England girl, and makes $8 or $9 a week. The new hand makes from $2.50 to $3 a week at the same work] "Ten years." "And you make?" "Well, I don't want to discourage you." ... (If Maggie used this expression once she used it a dozen times; it was her pat on the shoulder, her word of cheer before coming ill news.) "... I don't want to discourage you, but it's slow! I make about twelve dollars a week." "Then I will make four!" (Four? Could it be possible I dreamed of such sums at this stage of ignorance!) "_I don't want to discourage you_, but I guess you'd better do housework!" It was clear, then, that for weeks I was to drop in with the lot of women wage-earners who make under five dollars a week for ten hours a day labour. "Why don't _you_ do housework, Maggie?" "I do. I get up at five and do all the work of our house, cook breakfast, and clean up before I come to the shop. I eat dinner here. When I go home at night I get supper and tidy up!" My expression as I fell to gumming foxings was not pity for my own fate, as she, generous creature, took it to be. "After you've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me." Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged! Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and beauty from a woman's hands. Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're awful! I do love a nice hand." The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils, sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3] [Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate the shop.] Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a shift at a toilet. Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she waited upon her nine guests. No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness of welcome. My place was at the table's end, before the Irish stew. "Miss Ballard!" The landlady put her arm about my waist and introduced me, mentioning the names of every one present. There were four women besides myself and four men. "I don't want Miss Ballard to feel strange," said my hostess in her pretty Canadian _patois_. "I want her to be at home here." I sat down. "Oh, she'll be at home all right!" A frowzy-headed, pretty brunette from the table's other end raised kind eyes to me and nodded a smiling good-fellowship. "Come to work in the shops?" "Yes." "Ever been to Lynn before?" "No; live in Paris--stranger." "My, but that's hard--all alone here! Got a job?" "Yes." And I explained to the attentive interest of all. From the Irish stew before me they helped themselves, or passed to me the plates from the distance. If excitement had not taken from me every shred of appetite, the kitchen odours, smoke and frying, the room's stifling heat would have dulled hunger. Let it go! I was far too interested to eat. The table was crowded with all manner of substances passing for food--cheese, preserves, onion pickles, cake and Irish stew, all eaten at one time and at will; the drink was tea. At my left sat a well-dressed man who would pass anywhere for a business man of certain distinction. He was a common operator. Next him was a bridal couple, very young and good looking; then came the sisters, Mika and Nannette, their brother, a packer at a shop, then Mademoiselle Frances, expert hand at fourteen dollars a week (a heavy swell indeed), then Maurice. Although I was evidently an object of interest, although countless questions were put to me, let me say that curiosity was markedly absent. Their attitude was humane, courteous, sympathetic, agreeable, which qualities I firmly believe are supreme in those who know hardship, who suffer privation, who labour. Great surprise was evinced that I had so soon found a job. Mika and Nannette, brunette Canadians, with voices sweet and carrying, talked in good English and mediocre French. "It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most has to get spoken of weeks in advance--introduced by friends, too!" Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak for you to our foreladies." Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my shoulder. "Yes, _mon enfant_, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange place. _Ici nous sommes toute une famille_". "All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who, one day by chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face, brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour. Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social climber's ladder. Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the _truffle_ buried in _pate de foie gras_; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a _canard a la presse_ throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry, eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall. Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so. The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige. "But mademoiselle eats nothing--a bird's appetite." And here was displayed the first hint of vulgarity we are taught to look for in the other class. She put her hands about my arms. "_Tiens! un bras tout de meme!_" and she looked at Maurice, the young man on my right. "_Maurice c'est toi qui devrait t'informer des bras d'mademoiselle."_ ("Maurice, it is you who should inform yourself of mademoiselle's arms.") Maurice laughed with appreciation, as did the others. He was the sole American at table; out of courtesy for him we talked English from time to time, although he assured us he understood all we said in "the jargon." * * * * * To Maurice a master pen could do justice; none other. His _type_ is seen stealing around corners in London's Whitechapel and in the lowest quarters of New York: a lounger, indolent, usually drunk. Maurice was the type, with the qualities absent. Tall, lank, loosely hung together, made for muscular effort, he wore a dark flannel shirt, thick with grease and oil stains, redolent with tobacco, a checked waistcoat, no collar or cravat. From the collarless circle of his shirt rose his strong young neck and bullet head; his forehead was heavy and square below the heavy brows; his black eyes shone deep sunken in their caverns. His black hair, stiff as a brush, came low on his forehead; his mouth was large and sensual, his teeth brilliant. But his hands! never to be forgotten! Scrubbed till flesh might well have parted from the bones! clean, even if black and mutilated with toil; fingers forever darkened; stained ingrained ridges rising around the nails, hard and ink-black as leather. Maurice was Labour--its Symbol--its Epitome. At the landlady's remark he had blushed and addressed me frankly: "Say, I work to de 'Lights.'" (Lights! Can such a word be expressive of the factory which has daily blackened and scarred and dulled this human instrument?) "To the 'Lights,' and it ain't no _cinch_, I can tell you! I got to keep movin'. Every minute I'm late I get docked for wages--it's a day's work to the 'Lights.' When _she_ calls me at six--why, I don't turn over and snooze another! I just turn right out. I walk two miles to my shop--and every man in his place at 6:45! Don't you forgit it!" He cleaned his plate of food. "I jest keep movin' all de time." He wiped his mouth--rose unceremoniously, put on his pot-like derby ajaunt, lit a vile cigar, slipped into a miserable old coat, and was gone, the odour of his weed blending its new smell with kitchen fumes. He is one of the absolutely real creatures I have ever seen. Of his likeness types of crime are drawn. Maurice--blade keen-edged, hidden in its battered sheath, its ugly case--terrible yet attractive specimen of strength and endurance--Youth and Manhood in you are bound to labour as on the rack, and in the ordeal you keep (as does the mass of humanity) Silence! Eat by this man's side, heap his plate with coarse victuals, feel the touch of his flannel sleeve against your own flannel blouse, see his look of brotherhood as he says: "Say, if de job dey give you is too hard, why, I guess I kin get yer in to the 'Lights'!" These are sensations facts alone can give. * * * * * After dinner we sit all together in the parlour, the general living-room: carpet-covered sofa, big table, few chairs--that's all. We talk an hour--and on what? We discuss Bernhardt, the divine Sarah. "Good shows don't come to Lynn much; it don't pay them. You can't get more than fifty cents a seat. Now Bernhardt don't like to act for fifty-cent houses! But the theatres are crowded if ever there's a good show. We get tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House." Maude Adams was a favourite. Réjane had been seen. Of course, the vital American interest--money--is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read, discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the pleasure it would be to travel and see the world. At nine, friendly handshaking. "Good-night. You're tired. You'll like it all right to the shops, see if you don't! You'll make money, too. The forelady must a-seen that you were ambitious. Why, to my shop when a new hand applies for a job the foreman asks: 'What does he look like? Ambitious lookin'? Well, then--there's room." Ambitious to make shoes! To grind out all you can above the average five dollars a week, all you may by conscientious, unflagging work during 224 hours out of a month. Good-night to the working world! Landlady and friendly co-labourers. "_Il ne faut pas vous gener, mademoiselle; nous sommes toute une famille_." Upstairs in my room the excitement died quite out of me. I lay wakeful in the hard, sheetless bed. It was cold, my window-pane freezing rapidly. I could not sleep. On either side, through the thin walls of the house, I could hear my neighbours settling to repose. Maurice's room was next to mine. He whistled a short snatch of a topical song as he undressed. On the other side slept the landlady's children; opposite, the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete. Before six the next morning--black as night--the call: "Mau--rice! Mau--_rice_!" rang through the hall. Summons to us all, given through him on whom the exigencies of life fell the heaviest. Maurice worked by day system--the rest of us were freed men and women by comparison. The night before, timid and reluctant to descend the two flights of pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by pitcher. A little water nearly frozen was at hand for my toilet. By six I was dressed and my bed made; by 6:15 in the kitchen, dense with smoke from the frying breakfast. Through the haze the figures of my friends declared themselves. Codfish balls, bread and butter and coffee formed the repast. Maurice is the first to finish, standing a moment to light his pipe, his hat acock; then he is gone. The sisters wash at the sink, Mika combing her mass of frowzy dark hair, talking meanwhile. The sisters' toilet, summary and limited, is frankly displayed. At my right the bride consumes five enormous fish balls, as well as much bread. Her husband, a young, handsome, gentle creature, eats sparingly. His hand is strapped up at the wrist. "What's wrong?" "Strained tendons. Doctor says they'd be all right if I could just hold up a little. They don't get no chance to rest." "But why not 'hold up' awhile?" He regards me sympathetically as one who says to an equal, a fellow: "You know why!--for the same reason that you yourself will work sick or well." "_On fait ce que l'on peut_!" ("One does one's best!") When the young couple had left the room our landlady said: "The little woman eats well, doesn't she! She needs no tonic! All day long she sits in my parlour and rocks--and rocks." "She does nothing?" Madame shrugged. "But yes! She reads novels!" It was half-past six when I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring to life. I become, after a block or two, one of a hurrying throng of labour-bound fellows--dark forms appear from streets and avenues, going in divers directions toward their homes. Homes? Where one passes most of one's life, is it not _Home_? These figures to-day bend head and shoulders against the wind as it blows neck-coverings about, forces bare hands into coat pockets. By the time the town has been traversed, railroad track crossed, and Parsons' in sight, day has nearly broken. Pink clouds float over factory roofs in a sky growing bluer, flushing to day. [Illustration: THE WINDOW SIDE OF MISS K.'s PARLOUR AT LYNN, MASS] From now on the day is shut out for those who here and there enter the red-brick factories. An hour at noon? Of course, this magnificent hour is theirs! Time to eat, time to feed the human machine. One hour in which to stretch limbs, to pull to upright posture the bent body. Meanwhile daylight progresses from glowing beauty to high noon, and there the acme of brilliance seems to pause, as freed humanity stares half-blinded at God's midday rest. All the remaining hours of daylight are for the leisure world. Not till night claims Lynn shall the factory girl be free. Ascending the five flights of dirty stairs, my steps fell side by side those of a young workman in drilling coat. He gave me a good-morning in a cheery tone. "Working here? Got it good?" "I guess so." "That's all right. Good-day." Therefore I began my first labour day with a good wish from my new class! On the fifth floor I was one of the very first arrivals. If in the long, low-ceiled room windows had been opened, the flagging air gave no sign to the effect. It was fetid and cold. Daylight had not fully found the workshop, gas was lit, and no work prepared. I was eager to begin, but was forced to wait before idle tools till work was given me--hard ordeal for ambitious piece-worker. At the tick of seven, however, I had begun my branch of the shoe-making trade. One by one my mates arrived; the seats beyond me and on either side were filled. Opposite me sat a ghost of girlhood. A tall, slender creature, cheeks like paper, eyes sunken. She, too, had the smile of good-fellowship--coin freely passed from workwoman to workwoman. This girl's job was filthy. She inked edges of the shoes with a brush dipped in a pot of thick black fluid. Pile after pile of piece-work was massed in front of her; pile by pile disappeared. She worked like lightning. "Do you like your job?" I ventured. This seemed to be the open sesame to all conversations in the shops. She shrugged her narrow shoulders but made no direct reply. "I used to have what you're doing; it's awful. That glue made me sick. I was in bed. So when I came back I got _this_." She was separated from my glue-pot by a table's length only. "But don't you smell it from here?" "Not so bad; this here" (pointing to her black fluid) "smells stronger; it _drownds_ it. "I make my wages clear," she announced to me a few minutes later. "How do you mean?" "Why, at noon I wait in a restaurant; they give me my dinner afterward. I go back there and wait on the table at supper, too. My vittles don't cost me anything!" So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running, waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end! "I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side." My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes (thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie, loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because one had been three hours at work. A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her half with her neighbours, advising me wisely. "Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!" My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long. It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said. "Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops." Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing." The other laughed sweetly. "Well, I jest have to sing." "You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes. "You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me alone, she whispered: "Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself. "See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_ soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!" Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed shoulders! on the flying hands! At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn. The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue (oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity. * * * * * Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn." Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory, shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech. Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close. Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions she was courtesy itself. "Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from? Paris!" My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?" She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is like!" The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five cents to-day." Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune never to work in a shoe-shop." "_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!" Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd jump into the river!" She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers. "Why do you speak so strongly? 'Jump into the river!' That's saying a lot!" "I am sick of the shoe-shops." "How long have you been at this work?" "Ten years. When you have worked ten years in Lynn you will be sick of the shops." I was sick of the shops, and I had not worked ten years. And for my hard-toiling future, such as she imagined that it would be, I could see that she pitied me. Once, supposing that since I am so green and so ill-clad, and so evidently bent on learning my trade the best I knew, she asked me in a voice quick with sisterhood: "Say, are you hungry?" "No, no, no." "You'll be all right! No American girl need to starve in America." In the shops the odours are more easily endured than is the noise. All conversation is shrieked out, and all the vision that one has as one lifts one's eyes from time to time is a sky seen through dirty window-panes, distant chimney-pots, and the roof-lines of like houses of toil. * * * * * I gathered this from our interrupted talk that flowed unceasingly despite the noise of our hammers and the noise of the general room. They worked at a trade uncongenial. Not one had a good word to say for shop-labour there, despite its advantages, in this progressive land of generous pay. Each woman in a narrow, touching degree was a dreamer. Housework! too servile; but then, compared to shopwork it was leisure. By four the gas was lit here and there where burners were available. Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the gas jets in misty circles. Unaltered alone was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the machinery, the long soughing of the power-engine. Here and there a woman stops to rest a second, her head sunk in her hand; or she rises, stretches limbs and body. A man wanders in from the next room, a pipe in his mouth, or a bad cigar, and pausing by one of the pale operators, whose space of rest is done, he flings down in front of her a new pile of piece-work from the cutting machines. We are up five flights of stairs. There are at least two hundred girls. Machine oil, rags, refuse, cover the floor--such _dèbris_ as only awaits a spark from a lighted match or cigar to burst into flames. Despite laws and regulations the building is not fire-proof. There is no fire-escape. A cry of fire, and great Heaven! what escape for two hundred of us from this mountain height, level with roofs of the distant town! Thus these women, shapes mysterious in gaslight and twilight, labour: life is at stake; health, youth, vigour, supply little more than bread. I rise; my bruised limbs, at first numb, then aching, stir for the first time after five hours of steady work. The pile of shoes before me is feeble evidence of the last hours' painful effort. I get into my clothes--skirt, jacket and hat, all impregnated now with factory and tenement odours, and stumble downstairs and out into the street. I have earned fifty cents to-day--but then, I am green! When once more in the cool, fresh air, released, I draw in a long and grateful breath. Lynn on this winter night is a snow-bound, midwinter village. In the heavens is the moon's ghost, a mist-shrouded, far-away disk. But it is the Christmas moon, shining on the sleeping thousands in the town, where night alone is free. The giant factories are silent, the machines at last quiet, the long workrooms moon-invaded. Labour is holy, but serfdom is accursed, and toil which demands that every hour of daylight should be spent in the race for existence--all of the daylight--is kin to slavery! There is no time for mental or physical upright-standing, no time for pleasure. * * * * * One day I decided to consider myself dismissed from Parsons'. They had taught me all they could, unless I changed my trade, in that shop; I wished to learn a new one in another. Therefore, one morning I applied at another factory, again one of the largest in Lynn. The sign read: "_Cleaner Wanted_!" "Cleaner" sounded easy to learn. My experience this time was with a foreman instead of a forelady. The workroom I sought was on the second floor, a room filled with men, all of them standing. Far down the room's centre I saw the single figure of a woman at her job. By her side I was soon to be, and we two the sole women on the second floor. The foreman was distinctly a personage. Small, kind, alive, he wore a straw hat and eye-glasses. He had decided in a moment that my short application for "something to do" was not to be gainsaid. "Ever worked before?" This time I had a branch of a trade at my fingers' ends. "Yes, sir; presser." I was proud of my trade. I did not even know, as I do now, that "cleaning" is the filthiest job the trade possesses. It is in bad repute and difficult to secure a woman to do the unpleasant work. "You come with me," he said cheerfully; "I'll teach you." The forelady at Parsons' did not know whether I worked well or not. She never came to see. The foreman in Marches' taught me himself. Two high desks, like old-time school desks, rose in the workshop's centre. Behind one of these I stood, whilst the foreman in front of me instructed my ignorance. The room was filled with high crates rolled hither and thither on casters. These crates contained anywhere from thirty-two to fifty pairs of boots. The cases are moved from operator to operator as each man selects the shoes to apply to them the especial branch of his trade. From the crate of boots rolled to my side I took four boots and placed them on the desk before me. With the heel of one pressed against my breast, I dipped my forefinger in a glass of hot soap and water, water which soon became black as ink. I passed my wet, soapy finger all around the boot's edges, from toe to heel. This loosened, in the space between the sole and vamp, the sticky dye substance on the leather and particles so-called "dirt." Then with a bit of wood covered with Turkish toweling I scraped the shoe between the sole and vamp and with a third cloth polished and rubbed the boot clean. In an hour's time I did one-third as well as my companion. I cleaned a case in an hour, whilst she cleaned three. When my employer had left me I observed the woman at my side: an untidy, degraded-looking creature, long past youth. Her hands beggared description; their covering resembled skin not at all, but a dark-blue substance, leatherlike, bruised, ingrained, indigo-hued. Her nails looked as though they had been beaten severely. One of her thumbs was bandaged. "I lost one nail; rotted off." "Horrible! How, pray?" "That there water: it's poison from the shoe-dye." Swiftly my hands were changing to a faint likeness of my companion's. "Don't tell him," she said, "that I told you that. He'll be mad; he'll think I am discouraging you. But you'll lose your forefinger nail, all right!" Then she gave a little laugh as she turned her boot around to polish it. "Once I tried to clean my hands up. Lord! it's no good! I scrub 'em with a scrubbin'-brush on Sundays." "How long have you been at this job?" "Ten months." They called her "Bobby"; the men from their machines nodded to her now and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood. I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to "Bobby." He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his job she said to me: "Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor? You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend." "Did that man come over to tell you this?" "Yes. He said it made you tired." From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man, bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole he held to the flying wheel. * * * * * I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks. "Bobby" was not talkative or communicative simply because she had nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question to me during the time I worked by her side: "Do you like your job?" and although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. Every now and then she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents. During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of shoes. In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work. Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial "B" on the tag and rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into his active charge. The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say? "You've been a presser long at the shoe-shops?" "No." "I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right." "Thank you; perhaps I won't, though." "Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself," he said; "I know how that is." On his next visit he asked me: "Where you goin'; to when you get out of here to-night?" I told him that I was all right--that I had a place to stay. "If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me." [Illustration: "FANCY GUMMING." Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her husband also works in a factory, and between them they have made enough to build a pretty little cottage] [Illustration: AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND. Mrs. F., who has worked in the factory more than twenty years, once as a forewoman, now earns only $5 or $6 a week] I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity. "Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes you a livin'." When the foreman had left me I turned to look at "Bobby." She was in the act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water. "You're not going to drink that!" I gasped, horrified. "Where did you get it?" "Oh, I drawed it awhile ago," she said. It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight years old, and her brain was stunted. At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen and men. Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage in a vessel. The top floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and ate, in spite of the inconveniences, ravenously, and paid for my dinner fifteen cents. Most of my neighbours took one course, stew or soup. I rose half-satisfied, dizzy from the fumes and the bad air. I am safe in saying that I never smelled anything like to Weyman's, and I hope never to again. Never again shall I hear food and drink discussed by the _gourmet_--discuss, indeed, with him over his repast--but there shall rise before me Weyman's restaurant, low-ceiled, foul, crowded to overflowing. I shall see the diners bend edged appetites to the unpalatable food. These Weyman patrons, mark well, are the rich ones, the swells of labour--able to squander fifteen to twenty cents on their stew and tea. There are dozens, you remember, still in the unaired fourth and fifth stories--at "lunching" over their sandwiches. Far more vivid, more poignant even must be to me the vision of "Bobby." I shall see her eat her filthy sandwich with her blackened hands, see her stoop to blow the scum of deadly matter from her typhoid-breeding glass. In Lynn, unless she boards at home, a girl's living costs her at best $3.75 a week. If she be of the average[4] her month's earnings are $32. Reduce this by general expenses and living and her surplus is $16, to earn which she has toiled 224 hours. You will recall that there are, out of the 22,000 operatives in Massachusetts, 5,000 who make under $5 a week. I leave the reader to compute from this the luxuries and possible pleasures consistent with this income. [Footnote 4: Lynn's average wages are $8 per week.] A word for the swells of the trade, for swells exist. One of my companions at 28 Viger Street made $14 a week. Her expenses were $4; she therefore had at her disposition about $40 a month. She had no family--_every cent of her surplus she spent on her clothes_. "I like to look down and see myself dressed nice," she said; "it makes me feel good. I don't like myself in poor clothes." She _was_ well-dressed--her furs good, her hat charming. We walked to work side by side, she the lady of us. Of course she belongs to the Union. Her possible illness is provided for; her death will bring $100 to a distant cousin. She is only tired out, thin, undeveloped, pale, that's all. She is almost a capitalist, and extremely well dressed. Poor attire, if I can judge by the reception I met with in Lynn, influences only those who by reason of birth, breeding and education should be above such things. In Viger Street I was more simply clad than my companions. My aspect called forth only sisterhood and kindness. Fellowship from first to last, fellowship from their eyes to mine, a spark kindled never to be extinguished. The morning I left my tenement lodging Mika took my hand at the door. "Good-by." Her eyes actually filled. "I'm awful sorry you're going. If the world don't treat you good come back to us." I must qualify a little. One member of the working class there was on whom my cheap clothes had a chilling effect--the spoiled creature of the traveling rich, a Pullman car porter on the train from Boston to New York! Although I called him first and purposely gave him my order in time, he viewed me askance and served me the last of all. As I watched my companions in their furs and handsome attire eat, whilst I sat and waited, my woolen gloves folded in my lap, I wondered if any one of the favoured was as hungry, as famished as the presser from Parsons', the cleaner from Marches'. * * * * * THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS * * * * * CHAPTER VIII THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS THE MILL VILLAGE Columbia, South Carolina, of course is conscious that there are mills without its city precincts. It is proud of the manufacture that gives the city precedence and commercial value all over the world. The trolley runs to the mills empty, as a rule, after the union depot is passed. Frankly, what is there to be seen in these dusty suburbs? Entry to the mills themselves is difficult, if not absolutely impossible. And that which forms the background for the vast buildings, the Mill Village, is a section to be shunned like the plague. Plague is not too strong a word to apply to the pest-ridden, epidemic-filled, filthy settlement where in this part of the country the mill-hand lives, moves and has his being, horrible honeycomb of lives, shocking morals and decency. Around Columbia there lie five mills and their respective settlements--Excelsior, the Granton, Calcutta, the Richland and the Capital City. Each of these mills boasts its own so-called town. When these people are free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday they are too exhausted to do anything but turn into their hovels to sleep. At most on Saturday afternoons or Sundays they board a trolley and betake themselves to a distant park which, in the picturesque descriptions of Columbia, reads like an Arcadia and is in reality desolation. The mill-hands are not from the direct section of Columbia. They are strangers brought in from "the hills" by the agents of the company, who go hither and thither through the different parts of the country describing to the poor whites and the hill dwellers work in the mills as a way to riches and success. Filled with dreams of gain and possessions, with hopes of decent housing and schooling for their children, they leave their distant communities and troop to the mills. These immigrants are picturesque, touching to see. They come with all they own in the world on their backs or in their hands; penniless; burrs and twigs often in the hair of the young girls. They are hatless, barefooted, ignorant; innocent for the most part--and hopeful! What the condition of these labourers is after they have tested the promises of the manufacturer and found them empty bubbles can only be understood and imagined when one has seen their life, lived among them, worked by their side, and comprehended the tragedy of this population--a floating population, going from Granton to Excelsior, from Excelsior to Richland, hither and thither, seeking--seeking better conditions. They have no affiliation with the people of the town; they are looked down upon as scum: and in good sooth, for good reason, scum they are! It is spring, warm, gracious. This part of the world seems to be well-nigh treeless! There is no generous foliage, but wherever there are branches to bear it the first green has started out, delicate, tender and beautiful. In my simple work garb I leave Columbia and take a trolley to the mill district. I have chosen Excelsior as best for my purpose. Its reputation is most at stake; its prospectus dazzling; its annals effective. If such things are done in Gath...! I cannot say with what timidity I descend from the tram in this strange country, foreign to my Northern habitation and filled with classes whose likeness I have never seen and around which the Southern Negro makes a tad and gloomy background. Before the trolley has arrived at the corporation stores Excelsior has spoken--roared, clicked forth so vibrantly, so loudly, I am prepared to feel the earth shake. This is the largest mill in the world and looks it! A model, too, in point of view of architecture. I have read in the prospectus that it represents $1,750,000 capital, possesses 104,000 spindles, employs 1,200 hands, and can, with crowding, employ 3,000. Surely it will have place for one more, then! I am impressed with its grandeur as it rises, red-bricked, with proud, straight towers toward its centre--impressed and frightened by its insistent call as it rattles and hums to me across the one-sixteenth of a mile of arid sand track. At one side Christianity and doctrine have constructed a church: a second one is building. On the other side, at a little distance, lies Granton, second largest mill. All this I take in as I make my way Excelsiorward. Between me and the vast mill itself there is not a soul. A thick, sandy road winds to the right; in the distance I can see a black trestle over which the freight cars take the cotton manufactures to the distant railroad and ship them to all parts of the world. Beyond the trestle are visible the first shanties of the mill town. Work first and lodgings afterward are my goals. At the door of Excelsior I am more than overwhelmed by its magnificence and its loud voice that makes itself so far-reachingly heard. There is no entry for me at the front of the mill, and I toil around to the side; not a creature to be seen. I venture upon the landing and make my way along a line of freight cars--between the track and the mill. A kind-faced man wanders out from an unobserved doorway; a gust of roar follows him! He sees me, and lifts his hat with the ready Southern courtesy not yet extinct. I hasten to ask for work. [Illustration: "MIGHTY MILL--PRIDE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THE COMMERCIAL MAGNATE" "Charnel house, destroyer of homes, of all that mankind calls hallowed; breeder of strife, of strike, of immorality of sedition and riot"] "Well, thar's jest plenty of work, I reckon! Go in that do'; the overseer will tell you." Through the door open behind him I catch glimpses of a room enormous in dimensions. Cotton bales lie on the floor, stand around the walls and are piled in the centre. Leaning on them, handling them, lying on them, outstretched, or slipping like shadows into shadow, are the dusky shapes of the black Negro of true Southern blood. I have been told there is no Negro labour in the mills. I take advantage of my guide's kind face to ask him if he knows where I can lodge. "Hed the measles? Well, my gyrl got 'em. Thar's a powerful sight of measles hyar. I'd take you-all to bo'd at my house ef you ain't 'fraid of measles. Thar's the hotel." (He points to what at the North would be known as a brick shanty.) "A gyrl can bo'd thar for $2.25 a week. You won't make that at first." With extreme kindness he leads me into the roaring mill past picturesque black men and cotton bales: we reach the "weave-room." I am told that carpet factories are celebrated for their uproar, but the weave-looms of a cotton mill to those who know them need no description! This is chaos before order was conceived: more weird in that, despite the din and thunder, everything is so orderly, so perfectly carried forth by the machinery. Here the cotton cloth is woven. Excelsior is so vast that from one end to the other of a room one cannot distinguish a friend. I decide instantly that the weave-room shall not be my destination! An overseer comes up to me. He talks with me politely and kindly--that is, as well as he can, he talks! It is almost impossible to hear what he says. He asks me simple and few questions and engages me promptly to work that "_evening_" as the Southerner calls the hours after midday. "You can see all the work and choose a sitting or a standing job." This is an improvement on Pittsburg and Lynn. I have been told there is always work in the mills for the worker. It is not strange that every inducement consistent with corporation rules should be made to entice the labouring girl! The difficulty is that no effort is made to keep her! The ease with which, in all these experiences, work has been obtained, goes definitely to prove that there is a demand everywhere for labourers. _Organize labour, therefore, so well that the work-woman who obtains her task may be able to continue it and keep her health and her self-respect_. With Excelsior as my future workshop I leave the mill to seek lodging in the mill village. The houses built by the corporation for the hands are some five or six minutes' walk, not more, from the palace-like structure of the mill proper. To reach them I plod through a roadway ankle-deep in red clay dust. The sun is bright and the air heavy, lifeless and dull; the scene before me is desolate, meager and poverty-stricken in the extreme. The mill houses are all built exactly alike. Painted in sickly greens and yellows, they rise on stilt-like elevations above the malarial soil. Here the architect has catered to the different families, different individual tastes in one point of view alone, regarding the number of rooms: They are known as "four-or six-room cottages." In one of the first cottages to the right a wholesome sight--the single wholesome sight I see during my experience--meets my eye. Human kindness has transformed one of the houses into a kindergarten--"Kindergarten" is over the door. A pretty Southern girl, a lady, stands surrounded by her little flock. The handful of half a dozen emancipated children who are not in the mills is refreshing to see. There are very few; the kindergarten flags for lack of little scholars. I accost her. "Can you tell me any decent place to board?" She is sorry, regards me kindly with the expression I have grown to know--the look the eyes adopt when a person of one class addresses her sister in a lower range. "I am a stranger come out to work in the mills." But the young lady takes little interest in me. Children are her care. They surround her, clinging, laughing, calling--little birds fed so gently by the womanly hand. She turns from the working-woman to them, but not before indicating a shanty opposite: "Mrs. Green lives there in that four-room cottage. She is a good woman." Through the door's crack I interview Mrs. Green, a pallid, sickly creature, gowned, as are most of the women, in a calico garment made all in one piece. She permits me to enter the room which forms (as do all the front rooms in a mill cottage) bedroom and general living-room. Here is confusion incarnate--and filthy disorder. The tumbled, dirty bed fills up one-half the room. In it is a little child, shaking with chills. On the bare floor are bits of food, old vegetables, rags, dirty utensils of all sorts of domestic description. The house has a sickening odour. The woman tells me she is too ill to keep tidy--too ill to keep boarders. We do not strike a bargain. "I am only here four months," she said. "Sick ever since I come, and my little girl has fevernaygu." I wander forth and a child directs me to a six-room cottage, "a real bo'din'-house." I attack it and thus discover the dwelling where I make my home in Excelsior. From the front room of this dwelling a kitchen opens. Within its shadow I see a Negro washing dishes. A tall woman, taller than most men, angular, white-haired, her face seared by toil and stricken with age, greets me: she is the landlady. At her skirts, catching them and staring at a stranger, wanders a very young child--a blue-eyed, clean little being; a great relief, in point of fact, to the general filth hitherto presented me. The room beyond me is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude. "Mrs. Jones?" "Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house." The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has "jest ben com'in' Letty's hair." Letty smiles delightedly. "This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick thing." Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the stranger's child. "And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her." "Can I find lodging here?" She looks at me. "Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there, too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard on her; she's ben sick fo' days." I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at noon. "Stranger hyar, I reckon?" "Yes; from Massachusetts. A shoe-hand." She shakes her head: "You wont like the mills." She draws Letty between her old stiff knees, seats herself on a straight chair, and combs the child's hair on either side its pathetic, gentle little face. So I leave her for the present to return to Columbia and fetch back with me my bundle of clothes. * * * * * When I return at noon it is dinner time. I enter and am introduced, with positive grace and courtesy, by my dear old landlady to her son-in-law, "Tommy Jones," a widower, a man in decent store clothes and a Derby hat surrounded by a majestic crape sash. He is nonchalantly loading a large revolver, and thrusts it in his trousers pocket: "Always carry it," he explains; "comes handy!" Then I am presented to the gentlemen boarders. I beg to go upstairs, with my bundles, and I see for the first time my dwelling part of this shanty. A ladderlike stair leading directly from the kitchen takes me into the loft. Heavens! the sight of that sleeping apartment! There are three beds in it, sagging beds, covered by calico comforters. The floor is bare; the walls are bare. I have grown to know that "Jones'" is the cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it lacks perfection. Around the bare walls hang the garments of the other women who share the room with me. What humble and pathetic decorations! poor, miserable clothes--a shawl or two, a coat or two, a cotton wrapper, a hat; and on one nail the miniature clothes of Letty--a little night-dress and a tiny blue cotton dress. I put my bundle down by the side of my bed which I am to share with another woman, and descend, for Mrs. Jones' voice summons me to the midday meal. The nourishment provided for these thirteen-hour-a-day labourers is as follows: On a tin saucepan there was a little salt pork and on another dish a pile of grease-swimming spinach. A ragged Negro hovered over these articles of diet; the room was full of the smell of frying. After the excitement of my search for work, and the success, if success it can be called that so far had met me, I could not eat; I did not even sit down. I made my excuse. I said that I had had something to eat in Columbia, and started out to the mill. By the time the mill-hand has reached his home a good fifteen minutes out of the three-quarters of an hour recreation is gone: his food is quickly bolted, and by the time I have reached the little brick hotel pointed out to me that morning and descended to its cellar restaurant, forced myself to drink a cup of sassafras tea, and mounted again into the air, the troop of workers is on the march millward. I join them. Although the student of philanthropy and the statistician would find difficulty in forcing the countersign of the manufactories, the worker may go everywhere. I do not see my friend of the morning, the overseer, in the "weave-room"; indeed, there is no one to direct me; but I discover, after climbing the stairs, a room of flying spools and more subdued machinery, and it appears that the spool-room is this man's especial charge. He consigns to me a standing job. A set of revolving spools is designated, and he secures a pretty young girl of about sixteen, who comes cheerfully forward and consents to "learn" me. Spooling is not disagreeable, and the room is the quietest part of the mill--noisy enough, but calm compared to the others. In Excelsior this room is, of course, enormous, light and well ventilated, although the temperature, on account of some quality of the yarn, is kept at a point of humidity far from wholesome. "Spooling" is hard on the left arm and the side. Heart disease is a frequent complaint amongst the older spoolers. It is not dirty compared to shoe-making, and whereas one stands to "spool," when one is not waiting for yarn it is constant movement up and down the line. The fact that there are more children than young girls, more young girls than women, proves the simplicity of this task. The cotton comes from the spinning-room to the spool-room, and as the girl stands before her "side," as it is called, she sees on a raised ledge, whirling in rapid vibration, some one hundred huge spools full of yarn; whilst below her, each in its little case, lies a second bobbin of yarn wound like a distaff. Her task controls machinery in constant motion, that never stops except in case of accident. With one finger of her right hand she detaches the yarn from the distaff that lies inert in the little iron rut before her. With her left hand she seizes the revolving circle of the large spool's top in front of her, holding this spool steady, overcoming the machinery for the moment not as strong as her grasp. This demands a certain effort. Still controlling the agitated spool with her left hand, she detaches the end of yarn with the same hand from the spool, and by means of a patent knotter harnessed around her palm she joins together the two loosened ends, one from the little distaff and one from this large spool, so that the two objects are set whirling in unison and the spool receives all the yarn from the distaff. Up and down this line the spooler must walk all day long, replenishing the iron grooves with fresh yarn and reknitting broken strands. This is all that there is of "spooling." It demands alertness, quickness and a certain amount of strength from the left arm, and that is all! To conceive of a woman of intelligence pursuing this task from the age of eight years to twenty-two on down through incredible hours is not salutary. You will say to me, that if she demands nothing more she is fit for nothing more. I cannot think it. The little girl who teaches me spooling is fresh and cheerful and jolly; I grant her all this. She lives at home. I am told by my subsequent friends that she thinks herself better than anybody. This pride and ambition has at least elevated her to neat clothes and a sprightliness of manner that is refreshing. She does not hesitate to evince her superiority by making sport of me. She takes no pains to teach me well. Instead of giving me the patent knotter, which would have simplified my job enormously, she teaches me what she expresses "the old-fashioned way"--knotting the yarn with the fingers. I have mastered this slow process by the time that the overseer discovers her trick and brings me the harness for my left hand. She is full of curiosity about me, asking me every sort of question, to which I give the best answers that I can. By and by she slips away from me. I turn to find her; she has vanished, leaving me under the care of a truly kind, sad little creature in a wrapper dress. This little Maggie has a heart of gold. "Don't you-all fret," she consoles. "That's like Jeannie: she's so _mean_. When you git to be a remarkable fine spooler she'll want you on her side, you bet." She assists my awkwardness gently. "I'll learn you all right. You-all kin stan' hyar by me all day. Jeannie clean fergits she was a greenhorn herself onct; we all wuz. Whar you come from?" "Lynn, Massachusetts." "Did you-all git _worried_ with the train? I only bin onto it onct, and it worried me for days!" She tells me her simple annals with no question: "My paw he married ag'in, and me stepmother peard like she didn't care for me; so one day I sez to paw, 'I'm goin' to work in the mills'--an' I lef home all alone and come here." After a little--"When I sayd good-by to my father peard like _he_ didn't care neither. I'm all alone here. I bo'ds with that girl's mother." I wore that day in the mill a blue-checked apron. So did Maggie, but mine was from Wanamaker's in New York, and had, I suppose, a certain style, for the child said: "I suttenly dew think that yere's a awful pretty apron: where'd you git it?" "Where I came from," I answered, and, I am sorry to say, it sounded brusque. For the little thing blushed, fearful lest she had been indiscreet....(Oh, I assure you the qualities of good breeding are there! Some of my factory and mill friends can teach the set in which I move lessons salutary!) "I didn't mean jest 'xactly wherebouts," she murmurs; "I only meant it warn't from these parts." * * * * * During the afternoon the gay Jeannie returns and presents to me a tin box. It is filled with a black powder. "Want some?" Well, what is it? She greets my ignorance with shrieks of laughter. In a trice half a dozen girls have left their spooling and cluster around me. "She ain't never _seen_ it!" and the little creature fills her mouth with the powder which she keeps under her tongue. "It is _snuff_!" They all take it, old and young, even the smallest children. Their mouths are brown with it; their teeth are black with it. They take it and smell it and carry it about under their tongues all day in a black wad, spitting it all over the floor. Others "dip," going about with the long sticks in their mouths. The air of the room is white with cotton, although the spool-room is perhaps the freest. These little particles are breathed into the nose, drawn into the lungs. Lung disease and pneumonia--consumption--are the constant, never-absent scourge of the mill village. The girls expectorate to such an extent that the floor is nauseous with it; the little girls practise spitting and are adepts at it. Over there is a woman of sixty, spooling; behind the next side is a child, not younger than eight, possibly, but so small that she has to stand on a box to reach her side. Only the very young girls show any trace of buoyancy; the older ones have accepted with more or less complaint the limitation of their horizons. They are drawn from the hill district with traditions no better than the loneliness, desertion and inexperience of the fever-stricken mountains back of them. They are illiterate, degraded; the mill has been their widest experience; and all their tutelage is the intercourse of girl to girl during the day and in the evenings the few moments before they go to bed in the mill-houses, where they either live at home with parents and brothers all working like themselves, or else they are fugitive lodgers in a boarding-house or a hotel, where their morals are in jeopardy constantly. As soon as a girl passes the age, let us say of seventeen or eighteen, there is no hesitation in her reply when you ask her: "Do you like the mills?" Without exception the answer is, "I _hate them_." Absorbed with the novelty of learning my trade, the time goes swiftly. Yet even the interest and excitement does not prevent fatigue, and from 12:45 to 6:45 seems interminable! Even when the whistle blows we are not all free--Excelsior is behindhand with her production, and those whom extra pay can beguile stay on. Maggie, my little teacher, walks with me toward our divided destinations, her quasi-home and mine. Neither in the mill nor the shoe-shops did I take precaution to change my way of speaking--and not once had it been commented upon. To-day Maggie says to me: "I reckon you-all is 'Piscopal?" "Why?" "Why, you-all _talks_ 'Piscopal." So much for a tribute to the culture of the church. * * * * * At Jones' supper is ready, spread on a bare board running the length of the room--a bare board supported by saw-horses; the seats are boards again, a little lower in height. They sag in the middle threateningly. One plate is piled high with fish--bones, skin and flesh all together in one odourous mass. Salt pork graces another platter and hominy another. I am alone in the supper room. The guests, landlord and landlady are all absent. Some one, as he rushes by me, gives me the reason for the desertion: "They've all gone to see the fight; all the white fellers is after a nigger." Through the window I can see the fleeing forms of the settlers--women, sunbonnets in hand, the men hatless. It appears that all the world has turned out to see what lawless excitement may be in store. The whirling dust and sand in the distance denote the group formed by the Negro and his pursuers. This, standing on the little porch of my lodging-house, I see and am glad to find that the chase is fruitless. The black man, tortured to distraction, dared at length to rebel, and from the moment that he showed spirit his life was not worth a farthing, but his legs were, and he got clear of Excelsior. The lodgers troop back. Molly, my landlady's niece, breathing and panting, disheveled, leads the procession and is voluble over the affair. "They-all pester a po'r nigger's life out 'er him, ye'es, they dew so! Ef a nigger wants ter show his manners to me, why, I show mine to him," she said generously, "and ef he's a mannerly nigger, why, I ain't got nothin' ag'in him; no, sir, I suttenly ain't!" It is difficult to conceive how broad and philanthropic, how generous and unusual this poor mill girl's standpoint is contrasted with the sentiment of the people with which she moves. I slip into my seat at the table in the centre of the sagging board and find Molly beside me, the girl from Excelsior with the pretty hair on the other side. The host, Mr. Jones, honours the head of the table, and "grandmaw" waits upon us. Opposite are the three men operatives, flannel-shirted and dirty. The men are silent for the most part, and bend over their food, devouring the unpalatable stuff before them. I feel convinced that if they were not so terribly hungry they could not eat it. Jones discourses affably on the mill question, advising me to learn "speeding," as it pays better and is the only advanced work in the mill. Molly, my elbow-companion, seems to take up the whole broad seat, she is so big and so pervading; and her close proximity--unwashed, heavy with perspiration as she is, is not conducive to appetite. She is full of news and chatter and becomes the leading spirit of the meal. "I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill to-day." She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear. "Amanda Wilcox she dun tol' Ida Jacobs that she'd _do her_ at noon, and Ida she sarst her back. It was all about a _sport_[5]--Bill James. He's been spo'tin' Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I reckon, and Amanda got crazy over it and 'clared she'd spile her game. And she tol' Ida Jacobs a lie about Bill--sayd he' been spo'tin' her down to the Park on Sunday. [Footnote 5: A beau.] "Well, sir, the whole spinnin'-room was out to see what they-all'd do at noon, and they jest resh'd for each other like's they was crazy; and one man he got between 'em and sayd, 'Now the gyrl what spits over my hand first can begin the fight.' "They both them spit right, into each other's faces, they did so; and arter that yer couldn't get them apart. Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the ha'r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist. They was suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn't just parted them; it took three men to part 'em." Her story was much appreciated. "Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was. She can't git back to work fer days." The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill. After supper the men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her. She made a lap, a generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty. Mrs. White had disappeared. "You-all come here to me, Letty." She held out her large dirty hands to the blue-eyed waif. In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a moment motionless and on the verge of tears. "You-all come to Molly and go By-O." There was some magic in that word that at long past eight charmed the eighteen-months'-old baby. She toddled across the floor to the mill-girl, who lifted her tenderly into her ample lap. The big, awkward girl, scarcely more than a child herself, uncouth, untutored, suddenly gained a dignity and a grace maternal--not too much to say it, she had charm. Letty leaned her head against Molly's breast and smiled contentedly, whilst the mill-girl rocked softly to and fro. "Shall Molly sing By-O?" She should. The little face, lifted, declared its request. "Letty must sing, too," murmured the young girl. "Sing By-O! We'll all sing it together." Letty covered her eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two words sweetly, "By-O! By-O!" and Molly joined her. Thus they rocked and hummed, a picture infinitely touching to see. One of these two would soon be an unclaimed foundling when the unknown woman had faded out of existence. The other--who can say how to her maternity would come! * * * * * In the room where we sit Jones' wife died a few weeks before, victim to pneumonia that all winter has scourged the town--"the ketchin' kind"--that is the way it has been caught, and fatally by many.[6] [Footnote 6: There are no statistics, they tell me, kept of births, marriages or deaths in this State; it is less surprising that the mill village has none.] In one corner stands a sewing machine, in another an organ--luxuries: in these cases, objects of art. They are bought on the installment plan, and some of these girls pay as high as $100 for the organ in monthly payments of $4 at a time. The mill-girl is too busy to use the machine and too ignorant to play the organ. Jones is a courteous host. His lodgers occupy the comfortable seats, whilst he perches himself on the edge of a straight high-backed chair and converses with us, not lighting his pipe until urged, then deprecatingly smoking in little smothered puffs. I feel convinced that Jones thinks that Massachusetts shoe-hands are a grade higher in the social scale than South Carolina mill-girls! Because, after being witness more than once to my morning and evening ablutions on the back steps, he said: "Now, I am goin' to dew the right thing by you-all; I'm goin' to fix up a wash-stand in that there loft." This is a triumph over the lax, uncleanly shiftlessness of the Southern settlement. Again: "You-all must of had good food whar you come from: your skin shows it; 'tain't much like hyar-'bouts. Why, I'd know a mill-hand anywhere, if I met her at the North Pole--salla, pale, sickly." I might have added for him, deathlike, ... skeleton ... _doomed_. But I listen, rocking in the best chair, whilst Mrs. White glides in from the kitchen and, unobserved, takes her place on a little low chair by the sewing machine behind Jones. Her baby rocks contentedly in Molly's arms. Jones continues: "I worked in the mill fifteen years. I have done a little of all jobs, I reckon, and I ain't got no use for mill-work. If they'd pay me fifty cents a side to run the 'speeders' I'd _go_ in fer an hour or two now and then. Why, I sell sewing machines and organs to the mill-hands all over the country. I make $60 a month, and _I touch all my money_," he said significantly. "It's the way to do. A man don't feel no dignity unless he does handle his own money, if it's ten cents or ten dollars." He then explains the corporation's methods of paying its slaves. Some of the hands never touch their money from month's end to month's end. Once in two weeks is pay-day. A woman has then worked 122 hours. The corporation furnishes her house. There is the rent to be paid; there are also the corporation stores from which she has been getting her food and coal and what gewgaws the cheap stuff on sale may tempt her to purchase. There is a book of coupons issued by the mill owners which are as good as gold. It is good at the stores, good for the rent, and her time is served out in pay for this representative currency. This is of course not obligatory, but many of the operatives avail themselves or bind themselves by it. When the people are ill, Jones says, they are docked for wages. When, for indisposition or fatigue, they knock a day off, there is a man, hired especially for this purpose, who rides from house to house to find out what is the matter with them, to urge them to rise, and if they are not literally too sick to move, they are hounded out of their beds and back to their looms. Jones himself, mark you, is emancipated! He has set himself free; but he is still a too-evident although a very innocent partisan of the corporation. [Illustration: "THE SOUTHERN MILL HAND'S FACE IS UNIQUE, A FEARFUL TYPE"] "I think," he says, "that the mill-hand is _meaner_ to the corporation than the corporation is to the mill-hand." "Why?" "Why, they would strike for shorter hours and better pay." Unconsciously with one word he condemns his own cause. "What's the use of these hyar mill-hands tryin' to fight corporations? Why, Excelsior is the biggest mill under one roof in the world; its capital is over a million; it has 24,500 spindles. The men that run these mills have got all their stuff paid for; they've got piles of money. What do they care for a few penniless lot of strikers? They can shut down and not feel it. Why, these hyar people might just as well fight against a stone wall." The wages of these people, remember, pay Jones for the organs upon which they cannot play and the machines which they cannot use. His home is a mill corporation house; he makes a neat sum by lodging the hands. He has fetched down from the hills Molly, his own niece, to work for him. He perforce _will_ speak well. I do not blame him. He is by all means the most respectable-looking member of the colony. He wears store clothes; he dresses neatly; he is shaven, brushed and washed. "Don't you let the mill hands discourage you with lies about the mill. Any of 'em would be jealous of you-all." Then he warns, again forced to plead for another side: "You-all won't come out as you go in, I tell you! You're the picture of health. Why," he continues, a little later, "you ain't got no idea how light-minded the mill-girl is. Why, in the summer time she'll trolley four or five miles to a dance-hall they've got down to ---- and dance there till four o'clock--come home just in time to get into the mills at 5:45." Which fact convinces me of nothing but that the women are still, despite their condition and their white slavery, human beings, and many of them are young human beings (Thank God, for it is a prophecy for their future!) _not yet crushed to the dumb endurance of beasts_. Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me. Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark, suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is warm and stifling. Close to an old trunk I sit down with a slip of paper on my knee and try to take a few notes. But no sooner have I begun to write than a step on the stair below announces another comer. Before annoyance can deepen too profoundly the big, awkward form of the landlady's niece slouches into sight. Sheepishly she comes across the room to me--sits down on the nearest bed. Molly's costume is typical: a dark cotton wrapper whose colours have become indistinct in the stains of machinery oil and perspiration. The mill girl boasts no coquetry of any kind around her neck and waist, but her headdress is a tribute to feminine vanity! Compactly screwed curl papers, dozens of them, accentuate the hard, unlovely lines of her face and brow. Her features are coarse, heavy and square, but her eyes are clear, frank and kind. She has an appealing, friendly expression; Molly is a distinctly whole-souled, nice creature. One elbow sinks in the bed and she cradles her crimped head in her large, dirty hand. "My, ef I could write as fast as you-all I'd write some letters, I reckon. Ust ter write; like it good enough, tew; but I ain't wrote in months. I was thinkin' th' other day ef I didn't take out the _pencile_ I'd dun forgit how to spell." Without the window through which she gazes is seen the pale night sky and in the heavens hangs the thread of a moon. Its light is unavailing alongside of the artificial moon--an enormous electric light. This lifts its brilliant, dazzling circumference high in the centre of the mill street. I have but to move a trifle aside from the window coping's shelter to receive a blinding blaze. But Molly has been subtle enough to discover the natural beauty of the night. She sees, curiously enough, past this modern illumination: the young moon has charm for her. "Ain't it a pretty night?" she asks me. Its beauty has not much chance to enhance this room and the crude forms, but it has awakened something akin to sentiment in the breast of this young savage. "I don't guess ever any one gets tired of hearing _sweet music_[7], does you-all?" [Footnote 7: The Southern term for stringed instruments.] "What is the nicest music you have ever heard, Molly?" "Why, a gui-taar an' a mandolin. It's so sweet! I could sit for hours an' hyar 'em pick." Her curlpaper head wags in enthusiasm. "Up to the hills, from whar I cum, I ust ter hyar 'em a serenadin' of some gyrl an' I ust ter set up in bed and lis'en tel it died out; it warn't for _me_, tho'!" "Didn't they ever serenade you?" "No, _ma'am_; I don't pay no 'tention to spo'tin'." Without, the moon's slender thread holds in a silvery circle the half-defined misty ball that shall soon be full moon. Thank heavens I shall not see this golden globe form, wane, decline in this town, forgotten of gods and men! But the woman at my side must see it mark its seasons; she is inscrutably part of the colony devoted to unending toil! Here all she has brought of strong youth shall fade and perish; womanly sentiment be crushed; die out in sterility; or worse, coarsen to the animal like to those whose companion she is forced to be. "I live to the Rockies, an' Uncle Tom he come up after me and carried me down hyar. My auntie died two weeks ago in the livin'-room; she had catchin' pneumonia. I tuk care of her all through her sickness, did every mite for her, and there was bo'ders, tew--I guess half a dozen of 'em--and I cooked and washed and everything for 'em all. When she died I went to work in the mill. Say, I reckon you-all didn't see my new hat?" It was fetched, done up with care in paper. She displayed it, a white straw round hat, covered with roses. At praise of it and admiration the girl flushed with pleasure. "My, you _dew_ like it? Why, I didn't think it _pretty, much_. Uncle Tom dun buy it for me." She gives all her wages to Uncle Tom, who in turn brings her from time to time such stimulus to labour as some pretty feminine thing like this. _This_ shall crown Molly's hair freed from the crimpers when the one day of the week, Sunday, comes! Not from Sunday till Sunday again are those hair crimpers unloosed. Despite Uncle Tom's opposition to mill work for women, despite his cognizance of the unhealthfulness of the mills, he knew a thing or two when he put his strapping innocent niece to work thirteen hours a day and pocketed himself the spoils. "I can't go to bade awful early, because I don't sleep ef I do; I'm too tired to sleep. When I feel real sick I tries to stay home a day, and then the overseer he rides around and _worries_ me to git up. I declare ef I wouldn't near as soon git up as to be roused up. They don't give you no peace, rousing you out of bed when you can scarcely stand. I suttenly dew feel bade to-night; I suttenly can't scarcely get to bed!" Here into our discourse, mounting the stairs, comes the pale mother and her little child. This ghost of a woman, wedding-ringless, who called herself Mrs. White, could scarcely crawl to her bed. She was whiter than the moon and as slender. Molly's bed is close to mine. The night toilet of this girl consisted of her divesting herself of her shoes, stockings and her cotton wrapper, then in all the other garments she wore during the day she turned herself into bed, nightgownless, unwashed. Mrs. White undressed her child, giving it very good care. It was a tiny creature, small-boned and meager. Every time I looked over at it it smiled appealingly, touchingly. Finally when she went downstairs to the pump to get a drink of water for it, I went over and in her absence stroked the little hand and arm: such a small hand and such an infinitesimal arm! Unused to attention and the touch, but not in the least frightened, Letty extended her miniature member and looked up at me in marvel. Mrs. White on her return made herself ready for the night. She said in her frail voice: "Letty's a powerful hand for vegetubbles, and she eats everything." Memory of the ham and the putrid fish I had seen this eighteen-months-old child devour not an hour ago came to my mind. Mrs. White let down her hair--a nonchalance that Molly had not been guilty of. This woman's hair was no more than a wisp. It stood out thin, wiry, almost invisible in the semilight. This was the extent of her toilet. She slipped out of her shoes, but she did not even take off her dress. Then she turned in by her child. She was very ill; it was plain to be seen. Death was fast upon this woman's track; it should clutch her inevitably within the next few weeks at most, if that emaciated body had resistance for so long. Her languor was slow and indicative, her gray, ashen face like death itself. "Lie still, Letty," she whispers to the baby; "don't touch mother--she can't stand it to-night." My mattress was straw and billowy, the bed sheetless, and under the weight of the cotton comforter I tried to compose myself. There were five of us in the little loft. My bedfellow was peaceful and lay still, too tired to do anything else. In front of me was the open window, through which shone the electric light, blatant and insistent; behind this, the clock of Excelsior--brightly lit and incandescent--glared in upon us, giant hands going round, seeming to threaten the hour of dawn and frightening sleep and mocking, bugbearing the short hours which the working-woman might claim for repose. It was well on to nine o 'clock and the mills were working overtime. Molly turned restlessly on her bed and murmured, "I suttenly dew feel bad to-night." A little later I heard her say over to herself: "My, I forgot to say my prayers." She was the sole member of the loft to whom sleep came; it came to her soon. I lay sleepless, watching the clock of Excelsior. The ladder staircase openly led to the kitchen: there was no door, no privacy possible to our quarters, and the house was full of men. A little later Letty cries: "A drink, a drink!" and the tone of the mother, who replies, is full of patience, but fuller still of suffering. "Hush, Letty, hush! Mother's too sick to get it." But the child continues to fret and plead. Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water which has brought death to so many in the mill village. The child drinks it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable--she rises to be violently sick over and over again. It seems an indefinite number of times to one who lies awake listening, and must seem unceasing to the poor wretch who returns to her bed only to rise again. She groans and suffers and bites her exclamations short. Twice she goes to the window and by the light of the electric lamp pours laudanum into a glass and takes it to still her pain and her need. The odours become so nauseous that I am fain to cover my face and head. The child fed on salt ham and pork is restless and thirsty all night and begs for water at short intervals. At last the demand is too much for the poor agonized mother--she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to which one feels her gentleness must be forced. "Hark! The cat will get you, Letty! See that cat?" And the feline horror in nameless form, evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, who murmurs, sobs and subsides. What spirit deeper than her character has hitherto displayed stirs the mill-girl in the bed next to me? Possibly the tragedy in the other bed; possibly the tragedy of her own youth. At all events, whatever burden is on her, her cross is heavy! She murmurs in her dreams, in a voice more mature, more serious than any tone of hers has indicated: "Oh, my God!" It is a strange cry--call--appeal. It rings solemn to me as I lie and watch and pity. Hours of night which should be to the labourer peaceful, full of repose after the day, drag along from nine o'clock, when we went to bed, till three. At three Mrs. White falls into a doze. I envy her. Over me the vermin have run riot; I have killed them on my neck and my arms. When it seemed that flesh and blood must succumb, and sleep, through sheer pity, take hold of us, a stirring begins in the kitchen below which in its proximity seems a part of the very room we occupy. The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire. At a quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly smoke has ascended the stairway to us. This smoke is thick with odours--the odour of bad grease and bad meat. Its cloud conceals the beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the window. It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall. So permeating is it that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me all day. I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. _I know what they are_, for I have seen them the night before--great crimson bits of flesh torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as he crouched by the kitchen table. This preparation continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever might be lucky enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. "Molly!" The girl murmurs and turns. "Come, you-all git up; you take so powerful long to dress yo'self!" Long to dress! It is difficult to see how that would be possible. She rises reluctantly, yawning, sighing; lifts her scarcely rested body, puts on her stockings and her shoes and the dirty wrapper. Her hair is untouched, her face unwashed, but she is ready for the day! Mrs. White has actually fallen asleep, the small roll, her baby, curled up close to her back. Molly's summons is mine as well. I am a mill-hand with her. I rise and repeat my ablutions of the evening before. Unhooking the tin basin, possessing myself of a bit of soap on the kitchen stairs, I wash my face and hands. Although the water is dipped from the pail on which a scum has formed, still it is so much more cool, refreshing and stimulating than anything that has come in contact with me for hours that it is a positive pleasure. * * * * * THE MILL By this time the morning has found us all, and unlovely it seems as regarded from this shanty environment. At 4:50 Excelsior has shrieked every settler awake. At half-past five we have breakfasted and I pass out of the house, one of the half-dozen who seek the mill from our doors. We fall in with the slowly moving, straggling file, receiving additions from each tenement as we pass. Beside me walks a boy of fourteen in brown earth-coloured clothes. He is so thin that his bones threaten to pierce his vestments. He has a slender visage of the frailness I have learned to know and distinguish: it represents the pure American type of people known as "poor white trash," and with whose blood has been scarcely any admixture of foreign element. A painter would call his fine, sensitive face beautiful: it is the face of a martyr. His hat of brown felt slouches over bright red hair; one cuffless hand, lank and long, hangs down inert, the other sleeve falls loose; he is one-armed. His attitude and gait express his defrauded existence. Cotton clings to his clothes; his shoes, nearly falling off his feet, are red with clay stains. I greet him; he is shy and surprised, but returns the salutation and keeps step with me. He is "from the hills," an orphan, perfectly friendless. He boards with a lot of men; evidently their companionship has not been any solace to him, for, as he is alone this day, I see him always alone. He works from 5:45 to 6:45, with three-quarters of an hour at noon, and has his Saturday afternoons and his Sundays free. He is destitute of the quality we call joy and has never known comfort. He makes fifty cents a day; he has no education, no way of getting an education; he is almost a man, crippled and condemned. At my exclamation when he tells me the sum of his wages he looks up at me; a faint likeness to a smile comes about his thin lips: "_It keeps me in existence_!" he says in a slow drawl. He used just those words. At the different doors of the mill we part. He is not unconscious of my fellowship with him, that I feel and know. A kindling light has come across his face. "Good luck to you!" I bid him, and he lifts his head and his bowed shoulders and with something like warmth replies, "I hope you-all will have good luck, tew." As we come into the spooling-room from the hot air without the mill seems cold. I go over to a green box destined for the refuse of the floors and sit down, waiting for work. On this day I am to have my own "side"--I am a full-fledged spooler. Excelsior has gotten us all out of our beds before actual daylight, but that does not mean we are to have a chance to begin our money-making piece-work job at once! "Thar ain't likely to be no yarn for an hour to-day," Maggie tells me. She is no less dirty than yesterday, or less smelly, but also she is no less kind. "I reckon you-all are goin' to make a remarkable spooler," she cheers me on. "You'll get tired out at first, but then I gets tired, tew, right along, only it ain't the same _kind_--it's not so _sharp_." Her distinction is clever. Across the room at one of the "drawing-in frames" I see the figure of an unusally pretty girl with curly dark hair. She bends to her job in front of the frame she runs; it has the effect of tapestry, of that work with which women of another--oh, of _quite_ another class--amuse their leisure, with which they kill their time. "Drawing-in,"[8] although a sitting job, is considered to be a back-breaker. The girls are ambitious at this work; they make good wages. They sit close to their frames, bent over, for twelve hours out of the day. This girl whom I see across the floor of the Excelsior is an object to rest the eyes upon; she is a beauty. There is not much beauty of any kind or description in sight. Maggie has noticed her esthetic effect. "You-all seen that girl; she's suttenly prob'ly am _peart_." [Footnote 8: A good drawer-in makes $1.25 a day.] She is a new hand from a distance. This is her first day. What miserable chance has brought her here? If she stays the mill will claim her body and soul. The overseer has marked her out; he hovers in the part of the room where she works. She has colour and her difference to her pale companions is marked. Excelsior will not leave those roses unwithered. I can foretell the change as yellow unhealthfulness creeps upon her cheeks and the red forever goes. There are no red cheeks here, not one. She has chosen a sitting-down job thinking it easier. I saw her lean back, put her hands around her waist and rest, or try to, after she has bent four hours over her close task. I go over to her. "They say it's awful hard on the eyes, but they tell me, too, that I'll be a remarkable fine hand." I saw her apply for work, and saw, too, the man's face as he looked at her when she asked: "Got any work?" "We've got plenty of work for a good-looking woman like you," he said with significance, and took pains to place her within his sight. The yarn has come in, and I return to my part of the mill; Maggie flies to her spools and leaves me to seek my distant place far away from her. I set my work in order; whilst my back is turned some girl possesses herself of my hand-harness. Mine was a new one, and the one she leaves for me is broken. This delays, naturally, and the overseer, after proving to his satisfaction that I am hampered, gets me a new one and I set to work. Many of the older hands come without breakfast, and a little later tin pails or paper parcels appear. These operatives crouch down in a Turkish fashion at the machines' sides and take a hasty mouthful of their unwholesome, unpleasant-looking food, eating with their fingers more like animals than human beings. By eight the full steam power is on, to judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed. There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you can tell it by the scowls and the low, insulting words as an enemy passes. To protect the hair from the flying pieces of cotton the more particular women, and oftentimes children as well, wear felt hats pulled down well over the eyes. The cotton, indeed, thistledown-like, flies without cessation through the air--spins off from the spools; it rises and floats, falling on the garments and in the hair, entering the nostrils and throat and lungs. I repeat, the expectoration, the coughing and the throat-cleaning is constant. Over there two girls have taken advantage of a wait for yarn to go to sleep on the floor; their heads are pillowed on each others' shoulders; they rest against a cotton bale. Maggie wanders over to me to see "how you-all is gettin' on." "Tired?" "Well, I reckon I am. Thank God we get out in a little while now." * * * * * One afternoon I went up to the loft to rest a few moments before going to the mill. Mrs. White was sitting on her bed, a slender figure in the blue-checked wrapper she always wore. Her head was close to the window, her silhouette in the light, pale and slender. "I wa'n't sick when I come hyar, but them mills! They's suttinly tew hyard on a woman! Weave-room killed me, I guess. I couldn't hyar at all when I come out and scarcely could stan' on ma feet when I got home. Tew tyred to eat, tew; and the water hyar is regularly pisen; hev you-all seen it? It's all colours. Doctor done come to see me; ain't helpin' me any; 'pears like he-all ain't goin' to come no mo'!" "If you have a husband, why don't you go to him and let him care for you?" She was silent, turning her wedding-ringless hand over and over on her lap: the flies came buzzing in around us, and in the near distance Excelsior buzzed, the loudest, most insistent creature on this part of the earth. "Seems like a woman ought to help a man--some," she murmured. Downstairs Mrs. Jones sums her up in a few words. "She-all suttinly ain't no _'Mrs'_ in the world! Calls herself _'White.'_" (The intonation is not to be mistaken.) "Pore thing's dyin'--knows it, tew! Come hyar to die, I reckon. She'll die right up thar in that baed, tew. Doctor don't come no mo'. Know she cayn't pay him nothin'. You-all come hyar to grandmaw, Letty!" The child around whom the threads of existence are weaving fabric more intricate than any woof or warp of the great mills goes confidingly to the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen save Tolstoi's could do justice. Mine can do no more than display them by faithfully transcribing their simple dialect-speech. "I am sixty-four years old, an' played out. Worked too hyard. Worked every day since I was a child, and when I wasn't workin' had the fevar. Come from the hills las' month. When his wife dyde, the son he come an' fetched me cross the river to help him." How has she lived so long and so well, with life "so hyard on her"? "I loved my husban', yes, ma'am, I regularly loved him; reckon no woman didn't ever love a man mo', and he loved me, tew, jest ez much. Seems tho' God couldn't bayr to see us-all so happy--couldn't las'; he dyde." Mrs. Jones' figure is a case of bones covered with a brown substance--you could scarcely call it skin; a weather-beaten, tanned hide; nothing more. This human statue, ever responsive to the eternal moulding, year after year has been worked upon by the titan instrument, Labour: struggle, disease, want. But this hill woman has known love. It has transfigured her, illumined her. This poor deformed body is a torch only for an immortal flame. I know now why it seems good to be near her, why her eyes are inspired.... I rise to leave her and she comes forward to me, puts out her hand first, then puts both thin, old arms about me and kisses me. In speaking of the settlement, it borders on the humourous to use the word sanitation. In the mill district, as far as my observation reached, there is none. Refuse not too vile for the public eye is thrown into the middle of the streets in front of the houses. The general drainage is performed by emptying pans and basins and receptacles into the backyards, so that as one stands at the back steps of one's own door one breathes and respires the filth of half a dozen shanties. Decaying vegetables, rags, dirt of all kinds are the flowers of these people, the decorations of their miserable garden patches. To walk through Granton (which the prospectus tells us is well drained) is to evoke nausea; to _inhabit_ Granton is an ordeal which even necessity cannot rob of its severity. These settlers, habitants of dwellings built by finance solely for the purpose of renting, are celebrated for their immorals--"a rough, lying, bad lot." "Oh, the mill-hands!" ... Sufficient, expressive designation. Nevertheless, these people, simple, direct and innocent, display qualities that we have been taught are enviable--a lack of curiosity, for the most part, in the affairs of others, a warm Southern courtesy, a human kindliness. I found these people degraded because of their habits and not of their tendencies, which statement I can justify; whatever may be their natural instincts, born, nurtured in their unlovely environment, they have no choice but to fall into the usages of poverty and degradation. They have seen nothing with which to compare their existences; they have no time, no means to be clean, and no stimulus to be decent. A job at Granton was no more difficult to secure than was "spoolin'" at the other mill. I applied one Saturday noon, when Granton was silent and the operatives within their doors asleep, for the most part, leaving the village as deserted as it is on a workday. A like desolation pervades the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad, pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors--cotton that resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the loneliness, the lawlessness of the place, the risk and boldness of my venture. By this I was most thoroughly a mill-girl in appearance, at least; my clothes were white with cotton, my hair far from tidy; fatigue and listlessness unassumed were in my attitude. I had not heard the Southern dialect for so long not to be able to fall into it with little effort. I told him I had been a "spooler" and did not like it--"wanted to spin." He listened silently, regarding me with interest and with what I trembled to fear was disbelief. I desperately pushed back my sunbonnet and in Southern drawl begged for work. "Spinnin'?" he asked. "What do you want to spin for?" He was a Yankee, his accent sharp and keen. How clean and decent and capable he appeared, the dark mill back of him; shantytown, vile, dirty, downtrodden, beside him! I told him that I was tired of spooling and knew I could make more by something else. He thrust his hands into his pockets. "To-night is Saturday; alone here?" "Yes." "Where you going to stay in Granton?" "I don't know yet." "Don't learn spinnin'," he said decidedly. "I am head of the _speedin'-room_. I'll give you a job in my room on Monday morning." My relief was immense. His subsequent questions I parried, thanked him, and withdrew to keep secret from Excelsior that I had deserted for Granton. Although these mills are within three hundred feet of each other, the villagers do not associate. The workings of Granton are unknown to Excelsior and vice versa. The speeding-room in Granton is second only in noise to the weave-room. Conversation must be entrancing and vital to be pursued here! The speeder has under her care as many machines as her skill can control. My teacher, Bessie, ran four sides, seventy-six speeders on a side, her work being regulated by a crank that marked the vibrations. To the lay mind the terms of the speeding-room can mean nothing. This girl made from $1.30 to $1.50 a day. She controlled in all 704 speeders; these she had to replenish and keep running, and to clean all the machinery gear with her own hands; to oil the steel, even to bend and clean under the lower shelf and come into contact with the most dangerous parts of the mechanism. The girl at the speeder next to me had just had her hand mashed to a jelly. The speeder watches her ropers run out; these stand at the top and back of the line. The ropers are refilled and their ends attached to the flying speeders by a quick motion. The yarn from the ropers is wound off on to the speeders. When the speeders are full of yarn they are detached from the nest of steel in which they whirl and are thrown into a hand-car which is pushed about the room by the girls themselves. Speeding is excessively dirty work and greasy; the oiling and cleaning is only fit for a man to do. The girl who teaches me has been at her work for ten years; she entered the factory at eight. She was tall, raw-boned, an expert, deft and capable, and, as far as I could judge in our acquaintance, thoroughly respectable. There are long waits in this department of the cotton-spinning life. On tall green stools we sit at the end of our sides during the time it takes for one well-filled roper to spin itself out; we talk, or rather contrive to make ourselves heard. She has a sweet, gentle face; she is courtesy and kindness itself. "What do you think about all day?" "Why, I couldn't even begin to tell all my thoughts." "Tell me some." "Why, I think about books, I reckon. Do you-all like readin'?" "Yes." "Ain't nuthin' I like so good when I ain't tyrd." "Are you often tired?" And this question surprises her. She looks up at me and smiles. "Why, I'm _always_ tyrd! I read novels for the most part; like to read love stories and about fo'ran travel." (For one short moment please consider: This hemmed-in life, this limited existence, encompassed on all sides by the warfare and battle and din of maddening sounds, vibrations around her during twelve hours of the day, vibrations which, mean that her food is being gained by each pulse of the engine and its ratio marked off by the disk at her side. Before her the scene is unchanged day after day, month after month, year after year. It is not an experience to this woman who works beside me so patiently; it is her life. The forms she sees are warped and scarred; the intellects with which she comes in contact are dulled and undeveloped. All they know is toil, all they know of gain is a fluctuation in a wage that ranges from cents to a dollar and cents again, never touching a two-dollar mark. The children who, barefooted, filthy, brush past her, sweeping the cotton from the infected floors, these are the only forms of childhood she has ever seen. The dirty women around her, low-browed, sensual, are the forms of womanhood that she knows; and the men? If she does not feed the passion of the overseer, she may find some mill-hand who will contract a "mill marriage" with this daughter of the loom, a marriage little binding to him and which will give her children to give in time to the mill. This is the realism of her love story: She reads books that you, too, may have read; she dares to dream of scenes, to picture them--scenes that you have sought and wearied of. A tithe of our satiety would mean her banquet, her salvation!... Her happiness? _That_ question who can answer for her or for you?) She continues: "I'm very fond of fo'ran travel, only I ain't never had much occasion for it." This pathos and humour keep me silent. A few ropers have run out; she rises. I rise, too, to replace, to attach, and set the exhausted line taut and complete again. Ten years! Ten years! All her girlhood and youth has been given to keeping ropers supplied with fresh yarn and speeders a-whirling. During this travail she has kept a serenity of expression, a depth of sweetness at which I marvel. Her voice is peculiarly soft and, coupled with the dialect drawl, is pleasant to hear. "I hate the mills!" she says simply. "What would you be if you could choose?" I venture to ask. She has no hesitation in answering. "I'd love to be a trained nurse." Then, turn about is fair play in her mind, I suppose, for she asks: "What would _you-all_ be?" And ashamed not to well repay her truthfulness I frankly respond: "I'd like to write a book." "I _dee_-clare." She stares at me. "Why, you-all _is_ ambitious. Did you ever write anything?" "A letter or two." She is interested and kindles, leaning forward. "I suttenly ain't so high in my ambitions," she says appreciatively. "Wish you'd write a love story for me to read," and she ponders over the idea, her eyes on my snowy flying speeders. "Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin's on writin' hyar? Ef you don't mind anybody's messin' with your things, bring your scrappin's to me an' I'll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not," she whispered to me encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills than a loud sound. I thanked her and said: "Do you think that you'd know?" "Well, I guess I would!" she said confidently. "I ain't read all my life sense I was eight years old not to know good writin' from bad. Can you-all sing?" "No." "Play sweet music?" "No." "I jest love it." She enthuses. "Every Saturday afternoon I take of a music teacher on the gee-tar. It costs me a quarter." I could see the scene: a shanty room, the tall, awkward figure bending over her instrument; the type that the teacher made, the ambition, the eagerness--all of which qualities we are so willing to deny to the slaves of toil. "They ain't much flowers here in Granton," she said again. "'Tain't no use to try to have even a few geraneums; it's so dry; ain't no yards nor gardens, nuther." Musing on this desolation as she walks up and down the line, she says: "I dew love flowers, don't you?" * * * * * Over and over again I am asked by those whose wish I suppose is to prove to themselves and their consciences that the working-girl is not so actively wretched, her outcry is not so audible that we are forced to respond: "The working people are happy? The factory girls are happy, are they not? Don't you find them so?" Is it a satisfaction to the leisure class, to the capitalist and employer, to feel that a woman poorly housed, ill-fed, in imminent moral danger, every temptation rampant over barriers down, overworked, overstrained by labour varying from ten to thirteen hours a day, by all-night labour, and destruction of body and soul, _is happy_? Do you _wish_ her to be so? Is the existence _ideal_? I can speak only for the shoe manufacturing girl of Lynn and for the Southern mill-hand. I thank Heaven that I can say truthfully, that of all who came under my observation, not one who was of age to reflect was happy. I repeat, the working-woman is brave and courageous, but the most sane and hopeful indication for the future of the factory girl and the mill-hand is that she rebels, dreams of something better, and will in the fullness of time stretch toward it. They have no time to think, even if they knew how. All that remains for them in the few miserable hours of relief from labour and confinement and noise is to seek what pastime they may find under their hand. We have never realized, they have never known, that their great need--given the work that is wrung from them and the degradation in which they are forced to live--is a craving for amusement and relaxation. Amusements for this class are not provided; they _can_ laugh, they rarely do. The thing that they seek--let me repeat: I cannot repeat it too often--in the minimum of time that remains to them, is distraction. They do not want to read; they do not want to study; they are too tired to concentrate. How can you expect it? I heard a manufacturer say: "We gave our mill-hands everything that we could to elevate them--a natatorium, a reading library--and these halls fell into disuse." I ask him now, through these pages, the questions which I did not put to him then as I listened in silence to his complaint. He said he thought too much was done for the mill-hands. What time would he suggest that they should spend in the reading-room, even if they have learned to read? They rise at four; at a quarter before six they are at work. The day in winter is not born when they start their tasks; the night has fallen long before they cease. In summer they are worked long into their evenings. They tell me that they are too tired to eat; that all they want to do is to turn their aching bones on to their miserable mattresses and sleep until they are cried and shrieked awake by the mill summons. Therefore they solve their own questions. Nothing is provided for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is within their reach--animal enjoyment, human intercourse and companionship. They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let us believe, more excuse. The mill marriage is a farce, and yet they choose to call their unions now and again a marriage. Many a woman has been a wife several times in the same town, in the same house. The bond-tying is a form, and, of course, mostly ignored. The settlements swarm with illegitimate children. Next to me work two young girls, both under seventeen, both ringless and with child. * * * * * Let me picture the Foster household, where I used to call Saturday evenings. Mrs. Foster herself, dirty, slipshod, a frowzy mass, hugs her fireside. Although the day is warm, she kindled a fire to stimulate the thin, poor blood exhausted by disease and fevers. Two flatirons lie in a dirty heap on the floor. As usual, the room is a nest of filth and untidiness. Mrs. Foster is half paralyzed, but her tongue is free. She talks fluently in her soft Southern drawl, more Negro than white as to speech and tone. Up to her sidles a dirty, pretty little boy of four. "This yere is too little to go to the mill, but he's wild to go; yes, ser, he is so. Las' night he come to me en say, 'Auntie, you-all wake me up at fo' 'clock sure; I got ter go ter the mill.'" Here the little blond child, whose mouth is set on a pewter spoon dripping over with hominy, grins appreciatively. He throws back his white and delicate little face, and his aunt, drawing him close to her, caresses him and continues: "Yes, ma'am, to-day he dun wake up after they-all had gone and he sayd, 'My goodness, I dun oversleep mase'f!' He sha'n't go to the mill," she frowned, "not ef we can help it. Why, I don't never let him outen my sight; 'fraid lest those awful mill children would git at him." Thus she sheltered him with what care she knew--care that unfortunately _could not go far enough back to protect him_! His mother came in at the noon hour, as we sat there rocking and chatting. She was a straight, slender creature, not without grace in her shirt-waist and her low-pulled felt hat that shadowed her sullen face. She was very young, not more than twenty-two, and her history indicative and tragic. With a word only and a nod she passes us; she has now too many vital things and incidents in her own career to be curious regarding a strange mill-hand. She goes with her comrade--and cousin--Mamie, into the kitchen to devour in as short a time as possible the noon dinner, served by the grandmother: cabbage and hominy. "They don't have time 'nough to eat," the aunt says; "no sooner then they-all come in and bolt their dinner then it is time to go back." Her child has followed her. Minnie was married at thirteen; in less than a year she was a grass widow. "My goodness, there's lots of grass widows!" my frowsled hostess nods. "Why, in one weave-room hyar there ain't a gyrl but what's left by her husband. One day a new gyrl come for to run a loom and they yells out at her, 'Is you-all a grass widow? Yer can't come in hyar ef you ain't.'" But it was after her grass widowhood that Minnie's tragedy began. The mill was her ruin. So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go, _does not_ go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put there to run these women's work. The overseer was father of her child, and when she tried to force from him recognition and aid he threw over his position and left Columbia and this behind him. This, one instance under my own eyes observed. There are many. "Mamie works all night" (she spoke of the other girl)--"makes more money. My, but she hates the mills! Says she ain't ever known a restful minute sence she left the hills." My hostess has drawn the same conclusion from my Northern appearance that the Joneses drew. "You-all must eat good where you come from! you look so healthy.' Do you-all know the Banks girl over to Calcutta?" "No." "They give her nine months." (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round here.) "Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts like a man. She drew her knife on a man last week--cut his face all up and into his side through his lung. Tried to pass as she was his wife, but when they had her up, ma'am, they proved she had been three men's wives and he four gyrl's husbands. He liked to died of the cut. They've given her nine months, but he ain't the only man that bears her marks. Over to Calcutta it's the knife and the gun at a wink. This yere was an awful pretty gyrl. My Min seed her peekin' out from behind the loom in the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said: 'Who's that yere pretty boy peekin' at me?' And that gyrl told Min that she couldn't help knife the men, they all worried on her so! 'Won't never leave me alone; I jest have to draw on 'em; there ain't no other way.'"... For the annals of morality and decency do not take up this faithful account and picture the cotton-mill village. You will not find it in these scenes drawn from the life as it is at this hour, as it is portrayed by the words that the very people themselves will pour into your ears. Under the walls of Calcutta Negroes are engaged in laying prospective flower beds, so that the thirteen-hour workers may look out from time to time and see the forms of flowers. On the other side rise some twenty shanties. These houses of Calcutta village are very small, built from the roughest unpainted boards. Here it is, in this little settlement, that the knife comes flashing out at a word--that the women shoot as well as men, and perhaps more quickly. * * * * * "Richmond aint so bad as the other!" I can hear Mrs. Foster drawl out this recommendation to us. "They ain't so much chills here. We dun move up from town first; had to--too high rents for we-all; now we dun stay hyar. Why, some of the gyrls and boys works to Granton and bo'ds hyar; seems like it's mo' healthy." Moving, ambulant population! tramping from hill to hill, from sand-heap to sand-heap to escape the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling, bitter existence--pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter what the burden's weight must be, _one must live_! It takes a great deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of interest. At what should they rejoice? I have made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an absolute lack of every form or sight that might inspire or cause a soul to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from labour. There should be a complete readjustment of this system. I have been interested in reading in the New York _Sun_ of April 20th of the visit of the bishops to the model factories in Ohio. I am constrained to wish that bishops and clergy and philanthropists and millionaires and capitalists might visit in bodies and separately the mills of South Carolina and their tenement population. It is difficult to know just what the ideas are of the people who have constructed these dwellings. They tell us in this same prospectus, which I have read with interest after my personal experience, that these villages are "_picturesque_." This is the only reference I find to the people and their conditions. I have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to destruction before the scales swing even. * * * * * THE CHILD IN SOUTHERN MILLS * * * * * CHAPTER IX THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS In the week before I left for the South I dined in ---- with a very charming woman and her husband. Before a table exquisite in its appointments, laden with the best the market could offer and good taste display, sat the mistress, a graceful, intelligent young woman, full of philanthropic, charitable interests, and one whom I know to be devoted to the care and benefiting of little children in her city. During the meal I said to her casually: "Do you know that in your mills in South Carolina to-night, as we sit here, little children are working at the looms and frames--little children, some of them not more than six years old?" She said, in astonishment, "I don't know it; and I can't believe it." I told her I should soon see just how true the reports were, and when I returned to New York I would tell her the facts. She is not alone in her ignorance. Not one person, man or woman, to whom I told the facts of the cases I observed "_dreamed that children worked in any mills in the United States_!" After my experience amongst the working class, I am safe in saying that I consider their grievances to be the outcome of the ignorance and greed of the manufacturer abetted, aided and made possible by the ignorance and poverty of the labourer. There is nothing more conscience-silencing than to accuse the writers of the different articles on child-labour of sentimentality. The comfort in which we live makes it easy to eliminate thoughts that torture us to action in the cause of others. I will be delighted to meet an accusation of sentimentality and exaggeration by any man or woman who has gone to a Southern mill as an operative and worked side by side with the children, lived with them in their homes. It is defamation to use the word "home" in connection with the unwholesome shanty in the pest-ridden district where the remnant of the children's lives not lived in the mill is passed. This handful of unpainted huts, raised on stilts from the soil, fever-ridden and malarious; this blank, ugly line of sun-blistered shanties, along a road, yellow-sand deep, is a mill village. The word _village_ has a cheerful sound. It summons a country scene, with the charms of home, however simple and unpretentious. There is nothing to charm or please in the villages I have already, in these pages, drawn for you to see and which with veritable sick reluctance I summon again before your eyes. Every house is like unto its neighbour--a shelter put up rapidly and filled to the best advantage. There is not a garden within miles, not a flower, scarcely a tree. Arid, desolate, beautyless, the pale sand of the State of South Carolina nurtures as best it can a stray tree or shrub--no more. At the foot of the shanties' black line rises the cotton mill. New, enormous, sanitary (!!). Its capital runs into millions; its prospectuses are pompous; its pay-roll mysterious. You will not be able to say how many of the fifteen hundred odd hands at work in this mill are adults, how many children. In the State of South Carolina there are statistics of neither births, marriages nor deaths. What can you expect of a mill village! At 5:45 we have breakfasted--the twelve of us who live in one small shanty, where we have slept, all five of us in one room, men to the right of the kitchen, women and children on the left. To leave the pestilence of foul air, the stench of that dwelling, is blessed, even if the stroke that summons is the mill whistle. As we troop to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and infirmity--but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel between its merciless jaws is the little child. So long as I am part of its food and triumph I will study the mill. Leaving the line of flashing, whirling spools, I lean against the green box full of cotton refuse and regard the giant room. It is a wonderful sight. The mill itself, a model of careful, well-considered building, has every facility for the best and most advantageous manufacture of textiles. The fine frames of the intricate "warping," the well-placed frames of the "drawing-in" all along the window sides of the rooms; then lines upon lines of spool frames. Great piles of stuff lie here and there in the room. It is early--"all the yarn ain't come yet." Two children whose work has not been apportioned lie asleep against a cotton bale. The terrible noise, the grinding, whirling, pounding, the gigantic burr renders other senses keen. By my side works a little girl of eight. Her brutal face, already bespeaking knowledge of things childhood should ignore, is surrounded by a forest of yellow hair. She goes doggedly at her spools, grasping them sullenly. She walks well on her bare, filthy feet. Her hands and arms are no longer flesh colour, but resemble weather-roughened hide, ingrained with dirt. Around the tangle of her hair cotton threads and bits of lint make a sort of aureole. (Her nimbus of labour, if you will!) There is nothing saint-like in that face, nor in the loose-lipped mouth, whence exudes a black stain of snuff as between her lips she turns the root she chews. "She's a mean girl," my little companion says; "we-all don't hev nothin' to say to her." "Why?" "Her maw hunts her to the mill; she don't want to go--no, sir--so she's mad most the time." Thus she sets her dogged resistance in scowling black looks, in quick, frantic gestures and motions against the machinery that claims her impotent childhood. The nimbus around her furze of hair remains; there are other heads than saints--there are martyrs! Let the child wear her crown. Through the looms I catch sight of Upton's, my landlord's, little child. She is seven; so small that they have a box for her to stand upon. She is a pretty, frail, little thing, a spooler--"a good spooler, tew!" Through the frames on the other side I can only see her fingers as they clutch at the flying spools; her head is not high enough, even with the box, to be visible. Her hands are fairy hands, fine-boned, well-made, only they are so thin and dirty, and her nails--claws; she would do well to have them cut. A nail can be torn from the finger, _is_ torn from the finger frequently,[9] by this flying spool. I go over to Upton's little girl. Her spindles are not thinner nor her spools whiter. [Footnote 9: In Huntsville, Alabama, a child of eight lost her index and middle fingers of the right hand in January, 1902. One doctor told me that he had amputated the fingers of more than a hundred babies. A merchant told me he had _frequently_ seen children whose hands had been cut off by the machinery.--_American Federationist_.] "How old are you?" "Ten." She looks six. It is impossible to know if what she says is true. The children are commanded both by parents and bosses to advance their ages when asked. "Tired?" She nods, without stopping. She is a "remarkable fine hand." She makes forty cents a day. See the value of this labour to the manufacturer--cheap, yet skilled; to the parent it represents $2.40 per week. I must not think that as I work beside them I will gain their confidence! They have no time to talk. Indeed, conversation is not well looked upon by the bosses, and I soon see that unless I want to entail a sharp reproof for myself and them I must stick to my "side." And at noon I have no heart to take their leisure. At twelve o'clock, Minnie, a little spooler, scarcely higher than her spools, lifts her hands above her head and exclaims: _"Thank God, there's the whistle!"_ I watched them disperse: some run like mad, always bareheaded, to fetch the dinner-pail for mother or father who work in the mill and who choose to spend these little legs and spare their own. It takes ten minutes to go, ten to return, and the little labourer has ten to devote to its own food, which, half the time, he is too exhausted to eat. I watch the children crouch on the floor by the frames; some fall asleep between the mouthfuls of food, and so lie asleep with food in their mouths until the overseer rouses them to their tasks again. Here and there totters a little child just learning to walk; it runs and crawls the length of the mill. Mothers who have no one with whom to leave their babies bring them to the workshop, and their lives begin, continue and end in the horrible pandemonium. One little boy passes by with his broom; he is whistling. I look up at the cheery sound that pierces fresh but faint and natural above the machines' noise. His eyes are bright; his good spirits surprise me: here is an argument for my comfortable friends who wish to prove that the children "are happy!" I stop him. "You seem very jolly!" He grins. "How long have you been working?" "Two or three days." The gay creature has just _begun_ his servitude and brings into the dreary monotony a flash of the spirit which should fill childhood. I think it will be granted that it takes a great deal to discourage and dishearten a child. The hopefulness of the mill communities lies in just those elements that overwork in the adult and that child labour will ultimately destroy. When hope is gone in the adult he must wreak some vengeance on the bitter fate that has robbed him. There is no more tragic thing than the hopeless child. The adult who grows hopeless can affiliate with the malcontents and find in the insanity of anarchy what he calls revenge. It seems folly to insult the common sense of the public by asking them whether they think that thirteen hours a day, with a half to three-quarters of an hour for recreation at noon, or the same amount of night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ... whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive development, to the making of decent manhood or womanhood? What kind of citizen can this child--if he is fit enough in the economic struggle of the world to survive--turn out to be? Not citizens at all: creatures scarcely fit to be called human beings. I asked the little girl who teaches me to spool who the man is whom I have seen riding around on horseback through the town. "Why, he goes roun' rousin' up the hands who ain't in their places. Sometimes he takes the children outen thayre bades an' brings 'em back to the mill." And if the child can stand, it spins and spools until it drops, till constitution rebels, and death, the only friend it has ever known, sets it free. Besides being spinners and spoolers, and occasionally weavers even, the children sweep the cotton-strewed floors. Scarcely has the miserable little object, ragged and odourous, passed me with his long broom, which he drags half-heartedly along, than the space he has swept up is cotton-strewn again. It settles with discouraging rapidity; it has also settled on the child's hair and clothes, and his eyelashes, and this atmosphere he breathes and fairly eats, until his lungs become diseased. Pneumonia--fatal in nearly all cases here--and lung fever had been a pestilence, "a regular plague," before I came. There were four cases in the village where I, lived, and fever and ague, malaria and grippe did their parts. "Why, thar ain't never a haouse but's got somebody sick," my little teacher informed me in her soft Southern dialect. "I suttinly never did see a place like this for dyin' in winter time. I reckon et's funerals every day." Here is a little child, not more than seven years old. The land is a hot enough country, we will concede, but not a savage South Sea Island! She has on one garment, if a tattered sacking dress can so be termed. Her bones are nearly through her skin, but her stomach is an unhealthy pouch, abnormal. _She has dropsy._ She works in _a new mill_--in one of the largest mills in South Carolina. Here is a slender little boy--a birch rod (good old simile) is not more slender, but the birch has the advantage: it is elastic--it bends, has youth in it. This boy looks ninety. He is a dwarf; twelve years old, he appears seven, no more. He sweeps the cotton off the floor of "the baby mill." (How tenderly and proudly the owners speak of their brick and mortar.) He sweeps the cotton and lint from the mill aisles from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. without a break in the night's routine. He stops of his own accord, however, to cough and expectorate--he has advanced tuberculosis. At night the shanties receive us. On a pine board is spread our food--can you call it nourishment? The hominy and molasses is the best part; salt pork and ham are the strong victuals. It is eight o'clock when the children reach their homes--later if the mill work is behindhand and they are kept over hours. They are usually beyond speech. They fall asleep at the table, on the stairs; they are carried to bed and there laid down as they are, unwashed, undressed; and the inanimate bundles of rags so lie until the mill summons them with its imperious cry before sunrise, while they are still in stupid sleep: "What do you do on Sundays?" I asked one little girl. "Why, thare ain't nothing much to dew. I go to the park sometimes." This park is at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia. Picture it! A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be conceived. On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to so spend the day. On Sundays the mill shanties are full of sleepers. The park has a limited number of devotees. Through the beautyless paths and walks the figures pass like shadows. There come three mill girls arm in arm; their curl papers, screwed tight all the week, are out on Sunday, in greasy, abundant curls. Sunday clothes are displayed in all their superbness. Three or four young men, town fellows, follow them; they are all strangers, but they will go home arm in arm. Several little children, who have no clothes but those, they wear, cling close to the side of a gaunt, pale-faced man, who carries in his arms the youngest. The little girl has become a weight to be carried on Sundays; she has worked six days of the week--shall she not rest on the seventh? She shall; she claims this, and lies inert on the man's arm, her face already seared with the scars of toil. I ran such risk taking pictures that I relinquished the task, and it was only the last day at the mill, while still in my working clothes with a camera concealed in my pocket, that I contrived to get a picture or two. I ventured to ask two little boys who swept the mill to stand for their pictures. "I don't kyar to," the older one said. I explained that it would not hurt them, as I thought he was afraid; but his little companion vouchsafed: "We-all ain't got no nickel." When they understood it was a free picture they were as delighted as possible and posed with alacrity, making touching apologies for their greasy, dirty condition. When I asked one of them if he was ever clean, he said: "On Sunday I wash my hands." It was noon, on the day I chose to leave ----, turning my back on the mill that had allured me to its doors and labour. In South Carolina early April is torrid, flies and mosquitoes are rampant. What must this settlement be in midsummer heat? There is no colour in the Southern scene; the clothes of the mill-hands, the houses, the soil are of one tone--and, more strange, there is not one line of red, one dash of life, in the faces of the hundreds of women and children that pass me on their way back to work. Under the existing circumstances they have no outlook, these people, no hope; their appearance expresses accurately the changeless routine of an existence devoted to eternal ignorance, eternal toil. From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing, inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this Southern mill justly famous. The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy, frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their sleeves; they are barefooted, bareheaded. With these little figures the elements wanton; they can never know the fullness of summer or the proper maturity of autumn. Suns have burned them, rains have fallen upon them, as unprotected through storms they go to their work. The winter winds have penetrated the tatters with blades like knives; gray and dusty and earth-coloured the line passes. These are children? No, they are wraiths of childhood--they are effigies of youth! What can Hope work in this down-trodden soil for any future harvest? They can curse and swear; they chew tobacco and take snuff. When they speak at all their voices are feeble; ears long dulled by the thunder of the mill are no longer keen to sound; their speech is low and scarcely audible. Over sallow cheeks where the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood. As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark the distinctive visages of these children of labour. At certain seasons of the year they actually die off like flies. They fall subject, not to children's diseases exactly--nothing really natural seems to come into the course of these little existences--they fall a prey to the maladies that are the outcomes of their conditions. They are always half-clad in the winter time; their clothes differ nothing at all from their summer clothes; they have no overcoats or coats; many of them go barefoot all winter long. They come out from the hot mills into cold, raw winds and fall an easy prey to pneumonia, scourge of the mill-town. Their general health is bad all the year round; their skins and complexions have taken the tone of the sandy soil of the Southern country in which they are bred and in which their martyrdom is accomplished. I never saw a rosy cheek nor a clear skin: these are the parchment editions of childhood on which Tragedy is written indelibly. You can there read the eternal condemnation of those who have employed them for the sake of gain. It is a melancholy satisfaction to believe that mill labour will kill off little spinners and spoolers. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. There are constitutions that survive all the horrors of existence. I have worked both in Massachusetts and the South beside women who entered the mill service at eight years of age. One of these was still in her girlhood when I knew her. She was very strong, very good and still had some illusions left. I do not know what it goes to prove, when I say that at twenty, in spite of twelve years of labour, she still dreamed, still hoped, still longed and prayed _for something that was not a mill_. If this means content in servitude, if this means that the poor white trash are born slaves, or if, on the contrary, it means that there is something inherent in a woman that will carry her past suicide and past idiocy and degradation, all of which is around her, I think it argues well for the working women. The other woman was forty. She had no illusions left--please remember she had worked since eight; she had reached, if you like, the idiot stage. She had nothing to offer during all the time I knew her but a few sentences directly in connection with her toil. It is useless to advance the plea that spooling is not difficult. No child (we will cancel under twelve!) should work at all. No human creature should work thirteen hours a day. No baby of six, seven or eight should be seen in the mills. It is also useless to say that these children tell you that they "like the mill." They are beaten by their parents if they do not tell you this, and, granted that they do not like their servitude, when was it thought expedient that a child should direct its existence? If they do not pass the early years of their lives in study, when should they learn? At what period of their lives should the children of the Southern mill-hand be educated? Long before they reach their teens their habits are formed--ignorance is ingrained; indeed, after a few years they are so vitally reduced that if you will you cannot teach them. Are these little American children, then, to have no books but labour? No recreation? To be crushed out of life to satisfy the ignorance and greed of their parents, the greed of the manufacturers? Whatever else we are, we are financiers _per se_. The fact that to-day, as for years past, Southern cotton mills are employing the labour of children under tender age--employing an army of them to the number of twenty thousand under twelve--can only be explained by a frank admittal that infantile labour has been considered advantageous to the cause of gain. This gain, apparent by the facts that a mill can be run for thousands of dollars less in the South than a like mill can be run in the North, and its net surplus profits be the same as those of the Northern manufactory, is one by which one generation alone will profit. The attractiveness of the figures is fallacious. What I imply is self-evident. The infant population (its numbers give it a right to this dignity of term) whose cheap toil feeds the mills is doomed. I mean to say that the rank and file of humanity are daily weeded out; that thousands of possibly strong, healthy, mature labouring men and women are being disease-stricken, hounded out of life; the cotton mill child cannot develop to the strong normal adult working-man and woman. The fiber exhausted in the young body cannot be recreated. Early death carries hundreds out of life, disease rots the remainder, and the dulled maturity attained by a creature whose life has been passed in this labour is not fit to propagate the species. The excessively low wages paid these little mill-hands keep under, of necessity, the wage paid the grown labourer. It is a crying pity that children are equal to the task imposed upon them. It is a crying pity that machines (since they have appeared, with their extended, all-absorbing power) should not do all! Particularly in the Southern States do they evince, at a fatal point, their limit, display their inadequacy. When babies can be employed successfully for thirteen hours out of the twenty-four at all machines with men and women; when infants feeds mechanism with labour that has not one elevating, humanizing effect upon them physically or mentally, it places human intelligence below par and cheapens and distorts the nobler forms of toil. Not only is it "no disgrace to work," but on the contrary it is a splendid thing to be able to labour, and those who gain their bread by the sweat of their brow are not the servants of mankind in the sense of the term, but the patriarchs and controllers of the world's march and the most subtle signs of the times. But there are distinctly fitnesses of labour, and the proper presentation to the working-man and woman and child is a consideration. No one to-day would be likely for an instant to concede that to replace the treadmill horse with a child (a thing often seen and practised in times past) would be an advantage. And yet the march of the child up and down before its spooling frame is more suggestive of an animal--of the dog hitched to the Belgian milk cart; of the horse on the mill-tread--than another analogy. Contrast this pallid automaton with the children of the poor in a New York kindergarten, where the six-or seven-year-old child of the German, the Hungarian, the Polish emigrant, may have its imagination stimulated, its creative and individual faculties employed as it is taught to _make things_--construct, combine, weave, sew, mould. Every power latent is cajoled to expression, every talent encouraged. Thus work in its first form is rendered attractive, and youth and individuality are encouraged. In the South of this American country whose signet is individualism, whose strength (despite our motto, "United we stand") is in the individual freedom and vast play of original thought, here in the South our purest born, the most unmixed blood of us, is being converted into machines of labour when the forms of little children are bound in youth to the spindle and loom. In a certain mill in Alabama there are seventy-five child-labourers who work twelve hours out of the twenty-four; they have a half-hour at noon for luncheon. There is a night school in connection with this mill corporation. Fancy it, a night school for the day-long child labourer! Fifty out of seventy-five troop to it. Although they are so tired they cannot keep awake on the benches, and the littlest of them falls asleep over its letters, although they weep with fatigue, they are eager to learn! Is there a more conclusive testimony to the quality of the material that is being lost to the States and the country by the martyrdom of intelligent children? One hears two points of view expressed on this subject. The capitalist advances that the greed of the parents forces the children into the mills; the people themselves tell you that unless they are willing to let their available children work, their own lives are made impossible by the overseers. A widow who has children stands a fair chance of having her rent free; if she refuses this tithe of flesh and blood she is too often thrust into the street. So I am told. Now, which of these facts is the truth? It seems to be clearly too much left to the decision of private enterprise or parental incapability. The Legislature is the only school in which to decide the question. During my stay in South Carolina I never heard one woman advocate the mills for children. One mother, holding to her breast her illegitimate child, her face dark with dislike, said: "_Them mills!_ I would not let _my_ little boy work in 'em! No, sir! He would go over my dead body." Another woman said: "_My_ little girl work? No, ma'am; she goes to school!" and the child came in even as she spoke--let me say the only cheerful specimen of childhood, with the exception of the few little creatures in the kindergarten, that I saw in the mill district. South Carolina has become very haughty on this topic and has reached a point when she tells us she is to cure the sore in her own body without aid or interference. At a late session of the Legislature the bill for the restriction of child labour--we must call it this, since it legislates only for the child under ten--this bill was defeated by only two dissenting voices. A humane gentleman who laid claim to one of these voices was heard to ejaculate as the bill failed to pass: "Thank God!" Just why, it is not easy to understand. When I was so arrogant as to say to the editor of _The State_, the leading paper in South Carolina, that I hoped my article might aid the cause, I made an error clearly, for he replied: "We need no aid. The people of South Carolina are aroused to the horror and will cure it themselves." Georgia is not roused to the horror; Alabama is stirring actively; but the Northerners who own these mills--the capitalists, the manufacturers, the men who are building up a reputation for the wealth of South Carolina and Alabama mills, are the least aroused of all. We must believe that many directors of these mills are ignorant of the state of affairs, and that those who are enlightened willingly blind their eyes. The mill prospectuses are humourous when read by the investigator. We are told "labour-unions cut no figure here!" Go at night through the mills with the head of the Labour Federation and with the instigator of the first strikes in this district--with men who are the brain and fiber of the labour organization, and see the friendly looks flash forth, see the understanding with which they are greeted all through certain mills. Consider that not 200 miles away at the moment are 22,000 labourers on strike. Then greet these statements with a smile! * * * * * On my return to the North I made an especial effort to see my New England friend. We lunched together this time, and at the end of the meal her three little children fluttered in to say a friendly word. I looked at them, jealous for their little defrauded fellows, whose twelve-hour daily labour served to purchase these exquisite clothes and to heap with dainties the table before us. But I was nevertheless rejoiced to see once again the forms of real childhood for whom air and freedom and wealth were doing blessed tasks. When we were alone I drew for my friend as well as I could pictures of what I had seen. She leaned forward, took a brandied cherry from the dish in front of her, ate it delicately and dipped her fingers in the finger-bowl; then she said: "Dear friend, I am going to surprise you very much." I waited, and felt that it would be difficult to surprise me with a tale of a Southern mill. "Those little children--_love the mill!_ They _like_ to work. It's a great deal better for them to be employed than for them to run the streets!" She smiled over her argument, and I waited. "Do you know," she continued, "that I believe they are really very happy." She had well presented her argument. She had said she would surprise me--and she did. "You will not feel it a breach of affection and hospitality if I print what you say?" I asked her. "It's only fair that the capitalist's view should be given here and there first hand. You own one-half the mill in ----, Carolina?" "Yes." "What do you think of a model mill with only nine hours a day labour, holidays and all nights free, schools, where education is enforced by the State; reading-rooms open as well as churches--amusement halls, music, recreation and pleasure, as well as education and religion?" "I think," she said keenly, "that united, concentrated action on the part of the cotton mill owners might make such a thing feasible; for us to try it alone would mean ruin." "Not ruin," I amended; "a reduction of income." "Ruin," she said, firing. "We couldn't compete. To compete," she said with the conviction of an intelligent, well-informed manufacturer, "I must have my sixty-six hours a week!" The spirit of discontent is always abroad when false conditions exist. Its restless presence is controlled by one spirit alone--humanity--when reasonably are weighed and justly decided the questions of balance between Capital and Labour. We must believe that there is no unsolvable problem before us in considering the presence of the child in the Southern mills. There is nothing in the essence of the subject to discourage the social economist. The question should not be left to the decision of the private citizen. This stuff is worth saving. There is the making in these children of first-class citizens. I quote from the illustrated supplement of the South Carolina _State_ that you may see what the mill manufacturers think of the quality of the "poor white trash": "The operatives in the South Carolina mills are the common people--the bone and sinew who have left the fields to the Negroes. They are industrious, intelligent, frugal, and have the native instincts of honesty and integrity and of fidelity which are essential to good citizenship." If such things are true of the mill-hands of South Carolina, it is worth while to save their children. * * * * * Henceforth, to my vision across the face of the modern history of labour and manufacture will eternally defile the gray, colourless column of the Southern mill-hands: an earth-hued line of humanity--a stream that divides not. Here there are no stragglers. At noon and night the pace is quick, eager. Steady as a prison gang, it goes to food, rest and freedom. But this alacrity is absent in the morning. On the hem of night, the fringe of day, the march is slow and lifeless. Many of the heads are bent and downcast; some of the faces peer forward, and sallow masks of human countenances lift, with a look set beyond the mill--toward who can say what vain horizon! The Stream wanders slowly toward the Houses of Labour, although whipped by invisible scourge of Need. Without this incentive and spur, think you it would pursue a direction toward _thirteen hours of toil_, shut from air and sunlight and day, taking in its rank the women, the young girl and the little child? The tone of the garments is somber and gray, blending with the gray of the dawn; or red, blending with the earth stains of the peculiar Southern soil; or claylike and pale yellow. Many of the faces are pallid, some are tense, most of them are indifferent, dulled by toil and yet not all unintelligent. Those who are familiar with the healthy type of the decent workmen of the West and East must draw their distinctions as they consider this peculiar, unfamiliar class. The Southern mill-hand's face is unique--a fearful type, whose perusal is not pleasant or cheerful to the character-reader, to the lover of humanity or to the prophet of the future. Thus they defile: men with felt hats drawn over their brows; women, sunbonneted or hatless; children barefoot, bareheaded, ragged, unwashed. Unwashed these labourers have gone to bed; unwashed they have arisen. To their garments cling the bits of cotton, the threads of cotton, the strands of roping, badges of their trade, brand of their especial toil. As they pass over the red clay, over the pale yellow sand, the earth seems to claim them as part of her unchanging phase; cursed by the mandate primeval--"by the sweat of thy brow"--Earth-Born! In the early morning the giant mill swallows its victims, engorges itself with entering humanity; then it grows active, stirring its ponderous might to life, movement and sound. Hear it roar, shudder, shattering the stillness for half a mile! It is full now of flesh and blood, of human life and brain and fiber: it is content! Triumphantly during the long, long hours it devours the tithe of body and soul. Behind lies the deserted, accursed village, destitute of life during the hours of day, condemned to the care of a few women, the old, the bedridden and the sick--of which last there are plenty. Mighty Mills--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate; charnel houses, devastators, destructors of homes and all that mankind calls hallowed; breeders of strife, of strike, of immorality, of sedition and riot--buildings tremendous--you give your immutable faces, myriads-windowed, to the dust-heaps, to the wind-swept plains of sand. When South Carolina shall have taken from you (as its honour and wisdom and citizenship is bound to do) the youngest of the children, do you think that you shall inevitably continue to devour what remains? There is too much resistance yet left in the mass of human beings. Youth will then rebel at a servitude beginning _at ten years of age_: and the women will lift their arms above their heads one day in desperate gesture of appeal and cry out--not for the millionaire's surplus; not a tirade anarchistic against capital.... What is this woman of the hills and woman of the mills that she should so demand? She will call for hours short enough to permit her to bear her children; for requital commensurate with the exigence of progressive civilization; for wages equal to her faithful toil. This is not too fantastic a demand or too ideal a state to be divinely hoped for, believed in and brought to pass.[10] [Footnote 10: Of the 21,000,000 spindles in the United States, the South has 6,000,000. $35,381,000 of Carolina's wealth is in cotton mills. NOTE. I have seen, in Aragon, Georgia, hope for the future of the mill-hands. The Aragon Cotton Mills are an improvement on the South Carolina Mills and are under the direct supervision of an owner whose sole God is not gain. Mr. Walcott is an agitator of the nine-hours-a-day movement; he is opposed to Child Labour, and in all his relations with his hands he is humane and kindly. I look to the time when Aragon shall set a perfect pattern of what a mill-town should be. It is already quite the best I have seen. Its healthfulness is far above the average, and its situation most fortunate.] * * * * * Not inapt here is the pagan idea of _Nous_, moving upon chaos, stirring the stagnant, unresponsive forces into motion; agitating these forces into action; the individual elements separate and go forth, each one on its definitely inspired mission. Some inevitable hour shall see the universal agitation of the vast body known as the "labouring class." For the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so ignorant and so down-pressed. 
19547	----	[Illustration: Hussey's American Reaper] OBED HUSSEY WHO, OF ALL INVENTORS, MADE BREAD CHEAP Being a true record of his life and struggles to introduce his greatest invention, the reaper, and its success, as gathered from pamphlets published heretofore by some of his friends and associates, and reprinted in this volume, together with some additional facts and testimonials from other sources. EDITED BY FOLLETT L. GREENO 1912 COPYRIGHTED 1912 BY FOLLETT L. GREENO PREFACE Every step in the progress of modern achievement has been met with strong resistance and hostile contest. There is in business an actual firing line where continuous conflict wages, and so fierce does the struggle become that it requires a certain class of men possessing qualities, not only of energy and perseverance, but of tenacity and combativeness, aggressive and determined to fight to the last ditch for commercial supremacy. Such men do not always rely upon the merits of their cause, nor do they stop to question the justice or injustice of their methods. They have but one goal, commercial supremacy, and every effort is bent and every man and method utilized to attain that end. Men of inventive genius are rarely of that type. They are more often unassuming and averse to anything like a personal combat. Such a man was Obed Hussey, inventor of the reaper. Honest and conscientious, enured to hard and unremitting toil, with the inspiration of a new idea for the benefit of mankind burning in his brain, he applied himself in the face of immense difficulties to the production and perfection of the great gift which he gave to the world. He was a man at once so humble and so broad in his kindness, so loyal to his Quaker ideals of righteousness and justice, that he offered no protests, or arguments against his rivals and opponents other than the superiority of his own machine. Only his great genius which produced the superior machine (a fact which no one could possibly contradict) could have saved him from the fierce opposition of his more powerful rivals. One has only to read from some of his own letters reproduced in this narrative, to witness the fairness of his attitude, or to gain a knowledge of his scruples. Yet it was just this which has operated to deprive Obed Hussey of his well deserved fame as inventor of the reaper. Moreover, a great industry, fostered by his opponents in the patent controversy, has grown up, the basis and life of which is Obed Hussey's invention of the reaper. It would seem that the vast fortunes made from this industry should be ample reward for those who are receiving the benefits of a man's life work without whose genius it would never have been. In 1897 there was published in Chicago a booklet entitled "A Brief Narrative of the Invention of Reaping Machines," a large part of which is reproduced in this book. The pamphlets of which the narrative was a republication were from the pen of Edward Stabler, an able man and a mechanic of great skill and ability, a close friend of Mr. Hussey and one familiar with his reaper and with all the facts which he set forth in these articles. Such other facts and information as are published herein were furnished by Martha Hussey, daughter of Mr. Hussey, now living and by my uncle, Hon. Alexander B. Lamberton, who married Mr. Hussey's widow. Mr. Lamberton is a man of high standing, having for many years taken an active part in the affairs of Rochester. He was President of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, 1901-1904 (three successive terms), and has been President of the Rochester Park Board for the past eleven years. He also won national fame as a hunter and naturalist and was President of the National Association for the Protection of Fish and Game. His relation to the Hussey family has made him conversant with the whole history of the invention of the reaper and of Mr. Hussey's early struggles. The facts as set forth in this volume are well known to the reaper men of the United States, men high up in the industry. Had Mr. Hussey lived, he would have been able to establish his claim to the invention of the reaper beyond the shadow of a doubt. This humble man, who, against tremendous odds and powerful opposition, proved his contentions before Congress and the United States Patent Office could certainly have won deserved fame with the public. His tragic death, which came just at the time when his Congressional victory was certain and the future of his reaper seemed bright with promise, occurred while he was en route from Boston to Portland, Maine, on August 4, 1860. In those days there was often no water in the cars. The train had stopped at a station when a little child asked for a drink of water and Mr. Hussey stepped out to get it for her. On his return, as he attempted to re-enter, the cars started; he was thrown beneath the wheels and instantly killed. The last act of his life was one of kindness and compassion. Obed Hussey is dead, but his machine still lives, an article of measureless value to the great world of agriculture. His life was one of long suffering and faithful service and he justly deserves the proper credit and honor for his great invention. To Obed Hussey belongs the fame of Inventor of the Reaper as these pages will show, to which purpose these facts are published by those who knew him and his works, and these facts, like his works, stand squarely on their own merits. FOLLETT L. GREENO. Rochester, N. Y., April 21, 1912. [Illustration: Obed Hussey, Inventor of the Reaper] OBED HUSSEY, THE INVENTOR OF THE REAPER [Sidenote: A Natural Inventor] Obed Hussey was of Quaker stock, born in Maine in 1792 and early removed to Nantucket, Mass. When young, like all Nantucket boys, he had a desire to go to sea, and made one or two whaling voyages. He was of quiet and retiring disposition, studious, thoughtful, with a strong bent for studying intricate mechanical contrivances. Little is known of his early life and there is none living who knew him at that time. He was a skillful draftsman and incessant worker at different inventions all his life. He invented a successful steam plow, for which he obtained a medal in the West. He also invented a machine for grinding out hooks and eyes, a mill for grinding corn and cobs, a husking machine run by horse power, the "iron finger bar," a machine for crushing sugar cane, a machine for making artificial ice, and other devices of more or less note. His chief characteristic seems to have been an extremely sensitive, modest and unassuming personality. It was this reticence which has served to keep him in the background as the inventor of the reaper. He was unwilling to push himself forward, and his claim to distinction has had to rest solely upon the merits of his greatest invention. Mr. Hussey first began work on his reaper in a room at the factory of Richard B. Chenoweth, a manufacturer of agricultural implements, and the story of those early efforts is told by Sarah A. Chenoweth, a granddaughter of the latter: [Sidenote: Early Efforts] "As a child, it seemed that I had always known Mr. Hussey. I saw him every day of my life, for he lived in a room, the use of which my grandfather, Richard B. Chenoweth, a manufacturer of agricultural implements in Baltimore City, had given him at his factory. No grown person was allowed to enter, for in this room he spent most of his time making patterns for the perfecting of his reaper. I, unforbidden, was his constant visitor, and asked him numberless questions, one of which, I remember, was why he washed and dried his dishes with shavings. His reply was characteristic of himself, 'Shavings are clean.' [Sidenote: First Trial] "At this time I was about seven years of age, having been born in 1824. Although very poor at the time, he was a man of education, upright and honorable, and so very gentle in both speech and manner that I never knew fear or awe of him. I do not know for a certainty how long he remained there,--several years, at the least, I think, but of his connection with the reaper, I am _positive_, for it was talked of morning, noon and night. To this day, my brother bears on his finger a scar, made by receiving a cut from one of the teeth of the machine. When, finally, the model was completed, it was brought out into the yard of the factory for trial. This trial was made on a board, drilled with holes, and stuck full of rye straws. I helped to put those very straws in place. Mr. Hussey, with repressed excitement, stood watching, and when he saw the perfect success of his invention, he hastened to his room too moved and agitated to speak. This scene is vividly impressed on my mind, as is also a remark made by a workman, that Mr. Hussey did not wish us to see the tears in his eyes." The story of Mr. Hussey's efforts at that time is also told by a brother of the little granddaughter: "Chicago, Nov. 25, 1893. "Clark Lane, Esq., "Elkhart, Ind. "My Dear Sir:-- "I notice in this morning's 'Inter Ocean' your letter of 22nd in regard to the First Reaper and Obed Hussey; now I can say that the name of Obed Hussey called to my mind the best friend of my boyhood days, as he was in the habit of keeping me supplied with pennies when I was short, and taught me how to put iron on a wood sled, and helped me to make my first wagon as he turned the wheel for me. You are right with regard to the date of the fingers and shaped cutters for Reapers, as I saw and handled it, to my sorrow in 1833 or '34 before the machine was finished and nearly cut my fingers off. I have the whole thing photographed in my mind and can show the spot or within 10 feet of it where I lay on the floor. It was not possible to try it in Maryland, owing to the hilly nature of the ground, and was afterwards taken to Ohio for trial and was rebuilt there, or at least a part of it, but of that part (the rebuilding) I do not know for a certainty, but the bars, fingers and knives I do most positively remember, as I was a lad of some eight or nine years old with a mechanical turn of mind and was looking into what seemed strange to me, hence I cut my finger so bad that I carried the scar for a number of years. I very distinctly remember the incomplete reaper made by my old friend, Obed Hussey, as it was made in my grandfather's shop in Baltimore, Maryland, who was at that time the leading plow-maker of the U. S. and that it was made either in 1833 or '34, as I would not have had a chance to see it if later than '34 as I was not at home until '38, when it had been sent, as I was told, to Ohio for trial and some parts had to be rebuilt. "Please excuse the liberty I have taken in writing to you, but I could not resist the temptation to give my tribute to my old friend, O. Hussey. "Very respectfully yours, (Signed) "W. H. CHENOWETH." The machine referred to was, no doubt, the reaper completed and tested near Cincinnati in the harvest of 1833. [Sidenote: The First Reaper] It is not known when Mr. Hussey left the Chenoweth factory, but during the winter of 1832-33 he was at Cincinnati working upon the reaper that, more than else, won him lasting fame during the harvest of 1833. The "Mechanics Magazine" for April, 1834, contains an illustration of "Hussey's Grain Cutter." The picture does not represent the model deposited in the Patent Office with his application, for it differs in many essentials from the drawing of the patent, which, of course, corresponded with the model there filed. It has neither divider nor outer wheel, and the construction of the platform differs from that of his regular machine. It is thought that the picture represents the small working model made at the Chenoweth factory, mentioned by the little girl. [Sidenote: Financing the First Reaper] Mr. Hussey found one who took an interest in his invention and became so confident of its value that he provided the necessary funds and mechanical facilities for manufacturing a reaper to be tested in the field. This was Jarvis Reynolds of Cincinnati. Drawings were made of the cutting apparatus and a description of it was sent by the inventor to a friend, Edwin G. Pratt, early in 1833. [Sidenote: The Reaper Historian] Another personal friend of Obed Hussey was Edward Stabler, who lived at Sandy Hill, Maryland, and was, as he termed himself, "a farmer and a mechanic." That he was a mechanic of ability is evidenced by government seals which were cut by him, that for the Smithsonian Institute being worthy of mention as an example of his skill. He was a postmaster from President Jackson's time until his own death. He is the only one who may be said to have acted as Hussey's historian, and has left very much valuable information in the form of letters, legal papers, et cetera. In 1854 and '55 he published "A Brief Narrative of the Invention of Reaping Machines," "Hussey's Reaping Machine in England," and "A Review of the Pamphlet of W. N. P. Fitzgerald in Opposition to the Extension of the Patent of Obed Hussey; and also of the Defense, of Evidence in Favor of Said Extention," etc. There is sufficient data obtainable from Mr. Stabler's various publications and material in the Congressional Library to enable one to judge for himself whether the honors placed upon this inventor by the Patent Office, the Courts, by Congress, and by the farmer were earned. It was at the time Mr. Hussey was residing in Baltimore that he turned his attention to the idea of a reaping machine and spent his leisure hours in working out his model. This satisfied him that the thing was practical, and he undertook an operating machine, which, although lightly made, was fully sufficient to test the great principle. At this time he had no knowledge whether any others had undertaken anything in this direction and there was nothing in his own mechanical occupation which would make him familiar with the subject. [Sidenote: McCormick Claims Invention] As the only other claimant for the honor of inventing the reaper was Cyrus H. McCormick, reference is here made to a book entitled "Memorial of Robert McCormick," the father of Cyrus H. McCormick, Leander J. McCormick and William S. McCormick, published by the said Leander J. McCormick in 1885, pages 44 to the bottom of page 51, also pages 58 to 61 inclusive, from which I extract: [Sidenote: Denial by Members of McCormick Family] "Now, while we have no disposition to question the merits of the so-called McCormick harvester and binder, which, without doubt, is a good machine,--though the judgment of foreigners as to its value is of no consequence,--we do assert that C. H. McCormick was not entitled to any of the honors showered upon him as its inventor. To be more explicit, he not only did not invent the said machine, nor mechanically assist in the combinations of the inventions of others which produced it, but he never invented or produced any essential elementary part in any reaping or harvesting machine from the first to last. These assertions are broad, but absolutely true. They stand squarely upon the records and the history and state of the art. C. H. McCormick, or any one for him, cannot deny them with proofs, therefore he is not entitled to recognition as the man who 'has done more to elevate agriculture than any man the world has produced,' because of his supposed inventions in this line; but on the contrary, that the development of Western agriculture has elevated him, and that he has more money, and received more honors, 'than any man the world has produced,' by appropriating the brains of others, and the credit due them as inventors, are propositions much more defensible." [Sidenote: Their Affirmation of Hussey's Claim] "But the man who is entitled to the most credit, as inventor and pioneer in this business, is Obed Hussey, who, December 31st, 1833, patented the machine (successfully operated in previous harvest, well known and in use since to this day), which combined all the main features--except the reel, which was then an old device--of practical reapers down to the time, at least, when 'harvesters,' so-called, came into the field." [Illustration: (From An Old Print)] [Sidenote: The First Machine] The following is also copied from "Memorial of Robert McCormick," published by Leander J. McCormick in 1885: TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES _"REMONSTRANCE"_ "Of the Citizens of New York against the renewal of Letters Patent granted to Cyrus H. McCormick, June 21, 1834, for improvements in the Reaping Machine. "Among the early reaper inventors of this country, Mr. Obed Hussey, now of Baltimore, stood for many years deservedly the most prominent, and he has doubtless by his genius and indefatigable exertions (although in a modest way) contributed more to the advancement of this invention than any other man. He first tested his machine in 1833, and took out a patent for it the 31st of December of that year. "He first constructed his machine with a reel to gather the grain up to the cutters, and throw it upon the platform; but on trial, with his cutter, he thought it unnecessary and only an incumbrance, and, therefore, threw it aside and has never used it since. The main frame-work containing the gearing was suspended on two wheels about three feet four inches in diameter. The platform was attached to the rear of this frame, and extended out one side of it say six feet. The team was attached to the front end of the frame and traveled at the side of the standing grain as in Randall's machine. The cutting apparatus was pretty much the same as now used in Hussey's machine. The knife is constructed of steel plates, riveted to a flat bar of iron. These plates are three inches broad at the end where they are riveted to the bar, and four and a half inches long, projecting in front, and tapering nearly to a point, forming what is described as a saw with very coarse teeth, which are sharp on both edges. This cutter is supported on what he terms guards, which are attached to the front edge of the platform or cutter-bar (as termed by Hussey), one every three inches the whole width of the machine, projecting horizontally in front about six or eight inches. These guards have long slots through them horizontally through which the cutter vibrates, and thus form a support for the grain whilst it is cut, and protect the cutter from liability to injury from large stones and other obstructions. The cutter is attached by means of a pitman rod to a crank, which is put in motion by gearing connecting with one or both of the ground wheels as may be desired, according to circumstances, which gives to the cutter as the machine advances, a quick vibrating motion; and each point of the cutter vibrates from the centre of one guard, through the space between, to the centre of the next, thus cutting equally both ways. As the machine advances, the grain is readily cut, and the butts are carried along with the machine which causes the tops to fall back upon the platform without the aid of the reel. The grain to be cut was separated from that to be left standing by means of a point projecting in front of the cutter, in the form of a wedge, bearing the grain both inwards and outwards, with a board set edgewise upon it, sloping downwards, to a point in front. The grain was raked from the machine by a man riding upon it, in rear of the frame, at the side of the cutter, nearly in range with the guards, with his back towards the team, sometimes at the side and sometimes behind the platform. Soon after this date Mr. Hussey changed the construction of his machine somewhat, used one large ground wheel instead of two, placed the platform alongside the frame, and placed his raker on a seat by the side of the large ground wheel, facing the team, and raked the grain off in rear of the platform. [Sidenote: The Most Practical] "This was for many years doubtless the most practical reaping machine known, and, with the improvements that have been made upon it, from time to time, it is now preferred to any other in many wheat growing sections of the country." [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Plea] The fact and intensity of Mr. Hussey's struggles may, in part, be gathered from his letter to Edward Stabler, dated March 12, 1854: "Baltimore, March 12, 1854. "My Esteemed Friend, Edward Stabler:-- "I think the work goes bravely on. I am unable to express my estimation of thy disinterested efforts; I never before experienced anything of the kind; it seems entirely new to me to have any one go out of their way so much, to do so much for me. I am not so much surprised at the progress thee makes considering the man, as I am that any man could be found to do me such a service. I hope thee will not get weary; I am sure thee will not. I hope the Committee will not act so unjustly as to turn their backs on all cases because there is 'rascality' in some; because there is rascality in some cases, why should a just cause suffer? The facts in my case can be easily proved. I made no money during the existence of my patent, or I might say I made less than I would have made if I had held an under-clerk's position in the Patent Office; I would have been better off at the end of the 14 years if I had filled exactly such station as my foreman holds, and got his pay, and would not have had half the hard work, nor a hundredth part of the heart-aching. I never experienced half the fatigue in rowing after a whale in the Pacific Ocean (which I have often done) as I experienced year after year for eighteen years in the harvest field, I might say twenty years, for I worked as hard in England as I do at home, for in the harvest, wherever I am there is no rest for me. If I am guilty of no rascality why should I not be compensated for toiling to introduce an invention which I thought to be of so much advantage to the World. I know I was the _first_ one who successfully accomplished the cutting of grain and grass by machinery. If others _tried_ to do it before me it was not _doing_ it; being the first who ever did it, why should I be obliged to suffer and toil most, and get the least by it? No man knows how much I have suffered in body and mind since 1833, on account of this thing, the first year I operated it in Balto. Three years after I cut the first crop, I could not go to meeting for many weeks for want of a _decent coat_, while for economy I made my own coffee and eat, slept in my shop, until I had sold machines enough to be able to do better; there was no rascality in all that. My machines then cost me nearly all I got for them when counting moderate wages for my own labour. The Quaker who lent me the ninety dollars ten years afterward would not then (ten years before) trust me for iron, one who was not a Quaker did. There is one thing not generally understood; thou will remember the trial at Lloyd's, thou remembers also that I received the purse of 100 dollars; now what would the world suppose I would do? Why that I would do like the flour holders, _keep the price up_! But it is a fact and can be proved, that after it was announced to me that the verdict was in my favor I said to a gentleman _now I will reduce my price 10 dollars_, on each machine, _and I did it_, from that hour and did not breathe my intention until after that decision was announced to me! Where is the man who has done the like under similar circumstances? There is no 'rascality' in that. Now I do not believe that there is a reaper in the country (which is good for anything) at so low a price as mine, and not one on which so little profit is made. "I will inclose a pamphlet which I suppose thee has already seen--it may be useful. "Thy friend, (Signed) "OBED HUSSEY." Mr. William N. Whitely, an early inventor and manufacturer of harvesting machinery, who was for many years the king of the reaper business, and who fought the Hussey extension "tooth and nail," on January 8, 1897, wrote to the "Farm Implement News" upon the subject of McCormick's portrait on the silver certificates, then about to be issued, in which he refers also to Mr. Hussey, as follows: [Sidenote: From the Pen of a Hussey Opponent] "Editor 'Farm Implement News': "Having been informed that the bureau of engraving and printing was preparing new $10 silver certificates to be ornamented by the busts of Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, and C. H. McCormick, 'inventor of the reaper,' I write you to say that it would manifestly be unjust to credit the invention of the reaper to any one man. Mr. McCormick does deserve great credit for his _enterprise_ and _business skill_ in the many years he was engaged in manufacturing harvesting machinery and we are pleased to honor his memory; yet so much has been done in bringing the reaper to its present state of perfection by the many thousands of inventors that our government would make a mistake in singling out Mr. McCormick from the many _meritorious_ ones who have contributed so much to the reaper of the past and of the present day. We well understand that no effort has been spared for many years past in keeping C. H. McCormick before the American people as the inventor of the reaper by his immediate relatives and friends, and we have no right to find fault with such a course upon their part; but when the great government of the United States of America proposes to certify by the above mentioned course to the correctness of the claims made for C. H. McCormick as the inventor of the reaper, to the disparagement of so many other _worthy_ inventors and co-workers upon the reaper, then those who know better should raise their voices against such an attempted recognition for any one man, of whom the best that can be said is that he was only one of the many. [Sidenote: The Reaper Itself Mr. Hussey's Contribution] "From 1831 to 1834, and for several years thereafter, two persons, i.e., Obed Hussey and C. H. McCormick, were striving to produce a successful reaping machine for cutting grain and grass, as were many others, before and since. These two men were contemporaneously in the field, and no doubt they both labored faithfully to accomplish the desired result. The invention of Obed Hussey, the features of which were embraced in his first machine in 1832 and 1833, included all the principles of a practical reaper. It was a side draft or side cut machine; that is, the cutting apparatus extended out to one side, the animals drawing the machine moving along by the side of the grain or grass to be cut. It had two driving and supporting wheels, gearing extending rearward with a crank and pitman therefrom to reciprocate the cutters, which were scalloped or projecting blades from a bar and vibrated through slotted guard fingers which held the stalks to be cut. The cutting apparatus was hinged to the side of the frame of the machine to enable it to follow the surface of the ground over which the machine was passing. A platform was supported by an outer and inner wheel. The operator was seated upon the machine and raked the grain into sheaves from the platform as it was cut. Over sixty years have come and gone, yet all the essential features of the first Hussey machine and all Hussey machines made thereafter (which were large numbers) employed substantially these devices. The machine was successful the first time it was completed, and ever after were the Hussey machines successful in harvesting grain and grass. The fundamental principles of all harvesting machinery of the world to-day were furnished by Obed Hussey's invention and patent of 1833; and while very many and valuable improvements have been made thereon for harvesting grain and grass, for which credit should be given to the worthy inventors who followed after Hussey, yet we must not ignore his valuable contribution, '_the reaper_.' "Cyrus H. McCormick's first patent was dated in 1834. This was known as a push machine with a straight cutter, the operator walking by the side of the machine and raking the grain from the platform. Other modifications in after years were made on this machine by Mr. McCormick; and it may be said that the inventive genius of Obed Hussey and the business tact and skill of C. H. McCormick produced and brought into practical use the first successful reaping machine of this or any other country. [Sidenote: Whose Machine Still Lives?] "Whatever might have been embodied in the first McCormick machine or in his experiments or machines for the first fifteen years of his efforts, the _reaper of the present day does not disclose any principles_ contained in these early efforts of C. H. McCormick; but that cannot be said of Hussey. _All_ reaping machines of the present day embody substantially _all_ of the vital principles given by Obed Hussey in 1833 and at different periods thereafter. The Patent Office, as well as other sources of information, make good these statements. "Passing, however, from the early history up to the present time, when the present mowing machines and grain binding machines are seen in operation, and taking into account the thousands of patents that have been issued to American inventors for various features that they have brought out, it would be but simple justice that all be recognized as contributors to the building up of such valuable and important pieces of machinery; and I cannot but repeat that it would be very unjust, unfair and un-American to single out one person, and that one Mr. McCormick, as a representative to be used by the government printing bureau, when it is so well known what he did and what he did not do in the invention of the reaper. It would be a false monument; it would only be respected by persons who are ignorant of the facts. "If this should succeed, it would not be the first time, as likely it will not be the last time, in the history of mankind where those who did the work were soon forgotten and those who were more fortunate in being held up and prominently kept before the public by their friends or powerful allies received unjustly the credit." [Sidenote: Early Ventures in Manufacture] [Sidenote: An Unfortunate Delay] It will be seen from the foregoing extracts that Mr. Hussey's machines went early into the field in such quantities as he and other little manufacturers throughout the country, some of whom ignored the exclusive rights granted him, could put them out. They were simple, and a few castings were all that was necessary, except lumber, which was plenty in the forests of the East and in the groves of the West, to enable a country wagon maker and blacksmith to put machines into the field. Many of the earlier inventors, who began the manufacture of reapers of their own invention, followed that course and castings were sometimes brought from great distances. Mr. Hussey applied for an extension of his 1833 patent, but, not knowing the exact requirements, his application was offered too late, sixty days before the expiration of the patent being the time allotted. Knowing, we presume, but little about law, and still less about "the rules and regulations of the Patent Office"--for all his time, and constant labor with his own hands, were required in the workshop to earn a bare support,--but being very desirous to obtain an extension of his Patent before it should expire, and also having some personal acquaintance with Commissioner Ellsworth, Hussey's first application was made to him in 1845, a short time previous to his going out of office; certainly not less than twelve months before the expiration. This is proved by the annexed letter: "La Fayette, Ia., July 3, 1854. "Dear Sir:-- "Your letter of some weeks since, referring to a conversation I had with you while I was Commissioner of Patents, relative to the extention of your patent for a Reaper, would have been answered earlier, but for absence and extreme pressure of business." "If my recollection will aid you, I most cheerfully state, that before your patent expired, you consulted me as to the extension of the same. I replied that it was better to postpone an application until near the time the patent would run out, for the Office must estimate the profits of the invention during the whole term; and you accordingly postponed it. I regret you postponed it too long. The publication of thirty days before the patent expired, was a rule as published by myself. If you have lost your opportunity for relief through (the) Patent Office, you must of course go to Congress. I have always regarded your improvement as valuable, and that the country is greatly indebted to your persevering efforts, notwithstanding the obstacles presented. "Yours respectfully, "HENRY L. ELLSWORTH. "Mr. Obed Hussey, Balto., Md." Hussey acted on this official advice, and did "postpone an application until near the time the patent would run out"--literally so, for he was not advised of even the "thirty days' rule." [Sidenote: Why Mr. Hussey's Application Was Late] When he again applied, and not "until near the time the patent would run out," Edmund Burke was Commissioner of Patents. He states in a letter to Senators Douglas and Shields, under date March 4th, 1850, as follows: "In relation to the patent of Hussey, if my memory serves me, his patent expired some time within the latter part of December, 1847. During that month, and within some ten or twelve days before the expiration of his patent, he applied to me as Commissioner of Patents for an extension. I informed him, that inasmuch as the act of Congress prescribed the mode in which patents should be extended; required a reasonable notice to be given to the public in sundry newspapers, published in those parts of the country most interested against such extension; and as the board had decided that 'reasonable' notice should be a publication of the application for extension three weeks prior to the day appointed for the hearing, there was not time to give the required notice in his case; and I advised Mr. Hussey not to make his application, and thus lose the fee of $40 required in such cases, as he inevitably would, without the least prospect of succeeding in his application--but to petition Congress for an extension, which body had the power to grant it." [Sidenote: An Able and Unanswerable Report] "Washington, 5th Sept., 1854. "Obed Hussey, Esq., Baltimore:-- "My Dear Sir: I have recently learned, with surprise and indignation, that certain speculating harpies who fill their coffers with the products of other men's brains, and who, in your case, seek to 'reap where they sow not' are basely and unjustly endeavoring to prevent a renewal of your patent for your Reaping and Mowing Machine,' upon the ground [among others] that you and your agents have neglected to press your Claim properly before Congress. "I have been your Agent from the time the claim was first presented to Congress, and know that the Charge is entirely unfounded. "The facts according to the best of my recollection and belief, are as follows: Your Claim for a renewal was presented to Congress at the very first Session, after you ascertained that your application to the Commissioner could not be acted upon under the rules of the Patent Office. Every paper and proof necessary to establish your right to a renewal of your patent, under the existing laws, was procured, and promptly placed with your memorial, before Congress. No further proof was required by the Committee on Patents, in the Senate, and your right to a renewal was fully established by an able and unanswerable report of that Committee, accompanied by a bill for a renewal. This report and bill were printed by order of the Senate, and were noticed as a part of the proceedings of Congress, by the press throughout the United States, and every body thus notified of your application. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Methods] "From that period to the present time, I do not think there has been a single Congress at which all proper efforts were not made to obtain the action of that Body. Members were not annoyed with indecent importunity; nor were any powerful combinations of interested individuals resorted to, to force your Claim upon the consideration of Congress. This was not in accordance with your taste, or your means. I well remember, however, that you frequently visited this City on that business; and that at almost every session, you either brought or sent to me, to be laid before Congress, some new evidence of the triumph of your great invention. These documents were faithfully laid before that body, or sent to the senators from Maryland for that purpose. On one occasion, as your agent, I addressed a somewhat extended communication to the Senators from Maryland, attempting to show the vast importance of your invention to the Agricultural interests of the United States, and the strong claims you had to a renewal of your patent, and requested them as the Representatives of your State in the Senate, to give their attention and influence to accomplish that end. "At a subsequent Session, this request was repeated, to one or both of the Senators from that State. "I can also state with certainty that hardly a Session of Congress has passed since your memorial was first presented, at which prominent and Scientific Agriculturalists, in different parts of the Country, who were acquainted with the merits of your invention, have not used their influence with Members of Congress to obtain a renewal of your patent. Any pretense, therefore, that your Claim has not been duly presented, notified to the public, and urged with all proper care and diligence upon the attention of Congress, I repeat is totally unfounded. "It will be a stain upon the justice of the Country, if one whom truth and time must rank among its greatest Benefactors, shall be stricken down and permitted to die in indigence by the interested and unworthy efforts thus made to defeat you. "You are at liberty to use this statement in any manner you may desire. "Very truly and respectfully, "Your Ob't Ser'vt, "CHA'S E. SHERMAN." Although not coming in the natural order of events, I quote from an enclosure found in a letter written to Hon. H. May, evidently a member of Congress. Mr. Hussey having failed to apply for an extension of his 1833 patent early enough, a bill was introduced in Congress with an extension in view. In some correspondence between Mr. Hussey and the Hon. H. May an enclosure is found reading as follows: [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Defense] "During the examination of my case in the Committee-room on the 21st inst. you asked me a question, and accompanied it with a remark to the effect 'Why could I not raise a company in Baltimore with sufficient capital and make as many machines as Howard & Co. and compete with them on equal ground? The excitement of the occasion disqualified me for giving a full reply to your question and remarks. I was at the time so impressed with the injustice and the great hardship of being compelled to compete with the world for what of right belonged to myself exclusively that I had not the words to express my feelings. Could any gentleman look back twenty-one years and see me combating the prejudices of the farmers, and exerting the most intense labor of body and mind, and continuing to do so from year to year, at the very door of poverty, and also look back on those New York parties through the same period, accumulating wealth by the usual course of business, and perhaps watching my progress, and waiting for the proper moment to step in with their money power and grasp the lion's share of the prize which justly belongs to myself. If they could look back on the circumstances and comprehend the case in all its reality and truth I should have no fear of a just decision by the Committee in the House of Representatives. The Government which can tolerate and uphold such a state of things would appear to me to be a hard Government. "The end and design of the Patent Laws was to reward the inventor for a valuable invention by giving him the exclusive right to make and vend the article which he had invented and fourteen years was deemed a sufficient time in which to secure that reward. The telegraph was perfect on its first trial. It required no improvement. On the contrary, half the wire was dispensed with. The Government was at the cost of trying the experiment and has since heaped wealth on the inventor. My fourteen years were required in perfecting my invention without any return for time and labor. (The finishing touch to his cutting apparatus is, no doubt here referred to, and shown in his patent of 1847.) [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Protest] "Public opinion on the subject of valuable inventions is liberal until an obscure individual appears in the community claiming the reward for a valuable invention; the disposition then seems to be to let him shrink into a corner. The world has got the advantage of his labors and has no further use for him; every unreasonable man in the community will at once claim an equal right with the inventor of the device and one not content to urge their claims by misrepresentation but must heap abuses on the poor inventor who they have in a great measure pushed out of their way. The idea that a wise Government, of an enlightened country, can not only look on and suffer such injustice but will actually encourage it by disregarding the prayers of the poor inventor is a mystery to those who build their hopes on the dogma that '_Truth is mighty and will prevail_.' I hope the Committee will not pass lightly over my case but duly consider, as I believe they will, to whom the advantages of this invention belongs, whether to me or to the parties in New York. My chief aim in addressing this to you is to endeavor to draw a parallel between myself and the parties in New York, and thereby secure your good opinion in my favor." [Sidenote: Farmers Using Hussey Reaper] Edward Stabler, on January 11, 1854, wrote to Hon. Henry May as follows: "As requested I have examined the petitions of the 450 farmers who advocate the extension of Hussey's patent and from a personal acquaintance or by character with much larger portion in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and on reliable information of those from New York--234 in number--I am satisfied that they are wheat-growers to an amount of not less than from four to 500,000 bushels annually. * * * They used Hussey's reaper, and some of them three and four, or more of these great labor-saving implements." Mr. Edward Stabler writes to Henry May, under date March 19, 1854: "The most that I fear is that Hussey's interests (which all appear willing to admit is a meritorious case) may suffer in the contests that I am satisfied will take place with regard to Moore & Haskell's and McCormick's extensions. I should be greatly pleased, and have stronger hopes if Hussey's case could be acted on promptly and before that contest begins. "On the ground of its having been so long and so favorably reported on, by the Senate's Committee in '48--six years next May, possibly it could be called up at an earlier date,--the sooner the better, to avoid competition from interested parties, and which I certainly anticipate if long delayed in either House of Congress. Honestly believing the cause just and right, for no fee, however large, could tempt me to advocate what I thought unjust or wrong, I shall persevere as long as there is ground for hope. If we fail I shall have pleasing reflections, doing unto others as you would that they under similar circumstances should do unto you." Mr. Edward Stabler, on February 5, 1854, wrote to J. A. Pierce, member of one of the Committees, a letter from which the following is extracted: [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Character and Service] "I will, however, preface my remarks by saying that I have no connection whatever with his business operations nor pecuniary interest in his affairs, but being well acquainted with him I am free to say, that I have known no man on whose word I have placed more implicit reliance, no one more honestly entitled to what he asks for. "He has faithfully devoted the prime of his life, and no small portion of it either, in the invention and the perfecting of the reaping and mowing machine; and his untiring perseverance has certainly been crowned with success so far as to confer a signal and lasting benefit on his country; but unfortunately he has derived no corresponding advantage for himself, and from no fault on his part. [Sidenote: Opinion of an Able Mechanic] [Sidenote: Mr. Stabler's Testimony] "While C. H. McCormick has literally fattened on the agricultural public by the sale of his inferior and cheaply made machines--for such I do consider them, both from my own observations and the report to me by those who have been induced to purchase them--Hussey has been pirated on from all quarters, and others reaping the reward of his labors. And I perceive by the papers on file, and accompanying the printed report (No. 16) that this same C. H. McCormick has actually petitioned against the renewal of Hussey's patent. It is really a very hard case, that a poor man and one of the most deserving in the community in every sense of the term, should thus fail of a just reward when he has done so much for the benefit of others. * * * Believing as I do that the extension is no more than sheer justice to Obed Hussey,--quite equal in merit to any that has been granted,--as one of the _most meritorious_ in the language of the Committee, I do most earnestly solicit thy kind aid and influence to get it through the Senate. * * * He was then (and still is) a comparatively poor man; without the means from his limited sales to extend his business in a profitable manner or to protect his known and acknowledged rights from the depredations of others. His shops--and I speak from personal knowledge--are for the most part dilapidated sheds--too confined and cramped up to do any part of his work to the best advantage, and from a personal knowledge speaking as a practical machinist of some 25 years experience, I do know that his profits are far less than some other machine makers--not the half of what is usually supposed. [Sidenote: The Two Machines Compared] "Take, for example, the machines as usually made by Obed Hussey and C. H. McCormick--for I am familiar with both; owing to the quality of the work, costs of material and arrangement of the mechanism, _two_ of McCormick's can be made by him for little or no more than the cost to Hussey of _one_ of his. Such, too, is the statement on oath of competent men employed by both manufacturers. McCormick's foreman and clerk have sworn (see petition from New York against his extension) that his machines are made for some $35 to $40 each. Any man who will undertake to make and sell Hussey machines as he makes them for much less than double this sum, will soon beg his bread if he depends on his profits to buy it, unless he _cheats_ his hands out of _their_ part." A postscript is added, which reads: "I should have made no allusion to C. H. McCormick or to his machines, had he not volunteered by petition to injure his rival--in my opinion a most worthy, reliable and deserving man--and I would add that in my estimation the two machines differ just about as widely as the two men." We may assume that Mr. Hussey must have begun on his large machine late in 1832, or early in 1833, at latest. During the early part of the harvest of 1833 he was in the field. "The machine was started," Stabler tells us, "but owing to some part giving way, or some slight defect not apparent until then, it at first failed to work satisfactorily. One burly fellow present picked up a reaping cradle and, swinging it with an air of great exultation, exclaimed, 'This is the machine to cut the wheat!'" Another account charges the breakage to a fractious team. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Triumph] "After the jeers and merriment of the crowd had somewhat subsided, the inventor remedied the defect, and assisted by the laborers present--the horses having been removed--pulled the machine to the top of an adjacent hill; when, alone, he drew the machine down the hill and through the standing grain, when it cut every head clean in its track. The same machine was directly afterwards exhibited before the Hamilton County Agricultural Society near Carthage, on the 2nd day of July, 1833." The secretary of the Society wrote an exceedingly favorable report. The group of spectators present at this trial drew up a testimonial that was very favorable indeed. On July 2, 1833, then, we are warranted in saying, the problem that had so long exercised the minds of inventors was solved. [Sidenote: The Hussey Reaper in the Field] [Sidenote: Public Tests] Fortunately Mr. Hussey was not as easily discouraged as many. He, no doubt, felt chagrined that his machine had broken down, but had the pluck then and there to make an effort to close the hooting mouths, and fully succeeded. In 1834 other machines were put out. We learn from the Genesee Farmer, dated December 6, 1834, that Mr. Hussey, the inventor of a machine for harvesting wheat, had left in the village one of his machines for the purpose of giving the farmers an opportunity to test its value. During the harvest of 1834 it was operated in the presence of hundreds of farmers with most satisfactory results. We next find Mr. Hussey at Palmyra, Mo., on July 6, 1835, with two of his machines, at the farm of his old friend, Edwin G. Pratt. The machine "excited much attention, and its performance was highly satisfactory." The results of the trials were published in the "Missouri Courrier" in August or September of 1835. The machines were sold for $150 each. A Mr. Muldrow bought another kind of machine, however, in which the cutting was done by a "whirling wheel" and paid $500 for it. In 1836 Mr. Hussey was in Maryland, at the written solicitation of the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Agricultural Society. The fame of his reaping machines in the state of New York, and the far West, had spread, "though with something like a snail's pace," as new things did two-thirds of a century ago. The machine was operated at Oxford, Talbot County, on the 1st of July, in the presence of the Board and a considerable number of other gentlemen. Its performance was perfect, as it cut every spear of grain, collected it in bunches of the proper size for sheaves and laid it straight and even for the binder. On the 12th of July a public exhibition was made at Easton, under the direction of the Board; several hundred persons, principally farmers, being present. This same machine was sold to Mr. Tench Tilghman, for whom it cut 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley during that season. The report of the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Agricultural Society stated that "three mules of medium size worked in it constantly with as much ease as in a drag harrow. They moved with equal facility in a walk or trot." In 1837 the machines were sold in various parts of the country. One at Hornewood, Md., one at West River, and several others throughout the state. One of the machines sold in 1838 to the St. George's and Appoquinomick Ag. Society cut several hundred acres of grain, up to 1845, and was then in good repair. In all this time the cost for repairs was only 1-1/4c per acre. The popularity of the machine became so pronounced that other inventors were given courage, and those who before had failed were prompted to pick up their work where they had dropped it or begin on newer lines. [Illustration: Silver medal awarded to Mr. Hussey for the Reaper at Baltimore in 1845.] [Sidenote: A Hussey-McCormick Contest] In 1843 we find that Hussey's machine was in a field-contest with one brought in by Cyrus H. McCormick of Rockbridge County, Va. We say brought in, because the claim that it was in fact invented and made by _Robert McCormick_ seems to be quite well founded. (Memorial of Robert McCormick.) The contest took place on the farm of a Mr. Hutchinson, about four miles above the city of Richmond. Mr. Hussey had, for a number of years, been building two sizes of machines, and at the first day's trial was obliged to use a small one because his only large machine within reach was elsewhere occupied. The majority of the self-appointed committee of bystanders reported in favor of McCormick's machine, but Mr. Roane, one of them, who signed very reluctantly, later bought a Hussey machine. A few days after, at Tree Hill, Mr. Hussey was present with his large machine. In the "American Farmer" was soon after published a letter from Mr. Roane, dated January 23, 1844, to Mr. Hussey, in which, among other things, he says: [Sidenote: Mr. Roane's Letter] "Averse as I am to having my name in print on _this_, or any other occasion, I cannot with propriety decline a response to your inquiry. I had never seen or formed an idea of a reaping machine until I went to Hutchinson's. I was surprised and delighted with the performance of each of them, and fully resolved to own one of them by the _next_ harvest, but their performance that day left me in a state of doubt which I should select. The report spoke in terms of high praise of each machine, and I consented to its award, that on the whole Mr. McCormick's was preferable, merely because being the cheapest, and requiring but two horses, it would best suit the majority of our farmers, who make small crops of wheat on _weak land_, for I doubted its capacity in _heavy_ grain. After this report was made I heard your complaint that you did not have a fair trial, because being unable to bring into the field your large improved reaper, which was up the river, you were compelled to comply with your _engagement_ for the day, with a _small_ and _inferior_ machine, drawn by an indifferent and untutored team. Mr. Hutchinson's wheat was badly rusted, and therefore light. I had ready for the scythe a low ground field of heavy and well matured grain; partly to expedite my harvest work, and partly to renew the trial, that I might solve my doubts as to the merits of these machines, I succeeded in engaging them to be at Tree Hill on a named day. They both came agreeable to appointment, Mr. McCormick bringing the machine he used at Hutchinson's, and you bringing the one you could not on that occasion bring down the river. The day was fine, and both machines did their best, and had a very fair trial. My doubts were fully removed, and my mind convinced that in the heavy wheat we raise on our river low grounds, rich bottoms, etc. _your_ machine is superior to Mr. McCormick's of which I still think highly. I accordingly ordered one of yours to be made for the approaching harvest. "I wish you all possible success in cutting hemp in the 'Great West.' It must be very desirable to cut that valuable plant instead of pulling it up by the roots, and I cannot doubt that your reaper has _ample_ power for the purpose." (Records of U.S. Patent Office.) [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey Not a Business Man] No one will claim that Mr. Hussey was what may be termed a good business man; like most inventors, his mind was on what he sought to accomplish rather than on the hoarding of wealth. I have already quoted from correspondence that passed between him and his friends, when attempting to get his 1833 patent extended. An early manufacturer, well known to Mr. Hussey and who paid royalties under Mr. Hussey's patents, writes: "Mr. Hussey's early machines were made by Jarvis Reynolds of Cincinnati, Ohio," we are informed by Mr. William N. Whitely, who early became familiar with many of the facts, he having opposed Hussey's extension application, "in a shop on the river front, beginning in 1831 or '32. After making that operated in 1833 he built several others during two or three years or more. Some of the early ones were taken to Glendale, Ohio, to the farm of Algernon Foster." "The first machine taken there had a reel on it, but after using it a short time the reel was laid aside. On the same machine was an extra platform, attached to the rear, so that the raker could deliver the grain to one side. The machines were intended for both reaping and mowing." Mr. Whitely states that he saw two of the machines still on Mr. Foster's farm in 1860, that had been there since, probably, 1835. "The machines were at first bought by farmers who did cutting for the neighbors and under the circumstances were anxious to prostrate as many acres of grain per day as possible; in order to accomplish this, they applied four horses and moved on a 'jog trot.' So moving the reel was found of little service because the rapidly moving machine caused the severed straws to fall backward on the platform so that the raker had little to do but to remove it, except where it was particularly badly lodged; in such cases he manipulated his rake as it is now used on all reelless reaping machines." After building the machines for Algernon Foster, Mr. Hussey undertook the manufacture of two or more machines for the harvest of 1835. From a letter received from John Lane, we quote: [Sidenote: A Contract] "'Old Judge Foster' was a well known jurist and judge of court in Hamilton County, Ohio, having his country home (a farm) 3-1/2 miles near due east from my father's place of business, and it was he who introduced Obed Hussey to John Lane as being a mechanic who could and would make for him the reaper he was at that time seeking to have made in Cincinnati. Also it was agreed between said Hussey and Foster that when said reaper had been made and tested to their satisfaction in the standing grains, his sons, Algernon and brother (whose name I do not remember) would pay all costs of making said reaper and put the same in use to best of their ability." I quote from the book entitled "Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana," published by Henry Ellsworth in 1838: "Another material reduction of the expense attending the cultivation of hay and other crops will be found in the use of some of the mowing and reaping machines recently invented. [Sidenote: Editorial Comment] "A machine of this description, invented by Mr. Obed Hussey, of Cambridge, Maryland, has of late excited general admiration, from the neatness and rapidity of its execution, and the great amount of labor which its use will save. Its introduction on large farms, of the description we have mentioned, will undoubtedly be followed by remarkable results. These machines, when in good order (and they seldom need repair), can cut from twelve to fifteen acres of grass, and from fifteen to twenty acres of wheat, daily. "The following letter from John Stonebraker, Esq., of Hagerstown, Maryland, will exhibit his experience in the use of this machine. "He was induced (as the writer knows from personal communication with him on the subject) to try it from the representations of others, and with many misgivings as to the result. That trial, however, has satisfied him and with him, many of his neighbors, of the great utility of the machine. "The letter is as follows: "'Hagerstown, August 15, 1837. "'Dear Sir: Will you please give this a place in your paper, for the benefit of wheat growers. As the subject is of public interest, it is hoped that other papers will circulate it through the grain growing districts of the country. [Sidenote: A Hussey Testimonial] "'I procured a reaping machine this summer of Mr. Hussey, the inventor, which I have used through my wheat harvest. It was in constant use every day, and performed its work to my satisfaction, and far better than I had any expectation of when I first engaged it of Mr. Hussey. When the ground is clear of rocks, loose stones, stumps, etc., and the grain stands well, it cuts it perfectly clear, taking every head; and, if well managed, scatters none, but leaves it in neat heaps ready for binding. When the grain is flat down, the machine will of course pass over it; but if it be leaning, or tangled only, it is cut nearly as well as if standing, excepting when it leans from the machine, and then if the horses are put in a trot it will be very well cut. But in cutting such grain much depends on the expertness of the hand who pushes off the grain, in making clean work and good sheaves. I found the machine capable of going through anything growing on my wheat land, such as weeds and grass, no matter how thick. "'After my harvest was over, I cut my seed timothy with the same neatness and ease that I did my grain. As respects the durability of the machine, I can say this much for my machine, that not the least thing has given out yet; it appears as strong as a cart, and but little liable to get out of order, if well used. I was advised by Mr. Hussey of the necessity of keeping some of the parts well greased; this I have punctually attended to, and no perceptible wear yet appears, beyond the ordinary wear of any other machinery. [Sidenote: Durability of the Machine] "'It is immaterial to the machine whether the speed be a walk, or trot; although a walk will make the most perfect work. My speed was a common walk, but a trot is sometimes necessary to counteract the effect of a strong wind when blowing from behind, in order to incline the grain backwards, on to the platform, to make good bundles. A quick walk is required to make good work in very short and scattering grain. The machine performs well, up or down hill, provided the surface be not too broken. By its compactness and ease of management, rocks, and stumps too high to be cut over, can be easily avoided. Although a rough surface is very objectionable, yet I have cut over very rocky ground with no material difficulty. I can say one thing which to some may appear incredible, but it is not the less true; the cutters of my machine have not been sharpened since I have had it; nor have I yet seen any appearance of a need of it in the quality of its work. How many harvests a machine would cut without sharpening is hard to say. I propose sharpening mine once a year only. I have used two horses at a time in the machine, and sometimes changed at noon; they worked it with ease, the draught being light. I took no account of what I cut in any one day, with this exception: in less than half a day I cut six acres, and was often detained for want of the requisite number of binders, by which much time was lost. My machine being something narrower than those generally made by Mr. Hussey, I could cut but about one acre in going two miles; this, at the moderate gait of two and a half miles per hour, would amount to twelve and a half acres in ten hours; and at four miles per hour, a speed at which the work is done in fine style, the amount would be twenty acres in ten hours. I should judge my quantity per day to range between ten and fifteen acres, yet I am decided in the opinion that I can cut twenty acres in a day, of good grain, on good ground, by the usual diligence of harvest hands, with a little increase of my usual speed, and a change of horses. Two hands are required to work the machine, a man to push off the grain and a boy to drive, besides a number of binders, proportioned to the quantity cut. As the machine can be drawn equally fast in heavy or light grain, the number of binders is necessarily increased in heavy grain, except an additional speed be given in light grain. Under every circumstance, the number of binders will vary from four to ten; and, when the usual care is practiced by the binders, there will be much less waste than in any other method of cutting. [Sidenote: A Labor-Saving Machine] "'I speak with more confidence of the merits and capacity of Mr. Hussey's reaping machine, from the circumstance of having pushed the grain off myself for several days, in order to make myself practically and thoroughly acquainted with it, before putting it into the hands of my laboring men. The land in this country being rather rocky and uneven, it is hard to say what may be the ultimate advantage of these machines to our farmers; but from what little experience I have had, I am resolved not to be without one or two of them. I can therefore recommend the machine with confidence, especially to those who have a large proportion of smooth ground in cultivation. It is undoubtedly a labor saving machine, and worthy of their attention. 'JOHN STONEBRAKER. 'Mr. Bell, Editor of the Torch Light.' "To this testimonial from one of the best and most practical farmers in Maryland could be added many more, should they be needed. Farther improvements on the part of the inventor, during the past year, have much increased the power of the machine; and its adoption, as a valuable agricultural implement, is becoming very general. [Sidenote: Other Testimonials] "One of these machines is now in the possession of the writer, which arrived too late for use during the harvest of the present season. From one or two trials, however, and those under the disadvantageous circumstances of arranging a new machine, and the forced selection of a spot little suited for experiment, no doubt remains of the result. "We add a letter to the inventor from Colonel Tilghmann, who also resides near Hagerstown, Maryland. "'September 15, 1837. "'Sir: Your wheat cutting machine was used by me in securing my clover seed. With one man, three boys, and two horses, we cut about twelve acres per day. The operation was in every respect complete. The clover was well cut, and deposited in proper sized heaps, and no raking required, further than to remove the heaps of cut clover from the track of the machine. The whole operation was easily performed by the hands and the horses. "'In the operation of cutting wheat, I followed the machine for two hours in the field of Mr. John Stonebraker, during the late wheat harvest, and can vouch for the operation in securing his wheat in the manner described in his publication. The late improvements made by you in your machine have added greatly to the beauty and facility of its operation. 'Yours respectfully, 'F. TILGHMANN.' 'Mr. Hussey.' "We add the following notice of this machine, from Messrs. S. and E. P. Le Compte, enterprising farmers, of Cambridge, Maryland, as follows: "'Cambridge, July 3, 1838. "'We have employed Mr. Obed Hussey's wheat cutting machine to cut for us about thirty-four acres; the greater part of which was very heavy. We were remarkably well pleased with the performance of said machine, and are of opinion that, with proper management and attention, it will cut twenty acres per day, and save it much better than any other mode of cutting we have ever tried. "'S. & E. P. LE COMPTE.' "To which is appended the following postscript: "'I have been a practical farmer forty years; and am well satisfied, that, on a large farm, this machine will save wheat enough, beyond the scythe and hooks, to pay all the expense of cutting and binding. 'SAMUEL LE COMPTE.'" I next quoted again from the "Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana:" HUSSEY'S GRAIN CUTTER "Report of the Board of Trustees of 'The Maryland Agricultural Society,' for the Eastern Shore, on the machine for harvesting small grain, invented by Mr. Obed Hussey, of Cincinnati, Ohio. [Sidenote: Invitation of Agricultural Board] [Illustration: Silver medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper at Baltimore in 1850.] [Sidenote: How the Reaper Worked] "The favorable accounts of the operation of this implement in several of the Western States, induced the board to invite Mr. Hussey to bring it to Maryland, and submit it to their inspection. It was accordingly exhibited in Oxford, Talbot county, on the first of July, in presence of the board, and a considerable number of other gentlemen. Its performance may justly be denominated perfect, as it cuts every spear of grain, collects it in bunches of the proper size for sheaves, and lays it straight and even for the binders. On the 12th of July a public exhibition was made at Easton, under the direction of the board; several hundred persons, principally farmers, assembled to witness it, and expressed themselves highly satisfied with the result. At the Trappe, where it was shown by the inventor on the following Saturday, an equal degree of approbation was evinced. It was afterwards used on the farm of Mr. Tench Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats, and barley were cut with it. Three mules of medium size worked in it constantly, with as much ease as in a drag harrow. They moved with equal facility in a walk or a trot. A concise description of this simple implement will show that it is admirably adapted to the important purpose for which it was invented. Resting on two wheels, which are permanently attached to the machine, and impart the motion to the whole, the main body of the machine is drawn by the horses along the outer edge of the standing grain. As the horses travel outside of the grain, it is neither knocked down or tangled in the slightest degree. Behind the wheels is a platform (supported by a roller or wheel), which projects beyond the side of the machine five feet into the grain. On the front of the edge projecting part of the platform is the cutter. This is composed of twenty-one teeth, resembling large lancet blades, which are placed side by side, and firmly riveted to a rod of iron. A lateral motion is imparted to it by a crank, causing it to vibrate between two rows of iron spikes, which point forward. As the machine advances, the grain is cut and falls backwards on the platform, where it collects in a pile. A man is placed on the part of the platform directly behind the horses, and with a rake of peculiar construction pushes off the grain in separate bunches, each bunch making a sheaf. It may appear to some that the grain will accumulate too rapidly for this man to perform his duty. But, upon considering the difference between the space occupied by the grain when standing, and when lying in a pile after it is cut, it will be evident that the raker has ample time to push off the bunches even in the thickest grain. In thin grain he has to wait until sufficient has collected to form a sheaf. "The machine is driven around the grain, which may be sown either on a smooth surface or on corn ridges. For the first round a way may be cleared with a cradle; but this is deemed unnecessary, for the grain, when driven over, is left in an inclined position, and by cutting it in the opposite direction as much of it is saved as with a cradle. Fourteen acres in corn lands were cut between 10 A. M. and 7-1/2 P. M. The hands had never worked with the machine before, nor was it a trial day's work; for, owing to the shortness of the straw, the machine was not allowed to cut when passing over the ridges from one side of the ground to the other, and this time was consequently lost. From the principle on which the cutting is performed, a keen edge to the cutter is by no means essential. The toughest weeds, an occasional corn stalk, or a stick of the thickness of a man's little finger, have been frequently cut without at all affecting its operation; it can be sharpened, however, in a few minutes with a file. The width of the swath may be increased by having the cutter made longer, and the same machine will cut a stubble of several different heights. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey Awarded Silver Cups] "There is ample room to make the different parts of any size, though the strength of every part has been fully tested. The machine has been often choked by oyster-shells getting into the cutter, in attempting to cut too low a stubble. The motion of the machinery being checked, the main wheels slide on the ground; the strain on every part being equal to the power exerted by the horses. It can be managed by any intelligent, careful negro. We deem it a simple, strong, and effective machine, and take much pleasure in awarding unanimously the meritorious inventor of it a handsome pair of silver cups. "ROBERT H. GOLDSBOROUGH, SAMUEL STEVENS, SAMUEL T. KENNARD, ROBERT BANNING, SAMUEL HAMBLETON, Senr., NICHOLAS GOLDSBOROUGH, EDWARD N. HAMBLETON, JAMES LI. CHAMBERLAIN, MARTIN GOLDSBOROUGH, HORATIO L. EDMONSON, TENCH TILGHMAN." Mr. Lane goes on to say that one of the machines was taken to La Porte, Indiana, and there put to work. Another was sent to Illinois. "The turning and fitting for these machines was done at the mill of Henry Rogers, about 500 yards away from the little shop. In the following copy of a recent affidavit sent us, date not given, these last matters are sufficiently substantiated." Mr. Lane continues: [Sidenote: The True Inventor] "Who invented the Reaper? The full, honest answer is that Obed Hussey invented the Reaper. "Between April and July, 1835, John Lane and Henry Rogers (with Isaac and Clark Lane assisting in the work) at their respective places of business one mile north of Mt. Healthy, Hamilton County, Ohio, made to order of Obed Hussey one Reaping machine for S. F. and Algernon Foster, then of the same County and State. Said Reaper was made to conform to or with drawings and patterns made and furnished by the said Obed Hussey, who also superintended the work of making the machine, and witnessed its trial in the field near the middle of June, 1835, in presence of many farmers, mechanics and others near by where the same was made; and when and where it was delivered to the Messrs. Foster's, who took this same reaper to La Porte County, Indiana, for the reaping season of the same year. "For the iron and steel work done as aforesaid books in my possession show that fifty-three and 69/100 dollars was paid by Messrs. Fosters, July 6th, 1835, to John Lane and by him receipted for in full, etc., etc. "The cutting device we then made for this machine evidently was the invention of Obed Hussey; and it was as near exactly the same in all material parts to the cutting device now universally in use, as the hand made sickle could then or now be made. The sections of sickle were forged steel blades V shaped, having serrated or sickle cut edges, and riveted to vibrating bar passing through slotted fingers, substantially riveted to the apron or table upon which the cut grain fell in position to be raked, or 'forked off.' "This Obed Hussey machine cutting in a good average stand of barley, June, 1835, was light draught for two horses and left as clean and as evenly cut stubble behind it as the best of machines now do the same work. But one fault, if any, with this first reaper was _the lack of one or more cogs_ in the driving wheel that gave motion to the sickle, which required the team to walk a bit too fast for teams of habitual, or slow motion. (Signed) "CLARK LANE." [Sidenote: McCormick Late in the Field] [Sidenote: McCormick's Application Rejected] Regarding one who became a competitor of Hussey, much can be gathered from the U.S. Patent Office. McCormick, who came comparatively late in the field, when applying for an extension of his patents made many admissions which were afterwards shown to dispute that he had accomplished a successful machine before Mr. Hussey and others. He tells us in his petition and brief to the Commissioner of Patents that he had operated his machine in some late wheat in the harvest of 1831, but that, although he was sometimes flattered, he was often discouraged; that he did not make sales or sell rights because not satisfied that the reaper would succeed well. He was not sufficiently satisfied of its being a "useful" machine to patent the reaper; he tells us that its construction and proportions were imperfect and its cutting apparatus defective on account of liability to choke. He admits that the cutting "proved not sufficiently certain to be relied upon in all situations" until "the improvement in the fingers and reversed angle of the teeth of the sickle" shown in his patent of 1845 were adopted. A farmer ordered a machine to be delivered in 1841, but McCormick "did not then feel that it was safe to warrant its performance." These facts are found in the records of the United States Patent Office. Referring to Mr. Hussey, on whose patent, among others, McCormick's application for an extension was rejected, who proved to be a factor he must consider, he said: "I did not interfere with him because I did not find him very much in the way, calculated to beat him without, and supposed it might be best to do so." Mr. Hussey, no doubt, took the charitable view and supposed Mr. McCormick to have meant that his proofs would have been sufficient to support him in his own rights. Mr. Hussey, the Quaker, wrote the Board to whom McCormick's application for an extension had been referred, and from his letter I quote: "In view of all these facts, I feel justified in asking your Honorable Board a decision, which, while it adjudges McCormick's machine according to its merits, will not be prejudicial to my interests, seeing that Mr. McCormick makes no claims to the grand principle in my machine, which makes it valuable, and so much better than his, which principle I claim as my invention. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Attitude] "I had no intention, neither had I any desire, to place any obstacle in the way of the extension of McCormick's patent, but the course he has taken, before your Board and before Congress, has compelled me to act in self defense, by which I have given your Honorable Board much trouble, which I would have gladly avoided." Mr. McCormick also said to the Board: "If my claim be made out as so far appears from the evidence presented, it will be observed (as I think) that nothing will be left of Mr. Hussey's claim to which he is entitled, and all the improvements he has added since his patent have, I believe, been taken from mine." Reference is no doubt had to the effect that Hussey, in some of his machines, used only a single drive wheel and balanced his machine thereon. He confessed that he never received profits from his first patent until after twelve years of study, and never should have realized anything from the invention but for later improvements, and he continues as follows: "If then it shall appear that I am the original inventor of all the leading and important principles of the invention, is it wrong that I should ask for reciprocal benefits for myself, who alone have brought them into being? Mr. Hussey's prior patent stood in Mr. McCormick's way, but its inventor raised no voice against the extension of McCormick's rights unless his prior rights became endangered. The honors due Mr. Hussey were not lessened by the Commissioner of Patents when treating of a competitive claimant to have invented the reaper. [Sidenote: Not McCormick's Inventions] Mr. McCormick took out a third patent in 1847 covering inventions shown by the statement of Leander and others to have been the invention of the _father_ or _some one else_. An application was made for the extension of this patent. It then became necessary that the applicant show that he had not reaped the benefits he believed himself entitled to through his monopoly for the term of the patent. [Sidenote: Neither Brilliant nor Extraordinary] The value of the second patent that of 1845, may be gathered from the words of the Commissioner of Patents: "The invention of 1845, considered in itself, and examined in presence of the reaping machine as then in successful operation, both in Europe and America, can scarcely be regarded as brilliant or in any degree extraordinary." The Commissioner further said: [Sidenote: An Efficient Machine] "It was a conviction of the inefficiency of the machine that led the applicant to make his invention of 1847, which, by a modification of pre-existing elements, provided an advantageous location for the raker's seat. Upon this his fame as an inventor rests, and to this is his reaper indebted for the triumphs it has achieved. This seat had been previously known in at least nine patented reapers; but it had not been well placed, and an appropriate location for it was, up to 1847, an acknowledged desideratum. Whatever, however, may have been the value or the success of the reaper as improved in 1847, such value or success can exert no influence in determining the issue under discussion." The Commissioner further said, referring to the 1847 patent: [Sidenote: McCormick's "Invention" Valueless] "Without the parts thus slowly accumulated and combined, and which have been so unhesitatingly appropriated by himself, _his own invention would have been as valueless as would be a shingle to him who could find no house-top on which to nail it_. The construction insisted on would compel the public to pay again, and pay extravagantly, for that which is already its own, alike by purchase and by long uninterrupted possession." The authorities cited make it clear the Hussey reaper was successful, from the start, but _the Patent Office did not seem to think that the machine of his opponent for honors was so_. The Commissioner in his decision refers to the testimony of William S. McCormick, who, at that time, was a partner of Cyrus McCormick as a manufacturer and seller of the McCormick reaper: [Sidenote: A Worthless Machine] "As a farmer I used the reaper without a seat, before a good one was invented, and am perfectly certain that it was so nearly worthless that a machine without one could not be sold at any price that would pay in competition with one having a raker's seat; this is my experience from my intimate connection with the business for many years." (Commissioner's Decision, January 28, 1859.) I further find: "In the criticism which has been necessarily made upon the invention of 1845, there has been no design to detract from the acknowledged value and usefulness of the machine, as constructed under the patent of 1847. It has had its brilliant successes in England and France, but it has also had its marked discomfitures when competing with other machines. Though enjoying a great and perhaps a still expanding popularity, it is by no means a universal favorite." The last words of the Commissioner are: "The application must therefore be rejected." There were no questions raised as to the invention of Mr. Hussey. [Sidenote: McCormick Had to Pay for Hussey Improvements] [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey Did Not Need the Improvements of Others] The statement that McCormick's success was founded upon the inventions of others and to no extent upon his own, as quoted from "Memorial of Robert McCormick," is in part admitted by Cyrus McCormick, who, in his affidavit when applying for the extension of his 1847 patent said: "He has, at the expense of much thought, time, and money, added many other important improvements to it since 1847, which have contributed to the profits of his manufacture." He then refers to other improvements, saying: Among such improvements by others as he has had to pay for, are the inventions of his brothers, of Obed Hussey, of Jonathan Reed, of Henry Green, of Solymon Bell and of Joseph Nesen. It is known that for nearly thirty years Obed Hussey manufactured and sold reaping machines and mowers in his limited way and, _infringing no rights of others, had no royalties to pay_. To such an extent was his mind that of an inventor, that he devoted thought to many side lines, the expense of which taxed his abilities until, when his patent of 1847 had but two years to run, he sold it for $200,000.00. COMMISSIONER'S DECISION In the matter of this application of Eunice B. Hussey, Administratrix of Obed Hussey, deceased, for the extension of Reissued Letters Patent No. 449 for an improvement in Reaping Machines, dated the 14th day of April, 1857, being a division and re-issue of original Letters Patent No. 5227, dated the 7th day of August, 1847, for an improvement in Reaping machines. [Sidenote: Applications of Mr. Hussey's Widow for Patent Extension all Granted] Also, the application of the same party for the extension of the Reissued Letters Patent No. 451, for an improvement in Reaping Machines, dated the 14th day of April 1851, being a division and Reissue of Original Letters Patent No. 5227, dated the 7th day of August, 1847, for an improvement in Reaping Machines. Also, the application of the same party for the extension of Reissued Letters Patent No. 742, for an improvement in Reaping Machines, dated the 21st day of June, 1859, being a division of Reissued Letters Patent No. 450, dated the 14th of April, 1857, being a division and Reissue of original Letters Patent No. 5227, dated the 7th day of August, 1847, for an improvement in Reaping Machines. Also the application of the same party for the extension of Reissued Letters Patent No. 917, dated the 28th day of February, 1860, for an improvement in Reaping Machines, being a reissue of reissued Letters Patent No. 743, dated June 21, 1859, the last named Patent being a division and reissue of reissued Letters Patent No. 450, dated the 14th day of April, 1857, which last mentioned patent was a division and reissue of original Letters Patent No. 5227, dated the 7th of August, 1847, for an Improvement in Reaping Machines. [Sidenote: Claim of Opponents Overruled] These four applications for the extension of the said four patents, Nos. 449, 451, 742 and 917, having been made in due form on the 30th day of November, 1860, and the Commissioner of Patents having caused to be published in due and legal form, notice of said applications and of the time and place when and where the same would be considered. And the applicant, the administratrix and widow of the patentee, having duly furnished and filed statements in writing under oath of the ascertained value of the said inventions and improvements claimed in said patents, and of the receipts and expenditures of the patentee and his legal representatives sufficiently in detail to exhibit a true and faithful account of loss and profit in any manner accruing to the patentee and his legal representatives from and by reason of said inventions and patents. And the testimony in these four cases having been duly filed and considered and referred to the principal Examiner having charge of the class of inventions to which these belong, and the said Examiner having made a full report upon the said cases, and particularly that the inventions or improvements, secured by the said four patents, were new and patentable when patented. And the printed arguments in these cases having been duly filed and considered, and the day of hearing viz. the 28th day of Feb., 1861, arrived, undersigned, the Acting Commissioner of Patents, sitting at the time and place designated in the said published notice to hear and decide upon the evidence produced before him both for and against the extension, and having heard all persons who appeared to show cause why the extension should not be granted, does decide as follows, _viz._: That the applications for extension in these cases were made at a proper time, and not prematurely as the opponents have contended. The only ground alleged to support the allegation that the applications were premature is that the receipts for the year 1861 cannot be fully ascertained at this time, but must be estimated or guessed at. If this is a good reason for not considering the applications now it would also be good on the 7th of August when the patent expires, for the receipts would not then be ascertained, but would still be the subject of estimate only. These receipts can be as well determined by this mode now, as in August. The objection on this point is not therefore well taken, and must be overruled. An application for extension cannot be regarded as premature if made during the last year of the term of the patent, and the total receipts are known or can be estimated with reasonable certainty. In addition to this there seems to be no little force in the argument of Counsel that the public convenience would be promoted by an early decision upon these cases before manufacturers enter upon their preparations for another year's business. Besides these considerations, which of themselves are sufficient to determine the propriety of hearing these cases at the present time, the late Commissioner of Patents fixed this time for these hearings with reference to the public interests therein, and is an additional reason why it should be adhered to, yet I should have no hesitation in postponing the hearing if it were made to appear that the public interest were likely in any way to be subserved by such postponement. [Sidenote: Value and Importance of Hussey Inventions Fully Established] The report of the Examiner leaves no doubt in my mind as to the novelty of each of the inventions which constitute the subject matter of the four patents for which the extensions are asked. His report is equally conclusive as to the _utility_ of the inventions, their _value and importance_ to the public, and as to the patentee's diligence in introducing them into public use, and his efforts to derive remuneration from their sale. From a careful examination of all these points myself, I have arrived at the same conclusion as the Examiner. [Sidenote: Opponents Contentions Not Proven by Facts] The Counsel, Wm. N. Whitely, the opponent of these extensions have urged with great pertinacity that the inventions are not novel. They allege that the same thing existed before in Hiram Moore's "Big Harvester" in Michigan--the Ambler Machine in New York--the Nicholson Machine in Maryland--and the White and Hoyle Machines in Ohio. They also contend that the invention claimed in Patent No. 451 especially, is of no utility or value. On a careful review of all these points with the light of the Argument of Counsel, I am quite clear that the Examiners conclusion as to the novelty and utility of Hussey's invention are sound. The Moore or "Big Harvester" cutting apparatus, the testimony shows was designated for the performance of a different duty from Hussey's and could not without essential changes of construction, amounting to changes in its principle and mode of operation, be used for the same purposes as that of Hussey. The Ambler machine had a straight edge cutter vibrating on arms through barbed or open slotted fingers. His Cutting apparatus lacked an essential element found in Hussey's the scalloped cutter, to say nothing of other material differences. This machine has nothing to impeach the novelty of Hussey's inventions. The Nicholson Model has no vibrating scalloped cutter which is one of the specific elements of Hussey's combination. The White machine as shown in the exhibit produced and which the testimony shows has been recently fabricated is not substantially the same combination claimed in patent No. 742. It has not like Hussey's a cutter with flush edges on both sides of the angle of the forks on the _same side_ of the blade. The Hoyle Machine, according to Hoyle's own deposition, is subsequent in date to Hussey's invention. [Sidenote: Utility of Hussey's Inventions] It is contended by the opponents that the patent No. 451 has no utility or value. I am inclined to the opinion that the utility of the improvement specified in this patent is, of itself, small, compared with the improvements covered by the other patents of Hussey now before me, which are all of very great utility, and two of them indispensable in the present state of the art. Still since the novelty of the improvement claimed in No. 451, is admitted and is proven by the testimony of Henry B. Renwick to have some utility as one of this series of patents, I think it has sufficient utility to justify an extension. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey Did Not Abandon His Invention] The contestant's counsel have argued from the testimony of Lovegrove, that Hussey abandoned his inventions to the public by having them on sale more than two years before applying for a patent. The testimony does not sustain this point. Besides, an inventor does not abandon his invention to the public by constructing a machine embracing it, in the same factory where he makes and sells other machines. Nor by using it experimentally in such a factory or elsewheres. Nor by keeping it in such a factory from the autumn of one year to the harvest of the next year. Nor by doing all or any of these things more than two years before his application for a patent. The statement of receipts and expenditures is unusually full and in detail, more so than is necessary to fulfill the requirements of the law. There are two classes of expenditures and two corresponding classes of receipts, _viz._: 1st. Expenditures and receipts on account of the manufacture and sale of Reapers and Mowing Machines embracing the patentee's improvements. 2nd. Expenditures and receipts on account of the sales of Patent rights and licenses, and compromise of infringements. The Patentee manufactured and sold about 2,000 machines, and a few other articles at a cost of materials and labor $195,292.88 Shop and Tools 12,500.00 One-quarter of patentee's time and expenses 9,008.22 ___________ $216,801.10 The receipts on account of the sale of these manufactures were: Cash for Reapers $216,607.90 Cash for parts of Reapers 22,416.58 Notes and Book Accounts 11,388.23 Cash for Corn Crushers 1,135.25 Discount and Interest 2,327.84 ___________ $253,875.80 The result of the manufacturing business is an excess of receipts over expenditures of $37,074.70. This statement, however, allows nothing for manufacturer's profits. An allowance for such profit ought to be made but in this case the object is to eliminate from the gross receipts such profits as have in any manner accrued from or by reason of the inventions claimed in the patents. Now receipts or profits that result from business talents or skill in manufacturing or in financeering are not receipts or profits in any manner accruing from or by reason of an invention. In the case of Seymour and Morgan vs. McCormick-Howards Reports Vol. 16 p. 480, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the ruling of Judge Nelson that the whole profits of the manufacture of Reaping machines in which one small part of the machines infringed a patent was to be considered as accruing from the use of the patented part was erroneous, and that a reasonable manufacturer's profit for the use of the Capital so, in addition to the actual cost of the machine must first be deducted from the gross receipts, and if then there was any excess, that might be assigned to patents. This decision I should deem binding and conclusive upon the subject even if I did not think that the values of business capital and talent are as fairly charges against the receipts of business as the values of a business house or tools. [Sidenote: An Inadequate Profit] In this case there is only an excess of $37,074.70 of the receipts over the expenditure or something less than 14 per cent upon the gross amount of sales. This is a very inadequate profit for manufacturing and selling, but it is all there is, and it is all that I can allow. If the excess of the receipts over the expenditures had amounted to three times fourteen per cent, I should have had no hesitation in allowing the whole of it for manufacturer's profit, and should not have deemed it more than a reasonable allowance in view of the testimony of Long, which shows that his firm have made a profit of over fifty per cent after paying patent fees, on their manufacture of reapers. It seems to be supposed from the reference which has been made to Commissioner Holt's decision in the case of McCormick's application for the extension of his patent of 1845, that he entertained views at variance with those I have expressed as to the justice of allowing manufacturer's profits as a part of the expenditure, and as an offset against the receipts, but a careful examination of that opinion will show clearly that Mr. Holt was not willing to allow a charge for the use of Capital, and for wear and tear of machines (which are the Constituent elements of a manufacturer's claim to allow for profit) and then, again allow a second or duplicate charge for the same things under the name of manufacturer's profits. This is the extent to which Mr. Holt goes, and I fully agree with him. The expenditures on account of the patents and the sale of rights and licenses under the same are: For three quarter of patentee's labor and expense $27,024.68 For sundry legal and traveling expenses 44,562.88 __________ $71,587.56 The receipts on the same account are: Cash for licenses, sale of rights, etc. $92,788.38 Notes and unsettled accounts 23,748.89 License fees estimated for 1861 10,000.00 ___________ $126,537.27 showing that the receipts exceed the expenditures by $54,949.71 or $13,737.42 for each of the four patents. This I can have no hesitation in pronouncing to be a totally inadequate compensation for inventions of such great value and importance. After a most laborious examination and careful consideration of the whole matter, it appears to my full and entire satisfaction, having due regard to the public interest therein, that it is just and proper that the term of the said reissued patents No. 449, No. 451, No. 742, and No. 917 should severally be extended by reason of the patentee, without fault or neglect on his part, having failed to obtain from the use and sale of his said inventions a reasonable remuneration for the time, ingenuity and expense bestowed upon the same and the introduction thereof into use. [Sidenote: Hussey's Inventions the Basis of all Reaper Manufacturers Profits] The list of licenses under these patents show the acquiescence of the principal manufacturers in the justice of Hussey's claims. The list shows that the manufacturers of Reapers have made large profits, and that Hussey's improvements are the foundation of their success. It is certainly just and equitable that Hussey's heirs should be allowed to participate in the advantages of using his own inventions to an extent more nearly commensurate with the merits of those inventions. [Sidenote: A Merited Tribute from the U.S. Patent Office] The character of the opposition to these applications, in which but a single manufacturer has entered an appearance is such, as greatly strengthens this view, and I feel constrained to regard this tacit assent, of the great body of manufacturers to these applications for extension, an additional evidence of the soundness of my own conclusions. As it is also a fitting and merited tribute to Obed Hussey, now in his grave, for the invaluable contributions his genius and industry have made to the improvements of the age. The said four patents, Nos. 449, 451, 742 and 917, are accordingly extended for the term of seven years from the 7th day of August, 1861. S. T. SHUGERT, Acting Commissioner of Patents. United States Patent Office, Mar. 1, 1861. A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF THE INVENTION OF REAPING MACHINES And an Examination of the Claims for Priority of Invention The object aimed at in this examination is to ascertain as far as reliable evidence within reach will establish the fact--and before the evidence may be lost--to whom belongs the credit of first rendering the Reaping and Mowing Machine a practical and available implement to the American farmer; not who _theoretically invented_ a machine for the purpose, that may have worked an hour only, and very imperfectly for that short period, and was then laid aside; but who rendered it an operating and efficient machine that was proved by successive years in the harvest field, capable of doing its work, and doing it well; better than either the scythe or cradle. The object is _not_ to detract from the merits fairly claimed by any inventor; but it is to examine into some of the rival claims, furnish the evidence that has satisfied our own minds, and leave it for others to judge for themselves. We would not intentionally deprive an inventor of his often dearly bought and hard-earned fame--the creation of his own genius--for it is more prized than even fine gold by many. But it is equally just that merit should be acknowledged, and the meed of praise awarded, where it is honestly and fairly due; and to this end we propose and intend to examine into the evidence closely and critically. It may also be right to remark that we have no private or pecuniary interest whatever, in these, or any other patent claims. [Sidenote: Attempts of the Ancients] As to the theoretical portion of the business, the enquiry might be greatly extended; indeed for past centuries, as we have imperfect accounts of Reaping Machines being used by the Romans. If the ancients were successful in making a practical implement for Reaping, by horse, or ox power, as some ancient writers assert, we certainly have no correct and reliable account of a machine that would be considered efficient or useful at the present day; a machine to save or tear off the heads only--as described by Pliny and Palladius--would more properly be termed a gathering machine, and not at all suited to the wants and habits of modern farmers. [Illustration: Silver medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper at New York in 1852.] [Sidenote: English Endeavors] It was not until near the close of the past, and within the present century, so far as we can learn, that the subject again claimed much attention of the inventive talent of either this, or foreign countries. Of some half a dozen or more attempts made in Great Britain, and recorded in Loudon's Encyclopedia of Agriculture, the Edinburg Encyclopedia, and other similar works, all, or nearly all, relied either upon scythes or cutters, with a rotary motion, or vibrating shears. And although there was "go ahead" about them in one sense of the term, as it was intended for the "cart to go before the horse," none of them appeared to have gained, or certainly not long retained, the confidence of the farmers; for at the exhibition of the "World's Fair in London," the whole Kingdom could not raise a Reaping Machine;--a practical implement which was considered worth using and exhibiting. [Sidenote: English Failure] That the idea was obsolete there, and had been unsuccessful, is clearly proved by the fact that the English journals and writers of that period, without a single exception, spoke of the American Reapers--after the trials!--as "completely successful"--"taking every one by surprise"--"their reaping machines have astonished our agriculturists"--"few subjects have created a greater sensation in the agricultural world than the recent introduction into the country of the reaping machines"--the "curiosity of the crowd was irrepressible to witness such a novelty, even to stopping the machine, and trampling the grain under foot," etc., etc.--Much more and similar evidence is at hand; but _better_ need not be produced to prove the entire failure of reaping machines in Great Britain, as late as 1851. We would also refer the curious to Rees' Cyclopedia, for a very brief account of what had been effected;--a few paragraphs only are written on reaping machines, but several pages are compiled as to the use of the scythe, sickle or reap hook, and reaping _fork_. The Doctor refers to Plunknett's Machine by name, as being "somewhat on a new principle, the horse drawing the machine instead of pushing it forward as was the old mode of applying the power." The machine is fully represented in the Farmers' Dictionary; and he winds up the account as follows: "But the success with which they have been attended has hitherto been far from complete;" again, "Other machines of this kind have still more lately been invented by other persons [meaning of course his own countrymen] but without answering the purpose in that full and complete manner which is necessary in this sort of work." The Doctor undertakes to tell us _what is wanted_, but fails entirely to inform his readers _how to do it_. That John Bull had not done it is clearly established; but Brother Jonathan, the "Live Yankee," as John calls his cousin, has solved the problem; and the solution is so simple, when you know how to do it! that it is marvelously strange no one for centuries had before struck upon the right key. Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P. and F. R. S.--the chief manager of the London Exhibition--admits the failure, though apparently reluctantly; but the source of his information, in writing about the American machines, was interested and defective; and when he again writes on this subject he will be better informed. He says: "At the opening of this century it was thought that a successful reaping machine had been invented, and a reward had been voted by Parliament to its author. The machine was employed here and abroad, but from its intricacy, fell into disuse. Another has been lately devised in one of our Colonies, which cuts off the heads of the corn, but leaves the straw standing, a fatal defect in an old settled country, where the growth of corn is forced by the application of dung. Our farmers may well, therefore, have been astonished by an American implement which not only reaped the wheat, but performed the work with the neatness and certainty of an old and perfect machine. Its novelty of action reminded one of seeing the first engine run on the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830. Its perfection depended on its being new only in England; but in America the result of repeated disappointments and untired perseverance, etc." [Sidenote: English Claims] We propose to prove, and by better evidence, and disinterested too, than he then had, that in 1833, near the date of "the first engine run on the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830," the American machine cut the "corn" just as perfectly, with equal "neatness and certainty" as did the "Novelty" or "Rocket" pass over the Liverpool and Manchester railway. We shall again recur to English authority. John Bull is a right honest and clever old gentleman in the main; but he is rather prone to claim what he has no title for--inventions, as well as territory. We are willing to give him what he can show a clear deed for, but no more. He beat us by one year only in the Locomotive; but we fairly beat him eighteen or twenty in the Reaping Machine; and yet some of his writers contend to this day that we "_pirated_" from Bell and other English inventors all we know! [Sidenote: English Inventors and Their Mistakes] The excitement and sensation thus produced by the American Reapers, caused renewed efforts on the part of English inventors; some who had near a quarter of a century previously, been endeavoring to effect this "great desideratum," to use an English editorial; and the most conspicuous of these was one invented by the Rev. Patrick Bell, of Scotland. Of the half a score or more and previous inventors in Great Britain--Boyce, Plunknett, Gladstone of Castle Douglass, Salmon of Waburn, Smith of Deanston in Perthshire, etc., etc.--none were waked up from their Rip Van Winkle slumbers; or if they were, the world is not advised of it. They all used revolving scythes, revolving cutters, or shears instead. Several trials were made with Bell's in 1828 or 1829; and a very full and minute description with plates, was published some 24 or 25 years ago, and may be found in Loudon's Encyclopedia of Agriculture. It was, however, too complicated, too cumbersome and expensive, performed too little service, and required too much tinkering and repairs to be viewed as a practical and available implement.--The English farmer found the sickle or reap hook preferable, for it was everywhere resorted to.--The cutting apparatus of Bell's consisted of shears, one half stationary, the other vibrating, and turning on the bolt that confined them to the iron bar which extends across the front of the frame. The vibrating motion was given by connecting the back end of one shear to a bar--making the bolt the fulcrum--and which was attached to a crank, revolving by gear to the driving wheels. [Sidenote: Bell's Machine] A reel was used to gather the grain to the shears, and adjustable, back and forth, and higher or lower, to suit the height of the grain. A revolving apron delivered the grain in a continuous swath; and the team was attached to the rear of the machine, _pushing_ it through the grain. We have been more minute in the description of Bell's machine, because it may have been the foundation of some of the early, and nearly simultaneous attempts made in this country. In fact it does not admit of doubt that several were nearly identical with Bell's in the use of the shears and reel, though with much more simple gearing, and in the general arrangement. Whether they were original inventions, cannot be ascertained. In this country, from 1800 to 1833 out of some 15 or 20 patents granted for "cutting grain" and "cutting grass," only four appear to have been "restored"; i.e. technically speaking, "not restored" in models and drawings after the burning of the Patent Office in 1836. Many, if not most of them, were probably improvements in the grain cradle, and mowing scythe; though the names are preserved, there is no record to show for what particulars the patents were granted. There can be no doubt, however, that the inventors considered them valueless, as they were "not restored," though Congress voted large sums to replace the burnt models and drawings, without any expense to the parties. Of those restored James Ten Eyck's patent is dated 1825, Wm. Manning's in 1831, Wm. & Thos. Schnebly's in 1833, and Obed Hussey's also in 1833. James Ten Eyck used an open reel; not only to gather the grain, but his cutters or shears, were attached to, and revolved with the reel;--very much, if not exactly on the principle of shearing cloth. William Manning used another form of cutters, and quite different from James Ten Eyck's--he likewise used fingers or teeth to support the grain during the action of the horizontal cutters. William and Thomas Schnebly of Maryland also used the reel, with shears as cutters, very similar to Bell's. Abraham Randall, or Rundell, of New York (for the name is spelled both ways), was another of the early inventors. His patent of 1835 is not restored, though it is stated his machine was experimented with as early as 1833 or 1834. He also used the reel, and his cutters, it is said, were similar to Bell's--using shears. T. D. Burrall, of New York, was also one of the early inventors, about 1832 or 1833, but we believe professedly after Bell's, so far as to use a reel and shears. [Sidenote: None Successful] [Sidenote: Hussey's Machine an American Triumph] None of these machines, however, Hussey's excepted, were successful, or were used any length of time; nor is it necessary here to refer particularly to other attempts, about this time, or indeed prior to this period, for they were equally unsuccessful; and their inventors cannot claim the merit of doing a thing, that was not in fact performed--making an efficient and successful Reaper. We may here remark, however, that so far as now known, no machine like Bell's, on the shear or scissor principle, has succeeded in this country; or as we believe, is ever likely to succeed. We have seen a number by different inventors, and all have failed to give satisfaction. They may work well for a very brief period and with keen edges; but as they become dull, the shears are forced apart by the straw and grass--particularly the latter, and the machine fails, as it inevitably must do, in its allotted duty, and for very obvious reasons. If the shear rivet or bolt is kept tight there is too much friction; if loose enough to play freely it is too loose to cut well; and, lastly, it is too liable to wear at the most important point of the whole machine. During the harvest of 1853 in England every effort was made to uphold Bell's machine; in some cases prizes were awarded to it, though evidently partial; for in the face of these awards some who witnessed the trials, and had used Bell's machines, laid them aside and purchased Hussey's. At the close of the season, as we learn from reliable authority, even the engineers who operated Bell's, frankly admitted that the American machine as exhibited by Hussey, was the better implement, owing to the arrangement of the guards and knives; Bell's required so much tinkering, that several machines were required to cope with one of Hussey's. At the recent harvest (1854) the Mark Lane Express acknowledges that the Royal Agricultural Societies' show at Lincoln, Bell's machine was "at last fairly beaten" by Hussey's, including McCormick's, and Hussey's machine received the prize over all others. It is just, however, to add, that far as we consider Bell's machine behind some of the present day, yet complex and cumbersome as it was, it combined more of the essential features of success than any Reaper that preceded it. [Illustration: Bronze medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper at New York in 1853.] We now come to 1833, the date of Hussey's patent; and to 1834, the date of C. H. McCormick's first patent. These were known and admitted by all to have been the rivals for popular favor and patronage, from about the year 1844 or 1845 to the opening of the great Industrial Exhibition in London, in 1851. To these, therefore, the enquiry will be more particularly directed. We must, however, refer back for a brief period to 1831; for although C. H. McCormick's first patent was dated in 1834, yet when he applied for his extension in 1848 he alleged that _his invention_ was prior to Hussey's, as he had invented a machine in 1831, two years before the date of O. Hussey's, and three years before the date of his own patent. The evidence produced _written and prepared_ by C. H. McCormick (and now on file in the Patent Office) was deemed inadmissible and informal by the Board, and it refused to go on with the examination either as to priority or validity of invention without notice to Hussey--his patent being called in question by McCormick--to be present when the depositions were taken. [Sidenote: McCormick's Attempt to Get Hussey's Signature] Before, however, receiving the official notice, he was called on by C. H. McCormick in Baltimore, and requested to sign a paper, agreeing or admitting, that the testimony he had himself prepared should be considered evidence--i.e. considered formal; alleging that it would save him trouble and expense in going to Virginia. This was declined by Hussey on the ground that he might thus unwittingly injure himself; he having previously applied for an extension of his own Patent. Neither was he then aware of the nature of this evidence; or until this interview, was he advised of C. H. McCormick's application for extension. Hussey was subsequently duly notified by order of the Board to be present at taking the depositions in Augusta County, Virginia,--the Board having adjourned three weeks for that purpose. Either just previous or subsequent to these proceedings the case was referred by the Commissioner of Patents, or Board of Extensions, to Dr. Page, one of the Examiners of the office. His report is as follows: "Patent Office, "Jan. 22d, 1848. "Sir: "In compliance with your requisition I have examined the patent of Cyrus H. McCormick, dated 31st June, 1834, and found that the principal features embraced in said patent, viz, the cutting-knife and mode of operating it, the fingers to guide the grain and the revolving rack for gathering the grain, were not new at the time of granting said letters patent. "The knife-fingers and general arrangements and operation of the cutting apparatus are found in the reaping machine of O. Hussey, patented 31st Dec., 1833. "The revolving rack presents novelty chiefly in form, as its operation is similar to the revolving frame of James Ten Eyck, patented 2nd November, 1825. "Respectfully submitted, "CHAS. G. PAGE, "Examiner. "Hon. Edmund Burke, Com'r of Patents." As some have enquired, and others may enquire, why a patent should issue under these circumstances, we reply, that previous to 1836 but little, if any, examination was made as to priority of inventions, or into preceding Patents; the applicant made oath as to his invention, and the patent was issued as a matter of course. And as another matter of course, if the rival interests clashed, litigation was the result:--the Courts and juries often decided what they little understood, and at times not at all, after the pleading of well fee'd lawyers; a pretty fair illustration of the fable of the boys and frogs; it may be _fun_ for the lawyers but it is _death_ to the hopes of many a poor patentee. We are, however, pleased to perceive a disposition manifested by the courts to sustain patents; even if occasionally an unjust claim is recognized as a valid one, it is better, according to the legal and moral maxim, that half a dozen rogues should escape punishment for a time, than that one innocent person should be unjustly convicted; the rogue is almost certain to be caught in the end, and truth will ultimately triumph. [Sidenote: McCormick-Hussey Controversy] This testimony was taken in due form at Steele's Tavern, Augusta County, Va., McCormick and Hussey both being present. It is too voluminous to copy entire, but we will refer briefly to each, having read them carefully, and obtained certified copies of all from the Patent office. Dr. N. M. Hitt testified to a reaping machine being made by C. H. McCormick in 1831--it had a straight sickle blade. William S. McCormick and Leander J. McCormick, brothers of C. H. McCormick, also testified to the making of a machine in 1831. Mary McCormick, mother of C. H. McCormick, agreed in general with the testimony of her sons,--did not doubt but it was correct, "it appears familiar to me," but testified to nothing in particular. [Sidenote: Testimony] John Steele, Jr., was tavernkeeper at "Steele's Tavern," testified as to the year being 1831 or 1832. In his amended testimony, admitted that C. H. McCormick wrote the paper describing the machine for him to testify to; recollects little else about the machine than the straight sickle edge. Eliza H. Steele refused to testify without first seeing a certificate previously signed by her; admitted that C. H. McCormick wrote it for her to sign; her testimony as to the year depended on the building of a certain house, on which the workmen put 1831. John McCown--was a blacksmith--testified that _he_ made the "straight sickle blade," and that it was "a long, straight sickle" blade. This was most singular testimony to found a claim of priority of invention on, and by which to invalidate another man's patent. There was discrepancy in the evidence as to the year of the invention; also whether the machine was intended for one or two horses; how the "fingers" were arranged, and whether of _wood_ or _iron_, _above_ or _below_, the "straight sickle blade." Two of the brothers--one at least who helped to make, if not also to invent this machine--testified that the plan or arrangement of the machine here sworn to, was changed in 1840, 1841, 1842, or 1843, they did not know which; from 9 to 12 years afterwards! John McCown swears positively that he helped to build the machine, so far at least as to forge "a long, straight sickle;" but neither he, or a single one of the seven sworn witnesses, "_ladies_ and _gentlemen_," testify that the machine ever worked a single hour, or cut as much grain of any kind as would make a single sheaf![1] [1] The reading of this testimony strongly reminds us of an anecdote related at the hustings in Virginia by that talented but eccentric character, John Randolph, of Roanoake, in a political canvass with an opponent, who promised what he would do for his constituents, if elected. Randolph told him he was like one of his overseers, a plausible fellow, but on whom little reliance was to be placed--and who, desiring to show what fine crops he had raised, exhibited a better tally board than the crop could justify. "I told him," said Randolph, "this is very good tally, John, but where's the corn? and I tell the gentleman, I don't want to see his tally, but the corn--the evidence of what he ever did to entitle him to a seat in Congress." The effect was electric, and the hustings rang with plaudits. Now we would say to C. H. McCormick, this is very good tally, John, but where's the Corn? The evidence that the machine ever cut a single acre of grain. [Sidenote: "John Smith"] In a long communication to Commissioner Burke in 1848, together with a list of sales and profits, C. H. McCormick states, and on oath, that he had exhibited his machine in 1840 or 1841 to a considerable number of farmers and _very satisfactorily_, though but one person could be induced to purchase--a Mr. John Smith we believe--and that up to 1842, _eleven_ years after the alleged invention, he had sold but two machines, and one of them conditionally. Again, in the _same paper_ he states, "but they failed to operate well," and had to be altered--in other words they would not work at all. Amongst others, he had applied to "the farmer of Virginia, Mr. Sampson," for a certificate as to the satisfactory working of the machine, but it was declined. We are not surprised at this; for some 35 years ago we were personally acquainted with this "farmer of Virginia," and also with his mode of farming; and know that a machine of any kind to please him _must work_ and must also work "_well_." Richard Sampson was at that early day in this "age of progress," one of the best and most practical farmers in the "Old Dominion," and was not a man to be "caught napping," either at home or abroad. The record shows that "on March 29, 1848, the Board met agreeably to adjournment--Present, James Buchanan, Secretary of State, Edmund Burke, Commissioner of Patents, and R. H. Gillett, Solicitor of the Treasury--and having examined the evidence adduced in the case decide that said patent ought not to be extended." (Signed) "JAMES BUCHANAN, "Secretary of State. "EDMUND BURKE, "Commissioner of Patents. "R. H. GILLETT, "Solicitor of the Treasury." This evidence, taken in due form, and certified to by the magistrates in Augusta and Rockbridge Counties, Virginia, was _not_ ruled out as informal, as we have seen it stated: but it was certainly laid before the Board; and was doubtless satisfactory both as to priority of invention, and in connection with Dr. Page's report, conclusive, "that said patent ought not to be extended." We have also seen it stated that Hussey appeared before the Board of Extensions "to contest the extension of McCormick's patent." [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey Acted in Self Defense] We think injustice--and no doubt unintentionally--is here done to Hussey. Until the order of the Board was passed to afford him the opportunity to defend his rights, assailed without his knowledge, he was not aware of C. H. McCormick's application. As a matter of course he then attended, but stated in writing, and which is now on file, "I had no intention, neither had I any desire to place any obstacle in the way of the extension of C. H. McCormick's patent. But the course he has taken before your Board and before Congress has compelled me to act in self defense." [Sidenote: McCormick Assailed the Hussey Extension] Not so with C. H. McCormick; for when his claims were rejected by the Board of Extensions,--and most justly, as we think, in accordance with the evidence--_he petitioned Congress against Hussey's extension_: and to this most ungenerous, illiberal and unfair course, and of which Hussey was for years totally ignorant, C. H. McCormick may justly attribute this enquiry;--but for this, it had never been written. Our object is not to injure C. H. McCormick; but it is that justice may be done to another, whose interests and rights he was the first to assail. If the foregoing testimony is not conclusive, as regards priority of invention in 1831 against C. H. McCormick, we think the evidence which follows--and which no one will pretend to call in question, or doubt--establishes the fact that the machine of 1831 was good for nothing,--not even _half invented_; and that the machine of 1841 was not much more perfect. On page 231 of the Reports of Juries for the Great London Exhibition, and now in the Library of Congress, we find the following: "It seems right," says Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., "to put on record Mr. McCormick's own account of his progress, or some extracts at least, from a statement written by him, at my request."--[Pusey.] "My father was a farmer in the county of Rockbridge, State of Virginia, United States. He made an experiment in cutting grain in the year 1816, by a number of cylinders standing perpendicularly. Another experiment of the same kind was made by my father in the harvest of 1831, which satisfied my father to abandon it. Thereupon my attention was directed to the subject, and the same harvest I invented and put in operation in cutting late oats on the farm of John Steele, adjoining my father's, those parts of my present Reaper called the platform, for receiving the corn, a straight blade taking effect on the corn, supported by stationary fingers over the edge, and a reel to gather the corn; which last, however, I found had been used before, though not in the same combination. "Although these parts constituted the foundation of the present machine, I found in practice innumerable difficulties, being limited also to a few weeks each year, during the harvest, for experimenting, so that my first patent for the Reaper was granted in June, 1834. "During this interval, _I was often advised by my father and family to abandon it, and pursue my regular business, as likely to be more profitable, he having given me a farm_. [Italicised by C. H. McC.] "No machines were sold until 1840, and I may say that they were not of much practical value until the improvements of my second patent in 1845. "These improvements consist in reversing the angle of the sickle teeth alternately--the improved form of the fingers to hold up the corn, etc.--an iron case to preserve the sickles from clogging--and a better mode of separating the standing corn to be cut. Up to this period nothing but loss of time and money resulted from my efforts. The sale has since steadily increased, and is now more than a thousand yearly."[2] [2] "The sale has since steadily increased, and is now more than a thousand yearly." This was written in 1851, and by a little calculation, we can readily estimate the "yearly" profits. In the Circuit Court of the United States, at Albany, in the suit brought by C. H. McCormick against Seymour & Morgan, in 1850, for an alleged infringement of patent, it was proved on the oath of O. H. Dormon, his partner, and also on the oath of H. A. Blakesley, their clerk, that these Reapers only cost $36 to $37 to manufacture. By the same evidence, the sales averaged from $110 to $120 each machine; leaving a clear profit of at least $73. C. H. McCormick first received a patent fee of $30 on each machine, then three-fourths of the remainder in the division of profits. It would thus appear, if these figures are correct--and they are all sworn to--that C. H. McCormick realized full fifty thousand dollars clear profit annually, with a margin of eight to ten thousand dollars for commissions and bad debts in addition. It would be just as conclusive and reasonable for the _father_ of C. H. McCormick to claim at this day priority of invention for his Reaper invented in 1816, "by a number of cylinders standing perpendicularly;" or for "the invention made by my father in the harvest of 1831, which satisfied my father to abandon it." This authority, high and official as all must admit it to be, [and italicised too, by the writer for a particular object,] clearly proves that the invention of 1831 was an abortion; for if the principle was effective to cut one acre of grain properly, any man of common sense knows that it was equally so to cut one thousand acres; but so complete was the failure that, "During this interval"--between 1831 and 1834--"_I was often advised by my father and family to abandon it, and pursue my regular business, as likely to be more profitable, he having given me a farm._" Again, "No machines were sold until 1840, and I may say that they were not of much practical value until the improvements of my second patent in 1845." What these improvements were we are also informed: "These improvements consist in reversing the angle of the sickle teeth alternately, the improved form of the fingers to hold up the corn, etc.--an iron case to preserve the sickle from clogging, etc.--up to this period nothing but loss of time and money resulted from my efforts." Nor is it at all surprising; for until improvements were added, invented and long in successful operation by others, the machine would not work, and consequently no one would buy. [Sidenote: McCormick's Pen More Effective Than His Reaper] This letter is the most perfect and complete estopper to priority of invention--not only for 1831, but to 1841 inclusive, if not to 1845, that could be _penned_. His _pen_ cuts a "cleaner swath," as we farmers say, than ever did his Reaper; and this letter at least is certainly C. H. McCormick's own "invention," which no one else can lay any claim to. Yet, strange as it may appear, he contended before the Board of Extensions in order to invalidate Hussey's Patent, that he invented a Reaping Machine nine years before! So has perpetual motion been invented a hundred times--in the estimation of the projectors; and by his own showing, and on oath, he sold but two machines up to 1842--one of them conditionally sold--being _eleven_ years after the alleged invention, and even they had to be re-invented to make them work, or use the previous inventions of others. In this letter to Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., C. H. McCormick admits that the Reel "had been used before," yet he includes it in his patent of 1834.--Both the specifications and drawings in the Patent Office conclusively establish the fact that James Ten Eyck _patented_ the reel or "revolving rack," or "revolving frame" in 1825, used not only to _gather_ the grain as all such devices are used, but by the knives attached to it, also intended to _cut it off_. [Sidenote: Priority of the Reel] Could it be contended that because _rockers_ are attached to a chair it is no longer a chair, or useful as a seat? Even "Mary McCormick, the mother of Cyrus," and "Eliza H. Steele, of Steele's Tavern, Virginia"--nay every woman and child in the country would tell you that it was then a _rocking_ chair--just as much a seat as ever--and Ten Eyck's was a Reel to all intents and purposes, but also a _cutting_ reel. It does not require the mechanical tact and skill of Professor Page to discover that "the revolving rack presents novelty chiefly in form, as its operation is similar to the revolving frame of James Ten Eyck, patented November 2d, 1825." It is certain the reel was no "novelty," either in 1831 or 1834, when patented by C. H. McCormick; _he_ tells us so himself; and it is most likely the father of C. H. McCormick also used a reel for his "cylinders standing perpendicularly, in 1816," and also for his other plan in 1831, and "which satisfied my father to abandon it." And it is equally probable that most of the "fathers" and the sons, who invented Reapers for a hundred years preceding the date of Hussey's patent, used reels;--indeed the reel seemed to be considered a _Sine qua non_ by many; most of the inventors we have any clear account of, resorted to the reel. Hussey also used the reel in 1833--of course the reel and seat in combination--but only for a short period, as it was found quite unnecessary--an actual incumbrance with _his_ cutting apparatus, and soon laid it aside. We will now examine another invention patented by C. H. McCormick, in 1847. We here assert and challenge a denial, that from 12 to 14 years after the alleged invention of a Reaper by C. H. McCormick in 1831, and from 9 to 12 years after the date of his patent in 1834 his _raker walked_ by the side of his machine, while Hussey's raker _rode on the machine as they always had done_ since his first machine that cut the grain like "a thing of life" in Hamilton County, Ohio, in 1833. Yet, in 1847, C. H. McCormick takes out a patent for the _raker's seat_! this _was_ a "novelty" and well worth a patent! [Sidenote: The Raker's Seat] In two trials of reaping machines by Hussey and McCormick in the same fields in Virginia, in 1843, one at Hutchinson's, and the other on the plantation of the late Senator Roane, at Tree Hill, near Richmond, McCormick's raker _walked_ by the side of the machine, while Hussey's _rode_ on the machine, in the same manner as he did just exactly ten years before. We have three letters from the late Hon. William H. Roane referring to these trials, and ordering a machine from Hussey, after witnessing the operation of both. Two of the letters he desired might not be published; but says in one of them, "I have no objection to your stating publicly that a _member_ of the committee who made the report last summer at _Hutchinson's_, which was published a few days thereafter, witnessed a fuller and fairer trial between the two machines, and has in consequence ordered one of yours. * * * What I have said above of ---- is intended only for your eye _confidentially_, to show you in part the character and probable motives of the opposition your Reaper has met. Let what I say be private, as I have a great objection to going into the newspapers. Should you ever want it, you can have from me the strongest public testimonial of my good opinion of your machine." The third letter, giving this "testimonial," was published in the American Farmer in January, 1844. As the Raker's Seat--the main feature of C. H. McCormick's patent of 1847--comes fairly within the scope of this enquiry as to priority of invention, we re-publish Senator Roane's letter and also furnish other testimony on the subject. "_To the Editor of the American Farmer:_ "As the question of _which is the best Reaping Machine_ is of no little importance to wheat growers, it is highly necessary that they be rightly informed of every fact which tends to decide the question. The trial which forms the subject of the following correspondence was looked forward to with great interest by farmers; such was the partial character of the trial, and the general terms of the committee's report, in which the particulars that led to the result were omitted, it cannot appear strange that the public should be in some degree misled with regard to the relative merits of the two machines. If my own interest was alone concerned, I would not thus far trespass on your columns, but you will doubtless agree with me, that it is due to wheat growers throughout the country that the views expressed by Mr. Roane, in connection with the committee's report, should be published as extensively as the report itself; I therefore solicit the insertion of the following correspondence in your paper. "Very respectfully, "OBED HUSSEY." [Sidenote: Hussey Letter to Mr. Roane] "Baltimore, January 18th, 1844. _"To the Hon. William H. Roane:_ "Dear Sir--You will remember that a trial took place on the farm of Mr. Hutchinson near Richmond, Va., in July last, between my reaping machine and Mr. McCormick's, at which trial you were one of a committee which gave the preference to Mr. McCormick's machine. "You will also recollect that the machine which I used at that time was a small one, and quite different from that which I used in your field a few days afterwards in a second trial between Mr. McCormick and myself. "As the first trial was made under circumstances unfavorable to myself, owing to the difficulties which prevented me from getting my best machine to the field on that day, and other impediments incidental to a stranger unprovided with a team, etc., and as no report was made of the second trial, you will oblige me by informing me what your impressions were after witnessing the second trial. "I would very gladly embrace the opportunity which the next harvest will afford of following up my experiments in wheat cutting in Virginia, but the new field opened to me in the _great west_ for cutting hemp, in which I was so successful last September, as will appear by the Louisville 'Journal' of that date, will claim my particular attention this year. I mention this to you lest it might appear that I had abandoned the field in Virginia by my non-appearance there in the next harvest. "Very respectfully yours, etc., "OBED HUSSEY." [Sidenote: Mr. Roane's Reply] "Tree Hill, January 23d, 1844. "Dear Sir: "I received a few days ago your letter of the 17th inst., on the subject of your reaping machine; you call my recollection to a trial between it and Mr. McCormick's reaper at Mr. Hutchinson's in July last, on which occasion I 'was one of a committee which gave the preference to Mr. McCormick's machine;' you also advert to a trial between these rival machines a few days subsequent, at this place, and request to know my impressions after this second trial. I presume from the fact of my having ordered one of your reapers for the ensuing harvest, that it is your purpose to publish this statement. Averse as I am to having my name in print on _this_, or any other occasion, I cannot with propriety decline a response to your inquiry. I had never seen or formed an idea of a reaping machine until I went to Hutchinson's--I was surprised and delighted with the performance of each of them, and fully resolved to own one of them by the _next_ harvest, but their performance that day left me in a state of doubt which I should select. The report spoke in terms of high praise of each machine, and I consented to its award that _on the whole_ Mr. McCormick's was preferable, merely because being the cheapest and requiring but two horses, it would best suit the majority of our farmers, who make small crops of wheat on _weak land_--for I doubted its capacity in _heavy_ grain. After this report was made I heard your complaint that you did not have a fair trial, because being unable to bring into the field your large improved Reaper, which was up the river, you were compelled to comply with your _engagement_ for the day, with a _small_ and _inferior_ machine, drawn by an indifferent and untutored team. Mr. Hutchinson's wheat was badly rusted, and therefore light. I had ready for the scythe a low ground field of heavy and well matured grain; partly to expedite my harvest work, and partly to renew the trial, that I might solve my doubts as to the merits of these machines, I succeeded in engaging them to be at Tree Hill on a named day. They both came agreeable to appointment, Mr. McCormick bringing the machine he used at Hutchinson's, and you bringing the one you could not on that occasion bring down the river. The day was fine, and both machines did their best, and had a very fair trial. My doubts were fully removed, and my mind convinced that for the heavy wheat we raise on our river low grounds, rich bottoms, etc., _your_ machine is superior to Mr. McCormick's, of which I still think highly. I accordingly ordered one of yours to be made for the approaching harvest. "I wish you all possible success in cutting hemp in the 'Great West.' It must be very desirable to cut that valuable plant instead of pulling it up by the roots, and I cannot doubt that your reaper has ample _power_ for the process. "Most respectfully, yours, etc., "W. H. ROANE. "Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore." "We are not advised at what precise period subsequent to 1843 and previous to 1847 (when C. H. McCormick patented the raker's seat), that he changed the arrangement of his wheels, etc., so as to admit a seat for his raker without 'tipping up the machine' as was unavoidable previously. From evidence deemed fully reliable, _he_ was not the first even on his own machine, to provide a seat for the raker, "and all take a ride.' It is laborious enough to test fully the endurance of the most powerful and muscular man, to _ride_ and _rake_; but to _walk_ and _rake_ is even more barbarous than the old time ball and chain to the leg of the felon. The considerate and feeling farmer would certainly 'wait for the wagon' to be better fixed before thus undertaking to reap his grain fields if himself or his hands had to _ride_ in this sort of style. "We have a letter from Isaac Irvine Hite, Esq., now of Clarke County, Va., which throws some light on the subject; he says (italicised by the writer): "In 1842 my father, by my request, purchased for me of _C. H. McCormick_ and _Father_, a reaper at $110, which was _drawn_ by two horses, and it was raked off to the right hand side by a _man on foot_. The father of C. H. McCormick stated to me at the commencement of that harvest, that it had been _nine years since they_ had first operated with it, in pretty much the form it was then constructed. On a recent visit to Messrs. McCormick, who then resided on the line between Augusta and Rockbridge Counties in this State, the old gentleman stated to me that _he_ had been at _odd_ times at work on the reaper for many years; and either he or his son stated to me that C. H. McCormick had been _improving_, _changing_ or _inventing_ various parts until they had (as they thought) perfected the machine. * * * I disliked the labor _imposed on the hand who had to walk and remove_ the wheat from a platform seven feet in width, and urged Messrs. McCormick to attach another contrivance so as to enable the raker to ride and perform his arduous task; the old gentleman contended that that could never be accomplished, but that a self-operating appendage could be constructed to remove the grain, but that would be uncertain, and entirely unreliable. During my visit, he pointed out to me _one_ or _more_ fixtures they had tried for the raker to ride on. I think one was on one wheel, and the other on two. [Sidenote: Mr. Hite Suggests a Seat] I yet contended that it could be accomplished; if by no other means, by changing the construction of the machine, and remarked to him, if I were a mechanic, and understood the construction of the machine well enough to venture to alter its parts, I was certain I could so arrange it, and requested him to urge his son to make the effort; he replied that it would be useless; that they had tried every imaginable way or plan before placing the machine before the public, and that they regarded it as an impossibility, successfully, and properly, in any other way than on foot, and said it was necessary for the heads to be brought round to the right, in which I fully agreed; but contended it could be done while the raker was riding or standing in an erect position. [Sidenote: McCormick Condemns] After this unsatisfactory interview I returned home, and at the close of the next wheat harvest I had a small carriage, about 3 feet by 3-1/2 feet, constructed on two wheels, and connected underneath the platform, by means of shafts to the back part of the head of the machine; this during the cutting of my oat crop answered every purpose, so far as the raker was concerned, but there was a difficulty in turning. C. H. McCormick came to see this combination sometime during the year, and condemned it in toto. But by the next harvest I had it so constructed, as to be drawn by an iron bar so shaped, appended and supported on the underneath part of the carriage, as to admit of the machine turning in any direction, and the carriage would follow just as the two hind wheels of a wagon do; the carriage had a seat behind, and a thick, deep cushion in front, for the raker to press his knees against while removing the grain from the platform to his right hand, which he was enabled to do with apparent ease with a _rake of peculiar shape_;--(it cannot be done with a rake of ordinary shape). [Sidenote: McCormick Adopts Mr. Hite's Suggestion] The working of the first carriage was witnessed by many gentlemen who approved of it; and the combination of the second carriage I applied for a patent for. The model carriage can now be seen in the room of the Patent Office, containing models of all rejected patents. After this, I heard of McCormick making experiments at one of his Western factories--I think it was at Chicago; and finally he addressed me _a letter, stating he had changed the construction of his machine, and had it so constructed that the raker could ride on the machine and remove the grain_." We think the foregoing letter--for it carries truth on its face--clearly shows that the idea of "changing the construction of the machine," and permit the raker to ride, did not originate with the McCormick's father or son; for "they had tried every imaginable plan or way before placing the machine before the public, and that they regarded it as an impossibility for the wheat to be so removed regularly, successfully and properly, in any other way except on foot." At the trial referred to at Hutchinson's, and the late Senator Roane's in 1843, it was demonstrated that a raker could ride and rake, and as was also done by Hussey many years before, at various places, and delivering the grain at back or side. But we have still better evidence than the above--C. H. McCormick himself. His Patent of 1847, covering some four or five folio pages, is altogether to change "the construction of the machine," to admit of, and to patent the raker's seat; the substance of the whole is comprised within the following brief extract from the patent of 1847: [Sidenote: McCormick's Patent for Raker's Seat] "And the gearing which communicates motion to the crank is placed back of the driving wheel, which is therefore subject to be clogged by sand, dirt, straw, etc.--_and in consequence of the relative position of the various parts, the attendant is obliged to walk on the ground by the side of the machine, to rake the cut grain from the platform as it is delivered and laid there by the reel_. These defects which have so much retarded the introduction into practical and general use of Reaping Machines, I have remedied by my improvements, the nature of which consists in placing the driving wheels further back than heretofore, and back of the gearing which communicates motion to the sickle, which is placed in a line back of the axis of the driving wheel, the connexion being formed, etc., and also bringing the driving wheel sufficiently far back _to balance the frame of the machine with the raker on it_, to make room for him to sit or stand on the frame," etc., etc.--"_which cannot be done, if the raker walks by the side of the machine, as heretofore_." [Sidenote: Hussey Fourteen Years Ahead] Now if C. H. McCormick's testimony in his own favor, can be considered reliable, he certainly had not _invented_ a seat for his raker as late as 1845--and not long prior to 1847, when he patented it; and just _fourteen years_ after Hussey had used it _every year_, successively. The raker's seat therefore was just as _original_ an invention as the reel. The "straight sickle blade," but cut one way only, and abandoned some 10 or 12 years after its conception in 1831, as he states, appears to be the only original idea--properly belonging to whom it may--in the patent of 1834. As to the "foundation" of the machine, viz:--the platform, cog wheels, crank, etc., etc., they have been used by every projector in reaping machines, for a century. A machine exhibited at the World's Fair in London, by C. H. McCormick, had the "straight sickle blade," but alternating the cuts every few inches. With such a machine it is impracticable to cut grain, much less grass, efficiently, divested of the reel. That plan has since been changed to a much more efficient blade, the scolloped edged sickle. That it was used in the Northwestern States by others several years previous to its adoption by C. H. McCormick, we believe admits of just as little doubt, as rests with the priority of invention of the Reel, Rakers-seat, etc. There is one other important feature, patented in 1845 and referred to in the Pusey letter;--an "Iron case to preserve the sickles from clogging;" these we will also take a look into after a while. Obed Hussey, as appears by the evidence before us, made his first machine in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he then resided, in the spring of 1833, and it was patented the same year. [Sidenote: The Hussey Principle] His principle--the arrangement and construction of the Guards and Knives--was precisely identical with those used by him at the present day, except an improvement patented in 1847, leaving openings at the back end of the slot in the guards for the escape of particles of straw or grass that might get in between the blades and guards. It was communicated at the time by letter with a diagram to a personal friend now living, and of the highest respectability, from whom we have a certificate, and copy of the drawing. The knives or cutters, for lack of more suitable materials were made out of hand saw blades cut into suitable form, and riveted to a bar, vibrating through an opening or slot in the guards. [Sidenote: An Early Experiment] Judge Foster, residing within a few miles of the city, and to whom he applied, kindly offered him every facility to test the machine by cutting grain, ripe and unripe, being himself greatly interested in its success. When taken to the field, a considerable number of persons were attracted to the spot; and rather to the discomfiture of the inventor, for it may well be supposed it was an anxious moment to him, and he desired _no witnesses to his failure_. The machine was started; but owing to some part giving away, or some slight defect not apparent until then, it failed to work satisfactorily. One burley fellow present picked up a cradle, and, swinging it with an air of great exultation, exclaimed, "this is the machine to cut the wheat!" After the jeers and merriment of the crowd had somewhat subsided, the inventor remedied the defect, and assisted by the laborers present--the horses having been removed--pulled the machine to the top of an adjacent hill; when alone, he drew the machine down the hill, and through the standing grain, when it cut every head clean in its track! The _same_ machine was directly afterwards exhibited before the Hamilton County Agricultural Society near Carthage, on the 2nd of July, 1833. Of its operation and success, the following statements, and certificates, now in our possession, sufficiently testify. Doctor Wallace as well as some others of the gentlemen, are living witnesses of what is here stated. [Sidenote: Wallace Testimonial] Cincinnati, November 20th, 1833. This may certify that I was present on the 2nd day of July near Carthage, in this county, at an experimental trial with a machine invented by Mr. Obed Hussey for cutting grain. The operation was performed on a field of wheat. The machine was found to cut the wheat clean, and with great rapidity. But owing to its having been imperfectly made, being only constructed for the experiment, some parts of _wood_ which should have been made of iron, and in consequence frequently getting some parts out of order, a correct estimate of the quantity of work it would perform in a given time could not be made. One point was, however, satisfactorily established, that the principle upon which the machine is constructed will operate; and when well built will be an important improvement, and greatly facilitate the harvesting of grain. I would also remark that the horses moving the machine were walked, and trotted, and it was found to cut best with the greatest velocity. C. D. WALLACE, Secretary of the Hamilton County Agricultural Society. [Sidenote: Exceeded Expectations] We, the undersigned, witnessed the exhibition of Mr. O. Hussey's Machine for cutting grain alluded to by Dr. Wallace, and do fully concur with his statement of its performance. We would further add, that notwithstanding its temporary construction, its performance far exceeded our expectations. Cutting the grain clean and rapidly, and leaving it in good order for binding. We are of the opinion that the machine is capable of being propelled at the rate of five miles the hour, and do good work. The machine was worked when the cutters were both in a sharp and a dull condition, and no difference could be perceived in its execution. (Signed) "G. A. MAYHEW, T. R. SEBRING, A. CASTNER, JACOB WHITE, H. B. COFFIN, C. F. COFFIN, S. W. FOLGER, T. B. COFFIN, WM. PADDOCK." There are several other certificates equally conclusive and satisfactory; but we will only copy in addition to the foregoing, a short piece from the _Farmer and Mechanic_, issued July 3d, 1833, in Cincinnati, as follows: "Several members of the Agricultural Society on last Wednesday attended in Carthage to see a machine for cutting wheat by horse power, in operation. It was propelled by two horses, and cut as fast as eight persons could conveniently bind, doing the cutting neatly. "This machine is the invention of Mr. O. Hussey, and will no doubt prove a useful addition to our agricultural implements. Mr. J. C. Ludlow suggested that it would be good economy of time and labor to take a threshing machine into the field and thresh out the grain as it is reaped, thereby saving the binding and hauling to the barn or stack. We think the suggestion a good one." [Sidenote: The Problem Solved] Here, then, was the problem solved--the great discovery made that had puzzled the brains of hundreds if not of thousands, and for centuries. No one we fearlessly assert had ever succeeded so completely and satisfactorily, and with so simple and practical a machine. Some visited the exhibition determined to condemn as they afterwards acknowledged, deeming the thing impracticable; but all were convinced; for the demonstration was of that character which left no room for doubt or cavil in the minds of any. [Sidenote: A Great Triumph] It was indeed a triumph,--not perhaps entirely unexpected to the inventor--but neither he, nor any one else at that early day, could foresee the wonderful changes ultimately to be effected, and the world-wide renown to be conferred on the inventor as the result of this experiment; one that was certain to immortalize his name as a pioneer and benefactor in the most useful and peaceful pursuits in life. It was too, the dawn of a brighter day to the toiling husbandman, by lightening his labors, and adding to his comfort and independence; only circumscribed in its beneficial influence by the bounds of civilization. Some may possibly suppose that we view the invention in too glowing colors; but we have yet to meet with the farmer who owned a good reaping and mowing machine that would dispense with its advantages for twice the cost of the implement, and again be compelled to resort to the sickle, the cradle, and the scythe; for of a truth it completely supersedes all three in competent hands and with fair usage, in both the grain and grass crops. [Sidenote: No Competitors Until 1841] It is difficult to confine our narrative to its intended brief limits and select from the mass of evidence on hand as to the uninterrupted success off Hussey's invaluable invention from that day to the present--now twenty-one years. We will therefore only select a single and short account of each year; until about 1840 or '42; not long after which a few other inventors came before the public. There was, however, no competitor in the field from 1833 to 1841 or 1842, either in Europe or America, so far as we can ascertain, that did more than make a few occasional trials; none attracted public attention, or were successful and efficient machines even in the estimation of the projectors themselves. The evidence proves it, and it is corroborated by our own personal knowledge, having been constantly engaged in Agricultural and Mechanical pursuits for more than thirty years--and, as we believe, familiar with most of the important improvements of the age;--of all in fact, directly connected with agriculture in its labor saving implements, of any notoriety. [Sidenote: No Reaping Machine Without Hussey Principle] Many alleged improvements have been made in the Reaper in the past ten or twelve years; and many more still within half that period. How far they are new inventions, and actual _improvements_, we can better judge by examining Hussey's patent; for it describes the cutting apparatus clearly and minutely, and which in fact is the whole thing,--the "one thing needful" to success. For the use of wheels, or a system of gearing to all kinds of motive machinery is coeval with the first dawn of mechanical science. How ancient we know not, for the Prophets of old spoke of "wheels within wheels" near three thousand years ago; and it is very certain the hand of man, unaided by wheels and machinery, never erected the vast Pyramids and other structures of antiquity. We do not believe there is a single Reaping and Mowing machine in successful operation on this continent that is not mainly indebted to Hussey's invention in the cutting apparatus, for its success: deprive them of this essential feature--disrobe them of their borrowed plumes, and their success would be like the flight of the eagle, suddenly bereft of his pinions,--he must fall; and the machines would stand still, for not a farmer in the land would use them. [Sidenote: The Guards] As previously remarked, O. Hussey's first patent is dated in 1833. We omit the more general description of the machine, and copy only what embraces the most important features, the guards and knives; also an extract from his improvement patented in 1847, to obviate choking in the guards: "On the front edge of the platform is fixed the cutting or reaping apparatus, which is constructed in the following manner: A series of iron spikes, and which I will call _guards_, are fixed permanently to the platform, and extend seven or eight inches, more or less, beyond the edge of the platform, parallel to each other, horizontal, and pointing forward. These guards are about three inches apart, of a suitable size, say three-quarters of an inch square, more or less, at the base, and lessening towards the points. The guards are formed of a top and bottom piece, joined at the point and near the back, being nearly parallel, and about one-eighth of an inch apart, forming a horizontal mortice or slit through the guard; these mortices being on a line with each other, form a continued range of openings or slits through the guards. The first guard is placed on the rear of the right wheel, and the last at the extreme end of the platform, and the intermediate guards at equal distances from each other, and three inches apart, more or less, from center to center. [Illustration: Diagram Showing Arrangement of Guards and Knives] [Sidenote: The Cutter] "The cutter or saw (f) is formed of thin triangular plates of steel fastened to a straight _flat rod_, (g) of steel, iron or wood, one inch and a half wide; these steel plates are arranged side by side, forming a kind of saw with teeth three inches at the base, and four and a half inches long, more or less, sharp on both sides, and terminating nearly in a point. The saw is then passed through all the guards in the aforesaid range of mortices, the size of the mortice being suited to receive the saw with the teeth pointing forward; observing always that the points of the saw teeth should correspond with the center of the guards. One end of the saw is connected with a pitman moved by a crank, and receiving its motion from the main axis, by one or two sets of cog wheels. The vibration of this crank must be equal to the distances of the centers of the guards, or the points of the saw teeth, or thereabouts, so when the machine is in motion, the point of each saw tooth may pass from center to center of the guards on each side of the same tooth at every vibration of the crank; if the main wheels are three feet four inches in diameter, they should in one revolution give the crank sixteen vibrations, more or less; the saw teeth should play clear of the guards, both above and below. * * * [Sidenote: Operation] "The power is given by locking the wheels to the main axis, the machine has one square wheel box, the other round and locked at pleasure. If the power should be wanted, one, two, or more horses are attached and driven on the stubble before the machine, the right wheel running near the standing grain, the platform with the saw in its front edge extends on the right, at right angles with the direction of the horses, with the guards and saw teeth presented to the standing grain--when the machine moves forward, the saw moves with the teeth endwise and horizontal, the grain or grass is brought between the guards, the saw teeth in passing through the guards, cut the stalk while held both above and below the saw--the butts of the grain receive an impulse forward by the motion of the machine while in the act of being cut, which causes the heads of the grain to fall directly backwards on the platform--in this manner the platform receives the grain until a sufficient quantity is collected to make one or more bundles, according to the pleasure of the operator, then it is deposited with a proper instrument by the operator, _who may ride on the machine_." Here follows the dimensions of a machine suited to two horses, which is only copied so far as refers to the cutting apparatus, viz: "The back of the saw may be from one inch to one and one-half inches wide, and from three-sixteenths to one-quarter of an inch thick; and the steel plates for the teeth should be about one-tenth of an inch thick; one end of the mortice in the guard should be fitted to receive the back of the saw, so that the bearing may be on the back of the saw only." [Illustration: Gearing of Hussey's Early Reapers.] [Sidenote: The Four Essentials] "In this machine the following points are claimed as new and original: 1st. The straight horizontal saw, with the teeth sharp on their two sides for cutting grain. 2d. The guards forming double bearers above and below the saw, whereby the cutting is made sure, whether with a sharp or dull edge, the guards at the same time protecting the saw from rocks or stones, or other large substances it may meet with. 3d. The peculiar construction that the saw teeth may run free, whereby the necessary pressure and consequent friction of two corresponding edges cutting together, as on the principle of scissors, is entirely avoided. 4th. The peculiar arrangement by which the horses are made to go before the machine, being more natural, and greatly facilitating the use of the machine, and the general arrangement of the points as above described. "In cutting grass, the platform is reduced in width, and the grass falls on the ground as it is cut." In the improvement of the guards patented in 1847, the claim states: "I accordingly claim the opening above the blades A, fig. 3, and at D, fig. 1, in combination with vibrating blades. I also claim the particular application of the flush edge at the fork of the blades, for the purpose described. "The end and design of the improvements above claimed is to prevent the blades choking." [Sidenote: McCormick Twelve Years Late] _En passant_, we would ask any intelligent and candid farmer or mechanic who has examined a successful reaper, to compare the foregoing plain specifications which all can understand, with the cutting apparatus of the most successful modern machine. And we would especially desire him to compare them in principle with the "improved form of fingers to hold up the corn, and an iron case to preserve the sickles from clogging;" not the alleged invention of 1831, by C. H. McCormick, and abandoned from 1840 to 1843, but the claims patented by him in 1845 [as stated in the letter to Philip Pusey, M. P.], twelve years after the date of Hussey's patent, and twelve years after his most complete and uninterrupted success in cutting both grain and grass. In fact, there was no year from and including 1833 up to 1854, a period of 21 years the past harvest, that we have not the most positive and conclusive evidence of the success of Hussey's reaper; in numerous cases the same machines had cut from 500 to 800, and even one thousand acres; in one instance, the same machine was used for fourteen harvests, or as many years, successively and successfully. [Sidenote: Canfield Testimonial] We have given some of the evidence for 1833. For 1834 we annex two letters giving an account of the two machines made this year, one in Illinois, and the other in New York, viz: "Spring Creek, Sangamon Co., Ill., "October 1st, 1854. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore:_ "Dear Sir:--Your favor of August 10th came to hand a few days since. The reason was, it lay at Berlin (formerly Island Grove Post-office) and my Post-office address is Springfield, the only place where I call for letters. "In answer to your query, how your Reaping Machine worked in 1834, I have to say that it cut about sixteen acres of wheat for me on my farm; that it did the work in first rate style; according to my best recollection, as well as any of the machines that have since been introduced. The only objection I recollect being made, was, that when the straw was wet, or there was much green grass among the wheat, the blades would choke. You certainly demonstrated in 1834 the practicability of cutting grain or grass with horse-power; and all the machines since introduced seem to have copied your machine in all its essential features. "I am respectfully yours, "JOHN E. CANFIELD." The next letter we copy from the _Genesee Farmer_ of December 6th, 1834. The reader will readily perceive that the author, William C. Dwight, knew how to handle the pen as well as the plow, and equally well to work the reaper, being a practical farmer. But we are pained to add that he lost his life by the fatal railroad accident at Norwalk, Ct., about a year since. From the Genesee Farmer, December 6, 1834. "_To the Editor of the Genesee Farmer:_ "I wrote you last May that Mr. _Hussey_, the inventor of a machine for harvesting wheat, had left in this village one of his machines for the purpose of giving our farmers an opportunity to test its value, and I promised to write you further about it when it had been put to use. For many reasons which will not interest either yourself or the public, the matter has been delayed till the first rainy day, after my fall work was out of the way, should give leisure to remember and fulfill my promise. "The machine has been fully tried, and I am gratified to be able to say that it has fully succeeded; hundreds of farmers from the different towns of this and the adjoining counties have witnessed its operations, and all have not only expressed their confidence in its success, but their gratification in the perfection of the work. "As every inquirer asks the same series of questions, I presume your readers will have a like course of thought, and wish for satisfaction in the same particulars. To give them this, I will write them in their order, and give the answers: "Does the machine make clean work? "It saves all the grain. To use the language of a gratified looker-on, an old and experienced farmer, 'it cheats the hogs.'[3] [3] The hogs are the gleaners in this section of country. "Does the machine expedite the work? "What the machine is capable of accomplishing, we who have used it can hardly say, as we had no field in fit order, large enough for a fair trial through a whole day; and can only say what it has done. Five acres of heavy wheat, on the Genesee flats, were harvested in two hours and a quarter. "In what condition is the wheat left, and how is the work done where the wheat is lodged? "The machine leaves the wheat in gavels large enough for a sheaf, and where grain stands well enough to make fair work with the cradle, it leaves the straw in as good condition to bind as the gavels of a good reaper. Whether the grain stands or is lodged is of little consequence, except as to the appearance of the sheaf, and the necessity of saving more straw, when lodged, than is desirable. The condition of the sheaf when the grain is lodged depends much upon the adroitness of the raker. "What number of hands, and what strength of team is necessary to manage the machine advantageously? "Two men, one to drive the team and the other to rake off the wheat, and two horses, work the machine; but when the grain is heavy, or the land mellow, a change of horses is necessary, as the gait of the horses is too rapid to admit of heavy draft. The horses go at the rate of four to five miles an hour, and when the growth of straw is not heavy a fair trot of the team is not too much. "Is the machine liable to derangement and destruction from its own motion? "This is a question which cannot be so directly answered as the others. We have only used the machine to cut about fifty acres, and have had no trouble; judging from appearances so far, should say it was as little subject to this evil as any machinery whatever. The wear upon the cutting part being so little as to require not more than fifteen minutes sharpening in a day; there is no loss of time on this score. "Is the sheaf a good one to thresh? "The man who has fed the threshing machine with the grain of twenty acres cut by this machine, says the sheaves are much better than those of cradled grain, and quite as good as those of a reaper. "There is one more advantage beyond ordinary inquiries, of consequence, where so much grain is raised as in this valley; be the grain ever so ripe, there is no waste of grain by any agitation of the straw, and all the waste which can take place must arise from the handling and shaking in binding. "I am yours, etc., "WM. C. DWIGHT. "Moscow, Livingston Co., N. Y., Nov. 14, 1834. "N. B.--The machine we used was intended only for upland, but by some little alterations and additions we used it with equal facility on all kinds of soil; and it can be used on any farm so clean from stumps and stones as not to endanger the blocking the wheels." The following letter is evidence for 1835, and also refers to the originality of the invention by O. Hussey. "Palmyra, Mo., Aug. 14, 1854. "Friend Hussey--Yours duly received. As to the machines sent by you (ordered some two years since) they both worked well. "Before you had invented your machine in 1831 or 1832, your attention was drawn to a mode of cutting grain, hemp and grass and you told me you thought you could invent such a machine to be drawn by horses; and after you had returned to Cincinnati from Laurenceburg you wrote me a letter in '32 or at the furthest in '33 (for I left Indiana 2nd Oct., 1833) with a draft and description of a plan for cutting grain. The draft was thus (here follows a diagram of the cutting apparatus exactly as described by the patent) and the description was, that these knives were to work by the motion of the wheels, being a perfect description of the invented principle. "As soon as I saw the plan, I was satisfied of its success and wrote to you that there was no doubt of the success of your machine; that it was astonishing the world had so many thousand years been confined to the sickle when so obvious a mode of cutting grain and grass existed; and shortly after you obtained a patent for the machine. "On the 6th July, 1835, you brought to Palmyra two of your machines, and they were put in operation near this place--one in a meadow between here and Philadelphia, and one in the heavy grass in Marion City bottom.[4] The machines did cut well. I was the editor of the _Missouri Courier_, from the month of November, 1833, until 1838, and brought your machine before the public; it excited much attention, and its performance was highly satisfactory. The results of the trials were published in the paper by me in August or September, 1835. I knew of the capacity of the machine, and that it did so execute in the bottom three acres an hour. In this I cannot be mistaken, for I felt at the time the deepest interest in the success of the machine. Mr. McElroy is dead, where you boarded, and also Samuel Muldrow and James Muldrow. Still I will inquire if any persons can be found who were present. [4] Both of these machines were sold to Wm. Muldrow, Agent, of Marion College, Marion County, Mo. "I know the results, and recollect distinctly the reception the machines met with, and the prices, to wit, $150 each. Muldrow bought another for $500--which was a whirling wheel. You recollect it; it never run any. Yours, I know it was said then, would cut off brush large enough for a hoop-hole. Court is now in session, but as soon as I can ascertain the witnesses (at the exhibition) I will write you further. But my recollection is distinct, from the relations existing between us, my interest in machinery generally, and my position as editor of the only paper of this section of country. "As ever, your friend, "EDWIN G. PRATT." [Sidenote: Mode of Transportation] In 1836 O. Hussey visited Maryland at the written solicitation of the Board of Trustees of _The Maryland Agricultural Society_, for the Eastern Shore. The fame of his reaping exploits in the State of New York, and the far West, had reached the East; though with something like a "snail's pace." We had not then the Magnetic Telegraph, which with lightning speed enables the East to _talk_ with the West; nor even the "iron horse," by whose speed and power, the reaper that cut a large crop of wheat in Maryland, could within the same week cut another equally large in the valley of the Mississippi; but it then required some two to three _years_ to prepare the public mind for the reception of the machine here; and owing to the limited means of the inventor, the transportation from place to place was often done by a single horse; accompanied by the inventor foot-sore and weary from walking hundreds of miles! [Sidenote: An Inventor's Difficulties] The annexed certificate was given, published, and widely circulated after a full trial of the machine, in cutting more than two hundred acres, and by large farmers and practical men, known throughout the State. Comment is unnecessary on such a paper; but we feel bound to state that it was mainly owing to the exertions of the liberal public spirited gentlemen, the last, though not the least of the signers, Gen. Tench Tilghman, that the Reaper was then introduced into this State. He was the early and steadfast friend of the Patentee, and to the cause of agricultural improvement in our State. Strange as it may appear to many at the present day, and notwithstanding these demonstrations in Ohio, Illinois, New York, Missouri and Maryland, which did not admit of cavil or doubt as to the entire efficiency and success of Hussey's reaper, scarcely a farmer could be found ready and willing to take hold of it, and aid the inventor in introducing it into use. But farmers as a class are proverbially cautious, and disinclined to change from established customs and usages; it often requires "line upon line and precept upon precept," aided, too, by almost a free gift of the article, to induce them even to give a new agricultural implement a fair trial,--a plough, for instance, that will do better work, with a fourth to a third less draught; the old and nearly worn out implement "does well enough." Gen. T. was, we believe, the first farmer in Maryland to use and purchase a reaping machine; and by so doing, to aid the inventive genius and talent of his countrymen, and also at the same time greatly to benefit the interest of his brother farmers. It avails little to the inventor, or the public, how valuable his improvement may be,--for in nine cases out of ten the inventor is limited in means,--if none can be found who are both able and willing to lend a helping hand to modest merit; for true genius is ever modest; and unfortunately the term is too often synonymous with penury and want. [Sidenote: The Inventor's Rewards] Very few of the really valuable inventions inure to the benefit of the inventors,--even to a tithe of the profits that are occasionally realized. His necessities often compel him to a forced sale of his patent right to some capitalist who has the tact to turn other men's wits to his own advantage; or the _Public_,--which simply means other capitalists of another description, who possess little or no inventive genius themselves, and just about as much principle as genius--seize upon the invention, and often in spite of law, justice, or right, reap the reward justly due to another. This, however, is a digression for which we beg the reader's pardon; but we could not let the occasion pass without rendering this honest tribute to the public spirited farmer, who had the discernment to perceive its merits, and the liberality to aid its introduction, of one of the most valuable improvements of this, or any age. The following three letters not only embrace the year 1837, but are equally good evidence from that period to the present, 1854. As they are short, and to the point, we use them all. The very appropriate and just remarks of Col. Hughes as regards the rights, and what is due to inventive talent, we most cordially respond to; as must every right minded and disinterested reader. He refers to Col. Edw. Lloyd of "Wye House" as the largest wheat grower in Maryland; we much doubt if he is not the largest in the Union. Several years since, he informed us that his average crop of wheat was from 33 to 35 thousand bushels; and a year or two ago we learned that the crop exceeded forty thousand bushels. He now, and for many years past has used Hussey's Reaper exclusively. More satisfactory and conclusive evidence cannot be given, or desired, than is afforded in these three letters, of the early use, and long proved efficiency of the invention. "Hornewood, E. Shore, Md., "August 22, '54. "Dear Sir:--In reply to your enquiry whether I recollect the time, and the success of your reaping machine at my father's in 1837, I answer that I do perfectly; and also seeing it in operation in company with my friend, Mr. J. H. Luckett, of Balto., at Col. H. L. Edmondson's of Talbot Co. the same season. "My father expressed himself highly satisfied with the performance of the reaper, as did other gentlemen who saw it in operation at Cheston. So well convinced was my father of the value of the machine, that he offered you a considerable advance per acre on your charge for cutting, to remain and reap his two fields, say 125 to 130 acres, which you declined, owing to prior engagements. At an early date after this trial, my father secured one of your reapers, and the farm has since never been without. "My brother, Dr. DeCourcy, has now one which did its work most excellently well this past harvest, and without any stoppage. With some trivial repairs, it has been in successful use nearly ten years. "Wishing you every possible success with your reaper, for which the agricultural community owe you a heavy debt, "I am respectfully yours, "N. H. ROZIER DE COURCEY." "Baltimore, "October 17th, 1854. "_To Obed Hussey, Esq.:_ "Sir--In the harvest of 1837 I saw one of your Reapers in operation in my neighborhood [West River, Anne Arundel Co., Md.] in charge of the Hon. John C. Weems, who I believe was the owner of it; and was so much pleased with its performance that I ordered one from you in the following year, 1838, which you set in motion for me. It worked most admirably, and fully met my expectations; _as it has done from that early period to the present day_. "In a loose way, I estimated that in the saving of labor, and grain from shattering, it nearly or quite paid for itself the first harvest. Since then the machine has been much improved. "Up to the time I purchased, very few had been used in this State. The first, as I have always understood, was bought by that intelligent and enterprising farmer, Gen. Tench Tilghman, of Oxford, Talbot County. In 1838, Col. Edward Lloyd, of 'Wye,' Talbot Co., the largest wheat grower in Maryland, and myself, as above mentioned, availed ourselves of your invention; but I did not hear of any other orders for it in this State. It came, like most other agricultural implements, slowly into use; and I fear has not fairly compensated you for the labor and ingenuity bestowed upon it. This, however, is too often the fate of discoverers and inventors; and others reap the fruits of their toil and genius. I have long thought that governments were unjust to inventors; and could never understand why a man has not the same right of property to a machine conceived in his head, and constructed by his hands, as to that acquired in any other manner. The same that a farmer has to the lands he owns. "Very respectfully, y'r ob't serv't, "GEO. W. HUGHES." "Oxford, Md., "Sept. 22d, 1854. "_Mr. Obed Hussey:_ "Dear Sir:--I recently received from the Commissioner of Patents the Report on Mechanics for 1853, and have examined with much interest the descriptions of what claim to be improvements in the Reaping Machine. "I was rather surprised to find that so many of then were almost identical with the notions which were tried and rejected during the season you spent with me nearly twenty years ago; when for the first time (I believe) a reaper was used throughout our entire harvest, on a farm as large as six hundred acres. "You had just then arrived from Cincinnati with two machines--one a reaper, and the other a reaper and mower. "They were exhibited publicly at Oxford and Easton, and their operation on wheat gave entire satisfaction. The work throughout the harvest was equally well done; the only objection being the delay caused by repairing the machinery, a difficulty common to all new machines of much power at that period. "Since then I have used one or more reapers every year, and have watched with much interest the progress of their improvement. I have examined most of those which have the best reputation, and do not believe there is a single one in which the cutting principle has not been copied from yours. "In attempting to avoid an infringement of your patent, variations have been made either in the cutting apparatus, or the driving machinery, by which they have been made more complicated and less efficient. Burrall's, which approaches nearest to yours in simplicity and efficiency, is so close a copy that I do not see how the courts could refuse an injunction to prohibit the use of it. The only material difference is the attempt at a side delivery which was tried by you on your first machine, and proved an entire failure. [Sidenote: The Farmers' Debt to Mr. Hussey] "Believing sincerely that the farmers of the U.S. owe you a debt of gratitude, which a regard for themselves should prompt them to pay, and understanding that attempts have been made to question even the priority of your invention, I send you a volume of the _Genesee Farmer_ published in 1834, which will show the opinion entertained at that time by the farmers of that celebrated wheat growing region, both as to the efficiency and priority of your reaper. "Your ob't serv't, "TENCH TILGHMAN." [Sidenote: Conclusive Evidence] As we have already much exceeded the intended limits of the narrative, we might, perhaps, with propriety, here rest the enquiry, having, as we think, satisfactorily shown, and by evidence that cannot be disproved: first, that for a period of nine or ten years after the alleged invention of the reaper by C. H. McCormick in 1831 he did not sell a single machine; nor could he establish by all the evidence adduced before the Board of Extensions, in 1848, that prior to 1840 or 1841 was his reaper in any degree an effective or practical machine; for as he himself states in the letter to Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., it was not until very material alterations--all essential it may be said--were made, some six or eight years after the date of the patent, could the machine be made to work even tolerably well. Indeed, he states, "I may say they were not of much practical value, until the improvements of my second patent in 1845," being eleven years after the date of the patent, and fourteen years after the alleged invention in 1831. On the other hand we have shown by as good and respectable testimony as can be had in any cause, that from 1833 to 1854, a period of twenty-one years, Hussey's invention was most efficient and satisfactory, _every year_; not by cutting a patch of the fraction of an acre, but by reaping hundreds, nay thousands of acres annually, by the few machines placed in the hands of the farmers from 1833 to 1840. As, however, we have given no direct evidence from Delaware, or Virginia, none from North Carolina, and but one from New York, we annex a few short testimonials from each, that embrace the period from 1838 to 1845; and with a few more of the same respectable character up to 1853, both in this country and in England, we will leave the decision of the question to the intelligent reader. We will, however, call the reader's attention to the concluding paragraph of Maj. J. Jones' letter, from Delaware--one of the smallest States, but containing as large a proportion of noble minded, talented men, and as good practical farmers, as any in the Union.[5] [5] It is reported of one of her sons, that during the struggle for Independence, when a Delegate to the Convention from one of the largest and most powerful Colonies was ready to quail and almost despair of success in the unequal contest, he was encouraged and cheered on by a member from little Delaware; and told that when he found his Colony likely to be overrun by the enemy, to call on Delaware for aid--she would lend a helping hand. It will be perceived that a reaper sold in 1838 to the St. George's and Appoquinomick Agricultural Society had, after subsequently coming into the possession of Col. Vandergrift, and prior to 1845, "cut about _seven hundred acres_ of his grain," and "was then in good repair"! We wish it was in our power to state how many times seven hundred acres this single machine had reaped since 1838. [Sidenote: An Important Testimonial from Delaware] "Wheatland, Del., "July 21, 1845. "_Mr. Hussey:_ "Dear Sir:--I have just finished cutting my oats; I finished cutting my wheat on the 28th of June, having cut over 160 acres, excepting what was cut by a cradle in opening tracks for the horses and rounding the corners so that the machine might sweep round without loss of time in turning, which it did with ease and certainty, cutting more than twenty acres a day on an average. A part of the wheat was so heavy as to require three active shockers to keep up with the cutting; the whole cost of all necessary repairs 31-1/4 cents for the harvest. "Of the two machines which I purchased of you I used the large one, having sold the small one to Richard Millwood, who rents the farm of Dr. Noble. Strange as it may appear, I could find no _landholder_ in the vicinity who had enterprise enough to risk the purchase of that machine until they could see it work; but after the performance was once witnessed, the impression it made was such as to justify me in ordering you to have ten ready by next harvest for New Castle County, Del. Mr. Millwood's wheat was very heavy, one measured acre having sixty dozen sheaves upon it, and the whole cutting time on the forty acre field was but two days, making for the small machine a full average of twenty acres per day, without any repairing or accident. None of the hands who worked it had ever seen such a machine before those you sent to me. My crop has not all passed through the half bushel yet, but it will fall but little short of 3,000 bushels--expect it will all be in market to-morrow. "In conversation with Col. Vandergrift, the present owner of the Reaper you sold to the St. George and Appoquinomick Agricultural Society, in 1838, he told me that he had cut about 700 acres of wheat and oats with it since he owned it, and up to that time the cost of repairs had been $1.25 for every hundred acres cut. It was then in good repair. "Yours, "JOHN JONES." "Jefferson County, Va., "August 9th, 1845. "_To Mr. Obed Hussey:_ "Dear Sir:--We, the undersigned, having used your reaping machine during the recent harvest in cutting our respective crops, take great pleasure in tendering to you this voluntary testimonial of the very high estimation in which we hold your invention. We have now tried your machines fully and fairly, and we are unanimous in the conclusion that in every case they have borne the test in a manner which has excited our highest admiration of their merits. We were particularly pleased with their work in lodged grain; they cut and gather every straw with the utmost ease, and the only fault at all that we have had to find with them was that they did not cut wet grain with facility; this single defect, however, we are pleased to perceive you have completely remedied with the late improvement (with open guards to the knives, etc.) which the most of us saw at work in Mr. Wm. Butler's field cut wet grain and green oats as well as could possibly be desired--it will also cut timothy and clover--so that now we have no hesitation in recommending your reaper, as we hereby most cordially do, to our brother farmers, as the most complete and efficient in agricultural operations, and as one which, whilst from its simple and substantial construction, is not liable to be broken or to get out of order, will at the same time save its owner the first year more than its original cost. "WM. BUTLER, J. H. TAYLOR, W. SHORTT, JOSEPH M'MURRAN, DANIEL G. HENKLE, DAVID L. HENSELL, W. G. BUTLER, JAS. S. MARKELL, V. M. BUTLER, ANDREW M'INTIRE, ADAM SMELL, GEORGE TABB, JOHN MARSHALL." "Washington County, "Aug. 7th, 1845. "I hereby certify that I have used Mr. Obed Hussey's wheat cutter through the late harvest, and that it answered my fullest expectations, in every respect, except that it will not cut when the wheat is _damp from rain or the dews of the morning_. I cut 140 acres of wheat with it in nine days; and on one occasion, cut off thirty acres in eighteen hours, from daylight in the morning until 11 o'clock the next day, and with the same four horses, never having changed them during that time. "JOHN R. DALL." [Illustration: Hussey's Rear-Delivery Reaper. (From "Who Invented the Reaper?" by R. B. Swift.)] "Oaklands (near Geneva), N. Y. "26th August, 1845. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore:_ "Dear Sir:--Having housed all the grain crops of this farm, it is due to you that I should now frankly admit the removal of all my doubts in regard to the effectiveness and excellence of your 'Reaping Machine.' The doubts expressed in my early correspondence with you arose from the many abortive attempts in this country and in England to produce a reaping machine, possessing power and simplicity and durability; most of them were complicated, and proved too fragile. "Soon after the arrival of your machine, I tried its power and became readily familiar with the manner of using it; the result of my experience will appear from the following facts: "The wheat crop of this farm covered 104 acres, producing 2,540 shocks, 30,480 sheaves, as counted on the ground, and again when housed in the grain barn and sheds. "The whole crop was cut by your reaping machine in eight days, using one team, a boy to drive and a man to manage the machine. "The average quantity cut per day was thirteen acres. "The largest quantity cut on any one day was seventeen acres. "The longest period for working the machine on any one day was nine hours. "Seven men were stationed on the field to bind the sheaves. "The cost of _cutting_ the wheat with your machine is _twenty-five cents_ per acre. "The total cost for cutting, raking, binding and shocking is _seventy-eight cents and a fraction_ per acre. "The cost may be stated as follows, viz: A man and team for eight days at $1.50 per day $12.00 A boy to drive for eight days at fifty cents per day 4.00 Interest on cost of machine and for wear and tear, say at 10 per cent 10.00 ______ $26.00 "Which is equal to 25 cents per acre on 104 acres. The seven men employed to rake and bind received, each, $1 per day for eight days, say $56, which sum added to the cost for cutting or reaping, gives a total cost of $82, or 78-88/100 cents per acre. "I have compared this cost with the cost paid by my neighboring farmers this season, and find it vastly in favor of your machine. The individual in this town who harvested with the most economy paid $1 13/100 per acre--other farmers have paid from $1 25/100 to $2 per acre. "Since the wheat harvest the machine has cut with signal advantage about twenty acres of oats. "The wheat and oats were cut with such neatness and precision that the gleanings were not sufficient to pay the labor of raking. "The machine remains in perfect order, and did not fail to perform all you promised. "I deem it one of the best labor-saving machines ever offered for the advantage of the farmer; its effectiveness, simple and durable construction, have been witnessed with satisfaction by a large number of my neighbor farmers. "Respectfully yours, "J. DELAFIELD." The machine alluded to in the above letter is the low priced one at $100. For 1846, 1847 and 1848 we copy from the _Richmond Planter_ and _American Farmer_--and all from North Carolina, though the evidence from other sections is much more extended, and equally as conclusive: "Somerset Place, Washington Co., "North Carolina 25th Aug. 1847. "_To the Editor of the American Farmer:_ "Dear Sir:--Yours of the 6th ult. arrived at my residence during my absence in consequence of which I was unable to return you an answer in time for your August number of the _American Farmer_. I trust, however, the delay will not materially affect the value of my communication. In consequence of the recommendation of a gentleman who had used "Hussey's Reaper" in the harvest of 1846 with much satisfaction, I was induced to make a trial of one the present season. It was put in operation under the direction and supervision of Mr. Hussey himself, upon a field of reclaimed low ground, originally Cypress Swamp, which of course could only be cultivated in beds--these beds were six feet wide, including the water-furrow between, and were intersected at intervals of about fifty yards by drains, known to us as _tap-ditches_, which cross the water furrows at right angles, and are cut from two to four inches deeper than the furrows themselves. I am particular in describing the land, as I had always supposed that an insuperable obstacle in the way of the regular action of any machine would be found in the irregularity of surface into which our land is necessarily thrown by our system of culture. The machine surmounted every anticipated difficulty, and was eminently successful, both in cutting lengthwise with the beds and across them. The wheat was cut in a most thorough manner; nothing escaped the cutting surfaces, nor did weeds or any other obstruction of the kind hinder the machine from doing its work perfectly. During the running of the machine one day in the harvest, seventeen acres of wheat were cut by it.[6] This was done by using relays of horses, four at each time, the same hands being employed, however, and the working time was twelve hours. After a heavy rain we were obliged to abandon the use of the machine, owing to the fact that the ground became so soft that the "road wheel" as it is termed, buried in the soil, and would become clogged with mud. This difficulty can, I have no doubt, be easily overcome by increasing the "tread" of this wheel, and making some slight alteration in the cog-wheel which gears into it. [6] When Mr. Hussey was with me I informed him that the piece of wheat cut by the machine on this occasion equalled twenty acres, but I have since discovered that I had been mistaken in my calculation of the acre. [Sidenote: A McCormick Failure] "Some two years since I saw an experiment made upon an adjoining estate with McCormick's machine; it cut occasionally well where the wheat was free from weeds, but any obstruction from that source would immediately choke it, when of course the wheat would be overrun without being cut. The experiment proved a failure, and the machine was laid aside. The blade in this machine appears to me to be too delicate in its cutting surface to succeed, except under the most favorable circumstances. Quite a number of McCormick's have been in use in this part of the country during the last two years, and to my inquiries concerning them I have received but one answer and that an unfavorable one. The few of Hussey's machines, on the contrary, that have been employed within my ken, have in each instance given entire satisfaction. I do not hesitate to say that when well managed, with a skilful hand at the rake, in dry wheat (I do not recommend it when the straw is wet), it will, as compared with _ordinary_ cutting, save per acre the _entire expense of reaping_, from the thorough manner in which every stalk is cut, thus preventing loss or waste. "Believing, as I do, that a great desideratum to those who grow wheat upon a large scale, is to be found in Mr. Hussey's reaper, I cannot but wish that both he and they may _reap_ the benefit of its general adoption. "I am, sir, "Very respectfully your ob't serv't, "JOSIAH COLLINS." "Edenton, N. C., "January 25th, 1848. "_To the Editor of the American Farmer:_ "Dear Sir:--Some months ago I received a letter from you, making enquiries of me relative to Hussey's Reaping Machine. When your letter reached me I was on the eve of leaving home for the summer, and since my return home, my engagements have been of such a character as to cause me until the present to neglect replying to it. "I have used one of Hussey's machines one season, and though under circumstances not very favorable for the machine, I take pleasure in stating that its operation was satisfactory. During my harvest, which was about three weeks' duration, this machine was kept constantly at work, with the exception of a day and a half, yet I did not ascertain how many acres it would reap. Mr. Collins, of Lake Scuppernong also used one last season, and from him I learned that he cut upwards of twenty acres a day. "There is certainly much less wheat left in the field by one of these machines than is by the ordinary method of reaping by the scythe or reap hook; it cuts close, lays the straw smoothly, thus rendering tying of it in sheaves much easier. "I have witnessed McCormick's, which I consider _a poor affair_, and _meriting no consideration_ except a dissent from me. Many of this last kind of reaper found their way here a few years ago; they now, or rather their remains, may be seen lying in the field whence they will never be removed. "THOS. D. WARREN." [Illustration: Modern Rear-Delivery Reaper. (From "Who Invented the Reaper?" by R. B. Swift.)] From the Richmond Planter. HUSSEY'S AND M'CORMICK'S REAPERS "It is very painful to be compelled to inflict a private injury in the discharge of a public duty; upon a particular system of cultivation we can talk and write without restraint; but when we are called on to discuss the merits of an invention, upon which the fortunes of the originator may absolutely depend, it is a much more responsible and delicate office. We are aware, too, that in introducing a subject of the kind, we are opening the floodgates of a controversy that is often hard to close; we have had the strongest evidence of that fact in the controversy that once occurred in this paper between Messrs. McCormick and Hussey, and yet it is to the relative merits of the reaping machines of these two gentlemen that we are compelled again to draw the public attention. Probably not less than fifteen thousand dollars has been spent in Virginia this summer for reaping machines, and it becomes a subject of great importance to the wheat growing community at least, to ascertain how such a sum is annually to be dispensed to the greatest advantage. We shall express no _opinion_ ourself in the discussion which must necessarily follow the introduction of this subject, and we would greatly prefer that neither of the gentlemen more particularly interested in the subject would appear in our columns. We will publish statements of facts for either, provided they are made over responsible names, and are short and permanent. As one of these facts we feel bound to state that we acted this year as the agent for McCormick's machine, and we have heard great complaint of the manner in which it was gotten up; but it is but fair also to state, that we believe Mr. McCormick himself has been superintending the manufacture of his machine in the State of New York, and that probably his work has not been as well done as it would have been could he have seen to it in person. The following communication is altogether in favor of Hussey's machine: [Sidenote: Hussey's Machine "Vastly Superior"] "I have had in operation on my plantation this year both Hussey's and McCormick's reapers. Now, as you have asked me to furnish the _Planter_ with the result of my own experience and opinion as to the comparative merit of the two machines, it is now at your service. I have had them both in operation (as the weather would permit) for the last fortnight, and have cut with the two rather upwards of two hundred acres of wheat. Both machines have been, I think, very fairly tested in all qualities of grain, from wheat five feet and more in height, both standing up, and lodged and tangled, and averaging, as is supposed, from thirty and forty bushels, down to light, thin wheat, not averaging more than four bushels (being some galled hills) and I am _candidly_ and _decidedly_ of opinion that Hussey's machine is _vastly superior_. I deem it superior, not only in the execution of its work, but in the durability of the machine. So well pleased am I with its performance that I have ordered another machine of Hussey's for my next harvest, and also one, and probably two, for my father's plantation. I consider this machine invaluable to the grower of wheat, and would recommend every farmer who grows even fifty acres of wheat, to purchase one. He may rest assured that he will be pleased with his purchase. I shall probably be in Richmond shortly. "Yours very respectfully, "T. POLLOCK BURGUYN. "Occonichee Wigwam, near Halifax, N. C., "June 20, 1846. "For 1849 and 1850 we will return and see how the invention progresses on the broad prairies and fertile lands of the West, where it first operated--in 1833 and 1834--and where, too, although the most luxuriant crops are _grown_ with comparatively but little labor, it would in many cases be next to impossible to save _them_ without the aid of this invaluable invention. "These certificates embrace the mowing of large crops of grass as well as grain, and in addition, the cutting of more than three hundred acres of _hemp_ in the harvest of 1849 and 1850, by 'the same single machine.' "Hussey's complete success in cutting grass and hemp was no new thing ten years ago; but we suppose, like the grain cutting, in the view of Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., 'Its _perfection_ depended on its being _new_ only in England,' full eighteen years after it was effected in America. [Sidenote: A General Opinion] "Blackberry, Kane County, Ill., "August 28, 1849. "This may certify that I have had one of Mr. Hussey's mowing and reaping machines on my farm this year cutting wheat, oats, and grass for a short time. I think nothing can beat it cutting timothy grass, and I intend to purchase one for that purpose. While the machine was cutting prairie grass in my field, I cut off a dry poplar stake, one inch in diameter, which had been sticking in the ground after it had been laid off for a ditch. I am of the opinion that it will cut wheat well, where it is so much lodged, or so foul with stiff weeds or corn stalks that it cannot be cut with any other machine I have seen in this country. Some of my neighbors say that they intend to have Mr. Hussey's reaper in preference to any other; and from what I can learn this opinion is pretty general in my neighborhood amongst those who have seen this machine work, and are acquainted with other machines. My brother farmers have had great trouble with McCormick's machine, by the breaking of sickles, and the great difficulty or rather the impossibility of getting them repaired, or getting new ones made when broken, whereas the blades of Mr. Hussey's machine can be made by any common blacksmith. I have no doubt but Mr. Hussey's machine will come into general use. "D. W. ANNIS." "Franklin Precinct, DeKalb Co., "August 13, 1849. "This may certify that we have seen Mr. O. Hussey's machine cut about an acre of wheat, so badly lodged that McCormick's reaper could do nothing with it, nor could it be cradled. Said Hussey's machine cut it handsomely, and laid it in very good bundles for binding. "JOHN SCHOOMAKER, ALBERT FIELD, JOHN M. SCHOOMAKER, DANIEL MILLER, ALBERT FIELD, JR., ISAAC CRILL, JOHN MILLER." "Berkshire, Kane County, Ill., "August 6, 1849. "We, the undersigned, having seen Mr. Hussey's reaper work at cutting grass and grain, think it preferable to McCormick's or any other machine that we have seen. It cut wheat that could not be cut with McCormick's reaper or a cradle. We are well acquainted with McCormick's machine. "P. A. HIXBY, JOHN GRIGGS, JR., JOHN GRIGGS, HARRY POTTER, JOHN SHIRWOOD, SETH SHIRWOOD, DAVID SHANKS, ABRAHAM SHIRWOOD, JAMES HESS, ALSON BANKER, D. C. WRIGHT, ELISHA WRIGHT." "Oswego, Ill., "August 2, 1849. "This may certify that I cut a lot of Black Sea Wheat with Mr. O. Hussey's Reaper; the wheat was so badly lodged that no McCormick Reaper or Cradle could cut it; Mr. Hussey's Reaper cut it clean and laid the bundles out of the track in good order for binding. I have seen the work done by this machine in grass; it was as good work as ever I saw done by a scythe, or better. For my choice I should rather have my grass cut by the Reaper than by the scythe. Every farmer ought to have such a machine, and every farmer I hear talk about it says the same. "PHILIP YOUNG." "Sugar Grove, "August 8, 1849. "This may certify that we have seen Mr. O. Hussey's machine operate in clean grain, and where weeds were very tall, large and thick. In the former, it operated as well as any machine we have seen; in the latter, it worked to a charm, even where it was impracticable to cut with one of McCormick's Reapers. "HARRY WHITE, L. B. SNOW, CHAUNCEY SNOW, SULLIVAN DORR, HIRAM TUBS, DWIGHT SPENCER, SAMUEL WARD, A. LOGAN." "Springfield, Ill., "Dec. 25, 1850. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore, Md.:_ "Dear Sir:--I have used one of your Mowing and Reaping Machines, and consider it the best machine I ever saw, and never intend to do without one, if it is possible to get one, even if I have to go to Baltimore and remain at the shop till one can be made. I do candidly believe if I had had one ten years ago I would now feel like a much younger man; and cheerfully recommend them to all who have grass or grain to cut, as a machine that will do their work in perfect order, neatness, and with ease to all employed. "JOHN SIMMS, "Four miles west of Springfield, Ill." "Utica, Lasal Co., Ill., "Dec. 14, 1850. "_Obed Hussey, Esq.:_ "Dear Sir:--I received your Reaping and Mowing Machine in time for harvest, and used it for harvesting and for mowing. I am fully satisfied that your machines are the best yet offered to the farmers of this State. I have mowed about four hundred acres, a great portion of which was wild prairie, very frequently running against stones and ant heaps with sufficient force to throw both driver and raker off the machine, without injury to the machine. Why your machine is preferable to any other, is, after you have cut your different kinds of grain, fully as well as can be done with any other machine, with not over fifteen minutes' work, you can take the same machine into your meadow or on to the prairie, and cut your grass at the rate of ten acres per day, cutting closer and cleaner than can be done with a scythe. With proper care, your machines will last fifteen or twenty years, with trifling repairs. "Respectfully yours, JAMES CLARK." "Island Grove, Sangamon Co., Ill., "December 25, 1850. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore, Md.:_ "Dear Sir:--Last summer I received two of Hussey's Mowing and Reaping Machines; one from your own shop in Baltimore, and the other manufactured in this State. Unfortunately for me, I retained the one manufactured in this State, and with some difficulty succeeded in cutting about two hundred acres of wheat and grass. The one from your shop I let Mr. John Simms have, who cut his wheat, oats and hay (about seventy-five acres) with perfect satisfaction and ease, most of it with two horses, and without being obliged to grind the knives. After Mr. Simms finished his harvest he let Mr. James D. Smith, of Island Grove, have it, who cut about three hundred acres of grass with it, the machine giving perfect satisfaction. "Very respectfully yours, "EDWARD J. ENO." "Carrolton, Green Co., Ill., "Dec. 27, 1850. "I procured one of Mr. Hussey's Reaping and Mowing Machines from Baltimore last spring; I cut eighty acres of wheat, and ten acres of oats, and fifty acres of timothy with it, to my entire satisfaction--after which I cut sixty acres of cloverseed with it in less than five days. I could not have saved the cloverseed without the machine, so I consider I saved the whole cost of the machine in the saving of the cloverseed alone. "SAMUEL THOMAS." "Springfield, Ill., "Dec. 25, 1850. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore, Md.:_ "Dear Sir:--During the harvest of August, 1849, with one of your machines I cut sixty acres of Hemp, using a set of 4-1/2 feet knives and guards, and two teams of four horses each, changing every two rounds, which cut on an average eight acres per day. This last harvest, the same single machine, with 6 foot guides and knives,[7] operated by the same force, cut successfully 250 acres of hemp, or from 10 to 12 acres per day. From this experience, I take pleasure in recommending your Cutters above the hemp cradle and hook, not only as labor-saving, by the expedition with which they cut, but as hemp saving, from the perfect thoroughness, evenness and nearness to the ground with which they do their work, and the regular and collected form in which they leave the hemp after being cut. "Yours respectfully, "EDWARD S. COX." [7] The cutters were lengthened by removing a board that previously reduced the cutting space to 4-1/2 feet in length. "Carrolton, Lebanon Co., Ill., "Sept., 1850. "_Mr. O. Hussey:_ "The four Reaping and Mowing Machines you sent arrived safe and in good order. Their performance far exceeded our expectations, the work went on so smoothly that we scarcely knew it was hay time and harvest. * * * If your machine had been as well known as they are now, you could have sold twenty as well as one. "Yours, "JONAS WARD." The few letters which follow, taken from the _American Farmer_, and referring to a still later period, are selected for their brevity, from many others, and principally from Maryland and Ohio. It is considered unnecessary to extend the list, for the operation and character of the machine is too well and too widely known at this day to render it necessary to the intelligent farmer and general reader, in any grain growing section of the country.[8] [8] With the view of determining as far as possible which was the best Reaping and Mowing Machines for the farmer to purchase, the Maryland State Agricultural Society in 1852 offered a prize of one hundred dollars--the largest yet offered in the country--for the best machine, to be tested by a committee appointed by the Society; a large committee of men of the first standing in the State, and all large wheat growers, was appointed, and extended notice published of the trial to take place at "Wye," the seat of Col. Edward Lloyd, Eastern Shore, Md., in July. Every effort was made by the Society and Committee to give a fair and satisfactory trial; as the extent of crops in that fine wheat growing region, and extensive level face of the country, are unsurpassed anywhere for such an exhibition. But two machines were entered for competition, McKeever's and Hussey's. The prize was awarded unanimously to Hussey. Why no others could be induced to attend was a matter of surprize at the time, and so remains with many. "Harewood, "12mo., 8, 1852. "Having used one of O. Hussey's Reaping and Mowing Machines during the last harvest (1852) I can state that in cutting wheat, oats and cloverseed--also in mowing my crop of grass--it has fully answered my expectations, doing the work better than I ever had it done by the scythe, and at much less expense. The machine has been tested by cutting some fifty to sixty acres of grass--quite sufficient to prove its complete adaptation to mowing as well as reaping. "EDWARD STABLER." "Wye House, "Dec. 20, 1852. "Dear Sir:--Having worked your Reaper for many years I have fully tested its merits. It has proved itself to be not only a wheat saving implement but a labor and time saving one--these are all important to the farmer. "It does its work completely, regardless of the position of the wheat, if in condition to bind. "Those you sent me in the spring worked well through the harvest, and proved their strength. "Yours respectfully, "EDW'D LLOYD." "Oxford, Md., "Dec. 8, 1852. "_Mr. Obed Hussey:_ "Sir:--I have used your Reaper with such entire satisfaction that I am but performing a duty to my brother farmers by recommending it in the strongest terms. "For sixteen years I have used a Reaping Machine, and know from experience that the most important qualities are _strength_ and _simplicity_. In these respects your machine is superior to any other, and is the only one I have seen which can be safely entrusted to the management of ordinary overseers, with negro laborers. "Yours, etc., "TENCH TILGHMAN." "Hayes, Montgomery Co., Md., "December 7, 1852. "I purchased in the year 1851 one of Mr. Obed Hussey's Reaping Machines. I used it that year and this year in cutting my grain; I was pleased with the machine; I consider it a valuable implement, and hope never to be without one while I continue to be a farmer. My machine was used in cutting wheat and oats--it was not designed for grass. I employed it about half the day, and reaped about ten acres of land in grain--the rest of the day was devoted to the securing of the grain; I used four horses. My machine, I believe, was of the smallest size, and was without front wheels; with wheels it would have been a relief to the horses. "I cannot speak of the relative value of this machine compared with others, having never seen any Reaping Machines but Hussey's at work. I do not think I could be induced to return to the old mode of cutting grain by the scythe and cradle. "Respectfully yours, etc., "ROBERT P. DUNLOP." "Forest Hill, King and Queens Co., Va., "December 24, 1852. "_Mr. O. Hussey:_ "Sir:--It gives me pleasure to state that I used your Reaping Machine in my late harvest with great satisfaction. It fully equals my expectation as a labor-saving implement, and does the work better than can be done by the cradle. I would farther state that the seven which were purchased along with mine for my relations and friends of this country have given in every instance, entire satisfaction. "Very respectfully, "WM. D. GRESHAM." "_To the Editor of the American Farmer:_ "Dear Sir:--Having had a fair opportunity of observing the performance of Mr. Hussey's celebrated 'Reaper' on my farm last season, under circumstances peculiarly calculated to test its efficiency, I think it not inappropriate to bear my testimony in its favor. "I finished cutting my grain more than a week ago. The grain was not only blown as flat as possible, but was tangled and twisted together, and lying in every direction; so much so that it would have been impossible to cut a large portion of it with the cradle. No one who saw the field believed the machine could possibly succeed. "I take great pleasure in stating that its success was perfect and entire. It cut and gathered the grain in the very worst spots almost as well as that which was standing; and I was thus enabled to mow my crop in about one-half the time the _old fashioned_ method would have required, thereby effecting a large pecuniary gain. It cuts the grass as evenly and as close as the most expert mower. I need scarcely say that I am perfectly satisfied with it. I subscribe myself yours, etc., "AQUILLA TABOT." "Alexandria, Va., "12 mo., 11, 1852. "It gives me much pleasure to state that I have had in use on my farm in Montgomery County, Md., for the past two seasons, one of 'Hussey's Reapers,' and its operation has given me _entire satisfaction in every respect_. It appears to combine the three qualities so important to the farmer, efficiency, durability and economy. I can, with great sincerity, recommend its general adoption. "BENJAMIN HALLOWELL." "_To Obed Hussey:_ "Dear Sir:--Having used one of your Reapers upon land, a great deal of which was hilly, stony and rough, I take pleasure in saying that it has given entire satisfaction, and proved to be a very durable, well built, and great labor saving machine. "Respectfully, "A. B. DAVIS." "Greenwood, Mont. Co., Md., Dec. 20, 1852." "Pickaway County, O., "July 1, 1851. "I made an experiment this season in my field of testing the McCormick and Hussey Reapers. I tried each fairly and under similar circumstances. I am satisfied that Hussey's is decidedly the best Reaper, both as to cutting grain and durability. The objections made to Hussey's Reaper by agents and manufacturers of other machines I do not find, upon trial, to exist in any one particular. "WM. STAGE." "We, the undersigned, present at the trial, concur in Mr. Stage's statement: Z. Pritchett, John Reber, Philip Stuart, Isaac Stage, John Hogeland, Michael Eyer." "Salem Tp., Champaign Co., O., "July, 1851. "I have worked with McCormick and Hussey's Reapers three seasons, and unqualifiedly pronounce Hussey's the best machine. It cuts cleaner and faster, and leaves the grain in better order on the ground; and this is the opinion of every hand in giving an expression of the comparative merits of the two machines. "THOS. OUTRAM." "Union Township, Champaign County, O., "July, 1851. "I have for the past four seasons worked Hussey's Reaper, and unhesitatingly pronounce it vastly superior to McCormick's or any other Reaper I have seen used. "WILLIAM T. ZOMBRO." "Salem Township, Champaign County, O., "July, 1851. "I have had Hussey's Reaper used on my farm. It will cut 20 acres of the heaviest wheat per day, with ease. I consider it far superior to the McCormick Reaper. "JOSHUA BUFFINGTON." "Ross County, Ohio, "July, 1851. "I have used Hussey's Reaper, and consider it an invaluable machine. I have seen McCormick's Reaper operate, and am of opinion that Hussey's is the best machine. "D. M'CONNELL." "Union Township, Champaign County, O., "August, 1851. "I have used Hussey's Reaper for four years. I prefer it to every other machine. I do not have to drive fast, and the raking is the easiest work in the field. "JOHN EARSOM." "Salem Township, Champaign County, O., "August, 1851. "I bought a Hussey Reaper this season, and it has given the best satisfaction. I cut wheat that was down as badly as any I ever saw. It operated well by driving in a slow walk. My hands would rather rake than bind. "JOHN LEE." "Union Township, Champaign County, O., "July, 1851. "I have used for five years Hussey's Reaper. It is a labor and grain saving machine. It is a much better machine than McCormick's, in several particulars; it is more substantial, not so liable to injury, and will cut faster and cleaner. I cut this season, with three horses, sixteen acres of heavy wheat, in five hours and thirty minutes. "REZIN C. WILSON." "Bergen, "September 1, 1851. "This is to certify that I have for three seasons used one of Hussey's Reaping Machines, which I purchased at the Genesee Seed Store, and that it gives perfect satisfaction. I have cut my wheat when it was very badly lodged, much faster, better and cheaper than it could have been done in any other way. I had one of McCormick's, but left it in the road, a useless article, as I consider it, having tried for three years to use it without success. "I consider Hussey's machine just the thing for our farmers, and I could not now, after having proved its merits, be induced to be without one. "NOAH WILSON." With a few general remarks as to the reputation of Reaping Machines in England, and on the authority of the annexed English publications, we take leave of the subject. At the trial for which the "Great Council Medal" was awarded, but which no practical farmer in this country would consider as any trial at all, being merely the attempt to cut a small space in green and wet grain, and during the temporary absence of Hussey, his machine was operated by ignorant laborers of the "Chrystal Palace," and who had never before seen a reaping machine. This did not satisfy the English farmers; complaints were soon heard of injustice, partiality, and unfairness. It compelled C. H. McCormick or his agents to offer a challenge, which was promptly accepted by Hussey; and before the Cleveland Agricultural Society a tolerably fair trial was had of the rival machines, though neither the grain nor ground was then in a suitable state. For the decision of twelve prominent men and practical farmers we refer to the annexed English account for the complete triumph of the unmedalled machine. In an interview with an extensive agricultural implement maker of Yorkshire--himself an inventor of many valuable implements, and to no small extent a rival--he spoke of Obed Hussey as a man who conferred honor on his own country; as well by his genius and talents, as by his integrity of character. This feeling was alike honorable to the gentleman who gave it expression, and just to an American citizen. [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Distinction] Obed Hussey is perhaps the only American who ever waved the "Stars and Stripes" on the soil of England [placed there, too, at different times, on his machine, by _Englishmen_] or who could do it without a strong feeling of envy and jealousy being engendered. Even Englishmen, jealous as they are known to be, viewed Hussey as a public benefactor, and his mission as one calculated either directly or indirectly to benefit all classes. Yet in his own country, which he has so signally benefited, he is compelled to supplicate for years, and as yet in vain, for rights, that others, with not a tithe of his claim and merit, but with more ample means perhaps, or more influential friends, succeed in obtaining. It is a reproach to the age and to the Halls of Legislation. When it was supposed this great invention was perfected in England, many years ago--though _not_ successful, as was subsequently proved--the _Nation_ took the matter in hand, and Parliament voted a reward to its author. At the great Agricultural Exhibition for "Bath and the West of England," held at Plymouth in 1853, the _Plymouth Mail_ states: ["the interest and excitement created by the trial of Reaping Machines was very great, and the crowd of persons assembled to witness their performance was immense"]--that Hussey won the prize for Reaping, by acclamation, over all competitors--the only other American machine present, McCormick's included; and an eye witness states that three cheers were proposed for Mr. Hussey by Sir Thomas Ackland, the President, and member of Parliament, which was responded to by thousands, and without a dissenting voice; that his reaper was crowned with laurel by the Judges, and the "Stars and Stripes" waved in triumph twenty-five feet high over American ingenuity and enterprise on English soil. [Illustration: Gold medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper at Baltimore in 1853. Silver medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper and his Steam Plough at New York in 1857.] [Sidenote: A Mowing Machine as Well as a Reaper] At this trial it was again demonstrated to the agriculturists of Great Britain by Obed Hussey [and not the first time, though he was the first to do it] that his machine would cut their grass quite as perfectly as their "corn." The _Mail_ goes on to say: "A mowing machine was so remote from the expectations and hopes of the Society, that no prize was offered for one; yet Mr. Hussey was prepared with a mowing machine, which was taken to an adjoining field of meadow grass and clover mixed. The people followed, but evidently with no expectation of being gratified. The machine mower was put in action, and to the admiration of every one, it cut the grass with an evenness and precision which is truly surprising, being more close and even than a scythe. The grass left behind the machine was quite evenly spread, and where it was not so, it lay so light and open that the use of the tending machine was scarcely necessary. The admiration of the truly astonishing performance was universal. "The cutting the rye was looked for, but mowing the grass took every one by surprise. Thus a great desideratum has been achieved; the farmer has now only to gear up his horses and take a ride through his meadow, and his grass is cut." Again, at the Royal Agricultural Society's Exhibition, held at Lincoln, the present season, the _Mark Lane Express_ states that Hussey's machine won the prize over all competitors; and admits that Bell's machine was "at last fairly beaten." Is there an _American_ who can read these accounts who does not feel indebted to the man who, solely by his own perseverance and skill, has added lustre to his country's renown in the peaceful walks of life? If the same man, as a "warrior in hostile array," had raised the same flag in triumph on the same soil, how would his countrymen have rewarded him? Doubtless by a "vote of thanks by both Houses of Congress," together with a sword and gold medal, if not a monument in addition! [Sidenote: A Peaceful Conquest] Should not those be equally honored and rewarded by the Country, who are engaged in the arts and in agriculture; who devote their energies to add to the comfort and happiness of their fellow man, as those engaged in shedding blood, making widows and orphans to mourn for their untimely bereavement, and who literally for hire, not patriotism, and with the spirit demons, seek to slay and destroy? We fully believe so; for fame and renown in arms are rarely or never acquired, except by entailing misery and distress on our fellow beings, and engendering the worst feelings and passions of our nature. But we hope for the advent of better days; when, if the political sword is not literally beaten into a plough-share, and the partisan spear turned into a pruning hook, the inventive genius and talent of our countrymen shall be more aided and better rewarded by Government, in its praiseworthy efforts "for the diffusion of knowledge among men," in all that really ennobles the mind, and benefits the whole human family. Such, at least, is the earnest wish and desire of A FARMER AND MECHANIC. HUSSEY'S REAPING AND MOWING MACHINE IN ENGLAND [Sidenote: An Unfair Disadvantage] "In presenting the following pages for consideration of the farmers of the country, the subscriber has confined himself strictly to matters selected from English papers, which will speak for itself. As a short explanation from me will be looked for, I will merely state that at the trial in presence of the Exhibition Jury, Mr. McCormick's machine was operated by an experienced hand sent from the United States, while mine was managed by English laborers of the lower class, who were total strangers to it, and had never seen it in operation. The trial was made in unripe wheat on a rainy day. My machine was very improperly adjusted for the work and wrongly put together, in consequence of which the ignorant raker failed to deliver the sheaves, and it stopped as a matter of course, and was immediately laid aside, after cutting but a few feet. My machine was never tried in presence of that Jury by any other hands, or in any other condition, myself not being in England. "It was on such a trial that the Exhibition medal was disposed of, and with what justice the reader can judge by reading the following pages. On my arrival in England I took my machine into the field that it might work its way into public favor as it best could. After being exhibited in several places, its rising fame appeared to produce some effect, as it will appear by the following in the _Windsor and Eaton Express_ of November 8, 1851: "Alluding to the astonishing and unexpected performance of my Reaper, it says: '_By this unlooked for turn of events, the proprietors of McCormick's machine found that their supremacy was no longer undisputed, and that the necessity was laid upon them to look to their laurels; they therefore came boldly forward, and threw down the gauntlet!_' [Illustration: Hussey's Side-Delivery Reaper As Used in England. (From An Old Print)] [Sidenote: How McCormick Received a Medal] "That farmers who are acquainted with my reaper may understand why it failed to perform well in the hands of strangers at the Exhibition trial where McCormick got the medal, it will be necessary for me to say that when the machine was sent from Baltimore it was set to cut high. That when the inexperienced hands undertook to make it cut low, they pitched down the cutters by putting on the tongue, not knowing any other way to lower it. In doing so the hind part of the platform was of course raised high. In this condition the unpracticed raker failed to push the heavy wet wheat off up an inclined plane; and as a matter of course the machine choaked, and for the same reason that a mill will choak when the corn goes in faster than the meal comes out. A skillful hand would have lowered the cut at the axle of the machine, and brought the platform horizontal or lowest at the rear, as it should be in cutting wet grain. "The following pages will show the result, the authenticity of which, if doubted, will be proved by the production of the originals in my possession. "OBED HUSSEY. "Baltimore, Md., Jan. 1, 1852." From the Hull [England] Advertiser, September 5, 1851. "At the annual meeting on Mr. Mechi's Farm at Tiptree Heath, a few weeks ago, a brief report of which appeared in the Hull Advertiser at the time, several reaping machines were tested, the result then being that one manufactured and invented by Mr. McCormick, of America, was the only one which was considered to have done its work properly. Amongst those tried was one invented and manufactured by Mr. O. Hussey, Baltimore, Md. (U. S.) which, in the opinion of gentlemen then present, did not fully accomplish the object in view. It should, however, be mentioned, that while Mr. McCormick's machine had on that trial the advantage of the superintendence of persons intimately acquainted with its mechanism, and who had been accustomed to the working of the machine for some years, Mr. Hussey's invention was (in the absence of the inventor) in the hands of persons entirely unacquainted with the proper mode of working it. Since then Mr. Hussey himself has come over to England in order to superintend his machine, and the result has been that it is now brought out to receive a thorough trial of its merits. "The trial of Wednesday, however, was the best. It took place in a field belonging to Mr. Coskill, Grovehill Lane, Beverly. There was assembled during the day a great number of farmers and gentlemen interested in agriculture, who witnessed the trial with great interest. "The wheat in this case was very much 'laid;' indeed in many places it was almost flat on the ground. It therefore afforded one of the best opportunities for judging of the capabilities of the machine under disadvantageous circumstances that could possibly occur. "On the whole, the conclusion come to was that the reaping was done as well by machine as by hand. No one doubted for a moment that it would cut corn well where it was standing; but some farmers thought it would not equal the scythe where the corn was laid. The result, however, showed the contrary, and every person acknowledged that it had succeeded admirably. After cutting a large quantity of wheat, the machine was taken into another field, and after a slight alteration, set to work to cut clover. We understand that on the day before previous to coming to Hull, it had been tried on clover and cut it extremely well. [Sidenote: Winning Its Own Way] "As the machine cut along it was followed closely by groups of farmers striving hard to find flaws in its performance. But they could not. On the contrary, in those places where the corn was most 'laid,' and where, consequently, the greatest difficulty must occur in the cutting, the manner in which the reaper did its work elicited their loudest approbation. 'Why,' said one burly old gentleman by our side, 'a man with a scythe could never cut it like that.' 'It is wonderful,' said another. From the Morning Advertiser, September 12, 1851. "On Monday last, the public trial of Hussey's patent Reaping Machine took place with the permission of his Grace, the Duke of Marlborough, on his Grace's estate of Blenheim, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, and also, on the adjoining one of Mr. Southern, one of the most considerable landed proprietors of the country. A large assemblage of the Agriculturists of the highest class attracted by the celebrity which this ingenious and efficient contrivance has acquired for itself in a course of successful experiments performed last week in Yorkshire, were present to witness the trial, mostly from Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties, but many from a considerable distance, and all of them concurred in the most ready acknowledgments of its advantages. [Sidenote: The Duke of Marlborough's Test] "The reaping commenced at 11 o'clock in the barley field, the machine being drawn by two fine chestnut horses, lent by his Grace for the purpose of the experiment, in which he took the deepest interest, following the reaper in a car, and watching with evident satisfaction, the ease and rapidity with which the blades cut down the golden produce of the field. The crop was by no means one calculated to favor the experiment. On the contrary, some of it was down and much laid. It was cut down, however, with great regularity and speed, and the general evenness of the stubble was the subject of general remark. As the machine passed on, hewing its way at a smart pace through the dense mass of stalks, the crowd of eager observers rushed after it, and many were the cheers with which it was welcomed. Occasionally, to satisfy the ideas of the more fastidious, the level of the cutters was changed, so as to leave a greater or less length of stubble, and it was evident to all that in this respect the machine was susceptible of the nicest adjustment. Some times at the end of a turn it was rested to give the farmers an opportunity of inspecting it, which they seemed never tired of doing, and then it was turned round at right angles to cut in the cross direction. In the experiments upon barley, it showed itself capable of reaping the enormous space of fifteen acres, which we believe is from eight to nine times the power of the most vigorous and skillful reaper. Afterwards the machine was taken into a large field of clover, which it cut to within two inches of the ground, and with still greater rapidity. "His Grace repeatedly expressed his admiration of the powers of the apparatus, and congratulated some of the agricultural gentlemen present with him on the prospects of greater economy and security in harvesting which it afforded them. These opinions were generally entertained upon the ground, and yesterday at Bishop's Startford, in Hartfordshire, the farmers of that part of the country witnessed a similar experiment, attended with results precisely similar, and which gave them the same satisfaction." [Illustration: McCormick's American Reaper] The following testimonial was given by the Duke of Marlborough: "Tuesday, September 9th, 1851. "Having yesterday witnessed the working of the American Reaping Machine, patented by Mr. Hussey, and being requested to give my opinion upon its execution, I state that it performed its work admirably, laying the corn when cut very neatly for tying up, and leaving the stubble very regular. "MARLBOROUGH." Following upon these various successes, an advertisement from the proprietors of McCormick's Machine appeared in the public papers, as follows: MR. M'CORMICK'S AMERICAN REAPER [Sidenote: The Challenge] "Public Challenge to Makers and Venders of Reaping Machines: We, the undersigned, agents for Mr. McCormick, having observed sundry advertisements and circulars complaining of the decision of the Jurors of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in favor of Mr. McCormick's Reaper, and of the reports given in the public journals of the trials which led to such decision, do hereby give notice to Messrs. Wm. Dray & Co., Messrs. Garrett & Son, Mr. O. Hussey, and all other makers and venders of Reaping Machines whatsoever, that M'CORMICK'S Reaper will be tried at the Cleveland Society's Show at Marton, Middlesbrough, near Stockton-on-Tees, on the 25th inst., and publicly CHALLENGE them or any of them, to meet us there, with their machines, for the purpose of a comparative trial of the respective merits of each, to be determined by the Chairman and Council of the Cleveland Society, or by such Judge or Judges as the said Society may appoint. BURGESS & KEY, 103 Newgate Street, London." The Challenge was immediately accepted. MR. HUSSEY'S AMERICAN REAPER [Sidenote: The Acceptance] "In answer to an advertisement which appeared in the Times of the 18th, from Messrs. Burgess & Key, giving us a PUBLIC CHALLENGE to a TRIAL of the AMERICAN REAPING MACHINES, we hereby announce that we shall willingly ACCEPT the SAME, and on the 25th inst. we shall be prepared at the Cleveland Society's Show, Marton, Middlesborough, near Stockton-on-Tees, to prove to the Agricultural World the superiority of HUSSEY'S REAPER for general farming purposes. We stipulate, however, that the Machines shall be tested, not only on a particular patch of good upstanding grain, where they might, perhaps, prove equal, but on an average variety of conditions, as to short and laid corn, etc., such as the farmer will usually meet with. Its capabilities for cutting green crops, such as clover, etc., shall also be proved. It must be evident to the Farming Public that the Reaping Machine which will cut a crop of the greatest variety and difference of condition must possess the greatest merit. WM. DRAY & CO., Agricultural Warehouse, Swan-Lane, London Bridge." Accordingly the matter was arranged, and the following gentlemen were called upon to act as jurors: Henry Stephen Thompson, Esq., of Moat Hall, _Foreman_; Mr. Wm. Lister of Dunsa Bank; Mr. Jno. Booth of Killerby; Mr. John Parrington, of Brancepeth; Mr. Wm. Wetherell, of Kirkbridge, Darlington; Mr. Robert Hymers, of Marton; Mr. Christopher Cobson, Linthorpe; Mr. Robert Fawcitt, of Ormsby; Mr. Joseph Parrington, of Cross Beck; Mr. John Outhwaite, of Bainesse; Mr. Geo. Reed, Hutton Lowcross; Mr. Thomas Phillips, of Helmsley, and Mr. Thomas Outhwaite, of Bainesse. The following were the conditions to be submitted by the representatives of the respective machines: The machines to be tried on wheat and barley in such order, and for such lengths of time, as the jurymen may direct. The jury to have full power to use any means they deem advisable in order to put the machines to the severest trial. The jury in deciding on the merits of the two machines, to take into their consideration: [Sidenote: Conditions of the Contest] 1st. Which of the two cuts corn in the best manner. 2d. Which of the two causes the least waste. 3d. Which of the two does the most work in a given time. 4th. Which of the two leaves the corn in the best order for gathering and binding. 5th. Which of the two is the best adapted for the ridge and furrow. 6th. Which of the two is the least liable to get out of order. 7th. Which of the two at first cost is least price. 8th. Which of the two requires the least amount of horse labor. 9th. Which of the two requires the least amount of manual labor. As no report was made of the trial on the first day, the following may be relied upon: From the Gateshead Observer, September 27, 1851. "It was curious to see on the soil of a Cleveland farm two implements of agriculture lying side by side in rivalry, respectively marked, 'McCormick, inventor, Chicago, Illinois,' 'Hussey, inventor, Baltimore, Maryland'--America competing with America, on English soil. "Mr. Hussey led off. An attempt was made to keep back the eager crowd; but their curiosity was irrepressible; they flocked in upon the machine so that the experiment could not be properly performed, nor could the jury duly discharge their duties. P. C. Thompson did his very best; he was all but everywhere at once; but what avails a police force, _one_ strong, against a concourse of Yorkshire yeomanry and clowns? It was requisite that he should have recruits, and a body of self-elected 'specials' came to his aid, who succeeded in procuring approach to a clear course. Mr. Hussey then took his seat anew, and his machine cut down a breadth of wheat from end to end of the field. It seemed to us to do its work neatly and well. The wheat was cleverly delivered from the teeth of the reaper, and handed over to the binders by the rake." To William Dray and Company. "Stockton-on-Tees, September 27th, 1851. "Sir--Having been in communication with you relative to the trial of your Reaper against McCormick's, and feeling deeply interested in the introduction of the new implement into this district, particularly one of so much importance as a Reaping Machine, I think it is not probably out of place in me if I give you the result of my observations during the two trials which have taken place. From the fact that McCormick's Machine obtained the prize at the Great Exhibition (though I do not _pin my faith_ upon awards made by Agricultural and other societies) the letter of Mr. Pusey's, in the _Royal Agricultural Society's Journal_, the various newspaper reports, etc., etc., it was natural for me to be predisposed in favor of McCormick's Machine; indeed Mr. M. had a prestige in his favor, which of course operated against the 'Little Hussey.' Previous to starting, at Marton, on Thursday, the gentlemen representing McCormick's machine expressed themselves desirous of testing the machines early in the morning when the dew was on, believing that their machine would cut the grain under such circumstances, and that yours would not. Well, on Thursday we had a deluge rain, the surface of the land was very soft, and the corn very wet. Everybody there was astonished to see your machine brought up the field at a trot, cutting its way to the admiration of all present; it not only cut _to_ the leaning corn, but it cut cross over the corn leaning to the left of the postillion (I presume I must call him). McCormick's machine then _attempted_ to start (he made two or three attempts) but the attendant confessed it was impossible to do so. That there might be no mistake about it, your representatives proposed that their machines should go up again; the jury said 'No! we are satisfied that your machine can cut it under the present circumstances,' and so ended Thursday's trial." From the Gateshead Observer, October 4. "We left the members and friends of this society, on Friday, the 26th ult. on the Show-ground at Middlesbrough, immersed in rain. The scene now shifts to the Townhall, where, in a handsome and spacious apartment, we find them assembled in the evening, to dinner, to the number of 150, with the Earl of Zetland in the chair, and in the vice-chair Mr. John Vaughan, of the firm of Bolckow & Vaughan, iron-masters and manufacturers. His lordship was supported by the Rev. W. F. Wharton, of Birmingham, and Messrs. J. T. Wharton, Henry Pease, G. D. Trotter, Isaac Wilson, George Coates, J. W. Pease, George Reade, John Pierson, etc.; and the vice-chair by Messrs. C. Dryden, W. Fallows, R. Chilton, etc. In the body of the hall were the leading inhabitants of the town and neighborhood; also, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Samuelson (who had come to the meeting with Mr. McCormick's reaping machine), Mr. Hussey, the inventor of the reaper which bears his name, and Mr. Pierce and Mr. Stevens (on the part of Messrs. Dray & Co., agents for Mr. Hussey). "On the removal of the cloth, the noble Chairman (behind whose seat was inscribed on the wall in conspicuous characters, 'Success to the Cleveland Agricultural Society--Eighteenth Anniversary') gave the customary loyal toasts, and took occasion to observe that had it not been for the Exhibition of Industry, projected by Prince Albert, the 'Reaping Machine,' from which he anticipated great benefits to agriculture, would not have been introduced into this country. (Applause.) "The Earl of Zetland again referred to the reaping machine. Such an aid to agriculture, his lordship observed, was needed in Cleveland and elsewhere. "Mr. J. T. Wharton, of Skelton Castle, said he had never witnessed so much enthusiasm in an agricultural district as was displayed in connection with the reaping machine. Had the day been fine the number of spectators present yesterday (Thursday) would have been at least fourfold what it was. Bad as the weather was, not only was there a large muster of members of the society, but 803 persons, many of them from a considerable distance, paid sixpence each for admission to the ground. The trial of the rival machines was, unfortunately, so short, and conducted under such adverse circumstances, that it was impossible to pronounce any opinion as to their relative merits; but what he saw of Hussey's was as satisfactory as he could expect. (Applause.) "Mr. George Reade, of Hutton Lowcross, said, had it not been for the boisterous weather, the receipts of the Society at Ormesby and Middlesbrough would have been marvelous. As it was, there was a large assemblage to witness the trial of the American reaping machines, and they were regarded with an anxious desire that they might succeed. Indeed, let any ingenious mechanic--he cared not whether he was English, Scotch, Irish, American or German--come before a jury of the farmers of Cleveland with an implement or machine for the improvement of Agriculture, and it would be judged with candor, impartiality and uprightness, and the inventor should go home satisfied that he had experienced fair play. (Applause.) "Mr. Isaac Wilson proposed the health of 'The Strangers.' To those gentlemen the members were greatly indebted for their attendance. Had the weather permitted, they would all have experienced much pleasure from an inspection of the celebrated reaping machines in action, and the ingenious draining plough of Mr. Fowler, which did him very much credit. (The toast was drank with musical honors.) "Mr. Pierce, the representative of Dray & Co., being called upon to respond, rose and said, bad as the weather had been, he had been delighted with his visit to Middlesbrough. The kindness of the inhabitants soon made him no stranger. He was not four and twenty hours in the place before he fraternized with the whole parish. (Laughter.) He rejoiced that Mr. Hussey's reaping machine was now in the hands of a jury of Cleveland farmers. It would have a fair, honest, impartial trial; and what more could an Englishman desire. (Applause.) He thanked the company for the honor which they had conferred upon their visitors from a distance, and wished continued success to their flourishing society. (Applause.) [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Toast to England] "Mr. Hussey was next called upon, and said that he had for many years been building machines in America. If he had had the least idea of the interest which England would take in the reaping of crops by machinery, it would have been a difficult thing to keep him on the other side of the Atlantic; and he knew not, now, after the reception which he had met with, how he should ever get home again. (Applause and laughter.) "Mr. Steevens, Dray & Co.'s engineer, was also called upon to rise, and stated that his employers had purchased Mr. Hussey's machine because they saw it to be the best, and they would meet every competitor in the three kingdoms, fearless of the result. (Cheers.) "[It should be stated that Messrs. Fowler, Burgess, Samuelson,[9] etc., had by this time left the hall, and therefore could not be called upon.] [9] McCormick's agents. "Mr. Parrington, having read the award, announced that a second trial of McCormick's and Hussey's reaping machines would be made, if the weather were favorable, on the following morning (Saturday), at 9 o'clock, at Mr. Fawcitt's farm. The jury, appointed by the committee, would give no opinion on the trial of the previous day (Thursday). That would go for nothing. They would devote the whole of next day, if necessary, to a full, fair, and satisfactory trial of the two machines. (Applause.) "On Saturday morning, the weather was so far favorable that there was no rain. The trial, therefore, took place. There was a numerous gathering of land-owners, farmers, laborers, etc., but not so crowded a muster as to obstruct the experiment. "The foreman of the jury, Mr. Thompson, being unavoidably absent, his place was supplied by the Rev. W. F. Wharton, of Birmingham. Messrs. Lister, Outhwaite, (J. and T. P.) Booth, Wetherell, Phillips, and Dobson, were also absent. Their places were filled by Mr. William Morley, Dishforth; Mr. Thomas Parrington, Marton; Mr. J. T. Wharton, Shelton Castle; Mr. Wm. Hill, Staunton; Mr. Joseph Coulson, Sexhow; Mr. Joseph Harrison, White House; Mr. John Mason Hopper, Marton. "The trial commenced in a level enclosure, adjoining the road from Stockton and Middlesbrough to Ormesby Hall (the residence of Sir Wm. Pennyman, Bart.). The wheat was laid. We have seen a crop in worse condition, but not often. The straw was damp and soft. The soil was loamy and light, and the field free from wet; it was to Mr. Fawcitt's credit that he was able to place such a field at the service of the society under the circumstances; still, the earth was in a state to clog the wheels of the reapers. Altogether, the test was a severe one for the competitors. Mr. Samuelson, Mr. Burgess, and Mr. D. C. Mackenzie (the son of an emigrant from Ivernesse) were in charge of Mr. McCormick's machine. The other was in the hands of the inventor himself, Mr. Hussey, and of Mr. Pierce and Mr. Steevens (who represented the agents, Messrs. Dray & Co.) "The Rev. Mr. Wharton (the jury, competitors, etc., having gathered round him on the field, on Saturday morning) announced that after the lapse of an hour, when the corn would be in such a condition that Mr. Fawcitt, as he had just said, would, under ordinary circumstances, reap it himself, the trial would commence. "The question was, now, which of the two machines should begin. A 'toss' gave the chance to Mr. Pierce, and he requested Mr. Burgess to lead off. "McCormick's machine then got into action, taking the crop in the most favorable manner--that is, leaning toward the knife. Passing along the field (which was from two to three hundred yards in length) it cut down a breadth of little more than four feet. The corn being laid, the flier, of course did not come into practical operation; nor was it necessary that it should do so--the elements having already done its work. The corn was well cut--the stubble a little too high. "Another breadth or two having been cut, Hussey's machine followed, and cut some breadths--somewhat wider than McCormick's, and closer to the ground. "Mackenzie, when we pointed out the shorter stubble of his rival, admitted the fact, but said there would be no difficulty--not the slightest--in bringing Mr. McCormick's knife nearer to the ground. In America, however, where the straw is comparatively of little or no value, the stubble is no object, and there are some advantages in cutting high. "A backer of McCormick's machine (and many bets have been laid on the two machines) urged that Hussey's would spoil clover when going among wheat. The reply was, that Hussey's knife could be raised or depressed at pleasure. "The next test was cutting the crop across ridge and furrow, so that the corn was lying neither to nor from the knife, but sidewise. Both the machines cut the corn under these circumstances--Hussey's the cleaner of the two. "The jury then required the experiment to be made along the field, with the corn lying from the knife. "Mr. Hussey consented, and the machine succeeded in cutting the corn--leaving a tolerable stubble, but not so short and regular as before. "McCormick's machine was then tried, and failed. As it scoured over the corn, making sad havoc, there were loud cries of 'Stop! stop! you're wasting it!' "Barley was next cut, with much the same result. In this case, Mr. Hussey adjusted his platform for discharging the corn at the side. [Sidenote: Hussey Wins 6 to 4] "The binders being summoned before the jury, and asked which of the two machines they preferred, so far as their particular department was concerned, decided, 4 for McCormick's, 6 for Hussey's. "Clover was now to be tried, but at this stage of the proceedings we left the field. Clover-cutting, we should state, formed no part of the competition. The agreement merely refers to wheat and barley. McCormick's machine is not intended for clover-cutting; but some of the land owners and farmers were anxious to see clover cut by Hussey's machine. Mr. Thompson, we understand, had requested his proxy to have the experiment made. We were told on the ground that the machine had already been tried on clover at Newport, near Middlesbrough, and 'cut it well--if the weather had been dry it would have cut it beautifully.' "It was pleasant to mark the anxiety and watchfulness of the gentlemen in charge of the two machines. Mr. McCormick suffered no loss from his absence, he was so admirably represented; and in Messrs. Pierce and Steevens, Dray & Co. had invaluable agents--on the Thursday in particular, when a storm, which ravaged land and sea, could not deter them or Mr. Hussey, from practically attesting the reaper's prowess in the field. The trial, throughout, was conducted with a fidelity to self which would not throw a point away, and a courtesy to rivals which should ever mark honorable competition." From a Correspondent. "Stockton, Monday, September 29.--A report reached me, after I left the farm, that Hussey's machine cut the barley very much better than McCormick's. It came to me, however, through parties who might fairly be suspected of a bias, and therefore I kept my judgment in suspense until I could obtain information on which I could more implicitly rely. This I have now got. I have been to the farm again today, and made inquiries of persons who saw the completion of the trial. McCormick's machine did not cut the barley so well as Hussey's. It cut it much too high; and as the crop was very much laid, the heads only, in many cases were cut off. We had Hussey's machine in operation to-day, both on barley and wheat, and made better work than on Saturday. Mr. Fawcitt worked it with the greatest ease. I think he would soon beat the inventor himself. Even I, townsman as I am, made fair work; and in an hour or two's practice, I would engage to cut a crop in a manner not to be found fault with. You may safely say that any ordinary workman about a farm would be able to manage the machine; and when I say this of Hussey's, it is also true of McCormick's. The one may be a better machine than the other, but the merits of either of them may be brought into practical action by a laborer of average intelligence and skill. It is the opinion of farmers and others with whom I have conversed, that the saving per acre, by the use of Hussey's machine, would be about 5s. "At the close of the contest on Saturday, the knives of the two machines were placed in the hands of Mr. Robinson, engineer to Mr. Bellerby, of York, that he might report thereon, and on the machinery generally, to the Jury. "Wednesday, October 1.--The Marquis of Londonderry, and several other gentlemen, have visited Mr. Fawcitt's farm, to see the machine at work. "The laurels so recently placed upon the brow of Mr. McCormick have been plucked off--not wholly, but in great part--by his fellow countryman, Mr. Hussey. "We would enlarge upon this theme, but our report has left us little room. We would only say, that while the farmers of Cleveland, and of the Island generally, are turning their attention to agricultural improvements--by reaping machines, draining ploughs, and steam ploughs--we would say to them, in the words of Mr. Hussey to the Cleveland horse-jockey, when his machine was ready for its work, '_Now, then, go ahead!_'" REPORT OF THE JURY "The Jury regret exceedingly the most unfavorable state of the weather on the days of trial (a perfect hurricane raging during the whole of the first day), and their consequent inability to make so full and satisfactory a trial as they could have wished. "The machines were tested on a crop of wheat, computed at 25 bushels per acre, very short in the straw, and if possible, more laid than the wheat. "The Jury, taking the different points submitted to their consideration, in the order as mentioned: "1. Their unanimous opinion, that Mr. Hussey's machine, as exhibited by Messrs. Wm. Dray & Co., cut the corn in the best manner, especially across ridge and furrow, and when the machine was working in the direction of the corn laid. "2. By a majority of eleven to one, that Mr. Hussey's machine caused the least waste. "3. Taking the breadth of the two machines into consideration, that of Mr. Hussey did most work. "4. That Mr. Hussey's machine leaves the cut corn in the best order for gathering and binding. This question was submitted to the laborers employed on the occasion, and decided by them, as above, by a majority of 6 to 4. "5. Their unanimous opinion that Mr. Hussey's machine is best adapted for ridge and furrow. "6. This question was referred by the Jury to Mr. Robinson, foreman to Messrs. Bellerby, of York, a practical mechanic of acknowledged ability, whose report is appended below. "7. That Mr. Hussey's machine at first cost is less price. "8, 9. The Jury decline to express a decided opinion on these points in consequence of the state of the weather. "The trials took place on the farm of Robert Fawcitt, of Ormsby, near Marlbro'-on-Tees, who in the most liberal and disinterested spirit allowed his crops to be trodden down and damaged to a very great extent, especially on the 25th, when in spite of the storm an immense crowd assembled to witness the trials. "The Jury cannot conclude their report without expressing the great pleasure they have derived from seeing two machines brought into competition that were able to do such very good work, and also at witnessing the friendly, straightforward, and honorable way in which the exhibitors of the respective machines met on this occasion. "Signed on behalf of the Jury, "W. F. WHARTON, Foreman." MR. ROBINSON'S REPORT ON QUESTION 6. "Having carefully examined both machines, and given the subject due consideration, I am of opinion that McCormick's Reaping Machine, as at present made, is most liable to get out of order. "(Signed) THOMAS ROBINSON. "York, 30th September, 1851." From the London Mercantile Journal. "_The Great Exhibition and Transatlantic Superiority Over European Ingenuity--American Reaping Machines._--The close of the Crystal Palace has given rise to many panegyrics, and we would not for one moment detract from its merits; it has been deservedly the admiration of the world, and visited by thousands of its inhabitants. Brought into life by the most eminent men, and supported by royalty; the means taken were such as no private individual could have accomplished; every exertion was used to obtain the choicest relics that the earth could produce; almost every country vied in exhibiting the arts and treasures of its products and manufactures, and were with one exception considered eminently successful. The United States of America, however, was thought to be deficient, and in one or two cases some rather strong and even coarse remarks were indulged in. But what are the results? France can boast of the richness of its silks and artificial manufactures, and England of its machinery; but we find that our own newspapers are filled with admiration at the inventions of Brother Jonathan. We shall only slightly touch upon the sensation produced by the splendid performance of the American yacht, and the dexterity displayed in the lock-picking, which was previously deemed impracticable. But it may be said that these are trifling matters in a national point of view; still, facts have been elicited by these apparent trifling incidents, for we find that the superior build of the little American yacht involves a principle--it being now admitted that in nautical matters the Americans are equal, if not superior, to other nations in their construction of their merchant vessels, and also in the equipment of their ships of war. On the land they are equally successful; their reaping machines have astonished our agriculturists. We extract from the _Gateshead Observer_, and other local papers, the surprising performance of Hussey's and McCormick's machines. Our readers are aware that there are two rival parties competing their powers on British ground, and without entering into the question as to which of the two performed their work in the best manner, we copy the result of the trial. The _Durham Advertiser_ states that the performance took place at Middlesbro', and says: [Sidenote: 19 Out of 20 Favored the Hussey Reaper] "'Few subjects have created a greater sensation in the agricultural world than the recent introduction into the country of the reaping machines of Mr. McCormick, and the subsequent appearance, of a rival, of no inferior description, in a similar implement from Mr. Hussey. The interesting trial of the two in competition, intended to have taken place on Thursday last, was postponed, in consequence of the torrents of rain, until Saturday, when, under the superintendence of a very efficient jury empanelled to decide the respective merits of the two implements, the contest came off. The compact form of Hussey's implement was in its favor, though from the notoriety of McCormick's at Mr. Mechi's farm, the general preference was at first on his side. McCormick's machine was first tried against the inclination of the corn, and completed its portion in very good style, leaving the sheaves in a handy manner at the side of the furrow. Hussey's completed a similar breadth, but deposited the sheaves behind, and consequently several binders were required to follow the machine to clear the course for cutting the next breadth, an imperfection, which, however, it was understood could be easily remedied, and the back deliver replaced by a side one. This breadth was closer cut than the one executed by McCormick's reaper. The two were then tried across the ridge, where Hussey's implement carried the palm, McCormick's leaving a very considerable portion of the straw standing behind it; and the last trial upon the wheat, in the direction of the lean of the wheat, Hussey's machine did its work very fairly, while McCormick's was obliged to be stopped in its course, after having taken the heads of the wheat, but left the whole of the straw standing. At this time two opinions did not exist among the company present--Hussey's being the favorite. The trial was then carried to some barley, where Hussey's again succeeded in obtaining public favor. The more compact form of Hussey's implement, as well as the superiority of the clipping action over the cutting action of McCormick's, entitle it to a greater share of public favor, and as the advantages of a side delivery can be easily applied to it, it will doubtless become the more general in use amongst the farmers. We cannot, however, but think that some mechanical process might be substituted for raking the sheaf from the receiving board, and this with a few other mechanical improvements, would we think, make Hussey's reaping machine a perfect, useful and economical agricultural implement. The latter may be also advantageously applied to the cutting of clover crops, which is quite out of the question with the farmer. Another Correspondent on this subject says: "The jury did not on Saturday announce their decision, nor have they yet made a report. Nineteen farmers out of twenty who witnessed the trial were in favor of Hussey's machine.'" "The _Gateshead Observer_ remarks: 'The great Cleveland contest between the two American reaping machines, respectively invented by Mr. McCormick, of Chicago, and Mr. Hussey, of Baltimore, originally appointed for Thursday, the 25th ult., frustrated, for a time by the deluge and hurricane of that disastrous day, came off on Saturday, the 27th. The trial was one of great severity, the crops of wheat and barley were laid, and the straw damp and soft. The laurels so recently placed upon the brow of Mr. McCormick have been plucked off--not wholly, but in great part, by his fellow countryman, Mr. Hussey. Both the machines proved their ability to do good work, but Mr. Hussey's attested its superiority; and the English farmer has now seen, thanks to Prince Albert and the Exhibition of Works of Industry, that his corn and grasses, hitherto slowly and laboriously reaped with the sickle and the scythe, may now be plained off the land, in five feet breadth, as rapidly as a horse can trot.'" [Sidenote: A "Considerable Doubt"] "'A trial has taken place before the Cleveland Agricultural Society of the respective merits of McCormick's and Hussey's American Reaping Machines, and the report of the jury of practical men, appointed by the consent of both parties to decide the question of merit is favorable to the latter implement. _This decision throws considerable doubt upon the justice of the award of a great medal at the exhibition to McCormick's._'--_London Times, October 7._" Following upon its success at Cleveland, the proprietors were invited to exhibit the machine at the Barnard Castle Agricultural Society, Lord Harry Vane, _president_. "Barnard Castle, October 8, 1851. "The undersigned President, Vice Presidents, and members of the Barnard Castle Agricultural Society and others who have witnessed the working of the American Reaping Machine, invented by Mr. Hussey, _do certify their unqualified approval of its operations and entire success_. "Lord Harry Vane, President. W. F. Wharton, Vice President. John Mitchell, V. P., Forcett Hall, Yorkshire, Esq. J. S. Edgar, M. D., Barnard Castle, Esq. John Dickonson Holmes, Barnard Castle, Solicitor. George P. Harrison, Forcett, Yorkshire, Esq., Farmer. Edward Scaith, Keverston, near Darlington, Esq., Farmer, and Assistant Draining Commissioner. Thomas Robinson, Hutton Hall, near Richmond, Yorkshire, Esq., Farmer. Richard Kay, Forcett Valley, near Darlington, Esq., Farmer. William Harrison, Greta Bridge, Yorkshire, Esq., Farmer. Thomas Carter, Scales, near Richmond, Esq., Farmer. Jno Whitfield, London, Esq. Rev. Thomas Boys Croome, Scotland. William Watson, Jr., Barnard Castle, Solicitor. J. R. Monkhouse, Barnard Castle, Manufacturer. Samuel Nelson, of Scaife House, near Staindrop, Durham, Esq., Farmer. William Thompson, Lanehead, near Ovington, Yorkshire, Esq., Farmer. John Ethwaite, Bainesse, near Catterick, Yorkshire, Farmer. Rev. George Dugard, Barnard Castle, Incumbent of Yorkshire, Farmer. William Watson, Secretary of the Barnard Agricultural Association." From the Darlington and Stockton [England] Times, October 11. BARNARD CASTLE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. MR. HUSSEY'S REAPING MACHINE. "Great interest was excited in Barnardcastle and its neighborhood on Tuesday last, by the announcement that Mr. Hussey's reaping machine would be exhibited at the forthcoming meeting of the Barnardcastle Agricultural Society; and that a trial of its powers would be made previous to the meeting. Accordingly, on Tuesday last, the machine was brought into operation in a field of barley, belonging to Mr. George White, of Stainton, near Barnardcastle, which it cut admirably well. The Rev. W. F. Wharton, and other gentlemen in the vicinity, besides a vast number of farmers, were present. The Judges on the occasion were H. S. Thompson, Esq., of Moat Hall (one of the Agricultural Jury of the Great Exhibition); W. Lister, Esq., of Dunsa Bank; and T. Robinson, Esq., of Hutton. Luncheon was provided for a large party in an out-building near the scene of the experiments, and it is a fact worthy of notice that after dinner Mr. Thompson proposed the health of Mr. Hussey (who was present) with great fervour, and spoke of the disadvantages under which Mr. Hussey's Machine had labored when tried against McCormick's for the Great Exhibition Medal; Mr. Hussey not being in the country at that time, and no one being present who understood the adjusting or working of the implement. Mr. Thompson said he was now so thoroughly satisfied of its great merits that he would do his best to get a medal awarded to it. After luncheon, the machine was taken to the grounds of Mr. Adamson, and tried upon a field of oats, which were so laid as to form a very severe test to the machine, but it nevertheless was successful there also. The party retired greatly pleased with it, and some of the most wary agriculturists ordered machines upon the ground. On Wednesday morning a large assemblage of agriculturists met on the farm of Mr. F. Atkinson, Westwood, Startforth, to see the machine cut a field of wheat, and there again the experiment yielded all that even its inventor could desire. We understand that a large number of orders were given for machines by the farmers present, which is perhaps the very best test of their views in the matter. The general impression seemed to be that it would prove of incalculable value to the agricultural interest. [Sidenote: A Toast to Mr. Hussey] "At about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a large party sat down to a sumptuous dinner at the King's Head Inn. Lord Harry Vane presided and the Rev. W. F. Wharton occupied the vice-chair. After dinner the usual loyal toasts having been proposed, the vice-chair proposed the health of Mr. Hussey; that gentleman, he said, had contributed to their gratification and interest in bringing his invention there for trial; the result of that trial had exceeded everything they could have previously imagined or hoped; and therefore he begged they would excuse him for proposing this health so early, as Mr. Hussey and his agents's representative, Mr. Pierce, had to leave by the first train from Darlington, which they had then but sufficient time to reach. He proposed the healths of Mr. Hussey and of the enterprising firm, Messrs. Dray & Co., who had undertaken to bring that machine into the British market. The toast was drank with honors. Mr. Hussey briefly returned thanks. "After some further proceedings, the Vice-Chairman proposed the health of the President. Lord Harry Vane responded. [Sidenote: "A Worthy, Modest and Unassuming Man"] "The healths of the Vice-Presidents were proposed. Mr. Mitchell briefly responded. Mr. Wharton, in acknowledging the toast, took the opportunity of again bringing before the meeting the merits of the invention which had been the object of that day's attraction. It had been most unfortunate that when the trial took place for the prize of the great exhibition, Mr. Hussey had not arrived in this country--nobody knew how it was managed, whilst McCormick's was properly attended to. Mr. Hussey's machine did no work, and Mr. McCormick took the medal. No sooner did Mr. Hussey arrive than he prayed for a further trial, but the Jury could not grant it. All difficulty was removed by Mr. McCormick throwing down the gauntlet. The trial came off in Cleveland--the result was clear and satisfactory in favor of Mr. Hussey's machine as decidedly superior. Mr. Thompson, of Moat Hall, one of the Great Exhibition Jury, was also one of the Judges in Cleveland, and was so satisfied on the subject that he left, determined to urge for a medal for Mr. Hussey. It must be a source of pleasure to all to find that justice was thus about to be done to a worthy, modest and unassuming man." From the Darlington and Stockton Times, October 11, 1851. THE REAPING MACHINES AT BARNARDCASTLE. "_To the Editor of the Darlington and Stockton Times:_ "Sir--I beg to trouble you with a few particulars of Mr. Hussey's American Reaping Machine, which I yesterday saw working in a field near Barnardcastle. I am not a farmer, and of course cannot be thoroughly _au fait_ at describing an agricultural implement, nor am I sufficiently versed in mechanics to explain to you the construction of the machine in all its details, but of the result I can speak, and that with confidence. "Drawn by two horses, a man seated on the near side horse as driver, this wonderful implement was drawn with perfect ease, at more than the rate of three miles an hour, round and round a field, partly in wheat and partly in barley, cutting a breadth of corn in its progress with a regularity and evenness that was surprising. No straggling stalks of corn were left, none of the slovenly irregular work too often seen where manual labor is employed was to be discovered; on the contrary, the field after shearing, looked nearly as smooth and even as a kitchen floor or turnpike road. The farmer has now no longer occasion to be behind the reapers, dinning in their ears, 'shear low"--'now do shear low;' for this machine, with a very simple adjustment, will cut the corn as low as he can possibly require. A seat on the machine is provided for a man, who, with a large rake, and with motion resembling the pushing of a punt, removes the corn from the machine as it is cut, and leaves it for the binders to put together in sheafs. "The assistance of two men and two horses are thus all that is required to draw and to guide this wonderful sickle--and so manned, it will cut with the ease and regularity I have described, from perhaps ten to twelve acres in the working day. Nor as far as I could see, or learn from the observation of others, does there appear to be any drawback against its general adoption. Its price (£21) is not exorbitant--its construction is not so complex as to cause a fear of frequent repairs being required; men of the common run of agricultural laborers are quite competent to go with it, and the work of drawing it is not distressing to the horses. Neither does the nature of the ground appear to be much an object, for it traveled as well over ridge and furrow as it did upon a level. "Nothing could be more unanimous than the approval of which the machine met with from all who saw its work, and I was informed that nine machines were ordered on the ground. Among the purchasers was the Duke of Cleveland, who, with Lord Harry Vane, was present and examined its working and construction minutely. The curiosity excited by the machine was great, and an immense number of people visited the ground during the two days. Noblemen and gentlemen, farmers and farm laborers, tradesmen and mechanics, men and women, flocked to see the implement which from the other side of the Atlantic has come to effect so important a revolution in the labor of the harvest field, and all were agreed that Brother Jonathan, though still a young man, had some clever notions in his head, and that John Bull, in the case of the reaping machine, would not be above taking advantage of his intelligence. I am, etc., "A. B." From the London Daily News. HUSSEY'S REAPING MACHINE--TRIAL BEFORE PRINCE ALBERT. "The celebrated battle of the Ganges hardly excited more interest in the railway world than the battle of the Reaping machines has lately created in the agricultural world; nor is the result perhaps very much less important in the latter case than in the former. [Sidenote: Hussey's by Far the Best] "Of the recent inventions for diminishing the cost of production, the most remarkable are undoubtedly the Reaping machines of Messrs. Hussey and McCormick. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call them importations than inventions, since both have been in use for a considerable time in America; and amongst the benefits arising from the Exhibition, it is certainly not the least that it has introduced to the agriculturist of Great Britain implements of the highest practical utility, which might otherwise have remained forever exclusively in the hands of their brethren across the Atlantic. It will be remembered that a trial of the two rival machines took place last summer, at Mr. Mechi's model farm in Essex, having been directed by the royal commissioners, with the view of determining the comparative merits of the two instruments, whose patentees were competitors for the forthcoming medal prizes. At that time Mr. Hussey, the American inventor of the machine called after his name, had not arrived in the country. The weather, too, was very unpropitious for the trial, notwithstanding which a very large number of gentlemen were present. The machines were tried upon a field of wheat, and the result was such as to convince all present of the superiority, in every point of view, of McCormick's machine--a conviction which was subsequently confirmed by the fact of the Exhibition medal being awarded exclusively to the patentee of that machine. The tables, however, were soon to be turned. Mr. Hussey arrived in England; a challenge having been given by the agents of Mr. McCormick, it was accepted by Mr. Hussey, and his English agent, Mr. Dray; and, after a fair contest before the Cleveland Society, at Middlesbro', near Stockton-on-Tees, on the 25th and 27th of September, a jury of twelve agriculturists pronounced a verdict in favor of the unmedalled machine. They decided that of the two machines, Hussey's had the preponderance of advantages--that it cut corn in the best manner, caused the least waste, did the most work in a given time, left the cut corn in the best order for gathering and binding, was the best adapted for ridge and furrow, was the least liable to get out of repair, and was the least price at first cost. On the two other points submitted to them, namely, which machine required the least amount of horse labor, and which the least amount of manual labor, the jury declined to express a decided opinion, in consequence of the state of the weather." [Illustration: Bronze medal won by Mr. Hussey with his Reaper in England in 1851.] [Sidenote: Arrival of the Prince] "There have been many other trials of Hussey's machine in different parts of the country, and the result has been so far uniformly satisfactory. Amongst these we have now to mention a very interesting one which took place by appointment last Saturday, at Windsor, in the presence of his Royal Highness, Prince Albert, originating in a correspondence between General Wemyss, on behalf of the Prince, and Messrs. Dray & Co. of Swan-lane, the agents for Mr. Hussey. The spot selected for the trial was behind the statue of George III, at the end of the Long Walk, fern--of which there is an abundance in that locality--being the article on which the machine had to operate. The Prince having from an early hour in the morning been engaged in shooting in the vicinity of the statue, at half-past twelve, resigned his gun, and proceeded on horseback, in company with General Wemyss and Col. Seymour, to the spot appointed for the trial of the machine. Dismounting from his horse, his Royal Highness saluted briefly and gracefully the assembled company, and especially Mr. Hussey and Mr. Dray. He then asked a few general questions respecting the history of the machine, and observed that as the ground selected was very uneven (it was in fact remarkably so) the trial would be a good one. After a brief delay, the gear being declared in order, on went the machine, drawn by two strong horses, and heedless of ruts and hillocks in its course, which was very rapid, bringing down every thing it encountered cleanly and completely, including two or three slices of turf at least a foot long, and more than an inch thick. "The performances of the machine were not confined to one single course. A considerable amount of work was performed in the most satisfactory manner, Mr. Hussey himself sitting on the box at the side, and throwing aside what was cut down in the manner best adapted for gathering and binding. Indeed the work was not confined to the fern; a rabbit which was not accustomed to this species of interference was startled and cruelly lacerated before it had time to escape. [Sidenote: A Royal Order] "At the close of the trial, his Royal Highness gave a practical proof of his favorable opinion by ordering two of the machines for himself, one for Windsor and the other for Osborne. He then, after expressing his gratification, rode back to the game-keepers and resumed his gun. After he had left, the machine operated well upon some rushes. "It may not be out of place to state here that Mr. Dray's explanation of the failure of the Hussey machine at Tiptree Hall (Mr. Mechi's farm) is that it was entirely owing to its not being properly managed. On that occasion, he says, the person in charge of it was simply a porter at the Exhibition, who, not understanding the matter, neglected to clear away the wheat as it was cut down, in consequence of which the action of the machine was unavoidably and fatally impeded. We witnessed the result at Mr. Mechi's, and certainly there was no such fault on Saturday. The progress of the machine was notwithstanding the unevenness of the ground, rapid and satisfactory; and it was stated as a fact that on a level ground the horses used in drawing may trot, not only without weakening or impeding the action of the knives, but even with advantages, as by that means the cutting requires increased precision and force." [Sidenote: A Royal Verdict] The following is Prince Albert's certificate: "Windsor Castle, Nov. 13, 1851. "Sir--In answer to your letter addressed to Gen. Wemyss, I have received the commands of his Royal Highness, Prince Albert, to say, that so far as he could judge of Mr. Hussey's Reaping Machine, from its performance in the high fern at Windsor Park, his Royal Highness is disposed to form a very favorable opinion of it, and has ordered one[10] in consequence for the use of his own farm. His Royal Highness can however give no opinion as to the relative merits of this machine in comparison with those of others which he has not seen at work. "I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, "GREY." [10] The Prince ordered two Machines, one for Windsor and one for Isle of Wight. From Maidstone & South Eastern Gazette, October 21, 1851. WEST KENT AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY'S PLOUGHING MATCH. HUSSEY'S AMERICAN REAPER. "A distinguishing feature at this society's meeting on Thursday, the 16th inst., was an exhibition of the capabilities of the above machine. The session of the year of course prevented a display of its powers on anything in the shape of grain, indeed great difficulty was found in procuring even a green crop on which to operate. Undaunted by this fact, the inventor was determined to show to the anxious hundreds assembled the extent of the advantages to be derived from the use of his reaper. At two o'clock the machine was set to work upon a field of clover, short and light (as may be supposed), where its performance was effectual as it possibly could be, exciting a considerable amount of surprise as well as gratification. It was then taken to a piece of marsh land, where clumps of stout rushes in many places were growing in thick masses, presenting the appearance of stunted grain. The machine passed over this marsh, cutting the rushes with the same facility as if it had been corn, leaving the stubble about four inches long and very regular, giving also a good representation of the manner in which the sheaves of wheat, etc., are usually delivered. Both these operations, but especially the latter, were considered severe contests of the capabilities of the machine. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the performance was far beyond all reasonable expectations. It was a question whether the excellent work of the 58 competing ploughs, or the extraordinary novelty of Hussey's machine in operation, added most to the gratification of the large assemblage of the leading agriculturists of Kent." From the Kentish Gazette, November 11, 1851. "In addition to the interest naturally felt by all who live on and by the soil in its proper cultivation, there was an unusual degree of attraction in the fact that a reaping machine by Mr. Hussey (the celebrated American Machinist) would be tested upon seven acres of mustard adjoining the ploughing field. The reaping was commenced about twelve o'clock, and continued for a considerable period. The crop of mustard was wet, and by no means calculated to favor the experiment. It was, however, after the machine was properly arranged, cut down with great regularity; and at a speed equal to four miles an hour it traversed the circuit of the field, hewing its way through the mustard, quickly followed by a crowd of eager observers, whose wondering gaze exhibited at once their astonishment and admiration of its working. Occasionally the level of the cutters were altered, so as to leave a greater or less length of stubble, which evinced the accurate adjustment to which the machine could be brought. Some portion of it was taken to pieces, and the whole of the arrangements shown, which the farmers present displayed an eager anxiety to investigate, and many were the questions proposed, and satisfactorily answered by the talented inventor. "We should mention that the undulation of the land does not impede its operations in the least--as it was well observed by a gentleman present, that where a cart could travel there this machine could also go, and complete its design. No previous acquaintance with its principle is necessary to be able to guide its operation, as was shown by Mr. Neame, Jr., who mounted the platform and discharged the functions appertaining to the party who removes the corn from the machine after it is cut, with the greatest ease and precision. Indeed the most unqualified approval was given by the gentlemen present, to the applicability of the reaping machine to the purposes for which it is designed. We have thus entered into minute particulars, because this is the first opportunity we have had of witnessing the results of such an experiment, attended as it was with every degree of satisfaction. Lord Sondes gave an order for one of the machines, and we understand that three or four orders were given in the course of the day. "At the dinner which followed, the chairman gave 'Sir John Tylden and the visitors.' "Sir John Tylden, as a member as well as a visitor, replied to the toast, and in a jocular strain animadverted on the suffering of the farmers of Faversham, who were determined, like a celebrated regiment in the service, to 'die hard.' He alluded to the reaping machine of Mr. Hussey, which he characterized in contradistinction to that of Mr. McCormick's and all others, as the universal reaping machine, of which he spoke in highly approving terms, and passed a warm eulogium on its talented inventor, and the country he represented, which in the space of 80 years had risen from a wilderness to her now exalted position, and proud of her Anglo-Saxon blood." 
11874	----	Proofreaders HODGE AND HIS MASTERS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES Author of 'The Gamekeeper at Home,' 'Wild Life in a Southern County,' 'The Amateur Poacher,' 'Round About A Great Estate,' Etc. PREFACE The papers of which this volume is composed originally appeared in the _Standard_, and are now republished by permission of the Editor. In manners, mode of thought, and way of life, there is perhaps no class of the community less uniform than the agricultural. The diversities are so great as to amount to contradictions. Individuality of character is most marked, and, varying an old saw, it might be said, so many farmers so many minds. Next to the tenants the landowners have felt the depression, to such a degree, in fact, that they should perhaps take the first place, having no one to allow them in turn a 20 per cent, reduction of their liabilities. It must be remembered that the landowner will not receive the fruits of returning prosperity when it comes for some time after they have reached the farmer. Two good seasons will be needed before the landowner begins to recoup. Country towns are now so closely connected with agriculture that a description of the one would be incomplete without some mention of the other. The aggregate capital employed by the business men of these small towns must amount to an immense sum, and the depreciation of their investments is of more than local concern. Although the labourer at the present moment is a little in the background, and has the best of the bargain, since wages have not much fallen, if at all; yet he will doubtless come to the front again. For as agriculture revives, and the sun shines, the organisations by which he is represented will naturally display fresh vigour. But the rapid progress of education in the villages and outlying districts is the element which is most worthy of thoughtful consideration. On the one hand, it may perhaps cause a powerful demand for corresponding privileges; and on the other, counteract the tendency to unreasonable expectations. In any case, it is a fact that cannot be ignored. Meantime, all I claim for the following sketches is that they are written in a fair and impartial spirit. RICHARD JEFFERIES. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE FARMERS' PARLIAMENT II. LEAVING HIS FARM III. A MAN OF PROGRESS IV. GOING DOWNHILL V. THE BORROWER AND THE GAMBLER VI. AN AGRICULTURAL GENIUS--OLD STYLE VII. THE GIG AND THE FOUR-IN-HAND. A BICYCLE FARMER VIII. HAYMAKING. 'THE JUKE'S COUNTRY' IX. THE FINE LADY FARMER. COUNTRY GIRLS X. MADEMOISELLE, THE GOVERNESS XI. FLEECEBOROUGH. A 'DESPOT' XII. THE SQUIRE'S 'ROUND ROBIN' XIII. AN AMBITIOUS SQUIRE XIV. THE PARSON'S WIFE XV. A MODERN COUNTRY CURATE XVI. THE SOLICITOR XVII. 'COUNTY COURT DAY' XVIII. THE BANK. THE OLD NEWSPAPER XIX. THE VILLAGE FACTORY. VILLAGE VISITORS. WILLOW-WORK XX. HODGE'S FIELDS XXI. A WINTER'S MORNING XXII. THE LABOURER'S CHILDREN, COTTAGE GIRLS XXIII. THE LOW 'PUBLIC' IDLERS XXIV. THE COTTAGE CHARTER, FOUR-ACRE FARMERS XXV. LANDLORDS' DIFFICULTIES, THE LABOURER AS A POWER. MODERN CLERGY XXVI. A WHEAT COUNTRY XXVII. GRASS COUNTRIES XXVIII. HODGE'S LAST MASTERS, CONCLUSION CHAPTER I THE FARMERS' PARLIAMENT The doorway of the Jason Inn at Woolbury had nothing particular to distinguish it from the other doorways of the same extremely narrow street. There was no porch, nor could there possibly be one, for an ordinary porch would reach half across the roadway. There were no steps to go up, there was no entrance hall, no space specially provided for crowds of visitors; simply nothing but an ordinary street-door opening directly on the street, and very little, if any, broader or higher than those of the private houses adjacent. There was not even the usual covered way or archway leading into the courtyard behind, so often found at old country inns; the approach to the stables and coach-houses was through a separate and even more narrow and winding street, necessitating a detour of some quarter of a mile. The dead, dull wall was worn smooth in places by the involuntary rubbings it had received from the shoulders of foot-passengers thrust rudely against it as the market-people came pouring in or out, or both together. Had the spot been in the most crowded district of the busiest part of the metropolis, where every inch of ground is worth an enormous sum, the buildings could not have been more jammed together, nor the inconvenience greater. Yet the little town was in the very midst of one of the most purely agricultural counties, where land, to all appearance, was plentiful, and where there was ample room and 'verge enough' to build fifty such places. The pavement in front of the inn was barely eighteen inches wide; two persons could not pass each other on it, nor walk abreast. If a cart came along the roadway, and a trap had to go by it, the foot-passengers had to squeeze up against the wall, lest the box of the wheel projecting over the kerb should push them down. If a great waggon came loaded with wool, the chances were whether a carriage could pass it or not; as for a waggon-load of straw that projected from the sides, nothing could get by, but all must wait--coroneted panel or plain four-wheel--till the huge mass had rumbled and jolted into the more open market-place. But hard, indeed, must have been the flag-stones to withstand the wear and tear of the endless iron-shod shoes that tramped to and fro these mere ribbons of pavements. For, besides the through traffic out from the market-place to the broad macadamised road that had taken the place and the route of an ancient Roman road, there were the customers to the shops that lined each side of the street. Into some of these you stepped from the pavement down, as it were, into a cave, the level of the shop being eight or ten inches below the street, while the first floor projected over the pavement quite to the edge of the kerb. To enter these shops it was necessary to stoop, and when you were inside there was barely room to turn round. Other shops were, indeed, level with the street; but you had to be careful, because the threshold was not flush with the pavement, but rose a couple of inches and then fell again, a very trap to the toe of the unwary. Many had no glass at all, but were open, like a butcher's or fishmonger's. Those that had glass were so restricted for space that, rich as they might be within in the good things of the earth, they could make no 'display.' All the genius of a West-end shopman could not have made an artistic arrangement in that narrow space and in that bad light; for, though so small below, the houses rose high, and the street being so narrow the sunshine rarely penetrated into it. But mean as a metropolitan shopman might have thought the spot, the business done there was large, and, more than that, it was genuine. The trade of a country market-town, especially when that market-town, like Woolbury, dates from the earliest days of English history, is hereditary. It flows to the same store and to the same shop year after year, generation after generation, century after century. The farmer who walks into the saddler's here goes in because his father went there before him. His father went in because his father dealt there, and so on farther back than memory can trace. It might almost be said that whole villages go to particular shops. You may see the agricultural labourers' wives, for instance, on a Saturday leave the village in a bevy of ten or a dozen, and all march in to the same tradesman. Of course in these latter days speculative men and 'co-operative' prices, industriously placarded, have sapped and undermined this old-fashioned system. Yet even now it retains sufficient hold to be a marked feature of country life. To the through traffic, therefore, had to be added the steady flow of customers to the shops. On a market-day like this there is, of course, the incessant entry and exit of carts, waggons, traps, gigs, four-wheels, and a large number of private carriages. The number of private carriages is, indeed, very remarkable, as also the succession of gentlemen on thoroughbred horses--a proof of the number of resident gentry in the neighbourhood, and of its general prosperity. Cart-horses furbished up for sale, with straw-bound tails and glistening skins; 'baaing' flocks of sheep; squeaking pigs; bullocks with their heads held ominously low, some going, some returning, from the auction yard; shouting drovers; lads rushing hither and thither; dogs barking; everything and everybody crushing, jostling, pushing through the narrow street. An old shepherd, who has done his master's business, comes along the pavement, trudging thoughtful and slow, with ashen staff. One hand is in his pocket, the elbow of the arm projecting; he is feeling a fourpenny-piece, and deliberating at which 'tap' he shall spend it. He fills up the entire pavement, and stolidly plods on, turning ladies and all into the roadway; not from intentional rudeness, but from sheer inability to perceive that he is causing inconvenience. Unless you know the exact spot it is difficult in all this crowd and pushing, with a nervous dread of being gored from behind by a bull, or thrown off your feet by a sudden charge of sheep, to discover the door of the Jason Inn. That door has been open every legitimate and lawful hour this hundred years; but you will very likely be carried past it and have to struggle back. Then it is not easy to enter, for half a dozen stalwart farmers and farmers' sons are coming out; while two young fellows stand just inside, close to the sliding bar-window, blocking up the passage, to exchange occasional nods and smiles with the barmaid. However, by degrees you shuffle along the sanded passage, and past the door of the bar, which is full of farmers as thick as they can stand, or sit. The rattle of glasses, the chink of spoons, the hum of voices, the stamping of feet, the calls and orders, and sounds of laughter, mingle in confusion. Cigar-smoke and the steam from the glasses fill the room--all too small--with a thick white mist, through which rubicund faces dimly shine like the red sun through a fog. Some at the tables are struggling to write cheques, with continual jogs at the elbow, with ink that will not flow, pens that scratch and splutter, blotting-paper that smudges and blots. Some are examining cards of an auction, and discussing the prices which they have marked in the margin in pencil. The good-humoured uproar is beyond description, and is increased by more farmers forcing their way in from the rear, where are their horses or traps--by farmers eagerly inquiring for dealers or friends, and by messengers from the shops loaded with parcels to place in the customer's vehicle. At last you get beyond the bar-room door and reach the end of the passage, where is a wide staircase, and at the foot a tall eight-day clock. A maid-servant comes tripping down, and in answer to inquiry replies that that is the way up, and the room is ready, but she adds with a smile that there is no one there yet. It is three-quarters of an hour after the time fixed for the reading of a most important paper before a meeting specially convened, before the assembled Parliament of Hodge's masters, and you thought you would be too late. A glance at the staircase proves the truth of the maid's story. It has no carpet, but it is white as well-scrubbed wood could well be. There is no stain, no dust, no foot-mark on it; no heavy shoe that has been tramping about in the mud has been up there. But it is necessary to go on or go back, and of the two the first is the lesser evil. The staircase is guarded by carved banisters, and after going up two flights you enter a large and vacant apartment prepared for the meeting of the farmers' club. At the farther end is a small mahogany table, with an armchair for the president, paper, pens, ink, blotting-paper, and a wax candle and matches, in case he should want a light. Two less dignified chairs are for the secretary (whose box, containing the club records, books of reference, &c., is on the table), and for the secretary's clerk. Rows of plain chairs stretch across the room, rank after rank; these are for the audience. And last of all are two long forms, as if for Hodge, if Hodge chooses to come. A gleam of the afternoon sun--as the clouds part awhile--attracts one naturally to the window. The thickness of the wall in which it is placed must be some two or three feet, so that there is a recess on which to put your arms, if you do not mind the dust, and look out. The window is half open, and the sounds of the street come up, 'baaing' and bellowing and squeaking, the roll of wheels, the tramp of feet, and, more distant, the shouting of an auctioneer in the market-place, whose stentorian tones come round the corner as he puts up rickcloths for sale. Noise of man and animal below; above, here in the chamber of science, vacancy and silence. Looking upwards, a narrow streak of blue sky can be seen above the ancient house across the way. After awhile there comes the mellow sound of bells from the church which is near by, though out of sight; bells with a soft, old-world tone; bells that chime slowly and succeed each other without haste, ringing forth a holy melody composed centuries ago. It is as well to pause a minute and listen to their voice, even in this railroad age of hurry. Over the busy market-place the notes go forth, and presently the hum comes back and dwells in the recess of the window. It is a full hour after the time fixed, and now at last, as the carillon finishes, there are sounds of heavy boots upon the staircase. Three or four farmers gather on the landing; they converse together just outside. The secretary's clerk comes, and walks to the table; more farmers, who, now they have company, boldly enter and take seats; still more farmers; the secretary arrives; finally the president appears, and with him the lecturer. There is a hum of greeting; the minutes are read; the president introduces the professor, and the latter stands forth to read his paper--'Science, the Remedy for Agricultural Depression.' Farmers, he pointed out, had themselves only to blame for the present period of distress. For many years past science had been like the voice crying in the wilderness, and few, a very few only, had listened. Men had, indeed, come to the clubs; but they had gone away home again, and, as the swine of the proverb, returned to their wallowing in the mire. One blade of grass still grew where two or even three might be grown; he questioned whether farmers had any real desire to grow the extra blades. If they did, they had merely to employ the means provided for them. Everything had been literally put into their hands; but what was the result? Why, nothing--in point of fact, nothing. The country at large was still undrained. The very A B C of progress had been neglected. He should be afraid to say what proportion of the land was yet undrained, for he should be contradicted, called ill names, and cried down. But if they would look around them they could see for themselves. They would see meadows full of rank, coarse grass in the furrows, which neither horse nor cattle would touch. They would see in the wheat-fields patches of the crop sickly, weak, feeble, and altogether poor; that was where the water had stood and destroyed the natural power of the seed. The same cause gave origin to that mass of weeds which was the standing disgrace of arable districts. But men shut their eyes wilfully to these plain facts, and cried out that the rain had ruined them. It was not the rain--it was their own intense dislike of making any improvement. The _vis inertiae_ of the agricultural class was beyond the limit of language to describe. Why, if the land had been drained the rain would have done comparatively little damage, and thus they would have been independent of the seasons. Look, again, at the hay crop; how many thousand tons of hay had been wasted because men would not believe that anything would answer which had not been done by their forefathers! The hay might have been saved by three distinct methods. The grass might have been piled against hurdles or light frame-work and so dried by the wind; it might have been pitted in the earth and preserved still green; or it might have been dried by machinery and the hot blast. A gentleman had invented a machine, the utility of which had been demonstrated beyond all doubt. But no; farmers folded their hands and watched their hay rotting. As for the wheat crop, how could they expect a wheat crop? They had not cleaned the soil--there were horse-hoes, and every species of contrivances for the purpose; but they would not use them. They had not ploughed deeply: they had merely scratched the surface as if with a pin. How could the thin upper crust of the earth--the mere rind three inches thick--be expected to yield crop after crop for a hundred years? Deep ploughing could only be done by steam: now how many farmers possessed or used steam-ploughs? Why, there were whole districts where such a thing was unknown. They had neglected to manure the soil; to restore to it the chemical constituents of the crops. But to speak upon artificial manure was enough to drive any man who had the power of thought into temporary insanity. It was so utterly dispiriting to see men positively turning away from the means of obtaining good crops, and then crying out that they were ruined. With drains, steam-ploughs, and artificial manure, a farmer might defy the weather. Of course, continued the professor, it was assumed that the farmer had good substantial buildings and sufficient capital. The first he could get if he chose; and without the second, without capital, he had no business to be farming at all. He was simply stopping the road of a better man, and the sooner he was driven out of the way the better. The neglect of machinery was most disheartening. A farmer bought one machine, perhaps a reaping-machine, and then because that solitary article did not immediately make his fortune he declared that machinery was useless. Could the force of folly farther go? With machinery they could do just as they liked. They could compel the earth to yield, and smile at the most tropical rain, or the most continuous drought. If only the voice of science had been listened to, there would have been no depression at all. Even now it was not too late. Those who were wise would at once set to work to drain, to purchase artificial manure, and set up steam power, and thereby to provide themselves with the means of stemming the tide of depression. By these means they could maintain a head of stock that would be more than double what was now kept upon equal acreage. He knew full well one of the objections that would be made against these statements. It would be said that certain individuals had done all this, had deep ploughed, had manured, had kept a great head of valuable stock, had used every resource, and yet had suffered. This was true. He deeply regretted to say it was true. But why had they suffered? Not because of the steam, the machinery, the artificial manure, the improvements they had set on foot; but because of the folly of their neighbours, of the agricultural class generally. The great mass of farmers had made no improvements; and, when the time of distress came, they were beaten down at every point. It was through these men and their failures that the price of stock and of produce fell, and that so much stress was put upon the said individuals through no fault of their own. He would go further, and he would say that had it not been for the noble efforts of such individuals--the pioneers of agriculture and its main props and stays--the condition of farming would have been simply fifty times worse than it was. They, and they alone, had enabled it to bear up so long against calamity. They had resources; the agricultural class, as a rule, had none. Those resources were the manure they had put into the soil, the deep ploughing they had accomplished, the great head of stock they had got together, and so on. These enabled them to weather the storm. The cry for a reduction of rent was an irresistible proof of what he had put forth--that it was the farmers themselves who were to blame. This cry was a confession of their own incompetency. If you analysed it--if you traced the general cry home to particular people--you always found that those people were incapables. The fact was, farming, as a rule, was conducted on the hand-to-mouth principle, and the least stress or strain caused an outcry. He must be forgiven if he seemed to speak with unusual acerbity. He intended no offence. But it was his duty. In such a condition of things it would be folly to mince matters, to speak softly while everything was going to pieces. He repeated, once for all, it was their own fault. Science could supply the remedy, and science alone; if they would not call in the aid of science they must suffer, and their privations must be upon their own heads. Science said, Drain, use artificial manure, plough deeply, keep the best breed of stock, put capital into the soil. Call science to their aid, and they might defy the seasons. The professor sat down and thrust his hand through his hair. The president invited discussion. For some few minutes no one rose; presently, after a whispered conversation with his friend, an elderly farmer stood up from the forms at the very back of the room. He made no pretence to rounded periods, but spoke much better than might have been expected; he had a small piece of paper in his hand, on which he had made notes as the lecture proceeded. He said that the lecturer had made out a very good case. He had proved to demonstration, in the most logical manner, that farmers were fools. Well, no doubt, all the world agreed with him, for everybody thought he could teach the farmer. The chemist, the grocer, the baker, the banker, the wine merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, the clerk, the mechanic, the merchant, the editor, the printer, the stockbroker, the colliery owner, the ironmaster, the clergyman, and the Methodist preacher, the very cabmen and railway porters, policemen, and no doubt the crossing-sweepers--to use an expressive Americanism, all the whole "jing-bang"--could teach the ignorant jackass of a farmer. Some few years ago he went into a draper's shop to bring home a parcel for his wife, and happened to enter into conversation with the draper himself. The draper said he was just going to sell off the business and go into dairy farming, which was the most paying thing out. That was just when there came over from America a patent machine for milking cows. The draper's idea was to milk all his cows by one of these articles, and so dispense with labour. He saw no more of him for a long time, but had heard that morning that he went into a dairy farm, got rid of all his money, and was now tramping the country as a pedlar with a pack at his back. Everybody thought he could teach the farmer till he tried farming himself, and then he found his mistake. One remark of the lecturer, if he might venture to say so, seemed to him, a poor ignorant farmer of sixty years' standing, not only uncalled-for and priggish, but downright brutal. It was that the man with little capital ought to be driven out of farming, and the sooner he went to the wall the better. Now, how would all the grocers and other tradesmen whom he had just enumerated like to be told that if they had not got 10,000_l_. each they ought to go at once to the workhouse! That would be a fine remedy for the depression of trade. He always thought it was considered rather meritorious if a man with small capital, by hard work, honest dealing, and self-denial, managed to raise himself and get up in the world. But, oh no; nothing of the kind; the small man was the greatest sinner, and must be eradicated. Well, he did not hesitate to say that he had been a small man himself, and began in a very small way. Perhaps the lecturer would think him a small man still, as he was not a millionaire; but he could pay his way, which went for something in the eyes of old-fashioned people, and perhaps he had a pound or two over. He should say but one word more, for he was aware that there was a thunderstorm rapidly coming up, and he supposed science would not prevent him from getting a wet jacket. He should like to ask the lecturer if he could give the name of one single scientific farmer who had prospered? Having said this much, the old gentleman put on his overcoat and busted out of the room, and several others followed him, for the rain was already splashing against the window-panes. Others looked at their watches, and, seeing it was late, rose one by one and slipped off. The president asked if any one would continue the discussion, and, as no one rose, invited the professor to reply. The professor gathered his papers and stood up. Then there came a heavy rolling sound--the unmistakable boom of distant thunder. He said that the gentleman who had left so abruptly had quite misconstrued the tenour of his paper. So far from intending to describe farmers as lacking in intelligence, all he wished to show was that they did not use their natural abilities, from a certain traditionary bowing to custom. They did not like their neighbours to think that they were doing anything novel. No one respected the feelings that had grown up and strengthened from childhood, no one respected the habits of our ancestors, more than he did; no one knew better the solid virtues that adorned the homes of agriculturists. Far, indeed, be it from him to say aught--[Boom! and the rattling of rain against the window]--aught that could--but he saw that gentlemen were anxious to get home, and would conclude. A vote of thanks was hurriedly got over, and the assembly broke up and hastened down the staircase. They found the passage below so blocked with farmers who had crowded in out of the storm that movement was impossible. The place was darkened by the overhanging clouds, the atmosphere thick and close with the smoke and the crush. Flashes of brilliant lightning seemed to sweep down the narrow street, which ran like a brook with the storm-water; the thunder seemed to descend and shake the solid walls. 'It's rather hard on the professor,' said one farmer to another. 'What would science do in a thunderstorm?' He had hardly spoken when the hail suddenly came down, and the round white globules, rebounding from the pavement, rolled in at the open door. Each paused as he lifted his glass and thought of the harvest. As for Hodge, who was reaping, he had to take shelter how he might in the open fields. Boom! flash! boom!--splash and hiss, as the hail rushed along the narrow street. CHAPTER II LEAVING HIS FARM A large white poster, fresh and glaring, is pasted on the wall of a barn that stands beside a narrow country lane. So plain an advertisement, without any colour or attempt at 'display,' would be passed unnoticed among the endless devices on a town hoarding. There nothing can be hoped to be looked at unless novel and strange, or even incomprehensible. But here the oblong piece of black and white contrasts sufficiently in itself with red brick and dull brown wooden framing, with tall shadowy elms, and the glint of sunshine on the streamlet that flows with a ceaseless murmur across the hollow of the lane. Every man that comes along stays to read it. The dealer in his trap--his name painted in white letters on the shaft--pulls up his quick pony, and sits askew on his seat to read. He has probably seen it before in the bar of the wayside inn, roughly hung on a nail, and swaying to and fro with the draught along the passage. He may have seen it, too, on the handing-post at the lonely cross-roads, stuck on in such a manner that, in order to peruse it, it is necessary to walk round the post. The same formal announcement appears also in the local weekly papers--there are at least two now in the smallest place--and he has read it there. Yet he pauses to glance at it again, for the country mind requires reiteration before it can thoroughly grasp and realise the simplest fact. The poster must be read and re-read, and the printer's name observed and commented on, or, if handled, the thickness of the paper felt between thumb and finger. After a month or two of this process people at last begin to accept it as a reality, like cattle or trees--something substantial, and not mere words. The carter, with his waggon, if he be an elderly man, cries 'Whoa!' and, standing close to the wall, points to each letter with the top of his whip--where it bends--and so spells out 'Sale by Auction.' If he be a young man he looks up at it as the heavy waggon rumbles by, turns his back, and goes on with utter indifference. The old men, working so many years on a single farm, and whose minds were formed in days when a change of tenancy happened once in half a century, have so identified themselves with the order of things in the parish that it seems to personally affect them when a farmer leaves his place. But young Hodge cares nothing about his master, or his fellow's master. Whether they go or stay, prosperous or decaying, it matters nothing to him. He takes good wages, and can jingle some small silver in his pocket when he comes to the tavern a mile or so ahead; so 'gee-up' and let us get there as rapidly as possible. An hour later a farmer passes on horseback; his horse all too broad for his short legs that stick out at the side and show some inches of stocking between the bottom of his trousers and his boots. A sturdy, thick-set man, with a wide face, brickdust colour, fringed with close-cut red whiskers, and a chest so broad he seems compelled to wear his coat unbuttoned. He pulls off his hat and wipes his partly bald head with a coloured handkerchief, stares at the poster a few minutes, and walks his horse away, evidently in deep thought. Two boys--cottagers' children--come home from school; they look round to see that no one observes, and then throw flints at the paper till the sound of footsteps alarms them. Towards the evening a gentleman and lady, the first middle-aged, the latter very young--father and daughter--approach, their horses seeming to linger as they walk through the shallow stream, and the cool water splashes above their fetlocks. The shooting season is near at hand, Parliament has risen, and the landlords have returned home. Instead of the Row, papa must take his darling a ride through the lanes, a little dusty as the autumn comes on, and pauses to read the notice on the wall. It is his neighbour's tenant, not his, but it comes home to him here. It is the real thing--the fact--not the mere seeing it in the papers, or the warning hints in the letters of his own steward. 'Papa,' is rather quiet for the rest of the ride. Ever since he was a lad--how many years ago is that?--he has shot with his neighbour's party over this farm, and recollects the tenant well, and with that friendly feeling that grows up towards what we see year after year. In a day or two the clergyman drives by with his low four-wheel and fat pony, notes the poster as the pony slackens at the descent to the water, and tells himself to remember and get the tithe. Some few Sundays, and Farmer Smith will appear in church no more. Farmer Smith this beautiful morning is looking at the wheat, which is, and is not, his. It would have been cut in an ordinary season, but the rains have delayed the ripening. He wonders how the crop ever came up at all through the mass of weeds that choked it, the spurrey that filled the spaces between the stalks below, the bindweed that climbed up them, the wild camomile flowering and flourishing at the edge, the tall thistles lifting their heads above it in bunches, and the great docks whose red seeds showed at a distance. He sent in some men, as much to give them something to do as for any real good, one day, who in a few hours pulled up enough docks to fill a cart. They came across a number of snakes, and decapitated the reptiles with their hoes, and afterwards hung them all up--tied together by the tail--to a bough. The bunch of headless snakes hangs there still, swinging to and fro as the wind plays through the oak. Vermin, too, revel in weeds, which encourage the mice and rats, and are, perhaps, quite as much a cause of their increase as any acts of the gamekeeper. Farmer Smith a few years since was very anxious for the renewal of his lease, just as those about to enter on tenancies desired leases above everything. All the agricultural world agreed that a lease was the best thing possible--the clubs discussed it, the papers preached it. It was a safeguard; it allowed the tenant to develop his energies, and to put his capital into the soil without fear. He had no dread of being turned out before he could get it back. Nothing like a lease--the certain preventative of all agricultural ills. There was, to appearance, a great deal of truth in these arguments, which in their day made much impression, and caused a movement in that direction. Who could foresee that in a few short years men would be eager to get rid of their leases on any terms? Yet such was the fact. The very men who had longed so eagerly for the blessing of security of tenure found it the worst thing possible for their interest. Mr. Smith got his lease, and paid for it tolerably stiffly, for at that period all agricultural prices were inflated--from the price of a lease to that of a calf. He covenanted to pay a certain fixed rental for so many acres of arable and a small proportion of grass for a fixed time. He covenanted to cultivate the soil by a fixed rotation; not to sow this nor that, nor to be guided by the change of the markets, or the character of the seasons, or the appearance of powerful foreign competitors. There was the parchment prepared with all the niceties of wording that so many generations of lawyers had polished to the highest pitch; not a loophole, not so much as a _t_ left uncrossed, or a doubtful interlineation. But although the parchment did not alter a jot, the times and seasons did. Wheat fell in price, vast shipments came even from India, cattle and sheep from America, wool from Australia, horses from France; tinned provisions and meats poured in by the ton, and cheese, and butter, and bacon by the thousand tons. Labour at the same time rose. His expenditure increased, his income decreased; his rent remained the same, and rent audit came round with the utmost regularity. Mr. Smith began to think about his lease, and question whether it was such an unmixed blessing. There was no getting out of it, that was certain. The seasons grew worse and worse. Smith asked for a reduction of rent. He got, like others, ten per cent, returned, which, he said looked very liberal to those who knew nothing of farming, and was in reality about as useful as a dry biscuit flung at a man who has eaten nothing for a week. Besides which, it was only a gracious condescension, and might not be repeated next year, unless he kept on his good behaviour, and paid court to the clergyman and the steward. Unable to get at what he wanted in a direct way, Smith tried an indirect one. He went at game, and insisted on its being reduced in number. This he could do according to the usual terms of agreement; but when it came to the point he found that the person called in to assess the damage put it at a much lower figure than he had himself; and who was to decide what was or was not a reasonable head of game? This attack of his on the game did him no good whatever, and was not unnaturally borne in mind--let us not say resented. He next tried to get permission to sell straw--a permission that he saw granted to others in moderation. But he was then reminded of a speech he had made at a club, when, in a moment of temper (and sherry), he had let out a piece of his mind, which piece of his mind was duly published in the local papers, and caused a sensation. Somebody called the landlord's attention to it, and he did not like it. Nor can he be blamed; we none of us like to be abused in public, the more especially when, looking at precedents, we do not deserve it. Smith next went to the assessment committee to get his taxes reduced, on the ground of a loss of revenue. The committee sympathised with him, but found that they must assess him according to his rent. At least so they were then advised, and only did their duty. By this time the local bankers had scented a time of trouble approaching in the commercial and agricultural world; they began to draw in their more doubtful advances, or to refuse to renew them. As a matter of fact, Smith was a perfectly sound man, but he had so persistently complained that people began to suspect there really was something wrong with his finances. He endeavoured to explain, but was met with the tale that he had himself started. He then honestly produced his books, and laid his position bare to the last penny. The banker believed him, and renewed part of the advance for a short period; but he began, to cogitate in this wise: 'Here is a farmer of long experience, born of a farming family, and a hardworking fellow, and, more than that, honest. If this man, who has hitherto had the command of a fair amount of capital, cannot make his books balance better than this, what must be the case with some of our customers? There are many who ride about on hunters, and have a bin of decent wine. How much of all this is genuine? We must be careful; these are hard times.' In short, Smith, without meaning it, did his neighbours an immense deal of harm. His very honesty injured them. By slow degrees the bank got 'tighter' with its customers. It leaked out--all things leak out--that Smith had said too much, and he became unpopular, which did not increase his contentment. Finally he gave notice that unless the rent was reduced he should not apply to renew the lease, which would soon expire. He had not the least intention in his secret mind of leaving the farm; he never dreamed that his notice would be accepted. He and his had dwelt there for a hundred years, and were as much part and parcel of the place as the elm-trees in the hedges. So many farms were in the market going a-begging for tenants, it was not probable a landlord would let a good man go for the sake of a few shillings an acre. But the months went by and the landlord's agents gave no sign, and at last Smith realised that he was really going to leave. Though he had so long talked of going, it came upon him like a thunderbolt. It was like an attack of some violent fever that shakes a strong man and leaves him as weak as a child. The farmer, whose meals had been so hearty, could not relish his food. His breakfast dwindled to a pretence; his lunch fell off; his dinner grew less; his supper faded; his spirits and water, the old familiar 'nightcap,' did him no good. His jolly ringing laugh was heard no more; from a thorough gossip he became taciturn, and barely opened his lips. His clothes began to hang about him, instead of fitting him all too tight; his complexion lost the red colour and became sallow; his eyes had a furtive look in them, so different to the old straightforward glance. Some said he would take to his bed and die; some said he would jump into the pond one night, to be known no more in this world. But he neither jumped into the pond nor took to his bed. He went round his fields just the same as before--perhaps a little more mechanically; but still the old routine of daily work was gone through. Leases, though for a short period, do not expire in a day; after awhile time began to produce its usual effect. The sharpness of the pain wore off, and he set to work to make the best of matters. He understood the capacity of each field as well as others understand the yielding power of a little garden. His former study had been to preserve something like a balance between what he put in and what he took out of the soil. Now it became the subject of consideration how to get the most out without putting anything in. Artificial manures were reduced to the lowest quantity and of the cheapest quality, such as was used being, in fact, nothing but to throw dust, literally, in the eyes of other people. Times were so bad that he could not be expected, under the most favourable circumstances, to consume much cake in the stalls or make much manure in that way. One by one extra expenditures were cut off. Gates, instead of being repaired, were propped up by running a pole across. Labour was eschewed in every possible way. Hedges were left uncut; ditches were left uncleaned. The team of horses was reduced, and the ploughing done next to nothing. Cleaning and weeding were gradually abandoned. Several fields were allowed to become overrun with grass, not the least attention being paid to them; the weeds sprang up, and the grass ran over from the hedges. The wheat crop was kept to the smallest area. Wheat requires more previous labour and care as to soil than any other crop. Labour and preparation cost money, and he was determined not to spend a shilling more than he was absolutely compelled. He contrived to escape the sowing, of wheat altogether on some part of the farm, leaving it out of the rotation. That was a direct infringement of the letter of the agreement; but who was to prove that he had evaded it? The steward could not recollect the crops on several hundred acres; the neighbouring tenants, of course, knew very well; but although Smith had become unpopular, they were not going to tell tales of him. He sold everything he dared off the farm, and many things that he did not dare. He took everything out of the soil that it was possible to take out. The last Michaelmas was approaching, and he walked round in the warm August sunshine to look at the wheat. He sat down on an old roller that lay in the corner of the field, and thought over the position of things. He calculated that it would cost the incoming tenant an expenditure of from one thousand two hundred pounds to one thousand five hundred pounds to put the farm, which was a large one, into proper condition. It could not be got into such condition under three years of labour. The new tenant must therefore be prepared to lay out a heavy sum of money, to wait while the improvement went on, must live how he could meanwhile, and look forward some three years for the commencement of his profit. To such a state had the farm been brought in a brief time. And how would the landlord come off? The new tenant would certainly make his bargain in accordance with the state of the land. For the first year the rent paid would be nominal; for the second, perhaps a third or half the usual sum; not till the third year could the landlord hope to get his full rental. That full rental, too, would be lower than previously, because the general depression had sent down arable rents everywhere, and no one would pay on the old scale. Smith thought very hard things of the landlord, and felt that he should have his revenge. On the other hand, the landlord thought very hard things of Smith, and not without reason. That an old tenant, the descendant of one of the oldest tenant-farmer families, should exhaust the soil in this way seemed the blackest return for the good feeling that had existed for several generations. There was great irritation on both sides. Smith had, however, to face one difficulty. He must either take another farm at once, or live on his capital. The interest of his capital--if invested temporarily in Government securities--would hardly suffice to maintain the comfortable style of living he and his rather large family of grown-up sons and daughters had been accustomed to. He sometimes heard a faint, far off 'still small voice,' that seemed to say it would have been wiser to stay on, and wait till the reaction took place and farming recovered. The loss he would have sustained by staying on would, perhaps, not have been larger than the loss he must now sustain by living on capital till such time as he saw something to suit him. And had he been altogether wise in omitting all endeavours to gain his end by conciliatory means? Might not gentle persuasion and courteous language have ultimately produced an impression? Might not terms have been arranged had he not been so vehement? The new tenant, notwithstanding that he would have to contend with the shocking state of the farm, had such favourable terms that if he only stayed long enough to let the soil recover, Smith knew he must make a good thing of it. But as he sat on the wooden roller under the shade of a tree and thought these things, listening to the rustle of the golden wheat as it moved in the breeze, he pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, and glanced down a long, long list of farms to let. Then he remembered that his pass-book at the bank showed a very respectable row of figures, buttoned up his coat, and strolled homeward with a smile on his features. The date fixed for the sale, as announced by the poster on the barn, came round, and a crowd gathered to see the last of the old tenant. Old Hodge viewed the scene from a distance, resting against a gate, with his chin on his hand. He was thinking of the days when he first went to plough, years ago, under Smith's father. If Smith had been about to enter on another farm old Hodge would have girded up his loins, packed his worldly goods in a waggon, and followed his master's fortunes thither. But Smith was going to live on his capital awhile; and old Hodge had already had notice to quit his cottage. In his latter days he must work for a new master. Down at the sale young Hodge was lounging round, hands in pocket, whistling--for there was some beer going about. The excitement of the day was a pleasurable sensation, and as for his master he might go to Kansas or Hong-Kong. CHAPTER III A MAN OF PROGRESS The sweet sound of rustling leaves, as soothing as the rush of falling water, made a gentle music over a group of three persons sitting at the extremity of a lawn. Upon their right was a plantation or belt of trees, which sheltered them from the noonday sun; on the left the green sward reached to the house; from the open window came the rippling notes of a piano, and now and again the soft accents of the Italian tongue. The walls of the garden shut out the world and the wind--the blue sky stretched above from one tree-top to another, and in those tree-tops the cool breeze, grateful to the reapers in the fields, played with bough and leaf. In the centre of the group was a small table, and on it some tall glasses of antique make, and a flask of wine. By the lady lay a Japanese parasol, carelessly dropped on the grass. She was handsome, and elegantly dressed; her long drooping eyelashes fringed eyes that were almost closed in luxurious enjoyment; her slender hand beat time to the distant song. Of the two gentlemen one was her brother--the other, a farmer, her husband. The brother wore a pith helmet, and his bronzed cheek told of service under tropical suns. The husband was scarcely less brown; still young, and very active-looking, you might guess his age at forty; but his bare forehead (he had thrown his hat on the ground) was marked with the line caused by involuntary contraction of the muscles when thinking. There was an air of anxiety, of restless feverish energy, about him. But just for the moment he was calm and happy, turning over the pages of a book. Suddenly he looked up, and began to declaim, in a clear, sweet voice: 'He's speaking now, Or murmuring, "Where's my serpent of old Nile?" For so he calls me. Now I feed myself With most delicious poison!' Just then there came the sharp rattle of machinery borne on the wind; he recollected himself, shut the volume, and rose from his seat. 'The men have finished luncheon,' he said; 'I must go and see how things are getting on.' The Indian officer, after one glance back at the house, went with him. There was a private footpath through the plantation of trees, and down this the two disappeared. Soon afterwards the piano ceased, and a lady came slowly across the lawn, still humming the air she had been playing. She was the farmer's sister, and was engaged to the officer. The wife looked up from the book which she had taken from the table, with a smile of welcome. But the smile faded as she said--'They have gone out to the reapers. Oh, this farm will worry him out of his life! How I wish he had never bought it! Don't let Alick have anything to do with farms or land, dear, when you are married.' The girl laughed, sat down, took her hand, and asked if matters were really so serious. 'It is not so much the money I trouble about,' said the wife. 'It is Cecil himself. His nature is too fine for these dull clods. You know him, dear; his mind is full of art--look at these glasses--of music and pictures. Why, he has just been reading "Antony and Cleopatra," and now he's gone to look after reapers. Then, he is so fiery and quick, and wants everything done in a minute, like the men of business in the "City." He keeps his watch timed to a second, and expects the men to be there. They are so slow. Everything agricultural is so slow. They say we shall have fine seasons in two or three years; only think, _years_. This is what weighs on Cecil.' By this time the two men had walked through the plantation, and paused at a small gate that opened on the fields. The ground fell rapidly away, sloping down for half a mile, so that every portion of the fields below was visible at once. The house and gardens were situate on the hill; the farmer had only to stand on the edge to overlook half his place. 'What a splendid view!' said the officer. The entire slope was yellow with wheat--on either hand, and in front the surface of the crop extended unbroken by hedge, tree, or apparent division. Two reaping-machines were being driven rapidly round and round, cutting as they went; one was a self-binder and threw the sheaves off already bound; the other only laid the corn low, and it had afterwards to be gathered up and bound by hand-labour. There was really a small army of labourers in the field; but it was so large they made but little show. 'You have a first-rate crop,' said the visitor; 'I see no weeds, or not more than usual; it is a capital crop.' 'Yes,' replied the farmer, 'it is a fine crop; but just think what it cost me to produce it, and bear in mind, too, the price I shall get for it.' He took out his pocket-book, and began to explain. While thus occupied he looked anything but a farmer. His dress was indeed light and careless, but it was the carelessness of breeding, not slovenliness. His hands were brown, but there were clean white cuffs on his wrist and gold studs; his neck was brown, but his linen spotless. The face was too delicate, too refined with all its bronze; the frame was well developed, but too active; it lacked the heavy thickness and the lumbering gait of the farmer bred to the plough. He might have conducted a great financial operation; he might have been the head of a great mercantile house; he might have been on 'Change; but that stiff clay there, stubborn and unimpressionable, was not in his style. Cecil had gone into farming, in fact, as a 'commercial speculation,' with the view of realising cent. per cent. He began at the time when it was daily announced that old-fashioned farming was a thing of the past. Business maxims and business practice were to be the rule of the future. Farming was not to be farming; it was to be emphatically 'business,' the same as iron, coal, or cotton. Thus managed, with steam as the motive power, a fortune might be made out of the land, in the same way as out of a colliery or a mine. But it must be done in a commercial manner; there must be no restrictions upon the employment of capital, no fixed rotation of crops, no clauses forbidding the sale of any products. Cecil found, however, that the possessors of large estates would not let him a farm on these conditions. These ignorant people (as he thought them) insisted upon keeping up the traditionary customs; they would not contract themselves out of the ancient form of lease. But Cecil was a man of capital. He really had a large sum of money, and this short-sighted policy (as he termed it) of the landlords only made him the more eager to convince them how mistaken they were to refuse anything to a man who could put capital into the soil. He resolved to be his own landlord, and ordered his agents to find him a small estate and to purchase it outright. There was not much difficulty in finding an estate, and Cecil bought it. But he was even then annoyed and disgusted with the formalities, the investigation of title, the completion of deeds, and astounded at the length of a lawyer's bill. Being at last established in possession Cecil set to work, and at the same time set every agricultural tongue wagging within a radius of twenty miles. He grubbed up all the hedges, and threw the whole of his arable land into one vast field, and had it levelled with the theodolite. He drained it six feet deep at an enormous cost. He built an engine-shed with a centrifugal pump, which forced water from the stream that ran through the lower ground over the entire property, and even to the topmost storey of his house. He laid a light tramway across the widest part of his estate, and sent the labourers to and fro their work in trucks. The chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, the winnowing-machine--everything was driven by steam. Teams of horses and waggons seemed to be always going to the canal wharf for coal, which he ordered from the pit wholesale. A fine set of steam-ploughing tackle was put to work, and, having once commenced, the beat of the engines never seemed to cease. They were for ever at work tearing up the subsoil and bringing it to the surface. If he could have done it, he would have ploughed ten feet deep. Tons of artificial manure came by canal boat--positively boat loads--and were stored in the warehouse. For he put up a regular warehouse for the storage of materials; the heavy articles on the ground floor, the lighter above, hoisted up by a small crane. There was, too, an office, where the 'engineer' attended every morning to take his orders, as the bailiff might at the back-door of an old farmhouse. Substantial buildings were erected for the shorthorn cattle. The meadows upon the estate, like the corn-fields, were all thrown together, such divisions as were necessary being made by iron railings. Machines of every class and character were provided--reaping-machines, mowing-machines, horse-hoes, horse-rakes, elevators--everything was to be done by machinery. That nothing might be incomplete, some new and well-designed cottages were erected for the skilled artisans--they could scarcely be called labourers--who were engaged to work these engines. The estate had previously consisted of several small farms: these were now thrown all into one, otherwise there would not have been room for this great enterprise. A complete system of booking was organised. From the sale of a bullock to the skin of a calf, everything was put down on paper. All these entries, made in books specially prepared and conveniently ruled for the purpose, came under Cecil's eye weekly, and were by him re-entered in his ledgers. This writing took up a large part of his time, and the labour was sometimes so severe that he could barely get through it; yet he would not allow himself a clerk, being economical in that one thing only. It was a saying in the place that not a speck of dust could be blown on to the estate by the wind, or a straw blown off, without it being duly entered in the master's books. Cecil's idea was to excel in all things. Some had been famous for shorthorns before him, others for sheep, and others again for wheat. He would be celebrated for all. His shorthorns should fetch fabulous prices; his sheep should be known all over the world; his wheat should be the crop of the season. In this way he invested his capital in the soil with a thoroughness unsurpassed. As if to prove that he was right, the success of his enterprise seemed from the first assured. His crops of wheat, in which he especially put faith, and which he grew year after year upon the same land, totally ignoring the ancient rotations, were the wonder of the neighbourhood. Men came from far and near to see them. Such was the effect of draining, turning up the subsoil, continual ploughing, and the consequent atmospheric action upon the exposed earth, and of liberal manure, that here stood such crops of wheat as had never previously been seen. These he sold, as they stood, by auction; and no sooner had the purchasers cleared the ground than the engines went to work again, tearing up the earth. His meadow lands were irrigated by the centrifugal pump, and yielded three crops instead of one. His shorthorns began to get known--for he spared no expense upon them--and already one or two profitable sales had been held. His sheep prospered; there was not so much noise made about them, but, perhaps, they really paid better than anything. Meantime, Cecil kept open house, with wine and refreshments, and even beds for everybody who chose to come and inspect his place. Nothing gave him such delight as to conduct visitors over the estate and to enter into minute details of his system. As for the neighbouring farmers they were only too welcome. These things became noised abroad, and people arrived from strange and far-off places, and were shown over this Pioneer's Farm, as Cecil loved to call it. His example was triumphantly quoted by every one who spoke on agricultural progress. Cecil himself was the life and soul of the farmers' club in the adjacent market town. It was not so much the speeches he made as his manner. His enthusiasm was contagious. If a scheme was started, if an experiment was suggested, Cecil's cheque-book came out directly, and the thing was set on foot without delay. His easy, elastic step, his bright eye, his warm, hearty handshake, seemed to electrify people--to put some of his own spirit into them. The circle of his influence was ever increasing--the very oldest fogeys, who had prophesied every kind of failure, were being gradually won over. Cecil himself was transcendently happy in his work; his mind was in it; no exertion, no care or trouble, was too much. He worked harder than any navvy, and never felt fatigue. People said of him--'What a wonderful man!' He was so genuine, so earnest, so thorough, men could not choose but believe in him. The sun shone brightly, the crops ripened, the hum of the threshing-machine droned on the wind--all was life and happiness. In the summer evenings pleasant groups met upon the lawn; the song, the jest went round; now and then an informal dance, arranged with much laughter, whiled away the merry hours till the stars appeared above the trees and the dew descended. Yet to-day, as the two leaned over the little gate in the plantation and looked down upon the reapers, the deep groove which continual thought causes was all too visible on Cecil's forehead. He explained to the officer how his difficulties had come about. His first years upon the farm or estate--it was really rather an estate than a farm--had been fairly prosperous, notwithstanding the immense outlay of capital. A good percentage, in some cases a high-rate of percentage, had been returned upon the money put into the soil. The seasons were good, the crops large and superabundant. Men's minds were full of confidence, they bought freely, and were launching out in all directions. They wanted good shorthorn cattle--he sold them cattle; they wanted sheep--he sold them sheep. They wanted wheat, and he sold them the standing crops, took the money, and so cleared his profit and saved himself trouble. It was, in fact, a period of inflation. Like stocks and shares, everything was going up; everybody hastening to get rich. Shorthorns with a strain of blue blood fetched fancy prices; corn crops ruled high; every single thing sold well. The dry seasons suited the soil of the estate, and the machinery he had purchased was rapidly repaying its first cost in the saving of labour. His whole system was succeeding, and he saw his way to realise his cent. per cent. But by degrees the dream faded. He attributed it in the first place to the stagnation, the almost extinction, of the iron trade, the blowing out of furnaces, and the consequent cessation of the demand for the best class of food on the part of thousands of operatives and mechanics, who had hitherto been the farmers' best customers. They would have the best of everything when their wages were high; as their wages declined their purchases declined. In a brief period, far briefer than would be imagined, this shrinking of demand reacted upon agriculture. The English farmer made his profit upon superior articles--the cheaper class came from abroad so copiously that he could not compete against so vast a supply. When the demand for high-class products fell, the English farmer felt it directly. Cecil considered that it was the dire distress in the manufacturing districts, the stagnation of trade and commerce and the great failures in business centres, that were the chief causes of low prices and falling agricultural markets. The rise of labour was but a trifling item. He had always paid good wages to good men, and always meant to. The succession of wet seasons was more serious, of course; it lowered the actual yield, and increased the cost of procuring the yield; but as his lands were well drained, and had been kept clean he believed he could have withstood the seasons for awhile. The one heavy cloud that overhung agriculture, in his opinion was the extraordinary and almost world-spread depression of trade, and his argument was very simple. When men prospered they bought freely, indulged in luxurious living, kept horses, servants, gave parties, and consumed indirectly large quantities of food. As they made fortunes they bought estates and lived half the year like country gentlemen--that competition sent up the price of land. The converse was equally true. In times of pressure households were reduced, servants dismissed, horses sold, carriages suppressed. Rich and poor acted alike in different degrees but as the working population was so much more numerous it was through the low wages of the working population in cities and manufacturing districts that the farmers suffered most. It was a period of depression--there was no confidence, no speculation. For instance a year or two since the crop of standing wheat then growing on the very field before their eyes was sold by auction, and several lots brought from 16_l_. to 18_l_. per acre. This year the same wheat would not fetch 8_l_. per acre; and, not satisfied with that price, he had determined to reap and thresh it himself. It was the same with the shorthorns, with the hay, and indeed with everything except sheep, which had been a mainstay and support to him. 'Yet even now,' concluded Cecil, shutting his pocket-book, 'I feel convinced that my plan and my system will be a success. I can see that I committed one great mistake--I made all my improvements at once, laid out all my capital, and crippled my self. I should have done one thing at a time. I should, as it were, have grown my improvements--one this year, one next. As it was, I denuded myself of capital. Had the times continued favourable it would not have mattered, as my income would have been large. But the times became adverse before I was firmly settled, and, to be plain, I can but just keep things going without a loan--dear Bella will not be able to go to the sea this year; but we are both determined not to borrow.' 'In a year or two I am convinced we shall flourish again; but the waiting, Alick, the waiting, is the trial. You know I am impatient. Of course, the old-fashioned people, the farmers, all expect me to go through the Bankruptcy Court. They always said these new-fangled plans would not answer, and now they are sure they were right. Well, I forgive them their croaking, though most of them have dined at my table and drank my wine. I forgive them their croaking, for so they were bred up from childhood. Were I ill-natured, I might even smile at them, for they are failing and leaving their farms by the dozen, which seems a pretty good proof that their antiquated system is at best no better than mine. But I can see what they cannot see--signs of improvement. The steel industry is giving men work; the iron industry is reviving; the mines are slowly coming into work again; America is purchasing of us largely; and when other nations purchase of us, part, at least, of the money always finds its way to the farmer. Next season, too, the weather may be more propitious. 'I shall hold on, Alick--a depression is certain to be followed by a rise. That has been the history of trade and agriculture for generations. Nothing will ever convince me that it was intended for English agriculturists to go on using wooden ploughs, to wear smock-frocks, and plod round and round in the same old track for ever. In no other way but by science, by steam, by machinery, by artificial manure, and, in one word, by the exercise of intelligence, can we compete with the world. It is ridiculous to suppose we can do so by returning to the ignorance and prejudice of our ancestors. No; we must beat the world by superior intelligence and superior energy. But intelligence, mind, has ever had every obstacle to contend against. Look at M. Lesseps and his wonderful Suez Canal. I tell you that to introduce scientific farming into England, in the face of tradition, custom, and prejudice, is a far harder task than overcoming the desert sand.' CHAPTER IV GOING DOWNHILL An aged man, coming out of an arable field into the lane, pauses to look back. He is shabbily clad, and there is more than one rent in his coat; yet it is a coat that has once been a good one, and of a superior cut to what a labourer would purchase. In the field the ploughman to whom he has been speaking has started his team again. A lad walks beside the horses, the iron creaks, and the ploughman holding the handles seems now to press upon them with his weight, and now to be himself bodily pulled along. A dull November cloud overspreads the sky, and misty skits of small rain sweep across the landscape. As the old man looks back from the gate, the chill breeze whistles through the boughs of the oak above him, tearing off the brown dry leaves, and shaking out the acorns to fall at his feet. It lifts his grey hair, and penetrates the threadbare coat. As he turns to go, something catches his eye on the ground, and from the mud in the gateway he picks up a cast horse-shoe. With the rusty iron in his hand he passes slowly down the lane, and, as he goes, the bitter wind drives the fallen leaves that have been lying beside the way rustling and dancing after him. From a farmer occupying a good-sized farm he had descended to be a farmer's bailiff in the same locality. But a few months since he was himself a tenant, and now he is a bailiff at 15_s_. a week and a cottage. There is nothing dramatic, nothing sensational, in the history of his descent; but it is, perhaps, all the more full of bitter human experiences. As a man going down a steep hill, after a long while finds himself on the edge of a precipitous chalk pit, and topples in one fall to the bottom, so, though the process of going downhill occupied so long, the actual finish came almost suddenly. Thus it was that from being a master he found himself a servant. He does not complain, nor appeal for pity. His back is a little more bowed, he feels the cold a little more, his step is yet more spiritless. But all he says about it is that 'Hard work never made any money yet.' He has worked exceedingly hard all his lifetime. In his youth, though the family were then well-to-do, he was not permitted to lounge about in idleness, but had to work with the rest in the fields. He dragged his heavy nailed shoes over the furrows with the plough; he reaped and loaded in harvest time; in winter he trimmed the hedgerows, split logs, and looked after the cattle. He enjoyed no luxurious education--luxurious in the sense of scientifically arranged dormitories, ample meals, and vacations to be spent on horseback, or with the breechloader. Trudging to and fro the neighbouring country town, in wind, and wet, and snow, to school, his letters were thrashed into him. In holiday time he went to work--his holidays, in fact, were so arranged as to fall at the time when the lad could be of most use in the field. If an occasion arose when a lad was wanted, his lessons had to wait while he lent a hand. He had his play, of course, as boys in all ages have had; but it was play of a rude character with the plough lads, and the almost equally rough sons of farmers, who worked like ploughmen. In those days the strong made no pretence to protect the weak, or to abnegate their natural power. The biggest lad used his thews and sinews to knock over the lesser without mercy, till the lesser by degrees grew strong enough to retaliate. To be thrashed, beaten, and kicked was so universal an experience that no one ever imagined it was not correct, or thought of complaining. They accepted it as a matter of course. As he grew older his work simply grew harder, and in no respect differed from that of the labourers, except that he directed what should be done next, but none the less assisted to do it. Thus the days went on, the weeks, and months, and years. He was close upon forty years old before he had his own will for a single day. Up to almost that age he worked on his father's farm as a labourer among the labourers, as much under parental authority as when he was a boy of ten. When the old man died it was not surprising that the son, so long held down in bondage--bondage from which he had not the spirit to escape--gave way for a short period to riotous living. There was hard drinking, horse-racing, and card-playing, and waste of substance generally. But it was not for long, for several reasons. In the first place, the lad of forty years, suddenly broken forth as it were from school, had gone past the age when youth plunges beyond recall. He was a grown man, neither wise nor clever; but with a man's sedateness of spirit and a man's hopes. There was no innate evil in his nature to lead him into unrighteous courses. Perhaps his fault rather lay in his inoffensive disposition--he submitted too easily. Then, in the second place, there was not much money, and what there was had to meet many calls. The son found that the father, though reputed a substantial man, and a man among farmers of high esteem and good family, had been anything but rich. First there were secret debts that had run on for fully thirty years--sums of from fifty to one hundred pounds--borrowed in the days of his youth, when he, too, had at last been released in a similar manner from similar bondage, to meet the riotous living in which he also had indulged. In those earlier days there had been more substance in cattle and corn, and he had had no difficulty in borrowing ready money from adjoining farmers, who afterwards helped him to drink it away. These boon companions had now grown old. They had never pressed their ancient comrade for the principal, the interest being paid regularly. But now their ancient comrade was dead they wanted their money, especially when they saw the son indulging himself, and did not know how far he might go. Their money was paid, and reduced the balance in hand materially. Now came a still more serious matter. The old man, years ago, when corn farming paid so handsomely, had been induced by the prospect of profit to take a second and yet larger farm, nearly all arable. To do this he was obliged, in farming phrase, to 'take up'--_i.e._ to borrow--a thousand pounds, which was advanced to him by the bank. Being a man of substance, well reputed, and at that date with many friends, the thousand pounds was forthcoming readily, and on favourable terms. The enterprise, however, did not prosper; times changed, and wheat was not so profitable. In the end he had the wisdom to accept his losses and relinquish the second farm before it ate him up. Had he only carried his wisdom a little farther and repaid the whole of the bank's advance, all might yet have been well. But he only repaid five hundred pounds, leaving five hundred pounds still owing. The bank having regularly received the interest, and believing the old gentleman upright--as he was--was not at all anxious to have the money back, as it was earning fair interest. So the five hundred remained on loan, and, as it seemed, for no very definite purpose. Whether the old gentleman liked to feel that he had so much money at command (a weakness of human nature common enough), or whether he thought he could increase the produce of his farm by putting it in the soil, it is not possible to say. He certainly put the five hundred out of sight somewhere, for when his son succeeded him it was nowhere to be found. After repaying the small loans to his father's old friends, upon looking round the son saw cattle, corn, hay, and furniture, but no five hundred pounds in ready money. The ready money had been muddled away--simply muddled away, for the old man had worked hard, and was not at all extravagant. The bank asked for the five hundred, but not in a pressing manner, for the belief still existed that there was money in the family. That belief was still further fostered because the old friends whose loans had been repaid talked about that repayment, and so gave a colour to the idea. The heir, in his slow way, thought the matter over and decided to continue the loan. He could only repay it by instalments--a mode which, to a farmer brought up in the old style, is almost impossible, for though he might meet one he would be sure to put off the next--or by selling stock (equivalent to giving up his place), or by borrowing afresh. So he asked and obtained a continuation of the loan of the five hundred, and was accommodated, on condition that some one 'backed' him. Some one in the family did back him, and the fatal mistake was committed of perpetuating this burden. A loan never remains at the same sum; it increases if it is not reduced. In itself the five hundred was not at all a heavy amount for the farm to carry, but it was the nucleus around which additional burdens piled themselves up. By a species of gravitation such a burden attracts others, till the last straw breaks the camel's back. This, however, was not all. The heir discovered another secret which likewise contributed to sober him. It appeared that the farm, or rather the stock and so on, was really not all his father's. His father's brother had a share in it--a share of which even the most inquisitive gossips of the place were ignorant. The brother being the eldest (himself in business as a farmer at some distance) had the most money, and had advanced a certain sum to the younger to enable him to start his farm, more than a generation since. From that day to this not one shilling of the principal had been repaid, and the interest only partially and at long intervals. If the interest were all claimed it would now amount to nearly as much as the principal. The brother--or, rather, the uncle--did not make himself at all unpleasant in the matter. He only asked for about half the interest due to him, and at the same time gave the heir a severe caution not to continue the aforesaid riotous living. The heir, now quite brought down to earth after his momentary exaltation, saw the absolute necessity of acquiescence. With a little management he paid the interest--leaving himself with barely enough to work the farm. The uncle, on his part, did not act unkindly; it was he who 'backed' the heir up at the bank in the matter of the continuation of the loan of the five hundred pounds. This five hundred pounds the heir had never seen and never would see: so far as he was concerned it did not exist; it was a mere figure, but a figure for which he must pay. In all these circumstances there was nothing at all exceptional. At this hour throughout the width and breadth of the country there are doubtless many farmers' heirs stepping into their fathers' shoes, and at this very moment looking into their affairs. It may be safely said that few indeed are those fortunate individuals who find themselves clear of similar embarrassments. In this particular case detailed above, if the heir's circumstances had been rigidly reduced to figures--if a professional accountant had examined them--it would have been found that, although in possession of a large farm, he had not got one scrap of capital. But he was in possession of the farm, and upon that simple fact of possession he henceforth lived, like so many, many more of his class. He returned to the routine of labour, which was a part of his life. After awhile he married, as a man of forty might naturally wish to, and without any imputation of imprudence so far as his own age was concerned. The wife he chose was one from his own class, a good woman, but, as is said to be often the case, she reflected the weakness of her husband's character. He now worked harder than ever--a labourer with the labourers. He thus saved himself the weekly expense of the wages of a labourer--perhaps, as labourers do not greatly exert themselves, of a man and a boy. But while thus slaving with his hands and saving this small sum in wages, he could not walk round and have an eye upon the other men. They could therefore waste a large amount of time, and thus he lost twice what he saved. Still, his intention was commendable, and his persistent, unvarying labour really wonderful. Had he but been sharper with his men he might still have got a fair day's work out of them while working himself. From the habit of associating with them from boyhood he had fallen somewhat into their own loose, indefinite manner, and had lost the prestige which attaches to a master. To them he seemed like one of themselves, and they were as much inclined to argue with him as to obey. When he met them in the morning he would say, 'Perhaps we had better do so and so,' or 'Suppose we go and do this or that.' They often thought otherwise; and it usually ended in a compromise, the master having his way in part, and the men in part. This lack of decision ran through all, and undid all that his hard work achieved. Everything was muddled from morn till night, from year's end to year's end. As children came the living indoors became harder, and the work out of doors still more laborious. If a farmer can put away fifty pounds a year, after paying his rent and expenses, if he can lay by a clear fifty pounds of profit, he thinks himself a prosperous man. If this farmer, after forty years of saving, should chance to be succeeded by a son as thrifty, when, he too has carried on the same process for another twenty years, then the family may be, for village society, wealthy, with three or even four thousand pounds, besides goods and gear. This is supposing all things favourable, and men of some ability, making the most of their opportunities. Now reverse the process. When children came, as said before, our hard-working farmer found the living indoors harder, and the labour without heavier. Instead of saving fifty pounds a year, at first the two sides of the account (not that he ever kept any books) about balanced. Then, by degrees, the balance dropped the wrong way. There was a loss, of twenty or thirty pounds on the year, and presently of forty or fifty pounds, which could only be made good by borrowing, and so increasing the payment of interest. Although it takes sixty years--two generations--to accumulate a village fortune by saving fifty pounds a year, it does not occupy so long to reduce a farmer to poverty when half that sum is annually lost. There was no strongly marked and radical defect in his system of farming to amount for it; it was the muddling, and the muddling only, that did it. His work was blind. He would never miss giving the pigs their dinner, he rose at half-past three in the morning, and foddered the cattle in the grey dawn, or milked a certain number of cows, with unvarying regularity. But he had no foresight, and no observation whatever. If you saw him crossing a field, and went after him, you might walk close behind, placing your foot in the mark just left by his shoe, and he would never know it. With his hands behind his back, and his eyes upon the ground, he would plod across the field, perfectly unconscious that any one was following him. He carried on the old rotation of cropping in the piece of arable land belonging to the farm, but in total oblivion of any advantage to be obtained by local change of treatment. He could plan nothing out for next year. He spent nothing, or next to nothing, on improved implements; but, on the other hand, he saved nothing, from a lack of resource and contrivance. As the years went by he fell out of the social life of the times; that is, out of the social life of his own circle. He regularly fed the pigs; but when he heard that the neighbours, were all going in to the town to attend some important agricultural meeting, or to start some useful movement, he put his hands behind his back and said that he should not go; he did not understand anything about it. There never used to be anything of that sort. So he went in to luncheon on bread and cheese and small ale. Such a course could only bring him into the contempt of his fellow-men. He became a nonentity. No one had any respect for or confidence in him. Otherwise, possibly, he might have obtained powerful help, for the memory of what his family had been had not yet died out. Men saw that he lived and worked as a labourer; they gave him no credit for the work, but they despised him for the meanness and churlishness of his life. There was neither a piano nor a decanter of sherry in his house. He was utterly out of accord with the times. By degrees, after many years, it became apparent to all that he was going downhill. The stock upon the farm was not so large nor of so good a character as had been the case. The manner of men visibly changed towards him. The small dealers, even the very carriers along the road, the higglers, and other persons who call at a farm on petty business, gave him clearly to know in their own coarse way that they despised him. They flatly contradicted him, and bore him down with loud tongues. He stood it all meekly, without showing any spirit; but, on the other hand, without resentment, for he never said ill of any man behind his back. It was put about now that he drank, because some busybody had seen a jar of spirits carried into the house from the wine merchant's cart. A jar of spirits had been delivered at the house at intervals for years and years, far back into his father's time, and every one of those who now expressed their disgust at his supposed drinking habits had sipped their tumblers in that house without stint. He did not drink--he did not take one-half at home what his neighbours imbibed without injury at markets and auctions every week of their lives. But he was growing poor, and they called to mind that brief spell of extravagance years ago, and pointed out to their acquaintances how the sin of the Prodigal was coming home to him. No man drinks the bitter cup of poverty to the dregs like the declining farmer. The descent is so slow; there is time to drain every drop, and to linger over the flavour. It may be eight, or ten, or fifteen years about. He cannot, like the bankrupt tradesman, even when the fatal notice comes, put up his shutters at once and retire from view. Even at the end, after the notice, six months at least elapse before all is over--before the farm is surrendered, and the sale of household furniture and effects takes place. He is full in public view all that time. So far as his neighbours are concerned he is in public view for years previously. He has to rise in the morning and meet them in the fields. He sees them in the road; he passes through groups of them in the market-place. As he goes by they look after him, and perhaps audibly wonder how long he will last. These people all knew him from a lad, and can trace every inch of his descent. The labourers in the field know it, and by their manner show that they know it. His wife--his wife who worked so hard for so many, many years--is made to know it too. She is conspicuously omitted from the social gatherings that occur from time to time. The neighbours' wives do not call; their well-dressed daughters, as they rattle by to the town in basket-carriage or dog-cart, look askance at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path beside the road. They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity, and of age. So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the 'old lady' to plod unrecognised. The end came at last. All this blind work of his was of no avail against the ocean steamer and her cargo of wheat and meat from the teeming regions of the West. Nor was it of avail against the fall of prices, and the decreased yield consequent upon a succession of bad seasons. The general lack of confidence pressed heavily upon a man who did not even attempt to take his natural place among his fellow-men. The loan from the bank had gradually grown from five to seven or eight hundred by thirties, and forties, and fifties added to it by degrees; and the bank--informed, perhaps, by the same busybodies who had discovered that he drank--declined further assistance, and notified that part, at least, of the principal must be repaid. The landlord had long been well aware of the state of affairs, but refrained from action out of a feeling for the old family. But the land, from the farmer's utter lack of capital, was now going from bad to worse. The bank having declined to advance further, the rent began to fall into arrear. The landlord caused it to be conveyed to his tenant that if he would quit the farm, which was a large one, he could go into a smaller, and his affairs might perhaps be arranged. The old man--for he was now growing old--put his hands behind his back and said nothing, but went on with his usual routine of work. Whether he had become dulled and deadened and cared nothing, whether hope was extinct, or he could not wrench himself from the old place, he said nothing. Even then some further time elapsed--so slow is the farmer's fall that he might almost be excused for thinking that it would never come. But now came the news that the old uncle who had 'backed' him at the bank had been found dead in bed of sheer old age. Then the long-kept secret came out at last. The dead man's executors claimed the money advanced so many, many years ago. This discovery finished it. The neighbours soon had food for gossip in the fact that a load of hay which he had sold was met in the road by the landlord's agent and turned back. By the strict letter of his agreement he could not sell hay off the farm; but it had been permitted for years. When they heard this they knew it was all over. The landlord, of course, put in his claim; the bank theirs. In a few months the household furniture and effects were sold, and the farmer and his aged wife stepped into the highway in their shabby clothes. He did not, however, starve; he passed to a cottage on the outskirts of the village, and became bailiff for the tenant of that very arable farm to work which years ago his father had borrowed the thousand pounds that ultimately proved their ruin. He made a better bailiff than a farmer, being at home with every detail of practice, but incapable of general treatment. His wife does a little washing and charing; not much, for she is old and feeble. No charity is offered to them--they have outlived old friends--nor do they appeal for any. The people of the village do not heed them, nor reflect upon the spectacle in their midst. They are merged and lost in the vast multitude of the agricultural poor. Only two of their children survive; but these, having early left the farm and gone into a city, are fairly well-to-do. That, at least, is a comfort to the old folk. It is, however, doubtful whether the old man, as he walks down the lane with his hands behind his back and the dead leaves driven by the November breeze rustling after, has much feeling of any kind left. Hard work and adversity have probably deadened his finer senses. Else one would think he could never endure to work as a servant upon that farm of all others, nor to daily pass the scenes of his youth. For yonder, well in sight as he turns a corner of the lane, stands the house where he dwelt so many, many years; where the events of his life came slowly to pass; where he was born; where his bride came home; where his children were born, and from whose door he went forth penniless. Seeing this every day, surely that old man, if he have but one spark of feeling left, must drink the lees of poverty to the last final doubly bitter dregs. CHAPTER V THE BORROWER AND THE GAMBLER 'Where do he get the money from, you?' 'It be curious, bean't it; I minds when his father drove folks' pigs to market.' These remarks passed between two old farmers, one standing on the sward by the roadside, and the other talking to him over the low ledge, as a gentleman drove by in a Whitechapel dog-cart, groom behind. The gentleman glanced at the two farmers, and just acknowledged their existence with a careless nod, looking at the moment over their heads and far away. There is no class so jealous of a rapid rise as old-fashioned farming people. They seem to think that if a man once drove pigs to market he should always continue to do so, and all his descendants likewise. Their ideas in a measure approximate to those of caste among the Hindoos. It is a crime to move out of the original groove; if a man be lowly he must remain lowly, or never be forgiven. The lapse of time makes not the least difference. If it takes the man thirty years to get into a fair position he is none the less guilty. A period equal to the existence of a generation is not sufficient excuse for him. He is not one whit better than if he had made his money by a lucky bet on a racehorse. Nor can he ever hope to live down this terrible social misdemeanour, especially if it is accompanied by the least ostentation. Now, in the present day a man who gets money shows off more than ever was the case. In the olden time the means of luxury were limited, and the fortunate could do little more than drink, and tempt others to drink. But to-day the fortunate farmer in the dog-cart, dressed like a gentleman, drove his thorough-bred, and carried his groom behind. Frank D----, Esq., in the slang of the time, 'did the thing grand!' The dog-cart was a first-rate article. The horse was a high-stepper, such as are not to be bought for a song; the turn-out was at the first glance perfect. But if you looked keenly at the groom, there was a suspicion of the plough in his face and attitude. He did not sit like a man to the manner born. He was lumpy; he lacked the light, active style characteristic of the thoroughbred groom, who is as distinct a breed as the thoroughbred horse. The man looked as if he had been taken from the plough and was conscious of it. His feet were in top-boots, but he could not forget the heavy action induced by a long course of walking in wet furrows. The critics by the hedge were not capable of detecting these niceties. The broad facts were enough for them. There was the gentleman in his ulster, there was the resplendent turn-out, there was the groom, and there was the thoroughbred horse. The man's father drove their pigs to market, and they wanted to know where he got the money from. Meantime Mr. D----, having carelessly nodded, had gone on. Half a mile farther some of his own fields were contiguous to the road, yet he did not, after the fashion of the farmer generally, pause to gaze at them searchingly; he went on with the same careless glance. This fact, which the old-fashioned folk had often observed, troubled them greatly. It seemed so unnatural, so opposite to the old ideas and ways, that a man should take no apparent interest in his own farm. They said that Frank was nothing of a farmer; he knew nothing of farming. They looked at his ricks; they were badly built, and still worse thatched. They examined his meadows, and saw wisps of hay lying about, evidence of neglect; the fields had not been properly raked. His ploughed fields were full of weeds, and not half worked enough. His labourers had acquired a happy-go-lucky style, and did their work anyhow or not at all, having no one to look after them. So, clearly, it was not Frank's good farming that made him so rich, and enabled him to take so high and leading a position. Nor was it his education or his 'company' manners. The old folk noted his boorishness and lack of the little refinements which mark the gentleman. His very voice was rude and hoarse, and seemed either to grumble or to roar forth his meaning. They had frequently heard him speak in public--he was generally on the platform when any local movement was in progress--and could not understand why he was put up there to address the audience, unless it was for his infinite brass. The language he employed was rude, his sentences disjointed, his meaning incoherent; but he had a knack of an _apropos_ jest, not always altogether savoury, but which made a mixed assembly laugh. As his public speeches did not seem very brilliant, they supposed he must have the gift of persuasion, in private. He did not even ride well to hounds--an accomplishment that has proved a passport to a great landlord's favour before now--for he had an awkward, and, to the eye, not too secure a seat in the saddle. Nor was it his personal appearance. He was very tall and ungainly, with a long neck and a small round head on the top of it. His features were flat, and the skin much wrinkled; there seemed nothing in his countenance to recommend him to the notice of the other sex. Yet he had been twice married; the last time to a comparatively young lady with some money, who dressed in the height of fashion. Frank had two families--one, grown up, by his first wife, the second in the nursery--but it made no difference to him. All were well dressed and well educated; the nursery maids and the infants went out for their airings in a carriage and pair. Mrs. D----, gay as a Parisian belle, and not without pretensions to beauty, was seen at balls, parties, and every other social amusement. She seemed to have the _entrée_ everywhere in the county. All this greatly upset and troubled the old folk, whose heads Frank looked over as he carelessly nodded them good-morning driving by. The cottage people from whose ranks his family had so lately risen, however, had a very decided opinion upon the subject, and expressed it forcibly. "'Pend upon it," they said, "'pend upon it, he have zucked zumbody in zumhow." This unkind conclusion was perhaps not quite true. The fact was, that Frank, aided by circumstances, had discovered the ease with which a man can borrow. That was his secret--his philosopher's stone. To a certain extent, and in certain ways, he really was a clever man, and he had the luck to begin many years ago when farming was on the ascending side of the cycle. The single solid basis of his success was his thorough knowledge of cattle--his proficiency in dealership. Perhaps this was learnt while assisting his father to drive other folks' pigs to market. At all events, there was no man in the county who so completely understood cattle and sheep, for buying and selling purposes, as Frank. At first he gained his reputation by advising others what and when to buy; by degrees, as people began to see that he was always right, they felt confidence in him, and assisted him to make small investments on his own account. There were then few auctioneers, and cattle were sold in open market. If a man really was a judge, it was as good to him as a reputation for good ale is to an innkeeper. Men flock to a barrel of good ale no matter whether the inn be low class or high class. Men gather about a good judge of cattle, and will back him up. By degrees D---- managed to rent a small farm, more for the purpose of having a place to turn his cattle into than for farming proper--he was, in fact, a small dealer. Soon afterwards there was an election. During the election, Frank gained the good-will of a local solicitor and political agent. He proved himself an active and perhaps a discreetly unscrupulous assistant. The solicitor thought he saw in Frank talent of a certain order--a talent through which he (the solicitor) might draw unto himself a share of other people's money. The lawyer's judgment of men was as keen as Frank's judgment of cattle. He helped Frank to get into a large farm, advancing the money with which to work it. He ran no risk; for, of course, he had Frank tight in the grasp of his legal fist, and he was the agent for the landlord. The secret was this--the lawyer paid his clients four per cent, for the safe investment of their money. Frank had the money, worked a large farm with it, and speculated in the cattle markets, and realised some fifteen or perhaps twenty per cent., of which the lawyer took the larger share. Something of this sort has been done in other businesses besides farming. Frank, however, was not the man to remain in a state of tutelage, working for another. His forte was not saving--simple accumulation was not for him; but he looked round the district to discover those who had saved. Now, it is a fact that no man is so foolish with his money as the working farmer in a small way, who has put by a little coin. He is extremely careful about a fourpenny piece, and will wrap a sovereign up in several scraps of paper lest he should lose it; but with his hundred or two hundred pounds he is quite helpless. It has very likely occupied him the best part of his lifetime to add one five-pound note to another, money most literally earned in the sweat of his brow; and at last he lends it to a man like Frank, who has the wit to drive a carriage and ride a thoroughbred. With the strange inconsistency so characteristic of human nature, a half-educated, working farmer of this sort will sneer in his rude way at the pretensions of such a man, and at the same time bow down before him. Frank knew this instinctively, and, as soon as ever he began to get on, set up a blood-horse and a turn-out. By dint of such vulgar show and his own plausible tongue he persuaded more than one such old fellow to advance him money. Mayhap these confiding persons, like a certain Shallow, J.P., have since earnestly besought him in vain to return them five hundred of their thousand. In like manner one or two elderly ladies--cunning as magpies in their own conceit--let him have a few spare hundreds. They thought they could lay out this money to better advantage than the safe family adviser 'uncle John,' with his talk of the Indian railways and a guaranteed five per cent. They thought (for awhile) that they had done a very clever thing on the sly in lending their spare hundreds to the great Mr. Frank D---- at a high rate of interest, and by this time would perhaps be glad to get the money back again in the tea-caddy. But Frank was not the man to be satisfied with such small game. After a time he succeeded in getting at the 'squire.' The squire had nothing but the rents of his farms to live upon, and was naturally anxious for an improving tenant who would lay out money and put capital into the soil. He was not so foolish as to think that Frank was a safe man, and of course he had legal advice upon the matter. The squire thought, in fact, that although Frank himself had no money, Frank could get it out of others, and spend it upon his place. It did not concern the squire where or how Frank got his money, provided he had it--he as landlord was secure in case of a crash, because the law gave him precedence over all other creditors. So Frank ultimately stepped into one of the squire's largest farms and cut a finer dash than ever. There are distinct social degrees in agriculture. The man who occupies a great farm under a squire is a person of much more importance than he who holds a little tenancy of a small proprietor. Frank began to take the lead among the farmers of the neighbourhood, to make his appearance at public meetings, and to become a recognised politician--of course upon the side most powerful in that locality, and most likely to serve his own interest. His assurance, and, it must be owned, his ready wit, helped him in coming to the front. When at the front, he was invited to the houses of really well-to-do country people. They condoned his bluff manners--they were the mark of the true, solid British agriculturist. Some perhaps in their hearts thought that another day they might want a tenant, and this man would serve their turn. As a matter of fact, Frank took every unoccupied farm which he could get at a tolerably reasonable rent. He never seemed satisfied with the acreage he held, but was ever desirous of extending it. He took farm after farm, till at last he held an area equal to a fine estate. For some years there has been a disposition on the part of landlords to throw farms together, making many small ones into one large one. For the time, at all events, Frank seemed to do very well with all these farms to look after. Of course the same old-fashioned folk made ill-natured remarks, and insisted upon it that he merely got what he could out of the soil, and did not care in the least how the farming was done. Nevertheless, he flourished--the high prices and general inflation of the period playing into his hand. Frank was now a very big man, the biggest man thereabout. And it was now that he began to tap another source of supply--to, as it were, open a fresh cask--_i.e._ the local bank. At first he only asked for a hundred or so, a mere bagatelle, for a few days--only temporary convenience. The bank was glad to get hold of what really looked like legitimate business, and he obtained the bagatelle in the easiest manner--so easily that it surprised him. He did not himself yet quite know how completely his showy style of life, his large acreage, his speeches, and politics, and familiarity with great people, had imposed upon the world in which he lived. He now began to realise that he was somebody. He repaid the loan to the day, waited awhile and took a larger one, and from that time the frequency and the amount of his loans went on increasing. We have seen in these latter days bank directors bitterly complaining that they could not lend money at more than 7/8 or even 1/2 per cent., so little demand was there for accommodation. They positively could not lend their money; they had millions in their tills unemployed, and practically going a-begging. But here was Frank paying seven per cent, for short loans, and upon a continually enlarging amount. His system, so far as the seasons were concerned, was something like this. He took a loan (or renewed an old one) at the bank on the security of the first draught of lambs for sale, say, in June. This paid the labourers and the working expenses of the hay harvest, and of preparing for the corn. He took the next upon the second draught of lambs in August, which paid the reapers. He took a third on the security of the crops, partly cut, or in process of cutting, for his Michaelmas rent. Then for the fall of the year he kept on threshing out and selling as he required money, and had enough left to pay for the winter's work. This was Frank's system--the system of too many farmers, far more than would be believed. Details of course vary, and not all, like Frank, need three loans at least in the season to keep them going. It is not every man who mortgages his lambs, his ewes (the draught from a flock for sale), and the standing crops in succession. But of late years farming has been carried on in such an atmosphere of loans, and credit, and percentage, and so forth, that no one knows what is or what is not mortgaged. You see a flock of sheep on a farm, but you do not know to whom they belong. You see the cattle in the meadow, but you do not know who has a lien upon them. You see the farmer upon his thoroughbred, but you do not know to whom in reality the horse belongs. It is all loans and debt. The vendors of artificial manure are said not to be averse sometimes to make an advance on reasonable terms to those enterprising and deserving farmers who grow so many tons of roots, and win the silver cups, and so on, for the hugest mangold grown with their particular manure. The proprietors of the milk-walks in London are said to advance money to the struggling dairymen who send them their milk. And latterly the worst of usurers have found out the farmers--_i.e._ the men who advance on bills of sale of furniture, and sell up the wretched client who does not pay to the hour. Upon such bills of sale English farmers have been borrowing money, and with the usual disastrous results. In fact, till the disastrous results became so conspicuous, no one guessed that the farmer had descended so far. Yet, it is a fact, and a sad one. All the while the tradespeople of the market-towns--the very people who have made the loudest outcry about the depression and the losses they have sustained--these very people have been pressing their goods upon the farmers, whom they must have known were many of them hardly able to pay their rents. Those who have not seen it cannot imagine what a struggle and competition has been going on in little places where one would think the very word was unknown, just to persuade the farmer and the farmer's family to accept credit. But there is another side to it. The same tradesman who to-day begs--positively begs--the farmer to take his goods on any terms, in six months' time sends his bill, and, if it be not paid immediately, puts the County Court machinery in motion. Now this to the old-fashioned farmer is a very bitter thing. He has never had the least experience of the County Court; his family never were sued for debt since they can remember. They have always been used to a year's credit at least--often two, and even three. To be threatened with public exposure in the County Court because a little matter of five pounds ten is not settled instantly is bitter indeed. And to be sued so arbitrarily by the very tradesman who almost stuffed his goods down their throats is more bitter still. Frank D----, Esq.'s coarse grandeur answered very well indeed so long as prices were high. While the harvests were large and the markets inflated; while cattle fetched good money; while men's hearts were full of mirth--all went well. It is whispered now that the grand Frank has secretly borrowed 25_l_. of a little cottage shopkeeper in the adjacent village--a man who sells farthing candles and ounces of tea--to pay his reapers. It is also currently whispered that Frank is the only man really safe, for the following reason--they are all 'in' so deep they find it necessary to keep him going. The squire is 'in,' the bank is 'in,' the lawyer is 'in,' the small farmers with two hundred pounds capital are 'in,' and the elderly ladies who took their bank-notes out of their tea-caddies are 'in.' That is to say, Mr. Frank owes them so much money that, rather than he should come to grief (when, they must lose pretty well all), they prefer to keep him afloat. It is a noticeable fact that Frank is the only man who has not raised his voice and shouted 'Depression.' Perhaps the squire thinks that so repellent a note, if struck by a leading man like Frank, might not be to his interest, and has conveyed that thought to the gentleman in the dog-cart with the groom behind. There are, however, various species of the façade farmer. 'What kind of agriculture is practised here?' the visitor from town naturally asks his host, as they stroll towards the turnips (in another district), with shouldered guns. 'Oh, you had better see Mr. X----,' is the reply, 'He is our leading agriculturist; he'll tell you all about it.' Everybody repeats the same story, and once Mr. X----'s name is started everybody talks of him. The squire, the clergyman--even in casually calling at a shop in the market town, or at the hotel (there are few inns now)--wherever he goes the visitor hears from all of Mr. X----. A successful man--most successful, progressive, scientific, intellectual. 'Like to see him? Nothing easier. Introduction? Nonsense. Why, he'd be delighted to see you. Come with me.' Protesting feebly against intruding on privacy, the visitor is hurried away, and expecting to meet a solid, sturdy, and somewhat gruff old gentleman of the John Hull type, endeavors to hunt up some ideas about shorthorns and bacon pigs. He is a little astonished upon entering the pleasure grounds to see one or more gardeners busy among the parterres and shrubberies, the rhododendrons, the cedar deodaras, the laurels, the pampas grass, the 'carpet gardening' beds, and the glass of distant hothouses glittering in the sun. A carriage and pair, being slowly driven by a man in livery from the door down to the extensive stabling, passes--clearly some of the family have just returned. On ringing, the callers are shown through a spacious hall with a bronze or two on the marble table, into a drawing-room, elegantly furnished. There is a short iron grand open with a score carelessly left by the last player, a harp in the corner, half hidden by the curtains, some pieces of Nankin china on the side tables. Where are the cow-sheds? Looking out of window a level lawn extends, and on it two young gentlemen are playing tennis, in appropriate costume. The laboured platitudes that had been prepared about shorthorns and bacon pigs are quite forgotten, and the visitor is just about to ask the question if his guide has not missed the farm-house and called at the squire's, when Mr. X---- comes briskly in, and laughs all apology about intrusion to the winds in his genial manner. He insists on his friends taking some refreshment, will not take refusal; and such is the power of his vivacity, that they find themselves sipping Madeira and are pressed to come and dine in the evening, before one at least knows exactly where he is. 'Just a homely spread, you know; pot-luck; a bit of fish and a glass of Moet; now _do_ come.' This curious mixture of bluff cordiality, with unexpected snatches of refinement, is Mr. X----'s great charm. 'Style of farming; tell you with pleasure.' [Rings the bell.] 'John' (to the manservant), 'take this key and bring me account book No. 6 B, Copse Farm; that will be the best way to begin.' If the visitor knows anything of country life, he cannot help recollecting that, if the old type of farmer was close and mysterious about anything, it was his accounts. Not a word could be got out of him of profit or loss, or revenue: he would barely tell you his rent per acre, and it was doubtful if his very wife ever saw his pass-book. Opening account book No. 6 B, the explanation proceeds. 'My system of agriculture is simplicity itself, sir. It is all founded on one beautiful commercial precept. Our friends round about here [with a wave of the hand, indicating the country side]--our old folks--whenever they got a guinea put it out of sight, made a hoard, hid it in a stocking, or behind a brick in the chimney. Ha! ha! Consequently their operations were always restricted to the same identical locality--no scope, sir, no expansion. Now my plan is--invest every penny. Make every shilling pay for the use of half a crown, and turn the half-crown into seven and sixpence. Credit is the soul of business. There you have it. Simplicity itself. Here are the books; see for yourself. I publish my balance half-yearly--like a company. Then the public see what you are doing. The earth, sir, as I said at the dinner the other day (the idea was much applauded), the earth is like the Bank of England--you may draw on it to any extent; there's always a reserve to meet you. You positively can't overdraw the account. You see there's such a solid security behind you. The fact is, I bring commercial principles into agriculture; the result is, grand success. However, here's the book; just glance over the figures.' The said figures utterly bewilder the visitor, who in courtesy runs his eye from top to bottom of the long columns--farming accounts are really the most complicated that can be imagined--so he, meantime, while turning over the pages, mentally absorbs the personality of the commercial agriculturist. He sees a tall, thin farmer, a brown face and neck, long restless sinewy hands, perpetually twiddling with a cigar or a gold pencil-case--generally the cigar, or rather the extinct stump of it, which he every now and then sucks abstractedly, in total oblivion as to its condition. His dress would pass muster in towns--well cut, and probably from Bond Street. He affects a frock and high hat one day, and knickerbockers and sun helmet the next. His pockets are full of papers, letters, etc., and as he searches amid the mass for some memorandum to show, glimpses may be seen of certain oblong strips of blue paper with an impressed stamp. 'Very satisfactory,' says the visitor, handing back No 6 B; 'may I inquire how many acres you occupy?' Out comes a note-book. 'Hum! There's a thousand down in the vale, and fifteen hundred upland, and the new place is about nine hundred, and the meadows--I've mislaid the meadows--but it's near about four thousand. Different holdings, of course. Great nuisance that, sir; transit, you see, costs money. City gentlemen know that. Absurd system in this country--the land parcelled out in little allotment gardens of two or three hundred acres. Why, there's a little paltry hundred and twenty acre freehold dairy farm lies between my vale and upland, and the fellow won't let my waggons or ploughing-tackle take the short cut, ridiculous. Time it was altered, sir. Shooting? Why, yes; I have the shooting. Glad if you'd come over.' Then more Madeira, and after it a stroll through the gardens and shrubberies and down to the sheds, a mile, or nearly, distant. There, a somewhat confused vision of 'grand shorthorns,' and an inexplicable jumble of pedigrees, grand-dams, and 'g-g-g-g-g-g-dams,' as the catalogues have it; handsome hunters paraded, steam-engines pumping water, steam-engines slicing up roots, distant columns of smoke where steam-engines are tearing up the soil. All the while a scientific disquisition on ammonia and the constituent parts and probable value of town sewage as compared with guano. And at intervals, and at parting, a pressing invitation to dinner [when pineapples or hot-house grapes are certain to make their appearance at dessert]--such a flow of genial eloquence surely was never heard before! It requires a week at least of calm reflection, and many questions to his host, before the visitor--quite carried away--can begin to arrange his ideas, and to come slowly to the opinion that though Mr. X---- is as open as the day and frank to a fault, it will take him a precious long time to get to the bottom of Mr. X----'s system; that is to say, if there is any bottom at all to it. Mr. X---- is, in brief, a gambler. Not in a dishonest, or even suspicious sense, but a pure gambler. He is a gigantic agricultural speculator; his system is, as he candidly told you, credit. Credit not only with the bank, but with everybody. He has actually been making use of you, his casual and unexpected visitor, as an instrument. You are certain to talk about him; the more he is talked of the better, it gives him a reputation, which is beginning to mean a great deal in agriculture as it has so long in other pursuits. You are sure to tell everybody who ever chooses to converse with you about the country of Mr. X----, and Mr. X----'s engines, cattle, horses, profuse hospitality, and progressive science. To be socially popular is a part of his system; he sows corn among society as freely as over his land, and looks to some grains to take root, and bring him increase a hundred fold, as indeed they do. Whatever movement is originated in the neighbourhood finds him occupying a prominent position. He goes to London as the representative of the local agricultural chamber; perhaps waits upon a Cabinet Minister as one of the deputation. He speaks regularly at the local chamber meetings; his name is ever in the papers. The press are invited to inspect his farms, and are furnished with minute details. Every now and then a sketch of his life and doings, perhaps illustrated with a portrait, appears in some agricultural periodical. At certain seasons of the year parties of gentlemen are conducted over his place. In parochial or district matters he is a leading man. Is it a cottage flower-show, a penny reading, a cricket club, a benefit society--it does not matter what, his subscriptions, his name, and his voice are heard in it. He is the life and soul of it; the energy comes from him, though others higher in the scale may be the nominal heads. And the nominal heads, knowing that he can be relied upon politically, are grateful, and give him their good word freely. He hunts, and is a welcome companion--the meet frequently takes place at his house, or some of the huntsmen call for lunch; in fact, the latter is an invariable thing. Everybody calls for lunch who happens to pass near any day; the house has a reputation for hospitality. He is the clergyman's right hand--as in managing the school committee. When the bishop comes to the confirmation, he is introduced as 'my chief lay supporter.' At the Rural Diaconal Conference, 'my chief supporter' is one of the lay speakers. Thus he obtains every man's good word whose good word is worth anything. Social credit means commercial credit. Yet he is not altogether acting a part--he really likes taking the lead and pushing forward, and means a good deal of what he says. He is especially quite honest in his hospitality. All the same, so far as business is concerned, it is pure gambling, which may answer very well in favourable times, but is not unlikely to end in failure should the strain of depression become too severe. Personal popularity, however, will tide him over a great deal. When a man is spoken highly of by gentry, clergy, literally everybody, the bank is remarkably accommodating. Such a man may get for his bare signature--almost pressed on him, as if his acceptance of it were a favour--what another would have to deposit solid security for. In plain language, he borrows money and invests it in every possible way. His farms are simply the basis of his credit. He buys blood shorthorns, he buys blood horses, and he sells them again. He buys wheat, hay, &c., to dispose of them at a profit. If he chose, he could explain to you the meaning of contango, and even of that mysterious term to the uninitiated, 'backwardation.' His speculations for the 'account' are sometimes heavy. So much so, that occasionally, with thousands invested, he has hardly any ready money. But, then, there are the crops; he can get money on the coming crops. There is, too, the live stock money can be borrowed on the stock. Here lies the secret reason of the dread of foreign cattle disease. The increase of our flocks and herds is, of course, a patriotic cry (and founded on fact); but the secret pinch is this--if foot-and-mouth, pleuro-pneumonia, or rinderpest threaten the stock, the tenant-farmer cannot borrow on that security. The local bankers shake their heads--three cases of rinderpest are equivalent to a reduction of 25 per cent. in the borrowing power of the agriculturist. The auctioneers and our friends have large transactions--'paper' here again. With certain members of the hunt he books bets to a high amount; his face is not unknown at Tattersall's or at the race meetings. But he does not flourish the betting-book in the face of society. He bets--and holds his tongue. Some folks have an ancient and foolish prejudice against betting; he respects sincere convictions. Far and away he is the best fellow, the most pleasant company in the shire, always welcome everywhere. He has read widely, is well educated; but, above all, he is ever jolly, and his jollity is contagious. Despite his investments and speculations, his brow never wears that sombre aspect of gloomy care, that knitted concentration of wrinkles seen on the face of the City man, who goes daily to his 'office.' The out-of-door bluffness, the cheery ringing voice, and the upright form only to be gained in the saddle over the breezy uplands, cling to him still. He wakes everybody up, and, risky as perhaps some of his speculations are, is socially enlivening. The two young gentlemen, by-the-by, observed playing lawn-tennis from the drawing-room window, are two of his pupils, whose high premiums and payments assist to keep up the free and generous table, and who find farming a very pleasant profession. The most striking characteristic of their tutor is his Yankee-like fertility of resource and bold innovations--the very antipodes of the old style of 'clod-compeller.' CHAPTER VI AN AGRICULTURAL GENIUS-OLD STYLE Towards the hour of noon Harry Hodson, of Upcourt Farm, was slowly ascending the long slope that led to his dwelling. In his left hand he carried a hare, which swung slightly to and fro as he stepped out, and the black-tipped ears rubbed now and then against a bunch of grass. His double-barrel was under his right arm. Every day at the same hour Harry turned towards home, for he adhered to the ways of his fathers and dined at half-past twelve, except when the stress of harvest, or some important agricultural operation, disturbed the usual household arrangements. It was a beautiful October day, sunny and almost still, and, as he got on the high ground, he paused and looked round. The stubbles stretched far away on one side, where the country rose and fell in undulations. On the distant horizon a column of smoke, broadening at the top, lifted itself into the sky; he knew it was from the funnel of a steam-plough, whose furnace had just been replenished with coal. The appearance of the smoke somewhat resembled that left by a steamer at sea when the vessel is just below the horizon. On the other hand were wooded meadows, where the rooks were cawing--some in the oaks, some as they wheeled round in the air. Just beneath him stood a row of wheat ricks--his own. His gaze finally rested upon their conical roofs with satisfaction, and he then resumed his walk. Even as he moved he seemed to bask in the sunshine; the sunshine pouring down from the sky above, the material sunshine of the goodly wheat ricks, and the physical sunshine of personal health and vigour. His walk was the walk of a strong, prosperous man--each step long, steady, and firm, but quite devoid of haste. He was, perhaps, forty years of age, in the very prime of life, and though stooping a little, like so many countrymen, very tall, and built proportionately broad across the shoulders and chest. His features were handsome--perhaps there was a trace of indolence in their good-humoured expression--and he had a thick black beard just marked with one thin wavy line of grey. That trace of snow, if anything, rather added to the manliness of his aspect, and conveyed the impression that he was at the fulness of life when youth and experience meet. If anything, indeed, he looked too comfortable, too placid. A little ambition, a little restlessness, would perhaps have been good for him. By degrees he got nearer to the house; but it was by degrees only, for he stayed to look over every gate, and up into almost every tree. He stopped to listen as his ear caught the sound of hoofs on the distant road, and again at the faint noise of a gun fired a mile away. At the corner of a field a team of horses--his own--were resting awhile as the carter and his lad ate their luncheon. Harry stayed to talk to the man, and yet again at the barn door to speak to his men at work within with the winnowing machine. The homestead stood on an eminence, but was hidden by elms and sycamores, so that it was possible to pass at a distance without observing it. On entering the sitting-room Harry leaned his gun against the wall in the angle between it and the bureau, from which action alone it might have been known that he was a bachelor, and that there were no children about the house to get into danger with fire-arms. His elderly aunt, who acted as housekeeper, was already at table waiting for him. It was spread with a snow-white cloth, and almost equally snow-white platter for bread--so much and so well was it cleaned. They ate home-baked bread; they were so many miles from a town or baker that it was difficult to get served regularly, a circumstance which preserved that wholesome institution. There was a chine of bacon, small ale, and a plentiful supply of good potatoes. The farmer did full justice to the sweet picking off the chine, and then lingered over an old cheese. Very few words were spoken. Then, after his dinner, he sat in his arm-chair--the same that he had used for many years--and took a book. For Harry rather enjoyed a book, provided it was not too new. He read works of science, thirty years old, solid and correct, but somewhat behind the age; he read histories, such as were current in the early part of the present century, but none of a later date than the end of the wars of the First Napoleon. The only thing modern he cared for in literature was a 'society' journal, sent weekly from London. These publications are widely read in the better class of farmsteads now. Harry knew something of most things, even of geology. He could show you the huge vertebrae of some extinct saurian, found while draining was being done. He knew enough of archaeology to be able to tell any enthusiastic student who chanced to come along where to find the tumuli and the earthworks on the Downs. He had several Roman coins, and a fine bronze spearhead, which had been found upon the farm. These were kept with care, and produced to visitors with pride. Harry really did possess a wide fund of solid, if quiet, knowledge. Presently, after reading a chapter or two, he would drop off into a siesta, till some message came from the men or the bailiff, asking for instructions. The farmstead was, in fact, a mansion of large size, an old manor-house, and had it been situate near a fashionable suburb and been placed in repair would have been worth to let as much per annum as the rent of a small farm. But it stood in a singularly lonely and outlying position, far from any village of size, much less a town, and the very highway even was so distant that you could only hear the horse's hoofs when the current of air came from that direction. This was his aunt's--the housekeeper's--great complaint, the distance to the highway. She grumbled because she could not see the carriers' carts and the teams go by; she wanted to know what was going on. Harry, however, seemed contented with the placid calm of the vast house that was practically empty, and rarely left it, except for his regular weekly visit to market. After the fashion of a thoroughbred farmer he was often rather late home on market nights. There were three brothers, all in farms, and all well to do; the other two were married, and Harry was finely plagued about being a bachelor. But the placid life at the old place--he had succeeded to his father--somehow seemed to content him. He had visitors at Christmas, he read his books of winter evenings and after dinner; in autumn he strolled round with his double-barrel and knocked over a hare or so, and so slumbered away the days. But he never neglected the farming-everything was done almost exactly as it had been done by his father. Old Harry Hodson was in his time one of the characters of that country side. He was the true founder of the Hodson family. They had been yeomen in a small way for generations, farming little holdings, and working like labourers, plodding on, and never heard of outside their fifty-acre farms. So they might have continued till this day had not old Harry Hodson arose to be the genius--the very Napoleon--of farming in that district. When the present Harry, the younger, had a visitor to his taste--_i.e._ one who was not in a hurry--he would, in the evening, pull out the books and papers and letters of his late father from the bureau (beside which stood the gun), and explain how the money was made. The logs crackled and sparkled on the hearth, the lamp burnt clear and bright; there was a low singing sound in the chimney; the elderly aunt nodded and worked in her arm-chair, and woke up and mixed fresh spirits and water, and went off to sleep again; and still Harry would sit and smoke and sip and talk. By-and-by the aunt would wish the visitor good-night, draw up the clock, and depart, after mixing fresh tumblers and casting more logs upon the fire, for well she knew her nephew's ways. Harry was no tippler, he never got intoxicated; but he would sit and smoke and sip and talk with a friend, and tell him all about it till the white daylight came peeping through the chinks in the shutters. Old Harry Hodson, then, made the money, and put two of his sons in large farms, and paid all their expenses, so that they started fair, besides leaving his own farm to the third. Old Harry Hodson made the money, yet he could not have done it had he not married the exact woman. Women have made the fortunes of Emperors by their advice and assistance, and the greatest men the world has seen have owned that their success was owing to feminine counsel. In like manner a woman made the policy of an obscure farmer a success. When the old gentleman began to get well to do, and when he found his teeth not so strong as of yore, and his palate less able to face the coarse, fat, yellowy bacon that then formed the staple of the household fare, he actually ventured so far as to have one joint of butcher's meat, generally a leg of mutton, once a week. It was cooked for Sunday, and, so far as that kind of meat was concerned, lasted till the next Sunday. But his wife met this extravagant innovation with furious opposition. It was sheer waste; it was something almost unpardonably prodigal. They had eaten bacon all their lives, often bacon with the bristles thick upon it, and to throw away money like this was positively wicked. However, the-old gentleman, being stubborn as a horse-nail, persisted; the wife, still grumbling, calmed down; and the one joint of meat became an institution. Harry, the younger, still kept it up; but it had lost its significance in his day, for he had a fowl or two in the week, and a hare or a partridge, and, besides, had the choicest hams. Now, this dispute between the old gentleman and his wife--this dispute as to which should be most parsimonious--was typical of their whole course of life. If one saved cheese-parings, the other would go without cheese at all, and be content with dry bread. They lived--indeed, harder than their own labourers, and it sometimes happened that the food they thought good enough was refused by a cottager. When a strange carter, or shepherd, or other labourer came to the house from a distance, perhaps with a waggon for a load of produce or with some sheep, it was the custom to give them some lunch. These men, unaccustomed even in their own cottages to such coarse food, often declined to eat it, and went away empty, but not before delivering their opinion of the fare, expressed in language of the rudest kind. No economy was too small for old Hodson; in the house his wife did almost all the work. Nowadays a farmer's house alone keeps the women of one, or even two, cottages fully employed. The washing is sent out, and occupies one cottage woman the best part of her spare time. Other women come in to do the extra work, the cleaning up and scouring, and so on. The expense of employing these women is not great; but still it is an expense. Old Mrs. Hodson did everything herself, and the children roughed it how they could, playing in the mire with the pigs and geese. Afterwards, when old Hodson began to get a little money, they were sent to a school in a market town. There they certainly did pick up the rudiments, but lived almost as hard as at home. Old Hodson, to give an instance of his method, would not even fatten a pig, because it cost a trifle of ready money for 'toppings,' or meal, and nothing on earth could induce him to part with a coin that he had once grasped. He never fattened a pig (meaning for sale), but sold the young porkers directly they were large enough to fetch a sovereign a-piece, and kept the money. The same system was carried on throughout the farm. The one he then occupied was of small extent, and he did a very large proportion of the work himself. He did not purchase stock at all in the modern sense; he grew them. If he went to a sale he bought one or two despicable-looking cattle at the lowest price, drove them home, and let them gradually gather condition. The grass they ate grew almost as they ate it--in his own words, 'They cut their own victuals'--_i.e._ with their teeth. He did not miss the grass blades, but had he paid a high price then he would have missed the money. Here he was in direct conflict with modern farming. The theory of the farming of the present day is that time is money, and, according to this, Hodson made a great mistake. He should have given a high price for his stock, have paid for cake, &c., and fattened them up as fast as possible, and then realised. The logic is correct, and in any business or manufacture could not be gainsaid. But Hodson did just the reverse. He did not mind his cattle taking a little time to get into condition, provided they cost him no ready money. Theoretically, the grass they ate represented money, and might have been converted to a better use. But in practice the reverse came true. He succeeded, and other men failed. His cattle and his sheep, which he bought cheap and out of condition, quietly improved (time being no object), and he sold them at a profit, from which there were no long bills to deduct for cake. He purchased no machinery whilst in this small place--which was chiefly grass land--with the exception of a second-hand haymaking machine. The money he made he put out at interest on mortgage of real property, and it brought in about 4 per cent. It was said that in some few cases where the security was good he lent it at a much higher rate to other farmers of twenty times his outward show. After awhile he went into the great farm now occupied by his son Harry, and commenced operations without borrowing a single shilling. The reason was because he was in no hurry. He slowly grew his money in the little farm, and then, and not till then, essayed the greater. Even then he would not have ventured had not the circumstances been peculiarly favourable. Like the present, it was a time of depression generally, and in this particular case the former tenant had lived high and farmed bad. The land was in the worst possible state, the landlord could not let it, and Hodson was given to understand that he could have it for next to nothing at first. Now it was at this crisis of his life that he showed that in his own sphere he possessed the true attribute of genius. Most men who had practised rigid economy for twenty years, whose hours, and days, and weeks had been occupied with little petty details, how to save a penny here and a fourpenny bit yonder, would have become fossilised in the process. Their minds would have become as narrow as their ways. They would have shrunk from any venture, and continued in the old course to the end of their time. Old Hodson, mean to the last degree in his way of living, narrow to the narrowest point where sixpence could be got, nevertheless had a mind. He saw that his opportunity had come, and he struck. He took the great corn farm, and left his little place. The whole country side at once pronounced him mad, and naturally anticipated his failure. The country side did not yet understand two things. They did not know how much money he had saved, and they did not know the capacity of his mind. He had not only saved money, and judiciously invested it, but he had kept it a profound secret, because he feared if his landlord learnt that he was saving money so fast the rent of the little farm would have been speedily raised. Here, again, he was in direct conflict with the modern farmer. The modern man, if he has a good harvest or makes a profit, at once buys a 'turn-out,' and grand furniture, and in every way 'exalts his gate,' When landlords saw their tenants living in a style but little inferior to that they themselves kept up, it was not really very surprising that the rents a few years back began to rise so rapidly. In a measure tenants had themselves to blame for that upward movement. Old Hodson carried his money to a long distance from home to invest, so anxious was he that neither his landlord nor any one else should know how quickly he was getting rich. So he entered upon his new venture--the great upland farm, with its broad cornfields, its expanse of sheep walk and down, its meadows in the hollow, its copses (the copses alone almost as big as his original holding), with plenty of money in his pocket, and without being beholden to bank or lawyer for a single groat. Men thought that the size of the place, the big manor-house, and so on, would turn his head. Nothing of the kind; he proceeded as cautiously and prudently as previously. He began by degrees. Instead of investing some thousand pounds in implements and machinery at a single swoop, instead of purchasing three hundred sheep right off with a single cheque, he commenced with one thing at a time. In this course he was favoured by the condition of the land, and by the conditions of the agreement. He got it, as it were, gradually into cultivation, not all at once; he got his stock together, a score or two at a time, as he felt they would answer. By the year the landlord was to have the full rent: the new tenant was quite able to pay it, and did pay it without hesitation at the very hour it was due. He bought very little machinery, nothing but what was absolutely necessary--no expensive steam-plough. His one great idea was still the same, _i.e._ spend no money. Yet he was not bigoted or prejudiced to the customs of his ancestors--another proof that he was a man of mind. Hodson foresaw, before he had been long at Upcourt Farm, that corn was not going in future to be so all in all important as it had been. As he said himself, 'We must go to our flocks now for our rent, and not to our barn doors.' His aim, therefore, became to farm into and through his flock, and it paid him well. Here was a man at once economical to the verge of meanness, prudent to the edge of timidity, yet capable of venturing when he saw his chance; and above all, when that venture succeeded, capable of still living on bacon and bread and cheese, and putting the money by. In his earlier days Hodson was as close of speech as of expenditure, and kept his proceedings a profound secret. As he grew older and took less active exercise--the son resident at home carrying out his instructions--he became more garrulous and liked to talk about his system. The chief topic of his discourse was that a farmer in his day paid but one rent, to the landlord, whereas now, on the modern plan, he paid eight rents, and sometimes nine. First, of course, the modern farmer paid his landlord (1); next he paid the seedsman (2); then the manure manufacturer (3); the implement manufacturer (4); the auctioneer (5); the railroad, for transit (6); the banker, for short loans (7); the lawyer or whoever advanced half his original capital (8); the schoolmaster (9). To begin at the end, the rent paid by the modern farmer to the schoolmaster included the payment for the parish school; and, secondly, and far more important, the sum paid for the education of his own children. Hodson maintained that many farmers paid as much hard cash for the education of their children, and for the necessary social surroundings incident to that education, as men used to pay for the entire sustenance of their households. Then there was the borrowed capital, and the short loans from the banker; the interest on these two made two more rents. Farmers paid rent to the railroad for the transit of their goods. The auctioneer, whether he sold cattle and sheep, or whether he had a depôt for horses, was a new man whose profits were derived from the farmers. There were few or no auctioneers or horse depositories when he began business; now the auctioneer was everywhere, and every country town of any consequence had its establishment for the reception and sale of horses. Farmers sunk enough capital in steam-ploughs and machinery to stock a small farm on the old system, and the interest on this sunk capital represented another rent. It was the same with the artificial manure merchant and with the seedsman. Farmers used to grow their own seed, or, at most, bought from the corn dealers or a neighbour if by chance they were out. Now the seedsman was an important person, and a grand shop might be found, often several shops, in every market town, the owners of which shops must likewise live upon the farmer. Here were eight or nine people to pay rent to instead of one. No wonder farming nowadays was not profitable. No wonder farmers could not put their sons into farms. Let any one look round their own neighbourhood and count up how many farmers had managed to do that. Why, they were hardly to be found. Farmers' sons had to go into the towns to get a livelihood now. Farming was too expensive a business on the modern system--it was a luxury for a rich man, who could afford to pay eight or nine landlords at once. The way he had got on was by paying one landlord only. Old Hodson always finished his lecture by thrusting both hands into his breeches pockets, and whispering to you confidentially that it was not the least use for a man to go into farming now unless he had got ten thousand pounds. It was through the genius of this man that his three sons were doing so well. At the present day, Harry, the younger, took his ease in his arm-chair after his substantial but plain dinner, with little care about the markets or the general depression. For much of the land was on high ground and dry, and the soil there benefited by the wet. At the same time sheep sold well, and Harry's flocks were large and noted. So he sauntered round with his gun, and knocked over a hare, and came comfortably home to dinner, easy in his mind, body, and pocket. Harry was not a man of energy and intense concentrated purpose like his father. He could never have built up a fortune, but, the money being there, Harry was just the man to keep it. He was sufficiently prudent to run no risk and to avoid speculation. He was sufficiently frugal not to waste his substance on riotous living, and he was naturally of a placid temperament, so that he was satisfied to silently and gradually accumulate little by little. His knowledge of farming, imbibed from his father, extended into every detail. If he seldom touched an implement now, he had in his youth worked like the labourers, and literally followed the plough. He was constantly about on the place, and his eye, by keeping the men employed, earned far more money than his single arm could have done. Thus he dwelt in the lonely manor-house, a living proof of the wisdom of his father's system. Harry is now looking, in his slow complacent way, for a wife. Being forty years of age, he is not in a great hurry, and is not at all inclined to make a present of himself to the first pretty face he meets. He does not like the girl of the period; he fears she would spend too much money. Nor, on the other hand, does he care for the country hoyden, whose mind and person have never risen above the cheese-tub, with red hands, awkward gait, loud voice, and limited conversation. He has read too much, in his quiet way, and observed too much, in his quiet way, also, for that. He wants a girl well educated, but not above her station, unaffected and yet comely, fond of home and home duties, and yet not homely. And it would be well if she had a few hundreds--a very small sum would do--for her dower. It is not that he wants the money, which can be settled on herself; but there is a vein of the old, prudent common sense running through Harry's character. He is in no hurry; in time he will meet with her somewhere. CHAPTER VII THE GIG AND THE FOUR-IN-HAND. A BICYCLE FARMER Two vehicles were gradually approaching each other from opposite directions on a long, straight stretch of country road, which, at the first glance, appeared level. The glare of the August sunshine reflected from the white dust, the intense heat that caused a flickering motion of the air like that which may be seen over a flue, the monotonous low cropped hedges, the scarcity of trees, and boundless plain of cornfields, all tended to deceive the eye. The road was not really level, but rose and fell in narrow, steep valleys, that crossed it at right angles--the glance saw across these valleys without recognising their existence. It was curious to observe how first one and then the other vehicle suddenly disappeared, as if they had sunk into the ground, and remained hidden for some time. During the disappearance the vehicle was occupied in cautiously going down one steep slope and slowly ascending the other. It then seemed to rapidly come nearer till another hollow intervened, and it was abruptly checked. The people who were driving could observe each other from a long distance, and might naturally think that they should pass directly, instead of which they did not seem to get much nearer. Some miles away, where the same road crossed the Downs, it looked from afar like a white line drawn perpendicularly up the hill. The road itself was narrow, hardly wider than a lane, but on either side was a broad strip of turf, each strip quite twice the width of the metalled portion. On the verge of the dust the red pimpernel opened its flowers to the bright blue cloudless sky, and the lowly convolvulus grew thickly among the tall dusty bennets. Sweet short clover flowers stood but a little way back; still nearer the hedges the grass was coarser, long, and wire-like. Tall thistles stood beside the water furrows and beside the ditch, and round the hawthorn bushes that grew at intervals on the sward isolated from the hedge. Loose flints of great size lay here and there among the grass, perhaps rolled aside surreptitiously by the stone-breakers to save themselves trouble. Everything hot and dusty. The clover dusty, the convolvulus dusty, the brambles and hawthorn, the small scattered elms all dusty, all longing for a shower or for a cool breeze. The reapers were at work in the wheat, but the plain was so level that it was not possible to see them without mounting upon a flint heap. Then their heads were just visible as they stood upright, but when they stooped to use the hook they disappeared. Yonder, however, a solitary man in his shirt-sleeves perched up above the corn went round and round the field, and beside him strange awkward arms seemed to beat down the wheat. He was driving a reaping machine, to which the windmill-like arms belonged. Beside the road a shepherd lingered, leaning on a gate, while his flock, which he was driving just as fast and no faster than they cared to eat their way along the sward, fed part on one side and part on the other. Now and then two or three sheep crossed over with the tinkling of a bell. In the silence and stillness and brooding heat, the larks came and dusted themselves in the white impalpable powder of the road. Farther away the partridges stole quietly to an anthill at the edge of some barley. By the white road, a white milestone, chipped and defaced, stood almost hidden among thistles and brambles. Some white railings guarded the sides of a bridge, or rather a low arch over a dry watercourse. Heat, dust, a glaring whiteness, and a boundless expanse of golden wheat on either hand. After awhile a towering four-in-hand coach rose out of the hollow where it had been hidden, and came bowling along the level. The rapid hoofs beat the dust, which sprang up and followed behind in a cloud, stretching far in the rear, for in so still an atmosphere the particles were long before they settled again. White parasols and light dust coats--everything that could be contrived for coolness--gay feathers and fluttering fringes, whose wearers sat in easy attitudes enjoying the breeze created by the swift motion. Upon such a day the roof of a coach is more pleasant than the thickest shade, because of that current of air, for the same leaves that keep off the sun also prevent a passing zephyr from refreshing the forehead. But the swifter the horses the sweeter the fresh wind to fan the delicate cheek and drooping eyelid of indolent beauty. So idle were they all that they barely spoke, and could only smile instead of laugh if one exerted himself to utter a good jest. The gentleman who handled the ribbons was the only one thoroughly awake. His eyes were downcast, indeed, because they never left his horses, but his ears were sharply alive to the rhythmic beat of the hoofs and the faint creak and occasional jingle of the harness. Had a single shoe failed to send forth the proper sound as it struck the hard dry road, had there been a creak or a jingle too many, or too few, those ears would instantly have detected it. The downcast eyes that looked neither to the right nor left--at the golden wheat or the broad fields of barley--were keenly watching the ears of the team, and noting how one of the leaders lathered and flung white froth upon the dust. From that height the bowed backs of the reapers were visible in the corn. The reapers caught sight of the coach, and stood up to look, and wiped their brows, and a distant hurrah came from the boys among them. In all the pomp and glory of paint and varnish the tall coach rolled on, gently swaying from side to side as the springs yielded to the irregularities of the road. It came with a heavy rumble like far-away thunder over the low arch that spanned the dry water-course. Meantime the vehicle approaching from the opposite direction had also appeared out of a hollow. It was a high, narrow gig of ancient make, drawn by a horse too low for the shafts and too fat for work. In the gig sat two people closely pressed together by reason of its narrow dimensions. The lady wore a black silk dress, of good and indeed costly material, but white with the dust that had settled upon it. Her hands were covered with black cotton gloves, and she held a black umbrella. Her face was hidden by a black veil; thin corkscrew curls fringed the back of her head. She was stout, and sat heavily in the gig. The man wore a grey suit, too short in the trousers--at least they appeared so as he sat with his knees wide apart, and the toe of one heavy boot partly projecting at the side of the dash-board. A much-worn straw hat was drawn over his eyes, and he held a short whip in his red hand. He did not press his horse, but allowed the lazy animal to go jog-trot at his own pace. The panels of the gig had lost their original shining polish; the varnish had cracked and worn, till the surface was rough and grey. The harness was equally bare and worn, the reins mended more than once. The whole ramshackle concern looked as if it would presently fall to pieces, but the horse was in much too good a condition. When the four-in-hand had come within about a hundred yards, the farmer pulled his left rein hard, and drew his gig right out of the road on to the sward, and then stopped dead, to give the coach the full use of the way. As it passed he took off his straw hat, and his wife stooped low as a makeshift for bowing. An outsider might have thought that the aristocratic coach would have gone by this extremely humble couple without so much as noticing it. But the gentleman who was driving lifted his hat to the dowdy lady, with a gesture of marked politeness, and a young and elegantly-dressed lady, his sister, nodded and smiled, and waved her hand to her. After the coach had rolled some fifty yards away, the farmer pulled into the road, and went on through the cloud of dust it had left behind it, with a complacent smile upon his hard and weather-worn features. 'A' be a nice young gentleman, the Honourable be,' said he presently. 'So be Lady Blanche,' replied his wife, lifting her veil and looking back after the four-in-hand. 'I'm sure her smile's that sweet it be a pleasure for to see her.' Half a mile farther the farmer drew out of the road again, drove close to the hedge, stopped, and stood up to look over. A strongly-built young man, who had been driving the reaping machine in his shirt-sleeves, alighted from his seat and came across to the hedge. 'Goes very well to-day,' he said, meaning that the machine answered. 'You be got into a good upstanding piece, John,' replied the old man sharply in his thin jerky voice, which curiously contrasted with his still powerful frame. 'You take un in there and try un'--pointing to a piece where the crop had been beaten down by a storm, and where the reapers were at work. 'You had better put the rattletrap thing away, John, and go in and help they. Never wasted money in all my life over such a thing as that before. What be he going to do all the winter? Bide and rust, I 'spose. Can you put un to cut off they nettles along the ditch among they stones?' 'It would break the knives,' said the son. 'But you could cut um with a hook, couldn't you?' asked the old man, in a tone that was meant to convey withering contempt of a machine that could only do one thing, and must perforce lie idle ten months of the year. 'That's hardly a fair way of looking at it,' the son ventured. 'John,' said his mother, severely, 'I can't think how you young men can contradict your father. I'm sure young men never spoke so in my time; and I'm sure your father has been prospered in his farming' (she felt her silk dress), 'and has done very well without any machines, which cost a deal of money--and Heaven knows there's a vast amount going out every day.' A gruff voice interrupted her--one of the reapers had advanced along the hedge, with a large earthenware jar in his hand. 'Measter,' he shouted to the farmer in the gig, 'can't you send us out some better tackle than this yer stuff?' He poured some ale out of the jar on the stubble with an expression of utter disgust. 'It be the same as I drink myself,' said the farmer, sharply, and immediately sat down, struck the horse, and drove off. His son and the labourer--who could hardly have been distinguished apart so far as their dress went--stood gazing after him for a few minutes. They then turned, and each went back to his work without a word. The farmer drove on steadily homewards at the same jog-trot pace that had been his wont these forty years. The house stood a considerable distance back from the road: it was a gabled building of large size, and not without interest. It was approached by a drive that crossed a green, where some ducks were waddling about, and entered the front garden, which was surrounded by a low wall. Within was a lawn and an ancient yew tree. The porch was overgrown with ivy, and the trees that rose behind the grey tiles of the roof set the old house in a frame of foliage. A fine old English homestead, where any man might be proud to dwell. But the farmer did not turn up the drive. He followed the road till he came to a gate leading into the rickyard, and, there getting out of the gig, held the gate open while the horse walked through. He never used the drive or the front door, but always came in and went out at the back, through the rickyard. The front garden and lawn were kept in good order, but no one belonging to the house ever frequented it. Had any stranger driven up to the front door, he might have hammered away with the narrow knocker--there was no bell--for half an hour before making any one hear, and then probably it would have been by the accident of the servant going by the passage, and not by dint of noise. The household lived in the back part of the house. There was a parlour well furnished, sweet with flowers placed there fresh daily, and with the odour of those in the garden, whose scent came in at the ever open window; but no one sat in it from week's end to week's end. The whole life of the inmates passed in two back rooms--a sitting-room and kitchen. With some slight concessions to the times only, Farmer M---- led the life his fathers led before him, and farmed his tenancy upon the same principles. He did not, indeed, dine with the labourers, but he ate very much the same food as they did. Some said he would eat what no labourer or servant would touch; and, as he had stated, drank the same smallest of small beer. His wife made a large quantity of home-made wine every year, of which she partook in a moderate degree, and which was the liquor usually set before visitors. They rose early, and at once went about their work. He saw his men, and then got on his horse and rode round the farm. He returned to luncheon, saw the men again, and again went out and took a turn of work with them. He rode a horse because of the distance--the farm being large--not for pleasure. Without it he could not have visited his fields often enough to satisfy himself that the labourers were going on with their work. He did not hunt, nor shoot--he had the right, but never exercised it; though occasionally he was seen about the newly-sown fields with a single-barrel gun, firing at the birds that congregated in crowds. Neither would he allow his sons to shoot or hunt. One worked with the labourers, acting as working bailiff--it was he who drove the reaping machine, which, after long argument and much persuasion the farmer bought, only to grumble at and abuse every day afterwards. The other was apprenticed as a lad to a builder and carpenter of the market town, and learned the trade exactly as the rest of the men did there. He lodged in the town in the cheapest of houses, ate hard bread and cheese with the carpenters and masons and bricklayers, and was glad when the pittance he received was raised a shilling a week. Once now and then he walked over to the farm on Sundays or holidays--he was not allowed to come too often. They did not even send him in a basket of apples from the great orchard; all the apples were carefully gathered and sold. These two sons were now grown men, strong and robust, and better educated than would have been imagined--thanks to their own industry and good sense, and not to any schooling they received. Two finer specimens of physical manhood it would have been difficult to find, yet their wages were no more than those of ordinary labourers and workmen. The bailiff, the eldest, had a pound a week, out of which he had to purchase every necessary, and from which five shillings were deducted for lodgings. It may be that he helped himself to various little perquisites, but his income from every source was not equal to that of a junior clerk. The other nominally received more, being now a skilled workman; but as he had to pay for his lodgings and food in town, he was really hardly so well off. Neither of these young men had the least chance of marrying till their father should die; nothing on earth would induce him to part with the money required to set the one in business up or the other in a separate farm. He had worked all his time under his father, and it seemed to him perfectly natural that his sons should work all their time under him. There was one daughter, and she, too, was out at work. She was housekeeper to an infirm old farmer; that is to say, she superintended the dairy and the kitchen, and received hardly as much as a cook in a London establishment. Like the sons, she was finely developed physically, and had more of the manners of a lady than seemed possible under the circumstances. Her father's principles of farming were much the same as his plan of housekeeping and family government. It consisted of never spending any money. He bought no machines. The reaping machine was the one exception, and a bitter point with the old man. He entered on no extensive draining works, nor worried his landlord to begin them. He was content with the tumble-down sheds till it was possible to shelter cattle in them no longer. Sometimes he was compelled to purchase a small quantity of artificial manure, but it was with extreme reluctance. He calculated to produce sufficient manure in the stalls, for he kept a large head of fattening cattle, and sheep to the greatest extent possible. He would rather let a field lie fallow, and go without the crop from it, till nature had restored the exhausted fertility, than supply that fertility at the cost of spending money. The one guiding motto of his life was 'Save, not invest.' When once he got hold of a sovereign he parted with it no more; not though all the scientific professors in the world came to him with their analyses, and statistics, and discoveries. He put it in the bank, just as his father would have put it into a strong box under his bed. There it remained, and the interest that accrued, small as it was, was added to it. Yet it was his pride to do his land well. He manured it well, because he kept cattle and sheep, especially the latter, to the fullest capacity of his acreage; and because, as said before, he could and did afford to let land lie fallow when necessary. He was in no hurry. He was not anxious for so much immediate percentage upon an investment in artificial manure or steam-plough. He might have said, with a greater man, 'Time and I are two.' It was Time, the slow passage of the years, that gave him his profit. He was always providing for the future; he was never out of anything, because he was never obliged to force a sale of produce in order to get the ready cash to pay the bank its interest upon borrowed money. He never borrowed; neither did he ever make a speech, or even so much as attend a farmers' club, to listen to a scientific lecture. But his teams of horses were the admiration of the country side--no such horses came into the market town. His rent was paid punctually, and always with country bank-notes--none of your clean, newfangled cheques, or Bank of England crisp paper, but soiled, greasy country notes of small denomination. Farmer M---- never asked for a return or reduction of his rent. The neighbours said that he was cheaply rented: that was not true in regard to the land itself. But he certainly was cheaply rented if the condition of the farm was looked at. In the course of so many long years of careful farming he had got his place into such a state of cultivation that it could stand two or three bad seasons without much deterioration. The same bad seasons quite spoiled the land of such of his neighbours as had relied upon a constant application of stimulants to the soil. The stimulating substances being no longer applied, as they could not afford to buy them, the land fell back and appeared poor. Farmer M---, of course, grumbled at the weather, but the crops belied his lips. He was, in fact, wealthy--not the wealth that is seen in cities, but rich for a countryman. He could have started both his sons in business with solid capital. Yet he drank small beer which the reapers despised, and drove about in a rusty old gig, with thousands to his credit at that old country bank. When he got home that afternoon, he carefully put away some bags of coin for the wages of the men, which he had been to fetch, and at once started out for the rickyard, to see how things were progressing. So the Honourable on the tall four-in-hand saluted with marked emphasis the humble gig that pulled right out of the road to give him the way, and the Lady Blanche waved her hand to the dowdy in the dusty black silk with her sweetest smile. The Honourable, when he went over the farm with his breechloader, invariably came in and drank a glass of the small beer. The Lady Blanche, at least once in the autumn, rode up, alighted, and drank one glass of the home-made wine with the dowdy. Her papa, the landlord, was an invalid, but he as invariably sent a splendid basket of hot-house grapes. But Farmer M---- was behind the age. Had he looked over the hedge in the evening, he might have seen a row of reapers walking down the road at the sudden sound of a jingling bell behind them, open their line, and wheel like a squad, part to the right and part to the left, to let the bicycle pass. After it had gone by they closed their rank, and trudged on toward the village. They had been at work all day in the uplands among the corn, cutting away with their hooks low down the yellow straw. They began in the early morning, and had first to walk two miles or more up to the harvest field. Stooping, as they worked, to strike low enough, the hot sun poured his fierce rays upon their shoulders and the backs of their necks. The sinews of the right arm had continually to drive the steel through straw and tough weeds entangled in the wheat. There was no shadow to sit under for luncheon, save that at the side of the shocks, where the sheaves radiated heat and interrupted the light air, so that the shadow was warmer than the sunshine. Coarse cold bacon and bread, cheese, and a jar of small beer, or a tin can of weak cold tea, were all they had to supply them with fresh strength for further labour. At last the evening came, the jackets so long thrown aside were resumed, and the walk home began. After so many hours of wearisome labour it was hardly strange that their natural senses were dulled--that they did not look about them, nor converse gaily. By mutual, if unexpressed consent, they intended to call at the wayside inn when they reached it, to rest on the hard bench outside, and take a quart of stronger ale. Thus trudging homewards after that exhausting day, they did not hear the almost silent approach of the bicycle behind till the rider rang his bell. When he had passed, the rider worked his feet faster, and swiftly sped away along the dry and dusty road. He was a tall young gentleman, whose form was well set off and shown by the tight-fitting bicycle costume. He rode well and with perfect command--the track left in the dust was straight, there was no wobbling or uncertainty. 'That be a better job than ourn, you,' said one of the men, as they watched the bicycle rapidly proceeding ahead. 'Ay,' replied his mate, 'he be a vine varmer, he be.' Master Phillip, having a clear stretch of road, put on his utmost speed, and neither heard the comments made upon him, nor would ha e cared if he had. He was in haste, for he was late, and feared every minute to hear the distant dinner bell. It was his vacation, and Master Phillip, having temporarily left his studies, was visiting a gentleman who had taken a country mansion and shooting for the season. His host had accumulated wealth in the 'City,' and naturally considered himself an authority on country matters. Master Phillip's 'governor' was likewise in a large way of business, and possessed of wealth, and thought it the correct thing for one of his sons to 'go in' for agriculture--a highly genteel occupation, if rightly followed, with capital and intelligence. Phillip liked to ride his bicycle in the cool of the evening, and was supposed in these excursions to be taking a survey of the soil and the crops, and to be comparing the style of agriculture in the district to that to which he had been trained while pursuing his studies. He slipped past the wayside inn; he glided by the cottages and gardens at the outskirts of the village; and then, leaving the more thickly inhabited part on one side, went by a rickyard. Men were busy in the yard putting up the last load of the evening, and the farmer in his shirt-sleeves was working among and directing the rest. The bicyclist without a glance rode on, and shortly after reached the lodge gates. They were open, in anticipation of his arrival. He rode up the long drive, across the park, under the old elms, and alighted at the mansion before the dinner bell rang, much to his relief; for his host had more than one daughter, and Phillip liked to arrange his toilet to perfection before he joined their society. His twenty-five-guinea dressing-case, elaborately fitted up--too completely indeed, for he had no use for the razor--soon enabled him to trim and prepare for the dining-room. His five-guinea coat, elegant studs, spotless shirt and wristbands, valuable seal ring on one finger, patent leather boots, keyless watch, eyeglass, gold toothpick in one pocket, were all carefully selected, and in the best possible style. Mr. Phillip--he would have scorned the boyish 'master'--was a gentleman, from the perfumed locks above to the polished patent leather below. There was _ton_ in his very air, in the 'ah, ah,' of his treble London tone of voice, the antithesis of the broad country bass. He had a firm belief in the fitness of things--in the unities, so to speak, of suit, action, and time. When his team were struggling to force the ball by kick, or other permitted means, across the tented field, Phillip was arrayed in accurate football costume. When he stood on the close-mown lawn within the white-marked square of tennis and faced the net, his jacket was barred or striped with scarlet. Then there was the bicycle dress, the morning coat, the shooting jacket, and the dinner coat, not to mention the Ulster or Connaught overcoat, the dust coat, and minor items innumerable. Whether Phillip rolled in the mire at football, or bestrode a bicycle, or sat down to snow-white tablecloth and napkin, he conscientiously dressed the part. The very completeness of his prescribed studies--the exhaustive character of the curriculum-naturally induced a frame of mind not to be satisfied with anything short of absolute precision, and perhaps even apt to extend itself into dilettanteism. Like geology, the science of agriculture is so vast, it embraces so wide a range, that one really hardly knows where it begins or ends. Phillip's knowledge was universal. He understood all about astronomy, and had prepared an abstract of figures proving the connection of sun-spots, rainfall, and the price of wheat. Algebra was the easiest and at the same time the most accurate mode of conducting the intricate calculations arising out of the complicated question of food--of flesh formers and heat generators--that is to say, how much a sheep increased in weight by gnawing a turnip. Nothing could be more useful than botany-those who could not distinguish between a dicotyledon and a monocotyledon could certainly never rightly grasp the nature of a hedgerow. _Bellis perennis_ and _Sinapis arvensis_ were not to be confounded, and _Triticum repens_ was a sure sign of a bad farmer. Chemistry proved that too small a quantity of silicate made John Barleycorn weak in the knee; ammonia, animal phosphates, nitrogen, and so on, were mere names to many ignorant folk. The various stages and the different developments of insect life were next to be considered. As to the soil and strata--the very groundwork of a farm--geology was the true guide to the proper selection of suitable seed. Crops had been garnered by the aid of the electric light, the plough had been driven by the Gramme machine; electricity, then, would play a foremost part in future farming, and should be studied with enthusiasm. Without mathematics nothing could be done; without ornithological study, how know which bird revelled on grain and which destroyed injurious insects? Spectrum analysis detected the adulteration of valuable compounds; the photographer recorded the exact action of the trotting horse; the telephone might convey orders from one end of an estate to the other; and thus you might go through the whole alphabet, the whole cyclopaedia of science, and apply every single branch to agriculture. It is to be hoped that Phillip's conversational account of his studies has been correctly reproduced here. The chemical terms look rather weak, but the memory of an ordinary listener can hardly be expected to retain such a mass of technicalities. He had piles of strongly-bound books, the reward of successful examinations, besides diplomas and certificates of proficiency. These subjects could be pursued under cover, but there was besides the field work, which had a more practical sound; model farms to be visited; steam-engines to be seen at work; lectures to be listened to on the spot; deep-drainage operations, a new drill, or a new sheaf-binder to be looked at. Then there were the experimental plots--something like the little _parterres_ seen at the edge of lawns. One plot was sown without manure, another was sown with manure, a third had a different kind of manure. The dozen mangolds grown in one patch were pulled up and carefully weighed. The grains of wheat in an ear standing in an adjacent patch were counted and recorded. As these plots were about a yard wide, and could be kept clean, no matter what the weather; and as a wheelbarrow load of clay, or chalk, or sand thrown down would alter the geological formation, the results obtained from them were certainly instructive, and would be very useful as a guide to the cultivation of a thousand acres. There was also a large, heavy iron roller, which the scholars could if they chose drag round and round the gravel path. Architecture, again, touches the agriculturist nearly. He requires buildings for the pigs, cattle, horses, labourers, engine and machinery, lastly, for himself. Out of doors almost any farmhouse that could be visited might be made by a lecturer an illustrative example of what ought to be avoided. Scarcely one could be found that was not full of mistakes--utterly wrong, and erected regardless of design and utility. Within doors, with ink, tracing paper, compasses, straight-edge and ruler, really valuable ground plans, front elevations, and so on, could be laid down. Altogether, with this circle of science to study, the future farmer had very hard work to face. Such exhaustive mental labour induced a certain nervousness that could only be allayed by relaxation. The bicycle afforded a grateful change. Mounted upon the slender, swift-revolving wheel, Mr. Phillip in the cool of the evening, after the long day of study, sometimes proceeded to stretch his limbs. The light cigar soothed his weary and overstrained mind. The bicycle by-and-by, as if drawn by the power of gravitation, approached more and more nearly to the distant town. It threaded the streets, and finally stopped in the archway of an inn. There, leaned against the wall, under the eye of the respectful ostler, the bicycle reposed. The owner strolled upstairs, and in the company of choice spirits studied the laws of right angles, of motion, and retarding friction, upon the level surface of the billiard table. Somewhere in a not much frequented street there could be seen a small window in which a coloured plate of fashions was always displayed. There were also some bonnets, trimming, and tasteful feathers. Nothing could be more attractive than this window. The milliner was young and pretty, and seemed to have a cousin equally young and pretty. Poor, lonely, friendless creatures, it was not surprising they should welcome a little flirtation. The bicycle which so swiftly carries the young man of the present day beyond the penetrating vision of his aunt or tutor has much to answer for. But, as pointed out previously, such exhaustive scientific training naturally tends to make the mind mathematical. It cannot be satisfied unless its surroundings--the substantial realisation of the concrete-are perfect. So Mr. Phillip had a suit for every purpose--for football, cricket, tennis, bicycle, shooting, dining, and strolling about. In the same way he possessed a perfect armoury of athletic and other useful implements. There were fine bats by the best makers for cricket, rods for trout fishing, splendid modified choke-bores, saddles, jockey caps, and so on. A gentleman like this could hardly long remain in the solitary halls of learning--society must claim him for parties, balls, dinners, and the usual round. It was understood that his 'governor' was a man of substantial wealth; that Phillip would certainly be placed in an extensive farm, to play the pleasant part of a gentleman farmer. People with marriageable daughters looked upon the clever scholar as a desirable addition to their drawing-rooms. Phillip, in short, found himself by degrees involved in a whirl of festivities, and was never at a loss where to go for amusement when he could obtain leave to seek relaxation. If such social adulation made him a little vain, if it led to the purchase of a twenty-five-guinea dressing-case, and to frequent consultations with the tailor, it really was not Phillip's fault. He felt himself popular, and accepted the position. When the vacation came, gathering up a fresh pile of grandly-bound prize books, broad sheets of diplomas, and certificates, Phillip departed to his friend's mansion for the partridge shooting. Coming down the road on the bicycle he overtook the reapers, and sprang his bell to warn them. The reapers thought Phillip's job better than theirs. At dinner, while sipping his claret, Phillip delivered his opinion upon the agriculture of the district, which he had surveyed from his bicycle. It was incomplete, stationary, or retrograde. The form of the fields alone was an index to the character of the farmers who cultivated them. Not one had a regular shape. The fields were neither circles, squares, parallelograms, nor triangles. One side, perhaps, might be straight; the hedgerow on the other had a dozen curves, and came up to a point. With such irregular enclosures it was impossible that the farmer could plan out his course with the necessary accuracy. The same incompleteness ran through everything--one field was well tilled, the next indifferently, the third full of weeds. Here was a good modern cattle-shed, well-designed for the purpose; yonder was a tumble-down building, with holes in the roof and walls. So, too, with the implements--a farmer never seemed to have a complete set. One farmer had, perhaps, a reaping machine, but he had not got an elevator; another had an elevator, but no steam-plough. No one had a full set of machinery. If they drained, they only drained one field; the entire farm was never by any possibility finished straight off. If the farmer had two new light carts of approved construction, he was sure to have three old rumbling waggons, in drawing which there was a great waste of power. Why not have all light carts? There was no uniformity. The farming mind lacked breadth of view, and dwelt too much on detail. It was not, of course, the fault of the tenants of the present day, but the very houses they inhabited were always put in the wrong place. Where the ground was low, flat, and liable to be flooded, the farmhouse was always built by a brook. When the storms of winter came the brook overflowed, and the place was almost inaccessible. In hilly districts, where there was not much water, the farmhouse was situate on the slope, or perhaps on the plateau above, and in summer very likely every drop of water used had to be drawn up there from a distance in tanks. The whole of rural England, in short, wanted rearranging upon mathematical principles. To begin at the smallest divisions, the fields should be mapped out like the squares of a chessboard; next, the parishes; and, lastly, the counties. You ought to be able to work steam-ploughing tackle across a whole parish, if the rope could be made strong enough. If you talked with a farmer, you found him somehow or other quite incapable of following a logical sequence of argument. He got on very well for a few sentences, but, just as one was going to come to the conclusion, his mind seized on some little paltry detail, and refused to move any farther. He positively could not follow you to a logical conclusion. If you, for instance, tried to show him that a certain course of cropping was the correct one for certain fields, he would listen for awhile, and then suddenly declare that the turnips in one of the said fields last year were a failure. That particular crop of turnips had nothing at all to do with the system at large, but the farmer could see nothing else. What had struck him most, however, in that particular district, as he traversed it on the bicycle, was the great loss of time that must result from the absence of rapid means of communication on large farms. The distance across a large farm might, perhaps, be a mile. Some farms were not very broad, but extended in a narrow strip for a great way. Hours were occupied in riding round such farms, hours which might be saved by simple means. Suppose, for example, that a gang of labourers were at work in the harvest-field, three-quarters of a mile from the farmhouse. Now, why not have a field telegraph, like that employed in military operations? The cable or wire was rolled on a drum like those used for watering a lawn. All that was needed was to harness a pony, and the drum would unroll and lay the wire as it revolved. The farmer could then sit in his office and telegraph his instructions without a moment's delay. He could tap the barometer, and wire to the bailiff in the field to be expeditious, for the mercury was falling. Practically, there was no more necessity for the farmer to go outside his office than for a merchant in Mincing Lane. The merchant did not sail in every ship whose cargo was consigned to him: why should the farmer watch every waggon loaded? Steam could drive the farmer's plough, cut the chaff, pump the water, and, in short, do everything. The field telegraph could be laid down to any required spot with the greatest ease, and thus, sitting in his office chair, the farmer could control the operations of the farm without once soiling his hands. Mr. Phillip, as he concluded his remarks, reached his glass of claret, and thus incidentally exhibited his own hand, which was as white as a lady's. CHAPTER VIII HAYMAKING. 'THE JUKE'S COUNTRY' A rattling, thumping, booming noise, like the beating of their war drums by savages, comes over the hedge where the bees are busy at the bramble flowers. The bees take no heed, they pass from flower to flower, seeking the sweet honey to store at home in the hive, as their bee ancestors did before the Roman legions marched to Cowey Stakes. Their habits have not changed; their 'social' relations are the same; they have not called in the aid of machinery to enlarge their liquid, wealth, or to increase the facility of collecting it. There is a low murmur rather than a buzz along the hedgerow; but over it the hot summer breeze brings the thumping, rattling, booming sound of hollow metal striking against the ground or in contact with other metal. These ringing noises, which so little accord with the sweet-scented hay and green hedgerows, are caused by the careless handling of milk tins dragged hither and thither by the men who are getting the afternoon milk ready for transit to the railway station miles away. Each tin bears a brazen badge engraved with the name of the milkman who will retail its contents in distant London. It may be delivered to the countess in Belgravia, and reach her dainty lip in the morning chocolate, or it may be eagerly swallowed up by the half-starved children of some back court in the purlieus of the Seven Dials. Sturdy milkmaids may still be seen in London, sweeping the crowded pavement clear before them as they walk with swinging tread, a yoke on their shoulders, from door to door. Some remnant of the traditional dairy thus survives in the stony streets that are separated so widely from the country. But here, beside the hay, the hedgerows, the bees, the flowers that precede the blackberries--here in the heart of the meadows the romance has departed. Everything is mechanical or scientific. From the refrigerator that cools the milk, the thermometer that tests its temperature, the lactometer that proves its quality, all is mechanical precision. The tins themselves are metal--wood, the old country material for almost every purpose, is eschewed--and they are swung up into a waggon specially built for the purpose. It is the very antithesis of the jolting and cumbrous waggon used for generations in the hay-fields and among the corn. It is light, elegantly proportioned, painted, varnished--the work rather of a coachbuilder than a cartwright. The horse harnessed in it is equally unlike the cart-horse. A quick, wiry horse, that may be driven in a trap or gig, is the style--one that will rattle along and catch the train. The driver takes his seat and handles the reins with the air of a man driving a tradesman's van, instead of walking, like the true old carter, or sitting on the shaft. The vehicle rattles off to the station, where ten, fifteen, or perhaps twenty such converge at the same hour, and then ensues a scene of bustle, chaff, and rough language. The tins are placed in the van specially reserved for them, the whistle sounds, the passengers--who have been wondering why on earth there was all this noise and delay at a little roadside station without so much as a visible steeple--withdraw their heads from the windows; the wheels revolve, and, gathering speed, the train disappears round the curve, hastening to the metropolis. Then the empty tins returned from town have to be conveyed home with more rattling, thumping and booming of hollow tin--there to be carefully cleansed, for which purpose vast quantities of hot water must be ready, and coal, of course, must be consumed in proportion. This beautiful afternoon the booming seems to sound more than usual; it may perhaps be the wind that carries the noise along. But Mr. George, the farmer, who has been working among the haymakers, steps out from the rank, and going some way aside pauses awhile to consider. You should not address him as Farmer George. Farmer as an affix is not the thing now; farmers are 'Mr. So-and-so.' Not that there is any false pride about the present individual; his memory goes back too far, and he has had too much experience of the world. He leans on his prong--the sharp forks worn bright as silver from use--stuck in the sward, and his chest pressing on the top of the handle, or rather on both hands, with which he holds it. The handle makes an angle of forty-five degrees with his body, and thus gives considerable support and relief while he reflects. He leans on his prong, facing to windward, and gazing straight into the teeth of the light breeze, as he has done these forty and odd summers past. Like the captain of a sailing ship, the eye of the master haymaker must be always watching the horizon to windward. He depends on the sky, like the mariner, and spreads his canvas and shapes his course by the clouds. He must note their varying form and drift; the height and thickness and hue; whether there is a dew in the evenings; whether the distant hills are clearly defined or misty; and what the sunset portends. From the signs of the sunset he learns, like the antique Roman husbandman-- 'When the south projects a stormy day, And when the clearing north will puff the clouds away.' According as the interpretation of the signs be favourable, adverse, or doubtful, so he gives his orders. This afternoon, as he stands leaning on the prong, he marks the soft air which seems itself to be heated, and renders the shade, if you seek it for coolness, as sultry as the open field. The flies are numerous and busy--the horses can barely stand still, and nod their heads to shake them off. The hills seem near, and the trees on the summit are distinctly visible. Such noises as are heard seem exaggerated and hollow. There is but little cloud, mere thin flecks; but the horizon has a brassy look, and the blue of the sky is hard and opaque. Farmer George recollects that the barometer he tapped before coming out showed a falling mercury; he does not like these appearances, more especially the heated breeze. There is a large quantity of hay in the meadow, much of it quite ready for carting, indeed, the waggons are picking it up as fast as they can, and the rest, if left spread about through next day--Sunday--would be fit on Monday. On Sunday there are no wages to pay to the labourers; but the sun, if it shines, works as hard and effectually as ever. It is always a temptation to the haymaker to leave his half-made hay spread about for Sunday, so that on Monday morning he may find it made. Another reason why he hesitates is because he knows he will have trouble with the labourers, who will want to be off early as it is Saturday. They are not so ready to work an hour or two overtime as when he was a boy. On the other hand, he recollects that the weather cablegrams from America foretell the arrival of a depression. What would his grandfather have thought of adjusting the work in an English meadow to the tenour of news from the other side of the Atlantic? Suddenly, while he ponders, there arises a shout from the labourers. The hay in one spot, as if seized by an invisible force, lifts itself up and revolves round and round, rising higher every turn. A miniature cyclone is whirling it up--a column of hay twisting in a circle and rising above the trees. Then the force of the whirlwind spends itself; some of the hay falls on the oaks, and some drifts with the breeze across the field before it sinks. This decides him at once. He resolves to have all the hay carted that he can, and the remainder put up into haycocks. The men grumble when they hear it; perhaps a year ago they would have openly mutinied, and refused to work beyond the usual hour. But, though wages are still high, the labourers feel that they are not so much the masters as they were--they grumble, but obey. The haycocks are put up, and the rick-cloth unfolded over the partly made rick. Farmer George himself sees to it that the cloth does not touch the rick at the edges, or the rain, if it comes, will go through instead of shooting off, and that the ropes are taut and firmly belayed. His caution is justified in the night by a violent thunderstorm, and in the morning it is raining steadily. It rains again on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday it does not rain, but the hedges are wet, the ground is soaked, the grass hung with raindrops, the sky heavy with masses of drifting cloud. The hay cannot be touched; it must lie a day till sufficiently dry. Friday is more hopeful. He walks out into the fields, and kicks a haycock half over. The hay is still wet, but he congratulates himself that not much damage is done. Saturday Is warm and fine--work goes on again. But Sunday is near. Sunday is fiery hot. Monday, the rain pours down with tropical vehemence. Thus the monotonous, heart-breaking days go by and lengthen into weeks, and the weeks extend into months. The wheat is turning colour, and still the hay lies about, and the farmer has ceased even to tap the barometer. Those fields that are not cut are brown as brown can be--the grass has seeded and is over ripe. The labourers come every day, and some trifling job is found for them--the garden path is weeded, the nettles cut, and such little matters done. Their wages are paid every week in silver and gold--harvest wages, for which no stroke of harvest work has been done. He must keep them on, because any day the weather may brighten, and then they will be wanted. But the weather does not brighten, and the drain of ready cash continues. Besides the men, the mowing machine is idle in the shed. Even if the rain ceases, the crops are so laid that it is doubtful if it can be employed. The horse-rake is idle, the elevator is idle, the haymaking machine is idle, and these represent capital, if not to a large amount. He notes the price of hay at the market. For months past it has been low--so low that it has hardly paid him to sell that portion of old hay which he felt he could spare. From October of last year to June of this [1879] the price remained about the same. It is now rising, but he has no more old hay to part with, and the new is not yet made. He has to bear in mind that his herd of cows has to be kept in high feed all the winter, to supply an unvarying quantity of milk to the London purchaser. These wet days, forcing him unwillingly to stay within doors, send him to his books and accounts, and they tell a story somewhat at variance with the prevalent belief that dairy-farming is the only branch of farming that is still profitable. First, as to the milk-selling. Cows naturally yield a larger supply in the summer than in winter, but by the provisions of the contract between the farmer and the milkman the quantity sent in summer is not to exceed, and the quantity in winter not to fall short of, a stipulated amount.[Footnote: An improvement upon this system has been introduced by the leading metropolitan dairy company. The farmer is asked to fix a minimum quantity which he will engage to supply daily, but he can send as much more as he likes. This permits of economical and natural management in a dairy, which was very difficult under the rigid rule mentioned above.] The price received in summer is about fivepence or fivepence-halfpenny per imperial gallon, afterwards retailed in London at about one shilling and eightpence. When the cost of conveyance to the station, of the horses, of the wear and tear, of the men who have to be paid for doing nothing else but look after the milk, is deducted, the profit to the farmer is but small. He thinks, too, that he notices a decided falling-off in the demand for milk even at this price. Some dairies find a difficulty in disposing of the milk--they cannot find a purchaser. He has himself a considerable surplus over and above what the contract allows him to send. This must either be wasted entirely or made into butter and cheese. In order to make cheese, the plant, the tubs, vats, presses, and so on, must be kept in readiness, and there must be an experienced person to superintend the work. This person must be paid a salary, and lodge and board in the house, representing therefore a considerable outlay. The cheese, when made and sent to market, fluctuates of course in price: it may be as low as fourpence a pound wholesale; it may go as high as sixpence. Fourpence a pound wholesale will not pay for the making; sixpence will leave a profit; but of late the price has gone rather to the lower than the higher figure. A few years since, when the iron industries flourished, this kind of cheese had a good and ready sale, and there was a profit belonging to it; but since the iron trade has been in so depressed a condition this cheese has sold badly. The surplus milk consequently brings no profit, and is only made into cheese because it shall not be wasted, and in the hope that possibly a favourable turn of the cheese market may happen. Neither the summer cheese nor the summer milk is bringing him in a fortune. Meantime the hay is spoiling in the fields. But a few years ago, when agricultural prices were inflated, and men's minds were full of confidence, he recollects seeing standing grass crops sold by auction for 5_l_. the acre, and in some cases even higher prices were realised. This year similar auctions of standing grass crops hardly realised 30_s_. an acre, and in some instances a purchaser could not be found even at that price. The difference in the value of grass represented by these prices is very great. He has no pigs to sell, because, for a long while past, he has had nothing upon which to feed them, the milk being sold. The pigsties are full of weeds; he can hardly fatten one for his own use, and has scarcely better facilities for keeping pigs than an agricultural labourer. The carriage of the milk to the station requires at least two quick horses, and perhaps more; one cannot do it twice a day, even with a very moderate load. The hard highway and the incessant work would soon knock a single horse up. The mowing machine and the horse-rake must be drawn by a similar horse, so that the dairy farm may be said to require a style of horse like that employed by omnibus proprietors. The acreage being limited, he can only keep a certain number of horses, and, therefore, has no room for a brood mare. Farmer George is aware that nothing now pays like a brood cart mare with fair good luck. The colt born in April is often sold six months afterwards, in September, for 20_l_. or 25_l_., and even up to 30_l_., according to excellence. The value of cart-horse colts has risen greatly, and those who are fortunately able to maintain a brood mare have reaped the profit. But Mr. George, selling the milk, and keeping a whole stud of nags for the milk cart, the mowing machine, the horse-rake, and so forth, cannot maintain a brood mare as well. In the winter, it is true, the milk may sell for as high a price as tenpence per gallon of four quarts, but then he has a difficulty in procuring the quantity contracted for, and may perhaps have to buy of neighbours to keep up the precise supply. His herd must also be managed for the purpose, and must be well fed, and he will probably have to buy food for them in addition to his hay. The nag horses, too, that draw the milk waggon, have to be fed during the winter, and are no slight expense. As for fattening a beast in a stall, with a view to take the prize at Christmas at the local show, he has abandoned that, finding that it costs more to bring the animal up to the condition required than he can afterwards sell it for. There is no profit in that. America presses upon him hard, too--as hard, or harder, than on the wheat-grower. Cases have been known of American cheese being sold in manufacturing towns as low as twopence per pound retail--given away by despairing competition. How, then, is the dairyman to succeed when he cannot, positively cannot, make cheese to sell at less than fourpence per pound wholesale? Of course such instances are exceptional, but American cheese is usually sold a penny or more a pound below the English ordinary, and this cuts the ground from under the dairyman's feet; and the American cheese too is acquiring a reputation for richness, and, price for price, surpasses the English in quality. Some people who have long cherished a prejudice against the American have found, upon at last being induced to try the two, that the Canadian cheddar is actually superior to the English cheddar, the English selling at tenpence per pound and the Canadian at sevenpence. Mr. George finds he pays a very high rent for his grass land--some 50_s_. per acre--and upon reckoning up the figures in his account-books heaves a sigh. His neighbours perchance may be making fortunes, though they tell quite a different tale, but he feels that he is not growing rich. The work is hard, or rather it is continuous. No one has to attend to his duties so regularly all the year round as the man who looks after cows. They cannot be left a single day from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Nor is the social state of things altogether pleasant to reflect on. His sons and daughters have all left home; not one would stay and take to the dairy work. They have gone into the towns, and found more congenial employment there. He is himself growing in years. His wife, having once left off making cheese when the milk selling commenced, and having tasted the sweets of rest, is unwilling to return to that hard labour. When it is done he must pay some one to do it. In every way ready money is going out of the house. Cash to pay the haymakers idling about in the sheds out of the rain; cash to pay the men who manage the milk; cash to pay the woman who makes the cheese out of the surplus milk; cash to pay the blacksmith for continually re-shoeing the milk cart nags and for mending machines; cash to pay the brewer and the butcher and the baker, neither of whom took a sovereign here when he was a lad, for his father ate his own bacon, brewed his own beer, and baked his own bread; cash to pay for the education of the cottagers' children; cash, a great deal of cash, to pay the landlord. Mr. George, having had enough of his accounts, rises and goes to the window. A rain cloud sweeping along the distant hills has hidden them from sight, and the rack hurries overhead driven before the stormy wind. There comes a knock at the door. It is the collector calling the second time for the poor rates, which have grown heavier of late. But, however delayed, the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season. Then Mr. George some mild morning forms one of a little group of well-mounted farmers waiting at a quiet corner while the hounds draw a great wood. Two of them are men long past middle age, whose once tawny beards are grizzled, but who are still game, perhaps more so than the rising generation. The rest have followed them here, aware that these old hands know every inch of the country, and are certain to be in the right place. The spot is not far from the park wall, where the wood runs up into a wedge-shaped point, and ends in a low mound and hedge. Most of the company at the meet in the park have naturally cantered across the level sward, scattering the sheep as they go, and are now assembled along the side of the wood, near where a green 'drive' goes through it, and apparently gives direct access to the fields beyond. From thence they can see the huntsman in the wood occasionally, and trace the exact course the hounds are taking in their search. A gallant show it is by the wood! Horsemen and horsewomen, late comers hastening up, restless horses, a throng for ever in motion, and every now and then the blast of a horn rising up from the trees beneath. A gallant show indeed, but two old cunning ones and their followers have slipped away down to this obscure corner where they can see nothing of it, and are themselves hidden. They know that the wood is triangular in shape, and that from this, the apex, they have merely to pass the low hedge in front, and, turning to the left, ride along the lower side, and so bisect the course the fox will probably take. They know that the 'drive,' which offers so straight and easy a descent through the wood from the park, is pleasant enough till the lower ground is reached. There the soft, oozy earth, which can never dry under the trees, is poached into a slough through which even timber carriages cannot be drawn. Nor can a horseman slip aside, because of the ash poles and thorn thickets. Those who are trapped there must return to the park and gallop all round the wood outside, unless they like to venture a roll in that liquid mud. Any one can go to a meet, but to know all the peculiarities of the covers is only given to those who have ridden over the country these forty years. In this corner a detached copse of spruce fir keeps off the wind--the direction of which they have noted--and in this shelter it is almost warm. The distant crack of a whip, the solitary cry of a hound, a hollow shout, and similar sounds, come frequently, and now and then there is an irrepressible stir in the little group as they hear one of the many false alarms that always occur in drawing a great wood. To these noises they are keenly sensitive, but utterly ignore the signs of other life around them. A pheasant, alarmed by the hounds, comes running quietly, thinking to escape into the line of isolated copses that commences here; but, suddenly confronted by the horsemen just outside, rises with an uproar, and goes sailing down over the fields. Two squirrels, happy in the mild weather, frisk out of the copse into the dank grass, till a curvet of one of the horses frightens them up into the firs again. Horses and men are becoming impatient. 'That dalled keeper has left an earth open,' remarks one of the riders. His companion points with his whip at the hedge just where it joins the wood. A long slender muzzle is thrust for a moment cautiously over the bare sandy mound under cover of a thorn stole. One sniff, and it is withdrawn. The fox thought also to steal away along the copses, the worst and most baffling course he could choose. Five minutes afterwards, and there is this time no mistake. There comes from the park above the low, dull, rushing roar of hundreds of hoofs, that strike the sward together, and force by sheer weight the reluctant earth to resound. The two old hands lead over the hedge, and the little company, slipping along below the wood, find themselves well on the track, far in front of the main body. There is a block in the treacherous 'drive,' those who where foremost struggling to get back, and those behind struggling to come down. The rest at last, learning the truth, are galloping round the outside, and taking it out of their horses before they get on the course at all. It is a splendid burst, and the pace is terrible. The farmers' powerful horses find it heavy going across the fresh ploughed furrows and the wet 'squishey' meadows, where the double mounds cannot be shirked. Now a lull, and the two old hands, a little at fault, make for the rising ground, where are some ricks, and a threshing machine at work, thinking from thence to see over the tall hedgerows. Upon the rick the labourers have stopped work, and are eagerly watching the chase, for from that height they can see the whole field. Yonder the main body have found a succession of fields with the gates all open: some carting is in progress, and the gates have been left open for the carter's convenience. A hundred horsemen and eight or ten ladies are galloping in an extended line along this route, riding hardest, as often happens, when the hounds are quiet, that they may be ready when the chiding commences. Suddenly the labourers exclaim and point, the hounds open, and the farmers, knowing from the direction they point where to ride, are off. But this time the fox has doubled, so that the squadrons hitherto behind are now closest up, and the farmers in the rear: thus the fortune of war changes, and the race is not to the swift. The labourers on the rick, which stands on the side of a hill, are fully as excited as the riders, and they can see what the hunter himself rarely views, _i.e._ the fox slipping ahead before the hounds. Then they turn to alternately laugh at, and shout directions to a disconsolate gentleman, who, ignorant of the district, is pounded in a small meadow. He is riding frantically round and round, afraid to risk the broad brook which encircles it, because of the treacherous bank, and maddened by the receding sound of the chase. A boy gets off the rick and runs to earn sixpence by showing a way out. So from the rick Hodge has his share of the sport, and at that elevation can see over a wide stretch of what he--changing the 'd' into a 'j'--calls 'the juke's country.' It is a famous land. There are spaces, which on the map look large, and yet have no distinctive character, no individuality as it were. Such broad expanses of plain and vale are usefully employed in the production of cattle and corn. Villages, hamlets, even towns are dotted about them, but a list of such places would not contain a single name that would catch the eye. Though occupying so many square miles, the district, so far as the world is concerned, is non-existent. It is socially a blank. But 'the juke's country' is a well-known land. There are names connected with it which are familiar not only in England, but all the world over, where men--and where do they not?--converse of sport. Something beyond mere utility, beyond ploughing and sowing, has given it within its bounds a species of separate nationality. The personal influence of an acknowledged leader has organised society and impressed it with a quiet enthusiasm. Even the bitterest Radical forgives the patrician who shoots or rides exceptionally well, and hunting is a pursuit which brings the peer and the commoner side by side. The agricultural population speak as one man upon the subject. The old farmer will tell you with pride how his advice was sought when disease entered the kennels, and how his remedy saved the lives of valuable hounds. The farmer's son, a mere lad, whose head barely rises to his saddle, talks of 'the duke' as his hero. This boy knows the country, and can ride straight, better than many a gentleman with groom and second horse behind. Already, like his elders, he looks forward impatiently to the fall of the leaf. The tenants' wives and daughters allude with pleasure to the annual social gatherings at the mansion, and it is apparent that something like a real bond exists between landlord and tenant. No false pride separates the one from the other--intercourse is easy, for a man of high and ancient lineage can speak freely to the humblest labourer without endangering his precedence. It needs none of the parvenu's _hauteur_ and pomp to support his dignity. Every tenant is treated alike. On small estates there is sometimes a complaint that the largest tenant is petted while the lesser are harshly treated. Nothing of that is known here. The tenants are as well content as it is possible for men to be who are passing under the universal depression. _Noblesse oblige_--it would be impossible for that ancient house to stoop to meanness. The head rides to the hunt, as his ancestors rode to battle, with a hundred horsemen behind him. His colours are like the cockades of olden times. Once now and then even Royalty honours the meet with its presence. Round that ancient house the goodwill of the county gathers; and when any family event--as a marriage--takes place, the hearty congratulations offered come from far beyond the actual property. His pastime is not without its use--all are agreed that hunting really does improve the breed of horses. Certainly it gives a life, a go, a social movement to the country which nothing else imparts. It is a pleasant land withal--a land of hill and vale, of wood and copse. How well remembered are the copses on the hills, and the steeples, those time-honoured landmarks to wandering riders! The small meadows with double mounds have held captive many a stranger. The river that winds through them enters by-and-by a small but ancient town, with its memories of the fierce Danes, and its present talk of the hunt. About five o'clock on winter afternoons there is a clank of spurs in the courtyard of the old inn, and the bar is crowded with men in breeches and top-boots. As they refresh themselves there is a ceaseless hum of conversation, how so-and-so came a cropper, how another went at the brook in style, or how some poor horse got staked and was mercifully shot. A talk, in short, like that in camp after a battle, of wounds and glory. Most of these men are tenant farmers, and reference is sure to be made to the price of cheese, and the forthcoming local agricultural show. This old market town has been noted for generations as a great cheese centre. It is not, perhaps, the most convenient situation for such a market, and its population is inconsiderable; but the trade is, somehow or other, a tradition of the place, and traditions are hard to shake. Efforts have been made to establish rival markets in towns nearer to the modern resorts of commerce, but in vain. The attempt has always proved a failure, and to this day the prices quoted at this place rule those of the adjoining counties, and are watched in distant cities. The depression made itself felt here in a very practical manner, for prices fell to such an extent that the manufacture of the old style of cheese became almost a dead loss. Some farmers abandoned it, and at much trouble and expense changed their system, and began to produce Cheddar and Stilton. But when the Stilton was at last ready, there was no demand for it. Almost suddenly, however, and quite recently, a demand sprang up, and the price of that cheese rose. They say here in the bar that this probably saved many from difficulties; large stocks that had been lying on hand unsaleable for months going off at a good price. They hope that it is an omen of returning prosperity, and do not fail to observe the remarkable illustration it affords of the close connection between trade and agriculture. For no sooner did the iron trade revive than the price of cheese responded. The elder men cannot refrain from chuckling over the altered tone of the inhabitants of cities towards the farmers. 'Years ago,' they say, 'we were held up to scorn, and told that we were quite useless; there was nothing so contemptible as the British farmer. Now they have discovered that, after all, we are some good, and even Manchester sympathises with us.' It is now hoped that the forthcoming local show--largely patronised and promoted by the chief of the hunting field--will be better than was at one time anticipated. Those who would like to see the real working of an agricultural show such as this should contrive to visit the yard early in the morning of the opening day, some few hours before the public are admitted. The bustle, the crash of excited exhibitors, the cries of men in charge of cattle, the apparently inextricable confusion, as if everything had been put off to the last moment--the whole scene is intensely agricultural. Every one is calling for the secretary. A drover wants to know where to put his fat cattle; a carter wants to ask where a great cart-horse is to stand--he and his horse together are hopelessly floundering about in the crowd. The agent of a firm of implement manufacturers has a telegram that another machine is coming, and is anxious for extra space; the representative of an artificial manure factory is vainly seeking a parcel that has got mislaid. The seedsman requires permission to somewhat shift his stall; wherever is the secretary? When he appears, a clergyman at once pounces on him to apply for tickets for the dinner, and is followed by a farmer, who must have a form and an explanation how to fill it up. One of his labourers has decided at the last minute to enter for a prize--he has had a year to make up his mind in. A crowd of members of the Society are pushing round for a private view, and watching the judges at their work. They all turn to the secretary to ask where such and such an exhibit may be found, and demand why on earth the catalogues are not ready? Mr. Secretary, a stout tenant farmer, in breeches and top-boots, whose broad face beams with good nature (selected, perhaps, for that very quality), pants and wipes his forehead, for, despite the cold, the exertion and the universal flurry have made him quiet hot. He gives every inquirer a civil answer, and affably begs the eager folk that press upon him to come up into the committee-room. At this a satisfied smile replaces the troubled expression upon their faces. They feel that their difficulties are at an end; they have got hold of the right man at last--there is something soothing in the very sound of the committee-room. When they get up into this important apartment they find it quite empty. There is a blazing fire in the grate, and littered on the long table is a mass of forms, letters, lists, and proofs of the catalogue waiting for the judges' decision to be entered. After half an hour or so their hopes begin to fall, and possibly some one goes down to try and haul the secretary up into his office. The messenger finds that much-desired man in the midst of an excited group; one has him by the arm pulling him forward, another by the coat dragging him back, a third is bawling at him at the top of a powerful voice. By-and-by, however, the secretary comes panting up into the committee-room with a letter in his hand and a pleased expression on his features. He announces that he has just had a note from his Grace, who, with his party, will be here early, and who hopes that all is going on well. Then to business, and it is surprising how quickly he disposes of it. A farmer himself, he knows exactly what is wanted, and gives the right order without a moment's hesitation. It is no new experience to him, and despite all this apparent confusion, everything presently falls into its place. After the opening of the show there is a meeting, at which certain prizes are distributed, among them rewards to the best ploughman in 'the juke's country,' and to those labourers who have remained longest in the service of one master. For the graceful duty of presentation a marchioness has been selected, who, with other visitors of high social rank, has come over from that famous hunting mansion. To meet that brilliant party the whole agricultural interest has assembled. The room is crowded with tenant farmers, the entire hunting field is present. Every clergyman in the district is here, together with the gentry, and many visitors for the hunting season. Among them, shoulder to shoulder, are numbers of agricultural labourers, their wives, and daughters, dressed in their best for the occasion. After some speeches, a name is called, and an aged labourer steps forward. His grandchildren are behind him; two of his sons, quite elderly themselves, attend him almost to the front, so that he may have to make but a few steps unsupported. The old man is frosted with age, and moves stiffly, like a piece of mechanism rather than a living creature, nor is there any expression--neither smile nor interest--upon his absolutely immobile features. He wears breeches and gaiters, and a blue coat cut in the style of two generations since. There is a small clear space in the midst of the well-dressed throng. There he stands, and for the moment the hum is hushed. For sixty years that old man laboured upon one farm; sixty years of ploughing and sowing, sixty harvests. What excitement, what discoveries and inventions--with what giant strides the world has progressed while he quietly followed the plough! An acknowledgment has been publicly awarded to him for that long and faithful service. He puts forth his arm; his dry, horny fingers are crooked, and he can neither straighten nor bend them. Not the least sign appears upon his countenance that he is even conscious of what is passing. There is a quick flash of jewelled rings ungloved to the light, and the reward is placed in that claw-like grasp by the white hand of the marchioness. Not all the gallant cavalry of the land fearlessly charging hedge and brook can, however, repel the invasion of a foe mightier than their chief. Frost sometimes comes and checks their gaiety. Snow falls, and levels every furrow, and then Hodge going to his work in the morning can clearly trace the track of one of his most powerful masters, Squire Reynard, who has been abroad in the night, and, likely enough, throttled the traditional grey goose. The farmer watches for the frozen thatch to drip; the gentleman visiting the stable looks up disconsolately at the icicles dependent from the slated eave with the same hope. The sight of a stray seagull wandering inland is gladly welcomed, as the harbinger of drenching clouds sweeping up on soft south-westerly gales from the nearest coast. The hunt is up once more, and so short are the hours of the day in the dead of the year, that early night often closes round the chase. From out of the gloom and the mist comes the distant note of the horn, with a weird and old-world sound. By-and-by the labourer, trudging homeward, is overtaken by a hunter whose horse's neck droops with weariness. His boots are splashed with mud, his coat torn by the thorns. He is a visitor, vainly trying to find his way home, having come some ten or fifteen miles across country since the morning. The labourer shows the route--the longest way round is the shortest at night--and as they go listens eagerly to the hunter's tale of the run. At the cross roads they part with mutual goodwill towards each other, and a shilling, easily earned, pays that night for the cottager's pipe and glass of ale. CHAPTER IX THE FINE LADY FARMER. COUNTRY GIRLS A pair of well-matched bays in silver-plated harness, and driven by a coachman in livery, turn an easy curve round a corner of the narrow country road, forcing you to step on the sward by the crimson-leaved bramble bushes, and sprinkling the dust over the previously glossy surface of the newly fallen horse chestnuts. Two ladies, elegantly dressed, lounge in the carriage with that graceful idleness--that indifferent indolence--only to be acquired in an atmosphere of luxury. Before they pass out of sight round another turn of the road it is possible to observe that one at least possesses hair of the fashionable hue, and a complexion delicately brilliant--whether wholly natural or partly aided by art. The other must be pronounced a shade less rich in the colours of youth, but is perhaps even more expensively dressed. An experienced observer would at once put them down as mother and daughter, as, indeed, they are. The polished spokes of the wheels glitter in the sun, the hoofs of the high-stepping pair beat the firm road in regular cadence, and smoothly the carriage rolls on till the brown beech at the corner hides it. But a sense of wealth, of social station, and refinement--strange and in strong contrast to the rustic scene--lingers behind, like a faint odour of perfume. There are the slow teams pulling stolidly at the ploughs--they were stopped, of course, for the carters to stare at the equipage; there are the wheat ricks; yonder a lone farmstead, and black cattle grazing in the pasture. Surely the costly bays, whose hoofs may even now be heard, must belong to the lordly owner of these broad acres--this undulating landscape of grass and stubble, which is not beautiful but evidently fertile! A very brief inquiry at the adjacent market town disposes of this natural conclusion. It is the carriage of a tenant farmer--but what a tenant! The shopkeepers here are eloquent, positively gratefully eloquent, in the praise of his wife and daughter. Customers!--no such customers had been known in the old borough from time immemorial. The tradesman as he speaks involuntarily pulls out his till, glances in, and shuts it up with a satisfied bang. The old style of farmer, solid and substantial enough, fumbling at the bottom of his canvas bag for silver and gold, was a crusty curmudgeon where silk and satin, kid gloves, and so forth were concerned. His wife had to look sharp after her poultry, geese and turkeys, and such similar perquisites, in order to indulge in any innocent vanity, notwithstanding that the rent was paid and a heavy balance at the bank. Then he would have such a length of credit--a year at least--and nowadays a shopkeeper, though sure of his money, cannot wait long for it. But to ask for the account was to give mortal offence. The bill would be paid with the remark, intended to be intensely sarcastic, 'Suppose you thought we was a-going to run away--eh?' and the door would never again be darkened by those antique breeches and gaiters. As for the common run of ordinary farmers, their wives bought a good deal, but wanted it cheap and, looking at the low price of corn and the 'paper' there was floating about, it did not do to allow a long bill to be run up. But the Grange people--ah! the Grange people put some life into the place. 'Money! they must have heaps of money' (lowering his voice to a whisper). 'Why, Mrs. ---- brought him a fortune, sir; why, she's got a larger income than our squire' (as if it were, rank treason to say so). 'Mr. ---- has got money too, and bless you, they holds their heads as high as their landlord's, and good reason they should. They spend as much in a week as the squire do in a month, and don't cheapen nothing, and your cheque just whenever you like to ask for it. That's what I calls gentlefolks.' For till and counter gauge long descent, and heraldic quarterings, and ancestral Crusaders, far below the chink of ready money, that synonym for all the virtues. The Grange people, indeed, are so conspicuous, that there is little secrecy about them or their affairs. The house they reside in--it cannot be called a farmstead--is a large villa-like mansion of recent erection, and fitted with every modern convenience. The real farmstead which it supplanted lies in a hollow at some distance, and is occupied by the head bailiff, for there are several employed. As the architecture of the villa is consonant with modern 'taste,' so too the inferior is furnished in the 'best style,' of course under the supervision of the mistress. Mrs. ---- has filled it with rosewood and ormolu, with chairs completely gilt, legs, back, seat, and all, with luxurious ottomans, 'occasional' tables inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, soft carpets, polished brazen grate-fittings, semi-ecclesiastical, semi-mediaeval, and so forth. Everywhere the glitter of glass, mirrors over the mantelpieces, mirrors let into panels, glass chiffoniers, and pendent prisms of glass round the ornamental candlesticks. Mixed with this some of the latest productions of the new English Renaissance--stiff, straight-back, plain oak chairs, such as men in armour may have used--together with Japanese screens. In short, just such a medley of artistic styles as may be seen in scores of suburban villas where money is of little account, and even in houses of higher social pretensions. There is the usual illustrated dining-room literature, the usual _bric-à-brac_, the usual cabinet series of poets. There are oil paintings on the walls; there is an immense amount of the most expensive electroplate on the dinner table; the toilet accessories in the guest chambers are 'elegant' and _recherché_. The upholsterer has not been grudged. For Mrs. ---- is the daughter of a commercial man, one of the principals of a great firm, and has been accustomed to these things from her youth upwards. She has no sympathies with the past, that even yet is loth to quit its hold of the soil and of those who are bred upon it. The ancient simplicity and plainness of country life are positively repulsive to her; she associates them with poverty. Her sympathies are with warm, well-lighted rooms, full of comfort, shadowless because of the glare of much gas. She is not vulgar, just the reverse--she is a thorough lady, but she is not of the country and its traditions. She is the city and the suburb transplanted to the midst of corn, and grass, and cattle. She has her maid, skilled in the toilet, her carriage and pair and pony carriage, grooms, footmen, just exactly as she would have done had she brought her magnificent dowry to a villa at Sydenham. In the season, with her daughter, she goes to town, and drives daily in the park, just the same as to-day she has driven through the leaf-strewn country-lane to the market town. They go also to the sea-side, and now and then to the Continent. They are, of course, invited to the local balls, and to many of the best houses on more private occasions. The ramifications of finance do not except the proudest descendants of the Crusaders, and the 'firm' has its clients even among them. Bonnets come down from Madame Louise, boxes of novels from Mudie's; 'Le Follet' is read in the original, and many a Parisian romance as well. Visitors are continually coming and going--the carriage is perpetually backwards and forwards to the distant railway station. Friends come to the shooting, the hunting, the fishing; there is never any lack of society. The house is full of servants, and need be, to wait upon these people. Now, in former days, and not such a great while since, the best of servants came from the country. Mistresses sought for them, and mourned when, having imbibed town ways and town independence, they took their departure to 'better' themselves. But that is a thing of the past; it is gone with the disappearance of the old style of country life. Servant girls in farmhouses when young used to have a terribly hard life: hard work, hard fare, up early of a morning, stone flags under foot by day, bare boards under foot upstairs, small pay, and hard words too often. But they turned out the best of women, the healthiest and strongest, the most sought after. Now they learn a great deal about Timbuctoo, and will soon, no doubt, about Cyprus; but the 'servant from the country' is no more. Nothing less will suit them to begin with than the service of the parish clergyman, then they aspire to the Grange, get there, and receive a finishing education, and can never afterwards condescend to go where a footman is not kept. They become, in short, fine ladies, whose fathers are still at the plough--ladies who at home have been glad of bread and bacon, and now cannot possibly survive without hot butcher's meat every day, and game and fish in their seasons. But to return. Mrs. ---- and her daughter have also their saddle horses. They do not often hunt, but frequently go to the meet. They have, it is true, an acceptable excuse for preferring riding to walking--the fashion of tying the dress back so tightly makes it extremely difficult for a lady to get over a country stile. The rigours of winter only enable them to appear even yet more charming in furs and sealskin. In all this the Grange people have not laid themselves open to any reproach as to the extravagance or pretension of their doings. With them it is genuine, real, unaffected: in brief, they have money, and have a right to what it can purchase. Mr. ---- is not a tenant farmer from necessity; personally he is not a farmer at all, and knows no more of shorthorns than the veriest 'City' man. He has a certain taste for country life, and this is his way of enjoying it--and a very acute way, too, when you come to analyse it. The major portion of his capital is, with his wife's, in the 'firm'; it is administered and employed for him by men whose family interests and his are identical, whose knowledge of business is profound, whose own capital is there too. It is a fortunate state of things, not brought about in a day, but the growth of more than one generation. Now this man, as has been remarked, has a taste for country life--that is to say, he is an enthusiast over horses--not betting, but horses in their best form. He likes to ride and drive about, to shoot, and fish, and hunt. There is nothing despicable in this, but, after the manner of men, of course he must find an excuse. He found it in the children when they were young--two boys and one girl. It was better for them to have country air, to ride about the country lanes, and over the hills. The atmosphere altogether was more healthy, more manly than in the suburbs of a city. The excuse is a good one. Now come the means; two plans are open to him. He can buy an estate, or he can rent a large farm, or rather series of farms. If he purchases a fine estate he must withdraw his capital from business. In the first place, that would be inconvenient to old friends, and even unjust to them; in the second place, it would reduce his income most materially. Suppose we say, not for absolute exactness, but for the sake of present contrast, that capital well invested in business brings in ten per cent. The same capital invested in land brings in, say, three per cent. nominally; but is it as much in reality if you deduct those expensive improvements upon which tenants insist nowadays, and the five per cents, and ten per cents, allowed off the rent in bad years? At all events, it is certain that landlords, as a class, are investing more and more every year in business, which looks as if they did not consider land itself sufficiently remunerative. In addition, when you have bought your estate, should you subsequently wish to realise, the difficulties and delays are very trying. You cannot go down to your broker and say, 'Sell me a thousand acres this morning.' Capital in land is locked up. Mr. ----, having been trained in traditions of ready money and easy transfer, does not like this prospect. But as the tenant of a great farm it is quite another matter. The larger part of his capital still remains in the 'firm,' and earns him a handsome income. That which is invested in stock, cattle, horses, implements, &c., is in a sense readily negotiable if ever he should desire to leave. Instead of having to pet and pamper discontented tenants, his landlord has to pet and pamper him. He has, in fact, got the upper hand. There are plenty of landlords who would be only too glad to get the rich Mr. ---- to manure and deep-plough their lands; but there are comparatively few Mr. ----'s whose rent-day payments can be implicitly relied on. Mr. ----, in point of fact, gets all the sweets of the country gentleman's life, and leaves the owner all the sour. He has no heir presumptive to check his proceedings; no law of entail to restrain him; no old settlements to bind him hand and foot; none of those hundred and one family interests to consult which accumulate in the course of years around a landed estate, and so seriously curtail the freedom of the man in possession, the head of the family. So far as liberty and financial considerations go, he is much better off than his landlord, who perhaps has a title. Though he knows nothing of farming, he has the family instinct of accounts and figures; he audits the balance-sheets and books of his bailiff personally, and is not easily cheated. Small peculations of course go on, but nothing serious. The farms pay their way, and contribute a trifle towards the household expenses. For the rest, it is taken out in liberty, out-of-door life, field sports, and unlimited horses. His wife and daughter mix in the best society the county affords, besides their annual visits to town and the sea-side: they probably enjoy thrice the liberty and pleasure they would elsewhere. Certainly they are in blooming health. The eldest son is studying for the law, the younger has the commercial instinct more strongly developed, and is already with the 'firm.' Both of them get the full benefit of country life whenever they wish; both of them feel that there is plenty of capital behind them, and not the slightest jealousy exists on account of primogeniture. Of course they have their troubles--what family has not its troubles?--but on the whole their position is an enviable one. When Mrs. ---- and her daughter rustle into their pew at church--placed next in honour to that of the proprietor of the soil--all eyes are turned upon them. The old-fashioned farmer's wife, who until her years pressed heavily upon her made the cheese and butter in her husband's dairy, is not so old but that her eyes can distinguish the colour of a ribbon. She may talk of such things as vanities, and unknown in her day, but for all that a pair of keen eyes criticise skirt, and trimmings, and braidings, and so forth, as displayed up in the Grange pew. Her daughter, who is quite young--for in her mother's time farming people did not marry till late in life--brings a still keener pair of eyes to bear in the same direction. The bonnets from Regent Street are things to think over and talk of. The old lady disinters her ancient finery; the girl, by hook or crook, is determined to dress in the fashion. If one farmer's wife is a fine lady, why not another? Do not even the servant girls at the Grange come out twenty times finer than people who have a canvas bag full of sovereigns at home, and many such bags at the bank? So that the Grange people, though they pay their way handsomely, and plough deep and manure lavishly, and lead the van of agriculture, are not, perhaps, an unmixed good. They help on that sapping and undermining of the ancient, sturdy simplicity, the solid oak of country character, replacing it with veneer. It is not, of course, all, or a tenth part, their fault, or in any way traceable to them. It is part and parcel of the wide-spread social changes which have gradually been proceeding. But the tenant farmer's wife who made the butter and cheese, and even helped to salt bacon, where is she now? Where are the healthy daughters that used to assist her? The wife is a fine lady--not, indeed, with carriage and pair, but with a dandy dog-cart at least; not with three-guinea bonnets, but with a costly sealskin jacket. There are kid gloves on her hands; there is a suspicion of perfume about her; there is a rustling of silk and satin, and a waving of ostrich feathers. The daughter is pale and interesting, and interprets Beethoven, and paints the old mill; while a skilled person, hired at a high price, rules in the dairy. The son rides a-hunting, and is glib on the odds. The 'offices'--such it is the fashion to call the places in which work was formerly done--are carefully kept in the background. The violets and snowdrops and crocuses are rooted up, all the sweet and tender old flowers ruthlessly eradicated, to make way for a blazing parterre after the manner of the suburban villa--gay in the summer, in the spring a wilderness of clay, in the autumn a howling desert of musty evergreens.. The 'civilisation' of the town has, in fact, gone out and taken root afresh in the country. There is no reason why the farmer should not be educated; there is no reason why his wife should not wear a sealskin jacket, or the daughter interpret Beethoven. But the question arises, Has not some of the old stubborn spirit of earnest work and careful prudence gone with the advent of the piano and the oil painting? While wearing the dress of a lady, the wife cannot tuck up her sleeves and see to the butter, or even feed the poultry, which are down at the pen across 'a nasty dirty field.' It is easy to say that farming is gone to the dogs, that corn is low, and stock uncertain, and rents high, and so forth. All that is true, but difficulties are nothing new; nor must too much be expected from the land. A moderate-sized farm, of from 200 to 800 acres, will no more enable the mistress and the misses to play the fine lady to-day than it would two generations ago. It requires work now the same as then--steady, persevering work--and, what is more important, prudence, economy, parsimony if you like; nor do these necessarily mean the coarse manners of a former age. Manners may be good, education may be good, the intellect and even the artistic sense may be cultivated, and yet extravagance avoided. The proverb is true still: 'You cannot have your hare and cook him too.' Now so many cook their hares in the present day without even waiting to catch them first. A euphuism has been invented to cover the wrongfulness of this system; it is now called 'discounting.' The fine lady farmers discount their husbands' corn and fat cattle, cheese and butter, before they reach the market. By-and-by the plough stops in the furrow, and the team is put up to auction, and farewell is said to the old homestead for evermore. There was no warmer welcome to be met with in life than used to be bestowed upon the fortunate visitor to an old house in the country where the people were not exactly farmers in the ordinary sense, because they were sufficiently well off to be independent, and yet made no pretence to gentility. You dropped in quite unexpectedly and informally after a pleasant stroll about the fields with a double-barrel, untrammelled by any attendant. The dogs were all over cleavers sticking to their coats, and your boots had to be wiped with a wisp of straw; your pocket was heavy with a couple of rabbits or a hare, and your hands black enough from powder and handling gates and stiles. But they made you feel immediately that such trifles were not of the slightest account. The dogs were allowed to rush in anyhow and set to work to lick their paws by the fire as if the house was their own. Your apology about your boots and general state of disorder was received with a smile by the mistress, who said she had sons of her own, and knew their ways. Forthwith one sturdy son seized the double-barrel, and conveyed it to a place of safety; a second took the rabbits or the hare, that you might not be incommoded by such a lump in your pocket, and sent the game on home to your quarters by a labourer; a third relieved you of your hat. As many tall young ladies rose to offer you a seat, so that it was really difficult to know which way to turn, besides which the old grandfather with silvery hair pressed you to take his chair by the fire. They had just sat down to the old-fashioned tea at half-past four, and in a moment there was a cup and plate ready. The tea had a fragrant scent, warm and grateful after the moist atmosphere of the meadows, smelling of decaying leaves. The mistress suggested that a nip of brandy might improve it, thinking that tea was hardly strong enough for a man. But that was, declined; for what could be more delicious than the sweet, thick cream poured in by a liberal hand? A fine ham had already been put on the table, as if by magic--the girls really seemed to anticipate everything you could possibly want. As for the butter, it was exquisite, and so, too, the home-baked bread, the more so, because only touched in the processes of preparing by the whitest and softest of hands. Such simple things become luxuries when brought to perfection by loving care. The old dog on the hearthrug came thrusting his nose into your hands, making almost too great friends, being perfectly well aware (cunning old fellow) that he could coax more out of a visitor than one of the family, who knew how he had stuffed all day. Over all there was an atmosphere of welcome, a genial brightness. The young men were anxious to tell you where the best sport could be got. The young ladies had a merry, genuine, unaffected smile--clearly delighted to see you, and not in the least ashamed of it. They showed an evident desire to please, without a trace of an _arriére pensée_. Tall, well-developed, in the height of good health, the bloom upon the cheek and the brilliant eyes formed a picture irresistibly charming. But it was the merry laugh that so long dwelt in the memory--nothing so thoroughly enchants one as the woman who laughs from her heart in the joyousness of youth. They joined freely in the conversation, but did not thrust themselves forward. They were, of course, eager for news of the far away world, but not a hint was breathed of those social scandals which now form our favourite gossip. From little side remarks concerning domestic matters it was evident that they were well acquainted with household duties. Indeed, they assisted to remove the things from the table without any consciousness that it was a menial task. It was not long after tea before, drawing round the fire, pipes were produced, and you were asked to smoke. Of course you declined on account of the ladies, but it was none the less pleasant to be asked. There was the great secret of it all-the genuine, liberal, open-handed and open-hearted proffering of all the house contained to the guest. And it was none the less an amusing conversation because each of the girls candidly avowed her own opinions upon such topics as were started--blushing a little, it is true, if you asked the reason for the opinion, for ladies are not always quite ready with the why and wherefore. But the contrast of character, the individuality displayed, gave a zest and interest to the talk; so that the hour wore late before you were aware of it. Then, if you would go, two, at least, of the three boys piloted you by the best and cleanest route, and did not wish you farewell till you were in the straight road. This was not so many years ago. Today, if you call at such a country house, how strangely different is the reception! None of the family come to the door to meet you. A servant shows you into a parlour--drawing-room is the proper word now--well carpeted and furnished in the modern style. She then takes your name--what a world of change is shown in that trifling piece of etiquette! By-and-by, after the proper interval, the ladies enter in morning costume, not a stray curl allowed to wander from its stern bands, nature rigidly repressed, decorum--'Society'--in every flounce and trimming. You feel that you have committed a solecism coming on foot, and so carrying the soil on your boots from the fields without into so elegant an apartment Visitors are obviously expected to arrive on wheels, and in correct trim for company. A remark about the crops falls on barren ground; a question concerning the dairy, ignorantly hazarded, is received with so much _hauteur_ that at last you see such subjects are considered vulgar. Then a touch of the bell, and decanters of port and sherry are produced and our wine presented to you on an electro salver together with sweet biscuits. It is the correct thing to sip one glass and eat one biscuit. The conversation is so insipid, so entirely confined to the merest platitudes, that it becomes absolutely a relief to escape. You are not pressed to stay and dine, as you would have been in the old days--not because there is a lack of hospitality, but because they would prefer a little time for preparation in order that the dinner might be got up in polite style. So you depart--chilled and depressed. No one steps with you to open the gate and exchange a second farewell, and express a cordial wish to see you again there. You feel that you must walk in measured step and place your hat precisely perpendicular, for the eyes of 'Society' are upon you. What a comfort when you turn a corner behind the hedge and can thrust your hands into your pockets and whistle! The young ladies, however, still possess one thing which they cannot yet destroy--the good constitution and the rosy look derived from ancestors whose days were spent in the field under the glorious sunshine and the dews of heaven. They worry themselves about it in secret and wish they could appear more ladylike--i.e. thin and white. Nor can they feel quite so languid and indifferent, and _blasé_ as they desire. Thank Heaven they cannot! But they have succeeded in obliterating the faintest trace of character, and in suppressing the slightest approach to animation. They have all got just the same opinions on the same topics--that is to say, they have none at all; the idea of a laugh has departed. There is a dead line of uniformity. But if you are sufficiently intimate to enter into the inner life of the place it will soon be apparent that they either are or wish to appear up to the 'ways of the world.' They read the so-called social journals, and absorb the gossip, tittle-tattle, and personalities--absorb it because they have no means of comparison or of checking the impression it produces of the general loose tone of society. They know all about it, much more than you do. No turn of the latest divorce case or great social exposure has escaped them, and the light, careless way in which it is the fashion nowadays to talk openly of such things, as if they were got up like a novel--only with living characters--for amusement, has penetrated into this distant circle. But then they have been to half the leading watering-places--from Brighton to Scarborough; as for London, it is an open book to them; the railways have long dissipated the pleasing mysteries that once hung over the metropolis. Talk of this sort is, of course, only talk; still it is not a satisfactory sign of the times. If the country girl is no longer the hoyden that swung on the gates and romped in the hay, neither has she the innocent thought of the olden days. At the same time our friends are greatly devoted to the Church--old people used to attend on Sundays as a sacred and time honoured duty, but the girls leave them far behind, for they drive up in a pony carriage to the distant church at least twice a week besides. They talk of matins and even-song; they are full of vestments, and have seen 'such lovely things' in that line. At Christmas and Easter they are mainly instrumental in decorating the interior till it becomes perfectly gaudy with colour, and the old folk mutter and shake their heads. Their devotion in getting hothouse flowers is quite touching. One is naturally inclined to look with a liberal eye upon what is capable of a good construction. But is all this quite spontaneous? Has the new curate nothing at all to do with it? Is it not considered rather the correct thing to be 'High' in views, and even to manifest an Ultramontane tendency? There is a rather too evident determination to go to the extreme--the girls are clearly bent upon thrusting themselves to the very front of the parish, so that no one shall be talked of but the Misses ----. Anything is seized upon, that will afford an opening for posing before the world of the parish, whether it be an extreme fashion in dress or in ritual. And the parish is splitting up into social cliques. These girls, the local leaders of fashion, hold their heads far above those farmers' sons who bear a hand in the field. No one is eligible who takes a share in manual work: not even to be invited to the house, or even to be acknowledged if met in the road. The Misses ----, whose papa is well-to-do, and simply rides round on horseback to speak to the men with his steam-plough, could not possibly demean themselves to acknowledge the existence of the young men who actually handle a fork in the haymaking time. Nothing less than the curate is worthy of their smile. A very great change has come over country society in this way. Of course, men (and women) with money were always more eligible than those without; but it is not so very long ago that one and all--well-to-do and poor--had one bond in common. Whether they farmed large or small acres, all worked personally. There was no disgrace in the touch of the plough--rather the contrary; now it is contamination itself. The consequence is that the former general goodwill and acquaintanceship is no more. There are no friendly meetings; there is a distinct social barrier between the man and the woman who labours and the one who does not. These fashionable young ladies could not possibly even go into the hayfield because the sun would spoil their complexion, they refresh themselves with aërated waters instead. They could not possibly enter the dairy because it smells so nasty. They would not know their father's teams if they met them on the road. As for speaking to the workpeople--the idea would be too absurd! Once on a time a lift in the waggon just across the wet turf to the macadamised road--if it chanced to be going that way--would have been looked upon as a fortunate thing. The Misses ---- would indeed stare if one of their papa's carters touched his hat and suggested that they should get up. They have a pony carriage and groom of their own. He drives the milk-cart to the railway station in the morning; in the afternoon he dons the correct suit and drives the Misses ---- into the town to shopping. Now there exists a bitter jealousy between the daughters of the tradesmen in the said town and these young ladies. There is a race between them as to which shall be first in fashion and social rank. The Misses ---- know very well that it galls their rivals to see them driving about so grandly half the afternoon up and down the streets, and to see the big local people lift their hats, as the banker, with whom, of course, the large farmer has intimate dealings. All this is very little; on paper it reads moan and contemptible: but in life it is real--in life these littlenesses play a great part. The Misses ---- know nothing of those long treasured recipes formerly handed down in old country houses, and never enter the kitchen. No doubt, if the fashion for teaching cooking presently penetrates into the parish, they will take a leading part, and with much show and blowing of trumpets instruct the cottager how to boil the pot. Anything, in short, that happens to be the rage will attract them, but there is little that is genuine about them, except the eagerness for a new excitement. What manner of men shall accept these ladies as their future helpmates? The tenant farmers are few and far between that could support their expenditure upon dress, the servants they would require, and last, but not least, the waste which always accompanies ignorance in household management. Nor, indeed, do they look for tenant farmers, but hope for something higher in the scale. The Misses ---- are fortunate in possessing a 'papa' sufficiently well-to-do to enable them to live in this manner. But there are hundreds of young ladies whose fathers have not got so much capital in their farms, while what they have is perhaps borrowed. Of course these girls help cheerfully in the household, in the dairy, and so forth? No. Some are forced by necessity to assist in the household with unwilling hands: but few, indeed, enter the dairy. All dislike the idea of manual labour, though never so slight. Therefore they acquire a smattering of knowledge, and go out as governesses. They earn but a small stipend in that profession, because they have rarely gone through a sufficiently strict course of study themselves. But they would rather live with strangers, accepting a position which is often invidious, than lift a hand to work at home, so great is the repugnance to manual labour. These, again, have no domestic knowledge (beyond that of teaching children), none of cooking, or general household management. If they marry a tenant farmer of their own class, with but small capital, they are too often a burden financially. Whence comes this intense dislike to hand work--this preference for the worst paid head work? It is not confined, of course, to the gentler sex. No more striking feature of modern country life can be found. You cannot blame these girls, whether poor or moderately well-to-do, for thinking of something higher, more refined and elevating than the cheese-tub or the kitchen. It is natural, and it is right, that they should wish to rise above that old, dull, dead level in which their mothers and grandmothers worked from youth to age. The world has gone on since then--it is a world of education, books, and wider sympathies. In all this they must and ought to share. The problem is how to enjoy the intellectual progress of the century and yet not forfeit the advantages of the hand labour and the thrift of our ancestors? How shall we sit up late at night, burning the midnight oil of study, and yet rise with the dawn, strong from sweet sleep, to guide the plough? One good thing must be scored down to the credit of the country girls of the day. They have done much to educate the men. They have shamed them out of the old rough, boorish ways; compelled them to abandon the former coarseness, to become more gentlemanly in manner. By their interest in the greater world of society, literature, art, and music (more musical publications probably are now sold for the country in a month than used to be in a year), they have made the somewhat narrow-sighted farmer glance outside his parish. If the rising generation of tenant farmers have lost much of the bigoted provincial mode of thought, together with the provincial pronunciation, it is undoubtedly due to the influence of the higher ideal of womanhood that now occupies their minds. And this is a good work to have accomplished. CHAPTER X MADEMOISELLE, THE GOVERNESS A country 'roadside' railway station seemed deserted upon a warm August afternoon. It was all but concealed on that level ground by the hedges and trees of the fields with which it was surrounded. There was no sound of man or wheels, and nothing moving upon the platform. On the low green banks of the rail, where the mast-like telegraph poles stood, the broad leaves of the coltsfoot almost covered the earth, and were dusty with the sand whirled up an hour since behind the rushing express. By the footpath, higher up under the close-cropped hedge, the yarrow flourished, lifting its white flower beside the trodden soil. The heavy boots of the platelayers walking to and fro to their work on the permanent way brushed against it, and crushed the venturous fibres of the creeping cinquefoil that stretched into the path. From the yellow standing wheat the sparrows rose in a bevy, and settled upon the hedge, chirping merrily. Farther away, where a meadow had been lately mown, the swallows glided to and fro, but just above the short grass, round and round, under the shadow of the solitary oaks. Over the green aftermath is the swallows' favourite haunt when the day, though passing fair, does not look like settled weather. For lack of such weather the reapers have not yet entered the ripening corn. But, for the hour, the sun shines brightly, and a narrow line along the upper surfaces of the metals, burnished by the polishing friction of a thousand wheels, glints like silver under the rays. The red brick of the booking-office looks redder and more staring under the fierce light. The door is locked, and there is no waiting-room in which to take shelter; nothing but a projecting roof over a part of the platform. On the lintel is the stationmaster's name painted in small white letters, like the name of the landlord over the doorway of an inn. Two corded boxes lie on the platform, and near them stand half a dozen rusty milk tins, empty. With the exception of a tortoiseshell cat basking in the sunshine, there seems nothing living in the station, and the long endless rails stretching on either side in a straight line are vacant. For hours during the day the place slumbers, and a passenger gliding by in the express may well wonder why a station was built at all in the midst of trees and hedges without so much as a single visible house. But by night and very early in the morning there is bustle enough. Then the white painted cattle pen yonder, from which the animals are forced into the cattle trucks, is full of frightened beasts, lowing doubtfully, and only goaded in by the resounding blows upon their backs. Then the sheep file in in more patient ranks, but also doubtful and bleating as they go. An engine snorts to and fro, shunting coal waggons on to the siding--coal for the traction engines, and to be consumed in threshing out the golden harvest around. Signalmen, with red and green lights, rush hither and thither, the bull's-eyes now concealed by the trucks, and now flashing out brightly like strange will-o'-the-wisps. At intervals long and heavy goods trains go by, causing the solid earth to tremble. Presently the sun rises over the distant hills, and the red arms of the signals stand out clearly defined, and then the noise of wheels, the shouts of the drivers, and the quick sound of hoofs betoken the approach of the milk carts with their freight for the early morning train. From the platform it is out of sight; but a few yards from the gate a small inn is hidden under the tall elms of the hedgerow. It has sprung up since the railway came, and is called the Railway Hotel. It proffers good stabling, and even a fly and posting for the passenger who finds himself set down at that lonely place--a mere road--without the certainty of a friendly carriage meeting him. The porter may, perhaps, be taking his glass within. The inspector or stationmaster (whichever may be technically correct), now that the afternoon express has gone safely through, has strolled up the line to his garden, to see how his potatoes are getting on. He knows full well that the slow, stopping train despatched just after it will not reach his station for at least an hour. Outside the 'Hotel' stands a pony cart--a gaily coloured travelling rug lies across the seat, and the pony, a perfect little beauty, is cropping the grass by the hedge side. By-and-by a countryman comes up the road, evidently a labourer dressed in his best--he hastens to the 'Hotel,' instead of to the station, and finds from the porter that he is at least twenty minutes too soon. Then a waggon arrives, and stops while the carter drinks. Presently the porter and the labourer stroll together over to the platform, and after them a young fellow--a farmer's son, not yet a man but more than a boy--comes out and re-arranges the travelling rug in the pony cart. He then walks on to the platform, whistling defiantly with his hands in his pockets, as if he had got an unpleasant duty to perform, but was not going to be intimidated. He watches the stationmaster unlock the booking-office, and follows him in out of idle curiosity. It is booking-office, parcel-office, waiting-room and all combined, and the telegraph instrument is there too, some of the needles blocked over with a scrap of paper. The place is crammed with sacks, bags, boxes, parcels and goods mixed together, such as ironwork for agricultural machines, and in a corner lies a rick-cloth smelling strongly of tar like the rigging of a ship. On the counter, for there is no sliding window as usual at large stations, stands the ticket-stamping machine, surrounded with piles of forms, invoices, notices, letters, and the endless documents inseparable from railway business, all printed on a peculiar paper with a faint shade of yellow. Somebody says 'A' be coming,' and the young farmer walks out to watch the white steam now just visible far away over the trees. The train runs round the curve on to the straight, and the engine in front grows gradually larger and larger as it comes nearer, visibly vibrating till the brake draws it up at the platform. Master Jack has no difficulty in identifying the passenger he has come to meet. His sister, a governess, coming home for a holiday, is the only person that alights, and the labourer, dressed for the occasion, is the only one who gets in. No sooner is he in than he gapes out of the window open-mouthed at Miss S----. She wears a light Ulster to protect her dress from the dust and dirt of travel. Her fashionable hat has an air of the West End; her gloved hand holds a dainty little bag; she steps as those must do who wear tight dresses and high heels to their boots. Up goes her parasol instantly to shade her delicate complexion from the glaring sun. Master Jack does not even take her hand, or kiss her; he looks her up and down with a kind of contemptuous admiration, nods, and asks how much luggage? He has, you see, been repulsed for 'gush' on previous occasions. Mademoiselle points to her luggage, which the porter, indeed, has already taken out. He worked in his boyhood on her father's farm, and attends upon her with cheerful alacrity. She gives him a small coin, but looks the other way, without a sign of recognition. The luggage is placed in the pony cart. Mademoiselle gets in without so much as patting the beautiful little creature in the shafts. Her ticket is the only first-class ticket that has been given up at that lonely station all the week. 'Do make haste,' she remarks petulantly as her brother pauses to speak to a passing man who looks like a dealer. Master Jack turns the pony cart, and away they go rattling down the road. The porter, whilom an agricultural labourer, looks after them with a long and steady stare. It is not the first time he has seen this, but he can hardly take it in yet. 'She do come the lady grandish, don't her?' the dealer remarks meditatively. 'Now her father----' 'Ay,' interrupts the porter, 'he be one of the old sort; but she----' he cannot get any further for lack of an appropriate illustration. The arrival of mademoiselle periodically takes their breath away at that little place. As the pair rattle along in the pony trap there is for a time a total silence. Mademoiselle looks neither to the right nor the left, and asks after nobody. She does not note the subtle tint of bronze that has begun to steal over the wheat, nor the dark discoloured hay, witness of rough weather, still lying in the meadows. Her face--it is a very pretty face--does not light up with any enthusiasm as well-remembered spots come into sight. A horseman rides round a bend of the road, and meets them--he stares hard at her--she takes no heed. It is a young farmer, an old acquaintance, anxious for some sign of recognition. After he has passed he lifts his hat, like a true countryman, unready at the moment. As for the brother, his features express gathering and almost irrepressible disgust. He kicks with his heavy boots, he whistles, and once now and then gives a species of yell. Mademoiselle turns up her pretty nose, and readjusts her chevron gloves. 'Have you not got any cuffs, Jack?' she asks, 'your wrists look so bare without them.' Jack makes no reply. Another silence. Presently he points with an expression meant to be sardonic at a distant farmhouse with his whip. 'Jenny's married,' he says, full well aware that this announcement will wake her up, for there had been of old a sort of semi-feud or rivalry between the two girls, daughters of neighbouring farmers, and both with pretensions to good looks. 'Who to?' she asks eagerly. 'To old Billy L----; lots of tin.' 'Pshaw!' replies mademoiselle. 'Why, he's sixty, a nasty, dirty old wretch.' 'He has plenty of money,' suggests Jack. 'What you think plenty of money, perhaps. He is nothing but a farmer,' as if a farmer was quite beneath her notice. Just then a farmer rode out into the road from the gateway of a field, and Jack pulled up the pony. The farmer was stout, elderly, and florid; he appeared fairly well-to-do by his dress, but was none too particular to use his razor regularly. Yet there was a tenderness--almost a pathos--in the simple words he used:--'Georgie, dear, come home?' 'Yes, papa,' and she kissed his scrubby chin as he bent down from his horse. He would not go to the station to meet her; but he had been waiting about behind the hedge for an hour to see her come along. He rode beside the pony cart, but Georgie did not say anything more, or ask after any one else. As they turned a corner the farmer pointed ahead. 'There's your mother, Georgie, looking over the garden wall.' The yearning mother had been there these two hours, knowing that her darling could not arrive before a certain time, and yet unable in her impatience to stay within. Those old eyes were dim with tears under the spectacles as Georgie quietly kissed her forehead, and then suddenly, with something like generous feeling, her lips. They went in, an old pointer, whose days in the stubble were nearly over, following close at Georgie's heels, but without obtaining a pat for his loving memory. The table was spread for tea--a snowy cloth, the whitest of bread, the most delicious golden butter, the ham fresh cooked, as Georgie might be hungry, the thick cream, the silver teapot, polished for Georgie, and the bright flowers in the vase before her plate. The window was open, with its view of the old, old hills, and a breath of summer air came in from the meadow. The girl glanced round, frowned, and went upstairs to her room without a word, passing on the landing the ancient clock in its tall case, ticking loud and slow. And this was 'home.' The whole place jarred upon her, fresh as she was from a fine house in Belgravia. The sitting-room beneath, which she had so quickly left, looked cheerful and homely, but it was that very homeliness that jarred upon her. The teapot was real silver, but it was of old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles as they may be, repelled her. It was a bitter cup to her to come 'home.' Mr. S---- was a farmer of fair means, and, compared with many of his neighbours, well-to-do, and well connected. But he was still a yeoman only, and personally made pretensions to nothing more. Though he himself had received little or no education, he quite saw the value of it, and was determined that his children should be abreast of the times. Accordingly, so soon as Georgie grew old enough, a governess with high recommendations, and who asked what the farmer then thought a high price (he knows more about such things now!) was had down from London. Of course the rudimentary A B C of learning could just as well have been imparted by an ordinary person, but Mr. and Mrs. S---- had a feeling which they could not perhaps have expressed in words, that it was not so much the actual reading and writing, and French and music, and so on, as a social influence that was needed to gradually train the little country girl into a young lady fit to move in higher society. The governess did her work thoroughly. Georgie was not allowed to walk in the wet grass, to climb up the ladder on to the half-completed hayrick, and romp under the rick-cloth, to paddle with naked feet in the shallow brook, or any other of the things that country children have done from time immemorial. Such things she was taught were not ladylike, and, above all, she was kept away from the cottage people. She was not permitted to enter their doors, to converse with the women, or to watch the carter with his horses. Such vulgar folk and their vulgar dialect were to be carefully avoided. Nor must she get into a hedge after a bird's-nest, lest she should tear her frock. It was not long before the governess really ruled the house. The farmer felt himself totally unable to interfere in these matters; they were outside his experience altogether. His wife did not like it, but for Georgie's sake she gave up her former habits, and endeavoured to order the house according to the ideas of the governess from London. The traditions, as it were, of the place were upset. It was not a solitary instance, the same thing has happened in scores of farmhouses to a more or less degree. Mr. S---- all his life had ridden on horseback, or driven a gig, which did very well for him and his wife. But the governess thought Georgie ought to learn to ride and drive, and gigs were so much out of fashion. So the pony cart and pony were purchased for her, and in this she went into the distant market town twice or more weekly. Sometimes it was for shopping, sometimes to fetch household goods, sometimes to see friends; any excuse answered very well. The governess said, and really believed, that it was better for Georgie to be away from the farm as much as possible, to see town people (if only a country town), and to learn their ways. The many cheap illustrated papers giving the last details of fashionable costumes were, of course, brought home to be carefully read in the evenings. These publications have a large circulation now in farmhouses. Naturally Georgie soon began to talk about, and take an interest--as girls will do--in the young gentlemen of the town, and who was and who was not eligible. As for the loud-voiced young farmers, with their slouching walk, their ill-fitting clothes, and stupid talk about cows and wheat, they were intolerable. A banker's clerk at least--nothing could be thought of under a clerk in the local banks; of course, his salary was not high, but then his 'position.' The retail grocers and bakers and such people were quite beneath one's notice--low, common persons. The 'professional tradesmen' (whatever that may be) were decidedly better, and could be tolerated. The solicitors, bank managers, one or two brewers (wholesale--nothing retail), large corn factors or coal merchants, who kept a carriage of some kind--these formed the select society next under, and, as it were, surrounding the clergy and gentry. Georgie at twelve years old looked at least as high as one of these; a farmhouse was to be avoided above all things. As she grew older her mind was full of the local assembly ball. The ball had been held for forty years or more, and had all that time been in the hands of the exclusive upper circles of the market town. They only asked their own families, relations (not the poor ones), and visitors. When Georgie was invited to this ball it was indeed a triumph. Her poor mother cried with pleasure over her ball dress. Poor woman, she was a good, a too good, mother, but she had never been to a ball. There were, of course, parties, picnics, and so on, to which Georgie, having entered the charmed circle, was now asked; and thus her mind from the beginning centred in the town. The sheep-fold, the cattle-pen, the cheese-tub, these were thrust aside. They did not interest her, she barely understood the meaning when her father took the first prize at an important cattle show. What So-and-so would wear at the flower show, where all the select would come, much more nearly concerned her. At the high-class academy where her education was finished the same process went on. The other girls quickly made her thoroughly understand (a bitter knowledge) that the great people in the little market town, the very richest of them, were but poor in comparison with their papas. Their papas were in the 'City,' or on ''Change,' and had as many thousands a year as the largest farmer she knew could reckon hundreds. Georgie felt ashamed of her papa, recollecting his crumpled old hat, and his scrubby chin. Being really a nice girl, under the veneer that was so industriously placed upon her, she made friends among her fellow scholars, and was invited to more than one of their grand homes in Kensington and the suburbs of London. There she learned all the pomp of villa life, which put into the shade the small incomes which displayed their miserable vanities in the petty market town. Footmen, butlers, late dinners, wines, carriages, the ceaseless gossip of 'Society' were enough to dazzle the eyes of a girl born so near the cowshed. The dresses she had to wear to mix with these grand friends cost a good deal--her parents sacrificing their own comforts for her advantage--and yet, in comparison with the beautiful costumes she saw, they seemed shabby. Georgie was so far fortunate as to make friends of some of the elder people, and when she had passed her examinations, and obtained the diplomas and certificates which are now all essential, through their interest she obtained at starting a very high salary. It was not long before she received as much as sixty or seventy pounds a year. It was not only that she really was a clever and accomplished girl, but her recommendations were influential. She was employed by wealthy people, who really did not care what they paid so long as their children were in good hands. Now to the old folk at home, and to the neighbours, this seemed an immense salary for a girl, especially when the carriage, the footmen, the wines, and late dinners, and so on, were taken into consideration. The money, however, was of very little use to her. She found it necessary to dress equal to her place. She had to have several dresses to wear, according to the time of day, and she had to have new ones very often, or she might be told petulantly and pointedly by her mistress that 'one gets so weary of seeing the same dresses every day.' Instead of the high salary leaving a handsome profit, her father had occasionally to pay a stiff bill for her. But then the 'position'--look at the 'position' and the society. Georgie, in process of time, went to Scotland, to Paris, the South of France, to Rome, and Naples. Being a discreet girl, and having a winning manner, she became as much a companion to her mistress as governess, and thus saw and heard more of the world than she would otherwise have done. She saw some very grand people indeed occasionally. After this, after the Continent, and, above all, London in the season, the annual visit to the old farmhouse came to be a bitter time of trial. Georgie had come home now for a few days only, to ask for money, and already before she had scarcely spoken had rushed upstairs to hide her feeling of repulsion in the privacy of her room. Her welcome had been warm, and she knew that under the rude exterior it was more than warm; but the absence of refinement jarred upon her. It all seemed so uncouth. She shrank from the homely rooms; the very voice of her mother, trembling with emotion, shocked her ear, unaccustomed to country pronunciation. She missed the soft accents of the drawing-room. From her window she could see nothing but the peaceful fields--the hateful green trees and hedges, the wheat, and the hateful old hills. How miserable it was not to be born to Grosvenor Square! Georgie's case was, of course, exceptional in so far as her 'success' was concerned. She possessed good natural parts, discretion, and had the advantage of high-class recommendations. But apart from her 'success,' her case was not exceptional. The same thing is going on in hundreds of farmhouses. The daughters from the earliest age are brought up under a system of education the practical tendency of which is to train their minds out of the associations of farming. When later on they go out to teach they are themselves taught by the social surroundings of the households into which they enter to still more dislike the old-fashioned ways of agriculture. Take twenty farmers' families, where there are girls, and out of that twenty fifteen will be found to be preparing for a scholastic life. The farmer's daughter does not like the shop-counter, and, as she cannot stay at home, there is nothing left to her but the profession of governess. Once thoroughly imbued with these 'social' ideas, and a return to the farm is almost impossible. The result is a continuous drain of women out of agriculture--of the very women best fitted in the beginning to be the helpmate of the farmer. In no other calling is the assistance of the wife so valuable; it is not too much to say that part at least of the decadence of agriculture is owing to the lack of women willing to devote themselves as their mothers did before them. It follows that by degrees the farming caste is dying out. The sons go to the city, the daughters go to the city; in a generation, or little more, a once well-known farming family becomes extinct so far as agriculture is concerned. How could such a girl as poor Georgie, looking out of window at the hateful fields, and all at discord with the peaceful scene, settle down as the mistress of a lonely farmhouse? CHAPTER XI FLEECEBOROUGH. A 'DESPOT' An agricultural district, like a little kingdom, has its own capital city. The district itself is as well defined as if a frontier line had been marked out around it, with sentinels and barriers across the roads, and special tolls and duties. Yet an ordinary traveller, upon approaching, fails to perceive the difference, and may, perhaps, drive right through the territory without knowing it. The fields roll on and rise into the hills, the hills sink again into a plain, just the same as elsewhere; there are cornfields and meadows; villages and farmsteads, and no visible boundary. Nor is it recognised upon the map. It does not fit into any political or legal limit; it is neither a county, half a county, a hundred, or police division. But to the farmer it is a distinct land. If he comes from a distance he will at once notice little peculiarities in the fields, the crops, the stock, or customs, and will immediately inquire if it be not such and such a place that he has heard of. If he resides within thirty miles or so he will ever since boyhood have heard 'the uplands' talked of as if it were a separate country, as distinct as France. Cattle from the uplands, sheep, horses, labourers, corn or hay, or anything and anybody from thence, he has grown up accustomed to regard almost as foreign. There is good reason, from an agricultural point of view, for this. The district, with its capital city, Fleeceborough, really is distinct, well marked, and defined. The very soil and substrata are characteristic. The products are wheat, and cattle, and sheep, the same as elsewhere, but the proportions of each, the kind of sheep, the traditionary methods and farm customs are separate and marked. The rotation of crops is different, the agreements are on a different basis, the very gates to the fields have peculiar fastenings, not used in other places. Instead of hedges, the fields, perhaps, are often divided by dry stone walls, on which, when they have become old, curious plants may sometimes be found. For the flora, too, is distinct; you may find herbs here that do not exist a little way off, and on the other hand, search how you will, you will not discover one single specimen of a simple flower which strews the meadows elsewhere. Here the very farmhouses are built upon a different plan, and with different materials; the barns are covered with old stone slates, instead of tiles or thatch. The people are a nation amongst themselves. Their accent is peculiar and easily recognised, and they have their own folklore, their own household habits, particular dainties, and way of life. The tenant farmers, the millers, the innkeepers, and every Hodge within 'the uplands' (not by any means all hills)--in short, every one is a citizen of Fleeceborough. Hodge may tend his flock on distant pastures, may fodder his cattle in far-away meadows, and dwell in little hamlets hardly heard of, but all the same he is a Fleeceborough man. It is his centre; thither he looks for everything. The place is a little market town, the total of whose population in the census records sounds absurdly small; yet it is a complete world in itself; a capital city, with its kingdom and its ruler, for the territory is practically the property of a single family. Enter Fleeceborough by whichever route you will, the first object that fixes the attention is an immensely high and endless wall. If you come by carriage one way, you skirt it for a long distance; if you come the other, you see it as you pass through the narrow streets every now and then at the end of them, closing the prospect and overtopping the lesser houses. By railway it is conspicuous from the windows; and if you walk about the place, you continually come upon it. It towers up perpendicular and inaccessible, like the curtain wall of an old fortification: here and there the upper branches of some great cedar or tall pine just show above it. One or more streets for a space run conterminous with it--the wall on one side, the low cottage-houses on the other, and their chimneys are below the coping. It does not really encircle the town, yet it seems everywhere, and is the great fact of the place. If you wander about examining this wall, and wondering where it begins and where it ends, and what is inside, you may perchance come upon a gateway of noble proportions. It is open, but one hesitates to pass through, despite the pleasant vista of trees and green sward beyond. There is a watchman's wooden hut, and the aged sentinel is reading his newspaper in the shadow, his breast decorated with medal and clasp, that tell of honourable service. A scarlet-coated soldier may, too, be strolling thereabout, and the castellated top of a barrack-like building near at hand is suggestive of military force. You hesitate, but the warden invites you to walk at your leisure under the old trees, and along the endless glades. If you enter, you pass under the metal scrollwork of the iron gates, and, above, the gilded circle of a coronet glistens in the sunshine. These are the private demesnes of a prince and ruler of Hodge--the very highest and most powerful of his masters in that part of the country. The vast wall encloses his pleasure-grounds and mansion; the broad iron gates give access to mile after mile of park and wood, and the decorated warden or pensioner has but to open them for the free entry of all Fleeceborough and her citizens. Of course the position of the barrack is a mere accident, yet it gives an air of power and authority--the place is really as open, the beautiful park as common and accessible as the hill-top under the sky. A peer only at Westminster, here he is a prince, whose dominions are almost co-extensive with the horizon; and this, the capital city, is for the most part his. Far away stretches that little kingdom, with its minor towns of villages, hamlets, and farms. Broad green meadows, where the cattle graze beside the streams and in the plains; rolling uplands, ploughed and sown, where the barley nourishes; deep rich wheatlands; high hills and shadowy woods; grey church towers; new glaring schools; quiet wayside inns, and ancient farmhouses tenanted for generations by the same families. Farmers have long since discovered that it is best to rent under a very large owner, whether personal as in this case, or impersonal as a college or corporation. A very large owner like this can be, and is, more liberal. He puts up sheds, and he drains, and improves, and builds good cottages for the labourers. Provided, of course, that no serious malpractice comes to light, he, as represented by his steward, never interferes, and the tenant is personally free. No one watches his goings out and comings in; he has no sense of an eye for ever looking over the park wall. There is a total absence of the grasping spirit sometimes shown. The farmer does not feel that he will be worried to his last shilling. In case of unfavourable seasons the landlord makes no difficulty in returning a portion of the rent; he anticipates such an application. Such immense possessions can support losses which would press most heavily upon comparatively small properties. At one side of the estate the soil perchance is light and porous, and is all the better for rain; on the other, half across the county, or quite, the soil is deep and heavy and naturally well watered and flourishes in dry summers. So that there is generally some one prospering if another suffers, and thus a balance is maintained. A reserve of wealth has, too, slowly accumulated in the family coffers, which, in exceptional years, tides the owner over with little or no appreciable inconvenience. With an income like this, special allowances, even generous allowances, can be and are made, and so the tenants cease to feel that their landlord is living out of their labour. The agreements are just; there is no rapacity. Very likely the original lease or arrangement has expired half a century since; but no one troubles to renew it. It is well understood that no change will be effected. The tenure is as steady as if the tenant had an Act of Parliament at his back. When men have once settled, they and their descendants remain, generation after generation. By degrees their sons and sons' descendants settle too, and the same name occurs perhaps in a dozen adjacent places. It is this fixed unchangeable character of the district which has enabled the mass of the tenants not indeed to become wealthy, but to acquire a solid, substantial standing. In farming affairs money can be got together only in the slow passage of years; experience has proved that beyond a doubt. These people have been stationary for a length of time, and the moss of the proverb has grown around them. They walk sturdily, and look all men in the face; their fathers put money in the purse. Times are hard here as everywhere, but if they cannot, for the present season, put more in that purse, its contents are not, at all events, much diminished, and enable them to maintain the same straightforward manliness and independence. By-and-by, they know there will come the chink of the coin again. When the tenant is stationary, the labourer is also. He stays in the same cottage on the same farm all his life, his descendants remain and work for the same tenant family. He can trace his descent in the locality for a hundred years. From time immemorial both Hodge and his immediate employers have looked towards Fleeceborough as their capital. Hodge goes in to the market in charge of his master's sheep, his wife trudges in for household necessaries. All the hamlet goes in to the annual fairs. Every cottager in the hamlet knows somebody in the town; the girls go there to service, the boys to get employment. The little village shops obtain their goods from thence. All the produce--wheat, barley, oats, hay, cattle, and sheep--is sent into the capital to the various markets held there. The very ideas held in the villages by the inhabitants come from Fleeceborough; the local papers published there are sold all round, and supply them with news, arguments, and the politics of the little kingdom. The farmers look to Fleeceborough just as much or more. It is a religious duty to be seen there on market days. Not a man misses being there; if he is not visible, his circle note it, and guess at various explanations. Each man has his own particular hostelry, where his father, and his grandfather, put up before him, and where he is expected to dine in the same old room, with the pictures of famous rams, that have fetched fabulous prices, framed against the walls, and ram's horns of exceptional size and peculiar curve fixed up above the mantelpiece. Men come in in groups of two or three, as dinner time approaches, and chat about sheep and wool, and wool and sheep; but no one finally settles himself at the table till the chairman arrives. He is a stout, substantial farmer, who has dined there every market day for the last thirty or forty years. Everybody has his own particular seat, which he is certain to find kept for him. The dinner itself is simple enough, the waiters perhaps still more simple, but the quality of the viands is beyond praise. The mutton is juicy and delicious, as it should be where the sheep is the very idol of all men's thoughts; the beef is short and tender of grain; the vegetables, nothing can equal them, and they are all here, asparagus and all, in profusion. The landlord grows his own vegetables--every householder in Fleeceborough has an ample garden--and produces the fruit from his own orchards for the tarts. Ever and anon a waiter walks round with a can of ale and fills the glasses, whether asked or not. Beef and mutton, vegetables and fruit tarts, and ale are simple and plain fare, but when they are served in the best form, how will you surpass them? The real English cheese, the fresh salads, the exquisite butter--everything on the table is genuine, juicy, succulent, and rich. Could such a dinner be found in London, how the folk would crowd thither! Finally, comes the waiter with his two clean plates, the upper one to receive the money, the lower to retain what is his. If you are a stranger, and remember what you have been charged elsewhere in smoky cities for tough beef, stringy mutton, waxy potatoes, and the very bread black with smuts, you select half a sovereign and drop it on the upper plate. In the twinkling of an eye eight shillings are returned to you; the charge is a florin only. They live well in Fleeceborough, as every fresh experience of the place will prove; they have plentiful food, and of the best quality; poultry abounds, for every resident having a great garden (many, too, have paddocks) keeps fowls; fresh eggs are common; as for vegetables and fruit, the abundance is not to be described. A veritable cornucopia--a horn of plenty--seems to forever pour a shower of these good things into their houses. And their ale! To the first sight it is not tempting. It is thick, dark, a deep wine colour; a slight aroma rises from it like that which dwells in bonded warehouses. The first taste is not pleasing; but it induces a second, and a third. By-and-by the flavour grows upon the palate; and now beware, for if a small quantity be thrown upon the fire it will blaze up with a blue flame like pure alcohol. That dark vinous-looking ale is full of the strength of malt and hops; it is the brandy of the barley. The unwary find their heads curiously queer before they have partaken, as it seems to them, of a couple of glasses. The very spirit and character of Fleeceborough is embodied in the ale; rich, strong, genuine. No one knows what English ale is till he has tried this. After the market dinner the guests sit still--they do not hurry away to counter and desk; they rest awhile, and dwell as it were on the flavour of their food. There is a hum of pleasant talk, for each man is a right boon companion. The burden of that talk has been the same for generations--sheep and wool, wool and sheep. Occasionally mysterious allusions are made to 'he,' what 'he' will do with a certain farm, whether 'he' will support such and such a movement, or subscribe to some particular fund, what view will 'he' take of the local question of the day? Perhaps some one has had special information of the step 'he' is likely to take; then that favoured man is an object of the deepest interest, and is cross-questioned all round the table till his small item of authentic intelligence has been thoroughly assimilated. 'He' is the resident within those vast and endless walls, with the metal gates and the gilded coronet above--the prince of this kingdom and its capital city. To rightly see the subjects loyally hastening hither, let any one ascend the church tower on market day. It is remarkably high, and from thence the various roads converging on the town are visible. The province lies stretched out beneath. There is the gleam of water--the little river, with its ancient mills--that flows beside the town; there are the meadows, with their pleasant footpaths. Yonder the ploughed fields and woods, and yet more distant the open hills. Along every road, and there are many, the folk are hastening to their capital city, in gigs, on horseback, in dog-traps and four-wheels, or sturdily trudging afoot. The breeze comes sweet and exhilarating from the hills and over the broad acres and green woods; it strikes the chest as you lean against the parapet, and the jackdaws suspend themselves in mid-air with outstretched wings upheld by its force. For how many years, how many centuries, has this little town and this district around it been distinct and separate? In the days before the arrival of the Roman legions it was the country of a distinct tribe, or nation, of the original Britons. But if we speak of history we shall never have done, for the town and its antique abbey (of which this tower is a mere remnant) have mingled more or less in every change that has occurred, down from the earthwork camp yonder on the hills to to-day--down to the last puff of the locomotive there below, as its driver shuts off steam and runs in with passengers and dealers for the market, with the papers, and the latest novel from London. Something of the old local patriotism survives, and is vigorous in the town here. Men marry in the place, find their children employment in the place, and will not move, if they can help it. Their families--well-to-do and humble alike--have been there for so many, many years. The very carter, or the little tailor working in his shop-window, will tell you (and prove to you by records) that his ancestor stood to the barricade with pike or matchlock when the army of King or Parliament, as the case may be, besieged the sturdy town two hundred years ago. He has a longer pedigree than many a titled dweller in Belgravia. All these people believe in Fleeceborough. When fate forces them to quit--when the young man seeks his fortune in New Zealand or America--he writes home the fullest information, and his letters published in the local print read curiously to an outsider, so full are they of local inquiries, and answers to friends who wished to know this or that. In the end he comes back--should he succeed in getting the gold which tempted him away--to pass his latter days gossiping round with the dear old folk, and to marry amongst them. Yet, with all their deep local patriotism, they are not bigoted or narrow-minded; there is too much literature abroad for that, and they have the cosiest reading-room wherein to learn all that passes in the world. They have a town council held now and then in an ancient wainscoted hall, with painted panels and coats of arms, carved oaken seats black with age, and narrow windows from which men once looked down into the street, wearing trunk hose and rapier. But they have at least two other councils that meet much more often, and that meet by night. When his books are balanced, when his shop is shut, after he has strolled round his garden, and taken his supper, the tradesman or shopkeeper walks down to his inn, and there finds his circle assembled. They are all there, the rich and the moderately well-to-do, the struggling, and the poor. Each delivers his opinion over the social glass, or between the deliberate puffs of his cigar or pipe. The drinking is extremely moderate, the smoking not quite so temperate; but neither the glass nor the cigar are the real attractions. It is the common hall--the informal place of meeting. It is here that, the real government of the town is planned--the mere formal resolutions voted in the ancient council-room are the outcome of the open talk, and the quiet whisper here. No matter what subject is to the front, the question is always heard--What will 'he' do? What will 'he' say to it? The Volunteers compete for prizes which 'he' offers. The cottage hospital; the flower show; the cattle show, or agricultural exhibition; the new market buildings arose through his subscriptions and influence; the artesian well, sunk that the town might have the best of water, was bored at his expense; and so on through the whole list of town affairs. When 'he' takes the lead all the lesser gentry--many of whom, perhaps, live in his manor houses--follow suit, and with such powerful support to back it a movement is sure to succeed, yet 'he' is rarely seen; his hand rarely felt; everything is done, but without obtrusiveness. At these nightly councils at the chief hostelries the farmers of the district are almost as numerous as the townsmen. They ride in to hear the news and exchange their own small coin of gossip. They want to know what 'he' is going to do, and little by little of course it leaks out. But the town is not all so loyal. There is a section which is all the more vehemently rebellious because of the spectacle of its staid and comfortable neighbours. This section is very small, but makes a considerable noise. It holds meetings and utters treasonable speeches, and denounces the 'despot' in fiery language. It protests against a free and open park; it abhors artesian wells; it detests the throwing open of nut woods that all may go forth a-nutting; it waxes righteously indignant at every gift, be it prizes for the flower show or a new market site. It scorns those mean-spirited citizens that cheer these kindly deeds. It asks why? Why should we wait till the park gates are open? Why stay till the nut woods are declared ready? Why be thankful for pure water? Why not take our own? This one man has no right to these parks and woods and pleasure grounds and vast walls; these square miles of ploughed fields, meadows and hills. By right they should all be split up into little plots to grow our potatoes. Away with gilded coronet and watchman, batter down these walls, burn the ancient deeds and archives, put pick and lever to the tall church tower; let us have the rights of man! These violent ebullitions make not the least different. All the insults they can devise, all the petty obstructions they can set up, the mud they can fling, does not alter the calm course of the 'despot' one jot. The artesian well is bored, and they can drink pure water or not, as pleases them. The prizes are offered, and they can compete or stand aloof. Fleeceborough smiles when it meets at night in its council-rooms, with its glass and pipe; Fleeceborough knows that the traditional policy of the Hall will continue, and that policy is acceptable to it. What manner of man is this 'despot' and prince behind his vast walls? Verily his physique matters nothing; whether he be old or of middle age, tall or short, infirm or strong. The policy of the house keeps the actual head and owner rather in the background. His presence is never obtruded; he is rarely seen; you may stay in his capital for months and never catch a glimpse of him. He will not appear at meetings, that every man may be free, nor hesitate to say his say, and abuse what he lists to abuse. The policy is simply perfect freedom, with support and substantial assistance to any and to every movement set on foot by the respectable men of Fleeceborough, or by the tenant farmers round about. This has been going on for generations; so that the personnel of the actual owner concerns little. His predecessors did it, he does it, and the next to come will do it. It is the tradition of the house. Nothing is left undone that a true princely spirit could do to improve, to beautify, or to preserve. The antiquities of the old, old town are kept for it, and not permitted to decay; the ancient tesselated pavements of Roman villas carefully protected from the weather; the remnants of the enclosing walls which the legions built for their defence saved from destruction; the coins of the emperors and of our own early kings collected; the spurs, swords, spearheads, all the fragments of past ages arranged for inspection and study by every one who desires to ponder over them. Chipped flints and arrowheads, the bones of animals long extinct, and the strange evidences of yet more ancient creatures that swam in the seas of the prehistoric world, these too are preserved at his cost and expense. Archaeologists, geologists, and other men of science come from afar to see these things and to carry away their lessons. The memories of the place are cherished. There was a famous poet who sang in the woods about the park; his hermitage remains, and nothing is lost that was his. Art-treasures there are, too, heirlooms to be seen behind those vast walls by any who will be at the trouble of asking. Such is the policy of Hodge's own prince, whose silent influence is felt in every household for miles about, and felt, as all must admit, however prejudiced against the system, in this case for good. His influence reaches far beyond the bounds even of that immense property. The example communicates itself to others, and half the county responds to that pleasant impulse. It is a responsible position to hold; something, perhaps, a little like that of the Medici at Florence in the olden times. But here there is no gonfalon, no golden chain of office, no velvet doublet, cloak, and rapier, no guards with arquebuss or polished crossbow. An entire absence of state and ceremony marks this almost unseen but powerful sway. The cycle of the seasons brings round times of trial here as over the entire world, but the conditions under which the trial is sustained could scarcely in our day, and under our complicated social and political system, be much more favourable. CHAPTER XII THE SQUIRE'S 'ROUND ROBIN A cock pheasant flies in frantic haste across the road, beating the air with wide-stretched wings, and fast as he goes, puts on yet a faster spurt as the shot comes rattling up through the boughs of the oak beneath him. The ground is, however, unfavourable to the sportsman, and the bird escapes. The fir copse from which the pheasant rose covers a rather sharp descent on one side of the highway. On the level above are the ploughed fields, but the slope itself is too abrupt for agricultural operations, and the soil perhaps thin and worthless. It is therefore occupied by a small plantation. On the opposite side of the road there grows a fine row of oaks in a hedge, under whose shade the dust takes long to dry when once damped by a shower. The sportsman who fired stands in the road; the beaters are above, for they desire the game to fly in a certain direction; and what with the narrow space between the firs and the oaks, the spreading boughs, and the uncertainty of the spot where the pheasant would break cover, it is not surprising that he missed. The shot, after tearing through the boughs, rises to some height in the air, and, making a curve, falls of its own weight only, like pattering hail--and as harmless--upon an aged woman, just then trudging slowly round the corner. She is a cottager, and has been to fetch the weekly dole of parish bread that helps to support herself and infirm husband. She wears a long cloak that nearly sweeps the ground on account of her much-bowed back, and carries a flag basket full of bread in one hand, and a bulging umbrella, which answers as a walking stick, in the other. The poor old body, much startled, but not in the least injured, scuttles back round the corner, exclaiming, 'Lor! it be Filbard a-shooting: spose a'had better bide a bit till he ha' done.' She has not long to wait. The young gentleman standing in the road gets a shot at another cock; this time the bird flies askew, instead of straight across, and so gives him a better opportunity. The pheasant falls crash among the nettles and brambles beside the road. Then a second and older gentleman emerges from the plantation, and after a time a keeper, who picks up the game. The party then proceed along the road, and coming round the corner the great black retriever runs up to the old woman with the most friendly intentions, but to her intense confusion, for she is just in the act of dropping a lowly curtsey when the dog rubs against her. The young gentleman smiles at her alarm and calls the dog; the elder walks on utterly indifferent. A little way up the road the party get over the gate into the meadows on that side, and make for another outlying plantation. Then, and not till then, does the old woman set out again, upon her slow and laborious journey. 'Filbard be just like a gatepost,' she mutters; 'a' don't take no notice of anybody.' Though she had dropped the squire so lowly a curtsey, and in his presence would have behaved with profound respect, behind his back and out of hearing she called him by his family name without any prefix. The cottagers thereabout almost always did this in speaking among themselves of their local magnate. They rarely said 'Mr.'; it was generally 'Filbard,' or, even more familiarly, 'Jim Filbard.' Extremes meet. They hardly dared open their mouths when they saw him, and yet spoke of him afterwards as if he sat with them at bacon and cabbage time. Squire Filbard and one of his sons were walking round the outlying copses that October day with the object of driving the pheasants in towards the great Filbard wood, rather than of making a bag. The birds were inclined to wander about, and the squire thought a little judicious shooting round the outskirts would do good, and at the same time give his son some sport without disturbing the head of game he kept up in the wood itself. The squire was large made, tall, and well proportioned, and with a bearded, manly countenance. His neck was, perhaps, a little thick and apoplectic-looking, but burnt to a healthy brick-dust colour by exposure to the sun. The passing years had drawn some crows'-feet round the eyes, but his step was firm, his back straight, and he walked his ancestral acres every inch the master. The defect of his features was the thinness of the lips, and a want of character in a nose which did not accord with a good forehead. His hands, too, were very large and puffy; his finger-nails (scrupulously clean) were correspondingly large, and cut to a sharp point, that seemed to project beyond the tip of the finger, and gave it a scratchy appearance. The chimneys of Filbard Hall showed for some distance above the trees of the park, for the house stood on high ground. It was of red brick, somewhat square in style, and had little of the true Elizabethan character--it was doubtless later in date, though not modern. The chimneys, however, had a pleasing appearance over the trees; they were in stacks, and rather larger, or broader apparently at the top than where they rose from the roof. Such chimneys are not often seen on recent buildings. A chimney seems a simple matter, and yet the aspect of a house from a distance much depends upon its outline. The mansion was of large size, and stood in an extensive park, through which carriage drives swept up to the front from different lodge gates. Each of the drives passed under avenues of trees--the park seemed to stretch on either hand without enclosure or boundary--and the approach was not without a certain stateliness. Within the apartments were commodious, and from several there were really beautiful views. Some ancient furniture, handed down generation after generation, gave a character to the rooms; the oak staircase was much admired, and so was the wainscoating of one part. The usual family portraits hung on the walls, but the present squire had rather pushed them aside in favour of his own peculiar hobby. He collected antique Italian pictures--many on panels--in the pre-Raphaelite style. Some of these he had picked up in London, others he had found and purchased on the Continent. There were saints with glories or _nimbi_ round their heads, Madonnas and kneeling Magi, the manger under a kind of penthouse, and similar subjects--subjects the highest that could be chosen. The gilding of the _nimbi_ seemed well done certainly, and was still bright, but to the ordinary eye the stiffness of the figures, the lack of grace, the absence of soul in the composition was distressingly apparent. It was, however, the squire's hobby, and it must be admitted that he had very high authority upon his side. Some sensitive persons rather shrank from seeing him handle these painted panels with those peculiar scratchy finger-nails; it set their teeth on edge. He gave considerable sums of money for many of these paintings, the only liberality he permitted himself, or was capable of. His own room or study was almost bare, and the solitary window looked on a paved passage that led to the stables. There was nothing in it but a large table, a bookcase, and two or three of the commonest horsehair chairs; the carpet was worn bare. He had selected this room because there was a door close by opening on the paved passage. Thus the bailiff of the Home Farm, the steward, the gamekeeper, the policeman, or any one who wished to see him on business, could come to the side door from the back and be shown in to him without passing through the mansion. This certainly was a convenient arrangement; yet one would have thought that he would have had a second and more private study in which to follow his own natural bent of mind. But the squire received the gardener and gave him directions about the cucumbers--for he descended even to such minutiae as that--sitting at the same table on which he had just written to an Italian art collector respecting a picture, or to some great friend begging him to come and inspect a fresh acquisition. The bookcase contained a few law books, a manual for the direction of justices--the squire was on the commission--a copy of Burke, and in one corner of a shelf a few musty papers referring to family history. These were of some value, and the squire was proud of showing them to those who took an interest in archaeology; yet he kept them much as if they had been receipts for the footman's livery, or a dozen bottles of stable medicine. He wrote with a quill pen, and as it went up and down it scratched the paper as if it had been those sharp projecting finger-nails. In this study he spent many hours when at home--he rose late, and after breakfast repaired hither. The steward was usually in attendance. He was a commonplace man, but little above the description of a labourer. He received wages not much superior to those a labourer takes in summer time, but as he lived at the Home Farm (which was in hand) there were of course some perquisites. A slow, quiet man, of little or no education, he pottered about and looked after things in general. One morning perhaps he would come in to talk with the squire about the ash wood they were going to cut in the ensuing winter, or about the oak bark which had not been paid for. Or it might be the Alderney cow or the poultry at the Home Farm, or a few fresh tiles on the roof of the pig-sty, which was decaying. A cart wanted a new pair of wheels or a shaft. One of the tenants wanted a new shed put up, but it did not seem necessary; the old one would do very well if people were not so fidgety. The wife or daughter of one of the cottage people was taking to drink and getting into bad ways. This or that farmer had had some sheep die. Another farmer had bought some new silver-mounted harness, and so on, through all the village gossip. Often it was the gamekeeper instead of the steward who came in or was sent for. The squire kept a large head of pheasants for certain reasons, but he was not over-anxious to pay for them. The keeper grumbled about his wages, that he had no perquisites, and that the shooting season never brought him any fees--unless the squire let the place; he only wished he let it every year. This, of course, was said aside; to the squire he was hat in hand. He had to produce his vouchers for food for the pheasants and dogs, and to give particulars why a certain gate on the plantation wanted renewing. The steward had seen it, and thought it might be repaired; why did the keeper think it ought to be renewed altogether? And was there not plenty of larch timber lying about, that had been thrown and not sold, that would make a very good spar-gate, without purchasing one? Why couldn't old Hooker, the hedge carpenter, knock it up cheap? Next came the coachman--the squire did not keep up anything of a stud, just enough to work the carriage, and some ordinary riding horses and a pony for the children. The coachman had to explain why a new lock was wanted on the stable door; why the blacksmith's bill was so much for shoes; after which there was a long gossip about the horses of a gentleman who had come down and rented a place for the season. The gardener sometimes had an interview about the quantity of apples that might be sold from the orchard, and twenty other peddling details, in which the squire delighted. As for the butler, time at last had brought him to bear with patience the inquisition about the waste corks and the empty bottles. The squire would have had the cook in and discussed the stock-pot with her for a full hour, but the cook set up her back. She wouldn't, no, that she wouldn't; and the squire found that the cook was mistress of the situation. She was the only personage who did not pass him with deference. She tossed her head, and told her fellow-servants audibly that he was a poor, mean-spirited man; and as for missis, she was a regular Tartar--there! In this they thoroughly agreed. The coachman and footman, when out with the carriage, and chancing to get a talk with other coachmen and footmen, were full of it. He was the meanest master they had ever known; yet they could not say that he paid less wages, or that they were ill-fed--it was this meddling, peddling interference they resented. The groom, when he rode into town for the letter-bag, always stopped to tell Ills friends some fresh instance of it. All the shopkeepers and tradesmen, and everybody else, had heard of it. But they were none the less obsequious when the squire passed up the street. The servants were never so glad as when young master came home with the liberal views imbibed in modern centres of learning, and with a free, frank mode of speech. But miss, the sole daughter, they simply hated; she seemed to have ten times the meanness of her papa, and had been a tell-tale from childhood. The kitchen said she saved her curl papers to sell as waste paper. The 'missis' was as haughty, as unapproachable, and disdainful as the master was inquisitive; she never spoke to, looked at, nor acknowledged any one--except the three largest tenants and their wives. To these, who paid heavily, she was gracious. She dressed in the very extreme and front of fashion--the squire himself quite plainly, without the least pretence of dandyism. Hateful as the village folk thought her _hauteur_ and open contempt for them, they said she was more the lady than the squire was the gentleman. The squire's time, when at home, like everything else, was peddled away. He rode into market one day of the week; he went to church on Sundays with unfailing regularity, and he generally attended the petty sessional bench on a third day. Upon the bench, from the long standing of his family, he occupied a prominent position. His mind invariably seized the minutiae of the evidence, and never seemed to see the point or the broad bearings of the case. He would utterly confuse a truthful witness, for instance, who chanced to say that he met the defendant in the road. 'But you said just now that you and he were both going the same way; how, then, could you meet him?' the squire would ask, frowning sternly. Whether the witness overtook or met the defendant mattered nothing to the point at issue; but the squire, having got a satisfactory explanation, turned aside, with an aggravating air of cleverness. For the rest of the week the squire could not account for his time. He sometimes, indeed, in the hunting season, rode to the meet; but he rarely followed. He had none of the enthusiasm that makes a hunter; besides, it made the horse in such a heat, and would work him out too quick for economy. He went out shooting, but not in regular trim. He would carry his gun across to the Home Farm, and knock over a rabbit on the way; then spend two hours looking at the Alderney cow, the roof of the pig-sty, and the poultry, and presently stroll across a corner of the wood, and shoot a pheasant. The head of game was kept up for the purpose of letting the mansion from time to time when the squire or his lady thought it desirable to go on the Continent, that the daughter might acquire the graces of travel. A visit to London in the season, a visit to the seaside, and then home in the autumn to peddle about the estate, made up the year when they did not go abroad. There was a broad park, noble trees, a great mansion, a stately approach; but within it seemed all littleness of spirit. The squire's own private study--the morning-room of the owner of this fine estate--was, as previously observed, next the passage that led to the stables, and the one window looked out on a blank wall. It was in this room that he conducted his business and pleasure, and his art researches. It was here that he received the famous 'Round Robin' from his tenants. The estate was not very large--something between 3,000 and 4,000 acres--but much of it was good and fertile, though heavy land, and highly rented. Had the squire received the whole of his rents for his own private use he would have been well off as squires go. But there was a flaw or hitch somewhere in the right, or title, or succession. No one knew the precise circumstances, because, like so many similar family disputes, when the lawyers were ready, and the case had come before the tribunal, a compromise was arrived at, the terms of which were only known to the tribunal and the parties directly concerned. But everybody knew that the squire had to pay heavy pensions to various members of another branch of the family; and it was imagined that he did not feel quite fixed in the tenure--that possibly the case might, under certain circumstances, be heard of again--since it was noticed that he did not plant trees, or make improvements, or in any way proceed to increase the permanent attractions of the estate. It seemed as if he felt he was only lodging there. He appeared to try and get all he could off the place--without absolute damage--and to invest or spend nothing. After all these payments had been made the squire's income was much reduced, and thus, with all these broad acres, these extensive woods, and park, and mansion, pleasure grounds, game, and so forth, he was really a poor man. Not poor in the sense of actual want, but a man in his position had, of course, a certain appearance to keep up. Horses, carriages--even cooks--are not to be had for nothing, and are absolutely essential to those who are compelled to maintain any kind of dignity. Sons with liberal ideas are expensive; a daughter is expensive; a wife who insists on dressing in the fashion is expensive. Now, taking all those things into consideration, and remembering, too, that the squire as a good father (which he was admittedly) wished to make provision for the future of his children, it may perhaps, after all, be questioned whether he really was so mean and little of spirit as appeared. Under the circumstances, if he wished to save, the only way open to him was to be careful in little things. Even his hobby--the pre-Raphaelite pictures--was not without its advantage in this sense; the collection was certainly worth more than he gave for it, for he got it all by careful bargaining, and it could be sold again at a profit. The careful superintendence of the Alderney cow, the cucumber frames, and the rabbits, might all be carried out for the very best of objects, the good of his children. Now, the squire was, of course, very well aware of the troubles of agriculture, the wetness of the seasons--which played havoc with the game--the low prices, and the loud talk that was going on around him. But he made no sign. He might have been deaf, dumb, and blind. He walked by the wheat, but did not see the deficiency of the crop, nor the extraordinary growth of weeds. There were voices in the air like the mutterings of a coming storm, but he did not hear them. There were paragraphs in the papers--how So-and-So had liberally reduced the rents or returned a percentage; but he did not read them, or did not understand. Rent days came and went, and no sign was made. His solicitor received the rents, but nothing could be got out of him by the farmers. The little farmers hardly liked to take the lead: some of them did not dare. The three largest farmers looked at each other and wondered which would speak first. They were awkwardly situated. The squire's wife acknowledged their wives and daughters, and once now and then deigned to invite them to the mansion. The squire himself presented them with specimens of a valuable breed of poultry he was bringing up at the Home Farm. It was difficult to begin unpleasant business. Meantime the solicitor gathered up the cheques, wished them good afternoon and departed. Another rent day came round, and still no sign. The squire's policy was, in fact, to ignore. He ignored the depression altogether--could not see that it existed in that county at all. Recollect, it was the only policy open to him. Whether the rents paid to him were large or small, his expenses would be the same. There were the members of the other branch of the family to be paid in full. There were the carriages, the servants, the gamekeepers, and so on. He could reduce nothing; no wonder that he was slow to acknowledge that he must be himself reduced. The fatal day--so long dreaded--came at last. A large letter lay on the table in the study one morning, along with the other letters. He did not recognise the handwriting, and naturally opened it first. It was a 'Round Robin' from the tenants. All had signed a memorial, setting forth the depression, and respectfully, even humbly, asking that their case be taken into consideration, and that a percentage be returned, or the rent reduced. Their heavy land, they pointed out, had been peculiarly difficult to work in such seasons. They had suffered exceptionally, and they trusted he would take no offence. But there was an unmistakable hint that they were in earnest. All signed it--from the ungrateful largest tenants, who had had presents of fancy poultry, and whose wives had been smiled upon, down to the smallest working farmer, who could hardly be distinguished from his own labourers. The squire read the names over twice, pointing to each with his sharp, scratchy finger-nail. There were other letters from the members of the other branch of the family whose pensions were just due in full. Suppose he returned ten per cent. of the rents to the tenants, that would not be like ten per cent. upon the entire rental, but perhaps twenty-five or thirty per cent, upon that portion of the rental which actually went into his own pocket. A man can hardly be expected to cheerfully tender other people a third of his income. But sprawling and ill-written as many of the signatures were to the 'Round Robin'--the pen held by heavy hands--yet they were genuine, and constituted a very substantial fact, that must be yielded to. CHAPTER XIII AN AMBITIOUS SQUIRE Perhaps the magistrate most regular in his attendance at a certain country Petty Sessional Court is young Squire Marthorne. Those who have had business to transact at such Courts know the difficulty that often arises from the absence of a second magistrate, there being a numerous class of cases with which one justice of the peace is not permitted to deal. There must be two, and it sometimes happens that only one is forthcoming. The procedure adopted varies much in different divisions, according to the population and the percentage of charges brought up. Usually a particular day is appointed when it is understood that a full bench will be present, but it not unfrequently happens that another and less formal meeting has to be held, at which the attendance is uncertain. The district in which Mr. Marthorne resides chances to be somewhat populous, and to include one or two turbulent places that furnish a steady supply of offenders. The practice therefore is to hold two Courts a week; at one of these, on the Saturday, the more important cases are arranged to be heard, when there are always plenty of magistrates. At the other, on the Tuesday, remands and smaller matters are taken, and there then used to be some delay. One justice thought his neighbour would go, another thought the same of his neighbour, and the result was nobody went. Having tacitly bound themselves to attend once a week, the justices, many of whom resided miles away, did not care formally to pledge themselves to be invariably present on a second day. Sometimes the business on that second day was next to nothing, but occasionally serious affairs turned up, when messengers had to be despatched to gather a quorum. But latterly this uncertainty has been put an end to through the regular attendance of young Squire Marthorne, of Marthorne House. The Marthornes are an old family, and one of the best connected in the county, though by no means rich, and, whether it was the lack of great wealth or a want of energy, they had until recently rather dropped out of the governing circle. When, however, the young squire, soon after his accession to the property, in the natural course of events, was nominated to the Commission of the Peace, he began to exhibit qualities calculated to bring him to the front. He developed an aptitude for business, and at the same time showed a personal tact and judgment which seemed to promise a future very different from the previous stagnation of his family. These qualities came first into play at the Petty Sessions, which, apart from the criminal business, is practically an informal weekly Parliament of local landowners. Marthorne, of course, was well known to the rest long before his appearance among them as a colleague. He had gained some reputation at college; but that had long since been forgotten in the prestige he had attained as a brilliant foxhunter. Even in the days before his accession, when his finances were notoriously low, he had somehow contrived to ride a first-rate horse. Everybody likes a man who rides a good horse. At the same time there was nothing horsey about him; he was always the gentleman. Since his succession the young squire, as he was familiarly described--most of the others being elderly---had selected his horses with such skill that it was well known a very great man had noticed them, so that when he came to the Bench, young as he was, Marthorne escaped the unpleasant process of finding his level--_i.e._ being thoroughly put down. If not received quite as an equal by that assemblage of elderly gentlemen, he was made to feel that at all events they would listen to what he had to say. That is a very great point gained. Marthorne used his advantage with judgment. He displayed a modesty highly commendable in a young man. He listened, and only spoke for the purpose of acquiring information. Nothing is so pleasing as to find a man of intelligence willingly constituting himself your pupil. They were all anxious to teach him the business of the county, and the more he endeavoured to learn from them the cleverer they thought him. Now, the business of the county was not very intricate; the details were innumerable, but the general drift was easy to acquire. Much more complicated to see through were all the little personal likings, dislikings, petty spites, foibles, hobbies, secret understandings, family jars, and so forth, which really decide a man's vote, or the scale into which he throws his influence. There were scores of squires dotted over the county, each of whom possessed local power more or less considerable, and each of whom might perchance have private relations with men who held high office in the State. Every family had its history and its archives containing records of negotiations with other families. People who met with all outward friendliness, and belonged to the same party, might have grudges half a century old, but not yet forgotten. If you made friends with one, you might mortally offend the other. The other would say nothing, but another day a whisper to some great authority might destroy the hopes of the aspirant. Those who would attain to power must study the inner social life, and learn the secret motives that animate men. But to get at the secret behind the speech, the private thought behind the vote, would occupy one for years. Marthorne, of course, having been born and bred in the circle, knew the main facts; but, when he came to really set himself to work, he quickly felt that he was ignorant, and that at any moment he might irritate some one's hidden prejudice. He looked round for an older man who knew all about it, and could inform him. This man he found in the person of the Vice-Chairman of the Petty Sessions. The nominal Chairman, like many other unpaid officials, held the place because of old family greatness, not from any personal ability--family greatness which was in reality a mere tradition. The Vice-Chairman was the true centre and spirit of the circle. A man of vast aptitude for details, he liked county business for its own sake, and understood every technicality. With little or no personal ambition, he had assisted in every political and social movement in the county for half a century, and knew the secret motives of every individual landowner. With large wealth, nothing to do, and childless, he took a liking to young Marthorne. The old man wished for nothing better than to talk; the young squire listened attentively. The old man was delighted to find some one who would sit with him through the long hours of Petty Sessional business. Thus it was that the people who had to attend the Local Board, whether it was a Saturday, the principal day, or whether it was a Tuesday, that had previously been so trying, found their business facilitated by the attendance of two magistrates. The Vice-Chairman was always there, and Mr. Marthorne was always there. It sometimes happened that while Hodge the lately intoxicated, or Hodge the recent pugilist, was stolidly waiting for his sentence, the two justices in the retiring room were convulsed with laughter; the one recounting, the other imbibing, some curious racy anecdote concerning the family history of a local magnate. Meantime, the young squire was steadily gaining a reputation for solid qualities, for work and application. Not only at the Bench, but at the Board of Guardians and at other Boards where the justice of the peace is _ex officio_ a member, he steadily worked at details, sat patiently upon committees, audited endless accounts, read interminable reports, and was never weary of work. The farmers began to talk about him, and to remark to each other what a wonderful talent for business he possessed, and what a pleasant-speaking young gentleman he was. The applause was well earned, for probably there is no duller or more monotonous work than that of attending Boards which never declare dividends. He next appeared at the farmers' club, at first as a mere spectator, and next, though with evident diffidence, as a speaker. Marthorne was no orator; he felt when he stood up to speak an odd sensation in the throat, as if the glottis had contracted. He was, in fact, very nervous, and for the first two or three sentences had not the least idea what he had said. But he forced himself to say it--his will overruled his physical weakness. When said it was not much--only a few safe platitudes--but it was a distinct advance. He felt that next time he should do better, and that his tongue would obey his mind. His remarks appeared in the local print, and he had started as a speaker. He was resolved to be a speaker, for it is evident to all that, without frequent public speech, no one can now be a representative man. Marthorne, after this, never lost an opportunity of speaking--if merely to second a resolution, to propose a toast, he made the most of it. One rule he laid down for himself, namely, never to say anything original. He was not speaking to propound a new theory, a new creed, or view of life. His aim was to become the mouthpiece of his party. Most probably the thought that seemed to him so clever might, if publicly expressed, offend some important people. He, therefore, carefully avoided anything original. High authorities are now never silent; when Parliament closes they still continue to address the public, and generally upon more or less stirring questions of the time. In those addresses, delivered by the very leaders of his own party, Marthorne found the material, and caught from their diligent perusal the spirit in which to use it. In this way, without uttering a single original idea of his own, and with very little originality of expression, the young orator succeeded perfectly in his aim. First, he became recognised as a speaker, and, therefore, extremely useful; secondly, he was recognised as one of the soundest exponents of politics in the county. Marthorne was not only clever, but 'safe.' His repute for the latter quality was of even more service to him than for talent; to be 'safe' in such things is a very great recommendation. Personal reputation is of slow growth, but it does grow. The Vice-Chairman, Marthorne's friend and mentor, had connections with very high people indeed. He mentioned Marthorne to the very high people. These, in their turn, occasionally cast a glance at what Marthorne was doing. Now and then they read a speech of his, and thought it extremely good, solid, and well put. It was understood that a certain M.P. would retire at the next election; and they asked themselves whom they had to take his place? While this important question was exercising the minds of those in authority, Marthorne was energetically at work gaining the social suffrage. The young squire's lady--he had married in his minority for beauty and intelligence, and not for money--was discovered to be a very interesting young person. Her beauty and intelligence, and, let it be added, her true devotion to her husband's cause, proved of fifty times more value to him than a dowry of many manors. Her tact smoothed the way everywhere; she made friends for him in all directions, especially perhaps during the London season. Under the whirl and glitter of that fascinating time there are latent possibilities of important business. Both Marthorne and his lady had by birth and connections the _entrée_ into leading circles; but many who have that _entrée_ never attain to more influence in society than the furniture of the drawing-room. These two never for a moment lost sight of the country while they enjoyed themselves in town. Everything they said or did was said and done with a view to conciliate people who might have direct or indirect influence in the country. In these matters, ladies of position still retain considerable power in their hands. The young squire and his wife put themselves to immense trouble to get the good-will of such persons, and being of engaging manners they in time succeeded. This was not effected at once, but three or four years are a very short time in which to develop personal influence, and their success within so brief a period argues considerable skill. At home again in the autumn the same efforts were diligently continued. The mansion itself was but of moderate size and by no means convenient, but the squire's lady transformed it from a gaunt, commonplace country house into an elegant and charming residence. This she contrived without great expense by the exercise of good taste and a gift of discriminating between what was and what was not. The exterior she left alone--to alter an exterior costs a heavy sum and often fails. But the interior she gradually fitted in a novel fettle, almost entirely after her own design. The gardens, too, under her supervision, became equally inviting. The house got talked about, and was itself a social success. On his part, the squire paid as much attention to the estate. It was not large, far from sufficient of itself, indeed, to support any social or political pretensions without the most rigid economy. And the pair were rigidly economical. The lady dressed in the height of the fashion, and drove the most beautiful horses, and yet she never wasted a shilling upon herself. Her own little private whims and fancies she resolutely refused to gratify. Every coin was spent where it would produce effect. In like manner, the squire literally never had half a sovereign in his pocket. He selected the wines in his cellar with the greatest care, and paid for them prices which the wine merchant, in these days of cheap wines, was unaccustomed to receive from men of thrice his income. The squire paid for the very best wine, and in private drank a cheap claret. But his guests, many of them elderly gentlemen, when once they had dined with him never forgot to come again. His bins became known throughout the county; very influential people indeed spoke of them with affection. It was in this way that the squire got a high value out of his by no means extensive rents. He also looked after the estate personally. Hodge, eating his luncheon under the hedge in October, as he slowly munched his crust, watched the squire strolling about the fields, with his gun under his arm, and wondered why he did not try the turnips. The squire never went into the turnip field, and seemed quite oblivious that he carried a gun, for when a covey rose at his feet he did not fire, but simply marked them down. His mind, in fact, was busy with more important matters, and, fond as he was of shooting, he wanted the birds for some one else's delectation. After he had had the place a little while, there was not a square inch of waste ground to be found. When the tenants were callous to hints, the squire gave them pretty clearly to understand that he meant his land to be improved, and improved it was. He himself of his own free motive and initiative ordered new buildings to be erected where he, by personal inspection, saw that they would pay. He drained to some extent, but not very largely, thinking that capital sunk in drains, except in particular soils, did not return for many years. Anxious as he was to keep plenty of game, he killed off the rabbits, and grubbed up many of the small covers at the corners and sides of arable fields which the tenants believed injurious to crops. He repaired labourers' cottages, and added offices to farmsteads. In short, he did everything that could be done without too heavy an expenditure. To kill off the rabbits, to grub the smaller coverts, to drain the marshy spots, to thatch the cottages, put up cattle sheds, and so on, could be effected without burdening the estate with a loan. But, small as these improvements were in themselves, yet, taken together, they made an appreciable difference. There was a distinct increase in the revenue of the estate after the first two years. The increase arose in part from the diminished expenses, for it has been found that a tumble-down place is more costly to maintain than one in good repair. The tenants at first were rather alarmed, fearing lest the change should end in a general rise of rents. It did not. The squire only asked an increase when he had admittedly raised the value of the land, and then only to a moderate amount. By degrees he acquired a reputation as the most just of landlords. His tenantry were not only satisfied, but proud of him; for they began to foresee what was going to happen. Yet all these things had been done for his own interest--so true is it that the interest of the landlord and the tenant are identical. The squire had simply acted judiciously, and from personal inspection. He studied his estate, and attended to it personally. Of course he could not have done these things had he not succeeded to a place but little encumbered with family settlements. He did them from interested motives, and not from mere sentiment. But, nevertheless, credit of a high order was justly accorded to him. So young a man might naturally have expended his income on pleasure. So young a wife might have spent his rents in frivolity. They worked towards an end, but it was a worthy end--for ambition, if not too extravagant, is a virtue. Men with votes and influence compared this squire in their minds with other squires, whose lives seemed spent in a slumberous donothingness. Thus, by degrees, the young squire's mansion and estate added to his reputation. The labour which all this represented was immense. Both the squire and his wife worked harder than a merchant in his office. Attending Boards and farmers' clubs, making speeches, carrying on correspondence, looking after the estate, discharging social duties, filled up every moment of his time. Superintending the house, the garden, corresponding, and a hundred other labours, filled up every moment of hers. They were never idle; to rise socially and politically requires as great or greater work than for a poor man to achieve a fortune. Ultimately the desired result began to be apparent. There grew up a general feeling that the squire was the best man for the place in Parliament which, in the course of events, must ere long be vacant. There was much heartburning and jealousy secretly felt among men twice his age, who had waited and hoped for years for such an opening, till at last they had rusted and become incapable of effort. But, cynical as they might be in private, they were too wise to go openly against the stream. A few friendly words spoken in season by a great man whose goodwill had been gained decided the matter. At an informal meeting of the party--how much more is effected at informal than at formal assemblies!--Marthorne was introduced as the successor to the then representative. The young squire's estate could not, of course, bear the heavy pecuniary strain which must arise; but before those who had the control of these things finally selected him they had ascertained that there would be no difficulty with respect to money. Marthorne's old friend and mentor, the wealthy Vice-Chairman of the Petty Sessions, who had inducted him into the county business, announced that he should bear the larger part of the expense. He was not a little proud of his _protégé_. The same old friend and mentor, wise with the knowledge and experience which long observation of men had given him, advised the young squire what to do when the depression first came upon agriculture. The old man said, 'Meet it; very likely it will not last two years. What is that in the life of an estate?' So the young squire met it, and announced at once that he should return a percentage of his rents. 'But not too high a percentage,' said the old man; 'let us ascertain what the rest of the landowners think, else by a too liberal reduction you may seem to cast a reflection upon them.' The percentage was returned, and continued, and the young squire has tided over the difficulty. His own tenantry and the farming interest generally are proud of him. Hodge, who, slow as he is, likes a real man, says, 'He beant such a bad sort of a veller, you; a' beant above speaking to we!' When the time comes the young squire will certainly be returned. CHAPTER XIV THE PARSON'S WIFE It is pleasant, on a sunny day to walk through a field of wheat when the footpath is bordered on either side by the ripening crop, without the intervention of hedge or fence. Such a footpath, narrow, but well kept, leads from a certain country churchyard to the highway road, and passes on the way a wicket gate in a thick evergreen shrubbery which surrounds the vicarage lawn and gardens. This afternoon the wheat stands still and upright, without a motion, in the burning sunshine, for the sun, though he has sloped a little from his highest meridian altitude, pours an even fiercer beam than at the exact hour of noon. The shadeless field is exposed to the full glare of the brilliant light. There are no trees in the field itself, the hedges are cut low and trimmed to the smallest proportions, and are devoid of timber; and, as the ground is high and close to the hills, all the trees in sight are beneath, and can be overlooked. Whether in sunshine or storm there is no shelter--no medium; the wind rushes over with its utmost fury, or the heat rests on it undisturbed by the faintest current. Yet, sultry as it is, the footpath is a pleasant one to follow. The wheat ears, all but ripe--to the ordinary eye they are ripe, but the farmer is not quite satisfied--rise to the waist or higher, and tempt the hand to pluck them. Butterflies flutter over the surface, now descending to some flower hidden beneath, now resuming their joyous journey. There is a rich ripe feeling in the very atmosphere, the earth is yielding her wealth, and a delicate aroma rises from her generous gifts. Far as the eye can see, the rolling plains and slopes present various tints of yellow--wheat in different stages of ripeness, or of different kinds; oats and barley--till the hedges and woods of the vale conceal the farther landscape on the one hand and the ridge of the hills upon the other. Nothing conveys so strong an impression of substantial wealth as the view of wheat-fields. A diamond ornament in a window may be ticketed as worth so many hundreds of pounds; but the glittering gem, and the sum it represents, seem rather abstract than real. But the wheat, the golden wheat, is a great fact that seizes hold of the mind; the idea comes of itself that it represents solid wealth. The tiles of the vicarage roof--all of the house visible above the shrubbery--look so hot and dry in the glaring sunshine that it does not seem possible for vegetation to exist upon them; yet they are tinted with lichen. The shrubbery has an inviting coolness about it--the thick evergreens, the hollies on which the berries are now green, the cedars and ornamental trees planted so close together that the passer-by cannot see through, must surely afford a grateful shade--a contrast with the heat of the wheat-field and the dust of the highway below. Just without the wicket gate a goat standing upon his hind legs, his fore legs placed against the palings, is industriously nibbling the tenderest leaves of the shrubs and trees which he can reach. Thus extended to his full length he can reach considerably higher than might be supposed, and is capable of much destruction. Doubtless he has got out of bounds. Inside the enclosure the reverend gentleman himself reclines in an arm-chair of cane-work placed under the shade of the verandah, just without the glass door or window opening from the drawing-room upon the lawn. His head has fallen back and a little to one side, and an open book lies on his knee; his soft felt hat is bent and crumpled; he has yielded to the heat and is slumbering. The blinds are partly down the window, but a glimpse can be obtained of a luxurious carpet, of tables in valuable woods and inlaid, of a fine piano, of china, and the thousand and one nicknacks of highly civilised life. The reverend gentleman's suit of black, however, is not new; it is, on the contrary, decidedly rusty, and the sole of one of his boots, which is visible, is much worn. Over his head the roses twine round the pillars of the verandah, and there is a _parterre_ of brilliant flowers not far from his feet. His wife sits, a few yards distant, under a weeping ash, whose well-trained boughs make a perfect tent, and shield her from the sun. She has a small table before her, and writing materials, and is making notes with the utmost despatch from some paper or journal. She is no longer young, and there are marks of much care and trouble on her forehead; but she has still a pleasing expression upon her features, her hands are exquisitely white, and her figure, once really good, retains some of the outline that rendered it beautiful. Wherever you saw her you would say, That is a lady. But her dress, tasteful though it be, is made of the cheapest material, and looks, indeed, as if it had been carefully folded away last summer, and was now brought out to do duty a second time. The slow rumble of waggon wheels goes down the road, close to the lawn, but concealed by the trees, against whose boughs the sheaves of the load rustle as they go past. Wealth rolling by upon the waggon, wealth in the well-kept garden, in the smart lawn, in the roses, the bright flowers, the substantial well-furnished house, the luxurious carpet, and the china; wealth, too, all around in the vast expanse of ripening wheat. He has nothing to do but to slumber in the cane chair and receive his tithe of the harvest. She has nothing to do but to sit under the shadow of the weeping ash and dream dreams, or write verses. Such, at least, might be the first impression. The publication from which she is so earnestly making notes is occupied with the management of bees, and she is so busy because the paper is only borrowed, and has to be returned. Most of the papers and books that come to the vicarage have to be hastily read for the same reason. Mrs. F---- is doing her very best and hardest to increase the Rev. F----'s income--she has tried to do so for some years, and despite repeated failures is bravely, perhaps a little wearily, still trying. There is not much left for her to experiment with. The goat surreptitiously nibbling the valuable shrubs outside the palings is a member of a flock that once seemed to promise fair. Goats at one time (she was persuaded) were the means of ready wealth--they could live anywhere, on anything (the shrubs to wit), and yielded such rich milk; it far surpassed that of the shorthorn; there was the analysis to prove it! Such milk must of course be worth money, beside which there were the kids, and the cheese and butter. Alas! the goats quickly obtained so evil a reputation, worse than that of the rabbits for biting off the shooting vegetation, that no one would have them on the land. The milk was all the analysis declared it, but in that outlying village, which did not contain two houses above the quality of a farmstead, there was no one to buy it. There was a prejudice against the butter which could not be got over; and the cheese--well, the cheese resembled a tablet of dark soap. Hodge would not eat it at a gift; he smelt it, picked a morsel off on the tip of his clasp knife, and threw it aside in contempt. One by one the goats were got rid of, and now but two or three remained; she could not make up her mind to part with all, for living creatures, however greatly they have disappointed, always enlist the sympathies of women. Poultry was the next grand discovery--they ate their heads off, refused to lay eggs, and, when by frequent purchase they became numerous and promised to pay, quietly died by the score, seized with an epidemic. She learnt in visiting the cottagers how profitable their allotment gardens were to them, and naturally proceeded to argue that a larger piece of ground would yield proportionately larger profit if cultivated on the same principle. If the cottagers could pay a rent for an acre which, in the aggregate, was three times that given by the ordinary farmer, and could even then make a good thing of it, surely intelligence and skill might do the same on a more extended scale. How very foolish the farmers were! they might raise at least four times the produce they did, and they might pay three times the rent. As the vicar had some hundred and fifty acres of glebe let at the usual agricultural rent, if the tenants could be persuaded or instructed to farm on the cottager's system, what an immense increase it would be to his income! The tenants, however, did not see it. They shrugged their shoulders, and made no movement The energetic lady resolved to set an example, and to prove to them that they were wrong. She rented an acre of arable land (at the side of the field), giving the tenant a fair price for it. First it had to be enclosed so as to be parted off from the open field. The cost of the palings made the vicar wince; his lady set it duly down to debit. She planted one-half potatoes, as they paid thirty pounds per acre, and on the rest put in hundreds of currant bushes, set a strawberry bed and an asparagus bed, on the principle that luxuries of that kind fetch a high price and occupy no more space than cabbages. As the acre was cultivated entirely by the spade, the cost of the labour expended upon it ran up the figures on the debit side to an amount which rather startled her. But the most dispiriting part of the commencement was the length of time to wait before a crop came. According to her calculations that represented so much idle capital sunk, instead of being rapidly turned over. However, she consoled herself with the pig-sty, in which were half a dozen animals, whose feeding she often personally superintended. The potatoes failed, and did not pay for the digging; the currant bushes were blighted; the strawberries were eaten by snails, and, of course, no asparagus could be cut for three years; a little item, this last, quite overlooked. The pigs returned exactly the sum spent upon them; there was neither profit nor loss, and there did not appear any chance of making a fortune out of pork. The lady had to abandon the experiment quite disheartened, and found that, after all her care and energy, her books showed a loss of fifteen pounds. It was wonderful it was not more; labour was so expensive, and no doubt she was cheated right and left. She next tried to utilise her natural abilities, and to turn her accomplishments to account. She painted; she illuminated texts; she undertook difficult needlework of various kinds, in answer to advertisements which promised ample remuneration for a few hours' labour. Fifteen hours' hard work she found was worth just threepence, and the materials cost one shilling: consequently she laboriously worked herself poorer by ninepence. Finally, she was studying bees, which really seemed to hold out some prospect of success. Yonder were the hills where they could find thyme in abundance; the fields around supplied clover; and the meadows below were full of flowers. So that hot summer day, under the weeping ash, she was deep in the study of the 'Ligurian queen,' the 'super' system, the mysteries of 'driving,' and making sketches of patent hives. Looking up from her sketch she saw that her husband had fallen asleep, and stayed to gaze at him thoughtfully. He looked worn, and older than he really was; as if rest or change would do him good; as if he required luxuries and petting. She sighed, and wondered whether the bees would enable her to buy him such things, for though the house was well furnished and apparently surrounded with wealth, they were extremely poor. Yet she did not care for money for their own household use so much as to give him the weight in parish affairs he so sadly needed. She felt that he was pushed aside, treated as a cipher, and that he had little of the influence that properly belonged to him. Her two daughters, their only children, were comfortably, though not grandly, married and settled; there was no family anxiety. But the work, the parish, the people, all seemed to have slipped out of her husband's hands. She could not but acknowledge that he was too quiet and yielding, that he lacked the brazen voice, the personal force that imposes upon men. But surely his good intentions, his way of life, his gentle kindness should carry sway. Instead of which the parish seemed to have quite left the Church, and the parson was outside the real modern life of the village. No matter what he did, even if popular, it soon seemed to pass out of his hands. There was the school, for instance. He could indeed go across and visit it, but he had no control, no more than the veriest stranger that strolled along the road. He had always been anxious for a good school, and had done the best he could with means so limited before the new Acts came into operation. When they were passed he was the first to endeavour to carry them out and to save the village the cost and the possible quarrelling of a school board. He went through all the preliminary work, and reconciled, as far as possible, the jarring interests that came into play. The two largest landlords of the place were unfortunately not on good terms. Whatever the one did the other was jealous of, so that when one promised the necessary land for the school, and it was accepted, the other withdrew his patronage, and declined to subscribe. With great efforts the vicar, nevertheless, got the school erected, and to all appearance the difficulty was surmounted. But when the Government inspection took place it was found that, though not nearly filled with scholars, there was not sufficient cubic space to include the children of a distant outlying hamlet, which the vicar had hoped to manage by a dame school. These poor children, ill fed and young, could hardly stand walking to and from the village school--a matter of some five miles daily, and which in winter and wet weather was, in itself, a day's work for their weary little limbs. As the vicar could not raise money enough to pay a certificated teacher at the proposed branch or dame school, the scheme had to be abandoned. Then, according to red tape, it was necessary to enlarge the village school to accommodate these few children, and this notwithstanding that the building was never full. The enlargement necessitated a great additional expenditure The ratepayers did, indeed, after much bickering and much persuasion, in the end pay off the deficiency; but in the meantime, the village had been brought to the verge of a school board. Religious differences came to the front--there was, in fact, a trial of force between the denominations. Till then for many years these differences had slumbered and been almost forgotten; they were now brought into collision, and the social quiet of the place was upset. A council of the chief farmers and some others was ultimately formed, and, as a matter of fact, really did represent the inhabitants fairly well. But while it represented the parish, it left the vicar quite outside. He had a voice, but nothing more. He was not the centre--the controlling spirit. He bore it meekly enough, so far as he was personally concerned; but he grieved about it in connection with his deep religious feelings and his Church. The Church was not in the front of all, as it should be. It was hard after all his labour; the rebuffs, the bitter remarks, the sneers of those who had divergent views, and, perhaps worse than all, the cold indifference and apathy of those who wished things to remain in the old state, ignoring the fact that the law would not suffer it. There were many other things besides the school, but they all went the same way. The modern institution was introduced, championed by the Church, worked for by the Church, but when at last it was successful, somehow or other it seemed to have severed itself from the Church altogether. The vicar walked about the village, and felt that, though nominally in it, he was really out of it. His wife saw it too, still more clearly than he did. She saw that he had none of the gift of getting money out of people. Some men seem only to have to come in contact with others to at once receive the fruits of their dormant benevolent feelings. The rich man writes his cheque for 100_l_., the middle-class well-to-do sends his bank notes for 20_l_., the comfortable middle-class man his sovereigns. A testimonial is got up, an address engrossed on vellum, speeches are made, and a purse handed over containing a draft for so many hundreds, 'in recognition, not in reward, of your long continued and successful ministrations.' The art of causing the purse-strings to open is an art that is not so well understood, perhaps, among the orthodox as by the unorthodox. The Rev. F---- either could not, or would not, or did not know how to ask, and he did not receive. Just at present his finances were especially low. The tenants who farmed the glebe land threatened to quit unless their rents were materially reduced, and unless a considerable sum was expended upon improvements. To some very rich men the reduction of rents has made a sensible difference; to the Rev. F---- it meant serious privations. But he had no choice; he had to be satisfied with that or nothing. Then the vicarage house, though substantial and pleasant to look at, was not in a good state within. The rain came through in more places than one, and the ancient woodwork of the roof was rotten. He had already done considerable repairing, and knew that he must soon do more. The nominal income of the living was but moderate; but when the reductions were all made, nothing but a cheese-paring seemed left. From this his subscriptions to certain ecclesiastical institutions had to be deducted. Lastly, he had received a hint that a curate ought to be kept now that his increasing age rendered him less active than before. There was less hope now than ever of anything being done for him in the parish. The landowners complained of rent reductions, of farms idle on their hands, and of increasing expenses. The farmers grumbled about the inclement seasons, their continual losses, and the falling markets. It was not a time when the churlish are almost generous, having such overflowing pockets. There was no testimonial, no address on vellum, no purse with banker's draft for the enfeebled servant of the Church slumbering in the cane chair in the verandah. Yet the house was exquisitely kept, marvellously kept considering the class of servants they were obliged to put up with. The garden was bright and beautiful with flowers, the lawn smooth; there was an air of refinement everywhere. So the clergyman slept, and the wife turned again to her sketch of the patent hive, hoping that the golden honey might at last bring some metallic gold. The waggon rumbled down the road, and Hodge, lying at full length on the top of the load, could just see over the lowest part of the shrubbery, and thought to himself what a jolly life that parson led, sleeping the hot hours away in the shade. CHAPTER XV A MODERN COUNTRY CURATE 'He can't stroddle thuck puddle, you: can a'?' 'He be going to try: a' will leave his shoe in it.' Such were the remarks that passed between two agricultural women who from behind the hedge were watching the approach of the curate along a deep miry lane. Where they stood the meadow was high above the level of the lane, which was enclosed by steep banks thickly overgrown with bramble, briar, and thorn. The meadows each side naturally drained into the hollow, which during a storm was filled with a rushing torrent, and even after a period of dry weather was still moist, for the overhanging trees prevented evaporation. A row of sarsen stones at irregular intervals were intended to afford firm footing to the wayfarer, but they were nothing more than traps for the unwary. Upon placing the foot on the smooth rounded surface it immediately slipped, and descended at an angle into a watery hole. The thick, stiff, yellow clay held the water like a basin; the ruts, quite two feet deep, where waggon wheels had been drawn through by main force, were full to the brim. In summer heats they might have dried, but in November, though fine, they never would. Yet if the adventurous passenger, after gamely struggling, paused awhile to take breath, and looked up from the mud, the view above was beautiful. The sun shone, and lit up the oaks, whose every leaf was brown or buff; the gnats played in thousands in the mild air under the branches. Through the coloured leaves the blue sky was visible, and far ahead a faintly bluish shadow fell athwart the hollow. There were still blackberries on the bramble, beside which the brown fern filled the open spaces, and behind upon the banks the mosses clothed the ground and the roots of the trees with a deep green. Two or more fieldfares were watching in an elm some distance down; the flock to which they belonged was feeding, partly in the meadow and partly in the hedge. Every now and then the larks flew over, uttering their call-note. Behind a bunch of rushes a young rabbit crouched in the ditch on the earth thrown out from the hole hard by, doubtful in his mind whether to stay there or to enter the burrow. It was so still and mild between the banks, where there was not the least current of air, that the curate grew quite warm with the exertion. His boots adhered to the clay, in which they sank at every step; they came out with a 'sock, sock.' He now followed the marks of footsteps, planting his step where the weight of some carter or shepherd had pressed the mud down firm. Where these failed he was attracted by a narrow grass-grown ridge, a few inches wide, between two sets of ruts. In a minute he felt the ridge giving beneath him as the earth slipped into the watery ruts. Next he crept along the very edge of the ditch, where the briars hooked in the tail of his black frock-coat, and an unnoticed projecting bough quietly lifted his shovel-hat off, but benevolently held it suspended, instead of dropping it in the mud. Still he made progress, though slow; now with a giant stride across an exceptionally doubtful spot, now zigzagging from side to side. The lane was long, and he seemed to make but little advance. But there was a spirit in him not to be stayed by mud, or clay, or any other obstacle. It is pleasant to see an enthusiast, whether right or wrong, in these cynical days. He was too young to have acquired much worldly wisdom, but he was full of the high spirit which arises from thorough conviction and the sense of personal consecration conferred by the mission on the man. He pushed on steadily till brought to a stop by a puddle, broad, deep, and impassable, which extended right across the lane, and was some six or eight yards long. He tried to slip past at the side, but the banks were thick with thorns, and the brambles overhung the water; the outer bushes coated with adhesive mud. Then he sounded the puddle with his stick as far as he could reach, and found it deep and the bottom soft, so that the foot would sink into it. He considered, and looked up and down the lane. The two women, of whose presence he was unconscious, watched him from the high and dry level of the meadow, concealed behind the bushes and the oaks. They wore a species of smock frock gathered in round the waist by a band over their ordinary dress; these smock frocks had once been white, but were now discoloured with dirt and the weather. They were both stout and stolid-looking, hardy as the trees under which they stood. They were acorn picking, searching for the dropped acorns in the long rank grass by the hedge, under the brown leaves, on the banks, and in the furrows. The boughs of the oak spread wide--the glory of the tree is its head--and the acorns are found in a circle corresponding with the outer circumference of the branches. Some are still farther afield, because in falling they strike the boughs and glance aside. A long slender pole leaning against the hedge was used to thrash the boughs within reach, and so to knock down any that remained. A sack half filled was on the ground close to the trunk of the oak, and by it was a heap of dead sticks, to be presently carried home to boil the kettle. Two brown urchins assisted them, and went where the women could not go, crawling under the thorns into the hedge, and creeping along the side of the steep bank, gathering acorns that had fallen into the mouths of the rabbit holes, or that were lying under the stoles. Out of sight under the bushes they could do much as they liked, looking for fallen nuts instead of acorns, or eating a stray blackberry, while their mothers rooted about among the grass and leaves of the meadow. Such continual stooping would be weary work for any one not accustomed to it. As they worked from tree to tree they did not observe the colours of the leaves, or the wood-pigeons, or the pheasant looking along the edge of the ditch on the opposite side of the field. If they paused it was to gossip or to abuse the boys for not bringing more acorns to the sack. But when the boys, hunting in the hedge, descried the curate in the distance and came back with the news, the two women were suddenly interested. The pheasants, the wood-pigeons, or the coloured leaves were not worthy of a glance. To see a gentleman up to his ankles in mud was quite an attraction. The one stood with her lap half-full of acorns; the other with a basket on her arm. The two urchins lay down on the ground, and peered from behind a thorn stole, their brown faces scarcely distinguishable from the brown leaves, except for their twinkling eyes. The puddle was too wide to step across, as the women had said, nor was there any way round it. The curate looked all round twice, but he was not the man to go back. He tucked up his troupers nearly to the knee--he wore them short always--and stepped into the water. At this the urchins could barely suppress a shout of delight--they did, however, suppress it--and craned forward to see him splash. The curate waded slowly to the middle, getting deeper and deeper, and then suddenly found firmer footing, and walked the rest of the way with the water barely over his boots. After he was through he cleansed his boots on a wisp of grass and set off at a good pace, for the ground past the pool began to rise, and the lane was consequently drier. The women turned again to their acorns, remarking, in a tone with something like respect in it, 'He didn't stop for the mud, you: did a'?' Presently the curate reached the highway with its hard surface, and again increased his pace. The hedges here were cut each side, and as he walked rapidly, leaning forward, his shovel-hat and shoulders were visible above them, and his coat tails floated in the breeze of his own progress. His heavy boots--they were extremely thick and heavy, though without nails--tramped, tramped, on the hard road. With a stout walking-stick in one hand, and in the other a book, he strode forward, still more swiftly as it seemed at every stride. A tall young man, his features seemed thin and almost haggard; out of correspondence with a large frame, they looked as if asceticism had drawn and sharpened them. There was earnestness and eagerness--almost feverish eagerness--in the expression of his face. He passed the meadows, the stubble fields, the green root crops, the men at plough, who noticed his swift walk, contrasting with their own slow motion; and as he went his way now and then consulted a little slip of paper, upon which he had jotted memoranda of his engagements. Work, work, work--ceaseless work. How came this? What could there be to do in a sparely-populated agricultural district with, to appearance, hardly a cottage to a mile? After nearly an hour's walking he entered the outskirts of a little country town, slumbering outside the railway system, and, turning aside from the street, stopped at the door of the ancient vicarage. The resident within is the ecclesiastical head of two separate hamlets lying at some miles' distance from his own parish. Each of these hamlets possesses a church, though the population is of the very sparsest, and in each he maintains a resident curate. A third curate assists him in the duties of the home parish, which is a large one, that is, in extent. From one of these distant hamlets the curate, who struggled so bravely through the mire, has walked in to consult with his superior. He is shown into the library, and sinks not unwillingly into a chair to wait for the vicar, who is engaged with a district visitor, or lay sister. This part of the house is ancient, and dates from medieval times. Some have conjectured that the present library and the adjoining rooms (the partitions being modern) originally formed the refectory of a monastic establishment. Others assign it to another use; but all agree that it is monastic and antique. The black oak rafters of the roof, polished as it were by age, meet overhead unconcealed by ceiling. Upon the wall in one place a figure seems at the first glance to be in the act to glide forth like a spectre from the solid stone. The effect is caused by the subdued colouring, which is shadowy and indistinct. It was perhaps gaudy when first painted; but when a painting has been hidden by a coat or two of plaster, afterwards as carefully removed as it was carelessly laid on, the tints lose their brilliancy. Some sainted woman in a flowing robe, with upraised arm, stands ever in the act to bless. Only half one of the windows of the original hall is in this apartment--the partition wall divides it. There yet remain a few stained panes in the upper part; few as they are and small, yet the coloured light that enters through them seems to tone the room. The furniture, of oak, is plain and spare to the verge of a gaunt severity, and there is not one single picture-frame on the wide expanse of wall. On the table are a few books and some letters, with foreign postmarks, and addressed in the crabbed handwriting of Continental scholars. Over the table a brazen lamp hangs suspended by a slender chain. In a corner are some fragments of stone mouldings and wood carvings like the panel of an ancient pew. There are no shelves and no bookcase. Besides those on the table, one volume lies on the floor, which is without carpet or covering, but absolutely clean: and by the wall, not far from the fireplace, is an open chest, ancient and ponderous, in which are the works of the Fathers. The grate has been removed from the fireplace and the hearth restored; for in that outlying district there is plenty of wood. Though of modern make, the heavy brass fire-irons are of ancient shape. The fire has gone out--the logs are white with the ash that forms upon decaying embers; it is clear that the owner of this bare apartment, called a library, but really a study, is not one who thinks of his own personal comfort. If examined closely the floor yonder bears the marks of feet that have walked monotonously to and fro in hours of thought. When the eye has taken in these things, as the rustle of the brown leaves blown against the pane without in the silence is plainly audible, the mind seems in an instant to slip back four hundred years. The weary curate has closed his eyes, and starts as a servant enters bringing him wine, for the vicar, utterly oblivious of his own comfort, is ever on the watch for that of others. His predecessor, a portly man, happy in his home alone, and, as report said, loving his ease and his palate, before he was preferred to a richer living, called in the advice of architects as to converting the ancient refectory to some use. In his time it was a mere lumber-room, into which all the odds and ends of the house were thrown. Plans were accordingly prepared for turning one part of it into a cosy breakfast parlour, and the other into a conservatory. Before any steps, however, were taken he received his preferment--good things flow to the rich--and departed, leaving behind him a favourable memory. If any inhabitant were asked what the old vicar did, or said, and what work he accomplished, the reply invariably was, 'Oh! hum! he was a very good sort of man: he never interfered with anybody or anything!' Accustomed to such an even tenour of things, all the _vis inertiae_ of the parish revolted when the new vicar immediately evinced a determination to do his work thoroughly. The restless energy of the man alone set the stolid old folk at once against him. They could not 'a-bear to see he a-flying all over the parish: why couldn't he bide at home?' No one is so rigidly opposed to the least alteration in the conduct of the service as the old farmer or farmer's wife, who for forty years and more has listened to the same old hymn, the same sing-song response, the same style of sermon. It is vain to say that the change is still no more than what was--contemplated by the Book of Common Prayer. They naturally interpret that book by what they have been accustomed to from childhood. The vicar's innovations were really most inoffensive, and well within even a narrow reading of the rubric. The fault lay in the fact that they were innovations, so far as the practice of that parish was concerned. So the old folk raised their voices in a chorus of horror, and when they met gossiped over the awful downfall of the faith. All that the vicar had yet done was to intone a part of the service, and at once many announced that they should stay away. Next he introduced a choir. The sweet voices of the white-robed boys rising along the vaulted roof of the old church melted the hearts of those who, with excuses for their curiosity to their neighbours, ventured to go and hear them. The vicar had a natural talent, almost a genius, for music. There was a long struggle in his mind whether he might or might not permit himself an organ in his library. He decided it against himself, mortifying the spirit as well as the flesh, but in the service of the Church he felt that he might yield to his inclination. By degrees he gathered round him the best voices of the parish; the young of both sexes came gladly after awhile to swell the volume of song. How powerful is the influence of holy music upon such minds as are at all inclined to serious devotion! The church filled more and more every Sunday, and people came from the farthest corners of the parish, walking miles to listen. The young people grew enthusiastic, and one by one the old folk yielded and followed them. At the same time the church itself seemed to change. It had been cold and gloomy, and gaunt within, for so many generations, that no one noticed it. A place of tombs, men hurried away from it as quickly as possible. Now, little touches here and there gradually gave it the aspect of habitation. The new curtains hung at the door of the vestry, and drawn, too, across the main entrance when service began, the _fleur-de-lys_ on the crimson ground gave an impression of warmth. The old tarnished brazen fittings of the pews were burnished up, a new and larger stove (supplied at the vicar's expense) diffused at least some little heat in winter. A curate came, one who worked heart and soul with the vicar, and the service became very nearly choral, the vicar now wearing the vestment which his degree gave him the strict right to assume. There were brazen candlesticks behind the altar, and beautiful flowers. Before, the interior was all black and white. Now there was a sense of colour, of crimson curtains, of polished brass, of flowers, and rich-toned altar cloth. The place was lit up with a new light. After the first revolt of the old folk there was little opposition, because the vicar, being a man who had studied human nature and full of practical wisdom as well as learning, did all things gradually. One thing as introduced at a time, and the transition--after the first start--was effected imperceptibly. Nor was any extravagant ritual thrust upon the congregation; nor any suspicious doctrine broached. In that outlying country place, where men had no knowledge of cathedrals, half the offices of the Church had been forgotten. The vicar brought them back again. He began early morning services; he had the church open all day for private prayer. He reminded the folk of Lent and Eastertide, which, except for the traditional pancakes, had almost passed out of their lives. Festivals, saints' days, midnight service, and, above all, the Communion, were insisted upon and brought home to them. As in many other country districts, the Communion had nearly dropped into disuse. At first he was alone, but by-and-by a group of willing lay helpers grew up around him. The churchwardens began to work with him; then a few of the larger tenant farmers. Of the two great landed proprietors, one was for him from the first, the other made no active opposition, but stood aloof. When, in the autumn, the family of the one that was for him came home, a fresh impetus was given. The ladies of the mansion came forward to join in the parish and Church work, and then other ladies, less exalted, but fairly well-to-do, who had only been waiting for a leader, crowded after. For the first time in the memory of man the parish began to be 'visited.' Lay sisters accepted the charge of districts; and thus there was not a cottage, nor an old woman, but had the change brought home to her. Confirmation, which had been almost forgotten, was revived, and it was surprising what a number of girls came forward to be prepared. The Bishop, who was not at all predisposed to view the 'movement' with favour, when he saw the full church, the devotional congregation, and after he had visited the vicarage and seen into what was going on personally, expressed openly a guarded approval, and went away secretly well pleased. Rightly or wrongly, there was a 'movement' in the parish and the outlying hamlets: and thus it was that the curate, struggling through the mire, carried in his face the expression of hard work. Work, work, work; the vicar, his three curates and band of lay helpers, worked incessantly. Besides his strictly parochial duties, the vicar wrote a manual for use in the schools, he attended the Chambers of Agriculture, and supported certain social movements among the farmers; he attended meetings, and, both socially and politically, by force of character, energy, and the gift of speech, became a power in the country side. Still striving onwards, he wrote in London periodicals, he published a book, he looked from the silence of his gaunt study towards the great world, and sometimes dreamed of what he might have done had he not been buried in the country, and of what he might even yet accomplish. All who came in contact with him felt the influence of his concentrated purpose: one and all, after they had worked their hardest, thought they had still not done so much as he would have done. The man's charm of manner was not to be resisted; he believed his office far above monarchs, but there was no personal pretension. That gentle, pleasing manner, with the sense of intellectual power behind it, quite overcame the old folk. They all spoke with complacent pride of 'our vicar'; and, what was more, opened their purses. The interior of the church was restored, and a noble organ built. When its beautiful notes rose and fell, when sweet voices swelled the wave of sound, then even the vicar's restless spirit was soothed in the fulfilment of his hope. A large proportion of the upper and middle class of the parish was, without a doubt, now gathered around him; and there was much sympathy manifested from adjacent parishes with his objects, sympathy which often took the form of subscriptions from distant people. But what said Hodge to it all? Hodge said nothing. Some few young cottage people who had good voices, and liked to use them, naturally now went to church. So did the old women and old men, who had an eye to charity. But the strong, sturdy men, the carters and shepherds, stood aloof; the bulk and backbone of the agricultural labouring population were not in the least affected. They viewed the movement with utter indifference. They cleaned their boots on a Sunday morning while the bells were ringing, and walked down to their allotments, and came home and ate their cabbage, and were as oblivious of the vicar as the wind that blew. They had no present quarrel with the Church; no complaint whatever; nor apparently any old memory or grudge; yet there was a something, a blank space as it were, between them and the Church. If anything, the 'movement' rather set them against going. Agricultural cottagers have a strong bias towards Dissent in one form or another; village chapels are always well filled. Dissent, of course, would naturally rather dislike a movement of the kind. But there was no active or even passive opposition. The cottage folk just ignored the Church; nothing more and nothing less. No efforts were spared to obtain their good-will and to draw them into the fold, but there was absolutely no response. Not a labourer's family in that wide district was left unvisited. The cottages were scattered far apart, dotted here and there, one or two down in a narrow coombe surrounded on three sides by the green wall of the hills. Others stood on the bleak plains, unsheltered by tree or hedge, exposed to the keen winds that swept across the level, yet elevated fields. A new cottage built in modern style, with glaring red brick, was perched on the side of a hill, where it was visible miles away. An old thatched one stood in a hollow quite alone, half a mile from the highway, and so hidden by the oaks that an army might have ravaged the country and never found it. How many, many miles of weary walking such rounds as these required! Though they had, perhaps, never received a 'visitor' before, it was wonderful with what skill the cottage women especially--the men being often away at work--adapted themselves to the new _régime_. Each time they told a more pitiful tale, set in such a realistic framing of hardship and exposure that a stranger could not choose but believe. In the art of encouraging attentions of this sort no one excels the cottage women; the stories they will relate, with the smallest details inserted in the right place, are something marvellous. At first you would exclaim with the deepest commiseration, such a case of suffering and privation as this cannot possibly be equalled by any in the parish; but calling at the next cottage, you are presented with a yet more moving relation, till you find the whole population are plunged in misery and afflicted with incredible troubles. They cannot, surely, be the same folk that work so sturdily at harvest. But when the curate has administered words of consolation and dropped the small silver dole in the palm, when his shovel-hat and black frock-coat tails have disappeared round the corner of the copse, then in a single second he drops utterly out of mind. No one comes to church the more. If inquiries are made why they did not come, a hundred excuses are ready; the rain, a bad foot, illness of the infant, a cow taken ill and requiring attention, and so on. After some months of such experience the curate's spirits gradually decline; his belief in human nature is sadly shaken. Men who openly oppose, who argue and deny, are comparatively easy to deal with; there is the excitement of the battle with evil. But a population that listens, and apparently accepts the message, that is so thankful for little charities, and always civil, and yet turns away utterly indifferent, what is to be done with it? Might not the message nearly as well be taken to the cow at her crib, or the horse at his manger? They, too, would receive a wisp of sweet hay willingly from the hand. But the more bitter the experience, the harder the trial, the more conscientiously the curate proceeds upon his duty, struggling bravely through the mire. He adds another mile to his daily journey: he denies himself some further innocent recreation. The cottages in the open fields are comparatively pleasant to visit, the sweet fresh air carries away effluvia. Those that are so curiously crowded together in the village are sinks of foul smell, and may be of worse--places where, if fever come, it takes hold and quits not. His superior requests him earnestly to refrain awhile and to take rest, to recruit himself with a holiday--even orders him to desist from overmuch labour. The man's mind is in it, and he cannot obey. What is the result? Some lovely autumn day, at a watering-place, you may perchance be strolling by the sea, with crowds of well-dressed, happy people on the one side, and on the other the calm sunlit plain where boats are passing to and fro. A bath-chair approaches, and a young man clad in black gets out of it, where some friendly iron railings afford him a support for his hand. There, step by step, leaning heavily on the rails, he essays to walk as a child. The sockets of his joints yield beneath him, the limbs are loose, the ankle twists aside; each step is an enterprise, and to gain a yard a task. Thus day by day the convalescent strives to accustom the sinews to their work. It is a painful spectacle; how different, how strangely altered, from the upright frame and the swift stride that struggled through the miry lane, perhaps even then bearing the seeds of disease imbibed in some foul village den, where duty called him! His wan, white face seems featureless; there is nothing but a pair of deep-set eyes. But as you pass, and momentarily catch their glance, they are bright and burning still with living faith. CHAPTER XVI THE SOLICITOR In glancing along the street of a country town, a house may sometimes be observed of a different and superior description to the general row of buildings. It is larger, rises higher, and altogether occupies more space. The façade is stylish, in architectural fashion of half a century since. To the modern eye it may not perhaps look so interesting as the true old gabled roofs which seem so thoroughly English, nor, on the other hand, so bright and cheerful as the modern suburban villa. But it is substantial and roomy within. The weather has given the front a sombre hue, and the windows are dingy, as if they rarely or never knew the care of a housemaid. On the ground floor the windows that would otherwise look on to the street are blocked to almost half their height with a wire blind so closely woven that no one can see in, and it is not easy to see out. The doorway is large, with stone steps and porch--the doorway of a gentleman's house. There is business close at hand--shops and inns, and all the usual offices of a town--but, though in the midst, this house wears an air of separation from the rest of the street. When it was built--say fifty years ago, or more--it was, in fact, the dwelling-house of an independent gentleman. Similar houses may be found in other parts of the place, once inhabited by retired and wealthy people. Such persons no longer live in towns of this kind--they build villas with lawns and pleasure grounds outside in the environs, or, though still retaining their pecuniary interest, reside at a distance. Like large cities, country towns are now almost given over to offices, shops, workshops, and hotels. Those who have made money get away from the streets as quickly as possible. Upon approaching nearer to this particular building the street door will be found to be wide open to the public, and, if you venture still closer, a name may be seen painted in black letters upon the side of the passage wall, after the manner of the brokers in the courts off Throgmorton Street, or of the lawyers in the Temple. It is, in fact, the office of a country solicitor--most emphatically one of Hodge's many masters--and is admirably suited for his purpose, on account of its roomy interior. The first door within opens on the clerks' room, and should you modestly knock on the panels instead of at once turning the handle, a voice will invite you to 'Come in.' Half of the room is partitioned off for the clerks, who sit at a long high desk, with a low railing or screen in front of them. Before the senior is a brass rail, along which he can, if he chooses, draw a red curtain. He is too hard at work and intent upon some manuscript to so much as raise his head as you enter. But the two younger men, eager for a change, look over the screen, and very civilly offer to attend to your business. When you have said that you wish to see the head of the firm, you naturally imagine that your name will be at once shouted up the tube, and that in a minute or two, at farthest, you will be ushered into the presence of the principal. In that small country town there cannot surely be much work for a lawyer, and a visitor must be quite an event. Instead, however, of using the tube they turn to the elder clerk, and a whispered conversation takes place, of which some broken sentences may be caught--'He can't be disturbed,' 'It's no use,' 'Must wait.' Then the elder clerk looks over his brass rail and says he is very sorry, but the principal is engaged, the directors of a company are with him, and it is quite impossible to say exactly when they will leave. It may be ten minutes, or an hour. But if you like to wait (pointing with his quill to a chair) your name shall be sent up directly the directors leave. You glance at the deck, and elect to wait. The older clerk nods his head, and instantly resumes his writing. The chair is old and hard--the stuffing compressed by a generation of weary suitors; there are two others at equal distances along the wall. The only other furniture is a small but solid table, upon which stands a brass copying-press. On the mantelpiece there are scales for letter-weighing, paper clips full of papers, a county Post-office directory, a railway time-table card nailed to the wall, and a box of paper-fasteners. Over it is a map, dusty and dingy, of some estate laid out for building purposes, with a winding stream running through it, roads passing at right angles, and the points of the compass indicated in an upper corner. On the other side of the room, by the window, a framed advertisement hangs against the wall, like a picture, setting forth the capital and reserve and the various advantages offered by an insurance company, for which the firm are the local agents. Between the chairs are two boards fixed to the wall with some kind of hook or nail for the suspension of posters and printed bills. These boards are covered with such posters, announcing sales by auction, farms to be let, houses to be had on lease, shares in a local bank or gasworks for sale, and so on, for all of which properties the firm are the legal representatives. Though the room is of fair size the ceiling is low, as in often the case in old houses, and it has, in consequence, become darkened by smoke and dust, therein, after awhile, giving a gloomy, oppressive feeling to any one who has little else to gaze at. The blind at the window rises far too high to allow of looking out, and the ground glass above it was designed to prevent the clerks from wasting their time watching the passers-by in the street. There is, however, one place where the glass is worn and transparent, and every now and then one of the two younger clerks mounts on his stool and takes a peep through to report to his companion. The restraint arising from the presence of a stranger soon wears off; the whisper rises to a buzz of talk; they laugh, and pelt each other with pellets of paper. The older clerk takes not the least heed. He writes steadily on, and never lifts his head from the paper--long hours of labour have dimmed his sight, and he has to stoop close over the folio. He may be preparing a brief, he may be copying a deposition, or perhaps making a copy of a deed; but whatever it is, his whole mind is absorbed and concentrated on his pen. There must be no blot, no erasure, no interlineation. The hand of the clock moves slowly, and the half-heard talk and jests of the junior clerks--one of whom you suspect of making a pen-and-ink sketch of you--mingle with the ceaseless scrape of the senior's pen, and the low buzz of two black flies that circle for ever round and round just beneath the grimy ceiling. Occasionally noises of the street penetrate; the rumble of loaded waggons, the tramp of nailed shoes, or the sharp quick sound of a trotting horse's hoofs. Then the junior jumps up and gazes through the peephole. The directors are a very long time upstairs. What can their business be? Why are there directors at all in little country towns? Presently there are heavy footsteps in the passage, the door slowly opens, and an elderly labourer, hat in hand, peers in. No one takes the least notice of him. He leans on his stick and blinks his eyes, looking all round the room; then taps with the stick and clears his throat--'Be he in yet?' he asks, with emphasis on the 'he.' 'No, he be not in,' replies a junior, mocking the old man's accent and grammar. The senior looks up, 'Call at two o'clock, the deed is not ready,' and down goes his head again. 'A main bit o' bother about this yer margidge' (mortgage), the labourer remarks, as he turns to go out, not without a complacent smile on his features for the law's delays seem to him grand, and he feels important. He has a little property--a cottage and garden--upon which he is raising a small sum for some purpose, and this 'margidge' is one of the great events of his life. He talked about it for two or three years before he ventured to begin it; he has been weeks making up his mind exactly what to do after his first interview with the solicitor--he would have been months had not the solicitor at last made it plain that he could waste no more time--and when it is finally completed he will talk about it again to the end of his days. He will be in and out asking for 'he' all day long at intervals, and when the interview takes place it will be only for the purpose of having everything already settled explained over to him for the fiftieth time. His heavy shoes drag slowly down the passage--he will go to the street corner and talk with the carters who come in, and the old women, with their baskets, a-shopping, about 'this yer law job.' There is a swifter step on the lead-covered staircase, and a clerk appears, coming from the upper rooms. He has a telegram and a letter in one hand, and a bundle of papers in the other. He shows the telegram and the letter to his fellow clerks--even the grave senior just glances at the contents silently, elevates his eyebrows, and returns to his work. After a few minutes' talk and a jest or two the clerk rushes upstairs again. Another caller comes. It is a stout, florid man, a young farmer or farmer's son, riding-whip in hand, who produces a red-bound rate-book from a pocket in his coat made on purpose to hold the unwieldy volume. He is a rate-collector for his parish, and has called about some technicalities. The grave senior clerk examines the book, but cannot solve the difficulties pointed out by the collector, and, placing it on one side, recommends the inquirer to call in two hours' time. Steps again on the stairs, and another clerk comes down leisurely, and after him still another. Their only business is to exchange a few words with their friends, for pastime, and they go up again. As the morning draws on, the callers become more numerous, and it is easy to tell the positions they occupy by the degree of attention they receive from the clerks. A tradesman calls three or four times, with short intervals between--he runs over from his shop; the two juniors do not trouble to so much as look over the screen, and barely take the trouble to answer the anxious inquiry if the principal is yet disengaged. They know, perhaps, too much about his bills and the state of his credit. A builder looks in--the juniors are tolerably civil and explain to him that it is no use calling for yet another hour at least. The builder consults his watch, and decides to see the chief clerk (who is himself an attorney, having passed the examination), and is forthwith conducted upstairs. A burly farmer appears, and the grave senior puts his head up to answer, and expresses his sorrow that the principal is so occupied. The burly farmer, however, who is evidently a man of substance, thinks that the chief clerk can also do what he wants, and he, too, is ushered upstairs. Another farmer enters--a rather rougher-looking man--and, without saying a word, turns to the advertisement boards on which the posters of farms to be let, &c., are displayed. These he examines with the greatest care, pointing with his forefinger as he slowly reads, and muttering to himself. Presently he moves to go. 'Anything to suit you, sir?' asks the senior clerk. 'Aw, no; I knows they be too much money,' he replies, and walks out. A gentleman next enters, and immediately the juniors sink out of sight, and scribble away with eager application; the senior puts down his pen and comes out from his desk. It is a squire and magistrate. The senior respectfully apologises for his employer being so occupied. The gentleman seems a little impatient. The clerk rubs his hands together deprecatingly, and makes a desperate venture. He goes upstairs, and in a few minutes returns; the papers are not ready, but shall be sent over that evening in any case. With this even the squire must fain be satisfied and depart. The burly farmer and the builder come downstairs together amicably chatting, and after them the chief clerk himself. Though young, he has already an expression of decision upon his features, an air of business about him; in fact, were he not thoroughly up to his work he would not remain in that office long. To hold that place is a guarantee of ability. He has a bundle of cheques, drafts, &c., in his hand, and after a few words with the grave senior at the desk, strolls across to the bank. No sooner has the door closed behind him than a shoal of clerks come tripping down on tip-toe, and others appear from the back of the house. They make use of the opportunity for a little gossip. Voices are heard in the passage, and an aged and infirm labouring man is helped in by a woman and a younger man. The clerks take no notice, and the poor old follow props himself against the wall, not daring to take a chair. He is a witness. He can neither read nor write, but he can recollect 'thuck ould tree,' and can depose to a fact worth perhaps hundreds of pounds. He has come in to be examined; he will be driven in a week or two's time from the village to the railway station in a fly, and will talk about it and his visit to London till the lamp of life dies out. A footman calls with a note, a groom brings another, the letters are carelessly cast aside, till one of the juniors, who has been watching from the peephole, reports that the chief clerk is coming, and everybody scuttles back to his place. Callers come still more thickly; another solicitor, well-to-do, and treated with the utmost deference; more tradesmen; farmers; two or three auctioneers, in quick succession; the well-brushed editor of a local paper; a second attorney, none too well dressed, with scrubby chin and face suspiciously cloudy, with an odour of spirits and water and tobacco clinging to his rusty coat. He belongs to a disappearing type of country lawyer, and is the wreck, perhaps, of high hopes and good opportunities. Yet, wreck as he is, when he gets up at the Petty Sessions to defend some labourer, the bench of magistrates listen to his maundering argument as deferentially as if he were a Q.C. They pity him, and they respect his cloth. The scrubby attorney whistles a tune, and utters an oath when he learns the principal is engaged. Then he marches out, with his hat on one side of his head, to take another 'refresher.' Two telegrams arrive, and are thrown aside; then a gentleman appears, whom the senior goes out to meet with an air of deference, and whom he actually conducts himself upstairs to the principal's room. It is a local banker, who is thus admitted to the directors' consultation. The slow hand of the clock goes round, and, sitting wearily on the hard chair, you wonder if ever it will be possible to see this much-sought man. By-and-by a door opens above, there is a great sound of voices and chatting, and half a dozen gentlemen--mostly landed proprietors from their appearance--come downstairs. They are the directors, and the consultation is over. The senior clerk immediately goes to the principal, and shortly afterwards reappears and asks you to come up. As you mount the lead-covered stairs you glance down and observe the anxious tradesman, the ancient labourer, and several others who have crowded in, all eyeing you with jealous glances. But the senior is holding the door open--you enter, and it closes noiselessly behind you. A hand with a pen in it points to a chair, with a muttered 'Pardon--half a moment' and while the solicitor just jots down his notes you can glance round the apartment. Shelves of calf-bound law books; piles of japanned deed-boxes, some marked in white letters 'Trustees of,' or 'Executors of' and pigeon-holes full of papers seem to quite hide the walls. The floor is covered with some material noiseless to walk on (the door, too, is double, to exclude noise and draught); the furniture is solid and valuable; the arm-chair you occupy capacious and luxurious. On the wall hangs a section of the Ordnance map of the district. But the large table, which almost fills the centre of the room, quickly draws the attention from everything else. It is on that table that all the business is done; all the energies of the place are controlled and directed from thence. At the first glance it appears to support a more chaotic mass of papers. They completely conceal it, except just at the edge. Bundles of letters tied with thin red tape, letters loose, letters unopened; parchment deeds with the seals and signature just visible; deeds with the top and the words, 'This indenture,' alone glowing out from the confusion; deeds neatly folded; broad manuscript briefs; papers fastened with brass fasteners; papers hastily pinned together; old newspapers marked and underlined in red ink; a large sectional map, half unrolled and hanging over the edge; a small deed-box, the lid open, and full of blue paper in oblong strips; a tall porcupine-quill pen sticking up like a spire; pocket-books; books open; books with half a dozen papers in them for markers; altogether an utter chaos. But the confusion is only apparent; the master mind knows the exact position of every document, and can lay his hand on it the moment it is wanted. The business is such that even the master mind can barely keep pace with it. This great house can hardly contain it; all the clerks we saw rushing about cannot get through the work, and much of the mechanical copying or engrossing goes to London to be done. The entire round of country life comes here. The rolling hills where the shepherd watches his flock, the broad plains where the ploughman guides the share, the pleasant meadows where the roan cattle chew the cud, the extensive parks, the shady woods, sweet streams, and hedges overgrown with honeysuckle, all have their written counterpart in those japanned deed-boxes. Solid as is the land over which Hodge walks stolid and slow, these mere written words on parchment are the masters of it all. The squire comes here about intricate concerns of family settlements which in their sphere are as hard to arrange as the diplomatic transactions of Governments. He comes about his tenants and his rent; he comes to get new tenants. The tenants resort to the solicitor for farms, for improvements, reductions, leases, to negotiate advances, to insure for the various affairs of life. The clergyman comes on questions that arise out of his benefice, the churchyard, ecclesiastical privileges, the schools, and about his own private property. The labourer comes about his cottage and garden--an estate as important to him as his three thousand acres to the squire--or as a witness. The tradesman, the builder, the banker come for financial as well as legal objects. As the town develops, and plots are needed for houses and streets, the resort to the solicitor increases tenfold. Companies are formed and require his advice. Local government needs his assistance. He may sit in an official position in the County Court, or at the bench of the Petty Sessions. Law suits--locally great-- are carried through in the upper Courts of the metropolis; the counsel's name appears in the papers, but it is the country solicitor who has prepared everything for him, and who has marshalled that regiment of witnesses from remote hamlets of the earth. His widening circle of landlord clients have each their attendant circles of tenants, who feel confidence in their leader's legal adviser. Parochial officers come to him; overseer, rate-collector, church warden, tithing-man. The all-important work of registering voters fills up the space between one election and another. At the election his offices are like the head-quarters of an army. He may represent some ancient college, or corporation with lands of vast extent. Ladies with a little capital go home content when he has invested their money in mortgage of real property. Still the work goes on increasing; additional clerks have to be employed; a fresh wing has to be built to the old house. He has, too, his social duties; he is, perhaps, the head or mainspring of a church movement--this is not for profit, but from conviction. His lady is carried to and fro in the brougham, making social visits. He promotes athletic clubs, reading-rooms, shows, exhibitions. He is eagerly seized upon by promoters of all kinds, because he possesses the gift of organisation. It becomes a labour merely to catalogue his engagements like this. Let the rain rain, or the sun shine, the pen never stays work. Personally he is the very antithesis is of what might be predicated of the slow, comfortable, old-fashioned lawyer. He is in the prime of life, physically full of vigour, mentally persevering with untiring perseverance, the embodiment of energy, ever anxious to act, to do rather than to delay. As you talk with him you find his leading idea seems to be to arrange your own half-formed views for you; in short, to show you what you really do want, to put your desire into shape. He interprets you. Many of the clients who come to him are the most impracticable men in the world. A farmer, for instance, with a little money, is in search of a farm. Find him twenty farms just the size for his capital, he will visit them all and discover a fault in each, and waver and waver till the proper season for entering on possession is past. The great problem with country people is how to bring them to the point. You may think you have got all your witnesses ready for the train for London, and, as the bell rings, find that one has slipped away half a mile to talk with the blacksmith about the shoeing of his mare. Even the squire is trying when, he talks of this or that settlement. Of course, as he is educated, no lengthy and oft-repeated explanations are needed; but the squire forgets that time is valuable, and lingers merely to chat. He has so much time to spare, he is apt to overlook that the solicitor has none. The clergyman will talk, talk, talk in rounded periods, and nothing will stop him; very often he drives his wife in with him from the village, and the wife must have her say. As for Hodge and his mortgage, ten years would not suffice for his business, were he allowed to wander on. The problem is to bring these impracticable people to the point with perfect courtesy. As you talk with him yourself, you feel tempted to prolong the interview--so lucid an intellect exercises an indefinable charm. Keen and shrewd as he is, the solicitor has a kindly reputation. Men say that he is slow to press them, that he makes allowances for circumstances; that if the tenant is honestly willing to discharge his obligation he need fear no arbitrary selling up. But he is equally reputed swift of punishment upon those who would take shelter behind more shallow pretence, or attempt downright deceit. Let a man only be straightforward, and the solicitor will wait rather than put the law in force. Therefore, he is popular, and people have faith in him. But the labour, the incessant supervision, the jotting down of notes, the ceaseless interviews, the arguments, the correspondence, the work that is never finished when night comes, tell even upon that physical vigour and mental elasticity. Hodge sleeps sound and sees the days go by with calm complacency. The man who holds that solid earth, as it were, in the japanned boxes finds a nervous feeling growing upon him despite his strength of will. Presently nature will have her way; and, weary and hungry for fresh air, he rushes off for awhile to distant trout-stream, moor, or stubble. CHAPTER XVII 'COUNTY-COURT DAY' The monthly sitting of the County Court in a country market town is an event of much interest in all the villages around, so many of the causes concerning agricultural people. 'County-Court Day' is looked upon as a date in the calendar by which to recollect when a thing happened, or to arrange for the future. As the visitor enters the doorway of the Court, at a distance the scene appears imposing. Brass railings and red curtains partition off about a third of the hall, and immediately in the rear of this the Judge sits high above the rest on a raised and carpeted dais. The elevation and isolation of the central figure adds a solemn dignity to his office. His features set, as it were, in the wig, stand out in sharp relief--they are of a keenly intellectual cast, and have something of the precise clearness of an antique cameo. The expression is that of a mind in continuous exercise--of a mind accustomed not to slow but to quick deliberation, and to instant decision. The definition of the face gives the eyes the aspect of penetration, as if they saw at once beneath the surface of things. If the visitor looks only at the Judge he will realise the dignity of the law; the law which is the outcome and result of so many centuries of thought. But if he glances aside from the central figure the impression is weakened by the miserable, hollow, and dingy framing. The carpet upon the daïs and the red curtains before it ill conceal the paltry substructure. It is composed of several large tables, heavy and shapeless as benches, placed side by side to form a platform. The curtains are dingy and threadbare the walls dingy; the ceiling, though lofty, dingy; the boxes on either side for Plaintiff and Defendant are scratched and defaced by the innumerable witnesses who have blundered into them, kicking their shoes against the woodwork. The entire apparatus is movable, and can be taken to pieces in ten minutes, or part of it employed for meetings of any description. There is nothing appropriate or convenient; it is a makeshift, and altogether unequal to the pretensions of a Court now perhaps the most useful and most resorted to of any that sit in the country. Quarter sessions and assizes come only at long intervals, are held only in particular time-honoured places, and take cognisance only of very serious offences which happily are not numerous. The County Court at the present day has had its jurisdiction so enlarged that it is really, in country districts, the leading tribunal, and the one best adapted to modern wants, because its procedure is to a great extent free from obsolete forms and technicalities. The Plaintiff and the Defendant literally face their Judge, practically converse with him, and can tell their story in their own simple and natural way. It is a fact that the importance and usefulness of the country County Court has in most places far outgrown the arrangements made for it. The Judges may with reason complain that while their duties have been enormously added to, their convenience has not been equally studied, nor their salaries correspondingly increased. In front, and below the Judge's desk, just outside the red curtain, is a long and broad table, at which the High Bailiff sits facing the hall. By his side the Registrar's clerk from time to time makes notes in a ponderous volume which contains a minute and exact record of every claim. Opposite, and at each end, the lawyers have their chairs and strew the table with their papers. As a rule a higher class of lawyers appear in the County Court than before the Petty Sessional Bench. A local solicitor of ability no sooner gets a 'conveyancing' practice than he finds his time too valuable to be spent arguing in cases of assault or petty larceny. He ceases to attend the Petty Sessions, unless his private clients are interested or some exceptional circumstances induce him. In the County Court cases often arise which concern property, houses and lands, and the fulfilment of contracts. Some of the very best lawyers of the district may consequently be seen at that table, and frequently a barrister or two of standing specially retained is among them. A low wooden partition, crossing the entire width of the hall, separates the 'bar' from the general public, Plaintiff and Defendant being admitted through a gangway. As the hall is not carpeted, nor covered with any material, a new-comer must walk on tip-toe to avoid raising the echo of hollow boards, or run the risk of a reproof from the Judge, anxiously endeavouring to catch the accents of a mumbling witness. Groups of people stand near the windows whispering, and occasionally forgetting, in the eagerness of the argument, that talking is prohibited. The room is already full, but will be crowded when the 'horse case' comes on again. Nothing is of so much interest as a 'horse case.' The issues raised concern almost every countryman, and the parties are generally well known. All the idlers of the town are here, and among them many a rascal who has been, through the processes, and comes again to listen and possibly learn a dodge by which to delay the execution of judgment. Some few of the more favoured and respectable persons have obtained entrance to the space allotted to the solicitors, and have planted themselves in a solid circle round the fire, effectually preventing the heat from benefiting anyone else. Another fire, carefully tended by a bailiff, burns in the grate behind the Judge, but, as his seat is so far from it, without adding much to his comfort. A chilly draught sweeps along the floor, and yet at the same time there is a close and somewhat fetid atmosphere at the height at which men breathe. The place is ill warmed and worse ventilated; altogether without convenience, and comfortless. To-day the Judge, to suit the convenience of the solicitors engaged in the 'horse case,' who have requested permission to consult in private, has asked for a short defended cause to fill up the interval till they are ready to resume. The High Bailiff calls 'Brown _v_. Jones,' claim 8_s_. for goods supplied. No one at first answers, but after several calls a woman in the body of the Court comes forward. She is partly deaf, and until nudged by her neighbours did not hear her husband's name. The Plaintiff is a small village dealer in tobacco, snuff, coarse groceries, candles, and so on. His wife looks after the little shop and he works with horse and cart, hauling and doing odd jobs for the farmers. Instead of attending himself he has sent his wife to conduct the case. The Defendant is a labourer living in the same village, who, like so many of his class, has got into debt. He, too, has sent his wife to represent him. This is the usual course of the cottagers, and of agricultural people who are better off than cottagers. The men shirk out of difficulties of this kind by going off in the morning early to their work with the parting remark, 'Aw, you'd better see about it; I don't knaw nothing about such jobs.' The High Bailiff has no easy task to swear the Plaintiff's representative. First, she takes the book and kisses it before the formula prescribed has been repeated. Then she waits till the sentence is finished and lifts the book with the left hand instead of the right. The Registrar's clerk has to go across to the box and shout an explanation into her ear. 'Tell the truth,' says the old lady, with alacrity; 'why, that's what I be come for.' The Judge asks her what it is she claims, and she replies that that man, the Registrar's clerk, has got it all written down in his book. She then turns to the Defendant's wife, who stands in the box opposite, and shouts to her, 'You knows you ain't paid it.' It is in vain that the Judge endeavours to question her, in vain that the High Bailiff tries to calm her, in vain that the clerk lays his hand on her arm--she is bent on telling the Defendant a bit of her mind. The Court is perforce compelled to wait till it is over, when the Judge, seeing that talking is of no avail, goes at once to the root of the matter and asks to see her books. A dirty account-book, such as may be purchased for threepence, is handed up to him; the binding is broken, and some of the leaves are loose. It is neither a day-book, a ledger, nor anything else--there is no system whatever, and indeed the Plaintiff admits that she only put down about half of it, and trusted to memory for the rest. Here is a date, and after it some figures, but no articles mentioned, neither tea nor candles. Next come some groceries, and the price, but no one's name, so that it is impossible to tell who had the goods. Then there are pages with mysterious dots and strokes and half-strokes, which ultimately turn out to mean ounces and half-ounces of tobacco. These have neither name nor value attached. From end to end nothing is crossed off, so that whether an account be paid or not cannot be ascertained. While the Judge laboriously examines every page, trying by the light of former experience to arrive at some idea of the meaning, the Defendant's wife takes up her parable. She chatters in return at the Plaintiff, then she addresses the High Bailiff, who orders her to remain quiet, and, finally, turns round and speaks to the crowd. The Judge, absorbed in the attempt to master the account-book, does not for the moment notice this, till, as he comes to the conclusion that the book is utterly valueless, he looks up and finds the Defendant with her back turned gesticulating and describing her wrongs to the audience. Even his command of silence is with reluctance obeyed, and she continues to mutter to herself. When order is restored the Judge asks for her defence, when the woman immediately produces a receipt, purporting to be for this very eight shillings' worth. At the sight of this torn and dirty piece of paper the Plaintiff works herself into a fury, and speaks so fast and so loud (as deaf people will) that no one else can be heard. Till she is made to understand that she will be sent out of Court she does not desist. The Judge looks at the receipt, and finds it correct; but still the Plaintiff positively declares that she has never had the money. Yet she admits that the receipt is in her handwriting. The Judge asks the Defendant who paid over the cash, and she replies that it was her husband. The account-book contains no memorandum of any payment at all. With difficulty the Judge again obtains silence, and once more endeavours to understand a page of the account-book to which the Plaintiff persists in pointing. His idea is now to identify the various articles mentioned in the receipt with the articles put down on that particular page. After at least three-quarters of an hour, during which the book is handed to and fro by the clerk from Judge to Plaintiff, that she may explain the meaning of the hieroglyphics, some light at last begins to dawn. By dint of patiently separating the mixed entries the Judge presently arrives at a partial comprehension of what the Plaintiff has been trying to convey. The amount of the receipted bill and the amount of the entries in the page of the account-book are the same; but the articles entered in the book and those admitted to be paid for are not. The receipt mentions candles; the account-book has no candles. Clearly they are two different debts, which chanced to come to the same figure. The receipt, however, is not dated, and whether it is the Defendant who is wilfully misrepresenting, or whether the Plaintiff is under a mistaken notion, the Judge for the time cannot decide. The Defendant declares that she does not know the date and cannot fix it--it was a 'main bit ago,' and that is all she can say. For the third time the Judge, patient to the last degree, wades through the account-book. Meanwhile the hands of the clock have moved on. Instead of being a short case, this apparently simple matter has proved a long one, and already as the afternoon advances the light of the dull winter's day declines. The solicitors engaged in the 'horse case,' who retired to consult, hoping to come to a settlement, returned into Court fully an hour ago, and have since been sitting at the table waiting to resume. Besides these some four or five other lawyers of equal standing are anxiously looking for a chance of commencing their business. All their clients are waiting, and the witnesses; they have all crowded into the Court, the close atmosphere of which is almost intolerable. But having begun the case the Judge gives it his full and undivided attention. Solicitors, clients, witnesses, cases that interest the public, causes that concern valuable property, or important contracts must all be put aside till this trifling matter is settled. He is as anxious as any, or more so, to get on, because delay causes business to accumulate--the adjourned causes, of course, having to be heard at next Court, and thus swelling the list to an inordinate length. But, impatient as he may be, especially as he is convinced that one or other of the parties is keeping back a part of the truth, he is determined that the subject shall be searched to the bottom. The petty village shopkeeper and the humble cottager obtain as full or fuller attention than the well-to-do Plaintiffs and Defendants who can bring down barristers from London. 'What have you there?' the Registrar's clerk demands of the Plaintiff presently. She has been searching in her pocket for a snuff-box wherewith to refresh herself, and, unable to immediately discover it, has emptied the contents of the pocket on the ledge of the witness-box. Among the rest is another little account-book. 'Let me see that,' demands the Judge, rather sharply, and no wonder. 'Why did you not produce it before?' 'Aw, he be last year's un; some of it be two years ago,' is the reply. Another long pause. The Judge silently examines every page of the account-book two years old. Suddenly he looks up. 'This receipt,' he says, 'was given for an account rendered eighteen months ago. Here in this older book are the entries corresponding with it. The present claim is for a second series of articles which happened to come to the same amount, and the Defendant, finding that the receipt was not dated, has endeavoured to make it do duty for the two.' 'I tould you so,' interrupts the Plaintiff. 'I tould you so, but you wouldn't listen to I.' The Judge continues that he is not sure he ought not to commit the Defendant, and then, with a gesture of weary disgust, throws down his pen and breaks off in the middle of his sentence to ask the High Bailiff if there are any other judgments out against the Defendant. So many years' experience of the drifts, subterfuges, paltry misrepresentations and suppressions--all the mean and despicable side of poor humanity--have indeed wearied him, but, at the same time, taught forbearance. He hesitates to be angry, and delays to punish. The people are poor, exceedingly poor. The Defendant's wife says she has eight children; they are ignorant, and, in short, cannot be, in equity, judged as others in better circumstances. There are two other judgments against the Defendant, who is earning about 12s. a week, and the verdict is 1s. a month, first payment that day three weeks. Then the solicitor for the Plaintiff in the 'horse case' rises and informs the Judge that the parties cannot settle it, and the case must proceed. The Plaintiff and Defendant take their places, and some thirty witnesses file through the gangway to the witness-room to be out of Court. The bailiffs light the gas as the gloom deepens, and the solicitor begins his opening speech. The Judge has leant back in his chair, closed his eyes, and composed himself to listen. By the time two witnesses have been examined the hour has arrived when the Judge can sit no longer. He must leave, because on the morrow he has to hold a Court in another part of the county. The important 'horse case' and the other causes must wait a month.. He sits to the very last moment, then hastily stuffs deeds, documents, papers of all descriptions into a portmanteau already overflowing, and rushes to his carriage. He will go through much the same work to-morrow; combating the irritating misrepresentations, exposing suppressors, discovering the truth under a mountain of crass stupidity and wilful deceit. Next day he will be again at work; and the same process will go on the following week. In the month there are perhaps about five days--exclusive of Sundays--upon which he does not sit. But those days are not holidays. They are spent in patiently reading a mass of deeds, indentures, contracts, vouchers, affidavits, evidence of every description and of the most voluminous character. These have been put in by solicitors, as part of their cases, and require the most careful attention. Besides causes that are actually argued out in open Court, there are others which, by consent of both parties, are placed in his hands as arbitrator. Many involve nice points of law, and require a written judgment in well-chosen words. The work of the County Court Judge at the present day is simply enormous; it is ceaseless and never finished, and it demands a patience which nothing can ruffle. No matter how much falsehood may annoy him, a Judge with arbitrary power entrusted to him must not permit indignation alone to govern his decision. He must make allowances for all. For the County Court in country districts has become a tribunal whose decisions enter, as it were, into the very life of the people. It is not concerned with a few important cases only; it has to arrange and finally settle what are really household affairs. Take any village, and make inquiries how many householders there are who have not at one time or other come under the jurisdiction of the County Court? Either as Plaintiff, or Defendant, or as witness, almost every one has had such experience, and those who have not have been threatened with it. Beside those defended cases that come before the Judge, there are hundreds upon hundreds of petty claims, to which no defence is offered, and which are adjudicated upon by the Registrar at the same time that the Judge hears the defended causes. The labourer, like so many farmers in a different way, lives on credit and is perpetually in debt. He purchases his weekly goods on the security of hoeing, harvest, or piece work, and his wages are continually absorbed in payment of instalments, just as the tenant-farmer's income is too often absorbed in the payment of interest and instalments of his loans. No one seems ever to pay without at least a threat of the County Court, which thus occupies a position like a firm appointed to perpetually liquidate a vast estate. It is for ever collecting shillings and half-crowns. This is one aspect of the County Court; the other is its position with respect to property. It is the great arbitrator of property--of houses and land, and deeds and contracts. Of recent years the number of the owners of land has immensely increased--that is, of small pieces--and the litigation has correspondingly grown. There is enough work for a man of high legal ability in settling causes of this character alone, without any 'horse case' with thirty witnesses, or any dispute that involves the conflict of personal testimony. CHAPTER XVIII THE BANK. THE OLD NEWSPAPER The most imposing building in a certain country market town is the old Bank, so called familiarly to distinguish it from the new one. The premises of the old Bank would be quite unapproached in grandeur, locally, were it not for the enterprise of the new establishment. Nothing could be finer than the façade of the old Bank, which stands out clear and elegant in its fresh paint among the somewhat dingy houses and shops of the main street. It is rather larger in size, more lofty, and has the advantage of being a few yards nearer to the railway station. But the rival institution runs it very close. It occupies a corner on the very verge of the market-place--its door facing the farmer as he concludes his deal--and it is within a minute of the best hotels, where much business is done. It is equally white and clean with fresh paint, and equally elegant in design. A stranger, upon a nice consideration of the circumstances, might find a difficulty in deciding on which to bestow his patronage; and perhaps the chief recommendation of the old establishment lies in the fact that it is the older of the two. The value of antiquity was never better understood than in these modern days. Shrewd men of business have observed that the quality of being ancient is the foundation of credit. Men believe in that which has been long established. Their fathers dealt there, they deal themselves, and if a new-comer takes up his residence he is advised to do likewise. A visitor desirous of looking on the outside, at least of country banking, would naturally be conducted to the old Bank. If it were an ordinary day, _i.e._ not a market or fair, he might stand on the pavement in front sunning himself without the least inconvenience from the passenger traffic. He would see, on glancing Up and down the street, one or two aged cottage women going in or out of the grocer's, a postman strolling round, and a distant policeman at the farthest corner. A sprinkling of boys playing marbles at the side of the pavement, and two men loading a waggon with sacks of flour from a warehouse, complete the scene as far as human life is concerned. There are dogs basking on doorsteps, larger dogs rambling with idleness in the slow sway of their tails, and overhead black swifts (whose nests are in the roofs of the higher houses) dash to and fro, uttering their shrill screech. The outer door of the bank is wide open--fastened back--ostentatiously open, and up the passage another mahogany door, closed, bears a polished brazen plate with the word 'Manager' engraved upon it. Everything within is large and massive. The swing door itself yields with the slow motion of solidity, and unless you are agile as it closes in the rear, thrusts you forward like a strong gale. The apartment is large and lofty: there is room for a crowd, but at present there is no one at the counter. It is long enough and broad enough for the business of twenty customers at once; so broad that the clerks on the other side are beyond arm's reach. But they have shovels with which to push the gold towards you, and in a small glass stand is a sponge kept constantly damp, across which the cashier draws his finger as he counts the silver, the slight moisture enabling him to sort the coin more swiftly. The fittings are perfect, as perfect as in a London bank, and there is an air of extreme precision. Yonder open drawers are full of pass-books; upon the desks and on the broad mantelpiece are piles of cheques, not scattered in disorder but arranged in exact heaps. The very inkstands are heavy and vast, and you just catch a glimpse round the edge of the semi-sentry box which guards the desk of the chief cashier, of a ledger so huge that the mind can hardly realise the extent of the business which requires such ponderous volumes to record it. Then beyond these a glass door, half open, apparently leads to the manager's room, for within it is a table strewn with papers, and you can see the green-painted iron wall of a safe. The clerks, like the place, are somewhat imposing; they are in no hurry, they allow you time to look round you and imbibe the sense of awe which the magnificent mahogany counter and the brazen fittings, all the evidences of wealth, are so calculated to inspire. The hollow sound of your footstep on the floor does not seem heard; the slight 'Ahem!' you utter after you have waited a few moments attracts no attention, nor the rustling of your papers. The junior clerks are adding up column after column of figures, and are totally absorbed; the chief cashier is pondering deeply over a letter and annotating it. By-and-by he puts it down, and slowly approaches. But after you have gone through the preliminary ceremony of waiting, which is an institution of the place, the treatment quite changes. Your business is accomplished with practised ease, any information you may require is forthcoming on the instant, and deft fingers pass you the coin. In brief, the whole machinery of banking is here as complete as in Lombard Street. The complicated ramifications of commercial transactions are as well understood and as closely studied as in the 'City.' No matter what your wishes, provided, of course, that your credentials are unimpeachable, they will be conducted for you satisfactorily and without delay. Yet the green meadows are within an arrow shot, and standing on the threshold and looking down a cross street you can see the elms of the hedgerows closing in the prospect. It is really wonderful that such conveniences should he found in so apparently insignificant a place. The intelligence and courtesy of the officials is most marked. It is clear, upon reflection, that such intelligence, such manners, and knowledge not only of business but of men (for a banker and a banker's agent has often to judge at a moment's notice whether a man be a rogue or honest), cannot be had for nothing. They must be paid for, and, in so far at least as the heads are concerned, paid liberally. It is known that the old Bank has often paid twenty and twenty-five per cent, to its shareholders. Where does all this money come from? From Hodge, toiling in the field and earning his livelihood in the sweat of his brow? One would hardly think so at first, and yet there are no great businesses or manufactories here. Somehow or other the money that pays for this courtesy and commercial knowledge, for these magnificent premises and furniture, that pays the shareholders twenty-five per cent., must be drawn from the green meadows, the cornfields, and the hills where the sheep feed. On an ordinary day the customers that come to the bank's counter may be reckoned on the fingers. Early in the morning the Post-Office people come for their cash and change; next, some of the landlords of the principal inns with their takings; afterwards, such of the tradesmen as have cheques to pay in. Later on the lawyers' clerks, or the solicitors themselves drop in; in the latter case for a chat with the manager. A farmer or two may call, especially on a Friday, for the cash to pay the labourers next day, and so the morning passes. In the afternoon one or more of the local gentry or clergy may drive up or may not--it is a chance either way--and as the hour draws near for closing some of the tradesmen come hurrying in again. Then the day, so far as the public are concerned, is over. To-morrow sees the same event repeated. On a market-day there is a great bustle; men hustle in and out, with a bluff disregard of conventional politeness, but with no intention of rudeness. Through the open doors comes the lowing of cattle, and the baaing of sheep; the farmers and dealers that crowd in and out bring with them an odour of animals that exhales from their garments. The clerks are now none too many, the long broad counter none too large; the resources of the establishment are taxed to the utmost. The manager is there in person, attending to the more important customers. In the crush are many ladies who would find their business facilitated by coming on a different day. But market-day is a tradition with all classes; even the gentry appear in greater numbers. If you go forth into the Market-place you will find it thronged with farmers. If you go into the Corn Hall or Exchange, where the corndealers have their stands, and where business in cereals and seeds is transacted; if you walk across to the auction yard for cattle, or to the horse depository, where an auction of horses is proceeding; everywhere you have to push your way through groups of agriculturists. The hotels are full of them (the stable-yards full of their various conveyances), and the restaurant, the latest innovation in country towns, is equally filled with farmers taking a chop, and the inner rooms with ladies discussing coffee and light refreshments. Now every farmer of all this crowd has his cheque-book in the breast pocket of his coat. Let his business be what it may, the purchase of cattle, sheep, horses, or implements, seed, or any other necessary, no coin passes. The parties, if the transaction be private, adjourn to their favourite inn, and out comes the cheque-book. If a purchase be effected at either of the auctions proceeding it is paid for by cheque, and, on the other hand, should the farmer be the vendor, his money comes to him in the shape of a cheque. With the exception of his dinner and the ostler, the farmer who comes to market carries on all his transactions with paper. The landlord of the hotel takes cash for the dinner, and the ostler takes his shilling. For the rest, it is all cheques cheques, cheques; so that the whole business of agriculture, from the purchase of the seed to the sale of the crop, passes through the bank. The toll taken by the bank upon such transactions as simple buying and selling is practically _nil_; its profit is indirect. But besides the indirect profit there is the direct speculation of making advances at high interest, discounting bills, and similar business. It might almost be said that the crops are really the property of the local banks, so large in the aggregate are the advances made upon them. The bank has, in fact, to study the seasons, the weather, the probable market prices, the import of grain and cattle, and to keep an eye upon the agriculture of the world. The harvest and the prices concern it quite as much as the actual farmer who tills the soil. In good seasons, with a crop above the average, the business of the bank expands in corresponding ratio. The manager and directors feel that they can advance with confidence; the farmer has the means to pay. In bad seasons and with short crops the farmer is more anxious than ever to borrow; but the bank is obliged to contract its sphere of operations. It usually happens that one or more of the directors of a country bank are themselves farmers in a large way--gentlemen farmers, but with practical knowledge. They are men whose entire lives have been spent in the locality, and who have a very wide circle of acquaintances and friends among agriculturists. Their forefathers were stationed there before them, and thus there has been an accumulation of local knowledge. They not only thoroughly understand the soil of the neighbourhood, and can forecast the effect of particular seasons with certainty, but they possess an intimate knowledge of family history, what farmer is in a bad way, who is doubtful, or who has always had a sterling reputation. An old-established country bank has almost always one or more such confidential advisers. Their assistance is invaluable. Since agriculture became in this way, through the adoption of banking, so intimately connected with commerce, it has responded, like other businesses, to the fluctuations of trade. The value of money in Threadneedle Street affects the farmer in an obscure hamlet a hundred miles away, whose fathers knew nothing of money except as a coin, a token of value, and understood nothing of the export or import of gold. The farmer's business is conducted through the bank, but, on the other hand, the bank cannot restrict its operations to the mere countryside. It is bound up in every possible manner with the vast institutions of the metropolis. Its private profits depend upon the rate of discount and the tone of the money market exactly in the same way as with those vast institutions. A difficulty, a crisis there is immediately felt by the country bank, whose dealings with its farmer customers are in turn affected. Thus commerce acts upon agriculture. _Per contra_, the tradesmen of the town who go to the bank every morning would tell you with doleful faces that the condition of agriculture acts upon trade in a most practical manner. Neither the farmer, nor the farmer's wife and family expend nearly so much as they did at their shops, and consequently the sums they carry over to the bank are much diminished in amount. The local country tradesman probably feels the depression of agriculture all but as much as the farmer himself. The tradesman is perhaps supported by the bank; if he cannot meet his liabilities the bank is compelled to withdraw that support. Much of this country banking seems to have grown up in very recent times. Any elderly farmer out yonder in the noisy market would tell you that in his young days when he first did business he had to carry coin with him, especially if at a distance from home. It was then the custom to attend markets and fairs a long way off, such markets being centres where the dealers and drovers brought cattle. The dealers would accept nothing but cash; they would not have looked at a cheque had such a thing been proffered them. This old Bank prides itself upon the reputation it enjoyed, even in those days. It had the power of issuing notes, and these notes were accepted by such men, even at a great distance, the bank having so good a name. They were even preferred to the notes of the Bank of England, which at one time, in outlying country places, were looked on with distrust, a state of things which seems almost incredible to the present generation. In those days men had no confidence. That mutual business understanding, the credit which is the basis of all commerce of the present time, did not exist. Of course this only applies to the country and to country trading; the business men of cities were years in advance of the agriculturists in this respect. But so good was the reputation of the old Bank, even in those times, that its notes were readily accepted. It is, indeed, surprising what a reputation some of the best of the country banks have achieved. Their names are scarcely seen in the money articles of the daily press. But they do a solid business of great extent, and their names in agricultural circles are names of power. So the old Bank here, though within an arrow shot of the green meadows, though on ordinary days a single clerk might attend to its customers, has really a valuable _clientèle._ Of late years shrewd men of business discovered that the ranks of the British farmer offered a wonderful opportunity for legitimate banking. The farmer, though he may not be rich, must of necessity be the manager, if not the actual owner, of considerable capital. A man who farms, if only a hundred acres, must have some capital. It may not be his own--it may be borrowed; still he has the use of it. Here, then, a wide field opened itself to banking enterprise. Certainly there has been a remarkable extension of banking institutions in the country. Every market town has its bank, and in most cases two--branches of course, but banks to all intents and purposes. Branches are started everywhere. The new Bank in this particular little town is not really new. It is simply a branch set up by a well-established bank whose original centre may perhaps be in another county. It is every whit as respectable as the other, and as well conducted. Its branch as yet lacks local antiquity, but that is the only difference. The competition for the farmer's business between these branches, scattered all over the length and breadth of the country, must of necessity be close. When the branch, or new Bank, came here, it was started in grand premises specially erected for it, in the most convenient situation that could be secured. Till then the business of the old Bank had been carried on in a small and dingy basement. The room was narrow, badly lit, and still worse ventilated, so that on busy days both the clerks and the customers complained of the stuffy atmosphere. The ancient fittings had become worn and defaced; the ceiling was grimy; the conveniences in every way defective. When it was known that a new branch was to be opened the directors of the old Bank resolved that the building, which had so long been found inadequate, should be entirely renovated. They pulled it down, and the present magnificent structure took its place. Thus this little country town now possesses two banks, whose façades could hardly be surpassed in a city. There is perhaps a little rivalry between the managers of the two institutions, in social as well as in business matters. Being so long established there the old Bank numbers among its customers some of the largest landed proprietors, the leading clergy, and solicitors. The manager coming into contact with these, and being himself a man of intelligence, naturally occupies a certain position. If any public movement is set on foot, the banks strive as to which shall be most to the fore, and, aided by its antiquity, the old Bank, perhaps, secures a social precedence. Both managers belong to the 'carriage people' of the town. Hodge comes into the place, walking slowly behind cattle or sheep, or jolting in on a waggon. His wife comes, too, on foot, through the roughest weather, to fetch her household goods. His daughter comes into the hiring fair, and stands waiting for employment on the pavement in the same spot used for the purpose from time immemorial, within sight of the stately façades of the banks. He himself has stood in the market-place with reaping hook or hoe looking for a master. Humble as he may be, it is clear that the wealth in those cellars--the notes and the gold pushed over the counters in shovels--must somehow come from the labour which he and his immediate employer--the farmer--go through in the field. It is becoming more and more the practice for the carter, or shepherd, who desires a new situation, to advertise. Instead of waiting for the chance of the hiring fair, he trudges into the market town and calls at the office of the oldest established local paper. There his wishes are reduced to writing for him, he pays his money, and his advertisement appears. If there is an farmer advertising for a man, as is often the case, he at the same time takes the address, and goes over to offer his services. The farmer and the labourer alike look to the advertisement columns as the medium between them. The vitality and influence of the old-fashioned local newspaper is indeed a remarkable feature of country life. It would be thought that in these days of cheap literature, these papers, charging twopence, threepence, and even fourpence per copy, could not possibly continue to exist. But, contrary to all expectation, they have taken quite a fresh start, and possess a stronger hold than ever upon the agricultural population. They enter into the old homesteads, and every member of the farmer's family carefully scans them, certain of finding a reference to this or that subject or person in whom he takes an interest. Some such papers practically defy competition. In the outlying towns, where no factories have introduced a new element, it is vain for the most enterprising to start another. The squire, the clergyman, the lawyer, the tenant-farmer, the wayside innkeeper stick to the old weekly paper, and nothing can shake it. It is one of the institutions of agriculture. The office is, perhaps, in a side street of the quiet market-town, and there is no display to catch the casual purchaser. No mystery surrounds the editor's sanctum; the visitor has but to knock, and is at once admitted to his presence. An office could scarcely be more plainly furnished. A common table, which has, however, one great virtue--it does not shake when written on--occupies the centre. Upon one side is a large desk or bureau; the account-books lying open show that the editor, besides his literary labour, has to spend much time in double entry. Two chairs are so completely hidden under 'exchanges' that no one can sit upon them. Several of these 'exchanges' are from the United States or Australia, for the colonists are often more interested and concerned about local affairs in the old country than they are with the doings in the metropolis. Against the wall, too, hangs a picture of a fine steamer careering under sail and steam, and near it a coloured sectional map of some new township marked out in squares. These are the advertisements of an Atlantic or Australian line, or of both; and the editor is their agent. When the young ploughman resolves to quit the hamlet for the backwoods of America or the sheepwalks of Australia, he comes here to engage his berth. When the young farmer wearies of waiting for dead men's shoes--in no other way can he hope to occupy an English farm--he calls here and pays his passage-money, and his broad shoulders and willing hands are shipped to a land that will welcome him. A single shelf supports a few books, all for reference, such as the 'Clergy List,' for the Church is studied, and the slightest change that concerns the district carefully recorded. Beneath this, the ponderous volumes that contain the file of the paper for the last forty years are piled, their weight too great for a shelf resting on the floor. The series constitutes a complete and authentic local history. People often come from a distance to consult it, for it is the only register that affords more than the simple entry of birth and death. There is a life in the villages and hamlets around, in the little places that are not even hamlets, which to the folk who dwell in them is fully as important as that of the greatest city. Farmhouses are not like the villas of cities and city suburbs. The villa has hardly any individuality; it is but one of many, each resembling the other, and scarcely separated. To-day one family occupies it, tomorrow another, next year perhaps a third, and neither of these has any real connection with the place. They are sojourners, not inhabitants, drawn thither by business or pleasure; they come and go, and leave no mark behind. But the farmhouse has a history. The same family have lived in it for, perhaps, a hundred years: they have married and intermarried, and become identified with the locality. To them all the petty events of village life have a meaning and importance: the slow changes that take place and are chronicled in the old newspaper have a sad significance, for they mark that flux of time which is carrying them, too, onwards to their rest. These columns of the file, therefore, that to a stranger seem a blank, to the old folk and their descendants are like a mirror, in which they can see the faces of the loved ones who passed away a generation since. They are the archives of the hamlets round about: a farmer can find from them when his grandfather quitted the old farm, and read an account of the sale. Men who left the village in their youth for the distant city or the still more distant colonies, as they grow in years often feel an irresistible desire to revisit the old, old place. The home they so fondly recollect is in other hands, and yet in itself but little changed. A few lines in the plainest language found in the file here tell to such a greybeard a story that fills his eyes with tears. But even a stranger who took the trouble to turn over the folios would now and then find matter to interest him: such as curious notes of archaeological discovery, accounts of local customs now fallen into disuse, and traditions of the past. Many of these are worthy of collection in more accessible form. There is hardly anything else in the room except the waste basket under the table. As the visitor enters, a lad goes out with a roll of manuscript in his hand, and the editor looks up from his monotonous task of proof-reading, for he has that duty also to perform. Whatever he is doing, some one is certain to call and break off the thread of his thought. The bailiff or farm-steward of a neighbouring estate comes in to insert an advertisement of timber for sale, or of the auction of the ash-poles annually felled. A gamekeeper calls with a notice not to sport or trespass on certain lands. The editor has to write out the advertisement for these people, and for many of the farmers who come, for countrymen have the greatest dislike to literary effort of any kind, and can hardly be persuaded to write a letter. Even when they have written the letter they get the daughter to address the envelope, lest the Post Office should smile at their rude penmanship. The business of preparing the advertisement is not quickly concluded, for just as it is put down to their fancy, they recollect another item which has to be added. Then they stand and gossip about the family at the mansion and the affairs of the parish generally, totally oblivious of the valuable time they are wasting. Farmers look in to advertise a cottage or a house in the village to let, and stay to explain the state of the crops, and the why and the wherefore of So-and-so leaving his tenancy. The largest advertisers invariably put off their orders till the morning of the paper going to press, from sheer inattention. On that busy morning, auctioneers' clerks rush in with columns of auction sales of cattle, sheep, horses, hay, or standing crops (according to the season of the year), and every species of farm produce. After them come the solicitors' clerks, with equally important and lengthy notices of legal matters concerning the effects of farmers who have fallen into difficulties, of parochial or turnpike affairs, or 'Pursuant to an Act intitled "An Act to further amend the Law and to Relieve Trustees."' These notices have been lying on their desks for days, but are perversely sent down at the last moment, and upset the entire make-up of the paper. Just as the editor has arranged for these, and is in the act to rush up into the press-room, a timid knock announces a poor cottage girl, who has walked in from a hamlet six or seven miles away to inquire the address of a lady who wants a servant. This advertisement appeared at least three weeks since, for country folk could in no wise make up their minds to apply under three weeks, and necessitates a search back through the file, and a reference to divers papers. He cannot in common courtesy leave the poor girl to wait his convenience, and meantime the steam is up and the machine waiting. When the address is discovered, the girl thinks she cannot remember it, and so he has to write it down on a piece of paper for her. He has no highly organised staff to carry on the routine work; he has to look after every department as well as the purely editorial part. Almost every one who has a scrap of news or gossip looks in at the office to chat about it with him. Farmers, who have driven in to the town from distant villages, call to tell him of the trouble they are having over the new schools, and the conflict in the parish as to whether they shall or shall not have a school board. Clergymen from outlying vicarages come to mention that a cottage flower show, a penny reading, a confirmation, or some such event, is impending, and to suggest the propriety of a full and special account. Occasionally a leading landed proprietor is closeted with him, for at least an hour, discussing local politics, and ascertaining from him the tone of feeling in the district. Modern agricultural society insists upon publicity. The smallest village event must be chronicled, or some one will feel dissatisfied, and inquire why it was not put in the paper. This continual looking towards the paper for everything causes it to exercise a very considerable amount of influence. Perhaps the clergy and gentry are in some things less powerful than the local newspaper, for, from a variety of causes, agricultural society has become extremely sensitive to public opinion. The temperate and thoughtful arguments put forward by a paper in which they have confidence directly affect the tenant-farmers. On the other hand, as expressing the views of the tenant-farmers, the paper materially influences the course taken by the landed proprietors. In country districts the mere numerical circulation of a weekly publication is no measure of its importance. The position of the subscribers is the true test. These old-established papers, in fact, represent property. They are the organs of all who possess lands, houses, stock, produce; in short, of the middle class. This is evident from the advertising columns. The lawyer, the auctioneer, the land agent, the farmer, all who have any substance, publish their business in this medium. Official county advertisements appear in it. The carter and the shepherd look down the column of situations vacant as they call at the village inn for a glass of ale, or, if they cannot read, ask some one to read for them. But they do not purchase this kind of newspaper. The cottager spells over prints advocating the disestablishment of the Church, the division of great estates, and the general subversion of the present order of things. Yet when the labourer advertises, he goes to the paper subscribed to by his master. The disappearance of such an obsolete and expensive paper is frequently announced as imminent; but the obsolete and expensive print, instead of disappearing, nourishes with renewed vitality. Solid matter, temperate argument, and genuine work, in the long ran, pay the best. An editor who thus conducts his paper is highly appreciated by the local chiefs of his party, and may even help to contribute to the success of an Administration. The personal labour involved in such editing must be great from the absence of trained assistance, and because the materials must be furnished by incompetent hands. Local news must be forwarded by local people, perhaps by a village tailor with literary tastes. Such correspondents often indulge in insinuations, or fulsome flattery, which must be carefully eliminated. From another village an account of some event comes from the schoolmaster--quite an important person nowadays!--who writes in a fair, round hand and uses the finest language and the longest words. He invariably puts 'hebdomadal' for 'weekly.' A lawyer's clerk writes a narrative of some case, on blue foolscap, and, after the manner of legal documents, without a single stop from beginning to end. Once a year comes the labour of preparing the sheet almanac. This useful publication is much valued by the tenants of the district, and may be found pinned against the wall for ready reference in most farmhouses. Besides the calendar it contains a list of county and other officials, dates of quarter sessions and assizes, fair days and markets, records of the prices obtained at the annual sales of rams or shorthorns on leading farms, and similar agricultural information. The editor has very likely been born in the district, and has thus grown up to understand the wants and the spirit of the farming class. He is acquainted with the family history of the neighbourhood, a knowledge which is of much advantage in enabling him to avoid unnecessarily irritating personal susceptibilities. His private library is not without interest. It mainly consists of old books picked up at the farmhouse sales of thirty years. At such disposals of household effects volumes sometimes come to light that have been buried for generations among lumber. Many of these books are valuable and all worth examination. A man of simple and retiring habits, his garden is perhaps his greatest solace, and next to that a drive or stroll through the green meadows around. Incessant mental labour has forced him to wear glasses before his time, and it is a relief and pleasure to the eyes to dwell on green sward and leaf. Such a man performs a worthy part in country life, and possesses the esteem of the country side. CHAPTER XIX THE VILLAGE FACTORY. VILLAGE VISITORS. WILLOW-WORK In the daytime the centre of a certain village may be said to be the shop of the agricultural machinist. The majority of the cottagers are away in the fields at work, and the place is elsewhere almost quiet. A column of smoke and a distant din guide the visitor to the spot where the hammers are clattering on the anvils. Twisted iron, rusty from exposure, lies in confusion on the blackened ground before the shed. Coal-dust and the carbon deposited from volumes of thick smoke have darkened the earth, and coated everything with a black crust. The windows of the shed are broken, probably by the accidental contact of long rods of iron carelessly cast aside, and some of the slates of the roof appear gone just above the furnace, as if removed for ventilation and the escape of the intense heat. There is a creaking of stiff leather as the bellows rise and fall, and the roar of the blast as it is forced up through the glowing coals. A ceaseless hum of wheels in motion comes from the rear, and the peculiar crackling sound of a band in rapid revolution round the drum of the engine and the shaft. Then the grinding scrape of sharp steel on iron as the edge of the tool cuts shavings from the solid metal rotating swiftly in the lathe. As blow follows blow the red-hot 'scale,' driven from the surface of the iron on the anvil by the heavy sledge, flies rattling against the window in a spray of fire. The ring of metal, the clatter, the roaring, and hissing of steam, fill the air, and through it rises now and then the shrill quick calls of men in command. Outside, and as it seems but a stone's throw distant, stands the old grey church, and about it the still, silent, green-grown mounds over those who once followed the quiet plough. Bound the corner of the village street comes a man with a grimy red flag, and over the roofs of the cottages rises a cloud of smoke, and behind it yet another. Two steam ploughing engines are returning from their work to their place beside the shed to wait fresh orders. The broad wheels of the engines block up the entire width of the street, and but just escape overthrowing the feeble palings in front of the cottage doors. Within those palings the children at play scarcely turn to look; the very infants that can hardly toddle are so accustomed to the ponderous wonder that they calmly gnaw the crusts that keep them contented. It requires a full hour to get the unwieldy engines up the incline and round the sharp turns on to the open space by the workshop. The driver has to 'back,' and go-a-head, and 'back' again, a dozen times before he can reach the place, for that narrow bye-way was not planned out for such traffic. A mere path leading to some cottages in the rear, it was rarely used even by carts before the machinist came, and it is a feat of skill to get the engines in without, like a conqueror, entering by a breach battered in the walls. When, at last, they have been piloted into position, the steam is blown off, and the rushing hiss sounds all over the village. The white vapour covers the ground like a cloud, and the noise re-echoes against the old grey church, but the jackdaws do not even rise from the battlements. These engines and their corresponding tackle are the chief stock-in-trade of the village machinist. He lets them out to the farmers of the district, which is principally arable; that is, he contracts to do their ploughing and scarifying at so much per acre. In the ploughing seasons the engines are for ever on the road, and with their tackle dragging behind them take up the highway like a train. One day you may hear the hum and noise from a distant field on the left; in a day or two it comes from another on the right; next week it has shifted again, and is heard farther off northwards, and so all round the compass. The visitor, driving about the neighbourhood, cannot but notice the huge and cumbrous-looking plough left awhile on the sward by the roadside. One-half of the shares stand up high in the air, the other half touch the ground, and it is so nicely balanced that boys sometimes play at see-saw on it. He will meet the iron monster which draws this plough by the bridge over the brook, pausing while its insatiable thirst is stayed from the stream. He will see it patiently waiting, with a slight curl of steam over the boiler, by the wayside inn while its attendants take their lunch. It sometimes happens in wet weather that the engines cannot be moved from the field where they have been ploughing. The soil becomes so soft from absorbing so much water that it will not bear up the heavy weight. Logs and poles are laid down to form a temporary way, but the great wheels sink too deeply, and the engines have to be left covered with tarpaulins. They have been known to remain till the fresh green leaves of spring on the hedges and trees almost hid them from sight. The machinist has another and lighter traction engine which does not plough, but travels from farm to farm with a threshing machine. In autumn it is in full work threshing, and in winter drives chaff-cutters for the larger farmers. Occasionally it draws a load of coal in waggons or trucks built for the purpose. Hodge's forefathers knew no rival at plough time; after the harvest they threshed the corn all the winter with the flail. Now the iron horse works faster and harder than he. Some of the great tenant-farmers have sets of ploughing-engines and tackle of their own, and these are frequently at the machinist's for repairs. The reaping, mowing, threshing, haymaking, hoeing, raking, and other machines and implements also often require mending. Once now and then a bicyclist calls to have his machine attended to, something having given way while on a tour. Thus the village factory is in constant work, but has to encounter immense competition. Country towns of any size usually possess at least one manufactory of agricultural implements, and some of these factories have acquired a reputation which reaches over sea. The visitor to such a foundry is shown medals that have been granted for excellence of work exhibited in Vienna, and may see machines in process of construction which will be used upon the Continent; so that the village machinist, though apparently isolated, with nothing but fields around him, has in reality competitors upon every side. Ploughing engines, again, travel great distances, and there are firms that send their tackle across a county or two. Still the village factory, being on the spot, has plenty of local work, and the clatter of hammers, the roar of the blast, and the hum of wheels never cease at the shed. Busy workmen pass to and fro, lithe men, quick of step and motion, who come from Leeds, or some similar manufacturing town, and whose very step distinguishes them in a moment from the agricultural labourer. A sturdy ploughboy comes up with a piece of iron on his shoulder; it does not look large, but it is as much as he can carry. One edge of it is polished by the friction of the earth through which it has been forced; it has to be straightened, or repaired, and the ploughboy waits while it is done. He sits down outside the shed on a broken and rusty iron wheel, choosing a spot where the sun shines and the building keeps off the wind. There, among the twisted iron, ruins and fragments of machines, he takes out his hunch of bread and cheese, and great clasp knife, and quietly enjoys his luncheon. He is utterly indifferent to the noise of the revolving wheels, the creak of the bellows, the hiss of steam; he makes no inquiry about this or that, and shows no desire to understand the wonders of mechanics. Something in his attitude--in the immobility, the almost animal repose of limb; something in the expression of his features, the self-contained oblivion, so to say, suggests an Oriental absence of aspiration. Only by negatives and side-lights, as it were, can any idea be conveyed of his contented indifference. He munches his crust; and, when he has done, carefully, and with vast deliberation, relaces his heavy shoe. The sunshine illumines the old grey church before him, and falls on the low green mounds, almost level with the sward, which cover his ancestors. These modern inventions, this steam, and electric telegraph, and even the printing-press have but just skimmed the surface of village life. If they were removed--if the pressure from without, from the world around, ceased, in how few years the village and the hamlet would revert to their original condition! On summer afternoons, towards five or six o'clock, a four-wheel carriage--useful, but not pretentious--comes slowly up the hill leading to the village. The single occupant is an elderly man, the somewhat wearied expression of whose features is caused by a continuous application to business. The horse, too well fed for work, takes his own time up the hill, and when at the summit the reins are gently shaken, makes but an idle pretence to move faster, for he knows that his master is too good-natured and forbearing to use the whip, except to fondly stroke his back. The reins are scarcely needed to guide the horse along the familiar road to a large farmhouse on the outskirts of the village, where at the gate two or more children are waiting to welcome 'papa.' Though a farmhouse, the garden is laid out in the style so often seen around detached villas, with a lawn for tennis and croquet, parterres bright with summer flowers, and seats under the pleasant shade of the trees. Within it is furnished in villa fashion, and is in fact let to a well-to-do tradesman of the market town a few miles distant. He has wisely sent his family for the summer months to inhale the clear air of the hills, as exhilarating as that of the sea. There they can ride the pony and donkeys over the open sward, and romp and play at gipsying. Every evening he drives out to join them, and every morning returns to his office. The house belongs to some large tenant-farmer, who has a little freehold property, and thus makes a profit from it. This practice of hiring a village home for the summer has become common of recent years among the leading tradesmen of country towns. Such visitors are welcome to the cottage folk. They require the service of a labourer now and then; they want fresh eggs, and vegetables from the allotment gardens. The women have the family washing to do, and a girl is often needed to assist indoors, or a boy to clean the knives and shoes. Many perquisites fall to the cottage people--cast aside dresses, and so on; besides which there are little gifts and kindnesses from the lady and her children. Towards November, again, the congregation in the old church one Sunday morning find subject for speculation concerning a stranger who enters a certain well-appointed pew appropriated to The Chestnuts. He is clearly the new tenant who has taken it for the hunting season. The Chestnuts is a mansion built in modern style for a former landowner. As it is outside the great hunting centres it is let at a low rental compared with its accommodation. The labourers are glad to see that the place is let again, for although the half-pay officer--the new occupant--who has retired, wounded and decorated, from the service of a grateful country, has probably not a third the income of the tradesman, and five times the social appearance to maintain, still there will be profit to be got from him. What chance has such a gentleman in bargaining with the cottagers? How should he know the village value of a cabbage? How should he understand the farmyard value of a fowl? It may possibly strike him as odd that vegetables should be so dear when, as he rides about, he sees whole fields green with them. He sees plenty of fowls, and geese, and turkeys, gobbling and cackling about the farmyards, and can perhaps after awhile faintly perceive that they are the perquisites of the ladies of the tenants' households, who drive him a very hard bargain. He, too, has cast aside suits, shoes, hats, and so forth, really but little worn, to give away to the poor. If married, his family require some help from the cottage women; and there are odd jobs, well paid for, on the place for the men. Thus the cottagers are glad of the arrival of their new masters, the one in the summer, the other in the winter months. The 'chapel-folk' of the place have so increased in numbers and affluence that they have erected a large and commodious building in the village. Besides the cottagers, many farmers go to the chapel, driving in from the ends of the parish. It is a curious circumstance that many of the largest dealers in agricultural produce, such as cheese, bacon, and corn, and the owners of the busiest wharves where coal and timber, slate, and similar materials are stored, belong to the Dissenting community. There are some agricultural districts where this class of business is quite absorbed by Dissenters--almost as much as money-changing and banking business is said to be the exclusive property of Jews in some Continental countries. Such dealers are often substantial and, for the country, even wealthy men. Then there are the Dissenting tradesmen of the market town. All these together form a species of guild. The large chapel in the village was built by their united subscriptions. They support each other in a marked manner in times of difficulty, so that it is rare for a tenant-farmer of the persuasion to lose his position unless by wilful misconduct. This mutual support is so very marked as to be quite a characteristic fact. The cottagers and their families go to chapel with these masters. But sometimes the cottager, as he approaches the chapel door, finds upon it (as in the church porch) a small printed notice affixed there by the overseers. If the labourer is now recognised as a person whose opinion is to be consulted, on the other hand he finds that he is not without responsibilities. The rate-collector knocks at the cottage door as well as at the farmer's. By gradual degrees village rates are becoming a serious burden, and though their chief incidence may be upon the landlord and the tenant, indirectly they begin to come home to the labourer. The school rate is voluntary, but it is none the less a rate; the cemetery, the ancient churchyard being no more available, has had to be paid for, and, as usual, probably cost twice what was anticipated. The highways, the sanitary authority, not to speak of poor relief, all demand a share. Each in itself may be only a straw, but accumulated straws in time fill a waggon. One side of the stable of the village inn, which faces the road, presents a broad surface for the country bill-sticker. He comes out from the market town, and travels on foot for a whole day together, from hamlet to hamlet. posting up the contents of his bag in the most outlying and lonely districts. Every villager as he passes by reads the announcements on the wall: the circus coming to the market town, some jeweller's marvellous watches, the selling off of spring or summer goods by the drapers at an immense reduction, once now and then a proclamation headed V.R., and the sales of farm stock (the tenants leaving) and of large freehold properties. These latter are much discussed by the callers at the inn. A carter comes along perhaps with a loaded waggon from some distance, and as he stays to drink his quart talks of the changes that are proceeding or imminent in his locality. Thus the fact that changes are contemplated is often widely known before the actual advertisement is issued. The labourers who hear the carter's story tell it again to their own employer next time they see him, and the farmer meeting another farmer gossips over it again. There has grown up a general feeling in the villages and agricultural districts that the landed estates around them are no longer stable and enduring. A feeling of uncertainty is abroad, and no one is surprised to hear that some other place, or person, is going. It is rumoured that this great landlord is about to sell as many farms as the family settlements will let him. Another is only waiting for the majority of his son to accomplish the same object. Others, it is said, are proceeding abroad to retrench. Properties are coming into the market in unexpected directions, and others are only kept back because the price of land has fallen, and there is a difficulty in selling a large estate. If divided into a number of lots, each of small size, land still fetches its value, and can be readily sold; but that is not always convenient, and purchasers hesitate to invest in extensive estates. But though kept back, efforts are being made to retrench, and, it is said, old mansions that have never been let before can now be hired for the season. Not only the tenant-farmers, but the landowners are pacing through a period of depression, and their tenure too is uncertain. Such is the talk of the country side as it comes to the village inn. Once a week the discordant note of a horn or bugle, loudly blown by a man who does not understand his instrument, is heard at intervals. It is the newspaper vendor, who, like the bill-sticker, starts from the market town on foot, and goes through the village with a terrible din. He stops at the garden gate in the palings before the thatched cottage, delivers his print to the old woman or the child sent out with the copper, and starts again with a flourish of his trumpet. His business is chiefly with the cottagers, and his print is very likely full of abuse of the landed proprietors as a body. He is a product of modern days, almost the latest, and as he goes from cottage door to cottage door, the discordant uproar of his trumpet is a sign of the times. In some districts the osier plantations give employment to a considerable number of persons. The tall poles are made into posts and rails; the trunks of the pollard trees when thrown are cut into small timber that serves many minor purposes; the brushwood or tops that are cut every now and then make thatching sticks and faggots; sometimes hedges are made of a kind of willow wicker-work for enclosing gardens. It is, however, the plantations of withy or osier that are most important. The willow grows so often in or near to water that in common opinion the association cannot be too complete. But in the arrangement of an osier-bed water is utilised, indeed, but kept in its place--i.e. at the roots, and not over the stoles. The osier should not stand in water, or rise, as it were, out of a lake--the water should be in the soil underneath, and the level of the ground higher than the surface of the adjacent stream. Before planting, the land has to be dug or ploughed, and cleared; the weeds collected in the same way as on an arable field. The sticks are then set in rows eighteen inches apart, each stick (that afterwards becomes a stole) a foot from its neighbours of the same row. At first the weeds require keeping down, but after awhile the crop itself kills them a good deal. Several willows spring from each planted stick, and at the end of twelve months the first crop is ready for cutting. Next year the stick or stole will send up still more shoots, and give a larger yield. The sorts generally planted are called Black Spanish and Walnut Leaf. The first has a darker bark, and is a tough wood; the other has a light yellow bark, and grows smoother and without knots, which is better for working up into the manufactured article. Either will grow to nine feet high--the average height is six or seven feet. The usual time for cutting is about Good Friday--that is, just before the leaf appears. After cutting, the rods are stacked upright in water, in long trenches six inches deep prepared for the purpose, and there they remain till the leaf comes out. The power of growth displayed by the willow is wonderful--a bough has only to be stuck in the earth, or the end of a pole placed in the brook, for the sap to rise and shoots to push forth. When the leaf shows the willows are carried to the 'brakes,' and the work of stripping off the bark commences. A 'brake' somewhat resembles a pair of very blunt scissors permanently fixed open at a certain angle, and rigidly supported at a convenient height from the ground. The operator stands behind it, and selecting a long wand from the heap beside him places it in the 'brake,' and pulls it through, slightly pressing it downwards. As he draws it towards him, the edges of the iron tear the bark and peel it along the whole length of the stick. There is a knack in the operation, of course, but when it is acquired the wand is peeled in a moment by a dexterous turn of the wrist, the bark falls to the ground on the other side of the brake, and the now white stick is thrown to the right, where a pile soon accumulates. The peel is handy for tying up, and when dried makes a capital material for lighting fires. This stripping of the osiers is a most busy time in the neighbourhood of the large plantations--almost like hop-picking--for men, women, and children can all help. It does not require so much strength as skill and patience. After the peeling the sticks have to be dried by exposure to the sun; they are then sorted into lengths, and sold in bundles. If it is desired to keep them any time they must be thoroughly dried, or they will 'heat' and rot and become useless. This willow harvest is looked forward to by the cottagers who live along the rivers as an opportunity for earning extra money. The quantity of osier thus treated seems immense, and yet the demand is said to be steady, and as the year advances the price of the willow rises. It is manufactured into all kinds of baskets--on farms, especially arable farms, numbers of baskets are used. Clothes baskets, market baskets, chaff baskets, bassinettes or cradles, &c., are some few of the articles manufactured from it. Large quantities of willow, too, are worked up unpeeled into hampers of all kinds. The number of hampers used in these days is beyond computation, and as they are constantly wearing out, fresh ones have to be made. An advantage of the willow is that it enables the farmer to derive a profit from land that would otherwise be comparatively valueless. Good land, indeed, is hardly fitted for osier; it would grow rank with much pith in the centre, and therefore liable to break. On common land, on the contrary, it grows just right, and not too coarse. Almost any scrap or corner does for willow, and if properly tended it speedily pays for the labour. The digging and preparation of the ground gives employment, and afterwards the weeding and the work required to clean the channels that conduct water round and through the beds. Then there is the cutting and the peeling, and finally the basket-making; and thus the willow, though so common as to be little regarded, finds work for many hands. CHAPTER XX HODGE'S FIELDS The labourer working all the year round in the open air cannot but note to some degree those changes in tree and plant which coincide with the variations of his daily employment. Early in March, as he walks along the southern side of the hedge, where the dead oak leaves still cumber the trailing ivy, he can scarcely avoid seeing that pointed tongues of green are pushing up. Some have widened into black-spotted leaves; some are notched like the many-barbed bone harpoons of savage races. The hardy docks are showing, and the young nettles have risen up. Slowly the dark and grey hues of winter are yielding to the lively tints of spring. The blackthorn has white buds on its lesser branches, and the warm rays of the sun have drawn forth the buds on one favoured hawthorn in a sheltered nook, so that the green of the coming leaf is visible. Bramble bushes still retain their forlorn, shrivelled foliage; the hardy all but evergreen leaves can stand cold, but when biting winds from the north and east blow for weeks together even these curl at the edge and die. The remarkable power of wind upon leaves is sometimes seen in May, when a strong gale, even from the west, will so beat and batter the tender horse-chestnut sprays that they bruise and blacken. The slow plough traverses the earth, and the white dust rises from the road and drifts into the field. In winter the distant copse seemed black; now it appears of a dull reddish brown from the innumerable catkins and buds. The delicate sprays of the birch are fringed with them, the aspen has a load of brown, there are green catkins on the bare hazel boughs, and the willows have white 'pussy-cats.' The horse-chestnut buds--the hue of dark varnish--have enlarged, and stick to the finger if touched; some are so swollen as to nearly burst and let the green appear. Already it is becoming more difficult to look right through the copse. In winter the light could be seen on the other side; now catkin, bud, and opening leaf have thickened and check the view. The same effect was produced not long since by the rime on the branches in the frosty mornings; while each smallest twig was thus lined with crystal it was not possible to see through. Tangled weeds float down the brook, catching against projecting branches that dip into the stream, or slowly rotating and carried apparently up the current by the eddy and back-water behind the bridge. In the pond the frogs have congregated in great numbers; their constant 'croo-croo' is audible at some distance. The meadows, so long bound by frost and covered with snow, are slowly losing their wan aspect, and assuming a warmer green as the young blades of grass come upwards. Where the plough or harrow has passed over the clods they quickly change from the rich brown of fresh-turned soil to a whiter colour, the dryness of the atmosphere immediately dissipating the moisture in the earth. So, examine what you will, from the clod to the tiniest branch, the hedge, the mound, the water--everywhere a step forward has been taken. The difference in a particular case may be minute; but it is there, and together these faint indications show how closely spring is approaching. As the sun rises the chaffinch utters his bold challenge on the tree; the notes are so rapid that they seem to come all at once. Welcome, indeed, is the song of the first finch. Sparrows are busy in the garden--the hens are by far the most numerous now, half a dozen together perch on the bushes. One suddenly darts forth and seizes a black insect as it flies in the sunshine. The bee, too, is abroad, and once now and then a yellow butterfly. From the copse on the warmer days comes occasionally the deep hollow bass of the wood pigeon. On the very topmost branch of an elm a magpie has perched; now he looks this way, and then turns that, bowing in the oddest manner, and jerking his long tail up and down. Then two of them flutter across the field--feebly, as if they had barely strength to reach the trees in the opposite hedge. Extending their wings they float slowly, and every now and then the body undulates along its entire length. Rooks are building--they fly and feed now in pairs; the rookery is alive with them. To the steeple the jackdaws have returned and fly round and round; now one holds his wings rigid and slides down at an angle of sixty degrees at a breakneck pace, as if about to dash himself in fragments on the garden beneath. Sometimes there come a few days which are like summer. There is an almost cloudless sky, a gentle warm breeze, and a bright sun filling the fields with a glow of light. The air, though soft and genial, is dry, and perhaps it is this quality which gives so peculiar a definition to hedge, tree, and hill. A firm, almost hard, outline brings copse and wood into clear relief; the distance across the broadest fields appears sensibly diminished. Such freedom from moisture has a deliciously exhilarating effect on those who breathe so pure an atmosphere. The winds of March differ, indeed, in a remarkable manner from, the gales of the early year, which, even when they blow from a mild quarter, compel one to keep in constant movement because of the aqueous vapour they carry. But the true March wind, though too boisterous to be exactly genial, causes a joyous sense of freshness, as if the very blood in the veins were refined and quickened upon inhaling it. There is a difference in its roar--the note is distinct from the harsh sound of the chilly winter blast. On the lonely highway at night, when other noises are silent, the March breeze rushes through the tall elms in a wild cadence. The white clouds hasten over, illuminated from behind by a moon approaching the full; every now and then a break shows a clear blue sky and a star shining. Now a loud roar resounds along the hedgerow like the deafening boom of the surge; it moderates, dies away, then an elm close by bends and sounds as the blast comes again. In another moment the note is caught up and repeated by a distant tree, and so one after another joins the song till the chorus reaches its highest pitch. Then it sinks again, and so continues with pauses and deep inspirations, for March is like a strong man drawing his breath full and long as he starts to run a race. The sky, too, like the earth, whose hedges, trees, and meadows are acquiring fresher colours, has now a more lovely aspect. At noon-day, if the clouds be absent, it is a rich azure; after sunset a ruddy glow appears almost all round the horizon, while the thrushes sing in the wood till the twilight declines. At night, when the moon does not rise till late, the heavens are brilliant with stars. In the east Arcturus is up; the Great Bear, the Lesser Bear, and Cassiopeia are ranged about the Pole. Procyon goes before the Dog; the noble constellation of Orion stretches broad across the sky; almost overhead lucent Capella looks down. Aries droops towards the west; the Bull follows with the red Aldebaran, and the Pleiades. Behind these, Castor and Pollux, and next the cloudlike, nebulous Cancer. Largest of all, great Sirius is flaming in the south, quivering with the ebb and flow of his light, sometimes with an emerald scintillation like a dewdrop on which a sunbeam glances. The busy summer, with its haymaking, reaping, and continuous succession of harvest work, passes too swiftly for reflection both for masters and men. But in the calm of autumn there is time again to look round. Then white columns of smoke rise up slowly into the tranquil atmosphere, till they overtop the tallest elms, and the odour of the burning couch is carried across the meadows from the lately-ploughed stubble, where the weeds have been collected in heaps and fired. The stubble itself, short and in regular lines, affords less and less cover every year. As the seed is now drilled in, and the plants grow in mathematically straight lines, of course when the crop is reaped, if you stand at one side of the field you can see right across between the short stubbs, so that a mouse could hardly find shelter. Then quickly come the noisy steam ploughing engines, after them the couch collectors, and finally the heaps are burnt, and the strong scent of smoke hangs over the ground. Against these interruptions of their haunts and quiet ways what are the partridges to do? Even at night the place is scarcely their own, for every now and then as the breeze comes along, the smouldering fires are fanned into bright flame, enough to alarm the boldest bird. In another broad arable field, where the teams have been dragging the plough, but have only just opened a few furrows and gone home, a flock of sheep are feeding, or rather picking up a little, having been, turned in, that nothing might be lost. There is a sense of quietness--of repose; the trees of the copse close by are still, and the dying leaf as it drops falls straight to the ground. A faint haze clings to the distant woods at the foot of the hills; it is afternoon, the best part of an autumn day, and sufficiently warm to make the stile a pleasant resting-place. A dark cloud, whose edges rise curve upon curve, hangs in the sky, fringed with bright white light, for the sun is behind it, and long, narrow streamers of light radiate from the upper part like the pointed rays of an antique crown. Across an interval of blue to the eastward a second massive cloud, white and shining as if beaten out of solid silver, fronts the sun, and reflects the beams passing horizontally through the upper ether downwards on the earth like a mirror. The sparrows in the stubble rise in a flock and settle down again. Yonder a solitary lark is singing. Then the sun emerges, and the yellow autumn beams flood the pale stubble and the dark red earth of the furrow. On the bushes in the hedge hang the vines of the bryony, bearing thick masses of red berries. The hawthorn leaves in places have turned pale, and are touched, too, towards the stalk with a deep brown hue. The contrast of the two tints causes an accidental colour resembling that of bronze, which catches the eye at the first glance, but disappears on looking closer. Spots of yellow on the elms seem the more brilliant from the background of dull green. The drooping foliage of the birch exhibits a paler yellow; the nut-tree bushes shed brown leaves upon the ground. Perhaps the beech leaves are the most beautiful; two or three tints are blended on the topmost boughs. There is a ruddy orange hue, a tawny brown, and a bright green; the sunlight comes and mingles these together. The same leaf will sometimes show two at least of these colours--green shading into brown, or into a ruddy gold. Later on, the oaks, in a monochrome of buff, will rival the beeches. Now and then an acorn drops from the tree overhead, with a smart tap on the hard earth, and rebounds some inches high. Some of these that fall are already dark--almost black--but if opened they will be found bored by a grub. They are not yet ripe as a crop; the rooks are a good guide in that respect, and they have not yet set steadily to work upon this their favourite autumn food. Others that have fallen and been knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which they spurned a short while since, when with a brisk buzz they flew from apple to plum. In the quiet woodland lane a covey of partridges are running to and fro on the short sward at the side, and near them two or three pheasants are searching for food. The geometrical spiders--some of them look almost as big as a nut--hang their webs spun to a regular pattern on the bushes. The fungi flourish; there is a huge specimen on the elm there, but the flowers are nearly gone. A few steps down the lane, upon looking over a gate into a large arable field where the harrow has broken up the clods, a faint bluish tinge may be noticed on the dull earth in the more distant parts. A second glance shows that it is caused by a great flock of woodpigeons. Some more come down out of the elms and join their companions; there must be a hundred and fifty or two hundred of them. The woodpigeon on the ground at a distance is difficult to distinguish, or rather to define individually--the pale blue tint seems to confuse the eye with a kind of haze. Though the flock take little notice now--knowing themselves to be far out of gunshot--yet they would be quickly on the alert if an attempt were made to approach them. Already some of the elms are becoming bare--there are gaps in the foliage where the winds have carried away the leaves. On the bramble bushes the blackberries cluster thickly, unseen and ungathered in this wild spot. The happy hearts that go a-blackberrying think little of the past: yet there is a deep, a mournful significance attached to that joyous time. For how many centuries have the blackberries tempted men, women, and children out into the fields, laughing at scratched hands and nettles, and clinging burrs, all merrily endured for the sake of so simple a treasure-trove. Under the relics of the ancient pile-dwellings of Switzerland, disinterred from the peat and other deposits, have been found quantities of blackberry seeds, together with traces of crabs and sloes; so that by the dwellers in those primeval villages in the midst of the lakes the wild fruits of autumn were sought for much as we seek them now; the old instincts are strong in us still. The fieldfares will soon be here now, and the redwings, coming as they have done for generations about the time of the sowing of the corn. Without an almanack they know the dates; so the old sportsmen used to declare that their pointers and setters were perfectly aware when September was approaching, and showed it by unusual restlessness. By the brook the meadows are green and the grass long still; the flags, too, are green, though numbers of dead leaves float down on the current. There is green again where the root crops are flourishing; but the brown tints are striving hard, and must soon gain the mastery of colour. From the barn comes the clatter of the winnowing machine, and the floor is covered with heaps of grain. After the sun has gone down and the shadows are deepening, it is lighter in the open stubbles than in the enclosed meadows--the short white stubbs seem to reflect what little light there is. The partridges call to each other, and after each call run a few yards swiftly, till they assemble at the well-known spot where they roost. Then comes a hare stealing by without a sound. Suddenly he perceives that he is watched, and goes off at a rapid pace, lost in the brooding shadow across the field. Yonder a row of conical-roofed wheat-ricks stand out boldly against the sky, and above them a planet shines. Still later, in November, the morning mist lingers over gorse and heath, and on the upper surfaces of the long dank grass blades, bowed by their own weight, are white beads of dew. Wherever the eye seeks an object to dwell on, there the cloud-like mist seems to thicken as though to hide it. The bushes and thickets are swathed in the vapour; yonder, in the hollow, it clusters about the oaks and hangs upon the hedge looming in the distance. There it no sky--a motionless, colourless something spreads above; it is, of course, the same mist, but looking upwards it apparently recedes and becomes indefinite. The glance finds no point to rest on--as on the edges of clouds--it is a mere opaque expanse. But the air is dry, the moisture does not deposit itself, it remains suspended, and waits but the wind to rise and depart. The stillness is utter: not a bird calls or insect buzzes by. In passing beneath the oaks the very leaves have forgotten to fall. Only those already on the sward, touched by the frost, crumble under the footstep. When green they would have yielded to the weight, but now stiffened they resist it and are crushed, breaking in pieces. A creaking and metallic rattle, as of chains, comes across the arable field--a steady gaze reveals the dim outline of a team of horses slowly dragging the plough, their shapes indistinctly seen against the hedge. A bent figure follows, and by-and-by another distinct creak and rattle, and yet a third in another direction, show that there are more teams at work, plodding to and fro. Watching their shadowy forms, suddenly the eye catches a change in the light somewhere. Over the meadow yonder the mist is illuminated; it is not sunshine, but a white light, only visible by contrast with the darker mist around. It lasts a few moments, and then moves, and appears a second time by the copse. Though hidden here, the disk of the sun must be partly visible there, and as the white light does not remain long in one place, it is evident that there is motion now in the vast mass of vapour. Looking upwards there is the faintest suspicion of the palest blue, dull and dimmed by mist, so faint that its position cannot be fixed, and the next instant it is gone again. But the teams at plough are growing momentarily distinct--a breath of air touches the cheek, then a leaf breaks away from the bough and starts forth as if bent on a journey, but loses the impetus and sinks to the ground. Soon afterwards the beams of the sun light up a distant oak that glows in the hedge--a rich deep buff--and it stands out, clear, distinct, and beautiful, the chosen and selected one, the first to receive the ray. Rapidly the mist vanishes--disappearing rather than floating away; a circle of blue sky opens overhead, and, finally, travelling slowly, comes the sunshine over the furrows. There is a perceptible sense of warmth--the colours that start into life add to the feeling. The bare birch has no leaf to reflect it, but its white bark shines, and beyond it two great elms, the one a pale green and the other a pale yellow, stand side by side. The brake fern is dead and withered; the tip of each frond curled over downwards by the frost, but it forms a brown background to the dull green furze which is alight here and there with scattered blossom, by contrast so brilliantly yellow as to seem like flame. Polished holly leaves glisten, and a bunch of tawny fungus rears itself above the grass. On the sheltered sunny bank lie the maple leaves fallen from the bushes, which form a bulwark against the north wind; they have simply dropped upon the ivy which almost covers the bank. Standing here with the oaks overhead and the thick bushes on the northern side it is quite warm and genial; so much so that if is hard to realise that winter is at hand. But even in the shortest days, could we only get rid of the clouds and wind, we should find the sunshine sufficiently powerful to make the noontide pleasant. It is not that the sun is weak or low down, nor because of the sharp frosts, that winter with us is dreary and chill. The real cause is the prevalence of cloud, through which only a dull light can penetrate, and of moisture-laden winds. If our winter sun had fair play we should find the climate very different. Even as it is, now and then comes a break in the masses of vapour streaming across the sky, and if you are only sheltered from the wind (or stand at a southern window), the temperature immediately rises. For this reason the temperatures registered by thermometers are often far from being a correct record of the real weather we have had. A bitter frost early in the morning sends the mercury below zero, but perhaps, by eleven o'clock the day is warm, the sky being clear and the wind still. The last register instituted--that of the duration of sunshine, if taken in connection with the state of the wind--is the best record of the temperature that we have actually felt. These thoughts naturally arise under the oaks here as the bright sunlight streams down from a sky the more deeply blue from contrast with the brown, and buff, and yellow leaves of the trees. Hark! There comes a joyous music over the fields--first one hound's, note, then two, then three, and then a chorus; they are opening up a strong scent. It rises and falls--now it is coming nearer, in a moment I shall see them break through the hedge on the ridge--surely that was a shout! Just in the very moment of expectation the loud tongues cease; I wait, listening breathlessly, but presently a straggling cry or two shows that the pack has turned and are spread wide trying to recover. By degrees the sounds die away; and I stroll onwards. A thick border of dark green firs bounds the copse--the brown leaves that have fallen from the oaks have lodged on the foliage of the firs and are there supported. In the sheltered corner some of the bracken has partly escaped the frost, one frond has two colours. On one side of the rib it is green and on the other yellow. The grass is strewn with the leaves of the aspen, which have turned quite black. Under the great elms there seems a sudden increase of light--it is caused by the leaves which still remain on the branches; they are all of the palest yellow, and, as you pass under, give the impression of the tree having been lit up--illuminated with its own colour. From the bushes hang the red berries of the night shade, and the fruit on the briars glistens in the sun. Inside the copse stand innumerable thistles shoulder high, dead and gaunt; and a grey border running round the field at the bottom of the hedge shows where the tall, strong weeds of summer have withered up. A bird flutters round the topmost boughs of the elm yonder and disappears with a flash of blue--it is a jay. Here the grass of the meadow has an undertone of grey; then an arable field succeeds, where six strong horses are drawing the heavy drill, and great bags of the precious seed are lying on the furrows. Another meadow, where note a broken bough of elder, the leaves on which have turned black, while still on its living branches they are green, and then a clump of beeches. The trunks are full of knot-holes, after a dead bough has fallen off and the stump has rotted away, the bark curls over the orifice and seemingly heals the wound more smoothly and completely than with other trees. But the mischief is proceeding all the same, despite that flattering appearance; outwardly the bark looks smooth and healthy, but probe the hole and the rottenness is working inwards. A sudden gap in the clump attracts the glance, and there--with one great beech trunk on this side and another on that--is a view opening down on the distant valley far below. The wood beneath looks dwarfed, and the uneven tops of the trees, some green, some tinted, are apparently so close together as to hide aught else, and the shadows of the clouds move over it as over a sea. A haze upon the horizon brings plain and sky together there; on one side, in the far distance a huge block, a rude vastness stands out dusky and dimly defined--it is a spur of the rolling hills. Out in the plain, many a mile away, the sharp, needle-like point of a steeple rises white above the trees, which there shade and mingle into a dark mass--so brilliantly white as to seem hardly real. Sweeping the view round, there is a strange and total absence of houses or signs of habitation, other than the steeple, and now that, too, is gone. It has utterly vanished--where, but a few moments before it glowed with whiteness, is absolutely nothing. The disappearance is almost weird in the broad daylight, as if solid stone could sink into the earth. Searching for it suddenly a village appears some way on the right--the white walls stand out bright and clear, one of the houses is evidently of large size, and placed on a slight elevation is a prominent object. But as we look it fades, grows blurred and indistinct, and in another moment is gone. The whole village has vanished--in its place is nothing; so swift is the change that the mind scarcely credits the senses. A deep shadow creeping towards us explains it. Where the sunlight falls, there steeple or house glows and shines; when it has passed, the haze that is really there, though itself invisible, instantly blots out the picture. The thing may be seen over and over again in the course of a few minutes; it would be difficult for an artist to catch so fleeting an effect. The shadow of the cloud is not black--it lacks several shades of that--there is in it a faint and yet decided tint of blue. This tone of blue is not the same everywhere--here it is almost distinct, there it fades; it is an aerial colour which rather hints itself than shows. Commencing the descent the view is at once lost, but we pass a beech whose beauty is not easily conveyed. The winds have scarcely rifled it; being in a sheltered spot on the slope, the leaves are nearly perfect. All those on the outer boughs are a rich brown--some, perhaps, almost orange. But there is an inner mass of branches of lesser size which droop downwards, something after the manner of a weeping willow; and the leaves on these are still green and show through. Upon the whole tree a flood of sunshine pours, and over it is the azure sky. The mingling, shading, and contrast of these colours give a lovely result--the tree is aglow, its foliage ripe with colour. Farther down comes the steady sound of deliberate blows, and the upper branches of the hedge falls beneath the steel. A sturdy labourer, with a bill on a pole, strikes slow and strong and cuts down the hedge to an even height. A dreadful weapon that simple tool must have been in the old days before the advent of the arquebus. For with the exception of the spike, which is not needed for hedge work, it is almost an exact copy of the brown bill of ancient warfare; it is brown still, except where sharpened. Wielded by a sinewy arm, what, gaping gashes it must have slit through helm and mail and severed bone! Watch the man there--he slices off the tough thorn as though it were straw. He notes not the beauty of the beech above him, nor the sun, nor the sky; but on the other hand, when the sky is hidden, the sun gone, and the beautiful beech torn by the raving winds neither does he heed that. Rain and tempest affect him not; the glaring heat of summer, the bitter frost of winter are alike to him. He is built up like an oak. Believe it, the man that from his boyhood has stood ankle-deep in the chill water of the ditch, patiently labouring with axe and bill; who has trudged across the furrow, hand on plough, facing sleet and mist; who has swung the sickle under the summer sun--this is the man for the trenches. This is the man whom neither the snows of the North nor the sun of the South can vanquish; who will dig and delve, and carry traverse and covered way forward in the face of the fortress, who will lie on the bare ground in the night. For they who go up to battle must fight the hard earth and the tempest, as well as face bayonet and ball. As of yore with the brown bill, so now with the rifle--the muscles that have been trained about the hedges and fields will not fail England in the hour of danger. Hark!--a distant whoop--another, a blast of a horn, and then a burst of chiding that makes the woods ring. Down drops the bill, and together, heedless of any social difference in the common joy, we scramble to the highest mound, and see the pack sweep in full cry across the furrows. Crash--it is the bushes breaking, as the first foam-flecked, wearied horse hardly rises to his leap, and yet crushes safely through, opening a way, which is quickly widened by the straggling troop behind. Ha! down the lane from the hill dashes another squadron that has eroded the chord of the arc and comes in fresher. Ay, and a third is entering at the bottom there, one by one, over the brook. Woods, field, and paths, but just before an empty solitude, are alive with men and horses. Up yonder, along the ridge, gallops another troop in single file, well defined against the sky, going parallel to the hounds. What a view they must have of the scene below! Two ladies who ride up with torn skirts cannot lift their panting horses at the double mound. Well, let us defy 'wilful damage' for once. The gate, jealously padlocked, is swiftly hoisted off its hinges, and away they go with hearty thanks. We slip the gate on again just as some one hails to us across the field to wait a minute, but seeing it is only a man we calmly replace the timber and let him take his chance. He is excited, but we smile stolidly. In another minute the wave of life is gone; it has swept over and disappeared as swiftly as it came. The wood, the field, and lane seem painfully--positively painfully--empty. Slowly the hedger and ditcher goes back to his work, where in the shade under the bushes even now the dew lingers. So there are days to be enjoyed out of doors even in much-abused November. And when the wind rises and the storm is near, if you get under the lee of a good thick copse there is a wild pleasure in the frenzy that passes over. With a rush the leaves stream outwards, thickening the air, whirling round and round; the tree-tops bend and sigh, the blast strikes them, and in an instant they are stripped and bare. A spectral rustling, as the darkness falls and the black cloud approaches, is the fallen leaves in the copse, lifted up from their repose and dashed against the underwood. Then a howl of wrath descends and fills the sense of hearing, so that for the moment it is hard to tell what is happening. A rushing hiss follows, and the rain hurtles through the branches, driving so horizontally as to pass overhead. The sheltering thorn-thicket stirs, and a long, deep, moaning roar rises from the fir-trees. Another howl that seems to stun--to so fill the ears with sound that they cannot hear--the aerial host charges the tree-ranks, and the shock makes them tremble to the root. Still another and another; twigs and broken boughs fly before it and strew the sward; larger branches that have long been dead fall crashing downwards; leaves are forced right through the thorn-thicket, and strike against the face. Fortunately, so fierce a fury cannot last; presently the billows of wind that strike the wood come at longer intervals and with less vigour; then the rain increases, and yet a little while and the storm has swept on. The very fury--the utter _abandon_--of its rage is its charm; the spirit rises to meet it, and revels in the roar and buffeting. By-and-by they who have faced it have their reward. The wind sinks, the rain ceases, a pale blue sky shows above, and then yonder appears a majesty of cloud--a Himalaya of vapour. Crag on crag rises the vast pile--such jagged and pointed rocks as never man found on earth, or, if he found, could climb--topped with a peak that towers to the heavens, and leans--visibly leans--and threatens to fall and overwhelm the weak world at its feet. A gleam as of snow glitters on the upper rocks, the passes are gloomy and dark, the faces of the precipice are lit up with a golden gleam from the rapidly-sinking sun. So the magic structure stands and sees the great round disk go down. The night gathers around those giant mounts and dark space receives them. CHAPTER XXI A WINTER'S MORNING The pale beams of the waning moon still cast a shadow of the cottage, when the labourer rises from his heavy sleep on a winter's morning. Often he huddles on his things and slips his feet into his thick 'water-tights'--which are stiff and hard, having been wet over night--by no other light than this. If the household is comparatively well managed, however, he strikes a match, and his 'dip' shows at the window. But he generally prefers to save a candle, and clatters down the narrow steep stairs in the semi-darkness, takes a piece of bread and cheese, and steps forth into the sharp air. The cabbages in the garden he notes are covered with white frost, so is the grass in the fields, and the footpath is hard under foot. In the furrows is a little ice--white because the water has shrunk from beneath it, leaving it hollow--and on the stile is a crust of rime, cold to the touch, which he brushes off in getting over. Overhead the sky is clear--cloudless but pale--and the stars, though not yet fading, have lost the brilliant glitter of midnight. Then, in all their glory, the idea of their globular shape is easily accepted; but in the morning, just as the dawn is breaking, the absence of glitter comes the impression of flatness--circular rather than globular. But yonder, over the elms, above the cowpens, the great morning star has risen, shining far brighter, in proportion, than the moon; an intensely clear metallic light--like incandescent silver. The shadows of the trees on the frosted ground are dull. As the footpath winds by the hedge the noise of his footstep startles the blackbird roosting in the bushes, and he bustles out and flies across the field. There is more rime on the posts and rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife--a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually curving to a point--and then searches for the rubber or whetstone, stuck somewhere in the side of the rick. At the first sound of the stone upon the steel the cattle in the adjoining yard and sheds utter a few low 'moos,' and there is a stir among them. Mounting the ladder he forces the knife with both hands into the hay, making a square cut which bends outwards, opening from the main mass till it appears on the point of parting and letting him fall with it to the ground. But long practice has taught him how to balance himself half on the ladder, half on the hay. Presently, with a truss unbound and loose on his head, he enters the yard, and passes from crib to crib, leaving a little here and a little there, for if he fills one first, there will be quarrelling among the cows, and besides, if the crib is too liberally filled, they will pull it out and tread it under foot. The cattle that are in the sheds fattening for Christmas have cake as well, and this must be supplied in just proportion. The hour of milking, which used to be pretty general everywhere, varies now in different places, to suit the necessities of the milk trade. The milk has, perhaps, to travel three or four miles to the railway station; near great towns, where some of the farmers deliver milk themselves from house to house, the cows are milked soon after noonday. What would their grandfathers have said to that? But where the old customs have not much altered, the milker sits down in the morning to his cow with the stars still visible overhead, punching his hat well into her side--a hat well battered and thickly coated with grease, for the skin of the cow exudes an unctuous substance. This hat he keeps for the purpose. A couple of milking pails--they are of large size--form a heavy load when filled. The milker, as he walks back to the farmhouse, bends his head under the yoke--whence so many men are round-shouldered--and steps slowly with a peculiar swaying motion of the body, which slight swing prevents it from spilling. Another man who has to be up while the moon casts a shadow is the carter, who must begin to feed his team very early in order to get them to eat sufficient. If the manger be over-filled they spill and waste it, and at the same time will not eat so much. This is tedious work. Then the lads come and polish up the harness, and so soon as it is well light get out to plough. The custom with the horses is to begin to work as early as possible, but to strike off in the afternoon some time before the other men, the lads riding home astride. The strength of the carthorse has to be husbanded carefully, and the labour performed must be adjusted to it and to the food, i.e. fuel, consumed. To manage a large team of horses, so as to keep them in good condition, with glossy coats and willing step, and yet to get the maximum of work out of them, requires long experience and constant attention. The carter, therefore, is a man of much importance on a farm. If he is up to his duties he is a most valuable servant; if he neglects them he is a costly nuisance, not so much from his pay, but because of the hindrance and disorganisation of the whole farm-work which such neglect entails. Foggers and milkers, if their cottages are near at hand, having finished the first part of the day's work, can often go back home to breakfast, and, if they have a good woman in the cottage, find a fire and hot tea ready. The carter can rarely leave his horses for that, and, therefore, eats his breakfast in the stable; but then he has the advantage that up to the time of starting forth he is under cover. The fogger and milker, on the other hand, are often exposed to the most violent tempests. A gale of wind, accompanied with heavy rain, often readies its climax just about the dawn. They find the soil saturated, and the step sinks into it--the furrows are full of water; the cow-yard, though drained, is a pool, no drain being capable of carrying it off quick enough. The thatch of the sheds drips continually; the haystack drips; the thatch of the stack, which has to be pulled off before the hay-knife can be used, is wet; the old decaying wood of the rails and gates is wet. They sit on the three-legged milking-stool (whose rude workmanship has taken a dull polish from use) in a puddle; the hair of the cow, against which the head is placed, is wet; the wind blows the rain into the nape of the neck behind, the position being stooping. Staggering under the heavy yoke homewards, the boots sink deep into the slush and mire in the gateways, the weight carried sinking them well in. The teams do not usually work in very wet weather, and most of the out-door work waits; but the cattle must be attended to, Sundays and holidays included. Even in summer it often happens that a thunderstorm bursts about that time of the morning. But in winter, when the rain is driven by a furious wind, when the lantern is blown out, and the fogger stumbles in pitchy darkness through mud and water, it would be difficult to imagine a condition of things which concentrates more discomfort. If, as often happens, the man is far from home--perhaps he has walked a mile or two to work--of course he cannot change his clothes, or get near a fire, unless in the farmer's kitchen. In some places the kitchen is open to the men, and on Sundays, at all events, they get a breakfast free. But the kindly old habits are dying out before the hard-and-fast money system and the abiding effects of Unionism, which, even when not prominently displayed, causes a silent, sullen estrangement. Shepherds, too, sometimes visit the fold very early in the morning, and in the lambing season may be said to be about both day and night. They come, however, under a different category to the rest of the men, because they have no regular hours, but are guided solely by the season and the work. A shepherd often takes his ease when other men are busily labouring. On the other hand, he is frequently anxiously engaged when they are sleeping. His sheep rule his life, and he has little to do with the artificial divisions of time. Hedgers and ditchers often work by the piece, and so take their own time for meals; the ash woods, which are cut in the winter, are also usually thrown by the piece. Hedging and ditching, if done properly, is hard work, especially if there is any grubbing. Though the arms get warm from swinging the grub-axe or billhook, or cleaning out the ditch and plastering and smoothing the side of the mound with the spade, yet feet and ankles are chilled by the water in the ditch. This is often dammed up and so kept back partially, but it generally forces its way through. The ditcher has a board to stand on; there is a hole through it, and a projecting stick attached, with which to drag it into position. But the soft soil allows the board to sink, and he often throws it aside as more encumbrance than use. He has some small perquisites: he is allowed to carry home a bundle of wood or a log every night, and may gather up the remnants after the faggoting is finished. On the other hand, he cannot work in bad weather. Other men come to the farm buildings to commence work about the time the carter has got his horses fed, groomed, and harnessed, and after the fogger and milker have completed their early duties. If it is a frosty morning and the ground firm, so as to bear up a cart without poaching the soil too much, the manure is carried out into the fields. This is plain, straightforward labour, and cannot be looked upon as hard work. If the cattle want no further attention, the foggers and milkers turn their hands after breakfast to whatever may be going on. Some considerable time is taken up in slicing roots with the machine, or chaff-cutting--monotonous work of a simple character, and chiefly consisting in turning a handle. The general hands--those who come on when the carter is ready, and who are usually young men, not yet settled down to any particular branch--seem to get the best end of the stick. They do not begin so early in the morning by some time as the fogger, milker, carter, or shepherd; consequently, if the cottage arrangements are tolerable, they can get a comfortable breakfast first. They have no anxieties or trouble whatever; the work may be hard in itself, but there is no particular hurry (in their estimation) and they do not distress themselves. They receive nearly the same wages as the others who have the care of valuable flocks, herds, and horses; the difference is but a shilling or two, and, to make up for that, they do not work on Sundays. Now, the fogger must feed his cows, the carter his horse, the shepherd look to his sheep every day; consequently their extra wages are thoroughly well earned. The young labourer--who is simply a labourer, and professes no special branch--is, therefore, in a certain sense, the best off. He is rarely hired by the year--he prefers to be free, so that when harvest comes he may go where wages chance to be highest. He is an independent person, and full of youth, strength, and with little experience of life, is apt to be rough in his manners and not overcivil. His wages too often go in liquor, but if such a young man keeps steady (and there are a few that do keep steady) he does very well indeed, having no family to maintain. A set of men who work very hard are those who go with the steam-ploughing tackle. Their pay is so arranged as to depend in a measure on the number of acres they plough. They get the steam up as early as possible in the morning, and continue as late as they can at night. Just after the harvest, when the days are long, and, indeed, it is still summer, they work for extremely long hours. Their great difficulty lies in getting water. This must be continually fetched in carts, and, of course, requires a horse and man. These are not always forthcoming in the early morning, but they begin as soon as they can get water for the boiler, and do not stop till the field be finished or it is dark. The women do not find much work in the fields during the winter. Now and then comes a day's employment with the threshing-machine when the farmer wants a rick of corn threshed out. In pasture or dairy districts some of them go out into the meadows and spread the manure. They wear gaiters, and sometimes a kind of hood for the head. If done carefully, it is hard work for the arms--knocking the manure into small pieces by striking it with a fork swung to and fro smartly. In the spring, when the great heaps of roots are opened--having been protected all the winter by a layer of straw and earth--it is necessary to trim them before they are used. This is often done by a woman. She has a stool or log of wood to sit on, and arranges a couple of sacks or something of the kind, so as to form a screen and keep off the bitter winds which are then so common--colder than those of the winter proper. With a screen one side, the heap of roots the other, and the hedge on the third, she is in some sense sheltered, and, taking her food with her, may stay there the whole day long, quite alone in the solitude of the broad, open, arable fields. From a variety of causes, the number of women working in the fields is much less than was formerly the case; thus presenting precisely the reverse state of things to that complained of in towns, where the clerks, &c., say that they are undersold by female labour. The contrast is rather curious. The price of women's labour has, too, risen; and there does not appear to be any repugnance on their part to field-work. Whether the conclusion is to be accepted that there has been a diminution in the actual number of women living in rural places, it is impossible to decide with any accuracy. But there are signs that female labour has drifted to the towns quite as much as male--especially the younger girls. In some places it seems rare to see a young girl working in the field (meaning in winter)--those that are to be found are generally women well advanced in life. Spring and summer work brings forth more, but not nearly so many as used to be the case. Although the work of the farm begins so soon in the morning, it is, on the other hand, in the cold months, over early. 'The night cometh when no man can work' was, one would think, originally meant in reference to agricultural labour. It grows dusk before half-past four on a dull winter's day, and by five is almost, if not quite, dark. Lanterns may be moving in the cowyards and stables; but elsewhere all is quiet--the hedger and ditcher cannot see to strike his blow, the ploughs have ceased to move for some time, the labourer's workshop--the field--is not lighted by gas as the rooms of cities. The shortness of the winter day is one of the primary reasons why, in accordance with ancient custom, wages are lowered at that time. In summer, on the contrary, the hours are long, and the pay high--which more than makes up for the winter reduction. A labourer who has any prudence can, in fact, do very well by putting by a portion of his extra summer wages for the winter; if he does not choose to exercise common sense, he cannot expect the farmer (or any manufacturer) to pay the same price for a little work and short time as for much work and long hours. Reviewing the work the labourer actually does in winter, it seems fair and just to state that the foggers, or milkers, i.e. the men who attend on cattle, the carters, and the shepherds, work hard, continuously, and often in the face of the most inclement weather. The mere labourers, who, as previously remarked, are usually younger and single men, do not work so hard, nor so long. And when they are at it--whether turning the handle of a winnowing machine in a barn, cutting a hedge, spreading manure, or digging--it must be said that they do not put the energy into it of which their brawny arms are capable. 'The least work and the most money,' however, is a maxim not confined to the agricultural labourer. Recently I had occasion to pass through a busy London street in the West-end where the macadam of the roadway was being picked up by some score of men, and, being full of the subject of labour, I watched the process. Using the right hand as a fulcrum and keeping it stationary, each navvy slowly lifted his pick with the left half-way up, about on a level with his waistcoat, when the point of the pick was barely two feet above the ground. He then let it fall--simply by its own weight--producing a tiny indentation such as might be caused by the kick of one's heel It required about three such strokes, if they could so called strokes, to detach one single small stone. After that exhausting labor the man stood at ease for a few minutes, so that there were often three or four at once staring about them, while several others lounged against the wooden railing placed to keep vehicles back. A more irritating spectacle it would be hard to imagine. Idle as much agricultural labour is, it is rarely so lazy as that. How contractors get their work done, if that is a sample, it is a puzzle to understand. The complaint of the poor character of the work performed by the agricultural labourer seems also true of other departments, where labour--pure and simple labour of thews and sinews--is concerned. The rich city merchant, who goes to his office daily, positively works harder, in spite of all his money. So do the shopmen and assistants behind their counters; so do the girls in drapers' shops, standing the whole day and far into the evening when, as just observed, the fields have been dark for hours; so, indeed, do most men and women who earn their bread by any other means than mere bodily strength. But the cattle-men, carters, and shepherds, men with families and settled, often seem to take an interest in their charges, in the cows, horses, or sheep; some of them are really industrious, deserving men. The worst feature of unionism is the lumping of all together, for where one man is hardly worth his salt, another is a good workman. It is strange that such men as this should choose to throw in their lot with so many who are idle--whom they must know to be idle--thus jeopardising their own position for the sake of those who are not worth one-fifth the sacrifice the agricultural cottager must be called upon to make in a strike. The hard-working carter or cattle-man, according to the union theory, is to lose his pay, his cottage, his garden, and get into bad odour with his employer, who previously trusted him, and was willing to give him assistance, in order that the day labourer who has no responsibilities either of his own or his master's, and who has already the best end of the stick, should enjoy still further opportunities for idleness. CHAPTER XXII THE LABOURER'S CHILDREN. COTTAGE GIRLS In the coldest weather one or more of the labourer's children are sure to be found in the farmyard somewhere. After the mother has dressed her boy (who may be about three or four years old) in the morning, he is at once turned out of doors to take care of himself, and if, as is often the case, the cottage is within a short distance of the farmyard, thither he toddles directly. He stands about the stable door, watching the harnessing of the great carthorses, which are, from the very first, the object of his intense admiration. But he has already learnt to keep out of the way, knowing that his presence would not otherwise be tolerated a moment, and occupies a position which enables him to dart quickly behind a tree, or a rick. When the horses are gone he visits the outhouse, where the steam-engine is driving the chaff-cutter, or peers in at the huge doors of the barn, where with wide wooden shovel the grain is being moved. Or he may be met with round the hay-ricks, dragging a log of wood by a piece of tar cord, the log representing a plough. As you come upon him suddenly he draws up to the rick as if the hay was his natural protector, and looks up at you with half-frightened, half-curious gaze, and mouth open. His hat is an old one of his father's, a mile too big, coming down over his ears to his shoulders, well greased from ancient use--a thing not without its advantage, since it makes it impervious to rain. He wears what was a white jacket, but is now the colour of the prevailing soil of the place; a belt; and a pair of stumping boots, the very picture in miniature of his father's, heeled and tipped with iron. His naked legs are red with the cold, but thick and strong; his cheeks are plump and firm, his round blue eyes bright, his hair almost white, like bleached straw. An hour or two ago his skin was clean enough, for he was sent out well washed, but it is now pretty well grimed, for he has been making himself happy in the dirt, as a boy should do if he be a boy. For one thing it is clean dirt, nothing but pure mother earth, and not the nasty unctuous filth of city courts and back lanes. If you speak to him he answers you sturdily--if you can catch the meaning of his words, doubly difficult from accent and imperfect knowledge of construction. But he means well, and if you send him on an errand will run off to find 'measter' as fast as his short stature will allow. He will potter about the farmyard the whole morning, perhaps turning up at home for a lunch of a slice of bread well larded. His little sister, not so old as himself, is there, already beginning her education in the cares of maternity, looking after the helpless baby that crawls over the wooden threshold of the door with bare head, despite the bitter cold. Once during the day he may perhaps steal round the farmhouse, and peer wistfully from behind the tubs or buckets into the kitchen, when, if the mistress chances to be about, he is pretty certain to pick up some trifle in the edible line. How those prosperous parents who dwell in highly-rented suburban villas, and send out their children for a walk with a couple of nurses, and a 'bow-wow' to run beside the perambulator, would be eaten up with anxiety did their well-dressed boys or girls play where this young son of toil finds his amusement! Under the very hoofs of the carthorses--he will go out to them when they are loose in the field, three or four in a group, under a tree, when it looks as if the slightest movement on their part must crush him; down to the side of the deep broad brook to swim sticks in it for boats, where a slip on the treacherous mud would plunge him in, and where the chance of rescue--everybody being half a mile away at work--would be absolutely _nil_. The cows come trampling through the yard; the bull bellows in the meadow; great, grunting sows, savage when they have young, go by, thrusting their noses into and turning up the earth for food; steam ploughing engines pant and rumble about; carts are continually coming and going; and he is all day in the midst of it without guardian of any kind whatsoever. The fog, and frost, and cutting winter winds make him snivel and cry with the cold, and yet there he is out in it--in the draughts that blow round the ricks, and through the hedge bare of leaves. The rain rushes down pitilessly--he creeps inside the barn or shed, and with a stick splashes the puddles. The long glaring days of summer see him exposed to the scorching heat in the hay, or the still hotter harvest field. Through it all he grows stout and strong, and seems happy enough. He is, perhaps, more fortunate than his sister, who has to take part in the household work from very early age. But the village school claims them both after awhile; and the greater number of such schools are well filled, taking into consideration the long distances the children have to come and the frequent bad state of the roads and lanes. Both the employers and the children's own parents get them to school as much as possible; the former put on a mild compulsion, the latter for the most part are really anxious for the schooling, and have even an exaggerated idea of the value of education. In some cases it would seem as if the parents actually educated themselves in some degree from their own children, questioning them as to what they have been told. But, on the other hand, the labourer objects to paying for the teaching, and thinks the few coppers he is charged a terrible extortion. The lads, as they grow older and leave school, can almost always find immediate employment with their father on the same farm, or on one close by. Though they do not now go out to work so soon, yet, on the other hand, when they do commence they receive higher weekly wages. The price paid for boys' labour now is such that it becomes a very important addition to the aggregate income of the cottager. When a man has got a couple of boys out, bringing home so much per week, his own money, of course, goes very much farther. The girls go less and less into the field. If at home, they assist their parents at harvest time when work is done by the acre, and the more a man can cut the better he is off; but their aim is domestic service, and they prefer to be engaged in the towns. They shirk the work of a farmhouse, especially if it is a dairy, and so it has come to be quite a complaint among farmers' wives, in many places, that servants are not to be obtained. Those that are available are mere children, whose mothers like them to go out anywhere at first, just to obtain an insight into the duties of a servant. The farmer's wife has the trouble and annoyance of teaching these girls the rudiments of household work, and then, the moment they are beginning to be useful, they leave, and almost invariably go to the towns. Those that remain are the slow-witted, or those who are tied in a measure by family difficulties--as a bedridden mother to attend to; or, perhaps, an illegitimate child of her own may fetter the cottage girl. Then she goes out in the daytime to work at the farmhouse, and returns to sleep at home. Cottage girls have taken to themselves no small airs of recent years--they dress, so far as their means will go, as flashily as servants in cities, and stand upon their dignity. This foolishness has, perhaps, one good effect--it tends to diminish the illegitimate births. The girls are learning more self-respect--if they could only achieve that and eschew the other follies it would be a clear gain. It may be questioned whether purely agricultural marriages are as common as formerly. The girl who leaves her home for service in the towns sees a class of men--grooms, footmen, artisans, and workmen generally--not only receiving higher wages than the labourers in her native parish, but possessing a certain amount of comparative refinement. It is not surprising that she prefers, if possible, to marry among these. On the other hand, the young labourer, who knows that he can get good wages wherever he likes to go, has become somewhat of a wanderer. He roams about, not only from village to village, but from county to county; perhaps works for a time as a navvy on some distant railway, and thus associates with a different class of men, and picks up a sort of coarse cynicism. He does not care to marry and settle and tie himself down to a routine of labour--he despises home pleasures, preferring to spend his entire earnings upon himself. The roaming habits of the rising generation of labourers is an important consideration, and it has an effect in many ways. Statistics are not available; but the impression left on the mind is that purely rural marriages are not so frequent, notwithstanding that wages at large have risen. When a young man does marry, he and his wife not uncommonly live for a length of time with his parents, occupying a part of the cottage. Had any one gone into a cottage some few years back and inquired about the family, most probably the head of the house could have pointed out all his sons and daughters engaged in or near the parish. Most likely his own father was at work almost within hail. Uncles, cousins, various relations, were all near by. He could tell where everybody was. To-day if a similar inquiry wore made, the answer would often be very different. The old people might be about still, but the younger would be found scattered over the earth. One, perhaps, went to the United States or Canada in the height of the labourers' agitation some years ago, when agents were busy enlisting recruits for the Far West. Since then another has departed for Australia, taking with him his wife. Others have migrated northwards, or to some other point of the compass--they are still in the old country, but the exact whereabouts is not known. The girls are in service a hundred miles away--some married in the manufacturing districts. To the middle-aged, steady, stay-at-home labourer, the place does not seem a bit like it used to. Even the young boys are restless, and talking of going somewhere. This may not be the case with every single individual cottage family, but it is so with a great number. The stolid phalanx of agricultural labour is slowly disintegrating. If there yet remains anything idyllic in the surroundings of rural cottage life, it may be found where the unmarried but grown-up sons--supposing these, of course, to be steady--remain at home with their parents. The father and head of the house, having been employed upon one farm for the last thirty years or more, though nominally carter, is really a kind of bailiff. The two young men work on at the same place, and lodge at home, paying a small weekly sum for board and lodging. Their sister is probably away in service; their mother manages the cottage. She occasionally bears a hand in indoor work at the farmhouse, and in the harvest time aids a little in the field, but otherwise does not labour. What is the result? Plenty to eat, good beds, fairly good furniture, sufficient fuel, and some provision for contingencies, through the benefit club. As the wages are not consumed in drink, they have always a little ready money, and, in short, are as independent as it is possible for working men to be, especially if, as is often the case, the cottage and garden is their own, or is held on a small quit-rent. If either of the sons in time desires to marry, he does not start utterly unprovided. His father's influence with the farmer is pretty sure to procure him a cottage; he has some small savings himself, and his parents in the course of years have accumulated some extra furniture, which is given to him. If a cottage, where the occupants are steady like this, be visited in the evening, say towards seven o'clock, when dinner is on the table (labourers dining or supping after the conclusion of the day's work), the fare will often be found of a substantial character. There may be a piece of mutton--not, of course, the prime cut, but wholesome meat--cabbages, parsnips, carrots (labourers like a profusion of vegetables), all laid out in a decent manner. The food is plain, but solid and plentiful. If the sister out in service wishes to change her situation, she has a home to go to meanwhile. Should any dispute occur with the employer the cottage is still there, and affords a shelter till the difficulty is settled or other work obtained. In towns the workman who has been earning six or even ten shillings a day, and paying a high rent (carefully collected every week), no sooner gets his discharge than he receives notice to quit his lodgings, because the owner knows he will not be paid. But when the agricultural labourer has a quit-rent cottage, or one of his own, he has a permanent resource, and can look round for another engagement. The cooking in the best cottages would not commend itself to the student of that art: in those where the woman is shiftless it would be deemed simply intolerable. Evidence of this is only too apparent on approaching cottages, especially towards the evening. Coming from the fresh air of the fields, perhaps from the sweet scent of clover or of new-mown grass, the odour which arises from the cottages is peculiarly offensive. It is not that they are dirty inside--the floor may be scrubbed, the walls brushed, the chairs clean, and the beds tidy; it is from outside that all the noisome exhalations taint the breeze. The refuse vegetables, the washings, the liquid and solid rubbish generally is cast out into the ditch, often open to the highway road, and there festers till the first storm sweeps it away. The cleanest woman indoors thinks nothing disgusting out of doors, and hardly goes a step from her threshold to cast away indescribable filth. Now, a good deal of this refuse is the remains of imperfect cooking--masses of soddened cabbage, part of which only is eaten, and the rest stored for the pig or thrown into the ditch. The place smells of soaking, saturated cabbage for yards and yards round about. But it is much easier to condemn the cottage cook than to show her how to do better. It is even doubtful whether professed scientific cooks could tell her what to do. The difficulty arises from the rough, coarse taste of the labourer, and the fact, which it is useless to ignore, that he must have something solid, and indeed, bulky. Thin clear soups--though proved to abound with nourishment and of delicious flavour--are utterly beside his wants. Give him the finest soup; give him _pâtés_, or even more meaty _entrées_, and his remark will be that it is very nice, but he wants 'summat to eat.' His teeth are large, his jaws strong, his digestive powers such as would astonish a city man; he likes solid food, bacon, butcher's meat, cheese, or something that gives him a sense of fulness, like a mass of vegetables. This is the natural result of his training and work in the fields. The materials used by the cottage cook are often quite capable of being made into agreeable dishes, but then those dishes would not suit the man. All the soups and kickshaws--though excellent in themselves--in the world are not, for his purpose, equal to a round of beef or a side of bacon. Let any one go and labour daily in the field, and they will come quickly to the same opinion. Yet something might certainly be done in the way of preventing waste. The real secret lies in the education of the women when young--that is, for the future. But, taking the present day, looking at things as they actually exist, it is no use abusing or lecturing the cottage cook. She might, perhaps, be persuaded to adopt a systematic plan of disposing of the refuse. The Saturday half-holiday is scarcely so closely observed in rural labour as in urban. The work closes earlier, that is, so far as the day labourer is concerned, for he gets the best of this as of other things. But, half-holiday or not, cows have to be fed and milked, sheep must be looked after, and the stable attended to, so that the regular men do not get off much sooner. In winter, the days being short, they get little advantage from the short time; in summer they do. Compensation is, however, as much as possible afforded to the settled men who have gardens, by giving them a half-day now and then when work is slack to attend to them. On Sunday morning the labourer cleans and polishes his boots (after digging the potatoes for dinner), puts on a black or dark coat, put his hands in his pockets--a marked feature this--and rambles down to his garden or the allotment. There, if it be spring or summer, he is sure to find some acquaintances likewise 'looking round.' This seems to be one of the greatest pleasures of the labourer, noting the growth of a cabbage here, and the promise of potatoes yonder; he does not work, but strolls to and fro, discussing the vegetable prospect. Then back home in time for dinner--the great event of Sunday, being often the only day in the week that he can get a hot dinner in the middle of the day. It is his day at home, and though he may ramble out he never goes far. Ladies residing in the country are accustomed to receive periodical appeals from friends in town asking their assistance in procuring servants. So frequent are such appeals that there would seem to be a popular belief that the supply is inexhaustible. The villages are supposed to be full of girls, all ready to enter service, and, though a little uncouth in manner, possessed nevertheless of sterling good qualities. The letter is usually couched in something like the following terms:--'Do you happen to know of a really good girl that would suit us? You are aware of the scale on which our household is conducted, and how very modest our requirements are. All we want is a strong, healthy, honest girl, ready and willing to work and to learn, and who will take an interest in the place, and who will not ask too extravagant a price. She can have a good home with us as long as ever she likes to stay. My dear, you really cannot tell what a difficulty we experience in getting servants who are not "uppish," and who are trustworthy and do not mind working, and if you can find us one in those pretty villages round you, we shall be so much obliged,' &c. The fact that a servant from the country is supposed, in the nature of things, to be honest and willing, hardworking, strong, and healthy, and almost everything else, speaks well for the general character of the girls brought up in agricultural cottages. It is, however, quite a mistake to suppose the supply to be limitless; it is just the reverse; the really good servants from any particular district are quickly exhausted, and then, if the friends in town will insist upon a girl from the country, they cannot complain if they do not get precisely what they want. The migration, indeed, of servants from the villages to the towns has, for the time being, rather overdone itself. The best of those who responded to the first demand were picked out some time since; many of those now to be had are not of the first class, and the young are not yet grown up. After awhile, as education progresses--bringing with it better manners--there may be a fresh supply; meantime, really good country girls are difficult to obtain. But the demand is as great as ever. From the squire's lady down to the wife of the small tenant-farmer, one and all receive the same requests from friends in town. The character of the true country servant stands as high as ever. Let us hope that the polish of progress may not too much overlay the solid if humble virtues which procured that character for her class. Some efforts are being made here and there to direct the course of young girls after leaving the village schools--to put them in the right way and give them the benefit of example. As yet such efforts are confined to individuals. The object is certainly worth the formation of local organisations, for, too often, on quitting the school, the young village girl comes in contact with anything but elevating influences, and, unfortunately, her own mother is not always the best guide. The position of a servant in town is well known, the antecedents of a girl before she reaches town perhaps not so thoroughly, while the lives of those who remain in the villages drop out of sight of the great world. As a child, the cottage girl 'roughs' it in the road and in the fields. In winter she learns to slide, and to endure the cold and rain, till she often becomes what, to any one accustomed to a more delicate life, seems positively impervious to weather. The servants in old-fashioned farmhouses really did not seem to know what it was to feel cold. Even nowadays, a servant fresh from an outlying hamlet, where her parents probably could procure but little fuel beyond what was necessary for cooking, at first cares not an atom whether there be a fire in the kitchen or not. Such girls are as hardy as the men of their native place. After a time, hot rooms and a profusion of meat and good living generally saps and undermines this natural strength. Then they shiver like town-bred people. The cottage child is often locked out by her parents, who go to work and leave her in charge of her still smaller brothers and sisters. They play about the hedges and ditches, and very rarely come to any harm. In autumn their little fingers are employed picking up the acorns fallen from the oaks, for which the formers pay so much per bushel. In spring is their happiest time. The joy of life--the warm sunshine and pleasant breeze of spring--is not wholly lost upon them, despite their hard fare, and the not very affectionate treatment they receive at home. Such a girl may then be seen sitting under a willow beside the brook, with her charges around her--the little brother that can just toddle, the baby that can but crawl and crow in the green fresh grass. Between them lies a whole pile of flowers--dandelion stems made into rings, and the rings joined together so as to form a chain, rushes plaited, blue-bells, cowslips tied up in balls, and cowslips loose, their yellow petals scattered over the sward. The brook flows murmuring by, with an occasional splash, as a water-rat dives from the bank or a fish rises to an insect. The children weave their flowers and chant some old doggrel rhymes with little or no meaning. Long afterwards that girl will retain an unconscious memory of the scene, when, wheeling her employer's children out on some suburban road, she seeks a green meadow and makes a cowslip ball for the delighted infants. In summer they go down to the hay-field, but dare not meddle with the hay, which the bailiff does not like to see disturbed; they remain under the shadow of the hedge. In autumn they search for the berries, like the birds, nibbling the hips and haws, tasting crabs and sloes, or feasting on the fruit of a hazel-bush. Be it spring or summer, autumn or winter, wherever the child may be, her eyes are ever on the watch to find a dead stick or a broken branch, too heavy to lift, but which may be dragged behind, in order to feed the cottage fire at night. That is her first duty as a child; if she remains in the hamlet that will be her duty through life, and to the last, as an aged woman. So in London, round the purlieus of buildings in the course of erection--even in the central thoroughfares, in busy Fleet Street--children hang about the temporary hoardings, and pick up the chips and splinters of deal. But the latter have not the pleasure of the blue-bells and cowslips, nor even of the hips and haws, nor does the fresh pure breeze play upon their foreheads. Rough though it be, the childhood of the cottage girl is not without its recompenses, the most valuable of which is sturdy health. Now that good schools are open to every village, so soon as the children are old enough to walk the distance, often considerable, they are sent off every morning. At all events, if it does nothing else, it causes the mothers to give them a daily tidying up, which is in itself an advantage. They travel under the charge of the girl; often two or three such small parties join company, coming from as many cottages. In the warmer months, the lanes and fields they cross form a long playground for them, and picking flowers and searching for birds'-nests pass away the time. In winter they have to face the mire and rain. When the girl leaves school she is hardly old enough to enter service, and too often in the year or so that elapses before she 'goes out' much mischief is done. She is then at an age when the mind is peculiarly receptive, and the ways of the young labourers with whom she is thrown into contact are not very refined. Her first essay at 'service' is often as day-nursemaid at some adjacent farmhouse, taking care of the younger children in the day, and returning home to sleep. She then wanders with the children about the same fields she visited long before. This system used to be common enough, but latterly it has not worked well, because the parents expect the girl to progress so rapidly. She must be a woman and receive a woman's wages almost before she has ceased to be a girl. If she does not disdain to enter a farmhouse as kitchen-maid her wages will probably be about six pounds a year at first. Of course the exact sum varies very much in different localities and in different cases. It is but a small sum of money, yet it is often all she is worth. The cottage is a poor preparation even for the humblest middle-class home. Those ladies in towns who have engaged country servants are well aware of the amount of teaching they require before they can go through the simplest duties in a satisfactory manner. But most of these girls have already been out several times before reaching town. What a difficulty, then, the first farmer's wife must have had in drilling the rudiments of civilised life into them! Indeed, the vexations and annoyances connected with servants are no light weight upon the patience of the tenant-farmer. His wife is perpetually preparing servant girls for the service of other people. She is a kind of unpaid teacher, for ever shaping the rough material which, so soon as it is worth higher wages than a tenant-farmer can usually pay, is off, and the business has to be begun over again. No one who had not seen it would believe how clumsy and unthinking such girls are on first 'going out.' It is, too, the flightiest and giddiest period of their existence--before the girl sobers down into the woman. In the houses of the majority of tenant-farmers the mistress herself has to be a good deal in the kitchen, and therefore comes into close personal contact with the servants, and feels these things acutely. Except in the case of gentleman-farmers it may, perhaps, be said that almost all the wives of farmers have had experience of this kind. The girls are not nearly so tractable as formerly--they are fully aware of their own value and put it extremely high; a word is sufficient, and if not pleased they leave immediately. Wages rise yearly to about the limit of twelve pounds. In mentioning that sum it is not set down as an exact figure, for circumstances of course vary in every case. But it is seldom that servants in farmhouses of the middle class receive more than that. Until recently few obtained so much. Most of them that are worth anything never rest till they reach the towns, and take service in the villas of the wealthy suburban residents. Some few, however, remain in the country from preference, feeling a strong affection for their native place, for their parents and friends. Notwithstanding the general tendency to roam, this love of home is by no means extinct, but shows itself very decidedly in some of the village girls. The fogger, or milker, who comes to the farmhouse door in the morning may not present a very attractive appearance in the eyes of those accustomed to see well-dressed people; but it may be quite different with the young girl whose early associations have made her oblivious of dirt. She does not notice the bits of hay clinging to the smockfrock, the greasy hat and begrimed face, or the clumsy boots thickly coated with mud. A kiss may be quite as sweet, despite these mere outside accidents. In her way she is full of imagination and fancy--what her mistress would call 'giddy.' Within doors an eye may be on her, so she slips out to the wood-stack in the yard, ostensibly to fetch a log for the fire, and indulges in a few moments of flirtation behind the shelter of the faggots. In the summer she works doubly hard in the morning, and gets everything forward, so that she may go out to the field haymaking in the afternoon, when she may meet her particular friend, and also, perhaps, his rival. On Sundays she gladly walks two or more miles across the fields to church, knowing full well that some one will be lounging about a certain stile, or lying on the sward by a gate waiting for her. The practice of coquetry is as delightful in the country lane as in the saloons of wealth, though the ways in which it exhibits itself may be rude in comparison. So that love is sometimes the detaining force which keeps the girl in the country. Some of the young labourers are almost heirs to property in their eyes. One is perhaps the son of the carrier, who owns a couple of cottages let out to tenants; or the son of the blacksmith, at whom several caps are set, and about whom no little jealousy rages. On the whole, servants in the country, at least at farmhouses, have much more liberty than they could possibly get in town. The work is hard in the morning, but generally much less for the rest of the day; in the evening there is often scarcely anything to do. So that the farmhouse servant has much time to herself, and is not too strictly confined indoors when not at work. There is a good deal of 'company,' too; men coming to the door, men in the rick-yards and cattle-yards, men in the barn, labourers passing to their work, and so on. It is not so dull a life as might appear. Indeed, a farmhouse servant probably sees twice as many of her own class in the course of a week as a servant in town. Vanity, of course, is not to be shut out even from so simple an existence: the girl must have a 'fashionable' bonnet, and a pair of thin tight boots, let the lanes be never so dirty or the fields never so wet. In point of education they have much improved of late, and most can now read and write. But when they write home the letter is often read to the mother by some friend; the girl's parents being nearly or quite illiterate. Tenant-farmers' wives are often asked to act as notaries in such cases by cottage women on the receipt of letters from their children. When such a girl marries in the village she usually finds the work of the cottage harder than that of the farmhouse. It is more continuous, and when children arrive the trouble of nursing has to be added to the other duties, and to occasional work in the fields. The agricultural labourer's wife, indeed, has a harder lot than her husband. His toil is for the most part over when he leaves the field, but the woman's is never finished. When the man reaches home he does not care, or will not turn his hand to anything, except, perhaps, to fetch a pail of water, and he is not well pleased if asked to do that. The want of conveniences like an accessible water supply is severely felt by the women in many villages and hamlets; whilst in others there is a quantity running to waste. Many of the men obtain a more than liberal amount of beer, while the women scarcely get any at all. While working in the field they are allowed a small quantity by some farmers; at home they have none. Very few cottage women are inclined to drink, and they are seldom seen at 'public' or intoxicated. On Saturdays most of them walk into the nearest town, perhaps five or more miles distant, in order to buy household stuff. Often a whole bevy of neighbours then meet and return home together, and that is about the only time when they call at the roadside inn. Laden with heavy parcels, with a long walk yet before them, and after a hard week's work, it is not surprising that they should want some refreshment, but the quantity of ale then purchased is very small. When there are a number of young children, and the parents endeavour to keep them decent, the woman works very hard indeed. Many farmers' wives take much interest in such families, where there is an evident endeavour to go straight, and assist the women in various ways, as with cast-off clothing for the children. A basketful of apples even from the farmer's orchard is a treat to the children, for, though better fed than formerly, their diet is necessarily monotonous, and such fruit as may be grown in the cottage garden is, of course, sold. With the exception of vegetables the cottager now buys almost everything and produces nothing for home use; no home-spun clothing--not even a home-baked loaf. Instances have been observed where cottagers have gone to much expense (for them) to build ovens, and after baking a few batches abandoned the project. Besides the cheap outfitters in the towns, the pack-drapers come round visiting every cottage. Such drapers have no shop-window, and make no display, but employ several men carrying packs, who work through the villages on foot and range over a wide stretch of country. Agricultural women, other than those belonging to the families of tenant-farmers, may be summed up as employed in the following manner. Bailiff's wives and daughters: these are not supposed, on extensive farms, to work in the field. The wife frequently has charge of the small home dairy, and the daughter assists at the house. Sometimes they also attend to the poultry, now occasionally kept in large numbers. A bailiff's daughter sometimes becomes housekeeper to a farmer. Dairymaids of the ordinary class--not competent to make special cheese--are becoming rarer, on account of the demand for their services decreasing--the milk trade and cheap foreign cheese having rendered common sorts of cheese unprofitable. They are usually cottagers. Of the married labouring women and the indoor servants something has already been said. In most villages a seamstress or two may be found, and has plenty of work to do for the farmers' families. The better class of housekeepers, and those professional dairymaids who superintend the making of superior cheese, are generally more or less nearly related to the families of tenant-farmers. CHAPTER XXIII THE LOW 'PUBLIC' IDLERS The wise old saw that good wine needs no bush does not hold true in the case of the labourer; it would require a very large bush indeed to attract him to the best of beer offered for sale under legitimate conditions. In fact, he cares not a rap about good beer--that is, intrinsically good, a genuine product of malt and hops. He would rather grumble at it, unless, perchance, it was a gift; and even then would criticise it behind the donor's back, holding the quart cup aslant so as to see the bottom in one place, and get a better view of the liquor. The great breweries whose names are household words in cities, and whose interest it is to maintain a high standard of quality for the delectation of their million consumers, do not exalt their garish painted advertisements in gilded letters as tall as Tom Thumb over the doors of village alehouses. You might call for Bass at Cairo, Bombay, Sydney, or San Francisco, and Bass would be forthcoming. But if you knocked the trestle-table with the bottom of a tankard (the correct way) in a rural public, as a signal to the cellar you might call for Bass in vain. When the agricultural labourer drops in on his way home from his work of a winter evening--heralding his approach by casting down a couple of logs or bundle of wood which he has been carrying with a thud outside the door--he does not demand liquor of that character. When in harvest time, after sundown--when the shadows forbid farther cutting with the fagging hook at the tall wheat--he sits on the form without, under the elm tree, and feels a whole pocketful of silver, flush of money like a gold-digger at a fortunate rush, he does not indulge in Allsopp or Guinness. He hoarsely orders a 'pot' of some local brewer's manufacture--a man who knows exactly what he likes, and arranges to meet the hardy digestion of the mower and the reaper. He prefers a rather dark beer with a certain twang faintly suggestive of liquorice and tobacco, with a sense of 'body,' a thickness in it, and which is no sooner swallowed than a clammy palate demands a second gulp to wash away the relics of the first. Ugh! The second requires a third swig, and still a fourth, and appetite increasing with that it feeds on, the stream rushes down the brazen throat that burns for more. Like the Northern demi-god who drank unwittingly at the ocean from a horn and could not empty it, but nevertheless caused the ebb of the sea, so our toper, if he cannot contain the cask, will bring it down to the third hoop if time and credit will but serve. It would require a ganger's staff to measure his capacity--in fact, the limit of the labourer's liquor-power, especially in summer, has never yet been reached. A man will lie on his back in the harvest field, under a hedge sweet with the June roses that smile upon the hay, and never move or take his lips away till a gallon has entered into his being, for it can hardly be said to be swallowed. Two gallons a day is not an uncommon consumption with men who swing the scythe or reaping-hook. This of course is small beer; but the stuff called for at the low public in the village, or by the road just outside, though indescribably nauseous to a non-vitiated palate, is not 'small.' It is a heady liquid, which if anyone drinks, not being accustomed to it, will leave its effects upon him for hours afterwards. But this is what the labourer likes. He prefers something that he can feel; something that, if sufficiently indulged in, will make even his thick head spin and his temples ache next morning. Then he has had the value of his money. So that really good ale would require a very large bush indeed before it attracted his custom. It is a marked feature of labouring life that the respectable inn of the village at which the travelling farmer, or even persons higher in rank, occasionally call, which has a decent stable, and whose liquors are of a genuine character, is almost deserted by the men who seek the reeking tap of the ill-favoured public which forms the clubhouse of all the vice of the village. While the farmer or passing stranger, calling at the decent house really for refreshment, drinks but a glass or two and departs, the frequenters of the low place never quit their seats till the law compels them, so that for sixpence spent in the one by men with cheque-books in their pockets, five shillings are spent in the other by men who have not got a loaf of bread at home for their half-starving children and pinched wife. To an unprincipled landlord clearly this sort of custom is decidedly preferable, and thus it is that these places are a real hardship to the licensed victualler whose effort it is to keep an orderly house. The influence of the low public upon the agricultural labourer's life is incalculable--it is his club, almost his home. There he becomes brutalised; there he spends his all; and if he awakes to the wretched state of his own family at last, instead of remembering that it is his own act, he turns round, accuses the farmer of starvation wages, shouts for what is really Communism, and perhaps even in his sullen rage descends to crime. Let us go with him into such a rural den. Beware that you do not knock your head against the smoke-blackened beams of the low ceiling, and do not put your elbow carelessly on the deal table, stained with spilled ale, left uncleaned from last night, together with little heaps of ashes, tapped out from pipes, and spots of grease from the tallow candles. The old-fashioned settles which gave so cosy an air in the olden time to the inn room, and which still linger in some of the houses, are not here--merely forms and cheap chairs. A great pot hangs over the fire, for the family cooking is done in the public apartment; but do not ask to join in the meal, for though the food may be more savoury than is dreamed of in your philosophy, the two-grained forks have not been cleaned these many a day. Neither is the butcher's wooden skewer, just extracted from the meat, an elegant toothpick if you are fastidious. But these things are trifles when the dish is a plump pheasant, jugged hare, brown partridges, or trout--perhaps not exactly in season--as the chance may be; or a couple of boiled fowls, or a turkey, or some similar toothsome morsel. Perhaps it is the gamey taste thus induced that enables them to enjoy joints from the butcher which are downright tainted, for it is characteristic of the place and people on the one hand to dine on the very best, as above, and yet to higgle over a halfpenny a pound at the shop. Nowhere else in all the parish, from the polished mahogany at the squire's mansion to the ancient solid oaken table at the substantial old-fashioned farmer's, can there be found such a constant supply of food usually considered as almost the privilege of the rich. Bacon, it is true, they eat of the coarsest kind; but with it eggs new laid and delicious. In brief, it is the strangest hodge-podge of pheasant and bread and cheese, asparagus and cabbage. But somehow, whatever is good, whatever is held in estimation, makes its appearance in that grimy little back room on that ragged, dirty table-cloth. Who pays for these things? Are they paid for at all? There is no licensed dealer in game in the village nor within many miles, and it seems passing strange. But there are other things almost as curious. The wood pile in the back yard is ever high and bulky; let the fire burn never so clear in the frosty days there is always a regular supply of firewood. It is the same with coal. Yet there is no copse attached to the place, nor is the landlord ever seen chopping for himself, nor are the farmers in the habit of receiving large orders for logs and faggots. By the power of some magic spell all things drift hitherward. A magnet which will draw logs of timber and faggots half across the parish, which will pull pheasants off their perch, extract trout from the deep, and stay the swift hare in midst of her career, is a power indeed to be envied. Had any enchanter of mediaeval days so potent a charm? Perhaps it is the engaging and attractive character of the landlord himself. He is a tall, lanky man, usually seen in slippers, and trousers too short for his limbs; he 'sloppets' about in his waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, hands in pockets, and shoulders forward almost in a hump. He hangs about the place, now bringing in a log, now carrying a bucket, now spinning a mop, now slouching down the garden to feed the numerous fowls that scratch around the stumps of cabbages. Anything, in short, but work. Sometimes, however, he takes the trap and horse, and is supposed to be gone on a dealing expedition. Sometimes it is only to carry a jar of beer up to the men in the field, and to mouch a good armful of fresh-cut clover for provender from the swathe. He sips gin the live-long day--weak gin always--every hour from morn till a cruel Legislature compels the closing of the shutters. He is never intoxicated--it is simply a habit, a sort of fuel to feed the low cunning in which his soul delights. So far from intoxication is he, that there is a fable of some hard knocks and ill usage, and even of a thick head being beaten against the harder stones of the courtyard behind, when the said thick head was helpless from much ale. Such matters are hushed up in the dark places of the earth. So far from intoxication is he, that he has the keenest eye to business. There is a lone rick-yard up in the fields yonder to which the carters come from the farm far away to fetch hay, and straw, and so forth. They halt at the public, and are noticed to enjoy good living there, nor are they asked for their score. A few trusses of hay, or bundles of straw, a bushel of corn, or some such trifle is left behind merely out of good-fellowship. Waggons come up laden with tons of coal for the farms miles above, far from a railway station; three or four teams, perhaps, one after the other. Just a knob or two can scarcely be missed, and a little of the small in a sack-bag. The bundles of wood thrown down at the door by the labourers as they enter are rarely picked up again; they disappear, and the hearth at home is cold. The foxes are blamed for the geese and the chickens, and the hunt execrated for not killing enough cubs, but Reynard is not always guilty. Eggs and poultry vanish. The shepherds have ample opportunities for disposing of a few spare lambs to a general dealer whose trap is handy. Certainly, continuous gin does not chill the faculties. If a can of ale is left in the outhouse at the back and happens to be found by a few choice spirits at the hour when the vicar is just commencing his sermon in church on Sunday, it is by the purest accident. The turnip and swede greens left at the door, picked wholesale from the farmers' fields; the potatoes produced from coat pockets by fingers which have been sorting heaps at the farmstead; the apples which would have been crushed under foot if the labourers had not considerately picked them up--all these and scores of other matters scarce worth naming find their way over that threshold. Perhaps the man is genial, his manners enticing, his stories amusing, his jokes witty? Not at all. He is a silent fellow, scarce opening his mouth except to curse the poor scrub of a maid servant, or to abuse a man who has not paid his score. He slinks in and lights his pipe, smokes it silently, and slinks out again. He is the octopus of the hamlet, fastening on the cottage homes and sucking the life-blood from them. He misses nothing, and nothing comes amiss to him. His wife, perhaps, then, may be the centre of attraction? She is a short, stout woman, whose cheeks as she walks wobble with fat, whose face is ever dirty, and dress (at home) slatternly. But mayhap her heart is in the right place, and when Hodge is missed from his accustomed seat by the fire of an evening, when it is bruited abroad that he is down with illness, hurriedly slips on her bonnet, and saying nothing, carries a basket of good things to cheer the inner man? Or, when his wife is confined, perhaps she brings some little delicacies, a breast of pheasant, a bottle of port wine, and strengthens her with motherly counsel in the hour of her travail. Is this so? Hodge's wife could tell you that the cottage door has never been darkened by her presence: that she indeed would not acknowledge her if passed by chance on the road. For the landlady sails forth to the adjacent town in all the glory of those fine feathers that proverbially make the fine bird. It is a goodly spectacle to see her in rustling ample silk, in costly sealskin, in a bonnet 'loud' but rich, shading a countenance that glows ruddy red as a furnace. A gold chain encircles her portly neck, with a gold watch thereto attached; gold rings upon her fingers, in one of which sparkles a brilliant diamond; gold earrings, gold brooch, kid gloves bursting from the fatness of the fingers they encase. The dingy trap and limping rawboned hack which carry her to the outskirts of the town scarcely harmonise with so much glory. But at the outskirts she alights, and enters the street in full dignity. By some potent alchemy the sweat of Hodge's brow has become condensed into that sparkling diamond, which is disclosed when the glove is drawn off in the shops, to the admiration of all beholders. Or, if not the wife, perhaps it may be the daughter who is the magnet that draws the very timber across the parish? She is not ill-looking, and might pass muster in her best dress were it not for a squareness of build, like the set of a man rather than the full curves associated with woman. She is rarely seen in the house at all, and neither talks to the men nor the women who enter. She sallies forth at night, and her friends are the scampish among the sons of the lower class of tenant-farmers. This is the family. How strange and yet how undeniable is it that such a house should attract the men whose self-interest, one would imagine, would lead them to shun it, and if they must spend their hard-won earnings, at least to get a good article for their money! It proves that an appeal to reason is not always the way to manage the working man. Such a low house is always a nest of agitation: there the idle, drunken, and ill-conditioned have their rendezvous, there evil is hatched, and from there men take their first step on the road that leads to the gaol. The place is often crowded at night--there is scarcely room to sit or stand, the atmosphere is thick with smoke, and a hoarse roar of jarring voices fills it, above which rises the stave of a song shouted in one unvarying key from some corner. Money pours in apace--the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, with all this custom and profit, the landlord and his family still grovel. And grovel they will in dirt, vice, low cunning, and iniquity--as the serpent went on his belly in the dust--to the end of their days. Why do these places exist? Because in England justice is ever tempered with mercy; sometimes with too much mercy. The resident squire and magistrate knows the extent of the evil only too well. He sees it with his own eyes in the village; he sees it brought before him on the bench; the clergyman tells him of it, so do the gamekeeper and the policeman. His tenants complain of it. He is perpetually reminded of it, and of what it may ultimately mean as these places become the centres of communistic propagandas. But though perfectly aware of the evil, to suppress it is quite another matter. First, you must find the power, and then, having the power, the question arises, is it wise to exercise it? Though the men who frequent such dens are often of the lowest type, or on their way to that condition, they are not all of that character. Men of a hard-working and honest stamp go there as well. All have their rights alike--rights and liberties which must be held sacred even at some disadvantage. In short, the reprobate nature of the place may be established, but while it is the chosen resort of the people, or of a section of them, unless some great and manifest harm arises it cannot be touched. The magistrate will willingly control it as far as lies in his province, but unless directly instructed by the Legislature he cannot go farther. The truth is, it lies with the labourer himself. He is not obliged to visit there. A respectable inn may be found in every village if he desires that wholesome conviviality which, when it does not overstep certain bounds, forms a bond between man and man. Were such low houses suddenly put down, what an outcry would be raised of favouritism, tyranny, and so on! When the labourer turns against them himself, he will speedily find powerful friends to assist in attaining the object. If ever a man deserved a good glass of beer it is the agricultural labourer upon the conclusion of his day's work, exposed as he is to the wear and tear of the elements. After following the slow plough along the furrows through the mist; after tending the sheep on the hills where the rain beats with furious energy; after grubbing up the tough roots of trees, and splitting them with axe and wedge and mallet, a man may naturally ask for refreshment. And it is equally natural that he should desire to take it in the society of his fellows, with whom he can associate freely and speak his mind unchecked. The glass of ale would not hurt him; it is the insidious temptation proffered in certain quarters to do evil for an extra quart. Nothing forms so strong a temptation as the knowledge that a safe receiver is near at hand. He must not be harshly judged because of the mere quantity he can take, for a quart of ale to him is really no more than a glass of wine to the 'City' gentleman who lives delicately. He is to be pitied rather than condemned, and aided out of the blunder rather than chastised. Punishment, indeed, waits upon him only too doggedly, and overtakes him too quickly in the shape of sorrows and privations at home. The evil lies not in the ale, but in the character of the man that sold him the ale, and who is, at the same time, the worst enemy of the legitimately-trading innkeeper. No one, indeed, has better cause than the labourer to exclaim, 'Save me from my friends!' To do the bulk of the labourers bare justice it must be stated that there is a certain bluff honesty and frankness among them, a rude candour, which entitles them to considerable respect as a body. There are also men here and there whose strength of character would certainty have obtained favourable acknowledgment had their lot been cast in a higher rank of life. But, at the same time, the labourer is not always so innocent and free from guile--so lamblike as it suits the purpose of some to proclaim, in order that his rural simplicity may secure sympathy. There are very queer black sheep in the flock, and it rather unfortunately happens that these, in more ways than one, force themselves, sometimes most unpleasantly, upon the notice of the tenant-farmer and the landlord. A specimen or two may easily be selected from that circle of choice manhood whose head-quarters are at the low 'public.' A tall, well-built man stands forward, and at the first glance a stranger might take him for a favourable example. He holds himself more upright than most of his class, he is not ill-looking, and a marked air of deference towards those who address him conveys rather a pleasing impression. He can read fairly well and sign his name. This man, who is still young, began life as carter's lad, in which occupation he had not been long engaged before the horse-hair carefully accumulated as a perquisite disappeared. Whipcord and similar small articles next vanished, and finally a handsome new whip. This last, not being so easily disposed of, was traced to his possession and procured him a sound thrashing. Some short time afterwards a carthorse was found in the fields stabbed in several places, though, fortunately, not severely. Having already the bad name that hangs the dog, he was strongly suspected of this dastardly act in revenge for the thrashing from the carter, and threat of dismissal from the employer. No evidence, however, could be procured, and though he was sent about his business he escaped punishment. As he grew older he fell in with a tribe of semi-gipsies, and wandered in their company for a year or two, learning their petty pilfering tricks. He then returned to agriculture labour, and, notwithstanding the ill-flavour that clung about his doings, found no difficulty in obtaining employment. It is rare in agriculture for a man to be asked much about his character, unless he is to be put into a position of some trust. In trades and factories--on railways, too--an applicant for employment is not only questioned, but has to produce evidence as to his immediate antecedents at least. But the custom in farming prescribes no such checks; if the farmer requires a man, the applicant is put on to work at once, if he looks at all likely. This is especially the case in times of pressure, as when there is a great deal of hoeing to be done, in harvest, and when extra hands are wanted to assist in feeding the threshing machine. Then the first that comes along the road is received, and scarcely a question asked. The custom operates well enough in one way, since a man is nearly sure of procuring employment, and encounters no obstacles; on the other hand, there is less encouragement to preserve a good character. So the fellow mentioned quickly got work when he applied for it, and went on pretty steadily for a period. He then married, and speedily discovered the true use of women--i.e. to work for idle men. The moment he learnt that he could subsist upon her labour he ceased to make any effort, and passed his time lounging about. The wife, though neither handsome nor clever, was a hard-working person, and supported herself and idle husband by taking in washing. Indignation has often been expressed at the moral code of savages, which permits the man to lie in his hammock while the woman cultivates the maize; but, excepting the difference in the colour of the skin, the substitution of dirty white for coppery redness, there is really no distinction. Probably washing is of the two harder work than hoeing maize. The fellow 'hung about,' and doubtless occasionally put in practice the tricks he had acquired from his nomad friends. The only time he worked was in the height of the harvest, when high wages are paid. But then his money went in drink, and drink often caused him to neglect the labour he had undertaken, at an important juncture when time was of consequence. On one such occasion the employer lost his temper and gave him a piece of his mind, ending by a threat of proceedings for breach of contract. A night or two afterwards the farmer's rick-yard was ablaze, and a few months later the incendiary found himself commencing a term of penal servitude. There he was obliged to work, began to walk upright, and acquired that peculiarly marked air of deference which at first contrasts rather pleasantly with the somewhat gruff address of most labourers. During his absence the wife almost prospered, having plenty of employment and many kind friends. He signalised his return by administering a thrashing--just to re-assert his authority--which, however, the poor woman received with equanimity, remarking that it was only his way. He recommenced his lounging life, working occasionally when money was to be easily earned--for the convict stain does not prevent a man getting agricultural employment--and spending the money in liquor. When tolerably sober he is, in a sense, harmless; if intoxicated, his companions give him the road to himself. Now there is nothing exceptionally characteristic of the agricultural labourer in the career of such a man. Members of other classes of the working community are often sent to penal servitude, and sometimes men of education and social position. But it is characteristic of agricultural life that a man with the stigma of penal servitude can return and encounter no overpowering prejudice against him. There are work and wages, for him if he likes to take them. No one throws his former guilt in his face. He may not be offered a place of confidence, nor be trusted with money, as the upper labourers--carters for instance--sometimes are. But the means of subsistence are open to him, and he will not be driven by the memory of one crime to commit another. There is no school of crime in the country. Children are not brought up from the earliest age to beg and steal, to utter loquacious falsehood, or entrap the benevolent with sham suffering. Hoary thieves do not keep academies for the instruction of little fingers in the art of theft. The science of burglary is unstudied. Though farmhouses are often situate in the most lonely places a case of burglary rarely occurs, and if it does, is still more rarely traced to a local resident. In such houses there is sometimes a good deal of old silver plate, accumulated in the course of generations--a fact that must be perfectly well known to the labouring class, through the women indoor-servants. Yet such attempts are quite exceptional. So, too, are robberies from the person with violence. Serious crime is, indeed, comparatively scarce. The cases that come before the Petty Sessions are, for the most part, drunkenness, quarreling, neglect or absenteeism from work, affiliation, petty theft, and so on. The fact speaks well for the rural population; it speaks very badly for such characters as the one that has been described. If he will not turn into the path of honest labour, that is his own fault. The injury he does is this, that he encourages others to be idle. Labouring men quit the field under the influence of temporary thirst, or that desire for a few minutes' change which is not in itself blameworthy. They enter the low 'public,' call for their quart, and intend to leave again immediately. But the lazy fellow in the corner opens conversation, is asked to drink, more is called for, there is a toss-up to decide who shall pay, in which the idle adept, of course, escapes, and so the thing goes on. Such a man becomes a cause of idleness, and a nuisance to the farmers. Another individual is a huge, raw-boned, double-jointed giant of a man, whose muscular strength must be enormous, but whose weakness is beer. He is a good workman, and of a civil, obliging disposition. He will commence, for instance, making drains for a farmer with the greatest energy, and in the best of tempers. A drain requires some little skill. The farmer visits the work day by day, and notes with approval that it is being done well. But about the third or fourth day the clever workman, whose immense strength makes the employment mere child's play to him, civilly asks for a small advance of money. Now the farmer has no objection to that, but hands it to him with some misgiving. Next morning no labourer is to be seen. The day passes, and the next. Then a lad brings the intelligence that his parent is just recovering from a heavy drinking bout and will be back soon. There is the history of forty years! The same incident is repeated once or twice a month all the year round. Now it is a drain, now hedge-cutting, now hoeing, now haymaking, and now reaping. Three or four days' work excellently performed; then a bed in a ditch and empty pockets. The man's really vast strength carries him through the prostration, and the knocks and bangs and tumbles received in a helpless state. But what a life! The worst of it is the man is not a reprobate--not a hang-dog, lounging rascal, but perfectly honest, willing to oblige, harmless and inoffensive even when intoxicated, and skilful at his labour. What is to be done with him? What is the farmer to do who has only such men to rely on--perhaps in many cases--without this fellow's honesty and good temper--qualities which constantly give him a lift? It is simply an epitome of the difficulties too commonly met with in the field--bright sunshine, good weather, ripe crops, and men half unconscious, or quite, snoring under a hedge! There is no encouragement to the tenant to pay high wages in experiences like this. A third example is a rakish-looking lad just rising into manhood. Such young men are very much in demand and he would not have the slightest difficulty in obtaining employment, yet he is constantly out of work. When a boy he began by summoning the carter where he was engaged for cuffing him, charging the man with an assault. It turned out to be a trumpery case, and the Bench advised his parents to make him return and fulfil his contract. His parents thought differently of it. They had become imbued with an inordinate sense of their own importance. They had a high idea of the rights of labour; Jack, in short, was a good deal better than his master, and must be treated with distinguished respect. The doctrines of the Union countenanced the deduction; so the boy did not return. Another place was found for him. In the course of a few months he came again before the Bench. The complaint was now one of wrongful dismissal, and a claim for a one pound bonus, which by the agreement was to have been paid at the end of the year if his conduct proved satisfactory. It was shown that his conduct had been the reverse of satisfactory; that he refused to obey orders, that he 'cheeked' the carters, that he ran away home for a day or two, and was encouraged in these goings on by the father. The magistrates, always on the side of peace, endeavoured to procure a reconciliation, the farmer even paid down the bonus, but it was of no use. The lad did not return. With little variations the same game has continued ever since. Now it is he that complains, now it is his new master; but any way there is always a summons, and his face is as familiar in the court as that of the chairman. His case is typical. What is a farmer to do who has to deal with a rising generation full of this spirit? Then there are the regular workhouse families, who are perpetually applying for parochial relief. From the eldest down to the youngest member they seem to have no stamina; they fall ill when all others are well, as if afflicted with a species of paralysis that affects body, mind, and moral sense at once. If the phrase may be used without irreverence, there is no health in them. The slightest difficulty is sufficient to send an apparently strong, hale man whining to the workhouse. He localises his complaint in his foot, or his arm, or his shoulder; but, in truth, he does not know himself what is the matter with him. The real illness is weakness of calibre--a looseness of fibre. Many a labourer has an aching limb from rheumatism, and goes to plough all the same; many a poor cottage woman suffers from that prevalent agony, and bravely gets through her task, and keeps her cottage tidy. But these people cannot do it--they positively cannot. The summer brings them pain, the winter brings pain, their whole life is one long appeal _ad misericordiam_. The disease seems to spread with the multiplication of the family: the sons have it, and the sons' sons after them, so much so that even to bear the name is sufficient to stamp the owner as a miserable helpless being. All human wretchedness is, of course, to be deeply commiserated, and yet it is exasperating to see one man still doing his best under real trouble, and another eating contentedly the bread of idleness when there seems nothing wrong except a total lack of energy. The old men go to the workhouse, the young men go, the women and the children; if they are out one month the next sees their return. These again are but broken reeds to rely upon. The golden harvest might rot upon the ground for all their gathering, the grass wither and die as it stands, without the touch of the scythe, the very waggons and carts fall to pieces in the sheds. There is no work to be got out of them. The village, too, has its rookery, though not quite in the same sense as the city. Traced to its beginning, it is generally found to have originated upon a waste piece of ground, where some squatters settled and built their cabins. These, by the growth of better houses around, and the rise of property, have now become of some value, not so much for the materials as the site. To the original hovels additions have been made by degrees, and fresh huts squeezed in till every inch of space is as closely occupied as in a back court of the metropolis. Within the cottages are low pitched, dirty, narrow, and contracted, without proper conveniences, or even a yard or court. The social condition of the inhabitants is unpleasant to contemplate. The young men, as they grow up, arrive at an exaggerated idea of the value of their parents' property--the cottage of three rooms--and bitter animosities arise between them. One is accused of having had his share out in money; another has got into trouble and had his fine paid for him; the eldest was probably born before wedlock; so there are plenty of materials for recrimination. Then one, or even two of them bring home a wife, or at least a woman, and three families live beneath a single roof--with results it is easy to imagine, both as regards bickering and immorality. They have no wish to quit the place and enter cottages with better accommodation: they might rent others of the farmers, but they prefer to be independent, and, besides, will not move lest they should lose their rights. Very likely a few lodgers are taken in to add to the confusion. As regularly as clockwork cross summonses are taken out before the Bench, and then the women on either side reveal an unequalled power of abuse and loquacity, leaving a decided impression that it is six to one and half a dozen to the other. These rookeries do not furnish forth burglars and accomplished pickpockets, like those of cities, but they do send out a gang of lazy, scamping fellows and coarse women, who are almost useless. If their employer does not please them--if he points out that a waste of time has taken place, or that something has been neglected--off they go, for, having a hole to creep into, they do not care an atom whether they lose a job or not. The available hands, therefore, upon whom the farmers can count are always very much below the sum total of the able-bodied population. There must be deducted the idle men and women, the drunkards, the never satisfied, as the lad who sued every master; the workhouse families, the rookery families, and those who every harvest leave the place, and wander a great distance in search of exceptionally high wages. When all these are subtracted, the residue remaining is often insufficient to do the work of the farms in a proper manner. It is got through somehow by scratch-packs, so to say--men picked up from the roads, aged men who cannot do much, but whose energy puts the younger fellows to shame, lads paid far beyond the value of the work they actually accomplish. Work done in this way is, of course, incomplete and unsatisfactory, and the fact supplies one of the reasons why farmers seem disinclined to pay high wages. It is not because they object to pay well for hard work, but because they cannot get the hard work. There is consequently a growing reliance upon floating labour--upon the men and women who tramp round every season--rather than on the resident population. Even in the absence of any outward agitation--of a strike or open movement in that direction--the farmer has considerable difficulties to contend with in procuring labour. He has still further difficulties in managing it when he has got it. Most labourers have their own peculiar way of finishing a job; and however much that style of doing it may run counter to the farmer's idea of the matter in hand, he has to let the man proceed after his own fashion. If he corrected, or showed the man what he wanted, he would run the risk of not getting it done at all. There is no one so thoroughly obstinate as an ignorant labourer full of his own consequence. Giving, then, full credit to those men whose honest endeavours to fulfil their duty have already been acknowledged, it is a complete delusion to suppose that all are equally manly. CHAPTER XXIV THE COTTAGE CHARTER. FOUR-ACRE FARMERS The songs sung by the labourer at the alehouse or the harvest home are not of his own composing. The tunes whistled by the ploughboy as he goes down the road to his work in the dawn were not written for him. Green meads and rolling lands of wheat--true fields of the cloth of gold--have never yet inspired those who dwell upon them with songs uprising from the soil. The solitude of the hills over whose tops the summer sun seems to linger so long has not filled the shepherd's heart with a wistful yearning that must be expressed in verse or music. Neither he nor the ploughman in the vale have heard or seen aught that stirs them in Nature. The shepherd has never surprised an Immortal reclining on the thyme under the shade of a hawthorn bush at sunny noontide; nor has the ploughman seen the shadowy outline of a divine huntress through the mist that clings to the wood across the field. These people have no myths; no heroes. They look back on no Heroic Age, no Achilles, no Agamemnon, and no Homer. The past is vacant. The have not even a 'Wacht am Rhein' or 'Marseillaise' to chaunt in chorus with quickened step and flashing eye. No; nor even a ballad of the hearth, handed down from father to son, to be sung at home festivals, as a treasured silver tankard is brought out to drink the health of a honoured guest. Ballads there are in old books--ballads of days when the yew bow was in every man's hands, and war and the chase gave life a colour; but they are dead. A cart comes slowly down the road, and the labourer with it sings as he jogs along; but, if you listen, it tells you nothing of wheat, or hay, or flocks and herds, nothing of the old gods and heroes. It is a street ditty such as you may hear the gutter arabs yelling in London, and coming from a music hall. So, too, in material things--in the affairs of life, in politics, and social hopes--the labourer has no well-defined creed of race. He has no genuine programme of the future; that which is put forward in his name is not from him. Some years ago, talking with an aged labourer in a district where at that time no 'agitation' had taken place, I endeavoured to get from him something like a definition of the wants of his class. He had lived many years, and worked all the while in the field; what was his experience of their secret wishes? what was the Cottage Charter? It took some time to get him to understand what was required; he had been ready enough previously to grumble about this or that detail, but when it came to principles he was vague. The grumbles, the complaints, and so forth, had never been codified. However, by degrees I got at it, and very simple it was:--Point 1, Better wages; (2) more cottages; (3) good-sized gardens; (4) 'larning' for the children. That was the sum of the cottager's creed--his own genuine aspirations. Since then every one of these points has been obtained, or substantial progress made towards it. Though wages are perhaps slightly lower or rather stationary at the present moment, yet they are much higher than used to be the case. At the same time vast importations of foreign food keep the necessaries of life at a lower figure. The number of cottages available has been greatly increased--hardly a landlord but could produce accounts of sums of money spent in this direction. To almost all of these large gardens are now attached. Learning for the children is provided by the schools erected in every single parish, for the most part by the exertions of the owners and occupiers of land. Practically, therefore, the four points of the real Cottage Charter have been attained, or as nearly as is possible. Why, then, is it that dissatisfaction is still expressed? The reply is, because a new programme has been introduced to the labourer from without. It originated in no labourer's mind, it is not the outcome of a genuine feeling widespread among the masses, nor is it the heartbroken call for deliverance issuing from the lips of the poet-leader of a downtrodden people. It is totally foreign to the cottage proper--something new, strange, and as yet scarcely understood in its full meaning by those who nominally support it. The points of the new Cottage Charter are--(1) The confiscation of large estates; (2) the subdivision of land; (3) the abolition of the laws of settlement of land; (4) the administration of the land by the authorities of State; (5) the confiscation of glebe lands for division and distribution; (6) the abolition of Church tithes; (7) extension of the county franchise; (8) education gratis, free of fees, or payment of any kind; (9) high wages, winter and summer alike, irrespective of season, prosperity, or adversity. No. 6 is thrown in chiefly for the purpose of an appearance of identity of interest between the labourer and the tenant against the Church. Of late it has rather been the cue of the leaders of the agitation to promote, or seem to promote, a coalition between the labourer and the dissatisfied tenant, thereby giving the movement a more colourable pretence in the eyes of the public. Few tenants, however dissatisfied, have been deceived by the shallow device. This programme emanated from no carter or shepherd, ploughman or fogger. It was not thought out under the hedge when the June roses decked the bushes; nor painfully written down on the deal table in the cottage while the winter rain pattered against the window, and, coming down the wide chimney, hissed upon the embers. It was brought to the cottage door from a distance; it has been iterated and reiterated till at last some begin to think they really do want all these things. But with the majority even now the propaganda falls flat. They do not enter into the spirit of it. No. 9 they do understand; that appeals direct, and men may be excused if, with a view which as yet extends so short a space around, they have not grasped the fact that wages cannot by any artificial combination whatever be kept at a high level. The idea of high wages brings a mass of labourers together; they vote for what they are instructed to vote, and are thus nominally pledged to the other eight points of the new charter Such a conception as the confiscation and subdivision of estates never occurred to the genuine labourers. An aged man was listening to a graphic account of what the new state of things would be like. There would be no squire, no parson, no woods or preserves--all grubbed for cabbage gardens--no parks, no farmers. 'No farmers,' said the old fellow, 'then who's to pay I my wages?' There he hit the blot, no doubt. If the first four points of the new charter were carried into effect, agricultural wages would no longer exist. But if such a consummation depends upon the action of the cottager it will be a long time coming. The idea did not originate with him--he cares nothing for it--and can only be got to support it under the guise of an agitation for wages. Except by persistent stirring from without he cannot be got to move even then. The labourer, in fact, is not by any means such a fool as his own leaders endeavour to make him out. He is perfectly well aware that the farmer, or any person who stands in the position of the farmer, cannot pay the same money in winter as in summer. Two new cottages of a very superior character were erected in the corner of an arable field, abutting on the highway. As left by the builders a more uninviting spot could scarcely be imagined. The cottages themselves were well designed and well built, but the surroundings were like a wilderness. Heaps of rubbish here, broken bricks there, the ground trampled hard as the road itself. No partition from the ploughed field behind beyond a mere shallow trench enclosing what was supposed to be the garden. Everything bleak, unpromising, cold, and unpleasant. Two families went into these cottages, the men working on the adjoining farm. The aspect of the place immediately began to change. The rubbish was removed, the best of it going to improve the paths and approaches; a quick-set hedge was planted round the enclosure. Evening after evening, be the weather what it might, these two men were in that garden at work--after a long day in the fields. In the dinner hour even they sometimes snatched a few minutes to trim something. Their spades turned over the whole of the soil, and planting commenced. Plots were laid out for cabbage, plots for potatoes, onions, parsnips. Then having provided necessaries for the immediate future they set about preparing for extras. Fruit trees--apple, plum, and damson--were planted; also some roses. Next beehives appeared and were elevated on stands and duly protected from the rain. The last work was the building of pigsties--rude indeed and made of a few slabs--but sufficient to answer the purpose. Flowers in pots appeared in the windows, flowers appeared beside the garden paths. The change was so complete and so quickly effected I could hardly realise that so short a time since there had been nothing there but a blank open space. Persons travelling along the road could not choose but look on and admire the transformation. I had often been struck with the flourishing appearance of cottage gardens, but then those gardens were of old date and had reached that perfection in course of years. But here the thing seemed to grow up under one's eyes. All was effected by sheer energy. Instead of spending their evenings wastefully at 'public,' these men went out into their gardens and made what was a desert literally bloom. Nor did they seem conscious of doing anything extraordinary, but worked away in the most matter-of-fact manner, calling no one's attention to their progress. It would be hard to say which garden of the two showed the better result. Their wives are tidy, their children clean, their cottages grow more cosy and homelike day by day; yet they work in the fields that come up to their very doors, and receive nothing but the ordinary agricultural wages of the district. This proves what can be done when the agricultural labourer really wants to do it. And in a very large number of cases it must further be admitted that he does want to do it, and succeeds. If any one when passing through a rural district will look closely at the cottages and gardens he will frequently find evidence of similar energy, and not unfrequently of something approaching very nearly to taste. For why does the labourer train honeysuckle up his porch, and the out-of-door grape up the southern end of his house? Why does he let the houseleek remain on the roof; why trim and encourage the thick growth of ivy that clothes the chimney? Certainly not for utility, nor pecuniary profit. It is because he has some amount of appreciation of the beauty of flowers, of vine leaf, and green ivy. Men like these are the real backbone of our peasantry. They are not the agitators; it is the idle hang-dogs who form the disturbing element in the village. The settled agricultural labourer, of all others, has the least inducement to strike or leave his work. The longer he can stay in one place the better for him in many ways. His fruit-trees, which he planted years ago, are coming to perfection, and bear sufficient fruit in favourable years not only to give him some variety of diet, but to bring in a sum in hard cash with which to purchase extras. The soil of the garden, long manured and dug, is twice as fertile as when he first disturbed the earth. The hedges have grown high, and keep off the bitter winds. In short, the place is home, and he sits under his own vine and fig-tree. It is not to his advantage to leave this and go miles away. It is different with the mechanic who lives in a back court devoid of sunshine, hardly visited by the fresh breeze, without a tree, without a yard of earth to which to become attached. The factory closes, the bell is silent, the hands are discharged; provided he can get fresh employment it matters little. He leaves the back court without regret, and enters another in a distant town. But an agricultural labourer who has planted his own place feels an affection for it. The young men wander and are restless; the middle-aged men who have once anchored do not like to quit. They have got the four points of their own genuine charter; those who would infuse further vague hopes are not doing them any other service than to divert them from the substance to the shadow. Past those two new cottages which have been mentioned there runs a road which is a main thoroughfare. Along this road during the year this change was worked there walked a mournful procession--men and women on tramp. Some of these were doubtless rogues and vagabonds by nature and choice; but many, very many, were poor fellows who had really lost employment, and were gradually becoming degraded to the company of the professional beggar. The closing of collieries, mines, workshops, iron furnaces, &c., had thrown hundreds on the mercy of chance charity, and compelled them to wander to and fro. How men like these on tramp must have envied the comfortable cottages, the well-stocked gardens, the pigsties, the beehives, and the roses of the labourers! If the labourer has never gone up on the floodtide of prosperity to the champagne wages of the miner, neither has he descended to the woe which fell on South Wales when children searched the dust-heaps for food, nor to that suffering which forces those whose instinct is independence to the soup-kitchen. He has had, and still has, steady employment at a rate of wages sufficient, as is shown by the appearance of his cottage itself, to maintain him in comparative comfort. The furnace may be blown out, and strong men may ask themselves, What shall we do next? But still the plough turns up the earth morning after morning. The colliery may close, but still the corn ripens, and extra wages are paid to the harvest men. This continuous employment without even a fear of cessation is an advantage, the value of which it is difficult to estimate. His wages are not only sufficient to maintain him, he can even save a little. The benefit clubs in so many villages are a proof of it--each member subscribes so much. Whether conducted on a 'sound financial basis' or not, the fact of the subscriptions cannot be denied, nor that assistance is derived from them. The Union itself is supported in the same way; proving that the wages, however complained of, are sufficient, at any rate, to permit of subscriptions. It is held out to the labourer, as an inducement to agitate briskly, that, in time, a state of things will be brought about when every man will have a small farm of four or five acres upon which to live comfortably, independent of a master. Occasional instances, however, of labourers endeavouring to exist upon a few acres have already been observed, and illustrate the practical working of the scheme. In one case a labourer occupied a piece of ground, about three acres in extent, at a low rental paid to the lord of the manor, the spot having originally been waste, though the soil was fairly good. He started under favourable conditions, because he possessed a cottage and garden and a pair of horses with which he did a considerable amount of hauling. He now set up as a farmer, ploughed and sowed, dug and weeded, kept his own hours, and went into the market and walked about as independent as any one. After a while the three acres began to absorb nearly all his time, so that the hauling, which was the really profitable part of the business, had to be neglected. Then, the ready money not coming in so fast, the horses had to go without corn, and pick up what they could along the roadside, on the sward, and out of the hedges. They had, of course, to be looked after while thus feeding, which occupied two of the children, so that these could neither go to school nor earn anything by working on the adjacent farms. The horses meantime grew poor in condition; the winter tried them greatly from want of proper fodder; and when called upon to do hauling they were not equal to the task. In the country, at a distance from towns, there is not always a good market for vegetables, even when grown. The residents mostly supply themselves, and what is raised for export has to be sold at wholesale prices. The produce of the three acres consequently did not come up to the tenant's expectation, particularly as potatoes, on account of the disease, could not be relied on. Meantime he had no weekly money coming in regularly, and his wife and family had often to assist him, diminishing their own earnings at the same time; while he was in the dilemma that if he did hauling he must employ and pay a man to work on the 'farm,' and if he worked himself he could not go out with his team. In harvest time, when the smaller farmers would have hired his horses, waggon, and himself and family to assist them, he had to get in his own harvest, and so lost the hard cash. He now discovered that there was one thing he had omitted, and which was doubtless the cause why he did not flourish as he should have done according to his calculations. All the agriculturists around kept live stock--he had none. Here was the grand secret--it was stock that paid: he must have a cow. So he set to work industriously enough, and put up a shed. Then, partly by his own small savings, partly by the assistance of the members of the sect to which he belonged, he purchased the desired animal and sold her milk. In summer this really answered fairly well while there was green food for nothing in plenty by the side of little-frequented roads, whither the cow was daily led. But so soon as the winter approached the same difficulty as with the horses arose, i.e., scarcity of fodder. The cow soon got miserably poor, while the horses fell off yet further, if that were possible. The calf that arrived died; next, one of the horses. The 'hat' was sent round again, and a fresh horse bought; the spring came on, and there seemed another chance. What with milking and attending to the cow, and working on the 'farm,' scarcely an hour remained in which to earn money with the horses. No provision could be laid by for the winter. The live stock--the cow and horses--devoured part of the produce of the three acres, so that there was less to sell. Another winter finished it. The cow had to be sold, but a third time the 'hat' was sent round and saved the horses. Grown wiser now, the 'farmer' stuck to his hauling, and only worked his plot at odd times. In this way, by hauling and letting out his team in harvest, and working himself and family at the same time for wages, he earned a good deal of money, and kept afloat very comfortably. He made no further attempt to live out of the 'farm,' which was now sown with one or two crops only in the same rotation as a field, and no longer cultivated on the garden system. Had it not been for the subscriptions he must have given it up entirely long before. Bitter experience demonstrated how false the calculations had been which seemed to show--on the basis of the produce of a small allotment--that a man might live on three or four acres. He is not the only example of an extravagant estimate being put upon the possible product of land: it is a fallacy that has been fondly believed in by more logical minds than the poor cottager. That more may be got out of the soil than is the case at present is perfectly true; the mistake lies in the proposed method of doing it. There was a piece of land between thirty and forty acres in extent, chiefly arable, which chanced to come into the possession of a gentleman, who made no pretence to a knowledge of agriculture, but was naturally desirous of receiving the highest rental. Up to that time it had been occupied by a farmer at thirty shillings per acre, which was thought the full value. He did not particularly want it, as it lay separated from the farm proper, and gave it up with the greatest alacrity when asked to do so in favour of a new tenant. This man turned out to be a villager--a blustering, ignorant fellow--who had, however, saved a small sum by hauling, which had been increased by the receipt of a little legacy. He was confident that he could show the farmers how to do it--he had worked at plough, had reaped, and tended cattle, and had horses of his own, and was quite sure that farming was a profitable business, and that the tenants had their land dirt cheap. He 'knowed' all about it. He offered three pounds an acre for the piece at once, which was accepted, notwithstanding a warning conveyed to the owner that his new tenant had scarcely sufficient money to pay a year's rent at that rate. But so rapid a rise in the value of his land quite dazzled the proprietor, and the labourer--for he was really nothing better, though fortunate enough to have a little money--entered on his farm. When this was known, it was triumphantly remarked that if a man could actually pay double the former rent, what an enormous profit the tenant-farmers must have been making! Yet they wanted to reduce the poor man's wages. On the other hand, there were not wanting hints that the man's secret idea was to exhaust the land and then leave it. But this was not the case--he was honestly in earnest, only he had got an exaggerated notion of the profits of farming. It is scarcely necessary to say that the rent for the third half year was not forthcoming, and the poor fellow lost his all. The land then went begging at the old price, for it had become so dirty--full of weeds from want of proper cleaning--that it was some time before any one would take it. In a third case the attempt of a labouring man to live upon a small plot of land was successful--at least for some time. But it happened in this way. The land he occupied, about six acres, was situated on the outskirts of a populous town. It was moderately rented and of fairly good quality. His method of procedure was to cultivate a small portion--as much as he could conveniently manage without having to pay too much for assistance--as a market garden. Being close to his customers, and with a steady demand at good prices all the season, this paid very well indeed. The remainder was ploughed and cropped precisely the same as the fields of larger farms. For these crops he could always get a decent price. The wealthy owners of the villas scattered about, some keeping as many horses as a gentleman with a country seat, were glad to obtain fresh fodder for their stables, and often bought the crops standing, which to him was especially profitable, because he could not well afford the cost of the labour he must employ to harvest them. In addition, he kept several pigs, which were also profitable, because the larger part of their food cost him nothing but the trouble of fetching it. The occupants of the houses in the town were glad to get rid of the refuse vegetables, &c.; of these he had a constant supply. The pigs, too, helped him with manure. Next he emptied ash-pits in the town, and sifted the cinders; the better part went on his own fire, the other on his land. As he understood gardening, he undertook the care of several small gardens, which brought in a little money. All the rubbish, leaves, trimmings, &c., which he swept from the gardens he burnt, and spread the ashes abroad to fertilise his miniature farm. In spring he beat carpets, and so made more shillings; he had also a small shed, or workshop, and did rough carpentering. His horse did his own work, and occasionally that of others; so that in half a dozen different ways he made money independent of the produce of his land. That produce, too, paid well, because of the adjacent town, and he was able to engage assistance now and then. Yet, even with all these things, it was hard work, and required economical management to eke it out. Still it was done, and under the same conditions doubtless might be done by others. But then everything lies in those conditions. The town at hand, the knowledge of gardening, carpentering, and so on, made just all the difference. If the land were subdivided in the manner the labourer is instructed would be so advantageous, comparatively few of the plots would be near towns. Some of the new 'farmers' would find themselves in the centre of Salisbury Plain, with the stern trilithons of Stonehenge looking down upon their efforts. The occupier of a plot of four acres in such a position--many miles from the nearest town--would experience a hard lot indeed if he attempted to live by it. If he grew vegetables for sale, the cost of carriage would diminish their value; if for food, he could scarcely subsist upon cabbage and onions all the year round. To thoroughly work four acres would occupy his whole time, nor would the farmers care for the assistance of a man who could only come now and then in an irregular manner. There would be no villa gardens to attend to, no ash-pits to empty, no tubs of refuse for the pig, no carpets to beat, no one who wanted rough carpentering done. He could not pay any one to assist him in the cultivation of the plot. And then, how about his clothes, boots and shoes, and so forth? Suppose him with a family, where would their boots and shoes come from? Without any wages--that is, hard cash received weekly--it would be next to impossible to purchase these things. A man could hardly be condemned to a more miserable existence. In the case of the tenant of a few acres who made a fair living near a large town, it must be remembered that he understood two trades, gardening and carpentering, and found constant employment at these, which in all probability would indeed have maintained him without any land at all. But it is not every man who possesses technical knowledge of this kind, or who can turn his hand to several things. Imagine a town surrounded by two or three thousand such small occupiers, let them be never so clever; where would the extra employment come from; where would be the ashpits to empty? Where one could do well, a dozen could do nothing. If the argument be carried still further, and we imagine the whole country so cut up and settled, the difficulty only increases, because every man living (or starving) on his own plot would be totally unable to pay another to help him, or to get employment himself. No better method could be contrived to cause a fall in the value of labour. The examples of France and China are continually quoted in support of subdivision. In the case of France, let us ask whether any of our stalwart labourers would for a single week consent to live as the French peasant does? Would they forego their white, wheaten bread, and eat rye bread in its place? Would they take kindly to bread which contained a large proportion of meal ground from the edible chestnut? Would they feel merry over vegetable soups? Verily the nature of the man must change first; and we have read something about the leopard and his spots. You cannot raise beef and mutton upon four acres and feed yourself at the same time; if you raise bacon you must sell it in order to buy clothes. The French peasant saves by stinting, and puts aside a franc by pinching both belly and back. He works extremely hard, and for long hours. Our labourers can work as hard as he, but it must be in a different way; they must have plenty to eat and drink, and they do not understand little economies. China, we are told, however, supports the largest population in the world in this manner. Not a particle is wasted, not a square foot of land but bears something edible. The sewage of towns is utilised, and causes crops to spring forth; every scrap of refuse manures a garden. The Chinese have attained that ideal agriculture which puts the greatest amount into the soil, takes the greatest amount out of it, and absolutely wastes nothing. The picture is certainly charming. There are, however, a few considerations on the other side. The question arises whether our labourers would enjoy a plump rat for supper? The question also arises why the Six Companies are engaged in transhipping Chinese labour from China to America? In California the Chinese work at a rate of wages absolutely impossible to the white man--hence the Chinese difficulty there. In Queensland a similar thing is going on. Crowds of Chinese enter, or have entered, the country eager for work. If the agriculture of China is so perfect; if the sewage is utilised; if every man has his plot; if the population cannot possibly become too great, why on earth are the Chinese labourers so anxious to get to America or Australia, and to take the white man's wages? And is that system of agriculture so perfect? It is not long since the Chinese Ambassador formally conveyed the thanks of his countrymen for the generous assistance forwarded from England during the late fearful famine in China. The starvation of multitudes of wretched human beings is a ghastly comment upon this ideal agriculture. The Chinese yellow spectre has even threatened England; hints have been heard of importing Chinese into this country to take that silver and gold which our own men disdained. Those who desire to destroy our land system should look round them for a more palatable illustration than is afforded by the great Chinese problem. The truth in the matter seems to be this. A labourer does very well with a garden; he can do very well, too, if he has an allotment in addition, provided it be not too far from home. Up to a quarter of an acre--in some cases half an acre--it answers, because he can cultivate it at odd times, and so receive his weekly wages without interruption. But when the plot exceeds what he can cultivate in this way--when he has to give whole weeks to it--then, of course, he forfeits the cash every Saturday night, and soon begins to lose ground. The original garden of moderate size yielded very highly in proportion to its extent, because of the amount of labour expended on it, and because it was well manured. But three or four acres, to yield in like degree, require an amount of manure which it is quite out of a labourer's power to purchase; and he cannot keep live stock to produce it. Neither can he pay men to work for him consequently, instead of being more highly cultivated than the large farms, such plots would not be kept so clean and free from weeds, or be so well manured and deeply ploughed as the fields of the regular agriculturist. CHAPTER XXV LANDLORDS' DIFFICULTIES. THE LABOURER AS A POWER. MODERN CLERGY The altered tone of the labouring population has caused the position of the landlord, especially if resident, to be one of considerable difficulty. Something like diplomatic tact is necessary in dealing with the social and political problems which now press themselves upon the country gentleman. Forces are at work which are constantly endeavouring to upset the village equilibrium, and it is quite in vain to ignore their existence. However honestly he may desire peace and goodwill to reign, it is impossible for a man to escape the influence of his own wealth and property. These compel him to be a sort of centre around which everything revolves. His duties extend far beyond the set, formal lines--the easy groove of old times--and are concerned with matters which were once thought the exclusive domain of the statesman or the philosopher. The growth of a public opinion among the rural population is a great fact which cannot be overlooked. Some analogy may be traced between the awaking of a large class, hitherto almost silent, and the strange new developments which occur in the freshly-settled territories of the United States. There, all kinds of social experiments are pushed to the extreme characteristic of American energy. A Salt Lake City and civilised polygamy, and a variety of small communities endeavouring to work out new theories of property and government, attest a frame of mind escaped from the control of tradition, and groping its way to the future. Nothing so extravagant, of course, distinguishes the movement among the agricultural labourers of this country. There have been strikes; indignation meetings held expressly for the purpose of exciting public opinion; an attempt to experimentalise by a kind of joint-stock farming, labourers holding shares; and a preaching of doctrines which savour much of Communism. There have been marches to London, and annual gatherings on hill tops. These are all within the pale of law, and outrage no social customs. But they proclaim a state of mind restless and unsatisfied, striving for something new, and not exactly knowing what. Without a vote for the most part, without an all-embracing organisation--for the Union is somewhat limited in extent--with few newspapers expressing their views, with still fewer champions in the upper ranks, the agricultural labourers have become in a sense a power in the land. It is a power that is felt rather individually than collectively--it affects isolated places, but these in the aggregate reach importance. This power presses on the landlord--the resident country gentleman--upon one side; upon the other, the dissatisfied tenant-farmers present a rugged front. As a body the tenant-farmers are loyal to their landlords--in some cases enthusiastically loyal. It cannot, however, be denied that this is not universal. There are men who, though unable to put forth a substantial grievance, are ceaselessly agitating. The landlord, in view of unfavourable seasons, remits a percentage of rent. He relaxes certain clauses in leases, he reduces the ground game, he shows a disposition to meet reasonable, and even unreasonable, demands. It is useless. There exists a class of tenant-farmers who are not to be satisfied with the removal of grievances in detail. They are animated by a principle--something far beyond such trifles. Unconsciously, no doubt, in many cases that principle approximates very nearly to the doctrine proclaimed in so many words by the communistic circles of cities. It amounts to a total abolition of the present system of land tenure. The dissatisfied tenant does not go so far as minute subdivisions of land into plots of a few acres. He pauses at the moderate and middle way which would make the tenant of three or four hundred acres the owner of the soil. In short, he would step into the landlord's place. Of course, many do not go so far as this; still there is a class of farmers who are for ever writing to the papers, making speeches, protesting, and so on, till the landlord feels that, do what he may, he will be severely criticised. Even if personally insulted he must betray no irritation, or desire to part with the tenant, lest he be accused of stifling opinion. Probably no man in England is so systematically browbeaten all round as the country gentleman. Here are two main divisions--one on each side--ever pressing upon him, and, besides these, there are other forces at work. A village, in fact, at the present day, is often a perfect battle-ground of struggling parties. When the smouldering labour difficulty comes to a point in any particular district the representatives of the labourers lose no time in illustrating the cottager's case by contrast with the landlord's position. He owns so many thousand acres, producing an income of so many thousand pounds. Hodge, who has just received notice of a reduction of a shilling per week, survives on bacon and cabbage. Most mansions have a small home farm attached, where, of course, some few men are employed in the direct service of the landlord. This home farm becomes the bone of contention. Here, they say, is a man with many thousands a year, who, in the midst of bitter wintry weather, has struck a shilling a week off the wages of his poor labourers. But the fact is that the landlord's representative--his steward--has been forced to this step by the action and opinion of the tenant-farmers. The argument is very cogent and clear. They say, 'We pay a rent which is almost as much as the land will bear; we suffer by foreign competition, bad seasons and so on, the market is falling, and we are compelled to reduce our labour expenditure. But then our workmen say that at the home farm the wages paid are a shilling or two higher, and therefore they will not accept a reduction. Now you must reduce your wages or your tenants must suffer.' It is like a tradesman with a large independent income giving his workmen high wages out of that independent income, whilst other tradesmen, who have only their business to rely on, are compelled by this example to pay more than they can afford. This is obviously an unjust and even cruel thing. Consequently though a landlord may possess an income of many thousands, he cannot, without downright injustice to his tenants, pay his immediate _employés_ more than those tenants find it possible to pay. Such is the simple explanation of what has been described as a piece of terrible tyranny. The very reduction of rent made by the landlord to the tenant is seized as a proof by the labourer that the farmer, having less now to pay, can afford to give him more money. Thus the last move of the labour party has been to urge the tenant-farmer to endeavour to become his own landlord. On the one hand, certain dissatisfied tenants have made use of the labour agitation to bring pressure upon the landlord to reduce rent, and grant this and that privilege. They have done their best, and in great part succeeded, in getting up a cry that rent must come down, that the landlord's position must be altered, and so forth. On the other hand, the labour party try to use the dissatisfied tenant as a fulcrum by means of which to bring their lever to bear upon the landlord. Both together, by every possible method, endeavour to enlist popular sympathy against him. There exists a party in cities who are animated by the most extraordinary rancour against landlords without exception--good, bad, and indifferent--just because they are landlords. This party welcomes the agitating labourer and the discontented tenant with open arms, and the chorus swells still louder. Now the landlords, as a body, are quite aware of the difficulties under which farming has been conducted of late, and exhibit a decided inclination to meet and assist the tenant. But it by no means suits the agitator to admit this; he would of the two rather the landlord showed an impracticable disposition, in order that there might be grounds for violent declamation. Fortunately there is a solid substratum of tenants whose sound common sense prevents them from listening to the rather enchanting cry, 'Every man his own landlord.' They may desire and obtain a reduction of rent, but they treat it as a purely business transaction, and there lies all the difference. They do not make the shilling an acre less the groundwork of a revolution; because ten per cent, is remitted at the audit they do not cry for confiscation. But it is characteristic of common sense to remain silent, as it is of extravagance to make a noise. Thus the opinion of the majority of tenants is not heard; but the restless minority write and speak; the agitating labourer, through his agent, writes and speaks, and the anti-landlord party in cities write and speak. A pleasant position for the landlord this! Anxious to meet reasonable wishes he is confronted with unreasonable demands, and abused all round. Besides the labour difficulty, which has been so blazed abroad as to obscure the rest, there are really many other questions agitating the village. The school erected under the Education Act, whilst it is doing good work, is at the same time in many cases a scene of conflict. The landlord can hardly remain aloof, try how he will, because his larger tenants are so closely interested. He has probably given the land and subscribed heavily--a school board has been avoided; but, of course, there is a committee of management, which is composed of members of every party and religious denomination. That is fair enough, and the actual work accomplished is really very good. But, if outwardly peace, it is inwardly contention. First, the agitating labourer is strongly of opinion that, besides giving the land and subscribing, and paying a large voluntary rate, the landlord ought to defray the annual expenses and save him the weekly pence. The sectarian bodies, though neutralised by their own divisions, are ill-affected behind their mask, and would throw it off if they got the opportunity. The one thing, and the one thing only, that keeps them quiet is the question of expense. Suppose by a united effort--and probably on a poll of the parish the chapel-goers in mere numbers would exceed the church people--they shake off the landlord and his party, and proceed to a school board as provided by the Act? Well, then they must find the annual expenses, and these must be raised by a rate. Now at present the cottager loudly grumbles because he is asked to contribute a few coppers; but suppose he were called upon to pay a heavy rate? Possibly he might in such a case turn round against his present leaders, and throw them overboard in disgust. Seeing this possibility all too clearly, the sectarian bodies remain quiescent. They have no real grievance, because their prejudices are carefully respected; but it is not the nature of men to prefer being governed, even to their good, to governing. Consequently, though no battle royal takes place, it is a mistake to suppose that because 'education' is now tolerably quiet there is universal satisfaction. Just the reverse is true, and under the surface there is a constant undermining process proceeding. Without any downright collision there is a distinct division into opposing ranks. Another matter which looms larger as time goes on arises out of the gradual--in some cases the rapid--filling up of the village churchyards. It is melancholy to think that so solemn a subject should threaten to become a ground for bitter controversy; but that much animosity of feeling has already appeared is well known. Already many village graveyards are overcrowded, and it is becoming difficult to arrange for the future. From a practical point of view there is really but little difficulty, because the landlords in almost every instance are willing to give the necessary ground. The contention arises in another form, which it would be out of place to enter upon here. It will be sufficient to recall the fact that such a question is approaching. Rural sanitation, again, comes to the front day by day. The prevention of overcrowding in cottages, the disposal of sewage, the supply of water--these and similar matters press upon the attention of the authorities. Out of consideration for the pockets of the ratepayers--many of whom are of the poorest class--these things are perhaps rather shelved than pushed forward; but it is impossible to avoid them altogether. Every now and then something has to be done. Whatever takes place, of course the landlord, as the central person, comes in for the chief share of the burden. If the rates increase, on the one hand, the labourers complain that their wages are not sufficient to pay them; and, on the other, the tenants state that the pressure on the agriculturist is already as much as he can sustain. The labourer expects the landlord to relieve him; the tenant grumbles if he also is not relieved. Outside and beyond the landlord's power as the owner of the soil, as magistrate and _ex-officio_ guardian, and so on, he cannot divest himself of a personal--a family--influence, which at once gives him a leading position, and causes everything to be expected of him. He must arbitrate here, persuade there, compel yonder, conciliate everybody, and subscribe all round. This was, perhaps, easy enough years ago, but it is now a very different matter. No little diplomatic skill is needful to balance parties, and preserve at least an outward peace in the parish. He has to note the variations of public opinion, and avoid giving offence. In his official capacity as magistrate the same difficulty arises. One of the most delicate tasks that the magistracy have had set them of recent years has been arbitrating between tenant and man--between, in effect, capital and labour. That is not, of course, the legal, but it is the true, definition. It is a most invidious position, and it speaks highly for the scrupulous justice with which the law has been administered that a watchful and jealous--a bitterly inimical party--ever ready, above all things, to attempt a sensation--have not been able to detect a magistrate giving a partial decision. In cases which involve a question of wages or non-fulfilment of contract it has often happened that a purely personal element has been introduced. The labourer asserts that he has been unfairly treated, that implied promises have been broken, perquisites withheld, and abuse lavished upon him. On the opposite side, the master alleges that he has been made a convenience--the man staying with him in winter, when his services were of little use, and leaving in summer; that his neglect has caused injury to accrue to cattle; that he has used bad language. Here is a conflict of class against class--feeling against feeling. The point in dispute has, of course, to be decided by evidence, but whichever way evidence leads the magistrates to pronounce their verdict, it is distasteful. If the labourer is victorious, he and his friends 'crow' over the farmers; and the farmer himself grumbles that the landlords are afraid of the men, and will never pronounce against them. If the reverse, the labourers cry out upon the partiality of the magistrates, who favour each other's tenants. In both cases the decision has been given according to law. But the knowledge that this kind of feeling exists--that he is in reality arbitrating between capital and labour--renders the resident landlord doubly careful what steps he takes at home in his private capacity. He hardly knows which way to turn when a question crops up, desiring, above all things, to preserve peace. It has been said that of late there has come into existence in the political world 'a power behind Parliament.' Somewhat in the same sense it may be said that the labourer has become a power behind the apparent authorities of the rural community. Whether directly, or through the discontented tenant, or by aid of the circles in cities who hold advanced views, the labourer brings a pressure to bear upon almost every aspect of country life. That pressure is not sufficient to break in pieces the existing order of things; but it is sufficient to cause an unpleasant tension. Should it increase, much of the peculiar attraction of country life will be destroyed. Even hunting, which it would have been thought every individual son of the soil would stand up for, is not allowed to continue unchallenged. Displays of a most disagreeable spirit must be fresh in the memories of all; and such instances have shown a disposition to multiply. Besides the more public difficulties, there are also social ones which beset the landowner. It is true that all of these do not originate with the labourer, or even concern him, but he it dragged into them to suit the convenience of others. 'Coquetting with a vote' is an art tolerably well understood in these days; the labourer has not got a nominal vote, yet he is the 'power behind,' and may be utilised. There is another feature of modern rural life too marked to be ignored, and that is the increased activity of the resident clergy. This energy is exhibited by all alike, irrespective of opinion upon ecclesiastical questions, and concerns an inquiry into the position, of the labourer, because for the most part it is directed towards practical objects. It shows itself in matters that have no direct bearing upon the Church, but are connected with the everyday life of the people. It finds work to do outside the precincts of the Church--beyond the walls of the building. This work is of a nature that continually increases, and as it extends becomes more laborious. The parsonage is often an almost ideal presentment of peace and repose. Trees cluster about it that in summer cast a pleasant shade, and in winter the thick evergreen shrubberies shut out the noisy winds. Upon the one side the green meadows go down to the brook, upon the other the cornfields stretch away to the hills. Footpaths lead out into the wheat and beside the hedge, where the wild flowers bloom--flowers to be lovingly studied, food for many a day-dream. The village is out of sight in the hollow--all is quiet and still, save for the song of the lark that drops from the sky. The house is old, very old; the tiles dull coloured, the walls grey, the calm dignity of age clings to it. A place surely this for reverie--the abode of thought. But the man within is busy--full of action. The edge of the great questions of the day has reached the village, and he must be up and doing. He does not, indeed, lift the latch of the cottage or the farmhouse door indiscreetly--not unless aware that his presence will not be resented. He is anxious to avoid irritating individual susceptibilities. But wherever people are gathered together, be it for sport or be it in earnest, wherever a man may go in open day, thither he goes, and with a set purpose beforehand makes it felt that he is there. He does not remain a passive spectator in the background, but comes as prominently to the front as is compatible with due courtesy. When the cloth is cleared at the ordinary in the market town, and the farmers proceed to the business of their club, or chamber, he appears in the doorway, and quietly takes a seat not far from the chair. If the discussion be purely technical he says nothing; if it touch, as it frequently does, upon social topics, such as those that arise out of education, of the labour question, of the position of the farmer apart from the mere ploughing and sowing, then he delivers his opinion. When the local agricultural exhibition is proceeding and the annual dinner is held he sits at the social board, and presently makes his speech. The village benefit club holds its fête--he is there too, perhaps presiding at the dinner, and addresses the assembled men. He takes part in the organisation of the cottage flower show; exerts himself earnestly about the allotments and the winter coal club, and endeavours to provide the younger people with amusements that do not lead to evil--supporting cricket and such games as may be played apart from gambling and liquor. This is but the barest catalogue of his work; there is nothing that arises, no part of the life of the village and the country side, to which he does not set his hand. All this is apart from abstract theology. Religion, of course, is in his heart; but he does not carry a list of dogmas in his hand, rather keeping his own peculiar office in the background, knowing that many of those with whom he mingles are members of various sects. He is simply preaching the practical Christianity of brotherhood and goodwill. It is a work that can never be finished, and that is ever extending. His leading idea is not to check the inevitable motion of the age, but to lone it. He is not permitted to pursue this course unmolested; there are parties in the village that silently oppose his every footstep. If the battle were open it would be easier to win it, but it is concealed. The Church is not often denounced from the housetop, but it is certainly denounced under the roof. The poor and ignorant are instructed that the Church is their greatest enemy, the upholder of tyranny, the instrument of their subjection, synonymous with lowered wages and privation, more iniquitous than the landowner. The clergyman is a Protestant Jesuit--a man of deepest guile. The coal club, the cricket, the flower show, the allotments, the village _fête_, everything in which he has a hand is simply an effort to win the good will of the populace, to keep them quiet, lest they arise and overthrow the property of the Church. The poor man has but a few shillings a week, and the clergyman is the friend of the farmer, who reduces his wages--the Church owns millions and millions sterling. How self-evident, therefore, that the Church is the cottager's enemy! See, too, how he is beautifying that church, restoring it, making it light and pleasant to those who resort to it; see how he causes sweeter music and singing, and puts new life into the service. This a lesson learnt from the City of the Seven Hills--this is the mark of the Beast. But the ultimate aim may be traced to the same base motive--the preservation of that enormous property. Another party is for pure secularism. This is not so numerously represented, but has increased of recent years. From political motives both of these silently oppose him. Nor are the poor and ignorant alone among the ranks of his foes. There are some tenant-farmers among them, but their attitude is not so coarsely antagonistic. They take no action against, but they do not assist, him. So that, although, as he goes about the parish, he is not greeted with hisses, the clergyman is full well aware that his activity is a thorn in the side of many. They once reproached him with a too prolonged reverie in the seclusion of the parsonage; now they would gladly thrust him back again. It may be urged, too, that all his efforts have not produced much visible effect. The pews are no more crowded than formerly; in some cases the absence of visible effect is said to be extremely disheartening. But the fact is that it is yet early to expect much; neither must it be expected in that direction. It is almost the first principle of science that reaction is equal to action; it may be safely assumed, then, that after awhile these labours will bear fruit. The tone of the rising generation must perforce be softened and modified by them. There exists at the present day a class that is morally apathetic. In every village, in every hamlet, every detached group of cottages, there are numbers of labouring men who are simply indifferent to church and to chapel alike. They neither deny nor affirm the primary truths taught in all places of worship; they are simply indifferent. Sunday comes and sees them lounging about the cottage door. They do not drink to excess, they are not more given to swearing than others, they are equally honest, and are not of ill-repute. But the moral sense seems extinct--the very idea of anything beyond gross earthly advantages never occurs to them. The days go past, the wages are paid, the food is eaten, and there is all. Looking at it from the purely philosophic point of view there is something sad in this dull apathy. The most pronounced materialist has a faith in some form of beauty--matter itself is capable of ideal shapes in his conception. These people know no ideal. It seems impossible to reach them, because there is no chord that will respond to the most skilful touch. This class is very numerous now--a disheartening fact. Yet perhaps the activity and energy of the clergyman may be ultimately destined to find its reaction, to produce its effect among these very people. They may slowly learn to appreciate tangible, practical work, though utterly insensible to direct moral teaching and the finest eloquence of the pulpit. Finding by degrees that he is really endeavouring to improve their material existence, they may in time awake to a sense of something higher. What is wanted is a perception of the truth that progress and civilisation ought not to end with mere material--mechanical--comfort or wealth. A cottager ought to learn that when the highest wages of the best paid artisan are readied it is _not_ the greatest privilege of the man to throw mutton chops to dogs and make piles of empty champagne bottles. It might almost be said that one cause of the former extravagance and the recent distress and turbulence of the working classes is the absence of an ideal from their minds. Besides this moral apathy, the cottager too often assumes an attitude distinctly antagonistic to every species of authority, and particularly to that _prestige_ hitherto attached to property. Each man is a law to himself, and does that which seems good in his own eyes. He does not pause to ask himself, What will my neighbour think of this? He simply thinks of no one but himself, takes counsel of no one, and cares not what the result may be. It is the same in little things as great. Respect for authority is extinct. The modern progressive cottager is perfectly certain that he knows as much as his immediate employer, the squire, and the parson put together with the experience of the world at their back. He is now the judge--the infallible authority himself. He is wiser far than all the learned and the thoughtful, wiser than the prophets themselves. Priest, politician, and philosopher must bow their heads and listen to the dictum of the ploughman. This feeling shows itself most strikingly in the disregard of property. There used to be a certain tacit agreement among all men that those who possessed capital, rank, or reputation should be treated with courtesy. That courtesy did not imply that the landowner, the capitalist, or the minister of religion, was necessarily in himself superior. But it did imply that those who administered property really represented the general order in which all were interested. So in a court of justice, all who enter remove their hats, not out of servile adulation of the person in authority, but from respect for the majesty of the law, which it is every individual's interest to uphold. But now, metaphorically speaking, the labourer removes his hat for no man. Whether in the case of a manufacturer or of a tenant of a thousand-acre farm the thing is the same. The cottager can scarcely nod his employer a common greeting in the morning. Courtesy is no longer practised. The idea in the man's mind appears to be to express contempt for big employer's property. It is an unpleasant symptom. At present it is not, however, an active, but a passive force; a moral _vis inertiae_. Here again the clergyman meets with a cold rebuff. No eloquence, persuasion, personal influence even, can produce more than a passing impression. But here again, perhaps, his practical activity may bring about its reaction. In time the cottager will be compelled to admit that, at least, coal club, benefit society, cricket, allotment, &c., have done him no harm. In time he may even see that property and authority are not always entirely selfish--that they may do good, and be worthy, at all events, of courteous acknowledgment. These two characteristics, moral apathy and contempt of property--i.e., of social order--are probably exercising considerable influence in shaping the labourer's future. Free of mental restraint, his own will must work its way for good or evil. It is true that the rise or fall of wages may check or hasten the development of that future. In either case it is not, however, probable that he will return to the old grooves; indeed, the grooves themselves are gone, and the logic of events must force him to move onwards. That motion, in its turn, must affect the rest of the community. Let the mind's eye glance for a moment over the country at large. The villages among the hills, the villages on the plains, in the valleys, and beside the streams represent in the aggregate an enormous power. Separately such hamlets seem small and feeble--unable to impress their will upon the world. But together they contain a vast crowd, which, united, may shoulder itself an irresistible course, pushing aside all obstacles by mere physical weight. The effect of education has been, and seems likely to be, to supply a certain unity of thought, if not of action, among these people. The solid common sense--the law-abiding character of the majority--is sufficient security against any violent movement. But how important it becomes that that common sense should be strengthened against the assaults of an insidious Socialism! A man's education does not come to an end when he leaves school. He then just begins to form his opinions, and in nine cases out of ten thinks what he hears and what he reads. Here, in the agricultural labourer class, are many hundred thousand young men exactly in this stage, educating themselves in moral, social, and political opinion. In short, the future literature of the labourer becomes a serious question. He will think what he reads; and what he reads at the present moment is of anything but an elevating character. He will think, too, what he hears; and he hears much of an enticing but subversive political creed, and little of any other. There are busy tongues earnestly teaching him to despise property and social order, to suggest the overthrow of existing institutions; there is scarcely any one to instruct him in the true lesson of history. Who calls together an audience of agricultural labourers to explain to and interest them in the story of their own country? There are many who are only too anxious to use the agricultural labourer as the means to effect ends which he scarcely understands. But there are few, indeed, who are anxious to instruct him in science or literature for his own sake. CHAPTER XXVI A WHEAT COUNTRY The aspect of a corn-growing district in the colder months is perhaps more dreary than that of any other country scene. It is winter made visible. The very houses at the edge of the village stand out harsh and angular, especially if modern and slated, for the old thatched cottages are not without a curve in the line of the eaves. No trees or bushes shelter them from the bitter wind that rushes across the plain, and, because of the absence of trees round the outskirts, the village may be seen from a great distance. The wayfarer, as he approaches along the interminable road, that now rises over a hill and now descends into a valley, observes it from afar, his view uninterrupted by wood, but the vastness of the plain seems to shorten his step, so that he barely gains on the receding roofs. The hedges by the road are cropped--cut down mercilessly--and do not afford the slightest protection against wind, or rain, or sleet. If he would pause awhile to rest his weary limbs no friendly bush keeps off the chilling blast. Yonder, half a mile in front, a waggon creeps up the hill, always just so much ahead, never overtaken, or seeming to alter its position, whether he walks slow or fast. The only apparent inhabitants of the solitude are the larks that every now and then cross the road in small flocks. Above, the sky is dull and gloomy; beneath, the earth, except, where some snow lingers, is of a still darker tint. On the northern side the low mounds are white with snow here and there. Mile after mile the open level fields extend on either hand; now brown from the late passage of the plough, now a pale yellow where the short stubble yet remains, divided by black lines; the low-cropped hedges bare of leaves. A few small fir copses are scattered about, the only relief to the eye; all else is level, dull, monotonous. When the village is reached at last, it is found to be of considerable size. The population is much greater than might have been anticipated from the desert-like solitude surrounding the place. In actual numbers, of course, it will not bear comparison with manufacturing districts, but for its situation, it is quite a little town. Compared with the villages situate in the midst of great pastures--where grass is the all-important crop--it is really populous. Almost all the inhabitants find employment in the fields around, helping to produce wheat and barley, oats and roots. It is a little city of the staff of life--a metropolis of the plough. Every single house, from that of the landowner, through the rent; that of the clergyman, through the tithe--down to the humblest cottage, is directly interested in the crop of corn. The very children playing about the gaps in the hedges are interested in it, for can they not go gleaning? If the heralds had given the place a coat of arms it should bear a sheaf of wheat. And the reason of its comparative populousness is to be found in the wheat also. For the stubborn earth will not yield its riches without severe and sustained labour. Instead of tickling it with a hoe, and watching the golden harvest leap forth, scarifier and plough, harrow and drill in almost ceaseless succession, compel the clods by sheer force of iron to deliver up their treasure. In another form it is almost like the quartz-crushing at the gold mines--the ore ground out from the solid rock. And here, in addition, the ore has to be put into the rock first in the shape of manure. All this labour requires hands to do it, and so--the supply for some time, at all events, answering the demand--the village teemed with men. In the autumn comes the ploughing, the couch-picking and burning, often second ploughing, the sowing by drill or hand, the threshing, &c. In the spring will come more ploughing, sowing, harrowing, hoeing. Modern agriculture has increased the labour done in the fields. Crops are arranged to succeed crops, and each of these necessitates labour, and labour a second and a third time. The work on arable land is never finished. A slackness there is in the dead of winter; but even then there is still something doing--some draining, some trimming of hedges, carting manure for open field work. But beyond this there are the sheep in the pens to be attended to as the important time of lambing approaches, and there are the horned cattle in the stalls still fattening, and leaving, as they reach maturity, for the butcher. The arable agriculturist, indeed, has a double weight upon his mind. He has money invested in the soil itself, seed lying awaiting the genial warm rain that shall cause it to germinate, capital in every furrow traced by the plough. He has money, on the other hand, in his stock, sheep, and cattle. A double anxiety is his; first that his crops may prosper, next that his stock may flourish. He requires men to labour in the field, men to attend to the sheep, men to feed the bullocks; a crowd of labourers are supported by him, with their wives and families. In addition to these he needs other labour--the inanimate assistance of the steam-engine, and the semi-intelligent co-operation of the horse. These, again, must be directed by men. Thus it is that the corn village has become populous. The original idea was that the introduction of machinery would reduce all this labour. In point of fact, it has, if anything, increased it. The steam-plough will not work itself; each of the two engines requires two men to attend to it; one, and often two, ride on the plough itself; another goes with the water-cart to feed the boiler: others with the waggon for coal. The drill must have men--and experienced men--with it, besides horses to draw it, and these again want men The threshing-machine employs quite a little troop to feed it; and, turning to the stock in the stalls, roots will not pulp or slice themselves, nor will water pump itself up into the troughs, nor chaff cut itself. The chaff-cutter and pump, and so on, all depend on human hands to keep them going. Such is but a very brief outline of the innumerable ways in which arable agriculture gives employment. So the labourer and the labourer's family flourish exceedingly in the corn tillage. Wages rise; he waxes fat and strong and masterful, thinking that he holds the farmer and the golden grain in the hollow of his hand. But now a cloud arises and casts its shadow over the cottage. If the farmer depends upon his men, so do the men in equal degree depend upon the farmer. This they overlooked, but are now learning again. The farmer, too, is not independent and self-sustained, but is at the mercy of many masters. The weather and the seasons are one master; the foreign producer is another; the markets, which are further influenced by the condition of trade at large, form a third master. He is, indeed, very much more in the position of a servant than his labourer. Of late almost all these masters have combined against the corn-growing farmer. Wheat is not only low but seems likely to remain so. Foreign meat also competes with the dearly-made meat of the stalls. The markets are dull and trade depressed everywhere. Finally a fresh master starts up in the shape of the labourer himself, and demands higher wages. For some length of time the corn-grower puts a courageous face on the difficulties which beset him, and struggles on, hoping for better days. After awhile, however, seeing that his capital is diminishing, because he has been, as it were, eating it, seeing that there is no prospect of immediate relief, whatever may happen in the future, he is driven to one of two courses. He must quit the occupation or he must reduce his expenditure. He must not only ask the labourer to accept a reduction, but he must, wherever practicable, avoid employing labour at all. Now comes the pressure on the corn village. Much but not all of that pressure the inhabitants have brought upon themselves through endeavouring to squeeze the farmer too closely. If there had been no labour organisation whatever when the arable agriculturist began to suffer, as he undoubtedly has been suffering, the labourer must have felt it in his turn. He has himself to blame if he has made the pain more acute. He finds it in this way. Throughout the corn-producing district there has been proceeding a gradual shrinkage, as it were, of speculative investment. Where an agriculturist would have ploughed deeper, and placed extra quantities of manure in the soil, with a view to an extra crop, he has, instead, only just ploughed and cleaned and manured enough to keep things going. Where he would have enlarged his flock of sheep, or added to the cattle in the stalls, and carried as much stock as he possibly could, he has barely filled the stalls, and bought but just enough cake and foods. Just enough, indeed, of late has been his watchword all through--just enough labour and no more. This cutting down, stinting, and economy everywhere has told upon the population of the village. The difference in the expenditure upon a solitary farm may be but a trifle--a few pounds; but when some score or more farms are taken, in the aggregate the decrease in the cash transferred from the pocket of the agriculturist to that of the labourer becomes something considerable. The same percentage on a hundred farms would amount to a large sum. In this manner the fact of the corn-producing farmer being out of spirits with his profession reacts upon the corn village. There is no positive distress, but there is just a sense that there are more hands about than necessary. Yet at the same moment there are not hands enough; a paradox which may be explained in a measure by the introduction of machinery. As already stated, machinery in the field does not reduce the number of men employed. But they are employed in a different way. The work all comes now in rushes. By the aid of the reaping machine acres are levelled in a day, and the cut corn demands the services of a crowd of men and women all at once, to tie it up in sheaves. Should the self-binders come into general use, and tie the wheat with wire or string at the moment of cutting it, the matter of labour will be left much in the same stage. A crowd of workpeople will be required all at once to pick up the sheaves, or to cart them to the rick; and the difference will lie in this, that while now the crowd are employed, say twelve hours, then they will be employed only nine. Just the same number--perhaps more--but for less time. Under the old system, a dozen men worked all the winter through, hammering away with their flails in the barns. Now the threshing-machine arrives, and the ricks are threshed in a few days. As many men are wanted (and at double the wages) to feed the machine, to tend the 'elevator' carrying up the straw to make the straw rick, to fetch water and coal for the engine, to drive it, &c. But instead of working for so many months, this rush lasts as many days. Much the same thing happens all throughout arable agriculture--from the hoeing to the threshing--a troop are wanted one day, scarcely anybody the next. There is, of course, a steady undercurrent of continuous work for a certain fixed number of hands; but over and above this are the periodical calls for extra labour, which of recent years, from the high wages paid, have been so profitable to the labourers. But when the agriculturist draws in his investments, when he retrenches his expenditure, and endeavours, as far as practicable, to confine it to his regular men, then the intermittent character of the extra work puts a strain upon the rest. They do not find so much to do, the pay is insensibly decreasing, and they obtain, less casual employment meantime. In the olden times a succession of bad harvests caused sufferings throughout the whole of England. Somewhat in like manner, though in a greatly modified degree, the difficulties of the arable agriculturist at the present day press upon the corn villages. In a time when the inhabitants saw the farmers, as they believed, flourishing and even treading on the heels of the squire, the corn villagers, thinking that the farmer was absolutely dependent upon them, led the van of the agitation for high wages. Now, when the force of circumstances has compressed wages again, they are both to submit. But discovering by slow degrees that no organisation can compel, or create a demand for labour at any price, there are now signs on the one hand of acquiescence, and on the other of partial emigration. Thus the comparative density of the population in arable districts is at once a blessing and a trouble. It is not the 'pranks' of the farmers that have caused emigration, or threats of it. The farmer is unable to pay high wages, the men will not accept a moderate reduction, and the idle crowd, in effect, tread on each other's heels. Pressure of that kind, and to that extent, is limited to a few localities only. The majority have sufficient common sense to see their error. But it is in arable districts that agitation takes its extreme form. The very number of the population gives any movement a vigour and emphasis that is wanting where there may be as much discontent but fewer to exhibit it. That populousness has been in the past of the greatest assistance to the agriculturist, and there is no reason why it should not be so in the future, for it does not by any means follow that because agriculture is at present depressed it will always be so. Let the months roll by and then approach the same village along the same road under the summer sun. The hedges, though low, are green, and bear the beautiful flowers of the wild convolvulus. Trees that were scarcely observed before, because bare of leaves, now appear, and crowds of birds, finches and sparrows, fly up from the corn. The black swifts wheel overhead, and the white-breasted swallows float in the azure. Over the broad plain extends a still broader roof of the purest blue--the landscape is so open that the sky seems as broad again as in the enclosed countries--wide, limitless, very much as it does at sea. On the rising ground pause a moment and look round. Wheat and barley and oats stretch mile after mile on either hand. Here the red wheat tinges the view, there the whiter barley; but the prevailing hue is a light gold. Yonder green is the swede, or turnip, or mangold; but frequent as are the fields of roots, the golden tint overpowers the green. A golden sun looks down upon the golden wheat--the winds are still and the heat broods over the corn. It is pleasant to get under the scanty shadow of the stunted ash. Think what wealth all that glorious beauty represents. Wealth to the rich man, wealth to the poor. Come again in a few weeks' time and look down upon it. The swarthy reapers are at work. They bend to their labour till the tall corn overtops their heads. Every now and then they rise up, and stand breast high among the wheat. Every field is full of them, men and women, young lads and girls, busy as they may be. Yonder the reaping-machine, with its strange-looking arms revolving like the vast claws of an unearthly monster beating down the grain, goes rapidly round and round in an ever-narrowing circle till the last ears fall. A crowd has pounced upon the cut corn. Behind them--behind the reapers--everywhere abroad on the great plain rises an army, regiment behind regiment, the sheaves stacked in regular ranks down the fields. Yet a little while, and over that immense expanse not one single, solitary straw will be left standing. Then the green roots show more strongly, and tint the landscape. Next come the waggons, and after that the children searching for stray ears of wheat, for not one must be left behind. After that, in the ploughing time, while yet the sun shines warm, it is a sight to watch the teams from under the same ash tree, returning from their labour in the afternoon. Six horses here, eight horses there, twelve yonder, four far away; all in single file, slowly walking home, and needing no order or touch of whip to direct their steps to the well-known stables. If any wish to see the work of farming in its full flush and vigour, let them visit a corn district at the harvest time. Down in the village there scarcely any one is left at home; every man, woman, and child is out in the field. It is the day of prosperity, of continuous work for all, of high wages. It is, then, easy to understand why corn villages are populous. One cannot but feel the strongest sympathy with these men. The scene altogether seems so thoroughly, so intensely English. The spirit of it enters into the spectator, and he feels that he, too, must try his hand at the reaping, and then slake his thirst from the same cup with these bronzed sons of toil. Yet what a difficult problem lies underneath all this! While the reaper yonder slashes at the straw, huge ships are on the ocean rushing through the foam to bring grain to the great cities to whom--and to all--cheap bread is so inestimable a blessing. Very likely, when he pauses in his work, and takes his luncheon, the crust he eats is made of flour ground out of grain that grew in far distant Minnesota, or some vast Western State. Perhaps at the same moment the farmer himself sits at his desk and adds up figure after figure, calculating the cost of production, the expenditure on labour, the price of manure put into the soil, the capital invested in the steam-plough, and the cost of feeding the bullocks that are already intended for the next Christmas. Against these he places the market price of that wheat he can see being reaped from his window, and the price he receives for his fattened bullock. Then a vision rises before him of green meads and broad pastures slowly supplanting the corn; the plough put away, and the scythe brought out and sharpened. If so, where then will be the crowd of men and women yonder working in the wheat? Is not this a great problem, one to be pondered over and not hastily dismissed? Logical conclusions do not always come to pass in practice; even yet there is plenty of time for a change which shall retain these stalwart reapers amongst us, the strength and pride of the land. But if so, it is certain that it must be preceded by some earnest on their part of a desire to remove that last straw from the farmer's back--the last straw of extravagant labour demands--which have slowly been dragging him down. They have been doing their very best to bring about the substitution of grass for corn. And the farmer, too, perhaps, must look at home, and be content to live in simpler fashion. To do so will certainly require no little moral courage, for a prevalent social custom, like that of living fully up to the income (not solely characteristic of farmers), is with difficulty faced and overcome. CHAPTER XXVII GRASS COUNTRIES On the ground beside the bramble bushes that project into the field the grass is white with hoar frost at noon-day, when the rest of the meadow has resumed its dull green winter tint. Behind the copse, too, there is a broad belt of white--every place, indeed, that would be in the shadow were the sun to shine forth is of that colour. The eager hunter frowns with impatience, knowing that though the eaves of the house may drip in the middle of the day, yet, while those white patches show in the shelter of the bramble bushes the earth will be hard and unyielding. His horse may clear the hedge, but how about the landing on that iron-like surface? Every old hoof-mark in the sward, cut out sharp and clear as if with a steel die, is so firm that the heaviest roller would not produce the smallest effect upon it. At the gateways where the passage of cattle has trodden away the turf, the mud, once almost impassable, is now hardened, and every cloven hoof that pressed it has left its mark as if cast in metal. Along the furrows the ice has fallen in, and lies on the slope white and broken, the shallow water having dried away beneath it. Dark hedges, dark trees--in the distance they look almost black--nearer at hand the smallest branches devoid of leaves are clearly defined against the sky. As the northerly wind drifts the clouds before it the sun shines down, and the dead, dry grass and the innumerable tufts of the 'leaze' which the cattle have not eaten, take a dull grey hue. Sheltered from the blast behind the thick, high hawthorn hedge and double mound, which is like a rampart reared against Boreas, it is pleasant even now to stroll to and fro in the sunshine. The longtailed titmice come along in parties of six or eight, calling to each other as in turn they visit every tree. Turning from watching these--see, a redbreast has perched on a branch barely two yards distant, for, wherever you may be, there the robin comes and watches you. Whether looking in summer at the roses in the garden, or waiting in winter for the pheasant to break cover or the fox to steal forth, go where you will, in a minute or two, a redbreast appears intent on your proceedings. Now comes a discordant squeaking of iron axles that have not been greased, and the jolting sound of wheels passing over ruts whose edges are hard and frost-bound. From the lane two manure carts enter the meadow in slow procession, and, stopping at regular intervals, the men in charge take long poles with hooks at the end and drag down a certain quantity of the fertilising material. The sharp frost is so far an advantage to the tenant of meadow land that he can cart manure without cutting and poaching the turf, and even without changing the ordinary for the extra set of broad-wheels on the cart. In the next meadow the hedge-cutters are busy, their hands fenced with thick gloves to turn aside the thorns. Near by are the hay-ricks and cow-pen where a metallic rattling sound rises every now and then--the bull in the shed moving his neck and dragging his chain through the ring. More than one of the hay-ricks have been already half cut away, for the severe winter makes the cows hungry, and if their yield of milk is to be kept up they must be well fed, so that the foggers have plenty to do. If the dairy, as is most probably the case, sends the milk to London, they have still more, because then a regular supply has to be maintained, and for that a certain proportion of other food has to be prepared in addition to the old-fashioned hay. The new system, indeed, has led to the employment of more labour out-of-doors, if less within. An extra fogger has to be put on, not only because of the food, but because the milking has to be done in less time--with a despatch, indeed, that would have seemed unnatural to the old folk. Besides which the milk carts to and fro the railway station require drivers, whose time--as they have to go some miles twice a day--is pretty nearly occupied with their horses and milk tins. So much is this the case that even in summer they can scarcely be spared to do a few hours haymaking. The new system, therefore, of selling the milk instead of making butter and cheese is advantageous to the labourer by affording more employment in grass districts. It is steady work, too, lasting the entire year round, and well paid. The stock of cows in such cases is kept up to the very highest that the land will carry, which, again, gives more work. Although the closing of the cheese lofts and the superannuation of the churn has reduced the number of female servants in the house, yet that is more than balanced by the extra work without. The cottage families, it is true, lose the buttermilk which some farmers used to allow them; but wages are certainly better. There has been, in fact, a general stir and movement in dairy districts since the milk selling commenced, which has been favourable to labour. A renewed life and energy has been visible on farms where for generations things had gone on in the same sleepy manner. Efforts have been made to extend the area available for feeding by grubbing hedges and cultivating pieces of ground hitherto given over to thistles, rushes, and rough grasses. Drains have been put in so that the stagnant water in the soil might not cause the growth of those grasses which cattle will not touch. Fresh seed has been sown, and 'rattles' and similar plants destructive to the hay crop have been carefully eradicated. New gales, new carts, and traps, all exhibit the same movement. The cowyards in many districts were formerly in a very dilapidated condition. The thatch of the sheds was all worn away, mossgrown, and bored by the sparrows. Those in which the cows were placed at calving time were mere dark holes. The floor of the yard was often soft, so that the hoofs of the cattle trod deep into it--a perfect slough in wet weather. The cows themselves were of a poor character, and in truth as poorly treated, for the hay was made badly--carelessly harvested, and the grass itself not of good quality--nor were the men always very humane, thinking little of knocking the animals about. Quite a change has come over all this. The cows now kept are much too valuable to be treated roughly, being selected from shorthorn strains that yield large quantities of milk. No farmer now would allow any such knocking about. The hay itself is better, because the grass has been improved, and it is also harvested carefully. Rickcloths prevent rain from spoiling the rising rick, mowing machines, haymaking machines, and horse rakes enable a spell of good weather to be taken advantage of, and the hay got in quickly, instead of lying about till the rain returns. As for the manure, it is recognised to be gold in another shape, and instead of being trodden under foot by the cattle and washed away by the rain, it is utilised. The yard is drained and stoned so as to be dry--a change that effects a saving in litter, the value of which has greatly risen. Sheds have been new thatched, and generally renovated, and even new roads laid down across the farms, and properly macadamised, in order that the milk carts might reach the highway without the straining and difficulty consequent upon wheels sinking half up to the axles in winter. In short, dairy farms have been swept and garnished, and even something like science introduced upon them. The thermometer in summer is in constant use to determine if the milk is sufficiently cooled to proceed upon its journey. That cooling of the milk alone is a process that requires more labour to carry it out. Artificial manures are spread abroad on the pastures. The dairy farmer has to a considerable extent awakened to the times, and, like the arable agriculturist, is endeavouring to bring modern appliances to bear upon his business. To those who recollect the old style of dairy farmer the change seems marvellous indeed. Nowhere was the farmer more backward, more rude and primitive, than on the small dairy farms. He was barely to be distinguished from the labourers, amongst whom he worked shoulder to shoulder; he spoke with their broad accent, and his ideas and theirs were nearly identical. In ten years' time--just a short ten years only--what an alteration has taken place! It is needless to say that this could not go on without the spending of money, and the spending of money means the benefit of the labouring class. New cottages have been erected, of course on modern plans, so that many of the men are much better lodged than they were, and live nearer to their work--a great consideration where cows are the main object of attention. The men have to be on the farm very early in the morning, and if they have a long walk it is a heavy drag upon them. Perhaps the constant intercourse with the towns and stations resulting from the double daily visit of the milk carts has quickened the minds of the labourers thus employed. Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that they do exhibit an improvement, and are much 'smarter' than they used to be. It would be untrue to say that no troubles with the labourers have arisen in meadow districts. There has been some friction about wages, but not nearly approaching the agitation elsewhere. And when a recent reduction of wages commenced, many of the men themselves admitted that it was inevitable. But the average earnings throughout the year still continue, and are likely to continue far above the old rate of payment. Where special kinds of cheese are made the position of the labourer has also improved. Coming to the same district in summer time, the meadows have a beauty all their own. The hedges are populous with birds, the trees lovely, the brook green with flags, the luxuriantly-growing grass decked with flowers. Nor has haymaking lost all its ancient charm. Though the old-fashioned sound of the mower sharpening his scythe is less often heard, being superseded by the continuous rattle of the mowing machine, yet the hay smells as sweetly as ever. While the mowing machine, the haymaking machine, and horse rake give the farmer the power of using the sunshine, when it comes, to the best purpose, they are not without an effect upon the labouring population. Just as in corn districts, machinery has not reduced the actual number of hands employed, but has made the work come in spells or rushes; so in the meadows the haymaking is shortened. The farmer waits till good weather is assured for a few days. Then on goes his mowing machine and levels the crop of an entire field in no time. Immediately a whole crowd of labourers are required for making the hay and getting it when ready on the waggons. Under the old system the mowers usually got drunk about the third day of sunshine, and the work came to a standstill. When it began to rain they recovered themselves, and slashed away vigorously--when it was not wanted. The effect of machinery has been much the same as on corn lands, with the addition that fewer women are now employed in haymaking. Those that are employed are much better paid. The hamlets of grass districts are not, as a rule, at all populous. There really are fewer people, and at the same time the impression is increased by the scattered position of the dwellings. Instead of a great central village there are three or four small hamlets a mile or two apart, and solitary groups of cottages near farmhouses. One result of this is, that allotment gardens are not so common, for the sufficient reason that, if a field were set apart for the purpose, the tenants of the plots would have to walk so far to the place that it would scarcely pay them. Gardens are consequently attached to most cottages, and answer the same purpose; some have small orchards as well. The cottagers have also more firewood than is the case in some arable districts on account of the immense quantity of wood annually cut in copses and double-mound hedges. The rougher part becomes the labourers' perquisite, and they can also purchase wood at a nominal rate from their employers. This more than compensates for the absence of gleaning. In addition, quantities of wood are collected from hedges and ditches and under the trees--dead boughs that have fallen or been broken off by a gale. The aspect of a grazing district presents a general resemblance to that of a dairy one, with the difference that in the grazing everything seems on a larger scale. Instead of small meadows shut in with hedges and trees, the grazing farms often comprise fields of immense extent; sometimes a single pasture is as large as a small dairy farm. The herds of cattle are also more numerous; of course they are of a different class, but, in mere numbers, a grazier often has three times as many bullocks as a dairy farmer has cows. The mounds are quite as thickly timbered as in dairy districts, but as they are much farther apart, the landscape appears more open. To a spectator looking down upon mile after mile of such pasture land in summer from an elevation it resembles a park of illimitable extent. Great fields after great fields roll away to the horizon--groups of trees and small copses dot the slopes--roan and black cattle stand in the sheltering shadows. A dreamy haze hangs over the distant woods--all is large, open, noble. It suggests a life of freedom--the gun and the saddle--and, indeed, it is here that hunting is enjoyed in its full perfection. The labourer falls almost out of sight in these vast pastures. The population is sparse and scattered, the hamlets are few and far apart; even many of the farmhouses being only occupied by bailiffs. In comparison with a dairy farm there is little work to do. Cows have to be milked as well as foddered, and the milk when obtained gives employment to many hands in the various processes it goes through. Here the bullocks have simply to be fed and watched, the sheep in like manner have to be tended. Except in the haymaking season, therefore, there is scarcely ever a press for labour. Those who are employed have steady, continuous work the year through, and are for the most part men of experience in attending upon cattle, as indeed they need be, seeing the value of the herds under their charge. Although little direct agitation has taken place in pasture countries, yet wages have equally risen. Pasture districts almost drop out of the labour dispute. On the one hand the men are few, on the other the rise of a shilling or so scarcely affects the farmer (so far as his grass land is concerned, if he has much corn as well it is different), because of the small number of labourers he wants. The great utility of pasture is, of course, the comparatively cheap production of meat, which goes to feed the population in cities. Numbers of bullocks are fattened on corn land in stalls, but of late it has been stated that the cost of feeding under such conditions is so high that scarcely any profit can be obtained. The pasture farmer has by no means escaped without encountering difficulties; but still, with tolerably favourable seasons, he can produce meat much more cheaply than the arable agriculturist. Yet it is one of the avowed objects of the labour organisation to prevent the increase of pasture land, to stop the laying down of grass, and even to plough up some of the old pastures. The reason given is that corn land supports so many more agricultural labourers, which is so far true; but if corn farming cannot be carried on profitably without great reduction of the labour expenses the argument is not worth much, while the narrowness of the view is at once evident. The proportion of pasture to arable land must settle itself, and be governed entirely by the same conditions that affect other trades--i.e.. profit and loss. It has already been pointed out that the labourer finds it possible to support the Union with small payments, and also to subscribe to benefit-clubs. The fact suggests the idea that, if facilities were afforded, the labourer would become a considerable depositor of pennies. The Post-office Savings Banks have done much good, the drawback is that the offices are often too distant from the labourer. There is an office in the village, but not half the population live in the village. There are far-away hamlets and things, besides lonely groups of three or four farmhouses, to which a collective name can hardly be given, but which employ a number of men. A rural parish is 'all abroad'--the people are scattered. To go into the Post-office in the village may involve a walk of several miles, and it is closed, too, on Saturday night when the men are flush of money. The great difficulty with penny banks on the other hand is the receiver--who is to be responsible for the money? The clergyman would be only too glad, but many will have nothing to do with anything under his influence simply because he is the clergyman. The estrangement that has been promoted between the labourer and the tenant farmer effectually shuts the latter out. The landlord's agent cannot reside in fifty places at once. The sums are too small to pay for a bank agent to reside in the village and go round. There remain the men themselves; and why should not they be trusted with the money? Men of their own class collect the Union subscriptions, and faithfully pay them in. Take the case of a little hamlet two, three, perhaps more miles from a Post-office Savings Bank, where some thirty labourers work on the farms. Why should not these thirty elect one of their own number to receive their savings over Saturday--to be paid in by him at the Post-office? There are men among them who might be safely trusted with ten times the money, and if the Post-office cannot be opened on Saturday evenings for him to deposit it, it is quite certain that his employer would permit of his absence, on one day, sufficiently long to go to the office and back. If the men wish to be absolutely independent in the matter, all they have to do is to work an extra hour for their agent's employer, and so compensate for his temporary absence. If the men had it in their own hands like this they would enter into it with far greater interest, and it would take root among them. All that is required is the consent of the Post-office to receive moneys so deposited, and some one to broach the idea to the men in the various localities. The great recommendation of the Post-office is that the labouring classes everywhere have come to feel implicit faith in the safety of deposits made in it. They have a confidence in it that can never be attained by a private enterprise, however benevolent, and it should therefore be utilised to the utmost. To gentlemen accustomed to receive a regular income, a small lump sum like ten or twenty pounds appears a totally inadequate provision against old age. They institute elaborate calculations by professed accountants, to discover whether by any mode of investment a small subscription proportionate to the labourer's wages can be made to provide him with an annuity. The result is scarcely satisfactory. But, in fact, though an annuity would be, of course, preferable, even so small a sum as ten or twenty pounds is of the very highest value to an aged agricultural labourer, especially when he has a cottage, if not his own property, yet in which he has a right to reside. The neighbouring farmers, who have known him from their own boyhood, are always ready to give him light jobs whenever practicable. So that in tolerable weather he still earns something. His own children do a little for him. In the dead of the winter come a few weeks when he can do nothing, and feels the lack of small comforts. It is just then that a couple of sovereigns out of a hoard of twenty pounds will tide him over the interval. It is difficult to convey an idea of the value of these two extra sovereigns to a man of such frugal habits and in that position. None but those who have mixed with the agricultural poor can understand it. Now the wages that will hardly, by the most careful management, allow of the gradual purchase of an annuity, will readily permit such savings as these. It is simply a question of the money-box. When the child's money-box is at hand the penny is dropped in, and the amount accumulates; if there is no box handy it is spent in sweets. The same holds true of young and old alike. If, then, the annuity cannot be arranged, let the money-box, at all events, be brought nearer. And the money-box in which the poor man all over the country has the most faith is the Post-office. CHAPTER XXVIII HODGE'S LAST MASTERS. CONCLUSION After all the ploughing and the sowing, the hoeing and the harvest, comes the miserable end. Strong as the labourer may be, thick-set and capable of immense endurance; by slow degrees that strength must wear away. The limbs totter, the back is bowed, the dimmed sight can no longer guide the plough in a straight furrow, nor the weak hands wield the reaping-hook, Hodge, who, Atlas-like, supported upon his shoulders the agricultural world, comes in his old age under the dominion of his last masters at the workhouse. There, indeed, he finds almost the whole array of his rulers assembled. Tenant farmers sit as the guardians of the poor for their respective parishes; the clergyman and the squire by virtue of their office as magistrates; and the tradesman as guardian for the market town. Here are representatives of almost all his masters, and it may seem to him a little strange that it should require so many to govern such feeble folk. The board-room at the workhouse is a large and apparently comfortable apartment. The fire is piled with glowing coals, the red light from which gleams on the polished fender. A vast table occupies the centre, and around it are arranged seats, for each of the guardians. The chairman is, perhaps, a clergyman (and magistrate), who for years has maintained something like peace between discordant elements. For the board-room is often a battle-field where political or sectarian animosities exhibit themselves in a rugged way. The clergyman, by force of character, has at all events succeeded in moderating the personal asperity of the contending parties. Many of the stout, elderly farmers who sit round the table have been elected year after year, no one disputing with them that tedious and thankless office. The clerk, always a solicitor, is also present, and his opinion is continually required. Knotty points of law are for ever arising over what seems so simple a matter as the grant of a dole of bread. The business, indeed, of relieving the agricultural poor is no light one--a dozen or fifteen gentlemen often sit here the whole day. The routine of examining the relieving officers' books and receiving their reports takes up at least two hours. Agricultural unions often include a wide space of country, and getting from one village to another consumes as much time as would be needed for the actual relief of a much denser population. As a consequence, more relieving officers are employed than would seem at first glance necessary. Each of these has his records to present, and his accounts to be practically audited, a process naturally interspersed with inquiries respecting cottagers known to the guardians present. Personal applications for out-door relief are then heard. A group of intending applicants has been waiting in the porch for admission for some time. Women come for their daughters; daughters for their mothers; some want assistance during an approaching confinement, others ask for a small loan, to be repaid by instalments, with which to tide over their difficulties. One cottage woman is occasionally deputed by several of her neighbours as their representative. The labourer or his wife stands before the Board and makes a statement, supplemented by explanation from the relieving officer of the district. Another hour thus passes. Incidentally there arise cases of 'settlement' in distant parishes, when persons have become chargeable whose place of residence was recently, perhaps, half across the country. They have no parochial rights here and must be returned thither, after due inquiries made by the clerk and the exchange of considerable correspondence. The master of the workhouse is now called in and delivers his weekly report of the conduct of the inmates, and any events that have happened. One inmate, an ancient labourer, died that morning in the infirmary, not many hours before the meeting of the Board. The announcement is received with regretful exclamations, and there is a cessation of business for a few minutes. Some of the old farmers who knew the deceased recount their connection with him, how he worked for them, and how his family has lived in the parish as cottagers from time immemorial. A reminiscence of a grim joke that fell out forty years before, and of which the deceased was the butt, causes a grave smile, and then to business again. The master possibly asks permission to punish a refractory inmate; punishment is now very sparingly given in the house. A good many cases, however, come up from the Board to the magisterial Bench--charges of tearing up clothing, fighting, damaging property, or of neglecting to maintain, or to repay relief advanced on loan. These cases are, of course, conducted by the clerk. There is sometimes a report, to be read by one of the doctors who receive salaries from the Board and attend to the various districts, and occasionally some nuisance to be considered and order taken for its compulsory removal on sanitary grounds. The question of sanitation is becoming rather a difficult one in agricultural unions. After this the various committees of the Board have to give in the result of their deliberations, and the representative of the ladies' boarding-out committee presents a record of the work accomplished. These various committees at times are burdened with the most onerous labours, for upon them falls the duty of verifying all the petty details of management. Every pound of soap, or candles, scrubbing-brushes, and similar domestic items, pass under their inspection, not only the payments for them, but the actual articles, or samples of them, being examined. Tenders for grocery, bread, wines and spirits for cases of illness, meat, coals, and so forth are opened and compared, vouchers, bills, receipts, invoices, and so forth checked and audited. The amount of detail thus attended to is something immense, and the accuracy required occupies hour after hour. There are whole libraries of account-books, ledgers, red-bound relief-books, stowed away, pile upon pile, in the house; archives going back to the opening of the establishment, and from which any trifling relief given or expenditure inclined years ago can be extracted. Such another carefully-administered institution it would be hard to find; nor is any proposed innovation or change adopted without the fullest discussion--it may be the suggested erection of additional premises, or the introduction of some fresh feature of the system, or some novel instructions sent down by the Local Government Board. When such matters or principles are to be discussed there is certain to be a full gathering of the guardians and a trial of strength between the parties. Those who habitually neglect to attend, leaving the hard labour of administration to be borne by their colleagues, now appear in numbers, and the board-room is crowded, many squires otherwise seldom seen coming in to give their votes. It is as much as the chairman can do to assuage the storm and to maintain an approach to personal politeness. Quiet as the country appears to the casual observer, there are, nevertheless, strong feelings under the surface, and at such gatherings the long-cherished animosities burst forth. Nothing at all events is done in a corner; everything is openly discussed and investigated. Every week the visiting committee go round the house, and enter every ward and store-room. They taste and test the provisions, and the least shortcoming is certain to be severely brought home to those who are fulfilling the contracts. They pass through the dormitories, and see that everything is clean; woe betide those responsible if a spot of dirt be visible! There is the further check of casual and unexpected visits from the guardians or magistrates. It is probable that not one crumb of bread consumed is otherwise than good, and that not one single crumb is wasted. The waste is in the system--and a gigantic waste it is, whether inevitable as some contend, or capable of being superseded by a different plan. Of every hundred pounds paid by the ratepayers how much is absorbed in the maintenance of the institution and its ramifications, and how very little reaches poor deserving Hodge! The undeserving and mean-spirited, of whom there are plenty in every village, who endeavour to live upon the parish, receive relief thrice as long and to thrice the amount as the hard-working, honest labourer, who keeps out to the very last moment. It is not the fault of the guardians, but of the rigidity of the law. Surely a larger amount of discretionary power might be vested in them with advantage! Some exceptional consideration is the just due of men who have worked from the morn to the very eve of life. The labourer whose decease was reported to the Board upon their assembling was born some seventy-eight or seventy-nine years ago. The exact date is uncertain; many of the old men can only fix their age by events that happened when they were growing from boys into manhood. That it must have been nearer eighty than seventy years since is known, however, to the elderly farmers, who recollect him as a man with a family when they were young. The thatched cottage stood beside the road at one end of a long, narrow garden, enclosed from the highway by a hedge of elder. At the back there was a ditch and mound with elm-trees, and green meadows beyond. A few poles used to lean against the thatch, their tops rising above the ridge, and close by was a stack of thorn faggots. In the garden three or four aged and mossgrown apple-trees stood among the little plots of potatoes, and as many plum-trees in the elder hedge. One tall pear-tree with scored bark grew near the end of the cottage; it bore a large crop of pears, which were often admired by the people who came along the road, but were really hard and woody. As a child he played in the ditch and hedge, or crept through into the meadow and searched in the spring for violets to offer to the passers-by; or he swung on the gate in the lane and held it open for the farmers in their gigs, in hope of a halfpenny. As a lad he went forth with his father to work in the fields, and came home to the cabbage boiled for the evening meal. It was not a very roomy or commodious home to return to after so many hours in the field, exposed to rain and wind, to snow, or summer sun. The stones of the floor were uneven, and did not fit at the edges. There was a beam across the low ceiling, to avoid which, as he grew older, he had to bow his head when crossing the apartment. A wooden ladder, or steps, not a staircase proper, behind the whitewashed partition, led to the bedroom. The steps were worm-eaten and worn. In the sitting-room the narrow panes of the small window were so overgrown with woodbine as to admit but little light. But in summer the door was wide open, and the light and the soft air came in. The thick walls and thatch kept it warm and cosy in winter, when they gathered round the fire. Every day in his manhood he went out to the field; every item, as it were, of life centred in that little cottage. In time he came to occupy it with his own wife, and his children in their turn crept through the hedge, or swung upon the gate. They grew up, and one by one went away, till at last he was left alone. He had not taken much conscious note of the changing aspect of the scene around him. The violets flowered year after year; still he went to plough. The May bloomed and scented the hedges; still he went to his work. The green summer foliage became brown and the acorns fell from the oaks; still he laboured on, and saw the ice and snow, and heard the wind roar in the old familiar trees without much thought of it. But those old familiar trees, the particular hedges he had worked among so many years, the very turf of the meadows over which he had walked so many times, the view down the road from the garden gate, the distant sign-post and the red-bricked farmhouse--all these things had become part of his life. There was no hope nor joy left to him, but he wanted to stay on among them to the end. He liked to ridge up his little plot of potatoes; he liked to creep up his ladder and mend the thatch of his cottage; he liked to cut himself a cabbage, and to gather the one small basketful of apples. There was a kind of dull pleasure in cropping the elder hedge, and even in collecting the dead branches scattered under the trees. To be about the hedges, in the meadows, and along the brooks was necessary to him, and he liked to be at work. Three score and ten did not seem the limit of his working days; he still could and would hoe--a bowed back is no impediment, but perhaps rather an advantage, at that occupation. He could use a prong in the haymaking; he could reap a little, and do good service tying up the cut corn. There were many little jobs on the farm that required experience, combined with the plodding patience of age, and these he could do better than a stronger man. The years went round again, and yet he worked. Indeed, the farther back a man's birth dates in the beginning of the present century the more he seems determined to labour. He worked on till every member of his family had gone, most to their last home, and still went out at times when the weather was not too severe. He worked on, and pottered round the garden, and watched the young green plums swelling on his trees, and did a bit of gleaning, and thought the wheat would weigh bad when it was threshed out. Presently people began to bestir themselves, and to ask whether there was no one to take care of the old man, who might die from age and none near. Where were his own friends and relations? One strong son had enlisted and gone to India, and though his time had expired long ago, nothing had ever been heard of him. Another son had emigrated to Australia, and once sent back a present of money, and a message, written for him by a friend, that he was doing well. But of late, he, too, had dropped out of sight. Of three daughters who grew up, two were known to be dead, and the third was believed to be in New Zealand. The old man was quite alone. He had no hope and no joy, yet he was almost happy in a slow unfeeling way wandering about the garden and the cottage. But in the winter his half-frozen blood refused to circulate, his sinews would not move his willing limbs, and he could not work. His case came before the Board of Guardians. Those who knew all about him wished to give him substantial relief in his own cottage, and to appoint some aged woman as nurse--a thing that is occasionally done, and most humanely. But there were technical difficulties in the way; the cottage was either his own or partly his own, and relief could not be given to any one possessed of 'property' Just then, too, there was a great movement against, out-door relief; official circulars came round warning Boards to curtail it, and much fuss was made. In the result the old man was driven into the workhouse; muttering and grumbling, he had to be bodily carried to the trap, and thus by physical force was dragged from his home. In the workhouse there is of necessity a dead level of monotony--there are many persons but no individuals. The dining-hall is crossed with forms and narrow tables, somewhat resembling those formerly used in schools. On these at dinner-time are placed a tin mug and a tin soup-plate for each person; every mug and every plate exactly alike. When the unfortunates have taken their places, the master pronounces grace from an elevated desk at the end of the hall. Plain as is the fare, it was better than the old man had existed on for years; but though better it was not his dinner. He was not sitting in his old chair, at his own old table, round which his children had once gathered. He had not planted the cabbage, and tended it while it grew, and cut it himself. So it was, all through the workhouse life. The dormitories were clean, but the ward was not his old bedroom up the worm-eaten steps, with the slanting ceiling, where as he woke in the morning he could hear the sparrows chirping, the chaffinch calling, and the lark singing aloft. There was a garden attached to the workhouse, where he could do a little if he liked, but it was not his garden. He missed his plum-trees and apples, and the tall pear, and the lowly elder hedge. He looked round raising his head with difficulty, and he could not see the sign-post, nor the familiar red-bricked farmhouse. He knew all the rain that had fallen must have come through the thatch of the old cottage in at least one place, and he would have liked to have gone and rethatched it with trembling hand. At home he could lift the latch of the garden gate and go down the road when he wished. Here he could not go outside the boundary--it was against the regulations. Everything to appearance had been monotonous in the cottage--but there he did not feel it monotonous. At the workhouse the monotony weighed upon him. He used to think as he lay awake in bed that when the spring came nothing should keep him in this place. He would take his discharge and go out, and borrow a hoe from somebody, and go and do a bit of work again, and be about in the fields. That was his one hope all through his first winter. Nothing else enlivened it, except an occasional little present of tobacco from the guardians who knew him. The spring came, but the rain was ceaseless. No work of the kind he could do was possible in such weather. Still there was the summer, but the summer was no improvement; in the autumn he felt weak, and was not able to walk far. The chance for which he had waited had gone. Again the winter came, and he now rapidly grew more feeble. When once an aged man gives up, it seems strange at first that he should be so utterly helpless. In the infirmary the real benefit of the workhouse reached him. The food, the little luxuries, the attention were far superior to anything he could possibly have had at home. But still it was not home. The windows did not permit him from his bed to see the leafless trees or the dark woods and distant hills. Left to himself, it is certain that of choice he would have crawled under a rick, or into a hedge, if he could not have reached his cottage. The end came very slowly; he ceased to exist by imperceptible degrees, like an oak-tree. He remained for days in a semi-unconscious state, neither moving nor speaking. It happened at last. In the grey of the winter dawn, as the stars paled and the whitened grass was stiff with hoar frost, and the rime coated every branch of the tall elms, as the milker came from the pen and the young ploughboy whistled down the road to his work, the spirit of the aged man departed. What amount of production did that old man's life of labour represent? What value must be put upon the service of the son that fought in India; of the son that worked in Australia; of the daughter in New Zealand, whose children will help to build up a new nation? These things surely have their value. Hodge died, and the very grave-digger grumbled as he delved through the earth hard-bound in the iron frost, for it jarred his hand and might break his spade. The low mound will soon be level, and the place of his burial shall not be known. 
21657	----	DEEP FURROWS Which Tells of Pioneer Trails Along Which the Farmers of Western Canada Fought Their Way to Great Achievements in Co-Operation By HOPKINS MOORHOUSE TORONTO AND WINNIPEG GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1918 BY GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE SOIL CONTENTS CHAPTER Foreword I The Man on the Qu'Appelle Trail II A Call to Arms III The First Shot is Fired IV "That Man Partridge!" V "The House With the Closed Shutters" VI On a Card in the Window of Wilson's Old Store VII A Fight for Life VIII A Knock on the Door IX The Grain Exchange Again X Printers' Ink XI From the Red River Valley to the Foothills XII The Showdown XIII The Mysterious "Mr. Observer" XIV The Internal Elevator Campaign XV Concerning the Terminals XVI The Grip of the Pit XVII New Furrows XVIII A Final Test XIX Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan XX What Happened in Alberta XXI In the Drag of the Harrows XXII The Width of the Field XXIII The Depth of the Furrows XXIV And the End is Not Yet Appendix FOREWORD Once in awhile, maybe, twenty-five or thirty years ago, they used to pack you off during the holidays for a visit on Somebody's Farm. Have you forgotten? You went with your little round head close clipped till all the scar places showed white and you came back with a mat of sunbleached hair, your face and hands and legs brown as a nut. Probably you treasure recollections of those boyhood days when a raw field turnip, peeled with a "toad-stabber," was mighty good eatin'. You remember the cows and chickens, the horses, pigs and sheep, the old corn-crib where generally you could scare up a chipmunk, the gnarled old orchard--the Eastern rail-fenced farm of a hundred-acres-or-so. You remember Wilson's Emporium at the Corners where you went for the mail--the place where the overalled legs of the whole community drummed idly against the cracker boxes and where dried prunes, acquired with due caution, furnished the juvenile substitute for a chew of tobacco! Or perhaps you did not know even this much about country life--you of the Big Cities. To you, it may be, the Farmer has been little more than the caricatures of the theatres. You have seen him wearing blue jeans or a long linen duster in "The Old Homestead," wiping his eyes with a big red bandana from his hip pocket. You have seen him dance eccentric steps in wrinkled cowhide boots, his hands beneath flapping coat-tails, his chewing jaws constantly moving "the little bunch of spinach on his chin!" You have heard him fiddle away like two-sixty at "Pop Goes the Weasel!" You have grinned while he sang through his nose about the great big hat with the great big brim, "All Ba-ound Ra-ound With a Woolen String!" Yes, and you used to read about the Farmer, too--Will Carleton's farm ballads and legends; Riley's fine verses about the frost on the pumpkin and "Little Orphant Annie" and "Over the Hill to the Poorhouse!" And when Cousin Letty took you to the Harvest Home Supper and Grand Entertainment in the Town Hall you may have heard the village choir wail: "Oh, _Shall_ We Mortgage the Farm?" Perhaps even yet, now that you are man grown--business or professional man of the great cities--perhaps even yet, although you long have studied the market reports and faithfully have read the papers every day--perhaps that first impression of what a farmer was like still lingers in a more or less modified way. So that to you pretty much of an "Old Hayseed" he remains. Thus, while you have been busy with other things, the New Farmer has come striding along until he has "arrived in our midst" and to you he is a stranger. Remember the old shiny black mohair sofa and the wheezy, yellow-keyed melodeon or the little roller hand-organ that used to play "Old Hundred"? They have given place to new styles of furniture, upright pianos and cabinet gramophones. Coffin-handles and wax flowers are not framed in walnut and hung in the Farmer's front parlor any more; you will find the grotesque crayon portrait superseded by photo enlargements and the up-to-date kodak. The automobile has widened the circle of the Farmer's neighbors and friends, while the telephone has wiped distance from the map. In the modern farm kitchen hot and cold water gushes from bright nickel taps into a clean white enamel sink, thanks to the pneumatic water supply system. The house and other farm buildings are lighted by electricity and perhaps the little farm power plant manages to operate some machinery--to drive the washing machine, the cream separator, the churn and the fodder-cutter or tanning-mill. There is also a little blacksmith shop and a carpenter shop where repairs can be attended to without delay. True, all these desirable conveniences may not be possessed generally as yet; but the Farmer has seen them working on the model farmstead exhibited by the Government at the Big Fair or in the Farm Mechanics car of the Better Farming Special Trains that have toured the country, and he dreams about them. More scientific methods of agriculture have been adopted. The Farmer has learned what may be accomplished by crop rotations and new methods of cultivation. He has learned to analyze the soil and grow upon his land those crops for which it is best suited. If he keeps a dairy herd he tests each cow and knows exactly how her yield is progressing so that it is impossible for her to "beat her board bill." No longer is it even considered good form to chop the head off the old rooster; the Farmer sticks him scientifically, painlessly, instantaneously dressing him for market in the manner that commands the highest price. So with the butter, the eggs and all the rest of the farm products. Do you wonder that the great evolution of farming methods should lead to advanced thought upon the issues of the day? In the living room the Family Bible remains in its old place of honor, perhaps with the crocheted mat still doing duty; but it is not now almost the only book in the house. There is likely to be a sectional bookcase, filled with solid volumes on all manner of practical and economic subjects--these as well as the best literature, the latest magazines and two or three current newspapers. Yes, a whole flock of tin roosters have rusted away on top of the barn since the Farmer first began to consider himself the Rag Doll of Commerce and to seek adjustments. It is the privilege of rag dolls to survive a lot of abuse; long after wax has melted and sawdust run the faithful things are still on hand. And along about crop time the Farmer finds himself attracting a little attention. That is because this business of backbone farming is the backbone of Business In General. As long as money is circulating freely Business In General, being merely an exchange in values, wears a clean shirt and the latest cravat. But let some foreign substance clog the trade channels and at once everything tightens up and squeezes everybody. Day by day the great mass of the toilers in the cities go to work without attempting to understand the fluctuations of supply and demand. They are but cogs on the rim, dependent for their little revolutions upon the power which drives the machinery. That power being Money Value, any wastage must be replaced by the creation of new wealth. So men turn to the soil for salvation--to the greatest manufacturing concern in the world, Nature Unlimited. This is the plant of which the Farmer is General Manager. On state occasions, therefore, it has been the custom in the past to call him "the backbone of his country"--its "bone and sinew." Without him, as it were, the Commercial Fabric could not sit up in its High Chair and eat its bread and milk. Such fine speeches have been applauded loudly in the cities, too frequently without due thought--without it occurring to anyone, apparently, that perhaps the Farmer might prefer to be looked upon rather as an ordinary hard-working human being, entitled as such to "a square deal." But all these years times have been changing. Gradually Agriculture has been assuming its proper place in the scheme of things. It is recognized now that successful farming is a business--a profession, if you like--requiring lifelong study, foresight, common sense, close application; that it carries with it all the satisfaction of honest work well done, all the dignity of practical learning, all the comforts of modern invention, all the wider benefits of clean living and right thinking in God's sunny places. And with his increasing self-respect the New Farmer is learning to command his rights, not merely to ask and accept what crumbs may fall. He is learning that these are the days of Organization, of Co-Operation among units for the benefit of the Whole; that by pooling his resources he is able to reach the Common Objective with the least waste of effort. He has become a power in the land. These pages record a story of the Western Canadian farmer's upward struggle with market conditions--a story of the organized Grain Growers. No attempt is made to set forth the full details of the whole Farmer's Movement in Western Canada in all its ramifications; for the space limits of a single volume do not permit a task so ambitious. The writer has endeavored merely to gather an authentic record of the earlier activities of the Grain Growers' Associations in the three Prairie Provinces--why and how they came to be organized, with what the farmers had to contend and something of their remarkable achievements in co-operative marketing during the past decade. It is a tale of strife, limned by high lights and some shadows. It is a record worthy of preservation and one which otherwise would pass in some of its details with the fading memories of the pathfinders. If from these pages the reader is able to glean something of interest, something to broaden--be it ever so slightly--his understanding of the Western Canadian farmers' past viewpoint and present outlook, the undertaking will have found its justification and the long journeys and many interviews their reward. For, under the alchemy of the Great War, many things are changing and in the wonderful days of reconstruction that lie ahead the Farmer is destined to play an upstanding part in the new greatness of our country. Because of this it behooves the humblest citizen of us to seek better understanding, to meet half way the hand of fellowship which he extends for a new conception of national life. The writer is grateful to those farmers, grain men, government officials and others who have assisted him so kindly in gathering and verifying his material. Indebtedness is acknowledged also to sundry Dominion Government records, to the researches of Herbert N. Casson and to the press and various Provincial Departments of Agriculture for the use of their files. H.M. WINNIPEG, March 1st, 1918. DEEP FURROWS CHAPTER I THE MAN ON THE QU'APPELLE TRAIL Among the lonely lakes I go no more, For she who made their beauty is not there; The paleface rears his tepee on the shore And says the vale is fairest of the fair. Full many years have vanished since, but still The voyageurs beside the camp-fire tell How, when the moon-rise tips the distant hill, They hear strange voices through the silence swell. --_E. Pauline Johnson._ _The Legend of Qu'Appelle._ To the rimming skyline, and beyond, the wheatlands of Assiniboia[1] spread endlessly in the sunshine. It was early October in the year 1901--one of those clear bright days which contribute enchantment to that season of spun gold when harvest bounties are garnered on the Canadian prairies. Everywhere was the gleam of new yellow stubble. In serried ranks the wheat stocks stretched, dwindling to mere specks, merging as they lost identity in distance. Here and there stripes of plowed land elongated, the rich black freshly turned earth in sharp contrast to the prevailing gold, while in a tremendous deep blue arch overhead an unclouded sky swept to cup the circumference of vision. Many miles away, yet amazingly distinct in the rarefied air, the smoke of threshers hung in funnelled smudges above the horizon--like the black smoke of steamers, hull down, at sea. On this particular autumn afternoon a certain black dot might have been observed, so lost in the immensity of landscape that it appeared to be stationary. It was well out upon the trail that wound northward from Indian Head into the country of the Fishing Lakes--the trail that forked also eastward to dip through the valley of the Qu'Appelle at Blackwood before striking north and east across the Kenlis plain towards the Pheasant Hills. In reality the well kept team which drew the big grain wagon was swinging steadily ahead at a smart pace; for their load of supplies, the heaviest item of which was a new plow, was comparatively light, they were homeward bound and the going in the earlier stages of the long journey was smooth. The driver sat hunched in his seat, reins sagging. He was a man of powerful physique, his skin deep coppered by long exposure to prairie winds and sun. In repose the face that was shadowed by the wide felt hat would have appeared somewhat deceptive in its placidity owing to the fact that the strong jaw and firm mouth were partly hidden by a heavy moustache and a thick, black beard, trimmed short. Just now it was evident that the big farmer's mood was far from pleasant. Forearm on knee, he had surrendered completely to his thoughts. His fists clenched spasmodically and there was an angry glint in his eyes. Occasionally he shook his head as if the matter in mind were almost too hopeless for consideration. A sudden surge of resentment made him lash his booted leg with the ends of the lines. "Confound them!" he muttered aloud. He had just delivered his first load of the season's new wheat. Three nights before, by lantern light, he had backed his horses to the wagon and hauled it twenty-five miles to the railway at Indian Head. His stay there had not been conducive to peace of mind. To reach the rails with a heavy load in favorable weather was simple enough; it merely required time. But many such trips would be necessary before his crop was marketed. Some of the farmers from beyond the Qu'Appelle would be hauling all winter; it was in winter that the haul was long and cruel. Starting at one, two or three o'clock in the morning, it would be impossible to forecast the weather with any degree of accuracy, so that often they would be overtaken by blizzards. At such times the lack of stopping-places and shelter in the sparsely settled reaches of the trail encompassed the journey with risks every whit as real as pioneer perils of marauding Indians or trailing wolf-packs. Snow and wind, however, had no place in the thoughts of the lonely farmer at the moment. Such things he had been used to ever since he first homesteaded; this long haul with the products of his toil he had been making for many years. What immediately concerned him was the discouraging prospect of another wheat blockade instead of any improvement in conditions which had become unbearable. With the country as full of wheat as it was this year it required no great gift of prophecy to foretell what would happen. It was happening already. The railway people were ignoring completely the car-distribution clauses of the Grain Act and thereby playing in with the elevator interests, so that the farmers were going to be just where they were before--at the mercy of the buyers, their legitimate profits filched by excessive dockage, low grades, depressed prices, exorbitant storage charges, even short weights in some cases. All this in spite of the strong agitation which had led to Government action, in spite of the Royal Commission which had investigated the farmers' claims and had recommended the Grain Act, in spite of the legislation on the statutes! Law or no law, the farmer was still to be preyed upon, apparently, without a single weapon left with which---- The eyes of the man in the broad-brimmed hat grew grave. Scoff as he might among the men of the district when the serious ones voiced their fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering indignation was glowing like a streak of fire in the prairie grass; a spark or two more and nothing could stop the conflagration that would sweep the plains country. If the law were to fail these red-blooded and long-suffering homesteaders there would be final weapons alright--real weapons! It was no use shutting one's eyes to the danger. Some fool would do something rash, and with the farmers already inflamed and embittered, there was no telling what desperate things might be attempted. That was the fear which stirred and perplexed the solitary traveller; for he had heard things that afternoon--seen things that he did not like but could not ignore. He recognized an undercurrent of feeling, a silence more ominous than all the heated talk, and that was where the danger lay. Something would have to be done, and that soon. But what? What? So engrossed was he that beyond an occasional flip of the reins or a word to the horses he paid no heed to his surroundings. A huge jack-rabbit sprang up, almost from beneath the noses of the team, and went flying off in great leaps over the stubble. A covey of prairie chicken, fat and fit, whirred into the air and rocketed away. But he scarcely saw them. Had he looked up he might have noticed a horseman loping down a cross trail with the evident intention of heading off the wagon. But the rider had pounded almost within hailing distance before the other was aware of his approach. It was Bob McNair of the "Two-Bar Ranch," as he insisted upon calling his wheat farm. He waved an oil-spattered Stetson and came into the trail with a rush, pulling up the wiry broncho with a suddenness that would have unseated one less accustomed than McNair, former corporal, Royal North-West Mounted Police. "Howdy, W. R. Thought 'twas your outfit. Good job I aint a Blackfoot on the warpath," he laughed. "I'd sure 'a' had your scalp sneaked before you could draw a bead!" He swung alongside, stepped into the wagon, looped the bridle-rein over the handle of the new plow and, climbing forward, shook hands heartily and sat down. "You're looking fit, Bob," welcomed the other with evident pleasure. "What brings you over this way? Everything going alright?" "So-so," nodded McNair. "Been over Sintaluta to see about gettin' a car, among other things." "Of course you got it?" "Sure! Oh, sure I got it--got it still to get!" and McNair burst into a flow of language that did even him justice. More or less vehement at all times, the one-time corporal exhibited so much vigor in his remarks that his good-natured auditor had to laugh. "I ain't tryin' to be funny!" finished McNair. "I mean every dashed word of it, Motherwell. If I don't get some of it out o' my system I'll bust to bits, that's what. Say, I met Sibbold. He told me some of you fellows was meetin' over at the Head to-day. What about it?" "Why, yes, Johnny Millar got a few of us together to talk things over. Lot of talk alright. Some of the boys were feeling pretty hot, I can tell you! But I can't see that anything came of it except some resolutions--the usual sort, you know." "Pshaw! I was hopin' it meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' alone, either!" he added grimly. W. R. Motherwell[2] glanced sharply at the tense face. "Don't talk nonsense!" he reproved quietly. "I ain't talkin' nonsense. Not on your life! If I am, then I reckon I know a hundred or so hard-headed farmers who're doin' the identical same. An' if I know that many in my territory, W. R., how many d'you suppose there are if we take in Manitoba and clean through to the mountains?" "Then all I've got to say is: there are more and bigger fools in the country than I had any idea of." "What d'you mean, talkin' like that?" "That's just what I've got to say to you, McNair," retorted the big farmer with heat. "What do _you_ mean, talking like that? If you're serious in what you say----" "I said I was, didn't I?" snapped the other. "Then you ought to be tied up on the Two-Bar and muzzled, for you're plumb mad, McNair! It's just that kind of firebrand talk that's hurting our cause. The farmers have got enough enemies now, God knows, without making a lot of new ones. Doggone your hide, Mac, what're you trying to do?--Stir up another rebellion like that of '85?" "If it's necessary--you bet I am!" he brazened. "You, of all men!" "An' why not me? Just because I've worn the Queen's uniform, eh? Well, let me tell you, sir, I belonged to a body of men who stood for British justice an' a square deal to even the meanest Injun in the Territories." The ex-mounted policeman spoke with pride. "We'd never have handled the beggars if it hadn't been for that. Even the Injuns were men enough to recognize justice, an' that's more'n these commercial blood-suckers to-day can do! If our case was in the hands of the Force it'd rest on its merits an' us grain growers'd get justice. Instead, where is it?--in the hands of a pussy-footed, hifalutin' bunch o' political windbags in the East who don't care a damn about us hayseeds out West! An' what's more----" "The Royal Mounted stood for law and order, Bob; but you'd class yourself with the half-breeds, would you? Have another little rebellion like that of '85 with all the----" "Not like '85," interrupted the rancher. "No, sir, this one'll be bloodless; but it'll knock the spots off the 'breeds' little shindig all the samee!" "You spoke of rifles, McNair. Guns go off," interpolated the other sententiously. "What'n the mischief do you expect to gain by that sort of thing?" "A hearing, by Jingo! That's more'n all your letters to the papers an' your meetin's an' resolutions have got us. We'll show 'em we mean business----" "Rot! How did we get the Royal Commission except by those letters and meetings? That put the Manitoba Grain Act on the statutes, didn't it? Mean to say we're no farther ahead? We've got the whole grain trade under control and supervision----" "Like ducks you have!" The former rancher threw back his head and laughed. "We've got the privilege of loading our wheat direct on cars through the flat warehouses or any other way we like----" "What's the good o' that if a man can't get a car when he wants it?" demanded McNair impatiently. "The elevator gang 've organized to grab everything in sight. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it, by heaven! So what's the use o' talkin'?" "We've got to be fair, though. The elevator people have put a lot of money--Say, why can't we organize, too?" suggested Motherwell with a flash of inspiration. "We haven't tried that yet. That's constitutional. That's what the livestock breeders have done," he said eagerly. McNair shook his head. "I tell you, Bill, it's too late for that sort o' thing," he objected. "Unless you mean organizin' to fight--" "Exactly." "With guns, if necessary?" "It won't be necessary." "Possibly not to shoot anybody. The showin' mebbe'll turn the trick. Now, look here. My idea is that if a bunch of us fellows got together on the quiet some night an' seized a few elevators--Say, wouldn't it bring things to a head so quick we'd get action? The law's there, but these fellows are deliberately breakin' it an' we got to show 'em----" "The action you'd get would be the wrong kind, Mac," protested W. R. Motherwell emphatically. "You'd land in jail!" "Don't see it that way," persisted McNair. "Wouldn't give a continental if I did so long's it woke a few people up." "I tell you you're on the wrong trail unless you want to get it where the chicken got the axe!" "Doggone it, man! Ain't that where we're gettin' it _now_?" "Whereas with the right kind of organization----" "Don't believe it," grunted McNair, starting to climb back to his horse. "The time for any more o' these here granny tea-parties is past to my way o' thinkin' an' if we can't agree on it, we'd better shut up before we get mad." He vaulted easily into the saddle. "But I'll tell you one thing, W. R.--there's the sweetest little flare-up you ever saw on its way. I was talkin' the other day to Ed. Partridge, the Railton boys, Al. Quigley, Billy Bonner and some more----" "And I'll bet they gave you a lot of sound advice, Mac!" laughed Motherwell confidently. "That's alright," resented McNair, the tan of his cheek deepening a trifle. "They're a pretty sore bunch an' a fellow from down Turtle Mountain way in Manitoba told me----" "That the mud-turtle and the jack-rabbit finally agreed that slow and steady----" "Bah! You're sure hopeless," grinned the owner of the Two-Bar, giving his horse the rein. "Hope_ful_," corrected W. R. Motherwell with a laugh. "Tell Wilson, if you see him, that Peter Dayman and I are expecting him over next week, will you? And I say, Mac, don't kill too many before you get home!" he called in final jocularity. The flying horseman waved his hat and his "S'long" came back faintly. The other watched till horse and rider lost themselves among the distant wheat stocks. The twinkle died out of his eyes as he watched. So McNair was another of them, eh? After all, that was only to be expected of an old Indian fighter and cow-puncher like him. Poor Bob! He had his reputation to sustain among the newcomers--hard rider, hard fighter, hard drinker; to do it under the changed conditions naturally required some hard talking on occasion. While Mac had become civilized enough to keep one foot in a cowhide boot planted in the practical present, the other foot was still moccasined and loath to forget the days of war-paint and whiskey-traders, feathers and fears. Over the crudities and hardships, the dirt and poverty, the years between had hung a kindly curtain of glamor; so that McNair with his big soft kerchiefs, his ranger's hat, his cow-puncher's saddle and trappings and his "Two-Bar" brand was a figure to crane an Eastern neck. Likeable enough chap--too much of a man to be treated as a joke to his face, but by no means to be taken seriously--not on most occasions. In the present instance, with feeling running as high as it was in some quarters, that crazy idea of seizing a few elevators at the point of a gun--! What in heaven's name would they do with them after they got them? Nevertheless, McNair might find rattle-brained listeners enough to cause a heap of trouble. There were always a few fellows ready for excitement; they might go in for the fun of it, then before they knew it the thing would curdle over night like a pan of milk in a thunder-storm. "He's just darn fool enough to try some funny work," muttered the anxious driver of the grain wagon. "Jailing him only makes a hero of him and that's the kind of thing the beggar glories in. The son-of-a-gun!" One by one throughout the afternoon the miles crept tediously beneath the wagon. The sun which had steeped the stubble in gold all day had turned the sky and was poising for its nightly dip below the horizon by the time the long misty blue line of the Qu'Appelle hills began to creep from the prairie. When the lone traveller at last could count the deep shadowy coulees the sun had disappeared, but the riot of after-fires still burned brightly in the west. He had passed his own place hours before, but had stopped there only for a change of horses and a brief rest; a parcel and an important message which he wished to deliver in person at Fort Qu'Appelle without delay was extending his day's journey. Six hundred feet below the level of the plain the grassy slopes of the Qu'Appelle Valley bowled to the blue lakes. Hugging the water's edge, the buildings of the romantic old fort scattered in the twilight. The winding trail stood out like a white thread that reached down the valley towards the Catholic Mission of Lebret. Before heading into the steep descent the farmer from over Abernethy way slipped on his heavy cardigan jacket; for behind the rim of the hills the sunset fires were dying and already the coolness of the October night was making itself felt. At the mouth of a coulee he spoke to a solitary Indian, standing motionless before a camp fire. The appetizing odor of roasting wild fowl reminded him that he was more than ready for the "bite to eat" which he would enjoy with the good Father Hugonard at the Indian Mission--he of the dark, gentle eyes, the quick understanding, the quiet tones. There would be much to talk about. So it proved. The hour was growing late when finally he bade good-bye to his pleasant host and resumed his journey in the starlight, refreshed and encouraged. For here in the seclusion of this peaceful valley, since the days of the great buffalo herds, Father Hugonard had ministered to the Indians, starved with them, worked patiently with them through many seasons of flowers and snows. Nevertheless, out of many discouragements and privations had this sterling man retained an abiding faith in the triumph of righteousness in all things. In the quiet beauty of the wonderful October night was little place for the anxious thoughts of the day. Bitterness of spirit, the bickerings of men, commercial Oppression and injustice--these were things far removed from the planets of the Ages that sparkled like jewels in the vault of Night. A vagrant breeze whispered in the valley sedges to the placid lake. High in the air, invisible, migrating _wavies_ winged into the south, the distant gabble of their passing falling weirdly earthward. The trail began to ascend sharply. Off to the right the sky was growing rapidly lighter behind a distant hill and presently a lop of yellow moon crept slowly over the edge and rose into the air like a broken chalice, chasing the shadows to their retreats. As he watched it the driver of the grain wagon recalled again the old Indian legend that haunted this valley and had given it its name--how, long ago, a young Indian chieftain was paddling his canoe through these waters on his way to win a bride when suddenly above "the night wind's melancholy song" he heard a voice calling him through the twilight. "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" he answered in French. "Who calls?" But only his own voice came back in echoes while the gloom of night deepened and a wan moon rose silently behind the distant hill. Then when he reached the Indian encampment it was only to see the death fires lighted on the shore, to hear the wail of women and to learn that just before her lips had closed forever, his beloved had called for him--just at the moon-rise. Thus, ever since, the Indians claimed, strange spirit voices spoke through the lone valley at every rising of the moon. Thrilled by the beauty of the valley scene, misty in the moonlight, the big farmer half unconsciously drew rein and listened. All he could hear at first was the impatient stamp of his horses' feet, the mouthing of the bits as the animals tossed their heads restlessly, the clink of the trace-chains; but presently he sensed a subdued undertone of night noises that wafted mysteriously over the silver water. It was nothing that could be recognized definitely; rather was it an impression of strangely merged minor sounds that grew upon him as imagination was given play under the influence of time and place. It was easy to supply interpretations of that faint medley, even while one knew that it was merely the murmur of night airs in the dry grasses, the whisper of the water-edges, the stirring of restless water-fowl in the dying reeds. The man who had ridden all day with his thoughts began unconsciously to apply other meanings to the sound, to people the night with dim faces and shapes that came trooping over the edge of the tablelands above--toil-bent figures of old pioneer farmers, care-worn faces of women and bright eager faces of little children who were holding out their hands trustfully to the future. There seemed to be a never-ending procession--faces that were apathetic from repeated disappointments, faces that scowled threateningly, brave faces tense with determination and sad faces on which was written the story of struggle hidden within many a lonely wind-buffeted shack on the great bosom of the prairie. Was it, then, that all the years of toil and hardship were to come to naught for this great company of honest workers, these brave pioneer men and women of the soil? Was all their striving forward to find them merely marking time, shouldered into the backwater while the currents of organized commercialism swept away their opportunities? Were not these producers of the world's bread themselves to partake of the fruits of their labor? Yes! Surely the answer was _Yes_! It was their Right. Wrong could not endure forever in the face of Right; else were the world a poor place, Life itself a failure, the mystic beauty of God's calm night a mockery. The man from Abernethy roused himself. It would be nearly dawn before his team would reach their home stalls. He whistled to the horses and they plunged into the black shadows of the coulee up which the trail rose in steep ascent from the valley. When they emerged into the moonlight he drew rein for a moment. Somewhere back in a forgotten arroyo a coyote yapped lonesomely. Around through the night were flung the distant glow-dots of the burning straw piles, and as he filled his lungs with the fresh sweet air the hope of better days warmed the heart of the belated traveller. The Hand which set the orbits of the universe created the laws of Truth and Justice and these never could be gainsaid. Everything would come out aright if only men were steadfast in faith and duty. He gave the horses their heads and they were off once more through the cool night upon the wheatland sea that was bounded only by far purple shadows. [1] The provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, Western Canada, were not created until 1906. Prior to that the entire country west of the Province of Manitoba was known as the North-West Territories, of which the District of Assiniboia was a part, the part which subsequently formed the southern portion of the Province of Saskatchewan. [2] Hon. W. R. Motherwell, Minister of Agriculture, Province of Saskatchewan. CHAPTER II A CALL TO ARMS And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth.--_Isaiah_ 10:14. For five thousand years Man has grown wheat for food. Archaeologists have found it buried with the mummies of Egypt; the pictured stones of the Pyramids record it. But it was the food of princes, not of peasants--of the aristocracy, not of the people; for no man could harvest enough of it with his sickle to create a supply which would place it within the reach of the poor. While century after century[1] has passed since wheat was first recognized as the premier nourishment for the human body, it is only of recent times that it has become the food of the nations. The swift development of grain growing into the world's greatest industry goes back for a small beginning to 1831. It was in that year that a young American-born farm boy of Irish-Scotch extraction was jeered and laughed at as he attempted to cut wheat with the first crude reaper; but out of Cyrus Hall McCormick's invention soon grew the wonderful harvesting machinery which made possible the production of wheat for export. Close on heel the railways and water-carriers began competing for the transportation of the grain, the railways pushing eagerly in every direction where new wheat lands could be tapped. In 1856 wheat was leaving Chicago for Europe and four years later grain vessels from California were rounding Cape Horn. The nine years that followed saw the conquest of the vast prairies of the American West which were crossed by the hissing, iron monsters that stampeded the frightened bison, out-ran the wild horses and out-stayed the lurking Indian. No sooner had the railways pushed back the frontier than wheat began to trickle steadily upon the market, to flow with increased volume, then to pour in by train-loads. Sacks were discarded for quicker shipment in bulk; barns and warehouses filled and spilled till adequate storage facilities became the vital problem and, the need mothering invention, F. H. Peavey came forward with an idea--an endless chain of metal cups for elevating grain. From this the huge modern elevator evolved to take its place as the grain's own particular storehouse. With the establishment of exchanges for conducting international buying and selling the universalizing of wheat was complete. These things had come to pass while that great region which is now Western Canada was still known as a Great Lone Land. Pioneer settlers, however, were beginning to venture westward to the newly organized Province of Manitoba and beyond. The nearest railroad was at St. Paul, Minnesota, from which point a "prairie schooner" trail led north for 450 miles to Winnipeg at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers; the alternative to this overland tented-wagon route was a tedious trip by Red River steamer. It was not until 1878 that a railway was built north into Manitoba from St. Paul; but it was followed shortly after by the projection of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which reached Vancouver in 1886. Then began what has been called the greatest wheat-rush ever known. Land, land without end, to be had for the asking--rich land that would grow wheat, forty bushels to the acre, millions of acres of it! Fabulous tales, winging east and south, brought settlers pouring into the new country. They came to grow wheat and they grew it, the finest wheat in the world. They grew it in ever increasing volume. Successful operation of new railroads--even ordinary railroads--is not all glistening varnish and bright new signal flags. The Canadian Pacific was no ordinary railway. It was a young giant, reaching for the western skyline with temerity, and it knew Trouble as it knew sun and wind and snow. The very grain which was its life-blood gorged the embryo system till it choked. The few elevators and other facilities provided could not begin to handle the crop, even of 1887, the heavy yield upsetting all calculations. The season for harvesting and marketing being necessarily short, the railroad became the focus of a sudden belch of wheat; it required to be rushed to the head of the lakes in a race with the advancing cold which threatened to congeal the harbor waters about the anxiously waiting grain boats before they could clear. With every wheel turning night and day no ordinary rolling stock could cope with the demands; for the grain was coming in over the trails to the shipping points faster than it could be hauled out and the railroad was in a fix for storage accommodation. It was easy to see that such seasonal rushes would be a permanent condition in Western Canada, vital but unavoidable; so the Canadian Pacific Railway Company cast about for alleviations. They hit upon the plan of increasing storage facilities rapidly by announcing that the Company would make special concessions to anyone who would build elevators along the line with a capacity of not less than 26,000 bushels and equipped with cleaning machinery, steam or gasoline power--in short, "standard" elevators. The special inducement offered was nothing more nor less than an agreement that at points where such elevators were erected the railway company would not allow cars to be loaded with grain through flat warehouses, direct from farmers' vehicles or in any other way than through such elevators; the only "condition" was that the elevator owners would furnish storage and shipping facilities, of course, for those wishing to store or ship grain. At once the noise of hammer and saw resounded along the right-of-way. Persons and corporations whose business it was to mill grain, to buy and export it, were quick to take advantage of the opportunity; for the protection offered by the railway meant that here was shipping control of the grain handed out on a silver platter, garnished with all the delectable prospects of satisfying the keenest money hunger. On all sides protests arose from the few owners of ordinary warehouses who found their buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside--from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines--lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the sky in increasing clusters. To operate a standard elevator at a country point with profit it was considered necessary in the early days to fill it three times in a season unless the owner proposed to deal in grain himself and make a buyer's profit in addition to handling grain for others. The cost of building and operating the class of elevator demanded by the railway company was partly responsible for this. Before long the number of elevators in Manitoba and the North-West Territories increased till it was impossible for all of them to obtain the three fillings per season even had their owners been inclined to perform merely a handling service. But those who had taken up the railway's offer with such avidity and had invested large sums of shareholders' capital in building the elevator accommodation were mostly shrewd grain dealers whose primary object was to buy and sell. These interested corporations were not constructing elevators in order to admire their silhouettes against the beautiful prairie sunsets! In every corner of the earth the Dollar Almighty, or its equivalent, was being stalked by all sorts and conditions of men, some of whom chased it noisily and openly while others hunted with their boots in one hand. Properly enough, the grain men were out for all that their investment could earn and for all the wheat which they could buy at one price and sell at another. That was their business, just as it was the business of the railway company to transport the grain at a freight rate which would net a profit, just as it was the farmer's business-- But to the farmer it seemed that he had no business! He merely grew the grain. Apparently a farmer was a pair of pants, a shirt and a slouch hat that sat on a wagon-load of wheat, drove it up the incline into the elevator and rattled away again for another load! To farm was an occupation easily parsed--subjunctive mood, past tense, passive voice! The farmer was third person, singular! He came and went in single file like an Indian or a Chinaman--John Doe, Yon Yonson and Johann X (his mark)--every kind of Johnny on no spot but his own! As soon as his grain was dumped each of him went back to the land among the dumb animals where the pomp and vanity of this wicked world would not interfere with preparations for next year's crop! Wheat was bought upon the grading system--so much per bushel for this grade, so much for that, according to the fluctuations of supply and demand upon the world's markets. But the average farmer at that time knew little or nothing about what went on in the great exchanges of the cities; there was no means of learning the intricacies of the grain business and many farmers even did not know what a grain exchange was. All such a man knew was that his wheat was graded and he received a certain price for it. The railway company's refusal to furnish cars for loading direct from the farmer's wagon compelled the shipper to sell to the elevator operator for whatever price he could get, accepting whatever weights the operator allowed and whatever "dockage" he chose to decree. The latter represented that portion of the farmer's delivery which was supposed to come through the cleaning sieves as waste material such as dirt, weed seeds, broken wheat kernels, etc. To determine the percentage of dockage in any given load of wheat the ordinary human being would require to weigh and clean a pound of it at least; but so expert were many of the elevator operators of those days that they had no trouble at all in arriving at the dockage by a single glance. Nor were they disconcerted by the fact that the country was new and grain frequently came from the thresher in a remarkably clean condition. With everything thus fallow for seeds of discord the Big Trouble was not long in making itself manifest. All over the country the Bumping of the Bumpkins apparently became the favorite pastime of elevator men. Certain persons with most of their calluses on the inside cracked the whip and the three-ring circus began. Excessive dockage, short weights, depressed prices! The farmers grew more and more bitter as time passed. To begin with, they resented being compelled by the railway to deal with the elevators; it was a violation of that liberty which they had a right to enjoy as British citizens. The grain was theirs to sell where they liked, and when on top of the refusal to let them do it came this bleeding of their crops, their indignation was fanned to white heat. It was useless for the farmers to build elevators of their own; for these had to conform to the requirements of the railway and, as already stated, it was impossible to run them profitably without making a buyer's profit in addition to the commission for handling and storage. The farmers were not buyers but sellers of grain and with very few exceptions, where conditions were specially favorable, the farmers' elevators that were attempted were soon in difficulties. Leading farmers began to write strong letters to the newspapers and it was not long before the agitation became so widespread that it reached the floor of Parliament. Mr. James M. Douglas, member for East Assiniboia, during two successive sessions introduced Bills to regulate the shipping and transportation of grain in Manitoba and the North-West Territories and these were discussed in the House of Commons. A Special Committee of the House was appointed finally to investigate the merits of the case and as considerable difference of opinion was expressed as to the actual facts, the appointment of a Royal Commission to make a full and impartial investigation of the whole subject in the public interest was recommended. This Royal Commission accordingly was appointed on October 7th, 1899, and consisted of three Manitoba farmers--W. F. Sirett, of Glendale; William Lothian, of Pipestone, and Charles C. Castle, of Foxton--with His Honor E. J. Senkler, of St. Catharines, Ontario, as Chairman; Charles N. Bell, of Winnipeg, acted as Secretary. Owing to the illness and death of Judge Senkler, Albert Elswood Richards (afterwards the late Hon. Mr. Justice Richards, of Winnipeg), succeeded as Chairman in February, 1900. Sittings were held at many places throughout Manitoba and the North-West Territories and much evidence was taken as to the grievances complained of, these being mainly: (1) That vendors of grain were being subjected to unfair and excessive dockage at the time of sale; (2) That doubt existed as to the fairness of the weights allowed or used by owners of elevators; (3) That the owners of elevators enjoyed a monopoly in the purchase of grain by refusing to permit the erection of flat warehouses where standard elevators were situated and were thus able to keep prices of grain below true value to their own benefit and the disadvantage of the public generally as well as others who were specially interested in the grain trade. Meanwhile the railway companies had hastened to announce that they would furnish cars to farmers who wished to ship direct and do their own loading. This concession, made in 1898-9, resulted in somewhat better prices and better treatment from the elevator operators. But farmers who lived more than four or five miles from the shipping points could not draw in their grain fast enough to load a car within the time allowed by the railway; so that the situation, so far as these farmers were concerned, remained practically unchanged. In March, 1900, the Royal Commission made a complete report. They had done their work thoroughly. They found that so long as any farmer was hampered in shipping to terminal markets himself he would be more or less at the mercy of elevator operators and that the only proper relief from the possibility of undue dockage and price depression was to be found in the utmost freedom of shipping and selling. To this end they considered that the railroads should be compelled by law to furnish farmers with cars for shipping their own grain and that flat warehouses should be allowed so that the farmer could have a bin in which to accumulate a carload of grain, if he so wished. This, the commissioners thought, should be the farmer's legal right rather than his privilege. Loading platforms for the free use of shippers were also recommended. It was the further opinion of the Commission that the law should compel elevator and warehouse owners to guarantee the grades and weights of a farmer's grain and to do this the adoption of a uniform grain ticket system was suggested. At the same time, the commissioners pointed out, these guarantees might lead to such careful grading and docking by the elevator operator as might appear to the farmer to be undergrading or overdocking; so that the farmer's right to load direct on cars was a necessary supplementary protection. The annual shortage of cars during the rush season following harvest was found to be a direct cause of depression in prices. When cars were not available for immediate shipments the grain soon piled up on the elevator companies who were thereby forced to miss the cheaper transportation by boat from the head of the lakes or assume the risk of carrying over the grain until the following spring; in buying, therefore, they naturally allowed a wide margin to cover all possible contingencies. Increase of transportation facilities during October and November accordingly was imperative. With no rules to regulate the grain trade except those laid down by the railways and the elevator owners, the need was great for definite legislation similar to that which obtained in the State of Minnesota and, as a result of the Royal Commission's recommendations, the Manitoba Grain Act was placed upon the statutes and became operative in 1900. To supervise the carrying out of the law in connection with the grain trade a Warehouse Commissioner was appointed, Mr. C. C. Castle who acted on the Royal Commission being selected for this responsible office. A sigh of relief went up from many intelligent farmers who had begun to worry over the conditions developing; for they looked upon the Manitoba Grain Act as a sort of Magna Charta. With the grain trade under official control and supervision along the lines laid down by the Royal Commission, they felt that everything would be alright now. It was like calling in a policeman to investigate suspicious noises in the house; like welcoming the doctor's arrival upon an occasion of sudden and severe illness. Unfortunately, the patient's alarming symptoms sometimes continue; sometimes the thief makes a clean get-away; King John had no sooner left Runnymede than he proceeded to ignore the Great Charter and plan new and heavier scutages upon the people! Up till now the elevator owners had been operating with nothing more definite than a fellowship of interests to hold them together; but upon appearance of the Grain Act they proceeded to organize the North West Elevator Association, afterwards called the North West Grain Dealers' Association. By agreeing on the prices which they would pay for wheat out in the country and by pooling receipts the members of such an organization, the farmers suspected, would be in a position to strangle competition in buying. The new Act was aiming point blank at these very things by affording the farmer an opportunity of loading his grain direct into cars through flat warehouses, if he chose, and shipping where he liked. But because many farmers did not know with just what the new weapon was loaded or how to pull the trigger, the railways and elevators merely stepped up and smilingly brushed the whole thing aside as something which were better hanging on a high peg out of harm's way. The crop of 1900 being comparatively light, the ignoring of the car-distribution clauses of the Act did not obtrude as brazenly as it did the year following. But when grain began to pour in to the shipping points in 1901 and the farmers found the railway unheeding their requests for cars their disgust and disappointment were as complete as their anger was swift. It was the rankling disappointment of men whose rights have been officially decreed only to be unofficially annulled; it was the hot anger of a slap in the face--the anger that makes men fight with every ounce of their strength. The quick welling of it planted anxiety in the minds of such level-headed farmers as W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman, of Abernethy; Williams, of Balcarres; Snow, of Wolseley; Sibbold and Millar, of Indian Head. While the two latter were riding into town with wheat one day John Sibbold suggested to John Millar that, as secretary of the local Agricultural Society, it might be a good thing if he called a meeting to talk things over. It was the high state of feeling manifested at this meeting which furnished W. R. Motherwell with food for thought on the lonely Qu'Appelle trail. And it was the idea that it might be advisable to hold similar mass meetings throughout the country that brought Peter Dayman driving over to the Motherwell place, not long after, to discuss it. These two men had been friends and neighbors since 1883. Each of them felt that the time had come for definite action of some kind and they spent the greater part of the day in talking over the situation in search of the most practical plan of campaign. There was little use in the farmers attempting to organize in defence of their own interests unless the effort were absolutely united and along broader lines than those of any previous farmers' organization. Politics, they both agreed, would have to be kept out of the movement at all costs or it would land on the rocks of defeat in the same way that the Farmers' Union and Patrons of Industry had been wrecked. It was in the middle eighties when the West was settled but sparsely that the farmers had attempted to improve their lot by the formation of "Farmers' Unions." The movement had had a brief and not very brilliant career and as the offspring of this attempt at organization some progressives with headquarters at Brandon, Manitoba, had tried to enter the grain trade as an open company. When one of the chief officers of this concern defected in an attempt to get rich the failure dragged down the earnest promoters to deep financial losses. Again in the early nineties the farmers had rebelled at their pioneer hardships by organizing the "Patrons of Industry," a movement which had gained strength and for a while looked healthy. It had got strong enough to elect friends to the Legislature and was sowing good seed when again temptation appeared, centred in the lure of commercial success and politics. Some of the chief officers began to misuse the organization for selfish ends and away went the whole thing. There was no use in repeating these defeats. Couldn't some way be devised of sidestepping such pitfalls? The great weakness of the farmers was their individual independence; if they could be taught to stand together for their common interests there was hope that something might be accomplished. The sitting-room clock ticked away the hours unheeded as these two far-sighted and conscientious farmers lost themselves in earnest discussion. The lamps were lighted, but still they planned. Finally W. R. Motherwell reached across the table for a pad of note-paper and drafted the call to arms--a letter which summoned the men of Wolseley, Sintaluta and Indian Head, of Qu'Appelle, Wideawake and other places to gather for _action_. There and then copies were written out for every leading farmer within reach, and in order that no political significance might be attached to the call, both men signed the letters. When Peter Dayman drove away from the Motherwell place that night perhaps he scarcely realized that he carried in his pocket the fate of the farmers of Western Canada. Neither he, W. R. Motherwell, nor any other man could have foretold the bitter struggles which those letters were destined to unleash--the stirring events that were impending. [1] Wheat was first grown in Canada in 1606 at Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, where Champlain and Pourtincourt built a fort and established a small colony. A plot of ground was made ready and wheat planted. "It grew under the snow," said Pourtincourt, "and in the following midsummer it was harvested." CHAPTER III THE FIRST SHOT IS FIRED Let us have faith that Right makes Might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.--_Abraham Lincoln_. The eighteenth of December, 1901, was a memorable day in the little prairie town of Indian Head. Strangers from East and West had begun to arrive the night before and early in the day the accommodations were taxed to the limit while the livery stables were overflowing with the teams of farmers from every direction. All forenoon the trails were dotted with incoming sleighs and the groups which began to congregate on Main Street grew rapidly in size and number. The shop-keepers had stayed up half the night to put the final touches to their holiday decorations and make their final preparations for the promised rush of Christmas buying. Many prominent men would grace the town with their presence before nightfall. The Premier of the North-West Territories, Hon. F. W. G. Haultain, would be on hand, as well as Hon. G. H. V. Bulyea and Senator William D. Perley; coming to meet them here would be Premier R. P. Roblin and other gentlemen of Manitoba. Certain boundary matters, involving the addition of a part of Assiniboia to the Province of Manitoba, were to be discussed at a public meeting in the Town Hall at night. Messrs. Motherwell and Dayman had chosen their date well, many farmers having planned already to be at Indian Head on the 18th. The grain growers' meeting was announced for the afternoon and so keen was the interest that when order was called the chairman faced between sixty and seventy-five farmers, as well as a number of public men, instead of the dozen-or-so whom W. R. Motherwell had ventured to expect. Although it was December out of doors, the temperature of that meeting was about one hundred in the shade! As the discussion expanded feeling ran high. Farmer after farmer got to his feet and told the facts as he knew them, his own personal experiences and those of his neighbors. There was no denying the evidence that it was full time the farmers bestirred themselves. W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman spoke earnestly in favor of immediate organization along strong, sane lines. The farmer was always referred to as the most independent man on earth, and so he was; but it was individual independence only. He had come lumbering into the country behind his own oxen with his family and all his worldly goods in his own wagon; had built a roof over their heads with his own hands. Alone on the prairie, he had sweated and wrestled with the problem of getting enough to eat. One of the very first things the pioneer learned was to stand on his own two feet--to do things by himself. His isolation, the obstacles he had overcome by his own planning, the hardships he had endured and survived--these were the excuses for his assertiveness, his individualism, his hostility to the restrictions of organization. He was a horse for work; but it was an effort for him to do team work because he was not used to it. This was the big barrier which would have to be surmounted in the beginning if battle were to be waged successfully against present oppressive conditions. The right kind of organization was the key that would unlock a happier future. The farmer was as much a producer as any manufacturer who made finished articles out of raw material; but his was the only business in which full energies were expended upon production of goods to sell while the marketing end was left for the "other fellow" to organize. That was why he was obliged to do as he was told, take what was given him or haul his wheat home and eat it himself. Like all such meetings, it was not without its few pails of cold water. These were emptied by some who hinted dark things about "political reasons," and it was easy to make the trite statement that history repeats itself and to predict that the formation of such a farmers' association as was proposed would be riding only for the same fall which had overtaken former attempts. The enthusiasm refused to be dampened and it broke out in unmistakable accents when without waste of words Angus McKay nominated W. R. Motherwell as provisional President of the "Territorial Grain Growers' Association." John Millar as provisional Secretary and a board of directors[1] were quickly chosen. When it was all over and Senator William D. Perley rose slowly to his feet, it was to deliver a parting message of confidence that the farmers were taking the right step in the right manner. There were few men who could be listened to with greater respect than the elderly Senator and as the silence of his audience deepened it was almost as if the white-haired gentleman's dignified words were prophetic. He had been familiar with a somewhat similar movement in New Brunswick, he said, and back there by the Atlantic this movement was still very much alive and doing good work. Long after those who were present at this meeting had passed away, it was his prediction that this newborn organization of prairie farmers would be living still, still expanding and still performing a useful service to the farmers generally. The meeting adjourned with the general feeling that at last matters were advancing beyond mere talk. The sixth of January was set as the date for a second meeting to draft a constitution and prepare a definite plan of campaign. Emphasis was laid upon the importance of a good attendance; but when the date arrived the leaders of the new movement were disappointed to find that, including themselves, there were just eleven farmers present. While this did not look very promising, they proceeded with their plans and it is a tribute to the careful thought expended at that time that the constitution then framed has stood the test of many years, even much of the exact phraseology remaining to-day. The idea of having local associations scattered throughout the country, each with its own officers, governed by a central organization with its special officers, was adopted from the first. Among those present was C. W. Peterson, Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture for the North-West Territories. He freely offered his services in the capacity of secretary; but the offer was turned down so flat and so quickly that it was breath-taking. The incident reflected very vividly the jealousy with which the farmers were guarding the new movement rather than any depreciation of the Deputy Commissioner's ability; every man of them was on the alert to deflect the thinnest political wedge, imagined or otherwise, that might come along. They would trust nobody with an official connection and the appointment of John Millar, who was one of themselves, was confirmed without loss of time. There was no salary attached to any office, of course; nobody thought of salaries. The farmers who knew the feel of spare cash in those days were seventh sons of seventh sons. Winter and all as it was, the leaders of the young organization did not let the snow pack under their feet. No sooner were the preliminaries over than they set about preparing for the first convention of the Association by hitching up and travelling the country, organizing local associations. W. R. Motherwell, John Millar and Matt. Snow, of Wolseley, tucked the robes around them and jingled away in different directions. Wherever they went they were listened to eagerly and the resulting action was instantaneous. The movement took hold of the farmers like wildfire; so that by February thirty-eight local grain growers' associations had been formed, each sending enthusiastic delegates to the first Annual Convention, which was held at Indian Head in February, 1902. All that summer, pacing the rapidly growing wheat, the Territorial Grain Growers' Association spread and took root till by harvest time it was standing everywhere in the field, a thrifty and full-headed champion of farmers' rights, lacking only the ripening of experience. There had been as yet no particular opportunity to demonstrate its usefulness in dollars and cents; but with the approach of the fall and market season the whole organization grew tense with expectancy. There seemed little reason to believe that the railway people would do other than attempt to continue their old methods of distributing cars where and when they chose and to disregard, as before, those provisions of the Grain Act which aimed to protect the farmer in getting his fair share of cars in which to load direct. Thus it soon turned out. The officers of the Association at once warned the Canadian Pacific Railway Company that if they persisted in such practice the farmers would be compelled to take legal action against them. It looked so much like the attack of a toddling child against a man full grown that the big fellow laughed good-naturedly. Who, pray, were the "Territorial Grain Growers' Association"? "We represent the farmers of Western Canada," retorted the unabashed officers of the little organization "and we want what the law allows us as our right. What's more, we propose to get it!" That was about the message which W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman went down to Winnipeg to deliver in person to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The official whom they interviewed manipulated the necessary levers to start the matter on its way through the "proper channels" towards that "serious consideration" into which all good politicians and corporation officials take everything that comes unexpectedly before them. W. R. Motherwell could not wait for the unfolding of this hardy perennial and left Peter Dayman at Winnipeg to follow up developments. When the latter got back home he brought with him a bagful of promises. The practical improvement in the situation which was to support these promises, however, evidently got wrapped up in somebody else's order and delivered to another address. As soon as the Association were satisfied that relief was not to be forthcoming they promptly filled out a standard form of information and complaint and notified the railway that they were going to take legal action at Sintaluta against the Company's station agent; if no results were forthcoming there, they assured the Company, they would take action against every railway agent in the Territories who was guilty of distributing cars contrary to the provisions of the Grain Act. The complaint went before Mr. C. C. Castle, the official Warehouse Commissioner; the information was laid before Magistrate H. O. Partridge at Sintaluta. All over the country the newspapers began to devote valuable space to the impending trial. It was talked about in bar-rooms and barber-shops. Some anti-railroaders declared at once that the farmers hadn't a minute's chance to win against the C. P. R. The news percolated eastward, its significance getting lighter till it became merely: "a bunch of fool hayseeds out West in some kind of trouble with the C. P. R.--cows run over, or something." At Ottawa, however, were those who saw handwriting on the wall and they awaited the outcome with considerable interest. Several public men, especially from Regina, made ready to be in actual attendance at the preliminary trial. The farmers were out in force, for they realized the importance of this test case. It was not the agent at Sintaluta they were fighting, but the railway itself; it was not this specific instance of unjust car distribution that would be settled, but all other like infringements along the line. The very efficacy of the Grain Act itself was challenged. Two hours before the Magistrate's Court sat to consider the case, J. A. M. Aikins (now Sir James Aikins, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba), who was there as the legal representative of the C. P. R., tapped the President of the farmers' Association on the elbow. "Let's make a real case of it while we're at it," he smiled, and proceeded to suggest that instead of laying information against the railway company on two charges, the Association should charge them also with violating some five or six other sections of the Act. "Then we'll have a decision on them, too, you see. For the purpose of this case the Company will plead guilty to the offences. What do you say?" "Don't you do it, W. R.! Not on your life, Mister!" The farmers within earshot crowded about the two. They suspected trickery in such a last-minute suggestion; either the railway people were very sure they had the case in their pocket or they were up to some smooth dodge, you bet! President Motherwell shook his head dubiously. "How can we change the information on such short notice?" he objected. "It would mean risking an adjournment of the court." "That's what they're after! Stick to him, Motherwell!" But it did seem very advisable to have the meaning of those other doubtful sections of the Act cleared up, and as C. P. R. counsel went more fully into the matter the desirability of it for both sides became even more apparent. "Tell you what we'll do, Mr. Aikins," said W. R. Motherwell, finally turning to him after consulting the others, "if you'll give your pledged word before this assembled crowd of farmers that you won't take any technical advantage of the change you've suggested us making in the information--by raising objections when court opens, I mean--why, we'll make the change." "Certainly," agreed Mr. Aikins without hesitation, and in solemn silence he and the President of the Association shook hands. This alteration in the information made the issue even more far-reaching and it was a tense moment for the farmers who packed the little court room when the Magistrate opened proceedings and on behalf of the Warehouse Commissioner, Mr. T. Q. Mathers (now Chief Justice Mathers, of Winnipeg), rose to his feet for argument. After the evidence was complete and the Magistrate at last handed down his decision--fifty dollars fine and costs, to be paid by the defendant--the victorious grain growers were jubilant and especially were the officers of the young Association proud of the outcome. The case was carried to the Supreme Court by the Railway Company, which made every effort to have the decision of the lower court reversed. When the appeal case came to trial, much to the disgust and chagrin of the railway authorities and the corresponding elation of the farmers, the Magistrate's decision was sustained. At once the newspapers all over the country were full of it. Oracles of bar-room and barber-shop nodded their heads wisely; hadn't they said that even the C. P. R. couldn't win against organized farmers, backed up by the law of the land? Away East the news was magnified till it became: "The farmers out West have licked the C. P. R. in court and are threatening to tear up the tracks!" At Ottawa Members of Parliament dug into Hansard to see if they had said anything when the Manitoba Grain Act was passed. Empty cars began to roll into Western sidings and they were not all spotted to suit the elevators but were for farmers who had signified a desire to load direct. It was unnecessary to carry out the threat of proceeding against every delinquent railway agent in the Territories; for the delinquencies were no longer deliberate. The book in which by turn the orders for cars were listed began to be a more honest record of precedence in distribution, as all good car-order books should be. For the railway authorities were men of wide experience and ability, who knew when they were defeated and how to accept such defeat gracefully. It meant merely that the time had come to recognize the fact that there was a man inside the soil-grimed shirt. The farmer had won his spurs. While the railway people did not like the action of the Association in hauling them into court, in all fairness they were ready to admit that they had received full warning before such drastic action was taken. If the railway officials began to regard the farmer in a new light, the latter on his part began to appreciate somewhat more fully the task which faced these energetic men in successfully handling the giant organization for which they assumed responsibility. After the tilt, therefore, instead of the leaders of the grain growers and the railway looking at each other with less friendly eyes, their relations became more kindly as each began to entertain for the other a greater respect. Best of all, applications were beginning to pour in upon the Secretary of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association--applications from farmers everywhere for admission to the organization. Skeptics who had been holding out now enrolled with their local association and, as fast as they could be handled, new locals were being formed. And at this very time, over in the hotel at Sintaluta, a grain grower of great ability and discernment was warning an interested group of farmers against the dangers of over-confidence. "At present we are but pygmies attacking giants," declared E. A. Partridge. "Giants may compete with giants, pygmies with pygmies, but pygmies with giants, never. We are not denizens of a hamlet but citizens of a world and we are facing the interlocking financial, commercial and industrial interests of a thousand million people. If we are to create a fighting force by co-operation of the workers to meet the giants created by the commercial co-operation of the owners, we have scarcely started. If we seek permanent improvement in our financial position and thereby an increase of comfort, opportunity and sense of security in our lives and the lives of our families, the fight will be long and hard. "And we are going to need every man we can muster." [1] See Appendix--Par. 1. CHAPTER IV "THAT MAN PARTRIDGE!" Any man can work when every stroke of his hand brings down the fruit rattling from the tree to the ground; but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement, by the power of faith . . . that requires a heroism which is transcendent. And no man, I think, ever puts the plow into the furrow and does not look back, and sows good seed therein, that a harvest does not follow.--_Henry Ward Beecher_. It was a handy place to live, that little tar-paper shanty around which the prairie wind whooed and whiffed with such disdain. So small was it that it was possible to wash oneself, dress oneself and get breakfast without getting out of bed. On the wall was a shelf which did duty as a table. There were also a little box stove and some odds and ends. When the roof leaked, which was every time it rained, it was necessary to put pans on the bed to catch the drip. But it was better than the tent in which E. A. Partridge and his brother slept through their first star-strewn winter nights on the open prairie--more pretentious than the tent and assuredly not so cold. The two boys were proud of it, even though they were fresh from civilization--from Simcoe County, Ontario, where holly-hocks topped the fences of old-fashioned flower gardens in summer and the houses had shingles on top to keep out the weather, and where there were no coyotes to howl lonesomely at night, where--Well, never mind. Those houses belonged to other people; the shanty was theirs. All around stretched acres and acres of snow; but there was land under that snow--rich, new land--and that was theirs, too, by right of homesteading. It was about Christmas time in 1883 when E. A. Partridge was twenty-one. The place was near Sintaluta, District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories, and homesteading there in the days before the Rebellion was no feather bed for those who tackled it. A piece of actual money was a thing to take out and look at every little while, to show to one's friends and talk about. Season after season the half starved agricultural pathfinders lost their hard-earned crops by drouth and what was not burned out by the sun was eaten by ubiquitous gophers. The drouth was due, no doubt, to the frequent prairie fires which swept the country; these found birth in the camp-fire coals left by ignorant or careless settlers on their way in. Under the rays of the summer sun the blackened ground became so hot that from it ascended a column of scorching air which interfered with the condensation of vapor preceding the falling of rain. Clouds would bank up above the prairie horizon, eagerly watched by anxious homesteaders; but over the burned area the clouds seemed to thin out without a drop falling upon the parching crops. Forty-three acres, sown to wheat, was the first crop which the Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained from around the edges of a slough! One by one discouraged settlers gathered together their few belongings and sought fresh trails. Lone men trudged by, pack on back, silent and grim. Swearing at his horses, wheels squealing for axle-grease, tin pans rattling and flashing in the hot morning sun, a settler with a family stopped one day to ask questions of the two young men. He was on his way--somewhere--no place in particular. "I tell ye, boys, this country ain't no place fer a white man," he volunteered. "When y'ain't freezin' ye're burnin' up, an' that's what happens in hell!" He spat a stream of tobacco juice over the wagon wheel and clawed his beard, his brown face twisted quizzically. "God A'mighty ain't nowheres near here! He didn't come this fur West--stopped down to Rat Portage![1] Well, anyways, good luck to ye both; but ef ye don't git it, young fellers, don't ye go blamin' me, by Jupiter!" He cracked his whip. "Come up out o' that, ye God-forsaken old skates!" And, mud-caked wheels screeching, tin pans banging and glaring, he jolted back to the trail that led away in distance to No Place In Particular. But along with some others who confessed to being poor walkers, the Partridge boys stuck right where they were. They set about the building of a more permanent and comfortable shack--a sod house this time. It took more than seven thousand sods, one foot by three, three inches thick; but when it was finished it was a precocious raindrop or a mendacious wind that could find its way in. About thirteen miles distant was a little mud schoolhouse, and one day E. A. Partridge was asked to go over and teach in it. It was known that back East, besides working on his father's farm, he had taught school for awhile. Learning was a truant for the younger generation on the prairies at that time, there being only a few private schools scattered here and there. Though it was not much of an opportunity for anything but something to do, the offer was accepted, and every morning, after sucking a couple of eggs for a breakfast, E. A. Partridge took to loping across the prairie on a "Shag" pony. But the little school put an idea into his head. He wondered if it might be worth while starting a private school of his own, and in 1885 he thought the Broadview locality offered profitable prospects. He decided to go down there and look over the situation. By this time the occupants of the sod house numbered four--three Partridge brothers and a friend. The problem of fitting out the school-teacher for his Broadview trip so that he would create the necessary impression among strangers was one which called for corrugated brows. The solution of it was not to be found in any of the teacher's few text-books; it quite upset Euclid's idea that things which were equal to the same thing were equal to one another--when it came to finding enough parts to make a respectable whole! For among the four bachelors was not one whole suit of clothes sufficiently presentable for social events. Everything was rough and ready in those days and in spite of the hardships the friendly pioneer settlers had some good times together; but the sod house quartette had never been seen at any of these gatherings--not all four at one time! Three of them were always so busy with this or that work that they had to stay home, you know; it would have been embarrassing to admit that it was only by pooling their clothes they could take turns in exhibiting a neighborly spirit. As it was, there was often a secret fear of exhibiting even more--an anxiety which led the visitor to keep the wall at his back like a man expecting general excitement to break loose at any moment! On reaching Broadview the prospects for the new school looked bright, so the hopeful pedagogue sent back word to the sod house to this effect. "And don't you fellows forget to send my linen," he wrote jokingly. "Make the trunk heavy, too. I don't know how long it will have to represent my credit!" When the trunk arrived it was so heavy that it took two men to carry it into the hotel. When in the secrecy of his own room E. A. Partridge ventured to look inside he found his few books, a pair of "jumper" socks--and a lot of stones! Also there was an old duster with a piece of paper pinned to it, advising: "Here's your linen!" The Broadview school did not last long for the reason that the second North-West Rebellion broke out that year and the teacher joined the Yorkton Rangers. Fifty cents a day and grub was an alluring prospect; many a poor homesteader would have joined the ranks on active service for the grub alone, especially when the time of his absence was being allowed by the Government to apply on the term set for homestead duties before he could come into full possession of his land. Many farmers earned money, also, teaming supplies from the railway north to Battleford and Prince Albert. In common with his fellow grain growers, the five years that followed were years of continuous struggle for E. A. Partridge. The railway came and the country commenced to settle quickly. The days of prairie fires that ran amuck gave way to thriving crops; but at thirty and forty cents per bushel the thriving of those who sowed them was another matter. This man with the snappy blue eyes and caustic tongue was among the first to foresee "the rising colossus," the shadow of which was creeping slowly across the farmer's path, and he watched the "brewing menace" with growing concern. With every ounce of his tremendous energy he resented the encroachment of Capital upon the liberties of Labor. Being of the people and temperamentally a democrat, he had a great yearning for the reorganization of society in the general interest. His championship in this direction earned him the reputation in some quarters of being full of "fads," a visionary. But his neighbors, who had toiled and suffered beside him through the years, knew "Ed." Partridge, man to man, and held him in high regard; they admired him for his human qualities, respected him for his abilities, and wondered at his theories. On occasion they, too, shook their heads doubtfully. They could not know the big part in their emancipation which this friend and neighbor of theirs was destined to play through many days of crisis. Not yet had the talley begun. But events even now slowly were shaping. With the winning of their first clash the farmers' movement was achieving momentum. In the latter part of December, 1902, down in the town of Virden, Manitoba, a committee was appointed at a meeting of the Virden Agricultural Society, to arrange a district meeting for the purpose of organizing the first Grain Growers' Association in Manitoba. As soon as the date was set J. W. Scallion wrote to W. R. Motherwell, urgently asking him to assist in the organization. Although roads and weather were rough, the President of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association at considerable inconvenience went down to Virden, taking with him Matt. Snow and copies of the constitution and by-laws upon which the Territorial Association was founded, With this assistance a strong local association was formed at Virden on January 9th, 1903, with capable officers[2] and a first-year membership of one hundred and twenty-five. The same difficulties that faced the farmers farther West were being experienced in Manitoba and the newspapers were full of protesting letters from country points. As President of the Virden Grain Growers' Association, J. W. Scallion wrote letters to every place where complaints were being voiced and urged organization. At every opportunity it was advocated through the press that from the eastern boundary of Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains the farmers should organize themselves for self-defence against oppression, present or possible, by "the interests." In about six weeks over fifteen local associations had been formed in Manitoba and Virden began calling for a Provincial association. Accordingly, on March 3rd and 4th, 1903, the Manitoba grain growers held their first convention at Brandon with one hundred delegates present, representing twenty-six local associations. Great enthusiasm marked the event and the officers[3] chosen were all men of initiative. The members of the parent organization watched the rapid expansion on all sides with sparkling eyes. Their own second annual convention at Indian Head revealed considerable progress and the promise of greater things to come. On the invitation of the delegates from the Regina district it was decided to hold the third annual convention at the capital and the rousing gathering which met there in due course was productive of such stimulus and publicity that its effect was felt long afterward. At every convention the farmers found some additional weak spot in the Grain Act and suggested remedial legislation. Records are lacking to show in what order the various changes came; but step by step the farmers were gaining their rights. It all seemed so wonderful--to get together thus and frame requests of the Government at Ottawa, to find their very wording incorporated in the Act. The farmers scarcely had dared to think of such a thing before. To them the ear of a government was a delicate organism beyond reach, attuned to the acoustics of High Places only; that it was an ear to hear, an ear to the ground to catch the voice of the people was a discovery. At any rate when W. R. Motherwell and J. B. Gillespie, of the Territories, D. W. McCuaig and R. C. Henders, of Manitoba, went to Ottawa for the first time they were received with every consideration and many of their requests on behalf of the farmers granted. With such recognition and the recurring evidence of advantageous results the jeering grins of a certain section of the onlooking public began to sober down to a less disrespectful mien. Those who talked glibly at first of the other farmers' organizations which they had seen go to pieces became less free with their forebodings. In 1904 the farmers began to press for something more than the proper distribution of cars and the freedom of shipment. They were dissatisfied with the grading system and the re-inspection machinery. Some of them claimed that the grading system did not classify wheat according to its milling value. Some wanted a change in the Government's staff at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector where the official grading was done. Some wanted a sample market; some didn't. The farmers were about evenly divided. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories commissioned Professor Robert Harcourt, Chemist of the Ontario Agricultural College, to conduct tests as to the comparative values of the different grades of wheat. E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta, and A. A. Perley, of Wolseley, undertook to secure eight-bushel samples of the various grades from their districts. These were carefully sacked and shipped to the Chief Grain Inspector at Winnipeg, where he graded them and forwarded them to Professor Harcourt, sealed in such a way that any tampering with the shipment would be detected readily. These samples were all of 1903 crop. There had been a bad snowstorm in September of that year and much wheat had been standing in stook. The farmers believed that the grain was not frozen or injured in any way and that they were defrauded to some extent in the grading of their wheat. The samples represented all grades from "No. 1 Hard" to "Feed." They were milled with exceptional care to prevent mixing of the various lots and the flours obtained were put through three different baking tests. The conclusion reached was that there did not appear to be much difference in the value of the different grades of wheat. Even the "Feed" sample proved by no means useless for bread-making purposes, either in yield or quality; the only thing that rendered it less available for bakers' use was its darker color. All who saw the loaves were surprised at the quality of this bread. The tests on these 1903 samples confirmed the farmers in their opinion that on 1903 wheat the spread in price between No. 1 Hard and No. 4 was not in harmony with the milling quality. From No. 1 Hard the amount of flour obtained was 70.8 per cent. as against 68 per cent. from the No. 4 grade. The large percentage of stook-frozen grain that went into the lower grades because it was technically debarred from the higher ones no doubt raised the milling value, it was thought, of all the grades that year. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories therefore decided to repeat the tests with 1904 wheat. The samples with which Professor Harcourt was furnished represented the grain just as it was sold by the farmer and graded either at the elevator or by the Chief Grain Inspector; it was not a composite sample of the commercial grades. The second tests practically confirmed the work done the previous year. The milling, chemical and baking tests failed to show very wide differences in the composition and milling value of the grades submitted. The conclusion reached was that the difference in composition and milling value was nearly as great between samples of any one grade as between the various grades. The farmers began to feel that it would be a good thing to have a representative at Winnipeg to watch the grading of their cars and to look after their interests generally. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories was asked by the Sintaluta grain growers to appoint a man and W. H. Gaddes was commissioned to act for two weeks. Then the farmers began to wonder if they could not send down a man of their own; at one of their meetings the question was put and those present subscribed five dollars apiece for the purpose. Thus it came about that on the 7th of January, 1905, there stepped from the train at the C. P. R. depot in Winnipeg a man who looked no different from any one of a dozen other farmers who daily reached the city, tanned of cheek and bright of eye. But his business in town was of a very special nature. In his pocket was a hundred dollars and the grip in his hand was packed for a month's stay. It was a month of "cold shoulders" and patronizing manners for E. A. Partridge. No band music was played in his honor, no festive board was spread, nor was he taken around and shown the sights of the city. On the contrary, he was made to feel like a spy in the camp of an enemy; for he found himself entirely without status, the grain dealers recognizing him merely as a farmers' representative, whatever that was. Even at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector he was looked upon as a man who was meddling with something which he wasn't supposed to know anything about. Nevertheless, the Chief Inspector himself gave him information at times and there were one or two others who took the trouble to explain some things about which he asked questions. Among the latter was a grain man by the name of Tom Coulter. For the most part, however, the presence of the "farmers' representative" at Winnipeg was looked upon as a joke; so that information as to the grain business became for him largely a still hunt. He visited offices, listened to how interviews were conducted over the telephone and picked up whatever loose ends he could find to follow up. "Who is that fellow, anyway?" asked a grain man who had just got back to the city. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Oh, him!" laughed his partner as he saw who was indicated. "Only that gazabo from Sintaluta who's been nosing around lately. Some hayseeds out the line sent him down here to learn the grain business. They believe that all wheat's No. 1 Hard, all grain buyers are thieves, and that hell's to be divided equally between the railways and the milling companies!" "So that's the guy, eh?--that's that man Partridge!" [1] The new name of Rat Portage is Kenora (Ontario). [2] See Appendix--Par. 2. [3] See Appendix--Par. 8. CHAPTER V "THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOSED SHUTTERS" Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer . . .--_Macbeth_. When wheat ceased to be grown for local needs and overflowed upon the markets of the world, becoming a factor in finance, arenas where its destiny was decided were established in the large centres of trade. In these basins of commerce the never-ending flow concentrated and wheeled for a short space before in re-directed currents it rolled on its way to ocean ports. Here, according to the novelists, frantic men were sucked into the golden eddies, their cries strangled and their fate forgotten even as they were engulfed by the Leviathan with which they adventured; or they emerged with eyes bloodshot, voices gone and clothes torn, successful speculators of a day. Perhaps the general reader is more familiar with these mad scenes of "The Pit," as the trading floor is called, than with the steadily turning marketing machinery of which they are but a penumbra. The modern grain exchange is much more than a mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real purpose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified--drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. In every corner of the earth where the wheat streams take their rise, from green blade to brown head the progress of the crop is recorded and the prospects forecasted--on the steppes of Russia, the pampas of the Argentine, the valley of the San Joaquin, the prairies of Western Canada and the Dakotas, the fields of India, Iowa, Illinois and Kansas. Good news, bad news, the movements of ships, the prices on the corn exchanges of London and Liverpool, at Chicago, on the bourses of Paris, Antwerp and Amsterdam--all are listed. With such a Timepiece of International Exchange ticking out the doings of nations, both buyer and seller can know what prices will govern their dealings. In office or farmhouse an ear to a telephone is all that is necessary. A grain exchange, then, is the market-place where grain dealers meet to secure information and maintain regulations for the prompt performance of contracts. The exchange organization does not deal in grain, but has for its sole purpose the protection of those who do and the facilitating of transactions; in other words, it is on the ground to see that the grain trade is carried on in an honest and capable manner and to punish offenders against proper business ethics and established rules. Its membership is composed of grain dealers doing business in the exchange's territory--milling companies, exporting companies, line elevator companies as well as independent dealers and "commission men." Besides seeking a supply of wheat to keep their mills busy for the season, the milling companies sell wheat. It is the business of the exporters to make shipment to other countries. Wheat is sold to exporters and millers by the elevator companies, who are interested in running as much grain as possible through their elevators at country points. The chief business of independent dealers is to handle wheat that stands "on track," ready for shipment, either buying outright from the farmer or handling it for him on a commission basis. The "commission man" is in an especially good position to do a clean-cut business. He assumes no burden of large capital investment and operating expense, as do the elevator companies. His chief need is a line of credit at a bank and from this he pays advances to his clients, his security being the bills of lading of wheat consigned to him. He does not need to buy or sell on his own account and, unlike the exporter, he does not have to risk changes in freight rates or in prices or make deliveries by given dates. As for the satisfactory milling quality of the crop--that is something for the miller to worry over. In order to do business it is necessary only for the commission man to be a member of the exchange and to obey its rules. For a long time Winnipeg has been known as the greatest primary wheat market in the world. That means that a greater volume of new wheat, direct from the producer, passes through the Winnipeg market than anywhere else, not even excepting Chicago where the first grain exchange to reach international development was established in 1848. The Winnipeg market is fed by the vast wheat area of Western Canada and frequently between two and three million bushels of wheat go through Winnipeg in a single day. During the rush season sixty or seventy cars of wheat leave Winnipeg for the East every twenty minutes of every twenty-four hours. The freight boats on the lakes load 460,000 bushels in three-and-a-half hours.[1] It is interesting to note that nowhere else in the world is a great public grain market like the Winnipeg market found located four hundred miles away from the storage point where grain dealt in is kept for sale delivery. Geographically Fort William and Port Arthur at the head of the great lakes water route would provide the natural delivery point for Western grain which has been routed eastward[2] and there the location of the exchange might be looked for logically. It so happens, however, that the eastern edge of the vast grain fields lies four hundred miles west of the twin harbors, the country between not being adapted for farming, and to avoid the delay of mail transit and to operate the trading effectively it was necessary to locate the exchange at Winnipeg, the great metropolitan railway centre where the incoming grain concentrated. In Western Canada the grain is stored in bulk by grades, thereby cheapening handling cost. Unlike most countries--which sell grain on sample--Western Canadian grain has been sold by grade. The inspection and grading of wheat, therefore, is a very important factor in the grain trade of Canada and is in full charge of Dominion Government officials. Upon their verdict depends the price per bushel which will be paid for any shipment of grain, market quotations varying for different grades; whether stored, sold at home or sold abroad their certificate of grade brands that particular wheat throughout. The huge river of grain flows in upon them unceasingly; at times the inspectors have to work at top speed to avoid being engulfed. The variety of Nature's response to the growing conditions in changing seasons must not confuse them from year to year; but with sharpened senses and sound judgment they must steer a sure course through the multiplicity of grades and grade subdivisions. The thoroughness of the system adopted by the Grain Inspection Department is shown by description of the work done at Winnipeg. Offices and staffs in charge of deputy inspectors are maintained in the different railway yards. They work in shifts night and day; for during the mad seventy-or-so days in which the Western crop stampedes for the lakefront there is no let-up to the in-rolling wheat-bins which come swaying and grinding in over the rails like beads on a string--the endless rosary of harvest thanksgiving. Wheat samples must be obtained from each car and no train can be moved until a placard has been placed at the end of it, reading: "Grain Inspectors have finished this train." A fifty-car train can be sampled in about an hour and a half, which is comfortable time for a change of engines and crews. The sampling gangs work with all the precision of gun crews--each man with a particular thing to do. One goes down the train, opening car doors and leaving an empty sample bag in each car. Running up a short ladder, the sampler climbs over the top of the inner door, which extends above the "load line"; the standard sampler which he uses is a cylindrical brass rod, so constructed that when it is "stabbed" to the bottom of the car the grain which fills it is a correct sample of wheat at every depth. Seven such samples are procured from different sections of the car, and the track foreman, standing on a ladder, watches these poured onto a cloth with an eye to detecting evidence of "plugging" with an inferior quality of grain; these seven samples having been mixed thoroughly, a canvas bag is filled from the result and the two-and-one-half pounds which it will hold become the official sample. The rest of the mixture is dumped back and the car resealed. The foreman has filled out a sample ticket with car number, date, load line, initials of sampler and any other notations necessary--such as leakages, etc. His own name is stamped on the back of the ticket, which goes into the sample sack. Copies of the way bills with full information as to all cars, shipping points, consignees or advisees and destinations are obtained from the railway yard office and these, together with the samples, are sent twice a day to the Chief Grain Inspector's office at the Grain Exchange. Here the samples are inspected and graded in a room with special lighting facilities. The grading is done only in broad daylight. The quality of the grain, its condition and the admixtures are determined respectively by judgment of hand and eye, by elaborate mechanical moisture tests and by a sieving and weighing process. The whole sample is examined closely for color, plumpness, weight, etc., in order to fix its grade as No. 1 Hard, No. 1 Northern, 2 Northern, 3 Northern; 1 Hard and 1 Northern must weigh at least sixty pounds, 2 Northern fifty-eight pounds, and so on. Grades below these are set by the Grain Standards Board. Damp or wet grain is marked "No Grade," which means that it is considered unfit for storing and therefore has a lower market value. Grain which is heated or bin-burnt is "condemned." If it is unsound, musty, dirty, smutty, sprouted or badly mixed with other grain, etc., it is "rejected." Grain which, because of weather or other conditions, cannot be included in the grades provided by statute is given a "commercial grade." It will be seen at once that here is work requiring great nicety of judgment and that long experience is necessary to enable the grader to reach his decisions quickly and accurately. When the grading is completed the sample is placed in a small tin box and filed systematically; it is supposed to remain thus stored until there is no longer the possibility of a demand for re-inspection and finally the samples are sacked and sold to the miller with the highest bid, the money being paid to the Dominion Government. Grade certificates, bearing the Chief Grain Inspector's signature, are issued for each shipment and sent at once to the elevator company, miller or commission agent to whom the car is consigned. These grade certificates, together with the weight certificate and the bill of lading, make the grain negotiable on the market; the dealer does not see the actual grain, merely handling these papers. If dissatisfaction with grade or dockage arises, the owner of the grain or his agent can obtain re-inspection at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector free of charge, and, if still dissatisfied, appeal can be made to the Survey Board. This is a board of twelve men; the governing rules and regulations are established by the Grain Commission. Six members are recommended by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and two each by the Minister of Agriculture in each of the three prairie provinces.[3] The verdict of the Survey Board is final. Now, back in 1905 the machinery for moving the crop upon its way was little understood by the average Western Canadian farmer. The wheels went around, gave a click and away went his wheat; but in approaching it all with the idea of understanding everything he was in the position of the small boy examining the works of a watch to see how it told the time. He felt that he ought to understand what went on down at Winnipeg; for of course where there were so many rules and regulations to be broken there must be "funny work." It was the natural suspicion of the man who lived much to himself in the quiet spaces, who could not believe that grain dealers could be honest and build palatial residences in Winnipeg while his own toil in producing the grain was rewarded with a living only. It looked as if the roost was being robbed and with his newborn initiative he wanted to find out how it was done and who was doing it. The satisfactory manner in which things are conducted in the grain trade to-day is the result of long experience and gradual improvement of conditions. It must be remembered that in the earlier days the trade was not so well organized for efficiency and in 1905 when E. A. Partridge began to probe for "plugging" he had a big job on his hands, especially in view of the fact that he was treated for the most part as a meddler who was not entitled to reliable information. There are two ways of reaching a conclusion--one by approaching it logically on facts laid down; the other by jumping to it across a yawning lack of detail. At the end of his month of investigation the farmer's scout had a regular rag-bag of material out of which to fashion a patchwork report. A grain man might have condemned it as a "crazy quilt" because bits of high color obtruded inharmoniously. But if here and there an end was short or a bit of information on the bias, it was because the "Farmers' Representative" had not been treated with sufficient frankness. He had to make the best of the materials allowed him and his natural tendency to bright-colored metaphor may have been quickened. He hit out straight from the shoulder in all sincerity at conditions as they appeared to him. He thought he saw five companies controlling the exporting business, and also their margin of profit, so that they were able to keep out smaller dealers who might have the temerity and the necessary capital to try exporting on their own account. He saw the smaller dealers in turn stem-winding their prices by those of the exporters, controlling the prices paid for street and track wheat throughout the country; thereby, he reasoned, it became possible to set special prices at any given point by the simple expedient of wiring the necessary instructions to the operator at that point to pinch independent competition. He saw elevator companies cutting their charges at certain points to kill off competition from "farmers' elevators" which sold to independent dealers. All this he was sure he saw. The sampling appeared to be carried on in a systematic and satisfactory manner. The grading, too, appeared to be uniform enough as regarded the standard grades; but in the item of color there seemed just cause for complaint. Lack of color, a trifling number of imperfectly formed kernels or the suspicion of a wrinkle on the bran apparently doomed a sample to low grade no matter how heavy and flinty the wheat might be. This seemed scarcely fair to Partridge, who bore in mind that the sunny seasons of past years had been succeeded by cloudier ones, the dry autumns by wet ones and that with stacking discontinued and much of the farmers' wheat left long in stock, bleaching was bound to follow. So that if the Chief Grain Inspector were a "crank on color," he should remember that beauty was only skin deep. The fracture and microscopic and weighing tests seemed to be the only reasonable tests which could be applied quickly; the milling test was the only one which was absolutely correct. Any rapid eye test which pretended to determine whether there was sixty-one per cent. or fifty-nine per cent. of Red Fife wheat in a given sample struck the Farmers' Representative as farcical; yet this was sufficient to make the difference of a grade and sometimes a difference of seven cents per bushel in the price obtained. The whim of the Inspector likewise decided how many lean berries in a plump sample would disqualify it for "plump" classification and how many mature or defective berries among sound wheat, would disqualify it from being classed as "sound." With a single concocted sample as a basis of judgment Partridge considered that the grading of the lower grades often was very unjust to the producer, especially to the owners of plump frosted wheat; the process of concocting the basic sample was very interesting; but the result was "a nightmare." W. H. Gaddes, who had preceded him to Winnipeg, agreed with him in this. Also, Mr. Gaddes denounced the Survey Board at that time as unsatisfactory in its composition, open to suspicion in its findings and in practice--so far as outsiders' wheat was concerned--simply a machine to register confirmation of the Inspector's previous grading. It was Partridge's belief that "many a fraud perpetrated in a line elevator" was added to the "iniquities" of the Inspector, in whose personal integrity he had every confidence. For this reason he was inclined to be lenient with the hard-working and conscientious officials of the Government. Nevertheless, it appeared wise that a farmers' special agent be maintained permanently at Winnipeg to safeguard the interests of the farmers, especially if certain powers were allotted to him under the Inspection Act. In making his report to the Territorial Grain Growers' Association Partridge went into the whole situation as he saw it and particularly was he outspoken in regard to "that House with the Closed Shutters," as he called the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange. In fact, his gas attack upon the Exchange was ablaze with the fires of hostility. And for the use of his reckless language Partridge was to be called to account in due course. [1] Although only about ten per cent. of the arable area in Western Canada is under cultivation there are already 3,500 country elevators. Terminal elevators at the head of the lakes with a storage capacity of forty-four million bushels and interior Government terminals with ten and one-half million bushels capacity are overflowing already. Wheat exports of Canada have increased from 2,284,702 bushels in 1867 to 157,745,469 bushels in 1916. Per capita Canada has more railway mileage than any country in the world. [2] In early days nearly all grain was routed eastward via Winnipeg; but with the development of the grain trade and the opening of the Panama Canal some Western Canadian grain travels west and south. Facilities for inspection and grading have been established at Calgary, Superior, Duluth, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat and Vancouver. [3] In 1905 three members of the Survey Board were recommended by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and three each by the respective Departments of Agriculture in the three Prairie Provinces. CHAPTER VI ON A CARD IN THE WINDOW OF WILSON'S OLD STORE . . . Is it vain to hope The sons of such a land will climb and grope Along the undiscovered ways of life, And neither seek nor be found shunning strife, But ever, beckoned by a high ideal, Press onward, upward, till they make it real; With feet sure planted on their native sod, And will and aspirations linked with God? --Robert J. C. Stead. Ideas grow. The particular idea which now began to occupy the thoughts of E. A. Partridge to the exclusion of everything else was a big idea to begin with; but it kept on growing so rapidly that it soon became an obsession. Why couldn't the farmers themselves form a company to undertake the marketing of their own wheat? That was the idea. If a thousand farmers got together in control of ten million bushels of wheat and sold through a single accredited agency, they would be in the same position exactly as a single person who owned ten million bushels. If the owner of ten thousand bushels was able to make a better bargain than the owner of one thousand, what about the owner of ten million bushels? "Would the owner of ten million bushels peddle his wheat by the wagonload at the local shipping point or by the carload in Winnipeg?" mused Partridge. "Would he pay one hundred thousand dollars to a commission man to sell his wheat, with perhaps a nice rake-off to an exporter, who turns it over at a profit by selling it to a British dealer, who blends it and makes a good living by selling the blend to a British miller?" His pencil travelled swiftly on the back of an envelope. "Would he pay one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to the line elevator and stand a dockage of one hundred thousand bushels in addition? Would he pay the terminal elevator seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of screenings? Would he pay two and one-half million dollars for transportation when 'by a little method known to large exporters' he could save one and a quarter million dollars out of this item? "You just bet he wouldn't!" concluded this man Partridge. "And supposing we had ten thousand farmers in one company and each farmer produced, on an average, five thousand bushels of wheat--that would put the company in control of the sale of _fifty_ million bushels, not ten! Why, there's the answer to the whole blame thing--so simple we've been stepping right over it!" Pools, mergers, combines, trusts and monopolies were but various forms of the same co-operative principle acting within narrow limits to the benefit of the co-operatives and the prejudices of the outsiders. The remedy lay not in legislative penalties against co-operation but in the practice of co-operation on a large scale by the people. That would provide the most powerful weapon of defence against financial buccaneering. Universally employed, it would bring about an industrial millennium! But this was dreaming, of course. None knew better than E. A. Partridge that if even a small part of it was to come true, there lay immediately ahead a great educational campaign. Ignorance and suspicion would require to be routed. It would be difficult to convince some farmers that his motives were unselfish. Others would be opposed to the idea of a farmers' trading company in the belief that it would wreck the Association. "We must keep our organization non-partizan, non-political and non-trading" had been the slogan from the first. Nothing daunted by the difficulties which loomed in the foreground, Partridge obtained permission from his Territorial associates to tell the central Manitoba Grain Growers' Association the result of his investigations at Winnipeg. The Manitoba convention was about to be held at Brandon and on his way back home he remained over to address the delegates. They listened carefully to what he had to say; but when he began to urge the necessity of the farmers themselves going into trading in grain his fire and enthusiasm caused more excitement where he was standing on the platform than in the audience. The best he could do by his earnestness was to create sufficient interest for a committee[1] to be appointed with instructions to investigate the possibilities of the scheme and report at the next annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association. On arrival at Sintaluta, however, he succeeded in stirring up his neighbors to the proper pitch of enthusiasm. They knew him at Sintaluta, listened to him seriously, and the leaders of the little community shook hands on the idea of organizing, in the form of a joint stock company, "a scheme for the co-operative marketing of grain by farmers." When he made his report of the Winnipeg investigations at the annual convention of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association at Moose Jaw he found that while the principle which he advocated was favorably received--just as it had been in Manitoba--many farmers drew back distrustfully from the idea of "going into business." Their experience with business in the past had not been of a nature to instill confidence in such a venture and if the enterprise failed, they feared it would discredit the Association. There was a strong prejudice against any Association director or officer being closely identified with such a propaganda. Back to Sintaluta went E. A. Partridge. A public meeting was called to discuss the situation. It was to be held in the Town Hall on January 27th (1906) and in preparation for it a preliminary meeting was held in the sitting-room of the hotel and a committee[2] appointed to prepare a synopsis of what was to be done. This synopsis was presented to the thirty farmers who gathered in the Town Hall and a lengthy resolution was passed unanimously, setting forth the aims and objects of the prospective trading company. Everybody present undertook to subscribe for shares. Justification for what they were attempting was found in "the widespread discontent existing among the grain growers of the West with conditions governing the marketing of their grain." It was pointed out also that the isolation of farmers from each other, their distance from the secondary and ultimate markets and their ignorance of the details of the grain business--that these things rendered them individually liable to suffer grave injustices, even without their knowledge and certainly without hope of remedy by individual efforts. The scientific selling of wheat was just as important to the farmer as the scientific growing of it and this scientific knowledge could be obtained only by actually engaging in the business at some important commercial centre where the methods of successful operators could be studied. There was every reason to believe that a scheme which limited its activities at first to acquiring a seat on the Grain Exchange and doing a straight commission business, or at most a commission and track-buying business--that such a co-operative scheme stood an excellent chance of success. Without much financial risk, it should prove immediately profitable, afford protection from crooked practices and at the same time the shareholders could gain an insight into the whole grain business and thereby equip themselves for greater enterprises; it would not be long before they would be in a position to deal intelligently with their problems and pertaining legislation. Besides all this there was the possible piling up of a surplus revenue, over and above dividends, which could be turned to good account in uncovering conditions in Eastern Canadian and European markets and learning the best ways to meet those conditions. For these reasons the grain growers of Sintaluta, Saskatchewan, went on record at this meeting in the little Town Hall as heartily recommending the formation of a joint stock company which was to be composed wholly of farmers and to be known as "The Grain Growers' Grain Company, Limited," with shares at twenty-five dollars each. It was stipulated that no one person could hold more than four shares, that even these were not to be transferable except by vote at annual meeting, and that no man could have more than one vote at annual meetings. With this single far-sighted stroke the possibility of control passing into the hands of any clique was removed. In furtherance of the plans set forth a committee[3] was named to take charge of the preliminary organization work until relieved by the election of a provisional directorate at an organization meeting which it was hoped to hold at Brandon the following March. This committee was authorized to conduct a campaign for subscriptions in the meantime, printed receipts to be issued for the same. Such was the scheme to which the farmers of Sintaluta subscribed to a man. Two hundred shares at Sintaluta to begin with and Sintaluta only one point in the West! The Committee went to work with enthusiasm. Ten dollars was spent in printing a prospectus. E. A. Partridge got a card and blocked out on it: GRAIN GROWERS' GRAIN COMPANY. This he hung in the window of Wilson's old store at Sintaluta, where a dollar was paid for the use of a desk. Here in the evenings would assemble William Hall, Al Quigley, William Bonner and E. A. Partridge to send out circulars and keep the pot boiling till enough funds were on hand to let Quigley out canvassing on board wages. On February 28th the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association held their 1906 convention and as chairman of the committee appointed the year before to report upon the matter, E. A. Partridge again urged the advisability of establishing a company to handle the farmers' grain. By this time the plan had taken more definite shape and he pressed the claims of the proposed commission company with such logic and eloquence that besides having the committee's report adopted by the Association unanimously, he secured the interest of quite a few delegates. There was, nevertheless, much adverse criticism, not a little apathy and some levity. "Let's hold a meeting of our own," suggested someone. The word was passed for all who were interested to meet in the council chamber of the Brandon Town Hall. Between twenty and thirty farmers attended this meeting and the plans of the Sintaluta men for a co-operative trading company were approved. It was decided to meet at the Leland Hotel in Winnipeg some time in March or April to formulate plans for an active campaign. For two days those in attendance at this second meeting discussed the details of the undertaking. A great many different views were expressed, not all of them favorable. There were those who objected to the chosen name of the prospective company as being a handicap upon the Association movement in case the venture failed. The Sintaluta provisional directorate was allowed to stand and the canvassing committee was enlarged to include a number of Manitoba men who were to take the field for a stock canvass. That stock-selling campaign will dodder through to the Final Memory of those who took part in it. The man who stood on the street-corner and offered ten-dollar gold-pieces for a dollar had no harder task. Blood from stones! Milk from dry cows! Although ten per cent. on each share was all the cash that was asked apparently some farmers were so hard up that if yarn were selling at five cents per mile, they couldn't buy enough of it to make a pair of mitts for a doodlebug! "If you take four shares," admitted Al Quigley at his meetings, "I can't guarantee that you're not losing four times $2.50, which is ten dollars. But you lose that much when you draw a load of wheat up to the elevator anyway," he argued. "You might just as well let another ten go to see what's become of the first ten!" "Huh!" grunted a skeptical farmer after one of E. A. Partridge's meetings. "This here thing's just a scheme for Partridge to feather his nest! You bet he didn't get any o' my money," he bragged. "Did he get you, Pete?" "He did, Ben, an' I'll tell you why. This thing'll probably go bust; but I put a hundred into it. Supposin' I put a hundred in a horse an' he dies on me. Same thing, ain't it? I got to have horses to do farmin' an' I just go an' buy another one. I figure it's worth takin' a hundred-dollar chance on this thing to try her out." Up in the northern part of Manitoba was one man who was meeting with pretty fair success. His name was Kennedy and his friends who knew him best called him "Honest John." His plan was simple--to start talking, talk for awhile, then keep right on talking. "For God's sake, Kennedy, if $2.50 will stop you talking, here it is! We're sleepy!" Then he would stop talking. One by one the original canvassers dropped out of the field till almost the only one left besides E. A. Partridge was this hard-talking enthusiast up in the Swan River country who wound himself up for the night and tired them out--but got the money! [1] See Appendix--Par. 4. [2] See Appendix--Par. 5. [3] See Appendix--Par. 6. CHAPTER VII A FIGHT FOR LIFE! My dear little Demus! you'll find it is true, He behaves like a wretch and a villain to you . . . --Aristophanes. It was characteristic of John Kennedy to keep everlastingly at it. He was used to hard things to do. In this life some men seem to get rather more than their share of tacks in the boots and crumbs in bed! But every time Fate knocked him down he just picked himself up again. Always he got up and went at it once more--patiently, conscientiously, smiling. Even Fate cannot beat a man like that and John Kennedy was a hard fighter in a quiet way who did not know how to quit. With four younger brothers and an equal number of younger sisters to crowd up to the home table down there on the farm near Beaverton, Ontario County, Ontario, it was advisable for the eldest son to work out as a farm boy. He was thirteen years old when he first hired out to a farmer for the summer and he was to receive twenty-four dollars for the season. But the farmer had a hard time that year and at the end of the summer-- "John," said the poor fellow with ill-concealed embarrassment, "I--I'm afraid I can't pay you that money. But you know that big flock of sheep down in the back pasture? Well, tell you what we'll do. Over at Beaverton I've got an uncle who's a tailor. I can give you a suit of full cloth of homespun and call it square," and though the boy wanted the money for fifty things he had to take the homespun suit. Three or four hobble-de-hoy years of it on the farms of the neighborhood and young Kennedy literally took to the woods and drove the rivers in Muskoka and Michigan as a lumberjack till he was a chunk of whalebone in a red flannel shirt and corked boots and could pull the whiskers out of a wild-cat! With varying success he fought the battle of life and learned that many things glitter besides gold and that the four-leafed clover in this life after all is a square deal between men. The appeal of E. A. Partridge at the convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers in 1906 therefore found John Kennedy feeling responsive. He knew the unjust position in which the farmers were placed; for he was a farmer himself--up in the Swan River Valley--and he was a delegate from the Swan River Grain Growers' Association. The idea of forming a farmers' commission company for handling the farmers' grain sounded like a very satisfactory solution of a very unsatisfactory state of affairs and he threw himself whole-heartedly into the campaign to sell enough stock to obtain a charter. Up in the newer part of the country, which was his own particular territory, he found the farmers ready enough to listen; for they had suffered up there from the evils at which the new movement was aiming. He found also that the most interested members of his audiences were men who could least afford to lose any money. An effort was made to discredit the whole proposition as a political move of the Conservative Party. Throughout the Swan River district, the Dauphin district and all the way down to Neepawa the rumor spread ahead of the meetings; so that the speakers were asked many pertinent and impertinent questions, J. W. Robson, a Swan River farmer who was at that time a Conservative Member of the Manitoba Legislature, was giving his services free as a speaker on behalf of the proposed company; John Kennedy was known to be a political supporter of J. W. Robson. One and one make two; two and two sometimes make a fairly large-sized political rumor. But Mr. Robson was a ready and convincing speaker who was known to be a farmer first and last and Mr. Kennedy attributes the practical results obtained as due largely to Mr. Robson's logic and sincerity. Along in June Kennedy received a telegram from Winnipeg that startled him. It contained the first intimation that difficulties were arising at Ottawa to prevent the proposed farmers' company from getting their charter. Taking the first train, he found on his arrival at Winnipeg that Francis Graham and W. A. Robinson, the two committeemen who met him, had not yet notified E. A. Partridge. A wire was despatched at once to Sintaluta and the Chairman joined them by first train. For two days the Board wrestled with this unexpected difficulty which threatened to annihilate the company before it got started. The application of the Organization Committee for a charter was refused on the ground that the shares of a company with a capital of $250,000 could not be less than $100 each. Their solicitor tried in vain to induce the Department to change its views, all canvassing to sell stock being discontinued by the Committee in the meantime. "Well, let 'em keep their charter if they want to," said Kennedy finally. "This discussion's not getting us anywhere and if we can't get a Dominion charter, why we can't get it." "Guess you're right, John. We might as well quit and go on home." "Who said anything about quitting?" Kennedy brought down his big fist on the table with a thump. "We'll get a Manitoba charter. That's what I mean." The others shook their heads. A Provincial charter would be useless for what they were proposing to do, they contended. Kennedy disagreed so emphatically that he refused to stop arguing about it till at last he and John Spencer were delegated to see the Manitoba authorities. In the course of a few days the arrangements for a Provincial charter were complete, and the Committee turned its attention to selling enough stock to be ready for business by the middle of the following month. By this time the harvest season was so near at hand that prompt action was necessary if they were to do any business that fall. Under the Manitoba charter the company could open for business with a provisional directorate and as five members of the original committee were in Winnipeg and available for quick action, it was decided to go ahead as it would be impossible to hold a representative general meeting of the shareholders before harvest and it was advisable in the interests of the subscribers to take advantage of the opportunity to do business in the meantime. Provisional organization therefore was undertaken during the week of the Winnipeg Industrial Exhibition, in a tent on the Fair grounds, and July 26th was set as the date. When space was sought for the erection of their sixteen-foot tent, however, they found themselves classed with the "Sunflower Belles" and "Katzenjammer Castle" and it was only after the payment of fifty dollars that permission was granted for the erection of the tent. Here to the accompaniment of a raucous medley of sounds--the beating of tom-toms, the ballyhooing of the sideshows, the racket of the machinery exhibits and the cries of the peanut and lemonade vendors--the farmers' trading company was organized with provisional officers[1] and directorate in legal shape to start the wheels in motion as a joint stock company. But before actual business could begin a manager must be located who knew all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the grain business; also a seat upon the Winnipeg Grain Exchange must be purchased before the farmers could enter the arena as dealers in grain. None of the officers of the young company which was about to try its wings overlooked the fact that nothing could be more foolhardy than for farmers like themselves, direct from the green pastures, to attempt the plunge they were about to take without proper guidance as to the depth of the water and the set of the currents. They knew they were embarking in a most intricate and difficult business and with so much at stake on behalf of the whole farming population of Western Canada it was necessary to place the helm in the hands of somebody who could pilot them through the shoals. At best it promised to be a stormy passage. About the only man in sight for the position was Thomas Coulter, of the Independent Grain Company. He had treated E. A. Partridge with more consideration as the "Farmers' Representative" than most of the other grain men and there was a possibility that he might be persuaded to take the offer seriously. But on approaching him, Mr. Coulter did not become excited over the prospect of managing a farmers' company in the grain business; even he was not inclined to take too seriously the effort of the farmers to do their own trading. How long would the farmers stand behind the company in the face of the competition that would be brought to bear? That was the question that bulged right out in front; for, as everybody knew, farmers never had been able to hang together very long when it came down to a matter of dollars and cents in their individual pockets. Finally, however, he agreed that there might be a fighting chance and accepted the management. So far so good. But what about the seat on the Grain Exchange? The price of it was $2,500. One thousand shares of the company's stock had been disposed of with ten per cent. paid up and from the $2,500 thus realized the expenses of organization had to be met, the charter paid for, the legal fee and expenses at Ottawa in connection with the effort to secure a Dominion charter, office rent, printing bills and what not. "Which leaves us about $1,000 to buy a $2,500 seat and finance our first business operations," said John Spencer with the look of a worried Secretary-Treasurer. "We'll have to issue a twenty per cent. call on subscribed stock," admitted the President reluctantly. "In the meantime I'll have to see if some of the boys out at Sintaluta will go security for the fifteen hundred. Thank heaven, these fellows down here think we're a hilarious joke! The only chance we've got to get through the fence with this thing is for them to keep right on laughing at us till we get our toes in the sand!" He wrote to Sintaluta, explaining the situation, and five of E. A. Partridge's friends[2] at once responded by going to the bank with their personal notes for the amount needed. "With support like that we're going to win, boys," cried the President proudly when the bank notified them that the money was available. Financial arrangements were established with the Bank of British North America and when a room had been rented on the top floor of the old Tribune building and circulars sent broadcast among the farmers, soliciting grain, the wheels began to turn. The little office was opened for business on September 5th (1906). It was so small that even two or three people got in each other's way, though all they were doing was to watch the mails anxiously for the first indications as to whether the farmers would stand behind the big idea that was now put to the test. Then came the bill of lading for the first carload of grain consigned to the new company, followed quickly by the second, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth--two at a time, three, ten, fifteen per day! Every foot of space in the little office was a busy spot and the lone typewriter clickety-clacked on the second-hand table with cheerful disregard of lunch hours. By the end of the month the weekly receipts had risen to one hundred cars of grain. It became necessary to move to a larger office and accommodation was obtained in the Henderson Block. At the present rate, a whole floor would be needed soon. Over at the Grain Exchange some men were talking seriously. They were talking about E. A. Partridge and they were not laughing. The Secretary of the Exchange was instructed to write a letter. Partridge hit the desk so hard that the paper-knife with which he had sliced open that letter hopped to the floor. "They're after us already!" he exploded. It looked that way. The Company's seat on the Grain Exchange was held in the name of the President and the letter summoned him to appear before the Council of the Exchange to answer to a charge of having sinned against the honor and "diginity" of that institution and of violating its rules. A short time before the young company had issued a circular setting forth their intention of dividing co-operatively whatever profits were earned; in other words, the man sending the larger amount of grain would receive the larger profits. This, the Exchange claimed, was a violation of the strict rules of the Grain Exchange and would have to be abandoned. "You are virtually splitting the commission with the shipper," claimed the Exchange, "and we can't allow that for a minute." "It's up to you to prove I'm guilty, not up to me to come here and commit myself," argued Partridge. "If you can find any profits that have been distributed co-operatively by the Grain Growers' Grain Company, go ahead. Nor have I sinned against your 'diginity'!" he added, sarcastically taking advantage of the stenographer's error in spelling. "For that matter, you've been digging into me ever since I came on here!" "You can't do any more business with our members till you change your ways," declared the Exchange and forthwith, on October 25th, notice was posted to all Exchange members that any of them found dealing with the farmers' company would be penalized themselves. Expelled from trading privileges! Practically boycotted! It was a straight punch on the nose that threatened to put the young organization out of business for the final count. Membership in the Exchange was absolutely imperative if the farmers were to be in a position to sell grain to exporters; they were not strong enough yet to export direct to Old Country markets and all the exporters through whom they were compelled to deal were members of the Exchange. "The whole thing's just a pretext!" cried Partridge vehemently. "We haven't got any by-law regarding distribution of profits co-operatively; the only thing they've got to go on is that circular. They're beginning to get scared of us and they see a chance to put us out of business." If this were the object, it looked as if it might be achieved in short order. The grain was pouring in steadily by the carload and with no buyer daring to deal with them in face of the mandate from the Exchange, of which they were all members, the new company was in a quandary to dispose of the incoming grain on a falling market. The only thing they could do was to wait until they had sufficient of any grade to make a shipment of from 8,000 to 10,000 bushels of that grade and try to place it somewhere in the East. The Manager was sent east hurriedly to see what connections he could establish while his office assistant mailed letter after letter to eastern points in an endeavor to work several contracts. The farmers who shipped their grain to the new company were expecting to receive seventy-five per cent. of an advance from the bank on their bills of lading and a prompt remittance of the balance when the Inspection Certificate and Outturn were in the hands of the Company. With the grain piling up on their company day by day, it was not long before the overdraft at the bank began to assume alarming proportions. Luckily the Assistant Manager succeeded in making several sales in the East, which eased away from the crisis which was shaping. It was quite patent that it would have been suicide for the young trading organization to notify the farmers to stop sending in business. They dare not do that. In desperation the President and Vice-President went to the Manitoba Government and laid their case in full before the cabinet. Premier R. P. Roblin (now Sir Rodmond Roblin) was very much surprised to learn the facts. "The Government certainly cannot countenance any such action on the part of the grain dealers," he declared emphatically. "We cannot allow them to boycott a company composed of farmers who have as much right to sell grain as any other body of men." Accordingly the Government set a time limit within which the Exchange had the option of removing the ban against the farmers' company or of losing their Provincial charter. In the meantime, however, this did not obtain restoration of trading privileges, without which the farmers' company could not do business with Exchange members except by paying them the full commission of one cent per bushel. The situation, therefore, was approaching a crisis rapidly. The company was fortunate in having the friendship of their local bank manager; but even he could not go on forever making advances on consigned grain and there was some suspicion that letters were reaching the head office of the bank in Montreal, advising that the quicker this particular account was closed out the better off the bank would be. Then one morning the local manager called on the Executive and his face was grave. "This is not the first time I've heard from the Head Office about this account, as you know," he began at once, "but I'm afraid it's the last call, gentlemen." He handed a letter to the President. "As you see, I am instructed to close out your account at once unless further security is forthcoming. I'm sorry; for I believe you've merely run into hard luck in getting squared away. But--I'm not the bank, you understand." "What do you want us to do? What can we do?" asked Partridge anxiously. "This thing will straighten out, Mr. Machaffie. We're getting the business. You know that. We're going to get back our trading privileges and everything will be alright." The banker shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. But do you know what your overdraft amounts to now?" "Three hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars," murmured the Secretary-Treasurer. "Exactly." "What are we to do?" "Before coming here I've been to see the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society about taking some of your wheat. Fisher is ready to help you out if he finds he's not overstepping the rules of the Exchange. I may be able to carry you along for a short time if you three gentlemen, the Executive of your company, will give the bank your personal bond without limit as to the amount. I have even gone so far as to draw up the document for signature, if it meets with your approval." "What about that, Kennedy? Spencer?" "Guess we've got to do it," nodded Kennedy. "Looks like it," agreed Spencer. "Then--down she goes!" decided Partridge, dipping his pen in the ink. The others signed after him. "That means we three go down with the ship," he remarked quietly after the door had closed upon the bank manager. "I appreciate you two fellows signing that thing." He got up and shook hands with each of them in turn. "If bad gets worse and we go to smash----" "It can't get worse and we're not going to smash," reassured the others. But that remained to be seen. Although placing grain in the East was robbing them of profits, it was the best that could be done to tide things over. The three active officials were on the anxious seat from morning till night. It had got down now to a question of meeting each day's events as they came and frequently the lights blazed in the little office till two and three in the morning while the provisional officers raked the situation from every angle in an endeavor to forecast the next day's difficulties and to prepare for them. For three months the overdraft at the bank had averaged $275,000, due almost entirely to the conditions resulting from the action of the Exchange. It was useless to worry over the amount of interest which this accommodation was costing and the profits which might have been rolled up had things been different; the real worry was to keep going at any cost. For, as the bank manager had intimated, the whole thing was just hard luck rather than any unsoundness in the business. It was a fine paradox that the more pronounced the success of the idea itself became, the greater grew the danger of complete failure because of the predicament! Death by wheat! An ironical fate indeed for a grain company! Upon investigation, the farmers' company discovered that their original idea of distributing their profits co-operatively--as embodied in the circular to which the Exchange had objected--was contrary to the provisions of the Manitoba Joint Stock Companies' Act under which they held their charter. Therefore the co-operative idea in connection with profits was formally dropped by the Grain Growers' Grain Company. This had been done at a directors' meeting on December 22nd (1906), when a resolution had been passed, cancelling the proposal contained in the objectionable circular.[3] But although the Exchange had been notified immediately and repeated applications for reinstatement had been made, the farmers' company was still struggling along in the throes of their dilemma--proof positive, concluded the farmers, that the Grain Exchange had used the co-operative suggestion as a mere pretext to oust the Company from the field altogether. In piled the wheat, car after car of it! A considerable portion of it had been bought on track and farmers who had consigned their grain were anxious, naturally, to have it disposed of without delay. With prices going down and navigation on the point of closing, the best hopes of the management became centred in getting a big shipment away to Buffalo by boat. That would enable them to escape a big item in storage charges and to place the grain in line for export at rates considerably below the all-rail figures. "With those bills of lading in the bank, we've no control of them and the bank can do just about as it likes," reviewed the President one night. "If they should come down on us to sell our wheat inside of forty-eight hours--we're goners, boys! All that those fellows over at the Exchange have got to do is to shove down the market thirty points and our name is _mud_! The loss to the farmers who've shipped us their grain will kill this movement and every one like it in the West for all time to come. This company will be as dead as a doornail and so will we financially as its bonded backers." Kennedy was running a finger tentatively down the window-pane. It left a streak in the forming frost. "What I want to know is, how long ought it to take to load up this whole boatload we're trying to move?" "Oh, about seventeen hours or so." "And how long have they been at it already? Five days, ain't it? And she's not away yet! What d'you suppose that means?" he snapped. He began to throw things into a grip. He made for the door. "Where'n the mischief are you going, John?" "Fort William--can just make the train if I hustle. The _J. P. Walsh_ gets out of that harbor with that wheat of ours, by Hickory!--if she has to be chopped out with an axe!" Two days later a telegram reached the little office: _S.S. J. P. Walsh_ cleared to-day for Buffalo. Three hundred and ten thousand bushels. Last boat out. KENNEDY. [1] See Appendix--Par. 7. [2] See Appendix--Par. 8. [3] This resolution was confirmed at a meeting of the shareholders, February 5th, 1907. CHAPTER VIII A KNOCK ON THE DOOR Every man is worth just as much as the things are worth about which he is concerned.--_Marcus Aurelius_. That big shipment to Buffalo, along with several others which were placed in the East with the market recovering, relieved the situation greatly. Also, the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society's Winnipeg office decided to stand by the farmers' co-operative marketing venture and risked disapproval to buy some of the young company's wheat; not only that, but the farmers' company was allowed the regular commission of one cent per bushel on the purchase and the cheque paid in to the bank amounted to $58,298. This friendly co-operation the farmers were not quick to forget and they still speak of it with gratitude. It began to look as if the struggling farmers' agency might worry through the winter after all. The strain of the past few months had told upon the men at the head of the young organization and especially upon the provisional President, who felt keenly the responsibilities of his office. Of a sensitive, high-strung temperament, E. A. Partridge suffered reaction to such a degree that at times he became almost despondent. He began to talk of resigning. He felt that he had done quite a lot in getting things under way and that the hard fight which the farmers would have to wage before the trading company was established permanently would be carried on more successfully by a younger man. So frequently had his motives been questioned by suspicious farmers at organization meetings that he thought it would be better for the company if he occupied a less prominent place in the conduct of its affairs. The idea seemed to be prevalent that the organizers were enthusiastic for direct financial reasons. "Those fellows are talking for what they are going to get out of it," was an open accusation at times--a misconception so unjust that on several occasions Partridge had refuted it by pledging to resign from the presidency as soon as the company was on its feet. "You men keep saying how much I've got out of this," he reproved in disheartened tones. "Gentlemen, I'll admit that I've got a little silver out of this. But it isn't in my pocket; it's in my hair!" Partridge had no respect for a "quitter," however. He did not propose to take it easy until the farmers' agency did get into proper running order. Although his associates tried to dissuade him altogether from the course he had planned, the best he would promise was to remain at his post until the first annual meeting. Immediately preceding the annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at Brandon in February a general meeting of Grain Growers' Grain Company shareholders was held with about two hundred represented. Until now the company had been operating under a provisional directorate only and it was the purpose of the meeting to complete organization. Since opening for business the shareholders had practically doubled in number and over 1,500,000 bushels of farmers' grain had been handled by their own agency, its ability to dispose of wheat at good figures being demonstrated in spite of deprivation of trading privileges on the Exchange. Putting a conservative estimate upon the holdings of the farmers' venture into co-operative marketing, its paid-up capital remained intact, its organization expenses paid--including the membership on the Grain Exchange--and there still was left a respectable margin of profit. To this showing the shareholders responded by electing the provisional directorate as directors for the balance of the year, adding two[1] to their number, while the same officers were left in charge. In connection with the directorate it was pointed out that it might be better to have the trading company's directorate independent of the Association's directorate. The suggestion came from a tall young man who had a habit of thinking before he spoke and it was but one of many practical ideas which he had thrown out at the meeting. "That young chap, Crerar, of Russell--makings of an able man there, Ed," commented the re-elected Vice-president later. "Know anything about him?" "I know his father better than I do him," nodded the President thoughtfully. "I met his father in the old Patron movement years ago. I've got a great respect for his attitude of mind towards moral and economic questions. I like that young man's views, Kennedy; he seems to have a grasp of what this movement could accomplish--of the aims that might be served beyond the commercial side of it. In short, he seems to be somewhat of a student of economics and he has the education--used to be a school-teacher, I believe." "Remember when I went up to Russell, during their Fair in October, to tell them what the Exchange was trying to do to us? Well, he was at the meeting and came over to my room at the hotel afterward," remarked Kennedy. "That's how interested he was. We had quite a talk over the whole situation. Told me he had an arrangement to buy grain for Graves & Reilly, besides running the Farmers' Elevator at Russell, and he offered to ship us all the grain that wasn't consigned to his firm. We've got quite a few carloads from him during the season." "If there were only a few more elevator operators like him!" sighed Partridge. "When I was up there last July, selling stock, only eight men turned out," he recalled. "Crerar was one of them. I sold four shares. Crerar bought one. Say, he'd be a good man to have on the next directorate. How would it be if I wrote him a letter about it?" But "Alex." Crerar laid that letter aside and promptly forgot it; he did not take it seriously enough to answer it. If there was anything he could do to help along a thing in which he believed as thoroughly as he believed in the grain growers' movement and the farmers' agency he was more than willing to do it; but executive offices, he felt, were for older and more experienced men than he. As manager of an elevator in his home town, as buyer for a grain firm and as a farmer himself he had had opportunities for studying the situation from many angles. From the first he had followed the organization of the farmers with much interest and sympathy. He could not forget his own early experiences in marketing grain when the elevators offered him fifty-nine cents per bushel, nineteen cents under the price at the terminal at the time. The freight rate on his No. 1 Northern wheat he knew to be only nine cents per bushel and when he was docked a bushel and a half to a load of fifty bushels on top of it all he had been aroused to protest. A protest from young Crerar was no mild and bashful affair, either. It was big-fisted with vigor. But when, with characteristic spirit, he had pointed out the injustice of the price offered and the dockage taken--the elevator man, quite calmly, had told him to go to the devil! "There's no use going to the other elevators, for you're all alike," said young Crerar hotly. "Then take your damned grain home again!" grinned the elevator operator insolently. So the young farmer was compelled to sell his first wheat for what he could get. He was prepared to pay three cents per bushel on the spread, that being a reasonable charge; but although plenty of cars were available at the time, the spread cost him ten cents, a direct loss of seven cents per bushel. Besides this he was forced to see between twenty-five and thirty bushels out of every thousand appropriated for dockage, no matter how clean the wheat might be. That was in 1902. It was hard to forget that kind of treatment. And when, later on, young Crerar accepted an offer of $75 per month to manage a Farmers' Elevator at Russell he bore his own experience in mind and extended every possible consideration to the farmers who came to him. The elevator company, as a company, did not buy grain; but as representative of Graves & Reilly, a Winnipeg firm, he bought odd lots and for this service received an extra fifty dollars per month. Financially, it was better than teaching school. He had made ten dollars the first summer he taught school and to earn it he had walked three miles and a half each morning after milking the cows at home, arriving at the school soaking wet with dew from wading in the long prairie grass. And even at that, the trustees had wanted a "cheaper" teacher! A woman, they thought, might do it cheaper. The young schoolmaster objected so earnestly, however, that the argument was dropped. He needed this money to assist in a plan for attending the Collegiate at Portage la Prairie. He taught the school so well that after studying Latin at Manitoba College in 1899, the trustees were glad to get him back the following year at a salary of $35 per month. But milking cows at home night and morning and teaching school in between was not an exciting life at best for a young fellow ambitious to go farming. So at last he acquired a quarter-section of Hudson Bay Company land near Russell and took to "baching it" in a little frame shack. In the fall some lumber was required for buildings and it so happened that along came an old chap with a proposition to put in a portable sawmill on a timber limit up in the Riding Mountains nearby. The old man meant business alright; he had the engine within ten miles of its destination before he was overtaken and the whole machine seized for debt. It looked as if the thousands of logs which the residents of the district had taken out for the expected mill had been piled up to no purpose. Crerar, however, succeeded in making a deal for the engine and, with a couple of partners, began sawing up logs. The little sawmill proved so useful that he ran it for four winters. When finally it was burned down no attempt was made to rebuild. Its owner was entering wider fields of activity. After meeting Partridge and Kennedy his interest in the affairs of the farmers' little trading concern was quickened. He was much impressed with the fact that here were men so devoted to an idea--so profound in their belief that it was the right idea--that its advancement was their first and only thought at all times. Alex. Crerar liked that. If a thing were worth attempting at all, it was worth every concentration of effort. What these men were trying to accomplish appealed to him as a big thing, a bigger thing than most of the farmers yet realized, and it deserved all the help he could give it. The little agency was in the thick of a fight against tremendous odds and that, too, had its appeal; for to a natural born fighter the odds meant merely a bigger fight, a bigger triumph. Accordingly, the young man lost no opportunity to boost things along. He was able to consign many carloads of grain in a season. If an idea occurred to him that he thought might be of service he sat down and wrote a letter, offering the suggestion on the chance that it might prove useful to the Executive. He did everything he could to build up the Company's business in the Russell district and when he returned home from the shareholders' organization meeting he kept right on sending in business, offering helpful suggestions and saying a good word when possible. As the weeks went by and it became more apparent that they would wind up their first year's business satisfactorily, E. A. Partridge decided definitely that he would not accept another term as President. There were several good men available to succeed him; but he could not get it out of his head that the one man for the tasks ahead was the young fellow up at Russell. When he went there in June to speak at a Grain Growers' picnic he drew Crerar aside for an hour's chat, found out why he had not answered the letter suggesting that he play a more active part, and liked him all the better for his modesty. Without saying anything of what he had in mind he returned to Winnipeg and sent the Vice-President to Russell to size up the situation quietly. When Kennedy got back he agreed with the President's choice of a successor. The Company was holding its first annual meeting on July 16th and care was taken that the unsuspecting Crerar was on hand. The Vice-president button-holed him, explaining that he was wanted on the Board of Directors and in spite of his protest the President himself nominated him and he was elected promptly. But when at the directors' meeting that night the President told the Board that he had been looking around for a young man to take charge and that T. A. Crerar was the man--when everybody present nodded approval, the man from Russell was speechless. If they had asked him to pack his grip and leave at once for Japan to interview the Mikado, he could not have been more completely surprised. "Why, gentlemen" he objected, "I don't know anything about managing this company! I could not undertake it." "What is the next order of business?" asked E. A. Partridge. The shareholders were almost as much surprised as the newcomer himself when the name of the new president was announced. Many of them had never heard of T. A. Crerar. Had the young president-elect been able to see what lay ahead of him-- But, fortunately or unfortunately, that is one thing which is denied to every human being. [1] See Appendix--Par. 7. CHAPTER IX THE GRAIN EXCHANGE AGAIN "How many tables, Janet, are there in the Law?" "Indeed, sir, I canna just be certain; but I think there's ane in the foreroom, ane in the back room an' anither upstairs." --_Scotch Wit and Humor (Howe)_. The efforts of the elevator faction of the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange, apparently to choke to death the Grain Growers' Grain Company, had awakened the farmers of the West to a fuller realization of the trading company's importance to the whole farmers' movement. The Grain Growers of the three prairie provinces had been watching things closely and they did not propose to let matters take their course unchallenged. A second Royal Commission had been appointed by the Dominion Government in 1906, under the chairmanship of John Millar, Indian Head, Saskatchewan, to probe conditions in the grain trade and the farmers felt that certain evidence which had been taken by this Commission at Winnipeg justified their claims that they were the victims of a combine. In the latter part of November (1906) the President of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, D. W. McCuaig, laid formal charges against three members of the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange--charges of conspiring in restraint of trade--and when these gentlemen appeared in the Police Court it was evident that the Exchange intended to fight the case every inch of the way. The farmers discovered that the legal talent of Winnipeg had been cornered; for of the twenty lawyers to whom their solicitor, R. A. Bonnar, K.C., could turn for assistance in the prosecution every one appeared to have been retained by the defendants. The case involved such wide investigation that such assistance was imperative and finally the Grain Growers secured the services of ex-Premier F. W. G. Haultain,[1] of Saskatchewan. The preliminary hearing in the Police Court proved to be most interesting and at times developed considerable heat among the battling legal lights. The defendants and their friends were so confident that commitment for trial would not be forthcoming at all that when the Magistrate decided that he was justified in so ordering, the grain men were shocked somewhat rudely out of their complacency. Following up this preliminary victory, the Manitoba Grain Growers turned to the Manitoba Government and demanded that the charter under which the Grain Exchange operated be amended in certain particulars. The deputation from the Grain Growers met the Committee on Agriculture, the House being in session, and asked that the powers of the charter be limited so that business would be conducted on an equitable basis between buyer and producer. They asked that the Exchange be allowed to set no limit as to the number of persons who might enjoy its privileges, the question of the reputability of such persons to be decided by a majority of the members and that a seat purchased for the use of any firm or corporation should entitle that firm to the privileges of the Exchange even though registration of membership was under the name of an individual; also that the right to membership should include the right to delegate the trading powers to anyone in the employ of the firm or corporation. The Grain Growers also asked that arbitrary interference with the business methods employed by individual firms or corporations and inquisitional inquiry into such be prohibited; also that the penalties and disabilities against those breaking the common rules and the maximum-price rule be abolished; that the right to define the eligibility of a person as an employee or fix a limit to salary in any way be denied; also that the expulsion of no member should be considered final until assented to by the Minister of Agriculture and that all by-laws should receive the assent of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council before becoming legal and binding. The farmers asked that the Government have full access to the minute books, papers and accounts of the Grain Exchange and that provision be made for the public to have free access to a gallery overlooking the trading room during the sessions of the Exchange so that the transactions occurring might be observed and the prices disseminated through the public press. They further wished to see gambling in futures made a criminal offence. Roderick McKenzie, Secretary of the Manitoba Association, told how the existing Grain Exchange had about three hundred members, of whom one hundred were active and fifty-seven of these active members represented the elevator interests. He said that the interests of the fifty-seven were looked after by twelve elevator men in the Exchange and that these twelve men agreed so well that they allowed one of their number to send out the price which should be paid for wheat for the day. The Committee on Agriculture promised to consider the requests and later, when they met to do so, members of the Grain Exchange attended in force to present their side of the case. They claimed that a great deal of the trouble existing between the producer and the Grain Exchange was due to misconception of the Exchange's methods of action. The Exchange was only a factor in the grain business and under their charter they were allowed to make by-laws and regulations, these being necessary in such an intricate business as handling grain. The wiring of prices to country points was done by the North-West Grain Dealers' Association, which had nothing to do with the Exchange but was a distinct and separate organization for the purpose of running elevators at country points as cheaply as possible. The highest possible prices were quoted and the plan was merely to avoid duplicate wiring. The grain men claimed that it was impossible to handle the wheat of the country unless futures were allowed while to carry on its business properly the Exchange must have the power to say who should be members and otherwise to regulate its business. If the producer was getting full value for his wheat why should the Grain Exchange be interfered with? The Exchange was willing that its membership should be extended. Their books always would be open to Government inspection in future and they would also repeal the rule regarding track-buyers' salaries. The press was already admitted and it would be found that when the new building which the Exchange was erecting was completed there would be a gallery for the use of the public during trading hours. If the Legislature were to amend the charter, declared the Exchange's spokesman, the Exchange would demand that the charter be cancelled _in toto_ and a receiver appointed to distribute the assets. The Exchange was tired of being branded thieves and robbers and they should be let alone to do their business. If this were not satisfactory, then they wished to be put out of business altogether. The Grain Growers protested that it was not their desire to have the charter cancelled. They were not blind to the usefulness of the Exchange if it were properly managed and all they asked was that this organization be compelled to do what was right. The reason the Exchange had admitted the Grain Growers' Grain Company, the farmers claimed, was so that they could have it under discipline, being afraid of a combination of farmers in the interests of the producer. The farmers had lost confidence in the manipulations of the Exchange and wanted official protection. The question of declaring deals in futures to be a criminal offence was outside provincial jurisdiction and the farmers withdrew that part of the request. They wished everything else to stand, however. At this juncture a recommendation was made that a conference be held between the Government, the Grain Growers, the Exchange, reeves of municipalities, bankers, railroads, etc., for discussion of everything pertaining to the handling of wheat, including amendments to the Grain Exchange charter. The idea appealed to the Premier and before the Committee he pledged that the resolutions passed at the proposed conference would be converted into legislation. After adopting the Agricultural Committee's report the Government did not act independently regarding the suggested charter amendments, as the farmers had hoped they would; instead, the whole thing was shelved, pending the suggested conference. When this conference was held in the latter part of February, however, the Government was duly impressed by the earnestness of the Grain Growers. Many strong speeches were made, including one powerful arraignment by J. W. Scallion, of Virden, whose energetic leadership had earned him the title: "Father of all the Grain Growers." The Government promised to amend the Exchange charter at the next session of the Legislature. The activity of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association was putting a new face upon the struggle of the Grain Growers' Grain Company for the restoration of their trading privileges on the floor of the Exchange. It demonstrated that the farmers could act in concert if occasion arose and that the Grain Growers' Associations were in accord with the principles for which the farmers' trading company was fighting. When, therefore, the Manitoba Association took a hand in the matter by officially urging the Manitoba Government to assist in restoring the Company to its former position on the Exchange in order that it could enjoy the rights of the seat for which it had paid, the Government was forced to take action. It is doubtful if a Minister of the Crown in Manitoba ever had been called upon to make a more remarkable official statement than that which now appeared in print in connection with this matter. In the absence of Hon. R. P. Roblin it became the duty of the Acting-Premier to make it. Hon. Robert Rogers, then Minister of Public Works in the Manitoba Government, was the official head of the Government in the Premier's absence and in the _Winnipeg Telegram_ of April 4th, 1907, the statement appeared as follows: "The action of the Council of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange in refusing trading privileges to the Grain Growers' Grain Company is regarded by the Government as an arbitrary exercise of the powers conferred upon them (the Exchange) through their charter from the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, and unless remedied by the Exchange, the Government will call the Legislature together during the present month for the purpose of remedying the conditions by Legislative amendments." On April 15th the farmers' trading company was admitted once more to the full privileges of their seat on the Exchange. The case against the three members of the Grain Exchange, who had been indicted under Section 498 of the Criminal Code, came to trial in the Assize Court a week later, on April 22nd, before Judge Phippen. It was now a matter for Crown prosecution and under direction of the Attorney-General, R. A. Bonnar, K.C., proceeded vigorously. The Grain Growers claimed that the Exchange had rules and regulations which had been carried out in restraint of trade and that in combination with the North-West Grain Dealers' Association there had been a practice of restricting the price to be paid for grain to certain daily figures, sent out by the parties conspiring. Also, they expected to show that there had been a combine in existence between the elevator companies so that there was no competition in the buying of grain at certain points while there was an agreement that only a certain amount of street wheat would be received at the various elevators, the whole thing amounting to the restriction of wheat buying within certain limits fixed by the combination of the buyers who belonged to the combine--this to the consequent barring out of the small buyer from the trade. The latter, the Grain Growers argued, was prevented from buying by the rule which called for the payment of a salary to track buyers and prohibited the hiring of men on commission; there were points where the quantity of grain offered for sale was too limited to justify the payment of a fifty-dollar salary to the buyer. Another point of complaint was that the Grain Exchange membership was restricted to three hundred, the members having agreed among themselves that no more seats be added although all present seats were sold and many more might be sold to eligible citizens. Also, claimed the prosecution, there was a practical boycott of expelled members in that the members of the Exchange were forbidden to deal with expelled members; it was practically impossible to do business in grain in Western Canada unless connected with the Grain Exchange, one firm having experienced this difficulty. The rule which barred the purchasing of grain on track during the hours of trading on the Exchange was, they would endeavor to show, an act in restraint of trade and the three men under indictment, the prosecution hoped to prove, had been active in the enactment of the alleged illegal by-laws of the Grain Exchange. Prior to the enactment of these obnoxious laws of the Exchange the farmers had been sought by the buyers, whereas since the rules had been established the farmer must seek the purchaser. While the prices given out were fixed by the Grain Exchange in what was claimed to be open competition, the prosecution intended to show that it was a gambling transaction pure and simple, the price-fixing being nothing more than the guess of the men who acted for their own gain. The trial lasted for a month, during which time a great many witnesses were examined--grain men and farmers--and the whole grain trade reviewed. The array of legal talent for the defence was very imposing and the case attracted much attention because, aside from its interest to the grain trade and the farming population, it promised to test the particular and somewhat obscure section of the Criminal Code under which the indictment was laid. At one stage of the proceedings the tension in court became so high and witnesses so unwilling that upon reproval by the court regarding his examination, leading counsel for the Grain Growers picked up his bag and walked out in protest, willing to risk punishment for the breach of etiquette rather than remain. After the Grain Growers' executive and counsel had conferred with the Government, however, the Grain Growers' counsel was prevailed upon to resume the case. The finding of the court did not come as much of a surprise; for it was apparent before the trial ended that the section of the Code was considered ambiguous by the presiding Judge. The latter held that all restraints suggested by the evidence were agreed to, whether justifiably or not, as business regulations and before finding the defendants guilty these restraints must appear to be "undue," according to his reading of the section. It was necessary to respect the right of a particular trade or business or of a particular class of traders to protect their property by regulations and agreements so long as the public interests were not thereby "unduly" impaired; to the Judge's mind there was no question that the public had not been _unduly_ affected. After reviewing the case the Judge held that the gravamen of the whole charge hung upon the Commission Rule of the Exchange--that one cent commission per bushel should be made in handling grain; so that the price paid would be the price at the terminal (Fort William) less the freight and one cent per bushel commission, neither more nor less. Witnesses agreed that this was the lowest profit on which the business could live. Fort William prices were the highest the world's markets could justify. Owing to the presence in the statute of the word, "unduly," therefore, the Judge could not find the defendants guilty. The Grain Growers were much dissatisfied with the decision; for they believed that they had adduced evidence to support their case and did not relish losing it on a technicality. Appeal was made, therefore; but the appeal court upheld the judgment of the assize court. Apparently, deduced the farmers, this meant that men could conspire to create monopolies by driving all competitors out of business so long as they did not do it out of pure malice--so long as they justified it on the grounds of "personal interest"--so long as the things they did were not "malicious restraints, unconnected with any business relations of the accused!" In other words, if men merely conspired to advance their own business interests they committed no offence under the then existing law; to be liable to punishment they must be actuated by malice. So that all the turmoil and talk, court proceedings and conferences, deputations and denunciations, evidence and evasions--all the excitement of the past few months practically left conditions just where they were. For the amendments to the Grain Exchange charter would not materialize till the Legislature met again next year. But there was one spot where the clouds had rifted and the light shone through. The Grain Growers' Grain Company had won back its place on the Exchange. More and more the farmers began to pin their faith to their little fighting trading company "at the front." It appeared to be the concentration point for the fire of enemy guns. In all probability hostilities would break out anew, but the men in charge were good men--loyal and determined; they could be relied upon to take a full-sized whack at every difficulty which raised its head. The first of these to threaten was on the way. [1] Now Chief Justice Haultain. CHAPTER X PRINTERS' INK The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own.--_Channing_. As the farmers saw it, there was no reason in the world why the bank should do what it did. The Company had closed its first year with net profits sufficient to declare a seven per cent. cash dividend and the profits would have been augmented greatly had it not been for the heavy interest payments which accrued on the unusual overdrafts imposed by special conditions. In spite of their extremely limited resources and the handicaps forced upon them, the volume of business transacted had exceeded $1,700,000 during the first ten months that the farmers had been in business; their paid-up capital had been approximately eleven thousand dollars of which over seven thousand had been required for organization outlay. The number of shareholders had nearly doubled during the ten months and everything was pointing to rapid advancement. The Company had been a good customer of the bank, which had received about $10,000 in interest. The security offered for their line of credit was unquestioned. Yet the new directors had scarcely settled into place for the approaching busy season before, without warning, the bank notified them that they wished to close out the account. When men set themselves up in business they expect to have to compete for their share of trade. The farmers did not expect to find their path lined with other grain dealers cheering them forward and waving their hats. They expected competition of the keenest. What they could not anticipate, however, was the lengths to which the fight might go or the methods that might be adopted to put their Agency out of business altogether. Hitherto the grain grower had been in the background when it came to marketing and handling grain. He was away out in the country somewhere--busy plowing, busy seeding, busy harvesting, busy something-or-other. He was a Farm Hand who so "tuckered himself out" during daylight that he was glad to pry off his wrinkled boots and lie down when it got dark in order to yank them on again, when the rooster crowed at dawn, for the purpose of "tuckering himself out" all over again. It was true that without him there would have been no grain to handle; equally true that without the grain dealers the farmer would have been in difficulty if he tried to hunt up individual consumers to buy his wheat. The farmer interfering in the established grain trade was something new and it was not to be supposed that when the surprise of it wore off things were not liable to happen. The farmer was quick to infer that the action of the bank in cutting off the trading company's credit without apparent cause was another move of the opposing forces. It was so palpably a vital spot at which to strike. This time, however, the threatening cloud evaporated almost as soon as it appeared. The manager, W. H. Machaffie, resigned and assumed the management of another bank. He was a far-sighted financier, Mr. Machaffie, and almost the first account he sought for the Home Bank was that of the Grain Growers' Grain Company. The Home Bank was new in the West and in the East it had been an old loan company without big capitalistic interests, its funds being derived mostly from small depositors; but while at that time it was not among the wealthiest banking institutions of the country, it was quite able to supply full credit facilities. The opportunity for the farmers' company and the young bank to get together to mutual advantage was too good to be overlooked. Under the banking laws of Canada valuable special privileges are granted in view of the important part which the banks play in the country's development. Government returns indicate that the greater part of the business done by banks is carried on upon their deposits. If the working people and the farmers, as is generally accepted, form the majority of these depositors of money in banks, then were not many loans which went to monopolistic interests being used against the very people who furnished the money? If the farmers could acquire stock in a bank of their own, would they not be in a position to finance their own requirements rather than those of corporations which might be obtaining unreasonable profits from the people at large? Such an investment would be safe and productive at the same time that it strengthened the farmers' hands in their effort to do their own trading. With all this in view the directors of the Grain Growers' Grain Company made a heavy investment in Home Bank stock and were appointed sole brokers to sell a large block of the bank's stock to Western farmers, working men and merchants. On the sale of this they were to receive a commission which would, they expected, be enough to cover the expense of placing the stock. As the business expanded the Company would be assured of an extended line of credit as it was needed. And the business certainly was expanding. Although the prospects for the new crop were not as bright as they had been the year before, a substantial increase in the amount of grain they would handle--owing to the increase in the number of shareholders--was anticipated by the management. They were not prepared, however, for the heavy volume that poured in upon them when the crop began to move; it was double that of their first season and the office staff was hard pressed to keep pace with the rising work. There now seemed no reason to believe that the success of the farmers' venture was any longer in doubt so far as the commercial side of it was concerned. But the President and directors had in mind a much broader objective. It was not enough that the farmer should receive a few more cents per bushel for his grain. "We must bear clearly in mind," warned T. A. Crerar, "that there are still those interests who would delight in nothing more than in our failure and destruction. A great many improvements require yet to be made in our system of handling grain. The struggle for the bringing about of those reforms is not by any means accomplished. As a great class of farmers, composing the most important factor in the progress and development of our country, we must learn the lesson that we must organize and work together to secure those legislative and economic reforms necessary to well-being. In the day of our prosperity we must not forget that there are yet many wrongs to be righted and that true happiness and success in life cannot be measured by the wealth we acquire. In the mad, debasing struggle for material riches and pleasure, which is so characteristic of our age, we often neglect and let go to decay the finer and higher side of our nature and lose thereby that power of sympathy with our fellows which finds expression in lending them a helping hand and in helping in every good work which tends to increase human happiness and lessen human misery. In keeping this in view we keep in mind that high ideal which will make our organization not alone a material success but also a factor in changing those conditions which now tend to stifle the best that is in humanity." An important step towards the upholding of these ideals was now taken by the directors. The President and the Vice-President happened to be in a little printshop one day, looking over the proof of a pamphlet which the Company was about to issue, when the former picked up a little school journal which was just off the press for the Teachers' Association. "Why can't we get out a little journal like that?" he wondered. "It would be a great help to our whole movement." About this time the Company was approached by a Winnipeg farm paper which devoted a page to the doings of the grain growers. "If you'll help us to get subscriptions amongst the farmers," said the publisher, "we'll devote more space still to the doings of the grain growers." "But why should we build up another man's paper for him?" argued the President. "Why can't we get out a journal for ourselves?" The idea grew more insistent the longer it was entertained, and although at first E. A. Partridge, who was on the directorate, was opposed to such a venture, he finally agreed that it would be of untold assistance to the farmers if they had a paper of their own to voice their ideals. The logical editor for the new undertaking was E. A. Partridge, of course, and accordingly he began to gather material for the first issue of a paper, to be called the _Grain Growers' Guide_. Partridge had a few ideas of his own that had lived with him for a long time. On occasion he had introduced some of them to his friends with characteristic eloquence and the eloquence of E. A. Partridge on a favorite theme was something worth listening to; also, he gave his auditors much to think about and sometimes got completely beyond their depth. It was then that some of them were forced to shake their heads at theories which appeared to them to be so idealistic that their practical consummation belonged to a future generation. In connection with this new paper it was Partridge's idea to issue it as a weekly and as the official organ of the grain growers' trading company instead of the grain growers' movement as a whole. He thought, too, that it would be advisable to join hands with _The Voice_, which was the organ of the Labor unions. The President and the other officers could not agree that any of these was wise at the start; it would be better, they thought, to creep before trying to walk, to issue the paper as a monthly at first and to have it the official organ of the Grain Growers' Associations rather than the trading company alone. This failure of his associates to see the wisdom of his plan to amalgamate with the organ of the Labor unions was a great disappointment to Partridge; for he had been working towards this consummation for some time, devoutly wished it and considered the time opportune for such a move. He believed it to be of vital importance to "the Cause" and its future. In October he had met with an unfortunate accident, having fallen from his binder and so injured his foot in the machinery that amputation was necessary; he was in no condition to undertake new and arduous duties in organizing a publishing proposition as he was still suffering greatly from his injury. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, it required only the upsetting of the plans he had cherished to make him give up altogether and he resigned the editorship of the new magazine after getting out the first number. "I'm too irritable to get along with anybody in an office," he declared. "I know I'm impatient and all that, boys. You'd better send for McKenzie to come in from Brandon and edit the paper." This suggestion of his editorial successor seemed to the others to be a good one; for Roderick McKenzie had been Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association from the first and had been a prime mover in its activities as well as wielding considerable influence in the other two prairie provinces where he was well known and appreciated. He was well posted, McKenzie. So the Vice-President wired him to come down to Winnipeg at once. Yes, he was well posted in the farming business, Rod. McKenzie. He had learned it in the timber country before he took to it in the land of long grass. At eleven years of age he was plowing with a yoke of oxen on the stump lands of Huron, helping his father to scratch a living out of the bush farm for a family of nine and between whiles attending a little log schoolhouse, going on cedar-gum expeditions, getting lost in the bush and indulging in other pioneer pastimes. Along in 1877, when people were talking a lot about Dakota as a farming country, McKenzie took a notion to go West; but he preferred to stay under the British flag and Winnipeg was his objective. A friend of his was running a flour-mill at Gladstone (then called Palestine), Manitoba, and young McKenzie decided to take a little walk out that way to visit him. It was a wade, rather than a walk! It was the year the country was flooded and during the first thirty days after his arrival he could count only three consecutive days without rain. In places the water was up to his hips and when he reached the flour-mill there was four feet of water inside of it. Such conditions were abnormal, of course, and due to lack of settlement and drainage. After helping to build the first railway through the country Roderick McKenzie eventually located his farm near Brandon and so far as the rich land and the climate were concerned he was entirely satisfied. Not so with the early marketing of his grain, though. He disposed of two loads of wheat at one of the elevators in Brandon one day and was given a grade and price which he considered fair enough. When he came in with two more loads of the same kind of wheat next day, however, the elevator man told him that he had sent a sample to Winnipeg and found out that it was not grading the grade he had given him the day before. "The train service wouldn't allow of such fast work, sir," said Roderick McKenzie. "I suppose you sent it by wire!" He picked up the reins. "That five cents a bushel you want me to give you looks just as good in my pocket as in yours." So he drove up town where the other buyers were and three of them looked at the wheat but refused to give a price for it. One of them was a son of the first elevator man to whom he had gone and, said he: "The Old Man gave you a knockdown for it, didn't he?" "Yes, but----" "Well, we're not going to bid against him and if you want to sell it at all, haul it back to him." As there was nothing else he could do under the conditions that prevailed, McKenzie was forced to pocket his loss without recourse. With such experiences it is scarcely necessary to say that when the grain growers' movement started in Manitoba Roderick McKenzie occupied a front seat. He was singled out at once for a place on the platform and was elected Secretary of the Brandon branch of the Association. At the annual convention of the Manitoba locals he was made Secretary of the Provincial Association, a position which he filled until 1916, when he became Secretary of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. His activities in the interests of the Association have made him a well-known figure in many circles. From the first he had been very much in favor of the farmers' trading company and only the restrictions of his official position with the Association had prevented him from taking a more prominent part in its affairs. As it was, the benefit of his experience was frequently sought. McKenzie was plowing in the field when the boy from the telegraph office reached him with John Kennedy's message. "They don't say what they want me for; but I guess I'm wanted or they wouldn't send a telegram--Haw! Back you!" And like Cincinnatus at the call of the State in the "brave days of old," McKenzie unhitched the horses and leaving the plow where it stood, made for the house, packed his grip and caught the next train for Winnipeg. John Kennedy met him at the station. "What's wrong?" demanded the Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at once. "I came right along as soon as I got your wire, Kennedy. What's up now?" "The editor of the _Grain Growers' Guide_. Partridge wants you to take his place." "ME? Why, I never edited anything in my life!" cried McKenzie, standing stock still on the platform. "Pshaw! Come along," laughed Kennedy reassuringly. "You'll be alright. It ain't hard to do." CHAPTER XI FROM THE RED RIVER VALLEY TO THE FOOTHILLS It ain't the guns or armament nor the funds that they can pay, But the close co-operation that makes them win the day; It ain't the individual, nor the army as a whole, But the everlastin' team-work of every bloomin' soul! --_Kipling_. At one of the early grain growers' conventions it had been voiced as an ideal that there were three things which the farmers' movement needed--first, a trading company to sell their products (with ultimately, it might be, the cheaper distribution of farm supplies); second, a bank in which they could own stock; third, a paper that would publish the farmers' views. So that if the new Executive of the Company had done little else than break ground for better financial arrangements and a farmers' own paper, their record for the year would have shown progress. But when the second annual meeting of the Company was held they were able to show that the volume of farmers' grain handled was almost five million bushels, double that of the first year, while the net profits amounted to over thirty thousand dollars. The number of farmer shareholders had increased to nearly three thousand with applications on file for another twelve hundred and a steady awakening of interest among the farmers was to be noticed all over the West. All this in spite of the general shortage of money, a reduced total crop yield and the keenest competition from rival grain interests. It had been apparent to the directors that if the business grew as conditions seemed to warrant it doing, it would require to be highly organized. Bit by bit the service to the farmer was being widened. For instance, the nucleus of a Claims Department had been established during the year; for under the laws governing the Canadian railway companies the latter were required to deliver to terminal elevators the amount of grain a farmer loaded into a car and to leave the car in a suitable condition to receive grain. The official weights at the terminal were unquestioned and if a farmer could furnish reasonable evidence of the quantity of grain he had loaded, any leakage in transit would furnish a claim case against the railway. During six months the farmers' company had collected for its shippers nearly two thousand dollars in such claims, a beginning sufficient to illustrate that the Company was destined to serve the farmers in many practical ways if they would only stand behind it. IF the farmers would stand behind it! But would they? It was a question which was forever popping up to obscure the future. Many tongues were busy with inuendo to belittle what the farmers had accomplished already and to befog their efforts to advance still farther. At every shipping point in the West industrious little mallets were knocking away on the Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune: "Just Kiss Yourself Good-Bye!" No farmers' business organization ever had been a success in the past and none ever could be. This new trading venture was going to go off with a loud bang one of these fine days and every farmer who had shipped grain to it would stand a first-class chance of losing it. You betcha! The Grain Growers' Associations mightn't be so bad; yes, they'd done some good. But this concern in the grain business--run by a few men, wasn't it? Well, say, does a cat go by a saucer of cream without taking a lick? "Farmers' company" they called it, eh? Go and tell it to your grandmother! The worst of it was that in many localities were farmers who believed this very suggestion already--that the Company belonged to the men at the head of its affairs. Discouraged by past failures and without much respect for the dignity of their occupation, their attitude towards the Company was almost automatic. That it was a great co-operative movement of their class, designed to improve economic and social conditions, was something quite out of their grasp. And upon these strings, already out of tune, elevator men strummed diligently in an effort to create discord. From the first it had been like that. Friends who would speak a good word for the struggling venture at the time it was most needed were about as scarce as horns on a horse. On the other hand the organizers ran across "the knockers" at every turn. A traveller for one of the milling companies, for instance, happened to get into conversation on the train with E. A. Partridge one day. The latter was a stranger to him and he naturally supposed he was talking to "just a farmer." The subject of conversation was the grain trade and this traveller began to make a few remarks about the "little grain company" that had started up. "What about that company?" asked Partridge with visible interest. "I've heard a lot about it." "Oh, it's just a little dinky affair," laughed the traveller. "They've got a little office about ten feet square and they actually have a typewriter! They get a car or two a month. Don't amount to anything." For a full hour he kept the chutes open and filled his interested auditor with all the latest brands of misrepresentation and ridicule. He explained why it was that the farmers' effort was nothing but a joke and how foolish it would be for any farmer to send business to it. He was a good salesman, this traveller, and he was sure he had "sold" this rather intelligent hayseed when he got to the end of his talk and his station was called. "I've really enjoyed this," assured Partridge gratefully. "As a farmer I'm naturally interested in that sort of thing, you know, and I've got a particular interest in that little grain company. My name is Partridge and I only want to say----" But the traveller had grabbed his club bag and was off down the aisle as fast as he could go. Salesmanship is punctuated by "psychological moments" and good salesmen always know when to leave. He did not look around. His ears were very red. It was funny. No, it wasn't, either! Lies about the Company, thought the then President, would travel a thousand miles before the Truth could get its boots on! It was not a matter for amusement at all. As the "little dinky affair" became a competitor of increasing strength in the grain trade the efforts of a section of the grain men, particularly the elevator interests, to discredit it among the farmers became more and more marked. While the farmers' company was not openly attacked, influences nevertheless were constantly at work to undermine in roundabout ways. The elevator men were in a strong position to fight hard and they pressed every advantage. At practically every shipping point they had agents whose business it was to secure shipments of grain in car lots as well as buying on street. Many of these men were very popular locally and as individuals were good fellows, well liked by their farmer friends. A rebate on the charges for loading grain through an elevator or the mere fact that letting the elevator have it saved the bother of writing a letter--these were excellent inducements to the unthinking farmer, and when added to this was the element of personal acquaintance with the buyer, it was hard to refuse. For your farmer is a man of simple code. He is not versed in subterfuge and diplomacy. He takes words at their face value, unless he distrusts you, just as he hands them out himself. He lives a clean, honest life and earns his money. If in some cases his viewpoint is narrowed by treading much in the same furrows, it is at least an honest viewpoint in which he really believes. And one of the things in which the average farmer prides himself is that he will "never go back on a friend." Even a red Indian would not do that! In selling to the elevator these same farmers probably had no intention of unfriendliness to the farmers' trading company. They hoped to see it succeed but did not appreciate their individual responsibility in the matter or realize that while their own personal defection represented a loss to the Company of just one shipment, the loss became vital when multiplied many times all along the line. And the Company had no agent on the ground to argue this out, face to face. Although many requests for the appointment of such local agents reached the office, the directors decided that it would be poor policy as it would mean appointing agents everywhere and abuses might develop. It would be easy under such a system for an impression to get abroad that favoritism was being shown in appointments; jealousies and disappointments might be the result. On the other hand, one of the greatest sources of strength which the Company could foster would be a sense of individual responsibility among its farmer shareholders--each shareholder an agent for his own grain and that of his non-member neighbors, each doing his part to keep down the handling cost of his grain and build up his own company. In the meantime it were better to lose some grain than run the risk of disrupting the whole movement--to let the elevators enjoy their advantage until it became a nullity by education of the farmer himself. Such educational work was already a regular part of the routine. Pamphlets and circulars were issued from time to time, dealing with prevailing conditions, advocating amendments to the Grain Act, etc., and explaining the need for government ownership of elevators. The feeling that the Provincial governments should acquire and operate all storage facilities in the way of elevators and warehouses was spreading rapidly among farmers and business men. In the second year the Grain Growers' Grain Company began to export several small shipments, more for the sake of the experience than anything else. A very extensive line of credit was necessary to go into the export business and, until the arrangement with the Home Bank developed this, their hands were tied in the matter of exporting for themselves. Their third year in business, though, found their financial relations so improved that they were able to do a considerable and profitable business in the exporting of grain, thereby advancing definitely towards one objective which the farmers had had from the first. Most of the grain which the Company handled in this way was sold to exporters in the Eastern States and in Eastern Canada, this method being found more satisfactory than selling direct to buyers in the Old Country at this time. In spite of everything, therefore, things were swinging the farmers' way. The whole Farmers' Movement was expanding, solidifying, particularly in Alberta, which for so long had been primarily a cattle country. Grain production was now increasing rapidly in this Province of the Foothills and Chinooks and the future shipment of Alberta grain to the Pacific Coast and thence via the new Panama Canal route was a live topic. Owing to special conditions prevailing in the farthest west of the three Prairie Provinces the Grain Growers' movement there did not solidify until 1909 into its final cohesion under the name, "United Farmers of Alberta." Prior to this the farmers of Alberta had been organized into two groups--the Canadian Society of Equity and the Alberta Farmers' Association. The first had its beginnings among some farmers from the United States--mostly from Nebraska and Dakota--who settled near Edmonton and who in their former home had been members of the American Society of Equity. These farmers in 1904-5 organized some branches of the American Society after arrival in the new land and, becoming ambitious, formed the Canadian Society of Equity with the idea of owning and controlling their own flour and lumber mills and what not. For this Purpose they got together a concern called "The Canadian Society of Equity, Limited," and bought a timber limit, so called. They secured shareholders in all parts of Alberta and the concern went to smash in 1907, this unfortunate failure making doubly shy those farmers who had been bitten. Meanwhile, in 1905, the members of the local branch of the American Society of equity which had been established at Clover Bar had reached the conclusion that the work of the Society did not meet the requirements of conditions in Alberta and that it was not desirable to have the farmers of the province organized into two camps--the Society of Equity on one hand and the Alberta branches of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association on the other. Especially now that the Territories were to be established into the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, it was desirable that reorganization and a change of name take place. Accordingly the Clover Bar branch of the American Society of Equity and the Strathcona branch of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association got their heads together on a proposal to amalgamate into one farmers' organization under the name, Alberta Farmers' Association. Under the impression that this was a veiled scheme of the Grain Growers to swallow their organization whole, the Society of Equity turned down the idea of amalgamation. The Clover Bar farmers withdrew from the Society and joined the Strathcona Grain Growers in forming the nucleus of a provincial farmers' association as planned. Owing to the mixed nature of Alberta's agricultural population and to the general distrust of farmers' organizations the new Alberta Farmers' Association faced a difficult situation. But the principles laid down by their leaders were so fair, so sane and broad-minded, that in two years the Association became an influence in almost every line of trade in the province. They organized a very successful seed fair, a feature of which was a meeting to discuss improvement of the market for live stock, especially hogs; this resulted in the appointment of a Pork Commission. At their convention in 1906 the Association took stand on such important matters as the special grading of Alberta Hard Winter Wheat, the establishment of a terminal elevator at the Pacific Coast, of a pork-packing and beef-chilling plant by the Provincial Government, etc. In the discussion of everything affecting the welfare of the farmers the Association played an important part and it was at their request that the Provincial Government sent an agent to investigate the markets of British Columbia with the idea of closer relations. A second attempt to amalgamate with the Canadian Society of Equity, which had succeeded the American Society, had fallen through and there were still two farmers' organizations in the Province of Alberta. However, with the progress being made with the Provincial Government in connection with the pork-packing and beef-chilling plant and with the Dominion Government in regard to government ownership of terminal elevators, the farmers as a whole began to see the need of closer union. Such wide measures as a system of government-owned internal elevators were bringing the farmers of all three Western provinces into closer conference and in 1908 the feeling in favor of amalgamation of all Alberta farmers into one organization began to crystallize. Finally in September a conference was held between representatives of the Alberta Farmers' Association and the Canadian Society of Equity. The constitution drafted at this conference was submitted to the annual conventions of both bodies at Edmonton on January 13th, 1909. The following morning the delegates of the Canadian Society of Equity marched from their hall to the convention of the Alberta Farmers' Association and amid great cheers the two became one under the name, United Farmers of Alberta, with "Equity" as their motto, and with a strong coalition directorate.[1] Until now each of the organizations had had its separate official organ; but on amalgamation these were dropped and the _Grain Growers' Guide_ adopted as the official organ for Alberta. First published under the auspices of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the _Guide_ now represented the farmers' movement in all three provinces. The wisdom of its establishment was being proved steadily. Its circulation was gathering momentum with every issue. It was now coming out as a weekly and its pages were filled with valuable information for the farmer on every subject dealing with the marketing of his produce. Also it was proving a wonderful educator on such large questions as government ownership of elevators, the tariff, control of public service corporations and so forth. The farmer was getting information which he had never been able to obtain before and he was getting it without distortion, uncolored by convenient imagination, plain as Fact itself. An up-to-date printing plant had been installed to print the _Guide_ and do a general job-printing business, and this was organized as a separate company under the name of the "Public Press, Limited." In addition to all the difficulties which usually attend the building of a publishing enterprise to success, the farmers' own journal had to face many more which were due to the special nature of its policies. Manufacturers who disapproved of its attitude on the tariff, for instance, refused for a long while to use its advertising columns. Each year as the _Guide's_ struggle went on there was an annual deficit and had it not been for the grants with which the Grain Growers' Grain Company came to its rescue, the paper must have gone under. For this financial assistance the farmers' trading company got no return except the satisfaction of knowing that the money could not be spent to better advantage in the interests of Western farmers. With the rapid developments in Alberta and the probable future shipment of Alberta grain via the Panama Canal route, branch offices were being opened at Calgary by Winnipeg grain dealers. Not to be behind in the matter of service, the farmers' company followed suit. A Seed Branch Department to supply good seed grain was another improvement in service and the farmers by this time were taking a keen interest in their trading organization. When the third annual meeting came around, there was no longer any doubt that a farmers' business organization _could_ succeed--that this venture of the Grain Growers was _not_ going to go off with a loud bang--at least, not yet. But, as the President remarked, it seemed that they had no more than touched the fringe of what remained to be accomplished. One of the immediate questions pressing for solution, he considered, was government ownership of elevators. "Our Company's experience has demonstrated completely," he said, "that our grain marketing conditions can never reach a proper basis as long as the elevators necessary for that marketing are allowed to remain in private hands for private gain. The Grain Growers' Associations are the one thing above everything else that stands between the farmer and the power of merciless corporations. They have undoubtedly been the greatest shield this Company has had since its organization; they have helped the Company to prove, far beyond any question of doubt, the advantages of co-operation." And what had the elevator men to say about all this? Surely these farmers were becoming a menace! At the present rate of speed another three years would see them in control of the grain business and was that good for the grain business? Was it good for the farmer? The elevator men did not think so. Strangely enough, they were not worrying greatly about government ownership. They were more interested in the fact that the volume of grain which had flowed so faithfully all these years was being split up by all these commission men--these hangers-on who invested little or no capital but necked right up to the profits of the trade as if they owned the whole business! Trouble was brewing on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--had been for some time. Then one day word reached the office of the Grain Growers' Grain Company that by a majority vote the Grain Exchange had suspended, for a period of one year, the Commission Rule under which grain was handled. Thus did things come to a showdown. [1] See Appendix--Par. 10. CHAPTER XII THE SHOWDOWN It's scarcely in a body's power Tae keep at times frae being sour Tae see how things are shared. --_Robert Burns_. A fight was on between the elevator interests and the commission merchants of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--a fight for existence. For, with the Commission Rule of the Exchange eliminated, those firms which handled grain on a straight commission basis would be forced to meet the competition of the elevator buyers and the chances were they would be forced to handle grain at a loss; the best they could hope for would be to cover their costs. It will be remembered that this Commission Rule, established in 1899, was that a charge of one cent commission per bushel should be made for handling grain and that all members of the Exchange dealing in grain must show that the price paid was the price at the terminal (Fort William) less the freight and one cent per bushel commission. This commission could be neither more nor less than one cent; for at that time it was felt that business could not be done, offices maintained and an efficient and reliable service given for less. It was a charge which both farmers and grain men considered fair and reasonable. The trouble in the Exchange started when the commission men claimed the right to have country agents and to pay them on a commission basis of one-quarter cent per bushel. The elevator companies were able to buy at elevator points through their salaried representatives but the commission men were prohibited from having country agents except on a salary basis, and this they could not afford, handling grain on commission. For some years past there had been considerable dissatisfaction among Exchange members in regard to the operation of the Commission rule, doubt being entertained that all the members were keeping good faith in the collection of the full commission charge of one cent to non-members of the Exchange and one-half cent per bushel to members on country consigned and purchased grain. Although the Council of the Exchange had held many special meetings in an endeavor to find a remedy and to investigate the charges, the results had not been very marked owing to the difficulty of securing the evidence to support such charges. This was given as a reason for the doing away with the one cent commission restriction altogether for a trial period of one year. Thereby the trade was put on a "free for all" basis, as the President of the Exchange then in office pointed out. It meant that Exchange members were "enabled to pay owners of grain in the country any price they desired without regard to actual market values as regularly established on the floor of the Exchange." It was the personal opinion of the President that to preserve stable markets with uniformity and discipline amongst Exchange members a commission rule was absolutely necessary and he predicted that perhaps in a short while, after the suspension of the Commission Rule had been given a fair trial, the Exchange might see its way clear to rescind the suspension. "Just so," nodded the commission men among themselves. "The logical and certain result will be the weeding out of the commission men and track buyers, who give practically the only element of competition that exists in the trade! One of the curses of our Canadian commercialism is the strong tendency to monopoly and this looks like an effort to create an absolute elevator monopoly of the grain trade, which is the staple industry of the country." But if the small dealers on the Exchange were aroused, what about the farmers' trading company? They did business on a commission basis only and with the elevators offering to handle the farmers' grain for nothing, or next door to it, what would happen? Would the farmer be "unable to see past his nose," as was predicted? Would he forget the conditions of the early days and grab for a present saving of five or ten dollars per car? If the farmers did not stand together now, they were licked! It was a showdown. There was only one thing to do--take a referendum of the shareholders as to the basis on which they wished the year's business handled. The Board of Control of the Grain Growers' Grain Company therefore issued the following circular letter, which was mailed to every farmer shareholder: "This matter we now bring to your notice is the most important yet. "At a meeting of the Grain Exchange, held a few days ago, the Commission Rule was suspended for a year. This means that there is no fixed charge for handling grain, and any company or firm can, if they wish, handle car lots for nothing. How did this come about? The Elevator Companies did it with the aid of Bank Managers and other Winnipeg men outside of the Grain Trade, who hold seats on the Exchange, and voted with them. The intention of these Elevator Companies is to handle all grain for 1/2c. per bushel or for nothing in order to take it away from the Commission Men, who have no elevators, and especially to keep it away from the Grain Growers' Grain Company. "The Elevator Companies can handle farmers' cars for nothing and still not lose anything. How? In four ways-- "1st. They all buy street grain and the immense profits they make on this will make up for any loss they have in handling cars for nothing. "2nd. The dockage they get on street grain and on car lots passed through their elevators helps them. "3rd. The charges on the cars loaded through their elevators helps them. "4th. When they get your car it is sent to their own terminal elevator, and they earn the storage on it there which is very profitable. "The commission man, such as ourselves, has none of these things to fall back on. His profit is what is left out of the cent a bushel commission after all expenses such as rent, taxes, insurance, wages for office help, telegrams, telephone, etc., are paid. "The Elevator Combine know this. They know the weakness of the commission dealers' position and the strength of their own, and knowing it, deliberately cut out the commission and will offer to handle the farmers' grain for nothing in order to put the only opposition they have out of business. And mark you! this is aimed at our company more than any other, though we believe they are after all commission dealers. Some of them have said so. They want to kill us and they think they have at last found a way. Their dodge is simple. By handling cars for half a cent or nothing, they are going to bribe the farmers and our own shareholders to send cars away from us, and by keeping grain from us help to kill us and plant us that deep we shall never come up again. "In this way they hope to 'rule the roost' and get back the good old days they had ten or twelve years ago. "Can they succeed? It depends on the men who ship the grain. If they support the combine by giving the elevators (or the commission houses that work for the elevators under a different name) their cars, they may soon expect to find themselves in a worse position than they have ever been before. "As a prominent commission man said the other day, 'The elevator companies are asking the farmers to help at their own funeral.' It is an anxious time for our own company. We have shown that with anything like fair play it may succeed. We have been growing stronger and, we believe, doing some good. Are our shareholders and friends going to take the bribe that is meant to put us out of business? We hope and believe not. For this reason we are taking a referendum vote of our shareholders." It was at this crisis that the _Grain Growers' Guide_ had an opportunity of demonstrating its value to the farmers as a fighting weapon. It seized the cudgels and waded right into the thick of the controversy without fear or favor. It came out flat-footed in its charges against the elevator interests and emphasized the warning of the Company in language that carried no double meaning. "We have no quarrel with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as an Exchange," said the _Guide_. "It is a convenience for gathering reports from other parts of the world, market conditions, and for drafting rules that facilitate and simplify business dealings. "As we have often pointed out, however, the Exchange is being used by the Elevator Interests that seem to dominate it, to further their own particular ends with the result that the nefarious methods of the Elevator Trust bring suspicion and condemnation upon the Exchange and its members. "The demand for the Royal Grain Commission arose from the methods pursued by the Elevator Companies in dealing with the farmers at country points. The pooling of receipts at country points is not forgotten by the farmers; heavy dockage and unfair grading and low prices paid when the farmers were compelled to sell and could not help themselves, are also not forgotten. "Every injustice and disturbance in the trade that has taken place since grain commenced to be marketed in Manitoba, can be traced to the Elevator Monopoly. "The farmers of this country owe nothing to the Elevator Trust and we have confidence enough in them to believe that they will not be bought over by them now. The Commission Men and Track Buyers certainly owe nothing to this trust either. They have helped in the past to carry the suspicion and sin arising from its methods and it commences to look as if they were getting tired of carrying the load." Column after column of such plain talk was given place in the _Guide_ week after week, together with reports of Grain Exchange proceedings, interviews with commission men and elevator men, pronouncements of Grain Exchange officials and comment upon pamphlets circulated amongst the farmers by the North-West Grain Dealers' Association, etc. Everything having a bearing upon the situation was brought to light and analyzed. Letters from farmers throughout the country were published as fast as they reached the editor's desk, and they were coming pretty fast, about as fast as the mail could bring them. They were reaching the office of the farmers' trading company by the bagful. The Company had asked three definite questions of the farmers in connection with the commission to be charged on grain shipped to the Company--whether or not the old rate should be maintained in spite of the action of the Exchange; whether the commission should be reduced; whether the whole matter should be left to the discretion of the directors. The letters poured in by the thousand and only two per cent. of the farmers recommended any reduction in the rates; of the remainder, seventy per cent. were in favor of the Company maintaining the one cent commission and the other twenty-eight per cent. were willing to abide by the decision of the directors. The comments contained in some of these letters revealed strong feeling. Many farmers were ready to pay two cents commission per bushel if necessary, rather than sell to "the monopolies." "I will pledge myself to ship every bushel of grain I grow to the Farmers' Company," wrote one, "even though the directors found it necessary to charge me five cents per bushel, coin." "No, they cauna draw the blinds ower the daylights o' a Scotchman," assured one old son of the heather. "I am verra pleased to leave the hale concern in your hands as I do believe you are thoroughly plumb and always square." With this encouragement the directors announced that they would continue to charge a commission of one cent per bushel on wheat shipped to them, just as if the Commission Rule had not been suspended by the Exchange. Other commission merchants, they knew, intended to reduce their charges to half a cent per bushel; the elevator men, they expected, would handle the grain for the same and in many cases for nothing in order to persuade the farmers to ship their way. It would be a great temptation to many farmers who had been sitting on the fence, shouting "Sic 'em!" but never lifting a little finger to help, and it was to be expected that those with limited vision would ship their grain where they could make the biggest saving at the time. Notwithstanding, the directors believed that the majority of the farmers would not prove one cent wise and many dollars foolish by failing to realize what the future might hold in store if the elevators succeeded in killing off competition. Finding that it was possible to handle oats on a smaller margin, they made the farmers a gift reduction of half a cent per bushel on oat shipments; otherwise the former rate was sustained. The wheat ripened. Harvesting began. The long grain trains commenced to drag into Winnipeg across the miles of prairie. By the middle of September the weekly receipts of the farmers' company were running to 744 cars. In 1907 they had handled about five per cent. of the crop and seven and one-half per cent. of the 1908 crop; of the total number of cars so far inspected in this year of "free for all" methods, the Grain Growers' Grain Company handled about fifteen per cent. When the end of the season brought the figures to a final total it was found that the farmers' organization had handled well over sixteen million bushels of farmers' grain. This was an increase over the preceding year of nearly nine million bushels, or 114 per cent. It was nearly one and one-half million bushels greater than all the previous years of operation and represented one-eighth of all the grain inspected during the year in Western Canada. CHAPTER XIII THE MYSTERIOUS MR. "OBSERVER" Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mold adhering to your instep. . . . So much is observation. The rest is deduction. --_Sherlock Holmes_. _Sign of Four (Doyle)_. In Prehistoric Days, when one man hied himself from his cave to impress his ideas upon another the persuasion used took the form of a wallop on the head with a stone axe. It was the age of Individual Opinion. But as Man hewed his way upward along Time's tangled trails personal opinions began to jog along together in groups, creating Force. With the growth of populations and the invention of printing this power was called Public Opinion and experience soon taught the folly of ignoring it. In the course of human aspiration Somebody who had a Bright Mind got the notion that in order to get his own way without fighting the crowd all he had to do was to educate the "Great Common Pee-pul" to his way of thinking and by sowing enough seed in public places up would come whatever kind of crop he wanted. Thus, by making Public Opinion himself he would avoid the hazard of opposing it. The name of this Sagacious Pioneer of Special Privilege who manufactured the first carload of Public Opinion is lost to posterity; all that is known about him is that he was a close student of the Art of concealing Artifice by Artlessness and therefore wore gum rubbers on his feet and carried around a lot of Presents to give away. It is quite possible to direct the thought of Tom-Dick-and-Harry. A skillful orator can swing a crowd from laughter to anger and back again. The politician who prepares a speech for a set occasion builds his periods for applause with every confidence. But it was to the public prints that they who sought the manufacture of Public Opinion were in the habit of turning. There has always been something very convincing about "cold print." The little boy believes that the cow really did jump over the moon; for isn't it right there in the nursery book with a picture of her doing it? And despite the disillusionments of an accelerated age many readers still cherish an old-time faith in their favorite newspaper--a faith which is a relic of the days when the freedom of the press was a new and sacred heritage and the public bought the paper to learn what Joseph Howe, George Brown, Franklin, Greeley or Dana thought about things. This period gave place gradually to the great modern newspaper, the product in some cases of a publishing company so "limited" that it thought mostly in terms of dollars and cents and political preferments. When the cub reporter rushed in to his city editor with eyes sparkling he cried out enthusiastically: "Gee, I've got a peach of a story! Old John Smith's daughter's eloped with the chauffeur. She's a movie fan and----" But it did not get into the paper for the very good reason that "Old John" was the proprietor of the big departmental store which took a full-page advertisement in every issue the year around. The editor would have used it soon enough, but--the business office--! Then there was the theatrical press-agent, a regular caller with his advance notices and free electros of coming attractions, his press passes. "Give us a chance, old man," he pleaded, perhaps laying down a good cigar. "Say, that was a rotten roast you handed us last week." "Yes, and it was a rotten show!" the editor would retort. "I saw it myself." The telephone rings, maybe--the business office again. "The Blank Theatre have doubled their space with us, Charlie. Go easy on 'em for awhile, will you?" The floor around the editor's desk was scuffed by the timid boots of the man who wanted his name kept out of the paper and the sure tread of the corporation representative who wanted his company's name mentioned on every possible occasion. Business interests, railway corporations, financial institutions--many of these had a regular department for the purpose of supplying "news" to the press. Some American railroads finally took to owning a string of papers outright, directly or indirectly, and one big Trust went so far as to control a telegraphic news service. In fact, to such a pass did things come in the United States that the exploitation of the press became a menace to public interest and a law was passed, requiring every publication to register the name of its proprietor; in the case of corporate ownerships the names of the shareholders had to be filed and the actual owners of stock held in trust had to be named also. This information had to be printed in every issue and the penalties for suppression or falsification were drastic. No such law was passed in Canada, although the reflection of the situation in the United States cast high lights and shadows across the northern boundary. Partizan politics were rife in Canada and too often have party "organs" and "subsidies" dampered down the fires of independence in the past. A few journals, however, even in the days before the great changes of the War, placed a jealous guard upon their absolute freedom from trammelling influences and to-day they reap the reward of public confidence. While not a newspaper, the _Grain Growers' Guide_ was a highly specialized journal for the Western farmer, aiming frankly at educating him to be the owner of his land, his produce, his self-respect and his franchise; to make him self-thinking and self-reliant and to defend him from unjust slurs. The editorial responsibility of carrying out such a programme in the face of existing conditions required a well chosen staff. In Roderick McKenzie, then Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the farmers had an editor upon whose viewpoint they could depend; for he was one of themselves. But lacking practical experience in newspaper work, it was necessary to secure an Associate Editor who would figure largely in the practical management of the publication. McKenzie was finding that his duties as Secretary of the Association were becoming too heavy for him to attempt editorial services as well; so that not long after the appointment of an Associate Editor he decided to devote his whole time to his official duties. In its selection of a young man to take hold the _Guide_ was fortunate. George Fisher Chipman was not only a very practical newspaper man to meet the immediate needs of the young journal, but he was capable of expanding rapidly with his opportunities. Well versed in the economic problems of the day, he was known already in many magazine offices as a reliable contributor upon current topics. He was well poised and, as legislative reporter for the _Manitoba Free Press_, Chipman had made something of a reputation for himself on both sides of the political fence as a man who endeavored to be fair and who upheld at all times the traditional honor of the press. By training and inclination Chipman was in complete sympathy with the Farmers' Movement in Western Canada. Away east, in the Valley of Evangeline, near Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, he was brought up on a farm, learning the farmers' viewpoint as afterwards he came to know that of the big men in the cities. He believed in co-operation, his father having been a leader in every farmers' organization in Nova Scotia for more than twenty years. It was not long before the young editor's influence made itself manifest in the official paper of the Western farmers. He saw many ways of improving it and organizing it for the widest possible service in its field. Editorially he believed in calling a spade a spade and, being free from political restrictions, Chipman did not hesitate to "get after" politicians of all stripes whenever their actions seemed to provide fit subject for criticism. By the time the Commission Rule difficulty arose the _Guide_ had increased its weekly circulation by many thousands. The new editor seized the opportunity for "active service" and waged an effective campaign. The Grain Exchange finally restored the One-Cent Commission Rule and never since has it been dropped. Meanwhile, however, hostilities broke out anew in an unexpected direction. They took the form of "letters" to the press and they began to appear in five papers which were published in Winnipeg--two newspapers and three farm journals. Concealing his identity under the _nom-de-plume_, "Observer," the writer attacked the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the men at the head of it. Declaring himself to be a farmer, Mr. "Observer" endeavored to discredit the farmers' trading organization by casting suspicion upon its motives and methods of business. As letter followed letter it became evident that the object in view was to stir up discontent among the farmers with the way their own agency was being conducted. After issuing a single, dignified and convincing refutation of these attacks, the Company ignored the anonymous enemy. But the gauntlet was picked up by the _Grain Growers' Guide_. It lay right at the editor's feet. Chipman recognized a direct challenge and did not propose to drop the matter with a denial in the columns of his paper--even with a dozen denials. His old reportorial instinct was aroused. Who was this mysterious "Observer"? Why was he going to so much trouble as to launch a systematic campaign? One thing was certain--he was NOT a farmer! All good newspaper reporters have two qualifications well developed; they are able to recognize news values--having "a nose for news," it is called--and they are able to run down a "story" with the instinct of a detective. G. P. Chipman had been a good reporter--a good police reporter particularly. He had the detective's instinct and it did not take him long to recognize that he was facing a situation which could be uncovered only by detective work. In the first place, he reasoned, the letters were too cleverly written--so cleverly, in fact, that they could be the product of a professional writer only, most likely a Winnipeg man. This narrowed the search at once. By process of elimination the list of possible "Observers" was soon reduced to a few names. It was an easy matter to verify the suspicion that the "letters" were paid for at advertising rates and the question uppermost became: "Who are the greatest beneficiaries of these attacks?" "The elevator interests, of course!" was Chipman's answer to his own question. He began to make progress in his investigations and before long he became very much interested in an office which happened to be located in the Merchant's Bank Building, Winnipeg. Here a certain bright newspaper man with some farming experience had taken to business as a "Financial Agent"--telephone, stenographer and all the rest of the equipment. So sure was Chipman that he was on the right track in following this clue that finally he shut the door of his private office and wrote up the whole story of the "deal" which he expected to have been made between certain elevator men and this clever editorial writer who knew so much about money that he had opened up a Financial Agency. With the whole "exposure" ready for publication and the photograph of the "suspect" handy in a drawer of the desk, Chipman asked the "Financial Agent" to call at the _Guide_ office. "Thought you might like to look over that copy before we use it," explained the editor casually when his visitor's pipe was going well. He handed the write-up across his desk. "I want to be fair and there might be something----" There decidedly was!--a number of things, in fact! Not the least of them was the utter surprise of the pseudo Financial Agent. He did not attempt to deny the truth of the statements made for publication. According to the story which he told the editor of the _Guide_, it had been the original intention to have these "letters to the press" signed by leading elevator men themselves; but when it was decided to hire an expert press agent to mould public opinion in such a way as to offset the "onesidedness" of the farmers' movement, none of the elevator men cared to assume the publicity. The name, "Observer," would do just as well. A committee was organized to direct and supervise the work of the press agent and the chairman of this committee conducted the negotiations with the newspaper man who was to undertake the preparation of the "letters" and other material. By the terms of his contract the press agent was to be paid in equal monthly instalments at the rate of $4,000 per year, with a contract for two years. For this he was to write letters which would turn public opinion against this Grain Growers' Grain Company, which was getting so much of the farmers' grain, and minimize the growth of sentiment in favor of government ownership of internal and terminal elevators. These communications he was to have published in the various papers of Winnipeg and the West. Such was the story. The better to conceal the wires beneath this publicity campaign and the identity of the writer, Mr. "Observer" opened his office as a Financial Agency and became a subscriber to the _Grain Growers' Guide_--one paper, of course, which could not be approached for the purpose in view. It was necessary, nevertheless, to clip and file the _Guide_ very carefully for reference; hence the subscription. The space used by the "correspondence" was paid for at regular advertising rates. The advertising bill each week amounted to about $150. But one factor in the success of the plan had been overlooked--the influence of the _Guide_. No sooner had the official paper of the Grain Growers pointed out the situation to its readers and suggested that papers which accepted material antagonistic to the farmers' cause were no friends of the farmers--no sooner was this pointed out than letters began to arrive in batches at the offices of all the papers which were publishing the "Observer" attacks. Most of these letters cancelled subscriptions and so fast did they begin to come that one after another the papers refused to publish any more "Observations," paid for or not. For unknown reasons it was decided to call off the attempt to create public opinion against government ownership of elevators and with the letters aimed at the farmers' trading activities being refused publication, the employers of "Observer" had no further work for him to do. As they were still paying his interesting salary each month, they offered him $1,500 to tear up his contract, he said. But with more than a year and a half still to run--over $6,000 coming to him--Mr. "Observer" had a certain affection for that contract. Fifteen hundred dollars? Pooh, pooh! He would settle for--well, say So-Much. "You're talking through your hat!" scoffed his employers in effect. "It's a six-thousand-dollar hat!" smiled "Observer" pleasantly. "Well, we won't pay any such lump sum as you say," virtually declared his employers, not so pleasantly. "Just as you wish, gentlemen. I'll wait, then, and draw my salary--$333.33 1/3 every month, according to contract. I know you don't want me to sue for it; because we'd have to air the whole thing in the courts and there would be a lot of publicity. So we'll just let her toddle along and no hard feelings." He got his money. The alleged attempt of these elevator men, whether with or without the sanction of their associates, to make public opinion by means of the "Observer" letters began in the fall of 1909. It lasted but a few weeks. CHAPTER XIV THE INTERNAL ELEVATOR CAMPAIGN What constitutes a state? . . . Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. --_Sir William Jones._ _Ode after Alcaeus._ Now, about this Government Ownership of Elevators. The Grain Growers had had it in mind right along. The elevators were the contact points between the farmer and the marketing machinery; therefore if his fingers got pinched it was here that he bled. Complaints of injustice in the matter of weights, dockage, grades and prices colored the conversation of farmers in many parts of the country and, rightly or wrongly, many farmers were profoundly dissatisfied with existing conditions at initial elevators. These elevators provided the only avenue by which grain could be disposed of quickly if transportation facilities were not fully adequate. It seemed to the farmers, therefore, that the only way to avoid monopolistic abuses was for the provincial governments to own and operate a system of internal storage elevators and for the Dominion authorities to own and operate the terminals. The elevators, declared the farmers, should be a public utility and not in private hands. This feeling first found definite expression in a request by the Manitoba Grain Growers prior to the Manitoba elections in 1907. The Manitoba Government declined to act on the request of the Grain Growers alone, but called a conference of municipal reeves and others interested. This conference was held in June and urgently requested the Manitoba Government to acquire and operate a complete system of storage elevators throughout the province, as asked for by the Grain Growers. Nothing was done at the first session of the renewed government, however. Meanwhile the Grain Growers were circularizing the three Prairie Provinces on the need for a government system of elevators and at the annual conventions of the organized farmers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1908 strong endorsement of the idea was made. An "Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations" [1] had been created, and this body urged the several executives to wait upon their respective governments and try to obtain definite action. At the suggestion of Premier Roblin, of Manitoba, a conference of the three premiers was arranged through the Secretary of the Inter-Provincial Council. It was the hope of the farmers that this might lead to uniform legislation, introducing government ownership of the elevators, and that the three provincial governments would join in an appeal to the Dominion Government for co-operation. In each province the whole subject had been dealt with exhaustively in the text prepared by the Grain Growers--the conditions making a government system of elevators necessary, how it could be created and the practicability of its operation, the question of financing and the beneficial results that would follow. It was the idea of the farmers that the provinces would purchase existing storage houses at a fair valuation, issuing government bonds to finance the undertaking and build new elevators where needed. The provincial Premiers met at Regina on May 4th, 1908, talked over the matter, then sent for George Langley, M.P.P., one of the directors of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association who occupied a seat in the Saskatchewan Legislature. They appointed Mr. Langley as a sort of ambassador in their negotiations with the Grain Growers' representatives, sending him to the Inter-Provincial Council to present verbally a couple of alternative propositions--that the Railways should be asked to build loading elevators with storage bins or that the management of the elevators should be taken away from the present owners and profits limited while the farmers' organizations became responsible for grades, weights, etc. Back came the Grain Growers with a document which repeated their former demands and amplified their argument. They claimed that they were entitled to what they were asking if only because the farmers formed the major part of the population and their demands could be granted without placing any tax upon the remainder of the people. They requested a conference with the three Premiers to go into the matter in detail. Not until November 4th, 1908, did this conference take place in Regina. When they did get together the Premiers were not posted well enough on details to promise anything more definite than that they would consult their colleagues and make reply in due course. It was the end of January, 1909, before the Inter-Provincial Council had an official reply. The Premiers pointed to grave and complicated questions which stood in the way of granting what the farmers were asking. Constitutional difficulties, financial difficulties, legislative difficulties--all were set forth in a lengthy and well written memorandum. The British North America Act would have to be amended to grant the provinces authority to create an absolute monopoly without which success would not be assured. In short, there was such a tangle of overlapping jurisdictions, public interest in trade and commerce, federal rights, railway rights and so on that the Premiers could not see their way clear at all in spite of their great desire to help the farmers at all times. The Grain Growers passed the document to their legal adviser and R. A. Bonnar, K.C., gave them his opinion in writing. That opinion was very complete, very authoritative, and poked so many holes in the "constitutional difficulties" that the farmers could see their way much more clearly than the Premiers, to whom they made dignified rejoinder. They handed on the holes while they were at it in the hope that the heads of the three Provincial Governments could take a peek through the "difficulties" for themselves and see just how clear the way really was after all. The Provincial Premiers, however, took the step which logically followed their reply to the farmers. Resolutions were introduced in the Alberta and Manitoba Legislatures that His Excellency the Governor-in-Council be memorialized in regard to the elevator question and asked to provide government ownership and operation or to have the necessary powers to deal with the matter conferred upon the provinces. Thus things rode until December 14th, 1909, when the Committee on Agriculture in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly recommended the appointment of a commission to make searching enquiry into the subject of government control and operation of the internal elevators as asked for by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association. Two days later, at the annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers, Hon. George Coldwell announced for the Manitoba Government that they had accepted the principle of establishing a line of internal elevators as a public utility, owned by the public and operated for the public. So unexpectedly did this good news come that the farmers were amazed at their own success. They had fought for it long and earnestly and victory meant a very great deal; but it had seemed still beyond reach. In the case of Manitoba it only remained now to get together and thresh out the details. A strong committee was appointed to conduct negotiations with the Government and there was prepared a memorandum of the plan which the farmers recommended the Government to follow. This was presented on January 5th, 1910. The Government and the Grain Growers then each got ready a bill for consideration by the Legislature. Many conferences took place. The Government refused the farmers' bill and the farmers did not approve of the Government's proposals. While leaving full financial control in the hands of the Government, the Grain Growers demanded that the operation of the elevators be undertaken by an absolutely independent commission without any political affiliations whatsoever; it was provided also that no officer of the Grain Growers could act on this commission. The Government did not deem it wise to let control of the managing commission out of its hands. So negotiations were broken off. The Manitoba Government now prepared a new bill, but did not remove the features to which the farmers were objecting. This bill was passed and the Government voted $50,000 for initial expenses and $2,000,000 for acquiring elevators. Beyond a weak protest from the North-West Grain Dealers' Association the elevator owners had not shown much excitement over the situation. While the Manitoba Grain Growers were not satisfied that the Government plan would work out successfully and therefore refused to assume responsibility in connection with it, they were ready nevertheless to lend their best co-operation to the Manitoba Elevator Commission when it got into action. In the Province of Saskatchewan an altogether different plan was evolved in due course. The investigating commission, appointed February 28th, 1910, consisted of three well qualified men--George Langley, M.P.P.; F. W. Green, Secretary of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association; Professor Robert Magill, of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, the latter acting as chairman. The commission held sittings at many points in Saskatchewan, taking evidence from a large number of farmers, went to Winnipeg to meet representatives of elevator companies, the Exchange and Government officials, and also visited several American cities. Their final report, consisting of 188 typewritten pages, was handed to the Saskatchewan Government on October 31st, 1910. In addition to the comprehensive scheme outlined by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers many different suggestions were considered by the commission, such as government ownership and operation, state aided Farmers' Elevators, municipal elevators and various modifications of these plans. All, however, were discarded by the commission in favor of an experiment in co-operative ownership and management by the farmers themselves, assisted financially by the Provincial Government. The scheme presented by the executive of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association appeared to be unworkable because it overstepped mere public ownership and operation of initial elevators to include methods of sampling, grading before shipment, bank and government loans, features outside the power of a provincial legislature. The schemes of municipal and district elevators, while appealing to local loyalty for patronage, did not secure the farmers' direct pecuniary interest to make the elevators successful in the face of competition. As to the Manitoba plan, the commission were unanimous in advising against it in view of the financial risk and the disadvantages of political influences which would tend to make themselves felt. Instead, therefore, of a plan aiming at ownership of initial elevators by the State and management by the Government of the day, the commission recommended ownership and management by the growers of grain. Such a co-operative scheme would aim equally well at removing initial storage from the ownership of companies interested in grain trading--would recognize as promptly the feeling of injustice in the minds of many farmers--would seek just as fully to create marketing conditions which would give the farmer satisfaction and confidence. While both the Manitoba scheme and the proposed co-operative scheme involved financial aid by the State, the commission saw reason to believe that with control and management in the hands of the farmers themselves many of the risks and limitations of other plans would be avoided. It is to be noted that in reporting upon general conditions in the grain trade of Canada in 1910 the Saskatchewan Elevator Commission pointed out the great change which had taken place since 1900. One factor in this had been the construction of new transcontinental lines and thousands of miles of branch railway lines together with a great increase in car supply and a more efficient and cheaper system of transportation. Again, the use of loading-platforms had introduced real competition with the elevators, almost fifteen million bushels of the 1908-09 crop in Western Canada having been shipped direct by the farmers. The development of co-operation among the farmers through the Grain Growers' Associations had led to much advantageous legislation, while Farmers' Elevators and Public Weigh Scales had had a salutary effect at many shipping points. The organization of the Grain Growers' Grain Company as a farmers' own selling agency likewise had exerted a wide influence for good all over the West, enabling the farmers to obtain first-hand information about existing methods of dealing in grain. Finally, the protection afforded by the Manitoba Grain Act was not to be questioned; for while it was impossible to draft any Act which would prevent all the abuses alleged, it had been the means of providing many weapons of defence for the farmer and unfamiliarity with these provisions by individual farmers was scarcely to be blamed upon the Act itself. The improvement in conditions, compared with earlier years, was recognized by most of the farmers appearing before the commission and many of them had no personal complaint to make in regard to weights, grades or prices. They were advocates of provincial ownership not so much on their own behalf as upon behalf of settlers in newer districts. The commission, therefore, while not saying that there were no cases of sharp practice or no grounds for dissatisfaction, were impressed by the fact that however powerless farmers had been in earlier days they were now in a very different position. The strong feeling which many farmers had against the line elevator companies was based upon experiences of rank injustice and bitter recollections of the past; for this the elevator people could blame nobody but themselves. But the factors enumerated undoubtedly had improved the situation from the farmers' standpoint and it only remained to strengthen these factors to give the farmer complete control in the matter of initial storage. The commission were unanimous in recommending co-operative organization of the farmers as the probable solution of the situation in Saskatchewan. They suggested the enactment of special legislation to provide for the financing of the undertaking by the farmers themselves, assisted by a government loan. That is, the farmers surrounding a point where an elevator was needed would subscribe the total amount of capital necessary to build it, paying fifteen per cent. in cash, the crop acreage of the shareholders at that point to total not less than 2,000 acres for each 10,000 bushels capacity of the proposed elevator; these conditions fulfilled, the government would advance the remaining eighty-five per cent. of the subscribed capital in the form of a loan, repayable in twenty equal annual instalments of principal and interest, first mortgage security. The commission also suggested that the responsibility of preliminary organization be thrown upon the farmers themselves by appointing the executive of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association as provisional directors of the new grain handling organization. When the matter came before the Saskatchewan Legislature the annual convention of the Saskatchewan Association was being held at Regina and the farmers declared themselves ready to assume responsibility and go ahead. A bill was introduced by the Government, embodying the recommendations of the Commission, and the Act incorporating The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company, Limited, was assented to on March 14th, 1911. Because of the unusual financial arrangements with the Provincial Government the capital stock was not set at a fixed amount but left subject to change from time to time by the Government. In order to protect the credit of the Province the Government thus was able to control the amount of stock the company could issue and thereby the amount of money the Government might be called upon to advance for the construction or purchase of elevators. Shares were placed at $50 each, available for farmers only, and a limit was set upon individual holdings. It was provided that each local unit would have a local board of management and appoint delegates to an annual meeting where a Central Board of Management would be elected. The company was empowered not only to own and operate elevators and buy and sell grain, but to own and operate lumber yards, deal in coal and other commodities and "do all things incidental to the production, storing and marketing of grain." By June 16th, 1911, the Provisional Directors[1] were able to call the first annual meeting of the new organization, having fulfilled the requirement of the Act that twenty-five "locals" be first organized, and by July 6th--the date of the general meeting at Moose Jaw--an additional twenty-one "locals" were ready. Thus they were able to start with forty-six units, representing $405,050 capitalization with 8,101 shares held by 2,580 shareholders. The newly-elected directors[2] proceeded forthwith to let contracts for forty new elevators, standard type of thirty and forty thousand bushels capacity with cleaning machinery and special bins. Six existing elevators were purchased. The Grain Growers' Grain Company agreed to act as selling agents for this new baby sister and wide-spread interest became manifest as the Grain Growers took another step into commercial circles. [1] See Appendix--Par. 8. [2] See Appendix--Par. 12. [3] See Appendix--Par. 12. CHAPTER XV CONCERNING THE TERMINALS I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.--_Patrick Henry_. With the establishment of co-operative elevators for the storing of grain at interior points the farmers of Western Canada launched out upon the greatest experiment in co-operation this continent has seen. The success of these elevators, owned and controlled by the farmers themselves, in all probability would evolve the final phase of internal storage in connection with the Canadian grain fields. Co-incident with their agitation for government ownership of elevators at country points, the farmers were urging upon the federal authorities the desirability of government control and operation of terminal storage facilities. It was not enough that the Provincial Governments of the Prairie Provinces should protect the farmers within their boundaries; for the terminal storage of grain was a part of the system and the farmers contended that corporation control of the terminals by grain dealers was leading to abuses and manipulations of the grain that were not in the best interests of the country. Grateful as they were, therefore, for the efforts to improve early conditions by legislation, it was the opinion of the Grain Growers that these contraventions of the Grain Act would be prevented only by acquisition of the terminals by the Dominion Government. Mere legislation and supervision by the Government would not provide an effective remedy. At the head of the lakes the grain passed out of the control of the transportation companies into the hands of the grain dealers; it was the only point in transit where it became subject to manipulation. With the exception of those owned by the C. P. R., the terminal elevators were operated by dealers, largely controlled by United States concerns and managed by experts from across the line. It was frequently charged that terminal operators forgot that they ought to be warehousemen solely and sought profits outside those of legitimate elevation and storage charges, although these authorized charges paid ample return on capital investment. The farmers wanted this temptation of handling and mixing grain at the terminals removed so that terminal operators could not tamper with the grain while it was in their custody. The claims of the Grain Growers that mixing was going on at Fort William and Port Arthur were based upon the report of the Royal Grain Commission which had investigated the grain trade in 1906-7. The first definite step taken to lay these matters before the Dominion Government was in the winter of 1908 after the formation of the Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations. At a meeting of these representatives of all the organized farmers it was decided to send delegates to Ottawa. When these gentlemen reached their destination in May, 1909, they found themselves face to face with a large and active group of grain men, railway officials and bankers who had gathered to take a hand in the interview with Sir Richard Cartwright, then Minister of Trade and Commerce. Beyond some concessions regarding special binning of grain, nothing came of this trip apparently, although the Western farmers were supported strongly by the Dominion Millers' Association. A second memorandum was presented early in 1910 and the Grain Growers were granted a very respectful hearing by the Government; for, while the organized farmers represented but part of the farming constituency in the West, they had the sympathy of the entire farming community behind them in these requests. They went home, however, feeling the need of concentrating their energies on organization if they were to get actual action from politicians. They had not much more than got home safely before something happened which proved their assertions that all was not as it should be down on the lake-front. Mr. C. C. Castle, Warehouse Commissioner, one day held in his hand some official reports from the Inspection Department concerning certain elevator concerns and compared the figures with the returns made to the authorities by these concerns themselves. He shook his head at the discrepancies and started an investigation. There were three companies involved and after full evidence was taken legally these three companies were prosecuted for returning untrue statements and in the Police Court at Winnipeg they were fined a total of $5,550 by the Magistrate. The next thing was the drafting of a Grain Bill which aimed to improve certain matters. It was considered by the Senate and passed. It reached the House of Commons and Hon. Frank Oliver took it by the halter and led it about. Before anything could happen to it, however, and the judges get a chance to study its good and bad points, July (1911) came along and Parliament dissolved like a lump of sugar dropped into a cup of tea and in the hub-bubbles of a general election everything was _in statu quo_, as they say. And when the race was over and the Party Nags back in their stalls, lo! new tenants were taking their turn at sliding around on the polished Treasury Benches and having a sun bath! The new Minister of Trade and Commerce was Hon. George E. Foster. He looked over the Grain Bill, passed his hand along its withers and patted it on the rump. Then he sat down and made a copy of it, idealizing it by injecting a few "betterments," then trotted it out for inspection with tail and mane plaited and bells on its patent-leather surcingle. He did not claim to be its real father--only its foster-father. He introduced it to the House with a very lucid review of the whole agitation for improvement in the Grain and Inspection Acts since "Johnny" Millar, of Indian Head, Saskatchewan, handed in the Royal Grain Commission report in 1907. The new Government proposed to grant government control of terminal elevators only on a limited and experimental scale. They wanted to test out the principle by lease or construction of two or three terminals at the head of the lakes before undertaking the financial responsibility of handling the entire terminal system. Heretofore there had been government supervision merely; but now for an experiment there would be government operation as well while the management of the remaining terminals would have to be satisfactory to the Government. "The demand of the West is that the grain should not be manipulated at the terminals," declared Mr. Foster. "It does not matter a pin as to how that is brought about so that the thing itself is accomplished." The new bill provided for sample markets and the farmers did not like this unless the Government acquired the terminals as had been requested. Owing to the grain blockade, due to car shortage, feeling was running high in the West and the farmers eyed the new legislation closely. They came upon a clause which startled them and in the row that followed it looked at one time as if the new Bill would be led to the boneyard and killed. One of the proposals of the Government was the formation of a Board of Grain Commissioners with wide discretionary powers. They would be made responsible for the proper conduct of the entire grain trade and deal with all matters pertaining thereto. They were to have the absolute say-so in regard to car distribution and there was one clause that threatened this protection for which the Western farmers had fought so hard in earlier days. At once consternation spread among the Grain Growers, their apprehensions based upon bitter experience. They protested vehemently. Letters, petitions and resolutions slid all over the official Government desks and delegations followed to Ottawa. Not the organized grain growers alone, but the whole Western farming element was up in arms. Nevertheless, the new Grain Bill passed the House of Commons and browsed over to the Senate. It was the farmers' last chance to stop it. R. McKenzie and J. S. Wood, of the Manitoba Grain Growers; J. A. Maharg and F. W. Green, of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers, and E. J. Fream, of the United Farmers of Alberta--these practical men figuratively took off their coats and waded in when they got in conference with Senate members. They preferred to see the whole bill killed unless the objectionable clause regarding car distribution were struck out; they saw the old-time elevator abuses again becoming possible and quite nullifying the many good features which the new legislation possessed. The final upshot was that somewhat unexpectedly Hon. Senator Lougheed, leader in the Upper House, withdrew the offending clause on behalf of the Government, although the Government felt that the farmers were unduly excited. The new Board of Grain Commissioners was appointed without delay and consisted of three men who understood Western conditions--W. D. Staples, of Treherne, Manitoba; Frank E. Gibbs, of Fort William, and Dr. Robert Magill, now Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. Dr. Magill was made Chief Grain Commissioner, for he had rendered excellent services in the past and commanded the respect of the entire West. The Board was not long in reaching the conclusion that if grain dealing companies were to be eliminated from the business of owning and operating terminal elevators, outright purchase and breaking of leases would be necessary. The companies refused to lease to the Government voluntarily on any terms which the Board could recommend. Some would not lease on any terms whatever, claiming that to lease their terminals would dislocate their whole system of interior elevators, involving a loss of capital which had been invested legitimately. Apart from this, the Board had its hands so full with other important things that expropriation and all that it involved would claim their whole time and energy to the neglect of other urgent matters. Accordingly, the Grain Commissioners recommended that the Government meet the immediate need of increased terminal facilities at the head of the lakes by building a three-million-bushel elevator, thoroughly equipped for storing, cleaning, drying and handling grain and with provision for future extensions to a capacity of thirty million bushels. They also approved of the Grain Growers' Grain Company leasing one of the C. P. R. elevators. In this way both the Board and the Grain Growers would gain first-hand knowledge of terminal elevator conditions. While formulating a policy for terminal elevators the Grain Commissioners considered the need for terminal storage in the interior as well as at the lakefront. The increase in the area of the grain fields, particularly in Alberta, was straining the transportation facilities to the limit and the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific promised to open up still more acreage. Railway rolling stock, railway yard accommodations at Winnipeg and Fort William and elevator storage were not keeping pace with the annual volume of new grain. The Government Inspection Department was up to its eyes in grain, working night and day during the rush season, while lake and ocean tonnage likewise were inadequate. Even the eleven million bushels of extra storage capacity being built at the lake at the time the Board was considering the situation would soon fill and overflow. Congestion at eastern transfer houses or terminal points was threatening, water freight rates were up and the export market disturbed and there was no reserve of storage capacity in Western Canada to meet emergencies. In a wet season the drying plants at Fort William and Port Arthur were far from adequate. Delayed inspection returns and terminal outturns, due to the recurring car shortage, prevented the farmers from financing and widened the spread between street and track prices as the close of navigation approached. Reviewing all this, the Grain Commissioners came to the conclusion that it was time to consider seriously the erection of Government terminal facilities nearer the grain fields. Especially in Alberta was the need great for inspection and terminal storage to be nearer the producer. It would relieve congestion, benefit the whole grain trade and provide for the future possibility of alternate shipping routes via Hudson Bay or the Panama Canal. It was true that the Royal Grain Commission of 1906-7 had raised objections to interior terminals and inspection, such as the extra expense of handling, the extra loss to the grain in handling and re-handling, the possibility of the railways solving the car shortage problem, the difficulty of getting shippers to send their grain to such elevators and so forth. But the Board considered that, in view of other possible routes than the Eastern, these objections were not strong enough to balance the benefits. Accordingly they recommended the Government to take action, the elevators to be regarded as public terminals in which mixing of grades would be forbidden. While the farmers in all three Prairie Provinces were busy with these vital matters, the Grain Growers' Grain Company meanwhile was wading along through all the difficult seasons of car shortage, expanding its usefulness and trying its best to give the maximum of service the while it was reaching out into the export field in an experimental way. Then, in 1911, a situation arose unexpectedly that caused turmoil among the officers of the pioneer company and led to considerable anxiety among the Grain Growers all over the West. For, through an excess of zeal upon the part of an employee, the Grain Growers' Grain Company suddenly found itself dragged into the maelstrom of "The Pit." It was accused of trying to corner the oat market and was forced to fight for very life. So that at last it looked indeed as if Chance had delivered the farmers into the hands of those who preferred to see them eliminated altogether from the market. CHAPTER XVI THE GRIP OF THE PIT Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip! --_Merchant of Venice._ The visitors' gallery is an excellent vantage point from which to view the trading floor of the Exchange. It runs the full width of the south wall. The chairs entrenched behind the rail have acquired a slippery polish from the shiftings of countless occupants just as the wall behind has known the restless backs of onlookers who have stood for hours at a stretch. It is here that the curious foregather--good people from every walk of life except the grain business. The tourist who is "just passing through your beautiful city" and has heard that Winnipeg has the largest primary wheat market in the world--the tourist drops in to see the sights. Friend Husband is there, pretending to be very bored by these things while fulfilling his promise to take Friend Wife "some day when there's something doing." Young girls who only know that bulls hate anything red and that bears hug people to death--they are there, thrilled by the prospect of what they are about to witness with but a very vague idea of what it will be. A dear old lady from the quiet eddies of some sheltered spot has been brought in by the rest of her party to see "goin's on" of which she does not approve because gambling is a well-known sin. She is somewhat reassured by noting a few seats away a man who wears the garb of a clergyman; presently he will take notes for his forthcoming sermon on "The Propinquity of Temptation and Its Relation to the Christian Life." The two young women who whisper together in the corner have been reading stockmarket stories in the magazines and they are wondering which of the traders, assembling on the floor below, will have his coat and collar torn off and which will break down and give vent to those "big, dry man-sobs" when his fortune is wrecked! Not the least of the sights at the Grain Exchange is the Visitors' Gallery! Two tanned farmers are discussing quotations and general conditions in a matter-of-fact way. War demands, the unfavorable United States Government report and rumors of black rust are making for a bullish condition. Cables are up and the market promises to be wild this morning. The gong will go in five minutes. "The Pit" is out in the middle of the floor. There is an octagonal platform, raised a couple of feet from the floor level. In the centre of this platform three wide steps descend to floor level again; so that the traders standing on the different steps are able to see over one another's heads and note each other's bids. On the west side of the Pit is an elevated, built-in desk like those seen in court-rooms, somewhat resembling an old-fashioned pulpit; here three men sit throughout the session. One keeps his fingers on the switch-box which operates the big clock on the north wall where the fluctuations of the trading are flashed on a frosted dial in red-light figures. At his left sits a second man whose duty it is to record the bidding on an official form for the purpose. At the right is a telegraph operator who sends the record of the trading as it occurs to other big Exchanges--Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, etc. The telegraphic report registers in several instruments attached to the big blackboard that occupies the entire north wall. Operators with chalk and chalk-brush in hand move about the platform at the base of this blackboard, catching the quotations from the clicking instruments and altering the figures on the board to keep pace with the changing information. A glance at this great blackboard will furnish the latest quotations on wheat, oats, barley, flax, corn, etc., the world over. Ranged along the entire east wall are the clacking instruments of the various telegraph companies for the use of the brokers and firms trading on the Winnipeg Exchange. Telephone booths at the north, seats for friends of members on the west side, weather maps, etc., beneath the gallery--these complete the equipment of the big chamber. The group about the Pit, waiting for the market to open, grows rapidly as 9.30 approaches. Members of the Exchange saunter in from the smoking-room, swap good-natured banter or confer earnestly with their representatives on the floor. In response to the megaphoned bellow of a call boy, individuals hurry to the telephone booths. Messengers shove about, looking for certain brokers. The market is very unsteady; it may go up or down. The men are clustering about the Pit now; most of them are in their shirt-sleeves and they are on tip-toe like sprinters who wait for the starter's pistol. Some of them have instructions to dump wheat on the market; some have been told to buy. Hundreds of thousands of bushels will change hands in the first few minutes. The market may go up or it may go-- Bang goes the gong! They're off! Above the red abbreviation, OCT., at the bottom of the big clock the blood-red figure 5 indicates the opening of the market at $1.45 even. With a mad swirl the trading begins in a roar of voices. A small forest of arms waves wildly above jostling bodies. Traders dive for each other, clutch each other and watch the clock. The red figure 5 has gone out and 7/8 has in turn vanished in favor of 5/8--1/2--3/8--4--(?) Instead of going up, she's falling fast. Before the market closes the price may rebound to $1.55. Somebody will make a "clean-up" to-day and many speculators will disappear; for margins are being wiped out every minute. To the Gallery it is a pandemonium of noise, unintelligible in the volume of it that beats against the void of the high chamber. Only one shrill voice flings up out of the roar: "Sell fifty Oc, sev'-eights!" He offers 50,000 bushels of wheat for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and go at it again. Down there in the mêlée those men are thinking fast. With every flash of the clock the situation changes for many of them. Some pause, watching, listening; others who have been quiet till now suddenly break in with a bellow, seemingly on the point of punching the noses of the men with whom they are doing business. Lightning calculation; instantaneous decisions! "Use your discretion" many of them have been cautioned by their firms and they are using it. A moment's hesitation may cost a thousand dollars. Trading in the Pit is no child's play; rather is it a severe strain even upon those who know every trick, every firm and the character of its dealings, every trader and his individuality, his particular methods--who know every sign and its meaning, who can read the coming shout by the first movement of the lips. And always, in and out, are darting the telegraph messenger boys with yellow slips that cause upheavals. "Why don't they take their time and do their trading more quietly and systematically?" ventures Friend Wife up in the gallery. "And lose a cent a bushel while they're turning around, eh?" laughs Friend Husband. "On a hundred thousand bushels that'd only be a thousand dollars. Of course that's mere car-fare!" The dear old lady from the quiet eddies of Shelterville is shaking her head in disapprobation and communing with herself upon the iniquities of gambling. "My, oh my! What won't men do for money! Jt-jt! Just look at 'em! Fightin' like that for money they ain't earnt! An' that nice lookin' young feller with the intelligent gold specs!--Dear me, it's enough to make a body sad!" She could not know that but comparatively few of the traders below were representatives of brokerage firms which were trading on margins for speculating clients--that most of the traders were negotiating legitimate deals in futures for firms who actually had the grain for sale, for exporters who would take delivery of the actual wheat for shipment, for milling companies who would grind it into actual flour. Because trading for delivery in future months affords opportunity for speculation, it is not to be condemned necessarily. It is the balance wheel which steadies the entire grain business. Even the speculating element is not without its uses at times and the layman who ventures to condemn This or That out of hand will do well to make sure he understands what he is talking about; for the business of the grain dealer is so subject to varying conditions and so involved in its methods that it is one of the most difficult to be found in the commercial world. Trading in futures finds birth in the very natural disinclination of Mr. Baker to buy his flour by the warehouseful. He does not want to provide storage for a year's supply, even if he could stand such a large bite out of his capital without losing his balance. So while the bakery man is anxious to order his flour in large quantities for future use, he is equally anxious to have it delivered only as he needs it, paying for it only as it reaches him--say, every three months. Before contracting for the delivery of the flour on this basis Mr. Miller must look to his wheat supply on a similar basis of So-Much every So-Often and he, too, has an eye on storage and, like his friend the baker, he "needs the dough," as they say on the street, and he does not want to part with any more hard-working money than he can help. Accordingly he looks around for somebody who has wheat for sale and will sell it right now at a fixed price but defer delivery and payment to a future date. With the price of his wheat thus nailed down, Mr. Miller can set the future price on his flour to his customers, taking delivery and paying for the wheat as he requires it for filling his flour orders. In the meantime where is the wheat? Out near the fields where it was grown, in country elevators perhaps, ready for transportation to market as the law of supply and demand dictates instead of the whole crop being dumped at once and smothering prices below the cost of production. Or perhaps it is in store at the terminal where Mr. Exporter can handle it. It will be seen that the mutual arrangement to buy and sell for future delivery simplifies matters for everybody in the grain trade. The manner in which the legitimate trader in futures protects himself from price fluctuation is easily understood. While a deal in cash wheat would refer to a definite shipment as shown by warehouse receipts, a deal for future delivery is merely an obligation involving a given quantity of grain at a given time at a given price. Being merely a contract and not an actual shipment, the seller does not require to produce the grain immediately nor is the buyer required to hand over the purchase price when the trade is made. Thus it is possible to buy a thousand bushels to-day for October payment and sell a thousand bushels to-morrow for October delivery, cancelling the obligation. The trade can be balanced at any time before October 1st. Again, a thousand bushels of October wheat may be bought (or sold) to-day and the future switched to May 1st by the sale (or purchase) of a thousand bushels for May delivery. Take the man with the blazing red tie half way up his collar, the man who this morning offered to sell fifty thousand bushels for October delivery at $1.43 7/8. Suppose that he represents a company with a line of elevators at country points. To his office at Winnipeg has come word from country representatives that fifty thousand bushels have been purchased for the company. At once he enters the Pit and sells fifty thousand bushels for delivery at a future date, thereby "hedging" the cash purchase out in the country. Once this future of fifty thousand is sold the company no longer is interested in market prices so far as this grain is concerned. If the market goes up, their cash grain is that much more valuable, offsetting the loss of an equal amount on the future delivery; if the price goes down, what is lost on the cash wheat will be gained on the future. So that the difference between the price paid for the grain at the country elevators and the price at which they sold "the hedge" is the only thing which need concern the grain company and it is here they must look for expenses and profits. This method of hedging enables a grain company to make purchases in the country on much smaller margins than was possible in the early days when the marketing machinery was less completely organized. It eliminates to the greatest extent the necessity of speculating to cover risks. The speculator's opportunity comes in connection with the fluctuations of the market in deliveries. He merely bets that prices will go up or down, as the case may be. He is not dealing in actual wheat but in margins. He buys to-day through his broker, who has a seat on the Exchange, and deposits enough money to cover a fluctuation of say ten cents per bushel. If October wheat to-day is quoted at $1.45 his deposit will keep his purchase in good standing until the price has dropped to $1.35. He must put up a further deposit then or lose the amount he has risked already, the broker selling out his holding. If the speculator is on the right side of the market--if he has guessed that it will go up and it does go up--he can sell and pocket a profit of so-many-cents per bushel, according to the number of points the price has risen. If he has bet that the market will go down the situation merely is reversed. The machinery for handling the huge volume of business transactions in a grain exchange must be complete and smooth running to the last detail, so designed that every contingency which may arise will be under control. For simplicity and efficiency in this connection the Winnipeg Grain Exchange occupies a unique position among the great exchanges of the American continent; in fact, it is a matter for wonder that its methods have not been copied elsewhere. The Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange Clearing Association is a separate organization within the Exchange and to it belong all the Exchange members who deal largely in futures. Each day the market closes at 1.15 p.m. By two o'clock every firm trading on the floor must hand in a report sheet, showing every deal made that day by the firm--the quantity of wheat bought or sold, the firm with whom the trade was made, the price, etc. If on totalling the day's transactions it is found that they entail a loss, the firm must hand over a cheque to the Clearing House to cover the loss; if a gain in price is totalled the Clearing House will issue a cheque for it to the firm so gaining. Thus, if Jones & Brown have bought wheat at $1.39 and the market closes at $1.35 they lose four cents per bushel on their purchase and must settle the difference with the Clearing House. All differences between buyers and sellers must be settled each day and if the volume of trades has been heavy, the Clearing House staff work on their books--all night, if necessary--until everything has been cleared for next day's business. The firm which loses to-day may gain by to-morrow's trades, maintaining good average business health. Any private trading which may take place after official trading hours is known as "curb" trading. The rules of the Clearing House are very strict. Any firm which fails to report by two o'clock is fined. The Clearing House assumes responsibility for all purchases and sales and, being actually liable, keeps close tab on every firm. Each firm has a certain credit on the books of the Clearing House, allotted impartially, according to its standing, and this credit forms the fixed basis of that firm's dealings. If its activities exhaust the line of credit, the Clearing House calls for "original margins" at once--a deposit of so-many cents per bushel for every bushel involved and for every point which the market drops. The amount per bushel called for is entirely at the discretion of the Clearing House authorities and if the quantity of grain reaches dangerous proportions the deposit required may be set so high that it becomes practically equivalent to cash purchase. To "corner the market" under these conditions would require unlimited credit with the Clearing House. When Jones & Brown are "called" for deposit margins they drop everything and obey. They have just fifteen minutes to reach the bank with that cheque, have it "marked" and rushed to the Clearing House. If they fail to arrive with it the Manager of the Clearing House will step into their office and if there were any "hemming and hawing" Jones & Brown would be reported at once to the Secretary of the Exchange who would call a hurry-up meeting of the Exchange Council and Messrs. Jones & Brown would find themselves posted and all trades with them forbidden. All clerical errors in regard to trades are checked up by the Clearing House and fines paid in for mistakes. Only a nominal charge is made for its services--enough to pay overhead expenses--but the fines have enabled the Clearing House to accumulate a large Reserve Fund which gives it financial stability to provide for all responsibilities should occasion arise through failure of any firm. All futures which have not been cancelled before delivery date are negotiated through the Clearing House and with its assistance the grain can be placed just where it should go and tremendous quantities of it are handled without a hitch and with the utmost despatch. Excitement in the Pit is not always over wheat. It may be oats. It was Canadian Western Oats which became the storm centre in 1911 when the Grain Growers got into difficulty with the "bears." Traders who attempt to boost prices are known as "bulls"; those who are interested in depressing the market are "bears." A trader may be a bear to-day and a bull to-morrow; thus the opposing groups are constantly changing in make-up and the firm which was a chief opponent in yesterday's trading may be lined up alongside the day following, fighting with instead of against. It is all in the day's business and the strenuous competition on the floor, into which the uninitiated visitor reads all manner of animosity and open anger, is a very misleading barometer to the actual good feeling which prevails. In recording what now took place in the Pit in connection with the farmers' commission agency it will be well to remember that the rest of the traders would have acted in the same way toward any firm which was fool enough to leave the opening for attack. It may be that as the thing developed some of those who were specially interested in the downfall of the farmers' organization seized the opportunity to ride the situation beyond the pale of business ethics and in their eagerness to be "in at the death" revealed special vindictiveness. But in view of the long struggle with this element it was only what the Grain Growers should have expected when they ran their heads deliberately into the noose. The situation was this: Shortly after New Year's the export demand for Canadian Western Oats became heavy and it looked as if in Great Britain and all over Europe, where the oat crop had been small, there would continue to be a shortage of oats. In spite of this situation, however, no sooner was the proposed reciprocity agreement reached between the Canadian and United States governments of the day, on January 26th, than market prices began to go down. The then Manager of the Grain Growers' Grain Company came to the conclusion that this price lowering was a local condition and that the export market for oats was too strong to justify it or sustain it. "I'll just step into the market and buy some oats," said he. "Later on I'll sell for export at a satisfactory figure." Accordingly, one fine morning he went into the Pit and began to buy. The Manager's motive in attempting to sustain the market may have been of the best; but it was the first time that such methods had been attempted by the Grain Growers--methods which were not at all in keeping with the avowed principles of the Company. The Board of Control had every confidence in their Manager and, although he was merely a salaried employee and not an executive officer, he had been given a pretty free hand in the conduct of the Company's operations. Apparently it did not occur to him that he should consult the Board before entering the market on a speculative basis. Had the Board known what he was about to do they would have vetoed it; but when they did discover what was afoot it was too late to prevent the situation. It developed very swiftly. "The Grain Growers are up to the neck in May oats," was the whisper which passed about among the other traders. That was all that was necessary. "Sell May oats! Sell May oats!" On every side of the Pit they were being offered by thousands of bushels--five--twenty-five--fifty thousand! The idea was to load up the Grain Growers' Grain Company to the point where their line of credit with the Clearing House would become exhausted, after which every bushel would require a marginal deposit. Then when the Company could carry no further burden the Clearing House would be forced to dump back the oats onto the market, breaking it several cents per bushel. At this lower price the traders who had obligated themselves to make these big deliveries would buy back the necessary supply of oats at a profit and everything would resume the even tenor of its way--except the Grain Growers, of course. Their serviette would be folded. Their chair would be pushed back from the table! They would be _through_! Up until now all the troubles of the farmers in marketing their own grain may be said to have come from sources outside themselves; but in the present instance they had nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament. It arose at a time, too, when the other grain dealers were beginning to recognize the farmers as a force in the grain market--a force which had come to stay. It was unfortunate, therefore, that just as they were beginning to acquire a standing as a solid and sensible business concern, the Grain Growers' Grain Company should find themselves driven into a corner, their backs to the wall, the focus of pointing fingers and gleeful grins. The fact that a salaried employee, not an officer of the Company, had acted on his own initiative without the consent of the directors was no excuse for a reliable business concern to tender as such. The first question flung back at them naturally would be: "Then your 'Board of Control' doesn't control, eh?" For although the Board of Control did not know what their Manager was doing until it was too late to prevent it, they should have known. That is what they were there for--to protect the shareholders from managerial mistakes. However, there they were. The only thing they could do was to fight it out to a finish in the Pit and, if they survived, to see that no similar mistakes occurred in the future. All sorts of rumors were flying about the corridors of the Exchange, gathering momentum as they passed from lip to lip, swelling with the heat of the excitement until it was a general guess that the Grain Growers must be loaded with anywhere between five and eight million bushels of oats more than they had been able to sell. It was only a guess, though, and a wild one. Many traders would have given a good round sum to know exactly how the farmers' company stood on the books of the Clearing House. Only the Clearing House and the Company itself knew the true figures and the Clearing House officials were men of the highest integrity who dare not be approached for secret tips. Thanks to the splendid export connection which had been built up in the Old Country and to the equally solid financial relations with the Home Bank, the farmers' agency was selling oats for export very rapidly. It began to look as if they would get out from under the threatening avalanche without much loss, if any. The Company's old-time enemies apparently saw an opportunity to undermine its credit at this crisis; for attacks began to appear in print--accusations of speculation, of official negligence and so forth. If the Grain Growers could be prevented from paying for the large quantity of oats, delivery of which they would have to take on May 1st to complete the export sales made during the winter--if they could be made to fail in filling these export orders when navigation opened, they would be smashed. But in attacking the credit of the Grain Growers, these opponents overlooked the rapid increase in paid-up capital and the ability of the farmers to secure money outside of Winnipeg. It was not being forgotten by the Grain Growers that upon the first day of May there would be delivered to them over 2,200,000 bushels of oats. When the day arrived, therefore, the money was on hand to meet every contingency. Every bushel was paid for immediately. Within a few weeks half of the quantity was riding the waves of the Atlantic, bound for the Old Country to fill part of the sales already made there. Before long some of the grain companies which had sold the oats were trying to buy them back. Had the farmers' company been a speculating firm they might have turned upon the market and cornered the oats with a vengeance. It was one of those rare occasions when a corner could have been operated successfully to a golden, no-quarter finish; for the export demand was sustained and the local market could have been made to pay "through the nose" for its fun. CHAPTER XVII NEW FURROWS Fishes, beasts and fowls are to eat each other, for they have no justice; but to men is given justice, which is for the best.--_Hesiod_. The situation was changing indeed for the Grain Growers in Western Canada. In spite of all opposition the farmers had made themselves a factor in the grain trade and had demonstrated their ability to conduct their affairs on sound business principles. Co-operative marketing of grain no longer was an untried idea, advocated by a small group of enthusiasts. The manner in which the farmers' pioneer trading agency had weathered the stormy conditions of its passage from the beginning and the dignified stand of its directors--these gradually were earning status in the solid circles of the business world. Out in the country also things were different. Those farmers who at first had been most certain that the trading venture would crumble away like so many other organized business efforts of farmers in the past, now were ready to admit their error--to admit that a farmers' business organization, managed by farmers, could succeed in such ample measure that its future as a going concern was assured. Instead of hovering on the outskirts of its activities, like small boys surrounding a giant fire-cracker on Victoria Day--waiting for the loud bang so freely predicted--these gentlemen were beginning to look upon it as a safe investment. The success of the Grain Growers' Grain Company was an argument for co-operation which could not be overlooked and the co-operative spirit spread rapidly among the farmers in many districts. It will be remembered that the promoters of the grain company had intended originally to operate under a Dominion charter but were compelled by circumstances to content themselves with provincial powers. The farmers now were finding themselves too restricted and application was made for a new charter which would facilitate the transaction of business in other provinces than Manitoba. Special powers were asked for and by special Act of Parliament the charter was granted in 1911 in the face of considerable opposition at Ottawa from those whom the farmers regarded as representing the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Retail Merchants' Association. For the trend of the organized farmers was quite apparent. No secret had been made of the views entertained by the Grain Growers regarding co-operation. To familiarize every member of the various organizations with the history of co-operative achievements in other countries had been the object of many articles in the _Grain Growers' Guide_ and much speech-making from time to time. The possibility of purchasing farm supplies co-operatively in addition to co-operative marketing of grain was being urged convincingly. And during the long winter evenings when the farmer shoved another stick into the stove it was natural for him to ask himself questions while he stood in front of it and let the paring from another Ontario apple dangle into the ash-pan. "The fellow who made that stove paid a profit to the Iron an' Steel Trust who supplied the raw iron ore," considered he. "Then he turned around an' added a profit of his own before he let the wholesaler have it. Then the wholesaler chalked up more profit before he shipped it along to Joe Green over in town an' Joe just naturally had to soak me something before I got her aboard for home. That's profits on the profits! It's a hot proposition an' it's my money that goes up the flue!" When he added further profits which he figured might be due to agreements between supposed competitors in prices, the Grain Grower was quite ready to believe that he had paid about twice as much for that stove as the thing would cost him legitimately if he dealt with the maker direct. Here was the High Cost of Living that everybody was talking about. The remedy? The same chance as the Other Fellow for the farmer to use the resources of Nature and, by co-operation, the reduction to a minimum of production and distribution cost. "I've done it with my grain. Why can't I do it with what I need to buy?" That was what the Grain Grower was asking himself. "Why must I feed and clothe and buy the smokes for so many of these middlemen?" So when the directors of the grain-trading company came before him with the suggestion of buying a timber limit in British Columbia in order to put in their own saw-mills eventually to supply building materials on the prairie, the Grain Grower slapped his leg and said: "Good boy! An' say, what about a coal mine, too?" That was the beginning of great developments for the organized farmers of Western Canada. It was the beginning of new furrows--the opening up of new vistas of emancipation, as the farmer saw it. And as the furrows lengthened and multiplied they were destined to cause much heart-burning and antagonism in new directions. The timber limit which the Grain Growers' Grain Company purchased was estimated to contain two hundred and twenty-two million feet of lumber. A Co-Operative Department was opened with the manufacture and sale of more than 130 carloads of flour at a saving to the farmer of fifty cents per cwt, even this small beginning registering a drop in milling company prices. Next they got in touch with the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association and sold over 4,000 bbls. of apples to Western farmers at the Eastern growers' carload-lot price, plus freight, plus a commission of ten cents per barrel. More than one hundred carloads of coal were handled in one month and the farmers then got after the lumber manufacturers for lumber by the carload at a saving of several dollars per thousand feet. Still experimenting, the Grain Growers' Grain Company added to the list of commodities in 1912-13--fence posts, woven fence wire, barbed wire and binder twine. Followed other staples--cement, plaster, sash and doors, hardware and other builders' supplies; sheet metal roofing and siding, shingles, curbing, culverts, portable granaries, etc.; oil, salt and other miscellaneous supplies; finally, in 1914-15, farm machinery of all kinds, scales, cream separators, sewing machines and even typewriters. Of binder twine alone nearly seven million pounds was handled during this season. Thus did co-operative purchasing by the farmers pass from experiment to a permanent place in their activities. Expansion was taking place in other directions also. In 1912 the Company leased from the Canadian Pacific Railway a terminal elevator at Fort William, capacity 2,500,000 bushels. A small cleaning elevator was acquired at the same place and, with an eye to possible developments at the Pacific Coast, a controlling interest in a small terminal elevator in British Columbia was purchased. At Port Arthur, on a six-hundred-foot lake frontage, a new elevator has just been built with a storage capacity of 600,000 bushels. So much for terminal facilities of this farmers' pioneer trading organization. Now, what about the country elevators for government control of which the farmers had campaigned so vigorously in the three Prairie Provinces? As we have seen, the problem had been handled in Saskatchewan along very different lines to the method adopted in Manitoba. In Manitoba the 374 elevators, owned by the Provincial Government and operated by the Provincial Elevator Commission, showed a loss. It was even hinted in some quarters that the Manitoba Government had no intention in the first place of operating at anything but a loss. Whether or not there was any ground for these irreverent suspicions, the fact remained that the Government elevator system in Manitoba was beginning to assume the bulk of a snow-white elephant. The Government, not entering the field as buyers, had tried to run the elevators as a storage proposition solely. In 1910-11 the loss had exceeded $84,000 and the year following was not much better. At last the Government said in effect to the Grain Growers: "We've lost money on this proposition. We tried it out to please you farmers, but you're still dissatisfied. Try to run 'em yourselves!" "We'll just do that," replied the farmers, although the Grain Growers' Grain Company was not enthusiastic over the prospect of converting the elevator failure into immediate financial success. It was too much to expect. At many points the Government owned all the elevators in sight. In some places there was too much elevator accommodation for the district's volume of business. In certain cases the elevators which had been sold to the Government were practically discards to begin with. However, the need for improvement in the service which the farmers were getting at country points was so very great that finally, in 1912, the farmers assumed control of the government system in Manitoba. It was late in August when this came about. With only three or four weeks in which to prepare for the season's crop, make repairs, secure competent managers, travelling superintendents and office staff the results of the first season scarcely could offer a fair test. Even so, prices for street grain went up at competing points. Line elevator companies began asking the farmer for his grain instead of merely permitting him to place it in their elevators. The farmers were quick to note this and asked that the elevator service be continued by their company. With better organization the following season brought still greater improvement in service. Prices rose. The special binning service from their own elevators the farmers found genuine, not just a last-minute privilege granted to secure their grain. In spite of bad crop conditions in 1914-15, the elevators continued to succeed under the farmers' own management and, the year following, letters of highest praise from farmers everywhere marked the complete success of the undertaking. So excellent was the service now being rendered by the Company that independent Farmers' Elevators in several instances approached the Grain Growers and sought their management. The handling of co-operative supplies at elevator points began in 1913-14. Flour houses were erected where prices were out of proportion and at other places the elevator agents began to arrange for carload shipments and proper distribution of coal among the farmers at a saving of from two to three dollars per ton. These co-operative lines at elevator points soon were enlarged with much success. In addition to the elevators leased from the Manitoba Government the Grain Growers' Grain Company bought outright, erected or leased sixty elevators of its own. Those who were watching all this steadily grew more restive. The Farmers' Movement in the West was fast becoming a subject of bitter debate. "When farmers advance to the last furrow of plowed land on the farm they breast the fence which skirts the Public Highway," argued many Men of Business. "They are climbing over the fence!" But the organized farmers were not inclined to recognize fences in restriction of honest competition. They believed they were on the Open Range and held unswervingly on their way. CHAPTER XVIII A FINAL TEST We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.--_Vicar of Wakefield_. While developing co-operative purchasing of farm supplies the pioneer business organization of the farmers had continued its policy of expansion in the grain business. The ideal of the farmers had been to reduce to the lowest possible point the cost between the producer in Western Canada and the Old Country consumer who bought most of the Western grain. By engaging in the export business they hoped to become an influence in keeping export values--the price at Port William, in other words--at a truer level. Prior to 1912 the export activities of the Grain Growers had been restricted necessarily to an experimental basis; but on January 1st, 1912, the "Grain Growers' Export Company," as it was called, was organized for business on a larger scale. It now becomes necessary to record a final test of the Grain Growers' Grain Company inasmuch as it demonstrated the mettle of the farmers in a significant manner--the test of serious internal disagreement. Of all the threatening situations through which this organization had passed none was more critical than this later development. The trouble was a brew which simmered for some time before the steam of it permeated beyond directors' meetings. It began early in 1912 as an aftermath of the unfortunate deal in oats, bubbled along to a boil with the fat finally in the fire at the annual meeting of the shareholders. The consequences were ladled out during 1913 and the bill was settled in full at the annual meeting that year with a cheque for nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Like most internal troubles in business organizations the personal equation entered into it. Certain of the directors were inclined to criticise other directors and to be somewhat dictatory as to how the farmers' business should be conducted. With the idea of improving the system of management, the directors at this stage abolished the Board of Control and the President was made Managing-Director with supervisory and disciplinary powers. Not long after this, at a special meeting of the directors to consider future management, four of the nine directors introduced a resolution to declare the position of Managing-Director vacant. They failed to carry it--and promptly resigned. This occurred in March. In the June columns of the _Guide_ these four directors addressed an open letter to the shareholders, urging full representation at the forthcoming annual meeting in order that their criticisms might be threshed out. President Crerar joined in the request for a full meeting of shareholders. If the loyalty or ability of any director was to be questioned because he refused to surrender his judgment to other directors who might disagree with him on certain matters, it was time to have an understanding. So far as he was concerned, he could not agree to become a mere speaking-tube for others who might want their own way against his own convictions of what was in the best interests of the farmers. When the annual meeting opened, on July 16th, there was a record attendance of shareholders and during the routine preliminaries it was evident that expectancy was on tip-toe among the farmers. The split in the directorate was a vital matter. In delivering his annual address the President detailed the business of the organization for the past year, referring but briefly to the facts which had led up to the resignation of the four directors. The Shareholders' Auditor followed with the balance sheet, giving detailed accounts of receipts, expenditures, assets and liabilities; he answered all questions asked. Then came a resolution, expressing the thanks of the shareholders to the President--and this moment was chosen by the leader of the revolt to spin his pin-wheels. The debate began at three o'clock in the afternoon. It did not end until ten at night. The President retired from the chair and the Auditor was called on for detailed information, covering a period of several years past. In the long speech which was then made by the leader of the critics the President was declared responsible for all the alleged mismanagement and his retention in office undesirable. To the surprise of everyone a fifth director now took the floor and joined the attack. Not having been one of the four directors who resigned, this new criticism was unexpected and the tension of the meeting grew. After amusing himself and the audience for awhile with a humorous speech, No. 5 ended by suggesting that the President was not sufficiently wicked to be driven from office. Arose the remaining three members of the resigning quartette and, one after another, had their say. Finally, when words failed them and they rested their case, the President spoke briefly. In the annual address, which he had delivered that morning, no attempt had been made to deny the inadequacy of the Company's office organization to cope with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and 1912. The latter season particularly had been very trying owing to the lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting conditions. Twenty-five per cent. of the grain, which started for market a month late, was tough, damp or wet. The arrival of snow had prevented hundreds of thousands of acres from being threshed and, on top of it all, railway traffic had become congested so that cars of grain got lost for weeks and even months and there were long delays in getting the outturns of cars after they were unloaded. Money was scarce and farmers who were being pressed for liabilities to merchants, banks and machinery companies found it hard to get cars; naturally, once they had shipped, they were in no mood for further delays. Owing to the condition of the grain, too, the grading was so uncertain that exceptional care had been necessary in accepting bank drafts on carloads of grain for amounts nearly double their possible value under the unusual current crop conditions. Even with the greatest care the Company found that in many instances they had given greater advances than were realized when the cars were sold. The refusal of drafts, passed by some local banks for amounts the managers should have known could not be met, led to many hard things being said against the farmers' agency. Under these conditions it was only to be expected that the work in the office would become congested badly for weeks at a stretch. Double the amount of work was entailed in handling a given quantity of grain, compared to the season before. The Company was handicapped for office space also and errors were bound to occur in a business involving so much detail that a simple mistake might lead to infinite trouble. Correspondence had not been answered as promptly as it should have been, the necessary information regarding shipments being unavailable. All of these things had been met frankly in the President's annual address and now when he brought the day's animated debate to a close he added merely a word or two regarding the strong financial position to which the farmers' pioneer trading organization had won its way in the commercial world. He pointed out the future that lay before it. Upon personal attacks he did not comment at all. Immediately a unanimous vote of thanks for his untiring work and loyalty was tendered Mr. Crerar. The debate was over. The following morning the officers for the ensuing year were chosen and only one of the four directors who had resigned from the old Board was re-elected. He withdrew and the whole incident was closed. But the real test was yet to come. The withdrawal of the four directors had left but five to cope with the difficult situation of the Export Company. It had found itself with a large amount of ocean freight on its hands--freight which had been secured on favorable terms from shipping agents for use later in transporting grain which the farmers' agency expected to sell in the Old Country. It was decided to cut off the export business entirely for the time being and to re-let the ocean shipping space to other exporters. The price of ocean freight fluctuated to such an extent, however, that rather than accept an immediate loss it was thought better to use the freight, after all, making shipment to fill. At the time of the sixth annual meeting the Export Company had stood about level on the books; but during the two succeeding months the grain shipped from Fort William went out of condition while crossing the ocean and when it arrived in port the Old Country buyers refused to look at it. Heavy charges had to be met in treating to bring it to sale condition and very heavy losses were incurred. Before the matter was cleaned up finally these losses totalled more than $230,000. When a quarter of a million dollars has been expended in a direction where tangible results have not been in evidence--when it has been sacrificed apparently for the sake of a principle--then does the manner in which such a loss is accepted become significant. The exporting of grain had begun to receive particular attention from the shareholders of the Grain Growers' Grain Company following the season of 1907-8 when they discovered the apparent margin of profit in the export business during much of the season to be from eight to twelve cents per bushel. This had been due, no doubt, to the fact that it was a time of financial stringency and only a few exporting firms could get the money necessary to carry on the business. The export value of grain, the farmers had figured, should be its value in the world's markets, less the cost of delivering it. By engaging in the export business, obtaining their cable offers regularly from the Old Country, they felt that their competition would be a factor in governing the prices paid the farmer, thereby benefiting every farmer in the West. That this had been accomplished the shareholders of the trading company were convinced. Therefore, instead of losing their heads as well as this large sum of money, they examined the situation coolly and sanely, making up their minds that the loss was due to the grain going out of condition because of the unusual weather which had characterized the season. No doubt the executive and directors had been handicapped by their lack of knowledge as to the methods and manner in which the export business was done; but that was to be expected and only by experience could they learn. "Can the export part of our business be developed successfully with a little more time?" asked the farmers. "Yes, we believe so," replied their officers. "That's all we want to know. Write a cheque to cover this loss, reorganize the Export Company and stick to it." This faith in their officers, in themselves and in the cause they had at heart was justified within the next two seasons when success was achieved with the subsidiary concern and the farmers were able to congratulate themselves that they had been sufficiently level-headed not to allow themselves to be stampeded from the exporting field altogether to the great weakening of their influence. The accomplishments of the Grain Growers in marketing their own grain cannot be dismissed with careless gesture. Their severest critic must admit that the manner in which the farmers conducted themselves in the face of the situation that threatened entitles them to respect. CHAPTER XIX MEANWHILE, IN SASKATCHEWAN-- An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a faggot of sticks, and said to his eldest son: Break it. The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. Untie the faggots, said the father, and each of you take a stick. When they had done so, he called out to them: Now break; and each stick was easily broken. You see my meaning, said their father. Let affection bind you to one another. Together you are strong; separated you are weak.--_Aesop_. Eventful years, these through which the Grain Growers of Western Canada were passing. While the Grain Growers' Grain Company was undertaking the initial experiments in co-operative purchasing of farm supplies, showing the Manitoba Government that farmers could run elevators satisfactorily and fighting its way forward to success in the exporting field, how were things getting along in Saskatchewan? With $52,000 and another four or five hundred in loose change tucked away in its hip pocket as the net profit of its first season's operations the new system of co-operative elevators had struck out "on a bee line" for Success and was swinging along at a steady gait, full of confidence. The volume of business handled through these elevators the first year had been affected by the failure of the contractors to finish construction of all the elevators by the dates specified. Even so, the new company had handled 3,261,000 bushels of grain, more than half of it being special binned. In planning to build eighty-eight new elevators in 1912 and to purchase six, thereby bringing the total to 140 co-operative elevators, the directors thought it wise to form a construction department of their own instead of relying upon outside contractors. Also it was decided to open a commission department of their own at Winnipeg, the volume of business in sight being very encouraging. This move was not made, however, because of any dissatisfaction with the Grain Growers' Grain Company's services as selling agent; on the other hand, although crop conditions had been perhaps the most unfavorable in the history of Saskatchewan and the grain with its diversity of grades therefore very difficult to market satisfactorily, the Board of Directors acknowledged in their annual report that the wisdom of the arrangement with the Grain Growers' Grain Company had been proved by the satisfactory working of it. The volume of business handled by the 137 elevators in operation the second year jumped to 12,900,000 bushels with a net profit of approximately $168,000, and it was apparent that the general acceptance of the co-operative scheme throughout the province would mean organization upon a large scale. This was emphasized during the 1913 grain season when 192 elevators were in operation and about 19,500,000 bushels of grain were hauled in to the co-operative elevators by farmers. This rapid expansion of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was entailing such an increase in staff organization that it became necessary to provide special office accommodation. Accordingly a site for a permanent building of their own was purchased in 1914 at Regina and the following year a modern, fireproof building was erected. It stands two storeys on a high basement, with provision for additional storeys, occupies a space of 9,375 square feet, has interior finish of oak and architecturally it is a matter of pride to the farmers who own it. This building has become the headquarters of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and likewise the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, the offices of the latter occupying the entire top floor. While the erection of this building afforded visible proof of financial progress the Saskatchewan farmers were warned by the directors and the general manager of the "Co-Op" that co-operation which was allowed to degenerate into mere production of dividends would but reproduce in another form the evil it was intended to destroy. The ideal of service was the vital force which must be kept in mind and the work of the Grain Growers' Association in fostering this ideal must be encouraged. "The Association has its great work of organization, education and agitation," stated Charles A. Dunning, the elevator company's manager, "and the company the equally great work of giving practical effect to the commercial and co-operative ideals of the Association, both institutions being branches of one united Farmers' Movement having for its object the social and economic uplift of the farming industry." Not a little of the early success of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was due to the energy and business ability which Dunning brought to bear upon its organization and development. The story of this young homesteader's rise from the ranks of the Grain Growers is worth noting. It was back in 1902 that he first reached the West--a seventeen-year-old Englishman, "green" as the grass that grew over there in Leicester. He did not know anything then about the historic meeting of pioneer grain growers which Motherwell and Dayman had assembled not long before at Indian Head. He was concerned chiefly with finding work on a farm somewhere and hired out near Yorkton, Saskatchewan, for ten dollars a month. After awhile he secured one of the Government's 160-acre slices of homestead land and proceeded to demonstrate that oxen could haul wheat twenty-five miles to a railway if their driver sat long enough on the load. There came a day when Dunning, filled with a new feeling of independence, started for Yorkton with a load of wheat and oats. It was along towards spring when the snow was just starting to go and at a narrow place in the trail, as luck would have it, he met a farmer returning from town with an empty sleigh. In trying to pass the other fellow Dunning's sleigh upset. While helping to reload the farmer imparted the information that oats were selling for eight cents and all he had been able to get for his wheat was something like thirteen cents in Yorkton the day before! The young Englishman's new feeling of "independence" slid into his shoe-packs as he stared speechless at his neighbor. Right-about went his oxen and back home he hauled his load, angry and dismayed and realizing that something was wrong with Western conditions that could bring about such treatment. When a branch of the Grain Growers' Association was formed at Beaverdale, not far from his homestead, it is scarcely necessary to say that young Dunning joined and took an active part in the debates. Finally he was chosen as delegate for the district at the annual Grain Growers' convention at Prince Albert on condition that he could finance the trip on $17.50. The story is told that Dunning figured by making friends with the furnace man of one of the hotels he might be allowed to sleep in the cellar for the week he would be in Prince Albert and manage to get through on this meagre expense fund! At any rate he did find a place to lay his head and, if reports be true, actually came back with money in his pocket. It was at this convention that the young man first attracted attention. The delegates had deadlocked over a discussion in regard to a scheme for insuring crops against hailstorms in Saskatchewan, half of them favoring it and half opposing it. The young homesteader from Beaverdale got up, ran his fingers through his pompadour and outlined the possibilities of co-operative insurance which would apply only to municipalities where a majority of the farmers favored the idea. He talked so convincingly and sanely that the convention elected him as a director of the Association and later when the co-operative elevator scheme was broached he was elected vice-president of the Association and the suggestion was made that he undertake the work of organizing the new elevator concern. Incidentally, the man who suggested this was E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta--the same Partridge who had fathered the Grain Growers' Grain Company and who already had located T. A. Crerar, of Russell, Manitoba. Out of Dunning's suggestion at Prince Albert grew the Saskatchewan Hail Insurance Commission which was recommended to the Provincial Government by the Association in 1911 and brought into operation the following year. The legislation provided for municipal co-operative hail insurance on the principle of a provincial tax made operative by local option. Twenty-five or more rural municipalities having agreed to join to insure against hail the crops within the municipalities, authority would be granted to collect a special tax--not to exceed four cents per acre--on all land in the municipalities concerned. Administration would be in the hands of the Hail Insurance Commission, which would set the rate of the special tax. All claims and expenses would be paid from the pooled fund and all crops in the respective municipalities would be insured automatically. If damage by hail occurred insurance would be paid at the rate of five dollars per acre when crop was destroyed completely and _pro rata_ if only partially destroyed. This co-operative insurance scheme was instituted successfully in the fall of 1912, soon spread throughout Saskatchewan and was destined eventually to carry more than twenty-five million dollars of hail insurance. Shortly after the launching of co-operative hail insurance the discussions among the Saskatchewan farmers in regard to the co-operative purchasing of farm commodities for their own use came to a head in a request to the Provincial Government for the widening of charter powers in order that the Association might organize a co-operative trading department. In 1913 authorization to act as a marketing and purchasing agent for registered co-operative associations was granted and next year the privilege was extended to include local grain growers' associations. Thus the Trading Department of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association takes the form of a Central Office, or wholesale body, through which all the Locals can act collectively in dealing with miners, millers, manufacturers, etc. The Central sells to organized Locals only, they in turn selling to their members. The surplus earnings of the Central are distributed to the Locals which have invested capital in their Central, such distribution being made in proportion to the amount of business done with the Central by the respective Locals. During its first season of co-operative purchasing the Association handled 25,000 tons of coal and in a year or two there was turned over in a season enough binder twine to bind fifty million bushels of grain--about 4,500,000 pounds of twine. When the Western potato crop failed in 1915 the Association imported four and one-half million bushels of potatoes for its members, cutting the market price in some cases a dollar per bushel. Flour, apples, cord-wood, building supplies, vegetables and groceries likewise were purchased and distributed co-operatively. The savings effected by the farmers cannot be tallied alone from actual quantities of goods thus purchased through their own organization but must include a large aggregate saving due to reduction of prices by outside dealers. Such commodities as coal and flour being best distributed through local warehouses, it is likely that eventually the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company will take a hand in helping the Association and the Locals with the handling of co-operative supplies by furnishing the large capital investment needed to establish these warehouses. The necessary financial strength to accomplish this is readily conceived to be available after a glance at later developments in Saskatchewan. The co-operative elevators now exceed 300. The figures for the season of 1915-16 show a total of more than 39,000,000 bushels of grain handled with an additional 4,109,000 bushels shipped over the loading platforms. Without deducting war-tax the total profit earned by the Saskatchewan company within the year was in the neighborhood of three-quarters of a million dollars. The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company in 1916 began building its own terminal elevator at Port Arthur with a capacity of 2,500,000 bushels. By this time there were 18,000 shareholders with a subscribed capital of $3,358,900, of which $876,000 was paid up. In these later years a remarkable development is recorded also by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association until it is by far the largest and best organized secular body in the province with over 1,300 Locals and a membership exceeding 28,000. The Secretary of the Association--J. B. Musselman, himself a farmer--has done much hard work in office and looks forward to the time when the Locals will own their own breeding stock, assemble and fatten their own poultry, handle and ship their eggs, operate their own co-operative laundries and bakeries, kill and cure meat in co-operative butcher-shops for their own use--have meeting places, rest rooms, town offices, libraries, moving-pictures and phonographs with which to entertain and inform themselves. To stand with a hand on the hilt of such a dream is to visualize a revolution in farm and community life--such a revolution as would switch much attraction from city to country. Whatever the future may hold in store, the fact remains that already much valuable legislation has been secured from the Government of Saskatchewan by the farmers. Perhaps in no other province are the Grain Growers in as close touch with the Government, due to the nature of the co-operative enterprises which have been launched with Government support financially. Three members of the cabinet are men who have been identified closely with the Grain Growers' Movement. Hon. W. R. Motherwell has held portfolio as Minister of Agriculture for many years. Hon. George Langley, Minister of Municipal Affairs, helped to organize the farmers of Northern Saskatchewan in the early days. Finally in 1916 C. A. Dunning[1] resigned as general manager of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company to become the youngest Provincial Treasurer in Canada; for already the Saskatchewan Government had called upon him for service on two official commissions to investigate agriculture and finance in most of the European countries and his services were valuable. Langley has been a prominent figure in Saskatchewan affairs ever since his arrival in the country in 1903. He was forty-one years old when he came and he brought with him long training as a public speaker, a knowledge of human nature and a ready twinkle in his eye for everything humorous. According to himself, his first job was chasing sparrows from the crops. After leaving the English rural life in which he was reared, he had worked on the London docks and as a London business man. In politics he became a disciple of the Cobden-Bright school and was one of the first members of the Fabian Society under the leadership of the redoubtable Bernard Shaw. It was Langley's habit, it is said, to talk to London crowds on side thoroughfares, standing on a soap-box and ringing a hand-bell to attract attention. In becoming a Western Canadian farmer it did not take him long to slip around behind the problems of the farming class; for there was no greater adept at poking a cantankerous problem about with a sharp stick than the Honorable George. It was natural for this short, stout, bearded Englishman to gravitate into the first Legislature of the newly-formed Province of Saskatchewan and just as naturally he moved up to a place in the cabinet. As one of the sponsors of the co-operative elevator scheme, by virtue of his place on the commission which recommended it, Langley has taken much interest in the co-operative activities of the farmers and on many occasions has acted as their spokesman. With the relationships outlined it was to be expected that now and then opponents would hint that the Saskatchewan authorities had played politics with the farmers. Such charges, of course, are refuted indignantly. Knowing the widespread desire among the farmers themselves to keep free from political alliances, it would be a foolish government indeed which would fail to recognize that not to play politics was the best kind of politics that could be played. Other leaders of sterling worth have contributed to the acknowledged success of co-operation in Saskatchewan, not forgetting John A. Maharg who came from Western Ontario in 1890 to settle near Moose Jaw. From the very beginning J. A. Maharg has worked for the cause of the farmers. A pioneer himself, he has a deep understanding of the Western Canadian farmers' problems and his devotion to their solution has earned him universal appreciation among the Grain Growers of Saskatchewan. Year after year he has been elected to the highest office in the gift of the Association. He has been President many times of both the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company. The Grain Growers' Movement, then, in this Province of Saskatchewan where it had its beginning, has grown to wonderful proportions with the passing of the years. Co-operation has been a pronounced success. The old conditions have passed far back down the trail. The new order of things has been fought for by men who have known the taste of smoky tea, the sour sweat of toil upon the land, the smell of the smudge fires on a still evening and the drive of the wind on the open plain. Out of the pioneer past they have stepped forward to the larger opportunities of the times--times which call for clear heads and wise vision. For as they build for the future so will the Sons of the Movement watch and learn. [1] The Union Government at Ottawa decided in February, 1918, to replace the office of Food Controller by the Canada Food Board, organized as a branch of the Dominion Department of Agriculture under Hon. T. A. Crerar. Hon. Charles A. Dunning was selected as Director of Production. The other members of the Canada Food Board were: H. B. Thomson, Chairman and Director of Conservation; J. D. McGregor, Director of Agricultural Labor. (Mr. McGregor resigned after a year in office.) CHAPTER XX WHAT HAPPENED IN ALBERTA Beyond the fields we plough are others waiting, The fallows of the ages all unknown. Beyond the little harvests we are reaping Are wider, grander harvests to be grown. --_Gerald J. Lively._ Out in the great Range Country all this time the United Farmers were lickety-loping along the trail of difficulties that carried their own special brand. The round-up revealed increasing opportunities for service and one by one their problems were cut out from the general herd, roped, tied and duly attended to for the improvement of conditions in Alberta. Here and there a difficulty persisted in breaking away and running about bawling; but even these finally were coralled. Along with the Grain Growers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan the United Farmers of Alberta had campaigned consistently for government ownership of elevators, both provincial and terminal. They had received assurance from Premier Rutherford that if a satisfactory scheme could be evolved, the Provincial Government was prepared to carry out the establishment of a line of internal elevators in Alberta. It looked as if all that remained to be done was to follow the lead of Manitoba or Saskatchewan. But on careful consideration neither of the plans followed in the other two provinces appeared to fit the special needs of the Alberta farmers. The province at the western end of the grain fields accordingly experienced quite a delay in obtaining elevator action. In the meantime the discussion of terminal storage facilities was going on at Ottawa. The need for such facilities at Calgary and Vancouver was pressed by the Alberta representatives on various farmer delegations and finally the Dominion Government declared its intention of establishing internal elevators with full modern equipment at Moose Jaw and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan and at Calgary in Alberta; a Dominion Government terminal elevator at the Pacific Coast likewise was on the programme. By this time the government operation of the Manitoba elevators had proved a complete failure and they had been leased by the Grain Growers' Grain Company. In Saskatchewan, however, the co-operative elevators were proving successful. A close study of the co-operative scheme adopted in the province just east of them enabled the United Farmers of Alberta to work out a plan along similar lines. This was presented to the Premier, whose name meanwhile had changed from Rutherford to Sifton. The Act incorporating the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, Limited, was drafted in the spring of 1913 and passed unanimously by the Legislature. The new company held its first meeting in August, elected its officers[1] and went to work enthusiastically. It had been decided by the United Farmers that full control and responsibility must rest in their own hands. They proposed to provide the means for raising at each point where an elevator was built sufficient funds to finance the purchase of grain at that point from their own resources, at the same time providing for the handling of other business than grain. Under the Act the Provincial Government made cash advance of eighty-five per cent. of the cost of each elevator built or bought by the Company, but had no say whatever as to whether any particular elevator should be bought or built at any particular place, what it should cost or what its capacity or equipment should be. In security for the loan the Government took a first mortgage on the elevator and other property of the Company at the given point. The loans on elevators were repayable in twenty equal annual instalments. The Company started off with the organization of forty-six Locals instead of the twenty which the Act called for and the construction of forty-two elevators was rushed. Ten additional elevators were bought. Although construction was not completed in time to catch the full season's business the number of bushels handled was 3,775,000, the Grain Growers' Grain Company acting as selling agent. By the end of the second year twenty-six more elevators had been built and the volume of grain handled had expanded to 5,040,000 bushels. Now, this progress had been achieved in the face of continuous difficulties of one kind and another. Chief of these was the attempt to finance such a large amount of grain upon a small paid-up capital. The Company found that after finishing construction of the elevators they had no money with which to buy grain nor any assets available for bank borrowings. It was impossible to obtain credit upon the unpaid capital stock. The Provincial Government was approached for a guarantee of the account along the lines followed in Saskatchewan; but the Government refused to assume the responsibility. It was at this juncture that the enemies of co-operation were afforded a practical demonstration of the fact that they had to deal not with any one farmers' organization but with them all. For the Grain Growers' Grain Company stepped into the breach with its powerful financial assistance. The Alberta farmers were clamoring for the handling of farm supplies as well as grain; so that the young trading company in Alberta had its hands more than full to organize a full stride in usefulness from the start. The organization of the United Farmers of Alberta was growing very rapidly and the co-operative spirit was tremendously strong throughout the province. There was a demand for the handling of livestock shipments and soon it was necessary to establish a special Livestock Department. It will be recalled that one of the subjects in which the Alberta farmers were interested from the first was the possibility of persuading the Provincial Government to undertake a co-operative pork-packing plant. Following the report of the Pork Commission upon the matter, however, official action on the part of the authorities had languished. The various committees appointed from year to year by the United Farmers gradually had acquired much valuable data and at last were forced to the conclusion that the development of a packing industry along co-operative lines was not so simple as it had appeared at first. Even in much older settled countries than Alberta the question, they found, had its complications. The first thing to discover was whether the farmers of a community were able and willing to adjust themselves to the requirements of an association for shipping stock together in carload lots to be sold at the large markets. Until such demonstration had been made it seemed advisable to defer the organization of a co-operative packing business. After the formation of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, therefore, the Alberta farmers proceeded to encourage the co-operative shipment of livestock on consignment by their local unions. The Livestock Department entered the field first as buyers of hogs, handling 16,000 hogs in the first four months. The experiment bettered prices by half-a-cent per pound and the expansion of the Department began in earnest the following season when nearly 800 cars of hogs, cattle and sheep were handled. On top of all the other troubles of the first year the farmers lost a valuable leader in the death of the president of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, W. J. Tregillus. Complete re-organization of the Executive was made and the question of his successor was considered from every angle. It was vital that no mistake be made in this connection and two of the directors were sent to study the business methods and policies of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and to secure a General Manager. They failed to get in touch with anyone to fill the requirements and the management of both the other farmers' concerns expressed grave doubts as to the wisdom of a farmers' company looking for a manager whose training had been received with line elevator companies and who had not seen things from the farmer's side. One of the remarkable features of the advance of the Farmers' Movement has been the manner in which strong leaders have stepped from their own ranks to meet every need. It has been a policy of the organized farmers to encourage the younger men to apply themselves actively in the work in order that they might be qualified to take up the responsibilities of office when called upon. There are many outstanding examples of the wisdom of this in the various farmers' executives to-day; so that with the on-coming of the years there is little danger that sane, level-headed management will pass. Several of the men occupying prominent places to-day in the Farmers' Movement have grown up entirely under its tutelage. So it turned out that in Alberta the man the farmers were seeking was one of themselves--one of the two directors sent out to locate a manager, in fact. His name was C. Rice-Jones. His father was an English Church clergyman whose work lay in the slum districts of London. This may have had something to do with the interest which the young man had in social problems. When at the age of sixteen he became a Canadian and went to work on various farms, finally homesteading in Alberta, that interest he carried with him. Out of his own experiences he began to apply it in practical ways and the Farmers' Movement drew him as a magnet draws steel. He became identified with the Veteran district eventually and there organized a local union. It was not long before he was in evidence in the wider field of the United Farmers' activities. Fortunately the new President and General Manager of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company was not a man to lose his sense of direction in a muddle of affairs. Into the situation which awaited him he waded with consummate tact, discernment and push; so that it was not long before his associates were pulling with him for the fullest weight of intelligent effort. The difficulties were sorted and sifted and classified, the machinery oiled and running true, and with a valuable directorate at his back Rice-Jones "made good." The third season of the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Company brought the final proof that the farmers knew how to support their own institutions. For through the 87 elevators that the farmers operated in Alberta flowed a total of nearly twenty million bushels of grain, with well over ten and one-quarter million bushels handled on commission. The Livestock Department in the face of severe competition achieved a permanent place in the livestock business of the province with offices of its own in the stock yards at Calgary and Edmonton. By this time livestock shipments had amounted to a value in excess of two million dollars. The Co-Operative Department had handled farm supplies to a total turnover of approximately $750,000. As in the case of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association's trading department the list of articles purchased co-operatively by the Alberta farmers grew very rapidly to include flour, feed, binder twine, coal, lumber and fence posts, wire fencing, fruit and vegetables, hay, salt, etc. In 1915-16 a thousand cars of these goods were purchased and distributed co-operatively, besides which a considerable volume of business was done in less-than-carload lots. Coal sheds were built in connection with many elevators, the staff increased and the entire Co-Operative Department thoroughly organized for prompt and satisfactory service. [1] See Appendix--Par. 13. CHAPTER XXI IN THE DRAG OF THE HARROWS "I see the villain in your face!" "May it plaze yer worship, that must be a personal reflection, sure." --_Irish Wit and Humor (Howe)._ The "good old days" when the Farmer was a poor sheep without a shepherd, shorn to the pink hide with one tuft of wool left over his eyes--those "good old days" are gone forever. It is some time now since he became convinced that if a lion and a lamb ever did lie down together the lamb would not get a wink of sleep. As a matter of survival he has been making use of the interval to become a lion himself and the process has been productive of a great roaring in the Jungle. All this co-operative purchasing of commodities in the three Prairie Provinces has not been developed to its present great volume without arousing antagonism in the business world. The co-operative idea in merchandizing is not confined to the West by any means. From the Atlantic to the Pacific various organizations have been formed to carry on business along co-operative lines. A Co-Operative Union has been formed to propagate the movement and the subject is vast. But the establishment of an extending network of elevators under the control of the Western farmers has brought about possibilities which threaten to revolutionize the whole established commercial system. Farmers' Elevators in Dakota, Minnesota and Alberta have proved that it is practical to utilize the same staff at each point to manage the distribution of farm supplies as well as looking after elevator operation during the grain season. This being so, it is not difficult to visualize a great distributing system under centralized management with tremendous purchasing power. There are those whose imaginations stretch readily to the extreme view that the Grain Growers are a menace. Such are filled with foreboding. They see the country merchant out of business and the whole business fabric destroyed. "The farmers are talking everlastingly about 'a square deal,'" it is argued. "Why don't they practice what they preach and give the country merchant a square deal? What about the times of poor crops and money scarcity? Where would the farmer have been if the country merchant had not carried him on the books for the necessities of life?" "It didn't cost the merchant anything to carry me," denies the farmer. "He just raised his prices to me and got credit from the wholesaler." "Then what about the wholesaler?" "Raised his prices and got credit from the manufacturer and the bank." "Then the banks----" "Refused to give me the credit in the first place!" interrupts the farmer resentfully. "Do you dare to blame me, Mister, for cutting out all these unnecessary middle charges when by proper organization I am able to finance myself and take advantage of cash discounts on the cost of living?" That is the Farmer's motive for taking action. He wants to improve his scale of living for the sake of his family. By making the farm home a place of comfort his sons and daughters will be more content to remain on the land. He does not seek to hoard money; he intends to spend it. If middlemen are crowded out of his community it will be because there are too many of them. Instead of having to support parasites the community will be just that much more prosperous, the farms just that much better equipped, the land just that much more productive and thereby the country's wealth just that much greater. That is how it appears to the Farmer. "If the Farmer is to be a merchant, a wholesaler, a banker and all the rest of it he is no longer a farmer. Is nobody else to have a right to live?" enquires the Cynic. "Did these Grain Growers fight the elevator combine of the early days in order that they could establish a Farmers' Combine? Is one any better than the other?" The inference is that the Grain Growers are bluffing deliberately and aiming at all the abuses conjured by the word, "combine." The slander is self-evident to anyone who examines the constitution of the Farmers' Movement, so framed from the first that any possibility of clique control was removed for all time. It is impossible to have a "combine" of fifty thousand units and maintain the necessary appeal to the cupidity of the individual. It is not possible for designing leaders, if such there were, to take even the first step in manipulation without discovery. It simply cannot be done. Woe betide the man who even exhibited such tendencies among his fellow Grain Growers! These organized farmers have learned how to do their own thinking and every rugged ounce of them is assertive. They are not to be fooled easily nor stampeded from their objective. And what is that objective? "To play politics!" explodes the hidebound Party Politician knowingly. "To get a share in the Divvy and eventually hog it!" suggests the Financial Adventurer. "Equal opportunities to all; special privileges to none," the Grain Grower patiently reiterates. He believes in doing away with "the Divvy" altogether. He believes that "the spoils system" is bad government and that no stone should be left unturned to elevate the living conditions of the Average Citizen to the highest possible plane. He believes that the status of a nation depends upon the status of its Average Citizen and in that he does not consider himself to be preaching Socialism but Common Sense. Come back to the country store--to the Country Retailer who is pulling on the other end of the whiffle-tree with the Farmer for community progress. Each is necessary to the other and it is a vital matter if the co-operation of the Farmer is going to kill off a teammate, especially when tandeming right behind them are the Clydesdales of Commerce, the Wholesaler and the Manufacturer. With the Farmer kicking over the traces, the Retailer biting and squealing at the Wholesaler every little while and the Manufacturer with his ears laid back flat this distribution of merchandize in Western Canada is no easy problem. It is bringing the Bankers to their aristocratic portals all along the route and about the only onlooker who is calm and serene is the Mail-Order Man as he passes overhead post-haste in the Government flying machine. "I'd get along alright if the Farmer would pay up his debts to me," cries the Retailer. "I've been giving him too long a line of credit and now he's running rings around me and tying me up in a knot. When he gets some money he goes and buys from my competitors for cash or he buys more land and machinery. If I shorten the rope he busts it and runs away!" "I'd be alright if everybody else would mind their own business," grumbles the Wholesaler. "Just trot along there now! Pay your bills, Farmer. Improve your service, Retailer. Don't ask me about high or low tariff. I've got my hands full with established lines and it's my business to supply them as cheaply as is consistent with quality. I want to see everybody succeed and it isn't fair to include me in any mix-up. Only the humming of that confounded flying-machine up there--Can't somebody bring down that Mail-Order bird? He isn't paying his share of the taxes while I've helped to finance this country." "We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves," sings the Manufacturer. "Giddap, Dobbin!" "'Money makes the mare go,'" quotes the Finance Minister, taking another look out of the window at the War Cloud. "'Money comes from the Soil,'" and he push-buttons a buzz-bell over in the Department of Agriculture. "Send out the choir and let's have that 'Patriotism and Production' song again," is the order issued by some deputy sub-chief's assistant in response to the P. M.'s signal. "We must encourage our farmers to even nobler efforts." And all the while the Unearned Increment loafs around, studying the Interest Charges which are ticking away like a taxicab meter, and the "Common Pee-pul" gaze in frozen fascination at the High Cost of Living flying its kite and climbing the string! Seriously, though, the situation demands the earnest thought of all classes. The argument has so many facets that it is impossible within the limits of a few pages to present an adequate conception of all the vital problems that surround the Farmers' Movement. Each interest has its own data--packages of it--and it is difficult to know what to select and what to leave out and at the same time remain entirely fair to all concerned. There is some truth in many of the accusations which are bandied about. No new country can do without credit facilities. What about the homesteader or the poorer farmer who is starting on meagre resources? They will win through if given a chance. Who is to give it to them if business is put on a cash basis? On the other hand, is the man who has the cash to receive no consideration? The trouble with our banks is that their system falls down when the retailer or the farmer need them most--in times of stringency. It is true that the wholesaler has done much for the country, that the retailer is often at the mercy of careless or selfish customers who abuse credit privileges. It is true that the mail-order houses also have performed good services in the general task of making a new country. The solution can be arrived at only by co-operation in its true sense--getting together--everybody. Also, while one may joke about "Patriotism and Production," the fact remains that much has been accomplished by these campaigns. Asked if the organization of the farmers meant that the retailer would be forced out of business, the well posted Credit Manager of a large Winnipeg wholesale establishment admitted that it would not mean that necessarily. The same question put to C. Rice-Jones, President and Manager of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, brought the same denial. "The only men who would be weeded out," said he, "are those who have gone into the local store business without knowing anything about it and who can remain in it only because the present system allows them to charge any price they like. The men who know their business will remain. Those who are objecting to us are objecting to the very thing they have been doing themselves for fifty years--organizing." "We want to farm, not to go into business," remarked H. W. Wood, President of the United Farmers of Alberta. "The local merchant gives us a local distribution service, a service which has to be given. We cannot destroy one single legitimate interest. But if there are four or five men living by giving a service that one man should give in a community and get just a living--that is what we are going to correct and we are absolutely entitled to do so. The selfishness we are accused of the accusers have practiced right along and these very things make it necessary for us to organize for self-protection. If they will co-operate with us to put their business on a legitimate basis we are willing to quit trying to do this business ourselves." That is straight talk, surely. It is a challenge to the business men to meet the farmers half way for a better understanding. No problem ever was solved by extremists on either side. Enmity and suspicion must be submerged by sane discussion and mutual concessions bring about the beginnings of closer unity. CHAPTER XXII THE WIDTH OF THE FIELD Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid." --_Robert Browning._ The Grain Growers' Movement in Western Canada now had attained potential proportions. In Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta the Provincial Associations with their many Locals were in a flourishing condition. Each province was headquarters for a powerful farmers' trading organization to market grain and provide co-operative supplies. Unlike the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, however, the pioneer business organization of the Grain Growers--the Grain Growers' Grain Company--was not provincial in scope but had a large number of shareholders in each of the three Prairie Provinces, in British Columbia and Ontario. Altogether, in 1916 the farmers owned and operated over 500 country elevators as well as terminal elevators to a capacity of three million bushels. The farmer shareholders in the three business concerns numbered more than 45,000. During 1916 the farmers handled over ninety million bushels of their own grain. With this remarkable growth the danger of rivalries and jealousies developing between their business organizations was a possibility upon which the farmers were keeping an eye. A certain amount of friendly competition was unavoidable. For some time, therefore, the necessity of closer union of their various organizations had been a serious topic among the leaders of the Grain Growers in all three provinces. It was the logical preparation for future achievements. At its regular meetings in 1915 the Canadian Council of Agriculture--comprising officials representing the whole Grain Growers' Movement--had agreed that definite action would be desirable. A meeting of representatives from the respective Associations and companies interested accordingly was held in the offices of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company at Regina. The plan discussed was the formation of one large business concern, similar in a general way to the Wholesale Co-Operative Societies in the Old Country. The idea was that this wholesale company should market and export grain, control terminal elevators and any manufacturing that might be done later on as well as importing supplies when necessary. This would leave each provincial company with its own organization to look after collection and distribution of supplies and to operate along the lines already existing in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The provincial companies would be in absolute control of the central or wholesale company. A difference of opinion arose in regard to the method of selling grain. The representatives from the United Farmers of Alberta, the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association and the Grain Growers' Grain Company were unanimous in agreeing that it would be unwise to divide the marketing strength of the farmers into three parts instead of concentrating for fullest buying and selling power in the interest of the farmers in all three provinces. With the individual organizations each having a voice in the control of the central company there did not seem to them to be justification for carrying provincial divisions into the marketing machinery, thereby weakening it. With this view the Saskatchewan representatives could not agree, holding out for a separate selling channel for Saskatchewan grain. A committee was appointed to try to work out some other solution to the problem of federating all three farmers' companies and a new proposal was submitted at a meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture, held in Winnipeg in July, 1916. This second attempt to get together was along the line of joint ownership of subsidiary concerns which would look after certain phases of the work--an export company, a terminal elevator company, the Public Press, Limited, and so on. However, the plan did not work out satisfactorily. The feeling of the Alberta officials after the Regina meeting was that even if Saskatchewan were not ready at the present time to consider federation on a basis acceptable to the other provinces, this should not overthrow all idea of federation. In short, the Alberta directors were strongly of the opinion that, failing complete affiliation of the farmers' business organizations at this time, the organization in Alberta and the Grain Growers' Grain Company should get together nevertheless, and this suggestion they presented at the meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture in Winnipeg. As this was approved by the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Manitoba Association officials steps were taken to go into the matter in detail, the Saskatchewan organization having signified its intention of withdrawing from present action. President C. Rice-Jones, of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, and President T. A. Crerar, of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, were asked to give the matter careful thought and make their recommendations to their respective boards of directors. There followed a joint meeting of all those interested. It was held at Winnipeg and the result was a recommendation that the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Grain Growers' Grain Company be amalgamated under the name "United Grain Growers, Limited." [1] When the matter finally came before the farmers concerned--at their annual meetings in 1916--it was decided unanimously to go ahead with the amalgamation of these two farmers' business organizations. Accordingly application was made for necessary changes in the charter of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and these changes were granted by Act of the Dominion Parliament in June, 1917. The authorized capital stock of United Grain Growers is five million dollars. Its annual meetings are to be held in the different provinces alternately. The shareholders are formed into local groups, each represented by delegates at annual meetings, these delegates alone doing the voting. Proxy voting is not allowed. The charter is designed, in brief, to introduce the system of internal government that has been in practice by the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and has proved so satisfactory in every way. This "merger" is unique in that the objections to a monopoly cannot be urged against it. There is no watered stock. With proxy voting eliminated no group of men can gain control of the company's affairs. Stock holdings by individuals is limited to $2,000 on a capitalization of five million and no man can grow rich by speculation with assets. Instead of exploiting the public the aim is service--reduction of prices instead of inflation. United Grain Growers, Limited, have begun their first year's business as an amalgamated farmers' concern, all the final details having been settled to the entire satisfaction of the farmers interested. The fact that the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' executives did not decide to amalgamate their co-operative marketing machinery with that of the others just now must not be misconstrued as a lack of harmony among the leaders of these powerful institutions. For they are meeting constantly in their inter-provincial relations, for mutual business advantages and in the broader educational aspects of the entire Movement. It will be seen that with such complete and solid business resources established in the three Prairie Provinces the organized farmers have been in a position to widen their field of influence and to carry on much propaganda work. The Movement has spread steadily until it embraces organization in other than prairie provinces. There seems to be a tendency among the entire agricultural population of Canada to organize and co-operate; so that it is not impossible for Canadian farmers in time to have a unity of organization in every province of the Dominion. In Ontario for many years there have been various farmers clubs, associations or granges. Until 1914 these were merely disorganized units. At the annual meeting of the Dominion Grange, however--December 17th and 18th, 1913--the advisability of consolidating for greater co-operation was discussed at some length. Representatives from the Western Grain Growers were present and told the story of what the Western farmer had accomplished. A committee[2] was appointed and, after investigating rural conditions in Ontario, this committee called a convention for March 19th and 20th, 1914, at Toronto. Farmers and fruit growers turned out in strength, old-time organization was cast aside and there came into being the "United Farmers of Ontario," [2] and the "United Farmers' Co-Operative Company, Limited," [3] with aims and organization similar to those of the Grain Growers. Although practically born during the war--although conditions have been far from normal, the United Farmers of Ontario have progressed steadily and naturally, with the co-operative activities setting the pace and with efficient service as the watchword. By 1915 there were 126 local associations with a total membership of 5,000. In the face of bad climatic conditions and war disturbances 1916 found the young organization being looked upon by the Ontario agriculturists with interest instead of suspicion. It continued to grow of its own accord. By that is meant that no advertising or other energetic campaign was undertaken; yet the membership increased during the year to 8,000 with 200 Locals organized throughout the province. To-day there is a total membership in excess of twenty thousand throughout the Province. Local conventions, addressed by Western leaders and other qualified speakers, have become a feature of the development. The first month in business for the United Farmers' Co-Operative Company was September, 1914, when $827 was taken in. The next month the sales increased to $6,250, and in November to $8,214. The December sales jumped to $17,970. The sales for 1915 approximated $226,000. In 1916 this amount was nearly doubled and during the first five months of 1917 the business done reached a total of $513,000. All this on paid-up capital of only $5,000. The Ontario Company has secured a new charter, increasing its authorized capital from $10,000 to $250,000. This expansion has been very satisfactory in view of the special conditions which necessarily make the progress of the Movement in the East slower than in the West. Ontario crops varying widely in different districts, the same unity of interest which has made possible the large grain companies of the West does not obtain. The Ontario farmers have had to confine their efforts to commercial lines. Co-operative sale of livestock, cheese, etc., may develop in time. Also the farm population in Ontario is in the minority and there are few electoral divisions where the urban vote does not control, resulting in mixed issues unknown on the prairies. Powerful influences have been brought to bear to handicap the Farmers' Movement in Ontario; but nevertheless it is spreading so rapidly that with the proper educational campaign great possibilities lie ahead of the Ontario farmers. The United Farmers of Ontario now have become affiliated with the Canadian Council of Agriculture,[4] the inter-provincial body of the organized farmers of Canada. The farmers of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec are showing much interest and have sought to have the Movement extended. Meetings have been held and no doubt in due course the Eastern farmers will be prepared for unity of action in every province. What about British Columbia? On February 16th, 1917, the "United Farmers of British Columbia" was a development in the Pacific Coast Province. Prior to this there had been quite a number of individual farmers' organizations scattered throughout the agricultural sections of British Columbia. The initiative for closer unity was taken by the Cowichan Creamery Association, which called a meeting of the farmers in the Cowichan district to discuss the cost of production and serious labor conditions which were threatening complete failure of agriculture in British Columbia. At this meeting what was called temporarily the "Vancouver Island Farmers' Union" was formed with over one hundred members. Representatives from other districts were on hand to assure the expansion of the movement and a provisional organization committee[5] was appointed to carry on the missionary work. This Provisional Committee--called into existence by a mass meeting of farmers held at Duncan, B.C., on November 4th, 1916--at once prepared a strong circular, setting forth the case of the farmers and the need for organization. This was sent out to the secretaries of all Farmers' Institutes and suggested that a special meeting of delegates should be held at Victoria when the usual farmers' conventions were in session a few months later. Thus came about the final large organization meeting of February 16th, 1917, which resulted in the "United Farmers of British Columbia," with strong membership under the guidance of enthusiastic officers.[6] Representatives of the Grain Growers, from Alberta and Manitoba, were present to lend the encouragement of their experience. Among them was Roderick McKenzie, then Secretary[7] of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. When the farmers commenced organization in Manitoba, he said, it was possible to find many old-fashioned farmers who could see no reason for organization. Had not their fathers been successful farmers? Had they not raised a family of eight or ten or a dozen or more without belonging to any organization?--educated them, too? These old-time farmers forgot that the world was making progress as the years went by and they were not living in the same age as their fathers before them. "Fifty years ago, when I was a boy," Mr. McKenzie continued, "there was no such thing as a joint stock company. We would not hear a word about combines or trusts or transportation organizations or financial institutions. At that time the business was carried on by individuals. Then it grew into partnerships. From partnerships it developed into joint stock corporations and now we have these forming into trusts and combines and holding companies. It is simply co-operation of the few in the interests of the few. It created a force in public affairs and this must be met by another force--the organization of the common people, led by the farmers. "Where would the British Army be as a disorganized army confronting the Germans? Nowhere! Place a body of disorganized farmers in front of organized industrial interests and you see where you are at! There is no form of industry, no form of labor, no form of finance, banking associations, loan associations, insurance compensation associations, transportation associations, that are not organized. In Winnipeg we have a Bootblack's Association and each of the little fellows contributes five dollars a year to the support of their organization and five dollars represents fifty pairs of boots to blacken at a dime the pair. "In our Grain Growers' associations the organization is simple and coherent. There is no pass-word. There is no grip. There is no riding of the goat. We don't ask a farmer whether he is a Grit or a Tory; we don't ask him anything about his nationality or his relations or where he comes from or anything else. One of the main aims of the organization is to make good Canadians of the different nationalities we have in this Western country. We are getting the Galicians and other nationalities gradually brought in--getting them together for the development of Canadianism and the community spirit. "The one thing we have steered clear of is letting party politics enter into our organization. The thing we are trying to do is to co-operate with our legislators by helping them to find out the things that need enacting into law and that have not been enacted into law or to find what laws already on the statute books are weak and ask that these weaknesses be corrected--not in a dominating spirit but in a spirit of equity." Public opinion is rallying to the leadership of the farmers. Their policy is progressive. Probably the first body in Canada to give Woman her proper place in its activities and councils was the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association. To-day the farm women of the West are organized with the Grain Growers in all three Prairie Provinces, working side by side. Their aims are to solve the many problems directly bearing upon home life, educational facilities, health and all things which affect the farm woman's life and they have been of great assistance in many ways, particularly in Red Cross and other patriotic endeavors. To do justice to the noble efforts of Western Canada's farm women would require a separate volume. Still another development with far-reaching possibilities is the tendency of the Grain Growers and the Church to get together. It first revealed itself in Alberta under the conscientious encouragement of President H. W. Wood, of the United Farmers of Alberta, when in 1916 he inaugurated "U.F.A. Sunday"--one Sunday in each year to be set aside as the Farmers' own particular day, with special sermons and services. It was born of a realization that something is fundamentally wrong with our social institutions and that "the Church will have to take broader responsibilities than it is now doing." "Is Christ to develop the individuals and Carl Marx mobilize and lead them?" asked Mr. Wood. "Is Christ to hew the stones and Henry George build them into the finished edifice? If Christ cannot mobilize His forces and build true civilization His name will be forgotten in the earth. The solution of the economic problems must be spiritual rather than intellectual. This is the work of the Church and the Church must take the responsibility for it." Not only did the idea of a special Sunday meet with hearty response from the churches and farmers in Alberta, but it was taken up in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In 1917 "Grain Growers' Sunday" was observed all over the West and led to many inspiring addresses. One of the most significant of these was delivered by President J. A. Maharg, of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, at a mass meeting in Moose Jaw on Sunday, May 27th. "There has been a strong agitation against church union," said Mr. Maharg. "We hope to bring the churches together. The establishment of community churches is not altogether an impossibility. That groups of churches will be brought together for the holding of community services is not altogether impossible, and a farmers' organization is not an organization that is farthest away from doing this." In these days of revolutionary thought who shall set the length and width of the Farmers' field of influence, therefore? A string of co-related provincial organizations of farmers, stretching right across the Dominion, working harmoniously through the Canadian Council of Agriculture, will create a national force which in itself will represent Public Opinion--which cannot be denied the upward trend to wider and better citizenship for all classes in Canada. For Public Opinion governs legislation as legislation governs the country. [1] See Appendix--Par. 17. [2] See Appendix--Par. 14. [3] See Appendix--Par. 15. [4] See Appendix--Par. 11. [5] See Appendix--Par. 16. [6] See Appendix--Par. 16. [7] See Appendix--Par. 18. CHAPTER XXIII THE DEPTH OF THE FURROWS Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. --_Julius Caesar._ Because it was the logical and primary source of redress for the abuses which led the Western farmers to organize, the Grain Growers from the first have concerned themselves seriously with legislation. It took them a little while to discover that instead of being an all-sufficient panacea, mere legislation may become at times as flat and useless as a cold pancake. But by the time the farmers had come to close quarters with their difficulties their vision had widened so that they were able to look ahead, clearing the path for the next step forward. So frequently have they besought the Governments, both Federal and Provincial, that occasionally they have been accused by harassed politicians of "playing politics and nothing else." As their organizations grew and acquired knowledge it is true that these "petitioners" who "did humbly pray" began to straighten their backs a little, the while they wrestled with the kinks that were bothering them from too much stooping. It was a sort of chiropractic process for the alleviation of growing pains--the discovery of the proper nerve to ask and receive, to seek and find. As the People grew more accustomed to the sound of their own Voice it was only natural that the quaver of timidity began to disappear from the tones of it and that their speech grew stronger in the Legislative Halls dedicated to government "of, by and for" them. The "Backbone of His Country" set out to prove that he was not spineless, merely disjointed. And as he gained confidence in his vertebrae the Farmer began to sit up and take notice--began even to entertain the bold idea of getting eventually upon his feet. The intention was laudable. To make it audible he assembled a platform, stood up on it, and argued. His protests could be heard clean to the back of the Hall. Like the young elephant whose trunk was being stretched by the crocodile, he said: "You are hurting me!" In the nose-pulling game of Party Politics as it too often has been played, it sometimes takes a lusty holler to make itself heard above all the other hollering that is going on; if getting a hearing is "playing politics," then the Grain Growers have run up a pretty good score. They began with various amendments to the Grain Act. These included the famous "car distribution" clause, the farmer's right to a car and his procedure to obtain it and additional cars as he needed them, the provision of penalties for the purchase or sale of car rights, etc. Opposition to some of these amendments was keen and the farmers had to fight constantly; when they were not fighting for necessary amendments they were fighting to retain those already secured. Constant vigilance was required. Many delegations of Grain Growers visited Ottawa from time to time to plead for improvement of conditions in handling grain, more equitable inspection methods, government ownership and operation of terminal facilities and so on. Each year the annual conventions of the various associations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta grew in size and importance; each year the Grain Growers' knowledge expanded, much of it gained by marketing experience. From these "Farmers' Parliaments" and the pages of the _Grain Growers' Guide_ they drew inspiration for many radical ideas and threshed them out into well defined policies. By the time Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then Premier of Canada, ventured West in 1910 the farmers were pretty well posted on national topics. Everywhere he went he faced thousands of ruddy, big-fisted men who read addresses to him and did a lot of extemporaneous talking which was no less forceful and complete than the prepared briefs. Six or eight hundred of them followed him back to Ottawa in December of that same year and laid siege to the Government on its own stamping-ground. It was the most remarkable red-seal record of the Voice from the Soil that hitherto had been known thereabouts. In order that there might be no doubt as to the planks on which they stood, the Grain Growers assembled a platform in full view of the audience. "We want reciprocal Free Trade between Canada and the United States in all horticultural, agricultural and animal products," declared the farmers; "also in spraying materials and fertilizers; illuminating, fuel and lubricating oils; cement, fish and lumber. "We want reciprocal Free Trade between the two countries in all agricultural implements, machinery, vehicles and parts of each of these. We want it carried into effect through the independent action of the respective Governments rather than by the hard and fast requirements of a treaty. "We want the duties on all British goods lowered to one-half the rates charged under the general tariff schedule, whatever that may be. Also, we want any trade advantages given to the United States in reciprocal trade relations to be extended to Great Britain. "We want such further gradual reduction of the remaining preferential tariff as will ensure the establishment of complete free trade between Canada and the Mother Land within ten years. We're willing to face direct taxation, in such form as may be advisable, to make up the revenue required under new tariff conditions." "This bunch wants the whole earth!" cried the Canadian Manufacturers indignantly. "Sub-soil and all!" nodded the Railways. "Certainly they're plowing deep," commented the Banks. "To eradicate weeds," admitted the Farmers. "Damn it all, anyway!" worried the Politicians. To show that they were talking neither Tory nor Grit, the Western farmers proceeded to waylay the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. R. L. Borden, the following year when he in turn decided to "Go West." He, too, came face to face with thousands of ruddy, big-fisted men and listened to their equally plain-spoken addresses, prepared and extemporaneous. And what came of it all? Did these farmers get what they wanted? Not yet! But while all this agitation of the Grain Growers one time and another seldom has resulted in assent to their full requests, certain compliances have been made on different occasions with beneficial results. For instance--to mention three--the Royal Grain Commission of 1906, the permanent Grain Commission, and the Government Terminal Elevators are an outcome of various requests and delegations of the Grain Growers. Certainly the organized farmers of Western Canada have attained a measure of self-confidence which enables them to declare themselves in definite language. While seeking wider markets and the real value of their products, they have been opposed always to any scheme which accomplishes higher prices at the expense of the consumer or of the British workman. They do not believe in import duties on food stuffs, clothing, fuel or building material. Rather do they favor bringing closer together the producer and consumer to the advantage of both. They believe in cheaper money for the development of agriculture and other industries and in such utilization of natural resources that the homes of the people may be improved. They have stood consistently behind woman suffrage and the abolition of the liquor traffic. They would adopt direct legislation through the Initiative and Referendum. They believe in the principles of Co-Operation in buying and selling. They have urged extension of the parcel post system, the reduction of traffic charges to a reasonable basis, Government control of waterways and all natural resources that they may be developed only in the public interest. Does a creed like this spell class legislation? Does it indicate that in his eagerness to improve the conditions surrounding his own life the Grain Grower is forgetting the general welfare of the Dominion of Canada? Listen to the doctrine which the leaders have inculcated on every occasion--to President T. A. Crerar before the War: "You have a very clear-cut and distinct responsibility in supporting the whole movement of the organized farmers in Western Canada; for this means that you are improving not alone your own environment and condition, but also creating the conditions and influences that will develop a higher and purer ideal of public service upon the part of our people than we have in Canada to-day. It should be a source of great satisfaction that upon all important matters the policies adopted and supported by the organized farmers in the past have been formed upon what in their judgment would benefit the country as a whole and not from the narrow view of selfish interest. "During the past ten years the people of Canada have mortgaged the prosperity of the future to far too great an extent. Our total borrowings as a nation, for public and private purposes, have run into such a colossal sum that it requires about $160,000,000 annually to pay interest on the amounts borrowed. This constitutes a very heavy task on a country with about eight millions of a population. Manufacturing industries have been built up with a view of developing home industry and furnishing home markets, but often at a very heavy cost to our agricultural development, with the result that we have been travelling in a circle, reaching nowhere, rather than along the road that leads to Progress. "We hear considerable nowadays of the necessity of a 'Back to the Land' movement. It is necessary, however, to do a little more than get people located on the land with a view of increasing agricultural production. It is necessary to free agriculture from the burdens now resting upon it and make it the first business of the country. "Much of our natural resources has been recklessly handled, and as a people we are faced with the necessity of overcoming the evil effects of our unbusinesslike methods as a nation in administering resources. If we are to surmount our shortcomings in this respect and pay our obligations as a nation to the outside world, we must place agriculture throughout Canada upon a thoroughly sound and profitable basis. The creation of wealth from our wonderfully rich natural resources, in which agriculture stands in the forefront, is the essential thing and should receive most consideration from our Governments--both Dominion and Provincial. "We must learn to respect each other's differences and, if we do, with the development of that democratic spirit which is now day by day becoming more manifest in Western Canada, we need have no fear of our usefulness as an agency in bringing about the ultimate triumph of the principles of justice between man and man." Listen to President J. A. Maharg, addressing the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association in 1914: "What is wanted is the general recognition by all classes of the importance of Agriculture and an honest desire by them to assist in placing it on a basis equal to that of any other industry--making it an occupation that will draw people to it instead of driving them away. In soliciting the aid of other classes I am not asking them to assist us in gaining any special favors whatever; all we ask is that they assist us to have Agriculture placed in the position its importance entitles it to." Hear the President of the United Farmers of Alberta, H. W. Wood: "This is the day of class co-operation. That means inter-class competition. In this competition of class against class ours is the losing class at every turn because we have been the least organized, the least co-operative; consequently the weakest. Before we can hope to hold our own in this struggle we will have to bring our full strength, thoroughly organized, to bear in protection of our rights. "I have an abiding faith that the organized farmers will receive that strength, not selfishly but unselfishly in the defence of the rights of all and for the spoliation of none. The highest ambition I have for our organization is that it may develop along the lines of safety and sanity, that we may hold to a steady determination to go forward unwaveringly in our efforts till the door of hope and opportunity is as wide open to the farmers as to any class in the world, that we may zealously cultivate unselfish co-operation and learn to treat fairly and justly every man and every class that is giving a useful service to society." And this from the Presidential address of R. C. Henders at the last Manitoba Grain Growers' convention: "In order to have legislation that will be equitable to the different interests concerned, all of these interests should be somewhat equally represented in the passing of such legislation. We do not desire to minimize in any way the great commercial interests of our people, yet we feel that the work of our associations is educational and legislative in its character. Democratic rule requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed and intelligent ruler of his country and therefore the success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines--first, political knowledge; second, and what is of far more importance, political morality. Ideal government is found when we have righteous rulers governing a people of character and intelligence. Right education is right thinking and right thinking can only come through accurate information." Now, is all this preaching of the men who are leading the farmers just so much talk?--chaff?--prairie wind? If not, what lies back of it? The farmers have an organization which meets every so-often to harmonize and crystallize the thought among their various associations and business units. It is that same Canadian Council of Agriculture which has been mentioned already. It consists of the executive committees of eight farmers' co-operative, business and educational institutions, to wit: The United Farmers of Ontario, The United Farmers' Co-Operative Company of Ontario, The Grain Growers' Association of Manitoba, United Grain Growers (of the entire West), The Grain Growers' Association of Saskatchewan, The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company, The United Farmers of Alberta, and the _Grain Growers' Guide_, the official organ of the whole movement. At a meeting of this influential body in Winnipeg in December, 1916--representing an affiliation of 60,000 farmers--a "National Political Platform" was adopted to embrace economic, political and social reforms not alone in the interests of the farmers but of Canada's citizens generally. The farmers are looking for the support of all who live in cities and towns as well as the rural districts; of organized Labor as well as organized farmers. This platform was referred to the provincial organizations which stand behind the Canadian Council of Agriculture. It was considered by each of the provincial boards and by them referred in turn to the three thousand local community associations into which the members are organized. Each Local was asked to call a meeting to consider the platform and vote upon its adoption. The next step was for the members to give their votes and financial support only to such candidates for the House of Commons as would pledge support of this National Platform in its entirety and who could be relied upon as Members of Parliament to live up to their pledges. And here is the National Political Platform on which the farmers stand without equivocation: THE CUSTOMS TARIFF WHEREAS the war has revealed the amazing financial strength of Great Britain, which has enabled her to finance not only her own part in the struggle, but also to assist in financing her Allies to the extent of hundreds of millions of pounds, this enviable position being due to the free trade policy which has enabled her to draw her supplies freely from every quarter of the globe and consequently to undersell her competitors on the world's markets, and because this policy has not only been profitable to Great Britain but has greatly strengthened the bonds of Empire by facilitating trade between the Motherland and her overseas Dominions--we believe that the best interests of the Empire and of Canada would be served by reciprocal action on the part of Canada through gradual reductions of the tariff on British imports, having for its object a closer union and a better understanding between Canada and the Motherland, and by so doing not only strengthen the hands of Great Britain in the life and death struggle in which she is now engaged, but at the same time bring about a great reduction in the cost of living to our Canadian people; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff has fostered combines, trusts and "gentlemen's agreements" in almost every line of Canadian industrial enterprise, by means of which the people of Canada--both urban and rural--have been shamefully exploited through the elimination of competition, the ruination of many of our smaller industries and the advancement of prices on practically all manufactured goods to the full extent permitted by the tariff; AND WHEREAS agriculture--the basic industry upon which the success of all other industries primarily depends--is almost stagnant throughout Canada as shown by the declining rural population in both Eastern and Western Canada, due largely to the greatly increased cost of agricultural implements and machinery, clothing, boots and shoes, building material and practically everything the farmer has to buy, caused by the protective tariff, so that it is becoming impossible for farmers generally to carry on farming operations profitably; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff is the most wasteful and costly method ever designed for raising national revenue, because for every dollar obtained thereby for the public treasury at least three dollars pass into the pockets of the protected interests, thereby building up a privileged class at the expense of the masses, thus making the rich richer and the poor poorer; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff has been and is a chief corrupting influence in our national life because the protected interests, in order to maintain their unjust privileges, have contributed lavishly to political and campaign funds, thus encouraging both political parties to look to them for support, thereby lowering the standard of public morality; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Canadian Council of Agriculture, representing the organized farmers of Canada, urges that as a means of bringing about these much needed reforms and at the same time reducing the high cost of living, now proving such a burden on the people of Canada, our tariff laws should be amended as follows: (1) By reducing the customs duty on goods imported from Great Britain to one half the rates charged under the general tariff and that further gradual, uniform reductions be made in the remaining tariff on British imports that will ensure complete free trade between Great Britain and Canada in five years. (2) That the Reciprocity Agreement of 1911, which still remains on the United States statute books, be accepted by the Parliament of Canada. (3) That all food stuffs not included in the Reciprocity Agreement be placed on the free list. (4) That agricultural implements, farm machinery, vehicles, fertilizer, coal, lumber, cement, illuminating fuel and lubricating oils be placed on the free list. (5) That the customs tariff on all the necessaries of life be materially reduced. (6) That all tariff concessions granted to other countries be immediately extended to Great Britain. TAXATION FOR REVENUE As these tariff reductions will very considerably reduce the national revenue derived from that source, the Canadian Council of Agriculture would recommend that in order to provide the necessary additional revenue for carrying on the government of the country and for the prosecution of the war to a successful conclusion, direct taxation be imposed in the following manner: (1) By a direct tax on unimproved land values, including all natural resources. (2) By a sharply graduated personal income tax. (3) By a heavy graduated inheritance tax on large estates. (4) By a graduated income tax on the profits of corporations. OTHER NECESSARY REFORMS The Canadian Council of Agriculture desires to endorse also the following policies as in the best interests of the people of Canada: (1) The nationalization of all railway, telegraph and express companies. (2) That no more natural resources be alienated from the Crown but brought into use only under short term leases, in which the interests of the public shall be properly safeguarded, such leases to be granted only by public auction. (3) Direct legislation, including the initiative and referendum and the right of recall. (4) Publicity of political campaign fund contributions and expenditures both before and after elections. (5) The abolition of the patronage system. (6) Full provincial autonomy in liquor legislation, including manufacture, export and import. (7) That the extension of the franchise to women in any province shall automatically admit them to the federal franchise. That is the official stand of the farmers and they point out that their political platform[1] is constructive, not destructive. The farmers are not trying to sidestep their fair share of the expenses in connection with government and public institutions; where they have torn down they have rebuilt. Admitting that the prosperity of Western Canada is essential to our national prosperity, it is not necessary to look far in order to understand why the farmers have taken this definite action. Western farmers and citizens generally are carrying extra burdens which offset the advantages of cheap and fertile land. Interest on mortgages and bank loans have been higher than in Eastern Canada. It is more expensive to distribute commodities West than East. On account of the lavish donations of Western lands to railway promoters the cost of railway construction has borne heavily on the West. Freight rates are about sixty per cent. higher and express rates about sixty-six per cent. higher than in Eastern Canada. Thanks to the protective tariff, Western people are paying high for everything they get without any return compensation. "Something has to be done to lift some of these unjust burdens," say the farmers, "if a prosperous country is to be developed West of the Great Lakes." Hence this platform. The Western farmers believe in it earnestly. It is their politics. They believe that the results which would follow its support in the House of Commons would be of untold benefit to the Canadian people as a whole. They will continue to believe it. When the crisis arose which brought about the last election, in which Union Government swept the West, the farmers saw the gravity of the situation and were prepared to forego immediate discussion of tariff amendments to concentrate on winning the war. Some of the farmers' candidates even withdrew in favor of Union candidates. All those who remained in the field were elected. After the war is won--what? Reforms of breathtaking sweep are taking place as the natural outcome of current conditions. The liquor traffic has been tossed aside like a useless boot. Woman has stepped forth to a sphere of active worth without upheaval. Just where lie the boundaries of the impossible and who shall define them? It is a far-seeing, clear-thinking New Farmer who has come forward in the last decade. Through his associations, his marketing experiences, his contact with railways and banks and manufacturers and governments he has become a student of economics. At the same time he has strengthened his thews and sinews for whatever may face him on the path ahead. And his eyes are wide open to the fact that there are "lions in the path!" Wait a minute, Mr. Business Man! Before condemning this Western farmer out of hand, put yourself in his place and try for a moment in all fairness to forget your own viewpoint. It may be that you have not even seen the prairies. Have you ever been at sea with not a thing in sight but water, sky, horizon? Imagine the water to be land, and yourself living in a one-room shack or a little low sod hut bewhiskered with growing grass. The nearest railway was fifty miles away and you got so lonesome that the howl of a coyote or the cry of owls in the night nearly drove you crazy. Neighbors so scarce your social pleasures were cut off by distance and you reared your family on that homestead twenty-five miles from a doctor, a church or a school. When you made the long trip in for supplies in those early days you found you had to pay anywhere up to twice as much as their market value while for what you had to sell you had to take from twenty-five to fifty per cent. less than the market value. The implements you simply had to have for your work you bought on the instalment plan with interest at ten and twelve per cent. for the privilege. When you had survived three years of this and with high hopes took your patent to the mortgage company to raise a loan at ten per cent. you found you couldn't get accommodation. Thereupon in marched your implement and other creditors with a chattel mortgage on everything you had--except the missus and the kids and the baby's bottley-by! Then in the beautiful hot month of August it blew up black one day and the chickens scurried for shelter and you and the wife stood with your noses flattened against the window-pane--unless it was only oiled paper--and watched the big ice-marbles bouncing and heard the hail drumming flat in a few minutes the acres of wheat you had worked so hard to produce. Or perhaps you escaped that time only to have your wheat frozen later on and when you took three days on purpose to haul in a wagonload to the elevator you couldn't get a decent offer for it. So that you pulled off your mitts and clenched your frost-cracked hands as you prepared to turn homeward with but a pitiful portion of the food and clothing you had promised the family you would bring. As you spread across your chest, inside your sheepskin coat, the old newspaper somebody had given you would your soul expand with the joy of living while you headed out into the snowy waste at forty degrees below zero? And if after you got home and the crying young ones had been put to bed in the corner behind the canvas curtain and your wife came and sat beside you, her own tears bravely dried--if then you read in the paper that the Government had decided you farmers were so prosperous you should contribute from your easily gained wealth a free gift to manufacturers, financiers, railway magnates or others--then would you say with a great booming, hearty enthusiasm and shining eyes: "I tell you, Wife, this is the life!"--would you? Or would you just proceed to swear--naturally, successfully, in what is known as "flowing" language? By just such pioneer hardships were the farmers of Western Canada driven to organize in self-defence. It has ever been the history of revolt that its wellspring was the suffering of the people. Pioneer hardships it was that caused the various movements which agitated the farmers of the Western States in earlier days. When fingers become hardened and crooked from unceasing toil that achieves nothing but premature old age; when hope withers in a treadmill that grinds to the very soul--then comes rebellion. [1] Since the formation of the organized farmers' National Political Platform several of its planks have been adopted as legislation at Ottawa, notably the abolition of the patronage system, extension of the franchise to women, total prohibition, and personal income taxation. CHAPTER XXIV AND THE END IS NOT YET. The principle of co-operation draws the whole community together. It breaks down barriers. It unites the State. It gives hope to the humblest toiler. And it strengthens the great moral ideal of duty, without which no State can endure.--_Earl Grey_. What is to be the final outcome of the Western farmers' revolt and its spread to rural communities in Eastern provinces? Is there to be greater harmony among opposing interests or is Canada on the threshold of internal strife which will plow deep furrows of dissension between class and class to an extent hitherto unknown in this country? If there is to be a pitched fight between capitalistic groups and the people at large, led by the farmers, what are the chances of victory for the latter? If they win, what will be the national effect? These were a few of the questions which first turned the writer's serious attention to the Grain Growers. It seems scarcely credible that this great economic movement has attained present momentum practically unheralded; yet such is the case. The writer had watched its early struggles to success from Government windows and as preparation for a brief historical sketch it seemed desirable to get out among the farmers themselves and study the situation from their angle. Frankly, the task was not approached without some skepticism as to the motives which might be uncovered. Almost the only occasions on which the Grain Growers revealed themselves to the public were when they waited upon politicians for this, that or the other. So often did this happen and so insistent were they that there seemed some grounds for the belief that to satisfy a Grain Grower was humanly impossible. From Legislative casements it even looked at times as if they were a new species of Indian, collecting political scalps! All manner of people accused them of all manner of things. In the East they were called "blacksmith-shop politicians, nail-keg economists, grousers and soreheads"; in the West they were dubbed "corner-grocer statesmen and political football players." When the caravans of the Eastern political chieftains, Liberal and Conservative, came West they knew they were going to be held up by the outlaws. Long before these respective expeditions started across the plains infested with wild and dangerous Grain Growers, their scouts--the Western M.P.'s--were ranging far and wide in preparation. And when those Grain Growers in turn rode East to take possession of Ottawa there was a popular expectation that they were about to whoop in and shoot up the town in the real old wild and woolly way. They were referred to cleverly as "Sod-Busters." It was rather startling to find them merely a new type of Business Farmer, trained to think on his feet, a student of economics. To gather and verify the facts here recorded has required two years. During that time the writer has listened to earnest farmers in prairie shacks, pioneers and newcomers, leaders and followers, and has watched these farmers at work in their "Farmers' Parliaments" where they assemble annually by the thousands. It is impossible thus to meet and know these men while examining the facts of their accomplishments without being impressed by the tremendous potentialities that underlie their efforts. Almost the first discovery is that the organized farmers have ideals beyond material advantage and that these ideals are national in scope, therefore involving responsibilities. Undeterred by these, the farmers are eager to push on to further achievements. Their hope for these ideals lies in the success of their business undertakings and it is because that success is the spinal column of the whole movement that it occupies such a prominent place in this historical outline. Not all the Grain Growers are men of vision, it must be admitted. Many have joined the movement for what they can get out of it. In all great aggregations of human beings it is quite possible to discover the full gamut of human failings. But loose threads sticking to a piece of cloth are no part of its warp and woof. It is the thinking Grain Grower who must be reckoned with and he is in the majority; the others are being educated. If there is doubt as to the sincerity of the organized farmers, why did their pioneer business agency spend its substance in educational directions instead of solely along the straight commercial lines of the concerns with which it was in competition? The very mould into which it poured its energies shaped special difficulties, generated special antagonisms and every possible obstruction to its progress. Its cash grants to the Associations in the West, to the official organ of the movement, even to the Ontario farmers, run over the hundred-thousand-dollar mark. Or, take the case of the Grain Growers at Virden, Manitoba, who proposed to bring into the district a large shipment of binder twine to supply their members. When the local merchant who had been handling this necessity learned of the plan he raised his voice, thus: "If you fellows are going to do that then I go out of binder twine this season. I won't handle a pound of it." "Not even to supply the farmers who don't belong to our Association?" "That's what I said. You're going to make a convenience of me when you rob me of all my cash business. The only business I could do would be with farmers who wanted credit." Did the Grain Growers say: "That's their lookout, then. Let them join us or go twineless"? No. They decided to bring in their co-operative shipment as planned, but to allow the merchant to handle it on commission in order to prevent any injustice to the other farmers. Incidents like that can be recorded from all over the country. It does not take very many of them to compel the honest conviction that equity of citizenship for all the people in every walk of life means more to these farmers than a high-sounding shibboleth. That being so, it becomes difficult to accept the slur of utter selfishness--the idea that the farmers are auto-intoxicated, a pig-headed lot who cause trouble for nothing. It is very hard to believe that Everybody Else is good and kind and sincere and true, affectionate one to another with brotherly love, not slothful in business; for one knows that the best of us need the prayers of our mothers! When these Grain Growers started out they did not know very much about what was going on. They had their suspicions; but that was all. To-day they know. Their business activities have taught them many things while providing the resources for the fight that is shaping unless the whole monopolistic system lets go its stranglehold. Yes, the farmers do talk about freedom in buying and selling; also about tariff reform. They point out that there are criminal laws to jail bankers who dared to charge from twenty-five per cent. to forty-two per cent. for the use of money; that food and clothing and the necessaries of life are the same as money and that high tariff protection which fosters combines and monopolies is official discrimination against the many in favor of the few; that there are other and more just forms of taxation and that all old systems of patronage and campaign funds have got to go if the grave problems of these grave times are to be met successfully. It is no old-time "Hayseed" who is discussing these things. It is a New Farmer altogether. The Farmers' Movement is no fancy of the moment either, but the product of Time itself. It is a condition which has developed in our rural life as the corolla of increased opportunities for education. The Farmer to-day is a different man to what he was ten years ago--indeed, five years ago. It has taken fifteen years of bitter struggle for the Western farmers to win to their present position and now that they are far enough along their Trail to Better Things to command respect they are going to say what they think without fear or favor. They believe the principles for which they stand to be fundamental to national progress. If there is to be any attempt to cram the old order of things down the people's throats; if, under cloak of all this present talk of winning the war, of new eras and of patriotism, profiteers should scheme and plan fresh campaigns--then will there be such a wrathful rising of the people as will sweep everything before it. In the forefront of that battle will stand the rugged legions of the organized farmers. Make no miscalculation of their ability to fight. This year, 1918, will see them sawing their own lumber in their own saw-mills in British Columbia. If necessary, they can grind their own flour in their own flour mills, dig their own coal from their own mines, run their own packing-plants, provide their own fidelity and fire-insurance, finance their own undertakings. They grow the grain. They produce the new wealth from the soil. They are the men who create our greatest asset, everything else revolving upon the axis of Agriculture in Canada. If, then, the farming population has learned to co-operate and stand solid; if in addition they have acquired the necessary capital to educate the masses and are prepared to spend it in advancing their ideals; if the working classes of the cities and the soldier citizens of Coming Days join their ranks--what chance will Special Privilege have against the public desire for Equal Rights? Is it to be co-operation in all sincerity or class warfare? If the other great interests in our national life will meet the Farmer in a fair spirit, approaching our national problems in an honest attempt to co-operate in their solution for the common good, they will find the Farmer meeting them eagerly. They will find that these farmer leaders are reasonable men, broad-minded, square-principled and just--no less so because the class they represent is organized to stand up for its rights. The situation is not hopeless. Most of these pages we have been turning are Back Pages. Old conditions and much of the bitterness which they generated have passed. The story of those old conditions has been told from the viewpoint of the Farmer in order that his attitude may be understood. But it must be remembered that the grain trade to-day is a very different proposition to what it was and that many of the men who have devoted their lives to it in the cities have played a big and honest part in its development. The Winnipeg Grain Exchange as an Exchange has done a great deal for Western Canada, a point that undoubtedly has been overlooked by many farmers. Gradually, however, the Farmer has learned that all is not evil in "Babylon"; for out of revolution has come evolution.[1] The key to that better future which is desired so earnestly and wisely is Education. The problems of the day are commanding the mental focus of the nation. The Banks, the Railways, the Manufacturers are considering them. The Joint Committee of Commerce and Agriculture has great opportunities for removing much old-time hostility on both sides. And now that true co-operation of all classes has become a national duty, surely out of the testing must come better understanding and a greater future. Just now, of course, there is only the War. It has brought the Canadian people to their feet. For the angry glare of the gun flashes has thrown in silhouette many fallacies, many foibles and rubbish heaps, and these must be swept out in preparation for the new nationhood which Canada is called upon to assume. With a third of the entire British Empire entrusted to her management and the hopeful gaze of homemakers the world over turning upon her Canada's responsibilities are great. But she will rise to her opportunities. Just now there is only the War. The history of mankind has no previous record of such chaos, such a solemn time. Thrones toppling, maps changing, whole peoples dying of starvation and misery while the fate of Democracy is balanced on the issue. Men are slaying each other on land, in the air, on the water and below it while the forces of Destruction are gnawing holes in the World's resources with the rapacity of swarming rats. It is costing Great Britain alone over thirty-five million dollars every day--a million and a half every hour! As for Canada--much figuring is being done by experts and others in attempts to estimate the total debt which the Canadian people will have to carry after the war. But the people themselves are too far immersed in war efforts to pause for futile reckonings. There will be time enough for that when the war is won, and won it shall be, no matter what the cost. It requires no great perspicacity to realize that our total national debt will be a sum which rolls so easily on its ciphers that it eludes the grasp of the average mind. It is going to cost a lot even to keep the wheels greased at five and one-half per cent. from year to year. Everybody knows it. _Win the War!_ When the lamp went out and the old world we had known blew up--away back in 1914--we spagged about anxiously, calling to each other: "Business as Usual!" Since then factory production has gone up fifty per cent.; export trade a hundred; profits on capital all the way up to the billion-and-a-quarter mark. We have got so used to things in four years that there is danger of forgetting that War has driven a sap beneath these ironical gifts of Mars and it is full time Business looked around for a place to light and got ready to dig itself in. Mobilization, co-operation of every interest, the full grapple of every individual--national effort, in short--these the State demands. The coverlet has been thrown back upon the realization that the State has claims upon each citizen which transcend his individual fortunes--that individual prosperity, in fact, is entirely dependent upon the prosperity of the national whole. Not all by himself can the Man Behind The Gun win a war like this. At his heels must stand the munition workers, the Man Back of The Desk, the people themselves, each guarding against waste and each contributing his or her part, great or small, for that national economy which alone can hope to sustain the terrific pace that victory demands. Finally, out in the great open spaces, faithful and unassuming and backing his country to the limit, must plod the Man Behind The Plow, working silently and steadily from dawn till dark to enlist and re-enlist the horizoned acres. Canada has reason for pride in her farmers. No class is more loyal to British traditions. No class is more determined to win this war. Thousands of their sons are at the front. Many a lonely mother has stood on a prairie knoll, straining her eyes for the last glimpse of the buggy and bravely waving "God-speed." In many a windswept prairie farm home reigns the sad pride of sacrifice. Out of the sanctifying fires is arising a national tendency to new viewpoints. The hope of Canada lies in a more active participation in affairs by the Average Citizen. In opposition to an awakened national interest what chance is there going to be for the silent partnerships of "invisible government"? 'Twill be a sorry partizan who allows his thoughts at this crisis to patter away at that old practice line, so full of past mistakes: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the Party." Win-the-War unity is the leaven at work in Canada to-day and regeneration is coming. What does it matter except that our country's leaders shall rise to their opportunities for true statesmanship with a deep sense of their responsibilities to the millions who turn to them for guidance in this time of national stress? What does it matter except that the people shall grant to their leaders their sympathy and co-operation in the cares of crisis? As this book goes to the publisher Union Government in Canada has become a fact. Not since Confederation has such a thing happened in this country. The vampire methods with which our political system has been cursed have been thrown under foot and thinking Canadians everywhere have drawn a breath of relief. The energies which have been wasted in jockeying for party position are now concentrating upon effective unity of action. Let us hope so indeed. There must be no want of confidence in the cheers which echo from Canadian trenches. For over there where Canada's first line of defence runs from the North Sea through Belgium into France your boy, Mr. Business Man, and your boy, Mr. Farmer, stand shoulder to shoulder. Think you that in the crucible which bares the very souls of men those boys have any thought of class criticism or of selfish grabbings? In those trenches you will find more practical Christianity, more unselfishness, more true brotherhood than can be realized at this distance. The spirit of sacrifice, the help-one-another idea, the equal share and charity of thought--these revitalizing principles will be brought back by our khaki citizens when they march home from victory. It is past belief that there should be anything but complete unity of purpose as they look back for their country's supports. A coat of arms on the red field of a British flag, a maple leaf on khaki cap or collar-band, a single name on every shoulder-strap--CANADA. All the nations of the earth salute that name. For it is emblazoned on the shell-churned fields of Ypres where, sweltering and bleeding, Canada "saved the day" for all humanity. It is inscribed for all time to come on the Somme--on Vimy Ridge--on the difficult slopes of Passchendaele. Just now, only the War. But when in the Years To Be we find ourselves in some far land or in some international circle which Chance, mayhap, has thrown together; when the talk turns upon the Great War and the wonderful victory of Civilization; when we are questioned as to who and what we are and we reply simply: "Gentlemen, I am a Canadian"---- Then may the light of pride in our eyes be undimmed by any sense of shame for duty shunned. May it be that out of it all has arisen a higher conception of individual and national life. So that in place of deep furrows of dissension there will be the level seed-bed of greater unity and justice among men. THE END. [1] Abnormal conditions in the grain trade at present, due to the war, have led to government control of the crop by means of a Board of Grain Supervisors, aside altogether from the permanent Board of Grain Commissioners. This government commission has very wide powers, superseding the Grain Act for the time being, and can fix the price at which grain stored in any elevator may be purchased, ascertain available supplies, fix conditions of removal from storage and determine the destination of grain, receive purchase offers and fix sale prices, take possession of grain in elevators and sell it, provide transportation, etc. The Board of Grain Supervisors consists of two representatives of the organized farmers--Hon. T. A. Crerar, Minister of Agriculture, and H. W. Wood, President of United Farmers of Alberta; one representative of unorganised farmers--S. K. Rathwell; three representatives of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--J. C. Gage, W. E. Bawlf and Dr. Magill (Chairman); a representative of the British Food Commission--Jas. Stewart; two representatives of Labor--Controller Ainey (Montreal) and W. B. Best, of Locomotive Firemen; W. A. Matheson, of Lake of the Woods Milling Company, and Lionel H. Clarke, head of the Canada Malting Company and a member of the Toronto Harbor Commission. Dr. Robert Magill, the Chairman, is Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and was formerly Chief Commissioner of the permanent Board of Grain Commissioners. APPENDIX FIRST OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, COMMITTEES, ETC., OF THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT IN WESTERN CANADA, ETC. 1. _Territorial_ (Saskatchewan) _Grain Growers' Association--1902_. President, W. R. Motherwell (Abernethy); Secretary, John Millar (Indian Head). Among those who acted on the first Board of Directors were: Messrs. Walter Govan and M. M. Warden (Indian Head); John Gillespie, Elmer Shaw and Peter Dayman (Abernethy); Matthew Snow (Wolseley). 2. _Virden_ (Manitoba) _Grain Growers' Association--1903_. President, J. W. Scallion; Vice-president, George Carefoot; Secretary-Treasurer, H. W. Dayton; Directors: J. A. Blakeman, Isaac Bennett, Peter McDonald and C. E. Ivens. 3. _Manitoba Grain Growers' Association--1903_. President, J. W. Scallion (Virden); Vice-President, R. C. Henders (Culross); Secretary-Treasurer, R. McKenzie (Brandon); Directors: Donald McEwan, Brandon; William Ryan (Boissevain), W. A. Robinson (Elva), D. W. McCuaig (Portage la Prairie), John Wilson (Lenore), and H. A. Fraser, Hamiota. 4. _Committee to Investigate Possibilities of Farmers Trading in Grain--1905_. The first step towards co-operative trading in grain by the farmers of Western Canada was a scheme, fathered by E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta, Sask., the first official action being taken by the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at their annual convention in 1905, when the following committee was ordered to investigate and report: Chairman, E. A. Partridge (Sintaluta, Sask.); J. A. Taylor (Cartwright, Man.); A. S. Barton (Boissevain, Man.). 5. _Local Committee to Organise Meeting of Sintaluta Farmers--1906_. The following committee of Sintaluta farmers made arrangements for a meeting of the farmers in the Sintaluta district to discuss co-operative trading in grain and to pledge support of the trading company proposed by E. A. Partridge: E. A. Partridge, Al Quigley, Dave Railton, W. J. Bonner, T. McLeod, James Ewart. 6. _Preliminary Organisation Committee of Sintaluta Farmers--1906_. E. A. Partridge (Chairman), A. J. Quigley (Secretary), William Hall (Treasurer), James Halford, James Ewart, D. Railton, Sr., J. O. Partridge, William J. Bonner, Thomas S. McLeod, W. Malhiot, H. O. Partridge, G. K. Grass, Harold Bird, H. T. Smith, George Hill--all of Sintaluta, Sask. Subsequently this committee was enlarged to include a number of Manitoba canvassers. 7. _Provisional Officers of Grain Growers' Grain Company--1906_. Provisional organization of the Western farmers' pioneer trading company finally took place at Winnipeg, July 26th, 1906, when the following officers were chosen: President, E. A. Partridge; Vice-President, John Kennedy; Secretary-Treasurer, John Spencer; Directors: W. A. Robinson (Elva, Man.), and Francis Graham (Melita, Man.). At a general meeting of the shareholders these same officers were elected subsequently and the directorate increased by two--Robert Cruise (Dauphin) and T. W. Knowles (Emerson). 8. _Sintaluta_ (Sask.) _Farmers Who Pledged Personal Securities--1906_. Finding themselves $1,500 short of the necessary $2,500 for the purchase of a seat on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, the young trading company of farmers had recourse to personal securities in order to finance their start in business. The friends to whom E. A. Partridge appealed and who immediately gave the bank their personal notes were the following Sintaluta men: Dave Railton, Al Quigley, Tom McLeod, Jim Ewart, William E. Hall. 9. _Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations--1907_. It was under this name that the executive officers of the various farmers' organizations in the three Prairie Provinces first came together to discuss problems affecting the Movement as a whole. The first officers of the Inter-Provincial Council were: President, E. N. Hopkins (Moose Jaw, Sask.); Secretary, M. D. Geddes (Calgary, Alberta). 10. _United Farmers of Alberta--1909_. Until January 14th, 1909, the farmers of Alberta had two provincial organizations--the "Canadian Society of Equity" and the "Alberta Farmers' Association." On this date amalgamation took place at Edmonton under the name, "United Farmers of Alberta" with officers and directors as follows: President, James Bower (Red Deer); Vice-President, Rice Sheppard (Strathcona); Secretary, Edward J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: G. A. Dixon (Fishburn), A. Von Mielecki (Calgary), George McDonald (Olds), George Long (Edmonton), Thomas Balaam (Vegreville), L. H. Jelliffe (Spring Coulee), E. Carswell (Penhold), H. Jamieson (Red Deer). 11. _Canadian Council of Agriculture--1910_. The name of the Inter-Provincial Council (Par. 9) was changed to the "Canadian Council of Agriculture" in 1909 when relations were established with The Grange, the early organization of Ontario farmers. The first officers of the new inter-provincial body were: President, D. W. McCuaig (Portage la Prairie, Man.); Vice-president, James Bower (Red Deer, Alberta); Secretary, E. C. Drury (Barrie, Ont.). 12. _Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company--1911_. _Provisional Officers_: President, J. A. Maharg (Moose Jaw); Vice-president, F. W. Green (Moose Jaw); Secretary-Treasurer, Charles A. Dunning (Beaverdale); Directors: A. G. Hawkes (Percival), James Robinson (Walpole), Dr. T. Hill (Kinley). Upon early withdrawal of F. W. Green for personal reasons, George Langley (Maymont) was called by the Board in an advisory capacity. _First Election_: President, J. A. Maharg (Moose Jaw); Vice-President, George Langley (Maymont); Secretary-Treasurer, Charles A. Dunning (Beaverdale); Directors: James Robinson (Walpole), W. C. Sutherland (Saskatoon), N. E. Baumunk (Dundurn), A. G. Hawkes (Percival), J. E. Paynter (Tantallon), Dr. E. J. Barrick. 13. _Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company--1913_. _Provisional Officers_: President, W. J. Tregillus (Calgary); Vice-President, E. Carswell (Red Deer); Secretary-Treasurer, E. J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: Joseph Quinsey (Noble), William S. Henry (Bow Island), Rice Sheppard (Edmonton), P. P. Woodbridge (Calgary). _First Election_: President, W. J. Tregillus; Vice-president, J. Quinsey (Noble); Secretary-Treasurer, E. J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: E. Carswell (Red Deer), Rice Sheppard (Edmonton), P. S. Austin (Ranfurly), J. G. McKay (Provost), R. A. Parker (Winnifred), C. Rice-Jones (Veteran). 14. _United Farmers of Ontario--1914_. _Organisation Committee--1913_: E. C. Drury (Barrie), J. J. Morrison (Arthur), Henry Glendinning (Manilla), Elmer Lick (Oshawa), H. B. Cowan (Peterboro), W. C. Good (Paris), Col. J. Z. Frazer (Burford). _First Election of Officers--1914_: President, E. C. Drury (Barrie); Secretary-Treasurer, J. J. Morrison (Arthur). 15. _United Farmers' Co-Operative Company, Limited--1914_. President, W. C. Good (Paris); Secretary-Treasurer, J. J. Morrison (Arthur); Executive: Anson Groh (Preston), C. W. Gurney (Paris), Col. J. Z. Fraser (Burford), E. C. Drury (Barrie). 16. _United Farmers of British Columbia--1917_. _Provisional Committee_ (Vancouver Island Farmers' Union)--_1916_: Chairman, R. M. Palmer (Cowichan Bay); Secretary-Treasurer, W. Paterson (Duncan); H. G. Helgesen (Metchosin), G. A. Cheeke (Shawnigan Lake), A. E. Brooke Wilkinson (Cobble Hill), E. H. Forrest (Hillbank), F. J. Bishop (Cowichan Station), G. H. Hadwen (Comiaken), C. G. Palmer, C.I.E. (Quamichan), F. Maris Hale (Deerholme), A. A. Mutter (Somenos), L. F. Solly (Westholme), R. U. Hurford (Courtenay), A. C. Aiken (Duncan). _First Election_ (United Farmers of British Columbia)--_1917_: President, C. G. Palmer (Quamichan); Vice-Presidents: J. W. Berry (Langley), R. A. Copeland (Kelowna), P. H. Moore (Saanich); Secretary, H. J. Ruscombe Poole (Duncan); Directors: J. Johnson (Nelson), R. U. Hurford (Comox), L. Dilworth (Kelowna), R. H. Helmer (Summerland), W. E. Smith (Revelstoke), W. Paterson (Koksiloh). 17. _United Grain Growers, Limited--1917_. By Act of Dominion Parliament, June, 1917, the necessary changes in the charter of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, Limited, were granted to enable amalgamation with the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company under the name, "United Grain Growers, Limited"; authorized capital, $5,000,000. The first election of officers was as follows: President, T. A. Crerar; 1st Vice-president, C. Rice-Jones (Veteran, Alta.); 2nd Vice-president, John Kennedy; Secretary, E. J. Fream (Calgary, Alta.); Directors: C. F. Brown (Calgary), R. A. Parker (Winnifred, Alta.), J. J. McLellan (Purple Springs, Alta.), P. S. Austin (Banfurly, Alta.), H. C. Wingate (Cayley, Alta.), Roderick McKenzie (Brandon, Man.), F. J. Collyer (Welwyn, Sask.), John Morrison (Yellow Grass, Sask.), J. F. Reid (Orcadia, Sask.). 18. At the meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture in Winnipeg on July 5th, 1918, Norman P. Lambert was appointed Secretary-Treasurer to succeed Roderick McKenzie, who now occupies the position of Vice-president. 19. R. A. Bonnar, K.C. (Bonnar, Trueman, Hollands & Robinson), has been solicitor and counsel for the Grain Growers since 1906 and has been identified closely with them on many dramatic occasions. 
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21837	----	MONOPOLIES AND THE PEOPLE BY CHARLES WHITING BAKER, C. E. ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF "THE ENGINEERING NEWS" NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS The Knickerbocker Press 1889 COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1889 The Knickerbocker Press Electrotyped and Printed by G. P. Putnam's Sons TO ALL THOSE WHO LOVE TRUTH AND JUSTICE AND EQUITY, WHO VALUE OUR HERITAGE OF LIBERTY AND PEACEFUL FRATERNITY, AND WHO ARE WILLING TO UNITE IN UPHOLDING AND DEFENDING THE COMMONWEALTH--THAT PRESERVER AND PROTECTOR OF THE RIGHTS OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE--THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THIS WORK. PREFACE. In the following pages it has been my endeavor to present, first, the results of a careful and impartial investigation into the present and prospective status of the monopolies in every industry; and, second, to discuss in all fairness the questions in regard to these monopolies--their cause, growth, future prospects, evils, and remedies--which every thinking man is to-day asking. The first part of this task, the presentation of facts with regard to existing monopolies, may seem to the well informed reader to be imperfectly done, because of the host of powerful and important monopolies of every sort that are not so much as mentioned. But I have deemed it most important that the broad facts concerning monopolies should be widely known; and I have, therefore, aimed to present these facts in a readable and concise way, although, in so doing, only a few of the important monopolies in each industry could be even mentioned. It is to be hoped that no one will underrate the importance of the problem of monopoly, or question the conclusions which I have reached, because of these omissions. To any such readers who may not be satisfied from the facts hereafter given that monopolies are the salient feature of our present industrial situation, and, moreover, that they have come to stay, I would recommend a careful perusal of the financial and trade journals for a few months. Wherever possible I have presented actual statistics bearing on the question at issue; but as regards trusts, monopolies in trade, mining, labor, and in fact nearly all monopolies, there are no statistics to be had. Nor can any be obtained, for it would be absurd for the government to collect statistics of the operation of that which it pronounces illegal but makes no effort to punish. It may increase the respect of some readers for the conclusions I have reached, to know that it was a practical acquaintance with monopolies rather than any study of economic theories which led me to undertake the present work; that, at the time I undertook it, I was wholly undecided as to the proper remedies for monopolies, and was quite willing to believe, if the facts had proved it to me, that they were destined to work their own cure; and that the rapid growth and increase of monopolies in very many industries, in the few months since these chapters were written, have furnished fresh evidence that my conclusions have not been amiss. Finally, I wish to place all emphasis on the fact that all the great movements toward genuine reform must go hand in hand. The cause of the people is one cause, and those who work for honest officers in our government, pure elections, the suppression of crime and pauperism, the mental and moral elevation of men and women, are striking harder blows at monopolies than they may realize. But if they desire to hasten the day of their success, they must bring the great masses of the people to comprehend that these movements aim at nothing less than their complete deliverance; and that the reformers who labor so earnestly to make our government purer and its people nobler, heartily desire also to cure the evils of monopoly, and to serve the cause of the people in its every form. CHARLES WHITING BAKER. TRIBUNE BUILDING, New York City. June, 1889. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. THE PROBLEM PRESENTED 1 A new use for the word "Trust," 1 The people's knowledge of trusts, 2 Remedies for trusts, 2, 3 Trusts a species of monopoly, 3 The problems which monopoly presents, 4 An impartial investigation necessary, 4 The question to be discussed from different standpoints, 5 A scientific method for solving the problem, 5. II. TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 7 Definition of a trust, 7 The first trusts and their successors, 8 Description of the organization of the linseed-oil trust by one of its founders, 9 The action of trust-makers perfectly natural, 14 Actual effect of trusts upon the public, 15 Profits of the linseed-oil trust, 16 Decreased market for goods controlled by trusts, 17 Control of the labor market by trusts, 17 The causes which have produced trusts, 18 Production on a large scale the most economical, 20 The Standard Oil Trust's defence of its work, 21 Its profits, and the cause of its low prices, 22 Industries in which trusts have been formed, 23 Andrew Carnegie's views of trusts, 24 The trust at once a benefit and a curse, 25. III. MONOPOLIES OF MINERAL WEALTH 26 Mining, the first monopolized industry, 26 Monopolies in iron-ore production, 27 Monopolies in other metals, 28 The French Copper Syndicate, 29 The effect of its action on consumers of copper, 31 Profits of the richest copper mines, 32 Anthracite-coal production, 33 The anthracite-coal pool, 34 Coal monopolies in the West and South, 36 Monopolies in petroleum and natural gas, 40 Other monopolies of this class, 41. IV. MONOPOLIES OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 42 Transportation only a necessity in modern times, 42 The importance of railway traffic, 43 Railway transportation a vital necessity, 43 Shipping points where competition exists very few, 44 Consolidation and its benefits, 45 Intensity of competition in railway traffic on trunk lines, 47 Its inevitable effect, 48 The necessity of pools or traffic agreements, 49 Their history, 50 The Interstate Commerce law, 51 The effect of stimulating competition, 52 The evils charged to railway monopolies, 52 Evils due to wasteful competition, 53 Monopolies in other forms of transportation, 54 Monopolies on natural highways, 56 Monopolies of bridges, 56 The telegraph monopoly, 56. V. MUNICIPAL MONOPOLIES 59 City dwellers dependent upon monopolies, 59 Suburban passenger traffic, 59 Street-railway monopolies, 60 Water-supply monopolies, 61 Competition and monopoly in gas supply, 62 T. M. Cooley on municipal monopolies, 64 Prices, cost, and profits of gas supply, 64 Monopolies in electric lighting and in telegraph, telephone, and messenger service, 66 Other monopolies beneath city pavements, 67 Monopolies in railway terminals, 68 Monopoly in real estate, 69. VI. MONOPOLIES IN TRADE 71 Absolute control not essential to a monopoly, 71 History of trade monopolies, 72 Monopolies in country retail trade, 73 In city retail trade, 74 In wholesale trade, 75 Co-operation of trusts and trade monopolies, 75 Monopolies in the grocery trade, 76 Monopolies in meat, 77 A general view, 78 Monopolies among purchasers, 78 "Corners" and monopolies, 80 Commercial exchanges and speculation, 82 Warehouse monopolies, 82 Insurance monopolies, 83 Trade monopolies artificial, 84 Their unjust acts, 85 VII. MONOPOLIES DEPENDING ON THE GOVERNMENT 87 Government monopolies in ancient times, 87 Government monopolies established for the benefit of the people, 88 Copyrights, 88 Patents, 89 Evils arising from the patent system, 90 Monopolies based on patents, 91 The Bell telephone monopoly, 92 Government subsidies, 94 Relation of the tariff to monopolies, 95 Origin of the protective tariff, 96 The tariff a secondary cause of trusts, 98 Reductions in the tariff as a remedy for trusts, 99 Monopolies carried on directly by Government, 100. VIII. MONOPOLIES IN THE LABOR MARKET 102 Classes of labor considered, 102 Monopolies of capital and monopolies of labor compared, 103 Locomotive engineers' strike on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway, 105 Effect of labor monopolies upon the people, 105 The history of labor, 107 The first trade-unions, 108 Laws against them, 109 Labor organizations from the laborer's standpoint, 110 "An injury to one the concern of all," 110 Preserving the self-respect of the laborer, 111 Repeal of unjust laws, 113 A defence for the action of labor monopolies, 114 The underlying cause of labor monopolies, 116 Limits to the power of labor monopolies, 118. IX. MONOPOLIES AND COMPETITION IN OTHER INDUSTRIES 119 Occupations of the people, 119 Proportion of the people in any way benefited by monopolies 120 Proportion deriving the principal profits from monopolies, 122 Monopolies in the professions, 123 Monopolies among the servant classes, 124 Agricultural industry, 125 Can monopolies be established there? 126 A proposed farmers' trust, 127 The Grange and the Farmers' Alliance, 128 Killing the competition of oleomargarine, 129 Monopolies among agricultural laborers, 130 Proportion of the people benefited and proportion injured by monopolies, 130 Monopolies in the use of capital impossible, 131. X. THE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL COMPETITION 133 The general effect of monopolies, 133 Two sorts of remedies suggested, 134 Study of the laws of competition necessary, 135 The growth of civilized society outlined, 136 The interdependence of modern society, 137 The theory of civilized industry, 137 Supply and demand and the unequal rewards of men's industry, 138 The theoretical perfection of our social system, 141 "Competition the life of trade," 142 The orthodox school of political economy, 143. XI. THE LAWS OF MODERN COMPETITION 145 Competition defined, 145 Competition in corn-raising, 146 In paper-making, 147 In railway traffic, 149 The laws governing competition deduced, 150 Monopoly defined, 155 Natural agents in production, 156 Different classes of competition, 157 The three salient causes of monopoly, 159 The proper remedy for monopoly, 160. XII. THE EVILS DUE TO MONOPOLY AND INTENSE COMPETITION 162 The theoretical perfection of human industry, 162 Over-production not a fault of production, 163 The ideal distribution of wealth, 164 The law of supply and demand, 165 Evils due to monopoly: the congestion of wealth, 166 How great fortunes are made, 168 Monopolized industries and speculation, 169 How monopolies reduce the income of small capitalists, 170 Monopolies the cause of over-production, 171 Monopolies and poverty, 173 The Church and the laboring classes, 173 Intemperance, 174 Reforms must go hand in hand, 174 How monopolies keep men in idleness, 175 The waste of competition, 176 Waste due to parallel railway lines, 177 The waste of competition and financial crises, 178 Wasteful competition in other industries, 179 Waste by strikes of labor monopolies, 180 False remedies for the disease, 181. XIII. AMELIORATING INFLUENCES 183 Two classes of palliatives to the evils of monopoly, 183 Reduction in price to increase demand, 184 The influence of Christianity, 185 Its promise as a remedy, 186 A social system based on nobler attributes than selfishness, 187 The tendency of modern society, 188 The possibilities of altruism, 189 Direct and indirect charities, 189 The benevolent spirit in business enterprises, 190 The proper attitude of the Church toward monopolies, 191 The fraternal spirit opposed to competition, 192 Monopolists to be judged charitably, 193 Unjust judgment of labor monopolies, 194 Enmity toward monopolists no cure for monopoly, 195. XIV. REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OF MONOPOLY 196 Schemes for bettering society, 196 The doctrine of individualism, 197 The doctrine of societism, 198 The defects of each when unmodified by the other, 199 Societism a necessary accompaniment of civilization, 200 The interdependence of mankind, 201 Does societism threaten liberty? 201 Government for the benefit of the whole people, 202 The dangers of government action to aid special classes, 202 Remedies for monopoly: the creation of new competitors, 204 Its practical result, 205 Remedies by prohibiting consolidations, 205 Their inevitable effect, 206 Government the only agent to prevent monopoly, 207 Why direct action by the government is impossible, 208 Indirect action and its probable results, 208 The Interstate Commerce law as an example, 209 The proper remedy for monopoly not abolition, but control, 210 The relative advantages of government and private management of industry, 211. XV. THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE AND OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE, THE GOVERNMENT 213 Questions brought up by the preceding conclusion, 213 The rights of property holders, 214 Property in the products of labor an inherent right, 215 Property in natural agents and public franchises a matter of expediency, 216 Eminent domain over natural agents still held by the public, 217 The laws of competition applicable to determine when this right should be exercised, 220 Absolutely perfect equity impossible, 221 Does private ownership of land work injustice? 222 Fundamental difficulties in dealing with monopolies not dependent on natural agents, 223 Why a remedy for their evils is essential, 224 The basis of the people's authority over these monopolies, 225 Government regulation with private management the only feasible plan, 225. XVI. PRACTICAL PLANS FOR THE CONTROL OF MONOPOLIES 227 Economists should unite on the principles already propounded, 227 Practical details a matter of opinion, 227 A plan for the equitable and permanent adjustment of the railway problem, 228 The ownership and operation of the railways, 229 Their securities as investments and for use in connection with the currency, 230 Readjustment of outstanding securities, 231 Lending the government's credit to private corporations, 232 How rates of fare and freight should be fixed, 233 How the incentive to economy is retained, 234 How to avoid strikes, 237 Principles to be observed in establishing government control of monopolies, 238 Plans for the control of mineral monopolies, 238 State ownership with private operation, 239 Plans for controlling municipal monopolies, 240 The control of other monopolies, 244 The dangers of special legislation, 244 Government control of manufacturing enterprises not feasible, 245 Taking trusts within the pale of the law, 247 Enforcing publicity, 247 Enforcing non-discrimination, 248 Direct action to prevent extortion by the monopoly, 251 Potential competition to prevent extortion, 252 Reform of corporation laws, 254 The contrast between this plan for controlling trusts and existing law, 255 Reductions in the tariff as a remedy for trusts, 256 Plans for the control of labor monopolies, 257 Strikes an injury to labor, 258 Removal of other monopolies as a cure, 258 What shall fix the rate of wages? 259 Cooperative ownership, 260 Fraternal benevolence most needed here, 261 A definite relation between monopolies and the people, 262 Conclusion, 263. MONOPOLIES AND THE PEOPLE I. THE PROBLEM PRESENTED. The word "trust," standing for one of the noblest faculties of the heart, has always held an honorable place in our language. It is one of the strange occurrences by which languages become indelible records of great facts in the history of the world, that this word has recently acquired a new meaning, which, to the popular ear at least, is as hateful as the old meaning is pleasant and gratifying. Some future generation may yet be interested in searching out the fact that back in the nineteenth century the word "trust" was used to signify an obnoxious combination to restrict competition among those engaged in the same business; and that it was so called because the various members of the combination entrusted the control of their projects and business to some of their number selected as trustees. We of the present day, however, are vitally interested in a question far more important to us than the examination of a curiosity of philology. We are all of us directly affected to-day by the operation of trusts; in some cases so that we feel the effect and rebel under it; in other cases, so that we are unconscious of their influence and pay little heed to their working. It is but a few months since public attention was directed to the subject of trusts; but, thanks to the widespread educational influence of the political campaign, at the present day the great proportion of the voters of the country have at least heard of the existence of trusts, and have probably some idea of their working and their effect upon the public at large. They have been pointed out as a great and growing evil; and few speakers or writers have ventured to defend them farther than to claim that their evil effects were exaggerated, and predict their early disappearance through natural causes; but while remedy after remedy has been suggested for the evil so generally acknowledged, none seems to have met with widespread and hearty approval, and practically the only effect thus far of the popular agitation has been to warn the trust makers and trust owners that the public is awakening to the results of their work and is likely to call them to account. The truth is, as we shall see later, that it is a difficult matter to apply an effective remedy of any sort to the trusts by legislation, without running counter to many established precedents of law and custom, and without serious interference with what are generally regarded as inalienable rights. Yet we are making the attempt. Already legislative and congressional committees have made their tours of investigation, and bills have been introduced in the legislatures of many of the States, and in Congress, looking to the restriction or abolition of trust monopolies. It is the wise surgeon, however, who, before he takes the knife to cut out a troublesome growth, carefully diagnoses its origin and cause, determines whether it is purely local, or whether it springs from the general state of the whole body, and whether it is the herald of an organic disease or merely the result of repressed energies or wrongly-trained organs. So we, in our treatment of the body politic, will do well to examine most carefully the actual nature of the diseases which we seek to cure, and discern, if we can, the causes which have brought them on and tend to perpetuate them. If we can discover these, we shall, perhaps, be able to cure permanently by removing the ultimate cause. At any rate, our remedies will be apt to reach the disease far more effectually than if they were sought out in a haphazard way. The crudest thinker, at the first attempt to increase his knowledge of the general nature of trusts, discovers that the problem has a close connection with others which have long puzzled workers for the public good. Trusts ally themselves at once in his mind with monopolies, in whichever form he is most familiar with them, and are apt to be classed at once, without further consideration, as simply a new device for the oppression of the laborer by the capitalist. But the man of judicious and candid mind is not content with any such conclusion; he finds at once, indeed, that a trust is a combination to suppress competition among producers of manufactured goods, and he calls to mind the fact that other combinations to suppress competition exist in various other lines of industry. Surely when the governing motives are so similar, the proper remedies, if remedies are needed, cannot be greatly unlike. And though, taking the country as a whole, trusts have occupied more attention lately than any other form of monopoly, the problem of railroad monopoly is still all-absorbing in the West; in every city there is clamor against the burdens of taxation levied by gas, electric-light, street-railway, and kindred monopolies; while strikes in every industry testify to the strength of those who would shut out competition from the labor market. These and similar social and industrial problems are quite as important as the problem of trusts, and their solution is becoming every day more urgent and necessary. If we neglect them too long, or carelessly adopt some unsuitable or unjust remedy, who knows the price we may pay for our folly in blood and treasure? The problem before us, then, as we see it from our present standpoint, is the problem of monopoly. What is it? Whence comes it? What are its effects? And, most important of all, what ought we to do about it? Surely questions whose correct answer is of such importance to the welfare of each person and to the very existence of society demand the careful consideration of every thinking man. Let us then take up this problem and give it the fairest and most candid investigation possible. In order to do this, let us remember that _the truth_ is the object of our search, and that it will be necessary, if the conclusions from our investigation are to be of value, that we divest ourselves, so far as possible, of all preconceived opinions founded, perhaps unconsciously, on the statements or evidence of incompetent authorities, and also of all prejudices. Let us, in searching for facts and principles, examine with impartiality the evidence and arguments which each side presents, and judge with candor between them. The author wishes to make an earnest personal request to the reader who is minded to follow the discussion through the following pages, that he will in good faith attempt to do this thing: that he will lay aside for the present his opinions already formed, as the author himself has conscientiously aimed to do while pursuing this investigation, and give a fair hearing to both sides of the question. A complicated machine can only be understood when it is viewed from different standpoints. So, here, in order to find the truth, we must examine trusts from the standpoint of the trust maker as well as from that of the consumer; and trade unions, from the standpoint of their members as well as from the ground of employers and of the public at large. We shall indeed meet much error by this method of study, but is it not proverbial that there are two sides to every question? It will be our task to study these opposing views and sift from them the truths for which we seek. In taking up now the problem before us, let us adopt the true scientific method for its solution. We must first find out as fully as possible the actual facts with regard to monopolies of every sort and the competition which monopoly replaces. Next, by discussing and comparing the evidence obtained, we may be able to discover the natural laws by which competition and monopoly are controlled; and finally, with our knowledge of these, we will try to discover both the source of the evils which vex us and the proper methods for ameliorating, curing, or preventing them, whichever may be found possible. Such is the outline of the investigation before us, which it may as well be said here could easily be extended and amplified to fill many volumes. The author has preferred to prepare the present volume without such amplification, believing that the busy men of affairs, to whom a practical knowledge of the subjects herein treated is most essential, have, as a rule, no leisure for the extended study which the volumes into which the present one might easily be expanded would require. He trusts, however, that brevity will not be found wholly incompatible with thoroughness; and that the fact that much which might have properly been included in the book is omitted, will not be taken as a necessary indication that the conclusions arrived at are without value. II. TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES. In common use the word "trust" is at present rather loosely used to denote any combination formed for the purpose of restricting or killing competition. Properly speaking, however, a trust is a combination to restrain competition among producers, formed by placing the various producing properties (mills, factories, etc.) in the hands of a board of trustees, who are empowered to direct the operations of production and sale, as if the properties were all under a single ownership and management. The novel characteristic of the trust is not the fact that it is a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly formed by combining several competitors according to a new plan. The process of placing property in the hands of trustees is familiar to every business man. In the formation of a trust the different firms or companies who have been competing with each other in the production and sale of goods agree to place the management of all their several properties in the hands of a board of trustees. The powers of this board and its relation to the owners of the various properties are ingeniously devised to evade the common law, which declares that contracts in restraint of competition are against public policy, and illegal. The first of the modern trusts was the Standard Oil Trust, which was a combination formed among several of the refiners of crude petroleum in the States of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the year 1869. The original combination grew out of the control of certain important patents connected with the process of refining. It pursued its course for a number of years without attracting much attention outside of the centre of its operations; but of late years so much has been published in regard to it that the very word "Standard" has come to be almost a synonym for monopoly. It is probable that certain branches of the iron and steel trade were the next to be combined by means of a trust, but as these were arrangements between private firms, not much information as to the time of their origin has reached the public. The second great trust to attract general public attention was the American Cotton Oil Trust, in which some of the same men who have so successfully engineered the Standard Oil combination are heavily interested. These two great trusts, the Cotton Oil and the Standard, have attracted widespread attention, and, to a certain extent, the public has become familiar with their organization and plan of operation; but popular feeling on the subject was not fully aroused until 1887, when the newspapers of the country made generally known the fact that the trust principle of combination was being rapidly adopted by the manufacturers of a large number of important lines of goods. The effect which these monopolies were believed to have upon the public welfare was pointed out by writers and speakers, and Congress and the State Legislatures were besought to investigate these combinations and seek to suppress them. Meanwhile it seems to be true that the popular agitation has had no effect in lessening the number of trusts, or checking their formation and growth; and they continue to increase and to gather their profits, while the public impotently wonders what it is going to do about it. Let us be careful, however, to make no assumption that the trust is injurious to the public at large. That is a matter which is before us for investigation. It is safe to assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with the general charges which have been brought against the trusts; but even if this side of the story has not been heard, it is not unfair to look at them first from the standpoint of the men who make and manage them. In order to do this, suppose we select some particular trust which will serve as a type, and imagine that some frank, candid manufacturer, who is a member of this trust, comes before us to give an account of its formation and operations. This man comes, we suppose, not as an unwilling informant, or as one on trial. He is frank, honest, and plain-spoken. He talks as man to man, and gives us, not the specious argument of an eloquent pleader in defence of trusts, but just that view of his trust and its work that his own conscience impels him to take. Certainly, then, he deserves an impartial hearing. A number of years ago the principal manufacturers of linseed oil in the United States formed an association. It was started largely for social ends, and was very successful. Business men are generally most interested in their own plans and operations; and those who are familiar with the same topics and have similar interests and purposes are apt to make agreeable companions for each other. We discussed many points connected with the management of our business at the meetings, and by interchanging with each other our views and experiences with different devices, methods of management, etc., we were able to get much valuable information, as well as social pleasure, from meeting one another. Now within the past few years things have been going from bad to worse with the manufacturers of linseed oil. The long and short of it all was that the margin between the cost of the raw seed and running our mills, and what we could get for the oil cake and the linseed oil in the market, has grown exceedingly narrow. It's hard to tell just what has caused it. They say over-production; but what has caused the over-production? One thing that may have had something to do with it is the new mills they have been putting up in the Northwest. Many of the Eastern mills used to get large quantities of seed from Iowa; but they are building cities out there now, as well as raising flax-seed, and when they were booming some of those cities they would raise heavy bonuses in aid of new enterprises. Among these were some great linseed oil mills, which have loaded up the market pretty heavily of late years; so that not only has the price sagged down, but we have all had to work to get rid of our stocks. The firms which had the best mills and machinery, and were in a position to get their seed reasonably and put their goods on the market with least expense for transportation, etc., have been making a small profit over and above their expenses. But some of the works which had to bring their seed a long way, and which haven't quite as good machinery as can be had now, were in a bad way. There were some of the oldest houses in the trade among them, too, and with fine men at their head. It was too bad to have them go under. They tried to cut down expenses, but strikes and trouble with their men prevented their saving much in that way. Then there was one item of expense which they had to increase instead of cutting down: that was the cost of marketing. Competition was so fierce, that, in order to keep up their trade, they had to spend more on salaries of expensive salesmen, and in advertising and pushing their goods, than they would dream of ordinarily. It seemed too bad to cut each other's throats in that way, for that was what it amounted to, and when the association met,--or what was left of it, for the business rivalries had grown so bitter that many of the former personal friendships between the members had become strained and one after the other had dropped out,--the situation was discussed by the few members who met together. It was discussed earnestly, too, by men who felt an interest in what they said, because unless some remedy could be devised, they had got to sit still and watch the savings of a lifetime slip through their fingers. One thing was very clear to all. Though competition was as sharp as any one could possibly wish, the public was not getting such a wonderful benefit after all. Prices were not so very much lower for oil, nor higher for seed. It was the selling expense which had run up to a ruinous figure; and on one point all the members were unanimous,--that if all the firms in the trade could only work together in harmony in marketing their goods, they could save enough in salesmen's salaries, etc., to make a great difference in the profit-and-loss account without affecting the selling prices in the market one penny. Another very important matter, which we had to handle pretty tenderly in our discussions, was that of adulteration. I must confess that a good many firms in the trade, who used to be above any thing of the sort, have been marketing some goods in the past few years which were not exactly the "pure linseed oil" which they were labelled. It's a mean business--adulteration,--but not many of our customers ever test their purchases. The one thing they are apt to look at is price, for they are buying to sell again; and when rivals are selling a cheaper oil that seems just as good until it is laid on as the pure linseed that you are obliged to ask a higher price for, the temptation to meet them at their own game, rather than lose your old customers, is a very strong one. Certainly, when competition took this form, it hurt the public even more than it hurt us. When people wish to buy pure linseed oil they ought to have some prospect of getting it, instead of getting an adulterated mixture of various substances; but at the rate competition was running, there seemed to be small prospect that there would be any really pure linseed oil put on the market in a short time. We have often discussed the possibility of stopping these adulterations, but it was a hard matter to cure by mere mutual agreement. How do I know what my competitor in a city a hundred miles away, does with the vats in his cellar after working hours, even if he has solemnly agreed not to adulterate his goods? For I must confess that there are a few men in our trade who are as tricky as horse jockeys. Quite a number of improvements have been patented in linseed oil machinery in the past twenty years. Nothing wonderful, but things that effect little economies in the manufacture. We could have done without them; but when a few firms took them up, of course the rest had to follow suit, or fall behind in the race of competition. We have had to pay a heavy royalty on some of these machines, and it has been rather galling to count out our hard-earned dollars to the company which has bought up most of the patents, and is making 100 per cent. a year on what it paid for them, with no risk, and without doing a stroke of work. Now if we manufacturers could work in harmony, we could make this company come down from their high horse, and they would have to ask a reasonable price for their machines. But we could do more than this. It stands to reason that a good many improvements will be made in our machinery in the future. We don't object to paying a fair price to any inventor who will work out these new ideas for us; but it does seem unjust for him to go and sell them to some outside company for a song, and have that company bleed the users of the improvement for every ounce they will stand. Now, by working together, we can refuse to pay royalties on any thing new which comes up; but require, instead, that any new patent in our line be submitted to a committee, who will examine and test it; and if they find it to be of value, will purchase it for the use of all members of the association. Some of the members thought this was as far as we ought to go. They were opposed to "trusts" on principle. But the great majority saw so clearly where we could continue to better ourselves that they became enthusiastic over it. Some speculators, in years of short crops, have occasionally tried to "corner" flax-seed in a small way. We could refuse to buy except directly from the growers, and that branch of speculation would be a thing of the past. We have sent out some pretty sharp men as buyers, and sometimes they have bought flax-seed in some of the backwoods districts at very low rates. At other times, two buyers from rival firms have run counter to each other, and paid prices larger than their employers could really afford. But with our combination, we cannot only fix uniform prices for seed, but we can send out only enough buyers to cover the territory; and the work of buying is reduced to simply inspecting and weighing the seed. Now another thing: Of course, not every manufacturer in the business owns his mills. It is a fact that since the close times of the past few years the majority of the firms are carrying mortgages on their mills; and some of them in the West are paying as high as eight or ten per cent. interest. But with the combined capital of all the firms in the trade at our back, we can change all that. Either by a guaranty, or by assuming the obligations, we can bring the interest charges on every mill in the association down to four or five per cent. at most. We have been paying enormous rates to fire insurance companies. They are not as familiar with our business as we are ourselves, and they don't know just how much risk there really is; so they charge us a rate which they make sure is high enough. We can combine together and insure ourselves on the mutual plan; and by stipulating that each firm shall establish and keep up such precautions against fire as an expert may direct, we can not only reduce the cost of our insurance to that of our actual losses, but we can make these a very small amount. It may be said that we might have done all these things without forming any trust to control prices. But the practical fact was that we could not. There was so much "bad blood" between some of the different firms in the business, from the rivalry and the sharp competition for trade, that as long as that was kept up it was impossible to get them to have any thing to do with each other in a business way. It was no small task to get these old feuds patched up; but some of the best and squarest men in the business went right into the work, and at meetings of the association, and privately, exerted all their influence to forward this coming together for mutual aid and protection. They did it conscientiously, too, I think, believing that it was necessary to save many of us from financial ruin; and that we were not bound, under any circumstances, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the public. The trust has been formed, as every one knows, and many of the things we planned to do have been already accomplished. We have stopped adulterations on all goods made by members of the trust; and the improvement in the quality of linseed oil which has been effected is an important benefit to the public. We are managing all the works in the trust as if it were all a single property, controlled by different managers; and the saving in expense, over the old plan of cut-throat competition, when everybody was striving to save himself and sink his rivals, is an enormous one. One thing which has caused much hue and cry, is the fact that we have closed half a dozen mills or so. But the matter stood in this way: these mills were not favorably situated for doing business, all things considered; and all the mills in the country cannot run all the time, because there are more mills in existence than are needed to supply the market. These mills must have been closed soon, if the trust had not commenced operations, because they could not be run under the old regime and pay expenses. We knew we could make the oil at a less cost in our other mills, so we concluded to buy out the owners of these at a fair price, and shut up the works. Prices of linseed oil have been raised somewhat, we confess; but we claim that they had been forced down much too low, by the excessive competition which has prevailed for a few years past. Of course some of the most hot-headed and grasping among us, were anxious to force prices away up, when they once realized that we had an absolute monopoly of the linseed oil trade of the country; but the great majority were practically unanimous in a demand for just prices only, and the adoption of the policy of live and let live; for trust-makers are not entirely selfish. We claim, moreover, that we are breaking no legal or moral law by this action. We are, for the most part, private parties or firms--but few corporations,--hence the attempt to abolish trusts on the ground that the corporations composing trusts have exceeded the power given by their charters will fail to reach our case. We have certainly done this: we have killed competition in the linseed oil trade; but we submit that with so many other interests and trades organized to protect themselves from outside competition, and control the prices at which their products are sold to the public, we were, in self-defence and for our own preservation, obliged to take this step.[1] [1] It should be explained that the above is not given as a _bona-fide_ statement of facts concerning this especial trust, but as a vivid description of the organization and plans of a typical trust, from the standpoint of its owners and managers. Probably, too, few or no existing trusts have tried to benefit themselves in so many different ways as we have supposed this imaginary trust to have done. But to shorten our investigation, the author has purposely extended the scope of this trust's action, to bring out clearly the variety and importance of the methods by which a trust reaps profits, aside from any advance in the price of its product. If we omit the references to the especial trade, the above view of a trust from the trust-makers' standpoint will do for almost any of the many combinations which have been formed by different manufacturers for the purpose of controlling production and prices. One thing is clearly indicated in the above, and will certainly be conceded: That the men who have formed these trusts are animated by the same motives as those that govern humanity in general. They have, in some cases at least, known what it was to be crowded close to the wall by severe competition. They all at once saw a way opening by which they could be freed from the worries and losses which had been making their business one of small and uncertain profits, and would be set squarely on their feet with a sure prospect for large and steady gains. It is using a common expression to say that they would have been more than human if they had refused to improve this opportunity. Certainly, then, in examining further the trusts, we shall do so with no feeling of personal prejudice toward the men who originated them and carry them on. As we have given a hearing to the case from the trust-makers' standpoint, it is only fair that we should hear at equal length from the public who oppose the trusts; but to abbreviate the investigation, let us suppose that we are already familiar with the various charges which are brought against the trust monopolies, and let us proceed at once to consider the actual effect of the trusts upon the public. Since we have heard so much in defence of the linseed oil trust, it will be well for us to inquire concerning the results, in which the public is interested, which have followed its organization. During the year 1887 (the trust was formed in January of that year) the price per gallon of linseed oil rose from thirty-eight cents to fifty-two cents; and this price was kept up or exceeded during 1888. That is to say, every purchaser of linseed oil, or every one who had occasion to have painting done, pays to the members of this trust, for every gallon of oil that he uses, about fourteen cents _over and above_ the sum which he would pay if competition were allowed to do its usual work in keeping down prices. What profits are the members of this trust making? Let us suppose that they were just able, at the old price of thirty-eight cents per gallon, to pay all their running expenses and four per cent. on the capital invested, making nothing for profits beyond a fair salary to the managers of the business. Then the gain of fifteen cents a gallon in the selling price is _clear profit_ to them. Now add to this the fact, which was plainly brought out in the foregoing supposed statement by a member of the trust, that it is possible by means of the trust to greatly reduce expenses in many directions as well as to increase receipts, and we begin to form some conception of the profits which this trust is harvesting. If we wish to put the statement in figures, suppose we take the annual consumption of linseed oil in the country at thirty million gallons. Then the profits of the trust from the increased prices alone will amount to four and one half million dollars per annum. There is another way in which trusts directly affect the public, which has received very much less attention than it deserves. Besides the people who use the linseed oil and pay the trust an extra fourteen cents a gallon for the privilege, there are a great number of people who would have used oil if the price had not advanced, but who cannot afford to do so at the advanced price. It is a well-known fact that every increase in the price of any article decreases the demand, and the advance in the price of linseed oil has undoubtedly had a great effect in decreasing the consumption of oil. So while it is undoubtedly true that _at the trust's prices_ there are more linseed-oil mills in the country than are needed to supply its wants, yet if the prices were lowered to the point which free competition would fix, there would probably be demand enough to keep all the mills running. To the trust, then, must be ascribed the final responsibility for the stoppage of the mills and the loss of employment by the workmen. Nor does the effect upon the labor market stop there. From the fact that less people can afford to paint their houses, because of the higher price of the oil, it is certain that there will be less employment for painters; and as less paint is used, all those interested in and employed in the paint trade are sufferers. It is to be remembered that we are speaking of the linseed oil trust only to make the case more vivid. The principle is general and applies equally well to other trusts, as for instance to the loss of employment by thousands of men working in refineries controlled by the sugar trust, in the fall of 1888. Still another effect of this trust's action is to be especially noted: the fact that the diminished production of oil lessens the demand for seed; and also that in the purchase of seed, as well as in the sale of oil, the trust has killed competition. The trust may, if it chooses, fix uniform prices for the seed which it purchases; and the farmer can take the prices they offer or keep his seed. Fortunately the farmer can raise other products instead of flax-seed, and will do so if the price is lowered by any large amount. One other possible mode of profit for the trusts, which, however, they are hardly likely to engage in--from their fear of public opinion, if for no other reason--lies in the power which they possess over the labor market. It will probably be conceded at once that the rate of wages in any occupation depends, among other things, upon the competition of the various workmen who seek employment in that occupation, and also upon the competition among those who wish to hire men to work at that occupation. It is plain that when the competition among employers to secure men is active, wages will rise; and when this competition falls off, wages will fall. Now the trust is more than a combination for selling purposes only. It is a combination of all the properties concerned under practically a single ownership. Clearly, then, as the various mills belonging to a single owner will not compete with each other in the employment of labor, the mills belonging to a trust will be no more likely to do so. Thus if it were not for the fact that the workmen are able to take up some other employment if their wages are too low, they would be absolutely obliged to take what wages, great or small, the trust chose to give, and would be as dependent for their food and clothing upon the trust as was the slave upon his master. The question is often asked why trusts have not been formed before, and what the causes are which have started them up so rapidly in such varied lines of industry. There is certainly room for much honest difference of opinion in reference to these causes; but one cause concerning whose influence there can be no dispute is the culmination of the change from the ancient system of manufacturing to the modern. Let us briefly trace the manner in which this branch of civilization has grown: In the most primitive state of existence, each man procures and prepares for himself the few things which he requires. With the first increase in intelligence those of most skill in making weapons and preparing skins make more than they require for themselves, which they exchange with others for the products of the chase. The next step is to teach to others the special skill required, and to employ them to aid the chief workman. Conditions analogous to these existed down to the end of the last century. The great bulk of all manufacturing was done in small shops, each employing only a few workmen; and the manufacturer or master workman labored at the side of his journeymen and apprentices. The products of these little workshops were sold in the country immediately adjacent. Of course the number of these scattered shops was so great that the possibility of uniting all the manufacturers in any one trade into a single organization to prevent competition among them, was beyond the thoughts of the most visionary. The present century has seen three great economic wonders accomplished: the invention of labor-saving machinery, greatly multiplying the efficiency of labor in every art and trade; the application of steam power to the propulsion of that machinery; and the extension over all civilized lands of a network of railway lines, furnishing a rapid, safe, and miraculously cheap means of transportation to every part of the civilized world. In order to realize the greatest benefit from these devices, it has become necessary to concentrate our manufacturing operations in enormous factories; to collect under one roof a thousand workmen, increase their efficiency tenfold by the use of modern machinery, and distribute the products of their labor to the markets of the civilized world. The agency which has acted to bring about this result is competition. The large workshops were able to make goods so much cheaper than the small workshops that the latter disappeared. Then one by one the large workshops were built up into factories, or were shut up because the factories could make goods at less cost. So the growth has gone on, and each advance in carrying on production on a larger scale has resulted in lessening the cost of the finished goods. Competition, too, which at first was merely an unseen force among the scattered workshops, is now a fierce rivalry; each great firm strives for the lion's share of the market. Under these conditions it is quite natural that attempts should be made to check the reduction of profits by some form of agreement to limit competition. Many plans have been tried which attempted to effect this by mere agreements and contracts, methods which left each property to the control of its special owners; but none have been permanently successful. By the trust plan of combination, the properties are practically consolidated; and the failure of the combination through withdrawal of its members is avoided. It offers to manufacturers, close crowded by competition, a means of swelling their profits and ensuring against loss; and encouraged by the phenomenal success of the Standard Oil combination, they have not been slow to accept it. The point to which we need to pay especial attention, in the foregoing consideration of the causes which have produced trusts, is the fact that the cost of production is continually being cheapened as it is carried on on a larger and larger scale. And because the cheaper mode of production must always displace the mode which is more expensive: as Prof. Richard Ely expresses it, "Production on the largest possible scale will be the only practical mode of production in the near future." We need not stop to prove the statement that the cost of production by the modern factory system is a small fraction of that by the old workshop system. The fact that the former has beaten the latter in the race of competition would prove it, if it were not evident to the most careless observer. But it is also a fact that the trust, apart from its character as a monopoly, is actually a means of cheapening production over the system by independent factories, for it carries it on on a larger scale than it has ever before been conducted. Our review of the trust from the trust makers' standpoint showed this most forcibly; and we shall see more of it as we study further the methods by which the monopoly gains an advantage over the independent producer in dispensing with what we may call the waste of competition. In the argument presented by the Standard Oil Trust before the House Committee on Manufactures in the summer of 1888, occurs the following statement of the work which that monopoly has done in cheapening production: "The Standard Oil Trust offers to prove by various witnesses, including Messrs. Flagler and Rockefeller, that the disastrous condition of the refining business and the numerous failures of refiners prior to 1875 arose from imperfect methods of refining, want of co-operation among refiners, the prevalence of speculative methods in the purchase and sale of both crude and refined petroleum, sudden and great reductions in prices of crude, and excessive rates of freight; that these disasters led to co-operation and association among the refiners, and that such association and co-operation, resulting eventually in the Standard Oil Trust, has enabled the refiners so co-operating to reduce the price of petroleum products and thus benefit the public to a very marked degree and that this has been accomplished: "1. By cheapening transportation, both local and to the seaboard, through perfecting and extending the pipe-line system, by constructing and supplying cars with which oil can be shipped in bulk at less cost than in packages, and the cost of packages also be saved; by building tanks for the storage of oil in bulk; by purchasing and perfecting terminal facilities for receiving, handling, and reshipping oils; by purchasing or building steam tugs and lighters for seaboard or river service, and by building wharves, docks, and warehouses for home and foreign shipments. "2. That by uniting the knowledge, experience, and skill, and by building manufactories on a more perfect and extensive scale, with approved machinery and appliances, they have been enabled to and do manufacture a better quality of illuminating oil at less cost, the actual cost of manufacturing having been thereby reduced about 66 per cent. "3. That by the same methods, the cost of manufacture in barrels, tin cans, and wooden cases has been reduced from 50 to 60 per cent. "4. That as a result of these savings in cost, the price of refined oils has been reduced since co-operation began, about 9 cents per gallon, after making allowance for reduction in the price of crude oil, amounting to a saving to the public of about $100,000,000 per annum." Certainly it would seem that this is a strong defence of the trust's character as a public benefactor; but it is well to note that while it has been making these expenditures and reducing the price of oil to the consumer, it has also been making some money for itself. The profits of this trust in 1887, according to the report of the committee appointed to investigate the subject of trusts by the New York Legislature, were $20,000,000. The nominal capital of the trust is but $90,000,000, a large portion of which is confessedly water. In answer to the statement that the price of oil has been reduced steadily by the operations of the trust, it is charged that no thanks is due to the trust for this benefit. The trust has always wished to put up the price, but the continual increase in the production of the oil fields has obliged the trust to make low prices in order to dispose of its stock. There are also about one hundred independent refineries competing with the trust, and their competition may have had some influence in keeping prices down. It is undoubtedly true that the economy in the storage, transportation, and distribution of oil by the systematic methods of the Standard Oil Trust has made it possible to deliver oil to the consumer at a small fraction of its cost a decade ago. But it is also true that a good part of the reduction in the price of oil is due to the abundant production of the petroleum wells, which have furnished us so lavish a supply. The principal charges against this trust, made by those who were conversant with its operations, have never been that it was particularly oppressive to consumers of oil; but that, in the attempt to crush out its competitors, it has not hesitated to use, in ways fair and foul, its enormous strength and influence to ruin those who dared to compete with it. In a later chapter we shall be able to study these more intricate questions regarding trusts with a better understanding of our problem. Let us pay some attention now to the growth of the trusts and of combinations in general for the purpose of limiting competition among manufacturers, which has taken place within the past few years. According to the little book entitled "Trusts," by Mr. Wm. W. Cook, the production of the following articles was, in February, 1888, more or less completely in the hands of trusts: petroleum, cotton-seed oil and cake, sugar, oatmeal, pearl barley, coal, straw-board, castor oil, linseed oil, lard, school slates, oil cloth, gas, whiskey, rubber, steel, steel rails, steel and iron beams, nails, wrought-iron pipe, iron nuts, stoves, lead, copper, envelopes, paper bags, paving pitch, cordage, coke, reaping and binding and mowing machines, threshing machines, ploughs, and glass--a long and somewhat jumbled list, to which, however, at the present time, there should probably be added: white lead, jute bagging, lumber, shingles, friction matches, beef, felt, lead pencils, cartridges and cartridge-shells, watches and watch cases, clothes-wringers, carpets, coffins and undertakers' supplies, dental tools, lager beer, wall paper, sandstone, marble, milk, salt, patent leather, flour, and bread. It should be said that, as regards most of these combinations, the public is ignorant beyond its knowledge that some form of combination for the purpose of restricting competition has been formed. For the purpose of our present investigation it makes little difference just what this combination may be. The salient facts for us to note are, that among the manufacturers of this country there has arisen a widespread movement to partially or wholly avoid competition in the production and sale of their goods; that in a very great number of manufacturing industries these combinations have progressed so far that their managers have been able to advance prices and check production; that some of these combinations have taken the form of trusts, and by this means have every prospect of maintaining their stability and reaping their enormous profits with the same permanency and safety as has their predecessor, the Standard Oil Trust; and, finally, that with this prospect before them, our manufacturers, as a class, would lose their reputation as shrewd business men if they did not follow out the path marked out for them, and combine every manufacturing industry in which combination is possible upon the plan of the trust. In conclusion, it may be well to examine the statement attributed to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, that, "there is no possibility of maintaining a trust. If successful for a time, and undue profits accrue, competition is courted which must be bought out; and this leads to fresh competition, and so on until the bubble bursts. I have never known an attempt to defeat the law of competition to be permanently successful. The public may regard trusts or combinations with serene confidence." Surely if this statement is true, we have little need for further examination of this subject. We have now knowledge enough of our subject to enable us to determine its truth or falsity. We have found in the actual trusts that we have examined none which have shown signs of succumbing to outside competition. More than this, however, we have seen that it is possible for a trust to carry on business and deliver goods to the consumer at much less cost than an independent manufacturer can. And as surely as this law holds that production on the largest scale is the cheapest production, so surely will the trust triumph over the independent manufacturer wherever they come into competition. If the trust were always content when its competitors were disposed of, to make only the profits which it could secure by selling at such prices as the independent manufacturers could afford, there would be less outcry against it. But with the consumers wholly dependent upon it for supplies, the prices are in the trust's hands; and the tendency is to reap not only the profits due to its lessened cost of production, but also all it can secure by raising the selling price without arousing too much the enmity of the public. Clearly the trust is at once a benefit and a curse. Can we by any means secure the benefit which it gives of reduction in cost without placing ourselves at the mercy of a monopoly? This is the question which must occur to every thoughtful man. Before we can answer it, however, we must examine the effects of competition and monopoly in other industries. III. MONOPOLIES OF MINERAL WEALTH. It is a well known historical fact that the extraction of metals and minerals from the earth has been more subject to monopoly than almost any other business. It was, and in a large part of the civilized world still is, esteemed a prerogative of the sovereign. Agricultural products have always been gathered from a wide area; manufactures were formerly the product of mean and scattered workshops; but in the working of a rich mine, there was a constant income more princely than was to be obtained from any other single source. Again, with all due respect to the traditions of former generations, it seems to have been thought that any thing to which no one else had a valid title belonged to the crown; and as no one was able to assert any stronger claim to the ownership of mineral wealth than that they had stumbled upon it, it was natural for the sovereign to claim it as his. We see thus the recognition at an early date of the inherent difference between natural wealth and that created by labor. But coming down to the present time, it is evident that the business of extracting some of the rarer metals from the earth is peculiarly liable to become a monopoly. It is one of the new laws of trade, whose force and importance we are just finding out, that the ease of restricting competition varies with the number of competing units which must be combined. Our most valuable metal, iron, is so widely distributed that any attempt to control the whole available supply could not long be successful. But it is one of the peculiarities of modern industry that by its specialization it furnishes constant opportunities for the establishment of new forms of monopoly, whose power is not generally understood. In the manufacture of Bessemer steel, which has now largely displaced wrought iron in the arts, it is necessary to use an iron ore of peculiar chemical composition. This ore is found most abundantly and of best quality in the mines of the Vermilion range, lying about one hundred miles north of Duluth, Minn., and in the mines of the Marquette Gogebic, and Menominee regions in the north Michigan peninsula. According to good authorities, a combination more or less effective has been formed among the owners of all these mines; and the highest price is charged for the ore which can be obtained without driving the customer to more distant markets for his supply. Among the mines of this district, competition, if not entirely stopped, is greatly checked, and is likely soon to be entirely a thing of the past. It is an interesting fact that among the members of the syndicate which owns the principal mines in the Vermilion regions are some of the trustees of the Standard Oil Trust. It is stated that some of these mines have paid 90 per cent. per annum on their capital stock, which, it is to be noted, represents a much greater sum than the amount invested in the plant of the mine. It is thus apparent that the mining of the raw ore from which iron is made, abundant and scattered though it is, is not free from monopoly. The combinations to restrict competition among the makers of cast iron and of steel belong properly under the head of monopolies in manufactures. We need only refer here to the fact that they are supposed to exist and have more or less control of the market. Fortunately for the stability of our system of currency and of finance, the precious metals, through the small ratio which their current production bears to the world's stock, and the fact that this stock is scattered among an enormous number of holders, are safe from any attempts to establish a monopoly to control their price through the control of their production. Other metals, however, which are like silver and gold in being found in workable deposits at but a few points on the globe but are there found in abundance, are peculiarly adapted to facilitate the schemes of monopolists. Of lead, copper, zinc, and tin, we require a steady supply for use in the various arts; and the statement has been made that the supply of each one of these is in the hands of a trust. To see the effect which these combinations have had on prices, let us examine the prices which have prevailed for two years past on these four articles, as shown in the following table: Table of wholesale prices (cents per lb.) in New York City of copper, lead, tin, and zinc during 1886, 1887, and 1888: +--------------+-------+------+-------+------+ | |Copper | Lead | Tin | Zinc | | +-------+------+-------+------+ | 1885 Dec. 31 | 11.50 | 4.60 | - | 5.35 | | 1886 Apr. 3 | 11.45 | 4.90 | - | 5.50 | | 1886 July 3 | 10.00 | 4.90 | - | 5.60 | | 1886 Oct. 7 | 11.00 | 4.35 | - | 5.60 | | 1887 Jan. 5 | 12.25 | 4.75 | 24.50 | 6.42 | | 1887 Apr. 6 | 11.00 | 4.75 | 24.50 | 6.50 | | 1887 July 6 | 10.50 | 4.92 | 25.00 | 7.00 | | 1887 Oct. 6 | 11.00 | 4.45 | 23.30 | 6.75 | | 1887 Dec. 29 | 17.75 | 5.00 | 37.00 | 6.00 | | 1888 Mar. 29 | 17.50 | 5.50 | 39.50 | 6.75 | | 1888 July 3 | 17.25 | 4.25 | 22.00 | 6.50 | | 1888 Oct. 4 | 18.50 | 5.75 | 26.00 | 6.75 | | 1889 Jan. 3 | 17.50 | 3.85 | 22.00 | 5.50 | | 1889 Apr. 29 | 16.50 | 4.25 | 23.00 | 6.50 | +--------------+-------+------+-------+------+ Taking the evidence of this table, we conclude that the combination which is said to control the zinc and lead markets is probably not a trust, but a "Producer's syndicate" or corner. The prices of lead show no such firm tendency to advance as would be expected if the production was in the hands of a single combination. The prices of zinc, however, show a decided advance in the past two years over the prices for the three years preceding, the average price for 1886 being but 5.50, while for 1887-8 it is 6.58. This is a rise of no small importance, and the way it is maintained seems to give evidence of restriction of competition among producers. But the striking fact in the above table is the evidence it presents of the work which has been done by that most gigantic and daring combination for the suppression of competition ever organized, the French Copper Syndicate or _La Société Industrielle Commerciale des Metaux_. This syndicate of French capitalists began operations in 1887, with the intention of "cornering" the tin supply of the world. The rise in price which was due to their operations is shown in the above table. But before completing their scheme they relinquished it for a grander enterprise, which would embrace the copper production of the world. They made contracts with the copper-mining companies in every country of the globe, by which they agreed to purchase all the copper which should be produced by the mines for three years to come at the fixed price of 13 cents per pound, and a bonus of half the profit which the syndicate was able to make from its sales to consumers. In effect this move killed the competition in the copper trade of the world, and placed every consumer at the mercy of this Paris syndicate. The advance in tin was of short duration, and those who suffered by it were speculators rather than consumers; but the advance in copper, as shown by our table, is still firmly maintained, and its effect on the industries using copper has been seriously felt all through 1888. In October, 1888, the _Société_ extended its contracts with several mining companies to cover a period of twelve years, and advanced its price to the producers to 13½ cents per pounds. At the same time, to avoid the accumulation of stock, which the diminished consumption consequent upon the increased price had caused, and which it had been generally predicted would finally be the cause of the _Société's_ downfall, they arranged for the restriction of the production of the mines. If the _Société_, which is backed by the heaviest capital, and managed by the shrewdest business skill of France, does what it intends to do, and its tributary producers are faithful to their contracts, for ten years to come, yes, for all years to come--for it is not likely that an enterprise of such golden returns will ever be abandoned if it can once profitably be carried out,--the world must pay for its copper whatever these monopolists demand. Probably the argument against the private ownership and control of the wealth which nature has stored up for the whole world's use was never brought home to men's minds so forcibly as it has been by the acts of these French speculators. Copper is a necessity to the industries of civilized society; and the mind of every unprejudiced person protests against the injustice of placing in the hands of any single firm or combination the power to exact such prices as they choose for the great staples of human consumption. This increase of price of about 7 cents per pound is a tax which affects, directly or indirectly, every person in the civilized world. Let us inquire what becomes of this tax. Perhaps 2 cents per pound will go into the pockets of the Frenchmen who have engineered the combination, a sum which will give them, if we set the annual consumption of copper at 400,000,000 pounds, a comfortable net income of about $8,000,000 per annum. The lion's share of the profits is taken by the producers, however; who, if 10 cents is the price at which copper would sell if free competition were in force, are receiving under the present contract with the _Société_ about 5 cents per pound as a reward for their co-operation in its monopolistic scheme.[2] [2] Since the above was written the collapse of the copper syndicate has taken place. The causes which brought this about were the failure to complete the contracts for restriction of production, and lack of funds to meet the current liabilities. The reason for both these must be largely ascribed to the fact that it had come to be generally realized how great and how obnoxious the monopoly was; and capitalists rightly feared that government interference would be interposed to check the monopoly's operations. If the syndicate had made its long-time contracts at the start, or if it had been bold and shrewd enough to have inveigled speculators on the bear side of the market into operating against it, M. Secretan and his associates might have won as many millions as they could have wished. It is a significant fact that the downfall of the syndicate was not followed by the reëstablishment of free competition. Instead there was at once talk of another syndicate being formed to hold the copper stored up by the _Société_, and keep the price up as long as possible. On this side of the water the question was at once canvassed whether a combination could be formed among the different American companies to prevent competition and support the price. Evidently the failure of this scheme has not discouraged the makers of monopolies. It is appropriate here, too, to make reference to the enormous profits which the owners of the copper mines of the country are receiving, apart from the special influence of this great syndicate. The richest and most valuable copper mines in the world lie on the southern shore of Lake Superior. The Calumet and Hecla Company, which works one of the richest deposits of native copper ever found, has a capital stock of $2,500,000, on which it has paid, since 1870, $30,000,000 in dividends. The reports of these companies to their stockholders show that the present cost of refined copper at the mines is as low as 4 cents per pound, and its cost, delivered in the New York market, is only 5¾ cents. Probably the officers of these companies are right in their belief that in no other mines of the world can copper be produced so cheaply. But the question that comes with force to every thinking man is: If the wealth of the ore in these mines is so much greater than that in any other that it can be produced at so much less cost, does there not exist here a natural monopoly, of which the owners of these mines are getting the sole benefit? And, again, by what right does the chief benefit from this rich deposit accrue to the few men who own the mines, rather than to the many men in all parts of the world who wish to use their product? Great and important as is the copper monopoly, of far greater importance to us than any and all the combinations in the metal industries are the monopolies which control the price of coal. We do not often realize how intimately connected is our nineteenth-century civilization with the store of fuel laid up for us in distant geologic ages. And in this country, with our severe climate, coal is all-important as a factor of domestic economy, as well as a necessity to manufacturing and metallurgical industries. The total cost to the consumers of the coal used in the United States every year (about 120,000,000 tons), calling the average retail price $4.00 per ton, is nearly $500,000,000, or over $8.00 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the country. Surely, then, the statement which we make at the outset, that the coal trade of the United States is in the hands of monopolists; and that competition, where not killed, is almost impotent to keep down prices, is one which merits earnest attention. The United States possesses coal fields of enormous extent and richness. The mineral is widely distributed, too, productive mines being now in operation in 27 of the States and Territories. Anthracite coal, however, which is by far the best adapted to domestic use, only occurs in a limited area in the State of Pennsylvania; but here the deposit is of phenomenal richness. The total area of the Pennsylvania anthracite field is about 300,000 acres. Of this area nearly 200,000 acres is owned by seven railway corporations. These companies, either directly or through subsidiary companies controlled in the same interest, carry on mining operations, carry the coal to market, and sell it. The following figures[3] exhibit the receipts of each of these companies from sales of coal from their mines during the year 1887: +-----------------------------------------+-----------+------------+ | COMPANY. | TONS. | RECEIPTS. | +-----------------------------------------+-----------+------------+ | Philadelphia and Reading R. R. Co. | 7,555,252 |$18,856,550 | | Central R. R. Co. of N. J. | 4,852,859 | 12,132,146 | | Lehigh Valley R. R. Co. | 5,784,450 | 14,461,125 | | Del., Lackawanna, and Western R. R. Co. | 6,220,793 | 19,044,803 | | Delaware and Hudson Canal Co. | 4,048,340 | 10,100,118 | | Pennsylvania R. R. Co. | 3,818,143 | 8,820,718 | | New York, Lake Erie, and Western R'y Co.| 2,363,290 | 6,846,342 | | +-----------+------------+ | Total |34,643,127 |$90,261,805 | +-----------------------------------------+-----------+------------+ [3] Compiled from "The Coal Trade," 1888, (H. E. Saward), and "Poor's Manual of Railroads," and partially estimated. Thus these seven corporations alone produced from their own mines, carried to market, and sold, over 34,000,000 tons of coal during the year, for which they received about $90,000,000. Of the magnitude of the operations carried on by these great corporations we now have some idea. Let us next inquire to what extent competition is allowed to act between them to keep down prices. Many years ago these seven companies formed the famous anthracite-coal pool. This was an agreement by which all the companies concerned agreed to maintain a uniform selling price for coal at all important distributing points where two or more of the companies came into competition. Some of the prices which were fixed by the pool were extremely arbitrary. Cities in Pennsylvania within an hour's ride of the coal fields had to pay nearly as high a price for coal as those 500 miles or more distant. Rates of transportation on coal mined by individual operators were made such that the latter could not afford to sell below the prices fixed by the pool, even if they had been so disposed. At the present time the situation has been modified by the long and short-haul clause of the Interstate Commerce law, by which the railroad is obliged to make its transportation rates somewhat proportionate to distance, and also by the passage of a law in the State of Pennsylvania, by which the acts of the anthracite-coal pool were declared illegal and punishable. Nominally, therefore, the pool is a thing of the past; but the practical fact is, that by secret or tacit agreement the various companies are not competing with each other any more now than in the days of the pool, and at points like New York or Buffalo, where two or more roads meet, the same prices are quoted by each different company. Nor are the charges against the pool comprehended in its autocratic determination of the price of coal. To make production correspond with price, it was necessary at times to close collieries entirely, throwing the miners out of employment. The individual operators, too, have no love for the combination. Their profit depends more than any thing else on the rate of transportation, and thus whether they shall make or lose depends on the railroad companies. They claim that the railways base their rates for carrying coal upon the principle of "charging what the traffic will bear." This is a matter, however, which we can better discuss in the next chapter. It is thus evident beyond dispute that the production of anthracite coal in this country is an industry uncontrolled by competition. To sum up: these seven great corporations own more than two thirds of the area in which workable anthracite coal is found: they mine and market directly the great bulk of the total production; the individual operators are dependent on the railways for getting their coal to a market; and the price at which they can afford to sell it depends on the railroad rates. Finally, consider that these seven companies work in harmony, both as to traffic rates and prices for the sale of coal, and the conclusion is irresistible that competition in anthracite-coal production in the United States is practically dead. Let it be noted, for the benefit of those who may conceive that the above statement is unfair to the railway companies, that no charge is here made that the prices fixed by the companies for the coal are at the present time extortionate or unjust. That is a separate matter; in which, doubtless, there would be plenty to affirm on the one hand that the prices charged were no more than a just compensation, while their opponents would declare that the prices adopted by the pool favor some points to the prejudice of others, and that the statement that they were on the whole exorbitant was proven by the fact that the railway lines in the coal regions, where honestly managed, have paid great dividends on the actual capital invested. Compared with the production of Pennsylvania anthracite, the coal production of any other single section seems small. But it is only so by comparison, for the Western coals, while inferior in quality, are abundant and easily mined, and must remain the staple for general consumption throughout the region west of the Mississippi, as well as for large sections further east. As is well known, the people of the Western and Northwestern plains are wholly dependent upon the railroads for their supplies of every description, except the raw products of the soil. The railways themselves are great consumers of coal, and have bought up large tracts of coal lands and opened mines. In the desire to develop traffic and ensure a supply of coal to the settlers on their lines--we will even say of cheap coal,--the railway companies have entered the coal trade themselves, either directly or through subsidiary companies. Thus it comes about that hundreds of thousands of people of the West and Northwest must pay for coal, which is an absolute necessity of life during several months of the year, whatever price the managers of a single railway corporation may demand. Let it be understood that no charges are here made of injustice or extortion on the part of the railway companies. It is only wished to bring out the fact that competition is here wholly absent. It is believed that, in some cases at least, an honest attempt has been made to mine and sell the coal at merely a fair profit. But in days to come it will not be so directly for the interest of the railways to deal liberally with their patrons as at present. Other men of less breadth and principle and more ready to grasp at a chance for enormous profits may control the company's affairs; and if that happens, the opportunity to take advantage of the absence of competition and raise the price of coal will be utilized. A brief review of the actual status of the coal production of the West and South will help us to a clear appreciation of the case. The Missouri Pacific Railway Company, through subsidiary companies, extracted from its mines in Missouri and the Indian Territory, during 1887, 1,618,605 tons of coal. Through its control of transportation rates, private operators have been compelled to sell coal at the company's prices in the market. The company has recently purchased large tracts of coal lands in Colorado, on which it is opening mines. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Denver and New Orleans, the Union Pacific, and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway companies are also heavily interested in the Colorado coal mines. The last company has long held a bonanza in the monopoly of the coal mining and transportation for the Colorado silver-mining and smelting districts. Though the other companies, to which the Rock Island should probably be added, come in as competitors, there can be no doubt that their active competition will be of short duration. The Wyoming coal fields are being worked by the Union Pacific and the Chicago and Northwestern companies, while the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and a company supposed to be closely connected with the Northern Pacific are preparing to take the field at an early date. On the Pacific coast the coal trade has long been a monopoly in the hands of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, who have kept the prices in San Francisco just below the point at which it becomes profitable to import Australian coal. Other railways are now preparing to reach the coal fields, but can we doubt that the competition to which the coal consumers are looking with eager anticipation will prove evanescent? Returning to the East, we find the coal mines of northern Illinois all held by a single company, which has full control of the traffic; while the mines of southern Illinois, on which the St. Louis consumers depend, are united as the Consolidated Coal Company. This latter corporation has "wrecked" many of its mines for the purpose of limiting the supply and raising the price; and has bought many mines of competing companies and closed them for the same purpose. The Attorney-General of Illinois has been requested to bring suit against this "trust" for the forfeiture of its charter. In the Hocking Valley coal fields in Ohio, the Columbus, Hocking Valley and Toledo Railway Company owns 10,000 acres of coal lands, and mined, in 1887, 1,870,416 tons of coal. The coal in western Virginia is coming into the hands of the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, while the coal of Alabama, of which so much has been noised abroad, has been quietly gathered in by the Louisville and Nashville corporation. The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which owns 76,000 acres of coal lands, and mined 1,145,000 tons in 1882, is owned by parties largely interested in the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad system. West Virginia has probably the most valuable untouched coal deposits of any State in the Union, but these also are rapidly being gathered up by railway corporations. To sum up, in the words of one of the best informed authorities, the coal business of the country is at the mercy of the railroads. It is to be noted, however, that this is simply the result of natural causes. Railway managers, in seeking to develop and place on a sound basis the mineral properties which could furnish a heavy and profitable traffic to their lines, have only done what they regarded as their duty to the owners of their roads. And that this policy has effected a rapid development of our resources is beyond question. The combinations to restrict competition among bituminous coal producers have been of a very different sort from those in force among the anthracite producers. The soft-coal fields are so widely scattered that it has never been possible to combine all the producers so as to control prices by a single authority. Local combinations, however, controlling all the fields of a single locality, have long been an important feature of the trade, and have been able to control prices pretty absolutely within their respective localities. The fact that the principal item in the cost of coal is transportation, enables a combination covering all the producers of a certain field to raise prices very notably before competitors can afford to ship from other coal-producing districts. It would seem that our fuel is especially liable to be subjected to monopoly, for, as we have already seen in the preceding chapter, the control over the petroleum trade is held by the Standard Oil Trust. How much of the production of crude petroleum is in the hands of the trust it is hard to say. This much is certain, that there is a "Petroleum Producers' Association," which has a compact enough organization to be able to make contracts with the Standard Oil Company regarding the limitation of production. It is even stated that the Standard Oil Trust itself controls to a considerable extent the oil-producing territory; but this is hardly probable. Our newest and most wonderful fuel, natural gas, has already come under the control of a few great corporations, who own the wells and the pipes for conveying and distributing it to the consumers. A striking instance of the arbitrary nature of prices when under a monopoly's control was shown at Pittsburgh a few months ago. As is well known, upon the introduction of natural gas to that city a great number of the manufactories, as well as the private houses, discarded coal, and at considerable expense fitted up boilers, furnaces, etc., to use the new fuel. After the use of the gas had become general and its value had come to be thoroughly understood, the company furnishing the supply advanced the rates 100 per cent., without previous notice; and despite the remonstrance of indignant consumers, the advanced rate had to be paid or the use of the gas discontinued, the latter alternative involving the loss of the money invested in piping, burners, etc. Of the minor products of mines and quarries, marble, sandstone, borax, salt, and asphalt are all known to be more or less thoroughly under the control of monopolies, which, though less important and powerful, show the same tendency toward the destruction of competition. Great as is the extent to which the monopoly of the mineral wealth of the world has gone, we can scarcely doubt that if the movement is unchecked it will go much farther. In one sense the only absolute necessaries of life are food and clothing. But to the civilization of to-day the metals and minerals are no less indispensable; and these cannot be made anywhere, like manufactured goods; or grown on wide areas, like the products of the soil. We are absolutely at the mercy of the men who own our deposits of coal and copper and lead, and it is only to be expected that they will take greater advantage of their legal industrial advantage. The combinations that exist will be made stronger and more binding, and new ones will be formed. The French copper "corner" has taught men that under the broad protection of International law their schemes of industrial conquest may embrace the world; and it is not to be doubted that the temporary "corner" will yet result in a strong permanent combination; and that the precedent set by this successful monopoly will be eagerly followed by those who wish to secure like profits by the control of some other form of mineral wealth. IV. MONOPOLIES OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION. We have already alluded to the fact that the concentration of manufacturing in large mills at great commercial centres has been made possible by the development of railway transportation, and that the rapid settlement of our Western prairies is due to the same agency; but it is worth while to note more fully the difference between ancient and modern conditions in the business of transportation. In the first place, it is plain that no more than a century ago the world had comparatively very little need for railways. Each community produced from its farms and shops most of the things which it needed; and the interchange of goods between different sections, while considerable in the aggregate, was as nothing in comparison with modern domestic commerce. The king's highways were open to every one, and though monopolies for coach lines were sometimes granted and toll roads were quite common, there was no possibility for any really harmful monopoly in transportation to arise, because the necessity of transportation was so small. Some writer has ascribed all the evils of modern railway monopolies to the fact that in their establishment the old principle of English common law that the king's highway is open to every man, was disregarded. But if we sift down this ancient maxim of law to its essential principle, we find it to be, _there must be no monopoly in transportation_; and the problem of obtaining the advantages of modern railway transportation and keeping up, at the same time, the free competition that exists in transportation on a highway is seen to be as far from solution as before. The importance of our railway traffic is proven by statistics. Of the total wealth annually produced in this country, it is probably a fair estimate to say that ten per cent. is paid for transportation of the raw material and finished goods in their various journeys between producers, dealers, and consumers, and for transportation of passengers whose journeys directly or indirectly contribute to the nation's industry. That is to say, the gross yearly earnings of all the railroads and transportation lines of the country is about one tenth of the total value of all the year's products. The average is brought down by the amount of sustenance still consumed in the locality where it is produced, and by the amount of valuable merchandise. But of the bulky products like coal and grain, the greater part of the cost to the remote consumer is due to the cost of carriage. It is also necessary to a proper appreciation of the problem, that we understand that railway transportation is now as absolutely necessary as is the production of food and clothing. Annihilate the railway communications of any of our great cities, and thousands would perish by starvation before they could scatter to agricultural regions. There was great suffering in many small communities in Minnesota and Dakota in the severe winter of 1887-8, because the heavy storms blockaded the railroads and prevented them from bringing in a supply of coal and provisions. But it is not taking the question in its broadest sense to consider whether we could eke out an existence without railway communication. The fact is that under modern conditions every man obtains all the things which he desires, not by producing them himself, but by producing some one thing which others desire. The interchange between each producer and each consumer must, broadly speaking, be all made by means of the railway; and without that, stores, factories, mills, mines, and farms, would have to cease operation. Remembering now the importance and necessity of transportation, let us inquire how the price at which it is sold to the public, the rate of fare and freight, is fixed. Is it or can it be generally fixed by competition? There are now in the United States about 37,000 railway stations where freight and passengers are received for transportation. Now, from the nature of the case, not more than ten per cent. of these are or can be at the junction of two or more lines of railway. (By actual count, on January 1, 1887, eight per cent. of existing stations were junction points.) Therefore the shippers and buyers of goods at nine-tenths of the shipping points of the country must always be dependent on the facilities and rates offered by a single railway. Such rates of transportation as are fixed, be they high or low, must be paid, if business is carried on at all. And when we consider the ten per cent. of railway stations which are, or may be, junction points, we find that at least three-fourths of them are merely the junction of two lines owned by the same company. Consolidation of railway lines has gone on very rapidly within the past few years and is undoubtedly destined to go much further. Of the 158,000 miles of railway in the country, about eighty per cent. is included in systems 500 miles or more in extent; and a dozen corporations control nearly half of the total mileage. The benefits which the public receive from this consolidation are so vast and so necessary that no one who is familiar with railway affairs would dream of making the suggestion that further consolidations be stopped or that past ones be undone. There is a great tendency on the part of the public, however, to look with fear and disfavor on further railway consolidation. And because this is so, it is greatly to be desired that the beneficial effects of consolidation should be better understood. The most important benefits are included under one head, the saving in expense and the avoidance of waste, and this is effected in very many different ways. Suppose a great system like the Pennsylvania or the Chicago & Northwestern were cut up into fifty or sixty independent roads, each with its own complete staff of officers. Each road would have to pay its president, directors, and heads of operating departments, would have to maintain its own repair-shops, general offices, etc., and conduct in general all the business necessary to the profitable operation of a railway corporation. A car of wheat or a passenger in going from Chicago to New York would have to be transferred from one road to another at perhaps twenty different points, and the freight or fare paid would be divided among twenty different companies, with corresponding clerical labor. The modern conveniences of through tickets, through baggage-checks, and through freight shipments, would be difficult, if not impossible. Further, consolidation tends to produce vastly better service and greater safety. The large systems can and do employ the highest grade of talent to direct their work. Every thing is systematized and managed with a view to producing the best results in efficiency and safety with the least waste of material and labor. And while the improvement in safety and convenience is all for the benefit of the public, a large part of the saving in expense effected by consolidation has likewise come back to the patrons of the roads in the form of reduced rates of fare and freight. It is difficult, however, for any one not familiar with the technical details of the railway business to fully appreciate the importance and necessity of the consolidations which have been effected, and the grave results that would follow the realization of the mad proposition to set us back a half century by cutting up our railroad systems into short local lines. It must be plain to every one, however, that while the loss of all the benefits of consolidation would be certain, the gain in competition could affect only the few junction points; and as we shall now see, the effect even on them would be small. Assuming that the total number of railway junction points in the United States is 3,000, we find, on examination, that at about two-thirds only two lines meet, and at more than half the remainder only three lines meet. It is plain that in the vast majority of cases where two roads intersect, and in many cases where three or four come together, the lines meet perhaps at right angles and diverge to entirely different localities. The shipper bringing goods to the station, then, may choose whether he will send his goods north or east perhaps; but only in the few cases where two lines run to the same point does he really have the choice of two rates for getting his produce to market. Practically, then, there are not, and never can be, more than a few hundred places in the country where shippers will be able to choose different routes for sending their goods to market. We say there never can be, because the building of a line of railway to parallel an existing line able to carry all the traffic is an absolute loss to the world of the capital spent in its construction, and a constant drain after it is built in the cost of its operation. This fact is now, fortunately, generally appreciated. But what of the competitive traffic which exists between commercial centres, like the trunk-line traffic between Chicago and the cities on the seaboard, or between the former city and the collecting centres farther west like St. Paul, Omaha, and Kansas City? Here, indeed, there is competition; and it is of great importance because of the enormous bulk of the traffic which traverses these few routes. It is a peculiar feature of the railway business which we have now to consider, and one which is not generally understood. We have already perceived the principle that competition cannot permanently exceed a certain intensity; and the proof of this principle in the case of the railway is remarkably plain. Suppose two roads are competing for the traffic between Omaha and Chicago. A shipper at the former city who wishes to send a few tons of freight to Chicago may go to one company and ask their rates, then to the other and induce them to give him a lower rate, and then back to the first again, until he secures rates low enough to suit him. Now it is a fact that either company can afford to carry this especial freight for less than the actual cost of carrying it better than it can afford to lose the shipment. This is because it costs the company practically _no more_ to carry the goods than if they were not shipped by its line; and hence whatever is received for the freight is so much profit. Stated in the form of a principle, this fact is expressed thus: _Receipts from additional traffic are almost clear profit_. Nor is this all. The practical impossibility of distinguishing _additional_ traffic from other traffic, and the enactment of State and National laws requiring uniform rates to be charged, places all traffic on a common basis; and the same cause which makes it more profitable to carry additional traffic for a song than to lose it, makes it better for a railroad to carry traffic, temporarily at least, for less than the actual running expenses of the road, rather than to lose it. The train and station service, the general office and shop expenses, must all be kept up, though the freight and passengers carried dwindle to almost nothing; and the capital invested in the road is a total loss, unless the line is kept in operation and earns some income, even though it be small. This last influence, as we shall see later, is a most important and far-reaching one in its effect on industrial competition. The cause of the intensity of competition in railway traffic is now evident. And from what we have seen, it follows that two railway lines competing freely with each other cannot possibly do business at a profit. Let us see what are the actual results of this law of practical railway management. Evidently the managers of two competing railway lines have but two possible courses open. They may, by tacit or formal agreement, unite in fixing common rates on both the roads, or they _may_ attempt to do business with free competition. But we have already proven that the latter course must result in reducing the income of the road certainly below the amount necessary to pay the operating expenses and the interest on the bonds, and probably it will be insufficient to pay the running expenses alone. The inevitable result, then, is the bankruptcy of the weaker road, the appointment of a receiver, and its sale, in all probability to its stronger competitor. This is the chain of cause and effect which has wrought the consolidation of competing parallel roads in scores of cases, and which, if free competition is allowed to act, is sure to do so. We can now appreciate the _necessity_ which managers of competing lines are under to agree upon uniform rates for traffic over their roads, and at the same time the difficulty of doing this. The strange paradox is true that while it is _necessary_ to the continued solvent existence of the competing corporations that such an agreement be made, it is also greatly to their advantage to break it secretly and secure additional traffic. It is necessary, therefore, that the parties to the agreement be strongly bound to maintain it inviolate; and to effect this, "pools" were established. In pooling traffic, each company paid either the whole or a percentage of their traffic receipts into a common fund, which was divided among the companies forming the pool, according to an agreed ratio. Under this method it is evident that all incentive to secret cutting of rates and dishonest methods for stealing additional traffic from another road was taken away. How widespread and universal is the restraint of competition by railway corporations may be seen by the following pithy words, penned by Charles Francis Adams, President of the Union Pacific Railway: "Irresponsive and secret combinations among railways always have existed, and, so long as the railroad system continues as it now is, they unquestionably always will exist. No law can make two corporations, any more than two individuals, actively undersell each other in any market, if they do not wish to do so. But they can only cease doing so by agreeing, in public or private, on a price below which neither will sell. If they cannot do this publicly, they will assuredly do it secretly. This is what, with alternations of conflict, the railroad companies have done in one way or another; and this is what they are now doing and must always continue to do, until complete change of conditions is brought about. Against this practice, the moment it begins to assume any character of responsibility or permanence, statutes innumerable have been aimed, and clauses strictly interdicting it have of late been incorporated into several State constitutions. The experience of the last few years, if it has proved nothing else, has conclusively demonstrated how utterly impotent and futile such enactments and provisions necessarily are." Disregarding for the present the latter part of the above quotation, consider the statement that during the whole history of railway corporations, agreements to restrain competition have been the rule. This the slightest research proves to be an historical fact, and it is in perfect accord with our preceding statement, that such agreements were necessary to the solvent existence of railway corporations. The records also show that invariably when these agreements have been broken and competition has been allowed to have full play, the revenues of the roads have been rapidly reduced to a point where, unless a peace was effected, bankruptcy ensued. Mr. Adams said, with truth, that no law had proven of any effect in preventing these competition-killing agreements between railways; but since the above extract was written, the Interstate Commerce law has been enacted. Let us pay some attention to its working and results. It is a curious fact that the framers of railway legislation in this country, almost down to the present time, have concentrated all their energies on the endeavor to keep up free competition; and the Interstate law is no exception to this rule. The plan of the Interstate law was about as follows: "Here are a few dozen great commercial centres where the railway lines of different systems meet. We will first prohibit the pooling by which they have restricted competition at these points. Then, in order that the thousands of other shipping points shall receive an equal benefit, we will enact a 'long and short haul clause,' obliging the rates charged to be in some degree proportionate to the distance. Thus competition at the great centres will bring rates down everywhere, and the public will be benefited." For a year after the enactment of the law its effects were not prominent. Pooling was abolished, but the agreements to maintain rates were still kept up and were fairly observed. But in 1888, the second year of the law's working, it came to be realized that the pool was the vital strength of the agreement to maintain rates, and that this agreement might now be easily broken. Then ensued a remarkable season of rate cutting, which, at the present writing, has reduced many strong companies to the verge of bankruptcy. It is plain enough that if this is allowed to go on, the various stages of receivership, sale, and consolidation will follow in regular order. To avoid this too sudden revolution and the general financial disaster which all sudden revolutions entail, the principal companies in the West are now striving to combine in an association for the maintenance of rates by a plan which will bind them more closely together than any other ever before adopted. Thus to quote Mr. Adams again: "The Interstate Commerce law has given a new impetus to the process of gravitation and consolidation, and it is now going on much more rapidly than ever before. It is at this moment rapidly driving us forward toward some grand railroad-trust scheme." It is a fact which we shall do well to ponder over, that this legislation intended to stimulate competition has finally had just the opposite effect from that which its makers desired. They did increase the intensity of the competition, and have thereby nearly brought about a permanent end to all competition in railway traffic. It must now be clear that the railway is essentially a monopoly, not, be it noted, because of any especial wickedness of its managers or owners, but because competition is _impossible_ as regards the greater part of its business, and because wherever competition is possible, its effect, as the managers well know, would be to annihilate all profits from the operation of the road. Let us consider now some of the evils with which this monopoly is charged. The first of these is _discrimination_ between persons and between places. A favored shipper has been enabled to ruin his competitors because he could obtain special rates, while they, perhaps, were charged an extra amount. The strong monopolies have in this way been able to strengthen their hands for the purpose of throttling their weak competitors. Passenger rates, too, have been low to one class and high to another; and the system of free passes has led to great abuses. Discrimination between towns and cities and States has been hardly less serious; and while the railways were permitted to make high local rates and low through rates, a great stimulus was given to the city at the expense of the country. The second class of evils is that rates in themselves have been too high. The railways have been wastefully built and then capitalized at double their actual cost, and it has been attempted to pay dividends of 6 to 10 per cent. on these securities. In some cases the principle of charging "what the traffic will bear" has been so applied that industries have been ruined through the absorption of their profits by unjust transportation charges. But our space will not permit a comprehensive review of the many abuses of railway management. They are already familiar to the public. We needed only to refer to them sufficiently to carry on our argument by showing that the railroad monopoly is not by any means a harmless monopoly if left to work its own pleasure. There are two evils of our present railway system, however, which are not chargeable to monopoly, but to the _attempt to defeat monopoly_, and which are important to our discussion. The first is the waste of competition in railway traffic; the second, the waste of competition by the construction and _threatened_ construction of competing lines where present facilities are ample for the traffic. Of the first it need only be said that in advertising, "drumming," and soliciting patronage the railways spend many millions of dollars every year, which comes out of the pockets of the public. The second is most serious, for it involves a far greater waste. It is a conservative estimate to say that 5 per cent. of the railways of the country were only built to divide the profits of older roads, and that their owners would be delighted to-day to have their money back in their possession and the railroad wiped out. The millions these roads have cost, the millions required every year to maintain and operate them, the millions spent on proposed roads that never reached completion, and the millions squandered in fighting proposed roads by every means short of actual bloodshed,--these are some of the wastes which we have made in our endeavor to create competition in railway transportation. And with all our efforts, and notwithstanding the fact that until within a short time the public sentiment and the railway managers have been united in the belief that free competition was the only mode of regulating railroad rates, we are farther removed from free competition now than ever before. And now consider in addition to all this the fact that every railway company must first of all secure from the State a right to exercise the sovereign power of Eminent Domain, and that it may and does choose and take every advantage of the favorable locations where its road can be built most cheaply; which natural highways, mountain passes, and the like, are gifts of Nature, the right to whose use equitably belongs to the general public, and not to private parties exclusively. Taking these facts also into consideration, it seems needless to offer further proof of the fact that the business of railway transportation is essentially a monopoly, and that the attempt to regulate it by competition must always prove a failure in the future, as it always has in the past. Necessarily we have limited our discussion to the most salient points, and have not touched at all many of the complicated details of the railway problem. In a later chapter we can study farther the evils due to railway monopolies, and the proper remedies therefor. At present we have accomplished our purpose in finding out the fact that railways are monopolies, and that they are so by their inherent nature. Of monopolies in other forms of internal transportation, but little need be said. Our once busy canals and great rivers seem destined, with the constant rapid improvement and cheapening in the carriage of goods by rail, to lose all their former importance. The monopolies small and great that once held sway there have all vanished before their strong rival, the railway. The use of steam in the vessels that navigate the ocean has had an effect very similar to the replacing of stage-coaches and freight wagons by the locomotive. Where hundreds of sailing vessels plied their slow and uncertain trade, steamer lines now make trips only less regular than the railway itself. The only cause for the existence of a monopoly in ocean traffic by steam is the greatly increased capital required for a rival steamship line as compared with that needed for the old sailing vessels. We find this, the requirement of a large capital, to be a feature of more or less importance in nearly every monopoly of the present day. In this case, however, unless there is an artificial monopoly in the shape of government aid or authorization, the strength of its capital is the only power the monopoly has. We may reach a clear idea of the essential nature of all the monopolies considered in this chapter by considering an especial class of monopolies of communication, namely, mountain passes, bridges, and ship canals. If a person or a railway corporation could secure sole control of the only pass through a high mountain range separating two wealthy and populous districts producing goods of different sorts, they might exact a princely yearly revenue for its use, equal to the interest on the capital required to secure an equally favorable passage by tunnelling, or the annual cost of sending goods over some longer and more expensive route. But under the law no private person would be allowed to do this; and if the pass were a very important and necessary one, probably no one railway company would be allowed to do so. The law recognizes to some extent, and should recognize much more than it does, the fact that the benefit of this natural pathway is not the property of any one man or set of men, but equitably belongs equally to every person who needs to use it directly or remotely. A very large and expensive bridge is like an important mountain pass, differing only in that one is the gift of Nature, while the other is wholly the work of man. But because the latter is the work of man, it does not follow that it is not a monopoly. The great bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis is owned by a private company which levies tolls for the teams and trains passing over it. These are deemed excessive, as they are sufficient to pay an exorbitant interest on the cost of the bridge. Yet for many years no one has cared to invest money in the erection of a new bridge, for they saw that there was no more traffic than one bridge could readily carry, and they knew that if a new bridge were erected, in the rivalry in tolls which would ensue, the old-established company would probably bankrupt its rival. It is thus plainly seen how an important bridge may become a monopoly, and a most powerful and onerous one. We have still one important monopoly of communication to describe, the telegraph. Viewed from a narrow standpoint it may be thought that there should be no monopoly in the telegraph. A telegraph line is not expensive to erect and maintain, and it gets no monopoly from taking advantage of the most favorable route through difficult country as a railway does. But the economy effected by combination and the effect of sharp competition in bringing about bankruptcy and then consolidation are exactly similar to the case of the railway, which we have just described. In the early history of telegraph companies, many short competing lines struggled and fought for supremacy. In 1859 the Western Union Telegraph Company was formed with the avowed intention of combining these warring companies and making the telegraph business profitable. It has exceeded the most sanguine dreams of its promoters by swallowing up its rivals until the entire system of telegraph communication of the country is practically in its hands. The effects of this consolidation have been of two sorts. On the one hand we have the telegraph service of the country performed with the least possible work; there is nothing wasted in the maintenance of two or more rival offices in small towns where one is sufficient, nor in operating two lines of wire where a single one would serve as well. All expense of "drumming up" business in various ways is avoided, and also the cost of keeping the complicated books necessary when the receipts of a single message must be divided among several companies. On the other hand it is plain that the public is wholly at the mercy of the monopoly in the matter of rates, and must pay for the use of the telegraph exactly what the corporation asks. There is a weak and foolish argument which is often used in an attempt to show that this particular monopoly is not hurtful. It is that the telegraph is a luxury which only wealthy people use, and hence whether its rates are high or low is of little account. The fallacy of this statement is easily seen. A principal use of the telegraph is to aid the prosecution of business; hence to unduly raise rates is to cause an additional tax on business,--on the carrying on of the processes of production. This tax will certainly have its effect, either in decreased profits, decreased wages, or an increased price for the product. Another large class of telegrams are those which are sent with little thought of the cost, in time of sickness, death, or sudden emergency, yet by people whose purse feels severely the tax. What to do with this vast monopoly is one of the questions of the day, but we will content ourselves at present with this investigation of its character, reserving its proper treatment for later consideration. V. MUNICIPAL MONOPOLIES. The people who live in cities are far more dependent on monopolies than the resident of the country. The farmer can still, on necessity, return to the custom of primitive times, and supply himself with food, clothing, fuel, and shelter without aid from the outside world; but the city dweller must supply all his wants by purchasing, and is absolutely dependent on his fellow-men for the actual necessaries, as well as the luxuries of life. From the peculiar circumstances of city life, many monopolies arise in production and transportation which occur nowhere else. One of these is the carriage of passengers on street and suburban railways. There is no better instance, perhaps, of the great power which is placed in the hands of railway managers than this matter of suburban passenger traffic. One example must suffice to show this. Let us suppose that the managers of a railway, which has hitherto not been run with a view to the development of suburban traffic, secure control of several choice tracts of land on the line of their road near a growing city, and establish low rates of commutation and frequent and convenient train service. The land which they purchased is sold out in building-lots for many times its cost, and a number of thriving villages become established there, inhabited chiefly by people whose business is in the city and who are obliged to go back and forth on the trains. After a number of years the growth of the towns becomes more sluggish, and the managers find that the commutation traffic is not after all extremely profitable; therefore they lessen their train service and increase the rates of fare. Perhaps they may abolish commutation rates altogether. It is a well known fact that the value of suburban real estate depends almost entirely on the convenience and cheapness of access to the city. By the removal and forced sale, which many of these people will be obliged to make, it may easily happen that they may lose their entire property. It is not stated that such flagrant cases of autocracy on the part of railway managers are common. Indeed, it is a high compliment to the uprightness and probity of these men that such occurrences are so infrequent, and that the temptation, so constantly presented, of enriching one's self at the expense of the owners of the road and the public is yielded to so seldom. But there have been cases where railway managers have secured excellent train service and low rates of fare to benefit places where they held an interest in real estate, while other and competing places were given poor service and high rates. And the entire abolition of long-established commutation rates has happened more than once. But turning now to the city railways proper, those carrying passengers through the streets, it is evident at first sight that we have another case where competition is a factor of little account. The power of this monopoly for harm is greatly intensified by the fact that its use is largely a necessity. In all our great cities the business sections are far removed from the residence sections, and the great mass of the industrial population is _obliged_ to ride at least twice each day in going to and returning from work. In nine cases out of ten there is one route so much more convenient than any other as to overbalance any slight difference of fare. Thus, even on the supposition that every different line was run in competition with every other line, the amount of really competitive business would be but a trifle. But besides this, as is well known, in a great many cities consolidation has gone on as rapidly among street-railway companies as among the great trunk-line railways. The three lines of New York elevated roads were originally projected by rival companies; but they were not long in coming together under one management. A Philadelphia syndicate has secured control of most of the street railways of that city, and in addition has purchased a number of the lines in Boston, Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis. Although the benefit in economy by consolidation is much less in the case of street railways than in the case of steam roads, yet considerable is gained, and the competition which is killed by the consolidation is, as we have just seen, of no great importance to the public. The so-called street-railway trust, then, is really of no great moment. The monopoly in street-railway traffic arises from the nature of the business rather than from any especial effort of capitalists to kill competition. But the railway companies are not the only monopolies which have the use of our city streets. Water, gas, and steam pipes beneath the pavements, and wires, either in subways or strung overhead, carrying electricity for street and domestic lighting, telegraph, telephone, and messenger service, are all necessities to our modern civilization. The absolute necessity of a public water supply, and the practical impossibility in most cases that any competition in the furnishing thereof can be established and maintained, have led, in the case of most of our large cities, to the work of water supply being undertaken by the municipal authorities. But many of our smaller cities have entrusted to private companies the work of furnishing a water supply. While this is a case of real monopoly, yet under the conditions which may be enforced, most of the power for harm is taken away. According to the best plan in vogue, the city sells the franchise for constructing the works to the company who bids to furnish water at the lowest rates under definitely specified conditions, the franchise being sometimes perpetual, but oftener granting to the city at some future date an option for the purchase of the works. It is to be particularly noticed that this is a case in which the administration of an absolute monopoly has been entrusted to private enterprise with excellent results; a fact which may be of use to us in our later investigation. While the fact was early appreciated that a water supply when once introduced became an absolute necessity, it was not recognized when illuminating gas was first brought into use how important it was to become. Franchises, or more properly permits, for erecting works and laying mains for supplying consumers were given away to hastily formed companies; and even at the present time there are but a few cities (only five in the United States) which own their works and mains for supplying gas. As a matter of course the gas companies saw their advantage. Knowing that gas once introduced was a necessity at almost any price, they made no move toward lowering rates as new and cheaper methods came into vogue and their output and profits increased. The stocks of our gas companies have been swollen by enormous amounts of water, and upon this fictitious capital they have continually paid enormous dividends. At one time there was a great call for competition in the gas business. The public demanded it, and as usual the demand was supplied. Rival companies were organized, and the city authorities made haste to grant them permits for laying their mains in the city streets. A war of rates of course ensued, and lasted till one company gave up the fight and sold out to its rival. The consolidated company promptly increased its stock by at least the amount which had been spent in purchasing and laying this extra and entirely needless set of gas mains. The public has to pay interest on this sum, and suffer besides the damage done to the pavements by tearing up and re-laying. In at least twenty cities of the United States has this farce been repeated, and in every case with the same result. It is now generally acknowledged that the attempt to regulate the price of gas by competition is unwise and harmful. Prof. E. J. James, of the University of Pennsylvania, in a monograph entitled "The Relation of the Modern Municipality to the Gas Supply," has treated this subject most fully. He describes the experience of cities in England, France, and Germany, where competition has been tried and abandoned, it being found by dear experience that the gas business is necessarily a monopoly. A Congressional Committee, who reported on the application of a rival gas company which proposed to lay mains in the city of Washington, declared that "it is bad policy to permit more than one gas company in the same part of the city." One of the best informed men in the gas business says: "The business is almost outside of the domain of rules governing other enterprises. Competition is so deadly to it that it is impossible for rival companies to occupy the same street without ruin to both, or without consolidation with its attendant double investment, and cheap light is thus rendered an impossibility." Hon. T. M. Cooley says: "The supply of public conveniences to a city is usually a monopoly, and the protection of the public against excessive charges is to be found first in the municipal power of control. Except in the very large cities, public policy requires that for supplying light and water there should be but one corporation, because one can perform the service at lower rates than two or more, and in the long run will be sure to do so. In some kinds of business competition will keep corporations within bounds in their charges; in others it will not. When it will not, it may become necessary to legislate upon profits." Considering it determined, therefore, that the gas industry is a monopoly, let us inquire something of the manner in which this monopoly regulates the prices for its service. According to recent statistics, collected from 683 gas companies in the United States, 148 companies charge $2 per thousand cubic feet, and 145 companies charge $2.50 per thousand. It is thus seen that rates have been fixed to make "even figures," something which does not occur when margins of profit are reduced by competition. The complete table shows this fact more fully as follows: 7 companies charge $1.00 per thousand cubic feet. 32 " " 1.50 " " " " 24 " " 1.75 " " " " 148 " " 2.00 " " " " 57 " " 2.25 " " " " 145 " " 2.50 " " " " 20 companies charge 2.75 per thousand cubic feet. 86 " " 3.00 " " " " 25 " " 3.50 " " " " 19 " " 4.00 " " " " 120 companies charge various other prices per thousand cubic feet. According to the same authority these companies in 1886 produced 23,050,706,000 cubic feet of gas, for which they received $40,744,673, an average price per M. of $1.76-71/100. According to the statement of good authorities, gas can be manufactured at a cost of 50 to 75 cents per M. in this country. Prof. James, in his work before quoted, says: "In England at the present time gas is manufactured at a net cost of 30 cents per thousand feet; some works in New England now manufacture it for 38 cents per thousand feet to the holder." The President of the American Gas-Light Association is quoted as stating in an address before the Association that the cost of the gas delivered to consumers by the South Metropolitan Company of London in 1883 was 39.65 cents per thousand, and figuring by the relative cost of coal and labor there and here, he stated that gas could be delivered in New York at a cost of 65 cents per thousand. In Germany the price of gas to consumers varies from 61 cents in Cologne to $1.02 in Berlin. Very recent improvements in processes have greatly cheapened the cost of manufacture. Mr. Henry Woodall, the engineer of the Leeds, England, gas-works, states that coal-gas costs in the holder 22 cents per thousand. Of nineteen companies doing business in principal English cities, the average rate charged consumers is 52½ cents, and the average cost of manufacture is 37-1/3 cents. The history of the gas monopoly is repeating itself in the matter of electric lighting. The smaller cities of the country, in their haste to "boom," are ready to grant a liberal franchise to the first firm or company which offers to supply an electric-lighting system, trusting to future competition to regulate prices, a resource that must prove of no avail. Nor are the men in power in our larger cities any wiser. The city of New York is taking every means to encourage the operation of rival electric-light companies, and is letting yearly contracts for street-lighting to the lowest bidder. It is true that competition is active just now, but it requires no far-seeing eye to discern the inevitable combination and consolidation among the companies. Again, not only is competition of this sort sure to fail, but the attempt to establish it is very harmful. To say nothing of the expense and waste of wealth which is involved when rival companies are allowed to stretch their wires and establish their extensive central stations in the same district, it is everywhere acknowledged that the multiplication of wires overhead is a crying evil and danger. Are we to double and treble it, then, by permitting rival companies to place their wires wherever they please? It is evident that the temporary rivalry which we obtain in this way is bought at much too great a cost. What is true of electric street light wires is equally true of the vastly greater multitude of wires which belong to our rapidly growing system of domestic lighting, and the telegraph, telephone, and messenger service. Surely no man knoweth the beginning or the end of the network which is woven over our heads, and which, besides all the useful wires already enumerated, is full of "dead" wires, many of them strung by defunct or irresponsible companies, who would never have been allowed to obstruct the streets if they had not been "competing" for the business. Can there be any doubt that it is the height of folly to continue this work, and that the only rational way of entrusting electric service to incorporated companies is to permit but a single company to operate in a district and control prices by some other means than competition? We have the beginnings of other monopolies in our city economies which are destined to become much more important, but to which we need only refer. Steam for supplying heat and power is beginning to be distributed from great central stations, through mains laid underground, to all parts of the surrounding district. The necessity for frequent repairs and stoppage of leaks renders it necessary to break the pavement and dig down to the mains much oftener than is required for any other of our underground furniture. Nothing would seem more evident than that the number of these pipes to be laid should be the fewest consistent with the proper supply of the district, yet it is a fact that for a time two competing steam companies were permitted to run riot in the streets of lower New York, until the weaker one succumbed "to over-pressure." Yet it is scarcely to be doubted, that if another rival company were to ask for a permit to operate in the district now monopolized by the New York Steam Company, public opinion would tend to favor the granting of the permit "because it would give more competition." It is to be hoped that before these great systems for the distribution from central stations of various necessities reach much greater proportions, the public will become educated enough to perceive the folly of attempting to regulate them by competition. The necessity for this will be more, rather than less, apparent with the use of underground instead of overhead wires. The cost of placing wires in subways is far beyond the cost of stringing them on poles, and if we are obliged to build our subways large enough to accommodate all the rival wires which may be offered, we have a herculean task upon our hands. The great question of the monopoly of land can be merely touched in this connection. While the fact that land is natural wealth must be freely acknowledged, it is only where population is most dense that any great monopoly appears in its ownership. The principle is well established, indeed, that private ownership of land cannot stand in the way of the public good. When a railway is to be built, any man who refuses to sell right of way to the railway company at a reasonable price may have it judicially condemned and taken from him. We have already noted in the chapter on railway monopolies the injustice of permitting a single person or corporation to control and own any especially necessary means of communication, as a mountain pass or a long and expensive bridge, and the same principle is apparent in connection with the railway terminals in our large cities. The enormous expense attendant upon securing right of way for an entrance to the heart of the city, makes it a very difficult matter for any new company to obtain a terminus there, except by securing running rights over the tracks of an older company. To give to any single corporation the sole control of the entrance to a city _and permit it to charge what toll it pleases_ for trains that pass through it, evidently places the city at the mercy of a monopoly. Practically the case is not so bad as this, as most large cities have means of water communication, and the railroads are run to the heart of the city through the public streets. But the time is fast approaching when these city grade crossings will be done away with, and in every city of importance the railways will enter the city on elevated viaducts terminating in a single union depot. Evidently it is contrary to the public welfare to sink more capital in these expensive structures than is necessary; and in general, several companies will use a single structure for entrance and exit. It is evident that the control of these terminals, if vested in a single company, may give rise to just the abuse we have set forth; and that the city itself should retain enough control over its railway terminals and freight-transfer lines to ensure that no single carrier or combination shall monopolize them. In the last analysis it is evident that the monopoly of entrance to a city is really a monopoly in land, or, we might more properly say, in space. We are fortunate in this country in having millions of acres of land still awaiting cultivation; and while it is not intended here to defend the policy of _giving away_ the estate of the public which our government has pursued, there is no danger for a long time to come that an actual monopoly will exist in agricultural lands. The price of land used for business purposes in a city, however, depends almost wholly upon its location. The price at which a single block of land near Wall Street, in New York City, was recently sold was so great that, at the same price, the value of a square mile would be equal to half the whole estimated wealth of every sort in the United States. Now the question must occur to every thinking man, by what right does the owner of this property receive this enormous wealth? To make the case of those who advocate the public control of the gifts of Nature more clear, let us consider a special case. Suppose a man in an Eastern city chanced to come into possession two-score years ago of a tract of land in what is now Kansas City. We may suppose that he got it by inheritance, or through some chance, and that, except to pay the taxes upon it, he has never given farther attention to it. During all the years of the city's rapid growth he pays no attention to his land and takes no part in furthering the growth of the city. At last, at the height of the real-estate boom, he sells the land, and, whereas it cost him in the first instance a merely nominal sum, perhaps $100, he sells it now for $100,000. This value it has, not because of itself, as is the case with farming lands, but because of its situation in reference to the community around it. In other words, practically the whole value of this land has been given it by the people who have come and built this city around it. It is their labor that has given this property its value, and, in equity, the value should be theirs. A more detailed statement of the arguments for the public control of land incomes cannot be given here. What we are concerned with here is the extent to which land is subject to a monopoly. It appears too evident to require further discussion that, as a general rule, agricultural lands in every section of the country are competing to a greater or less extent with lands in every other section, and that the lands used for business purposes in the cities compete likewise, each city with others neighboring and of similar size, while lands in the same city similarly situated compete with each other. VI. MONOPOLIES IN TRADE. We have now examined the various forces which are destroying competition in the production of goods in our factories, and of raw material from our mines; in the transportation of these goods in their various journeys between the producer and the consumer, and in the supply of the especial needs of the dwellers in our cities. It is an old and well-worn adage that "competition is the life of trade"; and if this be true, we shall certainly not expect to find the men who are earning their living by the purchase and sale of goods endeavoring to take away the life of their business by restraining or destroying competition. At first sight it seems as if it would be a difficult matter in any case to destroy competition in trade. The buyer and seller of merchandise has no exclusive control over natural wealth; no mine or necessary channel of transportation is under his direction; nor does he in his trade produce any thing, as does the manufacturer. He only serves the public by acting the part of a reservoir to equalize and facilitate the flow between the consumers and producers; and if necessity requires, the two can deal directly with each other and leave him out altogether. But in dealing with the question of monopolies we must not conclude that the absolute control of supply is at all necessary to the existence of a monopoly. While there are monopolies, as we have seen, which have the keys to some of the necessities of civilized life, there are others which control merely some _easier means_ for their production, carriage, or distribution; and to this latter class belong the principal monopolies in trade. To be sure that this constitutes a monopoly, we have but to turn to the case of the mountain pass mentioned in a former chapter. The use of that particular pass for transporting goods is only an _easier means_ of transportation than the detour to some other pass or by some other route; and the degree of power of the monopoly depends directly on the amount which is saved by the use of its facilities. So with the monopolies in trade. Brokers and jobbers and retail merchants form a channel through which trade is accustomed to pass, and through which it can pass more readily than by any new one. It is to be noted that under modern conditions the power of middle-men has been greatly reduced from what it was formerly. As we have already seen, manufacturing was then carried on only in families and small workshops, and the mines which were worked were principally in the hands of the king. The merchants were the wealthy men of olden time. They controlled largely the transportation facilities of that day; and while, as we have already noted, the commerce which then existed was but a trifle compared with the present, the principal exchange being in local communities, yet the trade in all articles which were imported, and all domestic commerce between points any great distance apart was in the hands of the merchants. It is natural, therefore, that we find monopolies in trade to have been among the first which existed and to have been of importance and power when manufacturers' trusts were not dreamed of. The guilds which flourished near the close of the Middle Ages, while not devoted to the establishment of a monopoly, did nevertheless aim, in some cases at least, to hinder competition from those outside their guild. But turning to the present, let us examine the conditions under which competition in trade is checked to-day. Let us take, first, the case of retail trade in any of the thousands of country villages and petty trade centres in the land. The history of the life of the country store-keeper is a constant succession of combinations and agreements with his rivals, interleaved with periods of "running," when, in a fit of spite, he sells kerosene and sugar below cost, and, to make future prices seem consistent, marks down new calico as "shop-worn--for half price." It is true the sum involved in each case is a petty one, but when we consider the enormous volume of goods which is distributed through these channels, the total effect of the monopoly in raising the cost of goods to the consumer must approach that effected by monopolies of much wider fame. But perhaps it may not seem evident that this is a monopoly of the same nature (not of the same degree) as a manufacturers' trust or a railroad pool. It certainly _seems_ to be true that the merchant has a right to do as he chooses with his own property; and that if he and his neighbor over the way agree to charge uniform prices for their goods, it is no one's business but their own. And, indeed, we are not yet ready to take up the question of right and wrong in this matter. That the act is essentially a "combination in restriction of competition," however, is self-evident. The degree of this monopoly may vary widely. If the merchants who effect this combination raise their prices far above what will secure them a fair profit on the capital invested in their business, and if it is difficult for their customers to reach any other source of supply outside of the combination, the monopoly will have considerable power. On the other hand, if the stores of another village are easy of access, or if the merchants who form the combination fix their prices at no exorbitant point, the effect of the monopoly may be very slight indeed. We find this class of trade monopolies most powerful and effective on the frontier. Wherever railroad communication is easy and cheap the tradesmen of different towns--between whom combinations are seldom formed--compete with each other. The extension of postal, express, and railway-freight facilities to all parts of the country, too, have made it possible for country buyers to purchase in the cities, if necessary. Thus the railways have been a chief instrument in _lessening_ the power of this species of monopoly in country retail trade, which was of great power and importance a half century ago. Of retail trade in the cities, it is not necessary to speak at length. Combination here has seldom been found practicable because of the great number of competing units. There is, however, a noticeable tendency of late to the concentration of the trade in large establishments, which by their prestige and capital are able to take away business from their smaller competitors. It does not seem likely, however, that this movement will result in any very injurious monopoly among city retailers. The wholesale trade is on quite a different basis from the retail. The number of competitors being so much less, combination is vastly easier. The tendency toward it has been greatly fostered and strengthened by the formation of trusts among the producers. These combinations made the manufacturer more independent in his treatment of jobbers, and disposed him to cut their profits to the lowest point. Naturally these men combined to resist this encroachment on their income. They refused to handle any goods for less than a certain minimum commission. It might be possible in many cases for manufacturers to sell directly to the retail traders, but in general the difficulty of changing old commercial channels is such that the friction and expense is less if the goods are permitted to pass through the wholesaler's hands. It is to be noted that one cause for ill-feeling between manufacturer and wholesaler is the fact that before the days of trusts the latter often reaped much greater proportionate profits than the producer himself. But in time this cause of dissension will be forgotten, and the trust and the wholesalers' association will work in harmony. The point of greatest interest in this is the fact that combinations among this first class of middlemen are fostered and made possible by the combination of producers. Nor does the series end here necessarily. The increased price which the retail dealers are obliged to pay for the goods, with the fact that others are making larger profits, makes them eager to do the same; and by the aid and co-operation of the wholesale merchants they may be able to do much toward checking competition among themselves and increasing their profits. Thus by the operation of the combination at the fountain-head among the producers, there is a tendency to check competition all along the line, and grant to each handler of the goods between producer and consumer an abnormal profit. An excellent example of this is found in the sugar trade. The wholesale Grocers' Guild of Canada, which includes 96 per cent. of the Dominion's wholesale traders, entered into a compact with the Canadian sugar refiners, who agreed that dealers outside of the guild should be charged 30 cents per 100 pounds more for sugar than those who were in the guild. In November, 1887, fourteen members of the guild were expelled and were compelled to pay the higher price. The executive committee of the guild fixed the selling price for the retail dealers. The guild was so successful with sugar that it extended its operations to starch, baking powder, and tobacco, fixing prices for those goods as well. The committee of the Dominion Parliament, appointed to investigate the guild, reported that it was a combination obnoxious to public interest, because it limited competition, advanced prices, and treated with gross injustice those in the trade who were not its members. In New York State there are two associations of wholesale grocers which are working to prevent competition in the sugar trade. They have fixed a uniform price for sugar, and have tried to make arrangements with the managers of the sugar trust by which that organization shall discriminate against all grocers who are not members of the association by refusing to sell them sugar or charging them a higher price. In some other sections an attempt has been, or is being, made by which the retail grocer sells only at certain fixed prices determined by a committee of the wholesalers who issue each week a card of rates. It is urged in defense of the movement that sugar has been sold at an actual loss by both the wholesale and retail trade for a very long time. The Grocers' Association, at its first meeting, passed a resolution declaring that it was opposed to combinations for the purpose of extorting unreasonable profits from the public, and that all that was sought was to prevent the evil of handling certain staples below the cost of doing the business. But if we inquire why these staples have been handled at a loss, the answer is, because of the strong competition which has prevailed. The organization, then, is a combination to limit competition, to suppress it, in fact, and the difference between its purpose and work and that of the Sugar Trust is a difference of degree and not of kind. The reason for its moderate demands may be because grocers are more liberal-hearted than refiners, or because they understand that their power over the trade is more limited than those who control the original product, so that an attempt to exact too large profits would offer a tempting premium to competitors of the Association. Another staple article of consumption in which combinations are known to exist is meat. It is affirmed that a combine of buyers and slaughterers controls the markets of Chicago and Kansas City, and both depresses the price paid for cattle in the market, and raises the price of beef to the retail dealer. This monopoly proved so oppressive, and attracted so much attention, that in February, 1889, Gov. Humphrey of Kansas, called a convention of delegates from the legislatures of ten different States and Territories to devise a system of legislation, to be recommended for adoption by the several States, which should destroy the power of the combination. One of the combinations investigated by the New York State Committee appointed to investigate trusts and similar organizations, was an association of the retail butchers, and the brokers buying sheep, lambs, calves, etc., from the farmers. The purpose of the association is to prevent competition among its members and keep control of prices in its own hands by charging a higher price to outsiders than to members of the association. The ultimate effect is to increase profits by paying less for the animals and getting higher prices for the meat sold. We might go on at indefinite length to examine the various monopolies of this sort, but it does not seem necessary. The salient fact which is evident to any one at all conversant with business affairs is, that in almost every line of trade the restriction of competition is in force to a greater or less extent. Those monopolies are strongest, indeed, which have control of production; but in so far as they can control the market, the men engaged in buying and selling are equally ready to create minor monopolies, and an acquaintance with the general markets convinces one that these monopolies are numerous enough to have a very important effect in increasing the cost of goods to the consumer. We are accustomed to think of competition as a force which always tends to keep prices down, and of a monopoly as always raising prices; but it should be understood that this is true only of the competition and monopolies among _sellers_ of goods. It must be remembered that the competition among _buyers_, is a force which acts in the opposite direction and tends to raise prices; and that it is quite possible to have combinations among buyers to restrict competition and keep prices down. Of course, where the buyer is the final consumer, this is almost impossible, for the great number of competitors forbids any permanent combination. Also where the product concerned is a manufactured article or a mineral product, the mining or manufacturing company or firm will generally have capital enough and business ability enough to defeat any attempt of the wholesale merchants to combine to reduce the prices paid for their output. This he can easily do by selling to retail dealers direct. But in the case of products gathered from the farmers the case is different, and the producer can less easily protect himself against combinations among buyers to fix the price he shall receive. The power and extent of these monopolies varies with the distance of the farmer from markets, and also, it must be said, with the intelligence and shrewdness of the farmer. In districts remote from railways and markets the farmers are often dependent on the travelling buyers for a chance to sell their cattle or produce. In a thinly settled region there may be no more than two or three times in a season when a farmer will have an opportunity to dispose of his surplus products; and, realizing his necessity, he is apt to be beaten down to a much lower price than the buyer would have given if other buyers had been competing with him to secure the goods. In the chief markets, too, there is often a combination of buyers formed to keep down prices. The combine of cattle-buyers in Kansas City and Chicago has just been noted. The New York Legislative Committee discovered that a milk trust had control of the supply of milk for New York City, fixing the price paid to the farmer at three cents per quart, and the selling price at 7 or 8 cents per quart. According to the suit brought by the Attorney-General of Louisiana against the Cotton-Seed Oil Trust, that monopoly has reduced the price paid to the planters for seed from $7 to $4 per ton. As the total amount of cotton seed which it purchases is about 700,000 tons a year, it is evident that this feature of the combination alone puts into the pockets of the owners of the Trust over two million dollars per annum, over and above the profits made through its control of the cotton-seed oil market. Evidently the combinations which lower prices by restricting competition among purchasers are not to be overlooked because of unimportance. In the chapter on monopolies of mineral wealth it was stated that the French copper syndicate is not a "trust," but a "corner." It has not been common to consider "corners" as a species of monopoly, except as they have, like the latter, acquired a bad reputation with the general public from their effect in raising the price of the necessaries of life. But if we look at the matter carefully, it becomes plain that the aim of the maker of corners is the same exactly as that of the organizer of trusts,--to kill competition. The difference lies in the fact that the "corner" is a temporary monopoly, while the trust is a permanent one. The man who forms a corner in, let us say, wheat, first purchases or secures the control of the whole available supply of wheat, or as near the whole supply as he can. In addition to this he purchases more than is really within reach of the market, by buying "futures," or making contracts with others who agree to deliver him wheat at some future time. Of course he aims to secure the greater part of his wheat quietly, at low figures; but after he deems that the supply is nearly within his control, he spreads the news that there is a "corner" in the market, and buys openly all the wheat he can, offering larger and larger prices, until he raises the price sufficiently high to suit him. Now the men who have contracted to deliver wheat to him at this date are at his mercy. They must buy their wheat of him at whatever price he chooses to ask, and deliver it as soon as purchased, in order to fulfil their contracts. Meanwhile mills must be kept in operation, and the millers have to pay an increased price for wheat; they charge the bakers a higher price for flour, and the bakers raise the price of bread. Thus is told by the hungry mouths in the poor man's home, the last act in the tragedy of the "corner." Fourier tells of an event in his early life which made a lasting impression on him. While in the employ of a mercantile firm at Marseilles, his employers engaged in a speculation in rice. They purchased almost all the available supply and held it at high prices during the prevalence of a famine. Some cargoes which were stored on shipboard rotted, and Fourier had to superintend the work of throwing the wasted grain, for the want of which people had been dying like dogs, into the sea. The "corners" of the present day are no less productive of discontent with the existing state of society than were those of Fourier's time. But, returning to our subject, it should be said that the "corner," generally speaking, does much less injury to the public than is commonly supposed. As we have shown, the manipulators of the corner make their chief profits from other speculators who operate on the opposing side of the market; and it is but a small part of their gains which is taken from the consumers. The effect on the consumer of the abnormal rise in price caused by the corner is sometimes quite made up for by the abnormal fall which occurs when the corner breaks. Generally, however, the drop in prices will be slower to reach down to the final consumer, past the middlemen, than will the higher prices. The corner makers also are apt, if they are shrewd and successful, to make the total of their sales for the current supply yield them a profit. Thus suppose that the normal price of wheat is 70 cents per bushel, and that the syndicate secures control of five million bushels at the normal price. If while it keeps the price up it sells two million bushels at $1.20 per bushel, it can afford to get rid of the rest of its stock at an average price as low even as 50 cents per bushel, and still make four hundred thousand dollars' profit. The operations of corner makers are confined principally to goods which are dealt in upon commercial exchanges. One evident reason for this is that the vast purchases and sales, which are necessary in the formation of a corner are impossible without the facilities afforded by an exchange. It must be said, too, that the plain truth is that our principal commercial exchanges, while they do serve certain useful purposes, are yet practically devoted chiefly to speculation. This, simmered down to its essence, means that the business of the speculators is to bet on the future prices of the articles dealt in,--a game in which the largest players are able to influence prices to accord with their bets, and hence have their "lamb" opponents at an obvious disadvantage. The evil of this sort of commercial gambling is recognized by practical men of every class; but its cure is yet to be effected. A sort of business allied both to trade and transportation is the business of storage or warehousing, and this has recently shown some interesting cases of monopoly. The owners of warehouses along the Brooklyn waterfront combined their business in January, 1888, and doubled their rates for storage. In the testimony of one of the members of this trust, before the New York Legislative Committee, he said: "We want to destroy competition all we can. It is a bad thing." The owners of grain elevators at Buffalo, N. Y., have long combined to exact higher prices for the transfer of grain than would have prevailed were free competition the rule. At the session of 1887 the New York Legislature took the bull by the horns and enacted a law fixing a maximum rate for elevator charges; a statute which was based on the popular demand for its enactment, but is hard to accord with the principles of a free government. There are a number of lines of business auxiliary to trade in which competition is more or less restricted by the fact that the amount of capital controlled and the prestige of the established firms renders it a difficult and risky matter to start a new and competing firm. The insurer of property or life, if he be wise, will demand financial stability as a first requisite for the company in which he takes a policy. The companies engaged in the business of fire insurance have long been trying to agree on some uniform standard of rates and the avoidance of all competition with each other. These combinations, however, are apt to be broken, as soon as formed, by the weaker companies, whose financial condition operates to prevent them from getting their share of the business under uniform rates. Even when this rate-cutting is stopped, there is still competition to be met from the various small mutual companies, who are necessarily outside the combination. Banks are a necessity to the carrying on of modern commerce, and they have great power over the financial affairs of the business men of the community which they serve. As a general rule, however, they are largely owned by the merchants and others who patronize them, and the instances of this power being abused are, therefore, not common. It is to be remembered, in discussing this, as in other monopolies, that the power of a monopoly depends entirely upon its degree. A bank, trust company, or real-estate guaranty company which has a great capital, an established reputation for safety and conservatism, sole control of many special facilities, and conveniences for obtaining and dispatching business, has a real monopoly, whose degree varies with the tendency people have to patronize it instead of some weaker competitor, if one exists. There is no evil effect from the monopoly upon the community, unless it takes advantage of its power to charge a sum greater than their real worth for the services it renders, or uses it to discriminate to the injury of special persons or places. In closing our discussion of the monopolies in trade, there is an important point to be noted. In the lines of industry considered in the preceding chapter, the monopoly was easy of maintenance because it held full control of the source of production, or of some necessary channel through which commerce must pass. No gift of nature assists to maintain a monopoly in trade. It must be wholly artificial, and it relies for its strength simply on the adherence of its members to their agreement to maintain prices. Its degree of power can never be great, compared with monopolies which control the original sources of production; for if it is attempted to put up prices inordinately, competition will start up outside of the combination, or the consumer will be led to deal directly with the producer. Because of this weakness, the temptation is great for these monopolies to strengthen themselves in ways quite indefensible on any score. The alliance of trade monopolies with trusts, in order to strengthen themselves, we have already considered. But the trust which makes such an alliance must plead guilty to the charge of _discrimination_ as well as _monopoly_. It is bad enough to raise the prices of the necessaries of life, and force the whole community to pay the tax; but it is worse to add to this the crime of discrimination against certain persons in the community, at the instance of a minor monopoly. But the trade monopoly does not confine its sins to tempting the stronger monopoly to practise discriminations. It practises discrimination itself in some very ugly forms. A combination among manufacturers of railway car-springs, which wished to ruin an independent competitor, not only agreed with the American Steel Association that the independent company should be charged $10 per ton more for steel than the members of the combine, but raised a fund to be used as follows: When the independent company made a bid on a contract for springs, one of the members of the trust was authorized to underbid at a price which would incur a loss, which was to be paid for out of the fund. In this way the competing company was to be driven out of business. It is often argued that combinations to advance prices can never exist long, because of the premium which the advanced price puts upon the entrance to the field of new competitors; but the weapons which this trust used to ruin an old and strong competitor are even more effectual against a new-comer; and the knowledge that they are to meet such a warfare is apt to deter new competitors from entering the field. The boycott was once deemed rather a degrading weapon of warfare; but now the term has grown to be a familiar one in trade circles. Even the great railway companies do not scruple to use the boycott in fighting their battles. One might imagine that both the thing and the name filled a long felt want. VII. MONOPOLIES DEPENDING ON THE GOVERNMENT. The fact has been already referred to that the principal monopolies which existed previous to the present century were those created by government. In the days when governments were less strong than now, and less able to raise money by such taxes as they chose to assess, it was a very convenient way to replenish the king's exchequer to sell the monopoly of a certain trade to some rich merchant. Nor was the establishment of these monopolies entirely without just reason. In those days of scarce and timid capital, inducements had to be held out to encourage the establishment of new enterprises. An instance of this, familiar to every one, was the grant to the owners of the first steamboat of the sole right to navigate the Hudson River by steam for a term of years. In the early history of the nation and in colonial days, government grants to establish local monopolies were very common. In this, however, we only followed the example of the mother country, which had long granted limited monopolies in trade and transportation as a means of encouraging new enterprises and the investment of capital. The monopolies of the present day which are properly considered as government monopolies are of two classes. The essential principle on which all are based is that their establishment is for the common benefit, real or supposed; but the first class--to which belong the patents and copyrights--are also justified on the ground that the brain worker should be protected in his right to reap the just profits from his labor. The effect of a copyright is simply to make it possible for an author to receive some recompense from his work. He can only do this by selling it in printed form to those who may wish to buy; but if there were no copyright, any printer might sell duplicates of the book as soon as it was issued, and could sell them at a much less price than the original edition, as the book would have cost him nothing to prepare. The practical result would thus be that few could afford to spend study and research in writing books, and the volumes which would be printed would be apt to be only those of so cheap and worthless a sort that no one would take the trouble to copy them. The monopoly produced by a copyright takes nothing from the public which it previously enjoyed. The writer of a book creates something which did not before exist; and if people do not wish to buy that which he has created, they are at perfect liberty not to do so. The monopoly relates only to the production and sale of that particular book. Others are at liberty to write similar books upon the same subject, which will compete with the first; and the same information may be given in different words without infringing the copyright. It seems clear enough, then, that the monopoly which occurs in the use of a copyright, is of an entirely different sort from the monopolies which we have previously considered. Competition is not destroyed by it, and its only effect upon the public relates to an entirely new production, which is not a necessity, and which the public could not have had an opportunity to enjoy if the copyright law had not made it possible for the author to write the book with the prospect of being repaid for his labor by the sale of the printed volume. As already stated, the granting of patents is based on the same principle as the granting of copyrights. A clause of the Constitution empowers the general government to grant to authors and inventors for limited periods the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. If we judge the granting of patents by the aims and intentions which are held in the theory of the law, we must conclude that it is a highly wise, just, and beneficial act. The man who invents a new machine or device which benefits the public by making easier or cheaper some industrial operation, performs a valuable service to the world. But he can receive no reward for this service, if any one is at liberty to make and sell the new machine he has invented; and unless the patent laws gave him the power to repay himself for the labor and expense of planning and designing his new device, it is altogether probable that he would not spend his time in inventing. The wealth which a valuable patent promises has been a great incentive to the work of inventors, and has undoubtedly been a chief cause of the great mechanical advancement of the last half century. But the state of mechanical science has greatly changed from what it was when the clause of the Constitution was penned which speaks of inventions as "discoveries." The trained mechanical designer now perfects a machine to do a given work, with almost the same certainty that it will be successful in its operation that he would feel if the machine were an old and familiar one. The successful inventor is no longer an alchemist groping in the dark. His task is simply to accomplish certain results with certain known means at his disposal and certain well-understood scientific principles to guide him in his work. But this statement, too, must be qualified. There are still inventions made which are the result of a happy inspiration as well as of direct design. Not all the principles of mechanical science and the modes of reaching desired ends are yet known or appreciated by even the best mechanical engineers. There is still room for inventors whose rights should be protected. The interpreters of our patent laws have always held the theory that the use of a natural agent or principle could not be the subject of a patent. This is undoubtedly wise and just. The distinction should always be sharply drawn between those existing forces of nature which are as truly common property as air and sunlight, and the tool or device invented to aid in their use. Again, it is a notorious fact that the great multiplicity of inventions has made the search to determine the novelty of any article submitted for a patent for the most part a farce. No one is competent nowadays to say surely of any ordinary mechanical device that it is absolutely new. The bulky volumes of Patent-Office reports are for the most part a hodge-podge of crude ideas, repeated over and over again under different names, with just enough valuable matter, in the shape of the inventions of practical mechanical designers and educated inventors, to save the volumes from being an entire waste of paper and ink. Space, however, will not permit us to discuss at length the faults of our patent system. The important point for us to notice is that the patent system establishes certain monopolies, and that these monopolies are not always harmless. Patents are given to "promote the useful arts," but the inventor whom they are supposed to encourage reaps but a small share of the profits of his inventions. Valuable improvements soon fall into the hands of large companies, who are able to defend them in the courts, and reap all possible profits by their use. Again, patents sometimes aid in the formation of trusts and combinations. Two or three firms may control all the valuable patents in connection with some important industry. If they agree to combine their interests and work in harmony, they are far stronger than an ordinary trust, because the patents they hold prevent outside competition. It was pointed out in the opening chapter how the control of patents was sometimes a feature helping to induce the formation of trusts. The Standard Oil Trust had its origin in the superiority which one firm gained over its competitors through the control of an important patent. The envelope trust, which, at this date, has raised the price of envelopes about twenty per cent., owes its chief strength to its control of patents on the machines for making the envelopes. Instances innumerable could be given where a few manufacturers, who by their ownership of patents controlled the whole field, have ended a fierce competition by consolidating or agreeing to work together harmoniously in the matter of selling-prices. Very many of these are monopolies in trade or monopolies in manufacturing, and as such have already been considered in the preceding chapters; but it is proper here to point out the part which our patent system has taken in their formation, and the fact that it is due to their control of patents that many of the existing combinations owe their security against outside competition. Probably the public was never so forcibly reminded of the defects of our patent system by any other means as it has been by the operation of the Bell Telephone monopoly. The purpose in granting patents is to aid in the establishment of new lines of industrial activity, secure to the inventor the right to reap a reward for his work, and encourage other inventors to persevere in their search for new improvements. All these things are effected by the monopoly which is held by the Bell Telephone Company; but they are effected at a cost to the users of the telephone under which they have grown very restive. Passing by the statement that the patents which the Bell company holds were illegally procured in the first place, through the inventor having had access to the secret records in the Patent Office of other inventions for which a patent had been asked at about the same time as his own, it is an undisputed fact that the Bell company holds the monopoly of communication by electric telephone in this country. They have managed this monopoly with great skill. While the instrument was yet in its introductory stage, and when every smart town felt obliged to start a telephone exchange or fall behind the times, prices were kept low; but when once the telephone became a business necessity and its benefits were well known, rates of rental were advanced to the point where the greatest possible profits would accrue to the Bell company's stockholders. This was excellent generalship. The same principle is applied in many other lines of business; and it was only because the company held a monopoly of a most valuable industry, that it proved so immensely profitable here. But other acts of the company, it is alleged, while within the letter of the law, are yet clearly infringements on the just rights of the public. It is charged that the company has purposely refrained from putting into practical use any of the many improvements which have been made in the telephone during the past few years, but at the same time has quietly secured their control. By skilfully managing "interferences" of one patent against another, and by amending and altering the various specifications, it contrives to delay as long as possible the issue of the patents upon these inventions. By means of these improvements, which it purposes to introduce as its present patents expire, it proposes to continue its monopoly for many years to come. It is very likely that this attempt will succeed. We have already seen the folly of establishing competing electric light companies, and the attempt to establish rival telephone exchanges is just as sure to result ultimately in a heavy additional tax on the public. Then, too, the monopoly has grown so wealthy and powerful through its enormous profits that it will be very loth to release its hold, even when it is no longer protected by patents. Rival companies which may be established then, it will seek to crush by a fierce competition; and it will be quite likely to succeed. But in so far as it is not protected by patents, it is properly to be considered with other municipal monopolies, in which class we have already referred to it. The course pursued by the Bell Telephone Company has at least proved that our whole patent system demands a thorough and radical revision. The inventor should certainly be protected, but not to the public hurt. The second class of monopolies which the government establishes or aids in establishing because it is deemed to be for the public welfare that they exist, are, first, those private industries which receive aid from the government, either directly by subsidies or indirectly by the taxation of the goods of foreign competitors; and second, those branches of industry which are carried on by the government itself. The question concerning the granting of subsidies is principally a past issue. A century ago many new enterprises in all lines of industry looked to the government for aid. In those days, when capital was scarce and when investors hesitated at risk, it was perhaps wise to grant the help of the public treasury to aid the establishment of young industries; but nowadays, when millions of capital are ready to seize every opportunity for profitable investment, it is recognized that subsidies by the general government are no longer needed. The days of subsidy granting ended none too soon. The people of the United States gave away millions of acres of their fertile lands and other millions of hard-earned dollars to aid in the building of the railroad lines of the West; and a great part of the wealth thus lavished has been gathered into the coffers of a few dozen men. The monopolies created by these subsidies have been largely shorn of their power; but while they reigned supreme, their profits were gathered with no halting hand. There is only one direction in which we still hear the granting of subsidies by the general government strongly advocated; that is in the direction of establishing steamship lines to foreign ports. It would be apart from the scope of our subject to discuss the wisdom or folly of such a proceeding farther than to note the fact that it establishes a monopoly. Take, let us say, the case of a steamer line between New York and Buenos Ayres. It is plain in the first place that the government aid will only be granted if there is not business enough to induce private parties to take up the enterprise. But as we suppose that there was not business enough in the first place to support one steamer line unaided, it is certain that none will undertake to establish a rival line to compete with that already sure of profits by reason of the government aid. Hence this line will have a monopoly of the trade; and unless some proper restrictions as to rates accompany the subsidy, the monopoly may lay an extortionate tax on the public who patronize it. The relation of the tariff to monopolies is one which deserves the careful attention of every thinking man. Let us, in discussing this question, lay aside all prejudice and preconceived ideas for or against the protective tariff system and consider candidly what are the actual facts of the case. It is evident, in the first place, that the purpose of the tariff tax which the government levies on goods imported from abroad is to _keep out foreign competition from our markets_. The imported goods cost more by the amount of the tariff than they otherwise would; and the American producer, if he makes equally desirable goods and does not raise his selling price above that at which imported goods can be bought, is secure against foreign competition. But we have already learned that monopoly is simply the absence of competition; and inasmuch as the tariff checks or shuts out foreign competition, it has a _tendency_ toward the establishment of monopoly. But this tendency may not result in the establishment of any monopoly. There is a tariff on potatoes, but there is no monopoly in their production. Evidently the tariff cannot create a monopoly; it only makes its establishment more easy by narrowing the field of competition to the producers of this single country. If we turn back over the list of monopolies we have studied, to find those which the tariff has any effect in aiding to establish, we shall find none till we reach the first two chapters. The monopolies in mineral products and manufactured goods, known generally by the name of trusts, it is self-evident are largely dependent upon the tariff. If they raise their price above a certain point, people will buy goods of foreign production instead. This point--the price at which foreign goods can be profitably sold--depends on the rate of the tariff, on the cost of production in foreign countries, and the cost of their carriage here. Of the various trusts, it is evident that only those would be effected by the removal or reduction of the tariff whose products are now covered by it. Thus the Standard Oil Trust and the Cotton-Seed Oil Trust would not be injured by any reduction in the tariff. As a matter of fact, however, nearly all of the trusts have to do with manufactured goods which are covered by the tariff, and the two exceptions already named are about the only ones. The trusts in manufactured products, broadly speaking, then, are all dependent on the tariff. Here is a strange condition of affairs. In the early history of this nation, the people of this country, represented by their popular government, were appealed to by the men engaged in manufacturing after this fashion: "We cannot make the things you need as cheaply as the manufacturers in foreign countries. They are wealthy and we are poor. They have their mills already in operation, we have ours to build. The capital we borrow bears a rate of interest double that which the foreign mill-owner has to pay. The labor we must employ is not yet trained as is theirs, and it must receive far higher wages. Therefore we ask that you aid us in establishing our industries by paying us higher prices for our goods than those for which you could purchase the same goods of foreign manufacture. In order that every one shall be obliged to do this, and that all may contribute equally to our support, we ask you to pass laws laying a tax on all imported goods which compete with ours, whereby none shall be able to buy them at a cheaper price than we can afford to sell our own goods." And the people replied: "While we recognize the fact that we must pay an increased price for your goods compared with that which is asked for goods from foreign mills, and are thus taxing ourselves for your benefit, yet we see how desirable it is that our industries should be diversified and that we should not be dependent on foreign nations for the necessaries and comforts of life. Thus _for a season_ we will grant your petition and tax ourselves to establish you in your business." Such was the spirit of the movement that inaugurated the protective tariff. One other great argument for its establishment, which was believed by the people and was assented to by the manufacturers, was as follows: "Our natural advantages for engaging in manufacturing are beyond those of any other nation. Our workmen are more skillful, intelligent, and ingenious; our capitalists are more enterprising. At the same time there are many difficulties to be overcome in establishing a manufacturing business in a new country. Some assistance is needed at the outset to tide it past the critical period. Now, if we can give our manufacturers a start and enable them to establish themselves, they will improve all these natural advantages which we possess; and with the abundance of raw material in our mines and farms and forests, with our ingenuity and Yankee enterprise and skill, who can doubt that our manufacturers, once established, can produce goods more cheaply than they could ever be brought across from foreign countries? This protection from foreign competition will be a great incentive to the establishment of manufacturing enterprises. Everywhere mills and factories will spring up; a brisk home competition will be created; and that will finally reduce prices lower than they could ever go if we remained dependent on foreign countries for our manufactured goods." It was a wise and well-founded plan, and only as to its final result did it fail. The protective tariff did make manufacturing more profitable than any other business, and mills and factories of every sort have sprung up in all parts of the country. But the expected extreme competition which was to reduce manufacturers' profits and the price of manufactured goods to a basis in accordance with the profits in agricultural and other branches of industry has been long delayed. The wonderful development of the country has kept up prices and profits, and has furnished a market for our manufacturers which has long kept in advance of their capacity to supply it. At last, however, the result which was expected by the founders of the protective tariff has come to pass. Our domestic mills and factories have a capacity beyond the present demand for their products. The home competition which was predicted has come; and if it had operated to reduce prices as was expected, there would now be employment for all our mills, for it is an axiom that every reduction in price increases the demand. But the manufacturers who had been making enormous profits of ten, twenty, and thirty per cent. on their capital for these many years, were far from willing to accept calmly the situation and reduce their profits to a reasonable figure. They have tried combinations of many sorts to keep up prices, and at last have found in the trust a strong and effective means of killing home competition and keeping up their profits, if they choose, to the highest point which the tariff permits. It is not to be argued that the manufacturers were especially worse than the general run of men in taking this action. It is the most natural thing in the world that a man who has all his life been used to making enormous profits in his business should come to think that he had an inalienable right to make them; and that when competition became so sharp that he had to lower his prices, it was due to an unnatural condition of affairs glibly designated as "over-production," for which the trust was an appropriate and wise remedy. It is thus plain how, in a secondary way, the tariff is a cause of the trusts. The fat profits which the former gave have made men covetous enough to engage in the latter. We are, perhaps, not yet prepared to discuss the question of the proper remedies for trusts; but it is too obvious to call for comment that an easy and most effective remedy is to cut away the protection from foreign competition, under which they flourish, and let them sink or swim as they best can. At the least it will be wise to reduce their protection to a point where any attempt to tax the nation of consumers and reap exorbitant profits by putting up prices so that profits of twenty-five per cent. or more can be reaped, will be counteracted by foreign competition. It is only fair to point out at the same time that this remedy is far from being a panacea against all trusts and monopolies. The monopolies in the peculiar products of this country will be unaffected by it, and the combinations which embrace the whole globe in their plan of operations are quite beyond its power. The copper syndicate and the salt trust, and according to Mr. Carnegie a steel rail trust, are the only actual examples of international combinations which have ever been attempted, and it will probably be many years yet before the constant movement towards Tennyson's "Federation of the World" permits the general formation of effective industrial combinations which shall embrace all commercial nations. We have finally to consider the monopolies carried on directly by the government. The carriage of the mails is the most important monopoly carried on by the government, and we may find some facts of interest by enquiring the reasons why it is for the public welfare that it should be so conducted rather than by private enterprise. In the first place, if it were left to private enterprise to furnish us with postal facilities, the postal service would be much more limited than now; many places of small importance being left without postal facilities or charged a much higher rate for service than now. On the other hand--and this is an important point--there would, perhaps, be in and between the large cities competition between different companies; in which case there would be duplicate sets of postal facilities, including buildings, mail-boxes, furniture, and employees of every grade. It is plain that all this would be a waste. One set of facilities is better for the public than two or three or more, and is ample to carry all the mails. To put another set of men at the work that others are already able to do, is to waste just so much of the working force of the world, as well as the capital necessary to furnish tools and buildings for its use. The matter of rates, too, would vary with the competition. One could never be sure what his postage bill for the coming year was to be. The receipts of the companies would be uncertain, and they would be obliged to pay a high rate of interest on the capital invested in their plant, thus making it necessary for them to charge high rates for their service. The intense competition between rival companies would lead to the bankruptcy of the weaker, and the final result would be the establishment of a single corporation in the control of the whole system. Rates would then be put up to the point where the greatest profit would accrue to the corporation. Under the existing system, then, we save in cost of service over competing systems under private direction, in that the existing facilities are all made use of. There is no waste by setting two men to do the work of one, or by renting two offices to do the business which one could accommodate, neither is any energy wasted in soliciting business. The capital invested by the government in its plant for carrying on the postal service would bear interest, if the money were borrowed, of not more than two or three per cent. But if a private company borrowed money to carry a similar business, they would have to pay five to seven per cent., which they would have to make up for by charging a higher rate of postage. Other monopolies which have been carried on by the government are the business of transportation, and the provision of roads, bridges, and canals therefor; monopolies in mining; and in the case of municipal governments, as already noted, the supply of water, gas, and electric service, and street railway transportation. VIII. MONOPOLIES IN THE LABOR MARKET. It should be said at the outset of this chapter that, in a very true sense, practically all men are laborers. That into which a man puts his energy and by which he earns his living, is his labor, whether it be work of the hand or the head. But the labor we are to consider in this chapter is that of the men who work for wages; and we will also make the arbitrary distinction that it is that of the men who work for wages in some branch of manufacturing, mining, trade, or transportation, the great divisions of modern industry which we have thus far considered. Almost all these monopolies employ large amounts of capital in carrying on their business; and in the popular speech, "monopolist" and "capitalist" are often used interchangeably. It is a very common belief that monopolies are confined to the capitalized industries of production, transportation, and trade, which we have already considered; but we are now confronted by the fact that the wage-workers in the various trades of the country are engaged in exactly the same monopolistic schemes, in which they have exactly the same ends in view as have the monopolists who combine millions of dollars' worth of capital to effect their purposes. On the one hand we have the Standard Oil Trust and the Railroad pools and the hundreds of other capitalistic combinations striving to benefit the producer at the expense of the consumer; while among those whose only capital is their strength and skill, we find the workers in all the various trades, and even some of the lower grades of laborers firmly banded together with the avowed purpose of raising their wages above those which they would receive if competition alone determined the rate. And they are successful, too. Notwithstanding the fact that they deal with tens of thousands of producing units where the combiner of capitalized interests deals with tens, the success achieved by the combinations of labor is quite comparable with that reached by combinations of capital. It speaks volumes for the intelligence and ability of the wage-workers of the present day--yes, and for the growth of the spirit of fraternity; that in the advancement of what they deem a just and righteous cause, they should voluntarily put themselves under discipline and endure patiently the untold hardships of uncounted strikes, often brought on in the unselfish work of aiding their brother laborers against what they deem a common enemy. The modes in which the combinations of skilled laborers attain their desired ends are akin to those which obtain in a well organized manufacturers' trust. The former allow only a certain number of apprentices to learn their trade. The latter permit the establishment of only such additional mills as shall not unduly increase the market supply. The former fix a standard scale of wages below which no member of the union shall work; the latter fix a minimum price for the goods sold in the market. If there are more laborers in the union than can be employed at the advanced rate of wages, some must be idle. If there are more mills in the trust than the lessened demand for the goods will keep busy, some must be shut down. The trade-union boycotts competing workmen outside its ranks, and stigmatizes them as "scabs." The trusts endeavor to punish every outside manufacturer, sometimes by forcing upon him such a competition as shall cause his ruin; sometimes by means as illegal and criminal as are the riotous acts of a mob of hungry workmen, and far less defensible. But let us not yet bring up the question of relative blame. The main point which must impress every candid observer is that the means employed for the monopolies of capital and the monopolies of labor are identical in principle and motive. Nor are we confined to manufacturers' trusts to show that the spirit of rule or ruin characterizes capital as well as labor. Railroad monopolies, in the words of the president of one of the greatest corporations of the country, "strive eagerly to protect themselves while entirely indifferent as to what shall befall their rivals." How many weak corporations have been deliberately ruined by the cut rates of stronger competitors? If the laborer has "scab" in his vocabulary, has not the railroad manager his "scalper" and "guerilla"? The close relationship, viewed in many different aspects, of the monopolies of labor and the monopolies in production generally has hardly received the notice its importance deserves. Still, it is an evidence that people are thinking of and discussing the matter when such a writer as W. D. Howells, who is popularly supposed to cater to the tastes of those who have very little in common with the laboring classes, puts into the mouth of one of his characters a defence of workingmen for executing a boycott on a non-union workingman, on the ground that they "did only once just what the big manufacturing trusts do every day." Perhaps it was never so forcibly realized how thoroughly effective these labor combinations have become, and how completely they hold the country at their mercy, as in the strike of the locomotive engineers on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad system in March, 1888. Here were, perhaps two thirds of the men in the country qualified for the responsible and onerous work of running a locomotive engine, firmly banded together to advance their own interests and secure assent to their demands. Granted the will, the courage, the discipline, and it was possible, yes, easy, for them to have obliged the railroads to raise the wages of every engineer in the brotherhood to $10.00 per day, for on a refusal they could have enforced the extreme penalty of bringing down a total paralysis upon the business of the country. It speaks volumes for the good sense, the honesty and moderation of the men and their leaders, that, notwithstanding the fact that their demands were not immoderate, and that the failure which came permanently deprived of a remunerative position a thousand members of their brotherhood, they refrained from the extreme to which they might easily have gone, and permitted themselves to be defeated, when they had the power to have forced a different result. Organized workers in many trades have the power to force wages much higher than they have done. Would that the Sugar Refineries Company, and some other monopolies of production, were as moderate in their demands upon the public as are the workingmen. But though their demands are in one sense moderate, it is yet true that in so far as they exceed the amount which the laborer would receive when the market for labor is open to free competition, they are the direct result of the artificial monopoly which the laborers have created by their combination, and, in effect, levy a tax upon the community. To illustrate: let us suppose that if every man were permitted to follow the trade of bricklaying who wished to do so, the equilibrium between supply and demand would be found at a rate of wages of $3.00 per day. At that rate, if the price rose, more men would wish to follow the trade and at the same time less people could afford to build houses, thus raising the supply above the demand. If the price fell, some of the men would prefer to work at some other trade and more people would conclude they could afford to build houses. But when the rate, which, without prejudice, we call the natural rate, is at $3.00 per day, suppose the men belonging to the trade form a union and resolve to charge $5.00 a day for their work. Then it is very evident that the cost of building is increased, and every one has to pay more for construction and ask a higher rent to repay himself afterward. Evidently, then, by this action of the bricklayers every man in the trade receives $2.00 more per day for each day's work, which must be paid, directly by their employers, but indirectly by the whole community. It would be easy to prove that the tax on the community when the wages are raised in any trade, affects the whole public as well as those directly employing the workers in that trade; but it seems too plain to require proof. The main point we now wish to show, is that any increase in the wages of labor over that received under ordinary competition must be paid by the community, just as much as any increase in the price of coal, iron, copper, wood, wheat, or any other commodity must be paid by consumers at large. Nor does the injury to the community stop here, by any means. We saw that the advance of prices by the linseed oil trust was an injury to all those who, on that account, were obliged to forego painting; and that it thus caused a further injury to painters, paint-makers, and even those employed in the building trade. But the increase in the price of the bricklayers' work has results no less important. Not only is injury done to those who build and have to pay more for their buildings, but many are prevented from building on account of the increased cost. If we argue according to a prevalent method, we may say that this reduced activity in the building trade will cause stagnation among allied trades with corresponding loss of employment. Again, as a less number of houses are built, and those which are built are more expensive, rents are certain to rise, which means that the poor man must pay out a still greater part of his earnings for his shelter, or else must put up with poorer and meaner quarters. It is a strange thing to trace, in connection with this, the history of labor, and see how recent it is that the natural right of a man to sell his services for such a price as he could obtain has been acknowledged. History shows that until modern times, compulsory personal servitude has been in every age and country the lot of a large part of the human race. And when wages began to be paid for service, conditions were not much improved. In England, in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward III., a pestilence seriously depopulated the country, and reduced the supply of laborers so much that it was not equal to the demand for labor, and wages began to rise. Laws were therefore enacted that each able-bodied man and woman in the realm, not over three score, "not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof to live, nor land about whose tillage he might employ himself, nor serving any other," should be bound to serve at the wages accustomed to be given five years previously. No persons were allowed to pay an advance on these wages, on pain of forfeiting to the Crown double what they had paid. Previous to the fifteenth century, workmen in various occupations were impressed into the service of the king at wages regardless of their will as to the terms and place of employment. Indeed, all through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were continual attempts to fix the rate of wages arbitrarily by law, and also the hours of labor. These, by one old statute, were decreed to last from 5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M. These acts, and others of similar nature, were intended for the subjugation of laborers and the benefit of the employers of labor. It is only since the era of popular government that legislation for an opposite purpose has come in vogue. Gradually the right of the workingman to have the price of his labor fixed as is the price of other commodities, by the law of supply and demand, came to be recognized, although the progress was pitifully slow. The old ideas of the relation between "master" and "servant" were very tenacious of life, and the substitution of the terms "workman" and "employer" is a change which has taken place in England during the present generation. It was the petty tyranny and the grinding extortion which the laborers had begun to feel, even though they were far better paid and better treated than their fathers, that caused the formation of the original trade unions. Laborers saw that each was helpless alone, but that combined they were a power which their employers need not despise. The old craft guilds furnished them an example of effective combination among those engaged in the same trade; and as men everywhere in every age, when a common danger or misfortune has confronted them, have come together for mutual help and defence, these ignorant laborers, in violation of stringent statutes, but following blindly their human instincts of self-defence, came together and organized the first trade unions. The common law has always held trade unions to be "illegal combinations in restraint of trade." Between the reigns of Edward I. and George IV., the common law was affirmed and made more effective by the passage of over thirty acts of Parliament, all intended to abolish the trade unions. In 1800 a stringent law was passed, by which all persons combining to advance their wages or decrease the quantity of their work, or in any way affect or control those who carried on the business in which they were employed, might be committed to jail by a justice for not more than three months, or to work in the house of correction for not more than two months. Not till 1824 was an act passed slightly ameliorating this stringent law, and even then the trade unions remained for the most part secret organizations. At last, in 1871 and 1876, laws were passed under which no person can be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit an act which would not be criminal if committed by him singly; and the trade unions, thus legalized, were taken in common with other benefit societies under the protection of the law. We have already pointed out the main fact that the chief end and aim of the trade unions is the advancement of wages by securing a monopoly of the supply of labor in some particular trade. It is now fair to explain, as we have for other monopolies, the labor monopoly from the standpoint of the laborer himself. It is a sound axiom of business that a forced sale is apt to be an unprofitable one to the seller; and that when a man's needs are so great that he is absolutely obliged to sell at any price, he is quite certain not to get the full worth of his goods. Now it is an undeniable fact that the condition of many of the wage-workers of the country approximates to this: They must have food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their families, and the only thing they can offer in exchange for it is their labor. Suppose an honest and industrious man has some misfortune, as an accident, or illness, and loses employment. When once more able to work, he finds his old place filled and new places hard to find; but at last he finds a mercenary employer who agrees to give him half wages. Disheartened at his prospects, he thinks half a loaf is better than no bread, especially when those dearest to him are hungry, and so takes the place. But his employer takes care that his constant work shall leave him no time to hunt for a better position. Indeed, by a few judicious threats from his employer, the man may be put in terror of losing the pittance he already has, and seeing those dependent on him in absolute starvation. Such cases are amply provided for by the trade union. Ill treatment of any one of its members may be avenged by the organization as a whole, on the principle, whose spirit of fraternity and self-sacrifice all must admire, that "an injury to one is the concern of all." More than this, by means of the benefit feature of the fraternity, the member unfortunate, or in distress, is properly cared for. No member is obliged to feel, when seeking for employment, that his food or shelter is at stake if his attempts fail, and he need never be at the mercy of employers who drive sharp bargains. It is often charged as an evil of trade-unions interfering with wages, that they tend to bring all their members to the same level, and are opposed to the payment of wages in proportion to the varying abilities of the men working at the same employment. But with unorganized labor, and employers who were none too just in their ideas, it was not uncommon to see the necessity of the laborer, or his inability to drive a good bargain, taken advantage of. Thus the workmen whose necessities were greatest, and who were the most docile and obedient, received lower wages than the men who were not particular whether they were busy or idle, and were inclined to pay more attention to their own rights and prerogatives than to the work for which they were hired. While the tendency toward non-recognition of the varying abilities and ambitions of workmen by the trade unions must be deprecated, it has largely grown from the reform of this worse abuse. There is another benefit which the organization of labor has effected which may, perhaps, be thought an evil by some, but which every broad and generous man must gratefully recognize as a gain to the whole community; and in a self-governed nation like our own, it is a benefit whose importance it is difficult to over-estimate. This is the maintenance of the laborer's dignity and self-respect. We have but to look back to the times we have already mentioned, to see the laborer hardly better than a dog, a cringing dependent, kicked and beaten on slight pretext, and with almost every vestige of manhood worked and bullied out of him. We have come upon far happier times to-day, and there are few corners of the civilized world where conditions so evil prevail now. But without the organization of labor, the status of workingmen would be much farther removed from what is just and right than it now is. Every employer who is wise and honest, and who has the true spirit of a gentleman, will see that his workmen are treated with the respect that is their just due. Discipline there must be, but it is a wrong view of discipline that makes it consist of oaths and brutal insults delivered according to the prevalent good temper or ugliness of the overseer. Unfortunately, not every man who is placed in authority is wise, honest, and a gentleman. Bodily violence is no longer permitted by law, but too often the curses and insults which are heaped on men with no due cause are a violence which is more severe to many a man than actual cuffs and kicks. No man can take such treatment without resentment, and maintain his dignity and self-respect. Yet in how many places is petty tyranny of this sort still active, and its victims are cowed into submission for fear of taking the bread from their children's mouths. But the member of a strong labor organization need not be cowed or tamely accept insult. He has the right to resent it, and has the power of his fraternity to support him. He knows this, and his employer knows it. Overseers, big with their importance, and inclined to show it by attacking the self-respect of the men under them are no longer in demand. It is very unfortunate that many people misconstrue this result of the organization of labor as a move toward the abolition of all social ranks and grades. It is nothing of the kind. Social gradations cannot be created or brushed away by any legislative enactment, or the acts of any single class. The combination of the workmen to secure their right to protect themselves from insult is indeed a movement toward making them better and nobler men, just as the abolition of slavery in all its forms was a move in this direction. But no man is truly free if he is not secure in his right to immunity from personal insult as well as from bodily violence. It is not strange, however, that the workman, conscious of the strength of the fraternity behind him, sometimes grows arrogant and insolent toward those who must necessarily be in authority over him. Unaccustomed for generations past to other government than fear of one sort or other, he is all unused to self-control. But it is hardly possible that this should be a great evil. The body of workmen will, eventually, if not now, refuse to sanction and defend their members in any thing which their innate sense of justice must teach them is wrong. Few workingmen will causelessly ask their brotherhood to undertake the hardships and loss of prestige which accompany a strike. And even when insolence is shown toward employers or overseers, they have at least equal power to resent it, and are not, as was the laborer of a half-century ago, forced to submit to insults with outward humility. We have already noticed the condition of the laws in reference to the laborer in former times: but the repeal of the laws oppressing the workman, and making him a servant to a master instead of a workman for an employer, has been largely due to the organized efforts of the trade unions. To them, also, we owe the passage of many acts like those for the guarding of machinery in factories, the restrictions upon the employment of child labor, and the proper care for the health, comfort, and convenience of employés in general. It cannot be said that the labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. On the whole, however, there is every reason to believe that the general course of justice has been aided by the influence of the trade unions--something which can be said of very few special interests for whose benefit our legislatures have enacted laws. All the above facts we must admit in defence of the organizations which have, to a large degree, killed competition in the labor market. But in defence of the especial action of the labor monopolists in forcing wages up to a point above that which competition alone would determine, there is also much to be said. Those who are unwilling to concede that there is any justice in the claim of the wage-workers that full justice is not yet awarded them, are accustomed to expand on the theme of the improved condition of the laborer over that in which he was a century ago. How this can be taken for argument is a mystery. No one thinks of disputing or diminifying the well-known fact that many workmen of to-day have more comforts than the princes of the Middle Ages. The single point in dispute is this: Of the total wealth which is being produced in the world to-day, is the laborer receiving his fair share? There are not wanting men of judgment and ability who answer this question with a decided No. And the greater share of the blame for this injustice they lay upon the monopolies which we have been discussing. They charge, and they verify their charge with ample and sound testimony, that of the wealth which the united brains, and strength, and skill of the world daily produces, the lion's share is taken by men who render the world no proportionate service. This is partly due to existing laws, which the public is not yet wise enough to better; partly to the inertia of public opinion, which is still prone to cling in many points to the idea of past generations that the workman was necessarily a slave; and partly to the narrow selfishness and grasping ambition of many men in the business world. This is not arguing for the reduction of all to a dead level, as is so often absurdly claimed. It is arguing that the inequalities which exist at the present day are not held securely in place by agreement with the inflexible laws of justice and right. Instead they are abrupt and uneven, and contrary to these laws; and there is great danger that the readjustment, which must inevitably take place to bring them in accord with these laws, will come, not as a gradual change, but as a series of terrible social catastrophes, involving us in a wreck which will require a century of civilization to repair. Only fanatics preach absolute equality. As men differ in their ability and their power to serve the world, so is it just that the reward which the world metes out to them should differ in like proportion. But if we stretch to the utmost the benefit which we conceive the world to derive from the life of many of its men who reap the richest harvest from its production, we cannot in any way make out that their services are so valuable as to deserve such munificent reward. Indeed, it is not very far from the truth to say of some of our most wealthy men that their wealth was won instead of earned; and many place a much worse term in the place of "won." The workman sums up his case with the argument that as he is confessedly not getting his just share of the results of his work, he is only getting his due, or part of it, if by combination with his fellows to crush out competition, he is able to put up the price of his labor above the natural rate. Finally, as a last defence for the labor monopolies, he calls attention to the trusts and pools and monopolies which are taxing him at every hand for the necessaries of life, and declares that if he, working on the same principle as the wealthy capitalists, is able to combine his tens of thousands of fellows into an effective monopoly, surely he should not be condemned for following the example of the men who are, or are supposed to be, his social, moral, and intellectual superiors. Such is the strong case which the labor organizations present in defence of the unions which they have formed to kill competition in the labor market. The investigation we have pursued in the preceding chapters enables us to add to this a statement of the case more comprehensive and striking even, than the narrower views which have preceded. In the chapter on the monopolies in trade, reference was made to the fact that the competition among purchasers tends to keep prices up, just as competition among sellers tends to keep them down. Now labor is a commodity whose price in the market is governed by the same laws of supply and demand that regulate the prices of all other things that are bought and sold. But it has this peculiar difference, that the _sellers_ of labor are many, while the _purchasers_ are few, as compared with the relative proportion of sellers and buyers of goods in general. Then, wherever there is little competition among purchasers of labor, we shall expect to find low wages; and where competition to secure workmen is active, high wages will be the rule. This is so obviously true, in the light of every one's experience, that we need not stop to prove it. Now, in the days when manufacturing was carried on in small workshops, there was a great number of purchasers of labor. The concentration of manufacturing in great establishments where thousands of workmen are employed has lessened the number of employers greatly; has it not also lessened competition among them? It is a well-known fact that in many great industries, as, for instance, the mining of coal or the manufacture of iron, there is one rate of wages paid all through one district, and the employers fix that rate through their associations. The makers of trusts have sometimes defended them, on the ground that they enabled the employer to pay his laborers higher wages; but it is plain that when all the firms in a trade are united in one combination, there can be no competition between them for the employment of labor. They will pay them only such wages as they choose; and the bulk of evidence seems to show that, notwithstanding the vast profits which the monopolies are reaping, they have been far from showing any general disposition to share their profits with their employés. It seems almost unquestionable that we have here the real reason for the extraordinary increase of labor monopolies within the past quarter century. This period has witnessed a rapid growth of consolidation and combination in all our industries, lessening thus the number of employers of labor. The wage-worker found himself confronted with the fact that he was soon to lose entirely the benefit of competition for the purchase of his work, and felt that his only salvation from practical slavery was to prevent the competition between himself and his comrades from forcing his wages down to the starvation point. He met the monopoly that threatened to lower his wages by forming another monopoly that could meet the first on equal terms. We have given little space in this chapter to the consideration of the limit of the power of labor monopolies; but it is obvious that this is very clearly defined. In the first place, while there are certain attempts at combination among unskilled laborers, and those not working at trades, these attempts cannot, as a general rule, be at all successful. Any man out of employment may be a competitor for the work which they do, and it seems practically impossible that any organization can combine, under effective discipline, even a majority of the workingmen of the country not skilled in a trade. The only ways in which attempts to kill competition in unskilled labor can be successful, then, are by the use of force or the boycott, or similar means, and these can never come into vogue as permanent agents in the world's industry. The labor monopolies which exist, and which promise, if let alone, to enjoy continued success, are principally combinations of the workers in skilled trades, and certain of those employed in manufacturing, mining, trade, and transportation. IX. MONOPOLIES AND COMPETITION IN OTHER INDUSTRIES. As we take a look back over the long list of monopolies which we have investigated in the preceding chapters, the natural thought is that we have considered now the greater part of the industries of the country. Certainly these occupations of manufacturing and trade and transportation, are generally considered as our important industries, and a pretty good share of our legislation and public agitation concerns itself with the welfare of these industries and with the men who are employed in them. But certain questions will naturally arise in the curious mind. Just what proportion of our total working population are employed in these industries; and of that number how many are reaping the profits of the monopoly? What are the remaining occupations of our people, and are the workers in them doing any thing to destroy competition? To the investigation of these matters we will devote the present chapter. The United States Census Bureau classes the gainful occupations of the people in four great divisions: (1) Agriculture. (2) Professional and Personal Service. (3) Trade and Transportation. (4) Manufacturing, Mining, and Mechanical Industries. The monopolies which we have studied in the preceding chapters are all included in the last two classes. The total number of persons engaged in trade and transportation in the country in 1880 is given as 1,810,256, and the total engaged in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining operations is 3,837,112, or a total of 5,647,368 in all these occupations among which we have found monopolies to exist. Of course the great proportion of the persons included in the above number have no direct interest in the profits of the industries in whose operation they aid. It is, indeed, argued that the manufacturer, miner, or merchant who is making enormous profits, pays, therefore, larger and more generous wages; but it is urged on the other side that while this is true in isolated cases, the general rule holds good that the price of labor is governed by the law of supply and demand; and that, as already pointed out, monopoly among producers means a monopoly among purchasers of labor. Let us now, however, leave out this indirect benefit which may, or may not, accrue to the workmen in these various occupations, and find as nearly as we can the number which are, or can possibly be, directly benefited by the operation of monopolies. Let us deduct from the total of 5,647,368, such classes of persons as it is evident cannot have a direct share in the results of a monopoly and are not engaged as skilled workmen in a trade which has been organized to control competition. We may certainly deduct the following items from the total: +---------------------------------------------------------+----------+ | Agents | 18,523 | | Clerks, salesmen, and accountants in stores | 445,513 | | Commercial travellers, hucksters, and peddlers | 81,649 | | Draymen, hackmen, teamsters, etc. | 177,586 | | Sailors, steamboat-men, canal-men, pilots, and watermen | 100,902 | | Apprentices | 44,170 | | Blacksmiths | 172,726 | | Fishermen and oystermen | 41,352 | | Lumbermen, raftsmen, and wood-choppers | 43,382 | | Photographers | 9,990 | | Saw-mill operatives | 77,050 | | Tailors, tailoresses, milliners, and dressmakers | 419,157 | | +----------+ | Total |1,632,000 | +---------------------------------------------------------+----------+ There are a great many other occupations in the list[4] from which these items are taken which might properly be included in the above, as the combination which does or can exist in them it is almost certain is of no practical importance. On the other hand, however, our total of 5,647,368 takes no account of the persons interested in trade, transportation, or manufacturing through holding the shares or bonds of incorporated companies; also the errors and omissions of the census are so great in any event that only broad and general statements can be based upon them. Deducting, then, from the total of 5,647,368 the 1,632,000, which we found to be surely not interested in monopolies, we have about four million persons as the utmost number who are benefited by the profits of the monopolies which we have thus far considered. But let us look into this a little farther. As we have already stated, the monopolies of trade are generally unable to raise prices far above their normal rate. In retail trade, especially, competition shows great tenacity of life. Also with regard to labor monopolies, it is true, as we have already stated, that the limits of their operation are pretty closely defined; even the men in the highest grades of skilled labor cannot secure for each workman by any combination more than two or three dollars per day over what he would receive under the freest competition. Let us, therefore, deduct from the preceding four millions the persons engaged in retail trade, and all skilled laborers in the various trades which we formerly included because we conceived that they might be connected with some form of labor organization, and might also obtain some benefit through the profits of their employers. But when we make these deductions we find that we have only a hundred thousand or so of our four millions left. Briefly summed up, therefore, the fact is, that the strong monopolies in manufacturing, mining, trade, and transportation are owned by a very small portion of the population. Just what this number is, it is impossible to say, for the stock and bonds of railroad companies, mining companies, and manufacturing companies are changing hands continually, and no public record is taken of their distribution and ownership. It may possibly be true, however, that one million different persons own an interest in some of the various monopolies which we have studied, excluding the monopolies in trade and labor. But even if this estimate is correct, it is a well-known fact that a few hundred immensely wealthy men hold a large share of the stock of these very profitable monopolies. [4] From the "Compendium of the Tenth Census of the United States," Part II., pp. 1378 and 1384. Leaving the questions which this statement opens up, for later consideration, let us consider the other classes of occupations in which men engage for the purpose of gain, and see if this far-reaching movement towards the destruction of competition has infected them, and whether it has proved, or can prove, so successful there as it has in the industries considered in preceding chapters. The third great class of occupations, rendering professional or personal service, gives employment to over four million persons (4,074,328), and includes in its members those in widely separated ranks of society. It is, of course, true that the competition in the professions is far more a competition of ability, real or supposed, than it is a competition of price; and the former is a competition which is never likely to be done away with. Yet in all occupations, to a greater or less degree, there tends to arise more or less competition in relation to price, and the professions are not entirely exempt. Lawyers, indeed, seem never to have felt the necessity of fixing any minimum tariff of fees; and so far as is known, clergymen have never combined to advance their salaries. But the medical profession has its well known code of ethics which debars its members from "pushing their business," and has, in certain places and times at least, prescribed a minimum tariff of fees. It should be clearly understood, however, that this is not cited with the intention of putting any aspersion upon the medical profession in any way. The services which are freely rendered to the poor, and the disgusting indecencies and insults which are thrust upon the public by some who choose to ignore this code of medical ethics, would make us ready to forgive very much worse things than a possible tendency among members of the profession to refrain from "cutting under each other" in the matter of fees. But while the three older professions have evidently little need or disposition to combine for the purpose of increasing their income from the community, some of the newer professions occupy different ground. Architecture is coming to be a profession of no small importance. The principal architects' society, the Association of American Architects, has a regular schedule of minimum commissions below which its members are forbidden to go. Another singular case of professional combination is the Musical Protective Union, a combination of professional musicians in New York City, which fixes minimum prices that its members may charge for their services. On the whole, however, it must be said that the limitation of competition in the professional and intellectual occupations is in this country still in its infancy. In England the fixing of prices of professional service by usage is very much more common, and in many professions the check to competition thus effected is of no small importance. To the careful observer there are indications of a tendency in a similar direction in this country. Is it not more and more common in professional circles to see a slur cast on the man who will work cheaply? There is hardly an occupation or specialty which has not its Associations and its periodicals; and what is more natural than that an association for mutual benefit should come to adopt that certain method of securing mutual benefit at the expense of the public, the restraint of competition? Examining the remaining occupations in this division, we find that those engaged in them form a large percentage of the whole population. There are of laborers whose occupation is not more definitely specified, 1,859,223. Then there are 1,075,655 domestic servants, 121,942 launderers, 77,413 hotel and restaurant employés, 24,000 soldiers, 14,000 messengers, and enough in other occupations similar to the above, in that very many persons can engage in them without special training, to make it certain that at least three fourths of the members of this division, or a little over three million persons, belong to the class of unskilled workers, among whom, as we have already seen, the attempt to limit competition and force up wages has not, and cannot possibly have, more than a limited and doubtful success. Nevertheless, to a very great extent, the unskilled laborers of the country as well as those working at minor trades are organized for mutual help and protection; and while they cannot increase much the rate of their wages without drawing a host of competitors, they can do much in the way of protecting themselves from injustice and extortion, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter. It may be possible, indeed, that certain changes in the future, as the requirement of greater skill and efficiency in all kinds of labor, may make combinations in this class of occupations easier and more effective. Our domestic affairs, for instance, are constantly growing more complex, and require greater skill in their operation. Housekeepers are prone to think the "servant girl" problem serious and perplexing enough already. It remains to be seen what they would say if a "Cooks' Protective Union," a "Chambermaids' Sisterhood," or a "Laundresses' Amalgamated Association," should assume control of the wages and hours of labor of their domestics. To sum up, we find that as a whole the 4,000,000 persons engaged in rendering professional and personal services are in general not increasing the cost to the public of their services by combining together to limit competition; and that so far as we can determine, it is not probable that many of them can do so in the future, even if they are so disposed. There remains yet one important class of the community to be considered: those engaged in agriculture. Can the farmers of the country fall into line behind the manufacturers and miners and railroad owners, and force up the price of their products by killing competition, to correspond with the increased prices which are demanded in many other lines of industry? They have one thing in their favor in that the principal products of the soil are necessaries of life, which the community cannot do without whether the price be great or small, although an increase in price is sure to result in a decreased consumption. We may best determine this question by inquiring exactly how the prices are forced up by monopolies. There can be but one way. The laws of supply and demand hold good, and it is out of the power of the producer to greatly affect the demand. It is only the supply of which he has control. From the manufacturers' trust to the laborers' union, the only way in which prices can be controlled is through a reduction in the supply of goods made or men allowed to work; and if the price were to be arbitrarily raised, the result would be the same; there would be a surplus of goods, or some unemployed workmen. In order to raise the price of his products, then, the farmer must do one of two things, which will bring in the end the same result. He must send less of his products to market--lessen the supply--or refuse to sell any thing at less than the increased price which he desires. In either case, if he plants the same acreage and gets the same yield as before, he will have a part of his crop left on his hands. The query then comes, can it be possible for the farmers all over the country to form so perfect and well-disciplined an organization that every member shall diminish his remittances to market of grain, wool, meat, hay, or what not, enough to raise prices; or that he shall refrain from selling all these articles below a certain defined price? It must be plain to every intelligent person that it would be a practical impossibility to effect such a thing. It would be possible to bring only a small percentage of the farmers in an area 3,000 miles in length and 1,500 in width into a single organization; and it would be essential to the success of this, as of every other scheme, that no outside competition should be permitted to exist. It may be argued that the Knights of Labor succeeded to a degree in gathering into one organization a large proportion of the workingmen in all the various trades in the country; but their members were mostly in cities, many worked together in great factories, and as regards ease of combination, they were far more easily handled than the widely scattered farmers of the country could hope to be. Besides, the Knights of Labor organization appears to be too unwieldy and cumbrous to be long successful, and internal dissension seems to have already brought it near its end. It is plain that the farmers are powerless to effect a reduction of the competition among themselves. Nor is this condition at all likely to change. Farming is unlike other modern productive industries in that the cost of production does not decrease as it is conducted on a larger scale. The most profitable farms are, and perhaps will always be, the small ones, where the details of the tillage come directly under the eye of the owner. Such are the facts with respect to the prospect of making a monopoly of agriculture, and it would seem that they are so simple and so easily understood that no attempt would ever be made to restrict competition among farmers. It is to be recorded, however, that such attempts are being seriously made. Prominent farmers of the West in the spring of 1888 took the preliminary steps towards the formation of a farmers' trust. Conventions were held and resolutions adopted reciting that the operation of trusts in manufacturing industries and of monopolies in trade and transportation laid serious burdens on the farmers of the country; and that in order not to be left behind in the struggle for existence the farmers must combine for their own protection. Committees were appointed to work out the details of a plan of organization; but the movement seems to have lost vitality when its projectors came to study it in detail. The preceding argument fully explains the reason. It should be said, however, that coöperative associations among the farmers are growing at a rapid pace. The Grange and the Farmers' Alliance are primarily coöperative associations for the purpose of benefiting their members in the purchase of goods and in various other directions, and they are fast increasing in numbers and influence. The attempts made to benefit their members in the sale of their produce have been generally confined to protection against the "middle men." The only movement of which the author is aware for restricting production to increase price, has been in certain sections of the South, where recently a general attempt has been made to restrict the acreage planted in tobacco in the hope of raising the price. It is a matter worthy of note here that the combined influence of the farmers of the country has recently been successful in securing legislation to defeat an important outside competitor. A few years ago some chemists found out that from a cheap substance known as beef suet, an imitation butter could be made, which was in composition and appearance the same as butter made by the ordinary process, and was exactly as nourishing a food. There has been much talk of the halcyon days to come when the progress of science will be so great that food will be made in the laboratory. Well, here was an important practical step in that direction. A cheap product worth three or four cents a pound could be easily converted by a chemical treatment into a valuable food worth three times as much, and the great profit in the business brought this substitute for butter rapidly into use. But at once an indignant protest went up from the farmers of the land. They were being ruined by the competition of the "grease butter" as they disrespectfully called it. There was something suggested about the idea that if just as good butter could be made out of the fat of the cow as out of her milk, and at half the expense, that it would be a benefit to everybody in the country who had butter to buy. But the weak protest for the protection of the general interests of the whole people was not heeded, and Congress passed a bill laying a tax on the new butter sufficient to stop the sale. Here was an evident case of killing competition for the sake of the farming interests, and the force of their unorganized sentiment alone was sufficient to secure the desired legislation. But when the farmers attempt to form a trust, they will have to kill competition among themselves instead of outside competition; and that is a different and far harder matter. To agricultural laborers the same rule applies which we have found to govern other unskilled labor, viz.: that combination cannot effect much in raising wages. Added to this is the fact that they are widely scattered, and that a great proportion do not follow this as a steady occupation. In England, indeed, there is an agricultural laborers' union, and we may possibly come to that here. But our circumstances are widely different. The fact that in many sections the agricultural laborer is not a "hand," or an "employé," or "servant," but a "hired man," is an important one, for the difference in terms denote a vast difference in conditions. It is hardly likely that an organization of any sort is to be expected among those in this occupation. This last division of occupations contains the most members of any of the four divisions. The farmers of the country number 4,225,945 and the farm laborers number 3,323,876. Other minor occupations of the division, as gardener, florist, etc., bring up the total engaged in agriculture to 7,670,493. We can now make some interesting comparisons. The evident effect of monopoly is, in general, to tax the community at large for the benefit of those who own the monopoly. Let us see what proportion exists between the two classes: +-----------------------------------------------------+------------+ | Total number of persons engaged in manufacturing, | | | mining, trade, and transportation (occupations more | | | or less monopolized) | 5,647,368 | | | | | Total number of persons engaged in agriculture and | | | in furnishing professional and personal services | | | (occupations not monopolized) | 11,744,821 | +-----------------------------------------------------+------------+ Thus at the greatest estimate we can make of the number benefited by monopolies, for each man who is gaining by them, two are having their income reduced. If we take the estimate previously made, that the utmost number of persons who can possibly be reaping benefit by ownership of the especially profitable monopolies, trusts, transportation lines, mines, etc., is one million, we have opposed over sixteen millions of the community who are being taxed by their operation. Let a sharp distinction be drawn at this point, however. The above comparison is to be confined to the things between which it is made, and not confused with others to which it has no reference. It is not a comparison of the sort which social agitators are fond of making between the great numbers of the working classes and the relative scarcity of the wealthy. Except so far as the operation of profitable monopolies by the few tends to bring about this unequal distribution of wealth, that is a matter with which we have nothing now to do. There is one point in this connection, however, which it is well to make plain, as it concerns a class of people which is not included in either of the four divisions that we have already described--those who live on the income of their property. We have before alluded to the fact that in the popular speech "capitalist" and "monopolist" are often used interchangeably. If we carefully consider the real status of the capitalist, however, we find that of the three requisites of production--labor, capital, and natural agents--capital is the requisite which is most perfectly secured from the control of monopoly. The rate of interest for the use of capital is regulated so perfectly by the law of supply and demand, that all the anti-usury laws which have ever been enacted have been able to accomplish but little in enabling the borrower to secure loans at a less rate than that prescribed by competition. The reason for this is plain on consideration. The total supply of accumulated wealth of the whole civilized world is engaged in this competition, and the millions of wealth which are added every day are new contestants in the market. Competition in other products is held in local bounds by the cost of shipment over long distances; but wealth in the form of value can be transferred quickly and easily to any part of the civilized world where a market awaits it. Every person who earns money or owns property is a potential competitor, in that he can be made to lend his capital for great enough inducements. Under the pressure of this competition, the price for the use of capital--the rate of interest--has steadily fallen; and the enormous production of wealth of which our industrial resources are now capable is such that the fall is certain to continue, and a very few years will see loans at 2 per cent. as common as those at 4 per cent. are to-day. Combination to restrict competition among those who loan capital for investment is an utter impossibility. The number of people with money to loan, or with property on which they can raise money for that purpose, if they wish, is too large a proportion of the population to be ever brought into a combination to restrict competition. The stringency which sometimes occurs in the money market need not be cited as a contradiction of this statement. That is a matter which has only to do with the currency. The broad fact, and it is a most important one, is that capital, a necessary agent of production, can never be monopolized. X. THE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL COMPETITION. We have now examined all the important occupations in which men engage for the purpose of gain; and we have found that while certain large classes of men still have the returns for their industry fixed by the laws of competition, other large and important classes have been able to check and limit competition, so that their returns from their work are constantly increased; while others still, are in possession of certain agents, so necessary to the community and so rare, that a price can be exacted for their use greatly in excess of the original cost to their owners. Some of the effects of this state of affairs it is easy to perceive. We have, indeed, pointed out for each monopoly described some of the especial abuses to which it gives rise; and it is plain enough that the general tendency is, first, to greatly enrich the possessors of the strongest monopolies at the expense of all other men; second, to give a certain degree of advantage to the possessors of minor monopolies,--as, for instance, monopolies in articles which are luxuries, and can easily be dispensed with; and third, to seriously injure all those engaged in occupations in which the price of the product is still fixed by competition. Every one will agree that this is an evil state of affairs. It is not just that my neighbor, who owns a mine or a railroad, should ask me what he pleases for coal, or for carriage of my produce to market; while I, being a farmer, must sell the products of my labor at a price determined by competition with the products of ten thousand other farms. No one can deny at this day that it is contrary to the principles of justice to give to the men in any one occupation or calling an advantage over those in any other, except in just the degree that one occupation is more beneficial to the world than another. The question then arises, how may we best remedy this state of affairs? Shall our panacea be to do away with all monopolies, and put every industry back upon the competitive system? If so, by what means are we to apply this remedy? Or shall we go to the other extreme and adopt the antipodal doctrine to the foregoing, that competition is an evil which ought to be done away with; and then proceed to abolish competition in every trade and occupation where it still exists, if we can find any possible means of accomplishing such a task. The investigation we have already pursued gives us no answer to these questions. We have thus far studied facts, and made little attempt to deduce from them general truths. We are now informed as to the widespread growth of monopoly; and we have paid some attention to the injustice and wrong to which it gives rise, in order that we may understand the urgent necessity for finding the right remedies, and finding them at once. Our study is henceforth to be devoted to this end. How shall we go about it? In the first place, it is evident that we might make a far wider and more detailed investigation of existing monopolies, and still be no nearer our desired end. We might study the facts concerning each especial railroad monopoly in the country, for instance, without reaching any valuable conclusion with regard to the proper method of restricting railroad monopolies in general. But if we were to take the monopoly exercised by a single railroad company, and study the principles on which it is founded and the laws by which it is governed, we might then be able to state something of value in reference to proper methods for its control. Evidently, then, principles rather than facts are to be the chief subjects of our future discussion, although, of course, we can only discover these principles by investigating the facts already found, together with others which may come to our notice. Our very first and most obvious generalization from the facts which we have studied is, that in all the monopolies we have considered, the inherent principle is the same, and the effect on the community is of the same sort. Therefore, instead of hunting for separate remedies for railroad monopolies and trusts and labor monopolies, we will see what the general problem of monopoly is, and what is the general nature of the remedy that should be applied; the details applicable to each case will, of course, be different; but the underlying principle must be the same. But if we examine our problem a little more closely we see that the word _monopoly_ seems to be only a negative, expressing the fact that _competition_ is absent. We will therefore direct our studies to competition itself, and will consider first its action as the basis of our social system. In the most primitive condition of man which we can imagine, each person provided for his or her own need. The competition which then existed was not competition, in the sense which we use the word in this volume, but was a struggle for existence and a gratification of the baser desires, of the same sort as that which now prevails in the brute creation, resulting in a "survival of the fittest." With the introduction of the family relation, the principle of the "division of labor" was utilized, the female doing the hard and menial work, while the male devoted himself to hunting and fishing, or subsisting on the results of his helpmate's industry. As men's wants increased and they became more industrious in supplying them, this division of labor was extended. The man most skilful in fishing neglected the use of the bow and spear, and his surplus of fish he exchanged with his neighbor for the fruit of the chase. The very same principle applied to different tribes brought about the first commerce. A pastoral tribe, with large flocks and herds, exchanged their surplus products with less civilized tribes who continued to live by the chase, or with a more civilized people who had begun to till the soil. It is plain that these were first steps in civilization. Man, so long as he supplies only such of his wants as he can supply with the labor of his unaided hands, must remain in a half-fed, half-clothed, and untaught condition, because his strength and skill, when diverted in the many directions which his wants require, are not enough to enable him, even when he spends all his time at work, to supply himself with more than the barest necessaries of life. It would be interesting to trace the development of this principle of action through its various stages down to the present time, when we see men everywhere working at various trades and occupations, and always to supply some want of their fellow-men. Every person in the community is absolutely dependent upon a multitude of others, most of whom he knows nothing of, for the supply of almost all his wants. Human society is thus growing more and more interwoven and interdependent. The motto of the Knights of Labor is a true one, apart from the altruism involved in it. "An injury to one _is_ the concern of all," because the mass of humanity is connected and woven together by such strong ties of self-interest, as well as fraternity, that a calamity to any class or country is felt in some degree throughout the civilized world. This is vastly more true now than it was a half-century ago. Under such conditions as existed then, the doctrine of _laissez-faire_, that the government should confine itself to the prevention of violence and crime and the maintenance of national honor and integrity, letting alone the industries of the country to develop and operate according to natural laws, was not liable to do harm. But the conditions now are wholly changed. The interdependence of the community involves a moral inter-responsibility, and the time has come when we must recognize this by making it a legal responsibility as well. We are now ready to consider in detail this inter-relationship of society, and to examine the natural laws which govern it. We have already stated the fact that, broadly speaking, each man is engaged in supplying the wants of his fellow men, because in that way better than in any other he can supply his own wants. We shall find this an easy matter to understand if we conceive that every man puts the products of his labor, of whatever sort it be, into a common public stock (offers it for sale), and takes out of this common stock (buys) the various articles which he wants. He does the first simply that he may do the second, not because he desires to benefit his fellow-men. The money which he receives (as we do not propose to consider here any questions regarding the currency) we may regard as simply a certificate that he has done a certain amount of work for the world, the measure of which is the number of dollars he receives; and on presentation of that certificate, he can obtain other articles which he desires. We have next to consider the fact that there is a great variation in the amount which a man can take out from this common stock. One man is able to provide himself from the common stock with a host of luxuries, while another may only take out a scant supply of the barest necessaries of life. If this distribution operated with perfect equity, a man would be permitted to take out of this common stock exactly in proportion to the benefit which the world at large received from that which he put in. No human judgment, however, is competent to fix, with even an approach to precision, the relative actual benefit which each member of society renders to his fellow-men as a whole. But our social system effects that for us better than it could be fixed by any arbitrary human judgment. This it does by a law known as the law of supply and demand. Instead of the actual benefit, this law takes what people choose to consider as benefit, which is the granting of their desires, whether they desire things hurtful or beneficial. It is these desires for things which others can produce which constitute demand. It is to be borne in mind that this is a broad term, and includes not only desires for food, clothing, and actual things, but for service of every sort, in short, demand is the desire for any thing whatever for which people are willing to pay money. But when there is this demand--this willingness to pay money for any article--people begin at once to supply it, because the money they receive allows them to take goods which they wish from the common stock. Evidently, if there is an unlimited supply of any thing, people will not pay money for it. People will not pay money for fresh air to breathe when they are out-of-doors, and the supply is unlimited; but when indoors, the supply may be limited, and they will spend money to have ventilators and air-pipes built to supply them with fresh air. Or take the contrary case: The supply of some commodity, say flour, falls very short. Evidently less flour must be used by the world than was used in the years of a more plentiful wheat harvest. But no one will wish to be the one to go without, and most people will pay a little more rather than do so. Therefore the price rises. The competition which we have chiefly considered is the rivalry which exists between the men who supply the same sort of goods; but there is a rivalry among buyers as well. Speaking generally, every buyer is trying to purchase for as little as possible, and every seller is trying to dispose of his goods or services to the world for as much as possible, which each has a perfect right to do. We have already seen that prices vary with the relative proportion between supply and demand, rising as demand rises or supply fails, and falling as supply increases or demand falls off. But to complete the wonderful perfection of the mechanism, the reciprocal relation is introduced, so that supply and demand vary with price. If the price rises, fewer people can afford to buy and more will be anxious to sell; while if the price falls, more people will wish to buy and fewer people will be willing to sell. We can now easily see why some men are able to take out from the world's common stock of product so large an amount, while most men can take but a meagre allowance. By the law of supply and demand the price is far higher for the service which one man renders to the world than another. Let us take the operation of a large machine shop, for instance. Only one superintendent is needed, and he should be a man who has devoted much time to mastering all the details of the business, and is experienced and competent to so govern the work that a large product will be turned out at a small expense. There is a demand in the country, let us say, for 5,000 such men; but out of the 5,000 who are filling such places, there are perhaps 50 who seem almost faultless in their skill and industry, there are 500 who are with one or two exceptional faults, almost equally efficient, there are 3,000 who are fairly good men, and the rest may be classed as those who hold their positions because better men for the place cannot be had. So with the skilled machinists, the relation of supply and demand is such that the price of their labor is kept up to perhaps $4.00 per day. But of common laborers the supply is so related to demand that the price of their work is very low. Thus the three classes take very unequal amounts from the common stock. The superintendent, perhaps, is able to take five thousand dollars' worth of goods each year. The skilled workman can spend perhaps one thousand five hundred dollars, while the laborer can spend but five or six hundred dollars. Thus the men who secure the greatest amount of wealth in return for their services to the world, secure it because people are willing to pay it rather than pay less for men of less ability. This is not the same as rewarding a man according to the actual benefit which he does to the community, but it is an approach to it; and it seems to be as close an approach as is possible by human methods. This social system is not the creation of any man or set of men, but has grown of itself out of the tendency among men to secure the things they wish for with the least exertion. And its theoretical working is marvellously perfect. Any thing which men desire sufficiently to exert themselves to secure it, can be bought with a small part of the time and labor, measured in money, which would be required if each made it for himself. Not only this, but the aim of every man is to do the greatest service to the world and best meet its desires, thus securing in return the greatest rewards for himself. Rivalry among purchasers constantly tends to increase the rewards of the producers, while competition among the latter tends toward the furnishing of a better article at a smaller price. These two forces hold each other in stable equilibrium, for a variation tends always to bring things back to their normal condition. Let us look more closely at the theory of the competition among producers. We see that, speaking broadly, all occupations are competing with each other. If changes in the supply or demand raise the rewards in any calling, men will leave other work to engage in it. Men by the pressure of competition are forced to seek out the easiest and most direct methods, and to learn how to secure the greatest results with the least expenditure of labor and material. It is this principle which lies at the very root of our industrial development. Men have so striven to meet each other's competition and outstrip each other in the production of superior goods at low prices, that the cost of the staple articles of consumption, measuring by the labor required to produce them now and the labor required by the clumsy tools and hand work of a century ago, is from a tenth to a hundredth of the cost in those days. It must be remembered, too, that this system of competition is in accordance with the sense of inalienable personal rights which is implanted in the breast of every man. The work of my hands and brain are my own. In disposing of it for a price, I have a right which none may deny to obtain such a sum as I can induce any one to pay me. If I choose to sell it for less than my neighbor, it is my right. In short, the open market is open to all; and every man has a right to sell there his labor, his skill, or his goods, of whatever sort he can produce, at such a price as he can obtain. The same is true of the buyer. I have a _right_ to go into the open market and secure such goods as any one wishes to sell me at the lowest price for which he will part with them. A curious illustration of this sense of personal right is the custom duties on imported goods. It is an evidence of this inherent feeling of a natural right that both public opinion and the law hold that it is a much less serious crime to smuggle than to steal. There are a dozen people who would smuggle, if tempted to do so, to one who would steal. Another illustration is the opposition shown to sumptuary laws on the same grounds. It is to be said that the fact that competition lies at the foundation of our industrial civilization, tersely expressed in the saying, "Competition is the life of trade," has long been known, and, to a certain extent, appreciated. The common law, based on the decisions of men most eminent for wise insight and sound judgment, has always held that combinations to restrict competition and establish a monopoly were contrary to public policy, and the protection of the law has invariably been refused, whether they were combinations of labor or of capitalized industries. The establishment of labor combinations, indeed, was long a criminal offence, as we have pointed out more fully in the chapter devoted to that subject. It must be said, too, that the principle has come to be generally, though rather blindly, understood by the masses of men. It is recognized, though perhaps not very clearly, that competition lowers the prices of goods, and that this benefits every consumer. Let a proposition to build a competing railroad line, or a competing electric-light plant be submitted to popular approval, and, under the impression that they are benefiting themselves, hard-working men will cheerfully assume heavy burdens of taxation to aid the new enterprise. So blind and unreasoning indeed, is this popular abiding faith in the merits of competition, that it has been responsible for some of the greatest wastes of wealth in unproductive enterprises that have ever been known. We have now examined the theory of universal competition as commonly accepted at the present day, and it is rightly considered a fundamental principle of society. It is the practice of most economic writers of the orthodox school to lay great stress on the importance of this fundamental principle, and enlarge upon its various manifestations. The many attempts to limit and destroy competition, which we have studied, they consider merely as abnormal manifestations which are opposed to law, and so not worth while considering very fully. But we have seen clearly to what extent the destruction of competition has gone on; and, with this knowledge, the question almost inevitably occurs to us: Is not this decay and death of competition, this attempt to suppress it under certain conditions, too wide and general a movement to be treated as merely a troublesome excrescence? Is it not likely that there are certain fixed laws regarding competition which determine its action and operation, and sometimes its death? If this be so, it is of the highest importance that we find and study these laws; and to that purpose we will devote the following chapter. XI. THE LAWS OF MODERN COMPETITION. Thus far in our study, we have assumed that we knew what competition was. Now, however, as we are to study it scientifically, we are in need of an exact definition, that we may know just what the term includes. Prof. Sturtevant, in his "Economics," says: "_Competition is that law of human nature by which every man who makes an exchange will seek to obtain as much as he can of the wealth of another for a given amount of his own wealth._" Simmer this down to its essence, and we have simply: _Competition is selfishness._ To the other evident faults of the definition we need not allude. It is a much more satisfactory definition which Webster's Dictionary gives us, for it includes the idea that competition necessitates two or more parties to exercise it: "_Competition is the act of seeking the same object that another is seeking._" But this is too broad a definition for our purpose. It takes in competitions for fame, social standing, etc., with which we have nothing to do. Failing to find a satisfactory definition, let us make one, as follows: _Competition is that force of rivalry between buyers or between sellers which tends to make the former give a greater price for the commodity they wish to secure, and tends to make the latter offer better commodities for a less price._ That competition _is_ a force, even in the popular estimation, is evidenced by such common expressions as "the pressure of competition," "a strong competition," and indeed, "the force of competition." But these very expressions show us as well, what we have already found to be true in the preceding chapters, that it is not a constant force but a variable one. What, then, are the laws of its variation? Let us see what we can learn by a study of three typical examples of the force of competition. Let us take first the business of growing corn. There are perhaps three million farmers in the United States engaged in producing corn, and each one of these competes with all the others. Is this doubted? We have defined competition as a rivalry that tends to make the sellers offer better goods for a less price. Now at first sight it may seem that there is no rivalry at all. Neighboring farmers work together in all harmony; and no man thinks that because his neighbors have raised a large crop of corn, he is in any way injured. And yet this _tendency_ to give better goods and lower prices exists and is plainly felt. Suppose a new and superior variety of corn were introduced, which buyers preferred. Some farmers would at once begin to raise it, so that they might be more sure of a market and perhaps of a better price, and other farmers would be obliged to follow suit to meet the competition. Again, consider that the supply and demand adjust themselves to each other through competition. For suppose, at the ruling price, the demand to be less than the supply; then to increase the demand, the price must fall; and the cause of the fall in price is simply that the farmers compete with each other for the market, and lower their prices in order to secure a sale for their crops. Note, however, that the rivalry in this case never becomes a personal one. Each farmer recognizes that an increased supply lessens the price for his goods; but his neighbor's extra acreage is such a drop in the bucket, that he never thinks of it as being really a rival of his own crop. Take as a second example, the wholesale paper trade. Here are perhaps three hundred men, each knowing personally many of his competitors and probably hating some of them cordially. Each striving to secure for himself all the trade possible, and to gain, if he can, his rivals' customers. He sends out his salesmen with instructions to, "Sell goods! For the best prices you can get, but sell them, anyhow." These "drummers" are sharp, active business men, they might well be employed in directing some productive process; but they go out and spend their time in inducing customers by all the means in their power to buy their goods. They spend money in various "treats" to secure the good-fellowship of the man with whom it is desired to trade, and use his time as well as their own. Another item of expense is for advertising and for keeping the firm name prominently before the purchasing public. All these things cost money, as any wholesale merchant engaged in a business where there is sharp competition can testify. It may be thought that a firm which would have the courage to do away with all these expenses and give the money thus saved to their patrons in reduced prices and better goods, would be able to keep its trade and even gain over its competitors. But it is hardly so; most men are more likely to be wheedled into taking slightly inferior goods at a slightly greater price. Another matter to be considered in this connection is the variation in price. In the case of the producers of corn, we saw that prices were practically uniform at any given place, being fixed by the ratio of supply and demand in the chief markets of the world. But in making sales of paper, the sharp, close-dealing buyer is generally able to secure a better price than a buyer not posted in regard to the condition of the paper trade. As competition becomes more intense, its burdens become more heavy to carry. Perhaps two of the largest houses in the trade, who are able to force prices lowest, come to a sort of tacit understanding that their salesmen "will respect each others rights a little and not force prices down beyond all reason." It is plain that _here_ the foundation is laid for the establishment of a monopoly. Yet the agreement certainly seems to be nothing more than these two firms have a right to make. Its result is seen, however, in a slight increase in the price their customers have to pay. Soon the tacit agreement becomes a formal one. Then other firms are taken in. The first seed has borne fruit. The combination grows larger and stronger. The number of producing units is growing less. Finally it includes practically all the paper manufacturers in the country. Whoever wants paper must buy of the combination, there is no other source of supply. Competition is dead. If the combination is strong enough and is managed well enough, it may be permanent; and prices of paper will be regulated by other laws than the law of competition. But suppose that the number of paper makers is so great and that they are so widely scattered that the combination proves difficult to maintain; local jealousies creep in, and charges are made of partiality on the part of the managers. The combination finally breaks up. Can we expect a perfect return to the old system of free competition? When men have once reaped the enormous returns that are yielded by the control of a monopoly, the ordinary profits of business seem tame and dull. There will surely be attempts to form the monopoly anew on a stronger and more permanent basis; and even if these attempts do succeed in producing only short-lived monopolies, the effect will be to keep the whole trade and all dependent upon it in a state of disquiet and uncertainty. Prices will swing up and down very suddenly between wide limits; and it is everywhere recognized that _stability in price_ is a most important element in inducing general prosperity. A perusal of the trade journals for the years 1887 and 1888 will convince one of the truth that when a combination is once formed, its members are loth to try competition again. A considerable number of combinations which were formed in 1887 were soon broken up, often from the strength of old feuds and jealousies. But in almost every case they have been formed anew on a stronger basis after a short experience of competition. This matter of the variation in price is a very important one, and it has an important influence in checking business prosperity. Men are far less apt to engage in an enterprise, if they cannot calculate closely on prices and profits. But the main point, after all, is the waste which is due to competition. It is for the interest of the public at large that the papermakers should devote all the energies which they give to their business to making the best quality of each grade of paper with the least possible waste of labor and material. Take for a third example two railway lines doing business between the same points. We have fully pointed out the practical working of this sort of competition in the chapter devoted to railways. It is plain that the general effect is a fluctuation of rates between wide limits, an enormous waste of capital and labor, and ultimately, the permanent death of competition by the consolidation of the two lines. In comparing now the above three cases, the most noticeable difference in the conditions is in the _number of competing units_. There were in the first example three million competitors; in the second, three hundred; and in the last, but two. The first difference in the competition which existed is in intensity. In the case of the producers of corn, competition was so mild that its very existence was doubted. In the case of the papermakers it was vastly more intense, so that it caused those engaged in it to take steps to restrict and finally abolish it. In the case of the railroads it was still more intense, so that it was not able to survive any length of time, but had to suffer either a temporary or permanent death very soon. Let us state, therefore, as the first law of competition, this: _In any given industry the intensity of competition tends to vary inversely as the number of competing units._ We also saw that among the producers of corn there was virtually no waste of energy from competition. Among the paper makers there was a large waste. And in the case of the railroads, the whole capital invested in the rival railroad, as well as the expense of operating it, was probably a total waste. Let us state, then, for a second law of competition: _In any given industry the waste due to competition tends to vary directly as the intensity._ As an additional example to prove the truth of these laws, take the competition which exists between buyers. In the case of ordinary retail trade the number of buyers is very great, and the competition between them is so moderate that we hardly remember that it exists. It is difficult to see how there could be any waste from this competition among buyers, at least of any amount. Expressed in the language of the laws we have found: The number of competing units is so great that competition is neither intense nor wasteful. From these two laws and a study of the examples we have given, it is easy to deduce a third. We have seen that when competition became very wasteful, monopoly arose; indeed, we have noted the working of this law all through our investigation. The principal cause assigned for the formation of the linseed-oil trust was the waste which intense competition had caused. The third law is, then: _In any given industry the tendency toward the death of competition (monopoly) varies directly with the waste due to competition._ We might now combine these three laws to deduce the fourth law, which is: _In any given industry the tendency toward the death of competition (monopoly) varies inversely with the number of competing units._ But this law is also proved independently. Look back over all the monopolies we have studied, and it will be seen that one of the most important conditions of their success was the small number of competitors. Fifty men could be brought together and organized, and made to bury their feuds and rivalries, when with a thousand the combination would have been impossible. We have seen, in the case of the farmers, how their great number alone has prevented them from forming combinations to restrict the competition among themselves. It should be said that these laws, like all other laws of economics, are not to be taken in a narrow mathematical sense. We cannot study causes and effects dependent on the caprice of men's desires and wills with the minute exactness with which we solve numerical problems. Taken in the broad sense, however, the study we have made in the preceding chapters is sufficient proof of their truth. The common expressions of trade afford still further evidence. We often hear the expression: "A healthy competition." But the very existence of the phrase implies that there may be an unhealthy competition, and if so, what is it? Is it not that competition whose intensity is so great that it causes a large waste of capital and labor in work other than production; whose intensity is so great that, like an animal or a machine working under too great a load, it labors intermittently,--now acting with great intensity and forcing prices far below their normal plane, now pausing in a reaction, when a temporary combination is formed, and allowing prices to spring back as far above the point indicated by the relation of supply and demand; and finally reaching the natural end for unhealthiness--death. In fact, a recent economic writer declares that especially intense competition should be called war, as, indeed, it frequently is called, rather than competition. Looking about us for other causes of variation in the intensity of competition we discover a fifth law: _The intensity of competition tends to vary directly in proportion to the amount of capital required for the operation of each competing unit, especially when the interest on the capital invested forms a large proportion of the cost of production._ Take, for example, the case of a railway line. All the capital invested in it is wasted unless the road is in operation. Hence it will be better to operate the road, so long as receipts are any thing more than the expense of operation, than to abandon it. An enterprise in which no capital is invested will cease operations when receipts do not exceed its expenditure and there is no prospect of betterment. But in the total expense of operating a railroad, a large item is the interest on the capital invested, which is as truly a part of the total cost of carrying the traffic as is the daily labor expended in keeping the road in good repair. (In railway bookkeeping only an arbitrary line can ever be drawn between capital account and operating expenses.) Now, in order to pay operating expenses and fixed charges, railways must secure traffic. We suppose that they are doing this by competition, and that they have not yet combined to form a monopoly. Let us suppose that this competition cuts down receipts to a point where they are just sufficient to pay the whole cost of carriage. In an enterprise in which no capital was invested some of the competitors would be sure to fall out when profits disappeared; but here there is no such chance of relief; and though the competition keeps on until the receipts are only enough to pay the operating expenses, still the road is not abandoned because then the capital invested, in it would be a complete loss. Changes in productive processes often lessen the demand for a line of goods; but the owners of the capital invested in factories and machines for making these goods may often cause them to be continued in operation at a loss rather than lose all that they have invested, and because they hope for better days and a renewal of the demand. For the sixth law of competition we have: _In any given industry the tendency toward the death of competition (monopoly) varies directly with the amount of capital required for each competing unit._ This law is proven in part by the preceding laws; for when a large capital is required for each competing unit, the number of competitors will be small and the tendency toward monopoly will be strong; but it may also be proven independently. Business men, before they form a combination, are certain to ask whether new competitors are likely to enter the field against the combination. Now, as we have seen in very many cases in the preceding chapters, when there is a great amount of capital required, new competitors will be very unlikely to enter the field. If there is but little capital required, they will be very apt to do so, being tempted by the prospect of large profits at the monopoly's prices. But they know that the combination will concentrate its strength to fight them in every way; and if they must invest a great deal of money in buildings, plant, etc., to start operations, they will be apt to think twice before they take the field against the combination. The seventh law of competition is: _In any given industry in which natural agents are necessary, the tendency toward the inequality of competition (monopoly) tends to vary directly with the scarcity of available like natural agents._ The influence of limited natural agents in promoting the growth of monopolies is a matter of the greatest importance. That the law is true, is evident upon slight investigation. For if some especial gift of Nature is a necessity to any industry, and those who are engaged in that industry can secure all the available gifts of Nature of that sort, there is no opportunity for new competitors to enter the field. It is to be noted that in this seventh law we have used in apposition with the term monopoly, the term "inequality of competition" instead of "death of competition," as in the preceding laws. We are now in need of a definition of the term monopoly. Webster defines it as "the sole control over the sale of any line of goods"; Prof. Newcomb says "a monopoly is the ownership or command by one or a limited number of persons of some requisite of production which is not solely a product of human labor"; Sturtevant says "a monopoly is such a control of the supply of any desirable object as will enable the holder to determine its price without appeal to competition." To the first definition we object that it is both narrow and indefinite. The second seems to omit such important classes of monopolies as the combinations to limit competition; and Sturtevant's definition is unscientific in this: Hardly any monopoly exists whose holders can without limit determine the price of its product. If the price continues to rise, competition in some form will appear. Take, for example, the business of transporting goods from New York to San Francisco; if all the railway lines combine to form a monopoly, the competition of ocean steamers via Panama would eventually stop the rise in rates, if no other outside competition stopped it before. The owners of a rich mine have a real monopoly, though they cannot raise the price above a certain point without being undersold by the owners of poorer mines or those more remote from market. Consideration of these facts lead us to construct the following definition: _A monopoly in any industry consists in the control of some advantage over existing or possible competitors by which greater profits can be secured than these competitors can make._ For the law of monopolies we have: _The degree of a monopoly depends upon the amount of advantage which is held over existing or possible competitors._ When the advantage of the monopoly is so great that no other competitor will try to do business in competition with it, we may rightly say that competition is dead. The great share of the monopolies which are based on this seventh law of competition, those due to the control of natural agents, only restrict competition by the attainment of an advantage over their competitors, and do not destroy it. The principal natural agents which are necessary to production, and whose supply may be so limited to cause an appreciable monopoly, are: (1) Land for agricultural purposes; (2) land for purposes of manufacture or commerce; (3) transportation routes, such as mountain passes, room for railway tracks in a city street, or for gas-and water-pipes beneath its surface; (4) natural deposits of minerals and metals; (5) sources of water supply or water power. (The latter is unimportant now compared with a score of years ago, because of the lessened cost of its competitor, steam.) Let us be especially careful not to confound this seventh law of competition with a certain doctrine which is now receiving more and more credence, which is, in brief, that the private ownership of the gifts of Nature used in production should be abolished. The grounds in opposition to this doctrine we will discuss in a later chapter. The law we have stated says nothing of the right or wrong of the private ownership of the gifts of Nature. What it does say is, that when any of these are limited in amount, those who control them are given an advantage over other would-be competitors, which constitutes a monopoly. In considering the natural agents enumerated above, we can easily see the truth of the law. Agricultural lands, the most important of natural agents, are in this country so abundant that their rental is entirely fixed by competition. In England, where they are so much more limited in area, rent is fixed by custom. As regards land for purposes of manufacture or commerce, we have already pointed out the cases in which monopolies are prominent, as also for transportation routes. As regards mineral wealth, deposits of iron are so numerous and widespread that no monopoly has ever yet succeeded in controlling competition in the manufacture of pig-iron to any great extent. But the rarer metals, like copper, tin, nickel, and others, are largely controlled by monopolies. Now, while this seventh law says nothing as to the right or wrong, the expediency or inexpediency of the private ownership of natural wealth, it does follow from it that this private ownership generally constitutes a monopoly, as we have defined it. For of no class of natural agents is it true that their richness and availability are absolutely equal. Those competitors who have the richest and best natural resources to work with have an advantage over their competitors which is essentially a monopoly. Thus the owners of fertile lands near a large city have an advantage over the owners of less fertile lands far removed from markets, which is of a monopolistic nature. If any one doubts this, let him say how this case is logically different from that of the ownership of a mine of native copper so near to New York City that the cost of laying it down in the market there will be half what it is from any existing mine; or, for a second case, take the New York Central railway, which has the control of such a valuable pathway between the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic seaboard that it has an advantage over all competitors in the business of transportation between those points. We have now to turn our attention to other variations in competition besides the variation in intensity. We need to distinguish the different species of competition. That competition which is in daily operation in most branches of industry we may call _actual_ competition. That competition which would spring up in any industry in case an increase in profits called it out, we may call _potential_ competition. The third class is instanced in the letting to the highest bidder a franchise for city water or gas-works, or street-car lines. Here competition acts at a single time to fix the price for perhaps twenty years. We may call this, for want of a better name, _franchise_ competition. It possesses the evident advantage that it avoids both the waste of competition and the fluctuation of prices. It has the disadvantage that, unless the owners of the franchise are held strictly to their contract, quality is apt to be sacrificed; also that if the purchase is for a term of years, cheapening in processes may result in undue profits to the franchise holders. The discussion of this matter, however, does not properly belong to this chapter. Arranging in their logical order the laws of competition which we have found, we have the following diagram: In any given industry the tendency toward monopoly increases: (1.) As the waste due to competition increases. The waste of competition increases in proportion to its intensity. (1.) The intensity of competition increases as the number of competing units decreases. (2.) The intensity of competition increases with the amount of capital required for each competing unit. (2.) As the number of competing units decreases. (3.) As the amount of capital required for each competing unit increases. (4.) As the number of available natural agents decreases. The preceding diagram sets plainly before us the three great salient causes from which have grown the long list of monopolies under which our civilization labors. First, the supply of natural agents of which new competitors in any industry may avail themselves has been largely exhausted, or has been gathered up by existing monopolies to render their position more secure; the world has not the natural resources to develop that she had a century ago. Second, the concentration of all the productive industries, except agriculture, into great establishments, while it has enormously lessened the cost of production, has so reduced the number of competing units that a monopoly is the inevitable final result. Last, the enormous capital required for the establishment and maintenance of new competing units tends to fortify the monopoly in its position and render the escape of the public from its grasp practically impossible. These terse statements contain exactly the kernel of potent truth for which we are seeking; MONOPOLIES OF EVERY SORT ARE AN INEVITABLE RESULT FROM CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. The vital importance of this truth cannot be over-estimated. For so long as we refuse to recognize it, so long as we attempt to stop the present evils of monopoly by trying to add a feeble _one_ to the number of competing units, or by trying to legislate against special monopolies, we are only building a temporary dam to shut out a flood which can only be controlled at the fountain head. The facts of history testify to the truth of this law. Monopolies were never so abundant as to-day, never so powerful, never so threatening; and with unimportant exceptions they have all sprung up with our modern industrial development. The last fifteen years have seen a greater industrial advancement than did the thirty preceding, but they have also witnessed a more than proportionate growth of monopolies. How worse than foolish, then, is the short-sightedness that ascribes monopolies to the personal wickedness of the men who form them. It is as foolish to decry the wickedness of trust makers as it is to curse the schemes of labor monopolists. Each is working unconsciously in obedience to a natural law; and the only reason that almost every man is not engaged in forming or maintaining a similar monopoly is that he is not placed in similar circumstances. Away, then, with the pessimism which declares that the prevalence of monopolies evidences the decay of the nobler aspirations of humanity. The monopolies of to-day are a natural outgrowth of the laws of modern competition, and they are as actually a result of the application of steam, electricity, and machinery to the service of man, as are our factories and railways. Great evils though they may have become, there is naught of evil omen in them to make us fear for the ultimate welfare of our liberties. To the practical mind, however, the question at once occurs, what light have we gained toward the proper method of counteracting this evil? Can it be true that the conditions of modern civilization necessitates our subjection to monopolies, and that all our vaunted progress in the arts of peace only brings us nearer to an inevitable and deplorable end, in which a few holders of the strongest monopolies shall ride rough shod over the industrial liberties of the vast mass of humanity? Were this true, perhaps we had better take a step backward; relinquish the factory for the workshop, the railway for the stage-coach. "Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide spoil with the proud." But the law we have found commits us to no such fate. We cannot, indeed, abolish the causes of monopolies. We cannot create new gifts of Nature, and it would be nonsense to attempt to bring about an increase in the number of competing units and a decrease in the capitalization of each by exchanging our factories and works of to-day for the workshops of our grandfathers. But while monopolies are inevitable, our _subjection_ to them is not inevitable; and when the public once comes to fully understand that _the remedy for the evils of monopoly is not abolition, but control_, we shall have taken a great step toward the settlement of our existing social evils. To discuss the details of the remedy, so far as it can be done in a volume of this sort, belongs properly to a later chapter. Before undertaking it, however, it seems well to devote some further attention to the evils which the attempt to abolish monopolies and adhere to the ideal system of universal competition has brought upon us, and to make, also, some further study of the general evils due to monopoly. XII. THE EVILS DUE TO MONOPOLY AND INTENSE COMPETITION. It is a strange thing when we come to analyze the various social evils which demand our attention, and which every true man longs to cure, to find how great a proportion can be traced back to the one great evil of faulty competition. As a preliminary to a survey of these evils, in order that we may understand the necessity that all good men and true should exert themselves in applying the remedy, let us see just what conditions of our industrial society we should seek to work toward. What is the theoretical perfection of human industry? Probably all thinking men, whatever their belief and practice, will acquiesce in the proposition that the end we should aim to secure is "the largest good to the greatest number." As we are discussing here only economic questions, this means that the end to be sought is that the largest number of people should have secured to them the greatest possible amount of the necessaries and comforts of life; or, more simply, that the total of human happiness to be derived from the world's production of wealth should be the greatest possible. Now for our present purpose we may assume that since all men desire wealth, the greater its production, the greater will be the number of human desires gratified. From this it follows that our social organization should be such as to increase to the greatest possible degree the world's stock of wealth. There is no easier or safer way of studying questions of economics than to consider the community as a unit, and see what is for the interest of the people as a whole; what conduces most to the "common wealth"; and if we do this, whenever the question concerns production alone, the task is simple, because the interests of the people as a whole are judged in the same way as the interests of a single person. Whatever tends to increase the total amount of wealth in the world, therefore, benefits the community as a whole; and whatever diminishes the supply is an injury. All work of every sort which tends to aid in the economical production of wealth and its transfer to the consumer is a benefit to the community; and any thing which destroys wealth, lessens its production, or hinders men from exerting themselves to produce it, is an economic injury. What, then, are we to say of the condition known as over-production? Is it not a fact that some lines of industry are so overdone that the production is far in excess of the demand, and is not this an evil rather than a benefit? Do not periods of business depression occur when all industries stagnate for want of a market for their goods? The true answer to this question is: Over-production is not a fault of _production_, but of _distribution_. It is true that, in special industries, a surplus of production sometimes occurs, due to over-stimulation, or too rapid growth; but over-production as commonly spoken of, refers to a general state of trade, in which demand for all sorts of goods seems to fall far below the market supply. But this lack of demand is not due to lack of desire. The desires of men are always in excess of their abilities to supply them; it follows, therefore, that the condition known as over-production consists in a lack of _ability_ to purchase goods rather than in a lack of _desire_ to purchase them. This lack of ability has evidently to do with the distribution of wealth rather than its production. While it is easy to formulate laws to govern the theoretically perfect production of wealth, to whose justice all men will consent, we cannot go far in the details of the ideal distribution of wealth without reaching points upon which the views of different parties are diametrically opposed. Some foundation principles, however, let us state, believing that in their truth the great majority of men will concur. In the chapter on the theory of competition we saw that, if we conceived the results of the labor of the whole community to be placed in a common storehouse and gave to each man the right to draw from it an amount just equal to the benefit derived from the goods which he had placed within it, the ideal of a perfect system of distribution of wealth would be realized. No human judgment, however, is, or ever can be, competent to measure the exact industrial benefits which each person confers upon the community at large. We must inevitably permit men to measure the result of their own work by securing for it such an amount of the results of others' work as they can induce them to give in exchange. But while we cannot measure exactly the benefit which each person confers, we can see cases in which the reward received is manifestly out of all proportion to the benefit conferred. Consider the fortunes which have been accumulated by some of our Midases of the present decade. It is quite certain that the benefits which Cornelius Vanderbilt, for instance, conferred on the community by his enterprise and business sagacity, by his work in opening new fields of industry, forming new channels for commerce, etc., were so valuable that he honestly earned the right to enjoy a large fortune. It is equally certain that a great part of his gains had nothing whatever to do with any benefit conferred upon the community, and that the fortune of $100,000,000 or so which he accumulated was an example of inequitable distribution of the products of the world's industry. Stating this in the form of a general principle, we should say: _The amount of wealth which any man receives should bear some approximate relation to the benefit which he confers upon the world._ We have already stated that, by the law of supply and demand, the rewards of each worker are regulated in theory even more perfectly in accordance with our ideas of liberty than they could be on the basis of actual benefit conferred. For it is inconceivable that people would submit to pay for what was beneficial to them instead of what they desired. A man who prefers to purchase wines instead of books with his surplus money would think it a great injustice if he were prevented from doing as he preferred with his own. But so long as every one is at liberty to use his income in buying whatever he desires most, _demand_--the willingness to pay money for the gratification of the desire--will exist, and so long as demand exists it will be met by a supply, furnished by those who are desirous of money and what it will bring. It is inconceivable, then, that any juster arrangement than this law of supply and demand can ever be practicable for regulating the compensation of each individual. The man who can drive a locomotive will receive larger wages than the man who shovels the earth to form its pathway, because the supply of men competent to drive an engine is small in proportion to the number of men who are wanted for that work, while almost any man can shovel dirt. Let us state, then, for our second principle: _The amount of wealth which any man receives should depend on the ratio between the demand which exists for his services and the supply of those able to render like service._ Farther than these statements of the ideal principles governing the economical production and equitable distribution of wealth we need not go at present. Let us turn now to examine the result of a violation of these principles in some of the crying evils of the present day which are wholly or in part due to the growth of monopoly and the waste of competition. Every candid man will acknowledge that the enormous congestion of wealth in a few hands which exists to-day is a danger to be feared. We have had it constantly dinned in our ears that in this free land the ups and downs of fortune were such that the rich man of to-day was apt to be the beggar to-morrow; also that almost invariably a rich man's sons were reckless spendthrifts. These things, aided by the abolition of primogeniture and entails, it was said, were to prevent the growth of a moneyed aristocracy in this country. The propounders of this amiable theory never explained how the community received reparation for the destruction of wealth which the spendthrift sons were to carry on; but so long as the theory has failed to work in practice, that does not matter so much. A few years ago it was a favorite occupation of newspaper paragraphers to estimate the Gould and Vanderbilt fortunes; but lately they seem to have given them up as beyond the limits of even their robust guessing abilities. Some idea of the latter's fortune may be gained, however, by realizing the fact that the Vanderbilt railway system now has a total extent of nearly 12,000 miles, the total value of which can hardly be less than one thousand millions of dollars. Probably not less than half of the securities of these companies are owned by the Vanderbilt family, and it is well known that their investments are by no means confined to railways. The important fact is, that this fortune grows so fast now that it is sure to increase; and will double itself every fifteen or twenty years, because all that its owners can spend is but a drop in the bucket toward using up their income. But this fortune, while the largest which is still under one name, is but one of many enormous ones. The names of Gould, Flagler, Astor, Rockefeller, Stanford, Huntington, and a host of others follow close after the Vanderbilts. In the days of our grandfathers, millionaires were no more plentiful than hundred-millionaires are to-day. We have next to show the present and prospective evils which result from this congestion of wealth. The first and most obvious one is its injury to the remainder of the people of the country, by the diversion from them of wealth which they have rightfully earned and which they would receive were it not for the tax of monopoly. It is obvious that a certain amount of wealth is annually produced by the industry of the country from which the whole wants of the country must be supplied. This amount may be greater, indeed, when a Gould or a Flagler or a Crocker directs the enterprise; but for the most part it is indisputable that the owners of these colossal fortunes have made them, not by any stimulus of the production of wealth by their owners, but by a diversion of the produced wealth in the general distribution from others' pockets to their own. In short, all other men are poorer that these many times millionaires may be richer. To show how these fortunes have in many cases been obtained, I cannot do better than to quote a writer not at all likely to err by undue severity to our millionaires, as he is himself the president of a railway system a thousand miles in extent: The great majority of the phenomenal fortunes of the day are the result of what may be called lucky gambling.... Man is a gambling animal by nature, and modern methods have enormously developed both its facilities and its temptations and have opened large fields in which gambling is not held to be disreputable. Under such stimulus is it wonderful that its growth has been phenomenal? Wall street is its head-quarters, and millions upon millions of dollars are accumulated there to meet the wants of the players. Railroad stocks are its favorite cards to bet upon, for their valuation is liable to constant fluctuation on account of weather, crops, new combinations, wars, strikes, deaths, and legislation. They can also be easily affected by personal manipulations.... Money makes money, and money in great masses has its attractive power increased. The aspect of phenomenal fortunes, therefore, is a social problem of some importance. Their manner of growth and their manner of use are to be observed, and what restrictions, if any, should be placed on their accumulation should be considered.[5] [5] "Railway Practice." By E. P. Alexander, President Central Railroad and Banking Co. of Georgia. The fact pointed out by General Alexander in the above quotation is one which is far too lightly appreciated. The evils of railway management by which the owners of the stocks and bonds of the company are victimized to enrich stock speculators are much too complex and numerous to be described here. The state of affairs can be briefly summed up, however, with the statement that our present system of conducting corporate enterprises results inevitably in the gravitation of their ownership into the hands of the holders of large fortunes. The railways of the country are an instance in point. Time was when the stocks and bonds of railways were owned by people of small means all over the country. But after many severe lessons in the shape of stocks wiped out, and bond interest scaled down, these small holders were taught the folly of investing their savings in business over which they had practically no control, and thus placing them at the mercy of irresponsible corporate officers. Broadly speaking, the railway property of the country is owned by men worth their millions; and the small holdings are being rapidly absorbed every day. But the case is not true of railways alone. Telegraph lines, telephone, and electric light plants, our mines, and to a large extent our factories, which were once held by private owners, are now controlled by corporations whose shares are quoted on the exchanges and are consequently subject to a forced variation, dictated according as "bull" or "bear" has the ascendancy. And when the ownership of a property is once brought into this channel, it is no longer a suitable investment for the man of small means. It is the prey of men who practically make bets as to what its future price will be, and manipulate the price, if possible, to win their bets. If it is ever again held for investment simply, it is when it is locked in the safe of some modern Croesus. We have shown now the extent to which the congestion of wealth has gone. We have shown that other men are poorer that these men may be richer. We have explained that these great fortunes have been made, not by legitimate enterprise, but largely by "lucky gambling." And finally we have seen how the transfer of each enterprise to the control of stock speculators adds it eventually to some already overgrown fortune. The connection with the subject of the present volume is obvious. The cotton-seed oil mills of the South, once held by private owners, are now in the hands of a trust whose certificates are quoted on the stock-exchanges, and are held only by men of large capital, or by stock gamblers. This is a typical example of the change which is everywhere occurring. Private enterprise gives way to the stock company, and that in turn gives way to the trust. The salient fact, then, we may express in similar terms to those of our first law of competition, as follows: _The congestion of wealth tends to increase inversely with the number of competing units._ The facts we have stated make it impossible for the greater monopolies to defend themselves, on the ground that their profits inure to the benefit of any great number of people. But this is not an innocuous state of affairs. It is one of serious injustice and evil. The workman who struggles hard to save a hundred dollars a year can receive only a paltry three dollars and a half of interest or less, if he deposits it in a saving-bank. But the capitalist who is clearing a hundred thousand a year may make twice or thrice that interest from his investments. In short, the charge is: That monopoly and intense competition, with the variation in price which they cause, have shut out the small capitalists of the country from the ownership of the most profitable sorts of property; and by confining them to other lines, have decreased their possible income from their investments. A further evil resulting from the congestion of wealth is what is commonly spoken of as over-production. We are confronted of late years with the strange spectacle of factories and mills shut down for months at a time, of markets which, at various times, are glutted with every sort of commodity. All sorts of causes are given; all sorts of remedies are suggested and tried. Where is the true one? With the exception of a few special cases, the fault is not that there are no people who want the goods. Probably ninety-nine families out of every hundred would buy more if they had the money to buy with. In many cases the lack of money to buy with is due to the fact that the bread-winners are out of employment because of the glutted markets and idle mills. In this way the evil tends to perpetuate itself and grow worse. Now combine this fact with the fact that the holders of monopolies are in the receipt of incomes so great that, in many cases, they are quite unable to spend them. Also, that this income is largely locked up to wait the chance of profitable investment, or is used in speculation. Is it not obvious, now, that the reason why people cannot afford to purchase the goods, with which the storehouses are glutted, is that too large a proportion of profits has been diverted to swell fortunes already enormous? Have we not in this way accounted for a large amount, at least, of the over-production which is throwing out of employment thousands of workmen, rendering useless a vast amount of valuable capital, and affecting from time to time the business of the whole country with a veritable paralysis? The facts bear out this theory. For, at many times when producers in every industry are complaining of dull times because people who buy have no money to spend, there is an abundance of money to be had for investment. Fortunately, the evil seen from this aspect must, to a certain extent, be but a temporary one, and will tend to work its own cure. For as the world's stock of invested wealth continues to grow, there is less opportunity for its profitable investment in improving undeveloped natural resources. The greater portion of our wealth we save and invest, the faster will the rate of interest tend downward. But, as this occurs, the operators of mills and mines have to pay less out of their receipts as interest on their borrowed capital, and can, therefore, pay more to their workmen. There is another way in which monopoly works to cause over-production, with its attendant evils. Suppose a trust is formed in some manufacturing industry, where the working capacity is just equal to supplying the demand. The first work of the trust is to raise the prices perhaps 20, 30, or 40 per cent. Of course this causes a falling off in the demand, and the trust has to shut down some of its mills to ward off over-production. The true cause of over-production in this case is, that the prices are not in equilibrium with the relation between supply and demand. Let prices come down, and the demand will increase. The working of this special case gives us an idea of the way in which general over-production is caused. For it is well known that monopolies have raised the prices and reduced the consumption not of one, but of hundreds of articles. If the men who are made idle by the over-production in these industries flock into other occupations to secure work, they reduce wages there; so that, in any case, their purchasing power is reduced, and this tends to perpetuate and increase the evil. Of course it is not pretended to claim that all industrial depressions have been due to over-production, or the local congestion of the world's income. But that a large part of it may be justly laid to this cause, seems to be beyond question. We have shown that the congestion of wealth is very largely due to the growth of monopoly, and we have discussed the more immediate evils that result from this congestion of wealth. But when we attempt to describe the evils and abuses which follow close after, as a result of the power which monopoly has placed in the hands of a few, we may well pause at the task. The whole array of perplexing social problems comes before us, and we realize more and more what a curse monopoly has become. The philanthropist tells us that poverty, and all the distresses that follow in its wake, are largely due to the fact that our workingmen under present conditions _must_ live from hand to mouth, _must_ rely on charity for aid in every emergency, and _must_, therefore, decrease in manliness and self-reliance and the ambition to better themselves, as the practical impossibility of success is comprehended. Good men are lamenting because the Church has, to a great degree, lost its hold on the laboring classes, and are casting about on all sides for a remedy. Will they ever find one as long as the wage-worker carries in his bosom a rankling sense of injury done him? Injury which he feels that the Church is merely seeking to drug with charity instead of wishing to cure it with justice? There is great need that the Church, not alone by the sermons of its most enlightened thinkers, like Dr. Heber Newton, but by the daily practice of the rank and file of its membership, should recognize, as it never yet has done, the great principles of human fraternity, and move intelligently and earnestly to remedy the great evils that menace us. Even the evil of intemperance can be traced back to a connection with monopoly. Who shall blame the tired laborer, if after a week with sixty hours of unremitting toil, he takes refuge from the dreariness and lassitude of physical exhaustion, the hopelessness of ambition-quenched life, and perhaps the discomforts and disquiet of the place he calls home, in a long draught of that which does, for the time, create in him an image of exhilaration, strength, self-respect, and manhood? It is but an image, indeed, and to all but the victim it is a caricature; but when a man cannot hope for the reality, to only imagine for a brief hour that he is indeed a king of men, and that care and woe and degradation are no longer his lot, is a refuge not to be despised. There is indeed a class of philanthropists who say, with some truth, that the laboring classes as a whole have now more than they will spend for their own good, and declare that higher wages means merely more spent on sprees and debasing sports, of different sorts but universally harmful. On the other side, the wise philanthropists who are trying to help their fellow-men in that best of all ways, by teaching them to rely on themselves, testify that their efforts to make men independent are largely hampered because it is so extremely difficult for a workingman to live in any other way than from hand to mouth, especially in our large cities. The true solution seems to be that all these reforms must go hand in hand. We must teach men how to make nobler uses of their incomes and themselves, while we endeavor to bring about reforms that shall give them greater comforts and more leisure to use for either self-improvement or self-debasement. Much more might be said of the indirect effects which result from the taxation which monopolies inflict upon the community for their own profit; but they are now so generally realized and understood that we can devote our time more profitably to the investigation of other evils. Under the ideal system of competition which we studied in Chapter X., we found that all occupations were competing with each other; so that if, from any cause, one calling became especially profitable, men would flock to it and bring down the profits to a normal point. Monopolies have seriously interfered with this important and beneficent law. How often do we hear the complaint of the great difficulties that beset young men on their first entrance to business or industrial life in securing a situation. The monopolized industries shut out new competitors by every means in their power. The trade-unions limit the number of apprentices which shall be allowed to learn their trade each year. The result is, first, a most deplorable tendency to idleness on the part of young men just at the time when they should be most active; and, second, a still larger increase of men in the professions and non-monopolized callings, tending to still further increase the competition in those callings, where returns are already inferior to what they should be. Surely, we must begin to appreciate how vitally important to every person in the land is this matter of competition and monopoly. The evils which we have thus far considered pertain to the distribution of wealth. Let us now turn our attention to the production of wealth. Our second law of competition stated that the waste due to competition varied directly as its intensity. We have frequently referred to this waste of competition; let us now inquire more fully concerning its amount and effect. In the first place, however, let us settle the question, once for all, that waste or destruction of wealth of any sort is an economic injury to the community. We have, indeed, already explained this in the first paragraphs of the chapter; but while all authorities on economics agree on this point, the general public is still seriously infected with the fallacy that waste, destruction, and unprofitable enterprises are beneficial because they furnish employment to labor. If this were merely a theory, we could afford to ignore it; but the trouble is that it is acted upon, and works untold evil and damage to the world. To take a typical case, people reason that damage done by flood or fire or storm is not a total loss because employment will be furnished to many in repairing and rebuilding after the devastation. They do not stop to reflect that so much wealth has been wiped out of the world, and that _instead of the destruction furnishing so much additional employment, it has only changed the direction of the employment_. For money nowadays is always spent, either directly, by its owners, or by some one to whom he lends it. And wherever money is spent it furnishes employment. Therefore, if the money which was used in repairing and rebuilding had not been required for that work, it would have been spent in some other direction and furnished employment to labor there. Understanding, then, that the economic interests of the community are best served when each one of its members exerts his energies with the greatest result and with the least waste in producing wealth, let us see to what extent intense competition and monopolies have violated this law. In his interesting book entitled "Questions of the Day," Prof. Richard P. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, refers to the building of two great railways with closely paralleled roads already in operation, the Nickel Plate, and the New York, West Shore and Buffalo, and says: "It is estimated that the money wasted by these two single attempts at competition amounts to $200,000,000. Let the reader reflect for a moment what this means. It will be admitted that, taking city and country together, comfortable homes can be constructed for an average of $1,000 each. Two hundred thousand homes could be constructed for the sum wasted, and two hundred thousand homes means homes for one million people. I suppose it is a very moderate estimate to place the amount wasted in the construction of useless railroads at $1,000,000,000, which, on the basis of our previous calculations, would construct homes for five millions of people. But this is probably altogether too small an estimate of even the direct waste resulting from the application of a faulty political economy to practical life. When the indirect losses are added, the result is something astounding, for the expense of a needless number of trains and of what would otherwise be an excessively large permanent force of employés must be added. Of course, nothing much better than guesswork is possible, but I believe that the total loss would be sufficient to provide a greater portion of the people of the United States with homes." But it seems quite possible to make a closer estimate of the wealth wasted by the construction of unneeded railways than the general one above. There are now, in round numbers, 158,000 miles of railway in the United States. The two lines named above have a total extent of nearly 1,000 miles; and while they are the most flagrant examples of paralleling in the country, there is no small number of other roads in various parts of the country which, except for their competition with roads already constructed, would never have been built. Considering the fact that the paralleling has been done in regions where the traffic was heaviest and where the cost of construction was greatest, it seems a conservative estimate to say that 5 per cent. of the capital invested in railways in the United States has been spent in paralleling existing roads. But the total capital invested in the railways of the United States is about $9,200,000,000, 5 per cent. of which is $460,000,000. It is also to be remembered that this 7,500 miles of needless road has to be maintained and operated at an average expense per mile per annum of $4,381, or a total annual cost of nearly $33,000,000. Taking Prof. Ely's estimate of $1,000 as the cost at which an average size family can be provided with a comfortable home, and we find that the cost of these unneeded railways would have provided 460,000 homes, sufficient to accommodate 2,300,000 people. Say that 3 per cent. of the cost of these homes is required annually to keep them in repair, then this could be furnished by the $33,000,000 now paid for the operating expenses of needless railways, and an annual margin of about $19,000,000 would be left, or enough to provide each year homes for nearly 100,000 more people in addition. Of course, this is merely a concrete example of what possible benefits we have been deprived by wasting our money in building needless railways. As a matter of fact, the money we have spent on unprofitable railways, as well as those totally useless, has wrought us an amount of damage far in excess of their actual cost. It is generally agreed by financiers that the periods of industrial depression during the past score of years have been largely due to excessive railway building. For in a period of active railway construction, roads are built whose only excuse for existence is that they will encroach upon the territory of some rival. The capital invested fails to make a return. The loss of income which ensues decreases the purchasing power of the community; and this combines with the sudden loss of business confidence caused by the failure of the enterprise to bring about a general panic and crash which affects the whole community; and by checking enterprise and industry, damages the country ten times the amount of the original loss. The waste of competition is by no means confined to railways. The Sugar Refiners' trust has raised the price of sugar and thus reduced its consumption so much that they have permanently closed several of their factories. Yet Claus Spreckels is now building a great refinery in Philadelphia, the output of which is to compete with the trust. All this capital invested in that which is not needed by the community is an injury to the public. The French Copper syndicate so raised the price of copper that it became profitable to work old mines of poor ore, which under ordinary circumstances could not be worked at all at a profit. Capital was expended in opening and refitting these mines, and in preparing them for working; while other mines, able to produce the metal at much less cost, were reducing their output because of their contract with the trust. In various cities of the country, millions have been wasted in tearing up the streets to bury the unneeded mains of competing gas companies. The electric light competitors are stringing their wires over our heads and beneath our feet, and by covering the same district twice or three times, double and treble the attendant evils as well as the cost. The waste due to intense competition in trade may be avoidable or unavoidable; but it is certainly of enormous magnitude, although the fact of its being a waste is still little appreciated. The waste due to labor monopolies is much better understood. The strikes which paralyze industry and send want and distress in ever widening circles are universally recognized to be a waste of wealth whose annual amount is enormous. The cost to employers and workmen of the strikes in the State of New York in 1886 and 1887, was $8,507,449. Reckoning from this as a basis, it is probable that the total annual cash cost of strikes in the United States is twenty or twenty-five million dollars. The results of these strikes in decreasing the purchasing power of employés and thus causing overproduction, and in discouraging enterprise and increasing the cost of capital, serve to spread their effect throughout the whole industrial community and thus cause an actual loss and injury many times that borne by the parties directly engaged. It is thus evident that the waste due to the intense competition which the concentration of productive enterprise has brought about in modern times is a matter of startling proportions. We are wasting and destroying wealth all the time sufficient to go a long way towards abolishing all the poverty in our midst; and the blame for this state of affairs we are now able to place where it belongs. Surely with a full appreciation of these evils, every honest and patriotic man must be willing to use every endeavor to strike at the root of the evil. The public indeed is, and has long been, a unit in its opposition to monopoly; but in endeavoring to defeat monopoly it has taken just the course which could give no permanent gain. Cities have beggared themselves to aid competing railway lines only to see them consolidated eventually with the monopoly which it was expected to defeat. The multitude regard Claus Spreckels as a benefactor--and will till he forces the Sugar Trust to divide their 25 per cent. profits with him in return for the control of his refinery. It is no benefit to us if in steering away from the Scylla of monopoly, we be wrecked on the Charybdis of wasteful competition. We have been trying for a score of years now to defeat monopolies by creating competition; but in spite of a universal public sentiment in favor of the reform, and notwithstanding the millions of wealth which we have poured out like water to accomplish this object, monopolies to-day are far more numerous and powerful than ever before. The people who are groaning under their burden of oppression are anxious for relief. The remedy they have so long and faithfully tried to apply has but made a bad matter worse; and it is small wonder that, despairing of other relief, they are adopting false and injurious plans for bettering themselves which serve merely to extend the monopoly policy into all industrial affairs. We are threatened with a state of society in which most of the principal industries will be wholly given over to monopoly. Those in each occupation will band together to secure the greatest returns for themselves at the expense of all other men; while the few occupations which cannot thus combine in a monopoly--farming, and the different sorts of unskilled labor--will be filled to overflowing with those crowded out of other callings. Those who follow them will do so only because the monopolized occupations are closed to them. Thus will our farming population degenerate into a peasantry more miserable than that of Europe, and our laborers be ground down to a level lower than they have yet known. Is there a probability that such a state of affairs will come to pass? There might be if the public were not keenly alive to the curse of monopoly. But as it is, the greater danger is that through ignorance a wrong course may be adopted for the cure of our present evils, which will aggravate instead of curing them. XIII. AMELIORATING INFLUENCES. If pure selfishness were the only motive influencing the masses of mankind, the evils which we have considered in the preceding chapter would be wholly unbearable. All men would be waging an industrial warfare with each other in their greed for gain, just as the barons of feudal times fought to satisfy their thirst for power and possessions; and as motive is the great force which determines character, we would be, as far as moral excellence is concerned, in the same category as the uncivilized savages. Fortunately for the happiness of the race, there are important influences at work counteracting, modifying and ameliorating the social evils that threaten us. These influences are not cures for these evils, though they are so considered by very many people. But they are very important palliatives. They are certainly of inestimable value in the lack of real remedies; but it is better to consider them as palliatives merely; for necessary, as they are and always will be, to soften and relieve the ruggedness of human laws and human administration of law, in the present condition of humanity they cannot effect a cure of the evils which burden us. The first of these palliatives has a purely selfish origin. It arises from the desire of the managers of every monopoly to make the greatest possible profit from its operations. Let us take, for example, a street railway monopoly which is at liberty to charge such rates of fare as it chooses and which has no competitors. If it fixes its fare at 10 cents, very many people will prefer to walk or take some other mode of conveyance, who, if the fare was at 5 cents, would patronize the road. Thus it may very likely happen that 5-cent fares will yield it the greatest net income. It is often said that it is competition which has brought our rates of railroad transportation down to their present low point. While this is largely true, it is also true that the tendency to foster the growth of traffic by making a low tariff has been a large factor in bringing rates down to a reasonable point. Another example of this principle's operation is in the case of monopolies protected by the patent laws. In this case the collection of only a moderate royalty will generally result in greater profits to the inventor than he would secure by exacting a large fee, because of the greatly increased sales in the former case. It should not be understood, however, that this principle has its only application in cases similar to the two mentioned. There is hardly an industry, monopolized or competitive, into which it does not enter to effect important results. It is to be noted, however, that it is least effective where the demand for the monopolized article is least sensitive to a variation in price. This fact should be considered by those who are fond of arguing that this principle alone is always sufficient to prevent monopolies from doing much harm. While it is powerful in the case of such monopolies as we have mentioned, where the demand for the commodity furnished varies greatly with the price, in the case of the great copper trust or of the quinine trust or of any monopoly controlling the great staples of human consumption, it seems plain that it can have little effect. Nor do we need to base our proof that this principle is not a sufficient remedy upon this ground alone. Grant it to be true that a certain monopoly makes the greatest net profit when its rates or prices are at a certain point; then will it not be apt to set them slightly above that point, where they will give nearly the same profit with a considerable decrease in the volume of business transacted and in the corresponding labor and responsibility? And, again, the point where it makes the greatest net profit is considerably above the point where it is of the greatest possible benefit to the community at large. This latter end is attained when it uses its facilities to their full capacity for the benefit of the public. The rates should be fixed at such a point that this full capacity will be utilized, or as much higher as may be necessary to pay the monopoly a fair profit on its operations. This influence just considered has its origin in the selfishness of men. The second, and by far the most important influence tending to ameliorate the evils due to monopolies and intense competition arises from that essentially noble trait of human character whose province it is to seek the welfare of others before that of self. It is not to be wondered at that the large benevolence of our noblest Christian thinkers rebels against the inflexible laws of competition, or rather at their stern application to modern conditions of life. Under our social system, indeed, each man is striving to do his utmost to benefit his fellow-men, but only so far as it benefits himself. Christianity goes far beyond this. It teaches the Fraternity of Man, the Fatherhood of God, and thus the duty of all men to care for and love their brothers' happiness and welfare. It is in accord with the noblest and most exalted desires of the human soul. It teaches a man to seek to benefit others for their own sake, not for the sake of the reflex benefit on himself. The burden of Christ's sermon on the mount was that golden rule of action, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them"; and the whole of his teachings glow with the spirit of fraternity; the strong bearing the burdens of the weak; the rich cast down and the poor exalted; brother sharing with brother, according to their needs. We are accustomed to make ourselves complaisant with the reflection that these were figurative expressions, and not meant as literal commands. But if we consider candidly, we must confess that if it is the spirit of its Master's commands which the Church means to follow, it is very far, as a body, from reaching up to their full import. The love for one's fellow-men which Christ taught was certainly meant to be expressed in great, noble acts of brotherly kindness. Consider the want, the suffering, the distress, the misfortune, the inequality by which a thousand families have hard work and scanty fare while one revels in luxury. Are these thing repugnant to the spirit of Christianity, or not? Every one knows that they are. It is because Christian men in these days are prone to follow their own ease in common with the rest of the world, and are accustomed to make their Christian code of morals to fit that which public opinion declares to be sufficiently advanced, that Christianity as a remedy for social evils has fallen into disrepute with the laboring classes. But men, both in and out of the Church, who are better informed as to the grand and noble spirit that lies at its foundation, are coming to look more and more toward Christianity as the only deliverance from the evils that threaten us. Our social system, say the devout among these men, is based on the selfish desires of men, their wish to get the most for themselves with the least service to their fellow-men. It is inconceivable that a system founded on any thing less than the noblest attributes of humanity can be intended as a permanent basis for society. The system founded on competition was adapted to the conditions of men during the formative period of civilization: but modern inventions, processes, and methods are revealing a strange want of elasticity in its action. It is leading us to such grave evils that men everywhere are looking for an escape from it. We are brought face to face with the fact that the law of competition, the cruelly terse "survival of the fittest," was never meant to control the wondrously intricate relations of the men of the coming centuries. And if selfishness is not to control, it is because unselfishness is to reign in its stead. It is because there will grow up in the hearts of men a fraternal love, such as the world has not yet seen, which will make them gladly share a common inheritance with each other, as they do a common Fatherhood. Men will then labor for others' welfare as now; but each with the thought of others' benefit, not of his own. Nor are these men alone in their belief. Earnest thinkers outside of the Church, who are familiar with the evils which intense competition and extortionate monopoly are constantly pushing into our notice, discern a tendency in our social organism to pulsate with stronger and more rapid beats in its convulsions of strike and boycott and commercial crisis. And in these mighty vibrations, like the swing of a gigantic pendulum, there is danger that it may swing so hard and so far as to break its controlling bonds and leave humanity in chaos. Anarchy means more than the reign of individualism. It means such a ruin of the world's wealth, the storehouses and fields and factories which supply its wants, that nine tenths of the population of the globe would be swept off its face by actual starvation. Some social organism there must be if our civilization is to continue. What can adjust the delicate relations of man to man when the bond of selfishness which holds us together breaks? There are many men, even now, whose greatest desire and strongest purpose is to benefit their fellow-men; and if we can extend and strengthen this noble principle so that it will govern the great mass of humanity, why may we not cease to measure and bargain and weigh with our brother men? Such is the argument for what we may appropriately call Christian communism. Who shall say what shall be possible with a new and nobler generation of men? When the great mass of the race has Altruism for its governing motive, then it may be possible to use that trait of character as the basis of industrial society. But to-day the governing motives of mankind are largely selfish. Society must govern men in their dealings with each other, not by arbitrary force but by their inner motives of action. When men at large begin to heartily desire to benefit others more than themselves, then the system of selfish competition will begin to disappear, and the system of fraternal devotion will arise to take its place. This will come about naturally. It will be an effect which can only be brought about by producing the cause. When Christianity shall have so regenerated mankind that its governing motives are noble and generous, then the social problems we are discussing, as well as many others, will be forever happily solved. Every one will say, God speed the attempt to implant such noble motives in the breasts of men; but we recognize at the same time the vast change which must be wrought before mankind at large will reach this high standard; and in the centuries which will be required to effect this, we must have other forces to govern society. Thus, while not denying the possibility that the Christian principle of Altruism may be the final solution of the problem of society, it seems best for us to regard it at the present day as what it is,--an influence tending to smooth over the inequalities and soften the asperities of our social system, and to transform the warfare of competition into a peaceable and friendly emulation. It is not easy to overestimate the valuable work which this Christian principle of human fraternity is thus doing at the present day. It is recognized in many ways so common that we cease to think of them as what they are--expressions of the common brotherhood of man. Our vast public charities supported by law are an instance. It is recognized now by all civilized countries that it is a duty for the State to care for those who are so poor or unfortunate as to be unable to care for themselves. Private charities, too, are as much more enormous now than they were a century ago as private fortunes are, compared with those of that day. In fact, beneficence has come to be recognized as an important duty of the very wealthy; and churches, schools, hospitals, and the like bear witness everywhere to the benevolence of wealthy men. All this public and private benevolence has certainly accomplished wonderful results in relieving the want and misfortune of men, and making their lot a bearable one. The above beneficences require outright giving; but there are many ways in which the fraternal spirit of men works to cause men to treat each other in business affairs more liberally than they would if competition were the only governing motive. In very many cases of the employment of labor, the wages paid are higher than the rate which competition alone would fix. It is true that this is largely due to a selfish motive. The men are more contented and industrious than when their wages are lower. There are always plenty of applicants for any vacant position. The men are not prone to find fault with their pay, knowing that plenty would be glad to fill their places. At the same time, it is certainly true that in many cases a principal motive for giving higher wages is the desire to be liberal and generous with the workers whose labor brings income and profits. Again it is very frequently the case that mills and mines are kept in operation in dull times, when goods must be sold at a loss, if sold at all, simply to keep the employees from the destitution and suffering consequent upon idleness. Cases of especial personal benevolence are still more common. There are tens of thousands of working people to-day rendering service whom their employers well know to be unprofitable servants, but who are retained because their youth or age or incapacity renders them proper objects of assistance in this way, a sort of charity far better than outright gift. In business enterprises, again, the spirit of fraternity is widely diffused. As we have seen, it has been one principal cause of the formation of trusts and combinations to limit and restrain competition. There are also a growing number of enterprises which are purely philanthropic, such as the provision of cheap and healthy homes for working men and women. In the conduct of business, too, public opinion does not approve of the man who exacts the utmost farthing, and weighs and measures to the closest fraction. The most grasping creditor, who precipitates the ruin upon the bankrupt, and the landlord or money-lender, who exacts pitilessly and turns a deaf ear to the call of a brother for mercy, are also condemned at the bar of public opinion. These and many other considerations lead us to some knowledge of the inestimable value of the principle of fraternity to correct the harsh and inequitable working of the industrial organism. It remains only to be said that in this sphere of action its influence is but a small fraction of what it ought to be and what it promises to become. It is through their conscience, as well as through their innate sense of justice and right, that men are coming to see how the extortion by monopolies and the waste of competition in which they have engaged are an injury to the common weal and an expression of might rather than of right. It is in this way that we are beginning to discern the faults and imperfections of our present industrial system and to recognize that progress toward better things is to be found by recognizing, not covering, these faults, and doing all in our power to remedy them. In this work the Christian Church should be in the lead; and a large proportion of its pastors, accustomed to an earnest and sympathetic appreciation of social evils, are among the foremost to second the efforts of modern reformers. Of the rank and file of the Church, however, it is to be regretfully said that they are eminently conservative; and that, with very many notable exceptions, they are certainly not in the lead in the efforts to equalize the injustices which have grown up under the laws of competition. It is largely because the course of Christians is in this respect so inconsistent with their professed belief in that grand doctrine of man's divine origin and universal brotherhood, that the Church, is losing the respect of the laboring classes. Nor will it regain that respect until it shows by unmistakable evidence to the men who toil with their hands that it is alive to the questions of the day,--alive to the injustice of society to-day; and that the love of the Church's great Master for their souls is echoed by a longing in the hearts of his followers for their temporal welfare. But it should be also said that, save as they assume it, the responsibility of those within the Church is not greater than of those without. All men alike are brothers; and it is more, far more, than a selfish tie that binds us together in civilized society. Legal rights are based largely on the system of competition under which our industries have grown up; but the moral duties of all men go far beyond this. It is the duty of all men alike to supplement the working of the law of selfish competition with the acts of a fraternal love for the welfare of all men. Too much stress cannot be laid on this. There can be little doubt that if it were not for the charity and beneficence and for the strong spirit of humanity, which lives in a strange strength, even in the hearts of the debased and evil-minded, the industrial warfare which our modern competition has come to be would have wrought tenfold more evil than it has, and would have already arrayed class against class with other weapons than those of peaceable industry. May Heaven grant that the time shall never come when the growth of the principle of human fraternity shall not far outstrip and overtop the growth of human selfishness, whatever forms the latter may take. In concluding this chapter it seems eminently proper to call attention to one practical application of this great principle of fraternity which ought to go a great way towards saving us from the results of mistakes in our attempts to remedy the evils which have grown up. The fraternal principle should lead men to judge charitably the men who are engaged in monopolies and in wasting the world's wealth in intense competition. The more especially as _these evils are due, not to the malignity of any person, but to our system of industry, which causes them to spring up_. The investigation which we pursued in the first chapters showed very clearly that monopolists are simply striving, like all other men, to protect and advance their own interests by what they consider legal and honorable means. And our study of the laws of competition has shown us that the evils of monopoly and unhealthy competition are the natural outgrowth of the great revolution in modern industries by which the number of competing units has been reduced from many to few. Unfortunately there is a great tendency to make these evils worse by recrimination. It is very common to hear those engaged in monopolistic enterprises, whether as owners or managers, denounced as unscrupulous villains, double-dyed rascals, scoundrelly enemies of the people, or perhaps in terms less blunt but more scathing. Now, what are the facts of the case? Speaking broadly, it is a fact that the men who own and manage our modern monopolies are as a class far more large-hearted in their sympathies than the average of men. It is only because they do not realize the consequences of their acts that they seem to those who do realize them and those who suffer by them to be incomprehensibly brutal. The same man who at a corporation meeting may do his part toward throwing a thousand men out of employment or wasting a million dollars of the world's wealth to effect some monster "deal," may stop as he leaves his office to help a crippled beggar regain his feet; and when he hears of the destitution that his own official act has helped create, he will give with a lavish hand to relieve it. When we come to questions between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact. The truth is, that it is circumstances, not men, which have created monopolies. For to tell the truth, there are but very few men who, if put in the place of the stigmatized monopolists, would not have done as much or more, as their abilities permitted, to achieve a fortune as have these men. All men strive in general to make as much as possible out of their fellow-men, and to gain the most possible with the least labor. The monopolist only goes further on this road than most other men can go. On the other hand, a still more common error exists with reference to the monopolies of labor. The newspaper press seems strangely fond of repeating the statement that all labor organizations are kept up by idle and turbulent labor agitators, who wish to live off the proceeds of their fellows' labor. A little candid thought and investigation will convince any one that this is an out-and-out lie, and as such deserves the condemnation of all honest men. Granted, indeed, that labor monopolies are an evil, as we have fully shown, and that the men who have charge of them are far from perfect, and make many mistakes, they have far more to excuse them than have the men who form monopolies for the purpose of adding to fortunes already plethoric. The truth is, that if the men who are so incomprehensibly unjust in their estimate of the work of labor organizations were put in the place of the laborers at the bench or in the mill, they would be foremost in securing their own rights by organizing their fellow workmen. It would be a great thing for the world's peace if men would try to look at their brother's failings through their brother's eyes. Before you criticise a man too harshly, candidly consider whether you would do any better if you were in his place. We hear much said of the folly and wickedness of stirring up and reviving the sectional animosity between the North and the South; and all patriotic men rejoice in burying past issues and inaugurating the era of a united nationalism. But those who, by personal attacks upon monopolists, whether they are millionaire monopolists or hard-handed workingmen, cultivate animosity and hatred between social classes already too widely separated and too prone to hostility, are sowing seed whose fruit may be reaped in a social strife far more destructive and fatal than any sectional strife could be. In discussing remedies for the evils we have been investigating, we should always keep the fact in mind that our remedy should seek, not to punish, but to cure. Personal or class enmities never yet helped the world to advance. It will be fortunate if men can be taught to see how useless such enmities are in this case; and how little revenge and reprisal can ever do to heal a wrong. XIV. REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OF MONOPOLY. We have now investigated the nature of all the different classes of monopolies and combinations for the suppression of competition. We have studied their working and their effect upon the different classes of society. We have discussed the foundation principles of civilized society as seen in abstract theory and as seen in the actual practice of to-day, with the evils which intense competition on the one hand and extortionate monopoly on the other have brought upon us. Finally, we have considered the influences which tend to lessen and ameliorate these evils, and the extent to which we may rely on them to benefit the condition of society. We are now fully prepared to consider the remedies which are proposed for these evils, and to see in what direction our hope lies for the improvement of the condition of mankind. It would be a far larger task than we propose to attempt, however, to discuss all the schemes which have been proposed for bettering the condition of society. They have been numerous ever since the dawn of the idea of popular liberty, have accompanied it all through its centuries of growth, and to-day, despite the fact that the amount of the comforts of life accessible to the masses of the people is far greater than ever before, plans for further betterment of the condition of society, the more economical production and equitable distribution of wealth, are being pressed forward and advocated more strongly than ever. Nor does this fact furnish any ground for pessimism. We shall have far more occasion to deplore when men become so conceited over the advancement which the race has already made,--so numb to the evils which still oppress them,--that they will no longer take part in the agitation of plans for further advancement. In considering now the plans proposed at the present day by those who wish to remedy the evils of monopoly, we shall find it profitable to consider first two great opposing principles, which we will designate as _individualism_ and _societism_. Upon one or the other of these principles almost every scheme for bettering the condition of society is based. The doctrine of individualism has for its foundation the absolute industrial liberty of each individual. By this is meant that every person shall have "the free right of contract,"--that is, the right to sell his labor or property or purchase that of others as he chooses. It holds that in all matters where the production and distribution of wealth is concerned, the desire of each man to advance his own interests will, alone, in the long run, result in the highest good to the greatest number. It asks the government to "let alone" the industrial affairs of the country, and leave private enterprise to take its own course. Its adherents are fond of asserting that each man knows his own wants and can direct his own business affairs much better than any government can direct them for him. It declares that free competition is the best possible agent to regulate all industrial affairs, and it ascribes all economic evils to the fact that free competition has been thwarted or destroyed. The opposing doctrine of societism holds that the waste in the production of wealth and the inequities in its distribution, which afflict mankind to-day, are due to the extreme application of the doctrine of individualism. Its adherents analyze competition and declare it to be but another expression of a law of savage nature, tersely expressed as "the survival of the fittest." A system which brutally forces the weaker to the wall, say they, is unfit to govern the inter-relations of civilized human beings. Condemning thus the principles and practice of their opponents, they would go to the opposite extreme and place the control of the production and distribution of wealth in the hands of organized society or of local and central governments, to be by them administered for the common benefit. The first and most obvious commentary upon these two opposing doctrines is that either of them is impracticable; and that if either of them were given the entire control of our industries, the whole people would unite in condemning it. Lest there should be any mistake as to what is meant by this, it is well to say that we now refer to neither the individualism nor the societism which is practically advocated at the present day, but rather to the essence of the two opposing principles. To see most clearly the practical failure of either of these principles when applied without modification by the other, consider our present social system, which is based on both individualism and societism. If the principle of individualism were to be fully applied and societism were to be entirely abolished, a first step would be the relinquishment by the government of all the enterprises it now carries on; and they would be left for private enterprise to take up or leave alone as it chose. This means, for one thing, to bring the matter plainly home, that the whole national postal system would be wiped out, and we should depend on some private company or companies to collect, carry, and distribute our mails. The government would also abandon all its work in keeping clear and safe the natural waterways of the country, as well as all the harbors, light-houses, etc. Municipal governments would give up all their systems of water supply to private companies, as well as their sewerage systems, and even paving, street cleaning, etc. Indeed, the maintenance of our whole system of highways would be given over to private enterprise. Is this too much? It is only a legitimate application of the principle that government should leave to private enterprise all matters connected with commerce and industry. Little need be said to prove that a similar application of the principle of societism to our industrial system would result even more disastrously. As a general thing, the necessary formality and expense of administration when business is carried on by the government, causes the final cost of production to be much greater than under private management, even when conducted with all honesty. But the chief reason why the principle of societism is impracticable and unwise for universal application, lies in the fact that the men who administer our governments are neither the wisest nor the most honest of men. The competition among those engaged in private business tends by a process of natural selection to bring the men of greatest business ability into control of affairs. But by any form of government yet tried, popularity rather than merit, and excellence in the arts of the politician, rather than experience and capacity as a statesman and business man, are the qualities which place men in positions where they can control public affairs. Not that very many wise and good men do not now hold office, and that many unprincipled and vicious men do achieve success in private business. But, as a general rule, the statements just made hold good. It seems plainly apparent, then, that neither the principle of individualism nor the principle of societism can be taken as an infallible guide for determining the control of our industry. It would be as manifestly unwise to take a step toward abolishing existing societism by placing our postal department under the control of a private company, as it would be to make a move toward abolishing individualism by having the government assume the management of all the farms in the country. Both of these principles are necessary. There is, indeed, a marked tendency toward an increased reliance on the principle of societism as civilization progresses and our life becomes necessarily more intense and complex. A community of plain farmers, isolated from each other, can live their individual lives about as they please, without any interference of the government becoming necessary to protect the rights of each man from infringement by his neighbors. But the resident in a large village must submit to certain restrictions for the common good. He must not carry on any kind of business likely to become a public nuisance. His cattle may not graze in the streets. He must give part of his earnings toward maintaining a water supply for a protection against fire. The citizen of a great city is subject to far more restrictions. The government assumes the control of education, charities, the care of the public health, the drainage of the streets, the collection of offal, and a multitude of other duties which in a less intense civilization each family performs for itself. The advance in science and the arts, too, has brought about a revolution whose effect we must recognize. A hundred years ago almost every community, and to a large degree every family, was industrially almost independent of every other, as we have already shown. To-day each man relies on a million others to supply him with the commonest necessaries of life. The armored knight was proof against all foes, save the few antagonists similarly clad. To-day my life is dependent on the fidelity and vigilance of ten thousand men, and every man I meet has me in his power. Given the malignant will and fiendish cunning necessary, and one single man can kill a thousand human beings and destroy a million dollars at a blow. To sum up, each advance in civilization makes men more dependent upon each other, and increases the advantage and necessity of having industries most important to the common welfare controlled by society as a whole instead of by individuals. It is contended by some that from the increased interference of government with private affairs, there is danger that the liberties of the people will be curtailed, and that their rights will be so hedged about by restrictions that the result will be evil instead of beneficial. To this it must be answered that the people themselves are the source of the government's authority and power of restriction, and that in no case will a restriction of the government be long maintained which does not benefit far more in conserving the rights of men than it injures by infringing them. Apply this rule to any case of government action in industrial matters. A city government, for instance, constructs a system of sewerage. All taxpayers must contribute something towards its expense, and their right to spend that money in such other ways as they choose is abridged; but, at the same time, the more important right of having healthy and safe drainage for their houses is conserved. In a similar way, the government may pass laws of various sorts to restrict and control what seems to be at first sight purely private business, such as the sale of explosives, spirituous liquors, poisons, drugs, and many other articles. In every instance, this is done on the ground that the interference of government is necessary to protect the rights of the community as a whole, even though the liberties of certain classes are abridged. The study of these facts brings to our attention an important principle of governmental action, which should always be remembered when in any industrial matter we find that the principle of individual action is producing unsatisfactory results, and conclude, therefore, to ask the government to take some part in its control. This principle is as follows: _government, as the representative of the will of the whole people, should in general, attempt the regulation, or control, of industrial matters only to benefit the people as a whole_. Of course it cannot be said that all government action for the benefit of special classes of the community is wrong. The granting of pensions to those defenders and upholders of the government who deserve it, is a case in point where special legislation is justifiable and proper; and many other cases exist. Nevertheless, the shaping of legislation to effect the interests of special classes of the community is one which is now working the nation serious injury; and it has obtained so firm a bold that it will take a long time for us to throw it off. It causes men of all classes to consider the government as a paternal benefactor, whose duty it is to aid them, either in their schemes for getting rich or their struggles to earn a living; when its real office is to protect all citizens in their individual rights, undertake only such industrial enterprises as can manifestly be better and more economically conducted by it than by private enterprise, and enforce restrictions upon industry only as they are needed to protect personal rights or the interests of the community as a whole. Worst of all, the use of government to advance special interests places a premium on the efforts of those who seek to corrupt the expression of the popular will in its every stage, from the voters at the polls to the chief rulers in the seats of government. For by combining to accomplish their mutual purposes, they are able to turn aside all departments of government from their legitimate work and occupy them with measures to advance special interests, some commendable enough, others a mere excuse for stealing from the public treasury, but all alike claiming attention and action, while the business of the people goes all awry. It has seemed necessary to thus briefly discuss these two opposing theories of society, individualism and societism, in order to show the impracticability of either when applied to the society of to-day without limitation and modification by the other; and that in adopting or rejecting any remedies that may be proposed for the industrial evils which we have discussed, we should be guided by the facts as we find them, and not by blind adherence to abstract principles. Let us now gather up the salient decisions which we have reached in all our past investigation. We have discovered that a great industrial revolution is in progress, by which manufacturing, mining, and transportation to a very great extent, and other industries to a considerable extent, have been and are being concentrated in the hands of a very few competitors. We have found that by the laws of competition this reduction in the number of competitors greatly increases the intensity of competition and the resulting waste and instability of price, and finally brings monopoly into existence. This monopoly we have determined to be a serious infringement on the rights of the people, and we have found that the losses due to intense competition and the fruitless attempts to defeat monopoly by adding new competing units have wasted the wealth of the nation in uncounted millions. We are now to consider the remedies proposed for these evils. The most obvious remedy for monopoly, and the one which has been tried and persevered in with the most remarkable faith, is _the creation of new competitors_. Does a railroad monopoly oppress us? Build a competing line. Is the gas company of our city charging us $3 per thousand for gas which cost but 50 cents to produce and deliver? Let us start another gas company and tear up all our pavements again to lay its mains. Has the sugar trust put up the price of sugar two cents per pound? Well, "sugar can be produced anywhere by the expenditure of labor and capital," the Trust's lawyers say, and so _we_ will "trust" that some enterprising manufacturer will take the field against the combination. But if we do any of these things, we have added only _one_ competitor to the number in the field. And with only _two_ competitors in the field, competition is sure to be so _intense_ and _wasteful_ that the formation of a new monopoly is a matter of but a short time. This is the conclusion to which the theory brings us; and the more one studies the history of actual attempts to create competition in this way, the more thoroughly convinced he must be that the inevitable result will be the same,--the tacit or formal combination between the old monopoly and the new competitor, resulting in the re-establishment of the absolute reign of monopoly. The author has thoroughly studied the actual working of hundreds of schemes, in every part of the United States, whose object was to create competition in railroad transportation. It is a most astonishing fact to see the eagerness with which thousands of municipalities, all over the country, which have taken great loads of debt upon their shoulders to secure "competing lines," and have seen these lines swallowed up by their rivals, are still anxious to repeat the folly and assume new burdens to aid in building new lines, which will inevitably be absorbed like those which they preceded. If the people as a whole learn wisdom by experience, they seem to learn with painful slowness. The first great lesson for the people who are groaning under the burden of monopoly to learn, then, is that when we try to defeat monopoly by creating new competing units, the remedy is worse for the community at large than the disease, and effects at best but a temporary relief. Another class of remedies against monopoly seek to accomplish their purpose by opposing the tendency to a reduction in the number of competing units. There are not wanting people who, having gained a dim perception that monopolies are an inevitable result of the modern concentration of industry, conclude that, after all, "the former days _were_ better than these," and that our wisest course is a retrograde one. Fortunately, however, these people are comparatively few. It is a fact so plain that even the dullest can hardly fail to perceive it, that the consolidation and concentration of industry which have gone on everywhere have wonderfully cheapened the cost of production,--made it possible for us to make better goods with a less expenditure of labor and material. The revolution in our industries could not be undone without a more radical action toward vested property rights than could be countenanced now; and as already seen, it would work to the detriment of every person in the community. We cannot go back to the stage-coach, the workshop, and the hand-loom of our ancestors; we cannot, if we would, undo the growth of a century in civilization; and it is well that it is so. But while most men see the benefit which has resulted from the consolidations already effected, there are but few who are not opposed to further consolidations. It is argued that the reduction in the number of competing units results in increasing the intensity of competition, which is assumed to be a desirable end; and that it has also worked great benefit in the reduction in cost. Having attained this, it is proposed to stop further consolidations and prevent the establishment of monopoly. This is what most of the present plans for giving relief from monopoly propose to accomplish. Certainly the task is no easy one; let us inquire if it be even possible. We may safely assume, in the first place, that the competitors in any industry will always be reduced to a very small number before the public will be sufficiently aroused to make any movement for the prevention of consolidation. So long as a monopoly is not imminent, usually, indeed, so long as it is not in actual operation, no one cares or notices how far consolidation and combination goes. Now by the laws of competition, when the number of competing units is small, competition is intense and wasteful, and acts to so reduce the returns from industry that combination and the establishment of a monopoly are a natural sequence. Evidently this result can only be prevented by some interference outside the industry itself. If we allow it to take its own course, a monopoly is certain, sooner or later, to be formed. But the only agency which has the right and power to interfere is government. The question then is, can government successfully interfere to prevent intense competition from bringing about monopoly? In order to do this it must of course keep competition in action; but it cannot do this directly. Competition is essentially a strife. No law was ever enacted which could force two men to fight if they were really determined to be at peace. No law was ever enacted which could force two manufacturers or merchants to compete with each other in price, if they really were agreed to sell at the same price. The common-law principle that contracts in restraint of competition are void, so often appealed to nowadays, has really but slight power. It merely prevents the parties who make an agreement to restrain competition, from enforcing such agreements in court. Attempts have also been made to apply this principle to secure an annulment of the charter of corporations which engage in monopolistic combinations. Even if this be successful, the only result probable is that private parties instead of corporations will carry on the monopolies in a few cases, while in most cases the competition-destroying agreements will be made so secretly that it will be impossible to prove their existence. It is thus plain that the action of the government in declaring the restriction of competition to be illegal is wholly ineffectual to check the growth of monopoly. And, further, the fact is that it is hardly possible for the government to take any more extreme stand in the matter. Let us suppose that it does declare, not only that these combinations are against public policy, but that they shall be punished. Then would it be a punishable offence for two country grocers who had been selling sugar below cost to agree that henceforth they would charge a uniform price and make an eighth of a cent per pound! It is to be remembered that _competition_ necessitates _action_. Can the government, therefore, _compel_ a man to compete, to cut prices below his neighbors, or to carry on his business at all, if he does not choose to do so? Such a law would establish the government's right to regulate the conduct of purely private business to a degree never before known. Such a law to protect the theory of individualism would be a most flagrant infringement of the rights of individuals. It is plain, then, that government cannot possibly keep up competition by direct action. Whether it is possible to do so by indirect means is a much harder question. Monopoly results, as we have found, from the intensity of competition. If it is possible to modify the intensity, to keep the candle from burning itself out too quickly, so to speak, it is possible that competition may be kept alive by legislative enactment. So far, practically nothing has been done in this direction, and it remains yet to be seen what remedies of this sort may accomplish. A pertinent example of an attempt by the government to keep competition alive is the Interstate Commerce law. Before its passage the railway companies had a patched-up and nominally illegal species of combination to restrict competition, known as pooling. As described by President Charles Francis Adams of the Union Pacific Railway, "it was merely a method through which the weaker corporations were kept alive." The Interstate law prohibited this restriction of competition, and also, by enactment of the long-and short-haul clause, made the competition more widespread and injurious to the railways. As a result an astonishing impetus has been given to the growth of the great systems and the consolidation of the minor competing roads. More than that, however, the great increase in the intensity of competition has done so much to drain the resources of the companies and injure their revenues, that some measure for uniting all the railroads of the country under one management is now being seriously planned by many men in railroad circles. Thus this result, which was probably inevitable, has doubtless been hastened many years by the action of the law. The means taken to intensify competition has operated, as might have been expected, to hasten the complete establishment of monopoly. We have now found that monopoly is the inevitable result of the concentration of competition in any industry in a few hands, if events are allowed to take their natural course; that the only agent which has either the right or the power to interfere in the case is the government,--National, State, or Municipal; that government cannot punish directly those who form combinations to restrict competition, without exercising to an unprecedented degree its right to interference with private affairs; while its attempt to deter men from establishing monopolies by refusing its protection to them in their contracts to restrict competition has proved to be but a slight hindrance to the growth of monopoly. There are, then, but two ways of preventing monopoly from establishing itself and laying such a tax upon the people at large for the supply of the commodity which it controls as it chooses. The first is, action to reduce the intensity of competition so that the weaker competitors may maintain their independence and not be forced to consolidate with their stronger rivals. The second is, action to permit or encourage the establishment of monopoly, and regulate by some means other than competition the prices which it shall charge for the products and the quality of product which it shall supply. These two general classes of remedies which we find to be feasible we will discuss here only in a general way. The first, reduction in the intensity of competition, has hardly been tried in any form, and we cannot yet say what practical means should be taken to put it into effect. We will return to this at a later period in our discussion. The second remedy is the one towards whose adoption we are rapidly working. State and Interstate Commissions have already been established to regulate railway monopolies; and in general it is true that the people who feel the burden of monopolies are looking to the government for relief, and expect it to take positive action for the control of other monopolies as it has for the control of railways. It will be seen that we have now arrived by a study of the various possible remedies for monopoly at the same irresistible conclusion to which we were brought by our study of the laws of competition. _The proper remedy for monopoly is not abolition but control._ It seemed necessary to conduct this independent investigation in order that no blind adherence to individualism and no thought of the possible efficacy of other remedies might lead us to doubt this important truth. We have next to consider the fact that the government can control monopolies in two ways. It can either permit the monopoly to remain under private ownership, and regulate its operations by law and by duly appointed officers; or it can itself assume the entire ownership and control of the monopoly. Which of these plans is the better, is a question of public policy over which future political parties are likely to dispute. One party will hold that when it is necessary for the government to interfere to protect those whom it represents from the oppression of monopoly, it should assume at once the whole ownership and management of the monopoly. Their opponents will argue that government should interfere only to the extent needful to maintain the rights of the public; and that it is far better that industry should be directed by the private individuals whose interests are at stake than by government officials. To discuss fully the arguments for each of these two principles of our future practice in dealing with monopolies, would be beyond the intended scope of this volume. It can only be briefly said that the arguments presented will certainly indicate that the conditions surrounding each given monopoly will have great weight in determining which policy is the most advantageous. It would be manifestly unwise, for instance, to place our postal facilities under the direction of a corporation, even though its operations were regulated by government. It would be even more unwise to place the operations of the flouring mills of the country in the hands of a department of the government. The important factors to be considered in deciding any given case are, first, the importance and necessity to the public of the service, and, second, the question whether production in the given case is likely to be carried on more economically by the government or by private enterprise. The former has an advantage in that it can secure its capital at a lower rate of interest. The latter, an advantage in that it secures greater efficiency from the labor it employs. Other circumstances being equal, it would appear wisest, then, for government to take direct charge of those monopolies in which the greatest amount of capital is invested and the least labor is employed, leaving to private enterprise under government regulation the operation of monopolies in which the opposite set of conditions prevails. As already stated, however, the question is complicated by the social and industrial effects which might follow a large transfer of enterprise from private to governmental direction; and these effects we will not now discuss. XV. THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE AND OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE, THE GOVERNMENT. We have now at last deduced the important facts, that the only remedy for the evils of monopoly must come from the popular will, expressed in direct action by the government; that the government may possibly keep competition alive by checking its intensity, or can certainly allow events to take their natural course and permit monopolies to be established. It can then protect the public, either by assuming itself the ownership and operation of the monopoly, or by taking the less radical step of placing the monopoly under official supervision and control while permitting its private ownership to continue. This conclusion is of the utmost importance, for it marks out one single direction as the one in which relief from the evils which vex us may be found. If we can once make the thinking people of the country understand the effect which monopolies have upon their welfare, and that the evil will not cure itself and cannot be cured by attempts to create competition or by any remedy short of direct action by the government, we shall have made a great advance. But with this goal reached, new questions at once present themselves. Can the interference of the government with private industries be defended? How shall government exercise its control, so as to protect the people without infringing vested property rights and discouraging private enterprise? It may be objected, too, that, while our preceding discussion has fully proved the weakness of other methods of dealing with monopoly, compared with that by the direct action of government, it has not been shown that the latter is practicable, or that it would not be likely to result in more harm than good to the people at large. These questions are coming before the people in a thousand practical forms. They are being fought over in courts and legislatures and councils, and are destined to be fought over at the polls. How important their right decision is, we have already seen. Let us make some attempt to find what this right decision is. In taking up first the question of the rights of private property holders, we touch a point over which there is likely in the future to be serious dispute. A certain faction vigorously contend that past precedents are no ground on which to base future action, and that little attention need be paid to the rights of private owners if the public interest is at stake. A far stronger and more influential faction are jealous of every thing which seems to question their right to hold and use their property in whatever way they see fit. But certainly, if their claims are just, they need not fear the result of that investigation which every idea we have inherited from former generations has in these days to receive. It would be beyond the scope of our investigation to make any exhaustive study of this subject, but it is necessary to note some of the important facts in connection with property rights as light upon the question at issue. In the first place, it must be conceded that the question is to be decided upon its merits, and not by precedent. It is of little use for one faction to show, as they can, that the idea of private property is largely of modern growth; or for their opponents to prove, as they may, that the progress of law and government has been continually toward better protection of the rights of property. The question must be, on what grounds of inherent right or public expediency is property held to-day in private ownership? Distasteful as it may be, to realize that what has been considered a fundamental principle of civilized society is here challenged and put upon the defensive, the fact remains that the defence must be made, and must be based only on what is just and wise to-day, for the opposing side may properly reject arguments based on the wholly different conditions under which past generations lived. The question of the rights of property in the products of labor we may pass briefly, as it is almost undisputed; and while certain thinkers have asserted that there is no such thing as a natural right to the ownership of property of any sort, it seems certain that this is true only in a technical sense; and that a man's right to hold, control, dispose of, and enjoy the fruits of his own strength or skill is as certain as his right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and follows from that right as a natural sequence. The most radical revolutionist hardly ventures nowadays to argue against this fact. Thus, though it is recognized that private property even in one's own strength and skill must, at times, be subjected to the higher law of public necessity--as when in time of war a man may be obliged to give up his time, strength, and even life for the public welfare--in general the right to hold the results of labor as private property is well established, on the grounds both of natural right and public expediency. But when we consider the private ownership of the gifts of Nature and of public franchises, it is apparent that we are on very different ground. These forms of property, which constitute a great proportion of the world's total wealth, are not created by labor. Nature's gifts were not stored up to enrich and benefit any one man, but the whole race. It follows, therefore, that they are always, in the first instance, public property. The argument presented to prove any inherent right of the private owners to any form of natural wealth seem to be insufficient to prove the case. The fact seems to be that the inherent right to the benefit of every one of Nature's gifts is vested, if perfect equity were established, in the whole human race; or, as a reasonable approach to this, in that portion of the public to whom this gift is a direct benefit. The title which the public holds may be transferred to private individuals, as a matter of expediency; but the public must still retain a prior claim upon the property. Its right to have the property used for the general welfare, transcends the right of any private owner to direct it solely to his own profit and the public injury. It is thus plain that the private ownership of our natural wealth and of all public franchises rests on the grounds of expediency alone. All the lands and mineral wealth, all franchises for railway lines and for the various public works discussed in the chapters on municipal monopolies were the heritage of the whole people in the first instance, and they have only transferred the title to private owners because it seemed expedient so to do. On the grounds of expediency alone, then, is the private ownership of natural wealth to be considered. It can hardly be doubted that in the case of our own country, the transfer to private owners of the title to our natural resources has been in the past the wisest and only proper course. It is a fact not often realized that the title to nearly all the natural wealth of the country, almost all the lands and mines and forests, has been held directly by the public within a century, and that the transfer to private owners of a great part of it has taken place within a generation. The question now comes: Did the public, in transferring the title to a private owner, relinquish all its right to the future control of these valuable properties, as a private owner would have done? The answer must be in the negative. Regarded simply as a matter of expediency, it is plain that to cause the act of any public official to bind all succeeding generations, living under dissimilar conditions and circumstances, which were then unknown and unprophesied, might result in unbearable evils. Necessary as it might be at the start to give away valuable properties to meet present needs, one generation or its representatives has no conceivable right to sell for a mess of pottage the heritage of all succeeding ones. The fact is, then, that the natural title to all gifts of Nature is vested in the public at large; and while it is in duty bound to observe the contracts which it makes with private parties, it is also not to be thought that the dishonesty or incompetence of a public official, or the failure to foresee the future, can work for too long a time an injury to the community. It seems certain that, in every case where the public has transferred to private owners the title to any gift of Nature, or has conferred any franchise upon a corporation, under whatever conditions, the right of supreme control still remains with the natural owner, the public; and when the need arises, this control may be exercised. The rights of the owners and the contract obligations into which the public has entered should be regarded so far as possible; but when the public necessity demands, control on its behalf can always be exercised. This may seem like a formidable and revolutionary doctrine, but, in reality, it is based on every-day acts of the public representatives, with which every one is familiar. Suppose it is conceived to be for the public interest that a certain railway shall be built. To do this it is necessary to cross many hundred tracts of land, the title to which was many years ago transferred by the public to private owners who have bought and sold since then as they pleased, as if their control were absolute. Many of the owners of these lands may be opposed to parting with the right of way necessary for a railroad, but their private wishes must not stop the progress of improvements necessary to the general welfare. The State, which has the natural title, asserts its right to supreme control; and, if necessary, will use all its power to force these private owners to relinquish their land for the public good. This is the commonest example of the exercise of the right of eminent domain, but other cases frequently occur. The laying out of city streets, building public bridges, and, in fact, highways of every class, furnish a similar example. Provision of public water supply often requires an exercise of this power even more positive than in the cases just cited. By the construction of one great reservoir to store the flow of the Croton water-shed for the supply of New York City, it is proposed to condemn the dwellings and lands now owned and occupied by several thousand people. It is to be noted that, in every case, the rights of the private owners are observed, and compensation is made them for the damage done. Under the common law the owner of lands bordering a running stream has certain rights to its use; and these riparian rights, as they are called, have been established by precedent for centuries. But, in the State of Colorado, it was found that the water in the streams was of such value for irrigation that the old system of permitting private ownership of these riparian rights led to grave abuses. The State Constitution, therefore, declares that all water in running streams is the inalienable property of the whole people, and the system providing for its use by private parties is based on this principle. So much for the power of the public to exercise its supreme control, when public exigency requires, over Nature's gifts in land and water. As an example of the supreme control of the public over the franchises which it grants, take the case of the railway again. It is well established that the public has the right through its legal representatives to regulate the management and operation of the railway in every detail; and not only that, but the rates which the railway may charge for its services as well. Many other examples might be given, for the necessities of the present decade have awakened men as never before to the facts which we have just discussed. The final conclusion must inevitably be that _the public as the sole possible holder of the natural title to the gifts of Nature, while it may find it expedient to transfer this ownership to private owners, retains always supreme control, which may be exercised as the public exigency demands_. We have next to determine in what cases the exercise by the public of this right of supreme control over its heritage is demanded. We are greatly aided here, however, by the thorough study we have made of the laws of competition. It is evident at once that competition in the case of natural agents acts according to the laws already found. Agricultural land in this country is so abundant and its ownership is so widely diffused that any monopoly of it is now impossible. Each farmer competes with every other farmer, and the extension of transportation facilities has so broadened the field of competition that in no industry is the day when the few competing units shall replace the many, and monopoly shall ensue, farther off than in this. In Great Britain and Ireland opposite conditions prevail. A limited amount of land is held by a few owners, and its rental is fixed without competition; consequently the land question has been almost, if not quite, the chief issue in British politics during this decade. If we examine Nature's gifts to the world in the shape of metals, we find iron to be so widely distributed that competition has always acted to reduce profits, and that combinations to restrict competition in the production of the metal have only recently become even possible. On the other hand, the workable deposits of copper are so scarce and the number of competitors in its production is so much smaller, that it has become the subject of the greatest monopoly the world has ever seen. With these examples--and any number of others might be cited--is it not plain enough that the laws of competition are exactly applicable to aid in solving the problem? The smaller the number of competing units, the stronger the tendency to monopoly. Certain gifts of Nature are given to us in profusion. The people transfer the title to private owners, and of these there must of necessity be so many that they will compete steadily with each other. The consequence is that the people receive the benefit from the country's natural resources, while the private owner gets only enough to compensate him reasonably well for the labor he employs and the capital which he invests. Certain other gifts of Nature are, as we have found, very scarce; the number of men who can own and use them and compete with each other in offering their advantages to the public is necessarily small. The inevitable result of this condition is, first, intense competition and then monopoly. It is thus evident that there is no necessity for the State to interfere with the private ownership of those gifts of Nature which are so widely distributed that competition can act for the protection of the public. As regards those other gifts which are so limited in their extent that their control has become a matter of monopoly, the right of the public to exercise its control is already proven. Whether in any given case the exigency is so great as to call for the assertion of this power, is a question which must be decided in each case separately. It may be objected, with truth, that nothing short of the actual ownership of all Nature's gifts by the public is in accord with absolutely perfect justice; but as a matter of fact every human work carried out by human hands and brains is only an approach to perfection. It will never be possible by any human agency to distribute the wealth production of the world with absolute equity. A careful writer says: "The view that the right of every human being to his share in the gifts of Nature should be recognized is not an unreasonable one." But by no system possible of putting into practical execution can these gifts be equitably divided among all men. What can be done is to cause the benefit of these gifts to be widely distributed, and to prevent them from being monopolized for the benefit of a few. The fact maybe alluded to, that even under widespread competition the holders of the most favorably situated and richest lands, mines, etc., receive a benefit which in absolute equity should be divided among all men. But the vastly more important matter of the monopolies which prevent the public from obtaining the benefit of the natural resources to which it holds an inalienable title, so overshadows such trivial injustices that they may be neglected. So much attention has been called of late, however, to the fact that land as a gift of Nature should, if absolute justice were done, have the benefit from its use equally divided among all men, that something further on this subject may be said. Let us first note the fact, which no one will dispute, that the title held by the public refers only to the "site value." The value of all improvements which are the product of labor belongs to the owner by natural right. Now it is conceivable that of the total value of $10,197,000,000 at which the farms of the United States were valued at the last census, $7,000,000,000 may perhaps have been the value of the land apart from the value of the buildings and improvements made since the country was settled. In 1880 there were at least 3,500,000 farmers who owned agricultural lands. It is a well-known fact that the holding of agricultural land in large parcels is the rare exception. We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that the "site value" held by each farmer was about $2,000. This is the sum which in absolute equity is said to belong to the public at large. But let us reflect that each farmer has only received a small proportion of this $2,000 through the increase in the value of his land. The fact is that the land which at first was actually valueless has increased in value with each generation, and it is this increase alone, apart from the increase due to the betterments, after which the public has any right to inquire. Remembering the number of sales and changes in the ownership which take place in this country, how often the benefits which have accrued to a single property are divided up among a number of heirs, and that each owner represents on the average a family of three individuals, it seems reasonable to suppose that this increase in the "site value" of each farm may have been divided among twenty different persons. Thus, while the statement may be made that the public has a claim upon the farms of the country of $7,000,000,000, it must be remembered that this sum has been divided among about 70,000,000 different people, and that this division has been in progress for over two centuries. When the benefits of our natural resources are so widely distributed as this, there can be little occasion to alarm ourselves regarding injustice through the private control of farming lands. This, however, is somewhat apart from our argument. The main point, of which we must not lose sight, is that the private ownership of those gifts of Nature which are widely distributed operates to the general benefit of the community far more than any system of public ownership that could be devised. But, on the other hand, in the case of natural agents limited in amount, it is practically certain that sooner or later a monopoly will be established by their private owners, to the serious detriment of the public at large. The sovereign right of the public in this latter case to take such steps as are necessary for its proper protection, is something which both _a priori_ reasoning and judicial decisions amply prove. The great problem of monopoly would be a far easier one to solve, both theoretically and practically, were it as easy to regulate justly those forms of monopoly whose strength lies in combination only, as it is those whose power depends on the possession of gifts of Nature, which we have just considered. In dealing with trusts, monopolies in trade, and labor monopolies, we are in danger, on the one hand, of sanctioning oppressive interference with private business, and on the other of permitting a license in the conduct of private business which encourages its managers to continue to extort unjust gains from the public. In the face of this difficulty, which careful consideration shows to be very serious, and in the dread of other evils, such as the government proving incompetent to safely undertake these new and strange responsibilities, we may well feel like trying to get along with the aid of those old defenses against monopolies that have always, until the modern concentration of industry was accomplished, been ample to hold them in check. But the one argument which prevents this is the fact that this tendency to concentration and consolidation is still actively at work. In the words of Prof. Ely: "Production on the largest possible scale will be the only practical mode of production in the near future." It is for this reason that we must not cease to look about for some better protection against this new class of monopolies than are afforded by merely placing stumbling-blocks in their way. We shall have need, for many years yet, of such weapons in fighting monopoly as the public is already familiar with; the creation of new competitors and their support by public opinion, judicial decisions against combinations, and the like. But before these grow absolutely useless, we ought to be prepared to meet the new conditions of industry with something better than mere opposition; and even now be experimenting and studying upon a permanent and consistent policy. In attempting to control monopolies which are not dependent on natural agents for their strength, we are met at once by the declaration that the government has no power or right to interfere with property which is the product of labor; and that the owner cannot be prevented from making such disposition of it as he chooses. The President and Counsel of the Sugar Trust said after Judge Barrett's decision was announced: "We do not believe that the law prevents two persons engaged in rivalry with each other from uniting their interests." This seems indeed true; and yet, on reflection, it appears to be absolutely certain that power must reside in the sovereign people to protect themselves from the unjust taxation which a monopoly may seek to enforce. Let us brush away cobwebs and set the facts clearly before us. That competition among producers is the sole present protection of the public against extortionate prices is undoubted. When by combination this defense is abolished, has not the public a right to adopt some other means of protection? There can be no doubt that it has; the only question is, what form should that protection take? It must be plain that, as a general rule, it is unfitting that government should own and operate industrial establishments. Practical experience has indicated that this experiment is wellnigh certain to result in failure, for reasons so evident as to require no mention here. The only alternative remaining is government regulation with private ownership and management. The essential features in the adoption of any plan should be that the returns of the private owner should be in proportion to the skill and economy which he exercises in managing his business; that competition and its resulting waste be done away with; and that the industry be placed on such a safe and stable basis that the capital invested in it shall receive the lowest possible rate of interest, thus leaving the greatest possible amount for the payment of wages of labor and permitting sales of the product at a low price. XVI. PRACTICAL PLANS FOR THE CONTROL OF MONOPOLIES. The investigation of the preceding chapters, leading up to the final conclusion that the proper and only wise remedy for the evils of monopoly lies in direct action of the government to protect the rights of the people, finishes the chain of our argument and really accomplishes the work laid out in the opening chapter. The laws which we have found to govern competition in modern industry are so far-reaching in their effects, and their correct apprehension by the people at large is so important to the general welfare, that economists ought to unite in recognizing and teaching their truth, while all who desire to work for the alleviation of present crying evils of society should understand these laws and be guided by them. In the practical application of these truths, however, so many complicated details are involved that there is ample reason for the widest differences of opinion. To decide intelligently upon these practical methods demands special knowledge, in order that all necessary details may be provided for, and rare practical judgment to adapt the method to the means at hand. The investigations which the author has pursued in the preparation of the preceding chapters and for certain other purposes have suggested to him certain principles in the practical execution of plans for the control of various monopolies, which seem to him necessary to success in the work. Well understanding the fallibility of any one man's judgment, especially in these matters of detail, he has determined to outline in a brief way what seem to him the most feasible plans for the control of each class of monopolies. These suggestions, however, are to be regarded in an entirely different light from the general laws propounded in the preceding chapters; and they are presented with a full knowledge of the fact that slight variations in circumstances may necessitate wide changes in plans and processes. Taking up the monopolies which by their use of natural agents or their exercise of a franchise granted by the public, are already acknowledged to be subject to the public control, let us consider first the railway system. The two years in which the Interstate Commerce law has been in force have seen a great progress toward the final solution of this problem, even though railway affairs are at present in so unsatisfactory a condition. The important features of our future policy which now seem to be quite generally understood are: full State and national control over both tariff rates and facilities; the abolition of competition, either by consolidation or by legalized agreements to that end; and strict prohibition of the construction of parallel lines not warranted by the traffic. That we are working very rapidly in this direction, no one will deny who is familiar with the progress of legislation affecting railway interests and with the opinions of railway men. Evidently, however, government cannot justly take so prominent a part in railway management without becoming in some degree responsible to railway stock- and bond-holders for the protection of their interests; and it is a difficult question to say in what manner this responsibility should be met. It has been the intention of the author in devising the following plan for the control of our railway system to make this responsibility a definite one, and not leave it as now, a vague constitutional right. For according to the law at present, State and national legislators may make laws to vary the receipts and expenditures of the railway companies as much as they please, and the only redress of the railway owner is an appeal to the courts, the judges of which must decide whether the company's revenue is so injured that its legal rights are infringed. Space will not permit here a full statement of the many serious evils and abuses with which our present system of railway management is burdened. The study which the author has made of them has convinced him of their importance and magnitude. The following plan is designed to permit their remedy as well as to remedy the special evils of monopoly with which our present investigation is concerned: Let the government acquire the title to the franchise, permanent way, and real estate of all the railway lines in the country. Let a few corporations be organized under government auspices; and let each, by the terms of its charter, receive a perpetual lease of all the railway lines built or to be built within a given territory. Let the territory of each of these corporations be so large and so planned with regard to its neighbors that there shall be, so far as possible, no competition between them. For instance, one corporation would operate all lines south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers; another all lines east of the Hudson and of Lake Champlain, etc. Let the terms of rental of these lines be about 3¼ per cent. on the road's actual "present cost" (the sum of money it would cost to rebuild it entirely at present prices of material and labor) less a due allowance for depreciation. The corporations would be obliged to keep the property in as good condition as when received, and would own absolutely all their rolling stock, machinery, etc. It is not proposed, however, that the government shall own any interest in the railways save the legal title. Bonds would be issued to the full amount of the appraised valuation, running twenty-five years and bearing interest at 3 per cent., principal and interest guaranteed by the government, and these would be sold to the highest bidder. Thus the real ownership of the roads would be vested in the bondholders. As is well known, there is a great and fast increasing need for investments of absolute safety, even though they bear very low rates of interest. This is especially desirable for the continuance of our national banking system, in order to insure us a safe, stable, and ample currency. Such bonds would find a market at a premium as fast as offered. It would not even be necessary that the money to pay the interest coupons should pass through the government's hands. The operating company would pay it directly to the bond-holder and at the same time the ¼ of 1 per cent. would be paid into the government treasury. The object in making the bonds run for no longer time than twenty-five years, when it is intended that the whole value of the road shall be perpetually held in the form of bonds, is that at proper intervals a revaluation may be made of the improvements to the road and the interest charges may be readjusted to correspond with the general change in the income from capital. When the bonds fall due, a new block would be issued and sold to the highest bidder. The interest rate should be set at such a point that the bonds could be sold at a premium. These premiums, with the ¼ of 1 per cent. on the bonds, paid by the operating company to the government, (which we may regard as a legitimate fee to the government for its guaranty) should form a government railway fund. This should be used, first, to defray the expenses of the government department of railways, and second, to pay the deficit when on any line the net receipts after operating expenses are paid are insufficient to pay the rental. The remainder should be expended in making improvements and additions to the railway system, such as building new bridges and stations, and improving the line, the cost of which, however, should be represented by additional bonds at the end of the twenty-five-year term. The amount of income should be so regulated, by varying the rate of interest on new bonds, that the sum remaining for the last purpose may be about sufficient for usual needs. The whole administration of the receipt and expenditure of this fund should be vested in the government department of railways. In this way the danger that the whole work of this government department might be blocked through the neglect of Congress to make necessary appropriations, would be avoided. The readjustment of existing stocks and bonds presents difficulties which will be considered in very different ways by different classes of persons. The "granger" element, for instance, would cut off the holder of "watered stock" with a shilling. Fortunately, if we take time enough, we can arrange this matter with no shadow of injustice. To illustrate: The government can purchase the A. B. & C. road outright at its market value, which, owing to inflated prices and watered securities, is perhaps $3,000,000. It is desired to wipe out $1,000,000 of this to place the road upon its proper basis. The government issues 3 per cent. guaranteed ten-year bonds upon the road and leases it at an annual rental of 6 per cent. on what it has paid. At the time the bonds are due, the accumulation of rentals over interest is more than sufficient to pay off $1,000,000 of the bonds, while the remainder are renewed on the permanent basis. The author is well aware that a very strong prejudice exists against the lending by the government of its credit to private corporations. This prejudice--which has perhaps already been sufficient to condemn the plan, as thus far presented, in the mind of the reader--he believes to be a very wise and well founded one. The assumption by the government of any risk in connection with corporate enterprise is highly undesirable. It is now to be noted that this objection is wholly overcome; for, notwithstanding the fact that the government guarantees the bonds of the railways, it is not proposed that it shall really assume any risk, as will be seen from the further description of the powers and obligations of the operating corporations. These should be essentially private companies, but there should be two or three representatives of the government on the Board of Directors. They should be required to operate the roads in a safe, efficient, and economical manner, and to keep accurate and simple records, open to the inspection of the Government Commissioners, of the receipts and expenditures on every separate line of road. The rates of fare and freight should be, first of all, stable. When once fixed they should neither be raised nor lowered except by the direction of the Government Railway Commissioners. Next--and this is the cardinal feature of the whole plan--it should be the endeavor to fix the rates of fare and freight at such a point that the total receipts would be sufficient, first, to pay the whole expense of operating and maintaining the road; second, to pay the annual rental of 3¼ per cent. interest on the cost of the road; and, third, an annual dividend to the stockholders of the operating company of from 4 to 8 per cent. The capital stock of the operating company should be fixed by law at about 1¼ times the actual cost of rolling stock and machinery. The operating company should be allowed to issue only one class of securities, and these should represent at par the actual cash capital invested by the operating company. Under this plan it is evident that every community would pay its equitable share of the cost of transportation, since the rates would be based on the cost of service.[6] Instead of roads running along, bankrupt for years, as now, we would have every community paying for its transportation facilities just what it cost to furnish them. But if, on any road, such a rule would raise the rates above a certain prescribed maximum point, then the rate could be lowered, if necessary, to a point where it was only great enough to pay the operating expenses; and part or all the bond interest would be paid out of the government railway fund. [6] It should be explained that it is only proposed to base the _rates as a whole_ upon the cost of service. As regards the relative rates on different commodities, the author, in common with all who have given careful study to the question, recognizes that the only equitable principle for proportioning rates is the much maligned one of "charging [in proportion to] what the traffic will bear." The argument against this principle is so very plausible that, until he had given the subject thorough study he held a diametrically opposite opinion. To make plain to the reader that this is really the only equitable principle, the following illustration may serve: A coal-mine operator and a sewing-machine manufacturer build together a railroad to carry their respective products to a market. They will fix the total rates of freight at such a point as to just pay the cost of service; but it is required to find what relative rates each should be equitably charged on the shipments from his works. Evidently, to have the rates perfectly equitable, they must be in exact proportion to the _benefit_ which each party derives from the use of the road. But this benefit which each derives is _measured_ by the profits which each makes from his business; and this profit, in turn, is the measure of the amount each can afford to pay for the use of the road,--that is to say, "what the traffic will bear." _Q. E. D._ "But," the objector says, "is it not true that when you limit the profits of the companies and base rates on cost of service you take away all incentive to economy and careful operation? The public, and not the company, gain if the cost of service is reduced; so why should the manager exert himself to economize? This very same principle has been tried. Many States have chartered railway corporations, and provided that fares and freight rates should be reduced when dividends exceeded a certain per cent., or else that a percentage of the surplus earnings, above the amount necessary to earn, say 10 per cent. dividends, should be paid into the State treasury. Of course the railway corporations who have been able to earn surplus dividends which they were not permitted to pay, have been sharp enough to spend their surplus on their own property instead of turning it over to the State treasury. How is it possible, then, to base rates on cost of service and still leave the incentive to economy, frugality, and efficiency which exists, when the corporation is permitted to make all the profits it can?" To discover a means of overcoming this difficulty, let us see how it is overcome under competition. A man invents a new machine, for instance, which effects a saving in the cost of some manufacturing process of 50 per cent. One manufacturer adopts it because it greatly increases his profits, and one by one his competitors follow suit. The competition between them cuts the prices lower and lower, till finally the consumers of the goods get all the benefit from the saving effected by the new machine, and the manufacturers' profits are no greater than they were originally. But the important point to be noted is this, that the benefit to the manufacturer continued long enough to repay him for introducing the machine. So in our attempts to base railway rates upon cost of service, we must permit the profit from the introduction of economies, the use of improved appliances, etc., to be gathered by the railway company long enough to induce it to work toward that end. All we need to do to effect this end is to _somewhat delay_ the change in rates to correspond to change in cost of service. As already stated, it is most necessary that rates should be _stable_, and it is proposed to make any change, either advance or reduction, only through the action of a Government Commission. Now, suppose that some such clause as this forms a part of our railway law: "upon the petition of any railway corporation, or of not less than twenty-five patrons of any single 'railway district,' it shall be the duty of the Railway Commission to investigate regarding a readjustment of rates to correspond more closely to the cost of service. If it shall be found that in the given 'railway district' the net receipts over the operating expenses and fixed charges have been for one year not less than 9 per cent. on the capital of the operating company invested in the given railway district; and that for two successive years they have been not less than 8 per cent.; or, if they have been for one year 8 per cent., and for two years 7 per cent., and it shall be proven to the satisfaction of the Commission, that any due and proper measure of economy, to which the attention of the officers was called in writing has been wilfully neglected, or that any uncalled for and manifestly extravagant expenditures have been entered into during that time, then it shall be the duty of the Commission to lower the rates. If it shall be found that for one year the net earnings have been less than 3½ per cent., and for two years less than 4½ per cent., unless it shall be proven that this deficit has been fostered by neglect of due economy, or by extravagant expenditure as aforesaid, the rates shall be raised. In all cases where rates are readjusted, it shall be the endeavor of the Commission to set them at such a point that the net earnings will equal 6 per cent. on the capital stock." The provision requiring two years of excess or deficiency before a change, would be necessary to avoid the fluctuations which occur in single seasons. Every piece of economy is so much gain to the stockholders, and its benefit is received for at least two years. It must be remembered that in any railway corporation, as at present conducted, none but the highest of the managing officials have any personal interest in the profit from operations. It may well be believed, therefore, that the measure of economy and efficiency effected would be at least as great as now. As this plan also contemplates government representation on the Board of Directors, any action by the higher officials to evade the law would be unlikely to occur. The receipts of a company operating say 30,000 miles of railway and carrying its traffic at fixed rates would vary but little from year to year; and its stock would be so largely held by investors and would vary so little in price that there would be very little speculation in it. To bankrupt the company would be an impossibility, since its receipts would always be regulated to preserve its revenue, although not so strictly but that the company would still have every incentive to cultivate traffic by offering good facilities, and to economize at the same time by the introduction of improved methods. No doubt it can be shown where every detail of the foregoing plan leaves loop-holes for abuses to creep in. It will be much the same with any plan whatever. The questions to be asked are, would abuses, waste and stealing be any more likely to occur than under any other plan? Could they be any more prevalent than they are now,--bearable only because we are calloused to them? Of course, the foregoing is a mere outline of the general principles of the plan. Details which readily suggest themselves would, of course, be necessary to carry out the principle successfully. That some attempt should be made in this connection to solve the perplexing problem of strikes on railway lines is proven by the memorable engineers' strike on the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy system. Perhaps a provision requiring every employé and officer to hold at least a certain number of shares in the operating company in proportion to his salary would help to solve the labor problem; and it might give the higher officers a greater interest in their work than they always show. The author has deemed it worth while to outline the foregoing plan for the equitable control of railway monopolies with considerable fulness, because, to a very great extent, the principles followed in the design of this plan are applicable to a great number of other monopolies. These important principles are: (1) Government protection to the owners of fixed capital so that the public may obtain the use of it at the lowest possible rate of interest. (2) The operation of monopolies by corporations rather than by the government, thus securing the increased efficiency of private over official management. (3) Securing to the people at large the benefit of the monopoly by basing the prices for its product on cost of service. (4) But leaving a suitable incentive for the company's managers to maintain economy and efficiency in its operations. (5) Government representation in the directorate controlling the ordinary affairs of the company. It is evident that the plan just outlined for railways would be especially well adapted, with but slight changes, for the control of the telegraph lines of the country. * * * * * We will next consider the monopolies discussed in Chapter III. It seems too plain to need proof that our mines and quarries are certain to have a steady increase in value as we use up the easily worked surface deposits and have to dig deeper shafts and develop the poorer deposits to supply the demand. In the case of any metals or minerals of which the deposits are so abundant, easily worked, and widely scattered, that the number of evenly matched competitors is great enough to ensure steady competition, the public will get the benefit of the especial gift of Nature, and its owner can receive little more than an ordinary return for his labor and capital. But, as we have already amply shown, in the production of a great number of minerals and metals competition has been killed, or is heavily handicapped by the vast advantages of a few bonanza mines, and the public is being taxed millions of dollars for that which belongs to it by right. How long is this condition to continue? Must all succeeding generations pay for coal, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, marble, oil, gas, and various other products of our mother-earth just what those who control the chief deposits choose to ask? Because a pioneer stumbles upon a valuable mine, shall the sole right to use the product of that mine be secured "to him, his heirs and assigns" forever? Suppose, now, that each of the several States were to acquire the title to all the productive mines, quarries, and mineral wealth within its borders, and enact laws providing that future discoverers of minerals on land where they are not now known to exist should be liberally rewarded, if the discovery proved valuable, but the minerals should belong to the State and not to the owner of the land. The same principle which we found to apply in the case of the railways would serve here in readjusting values, viz.: the difference in the rates of interest on safe investments and on risky ones. When acquired, the mines should be leased to private parties for operation. In the case of coal-mines and perhaps of iron, it would be well to copy largely from the scheme proposed for railway operation, viz.: place all the business in the hands of a single company, which should thus be enabled to carry on its business on the largest possible scale; do away with wasteful competition, and aim to regulate prices to provide a certain reasonable steady income on its capital to the mining company. For mines of copper, zinc, lead, and similar metals, it would be best to pursue a different plan, and simply provide by statute that such mines should be leased for short terms of years to the bidder who would offer to sell his product at the lowest price per ton at the mines, all lettings and relettings to be publicly advertised, and the successful bidder to give bonds for the faithful performance of his contract. It is difficult to see how, under these conditions, a combination to defeat competition could be formed. Relettings of expired leases would be frequent; and bidding by the _selling price_, a single competitor would be sufficient to break any combination. Of course the lease should specify a minimum product which the mine should furnish. It would be advisable, too, that a manifest duty of the government, which should be undertaken even under present conditions, should be observed. It should be required to work the mine with due attention to saving the greatest possible amount of ore or mineral contained in the seam or vein. The third class of monopolies, whose legal subjection to public control is acknowledged, are those connected with our municipal public works. There is already a widespread movement toward taking the control and operation of these out of the hands of private corporations, and placing it directly with the city government, and progress in this direction is very rapid. The author believes, however, that the general law already stated is applicable here. If the public works of States and of the nation are more economically and efficiently managed when in the hands of private parties, it is surely unwise, as a general rule, to entrust the operation of municipal works to the average city official. While it is in the highest degree desirable that water-works, gas, and electric-lighting plants, street railways, and the other municipal enterprises, discussed in Chapter V., should be _owned_ by the municipality, their operation, in cases where the employment of considerable labor and the carrying on of intricate business and mechanical operations is involved, should in general be entrusted to private companies. In every case where the financial condition of the municipality obliges it to rely at first upon private corporations for the construction and ownership of its public works, the franchise should expire at the end of a short term of years, and the city should then have the privilege of purchasing the works at their actual cost. As regards works for water supply, there can be little doubt that almost invariably the municipality should operate as well as own the works, for the administration of the works requires but a small amount of labor, and that of such a class that the city can safely carry it on. But gas or electric-light plants, both for street and resident lighting, should be operated by private companies. These industries are making such rapid progress in the way of new processes, effecting both economy and improvement, that it is somewhat difficult to say what steps should be taken. Many are of the opinion that gas is destined to be entirely replaced by the electric light; but while this may eventually prove true, it will probably be a very long time before the existing gas-works cease to supply consumers. Thus the true solution of the problem seems to be that when a growing town nowadays wishes to establish a new lighting plant of its own, it should adopt electricity. But in the case of a town having gas-works already established, the municipality is safe in assuming their ownership. As regards the operation of lighting plants in small towns, it would doubtless be best to lease the plant for short terms of years to the highest bidder, making sure that the call for proposals is widely circulated. Great cities, however, would find this policy unsatisfactory. If a ten-year lease of the Philadelphia gas-works, for instance, were advertised for sale to the highest bidder, there would be but few really close bidders upon it, and the danger of "a combination to defeat competition" would be great. It is at least worth considering whether such a plan as we proposed for railways could not be made feasible here. Let a corporation be chartered to operate the lighting plant of the city, and let the charter of the corporation provide that its rates shall be such as to pay an annual dividend upon its capital stock (fixed by law and not changeable) equal to the legal rate of interest in the State. Provided, that in no case should the rates be lowered unless the net profits in one year were more than 2 per cent. in excess of this rate, and that the excess for two consecutive years was more than 1½ per cent. in excess of this rate. Provided also, that in no case should the rates be raised unless the deficit exceeded 1½ per cent. in any year, and 1 per cent. for two consecutive years, and that it should be proven by the company that it had exercised all reasonable diligence, care, and economy in the management and operation of its business. A certain proportion of the stock--less than a majority--should be held by the city; and the mayor should appoint directors to represent the city, at least one of whom should be personally conversant with the industry carried on by the company. Although not often so considered, the matter of passenger transportation is a much more important matter in our greatest cities than either lighting or water supply. The laboring man, who has to pay perhaps twelve cents for the necessary ride back and forth to his work every day, feels this tax most severely. Suppose that under such an arrangement for street railways as we have outlined for gas and electric lighting companies the fare would be reduced to three cents. His savings from this source would amount to at least $18 per year. Counting the extra rides and those which his wife and children have to take, the annual saving would probably reach $25, a sum which to the average laboring man with a family dependent upon him means a great deal. Our municipal monopolies are now taxing us that they may pay swollen dividends on millions of dollars of fictitious capital. It is quite time that the public recovered possession of the valuable franchises which are its rightful property, and managed them for its own benefit. The legal difficulties in regaining the title to these franchises are certainly not insuperable, and the readjustment of capitalization can be made on the principle outlined in the case of steam railways. To illustrate: The city of "Polis" purchases the works which supply it with water from the private company owning them, paying the average market value of the stock and bonds during five years past, which amounts, perhaps, to one and one half times the cost of the works. The revenue from the works has been sufficient, probably, to pay 8 per cent. on these securities. The city issues 3 per cent. ten-year bonds to raise funds for the purchase, and it then operates the works so as to gain a yearly revenue of 6 per cent., or 2 per cent. less than that gained by the private company. At the end of ten years the surplus income from the works is enough to pay more than one third the bonded indebtedness; and, if desired, the rest may be reissued as new bonds to run for a long period. The three classes of monopolies just discussed--railways, mineral wealth, and municipal works--include practically all the monopolies which are generally acknowledged to be subject to the public control by virtue of their use of natural agents or the exercise of franchises granted by the public. We will next consider the monopolies in trade, in manufacturing, and in the purchase and sale of labor, to see what steps should be taken to protect them from encroaching on the rights of the people. In exercising the right of the people at large to take control of these purely private industries from the hands of their owners, we are assuming a power which, like a strong medicine, may be as potent for evil as for good. Only extreme necessity should sanction its use, and its abuse must be carefully guarded against. It is not saying too much to assert that the abuse of this power has already become an evil. We have become so used to legislation for the benefit of special industries, that legislation for their injury does not seem to be regarded as the exercise of a dangerous prerogative. Thus we are threatened with a flood of laws to fix the prices in various industries now subject to monopoly, or to crush them out altogether by enacting some restrictive measure,--legislation which, by its directness, is apt to strike the average lawmaker very favorably, but which, it needs little wisdom to see, is the sure forerunner of abuses. The author trusts that nothing in this book may be construed as advocating or defending some of the crude and ill-considered attempts at anti-monopoly legislation already made, or that may be made in the future. We have proven in the preceding chapters that, from the character of modern concentrated industry, a very large number of our manufactures must either exist as monopolies or else must engage in intense and wasteful competition. If the monopoly can be so managed that it shall carry on the industry economically, adopt improvements, keep up the character of its product, and keep the prices therefor so low as to make no more than ordinary profits, it would be for the public advantage that monopolies rather than competition should exist. Can we regulate monopolies to secure such results? If so, our problem will be solved. The author has proposed for the first class of monopolies--those obtaining the benefit of natural agents and public franchises--government ownership of fixed capital and regulation of prices, with private operation and general management. But he is far from believing that such a plan would now be wise for regulating trusts. It may indeed be that, at some time in the future, many of the great staple manufactures will be formally established by the government as monopolies, and controlled in a similar way to that which we have outlined for the railway system; but it is so far in the future that we need not consider it in detail now. Under our present political organization it would be practically impossible for the government to undertake to regulate justly and equitably such an industry, for instance, as the steel-rail manufacture. We have set our State, national, and municipal governments a hard enough task in the preceding pages of this chapter, in bringing under public control our monopolies of transportation and communication and our productive mines; and although it is a work possible of accomplishment, it will need good statesmanship to carry it out. By the time that task is accomplished, a similar plan, improved as experience will then suggest, may perhaps be found available for the regulation of the important manufacturing industries. We decide, then, that it is for the public advantage at present that both the ownership and operation of manufacturing industries and of trade must remain in private hands. The next question is, will the greatest advantage to the public be secured by starting a crusade to re-establish competition and break up all existing monopolies in manufacturing and trade; or by taking the opposite course, legalizing monopolies and so regulating them by law that they shall be prevented from making undue profits by laying an exorbitant tax upon the public? Practically all the efforts made or proposed thus far for remedying the evils of monopolies in manufacturing and trade have had for their purpose the re-establishment of competition. The investigation to which the first part of this book was devoted shows the wide extent of the movement to restrict competition. Is it possible to wholly counteract this? All our study of the laws of competition seems to show that the tendency of modern competition is to destroy itself by its own intensity. Certainly all the strenuous efforts to keep it alive by the force of legal enactment and public opinion have thus far proved unavailing. There are now, probably, at least a million persons in the United States who are directly or indirectly interested in unlawful contracts in restraint of competition; and among them are included many of the best financiers and most enterprising business men of the country. Certainly those who propose to drive these men into a renewal of competitive strife contrary to their will have set themselves a very difficult task. Let us consider the opposite alternative. It cannot be a good thing to have such a great proportion of the active business men of the country, who bear the highest personal character, engaged in illegal contracts. Let us therefore take them within the pale of the law. They seem to be determined to make contracts with each other in restraint of competition; and believe, indeed, that they are forced to do it by modern conditions of trade. Suppose we were to legalize these contracts and permit the establishment of monopolies. What can we then do to protect the public from extortion in prices and adulteration in its products on the part of the monopoly? In the first place, now that we have legalized monopolies there is no more excuse for secrecy. To work in darkness and privacy befits law-breakers, but is needless for legitimate enterprises. Let the law provide that every contract for the restriction of competition shall be in writing, and that a copy shall be filed, as a deed for real estate is filed now, with the proper city or town officer where the property affected is situate, and also with the Secretary of State where the contract is made. Certainly no honest man will object to this provision. The contention has been made that contracts to restrict competition were necessarily kept secret because they were "without the pale of the law." Very well; we have legalized them. There can be no further defense of secrecy. If any now refuse to make public their contracts to restrict competition, the refusal is evidence that the contract is for the injury of the public or some competitor and therefore properly punishable. We shall now know just what monopolies exist; just what is their strength, and for just how long a time their members are bound. Let us next see what measures we can adopt to prevent these legalized monopolies from practising extortion upon the public and abusing the power they have gained by the combination. The first important means to secure this which the author would suggest is simply an extension of the common-law principle of non-discrimination. A man in conducting certain sorts of business is permitted to do as he chooses. He may sell to one person and refuse to sell to another; he may give to one and withhold from another. But if he enters business as the keeper of an inn or as a common carrier of passengers or freight, he can no longer exercise partiality. He has _elected to become a necessary servant of the public_, and as such he is bound to serve impartially all who apply. In the same way a manufacturer while he engages in business under the usual laws of competition, may sell to whom he pleases and exercise such preference as he chooses. But when he combines with all other manufacturers of the same sort in a combination to restrict competition, he and his allies voluntarily change their relation to the public. Is it not true that they do actually _elect to become necessary servants of the public_--far more necessary, indeed, than the inn-keeper or the stage-coach driver,--and ought they not therefore to be placed under similar legal restrictions? In every case where combination or consolidation restricts competition in an industry, one effect produced is an increase in the power over the public which the industry possesses. But this increased power over the public, thus voluntarily assumed, must inevitably carry with it increased responsibility to the public. It is the duty of the government to see that this responsibility is legally enforced. This first principle, then, should be embodied in a law providing, in substance, that every person or firm entering into a contract to restrict competition should, so long as that contract was in force, be debarred from showing any preference in his or its purchases and sales, by giving more or less favorable prices to any person or firm than those quoted to any other person or firm. To enforce this requirement and prevent its evasion it is necessary to provide also that prices shall be public and that they shall not be altered without due notice. The requirement of publicity might be best effected by providing that the contract restricting competition should contain a schedule of prices, which would usually be the case in any event. While this may seem like quite an assumption of authority on the part of the State, it is exactly what trusts and trade associations are striving to effect, though with the important qualification that when occasion, in the shape of an obnoxious competitor, requires, they wish to be at liberty to put prices up or down at short notice and exercise their preferences as they choose. Let us now see what we would effect by the enforcement of this principle of non-discrimination. We have explained in the chapter on combinations in trade how one monopoly gains strength by alliance with another; as when the firms belonging to the car-spring combination made a contract with the steel combination by which that monopoly agreed to sell to them at a reduced price and to make an extra rate to their competitors. Under this law it would be impossible to found one monopoly upon the favors of another in this manner. The obnoxious trade boycott, too, which is now becoming so common, would be effectually checked. And the scheme for crushing out a rival by giving all his customers specially favorable rates would no longer be practicable. The fact is that if we can stop the discriminations which the monopolies have practised, we shall cure a large share of the evils they have caused. It may be said that the courts will already punish many conspiracies of this sort; but a monopoly which is already breaking the law by its contracts of combination, finds in its methods of doing business plenty of chances to evade the laws against conspiracy. Certainly with a properly drawn law with reference to the publicity and stability of prices, it should be possible to practically wipe out the evil of discrimination by monopolies. It is also to be noted that the requirement of non-discrimination and of public and stable prices would bring profit in doing away with the waste of competition. We have now to inquire what means it is possible to take to ensure that the prices charged by the monopoly shall not only be the same to all, but that they shall not in themselves be so exorbitant that the monopoly will reap large profits at the public expense. How can we keep the prices charged by the monopoly from rising far above the point where they would stand if free competition were in force? Two methods are open to us. We may keep down the monopoly's rates by what we will call _potential_ competition, or we may reduce them directly by legislative enactment. The right of the public to take this latter course may be defended on the ground that the monopoly has voluntarily made itself a necessary public servant, and in that capacity offers to the public its goods. While it is true that the people permit the monopoly to become a necessary public servant and protect it in the contracts by which it restricts competition, it is also true that the monopoly cannot justly make merchandise of the necessities of the people. The public may allow a combination to obtain control of all the sugar refineries, for instance, and protect the combination in its formation. But suppose the owners of the combination then say: "The people are obliged to have sugar and we control the supply. We will set a high price on sugar, therefore, because we know that they will pay it rather than go without." They are then making the necessity of the public a source of gain, and it cannot be believed that this will be permanently suffered. The serious difficulty in fixing by direct government action the prices which a monopoly of this sort shall charge, is that we cannot stop at that point. When once the government steps in to do so radical a thing as to fix the price which a monopoly shall charge, it becomes in equity responsible to the owners of that monopoly for the maintenance of their incomes from their capital invested. If their profits have been so reduced by this action as to seriously injure the value of their property, they have a legal right to claim compensation from the state for the injury it has done them. And in almost every case they would set up the claim that their property had been thus injured. To determine the point at which reasonable prices and reasonable profits become extortionate prices and unjust profits is a task requiring expert knowledge and the most comprehensive judgment, aided by the most accurate statistics. To impose this task on our already overburdened courts would permanently block the wheels of justice, and would give to the judicial department of government a work which its machinery is wholly unsuited to carry on. It seems evident, therefore, that when it becomes necessary for the state to directly fix prices to be charged by monopolies, a more radical step should be taken. The monopoly should be established on a permanent basis, and the state should have some part in its direct control. Discarding, therefore, direct action by the state to fix prices as inexpedient, for the present, at least, let us see what we can effect by means of "potential" competition, which term we will use to signify that competition which may be established in any monopolized industry if the inducements offered are sufficiently great. It must be remembered that nowadays men of capital and enterprise are always on the look-out for every opportunity to invest money and expend their industry where it will bring the greatest returns. If any monopoly seems to be making large returns, people are generally ready to believe that it is making twice as great profits as it really is; and some one is quite likely to start in as a competitor, if there is a prospect of large profits. Now we wish to do two things. We wish to make it so easy for new competitors to enter the field against a monopoly that its managers will keep their profits down in order not to call in any new competitors. We also wish to so modify the intensity of competition between the monopoly and the new competitor that the latter may have a chance at least of being repaid for its expenditure in entering the field. The simplest and best of the legal provisions which we may enforce to this end is the one already stated of non-discrimination. The monopoly can no longer reduce its price to apply to only the limited field in which the new competitor works, but must reduce its prices everywhere to meet those made by the rival. In the case of monopolies in trade and all monopolies in manufacturing in which the fixed capital required is but small, this is all that would be needed to encourage the establishment of new competitors and discourage the monopoly from grasping after undue profits from the public. In the case of those manufacturing monopolies in which a large fixed capital must be invested at the start by any new competitor, we have a much more difficult problem. It is true that in this case the monopoly itself has more at stake; and this may induce the starting up of new competitors simply to be bought out by the trust,--a sort of blackmailing operation which is certainly repugnant in its character. It might be possible to provide that rates charged by the monopoly must be so stable that a competitor would have a chance to establish itself before the monopoly could bring its own rates down. It might be possible to force the monopoly to keep all its factories in operation, and thus oblige it to keep down its price in order to dispose of its products; but there are evident practical difficulties in the way of enforcing such laws. It seems a great pity that just now, when to find some employment of prison convicts in some manner that will not "compete with free labor," and thus displease the labor interests, seems an impossibility, we cannot set the convicts at work to compete with the trusts and bring down their profits to a reasonable point. Surely the labor party would find no fault with this use of convict competition. There is one step, however, which we can take, and whose effect would certainly be very great; in its desirability, apart from questions of monopoly, all honest men are practically united. We can reform our laws regarding corporate management. It is a mild arraignment compared to what is deserved, to say that our present laws regarding the formation and management of corporations, taking the country as a whole, are a shame to the people and a disgrace to the men who made them. They seem designed to place a premium on fraud and knavery, and to assist the professional projector and stock manipulator in reaping gains from innocent--generally very innocent--stockholders. Now a real reform in our corporation laws would greatly simplify our work in controlling monopolies. Let us have no more stock-watering of any sort at any time in a corporation's life. Let us have no more "income bonds" which yield no income, and "preferred stock" in which another is preferred after all. Two classes of securities are enough for an honest corporation, and the public interest requires the charter of no other class of companies. Let us have done, too, with the iniquitous custom of one corporation holding another's stock or bonds. With a few such simple reforms as these effected, the holders of stock in our corporations would have some idea where they stand and what their securities represent, and would take some interest in the control of their property. With these reforms, in the case of every corporation making a contract to restrict competition, it would be required that the company make public annually a full statement of its receipts, expenditures, and profits. Every monopoly would stand before the public then in its true position, and every one would know if it were making 50 per cent. per annum on the actual capital invested, or only 5 per cent. With these facts made public, if any monopoly ventured to raise its price till it reaped unusual profits, some of the heaviest consumers of the monopolized product would be very apt to start a factory of their own in opposition. It is to be remembered that under the law of _non-discrimination_ the monopolies would be prevented from currying favor with the large consumers by giving them specially favorable prices. It is now common to do this, as it removes the danger of combination among these important customers to compete with the monopoly. To sum up, the chief features of the plan proposed for the control of monopolies in manufacture and trade are as follows: Make contracts to restrict competition, legal and binding, instead of illegal and void as now. _But_; provide that every such contract shall be filed for public inspection; that prices charged by the combination shall be public, stable, and absolutely unvarying to all; that the affairs of the combination shall be managed according to a consistent and stringent corporation law; and that an annual report of the operations of the combination be made to a public commission. Contrast this with the existing law upon this important subject. In Judge Barrett's decision in the Sugar Trust case he said: "The development of judicial thought, in regard to contracts in restraint of trade, has been especially marked. The ancient doctrine upon that head has been weakened and modified to such a degree that but little if any of it is left. Indeed, excessive competition may sometimes result in actual injury to the public; and anti-competitive contracts, to avert personal ruin, may be perfectly reasonable. It is only when such contracts are publicly oppressive that they become unreasonable, and are condemned as against public policy." This is probably the best statement of the present status of the common law upon this subject now extant. But what a path to endless litigation does it open! Who shall draw the line where a contract to restrain competition ceases to be beneficial and lawful, and becomes an injury to the public welfare? Must this be left to judge and jury? If so, the responsibilities of our already overburdened Courts are vastly increased. In contrast with such a policy as this, the plan before presented certainly promises definiteness in the place of uncertainty; and treats all contracts in restraint of competition with impartiality. It is believed that the effect of its enforcement would be a great reduction in the tax now levied on us by monopolies. There is yet one way, however, in which all these monopolies that we have found it so difficult to devise a plan to deal with--the manufacturers' trusts--may be quickly and certainly reduced. Our heavy tariff on imported goods, by protecting manufacturers from foreign competition, and thus reducing the number of possible competitors, has undeniably been a chief reason why trusts have appeared and grown wealthy in this country before any other. The author has purposely refrained, as far as possible, from reference to the relation of the tariff to monopolies; for the question has been so hotly fought over, and the real facts concerning it have been so garbled and distorted, that people are not yet ready to consider it in an unprejudiced way. This much, however, no one can gainsay. We hold in our hands the means to at any time reduce the prices and profits of practically all our monopolies in manufacturing to a reasonable basis, by simply cutting down the duty on the products of foreign manufactories. Now, if after our plan just described is in force, the managers of any monopoly choose to be so reckless as to raise its prices to a point where its published reports will show it to be making enormous profits, thus tempting new competitors to enter the field and breeding public hostility, all honest protectionists and free-traders will be quite apt to unite in a demand that the "protection" under which this monopoly is permitted to tax the public be taken away. If only we could find in any possible plan so excellent a solution of the problem of labor monopolies as a reduction of the tariff offers us in the case of trusts! The question is so complex a one that it is hardly possible to consider it here, except very briefly. Certainly, if we legalize combinations to restrict competition among capitalists, we should among laborers as well. Indeed, the decay of the old common-law principle, that such contracts were against public policy, and that such combinations were punishable, has been more marked in the case of trade unions than anywhere else. Besides this, as long as employers have the right to kill competition in the purchase of labor, workmen should certainly have the right to avoid competition in its sale. But to prevent by force other competitors from taking the field, if they choose, against any labor combination, is an infringement of the personal liberty guaranteed to every man by the Constitution, and can by no means be lawfully permitted. If workingmen only understood how much the apparent gain when they win in a strike is overbalanced by their loss in the higher prices which they have to pay for the necessaries of life, and in the reduced demand for labor, they would be as anxious to protect capital as they now are--some of them--to injure it. The strikes make timid the men who have capital to invest. They will not loan their money to business men, builders, manufacturers, or any one who wishes to use it to employ workmen, except at a higher rate of interest, to pay for the increased risk. _Hence_, the cost of the capital used in production is greater, and the price the public has to pay for the product must be greater. Again, when men have to pay higher rates of interest for the money they borrow they are slower to engage in new enterprises. Mr. A. a builder, intended to put up a block of a dozen houses this season, which would have tended to reduce rents; but the fear of strikes, with their attendant damage and loss, has prevented him from borrowing money at less than 8 per cent. interest. He concludes that, on the whole, this will eat up so much of his profits that he will not build. Is it not too plain to need proof that the _moral influence_ alone of the strikes has robbed the workmen at every point? And this is one of a thousand cases in a hundred different industries. The plans we have discussed for the treatment of monopolies have for their object a benefit to the people at large, by enabling them to purchase the products of industry and of natural wealth free from the tax now levied upon them by monopolies. If we can effect this, we shall not have a millennium; there will still be injustice and suffering enough in the world; but we shall have reduced the pressure upon the men who work with their hands for their daily bread, enough so that we shall no longer see the strange spectacle of over-production and hunger and nakedness existing side by side. Men's desires were made by an All-wise Creator to be always in advance of their ability to gratify them. And the commercial supply of that ability--the supply of men willing to work--ought always to be behind the demand for men. It seems beyond dispute, then, that whatever will remove these obstructions to the wheels of production will increase the demand for labor, as well as increase the wages of labor by lowering the prices of the necessaries of life. This the plan we have discussed promises to do, and it also promises to benefit the whole people by lowering the cost of monopolized articles. The men and women who work with their hands, and those dependent on them, form 97 per cent. of the population of the country. Instead of combining to stop production in this shop or that factory, why not join hands to work for reforms in the interest of the whole people? Be sure that in so doing, organized labor will have the hearty co-operation, and leadership if need be, of the best men in every class of society. But while the reforms proposed promise great and important benefits to the workers on whom the tax laid by monopoly falls most cruelly, the question, "What shall fix the rate of wages, if competition cannot?" is still left undecided. The best answer the author can make to this is as follows: The monopoly formed by the trade unions in the sale of labor is unnatural, because the number of competing units is great instead of small. As new competitors must continually arise, the monopoly can never be successful without the use of unlawful means. If it raises the price of labor above what free competition would determine, it as truly lays a tax on the whole people as did the copper monopoly. On the other hand, we must recognize the fact that competition is now often absent in the _purchase_ of labor, and this is a chief and sufficient cause for the existing attempts to kill competition in its sale. But this is largely due to the fact that the supply of labor is now in excess of the demand. When instead of signs everywhere, "No one need apply for employment here," we see placards, "Men wanted; high prices to good workmen," then competition will assert itself in the purchase of labor. In regard to the first class of industries, those utilizing natural agents, which we proposed to place under the care of the state, it is evident that we can permit no strikes there. Our transportation lines, our mines, our gas-works, our water supplies, are to be operated for the benefit of the whole people, and no labor monopoly can be permitted to stop them. The plan that might be adopted to prevent interruptions in these industries has been already referred to. The author would suggest a similar plan for the benefit of labor in general. Suppose that in the charter of a manufacturing corporation, a certain portion of the stock in small-sized shares was set aside for the employés required to operate the mill. Let each employé be _required_ to hold a certain number of shares in proportion to his wages; to purchase them when he begins to work, and to return them when he leaves the service of the corporation; the price in all cases to be par. In case he leaves without giving a certain notice, he should forfeit a certain proportion of his stock. If, on the other hand, he is discharged without an equal notice, he should receive the full amount of his stock, and a sum in addition equal to the penalty which he would have incurred had he broken the contract. Who will deny that such a move would be vastly to the interest of both parties, the employer and employed. Is not a protection needed by the workman against the power of the employer to turn him adrift at any time without a penny? Finally it must be said that the labor question, more than any other connected with monopoly, needs solution through the influence of the principles of Christian fraternity. In the last analysis, every man sells to his brother men his service and receives his food, clothing, and shelter in return. We may execute justice never so well, and regulate never so nicely the wages of men by the law of supply and demand, there will still be special cases demanding and deserving to be treated by the rules of brotherly charity. The strong were given their power that they might aid the feeble; and they who fall behind in the struggle for position are not to be blotted out by the brute law of the survival of the fittest, but cared for as the noblest instincts of humanity prompt. * * * * * I am well aware that the indictment which conservative critics will be apt to bring against the plans for the equitable control of monopolies presented in this chapter is that they are too novel, and that they require too much of an upheaval of existing institutions for their accomplishment. The conservative man is invariably in favor of getting along with things as they are. The answer to be made to this is, that no candid man who will make a thorough study of the present status of monopoly and of the attempts to control it can be conservative. The present status of monopolies is just neither to their owners nor to the public. They are plundering the public as much or as little as they choose; and the sovereign people are submitting to it and taking their revenge by passing retaliatory laws intended to ruin the monopolies if possible. These legislative "strikes" are thus especially well calculated to foster extortion on the part of the owners of monopolies, who naturally wish to make what profits they can before some piece of legislation is put through to destroy the industry they have built up. In contrast to this are the plans proposed in this chapter. They offer to establish a definite relation between the public and the monopolies, and a permanent and stable foundation for each industry they affect in place of the present fickle and ever changing one. There is another class of critics who may complain that the plan proposed leaves too much power still in the hands of the monopolists, and gives the government too small a part in their management. The answer to this is very evident. We have found the cardinal value of the system of individual competition to be that it tends by a process of natural selection to bring the men of greatest ability into the control and management of our industries; while the vital weakness in the management of industry by government is the fact that the sovereign people does not choose the wisest and most honest men to control its affairs. Men may well say that if they are to be robbed it had better be by a corporation, where innocent stockholders will receive part of the benefit, than by dishonest officials of government. The ultimate remedy for the evils of monopoly, therefore, lies with the people. When they will choose to control their affairs the men of greatest wisdom and honor; when each man will exercise the same care in choosing men to care for the public business that he does in caring for his own private interests, then we can safely trust far greater responsibilities to our government than is now prudent. There is no more important lesson to impress on the minds of the toiling millions who are growing restless under the burdens of monopoly than this: The only remedy for monopoly is control; the only power that can control is government; and to have a government fit to assume these momentous duties, all good men and true must join hands to put only men of wisdom and honor in places of public trust. There is a virtue which shone in all brightness when this nation was born, not alone in the hearts of the commander-in-chief and his brother heroes, but in the hearts of the men and women who gave themselves to their country's service. It glowed with all fervor when, a quarter of a century ago, the North fought to sustain what the fathers had created, and the rank and file of the South gave their lives and all they had for what they deemed a righteous and noble cause. Though the robust spirit of partisanship may seem for a time to have crowded out from men's hearts the love of their country, surely that love still remains; and in the days of new import which dawn upon us, in the virtue of PATRIOTISM will be found a sufficient antidote for the vice of _monopoly_. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note and Errata | | | | Some tables have been reformatted for clarity. | | | | One instance of an oe ligature has been expanded to 'oe'. | | | | The following typographical errors have been corrected: | | | | |particularly |particular | | | |1888, |1888. | | | |succcessful |successful | | | |ascendency |ascendancy | | | |quenced |quenched | | | |accomodate |accommodate | | | |owership |ownership | | | | | The following words were hyphenated in varying fashion in | | the text: | | | | |bond-holders (1) |bondholders (1) | | | |midle-men (1) |middlemen (2) | | | |over-estimate (1) |overestimate (1) | | | |over-production (16) |overproduction (1) | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ 
28499	----	Transcriber's Note: Extensive research indicates the copyright on this book was not renewed. _Mother Earth_-- LAND GRANTS IN VIRGINIA 1607-1699 By W. STITT ROBINSON, JR. Associate Professor of History University of Kansas VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA 1957 COPYRIGHT©, 1957 BY VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 12 CHAPTER ONE The Land and the Indian Among the motives for English colonization of America in the seventeenth century, the desire for free land occupied a prominent place. The availability of land in the New World appealed to all classes and ranks in Europe, particularly to the small landholder who sought to increase his landed estate and to the artisans and tenants who longed to enter the ranks of the freeholder. The desire for land and the opportunity to provide a home for one's family, according to Professor C. M. Andrews, "probably influenced the largest number of those who settled in North America." Land also had its appeal as the gateway to freedom, contributing substantially to the shaping of the American character. When analyzing the factors that helped make this "new man, who acts upon new principles," De Crèvecoeur in 1782 emphasized the opportunity to "become a free man, invested with lands, to which every municipal blessing is annexed!" Formulation of a land policy confronted the officials of all the colonies in early America. Its importance is reflected in the statement by C. L. Raper in his study of English colonial government that the "System and policy concerning land determine to a very considerable extent the economic, social, and political life of the colonists." The existence of the American frontier with unoccupied land was a potent force in America, and Frederick Jackson Turner stated in his famous essay in 1893 that the "Most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land." Before analyzing the nature of landholding and the land policy that was adopted in early Virginia, let us examine first the problem that arose by virtue of the presence of the Indians in North America. At the time of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 the area of present-day Virginia was occupied by Indians of three linguistic stocks: Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian. Generally speaking, the Algonquins which included the Powhatan Confederacy inhabited the Tidewater, reaching from the Potomac to the James River and extending to the Eastern Shore. The Siouan tribes, including the Monacans and the Manahoacs, occupied the Piedmont; while the Iroquoian group, containing the independent Nottoways and Meherrins, partially surrounded the others in a rough semicircle reaching from the headwaters of the Chesapeake through the western mountains and back to the coast in the region south of the James River. The presence of these tribes in the areas of proposed colonization confronted the colonizers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the same problem that has faced imperialists of a later date, the question of "right and title" to land. The British, like other European nations, did not recognize the sovereign right of the heathen natives but claimed a general title to the area by the prevailing doctrine of right by discovery and later by the generally accepted doctrine of effective occupation. As stated in the charter to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 with essentially the same provision included in the first charter of Virginia in 1606, the colonizers were authorized to occupy land "not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People." Over the Indians the British maintained a "limited sovereignty"; and when acknowledging any claim, they recognized only the Indian's right of occupation and asserted the "exclusive right" to extinguish this title which occupancy gave them. In the first years of the colony not even these tenure rights were recognized by the British. While a few gifts of land had been made by the natives and one of these confirmed by the London Company, there was no admission, either direct or by inference, that the Indians possessed a superior claim to the land. When such an implication was made in a land grant to Barkham in 1621, the company reacted with bitter resentment. Governor Yeardley, striving to maintain peace with the natives, made the grant conditional upon the consent of the Indian chief Opechancanough. According to stated practice under the company, the grant then had to be approved in England by a quarter court of the company's stockholders. When Barkham's petition was presented for ratification, the members of the court held the provision concerning the Indian chief to be "verie dishonorable and prejudiciall" for it infringed upon the company's title by acknowledging sovereignty in that "heathen infidell." Disregard for the aboriginal occupants of Virginia called forth anew the question of "right and title," a problem subject to discussion in England even before Jamestown. To allay these attacks, several proponents of colonial expansion attempted to justify the policy of the crown and the London Company. Sir George Peckham in _A true reporte of the late discoveries_ pointed out as early as 1583, relating to the discoveries of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, that it was "lawfull and necessary to trade and traficke with the savages." In a series of subsequent arguments, he then expounded the right of settlement among the natives and the mutual benefit to them and to England. This theme was later extended by the author of _Nova Britannia_, who maintained that the object of the English was to settle in the Indian's country, "yet not to supplant and roote them out, but to bring them from their base condition to a farre better" by teaching them the "arts of civility." The author of _Good Speed to Virginia_ added that the "Savages have no particular propertie in any part or parcell of that countrey, but only a generall residencie there, as wild beasts have in the forests." This last opinion, according to Philip A. Bruce, prevailed to a great extent and was held by a majority of the members of the London Company in regard to the appropriations of lands. In spite of these views entertained by the company, there were several instances in which the natives were compensated for their territory. This was done primarily through the initiative of local authorities, for they were usually better informed concerning Indian affairs. They were in much closer contact with the natives than the company's Council in London and realized that the goodwill of the aborigines could be cultivated by giving only minor considerations for the land occupied by the English. On other occasions the Indians voluntarily gave up their land such as the present from Opechancanough in 1617 of a large body of land at Weyanoke. At still other times land was seized by force. When any attempt was made to justify the seizure, it was done on the basis of an indemnity for damage inflicted upon the colony or for violations of agreements by the natives. By 1622 settlements had been made along the banks of the lower James River and in Accomac on the Eastern Shore, the land having been obtained by direct purchase, by gifts from the natives, or by conquest. Any attempt to determine the extent of the areas acquired by purchase in Virginia is hindered by the indefinite nature of the Indian holdings and by the lack of complete records for the early periods. Thomas Jefferson thought much of the land had been purchased. Writing to St. George Tucker in 1798, Jefferson stated: At an early part of my life, from 1762 to 1775, I passed much time in going through the public records in Virginia, then in the secretary's office, and especially those of a very early date of our settlement. In these are abundant instances of purchases made by our first assemblies of the indi[ans] around them. The opinion I formed at the time was that if the records were complete & thoroughly searched, it would be found that nearly the whole of the lower country was covered by these contracts. Jefferson overestimated the amount of land that was purchased by Virginia during the early years. While the records now extant show that the colony often purchased lands, they likewise indicate that frequently land was appropriated without compensation. Especially during the years following the first massacre of 1622, "The Indians were stripped of their inheritance without the shadow of justice." The greater part of the Peninsula between the York and James rivers was taken by conquest; the right of possession was later confirmed by a treaty with Necotowance in 1646, without, however, any stipulation for compensating the natives for the land they relinquished. The treaty of 1646 with the successor of Opechancanough inaugurated the policy of major historical significance of either setting aside areas reserved for Indian tribes, or establishing a general boundary line between white and Indian settlements. Influenced by the desire of individual settlers to fortify their claims and by the opposition of the natives to white encroachment, the colony designated definite lands for the Virginia Indians and began to follow more closely the custom of purchasing all territory received from the natives. To see that this was done, the Assembly passed numerous laws, pertaining in most cases only to the specific tribes of Indians mentioned in each act. In 1653 the Assembly ordered that the commissioners of York County remove any persons then seated upon the territory of the Pamunkey or Chickahominy Indians. At the same time both lands and hunting grounds were assigned to the red men of Gloucester and Lancaster counties. The following year the Indian tribes of Northampton County on the Eastern Shore were granted the right to sell their land to the English provided a majority of the inhabitants of the Indian town consented and provided the Governor and Council of the colony ratified the procedure. Soon other tribes were given the same privilege. So anxious were they to dispose of their land when allowed to convey a legal title, that it became necessary for the colony to forbid further land transfers without the Assembly's stamp of approval. Such a step was taken in order to prevent the continual necessity of apportioning new lands to keep the natives satisfied. By 1658 the Assembly had received from several Indian tribes so many complaints of being deprived of their land, either by force or fraud, that measures were again adopted to protect the natives in their rights. No member of the colony was allowed to occupy lands claimed by the natives without consent from the Governor and Council or from the commissioners of the territory where the settlement was intended. To decrease the chances for cheating the Indians, all sales were to be consummated at quarter courts where unfair purchases could be prevented. Efforts to protect the Indians in the possession of their lands were subject to modification from time to time. The treaty of 1646 designated the York River as the line to separate the settlements of the English and the natives. But the colony at that time was on the eve of a great period of expansion. With an estimated population of 15,000 in 1650, the colony increased by 1666 to approximately 40,000, and by 1681 to approximately 80,000. To stem the tide of the advancing English settlement was apparently an impossibility. Therefore, Governor William Berkeley and the Council, upon representation from the Burgesses, consented to the opening of the land north of the York and Rappahannock rivers after 1649. At the same time the provision making it a felony for the English to go north of the York was repealed. This turn in policy, based upon the assumption that some intermingling of the white and red men was inevitable, led to the effort to provide for an "equitable division" of land supplemented by attempts to modify the Indian economy which had previously demanded vast areas of the country. Endeavoring to provide for this "equitable division" of land, the Assembly in 1658 forbade further grants of lands to any Englishmen whatsoever until the Indians had been allotted a proportion of fifty acres for each bowman. The land for each Indian town was to lie together and to include all waste and unfenced land for the purpose of hunting. This provision did not relieve all pressure on Indians' lands, partly because some of the natives never received their full proportion and partly because some had been accustomed to even larger areas. But it did serve as a basis for reservation of land for different tribes. [Illustration: From a portrait reproduced in J. H. Claiborne, _William Claiborne of Virginia_. Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce. William Claiborne, Surveyor for Virginia, Secretary of the Colony of Virginia] [Illustration: _How to reduce all sorts of grounds into a square for the better measuring of it._ From John Norden's "Surveior's Dialogue" Photo by T. L. Williams] Two years later the Assembly in 1660 took definite steps to relieve the pressure of English encroachments upon the territory of the Accomac Indians on the Eastern Shore. Enough land was assigned to the natives of Accomac to afford ample provisions for subsistence over and above the supplies that might be obtained through hunting and fishing. To insure a fair and just distribution of these lands, the Assembly passed over surveyors of the Eastern Shore and required that the work be done by a resident of the mainland, who obviously would be less prejudiced against the aborigines because of personal interest. When once assigned to the natives, the land could not be alienated. By 1662 this last provision, forbidding the Accomacs to alienate their lands, was extended to all Indians in Virginia. The Assembly had realized that the chief cause of trouble was the encroachment by the whites upon Indian territory. Efforts, therefore, had been made to remove this cause of friction by permitting purchases from the natives provided each sale was publicly announced before a quarter court or the Assembly. But the plan had not been a complete success. Various members of the colony had employed all kinds of ingenious devices to persuade the natives to announce in public their willingness to part with their land. Dishonest interpreters had rendered "them willing to surrender when indeed they intended to have received a confirmation of their owne rights." In view of these evil practices the Assembly declared all future sales to be null and void. Twenty-eight years later in 1690 the Governor and Council in accord with this restriction nullified several purchases made from the Chickahominy Indians. By order of the Assembly in 1660 this tribe had received lands in Pamunkey Neck. Since that time several colonists had either purchased a part of their land or encroached upon their territory without regard for compensation. In neither case were the white settlers allowed to remain. All leases, sales, and other exchanges were declared void by the Governor and Council, and all intruders were ordered to withdraw and burn the buildings that had been constructed. George Pagitor, being one of the settlers affected by this order, had obtained about 1,200 acres in Pamunkey Neck from the natives. He had built a forty-foot tobacco barn and kept two workers there most of the year. When his purchase was declared void, he was ordered to return the land to the natives and to burn the barn that had been constructed. Accompanying this executive decree was an order to the sheriff of New Kent County authorizing him to carry out the will of the officials of the colony and to burn the barn himself, if necessary. Commissioners were also employed for the supervision of Indian lands. Upon the recommendation of the committee appointed for Indian affairs, the Assembly in 1662 authorized the Governor to appoint a commission "to enquire into and examine the severall claimes made to any part of our neighboring Indian land, and confirme such persons who have justly invested themselves, and cause all others to remove." The English with rights to land within three miles of the natives were to assist in fencing the Indian corn fields. This was done to prevent harm to the Indian crops by hogs and cattle of the colony. Commissioners appointed were to designate the time and number of English to aid in the construction. Other commissioners were to view annually the boundaries separating the two people. The commissioners diligently enforced the provisions of these laws which underwent few changes until the outburst of hostilities in Bacon's Rebellion. In 1678 the additional expense of the Indian war led the colony to modify temporarily its former provisions in order to obtain more revenue from land. All territory recently assigned to the Indians but then abandoned and any land then occupied that should later be deserted were to be sold. The proceeds from the sale were to be used in the public interest to defray the expense of the war. This regulation applied only to land abandoned by the Indians. The colony continued to protect the natives in other lands assigned them as is exemplified in the region south of the James River. In 1665 the Indian boundary line for the area was designated to run from the southern branches of the Blackwater River to the Appomattox Indian town, and from there to Manakin Town located only a few miles above the Fall Line. By 1674 some of the colonists had crossed this line and were settling on the territory of the Nottoway Indians. When the encroachment was called to the attention of the Governor and Council, they ordered the English to withdraw immediately, and in the next instructions to the surveyor of the colony they again forbade the location of new grants in the region designated as Indian land. The number of the aborigines gradually dwindled in this section as in other parts of the colony, due mainly to wars, smallpox epidemics, spirituous liquors, migration, and the abridgement of territory of a people who lived principally on the "spontaneous productions of nature." Because of the decrease the Burgesses in 1685 appealed to Governor Howard for permission to allow grants to some of the land in the area. The Governor failed to comply with their requests. Later, in 1690, an order was issued for the immediate removal of several persons who had obtained illegal patents to land south of the main Blackwater Swamp. All members of the colony were again forbidden to settle beyond the boundary line, and any who had already constructed houses were ordered not to repair them nor to finish any other uncompleted buildings. The sheriffs and justices of the peace of Charles City, Surry, Isle of Wight, and Nansemond counties were instructed to be on the alert for violators of the order. However, the Indians themselves, residing in the region on the south side of the Blackwater River and in Pamunkey Neck had requested in 1688 that colonists be allowed to settle across the boundary line in the area now made vacant by the gradual dying out of their tribes. The basis for the request seems to have been a desire for relief in their precarious economic condition and the fear of invasion by hostile Indians, whom they regarded with more apprehension than they did the English. By 1705, the colony, influenced by the request from the natives revoked its former law regarding the Indian boundary, permitting a limited number of white settlements in Pamunkey Neck and in the region south of the Blackwater Swamp and Nottoway River. Thus in the seventeenth century the pendulum moved from a position of the colony ignoring any Indian rights in the land to a gradual recognition of the Indian right of occupation. This sweep of the pendulum brought the establishment of boundary lines between the whites and the Indians with reservations being designated for certain tribes. By the end of the century the diminution of the tribes found the pendulum swinging back to open the area to white settlement which had once been reserved to the natives, yet still retaining the recognition of the Indian's right of occupation where tribes survived. With this survey of the problem of the red man's title to land, let us now turn to a consideration of the white man's title and how it was obtained in seventeenth-century Virginia. CHAPTER TWO The London Company General boundaries for English settlement were designated in the charter of 1606 creating the London Company and the Plymouth Company to settle the area in America known as Virginia. The London Company was authorized to settle a tract of land 100 miles square in the southern part of the area extending from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degrees north latitude, or from the Cape Fear River in present North Carolina to New York City. The boundaries for the Plymouth Company were from the thirty-eighth to the forty-fifth degrees north latitude, or from approximately the mouth of the Potomac River to a line just north of present Bangor, Maine. In the overlapping area between the thirty-eighth and forty-first degrees, which in effect created a neutral zone between the present location of Washington, D.C., and New York City, provision was made for a distance of at least 100 miles to separate the sites that might be selected by the two companies. As stated in the charter of 1606, "all the lands, tenements, and hereditaments" were to be held "as of our Manor at East-Greenwich in the County of Kent, in free and common soccage only, and not in capite." The "Manor at East-Greenwich" refers to the residence of King James I at the royal palace of Greenwich and was used as a descriptive term in many grants to indicate that the land in America was also considered a part of the demesne of the King. The land was held not "in fee simple" with absolute ownership, a concept which was not a part of English law at the time; but it was granted "in free and common soccage" with the holder a tenant of the King with obligations of fealty and of the payment of a quitrent. The fixed rent replaced the service, military or personal, required under feudal law; and the socage tenure in effect did not subject the land to the rules of escheat or return of the land to the King if inherited by minors or widows. For Englishmen in America, the "Instructions for the government of the colonies" in 1606 were explicit in showing that their legal and tenurial rights were the same as residents of the mother country by stating that "All the lands, tenements, and hereditaments ... shal be had and inherited and enjoyed, according as in the like estates they be had and enjoyed by the lawes within this realme of England." Government by the charter of 1606 provided for a strong exercise of control by the crown over the colonies of both companies. This was achieved through the establishment of the Council for Virginia that was appointed by the King, was resident in England, and answered to the King through the Privy Council for its actions. For local control of each company, authorization was made for a Council in America with its initial membership determined by the Council for Virginia and with a president selected by the local group. Few details were given either in the charter or "Instructions" of 1606 about distribution of land. Provisions did state that grants of land in the colony would be made in the name of the King to persons whom the local Council "nominate and assign"; but no details were given of the method of land distribution. From the scant records that survive, it is evident that promises of land were made to individuals who were willing to hazard the dangers of the new country. From a bill of adventure that goes back to 1608, the nature of the promise of land is revealed in the agreement between Henry Dawkes and Richard Atkinson, clerk of the Virginia Company. Fortunately the bill of adventure of 1608 was recorded with the patent by Governor John Harvey in 1632 to William Dawkes, son and heir of Henry Dawkes. The commitments in the bill of adventure were as follows: _Whereas_ Henry Dawkes now bound on the intended voyage to Virginia hath paid, in ready money, to Sr. Thomas Smith Kt. treasurer for Virginia the some of twelve pounds tenn shillings for his adventure in the voyage to Virginia. _It is agreed_ that for the same the said Henry Dawkes his heires, executors, admrs. and assignes shall have rateably according to his adventure his full pte. of all such lands tenemts and hereditamts. as shall from time to time bee there planted and inhabited, and of all such mines and minneralls of gould, silver, and other mettalls or treasures, pearles, pretious stoanes or any kinds of wares or merchandize, comodities or pfitts. whatsoever, which shal bee obtained or gotten in the said voyage, according to the portion of money by him imployed to that use, In as large and ample manner as any other adventurer therein shall receave for the like some. Written this fowerteenth of July one thousand six hundred and eight. Richard Atkinson [Clerk of the Virginia Company]. The first two years at Jamestown brought disappointments, but the adventurers of the London Company found grounds for new hope in the enlarged and expanded program that was inaugurated in 1609. A new charter was sought from the King to make possible reforms in governmental organization both in England and Virginia; and a broader base for financial support was laid by inviting the public to subscribe to a joint-stock fund. By the charter of 1609 the new organization was incorporated as the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony in Virginia. In England the head of the reorganized company was designated as treasurer, and the major change in control was the transfer of authority over the colony from the crown to the company with the powers of government in the hands of the treasurer and Council. This Council in England, which continued for some time to be called the Council for Virginia, had its jurisdiction limited to the exploits of the London Company; its membership came entirely from the company; and its members were in effect selected by the leading promoters of the company. One major governmental change occurred in the colony by the president and Council being eliminated in favor of a strong Governor to be advised by a Council. The former provision for title to an area of land 100 miles square was changed to give title to "all that space and circuit of land" lying 200 miles north and 200 miles south of Point Comfort from the sea coast "up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west, and northwest" plus islands within 100 miles of the coast. Provisions relative to distribution of land were more specific in the 1609 charter and provided that land should be conveyed by majority vote of the company under its common seal. Consideration in distribution of land was to be given both to the amount invested by adventurer as well as "special service, hazard, exploit, or merit of any person." In the third charter of 1612 no major changes were included relative to land. Boundaries of the colony were extended from 100 miles to 300 leagues to include the newly discovered Bermuda Islands. And greater governmental authority was placed in the generality of the company by providing for quarterly court meetings of the company to handle "matters and affairs of greater weight and importance" than were resolved by lesser courts of a smaller portion of the company. No immediate grants of land to individuals were forthcoming with these charters. Only promises were made to those who subscribed to the joint-stock undertaking. The adventurer invested only his money and remained in England with each unit of investment set at £12 10s. per share. The term planter was applied to one who went to the colony, and his personal adventure was equated to one unit of investment at the same rate as above. Both adventurer and planter were promised a proportionate share of any dividends distributed, whether in land or in money. The joint-stock arrangement was originally set to continue seven years from its inception in 1609, thus making 1616 as the terminal date. During this period monetary dividends might be declared, and at the end of the period the land suitable for cultivation was to be divided with at least 100 acres to be given for each share of stock. The tract _Nova Britannia_ of 1609, written by Robert Johnson as a part of the promotional campaign of the London Company, outlined these major provisions concerning land and included the optimistic prediction that each share of £12 10s. would be worth 500 acres at least. But an attempt fourteen years later by Captain Martin to justify a patent based on this figure of 500 acres per share failed because the promise was held to be the work of a private individual and not a commitment by the court of the company. In the absence of private title to land in the early years of the Virginia colony, the company relied upon a corporate form of management with the pooling of community effort to clear the land, construct buildings, develop agriculture, and engage in trade with the Indians. This was not an experiment based on a theory of communism for the joint-stock claims were limited in time. Most of the settlers were more in a position of contract laborers performing services for the company, and plans were devised for monetary dividends even before 1616 if the colony prospered. Inadequate supplies from England, severe weather conditions, hostility of the Indians, and the lack of willingness for industrious labor on the part of the early settlers depleted the common storehouse upon which the colonists were forced to rely, leading to the exercise of stern and autocratic measures by John Smith and some of his successors as leaders in the colony. Among the factors that contributed to the lack of zeal among the settlers was the absence of private ownership of land. Prior to the promised distribution of land in 1616, there was granted private use of land under a tenant-farm policy which most probably was first inaugurated in 1614 under Sir Thomas Dale, although there is some uncertainty about the date. Three acres of "cleare ground" were allotted to men of the old settlement. In effect they became tenants of the company and were obligated to render only one month's service to the colony at some period other than the planting and harvesting time and to contribute annually to the common magazine two barrels and a half of corn on the ear. This tenant-farm policy worked well and better conditions resulted with increased production of crops and stock. According to one account in 1616: They sow and reape their corne in sufficient proportion, without want or impeachment; their kine multiply already to some hundreds, their swine to many thousands, their goates and poultry in great numbers, every man hath house and ground to his owne use.... In the same year this policy was extended to include eighty-one farmers or tenants in the colony's total population of 351. Despite improvement in the supply of provisions, the company still had to face the harsh facts that in 1616 there were only 351 persons alive in the colony, and funds were low in the treasury. There had been only a limited number of new subscribers; some of the earlier subscribers had defaulted on their second or third payments; and the use of lotteries had failed to provide adequate money. This was the year set for the end of the joint ownership of land with the declaration of land dividends. But the company could not provide the necessary funds to defray the administrative costs for the land divisions; and furthermore, many were of the opinion that not enough land in possession had been cleared of trees and surveyed. The arbitrary conduct of the Deputy Governor Captain Samuel Argall, who arrived in Virginia in May, 1617, also contributed to the delay in carrying out the plan for land distribution. _In A Briefe Declaration of the present state of things in Virginia_, adventurers were told that "this course of sending a Governor with commissioners and a survayor, with men, ships, and sundry provisions" would be expensive, and plans were announced for only a preliminary or "first divident" of fifty acres with the expressed hope that a later division would bring at least 200 acres for every share. But even for the preliminary division, more money was needed and shareholders were asked to subscribe another £12 10s. to help pay for the administrative cost. For each additional subscription of £12 10s., a fifty-acre grant would be made. Here we have provisions for obtaining land by "treasury right," a method remaining in effect only until dissolution of the company in 1624 and not reappearing until 1699. Planters in the colony were also to receive a fifty-acre grant for their personal adventure. Even new adventurers were invited to buy shares at £12 10s. and were promised fifty-acre grants with the same privileges of the old adventurers. But the response was poor. Most of the grants that were made were either irregular in form or contained unreasonable provisions dictated by the exigency of the situation, thereby being later repudiated by the company. The financial embarrassment of the company and the need for further colonization led to grants of land in return for service to the company by officials or for promoting the transportation of colonists. For the services of Sir Thomas Dale to the colony, the Council for Virginia awarded him the value of 700 pounds sterling to be received in land distribution; to Sir Thomas Smith for his noteworthy efforts as treasurer or chief official of the company, 2,000 acres; and to Captain Daniel Tucker for his aiding the colony with his pinnace and for his service as vice-admiral, fifteen shares of land. Similar rewards could be made under the company to ministers, physicians, and other government officials. As a further stimulus to expand the population of the colony and to enhance agricultural production, the company beginning in 1617 encouraged private or voluntary associations, organized on a joint-stock basis, to establish settlements in the area of the company's patent. These "societies of adventurers" were to send to Virginia at their own expense, tenants, servants, and supplies; and the associates were given certain governmental powers over the settlement that approached the position of an independent colony. They were authorized "till a form of government is here settled over them" to issue orders and ordinances provided they were not contrary to the laws of England. In relation to the four original boroughs of James City, Charles City, Henrico, and Kecoughtan (later Elizabeth City), the hundreds or particular plantations in government were "co-ordinate and not subordinate"; and some of them sent representatives to the first Assembly held in 1619 under Governor Yeardley. The amount of land in these sub-patents depended upon the number of shares of stock of the associates, and in effect the grants served as dividends to the shareholders. One hundred acres were granted for each share with the first division of land, and the promise was made for an equal amount upon a second division of land provided the first was "sufficiently peopled." There was to be some choice in location by the associates, although certain restrictions were imposed. No grant was to be located within five miles of the four original boroughs, and the plantation should be ten miles from other settlements unless on opposite sides of an important river. These provisions were designed to provide for expansion and at the same time avoid conflict among plantations, yet they tended to disperse the colony and complicate efforts to maintain adequate protection from the imminent threat of hostile natives. The term hundred was applied to some, but not all, of these particular plantations. The origin of this designation has sometimes been explained as a derivation from the English administrative system, but this seems valid only as it pertains to the name. There was no attempt to establish a system based on English counties and hundreds, rather the Virginia hundreds were closer to the feudal manor with a degree of economic and political independence. In the light of these conditions, Professor Wesley Frank Craven suggested the possibility that the term might have been a "colloquial designation" applied to plantations with no definite name and related to the units of 100 acres included in the grants or by the requirement to seat 100 settlers on the land. There were three general types of particular plantations. The first of these represented the voluntary pooling of land and resources by several adventurers of the company, since few had adequate land or financial support to go it alone. The company granted a patent to contiguous areas of land according to the number of shares of stock possessed by the group. Examples of this type include the Society of Smith's Hundred and Martin's Hundred. Smith's Hundred, later called Southampton Hundred, was organized in 1617 and included among its adventurers Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Edwin Sandys, and the Earl of Southampton. The grant included 80,000 acres and was located on the north side of the James River in the area between "Tanks Weyanoke" and the Chickahominy River. The society was administered by a treasurer and committees selected by a meeting of the adventurers. The associates settled at least 300 colonists within their boundaries and reported in 1635 the expenditure of £6,000 on the settlement. Martin's Hundred, organized in 1618, was named for Richard Martin and should be distinguished from (John) Martin's Brandon organized the previous year. The Society of Martin's Hundred held patent to 80,000 acres and dispatched over 250 colonists, but only a part of the tract was ever occupied. The second type of particular plantation involved an adventurer who combined with persons outside the company to obtain a grant. The title usually resided in the original adventurer, and the nature of government and special privileges was similar to grants of the first kind discussed above. The grant made to Captain Samuel Argall was of this type. So was the grant of John Martin's Brandon in 1617, a plantation of 7,000 acres situated seven miles upstream from Jamestown. The third type of grant involved new adventurers whose major purpose in buying stock in the company was to organize a particular plantation. Illustrative of this category was the plantation of Christopher Lawne, who transported 100 settlers in 1619 to Warrosquoik and established Lawne's Hundred. During the following year the hundred was dissolved and thereafter called Isle of Wight Plantation. Beginning with the election of Sir Edwin Sandys as treasurer in 1619 and including the next four years, there were forty-four grants made for particular plantations; and the company declared six others to have been made prior to this time under Sir Thomas Smith. All of the projected plantations, however, were never located; and few were settled to the extent planned by the company. Historical records are scarce for these projects and this paucity of material has left much of the story incomplete. It is certain that the following additional plantations were actually established in Virginia: Archer's Hope on the James River, Bargrave's Settlement, Bennett's Welcome, Society of Truelove's Plantation, Persey's or Flowerdieu Hundred, and Berkeley Town or Hundred. For the last of these, Berkeley Hundred, there is an extensive set of records in the Smyth of Nibley Papers that gives considerable insight into the organization and activities of the adventurers under the leadership of Richard Berkeley, George Thorpe, William Throckmorton, and John Smyth of Nibley. Resembling its larger prototype, the London Company, the Berkeley Hundred group had a governor and council. The adventurers were granted 100 acres of land for each share of stock with the promise of an equal amount when the first grant was settled; likewise they were promised fifty acres without quitrent for every person transported at their expense who remained for three years or died within this period. For promoting both a church and school, the adventurers were also granted 1,500 acres. With these grants and with exemptions from both the company's trade rules and from taxation except by consent, the leaders of Berkeley Hundred inaugurated a vigorous campaign to provide the necessary provisions and personnel, including farmers, artisans, overseers, a minister, and a doctor. Over ninety people were dispatched to the colony in 1619 and 1620 at a cost of approximately £2,000. This settlement, however, did not thrive. Many of the settlers died of disease and eleven were killed in the Indian massacre of 1622. By 1636 the adventurers had abandoned their plans to continue the settlement and sold their interests to London merchants. In addition to the stimulus to migration by the three foregoing types of grants for particular plantations, the company took steps in 1618 toward reorganization of its administration. Sir Thomas Smith was still in control of the company as treasurer and contributed to the reforms, but the major contribution came from Sir Edwin Sandys who succeeded to the position of treasurer in the spring of the following year. Rules and by-laws were restated in the "Orders and Constitutions," which were largely prepared in 1618 although not formally adopted until June, 1619. One additional document of 1618 was very significant because it outlined a uniform land policy. Identified by the term "the greate charter," it is listed in the _Records_ of the London Company as "Instructions to Governor Yeardly" under the date November 18, 1618. This "charter" outlined plans for distribution of the land dividend and contained provisions for the headright system which became a basic feature of the colony's land policy. One hundred acres were promised as a first dividend to all adventurers for each paid-up share of stock at £12 10s., another 100 acres as a second dividend when the first had been settled ("sufficiently peopled"). "Ancient planters," that is, those who had come to the colony prior to the departure of Sir Thomas Dale in 1616, were to receive similar grants if they had come to the colony at their own expense. These foregoing grants were to be free of quitrent. "Ancient planters" who came to the colony at the company's expense would receive the same amount of land after a seven-year term of service but would be required to pay a quitrent of two shillings for every 100 acres. For settlers arriving after the departure of Dale in 1616 or those migrating during the seven-year period following Midsummer Day of 1618, separate regulations applied. If transported at company expense, the colonist was to serve as a half-share tenant for seven years with no promise of a land grant; if at his own expense, he was to receive as a headright fifty acres on the first dividend and the same amount on the second dividend. This provision for the fifty-acre headright was set up for the seven-year period prior to Midsummer Day of 1625, but it continued beyond this date as the essential key to Virginia's land policy of the seventeenth century. Out of the number of people who purchased a share in the company and thereby received a bill of adventure, Alexander Brown in his _Genesis of the United States_ estimated that about one-third came to Virginia and took up their land claim; approximately one-third sent over agents, or in some cases heirs, to benefit by the grants; and the remaining one-third disposed of their shares to others who occupied the lands. Provisions for special lands were also stated in "the greate charter." At each of the four focal points of settlement--James City, Charles City, Henrico, and Kecoughtan, 3,000 acres were to be set aside as the company's land. Half-share tenants were to cultivate the lands and half of the company's profits was to be used to support several of the colonial officials. For the Governor, a special plot known as the Governor's land was to be designated at Jamestown, and half of the proceeds of the tenants was to go to the Governor. For local government, additional provisions were made for support by setting aside 1,500 acres as "burroughs land" at the four points of settlement listed above. Support of cultural activities, as well as governmental, was also provided by land. Glebe lands were authorized at each borough, including 100 acres for the minister with a supplement from church members to pay a total of £200 per annum. For the promotion of education, "the greate charter" set aside 10,000 acres at Henrico as an endowment for a "university and college." The primary aim of the college in 1618 was to serve as an Indian mission, although the training of English students was probably a part of the plan. Tenants were dispatched to Virginia to work at Henrico as "tenants at halves," one-half of the proceeds of their labor to go to the tenant, the other half to be used for the building of the college and for support of its tutors and students. One hundred and fifty tenants were sent over for the college land; and to improve the returns from this enterprise, Sir Edwin Sandys engaged that "worthy religious gentleman" George Thorpe as deputy to supervise the investment in the college land. Patrick Copland, projector of the first English free school in North America, was designated president-elect of the Indian college; and Richard Downes, a scholar in England, came to Virginia in 1619 with plans to work in the proposed college. All of these hopeful plans were suddenly blasted by the eruption of the Indian massacre of 1622. For all practical purposes the project was ended, although some efforts were made after 1622 by the company to have the remaining tenants cultivate the land and to hold the bricklayers to the obligations of their contract. The trace of these grants, including the company land, the Governor's land, and the "burroughs land" fades out in the absence of complete records for this period of the colony. Use of the glebe land as partial support for the minister was continued in later years, although details of the disposition of these early plots are missing. And the appropriation of lands for support of education and other public purposes was a recognized concept in later American history. The issuing of patents in fee simple to land promised under the general land dividend did not reach the extent planned by the company until the arrival of Governor George Yeardley in 1619. There seems to be adequate evidence to prove, as Bruce contended, that a few grants had been made prior to this time, even prior to 1617; but no record has been preserved in the Virginia Land Office. However, even if such grants were authorized, it is unlikely that the proper surveys were made for many of them. As early as 1616 there were references by the company to send to Virginia a surveyor who could lay out the lands to be distributed to the adventurers. It is probable that a surveyor accompanied Captain Samuel Argall to the colony in 1617, but the first name on record in this position seems to be that of Richard Norwood who had previously engaged in surveying in the Somer Isles. There is little to indicate that much was done by Norwood. In 1621 William Claiborne accompanied Governor Francis Wyatt to Virginia, and the arrival of these two men actuated the granting of many tracts. One of these grants by Governor Wyatt is the earliest extant form of the headright franchise. Dated January 26, 1621/22, it conveyed to Thomas Hothersall 200 acres of land at Blunt Point located in later Warwick County. The grant read as follows: _By the Governr and Capt: Generll: of Virginia_ _To all to whome these prsents shall come_ greeting in our Lord God Everlasting. _Know Yee_ that I sr Francis Wyatt Kt, Governr and Capt: Generall of Virginia, by vertue of the great charter of orders and lawes concluded on and dated at London in a generall quarter court the eighteenth day of November one thousand six hundred and eighteene by the treasurer Counseil and company of adventurers for the first southerne colony of Virginia, according to the authority graunted them from his Matie under his great seale, the said charter being directed to the Governr and Counseil of State here resident, and by the rules of justice, equity & reason, doe wth the approbation and consent of the same Counseil who are joyned in commission with mee, give and graunt unto Mr. Thomas Hothersall of Paspehay gent., and to his heires and assignes for ever, for his first generll: devident, to bee augumented and doubled by the said company to him and his said heires and assignes when hee or they shall once sufficiently have planted and peopled the same. Two hundred acres of land scituate and being at Blunt Point, confining on the east the land of Cornelius May, on the south upon the great river, on the north upon the maine land and on the west runing towards a small creek one hundred rod (at sixteene foote and a half the rod); Fifty acres whereof is his owne psonall right and fifty acres is the psonall right of Frances Hothersall his wife, the other hundred acres in consideration of his transportacon of twoe of his children out of England at his owne cost & charges, Viz: Richard Hothersall and Mary Hothersall, _To Have and to Hold_ the said twoe hundred acres of land with all and singular the apptennces, and with his due share of all mines & minneralls therein conteyned, and wth all rights and privileges of hunting, hawking and fowling and others within the prcincts and upon the borders of the said land, To the only pper use benifitt and behoofe of the said Thomas Hothersall, his heires and assignes for ever, In as large and ample manner to all intents and purposes as is specified in the said great charter or by consequences may justly bee collected out of the same, or out of his Ma'ties letters patents whereon it is grounded. _Yeilding and paying_ to the treasurer and company and to their successors for ever, yearely at the feast of St. Michael the Archangell [September 29], for every fifty acres, the fee rent of one shilling. _In witness whereof_ I have to these presents sett my hand and the great seale of the colony, given at James Citty the six and twentieth day of January one thousand six hundred twenty one [o.s.] and in the yeares of the raigne, of our Soveraigne Lord, James by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the faith &c., Vizt: of England, France and Ireland the nineteenth and of Scotland the five and fiftieth, and in the fifteenth yeare of this plantacon. Claiborne supervised most of the surveys included on the list of patents that was drawn up by Governor Wyatt in 1625. Out of 184 patents that were issued to individual planters, over seventy-five per cent included only 200 acres or less with the most frequent grant being the 100-acre grant to the "ancient planter." For the remaining individual grants, approximately one-sixth were between 201 and 600 acres; four were between 601 and 1,000 acres; and four exceeded 1,000 acres. In an analysis of the status of the Virginia population with regard to landholding at the time of the dissolution of the company in 1624, Professor Manning C. Voorhis concluded that only about one-seventh of the 1,240 population obtained land from the company. This would leave the remainder of the settlers as indentured servants or tenant farmers who worked out their maintenance or transportation either for the company or for private individuals who financed their trip to America. The tenant farmers constituted the larger group. In the chapter that follows, some attention will be given to the status of these immigrants and the extent to which they were able to become independent landowners in the colony. CHAPTER THREE Virginia as a Royal Colony The Nature and Size of Land Grants A variety of reasons led the King to dissolve the London Company and to assume royal control over the first experiment in colonization under an incorporated company. Failure of the colony to thrive economically, the poor financial condition of the company, political differences between Sir Edwin Sandys and the King, internal dissensions between the Sandys faction and the Smith-Warwick group, the extremely high death rate in the colony, and the impact of the Indian massacre of 1622--all contributed in varying degrees of importance to the dissolution. The company rejected efforts of the crown to substitute a new charter drawn up in 1623 providing for the King to resume control of the colony by establishing a royal Council in England and a Governor and Council in Virginia. Consequently the Privy Council obtained a writ of _quo warranto_ which terminated with a decision by the court of King's Bench in May, 1624, annulling the charter of the company. With the advent of royal control there was a significant continuity in practice in the colony, and the political framework was little changed. The Governor and Council were then appointed by the King, but the House of Burgesses continued without major revision. In order to assure continued respect for public authority, a royal commission was dispatched to Governor Wyatt and an eleven-man Council empowering them to act "as fully and ampley as anie Governor and Councell resident there at anie tyme within the space of five yeares now last past." A similar commission was issued to Sir George Yeardley in 1626, and for the next sixteen years royal instructions to the Governors reflected a striking resemblance. A similar continuity was evident in economic affairs as revealed in land policy. The London Company as a corporate body in charge of the colony terminated in 1624 after eighteen years, and the following year after the death of King James I the colony of Virginia by proclamation was made a part of the royal demesne. The landholder in Virginia became then in effect a freehold tenant of the King. The rights and property of the company were taken over by the crown, but recognition was made of the private property right of the planter and of individual claims of those who had invested in the company. Even land rights to planters and adventurers that had not been taken up were recognized, but few proceeded to effect settlement or to exercise the right of taking up 100 acres per share of stock. The land rights of the private joint-stock associations also continued to be recognized, but there was less enthusiasm on the part of individual adventurers to promote the projects started some years earlier. This development was indicative of the major change in the economic life of the colony that resulted in the decline, if not disappearance, of absentee ownership. As previously noted, Berkeley Hundred had suffered the loss of many of its settlers in the massacre of 1622; and upon expiration of term of service of the few remaining servants, only the land and a few cattle were left in the settlement. By 1636 the adventurers had sold their claims to London merchants. In the case of Martin's Hundred located about seven miles from Jamestown, the massacre doomed the active settlement and only the title to the land continued. Eventually the title to this hundred was withdrawn to permit natural expansion of the colony, and the associates or adventurers were awarded claims to land allotments commensurate with the number of shares held in the joint stock. The tracts known as company land were maintained for a while under royal control. The role of the public estate, however, never assumed great significance, yet there is evidence of the continued practice during the seventeenth century of endowing an office such as Governor or secretary with the proceeds of a land grant. Theoretically tenants and contract laborers who were still alive at the time of the dissolution of the company were to continue their labor either on the public land or on private associations. In practice, however, it is likely that lax enforcement of the contracts resulted in a substantial diminution of the obligations of many workers. The scarcity of records for this period makes it impossible to trace all of this group, but there is enough evidence to indicate that some continued to serve out their term of labor. The General Court in 1627 expressed concern about the approaching expiration of leases and indentures of persons for whom there were no provisions for lands; and action was taken to permit them to lease land for a period of ten to twenty-one years in return for which they were to render a stipulated amount of tobacco or corn for each acre, usually one pound of tobacco per acre. This lenient provision notwithstanding, only about sixty persons availed themselves of the opportunity, the remainder presumably either squatting on frontier land, working as laborers, or eventually obtaining title to land by purchase from an original patentee. With the dissolution of the company the issuing of land patents continued in the hands of the Governor and Council. The King and Privy Council assumed power over land distribution but apparently left the issuing of patents as it had been before. Up until January, 1625, Governor Wyatt issued patents in the name of the company. At that time news reached Virginia that the writ of _quo warranto_ of June, 1624, had dissolved the company and that King James I upon assumption of control of the colony had issued on August 26, 1624, the first commission of a royal Governor to Wyatt. But the commission made no reference to land grants, and Governor Wyatt issued none after January, 1625. Charles I succeeded to the throne following the death of James I on March 27, 1625. His proclamation stating policy relative to Virginia professed protection of the interests of private planters and adventurers but made no direct reference to land grants. Governor Yeardley replaced Wyatt by a commission of March 14, 1625/26 and arrived in Virginia in May, 1626. There is no record extant to show that Yeardley received direct instructions to start issuing grants; but it is certain that he did begin in February, 1626/27, interpreting his instructions and commission as authorizing the action. Land patents during this period were to be issued on four main conditions: (1) as a dividend in return for investment in the founding of the colony; (2) as a reward for special service to the colony; (3) as a stimulus to fortify the frontier by using land to induce settlement; and (4) as a method of encouraging immigration by the headright. The first of these was simply an assurance by the King that the former stockholders in the company still had the right to take up land at the rate of 100 acres for each share of stock owned. As late as 1642 this privilege was still being confirmed in instructions to the Governor; but the stockholders appeared to be little interested at this time in coming to Virginia, for very few took up their claim and apparently the shares bearing the holder's name could not be transferred after the dissolution. The plan for the distribution of the first dividend in 1619 also provided for a second allotment. As late as 1632 patents still included authorization for a second dividend when the first had been cultivated. But no second allotment was ever made. There are, however, examples to indicate that claims for the first dividend were upheld after the company was dissolved. In 1628 Thomas Graies obtained a patent as a dividend for his subscription of twenty-five pounds sterling; in 1636 Captain John Hobson was issued a patent covering a bill of adventure that went back to 1621; and on another occasion the land dividend due a deceased father was awarded to his son. The next condition of awarding patents for meritorious service to the colony was of long standing. Used to award ministers, political officials, physicians, sea captains, and various other individuals under the company, the practice continued under royal control after 1624. Governor Wyatt in 1638 was instructed to issue land patents for meritorious service according to provisions previously adopted for such cases. And a few years later Charles II awarded lands in Virginia to servants or others who aided him, although it is not certain whether these individuals were ever able to take up the claim bestowed upon them. The third condition for a patent was practically a corollary to the second, for it involved rendering service to the colony by settling and fortifying the frontier. One example during this period may be found in securing the Peninsula. Following the massacre of 1622 Governor Wyatt and his Council wrote to the Earl of Southampton about a plan for "winning the forest" by running a pale between Martin's Hundred on the James River and Cheskiack on the York. Again in 1624 the suggestion was made to the royal commissioners who were sent over by the King to determine the most suitable places for fortification. To effect the construction of this palisade, the General Assembly in 1633 offered land as an inducement to settle between Queen's Creek and Archer's Hope Creek, promising fifty acres and a period of tax exemption to freemen who would occupy the area of Middle Plantation, later Williamsburg. In February, 1633, the order was issued for a fortieth part of the men in the "compasse of the forest" between the two previously mentioned creeks and Chesapeake Bay to meet at Dr. John Pott's plantation at the head of Archer's Hope Creek for the purpose of erecting houses to secure the neck of land known as the Peninsula. With this encouragement by the Assembly, a palisade six miles in length was completed, running from Queen's Creek to Archer's Hope Creek and passing through Middle Plantation. Houses were constructed at convenient distances, and a sufficient number of men were assigned to patrol the line of defense during times of imminent danger. By setting off a little less than 300,000 acres of land, this palisade provided defense for the new plantations between the York and James rivers and served as a restraining barrier for the cattle of the colony. Granting of land was again used on a large scale for the establishment of forts after the Indian massacre of 1644. By order of the Assembly in 1645 blockhouses or forts were established at strategic points: Fort Charles at the falls of the James River, Fort Royal at Pamunkey, Fort James on the ridge of Chickahominy on the north side of the James, and in the next year Fort Henry at the falls of the Appomattox River. The maintenance of these forts involved considerable expense, more than the officials of the colony wished to drain from the public treasury. Therefore, they decided to grant the forts with adjoining lands to individuals who would accept the responsibility of their upkeep as well as the maintenance of an adequate force for defense. Fort Henry, located at present-day Petersburg, was granted to Captain Abraham Wood with 600 acres of land plus all houses, edifices, boats, and ammunition belonging to the fort. Wood was required to maintain and keep ten persons continuously at the fort for three years. During this time he was exempted from all public taxes for himself and the ten persons. Upon similar terms Lieutenant Thomas Rolfe, son of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, received Fort James and 400 acres of land; Captain Roger Marshall, Fort Royal and 600 acres. Since there was no arable land adjoining Fort Charles at present-day Richmond, other inducements were made for its maintenance. These forts served as the first line of defense against possible attacks by the natives. Being the center of the varied activities of the frontier, they also were the starting point for expeditions against the Indians and became the center of trade for the outlying regions. The fourth condition for granting of land--the headright--was by far the most important and became the principal basis for title to land in the seventeenth century. Its origin goes back to "the greate charter" of 1618 in which the following provision was included: That for all persons ... which during the next seven years after Midsummer Day 1618 shall go into Virginia with intent there to inhabite If they continue there three years or dye after they are shiped there shall be a grant made of fifty acres for every person upon a first division and as many more upon a second division (the first being peopled) which grants to be made respectively to such persons and their heirs at whose charges the said persons going to inhabite in Virginia shall be transported with reservation of twelve pence yearly rent for every fifty acres to be answered to the said treasurer and company and their successors for ever after the first seven years of every such grant. Under these provisions of "the greate charter," it is evident that not only was the headright grant of fifty acres per person open to shareholders who brought settlers to the colony, but also to anyone who had migrated to the colony at his own expense or who had financed the expedition of other persons. Individuals paying their own transportation were entitled to fifty acres for themselves and for every member of the family, providing they fulfilled the residence requirement of three years. Governors under the company issued patents based on the headright until dissolution by the crown in 1624. Beyond that time the status of the headright was uncertain. The "charter" of 1618 had specified a term for this right for seven years ending on Midsummer Day of 1625. After this term expired, royal governors continued to honor headright claims based on immigration, although no direct authorization for such action had come from the crown. Therefore, the issuance of these claims after 1625 was based primarily on custom, brief as it was, until more direct instructions were issued to Governor John Harvey in 1634 following the proprietary grant of Maryland in 1632. The Maryland grant enhanced the concern of the Virginia inhabitants about their title to land, and correspondence conducted by Governor Harvey finally brought forth a statement from the Privy Council. Apprehension over Maryland led to assurance of the headright for Virginia as the Privy Council issued the following dispatch of July 22, 1634, to the Governor: We have thought fit to certify you that his Majesty of his royal favor, and for the better encouragement of the planters there doth let you knowe that it is not intended that the interestes which men had settled when you were a corporation should be impeached; that for the present they may enjoy their estates and trades with the same freedom and privileges as they did before the recalling of their patents: To which purpose also in pursuance of his Majesty's gracious intention, wee doe hereby authorize you to dispose of such proportions of lands to all those planters beeing freemen as you had power to doe before the yeare 1625. With this explicit royal endorsement of land patent principles followed under the company and confirmation of the headright, Governor Harvey modified the wording in the patents and adopted the following form illustrated in a grant of 2,500 acres to Captain Hugh Bullocke: _To all to whome these prsents. shall come_, I Sr. John Harvey Kt. Governr. and Capt. Generll. of Virginia send greeting in our Lord God Everlasting. _Whereas_ by letters pattents bearing date the twoe and twentieth of July one thousand six hundred thirtie fower from the Rt. Honble. the Lords of his Majties. most Honoble. Privie Councell their lordshipps did authorize the Governr. and Councell of Virginia to dispose of such pportions of land to all planters being freemen as they had power to doe before the yeare 1625, whene according to divers orders & constitutions in that case provided and appointed all devidents of lands any waies due or belonging to any adventurers or planters of what condicon soever were to bee laid out and assigned unto them according to the severall condicons in the same menconed. _Now Know Yee_ therefore that I the said Sr. John Harvey doe, with the consent of the Councell of State give and graunt unto Capt. Hugh Bullocke and to his heires and assignes for ever by these prsents Twoe thousand five hundred and fiftie acres of land, scituate, lying & being from the runn that falleth downe by the eastern side of a peece of land knowne by the name of the Woodyard and soe from that runn along the side of the Pocoson (or great Otter pond soe called) northwest and about the head of the said Otter pond back southeast leaveing the Otter pond in the middle. _To have and to Hold_ the said twoe thousand five hundred and fiftie acres of land with his due share of all mines and minneralls therein conteyned and with all rights and priviledges of hunting, hawking, fishing and fowling, wth in the prcincts of the same to the sole and pper use benifitt and behoofe of him the said Capt. Bullocke his heires and assignes for ever. In as large and ample manner to all intents and purposes as is expressed in the said orders and constitutions, or by consequence may bee justly collected out of the same or out of his Majties. letters pattents whereon they are grounded. _Yielding and paying_ for every fiftie acres of land herein by these presents given and graunted yearely at the feast of St. Michaell the Archangell [September 29], the fee rent of one shilling to his Majties. use. _Provided always_ that [if] the said Capt. Hugh Bullock, his heires or assignes shall not plant or seate or cause to bee planted on the said twoe thousand five hundred & fiftie acres of land wth in the time and terms of three yeares now next ensuing the date hereof, that then it shall and may bee lawfull for any adventurer or planter to make choice and seate upon the same. _Given_ at James Citty under my hand and sealed with the seale of the colony the twelfth day of March one thousand six hundred thirtie fower [o.s.] & in the tenth year of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles &c. Use of the headright had been adopted by the company as an expedient to increase population of the colony and to encourage immigration without further expenditure from the company treasury. The practice continued with the fifty acres of land granted to the persons who financed the transportation of the immigrant, but the grant itself was not valuable enough to compensate for the expense involved. Therefore, with increasing frequency the system of indentured servitude was used whereby the immigrant agreed to an indenture or contract to work a certain number of years as additional payment for his transportation. This system, in general, proved advantageous to both the master and the servant, to the colony by providing additional immigrants, and to England by serving as a vent for surplus population. Indentured servants were not slaves but were servants during the specified period of the contract. While the laws of the time did make a distinction in the severity of the penal code as applied to servants and to freemen, still indentured servitude did not have the stigma of bondage or slavery; and many servants upon completion of their term of service rose to positions of social and political prominence in the history of the colony. In 1676 the Lords of Trade and Plantations expressed concern over the use of the word "servitude" because of the implications of slavery, and they preferred "to use the word service, since those servants are only apprentices for years." At the expiration of the term of service, the servants usually received equipment and supplies necessary to start them as freemen. They received grain enough for one year, clothes, and in some cases a gun and a supply of tools. As to receipt of land, the policy varied from one colony to another, and at times there was uncertainty within one colony about obligations to freedmen. In Virginia the indentured servant did not usually receive land at the end of service unless he had insisted, as John Hammond in _Leah and Rachel_ had advised, that a specific provision be included in the contract to include the award of fifty acres as "freedom's dues." There are some cases in which the provision for land was included as illustrated in one of the earliest indentures known to exist for Virginia. This indenture of September 7, 1619, was made between Robert Coopy of North Nibley in Gloucestershire with the associates of Berkeley Hundred. Coopy agreed to work three years in Virginia and submit to the government of the hundred in return for which the owners were to transport him to Virginia and "There to maintayne him with convenient diet and apparell meet for such a servant, and in the end of the said terme to make him a free man of the said cuntry theirby to enjoy all the liberties, freedomes, and priviledges of a freeman there, and to grant to the said Robert thirty acres of land within their territory or hundred of Barkley...." The confusion over the question whether the indentured servant was entitled to fifty acres of land upon expiration of his service extended to the mother country. There was a widespread belief in England that such was the case, and there were indefinite statements in commissions and instructions to the Governors that left the matter in doubt. In practice in Virginia, however, it is certain that the fifty acres under the headright claim went to the person transporting indentured servants, not to the servants themselves. Only where the contract specifically stated that the servant was to receive fifty acres was he assured of this grant. Under the company there had been definite provisions that the fifty acres went to the persons transporting servants, not to the servants themselves. After its dissolution, Governors were instructed to follow the rules of the "late company," and this continued until there was a variation in Sir Francis Wyatt's commission of 1639 authorizing the Governor and the Council to issue grants to adventurers and planters "According to the orders of the late company ... and likewise 50 acres of land to every person transported thither ... until otherwise determined by His Majesty." Did "to every person" mean that the servant was entitled to land? Such was the case across the Potomac in Maryland where the servant could claim fifty acres from his employer or master until 1646; after 1646 and until 1683 the proprietor provided land for the servant. If such were intended, it was not followed and the intentions were far from clear in the later commission to Sir William Berkeley in 1642. In addition to assigning land for "adventurers of money" and "transportation of people," the commission authorized the Governor and Council to grant "fifty acres for every person transported thither since Midsummer 1625, and ... continue the same course to all persons transported thither until it shall otherwise be determined by His Majesty." The loose use of the terminology "to" and "for" recurred in subsequent years and again reflected the lack of precision in this matter as well as the seeming misapprehension in England that the servant was entitled to a fifty-acre grant. Under the articles of the treaty of 1651 between Virginia and the commissioners of the Commonwealth, the reversion to the term "for every person" was made and the policy of no land to servants was implicit in the sixth article of the agreement: "That the priviledge of haveing fiftie acres of land for every person transported in the collony shall continue as formerly granted." Even though servants were not granted land by the colony at the expiration of their service, a substantial number soon became landowners. The exact proportion of servants that became landholders after 1624 cannot be determined in the absence of a complete census. However, an examination of the land patents and the list of headrights makes possible some estimate of the percentage of landholders that had once been indentured servants. The conclusions cannot be final and are subject to limitations. Identification presents a problem because of the frequency of the same name as Smith or Davis and because of the omission of middle names. The problem is further complicated by the fact that headrights were often transferred by sale. A person entitled to a headright claim on the frontier may not have wished to settle there; rather he may have preferred to sell his headright claim and purchase land in an established county. As a result of the sale of his headright claim, his name may have appeared in the headright list as the basis for the claim for someone else even though he had not been an indentured servant. Therefore, all persons so listed under the headright claim cannot be considered indentured servants. Fully aware of the limitations just suggested and equally conscious that estimates in the absence of more complete records cannot be final, Professor Thomas J. Wertenbaker in his _Planters of Colonial Virginia_ summarized his analysis of patents and concluded that both before 1635 and in the following two or three decades, thirty to forty per cent of the landholders of Virginia came to the colony as indentured servants. Professor Wertenbaker also indicated general agreement with conclusions drawn by William G. Stanard about the proportion of immigrants that were indentured servants. From an analysis of the patent rolls from 1623 to July 14, 1637, printed in the April, 1901, issue of the _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, Stanard estimated that seventy-five per cent of immigrants from 1623 to 1637 were imported under term of the indenture. Out of 2,675 names on the rolls, 336 entered as freemen at their own cost and an additional 245 persons were believed for the most part to be of the same status although there was some uncertainty about this group. Transportation expenses were paid by others for 2,094. From these numbers, the conclusion was reached that 675 persons on the patent rolls were freemen, including women and children; the remaining 2,000 were servants and slaves, the latter in very small number at this time. Thus the analysis roughly confirms the conclusion that three-fourths of the immigrants during this period were indentured servants. Use of the headright system for distribution of land had a close correlation with expanding population, for it was hoped that the increase of population would keep pace with the acquisition of private title in the soil. As the seventeenth century progressed, there were many abuses and evasions of the system; and by the end of the period its significance declined in favor of acquisition of title by purchase, or the "treasury right." To understand the various deviations from the system, it will be helpful to review the steps by which title to land by headright was obtained. The first step involved the proving of the headright by the claimant appearing before either a county court or the Governor and Council and stating under oath that he had imported a certain number of persons whose names were listed. The clerk of the court issued a certificate which was validated in the secretary's office. Authorization for the headright was then passed on to a commissioned surveyor who ran off fifty acres for each person imported and located the grant in the area selected by the claimant as long as the land had not already been patented and had not been barred for white settlement in order to maintain peace with the Indians. Upon completion of the survey and of marking the boundaries, a copy of the record along with the headright certificate was presented to the secretary's office where a patent was prepared and a notation made of those imported. The final step was the signing of the patent by the Governor in the presence of, and with the approval of, the Council. One deviation from the spirit of the law of the headright involved claims based upon the person being imported into the colony more than once. For example, John Chew in 1637 received 700 acres, using his own transportation in 1622 and 1623 as the basis for the claim to 100 acres in the grant. Carrying this practice to a greater extreme, Sarah Law received a grant for 300 acres of land based upon the fact that she had imported John Good, probably a sailor, six times. On a larger scale, ship masters submitted lists for headright claims which in actuality contained the roster of both the sailors of the ship and the passengers. In neither case should the right have been acknowledged, for the sailors were under agreement to continue service at sea and the passengers had paid their own transportation to the colony. But the lax administration of the system usually permitted approval of such applications, and the ship master therefore found himself with headright certificates which he could sell to others for whatever price he could wangle. This practice was sometimes repeated by the same unscrupulous ship master who was aided in the irregular procedure by the failure of the clerks of the secretary's office to make careful checks of lists submitted, and also by the fact that he could present his lists to a different county court when importing the same sailors for the third or fourth time. Like the ship master, the sailor engaged in falsifying the record by swearing that he had imported himself and sometimes others at his own expense. Patents were obtained on the basis of the headright. Philip A. Bruce concluded that the land obtained in Virginia by mariners was "very extensive." To substantiate this general statement, he referred to powers of attorney found in the county court records, authorizing an agent in Virginia to handle the estates of the mariner. In the records of Rappahannock County for 1668 is an example of the practice, in which Thomas Sheppard of Plymouth, England, designated William Moseley to handle his interest in 150 headrights which he claimed for importing 150 people to Virginia. It was likely in this case that duplicate claims were issued, either to the individual if he paid his own transportation or to some master if the immigrant became an indentured servant. In some instances, as many as three or four claims were made for one importation: one for the ship master, one for the merchant who acted as middle-man in purchasing the service of the immigrant, one for the planter who eventually purchased the indentured servant, and less often one for a second planter who may have joined with the first in obtaining the services of the imported person. As abuse of the system increased, headright lists sometimes included fictitious names or in some cases names copied from old record books. The final stage in irregular procedure was reached when the clerks in the office of the secretary of the colony sold the headright claim to persons who would simply pay from one to five shillings. The exact date at which this practice began has not been determined, but it was prevalent sometime before 1692. Francis Nicholson reported to the Board of Trade that while serving as Governor of Virginia from 1690 to 1692, he had "heard" that the sale of rights by the clerks in the secretary's office was "common practice." Another report to the Board in 1697 described the clerks as being "a constant mint of those rights." The combined variations in the operation of the headright system resulted in the distortion, if not destruction, of its original concepts. The system continued to bring immigrants into the colony which had been a very important purpose when inaugurated. But the abuses threw out of balance the relation between patented land and the number of people in the colony; and furthermore through perversion of the system, speculation in land was not prevented and there resulted large areas of wholly uncultivated and uninhabited lands to which title had been granted. The headright was also originally intended to apply to inhabitants of the British Isles, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the names of persons imported from Africa appeared occasionally as the basis for headright, and by the last decade of the century they were frequently found. The distortion of the headright system was done with considerable public approval and in some ways reflected the evolution of economic development that seemed to demand a more convenient and less expensive method for obtaining title to large areas of unoccupied land. As the population of the colony increased and as the labor supply became more plentiful, there was a rather widespread demand to be able to obtain additional land, particularly adjacent undeveloped tracts, without having to import an additional person for every fifty acres. Partly through this demand, impetus was given to the custom, which was not at first sanctioned by law, to permit the granting of patents by simply paying a fee in the secretary's office. While the headright system was designed to maintain some proportion between the population of the colony and the amount of land patented, it was also designed to stimulate the migration of immigrants to the colony. Therefore, under the system it was possible for individuals who would engage in transporting or financing the transportation of immigrants to obtain large areas of land. This trend was started under the company; and in the four years prior to 1623, forty-four patents of 5,000 acres each were awarded to persons who were to transport at least 100 immigrants to the colony. In 1621, for example, 5,000 acres were granted to Arthur Swain and Nathaniel Basse and a similar grant to Rowland Truelove and "divers other patentees" each grant to be based on the transportation of 100 persons; 15,000 acres were to go to Sir George Yeardley for engaging to transport 300 persons. For the years following the dissolution of the company, valuable information of the nature and size of land grants can be found in the "Virginia Land Patents" which fortunately have survived the usual hazards of fire and carelessness. The two following tables (Tables I and II) have been compiled from the analysis of the land patents by Philip A. Bruce and summarized in his _Economic History of Virginia_ (volume I, pages 528-532). I. TABLE SHOWING SIZE OF LAND GRANTS FROM 1626 TO 1650 BASED ON THE RECORD OF VIRGINIA LAND PATENTS Year or years Average grant for Largest grant for the period the period 1626-1632 100-300 acres 1,000 acres 1634 719 acres 5,350 acres 1635 380 acres 2,000 acres 1636 351 acres 2,000 acres 1637 445 acres 5,350 acres 1638 423 acres 3,000 acres 1640 405 acres 1,300 acres 1641 343 acres 872 acres 1642 559 acres 3,000 acres 1643 595 acres 4,000 acres 1644 370 acres 670 acres 1645 333 acres 1,090 acres 1646 360 acres 1,200 acres 1647 361 acres 650 acres 1648 412 acres 1,800 acres 1649 522 acres 3,500 acres 1650 677 acres 5,350 acres II. TABLE SHOWING SIZE OF LAND GRANTS FROM 1650 TO 1700 BASED ON THE RECORD OF VIRGINIA LAND PATENTS Period of years Average grant for Number of largest grants the period for the period 1650-1655 591 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 92) 2,000- 5,000 acres ( 41) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 3) 1655-1666 671 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (252) 2,000- 5,000 acres (147) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 20) 1666-1679 890 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (220) 2,000- 5,000 acres (154) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 25) 10,000-20,000 acres ( 12) 1679-1689 607 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (143) 2,000- 5,000 acres ( 66) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 17) 10,000-20,000 acres ( 2) 1689-1695 601 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 63) 2,000- 5,000 acres ( 23) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 7) 1695-1700 688 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 14) 2,000- 5,000 acres ( 13) 5,000-10,000 acres ( 7) 13,400 acres ( 1) [Note: In compiling this table, two changes have been made to correct what seems clearly to be errors in Bruce's description. Forty-one grants were listed for 2,000-5,000 acres from 1650-1655 rather than forty-one grants of 1,000-5,000 acres as noted by Bruce. The date 1685 listed in Bruce has been changed to 1689 to give the proper time period of 1689-1695.] For the period from 1634 to 1650 included in Table I, there were occasional grants of 5,000 acres, but the average size of the patents for the period was not over 446 acres. It was possible, of course, for one individual to build up a large landed estate by putting together several smaller grants; and this was done by a limited number of persons during the seventeenth century in Virginia as will be discussed later. There was also the possibility that grants of considerable size in the original patent might be broken up and distributed to others in smaller amounts. In any case, the second half of the century as reflected in the land patents saw a moderate increase in the size and number of large grants as the population increased, and the average size for the land patent of this period was 674 acres, an increase of 228 acres over the period prior to 1650. While the second half of the century witnessed this increase, much of it came during the third quarter of the period. Near the end of the century there was a definite trend to break up some of the larger patents into smaller landholdings by sales to servants completing their indenture, by distribution of land to children, or by sale because of an inadequate labor supply either of slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers, or wage earners. The existence of the small farm and the small farmer as a major part of the socio-economic system of Virginia at the end of the seventeenth century has been well established. Professor Wertenbaker suggested that "a full 90 per cent of the freeholders" at the time the rent roll was compiled in 1704/05 included the "sturdy, independent class of small farmers." Through examination of land patents, land transfers, tax rolls, and a sampling of other county records, he found substantial evidence to corroborate the suggested trend of the breakup of a number of large patents and their distribution to small freeholders. Illustrative of this development was the land known as Button's Ridge in Essex County. Originally including 3,650 acres, the tract was patented to Thomas Button in 1666. The estate then passed first to the brother of Button and later was sold to John Baker. Baker divided the large tract and sold small amounts to the following people: 200 acres to Captain William Moseley, 600 to John Garnet, 200 to Robert Foster, 200 to William Smither, 200 to William Howlett, 300 to Anthony Samuell, and 200 to William Williams. Professor Susie M. Ames in _Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century_ found evidence of the same trend by which original land grants increased in size by the middle of the century and reached its peak in the third quarter of the century. Near the end of the period many of the larger tracts were being divided by wills distributing them among children or by sales in smaller units. Much of the land obtained by the first two generations on the Eastern Shore was broken up into small holdings by the third. As stated by Professor Ames, "It is the subtraction and division of acres, with only occasionally any marked addition, that seems to be the chief development in land tenure during the last quarter of the seventeenth century." Even with the trend of dividing some of the large estates on the Eastern Shore, a small per cent of the population held a considerable part of the land. In 1703/04 the average size of landholding in Northampton County was 389 acres, in Accomack 520 acres. When analyzed by use of the list of tithables, Northampton County had twenty-one persons, only three per cent of the tithables, holding thirty-nine per cent of the land; Accomack County had a total of forty-six persons, only four per cent of the tithables, holding forty-three per cent of the land. Considering all of Virginia of the seventeenth century, one cannot say that it was primarily a land of large plantations, of cavaliers, and of noble manors which have been romanticized by some writers. Yet there was a significant number of prominent planters who took an active part in the social and political life of the colony and exerted an influence disproportionate to their ratio of the population. Professor Wertenbaker listed the following men among the prominent planters of the first half of seventeenth-century Virginia--George Menefie, Richard Bennett, and Richard Kinsman; for the second half of the century, a more extensive list--Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., Thomas Ballard, Robert Beverley, Giles Brent, Joseph Bridger, William Byrd I, John Carter, John Custis I, Dudley Digges, William Fitzhugh, Lewis Burwell, Philip Ludwell I, William Moseley, Daniel Parke, Ralph Wormeley, Benjamin Harrison, Edward Hill, Edmund Jennings, and Matthew Page. Members of this group accumulated large landholdings, mostly by original patent through the headright system or by private purchase from holders of original patents. For example, William Byrd I had obtained 26,231 acres of land at the time of his death; and William Fitzhugh acquired during his lifetime 96,000 acres of land and left at the time of his death in 1701 a little over 54,000 acres in family "seats" to five sons. The land system and its administration that permitted the accumulation of a few of these substantial plantations came under detailed discussion by crown officials near the end of the seventeenth century. Before examining this analysis of Virginia land policy, it will be helpful to survey in the following chapter the major laws and the officials responsible for their administration. CHAPTER FOUR Royal Administration of Land Policy Attempts at Reform The issuing of land patents and the administration of laws concerning land involved a variety of officials during the seventeenth century. Under the company the authority to convey title to land rested after 1609 with the treasurer, the Council in London, and the association of adventurers in England. The Governor and Council in the colony were authorized as ministerial agents of the company to make grants, but final approval was to be made at sessions of the quarter court of the company in England. This last step, as previously noted, was seldom completed. After dissolution of the company, the process of issuing patents was simplified. Most grants were made under the headright claim and followed the steps outlined in chapter three, involving the county court, the secretary of the colony, the Governor and Council, and the commissioned surveyors. The office of surveyor existed under the company and William Claiborne, who came to the colony in 1621, was the first to fill the position effectively. As surveyor, Claiborne received the annual wage of thirty pounds sterling which was to be paid either in tobacco or some other comparable commodity with a good price on the English market. Surveyor Claiborne also had the use of a house constructed by the company as well as receiving the necessary equipment and books needed for his work. Following the dissolution of the company in 1624, the office of surveyor-general was established with a royal appointee who was charged with the responsibility of maintaining the survey records and issuing commissions to the surveyors of the colony. Some difficulty was encountered in securing qualified and reliable men. This led during the interregnum to a law in March, 1654/55, calling for the dismissal of unqualified surveyors and placing the power of appointment in the hands of the county court. After the restoration of Charles II to the throne, the appointment of surveyors returned to the system of commissions from the surveyor-general. The amount for surveyors' fees was designated by the legislature at various times. Ten pounds of tobacco for every 100 acres was specified in 1624; in 1642 and again in 1646 the fee limit was raised to twenty pounds of tobacco for measuring 100 acres of land with an additional allowance of twelve pounds of tobacco for each day that the task required the surveyor to be away from his home. If his transportation could be only by water, the person employing him was required to assume the expense of travel both to and from the location of the survey. In 1661/62 the allowance for each day away from home was increased to thirty pounds of tobacco; and by the same law the surveyor was authorized the same limit of twenty pounds of tobacco for running off 100 acres if the total was greater than 500, otherwise he was to receive a minimum of 100 pounds of tobacco. Efforts to obtain capable, honest, and conscientious appointees continued to be a problem. The need for better surveyors and the decline of the tobacco prices led the Assembly to double the previous fees. In 1666 forty pounds of tobacco was stipulated for surveying 100 acres if the total was for 1,000 acres. If less than 1,000, the allowance was 400 pounds of tobacco. Commissioned surveyors were not at liberty to refuse reasonable requests for surveys to be made, except in cases involving sickness or some other impediment recognized as legal. The law of 1666 provided that anyone violating this requirement was subject to a fine of 4,000 pounds of tobacco; for charging excessive fees, the fine was 200 pounds of tobacco that could be recovered in the Virginia courts. Gabriel Hawley, Robert Evelyn, Thomas Loving, Edmund Scarborough, and Alexander Culpeper served as surveyor-general with the last named having Philip Ludwell as his deputy. Upon the chartering of the College of William and Mary surveyors were appointed by the institution, and the appointees were required to contribute to the trustees of the college one-sixth of the fees of the office. The trustees were permitted to delegate the appointments. Consequently in 1692 they designated Miles Cary as surveyor-general, who was instructed to make the selection of surveyors with the aid of a committee named by the trustees. In addition to the fees of the surveyor, there were other charges that were made from time to time in obtaining a patent in Virginia. Under the company without a legal guide for the fees to be charged, the secretary of the colony apparently demanded at times as much as twenty pounds of tobacco or three pounds sterling when issuing a title for the individual dividends of fifty or 100 acres. Leaders of the company considered this fee unreasonable and took steps to prevent its collection. Following the dissolution of the company, the Assembly set the fees of the secretary regarding land patents along with other authorized charges. In 1632 the secretary collected thirty pounds of tobacco for issuing a patent plus two pounds for each sheet required to record the document. In 1633 the fee for patents by the secretary was designated as fifteen shillings which could be collected either in tobacco or corn according to current price. Ten years later in 1643 the fee for a patent was again listed in terms of tobacco at fifty pounds with six pounds allowed for each recorded sheet. In lieu of four pounds of tobacco, the secretary was authorized to receive money at the rate of twelve pence for every four pounds of tobacco. At the March session of the legislature in 1657/58, the secretary's fees were further raised to eighty pounds of tobacco for issuing and recording a patent; thirty pounds was set as the fee for supplying a copy of the patent later; and fifteen pounds of tobacco was authorized for providing a certificate for land. These same fees of 1657/58 were repeated by law in 1661/62. The stamp of the seal of the colony was required during much of the seventeenth century as the final step of approval for a patent, and during most of the time no fee was charged for this. However, under the governorship of Lord Howard which began in April, 1684, a charge of 200 pounds of tobacco was ordered for use of the seal for patents as well as all public documents such as commissions and proclamations. The proceeds from this fee were used by the Governor and were estimated by William Fitzhugh to equal 100,000 pounds of tobacco each year. However, such strong opposition was raised to the charge that it was dropped after 1689. In addition to controversies over fees, there were many problems that arose in seventeenth-century Virginia over surveys and the identification of boundaries. Surveyors usually took the edge of a stream, either a river or creek, as the base line of the survey and then ran the boundaries for a specified distance along a line at right angle to the base. Terminal points were laid out and witnessed by neighboring owners with some distinguishing mark as a large stone or a tree with three or four chops. In 1679 a question was called to the attention of the Assembly as to the extent of the owner's rights along the water's edge. The case arose over the complaint of Robert Liny that part of his patent along the river had been cleared for fishing but the exercise of his fishing rights had been hampered by trespassing individuals who dragged their seines upon the river's edge, claiming that "The water was the kings majesties ... and therefore equally free to all his majesties subjects to fish in and hale their sceanes on shore...." In answer to this complaint, the Assembly declared that the rights of the patent holder extended into the stream as far as the low water mark, and any person fishing or seining without permission within these bounds was guilty of trespass. More frequently problems arose as a result of defective surveys either in the first line along the edge of the stream or in a second and third line of patents that were laid out when all land along the streams had been occupied. Some of the surveys were inaccurate because of the lack of graduation on the compass; others were distorted by careless surveyors selecting convenient terminal points such as a tree, a road, or another stream and ignoring the accurate measurement of the line. As early as 1623/24, the Assembly ordered that individual land dividends be surveyed and the bounds recorded; and in case serious disputes arose over conflicting boundaries, appeal could be made to the Governor and Council. In an effort to prevent the holder of patents from having to pay for more than one survey of the same grant, the Assembly in 1642/43 stated that surveys made by commissioned surveyors were considered valid and bestowed full right of ownership without the necessity and expense of new surveys. Such a provision did not, however, resolve the problem that arose over errors made by commissioned surveyors, errors that may have led a person in good faith to construct buildings on a plot that was later determined to be a part of the patent of his neighbor. Several cases having arisen over this situation, the Assembly in 1642/43 and again in 1657/58 and 1661/62 provided that when one person had unknowingly erected constructions on another person's land, the original owner as shown by survey was to have the right to purchase the improvements at a price fixed by a twelve-man jury. If the amount proved too great for the original owner, then the person seating the land by mistake was to have the option of purchasing the land at a price set by the jury for its value before seating occurred. Beginning with the 1657/58 statement of the law, no consideration was to be given if construction had been made after legal warning had been given to desist. Other legislation was designed to minimize the number of cases of this type that would arise. One provision made in 1646 required the person claiming to be the original owner of the land to file suit against his encroaching neighbor within five years for removal; otherwise possession of the land for five years without contest would prevent recovery by the original claimant. The law exempted orphans from the above provision and permitted them a five-year period after coming of age. A later enactment in 1657/58 repeated the provision on orphans and added to the exemption married women and persons of unsound mind. A second provision designed to prevent quarrels among neighbors required a person holding patent to land adjacent to a proposed grant to show the boundaries of his property within twelve months; otherwise the latest grant as surveyed would be valid and would take precedence over the old patent. But these various laws did not prevent "contentious suites" from arising because of defective surveys when the lines were first run or because the restriction against resurveys did not resolve the boundary disputes. Conflicts continued if the surveyor had been negligent in marking clearly the boundaries, or if lines had become indistinct by the chops in trees filling out, by piles of stones being scattered, or by trees being removed. To prevent "the inconvenience of clandestine surveigh," the Assembly in 1661/62 enacted the law of processioning. By this provision the members of each community were to "goe in procession" once every four years to examine and renew, if necessary, the boundary lines. Boundaries acknowledged by the procession as correct were conclusive and prohibited later claims to change them. If controversy arose over the line, the two surveyors accompanying the party were to run the line anew, disputes were to be equitably settled, and the line so laid out to be final. For administration of processioning, the county court was to order the vestry to divide each parish into as many precincts as necessary, and the time set in 1661/62 for processioning was between Easter and Whitsunday (seventh Sunday or fiftieth day after Easter). The time was changed in 1691 to the months from September to March as a more convenient period. To assure enforcement of the law, provisions for penalties were included--1,200 pounds of tobacco for any vestry not ordering the processioning and 350 pounds of tobacco for individuals who failed to participate without good reason. Still other problems concerning land patents related to two important conditions stipulated for perfection of the title to land--the first, "seating and planting," and the second, the collection of a quitrent. With the exception of some of the early grants, the patents of seventeenth-century Virginia required "seating and planting" of the tract within three years. As shown in the form used by Governor William Berkeley during the 1660's, if the patentee "His heirs or assignes doe not seate or plant or cause to be planted or seated on the sayd land within three years next ensueing, then it shall be lawful for any adventurer or planter to make choyse or seate thereupon." The time limit was extended as the exigency demanded. Because of losses from the Indian massacre of 1644, of the shortage of corn, and of the need for additional servants, the Assembly ruled that persons affected by the massacre were permitted three additional years to comply with the requirement for "seating and planting." Following the Indian disturbances of Bacon's Rebellion, the time period for plantations that were attacked was extended to seven years from the date the Assembly passed the act in 1676/77. Generally speaking, however, the requirement for "seating and planting" was not carried out effectively, and there was little forfeiture because of noncompliance. In 1657/58 the Assembly recognized the right for patents to be issued on order of the Governor and Council for land "deserted for want of planting within the time of three yeeres." But even if such forfeiture did occur, the original patent holder was authorized to take up additional land elsewhere in the colony without complying with the headright requirement. And it was not until 1666 that the Assembly gave a definition for "seating and planting" in the declaration that "Building an house and keeping a stock one whole yeare upon the land shall be accounted seating; and that cleering, tending and planting an acre of ground shall be accounted planting." Either one or the other fulfilled the condition for the patent, and throughout the seventeenth century there was no relation between the size of the tract and the amount of improvement required. The minimum performance satisfied the law. Therefore, either the building of a small cabin, putting a few cattle or a few hogs on the tract for a year, or planting as little as an acre of ground--any one of the three protected the grant. For most of the patents issued, this requirement presented little problem because the owner was interested in settling and improving his holdings. Violation of the provision was most likely to come in the case of land speculators who had taken up large tracts or in the case of landholders who were interested in acquiring adjacent tracts for the purpose of grazing or for forest supply. In the case of the latter, there was some question whether the requirement applied to adjacent tracts; but the Assembly in 1692 declared that tracts added to an original patent must be seated and planted as the law provided for other grants. To a considerable extent there was the same attitude toward the requirement for "seating and planting" as has been noted previously for obtaining patent by headright. Light regard for the spirit of the law and at times the letter of the law came in part as a result of the unlimited expanse of land that tempted the established settler as well as the newcomer. Evasion of the law cast no stigma upon the offender, and some who were aware of their neighbor's dereliction winked at the action, thinking perhaps that they too might sometime engage in the same practice. Furthermore, the necessity of the provision for "seating and planting" which was well founded for the early years of the colony decreased in significance as the population and occupied areas of Virginia increased. The second condition for perfection of title to land--payment of a quitrent--likewise had a checkered career in the seventeenth century. Under the company there is some question whether quitrents were due. It is clear that "the greate charter" of 1618 in order to encourage immigration exempted for seven years settlers who were taking up land by headright. For planters settled before 1616 at the expense of the company, it seems that they would have been free of paying the quitrent only for a seven-year period which would have required compliance before dissolution of the company. Settlers who arrived in Virginia after Dale's departure in 1616 and before 1618 would most probably have been subject to the quitrent under the company since they were exempt for only seven years. Whatever the case, there were rents to be collected before 1624 as shown by the duties of George Sandys, younger brother of Sir Edwin Sandys and first appointee to the office of treasurer in Virginia. Sandys was instructed to collect some £1,000 owed the company either as rent or as dues. When Virginia became a royal colony in 1624, the quitrents were then payable at the rate of one shilling for every fifty acres patented. For 1631 the estimate was made by the Assembly that the quitrents would bring in as much as 2,000 pounds sterling, if paid. But little effort was being made to collect the rent and it was not until 1636 that Jerome Hawley was appointed treasurer. His arrival in the colony the following year initiated plans for collection. Proceeds from this source of revenue were to be used for the treasurer's salary; any surplus amount was to be used at the discretion of the Assembly. In order to determine who owed the rent, instructions were issued to landholders in Virginia to show their land titles to the treasurer in order that he could compute the rents that were due. But little action was taken and it seems certain that not enough was collected to pay the salary of the treasurer. In 1639 additional provisions were stipulated by the Assembly to tighten the quitrent collection by requiring landholders upon summon by warrant to reveal their title and the size of their estates to commissioners of the county courts. Following the precedent of "the greate charter" of 1618, no rents were to be paid until the expiration of seven years. This provision continued in effect under Charles I and during the interregnum, but the time limit was retracted in the instructions to Governor William Berkeley under Charles II. The retraction was confirmed under James II, the major reason being that it encouraged individuals to take up larger areas of land than they were able to cultivate. Collection of quitrents, however, continued to lag and around 1646 no more than 500 pounds sterling was being collected. The treasurer appealed to the Assembly which acknowledged that "There is and hath been great neglect in the payment of the quitt rent." Consequently the Assembly in 1647 authorized the treasurer to levy a distress upon the property of delinquent taxpayers. The delinquent was permitted, if providing security, to retain his goods under replevin and to have a hearing before either a county court or the Governor and Council for final disposition of the case. Such a measure, however, was not effective against land not seated and planted, for the land itself was not to be seized; and a similar handicap prevailed against absentee owners as far as action by the treasurer was concerned. Assistance in collection of quitrents was provided by the sheriff who was designated as the recipient of payments for each county with the fee of ten per cent of the collections being allowed him. Using the patent rolls of his office, both past and current, as a guide, the sheriff collected the rent and turned it over to the auditor of the colony. The rent was received either in coin or in tobacco as the law provided from time to time. In 1661, for example, persons unable to pay in coin were permitted by law to pay in tobacco at the rate of two pence per pound. But there was considerable controversy over the nature of the payment, and King James II ordered the repeal of the earlier act because of the poor quality of tobacco being submitted. After the overthrow of the King in 1688/89, the collection of quitrents continued for the most part in tobacco at the rate of one penny per pound. In 1671 the privilege of collecting and using the quitrents was granted to Colonel Henry Norwood, who had supported faithfully the King and the royal cause during the civil war. Two years later the quitrents were given to Lords Arlington and Culpeper, including collections that might be made of rents in arrears. Protests from Virginia of these grants forced the revocation of the special gifts in 1684, although Culpeper retained the right to the quitrents in the Northern Neck. Collection of quitrents at various times was farmed out to members of the Council and to the Governor, with the Councilor concerned usually taking the counties near his own residence. In 1665, for example, Governor William Berkeley assumed the collection in James City and Surry counties; Colonel Miles Cary, in Warwick and Elizabeth City counties; Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., for York County, the Isle of Wight, and the southern part of New Kent; and similar designations for other members of the Council. In 1699, however, the Council ordered William Byrd, auditor of the colony, to sell the quitrents of each county to any individual at the price of one penny per pound of tobacco and on the condition that the usual payment would be made to the sheriff for receiving the rent. While some improvement was made in the last half of the seventeenth century in the collection of quitrents, the sum was never very great; and according to one report in 1696 no land had been taken over by the colony because of failure to pay the rent. As to the amount being collected near the end of the century, the figure was not impressive. For the period of six years between 1684 and 1690, the estimate has been made that receipts totalled £4,375 13s. 9d. or a little over £700 as an average for each year during this period. The figure was little changed near the end of the century, for it was reported in 1697 that the amount collected from quitrents did not total more than £800. These weaknesses and abuses of the Virginia land system underwent a detailed analysis near the end of the seventeenth century by the newly created agency--the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations which was commonly known as the Board of Trade. During the first year of its organization in 1696 the Board received a report from Edward Randolph, sent from England to be surveyor-general of customs in America. Randolph pondered the question as to why the colony of Virginia was not more densely populated with all of the migration that had occurred. He attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement he concluded that ... the chief and only reason is that the inhabitants have been and still are discouraged and hindered from planting tobacco in that colony; and servants are not so willing to go there as formerly because the members of Council and others who make an interest in the government have from time to time procured grants of very large tracts of land, so that for many years there has been no waste land to be taken up by those who bring with them servants, or by servants who have served their time. But the land has been taken up and engrossed beforehand, whereby such people are forced to hire and pay rent for lands or to go to the utmost bounds of the colony for land exposed to danger.... Randolph then reviewed the steps by which a land patent was obtained and analyzed the conditions which a person was supposed to fulfill in order to obtain the land title in fee simple. The first of these was the requirement for the annual quitrent of one shilling for fifty acres; but according to Randolph, the colonists "never pay a penny of quit-rent to the King for it, by which in strictness of law their land is forfeited." The second requirement was for seating the land within three years to prevent it from being relinquished as deserted land. The following description was given of this condition: By seating land is meant that they build a house upon and keep a good stock of hogs and cattle, and servants to take care of them and to improve and plant the land. But instead thereof, they cut down a few trees and make thereof a hut, covering it with the bark, and turn two or three hogs into the woods by it. Or else they are to clear one acre of that land and plant and tend it for one year. But they fell twenty or thirty trees and put a little Indian corn into the ground among them as they lie and sometimes make a beginning to serve it, but take no care of their crop, nor make any further use of the land. The third condition pertained to the keeping of "four able men well armed" on land that was situated on the frontier of the colony. Again Randolph reported that ... this law is never observed. These grants are procured upon such easy terms and very often upon false certificates of rights. Many hold twenty or thirty thousand acres of land apiece, very largely surveyed, without paying one penny of quit-rent for it. In many patents there is double the quantity of land expressed in the patent, whereby some hundred thousand acres of land are taken up but not planted, which drives away the inhabitants and servants brought up only to planting to seek their fortunes in Carolina and other places, which depopulates the country and prevents the making of many thousand hogsheads of tobacco, to the great diminution of the revenue. Three proposals were submitted to the Board of Trade by Randolph to correct the evils of the land system: first, order a survey in every Virginia county of the lands in question; second, demand full payment of all quitrents in arrears and use legal compulsion to collect them; and third, limit grants to 500 acres for one man and have them issued on "more certain terms." Such requirements would produce threefold advantages to the crown and the colony. They would either bring in additional revenue by collection of the quitrent; or if payment were not made, approximately 100,000 acres of land would revert to the King and could be granted to new settlers. Limitation of grants to 500 acres would increase the number of planters, make settlements more compact, and produce more tobacco. And finally, both trade and the customs collection on tobacco would be enhanced. Before concluding his report, Randolph acknowledged both the awareness of the problem and the efforts of correction initiated by Francis Nicholson while Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia from 1690 to 1692. Nicholson was ... very sensible of the damage and injustice done to the crown by their using and conniving at such unwarrantable practices in granting away the King's lands, and was resolved to reform them by suing some of the claimers for arrears of quit-rents; but finding that the Council and many of the Burgesses, among others, were concerned, and being uncertain of his continuing in the government, he ordered to begin with Laurence Smyth, who was seised of many thousand acres of land in different counties, and for one particular tract of land was indebted £80 for arrears of quit-rents, which sum after the cause was ripe for judgment, was compounded for less than one half. Before the year was out, the Board of Trade sought more information on this problem and directed a series of searching questions in October, 1696, to Randolph who had then returned to England. Both the questions and the answers are recorded in the _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies_, 1696-1697 (pages 172, 188-89). Out of the ten questions asked, the following seem most significant in revealing Randolph's evaluation of the Virginia land system. What proportion of land in Virginia already taken up is now cultivated as near as you can judge? There is in Virginia, at a moderate computation, about 500,000 acres granted by patents, of which not above 40,000 acres are cultivated and improved; besides many thousand acres of waste land high up in the country. Why have not the prosecutions, neglected in Colonel Nicholson's time, been continued since? Colonel Nicholson was the first Governor of Virginia who directed prosecutions for arrears of quit-rents, beginning with Colonel Laurence Smith. The case was ready for trial but the Governor came to England, and the case was afterwards compounded for a small matter. Have any parcels of land been seized for the King's use, for want of planting or failure to pay quit-rents? Small parcels of land are granted away every court for not being planted or seated according to law, but no land has at any time been seized to the King's use for not paying of quit-rents. Are negro servants included in the persons who, if imported, make "rights" to grant of land. [?] Negro servants give a right to land to those who import them, who thereupon take up land, contrary to the true intention of seating the country; but the practice being general, to the advantage of certain persons, no notice is taken of it. Have you ever known of false certificates of rights, and how have the parties guilty thereof been punished? I have heard of many false certificates of rights; the practice is common but little regarded, being of no prejudice to any private person. If your methods be followed, in what county should a beginning be made? ... if my proposals were adopted, I answer that the members of Council have large tracts of land in most of the counties, for which they are in great arrears of quit-rent. It is advisable to make a beginning with some of them and to empower a person uninterested in the county to demand the arrears due to the King. These will amount to a considerable sum and will increase the King's revenue in Virginia yearly. If the patentees refuse to pay the arrears, some hundred thousand acres of land will revert to the crown, to be more carefully disposed of in future. The Board of Trade continued the search for additional opinions about the land system in Virginia. Questions were asked individually of Henry Hartwell, a Councilor of Virginia, and Edward Chilton, Attorney-General in Virginia from 1691 to 1694. Then Hartwell and Chilton collaborated with James Blair, Councilor and Commissary of the Anglican Church in Virginia, in preparing a report that was received by the Board in October, 1697, under the title _An Account of the Present State & Government of Virginia_. The three authors of the report were English or Scottish born and represented essentially the same point of view of royal appointees who became residents of the colony and who favored an extensive use of royal authority. All three had married into Virginia families and had had numerous occasions for observation. The report reflected a greater concern for royal revenue than for the internal development of the colony, and it definitely displayed the bias of the three men, particularly Blair, against Governor Andros. Their comments on the land system confirmed some of the conditions as set forth by Randolph's report. Stating that the country was "ill peopled" despite the headright system, they explained that "The first great abuse of this design arose from the ignorance and knavery of surveyors, who often gave out drafts of surveys without even coming on the land. They gave their descripton [sic] by some natural bounds and were sure to allow large measure, that so the persons for whom they surveyed should enjoy much larger tracts than they paid quit-rents for." The issuing of certificates for rights by the courts and secretary's office had been abused, especially the latter "which was and still is a constant mint of those rights, where they may be purchased at from one shilling to five shillings _per_ right." And in another criticism of the land system, the authors concluded that the "Fundamental error of letting the King's land run away to lie waste, together with another of not seating in townships, is the cause that Virginia to-day is so ill peopled." The Board of Trade considered reforms to correct the existing evils of the land system. Questions about these evils were posed to Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of Virginia from 1692 to 1698; but his answers were either evasive or otherwise unsatisfactory. Francis Nicholson was then returned to the colony as Governor in 1698 with instructions for a "new method of granting land in Virginia." To prevent land from being patented without being cultivated, to encourage trade, and to increase royal revenue, land title was not to be obtained "by merely importing or buying of servants"; rather anyone who would seat and plant vacant lands was to receive 100 acres for himself and the same amount for each laborer that was brought in or for whom arrangements were made for importation within three years. The annual quitrent was to be two shillings for 100 acres provided the full number of laborers were brought in within the three-year period; if, however, full compliance had not been made, ten shillings was to be paid annually for each 100 acres for which there was no worker or the size of the grant was to be reduced proportionally. On the other hand, if the number of laborers, including members of the family, was increased beyond the original number proposed, the owner was entitled to an additional 100 acres for each extra worker. Governor Nicholson was instructed to "consider and advise with the Council and Assembly" about putting these proposals into effect and about overcoming any difficulties that might exist because of the current laws of the colony. But instructions to the royal Governor was one thing; putting these instructions into effect was quite another. Neither the Council nor the Burgesses were willing to grapple directly with land reform and no action was taken by the two bodies to implement the recommendations of the Board of Trade. Governor Nicholson on his own ordered that no more headrights be issued for the importation of Negroes. As to the sale of headrights by the secretary's office which Nicholson found to be still prevalent, the practice was not eliminated completely. As a substitute measure which arose over the problem of land taken up in Pamunkey Neck and on the south side of Blackwater Swamp, the Governor and Council in 1699 authorized the acquisition of land by "treasury right," stating that title to fifty acres of land would be granted for the payment of five shillings sterling to the auditor. Thus during the terminal year of this study, we find the significant reappearance of sale of land by "treasury right" which increased in importance as the eighteenth century progressed. Grant by headright continued immediately to account for the great majority of land patents issued, but after the first quarter of the eighteenth century it gradually fell into disuse. Being unable to inaugurate the proposed plan for land reform of the Board of Trade, Nicholson turned to the improvement of collection of quitrents as the most feasible means of achieving the approximate goal. Payment of rent was an acknowledged requirement, even though frequently evaded in the seventeenth century; and Nicholson proposed a stringent collection of quitrents in arrears in order to force the return of unused land to be patented by others who would actually occupy and cultivate the vacant areas. Improvements were made in the sale of tobacco received as quitrents, and the rent roll of 1704/05 was an improvement over previous ones. Yet many loopholes still existed in the system, and Nicholson's attempts to make further reforms were hindered by the arguments that ensued with leading Councilors. His second term as executive for Virginia came to an end in 1705. CHAPTER FIVE The Northern Neck Before completing this study of seventeenth-century land grants, a brief analysis will be made of the nature of the land system in the Northern Neck with some attention given to the major ways in which it differed from the remainder of Virginia. The included area reached from the Potomac River south to the Rappahannock River and from the headwaters of these two streams in the western part of the colony to Chesapeake Bay. The separate provision for the area went back to the days of exile in France of Charles II following the execution of Charles I in 1649. As a reward to those cavaliers who had been faithful to the Stuart regime, Charles II exercised his royal prerogative by making a grant of the portions of tidewater Virginia that were not seated. In the year of the execution the Northern Neck was granted to the following seven supporters of the King: Lord John Culpeper, Lord Ralph Horton, Lord Henry Jermyn, Sir John Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt, and Thomas Culpeper. Efforts of the representatives of this group were frustrated in Virginia by the suspension of royal government, and therefore the proprietary charter was ineffective for a time. It had, however, been recorded in chancery in 1649 and was revived after the restoration of Charles II to the throne. In 1662 and again in 1663 Charles II ordered the Governor and Council of Virginia to assist the proprietors in "settling the plantations and receiving the rents and profits thereof." But portions of the area had been seated since 1645, and legal obstructions were brought forth by Virginia planters and the Council to defeat the efforts of the proprietors. A second appeal to the King led to a solution maneuvered in part by the Virginia resident agent in London, Francis Moryson. The original patent of 1649 was surrendered and a new charter was issued on May 8, 1669, to the Earl of St. Albans, Lord John Berkeley, Sir William Morton, and John Trethewy. The new document required the recognition of grants in the Northern Neck made by the Governor and Council prior to September 29, 1661, and it limited the title of the proprietors to that land which would be planted and inhabited within twenty-one years. The political jurisdiction of the area was still under the Virginia government. The laws of the colony were to remain operative, and in effect the grant was "to create a subordinate fief or proprietorship within Virginia." But considerable confusion prevailed over the retroactive recognition of grants, and many landholders sought confirmation of their ownership. "Besides there are many other grants," stated Governor William Berkeley, "in that patent inconsistent with the settlednesse of this government which hath no barr to its prosperitie but proprieties on both hands, and therefore is it mightily wounded in this last, nor have I ever observed anything so much move the peoples' griefe or passion, or which doth more put a stop to theire industry than their uncertainty whether they should make a country for the King or other proprietors." The confusion that existed was further confounded by the grant of Charles II on February 25, 1672/73, of all of Virginia for thirty-one years to Lord Arlington and to Lord Thomas Culpeper, son of one of the original patentees of the Northern Neck by the same name. These two proprietors of the whole colony were to control all lands, collect rents, including all rents and profits in arrears since 1669, and exercise authority that sprang from grants previously made. Up until 1669 amid all the controversy over control of the Northern Neck, grants were regularly made by the local government on the basis of headrights as revealed in the land patent books. After that date the number decreased; and in March, 1674/75, the first land grant of 5,000 acres, later George Washington's Mount Vernon, was issued to Nicholas Spencer and John Washington of Westmoreland in the name of the proprietors with the common seal being affixed to the grant by Thomas Culpeper and Anthony Trethewy. By this date Thomas Culpeper had obtained from the proprietors of 1669 recognition of one-sixth interest in the Northern Neck for him and his cousin on the basis of their fathers having been original patentees. Opposition to the proprietary grant of the Northern Neck in Virginia led to efforts of the Assembly, encouraged by Governor William Berkeley, to buy out the rights of the proprietors. Apparently the proprietors were willing to sell and set the price of £400 each for the six shares then held in the charter. Negotiations to complete the transaction were interrupted by the outbreak of Bacon's Rebellion, and the status of the proprietary grant hung in suspension. Meanwhile, Thomas, Lord Culpeper was appointed Governor of Virginia but did not arrive in the colony until 1680. The next year Culpeper bought up the proprietary rights in Virginia, both the rights of the other proprietors in the Northern Neck and the rights of Lord Arlington for all of Virginia. In 1684, however, he gave up the Arlington charter of 1673 to the crown in return for an annual pension of £600 for twenty-one years. Lord Culpeper retained the Northern Neck charter and made efforts to encourage settlement of the area. But the terminal date of the twenty-one year period stipulated in the charter of 1669 was approaching, and he appealed for a renewal of the grant on the basis that the amount of land intended by Charles II had not been taken up. Considering the restriction an impracticable one, King James II issued a new charter in 1688 with Lord Culpeper as the sole proprietor and with no time limit specified. Through changes and additions prompted by Culpeper's knowledge of Virginia's geography, the area of the grant included in the Northern Neck was substantially enlarged over the boundaries stated in the previous charters of 1649 and 1669, the additions later being interpreted as extending Culpeper's claim beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains to the foot of the Alleghenies. The area as outlined in 1688 was as follows with the additions to the former descriptions shown in italics: All that entire tract, territory or parcel of land situate, lying and being _in Virginia_ in America and bounded by and within the _first_ heads or _springs_ of the rivers of Tappanhannocke alias Rappahanocke and Quiriough alias Patawomacke Rivers, the courses of the said rivers, _from their said first heads or springs_, as they are commonly called and known by the inhabitants and descriptions of those parts, and the Bay of Chesapoyocke, together with the said rivers themselves and all the islands within the _outermost_ banks thereof, _and the soil of all and singular the premisses_. Soon after receiving this third charter, Lord Culpeper died on January 27, 1688/89. Despite efforts that were again made by the colony to eliminate the proprietary grant, it was confirmed to Culpeper's survivors and passed by marriage to the Fairfax family. After the 1669 charter, the proprietors opened an office in the colony and an agent was designated to handle land grants and collect fees. The scant records that survive indicate that from 1670 to 1673, Thomas Kirton was agent in the land office in Northumberland; from 1673 to 1677, William Aretkin was appointed the proprietor's "agent in Virginia"; and from 1677 to 1689, Daniel Parke and Nicholas Spencer were agents in the land office in Westmoreland. Beginning in 1690 land patents in the Northern Neck were entered separately and the grant books that have survived give a good account of the land policy under the proprietors. Philip Ludwell served as agent from 1690 to 1693 and began an orderly handling of the proprietor's interest at the land office in Westmoreland. Throughout his term as agent he used a form for land grants in establishing his authority which reviewed a part of the checkered history of the Northern Neck. The introductory portion of this form was as follows: _Whereas_ King Charles the Seacond of ever blessed memory by his letters pattents under the broad seale of England beareing date at Westminister the eighth day of May in the one and twentyeth yeare of his reigne Annoqe Dom. 1669, His Matie was gratiously pleased to give graunt and confirme unto Henry then Earle of St. Albons, John Lord Berkley, Sir William Morton, Knt., & John Trethewy, Esqr., there heires & assignes all that intire tract territory or parcell of land lyinge & being betweene the two rivers of Rapah. and Patomack and the courses of the said rivers and the Bay of Chesapeake, as by the said graunts, recourse beinge had there unto, will more at large appeare, and _Whereas_ all the rite and title of in and to the said lands & premisses is by deed enrold and other suffentient conveyance in law conveyed and made over to Thomas Lord Culpeper, eldest sonn & heire of John late Lord Culpeper, his heires & assignes for ever, who is thereby become sole owner and propriator of the said land in fee symple, and _Whereas_ Kinge James the Seacond hath beene gratiously pleased by his letters pattents bearinge date at Westminister the 27th day of September 1688, and in the fourth yeare of his Maties. reigne, to confirme the said graunt for the said tract or parcell of land to the said Thomas Lord Culpeper his heires & assignes for ever, as by the said graunt, relation beinge there unto had, will more at large appeare _And_ the said Thomas Lord Culpeper he beinge since deceased all the rite title and interest of in and to the said tract of land lawfully desendinge on the Honorble. Mrs. Katherine Culpeper sole daughter and heire of the said Thomas late Lord Culpeper, and Allexander Culpeper Esqr. who cometh in part propriator by lawfull conveyance from Thomas late Lord Culpeper, and confirmed by the said Mrs. Katherine Culpeper, who are thereby now become the true and lawfull propriators of the said tract or territory, and _Whereas_ the said propriators have thought fitt under there hands & seales to depute me Phillip Ludwell Esqr. with full power and authority to act in the prmisses. persuant to the powers granted by there said Maties. as fully & amply to all intents & purposes as they the said propriators them selves might or could doe if they were personally present, NOW KNOW YEE therefore.... The provisions in the fourth paragraph above designating Mrs. Katherine Culpeper and Alexander Culpeper as "the true and lawfull propriators" were obsolete after the former married Lord Fairfax while Ludwell was still agent. By law the husband also became a proprietor and should have been added to the list. This omission was corrected by George Brent and William Fitzhugh, the two agents who succeeded Ludwell in 1693 and continued to serve during the 1690's in the land office at Woodstock in Stafford County. In a much simplified form, Brent and Fitzhugh merely listed the proprietors including the husband as follows: Margarett Lady Culpeper, Thomas Lord Fairfax, Katherine his wife and Alexander Culpeper Esquire, proprietors of the Northern Neck of Virginia.... The grants made by the various agents of the proprietors in the Northern Neck were not substantially different in nature from those held under a Virginia land patent. Both tenures reflected the feudal law of the manor. The proprietors held their land in free and common socage, and the planters in the Northern Neck paid quitrents and fees to the proprietors rather than to the crown. While the nature of the tenure was similar, there was a marked difference in the methods of obtaining a grant. Instead of the headright which we have seen was the basis for Virginia land grants during most of the seventeenth century, the proprietors turned to what they considered the more practical procedure--acquisition of title by purchase, or the "treasury right." To obtain title to land the individual paid a "composition" which was established at a uniform rate. For each 100 acres in grants less than 600, the price was five shillings; for 100 acres in grants more than 600, the price was increased to ten shillings. Payment was permitted in tobacco which was valued at the rate of six shillings for every 100 pounds in 1690. Such a provision could permit the acquisition of large holdings without the manipulations that were practiced under the headright system. In the provision for quitrents, the two areas were similar. The amount of the quitrent in the Northern Neck was the same as elsewhere in Virginia--two shillings annually for 100 acres. Under agents Brent and Fitzhugh one exception occurred with the attempt in 1694 to double the quitrent and thereby maintain the same scale as was customary in Maryland at the time. But few grants have been found to indicate the agents succeeded to any extent in establishing the higher rate. Relative to requirements for seating to validate the claim, the two areas followed a different course as the seventeenth century progressed. We have previously noted the three-year "seating and planting" requirement for other Virginia patents. Similar provisions were included in the first proprietary grants as revealed in the earliest patent in 1675. But beginning with the grant for Brent Town in 1687, the seating requirement was omitted and this precedent was followed for all subsequent proprietary grants in the Northern Neck in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the seventeenth century under consideration in this study, there was considerable private and public animosity displayed toward the principles of the proprietary system. There was a distrust of the grants that were issued, and there was criticism of the proprietary system as it differed from the remainder of Virginia. Demand for land in the area was not as great; and with the exception of large holdings such as that of William Fitzhugh, most of the patents were small. It was not until the eighteenth century that public antipathy toward the proprietors was for the most part dispelled and that demands on the Northern Neck land offices increased to equal other areas in Virginia. RETROSPECT The availability of land was a leading motive in the European colonization of America. Although much of the country was inhabited by Indians, European nations claimed sovereignty over the area and denied superior claims by the non-Christian aborigines. The London Company held essentially to this position, although gradually the colony of Virginia, like other English colonies, recognized the Indian's right of occupation and provided some compensation for relinquishment of territory. By the middle of the seventeenth century Virginia had initiated the policy of laying out Indian boundaries or creating reservations for neighboring tribes that were not open to white settlement. Under the London Company land was held in common until the provision for distribution to individual stockholders was carried out after 1616. In addition to grants according to the number of shares of stock owned, the company rewarded individuals with land for special services rendered to the colony. And to stimulate immigration, grants were offered as dividends to voluntary associations or "societies of adventurers" for organizing and financing settlements such as the hundred or particular plantations. It was also possible to obtain patents by purchase or by "treasury right" under the company, but the most significant development was the provision for acquisition by headright as outlined in the Instructions to Governor George Yeardley in 1618. With the dissolution of the company in 1624, the "treasury right" was discontinued in Virginia and did not reappear other than in the Northern Neck until 1699. The major method of obtaining title to land was the headright which attempted to maintain an appropriate balance between the size of the population and the area patented. However, its basic concept was distorted by irregular practices and fraudulent acts. Other conditions for obtaining patents after 1624 were as a dividend for each share of stock invested in the company, as remuneration for special services, and as a means of encouraging frontier fortification. The size of land patents gradually increased during the seventeenth century with the peak being reached in the third quarter. During the last quarter of the period there was a definite trend toward the breakup of large estates by distribution to heirs and by sale of small segments of the larger patent. Whatever the variation in size, the small landholder constituted the major group in seventeenth-century Virginia and assumed a more important role in the socio-economic pattern of the colony than is evident from the descriptions of plantation life by romantic writers. By the end of the seventeenth century the use of the headright as the major means of land distribution began to give way to acquisition of title by purchase in all of Virginia other than the Northern Neck. For the Northern Neck which was granted to various proprietors who were faithful to the King during the civil war, the headright never served as the basis of the land system. Rather the distribution of land by the "treasury right" was employed in the seventeenth as well as the eighteenth century. The abuses of the land system and lax enforcement of its major principles brought forth a detailed discussion of its many facets by the Board of Trade near the end of the century. Reforms were proposed that would enhance the royal revenue by collection of the quitrent and would prevent the accumulation of large estates. But the existence of vast areas of unoccupied land on the frontier militated against the restriction, and there was considerable opposition to feudal tenures and to the payment of rents to the crown. The proposed reforms did not prevent the acquisition of large landholdings; the few large estates of the seventeenth century increased both in number and size in the eighteenth century and from them were developed the large plantations of some of the well-known Virginia leaders of the American Revolution. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. MANUSCRIPTS Virginia Land Patents. Forty-two volumes. Records of the Virginia State Land Office now in the custody of the Virginia State Library, Richmond. Indispensable source for the study of land grants in Colonial Virginia. Nine volumes cover the period to 1706 with two additional volumes for the Northern Neck beginning in 1690: Northern Neck Grants No. 1, 1690-1692 and Northern Neck Grants No. 2, 1694-1700. Thomas Jefferson Papers. Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. II. PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES Brown, Alexander, ed., _The Genesis of the United States_, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890. 2 vols. Force, Peter, ed., _Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin Settlement and Progress of the Colonies in North America, from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776_, Washington, D.C., 1836-1846. 4 vols. Grant, William, Munro (James) and Fitzroy (A. W.), eds., _Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, 1613-1783_, London, 1908-1912. 6 vols. Hartwell, Henry, Blair (James) and Chilton (Edward), _The Present State of Virginia and the College_. Edited by H. D. Farish, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 1940. Hening, W. W., ed., _Statutes at Large: being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619_ [to 1792]. Richmond, 1809. 13 vols. Kennedy, J. P. and McIlwaine, H. R., eds., _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1619-1776_, Richmond: The Colonial Press, 1905-1915. 13 vols. Kingsbury, S. M., ed., _The Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906 and 1933. 4 vols. Labaree, L. W., ed., _Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors_, 1670-1776, New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935. 2 vols. McIlwaine, H. R. and Hall, W. L., eds., _Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia_, Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1925. McIlwaine, H. R., ed., _Legislative Journals of the Council of Colonial_ _Virginia, 1680-1775_, Richmond: The Colonial Press, 1918-1919. 3 vols. ----, _Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622-1632, 1670-1676_, Richmond: The Colonial Press, 1924. Nugent, Nell M., ed., _Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants_, Richmond: The Dietz Printing Company, 1934. Only volume I published covering the period from 1623 to 1666. Excellent source for study of seventeenth-century land grants. Sainsbury, W. N. and others, eds., _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies_, London, 1860-. III. INDEX AND PERIODICALS Swem, E. G., comp., _Virginia Historical Index_, Roanoke: Stone Printing Company, 1934-1936. 2 vols. Valuable guide to material found in Hening's _Statutes_, _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, _Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, _William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_--first and second series, _Calendar of Virginia State Papers ... Preserved in the Capitol at Richmond_, _Virginia Historical Register and Literary Adviser_, and _Lower Norfolk County Virginia Antiquary_. IV. SECONDARY SOURCES--BOOKS Ames, Susie M., _Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century_, Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1940. Andrews, C, M., _The Colonial Period of American History_, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934-1938. 4 vols. Beverley, Robert, _The History of Virginia in Four Parts_. Reprinted from the author's second revised edition, 1722. Richmond, 1855. Brown, Alexander, _The First Republic in America_, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898. Bruce, P. A., _The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, New York: Macmillan and Company, 1896. 2 vols. ----, _Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910. 2 vols. ----, _Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Higher Planting Class, together with an Account of the Habits, Customs, and Diversions of the People_, Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1907. Craven, W. F., _Dissolution of the Virginia Company: The failure of a Colonial Experiment_, New York: Oxford University Press, 1932. ----, _The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689_. Volume I of _A History of the South_, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949. Harrison, _Fairfax, Virginia Land Grants: A Study of Conveyancing in Relation to Colonial Politics_, Richmond: The Old Dominion Press, 1925. Valuable for its emphasis upon the Northern Neck. Osgood, H. L., _The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century_, New York: Macmillan Company, 1904-1907. 3 vols. Voorhis, M. C., The Land Grant Policy of Colonial Virginia, 1607-1774, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia. Valuable study with emphasis upon analysis of land policy. Does not include the Northern Neck. Wertenbaker, T. J., _Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia; or, The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion_, Charlottesville, 1910. ----, _The Planters of Colonial Virginia_, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1922. ----, _Virginia under the Stuarts, 1607-1688_, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1914. Wright, L. B., _The First Gentlemen of Virginia: Intellectual Qualities of the Early Colonial Ruling Class_, San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1940. VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY COMMISSION _Honorary Chairman_ THOMAS B. STANLEY, Governor LEWIS A. MCMURRAN, JR., _Chairman of the Commission_ _Members of Senate appointed by President of the Senate_: LLOYD C. BIRD, Vice Chairman HARRY F. BYRD, JR. EDWARD L. BREEDEN, JR. W. MARVIN MINTER _Members of the House of Delegates appointed by the Speaker of the House_: RUSSELL M. CARNEAL FELIX E. EDMUNDS HALE COLLINS LEWIS A. MCMURRAN, JR. JOHN W. COOKE W. TAYLOE MURPHY EDMUND T. DEJARNETTE FRED G. POLLARD _Members appointed by the Governor_: MISS ELLEN BAGBY CARLISLE H. HUMELSINE ALVIN D. CHANDLER VERBON E. KEMP ALLEN R. MATTHEWS PARKE ROUSE, JR., _Executive Director_ * * * * * THE JAMESTOWN-WILLIAMSBURG-YORKTOWN CELEBRATION COMMISSION _Appointed by the President of the United States_ ROBERT V. HATCHER, Chairman SAMUEL M. BEMISS, Vice Chairman FRANK L. BOYDEN BENTLEY HITE DAVID E. FINLEY WINTHROP ROCKEFELLER CONRAD L. WIRTH _Appointed by the Vice President of the United States_ HARRY F. BYRD A. WILLIS ROBERTSON _Appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives_ EDWARD J. ROBESON, JR. RICHARD H. POFF H. K. ROBERTS, _Administrative Director_ _FEVDIGRAPHIA._ THE SYNOPSIS OR EPITOME OF SVRVEYING METHODIZED. Anatomizing the whole Corps of the Facultie; _Viz._ _The Materiall, Mathematicall, Mechanicall and Legall Parts_, Intimating all the Incidents to Fees and Possessions, and whatsoeuer may be comprized vnder their Matter, Forme, Proprietie, and Valuation. _Very pertinent to be perused of all those, whom the Right, Reuenewe, Estimation, Farming, Occupation, Manurance, Subduing, Preparing and Imploying of Arable, Medow, Pasture, and all other plots doe concerne._ And no lesse remarkable for all Vnder-takers in the Plantation of Ireland or Virginia, for all Trauailers for Discoueries of _forraine Countries, and for Purchasers, Exchangers, or Sellers_ of Land, and for euery other Interessee in the Profits or Practise deriued from the compleate SVRVEY _Of Manours, Lands, Tenements, Edifices, Woods, Waters, Titles, Tenures, Euidences, &c._ Composed in a compendious Digest by W. FOLKINGHAM. G. QUA PROSUNT SINGULA, MULTAIUVANT. LONDON Printed for _Richard Moore_, and are to be solde at his shop in Saint _Dunstanes_ Church-yard in Fleete-streete, 1610. [Photograph by T. L. Williams] THE SVRVEIORS DIALOGVE, Very profitable for all men to pervse, but _especially for Gentlemen, Farmers, and Husbandmen_, that shall either haue occasion, or be willing to buy, hire, or sell Lands: As in the ready and perfect Surueying of them, with the manner and Method of keeping a Court of Suruey with many necessary rules, and familiar Tables to that purpose. * * * * * _As also_, The vse of the Manuring of some Grounds, fit as well _for_ LORDS, _as for_ TENNANTS. * * * * * Now the third time Imprinted. * * * * * _And by the same Author inlarged, and a sixt Booke newly_ added, of a familiar conference, betweene a PVRCHASER, and a SVRVEYOR of Lands; of the true vse of both being very needfull for all such as are to purchase Land, whether it be in Fee simple, or by Lease. _Diuided into sixe Bookes by_ I. N. * * * * * PROV. 17.2. _A discreate Seruant shall haue rule ouer an vnthriftie Sonne, and he shall deuide the heritage among the brethren._ Voluntas pro facultate. * * * * * LONDON: Printed by THOMAS SNODHAM. 1618. [Photograph by T. L. Williams] 
29048	----	[Illustration: GUARANTY TRUST CO'S COTTON PRICE CHART. _Spot Prices, New York, Middling Uplands_] The Fabric of Civilization A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States Guaranty Trust Company of New York 140 Broadway FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE MADISON AVENUE OFFICE Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street Madison Avenue and 60th Street LONDON OFFICES LIVERPOOL OFFICE 32 Lombard Street, E. C. 27 Cotton Exchange Buildings 5 Lower Grosvenor Pl., S. W. PARIS OFFICE HAVRE OFFICE BRUSSELS OFFICE 1 and 3 Rue des Italiens 122 Boulevard Strasbourg 158 Rue Royale COPYRIGHT, 1919 GUARANTY TRUST COMPANY OF NEW YORK The cotton industry touches the lives of the vast majority of the peoples of the earth. The ensuing survey does not pretend to cover the field in all its diversity. It aims to give, in brief compass, such general facts concerning the industry in the United States as may enable the reader quickly to familiarize himself with its broader outlines. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I The Importance and Power of Cotton 5 II Where Cotton is Grown and Spun and Why 10 III The Raw Cotton Market 17 IV The Cloth Market 27 V Financing Cotton and Cotton Cloth 33 VI American Cloth in Foreign Markets 38 VII Some of the Grower's Problems 41 VIII In the Cotton Mill 45 IX The Finishing Operations 57 The Fabric of Civilization CHAPTER I The Importance and Power of Cotton Cotton is the fabric of civilization. It has built up peoples, and has riven them apart. It has brought to the world vast and permanent wealth. It has enlisted the vision of statesmen, the genius of inventors, the courage of pioneers, the forcefulness of manufacturers, the initiative of merchants and shipbuilders, and the patient toil of many millions. A whole library could be written on the economic aspects of cotton alone. It could be told in detail, how and why the domination of the field of its manufacture passed from India to Spain, to Holland, and finally to England, which now shares it chiefly with the United States. The interdependence of nations which it has brought about has been the subject of numerous books and articles. Genius that Served The World's Need Nor is the history of the inventions which have made possible to-day's great production of cotton fabrics less impressive. From the unnamed Hindu genius of pre-Alexandrian days, through Arkwright and Eli Whitney, down to Jacquard and Northrop, the tale of cotton manufacture is a series of romances and tragedies, any one of which would be a story worth telling in detail. Yet, here is a work that is by no means finished. Great inventors who will apply their genius to the improvement of cotton growing and manufacture are still to be born. The present purpose, however, is to explain, as briefly as may be, the growth of the cotton industry of the United States, in its more important branches, and to endeavor, on the basis of recognized authority, to indicate its position in relation to the cotton industries of the remainder of the world. America the Chief Source of Raw Material For the present, and for the future, as far as that may be seen, the United States will have to continue to supply the greater part of the world's raw cotton. Staples of unusual length and strength have been grown in some foreign regions, and short and inferior fibers have come from still others. But the cotton belt of the Southern States, producing millions of bales, is the chief source of supply for all the world. The following table, taken from "The World's Cotton Crops, 1915," by J. A. Todd, gives the comparative production of the great cotton-growing areas, for the 1914-1915 season: America 16,500,000 bales of 500 pounds India 5,000,000 " " 500 " Egypt 1,300,000 " " 500 " Russia 1,300,000 " " 500 " China 4,000,000 " " 500 " Others 1,300,000 " " 500 " ----------- Total 29,400,000 " " 500 " The American crop is thus approximately fifty-six per cent. of the world's total. The other producing countries have shown since the beginning of the century an interesting, if not a remarkable growth, that of China being the largest in quantity, and that of Russia, the largest in proportion. The American increase has been larger, absolutely, than that of any other region, and there is little indication that it will not continue to hold first position. English Spinners Dominate World Market In the manufacture of cotton, Great Britain's supremacy, while not so great proportionately as that of America in growing it, is for the present not likely to be challenged. The following table of the number of spindles in the chief manufacturing countries is based on English figures compiled shortly before the outbreak of the World War. The number of spindles is the usual basis upon which the size of the industry is judged. It is not a perfect method, but it has fewer objections than any other: Great Britain 55,576,108 United States 30,579,000 Germany 10,920,426 Russia 8,950,000 France 7,400,000 India 6,400,000 Austria 4,864,453 Italy 4,580,000 Latin America 3,100,000 Japan 2,250,000 Spain 2,200,000 Belgium 1,468,838 Switzerland 1,398,062 Scattering 2,499,421 ----------- Total Spindles 142,186,308 Such figures can be only approximate. The war has brought growth in the United States and in Japan, but has certainly reduced the numbers of spindles in Germany, Austria, and Russia. It is doubtful, moreover, how well the French industry has been able to maintain itself. But the tabulation is accurate enough to show the relative standing of the various countries. There are, as has been indicated, other standards than the number of spindles. The United States, through the fact that it specializes, generally speaking, on the coarser fabrics, uses about 5,000,000 bales of cotton annually, as compared with Great Britain's 4,000,000. The British product, however, sells for much more. Thus the value of the spindle standard is affirmed. England, then, produces well in excess of one-third of the cotton cloth of the world; the United States considerably more than one-fifth of it, with the other countries trailing far behind, but prospering nevertheless. The Individuality of the Cotton Fiber [Illustration: _The cotton fiber--a highly magnified view, showing the twist_] It is a curious ruling of fate which makes the spinning of cotton fiber possible. There are many other short vegetable fibers, but cotton is the only one which can profitably be spun into thread. Hemp and flax, its chief vegetable competitors, are both long fibered. The individuality of the cotton fiber lies in its shape. Viewed through the microscope, the fiber is seen to be, not a hollow cylinder, but rather a flattened cylinder, shaped in cross-section something like the figure eight. But the chief and valuable characteristic is that the flattened cylinder is not straight, but twisted. It is this twist which gives its peculiar and overwhelming importance to cotton, for without this apparently fortuitous characteristic, the spinning of cotton, if possible at all, would result in a much weaker and less durable thread. The twist makes the threads "kink" together when they are spun, and it is this kink which makes for strength and durability. Though the cotton plant seems to be native to South America, Southern Asia, Africa, and the West Indies, its cultivation, was largely confined at first to India, and later to India and the British West Indies. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the West Indies, because of their especial fitness for growing the longer staples were supplying about seventy per cent. of the food of the Lancashire spindles. The United States having made unsuccessful attempts to produce cotton in the early days of the colonies, first became an important producing country toward the end of the eighteenth century. American Upland cotton, by reason of its comparatively short staple, and the unevenness of the fibers, as well as the difficulty of detaching it from the seed, was decidedly inferior to some other accessible species. The Southern planters who grew it, moreover, found it next to impossible to gin it properly, the primitive roller gin of the time being unsuited to the task, and the work of pulling off the fibers by hand being both tedious and expensive. In 1792, the amount exported from the United States was equivalent to only 275 bales. [Illustration: _Eli Whitney, the schoolmaster inventor of the cotton gin_] The next year, 1793, is the most important in the history of cotton growing in the United States. In the autumn of 1792, Eli Whitney, a young Massachusetts man who had just been graduated from Yale College, sailed from New York to South Carolina where he intended to teach school. On shipboard he met the widow of Nathaniel Greene, the Revolutionary general. Mrs. Greene invited the youth to begin his residence in the South on her plantation at Mulberry Grove, Georgia. Here one evening, some officers, late of General Greene's command, were discussing the great wealth which might come to the South were there a suitable machine for removing stubborn Upland fiber from its green seed. The story goes that while the discussion was at its height, Mrs. Greene said: "Gentlemen, apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney. He can make anything." Whitney commenced work on the problem. A room was set aside as his workshop, and it was not long before he had produced the beginnings of the gin. He fixed wire teeth in a board, and found that by pulling the fibers through with his fingers he could leave the tenacious seed behind. He carried this basic idea further by putting the teeth on a cylinder and by providing a rotating brush to clean the fiber from the teeth. The changes which followed immediately upon the introduction of the cotton gin were tremendous in scope and almost innumerable. There was a time, before cotton became a staple, when the South led New England in manufacturing. That time passed almost immediately. Iron works and coal mines were abandoned, and men turned their energies from the culture of corn, rice, and indigo largely to the raising of the cotton. Expansion in Production The following figures, giving production in the equivalent of 500 pound bales for the year at the close of each ten-year period, give some idea of the tremendous expansion which ensued. _500 Pound _Year_ Bales_ 1790 3,138 1800 73,222 1810 177,824 1820 334,728 1830 732,218 1840 1,347,640 1850 2,136,083 1860 3,841,416 1870 4,024,527 1880 6,356,998 1890 8,562,089 1900 10,123,027 1910 11,608,616 1917 11,302,375 By this table it will be seen that the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves held up production only temporarily. In 1914, the banner year, the crop reached the tremendous total of 16,134,930 bales of five hundred pounds each. Some little spinning had been done in the seventeenth century, but in 1787-88 the first permanent factory, built of brick, and located in Beverly, Massachusetts, on the Bass river, was put into operation by a group headed by John Cabot and Joshua Fisher. This factory failed to justify itself economically, chiefly because of the crudeness of its machinery. But Samuel Slater, newly come from England with models of the Arkwright machinery in his brain, set up a factory in Pawtucket in 1790. From that time forth the growth was steady and sure, if not always extremely rapid. The following table,[A] which covers the whole country, relates particularly to New England in the years before 1880, because the cotton manufacturing industry until then was largely concentrated there. It shows how the manufacturing interests of the country profited by the discovery that brought wealth to the agricultural South: =======+=======+============+=========+=============+============== |_Number| |_Cotton | | | of | _Number | Used | _Number | _Value of _Year_ | Estab-| of | in | of | Product in | lish- | Spindles_ | Million | Employes_ | Dollars_ | ments_| | Pounds_ | | -------+-------+------------+---------+-------------+-------------- 1810 | | 87,000 | | | 1820 | | 220,000 | | | 1830 | 795 | 1,200,000 | 77.8 | 62,177 | $32,000,000 1840 | 1240 | 2,300,000 | 113.1 | 72,119 | 46,400,000 1850 | 1094 | 3,600,000 | 276.1 | 92,286 | 61,700,000 1860 | 1091 | 5,200,000 | 422.7 | 122,028 | 115,700,000 1870 | 956 | 7,100,000 | 398.3 | 135,369 | 177,500,000 1880 | 756 | 10,700,000 | 750.3 | 174,659 | 192,100,000 1890 | 905 | 14,200,000 | 1,118.0 | 218,876 | 268,000,000 1900 | 973 | 19,000,000 | 1,814.0 | 297,929 | 332,800,000 1910 | 1208 | 27,400,000 | 2,332.2 | 371,120 | 616,500,000 1918 | | 34,940,830 | 3,278.2 | | =======+=======+============+=========+=============+============== [A] This tabulation includes spinning and weaving establishments only. The North, having this growing interest in an industry struggling against the experience and ability of the more firmly established English market, sought naturally for the protection given by a high tariff. The South, having definitely dropped manufacturing, pleaded with Congress always for a low tariff, and the right to deal in human chattels. There is little need to go further into the rift which began to develop almost immediately. In 1861 the split occurred. The war between the States caused hardly more suffering than the blockade which cut off the spinners of Manchester from the vegetable wool which supplied them the means of living. Cotton proved its power and its domination. It was a beneficent monarch, but it brooked no denial of its overlordship. Early Exports to England Heavy The invention of the Whitney Gin, as we have just said, found the United States able to use but a small part of the cotton grown. What became of the remainder? Obviously, it was exported to provide the means for operating the English mills. Here is a table which shows how American cotton left the Southern ports for England and the Continent in the alternate decennial years beginning in 1790, three years before the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. The figures are exclusive of linters. _Exports in Equivalent of 500 _Year_ Pound Bales_ 1790 379 1810 124,116 1830 553,960 1850 1,854,474 1870 2,922,757 1890 5,850,219 1910 8,025,991 1917 4,587,000 In 1910 American cotton made up almost exactly three-quarters of the whole amount imported into Great Britain. The other countries of Europe have developed a spinning industry by no means inconsiderable. American cotton is sent to almost all those European countries which spin and weave. Such a movement had of course a profound effect upon the currents of world trade. The cotton crop is the second in value of all the crops produced in the United States, and such a large part of it is exported that the credit it gives to its sellers enables them to buy in return some of the most valuable of the products manufactured in Europe. The following table gives the amount of cotton, expressed in the equivalent of 500 pound bales, exported to the various countries named in the decennial years: ======+=========+=========+========+=======+========+========+========= |_United | | | | |_Nether-| _Year_| Kingdom_|_Germany_|_France_|_Italy_|_Russia_| lands_ |_Belgium_ ------+---------+---------+--------+-------+--------+--------+--------- 1821 | 175,438| 1,496| 54,878| 1,796| 609 | 8,372| 1830 | 419,661| 2,246| 150,212| 471| 223 | 17,135| 1840 | 989,830| 18,317| 358,180| 7,805| 4,406 | 21,698| 25,780 1850 | 863,062| 10,090| 251,668| 18,707| 8,677 | 8,590| 25,492 1860 |2,528,274| 132,145| 567,935| 54,037| 43,396 | 25,515| 29,601 1870 |1,298,332| 173,552| 306,293| 14,549| 30,341 | 17,050| 3,452 1880 |2,433,255| 308,045| 359,693| 59,126|204,500 | 65,325| 17,896 1890 |2,905,152| 837,641| 484,759|129,751|193,163 | 17,438| 93,588 1900 |2,302,128|1,619,173| 736,092|443,951| 54,950 | 74,635| 148,319 1910 |2,444,558|1,887,657| 968,422|393,327| 67,203 | 18,823| 102,346 1917 |2,387,101| | 658,553|369,213| 15,945 | 10,098| CHAPTER II Where Cotton is Grown and Spun and Why We have seen (page 5) that the world's cotton crop is produced chiefly by the United States, with 56%; India, with 17%; China, with 13-1/2%; Egypt and Russia with 4-1/2%, the remaining 4-1/2% being made up by Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Turkey, Persia, Japan, and several other countries. Primitive Methods of Growing in India India is the first country wherein, so far as we have record, the growing of cotton reached the stage of an industry. There conditions are almost ideal, apparently, for the production of a great crop; yet, for many years the crop was a small one, and was utilized locally in the domestic manufacture of the light clothing worn by the people. Nothing remotely resembling the present modern factory system developed during all the thousands of years that the Indians had the field practically to themselves. The plant grown in India for a long time produced a short, uncertain staple, difficult to gin and still more difficult to spin. The greater part of the cotton growing districts are still given over to the short staple varieties (about 3/4 inch) but in recent years certain varieties of Egyptian and American cotton have been produced with some success. About 20,000,000 acres are given over to the culture of the plant, but the methods used are to a great extent primitive in the extreme. Most of the crop, being unsuited to the needs of the British spinners, is either manufactured in Indian mills, of which the number is constantly growing, or exported to Japan. Before the war, Germany was a large consumer of Indian cotton. The figures given as representing the Chinese crop probably are not any more accurate than the usual statistical figures concerning China. The Chinese are still largely in the domestic system of manufacture, and much of their crop--probably a larger proportion than in India--is spun and woven in the neighborhood where it is grown, without ever appearing in statistical tables. The methods of growing are equally primitive. The fiber is short, and the mills of the country import more raw cotton, yarn, and textiles than they export. The Growing Importance Of Egyptian Staples The Egyptian crop is one of the most interesting, both in the methods of culture, and in the product. From the point of view of statistics--remembering the uncertainty of the size of the Chinese crop--Egypt is the third cotton growing country of the world. This is the more interesting because it was not until about 1820 that Egypt was considered as a source of supply. The present area, under extremely intensive cultivation, is about 1,800,000 acres, and nine-tenths of this is in the Nile delta. Climatic conditions are radically different from those of the United States. Little rain falls during the growing season, but an elaborate system of irrigation provides a sufficient and probably more satisfactory water supply, insomuch as the quantity of water can be regulated, and there is little danger of either too much or too little moisture. The regions where the soil is not composed exclusively of the black delta mud, but is a mixture of sand and mud, produce the best crops. The land, after being plowed, is thrown up into ridges about three feet apart. Channels for water are formed at right angles to the ridges. The seeds, before being sown, in March, are thoroughly soaked, and after the seedlings appear there is frequent hoeing and watering. The total water is equivalent to a rainfall of about 35 inches. There is little cultivation in the American fashion, hand labor being employed almost exclusively. The result of all this intensive effort is an abundant crop of long-stapled cotton with an extremely strong fiber, bringing in the open market a price second only to that of the American Sea Island variety. Much of the Egyptian cotton is used in the manufacture of hosiery and other knit goods, sateens, sewing thread, etc., but recently it has also been found to be exceedingly well fitted for the manufacture of the fabric used in pneumatic tires, and for the duck or filter cloth used in such industries as the refining of sugar. [Illustration: _Pickers in Delta Field_] Russian cotton, so-called, is really grown largely in Turkestan though a small amount is produced in the Southern Caucasus. The culture has been under way since very early times, but had little more than local significance until about 1875 when the Russian Government took steps to foster it, distributing American seed of the Upland variety, importing the necessary equipment, and providing instructors, frequently Americans. Railroads to handle the crop were built, and, with all this favorable assistance, progress was rapid. About one-third of the cotton used in the Russian mills up to the time of the war was grown on Russian soil, the remainder being brought largely from the United States. The American Crop As the World's Basis But the bulk of the world's supply is the cotton grown in the United States. The price for American Upland Cotton governs the price of the other varieties. The acreage devoted to the cultivation of the cotton crop in the United States is approximately 34,000,000. The increase since 1839, when census figures covering this point were first obtained, has been about seventeen fold. The 1916 acreage, of the various States, together with figures giving the value of the crop and the comparative rank, is here given: ================+==========+==============+========+=============== | | _Gross | | _Crop Value | |Equivalent 500|_Approx-| Including _States_ | _Acreage_| Pound Bales | imate | Seed | | Exclusive of |Percent-| and Linters_ | | Linters_ | age_ | ----------------+----------+--------------+--------+--------------- Alabama | 1,977,000| 517,890 | 4.6 | $86,940,000 Arizona | | 21,737 | 0.1 | 6,300,000 Arkansas | 2,740,000| 973,752 | 8.6 | 164,840,000 California | | 57,826 | 0.5 | 9,410,000 Florida | 183,000| 37,858 | 0.3 | 10,260,000 Georgia | 5,195,000| 1,883,911 | 16.7 | 322,600,000 Louisiana | 1,454,000| 638,729 | 5.7 | 102,260,000 Mississippi | 2,788,000| 905,554 | 8.0 | 152,270,000 Missouri | 345,000| 60,831 | 0.5 | 10,100,000 North Carolina | 1,515,000| 617,989 | 5.5 | 103,940,000 Oklahoma | 2,783,000| 959,081 | 8.5 | 150,270,000 South Carolina | 2,837,000| 1,236,871 | 10.9 | 207,220,000 Tennessee | 882,000| 240,525 | 2.1 | 40,130,000 Texas |11,092,000| 3,125,378 | 27.7 | 495,590,000 Virginia | 50,000| 18,777 | 0.2 | 3,140,000 All Other States| | 5,666 | 0.1 | 970,000 +----------+--------------+--------+-------------- Totals |33,841,000| 11,302,375 | 100.00 | 1,866,240,000 ================+==========+==============+========+============== There are generally speaking, two kinds of cotton produced in the United States--Upland cotton, and Sea Island cotton. The former makes up the great bulk of the crop, the relative percentages in 1917 being 99.2 and .8. The Constant Search For Long Staples A few years ago the terms short-staple and Upland were practically interchangeable, but the great demand for long staple, chiefly from the manufacturers of thread and of pneumatic tire fabrics has led to a successful attempt to grow the longer fibers in the Upland districts, so that now more than a million bales annually are being produced in the Upland districts of cotton with a staple length of 1-1/8 inches and more. The world's total production of long staple is in the neighborhood of 2,250,000 bales. Egypt is the chief producer outside the United States, her product being approximately 1,000,000 bales of 500 pounds every year. Although the product is small, the best Sea Island produced in the United States grows upon the small islands off the coast of South Carolina. The long-staple Upland is grown chiefly in the Mississippi delta, where the product is called "Peeler," "benders," etc., though the percentage of long-staple produced elsewhere is steadily increasing. The success of certain Arizona growers in producing long-staple from Egyptian seed is being watched with great interest. More than 3,000 bales came from this source in 1916, the fiber averaging 1-1/2 inches in length. There has recently been developed there, the new and important Pima variety, which is superior to the native Egyptian cotton, being both longer and whiter, and the growers are now planting Pima almost exclusively. The following table, taken from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, gives the comparative length of staple of the more important varieties of cotton. The order in which they are given represents, roughly, their relative commercial value: _Length of Staple Sea Island Cotton in Inches_ Carolina Sea Island 1.8 Florida Sea Island 1.8 Georgia Sea Island 1.7 Barbados Sea Island 2. Egyptian Cottons Yannovitch 1.5 Abassi 1.5 Good Brown Egyptian (Mitafifi) 1.2 American Cotton Good Middling Memphis 1.3 Good Middling Texas 1.0 Good Middling Upland 1.0 Indian Cottons Fine Tinnevelly .8 Fine Bhaunagar 1.0 Fine Amraoti 1.0 Fine Broach .9 Fine Bengal .9 Fine ginned Sind .8 Good ginned Kumta 1.0 The table of the number of spindles in each country in the world, given on page 6, gives some idea of the relative position of the United States in the field of cotton manufacturing. We have seen how the English industry, having the prior start, grew to imposing proportions and helped to bring about a change almost as great in its effects as the French Revolution, which was occurring at almost the same time. British supremacy in cotton manufacturing has never been truly challenged, but there has been an appreciable growth in several other countries, and in Germany and Japan, at least, the recent development has been little short of phenomenal. New figures will probably show that in the future Japan will be the chief competitor of England and the United States for a share of the cotton trade of the world. [Illustration: _Fall River, Massachusetts_] The Home Market Created An Industry The chief factor in the growth of the American industry was probably not the nearness of the source of supply, cheap fuel or labor, nor any of these factors which operated in the case of England, such as climate, geographical position, and shipping control, but more than anything else the presence of a market close at hand which grew so rapidly, more rapidly indeed than the industry could grow to meet it. Aided to some extent by an import tariff, the manufacturers have weathered some short periods of depression, but in the main the industry has grown in direct ratio to the growth of the country. [Illustration: _A typical Southern mill_] New England As Home Of American Spinning The cotton mill, as we have seen, early chose New England as its domicile. Mills are scattered more or less throughout the entire region, but there are several localities which stand out beyond all others, and almost deserve the title they have acquired as the centers of the industry. Premier place for a long time was held by Fall River, and even now the race between that city and New Bedford is strong, with the lead slightly in favor of the former city. Bristol County, Mass., in which these two centers, and Taunton, are located, Providence, R. I., and Middlesex County, Mass., together contained 10,086,686 spindles in 1917, or 29.5% of the country's total of 34,221,252. The growth in this one locality is due probably to the advantages which come with centralization, as well as to the natural advantages they possessed. These latter, which include particularly water power and a moist climate, are not as important now, With steam power and mechanical humidifiers as they were a generation ago. In the Middle Atlantic States, the number of plants and the spindlage have remained about stationary over a long period of years, and are even showing a tendency to decrease. Small weaving establishments which buy their yarn are particularly numerous around Philadelphia, and there are large cotton duck mills in and near Baltimore. Mills in the Midst of Cotton Plantations It has been in the South, however, that the growth of the cotton manufacturing industry in the last few decades has been most phenomenal. In 1860 there were 324,052 spindles in the cotton growing States compared with 8,632,087 in New England. In 1917, the figures were: Northern States (including Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont), 19,835,662 spindles devoted to the spinning of cotton exclusively; Southern States (including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia), 14,292,918 spindles devoted to cotton exclusively. The census figures do not give the number of spindles in each city except when the confines of the city and of the county happen to coincide. But the appended table is presented as showing the spindlage of counties having more than 100,000 spindles devoted to the spinning of cotton. About 1880, the Southerner saw the opportunity that awaited him when he should manufacture his own cotton. At that time he was consuming only 188,748 bales, while New England took 1,129,498. In ten years, he was utilizing more than half a million bales, while New England had just passed the million and a half figure. In 1905, the South consumed 2,140,151 bales, while New England had climbed to only 1,753,282. The figures are Scherer's, who points out that the race was won in twenty-five years. However, as competition with the South increased, New England, following the earlier lead of Old England, has tended always to produce a finer and finer quality of cloth, leaving the coarser grades of sheeting, drills and ducks to the Southern mills. Thus, while the South is consuming an ever larger proportion of the cotton crop, she is still far from receiving for her product the money that comes to the New Englander, who with a higher grade of labor and greater variation of output is constantly catering, with dress fabrics and fine stuffs of various kinds, to a discriminating well-to-do patronage. _Spindles _County_ (Number)_ Bristol, Mass. 7,294,221 Providence, R. I. 1,709,713 Middlesex, Mass. 1,082,752 Hillsborough, N. H. 907,245 Spartanburg, S. C. 831,476 Windham, Conn. 780,232 Worcester, Mass. 766,110 Greenville, S. C. 758,144 Essex, Mass. 645,020 Hampden, Mass. 642,096 Gaston, N. C. 603,102 Kent, R.I. 594,380 Anderson, S. C. 582,464 Berkshire, Mass. 521,408 New London, Conn. 512,170 Oneida, N. Y. 419,255 York, Me. 408,600 Androscoggin, Me. 402,471 Muscogee, Ga. 346,740 Pittsylvania, Va. 346,320 Union, S. C. 330,656 Strafford, N. H. 318,160 Cabarrus, N. C. 315,810 Mecklenburg, N. C. 272,198 Guilford, N. C. 262,862 Richland, S. C. 244,660 Essex, N. J. 232,291 Albany, N. Y. 226,564 Madison, Ala. 225,168 Greenwood, S. C. 217,744 Pickens, S. C. 211,320 Bristol, R. I. 210,488 Hampshire, Mass. 198,792 York, S. C. 198,404 Fulton, Ga. 198,016 Aiken, S. C. 193,989 Laurens, S. C. 193,312 Richmond, Ga. 192,914 Rockingham, N. C. 191,810 Durham, N. C. 172,532 Newberry, S. C. 168,040 Chambers, Ala. 164,000 Cherokee, S. C. 163,820 Kennebec, Me. 163,815 Alamance, N. C. 153,176 Knox, Tenn. 152,100 Lancaster, S. C. 151,768 Richmond, N. C. 149,748 Chester, S. C. 146,692 Stanley, N. C. 146,000 Rutherford, N. C. 143,400 Calhoun, Ala. 138,048 Troup, Ga. 136,204 Floyd, Ga. 126,264 Cleveland, N. C. 125,182 Cumberland, Me. 124,392 Spalding, Ga. 121,252 Talladega, Ala. 115,448 Philadelphia, Pa. 114,547 Merrimack, N. H. 113,316 Davidson, N. C. 110,564 Baltimore City. 106,008 Halifax, N. C. 104,116 Hall, Ga. 102,588 The wealth of the world--at least up to the time of the Great War--was constantly increasing and while there is little likelihood that the demand for the coarser grades of goods will fall off, the need for finer stuffs, not only in the United States, but abroad, is constantly growing. The greatest development of the South is probably still to come. The locations of the world's cotton markets have been dictated by the location of the growing fields and the manufacturing centers. Thus we find that the great raw cotton markets of the United States are in New York and New Orleans. In Europe they are at Liverpool, Bremen and Havre. Because of conditions imposed by the German government, the Bremen market is largely dependent upon New York and Liverpool. The other great world market is that of Alexandria, which, although it handles but a comparatively small part of the world's crop, is important on account of the quality of the staple which makes up the Egyptian bale. The two chief American markets, New York and New Orleans, are sharply differentiated. The New Orleans market is a true trader's market. The great bulk of the sales made on the New Orleans floor are bona-fide sales, in which cotton actually changes hands. The New York market on the other hand is a merchants' and manufacturers' market, in which business transactions are protected against loss by the purchase or sale of "futures", though, of course, there is always a large amount of speculating. Delivery is rarely demanded. The function of the exchange, therefore, is largely that of insurance. The intricacies of this market will be discussed later. CHAPTER III The Raw Cotton Market Because of the ramifications of the cotton industry, the cotton itself, on its devious way from planter to consumer, is successively the concern of a series of individuals and corporations. The immense value of the product, the expense of growing, handling, manufacturing, and selling it all mean that great quantities of capital are utilized in bringing it at last to its final consumer. At any stage of the process, cotton represents no inconsiderable part of the nation's wealth, and to expedite its journey, merchandising and financial methods of a highly specialized technique have been developed. There are two very clearly marked stages in this process. The first has to do with the raw cotton, as it goes from planter to mill. The second has to do with the journey from mill to consumer. The first is usually called the Raw Cotton Market, and the second the Cloth Market. The planter begins his work early in the spring. His crop is dependent upon his ability to secure and pay for the labor to work it, for the tools and machinery which are used, and his own expenses. Small planters are rarely sufficiently in funds to enable them to go through the growing season without financial assistance. They must borrow money, and they usually borrow it with the growing crop as a basis. The Local Grower And the Charge Account They may borrow from the country merchant in the town near which their plantations are located. Credit here is usually furnished through the "charge account" system, whereby the merchant supplies the planter's wants for the growing season, even to the extent of giving credit to his farm hands. Tenant farmers live almost entirely on credit furnished by the store-keepers of the vicinity. When the picking season begins, in July, August, or September, according to the region concerned, the merchant, in lieu of money, may take the cotton as it comes from the gins, crediting the grower thereof at the market price. The cotton thus accumulated is sold to local buyers, or, occasionally, to shippers or exporters. In the case of the larger plantations, or groups of plantations operated by syndicates or corporations, the cotton is frequently shipped direct to the mill or, more often, to a warehouse. The larger producers, instead of getting their credit from the local stores, as their tenant farmers do, are financed either by their banks, or by their buyers, who in turn are financed by their bankers. The Street Buyers Of Texas Towns In some districts, particularly in Texas, there is the small or local buyer, usually called a "street buyer," who operates in the smaller towns, buying his cotton at the gins in lots of from one to ten bales, either from the small planters, or from the country merchants. This buying gives a certain concentration to the crop, and enables the larger buyers to deal in lots of comparatively uniform quality from certain regions, the general type of whose product is known. [Illustration: _Street buyer in a Southern town_] Cotton bought from the planters or from the country merchants is almost invariably paid for in cash. Cotton is frequently sold at the compress point, rather than at the gin, this course being pursued in the case of large producers, or when the original buyer is a mere local operator. One of the most important operations, commercially as well as industrially, is the grading of cotton, which takes place as a rule at the compress point under the supervision of the buyer, who employs experts for this purpose. Cotton mills as a rule operate on certain specified grades of cotton, and any deviation from this grade means either a readjustment of machinery or disgruntled and dissatisfied employes, or, perhaps, an inability to fill an order for cloth of certain types. The manufacturer will usually refuse to accept any grades save those he has specifically commissioned the buyer to obtain for him. The actual grades, and the terms describing them have been established by the United States Government, and are rigidly adhered to by the trade. Prices are established on the grade known as "middling" as a basis, and variation from this basis is taken up in the price. Standardization of American Cotton Grades The grades, for white cotton, as established by usage and confirmed by Governmental standardization are: Middling Fair Strict Low Middling Strict Good Middling Low Middling Good Middling Strict Good Ordinary Strict Middling Good Ordinary Middling For yellow tinged stock the grades are: Strict Good Middling Middling Good Middling Strict Low Middling Strict Middling Low Middling For yellow stained and blue stained there are only three grades quoted, good middling, strict middling, and middling, the inference here being that stained cotton below the basic grade, is unsuited for most commercial purposes. With cotton selling around thirty cents a pound, the difference between the cost per pound of middling fair, the highest market grade of white cotton, and good ordinary, the lowest market grade, may amount to twelve or thirteen cents. The value of the shipment, and its use as a basis for credit, is dependent upon its proper classification. The large cotton buyers purchase for the account of mills, for exporters, or for clients abroad. They are usually firms of strong financial standing, and as we have seen, they are bankers or factors themselves, financing growers or small buyers during the growing of the crop, and the first concentration of the cotton. But when the large movement of cotton is on, it is frequently necessary that they, like the local banks, must be financed in order that they may execute their orders, or, as is frequently the case, accept cotton sent to them on consignment. Cotton sent on consignment must be stored until a market is found for it, and in order that proper storage facilities may be supplied, the provision of suitable warehouse facilities is an important matter. Warehousing as Industry's Great Need Until recently, warehousing in its relations to the textile trade, had not been developed to the extent which might have been expected in those methods which would make it of the greatest use and advantage to textile interests. By means of the facilities which could properly be afforded by warehouses, manufacturers, or merchants should be able, at times of favorable markets, to lay in large stocks of materials, and to finance them safely and easily. Today, this need is being met in constantly increasing measure by the Independent Warehouses, Inc., affiliated with the Textile Banking Co., and having, like the latter, the support of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, and the Liberty National Bank of New York. Modern warehouses of approved type, with all requisite facilities, will be established by this company at various ports of entry throughout the country, as well as at the important concentration points in the cotton belt, and also in the great textile manufacturing centers. [Illustration: _Weighing cotton on the compress platform_] Thus it is seen that the cotton merchant has an important economic function to perform. His is the duty of gathering up the great aggregate of cotton, from all parts of the cotton belt, and distributing it in exactly the quantity and grade needed to the cotton manufacturers of the world. In the performance of this function, and in order that the supply of cotton may be fed out exactly as it is needed by the manufacturers, the cotton merchants have found it convenient, and even necessary to establish great common markets where they may meet and enter into the transactions with each other and the whole world which are necessary to bring the cotton into the channels of commerce and keep it moving to its multitudinous destinations. These markets are in addition to the numerous local markets where the preliminary concentration takes place, and to some extent they are subsidiary to the latter, where the cotton of the actual quantity and quality they are seeking is to be had in the first instance. Yet it is the great markets which establish the prices, for it is they which are in close and immediate touch with all the other markets of the world, and it is on their floors that the merchants and brokers meet who deal in great quantities. It is their connection with the numerous sources of information which gives these great markets their importance, for it is they which register immediately and most accurately the resultant of the sum total of all the economic forces which determine the price. [Illustration: _The New York Cotton Exchange_] The great cotton markets of the world are those of New York and New Orleans, in the United States; Liverpool, in England; Bremen, in Germany; Havre, in France; Alexandria, in Egypt; and Bombay, in India. There are differences between these markets which give a greater importance to some of them. Bremen, which serves a large territory, operates under governmental restrictions which make it necessary for Bremen merchants to deal in other markets as well. Havre serves chiefly the needs of France, which is not one of the large cotton consuming countries. Alexandria deals only in Egyptian cottons, and Bombay, whose dealings are confined mostly to the native staples, has neither the responsiveness nor the completeness of the remaining markets. Thus, by elimination, the three great markets of the world, wherein cotton of all kinds is dealt in, and all forms of transactions in it are common are those of New York, New Orleans, and Liverpool. To these, the cotton world looks for guidance from day to day. The prices established on their several floors are the prices of the world. [Illustration: _Cotton train going from gin to compress_] The Liverpool Exchange, under different names, has existed since 1841, having taken approximately its present form in 1870, in the attempts to stabilize conditions after the great speculative period which resulted from the American Civil War. The New York and New Orleans Exchanges were both organized the following year. The uniformity of rules and practices in the trade which resulted from the establishment of the exchanges have been of inestimable benefit to the industry and to the world, and this despite occasional abuses, which have usually been corrected as methods for correction have been evolved. Spot Markets and Those Which Deal in "Futures" The New Orleans Cotton Market, and those of lesser cities, are largely spot markets, that is, the dealings which takes place in the Exchanges at those points involve the actual transferring of cotton which is on hand, or, at least, contracted for. The New York market deals preponderantly in what are known as contracts for future delivery, or, in the language of the Exchange, "futures." The Liverpool Cotton Market is both a great "spot" cotton market, and a great "futures" market. The striking thing about these "futures" contracts is that but few of them are fulfilled by actual delivery. The question then arises, what function is fulfilled by the New York Exchange that it should have such an important place in the cotton market? To the uninitiated the speculative features of the market have often served to condemn it, and at times of speculative fever, or of manipulation such as has occurred on one or two occasions, there has been public agitation calling for legislation against dealing in futures. Yet the New York Exchange performs a very definite and valuable service, and its trading methods have served to stabilize the whole industry, and to remove from it much of that very speculation which is frequently charged against the Exchange itself. The justification of the Exchange is found in the fact that the futures contracts common on its floor afford the cotton merchant and manufacturer a chance to insure themselves against losses occasioned by fluctuations in the market. The method by which this is done is called hedging. Why the Merchant Must Hedge His Sales For the cotton merchant, the situation as it develops is approximately this: buying, as he must, all grades and quantities of cotton, he may have an immediate market with the spinners whom he serves for only certain of these grades, and thus may have left on his hands a large supply of cotton of other grades which came to him in his purchases which he has no call for at the time. These "overs" are subject to the risk of a decline in value unless the merchant can find some way to protect himself. Nor is this risk the only one run by the cotton merchant. The spinners frequently contract for months ahead for the output of their mills, and it is part of the merchant's task to see that the cotton is available at a contract price when the spinners are in need of it. Such contracts for future deliveries are not only common but customary. If it were impossible for the spinner to make such contracts, it would, of course, be impossible for the weaver to make future contracts for the delivery of cloth. Such a condition unsettling the distributing markets, would be intolerable. Hence, the necessity of future contracts between merchants and spinners. The situation would otherwise be a very difficult one for the merchant whose supply of cotton, and the price he must pay for it, are subject to the vagaries of nature, which may grant a bountiful crop one year, and a short and inferior one the next, with consequent fluctuations in price sufficient not alone to wipe out his profit but his capital as well. The Hedge As a Credit Transaction Hedging, as has been said, affords the protection, against serious loss which these varying conditions make probable. "It may almost be said," observes Arthur R. Marsh, former President of the New York Cotton Exchange, "that as the main business of banks today is not dealing in money, but in credits, so the main business of the cotton exchanges is now in credit transactions in cotton, toward which the actual cotton 'on the spot' stands in much the same relation as the money in the banks to the sum total of their transactions in credit. It serves as a reserve at once for the satisfaction of unliquidated credit balances and for the maintenance of sound credit values in all the credit operations." Elsewhere, Mr. Marsh describes the hedging process in these words: "A hedge is the purchase or sale of contracts for one hundred or more bales of cotton for future delivery, made not for the purpose of receiving or delivering the actual cotton, but as an insurance against fluctuations in the market that might unfavorably affect other ventures in which the buyer or seller of the hedge is actually engaged." [Illustration: _The floor of the New York Cotton Exchange_] How Merchants Secure Protection by Hedging The cotton merchant, in making a hedge, would proceed in this fashion. Having made an actual sale of cotton to a spinner for future delivery, the price being fixed according to current quotations in New York for deliveries to be made in the month specified in the contract, he would buy futures for a corresponding amount of cotton on the New York Cotton Exchange. If the price of cotton should have advanced when the time for the delivery of the actual cotton comes, he will be able to sell his futures contract at a higher price, thus offsetting the loss sustained upon the deal in actual cotton. Or, if he prefers, he may hold the "futures" contract until its maturity and sell it at the then prevailing figure. The first course would be the customary one for a bona-fide merchant, whose sole concern is protecting himself against loss by fluctuations in price. If, on the other hand, cotton should fall before the merchant bought to fulfill his actual contract, he would make a profit upon his sales to the spinner. He would, however, suffer a loss upon his futures contract, for the seller would be able to purchase the cotton to fulfill the contract at a lower point than the contract called for, and would consequently be able to deliver to the merchant who made the hedge, cotton which the latter would be forced to accept at a price higher than the then prevailing one, and thus again the profit and loss would balance each other. The usual custom is, not for the merchant to accept delivery, but to pay over to the seller of the futures contract the difference between the contract price and that prevailing. This would be just the difference between his own purchasing and selling price in his actual dealing with the spinner, and so would eliminate the profit, due to change in price, made in that transaction. Thus, by the hedging process, the merchant loses a possible profit on a falling market, but at the same time fails to suffer a loss when the market is against him. Hedging as Practiced By Cotton Manufacturers The manufacturer's hedging is necessarily somewhat different in practice, though the same in principle. If he accepts orders for cloth requiring more cotton than is being held in his warehouse, he may buy futures contracts to the amount of the additional cotton he will need. Then in the event that his actual purchase of cotton may be at a figure which would tend to reduce or eliminate his profits on the sale of the cloth, already fixed by contract, he may sell his futures contract at a corresponding profit, thereby preventing loss. Should the price of cotton fall in the interim, his profit on the sale of the cloth will be larger, but the settlement of his futures contract will be expensive to the same extent. Thus he sacrifices the chance of a greater possible profit in order to be insured against loss. [Illustration: _Compress bales bound for New Orleans_] It is probably more common for the cotton merchant to hedge than for the manufacturer to adopt that proceeding. The manufacturer, as a rule, has been accustomed to buy his cotton during the buying season, that is, in October, November, December, and January, and he makes his arrangements with his selling agents on the basis of the price paid, trusting to his own judgment, and the comparatively small fluctuations in the price of cloth in normal times, to protect him against loss. It is usually believed that the Southern mills, being newer, and frequently of a different financial standing, have found it more desirable to have recourse to this form of insurance than their older competitors in the North. Then, too, the rapid development of the cotton warehousing system has made it less necessary for the manufacturers to tie their money up in great quantities of cotton, as they can buy when the market appears favorable. Protection for Mills Running for Stock A very important point, however, and one which all manufacturers would do well to consider carefully is the protection which a "futures" market gives to a manufacturer making plain goods for stock, particularly on a falling raw material market, which, of course, would also mean a falling goods market. To stop the mill because values were falling would be impossible without utter disorganization, and its attendant heavy loss, while to keep on manufacturing stock goods with a certainty that they would be worth less each succeeding month is a disheartening prospect for the mill. If, however, the manufacturer sells "futures" for the succeeding months to the extent of the cotton which he would require each month to manufacture the goods, he can run his machinery as usual and have a perfectly free mind, as he has safeguarded himself against any loss due to a falling value of the raw material. Suppose, for instance, the cotton market fell off, say one cent a pound each month, with a corresponding fall in the value of the woven goods. In such an event, the manufacturer could, as each month arrived, buy a contract for an amount corresponding to what he had sold, and at a proportionately less price, thus making a profit on the "futures" which he had sold to an extent which would correspond, approximately, to the smaller value which his manufactured goods would then have in the market. Thus the profit on the one side would take care of the loss on the other. If the market rose instead of falling, he would make a loss in replacing his futures contract, but his goods would then command a higher value, and again no loss would be experienced. This method of hedging is the regular and standard practice of the English cotton mills, and, of course, of many of our domestic mills, but there are some manufacturers who, through their unfamiliarity with the operations of the futures market, are quite unaware of the protection which they thus have at hand. The Responsiveness of the Great Exchanges The great exchanges, and the New York Exchange in particular, are thus used by cotton merchants and manufacturers in every part of the world to protect themselves in their buying and selling operations. The value of middling cotton in New York is kept upon par with the value of the same cotton in any growing or manufacturing point, such factors as freight, insurance, brokerage, etc., being allowed for in the quoted price. Quotations on the Liverpool Exchange are thus higher than quotations in New York by the difference between the amount it costs to deliver cotton in Liverpool and to deliver it in New York. Thus the merchant and manufacturer is able to buy and sell hedge contracts on the New York Exchange, knowing that operations at the New York price in New York are on a parity with operations at the Liverpool price in Liverpool, or at the Havre price in Havre. Thus the hedge contract which a Southern merchant sells in Atlanta, through his broker on the New York Exchange, may be bought by a spinner in Tokyo or Manchester, anxious to insure his supply of cotton at a price which would make his contracts profitable. In normal times the selling of merchants and the buying of manufacturing engaged in actual and bona fide hedging transaction has been estimated by competent authorities to make up fully seventy-five per cent. of the trading done on the New York Exchange. The remaining twenty-five per cent. may thus be attributed to speculative operations, that is operations entered into by outsiders through brokers, on the chance of a rise or a fall in the market. Nor is such speculation without its value. It is the speculators, as a rule, who are the first to take advantage of crop reports or weather conditions, or news likely to affect the market favorably or unfavorably, and buy or sell as their judgment dictates. Their operations serve to discount such changes to some extent, or at least to make the breaks and rises more gradual than they would otherwise be. In abnormal times, that is times of great scarcity and great demand, or bumper crops and small demand, the speculative element plays a larger part, for it is in such times that the greatest fluctuations in price take place. Merchants or manufacturers holding hedging contracts are under a greater incentive to buy or sell, as they see their opportunities for profit growing greater or less, as the case may be, and in consequence more contracts are made, and they pass from hand to hand with greater rapidity, the gain or loss thus being distributed among a greater number of persons than would otherwise be the case. It is the operations of speculators, and the manipulation that once or twice during its history has been possible by unscrupulous traders which has brought about at such times public agitation for the abolition of the Exchange. Recent changes in the form of the cotton contract have made it almost impossible for such operations, if repeated, to be successful, and thus there is little likelihood that the very important economic function of the Exchange will be interfered with by legislation. CHAPTER IV The Cloth Market The output of the manufacturer finds its way to the ultimate consumer through a variety of channels. What these are will depend upon the manner in which the various mills are organized, and their respective policies as to the marketing of their products. Some mills, usually very large organizations, will have plants completely equipped, in every department, spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, finishing, etc., and will process all of their goods themselves in every detail, offering them on the market in their finished form. Some of these may make a wide variety of fabrics suitable for one class of trade, or for many classes of trade, while others will specialize on a few articles. A good many concerns that are not of the largest size, but which confine their production to a few articles, may also put the goods through every operation themselves. Then there are a great number of cotton mills, many of them of very large size, which do no weaving at all, but confine themselves to spinning, finding a market for their yarns with the many weaving mills which have no spinning plants. Many Large Mills Do No Finishing Numerous mills, both large and small, manufacturing, principally, goods of a staple grade, which may either be of fine or coarse character, sell their entire product in the gray, or unfinished state, because they do not wish to burden themselves with the task of putting the goods through the various finishing treatments necessary to fit them for the market. This method of disposing of the product appeals to many for it reduces the manufacturing operations to the spinning of the yarn, and to the weaving of the cloth. The owners or managers of the mills may have had no experience outside of these branches, and if they themselves were to attempt to finish, or "convert," the goods they would be entering strange fields. Whatever method of merchandising may be adopted, it is certainly obvious that the product of large mills is so great that it must be disposed of in a large way, and hence various channels of outlet have grown up to satisfy the requirements of the case. Dealing Direct With Dry Goods Jobbers A substantial portion of the output of the mills (but nothing like what it was years ago, and it grows relatively smaller every year), is disposed of directly to dry goods jobbing houses, and by them to retail dealers, who sell it by the yard to the consumer. This practice was formerly more widespread, but has diminished greatly in recent years. A further enormous yardage passes eventually through the cutting-up houses, which manufacture garments of every kind, from overalls to pajamas, or from raincoats to shirts, and dispose of their products to distributors, who eventually sell them to the public. Then there are retailers whose requirements for goods of particular kinds are so considerable that their orders are of sufficient magnitude to warrant the mills in dealing with them direct. Again, there are the great mail-order houses, with a gigantic annual turnover, whose catalogues go to every part of the land, and which handle great quantities of piece goods, as well as made-up garments, and whose custom is eagerly sought for. [Illustration: _Thousands of looms in a single room_] Other mills make fabrics suitable for use in the military and naval establishments of the country, and in other public channels, and which, in selling these fabrics, will deal directly with the Government, or indirectly through intermediaries. In addition to these, and other domestic outlets, there is a great quantity of goods produced for export, which are handled through houses specially organized for that trade. Merchandising by Dry Goods Jobber One of the oldest established agencies for handling mill products is the dry goods jobber, and it is to be remarked that many large retail houses do also a substantial jobbing business, though generally less so in cottons than in other classes of fabrics. The jobber will buy finished products from those mills which sell goods in that state, and will also buy large amounts of gray goods. These he will sell principally to retail distributors, but his transactions, in addition, will extend into a multitude of channels, and, he will deal with small garment manufacturers and makers of all kinds of wares, and will also sell considerable quantities to the larger cutters when they are unable, for one reason or another, to buy direct from the mills or from the converters. There are also numerous small jobbing concerns which buy substantial quantities from the larger jobbers as occasion may require. One of the greatest avenues of outlet is through a class of dealers known as converters, and there are converters operating in every kind of fabric from cotton to silk. In the last forty or fifty years, this business has developed into immense proportions, and the converter performs a real and important service in the trade. He is intimately acquainted with the needs of his customers, and possesses a fair knowledge of the kinds of goods put out by the various mills and the different constructions in which they are sold, and is well acquainted with all of the market dyeing, finishing, bleaching, and printing concerns, having also a fair understanding of the various treatments accorded to the goods. He buys his goods in the gray from the mills, and sends them to the finishers, printers, etc., to be treated, according to his instructions. By a careful studying of the fabric constructions, and of the subsequent treatments, he is able to create fabrics of a suitable and marketable character, which are in some respects different from those offered by any of his competitors, and which are brought out with an exact knowledge of the requirements of the trade to which he is catering. He is able to make a profit, and generally a very substantial one, by handling the goods in this way. Considerable capital is required by the converter, as goods bought in the gray have to be paid for on practically a cash basis, and he may have to carry them for a time before they are finally marketed. The converter sells to the cutting-up houses, to jobbers, and to retailers, or, in fact, to whatever trade he seeks. Large and profitable businesses have thus been built up. Many converters have adopted their own distinctive trade marks, and since the goods that they handle are known by these trade marks, the identity of the mill which made them originally is often entirely unknown to the ultimate consumer. The converter can give his business to whatever mill, at the time, will give him the best value for his money. Jobbers Must Know Status of Mills These operations are facilitated by the services of another class of intermediaries, the cloth brokers. If a buyer, whether he be retailer, jobber, converter, or what not, wishes to secure goods of a certain kind, he would have a very difficult task if he had to canvass the entire market, and ascertain what was being offered. Hence he is likely to go to the cloth brokers. They are in touch with all the principal manufacturing sources of supply, and will have daily quotations of the offerings of the different mills; he will know which mills are "sold up," and which are open for business, and what class of goods they desire to sell. Consequently the cloth brokers are in a position to offer to would-be purchasers a wide variety of the different cloths which are available on the market, and it is their business to buy from the mills as cheaply as they can, and so get the best possible price for their customers. The transactions are handled on a small commission, and the average buyer, in many kinds of goods, is able to do much better by working through a broker than by opening negotiations directly with the mill. Most Mills Have Offices in Chief Markets Mills selling their products through brokers in this manner may, or may not, have a representative stationed in the goods market, according to circumstances. Mills, manufacturing a limited number of plain fabrics, and which do not sell through brokers, may also be without representatives in the primary goods market, and will dispose of their product directly from the mills, partly by correspondence, and partly through the efforts of their travelers. The great mass of the mills, however, are regularly and efficiently represented in the great central goods markets, principally New York, though also in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere, and their selling agencies are very highly organized institutions. These establishments which have sufficient capital to enable them to finance themselves--with or without the assistance of regular bankers' loans--may maintain their own selling offices, and market their product in their own names directly to their customers. The amount of capital required to handle a business in this way is proportionately very large, for the concern must be able to keep itself sufficiently supplied with raw materials, and then to carry the expenses as these materials pass through the slow stages of manufacture until the goods are finally finished, after which they may have to be kept in stock for a time until the delivery dates, and then, after shipment, the accounts have to be carried until the bills are paid, so that, from the time the manufacturer pays for his raw material until he finally receives pay for his goods is a very long period. Loans Made Upon Warehouse Receipts The financing of a business conducted in this way can be assisted by loans from warehouses upon stocks of raw material stored there, by bank accommodation, and by facilities which certain banks give for the cashing of a substantial percentage of those accounts on the books of the concern which the customers have not discounted themselves. Also, in handling his merchandise in this way, the manufacturer must have a thorough understanding of the best means of marketing his product, and this care of the selling end is, of course, an added burden upon his shoulders which, in many cases, he may not feel competent to handle properly. Therefore, the comparatively few concerns which do have sufficient capital to sell directly, in addition to the many from great to small who have not, will market their product through what are known as dry goods commission houses, sometimes referred to as factors, and simply as commercial bankers. The commission house system, as we have it here, does not exist anywhere else, and its great growth in the United States has been largely due to certain peculiarities in our banking methods, which have prevented mills--even those with a reasonably sufficient supply of capital--from obtaining the amount of direct banking accommodation necessary for their needs. The commission house, in its usual relations with its mills, undertakes to conduct the sale of their products. Some commission agents insist upon having the entire selling control of all of the goods the mill produces, or at any rate, of all the goods of the kind which they are equipped to sell. Others, again, will take over a partial selling control of the product of a mill, and various lines of the same manufacturer may be found offering through different channels. There are some obvious disadvantages connected with this latter procedure. If the mill is a very large one, the selling agent may handle no goods except the product of that mill, but in the great majority of cases, the factor will represent a considerable number of mills. Immediately on receipt of the invoices of the goods consigned to the selling agent, the mill can draw against them a percentage of their value, previously agreed upon, usually about two-thirds of their net selling price, and upon these loans interest at the rate of 6% is charged. The difference between the rate at which the commission house can borrow money, (in normal times perhaps 4 to 4-1/2%), and the 6% which is usually charged to the mills, constitutes a considerable part of the profits of the factor's business. Factors Provide Selling Facilities The factor often provides a store, together with a complete selling and office force, and every facility for receiving, storing, selling, and shipping the goods, and for financing the business. The salesmen of the house travel throughout the country, reaching all the important markets, and the managers of the different departments, who thus understand the needs of the market, are in a position to advise the mill with intelligence and exactness as to the kind of goods which should be made to meet the requirements of the trade. The cost of warehousing and of insurance on the merchandise is also paid by the commission agent. [Illustration: _Spinning room in a large mill. These are all ring spindles_] The prices at which the goods are to be sold are fixed by the mill, but, of course, they will finally sell at prices determined by the market conditions. As the goods are sold, the amounts which they bring are credited to the mill, less whatever has been advanced against them. The selling agent also stands ready, no matter on what time and terms the goods may be sold, to credit the mill with the net value of the sale, less 6% interest for the unexpired time within which the customer may pay, and from this interest charge also he secures part of his return. Of course if bank rates are very high, as they sometimes are for short periods, the factor may be out of pocket on the interest account, instead of making profit. As the goods are sold, so are the equities in them released, and the balance is credited to the mill. If, however, the goods sell at a loss there will be no equities coming to the mill, and, in fact, there are not infrequently deficiencies to make up. For these services, and according to the nature of the goods being sold, various commissions are charged, usually ranging between the limits of 4 and 8% of the net returns of the sales. Plain unfinished goods which are marketed in large quantities are charged for at a relatively low figure, while fancy goods, sold in smaller quantities and requiring more effort and expense to sell them, are charged for at a higher figure. The selling agent also guarantees the credits of the firms to which he sells, so that no losses for bad debts can fall upon the manufacturer, but, at the same time, he will decline orders from any concerns except those with whose credit he is entirely satisfied. Not infrequently when the manufacturer conducts his own selling operations, he will use the facilities afforded by the commission house for the financial part of the business only, taking advances on his goods, having his sales cashed, and his credits guaranteed, etc. For these lesser services, of course, the commissions charged are smaller. When goods are charged out, the bills are payable to the commission house, and so, as far as the customer is concerned, the commission house is the principal in the transaction. In many cases certain modified arrangements are made, but in most instances the business is conducted as herein described, and it may fairly be said that the bulk of the dry goods of all kinds produced in the United States finds its way into the market through commission house channels. Making Plain Goods for Future Orders It is the policy of most cotton mills, and certainly of those making plain goods, to run steadily all the year round, and thus the commission agent, whether he has secured advance orders on the goods or not, has constantly flowing into his hands an assured stream of merchandise which must eventually, when sold, pay him a commission. Thus the securing of a good account means an assured source of revenue to the commission agent. There are no more important selling organizations for textiles than these dry goods commission houses, many of them having an immense and profitable turnover, and their businesses are conducted on a very high plane of efficiency, and probity, although, in itself, there are many evils attendant upon this method of the distribution of merchandise, and which exercise at times a most adverse influence upon the well being of the mills whose product is thus disposed of. Strength of Agents Makes "Paper" Acceptable It is evident that no ordinary capital would be sufficient for the supplying of money on call to mills in the immense quantity needed, and it is here that the banker's capital is called into use. The commission house is usually a concern of substantial means, sometimes very rich, and nearly always of a financial standing, which will give it, on its own account, an assured credit. At certain times of the year the calls for money from the mills are greater than at other times, and as shipments come forward, and advances are required, the commission house, in order to put itself in funds, will issue a series of its own notes in convenient sized amounts, $5,000 to $10,000 each, for instance, and will offer these for sale, through its note broker. This paper, which commands an advantageously low rate of interest, and which is issued for convenient periods of time, averaging perhaps four months, is much sought after by banks and other institutions in primary markets and throughout the country wishing to invest current funds in a safe and not unprofitable medium. This paper is so acceptable to banks not only because the credit of the issuing firm is behind it, but also because it is known that the money which is obtained for the notes will be lent out to mills on ample collateral. The issuing house is in a position so entirely safe that hardly ever can a question arise as to its ability to take care of its borrowings. CHAPTER V Financing Cotton and Cotton Cloth No industry shows better than the cotton industry the economic importance of banking service. No industry, perhaps, utilizes to such a complete extent the modern instruments of credit, nor is so dependent upon these instruments for its proper functioning. At no point in the progress from seed to cloth is the capital represented by the cotton necessarily or even customarily tied up. And not only may the cotton itself at any stage be the basis of credit accommodation, but also, the actual added value which the labor of any factor in the chain may give to the cotton may itself be realized upon in advance. The credit possibilities of the industry have grown with the admission of acceptances to rediscount in the Federal Reserve Banks, and this admissibility has likewise played a part in the present growth of the warehouse system, the lack of which was a handicap to the industry in past years. Credit Necessary from Seed to Finished Product In considering the raw cotton and the cloth market it was necessary to include some account of the financial and banking processes involved in the various commercial transactions undertaken. It is perhaps advisable, however, even at the risk of some repetition, to give a quick survey of the financial and credit aspects of the industry as a whole from the time the cotton is placed in the ground up to the actual sale to the cutter-up or the jobber. The utilization of credit begins, as we have seen, with the very planting of the crop. Many of the growers, even those who own their farms, are men of limited means, and are not able to pay for the necessaries of life and of labor during the long growing season. The country storekeeper, accordingly, in return for a lien on the crop, allows them credit at his store, usually charging interest based on the monthly statement of their ledger accounts. He in turn receives the necessary accommodation for his own purchases from the local bank, or from the local buyer or factor with whom he is affiliated. The high prices prevailing during the past few years have undoubtedly changed to some extent the small grower's financial position. Cash for the Grower From the Local Bank The larger growers, or the great corporations which let out cotton lands to renters, usually operate the stores in their villages upon the same basis, credit being advanced against the renter's share of the growing crop. Even these large corporations are seldom able to meet the heavy demands of the growing season without recourse to the credit service of those to whom they sell their cotton, or to the local banks. The banks, or buyers, in turn discount at least a proportion of the commercial paper thus created with their correspondent banks in New York, Boston, or other financial centers. This credit arrangement, it will be seen, is almost entirely based on a moral risk, the lien being made upon the growing cotton which cannot be liquidated until it is grown, picked, and ginned. When the crop is picked, it is weighed by the merchant before it is ginned, and the farmer is credited on the merchant's books with the amount due him, the balance in his favor being given him in cash. His concern with the cotton is thus ended. In the event that he is able to finance himself through the season he takes the cotton directly to the gin, and has it ginned and baled there, paying the ginnery for the operation, and selling the cotton directly to a local buyer and the seed to an oil mill. If the gin warehouse is available, and he desires to wait for a more favorable opportunity to sell, he may store the cotton, taking a gin receipt for it, against which the cotton will eventually be delivered. The gin receipt may be collateral for a loan from a cotton factor, or from a local bank. Thus, it will be seen that the grower receives accommodation throughout his season, and is paid cash for his product when it is delivered. This arrangement puts a heavy strain upon the cotton buyers, particularly upon those who deal in large lots for the mills. The method by which the buyers pay the growers is thus described: The buyers make arrangements with the local bankers where the gins are located for the payment of the cotton, the banks furnishing the actual cash against tickets issued by the buyer's representatives, holding the tickets in question as their collateral in the meantime. When a sufficient amount of cotton has been accumulated the local banker, at the request of the buyer's agent, delivers the tickets in question to the local agent of the railroad, who in turn issues a bill of lading covering the shipment to the compress point, which then is attached to the draft drawn by the buyer's agent upon the buyer's head office, which draft includes the price paid for the cotton plus interest and exchange charged by the local banker, who is reimbursed for the amount of the draft thus drawn. When this cotton is ready for export (or for shipment to the mill in the United States) local bills of lading, covering shipment from point of origin to compress point, are exchanged by the cotton buyer's banker for local bills of lading to port or for through bills of lading. [Illustration: "_Picked 100 pounds today_"] When cotton is bought at compress points, compress receipts instead of tickets are delivered to the local banker, who pays for the cotton as purchased by the buyer's representative from time to time. When a sufficient amount of cotton is ready for shipment the compress receipts are exchanged by the banker for local bills of lading to port (or to mill), or through bills of lading, as the case may be. These bills of lading are attached to the draft drawn by the representative on the head office of the buyer, the local bank being reimbursed for the amount thus drawn. Buyers must necessarily hold great quantities of cotton in storage, for they buy whatever cotton is offered, and must sell, as we have seen, certain grades and qualities to the mills in order that they may weave the cloth for which their orders call. Cotton must, therefore, be held in storage, either at the compress points, which is usual, or at warehouses operated by factors, or by independent corporations, or in their own warehouses. While the buyers by cash payments are concentrating the cotton necessary to fill their domestic or foreign orders, their need for funds is a pressing one. Their arrangements with local banks we have seen. When the cotton is shipped, the local bank, by means of drafts on the buyer's head office, is relieved of the burden it has been carrying, but the cotton still represents capital, and if that capital is to continue to earn its wages it must be the basis for credit. The factors and large banks in New York or Boston, which have been assisting the local bank, must now assist the buyer and the warehouseman. The methods by which this burden is shifted to the larger banks are varied, and we can consider only one or two of their aspects. Same Mills Pay Cash, Relieving Factors of Burden Some of the larger New England mills pay cash for the cotton which is shipped to them, buying sufficient in the season to carry them through, or nearly through, the year. Their buyers, therefore, need support, if they need it at all, only during the period of concentration. They may have their private banking arrangements, and may be able to utilize their warehouse receipts or bills of lading, or their mere notes based upon mixed collateral, for an advance of sixty to seventy-five per cent. of the value of the cotton, the line having been arranged in advance. Credit may be obtained by the buyer directly from the warehouseman, who thus becomes a factor in his own right, being supported by arrangements previously made with his own bank. Credit may also be obtained from a bank, upon bills of lading which are exchanged for warehouse receipts when the cotton is delivered at the port or at any warehousing point; or the credit obtained from the bank may be settled and a new credit opened with the warehouseman when the cotton is shifted from cars to storage. Warehousemen as Factors of Growing Importance The growing importance of the warehouseman has been mentioned. His services have developed with the need of mills for greater credit, and their unwillingness to tie up their working capital in cotton held in their own warehouses. Mills which formerly bought all their year's supply during the buying season, so-called, now take their cotton from warehouses as they want it, buying it from their buyers, and making payment according to the individual standing arrangements. The advent of the warehouseman who is either a banker, or closely affiliated with a bank, has undoubtedly done much to make the financing of cotton a more elastic and feasible proposition, distributing the risk over a wider circle and making credit more readily available at any point in the succession. [Illustration: _Weighing gin bales in a ginnery yard_] [Illustration: _Cotton warehouses in the South_] The mill, we have seen, frequently pays cash for its raw stock, or else buys upon short term notes. The average mill does not have a working capital large enough to enable it to tie up the thousands of dollars necessary for such a proceeding, as well as the funds which must constantly be paid out for wages, for operation expenses of all kinds, for upkeep, and all other overhead. Mills, as a matter of fact, are frequent borrowers, either from general banks, or from textile banks or factors, or from their selling agents, who, as we have seen, combine their primary and original function of selling with that of supplying financial assistance. Mills which purchase cotton from their buyers and pay cash, or approximately cash, for it, usually buy such cotton to fill orders which they have already received from their selling agents. They may, in certain instances, obtain an advance from their agents of a proportion of the whole selling price of the order, and out of that advance pay for the purchase of cotton, or they may hold the cotton in warehouses, using it only as needed, and putting up the warehouse receipts as collateral for loans. The raw cotton itself, however, represents only a portion of the mill's operating expenses and it cannot be the entire basis for financial operations of the magnitude often needed. These broader financial wants may be met out of the prospective selling price of the cloth by means of loans from the selling agent; or, they may be met by direct relations with a commercial bank, which may make loans on ordinary collateral, on acceptances, or, as frequently happens in the case of mills of undoubted integrity, on the mere note of the company operating the mill. Selling Agent May Shift Burden to Banks When the burden is assumed by the selling agent, or factor, he in turn may shift it to the bank, either by indorsing the note of the mill, or by indorsing the note of the purchaser of the cloth or by borrowing directly from the bank on his own paper. The converter, as a rule, is not a factor, but a merchant pure and simple, seeking accommodations from a factor or a bank as his needs may require it. Inasmuch as he usually buys for cash or on short-term notes, and sells to jobbers or retailers upon more extended terms, his needs are frequently heavy. His relation with his factor may be, and frequently is, upon the basis of accounts receivable, or he may borrow upon his own collateral, or, if he is counted an "A1" risk, upon his unsecured note. These, in brief are the financial steps in the progress of cotton from the grower to the jobber. A cursory view is all that is possible, because in the words of a textile banker of standing "every textile banking transaction is a law unto itself." Yet enough has been said to show the all-important part which banking plays in the cotton industry, and to indicate how dependent are the turning of wheels and the distribution of cotton and of cloth upon the credit which banks and bankers are able to provide. Factors and Their Wide Financial Service Frequent use has been made of the word factor, and no adequate definition of its meaning has yet been given. The factor is, briefly, the commercial banker of the industry, and his duty is to provide, at any stage of the cotton process, the financial assistance which may be necessary, either from his own resources or through his affiliations with some large bank. It is true, of course, that some factors work only with those dealing in raw stock, and some confine their services to mills. Some factors are cotton buyers, some are selling agents, some deal with buyers and some deal with selling agents. Some are employed only by the mills. Recently, however, the tendency has been to develop under one roof a unit institution capable of handling every textile banking transaction. It will be interesting to enumerate here, briefly, the various functions and facilities of one such institution: 1. It makes loans to cotton buyers and to mills on cotton held in warehouses or in transit. 2. It checks the credit of the mill's prospective customers. 3. It cashes accounts receivable. 4. It makes advances against merchandise for the account of mill, converter, or jobber. 5. It finances merchandise and raw material requirements, and current operations. 6. It deals in acceptances, specializing, of course, upon paper arising out of transactions in the textile industry. 7. It maintains an Industrial Department, which includes: (a) the services of a consulting architect, expert in mill construction. (b) the services of a production engineer, skilled in the laying out of plants in the line of greatest efficiency, and in diagnosing and correcting the production mistakes of an inefficient mill. (c) information as to the newest mill practice, which it is ready to provide for its clients and others. (d) readiness to assist customers in the expansion of their business either by financing new mill construction or by providing sales representatives in other countries. (e) maintenance offices abroad, either for the buying or selling of textiles or equipment, or raw materials, or for the complete and direct financing of such transactions. CHAPTER VI American Cloth in Foreign Markets We have seen that the American cotton grower supplies more than half of the world's demand for raw cotton. The cotton manufacturer in the United States is in no such position. This is not to say that American cotton goods are not exported in very considerable amounts. From the inception of the industry in this country varying percentages of the total product have been sent abroad. The following table, taken from the United States Statistical Abstract (1910) shows the average annual exports of cotton goods for the five year periods named, expressed in millions of dollars: _Uncolored _Colored _Total_ Cloth_ Cloth_ _Other_ 1856-60 $7.5 $2.4 $2.3 $2.8 1861-65 3.7 .4 .9 2.4 1866-70 4.1 .9 .3 2.8 1871-75 3.1 1.7 .6 .7 1876-80 10.0 6.1 2.6 1.2 1881-85 13.0 8.0 2.9 2.1 1886-90 12.4 7.4 3.2 1.6 1891-95 13.3 7.7 3.0 2.5 1896-1900 20.4 11.6 4.4 4.3 1901-05 31.3 17.2 7.0 7.0 1906-10 35.1 16.8 7.2 11.0 The irregularity of the export trade, as shown by these figures, has been explained on several grounds, the chief factors being, apparently, the fluctuations in the prosperity and consequently in the buying power of the home market, and the pressure upon the home market exerted by the rapid growth of cotton manufacturing in the South. The normal position of the United States as an exporter of cotton goods is shown by the following table, which gives the exports of the chief manufacturing countries in the year before the war (the figures for 1915 are also given because they show the changes which had already begun): 1913 1915 United Kingdom $618,000,000 $418,000,000 Germany 117,000,000 30,100,000 France 78,000,000 60,000,000 Japan 58,000,000 95,800,000 United States 55,500,000 60,200,000 Switzerland 50,300,000 65,800,000 Italy 47,800,000 30,500,000 India 38,900,000 27,300,000 Holland 30,900,000 Austria Hungary 27,800,000 Belgium 23,700,000 Russia 22,500,000 19,700,000[B] Spain 8,300,000 17,400,000 China 1,400,000 2,100,000 ----- [B] Eleven months. Thus, despite the very remarkable growth which had taken place between 1910 and 1913, the United States ranked fifth among the nations exporting cotton goods. The reasons for this might be summed up in almost a word. The attractiveness and rapid growth of the home market provided an outlet for practically the whole output of American mills. With high prices prevailing in the home market, the manufacturer was not called upon to exert himself to stimulate sales in regions where competition would inevitably be keen and profits small. Minor Handicaps to Trade Development Supporting this main objection there have been others. Until recently the banking facilities abroad were insufficient to the needs of a greater commerce; and shipping facilities, in pre-war days, were not such as to make regular shipments possible to many foreign markets. Over these conditions manufacturers had not direct control, but there were other matters in which their own short-comings were all too evident. There is little need to list again the familiar complaints, known to every reader of Commerce Reports and the export magazines. Faulty packing and insufficient attention to orders were the most frequent. The former was undoubtedly due to inexperience, and the latter to the tendency of the manufacturer or merchant to consider the foreign market as a place for disposing of a surplus unsalable at home. To this attitude may also be attributed the frequency with which shipments for which orders had been accepted have been delayed or overlooked altogether. [Illustration: _Compress bales awaiting export on a Savannah wharf_] The foreign market remained for the American manufacturer a prize so distant and of such questionable value that he was simply not willing to make the effort and spend the money that would be necessary to compete with British, German, French, and other sellers. He would have had to know local customs and tastes, and all the details that he had so arduously acquired a knowledge of for the home market. The time was not ripe. U. S. Export Trade As Affected By War The war served to disarrange the system of cotton cloth distribution of the whole world. It is now a commonplace to say that the United States, by the cutting off of the usual sources of supply, succeeded for the first time in entering in force markets which hitherto had been closed. It would probably be truer to say that foreign buyers, finding it impossible to secure their customary supply from their regular sources, came to the United States and asked American manufacturers to supply their imperative wants. Just what this meant is found in the statement that while in 1913 our total exports of cotton goods amounted to about 445,000,000 yards, in 1917 the figure was about 690,000,000 yards, an increase of fifty-five per cent. The increase, moreover, has been in the colored cottons, the uncolored cloths showing an actual decrease. The United Kingdom, during 1917, exported nearly 5,000,000,000 yards of cloth, so there is no immediate prospect that the United States will be a dangerous competitor for that country, except in a few limited lines and in a few markets. The chief gain to the American cotton industry brought by the war was the opportunity it gave merchants to introduce their goods abroad at a time when loss was next to impossible. Operating at an assured profit they were able to learn the markets without the long and discouraging fight which would have been necessary had the competitive power of the other nations been at full force. If, as seems likely, the economic forces which projected the United States so suddenly and dramatically into the world's markets shall continue to operate, then the future will see a further development of our sales. Future of Foreign Sales And Probable Markets Our best and most permanent markets are probably to be found in such countries as Cuba, Mexico, the Philippines, Central and South America, and, to a certain extent, Canada and Australia, and parts of Asia and Africa. To be sure, competition will have to be met both from European countries and from Japan, whose development in the cotton industry in recent years has been nothing short of phenomenal. She has practically doubled the number of her spindles in the last ten years, and her competition has already been felt, for instance, in China, where American gray goods have been practically eliminated from the market. Other growing markets for Japanese cotton goods are South Africa, Australia, India, and the west coast of South America. In Cuba and the Philippine Islands, the United States has the advantage of a preferential tariff agreement and excellent shipping facilities. In Canada and Australia our cotton goods are popular but the tariff duties are in favor of Great Britain. In the Dutch East Indies there is at present a good opportunity for getting a foothold in the white goods trade. Argentina has lately been our best market for cotton goods, and as the imports of cotton products into that country amounted to $65,000,000 in 1916, this trade is worth the intensive efforts which are now being made to clinch it. Future Development Up to Merchants On the west coast of South America, as in the Manila market, there are established American trading firms that are doing extensive development work and their efforts have produced favorable results. In the other Latin-American markets there are practically no local American firms and in none of them have the possibilities of the trade been more than touched. The general opinion seems to be that if the United States is to keep what she has gained by the war in the cotton goods trade the same care and aggressiveness will have to be shown in the foreign as in the domestic trade. England's position today as the foremost exporter of cotton manufactures is the result of careful study of foreign markets and their requirements, of catering to the tastes of the people, of aggressive advertising, of competent foreign salesmen, of reliability in filling orders, of good packing, and of more or less liberal credit terms. Manufacturers in the United States will have to follow the same procedure if this country is to keep her present position in international trade. CHAPTER VII Some of the Grower's Problems Early in the spring, the farm hands begin the work of getting the seed beds ready. Upland fields have to be terraced, ditched, and drained by an elaborate process before the work is well begun. Plowing and sub-soiling are the least of the planter's worries. He must often chop last year's stalks with a disc harrow or with a stalk cutter. The spike tooth or the disc harrow must work again after the plowing is finished. It is customary to plant cotton in a slightly raised bed, in order that thinning may be more easily done, and that the soil may be more quickly warmed. Much planting is still done by hand, one man dropping the seeds in the long straight furrow and another following close behind him with a hoe, covering them up; but of late years the one-horse planter and the two-horse combined lister and planter have come into vogue, and, now that the tractor is both cheap and serviceable, it is possible to plant two or more rows at a time. The Long Season of Intensive Cultivation When the tiny seedlings first appear above the fragrant mellow soil, the planter's work is well begun, but it is only begun, for then comes the season of cultivating and thinning out. As soon as there are two or three inches of growth, the first cultivation takes place. How many times the field is cultivated depends on the planter, the nature of the soil, the availability of labor and other factors. But the general rule is, the more cultivations, the more cotton. The first cultivation scrapes away the soil from the plants, leaving them on a small ridge, where the thinning-out process can easily be done with a hoe. The stalks are left from fifteen to twenty inches apart in the hill, the rows being usually about three and a half feet apart. The next cultivation, usually with a sweep, pushes the soil back against the plants. Then begins the farmer's fight against the weeds, each of which seems sturdier and harder to eradicate than its predecessor. Usually cultivation must take place about every three weeks. In June, on the average, the bell-shaped blossoms appear. On the first day they are cream colored or white; on the second day, they change to a beautiful wild-rose pink, deepening toward evening to a deeper magenta or carnation. On the third day they fade completely, and the development of the boll begins. The Many Enemies of the Growing Boll Of the plants upon which humanity depends, the various species of the genus Gossypium have probably more enemies, and more relentless enemies, than any other. Besides army worms, cut worms, locusts, green flies, leaf bugs, blister mites, and several others, nature has produced and rendered extremely prolific and hardy, these two particular pests, the boll weevil and the boll worm. It is said that the collective attacks of all the insects which feed upon cotton cost the country in the neighborhood of $60,000,000 every year at pre-war prices. The little gray beetle that the world knows as the cotton boll weevil is responsible for most of this. The mother weevil lays her eggs in the bud. As the grubs from the eggs develop, the bud drops. If a weevil arrives on the scene after the bolls have begun to form, she lays her eggs in those with a fine indifference. These bolls will not drop, but the grubs ruin the cotton they contain. There have been numerous investigations and experiments made to develop a variety of cotton impervious to the weevil's attacks, as well as to find another insect willing to meet him in combat and overcome him. Guatamalan cotton is said to be immune and efforts are being made to transplant it to the United States. A small ant-like creature called a "kelep" has also been found, which attacks, kills and devours the weevil, but, unfortunately, the kelep prefers a warmer clime, and pines away and dies in even the mild winters of the cotton belt. The boll worm is very similar to the corn worm with which all housewives are familiar, and indeed corn is its favorite diet. But cotton will do in a pinch, and, next to the weevil, he ruins more cotton than any other pest. The boll weevil cost the country about $25,000,000 yearly, pre-war prices, and the boll worm about $12,500,000 yearly, enough to justify an even greater expenditure for investigation and eradication than has yet been made. Despite the ravage of insects and diseases, when a well-tended field of cotton is ripening, one would think from the number of bolls per plant, that the owner's fortune was surely made. Unfortunately, the plants shed bolls as well as buds and flowers, in great numbers. It has frequently been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good, carefully cultivated soil, will mature only fifteen to twenty per cent. of the bolls produced. [Illustration: _Cotton blossoms and bolls at various stages of growth_] The planter will tell you that he would be willing to stand the boll weevil, the dropped bolls, the extra cultivations, and all the remainder of it, if he could only be sure that cotton which did mature would be picked when it should be picked, and picked with rapidity and care. Picking is the most laborious, as it is the most picturesque operation on the plantation. Many types of machine pickers have been introduced, but there are few planters who will admit that any of them suits his particular needs. Now, as a hundred years ago, the picking is done by hand. It is a simple operation, so simple that children ten years old can do it, and women excel in it. But the best pickers rarely average more than a hundred pounds a day, and most of them pull much less. Careless work plays its part, too, for cotton is easily dropped from the boll and soiled or lost altogether. Leaves and twigs as well as the shell of the boll frequently cling to the fiber, and are picked with it, and all these things tend to dirty and discolor it, and lessen its marketability. It requires about three pounds of cotton with the seed in it, as picked, to produce one pound of ginned or lint cotton. There were in the United States, in 1917, a total of 24,272 ginneries, of which 3,921 were idle. Each active gin produced an average of 526 bales running bales of cotton. The number of gins shows a tendency to decrease every year, not rapidly, but surely, and this despite the opposite tendency of the crop. The Whitney gin of the old days has been improved beyond the dreams of its inventor. He boasted that one man could do as much with his machine as ten men without it. Today's gin averages about five bales a day--a quantity which the negro of old would find difficult to turn out in a year. To the gin then, which is located either on the plantation or in the immediate neighborhood, the mule drawn wagons, driven by negroes as a rule, bring their loads of cotton. [Illustration: _Gin bale and compress bale showing reduced bulk of latter_] As the downy lint, pulled from the tenacious seeds, rolls into the receiving bin of the gin, the huge compressors are put to work. The coarse jute bagging is on hand, and the steel straps spread out. The gin balers as a rule turn out a bale measuring approximately 28 by 56 by 42 inches, and weighing approximately 500 pounds including twenty pounds of bagging and straps. The cotton, in being separated from its seeds, has lost about two-thirds of its weight. But the first process in the long series that manufacturing entails has been completed, and the cotton is ready to begin its long journey to the mill. It is usually carted to the nearest railroad station, and from there shipped to the compressing point. The small farmer almost always gets his money for the cotton as it leaves the gin. His interest in it, therefore, is ended when the buyer there pays him the current price. The cotton is a market commodity from that time forth. The compress is a large and powerful hydraulic press, whose function is to force the loosely packed gin bale into a density that will make its handling by the railroads, ships, and warehouses more easy and economical. The compresses are frequently owned by the railroads. Gin Bales and Compress Bales Before being compressed, the bales are sorted according to grade, and are then compressed into a smaller sized bale, measuring approximately 28 by 56 by 18 inches, with a density of from twenty-eight to thirty pounds a square foot. It is this bale which is handled from that time forth, whether it be for export, for consumption in Northern or Southern mills, or whether, as sometimes happens, it is shipped from place to place as market conditions change, and the price offered makes reshipment profitable. Movement for Improving the Bale It is encouraging to note that the war brought about, under Government auspices, a very definite movement for the improvement of the bale. The proposal demands the installation of high pressure baling machines at the gin, capable of producing a bale with a density of thirty-five pounds a cubic foot. The trading unit in cotton is one hundred bales, and such a compression would mean that one hundred bales could be loaded into a single freight car, and shipped directly to the export point or warehouse. The present practice requires three cars to carry the ginnery bales to the compressor, and two cars to carry the compressed bales to the port, warehouse, or mill. The saving in freight and handling is obvious. It needs only a glance at the photograph of the two bales side by side to see the possible saving in waste and "city crop," or tare. The obstacles in the way of such an improvement are those which face any revolutionary change in commercial methods. Established practice, invested capital, and the natural conservatism of human nature militate against quick improvement. CHAPTER VIII In the Cotton Mill The manufacture of cotton cloth may be divided into five departments: 1. Preparatory processes: Opening, carding, combing, and drawing. 2. Spinning. 3. Spooling, warping, sizing, slashing, entering or drawing-in. 4. Weaving. 5. Converting and finishing, including bleaching, mercerizing, dying, printing, and finishing. Before the cotton fiber can be spun into the yarn from which the cloth is woven, the bales must be broken open, the impurities removed, and the fibers arranged so that they are parallel and contain no bunches or tangles. Care in these processes has become more and more necessary and important as the demand for a higher quality of cloth, possessing greater strength and evenness, has been developed. Hence, some of the most elaborate, complex, and admirable machinery in the mill is that devoted to these preparatory processes. The principle involved is always that of thoroughly cleaning the material, then opening it so that every fiber shall be thoroughly separated from its fellows, and then straightening out the fibers, no matter what types of machines may be used. Conveying Fiber By Air Blast The heavy laps of cotton are first thrown directly from the bale into the breaker, and the cotton is then usually blown through large pipes from the room in which the bales are broken to the room in which the openers are located. The functions of the opener are two. The first is to clean from the cotton the dirt and bits of leaf, pod, and foreign substances, which may have clung to the fiber as it passed through the gin back on the plantation. The second is to roll the cotton into a more or less regular "lap," as it is called. The Energetic Opener At Work As the cotton goes into the opener (see diagram on following page), dusty and dirty, it is seized by strong teeth fastened upon a large cylinder (A), revolving rapidly, and is flung by centrifugal force against an iron grid (B) time after time. Sometimes there is a strong current of air blowing through the tangled mass, helping to loosen the particles. The dirt comes out through the grid and is carried away, while the lint itself, after being carried around an indefinite number of times, gradually works its way along a channel, and finally out between two large rollers (C), which compress it once more, so that it is, in effect, a sheet of batting. This sheet, or lap, is rolled up in a large roll (G), which may be two or three feet in diameter, and is then ready for the first doubling or blending process. In mills where strength and evenness of yarn are at a premium, the sheets from three or four laps may be fed through another opener, usually called a "scutcher," which breaks them all apart again, mixes up the fibers, cleans out more of the dirt, and produces a more even lap. The cotton, as it comes from the opener and the scutcher, is much cleaner and more attractive. It begins to look like the riches it contains. [Illustration: _Cross-section diagram of opener_] To convey the heavy opener-lap from the opener to the carding room, the more modern mills are doing away rapidly with hand-power, and carry the lap on a sort of travelling mono-rail conveyor. The fibers of the lap which comes from the opening room are by no means parallel, but lie in all directions just as they happened to come from the grid of the opener. The function of the card is to straighten them, and at the same time to remove those which are knotted or immature and of a length below that required for the yarn to be spun, and to take out practically all of the impurities which may have escaped in the opening operations. The principle of carding is one of the oldest of textile mechanical principles, and all the improvements that have been made have been in developments rather than in basic ideas. Hargreaves, inventor of the jenny, and Sir Richard Arkwright both expended their ingenuity upon it, the latter seeming to have been the first to provide a carding machine operated by other than hand-power. The basic principle involved is the straightening out of the fibers by combing or brushing them with wire brushes or cards. [Illustration: _"Scutchers" at work_] In the revolving flat card, which dominates the field today, there are, as a rule, three principal cylinders. The lap passes first under the smallest of the three, called the taker-in, which is covered with very fine saw-teeth all in one long strip of steel, wound and fixed spirally in the surface of the cylinder. The taker-in receives the cotton from a feed-roller (C) that turns above a smooth iron plate (D) called the feed plate. The saw-teeth comb the fibers which are imbedded, so to speak, in the lap, and deliver the loose ones to the second cylinder, which is the largest of the group. This main cylinder is covered with wire teeth all bent at exactly the same angle. The cotton clings to them, and is carried around to the top of the cylinder, where it is engaged by teeth on the revolving-flat card which are bent in the opposite direction. This "card-clothing" arranged in strip, crosswise on a travelling lattice, moves in the same direction as the cylinder but moves very slowly, and so the fibers are carded between the two sets of wire points, the short and immature fibers remaining on the card wires of the lattice and the perfect and now almost entirely parallel ones being carried over from the main cylinder to the doffer cylinder, the third of the trio. From this they are removed by an oscillating comb (F), coming off in a light, fleecy lap, which is condensed through a funnel into a soft untwisted roping, or sliver, about the diameter of a man's thumb, and is then coiled into a can, usually about 45 inches high by 8 inches diameter. [Illustration: _View of Modern Motor-Driven Opener Picker_] The conveying of the sliver (pronounced with a long or short i) into the can is in itself an exceedingly ingenious operation, although a very simple one. The device is attached directly to the card, and is called a coiler. The sliver passes into it from the funnel. The hole from which the sliver emerges is off the center of a steel plate which revolves slowly, so that the sliver, as it comes out, has an eccentric motion which causes it to fall into the can in regular coils. Tangling is thus prevented, and ease of handling secured. Combing Necessary in Spinning Fine "Counts" Combing is necessary in the preparation of cotton for the spinning of fine "counts" or coarser yarns where great smoothness and regularity are desired. They are now quite extensively used in the United States, and it is significant of the trend of the industry here that the number is rapidly growing. The first cotton comber was invented by a Frenchman of Alsace named Heilmann. The patent was issued in 1845. Now there are on the market other machines, both English and American, similar in principle but improved in many ways. [Illustration: _Revolving flat cards_] The first of these preliminary processes is that which is done by the sliver-lapper. The slivers from 14 to 20 cans are drawn along side-by-side, passing between three pairs of drawing rollers which will be described later. From the drawing rollers the slivers now reduced in size, pass between two pairs of calendar rollers from which they emerge, not as a sliver, of course, but once more as a lap about a foot wide. These laps are usually passed to a ribbon lapper, where six of them are placed end-to-end, and unrolled simultaneously, passed between four pairs of drawing rollers, and then superimposed, one upon the other, and, calendered once more, issued as a lap a little less than a foot wide. This process may be repeated as many times as the quality of the yarn desired may require, for each drawing process served to straighten the fibers and so to render the thread more even and capable of finer spinning. Combing is exactly what its name implies. The lap is actually raked by a fine-tooth comb with needle-like teeth of steel ranging from 16 to 90 per inch. This involves breaking the lap again and the intricacy of the comber rests in the mechanism which it employs for joining the separated ends. [Illustration: _Cross-section diagram of revolving flat card_] Six or eight laps go through the machine at once, and the product is combined, condensed, formed into a continuous sliver, and deposited once more into cans. The process is not a fast one at best, and the chief contribution of American inventors is in the direction of speed. Each nip combs only 4/16 to 4/10 of an inch of fiber. The Heilman machine made about 85 or 90 nips per minute. The American improvement makes 130 to 135. The width of the lap in the American machine is likewise increased, and the saving in labor, therefore, is considerable. English improvements have been in the same direction, the resultant saving being almost as great. [Illustration: _Ribbon lappers_] Though many of the processes already described might be called drawing, in a sense, insomuch as they involve a continual lengthening and straightening of the lap or sliver, yet drawing in the strictest sense has not yet begun. It may be done only once, for coarse and cheap yarn, or it may be repeated a half dozen or more times to produce the finer and more expensive products. The frame for each repetition is slightly different, but several types may be isolated. They are, in the order of their use, the drawing frame, the fly frame, or slubber, the intermediate frame, and the roving and jack frames. For fine counts the slivers from the comber, and for other grades that which comes directly from the card, are taken, then to the drawing frame. The slivers from the cans, six or eight in number, are fed through one aperture, and pass, thus combined, between several (usually four) pairs of rollers, so arranged that each succeeding pair revolves at a more rapid rate than that which preceded it. The last pair in the series revolve probably six or eight times as fast as the first pair. This combination of rollers pulls constantly on the more or less irregular slivers, rendering them always more nearly uniform in diameter and density, the thickness of one of the entering slivers serving to counterbalance the thinness of the other. The drawing frame consists usually of four or five "heads," and the sliver, after it passes through one of these "heads," is put through a second one, along with other slivers, so that the doubling and redoubling goes on constantly. There is an electric device to stop the machine when a sliver breaks, either at the back or the front of the frame. [Illustration: _Combers at work in a mill spinning fine counts_] From the last head of the drawing frame, the sliver passes to the fly frame or slubber, which not only continues the drawing and doubling, usually between three pairs of rollers, but through the aid of a device which gives the sliver a slight twist and winds it, for the first time, upon a spindle. This device is known as the flyer, and is, roughly, a U-shaped piece of metal, which, revolving, inverted, over the spindle, gives the thread a slight lateral twist as it coils upon the spindle. The latter also revolves, but with a diminishing motion so that the amount of twist may be kept uniform as the diameter of the coil upon the spindle increases. The sliver, now being twisted, is called a sliver no longer, but the slubbing. The slubbing is passed between the rollers in pairs, the emerging product being less in diameter than the diameter of a single slubbing. The machine combines the fourfold process of combination, attenuation, twisting and winding. There are more spindles upon this frame than upon the slubber. The last drawing frame, except for very fine yarns spun from Egyptian or Sea Island staples, is the roving frame, similar in principle to the last two but containing still more spindles. It receives the rovings from the intermediate frame, combines two of them into one, twists them a little more, and winds them upon the spindle tubes. The Jack frame is similar except that its product is finer and smoother. [Illustration: _Sliver lappers in a Northern mill_] It is interesting to note, however, that the majority of improvements have been the fruit of the brains, not of Americans, but of Englishmen. Copeland points out that this may be due to the English desire to save in the consumption of cotton, but that more probably it is due to the development of fine spinning in England, in which most of the machines here described are chiefly valuable; and he ventures the prediction that now that American mills have definitely gone in for the finer counts, it may be expected that engineers here will apply themselves to the improvement of this machinery. [Illustration: _Drawing frames, turning slivers into roving_] The "Mule" Versus the Ring Spindle Spinning is the final process which turns the cotton into firm, coherent yarn, sufficiently twisted, and ready for the loom. The twist given to the thread by the previous machines has been only enough to make the fibers hold together. They are still comparatively loose and fluffy, and their tensile strength is slight. There are, in general, two types of spinning machines. The first, the mule, an English product. The second, radically different, is entirely American. It was invented in 1828 by James Thorpe, and immediately found some favor, but it was not until the Civil War that it was received on equal terms with the mule. Today, however, it dominates in the United States, the comparative figures in 1917 being: ring spindles 30,264,074; mule spindles 3,634,761. The disparity is growing greater every year, and the use of the ring is firmly established in other countries as well. The figures for 1907 were: _Mule_ _Ring_ England (1909) 39,800,000 7,900,000 Germany 5,740,000 3,722,000 France 4,122,000 2,481,000 Austria 2,307,000 1,277,000 Italy 1,015,000 1,852,000 Russia 1,031,000 1,320,000 The mule, by reason of the great size to which it has been developed, and the impressiveness of its large, rhythmic motion, is one of the most formidable of all cotton machines, as indeed it is one of the most complex. It received its name from the fact that, performing two principal functions--drawing and spinning--it was regarded as a hybrid, just as the mule is a hybrid cross between the horse and the donkey. In the mule (see diagram on page 53), which is a long and wide machine, carrying sometimes, in new models, as many as 1,300 spindles, the drawing and twisting are not continuous but consecutive. The rovings (B) are held on a creel (A) at the back of the machine, usually in three or four tiers, or on long beams or spools. They pass from the creel, or spools, between three pairs of drawing rollers (C.) Coming out of the rollers, they are fed to the spindles on the carriage which backs away from the creel and recedes somewhat faster than the rovings are unwound. This receding is the essential motion of the mule, for thus the cotton receives its final drawing. The spindles, meanwhile, are revolving rapidly, spinning the yarn. The twist goes first to the thin places where the least resistance is offered. Then, as the carriage carrying the whirling spindles continues to back away, the thicker parts of the thread, being comparatively untwisted are pulled down to the average diameter and are twisted in turn. The carriage usually runs back about sixty-three inches. At the termination of its run, or stretch, the spindles increase their speed until the twisting is completed and the carriage starts on its return trip. This reverses the spindles, and the thread which has been wound upon them is unwound, the slack being taken up by one guide wire (D) while the other guides the thread to the winding point, and winds it up in the opposite direction on the cone-shaped cops on the spindles. The rollers do not feed out more roving as the carriage returns. Hence, there is no slack when the round trip is completed. [Illustration: _Slubbers, showing the U-shaped flyers_] Except for the use of drawing rollers, there is little similarity between the mule and the ring frame. The latter has no movable carriage, none of the splendid sweep of motion that makes the mule so fascinating to watch. The ring-frame is simple and business-like, and its speed is amazing. The bobbins holding the roving are placed directly over the spindles. Around each of the latter is a steel ring. There are at least 112 spindles on each machine, and all the machine rings for the spindles are fixed in a single frame. The upper edge of the ring is flanged, like a miniature railroad track, and snapped over the flange is a small but important C-shaped steel ring, called the traveler. How Thread is Spun on the Ring Spindle When the machine is in operation (See diagram on page 56) each roving (H) leaving its bobbin, runs through the usual drawing rollers (G) then through a guiding wire to the ring, where it is passed through its traveler (B) which is always at the winding point on the spindle. As the spindle and the rollers revolve, the roving is fed out at a considerably slower rate than the spindle takes it up, so that there is always a tension on the thread. The whirling spindle thus pulls on the traveler, drawing it round and round on its flanged track (A). It revolves just a little more slowly than the spindle and thus the yarn receives its twist. Meanwhile, the frame (C) on which the rings are fixed moves slowly up and down, so that the winding is properly regulated. It is possible to operate the spindles at a remarkable speed. So perfect are the bearings which have been evolved that the average speed is ten thousand revolutions a minute, and on fine yarns it is sometimes 12,000 to 13,000 revolutions. The speed is limited by only two factors: the first is the ability of the operator to make splicings when threads break, and the second is the tendency of the traveler to fly off when the speed is too high. The number of travelers consumed is high at best, and in a mill which has long been in operation the floor in the front of the frame is likely to be paved with the little steel rings which have fallen and been ground into the planks by the heels of the worker. [Illustration: _Diagram of mule_] The battle between the advocates of the ring frame and those who favor the mule is still on. For the American spinner the ring has undoubtedly many advantages. Because it spins continuously, and not intermittently, it turns out about a third more yarn per operator. It is usually admitted, however, that the thread from the mule is more even in diameter. Advocates of the mule say, moreover, that the thread from the mule is softer and "loftier", and that cloth woven from it has a more "clothy" feel. But others say they can produce soft yarn with the ring. In the United States, where the labor cost is a vital item, the ring-spindle has an assured place. [Illustration: _Mules at work_] The yarn is now a finished product. It may be sold by the spinner to the weaver or it may be woven in the mill in which it is spun. Before it is ready for the loom, however, there are a number of operations which must be completed. The yarn from the ring frame, or mule, is wound in a large cop, or on a bobbin. It must be put upon spools before it can be warped. The spooler is a simple machine, but one that requires constant attendance. In the spooler, bobbins are placed upon holders or spindles, and the thread is passed over a series of guides to the spool, up above. The spool revolves at a high rate of speed, and the thread is wound evenly upon it. The operator must watch for broken threads, retie them, replace the empty bobbins by full ones and see that the empty ones are gathered up uninjured. She--the operator is usually a girl or woman--must be alert and active, and especially nimble fingered. [Illustration: _"Close-up" of Ring Spindle in American mill_] One of the most important inventions, one that was received with acclaim by the American manufacturer, and one which actually reduced his labor cost on spooling no less than ten per cent. at one clip, is a tiny little thing that is held in the palm of the hand. This is the Barber knotter. When a thread breaks, the attendant places the two ends together in the machine and by the mere pressure of her thumb ties the knot much better than she could do it without the knotter. The economies which it effects extend beyond the mere spooling, for better knots mean fewer breaks in the warping process, and a better cloth at the end of weaving. The spools from the spooler are placed on a large frame, called a creel. The creels have an average capacity of about 600 spools, and there are usually 16 to 20 in one tier. The threads from the spools are drawn between the dents of an adjustable reed, then under and over a series of rollers. From here they are led down to the beam, upon which they are wound. The revolving of the beam unwinds the yarn from the spools and winds it regularly and evenly upon the beam itself. There is a device for measuring the length of the warp wound, and stop motions for arresting the operation should a thread break or other accident occur. [Illustration: _Each operator at these spoolers has a Barber knotter on her hand_] The yarn of the warp must usually be impregnated with a sizing which will smooth out and stick down its furry surface and add as well to the tensile strength so that the strain of weaving may be withstood. For this the most effective and most generally used machine is the slasher, the chief feature of which is a roller, whose lower side is immersed in the sizing solution. Threads from the warp beam are run around this roller through the solution and then dried, after which it is finally wound on another beam for the loom. A considerable number of loom beams can be filled from one set of the warper beams mounted in the slasher. The lengthwise threads of a fabric are called the warp. The crosswise threads are called the weft or filling. To make cloth, the warp and weft must be interlaced with each other in a suitable manner. The operation is called weaving, the machine in which it is performed is, of course, the loom. The principal operations of weaving are as follows: 1. Shedding, or the raising and lowering of the alternate threads of the warp, so that the weft may pass under and over them. This is done by means of the harnesses and their heddles. 2. Picking, or placing a thread of the weft between the warp threads so raised and lowered by means of the shuttle. 3. Beating-up, or pushing, each thread of the weft into its position close against the thread which has preceded it by means of the reed. 4. Letting-off, or permitting the warp to unwind from the beam only just as fast as is needed by the speed of the weaving. This is accomplished by friction bands and weights on the warp beam. 5. Taking-up, or winding upon a roller the cloth as it is manufactured. In addition to these primary operations, the loom has attachments for performing several other functions, such as stop-motions for stopping the loom when warp or filling threads break, or when the shuttle fails to cross the loom completely; temples for holding out the cloth laterally as the weaving proceeds; a mechanism--in the most modern looms--for changing the shuttles, or the cops in the shuttles, as the weft thread on the cops becomes exhausted, etc. [Illustration: _Diagram of ring spindle_] The modern cotton loom, which automatically removes the filling bobbins without stopping the loom, is rapidly displacing the older types, and one weaver can now attend to a surprisingly large number of looms, being greatly assisted also by the automatic warp and filling "stop motions." CHAPTER IX The Finishing Operations Following the manufacture of the cloth, come the operations necessary to prepare it for the market. These involve such treatments as bleaching, printing, mercerizing, dyeing, and finishing (in the narrow sense). The number of machines involved in these various processes rivals the number which are used in the actual spinning and weaving operations. Modern bleaching is a highly technical science, conceived and planned by engineers, and carried out with elaborate machinery by skilled workers. Gray cloth, as it comes from the loom, is of an unattractive color, a dirty grayish yellow, and contains not only those impurities which it has picked up on its journey through the mill but those inherent in its natural state as well, all totalling some five per cent. more or less, of the total weight. In addition there may be numerous bits of leaf from the boll which have clung to the fibers through all the processing, and which appear finally in the cloth as little brownish specks, known to the trade as motes. Finally, there is the sizing which was put into the warp. [Illustration: _Warping--The creel in the rear_] Bleaching an Intricate Chemical Process In the bleaching of cotton, there is a series of operations which have for their object the elimination of the waxy, fatty matters embodied in the fiber, as well as any dirt which it may have acquired. Then, there is the actual whitening and the bleaching of the cloth which destroys any coloring matter which it may contain and finally there are treatments designed to neutralize the effect of the chemicals used in the bleaching. Thus, the sequence of treatments might be: first, boiling in plain water, which removes certain soluble substances; next, an extended boiling in a strong alkaline solution, which saponifies the waxy, fatty matters in the fiber, and thus removes them from the cloth or yarn. Third, a steeping in a bleaching solution--a solution of chloride of lime being largely employed for this purpose, and which treatment is known as the chemic. Next, after another thorough washing there is a treatment in diluted sulphuric acid to neutralize the effects of the chemic, and finally this is followed again by another thorough washing with possibly an additional mild alkaline treatment. The nature and the method of all these treatments varies considerably, and depends upon the character of the goods being treated, but, at the conclusion, if all has gone well, the cloth should be a good white and should not be impaired in strength. Singeing Necessary in Some Finishes For a certain class of goods, where a clean, smooth surface is required, it is desirable to singe the goods before the bleaching. This is accomplished by passing the cloth, stretched out at full width, very rapidly over heated plates, or through gas flames, so that the fine hairs or fuzz are singed off, but the fabric itself has not had time to take fire. Both sides may be singed and the goods may be passed more than once through the flame. When yarns are singed, the threads are passed through the flame very rapidly, being unwound from one set of bobbins and wound up on another. [Illustration: _Front view of an automatic loom_] In the dyeing operation the cotton piece goods pass through a series of machines, the goods being in rope form as already explained, so that a number of pieces can be put into each machine, side by side. The wash boxes, dye vats, etc. are equipped with overhead rollers, by means of which the goods, which have been sewn end to end, so as to make a continuous string of them, pass out of the dye, over the roller and down into the bath on the other side, continuing to circulate around thus until the desired results have been obtained. In addition to the preparatory washing and boiling, mordanting and dyeing, there are subsequent washings to free the goods from loose coloring matter, and other special treatments are frequently accorded them. Finishing in its special and restricted sense, implies a series of treatments, such as stretching, starching, dampening, drying, pressing, smoothing, lustreing, glazing, stiffening, softening, and whatnot, which are given to them according to the use to which they are to be put. The printing press is constructed with a large main cylinder (D), the size being dictated by the number of colors which it must take care of. As the printing operation is a continuous one, there must be a continuous feeding of the cloth, a continuous inking of the engraved rollers (C), and a continuous cleaning off of the unengraved surface after the inking. Under each roller, where it is fixed in its place in the press, is a long copper trough or pan carrying the coloring material, and in the pan under the roller, and extending into the coloring matter, is an intermediate roller known as the "furnisher" roller, and, as the press revolves, this covers the surface of the copper roller with a heavy film of coloring. The surplus coloring is scraped off as the roller revolves, by a long, sharp blade or knife, known as "the doctor," and after the roller passes this it is quite clean, no coloring remaining on it except that in the engraved portion. Each roller has its color pan with its own color in it. Then, as the cloth (A) passes between the main cylinder, properly covered by suitable intervening materials and the series of rollers, each roller in turn prints its own color, and, collectively, the finished pattern is produced. [Illustration: _Diagram of cloth printing machine_] The goods then pass into a drying room and are afterwards introduced into a steaming chamber, where they are given a good steaming at a slight pressure. This steaming develops the colors and causes them to impregnate the fibers more thoroughly. Subsequently, for good work, the goods should be washed to get rid of the thickening matters that are mixed with the coloring, and then the printing appears in all its beauty. Printing on Full Ground Colors The foregoing briefly describes the processes of direct printing. In this case, the penetration of the colors to the opposite side of the goods is not very good. If a solid and full ground color is needed both on the face and back of the goods, it can be had either by the "Resist" or "Reserve" method, or by the "Extract" or "Discharge" method. In the "Resist" method, when a white figure is wanted on a black or colored ground, the goods are first printed with some substance which will resist the action of the dye stuffs. Then, when the goods are dyed, the treated part does not take the color and the substance used as a resist is washed out, and thus a white figure is obtained on a solid colored ground. In the "Discharge" method, the goods are first dyed in a solid color, and are then treated with certain chemicals which destroy the dyed color wherever they touch the fabric, these chemicals being subsequently washed out where they have been applied, and thus again a white figure can be had in the colored ground. By the "Discharge" method, moreover, colored figures can also be printed on colored grounds, as certain colorings have been developed which are not affected by the discharge materials used, hence, a whole series of beautiful colors can be printed on goods previously dyed with black or colored grounds, each color being mixed with a suitable chemical for discharging the ground color, and thus the colors of the printed pattern come out as desired. Another important process which is applied to both cotton yarn and cotton fabrics is that known as mercerization, called after "Mercer" an English chemist who introduced the process. Cotton when subjected to the action of strong, caustic alkali contracts violently, but when again stretched and straightened it is found to have acquired a distinct silkiness of appearance, and under the microscope the twisted ribbon-like fibers of the material--already referred to--will be found to have become straight, glossy and rodlike, just as a bicycle tire would appear after air was blown into it. Cotton may be mercerized either in the yarn, warp, skein, or in the piece, the first being more effective. The best and most satisfactory results are achieved when the material treated is made of fine long staple cotton, either Sea Island or Egyptian, the shorter cottons being relatively much less improved by the treatment. The mercerizing does not diminish the strength of the material, and gives to it a greater affinity for dye stuffs. Internal Organization of Cotton Mills The foremen are specialists in their particular departments. The warehouseman, at one end, is a judge of cotton stock, and the foreman of the weaving room at the other knows how many automatic looms may safely be trusted to each weaver on his staff. In between these two there are, according to the individual mill, a dozen or more other foremen, all reporting regularly to the superintendent, all captains of their own companies of workers, and all keen, in the interests of their own reputations, to operate their departments as intelligently, as efficiently, and with as little friction with their individual operators as possible. For it is generally recognized throughout the cotton industry that profitable business depends as much upon the whole-hearted cooperation of the wage-earners, as upon any other single factor. The Question of Individual Efficiency As for the operators themselves, they are so varied, there are so many problems which they have to face, and such difficulties which those who employ and direct them have to solve, that anything like adequate consideration is impossible. From the impersonal viewpoint, leaving out of account the human elements, the problems of wages, and the correlated problem of trade organization, there remains the question of individual efficiency. It is that which we have chiefly to consider. [Illustration: _Inspecting finished cloth_] The number of men, women, and children employed in the cotton mills of the country has increased at a very high rate, but there has been an interesting diminution in the proportionate percentage of women and children under sixteen years of age employed. The United States Census of Manufacturers gives the following figures: AVERAGE NUMBER OF EMPLOYES IN AMERICAN COTTON MILLS _Men_ _Women_ _Children_ _Total_ 1870 42,790 69,637 22,942 135,369 1880 59,685 84,539 28,320 172,544 1890 88,837 106,607 23,432 218,876 1900 134,354 123,709 39,866 297,929 1910 190,531 141,728 38,861 371,120 In percentages these figures express themselves as follows: _Men_ _Women_ _Children_ 1870 31.5 51.4 17.1 1880 34.6 49.0 16.4 1890 40.6 48.7 10.7 1900 45.1 41.5 13.4 1910 51.3 38.2 10.5 The question of nationality has had an important bearing upon the development of the industry in the United States. The constant influx into the country of successive waves of immigration from the different countries of Europe has often served in a decade to change the whole complexion of the labor question. In the original New England mills, the employees were of almost pure English stock. The sons and daughters of the Yankee farmers entered the mills, not as a permanent occupation, but merely as a means of getting a start in life. Just before the Civil War, the Irish began to come rapidly, and the actual advent of that struggle saw a great number of the remaining natives leaving for the army, or thrown out of work. When the fighting was over they did not return, but the Irish came in even greater numbers. The next decade saw the arrival of the French Canadians in the New England states, and there also came, in quick succession, natives of Italy, and of the various states of eastern Europe. [Illustration: _Baled cloth being put aboard waiting freight cars_] This change in the national complexion had two very important results. It brought into the country a constant stream of cheap labor, polyglot, and lacking in homogeneity, and consequently slow at first to unionize and strike. This characteristic brought another in its train--a lack of stability, and a proneness to transiency. The second result was hardly less important. It meant that though labor was relatively plentiful, much of it was unskilled. This lack of skill put a premium upon quantity production, and led to efforts to develop automatic machinery and labor-saving devices of all kinds. It compelled most American manufacturers to specialize upon the coarser kinds of yarns and cloths, made in simple weaves and patterns, in the making of which the minimum amount of skilled labor was required. Native Stock in Southern Mills Conditions in the South were somewhat different. From the beginning, the employes here have been almost entirely of native stock. They came from a class which previously had little opportunity for any employment of a regular character outside of farming. When the mills were built these folks were given, for the first time, an opportunity for continuous employment. Whole families entered the mills, fathers, mothers and children serving in different or in the same departments. The South at first specialized on ducks, twills, denims, and such coarse work. Now, however, there is a growing tendency to diversify the product. The reason is found in the increasing capability of the workers, many of whom have by now spent many years of their lives in the mills, and whose fathers before them were operatives. Unless present conditions change and the South becomes the mecca of immigrants--a development probably less likely now than in the years before the war--there seems to be a strong possibility that a class of operatives, rivalling eventually in skill those of the English mill towns, will be developed. The stock is the same, and the latent capabilities are all there. The determining factors will probably be the economic changes of the next few years. A remaining factor in the organization of the mill is the size of the individual plant, the number of spindles and looms it contains, the number of workers employed, etc. It is in just this particular that some of the most characteristic developments of the American industry are found. About the time of the Civil War, the average New England mill had less than ten thousand spindles. Today the average is probably between fifty and one hundred thousand, and perhaps nearer the latter figure than the former. Some of the mills have nearly, if not quite, a full million spindles in several buildings. The average in the South is much less than the New England average. The industry in the older section is definitely localized, even to the extent of having whole towns devoted almost exclusively to the manufacture of single grades of cloth. In the South the mills are more widely scattered, advantage having been taken of labor supply, water power, and other conditions. Local pride has sometimes caused the establishment of mills in regions economically unfitted for them. Such mills do not long survive. The advantage of large scale production has thus been seized chiefly by the New England mills, but the generally lower wages of the South have tended to equalize the situation. [Illustration: _Original Whitney cotton gin, preserved in Smithsonian Institute in Washington_] 
27516	----	THE TOILERS OF THE FIELD BY RICHARD JEFFERIES AUTHOR OF "THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME," ETC. ETC. [Illustration: THE SILVER LIBRARY] _NEW IMPRESSION_ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1898 _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: RICHARD JEFFERIES. _From the bust by Miss Margaret Thomas, in Salisbury Cathedral._ _Photographed by Mr. Owen, Salisbury._] _BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE._ _First Edition, October 1892._ _Reprinted, November 1892 and January 1893._ _Issued in Silver Library, November 1893._ _Reprinted, June 1898._ PREFACE. The first and larger part of this volume, from which it takes its name, consists of papers which will be new to the large majority of readers of Richard Jefferies' works. The five entitled, "The Farmer at Home," "The Labourer's Daily Life," "Field-faring Women," "An English Homestead," and "John Smith's Shanty," appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1874, long before Jefferies had gained any portion of that fame which was so long in coming, and came in full measure too late. Of the three letters to the _Times_, written in 1872, one was republished, with the permission of Mrs. Jefferies, in an appendix to Mr. Walter Besant's "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies." It finds its natural place in this volume with the other papers, which give so clear a picture of the life of all classes of the cultivators of the soil in the early seventies. The "True Tale of the Wiltshire Labourer" has never previously been published, and is included in this volume by the kind permission of Mr. G. H. Harmer of the _Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard_, for which paper it was written when Jefferies was on its staff, but for some reason was never used. All the papers in Part II. have appeared in _Longman's Magazine_, since Jefferies' death, and though they are with one exception very slight, yet they are all characteristic specimens of his work. From internal evidence it appears certain that the longest of them, entitled "The Coming of Summer," was written on June 1, 1881, and the subsequent days. It contains one or two points of resemblance with the famous "Pageant of Summer," which appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ for June 1883. It was perhaps the first study of which that paper is the finished picture. The frontispiece is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. J. Owen of Salisbury, from a photograph taken by him of Miss Thomas' bust of Jefferies in Salisbury Cathedral. C. J. LONGMAN. CONTENTS. _PART I._ PAGE THE FARMER AT HOME 3 THE LABOURER'S DAILY LIFE 60 FIELD-FARING WOMEN 111 AN ENGLISH HOMESTEAD 151 JOHN SMITH'S SHANTY 175 WILTSHIRE LABOURERS (LETTERS TO THE "TIMES") 211 A TRUE TALE OF THE WILTSHIRE LABOURER 259 _PART II._ THE COMING OF SUMMER 289 THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN 313 AN EXTINCT RACE 315 ORCHIS MASCULA 319 THE LIONS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 321 PART I. _THE FARMER AT HOME._ The new towns, or suburbs which spring up every year in the neighbourhood of London, are all built upon much the same plan. Whole streets of houses present exact duplicates of each other, even to the number of steps up to the front door and the position of the scraper. In the country, where a new farmhouse is erected about once in twenty years, the styles of architecture are as varied and as irregular as in town they are prim and uniform. The great mass of farmhouses are old, and some are very picturesque. There was a farmhouse I knew which was almost entitled to be taken as the type of an English rural homestead. It was built at a spot where the open wild down suddenly fell away into rich meadow land. Here there was a narrow steep-sided valley, or "combe"--and at the mouth of this, well sheltered on three sides from the north, the east, and north-eastern winds, stood the homestead. A spring arose some way behind, and close to the house widened into a pool which was still further enlarged by means of a dam, forming a small lake of the clearest water. This lake fed a mill-race lower down. The farmyard and rick-barton were a little way up the narrow valley, on one side of which there was a rookery. The house itself was built in the pure Elizabethan style; with mullioned windows, and innumerable gables roofed with tiles. Nor was it wanting in the traditions of the olden time. This fine old place was the homestead of a large farm comprising some of the best land of the district, both down and meadow. Another farmhouse, still used for that purpose, stands upon the wildest part of the down, and is built of flint and concrete. It was erected nearly three hundred years ago, and is of unusual size. The woodwork is all solid black oak, good enough for an earl's mansion. These are specimens of the highest class of farmhouse. Immediately beneath them come the houses built in the early part of the present century. They vary in almost every architectural detail, and the materials differ in each county; but the general arrangement is the same. They consist as it were of two distinct houses under one roof. The front is the dwelling-house proper, usually containing a kitchen, sitting-room, and parlour. The back contains the wood-house (coal-house now), the brewhouse--where the beer was brewed, which frequently also had an oven--and, most important of all, the dairy. All this part of the place is paved with stone flags, and the dairy is usually furnished with lattice-work in front of the windows, so that they can be left open to admit the cool air and not thieves. Coolness is the great requisite in a dairy, and some gentlemen who make farming a science go to the length of having a fountain of water constantly playing in it. These houses, however, were built before scientific agriculture was thought of. The wood-house contained the wood used for cooking and domestic purposes; for at that date wood was universally used in the country, and coal rarely seen. The wood was of course grown on the farm, for which purpose those wide double mound hedges, now rapidly disappearing, were made. It was considered a good arrangement to devote half-an-acre in some outlying portion of the farm entirely to wood, not only for the fire, but for poles, to make posts and rails, gates, ladders, &c. The coal could not in those days be conveyed so cheaply as it now is by railways. Such as was used had to be brought by the slow barges on the canals, or else was fetched by the farmers' waggons direct from the pit-mouth. The teams were not unfrequently absent two days and a night on the journey. In the outlying districts this difficulty in obtaining coal practically restricted the available fuel to wood. Now the wood-house is used as much for coal as wood. Of course the great stacks of wood--the piles of faggots and logs--were kept outside, generally in the same enclosure as the ricks, only a sufficient number for immediate use being kept under cover. The brewhouse was an important feature when all farmers brewed their own beer and baked their own bread. At present the great majority purchase their beer from the brewers, although some still brew large quantities for the labourers' drinking in harvest time. At a period when comparatively little ready money passed between employer and employed, and the payment for work was made in kind, beer was a matter which required a great deal of the attention of the farmer, and absorbed no little of his time. At this day it is a disputed matter which is cheapest, to buy or to brew beer: at that time there was no question about it. It was indisputably economical to brew. The brewhouse was not necessarily confined to that use; when no brewing was in progress it was often made a kind of second dairy. Over these offices was the cheese-room. This was and still is a long, large, and lofty room in which the cheese after being made is taken to dry and harden. It is furnished with a number of shelves upon which the cheeses are arranged, and as no two can be placed one on the other in the early stage of their maturing, much space is required. It is the duty of the dairymaid and her assistant to turn these cheeses every morning--a work requiring some strength. In this part of the house are the servants' rooms. In front of the dairy and brewhouse is a paved court enclosed with a wall, and in this court it was not uncommon to find a well, or hog-tub, for the refuse of the dairy. Sometimes, but not often now, the pig-stye is just outside the wall which surrounds the court. In this court, too, the butter is generally churned, under a "skilling" which covers half of it. Here also the buckets are washed, and other similar duties performed. The labourers come here to receive their daily allowance of beer. Most farmhouses in large arable farms were originally built so as to have a small dairy at the back; though there was a time when the arable farmer never thought of keeping a cow, and butter and cheese were unknown, except as luxuries, in his establishment. This was during the continuance of the Corn Laws, when everything was sacrificed to the one great object of growing wheat. It was not impossible in those days to find a whole parish (I know of one myself) in which there was not a single cow. Now the great object is meat, then it was corn. But at the time when most of the farmhouses were erected, the system of agriculture pursued was a judicious mixture of the dairy and the cornfield, so that very few old farmhouses exist which have not some form of dairy attached. In the corn-growing times, most of the verdant meadows now employed to graze cattle, or for producing hay, were ploughed up. This may be seen by the regular furrows, unmistakable evidences of the plough. When corn declined in price through the influx of foreign produce, the land was again laid down in grass, and most of it continues so till this hour. It might be roughly estimated that England now contains a third more meadow land than in the early part of the present century, notwithstanding the attempt to plough up the downs. We now come to the third class of farmsteads--low thatched buildings, little better than large cottages, and indeed frequently converted into dwellings for labourers. These are generally found on small farms, and in districts where there are a number of small landed proprietors. These freeholders built houses according to their means. In process of time they were bought up by the great landowners, and the farms thrown together, when the houses were used for other purposes. Some may still be found, especially in dairy districts. In these the principal part of the house is usually the dairy, which absorbs at least half of the ground floor, and opens on the kitchen, in which the family sit, and in which their food is often cooked. The eaves of the house are low, and there are scarcely any appliances for comfort. The yeomen who originally lived in these places in all respects resembled the labourers with whom they ate and drank and held the most familiar intercourse. Their labourers even slept in the same bedrooms as the family. But these men, though they mingled so freely with the labourer, were his worst enemy. The little profit they made was entirely accumulated by careful economy. They were avaricious and penurious to the last degree, and grudged every halfpenny to the labouring man. They were, and the remnant of them still are, the determined opponent of all progress. The interior of some of these cottage-farmsteads, which still exist, is almost Dutch-like in simplicity and homeliness. The fireplace is of a vast size, fitted with antique iron dogs for burning wood, and on it swing the irons to sustain the great pot. On each side, right under the chimney, are seats, the ingle-nook of olden times. The chimney itself is very large, being specially built for the purpose of curing sides of bacon by smoking. The chimneypiece is ornamented with a few odd figures in crockery-ware, half-a-dozen old brass candlesticks, and perhaps a snuff-box or tobacco dish. The floor is composed of stone flags--apt to get slimy and damp when the weather is about to change--and the wide chinks between them are filled with hardened dirt. In the centre there is a piece of carpet on which the table stands, but the rest of the room is bare of carpeting, except the hearth-rug. The low window has a seat let into the wall under it. The furniture of the apartment is utilitarian in the strictest sense. There is nothing there for ornament or luxury, or even for ease; only what is absolutely necessary. Generally there is a dresser, above which, on shelves, the dishes and plates are arranged. A tall upright eight-day clock, with a brazen face, and an inscription which tells that it was manufactured in a neighbouring village, stands in one corner, and solemnly ticks in its coffin-like panelled case. On each side of the fireplace there is an arm-chair, often cushioned with a fox or badger skin, and a great brazen warming-pan hangs near the door. There is no ceiling properly so called. These old houses were always built with a huge beam, and you can see the boards of the floor above, which are merely whitewashed. A fowling-piece, once a flint-lock, now converted to the percussion cap system, hangs against the beam, and sometimes dried herbs may be seen there too. The use of herbs is, however, going out of date. In the evening when the great logs of wood smoulder upon the enormous hearth and cast flickering shadows on the walls, revealing the cat slumbering in the ingle-nook, and the dog blinking on the rug--when the farmer slowly smokes his long clay pipe with his jug of ale beside him, such an interior might furnish a good subject for a painter. Let the artist who wishes to secure such a scene from oblivion set to work speedily, for these things are fast fading away. All these three classes of farmhouse are usually well supplied with vegetables from the garden attached. The garden in fact was, and still is, an object of considerable importance to the farmer, quite as much as the allotment to the labourer. He reckons to receive from it his whole supply of potatoes, cabbages, beans, peas, and other varieties of table vegetables, and salads. These constitute an important item when there is a large family. I do not speak now of the great farmers, although even these set some store by such produce, but the middle class. It is usual in these gardens to grow immense quantities of cabbage of a coarse kind, and also of lettuce, onions, and radishes, all of which are freely given to the men and women working on the place during the harvest. They are, in fact, grown especially for them. At the dinner-hour one or more men of the number, deputed by the rest, come up to the house. One carries the wooden bottles, or small barrels of ale, which are handed out from the dairy. The other repairs to the garden, and pulls up a reasonable quantity of lettuce, onions, or radishes, as the case may be, from the patches indicated to him by the employer. These are then washed in the court by the dairy, where there is almost always a pump, and are then taken out to the men and shared amongst them. These salads make an agreeable addition to the dry bread and cheese, or bacon. The custom is an old one, and much to be commended. It costs the employer next to nothing, and is an element in that goodwill which should exist between him and the labourer. On some farms large quantities of fruit are grown--such as gooseberries, currants, plums, and damsons. Most have enough for their own use; some sell a considerable amount. Outside the garden is the orchard. Some of these orchards are very extensive, even in districts where cider is not the ordinary beverage, and in a good apple year the sale of the apples forms an important item in the peculiar emoluments of the farmer's wife. There are, of course, many districts in which the soil is not adapted to the apple, but as a rule the orchard is an adjunct of the garden. Some of the real old English farmsteads possess the crowning delight of a filbert walk, but these are rare now. In fact the introduction of machinery and steam, and the general revolution which has been going on in agriculture, has gone far to sweep away these more pleasant and home-like features of the farm. It becomes daily more and more like a mere official residence, so to speak. The peculiar home-like aspect of a farmhouse is gradually disappearing. The daily life of the middle-class dairy farmer begins at five in the morning. Rising about that hour, his first duty is to see that the men have all appeared, and that they are engaged in milking the cows. He breakfasts at six, or half-past, and the whole family have finished breakfast before seven. By this time the day-labourers have come (the milkers are usually hired by the year), and the master has to go out and put them on to their jobs. Meantime the dairy is a scene of work and bustle; cheesemaking being in full swing. This is at least superintended, if not partly performed, by the mistress of the house. At larger farms it is the bailiff who rises early and sees that the labourers are properly employed; and the cheesemaking is entrusted to a dairymaid hired at high wages, who often combines with that duty the office of general housekeeper. It was once the practice to rise even earlier than five, but there are not many farmers who do so now. On the arable farm, which is generally much larger, the master has almost always got a bailiff, or head-carter, whom he can trust to see the men set to work. The master is therefore not obliged to come down so soon, except at important seasons. But the ordinary dairy-farm is not large enough to support a bailiff, and the master has to rise himself. The fresh morning air and the exercise give the farmer a tremendous appetite for breakfast. The usual staple food consists of thick rashers of bacon only just "done," so as to retain most of the fat, the surplus of which is carefully caught on slices of bread. The town rasher is crisp, curled, and brown, without a symptom of fat or grease. The farmer's early rasher is to a town eye but half-done, bubbling with grease, and laid on thick slices of bread, also saturated with the gravy. Sometimes cold bacon is preferred, but it is almost always very fat. With this he drinks a pint or so of fairly strong beer, and afterwards has a hunch of bread and butter and a cup or two of tea. He is then well fortified for the labour of the morning. This is the common breakfast of the working-farmer, who is as much a labouring man as any cottager on his farm, and requires a quantity of solid food. Some, however, who are pretty well off, and have a better idea of the luxuries of the table, regale themselves on collared head, or rolled beef, or ham at breakfast. These hams are usually preserved after a family receipt, and some of them are exquisite. After breakfast the farmer walks round the place, watches the men at work for a few minutes, and gives them instructions, and then settles himself down to some job that requires his immediate superintendence. If it is hay-time he takes a rake and works about the field, knowing full well all the difference that his presence makes. The agricultural labourers, both men and women, are a slow set, never in a hurry; there is none of that bustle characteristic of the town people, even of the lowest class. They take every opportunity of leaning upon the prong-handle, or standing in the shade--they seem to have no idea of time. Women are a sore trial to the patience of the agriculturist in a busy time. If you want to understand why, go and ensconce yourself behind a hedge, out of sight but in view of a field in which ten or twelve women are hoeing. By and by a pedlar or a van comes slowly along the turnpike road which runs past the field. At the first sound of footsteps or wheels all the bent backs are straight in an instant, and all the work is at a standstill. They stand staring at the van or tramp for five or six minutes, till the object of attention has passed out of sight. Then there is a little hoeing for three or four consecutive minutes. By that time one of them has remembered some little bit of gossip, and stops to tell her nearest fellow-workwoman, and the rest at once pause to listen. After a while they go on again. Now another vehicle passes along the road, and the same process of staring has to be gone through once more. If a lady or gentleman pass, the staring is something terrific, and it takes quite ten minutes to discuss all the probabilities as to who they were, and where they were going. This sort of thing goes on all day, so that, in point of fact, they only do half a day's work. The men are not so bad as this; but they never let slip an opportunity for pausing in their work, and even when at work they do it in a slow, dawdling, lack-energy way that is positively irritating to watch. The agriculturist has in consequence plenty to do to keep his eye on them, and in the course of the day he walks over his farm half-a-dozen times at least. Very few ordinary working farmers walk much less than ten miles a day on the average, backwards and forwards over the fields. Half-past eleven used to be luncheon time, but now it is about twelve, except in harvest, when, as work begins earlier, it is at eleven. This luncheon hour is another source of constant irritation to the agriculturist. He does not wish to bind his men down to an exact minute, and if a man has some distance to walk to his cottage, will readily make all allowance. He does not stint the beer carried out either then or in the field. But do what he likes, be as considerate as he will, and let the season be never so pressing, it is impossible to get the labourers out to their work when the hour is up. Most of them go to sleep, and have to be waked up, after which they are as stupid as owls for a quarter of an hour. One or two, it will be found, have strolled down to the adjacent ale-house, and are missing. These will come on the field about an hour later. Then one man has a rake too heavy for him, and another a prong too light. There is always some difficulty in starting to work; the agriculturist must therefore be himself present if he wishes to get the labourers out to the field in anything like a moderate time. The nuisance of mowers must be gone through to be appreciated. They come and work very well for the first week. They slash down acre after acre, and stick to it almost day and night. In consequence the farmer puts on every man who applies for work, everything goes on first-rate, and there is a prospect of getting the crop in speedily. At the end of the week the mowers draw their money, quite a lump for them, and away they go to the ale-house. Saturday night sees them as drunk as men can be. They lie about the fields under the hedges all day Sunday, drinking when the public-house is open. Monday morning they go on to work for half-an-hour, but the fever engendered by so much liquor, and the disordered state of the stomach, cause a burning thirst. They fling the scythes down, and go off to the barrel. During all this week perhaps between them they manage to cut half an acre. What is the result? The haymakers have made all the grass that was cut the first week into hay, and are standing about idle, unable to proceed, but still drawing their wages from the unfortunate agriculturist. The hot sun is burning on--better weather for haymaking could not be--but there is not a rood of grass cut for them to work on. After a while the mowers come back, thoroughly tired and exhausted with their debauch, and go on feebly to work. There is hope again. But our climate is notoriously changeable. A fortnight of warm, close heat is pretty sure to breed a thunderstorm. Accordingly, just as the scythes begin to lay the tall grass prostrate again, there is a growl in the sky, and down comes the rain. A thunderstorm unsettles the weather, and here is perhaps another week lost. The farmer dares not discharge his haymakers, because he does not know but that he may require them any day. They are put to turn dung-heaps, clean out the yards, pick up the weeds in the garden, and such like little jobs, over which they can dawdle as much as they like. All the while they are on full pay. Now, what manufacturer could endure such conduct as this? Is it not enough to drive a saint out of his patience? Of course the larger farmers who can afford it have the resource of the mowing-machine, but there are hundreds and thousands of farms upon which its sharp rattle has not yet been heard. There is still a great divergence of opinion as to its merits, many maintaining that it does not cut so close to the ground, and therefore wastes a large percentage of the crop, and others that the action of the scissor-like knives bruises the grass, and prevents it growing up into a good after-math. Therefore many farmers who could afford it will not admit the mowing-machine into their fields, and the mowers may still be seen at work over miles and miles of meadow, and are still the plague of the agriculturist. The arable farmer has just the same difficulty to keep his labourers at their work, and unless he is constantly on the watch valuable time is lost daily. In the harvest, however, he has an advantage. The corn is reaped by piece-work, and the labourers therefore strain every nerve to do as much as they can. But then he must be on the lookout to see that they do not "scamp" it. The traditional bacon and greens dinner is passing away, though still the usual fare in the small farmhouses. Most of the fairly well-to-do farmers have a joint twice or three times a week, well supported with every kind of vegetable. There is no attempt at refinement in cooking, but there is plenty of good substantial food. The hill farmer, whose staple is sheep and wool, has generally a great deal of walking or riding to get over in the day. The down farms are sometimes very large, running perhaps in long narrow strips of land for two or three miles. Although he employs a head-shepherd, and even a bailiff, he finds it necessary, if he would succeed in making a profit, to be pretty well ubiquitous. They all want looking after sharply. Not that there is much actual dishonesty; but would any manufacturer endure to have his men sitting doing nothing on their benches for fifteen minutes out of every hour of the working day, just because his back was turned? The hill farmer has, perhaps, a preferable life in some respects to the agriculturist in the vale. He has not so much actual manual labour to get through. On the other hand, he is at a great distance from any town, or even large village; he sees no one during the day, and he has to run great risks. Wool may fall, so may the price of mutton, either of which would derange his calculations; or the fly may destroy his turnips, or the season may be exceptionally dry and unfavourable. His house is lonely, perched on the side of a hill, and exposed to the bitter blasts of winter which sweep over the downs with resistless fury, and which no doors nor windows can exclude. If there should be snow, it is sure to fall in greater quantities on the hills, and, driving before the wind, fills up the hollows, till the roads are impassable for weeks. Taking all the year round, the work of the agriculturist begins and ends with the rising and setting of the sun. There is an exception, because the cows must be milked and foddered nearly as early in the winter, when the sun rises very late, as at other seasons; but then, to make up for that, work ends earlier in the afternoon. In the spring, as the evenings draw out, there is almost always something to be done even after the labourers have left. In harvest time, the superintendence of work continues till late, and in the autumn labour is not unfrequently prolonged into the moonlight, in order to carry the corn. It is a life, on the whole, of hard work. In all this I speak of the ordinary middle-class farmer. The life of the higher class of agriculturists, who possess large capital, and employ bailiffs and all kinds of machinery, is of course not by any means so onerous. It is in general character pretty much that of an independent gentleman, with the addition of the sporting element, and a certain freedom from drawing-room trammels. To get at the physique of the agriculturists, the best plan is to pay a visit to the market-town. Here almost every farmer in the neighbourhood, no matter of what class--highest, middle, or lowest--is nearly sure to be seen on market-days. The upper class come in in their smart waggonettes, or dog-carts, drawn by thoroughly good and stylish horses, which are little, if at all, inferior to those of the gentry. Some of these keep their groom and coachman, who dress in livery of a quiet and subdued kind, but still unmistakably a livery. The middle-class come in in traps, or old-fashioned four-wheelers, generally bringing their wives and daughters, to do the shopping of the week. The market-day is, in fact, the event of the week, and the streets of the market-town are the Rotten Row of the neighbourhood. The wives and daughters come in their best dresses, and promenade up and down, and many a flirtation goes on with the young bucks of the district. The lower class of farmers jog in on their mares, rough as cart-horses, and the rider generally so manages to seat himself as to show three or four inches of stocking between his trousers and boots. After the market is over, and the dealing done, the farmers resort to the various inns, and dine at the market ordinary. A very good dinner is usually provided at a low charge on these days. Soup is not usual, the dinner generally beginning with fish, followed by joints, and fowl of various kinds. Wine "whips" are formed, and the sherry circulates freely. There is a regular chairman, always a man of property and influence, and an old frequenter of the place. After dinner they sit an hour or two discussing, not only the price of sheep and wool or mutton, but the political and other events of the day. The Chambers of Agriculture are generally so arranged as to meet on market-days, about an hour after the ordinary finishes, and not unfrequently in the same room. The market-towns derive great benefit from this habit of congregating on the market-day. It is the day, too, for paying visits by the ladies. Gay costumes pass through the streets, and bright eyes look out of the windows of the hotels upon the crowd of farmers. The yards of the various hostelries are made almost impassable by the innumerable variety of vehicles. The young farmers take the opportunity of playing a game at billiards, which they rarely do on other days. The news of the whole countryside is exchanged, and spreads from mouth to mouth, and is carried home and sent farther on its way. One great characteristic is the general good-humour that prevails. The laugh and the joke are frequently heard--it is a kind of moderate gala-day. The fishmonger's shop is emptied, and the contents carried home, this being the only day in the week when fish is bought by the majority of agriculturists. Some towns have only what is called a "gin-and-water" market: that is, the "deal" is begun and concluded from small samples carried in the pocket and examined at an inn over a glass of spirits and water. But in the great market-towns there is now almost always a large room, or hall, set aside for this special purpose. The market begins and concludes at a fixed time, indicated by the ringing of a bell. In this hall the dealers have stands, furnished with desks, at which they may always be found, and here sacks of samples are pitched. There is a clerk of the market, and the current prices are posted up, and afterwards sent to all the local newspapers. The cattle-market used to be carried on entirely in the streets, each farmer selling his own beasts or sheep by private treaty with the dealers. The streets were then often filled with cattle from one end to the other, and were almost impassable for vehicles, and at times not a little dangerous for foot-passengers. Now the practice of selling by auction has become very general, and the cattle are either put into the auctioneer's private yard, or in an enclosure provided by the town authorities. The corn-dealers are a most energetic class of men, well educated, and often employing large capital in their business. They are perpetually travelling, and often attend two markets a day. Having struck a bargain, the farmer and the purchaser adjourn to the hotel, and have a glass of spirits, without which no transaction seems complete. The use of beer has very much declined among the fairly well-to-do agriculturists. They drink it at dinner and lunch, but whenever a glass is taken with a friend, or in calling at an inn, it is almost invariably spirits. Whisky has been most extensively drunk of late years. No other class of men employing so much capital and so many labourers are so simple in their habits as the agriculturists. In dress they adhere to the plainest colours and shapes; there is no attempt to keep pace with the fashion. The materials of the coat and vest are good, and even expensive, but the cut is old and out of date, and the whole effect quite plain. There is no shirt front, no studs, no rings, no kid gloves. The boots are strong and thick, substantial, but not ornamental. A man with his ten or fifteen thousand perhaps will walk down the street buttoned up in an ungainly greatcoat and an old hat, not half so smartly dressed as a well-paid mechanic, and far behind the drapers' assistants in style. There is a species of contempt among them for the meretricious and showy; they believe in the solid. This very fact makes them good friends to shopkeepers, who have no better customers. They carry this leading idea too far, for they admire an article in precisely a corresponding ratio to the money it costs, totally oblivious of all considerations of art or ornament. The first question invariably is, if they are asked to admire anything, "What did it cost?" This results in a heavy and cumbrous style of furniture even in the best farmsteads. Everything must be massive, costly, and strong. Artistic tendencies they have none. They want something durable, and they get it. But on the whole they make marvellously little show for their money. Hundreds of the most substantial agriculturists, whose cheques would be honoured for thousands of pounds, seem absolutely to make no show at all. At the same time it is quite true that some of the rising generation, who have very little to do it on, make a great display with hunters and plated harness, and so forth. But they are not the rule. The generality go just the other way, and live below their income, and take a lower station in society than they might reasonably claim. Farmers are decidedly a marrying class of men. The farm is a business in which a wife is of material service, and can really be a helpmate. The lower class of farmers usually marry quite as much or more for that reason than any others. The higher classes of agriculturists feel that they have a right to marry because they too can show a home in which to keep a wife. Though they may not have any large amount of capital, still they possess a good house and sufficient provision. They are, therefore, a marrying class of men, but do not commonly contract matrimonial alliances very early in life. The great object of an agriculturist who has sons is to get them settled in farms, and it is astonishing to what an extent this is carried by men who do not seem to have much capital to start their children with. Instances are common in which a man has three or four sons all in farms, and doing fairly well. One of the greatest difficulties he has to contend against is the necessity of providing education. Where is a farmer, living perhaps two or three miles, often enough four and six miles, from a town, to send his boys to school? The upper class of agriculturists can, of course, afford to have a proper governess at home till they are old enough, and then send them to one of the so-called middle-class schools. The lower class, on the other hand, who do not aspire very high, and whose ideas are little more ambitious than those of their labourers, are contented with the school in the neighbouring village. Till recently these village schools were very poor affairs, something a little better than the old dame school, but not much. But since the new Education Act the lower class of farmers are in a better position with respect to education than those who possess much higher claims to social distinction. Where there is not a school board, the clergyman and the landowners have combined, and built first-rate schools, up to all the requirements of the Act, and attended by properly certified teachers. The lower class farmer, who is troubled with no scruples about the association of his boys with the labourers' children, can send them to this school at a very low charge indeed, and they will there receive a good foundation. But the middle-class farmer--the man who is neither an independent gentleman, nor obliged to live on bacon and greens--is unprovided for, and yet this class is the most numerous. They have better views for their sons than to confine those early impressions upon which so much depends to the narrow and rude, if not coarse manners of the labourers' children. They look higher than that, and they are fully justified in doing so. They do not, therefore, at all relish the idea of sending their boys to the national school of the parish, let it be never so well supplied with teachers. There is another objection to it. It has a faint suspicion of the pauper. Now if there is anything a downright English yeoman abominates more than all the rest it is any approach to the "parish." This is a "parish" school. It is not a paupers' school--that is admitted--but it is a "parish" school, to which the children of men who have often received relief are sent. The yeoman's instinct revolts at it. Attempts have been made to get over this niceness of feeling by erecting a special class-room for farmers' sons, and patriotic baronets have even gone so far as to send their own boys so as to set the example. But it is in vain. The middle-class farmer is above all men exclusive in his ideas. He detests the slightest flavour of communism. He likes to be completely and fully independent. He will not patronise the "parish" school. What then is he to do? At this present moment most farmers' sons are sent into the neighbouring towns to the middle-class schools which are to be found there. If the farmer is within two or three miles the boys walk or ride on ponies every morning. If it is farther than that they go as weekly boarders, and return home every Saturday. The fault in this system is simply and solely in the character of the school. Too often it is a school in name only, where the boys learn next to nothing at all, except mischief. Very few schools exist in these small country towns which afford a good education at a moderate price. It is almost impossible that they should exist without an endowment, as the scholars can never be numerous enough to make the profits exceed the expenditure. The result is that the middle-class farmer cannot give his boys a good education unless he sends them to what is called a middle-class school in some town at a great distance, and this he cannot afford. The sum demanded by these so-called middle-class schools is beyond his reach. He may, perhaps, if he has only one son, indulge in the expensive luxury of a sound and thorough education for him. But if there are several the thing is out of the question. With the girls it is even worse--where can he send them? They cannot very well walk or ride to and fro like the boys to the school in the nearest town, and if they are boarded at such schools, the education given is paltry and meagre in the extreme. A good girls' school is one of the rarest things in the country. The result is that a governess is kept while the girls are young. This governess is underpaid, and has consequently herself been only partially educated. Then as the girls grow older they are sent for a year or two, to "finish" them, to some young ladies' academy, and the ultimate product is a smattering of French and music, and crude ideas of fashion and refinement, which make them dissatisfied with their home and unfit for an agricultural life as the wife of a farmer. The nonsense talked and published of farmers having pianos, and their daughters strumming all day long instead of attending to the dairy, is perfectly absurd. It is quite true that in hundreds of farmhouses, just at the time when the dairy is in full work in the morning, a piano may be heard going. This is the governess instructing the girls when the farmer is not sufficiently rich to send them to a school. But when once these girls are grown up, and have finished their education, poor as it is, and return home to take a part in the household duties, then the piano is never heard in the morning when work is about. The farmer's wife sees to that sharp enough. In the evening it may be heard--and why not? If the agricultural labourer is to be polished up and refined, why on earth should not his employer take a step in advance? It must be remembered that there is very little society in the country; scarcely any one even passing along the road. There are none of those cheap sights and amusements so readily accessible to the poorest in a great city. The wives and daughters of the mechanics and workmen in London can once a week at least afford to enjoy themselves at some theatre or place of amusement. They are far better off in this respect than the daughters of agriculturists who may be worth thousands. These have nothing whatever to amuse themselves with during the long evenings; they cannot even take a stroll out and look at the shop windows. They are surely entitled to the simple and inexpensive amusement of a piano. It is in fact their only resource. There was a statement in the newspapers of farmers taking their daughters to Paris. It is possible that some of the upper class of farmers, who are in fact independent gentlemen, may have done so; but as for the ordinary middle-class farmers, such a thing is utterly unheard of. It is very few of them who even take their wives to London or the seaside for a week. But even if they did, it is nothing more than they are entitled to do. Half the tradesmen who do such things do not possess anything like the income of the farmers. The fact is, that the agriculturists are a singularly stay-at-home race of men. The great majority never leave their farms to go farther than the market-town from one year's end to the other. Above all classes they are attached to their homes, and slow to go away even temporarily. To such a length is this feeling carried that men have been known to go partially insane for a while at the prospect of having to quit a farm through a landlord's decease, even though no appreciable pecuniary loss was involved. The agriculturists are a remarkably observant race, and as a rule peculiarly well-informed. This is contrary to the popular belief, which represents the farmer as rude and ignorant, a pot-bellied beer-drinker, and nothing more. But the popular belief is a delusion. I do not say that they are literary or scientific in their tastes and private pursuits. There are no great names among them in geology, or astronomy, or anthropology, or any other science. They are not artists in any sense. But they are singularly well-informed. They possess more general knowledge than any other class, and can converse on subjects with which townsmen seem unacquainted. Many of them have very fair libraries, not extensive, but containing books of sterling excellence. Farming is necessarily an isolated business--there is little society. Except on market-days, there is scarcely any interchange of conversation. There is, too, at certain seasons of the year a good deal of leisure. What books they own, therefore, are well read, and the contents reflected upon. It is that habit of thinking over what is read that makes all the difference. It is impossible to avoid being struck with the immense amount of general information possessed by some agriculturists, and the wide field over which their knowledge ranges. Yet with all this knowledge and power of reflection they still remain attached to the old-world system of politics, religion, and social relations. The habits of intemperance which were at one time a just and standing reproach against the agriculturist have almost entirely disappeared. A drunken farmer is now unknown. They are as fond as ever of offering hospitality to a friend, and as ready to take a social glass--no total abstainers amongst them; but the steady hard-drinking sot has passed away. The old dodge of filling the bottle with gin instead of water, and so pouring out pure spirit, instead of spirit and water, when the guests were partially intoxicated, in order to complete the process, is no more known. They do not drink more than the inhabitants of towns. It is a singular fact that with so many streams and ponds scattered about the country within easy reach, the farmers do not care for fishing. A farmer engaged in fishing is a rarity indeed. They are eagerly fond of fox-hunting, coursing, and shooting, but fishing is a dead letter. A party will sometimes go out and net a pond, but as for fishing proper, with rod and line, it is almost unknown. Every chance of shooting is eagerly snatched at. In May the young rooks are shot, after which the gun is put aside for a while. At the end of July some of the young rabbits are ready, and are occasionally knocked over. Very few tenant farmers shoot game even when they could do so, leaving that for some neighbouring gentleman with whom they are friendly, and this too without any remuneration, the fact being that winged game does little damage. But they wage unceasing war on the rabbits, with dog and gun and ferret. All the winter long they are hunted in every possible way. This is, of course, on farms where the tenant has permission to kill the rabbits. Whist and post and pair are the staple indoor amusements. Of all businesses that of agriculture is peculiarly adapted to descend from father to son. In point of fact, farms so frequently pass from the father to the son as to be looked upon almost as a certain inheritance. In agriculture, then, it must be expected that the effects of inherited instincts and ideas should be very plainly shown. From this cause arises the persistent and unreasoning Conservatism of the mass of agriculturists. Out of a list of one hundred farmers, I find that one resides upon a farm which has been in the occupation of members of the same family for three hundred years. He possessed a series of documents, receipts, special agreements, and so on, proving that descent beyond all cavil; but with the usual want of proper appreciation for antiquities, most of these papers have been committed to the flames; still there is no question of the fact, which can still be shown from the landlord's family archives. Nominally that farm has been in the occupation of one family for ten generations, reckoning by the ordinary calculation of thirty years to each. But this average is not fairly applicable to the agricultural life, which is generally long, and occasionally extends into extreme old age. There were probably about eight successors if the line was unbroken; if not, there may of course have been treble that number. A man may be excused some amount of pride when he thinks of such a continuance as this in one spot, for it means not only an exceptional vitality of race, but an exceptional perseverance in the paths of honesty and straightforwardness. But with this pride it also engenders a stubborn unchangeableness, a dislike and hatred of all things new and unfamiliar, a nervous dread of reform. Faithful to the logic of their class, such men as these may in resisting innovations go to lengths which may appear foolish and wrong to others who live in a widely different social atmosphere. To some extent the bitter opposition to change in the position of the labourer, which is thrown in the teeth of the tenant farmer, is the outcome of these very centuries of steady adherence to all that they believed upright and manly. Another name on my list has been known at one spot for fully two hundred years. These men attained a position beyond that of yeoman, but they never sank beneath it. The rise of many of the great county families really dates from the success of some ancestor, or the collective success of a series of ancestors, in agriculture. They perhaps claim some knight or nobleman as the founder of the race, although he may have really done nothing for the practical advantage of the family; the true founders being merely proprietors of land, dignified as J.P.'s, and sometimes sheriffs, throwing off branches into the clerical and legal professions. The real ancestor was the sturdy yeoman who accumulated the money to purchase the farm he tilled, and whose successors had the good sense to go on adding acre to acre till they finally expanded into the wide domains of the modern squire. Not the knight whose effigy in brass paves the aisle of the parish church laid the corner-stone of the wealth and power of to-day, but the shrewd and close-fisted producer and dealer in wool and corn. Their true claim to aristocratic privileges and importance is the sense of centuries of independence. These others of whom we have spoken, the yeoman who never aspired beyond the yeoman's position, are as ancient and as "worshipful"--to use an old and disused term--as they. I do not instance these descents of three and two hundred years as extraordinary, because I believe that they could be paralleled and even extended by inquiry, but because they came under my own observation. There are others on the list ranging from one hundred and sixty down to sixty and eighty years of continued occupation. But not to go into details, I reckon on an average that thirty names out of a hundred have been the occupiers for three generations; forty for two generations; twenty for one hundred and fifty years; and ten are new comers. But a still more curious and instructive fact is the permanence of certain names over a wide section of country; so much so that in places it is a common saying that one has only to be an A, or a B, or a T, to be certain of getting a farm. Whole parishes seem related, and not very distantly related either; and yet there is not the remotest class-feeling or _esprit de corps_. The isolation and independence of a farm life are powerful agents in preventing anything like cohesion. Any one who will take the trouble to look down the parish register in a strictly agricultural district will be forcibly struck with the permanence of certain names. Page after page contains nothing but records of the marriages, intermarriages, burials, baptisms, and so on of two or three generic names. The population appears to have been stationary for scores upon scores of years. Say what you will, ridicule it as you like, there is a charm clinging round that which time has hallowed; and even the man of the hour, the successful speculator, yields to this. It is his most eager desire to become a landed proprietor, and if possible he buys a place where he can exercise manorial rights. Taking these things into consideration, it is only reasonable to admit that agriculture is a profession in which a man may, above all others, be excused if he manifests a certain amount of irritability at the prospect of change. The slow round of uneventful years, the long continuance of manual labour, the perpetual iteration of a few ideas, in time produce in the mind of the most powerfully intellectual men a species of unconscious creed; and this creed is religiously handed down from generation to generation. Setting aside those who have gone into agriculture as a science, and adapt everything to commercial principles--and they are as yet not very numerous--the great mass of farmers believe nearly the same now as they did two centuries ago. Looking through a farmer's calendar published in the first few years of this century, and containing a complete _résumé_ of the system of agriculture practised then, I was struck by the remarkable fact that in all main features it was the same as that in use now. We have heard so much of the rapid progress of agriculture, of the important changes introduced, and of the complete revolution which has taken place, that this statement may appear incredible. It is nevertheless the fact that that book might be put with advantage into the hands of any young man about to enter upon a farm. With the exception of those operations which are now performed by steam, and making an allowance for the altered conditions introduced by the abolition of the Corn Laws, the instructions given there are useful down to this very day. Here is the knowledge of the peculiarities and requirements of stock slowly accumulated during ages of agriculture, and at last written down and printed for easy reference. However much the aspect of politics may change, or however much the means of locomotion and communication may be facilitated by the introduction of steam, Nature still remains unaltered. The cows and sheep retain their instincts and their internal economy; their modes of feeding, times of rest, and seasons of increase, never vary. The earth too has not changed. The corn is sown at the same time; Nature goes on her way as before, heedless of the railway rattle. So it is that the details of management in this book are as useful now as then, more than two generations since. It is the same with the unwritten faith of the men who labour and live among these things. Go out among them, and collect from the majority their views and sentiments, and in this age of progress they will be found to correspond almost exactly with those of their forefathers, as recorded by history. They know that such is the fact themselves; they know too that it would subject them to sharp criticism and reproof if they published their real opinions. Therefore they remain silent, and it is only among themselves that these ideas are earnestly insisted on. In the earliest days of agriculture, when Abraham drove his flocks and herds to and fro under the Syrian sun, the father of the family was at once the procreator, the law-giver, the judge, the leader in battle, the priest, and the king. He was absolute master under Heaven of all things visible around him. The Pope claims to be infallible now, and to be the vicegerent of Heaven, but the patriarch of old actually possessed those powers upon his own domain. His sons were under his complete control--he could sacrifice them alive to his God if he chose, or banish them from their native land. His daughters were still more completely in his hand, to be done with as he thought fit. His servants, his slaves, were as much his as the wooden pole of his tent, or the very sandals he walked in. They were as dust before him. There was no coming of age in those days; no escape after the twenty-first year. The tie lasted till his death. At forty his sons and daughters were as much his own as they were at ten years old. They tell us that this system, to some extent, still survives in China. In all fundamental points such is the creed of the agricultural race of our own day. Circumstances have, no doubt, had something to do with the production and elaboration of such a faith. In no other profession do the sons and the daughters remain so long, and so naturally, under the parental roof. The growth of half-a-dozen strong sons was a matter of self-congratulation, for each as he came to man's estate took the place of a labourer, and so reduced the money-expenditure. The daughters worked in the dairy, and did not hesitate to milk occasionally, or, at least, to labour in the hayfield. They spun, too, the home-made stuffs in which all the family were clothed. A man's children were his servants. They could not stir a step without his permission. Obedience and reverence to the parent was the first and greatest of all virtues. Its influence was to extend through life, and through the whole social system. They were to choose the wife or the husband approved of at home. At thirty, perhaps, the more fortunate of the sons were placed on farms of their own nominally, but still really under the father's control. They dared not plough or sow except in the way that he approved. Their expenditure was strictly regulated by his orders. This lasted till his death, which might not take place for another twenty years. At the present moment I could point out ten or twelve such cases, where men of thirty or forty are in farms, and to all appearance perfectly free and independent, and yet as completely under the parental thumb as they were at ten years old. Why do they not throw off the burden? Because they have imbibed the same creed, and intend to carry it out in their own persons. These men, if they think thus of their own offspring, cannot be expected to be more tender towards the lower class around them. They did at one time, and some still wish to, extend the same system to the labouring population. As there was in those days little or no work for a man but upon a farm, and as the cottages were chiefly in the hands of the farmers, there was plenty of opportunity for carrying out these ideas. The old method of poor relief gave another handle. They did not want only to indulge in tyranny; what they did was to rule the labouring poor in the same way as they did their own children--nothing more nor less. These labouring men, like his own children, must do as the farmer thought best. They must live here or there, marry so and so, or forfeit favour--in short, obey the parental head. Each farmer was king in his own domain; the united farmers of a parish were kings of the whole place. They did not use the power circumstances gave them harshly; but they paid very little regard to the liberty of the subject. To this very day something of the same sort goes on. It is wonderful with what eager zeal many of the old-style farmers enter into the details of a labourer's life, and carefully ascertain his birth, his parentage, his marriage, his wife's parentage, and the very minutest matters. These facts thus accumulated are talked over in the boardroom when an applicant comes to the union for relief. Very often such special knowledge possessed by a guardian of the antecedents of the applicant is most useful and beneficial in enabling the Board to extend assistance to a deserving man. What I wish to show is the all-permeating influence of the parental system in the mind of the typical agriculturist. In religion it is, or lately was, the same. It was not a matter with the farmer of the Athanasian creed, or the doctrine of salvation by faith, or any other theological dogma. To him the parish church was the centre of the social system of the parish. It was the keystone of that parental plan of government that he believed in. The very first doctrine preached from the pulpit was that of obedience. "Honour thy father and mother" was inculcated there every seventh day. His father went to church, he went to church himself, and everybody else ought to go. It was as much a social gathering as the dinner at the market ordinary, or the annual audit dinner of their common landlord. The dissenter, who declined to pay church-rates, was an unsocial person. He had left the circle. It was not the theology that they cared about, it was the social nonconformity. In a spiritual sense, too, the clergyman was the father of the parish, the shepherd of the flock--it was a part of the great system. To go a step farther, in political affairs the one leading idea still threaded itself through all. The proper parliamentary representative--the natural law-giver--was the landlord of the district. He was born amongst them, walked about amongst them, had been in their houses many a time. He knew their wants, their ideas, their views. His own interest was identical with theirs. Therefore he was the man. The logic is indisputable. What is more, they acted up to it. In agricultural districts it is not uncommon even now to find men of diametrically opposite political views to the candidate at an election voting for and supporting him, simply and solely because he is the local man. It is natural and right that he should represent them. That one word "right" is the key to the whole ethical system of the agriculturists. They cherish and maintain their belief in right, and in their "rights"--by which they understand much the same thing--even when unaccompanied by any gain or advantage. In brief outline, such is the creed of the agriculturists as a body. It is neither written nor spoken, but it is a living faith which influences every hour of their lives. This faith must ever be borne in mind by those who wish to understand the movements of the agricultural world. Without making a proper allowance for it, the farmers will be easily misjudged. The labouring class are imbued to a great extent with the very same ideas. They stick to their rights. They will not give up an old pathway that their fathers used, not if one twice as convenient be offered in lieu of it. They have a right to go that way, and go that way they will. They are brutally tyrannical over their children. I use those words deliberately. He who spares the rod spoils the child, is the practical rule of their conduct. They seem to look upon their offspring as merely slaves. They are fond of them in their way, no doubt, but the law of implicit obedience is maintained by dint of blows and stripes. The children are kicked, punched, and thrashed perpetually. A good ground-ash stick is the gospel of the labouring man. They carry the same plan into their work. How many carters have been severely fined and imprisoned for whipping, and sometimes even maiming, the boys under their commands? And yet the old practice still continues, only a little checked by wholesome terror of the law. Despite of all the teaching of the Radical papers, all the whispers of the Methodist itinerant preachers, despite the hatred which the Labourers' Union agents endeavour to sow between the labourer and the farmer, still the great mass of labourers at the last election,[1] wherever they had a vote, supported the local candidate--the man who represented the soil--and declined to do more than listen to the brilliant promises held out by the party of change. So strong above all things is the force of tradition and custom. The agriculturists are firmly and earnestly wedded to that unwritten creed which has grown up among them out of the past. Why, then, should they be so hardly dealt with, more than others, for adhering to this faith? Argue with them, educate them up to your standard if you like--but is it fair, is it just, is it in accordance with that spirit of liberalism and tolerance which their opponents profess, to taunt, abuse, and bully to the full length that words will permit? They are not facile at expression, these same men of the soil. The flow of language seems denied to them. They are naturally a silent race--preferring deeds to speech. They live much with inarticulate nature. It may be, after all, they have learnt some useful and abiding lessons from that intercourse. The old shepherds on the plains of Chaldea, under the starry skies of the East, watched the motions of those shining bodies till they slowly built up a religion, which, mixed with much dross, nevertheless contained some truths which educated men profess to this hour. These English farmers also observe the changes of the seasons, and watch the face of heaven. Their deepest convictions are not to be lightly set aside. There are men amongst them of great powers of thought. I remember one at this moment whose grand old head would have been a study for an artist. A large head he had, well-balanced, broad and high at the forehead, deep-set eyes, straight nose, and firm chin--every outward sign of the giant brain within. But the man was dumb. The thoughts that came to him he could communicate roughly to his friends, but the pen failed him. The horny hand which results from manual labour is too stiff to wield the swiftly-gliding quill. But there is another species of handwriting which is called Work--a handwriting which will endure when the scribblings of the hour are utterly forgotten. This writing he laboured at earnestly and eagerly, not for his own good either, for it absorbed his own fortune, no small one, in the attempt to realise his conception of machinery which would double the yield of food. It has been done since his time, other men stepping over the bridge of experience which he had built. Now this man, who, on the principles of the opponents of the agriculturists, was a benefactor to his species, and a pioneer of true progress, was, nevertheless, one of the firmest, staunchest, most uncompromising supporters of that creed which they are endeavouring to destroy, and which may be stated thus: "I believe in the Sovereign, the Church, and the Land: the Sovereign being the father of the people in a temporal sense; the Church in a spiritual sense; and the Land being the only substantial and enduring means of subsistence. Cotton, coal, and iron cannot be eaten, but the land gives us corn and beef; therefore, the land stands first and foremost, and the agriculturist, as the tiller of land, possesses an inalienable right which it is his duty to maintain, and in so doing he is acting for the good of the community. I believe that the son and the daughter should obey their parents, and show regard to their wishes even when legally independent. Also that the servant should obey his employer. The connection between employer and employed does not cease with the payment of wages. It is the duty of the servant to show consideration for the advice of the master; and the master is not free from responsibility as to the education and the comfort of the man. The master is bound by all laws, human and divine, to pay a fair amount of wages for a day's work. If he does not do so he robs the workman as much as if he stole the money from his pocket. The workman is equally bound to do his work properly, and in neglecting to do so he robs his employer. To demand more wages than has been earned is an attempt at robbery. Both master and man should respect authority, and abide by its decisions." Such is a slight outline of the home-life and the faith of the farmer. FOOTNOTE: [1] Feb. 1874. _THE LABOURER'S DAILY LIFE._ Many labourers can trace their descent from farmers or well-to-do people, and it is not uncommon to find here and there a man who believes that he is entitled to a large property in Chancery, or elsewhere, as the heir. They are very fond of talking of these things, and naturally take a pride in feeling themselves a little superior in point of ancestry to the mass of labourers. How this descent from a farmer to a labourer is managed there are at this moment living examples going about the country. I knew a man who for years made it the business of his life to go round from farm to farm soliciting charity, and telling a pitiful tale of how he had once been a farmer himself. This tale was quite true, and as no class likes to see their order degraded, he got a great deal of relief from the agriculturists where he was known. He was said to have been wild in his youth, and now in his old age was become a living representative of the farmer reduced to a labourer. This reduction is, however, usually a slow process, and takes two generations to effect--not two generations of thirty years each, but at least two successors in a farm. Perhaps the decline of a farming family began in an accession of unwonted prosperity. The wheat or the wool went up to a high price, and the farmer happened to be fortunate and possessed a large quantity of those materials. Or he had a legacy left him, or in some way or other made money by good fortune rather than hard work. This elated his heart, and thinking to rise still higher in life, he took another, or perhaps two more large farms. But to stock these required more money than he could produce, and he had to borrow a thousand or so. Then the difficulty of attending to so large an acreage, much of it distant from his home, made it impossible to farm in the best and most profitable manner. By degrees the interest on the loan ate up all the profit on the new farms. Then he attempted to restore the balance by violent high farming. He bought manures to an unprecedented extent, invested in costly machinery--anything to produce a double crop. All this would have been very well if he had had time to wait till the grass grew; but meantime the steed starved. He had to relinquish the additional farms, and confine himself to the original one with a considerable loss both of money and prestige. He had no energy to rise again; he relapsed into slow, dawdling ways, perpetually regretting and dwelling on the past, yet making no effort to retrieve it. This is a singular and strongly marked characteristic of the agricultural class, taken generally. They work and live and have their being in grooves. So long as they can continue in that groove, and go steadily forward, without much thought or trouble beyond that of patience and perseverance, all goes well; but if any sudden jolt should throw them out of this rut, they seem incapable of regaining it. They say, "I have lost my way; I shall never get it again." They sit down and regret the past, granting all their errors with the greatest candour; but the efforts they make to regain their position are feeble in the extreme. So our typical unfortunate farmer folds his hands, and in point of fact slumbers away the rest of his existence, content with the fireside and a roof over his head, and a jug of beer to drink. He does not know French, he has never heard of Metternich, but he puts the famous maxim in practice, and, satisfied with to-day, says in his heart, _Après nous le Déluge_. No one disturbs him; his landlord has a certain respect and pity for him--respect, perhaps, for an old family that has tilled his land for a century, but which he now sees is slowly but irretrievably passing away. So the decayed farmer dozes out his existence. Meantime his sons are coming on, and it too often happens that the brief period of sunshine and prosperity has done its evil work with them too. They have imbibed ideas of gentility and desire for excitement utterly foreign to the quiet, peaceful life of an agriculturist. They have gambled on the turf and become involved. Notwithstanding the fall of their father from his good position, they still retain the belief that in the end they shall find enough money to put all to rights; but when the end comes there is a deficiency. Among them there is perhaps one more plodding than the rest. He takes the farm, and keeps a house for the younger children. In ten years he becomes a bankrupt, and the family are scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. The plodding one becomes a bailiff, and lives respectably all his life; but his sons are never educated, and he saves no money; there is nothing for them but to go out to work as farm labourers. Such is something like the usual way in which the decline and fall of a farming family takes place, though it may of course arise from unforeseen circumstances, quite out of the control of the agriculturist. In any case the children graduate downwards till they become labourers. Nowadays many of them emigrate, but in the long time that has gone before, when emigration was not so easy, many hundreds of families have thus become reduced to the level of the labourers they once employed. So it is that many of the labourers of to-day bear names which less than two generations ago were well known and highly respected over a wide tract of country. It is natural for them to look back with a certain degree of pleasure upon that past, and some may even have been incited to attempt a return to the old position. But the great majority, the mass, of the agricultural labourers have been labourers time out of mind. Their fathers were labourers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers have all worked upon the farms, and very often almost continuously during that long period of time upon the farms in one parish. All their relations have been, and still are, labourers, varied by one here who has become a tinker, or one there who keeps a small roadside beerhouse. When this is the case, when a man and all his ancestors for generations have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, it naturally follows that the present representative of the family holds strongly to the traditions, the instincts, acquired during the slow process of time. What those instincts are will be better gathered from a faithful picture of his daily life. Most of the agricultural labourers are born in a thatched cottage by the roadside, or in some narrow lane. This cottage is usually an encroachment. In the olden time, when land was cheap, and the competition for it dull, there were many strips and scraps which were never taken any notice of, and of which at this hour no record exists either in the parochial papers or the Imperial archives. Probably this arose from the character of the country in the past, when the greater part was open, or, as it was called, champaign land, without hedge, or ditch, or landmark. Near towns a certain portion was enclosed generally by the great landowners, or for the use of the tradesmen. There was also a large enclosure called the common land, on which all burgesses or citizens had a right to feed so many cattle, sheep, or horses. As a rule the common land was not enclosed by hedges in fields, though instances do occur in which it was. There were very few towns in the reign of Charles II. that had not got their commons attached to them; but outside and beyond these patches of cultivation round the towns the country was open, unenclosed, and the boundaries ill-defined. The king's highway ran from one point to another, but its course was very wide. Roads were not then macadamised and strictly confined to one line. The want of metalling, and the consequent fearful ruts and sloughs, drove vehicles and travellers further and further from what was the original line, till they formed a track perhaps a score or two of yards wide. When fields became more generally enclosed it was still only in patches, and these strips and spaces of green sward were left utterly uncared for and unnoticed. These were encamped upon by the gipsies and travelling folk, and their unmolested occupation no doubt suggested to the agricultural labourer that he might raise a cottage upon such places, or cultivate it for his garden. I know of one spot at this present moment which was enclosed by an agricultural labourer fully sixty years ago. It is an oval piece of ground of considerable size, situated almost exactly in the centre of a very valuable estate. He and his descendants continued to crop this garden of theirs entirely unmolested for the whole of that time, paying no rent whatever. It soon, however, became necessary to enlarge the size of the fields, which were small, in order to meet the requirements of the modern style of agriculture. This oval piece was surrounded by hedges of enormous growth, and the cultivator was requested to remove to another piece more out of the way. He refused to do so, and when the proprietors of the surrounding estate came to inquire into the circumstances they found that they could do nothing. He had enjoyed undisturbed possession for sixty years; he had paid no rent--no quit rent or manor dues of any kind. But still further, when they came to examine the maps and old documents, no mention whatever appeared of this particular patch of ground. It was utterly unnoticed; it was not recorded as any man's property. The labourer therefore retained possession. This was an extraordinary case, because the encroachment took place in the middle of a cultivated estate, where one would have thought the tenants would have seen to it. Commonly the squatters pitched on a piece of land--a long unused strip--running parallel to the highway or lane. This was no one's property; it was the property of the nation, which had no immediate representative to look after its interests. The surrounding farmers did not care to interfere; it was no business of theirs. The highway board, unless the instance was very glaring, and some actual obstruction of the road was caused, winked at the trespass. Most of them were farmers, and did not wish to interfere with a poor man, who they knew had no other way of getting a house of his own. By-and-by, when the cottage was built, the labourer was summoned to the court-leet of the manor, and was assessed in quit rent, a mere nominal sum, perhaps fourpence or a shilling a year. He had no objection to this, because it gave him a title. As long as the quit rent was duly paid, and he could produce the receipt, he was safe in the occupation of his cottage, and no one could turn him out. To be assessed by the court-leet in fact established his title. Some of these court-leets or manor courts are only held at intervals of three years, or even more, and are generally composed of farmers, presided over by the legal agent of the lord of the manor. The tenants of the manor attend to pay their quit rent for the preceding years, and it often happens that if the cottager has been ill, or is weak and infirm, the farmers composing the court subscribe and pay the quit rent for him. The first step when a labourer intends to become a squatter is to enclose the strip of land which he has chosen. This he does by raising a low bank of earth round it, on which he plants elder bushes, as that shrub grows quickest, and in the course of two seasons will form a respectable fence. Then he makes a small sparred gate which he can fasten with a padlock, and the garden is complete. To build the cottage is quite another matter. That is an affair of the greatest importance, requiring some months of thought and preparation. The first thing is to get the materials. If it is a clay country, of course bricks must be chosen; but in stone countries there are often quarries on the farm on which he works. His employer will let him have a considerable quantity of stone for nothing, and the rest at a nominal charge, and will lend him a horse and cart at a leisure season; so that in a very short time he can transport enough stone for his purpose. If he has no such friend, there is almost sure to be in every parish a labouring man who keeps a wretched horse or two, fed on the grass by the roadside, and gains his living by hauling. Our architect engages this man at a low price to haul his materials for him. The lime to make mortar he must buy. In the parish there is nearly sure to be at least one native mason, who works for the farmers, putting up pig-styes, mending walls, and doing small jobs of that kind. This is the builder who engages to come on Saturday afternoons or in the evenings, while the would-be householder himself is the hod-bearer and mixes the mortar. Nine times out of ten the site for the cottage is chosen so as to have a ditch at the back. This ditch acts at once as the cesspool and the sewer, and, unless it happens to have a good fall, speedily becomes a nuisance to the neighbourhood. A certain quantity of wood is of course required in building even this humble edifice. This is either given by the farmers or is purchased at a nominal rate. The ground plan is extremely simple. It consists of two rooms, oblong, and generally of the same size--one to live in, the other to sleep in--for the great majority of the squatters' hovels have no upstair rooms. At one end there is a small shed for odds and ends. This shed used to be built with an oven, but now scarcely any labourers bake their own bread, but buy of the baker. The walls of the cottage having been carried up some six feet, or six feet six--just a little higher than a man's head--the next process is to construct the roof, which is a very simple process. The roof is then thatched, sometimes with flags cut from the brooks, but more usually with straw, and practically the cottage is now built, for there are no indoor fittings to speak of. The chimney is placed at the end of the room set apart for day use. There is no ceiling, nothing between the floor and the thatch and rafters, except perhaps at one end, where there is a kind of loft. The floor consists simply of the earth itself rammed down hard, or sometimes of rough pitching-stones, with large interstices between them. The furniture of this room is of the simplest description. A few chairs, a deal table, three or four shelves, and a cupboard, with a box or two in the corners, constitute the whole. The domestic utensils are equally few, and strictly utilitarian. A great pot, a kettle, a saucepan, a few plates, dishes and knives, half-a-dozen spoons, and that is about all. But on the mantelpiece there is nearly sure to be a few ornaments in crockery, bought from some itinerant trader. The walls are whitewashed. The bedroom is plainly and rudely furnished. Some cottages do not even attain to this degree of comfort. They consist of four posts set in the ground which support the cross-beam and the roof, and the walls are made of wattle and daub, _i.e._, of small split willow sticks, put upright and daubed over with coarse plaster. The roofs of these cottages are often half hidden with rank grass, moss, and sillgreen, a vegetation perhaps encouraged by the drippings from a tree overhanging the roof; and the situation of the cottage is itself in many cases low and damp. But there is a class of squatters, who possess habitations more fit for human beings. These were originally built by men who had saved a little money, had showed, perhaps, a certain talent for hedge carpentering or thatching, become tinkers, or even blacksmiths. In such capacities a man may save a little money--not much, perhaps £30 or £40 at furthest. With the aid of this he manages to build a very tidy cottage, in the face of the statement made by architects and builders that a good cottage cannot be erected under £120. Their dwellings do not, indeed, compete with the neat, prim, and business-like work of the professional builder; but still they are roomy and substantial cottages. The secret of cheapness lies in the fact that they work themselves at the erection, and do not entrust some one else with a contract. Moreover, they make shifts and put up with drawbacks as no business-man could possibly do. The materials they purchase are cheap and of second-class condition, but good enough to hold together and to last some time. Their rude beams and rafters would not satisfy the eye of a landed proprietor, but they hold up the roof-tree equally well. Every pound they spend goes its full length, and not a penny is wasted. After a while a substantial-looking cottage rises up, whitewashed and thatched. It has an upper storey with two rooms, and two, at least, downstairs, with the inevitable lean-to or shed, without which no labourer's cottage is complete. This is more like a house, the residence of a man, than that of the poorer squatter. The floor is composed of flag-stones, in this case always carefully washed and holystoned. There are the same chairs and deal table as in the poorer cottage, but there are many more domestic utensils, and the chimney-piece is ornamented with more crockery figures. A few coarse prints hang against the walls. Some of these old prints are great curiosities in their way--hardly valuable enough for a collection, but very amusing. A favourite set of prints is the ride of Dick Turpin to York on Black Bess, representing every scene in that famous gallop. The upstair rooms are better furnished, and the beds often really good. Some of these cottages in summer-time really approach something of that Arcadian beauty which is supposed to prevail in the country. Everything, of course, depends upon the character of the inmates. The dull tint of the thatch is relieved here and there by great patches of sillgreen, which is religiously preserved as a good herb, though the exact ailments for which it is "good" are often forgotten. One end of the cottage is often completely hidden with ivy, and woodbine grows in thickest profusion over the porch. Near the door there are almost always a few cabbage-rose trees, and under the windows grow wall-flowers and hollyhocks, sweet peas, columbine, and sometimes the graceful lilies of the valley. The garden stretches in a long strip from the door, one mass of green. It is enclosed by thick hedges, over which the dog-rose grows, and the wild convolvulus will blossom in the autumn. Trees fill up every available space and corner--apple trees, pear trees, damsons, plums, bullaces--all varieties. The cottagers seem to like to have at least one tree of every sort. These trees look very nice in the spring when the apple blossom is out, and again in the autumn when the fruit is ripe. Under the trees are gooseberry bushes, raspberries, and numbers of currants. The patches are divided into strips producing potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, onions, radishes, parsnips; in this kitchen produce, as with the fruit, they like to possess a few of all kinds. There is generally a great bunch of rhubarb. In odd corners there are sure to be a few specimens of southernwood, mugwort, and other herbs; not for use, but from adherence to the old customs. The "old people" thought much of these "yherbs," so they must have some too, as well as a little mint and similar potherbs. In the windows you may see two or three geraniums, and over the porch a wicker cage, in which the "ousel cock, with orange-tawny bill," pours out his rich melodious notes. There is hardly a cottage without its captive bird, or tame rabbit, or mongrel cur, which seems as much attached to his master as more high-bred dogs to their owners. These better cottages are extremely pleasing to look upon. There is an old English, homely look about them. I know a man now whose cottage is ornamented much in the way I have described, a man of sixty, who can neither read nor write, and is rude and uncouth in speech, yet everything about him seems pleasant and happy. To my eye the thatch and gables, and picturesque irregularity of this class of cottages, are more pleasing than the modern glaring red brick and prim slate of dwellings built to order, where everything is cut with a precise uniformity. If a man can be encouraged to build his own house, depend upon it it is better for him and his neighbours than that he should live in one which is not his own. The sense of ownership engenders a pride in the place, and all his better feelings are called into play. Some of these cottagers, living in such houses as these, are the very best labourers to be had. They stay on one farm a lifetime, and never leave it--an invaluable aid to a farmer. They frequently possess some little special knowledge of carpentering or blacksmith's work, which renders them extremely useful, and at the same time increases their earnings. These men are the real true peasantry, quiet and peaceful, yet strong and courageous. These are the class that should be encouraged by every possible means; a man who keeps his little habitation in the state I have described, who ornaments it within, and fills his garden with fruit and flowers, though he may be totally unable to read or to speak correctly, is nevertheless a good and useful citizen, and an addition to the stability of the State. Though these cottages are worth the smallest sums comparatively, it is interesting to note with what pride and satisfaction the possessors contemplate leaving them to their children. Of course this very feeling, where there are quarrelsome relations, often leads to bickerings and strife. It is astonishing with what tenacity a man who thinks he has a claim to a part of such a small estate will cling to his cause, and will not hesitate to spend to maintain his claim all his little earnings on the third-class lawyers whom the agricultural poor mostly patronise. Even after every shadow of legal chance is gone, he still loudly declares his right; and there is more squabbling about the inheritance of these places than over the succession to great domains. Another class of labourers' cottages is found chiefly in the villages. These were not originally erected for the purpose to which they are now applied; they were farmhouses in the days when small farms were the rule, or they were built for tradesmen who have long since departed. These buildings are divided into two, three, or more habitations, each with its family; and many makeshifts have to be resorted to to render them decent and comfortable. This class of cottage is to be avoided if possible, because the close and forced intercourse which must take place between the families generally leads to quarrels. Perhaps there is one pump for the entire building, and one wants to use it just at the moment that another requires water; or there is only one gateway to the court, and the passage is obstructed by the wheelbarrow of the other party. It is from these places that the greater part of the malcontents go up to the magistrates in petty sessions. It is rare, indeed, that the cottager living more or less isolated by the side of the road appears in a court of law. Of course, in these villages there are cottages which have been built expressly for the use of labouring men, and these, like those in the open country, may be divided into three classes--the hovel, the cottage proper, and the model modern cottage. In the villages there is almost sure to be one or more cottages which carries one's idea of Lilliputian dwellings to the extreme. These are generally sheds or outhouses which have been converted into cottages. I entered one not long since which consisted of two rooms, one above and one below, and each of these rooms could not have measured, at a guess, more than six feet six across. I had heard of this place, and expected to find it a perfect den of misery and wretchedness. No such thing. To my surprise the woman who opened the door was neatly clad, clean, and bright. The floor of the cottage was of ordinary flag-stones, but there was a ceiling whitewashed and clean. A good fire was burning in the grate--it was the middle of winter--and the room felt warm and comfortable. The walls were completely covered with engravings from the _Illustrated London News_. The furniture was equal to the furniture of the best cottages, and everything was extremely clean. The woman said they were quite comfortable; and although they could have had a larger cottage many times since, they never wished to change, as they had no children. That of course made a great difference. I never should have thought it possible for two human beings to have existed, much less been comfortable, in such a diminutive place. Another cottage I know contains but one room altogether, which is about eight feet square; it is inhabited by a solitary old woman, and looks like a toy-house. One or two such places as these may be found in most villages, but it does not by any means follow that because they are small the inhabitants are badly off. The condition they are found in depends entirely upon the disposition of the inmates. If they are slatternly and dirty, the largest cottages would not improve them. In some rural villages a great many cottages may be observed sadly out of repair--the thatch coming off and in holes, the windows broken, and other signs of dilapidation. This is usually set down to the landlord's fault, but if the circumstances are inquired into, it will often be found that the fault lies with the inmates themselves. These cottages are let to labourers at a merely nominal rent, and with them a large piece of allotment ground. But although they thus get a house and garden almost free, they refuse to do the slightest or simplest repairs. If the window gets broken--"Oh, let it stop; the landlord can do that." If a piece of thatch comes off--"Oh, 'tisn't my house; let the landlord do it up." So it goes on till the cottage is ready to tumble to pieces. What is the landlord to do? In his heart he would like to raze the whole village to the ground and rebuild it afresh. But there are not many who can afford such an expense. Then, if it were done, the old women and old men, and infirm persons who find a home in these places, would be driven forth. If the landlord puts up two hundred new cottages, he finds it absolutely necessary to get some kind of return for the capital invested. He does not want more than two and a half per cent.; but to ask that means a rise of perhaps a shilling a week. That is enough; the labourer seeks another tumbledown place where he can live for tenpence a week, and the poor and infirm have to go to the workhouse. So, rather than be annoyed with the endless complaints and troubles, to say nothing of the inevitable loss of money, the landlord allows things to go on as they are. Among our English cottages in out-of-the-way places may be found curious materials for the study of character in humble life. In one cottage you may find an upright, stern-featured man, a great student of the Bible, and fond of using its language whenever opportunity offers, who is the representative of the old Puritan, though the denomination to which he may belong is technically known as the Methodist. He is stern, hard, uncompromising--one who sets duty above affection. His children are not spoiled because the rod is spared. He stands aloof from his fellows, and is never seen at the cottage alehouse, or lingering in groups at the cross-roads. He is certain to be at the "anniversary," _i.e._, the commemoration of the foundation of the Methodist chapel of the parish. The very next cottage may contain the antithesis of this man. This is a genius in his way. He has some idea of art, as you may gather from the fanciful patches into which his garden is divided. He has a considerable talent for construction, and though he has never been an apprentice he can do something towards mending a cart or a door. He makes stands with wires to put flowers in for the farmers' parlours, and strings the dry oak-apples on wire, which he twists into baskets, to hold knicknackeries. He is witty, and has his jest for everybody. He can do something of everything--turn his hand any way--a perfect treasure on the farm. In the old days there was another character in most villages; this was the rhymer. He was commonly the fiddler too, and sang his own verses to tunes played by himself. Since the printing-press has come in, and flooded the country with cheap literature, this character has disappeared, though many of the verses these men made still linger in the countryside. The ordinary adult farm labourer commonly rises at from four to five o'clock; if he is a milker, and has to walk some little distance to his work, even as early as half-past three. Four was the general rule, but of late years the hour has grown later. He milks till five or half-past, carries the yokes to the dairy, and draws water for the dairymaid, or perhaps chops up some wood for her fire to scald the milk. At six he goes to breakfast, which consists of a hunch of bread and cheese as the rule, with now and then a piece of bacon, and as a milker he receives his quart of beer. At breakfast there is no hurry for half-an-hour or so; but some time before seven he is on at the ordinary work of the day. If a milker and very early riser, he is not usually put at the heavy jobs, but allowances are made for the work he has already done. The other men on the farm arrive at six. At eleven, or half-past, comes luncheon, which lasts a full hour, often an hour and a quarter. About three o'clock the task of milking again commences; the buckets are got out with a good deal of rattling and noise, the yokes fitted to the shoulders, and away he goes for an hour or hour and a half of milking. That done, he has to clean up the court and help the dairymaid put the heavier articles in place; then another quart of beer, and away home. The time of leaving off work varies from half-past five to half-past six. At ordinary seasons the other men leave at six, but in haymaking or harvest time they are expected to remain till the job in hand that day is finished, often till eight or half-past. This is compensated for by a hearty supper and almost unlimited beer. The women employed in field labour generally leave at four, and hasten home to prepare the evening meal. The evening meal is the great event of the day. Like the independent gentleman in this one thing, the labourer dines late in the day. His midday meal, which is the farmer's dinner, is his luncheon. The labourer's dinner is taken at half-past six to seven in the evening, after he has got home, unlaced his heavy and cumbrous boots, combed his hair, and washed himself. His table is always well supplied with vegetables, potatoes, and particularly greens, of which he is peculiarly fond. The staple dish is, of course, a piece of bacon, and large quantities of bread are eaten. It is a common thing now, once or twice in the week, for a labourer to have a small joint of mutton, not a prime joint, of course, but still good and wholesome meat. Many of them live in a style, so far as eating and drinking is concerned, quite equal to the small farmers, and far superior to what these small farmers were used to. Instead of beer, the agricultural labourer frequently drinks tea with his dinner--weak tea in large quantities. After the more solid parts comes a salad of onions or lettuce. These men eat quantities which would half kill many townspeople. After dinner, if it is the season of the year, they go out to the allotment and do a little work for themselves, and then, unless the alehouse offers irresistible attractions, to bed. The genuine agricultural labourer goes early to bed. It is necessary for him, after the long toil of the day, on account of the hour at which he has to rise in the morning. Men employed on arable farms, as carters, for instance, have to rise even earlier than dairymen. They often begin to bait their horses at half-past three, or rather they used to. This operation of baiting is a most serious and important one to the carter. On it depends the appearance of his team--with him a matter of honest and laudable ambition. If he wishes his horses to look fat and well, with smooth shiny coats, he must take the greatest care with their food, not to give them too much or too little, and to vary it properly. He must begin feeding a long time before his horses start to plough. It is, therefore, an object with him to get to rest early. In the winter time especially the labouring poor go to bed very soon, to save the expense of candles. By the bye, the cottagers have a curious habit, which deserves to be recorded even for its singularity. When the good woman of the cottage goes out for half-an-hour to fetch a pail of water, or to gossip with a neighbour, she always leaves the door-key in the keyhole _outside_. The house is, in fact, at the mercy of any one who chooses to turn the key and enter. This practice of locking the door and leaving the key in it is very prevalent. The presence of the key is to intimate that the inmate has gone out, but will shortly return; and it is so understood by the neighbours. If a cottager goes out for the day, he or she locks the door, and takes the key with them; but if the key is left in the door, it is a sign that the cottager will be back in ten minutes or so. The alehouse is the terrible bane of the labourer. If he can keep clear of that, he is clean, tidy, and respectable; but if he once falls into drinking habits, good-bye to all hopes of his rising in his occupation. Where he is born there will he remain, and his children after him. Some of the cottagers who show a little talent for music combine under the leadership of the parish clerk and the patronage of the clergyman, and form a small brass band which parades the village at the head of the Oddfellows or other benefit club once a year. In the early summer, before the earnest work of harvest begins, and while the evenings begin to grow long, it is not unusual to see a number of the younger men at play at cricket in the meadow with the more active of the farmers. Most populous villages have their cricket club, which even the richest farmers do not disdain to join, and their sons stand at the wicket. The summer is the labourer's good season. Then he can make money and enjoy himself. In the summer three or four men will often join together and leave their native parish for a ramble. They walk off perhaps some forty or fifty miles, take a job of mowing or harvesting, and after a change of scenery and associates, return in the later part of the autumn, full of the things they have seen, and eager to relate them to the groups at the cross-roads or the alehouse. The winter is under the best circumstances a hard time for the labourer. It is not altogether that coals are dear and firewood growing scarcer year by year, but every condition of his daily life has a harshness about it. In the summer the warm sunshine cast a glamour over the rude walls, the decaying thatch, and the ivy-covered window. The blue smoke rose up curling beside the tall elm-tree. The hedge parting his garden from the road was green and thick, the garden itself full of trees, and flowers of more or less beauty. Mud floors are not so bad in the summer; holes in the thatch do not matter so much; an ill-fitting window-sash gives no concern. But with the cold blasts and ceaseless rain of winter all this is changed. The hedge next the road is usually only elder, and this, once the leaves are off, is the thinnest, most miserable of shelters. The rain comes through the hole in the thatch (we are speaking of the large class of poor cottages), the mud floor is damp, and perhaps sticky. If the floor is of uneven stones, these grow damp and slimy. The cold wind comes through the ill-fitting sash, and drives with terrible force under the door. Very often the floor is one step lower than the ground outside, and consequently there is a constant tendency in rainy weather for the water to run or soak in. The elm-tree overhead, that appeared so picturesque in summer, is now a curse, for the great drops fall perpetually from it upon the thatch and on the pathway in front of the door. In great storms of wind it sways to and fro, causing no little alarm, and boughs are sometimes blown off it, and fall upon the roof-tree. The thatch of the cottage is saturated; the plants and grasses that almost always grow on it, and the moss, are vividly, rankly green; till all dripping, soaked, overgrown with weeds, the wretched place looks not unlike a dunghill. Inside, the draught is only one degree better than the smoke. These low chimneys, overshadowed with trees, smoke incessantly, and fill the room with smother. To avoid the draught, many of the cottages are fitted with wooden screens, which divide the room, small enough before, into two parts, the outer of which, towards the door, is a howling wilderness of draught and wet from under the door; and the inner part close, stuffy, and dim with smoke driven down the chimney by the shifting wind. Here the family are all huddled up together close over the embers. Here the cooking is done, such as it is. Here they sit in the dark, or in such light as is supplied by the carefully hoarded stock of fuel, till it is time to go to bed, and that is generally early enough. So rigid is the economy practised in many of these cottages that a candle is rarely if ever used. The light of the fire suffices, and they find their beds in the dark. Even when a labourer has risen in the scale, and has some small property, the enforced habits of early life cling to him; and I have frequently found men who were really worth some little money sitting at eight o'clock on a dark winter's night without a candle or lamp, their feet close to a few dying embers. The older people especially go to bed early. Going to some cottages once for a parish paper that had been circulated for signature, I rapped at the closed door. This was at half-past seven one evening in November. Again and again I hammered at the door; at last an old woman put her head out of window, and the following colloquy ensued:-- "What do 'ee want?" "The paper; have you signed it?" "Lor, I doan't know. He's on the table--a bin ther ever since a come. Thee's can lift th' latch an' take 'un. _We bin gone to bed this two hours._" They must have gone upstairs at half-past five. To rise at five of a summer's morning, and see the azure of the sky and the glorious sun, may be, perhaps, no great hardship, although there are few persons who could long remain poetical on bread and cheese. But to rise at five on a dark winter's morning is a very different affair. To put on coarse nailed boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up above the knee, a short greatcoat of some heavy material, and to step out into the driving rain and trudge wearily over field after field of wet grass, with the furrows full of water; then to sit on a three-legged stool, with mud and manure half-way up the ankles, and milk cows with one's head leaning against their damp, smoking hides for two hours, with the rain coming steadily drip, drip, drip--this is a very different affair. The "fogger" on a snowy morning in the winter has to encounter about the most unpleasant circumstances imaginable. Icicles hang from the eaves of the rick, and its thatch is covered with snow. Up the slippery ladder in the dark morning, one knee out upon the snow-covered thatch, he plunges the broad hay-knife in and cuts away an enormous truss--then a great prong is stuck into this, a prong made on purpose, with extra thick and powerful handle, and the truss, well bound round with a horse-hair rope, is hoisted on the head and shoulders. This heavy weight the fogger has to carry perhaps half-a-mile through the snow; the furrows in the field are frozen over, but his weight crashes through the ice, slush into the chilly water. Rain, snow, or bitter frost, or still more bitter east winds--"harsh winds," as he most truly calls them--the fogger must take no heed of either, for the cows must be fed. A quart of threepenny ale for breakfast, with a hunch of bread and cheese, then out to work again in the weather, let it be what it may. The cowyards have to be cleaned out--if not done before breakfast--the manure thrown up into heaps, and the heaps wheeled outside. Or, perhaps, the master has given him a job of piece-work to fill up the middle of the day with--a hedge to cut and ditch. This means more slush, wet, cold, and discomfort. About six or half-past he reaches home, thoroughly saturated, worn-out, cross, and "dummel." I don't know how to spell that word, nor what its etymology may be, but it well expresses the dumb, sullen churlishness which such a life as this engenders. For all the conditions and circumstances of such a life tend to one end only--the blunting of all the finer feelings, the total erasure of sensitiveness. The coarse, half-cooked cabbage, the small bit of fat and rafty bacon, the dry bread and pint of weak tea, makes no very hearty supper after such a day as this. The man grows insensible to the weather, so cold and damp; his bodily frame becomes crusted over, case-hardened; and with this indifference there rises up at the same time a corresponding dulness as regards all moral and social matters. Generally the best conditions of cottage life are to be found wherever there are, say, three or four great, tall, strong, unmarried sons lodging in the house with their aged parents. Each of these pays a small sum weekly for his lodging, and often an additional sum for the bare necessaries of life. In the aggregate this mounts up to a considerable sum, and whatever is bought is equally shared by the parents. They live exceedingly well. Such young men as these earn good wages, and now and then make extra time, and come home with a pocketful of money. Even after the inevitable alehouse has claimed its share, there still remains enough to purchase fresh meat for supper; and it is not at all unusual in such cottages to find the whole family supping at seven (it is, in fact, dining) on a fairly good joint of mutton, with every species of common vegetables. In one case that was brought under my notice three brothers lived with their aged mother. They were all strong, hard-working men, and tolerably steady. In that cottage there were no less than four separate barrels of beer, and all on tap. Four barrels in one cottage seems an extraordinary thing, yet it resolved itself very simply. The cottage was the mother's; they gave her so much for lodging, and she had her own barrel of beer, so that there should be no dispute. The three brothers were mowers--mowers drink enormous quantities of liquor--and with the same view to prevent dispute each had his own especial barrel. Families like this live fairly well, and have many little comforts. Still, at the best, in winter it is a rough and uncomfortable existence. In the life of the English agricultural labourers there is absolutely no poetry, no colour. Even their marriages--times when if ever in life poetry will manifest itself--are sober, dull, tame, clumsy, and colourless. I say sober in the sense of tint, for to get drunk appears to be the one social pleasure of the marriage-day. They, of course, walk to church; but then that walk usually leads across fields full of all the beauties of the spring or the summer. There is nothing in the walk itself to flatten down the occasion. But the procession is so dull--so utterly ungenial--a stranger might pass it without guessing that a wedding was toward. Except a few rude jests; except that there is an attempt to walk arm-in-arm (it is only an attempt, for they forget to allow for each other's motions); except the Sunday dresses, utterly devoid of taste, what is there to distinguish this day from the rest? There is the drunken carousal, it is true, all the afternoon and evening. There are no fête days in the foreign sense in the English labourer's life. There are the fairs and feasts, and a fair is the most melancholy of sights. Showmen's vans, with pictures outside of unknown monsters; merry-go-rounds, nut stalls, gingerbread stalls, cheap Jacks, and latterly photographic "studios"; behind all these the alehouse; the beating of drums and the squalling of pigs, the blowing of horns, and the neighing of horses trotted out for show, the roar of a rude crowd--these constitute a country fair. There is no colour--nothing flowery or poetical about this festival of the labourer. The village feasts are still less interesting. Here and there the clergyman of the parish has succeeded in turning what was a rude saturnalia into a decorous "fête," with tea in a tent. But generally the feasts are falling into rapid disuse, and would perhaps have died away altogether had not the benefit societies often chosen that day for their annual club-dinner. A village feast consists of two or three gipsies located on the greensward by the side of the road, and displaying ginger-beer, nuts, and toys for sale; an Aunt Sally; and, if the village is a large one, the day may be honoured by the presence of what is called a rifle-gallery; the "feast" really and truly does not exist. Some two or three of the old-fashioned farmers have the traditional roast beef and plum-pudding on that day, and invite a few friends; but this custom is passing away. In what the agricultural labourer's feast nowadays consists no one can tell. It is an excuse for an extra quart or two of beer, that is all. This dulness is not, perhaps, the fault of the labourer. It may be that it is the fault of the national character, shown more broadly in the lower class of the population. Speaking nationally, we have no fête days--there is no colour in our mode of life. These English agricultural labourers have no passion plays, no peasant plays, no rustic stage and drama, few songs, very little music. The club dinner is the real fête of the labourer; he gets plenty to eat and drink for that day. It is this lack of poetical feeling that makes the English peasantry so uninteresting a study. They have no appreciation of beauty. Many of them, it is true, grow quantities of flowers; but barely one in a thousand could arrange those flowers in a bouquet. The alehouse forms no inconsiderable part of the labourer's life. It is at once his stock exchange, his reading-room, his club, and his assembly rooms. It is here that his benefit society holds its annual dinner. The club meetings take place weekly or monthly in the great room upstairs. Here he learns the news of the day; the local papers are always to be found at the public-house, and if he cannot read himself he hears the news from those who can. In the winter he finds heat and light, too often lacking at home; at all times he finds amusement; and who can blame him for seizing what little pleasure lies in his way? As a rule the beerhouse is the only place of amusement to which he can resort: it is his theatre, his music-hall, picture-gallery, and Crystal Palace. The recent enactments bearing upon the licensed victuallers have been rather hard upon the agricultural labourer. No doubt they are very excellent enactments, especially those relating to early closing; but in the villages and outlying rural districts, where life is reduced to its most rude and simple form, many of the restrictions are unjust, and deprive the labourer of what he feels to be his legitimate right. Playing at nine-pins, for instance, is practically forbidden, so also dominoes. Now, it was a great thing to put down skittle-sharping and cheating at gambling generally--a good thing to discourage gambling in every form--but in these thinly-populated outlying agricultural parishes, where money is scarce and wages low, there never existed any temptation to allure skittle-sharpers and similar cheaters to the spot. The game at skittles was a legitimate game--a fair and honest struggle of skill and strength. Nine times out of ten it was played only for a quart of ale, to be drunk by the loser as well as the winner in good fellowship. Why deprive the man who labours all day in wet and storm of so simple a pleasure in the evening? The conditions are very different to those existing in large manufacturing towns, and some modification of the law ought to be made. The agricultural labourer has no cheap theatre at which he can spend an hour, no music-hall, no reading-room; his only resource is the public-house. Now that he is practically deprived of his skittles and such games, he has no amusement left except to drink, or play at pitch and toss on the quiet, a far worse pastime than skittles. Skittles, of course, are allowed provided the players play for love only; but what public-house keeper cares to put up the necessary arrangements on such terms? The labourer will have his quart in the evening, and, despite of all "cry" to the contrary, I believe it to be his right to have that quart; and it is better, if he must have it, that his whole thoughts should not be concentrated on the liquor--that he should earn it by skill and strength. There is an opprobrium about the public-house, and let us grant that it is at least partially deserved--but where else is the labourer to go? He cannot for ever work all day and sit in his narrow cabin in the evening. He cannot always read, and those of his class who do read do so imperfectly. A reading-room has been tried, but as a rule it fails to attract the _purely agricultural labourer_. The shoemaker, the tailor, the village post-master, grocer, and such people may use it; also a few of the better-educated of the young labourers, the rising generation; but not the full-grown labourer with a wife and family and cottage. It does good undoubtedly; in the future, as education extends, it will become a place of resort. But at present it fails to reach the adult genuine agricultural labourer. For a short period in the dead of the winter the farmers and gentry get up penny readings in many places, but these are confined to at most one evening a week. What, then, is the labourer to do? Let any one put himself in his place, try to realise his feelings and circumstances. At present, till education extends, he must go to the public-house. Is he to be punished and deprived of his game of skill because in large towns it bears evil fruit? Surely the law could be somewhat modified, and playing permitted under some restrictions. The early closing has been an unalloyed good in these rural districts. The labourer is a steady drinker. He does not toss down glasses of stiff brandy and whisky. His beer requires time to produce an effect. The last hour does the mischief. Since the earlier closing the village streets have been comparatively free from drunken men. In any case, the agricultural labourer is the most lamb-like of drunkards. He interferes with no one. He unhinges no gates, smashes no windows, does no injury. He either staggers home or quietly lies on the grass till the liquor passes off. He is not a quarrelsome man. He does not fight with knuckle-dusters or kick with his heavy boots. His fights, when he does fight, are very harmless affairs. No doubt his drunkenness is an offence; but it is comparatively innocuous to the general public. Religious feeling does not run high among the labourers. A large proportion of them are Nonconformists--principally Methodists. But this is not out of any very decided notion as to the difference of ceremony or theological dogma; it arises out of a class feeling. They say, or rather they feel, that this is _their_ church. The parish church is the church of the farmers and the gentry. There is no hostility to the clergyman of the parish, no bitter warfare of sect against sect, or of Methodist against Churchman. But you see very few of the farmers go to chapel. The labourer goes there, and finds his own friends--his cousins and uncles--his wife's relations. He is among his own class. There is no feeling of inferiority. The religion taught, the service, the hymns, the preacher, all are his. He has a sense of proprietorship in them. He helps to pay for them. The French peasant replied to the English tourist, who expressed surprise at the fanatic love of the populace for the first Napoleon--"he was as much a tyrant as King Louis was." "Ah, but Napoleon was _our_ king." So the labourers feel that this is their religion. Therefore it is that so many of them gather together (where there are no chapels) in the cottage of some man who takes the lead, and sit, with doors and windows shut, crammed together to pray and listen to others pray. Any of them who wishes can, as it were, ascend the pulpit here. This is why in so many parishes the pews of the parish church are comparatively empty so far as agricultural labourers are concerned. The best of clergymen must fail to fill them under such disadvantages. It is very difficult not only for the clergyman, but for others who wish to improve the condition of the labourer, to reach him. Better cottages are, of course, a most effectual way, but it is not in the power of every one to confer so substantial a benefit. Perhaps one of the best means devised has been that of cottage flower-shows. These are, of course, not confined to flowers; in fact, the principal part of such shows consists of table vegetables and fruit. By rigidly excluding all gardeners, and all persons not strictly cottage people, the very best results have often been arrived at in this way. For if there is one thing in which the labourer takes an interest it is his garden and his allotment. To offer him prizes for the finest productions of his garden touches the most sensitive part of his moral organisation. It is wonderful what an amount of emulation these prizes excite--emulation not so much for the value of the prize as for the distinction. These competitions tend besides to provide him with a better class of food, for he depends largely upon vegetables. There is nothing connected with the condition of the agricultural poor that is better worth the attention of improvers than the style of cookery pursued in these cottages. A more wretched cookery probably does not exist on the face of the earth. The soddened cabbage is typical of the whole thing. Since higher wages have come in it has become possible for the labourer in many cases to provide himself with better food, such as mutton--the cheap parts--more bacon, pork, and so on; but the women do not know how to make the most of it. It is very difficult to lay down a way in which this defect may be remedied; for there is nothing a man, let him be never so poor, so deeply resents as an inspection of the contents of his pot. He would sooner eat half-raw bacon than have the teaching forced on him--how to make savoury meals of the simple provisions within his reach; nor can he be blamed for this sturdy independent feeling. Possibly the establishment of schools of cookery in villages might do much good. They might be attached to the new schools now building throughout the country. The labourer, from so long living upon coarse, ill-cooked food, acquires an artificial taste. Some men eat their bacon raw; others will drink large quantities of vinegar, and well they may need it to correct by its acidity the effects of strong unwholesome cabbage. The cottage cook has no idea of those nutritious and pleasant soups which can be made to form so important a feature in the economy of daily life. The labourer is in a lower degree of the same class as the third-rate working farmer of the past. He is the old small dairy farmer in a coarser shape. With a little less education, ruder manners, with the instincts of eating, drinking, and avarice more prominently displayed, he presents in his actual condition at this day a striking analogy to the agriculturist of a bygone time. In fact, those farmers of twenty or thirty acres, living in cottage-like homesteads, were barely distinguishable as far as _personnel_ went from the labourers among whom they lived. This being the case, it is not surprising to find that the labourer of this day presents in general characteristics a marked affinity in ideas and sentiments to those entertained by the old farmer. He has the same paternal creed in a more primeval form. He considers his children as his absolute property. He rules them with a rod of iron, or rather of ground-ash. In fact, the ground-ash stick is his social religion. The agricultural labouring poor are very rough and even brutal towards their children. Not that they are without affection towards them, but they are used to thrash them into obedience instead of leading them into it by the gentle means of moral persuasion. Bystanders would call the agricultural labourer cruel. Carters, for instance, had till lately a habit of knocking the boys under their control about in a brutal manner. But I do not think that in the mass of cases it arose from deliberate cruelty, but from a species of stolid indifference or insensibility to suffering. Somehow they do not seem to understand that others suffer, whether this arises from the rough life they lead, the endless battle with the weather, the hard fare--whether it has grown up out of the circumstances surrounding them. The same unfeeling brutality often extends to the cattle under their care. In this there has been a decided improvement of late years; but it is not yet extinct. These are some of the lights and shades of the labourer's daily life impartially presented. _FIELD-FARING WOMEN._ If a thoughtful English peasant-woman rejoiced that in her house a son was born, it would be, not because "she had gotten a man from the Lord," but a thanksgiving that it was not a girl. That most natural thanksgiving of the Hebrew woman is too rarely heard in the rural cottage, situated though it may be in the midst of meadows and fields abounding with the fat of the earth. The fact that a fresh being has entered upon life, with all its glorious possibilities, is not a subject for joy. "Well, John," the farmer says to his man, "your wife has been confined, hasn't she? How's the young one?" "Aw, sir, a' be main weak and pickèd, an' like _to go back_--thank God!" replies the labourer with intense satisfaction, especially if he has two or three children already. "Pickèd" means thin, sharp-featured, wasted, emaciated. "To go back" is to die. The man does not like to say "die," therefore he puts it "to go back"--_i.e._, whence it came; from the unknown. Yet, with all this hard indifference, the labourer is as fond of his children as any one else. The "ego" that utters those apparently heartless words is not the real man, it is the "ego" produced by long experience of the hardships of poverty; of coarse fare, rude labour, exposure. After all, it is in a spirit of tenderness towards the infant that the parent half desires it to die. The real "ego," the true man, delights as all humanity does in watching the growth of the tiny limbs, the expansion of the instincts into mind, and the first employment of that mind. He feels as Marguerite in _Faust_ felt, tending the babe--"the holiest of all joys." But life is very, very hard, and circumstances push him out of himself. Still more do these hardships tell upon his wife; and so it is, knowing what her sex have to go through, that she welcomes a boy more than a girl. An aged agricultural woman said she would sooner have seven boys than one girl; for the former, when they became lads, went out and earned their own living, but the girls you never knew when they were got rid of--they were always coming back. This expressed the practical view of the matter. But supposing that the child should prove a girl; it must not be imagined that it receives any ruder treatment in mere infancy than a boy would have had. In early infancy children have no sex. But the poor mother has her trials. Though in the midst of a country teeming with milk, it is often with the utmost difficulty that she can obtain any for her babe, if Nature shall have rendered her dependent upon artificial supply. This has become especially the case of late years, now that so much milk is sent to London, instead of being retained in the dairy for the manufacture of butter and cheese. So that it actually happens that the poor mother in the courts of the metropolis can obtain milk easier than her far-away sister in those fabulous fields which the city woman has never seen, and, perhaps, never will. Often in arable districts there are scarcely any cows kept. No one cares to retail a pennyworth of milk. It is only by favour, through the interest taken by some farmer's wife, that it can be got. Very few agricultural women have a medical man present at their confinement; they usually entrust themselves to the care of some village nurse, who has a reputation for skill in such matters, but no scientifically acquired knowledge--who proceeds by rule of thumb. The doctor--almost always the parish doctor, though sometimes the club officer--is not called in till after the delivery. The poor woman will frequently come downstairs on the fourth day; and it is to this disregard of proper precautions that the distortions of figure and many of the illnesses of poor agricultural women are attributable. Nothing but the severe training they have gone through from childhood upwards--the exposure to all kinds of weather--the life in the open air, the physical strength induced by labour, can enable them to support the strain upon the frame caused by so quickly endeavouring to resume their household duties. It is probably this reserve of strength which enables them to recover from so serious a matter so quickly. Certain it is that very few die from confinement; and yet, from the point of view of the middle class of society, almost every precaution and every luxury by them deemed necessary is omitted. Of course, in some instances, agricultural women whose husbands have, perhaps, worked for one master from boyhood, receive much more attention than here indicated--wines, jellies, meat, and so on--but the majority have to rely upon the tender mercies of the parish. It has been often remarked that the labourer, let him be in receipt of what wages he will, makes no provision for this, the most serious and interesting of all domestic events. Though it can be foreseen for months, he does not save a single sovereign. He does not consider it in the least shameful to receive parish relief on these occasions; he leaves his partner entirely to the mercy of strangers, and were it not for the clergyman's wife, she would frequently be without sympathy. There are no matters in which so much practical good is accomplished by the wives of the rural clergy as in these confinements of the poor women in their parishes. It is a matter peculiarly within their sphere, and, to their honour be it spoken, one which they carry out to the utmost of their ability. A cottage is at best a wretched place to be ill in. It is a marvel how many poor women escape at all, from the close atmosphere of the low-pitched holes in which they are confined. It is a wonder that, among the many schemes of philanthropy which have attracted attention of late years, something has not been done for these poor creatures. Why should not every large village or cluster of villages--there are often three or four within a mile or two--have their lying-in hospitals, on the cottage hospital system? Scarcely any parish but has its so-called charities--money left by misguided but benevolent persons, for the purpose of annual distribution in small doles of groats, or loaves, or blankets. Often there is a piece of land called "Poor's Mead," or some similar name, which has been devised like this, the annual rent from it to be applied for the poor. As it is, the benefit from these charities is problematical. If they were combined, and the aggregate funds applied to maintain a lying-in hospital for the district, a real and efficient good would be arrived at. But of all places, villages are neglected. Let it be drainage, water supply, allotments--anything and everything--the villages go on as they may, the fault being the absence of local authority. There are plenty of gentlemen ready and willing to take part in and advance such schemes, but there is no combination. Spontaneous combination is uncertain in its operation. If there were some system of village self-government, these wants would be soon supplied. It is true that there is the Union Workhouse. A poor woman can go to the workhouse; but is it right, is it desirable from any point of view, that decent women should be driven to the workhouse at such times? As a matter of fact, it is only the unfortunates who have illegitimate children that use the workhouse lying-in wards. Such an institution as has been suggested would be gladly welcomed by the agricultural poor. Most cottages have but two bedrooms, some only one; a better class of cottage is now being gradually erected with three, but even in these the third is very small. Now, take the case of a labouring man with seven or eight children, and living in a cottage with two bedrooms, and whose wife is confined; and let it be remembered that large families are common amongst this class. The wife must certainly have one room to herself and her attendant. The father, then, and his children must crowd into the other, or sleep as they can on the ground-floor. In the case of nearly grown-up children the overcrowding is a serious matter. The relief afforded by a lying-in hospital would be immense; and the poor woman herself would be restored to her family with her health firmly re-established, whereas now she often lingers in a sickly state for months. In the soft, warm summer-time, when the midsummer hum of the myriads of insects in the air sheds a drowsy harmony over the tree-tops, the field-faring woman goes out to haymaking, and leaves her baby in the shade by the hedge-side. A wooden sheepcage, turned upside down and filled with new-made hay, forms not at all a despicable cradle; and here the little thing lies on its back and inhales the fresh pure air, and feels the warmth of the genial sun, cheered from time to time by visits from its busy mother. Perhaps this is the only true poetry of the hayfield, so much talked of and praised. The mother works with her rake, or with a shorter, smaller prong; and if it is a large farm, the women are kept as much as possible together, for their strength and skill will not allow them to work at the same pace as the men, and if they work in company the one hinders the other. A man can do the work of two women, and do it better in every way, besides being capable of the heavier tasks of pitching, cock-making, &c., which the women cannot manage. Before the haymaking machines and horse-rakes came into vogue, it was not uncommon to see as many as twenty women following each other in _échelon_, turning a "wallow," or shaking up the green swathes left by the mowers. Farmers were obliged to employ them, but were never satisfied with their work, which was the dearest they paid for. Somehow, there was no finish to it. Large numbers of women still work in the hayfield, but they are not used in gangs so much as formerly, but distributed about to do light jobs for which a man cannot be spared, and in these they are useful. The pay used to be tenpence a day; now it is one shilling and a pint of beer per day, and in some places fifteenpence. The Arcadian innocence of the hayfield, sung by the poets, is the most barefaced fiction; for those times are the rural saturnalia, and the broadest and coarsest of jokes and insinuations are freely circulated; nor does it always stop at language only, provided the master be out of sight. Matrons and young girls alike come in for an equal share of this rude treatment, and are quite a match for the men in the force of compliment. The women leave work an hour or so before the men, except when there is a press, and the farmer is anxious to get in the hay before a storm comes. It is not that the hayfield itself originates this coarseness but this is almost the only time of the year when the labouring classes work together in large numbers. A great deal of farm-work is comparatively solitary; in harvest droves of people are collected together, and the inherent vulgarity comes out more strongly. At the wheat-harvest the women go reaping, and exceedingly hard they work at it. There is no harder work done under the sun than reaping, if it is well followed up. From earliest dawn to latest night they swing the sickles, staying with their husbands, and brothers, and friends, till the moon silvers the yellow corn. The reason is because reaping is piece-work, and not paid by the day, so that the longer and the harder they work the more money is earned. In this a man's whole family can assist. His wife, his grown-up sons and daughters cut the corn, the younger ones can carry it and aid in various ways. It is wonderful how the men stand the excessive and continuous labour; it is still more wonderful how the women endure it, trying as it is to the back. It is the hottest season of the year--the early autumn; the sun burns and scorches, and the warm wind gives no relief; even the evenings are close and sultry. The heated earth reflects the rays, and the straw is dry and warm to the touch. The standing corn, nearly as high as the reaper, keeps off the breeze, if there is any, from her brow. Grasping the straw continuously cuts and wounds the hand, and even gloves will hardly give perfect protection. The woman's bare neck is turned to the colour of tan; her thin muscular arms bronze right up to the shoulder. Short time is allowed for refreshment; right through the hottest part of the day they labour. It is remarkable that none, or very few, cases of sunstroke occur. Cases of vertigo and vomiting are frequent, but pass off in a few hours. Large quantities of liquor are taken to sustain the frame weakened by perspiration. When night does arrive, even then the task is not over, for they have to carry home on their heads the bundle of wheat gleaned by the smaller children, and perhaps walk two miles to the cottage. This is indeed work for a woman still suckling her child. It is not easy to calculate what a woman earns at such seasons, because they rarely work on their own account: either the father or the husband receives the wages in a lump with his own; but it cannot be much less than that earned by a man; for at these times they work with a will, and they do not at the haymaking. While reaping the baby is nestled down on a heap of coats or shawls under the shelter of the shocks of corn, which form a little hut for it, and, as in the hayfield, is watched by one of the children. Often three or four women will place their babies close together, and leave one great girl in charge of the whole, which is an economy, releasing other children for work; for the hayfield and the corn-harvest are the labourer's gold-mine. There is not so much rough joking in the corn-field; they do not work so close together, and the husband or father is near at hand; neither is there time nor inclination in the midst of such severe labour, to which haymaking is play. Harvest-homes are going out of fashion. After one of these feasts there was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect sticks, and a fire is made in a corner of the field, and the kettle boiled; and about four o'clock they take a cup in company--always weak tea, with a little brown sugar and no milk, and usually small pieces of bread sopped in it, especially by the elder women. Tea is largely used by the agricultural labourers, though it does not by any means prevent them from indulging in beer. Snuff is not taken by the women half so much as formerly, though some of the old ones are very fond of it. As soon as ever the child is old enough to crawl about, it is sure to get out into the road and roll in the dust. It is a curious fact that the agricultural children, with every advantage of green fields and wide open downs, always choose the dusty hard road to play in. They are free to wander as they list over mead and leaze, and pluck the flowers out of the hedges, and idle by the brooks, all the year round, the latter part of the spring, when the grass is nearly fit for mowing, only excepted. Yet, excepting a few of the elder boys birdnesting, it is the rarest thing to meet a troop of children in the fields; but there they are in the road, the younger ones sprawling in the dust, their naked limbs kicking it up in clouds, and the bigger boys clambering about in the hedge-mound bounding the road, making gaps, splashing in the dirty water of the ditches. Hardy young dogs one and all. Their food is of the rudest and scantiest, chiefly weak tea, without milk, sweetened with moist sugar, and hunches of dry bread, sometimes with a little lard, or, for a treat, with treacle. Butter is scarcely ever used in the agricultural labourer's cottage. It is too dear by far, and if he does buy fats, he believes in the fats expressed from meats, and prefers lard or dripping. Children are frequently fed with bread and cheap sugar spread on it. This is much cheaper than butter. Sometimes they get a bit of cheese or bacon, but not often, and a good deal of strong cabbage, soddened with pot-liquor. The elder boys get a little beer; the young girls none, save perhaps a sip from their mother's pint, in summer. This is what they have to build up a frame on capable of sustaining heat and cold, exposure, and a life of endless labour. The boys it seems to suit, for they are generally tolerably plump, though always very short for their age. Frequently teams of powerful horses drawing immense loads of hay or straw may be seen on the highway, in the charge of a boy who does not look ten years old judged by the town standard, but who is really fifteen. These short, broad, stout lads, look able to stand anything, and in point of fact do stand it, from the kick of a carter's heavy boot to the long and bitter winter. If it is wished to breed up a race of men literally "hard as nails," no better process could be devised; but, looked at from a mental and moral point of view, there may be a difference of opinion. The girls do not appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot, and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not only to mind the baby, but to nurse it; she carries it about with her in her arms; and really the infant looks almost as large as herself, and its weight compels her to lean backwards. She is left at home all day in charge of the baby, the younger children, and the cottage. Perhaps a little bread is left for them to eat, but they get nothing more till the mother returns about half-past four, when, woe be to the girl if the fire is not lit, and the kettle on. The girl has to fetch the water--often a hard and tedious task, for many villages have a most imperfect supply, and you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the operation till sufficient has been acquired; and when her mother is washing, or, still worse, is a washerwoman by profession, this is her weary trudge all day. Of course there are villages where water is at hand, and sometimes too much of it. I know a large village where the brook runs beside the highway, and you have to pass over a "drock," or small bridge, to get to each of the cottages; but such instances are rare. The girl has also to walk into the adjacent town and bring back the bread, particularly if her mother happens to be receiving parish pay. A little older--at ten or eleven, or twelve--still more skinny and bony now as a rule, she follows her mother to the fields, and learns to pick up stones from the young mowing grass, and place them in heaps to be carted away to mend drinking places for cattle. She learns to beat clots and spread them with a small prong; she works in the hayfield, and gleans at the corn-harvest. Gleaning--poetical gleaning--is the most unpleasant and uncomfortable of labour, tedious, slow, back-aching work; picking up ear by ear the dropped wheat, searching among the prickly stubble. Notwithstanding all her labour, and the hardship she has to endure--coarse fare, and churlish treatment at the hands of those who should love her most--the little agricultural girl still retains some of that natural inclination towards the pretty and romantic inherent in the sex. In the spring she makes daisy chains, and winds them round the baby's neck; or with the stalks of the dandelion makes a chain several feet in length. She plucks great bunches of the beautiful bluebell, and of the purple orchis of the meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip, and after playing with them a little while, they are left to wither in the dust by the roadside, while she is sent two or three miles with her father's dinner. She chants snatches of rural songs, and sometimes three or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing slowly rude rhymes describing marriage--and not over decent some of these rhymes are. She has no toys--not one in twenty such girls ever have a doll; or, if they do, it is but some stick dressed in a rag. Poor things! they need no artificial dolls; so soon as ever they can lift it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an outsider it seems unnecessarily rough, and even brutal. Her mother shouts at her in a shrill treble perpetually; her father enforces his orders with a harsh oath and a slap. The pressure of hard circumstances, the endless battle with poverty, render men and women both callous to others' feelings, and particularly strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even a slap on the ear, is really the counterpart of the frown and emphasised words of a father in a more fortunate class of life; and the children do not feel it, or think it exceptionally cruel, as the children of a richer man would. Undoubtedly, however, it does lessen the bond between child and parent. There is little filial affection among these cottagers--how should there be? The boy is driven away from home as early as possible; the girl is made day by day to feel her fault in being a girl; to neither can the poor man give any small present, or any occasional treat. What love there is lasts longest between the mother and her daughter. The only way in which a labourer exhibits his affection is when another labourer in authority, as a carter, ill-treats his boy--a too common case--and then he speaks loudly, and very properly. But even in most serious matters there is a strange callousness. I have known instances in which a father, aware that a criminal assault has been attempted by another labourer upon a tender child of twelve, has refused to prosecute, and the brutal offender would have escaped without the slightest punishment had not the clergyman heard of the story. The slow years roll by--they are indeed slow in an agricultural village--and the girl, now fifteen, has to go regularly to work in the fields; that is, if the family be not meantime largely increased. She has in this latter case plenty of work at home to assist her mother. Cottagers are not over-clean, but they are not wilfully dirty in their houses; and with a large family there is much washing and other domestic matters to attend to, which the mother, now fast growing feeble, cannot get through herself. In harvest the women get up at four or earlier, and do their household work before starting for the fields. But, perhaps, by this time another girl has grown up sufficiently to nurse baby, mind the young ones, and do slave's work generally. Then the elder daughter goes to the fields daily when there is work to be had. In arable districts the women do much work, picking couch grass--a tedious operation--and hoeing. They never or rarely milk now. In the dead of winter there is nothing for women to do. At this age--fifteen or sixteen--the girl perhaps goes out to service at some farmhouse. If she is fortunate enough to enter the house of one of the modern class of farmers, it is a lucky day for her when she begins indoor labour. It is to be feared that the life of a girl of this kind in the old time, and not so long ago, in the houses of the poorer order of farmers, was a rough one indeed. But much of that is past, never to return, and our business is with the present. Where they have a dairy she has to clean the buckets and milk-cans and other utensils, to help turn the cheeses, and assist the dairymaid (a most important personage this last) in all kinds of ways. The work is coarse and rude, but it only lasts a portion of the day, and she has regular and ample meals. The bacon and cheese soon begin to tell upon her. The angular bones disappear, the skinny arms grow round, and presently enormously fat--not much the prettier, perhaps, but far more pleasant to look at. Her face loses the pinched expression; her cheeks become full, and round, and rosy; in every way her physical frame improves. It is wonderful what a difference a few months in a good farmhouse makes to a girl of this kind. She soon begins to dress better, not from her wages, for these are small enough, and may commence as low as £4; but her mistress gives her many things, and, if she is a good girl, buys her a dress now and then; and with the shilling or two she asks in advance, she purchases cheap ornaments of the pedlar at the door. Her life is low enough socially--it is almost an annual round of working, eating, and sleeping (no one sleeps like a farm-wench); but it is an infinite improvement upon the struggle for existence at the cottage. She has no trouble, no thought, no care now. Her mistress may snap occasionally, her master may grumble, and the dairymaid may snarl; but there are no slaps on the ear, no kicks, no going to bed supperless. In summer she goes out in the afternoon haymaking as an extra hand, but only works a few hours, and it is really only a relaxation. She picks up some knowledge of cooking, learns how to make herself useful in the house, and in the course of a year or two, if moderately sharp, is capable of rising a degree, and obtaining a better salary as a maid-servant, having nothing to do with a dairy. The four or five pounds with which she commences may seem a very low sum, but the state of her domestic education at the time must be taken into consideration. She has to learn everything. All the years spent in working in the cottage at home have to be unlearnt--all the old habits replaced by new ones. After the first year or so her value rises considerably; she may continue in the house at a higher salary, or go into the town as maid-servant in a tradesman's family. A large proportion of servant-girls thus find their way from the country into the town. With these we have nothing further to do--they are no longer field-farers. A few after several years learn the art and mystery of butter and cheese, and become dairymaids; and then, if they are clever, earn good wages--indeed, fabulous prices are asked by them. There are not, however, so many dairymaids as formerly, for the small dairies are getting amalgamated and made into larger ones, and then the farmer, if he makes butter and cheese, employs a dairyman in preference. This rise to be maid-servant, or to be dairymaid, is the bright side of the girl's career. There are darker shades which must be mentioned. The overcrowding in cottages leads to what may be called an indifference to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is an open question whether she will or will not succumb. If she goes into a farmhouse as servant, the chances are in favour of her escaping temptation. But in farmhouses she may also sometimes run into the very jaws of danger. It is not uncommon in some districts for young labourers to sleep in the house, one or two who milk and have to be on the spot early. These take their supper in the kitchen or the brewhouse, and, despite the strictest precautions on the part of the mistress, enjoy plenty of opportunities for flirting with the girl. Young, full of animal spirits, giddy and ignorant, she thinks no harm of a romp, and finally falls, and has to leave her service. If a little may be said in favour of the poor girls, not a word can be said in favour of the agricultural men, who are immoral almost without exception, and will remain so until a better-educated generation with more self-respect arises. The number of poor girls, from fifteen to five-and-twenty, in agricultural parishes who have illegitimate offspring is extremely large, and is illustrated by the fact that, out of the marriages that take place--and agricultural poor are a marrying class--scarcely any occur until the condition of the girl is too manifest to be any longer concealed. Instances could be mentioned where the clergyman's wife, with a view to check the immorality around her, has offered a reward of a piece of furniture to the first married woman who does not bear a child till nine months after marriage; the custom being within three months. The frequency of the appeals to the petty sessions in rural districts for orders of contribution, by young unmarried girls, also illustrates the prevalent immorality. Of late the magistrates have taken the line of ordering contributions on a higher scale, on the grounds that the labourer earns larger wages, and that the cost of living has risen, and also as a check upon the men. This well-intentioned step has had the precisely opposite effect to what was wished. The labourer with higher wages feels the demand upon his pocket but very little more. The cost of living in rural outlying districts has risen only to a very trifling degree--barely perceptibly, in fact. Bread is cheap--that is the staple--rents are the same, and there are more allotments than ever, making vegetables more easy to obtain. The result, therefore, is this, that the girl feels she can sin with comparative immunity. She is almost sure to get her order (very few such appeals are refused); let this be supplemented with some aid from the parish, and she is none the worse off than before, for there is no prejudice against employing her in the fields. Should her fall take place with some young farmer's son from whom she may get a larger contribution in private, or by order of the magistrates, she is really and truly in a pecuniary sense better off than she was before, for she has a certain fixed income. The evil is aggravated by the new law, which enables the order to be extended over a longer term of years than formerly, so that for fifteen years is a common thing. If it is decided to recognise immorality, and to provide against the woman being unduly injured by it, then these orders are certainly the correct procedure; but if it is desired to suppress it, then they are a total failure. The girl who has had an illegitimate child is thought very little the worse of by her friends and her own class, especially if her seducer is a man who can afford to pay for it--that is the grand point. If she is fool enough to yield to a man who is badly off, she may be jeered at as a fool, but rarely reprimanded as a sinner, not even by her own mother. Such things are not looked upon by the rural poor as sins, but as accidents of their condition. It is easy to be hard upon the poor girls, but consider their training. Many of them cannot read or write; how many even can sew well? The cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a higher class of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart young men coarser and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what wonder is it if the natural result takes place? The fairs have been credited with much of the mischief, and undoubtedly they are productive of evil; but if they were abolished, the average would in all probability remain about the same. The evil is inherent, and does not depend upon circumstances. It is the outcome of a long series of generations; it cannot be overcome in a decade. Education will do much, but not all. Youth is always led by the tone of the elder people. Until the tone of the parent is improved, the conduct of the young will remain much the same. The more distant a parish from a town, the more outlying and strictly agricultural, and therefore stagnant, the greater the immorality. It is the one blot upon the character of the agricultural poor. They are not thieves, they are not drunkards; if they do drink they are harmless, and it evaporates in shouting and slang. They are not riotous; but the immorality cannot be gainsaid. No specific cure for this state of things can be devised: it must slowly work itself out under the gradual pressure of an advancing social state. It will be slow; for, up to the present, the woman has had but a small share of the benefit that has befallen the labourer through higher wages. If higher wages mainly go for drink, the wife at home is not much the better. The women say themselves they are no better off. If the girl at eighteen or twenty--in most agricultural marriages the girls are very young--is fortunate enough to have placed her faith in a man who redeems his word, then comes the difficulty of the cottage and the furniture to fill it. Cottages are often difficult to find, especially anywhere near a man's work, which is the great object. The furniture required is not much, but there must be some. The labourer does not deal much with the town furniture-dealer. A great deal of the furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good feather-beds and blankets. The women--especially the elder women--go to great trouble, and pinch themselves, to find a way of purchasing a good bed, and set no small pride upon it. These old oaken bedsteads, and sideboards, and chairs have perhaps been in the farmhouse for three or four generations, and are at last sold because the final representative of the family is imbued with modern ideas, and quits farming for trade. The cottagers always attend sales like this, and occasionally get hold of good bargains, and so it is that really good substantial furniture may often be found in the possession of the better class of labourers. The old people accumulate these things, and when their sons or daughters marry, can generally spare a few chairs, a bedstead and bed, and with a little crockery from other relations, and a few utensils bought in the adjacent town, the cottage is furnished sufficiently well for a couple whose habits are necessarily simple. After marriage the hard work of the woman's life really begins--work compared with which her early experience at home is nothing; and many, if they have left situations in farmhouses, deeply regret the change. The labourer can hardly be expected to feel the more exalted sentiments; and if in the upper classes even it is said that romance ends with marriage, it is doubly, literally true of the agricultural poor. In addition to her household work, she has to labour in the fields, or to wash--perhaps worse than the former alternative; and after a while her husband, too commonly wearying of his home, in which he finds nothing but a tired woman and troublesome children, leaves her for the public-house, and consumes two-thirds of their slender income in beer. The attachment of the woman for her husband lasts longer than that of the man for the woman. Even when he has become a confirmed drunkard, and her life with incessant labour has become a burden to her, she will struggle on, striving to get bread for the children and the rent for the landlord. She knows that as evening comes on, instead of sitting down to rest, her duty will be to go down to the public-house and wait till it pleases her lord and master to try to stagger home, and then to guide his clumsy steps to the threshold. Of course there are wives who become as bad as their husbands, who drink, or do worse, and neglect their homes, but they are the exception. As a rule, the woman, once married, does her best to keep her home together. The wife of the labourer does not get her shins smashed with heavy kicks from hobnailed boots, such as the Lancashire ruffians administer; but, although serious wife-beating cases are infrequent, there are few women who escape an occasional blow from their husbands. Most of them get a moderate amount of thrashing in the course of their lives, and take it much as they take the hardships and poverty of their condition, as a necessity not to be escaped. The labourer is not downright brutal to his wife, but he certainly thinks he has a right to chastise her when she displeases him. Once in authority, the labourer is stern, hard, and inconsiderate of the feelings of others, and he is in authority in his own cottage. The wife has been accustomed to such treatment more or less from her childhood; she has been slapped and banged about at home, and therefore thinks comparatively little of a blow from her husband's hand. The man does not mean it so brutally as it appears to outsiders. This semi-wife-beating is only too prevalent. Does the incessant labour undergone by an agricultural woman result in ill effects to her physical frame? The day-work in the fields, the haymaking, and such labour as is paid for by the day and not by the piece, cannot do any injury, for it is light, and the hours are short. In some districts the women do not come before half-past eight, and leave a little after four, and they have a long hour out for dinner. It is the piece-work of the corn-harvest that tries the frame, when work begins at sunrise or shortly after, and lasts till the latest twilight, and when it is work, real muscular strain. This cannot but leave its mark. Otherwise the field is not injurious to the woman so far as the labour is concerned, and the exposure is not so great as has been supposed, because women are scarcely ever expected to work in wet weather. The worst of the exposure is probably endured upon the arable fields in the bitter winds of spring; but this does not last very long. In what way field-labour is degrading to the women it is difficult to understand. The only work of a disgusting nature now performed by women is the beating of clots on pasture-land, and that is quickly over. After all, there is nothing so very dreadful in it. Stone-picking, couch-clearing, hoeing, haymaking, reaping, certainly none of these are in any way disgusting operations. Women do not attend to cattle now. As to the immorality, undoubtedly a great deal of what is coarse and rude does pass upon the hayfield, but the hayfield does not originate it; if the same men and women met elsewhere, the same jokes would be uttered and conduct indulged in. The position of agricultural women is a painful one to contemplate, and their lives full of hardships; but field-labour cannot be fairly accused as the cause of the evils they endure. Their strength is overstrained in the cornfield; but what can you do? It is their gold-mine--their one grand opportunity of getting a little money. It would be cruel kindness to deny it to them; and, in point of fact, except by interfering with the liberty of the subject, it would be impossible to prevent them. Farm-labour is certainly to be preferred to much of the work that women do in manufacturing districts. At least there is no overcrowding; there is plenty of fresh air, and the woman who works in the field looks quite as robust and healthy as her sister sitting all day in a confined factory. It used to be common to see women dressed in a kind of smock-frock; this was in the days when they milked, and it is still occasionally worn. Now they generally wear linsey dresses in the winter, and cotton in the summer, at prices from 4½d. to 6d. per yard. They wear boots nailed and tipped much like the men, but not so heavy, and in rough weather corduroy gaiters. Their cooking is rude and detestable to any one else's ideas; but it appears exactly suited to the coarse tastes and hearty appetite of their husbands. Being uneducated, and a large proportion unable to read, their chief intellectual amusement consists in tittle-tattle and gossip. They are generally inclined to be religious after a fashion, and frequent the chapel or the cottage in which the itinerant preacher holds forth. In summer this preacher will mount upon a waggon placed in a field by the roadside, and draw a large audience, chiefly women, who loudly respond and groan and mutter after the most approved manner. Now and then an elderly woman may be found who is considered to have a gift of preaching, and holds forth at great length, quoting Scripture right and left. The exhibitions of emotion on the part of the women at such meetings and in the services in their cottages are not pleasant to listen to, but the impression left on the mind is that they are in earnest. They are a charitable race, and eager to help each other. They will watch by the bedsides of their sick neighbours, divide the loaf of bread, look after the children and trudge weary miles to the town for medicine. On the other hand, they are almost childlike in imbibing jealousies and hatreds, and unsparing in abuse and imputation towards a supposed enemy. They are bolder in speech than their husbands to those who occupy higher places in the social scale. It cannot be said that agricultural women are handsome. In childhood they are too often thin and stunted; later they shoot up and grow taller, but remain thin and bony till from eighteen to twenty, when they get plumper, and then is their period of prettiness, if at all. Bright eyes, clear complexions, and glossy hair form their attractions, for their features are scarcely ever good. The brief beauty of the prime of youth speedily fades, and at five-and-twenty the agricultural woman, especially if married, is pale or else burnt by the sun to a brown, with flat chest and rounded shoulders. It is rare indeed to see a woman with any pretensions to what is called a figure. It would be wonderful if there were, for much of the labour induces a stooping position, and they are never taught when young to sit upright. Growing plainer and plainer as years go by, the elder women are wrinkled and worn-looking, and have contracted a perpetual stoop. Many live to a great age. In small parishes it is common to find a large number of women of seventy and eighty, and there are few cottages which do not contain an old woman. This is hardly a result in accordance with the labour they have undergone. The explanation probably is that, continued through a series of generations, it has produced a strength and stamina which can survive almost anything. Certain it is that young couples about to marry often experience much difficulty in finding cottages, because they are occupied by extremely aged pairs; and landlords, anxious to tear down and remove old cottages tumbling to pieces, are restrained from doing so out of regard for the aged tenants, who cling with a species of superstitious tenderness to the crumbling walls and decayed thatch. At this age, at seventy-five or even eighty, the agricultural woman retains a strength of body astonishing to a town-bred woman. She will walk eight or ten miles, without apparent fatigue, to and from the nearest town for her provisions. She will almost to the last carry her prong out into the hayfield, and do a little work in some corner, and bear her part in the gleaning after the harvest. She lives almost entirely upon weak tea and bread sops. Her mental powers continue nearly unimpaired, and her eyes are still good, though her teeth have long gone. She will laugh over memories of practical jokes played at harvest-homes half-a-century ago; and slowly spells over the service in a prayer-book which asks blessings upon a king instead of a queen. She often keeps the village "confectioner's" shop--_i.e._, a few bottles of sweets and jumbles in the window, side by side with "twists" of whipcord for the ploughboys and carters, and perhaps has a license for tobacco and snuff. But long before this age they have in most cases been kept by the parish. The farmers who form the guardians know well the history of the poor of their parishes, and remembering the long years of hard work, always allow as liberal a relief as they can to these women. Out of all their many children and grandchildren, it may happen that one has got on fairly well in life, has a business as a blacksmith, or tinker, or carpenter, and gives her a shilling or so a week; and a shilling goes a long way with a woman who lives upon tea and sops. In their latter days these women resemble the pollard oaks, which linger on year after year, and finally fall from sheer decay. _AN ENGLISH HOMESTEAD._ It is easy to pass along a country road without observing half of the farmhouses, so many being situated at a distance from the highway, and others hidden by the thick hedges and the foliage of the trees. This is especially the case in districts chiefly occupied in pasture farming, meadow land being usually found along the banks of rivers, on broad level plains, or in slightly undulating prairie-like country. A splendid belt of meadows often runs at the base of the chalk hills, where the springs break out; and it is here that some of the most beautiful pastoral scenery is to be found. By the side of the highway there are gates at intervals in the close-cropped hedge--kept close-cropped by the strict orders of the road surveyors--giving access to the green fields through which runs a waggon-track, apparently losing itself in the grass. This track will take the explorer to a farmhouse. It is not altogether pleasant to drive over in a spring trap, as the wheels jolt in the hard ruts, and the springs are shaken in the deep furrows, the vehicle going up and down like a boat upon the waves. Why there should be such furrows in a meadow is a question that naturally arises in the mind. Whether it be mown with the scythe or the mowing-machine, it is of advantage to have the surface of the field as nearly as possible level; and it is therefore most probable that these deep furrows had their origin at a period when a different state of things prevailed, when the farmer strove to grow as much wheat as possible, and devoted every acre that he dared break up to the plough. Many of these fields were ill adapted for the growth of corn, the soil unsuitable and liable to be partially flooded; consequently as soon as the market was opened, and the price of wheat declined, so that rapid fortunes could no longer be made by it, the fields were allowed to return to their natural condition. No trouble was taken to relevel the land, and the furrows remain silent witnesses to the past. They are useful as drains it is true; but, being so broad, the water only passes off slowly and encourages the rough grass and "bull-polls" to spring up, which are as uneatable by cattle as the Australian spinifex. The waggon-track is not altogether creditable to the farmer, who would, one would have thought, have had a good road up to his house at all events. It is very wide, and in damp weather every one who drives along it goes further and further out into the grass to find a firm spot, till as much space is rendered barren as by one of the great hedges, now so abominated. The expense of laying down stone is considerable in some localities where the geological formation does not afford quarries; yet even then there is a plan, simple in itself, but rarely resorted to, by which a great saving in outlay may be effected. Any one who will look at a cart-track will see that there are three parallel marks left by the passage of the cart upon the ground. The two outside ruts are caused by the wheels, and between these is a third beaten in by the hoofs of the horse. The plan consists in placing stone, broken up small, not across the whole width of the track, but in these three ruts only; for it is in these ruts alone that the wear takes place, and, if the ground were firm there, no necessity would exist to go farther into the field. To be thoroughly successful, a trench, say six or eight inches wide, and about as deep, should be cut in the place of each rut, and these trenches macadamised. Grass grows freely in the narrow green strips between the ruts, and the track has something of the appearance of a railroad. It is astonishing how long these metals, as it were, will last, when once well put down; and the track has a neat, effective look. The foot-passenger is as much benefited as the tenant of the field. In wet weather he walks upon the macadamised strip dryshod, and in summer upon either of the grass strips, easily and comfortably, without going out into the mowing-grass to have the pleasure of turf under his feet. These deep furrows are also awkward to cross with heavy loads of hay or straw, and it requires much skill to build a load able to withstand the severe jolting and lurching. Some of the worst are often filled up with a couple of large faggots in the harvest season. These tracks run by the side of the hedge, and the ditches are crossed by bridges or "drocks." The last gate opens into a small field surrounded with a high thick hawthorn hedge, itself a thing of beauty in May and June, first with the May blossom and afterwards with the delicate-tinted dog or wild roses. A spreading ash-tree stands on either side of the gateway, from which on King Charles's day the ploughboys carefully select small branches, those with the leaves evenly arranged, instead of odd numbers, to place in their hats. Tall elm-trees grow close together in the hedge and upon the "shore" of the ditch, enclosing the place in a high wall of foliage. In the branches are the rooks' nests, built of small twigs apparently thrown together, and yet so firmly intertwined as to stand the swaying of the tree-tops in the rough blasts of winter. In the spring the rook builds a second nest on the floor of the old one, and this continues till five or six successive layers may be traced; and when at last some ruder tempest strews the grass with its ruin, there is enough wood to fill a bushel basket. The dovecot is fixed in the fork of one of the larger elms, where the trunk divides into huge boughs, each the size of a tree; and in the long rank grass near the hedge the backs of a black Berkshire pig or two may be seen like porpoises rolling in the green sea. Here and there an ancient apple-tree, bent down and bowed to the ground with age, offers a mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed in with wooden palings to keep out the pigs, and poultry, and dogs--for almost every visitor brings with him one or more dogs--and in this narrow garden grow velvety wall-flowers, cloves, pinks, shrubs of lavender, and a few herbs which are useful for seasoning. The house is built of brick; but the colour is toned down by age, and against the wall a pear-tree is trained upon one side, and upon the other a cherry-tree, so that at certain seasons one may rise in the morning and gather the fresh fruits from the window. The lower windows were once latticed; but the old frames have been replaced with the sash, which if not so picturesque, affords more light, and most old farmhouses are deficient in the supply of light. The upper windows remain latticed still. The red tiles of the roof are dull with lichen and the beating of the weather; and the chimney, if looked at closely, is full of tiny holes--it is where the leaden pellets from guns fired at the mischievous starlings have struck the bricks. A pair of doves perched upon the roof-tree coo amorously to each other, and a thin streak of blue smoke rises into the still air. The door is ajar, or wide open. There is no fear here of thieves, or street-boys throwing stones into the hall. Excepting in rain or rough wind, and at night, that front door will be open almost all the summer long. When shut at night it is fastened with a wooden bar passing across the whole width of the door, and fitting into iron staples on each post--a simple contrivance, but very strong and not easily tampered with. Many of the interior doors still open with the old thumb-latch; but the piece of shoe-string to pull and lift it is now relegated to the cottages, and fast disappearing even there before brass-handled locks. This house is not old enough to possess the nail-studded door of solid oak and broad stone-built porch of some farmhouses still occasionally to be found, and which date from the sixteenth century. The porch here simply projects about two feet, and is supported by trellis-work, up which the honeysuckle has been trained. A path of stone slabs leads from the palings up to the threshold, and the hall within is paved with similar flags. The staircase is opposite the doorway, narrow, and guiltless of oilcloth or carpeting; and with reason, for the tips and nails of the heavy boots which tramp up and down it would speedily wear carpets into rags. There is a door at the bottom of the staircase closed at night. By the side of the staircase is a doorway which leads into the dairy--two steps lower than the front of the house. The sitting-room is on the left of the hall, and the floor is of the same cold stone flags, which in damp weather become wet and slimy. These flags, in fact, act as a barometer, and foretell rain with great accuracy, as it were perspiring with latent moisture at its approach. The chimney was originally constructed for a wood fire upon the hearth, and of enormous size, so that several sides of bacon could be hung up inside to be smoke-dried. The fireplace was very broad, so that huge logs could be thrown at once upon the fire with very little trouble of sawing them short. Since coal has come into general use, and wood grown scarce, the fireplace has been partly built up and an iron grate inserted, which looks out of place in so large a cavity. The curious fire-dogs, upon which the wood was thrown, may still, perhaps, be found upstairs in some corner of the lumber-room. On the mantelpiece are still preserved, well polished and bright, the several pieces of the "jack" or cooking apparatus; and a pair of great brazen candlesticks ornament it at each end. A leaden or latten tobacco-bowl, a brazen pestle and mortar, and half-a-dozen odd figures in china, are also scattered upon it, surmounted by a narrow looking-glass. In one corner stands an old eight-day clock with a single hour hand--minute hands being a modern improvement; but it is silent, and its duties are performed by an American timepiece supported upon a bracket against the wall. Upstairs, however, upon the landing, a similar ancient piece of clockmaking still ticks solemn and slow with a ponderous melancholy. The centre of the room is occupied with an oaken table, solid and enduring, but inconvenient to sit at; and upon each side of the fireplace is a stiff-backed arm-chair. A ledge under the window forms a pleasant seat in summer. Before the fireplace is a rug, the favourite resort of the spaniels and cats. The rest of the floor used to be bare; but of late years a square of cocoanut matting has been laid down. A cumbrous piece of furniture takes up almost half of one side--not known in modern manufactories. It is of oak, rudely polished, and inlaid with brass. At the bottom are great deep drawers, pulled open with brass rings ornamented with dogs' heads. In these drawers are kept cow-drenches--bottles of oils for the wounds which cattle sometimes get from nails or kicks; dog-whips and pruning-knives; a shot-belt and powder-flask; an old horse-pistol; a dozen odd stones or fossils picked up upon the farm and kept as curiosities; twenty or thirty old almanacs, and a file of the county paper for forty years; and a hundred similar odds and ends. Above the drawers comes a desk with a few pigeon-holes; a desk little used, for the farmer is less of a literary turn than almost any other class. The pigeon-holes are stuffed full of old papers, recipes for cattle medicines, and, perhaps, a book of divinity or sermons printed in the days of Charles II., leather-covered and worm-eaten. Still higher are a pair of cupboards where china, the tea-set, and the sugar and groceries in immediate use are kept. On the top, which is three or four inches under the ceiling, are two or three small brown-paper parcels of grass seeds, and a variety of nondescript articles. Opposite, on the other wall, and close above the chimneypiece, so as to be kept dry, is the gun-rack with two double-barrels, a long single-barrel duck gun, and a cavalry sabre, worn once a year by a son of the house who goes out to training in the yeomanry. There are a few pictures, not of a high class--three or four prints depicting Dick Turpin's ride to York, and a coloured sketch of some steeplechase winner, or a copy of a well-known engraving representing a feat accomplished many years ago at a farm. A flock of sheep were shorn, the wool carded and spun, and a coat made of it, and worn by the flockowner, and all in one day. From this room a door opens into the cellar and pantry, partly underground, and reached by three or four steps. On the other side of the hall is the parlour, which was originally floored, like the sitting-room, with stone flags, since taken up and replaced by boards. This is carpeted, and contains a comfortable old-fashioned sofa, horse-hair chairs, and upon the side tables may, perhaps, be found a few specimens of valuable old china, made to do duty as flower-vases, and filled with roses. The room has a fresh, sweet smell from the open window and the flowers. It tempts almost irresistibly to repose in the noontide heat of a summer's day. Upstairs there are two fair-sized bedrooms, furnished with four-post wooden bedsteads. The second flight of stairs, going up to the attic, has also a door at the foot. This house is built upon a simple but effective design, well calculated for the purposes to be served. It resembles two houses placed not end to end, as in a block, but side by side, and each part has a separate roof. Under the front roof, which is somewhat higher than the other, are the living-rooms of the family: sitting-room, parlour, bedroom, and attics, or servants' bedrooms. Under the lower roof are the offices, the cheese-loft, dairy, kitchen, cellar, and wood-house. Numerous doors give easy communication on each floor, so that the house consists of two distinct portions, and the business is kept quite apart from the living rooms, and yet close to them. This is, perhaps, the most convenient manner in which a dairy farmhouse can be built; and the plan was undoubtedly the result of experience. Of course, in dairy-farming upon a very extended scale, or as a gentlemanly amusement, it would be preferable to have the offices entirely apart, and at some distance from the dwelling-house. These remarks apply to an ordinary farm of moderate size. Leaving the hall by the door at the side of the staircase, two steps descend into the dairy, which is almost invariably floored with stone flags, even in localities where brick is used for the flooring of the sitting-room. The great object aimed at in the construction of the dairy was coolness, and freedom from dust as much as possible. The stone flags ensure a cool floor; and the windows always open to the north, so that neither the summer sunshine nor the warm southern winds can injuriously affect the produce. It is a long open room, whitewashed, in the centre of which stands the cheese-tub, until lately invariably made of wood, but now frequently of tin, this material taking much less trouble to keep clean. The cheese-tub is large enough for a Roman lady's bath of milk. Against one wall are the whey-leads--shallow, long, and broad vessels of wood, lined with lead, supported two or three feet above the floor, so that buckets can be placed underneath. In these "leads" the whey is kept, and drawn off by pulling up a wooden plug. Under the "leads"--as out of the way--are some of the great milk-pans into which the milk is poured. Pussy sometimes dips her nose into these, and whitens her whiskers with cream. At one end of the room is the cheese-press. The ancient press, with its complicated arrangement of long iron levers weighted at the end something like a steelyard, and drawn up by cords and pulleys, has been taken down and lies discarded in the lumber-room. The pressure in the more modern machine is obtained from a screw. The rennet-vat is perhaps hidden behind the press, and there are piles of the cheese-moulds or vats beside it, into which the curd is placed when fit to be compressed into the proper shape and consistency. All the utensils here are polished, and clean to the last degree; without extreme cleanliness success in cheese or butter making cannot be achieved. The windows are devoid of glass; they are really wind doors, closed when necessary, with a shutter on hinges like a cupboard door. Cats and birds are prevented from entering by means of wire screens--like a coarse netting of wire--and an upright iron bar keeps out more dangerous thieves. There is a copper for scalding milk. When in good order there is scarcely any odour in a dairy, notwithstanding the decidedly strong smell of some of the materials employed: free egress of air and perfect cleanliness takes off all but the faintest _astringent_ flavour. In summer it is often the custom of dairymaids to leave buckets full of water standing under the "leads" or elsewhere out of the way, or a milk-pan is left with water in it, to purify the atmosphere. Water, it is well known, has a remarkable power of preventing the air from going "dead" as it were. A model dairy should have a small fountain in some convenient position, with a jet constantly playing. The state of the atmosphere has the most powerful effect upon the contents of the dairy, especially during times of electrical tension. To the right of the dairy is the brewhouse, now rarely used for the purpose implied in its name, though the tubs, and coolers, and other "plant" necessary for the process are still preserved. Here there is a large copper also; and the oven often opens on to the brewhouse. In this place the men have their meals. Next to it is the wood-house, used for the storage of the wood which is required for immediate use, and must therefore be dry; and beyond that the kitchen, where the fire is still upon the hearth, though coal is mixed with the logs and faggots. Along the whole length of this side of the house there is a paved or pitched courtyard enclosed by a low brick wall, with one or two gates opening upon the paths which lead to the rickyards and the stalls. The buttermilk and refuse from the dairy runs by a channel cut in the stone across the court into a vault or well sunk in the ground, from whence it is dipped for the pigs. The vault is closed at the mouth by a heavy wooden lid. There is a well and pump for water here; sometimes with a windlass, when the well is deep. If the water be low or out of condition, it is fetched in yokes from the nearest running stream. The acid or "eating" power of the buttermilk, &c., may be noted in the stones, which in many places are scooped or hollowed out. A portion of the court is roofed in, and is called the "skilling." It is merely covered in without walls, the roof supported upon oaken posts. Under this the buckets are placed to dry after being cleaned, and here the churn may often be seen. A separate staircase, rising from the dairy, gives access to the cheese-loft. It is an immense apartment, reaching from one end of the house to the other, and as lofty as the roof will permit, for it is not ceiled. The windows are like those of the dairy. Down the centre are long double shelves sustained upon strong upright beams, tier upon tier from the floor as high as the arms can conveniently reach. Upon these shelves the cheese is stored, each lying upon its side; and, as no two cheeses are placed one upon the other until quite ready for eating, a ton or two occupies a considerable space while in process of drying. They are also placed in rows upon the floor, which is made exceptionally strong, and supported upon great beams to bear the weight. The scales used to be hung from a beam overhead, and consisted of an iron bar, at each end of which a square board was slung with ropes--one board to pile up the cheese on, and the other for the counterpoise of weights. These rude and primitive scales are now generally superseded by modern and more accurate instruments, weighing to a much smaller fraction. Stone half-hundredweights and stone quarters were in common use not long since. A cheese-loft, when full, is a noble sight of its kind, and represents no little labour and skill. When sold, the cheese is carefully packed in the cart with straw to prevent its being injured. The oil or grease from the cheese gradually works its way into the shelves and floor, and even into the staircase, till the woodwork seems saturated with it. Rats and mice are the pests of the loft; and so great is their passion for cheese that neither cats, traps, nor poison can wholly repress these invaders, against whom unceasing war is waged. The starlings--who, if the roof be of thatch, as it is in many farmhouses, make their nests in it--occasionally carry their holes right through, and are unmercifully exterminated when they venture within reach, or they would quickly let the rain and the daylight in. As the dairy and offices face the north, so the front of the house--the portion used for domestic purposes--has a southern aspect, which experience has proved to be healthy. But at the same time, despite its compactness and general convenience, there are many defects in the building--defects chiefly of a sanitary character. It is very doubtful if there are any drains at all. Even though the soil be naturally dry, the ground floor is almost always cold and damp. The stone flags are themselves cold enough, and are often placed upon the bare earth. The threshold is on a level with the ground outside, and sometimes a step lower, and in wet weather the water penetrates to the hall. There is another disadvantage. If the door be left open, which it usually is, frogs, toads, and creeping things generally, sometimes make their way in, though ruthlessly swept out again; and an occasional snake from the long grass at the very door is an unpleasant, though perfectly harmless visitor. The floor should be raised a foot or so above the level of the earth, and some provision made against the damp by a layer of concrete or something of the kind. If not, even if boards be substituted for the flags, they will soon decay. It often happens that farmhouses upon meadow land are situated on low ground, which in winter is saturated with water which stands in the furrows, and makes the footpaths leading to the house impassable except to water-tight boots. This must, and undoubtedly does affect the health of the inmates, and hence probably the prevalence of rheumatism. The site upon which the house stands should be so drained as to carry off the water. Some soils contract to an appreciable extent in a continuance of drought, and expand in an equal degree with wet--a fact apparent to any one who walks across a field where the soil is clay, in a dry time, when the deep, wide cracks cannot be overlooked. Alternate swelling and contraction of the earth under the foundations of a house produce a partial dislocation of the brickwork, and hence it is common enough to see cracks running up the walls. Had the site been properly drained, and the earth consequently always dry, this would not have happened; and it is a matter of consideration for the landlord, who in time may find it necessary to shore up a wall with a buttress. The great difference in the temperature of a drained soil and an undrained one has often been observed, amounting sometimes to as much as twenty degrees--a serious matter where health is concerned. A foolish custom was observed in the building of many old farmhouses, _i.e._, of carrying beams of wood across the chimney--a practice that has led to disastrous fires. The soot accumulates. These huge cavernous chimneys are rarely swept, and at last catch alight and smoulder for many days: presently fire breaks out in the middle of a room under which the beam passes. Houses erected in blocks or in towns do not encounter the full force of the storms of winter to the same degree as a solitary farmhouse, standing a quarter or half-a-mile from any other dwelling. This is the reason why the old farmers planted elm-trees and encouraged the growth of thick hawthorn hedges close to the homestead. The north-east and the south-west are the quarters from whence most is to be dreaded: the north-east for the bitter wind which sweeps along and grows colder from the damp, wet meadows it passes over; and the south-west for the driving rain, lasting sometimes for days and weeks together. Trees and hedges break the force of the gales, and in summer shelter from the glaring sun. The architectural arrangement of the farmhouse just described gives almost perfect privacy. Except visitors, no one comes to the front door or passes unpleasantly close to the windows. Labourers and others all go to the courtyard at the back. The other plans upon which farmsteads are built are far from affording similar privacy. There are some which, in fact, are nothing but an enlarged and somewhat elongated cottage, with the dwelling-rooms at one end and the dairy and offices at the other, and the bedrooms over both. Everybody and everything brought to or taken from the place has to pass before the dwelling-room windows--a most unpleasant arrangement. Another style is square, with low stone walls whitewashed, and thatched roof of immense height. Against it is a lean-to, the eaves of the roof of which are hardly three feet from the ground. So high-pitched a roof necessitates the employment of a great amount of woodwork, and the upper rooms have sloping ceilings. They may look picturesque from a distance, but are inconvenient and uncouth within, and admirably calculated for burning. A somewhat superior description is built in the shape of a carpenter's "square." The dwelling-rooms form, as it were, one house, and the offices, dairy and cheese-loft are added on at one end at right angles. The courtyard is in the triangular space between. For some things this is a convenient arrangement; but there still remains the disagreeableness of the noise, and, at times, strong odours from the courtyard under the windows of the dwelling-house. Nearly all farmsteads have awkwardly low ceilings, which in a town would cause a close atmosphere, but are not so injurious in the open country, with doors constantly ajar. In erecting a modern house this defect would, of course, be avoided. The great thickness of the walls is sometimes a deception; for in pulling down old buildings it is occasionally found that the interior of the wall is nothing but loose broken stones and bricks enclosed or rammed in between two walls. The staircases are generally one of the worst features of the old houses, being between a wall and a partition--narrow, dark, steep, and awkwardly placed, and without windows or handrails. These houses were obviously built for a people living much out of doors. _JOHN SMITH'S SHANTY._ He was standing in the ditch leaning heavily upon the long handle of his axe. It was a straight stick of ash, roughly shaved down to some sort of semblance of smoothness, such as would have worked up an unpractised hand into a mass of blisters in ten minutes' usage, but which glided easily through those horny palms, leaving no mark of friction. The continuous outdoor labour, the beating of innumerable storms, and the hard, coarse fare, had dried up all the original moisture of the hand, till it was rough, firm, and cracked or chapped like a piece of wood exposed to the sun and weather. The natural oil of the skin, which gives to the hand its beautiful suppleness and delicate sense of touch, was gone like the sap in the tree he was felling, for it was early in the winter. However the brow might perspire, there was no dampness on the hand, and the helve of the axe was scarcely harder and drier. In order, therefore, that the grasp might be firm, it was necessary to artificially wet the palms, and hence that custom which so often disgusts lookers-on, of spitting on the hands before commencing work. This apparently gratuitous piece of dirtiness is in reality absolutely necessary. Men with hands in this state have hardly any feeling in them; they find it difficult to pick up anything small, as a pin--the fingers fumble over it; and as for a pen, they hold it like a hammer. His chest was open to the north wind, which whistled through the bare branches of the tall elm overhead as if they were the cordage of a ship, and came in sudden blasts through the gaps in the hedge, blowing his shirt back, and exposing the immense breadth of bone, and rough dark skin tanned to a brown-red by the summer sun while mowing. The neck rose from it short and thick like that of a bull, and the head was round, and covered with a crop of short grizzled hair not yet quite grey, but fast losing its original chestnut colour. The features were fairly regular, but coarse, and the nose flattened. An almost worn-out old hat thrown back on the head showed a low, broad, wrinkled forehead. The eyes were small and bleared, set deep under shaggy eyebrows. The corduroy trousers, yellow with clay and sand, were shortened below the knee by leather straps like garters, so as to exhibit the whole of the clumsy boots, with soles like planks, and shod with iron at heel and tip. These boots weigh seven pounds the pair; and in wet weather, with clay and dirt clinging to them, must reach nearly double that. In spite of all the magnificent muscular development which this man possessed, there was nothing of the Hercules about him. The grace of strength was wanting, the curved lines were lacking; all was gaunt, angular, and square. The chest was broad enough, but flat, a framework of bones hidden by a rough hairy skin; the breasts did not swell up like the rounded prominences of the antique statue. The neck, strong enough as it was to bear the weight of a sack of corn with ease, was too short, and too much a part, as it were, of the shoulders. It did not rise up like a tower, distinct in itself; and the muscles on it, as they moved, produced hollow cavities distressing to the eye. It was strength without beauty; a mechanical kind of power, like that of an engine, working through straight lines and sharp angles. There was too much of the machine, and too little of the animal; the lithe, easy motion of the lion or the tiger was not there. The impression conveyed was, that such strength had been gained through a course of incessant exertion of the rudest kind, unassisted by generous food and checked by unnatural exposure. John Smith heaved up his axe and struck at the great bulging roots of the elm, from which he had cleared away the earth with his spade. A heavy chip flew out with a dull thud on the sward. The straight handle of the axe increased the labour of the work, for in this curiously conservative country the American improvement of the double curved handle has not yet been adopted. Chip after chip fell in the ditch, or went spinning out into the field. The axe rose and fell with a slow, monotonous motion. Though there was immense strength in every blow, there was no vigour in it. Suddenly, while it was swinging in the air overhead, there came the faint, low echo of a distant railway whistle, and the axe was dropped at once, without even completing the blow. "That's the express," he muttered, and began cleaning the dirt from his shoes. The daily whistle of the express was the signal for luncheon. Hastily throwing on a slop hung on the bushes, and over that a coat, he picked up a small bag, and walked slowly off down the side of the hedge to where the highway road went by. Here he sat down, somewhat sheltered by a hawthorn bush, in the ditch, facing the road, and drew out his bread and cheese. About a quarter of a loaf of bread, or nearly, and one slice of cheese was this full-grown and powerful man's dinner that cold, raw winter's day. His drink was a pint of cold weak tea, kept in a tin can, for these men are moderate enough with liquor at their meals, whatever they may be at other times. He held the bread in his left hand and the cheese was placed on it, and kept in its place by the thumb, the grimy dirt on which was shielded by a small piece of bread beneath it from the precious cheese. His plate and dish was his broad palm, his only implement a great jack-knife with a buck-horn handle. He ate slowly, thoughtfully, deliberately; weighing each mouthful, chewing the cud as it were. All the man's motions were heavy and slow, deadened as if clogged with a great load. There was no "life" in him. What little animation there was left had taken him to eat his dinner by the roadside--the instinct of sociality--that if possible he might exchange a word with some one passing. In factories men work in gangs, and hundreds are often within call of each other; a rough joke or an occasional question can be put and answered; there is a certain amount of sympathy, a sensation of company and companionship. But alone in the fields, the human instinct of friendship is checked, the man is driven back upon himself and his own narrow range of thought, till the mind and heart grow dull, and there only remains such a vague ill-defined want as carried John Smith to the roadside that day. He had finished his cheese and lit a short clay pipe, and thrust his hands deep in his pockets, when there was a rustling noise in the hedge a little farther down, and a short man jumped out into the road--even jumping with his hands in his pockets. He saw Smith directly and came towards him, and sat himself on a heap of flints used for mending the road. "What's thee at to-day?" asked John, after a pause. "Ditching," said the other laconically, pushing out one foot by way of illustrating the fact. It was covered with black mud far above the ankle, and there were splashes of mud up to his waist--his hands, as he proceeded to light his pipe, were black, too, from the same cause. "Thee's bin in main deep," said John, after a slow survey of the other's appearance. The fellow stamped his boot on the ground, and the slime and slush oozed out of it and formed a puddle. "That's pretty stuff to stand in for a man of sixty-four, yent it, John?" With a volubility and energy of speech little to be expected from his wizened appearance, the hedger and ditcher entered into details of his job. He began work at six that morning with stiff legs and swollen feet, and as he stood in the mingled mire and water, the rheumatism came gradually on, rising higher up his limbs from the ankles, and growing sharper with every twinge, while the cold and bitter wind cut through his thin slop on his chest, which was not so strong as it used to be. His arms got stiff with the labour of lifting up shovelful after shovelful of heavy mud to plaster the side of the ditch, his feet turned cold as "flints," and the sickly smell of the slime upset his stomach so that when he tried to eat his bread and cheese he could not. Through this speech John smoked steadily on, till the other stopped and looked at him for sympathy. "Well, Jim, anyhow," said Smith, "thee hasn't got far to walk to the job;" and he pointed with the stem of his pipe to the low roof of a cottage just visible a few hundred yards distant. "Ay, and a place it be to live in, that," said Jim. There were only two rooms, he explained, and both downstairs--no upstairs at all--and the first of these was so small he could reach across it, and the thatch had got so thin in one place that the rain came through. The floor was only hard mud, and the garden not big enough to grow a sack of potatoes, while one wall of the house, which was only "wattle and daub" (_i.e._, lath and plaster), rose up from the very edge of a great stagnant pond. Overhead there was an elm, from the branches of which in wet weather there was a perpetual drip, drip on the thatch, till the moss and grass grew on the roof in profusion. All the sewage and drainage from the cottage ran into the pond, over which at night there was almost always a thick damp mist, which crept in through the crevices of the rotten walls, and froze the blood in the sleepers' veins. Sometimes a flood came down, and the pond rose and washed away the cabbages from the garden, leaving a deposit of gritty sand which killed all vegetation, and they could only keep the water from coming indoors by making a small dam of clay across the doorway. There was only a low hedge of elder between the cottage and a dirty lane; and in the night, especially if there happened to be a light burning, it was common enough for a stone to come through the window, flung by some half-drunken ploughboy. A pretty place for a human being to live in: and again he looked up into Smith's face for comment. "Thee built 'un thee-self, didn't 'ee?" said John, in his slow way. "Ay, that I did," continued Jim, not seeing the drift of the remark. He not only built it, but he brought up nineteen children in it, and fourteen of them lived to grow up, all the offspring of one wife. And a time she had of it, too. None of them ever fell in that pond, though he often wished they would; and they were all pretty healthy, which was a bad thing, because it made them hungry, and if they had been ill the parish would have kept them. All that he had done on 12s. a week, and he minded the time when it was only 9s., ay, and even when it was 6s., and 'twas better then than it was now with 15s. That was before the Unions came about, in the time of the old workhouses in every parish. Then the farmers used to find everybody a job. Every morning they had to go round from one farmer to the other, and if there was no work then they went to the workhouse, or sometimes to the vestry-room in the church, where every man had a loaf of bread for every head there was in his family, so that the more children he had the more loaves of bread, which was a capital thing when the children were small. He had known a man in those times sent seven miles with a wheelbarrow to fetch a barrow load of coal from the canal wharf, and then have to wheel it back seven miles, and get one shilling for his day's work. Still they were better times than these, because the farmers for their own sake were forced to find the fellows something to do; but now they did not care, and it was a hard thing to find work, especially when a man grew old, and stiff about the joints. Now the Boards of Guardians would not give any relief unless the applicants were ill, or not able-bodied, and even then they were often required to break stones, and he was very much inclined to throw his spade in that old pond and go to the Union with the "missis" and all the lot for good. He had the rheumatism bad enough. It would serve them right. He had worked "nigh handy" sixty years; and all he had got by it he could put in his eye. They ought to keep him now. It was not half so good as the old times for all the talk; then the children could bring home a bit of wood out of the hedges to boil the pot with, but now they must not touch a stick, or there was the law on them in a minute. And then coal at the price it was. Why didn't his sons keep him? Where were they? One was a soldier, and another had gone to America, and the third was married and had a hard job to keep himself, and the fourth was gone nobody knew where. As for the wenches, they were no good in that way. So he and his "missis" muddled on at home with three of the youngest. And they could not let them alone even in that. He did go into the Union workhouse for a bit, a while ago, when the rheumatism was extraordinary bad, but some of the guardians smelt out that he had a cottage of his own, and it was against the law to relieve anybody that had property; so he must pay back the relief as a loan or sell the cottage. He was offered £25 for the place and garden, and he meant to have taken it, but when they came to look into the writings it was not clear that he could sell it. It was quit-rent land, and although the landlord had not taken the rent for twenty years, yet he had entered it in his book as paid (out of good nature), and the lawyers said it could not be done. But as they would not let him sell it, he would not turn out, not he. There he would stop--just to spite them. He knew that nook of his was wanted for cattle stalls on the new principle, and very handy it would be with all that water close at hand, but he had worked for sixty years, and had had nineteen children there, and he would not turn out. Not he. The parson's "missis" and the squire's "missis" came the other day about that youngest boy of his. They wanted to get him into some school up in London somewhere, but he remembered how the squire had served him just for picking up a dead rabbit that laid in his path one hard snow time. Six weeks in gaol because he could not pay the fine. And the parson turned him out of his allotment because he saw him stagger a little in the road one night with the rheumatism. It was a lie that he was drunk. And suppose he was? The parson had his wine, he reckoned. They should not have his boy. He rather hoped he would grow up a bad one, and bother them well. He minded when that sharp old Miss ---- was always coming round with tracts and blankets, like taking some straw to a lot of pigs, and lecturing his "missis" about economy. What a fuss she made, and scolded his wife as if she was a thief for having that fifteenth boy! His "missis" turned on her at last, and said, "Lor, miss, that's all the pleasure me an' my old man got." As for this talk about the labourers' Unions, it was all very well for the young men; but it made it worse still for the old ones. The farmers, if they had to give such a price, would have young men in full strength: there was no chance at all for an old fellow of sixty-four with rheumatism. Some of them, too, were terribly offended--some of the old sort--and turned off the few pensioners they had kept on at odd jobs for years. However, he supposed he must get back to that ditch again. This long oration was delivered not without a certain degree of power and effect, showing that the man, whatever his faults, might with training have become rather a clever fellow. The very way in which he contradicted himself, and announced his intention of never doing that which a moment before he was determined on, was not without an amount of oratorical art, since the turn in his view of the subject was led up to by a variety of reasons which were supposed to convince himself and his hearer at the same time. His remarks were all the more effective because there was an evident substratum of stern truth beneath them. But they failed to make much impression on Smith, who saw his companion depart without a word. The fact was, that Smith was too well acquainted with the private life of the orator. In his dull, dim way, he half recognised that the unfortunate old fellow's evils had been in great part of his own creating. He knew that he was far from faultless. That poaching business--a very venial offence in a labourer's eyes--he knew had been a serious one, a matter of some two-score pheasants and a desperate fight with a gang. Looking at it as property, the squire had been merciful, pleading with the magistrates for a mitigated penalty. The drunkenness was habitual. In short, they were a bad lot--there was a name attached to the whole family for thieving, poaching, drinking, and even worse. Yet still there were two points that did sink deep into Smith's mind, and made him pause several times that afternoon in his work. The first was that long family of nineteen mouths, with the father and mother making twenty-one. What a number of sins, in the rude logic of the struggle for existence, that terrible fact glossed over! Who could blame--what labourer at least could blame--the ragged, ill-clothed children for taking the dead wood from the hedges to warm their naked limbs? What labourer could blame the father for taking the hares and rabbits running across his very path to fill that wretched hovel with savoury steam from the pot? And further, what labourer could blame the miserable old man for drowning his feelings, and his sensation of cold and hunger, in liquor? The great evil of these things is that a fellow-feeling will arise with the wrong-doer, till the original distinction between right and wrong is lost sight of entirely. John Smith had a family too. The other point was the sixty years of labour and their fruit. After two generations of hardest toil and rudest exposure, still dependent upon the seasons even to permit him to work, when that work could be obtained. No rest, no cosy fireside nook: still the bitter wind, and the half-frozen slime and slush rising above the ankle. In an undefined way Smith had been proud of his broad, enormous strength, and rocklike hardihood. He had felt a certain rude pleasure in opening his broad chest to the winter wind. But now he involuntarily closed his shirt and buttoned it. He did not feel so confident in his own power of meeting all the contingencies of the future. Thought without method and without logical sequence is apt to press heavily upon the uneducated mind. It was thus that these reflections left a sensation of weight and discomfort upon Smith, and it was in a worse humour than was common to his usually well-balanced organisation that he hid away his tools under the bushes as the evening grew too dark for work, and slowly paced homewards. He had some two miles to walk, and he had long since begun to feel hungry. Plodding along in a heavy, uneven gait, there overtook him a tall, raw young lad of eighteen or twenty, slouching forward with vast strides and whistling merrily. The lad slackened his steps and joined company! "Where bist thee working now, then?" asked Smith. He replied, evidently in high spirits, that he had that day got a job at the new railway that was making. The wages were 18s. a week--3s. a day--and he had heard that as soon as the men grew to understand their work and to be a little skilful, they could get 24s. easily, up by London. The only drawback was the long walk to the work. Lodgings close at hand were very dear, as also was food, so dear as to lower the actual receipts to an equality, if not below that of the agricultural labourer. Four miles every morning and every night was the price he paid for 18s. a week. Smith began in his slow, dull way to reckon up his wages aloud against this. First he had 13s. a week for his daily work. Then he had 1s. extra for milking on Sundays, and two good meals with beer on that day. Every week-day he had a pint of beer on finishing work. The young navvy had to find his own liquor. His cottage, it was true, was his own (that is, he only paid a low quit-rent of 1s. a year for it), so that that could not be reckoned in as part of his earnings, as it could with many other men. But the navvy's wages were the same all the year round, while his in summer were often nearly double. As a stalwart mower he could earn 25s. a week and more, as a haymaker 18s., and at harvesting perhaps 30s. If the season was good, and there was a press for hands, he would get more. But, looking forward, there was no prospect of rising higher in his trade, of getting higher wages for more skilful work. He could not be more skilful than he was in ordinary farm work; and as yet the call for clever men to attend to machinery, &c., was very limited; nor were such a class of workmen usually drawn from the resident population where improvements were introduced. The only hope of higher wages that was held out to him was from the gradual rise of everything, or the forced rise consequent upon agitation. But, said he, the navvy must follow his work from place to place, and lodgings are dear in the towns, and the farmers in country places will not let their cottages except to their own labourers--how was the navvy even with higher wages to keep a wife? The aspiring young fellow beside him replied at once sharply and decisively, that he did not mean to have a wife, leastways not till he had got his regular 30s. a week, which he might in time. Then John Smith made a noise in his chest like a grunt. They parted after this. Smith went into the farmhouse, and got his pint of beer, drinking it in one long slow draught, and then made his way through the scattered village to his cottage. There was a frown on his forehead as he lifted the latch of the long low thatched building which was his home. The flickering light of the fire on the hearth, throwing great shadows as it blazed up and fell, dazed his eyes as he stepped in, and he did not notice a line stretched right across the room on which small articles of clothing were hanging to dry in a row. A damp worsted stocking flapped against his face, and his foot stumbled on the uneven flag stones which formed the floor. He sat down silently upon a three-legged stool--an old milking-stool--and, putting his hands on his knees, stared into the fire. It was formed of a few sticks with just one knob of coal balanced on the top of them, evident care having been taken that not a jot of its precious heat should be lost. A great black pot with open lid swung over it, from which rose a slight steam and a bubbling noise; and this huge, gaunt, bareboned, hungry man, looking into it, saw a large raw swede, just as from the field, with only the greens cut off, simmering for his supper. That root in its day of life had been fed well with superphosphate, and flourished exceedingly, till now its globe could hardly go into the pot. Down the low chimney there came the monotonous growl of the bitter winter wind, and a few spots of rain fell hissing on the embers. "Is this all thee has got?" he asked, turning to a woman who was busied with some more damp clothes in a basket. She faced round quickly--a short, narrow, meagre creature, flat-chested and square-shouldered, whose face was the hue of light-coloured clay, an almost corpse-like complexion. Her thin lips hissed out, "Ay, if thee takes thee money to the pothouse thee won't get bacon for supper." Smith said nothing in reply, but stared again into the fire. The children's voices, which had lowered the moment there seemed a coming quarrel between their parents, rose again. There were three of them--the youngest four, the eldest seven--playing on the stone flags of the floor, between whose rough edges there were wide crevices of hardened mud. With a few short sticks and a broken piece of earthenware for toys, they were happy in their way. Whatever their food might have been, they showed no traces of hard usage. Their red "puddy" fists were fat, and their naked legs round and plump enough. Their faces were full and rosy, and their voices clear and anything but querulous. The eager passions of childhood come out fierce and unrestrained, and blows were freely interchanged, without, however, either cries or apparent hatred. Their naked knees were on the stone-flags, and the wind, creeping in a draught under the ill-fitting door, blew their ragged clothes about. "Thee med well look at 'em, John," said the woman, seeing Smith cast a sideway glance at the children; and rapidly manipulating the clothing, her thin nervous lips poured forth a torrent of words upon the silent man. They had had nothing but bread that day, and nothing but bread and lard the day before, and now the lard was gone, and the baker would not trust any more. There were no potatoes because the disease had destroyed them, and the cabbages were sold for that bit of coal; and as for the swede, she took it out of Mr. ----'s field, and he was a cross-grained man, and who knew but what they might have the constable on them before morning? Jane W. and Sarah Y. went to prison for seven days for stealing swedes. All along of that cursed drink. If she were the squire she'd shut up all the pothouses in the county. The men went there, and drank the very shirts off their backs, and the clothes off their children, ay, and the shoes off their feet; and what was the use of their having more money when it only went into the publican's pocket? There they sat, and drank the bread out of the babies' mouths. As for the women, the most of them, poor things, never tasted beer from one year's end to another. Old Carter handed her a pint that day, and when she tasted it she did not know what it was. He might smile, but it was true though: no more did Jane W. and Sally Y.: they did not know what it tasted like. And yet they had to be out in the fields at work at eight o'clock, and their washing to do before that, and perhaps a baby in their arms, and the tea as weak as water, and no sugar. Milk, they could not get milk for money--he knew that very well; all the milk went to London. A precious lot of good the higher wages had done them. The farmers would not let them have a drop of milk or a scrap of victuals, and talked about rising the price of the allotment grounds. Allotment, did she say? and how did he lose his allotment?--didn't he drink, drink, drink, till he had to hand over his allotment to the landlord of the pothouse, and did not they take it away from both as soon as they heard of it? Served him right. They had not got a pound of potatoes, and the children did use to lick up the potato-pot liquor as if they liked it. Smith asked where Polly was, but that was only a signal for a fresh outburst. Polly, if he'd a looked after her she would have been all right. (Smith turned a sharp glance at her in some alarm at this.) Letting a great girl like that go about at night by herself while he was a drink, drink, drinking, and there she was now, the bad hussy, gone to the workhouse to lie in. (Smith winced.) _She_ never disgraced herself like that; and if he had sent the wench to service, or stopped her going down to that pothouse with the fellows, this would not have happened. She always told him how it would end. He was a good-for-nothing, drunken brute of a man, and had brought her to all this misery; and she began sobbing. After twelve long hours of toil, including the walk to and fro, exposed to the bitter cold, with but a slice of cheese to support the strength of that brawny chest, this welcome to his supper was more than the sturdy, silent man could bear. With a dull remembrance of the happy sunlit summer, twenty years ago, when Martha was a plump, laughing girl, of sloe-black eyes and nut-brown complexion--with a glimpse of that merry courting time passing across his mind, Smith got up and walked out into the dark rainy night. "Ay, thee bist agoing to the liquor again," were the last words he heard as he shut the door. It was too true. But what labourer, let us ask, with a full conception of the circumstances, would blame him? Here there was nothing but hard and scanty fare, no heat, no light, nothing to cheer the heart, nothing to cause it to forget the toil of the day and the thought of the morrow, no generous liquor sung by poets to warm the physical man. But only a few yards farther down the road there was a great house, with its shutters cosily closed, ablaze with heat and light, echoing with merry laughter and song. There was an array of good fellows ready to welcome him, to tell him the news, to listen eagerly to what he could tell them, to ask him to drink, and to drink from his cup in boon companionship. There was a social circle in which his heart and intellect could expand, at least for a while, till the strong liquor mounted up and overcame his brain; and then, even then, there was the forgetfulness, the deep slumber of intoxication, utterly oblivious of all things--perhaps the greatest pleasure of all. Smith went there, and who of his own class would blame him? And if his own class did not, of what use is it for other and higher classes to preach morality to him? It is a man's own comrades, his own class, whose opinions he dreads and conforms to. If they condemned him for going there, he would avoid the public-house. But they would have called him a fool if he avoided it. In their logic who could say they were wrong? A man who is happy is a long while getting drunk, he talks as much as he drinks; but Smith was dull and silent, and drank steadily. It was not late, but when the house closed he could but just keep his feet. In the thick darkness and the driving rain he staggered on, unconscious of the road he was taking, but bearing roughly towards home. The cold air rather more stupefied him than brought him to himself. Insensibly he wandered with uncertain steps down a lane which led by a gentle slope out into the fields, the fall of the ground guiding his footsteps, and then stumbling over the root of an ash-tree, fell heavily on the wet grass. His eyes, half-shut before, closed as if by clockwork, and in a moment he was firm asleep. His hat had fallen from his brow, and the grizzled hair was blown about by the wind as it came in gusts through the hedge. His body was a little sheltered by the tree, but his chest was open and bare half-way down his waistcoat; and the heavy drops fell from the boughs of the ash on his stalwart neck, gradually saturating his shirt. It may have been that the cold numbed him and rendered him more insensible than he otherwise would have been. No star shone out that night; all was darkness, clouds, and rain till the dawn broke. Soon after dawn, the young navvy, going to his work by a short cut, found Smith still asleep, and shook him till he got up. He was stupid beyond all power of words to express; but at last came to a dim idea that he must get home. Then the young navvy left him, anxious about being late at his employment, and John Smith slowly _felt_ his way to his own door. His wife, already up, opened it. "Thee varmint! thee never gi'ed I that shilling last night for the baker." Smith felt hopelessly in his pocket, and then looked at her vacantly. "Thee drunken, nasty old----," said the infuriated woman, almost unconsciously lifting her hand. Perhaps it was that action of hers which suggested the same to his mind, which was in a mechanical state. Perhaps the stinging words of last night had at last sunk deep enough to scarify his self-esteem. Perhaps he did not at that moment fully remember the strength of his own mighty arm. But he struck her, and she fell. Her forehead came in contact with the cradle, in which the youngest boy was sleeping, and woke him with a cry. She lay quite still. Smith sat stupidly down on the old milking-stool, with his elbows on his knees. The shrill voice of his wife, as she met him at the door, had brought more than one female neighbour to the window; they saw what happened, and they were there in a minute. Martha was only insensible, and they soon brought her to, but the mark on the temple remained. Five days afterwards John Smith, agricultural labourer, aged forty-five, stood in the dock to answer a charge of assaulting his wife. There were five magistrates on the Bench--two large landowners, a baronet in the chair, and two clergymen. Martha Smith hung her head as they placed her in the witness-box, and tried to evade kissing the Book, but the police saw that that formality was complied with. The Clerk asked her what she had to complain of. No answer. "Come, tell us all about it," said the eldest of the magistrates in a fatherly tone of voice. Still silence. "Well, how did you get that mark on your forehead?" asked the Clerk. No answer. "Speak up!" cried a shrill voice in the body of the court. It was one of Martha's cronies, who was immediately silenced by the police; but the train had been fired. Martha would not fail before another woman. But she did not commence about the assault. It was the drink she spoke of, nothing but the drink; and as she talked of that she warmed with her subject and her grievances, and forgot the old love for her husband, and her former hesitation, and placed that vice in all its naked deformity and hideous results in plain but burning words before the Bench. Had she been the cleverest advocate she could not have prepared the ground for her case better. This tale of drink predisposed their minds against the defendant. Only the Clerk, wedded to legal forms, fidgeted under this eloquence, and seized the first pause: "But now, how about the assault? Come to that," he said sharply. "I'm coming, sir," said Martha; and she described Smith coming home, stupid and ferocious, after staying out all night, and felling her to the ground because she asked him for a shilling to buy the children's daily bread. Then she pointed to the bruise on her forehead, and a suppressed murmur of indignation ran through the Court, and angry looks were directed at the defendant. Did she do or say anything to provoke the blow? asked the Chairman. No more than to ask for the shilling. Did she not abuse him? Well, yes, she did; she owned she did call him a drunken brute afterwards; she could not help it. These women, with their rapid tongues, have a terrible advantage over the slower-witted men. Had the defendant any questions to ask his wife? Smith began to say that he was very sorry, sir, but the Clerk snapped him up short. "That's your defence. Have you any questions? No; well, call your witnesses." Martha called her witnesses, the women living next door. They did not do her case much good; they were too evidently eager to obtain the defendant's condemnation. But, on the other hand, they did not do it any harm, for in the main it was easy to see that they really corroborated her statements. Smith asked them no questions; the labouring class rarely understand the object of cross-questioning. If asked to do so they almost invariably begin to tell their own tale. "Now, then," said the Clerk, "what have you got to say for yourself--what's your defence?" Smith looked down and stammered something. He was confused; they checked him from telling his story when his mouth was full of language, now it would not come. He did not know but that if he began he might be checked again. The eldest magistrate on the Bench saw his embarrassment, and, willing to assist him, spoke as kindly as he could under the circumstances. "Speak up, John; tell us all about it. I am sorry to see you there." "He's the finest, most stalwart man in my parish," he continued, turning to the Chairman. Thus encouraged, John got out a word or two. He was very sorry; he did not mean to hurt her; he knew he was tipsy, and 'twas his own fault; she had been a good wife to him; she asked him for money. Then all of a sudden John drew up his form to his full height, and his chest swelled out, and he spoke in his own strong voice clearly now that he had got a topic apart from his disgrace. These were his words, a little softened into more civilised pronunciation to make them intelligible:-- "She asked I for money, she did, and what was I to gi'e her? I hadn't a got a shilling nor a sixpence, and she knew it, and knowed that I couldn't get one either till Saturday night. I gets thirteen shillings a week from Master H., and a shilling on Sundays, and I hev got five children and a wife to keep out of that--that's two shillings a week for each on us, that's just threepence halfpenny a day, look 'ee, sir. And what victuals be I to buy wi' that, let alone beer? and a man can't do no work wi'out a quart a day, and that's fourpence, and there's my share, look 'ee, gone at onst. Wur be I to get any victuals, and wur be I to get any clothes an' boots, I should like for to know? And Jack he gets big and wants a main lot, and so did Polly, but her's gone to the work'us', wuss luck. And parson wants I to send the young 'uns to school, and pay a penny a week for 'em, and missis she wants a bit o' bacon in the house and a loaf, and what good is that of, among all we? I gets a slice of bacon twice a week, and sometimes narn. And beer--I knows I drinks beer, and more as I ought, but what's a chap to do when he's a'most shrammed wi' cold, and nar a bit o' nothin' in the pot but an old yeller swede as hard as wood? And my teeth bean't as good as 'em used to be. I knows I drinks beer, and so would anybody in my place--it makes me kinder stupid, as I don't feel nothing then. Wot's the good--I've worked this thirty year or more, since I wur big enough to go with the plough, and I've a knowed they as have worked for nigh handy sixty, and wot do 'em get for it? All he'd a got wur the rheumatiz. Yer med as well drink while 'ee can. I never meaned to hurt her, and her knows it; and if it wurn't for a parcel of women a-shoving on her on, her would never a come here agen me. I knows I drinks, and what else be I to do? I can't work allus." "But what are you going to say in your defence--do you say she provoked you or anything?" asked the Clerk. "No, I don't know as she provoked I. I wur provoked, though, I wur. I don't bear no malice agen she. I ain't a got nothin' more for to say." The magistrates retired, and the Chairman, on returning, said that this was a most brutal and unprovoked assault, made all the worse by the previous drinking habits of the defendant. If it had not been for the good character he bore generally speaking (here he looked towards the elder magistrate, who had evidently said a word in Smith's behalf), he would have had a month's imprisonment, or more. As it was, he was committed for a fortnight, and to pay the costs, or seven additional days; and he hoped this would be a warning to him. The elder magistrate looked at John Smith, and saw his jaw set firmly, and his brow contract, and his heart was moved towards him. "Cannot you get better wages than that, John?" he said. "At the railway they would give you eighteen or twenty." "It's so far to walk, sir, and my legs bean't as lissom as they used to be." "But take the missis and live there." "Lodgings is too dear, sir." "Ah, exactly. Still I don't see how the farmers could pay you more. I'll see what can be done for you." Smith was led from the dock to the cell. The expenses were paid by an unknown hand; but he underwent his fortnight's imprisonment. His wife and children, with an empty larder, were obliged to go to the workhouse, where also his daughter was at the same time confined of an illegitimate child. This is no fiction, but an uncompromising picture of things as they are. Who is to blame for them? _WILTSHIRE LABOURERS._ LETTER I. (_To the Editor of the "Times."_) SIR,--The Wiltshire agricultural labourer is not so highly paid as those of Northumberland, nor so low as those of Dorset; but in the amount of his wages, as in intelligence and general position, he may fairly be taken as an average specimen of his class throughout a large portion of the kingdom. As a man, he is usually strongly built, broad-shouldered, and massive in frame, but his appearance is spoilt by the clumsiness of his walk and the want of grace in his movements. Though quite as large in muscle, it is very doubtful if he possesses the strength of the seamen who may be seen lounging about the ports. There is a want of firmness, a certain disjointed style, about his limbs, and the muscles themselves have not the hardness and tension of the sailor's. The labourer's muscle is that of a cart-horse, his motions lumbering and slow. His style of walk is caused by following the plough in early childhood, when the weak limbs find it a hard labour to pull the heavy nailed boots from the thick clay soil. Ever afterwards he walks as if it were an exertion to lift his legs. His food may, perhaps, have something to do with the deadened slowness which seems to pervade everything he does--there seems a lack of vitality about him. It consists chiefly of bread and cheese, with bacon twice or thrice a week, varied with onions, and if he be a milker (on some farms) with a good "tuck-out" at his employer's expense on Sundays. On ordinary days he dines at the fashionable hour of six or seven in the evening--that is, about that time his cottage scents the road with a powerful odour of boiled cabbage, of which he eats an immense quantity. Vegetables are his luxuries, and a large garden, therefore, is the greatest blessing he can have. He eats huge onions raw; he has no idea of flavouring his food with them, nor of making those savoury and inviting messes or vegetable soups at which the French peasantry are so clever. In Picardy I have often dined in a peasant's cottage, and thoroughly enjoyed the excellent soup he puts upon the table for his ordinary meal. To dine in an English labourer's cottage would be impossible. His bread is generally good, certainly; but his bacon is the cheapest he can buy at small second-class shops--oily, soft, wretched stuff; his vegetables are cooked in detestable style, and eaten saturated with the pot liquor. Pot liquor is a favourite soup. I have known cottagers actually apply at farmers' kitchens not only for the pot liquor in which meat has been soddened, but for the water in which potatoes have been boiled--potato liquor--and sup it up with avidity. And this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a relish. They never buy anything but bacon; never butchers' meat. Philanthropic ladies, to my knowledge, have demonstrated over and over again even to their limited capacities that certain parts of butchers' meat can be bought just as cheap, and will make more savoury and nutritive food; and even now, with the present high price of meat, a certain proportion would be advantageous. In vain; the labourers obstinately adhere to the pig, and the pig only. When, however, an opportunity does occur the amount of food they will eat is something astonishing. Once a year, at the village club dinner, they gormandise to repletion. In one instance I knew of a man eating a plate of roast beef (and the slices are cut enormously thick at these dinners), a plate of boiled beef, then another of boiled mutton, and then a fourth of roast mutton, and a fifth of ham. He said he could not do much to the bread and cheese; but didn't he go into the pudding! I have even heard of men stuffing to the fullest extent of their powers, and then retiring from the table to take an emetic of mustard and return to a second gorging. There is scarcely any limit to their power of absorbing beer. I have known reapers and mowers make it their boast that they could lie on their backs and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a small barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a gallon, and from the feats I have seen I verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually poor and thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a taste of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly over; for from this very practice of drinking enormous quantities of small beer the labourer cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets inebriated at the alehouse. While mowing and reaping many of them lay in a small cask. They are much better clothed now than formerly. Corduroy trousers and slops are the usual style. Smock-frocks are going out of use, except for milkers and faggers. Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation "chimneypot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, dress how he will. Since labour has become so expensive it has become a common remark among the farmers that the labourer will go to church in broadcloth and the masters in smock-frocks. The labourer never wears gloves--that has to come with the march of the times; but he is particularly choice over his necktie. The women must dress in the fashion. A very respectable draper in an agricultural district was complaining to me the other day that the poorest class of women would have everything in the fashionable style, let it change as often as it would. In former times, if he laid in a stock of goods suited to tradesmen, and farmers' wives and daughters, if the fashion changed, or they got out of date, he could dispose of them easily to the servants. Now no such thing. The quality did not matter so much, but the style must be the style of the day--no sale for remnants. The poorest girl, who had not got two yards of flannel on her back, must have the same style of dress as the squire's daughter--Dolly Vardens, chignons, and parasols for ladies who can work all day reaping in the broiling sun of August! Gloves, kid, for hands that milk the cows! The cottages now are infinitely better than they were. There is scarcely room for further improvement in the cottages now erected upon estates. They have three bedrooms, and every appliance and comfort compatible with their necessarily small size. It is only the cottages erected by the labourers themselves on waste plots of ground which are open to objection. Those he builds himself are, indeed, as a rule, miserable huts, disgraceful to a Christian country. I have an instance before me at this moment where a man built a cottage with two rooms and no staircase or upper apartments, and in those two rooms eight persons lived and slept--himself and wife, grown-up daughters, and children. There was not a scrap of garden attached, not enough to grow half-a-dozen onions. The refuse and sewage was flung into the road, or filtered down a ditch into the brook which supplied that part of the village with water. In another case at one time there was a cottage in which twelve persons lived. This had upper apartments, but so low was the ceiling that a tall man could stand on the floor, with his head right through the opening for the staircase, and see along the upper floor under the beds! These squatters are the curse of the community. It is among them that fever and kindred infectious diseases break out; it is among them that wretched couples are seen bent double with rheumatism and affections of the joints caused by damp. They have often been known to remain so long, generation after generation, in these wretched hovels, that at last the lord of the manor, having neglected to claim quit-rent, they can defy him, and claim them as their own property, and there they stick, eyesores and blots, the fungi of the land. The cottages erected by farmers or by landlords are now, one and all, fit and proper habitations for human beings; and I verily believe it would be impossible throughout the length and breadth of Wiltshire to find a single bad cottage on any large estate, so well and so thoroughly have the landed proprietors done their work. On all farms gardens are attached to the cottages, in many instances very large, and always sufficient to produce enough vegetables for the resident. In villages the allotment system has been greatly extended of late years, and has been found most beneficial, both to owners and tenants. As a rule the allotments are let at a rate which may be taken as £4 per annum--a sum which pays the landlord very well, and enables the labourer to remunerate himself. In one village which came under my observation the clergyman of the parish has turned a portion of his glebe land into allotments--a most excellent and noble example, which cannot be too widely followed or too much extolled. He is thus enabled to benefit almost every one of his poor parishioners, and yet without destroying that sense of independence which is the great characteristic of a true Englishman. He has issued a book of rules and conditions under which these allotments are held, and he thus places a strong check upon drunkenness and dissolute habits, indulgence in which is a sure way to lose the portions of ground. There is scarcely an end to the benefits of the allotment system. In villages there cannot be extensive gardens, and the allotments supply their place. The extra produce above that which supplies the table and pays the rent is easily disposed of in the next town, and places many additional comforts in the labourer's reach. The refuse goes to help support and fatten the labourer's pig, which brings him in profit enough to pay the rent of his cottage, and the pig, in turn, manures the allotment. Some towns have large common lands, held under certain conditions; such are Malmesbury, with 500 acres, and Tetbury (the common land of which extends two miles), both these being arable, &c. These are not exactly in the use of labourers, but they are in the hands of a class to which the labourer often rises. Many labourers have fruit-trees in their gardens, which, in some seasons, prove very profitable. In the present year, to my knowledge, a labourer sold £4 worth of apples; and another made £3, 10s. off the produce of one pear-tree, pears being scarce. To come at last to the difficult question of wages. In Wiltshire there has been no extended strike, and very few meetings upon the subject, for the simple reason that the agitators can gain no hold upon a county where, as a mass, the labourers are well paid. The common day-labourer receives 10s., 11s., and 12s. a week, according to the state of supply and demand for labour in various districts; and, if he milks, 1s. more, making 13s. a week, now common wages. These figures are rather below the mark; I could give instances of much higher pay. To give a good idea of the wages paid I will take the case of a hill farmer (arable, Marlborough Downs), who paid this last summer during harvest 18s. per week per man. His reapers often earned 10s. a day--enough to pay their year's rent in a week. These men lived in cottages on the farm, with three bedrooms each, and some larger, with every modern appliance, each having a garden of a quarter of an acre attached and close at hand, for which cottage and garden they paid 1s. per week rent. The whole of these cottages were insured by the farmer himself, their furniture, &c., in one lump, and the insurance policy cost him, as nearly as possible, 1s. 3d. per cottage per year. For this he deducted 1s. per year each from their wages. None of the men would have insured unless he had insisted upon doing it for them. These men had from six to eight quarts of beer per man (over and above their 18s. a week) during harvest every day. In spring and autumn their wages are much increased by piece-work, hoeing, &c. In winter the farmer draws their coal for them in his waggons, a distance of eight miles from the nearest wharf, enabling them to get it at cost price. This is no slight advantage, for, at the present high price of coal, it is sold, delivered in the villages, at 2s. per cwt. Many who cannot afford it in the week buy a quarter of a cwt. on Saturday night, to cook their Sunday's dinner with, for 6d. This is at the rate of £2 per ton. Another gentleman, a large steam cultivator in the Vale, whose name is often before the public, informs me that his books show that he paid £100 in one year in cash to one cottage for labour, showing the advantage the labourer possesses over the mechanic, since his wife and child can add to his income. Many farmers pay £50 and £60 a year for beer drunk by their labourers--a serious addition to their wages. The railway companies and others who employ mechanics, do not allow them any beer. The allowance of a good cottage and a quarter of an acre of garden for 1s. per week is not singular. Many who were at the Autumn Manoeuvres of the present year may remember having a handsome row of houses, rather than cottages, pointed out to them as inhabited by labourers at 1s. per week. In the immediate neighbourhood of large manufacturing towns 1s. 6d. a week is sometimes paid; but then these cottages would in such positions readily let to mechanics for 3s., 4s., and even 5s. per week. There was a great outcry when the Duke of Marlborough issued an order that the cottages on his estate should in future only be let to such men as worked upon the farms where those cottages were situated. In reality this was the very greatest blessing the Duke could have conferred upon the agricultural labourer; for it ensured him a good cottage at a nearly nominal rent and close to his work; whereas in many instances previously the cottages on the farms had been let at a high rate to the mechanics, and the labourer had to walk miles before he got to his labour. Cottages are not erected by landowners or by farmers as paying speculations. It is well known that the condition of things prevents the agricultural labourer from being able to pay a sufficient rent to be a fair percentage upon the sum expended. In one instance a landlord has built some cottages for his tenant, the tenant paying a certain amount of interest on the sum invested by the landlord. Now, although this is a matter of arrangement, and not of speculation--that is, although the interest paid by the tenant is a low percentage upon the money laid out, yet the rent paid by the labourers inhabiting these cottages to the tenant does not reimburse him what he pays his landlord as interest--not by a considerable margin. But then he has the advantage of his labourers close to his work, always ready at hand. Over and above the actual cash wages of the labourer, which are now very good, must be reckoned his cottage and garden, and often a small orchard, at a nominal rent, his beer at his master's expense, piece-work, gleaning after harvest, &c., which alter his real position very materially. In Gloucestershire, on the Cotswolds, the best-paid labourers are the shepherds, for in that great sheep-country much trust is reposed in them. At the annual auctions of shearlings which are held upon the large farms a purse is made for the shepherd of the flock, into which every one who attends is expected to drop a shilling, often producing £5. The shepherds on the Wiltshire downs are also well paid, especially in lambing-time, when the greatest watchfulness and care are required. It has been stated that the labourer has no chance of rising from his position. This is sheer cant. He has very good opportunities of rising, and often does rise, to my knowledge. At this present moment I could mention a person who has risen from a position scarcely equal to that of a labourer, not only to have a farm himself, but to place his sons in farms. Another has just entered on a farm; and several more are on the highroad to that desirable consummation. If a labourer possesses any amount of intelligence he becomes head-carter or head-fagger, as the case may be; and from that to be assistant or under-bailiff, and finally bailiff. As a bailiff he has every opportunity to learn the working of a farm, and is often placed in entire charge of a farm at a distance from his employer's residence. In time he establishes a reputation as a practical man, and being in receipt of good wages, with very little expenditure, saves some money. He has now little difficulty in obtaining the promise of a farm, and with this can readily take up money. With average care he is a made man. Others rise from petty trading, petty dealing in pigs and calves, till they save sufficient to rent a small farm, and make that the basis of larger dealing operations. I question very much whether a clerk in a firm would not find it much more difficult, as requiring larger capital, to raise himself to a level with his employer than an agricultural labourer does to the level of a farmer. Many labourers now wander far and wide as navvies, &c., and perhaps when these return home, as most of them do, to agricultural labour, they are the most useful and intelligent of their class, from a readiness they possess to turn their hand to anything. I know one at this moment who makes a large addition to his ordinary wages by brewing for the small inns, and very good liquor he brews, too. They pick up a large amount of practical knowledge. The agricultural women are certainly not handsome; I know no peasantry so entirely uninviting. Occasionally there is a girl whose nut-brown complexion and sloe-black eyes are pretty, but their features are very rarely good, and they get plain quickly, so soon as the first flush of youth is past. Many have really good hair in abundance, glossy and rich, perhaps from its exposure to the fresh air. But on Sundays they plaster it with strong-smelling pomade and hair-oil, which scents the air for yards most unpleasantly. As a rule, it may safely be laid down that the agricultural women are moral, far more so than those of the town. Rough and rude jokes and language are, indeed, too common; but that is all. No evil comes of it. The fairs are the chief cause of immorality. Many an honest, hard-working servant-girl owes her ruin to these fatal mops and fairs, when liquor to which she is unaccustomed overcomes her. Yet it seems cruel to take from them the one day or two of the year on which they can enjoy themselves fairly in their own fashion. The spread of friendly societies, patronised by the gentry and clergy, with their annual festivities, is a remedy which is gradually supplying them with safer, and yet congenial, amusement. In what may be termed lesser morals I cannot accord either them or the men the same praise. They are too ungrateful for the many great benefits which are bountifully supplied them--the brandy, the soup, and fresh meat readily extended without stint from the farmer's home in sickness to the cottage are too quickly forgotten. They who were most benefited are often the first to most loudly complain and to backbite. Never once in all my observation have I heard a labouring man or woman make a grateful remark; and yet I can confidently say that there is no class of persons in England who receive so many attentions and benefits from their superiors as the agricultural labourers. Stories are rife of their even refusing to work at disastrous fires because beer was not immediately forthcoming. I trust this is not true; but it is too much in character. No term is too strong in condemnation for those persons who endeavour to arouse an agitation among a class of people so short-sighted and so ready to turn against their own benefactors and their own interest. I am credibly informed that one of these agitators, immediately after the Bishop of Gloucester's unfortunate but harmlessly intended speech at the Gloucester Agricultural Society's dinner--one of these agitators mounted a platform at a village meeting and in plain language incited and advised the labourers to duck the farmers! The agricultural women either go out to field-work or become indoor servants. In harvest they hay-make--chiefly light work, as raking--and reap, which is much harder labour; but then, while reaping they work their own time, as it is done by the piece. Significantly enough, they make longer hours while reaping. They are notoriously late to arrive, and eager to return home, on the hay-field. The children help both in haymaking and reaping. In spring and autumn they hoe and do other piece-work. On pasture farms they beat clots or pick up stones out of the way of the mowers' scythes. Occasionally, but rarely now, they milk. In winter they wear gaiters, which give the ankles a most ungainly appearance. Those who go out to service get very low wages at first from their extreme awkwardness, but generally quickly rise. As dairymaids they get very good wages indeed. Dairymaids are scarce and valuable. A dairymaid who can be trusted to take charge of a dairy will sometimes get £20 besides her board (liberal) and sundry perquisites. These often save money, marry bailiffs, and help their husbands to start a farm. In the education provided for children Wiltshire compares favourably with other counties. Long before the passing of the recent Act in reference to education the clergy had established schools in almost every parish, and their exertions have enabled the greater number of places to come up to the standard required by the Act, without the assistance of a School Board. The great difficulty is the distance children have to walk to school, from the sparseness of population and the number of outlying hamlets. This difficulty is felt equally by the farmers, who, in the majority of cases, find themselves situated far from a good school. In only one place has anything like a cry for education arisen, and that is on the extreme northern edge of the county. The Vice-Chairman of the Swindon Chamber of Agriculture recently stated that only one-half of the entire population of Inglesham could read and write. It subsequently appeared that the parish of Inglesham was very sparsely populated, and that a variety of circumstances had prevented vigorous efforts being made. The children, however, could attend schools in adjoining parishes, not farther than two miles, a distance which they frequently walk in other parts of the country. Those who are so ready to cast every blame upon the farmer, and to represent him as eating up the earnings of his men and enriching himself with their ill-paid labour, should remember that farming, as a rule, is carried on with a large amount of borrowed capital. In these days, when £6 an acre has been expended in growing roots for sheep, when the slightest derangement of calculation in the price of wool, meat, or corn, or the loss of a crop, seriously interferes with a fair return for capital invested, the farmer has to sail extremely close to the wind, and only a little more would find his canvas shaking. It was only recently that the cashier of the principal bank of an agricultural county, after an unprosperous year, declared that such another season would make almost every farmer insolvent. Under these circumstances it is really to be wondered at that they have done as much as they have for the labourer in the last few years, finding him with better cottages, better wages, better education, and affording him better opportunities of rising in the social scale.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours, RICHARD JEFFERIES. COATE FARM, SWINDON, _Nov. 12, 1872._ Lord Shaftesbury, in the _Times_, Dec. 6th, says:-- "It is our duty and our interest to elevate the present condition of the labourer, and to enable him to assert and enjoy every one of his rights. But I must agree with Mr. Jefferies that, even under the actual system of things, numerous instances have occurred of a rise in the social scale as the result of temperance, good conduct, and economy. He has furnished some examples. I will give only one from my own estate:--'T. M. was for many years shepherd to Farmer P----; he bought with his savings a small leasehold property at ---- for £170, and he had accumulated £100 besides. He had brought up a son and three daughters, and his son now occupies the leasehold.' This is the statement as given to me in writing." LETTER II. (_To the Editor of the "Times."_) SIR,--I did not intend to make any reply to the numerous attacks made upon my letter published in the _Times_ of the 14th inst., but the statements made by "The Son of a Wiltshire Labourer" are such as I feel bound to resent on the part of the farmers of this county. He says he wishes the landed proprietors would take as much care to provide cottages for their labourers as I represent them as doing. I repeat what I said, that the cottages on large estates are now, one and all, fit habitations for human beings. The Duke of Marlborough is a large proprietor of cottages in this neighbourhood, and his plan has been, whenever a cottage did not appear sufficiently commodious, to throw two into one. The owner of the largest estate near Swindon has been engaged for many years past in removing the old thatched mud hovels, and replacing them with substantial, roomy, and slate-roofed buildings. Farmers are invariably anxious to have good cottages. There is a reluctance to destroy the existing ones, both from the inconvenience and the uncertainty sometimes of others being erected. Often, too, the poor have the strongest attachment to the cabin in which they were born and bred, and would strongly resent its destruction, though obviously for their good. Farmers never build bad cottages now. When a tenement falls in, either from decay or the death of the tenant, the cottage which is erected on its site is invariably a good one. A row of splendid cottages has recently been erected at Wanborough. They are very large, with extensive gardens attached. Some even begin to complain that the cottages now erected are in a sense "too good" for the purpose. The system of three bedrooms is undoubtedly the best from a sanitary point of view, but it is a question whether the widespread belief in that system, and that system alone, has not actually retarded the erection of reasonably good buildings. It is that third bedroom which just prevents the investment of building a cottage from paying a remunerative percentage on the capital expended. Two bedrooms are easily made--the third puzzles the builder where to put it with due regard to economy. Nor is a third bedroom always required. Out of ten families perhaps only two require a third bedroom; in this way there is a large waste in erecting a row. It has been suggested that a row should consist of so many cottages with two bedrooms only for families who do not want more, and at each end a building with three bedrooms for larger families. In one instance two cottages were ordered to be erected on an estate, the estimate for which was £640; these when completed might have let for £10 per annum, or 1¾ per cent, on the capital invested! The plans for these cottages had so many dormer windows, porches, intricacies of design in variegated tiles, &c., that the contractor gave it up as a bad job. I mention this to show that the tendency to build good cottages has gone even beyond what was really required, and ornamentation is added to utility. Then it is further stated that the labourer cannot build cottages. I could name a lane at this moment the cottages in which were one and all built by labourers; and there are half-a-dozen in this village which were erected by regular farm labourers. The majority of these are, as I said before, wretched hovels, but there are two or three which demonstrate that the labourer, if he is a thrifty man, earns quite sufficient to enable him to erect a reasonably good building. The worst hovel I ever saw (it was mentioned in my letter of the 14th) was built by a man who is notorious for his drinking habits. Some forty years ago, when wages were much lower than they are now, two labourers, to my knowledge, took possession of a strip of waste land by the roadside, and built themselves cottages. One of these was a very fair building; the other would certainly be condemned now-a-days. The lord of the manor claimed these; and the difficulty was thus adjusted:--The builders were to receive the value of their tenements from the lord of the manor, and were to remain permanent tenants for life on payment of a small percentage, interest upon the purchase-money, as quit-rent. On their deaths the cottages were to become the property of the lord of the manor. One man received £40 for his cottage, the other £20, which sums forty years ago represented relatively a far higher value than now, and demonstrate conclusively that the labourer, if he is a steady, hard-working man, can build a cottage. Another cottage I know of, built by a farm labourer, is really a very creditable building--good walls, floors, staircase, sashes, doors; it stands high, and appears very comfortable, and even pleasant, in summer, for they are a thrifty family, and can even display flower-pots in the window. Other cottages have been built or largely added to in my memory by labourers. On these occasions they readily obtain help from the farmers. One lends his team and waggons to draw the stones; another supplies wood for nothing; but of late I must admit there has been some reluctance to assist in this way (unless for repairs) because it was so often found that the buildings thus erected were not fit habitations. The Boards of Guardians often find a difficulty from the limited ownership of some of the labourers, who apply for relief, of their cottages. Perhaps they have not paid quit-rent for a year or two; but still they cannot sell, and yet it seems unjust to the ratepayers to assist a man who has a tenement which he at least calls his own, and from which he cannot be ejected, I know a labourer at this moment living in a cottage originally built by his father, and added to by himself by the assistance of the neighbouring farmers. This man has been greatly assisted by one farmer in particular, who advanced him money by which he purchased a horse and cart, and was enabled to do a quantity of hauling, flint-carting for the waywardens, and occasionally to earn money by assisting to carry a farmer's harvest. He rents a large piece of arable land, and ought to be comparatively well off. "The Son of a Wiltshire Labourer" complains that the farmers or proprietors do not make sufficient efforts to supply the cottages with water. The lord of the manor and the tenant of the largest farms in this immediate neighbourhood have but just sunk a well for their cottages; previously they had got their supply from a pump in an adjacent farmyard thrown open by the proprietor to all the village. It is the labourer himself who will not rise. In a village with which I am acquainted great efforts have been made by a farmer and a gentleman living near to provide proper school instruction for the children. One labourer was asked why he did not send his children to school. He replied, "Because he could not afford it." "But," said the farmer, "it is only threepence altogether." "Oh, no; he could not afford it." The farmer explained to him that the object was to avoid a School Board, which, in other places, had the power to fine for not sending children to school. "No, he could not afford it." The farmer's books show that this labourer, his wife, and two children received 28s. 6d. per week, his cottage rent free, and a very large garden at a low rent. Yet he could not afford the 3d. a week which would enable his children ultimately to take a better position in the world! The same farmer, who is a liberal and large-minded man, has endeavoured, without success, to introduce the practice of paying in cash instead of beer, and also the system of payment for overtime. The men say no, they would rather not. "In wet weather," they say, "we do no work, but you pay us; and if we work a little later in harvest, it only makes it fair." They would not take money instead of beer. In another case which came under my personal observation in the middle of last summer, a farmer announced his intention of paying in cash instead of allowing beer. In the very press of the haymaking, with acres upon acres of grass spoiling, his men, one and all, struck work because he would not give them beer, and went over to a neighbour's field adjacent and worked for him for nothing but their share in the beer. If labourers work longer hours in harvest (corn), it is because it is piece-work, and they thereby make more money. I contend that the payment in kind, the beer, the gleanings, the piece-work, the low and nominal cottage rent, the allotment ground and produce, and the pig (not restricted to one pig in a year), may fairly be taken as an addition to their wages. I am informed that in one parish the cottage rents vary from 10d. to 1s. 2d. per week; nearly all have gardens, and all may have allotments up to a quarter of an acre each at 3d. per lug, or 40s. per acre. I am also informed of a labourer renting a cottage and garden at 1s. per week, the fruit-trees in whose garden produced this year three sacks of damsons, which he sold at 1s. 6d. per gallon, or £6, 18s. I know of a case in which a labourer--an earnest, intelligent, hard-working man--makes £2 a week on an average all the year round. But then he works only at piece-work, going from farm to farm, and this is, of course, an exceptional case. The old men, worn out with age and infirmity, are kept on year after year by many farmers out of charity, rather than let them go to the workhouse, though totally useless and a dead loss, especially as occupying valuable cottage-room. There is a society, the annual meetings of which are held at Chippenham, and which is supported by the clergy, gentry, and farmers generally of North Wilts, for the object of promoting steady habits among the labourers and rewarding cases of long and deserving services. There is also a friendly society on the best and most reliable basis, supported by the gentry, and introduced as far as possible into villages. The labourers on the Great Western Railway works at Swindon earn from 15s. a week upwards, according as they approach to skilled workmen. Attracted by these wages, most of the young men of the neighbourhood try the factory, but, usually, after a short period return to farm-work, the result of their experience being that they are better off as agricultural labourers. Lodgings in the town close to the factory are very expensive, and food in proportion; consequently they have to walk long distances to their labour--some from Wanborough, five miles; Wroughton, three and a half miles; Purton, four miles; and even Wootton Bassett, six miles, which twice a day is a day's work in itself. Add to this the temptations to spend money in towns, and the severe labour, and the man finds himself better off with his quiet cottage and garden on a farm at 12s. a week, and 1s. for milking, with beer, and a meal on Sundays. The skilled mechanics, who earn 36s. to £2 per week, rent houses in the town at 6s. to 8s.; and in one case I knew of 12s. per week paid by a lodger for two rooms. These prices cannot be paid out of the mechanic's wage; consequently he sub-lets, or takes lodgers, and sometimes these sub-let, and the result is an overcrowding worse than that of the agricultural cottages, around which there is at least fresh air and plenty of light (nearly as important), which are denied in a town. The factory labourer and the mechanic are liable to instant dismissal. The agricultural labourers (half of them at least) are hired by the year or half-year, and cannot be summarily sent along unless for misconduct. Wages have recently been increased by the farmers of Wiltshire voluntarily and without pressure from threatened strikes. It is often those who receive the highest wages who are the first to come to the parish for relief. It is not uncommon for mechanics and others to go for relief where it is discovered that they are in receipt of sick pay from the yard club, and sometimes from two friendly societies, making 18s. a week. A manufacturing gentleman informed me that the very men whom he had been paying £8 a week to were the first to apply for relief when distress came and the mills stopped. It is not low wages, then, which causes improvident habits. The only result of deporting agricultural labourers to different counties is to equalise the wages paid all over England. This union-assisted emigration affords the improvident labourer a good opportunity of transporting himself to a distant county, and leaving deeply in debt with the tradesmen with whom he has long dealt. I am informed that this is commonly the case with emigrating labourers. A significant fact is noted in the leader of the _Labour News_ of the 16th of November; the return of certain emigrants from America is announced as "indicative that higher quotations are not always representative of greater positive advantages." The agricultural labourer found that out when he returned from the factory at 15s. per week to farm labour at 12s. I am positive that the morality of the country compares favourably with that of the town. I was particularly struck with this fact on a visit to the Black Country. One of the worst parishes for immorality in Wiltshire is one where glovemaking is carried on; singularly enough, manufactures and immorality seem to go together. "The Son of a Labourer" says that all the advantages the labourer does possess are owing to the exertions of the clergy; pray who support the clergy but the farmers? I think that the facts I have mentioned sufficiently demonstrate that the farmers and the landlords of Wiltshire have done their duty, and more than their mere duty, towards the labourers; and only a little investigation will show that at present it is out of their power to do more. Take the case of a farmer entering a dairy-farm of, say, 250 acres, and calculate his immediate outgoings--say fifty cows at £20, £1,000; two horses at £25, £50; waggons, carts, implements, £100; labour, three men at 12s. per week, £94; harvest labour, £20; dairymaid £10; tithe, taxes, rates, &c., £100; rent, £2 per acre, £500. Total, £1874. In other words (exclusive of the capital invested in stock), the outgoings amount to £724 per annum; against which put--fifty cows' milk, &c., at £10 per head, £500; fifty calves, £100; fifty tons of hay at £3, 10s., £175. Total income, £775; balance in hand, £51. Then comes the village school subscription; sometimes a church rate (legally voluntary, but morally binding), &c. So that, in hard figures (all these are below the mark, if anything), there is positively nothing left for the farmer but a house and garden free. How, then, is money made? By good judgment in crops, in stock, by lucky accidents. On a dairy-farm the returns begin immediately; on an arable one there is half a year at least to wait. The care, the judgment, required to be exercised is something astonishing, and a farmer is said to be all his life learning his trade. If sheep are dear and pay well, the farmer plants roots; then, perhaps, after a heavy expenditure for manure, for labour, and seed, there comes the fly, or a drought, and his capital is sunk. On the other hand, if the season be good, roots are cheap and over-plentiful, and where is his profit then? He works like a labourer himself in all weathers and at all times; he has the responsibility and the loss, yet he is expected to find the labourer, not only good cottages, allotments, schooling, good wages, but Heaven knows what besides. Supposing the £1874 (on the dairy-farm) be borrowed capital for which he must pay at least 4 per cent.--and few, indeed, are there who get money at that price--it is obvious how hard he must personally work, how hard, too, he must live, to make both ends meet. And it speaks well for his energy and thrift that I heard a bank director not long since remark that he had noticed, after all, with every drawback, the tenant farmers had made as a rule more money in proportion than their landlords. A harder-working class of men does not exist than the Wiltshire farmers. Only a few days ago I saw in your valuable paper a list, nearly a column long, of the millionaires who had died in the last ten years. It would be interesting to know how much they had spent for the benefit of the agricultural labourer. Yet no one attacks them. They pay no poor-rates, no local taxation, or nothing in proportion. The farmer pays the poor-rate which supports the labourer in disease, accident, and old age; the highway rates on which the millionaire's carriage rolls; and very soon the turnpike trusts will fall in, and the farmers--_i.e._, the land--will have to support the imperial roads also. With all these heavy burdens on his back, having to compete against the world, he has yet no right to compensation for his invested capital if he is ordered to quit. Without some equalisation of local taxation--as I have shown, the local taxes often make another rent almost--without a recognised tenant-right, not revolutionary, but for unexhausted improvements, better security, so that he can freely invest capital, the farmer cannot--I reiterate it, he cannot--do more than he has done for the labourer. He would then employ more skilled labour, and wages would be better. And, after all that he does for them, he dares not find fault, or he may find his ricks blazing away--thanks to the teaching of the agitators that the farmers are tyrants, and, by inference, that to injure them is meritorious. There is a poster in Swindon now offering £20 reward for the discovery of the person who maliciously set fire to a rick of hay in Lord Bolingbroke's park at Lydiard. If any farmers are hard upon their men, it is those who have themselves been labourers and have risen to be employers of labour. These very often thoroughly understand the art of getting the value of a man's wage out of him. I deliberately affirm that the true farmers, one and all, are in favour of that maxim of a well-known and respected agriculturist of our county--"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work." I fear the farmers of Wiltshire would be only too happy to ride thorough-breds to the hunt, and see their daughters driving phaetons, as they are accused of doing; but I also fear that very, very few enjoy that privilege. Most farmers, it is true, do keep some kind of vehicle; it is necessary when their great distance from a town is considered, and the keep of a horse or two comes to nothing on a large farm. It is customary for them to drive their wives or daughters once a week on market-days into the nearest town. If here and there an energetic man succeeds in making money, and is able to send his son to a university, all honour to him. I hope the farmers will send their sons to universities; the spread of education in their class will be of as much advantage to the community as among the labouring population, for it will lead to the more general application of science to the land and a higher amount of production. If the labourer attempted to rise he would be praised; why not the farmer? It is simply an unjustifiable libel on the entire class to accuse them of wilful extravagance. I deliberately affirm that the majority of farmers in Wiltshire are exactly the reverse; that, while they practise a generous hospitality to a friend or a stranger, they are decidedly saving and frugal rather than extravagant, and they are compelled to be so by the condition of their finances. To prove that their efforts are for the good of the community I need only allude to the work of the late Mr. Stratton, so crowned with success in improving the breed of cattle--a work in the sister county of Gloucester so ably carried on at this present moment by Mr. Edward Bowly, and by Mr. Lane and Mr. Garne in the noted Cotswold sheep. The breeds produced by these gentlemen have in a manner impregnated the whole world, imported as they have been to America and Australia. It was once ably said that the readings of the English Bible Sunday after Sunday in our churches had preserved our language pure for centuries; and, in the same way, I do verily believe that the English (not the Wiltshire only, but the English) farmer as an institution, with his upright, untainted ideas of honour, honesty, and morality, has preserved the tone of society from that corruption which has so miserably degraded France--so much so that Dumas recently scientifically predicted that France was _en route à prostitution générale_. Just in the same way his splendid constitution as a man recruits the exhausted, pale, nervous race who dwell in cities, and prevents the Englishman from physically degenerating.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours, RICHARD JEFFERIES. COATE FARM, SWINDON, _November 25, 1872_. _THE ALLOTMENT SYSTEM._ (_To the Editor of the "Times."_) SIR,--Many gentlemen having written to me for further information upon the system of glebe allotments for labourers mentioned in my letter to the _Times_ of November 14, it has occurred to me that the following facts may be interesting:-- The glebe alluded to was that of Lyddington, near Swindon, and the plan was originated by the late incumbent, Mr. May, but carried out into a complete system by the present much-respected rector, the Rev. H. Munn. The land itself is situated not more than 300 yards from the village of Lyddington, by the side of a good turnpike-road, and is traversed by two roads giving easy access to every allotment. Each plot of ground is divided from the next by a narrow green path: no hedges or mounds are permitted, and the field itself is enclosed without a hedge to harbour birds. The soil is a rich dark loam, yielding good crops, with very little manure, and the surface is level. There are sixty-three tenants occupying plots varying in size, according to circumstances, from 48 "lug" downwards--25, 30, 16, &c. A "lug" is a provincialism for perch. The rent is 5d. per "lug" or perch, and each occupier on becoming a tenant receives a card on which the following rules are printed in large type:-- "LYDDINGTON GARDEN ALLOTMENTS. "RULES AND REGULATIONS. "1. The land shall be cultivated by the spade only, and proper attention shall be paid to its cultivation. "2. No allotment, or any part thereof, shall be under-let or exchanged. "3. The rent shall be due on the 1st of September in each year, and shall be paid before the crop is taken off the ground. "4. All tenants shall maintain a character for morality and sobriety, and shall not frequent a public-house on the Sabbath-day. "5. If any tenant fail to pay his rent or to perform any of the foregoing conditions he shall immediately forfeit his allotment, with his crop upon the same, and the landlord or his agent shall take possession and enforce payment of the rent due by sale of the crop or otherwise, as in arrears of rent. "All the tenants are earnestly requested to attend regularly at the House of God during the times of Divine Service, with their families, to the best of their abilities." The object of Rule 2 is to enable the landlord to retain a certain amount of influence over the tenant, to bring him in immediate contact with the tenant, and to keep the land itself under his control. Many occupiers endeavour to under-let their allotments, which, if permitted, would entirely defeat the main object of the landlord, besides complicating the already great labour of collecting the rents, &c. Rule 3 prevents the produce of the allotment going to pay the public-house score; while the date on which the rent falls due is so adjusted as to enable the occupier to receive his money for harvest-work before paying it. Rule 4 places a great restraint upon drunkenness and dissolute habits. Last year the Rev. H. Munn addressed a private circular to his tenants, in which he says:-- "Sad reports have been brought to me lately of the conduct of some in the parish, and among them, I am sorry to say, are tenants of the Allotment Gardens. Such conduct is contrary to the rules on which the allotments are held, and also contrary to the intentions of my predecessor in letting them out to the parishioners. They are intended to improve the condition of the labourers and their families, giving them employment in the summer evenings, increasing their supply of food, and withdrawing them from the influence of the public-house. But when drinking habits are indulged all these benefits are lost, and the allotments, which were intended to do the labourer good, only increase his means of obtaining intoxicating drinks." The landlord can, of course, exercise his discretion in enforcing Rule 5--can allow time for payment, and in certain cases of misfortune, such as the failure of the potato crop, remit it entirely. But this power must be sparingly used, otherwise every one would endeavour to find excuses for non-fulfilment of the contract. The extent of the allotment is written on the back of the card of rules, with the name of the tenant, thus:--"D. Hancock.--Lot 1, Lug 15; rent 6s. 3d.;" and each payment is receipted underneath, with the date and initials of the landlord. The present landlord has in no case disturbed or removed the tenants received by his predecessor, but where land has fallen in he has endeavoured to arrange the extent of the new allotments made to suit the requirements of families, and to allow of a sufficient crop of potatoes being grown for one season on one half of the allotment, while the other half bears different vegetables, and _vice versâ_ for the next season, being the same thing as a rotation of crops. The field has recently been drained at the joint cost of landlord and tenant. The Rev. H. Munn provided the drain-pipes, and the occupiers paid for the labour, which latter came to £8, the amount being proportioned according to the size of each allotment. The highest amount paid by any one tenant was, I believe, £1 (for 48 "lug"), others going down to 1s. The rent at 5d. per "lug" or perch comes to £3, 6s. 8d. per acre, an amount which bears a proper relation to the rent of arable farming land, when the labour of collecting so many small sums and other circumstances are taken into consideration. The moral effect of the arrangement has been incalculable--as one old woman pertinently remarked, "We needn't steal now, sir." In the olden times the farmers' gardens were constantly subject to depredations. The ordinary rate at which gardens are let in the neighbourhood is 6d. per "lug." At Swindon, the nearest town (12,000 inhabitants), there are large allotment fields let at 1s. 6d. per "lug," or £12 per acre, and eagerly caught up at that price. These allotments are rented by every class, from labourers and mechanics to well-to-do tradesmen. The very first desire of every agricultural labourer's heart is a garden, and so strong is the feeling that I have known men apply for permission to cultivate the vacant space between the large double mounds of the hedges on some pasture farms, and work hard at it despite the roots of the bushes and the thefts of the rooks. The facts mentioned above only add one more to the numberless ways in which the noble clergy of the Church of England have been silently labouring for the good of the people committed to their care for years before the agitators bestowed one thought on the agricultural poor.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours, RICHARD JEFFERIES. COATE FARM, SWINDON. (_Published in the "Times," Nov. 23, 1872._) _A TRUE TALE OF THE WILTSHIRE LABOURER._ "Now then--hold fast there--mind the furrow, Tim." The man who was loading prepared himself for the shock, and the waggon safely jolted over the furrow, and on between the wakes of light-brown hay, crackling to the touch as if it would catch fire in the brilliant sunshine. The pitchers, one on each side, stuck their prongs into the wakes and sent up great "pitches," clearing the ground rapidly, through emulation, for it was a point of honour to keep pace with each other. Tim, the old man who had led the horses, resumed his rake in the rear among the women, who instantly began teasing the poor wretch. "Tim, she's allus in the way," said one, purposely hitching her rake in his. "Thur--get away." "I shan't," said Tim, surly as crabbed age and incessant banter under a hot sun could make him. "Now--mind, thee's break th' rake." They both pulled as hard as they dared--each expecting the other to give way, for the master was in sight, on horseback, by the rick, and a rake broken wantonly would bring a sharp reprimand. "Go it, Sal!" cried the loader on the waggon hoarsely, half choked with hay dust. "Pull away!" "Pull, Tim!" cried one of the pitchers. "Ha! ha!" laughed two or three more women, closing round as the girl gave a tug which nearly upset Tim and broke half-a-dozen teeth out of his rake. "Darn thee!" growled the old fellow. The youngest of the girls at the same moment gave him a push under the arm with the end of her rake-handle. It was the last straw which broke the back of Tim's temper. Swearing, he dropped the rake and seized a prong, and hobbled after the girl, who danced away half in delight and half in terror. "I'll job this into thee--darn thee--if I can come near thee, thee hussy!" The "hussy" let him come near, and danced away again gracefully. She was at once the most handsome and most impudent of his tormentors. There's no saying whether the old man, roused as he was and incensed beyond control, might not really have "jobbed," _i.e._, stabbed, his prong at her, had not one of the pitchers left his wake and rushed on him. "My eye!" shouted the loader, "Absalom's at 'un!" Absalom took Tim by the shoulders and hurled him on the ground pretty heavily. Flinging the prong twenty yards away, he threatened to knock his head off if he didn't let Madge alone. Old Tim slowly got up and went off after his tool, growling to himself, while Madge clung hold of Absalom's arm, who, turning round, kissed her. The other women looked jealously on as she followed him back to his wake, and kept close to him at his work. Madge was tall and slenderly made. Her limbs were more delicately proportioned than is usual among women accustomed to manual labour from childhood. The rosy glow of health lit up her brown but clear cheek, free from freckles and sun-spots. Her eyes, black as sloes, were fringed with long dark eyelashes which gave their glances an _espiègle_ expression. They were very wicked-looking eyes, full of fun and mischief. Her dress, open at the throat, displayed a faultless neck, but slightly sun-browned. Her curly dark-brown hair escaped in ringlets down her back. A lovely nut-brown maid! Soft glances passed rapidly between Madge and Absalom, as she raked behind him. They did not escape the jealous notice of the other women. It was the last day of the hay-harvest--it was "hay home" that night. Harvest is a time of freedom, but the last day resembles the ancient Saturnalia, or rather perhaps the vine season in Italy, when the grape-gatherers indulged their rude wit on every one who came near. Raillery and banter poured incessantly on Madge and Absalom, who replied with equal freedom. "Grin away," shouted Absalom at last, half pleased, half irritated, as he stuck his prong in the ground, and seizing Madge, kissed her before them all. "Thur--I bean't ashamed on her!" "Ha! ha! ha! Hoorah!" shouted the men. Madge slipped away towards the rear, blushing scarlet. So absorbed had they been as not to notice the approach of another waggon coming in the opposite direction, which was now alongside. Seeing the kiss and hearing the laugh, one of the men, following it, shouted in a stentorian voice, for which he was renowned-- "Darn my buttons if I won't have one of they!" In an instant he was over the wake and caught Madge in his arms. But she struggled and cried. Absalom was there in a moment. "Go it, Roaring Billy!" shouted the followers of the other waggon. But Absalom shook him free, and the girl darted away. The two men stood fronting each other. Absalom was angry. Billy had had a trifle too much beer. A quarrel was imminent, and fists were doubled, when the pitchers rushed up and separated them. The last pitch was now flung up, and the women began to decorate the horses and the waggons with green boughs. "Come on, Madge," said Absalom, "we'll ride whoam;" and despite of much feminine shyness and many objections, and after much trouble and blushing and rude jokes about legs, Madge was hoisted up, and Absalom followed her. To the rickyard they rode in triumph among green boughs, and to the rude chorus of a song. At seven that evening the whole gang were collected in the farmer's great kitchen. A huge room it was, paved with stone flags, the walls whitewashed, and the ceiling being the roof itself, whose black beams were festooned with cobwebs. Three or four tables had been arranged in a row, and there was a strong smell of "dinner" from smoking joints. Absalom came in last. He had spent some time in adorning himself in a white clean slop and new corduroys, with a gay necktie and his grandfather's watch. His face shone from a recent wash. It was an open countenance, which unconsciously prepossessed one in his favour. Light-blue or grey eyes, which looked you straight in the face, were overshadowed with rather thick eyebrows. His forehead was well proportioned, and crowned with a mass of curling yellow hair. A profusion of whiskers hid his chin, which perhaps in its shape indicated a character too easy and yielding. His shoulders were broad; his appearance one of great strength. But his mouth had a sensual look. Absalom pushed in and out by Madge. "What didst thee have to eat?" asked a crony of his afterwards. "Aw," said Absalom, fetching a sigh at the remembrance of the good things. "Fust I had a plate of rus beef, then a plate of boiled beef; then I had one of boiled mutton, and next one of roast mutton; last, bacon. I found I couldn't git on at all wi' th' pudding, but when the cheese and th' salad came, didn't I pitch into that!" Absalom's love did not spoil his appetite. Soon as the dishes were removed, pipes were brought out and tankards sent on their rounds. By this time poor old Tim's weak brains were muddled, and he was discovered leaning back against the wall and mumbling out the tag-end of an old song:-- "On' Humphry wi' his flail, But Kitty she wur the charming ma-aid To carry th' milking pa-ail!" This set them on singing, and Roaring Billy insisted on bawling out at the top of his stentorian lungs the doleful ditty of "Lord Bateman and his Daughters," which ran to thirty verses, and lasted half-an-hour. Hardly were the last words out of his mouth, when an impatient wight struck up the "Leathern Bottel," and heartily did they all join in the chorus, down to where the ballad describes the married man wanting to beat his wife, and using a glass bottle for the purpose, which broke and let all the wine about:-- "Whereas it had been the Leathern Bottel, The stopper been in he might banged away well," without danger of creating an unanswerable argument in favour of leathern bottles. By this time they were pretty well "boozed." A thick cloud of tobacco-smoke filled the kitchen. Heads were rolling about from side to side and arms stretched over the tables among the _débris_ of broken pipes and in pools of spilt beer and froth. Despite these rude, unromantic surroundings, Absalom and Madge were leaning close against each other, hand-in-hand, almost silent, but looking in each other's eyes. What account takes passion of pipes or beer, smoke or drunken men, of snores and hoarse voices? None: they were oblivious of these things. CHAPTER II. A month after the "hay home" a gaily dressed party passed through the fields towards the village church. Absalom and Madge went first, arm-in-arm; followed by Roaring Billy, who was to give the bride away, with his lady beside him. Behind these came two or three more couples, and last of all, toiling along by herself, an old woman, bent nearly double; it was Madge's mother. With laugh and light jest they pushed on merrily over the stiles and through the brown autumn grass, covered with a lacework of cobwebs. The ceremony passed off well enough, except that Billy, as best-man, made the old arches of the church echo again with his response. Absalom had taken a cottage of Farmer Humphreys. "I'd 'ave sooner had 'un of anybody else," said he, "but thur war nur anuther to be had, and it bean't such a bad 'un nither, only Measter Humphreys be hardish in the mouth." By the which he meant that Humphreys had the reputation of being rather harsh in his dealings with his workpeople. The cottage itself, however, was pleasant enough to look upon, half thatched and half slated, with a narrow strip of flower-garden in front full of hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and wall-flowers, enclosed in a high elder-hedge. Besides which, the occupier had a prescriptive right, by custom, to a patch of potato ground in the allotments about a mile up the road. And half-a-dozen damson-trees overshadowed the back of the cottage, their branches coquetting with the roof when the wind blew. Here the bridal party made a hearty dinner, and grew jolly and genial afterwards over several gallons of beer ordered from the "Good Woman" inn: a sign which represented a woman minus a head, and therefore silent. It was the end of the harvest, and Absalom had plenty of money in his pocket: a week's holiday was therefore indispensable. The imbibing so much beer left a taste in the mouth next morning: this must be washed away by a visit to the barrel. Then there was a stroll to the top of a high hill in the neighbourhood, and as it was very hot, the party was obliged to "wet their whistles" and "wash the dust out of their throats" at every sign on the road, there and back; always backed up with a second glass for the "good of the house." The week wore on, and by Saturday Absalom had thoroughly emancipated himself from the traces of control. Saturday evening brought a company together at the "Good Woman," whom it behoved him to treat. Gallon after gallon was disposed of; Absalom, as the hero of the evening, rising higher and higher in his own estimation with every glass. At length a rude jest led to a blow. Absalom had his coat off in an instant, and felled Roaring Billy like an ox. A row began. The landlord, jealous of his license, turned them all out into the road, when one or two, overcome by the fresh air on top of so much liquor, quietly laid down in the dust. Absalom, mad with drink and vanity, hit out right and left, and piled up three half-stupefied fellows on top of each other, then, shouting-- "I'm the king of the castle!" stood up in the middle of the road, and brandishing his arms, challenged all comers. At that moment a pair of ponies dashed round the corner and suddenly stopped--obstructed by half-a-dozen men lying in the way. A tall gentleman, with a very broad forehead, a very small nose, and a profusion of grey beard, sprang out, and went up to the landlord, who stood at the door. "Johnson," said he sharply, "this is disgraceful. What's that fellow's name?" pointing to Absalom. The landlord of course didn't know--was very sorry. "I can tell 'ee, zur," said a voice, almost a childish treble, and old Tim crept out from whence he had been sipping up the forsaken goblets. "It be Absalom White--it be." "Very good," said the Reverend J. Horton, and resuming his seat, drove on; while Absalom, shouting and staggering, marched down the road, imagining he had carried all before him. The Reverend J. Horton was the owner of the allotment grounds, which he had broken up from the glebe land with the idea of benefiting the poor. Every tenant received a circular of rules which were to be observed. Foremost amongst these was a rule against fighting and drinking. Absalom next week received an intimation that he must give up his allotment. He swore, and said it didn't matter a "cuss," it was autumn, and the crop was up, and he'd warrant he'd get another piece before spring somewhere. But Madge cried, for her mother had prophesied evil from this offending of the "gentle-folk." Absalom kissed her and went to his work. Madge, despite these things, was happy enough. Her education had not taught her to expect great things. She went forth to her work in the morning with a light heart. Merry as a cricket, she forgot in the sunshine all the ominous forebodings of her feeble old mother. It so chanced, however, that Absalom's master could not find her employment at that season, and she therefore worked on a farm at a little distance. Madge saw little of Absalom, except at night, and then he was tired and went early to bed. Her restless spirit could not be satisfied with so little companionship. Naturally fond of admiration, she thought no harm of talking and joking with the men, and her gossips encouraged her in it. The very same "gossips" reported her freedom to Absalom--very much exaggerated. Absalom said nothing. He was slow to understand any new idea. On her road home from her work Madge had to come down a lane with but one solitary cottage in it. It belonged to an itinerant tinker, his own property, only paying quit-rent of a shilling a year. He was a bachelor, a gipsy sort of fellow, full of fun and rollicksome mirth, better educated than the labourers, and with a store of original ideas which he had acquired in travelling about. This fellow--"Bellows," as he was called--admired Madge exceedingly, and had tried to win her for himself, but failed. Still, what pretty woman was ever displeased with the attentions of a smart young fellow? After her marriage "Bellows" courted her more and more. It became a "talk," as the country people call it. Madge, thinking her title as wife exonerated her from all remarks, perhaps allowed him to go further than she ought, but, in strict earnestness, meant no harm. These things came to Absalom's ears. He grew fonder and fonder of the public-house. Still, at home he said nothing. It grew to be winter. One cold, frosty, but beautiful moonlight night Absalom came home late from his work. He had been sent up on the hills with some sheep, and did not return till two hours after his usual time. Weary and hungry, and not in the best of tempers, he walked in. The door was ajar, and there were some embers on the hearth, but Madge was neither in sight nor call. Eager for his supper, Absalom went out, and soon learned that she had gone up to the "Good Woman." Madge indeed, finding he did not come home, had gone up there to look for him. "Bellows" was there, and the landlord and he had been drinking pretty freely. No sooner did Madge come in than the landlord blew out the candle, slipped out, and locked the door with a loud guffaw, leaving the pair alone in the dark. Unable to escape, Madge sat down, and they chatted away gaily enough. It was thus that Absalom found them. He said nothing when he learnt where Madge was, but left the house and walked back to the cottage. Alarmed at his sullen demeanour, the landlord unlocked the door. Madge flew back to the cottage. "Ab," said she, rushing in with an armful of sticks to make a blaze, "you'll want your supper." The reply was a blow which doubled her up in a corner senseless. Absalom sat for a while sullenly glowering over the embers, and then went to bed, leaving Madge sobbing on the bare, hard earthen floor. It was midnight before she crept to his side. Early in the morning Absalom got up and dressed. Madge was sleeping soundly, a dark circle under each eye; she had cried herself to sleep. He went out and left her. CHAPTER III. Six weeks passed, and Absalom did not return. Madge went over to her mother. "He bean't come," she said, beginning to cry. "I knowed a wassn't," said the old woman, rocking herself to and fro in her low rush-bottomed chair, with her feet on the hearth, almost among the ashes. "Thee's soon have to look out for theeself." "How, mother?" "Cos I'm going to die." "Mother!" "I be goin' to die," repeated the old woman in the same calm, hard tone. A life of incessant labour had crushed all sentiment out of her--except superstition--and she faced the hard facts of existence without emotion. Madge began to weep. "Thee go and shut up the cottage, wench, and come and bide wi' I." Madge did so. In a few days the old woman took to her bed. She had it dragged out of the next room--there was but one floor--and placed near the fire, which was constantly kept up. Madge waited on her assiduously when she was not out of doors at field-work. Work was growing scarcer and scarcer as the winter advanced. The old woman slowly grew weaker and weaker, till Madge could leave her no longer. So she stayed at home, and so lost the little employment she had. One evening, when the firelight was growing low and dark shadows were flickering over the ceiling, the old woman seemed to recover a little strength, and sat up in bed. "Madge!" "Yes, mother." "Thee must promise I one thing." "What be it, mother?" "As thee won't have I buried by the parish." Madge began to cry. "Dost thee hear?" "I won't." A long silence. "Madge!" "Yes, mother." "Thee go to the fire. Dost thee see that brick in the chimbley as sticks out a little way?" "Yes." "Pull it out." Madge caught hold, and after a few tugs pulled the brick out. "Put thee hand in!" Madge thrust hand and arm into the cavity, and brought out a dirty stocking. "Has thee got th' stocking?" "Yes, mother." "Bury I wi' wots in thur, and take care o' the rest on't. Thee's want it bad enough afore th' spring comes." Madge replaced the stocking without examining it. She was heavy at heart. Before morning her mother was dead. Madge went back to her own cottage, carrying with her just a sovereign in sixpences and fourpenny-bits. She sat down and wept. No one came near her. Her former gossips, always jealous of her beauty, left her alone with her sorrow. But she knew that she could not remain idle. Something must be done. So she went out to rick-work, but there was none to be had. From farm to farm Madge wearily toiled along, meeting the same answer everywhere--"Had got more on now than they could find work for." Madge felt exceedingly ill as she slowly wended her way homewards. Then for the first time she remembered that she must shortly become a mother. In her weak state Madge caught cold. She shivered incessantly. The poor child could not rise from her bed in the morning, her limbs were so stiff and her head so bad. She lay there all day, crying to herself. Hunger at last, towards evening, compelled her to get up and seek food. There was only a piece of crust in the cupboard and a little lard. She was trying to masticate these when there came a tap at the door. "Come in," said Madge. Farmer Humphreys now appeared in the doorway. He was a short, thick man, with a shock-head of yellow hair, small grey eyes, and lips almost blue. "There be ten weeks' rent a-owing," said he, sitting down; "and we don't mean to wait no longer. And there's a half-side o' bacon an' a load of faggots." "How much is it altogether?" "Seventeen-and-six." "I ain't a-got but a pound, and Absalom bean't come whoam." "The vagabond--cuss 'im!" "A bean't no vagabond," cried Madge, firing up in defence of her husband. "Bist thee a-goin' to pay--or bisn't?" said the fellow, beginning to bully. Madge counted him out the money, and he left, casting an ugly leer on her as he went. Half-a-crown remained. On that half-crown Madge lived for one whole month. The cold clung to her and grew worse. Her tongue burned and her limbs shook; it was fever as well as cold--that low aguish fever, the curse of the poor. Bread and lard day by day, bread and lard, and a little weak tea. And at the month's end the half-crown was gone: sixpence went for her last half-dozen faggots. Madge crawled upstairs and wrapped herself up in a blanket, sitting on the side of the bed. It was her miserable loneliness which troubled the poor child most. Her cough, and the cold, and want of food and firing, might have been borne had there been some one to talk to. But alone they did their work. Her form was dreadfully shrunken, her hands as thin and bony as those her old mother last stretched over the fire. The ale-house which had absorbed her husband's earnings sent her no aid in this time of distress, and he had offended the clergyman who would otherwise have found her out. It grew dusky, as the poor creature sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly there was a hand on the latch of the door downstairs. Madge trembled with eagerness as a heavy step sounded on the floor--could it be Absalom? Her black eyes, looking larger from the paleness of her sunken cheeks, began to blaze with a new light. The steps came to the foot of the stairs and began ascending. She listened eagerly. A head of yellow hair came up through the trap-door, and the small grey eyes of young Humphreys leered on her. Disappointed and amazed, Madge remained silent. Humphreys came up and sat on the bed beside her. "Thee's got thin," he said, with a sort of chuckle. "Like some grub, wouldn't ye?" No answer. He put his hand on her shoulder and muttered something in her ear. Madge seemed scarcely to understand him, but sat staring wildly. "I'll give thee sixpence," said Humphreys, showing one. Then a full sense of his dishonourable intentions, mingled with shame and disgust at his unutterable meanness, came over Madge, and rising with a flush on her cheek, she struck him with all her might. It was a feeble blow, but he was unprepared: it over-balanced him; he staggered backwards, and fell heavily down the stairs. Madge, her heart beating painfully fast, leaned back on the bed and listened. There was not a sound. A dreadful thought that he might be killed flashed across her mind. Her impulse was to go down and see, but her strength failed, and she sat down again and waited. It seemed hours before she heard him stir and, after a noise like a great dog shaking himself, with mingled curses and threats, leave the house. Then a great pain came over her. She felt as if she should die, but the greatest dread was the dread of loneliness. She staggered to the window and looked out. A boy was passing, and she told him to go to Mrs. Green's and send her down. Then she fell on the bed in a faint, with the window open and the cold, bitter, biting east wind blowing in. It was half a mile to Mrs. Green's--one of Madge's old gossips. The boy got there in two hours. Mrs. Green was putting her baby to bed, but instantly transferred that duty to her eldest girl, and went off eager for news. At nine that night the "Good Woman" inn resounded with talk of Madge. Not a bit nor a drop was there in the house, according to Mrs. Green. The landlord said Absalom owed him two shillings unpaid score: he could forgive her the debt, but he couldn't give nothing. Mrs. Green went home for her supper, and returning, found Madge conscious. She would not have the parish doctor. "Bellows," the tinker, had during these late months been out on an itinerant journey. He came home that night, and at the "Good Woman" heard the news. His quick wit put him up to a plan to serve the poor girl. Early in the morning he took his pack and went through the village up to the Rev. Mr. Horton's. There, under pretence of asking for kettles to mend, he told the most dismal tale to the housemaid. At breakfast-time this was reported to Mrs. Horton. Distress at such a time was sufficient to engage any lady's attention. Mrs. Horton was a frail, tender woman, but earnest in works of charity. The ponies were ordered, and down they drove. The tale was not overdrawn. "Not a crust in the cupboard--not a stick to light a fire: the poor creature starved, and--and--you know, coming," said the good lady afterwards, describing the scene. "John drove after the doctor instantly, and I stayed. Poor girl! It was still-born; and she, poor thing! we saw, could not live long." Madge, indeed, died the same night, totally worn out at nineteen. And Absalom? He had gone to work on a distant railway as a navvy, and, earning good wages and able to enjoy himself nightly at the taverns, forgot poor Madge. Months went on. News travels slowly among the poor, but at last intelligence did reach him that his mother was dead and Madge starving. To do him justice, he had never thought of that, and he started at once for home, travelling on foot. But passing through a village with his bundle on his shoulders, he was arrested by a policeman who observed some blood on it. It was on the slop he had worn in the fight at the "Good Woman," and came only from the nose. But there had been a brutal murder in the neighbourhood, the public mind was excited, and Absalom was remanded for inquiries. It took a fortnight to prove his identity, and by then Madge was dead. Absalom went back to the railway and drank harder than ever. It was observed that he drank now by himself and for drinking's sake, whereas before he had only been fond of liquor with company. After a year he found his way back home. Madge was forgotten, and he easily got work. Likely young men are not so common on farms: strict inquiries are rarely made. The last that was heard of him appeared in the local newspaper:-- "DRUNK AND DISORDERLY.--Absalom White was brought up in custody, charged with obstructing the road while in a state of intoxication. Fined five shillings and seven-and-six costs." PART II. _THE COMING OF SUMMER._ The June sky is of the deepest blue when seen above the fresh foliage of the oaks in the morning before the sun has filled the heavens with his meridian light. To see the blue at its best it needs something to form a screen so that the azure may strike the eye with its fulness undiminished by its own beauty; for if you look at the open sky such a breadth of the same hue tones itself down. But let the eye rise upwards along a wall of oak spray, then at the rim the rich blue is thick, quite thick, opaque, and steeped in luscious colour. Unless, indeed, upon the high downs,--there the June sky is too deep even for the brilliance of the light, and requires no more screen than the hand put up to shade the eyes. These level plains by the Thames are different, and here I like to see the sky behind and over an oak. About Surbiton the oaks come out into leaf earlier than in many places; this spring[2] there were oak-leaves appearing on April 24, yet so backward are some of them that, while all the rest were green, there were two in the hedge of a field by the Ewell road still dark within ten days of June. They looked dark because their trunks and boughs were leafless against a background of hawthorn, elm, and other trees in full foliage, the clover flowering under them, and May bloom on the hedge. They were black as winter, and even now, on the 1st of June, the leaves are not fully formed. The trees flowered in great perfection this spring; many oaks were covered with their green pendants, and they hung from the sycamores. Except the chestnuts, whose bloom can hardly be overlooked, the flowering of the trees is but little noticed; the elm is one of the earliest, and becomes ruddy--it is as early as the catkins on the hazel; willow, aspen, oak, sycamore, ash, all have flower or catkin--even the pine, whose fructification is very interesting. The pines or Scotch firs by the Long Ditton road hang their sweeping branches to the verge of the footpath, and the new cones, the sulphur farina, and the fresh shoots are easily seen. The very earliest oak to put forth its flowers is in a garden on Oak Hill; it is green with them, while yet the bitter winds have left a sense of winter in the air. There is a broad streak of bright-yellow charlock--in the open arable field beyond the Common. It lights up the level landscape; the glance falls on it immediately. Field beans are in flower, and their scent comes sweet even through the dust of the Derby Day. Red heads of trifolium dot the ground; the vetches have long since been out, and are so still; along the hedges parsley forms a white fringe. The charlock seems late this year; it is generally up well before June--the first flowers by the roadside or rickyard, in a waste dry corner. Such dry waste places send up plants to flower, such as charlock and poppy, quicker than happens in better soil, but they do not reach nearly the height or size. The field beans are short from lack of rain; there are some reeds in the ditch by them, and these too are short; they have not half shot up yet, for the same reason. On the sward by the Long Ditton road the goat's-beard is up; it grows to some size there every season, but is not very common elsewhere. It is said to close its sepals at noon, and was therefore called "Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon," but in fact it shuts much earlier, and often does not open at all, and you may pass twenty times and not see it open. Its head is like that of the dandelion, and children blow it to see what's o'clock in the same way. It forms a large ball, and browner; dandelion seed-balls are white. The grass is dotted with them now; they give a glossy, silky appearance to the meadows. Tiny pink geranium flowers show on bunches of dusty grass; silver weed lays its yellow buttercup-like flower on the ground, placing it in the angle of the road and the sward, where the sward makes a ridge. Cockspur grass--three claws and a spur like a cock's foot--is already whitened with pollen; already in comparison, for the grasses are late to lift their heads this summer. As the petals of the May fall the young leaves appear, small and green, to gradually enlarge through the hay-time. A slight movement of the leaves on a branch of birch shows that something living is there, and presently the little head and neck of a whitethroat peers over them, and then under, looking above and beneath each leaf, and then with a noiseless motion passing on to the next. Another whitethroat follows immediately, and there is not a leaf forgotten nor a creeping thing that can hide from them. Every tree and every bush is visited by these birds, and others of the insect-feeders; the whole summer's day they are searching, and the caterpillar, as it comes down on a thread, slipping from the upper branches, only drops into their beaks. Birds, too, that at other periods feed on grain and seed, now live themselves, and bring up their young, upon insects. I went to look over a gate to see how the corn was rising--it is so short, now in June, that it will not hide a hare--and on coming near there was a cock chaffinch perched on the top, a fine bird in full colour. He did not move though I was now within three yards, nor till I could have almost touched him did he fly; he had a large caterpillar in his beak, and no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending into the underwood, most likely the young thrushes are there. Little indeed do the birds care for appropriate surroundings; anything does for them, they do not aim at effect. I heard a tit-lark singing his loudest, and found him perched on the edge of a tub, formed of a barrel sawn in two, placed in the field for the horses to drink from, as there was no pond. Some swallows are very fond of a notice-board fastened to a pole beside the Hogsmill bank. Upon its upper edge they perch and twitter sweetly. There is a muddy pond by Tolworth Farm, near the road; it is muddy because a herd of cows drink from and stand in it, stirring up the bottom. An elm overhangs it, and the lower boughs are dead and leafless. On these there are always swallows twittering over the water. Grey and yellow wagtails run along the verge. In the morning the flock of goslings who began to swim in the pond, now grown large and grey, arrange themselves in a double row, some twenty or thirty of them, in loose order, tuck their bills under their wings and sleep. Two old birds stand in the rear as if in command of the detachment. A sow, plastered with mud like the rhinoceri in the African lakes, lies on the edge of the brown water, so nearly the hue of the water and the mire, and so exactly at their juncture, as to be easily overlooked. But the sweet summer swallows sing on the branches; they do not see the wallowing animal, they see only the sunshine and the summer, golden buttercups and blue sky. In the hollow at Long Ditton I had the delight, a day or two since, to see a kingfisher. There is a quiet lane, and at the bottom, in a valley, two ponds, one in enclosed grounds, the other in a meadow opposite. Standing there a minute to see if there was a martin among the birds with which the pond in the grounds is thickly covered, something came shooting straight towards me, and swerving only a yard or two to pass me, a kingfisher went by. His blue wings, his ruddy front, the white streak beside his neck, and long bill, were all visible for a moment; then he was away straight over the meadow, the directness of his course enabling it to be followed for some time till he cleared the distant hedge, probably going to visit his nest. Kingfishers, though living by the stream, often build a good way from water. The months have lengthened into years since I saw one here before, sitting on the trunk of a willow which bends over the pond in the mead. The tree rises out of the water and is partly in it; it is hung with moss, and the kingfisher was on the trunk within a foot or so of the surface. After that there came severe winters, and till now I did not see another here. So that the bird came upon me unexpectedly out from the shadow of the trees that overhang the water, past me, and on into the sunshine over the buttercups and sorrel of the field. This hollow at Long Ditton is the very place of singing birds; never was such a place for singing--the valley is full of music. In the oaks blackbirds whistle. You do not often see them; they are concealed by the thick foliage up on high, for they seek the top branches, which are more leafy; but once now and then they quietly flutter across to another perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human, like a human being playing the flute; an uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself. It is a song which strives to express the singer's keen delight, the singer's exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of the days; the golden glory of the meadow, the light, the luxurious shadows, the indolent clouds reclining on their azure couch. Such thoughts can only be expressed in fragments, like a sculptor's chips thrown off as the inspiration seizes him, not mechanically sawn to a set line. Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge, the water which runs slower, held awhile by rootlet, flag, and forget-me-not. He feels the beauty of the time and he must say it. His notes come like wild flowers, not sown in order. The sunshine opens and shuts the stops of his instrument. There is not an oak without a blackbird, and there are others afar off in the hedges. The thrushes sing louder here than anywhere; they really seem to have louder notes; they are all round. Thrushes appear to vary their songs with the period of the year; they sing loudly now, but more plaintively and delicately in the autumn. Warblers and willow wrens sing out of sight among the trees; they are easily hidden by a leaf; ivy-leaves are so smooth, with an enamelled surface, that high up, as the wind moves them, they reflect the sunlight and scintillate. Greenfinches in the elms never cease love-making, and love-making needs much soft talking. There is a nightingale in a bush by the lane which sings so loud the hawthorn seems to shake with the vigour of his song; too loud, though a nightingale, if you stand at the verge of the boughs, as he would let you without alarm; farther away it becomes sweet and softer. Yellowhammers call from the trees up towards the arable fields. There are but a few of them: it is the place of singing birds. The doves in the copse are nearer the house this year; I see them more often in the field at the end of the garden. As the dove rises the white fringe on the tip of the tail becomes visible, especially when flying up into a tree. One afternoon one flew up into a hornbeam close to the garden, beside it in fact, and perched there full in view, not twenty yards at farthest. At first he sat upright, raising his neck and watching us in the garden; then, in a minute or so, turned and fluttered down to his nest. The wood-pigeons are more quiet now; their whoo-hoo-ing is not so frequently heard. By the sounds up in the elms at the top of the Brighton road (at the end of Langley Lane) the young rooks have not yet all flown, though it is the end of the first week in June. There is a little pond near the rookeries, and by it a row of elms. From one of these a heavy bough has just fallen without the least apparent cause. There is no sign of lightning, nor does it even look decayed; the wood has fractured short off; it came down with such force that the ends of the lesser branches are broken and turned up, though, as it was the lowest limb, it had not far to fall, showing the weight of the timber. There has been no hurricane of wind, nothing at all to cause it, yet this thick bough snapped. No other tree is subject to these dangerous falls of immense limbs, without warning or apparent cause, so that it is not safe to rest under elms. An accident might not occur once in ten years; nevertheless the risk is there. Elms topple over before gales which scarcely affect other trees, or only tear off a few twigs. Two have thus been thrown recently--within eighteen months--in the fields opposite Tolworth Farm. The elm drags up its own roots, which are often only a fringe round its butt, and leaves a hollow in the earth, as if it had been simply stood on end and held by these guy-ropes. Other trees do, indeed, fall in course of time, but not till they are obviously on the point of tottering, but the elm goes down in full pride of foliage. By this pond there is a rough old oak, which is the peculiar home of some titmice; they were there every day, far back on the frost and snow, and their sharp notes sounded like some one chipping the ice on the horse-pond with an iron instrument. Probably, before now, they have had a nest in a crevice. The tallest grass yet to be seen is in a little orchard on the right-hand side of the Long Ditton road. This little orchard is a favourite spot of mine, meaning, of course, to look at: it is a natural orchard and left to itself. The palings by the road are falling, and held up chiefly by the brambles and the ivy that has climbed up them. There are trees on the left and trees on the right; a fine spruce fir at the back. The apple-trees are not set in straight lines; they were at first, but some have died away and left an irregularity. The trees themselves lean this way and that; they are scarred and marked, as it were, with lichen and moss. It is the home of birds. A blackbird had a nest this spring in the bushes on the left side, a nightingale in the bushes on the right side, and there he sang and sang for hours every morning. A sharp, relentless shrike lives in one of the trees close by, and is perpetually darting across the road upon insects on the sward among the fern there. There are several thrushes who reside in this orchard besides the lesser birds. Swallows sometimes twitter from the tops of the apple-trees. As the grass is so safe from intrusion, one of the earliest buttercups flowers here. The apple-bloom appears rosy on the bare boughs only lately scourged by the east wind. After a time the trees are in full bloom, set about into the green of the hedges and bushes and the dark spruce behind. Bennets, the flower of the grass, come up. The first bennet is to green things what a swallow is to the breathing creatures of summer. White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in their stately way, lighting the path, which is strewn with fallen oak-flower. May appears on the hawthorn: there is an early bush of it. Now the grass is so high the flowers are lost under it; even the buttercups are overtopped; and soon as the young apples take form and shape white bramble-bloom will cover the bushes by the palings. Acorns will show on the oaks: the berries will ripen from red to black beneath. Along the edge of the path, where the dandelions and plantains are thick with seed, the greenfinches will come down and select those they like best: this they often do by the footpath beside the road. Lastly, the apples become red; the beech in the corner has an orange spray, and cones hang long and brown upon the spruce. The thrushes after silence sing again, and autumn approaches. But, pass when you may, this little orchard has always something, because it is left to itself--I had written neglected. I struck the word out, for this is not neglect, this is true attention, to leave it to itself, so that the young trees trail over the bushes and stay till the berries fall of their own over-ripeness, if perchance spared by the birds; so that the dead brown leaves lie and are not swept away unless the wind pleases; so that all things follow their own course and bent. Almost opposite, by autumn, when the reapers are busy with the sheaves, the hedge is white with the large trumpet-flowers of the greater convolvulus. The hedgerow seems made of convolvulus then, nothing but convolvulus; nowhere else does the flower flourish so strongly, and the bines remain till the following spring. This little orchard, without a path through it, without a border, or a parterre, or a terrace, is a place to sit down and dream in, notwithstanding that it touches the road, for thus left to itself it has acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness such as belongs to and grows up in woods and far-away coombs of the hills. A stray passer-by would go on without even noticing it, it is so commonplace and unpretentious, merely a corner of meadow irregularly dotted with apple-trees; a place that needs frequent glances and a dreamy mood to understand as the birds understand it. They are always here, even in the winter, starlings and blackbirds particularly, who resort to a kind of furrow there, which, even in frost, seems to afford them some food. In the spring thrushes move along, rustling the fallen leaves as they search behind the arum-sheaths unrolling beside the palings, or under the shelter of the group of trees where arum-roots are plentiful. There are nooks and corners from which shy creatures can steal out from the shadow and be happy. The dew falls softly, more noiseless than snow, and a star shines to the north over the spruce fir. By day there is a loving streak of sunshine somewhere among the tree-trunks; by night a star above. The trees are nothing to speak of in size or height, but they seem always to bloom well and to be fruitful; tree-climbers run up these and then go off to the elms. Beside the Long Ditton road, up the gentle incline on the left side, the broad sward is broken by thickets and brake like those of a forest. If a forest were cleared, as those in America are swept away before the axe, but a line of underwood left beside the highway, the result would be much the same as may be seen here when the bushes and fern are in perfection. Thick hawthorn bushes stand at unequal distances surrounded with brake; one with a young oak in the centre. Fern extends from one thicket to the other, and brambles fence the thorns, which are themselves well around. From such coverts the boar was started in old English days, the fawns hide behind and about them even now in many a fair park, and where there are no deer they are frequented by hares. So near the dust which settles on them as the wheels raise it, of course, every dog that passes runs through, and no game could stay an hour, but they are the exact kind of cover game like. One morning this spring, indeed, I noticed a cock-pheasant calmly walking along the ridge of a furrow in the ploughed field, parted from these bushes by the hedge. He was so near the highway that I could see the ring about his neck. I have seen peewits or green plovers in the same field, which is now about to be built on. But though no game could stay an hour in such places, lesser birds love them, white-throats build there, gold-crests come down from the dark pines opposite--they seem fond of pines--yellow-hammers sit and sing on them, and they are visited all day long by one or other. The little yellow flowers of tormentil are common in the grass as autumn approaches, and grasshoppers, which do not seem plentiful here, sing there. Some betony flowers are opposite on the other sward. There is a marshy spot by one of the bushes where among the rushes various semi-aquatic grasses grow. Blackberries are thick in favourable seasons--like all fruit, they are an uncertain crop; and hawkweeds are there everywhere on the sward towards the edge. The peculiar green of fern, which is more of a relief to the eye than any other shrub with which I am acquainted, so much so that I wonder it is not more imitated, is remarkable here when the burning July sun shines on the white dust thus fringed. By then trees are gone off in colour, the hedges are tired with heat, but the fern is a soft green which holds the glance. This varies much with various seasons; this year the fern is particularly late from a lack of moisture, but sometimes it is really beautiful between these bushes. It is cut down in its full growth by those who have charge of the road, and the scene is entirely destroyed for the remainder of the season; it is not often that such bushes and such fern are found beside the highway, and, if not any annoyance to the residents, are quite as worthy of preservation (not "preservation" by beadle) as open spaces like commons. Children, and many of larger growth, revel about them, gathering the flowers in spring and summer, the grasses and the blackberries in autumn. It is but a strip of sward, but it is as wild as if in the midst of a forest. A pleasure to every one--therefore destroy it. In the evening from the rise of the road here I sometimes hear the cry of a barn owl skirting the hedge of Southborough Park, and disappearing under the shadow of the elms that stand there. The stars appear and the whole dome of the summer night is visible, for in a level plain like this a slight elevation brings the horizon into view. Without moon the June nights are white; a faint white light shows through the trees of Southborough Park northwards; the west has not lost all its tint over the Ditton hollow; white flowers stand in the grass; white road, white flint-heaps even, white clouds, and the stars, too, light without colour. By day the breeze comes south and west, free over fields, over corn and grass and hedgerow; so slight a mound as this mere rise in the river-side plain lifts you up into the current of the air. Where the wind comes the sunlight is purer. The sorrel is now high and ripening in the little meadows beside the road just beyond the orchard. As it ripens the meadow becomes red, for the stalks rise above the grass. This is the beginning of the feast of seeds. The sorrel ripens just as the fledgelings are leaving the nest; if you watch the meadow a minute you will see the birds go out to it, now flying up a moment and then settling again. After a while comes the feast of grain; then another feast of seeds among the stubble, and the ample fields, and the furze of the hills; then berries, and then winter, and the last seed. A June rose. Something caught my eye on the top of the high hawthorn hedge beside the Brighton road one evening as it was growing dusk, and on looking again there was a spray of briar in flower, two roses in full bloom and out of reach, and one spray of three growing buds. So it is ever with the June rose. It is found unexpectedly, and when you are not looking for it. It is a gift, not a discovery, or anything earned--a gift like love and happiness. With ripening grasses the rose comes, and the rose is summer: till then it is spring. On the green banks--waste places--beside the "New Road" (Kingsdown Road formerly) the streaked pink convolvulus is in flower; a sign that the spring forces have spent themselves, that the sun is near his fulness. The flower itself is shapely, yet it is not quite welcome; it says too plainly that we are near the meridian. There are months of warmth to follow--brilliant sunshine and new beauties; but the freshness, the joyous looking forward of spring is gone. Upon these banks the first coltsfoot flowers in March, the first convolvulus in summer, and almost the last hawkweed in autumn. A yellow vetchling, too, is now opening its yellow petals beside the Long Ditton road: another summer flower, which comes in as the blue veronica is leaving the sward. As tall as the young corn the mayweed fringes the arable fields with its white rays and yellow centre, somewhat as the broad moon-daisies stand in the grass. By this time generally the corn is high above the mayweed, but this year the flower is level with its shelter. The pale corn buttercup is in flower by the New Road, not in the least overshadowed by the crops at the edge of which it grows. By the stream through Tolworth Common spotted persicaria is rising thickly, but even this strong-growing plant is backward and checked on the verge of the shrunken stream. The showers that have since fallen have not made up for the lack of the April rains, which in the most literal sense cause the flowers of May and June. Without those early spring rains the wild flowers cannot push their roots and develop their stalks in time for the summer sun. The sunshine and heat finds them unprepared. In the ditches the square-stemmed figwort is conspicuous by its dark green. It is very plentiful about Surbiton. Just outside the garden in a waste corner the yellow flowers of celandine are overhung by wild hops and white bryony, two strong plants of which have climbed up the copse hedge, twining in and out each other. Both have vine-like leaves; but the hops are wrinkled, those of the bryony hairy or rough to the touch. The hops seem to be the most powerful, and hold the bryony in the background. The young spruce firs which the wood-pigeon visited in the spring with an idea of building there look larger and thicker now the fresh green needles have appeared. In the woodland lane to Claygate the great elder-bushes are coming into flower, each petal a creamy-white. The dogwood, too, is opening, and the wild guelder-roses there are in full bloom. There is a stile from which a path leads across the fields thence to Hook. The field by the stile was fed off in spring, and now is yellow with birdsfoot lotus, which tints it because the grass is so short. From the grass at every footstep a crowd of little "hoppers" leap in every direction, scattering themselves hastily abroad. The little mead by the copse here is more open to the view this year, as the dry winter has checked the growth of ferns and rushes. There is a flock of missel-thrushes in it: the old birds feed the young, who can fly well in the centre of the field. Lesser birds come over from the hedges to the bunches of rushes. Slowly wandering along the lane and looking over the mound on the right hand (cow-wheat with yellow lip is in flower on the mound), there are glimpses between the bushes and the Spanish chestnut-trees of far-away blue hills--blue under the summer sky. FOOTNOTE: [2] 1881. _THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN._ This lovely little bird is so small and light that it can cling suspended on the end of a single narrow leaf, or needle of pine, and it does not depress the least branch on which it may alight. The gold-crest frequents the loneliest heath, the deepest pine wood, and the immediate neighbourhood of dwellings indifferently. A Scotch fir or pine grew so near a house in which I once lived that the boughs almost brushed the window, and when confined to my room by illness, it gave me much pleasure to watch a pair of these wrens who frequently visited the tree. They are also fond of thick thorn hedges, and, like all birds, have their favourite localities, so that if you see them once or twice in one place you should mark the tree or bush, for there they are almost certain to return. It would be quite possible for a person to pass several years in the country and never see one of these birds. There is a trick in finding birds' nests, and a trick in seeing birds. The first I noticed was in an orchard; soon after, I found a second in a yew-tree (close to a window), and after that constantly came upon them as they crept through brambles or in hedgerows, or a mere speck up in a fir-tree. So soon as I had seen one I saw plenty. _AN EXTINCT RACE._ There is something very mournful in a deserted house, and the feeling is still further intensified if it happens to have once been a school, where a minor world played out its little drama, and left its history written on the walls. For a great boys' school is like a kingdom with its monarchs, its ministers, and executioners, and even its changes of dynasty. Such a house stood no long while since on the northern border-land of Wilts and Berks, a mansion in its origin back in the days of Charles II., and not utterly unconnected with the great events of those times, but which, for hard on a hundred years--from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century--was used as a superior grammar-school, or college, as it would now be called. Gradually falling in reputation, and supplanted by modern rivals for fifteen or twenty years, the huge hollow halls and endless dormitories were silent, and the storms that sway with savage force down from the hills wreaked their will upon the windows and the rotting roof. Inside the refectory--the windows being blown in--and over the antique-carved mantelpiece, two swallows' nests had been built to the ceiling or cornice. The whitewashed walls were yellow and green with damp, and covered with patches of saltpetre efflorescence. But they still bore, legible and plain, the hasty inscriptions scrawled on them, years and years before, by hands then young, but by now returned to dust. The history of this little kingdom, the hopes and joys, the fears and hatreds of the subjects, still remained, and might be gathered from these writings on the walls, just as are the history of Egypt and of Assyria now deciphered from the palaces and tombs. Here were the names of the kings--the head-masters--generally with some rough doggerel verse, not often very flattering, and illustrated with outline portraits. Here were caricatures of the ushers and tutors, hidden in some corner of the dormitories once, no doubt, concealed by the furniture, coupled with the very freest personalities, mostly in pencil, but often done with a burnt stick. Dates were scattered everywhere--not often the year, but the day of the month, doubtless memorable from some expedition or lark played off half a century since. Now and then there was a quotation from the classics--one describing the groaning and shouting of the dying Hercules, till the rocks and the sad hills resounded, which irresistibly suggested the idea of a thorough caning. Other inscriptions were a mixture of Latin and any English words that happened to rhyme, together producing the most extraordinary jumble. Where now are the merry hearts that traced these lines upon the plaster in an idle mood? Attached to the mansion was a great garden, or rather wilderness, with yew hedges ten feet high and almost as thick, a splendid filbert walk, an orchard, with a sun-dial. It is all--mansion and garden, noble yew-tree hedges and filbert walk, sun-dial and all--swept away now. The very plaster upon which generation after generation of boys recorded their history has been torn down, and has crumbled into dust. Greater kingdoms than this have disappeared since the world began, leaving not a sign even of their former existence. _ORCHIS MASCULA._ The _Orchis mascula_ grew in the brook corner, and in early spring sent up a tall spike of purple flowers. This plant stood alone in an angle of the brook and a hedge, within sound of water ceaselessly falling over a dam. In those days it had an aspect of enchantment to me; not only on account of its singular appearance, so different from other flowers, but because in old folios I had read that it could call up the passion of love. There was something in the root beneath the sward which could make a heart beat faster. The common modern books--I call them common of _malice prepense_--were silent on these things. Their dry and formal knowledge was without interest, mere lists of petals and pistils, a dried herbarium of plants that fell to pieces at the touch of the fingers. Only by chipping away at hard old Latin, contracted and dogged in more senses than one, and by gathering together scattered passages in classic authors, could anything be learned. Then there arose another difficulty, how to identify the magic plants? The same description will very nearly fit several flowers, especially when not actually in flower; how determine which really was the true root? The uncertainty and speculation kept up the pleasure, till at last I should not have cared to have had the original question answered. With my gun under my arm I used to look at the orchis from time to time, so long as the spotted leaves were visible, till the grass grew too long. _THE LIONS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE._ The lions in Trafalgar Square are to me the centre of London. By those lions began my London work; from them, as spokes from the middle of a wheel, radiate my London thoughts. Standing by them and looking south you have in front the Houses of Parliament, where resides the mastership of England; at your back is the National Gallery--that is art; and farther back the British Museum--books. To the right lies the wealth and luxury of the West End; to the left the roar and labour, the craft and gold, of the City. For themselves, they are the only monument in this vast capital worthy of a second visit as a monument. Over the entire area covered by the metropolis there does not exist another work of art in the open air. There are many structures and things, no other art. The outlines of the great animals, the bold curves and firm touches of the master hand, the deep indents, as it were, of his thumb on the plastic metal, all the _technique_ and grasp written there, is legible at a glance. Then comes the _pose_ and expression of the whole, the calm strength in repose, the indifference to little things, the resolute view of great ones. Lastly, the soul of the maker, the spirit which was taken from nature, abides in the massive bronze. These lions are finer than those that crouch in the cages at the Zoological Gardens; these are truer and more real, and, besides, these are lions to whom has been added the heart of a man. Nothing disfigures them; smoke and, what is much worse, black rain--rain which washes the atmosphere of the suspended mud--does not affect them in the least. If the choke-damp of fog obscures them, it leaves no stain on the design; if the surfaces be stained, the idea made tangible in metal is not. They are no more touched than Time itself by the alternations of the seasons. The only noble open-air work of native art in the four-million city, they rest there supreme and are the centre. Did such a work exist now in Venice, what immense folios would be issued about it! All the language of the studios would be huddled together in piled-up and running-over laudation, and curses on our insular swine-eyes that could not see it. I have not been to Venice, therefore I do not pretend to a knowledge of that mediæval potsherd; this I do know, that in all the endless pictures on the walls of the galleries in London, year after year exposed and disappearing like snow somewhere unseen, never has there appeared one with such a subject as this. Weak, feeble, mosaic, gimcrack, coloured tiles, and far-fetched compound monsters, artificial as the graining on a deal front door, they cannot be compared; it is the gingerbread gilt on a circus car to the column of a Greek temple. This is pure open air, grand as Nature herself, because it _is_ Nature with, as I say, the heart of a man added. But if any one desire the meretricious painting of warm light and cool yet not hard shade, the effect of colour, with the twitching of triangles, the spangles glittering, and all the arrangement contrived to take the eye, then he can have it here as well as noble sculpture. Ascend the steps to the National Gallery, and stand looking over the balustrade down across the square in summer hours. Let the sun have sloped enough to throw a slant of shadow outward; let the fountains splash whose bubbles restless speak of rest and leisure, idle and dreamy; let the blue-tinted pigeons nod their heads walking, and anon crowd through the air to the roof-tops. Shadow upon the one side, bright light upon the other, azure above and swallows. Ever rolling the human stream flows, mostly on the south side yonder, near enough to be audible, but toned to bearableness. A stream of human hearts, every atom a living mind filled with what thoughts?--a stream that ran through Rome once, but has altered its course and wears away the banks here now and triturates its own atoms, the hearts, to dust in the process. Yellow omnibuses and red cabs, dark shining carriages, chestnut horses, all rushing, and by their motion mixing their colours so that the commonness of it disappears and the hues remain, a streak drawn in the groove of the street--dashed hastily with thick camel's hair. In the midst the calm lions, dusky, unmoved, full always of the one grand idea that was infused into them. So full of it that the golden sun and the bright wall of the eastern houses, the shade that is slipping towards them, the sweet swallows and the azure sky, all the human stream holds of wealth and power and coroneted panels--nature, man, and city--pass as naught. Mind is stronger than matter. The soul alone stands when the sun sinks, when the shade is universal night, when the van's wheels are silent and the dust rises no more. At summer noontide, when the day surrounds us and it is bright light even in the shadow, I like to stand by one of the lions and yield to the old feeling. The sunshine glows on the dusky creature, as it seems, not on the surface, but under the skin, as if it came up from out of the limb. The roar of the rolling wheels sinks and becomes distant as the sound of a waterfall when dreams are coming. All the abundant human life is smoothed and levelled, the abruptness of the individuals lost in the flowing current, like separate flowers drawn along in a border, like music heard so far off that the notes are molten and the theme only remains. The abyss of the sky over and the ancient sun are near. They only are close at hand, they and immortal thought. When the yellow Syrian lions stood in old time of Egypt, then too, the sunlight gleamed on the eyes of men, as now this hour on mine. The same consciousness of light, the same sun, but the eyes that saw it and mine, how far apart! The immense lion here beside me expresses larger nature--cosmos--the ever-existent thought which sustains the world. Massiveness exalts the mind till the vast roads of space which the sun tramples are as an arm's-length. Such a moment cannot endure long; gradually the roar deepens, the current resolves into individuals, the houses return--it is only a square. But a square potent. For London is the only _real_ place in the world. The cities turn towards London as young partridges run to their mother. The cities know that they are not real. They are only houses and wharves, and bricks and stucco; only outside. The minds of all men in them, merchants, artists, thinkers, are bent on London. Thither they go as soon as they can. San Francisco thinks London; so does St. Petersburg. Men amuse themselves in Paris; they work in London. Gold is made abroad, but London has a hook and line on every napoleon and dollar, pulling the round discs hither. A house is not a dwelling if a man's heart be elsewhere. Now, the heart of the world is in London, and the cities with the simulacrum of man in them are empty. They are moving images only; stand here and you are real. THE END. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London 
17306	----	IN ENGLAND IN 1844*** Transcribed from the January 1943 George Allen & Unwin reprint of the March 1892 edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 With a Preface written in 1892 by FREDERICK ENGELS _Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky_ _London_ GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD _Museum Street_ PREFACE The book, an English translation of which is here republished, was first issued in Germany in 1845. The author, at that time, was young, twenty- four years of age, and his production bears the stamp of his youth with its good and its faulty features, of neither of which he feels ashamed. It was translated into English, in 1885, by an American lady, Mrs. F. Kelley Wischnewetzky, and published in the following year in New York. The American edition being as good as exhausted, and having never been extensively circulated on this side of the Atlantic, the present English copyright edition is brought out with the full consent of all parties interested. For the American edition, a new Preface and an Appendix were written in English by the author. The first had little to do with the book itself; it discussed the American Working-Class Movement of the day, and is, therefore, here omitted as irrelevant, the second--the original preface--is largely made use of in the present introductory remarks. The state of things described in this book belongs to-day, in many respects, to the past, as far as England is concerned. Though not expressly stated in our recognised treatises, it is still a law of modern Political Economy that the larger the scale on which Capitalistic Production is carried on, the less can it support the petty devices of swindling and pilfering which characterise its early stages. The pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative in Europe of commerce in its lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so well in his own country, and are generally practised there, he finds to be out of date and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and, again, the commission agent, who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months, finds out that, in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native country. The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and trouble. And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer and his "hands." The revival of trade, after the crisis of 1847, was the dawn of a new industrial epoch. The repeal of the Corn Laws and the financial reforms subsequent thereon gave to English industry and commerce all the elbow- room they had asked for. The discovery of the Californian and Australian gold-fields followed in rapid succession. The Colonial markets developed at an increasing rate their capacity for absorbing English manufactured goods. In India millions of hand-weavers were finally crushed out by the Lancashire power-loom. China was more and more being opened up. Above all, the United States--then, commercially speaking, a mere colonial market, but by far the biggest of them all--underwent an economic development astounding even for that rapidly progressive country. And, finally, the new means of communication introduced at the close of the preceding period--railways and ocean steamers--were now worked out on an international scale; they realised actually, what had hitherto existed only potentially, a world-market. This world-market, at first, was composed of a number of chiefly or entirely agricultural countries grouped around one manufacturing centre--England--which consumed the greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles. No wonder England's industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive and insignificant. And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours' Bill was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced--much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades' Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes--at opportune times--a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is, that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed--at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case--to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman's fate during its earlier stages. And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact, that the cause of the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but _in the Capitalistic System itself_. The wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily sum. After a few hours' work he has reproduced the value of that sum; but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which cost the capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket. That is the basis of the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other. And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance, but by the system itself--this fact has been brought out in bold relief by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847. Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases. Accordingly, the most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous. Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst "slums" I had to describe. "Little Ireland" has disappeared, and the "Seven Dials" are next on the list for sweeping away. But what of that? Whole districts which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic, have now, with the growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation, discomfort, and misery. Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no longer tolerated. The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art of hiding the distress of the working-class. But that, in regard to their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place, is amply proved by the Report of the Royal Commission "on the Housing of the Poor," 1885. And this is the case, too, in other respects. Police regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it. But while England has thus outgrown the juvenile state of capitalist exploitation described by me, other countries have only just attained it. France, Germany, and especially America, are the formidable competitors who, at this moment--as foreseen by me in 1844--are more and more breaking up England's industrial monopoly. Their manufactures are young as compared with those of England, but increasing at a far more rapid rate than the latter; and, curious enough, they have at this moment arrived at about the same phase of development as English manufacture in 1844. With regard to America, the parallel is indeed most striking. True, the external surroundings in which the working-class is placed in America are very different, but the same economical laws are at work, and the results, if not identical in every respect, must still be of the same order. Hence we find in America the same struggles for a shorter working- day, for a legal limitation of the working-time, especially of women and children in factories; we find the truck-system in full blossom, and the cottage-system, in rural districts, made use of by the "bosses" as a means of domination over the workers. When I received, in 1886, the American papers with accounts of the great strike of 12,000 Pennsylvanian coal-miners in the Connellsville district, I seemed but to read my own description of the North of England colliers' strike of 1844. The same cheating of the workpeople by false measure; the same truck-system; the same attempt to break the miners' resistance by the capitalists' last, but crushing, resource,--the eviction of the men out of their dwellings, the cottages owned by the companies. I have not attempted, in this translation, to bring the book up to date, or to point out in detail all the changes that have taken place since 1844. And for two reasons: Firstly, to do this properly, the size of the book must be about doubled; and, secondly, the first volume of "Das Kapital," by Karl Marx, an English translation of which is before the public, contains a very ample description of the state of the British working-class, as it was about 1865, that is to say, at the time when British industrial prosperity reached its culminating point. I should, then, have been obliged again to go over the ground already covered by Marx's celebrated work. It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical standpoint of this book--philosophical, economical, political--does not exactly coincide with my standpoint of to-day. Modern international Socialism, since fully developed as a science, chiefly and almost exclusively through the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844. My book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development; and as the human embryo, in its early stages, still reproduces the gill-arches of our fish-ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,--German philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the working-class alone. The French bourgeois of 1789, too, declared the emancipation of the bourgeoisie to be the emancipation of the whole human race; but the nobility and clergy would not see it; the proposition--though for the time being, with respect to feudalism, an abstract historical truth--soon became a mere sentimentalism, and disappeared from view altogether in the fire of the revolutionary struggle. And to-day, the very people who, from the "impartiality" of their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes--these people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or they are the worst enemies of the workers,--wolves in sheeps' clothing. The recurring period of the great industrial crisis is stated in the text as five years. This was the period apparently indicated by the course of events from 1825 to 1842. But the industrial history from 1842 to 1868 has shown that the real period is one of ten years; that the intermediate revulsions were secondary, and tended more and more to disappear. Since 1868 the state of things has changed again, of which more anon. I have taken care not to strike out of the text the many prophecies, amongst others that of an imminent social revolution in England, which my youthful ardour induced me to venture upon. The wonder is, not that a good many of them proved wrong, but that so many of them have proved right, and that the critical state of English trade, to be brought on by Continental and especially American competition, which I then foresaw--though in too short a period--has now actually come to pass. In this respect I can, and am bound to, bring the book up to date, by placing here an article which I published in the _London Commonweal_ of March 1, 1885, under the heading: "England in 1845 and in 1885." It gives at the same time a short outline of the history of the English working-class during these forty years, and is as follows: "Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to all appearances by force only. The immense and rapid development of manufactures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets and the increase of demand. Every ten years the march of industry was violently interrupted by a general commercial crash, followed, after a long period of chronic depression, by a few short years of prosperity, and always ending in feverish over-production and consequent renewed collapse. The capitalist class clamoured for Free Trade in corn, and threatened to enforce it by sending the starving population of the towns back to the country districts whence they came, to invade them, as John Bright said, not as paupers begging for bread, but as an army quartered upon the enemy. The working masses of the towns demanded their share of political power--the People's Charter; they were supported by the majority of the small trading class, and the only difference between the two was whether the Charter should be carried by physical or by moral force. Then came the commercial crash of 1847 and the Irish famine, and with both the prospect of revolution "The French Revolution of 1848 saved the English middle-class. The Socialistic pronunciamentos of the victorious French workmen frightened the small middle-class of England and disorganised the narrower, but more matter-of-fact movement of the English working-class. At the very moment when Chartism was bound to assert itself in its full strength, it collapsed internally, before even it collapsed externally on the 10th of April, 1848. The action of the working-class was thrust into the background. The capitalist class triumphed along the whole line. "The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn Laws was the victory of the manufacturing capitalist not only over the landed aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists, too, whose interests were more or less bound up with the landed interest,--bankers, stock-jobbers, fund-holders, etc. Free Trade meant the re-adjustment of the whole home and foreign, commercial and financial policy of England in accordance with the interests of the manufacturing capitalists--the class which now represented the nation. And they set about this task with a will. Every obstacle to industrial production was mercilessly removed. The tariff and the whole system of taxation were revolutionised. Everything was made subordinate to one end, but that end of the utmost importance to the manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce, and especially of the means of living of the working-class; the reduction of the cost of raw material, and the keeping down--if not as yet the _bringing down_--of wages. England was to become the 'workshop of the world;' all other countries were to become for England what Ireland already was,--markets for her manufactured goods, supplying her in return with raw materials and food. England the great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world, with an ever-increasing number of corn and cotton-growing Irelands revolving around her, the industrial sun. What a glorious prospect! "The manufacturing capitalists set about the realisation of this their great object with that strong common sense and that contempt for traditional principles which has ever distinguished them from their more narrow-minded compeers on the Continent. Chartism was dying out. The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of 1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the English working-class, politically, into the tail of the 'great Liberal party,' the party led by the manufacturers. This advantage, once gained, had to be perpetuated. And the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning more and more, that the middle-class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working-class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes. The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their expansion into acts regulating almost all trades, was tolerated. Trades' Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself, were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions, and as useful means of spreading sound economical doctrines amongst the workers. Even strikes, than which nothing had been more nefarious up to 1848, were now gradually found out to be occasionally very useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves, at their own time. Of the legal enactments, placing the workman at a lower level or at a disadvantage with regard to the master, at least the most revolting were repealed. And, practically, that horrid 'People's Charter' actually became the political programme of the very manufacturers who had opposed it to the last. 'The Abolition of the Property Qualification' and 'Vote by Ballot' are now the law of the land. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to 'universal suffrage,' at least such as it now exists in Germany; the Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates 'equal electoral districts'--on the whole not more unequal than those of Germany; 'payment of members,' and shorter, if not actually 'annual Parliaments,' are visibly looming in the distance--and yet there are people who say that Chartism is dead. "The Revolution of 1848, not less than many of its predecessors, has had strange bedfellows and successors. The very people who put it down have become, as Karl Marx used to say, its testamentary executors. Louis Napoleon had to create an independent and united Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian independence, and the English manufacturers had to enact the People's Charter. "For England, the effects of this domination of the manufacturing capitalists were at first startling. Trade revived and extended to a degree unheard of even in this cradle of modern industry; the previous astounding creations of steam and machinery dwindled into nothing compared with the immense mass of productions of the twenty years from 1850 to 1870, with the overwhelming figures of exports and imports, of wealth accumulated in the hands of capitalists and of human working power concentrated in the large towns. The progress was indeed interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well as in 1866; but these revulsions were now considered as natural, inevitable events, which must be fatalistically submitted to, and which always set themselves right in the end. "And the condition of the working-class during this period? There was temporary improvement even for the great mass. But this improvement always was reduced to the old level by the influx of the great body of the unemployed reserve, by the constant superseding of bands by new machinery, by the immigration of the agricultural population, now, too, more and more superseded by machines. "A permanent improvement can be recognised for two 'protected' sections only of the working-class. Firstly, the factory hands. The fixing by Act of Parliament of their working-day within relatively rational limits has restored their physical constitution and endowed them with a moral superiority, enhanced by their local concentration. They are undoubtedly better off than before 1848. The best proof is that, out of ten strikes they make, nine are provoked by the manufacturers in their own interests, as the only means of securing a reduced production. You can never get the masters to agree to work 'short time,' let manufactured goods be ever so unsaleable; but get the workpeople to strike, and the masters shut their factories to a man. "Secondly, the great Trades' Unions. They are the organisations of those trades in which the labour of _grown-up men_ predominates, or is alone applicable. Here the competition neither of women and children nor of machinery has so far weakened their organised strength. The engineers, the carpenters, and joiners, the bricklayers, are each of them a power, to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers and bricklayers' labourers, they can even successfully resist the introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably improved since 1848 there can be no doubt, and the best proof of this is in the fact, that for more than fifteen years not only have their employers been with them, but they with their employers, upon exceedingly good terms. They form an aristocracy among the working- class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a relatively comfortable position, and they accept it as final. They are the model working-men of Messrs. Leone Levi & Giffen, and they are very nice people indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible capitalist in particular and for the whole capitalist class in general. "But as to the great mass of working-people, the state of misery and insecurity in which they live now is as low as ever, if not lower. The East End of London is an everspreading pool of stagnant misery and desolation, of starvation when out of work, and degradation, physical and moral, when in work. And so in all other large towns--abstraction made of the privileged minority of the workers; and so in the smaller towns and in the agricultural districts. The law which reduces the _value_ of labour-power to the value of the necessary means of subsistence, and the other law which reduces its _average price_, as a rule, to the minimum of those means of subsistence, these laws act upon them with the irresistible force of an automatic engine, which crushes them between its wheels. "This, then, was the position created by the Free Trade policy of 1847, and by twenty years of the rule of the manufacturing capitalists. But, then, a change came. The crash of 1866 was, indeed, followed by a slight and short revival about 1873; but that did not last. We did not, indeed, pass through the full crisis at the time it was due, in 1877 or 1878; but we have had, ever since 1876, a chronic state of stagnation in all dominant branches of industry. Neither will the full crash come; nor will the period of longed-for prosperity to which we used to be entitled before and after it. A dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for all trades, that is what we have been living in for nearly ten years. How is this? "The Free Trade theory was based upon one assumption: that England was to be the one great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world. And the actual fact is that this assumption has turned out to be a pure delusion. The conditions of modern industry, steam-power and machinery, can be established wherever there is fuel, especially coals. And other countries beside England,--France, Belgium, Germany, America, even Russia,--have coals. And the people over there did not see the advantage of being turned into Irish pauper farmers merely for the greater wealth and glory of English capitalists. They set resolutely about manufacturing, not only for themselves, but for the rest of the world; and the consequence is, that the manufacturing monopoly enjoyed by England for nearly a century is irretrievably broken up. "But the manufacturing monopoly of England is the pivot of the present social system of England. Even while that monopoly lasted, the markets could not keep pace with the increasing productivity of English manufacturers; the decennial crises were the consequence. And new markets are getting scarcer every day, so much so that even the negroes of the Congo are now to be forced into the civilisation attendant upon Manchester calicos, Staffordshire pottery, and Birmingham hardware. How will it be when Continental, and especially American, goods flow in in ever-increasing quantities--when the predominating share, still held by British manufacturers, will become reduced from year to year? Answer, Free Trade, thou universal panacea. "I am not the first to point this out. Already, in 1883, at the Southport meeting of the British Association, Mr. Inglis Palgrave, the President of the Economic section, stated plainly that 'the days of great trade profits in England were over, and there was a pause in the progress of several great branches of industrial labour. _The country might almost be said to be entering the non-progressive state_.' "But what is to be the consequence? Capitalist production _cannot_ stop. It must go on increasing and expanding, or it must die. Even now, the mere reduction of England's lion's share in the supply of the world's markets means stagnation, distress, excess of capital here, excess of unemployed workpeople there. What will it be when the increase of yearly production is brought to a complete stop? "Here is the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for capitalistic production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion, and this constant expansion now becomes impossible. It ends in a deadlock. Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the question: either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist production must. Which is it to be? "And the working-class? If even under the unparalleled commercial and industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1866, they have had to undergo such misery; if even then the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement of their condition, while only a small, privileged, 'protected' minority was permanently benefited, what will it be when this dazzling period is brought finally to a close; when the present dreary stagnation shall not only become intensified, but this, its intensified condition, shall become the permanent and normal state of English trade? "The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but even the great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then. And that is the reason why, since the dying-out of Owenism, there has been no Socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monopoly, the English working-class will lose that privileged position; it will find itself generally--the privileged and leading minority not excepted--on a level with its fellow-workers abroad. And that is the reason why there will be Socialism again in England." To this statement of the case, as that case appeared to me in 1885, I have but little to add. Needless to say that to-day there is indeed "Socialism again in England," and plenty of it--Socialism of all shades: Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic, Socialism of the working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable, but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room _causeuses_. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that public opinion. At the same time, we have no reason to grumble at the symptom itself. What I consider far more important than this momentary fashion among bourgeois circles of affecting a mild dilution of Socialism, and even more than the actual progress Socialism has made in England generally, that is the revival of the East End of London. That immense haunt of misery is no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago. It has shaken off its torpid despair, has returned to life, and has become the home of what is called the "New Unionism;" that is to say, of the organisation of the great mass of "unskilled" workers. This organisation may to a great extent adopt the form of the old Unions of "skilled" workers, but it is essentially different in character. The old Unions preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded, and look upon the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they at best can modify in the interest of their members. The new Unions were founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose adhesion gave them strength, were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working-class aristocracy; but they had this immense advantage, that _their minds were virgin soil_, entirely free from the inherited "respectable" bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated "old" Unionists. And thus we see now these new Unions taking the lead of the working-class movement generally, and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud "old" Unions. Undoubtedly, the East Enders have committed colossal blunders; so have their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh them. A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker than by undergoing the consequences of its own mistakes. And for all the faults committed in past, present, and future, the revival of the East End of London remains one of the greatest and most fruitful facts of this _fin de siecle_, and glad and proud I am to have lived to see it. F. ENGELS. _January_ 11_th_, 1892. INTRODUCTION The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of the last century, with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery for working cotton. These inventions gave rise, as is well known, to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil society; one, the historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognised. England is the classic soil of this transformation, which was all the mightier, the more silently it proceeded; and England is, therefore, the classic land of its chief product also, the proletariat. Only in England can the proletariat be studied in all its relations and from all sides. We have not, here and now, to deal with the history of this revolution, nor with its vast importance for the present and the future. Such a delineation must be reserved for a future, more comprehensive work. For the moment, we must limit ourselves to the little that is necessary for understanding the facts that follow, for comprehending the present state of the English proletariat. Before the introduction of machinery, the spinning and weaving of raw materials was carried on in the working-man's home. Wife and daughter spun the yarn that the father wove or that they sold, if he did not work it up himself. These weaver families lived in the country in the neighbourhood of the towns, and could get on fairly well with their wages, because the home market was almost the only one, and the crushing power of competition that came later, with the conquest of foreign markets and the extension of trade, did not yet press upon wages. There was, further, a constant increase in the demand for the home market, keeping pace with the slow increase in population and employing all the workers; and there was also the impossibility of vigorous competition of the workers among themselves, consequent upon the rural dispersion of their homes. So it was that the weaver was usually in a position to lay by something, and rent a little piece of land, that he cultivated in his leisure hours, of which he had as many as he chose to take, since he could weave whenever and as long as he pleased. True, he was a bad farmer and managed his land inefficiently, often obtaining but poor crops; nevertheless, he was no proletarian, he had a stake in the country, he was permanently settled, and stood one step higher in society than the English workman of to-day. So the workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence, leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their material position was far better than that of their successors. They did not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could take part besides in the recreations and games of their neighbours, and all these games--bowling, cricket, football, etc., contributed to their physical health and vigour. They were, for the most part, strong, well- built people, in whose physique little or no difference from that of their peasant neighbours was discoverable. Their children grew up in the fresh country air, and, if they could help their parents at work, it was only occasionally; while of eight or twelve hours work for them there was no question. What the moral and intellectual character of this class was may be guessed. Shut off from the towns, which they never entered, their yarn and woven stuff being delivered to travelling agents for payment of wages--so shut off that old people who lived quite in the neighbourhood of the town never went thither until they were robbed of their trade by the introduction of machinery and obliged to look about them in the towns for work--the weavers stood upon the moral and intellectual plane of the yeomen with whom they were usually immediately connected through their little holdings. They regarded their squire, the greatest landholder of the region, as their natural superior; they asked advice of him, laid their small disputes before him for settlement, and gave him all honour, as this patriarchal relation involved. They were "respectable" people, good husbands and fathers, led moral lives because they had no temptation to be immoral, there being no groggeries or low houses in their vicinity, and because the host, at whose inn they now and then quenched their thirst, was also a respectable man, usually a large tenant farmer who took pride in his good order, good beer, and early hours. They had their children the whole day at home, and brought them up in obedience and the fear of God; the patriarchal relationship remained undisturbed so long as the children were unmarried. The young people grew up in idyllic simplicity and intimacy with their playmates until they married; and even though sexual intercourse before marriage almost unfailingly took place, this happened only when the moral obligation of marriage was recognised on both sides, and a subsequent wedding made everything good. In short, the English industrial workers of those days lived and thought after the fashion still to be found here and there in Germany, in retirement and seclusion, without mental activity and without violent fluctuations in their position in life. They could rarely read and far more rarely write; went regularly to church, never talked politics, never conspired, never thought, delighted in physical exercises, listened with inherited reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the "superior" classes. But intellectually, they were dead; lived only for their petty, private interest, for their looms and gardens, and knew nothing of the mighty movement which, beyond their horizon, was sweeping through mankind. They were comfortable in their silent vegetation, and but for the industrial revolution they would never have emerged from this existence, which, cosily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings. In truth, they were not human beings; they were merely toiling machines in the service of the few aristocrats who had guided history down to that time. The industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to think and demand a position worthy of men. As in France politics, so in England manufacture, and the movement of civil society in general drew into the whirl of history the last classes which had remained sunk in apathetic indifference to the universal interests of mankind. The first invention which gave rise to a radical change in the state of the English workers was the jenny, invented in the year 1764 by a weaver, James Hargreaves, of Standhill, near Blackburn, in North Lancashire. This machine was the rough beginning of the later invented mule, and was moved by hand. Instead of one spindle like the ordinary spinning-wheel, it carried sixteen or eighteen manipulated by a single workman. This invention made it possible to deliver more yarn than heretofore. Whereas, though one weaver had employed three spinners, there had never been enough yarn, and the weaver had often been obliged to wait for it, there was now more yarn to be had than could be woven by the available workers. The demand for woven goods, already increasing, rose yet more in consequence of the cheapness of these goods, which cheapness, in turn, was the outcome of the diminished cost of producing the yarn. More weavers were needed, and weavers' wages rose. Now that the weaver could earn more at his loom, he gradually abandoned his farming, and gave his whole time to weaving. At that time a family of four grown persons and two children (who were set to spooling) could earn, with eight hours' daily work, four pounds sterling in a week, and often more if trade was good and work pressed. It happened often enough that a single weaver earned two pounds a week at his loom. By degrees the class of farming weavers wholly disappeared, and was merged in the newly arising class of weavers who lived wholly upon wages, had no property whatever, not even the pretended property of a holding, and so became working-men, proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between spinner and weaver was destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, yarn had been spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as the loom required a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived by spinning, while others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel aside; and, if they had not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to live upon the wages of the father alone. Thus began with spinning and weaving that division of labour which has since been so infinitely perfected. While the industrial proletariat was thus developing with the first still very imperfect machine, the same machine gave rise to the agricultural proletariat. There had, hitherto, been a vast number of small landowners, yeomen, who had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as their neighbours, the farming weavers. They cultivated their scraps of land quite after the ancient and inefficient fashion of their ancestors, and opposed every change with the obstinacy peculiar to such creatures of habit, after remaining stationary from generation to generation. Among them were many small holders also, not tenants in the present sense of the word, but people who had their land handed down from their fathers, either by hereditary lease, or by force of ancient custom, and had hitherto held it as securely as if it had actually been their own property. When the industrial workers withdrew from agriculture, a great number of small holdings fell idle, and upon these the new class of large tenants established themselves, tenants-at-will, holding fifty, one hundred, two hundred or more acres, liable to be turned out at the end of the year, but able by improved tillage and larger farming to increase the yield of the land. They could sell their produce more cheaply than the yeomen, for whom nothing remained when his farm no longer supported him but to sell it, procure a jenny or a loom, or take service as an agricultural labourer in the employ of a large farmer. His inherited slowness and the inefficient methods of cultivation bequeathed by his ancestors, and above which he could not rise, left him no alternative when forced to compete with men who managed their holdings on sounder principles and with all the advantages bestowed by farming on a large scale and the investment of capital for the improvement of the soil. Meanwhile, the industrial movement did not stop here. Single capitalists began to set up spinning jennies in great buildings and to use water-power for driving them, so placing themselves in a position to diminish the number of workers, and sell their yarn more cheaply than single spinners could do who moved their own machines by hand. There were constant improvements in the jenny, so that machines continually became antiquated, and must be altered or even laid aside; and though the capitalists could hold out by the application of water-power even with the old machinery, for the single spinner this was impossible. And the factory system, the beginning of which was thus made, received a fresh extension in 1767, through the spinning throstle invented by Richard Arkwright, a barber, in Preston, in North Lancashire. After the steam- engine, this is the most important mechanical invention of the 18th century. It was calculated from the beginning for mechanical motive power, and was based upon wholly new principles. By the combination of the peculiarities of the jenny and throstle, Samuel Crompton, of Firwood, Lancashire, contrived the mule in 1785, and as Arkwright invented the carding engine, and preparatory ("slubbing and roving") frames about the same time, the factory system became the prevailing one for the spinning of cotton. By means of trifling modifications these machines were gradually adapted to the spinning of flax, and so to the superseding of hand-work here, too. But even then, the end was not yet. In the closing years of the last century, Dr. Cartwright, a country parson, had invented the power-loom, and about 1804 had so far perfected it, that it could successfully compete with the hand-weaver; and all this machinery was made doubly important by James Watt's steam-engine, invented in 1764, and used for supplying motive power for spinning since 1785. With these inventions, since improved from year to year, the victory of machine-work over hand-work in the chief branches of English industry was won; and the history of the latter from that time forward simply relates how the hand-workers have been driven by machinery from one position after another. The consequences of this were, on the one hand, a rapid fall in price of all manufactured commodities, prosperity of commerce and manufacture, the conquest of nearly all the unprotected foreign markets, the sudden multiplication of capital and national wealth; on the other hand, a still more rapid multiplication of the proletariat, the destruction of all property-holding and of all security of employment for the working-class, demoralisation, political excitement, and all those facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in comfortable circumstances, which we shall have to consider in the following pages. Having already seen what a transformation in the social condition of the lower classes a single such clumsy machine as the jenny had wrought, there is no cause for surprise as to that which a complete and interdependent system of finely adjusted machinery has brought about, machinery which receives raw material and turns out woven goods. Meanwhile, let us trace the development of English manufacture {7} somewhat more minutely, beginning with the cotton industry. In the years 1771-1775, there were annually imported into England rather less than 5,000,000 pounds of raw cotton; in the year 1841 there were imported 528,000,000 pounds, and the import for 1844 will reach at least 600,000,000 pounds. In 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the value of 1,200,000 pounds. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not included, in the service of the cotton industry; and, according to MacCulloch's reckoning, nearly a million and a half human beings were supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000 worked in the mills; the power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to 33,000 horse-power, and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power. At present these figures are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year 1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring towns, Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge with 40,000, and a whole list of other manufacturing towns to spring up as if by a magic touch. The history of South Lancashire contains some of the greatest marvels of modern times, yet no one ever mentions them, and all these miracles are the product of the cotton industry. Glasgow, too, the centre for the cotton district of Scotland, for Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, has increased in population from 30,000 to 300,000 since the introduction of the industry. The hosiery manufacture of Nottingham and Derby also received one fresh impulse from the lower price of yarn, and a second one from an improvement of the stocking loom, by means of which two stockings could be woven at once. The manufacture of lace, too, became an important branch of industry after the invention of the lace machine in 1777; soon after that date Lindley invented the point-net machine, and in 1809 Heathcote invented the bobbin-net machine, in consequence of which the production of lace was greatly simplified, and the demand increased proportionately in consequence of the diminished cost, so that now, at least 200,000 persons are supported by this industry. Its chief centres are Nottingham, Leicester, and the West of England, Wiltshire, Devonshire, etc. A corresponding extension has taken place in the branches dependent upon the cotton industry, in dyeing, bleaching, and printing. Bleaching by the application of chlorine in place of the oxygen of the atmosphere; dyeing and printing by the rapid development of chemistry, and printing by a series of most brilliant mechanical inventions, a yet greater advance which, with the extension of these branches caused by the growth of the cotton industry, raised them to a previously unknown degree of prosperity. The same activity manifested itself in the manufacture of wool. This had hitherto been the leading department of English industry, but the quantities formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which is now manufactured. In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three years lay unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie if the newly invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun it. The adaptation of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most successfully accomplished. Then began the same sudden development in the wool district, which we have already seen in the cotton districts. In 1738 there were 75,000 pieces of woollen cloth produced in the West Riding of Yorkshire; in 1817 there were 490,000 pieces, and so rapid was the extension of the industry that in 1834, 450,000 more pieces were produced than in 1825. In 1801, 101,000,000 pounds of wool (7,000,000 pounds of it imported) were worked up; in 1835, 180,000,000 pounds were worked up; of which 42,000,000 pounds were imported. The principal centre of this industry is the West Riding of Yorkshire, where, especially at Bradford, long English wool is converted into worsted yarns, etc.; while in the other cities, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, etc., short wool is converted into hard-spun yarn and cloth. Then come the adjacent part of Lancashire, the region of Rochdale, where in addition to the cotton industry much flannel is produced, and the West of England which supplies the finest cloths. Here also the growth of population is worthy of observation: Bradford contained in 1801 29,000, and in 1831 77,000 inhabitants. Halifax ,, ,, 68,000, ,, ,, 110,000 ,, Huddersfield ,, ,, 15,000, ,, ,, 34,000 ,, Leeds,, ,, 53,000, ,, ,, 123,000 ,, And the whole West Riding 564,000, ,, ,, 980,000 ,, A population which, since 1831, must have increased at least 20 to 25 per cent. further. In 1835 the spinning of wool employed in the United Kingdom 1,313 mills, with 71,300 workers, these last being but a small portion of the multitude who are supported directly or indirectly by the manufacture of wool, and excluding nearly all weavers. Progress in the linen trade developed later, because the nature of the raw material made the application of spinning machinery very difficult. Attempts had been made in the last years of the last century in Scotland, but the Frenchman, Girard, who introduced flax spinning in 1810, was the first who succeeded practically, and even Girard's machines first attained on British soil the importance they deserved by means of improvements which they underwent in England, and of their universal application in Leeds, Dundee, and Belfast. From this time the British linen trade rapidly extended. In 1814, 3,000 tons of flax were imported; in 1833, nearly 19,000 tons of flax and 3,400 tons of hemp. The export of Irish linen to Great Britain rose from 32,000,000 yards in 1800 to 53,000,000 in 1825, of which a large part was re-exported. The export of English and Scotch woven linen goods rose from 24,000,000 yards in 1820 to 51,000,000 yards in 1833. The number of flax spinning establishments in 1835 was 347, employing 33,000 workers, of which one-half were in the South of Scotland, more than 60 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Leeds, and its environs, 25 in Belfast, Ireland, and the rest in Dorset and Lancashire. Weaving is carried on in the South of Scotland, here and there in England, but principally in Ireland. With like success did the English turn their attention to the manufacture of silk. Raw material was imported from Southern Europe and Asia ready spun, and the chief labour lay in the twisting of fine threads. Until 1824 the heavy import duty, four shillings per pound on raw material, greatly retarded the development of the English silk industry, while only the markets of England and the Colonies were protected for it. In that year the duty was reduced to one penny, and the number of mills at once largely increased. In a single year the number of throwing spindles rose from 780,000 to 1,180,000; and, although the commercial crisis of 1825 crippled this branch of industry for the moment, yet in 1827 more was produced than ever, the mechanical skill and experience of the English having secured their twisting machinery the supremacy over the awkward devices of their competitors. In 1835 the British Empire possessed 263 twisting mills, employing 30,000 workers, located chiefly in Cheshire, in Macclesfield, Congleton, and the surrounding districts, and in Manchester and Somersetshire. Besides these, there are numerous mills for working up waste, from which a peculiar article known as spun silk is manufactured, with which the English supply even the Paris and Lyons weavers. The weaving of the silk so twisted and spun is carried on in Paisley and elsewhere in Scotland, and in Spitalfields, London, but also in Manchester and elsewhere. Nor is the gigantic advance achieved in English manufacture since 1760 restricted to the production of clothing materials. The impulse, once given, was communicated to all branches of industrial activity, and a multitude of inventions wholly unrelated to those here cited, received double importance from the fact that they were made in the midst of the universal movement. But as soon as the immeasurable importance of mechanical power was practically demonstrated, every energy was concentrated in the effort to exploit this power in all directions, and to exploit it in the interest of individual inventors and manufacturers; and the demand for machinery, fuel, and materials called a mass of workers and a number of trades into redoubled activity. The steam-engine first gave importance to the broad coal-fields of England; the production of machinery began now for the first time, and with it arose a new interest in the iron mines which supplied raw material for it. The increased consumption of wool stimulated English sheep breeding, and the growing importation of wool, flax, and silk called forth an extension of the British ocean carrying trade. Greatest of all was the growth of production of iron. The rich iron deposits of the English hills had hitherto been little developed; iron had always been smelted by means of charcoal, which became gradually more expensive as agriculture improved and forests were cut away. The beginning of the use of coke in iron smelting had been made in the last century, and in 1780 a new method was invented of converting into available wrought-iron coke-smelted iron, which up to that time had been convertible into cast-iron only. This process, known as "puddling," consists in withdrawing the carbon which had mixed with the iron during the process of smelting, and opened a wholly new field for the production of English iron. Smelting furnaces were built fifty times larger than before, the process of smelting was simplified by the introduction of hot blasts, and iron could thus be produced so cheaply that a multitude of objects which had before been made of stone or wood were now made of iron. In 1788, Thomas Paine, the famous democrat, built in Yorkshire the first iron bridge, which was followed by a great number of others, so that now nearly all bridges, especially for railroad traffic, are built of cast- iron, while in London itself a bridge across the Thames, the Southwark bridge, has been built of this material. Iron pillars, supports for machinery, etc., are universally used, and since the introduction of gas- lighting and railroads, new outlets for English iron products are opened. Nails and screws gradually came to be made by machinery. Huntsman, a Sheffielder, discovered in 1790 a method for casting steel, by which much labour was saved, and the production of wholly new cheap goods rendered practicable; and through the greater purity of the material placed at its disposal, and the more perfect tools, new machinery and minute division of labour, the metal trade of England now first attained importance. The population of Birmingham grew from 73,000 in 1801 to 200,000 in 1844; that of Sheffield from 46,000 in 1801 to 110,000 in 1844, and the consumption of coal in the latter city alone reached in 1836, 515,000 tons. In 1805 there were exported 4,300 tons of iron products and 4,600 tons of pig-iron; in 1834, 16,200 tons of iron products and 107,000 tons of pig-iron, while the whole iron product reaching in 1740 but 17,000 tons, had risen in 1834 to nearly 700,000 tons. The smelting of pig-iron alone consumes yearly more than 3,000,000 tons of coal, and the importance which coal mining has attained in the course of the last 60 years can scarcely be conceived. All the English and Scotch deposits are now worked, and the mines of Northumberland and Durham alone yield annually more than 5,000,000 tons for shipping, and employ from 40 to 50,000 men. According to the Durham _Chronicle_, there were worked in these two counties: In 1753, 14 mines; in 1800, 40 mines; in 1836, 76 mines; in 1843, 130 mines. Moreover, all mines are now much more energetically worked than formerly. A similarly increased activity was applied to the working of tin, copper, and lead, and alongside of the extension of glass manufacture arose a new branch of industry in the production of pottery, rendered important by the efforts of Josiah Wedgewood, about 1763. This inventor placed the whole manufacture of stoneware on a scientific basis, introduced better taste, and founded the potteries of North Staffordshire, a district of eight English miles square, which, formerly a desert waste, is now sown with works and dwellings, and supports more than 60,000 people. Into this universal whirl of activity everything was drawn. Agriculture made a corresponding advance. Not only did landed property pass, as we have already seen, into the hands of new owners and cultivators, agriculture was affected in still another way. The great holders applied capital to the improvement of the soil, tore down needless fences, drained, manured, employed better tools, and applied a rotation of crops. The progress of science came to their assistance also; Sir Humphrey Davy applied chemistry to agriculture with success, and the development of mechanical science bestowed a multitude of advantages upon the large farmer. Further, in consequence of the increase of population, the demand for agricultural products increased in such measure that from 1760 to 1834, 6,840,540 acres of waste land were reclaimed; and, in spite of this, England was transformed from a grain exporting to a grain importing country. The same activity was developed in the establishment of communication. From 1818 to 1829, there were built in England and Wales, 1,000 English miles of roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all the old roads were reconstructed on the new system of M'Adam. In Scotland, the Department of Public Works built since 1803 nearly 900 miles of roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation. The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools were organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic- Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto a wilderness wholly without passable roads, and serving, by reason of its inaccessibility, as the refuge of all criminals and the chief protection of the Celtic Irish nationality in the South of Ireland. It has now been cut through by public roads, and civilisation has thus gained admission even to this savage region. The whole British Empire, and especially England, which, sixty years ago, had as bad roads as Germany or France then had, is now covered by a network of the finest roadways; and these, too, like almost everything else in England, are the work of private enterprise, the State having done very little in this direction. Before 1755 England possessed almost no canals. In that year a canal was built in Lancashire from Sankey Brook to St Helen's; and in 1759, James Brindley built the first important one, the Duke of Bridgewater's canal from Manchester, and the coal mines of the district to the mouth of the Mersey passing, near Barton, by aqueduct, over the river Irwell. From this achievement dates the canal building of England, to which Brindley first gave importance. Canals were now built, and rivers made navigable in all directions. In England alone, there are 2,200 miles of canals and 1,800 miles of navigable river. In Scotland, the Caledonian Canal was cut directly across the country, and in Ireland several canals were built. These improvements, too, like the railroads and roadways, are nearly all the work of private individuals and companies. The railroads have been only recently built. The first great one was opened from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, since which all the great cities have been connected by rail. London with Southampton, Brighton, Dover, Colchester, Exeter, and Birmingham; Birmingham with Gloucester, Liverpool, Lancaster (via Newton and Wigan, and via Manchester and Bolton); also with Leeds (via Manchester and Halifax, and via Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield); Leeds with Hull and Newcastle (via York). There are also many minor lines building or projected, which will soon make it possible to travel from Edinburgh to London in one day. As it had transformed the means of communication by land, so did the introduction of steam revolutionise travel by sea. The first steamboat was launched in 1807, in the Hudson, in North America; the first in the British empire, in 1811, on the Clyde. Since then, more than 600 have been built in England; and in 1836 more than 500 were plying to and from British ports. Such, in brief, is the history of English industrial development in the past sixty years, a history which has no counterpart in the annals of humanity. Sixty, eighty years ago, England was a country like every other, with small towns, few and simple industries, and a thin but _proportionally_ large agricultural population. To-day it is a country like _no_ other, with a capital of two and a half million inhabitants; with vast manufacturing cities; with an industry that supplies the world, and produces almost everything by means of the most complex machinery; with an industrious, intelligent, dense population, of which two-thirds are employed in trade and commerce, and composed of classes wholly different; forming, in fact, with other customs and other needs, a different nation from the England of those days. The industrial revolution is of the same importance for England as the political revolution for France, and the philosophical revolution for Germany; and the difference between England in 1760 and in 1844 is at least as great as that between France, under the _ancien regime_ and during the revolution of July. But the mightiest result of this industrial transformation is the English proletariat. We have already seen how the proletariat was called into existence by the introduction of machinery. The rapid extension of manufacture demanded hands, wages rose, and troops of workmen migrated from the agricultural districts to the towns. Population multiplied enormously, and nearly all the increase took place in the proletariat. Further, Ireland had entered upon an orderly development only since the beginning of the eighteenth century. There, too, the population, more than decimated by English cruelty in earlier disturbances, now rapidly multiplied, especially after the advance in manufacture began to draw masses of Irishmen towards England. Thus arose the great manufacturing and commercial cities of the British Empire, in which at least three-fourths of the population belong to the working-class, while the lower middle-class consists only of small shopkeepers, and very very few handicraftsmen. For, though the rising manufacture first attained importance by transforming tools into machines, workrooms into factories, and consequently, the toiling lower middle-class into the toiling proletariat, and the former large merchants into manufacturers, though the lower middle-class was thus early crushed out, and the population reduced to the two opposing elements, workers and capitalists, this happened outside of the domain of manufacture proper, in the province of handicraft and retail trade as well. In the place of the former masters and apprentices, came great capitalists and working- men who had no prospect of rising above their class. Hand-work was carried on after the fashion of factory work, the division of labour was strictly applied, and small employers who could not compete with great establishments were forced down into the proletariat. At the same time the destruction of the former organisation of hand-work, and the disappearance of the lower middle-class deprived the working-man of all possibility of rising into the middle-class himself. Hitherto he had always had the prospect of establishing himself somewhere as master artificer, perhaps employing journeymen and apprentices; but now, when master artificers were crowded out by manufacturers, when large capital had become necessary for carrying on work independently, the working-class became, for the first time, an integral, permanent class of the population, whereas it had formerly often been merely a transition leading to the bourgeoisie. Now, he who was born to toil had no other prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his life. Now, for the first time, therefore, the proletariat was in a position to undertake an independent movement. In this way were brought together those vast masses of working-men who now fill the whole British Empire, whose social condition forces itself every day more and more upon the attention of the civilised world. The condition of the working-class is the condition of the vast majority of the English people. The question: What is to become of those destitute millions, who consume to-day what they earned yesterday; who have created the greatness of England by their inventions and their toil; who become with every passing day more conscious of their might, and demand, with daily increasing urgency, their share of the advantages of society?--This, since the Reform Bill, has become the national question. All Parliamentary debates, of any importance, may be reduced to this; and, though the English middle-class will not as yet admit it, though they try to evade this great question, and to represent their own particular interests as the truly national ones, their action is utterly useless. With every session of Parliament the working-class gains ground, the interests of the middle-class diminish in importance; and, in spite of the fact that the middle-class is the chief, in fact, the only power in Parliament, the last session of 1844 was a continuous debate upon subjects affecting the working-class, the Poor Relief Bill, the Factory Act, the Masters' and Servants' Act; and Thomas Duncombe, the representative of the working-men in the House of Commons, was the great man of the session; while the Liberal middle-class with its motion for repealing the Corn Laws, and the Radical middle-class with its resolution for refusing the taxes, played pitiable roles. Even the debates about Ireland were at bottom debates about the Irish proletariat, and the means of coming to its assistance. It is high time, too, for the English middle-class to make some concessions to the working-men who no longer plead but threaten; for in a short time it may be too late. In spite of all this, the English middle-class, especially the manufacturing class, which is enriched directly by means of the poverty of the workers, persists in ignoring this poverty. This class, feeling itself the mighty representative class of the nation, is ashamed to lay the sore spot of England bare before the eyes of the world; will not confess, even to itself, that the workers are in distress, because it, the property-holding, manufacturing class, must bear the moral responsibility for this distress. Hence the scornful smile which intelligent Englishmen (and they, the middle-class, alone are known on the Continent) assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of the working-class; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole middle-class of everything which concerns the workers; hence the ridiculous blunders which men of this class, in and out of Parliament, make when the position of the proletariat comes under discussion; hence the absurd freedom from anxiety, with which the middle-class dwells upon a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day collapse, the speedy collapse of which is as certain as a mathematical or mechanical demonstration; hence the miracle that the English have as yet no single book upon the condition of their workers, although they have been examining and mending the old state of things no one knows how many years. Hence also the deep wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London, against the rich, by whom they are systematically plundered and mercilessly left to their fate, a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost within the power of man to predict, must break out into a Revolution in comparison with which the French Revolution, and the year 1794, will prove to have been child's play. THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT. The order of our investigation of the different sections of the proletariat follows naturally from the foregoing history of its rise. The first proletarians were connected with manufacture, were engendered by it, and accordingly, those employed in manufacture, in the working up of raw materials, will first claim our attention. The production of raw materials and of fuel for manufacture attained importance only in consequence of the industrial change, and engendered a new proletariat, the coal and metal miners. Then, in the third place, manufacture influenced agriculture, and in the fourth, the condition of Ireland; and the fractions of the proletariat belonging to each, will find their place accordingly. We shall find, too, that with the possible exception of the Irish, the degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct proportion to their relation to manufacture; and that the factory hands are most enlightened as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less so, the agricultural labourers scarcely at all. We shall find the same order again among the industrial workers, and shall see how the factory hands, eldest children of the industrial revolution, have from the beginning to the present day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement, and how the others have joined this movement just in proportion as their handicraft has been invaded by the progress of machinery. We shall thus learn from the example which England offers, from the equal pace which the Labour Movement has kept with the movement of industrial development, the historical significance of manufacture. Since, however, at the present moment, pretty much the whole industrial proletariat is involved in the movement, and the condition of the separate sections has much in common, because they all are industrial, we shall have first to examine the condition of the industrial proletariat as a whole, in order later to notice more particularly each separate division with its own peculiarities. It has been already suggested that manufacture centralises property in the hands of the few. It requires large capital with which to erect the colossal establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and with which to press into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand labour of the independent workman out of the market. The division of labour, the application of water and especially steam, and the application of machinery, are the three great levers with which manufacture, since the middle of the last century, has been busy putting the world out of joint. Manufacture, on a small scale, created the middle-class; on a large scale, it created the working-class, and raised the elect of the middle-class to the throne, but only to overthrow them the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and easily explained fact that the numerous, petty middle-class of the "good old times" has been annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich capitalists on the one hand and poor workers on the other. {20} The centralising tendency of manufacture does not, however, stop here. Population becomes centralised just as capital does; and, very naturally, since the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture simply as a piece of capital for the use of which the manufacturer pays interest under the name of wages. A manufacturing establishment requires many workers employed together in a single building, living near each other and forming a village of themselves in the case of a good-sized factory. They have needs for satisfying which other people are necessary; handicraftsmen, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, carpenters, stonemasons, settle at hand. The inhabitants of the village, especially the younger generation, accustom themselves to factory work, grow skilful in it, and when the first mill can no longer employ them all, wages fall, and the immigration of fresh manufacturers is the consequence. So the village grows into a small town, and the small town into a large one. The greater the town, the greater its advantages. It offers roads, railroads, canals; the choice of skilled labour increases constantly, new establishments can be built more cheaply because of the competition among builders and machinists who are at hand, than in remote country districts, whither timber, machinery, builders, and operatives must be brought; it offers a market to which buyers crowd, and direct communication with the markets supplying raw material or demanding finished goods. Hence the marvellously rapid growth of the great manufacturing towns. The country, on the other hand, has the advantage that wages are usually lower than in town, and so town and country are in constant competition; and, if the advantage is on the side of the town to- day, wages sink so low in the country to-morrow, that new investments are most profitably made there. But the centralising tendency of manufacture continues in full force, and every new factory built in the country bears in it the germ of a manufacturing town. If it were possible for this mad rush of manufacture to go on at this rate for another century, every manufacturing district of England would be one great manufacturing town, and Manchester and Liverpool would meet at Warrington or Newton; for in commerce, too, this centralisation of the population works in precisely the same way, and hence it is that one or two great harbours, such as Hull and Liverpool, Bristol, and London, monopolise almost the whole maritime commerce of Great Britain. Since commerce and manufacture attain their most complete development in these great towns, their influence upon the proletariat is also most clearly observable here. Here the centralisation of property has reached the highest point; here the morals and customs of the good old times are most completely obliterated; here it has gone so far that the name Merry Old England conveys no meaning, for Old England itself is unknown to memory and to the tales of our grandfathers. Hence, too, there exist here only a rich and a poor class, for the lower middle-class vanishes more completely with every passing day. Thus the class formerly most stable has become the most restless one. It consists to-day of a few remnants of a past time, and a number of people eager to make fortunes, industrial Micawbers and speculators of whom one may amass a fortune, while ninety-nine become insolvent, and more than half of the ninety-nine live by perpetually repeated failure. But in these towns the proletarians are the infinite majority, and how they fare, what influence the great town exercises upon them, we have now to investigate. THE GREAT TOWNS. A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has raised London to the commercial capital of the world, created the giant docks and assembled the thousand vessels that continually cover the Thames. I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from Woolwich upwards, the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the middle of the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect himself, but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness before he sets foot upon English soil. {23} But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union with those of others. The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellant and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And, however much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking is the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme. Hence it comes, too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declared. Just as in Stirner's recent book, people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end of it all is, that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains. What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every man's house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together. Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence and production, is the weapon with which this social warfare is carried on, it is clear that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the whirlpool, he must struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, _i.e_., if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together; if he can get no work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or starve, in which case the police will take care that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. Let the testimony of the witnesses be never so clear and unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always finds some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict, death from starvation. The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own condemnation. But indirectly, far more than directly, many have died of starvation, where long continued want of proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produced such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained inoperative, brought on severe illness and death. The English working- men call this "social murder," and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong? True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the working-man that it may not be his turn to-morrow? Who assures him employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master discharges him to-morrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him, until he may find some one else "to give him bread?" Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to obtain work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, and the rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something to-day, and that it does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something to-morrow. He knows that every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his head above water. He knows that, though he may have the means of living to-day, it is very uncertain whether he shall to-morrow. Meanwhile, let us proceed to a more detailed investigation of the position, in which the social war has placed the non-possessing class. Let us see what pay for his work society does give the working-man in the form of dwelling, clothing, food, what sort of subsistence it grants those who contribute most to the maintenance of society; and, first, let us consider the dwellings. Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchen form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing. Let us investigate some of the slums in their order. London comes first, and in London the famous rookery of St. Giles which is now, at last, about to be penetrated by a couple of broad streets. St. Giles is in the midst of the most populous part of the town, surrounded by broad, splendid avenues in which the gay world of London idles about, in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford Street, Regent Street, of Trafalgar Square and the Strand. It is a disorderly collection of tall, three or four-storied houses, with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there is quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except that, here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable market is held in the street, baskets with vegetables and fruits, naturally all bad and hardly fit to use, obstruct the sidewalk still further, and from these, as well as from the fish-dealers' stalls, arises a horrible smell. The houses are occupied from cellar to garret, filthy within and without, and their appearance is such that no human being could possibly wish to live in them. But all this is nothing in comparison with the dwellings in the narrow courts and alleys between the streets, entered by covered passages between the houses, in which the filth and tottering ruin surpass all description. Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, door-posts and window- frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in this thieves' quarter, where no doors are needed, there being nothing to steal. Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all directions, and the foul liquids emptied before the doors gather in stinking pools. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings. Nor is St. Giles the only London slum. In the immense tangle of streets, there are hundreds and thousands of alleys and courts lined with houses too bad for anyone to live in, who can still spend anything whatsoever upon a dwelling fit for human beings. Close to the splendid houses of the rich such a lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be found. So, a short time ago, on the occasion of a coroner's inquest, a region close to Portman Square, one of the very respectable squares, was characterised as an abode "of a multitude of Irish demoralised by poverty and filth." So, too, may be found in streets, such as Long Acre and others, which, though not fashionable, are yet "respectable," a great number of cellar dwellings out of which puny children and half-starved, ragged women emerge into the light of day. In the immediate neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the second in London, are some of the worst streets of the whole metropolis, Charles, King, and Park Streets, in which the houses are inhabited from cellar to garret exclusively by poor families. In the parishes of St. John and St. Margaret there lived in 1840, according to the _Journal of the Statistical Society_, 5,366 working-men's families in 5,294 "dwellings" (if they deserve the name!), men, women, and children thrown together without distinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons all told; and of these families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the aristocratic parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same authority, 1,465 working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole number crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s.; one room, ground-floor, 4s.; second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.; garret-room, 3s. weekly, so that the starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay the house-owners a yearly tribute of 2,000 pounds, and the 5,336 families above mentioned in Westminster, a yearly rent of 40,000 pounds. The most extensive working-people's district lies east of the Tower in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, where the greatest masses of London working-people live. Let us hear Mr. G. Alston, preacher of St. Philip's, Bethnal Green, on the condition of his parish. He says: "It contains 1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about 12,000 persons. The space upon which this large population dwells, is less than 400 yards (1,200 feet) square, and in this overcrowding it is nothing unusual to find a man, his wife, four or five children, and, sometimes, both grandparents, all in one single room, where they eat, sleep, and work. I believe that before the Bishop of London called attention to this most poverty-stricken parish, people at the West End knew as little of it as of the savages of Australia or the South Sea Isles. And if we make ourselves acquainted with these unfortunates, through personal observation, if we watch them at their scanty meal and see them bowed by illness and want of work, we shall find such a mass of helplessness and misery, that a nation like ours must blush that these things can be possible. I was rector near Huddersfield during the three years in which the mills were at their worst, but I have never seen such complete helplessness of the poor as since then in Bethnal Green. Not one father of a family in ten in the whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that is as bad and tattered as possible; many, indeed, have no other covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of straw and shavings." The foregoing description furnishes an idea of the aspect of the interior of the dwellings. But let us follow the English officials, who occasionally stray thither, into one or two of these working-men's homes. On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: She had lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither a bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy. On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The magistrate felt called upon to investigate the case further, and received the following details from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was the widow of an ex-soldier, afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard time since the death of her husband, to provide for her nine children. She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a bed. For bed clothing they had only their scanty day clothing. The poor woman told him that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year before to buy food. Her bedding she had pawned with the victualler for food. In short, everything had gone for food. The magistrate ordered the woman a considerable provision from the poor-box. In February, 1844, Theresa Bishop, a widow 60 years old, was recommended, with her sick daughter, aged 26, to the compassion of the police magistrate in Marlborough Street. She lived at No. 5 Brown Street, Grosvenor Square, in a small back room no larger than a closet, in which there was not one single piece of furniture. In one corner lay some rags upon which both slept; a chest served as table and chair. The mother earned a little by charring. The owner of the house said that they had lived in this way since May, 1843, had gradually sold or pawned everything that they had, and had still never paid any rent. The magistrate assigned them 1 pound from the poor-box. I am far from asserting that _all_ London working-people live in such want as the foregoing three families. I know very well that ten are somewhat better off, where one is so totally trodden under foot by society; but I assert that thousands of industrious and worthy people--far worthier and more to be respected than all the rich of London--do find themselves in a condition unworthy of human beings; and that every proletarian, everyone, without exception, is exposed to a similar fate without any fault of his own and in spite of every possible effort. But in spite of all this, they who have some kind of a shelter are fortunate, fortunate in comparison with the utterly homeless. In London fifty thousand human beings get up every morning, not knowing where they are to lay their heads at night. The luckiest of this multitude, those who succeed in keeping a penny or two until evening, enter a lodging-house, such as abound in every great city, where they find a bed. But what a bed! These houses are filled with beds from cellar to garret, four, five, six beds in a room; as many as can be crowded in. Into every bed four, five, or six human beings are piled, as many as can be packed in, sick and well, young and old, drunk and sober, men and women, just as they come, indiscriminately. Then come strife, blows, wounds, or, if these bedfellows agree, so much the worse; thefts are arranged and things done which our language, grown more humane than our deeds, refuses to record. And those who cannot pay for such a refuge? They sleep where they find a place, in passages, arcades, in corners where the police and the owners leave them undisturbed. A few individuals find their way to the refuges which are managed, here and there, by private charity, others sleep on the benches in the parks close under the windows of Queen Victoria. Let us hear the London _Times_: "It appears from the report of the proceedings at Marlborough Street Police Court in our columns of yesterday, that there is an average number of 50 human beings of all ages, who huddle together in the parks every night, having no other shelter than what is supplied by the trees and a few hollows of the embankment. Of these, the majority are young girls who have been seduced from the country by the soldiers and turned loose on the world in all the destitution of friendless penury, and all the recklessness of early vice. "This is truly horrible! Poor there must be everywhere. Indigence will find its way and set up its hideous state in the heart of a great and luxurious city. Amid the thousand narrow lanes and by-streets of a populous metropolis there must always, we fear, be much suffering--much that offends the eye--much that lurks unseen. "But that within the precincts of wealth, gaiety, and fashion, nigh the regal grandeur of St. James, close on the palatial splendour of Bayswater, on the confines of the old and new aristocratic quarters, in a district where the cautious refinement of modern design has refrained from creating one single tenement for poverty; which seems, as it were, dedicated to the exclusive enjoyment of wealth, that _there_ want, and famine, and disease, and vice should stalk in all their kindred horrors, consuming body by body, soul, by soul! "It is indeed a monstrous state of things! Enjoyment the most absolute, that bodily ease, intellectual excitement, or the more innocent pleasures of sense can supply to man's craving, brought in close contact with the most unmitigated misery! Wealth, from its bright saloons, laughing--an insolently heedless laugh--at the unknown wounds of want! Pleasure, cruelly but unconsciously mocking the pain that moans below! All contrary things mocking one another--all contrary, save the vice which tempts and the vice which is tempted! "But let all men remember this--that within the most courtly precincts of the richest city of God's earth, there may be found, night after night, winter after winter, women--young in years--old in sin and suffering--outcasts from society--ROTTING FROM FAMINE, FILTH, AND DISEASE. Let them remember this, and learn not to theorise but to act. God knows, there is much room for action nowadays." {32} I have referred to the refuges for the homeless. How greatly overcrowded these are, two examples may show. A newly erected Refuge for the Houseless in Upper Ogle Street, that can shelter three hundred persons every night, has received since its opening, January 27th to March 17th, 1844, 2,740 persons for one or more nights; and, although the season was growing more favourable, the number of applicants in this, as well as in the asylums of Whitecross Street and Wapping, was strongly on the increase, and a crowd of the homeless had to be sent away every night for want of room. In another refuge, the Central Asylum in Playhouse Yard, there were supplied on an average 460 beds nightly, during the first three months of the year 1844, 6,681 persons being sheltered, and 96,141 portions of bread were distributed. Yet the committee of directors declare this institution began to meet the pressure of the needy to a limited extent only when the Eastern Asylum also was opened. Let us leave London and examine the other great cities of the three kingdoms in their order. Let us take Dublin first, a city the approach to which from the sea is as charming as that of London is imposing. The Bay of Dublin is the most beautiful of the whole British Island Kingdom, and is even compared by the Irish with the Bay of Naples. The city, too, possesses great attractions, and its aristocratic districts are better and more tastefully laid out than those of any other British city. By way of compensation, however, the poorer districts of Dublin are among the most hideous and repulsive to be seen in the world. True, the Irish character, which, under some circumstances, is comfortable only in the dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of Irish in every great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must gradually sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is nothing specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all great towns. The poor quarters of Dublin are extremely extensive, and the filth, the uninhabitableness of the houses and the neglect of the streets, surpass all description. Some idea of the manner in which the poor are here crowded together may be formed from the fact that, in 1817, according to the report of the Inspector of Workhouses, {33} 1,318 persons lived in 52 houses with 390 rooms in Barral Street, and 1,997 persons in 71 houses with 393 rooms in and near Church Street; that: "In this and the adjoining district there exists a multitude of foul courts and alleys; many cellars receive all their light through the door, while in not a few the inhabitants sleep upon the bare floor, though most of them possess bedsteads at least; Nicholson's Court, for example, contains twenty-eight wretched little rooms with 151 human beings in the greatest want, there being but two bedsteads and two blankets to be found in the whole court." The poverty is so great in Dublin, that a single benevolent institution, the Mendicity Association, gives relief to 2,500 persons or one per cent. of the population daily, receiving and feeding them for the day and dismissing them at night. Dr. Alison describes a similar state of things in Edinburgh, whose superb situation, which has won it the title of the Modern Athens, and whose brilliant aristocratic quarter in the New Town, contrast strongly with the foul wretchedness of the poor in the Old Town. Alison asserts that this extensive quarter is as filthy and horrible as the worst district of Dublin, while the Mendicity Association would have as great a proportion of needy persons to assist in Edinburgh as in the Irish capital. He asserts, indeed, that the poor in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh and Glasgow, are worse off than in any other region of the three kingdoms, and that the poorest are not Irish, but Scotch. The preacher of the Old Church of Edinburgh, Dr. Lee, testified in 1836, before the Commission of Religious Instruction, that: "He had never before seen such misery as in his parish, where the people were without furniture, without everything, two married couples often sharing one room. In a single day he had visited seven houses in which there was not a bed, in some of them not even a heap of straw. Old people of eighty years sleep on the board floor, nearly all slept in their day-clothes. In one cellar room he found two families from a Scotch country district; soon after their removal to the city two of the children had died, and a third was dying at the time of his visit. Each family had a filthy pile of straw lying in a corner; the cellar sheltered besides the two families a donkey, and was, moreover, so dark that it was impossible to distinguish one person from another by day. Dr. Lee declared that it was enough to make a heart of adamant bleed to see such misery in a country like Scotland." In the Edinburgh _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Dr. Hennan reports a similar state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, {35a} it is evident that in the dwellings of the poor of Edinburgh a want of cleanliness reigns, such as must be expected under these conditions. On the bed-posts chickens roost at night, dogs and horses share the dwellings of human beings, and the natural consequence is a shocking stench, with filth and swarms of vermin. The prevailing construction of Edinburgh favours these atrocious conditions as far as possible. The Old Town is built upon both slopes of a hill, along the crest of which runs the High Street. Out of the High Street there open downwards multitudes of narrow, crooked alleys, called wynds from their many turnings, and these wynds form the proletarian district of the city. The houses of the Scotch cities, in general, are five or six-storied buildings, like those of Paris, and in contrast with England where, so far as possible, each family has a separate house. The crowding of human beings upon a limited area is thus intensified. {35b} "These streets," says an English journal in an article upon the sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, "are often so narrow that a person can step from the window of one house into that of its opposite neighbour, while the houses are piled so high, storey upon storey, that the light can scarcely penetrate into the court or alley that lies between. In this part of the city there are neither sewers nor other drains, nor even privies belonging to the houses. In consequence, all refuse, garbage, and excrements of at least 50,000 persons are thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of all street sweeping, a mass of dried filth and foul vapours are created, which not only offend the sight and smell, but endanger the health of the inhabitants in the highest degree. Is it to be wondered at, that in such localities all considerations of health, morals, and even the most ordinary decency are utterly neglected? On the contrary, all who are more intimately acquainted with the condition of the inhabitants will testify to the high degree which disease, wretchedness, and demoralisation have here reached. Society in such districts has sunk to a level indescribably low and hopeless. The houses of the poor are generally filthy, and are evidently never cleansed. They consist in most cases of a single room which, while subject to the worst ventilation, is yet usually kept cold by the broken and badly fitting windows, and is sometimes damp and partly below ground level, always badly furnished and thoroughly uncomfortable, a straw-heap often serving the whole family for a bed, upon which men and women, young and old, sleep in revolting confusion. Water can be had only from the public pumps, and the difficulty of obtaining it naturally fosters all possible filth." In the other great seaport towns the prospect is no better. Liverpool, with all its commerce, wealth, and grandeur yet treats its workers with the same barbarity. A full fifth of the population, more than 45,000 human beings, live in narrow, dark, damp, badly-ventilated cellar dwellings, of which there are 7,862 in the city. Besides these cellar dwellings there are 2,270 courts, small spaces built up on all four sides and having but one entrance, a narrow, covered passage-way, the whole ordinarily very dirty and inhabited exclusively by proletarians. Of such courts we shall have more to say when we come to Manchester. In Bristol, on one occasion, 2,800 families were visited, of whom 46 per cent. occupied but one room each. Precisely the same state of things prevails in the factory towns. In Nottingham there are in all 11,000 houses, of which between 7,000 and 8,000 are built back to back with a rear parti-wall so that no through ventilation is possible, while a single privy usually serves for several houses. During an investigation made a short time since, many rows of houses were found to have been built over shallow drains covered only by the boards of the ground floor. In Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield, it is no better. Of Birmingham, the article above cited from the _Artisan_ states: "In the older quarters of the city there are many bad districts, filthy and neglected, full of stagnant pools and heaps of refuse. Courts are very numerous in Birmingham, reaching two thousand, and containing the greater number of the working-people of the city. These courts are usually narrow, muddy, badly ventilated, ill-drained, and lined with eight to twenty houses, which, by reason of having their rear walls in common, can usually be ventilated from one side only. In the background, within the court, there is usually an ash heap or something of the kind, the filth of which cannot be described. It must, however, be observed that the newer courts are more sensibly built and more decently kept, and that even in the old ones, the cottages are much less crowded than in Manchester and Liverpool, wherefore Birmingham shows even during the reign of an epidemic a far smaller mortality than, for instance, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and Bilston, only a few miles distant. Cellar dwellings are unknown, too, in Birmingham, though a few cellars are misused as workrooms. The lodging-houses for proletarians are rather numerous (over four hundred), chiefly in courts in the heart of the town. They are nearly all disgustingly filthy and ill-smelling, the refuge of beggars, thieves, tramps, and prostitutes, who eat, drink, smoke, and sleep here without the slightest regard to comfort or decency in an atmosphere endurable to these degraded beings only." Glasgow is in many respects similar to Edinburgh, possessing the same wynds, the same tall houses. Of this city the _Artisan_ observes: "The working-class forms here some 78% of the whole population (about 300,000), and lives in parts of the city which exceed in wretchedness and squalor the lowest nooks of St. Giles and Whitechapel, the Liberties of Dublin, the Wynds of Edinburgh. There are numbers of such localities in the heart of the city, south of the Trongate, westward from the Saltmarket, in Calton and off the High Street, endless labyrinths of lanes or wynds into which open at almost every step, courts or blind alleys, formed by ill-ventilated, high-piled, waterless, and dilapidated houses. These are literally swarming with inhabitants. They contain three or four families upon each floor, perhaps twenty persons. In some cases each storey is let out in sleeping places, so that fifteen to twenty persons are packed, one on top of the other, I cannot say accommodated, in a single room. These districts shelter the poorest, most depraved, and worthless members of the community, and may be regarded as the sources of those frightful epidemics which, beginning here, spread desolation over Glasgow." Let us hear how J. C. Symonds, Government Commissioner for the investigation of the condition of the hand-weavers, describes these portions of the city: {38} "I have seen wretchedness in some of its worse phases both here and upon the Continent, but until I visited the wynds of Glasgow I did not believe that so much crime, misery, and disease could exist in any civilised country. In the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, sometimes twenty persons of both sexes, all ages and various degrees of nakedness, sleep indiscriminately huddled together upon the floor. These dwellings are usually so damp, filthy, and ruinous, that no one could wish to keep his horse in one of them." And in another place: "The wynds of Glasgow contain a fluctuating population of fifteen to thirty thousand human beings. This quarter consists wholly of narrow alleys and square courts, in the middle of every one of which there lies a dung heap. Revolting as was the outward appearance of these courts, I was yet not prepared for the filth and wretchedness within. In some of the sleeping-places which we visited at night (the Superintendent of Police, Captain Miller, and Symonds) we found a complete layer of human beings stretched upon the floor, often fifteen to twenty, some clad, others naked, men and women indiscriminately. Their bed was a litter of mouldy straw, mixed with rags. There was little or no furniture, and the only thing which gave these dens any shimmer of habitableness was a fire upon the hearth. Theft and prostitution form the chief means of subsistence of this population. No one seemed to take the trouble to cleanse this Augean stable, this Pandemonium, this tangle of crime, filth, and pestilence in the centre of the second city of the kingdom. An extended examination of the lowest districts of other cities never revealed anything half so bad, either in intensity of moral and physical infection, nor in comparative density of population. In this quarter most of the houses have been declared by the Court of Guild ruinous and unfit for habitation, but precisely these are the most densely populated, because, according to the law, no rent can be demanded for them." The great manufacturing district in the centre of the British Islands, the thickly peopled stretch of West Yorkshire and South Lancashire, with its numerous factory towns, yields nothing to the other great manufacturing centres. The woollen district of the West Riding of Yorkshire is a charming region, a beautiful green hill country, whose elevations grow more rugged towards the West until they reach their highest point in the bold ridge of Blackstone Edge, the watershed between the Irish Sea and the German Ocean. The valleys of the Aire, along which stretches Leeds, and of the Calder, through which the Manchester-Leeds railway runs, are among the most attractive in England, and are strewn in all directions with the factories, villages, and towns. The houses of rough grey stone look so neat and clean in comparison with the blackened brick buildings of Lancashire, that it is a pleasure to look at them. But on coming into the towns themselves, one finds little to rejoice over. Leeds lies as the _Artisan_ describes it, and as I found confirmed upon examination: "on a gentle slope that descends into the valley of the Aire. This stream flows through the city for about a mile-and-a-half and is exposed to violent floods during thaws or heavy rain. The higher western portions of the city are clean, for such a large town. But the low-lying districts along the river and its tributary becks are narrow, dirty, and enough in themselves to shorten the lives of the inhabitants, especially of little children. Added to this, the disgusting state of the working-men's districts about Kirkgate, Marsh Lane, Cross Street and Richmond Road, which is chiefly attributable to their unpaved, drainless streets, irregular architecture, numerous courts and alleys, and total lack of the most ordinary means of cleanliness, all this taken together is explanation enough of the excessive mortality in these unhappy abodes of filthy misery. In consequence of the overflows of the Aire" (which, it must be added, like all other rivers in the service of manufacture, flows into the city at one end clear and transparent, and flows out at the other end thick, black, and foul, smelling of all possible refuse), "the houses and cellars are often so full of water that they have to be pumped out. And at such times the water rises, even where there are sewers, out of them into cellars, {40a} engenders miasmatic vapours strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, and leaves a disgusting residuum highly injurious to health. During the spring-floods of 1839 the action of such a choking of the sewers was so injurious, that, according to the report of the Registrar of Births and Deaths for this part of the town, there were three deaths to two births, whereas in the same three months, in every other part of the town, there were three births to two deaths. Other thickly populated districts are without any sewers whatsoever, or so badly provided as to derive no benefit from them. In some rows of houses the cellars are seldom dry; in certain districts there are several streets covered with soft mud a foot deep. The inhabitants have made vain attempts from time to time to repair these streets with shovelfuls of cinders, but in spite of all such attempts, dung-heaps, and pools of dirty water emptied from the houses, fill all the holes until wind and sun dry them up. {40b} An ordinary cottage in Leeds occupies not more than five yards square of land, and usually consists of a cellar, a living room, and one sleeping-room. These contracted dwellings, filled day and night with human beings, are another point dangerous alike to the morals and the health of the inhabitants." And how greatly these cottages are crowded, the Report on the Health of the Working-Classes, quoted above, bears testimony: "In Leeds we found brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes, sharing the parents' sleeping-room, whence arise consequences at the contemplation of which human feeling shudders." So, too, Bradford, which, but seven miles from Leeds at the junction of several valleys, lies upon the banks of a small, coal-black, foul-smelling stream. On week-days the town is enveloped in a grey cloud of coal smoke, but on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when viewed from the surrounding heights. Yet within reigns the same filth and discomfort as in Leeds. The older portions of the town are built upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and irregular. In the lanes, alleys, and courts lie filth and _debris_ in heaps; the houses are ruinous, dirty, and miserable, and in the immediate vicinity of the river and the valley bottom I found many a one, whose ground-floor, half-buried in the hillside, was totally abandoned. In general, the portions of the valley bottom in which working-men's cottages have crowded between the tall factories, are among the worst built and dirtiest districts of the whole town. In the newer portions of this, as of every other factory town, the cottages are more regular, being built in rows, but they share here, too, all the evils incident to the customary method of providing working-men's dwellings, evils of which we shall have occasions to speak more particularly in discussing Manchester. The same is true of the remaining towns of the West Riding, especially of Barnsley, Halifax and Huddersfield. The last named, the handsomest by far of all the factory towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, by reason of its charming situation and modern architecture, has yet its bad quarter; for a committee appointed by a meeting of citizens to survey the town, reported August 5th, 1844: "It is notorious that in Huddersfield whole streets and many lanes and courts are neither paved nor supplied with sewers nor other drains; that in them refuse, _debris_, and filth of every sort lies accumulating, festers and rots, and that, nearly everywhere, stagnant water accumulates in pools, in consequence of which the adjoining dwellings must inevitably be bad and filthy, so that in such places diseases arise and threaten the health of the whole town." If we cross Blackstone Edge or penetrate it with the railroad, we enter upon that classic soil on which English manufacture has achieved its masterwork and from which all labour movements emanate, namely, South Lancashire with its central city Manchester. Again we have beautiful hill country, sloping gently from the watershed westwards towards the Irish Sea, with the charming green valleys of the Ribble, the Irwell, the Mersey, and their tributaries, a country which, a hundred years ago chiefly swamp land, thinly populated, is now sown with towns and villages, and is the most densely populated strip of country in England. In Lancashire, and especially in Manchester, English manufacture finds at once its starting point and its centre. The Manchester Exchange is the thermometer for all the fluctuations of trade. The modern art of manufacture has reached its perfection in Manchester. In the cotton industry of South Lancashire, the application of the forces of Nature, the superseding of hand labour by machinery (especially by the power-loom and the self-acting mule), and the division of labour, are seen at the highest point; and, if we recognise in these three elements that which is characteristic of modern manufacture, we must confess that the cotton industry has remained in advance of all other branches of industry from the beginning down to the present day. The effects of modern manufacture upon the working-class must necessarily develop here most freely and perfectly, and the manufacturing proletariat present itself in its fullest classic perfection. The degradation to which the application of steam-power, machinery and the division of labour reduce the working-man, and the attempts of the proletariat to rise above this abasement, must likewise be carried to the highest point and with the fullest consciousness. Hence because Manchester is the classic type of a modern manufacturing town, and because I know it as intimately as my own native town, more intimately than most of its residents know it, we shall make a longer stay here. The towns surrounding Manchester vary little from the central city, so far as the working-people's quarters are concerned, except that the working-class forms, if possible, a larger proportion of their population. These towns are purely industrial and conduct all their business through Manchester upon which they are in every respect dependent, whence they are inhabited only by working-men and petty tradesmen, while Manchester has a very considerable commercial population, especially of commission and "respectable" retail dealers. Hence Bolton, Preston, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood, Oldham, Ashton, Stalybridge, Stockport, etc., though nearly all towns of thirty, fifty, seventy to ninety thousand inhabitants, are almost wholly working- people's districts, interspersed only with factories, a few thoroughfares lined with shops, and a few lanes along which the gardens and houses of the manufacturers are scattered like villas. The towns themselves are badly and irregularly built with foul courts, lanes, and back alleys, reeking of coal smoke, and especially dingy from the originally bright red brick, turned black with time, which is here the universal building material. Cellar dwellings are general here; wherever it is in any way possible, these subterranean dens are constructed, and a very considerable portion of the population dwells in them. Among the worst of these towns after Preston and Oldham is Bolton, eleven miles north-west of Manchester. It has, so far as I have been able to observe in my repeated visits, but one main street, a very dirty one, Deansgate, which serves as a market, and is even in the finest weather a dark, unattractive hole in spite of the fact that, except for the factories, its sides are formed by low one and two-storied houses. Here, as everywhere, the older part of the town is especially ruinous and miserable. A dark-coloured body of water, which leaves the beholder in doubt whether it is a brook or a long string of stagnant puddles, flows through the town and contributes its share to the total pollution of the air, by no means pure without it. There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, but belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It lies in a narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down a steep hill on one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while the railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct above the city and the whole valley. Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this district. A few miles north-east of Stockport is Ashton-under-Lyne, one of the newest factory towns of this region. It stands on the slope of a hill at the foot of which are the canal and the river Tame, and is, in general, built on the newer, more regular plan. Five or six parallel streets stretch along the hill intersected at right angles by others leading down into the valley. By this method, the factories would be excluded from the town proper, even if the proximity of the river and the canal-way did not draw them all into the valley where they stand thickly crowded, belching forth black smoke from their chimneys. To this arrangement Ashton owes a much more attractive appearance than that of most factory towns; the streets are broad and cleaner, the cottages look new, bright red, and comfortable. But the modern system of building cottages for working-men has its own disadvantages; every street has its concealed back lane to which a narrow paved path leads, and which is all the dirtier. And, although I saw no buildings, except a few on entering, which could have been more than fifty years old, there are even in Ashton streets in which the cottages are getting bad, where the bricks in the house-corners are no longer firm but shift about, in which the walls have cracks and will not hold the chalk whitewash inside; streets, whose dirty, smoke-begrimed aspect is nowise different from that of the other towns of the district, except that in Ashton, this is the exception, not the rule. A mile eastward lies Stalybridge, also on the Tame. In coming over the hill from Ashton, the traveller has, at the top, both right and left, fine large gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst, built usually in the Elizabethan style, which is to the Gothic precisely what the Anglican Church is to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. A hundred paces farther and Stalybridge shows itself in the valley, in sharp contrast with the beautiful country seats, in sharp contrast even with the modest cottages of Ashton! Stalybridge lies in a narrow, crooked ravine, much narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and both sides of this ravine are occupied by an irregular group of cottages, houses, and mills. On entering, the very first cottages are narrow, smoke-begrimed, old and ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A few streets lie in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross, pell-mell, up hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this sloping situation, the ground floor is half-buried in the earth; and what multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this confused way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the town, here and there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined. But enough of these little towns. Each has its own peculiarities, but in general, the working-people live in them just as in Manchester. Hence I have especially sketched only their peculiar construction, and would observe, that all more general observations as to the condition of the labouring population in Manchester are fully applicable to these surrounding towns as well. Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope of a range of hills, which stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak, Kersallmoor, being at once the racecourse and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. On the left bank of the Irwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Chorlton on Medlock; still farther, pretty well to the east of Manchester, Ardwick. The whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-people's quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the working-people's quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle- class; or, if this does not succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of charity. Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial district, perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting almost wholly of offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night; only watchmen and policemen traverse its narrow lanes with their dark lanterns. This district is cut through by certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast traffic concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined with brilliant shops. In these streets the upper floors are occupied, here and there, and there is a good deal of life upon them until late at night. With the exception of this commercial district, all Manchester proper, all Salford and Hulme, a great part of Pendleton and Chorlton, two-thirds of Ardwick, and single stretches of Cheetham Hill and Broughton are all unmixed working-people's quarters, stretching like a girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the commercial district. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper and middle bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in the vicinity of the working quarters, especially in Chorlton and the lower lying portions of Cheetham Hill; the upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick, or on the breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city. And the finest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring districts to their places of business, without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and the left. For the thoroughfares leading from the Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and _can_ care for it. True, these shops bear some relation to the districts which lie behind them, and are more elegant in the commercial and residential quarters than when they hide grimy working-men's dwellings; but they suffice to conceal from the eyes of the wealthy men and women of strong stomachs and weak nerves the misery and grime which form the complement of their wealth. So, for instance, Deansgate, which leads from the Old Church directly southward, is lined first with mills and warehouses, then with second-rate shops and alehouses; farther south, when it leaves the commercial district, with less inviting shops, which grow dirtier and more interrupted by beerhouses and gin palaces the farther one goes, until at the southern end the appearance of the shops leaves no doubt that workers and workers only are their customers. So Market Street running south-east from the Exchange; at first brilliant shops of the best sort, with counting-houses or warehouses above; in the continuation, Piccadilly, immense hotels and warehouses; in the farther continuation, London Road, in the neighbourhood of the Medlock, factories, beerhouses, shops for the humbler bourgeoisie and the working population; and from this point onward, large gardens and villas of the wealthier merchants and manufacturers. In this way any one who knows Manchester can infer the adjoining districts, from the appearance of the thoroughfare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from the street a glimpse of the real labouring districts. I know very well that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities; I know, too, that the retail dealers are forced by the nature of their business to take possession of the great highways; I know that there are more good buildings than bad ones upon such streets everywhere, and that the value of land is greater near them than in remoter districts; but at the same time I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And yet, in other respects, Manchester is less built according to a plan, after official regulations, is more an outgrowth of accident, than any other city; and when I consider in this connection the eager assurances of the middle-class, that the working-class is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the liberal manufacturers, the "Big Wigs" of Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this sensitive method of construction. I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at once to describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the old town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better-built districts, and have left the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working- men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human beings can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea. And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only recently reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is left to be further occupied. The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found--especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie Bridge--in case any one should care to look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible description of the state of this court at that time. {49} Since then, it seems to have been partially torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down from Ducie Bridge, the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris with some newer houses. The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank. In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window frames. The background is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the "Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people's quarter below. Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks grows worse rather than better. He who turns to the left here from the main street, Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns countless corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes he has lost all clue, and knows not whither to turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings, some of them actually uninhabited, which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of debris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to live in such a district. The newly-built extension of the Leeds railway, which crosses the Irk here, has swept away some of these courts and lanes, laying others completely open to view. Immediately under the railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which surpass all the others by far, just because it was hitherto so shut off, so secluded that the way to it could not be found without a good deal of trouble. I should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks made by the railway, though I thought I knew this whole region thoroughly. Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping- room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six broad, I found two beds--and such bedsteads and beds!--which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings. Enough! The whole side of the Irk is built in this way, a planless, knotted chaos of houses, more or less on the verge of uninhabitableness, whose unclean interiors fully correspond with their filthy external surroundings. And how could the people be clean with no proper opportunity for satisfying the most natural and ordinary wants? Privies are so rare here that they are either filled up every day, or are too remote for most of the inhabitants to use. How can people wash when they have only the dirty Irk water at hand, while pumps and water pipes can be found in decent parts of the city alone? In truth, it cannot be charged to the account of these helots of modern society if their dwellings are not more cleanly than the pig-sties which are here and there to be seen among them. The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors of which stand at least two feet below the low-water level of the Irk that flows not six feet away from them; or like the upper floor of the corner-house on the opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the ground floor, utterly uninhabitable, stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when this open ground floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of other facilities! If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from Long Millgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings, we shall come into a somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from St. Michael's Church to Withy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat better order. In place of the chaos of buildings, we find at least long straight lanes and alleys or courts, built according to a plan and usually square. But if, in the former case, every house was built according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built, without reference to the situation of the adjoining ones. The lanes run now in this direction, now in that, while every two minutes the wanderer gets into a blind alley, or, on turning a corner, finds himself back where he started from; certainly no one who has not lived a considerable time in this labyrinth can find his way through it. If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district, the ventilation of these streets and courts is, in consequence of this confusion, quite as imperfect as in the Irk region; and if this quarter may, nevertheless, be said to have some advantage over that of the Irk, the houses being newer and the streets occasionally having gutters, nearly every house has, on the other hand, a cellar dwelling, which is rarely found in the Irk district, by reason of the greater age and more careless construction of the houses. As for the rest, the filth, debris, and offal heaps, and the pools in the streets are common to both quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another feature most injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the multitude of pigs walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in them. In almost every court one or even several such pens may be found, into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal, whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable substances. Through this quarter, a broad and measurably decent street has been cut, Millers Street, and the background has been pretty successfully concealed. But if any one should be led by curiosity to pass through one of the numerous passages which lead into the courts, he will find this piggery repeated at every twenty paces. Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air--and _such_ air!--he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is the _Old_ Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the _industrial epoch_. The couple of hundred houses, which belong to old Manchester, have been long since abandoned by their original inhabitants; the industrial epoch alone has crammed into them the swarms of workers whom they now shelter; the industrial epoch alone has built up every spot between these old houses to win a covering for the masses whom it has conjured hither from the agricultural districts and from Ireland; the industrial epoch alone enables the owners of these cattle-sheds to rent them for high prices to human beings, to plunder the poverty of the workers, to undermine the health of thousands, in order that they _alone_, the owners, may grow rich. In the industrial epoch alone has it become possible that the worker scarcely freed from feudal servitude could be used as mere material, a mere chattel; that he must let himself be crowded into a dwelling too bad for every other, which he for his hard-earned wages buys the right to let go utterly to ruin. This manufacture has achieved, which, without these workers, this poverty, this slavery could not have lived. True, the original construction of this quarter was bad, little good could have been made out of it; but, have the landowners, has the municipality done anything to improve it when rebuilding? On the contrary, wherever a nook or corner was free, a house has been run up; where a superfluous passage remained, it has been built up; the value of land rose with the blossoming out of manufacture, and the more it rose, the more madly was the work of building up carried on, without reference to the health or comfort of the inhabitants, with sole reference to the highest possible profit on the principle that _no hole is so bad but that some poor creature must take it who can pay for nothing better_. However, it is the Old Town, and with this reflection the bourgeoisie is comforted. Let us see, therefore, how much better it is in the New Town. The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of clay, beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass- grown clay soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George's Road, the separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and especially of the cellars, remains the same. It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as to the customary construction of working-men's quarters in Manchester. We have seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the grouping of the houses in general. Every house is built without reference to any other, and the scraps of space between them are called courts for want of another name. In the somewhat newer portions of the same quarter, and in other working-men's quarters, dating from the early days of industrial activity, a somewhat more orderly arrangement may be found. The space between two streets is divided into more regular, usually square courts. These courts were built in this way from the beginning, and communicate with the streets by means of covered passages. If the totally planless construction is injurious to the health of the workers by preventing ventilation, this method of shutting them up in courts surrounded on all sides by buildings is far more so. The air simply cannot escape; the chimneys of the houses are the sole drains for the imprisoned atmosphere of the courts, and they serve the purpose only so long as fire is kept burning. {55} Moreover, the houses surrounding such courts are usually built back to back, having the rear wall in common; and this alone suffices to prevent any sufficient through ventilation. And, as the police charged with care of the streets, does not trouble itself about the condition of these courts, as everything quietly lies where it is thrown, there is no cause for wonder at the filth and heaps of ashes and offal to be found here. I have been in courts, in Millers Street, at least half a foot below the level of the thoroughfares, and without the slightest drainage for the water that accumulates in them in rainy weather! More recently another different method of building was adopted, and has now become general. Working-men's cottages are almost never built singly, but always by the dozen or score; a single contractor building up one or two streets at a time. These are then arranged as follows: One front is formed of cottages of the best class, so fortunate as to possess a back door and small court, and these command the highest rent. In the rear of these cottages runs a narrow alley, the back street, built up at both ends, into which either a narrow roadway or a covered passage leads from one side. The cottages which face this back street command least rent, and are most neglected. These have their rear walls in common with the third row of cottages which face a second street, and command less rent than the first row and more than the second. By this method of construction, comparatively good ventilation can be obtained for the first row of cottages, and the third row is no worse off than in the former method. The middle row, on the other hand, is at least as badly ventilated as the houses in the courts, and the back street is always in the same filthy, disgusting condition as they. The contractors prefer this method because it saves them space, and furnishes the means of fleecing better paid workers through the higher rents of the cottages in the first and third rows. These three different forms of cottage building are found all over Manchester and throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, often mixed up together, but usually separate enough to indicate the relative age of parts of towns. The third system, that of the back alleys, prevails largely in the great working-men's district east of St. George's Road and Ancoats Street, and is the one most often found in the other working-men's quarters of Manchester and its suburbs. In the last-mentioned broad district included under the name Ancoats, stand the largest mills of Manchester lining the canals, colossal six and seven-storied buildings towering with their slender chimneys far above the low cottages of the workers. The population of the district consists, therefore, chiefly of mill hands, and in the worst streets, of hand-weavers. The streets nearest the heart of the town are the oldest, and consequently the worst; they are, however, paved, and supplied with drains. Among them I include those nearest to and parallel with Oldham Road and Great Ancoats Street. Farther to the north-east lie many newly- built-up streets; here the cottages look neat and cleanly, doors and windows are new and freshly painted, the rooms within newly whitewashed; the streets themselves are better aired, the vacant building lots between them larger and more numerous. But this can be said of a minority of the houses only, while cellar dwellings are to be found under almost every cottage; many streets are unpaved and without sewers; and, worse than all, this neat appearance is all pretence, a pretence which vanishes within the first ten years. For the construction of the cottages individually is no less to be condemned than the plan of the streets. All such cottages look neat and substantial at first; their massive brick walls deceive the eye, and, on passing through a _newly-built_ working- men's street, without remembering the back alleys and the construction of the houses themselves, one is inclined to agree with the assertion of the Liberal manufacturers that the working population is nowhere so well housed as in England. But on closer examination, it becomes evident that the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is possible to make them. The outer walls, those of the cellar, which bear the weight of the ground floor and roof, are one whole brick thick at most, the bricks lying with their long sides touching; but I have seen many a cottage of the same height, some in process of building, whose outer walls were but one-half brick thick, the bricks lying not sidewise but lengthwise, their narrow ends touching. The object of this is to spare material, but there is also another reason for it; namely, the fact that the contractors never own the land but lease it, according to the English custom, for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or ninety-nine years, at the expiration of which time it falls, with everything upon it, back into the possession of the original holder, who pays nothing in return for improvements upon it. The improvements are therefore so calculated by the lessee as to be worth as little as possible at the expiration of the stipulated term. And as such cottages are often built but twenty or thirty years before the expiration of the term, it may easily be imagined that the contractors make no unnecessary expenditures upon them. Moreover, these contractors, usually carpenters and builders, or manufacturers, spend little or nothing in repairs, partly to avoid diminishing their rent receipts, and partly in view of the approaching surrender of the improvement to the landowner; while in consequence of commercial crises and the loss of work that follows them, whole streets often stand empty, the cottages falling rapidly into ruin and uninhabitableness. It is calculated in general that working-men's cottages last only forty years on the average. This sounds strangely enough when one sees the beautiful, massive walls of newly-built ones, which seem to give promise of lasting a couple of centuries; but the fact remains that the niggardliness of the original expenditure, the neglect of all repairs, the frequent periods of emptiness, the constant change of inhabitants, and the destruction carried on by the dwellers during the final ten years, usually Irish families, who do not hesitate to use the wooden portions for fire-wood--all this, taken together, accomplishes the complete ruin of the cottages by the end of forty years. Hence it comes that Ancoats, built chiefly since the sudden growth of manufacture, chiefly indeed within the present century, contains a vast number of ruinous houses, most of them being, in fact, in the last stages of inhabitableness. I will not dwell upon the amount of capital thus wasted, the small additional expenditure upon the original improvement and upon repairs which would suffice to keep this whole district clean, decent, and inhabitable for years together. I have to deal here with the state of the houses and their inhabitants, and it must be admitted that no more injurious and demoralising method of housing the workers has yet been discovered than precisely this. The working-man is constrained to occupy such ruinous dwellings because he cannot pay for others, and because there are no others in the vicinity of his mill; perhaps, too, because they belong to the employer, who engages him only on condition of his taking such a cottage. The calculation with reference to the forty years' duration of the cottage is, of course, not always perfectly strict; for, if the dwellings are in a thickly-built-up portion of the town, and there is a good prospect of finding steady occupants for them, while the ground rent is high, the contractors do a little something to keep the cottages inhabitable after the expiration of the forty years. They never do anything more, however, than is absolutely unavoidable, and the dwellings so repaired are the worst of all. Occasionally when an epidemic threatens, the otherwise sleepy conscience of the sanitary police is a little stirred, raids are made into the working-men's districts, whole rows of cellars and cottages are closed, as happened in the case of several lanes near Oldham Road; but this does not last long: the condemned cottages soon find occupants again, the owners are much better off by letting them, and the sanitary police won't come again so soon. These east and north-east sides of Manchester are the only ones on which the bourgeoisie has not built, because ten or eleven months of the year the west and south-west wind drives the smoke of all the factories hither, and that the working-people alone may breathe. Southward from Great Ancoats Street, lies a great, straggling, working- men's quarter, a hilly, barren stretch of land, occupied by detached, irregularly built rows of houses or squares, between these, empty building lots, uneven, clayey, without grass and scarcely passable in wet weather. The cottages are all filthy and old, and recall the New Town to mind. The stretch cut through by the Birmingham railway is the most thickly built-up and the worst. Here flows the Medlock with countless windings through a valley, which is, in places, on a level with the valley of the Irk. Along both sides of the stream, which is coal black, stagnant and foul, stretches a broad belt of factories and working-men's dwellings, the latter all in the worst condition. The bank is chiefly declivitous and is built over to the water's edge, just as we saw along the Irk; while the houses are equally bad, whether built on the Manchester side or in Ardwick, Chorlton, or Hulme. But the most horrible spot (if I should describe all the separate spots in detail I should never come to the end) lies on the Manchester side, immediately south- west of Oxford Road, and is known as Little Ireland. In a rather deep hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded on all four sides by tall factories and high embankments, covered with buildings, stand two groups of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back to back, in which live about four thousand human beings, most of them Irish. The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in the worst court on the Irk. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity. This is the impression and the line of thought which the exterior of this district forces upon the beholder. But what must one think when he hears that in each of these pens, containing at most two rooms, a garret and perhaps a cellar, on the average twenty human beings live; that in the whole region, for each one hundred and twenty persons, one usually inaccessible privy is provided; and that in spite of all the preachings of the physicians, in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic plunged the sanitary police by reason of the condition of Little Ireland, in spite of everything, in this year of grace 1844, it is in almost the same state as in 1831! Dr. Kay asserts that not only the cellars but the first floors of all the houses in this district are damp; that a number of cellars once filled up with earth have now been emptied and are occupied once more by Irish people; that in one cellar the water constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to bale out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the street! Farther down, on the left side of the Medlock, lies Hulme, which, properly speaking, is one great working-people's district, the condition of which coincides almost exactly with that of Ancoats; the more thickly built-up regions chiefly bad and approaching ruin, the less populous of more modern structure, but generally sunk in filth. On the other side of the Medlock, in Manchester proper, lies a second great working-men's district which stretches on both sides of Deansgate as far as the business quarter, and in certain parts rivals the Old Town. Especially in the immediate vicinity of the business quarter, between Bridge and Quay Streets, Princess and Peter Streets, the crowded construction exceeds in places the narrowest courts of the Old Town. Here are long, narrow lanes between which run contracted, crooked courts and passages, the entrances to which are so irregular that the explorer is caught in a blind alley at every few steps, or comes out where he least expects to, unless he knows every court and every alley exactly and separately. According to Dr. Kay, the most demoralised class of all Manchester lived in these ruinous and filthy districts, people whose occupations are thieving and prostitution; and, to all appearance, his assertion is still true at the present moment. When the sanitary police made its expedition hither in 1831, it found the uncleanness as great as in Little Ireland or along the Irk (that it is not much better to-day, I can testify); and among other items, they found in Parliament Street for three hundred and eighty persons, and in Parliament Passage for thirty thickly populated houses, but a single privy. If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find on a peninsula formed by the river, a town of eighty thousand inhabitants, which, properly speaking, is one large working-men's quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue. Salford, once more important than Manchester, was then the leading town of the surrounding district to which it still gives its name, Salford Hundred. Hence it is that an old and therefore very unwholesome, dirty, and ruinous locality is to be found here, lying opposite the Old Church of Manchester, and in as bad a condition as the Old Town on the other side of the Irwell. Farther away from the river lies the newer portion, which is, however, already beyond the limit of its forty years of cottage life, and therefore ruinous enough. All Salford is built in courts or narrow lanes, so narrow, that they remind me of the narrowest I have ever seen, the little lanes of Genoa. The average construction of Salford is in this respect much worse than that of Manchester, and so, too, in respect to cleanliness. If, in Manchester, the police, from time to time, every six or ten years, makes a raid upon the working-people's districts, closes the worst dwellings, and causes the filthiest spots in these Augean stables to be cleansed, in Salford it seems to have done absolutely nothing. The narrow side lanes and courts of Chapel Street, Greengate, and Gravel Lane have certainly never been cleansed since they were built. Of late, the Liverpool railway has been carried through the middle of them, over a high viaduct, and has abolished many of the filthiest nooks; but what does that avail? Whoever passes over this viaduct and looks down, sees filth and wretchedness enough; and, if any one takes the trouble to pass through these lanes, and glance through the open doors and windows into the houses and cellars, he can convince himself afresh with every step that the workers of Salford live in dwellings in which cleanliness and comfort are impossible. Exactly the same state of affairs is found in the more distant regions of Salford, in Islington, along Regent Road, and back of the Bolton railway. The working-men's dwellings between Oldfield Road and Cross Lane, where a mass of courts and alleys are to be found in the worst possible state, vie with the dwellings of the Old Town in filth and overcrowding. In this district I found a man, apparently about sixty years old, living in a cow stable. He had constructed a sort of chimney for his square pen, which had neither windows, floor, nor ceiling, had obtained a bedstead and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung-heaps lay next door to his palace! Such are the various working-people's quarters of Manchester as I had occasion to observe them personally during twenty months. If we briefly formulate the result of our wanderings, we must admit that 350,000 working-people of Manchester and its environs live, almost all of them, in wretched, damp, filthy cottages, that the streets which surround them are usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without the slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the profit secured by the contractor. In a word, we must confess that in the working-men's dwellings of Manchester, no cleanliness, no convenience, and consequently no comfortable family life is possible; that in such dwellings only a physically degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality, could feel comfortable and at home. And I am not alone in making this assertion. We have seen that Dr. Kay gives precisely the same description; and, though it is superfluous, I quote further the words of a Liberal, {63} recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and a fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers: "As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands in Irish Town, Ancoats, and Little Ireland, I was only amazed that it is possible to maintain a reasonable state of health in such homes. These towns, for in extent and number of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected with the utmost disregard of everything except the immediate advantage of the speculating builder. A carpenter and builder unite to buy a series of building sites (_i.e_., they lease them for a number of years), and cover them with so-called houses. In one place we found a whole street following the course of a ditch, because in this way deeper cellars could be secured without the cost of digging, cellars not for storing wares or rubbish, but for dwellings for human beings. _Not one house of this street escaped the cholera_. In general, the streets of these suburbs are unpaved, with a dung-heap or ditch in the middle; the houses are built back to back, without ventilation or drainage, and whole families are limited to a corner of a cellar or a garret." I have already referred to the unusual activity which the sanitary police manifested during the cholera visitation. When the epidemic was approaching, a universal terror seized the bourgeoisie of the city. People remembered the unwholesome dwellings of the poor, and trembled before the certainty that each of these slums would become a centre for the plague, whence it would spread desolation in all directions through the houses of the propertied class. A Health Commission was appointed at once to investigate these districts, and report upon their condition to the Town Council. Dr. Kay, himself a member of this Commission, who visited in person every separate police district except one, the eleventh, quotes extracts from their reports: There were inspected, in all, 6,951 houses--naturally in Manchester proper alone, Salford and the other suburbs being excluded. Of these, 6,565 urgently needed whitewashing within; 960 were out of repair; 939 had insufficient drains; 1,435 were damp; 452 were badly ventilated; 2,221 were without privies. Of the 687 streets inspected, 248 were unpaved, 53 but partially paved, 112 ill-ventilated, 352 containing standing pools, heaps of debris, refuse, etc. To cleanse such an Augean stable before the arrival of the cholera was, of course, out of the question. A few of the worst nooks were therefore cleansed, and everything else left as before. In the cleansed spots, as Little Ireland proves, the old filthy condition was naturally restored in a couple of months. As to the internal condition of these houses, the same Commission reports a state of things similar to that which we have already met with in London, Edinburgh, and other cities. {64} It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity, and wretchedness. Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two families in two rooms. All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen and dining-room in common. Often more than one family lived in a single damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were crowded together. To these and other sources of disease must be added that pigs were kept, and other disgusting things of the most revolting kind were found. We must add that many families, who had but one room for themselves, receive boarders and lodgers in it, that such lodgers of both sexes by no means rarely sleep in the same bed with the married couple; and that the single case of a man and his wife and his adult sister-in-law sleeping in one bed was found, according to the "Report concerning the sanitary condition of the working-class," six times repeated in Manchester. Common lodging-houses, too, are very numerous; Dr. Kay gives their number in 1831 at 267 in Manchester proper, and they must have increased greatly since then. Each of these receives from twenty to thirty guests, so that they shelter all told, nightly, from five to seven thousand human beings. The character of the houses and their guests is the same as in other cities. Five to seven beds in each room lie on the floor--without bedsteads, and on these sleep, mixed indiscriminately, as many persons as apply. What physical and moral atmosphere reigns in these holes I need not state. Each of these houses is a focus of crime, the scene of deeds against which human nature revolts, which would perhaps never have been executed but for this forced centralisation of vice. {65} Gaskell gives the number of persons living in cellars in Manchester proper as 20,000. The _Weekly Dispatch_ gives the number, "according to official reports," as twelve per cent. of the working-class, which agrees with Gaskell's number; the workers being estimated at 175,000, 21,000 would form twelve per cent. of it. The cellar dwellings in the suburbs are at least as numerous, so that the number of persons living in cellars in Manchester--using its name in the broader sense--is not less than forty to fifty thousand. So much for the dwellings of the workers in the largest cities and towns. The manner in which the need of a shelter is satisfied furnishes a standard for the manner in which all other necessities are supplied. That in these filthy holes a ragged, ill-fed population alone can dwell is a safe conclusion, and such is the fact. The clothing of the working-people, in the majority of cases, is in a very bad condition. The material used for it is not of the best adapted. Wool and linen have almost vanished from the wardrobe of both sexes, and cotton has taken their place. Shirts are made of bleached or coloured cotton goods; the dresses of the women are chiefly of cotton print goods, and woollen petticoats are rarely to be seen on the washline. The men wear chiefly trousers of fustian or other heavy cotton goods, and jackets or coats of the same. Fustian has become the proverbial costume of the working-men, who are called "fustian jackets," and call themselves so in contrast to the gentlemen who wear broadcloth, which latter words are used as characteristic for the middle-class. When Feargus O'Connor, the Chartist leader, came to Manchester during the insurrection of 1842, he appeared, amidst the deafening applause of the working-men, in a fustian suit of clothing. Hats are the universal head-covering in England, even for working-men, hats of the most diverse forms, round, high, broad-brimmed, narrow-brimmed, or without brims--only the younger men in factory towns wearing caps. Any one who does not own a hat folds himself a low, square paper cap. The whole clothing of the working-class, even assuming it to be in good condition, is little adapted to the climate. The damp air of England, with its sudden changes of temperature, more calculated than any other to give rise to colds, obliges almost the whole middle-class to wear flannel next the skin, about the body, and flannel scarfs and shirts are in almost universal use. Not only is the working-class deprived of this precaution, it is scarcely ever in a position to use a thread of woollen clothing; and the heavy cotton goods, though thicker, stiffer, and heavier than woollen clothes, afford much less protection against cold and wet, remain damp much longer because of their thickness and the nature of the stuff, and have nothing of the compact density of fulled woollen cloths. And, if a working-man once buys himself a woollen coat for Sunday, he must get it from one of the cheap shops where he finds bad, so-called "Devil's-dust" cloth, manufactured for sale and not for use, and liable to tear or grow threadbare in a fortnight, or he must buy of an old clothes'-dealer a half-worn coat which has seen its best days, and lasts but a few weeks. Moreover, the working-man's clothing is, in most cases, in bad condition, and there is the oft-recurring necessity for placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker's shop. But among very large numbers, especially among the Irish, the prevailing clothing consists of perfect rags often beyond all mending, or so patched that the original colour can no longer be detected. Yet the English and Anglo- Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse--it's all the same to them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart. Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat or trousers. They wear, as Thomas Carlyle says,--{67} "A suit of tatters, the getting on or off which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar." The Irish have introduced, too, the custom previously unknown in England, of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English. As with clothing, so with food. The workers get what is too bad for the property-holding class. In the great towns of England everything may be had of the best, but it costs money; and the workman, who must keep house on a couple of pence, cannot afford much expense. Moreover, he usually receives his wages on Saturday evening, for, although a beginning has been made in the payment of wages on Friday, this excellent arrangement is by no means universal; and so he comes to market at five or even seven o'clock, while the buyers of the middle-class have had the first choice during the morning, when the market teems with the best of everything. But when the workers reach it, the best has vanished, and, if it was still there, they would probably not be able to buy it. The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted, the cheese old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death, and not fresh even then, often half decayed. The sellers are usually small hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by reason of their badness. The poorest workers are forced to use still another device to get together the things they need with their few pence. As nothing can be sold on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve o'clock on Saturday night, such things as would not keep until Monday are sold at any price between ten o'clock and midnight. But nine-tenths of what is sold at ten o'clock is past using by Sunday morning, yet these are precisely the provisions which make up the Sunday dinner of the poorest class. The meat which the workers buy is very often past using; but having bought it, they must eat it. On the 6th of January, 1844 (if I am not greatly mistaken), a court leet was held in Manchester, when eleven meat-sellers were fined for having sold tainted meat. Each of them had a whole ox or pig, or several sheep, or from fifty to sixty pounds of meat, which were all confiscated in a tainted condition. In one case, sixty-four stuffed Christmas geese were seized which had proved unsaleable in Liverpool, and had been forwarded to Manchester, where they were brought to market foul and rotten. All the particulars, with names and fines, were published at the time in the _Manchester Guardian_. In the six weeks, from July 1st to August 14th, the same sheet reported three similar cases. According to the _Guardian_ for August 3rd, a pig, weighing 200 pounds, which had been found dead and decayed, was cut up and exposed for sale by a butcher at Heywood, and was then seized. According to the number for July 31st, two butchers at Wigan, of whom one had previously been convicted of the same offence, were fined 2 and 4 pounds respectively, for exposing tainted meat for sale; and, according to the number for August 10th, twenty-six tainted hams seized at a dealer's in Bolton, were publicly burnt, and the dealer fined twenty shillings. But these are by no means all the cases; they do not even form a fair average for a period of six weeks, according to which to form an average for the year. There are often seasons in which every number of the semi-weekly _Guardian_ mentions a similar case found in Manchester or its vicinity. And when one reflects upon the many cases which must escape detection in the extensive markets that stretch along the front of every main street, under the slender supervision of the market inspectors--and how else can one explain the boldness with which whole animals are exposed for sale?--when one considers how great the temptation must be, in view of the incomprehensibly small fines mentioned in the foregoing cases; when one reflects what condition a piece of meat must have reached to be seized by the inspectors, it is impossible to believe that the workers obtain good and nourishing meat as a usual thing. But they are victimised in yet another way by the money-greed of the middle-class. Dealers and manufacturers adulterate all kinds of provisions in an atrocious manner, and without the slightest regard to the health of the consumers. We have heard the _Manchester Guardian_ upon this subject, let us hear another organ of the middle-class--I delight in the testimony of my opponents--let us hear the _Liverpool Mercury_: "Salted butter is sold for fresh, the lumps being covered with a coating of fresh butter, or a pound of fresh being laid on top to taste, while the salted article is sold after this test, or the whole mass is washed and then sold as fresh. With sugar, pounded rice and other cheap adulterating materials are mixed, and the whole sold at full price. The refuse of soap-boiling establishments also is mixed with other things and sold as sugar. Chicory and other cheap stuff is mixed with ground coffee, and artificial coffee beans with the unground article. Cocoa is often adulterated with fine brown earth, treated with fat to render it more easily mistakable for real cocoa. Tea is mixed with the leaves of the sloe and with other refuse, or dry tea-leaves are roasted on hot copper plates, so returning to the proper colour and being sold as fresh. Pepper is mixed with pounded nutshells; port wine is manufactured outright (out of alcohol, dye-stuffs, etc.), while it is notorious that more of it is consumed in England alone than is grown in Portugal; and tobacco is mixed with disgusting substances of all sorts and in all possible forms in which the article is produced." I can add that several of the most respected tobacco dealers in Manchester announced publicly last summer, that, by reason of the universal adulteration of tobacco, no firm could carry on business without adulteration, and that no cigar costing less than threepence is made wholly from tobacco. These frauds are naturally not restricted to articles of food, though I could mention a dozen more, the villainy of mixing gypsum or chalk with flour among them. Fraud is practiced in the sale of articles of every sort: flannel, stockings, etc., are stretched, and shrink after the first washing; narrow cloth is sold as being from one and a half to three inches broader than it actually is; stoneware is so thinly glazed that the glazing is good for nothing, and cracks at once, and a hundred other rascalities, _tout comme chez nous_. But the lion's share of the evil results of these frauds falls to the workers. The rich are less deceived, because they can pay the high prices of the large shops which have a reputation to lose, and would injure themselves more than their customers if they kept poor or adulterated wares; the rich are spoiled, too, by habitual good eating, and detect adulteration more easily with their sensitive palates. But the poor, the working-people, to whom a couple of farthings are important, who must buy many things with little money, who cannot afford to inquire too closely into the quality of their purchases, and cannot do so in any case because they have had no opportunity of cultivating their taste--to their share fall all the adulterated, poisoned provisions. They must deal with the small retailers, must buy perhaps on credit, and these small retail dealers who cannot sell even the same quality of goods so cheaply as the largest retailers, because of their small capital and the large proportional expenses of their business, must knowingly or unknowingly buy adulterated goods in order to sell at the lower prices required, and to meet the competition of the others. Further, a large retail dealer who has extensive capital invested in his business is ruined with his ruined credit if detected in a fraudulent practice; but what harm does it do a small grocer, who has customers in a single street only, if frauds are proved against him? If no one trusts him in Ancoats, he moves to Chorlton or Hulme, where no one knows him, and where he continues to defraud as before; while legal penalties attach to very few adulterations unless they involve revenue frauds. Not in the quality alone, but in the quantity of his goods as well, is the English working-man defrauded. The small dealers usually have false weights and measures, and an incredible number of convictions for such offences may be read in the police reports. How universal this form of fraud is in the manufacturing districts, a couple of extracts from the _Manchester Guardian_ may serve to show. They cover only a short period, and, even here, I have not all the numbers at hand: _Guardian_, June 16, 1844, Rochdale Sessions.--Four dealers fined five to ten shillings for using light weights. Stockport Sessions.--Two dealers fined one shilling, one of them having seven light weights and a false scale, and both having been warned. _Guardian_, June 19, Rochdale Sessions.--One dealer fined five, and two farmers ten shillings. _Guardian_, June 22, Manchester Justices of the Peace.--Nineteen dealers fined two shillings and sixpence to two pounds. _Guardian_, June 26, Ashton Sessions.--Fourteen dealers and farmers fined two shillings and sixpence to one pound. Hyde Petty Sessions.--Nine farmers and dealers condemned to pay costs and five shillings fines. _Guardian_, July 9, Manchester--Sixteen dealers condemned to pay costs and fines not exceeding ten shillings. _Guardian_, July 13, Manchester.--Nine dealers fined from two shillings and sixpence to twenty shillings. _Guardian_, July 24, Rochdale.--Four dealers fined ten to twenty shillings. _Guardian_, July 27, Bolton.--Twelve dealers and innkeepers condemned to pay costs. _Guardian_, August 3, Bolton.--Three dealers fined two shillings and sixpence, and five shillings. _Guardian_, August 10, Bolton.--One dealer fined five shillings. And the same causes which make the working-class the chief sufferers from frauds in the quality of goods make them the usual victims of frauds in the question of quantity too. The habitual food of the individual working-man naturally varies according to his wages. The better paid workers, especially those in whose families every member is able to earn something, have good food as long as this state of things lasts; meat daily, and bacon and cheese for supper. Where wages are less, meat is used only two or three times a week, and the proportion of bread and potatoes increases. Descending gradually, we find the animal food reduced to a small piece of bacon cut up with the potatoes; lower still, even this disappears, and there remain only bread, cheese, porridge, and potatoes, until on the lowest round of the ladder, among the Irish, potatoes form the sole food. As an accompaniment, weak tea, with perhaps a little sugar, milk, or spirits, is universally drunk. Tea is regarded in England, and even in Ireland, as quite as indispensable as coffee in Germany, and where no tea is used, the bitterest poverty reigns. But all this pre-supposes that the workman has work. When he has none, he is wholly at the mercy of accident, and eats what is given him, what he can beg or steal. And, if he gets nothing, he simply starves, as we have seen. The quantity of food varies, of course, like its quality, according to the rate of wages, so that among ill-paid workers, even if they have no large families, hunger prevails in spite of full and regular work; and the number of the ill- paid is very large. Especially in London, where the competition of the workers rises with the increase of population, this class is very numerous, but it is to be found in other towns as well. In these cases all sorts of devices are used; potato parings, vegetable refuse, and rotten vegetables are eaten for want of other food, and everything greedily gathered up which may possibly contain an atom of nourishment. And, if the week's wages are used up before the end of the week, it often enough happens that in the closing days the family gets only as much food, if any, as is barely sufficient to keep off starvation. Of course such a way of living unavoidably engenders a multitude of diseases, and when these appear, when the father from whose work the family is chiefly supported, whose physical exertion most demands nourishment, and who therefore first succumbs--when the father is utterly disabled, then misery reaches its height, and then the brutality with which society abandons its members, just when their need is greatest, comes out fully into the light of day. To sum up briefly the facts thus far cited. The great towns are chiefly inhabited by working-people, since in the best case there is one bourgeois for two workers, often for three, here and there for four; these workers have no property whatsoever of their own, and live wholly upon wages, which usually go from hand to mouth. Society, composed wholly of atoms, does not trouble itself about them; leaves them to care for themselves and their families, yet supplies them no means of doing this in an efficient and permanent manner. Every working-man, even the best, is therefore constantly exposed to loss of work and food, that is to death by starvation, and many perish in this way. The dwellings of the workers are everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in the worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome. The inhabitants are confined to the smallest possible space, and at least one family usually sleeps in each room. The interior arrangement of the dwellings is poverty-stricken in various degrees, down to the utter absence of even the most necessary furniture. The clothing of the workers, too, is generally scanty, and that of great multitudes is in rags. The food is, in general, bad; often almost unfit for use, and in many cases, at least at times, insufficient in quantity, so that, in extreme cases, death by starvation results. Thus the working-class of the great cities offers a graduated scale of conditions in life, in the best cases a temporarily endurable existence for hard work and good wages, good and endurable, that is, from the worker's standpoint; in the worst cases, bitter want, reaching even homelessness and death by starvation. The average is much nearer the worst case than the best. And this series does not fall into fixed classes, so that one can say, this fraction of the working-class is well off, has always been so, and remains so. If that is the case here and there, if single branches of work have in general an advantage over others, yet the condition of the workers in each branch is subject to such great fluctuations that a single working-man may be so placed as to pass through the whole range from comparative comfort to the extremest need, even to death by starvation, while almost every English working-man can tell a tale of marked changes of fortune. Let us examine the causes of this somewhat more closely. COMPETITION. We have seen in the introduction how competition created the proletariat at the very beginning of the industrial movement, by increasing the wages of weavers in consequence of the increased demand for woven goods, so inducing the weaving peasants to abandon their farms and earn more money by devoting themselves to their looms. We have seen how it crowded out the small farmers by means of the large farm system, reduced them to the rank of proletarians, and attracted them in part into the towns; how it further ruined the small bourgeoisie in great measure and reduced its members also to the ranks of the proletariat; how it centralised capital in the hands of the few, and population in the great towns. Such are the various ways and means by which competition, as it reached its full manifestation and free development in modern industry, created and extended the proletariat. We shall now have to observe its influence on the working-class already created. And here we must begin by tracing the results of competition of single workers with one another. Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is fought not between the different classes of society only, but also between the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put himself in their place. The workers are in constant competition among themselves as the members of the bourgeoisie among themselves. The power- loom weaver is in competition with the hand-loom weaver, the unemployed or ill-paid hand-loom weaver with him who has work or is better paid, each trying to supplant the other. But this competition of the workers among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hence the effort of the workers to nullify this competition by associations, hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie towards these associations, and its triumph in every defeat which befalls them. The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single day. The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death. It offers him the means of living, but only for an "equivalent" for his work. It even lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests! A fine "equivalent" valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie! And if one proletarian is such a fool as to starve rather than agree to the equitable propositions of the bourgeoisie, his "natural superiors," another is easily found in his place; there are proletarians enough in the world, and not all so insane as to prefer dying to living. Here we have the competition of the workers among themselves. If _all_ the proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work for the bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender its monopoly. But this is not the case--is, indeed, a rather impossible case--so that the bourgeoisie still thrives. To this competition of the worker there is but one limit; no worker will work for less than he needs to subsist. If he must starve, he will prefer to starve in idleness rather than in toil. True, this limit is relative; one needs more than another, one is accustomed to more comfort than another; the Englishman who is still somewhat civilised, needs more than the Irishman who goes in rags, eats potatoes, and sleeps in a pig-sty. But that does not hinder the Irishman's competing with the Englishman, and gradually forcing the rate of wages, and with it the Englishman's level of civilisation, down to the Irishman's level. Certain kinds of work require a certain grade of civilisation, and to these belong almost all forms of industrial occupation; hence the interest of the bourgeoisie requires in this case that wages should be high enough to enable the workman to keep himself upon the required plane. The newly immigrated Irishman, encamped in the first stable that offers, or turned out in the street after a week because he spends everything upon drink and cannot pay rent, would be a poor mill-hand. The mill-hand must, therefore, have wages enough to enable him to bring up his children to regular work; but no more, lest he should be able to get on without the wages of his children, and so make something else of them than mere working-men. Here, too, the limit, the minimum wage, is relative. When every member of the family works, the individual worker can get on with proportionately less, and the bourgeoisie has made the most of the opportunity of employing and making profitable the labour of women and children afforded by machine-work. Of course it is not in every family that every member can be set to work, and those in which the case is otherwise would be in a bad way if obliged to exist upon the minimum wage possible to a wholly employed family. Hence the usual wages form an average according to which a fully employed family gets on pretty well, and one which embraces few members able to work, pretty badly. But in the worst case, every working-man prefers surrendering the trifling luxury to which he was accustomed to not living at all; prefers a pig-pen to no roof, wears rags in preference to going naked, confines himself to a potato diet in preference to starvation. He contents himself with half- pay and the hope of better times rather than be driven into the street to perish before the eyes of the world, as so many have done who had no work whatever. This trifle, therefore, this something more than nothing, is the minimum of wages. And if there are more workers at hand than the bourgeoisie thinks well to employ--if at the end of the battle of competition there yet remain workers who find nothing to do, they must simply starve; for the bourgeois will hardly give them work if he cannot sell the produce of their labour at a profit. From this it is evident what the minimum of wages is. The maximum is determined by the competition of the bourgeoisie among themselves; for we have seen how they, too, must compete with each other. The bourgeois can increase his capital only in commerce and manufacture, and in both cases he needs workers. Even if he invests his capital at interest, he needs them indirectly; for without commerce and manufacture, no one would pay him interest upon his capital, no one could use it. So the bourgeois certainly needs workers, not indeed for his immediate living, for at need he could consume his capital, but as we need an article of trade or a beast of burden,--as a means of profit. The proletarian produces the goods which the bourgeois sells with advantage. When, therefore, the demand for these goods increases so that all the competing working-men are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful, the competition among the workers falls away, and the bourgeoisie begin to compete among themselves. The capitalist in search of workmen knows very well that his profits increase as prices rise in consequence of the increased demand for his goods, and pays a trifle higher wages rather than let the whole profit escape him. He sends the butter to fetch the cheese, and getting the latter, leaves the butter ungrudgingly to the workers. So one capitalist after another goes in chase of workers, and wages rise; but only as high as the increasing demand permits. If the capitalist, who willingly sacrificed a part of his extraordinary profit, runs into danger of sacrificing any part of his ordinary average profit, he takes very good care not to pay more than average wages. From this we can determine the average rate of wages. Under average circumstances, when neither workers nor capitalists have reason to compete, especially among themselves, when there are just as many workers at hand as can be employed in producing precisely the goods that are demanded, wages stand a little above the minimum. How far they rise above the minimum will depend upon the average needs and the grade of civilisation of the workers. If the workers are accustomed to eat meat several times in the week, the capitalists must reconcile themselves to paying wages enough to make this food attainable, not less, because the workers are not competing among themselves and have no occasion to content themselves with less; not more, because the capitalists, in the absence of competition among themselves, have no occasion to attract working-men by extraordinary favours. This standard of the average needs and the average civilisation of the workers has become very complicated by reason of the complications of English industry, and is different for different sorts of workers, as has been pointed out. Most industrial occupations demand a certain skill and regularity, and for these qualities which involve a certain grade of civilisation, the rate of wages must be such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill and subject himself to such regularity. Hence it is that the average wages of industrial workers are higher than those of mere porters, day labourers, etc., higher especially than those of agricultural labourers, a fact to which the additional cost of the necessities of life in cities contributes somewhat. In other words, the worker is, in law and in fact, the slave of the property-holding class, so effectually a slave that he is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity. If the demand for workers increases, the price of workers rises; if it falls, their price falls. If it falls so greatly that a number of them become unsaleable, if they are left in stock, they are simply left idle; and as they cannot live upon that, they die of starvation. For, to speak in the words of the economists, the expense incurred in maintaining them would not be reproduced, would be money thrown away, and to this end no man advances capital; and, so far, Malthus was perfectly right in his theory of population. The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of to-day seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class. For him the matter is unchanged at bottom, and if this semblance of liberty necessarily gives him some real freedom on the one hand, it entails on the other the disadvantage that no one guarantees him a subsistence, he is in danger of being repudiated at any moment by his master, the bourgeoisie, and left to die of starvation, if the bourgeoisie ceases to have an interest in his employment, his existence. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is far better off under the present arrangement than under the old slave system; it can dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing invested capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out. {80} Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the assertion: "That the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast." _Just as in the case of any other commodity_! If there are too few labourers at hand, prices, _i.e_. wages, rise, the workers are more prosperous, marriages multiply, more children are born and more live to grow up, until a sufficient number of labourers has been secured. If there are too many on hand, prices fall, want of work, poverty, and starvation, and consequent diseases arise, and the "surplus population" is put out of the way. And Malthus, who carried the foregoing proposition of Smith farther, was also right, in his way, in asserting that there are always more people on hand than can be maintained from the available means of subsistence. Surplus population is engendered rather by the competition of the workers among themselves, which forces each separate worker to labour as much each day as his strength can possibly admit. If a manufacturer can employ ten hands nine hours daily, he can employ nine if each works ten hours, and the tenth goes hungry. And if a manufacturer can force the nine hands to work an extra hour daily for the same wages by threatening to discharge them at a time when the demand for hands is not very great, he discharges the tenth and saves so much wages. This is the process on a small scale, which goes on in a nation on a large one. The productiveness of each hand raised to the highest pitch by the competition of the workers among themselves, the division of labour, the introduction of machinery, the subjugation of the forces of nature, deprive a multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then removed from the market, they can buy nothing, and the quantity of articles of consumption previously required by them is no longer in demand, need no longer be produced; the workers previously employed in producing them are therefore driven out of work, and are also removed from the market, and so it goes on, always the same old round, or rather, so it would go if other circumstances did not intervene. The introduction of the industrial forces already referred to for increasing production leads, in the course of time, to a reduction of prices of the articles produced and to consequent increased consumption, so that a large part of the displaced workers finally, after long suffering, find work again. If, in addition to this, the conquest of foreign markets constantly and rapidly increases the demand for manufactured goods, as has been the case in England during the past sixty years, the demand for hands increases, and, in proportion to it, the population. Thus, instead of diminishing, the population of the British Empire has increased with extraordinary rapidity, and is still increasing. Yet, in spite of the extension of industry, in spite of the demand for working-men which, in general, has increased, there is, according to the confession of all the official political parties (Tory, Whig, and Radical), permanent surplus, superfluous population; the competition among the workers is constantly greater than the competition to secure workers. Whence comes this incongruity? It lies in the nature of industrial competition and the commercial crises which arise from them. In the present unregulated production and distribution of the means of subsistence, which is carried on not directly for the sake of supplying needs, but for profit, in the system under which every one works for himself to enrich himself, disturbances inevitably arise at every moment. For example, England supplies a number of countries with most diverse goods. Now, although the manufacturer may know how much of each article is consumed in each country annually, he cannot know how much is on hand at every given moment, much less can he know how much his competitors export thither. He can only draw most uncertain inferences from the perpetual fluctuations in prices, as to the quantities on hand and the needs of the moment. He must trust to luck in exporting his goods. Everything is done blindly, as guess-work, more or less at the mercy of accident. Upon the slightest favourable report, each one exports what he can, and before long such a market is glutted, sales stop, capital remains inactive, prices fall, and English manufacture has no further employment for its hands. In the beginning of the development of manufacture, these checks were limited to single branches and single markets; but the centralising tendency of competition which drives the hands thrown out of one branch into such other branches as are most easily accessible, and transfers the goods which cannot be disposed of in one market to other markets, has gradually brought the single minor crises nearer together and united them into one periodically recurring crisis. Such a crisis usually recurs once in five years after a brief period of activity and general prosperity; the home market, like all foreign ones, is glutted with English goods, which it can only slowly absorb, the industrial movement comes to a standstill in almost every branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who cannot survive a prolonged inactivity of their invested capital fail, the larger ones suspend business during the worst season, close their mills or work short time, perhaps half the day; wages fall by reason of the competition of the unemployed, the diminution of working-time and the lack of profitable sales; want becomes universal among the workers, the small savings, which individuals may have made, are rapidly consumed, the philanthropic institutions are overburdened, the poor-rates are doubled, trebled, and still insufficient, the number of the starving increases, and the whole multitude of "surplus" population presses in terrific numbers into the foreground. This continues for a time; the "surplus" exist as best they may, or perish; philanthropy and the Poor Law help many of them to a painful prolongation of their existence. Others find scant means of subsistence here and there in such kinds of work as have been least open to competition, are most remote from manufacture. And with how little can a human being keep body and soul together for a time! Gradually the state of things improve; the accumulations of goods are consumed, the general depression among the men of commerce and manufacture prevents a too hasty replenishing of the markets, and at last rising prices and favourable reports from all directions restore activity. Most of the markets are distant ones; demand increases and prices rise constantly while the first exports are arriving; people struggle for the first goods, the first sales enliven trade still more, the prospective ones promise still higher prices; expecting a further rise, merchants begin to buy upon speculation, and so to withdraw from consumption the articles intended for it, just when they are most needed. Speculation forces prices still higher, by inspiring others to purchase, and appropriating new importations at once. All this is reported to England, manufacturers begin to produce with a will, new mills are built, every means is employed to make the most of the favourable moment. Speculation arises here, too, exerting the same influence as upon foreign markets, raising prices, withdrawing goods from consumption, spurring manufacture in both ways to the highest pitch of effort. Then come the daring speculators working with fictitious capital, living upon credit, ruined if they cannot speedily sell; they hurl themselves into this universal, disorderly race for profits, multiply the disorder and haste by their unbridled passion, which drives prices and production to madness. It is a frantic struggle, which carries away even the most experienced and phlegmatic; goods are spun, woven, hammered, as if all mankind were to be newly equipped, as though two thousand million new consumers had been discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate, speculators throw their goods upon the market in terror, the market is disordered, credit shaken, one house after another stops payments, bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the discovery is made that three times more goods are on hand or under way than can be consumed. The news reaches England, where production has been going on at full speed meanwhile, panic seizes all hands, failures abroad cause others in England, the panic crushes a number of firms, all reserves are thrown upon the market here, too, in the moment of anxiety, and the alarm is still further exaggerated. This is the beginning of the crisis, which then takes precisely the same course as its predecessor, and gives place in turn to a season of prosperity. So it goes on perpetually,--prosperity, crisis, prosperity, crisis, and this perennial round in which English industry moves is, as has been before observed, usually completed once in five or six years. From this it is clear that English manufacture must have, at all times save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army of workers, in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required by the market in the liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or smaller, according as the state of the market occasions the employment of a larger or smaller proportion of its members. And if at the moment of highest activity of the market the agricultural districts and the branches least affected by the general prosperity temporarily supply to manufacture a number of workers, these are a mere minority, and these too belong to the reserve army, with the single difference that the prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their connection with it. When they enter upon the more active branches of work, their former employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work longer hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places filled and themselves superfluous--at least in the majority of cases. This reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis and a large number during the period which may be regarded as the average between the highest prosperity and the crisis, is the "surplus population" of England, which keeps body and soul together by begging, stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing handcarts, driving donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what devices this "surplus population" takes refuge. The London crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law guardians or the municipal authorities for the purpose. Now, however, a machine has been invented which rattles through the streets daily, and has spoiled this source of income for the unemployed. Along the great highways leading into the cities, on which there is a great deal of waggon traffic, a large number of people may be seen with small carts, gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives among the passing coaches and omnibuses, often paying a couple of shillings a week to the authorities for the privilege. But this occupation is forbidden in many places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be sold as manure. Happy are such of the "surplus" as can obtain a push- cart and go about with it. Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed to possess an ass in addition to the cart. The ass must get his own food or is given a little gathered refuse, and can yet bring in a trifle of money. Most of the "surplus" betake themselves to huckstering. On Saturday afternoons, especially, when the whole working population is on the streets, the crowd who live from huckstering and peddling may be seen. Shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind of small articles are offered by men, women, and children; and at other times also, such peddlers are always to be seen standing at the street corners, or going about with cakes and ginger-beer or nettle-beer. Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting fires are further resources of such venders. Others, so-called jobbers, go about the streets seeking small jobs. Many of these succeed in getting a day's work, many are not so fortunate. "At the gates of all the London docks," says the Rev. W. Champney, preacher of the East End, "hundreds of the poor appear every morning in winter before daybreak, in the hope of getting a day's work. They await the opening of the gates; and, when the youngest and strongest and best known have been engaged, hundreds cast down by disappointed hope, go back to their wretched homes." When these people find no work and will not rebel against society, what remains for them but to beg? And surely no one can wonder at the great army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police carries on perpetual war. But the beggary of these men has a peculiar character. Such a man usually goes about with his family singing a pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by. And it is a striking fact that these beggars are seen almost exclusively in the working-people's districts, that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor from which they live. Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and without uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it. In this case, too, they reckon upon the sympathy of the workers alone, who know from experience how it feels to be hungry, and are liable to find themselves in the same situation at any moment; for this dumb, yet most moving appeal, is met with almost solely in such streets as are frequented by working-men, and at such hours as working-men pass by; but especially on summer evenings, when the "secrets" of the working-people's quarters are generally revealed, and the middle-class withdraws as far as possible from the district thus polluted. And he among the "surplus" who has courage and passion enough openly to resist society, to reply with declared war upon the bourgeoisie to the disguised war which the bourgeoisie wages upon him, goes forth to rob, plunder, murder, and burn! Of this surplus population there are, according to the reports of the Poor Law commissioners, on an average, a million and a half in England and Wales; in Scotland the number cannot be ascertained for want of Poor Law regulations, and with Ireland we shall deal separately. Moreover, this million and a half includes only those who actually apply to the parish for relief; the great multitude who struggle on without recourse to this most hated expedient, it does not embrace. On the other hand, a good part of the number belongs to the agricultural districts, and does not enter into the present discussion. During a crisis this number naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its highest pitch. Take, for instance, the crisis of 1842, which, being the latest, was the most violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each repetition, and the next, which may be expected not later than 1847, {87} will probably be still more violent and lasting. During this crisis the poor- rates rose in every town to a hitherto unknown height. In Stockport, among other towns, for every pound paid in house-rent, eight shillings of poor-rate had to be paid, so that the rate alone formed forty per cent. of the house-rent. Moreover, whole streets stood vacant, so that there were at least twenty thousand fewer inhabitants than usual, and on the doors of the empty houses might be read: "Stockport to let." In Bolton, where, in ordinary years, the rents from which rates are paid average 86,000 pounds, they sank to 36,000 pounds. The number of the poor to be supported rose, on the other hand, to 14,000, or more than twenty per cent. of the whole number of inhabitants. In Leeds, the Poor Law guardians had a reserve fund of 10,000 pounds. This, with a contribution of 7,000 pounds, was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its height. So it was everywhere. A report drawn up in January, 1843, by a committee of the Anti-Corn Law League, on the condition of the industrial districts in 1842, which was based upon detailed statements of the manufacturers, asserts that the poor-rate was, taking the average, twice as high as in 1839, and that the number of persons requiring relief has trebled, even quintupled, since that time; that a multitude of applicants belong to a class which had never before solicited relief; that the working-class commands more than two-thirds less of the means of subsistence than from 1834-1836; that the consumption of meat had been decidedly less, in some places twenty per cent., in others reaching sixty per cent. less; that even handicraftsmen, smiths, bricklayers, and others, who usually have full employment in the most depressed periods, now suffered greatly from want of work and reduction of wages; and that, even now, in January, 1843, wages are still steadily falling. And these are the reports of manufacturers! The starving workmen, whose mills were idle, whose employers could give them no work, stood in the streets in all directions, begged singly or in crowds, besieged the sidewalks in armies, and appealed to the passers-by for help; they begged, not cringing like ordinary beggars, but threatening by their numbers, their gestures, and their words. Such was the state of things in all the industrial districts, from Leicester to Leeds, and from Manchester to Birmingham. Here and there disturbances arose, as in the Staffordshire potteries, in July. The most frightful excitement prevailed among the workers until the general insurrection broke out throughout the manufacturing districts in August. When I came to Manchester in November, 1842, there were crowds of unemployed working-men at every street corner, and many mills were still standing idle. In the following months these unwilling corner loafers gradually vanished, and the factories came into activity once more. To what extent want and suffering prevail among these unemployed during such a crisis, I need not describe. The poor-rates are insufficient, vastly insufficient; the philanthropy of the rich is a rain-drop in the ocean, lost in the moment of falling, beggary can support but few among the crowds. If the small dealers did not sell to the working-people on credit at such times as long as possible--paying themselves liberally afterwards, it must be confessed--and if the working-people did not help each other, every crisis would remove a multitude of the surplus through death by starvation. Since, however, the most depressed period is brief, lasting, at worst, but one, two, or two and a half years, most of them emerge from it with their lives after dire privations. But indirectly by disease, etc., every crisis finds a multitude of victims, as we shall see. First, however, let us turn to another cause of abasement to which the English worker is exposed, a cause permanently active in forcing the whole class downwards. IRISH IMMIGRATION. We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more closely the causes and results of this immigration. The rapid extension of English industry could not have taken place if England had not possessed in the numerous and impoverished population of Ireland a reserve at command. The Irish had nothing to lose at home, and much to gain in England; and from the time when it became known in Ireland that the east side of St. George's Channel offered steady work and good pay for strong arms, every year has brought armies of the Irish hither. It has been calculated that more than a million have already immigrated, and not far from fifty thousand still come every year, nearly all of whom enter the industrial districts, especially the great cities, and there form the lowest class of the population. Thus there are in London, 120,000; in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 34,000; Bristol, 24,000; Glasgow, 40,000; Edinburgh, 29,000, poor Irish people. {90a} These people having grown up almost without civilisation, accustomed from youth to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and morality. Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject: {90b} "The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back--for wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges to his mind in any pig-hutch or dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears a suit of tatters, the getting on and off of which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar. The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his strength, but by the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming, but sunk. That the condition of the lower multitude of English labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish, competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done, will be done not at the English price, but at an approximation to the Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer to an equality with that." If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish national character, Carlyle is perfectly right. These Irishmen who migrate for fourpence to England, on the deck of a steamship on which they are often packed like cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The worst dwellings are good enough for them; their clothing causes them little trouble, so long as it holds together by a single thread; shoes they know not; their food consists of potatoes and potatoes only; whatever they earn beyond these needs they spend upon drink. What does such a race want with high wages? The worst quarters of all the large towns are inhabited by Irishmen. Whenever a district is distinguished for especial filth and especial ruinousness, the explorer may safely count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces which one recognises at the first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy of the native, and the singing, aspirate brogue which the true Irishman never loses. I have occasionally heard the Irish-Celtic language spoken in the most thickly populated parts of Manchester. The majority of the families who live in cellars are almost everywhere of Irish origin. In short, the Irish have, as Dr. Kay says, discovered the minimum of the necessities of life, and are now making the English workers acquainted with it. Filth and drunkenness, too, they have brought with them. The lack of cleanliness, which is not so injurious in the country, where population is scattered, and which is the Irishman's second nature, becomes terrifying and gravely dangerous through its concentration here in the great cities. The Milesian deposits all garbage and filth before his house door here, as he was accustomed to do at home, and so accumulates the pools and dirt-heaps which disfigure the working-people's quarters and poison the air. He builds a pig-sty against the house wall as he did at home, and if he is prevented from doing this, he lets the pig sleep in the room with himself. This new and unnatural method of cattle-raising in cities is wholly of Irish origin. The Irishman loves his pig as the Arab his horse, with the difference that he sells it when it is fat enough to kill. Otherwise, he eats and sleeps with it, his children play with it, ride upon it, roll in the dirt with it, as any one may see a thousand times repeated in all the great towns of England. The filth and comfortlessness that prevail in the houses themselves it is impossible to describe. The Irishman is unaccustomed to the presence of furniture; a heap of straw, a few rags, utterly beyond use as clothing, suffice for his nightly couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old chest for a table, more he needs not; a tea-kettle, a few pots and dishes, equip his kitchen, which is also his sleeping and living room. When he is in want of fuel, everything combustible within his reach, chairs, door-posts, mouldings, flooring, finds its way up the chimney. Moreover, why should he need much room? At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for all domestic purposes; more than one room his family does not need in England. So the custom of crowding many persons into a single room, now so universal, has been chiefly implanted by the Irish immigration. And since the poor devil must have one enjoyment, and society has shut him out of all others, he betakes himself to the drinking of spirits. Drink is the only thing which makes the Irishman's life worth having, drink and his cheery care-free temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of the most bestial drunkenness. The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness. The temptation is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it down his throat. What else should he do? How can society blame him when it places him in a position in which he almost of necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him to himself, to his savagery? With such a competitor the English working-man has to struggle with a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for this very reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing else is therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-men should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. But for all simple, less exact work, wherever it is a question more of strength than skill, the Irishman is as good as the Englishman. Such occupations are therefore especially overcrowded with Irishmen: hand-weavers, bricklayers, porters, jobbers, and such workers, count hordes of Irishmen among their number, and the pressure of this race has done much to depress wages and lower the working-class. And even if the Irish, who have forced their way into other occupations, should become more civilised, enough of the old habits would cling to them to have a strong degrading influence upon their English companions in toil, especially in view of the general effect of being surrounded by the Irish. For when, in almost every great city, a fifth or a quarter of the workers are Irish, or children of Irish parents, who have grown up among Irish filth, no one can wonder if the life, habits, intelligence, moral status--in short, the whole character of the working-class assimilates a great part of the Irish characteristics. On the contrary, it is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition. RESULTS. Having now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which the English working-class lives, it is time to draw some further inferences from the facts presented, and then to compare our inferences with the actual state of things. Let us see what the workers themselves have become under the given circumstances, what sort of people they are, what their physical, mental, and moral status. When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society {95} places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they _cannot_ live--forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence--knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. I have now to prove that society in England daily and hourly commits what the working-men's organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions. That it _knows_ the consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation of my charge. That a class which lives under the conditions already sketched and is so ill-provided with the most necessary means of subsistence, cannot be healthy and can reach no advanced age, is self-evident. Let us review the circumstances once more with especial reference to the health of the workers. The centralisation of population in great cities exercises of itself an unfavourable influence; the atmosphere of London can never be so pure, so rich in oxygen, as the air of the country; two and a half million pairs of lungs, two hundred and fifty thousand fires, crowded upon an area three to four miles square, consume an enormous amount of oxygen, which is replaced with difficulty, because the method of building cities in itself impedes ventilation. The carbonic acid gas, engendered by respiration and fire, remains in the streets by reason of its specific gravity, and the chief air current passes over the roofs of the city. The lungs of the inhabitants fail to receive the due supply of oxygen, and the consequence is mental and physical lassitude and low vitality. For this reason, the dwellers in cities are far less exposed to acute, and especially to inflammatory, affections than rural populations, who live in a free, normal atmosphere; but they suffer the more from chronic affections. And if life in large cities is, in itself, injurious to health, how great must be the harmful influence of an abnormal atmosphere in the working-people's quarters, where, as we have seen, everything combines to poison the air. In the country, it may, perhaps, be comparatively innoxious to keep a dung-heap adjoining one's dwelling, because the air has free ingress from all sides; but in the midst of a large town, among closely built lanes and courts that shut out all movement of the atmosphere, the case is different. All putrefying vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious to health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the working-people's quarters in the great cities have, therefore, the worst effect upon the public health, because they produce precisely those gases which engender disease; so, too, the exhalations from contaminated streams. But this is by no means all. The manner in which the great multitude of the poor is treated by society to-day is revolting. They are drawn into the large cities where they breathe a poorer atmosphere than in the country; they are relegated to districts which, by reason of the method of construction, are worse ventilated than any others; they are deprived of all means of cleanliness, of water itself, since pipes are laid only when paid for, and the rivers so polluted that they are useless for such purposes; they are obliged to throw all offal and garbage, all dirty water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement into the streets, being without other means of disposing of them; they are thus compelled to infect the region of their own dwellings. Nor is this enough. All conceivable evils are heaped upon the heads of the poor. If the population of great cities is too dense in general, it is they in particular who are packed into the least space. As though the vitiated atmosphere of the streets were not enough, they are penned in dozens into single rooms, so that the air which they breathe at night is enough in itself to stifle them. They are given damp dwellings, cellar dens that are not waterproof from below, or garrets that leak from above. Their houses are so built that the clammy air cannot escape. They are supplied bad, tattered, or rotten clothing, adulterated and indigestible food. They are exposed to the most exciting changes of mental condition, the most violent vibrations between hope and fear; they are hunted like game, and not permitted to attain peace of mind and quiet enjoyment of life. They are deprived of all enjoyments except that of sexual indulgence and drunkenness, are worked every day to the point of complete exhaustion of their mental and physical energies, and are thus constantly spurred on to the maddest excess in the only two enjoyments at their command. And if they surmount all this, they fall victims to want of work in a crisis when all the little is taken from them that had hitherto been vouchsafed them. How is it possible, under such conditions, for the lower class to be healthy and long lived? What else can be expected than an excessive mortality, an unbroken series of epidemics, a progressive deterioration in the physique of the working population? Let us see how the facts stand. That the dwellings of the workers in the worst portions of the cities, together with the other conditions of life of this class, engender numerous diseases, is attested on all sides. The article already quoted from the _Artisan_ asserts with perfect truth, that lung diseases must be the inevitable consequence of such conditions, and that, indeed, cases of this kind are disproportionately frequent in this class. That the bad air of London, and especially of the working-people's districts, is in the highest degree favourable to the development of consumption, the hectic appearance of great numbers of persons sufficiently indicates. If one roams the streets a little in the early morning, when the multitudes are on their way to their work, one is amazed at the number of persons who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in Manchester the people have not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid, flabby faces, incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such startling numbers only in London, though consumption carries off a horde of victims annually in the factory towns of the North. In competition with consumption stands typhus, to say nothing of scarlet fever, a disease which brings most frightful devastation into the ranks of the working-class. Typhus, that universally diffused affliction, is attributed by the official report on the sanitary condition of the working-class, directly to the bad state of the dwellings in the matters of ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness. This report, compiled, it must not be forgotten, by the leading physicians of England from the testimony of other physicians, asserts that a single ill-ventilated court, a single blind alley without drainage, is enough to engender fever, and usually does engender it, especially if the inhabitants are greatly crowded. This fever has the same character almost everywhere, and develops in nearly every case into specific typhus. It is to be found in the working-people's quarters of all great towns and cities, and in single ill-built, ill-kept streets of smaller places, though it naturally seeks out single victims in better districts also. In London it has now prevailed for a considerable time; its extraordinary violence in the year 1837 gave rise to the report already referred to. According to the annual report of Dr. Southwood Smith on the London Fever Hospital, the number of patients in 1843 was 1,462, or 418 more than in any previous year. In the damp, dirty regions of the north, south, and east districts of London, this disease raged with extraordinary violence. Many of the patients were working-people from the country, who had endured the severest privation while migrating, and, after their arrival, had slept hungry and half-naked in the streets, and so fallen victims to the fever. These people were brought into the hospital in such a state of weakness, that unusual quantities of wine, cognac, and preparations of ammonia and other stimulants were required for their treatment; 16.5 per cent. of all patients died. This malignant fever is to be found in Manchester; in the worst quarters of the Old Town, Ancoats, Little Ireland, etc., it is rarely extinct; though here, as in the _English_ towns generally, it prevails to a less extent than might be expected. In Scotland and Ireland, on the other hand, it rages with a violence that surpasses all conception. In Edinburgh and Glasgow it broke out in 1817, after the famine, and in 1826 and 1837 with especial violence, after the commercial crisis, subsiding somewhat each time after having raged about three years. In Edinburgh about 6,000 persons were attacked by the fever during the epidemic of 1817, and about 10,000 in that of 1837, and not only the number of persons attacked but the violence of the disease increased with each repetition. {100a} But the fury of the epidemic in all former periods seems to have been child's play in comparison with its ravages after the crisis of 1842. One- sixth of the whole indigent population of Scotland was seized by the fever, and the infection was carried by wandering beggars with fearful rapidity from one locality to another. It did not reach the middle and upper classes of the population, yet in two months there were more fever cases than in twelve years before. In Glasgow, twelve per cent. of the population were seized in the year 1843; 32,000 persons, of whom thirty- two per cent. perished, while this mortality in Manchester and Liverpool does not ordinarily exceed eight per cent. The illness reached a crisis on the seventh and fifteenth days; on the latter, the patient usually became yellow, which our authority {100b} regards as an indication that the cause of the malady was to be sought in mental excitement and anxiety. In Ireland, too, these fever epidemics have become domesticated. During twenty-one months of the years 1817-1818, 39,000 fever patients passed through the Dublin hospital; and in a more recent year, according to Sheriff Alison, {100c} 60,000. In Cork the fever hospital received one-seventh of the population in 1817-1818, in Limerick in the same time one-fourth, and in the bad quarter of Waterford, nineteen-twentieths of the whole population were ill of the fever at one time. When one remembers under what conditions the working-people live, when one thinks how crowded their dwellings are, how every nook and corner swarms with human beings, how sick and well sleep in the same room, in the same bed, the only wonder is that a contagious disease like this fever does not spread yet farther. And when one reflects how little medical assistance the sick have at command, how many are without any medical advice whatsoever, and ignorant of the most ordinary precautionary measures, the mortality seems actually small. Dr. Alison, who has made a careful study of this disease, attributes it directly to the want and the wretched condition of the poor, as in the report already quoted. He asserts that privations and the insufficient satisfaction of vital needs are what prepare the frame for contagion and make the epidemic widespread and terrible. He proves that a period of privation, a commercial crisis or a bad harvest, has each time produced the typhus epidemic in Ireland as in Scotland, and that the fury of the plague has fallen almost exclusively on the working-class. It is a noteworthy fact, that according to his testimony, the majority of persons who perish by typhus are fathers of families, precisely the persons who can least be spared by those dependent upon them; and several Irish physicians whom he quotes bear the same testimony. Another category of diseases arises directly from the food rather than the dwellings of the workers. The food of the labourer, indigestible enough in itself, is utterly unfit for young children, and he has neither means nor time to get his children more suitable food. Moreover, the custom of giving children spirits, and even opium, is very general; and these two influences, with the rest of the conditions of life prejudicial to bodily development, give rise to the most diverse affections of the digestive organs, leaving life-long traces behind them. Nearly all workers have stomachs more or less weak, and are yet forced to adhere to the diet which is the root of the evil. How should they know what is to blame for it? And if they knew, how could they obtain a more suitable regimen so long as they cannot adopt a different way of living and are not better educated? But new disease arises during childhood from impaired digestion. Scrofula is almost universal among the working-class, and scrofulous parents have scrofulous children, especially when the original influences continue in full force to operate upon the inherited tendency of the children. A second consequence of this insufficient bodily nourishment, during the years of growth and development, is rachitis, which is extremely common among the children of the working-class. The hardening of the bones is delayed, the development of the skeleton in general is restricted, and deformities of the legs and spinal column are frequent, in addition to the usual rachitic affections. How greatly all these evils are increased by the changes to which the workers are subject in consequence of fluctuations in trade, want of work, and the scanty wages in time of crisis, it is not necessary to dwell upon. Temporary want of sufficient food, to which almost every working-man is exposed at least once in the course of his life, only contributes to intensify the effects of his usual sufficient but bad diet. Children who are half-starved, just when they most need ample and nutritious food--and how many such there are during every crisis and even when trade is at its best--must inevitably become weak, scrofulous and rachitic in a high degree. And that they do become so, their appearance amply shows. The neglect to which the great mass of working-men's children are condemned leaves ineradicable traces and brings the enfeeblement of the whole race of workers with it. Add to this, the unsuitable clothing of this class, the impossibility of precautions against colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health permits, want made more dire when sickness appears, and the only too common lack of all medical assistance; and we have a rough idea of the sanitary condition of the English working-class. The injurious effects peculiar to single employments as now conducted, I shall not deal with here. Besides these, there are other influences which enfeeble the health of a great number of workers, intemperance most of all. All possible temptations, all allurements combine to bring the workers to drunkenness. Liquor is almost their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire to make it accessible to them. The working-man comes from his work tired, exhausted, finds his home comfortless, damp, dirty, repulsive; he has urgent need of recreation, he _must_ have something to make work worth his trouble, to make the prospect of the next day endurable. His unnerved, uncomfortable, hypochondriac state of mind and body arising from his unhealthy condition, and especially from indigestion, is aggravated beyond endurance by the general conditions of his life, the uncertainty of his existence, his dependence upon all possible accidents and chances, and his inability to do anything towards gaining an assured position. His enfeebled frame, weakened by bad air and bad food, violently demands some external stimulus; his social need can be gratified only in the public-house, he has absolutely no other place where he can meet his friends. How can he be expected to resist the temptation? It is morally and physically inevitable that, under such circumstances, a very large number of working-men should fall into intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive the working-man into drunkenness, there is the example of the great mass, the neglected education, the impossibility of protecting the young from temptation, in many cases the direct influence of intemperate parents, who give their own children liquor, the certainty of forgetting for an hour or two the wretchedness and burden of life, and a hundred other circumstances so mighty that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed for yielding to such overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a phenomenon, the necessary, inevitable effect of certain conditions upon an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. They who have degraded the working-man to a mere object have the responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of working- men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest its ruinous influence upon the body and mind of its victims. All the tendencies to disease arising from the conditions of life of the workers are promoted by it, it stimulates in the highest degree the development of lung and digestive troubles, the rise and spread of typhus epidemics. Another source of physical mischief to the working-class lies in the impossibility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is true that a number of charitable institutions strive to supply this want, that the infirmary in Manchester, for instance, receives or gives advice and medicine to 2,200 patients annually. But what is that in a city in which, according to Gaskell's calculation, {104} three-fourths of the population need medical aid every year? English doctors charge high fees, and working-men are not in a position to pay them. They can therefore do nothing, or are compelled to call in cheap charlatans, and use quack remedies, which do more harm than good. An immense number of such quacks thrive in every English town, securing their _clientele_ among the poor by means of advertisements, posters, and other such devices. Besides these, vast quantities of patent medicines are sold, for all conceivable ailments: Morrison's Pills, Parr's Life Pills, Dr. Mainwaring's Pills, and a thousand other pills, essences, and balsams, all of which have the property of curing all the ills that flesh is heir to. These medicines rarely contain actually injurious substances, but, when taken freely and often, they affect the system prejudicially; and as the unwary purchasers are always recommended to take as much as possible, it is not to be wondered at that they swallow them wholesale whether wanted or not. It is by no means unusual for the manufacturer of Parr's Life Pills to sell twenty to twenty-five thousand boxes of these salutary pills in a week, and they are taken for constipation by this one, for diarrhoea by that one, for fever, weakness, and all possible ailments. As our German peasants are cupped or bled at certain seasons, so do the English working- people now consume patent medicines to their own injury and the great profit of the manufacturer. One of the most injurious of these patent medicines is a drink prepared with opiates, chiefly laudanum, under the name Godfrey's Cordial. Women who work at home, and have their own and other people's children to take care of, give them this drink to keep them quiet, and, as many believe, to strengthen them. They often begin to give this medicine to newly-born children, and continue, without knowing the effects of this "heartsease," until the children die. The less susceptible the child's system to the action of the opium, the greater the quantities administered. When the cordial ceases to act, laudanum alone is given, often to the extent of fifteen to twenty drops at a dose. The Coroner of Nottingham testified before a Parliamentary Commission {105a} that one apothecary had, according to his own statement, used thirteen hundredweight of laudanum in one year in the preparation of Godfrey's Cordial. The effects upon the children so treated may be readily imagined. They are pale, feeble, wilted, and usually die before completing the second year. The use of this cordial is very extensive in all great towns and industrial districts in the kingdom. The result of all these influences is a general enfeeblement of the frame in the working-class. There are few vigorous, well-built, healthy persons among the workers, _i.e_., among the factory operatives, who are employed in confined rooms, and we are here discussing these only. They are almost all weakly, of angular but not powerful build, lean, pale, and of relaxed fibre, with the exception of the muscles especially exercised in their work. Nearly all suffer from indigestion, and consequently from a more or less hypochondriac, melancholy, irritable, nervous condition. Their enfeebled constitutions are unable to resist disease, and are therefore seized by it on every occasion. Hence they age prematurely, and die early. On this point the mortality statistics supply unquestionable testimony. According to the Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death- rate of all England and Wales is something less than 2.25 per cent. That is to say, out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. {105b} This was the average for the year 1839-40. In 1840-41 the mortality diminished somewhat, and the death-rate was but one in forty-six. But in the great cities the proportion is wholly different. I have before me official tables of mortality (_Manchester Guardian_, July 31st, 1844), according to which the death-rate of several large towns is as follows:--In Manchester, including Chorlton and Salford, one in 32.72; and excluding Chorlton and Salford, one in 30.75. In Liverpool, including West Derby (suburb), 31.90, and excluding West Derby, 29.90; while the average of all the districts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire cited, including a number of wholly or partially rural districts and many small towns, with a total population of 2,172,506 for the whole, is one death in 39.80 persons. How unfavourably the workers are placed in the great cities, the mortality for Prescott in Lancashire shows: a district inhabited by miners, and showing a lower sanitary condition than that of the agricultural districts, mining being by no means a healthful occupation. But these miners live in the country, and the death-rate among them is but one in 47.54, or nearly two-and-a-half per cent. better than that for all England. All these statements are based upon the mortality tables for 1843. Still higher is the death-rate in the Scotch cities; in Edinburgh, in 1838-39, one in 29; in 1831, in the Old Town alone, one in 22. In Glasgow, according to Dr. Cowen, {106} the average has been, since 1830, one in 30; and in single years, one in 22 to 24. That this enormous shortening of life falls chiefly upon the working-class, that the general average is improved by the smaller mortality of the upper and middle-classes, is attested upon all sides. One of the most recent depositions is that of a physician, Dr. P. H. Holland, in Manchester, who investigated Chorlton-on-Medlock, a suburb of Manchester, under official commission. He divided the houses and streets into three classes each, and ascertained the following variations in the death-rate: First class of Streets. Houses I. class. Mortality one in 51 ,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 45 ,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 36 Second ,, ,, I. ,, ,, ,, 55 ,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 38 ,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 35 Third ,, ,, I. ,, Wanting --- ---- ,, ,, ,, II. ,, Mortality ,, 35 ,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 25 It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the _streets_ of the second class is 18 per cent. greater, and in the streets of the third class 68 per cent. greater than in those of the first class; that the mortality in the _houses_ of the second class is 31 per cent greater, and in the third class 78 per cent. greater than in those of the first class; that the mortality is those bad streets which were improved, decreased 25 per cent. He closes with the remark, very frank for an English bourgeois: {107} "When we find the rate of mortality four times as high in some streets as in others, and twice as high in whole classes of streets as in other classes, and further find that it is all but invariably high in those streets which are in bad condition, and almost invariably low in those whose condition is good, we cannot resist the conclusion that multitudes of our fellow-creatures, _hundreds of our immediate neighbours_, are annually destroyed for want of the most evident precautions." The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working-Class contains information which attests the same fact. In Liverpool, in 1840, the average longevity of the upper-classes, gentry, professional men, etc., was thirty-five years; that of the business men and better-placed handicraftsmen, twenty-two years; and that of the operatives, day-labourers, and serviceable class in general, but fifteen years. The Parliamentary reports contain a mass of similar facts. The death-rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young children in the working-class. The tender frame of a child is least able to withstand the unfavourable influences of an inferior lot in life; the neglect to which they are often subjected, when both parents work or one is dead, avenges itself promptly, and no one need wonder that in Manchester, according to the report last quoted, more than fifty-seven per cent. of the children of the working-class perish before the fifth year, while but twenty per cent. of the children of the higher classes, and not quite thirty-two per cent. of the children of all classes in the country die under five years of age. {108a} The article of the _Artisan_, already several times referred to, furnishes exacter information on this point, by comparing the city death-rate in single diseases of children with the country death-rate, thus demonstrating that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and Liverpool are three times more fatal than in country districts; that affections of the nervous system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while deaths from affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2.5 to 1. Fatal cases of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough, among small children, are four times more frequent; those of water on the brain are trebled, and convulsions ten times more frequent. To quote another acknowledged authority, I append the following table. Out of 10,000 persons, there die--{108b} Under 5-19 20-39 40-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99 100 x 5 years In Rutlandshire, a healthy agricultural district 2,865 891 1,275 1,299 1,189 1,428 938 112 3 Essex, marshy agricultural district 3,159 1,110 1,526 1,413 963 1,019 630 177 3 Town of Carlisle, 1779-1787, before introduction of mills 4,408 921 1,006 1,201 940 826 633 153 22 Town of Carlisle, after introduction of mills 4,738 930 l,201 1,134 677 727 452 80 1 Preston, factory town 4,947 1,136 1,379 1,114 553 532 298 38 3 Leeds, factory town 5,286 927 1,228 1,198 593 512 225 29 2 Apart from the divers diseases which are the necessary consequence of the present neglect and oppression of the poorer classes, there are other influences which contribute to increase the mortality among small children. In many families the wife, like the husband, has to work away from home, and the consequence is the total neglect of the children, who are either locked up or given out to be taken care of. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if hundreds of them perish through all manner of accidents. Nowhere are so many children run over, nowhere are so many killed by falling, drowning, or burning, as in the great cities and towns of England. Deaths from burns and scalds are especially frequent, such a case occurring nearly every week during the winter months in Manchester, and very frequently in London, though little mention is made of them in the papers. I have at hand a copy of the _Weekly Despatch_ of December 15th, 1844, according to which, in the week from December 1st to December 7th inclusive, _six_ such cases occurred. These unhappy children, perishing in this terrible way, are victims of our social disorder, and of the property-holding classes interested in maintaining and prolonging this disorder. Yet one is left in doubt whether even this terribly torturing death is not a blessing for the children in rescuing them from a long life of toil and wretchedness, rich in suffering and poor in enjoyment. So far has it gone in England; and the bourgeoisie reads these things every day in the newspapers and takes no further trouble in the matter. But it cannot complain if, after the official and non-official testimony here cited which must be known to it, I broadly accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to it that these frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the administration of the common interests to the labouring-class. To the latter course it is by no means inclined; for the former task, so long as it remains the bourgeoisie crippled by bourgeois prejudice, it has not the needed power. For if, at last, after hundreds of thousands of victims have perished, it manifests some little anxiety for the future, passing a "Metropolitan Buildings Act," under which the most unscrupulous overcrowding of dwellings is to be, at least in some slight degree, restricted; if it points with pride to measures which, far from attacking the root of the evil, do not by any means meet the demands of the commonest sanitary policy, it cannot thus vindicate itself from the accusation. The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to continue its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder and in spite of this charge, or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class. Hitherto it has chosen the former course. Let us turn from the physical to the mental state of the workers. Since the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth, is not much. The means of education in England are restricted out of all proportion to the population. The few day schools at the command of the working-class are available only for the smallest minority, and are bad besides. The teachers, worn-out workers, and other unsuitable persons who only turn to teaching in order to live, are usually without the indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral discipline so needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervision. Here, too, free competition rules, and, as usual, the rich profit by it, and the poor, for whom competition is _not_ free, who have not the knowledge needed to enable them to form a correct judgment, have the evil consequences to bear. Compulsory school attendance does not exist. In the mills it is, as we shall see, purely nominal; and when in the session of 1843 the Ministry was disposed to make this nominal compulsion effective, the manufacturing bourgeoisie opposed the measure with all its might, though the working-class was outspokenly in favour of compulsory school attendance. Moreover, a mass of children work the whole week through in the mills or at home, and therefore cannot attend school. The evening schools, supposed to be attended by children who are employed during the day, are almost abandoned or attended without benefit. It is asking too much, that young workers who have been using themselves up twelve hours in the day, should go to school from eight to ten at night. And those who try it usually fall asleep, as is testified by hundreds of witnesses in the Children's Employment Commission's Report. Sunday schools have been founded, it is true, but they, too, are most scantily supplied with teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already learnt something in the day schools. The interval from one Sunday to the next is too long for an ignorant child to remember in the second sitting what it learned in the first, a week before. The Children's Employment Commission's Report furnishes a hundred proofs, and the Commission itself most emphatically expresses the opinion, that neither the week-day nor the Sunday schools, in the least degree, meet the needs of the nation. This report gives evidence of ignorance in the working-class of England, such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy. It cannot be otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear, from the education of the working-class. The Ministry, in its whole enormous budget of 55,000,000 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000 pounds for public education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious sects which does at least as much harm as good, the means of education would be yet more scanty. As it is, the State Church manages its national schools and the various sects their sectarian schools for the sole purpose of keeping the children of the brethren of the faith within the congregation, and of winning away a poor childish soul here and there from some other sect. The consequence is that religion, and precisely the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected. The working class has repeatedly demanded of Parliament a system of strictly secular public education, leaving religion to the ministers of the sects; but, thus far, no Ministry has been induced to grant it. The Minister is the obedient servant of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is divided into countless sects; but each would gladly grant the workers the otherwise dangerous education on the sole condition of their accepting, as an antidote, the dogmas peculiar to the especial sect in question. And as these sects are still quarrelling among themselves for supremacy, the workers remain for the present without education. It is true that the manufacturers boast of having enabled the majority to read, but the quality of the reading is appropriate to the source of the instruction, as the Children's Employment Commission proves. According to this report, he who knows his letters can read enough to satisfy the conscience of the manufacturers. And when one reflects upon the confused orthography of the English language which makes reading one of the arts, learned only under long instruction, this ignorance is readily understood. Very few working-people write readily; and writing orthographically is beyond the powers even of many "educated" persons. The Sunday schools of the State Church, of the Quakers, and, I think, of several other sects, do not teach writing, "because it is too worldly an employment for Sunday." The quality of the instruction offered the workers in other directions may be judged from a specimen or two, taken from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, which unfortunately does not embrace mill-work proper: "In Birmingham," says Commissioner Grainger, "the children examined by me are, as a whole, utterly wanting in all that could be in the remotest degree called a useful education. Although in almost all the schools religious instruction alone is furnished, the profoundest ignorance even upon that subject prevailed."--"In Wolverhampton," says Commissioner Horne, "I found, among others, the following example: A girl of eleven years had attended both day and Sunday school, 'had never heard of another world, of Heaven, or another life.' A boy, seventeen years old, did not know that twice two are four, nor how many farthings in two pence even when the money was placed in his hand. Several boys had never heard of London nor of Willenhall, though the latter was but an hour's walk from their homes, and in the closest relations with Wolverhampton. Several had never heard the name of the Queen nor other names, such as Nelson, Wellington, Bonaparte; but it was noteworthy that those who had never heard even of St. Paul, Moses, or Solomon, were very well instructed as to the life, deeds, and character of Dick Turpin, and especially of Jack Sheppard. A youth of sixteen did not know how many twice two are, nor how much four farthings make. A youth of seventeen asserted that four farthings are four half pence; a third, seventeen years old, answered several very simple questions with the brief statement, that he 'was ne jedge o' nothin'.'" {112a} These children who are crammed with religious doctrines four or five years at a stretch, know as little at the end as at the beginning. One child "went to Sunday school regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ is, but had heard the name; had never heard of the twelve Apostles, Samson, Moses, Aaron, etc." {112b} Another "attended Sunday school regularly six years; knows who Jesus Christ was; he died on the Cross to save our Saviour; had never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul." {113a} A third, "attended different Sunday schools seven years; can read only the thin, easy books with simple words of one syllable; has heard of the Apostles, but does not know whether St. Peter was one or St. John; the latter must have been St. John Wesley." {113b} To the question who Christ was, Horne received the following answers among others: "He was Adam," "He was an Apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and from a youth of sixteen: "He was a king of London long ago." In Sheffield, Commissioner Symonds let the children from the Sunday school read aloud; they could not tell what they had read, or what sort of people the Apostles were, of whom they had just been reading. After he had asked them all one after the other about the Apostles without securing a single correct answer, one sly-looking little fellow, with great glee, called out: "I know, mister; they were the lepers!" {113c} From the pottery districts and from Lancashire the reports are similar. This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the education and improvement of the working-class. Fortunately the conditions under which this class lives are such as give it a sort of practical training, which not only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the confused religious notions connected with it, and even places the workers in the vanguard of the national movement of England. Necessity is the mother of invention, and what is still more important, of thought and action. The English working-man who can scarcely read and still less write, nevertheless knows very well where his own interest and that of the nation lies. He knows, too, what the especial interest of the bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that bourgeoisie. If he cannot write he can speak, and speak in public; if he has no arithmetic, he can, nevertheless, reckon with the Political Economists enough to see through a Corn-Law-repealing bourgeois, and to get the better of him in argument; if celestial matters remain very mixed for him in spite of all the effort of the preachers, he sees all the more clearly into terrestrial, political, and social questions. We shall have occasion to refer again to this point; and pass now to the moral characteristics of our workers. It is sufficiently clear that the instruction in morals can have no better effect than the religious teaching, with which in all English schools it is mixed up. The simple principles which, for plain human beings, regulate the relations of man to man, brought into the direst confusion by our social state, our war of each against all, necessarily remain confused and foreign to the working-man when mixed with incomprehensible dogmas, and preached in the religious form of an arbitrary and dogmatic commandment. The schools contribute, according to the confession of all authorities, and especially of the Children's Employment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the working-class. So short-sighted, so stupidly narrow-minded is the English bourgeoisie in its egotism, that it does not even take the trouble to impress upon the workers the morality of the day, which the bourgeoisie has patched together in its own interest for its own protection! Even this precautionary measure is too great an effort for the enfeebled and sluggish bourgeoisie. A time must come when it will repent its neglect, too late. But it has no right to complain that the workers know nothing of its system of morals, and do not act in accordance with it. Thus are the workers cast out and ignored by the class in power, morally as well as physically and mentally. The only provision made for them is the law, which fastens upon them when they become obnoxious to the bourgeoisie. Like the dullest of the brutes, they are treated to but one form of education, the whip, in the shape of force, not convincing but intimidating. There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if the workers, treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power. They are men so long only as they burn with wrath against the reigning class. They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break the yoke. This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the proletariat--and when we take into consideration all the circumstances in which this class lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the resentment which it cherishes against the ruling class. The moral training which is not given to the worker in school is not supplied by the other conditions of his life; that moral training, at least, which alone has worth in the eyes of the bourgeoisie; his whole position and environment involves the strongest temptation to immorality. He is poor, life offers him no charm, almost every enjoyment is denied him, the penalties of the law have no further terrors for him; why should he restrain his desires, why leave to the rich the enjoyment of his birthright, why not seize a part of it for himself? What inducement has the proletarian not to steal! It is all very pretty and very agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the "sacredness of property" asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of itself. Money is the god of this world; the bourgeois takes the proletarian's money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No wonder, then, if the proletarian retains his atheism and no longer respects the sacredness and power of the earthly God. And when the poverty of the proletarian is intensified to the point of actual lack of the barest necessaries of life, to want and hunger, the temptation to disregard all social order does but gain power. This the bourgeoisie for the most part recognises. Symonds {115a} observes that poverty exercises the same ruinous influence upon the mind which drunkenness exercises upon the body; and Dr. Alison explains to property-holding readers, with the greatest exactness, what the consequences of social oppression must be for the working-class. {115b} Want leaves the working-man the choice between starving slowly, killing himself speedily, or taking what he needs where he finds it--in plain English, stealing. And there is no cause for surprise that most of them prefer stealing to starvation and suicide. True, there are, within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no other means of escape. But far more demoralising than his poverty in its influence upon the English working-man is the insecurity of his position, the necessity of living upon wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a proletarian of him. The smaller peasants in Germany are usually poor, and often suffer want, but they are less at the mercy of accident, they have at least something secure. The proletarian, who has nothing but his two hands, who consumes to-day what he earned yesterday, who is subject to every possible chance, and has not the slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom every crisis, every whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian is placed in the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human being. The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master, the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at worst a guarantee for life itself. But the proletarian must depend upon himself alone, and is yet prevented from so applying his abilities as to be able to rely upon them. Everything that the proletarian can do to improve his position is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods of varying chances to which he is exposed, over which he has not the slightest control. He is the passive subject of all possible combinations of circumstances, and must count himself fortunate when he has saved his life even for a short time; and his character and way of living are naturally shaped by these conditions. Either he seeks to keep his head above water in this whirlpool, to rescue his manhood, and this he can do solely in rebellion {116} against the class which plunders him so mercilessly and then abandons him to his fate, which strives to hold him in this position so demoralising to a human being; or he gives up the struggle against his fate as hopeless, and strives to profit, so far as he can, by the most favourable moment. To save is unavailing, for at the utmost he cannot save more than suffices to sustain life for a short time, while if he falls out of work, it is for no brief period. To accumulate lasting property for himself is impossible; and if it were not, he would only cease to be a working-man and another would take his place. What better thing can he do, then, when he gets high wages, than live well upon them? The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can, instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and which in the end moth and rust (_i.e_., the bourgeoisie) get possession of. Yet such a life is demoralising beyond all others. What Carlyle says of the cotton spinners is true of all English industrial workers: {117a} "Their trade, now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into inanition and 'short time,' is of the nature of gambling; they live by it like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation. Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus Steam demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a bewilderment; society, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first blessings of man are not theirs.--This world is for them no home, but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation against themselves and against all men. Is it a green, flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas fumes, cotton fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon, governed by a Demon?" And elsewhere: {117b} "Injustice, infidelity to truth and fact and Nature's order, being properly the one evil under the sun, and the feeling of injustice the one intolerable pain under the sun, our grand question as to the condition of these working-men would be: Is it just? And, first of all, what belief have they themselves formed about the justice of it? The words they promulgate are notable by way of answer; their actions are still more notable. Revolt, sullen, revengeful humour of revolt against the upper classes, decreasing respect for what their temporal superiors command, decreasing faith for what their spiritual superiors teach, is more and more the universal spirit of the lower classes. Such spirit may be blamed, may be vindicated, but all men must recognise it as extant there, all may know that it is mournful, that unless altered it will be fatal." Carlyle is perfectly right as to the facts and wrong only in censuring the wild rage of the workers against the higher classes. This rage, this passion, is rather the proof that the workers feel the inhumanity of their position, that they refuse to be degraded to the level of brutes, and that they will one day free themselves from servitude to the bourgeoisie. This may be seen in the case of those who do not share this wrath; they either bow humbly before the fate that overtakes them, live a respectful private life as well as they can, do not concern themselves as to the course of public affairs, help the bourgeoisie to forge the chains of the workers yet more securely, and stand upon the plane of intellectual nullity that prevailed before the industrial period began; or they are tossed about by fate, lose their moral hold upon themselves as they have already lost their economic hold, live along from day to day, drink and fall into licentiousness; and in both cases they are brutes. The last-named class contributes chiefly to the "rapid increase of vice," at which the bourgeoisie is so horrified after itself setting in motion the causes which give rise to it. Another source of demoralisation among the workers is their being condemned to work. As voluntary, productive activity is the highest enjoyment known to us, so is compulsory toil the most cruel, degrading punishment. Nothing is more terrible than being constrained to do some one thing every day from morning until night against one's will. And the more a man the worker feels himself, the more hateful must his work be to him, because he feels the constraint, the aimlessness of it for himself. Why does he work? For love of work? From a natural impulse? Not at all! He works for money, for a thing which has nothing whatsoever to do with the work itself; and he works so long, moreover, and in such unbroken monotony, that this alone must make his work a torture in the first weeks if he has the least human feeling left. The division of labour has multiplied the brutalising influences of forced work. In most branches the worker's activity is reduced to some paltry, purely mechanical manipulation, repeated minute after minute, unchanged year after year. {119} How much human feeling, what abilities can a man retain in his thirtieth year, who has made needle points or filed toothed wheels twelve hours every day from his early childhood, living all the time under the conditions forced upon the English proletarian? It is still the same thing since the introduction of steam. The worker's activity is made easy, muscular effort is saved, but the work itself becomes unmeaning and monotonous to the last degree. It offers no field for mental activity, and claims just enough of his attention to keep him from thinking of anything else. And a sentence to such work, to work which takes his whole time for itself, leaving him scarcely time to eat and sleep, none for physical exercise in the open air, or the enjoyment of Nature, much less for mental activity, how can such a sentence help degrading a human being to the level of a brute? Once more the worker must choose, must either surrender himself to his fate, become a "good" workman, heed "faithfully" the interest of the bourgeoisie, in which case he most certainly becomes a brute, or else he must rebel, fight for his manhood to the last, and this he can only do in the fight against the bourgeoisie. And when all these conditions have engendered vast demoralisation among the workers, a new influence is added to the old, to spread this degradation more widely and carry it to the extremest point. This influence is the centralisation of the population. The writers of the English bourgeoisie are crying murder at the demoralising tendency of the great cities, like perverted Jeremiahs, they sing dirges, not over the destruction, but the growth of the cities. Sheriff Alison attributes almost everything, and Dr. Vaughan, author of "The Age of Great Cities," still more to this influence. And this is natural, for the propertied class has too direct an interest in the other conditions which tend to destroy the worker body and soul. If they should admit that "poverty, insecurity, overwork, forced work, are the chief ruinous influences," they would have to draw the conclusion, "then let us give the poor property, guarantee their subsistence, make laws against overwork," and this the bourgeoisie dare not formulate. But the great cities have grown up so spontaneously, the population has moved into them so wholly of its own motion, and the inference that manufacture and the middle-class which profits from it alone have created the cities is so remote, that it is extremely convenient for the ruling class to ascribe all the evil to this apparently unavoidable source; whereas the great cities really only secure a more rapid and certain development for evils already existing in the germ. Alison is humane enough to admit this; he is no thoroughbred Liberal manufacturer, but only a half developed Tory bourgeois, and he has, therefore, an open eye, now and then, where the full-fledged bourgeois is still stone blind. Let us hear him: {120} "It is in the great cities that vice has spread her temptations, and pleasure her seductions, and folly her allurements; that guilt is encouraged by the hope of impunity, and idleness fostered by the frequency of example. It is to these great marts of human corruption that the base and the profligate resort from the simplicity of country life; it is here that they find victims whereon to practise their iniquity, and gains to reward the dangers that attend them. Virtue is here depressed from the obscurity in which it is involved. Guilt is matured from the difficulty of its detection; licentiousness is rewarded by the immediate enjoyment which it promises. If any person will walk through St. Giles's, the crowded alleys of Dublin, or the poorer quarters of Glasgow by night, he will meet with ample proof of these observations; he will no longer wonder at the disorderly habits and profligate enjoyments of the lower orders; his astonishment will be, not that there is so much, but that there is so little crime in the world. The great cause of human corruption in these crowded situations is the contagious nature of bad example and the extreme difficulty of avoiding the seductions of vice when they are brought into close and daily proximity with the younger part of the people. Whatever we may think of the strength of virtue, experience proves that the higher orders are indebted for their exemption from atrocious crime or disorderly habits chiefly to their fortunate removal from the scene of temptation; and that where they are exposed to the seductions which assail their inferiors, they are noways behind them in yielding to their influence. It is the peculiar misfortune of the poor in great cities that they cannot fly from these irresistible temptations, but that, turn where they will, they are met by the alluring forms of vice, or the seductions of guilty enjoyment. It is the experienced impossibility of concealing the attractions of vice from the younger part of the poor in great cities which exposes them to so many causes of demoralisation. All this proceeds not from any unwonted or extraordinary depravity in the character of these victims of licentiousness, but from the almost irresistible nature of the temptations to which the poor are exposed. The rich, who censure their conduct, would in all probability yield as rapidly as they have done to the influence of similar causes. There is a certain degree of misery, a certain proximity to sin, which virtue is rarely able to withstand, and which the young, in particular, are generally unable to resist. The progress of vice in such circumstances is almost as certain and often nearly as rapid as that of physical contagion." And elsewhere: "When the higher orders for their own profit have drawn the labouring- classes in great numbers into a small space, the contagion of guilt becomes rapid and unavoidable. The lower orders, situated as they are in so far as regards moral or religious instruction, are frequently hardly more to be blamed for yielding to the temptations which surround them than for falling victims to the typhus fever." Enough! The half-bourgeois Alison betrays to us, however narrow his manner of expressing himself, the evil effect of the great cities upon the moral development of the workers. Another, a bourgeois _pur sang_, a man after the heart of the Anti-Corn Law League, Dr. Andrew Ure, {122} betrays the other side. He tells us that life in great cities facilitates cabals among the workers and confers power on the Plebs. If here the workers are not educated (_i.e_., to obedience to the bourgeoisie), they may view matters one-sidedly, from the standpoint of a sinister selfishness, and may readily permit themselves to be hoodwinked by sly demagogues; nay, they might even be capable of viewing their greatest benefactors, the frugal and enterprising capitalists, with a jealous and hostile eye. Here proper training alone can avail, or national bankruptcy and other horrors must follow, since a revolution of the workers could hardly fail to occur. And our bourgeois is perfectly justified in his fears. If the centralisation of population stimulates and develops the property-holding class, it forces the development of the workers yet more rapidly. The workers begin to feel as a class, as a whole; they begin to perceive that, though feeble as individuals, they form a power united; their separation from the bourgeoisie, the development of views peculiar to the workers and corresponding to their position in life, is fostered, the consciousness of oppression awakens, and the workers attain social and political importance. The great cities are the birthplaces of labour movements; in them the workers first began to reflect upon their own condition, and to struggle against it; in them the opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie first made itself manifest; from them proceeded the Trades-Unions, Chartism, and Socialism. The great cities have transformed the disease of the social body, which appears in chronic form in the country, into an acute one, and so made manifest its real nature and the means of curing it. Without the great cities and their forcing influence upon the popular intelligence, the working-class would be far less advanced than it is. Moreover, they have destroyed the last remnant of the patriarchal relation between working- men and employers, a result to which manufacture on a large scale has contributed by multiplying the employes dependent upon a single employer. The bourgeoisie deplores all this, it is true, and has good reason to do so; for, under the old conditions, the bourgeois was comparatively secure against a revolt on the part of his hands. He could tyrannise over them and plunder them to his heart's content, and yet receive obedience, gratitude, and assent from these stupid people by bestowing a trifle of patronising friendliness which cost him nothing, and perhaps some paltry present, all apparently out of pure, self-sacrificing, uncalled-for goodness of heart, but really not one-tenth part of his duty. As an individual bourgeois, placed under conditions which he had not himself created, he might do his duty at least in part; but, as a member of the ruling class, which, by the mere fact of its ruling, is responsible for the condition of the whole nation, he did nothing of what his position involved. On the contrary, he plundered the whole nation for his own individual advantage. In the patriarchal relation that hypocritically concealed the slavery of the worker, the latter must have remained an intellectual zero, totally ignorant of his own interest, a mere private individual. Only when estranged from his employer, when convinced that the sole bond between employer and employe is the bond of pecuniary profit, when the sentimental bond between them, which stood not the slightest test, had wholly fallen away, then only did the worker begin to recognise his own interests and develop independently; then only did he cease to be the slave of the bourgeoisie in his thoughts, feelings, and the expression of his will. And to this end manufacture on a grand scale and in great cities has most largely contributed. Another influence of great moment in forming the character of the English workers is the Irish immigration already referred to. On the one hand it has, as we have seen, degraded the English workers, removed them from civilisation, and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other hand, it has thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeoisie, and hastened the approaching crisis. For the course of the social disease from which England is suffering is the same as the course of a physical disease; it develops, according to certain laws, has its own crisis, the last and most violent of which determines the fate of the patient. And as the English nation cannot succumb under the final crises, but must go forth from it, born again, rejuvenated, we can but rejoice over everything which accelerates the course of the disease. And to this the Irish immigration further contributes by reason of the passionate, mercurial Irish temperament, which it imports into England and into the English working-class. The Irish and English are to each other much as the French and the Germans; and the mixing of the more facile, excitable, fiery Irish temperament with the stable, reasoning, persevering English must, in the long run, be productive only of good for both. The rough egotism of the English bourgeoisie would have kept its hold upon the working-class much more firmly if the Irish nature, generous to a fault, and ruled primarily by sentiment, had not intervened, and softened the cold, rational English character in part by a mixture of the races, and in part by the ordinary contact of life. In view of all this, it is not surprising that the working-class has gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than with the workers in whose midst it lives. The workers speak other dialects, have other thoughts and ideals, other customs and moral principles, a different religion and other politics than those of the bourgeoisie. Thus they are two radically dissimilar nations, as unlike as difference of race could make them, of whom we on the Continent have known but one, the bourgeoisie. Yet it is precisely the other, the people, the proletariat, which is by far the more important for the future of England. Of the public character of the English working-man, as it finds expression in associations and political principles, we shall have occasion to speak later; let us here consider the results of the influences cited above, as they affect the private character of the worker. The workman is far more humane in ordinary life than the bourgeois. I have already mentioned the fact that the beggars are accustomed to turn almost exclusively to the workers, and that, in general, more is done by the workers than by the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of the poor. This fact, which any one may prove for himself any day, is confirmed, among others, by Dr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, who says: {125} "The poor give one another more than the rich give the poor. I can confirm my statement by the testimony of one of our eldest, most skilful, most observant, and humane physicians, Dr. Bardsley, who has often declared that the total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon one another, surpasses that which the rich contribute in the same time." In other ways, too, the humanity of the workers is constantly manifesting itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and can therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more, than the property-holding class. For them money is worth only what it will buy, whereas for the bourgeois it has an especial inherent value, the value of a god, and makes the bourgeois the mean, low money-grabber that he is. The working-man who knows nothing of this feeling of reverence for money is therefore less grasping than the bourgeois, whose whole activity is for the purpose of gain, who sees in the accumulations of his money-bags the end and aim of life. Hence the workman is much less prejudiced, has a clearer eye for facts as they are than the bourgeois, and does not look at everything through the spectacles of personal selfishness. His faulty education saves him from religious prepossessions, he does not understand religious questions, does not trouble himself about them, knows nothing of the fanaticism that holds the bourgeoisie bound; and if he chances to have any religion, he has it only in name, not even in theory. Practically he lives for this world, and strives to make himself at home in it. All the writers of the bourgeoisie are unanimous on this point, that the workers are not religious, and do not attend church. From the general statement are to be excepted the Irish, a few elderly people, and the half-bourgeois, the overlookers, foremen, and the like. But among the masses there prevails almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the utmost, some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words, or a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all sects is in very bad odour with the working-men, though the loss of its influence is recent. At present, however, the mere cry: "He's a parson!" is often enough to drive one of the clergy from the platform of a public meeting. And like the rest of the conditions under which he lives, his want of religious and other culture contributes to keep the working-man more unconstrained, freer from inherited stable tenets and cut-and-dried opinions, than the bourgeois who is saturated with the class prejudices poured into him from his earliest youth. There is nothing to be done with the bourgeois; he is essentially conservative in however liberal a guise, his interest is bound up with that of the property-holding class, he is dead to all active movement; he is losing his position in the forefront of England's historical development. The workers are taking his place, in rightful claim first, then in fact. All this, together with the correspondent public action of the workers, with which we shall deal later, forms the favourable side of the character of this class; the unfavourable one may be quite as briefly summed up, and follows quite as naturally out of the given causes. Drunkenness, sexual irregularities, brutality, and disregard for the rights of property are the chief points with which the bourgeois charges them. That they drink heavily is to be expected. Sheriff Alison asserts that in Glasgow some thirty thousand working-men get drunk every Saturday night, and the estimate is certainly not exaggerated; and that in that city in 1830, one house in twelve, and in 1840, one house in ten, was a public-house; that in Scotland, in 1823, excise was paid upon 2,300,000 gallons; in 1837, upon 6,620,000 gallons; in England, in 1823, upon 1,976,000 gallons, and in 1837, upon 7,875,000 gallons of spirits. The Beer Act of 1830, which facilitated the opening of beerhouses (jerry shops), whose keepers are licensed to sell beer to be drunk on the premises, facilitated the spread of intemperance by bringing a beerhouse, so to say, to everybody's door. In nearly every street there are several such beerhouses, and among two or three neighbouring houses in the country one is sure to be a jerry shop. Besides these, there are hush- shops in multitudes, _i.e_., secret drinking-places which are not licensed, and quite as many secret distilleries which produce great quantities of spirits in retired spots, rarely visited by the police, in the great cities. Gaskell estimates these secret distilleries in Manchester alone at more than a hundred, and their product at 156,000 gallons at the least. In Manchester there are, besides, more than a thousand public-houses selling all sorts of alcoholic drinks, or quite as many in proportion to the number of inhabitants as in Glasgow. In all other great towns, the state of things is the same. And when one considers, apart from the usual consequences of intemperance, that men and women, even children, often mothers with babies in their arms, come into contact in these places with the most degraded victims of the bourgeois regime, with thieves, swindlers, and prostitutes; when one reflects that many a mother gives the baby on her arm gin to drink, the demoralising effects of frequenting such places cannot be denied. On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops somewhat earlier than usual, when the whole working-class pours from its own poor quarters into the main thoroughfares, intemperance may be seen in all its brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an evening without meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others lying in the gutter. On Sunday evening the same scene is usually repeated, only less noisily. And when their money is spent, the drunkards go to the nearest pawnshop, of which there are plenty in every city--over sixty in Manchester, and ten or twelve in a single street of Salford, Chapel Street--and pawn whatever they possess. Furniture, Sunday clothes where such exist, kitchen utensils in masses are fetched from the pawnbrokers on Saturday night only to wander back, almost without fail, before the next Wednesday, until at last some accident makes the final redemption impossible, and one article after another falls into the clutches of the usurer, or until he refuses to give a single farthing more upon the battered, used-up pledge. When one has seen the extent of intemperance among the workers in England, one readily believes Lord Ashley's statement that this class annually expends something like twenty-five million pounds sterling upon intoxicating liquor: and the deterioration in external conditions, the frightful shattering of mental and physical health, the ruin of all domestic relations which follow may readily be imagined. True, the temperance societies have done much, but what are a few thousand teetotallers among the millions of workers? When Father Matthew, the Irish apostle of temperance, passes through the English cities, from thirty to sixty thousand workers take the pledge; but most of them break it again within a month. If one counts up the immense numbers who have taken the pledge in the last three or four years in Manchester, the total is greater than the whole population of the town--and still it is by no means evident that intemperance is diminishing. Next to intemperance in the enjoyment of intoxicating liquors, one of the principal faults of English working-men is sexual licence. But this, too, follows with relentless logic, with inevitable necessity out of the position of a class left to itself, with no means of making fitting use of its freedom. The bourgeoisie has left the working-class only these two pleasures, while imposing upon it a multitude of labours and hardships, and the consequence is that the working-men, in order to get something from life, concentrate their whole energy upon these two enjoyments, carry them to excess, surrender to them in the most unbridled manner. When people are placed under conditions which appeal to the brute only, what remains to them but to rebel or to succumb to utter brutality? And when, moreover, the bourgeoisie does its full share in maintaining prostitution--and how many of the 40,000 prostitutes who fill the streets of London every evening live upon the virtuous bourgeoisie! How many of them owe it to the seduction of a bourgeois, that they must offer their bodies to the passers-by in order to live?--surely it has least of all a right to reproach the workers with their sexual brutality. The failings of the workers in general may be traced to an unbridled thirst for pleasure, to want of providence, and of flexibility in fitting into the social order, to the general inability to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment to a remoter advantage. But is that to be wondered at? When a class can purchase few and only the most sensual pleasures by its wearying toil, must it not give itself over blindly and madly to those pleasures? A class about whose education no one troubles himself, which is a playball to a thousand chances, knows no security in life--what incentives has such a class to providence, to "respectability," to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for a remoter enjoyment, most uncertain precisely by reason of the perpetually varying, shifting conditions under which the proletariat lives? A class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages, one to which the social system appears in purely hostile aspects--who can demand that such a class respect this social order? Verily that is asking much! But the working-man cannot escape the present arrangement of society so long as it exists, and when the individual worker resists it, the greatest injury falls upon himself. Thus the social order makes family life almost impossible for the worker. In a comfortless, filthy house, hardly good enough for mere nightly shelter, ill-furnished, often neither rain-tight nor warm, a foul atmosphere filling rooms overcrowded with human beings, no domestic comfort is possible. The husband works the whole day through, perhaps the wife also and the elder children, all in different places; they meet night and morning only, all under perpetual temptation to drink; what family life is possible under such conditions? Yet the working-man cannot escape from the family, must live in the family, and the consequence is a perpetual succession of family troubles, domestic quarrels, most demoralising for parents and children alike. Neglect of all domestic duties, neglect of the children, especially, is only too common among the English working-people, and only too vigorously fostered by the existing institutions of society. And children growing up in this savage way, amidst these demoralising influences, are expected to turn out goody-goody and moral in the end! Verily the requirements are naive, which the self-satisfied bourgeois makes upon the working-man! The contempt for the existing social order is most conspicuous in its extreme form--that of offences against the law. If the influences demoralising to the working-man act more powerfully, more concentratedly than usual, he becomes an offender as certainly as water abandons the fluid for the vaporous state at 80 degrees, Reaumur. Under the brutal and brutalising treatment of the bourgeoisie, the working-man becomes precisely as much a thing without volition as water, and is subject to the laws of nature with precisely the same necessity; at a certain point all freedom ceases. Hence with the extension of the proletariat, crime has increased in England, and the British nation has become the most criminal in the world. From the annual criminal tables of the Home Secretary, it is evident that the increase of crime in England has proceeded with incomprehensible rapidity. The numbers of arrests for _criminal_ offences reached in the years: 1805, 4,605; 1810, 5,146; 1815, 7,898; 1820, 13,710; 1825, 14,437; 1830,18,107; 1835, 20,731; 1840, 27,187; 1841, 27,760; 1842, 31,309 in England and Wales alone. That is to say, they increased sevenfold in thirty-seven years. Of these arrests, in 1842, 4,497 were made in Lancashire alone, or more than 14 per cent. of the whole; and 4,094 in Middlesex, including London, or more than 13 per cent. So that two districts which include great cities with large proletarian populations, produced one-fourth of the total amount of crime, though their population is far from forming one-fourth of the whole. Moreover, the criminal tables prove directly that nearly all crime arises within the proletariat; for, in 1842, taking the average, out of 100 criminals, 32.35 could neither read nor write; 58.32 read and wrote imperfectly; 6.77 could read and write well; 0.22 had enjoyed a higher education, while the degree of education of 2.34 could not be ascertained. In Scotland, crime has increased yet more rapidly. There were but 89 arrests for criminal offences in 1819, and as early as 1837 the number had risen to 3,176, and in 1842 to 4,189. In Lanarkshire, where Sheriff Alison himself made out the official report, population has doubled once in thirty years, and crime once in five and a half, or six times more rapidly than the population. The offences, as in all civilised countries, are, in the great majority of cases, against property, and have, therefore, arisen from want in some form; for what a man has, he does not steal. The proportion of offences against property to the population, which in the Netherlands is as 1: 7,140, and in France, as 1: 1,804, was in England, when Gaskell wrote, as 1: 799. The proportion of offences against persons to the population is, in the Netherlands, 1: 28,904; in France, 1: 17,573; in England, 1: 23,395; that of crimes in general to the population in the agricultural districts, as 1: 1,043; in the manufacturing districts as 1: 840. {131a} In the whole of England to-day the proportion is 1: 660; {131b} though it is scarcely ten years since Gaskell's book appeared! These facts are certainly more than sufficient to bring any one, even a bourgeois, to pause and reflect upon the consequences of such a state of things. If demoralisation and crime multiply twenty years longer in this proportion (and if English manufacture in these twenty years should be less prosperous than heretofore, the progressive multiplication of crime can only continue the more rapidly), what will the result be? Society is already in a state of visible dissolution; it is impossible to pick up a newspaper without seeing the most striking evidence of the giving way of all social ties. I look at random into a heap of English journals lying before me; there is the _Manchester Guardian_ for October 30, 1844, which reports for three days. It no longer takes the trouble to give exact details as to Manchester, and merely relates the most interesting cases: that the workers in a mill have struck for higher wages without giving notice, and been condemned by a Justice of the Peace to resume work; that in Salford a couple of boys had been caught stealing, and a bankrupt tradesman tried to cheat his creditors. From the neighbouring towns the reports are more detailed: in Ashton, two thefts, one burglary, one suicide; in Bury, one theft; in Bolton, two thefts, one revenue fraud; in Leigh, one theft; in Oldham, one strike for wages, one theft, one fight between Irish women, one non-Union hatter assaulted by Union men, one mother beaten by her son, one attack upon the police, one robbery of a church; in Stockport, discontent of working-men with wages, one theft, one fraud, one fight, one wife beaten by her husband; in Warrington, one theft, one fight; in Wigan, one theft, and one robbery of a church. The reports of the London papers are much worse; frauds, thefts, assaults, family quarrels crowd one another. A _Times_ of September 12, 1844, falls into my hand, which gives a report of a single day, including a theft, an attack upon the police, a sentence upon a father requiring him to support his illegitimate son, the abandonment of a child by its parents, and the poisoning of a man by his wife. Similar reports are to be found in all the English papers. In this country, social war is under full headway, every one stands for himself, and fights for himself against all comers, and whether or not he shall injure all the others who are his declared foes, depends upon a cynical calculation as to what is most advantageous for himself. It no longer occurs to any one to come to a peaceful understanding with his fellow-man; all differences are settled by threats, violence, or in a law-court. In short, every one sees in his neighbour an enemy to be got out of the way, or, at best, a tool to be used for his own advantage. And this war grows from year to year, as the criminal tables show, more violent, passionate, irreconcilable. The enemies are dividing gradually into two great camps--the bourgeoisie on the one hand, the workers on the other. This war of each against all, of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, need cause us no surprise, for it is only the logical sequel of the principle involved in free competition. But it may very well surprise us that the bourgeoisie remains so quiet and composed in the face of the rapidly gathering storm- clouds, that it can read all these things daily in the papers without, we will not say indignation at such a social condition, but fear of its consequences, of a universal outburst of that which manifests itself symptomatically from day to day in the form of crime. But then it is the bourgeoisie, and from its standpoint cannot even see the facts, much less perceive their consequences. One thing only is astounding, that class prejudice and preconceived opinions can hold a whole class of human beings in such perfect, I might almost say, such mad blindness. Meanwhile, the development of the nation goes its way whether the bourgeoisie has eyes for it or not, and will surprise the property-holding class one day with things not dreamed of in its philosophy. SINGLE BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. FACTORY HANDS. In dealing now with the more important branches of the English manufacturing proletariat, we shall begin, according to the principle already laid down, with the factory-workers, _i.e_., those who are comprised under the Factory Act. This law regulates the length of the working-day in mills in which wool, silk, cotton, and flax are spun or woven by means of water or steam-power, and embraces, therefore, the more important branches of English manufacture. The class employed by them is the most intelligent and energetic of all the English workers, and, therefore, the most restless and most hated by the bourgeoisie. It stands as a whole, and the cotton-workers pre-eminently stand, at the head of the labour movement, as their masters the manufacturers, especially those of Lancashire, take the lead of the bourgeois agitation. We have already seen in the introduction how the population employed in working up the textile materials were first torn from their former way of life. It is, therefore, not surprising that the progress of mechanical invention in later years also affected precisely these workers most deeply and permanently. The history of cotton manufacture as related by Ure, {134a} Baines, {134b} and others is the story of improvements in every direction, most of which have become domesticated in the other branches of industry as well. Hand-work is superseded by machine-work almost universally, nearly all manipulations are conducted by the aid of steam or water, and every year is bringing further improvements. In a well-ordered state of society, such improvements could only be a source of rejoicing; in a war of all against all, individuals seize the benefit for themselves, and so deprive the majority of the means of subsistence. Every improvement in machinery throws workers out of employment, and the greater the advance, the more numerous the unemployed; each great improvement produces, therefore, upon a number of workers the effect of a commercial crisis, creates want, wretchedness, and crime. Take a few examples. The very first invention, the jenny, worked by one man, produced at least sixfold what the spinning-wheel had yielded in the same time; thus every new jenny threw five spinners out of employment. The throstle, which, in turn, produced much more than the jenny, and like it, was worked by one man, threw still more people out of employment. The mule, which required yet fewer hands in proportion to the product, had the same effect, and every improvement in the mule, every multiplication of its spindles, diminished still further the number of workers employed. But this increase of the number of spindles in the mule is so great that whole armies of workers have been thrown out of employment by it. For, whereas one spinner, with a couple of children for piecers, formerly set six hundred spindles in motion, he could now manage fourteen hundred to two thousand spindles upon two mules, so that two adult spinners and a part of the piecers whom they employed were thrown out. And since self-acting mules have been introduced into a very large number of spinning-mills, the spinners' work is wholly performed by the machine. There lies before me a book from the pen of James Leach, {135} one of the recognised leaders of the Chartists in Manchester. The author has worked for years in various branches of industry, in mills and coal mines, and is known to me personally as an honest, trustworthy, and capable man. In consequence of his political position, he had at command extensive detailed information as to the different factories, collected by the workers themselves, and he publishes tables from which it is clear that in 1841, in 35 factories, 1,060 fewer mule spinners were employed than in 1829, though the number of spindles in these 35 factories had increased by 99,239. He cites five factories in which no spinners whatever are employed, self-actors only being used. While the number of spindles increased by 10 per cent., the number of spinners diminished more than 60 per cent. And Leach adds that since 1841, so many improvements have been introduced by double-decking and other means, that in some of the factories named, half the operatives have been discharged. In one factory alone, where eighty spinners were employed a short time ago, there are now but twenty left; the others having been discharged or set at children's work for children's wages. Of Stockport Leach tells a similar story, that in 1835, 800 spinners were employed, and in 1840 but 140, though the manufacture of Stockport has greatly increased during the last eight or nine years. Similar improvements have now been made in carding frames, by which one-half the operatives have been thrown out of employment. In one factory improved frames have been set up, which have thrown four hands out of eight out of work, besides which the employer reduced the wages of the four retained from eight shillings to seven. The same process has gone on in the weaving industry; the power-loom has taken possession of one branch of hand-weaving after another, and since it produces much more than the hand-loom, while one weaver can work two looms, it has superseded a multitude of working-people. And in all sorts of manufacture, in flax and wool-spinning, in silk-twisting, the case is the same. The power-loom, too, is beginning to appropriate one branch after another of wool and linen-weaving; in Rochdale alone, there are more power than hand-looms in flannel and other wool-weaving branches. The bourgeoisie usually replies to this, that improvements in machinery, by decreasing the cost of production, supply finished goods at lower prices, and that these reduced prices cause such an increase in consumption that the unemployed operatives soon find full employment in newly-founded factories. {136} The bourgeoisie is so far correct that under certain conditions favourable for the general development of manufacture, every reduction in price of goods _in which the raw material is cheap_, greatly increases consumption, and gives rise to the building of new factories; but every further word of the assertion is a lie. The bourgeoisie ignores the fact that it takes years for these results of the decrease in price to follow and for new factories to be built; it is silent upon the point that every improvement in machinery throws the real work, the expenditure of force, more and more upon the machine, and so transforms the work of full-grown men into mere supervision, which a feeble woman or even a child can do quite as well, and does for half or two-thirds wages; that, therefore, grown men are constantly more and more supplanted and _not re-employed_ by the increase in manufacture; it conceals the fact that whole branches of industry fall away, or are so changed that they must be learned afresh; and it takes good care not to confess what it usually harps upon, whenever the question of forbidding the work of children is broached, that factory-work must be learned in earliest youth in order to be learned properly. It does not mention the fact that the process of improvement goes steadily on, and that as soon as the operative has succeeded in making himself at home in a new branch, if he actually does succeed in so doing, this, too, is taken from him, and with it the last remnant of security which remained to him for winning his bread. But the bourgeoisie gets the benefit of the improvements in machinery; it has a capital opportunity for piling up money during the first years while many old machines are still in use, and the improvement not yet universally introduced; and it would be too much to ask that it should have an open eye for the disadvantages inseparable from these improvements. The fact that improved machinery reduces wages has also been as violently disputed by the bourgeoisie, as it is constantly reiterated by the working-men. The bourgeoisie insists that although the price of piece- work has been reduced, yet the total of wages for the week's work has rather risen than fallen, and the condition of the operatives rather improved than deteriorated. It is hard to get to the bottom of the matter, for the operatives usually dwell upon the price of piece-work. But it is certain that the weekly wage, also, has, in many branches of work, been reduced by the improvement of machinery. The so-called fine spinners (who spin fine mule yarn), for instance, do receive high wages, thirty to forty shillings a week, because they have a powerful association for keeping wages up, and their craft requires long training; but the coarse spinners who have to compete against self-actors (which are not as yet adapted for fine spinning), and whose association was broken down by the introduction of these machines, receive very low wages. A mule spinner told me that he does not earn more than fourteen shillings a week, and his statement agrees with that of Leach, that in various factories the coarse spinners earn less than sixteen shillings and sixpence a week, and that a spinner, who years ago earned thirty shillings, can now hardly scrape up twelve and a half, and had not earned more on an average in the past year. The wages of women and children may perhaps have fallen less, but only because they were not high from the beginning. I know several women, widows with children, who have trouble enough to earn eight to nine shillings a week; and that they and their families cannot live decently upon that sum, every one must admit who knows the price of the barest necessaries of life in England. That wages in general have been reduced by the improvement of machinery is the unanimous testimony of the operatives. The bourgeois assertion that the condition of the working-class has been improved by machinery is most vigorously proclaimed a falsehood in every meeting of working-men in the factory districts. And even if it were true that the relative wage, the price of piece-work only, has fallen, while the absolute wage, the sum to be earned in the week, remained unchanged, what would follow? That the operatives have had quietly to look on while the manufacturers filled their purses from every improvement without giving the hands the smallest share in the gain. The bourgeois forgets, in fighting the working-man, the most ordinary principles of his own Political Economy. He who at other times swears by Malthus, cries out in his anxiety before the workers: "Where could the millions by which the population of England has increased find work, without the improvements in machinery?" {138} As though the bourgeois did not know well enough that without machinery and the expansion of industry which it produced, these "millions" would never have been brought into the world and grown up! The service which machinery has rendered the workers is simply this: that it has brought home to their minds the necessity of a social reform by means of which machinery shall no longer work against but for them. Let the wise bourgeois ask the people who sweep the streets in Manchester and elsewhere (though even this is past now, since machines for the purpose have been invented and introduced), or sell salt, matches, oranges, and shoe-strings on the streets, or even beg, what they were formerly, and he will see how many will answer: "Mill-hands thrown out of work by machinery." The consequences of improvement in machinery under our present social conditions are, for the working-man, solely injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive. Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a "surplus population," to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. And what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it! To escape despair, there are but two ways open to him; either inward and outward revolt against the bourgeoisie or drunkenness and general demoralisation. And the English operatives are accustomed to take refuge in both. The history of the English proletariat relates hundreds of uprisings against machinery and the bourgeoisie; we have already spoken of the moral dissolution which, in itself, is only another form of despair. The worst situation is that of those workers who have to compete against a machine that is making its way. The price of the goods which they produce adapts itself to the price of the kindred product of the machine, and as the latter works more cheaply, its human competitor has but the lowest wages. The same thing happens to every operative employed upon an old machine in competition with later improvements. And who else is there to bear the hardship? The manufacturer will not throw out his old apparatus, nor will he sustain the loss upon it; out of the dead mechanism he can make nothing, so he fastens upon the living worker, the universal scapegoat of society. Of all the workers in competition with machinery, the most ill-used are the hand-loom cotton weavers. They receive the most trifling wages, and, with full work, are not in a position to earn more than ten shillings a week. One class of woven goods after another is annexed by the power-loom, and hand-weaving is the last refuge of workers thrown out of employment in other branches, so that the trade is always overcrowded. Hence it comes that, in average seasons, the hand-weaver counts himself fortunate if he can earn six or seven shillings a week, while to reach this sum he must sit at his loom fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Most woven goods require moreover a damp weaving-room, to keep the weft from snapping, and in part, for this reason, in part because of their poverty, which prevents them from paying for better dwellings, the workrooms of these weavers are usually without wooden or paved floors. I have been in many dwellings of such weavers, in remote, vile courts and alleys, usually in cellars. Often half-a-dozen of these hand-loom weavers, several of them married, live together in a cottage with one or two workrooms, and one large sleeping- room. Their food consists almost exclusively of potatoes, with perhaps oatmeal porridge, rarely milk, and scarcely ever meat. Great numbers of them are Irish or of Irish descent. And these poor hand-loom weavers, first to suffer from every crisis, and last to be relieved from it, must serve the bourgeoisie as a handle in meeting attacks upon the factory system. "See," cries the bourgeois, triumphantly, "see how these poor creatures must famish, while the mill operatives are thriving, and _then_ judge the factory {140} system!" As though it were not precisely the factory system and the machinery belonging to it which had so shamefully crushed the hand-loom weavers, and as though the bourgeoisie did not know this quite as well as ourselves! But the bourgeoisie has interests at stake, and so a falsehood or two and a bit of hypocrisy won't matter much. Let us examine somewhat more closely the fact that machinery more and more supersedes the work of men. The human labour, involved in both spinning and weaving, consists chiefly in piecing broken threads, as the machine does all the rest. This work requires no muscular strength, but only flexibility of finger. Men are, therefore, not only not needed for it, but actually, by reason of the greater muscular development of the hand, less fit for it than women and children, and are, therefore, naturally almost superseded by them. Hence, the more the use of the arms, the expenditure of strength, can be transferred to steam or water- power, the fewer men need be employed; and as women and children work more cheaply, and in these branches better than men, they take their places. In the spinning-mills women and girls are to be found in almost exclusive possession of the throstles; among the mules one man, an adult spinner (with self-actors, he, too, becomes superfluous), and several piecers for tying the threads, usually children or women, sometimes young men of from eighteen to twenty years, here and there an old spinner {141} thrown out of other employment. At the power-looms women, from fifteen to twenty years, are chiefly employed, and a few men; these, however, rarely remain at this trade after their twenty-first year. Among the preparatory machinery, too, women alone are to be found, with here and there a man to clean and sharpen the carding-frames. Besides all these, the factories employ numbers of children--doffers--for mounting and taking down bobbins, and a few men as overlookers, a mechanic and an engineer for the steam-engines, carpenters, porters, etc.; but the actual work of the mills is done by women and children. This the manufacturers deny. They published last year elaborate tables to prove that machinery does not supersede adult male operatives. According to these tables, rather more than half of all the factory-workers employed, _viz_., 52 per cent., were females and 48 per cent. males, and of those operatives more than half were over eighteen years old. So far, so good. But the manufacturers are very careful not to tell us, how many of the adults were men and how many women. And this is just the point. Besides this, they have evidently counted the mechanics, engineers, carpenters, all the men employed in any way in the factories, perhaps even the clerks, and still they have not the courage to tell the whole truth. These publications teem generally with falsehoods, perversions, crooked statements, with calculations of averages, that prove a great deal for the uninitiated reader and nothing for the initiated, and with suppressions of facts bearing on the most important points; and they prove only the selfish blindness and want of uprightness of the manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the statements of a speech with which Lord Ashley introduced the Ten Hours' Bill, March 15th, 1844, into the House of Commons. Here he gives some data as to the relations of sex and age of the operatives, not yet refuted by the manufacturers, whose statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a part of the manufacturing industry of England. Of 419,560 factory operatives of the British Empire in 1839, 192,887, or nearly half, were under eighteen years of age, and 242,296 of the female sex, of whom 112,192 were less than eighteen years old. There remain, therefore, 80,695 male operatives under eighteen years, and 96,569 adult male operatives, _or not one full quarter_ of the whole number. In the cotton factories, 56.25 per cent.; in the woollen mills, 69.5 per cent.; in the silk mills, 70.5 per cent.; in the flax-spinning mills, 70.5 per cent. of all operatives are of the female sex. These numbers suffice to prove the crowding out of adult males. But you have only to go into the nearest mill to see the fact confirmed. Hence follows of necessity that inversion of the existing social order which, being forced upon them, has the most ruinous consequences for the workers. The employment of women at once breaks up the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or elsewhere, what becomes of the children? They grow up like wild weeds; they are put out to nurse for a shilling or eighteenpence a week, and how they are treated may be imagined. Hence the accidents to which little children fall victims multiply in the factory districts to a terrible extent. The lists of the Coroner of Manchester {143a} showed for nine months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77 from other causes, or a total of 225 {143b} deaths from accidents, while in non-manufacturing Liverpool during twelve months there were but 146 fatal accidents. The mining accidents are excluded in both cases; and since the Coroner of Manchester has no authority in Salford, the population of both places mentioned in the comparison is about the same. The _Manchester Guardian_ reports one or more deaths by burning in almost every number. That the general mortality among young children must be increased by the employment of the mothers is self-evident, and is placed beyond all doubt by notorious facts. Women often return to the mill three or four days after confinement, leaving the baby, of course; in the dinner hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat something, and what sort of suckling that can be is also evident. Lord Ashley repeats the testimony of several workwomen: "M. H., twenty years old, has two children, the youngest a baby, that is tended by the other, a little older. The mother goes to the mill shortly after five o'clock in the morning, and comes home at eight at night; all day the milk pours from her breasts, so that her clothing drips with it." "H. W. has three children, goes away Monday morning at five o'clock, and comes back Saturday evening; has so much to do for the children then that she cannot get to bed before three o'clock in the morning; often wet through to the skin, and obliged to work in that state." She said: "My breasts have given me the most frightful pain, and I have been dripping wet with milk." The use of narcotics to keep the children still is fostered by this infamous system, and has reached a great extent in the factory districts. Dr. Johns, Registrar in Chief for Manchester, is of opinion that this custom is the chief source of the many deaths from convulsions. The employment of the wife dissolves the family utterly and of necessity, and this dissolution, in our present society, which is based upon the family, brings the most demoralising consequences for parents as well as children. A mother who has no time to trouble herself about her child, to perform the most ordinary loving services for it during its first year, who scarcely indeed sees it, can be no real mother to the child, must inevitably grow indifferent to it, treat it unlovingly like a stranger. The children who grow up under such conditions are utterly ruined for later family life, can never feel at home in the family which they themselves found, because they have always been accustomed to isolation, and they contribute therefore to the already general undermining of the family in the working-class. A similar dissolution of the family is brought about by the employment of the children. When they get on far enough to earn more than they cost their parents from week to week, they begin to pay the parents a fixed sum for board and lodging, and keep the rest for themselves. This often happens from the fourteenth or fifteenth year. {144} In a word, the children emancipate themselves, and regard the paternal dwelling as a lodging-house, which they often exchange for another, as suits them. In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the employment of the wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case happens very frequently; in Manchester alone, many hundred such men could be cited, condemned to domestic occupations. It is easy to imagine the wrath aroused among the working-men by this reversal of all relations within the family, while the other social conditions remain unchanged. There lies before me a letter from an English working-man, Robert Pounder, Baron's Buildings, Woodhouse, Moorside, in Leeds (the bourgeoisie may hunt him up there; I give the exact address for the purpose), written by him to Oastler: {145} He relates how another working-man, being on tramp, came to St. Helens, in Lancashire, and there looked up an old friend. He found him in a miserable, damp cellar, scarcely furnished; and when my poor friend went in, there sat poor Jack near the fire, and what did he, think you? why he sat and mended his wife's stockings with the bodkin; and as soon as he saw his old friend at the door-post, he tried to hide them. But Joe, that is my friend's name, had seen it, and said: "Jack, what the devil art thou doing? Where is the missus? Why, is that thy work?" and poor Jack was ashamed, and said: "No, I know this is not my work, but my poor missus is i' th' factory; she has to leave at half-past five and works till eight at night, and then she is so knocked up that she cannot do aught when she gets home, so I have to do everything for her what I can, for I have no work, nor had any for more nor three years, and I shall never have any more work while I live;" and then he wept a big tear. Jack again said: "There is work enough for women folks and childer hereabouts, but none for men; thou mayest sooner find a hundred pound on the road than work for men--but I should never have believed that either thou or any one else would have seen me mending my wife's stockings, for, it is bad work. But she can hardly stand on her feet; I am afraid she will be laid up, and then I don't know what is to become of us, for it's a good bit that she has been the man in the house and I the woman; it is bad work, Joe;" and he cried bitterly, and said, "It has not been always so." "No," said Joe; "but when thou hadn't no work, how hast thou not shifted?" "I'll tell thee, Joe, as well as I can, but it was bad enough; thou knowest when I got married I had work plenty, and thou knows I was not lazy." "No, that thou wert not." "And we had a good furnished house, and Mary need not go to work. I could work for the two of us; but now the world is upside down. Mary has to work and I have to stop at home, mind the childer sweep and wash, bake and mend; and, when the poor woman comes home at night, she is knocked up. Thou knows, Joe, it's hard for one that was used different." "Yes, boy, it is hard." And then Jack began to cry again, and he wished he had never married, and that he had never been born; but he had never thought, when he wed Mary, that it would come to this. "I have often cried over it," said Jack. Now when Joe heard this, he told me that he had cursed and damned the factories, and the masters, and the Government, with all the curses that he had learned while he was in the factory from a child. Can any one imagine a more insane state of things than that described in this letter? And yet this condition, which unsexes the man and takes from the woman all womanliness without being able to bestow upon the man true womanliness, or the woman true manliness--this condition which degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and, through them, Humanity, is the last result of our much-praised civilisation, the final achievement of all the efforts and struggles of hundreds of generations to improve their own situation and that of their posterity. We must either despair of mankind, and its aims and efforts, when we see all our labour and toil result in such a mockery, or we must admit that human society has hitherto sought salvation in a false direction; we must admit that so total a reversal of the position of the sexes can have come to pass only because the sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning. If the reign of the wife over the husband, as inevitably brought about by the factory system, is inhuman, the pristine rule of the husband over the wife must have been inhuman too. If the wife can now base her supremacy upon the fact that she supplies the greater part, nay, the whole of the common possession, the necessary inference is that this community of possession is no true and rational one, since one member of the family boasts offensively of contributing the greater share. If the family of our present society is being thus dissolved, this dissolution merely shows that, at bottom, the binding tie of this family was not family affection, but private interest lurking under the cloak of a pretended community of possessions. The same relation exists on the part of those children who support unemployed parents {147a} when they do not directly pay board as already referred to. Dr. Hawkins testified in the Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report that this relation is common enough, and in Manchester it is notorious. In this case the children are the masters in the house, as the wife was in the former case, and Lord Ashley gives an example of this in his speech: {147b} A man berated his two daughters for going to the public house, and they answered that they were tired of being ordered about, saying, "Damn you, we have to keep you!" Determined to keep the proceeds of their work for themselves, they left the family dwelling, and abandoned their parents to their fate. The unmarried women, who have grown up in mills, are no better off than the married ones. It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a mill from her ninth year is in no position to understand domestic work, whence it follows that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and unfit as housekeepers. They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are unacquainted with the most ordinary duties of a housekeeper, and when they have young children to take care of, have not the vaguest idea how to set about it. The Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report gives dozens of examples of this, and Dr. Hawkins, Commissioner for Lancashire, expresses his opinion as follows: {147c} "The girls marry early and recklessly; they have neither means, time, nor opportunity to learn the ordinary duties of household life; but if they had them all, they would find no time in married life for the performance of these duties. The mother is more than twelve hours away from her child daily; the baby is cared for by a young girl or an old woman, to whom it is given to nurse. Besides this, the dwelling of the mill-hands is too often no home but a cellar, which contains no cooking or washing utensils, no sewing or mending materials, nothing which makes life agreeable and civilised, or the domestic hearth attractive. For these and other reasons, and especially for the sake of the better chances of life for the little children, I can but wish and hope that a time may come in which married women will be shut out of the factories." {148a} But that is the least of the evil. The moral consequences of the employment of women in factories are even worse. The collecting of persons of both sexes and all ages in a single workroom, the inevitable contact, the crowding into a small space of people, to whom neither mental nor moral education has been given, is not calculated for the favourable development of the female character. The manufacturer, if he pays any attention to the matter, can interfere only when something scandalous actually happens; the permanent, less conspicuous influence of persons of dissolute character, upon the more moral, and especially upon the younger ones, he cannot ascertain, and consequently cannot prevent. But precisely this influence is the most injurious. The language used in the mills is characterised by many witnesses in the report of 1833, as "indecent," "bad," "filthy," etc. {148b} It is the same process upon a small scale which we have already witnessed upon a large one in the great cities. The centralisation of population has the same influence upon the same persons, whether it affects them in a great city or a small factory. The smaller the mill the closer the packing, and the more unavoidable the contact; and the consequences are not wanting. A witness in Leicester said that he would rather let his daughter beg than go into a factory; that they are perfect gates of hell; that most of the prostitutes of the town had their employment in the mills to thank for their present situation. {148c} Another, in Manchester, "did not hesitate to assert that three-fourths of the young factory employees, from fourteen to twenty years of age, were unchaste." {149a} Commissioner Cowell expresses it as his opinion, that the morality of the factory operatives is somewhat below the average of that of the working-class in general. {149b} And Dr. Hawkins {149c} says: "An estimate of sexual morality cannot readily be reduced to figures; but if I may trust my own observations and the general opinion of those with whom I have spoken, as well as the whole tenor of the testimony furnished me, the aspect of the influence of factory life upon the morality of the youthful female population is most depressing." It is, besides, a matter of course that factory servitude, like any other, and to an even higher degree, confers the _jus primae noctis_ upon the master. In this respect also the employer is sovereign over the persons and charms of his employees. The threat of discharge suffices to overcome all resistance in nine cases out of ten, if not in ninety-nine out of a hundred, in girls who, in any case, have no strong inducements to chastity. If the master is mean enough, and the official report mentions several such cases, his mill is also his harem; and the fact that not all manufacturers use their power, does not in the least change the position of the girls. In the beginning of manufacturing industry, when most of the employers were upstarts without education or consideration for the hypocrisy of society, they let nothing interfere with the exercise of their vested rights. To form a correct judgment of the influence of factory-work upon the health of the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of children, and then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of manufacturing industry, children have been employed in mills, at first almost exclusively by reason of the smallness of the machines, which were later enlarged. Even children from the workhouses were employed in multitudes, being rented out for a number of years to the manufacturers as apprentices. They were lodged, fed, and clothed in common, and were, of course, completely the slaves of their masters, by whom they were treated with the utmost recklessness and barbarity. As early as 1796, the public objection to this revolting system found such vigorous expression through Dr. Percival and Sir Robert Peel (father of the Cabinet Minister, and himself a cotton manufacturer), that in 1802 Parliament passed an Apprentices' Bill, by which the most crying evils were removed. Gradually the increasing competition of free workpeople crowded out the whole apprentice system; factories were built in cities, machinery was constructed on a larger scale, and workrooms were made more airy and wholesome; gradually, too, more work was found for adults and young persons. The number of children in the mills diminished somewhat, and the age at which they began to work rose a little; few children under eight or nine years were now employed. Later, as we shall see, the power of the State intervened several times to protect them from the money-greed of the bourgeoisie. The great mortality among children of the working-class, and especially among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome conditions under which they pass their first year. These influences are at work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable case is a tendency to disease, or some check in development, and consequent less than normal vigour of the constitution. A nine years old child of a factory operative that has grown up in want, privation, and changing conditions, in cold and damp, with insufficient clothing and unwholesome dwellings, is far from having the working force of a child brought up under healthier conditions. At nine years of age it is sent into the mill to work 6.5 hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14, even 16 hours) daily, until the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until the eighteenth year. The old enfeebling influences continue, while the work is added to them. It is not to be denied that a child of nine years, even an operative's child, can hold out through 6.5 hours' daily work, without any one being able to trace visible bad results in its development directly to this cause; but in no case can its presence in the damp, heavy air of the factory, often at once warm and wet, contribute to good health; and, in any case, it is unpardonable to sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling bourgeoisie the time of children which should be devoted solely to their physical and mental development, withdraw them from school and the fresh air, in order to wear them out for the benefit of the manufacturers. The bourgeoisie says: "If we do not employ the children in the mills, they only remain under conditions unfavourable to their development;" and this is true, on the whole. But what does this mean if it is not a confession that the bourgeoisie first places the children of the working-class under unfavourable conditions, and then exploits these bad conditions for its own benefit, appeals to that which is as much its own fault as the factory system, excuses the sin of to-day with the sin of yesterday? And if the Factory Act did not in some measure fetter their hands, how this "humane," this "benevolent" bourgeoisie, which has built its factories solely for the good of the working-class, would take care of the interests of these workers! Let us hear how they acted before the factory inspector was at their heels. Their own admitted testimony shall convict them in the report of the Factories' Inquiry Commission of 1833. The report of the Central Commission relates that the manufacturers began to employ children rarely of five years, often of six, very often of seven, usually of eight to nine years; that the working-day often lasted fourteen to sixteen hours, exclusive of meals and intervals; that the manufacturers permitted overlookers to flog and maltreat children, and often took an active part in so doing themselves. One case is related of a Scotch manufacturer, who rode after a sixteen years old runaway, forced him to return running after the employer as fast as the master's horse trotted, and beat him the whole way with a long whip. {151} In the large towns where the operatives resisted more vigorously, such things naturally happened less often. But even this long working-day failed to satisfy the greed of the capitalists. Their aim was to make the capital invested in the building and machinery produce the highest return, by every available means, to make it work as actively as possible. Hence the manufacturers introduced the shameful system of night-work. Some of them employed two sets of operatives, each numerous enough to fill the whole mill, and let one set work the twelve hours of the day, and the other twelve hours of the night. It is needless to picture the effect upon the frames of young children, and even upon the health of young persons and adults, produced by permanent loss of sleep at night, which cannot be made good by any amount of sleep during the day. Irritation of the whole nervous system, with general lassitude and enfeeblement of the entire frame, were the inevitable results, with the fostering of temptation to drunkenness and unbridled sexual indulgence. One manufacturer testifies {152a} that during the two years in which night- work was carried on in his factory, the number of illegitimate children born was doubled, and such general demoralisation prevailed that he was obliged to give up night-work. Other manufacturers were yet more barbarous, requiring many hands to work thirty to forty hours at a stretch, several times a week, letting them get a couple of hours sleep only, because the night-shift was not complete, but calculated to replace a part of the operatives only. The reports of the Commission touching this barbarism surpass everything that is known to me in this line. Such infamies, as are here related, are nowhere else to be found--yet we shall see that the bourgeoisie constantly appeals to the testimony of the Commission as being in its own favour. The consequences of these cruelties became evident quickly enough. The Commissioners mention a crowd of cripples who appeared before them, who clearly owed their distortion to the long working-hours. This distortion usually consists of a curving of the spinal column and legs, and is described as follows by Francis Sharp, M.R.C.S., of Leeds: {152b} "I never saw the peculiar bending of the lower ends of the thigh bones before I came to Leeds. At first I thought it was rachitis, but I was soon led to change my opinion in consequence of the mass of patients who presented themselves at the hospital, and the appearances of the disease at an age (from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year) in which children are usually not subject to rachitis, as well as by the circumstance that the malady had first appeared after children began to work in the mills. Thus far I have seen about a hundred such cases, and can, most decidedly, express the opinion that they are the consequences of overwork. So far as I know they were all mill children, and themselves attributed the evil to this cause. The number of cases of curvature of the spine which have fallen under my observation, and which were evidently consequent upon too protracted standing, was not less than three hundred." Precisely similar is the testimony of Dr. Ray, for eighteen years physician in the hospital in Leeds: {153a} "Malformations of the spine are very frequent among mill-hands; some of them consequent upon mere overwork, others the effect of long work upon constitutions originally feeble, or weakened by bad food. Deformities seem even more frequent than these diseases; the knees were bent inward, the ligaments very often relaxed and enfeebled, and the long bones of the legs bent. The thick ends of these long bones were especially apt to be bent and disproportionately developed, and these patients came from the factories in which long work-hours were of frequent occurrence." Surgeons Beaumont and Sharp, of Bradford, bear the same testimony. The reports of Drinkwater, Power, and Dr. Loudon contain a multitude of examples of such distortions, and those of Tufnell and Sir David Barry, which are less directed to this point, give single examples. {153b} The Commissioners for Lancashire, Cowell, Tufnell, and Hawkins, have almost wholly neglected this aspect of the physiological results of the factory system, though this district rivals Yorkshire in the number of cripples. I have seldom traversed Manchester without meeting three or four of them, suffering from precisely the same distortions of the spinal columns and legs as that described, and I have often been able to observe them closely. I know one personally who corresponds exactly with the foregoing description of Dr. Ray, and who got into this condition in Mr. Douglas' factory in Pendleton, an establishment which enjoys an unenviable notoriety among the operatives by reason of the former long working periods continued night after night. It is evident, at a glance, whence the distortions of these cripples come; they all look exactly alike. The knees are bent inward and backwards, the ankles deformed and thick, and the spinal column often bent forwards or to one side. But the crown belongs to the philanthropic manufacturers of the Macclesfield silk district. They employed the youngest children of all, even from five to six years of age. In the supplementary testimony of Commissioner Tufnell, I find the statement of a certain factory manager Wright, both of whose sisters were most shamefully crippled, and who had once counted the cripples in several streets, some of them the cleanest and neatest streets of Macclesfield. He found in Townley Street ten, George Street five, Charlotte Street four, Watercots fifteen, Bank Top three, Lord Street seven, Mill Lane twelve, Great George Street two, in the workhouse two, Park Green one, Peckford Street two, whose families all unanimously declared that the cripples had become such in consequence of overwork in the silk-twisting mills. One boy is mentioned so crippled as not to be able to go upstairs, and girls deformed in back and hips. Other deformities also have proceeded from this overwork, especially flattening of the foot, which Sir D. Barry {154a} frequently observed, as did the physicians and surgeons in Leeds. {154b} In cases, in which a stronger constitution, better food, and other more favourable circumstances enabled the young operative to resist this effect of a barbarous exploitation, we find, at least, pain in the back, hips, and legs, swollen joints, varicose veins, and large, persistent ulcers in the thighs and calves. These affections are almost universal among the operatives. The reports of Stuart, Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry contain hundreds of examples; indeed, they know almost no operative who did not suffer from some of these affections; and in the remaining reports, the occurrence of the same phenomena is attested by many physicians. The reports covering Scotland place it beyond all doubt, that a working-day of thirteen hours, even for men and women from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, produces at least these consequences, both in the flax-spinning mills of Dundee and Dunfermline, and in the cotton mills of Glasgow and Lanark. All these affections are easily explained by the nature of factory-work, which is, as the manufacturers say, very "light," and precisely by reason of its lightness, more enervating than any other. The operatives have little to do, but must stand the whole time. Any one who sits down, say upon a window-ledge or a basket, is fined, and this perpetual upright position, this constant mechanical pressure of the upper portions of the body upon spinal column, hips, and legs, inevitably produces the results mentioned. This standing is not required by the work itself, and at Nottingham chairs have been introduced, with the result that these affections disappeared, and the operatives ceased to object to the length of the working-day. But in a factory where the operative works solely for the bourgeois, and has small interest in doing his work well, he would probably use the seats more than would be agreeable and profitable to the manufacturer; and in order that somewhat less raw material may be spoiled for the bourgeois, the operative must sacrifice health and strength. {155} This long protracted upright position, with the bad atmosphere prevalent in the mills, entails, besides the deformities mentioned, a marked relaxation of all vital energies, and, in consequence, all sorts of other affections general rather than local. The atmosphere of the factories is, as a rule, at once damp and warm, unusually warmer than is necessary, and, when the ventilation is not _very_ good, impure, heavy, deficient in oxygen, filled with dust and the smell of the machine oil, which almost everywhere smears the floor, sinks into it, and becomes rancid. The operatives are lightly clad by reason of the warmth, and would readily take cold in case of irregularity of the temperature; a draught is distasteful to them, the general enervation which gradually takes possession of all the physical functions diminishes the animal warmth: this must be replaced from without, and nothing is therefore more agreeable to the operative than to have all the doors and windows closed, and to stay in his warm factory-air. Then comes the sudden change of temperature on going out into the cold and wet or frosty atmosphere, without the means of protection from the rain, or of changing wet clothing for dry, a circumstance which perpetually produces colds. And when one reflects that, with all this, not one single muscle of the body is really exercised, really called into activity, except perhaps those of the legs; that nothing whatsoever counteracts the enervating, relaxing tendency of all these conditions; that every influence is wanting which might give the muscles strength, the fibres elasticity and consistency; that from youth up, the operative is deprived of all fresh air recreation, it is impossible to wonder at the almost unanimous testimony of the physicians in the Factories' Report, that they find a great lack of ability to resist disease, a general depression in vital activity, a constant relaxation of the mental and physical powers. Let us hear Sir D. Barry first: {156} "The unfavourable influences of mill-work upon the hands are the following: (1) The inevitable necessity of forcing their mental and bodily effort to keep pace with a machine moved by a uniform and unceasing motive power. (2) Continuance in an upright position during unnaturally long and quickly recurring periods. (3) Loss of sleep in consequence of too long working-hours, pain in the legs, and general physical derangement. To these are often added low, crowded, dusty, or damp workrooms, impure air, a high temperature, and constant perspiration. Hence the boys especially very soon and with but few exceptions, lose the rosy freshness of childhood, and become paler and thinner than other boys. Even the hand-weaver's bound boy, who sits before his loom with his bare feet resting upon the clay-floor, retains a fresher appearance, because he occasionally goes into the fresh air for a time. But the mill child has not a moment free except for meals, and never goes into the fresh air except on its way to them. All adult male spinners are pale and thin, suffer from capricious appetite and indigestion; and as they are all trained in the mills from their youth up, and there are very few tall, athletic men among them, the conclusion is justified that their occupation is very unfavourable for the development of the male constitution; females bear this work far better." (Very naturally. But we shall see that they have their own diseases.) So, too, Power: {157a} "I can bear witness that the factory system in Bradford has engendered a multitude of cripples, and that the effect of long continued labour upon the physique is apparent, not alone in actual deformity, but also, and much more generally, in stunted growth, relaxation of the muscles, and delicacy of the whole frame." So, too, F. Sharp, in Leeds, the surgeon {157b} already quoted: "When I moved from Scarborough to Leeds, I was at once struck by the fact that the general appearance of the children was much paler, and their fibre less vigorous here than in Scarborough and its environs. I saw, too, that many children were exceptionally small for their age. I have met with numberless cases of scrofula, lung trouble, mesenteric affections, and indigestion, concerning which I, as a medical man, have no doubt that they arose from mill work. I believe that the nervous energy of the body is weakened by the long hours, and the foundation of many diseases laid. If people from the country were not constantly coming in, the race of mill-hands would soon be wholly degenerate." So, too, Beaumont, surgeon in Bradford: "To my thinking, the system, according to which work is done in the mills here, produces a peculiar relaxation of the whole organism, and thereby makes children in the highest degree susceptible to epidemic, as well as to incidental illness. I regard the absence of all appropriate regulations for ventilation and cleanliness in the mills very decidedly as the chief cause of that peculiar tendency or susceptibility to morbid affections which I have so frequently met in my practice." Similar testimony is borne by Dr. Ray: (1) "I have had opportunity of observing the effects of the factory system upon the health of children under the most favourable circumstances (in Wood's mill, in Bradford, the best arranged of the district, in which he was factory surgeon). (2) These effects are decidedly, and to a very great extent, injurious, even under these most favourable circumstances. (3) In the year 1842, three-fifths of all the children employed in Wood's mill were treated by me. (4) The worst effect is not the predominance of deformities, but of enfeebled and morbid constitutions. (5) All this is greatly improved since the working-hours of children have been reduced at Wood's to ten." The Commissioner, Dr. Loudon himself, who cites these witnesses, says: "In conclusion, I think it has been clearly proved that children have been worked a most unreasonable and cruel length of time daily, and that even adults have been expected to do a certain quantity of labour which scarcely any human being is able to endure. The consequence is that many have died prematurely, and others are afflicted for life with defective constitutions, and the fear of a posterity enfeebled by the shattered constitution of the survivors is but too well founded, from a physiological point of view." And, finally, Dr. Hawkins, in speaking of Manchester: "I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes. I have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which degeneracy of form and colour from the national standard has been so obvious. Among the married women all the characteristic peculiarities of the English wife are conspicuously wanting. I must confess that all the boys and girls brought before me from the Manchester mills had a depressed appearance, and were very pale. In the expression of their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness, and cheeriness of youth. Many of them told me that they felt not the slightest inclination to play out of doors on Saturday and Sunday, but preferred to be quiet at home." I add, at once, another passage of Hawkins' report, which only half belongs here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere else: "Intemperance, excess, and want of providence are the chief faults of the factory population, and these evils may be readily traced to the habits which are formed under the present system, and almost inevitably arise from it. It is universally admitted that indigestion, hypochondria, and general debility affect this class to a very great extent. After twelve hours of monotonous toil, it is but natural to look about for a stimulant of one sort or another; but when the above-mentioned diseased conditions are added to the customary weariness, people will quickly and repeatedly take refuge in spirituous liquors." For all this testimony of the physicians and commissioners, the report itself offers hundreds of cases of proof. That the growth of young operatives is stunted, by their work, hundreds of statements testify; among others, Cowell gives the weight of 46 youths of 17 years of age, from one Sunday school, of whom 26 employed in mills, averaged 104.5 pounds, and 20 not employed in mills, 117.7 pounds. One of the largest manufacturers of Manchester, leader of the opposition against the working- men, I think Robert Hyde Greg himself, said, on one occasion, that if things went on as at present, the operatives of Lancashire would soon be a race of pigmies. {159a} A recruiting officer {159b} testified that operatives are little adapted for military service, looked thin and nervous, and were frequently rejected by the surgeons as unfit. In Manchester he could hardly get men of five feet eight inches; they were usually only five feet six to seven, whereas in the agricultural districts, most of the recruits were five feet eight. The men wear out very early in consequence of the conditions under which they live and work. Most of them are unfit for work at forty years, a few hold out to forty-five, almost none to fifty years of age. This is caused not only by the general enfeeblement of the frame, but also very often by a failure of the sight, which is a result of mule-spinning, in which the operative is obliged to fix his gaze upon a long row of fine, parallel threads, and so greatly to strain the sight. Of 1,600 operatives employed in several factories in Harpur and Lanark, but 10 were over 45 years of age; of 22,094 operatives in diverse factories in Stockport and Manchester, but 143 were over 45 years old. Of these 143, 16 were retained as a special favour, and one was doing the work of a child. A list of 131 spinners contained but seven over 45 years, and yet the whole 131 were rejected by the manufacturers, to whom they applied for work, as "too old," and were without means of support by reason of old age! Mr. Ashworth, a large manufacturer, admits in a letter to Lord Ashley, that, towards the fortieth year, the spinners can no longer prepare the required quantity of yarn, and are therefore "sometimes" discharged; he calls operatives forty years of age "old people!" Commissioner Mackintosh expresses himself in the same way in the report of 1833: "Although I was prepared for it from the way the children are employed, I still found it difficult to believe the statements of the older hands as to their ages; they age so very early." Surgeon Smellie, of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says that forty years is old age for them. {160a} And similar evidence may be found elsewhere. {160b} In Manchester, this premature old age among the operatives is so universal that almost every man of forty would be taken for ten to fifteen years older, while the prosperous classes, men as well as women, preserve their appearance exceedingly well if they do not drink too heavily. The influence of factory-work upon the female physique also is marked and peculiar. The deformities entailed by long hours of work are much more serious among women. Protracted work frequently causes deformities of the pelvis, partly in the shape of abnormal position and development of the hip bones, partly of malformation of the lower portion of the spinal column. "Although," says Dr. Loudon, in his report, "no example of malformation of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my notice, these things are nevertheless so common, that every physician must regard them as probable consequences of such working-hours, and as vouched for besides by men of the highest medical credibility." That factory operatives undergo more difficult confinement than other women is testified to by several midwives and accoucheurs, and also that they are more liable to miscarriage. {161} Moreover, they suffer from the general enfeeblement common to all operatives, and, when pregnant, continue to work in the factory up to the hour of delivery, because otherwise they lose their wages and are made to fear that they may be replaced if they stop away too soon. It frequently happens that women are at work one evening and delivered the next morning, and the case is none too rare of their being delivered in the factory among the machinery. And if the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie find nothing particularly shocking in this, their wives will perhaps admit that it is a piece of cruelty, an infamous act of barbarism, indirectly to force a pregnant woman to work twelve or thirteen hours daily (formerly still longer), up to the day of her delivery, in a standing position, with frequent stoopings. But this is not all. If these women are not obliged to resume work within two weeks, they are thankful, and count themselves fortunate. Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after three to four days, to resume full work. I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker: "Is so and so not back yet?" "No." "How long since she was confined?" "A week." "She might surely have been back long ago. That one over there only stays three days." Naturally, fear of being discharged, dread of starvation drives her to the factory in spite of her weakness, in defiance of her pain. The interest of the manufacturer will not brook that his employees stay at home by reason of illness; they must not be ill, they must not venture to lie still through a long confinement, or he must stop his machinery or trouble his supreme head with a temporary change of arrangements, and rather than do this, he discharges his people when they begin to be ill. Listen: {162a} "A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work. Why does she not ask permission to go home? Ah! the master is very particular, and if we are away half a day, we risk being sent away altogether." Or Sir D. Barry: {162b} "Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever. Cannot stay at home longer than four days, because he would fear of losing his place." And so it goes on in almost all the factories. The employment of young girls produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of development. In some, especially those who are better fed, the heat of the factories hastens this process, so that in single cases, girls of thirteen and fourteen are wholly mature. Robertson, whom I have already cited (mentioned in the Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report as the "eminent" gynaecologist of Manchester), relates in the North of England _Medical and Surgical Journal_, that he had seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a wholly developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years of age. In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature age and debility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c} Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or Eighteenth, sometimes in the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a} Irregular menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially with anaemia, is very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state. Children of such mothers, particularly of those who are obliged to work during pregnancy, cannot be vigorous. They are, on the contrary, described in the report, especially in Manchester, as very feeble; and Barry alone asserts that they are healthy, but says further, that in Scotland, where his inspection lay, almost no married women worked in factories. Moreover, most of the factories there are in the country (with the exception of Glasgow), a circumstance which contributes greatly to the invigoration of the children. The operatives' children in the neighbourhood of Manchester are nearly all thriving and rosy, while those within the city look pale and scrofulous; but with the ninth year the colour vanishes suddenly, because all are then sent into the factories, when it soon becomes impossible to distinguish the country from the city children. But besides all this, there are some branches of factory-work which have an especially injurious effect. In many rooms of the cotton and flax- spinning mills, the air is filled with fibrous dust, which produces chest affections, especially among workers in the carding and combing-rooms. Some constitutions can bear it, some cannot; but the operative has no choice. He must take the room in which he finds work, whether his chest is sound or not. The most common effects of this breathing of dust are blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing, pains in the chest, coughs, sleeplessness--in short, all the symptoms of asthma ending in the worst cases in consumption. {163b} Especially unwholesome is the wet spinning of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys. The water spirts over them from the spindle, so that the front of their clothing is constantly wet through to the skin; and there is always water standing on the floor. This is the case to a less degree in the doubling-rooms of the cotton mills, and the result is a constant succession of colds and affections of the chest. A hoarse, rough voice is common to all operatives, but especially to wet spinners and doublers. Stuart, Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry express themselves in the most vigorous terms as to the unwholesomeness of this work, and the small consideration shown by most of the manufacturers for the health of the girls who do it. Another effect of flax-spinning is a peculiar deformity of the shoulder, especially a projection of the right shoulder-blade, consequent upon the nature of the work. This sort of spinning and the throstle-spinning of cotton frequently produce diseases of the knee-pan, which is used to check the spindle during the joining of broken threads. The frequent stooping and the bending to the low machines common to both these branches of work have, in general, a stunting effect upon the growth of the operative. In the throstle-room of the cotton mill at Manchester, in which I was employed, I do not remember to have seen one single tall, well-built girl; they were all short, dumpy, and badly-formed, decidedly ugly in the whole development of the figure. But apart from all these diseases and malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger, half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often follows, even upon the lesser among these injuries, and brings death with it. Besides the deformed persons, a great number of maimed ones may be seen going about in Manchester; this one has lost an arm or a part of one, that one a foot, the third half a leg; it is like living in the midst of an army just returned from a campaign. But the most dangerous portion of the machinery is the strapping which conveys motive power from the shaft to the separate machines, especially if it contains buckles, which, however, are rarely used now. Whoever is seized by the strap is carried up with lightning speed, thrown against the ceiling above and floor below with such force that there is rarely a whole bone left in the body, and death follows instantly. Between June 12th and August 3rd, 1843, the _Manchester Guardian_ reported the following serious accidents (the trifling ones it does not notice): June 12th, a boy died in Manchester of lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels. June 16th, a youth in Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with it; died, utterly mangled. June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor, near Manchester, at work in a machine shop, fell under the grindstone, which broke two of his ribs and lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty times by a strap; no bone unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by the blower (the first machine that receives the raw cotton), and died of injuries received. August 3rd, a bobbins turner died in Dukenfield, caught in a strap, every rib broken. In the year 1843, the Manchester Infirmary treated 962 cases of wounds and mutilations caused by machinery, while the number of all other accidents within the district of the hospital was 2,426, so that for five accidents from all other causes, two were caused by machinery. The accidents which happened in Salford are not included here, nor those treated by surgeons in private practice. In such cases, whether or not the accident unfits the victim for further work, the employer, at best, pays the doctor, or, in very exceptional cases, he may pay wages during treatment; what becomes of the operative afterwards, in case he cannot work, is no concern of the employer. The Factory Report says on this subject, that employers must be made responsible for all cases, since children cannot take care, and adults will take care in their own interest. But the gentlemen who write the report are bourgeois, and so they must contradict themselves and bring up later all sorts of bosh on the subject of the culpable temerity of the operatives. The state of the case is this: If children cannot take care, the employment of children must be forbidden. If adults are reckless, they must be mere over-grown children on a plane of intelligence which does not enable them to appreciate the danger in its full scope; and who is to blame for this but the bourgeoisie which keeps them in a condition in which their intelligence cannot develop? Or the machinery is ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fencing, to supply which falls to the share of the bourgeoisie. Or the operative is under inducements which outweigh the threatened danger; he must work rapidly to earn his wages, has no time to take care, and for this, too, the bourgeoisie is to blame. Many accidents happen, for instance, while the operatives are cleaning machinery in motion. Why? Because the bourgeois would otherwise oblige the worker to clean the machinery during the free hours while it is not going, and the worker naturally is not disposed to sacrifice any part of his free time. Every free hour is so precious to the worker that he often risks his life twice a week rather than sacrifice one of them to the bourgeois. Let the employer take from working-hours the time required for cleaning the machinery, and it will never again occur to an operative to clean machinery in motion. In short, from whatever point of view, the blame falls ultimately on the manufacturer, and of him should be required, at the very least, life-long support of the incapacitated operative, and support of the victim's family in case death follows the accident. In the earliest period of manufacture, the accidents were much more numerous in proportion than now, for the machinery was inferior, smaller, more crowded, and almost never fenced. But the number is still large enough, as the foregoing cases prove, to arouse grave question as to a state of things which permits so many deformities and mutilations for the benefit of a single class, and plunges so many industrious working-people into want and starvation by reason of injuries undergone in the service and through the fault of the bourgeoisie. A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful money greed of the manufacturers! Women made unfit for childbearing, children deformed, men enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie. And when one reads of the barbarism of single cases, how children are seized naked in bed by the overlookers, and driven with blows and kicks to the factory, their clothing over their arms, {167a} how their sleepiness is driven off with blows, how they fall asleep over their work nevertheless, how one poor child sprang up, still asleep, at the call of the overlooker, and mechanically went through the operations of its work after its machine was stopped; when one reads how children, too tired to go home, hide away in the wool in the drying-room to sleep there, and could only be driven out of the factory with straps; how many hundreds came home so tired every night, that they could eat no supper for sleepiness and want of appetite, that their parents found them kneeling by the bedside, where they had fallen asleep during their prayers; when one reads all this and a hundred other villainies and infamies in this one report, all testified to on oath, confirmed by several witnesses, deposed by men whom the commissioners themselves declare trustworthy; when one reflects that this is a Liberal report, a bourgeois report, made for the purpose of reversing the previous Tory report, and rehabilitating the pureness of heart of the manufacturers, that the commissioners themselves are on the side of the bourgeoisie, and report all these things against their own will, how can one be otherwise than filled with wrath and resentment against a class which boasts of philanthropy and self-sacrifice, while its one object is to fill its purse _a tout prix_? Meanwhile, let us listen to the bourgeoisie speaking through the mouth of its chosen apostle, Dr. Ure, who relates in his "Philosophy of Manufactures" {167b} that the workers have been told that their wages bore no proportion to their sacrifices, the good understanding between masters and men being thus disturbed. Instead of this, the working-men should have striven to recommend themselves by attention and industry, and should have rejoiced in the prosperity of their masters. They would then become overseers, superintendents, and finally partners, and would thus--(Oh! Wisdom, thou speakest as the dove!)--"have increased at the same time the demand for their companions' labour in the market!" "Had it not been for the violent collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous views among the operatives, the factory system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially." {168a} Hereupon follows a long Jeremiad upon the spirit of resistance of the operatives, and on the occasion of a strike of the best paid workers, the fine spinners, the following naive observation: {168b} "In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a stipendiary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into nervous ailments, by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor employments." Let us hear how the bourgeois describes the work of children: {168c} "I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in the surrounding districts, during a period of several months, entering the spinning-rooms unexpectedly, and often alone, at different times of the day, and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement inflicted on a child; nor, indeed, did I ever see children in ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert; taking pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad emotions, in my mind, was always exhilerating. It was delightful to observe the nimbleness with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them at leisure, after a few seconds' exercise of their tiny fingers, to amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and winding on were once more completed. The work of these lively elves seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day's work, they evinced no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they immediately began to skip about any neighbouring playground, and to commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys issuing from a school." Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were not an urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure should have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not subsided after a couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this whole performance only in the afternoon after five or six hours' work, but not in the evening! As to the health of the operatives, the bourgeois has the boundless impudence to cite the report of 1833 just quoted in a thousand places, as testimony for the excellent health of these people; to try to prove by detached and garbled quotations that no trace of scrofula can be found among them, and, what is quite true, that the factory system frees them from all acute diseases, (that they have every variety of chronic affection instead he naturally conceals). To explain the impudence with which our friend Ure palms off the grossest falsehoods upon the English public, it must be known that the report consists of three large folio volumes, which it never occurs to a well- fed English bourgeois to study through. Let us hear further how he expresses himself as to the Factory Act of 1834, passed by the Liberal bourgeoisie, and imposing only the most meagre limitations upon the manufacturers, as we shall see. This law, especially its compulsory education clause, he calls an absurd and despotic measure directed against the manufacturers, through which all children under twelve years of age have been thrown out of employment; and with what results? The children thus discharged from their light and useful occupation receive no education whatsoever; cast out from the warm spinning-room into a cold world, they subsist only by begging and stealing, a life in sad contrast with their steadily improving condition in the factory and in Sunday school. Under the mask of philanthropy, this law intensifies the sufferings of the poor, and will greatly restrict the conscientious manufacturer in his useful work, if, indeed, it does not wholly stop him. {169} The ruinous influence of the factory system began at an early day to attract general attention. We have already alluded to the Apprentices' Act of 1802. Later, towards 1817, Robert Owen, then a manufacturer in New Lanark, in Scotland, afterwards founder of English Socialism, began to call the attention of the Government, by memorials and petitions, to the necessity of legislative guarantees for the health of the operatives, and especially of children. The late Sir Robert Peel and other philanthropists united with him, and gradually secured the Factory Acts of 1818, 1825, and 1831, of which the first two were never enforced, and the last only here and there. This law of 1831, based upon the motion of Sir J. C. Hobhouse, provided that in cotton mills no one under twenty-one should be employed between half-past seven at night and half-past five in the morning; and that in all factories young persons under eighteen should work no longer than twelve hours daily, and nine hours on Saturday. But since operatives could not testify against their masters without being discharged, this law helped matters very little. In the great cities, where the operatives were more restive, the larger manufacturers came to an agreement among themselves to obey the law; but even there, there were many who, like the employers in the country, did not trouble themselves about it. Meanwhile, the demand for a ten hours' law had become lively among the operatives; that is, for a law which should forbid all operatives under eighteen years of age to work longer than ten hours daily; the Trades Unions, by their agitation, made this demand general throughout the manufacturing population; the philanthropic section of the Tory party, then led by Michael Sadler, seized upon the plan, and brought it before Parliament. Sadler obtained a parliamentary committee for the investigation of the factory system, and this committee reported in 1832. Its report was emphatically partisan, composed by strong enemies of the factory system, for party ends. Sadler permitted himself to be betrayed by his noble enthusiasm into the most distorted and erroneous statements, drew from his witnesses by the very form of his questions, answers which contained the truth, but truth in a perverted form. The manufacturers themselves, incensed at a report which represented them as monsters, now demanded an official investigation; they knew that an exact report must, in this case, be advantageous to them; they knew that Whigs, genuine bourgeois, were at the helm, with whom they were upon good terms, whose principles were opposed to any restriction upon manufacture. They obtained a commission, in due order, composed of Liberal bourgeois, whose report I have so often cited. This comes somewhat nearer the truth than Sadler's, but its deviations therefrom are in the opposite direction. On every page it betrays sympathy with the manufacturers, distrust of the Sadler report, repugnance to the working-men agitating independently and the supporters of the Ten Hours' Bill. It nowhere recognises the right of the working- man to a life worthy of a human being, to independent activity, and opinions of his own. It reproaches the operatives that in sustaining the Ten Hours' Bill they thought, not of the children only, but of themselves as well; it calls the working-men engaged in the agitation demagogues, ill-intentioned, malicious, etc., is written, in short, on the side of the bourgeoisie; and still it cannot whitewash the manufacturers, and still it leaves such a mass of infamies upon the shoulders of the employers, that even after this report, the agitation for the Ten Hours' Bill, the hatred against the manufacturers, and the committee's severest epithets applied to them are all fully justified. But there was the one difference, that whereas the Sadler report accuses the manufacturers of open, undisguised brutality, it now became evident that this brutality was chiefly carried on under the mask of civilisation and humanity. Yet Dr. Hawkins, the medical commissioner for Lancashire, expresses himself decidedly in favour of the Ten Hours' Bill in the opening lines of his report, and Commissioner Mackintosh explains that his own report does not contain the whole truth, because it is very difficult to induce the operatives to testify against their employers, and because the manufacturers, besides being forced into greater concessions towards their operatives by the excitement among the latter, are often prepared for the inspection of the factories, have them swept, the speed of the machinery reduced, etc. In Lancashire especially they resorted to the device of bringing the overlookers of workrooms before the commissioners, and letting them testify as working-men to the humanity of the employers, the wholesome effects of the work, and the indifference, if not the hostility of the operatives, towards the Ten Hours' Bill. But these are not genuine working-men; they are deserters from their class, who have entered the service of the bourgeoisie for better pay, and fight in the interests of the capitalists against the workers. Their interest is that of the capitalists, and they are, therefore, almost more hated by the workers than the manufacturers themselves. And yet this report suffices wholly to exhibit the most shameful recklessness of the manufacturing bourgeoisie towards its employees, the whole infamy of the industrial exploiting system in its full inhumanity. Nothing is more revolting than to compare the long register of diseases and deformities engendered by overwork, in this report, with the cold, calculating political economy of the manufacturers, by which they try to prove that they, and with them all England, must go to ruin, if they should be forbidden to cripple so and so many children every year. The language of Dr. Ure alone, which I have quoted, would be yet more revolting if it were not so preposterous. The result of this report was the Factory Act of 1834, which forbade the employment of children under nine years of age (except in silk mills), limited the working-hours of children between 9-13 years to 48 per week, or 9 hours in any one day at the utmost; that of young persons from 14-18 years of age to 69 per week, or 12 on any one day as the maximum, provided for an hour and a half as the minimum interval for meals, and repeated the total prohibition of night-work for persons under eighteen years of age. Compulsory school attendance two hours daily was prescribed for all children under fourteen years, and the manufacturer declared punishable in case of employing children without a certificate of age from the factory surgeon, and a certificate of school attendance from the teacher. As recompense, the employer was permitted to withdraw one penny from the child's weekly earnings to pay the teacher. Further, surgeons and inspectors were appointed to visit the factories at all times, take testimony of operatives on oath, and enforce the law by prosecution before a Justice of the Peace. This is the law against which Dr. Ure inveighs in such unmeasured terms! The consequence of this law, and especially of the appointment of inspectors, was the reduction of working-hours to an average of twelve to thirteen, and the superseding of children as far as possible. Hereupon some of the most crying evils disappeared almost wholly. Deformities arose now only in cases of weak constitution, and the effects of overwork became much less conspicuous. Nevertheless, enough testimony remains to be found in the Factory Report, that the lesser evils, swelling of the ankles, weakness and pain in the legs, hips, and back, varicose veins, ulcers on the lower extremities, general weakness, especially of the pelvic region, nausea, want of appetite alternating with unnatural hunger, indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the chest in consequence of the dust and foul atmosphere of the factories, etc. etc., all occur among employees subject to the provisions of Sir J. C. Hobhouse's law (of 1831), which prescribes twelve to thirteen hours as the maximum. The reports from Glasgow and Manchester are especially worthy of attention in this respect. These evils remained too, after the law of 1834, and continue to undermine the health of the working-class to this day. Care has been taken to give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a hypocritical, civilised form, to restrain the manufacturers through the arm of the law from too conspicuous villainies, and thus to give them a pretext for self-complacently parading their sham philanthropy. That is all. If a new commission were appointed to-day, it would find things pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory attendance at school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government failed to provide good schools. The manufacturers employed as teachers worn-out operatives, to whom they sent the children two hours daily, thus complying with the letter of the law; but the children learned nothing. And even the reports of the factory inspectors, which are limited to the scope of the inspector's duties, _i.e_., the enforcement of the Factory Act, give data enough to justify the conclusion that the old evils inevitably remain. Inspectors Horner and Saunders, in their reports for October and December, 1844, state that, in a number of branches in which the employment of children can be dispensed with or superseded by that of adults, the working-day is still fourteen to sixteen hours, or even longer. Among the operatives in these branches they found numbers of young people who had just outgrown the provisions of the law. Many employers disregard the law, shorten the meal times, work children longer than is permitted, and risk prosecution, knowing that the possible fines are trifling in comparison with the certain profits derivable from the offence. Just at present especially, while business is exceptionally brisk, they are under great temptation in this respect. Meanwhile the agitation for the Ten Hours' Bill by no means died out among the operatives; in 1839 it was under full headway once more, and Sadler's place, he having died, was filled in the House of Commons by Lord Ashley {174} and Richard Oastler, both Tories. Oastler especially, who carried on a constant agitation in the factory districts, and had been active in the same way during Sadler's life, was the particular favourite of the working-men. They called him their "good old king," "the king of the factory children," and there is not a child in the factory districts that does not know and revere him, that does not join the procession which moves to welcome him when he enters a town. Oastler vigorously opposed the New Poor Law also, and was therefore imprisoned for debt by a Mr. Thornley, on whose estate he was employed as agent, and to whom he owed money. The Whigs offered repeatedly to pay his debt and confer other favours upon him if he would only give up his agitation against the Poor Law. But in vain; he remained in prison, whence he published his Fleet Papers against the factory system and the Poor Law. The Tory Government of 1841 turned its attention once more to the Factory Acts. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, proposed, in 1843, a bill restricting the working-hours of children to six and one-half, and making the enactments for compulsory school attendance more effective; the principal point in this connection being a provision for better schools. This bill was, however, wrecked by the jealousy of the dissenters; for, although compulsory religious instruction was not extended to the children of dissenters, the schools provided for were to be placed under the general supervision of the Established Church, and the Bible made the general reading-book; religion being thus made the foundation of all instruction, whence the dissenters felt themselves threatened. The manufacturers and the Liberals generally united with them, the working- men were divided by the Church question, and therefore inactive. The opponents of the bill, though outweighed in the great manufacturing towns, such as Salford and Stockport, and able in others, such as Manchester, to attack certain of its points only, for fear of the working- men, collected nevertheless nearly two million signatures for a petition against it, and Graham allowed himself to be so far intimidated as to withdraw the whole bill. The next year he omitted the school clauses, and proposed that, instead of the previous provisions, children between eight and thirteen years should be restricted to six and one-half hours, and so employed as to have either the whole morning or the whole afternoon free; that young people between thirteen and eighteen years, and all females, should be limited to twelve hours; and that the hitherto frequent evasions of the law should be prevented. Hardly had he proposed this bill, when the ten hours' agitation was begun again more vigorously than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of his friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he threw himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the Ten Hours' Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the masses of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides brought them allies, and on March 19th, 1844, Lord Ashley carried, with a majority of 179 to 170, a resolution that the word "Night" in the Factory Act should express the time from six at night to six in the morning, whereby the prohibition of night-work came to mean the limitation of working-hours to twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual work a day. But the ministry did not agree to this. Sir James Graham began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and at the next vote on the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten and twelve hours! Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a new bill, and that if this failed to pass they should resign. The new bill was exactly the old Twelve Hours' Bill with some changes of form, and the same House of Commons which had rejected the principal points of this bill in March, now swallowed it whole. The reason of this was that most of the supporters of the Ten Hours' Bill were Tories who let fall the bill rather than the ministry; but be the motives what they may, the House of Commons by its votes upon this subject, each vote reversing the last, has brought itself into the greatest contempt among all the workers, and proved most brilliantly the Chartists' assertion of the necessity of its reform. Three members, who had formerly voted against the ministry, afterwards voted for it and rescued it. In all the divisions, the bulk of the opposition voted _for_ and the bulk of its own party _against_ the ministry. {176} The foregoing propositions of Graham touching the employment of children six and one-half and of all other operatives twelve hours are now legislative provisions, and by them and by the limitation of overwork for making up time lost through breakdown of machinery or insufficient water-power by reason of frost or drought, a working-day of more than twelve hours has been made well-nigh impossible. There remains, however, no doubt that, in a very short time, the Ten Hours' Bill will really be adopted. The manufacturers are naturally all against it, there are perhaps not ten who are for it; they have used every honourable and dishonourable means against this dreaded measure, but with no other result than that of drawing down upon them the ever deepening hatred of the working-men. The bill will pass. What the working-men will do they can do, and that they will have this bill they proved last spring. The economic arguments of the manufacturers that a Ten Hours' Bill would increase the cost of production and incapacitate the English producers for competition in foreign markets, and that wages must fall, are all _half_ true; but they prove nothing except this, that the industrial greatness of England can be maintained only through the barbarous treatment of the operatives, the destruction of their health, the social, physical, and mental decay of whole generations. Naturally, if the Ten Hours' Bill were a final measure, it must ruin England; but since it must inevitably bring with it other measures which must draw England into a path wholly different from that hitherto followed, it can only prove an advance. Let us turn to another side of the factory system which cannot be remedied by legislative provisions so easily as the diseases now engendered by it. We have already alluded in a general way to the nature of the employment, and enough in detail to be able to draw certain inferences from the facts given. The supervision of machinery, the joining of broken threads, is no activity which claims the operative's thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which prevents him from occupying his mind with other things. We have seen, too, that this work affords the muscles no opportunity for physical activity. Thus it is, properly speaking, not work, but tedium, the most deadening, wearing process conceivable. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental powers decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every day and all day long from his eighth year. Moreover, he must not take a moment's rest; the engine moves unceasingly; the wheels, the straps, the spindles hum and rattle in his ears without a pause, and if he tries to snatch one instant, there is the overlooker at his back with the book of fines. This condemnation to be buried alive in the mill, to give constant attention to the tireless machine is felt as the keenest torture by the operatives, and its action upon mind and body is in the long run stunting in the highest degree. There is no better means of inducing stupefaction than a period of factory work, and if the operatives have, nevertheless, not only rescued their intelligence, but cultivated and sharpened it more than other working-men, they have found this possible only in rebellion against their fate and against the bourgeoisie, the sole subject on which under all circumstances they can think and feel while at work. Or, if this indignation against the bourgeoisie does not become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt here too! There is no cause for surprise, therefore, that in the manufacturing towns especially, drunkenness and sexual excesses have reached the pitch which I have already described. {178} Further, the slavery in which the bourgeoisie holds the proletariat chained, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system. Here ends all freedom in law and in fact. The operative must be in the mill at half-past five in the morning; if he comes a couple of minutes too late, he is fined; if he comes ten minutes too late, he is not let in until breakfast is over, and a quarter of the day's wages is withheld, though he loses only two and one-half hours' work out of twelve. He must eat, drink, and sleep at command. For satisfying the most imperative needs, he is vouchsafed the least possible time absolutely required by them. Whether his dwelling is a half-hour or a whole one removed from the factory does not concern his employer. The despotic bell calls him from his bed, his breakfast, his dinner. What a time he has of it, too, inside the factory! Here the employer is absolute law-giver; he makes regulations at will, changes and adds to his codex at pleasure, and even, if he inserts the craziest stuff, the courts say to the working-man: "You were your own master, no one forced you to agree to such a contract if you did not wish to; but now, when you have freely entered into it, you must be bound by it." And so the working-man only gets into the bargain the mockery of the Justice of the Peace who is a bourgeois himself, and of the law which is made by the bourgeoisie. Such decisions have been given often enough. In October, 1844, the operatives of Kennedy's mill, in Manchester struck. Kennedy prosecuted them on the strength of a regulation placarded in the mill, that at no time more than two operatives in one room may quit work at once. And the court decided in his favour, giving the working-men the explanation cited above. {179a} And such rules as these usually are! For instance: 1. The doors are closed ten minutes after work begins, and thereafter no one is admitted until the breakfast hour; whoever is absent during this time forfeits 3d. per loom. 2. Every power-loom weaver detected absenting himself at another time, while the machinery is in motion, forfeits for each hour and each loom, 3d. Every person who leaves the room during working-hours, without obtaining permission from the overlooker, forfeits 3d. 3. Weavers who fail to supply themselves with scissors forfeit, per day, 1d. 4. All broken shuttles, brushes, oil-cans, wheels, window panes, etc., must be paid for by the weaver. 5. No weaver to stop work without giving a week's notice. The manufacturer may dismiss any employee without notice for bad work or improper behaviour. 6. Every operative detected speaking to another, singing or whistling, will be fined 6d.; for leaving his place during working-hours, 6d. {179b} Another copy of factory regulations lies before me, according to which every operative who comes three minutes too late, forfeits the wages for a quarter of an hour, and every one who comes twenty minutes too late, for a quarter of a day. Every one who remains absent until breakfast forfeits a shilling on Monday, and sixpence every other day of the week, etc, etc. This last is the regulation of the Phoenix Works in Jersey Street, Manchester. It may be said that such rules are necessary in a great, complicated factory, in order to insure the harmonious working of the different parts; it may be asserted that such a severe discipline is as necessary here as in an army. This may be so, but what sort of a social order is it which cannot be maintained without such shameful tyranny? Either the end sanctifies the means, or the inference of the badness of the end from the badness of the means is justified. Every one who has served as a soldier knows what it is to be subjected even for a short time to military discipline. But these operatives are condemned from their ninth year to their death to live under the sword, physically and mentally. They are worse slaves than the negroes in America, for they are more sharply watched, and yet it is demanded of them that they shall live like human beings, shall think and feel like men! Verily, this they can do only under glowing hatred towards their oppressors, and towards that order of things which place them in such a position, which degrades them to machines. But it is far more shameful yet, that according to the universal testimony of the operatives, numbers of manufacturers collect the fines imposed upon the operatives with the most heartless severity, and for the purpose of piling up extra profits out of the farthings thus extorted from the impoverished proletarians. Leach asserts, too, that the operatives often find the factory clock moved forward a quarter of an hour and the doors shut, while the clerk moves about with the fines-book inside, noting the many names of the absentees. Leach claims to have counted ninety-five operatives thus shut out, standing before a factory, whose clock was a quarter of an hour slower than the town clocks at night, and a quarter of an hour faster in the morning. The Factory Report relates similar facts. In one factory the clock was set back during working-hours, so that the operatives worked overtime without extra pay; in another, a whole quarter of an hour overtime was worked; in a third, there were two clocks, an ordinary one and a machine clock, which registered the revolutions of the main shaft; if the machinery went slowly, working-hours were measured by the machine clock until the number of revolutions due in twelve hours was reached; if work went well, so that the number was reached before the usual working- hours were ended, the operatives were forced to toil on to the end of the twelfth hour. The witness adds that he had known girls who had good work, and who had worked overtime, who, nevertheless, betook themselves to a life of prostitution rather than submit to this tyranny. {181a} To return to the fines, Leach relates having repeatedly seen women in the last period of pregnancy fined 6d. for the offence of sitting down a moment to rest. Fines for bad work are wholly arbitrary; the goods are examined in the wareroom, and the supervisor charges the fines upon a list without even summoning the operative, who only learns that he has been fined when the overlooker pays his wages, and the goods have perhaps been sold, or certainly been placed beyond his reach. Leach has in his possession such a fines list, ten feet long, and amounting to 35 pounds 17s. 10d. He relates that in the factory where this list was made, a new supervisor was dismissed for fining too little, and so bringing in five pounds too little weekly. {181b} And I repeat that I know Leach to be a thoroughly trustworthy man incapable of a falsehood. But the operative is his employer's slave in still other respects. If his wife or daughter finds favour in the eyes of the master, a command, a hint suffices, and she must place herself at his disposal. When the employer wishes to supply with signatures a petition in favour of bourgeois interests, he need only send it to his mill. If he wishes to decide a Parliamentary election, he sends his enfranchised operatives in rank and file to the polls, and they vote for the bourgeois candidate whether they will or no. If he desires a majority in a public meeting, he dismisses them half-an-hour earlier than usual, and secures them places close to the platform, where he can watch them to his satisfaction. Two further arrangements contribute especially to force the operative under the dominion of the manufacturer; the Truck system and the Cottage system. The truck system, the payment of the operatives in goods, was formerly universal in England. The manufacturer opens a shop, "for the convenience of the operatives, and to protect them from the high prices of the petty dealers." Here goods of all sorts are sold to them on credit; and to keep the operatives from going to the shops where they could get their goods more cheaply--the "Tommy shops" usually charging twenty-five to thirty per cent. more than others--wages are paid in requisitions on the shop instead of money. The general indignation against this infamous system led to the passage of the Truck Act in 1831, by which, for most employees, payment in truck orders was declared void and illegal, and was made punishable by fine; but, like most other English laws, this has been enforced only here and there. In the towns it is carried out comparatively efficiently; but in the country, the truck system, disguised or undisguised, flourishes. In the town of Leicester, too, it is very common. There lie before me nearly a dozen convictions for this offence, dating from the period between November, 1843, and June, 1844, and reported, in part, in the _Manchester Guardian_ and, in part, in the _Northern Star_. The system is, of course, less openly carried on at present; wages are usually paid in cash, but the employer still has means enough at command to force him to purchase his wares in the truck shop and nowhere else. Hence it is difficult to combat the truck system, because it can now be carried on under cover of the law, provided only that the operative receives his wages in money. The _Northern Star_ of April 27th, 1843, publishes a letter from an operative of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, which refers to a manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as follows (retranslated from the German): "It is very strange to think that the accursed truck system should exist to such an extent as it does in Holmfirth, and nobody be found who has the pluck to make the manufacturer stop it. There are here a great many honest hand-weavers suffering through this damned system; here is one sample from a good many out of the noble-hearted Free Trade Clique. There is a manufacturer who has upon himself the curses of the whole district on account of his infamous conduct towards his poor weavers; if they have got a piece ready which comes to 34 or 36 shillings, he gives them 20s. in money and the rest in cloth or goods, and 40 to 50 per cent. dearer than at the other shops, and often enough the goods are rotten into the bargain. But, what says the _Free Trade Mercury_, the _Leeds Mercury_? They are not bound to take them; they can please themselves. Oh, yes, but they must take them or else starve. If they ask for another 20s. in money, they must wait eight or fourteen days for a warp; but if they take the 20s. and the goods, then there is always a warp ready for them. And that is Free Trade. Lord Brougham said we ought to put by something in our young days, so that we need not go to the parish when we are old. Well, are we to put by the rotten goods? If this did not come from a lord, one would say his brains were as rotten as the goods that our work is paid in. When the unstamped papers came out "illegally," there was a lot of them to report it to the police in Holmfirth, the Blythes, the Edwards, etc.; but where are they now? But this is different. Our truck manufacturer belongs to the pious Free Trade lot; he goes to church twice every Sunday, and repeats devotedly after the parson: 'We have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done the things we ought not to have done, and there is no good in us; but, good Lord, deliver us.' Yes, deliver us till to-morrow, and we will pay our weavers again in rotten goods." The Cottage system looks much more innocent and arose in a much more harmless way, though it has the same enslaving influence upon the employee. In the neighbourhood of the mills in the country, there is often a lack of dwelling accommodation for the operatives. The manufacturer is frequently obliged to build such dwellings and does so gladly, as they yield great advantages, besides the interest upon the capital invested. If any owner of working-men's dwellings averages about six per cent. on his invested capital, it is safe to calculate that the manufacturer's cottages yield twice this rate; for so long as his factory does not stand perfectly idle he is sure of occupants, and of occupants who pay punctually. He is therefore spared the two chief disadvantages under which other house-owners labour; his cottages never stand empty, and he runs no risk. But the rent of the cottages is as high as though these disadvantages were in full force, and by obtaining the same rent as the ordinary house-owner, the manufacturer, at cost of the operatives, makes a brilliant investment at twelve to fourteen per cent. For it is clearly unjust that he should make twice as much profit as other competing house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from competing with him. But it implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed profit from the pockets of the non-possessing class, which must consider the expenditure of every penny. He is used to that, however, he whose whole wealth is gained at the cost of his employees. But this injustice becomes an infamy when the manufacturer, as often happens, forces his operatives, who must occupy his houses on pain of dismissal, to pay a higher rent than the ordinary one, or even to pay rent for houses in which they do not live! The _Halifax Guardian_, quoted by the Liberal _Sun_, asserts that hundreds of operatives in Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, and Rochdale, etc., are forced by their employers to pay house-rent whether they occupy the house or not. {184} The cottage system is universal in the country districts; it has created whole villages, and the manufacturer usually has little or no competition against his houses, so that he can fix his price regardless of any market rate, indeed at his pleasure. And what power does the cottage system give the employer over his operatives in disagreements between master and men? If the latter strike, he need only give them notice to quit his premises, and the notice need only be a week; after that time the operative is not only without bread but without a shelter, a vagabond at the mercy of the law which sends him, without fail, to the treadmill. Such is the factory system sketched as fully as my space permits, and with as little partisan spirit as the heroic deeds of the bourgeoisie against the defenceless workers permit--deeds to wards which it is impossible to remain indifferent, towards which indifference were a crime. Let us compare the condition of the free Englishman of 1845 with the Saxon serf under the lash of the Norman barons of 1145. The serf was _glebae adscriptus_, bound to the soil, so is the free working-man through the cottage system. The serf owed his master the _jus primae noctis_, the right of the first night--the free working-man must, on demand, surrender to his master not only that, but the right of every night. The serf could acquire no property; everything that he gained, his master could take from him; the free working-man has no property, can gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and what even the Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through the truck system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the things which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs and by-laws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The free working-man's relation to his master is regulated by laws which are _not_ obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the employer nor with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not separate the serf from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since almost all the land was fief and there was no capital, practically could not sell him at all. The modern bourgeois forces the working-man to sell himself. The serf was the slave of the piece of land on which he was born, the working-man is the slave of his own necessaries of life and of the money with which he has to buy them--both are _slaves of a thing_. The serf had a guarantee for the means of subsistence in the feudal order of society in which every member had his own place. The free working-man has no guarantee whatsoever, because he has a place in society only when the bourgeoisie can make use of him; in all other cases he is ignored, treated as non-existent. The serf sacrificed himself for his master in war, the factory operative in peace. The lord of the serf was a barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle; the employer of operatives is civilised and regards his "hand" as a machine. In short, the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a disadvantage, it is the free working-man. Slaves they both are, with the single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open, honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed from himself and every one else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the old. The philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives the name white slaves. But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognises the right to freedom, at least in outward form; bows before a freedom- loving public opinion, and herein lies the historic progress as compared with the old servitude, that the _principle_ of freedom is affirmed, and the oppressed will one day see to it that this principle is carried out. {186} THE REMAINING BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. We were compelled to deal with the factory system somewhat at length, as it is an entirely novel creation of the industrial period; we shall be able to treat the other workers the more briefly, because what has been said either of the industrial proletariat in general, or of the factory system in particular, will wholly, or in part, apply to them. We shall, therefore, merely have to record how far the factory system has succeeded in forcing its way into each branch of industry, and what other peculiarities these may reveal. The four branches comprised under the Factory Act are engaged in the production of clothing stuffs. We shall do best if we deal next with those workers who receive their materials from these factories; and, first of all, with the stocking weavers of Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester. Touching these workers, the Children's Employment Commission reports that the long working-hours, imposed by low wages, with a sedentary life and the strain upon the eyes involved in the nature of the employment, usually enfeeble the whole frame, and especially the eyes. Work at night is impossible without a very powerful light produced by concentrating the rays of the lamp, making them pass through glass globes, which is most injurious to the sight. At forty years of age, nearly all wear spectacles. The children employed at spooling and hemming usually suffer grave injuries to the health and constitution. They work from the sixth, seventh, or eighth year ten to twelve hours daily in small, close rooms. It is not uncommon for them to faint at their work, to become too feeble for the most ordinary household occupation, and so near-sighted as to be obliged to wear glasses during childhood. Many were found by the commissioners to exhibit all the symptoms of a scrofulous constitution, and the manufacturers usually refuse to employ girls who have worked in this way as being too weak. The condition of these children is characterised as "a disgrace to a Christian country," and the wish expressed for legislative interference. The Factory Report {189} adds that the stocking weavers are the worst paid workers in Leicester, earning six, or with great effort, seven shillings a week, for sixteen to eighteen hours' daily work. Formerly they earned twenty to twenty-one shillings, but the introduction of enlarged frames has ruined their business; the great majority still work with old, small, single frames, and compete with difficulty with the progress of machinery. Here, too, every progress is a disadvantage for the workers. Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the pride of the stocking weavers that they are free, and had no factory bell to measure out the time for their eating, sleeping, and working. Their position to- day is no better than in 1833, when the Factory Commission made the foregoing statements, the competition of the Saxon stocking weavers, who have scarcely anything to eat, takes care of that. This competition is too strong for the English in nearly all foreign markets, and for the lower qualities of goods even in the English market. It must be a source of rejoicing for the patriotic German stocking weaver that his starvation wages force his English brother to starve too! And, verily, will he not starve on, proud and happy, for the greater glory of German industry, since the honour of the Fatherland demands that his table should be bare, his dish half empty? Ah! it is a noble thing this competition, this "race of the nations." In the _Morning Chronicle_, another Liberal sheet, the organ of the bourgeoisie par excellence, there were published some letters from a stocking weaver in Hinckley, describing the condition of his fellow-workers. Among other things, he reports 50 families, 321 persons, who were supported by 109 frames; each frame yielded on an average 5.5 shillings; each family earned an average of 11s. 4d. weekly. Out of this there was required for house rent, frame rent, fuel, light, soap, and needles, together 5s. 10d., so that there remained for food, per head daily, 1.5d., and for clothing nothing. "No eye," says the stocking weaver, "has seen, no ear heard, and no heart felt the half of the sufferings that these poor people endure." Beds were wanting either wholly or in part, the children ran about ragged and barefoot; the men said, with tears in their eyes: "It's a long time since we had any meat; we have almost forgotten how it tastes;" and, finally, some of them worked on Sunday, though public opinion pardons anything else more readily than this, and the rattling noise of the frame is audible throughout the neighbourhood. "But," said one of them, "look at my children and ask no questions. My poverty forces me to it; I can't and won't hear my children forever crying for bread, without trying the last means of winning it honestly. Last Monday I got up at two in the morning and worked to near midnight; the other days from six in the morning to between eleven and twelve at night. I have had enough of it; I sha'n't kill myself; so now I go to bed at ten o'clock, and make up the lost time on Sundays." Neither in Leicester, Nottingham, nor Derby have wages risen since 1833; and the worst of it is that in Leicester the truck system prevails to a great extent, as I have mentioned. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the weavers of this region take a very active part in all working-men's movements, the more active and effective because the frames are worked chiefly by men. In this stocking weavers' district the lace industry also has its headquarters. In the three counties mentioned there are in all 2,760 lace frames in use, while in all the rest of England there are but 786. The manufacture of lace is greatly complicated by a rigid division of labour, and embraces a multitude of branches. The yarn is first spooled by girls fourteen years of age and upwards, winders; then the spools are set up on the frames by boys, eight years old and upwards, threaders, who pass the thread through fine openings, of which each machine has an average of 1,800, and bring it towards its destination; then the weaver weaves the lace which comes out of the machine like a broad piece of cloth and is taken apart by very little children who draw out the connecting threads. This is called running or drawing lace, and the children themselves lace-runners. The lace is then made ready for sale. The winders, like the threaders, have no specified working-time, being called upon whenever the spools on a frame are empty, and are liable, since the weavers work at night, to be required at any time in the factory or workroom. This irregularity, the frequent night-work, the disorderly way of living consequent upon it, engender a multitude of physical and moral ills, especially early and unbridled sexual licence, upon which point all witnesses are unanimous. The work is very bad for the eyes, and although a permanent injury in the case of the threaders is not universally observable, inflammations of the eye, pain, tears, and momentary uncertainty of vision during the act of threading are engendered. For the winders, however, it is certain that their work seriously affects the eye, and produces, besides the frequent inflammations of the cornea, many cases of amaurosis and cataract. The work of the weavers themselves is very difficult, as the frames have constantly been made wider, until those now in use are almost all worked by three men in turn, each working eight hours, and the frame being kept in use the whole twenty-four. Hence it is that the winders and threaders are so often called upon during the night, and must work to prevent the frame from standing idle. The filling in of 1,800 openings with thread occupies three children at least two hours. Many frames are moved by steam-power, and the work of men thus superseded; and, as the Children's Employment Commission's Report mentions only lace factories to which the children are summoned, it seems to follow either that the work of the weavers has been removed to great factory rooms of late, or that steam- weaving has become pretty general; a forward movement of the factory system in either case. Most unwholesome of all is the work of the runners, who are usually children of seven, and even of five and four, years old. Commissioner Grainger actually found one child of two years old employed at this work. Following a thread which is to be withdrawn by a needle from an intricate texture, is very bad for the eyes, especially when, as is usually the case, the work is continued fourteen to sixteen hours. In the least unfavourable case, aggravated near-sightedness follows; in the worst case, which is frequent enough, incurable blindness from amaurosis. But, apart from that, the children, in consequence of sitting perpetually bent up, become feeble, narrow-chested, and scrofulous from bad digestion. Disordered functions of the uterus are almost universal among the girls, and curvature of the spine also, so that "all the runners may be recognised from their gait." The same consequences for the eyes and the whole constitution are produced by the embroidery of lace. Medical witnesses are unanimously of the opinion that the health of all children employed in the production of lace suffers seriously, that they are pale, weak, delicate, undersized, and much less able than other children to resist disease. The affections from which they usually suffer are general debility, frequent fainting, pains in the head, sides, back, and hips, palpitation of the heart, nausea, vomiting and want of appetite, curvature of the spine, scrofula, and consumption. The health of the female lacemakers especially, is constantly and deeply undermined; complaints are universal of anaemia, difficult childbirth, and miscarriage. {192a} The same subordinate official of the Children's Employment Commission reports further that the children are very often ill-clothed and ragged, and receive insufficient food, usually only bread and tea, often no meat for months together. As to their moral condition, he reports: {192b} "All the inhabitants of Nottingham, the police, the clergy, the manufacturers, the working-people, and the parents of the children are all unanimously of opinion that the present system of labour is a most fruitful source of immorality. The threaders, chiefly boys, and the winders, usually girls, are called for in the factory at the same time; and as their parents cannot know how long they are wanted there, they have the finest opportunity to form improper connections and remain together after the close of the work. This has contributed, in no small degree, to the immorality which, according to general opinion, exists to a terrible extent in Nottingham. Apart from this, the quiet of home life, and the comfort of the family to which these children and young people belong, is wholly sacrificed to this most unnatural state of things." Another branch of lace-making, bobbin-lacework, is carried on in the agricultural shires of Northampton, Oxford, and Bedford, chiefly by children and young persons, who complain universally of bad food, and rarely taste meat. The employment itself is most unwholesome. The children work in small, ill-ventilated, damp rooms, sitting always bent over the lace cushion. To support the body in this wearying position, the girls wear stays with a wooden busk, which, at the tender age of most of them, when the bones are still very soft, wholly displace the ribs, and make narrow chests universal. They usually die of consumption after suffering the severest forms of digestive disorders, brought on by sedentary work in a bad atmosphere. They are almost wholly without education, least of all do they receive moral training. They love finery, and in consequence of these two influences their moral condition is most deplorable, and prostitution almost epidemic among them. {193} This is the price at which society purchases for the fine ladies of the bourgeoisie the pleasure of wearing lace; a reasonable price truly! Only a few thousand blind working-men, some consumptive labourers' daughters, a sickly generation of the vile multitude bequeathing its debility to its equally "vile" children and children's children. But what does that come to? Nothing, nothing whatsoever! Our English bourgeoisie will lay the report of the Government Commission aside indifferently, and wives and daughters will deck themselves with lace as before. It is a beautiful thing, the composure of an English bourgeois. A great number of operatives are employed in the cotton-printing establishments of Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the West of Scotland. In no branch of English industry has mechanical ingenuity produced such brilliant results as here, but in no other has it so crushed the workers. The application of engraved cylinders driven by steam-power, and the discovery of a method of printing four to six colours at once with such cylinders, has as completely superseded hand-work as did the application of machinery to the spinning and weaving of cotton, and these new arrangements in the printing-works have superseded the hand-workers much more than was the case in the production of the fabrics. One man, with the assistance of one child, now does with a machine the work done formerly by 200 block printers; a single machine yields 28 yards of printed cloth per minute. The calico printers are in a very bad way in consequence; the shires of Lancaster, Derby, and Chester produced (according to a petition of the printers to the House of Commons), in the year 1842, 11,000,000 pieces of printed cotton goods: of these, 100,000 were printed by hand exclusively, 900,000 in part with machinery and in part by hand, and 10,000,000 by machinery alone, with four to six colours. As the machinery is chiefly new and undergoes constant improvement, the number of hand-printers is far too great for the available quantity of work, and many of them are therefore starving; the petition puts the number at one-quarter of the whole, while the rest are employed but one or two, in the best case three days in the week, and are ill-paid. Leach {194} asserts of one print-work (Deeply Dale, near Bury, in Lancashire), that the hand-printers did not earn on an average more than five shillings, though he knows that the machine-printers were pretty well paid. The print-works are thus wholly affiliated with the factory system, but without being subject to the legislative restrictions placed upon it. They produce an article subject to fashion, and have therefore no regular work. If they have small orders, they work half time; if they make a hit with a pattern, and business is brisk, they work twelve hours, perhaps all night. In the neighbourhood of my home, near Manchester, there was a print-work that was often lighted when I returned late at night; and I have heard that the children were obliged at times to work so long there, that they would try to catch a moment's rest and sleep on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby. I have no legal proof of the truth of the statement, or I should name the firm. The Report of the Children's Employment Commission is very cursory upon this subject, stating merely that in England, at least, the children are mostly pretty well clothed and fed (relatively, according to the wages of the parents), that they receive no education whatsoever, and are morally on a low plane. It is only necessary to remember that these children are subject to the factory system, and then, referring the reader to what has already been said of that, we can pass on. Of the remaining workers employed in the manufacture of clothing stuffs little remains to be said; the bleachers' work is very unwholesome, obliging them to breathe chlorine, a gas injurious to the lungs. The work of the dyers is in many cases very healthful, since it requires the exertion of the whole body; how these workers are paid is little known, and this is ground enough for the inference that they do not receive less than the average wages, otherwise they would make complaint. The fustian cutters, who, in consequence of the large consumption of cotton velvet, are comparatively numerous, being estimated at from 3,000 to 4,000, have suffered very severely, indirectly, from the influence of the factory system. The goods formerly woven with hand-looms, were not perfectly uniform, and required a practised hand in cutting the single rows of threads. Since power-looms have been used, the rows run regularly; each thread of the weft is exactly parallel with the preceding one, and cutting is no longer an art. The workers thrown out of employment by the introduction of machinery turn to fustian cutting, and force down wages by their competition; the manufacturers discovered that they could employ women and children, and the wages sank to the rate paid them, while hundreds of men were thrown out of employment. The manufacturers found that they could get the work done in the factory itself more cheaply than in the cutters' workroom, for which they indirectly paid the rent. Since this discovery, the low upper-storey cutters' rooms stand empty in many a cottage, or are let for dwellings, while the cutter has lost his freedom of choice of his working-hours, and is brought under the dominion of the factory bell. A cutter of perhaps forty-five years of age told me that he could remember a time when he had received 8d. a yard for work, for which he now received 1d.; true, he can cut the more regular texture more quickly than the old, but he can by no means do twice as much in an hour as formerly, so that his wages have sunk to less than a quarter of what they were. Leach {196} gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843 for various goods, from which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at the rates of 4d., 2.25d., 2.75d., and 1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at the rate of 1.5d., 1d., .75d., and 0.375d. per yard, cutters' wages. The average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows: 1827, 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; 1 pounds 2s. 6d.; 1 pounds; 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; and for the same goods in 1843, 10s. 6d.; 7s. 6d.; 6s. 8d.; 10s.; while there are hundreds of workers who cannot find employment even at these last named rates. Of the hand-weavers of the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other woven fabrics are almost exclusively produced on hand-looms. Here most of the workers have suffered as the weavers have done from the crowding in of competitors displaced by machinery, and are, moreover, subject like the factory operatives to a severe fine system for bad work. Take, for instance, the silk weavers. Mr. Brocklehurst, one of the largest silk manufacturers in all England, laid before a committee of members of Parliament lists taken from his books, from which it appears that for goods for which he paid wages in 1821 at the rate of 30s., 14s., 3.5s., .75s., 1.5s., 10s., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 7.25s., 2.25s., 0.333s., 0.5s., 6.25s., while in this case no improvement in the machinery has taken place. But what Mr. Brocklehurst does may very well be taken as a standard for all. From the same lists it appears that the average weekly wage of his weavers, after all deductions, was, in 1821, 16.5s., and, in 1831, but 6s. Since that time wages have fallen still further. Goods which brought in 4d. weavers' wages in 1831, bring in but 2.5d. in 1843 (single sarsnets), and a great number of weavers in the country can get work only when they undertake these goods at 1.5d.-2d. Moreover, they are subject to arbitrary deductions from their wages. Every weaver who receives materials is given a card, on which is usually to be read that the work is to be returned at a specified hour of the day; that a weaver who cannot work by reason of illness must make the fact known at the office within three days, or sickness will not be regarded as an excuse; that it will not be regarded as a sufficient excuse if the weaver claims to have been obliged to wait for yarn; that for certain faults in the work (if, for example, more weft-threads are found within a given space than are prescribed), not less than half the wages will be deducted; and that if the goods should not be ready at the time specified, one penny will be deducted for every yard returned. The deductions in accordance with these cards are so considerable that, for instance, a man who comes twice a week to Leigh, in Lancashire, to gather up woven goods, brings his employer at least 15 pound fines every time. He asserts this himself, and he is regarded as one of the most lenient. Such things were formerly settled by arbitration; but as the workers were usually dismissed if they insisted upon that, the custom has been almost wholly abandoned, and the manufacturer acts arbitrarily as prosecutor, witness, judge, law-giver, and executive in one person. And if the workman goes to a Justice of the Peace, the answer is: "When you accepted your card you entered upon a contract, and you must abide by it." The case is the same as that of the factory operatives. Besides, the employer obliges the workman to sign a document in which he declares that he agrees to the deductions made. And if a workman rebels, all the manufacturers in the town know at once that he is a man who, as Leach says, {197} "resists the lawful order as established by weavers' cards, and, moreover, has the impudence to doubt the wisdom of those who are, as he ought to know, his superiors in society." Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what Leach translates into plain English with the words: "If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire." The silk weavers of London, and especially of Spitalfields, have lived in periodic distress for a long time, and that they still have no cause to be satisfied with their lot is proved by their taking a most active part in English labour movements in general, and in London ones in particular. The distress prevailing among them gave rise to the fever which broke out in East London, and called forth the Commission for Investigating the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Class. But the last report of the London Fever Hospital shows that this disease is still raging. After the textile fabrics, by far the most important products of English industry are the metal-wares. This trade has its headquarters at Birmingham, where the finer metal goods of all sorts are produced, at Sheffield for cutlery, and in Staffordshire, especially at Wolverhampton, where the coarser articles, locks, nails, etc., are manufactured. In describing the position of the workers employed in these trades, let us begin with Birmingham. The disposition of the work has retained in Birmingham, as in most places where metals are wrought, something of the old handicraft character; the small employers are still to be found, who work with their apprentices in the shop at home, or when they need steam- power, in great factory buildings which are divided into little shops, each rented to a small employer, and supplied with a shaft moved by the engine, and furnishing motive power for the machinery. Leon Faucher, author of a series of articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which at least betray study, and are better than what has hitherto been written upon the subject by Englishmen or Germans, characterises this relation in contrast with the manufacture of Lancashire as "Democratie industrielle," and observes that it produces no very favourable results for master or men. This observation is perfectly correct, for the many small employers cannot well subsist on the profit divided amongst them, determined by competition, a profit under other circumstances absorbed by a single manufacturer. The centralising tendency of capital holds them down. For one who grows rich ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at a greater disadvantage than ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can afford to sell more cheaply than they. And in the cases where they have to compete from the beginning against great capitalists, it is self-evident that they can only toil along with the greatest difficulty. The apprentices are, as we shall see, quite as badly off under the small employers as under the manufacturers, with the single difference that they, in turn, may become small employers, and so attain a certain independence--that is to say, they are at best less directly exploited by the bourgeoisie than under the factory system. Thus these small employers are neither genuine proletarians, since they live in part upon the work of their apprentices, nor genuine bourgeois, since their principal means of support is their own work. This peculiar midway position of the Birmingham iron-workers is to blame for their having so rarely joined wholly and unreservedly in the English labour movements. Birmingham is a politically radical, but not a Chartist, town. There are, however, numerous larger factories belonging to capitalists; and in these the factory system reigns supreme. The division of labour, which is here carried out to the last detail (in the needle industry, for example), and the use of steam-power, admit of the employment of a great multitude of women and children, and we find here {199} precisely the same features reappearing which the Factories' Report presented,--the work of women up to the hour of confinement, incapacity as housekeepers, neglect of home and children, indifference, actual dislike to family life, and demoralisation; further, the crowding out of men from employment, the constant improvement of machinery, early emancipation of children, husbands supported by their wives and children, etc. etc. The children are described as half-starved and ragged, the half of them are said not to know what it is to have enough to eat, many of them get nothing to eat before the midday meal, or even live the whole day upon a pennyworth of bread for a noonday meal--there were actually cases in which children received no food from eight in the morning until seven at night. Their clothing is very often scarcely sufficient to cover their nakedness, many are barefoot even in winter. Hence they are all small and weak for their age, and rarely develop with any degree of vigour. And when we reflect that with these insufficient means of reproducing the physical forces, hard and protracted work in close rooms is required of them, we cannot wonder that there are few adults in Birmingham fit for military service. "The working men," says a recruiting surgeon, "are small, delicate, and of very slight physical power; many of them deformed, too, in the chest or spinal column." According to the assertion of a recruiting sergeant, the people of Birmingham are smaller than those anywhere else, being usually 5 feet 4 to 5 inches tall; out of 613 recruits, but 238 were found fit for service. As to education, a series of depositions and specimens taken from the metal districts have already been given, {200a} to which the reader is referred. It appears further, from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, that in Birmingham more than half the children between five and fifteen years attend no school whatsoever, that those who do are constantly changing, so that it is impossible to give them any training of an enduring kind, and that they are all withdrawn from school very early and set to work. The report makes it clear what sort of teachers are employed. One teacher, in answer to the question whether she gave moral instruction, said, No, for threepence a week school fees that was too much to require, but that she took a great deal of trouble to instil good principles into the children. (And she made a decided slip in her English in saying it.) In the schools the commissioner found constant noise and disorder. The moral state of the children is in the highest degree deplorable. Half of all the criminals are children under fifteen, and in a single year ninety ten-years'-old offenders, among them forty-four serious criminal cases, were sentenced. Unbridled sexual intercourse seems, according to the opinion of the commissioner, almost universal, and that at a very early age. {200b} In the iron district of Staffordshire the state of things is still worse. For the coarse wares made here neither much division of labour (with certain exceptions) nor steam-power or machinery can be applied. In Wolverhampton, Willenhall, Bilston, Sedgeley, Wednesfield, Darlaston, Dudley, Walsall, Wednesbury, etc., there are, therefore, fewer factories, but chiefly single forges, where the small masters work alone, or with one or more apprentices, who serve them until reaching the twenty-first year. The small employers are in about the same situation as those of Birmingham; but the apprentices, as a rule, are much worse off. They get almost exclusively meat from diseased animals or such as have died a natural death, or tainted meat, or fish to eat, with veal from calves killed too young, and pork from swine smothered during transportation, and such food is furnished not by small employers only, but by large manufacturers, who employ from thirty to forty apprentices. The custom seems to be universal in Wolverhampton, and its natural consequence is frequent bowel complaints and other diseases. Moreover, the children usually do not get enough to eat, and have rarely other clothing than their working rags, for which reason, if for no other, they cannot go to Sunday school The dwellings are bad and filthy, often so much so that they give rise to disease; and in spite of the not materially unhealthy work, the children are puny, weak, and, in many cases, severely crippled. In Willenhall, for instance, there are countless persons who have, from perpetually filing at the lathe, crooked backs and one leg crooked, "hind- leg" as they call it, so that the two legs have the form of a K; while it is said that more than one-third of the working-men there are ruptured. Here, as well as in Wolverhampton, numberless cases were found of retarded puberty among girls, (for girls, too, work at the forges,) as well as among boys, extending even to the nineteenth year. In Sedgeley and its surrounding district, where nails form almost the sole product, the nailers live and work in the most wretched stable-like huts, which for filth can scarcely be equalled. Girls and boys work from the tenth or twelfth year, and are accounted fully skilled only when they make a thousand nails a day. For twelve hundred nails the pay is 5.75d. Every nail receives twelve blows, and since the hammer weighs 1.25 pounds, the nailer must lift 18,000 pounds to earn this miserable pay. With this hard work and insufficient food, the children inevitably develop ill-formed, undersized frames, and the commissioners depositions confirm this. As to the state of education in this district, data have already been furnished in the foregoing chapters. It is upon an incredibly low plane; half the children do not even go to Sunday school, and the other half go irregularly; very few, in comparison with the other districts, can read, and in the matter of writing the case is much worse. Naturally, for between the seventh and tenth years, just when they are beginning to get some good out of going to school, they are set to work, and the Sunday school teachers, smiths or miners, frequently cannot read, and write their names with difficulty. The prevailing morals correspond with these means of education. In Willenhall, Commissioner Horne asserts, and supplies ample proofs of his assertion, that there exists absolutely no moral sense among the workers. In general, he found that the children neither recognised duties to their parents nor felt any affection for them. They were so little capable of thinking of what they said, so stolid, so hopelessly stupid, that they often asserted that they were well treated, were coming on famously, when they were forced to work twelve to fourteen hours, were clad in rags, did not get enough to eat, and were beaten so that they felt it several days afterwards. They knew nothing of a different kind of life than that in which they toil from morning until they are allowed to stop at night, and did not even understand the question never heard before, whether they were tired. {202} In Sheffield wages are better, and the external state of the workers also. On the other hand, certain branches of work are to be noticed here, because of their extraordinarily injurious influence upon health. Certain operations require the constant pressure of tools against the chest, and engender consumption in many cases; others, file-cutting among them, retard the general development of the body and produce digestive disorders; bone-cutting for knife handles brings with it headache, biliousness, and among girls, of whom many are employed, anaemia. By far the most unwholesome work is the grinding of knife-blades and forks, which, especially when done with a dry stone, entails certain early death. The unwholesomeness of this work lies in part in the bent posture, in which chest and stomach are cramped; but especially in the quantity of sharp-edged metal dust particles freed in the cutting, which fill the atmosphere, and are necessarily inhaled. The dry grinders' average life is hardly thirty-five years, the wet grinders' rarely exceeds forty-five. Dr. Knight, in Sheffield, says: {203} "I can convey some idea of the injuriousness of this occupation only by asserting that the hardest drinkers among the grinders are the longest lived among them, because they are longest and oftenest absent from their work. There are, in all, some 2,500 grinders in Sheffield. About 150 (80 men and 70 boys) are fork grinders; these die between the twenty-eighth and thirty-second years of age. The razor grinders, who grind wet as well as dry, die between forty and forty-five years, and the table cutlery grinders, who grind wet, die between the fortieth and fiftieth year." The same physician gives the following description of the course of the disease called grinders' asthma: "They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they have good constitutions, rarely notice any symptoms before the twentieth year. Then the symptoms of their peculiar disease appear. They suffer from shortness of breath at the slightest effort in going up hill or up stairs, they habitually raise the shoulders to relieve the permanent and increasing want of breath; they bend forward, and seem, in general, to feel most comfortable in the crouching position in which they work. Their complexion becomes dirty yellow, their features express anxiety, they complain of pressure upon the chest. Their voices become rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound is as if air were driven through a wooden tube. From time to time they expectorate considerable quantities of dust, either mixed with phlegm or in balls or cylindrical masses, with a thin coating of mucus. Spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat, colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh, and all the usual symptoms of consumption of the lungs finally carry them off, after they have lingered months, or even years, unfit to support themselves or those dependent upon them. I must add that all attempts which have hitherto been made to prevent grinders' asthma, or to cure it, have wholly failed." All this Knight wrote ten years ago; since then the number of grinders and the violence of the disease have increased, though attempts have been made to prevent it by covered grindstones and carrying off the dust by artificial draught. These methods have been at least partially successful, but the grinders do not desire their adoption, and have even destroyed the contrivance here and there, in the belief that more workers may be attracted to the business and wages thus reduced; they are for a short life and a merry one. Dr. Knight has often told grinders who came to him with the first symptoms of asthma that a return to grinding means certain death, but with no avail. He who is once a grinder falls into despair, as though he had sold himself to the devil. Education in Sheffield is upon a very low plane; a clergyman, who had occupied himself largely with the statistics of education, was of the opinion that of 16,500 children of the working-class who are in a position to attend school, scarcely 6,500 can read. This comes of the fact that the children are taken from school in the seventh, and, at the very latest, in the twelfth year, and that the teachers are good for nothing; one was a convicted thief who found no other way of supporting himself after being released from jail than teaching school! Immorality among young people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield than anywhere else. It is hard to tell which town ought to have the prize, and in reading the report one believes of each one that this certainly deserves it! The younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing coins or fighting dogs, go regularly to the gin palace, where they sit with their sweethearts until late at night, when they take walks in solitary couples. In an ale-house which the commissioner visited, there sat forty to fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all under seventeen years of age, and each lad beside his lass. Here and there cards were played, at other places dancing was going on, and everywhere drinking. Among the company were openly avowed professional prostitutes. No wonder, then, that, as all the witnesses testify, early, unbridled sexual intercourse, youthful prostitution, beginning with persons of fourteen to fifteen years, is extraordinarily frequent in Sheffield. Crimes of a savage and desperate sort are of common occurrence; one year before the commissioner's visit, a band, consisting chiefly of young persons, was arrested when about to set fire to the town, being fully equipped with lances and inflammable substances. We shall see later that the labour movement in Sheffield has this same savage character. {205} Besides these two main centres of the metal industry, there are needle factories in Warrington, Lancashire, where great want, immorality, and ignorance prevail among the workers, and especially among the children; and a number of nail forges in the neighbourhood of Wigan, in Lancashire, and in the east of Scotland. The reports from these latter districts tell almost precisely the same story as those of Staffordshire. There is one more branch of this industry carried on in the factory districts, especially in Lancashire, the essential peculiarity of which is the production of machinery by machinery, whereby the workers, crowded out elsewhere, are deprived of their last refuge, the creation of the very enemy which supersedes them. Machinery for planing and boring, cutting screws, wheels, nuts, etc., with power lathes, has thrown out of employment a multitude of men who formerly found regular work at good wages; and whoever wishes to do so may see crowds of them in Manchester. North of the iron district of Staffordshire lies an industrial region to which we shall now turn our attention, the Potteries, whose headquarters are in the borough of Stoke, embracing Henley, Burslem, Lane End, Lane Delph, Etruria, Coleridge, Langport, Tunstall, and Golden Hill, containing together 60,000 inhabitants. The Children's Employment Commission reports upon this subject that in some branches of this industry, in the production of stoneware, the children have light employment in warm, airy rooms; in others, on the contrary, hard, wearing labour is required, while they receive neither sufficient food nor good clothing. Many children complain: "Don't get enough to eat, get mostly potatoes with salt, never meat, never bread, don't go to school, haven't got no clothes." "Haven't got nothin' to eat to-day for dinner, don't never have dinner at home, get mostly potatoes and salt, sometimes bread." "These is all the clothes I have, no Sunday suit at home." Among the children whose work is especially injurious are the mould-runners, who have to carry the moulded article with the form to the drying-room, and afterwards bring back the empty form, when the article is properly dried. Thus they must go to and fro the whole day, carrying burdens heavy in proportion to their age, while the high temperature in which they have to do this increases very considerably the exhaustiveness of the work. These children, with scarcely a single exception, are lean, pale, feeble, stunted; nearly all suffer from stomach troubles, nausea, want of appetite, and many of them die of consumption. Almost as delicate are the boys called "jiggers," from the "jigger" wheel which they turn. But by far the most injurious is the work of those who dip the finished article into a fluid containing great quantities of lead, and often of arsenic, or have to take the freshly-dipped article up with the hand. The hands and clothing of these workers, adults and children, are always wet with this fluid, the skin softens and falls off under the constant contact with rough objects, so that the fingers often bleed, and are constantly in a state most favourable for the absorption of this dangerous substance. The consequence is violent pain, and serious disease of the stomach and intestines, obstinate constipation, colic, sometimes consumption, and, most common of all, epilepsy among children. Among men, partial paralysis of the hand muscles, colica pictorum, and paralysis of whole limbs are ordinary phenomena. One witness relates that two children who worked with him died of convulsions at their work; another who had helped with the dipping two years while a boy, relates that he had violent pains in the bowels at first, then convulsions, in consequence of which he was confined to his bed two months, since when the attacks of convulsions have increased in frequency, are now daily, accompanied often by ten to twenty epileptic fits, his right arm is paralysed, and the physicians tell him that he can never regain the use of his limbs. In one factory were found in the dipping-house four men, all epileptic and afflicted with severe colic, and eleven boys, several of whom were already epileptic. In short, this frightful disease follows this occupation universally: and that, too, to the greater pecuniary profit of the bourgeoisie! In the rooms in which the stoneware is scoured, the atmosphere is filled with pulverised flint, the breathing of which is as injurious as that of the steel dust among the Sheffield grinders. The workers lose breath, cannot lie down, suffer from sore throat and violent coughing, and come to have so feeble a voice that they can scarcely be heard. They, too, all die of consumption. In the Potteries district, the schools are said to be comparatively numerous, and to offer the children opportunities for instruction; but as the latter are so early set to work for twelve hours and often more per day, they are not in a position to avail themselves of the schools, so that three-fourths of the children examined by the commissioner could neither read nor write, while the whole district is plunged in the deepest ignorance. Children who have attended Sunday school for years could not tell one letter from another, and the moral and religious education, as well as the intellectual, is on a very low plane. {207} In the manufacture of glass, too, work occurs which seems little injurious to men, but cannot be endured by children. The hard labour, the irregularity of the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially the great heat of the working place (100 to 130 Fahrenheit), engender in children general debility and disease, stunted growth, and especially affections of the eye, bowel complaint, and rheumatic and bronchial affections. Many of the children are pale, have red eyes, often blind for weeks at a time, suffer from violent nausea, vomiting, coughs, colds, and rheumatism. When the glass is withdrawn from the fire, the children must often go into such heat that the boards on which they stand catch fire under their feet. The glassblowers usually die young of debility and chest affections. {208} As a whole, this report testifies to the gradual but sure introduction of the factory system into all branches of industry, recognisable especially by the employment of women and children. I have not thought it necessary to trace in every case the progress of machinery and the superseding of men as workers. Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the nature of manufacture can fill this out for himself, while space fails me to describe in detail an aspect of our present system of production, the result of which I have already sketched in dealing with the factory system. In all directions machinery is being introduced, and the last trace of the working-man's independence thus destroyed. In all directions the family is being dissolved by the labour of wife and children, or inverted by the husband's being thrown out of employment and made dependent upon them for bread; everywhere the inevitable machinery bestows upon the great capitalist command of trade and of the workers with it. The centralisation of capital strides forward without interruption, the division of society into great capitalists and non-possessing workers is sharper every day, the industrial development of the nation advances with giant strides towards the inevitable crisis. I have already stated that in the handicrafts the power of capital, and in some cases the division of labour too, has produced the same results, crushed the small tradesmen, and put great capitalists and non-possessing workers in their place. As to these handicraftsmen there is little to be said, since all that relates to them has already found its place where the proletariat in general was under discussion. There has been but little change here in the nature of the work and its influence upon health since the beginning of the industrial movement. But the constant contact with the factory operatives, the pressure of the great capitalists, which is much more felt than that of the small employer to whom the apprentice still stood in a more or less personal relation, the influences of life in towns, and the fall of wages, have made nearly all the handicraftsmen active participators in labour movements. We shall soon have more to say on this point, and turn meanwhile to one section of workers in London who deserve our attention by reason of the extraordinary barbarity with which they are exploited by the money-greed of the bourgeoisie. I mean the dressmakers and sewing-women. It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles which serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie involves the saddest consequences for the health of the workers. We have already seen this in the case of the lacemakers, and come now to the dressmaking establishments of London for further proof. They employ a mass of young girls--there are said to be 15,000 of them in all--who sleep and eat on the premises, come usually from the country, and are therefore absolutely the slaves of their employers. During the fashionable season, which lasts some four months, working-hours, even in the best establishments, are fifteen, and, in very pressing cases, eighteen a day; but in most shops work goes on at these times without any set regulation, so that the girls never have more than six, often not more than three or four, sometimes, indeed, not more than two hours in the twenty-four, for rest and sleep, working nineteen to twenty hours, if not the whole night through, as frequently happens! The only limit set to their work is the absolute physical inability to hold the needle another minute. Cases have occurred in which these helpless creatures did not undress during nine consecutive days and nights, and could only rest a moment or two here and there upon a mattress, where food was served them ready cut up in order to require the least possible time for swallowing. In short, these unfortunate girls are kept by means of the moral whip of the modern slave-driver, the threat of discharge, to such long and unbroken toil as no strong man, much less a delicate girl of fourteen to twenty years, can endure. In addition to this, the foul air of the workroom and sleeping places, the bent posture, the often bad and indigestible food, all these causes, combined with almost total exclusion from fresh air, entail the saddest consequences for the health of the girls. Enervation, exhaustion, debility, loss of appetite, pains in the shoulders, back, and hips, but especially headache, begin very soon; then follow curvatures of the spine, high, deformed shoulders, leanness, swelled, weeping, and smarting eyes, which soon become short-sighted; coughs, narrow chests, and shortness of breath, and all manner of disorders in the development of the female organism. In many cases the eyes suffer, so severely that incurable blindness follows; but if the sight remains strong enough to make continued work possible, consumption usually soon ends the sad life of these milliners and dressmakers. Even those who leave this work at an early age retain permanently injured health, a broken constitution; and, when married, bring feeble and sickly children into the world. All the medical men interrogated by the commissioner agreed that no method of life could be invented better calculated to destroy health and induce early death. With the same cruelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the needle-women of London are exploited. The girls employed in stay-making have a hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do they get? I do not know; but this I know, that the middle-man who has to give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work among the needle-women, receives 1.5d. per piece. From this he deducts his own pay, at least .5d., so that 1d. at most reaches the pocket of the girl. The girls who sew neckties must bind themselves to work sixteen hours a day, and receive 4.5s. a week. {210} But the shirtmakers' lot is the worst. They receive for an ordinary shirt 1.5d., formerly 2d.-3d.; but since the workhouse of St. Pancras, which is administered by a Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work at 1.5d., the poor women outside have been compelled to do the same. For fine, fancy shirts, which can be made in one day of eighteen hours, 6d. is paid. The weekly wage of these sewing-women according to this and according to testimony from many sides, including both needle-women and employers, is 2s. 6d. to 3s. for most strained work continued far into the night. And what crowns this shameful barbarism is the fact that the women must give a money deposit for a part of the materials entrusted to them, which they naturally cannot do unless they pawn a part of them (as the employers very well know), redeeming them at a loss; or if they cannot redeem the materials, they must appear before a Justice of the Peace, as happened a sewing-woman in November, 1843. A poor girl who got into this strait and did not know what to do next, drowned herself in a canal in 1844. These women usually live in little garret rooms in the utmost distress, where as many crowd together as the space can possibly admit, and where, in winter, the animal warmth of the workers is the only heat obtainable. Here they sit bent over their work, sewing from four or five in the morning until midnight, destroying their health in a year or two and ending in an early grave, without being able to obtain the poorest necessities of life meanwhile. {211} And below them roll the brilliant equipages of the upper bourgeoisie, and perhaps ten steps away some pitiable dandy loses more money in one evening at faro than they can earn in a year. * * * * * Such is the condition of the English manufacturing proletariat. In all directions, whithersoever we may turn, we find want and disease permanent or temporary, and demoralisation arising from the condition of the workers; in all directions slow but sure undermining, and final destruction of the human being physically as well as mentally. Is this a state of things which can last? It cannot and will not last. The workers, the great majority of the nation, will not endure it. Let us see what they say of it. LABOUR MOVEMENTS. It must be admitted, even if I had not proved it so often in detail, that the English workers cannot feel happy in this condition; that theirs is not a state in which a man or a whole class of men can think, feel, and live as human beings. The workers must therefore strive to escape from this brutalizing condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human position; and this they cannot do without attacking the interest of the bourgeoisie which consists in exploiting them. But the bourgeoisie defends its interests with all the power placed at its disposal by wealth and the might of the State. In proportion as the working-man determines to alter the present state of things, the bourgeois becomes his avowed enemy. Moreover, the working-man is made to feel at every moment that the bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy. I have shown in a hundred ways in the foregoing pages, and could have shown in a hundred others, that, in our present society, he can save his manhood only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie. And he can protest with most violent passion against the tyranny of the propertied class, thanks to his education, or rather want of education, and to the abundance of hot Irish blood that flows in the veins of the English working-class. The English working-man is no Englishman nowadays; no calculating money-grabber like his wealthy neighbour. He possesses more fully developed feelings, his native northern coldness is overborne by the unrestrained development of his passions and their control over him. The cultivation of the understanding which so greatly strengthens the selfish tendency of the English bourgeois, which has made selfishness his predominant trait and concentrated all his emotional power upon the single point of money-greed, is wanting in the working-man, whose passions are therefore strong and mighty as those of the foreigner. English nationality is annihilated in the working-man. Since, as we have seen, no single field for the exercise of his manhood is left him, save his opposition to the whole conditions of his life, it is natural that exactly in this opposition he should be most manly, noblest, most worthy of sympathy. We shall see that all the energy, all the activity of the working-men is directed to this point, and that even their attempts to attain general education all stand in direct connection with this. True, we shall have single acts of violence and even of brutality to report, but it must always be kept in mind that the social war is avowedly raging in England; and that, whereas it is in the interest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war hypocritically, under the disguise of peace and even of philanthropy, the only help for the working- men consists in laying bare the true state of things and destroying this hypocrisy; that the most violent attacks of the workers upon the bourgeoisie and its servants are only the open, undisguised expression of that which the bourgeoisie perpetrates secretly, treacherously against the workers. The revolt of the workers began soon after the first industrial development, and has passed through several phases. The investigation of their importance in the history of the English people I must reserve for separate treatment, limiting myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve to characterise the condition of the English proletariat. The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased with the extension of manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore a constant relation to the number of bales of cotton annually consumed. The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority. Besides, theft was the most primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no other, it never became the universal expression of the public opinion of the working-men, however much they might approve of it in silence. As a class, they first manifested opposition to the bourgeoisie when they resisted the introduction of machinery at the very beginning of the industrial period. The first inventors, Arkwright and others, were persecuted in this way and their machines destroyed. Later, there took place a number of revolts against machinery, in which the occurrences were almost precisely the same as those of the printers' disturbances in Bohemia in 1844; factories were demolished and machinery destroyed. This form of opposition also was isolated, restricted to certain localities, and directed against one feature only of our present social arrangements. When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of social power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its heart's content, while the machinery was introduced none the less. A new form of opposition had to be found. At this point help came in the shape of a law enacted by the old, unreformed, oligarchic-Tory parliament, a law which never could have passed the House of Commons later, when the Reform Bill had legally sanctioned the distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made the bourgeoisie the ruling class. This was enacted in 1824, and repealed all laws by which coalitions between working-men for labour purposes had hitherto been forbidden. The working-men obtained a right previously restricted to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the right of free association. Secret coalitions had, it is true, previously existed, but could never achieve great results. In Glasgow, as Symonds {214} relates, a general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought about by a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this occasion vitriol was thrown into the faces of the two working-men who would not join the association, and were therefore regarded by the members as traitors to their class. Both the assaulted lost the use of their eyes in consequence of the injury. So, too, in 1818, the association of Scottish miners was powerful enough to carry on a general strike. These associations required their members to take an oath of fidelity and secrecy, had regular lists, treasurers, bookkeepers, and local branches. But the secrecy with which everything was conducted crippled their growth. When, on the other hand, the working-man received in 1824 the right of free association, these combinations were very soon spread over all England and attained great power. In all branches of industry Trades Unions were formed with the outspoken intention of protecting the single working-man against the tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie. Their objects were to deal, _en masse_, as a power, with the employers; to regulate the rate of wages according to the profit of the latter, to raise it when opportunity offered, and to keep it uniform in each trade throughout the country. Hence they tried to settle with the capitalists a scale of wages to be universally adhered to, and ordered out on strike the employees of such individuals as refused to accept the scale. They aimed further to keep up the demand for labour by limiting the number of apprentices, and so to keep wages high; to counteract, as far as possible, the indirect wages reductions which the manufacturers brought about by means of new tools and machinery; and finally, to assist unemployed working-men financially. This they do either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the bearer as a "society man," and with which the working-man wanders from place to place, supported by his fellow-workers, and instructed as to the best opportunity for finding employment. This is tramping, and the wanderer a tramp. To attain these ends, a President and Secretary are engaged at a salary (since it is to be expected that no manufacturer will employ such persons), and a committee collects the weekly contributions and watches over their expenditure for the purposes of the association. When it proved possible and advantageous, the various trades of single districts united in a federation and held delegate conventions at set times. The attempt has been made in single cases to unite the workers of one branch over all England in one great Union; and several times (in 1830 for the first time) to form one universal trades association for the whole United Kingdom, with a separate organisation for each trade. These associations, however, never held together long, and were seldom realised even for the moment, since an exceptionally universal excitement is necessary to make such a federation possible and effective. The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are the following: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified by the Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working- men, you see, know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the factory in his little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union commands the employees to stop work, and all hands go home. This strike is either partial when one or several, or general when all employers in the trade refuse to regulate wages according to the proposals of the Union. So far go the lawful means of the Union, assuming the strike to take effect after the expiration of the legal notice, which is not always the case. But these lawful means are very weak when there are workers outside the Union, or when members separate from it for the sake of the momentary advantage offered by the bourgeoisie. Especially in the case of partial strikes can the manufacturer readily secure recruits from these black sheep (who are known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the efforts of the united workers. Knobsticks are usually threatened, insulted, beaten, or otherwise maltreated by the members of the Union; intimidated, in short, in every way. Prosecution follows, and as the law- abiding bourgeoisie has the power in its own hands, the force of the Union is broken almost every time by the first unlawful act, the first judicial procedure against its members. The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working- men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the Unions remain powerless against all _great_ forces which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists among themselves. But in dealing with minor, single influences they are powerful. If the employer had no concentrated, collective opposition to expect, he would in his own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower and lower point; indeed, the battle of competition which he has to wage against his fellow-manufacturers would force him to do so, and wages would soon reach the minimum. But this competition of the manufacturers among themselves is, _under average conditions_, somewhat restricted by the opposition of the working-men. Every manufacturer knows that the consequence of a reduction not justified by conditions to which his competitors also are subjected, would be a strike, which would most certainly injure him, because his capital would be idle as long as the strike lasted, and his machinery would be rusting, whereas it is very doubtful whether he could, in such a case, enforce his reduction. Then he has the certainty that if he should succeed, his competitors would follow him, reducing the price of the goods so produced, and thus depriving him of the benefit of his policy. Then, too, the Unions often bring about a more rapid increase of wages after a crisis than would otherwise follow. For the manufacturer's interest is to delay raising wages until forced by competition, but now the working-men demand an increased wage as soon as the market improves, and they can carry their point by reason of the smaller supply of workers at his command under such circumstances. But, for resistance to more considerable forces which influence the labour market, the Unions are powerless. In such cases hunger gradually drives the strikers to resume work on any terms, and when once a few have begun; the force of the Union is broken, because these few knobsticks, with the reserve supplies of goods in the market, enable the bourgeoisie to overcome the worst effects of the interruption of business. The funds of the Union are soon exhausted by the great numbers requiring relief, the credit which the shopkeepers give at high interest is withdrawn after a time, and want compels the working-man to place himself once more under the yoke of the bourgeoisie. But strikes end disastrously for the workers mostly, because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be it said, become their interest only through the resistance of the workers), are obliged to avoid all useless reductions, while the workers feel in every reduction imposed by the state of trade a deterioration of their condition, against which they must defend themselves as far as in them lies. It will be asked, "Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases, when the uselessness of such measures is so evident?" Simply because they _must_ protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity; because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to yield to them as human beings; because silence on their part would be a recognition of these social conditions, an admission of the right of the bourgeoisie to exploit the workers in good times and let them starve in bad ones. Against this the working-men must rebel so long as they have not lost all human feeling, and that they protest in this way and no other, comes of their being practical English people, who express themselves in _action_, and do not, like German theorists, go to sleep as soon as their protest is properly registered and placed _ad acta_, there to sleep as quietly as the protesters themselves. The active resistance of the English working-men has its effect in holding the money greed of the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping alive the opposition of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is needed than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class. But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; _i.e_., upon their want of cohesion. And precisely because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of the present social order, however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way, are they so dangerous to this social order. The working-men cannot attack the bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of society, at any sorer point than this. If the competition of the workers among themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end. Wages depend upon the relation of demand to supply, upon the accidental state of the labour market, simply because the workers have hitherto been content to be treated as chattels, to be bought and sold. The moment the workers resolve to be bought and sold no longer, when in the determination of the value of labour, they take the part of men possessed of a will as well as of working-power, at that moment the whole Political Economy of to-day is at an end. The laws determining the rate of wages would, indeed, come into force again in the long run, if the working-men did not go beyond this step of abolishing competition among themselves. But they must go beyond that unless they are prepared to recede again and to allow competition among themselves to reappear. Thus once advanced so far, necessity compels them to go farther; to abolish not only one kind of competition, but competition itself altogether, and that they will do. The workers are coming to perceive more clearly with every day how competition affects them; they see far more clearly than the bourgeois that competition of the capitalists among themselves presses upon the workers too, by bringing on commercial crises, and that this kind of competition; too, must be abolished. They will soon learn _how_ they have to go about it. That these Unions contribute greatly to nourish the bitter hatred of the workers against the property-holding class need hardly be said. From them proceed, therefore, with or without the connivance of the leading members, in times of unusual excitement, individual actions which can be explained only by hatred wrought to the pitch of despair, by a wild passion overwhelming all restraints. Of this sort are the attacks with vitriol mentioned in the foregoing pages, and a series of others, of which I shall cite several. In 1831, during a violent labour movement, young Ashton, a manufacturer in Hyde, near Manchester, was shot one evening when crossing a field, and no trace of the assassin discovered. There is no doubt that this was a deed of vengeance of the working-men. Incendiarisms and attempted explosions are very common. On Friday, September 29th, 1843, an attempt was made to blow up the saw-works of Padgin, in Howard Street, Sheffield. A closed iron tube filled with powder was the means employed, and the damage was considerable. On the following day, a similar attempt was made in Ibbetson's knife and file works at Shales Moor, near Sheffield. Mr. Ibbetson had made himself obnoxious by an active participation in bourgeois movements, by low wages, the exclusive employment of knobsticks, and the exploitation of the Poor Law for his own benefit. He had reported, during the crisis of 1842, such operatives as refused to accept reduced wages, as persons who could find work but would not take it, and were, therefore, not deserving of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a reduction. Considerable damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the working-men who came to view it regretted only "that the whole concern was not blown into the air." On Friday, October 6th, 1844, an attempt to set fire to the factory of Ainsworth and Crompton, at Bolton, did no damage; it was the third or fourth attempt in the same factory within a very short time. In the meeting of the Town Council of Sheffield, on Wednesday, January 10th, 1844, the Commissioner of Police exhibited a cast-iron machine, made for the express purpose of producing an explosion, and found filled with four pounds of powder, and a fuse which had been lighted but had not taken effect, in the works of Mr. Kitchen, Earl Street, Sheffield. On Sunday, January 20th, 1844, an explosion caused by a package of powder took place in the sawmill of Bently & White, at Bury, in Lancashire, and produced considerable damage. On Thursday, February 1st, 1844, the Soho Wheel Works, in Sheffield, were set on fire and burnt up. Here are six such cases in four months, all of which have their sole origin in the embitterment of the working-men against the employers. What sort of a social state it must be in which such things are possible I need hardly say. These facts are proof enough that in England, even in good business years, such as 1843, the social war is avowed and openly carried on, and still the English bourgeoisie does not stop to reflect! But the case which speaks most loudly is that of the Glasgow Thugs, {221a} which came up before the Assizes from the 3rd to the 11th of January, 1838. It appears from the proceedings that the Cotton-Spinners' Union, which existed here from the year 1816, possessed rare organisation and power. The members were bound by an oath to adhere to the decision of the majority, and had during every turnout a secret committee which was unknown to the mass of the members, and controlled the funds of the Union absolutely. This committee fixed a price upon the heads of knobsticks and obnoxious manufacturers and upon incendiarisms in mills. A mill was thus set on fire in which female knobsticks were employed in spinning in the place of men; a Mrs. M'Pherson, mother of one of these girls, was murdered, and both murderers sent to America at the expense of the association. As early as 1820, a knobstick named M'Quarry was shot at and wounded, for which deed the doer received twenty pounds from the Union, but was discovered and transported for life. Finally, in 1837, in May, disturbances occurred in consequence of a turnout in the Oatbank and Mile End factories, in which perhaps a dozen knobsticks were maltreated. In July, of the same year, the disturbances still continued, and a certain Smith, a knobstick, was so maltreated that he died. The committee was now arrested, an investigation begun, and the leading members found guilty of participation in conspiracies, maltreatment of knobsticks, and incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis Wood, and they were transported for seven years. What do our good Germans say to this story? {221b} The property-holding class, and especially the manufacturing portion of it which comes into direct contact with the working-men, declaims with the greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to prove their uselessness to the working-men upon grounds which are economically perfectly correct, but for that very reason partially mistaken, and for the working-man's understanding totally without effect. The very zeal of the bourgeoisie shows that it is not disinterested in the matter; and apart from the indirect loss involved in a turnout, the state of the case is such that whatever goes into the pockets of the manufacturers comes of necessity out of those of the worker. So that even if the working-men did not know that the Unions hold the emulation of their masters in the reduction of wages, at least in a measure, in check, they would still stand by the Unions, simply to the injury of their enemies, the manufacturers. In war the injury of one party is the benefit of the other, and since the working-men are on a war-footing towards their employers, they do merely what the great potentates do when they get into a quarrel. Beyond all other bourgeois is our friend Dr. Ure, the most furious enemy of the Unions. He foams with indignation at the "secret tribunals" of the cotton-spinners, the most powerful section of the workers, tribunals which boast their ability to paralyse every disobedient manufacturer, {222a} "and so bring ruin on the man who had given them profitable employment for many a year." He speaks of a time {222b} "when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower members." A pity that the English working-men will not let themselves be pacified so easily with thy fable as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius Agrippa! Finally, he relates the following: At one time the coarse mule-spinners had misused their power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead of awakening thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual improvement (in harmless study of sciences useful to the bourgeoisie, of course), in many cases produced pride and supplied funds for supporting rebellious spirits in strikes, with which a number of manufacturers were visited one after the other in a purely arbitrary manner. During an unhappy disturbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding neighbourhood, the manufacturers of the district, anxious lest they should be driven from the market by the French, Belgians, and Americans, addressed themselves to the machine-works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and requested Mr. Sharp to turn his inventive mind to the construction of an automatic mule in order "to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and impending ruin." {223a} "He produced in the course of a few months a machine apparently instinct with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced workman--which even in its infancy displayed a new principle of regulation, ready in its mature state to fulfil the functions of a finished spinner. Thus the Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva--a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes, and to confirm to Great Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to speak, it strangled the Hydra of misrule." {223b} Ure proves further that the invention of the machine, with which four and five colours are printed at once, was a result of the disturbances among the calico printers; that the refractoriness of the yarn-dressers in the power-loom weaving mills gave rise to a new and perfected machine for warp-dressing, and mentions several other such cases. A few pages earlier this same Ure gives himself a great deal of trouble to prove in detail that machinery is beneficial to the workers! But Ure is not the only one; in the Factory Report, Mr. Ashworth, the manufacturer, and many another, lose no opportunity to express their wrath against the Unions. These wise bourgeois, like certain governments, trace every movement which they do not understand, to the influence of ill-intentioned agitators, demagogues, traitors, spouting idiots, and ill-balanced youth. They declare that the paid agents of the Unions are interested in the agitation because they live upon it, as though the necessity for this payment were not forced upon them by the bourgeois, who will give such men no employment! The incredible frequency of these strikes proves best of all to what extent the social war has broken out all over England. No week passes, scarcely a day, indeed, in which there is not a strike in some direction, now against a reduction, then against a refusal to raise the rate of wages, again by reason of the employment of knobsticks or the continuance of abuses, sometimes against new machinery, or for a hundred other reasons. These strikes, at first skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty struggles; they decide nothing, it is true, but they are the strongest proof that the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is approaching. They are the military school of the working-men in which they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided; they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these too have joined the labour movement. And when one examines a year's file of the _Northern Star_, the only sheet which reports all the movements of the proletariat, one finds that all the proletarians of the towns and of country manufacture have united in associations, and have protested from time to time, by means of a general strike, against the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. And as schools of war, the Unions are unexcelled. In them is developed the peculiar courage of the English. It is said on the Continent that the English, and especially the working-men, are cowardly, that they cannot carry out a revolution because, unlike the French, they do not riot at intervals, because they apparently accept the bourgeois _regime_ so quietly. This is a complete mistake. The English working- men are second to none in courage; they are quite as restless as the French, but they fight differently. The French, who are by nature political, struggle against social evils with political weapons; the English, for whom politics exist only as a matter of interest, solely in the interest of bourgeois society, fight, not against the Government, but directly against the bourgeoisie; and for the time, this can be done only in a peaceful manner. Stagnation in business, and the want consequent upon it, engendered the revolt at Lyons, in 1834, in favour of the Republic: in 1842, at Manchester, a similar cause gave rise to a universal turnout for the Charter and higher wages. That courage is required for a turnout, often indeed much loftier courage, much bolder, firmer determination than for an insurrection, is self-evident. It is, in truth, no trifle for a working-man who knows want from experience, to face it with wife and children, to endure hunger and wretchedness for months together, and stand firm and unshaken through it all. What is death, what the galleys which await the French revolutionist, in comparison with gradual starvation, with the daily sight of a starving family, with the certainty of future revenge on the part of the bourgeoisie, all of which the English working-man chooses in preference to subjection under the yoke of the property-holding class? We shall meet later an example of this obstinate, unconquerable courage of men who surrender to force only when all resistance would be aimless and unmeaning. And precisely in this quiet perseverance, in this lasting determination which undergoes a hundred tests every day, the English working-man develops that side of his character which commands most respect. People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois will be able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie. But apart from that, the English working-man has proved his courage often enough. That the turnout of 1842 had no further results came from the fact that the men were in part forced into it by the bourgeoisie, in part neither clear nor united as to its object. But aside from this, they have shown their courage often enough when the matter in question was a specific social one. Not to mention the Welsh insurrection of 1839, a complete battle was waged in Manchester in May, 1843, during my residence there. Pauling & Henfrey, a brick firm, had increased the size of the bricks without raising wages, and sold the bricks, of course, at a higher price. The workers, to whom higher wages were refused, struck work, and the Brickmakers' Union declared war upon the firm. The firm, meanwhile, succeeded with great difficulty in securing hands from the neighbourhood, and among the knobsticks, against whom in the beginning intimidation was used, the proprietors set twelve men to guard the yard, all ex-soldiers and policemen, armed with guns. When intimidation proved unavailing, the brick-yard, which lay scarcely a hundred paces from an infantry barracks, was stormed at ten o'clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns. They forced their way in, fired upon the watchmen as soon as they saw them, stamped out the wet bricks spread out to dry, tore down the piled-up rows of those already dry, demolished everything which came in their way, pressed into a building, where they destroyed the furniture and maltreated the wife of the overlooker who was living there. The watchmen, meanwhile, had placed themselves behind a hedge, whence they could fire safely and without interruption. The assailants stood before a burning brick-kiln, which threw a bright light upon them, so that every ball of their enemies struck home, while every one of their own shots missed its mark. Nevertheless, the firing lasted half-an-hour, until the ammunition was exhausted, and the object of the visit--the demolition of all the destructible objects in the yard--was attained. Then the military approached, and the brickmakers withdrew to Eccles, three miles from Manchester. A short time before reaching Eccles they held roll-call, and each man was called according to his number in the section when they separated, only to fall the more certainly into the hands of the police, who were approaching from all sides. The number of the wounded must have been very considerable, but those only could be counted who were arrested. One of these had received three bullets (in the thigh, the calf, and the shoulder), and had travelled in spite of them more than four miles on foot. These people have proved that they, too, possess revolutionary courage, and do not shun a rain of bullets. And when an unarmed multitude, without a precise aim common to them all, are held in check in a shut-off market-place, whose outlets are guarded by a couple of policemen and dragoons, as happened in 1842, this by no means proves a want of courage. On the contrary, the multitude would have stirred quite as little if the servants of public (_i.e_., of the bourgeois) order had not been present. Where the working-people have a specific end in view, they show courage enough; as, for instance, in the attack upon Birley's mill, which had later to be protected by artillery. In this connection, a word or two as to the respect for the law in England. True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law. It is ridiculous to assert that the English working-man fears the police, when every week in Manchester policemen are beaten, and last year an attempt was made to storm a station-house secured by iron doors and shutters. The power of the police in the turnout of 1842 lay, as I have already said, in the want of a clearly defined object on the part of the working-men themselves. Since the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should at least propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a proletarian law in the place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie. This proposed law is the People's Charter, which in form is purely political, and demands a democratic basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the compact form of their opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and turnouts opposition always remained isolated: it was single working-men or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men; or, when it did happen intentionally, Chartism was at the bottom of it. But in Chartism it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie, and attacks, first of all, the political power, the legislative rampart with which the bourgeoisie has surrounded itself. Chartism has proceeded from the Democratic party which arose between 1780 and 1790 with and in the proletariat, gained strength during the French Revolution, and came forth after the peace as the Radical party. It had its headquarters then in Birmingham and Manchester, and later in London; extorted the Reform Bill from the Oligarchs of the old Parliament by a union with the Liberal bourgeoisie, and has steadily consolidated itself, since then, as a more and more pronounced working-men's party in opposition to the bourgeoisie In 1835 a committee of the General Working-men's Association of London, with William Lovett at its head, drew up the People's Charter, whose six points are as follows: (1) Universal suffrage for every man who is of age, sane and unconvicted of crime; (2) Annual Parliaments; (3) Payment of members of Parliament, to enable poor men to stand for election; (4) Voting by ballot to prevent bribery and intimidation by the bourgeoisie; (5) Equal electoral districts to secure equal representation; and (6) Abolition of the even now merely nominal property qualification of 300 pounds in land for candidates in order to make every voter eligible. These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the House of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the whole English Constitution, Queen and Lords included. The so-called monarchical and aristocratic elements of the Constitution can maintain themselves only because the bourgeoisie has an interest in the continuance of their sham existence; and more than a sham existence neither possesses to-day. But as soon as real public opinion in its totality backs the House of Commons, as soon as the House of Commons incorporates the will, not of the bourgeoisie alone, but of the whole nation, it will absorb the whole power so completely that the last halo must fall from the head of the monarch and the aristocracy. The English working-man respects neither Lords nor Queen. The bourgeois, while in reality allowing them but little influence, yet offers to them personally a sham worship. The English Chartist is politically a republican, though he rarely or never mentions the word, while he sympathises with the republican parties of all countries, and calls himself in preference a democrat. But he is more than a mere republican, his democracy is not simply political. Chartism was from the beginning in 1835 chiefly a movement among the working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their National Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The lower middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of mind in consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the bad business years of 1837-1839, and viewed the boisterous Chartist agitation with a very favourable eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation no one in Germany has any idea. The people were called upon to arm themselves, were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in the French Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson, said to the assembled working-people of Manchester: "You have no need to fear the power of Government, the soldiers, bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can wield it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of straw dipped in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its hundreds of thousands of soldiers will do against this one weapon if it is used boldly." As early as that year the peculiarly social character of the working-men's Chartism manifested itself. The same Stephens said, in a meeting of 200,000 men on Kersall Moor, the Mons Sacer of Manchester: "Chartism, my friends, is no political movement, where the main point is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork question: the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and short working-hours." The movements against the new Poor Law and for the Ten Hours' Bill were already in the closest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of that time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for improvements of the social condition of the workers were circulated along with the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in Birmingham. In 1839 the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and when it began to relax somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor, and Frost hastened to call forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of England, in Yorkshire, and Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was obliged to open hostilities prematurely. Those in the North heard of the failure of his attempt in time to withdraw. Two months later, in January, 1840, several so-called spy outbreaks took place in Sheffield and Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the excitement gradually subsided. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more practical projects, more profitable for itself, namely the Corn Laws. The Anti- Corn Law Association was formed in Manchester, and the consequence was a relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The working-men soon perceived that for them the abolition of the Corn Laws could be of little use, while very advantageous to the bourgeoisie; and they could therefore not be won for the project. The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in 1839. But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The Anti-Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly revolutionary tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly revolutionary language, one very good reason for which was the fact that the Conservative party had been in power since 1841. As the Chartists had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the people to rebel; and the working-men who had most to suffer from the crisis were not inactive, as the year's national petition for the charter with its three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At a meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 15th, 1842, a petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of the Charter was drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties. The spring and summer passed amidst violent agitation and increasing distress. The bourgeoisie was determined to carry the repeal of the Corn Laws with the help of the crisis, the want which it entailed, and the general excitement. At this time, the Conservatives being in power, the Liberal bourgeoisie half abandoned their law-abiding habits; they wished to bring about a revolution with the help of the workers. The working- men were to take the chestnuts from the fire to save the bourgeoisie from burning their own fingers. The old idea of a "holy month," a general strike, broached in 1839 by the Chartists, was revived. This time, however, it was not the working-men who wished to quit work, but the manufacturers who wished to close their mills and send the operatives into the country parishes upon the property of the aristocracy, thus forcing the Tory Parliament and the Tory Ministry to repeal the Corn Laws. A revolt would naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood safely in the background and could await the result without compromising itself if the worst came to the worst. At the end of July business began to improve; it was high time. In order not to lose the opportunity, three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite of the improvement. {232} Whether they did so of their own motion or in agreement with other manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do not know. Two withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey & Brothers, stood firm, and told the objecting operatives that "if this did not please them, they had better go and play a bit." This contemptuous answer the hands received with cheers. They left the mill, paraded through the town, and called upon all their fellows to quit work. In a few hours every mill stood idle, and the operatives marched to Mottram Moor to hold a meeting. This was on August 5th. August 8th they proceeded to Ashton and Hyde five thousand strong, closed all the mills and coal-pits, and held meetings, in which, however, the question discussed was not, as the bourgeoisie had hoped, the repeal of the Corn Laws, but, "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work." August 9th they proceeded to Manchester, unresisted by the authorities (all Liberals), and closed the mills; on the 11th they were in Stockport, where they met with the first resistance as they were storming the workhouse, the favourite child of the bourgeoisie. On the same day there was a general strike and disturbance in Bolton, to which the authorities here, too, made no resistance. Soon the uprising spread throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all employments, except harvesting and the production of food, came to a standstill. But the rebellious operatives were quiet. They were driven into this revolt without wishing it. The manufacturers, with the single exception of the Tory Birley, in Manchester, had, _contrary to their custom_, not opposed it. The thing had begun without the working-men's having any distinct end in view, for which reason they were all united in the determination not to be shot at for the benefit of the Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest, some wanted to carry the Charter, others who thought this premature wished merely to secure the wages rate of 1840. On this point the whole insurrection was wrecked. If it had been from the beginning an intentional, determined working-men's insurrection, it would surely have carried its point; but these crowds who had been driven into the streets by their masters, against their own will, and with no definite purpose, could do nothing. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie, which had not moved a finger to carry the alliance of February 10th into effect, soon perceived that the working-men did not propose to become its tools, and that the illogical manner in which it had abandoned its law-abiding standpoint threatened danger. It therefore resumed its law-abiding attitude, and placed itself upon the side of Government as against the working-men. It swore in trusty retainers as special constables (the German merchants in Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely superfluous manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and thick truncheons in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the crowd in Preston, so that the unintentional revolt of the people stood all at once face to face, not only with the whole military power of the Government, but with the whole property-holding class as well. The working-men, who had no especial aim, separated gradually, and the insurrection came to an end without evil results. Later, the bourgeoisie was guilty of one shameful act after another, tried to whitewash itself by expressing a horror of popular violence by no means consistent with its own revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of insurrection upon Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more than all of them together to bring about the uprising; and resumed its old attitude of sanctifying the name of the law with a shamelessness perfectly unequalled. The Chartists, who were all but innocent of bringing about this uprising, who simply did what the bourgeoisie meant to do when they made the most of their opportunity, were prosecuted and convicted, while the bourgeoisie escaped without loss, and had, besides, sold off its old stock of goods with advantage during the pause in work. The fruit of the uprising was the decisive separation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie. The Chartists had not hitherto concealed their determination to carry the Charter at all costs, even that of a revolution; the bourgeoisie, which now perceived, all at once, the danger with which any violent change threatened its position, refused to hear anything further of physical force, and proposed to attain its end by moral force, as though this were anything else than the direct or indirect threat of physical force. This was one point of dissension, though even this was removed later by the assertion of the Chartists (who are at least as worthy of being believed as the bourgeoisie) that they, too, refrained from appealing to physical force. The second point of dissension and the main one, which brought Chartism to light in its purity, was the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this the bourgeoisie was directly interested, the proletariat not. The Chartists therefore divided into two parties whose political programmes agreed literally, but which were nevertheless thoroughly different and incapable of union. At the Birmingham National Convention, in January, 1843, Sturge, the representative of the Radical bourgeoisie, proposed that the name of the Charter be omitted from the rules of the Chartist Association, nominally because this name had become connected with recollections of violence during the insurrection, a connection, by the way, which had existed for years, and against which Mr. Sturge had hitherto advanced no objection. The working-men refused to drop the name, and when Mr. Sturge was outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook himself out of the hall, and founded a "Complete Suffrage Association" within the Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these recollections become to the Jacobinical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the name Universal Suffrage into the ridiculous title, Complete Suffrage. The working-men laughed at him and quietly went their way. From this moment Chartism was purely a working-man's cause freed from all bourgeois elements. The "Complete" journals, the _Weekly Dispatch_, _Weekly Chronicle_, _Examiner_, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy tone of the other Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked the Ten Hours' Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let their Radicalism as a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical bourgeoisie joined hands with the Liberals against the working-men in every collision, and in general made the Corn Law question, which for the English is the Free Trade question, their main business. They thereby fell under the dominion of the Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most pitiful role. The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal all the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free competition has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them; its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working- man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of competition. The demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours' Bill, protection of the workers against the capitalist, good wages, a guaranteed position, repeal of the new Poor Law, all of the things which belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the "Six Points," are directly opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws (a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie), and while at least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point at which the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this, because it cannot comprehend the proletariat. Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social nature, a class movement. The "Six Points" which for the Radical bourgeois are the beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at the utmost, to call forth certain further reforms of the Constitution, are for the proletarian a mere means to further ends. "Political power our means, social happiness our end," is now the clearly formulated war- cry of the Chartists. The "knife and fork question" of the preacher Stephens was a truth for a part of the Chartists only, in 1838, it is a truth for all of them in 1845. There is no longer a mere politician among the Chartists, and even though their Socialism is very little developed, though their chief remedy for poverty has hitherto consisted in the land-allotment system, which was superseded {235} by the introduction of manufacture, though their chief practical propositions are apparently of a reactionary nature, yet these very measures involve the alternative that they must either succumb to the power of competition once more and restore the old state of things, or they must themselves entirely overcome competition and abolish it. On the other hand, the present indefinite state of Chartism, the separation from the purely political party, involves that precisely the characteristic feature, its social aspect, will have to be further developed. The approach to Socialism cannot fail, especially when the next crisis directs the working-men by force of sheer want to social instead of political remedies. And a crisis must follow the present active state of industry and commerce in 1847 at the latest, and probably in 1846; one, too, which will far exceed in extent and violence all former crises. The working- men will carry their Charter, naturally; but meanwhile they will learn to see clearly with regard to many points which they can make by means of it and of which they now know very little. Meanwhile the socialist agitation also goes forward. English Socialism comes under our consideration so far only as it affects the working-class. The English Socialists demand the gradual introduction of possession in common in home colonies embracing two to three thousand persons who shall carry on both agriculture and manufacture and enjoy equal rights and equal education. They demand greater facility of obtaining divorce, the establishment of a rational government, with complete freedom of conscience and the abolition of punishment, the same to be replaced by a rational treatment of the offender. These are their practical measures, their theoretical principles do not concern us here. English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat. The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing order, bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of winning public opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this method is for them, and for their principles as at present formulated, utterly hopeless. While bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower classes, they are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of the old social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in the property-holding class is much greater. They acknowledge no historic development, and wish to place the nation in a state of Communism at once, overnight, not by the unavoidable march of its political development up to the point at which this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They understand, it is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past, whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual man included. Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little. They are recruited in part from the working-class, of which they have enlisted but a very small fraction representing, however, its most educated and solid elements. In its present form, Socialism can never become the common creed of the working-class; it must condescend to return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint. But the true proletarian Socialism having passed through Chartism, purified of its bourgeois elements, assuming the form which it has already reached in the minds of many Socialists and Chartist leaders (who are nearly all Socialists), must, within a short time, play a weighty part in the history of the development of the English people. English Socialism, the basis of which is much more ample than that of the French, is behind it in theoretical development, will have to recede for a moment to the French standpoint in order to proceed beyond it later. Meanwhile the French, too, will develop farther. English Socialism affords the most pronounced expression of the prevailing absence of religion among the working-men, an expression so pronounced indeed that the mass of the working-men, being unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often draw back before it. But here, too, necessity will force the working-men to abandon the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more clearly perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class. Hence it is evident that the working-men's movement is divided into two sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are theoretically the more backward, the less developed, but they are genuine proletarians all over, the representatives of their class. The Socialists are more far-seeing, propose practical remedies against distress, but, proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie, are for this reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working-class. The union of Socialism with Chartism, the reproduction of French Communism in an English manner, will be the next step, and has already begun. Then only, when this has been achieved, will the working-class be the true intellectual leader of England. Meanwhile, political and social development will proceed, and will foster this new party, this new departure of Chartism. These different sections of working-men, often united, often separated, Trades Unionists, Chartists, and Socialists, have founded on their own hook numbers of schools and reading-rooms for the advancement of education. Every Socialist, and almost every Chartist institution, has such a place, and so too have many trades. Here the children receive a purely proletarian education, free from all the influences of the bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These arrangements are very dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in withdrawing several such institutes, "Mechanics' Institutes," from proletarian influences, and making them organs for the dissemination of the sciences useful to the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught, which may draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring in money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance with the natural sciences is utterly useless _now_ when it too often happens that he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large town with his long working-hours. Here Political Economy is preached, whose idol is free competition, and whose sum and substance for the working-man is this, that he cannot do anything more rational than resign himself to starvation. Here all education is tame, flabby, subservient to the ruling politics and religion, so that for the working-man it is merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience, passivity, and resignation to his fate. The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these institutes, and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to the discussion of matters which directly concern their own interests, whereupon the self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its _Dixi et Salvavi_, and turns with contempt from a class which "prefers the angry ranting of ill- meaning demagogues to the advantages of solid education." That, however, the working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed with the interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon scientific, aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered especially in the Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have often heard working-men, whose fustian jackets scarcely held together, speak upon geological, astronomical, and other subjects, with more knowledge than most "cultivated" bourgeois in Germany possess. And in how great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining independent education is shown especially by the fact that the epoch-making products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical literature are read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois, enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices involved in them, trembles, blesses, and crosses himself before everything which really paves the way for progress; the proletarian has open eyes for it, and studies it with pleasure and success. In this respect the Socialists, especially, have done wonders for the education of the proletariat. They have translated the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot, etc., and disseminated them, with the best English works, in cheap editions. Strauss' "Life of Jesus" and Proudhon's "Property" also circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet, Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat; the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down in accordance with the hypocritical morality of to-day. The two great practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin, are, especially the latter, almost exclusively the property of the proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have succeeded in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat has formed upon this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of journals and pamphlets, and is far in advance of the whole bourgeois literature in intrinsic worth. On this point more later. One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and especially those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour movement. Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers most Socialists. The more the factory system has taken possession of a branch of industry, the more the working-men employed in it participate in the labour movement; the sharper the opposition between working-men and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian consciousness in the working- men. The small masters of Birmingham, though they suffer from the crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between proletarian Chartism and shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the workers employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance to capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that they, as working-men, a title of which they are proud, and which is the usual form of address in Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with separate interests and principles, with a separate way of looking at things in contrast with that of all property owners; and that in this class reposes the strength and the capacity of development of the nation. THE MINING PROLETARIAT. The production of raw materials and fuel for a manufacture so colossal as that of England requires a considerable number of workers. But of all the materials needed for its industries (except wool, which belongs to the agricultural districts), England produces only the minerals: the metals and the coal. While Cornwall possesses rich copper, tin, zinc, and lead mines, Staffordshire, Wales, and other districts yield great quantities of iron, and almost the whole North and West of England, central Scotland, and certain districts of Ireland, produce a superabundance of coal. {241} In the Cornish mines about 19,000 men, and 11,000 women and children are employed, in part above and in part below ground. Within the mines below ground, men and boys above twelve years old are employed almost exclusively. The condition of these workers seems, according to the Children's Employment Commission's Reports, to be comparatively endurable, materially, and the English often enough boast of their strong, bold miners, who follow the veins of mineral below the bottom of the very sea. But in the matter of the health of these workers, this same Children's Employment Commission's Report judges differently. It shows in Dr. Barham's intelligent report how the inhalation of an atmosphere containing little oxygen, and mixed with dust and the smoke of blasting powder, such as prevails in the mines, seriously affects the lungs, disturbs the action of the heart, and diminishes the activity of the digestive organs; that wearing toil, and especially the climbing up and down of ladders, upon which even vigorous young men have to spend in some mines more than an hour a day, and which precedes and follows daily work, contributes greatly to the development of these evils, so that men who begin this work in early youth are far from reaching the stature of women who work above ground; that many die young of galloping consumption, and most miners at middle age of slow consumption, that they age prematurely and become unfit for work between the thirty-fifth and forty-fifth years, that many are attacked by acute inflammations of the respiratory organs when exposed to the sudden change from the warm air of the shaft (after climbing the ladder in profuse perspiration), to the cold wind above ground, and that these acute inflammations are very frequently fatal. Work above ground, breaking and sorting the ore, is done by girls and children, and is described as very wholesome, being done in the open air. In the North of England, on the borders of Northumberland and Durham, are the extensive lead mines of Alston Moor. The reports from this district {242} agree almost wholly with those from Cornwall. Here, too, there are complaints of want of oxygen, excessive dust, powder smoke, carbonic acid gas, and sulphur, in the atmosphere of the workings. In consequence, the miners here, as in Cornwall, are small of stature, and nearly all suffer from the thirtieth year throughout life from chest affections, which end, especially when this work is persisted in, as is almost always the case, in consumption, so greatly shortening the average of life of these people. If the miners of this district are somewhat longer lived than those of Cornwall, this is the case, because they do not enter the mines before reaching the nineteenth year, while in Cornwall, as we have seen, this work is begun in the twelfth year. Nevertheless, the majority die here, too, between forty and fifty years of age, according to medical testimony. Of 79 miners, whose death was entered upon the public register of the district, and who attained an average of 45 years, 37 had died of consumption and 6 of asthma. In the surrounding districts, Allendale, Stanhope, and Middleton, the average length of life was 49, 48, and 47 years respectively, and the deaths from chest affections composed 48, 54, and 56 per cent. of the whole number. Let us compare these figures with the so-called Swedish tables, detailed tables of mortality embracing all the inhabitants of Sweden, and recognised in England as the most correct standard hitherto attainable for the average length of life of the British working-class. According to them, male persons who survive the nineteenth year attain an average of 57.5 years; but, according to this, the North of England miners are robbed by their work of an average of ten years of life. Yet the Swedish tables are accepted as the standard of longevity of the _workers_, and present, therefore, the average chances of life as affected by the unfavourable conditions in which the proletariat lives, a standard of longevity less than the normal one. In this district we find again the lodging-houses and sleeping-places with which we have already become acquainted in the towns, and in quite as filthy, disgusting, and overcrowded a state as there. Commissioner Mitchell visited one such sleeping barrack, 18 feet long, 13 feet wide, and arranged for the reception of 42 men and 14 boys, or 56 persons altogether, one-half of whom slept above the other in berths as on shipboard. There was no opening for the escape of the foul air; and, although no one had slept in this pen for three nights preceding the visit, the smell and the atmosphere were such that Commissioner Mitchell could not endure it a moment. What must it be through a hot summer night, with fifty-six occupants? And this is not the steerage of an American slave ship, it is the dwelling of free-born Britons! Let us turn now to the most important branch of British mining, the iron and coal mines, which the Children's Employment Commission treats in common, and with all the detail which the importance of the subject demands. Nearly the whole of the first part of this report is devoted to the condition of the workers employed in these mines. After the detailed description which I have furnished of the state of the industrial workers, I shall, however, be able to be as brief in dealing with this subject as the scope of the present work requires. In the coal and iron mines which are worked in pretty much the same way, children of four, five, and seven years are employed. They are set to transporting the ore or coal loosened by the miner from its place to the horse-path or the main shaft, and to opening and shutting the doors (which separate the divisions of the mine and regulate its ventilation) for the passage of workers and material. For watching the doors the smallest children are usually employed, who thus pass twelve hours daily, in the dark, alone, sitting usually in damp passages without even having work enough to save them from the stupefying, brutalising tedium of doing nothing. The transport of coal and iron-stone, on the other hand, is very hard labour, the stuff being shoved in large tubs, without wheels, over the uneven floor of the mine; often over moist clay, or through water, and frequently up steep inclines and through paths so low-roofed that the workers are forced to creep on hands and knees. For this more wearing labour, therefore, older children and half-grown girls are employed. One man or two boys per tub are employed, according to circumstances; and, if two boys, one pushes and the other pulls. The loosening of the ore or coal, which is done by men or strong youths of sixteen years or more, is also very weary work. The usual working-day is eleven to twelve hours, often longer; in Scotland it reaches fourteen hours, and double time is frequent, when all the employees are at work below ground twenty-four, and even thirty-six hours at a stretch. Set times for meals are almost unknown, so that these people eat when hunger and time permit. The standard of living of the miners is in general described as fairly good and their wages high in comparison with those of the agricultural labourers surrounding them (who, however, live at starvation rates), except in certain parts of Scotland and in the Irish mines, where great misery prevails. We shall have occasion to return later to this statement, which, by the way, is merely relative, implying comparison to the poorest class in all England. Meanwhile, we shall consider the evils which arise from the present method of mining, and the reader may judge whether any pay in money can indemnify the miner for such suffering. The children and young people who are employed in transporting coal and iron-stone all complain of being over-tired. Even in the most recklessly conducted industrial establishments there is no such universal and exaggerated overwork. The whole report proves this, with a number of examples on every page. It is constantly happening that children throw themselves down on the stone hearth or the floor as soon as they reach home, fall asleep at once without being able to take a bite of food, and have to be washed and put to bed while asleep; it even happens that they lie down on the way home, and are found by their parents late at night asleep on the road. It seems to be a universal practice among these children to spend Sunday in bed to recover in some degree from the over- exertion of the week. Church and school are visited by but few, and even of these the teachers complain of their great sleepiness and the want of all eagerness to learn. The same thing is true of the elder girls and women. They are overworked in the most brutal manner. This weariness, which is almost always carried to a most painful pitch, cannot fail to affect the constitution. The first result of such over-exertion is the diversion of vitality to the one-sided development of the muscles, so that those especially of the arms, legs, and back, of the shoulders and chest, which are chiefly called into activity in pushing and pulling, attain an uncommonly vigorous development, while all the rest of the body suffers and is atrophied from want of nourishment. More than all else the stature suffers, being stunted and retarded; nearly all miners are short, except those of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, who work under exceptionally favourable conditions. Further, among boys as well as girls, puberty is retarded, among the former often until the eighteenth year; indeed, a nineteen years old boy appeared before Commissioner Symonds, showing no evidence beyond that of the teeth, that he was more than eleven or twelve years old. This prolongation of the period of childhood is at bottom nothing more than a sign of checked development, which does not fail to bear fruit in later years. Distortions of the legs, knees bent inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the spinal column and other malformations, appear the more readily in constitutions thus weakened, in consequence of the almost universally constrained position during work; and they are so frequent that in Yorkshire and Lancashire, as in Northumberland and Durham, the assertion is made by many witnesses, not only by physicians, that a miner may be recognised by his shape among a hundred other persons. The women seem to suffer especially from this work, and are seldom, if ever, as straight as other women. There is testimony here, too, to the fact that deformities of the pelvis and consequent difficult, even fatal, childbearing arise from the work of women in the mines. But apart from these local deformities, the coal miners suffer from a number of special affections easily explained by the nature of the work. Diseases of the digestive organs are first in order; want of appetite, pains in the stomach, nausea, and vomiting, are most frequent, with violent thirst, which can be quenched only with the dirty, lukewarm water of the mine; the digestion is checked and all the other affections are thus invited. Diseases of the heart, especially hypertrophy, inflammation of the heart and pericardium, contraction of the _auriculo-ventricular_ communications and the entrance of the _aorta_ are also mentioned repeatedly as diseases of the miners, and are readily explained by overwork; and the same is true of the almost universal rupture which is a direct consequence of protracted over-exertion. In part from the same cause and in part from the bad, dust-filled atmosphere mixed with carbonic acid and hydrocarbon gas, which might so readily be avoided, there arise numerous painful and dangerous affections of the lungs, especially asthma, which in some districts appears in the fortieth, in others in the thirtieth year in most of the miners, and makes them unfit for work in a short time. Among those employed in wet workings the oppression in the chest naturally appears much earlier; in some districts of Scotland between the twentieth and thirtieth years, during which time the affected lungs are especially susceptible to inflammations and diseases of a feverish nature. The peculiar disease of workers of this sort is "black spittle," which arises from the saturation of the whole lung with coal particles, and manifests itself in general debility, headache, oppression of the chest, and thick, black mucous expectoration. In some districts this disease appears in a mild form; in others, on the contrary, it is wholly incurable, especially in Scotland. Here, besides the symptoms just mentioned, which appear in an intensified form, short, wheezing, breathing, rapid pulse (exceeding 100 per minute), and abrupt coughing, with increasing leanness and debility, speedily make the patient unfit for work. Every case of this disease ends fatally. Dr. Mackellar, in Pencaitland, East Lothian, testified that in all the coal mines which are properly ventilated this disease is unknown, while it frequently happens that miners who go from well to ill-ventilated mines are seized by it. The profit-greed of mine owners which prevents the use of ventilators is therefore responsible for the fact that this working-men's disease exists at all. Rheumatism, too, is, with the exception of the Warwick and Leicestershire workers, a universal disease of the coal miners, and arises especially from the frequently damp working-places. The consequence of all these diseases is that, in all districts _without exception_, the coal miners age early and become unfit for work soon after the fortieth year, though this is different in different places. A coal miner who can follow his calling after the 45th or 50th year is a very great rarity indeed. It is universally recognised that such workers enter upon old age at forty. This applies to those who loosen the coal from the bed; the loaders, who have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal into the tubs, age with the twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, so that it is proverbial in the coal mining districts that the loaders are old before they are young. That this premature old age is followed by the early death of the colliers is a matter of course, and a man who reaches sixty is a great exception among them. Even in South Staffordshire, where the mines are comparatively wholesome, few men reach their fifty-first year. Along with this early superannuation of the workers we naturally find, just as in the case of the mills, frequent lack of employment of the elder men, who are often supported by very young children. If we sum up briefly the results of the work in coal mines, we find, as Dr. Southwood Smith, one of the commissioners, does, that through prolonged childhood on the one hand and premature age on the other, that period of life in which the human being is in full possession of his powers, the period of manhood, is greatly shortened, while the length of life in general is below the average. This, too, on the debit side of the bourgeoisie's reckoning! All this deals only with the average of the English coal mines. But there are many in which the state of things is much worse, those, namely, in which thin seams of coal are worked. The coal would be too expensive if a part of the adjacent sand and clay were removed; so the mine owners permit only the seams to be worked; whereby the passages which elsewhere are four or five feet high and more are here kept so low that to stand upright in them is not to be thought of. The working-man lies on his side and loosens the coal with his pick; resting upon his elbow as a pivot, whence follow inflammations of the joint, and in cases where he is forced to kneel, of the knee also. The women and children who have to transport the coal crawl upon their hands and knees, fastened to the tub by a harness and chain (which frequently passes between the legs), while a man behind pushes with hands and head. The pushing with the head engenders local irritations, painful swellings, and ulcers. In many cases, too, the shafts are wet, so that these workers have to crawl through dirty or salt water several inches deep, being thus exposed to a special irritation of the skin. It can be readily imagined how greatly the diseases already peculiar to the miners are fostered by this especially frightful, slavish toil. But these are not all the evils which descend upon the head of the coal miner. In the whole British Empire there is no occupation in which a man may meet his end in so many diverse ways as in this one. The coal mine is the scene of a multitude of the most terrifying calamities, and these come directly from the selfishness of the bourgeoisie. The hydrocarbon gas which develops so freely in these mines, forms, when combined with atmospheric air, an explosive which takes fire upon coming into contact with a flame, and kills every one within its reach. Such explosions take place, in one mine or another, nearly every day; on September 28th, 1844, one killed 96 men in Haswell Colliery, Durham. The carbonic acid gas, which also develops in great quantities, accumulates in the deeper parts of the mine, frequently reaching the height of a man, and suffocates every one who gets into it. The doors which separate the sections of the mines are meant to prevent the propagation of explosions and the movement of the gases; but since they are entrusted to small children, who often fall asleep or neglect them, this means of prevention is illusory. A proper ventilation of the mines by means of fresh air-shafts could almost entirely remove the injurious effects of both these gases. But for this purpose the bourgeoisie has no money to spare, preferring to command the working-men to use the Davy lamp, which is wholly useless because of its dull light, and is, therefore, usually replaced by a candle. If an explosion occurs, the recklessness of the miner is blamed, though the bourgeois might have made the explosion well-nigh impossible by supplying good ventilation. Further, every few days the roof of a working falls in, and buries or mangles the workers employed in it. It is the interest of the bourgeois to have the seams worked out as completely as possible, and hence the accidents of this sort. Then, too, the ropes by which the men descend into the mines are often rotten, and break, so that the unfortunates fall, and are crushed. All these accidents, and I have no room for special cases, carry off yearly, according to the _Mining Journal_, some fourteen hundred human beings. The _Manchester Guardian_ reports at least two or three accidents every week for Lancashire alone. In nearly all mining districts the people composing the coroner's juries are, in almost all cases, dependent upon the mine owners, and where this is not the case, immemorial custom insures that the verdict shall be: "Accidental Death." Besides, the jury takes very little interest in the state of the mine, because it does not understand anything about the matter. But the Children's Employment Commission does not hesitate to make the mine owners directly responsible for the greater number of these cases. As to the education and morals of the mining population, they are, according to the Children's Employment Commission, pretty good in Cornwall, and excellent in Alston Moor; in the coal districts, in general, they are, on the contrary, reported as on an excessively low plane. The workers live in the country in neglected regions, and if they do their weary work, no human being outside the police force troubles himself about them. Hence, and from the tender age at which children are put to work, it follows that their mental education is wholly neglected. The day schools are not within their reach, the evening and Sunday schools mere shams, the teachers worthless. Hence, few can read and still fewer write. The only point upon which their eyes are as yet open is the fact that their wages are far too low for their hateful and dangerous work. To church they go seldom or never; all the clergy complain of their irreligion as beyond comparison. As a matter of fact, their ignorance of religious and of secular things, alike, is such that the ignorance of the factory operatives, shown in numerous examples in the foregoing pages, is trifling in comparison with it. The categories of religion are known to them only from the terms of their oaths. Their morality is destroyed by their work itself. That the overwork of all miners must engender drunkenness is self-evident. As to their sexual relations, men, women, and children work in the mines, in many cases, wholly naked, and in most cases, nearly so, by reason of the prevailing heat, and the consequences in the dark, lonely mines may be imagined. The number of illegitimate children is here disproportionately large, and indicates what goes on among the half-savage population below ground; but proves too, that the illegitimate intercourse of the sexes has not here, as in the great cities, sunk to the level of prostitution. The labour of women entails the same consequences as in the factories, dissolves the family, and makes the mother totally incapable of household work. When the Children's Employment Commission's Report was laid before Parliament, Lord Ashley hastened to bring in a bill wholly forbidding the work of women in the mines, and greatly limiting that of children. The bill was adopted, but has remained a dead letter in most districts, because no mine inspectors were appointed to watch over its being carried into effect. The evasion of the law is very easy in the country districts in which the mines are situated; and no one need be surprised that the Miners' Union laid before the Home Secretary an official notice, last year, that in the Duke of Hamilton's coal mines in Scotland, more than sixty women were at work; or that the _Manchester Guardian_ reported that a girl perished in an explosion in a mine near Wigan, and no one troubled himself further about the fact that an infringement of the law was thus revealed. In single cases the employment of women may have been discontinued, but in general the old state of things remains as before. These are, however, not all the afflictions known to the coal miners. The bourgeoisie, not content with ruining the health of these people, keeping them in danger of sudden loss of life, robbing them of all opportunity for education, plunders them in other directions in the most shameless manner. The truck system is here the rule, not the exception, and is carried on in the most direct and undisguised manner. The cottage system, likewise, is universal, and here almost a necessity; but it is used here, too, for the better plundering of the workers. To these means of oppression must be added all sorts of direct cheating. While coal is sold by weight, the worker's wages are reckoned chiefly by measure; and when his tub is not perfectly full he receives no pay whatever, while he gets not a farthing for over-measure. If there is more than a specified quantity of dust in the tub, a matter which depends much less upon the miner than upon the nature of the seam, he not only loses his whole wage but is fined besides. The fine system in general is so highly perfected in the coal mines, that a poor devil who has worked the whole week and comes for his wages, sometimes learns from the overseer, who fine at discretion and without summoning the workers, that he not only has no wages but must pay so and so much in fines extra! The overseer has, in general, absolute power over wages; he notes the work done, and can please himself as to what he pays the worker, who is forced to take his word. In some mines, where the pay is according to weight, false decimal scales are used, whose weights are not subject to the inspection of the authorities; in one coal mine there was actually a regulation that any workman who intended to complain of the falseness of the scales _must give notice to the overseer three weeks in advance_! In many districts, especially in the North of England, it is customary to engage the workers by the year; they pledge themselves to work for no other employer during that time, but the mine owner by no means pledges himself to give them work, so that they are often without it for months together, and if they seek elsewhere, they are sent to the treadmill for six weeks for breach of contract. In other contracts, work to the amount of 26s. every 14 days, is promised the miners, but not furnished, in others still, the employers advance the miners small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus binding the debtors to themselves. In the North, the custom is general of keeping the payment of wages one week behindhand, chaining the miners in this way to their work. And to complete the slavery of these enthralled workers, nearly all the Justices of the Peace in the coal districts are mine owners themselves, or relatives or friends of mine owners, and possess almost unlimited power in these poor, uncivilised regions where there are few newspapers, these few in the service of the ruling class, and but little other agitation. It is almost beyond conception how these poor coal miners have been plundered and tyrannised over by Justices of the Peace acting as judges in their own cause. So it went on for a long time. The workers did not know any better than that they were there for the purpose of being swindled out of their very lives. But gradually, even among them, and especially in the factory districts, where contact with the more intelligent operatives could not fail of its effect, there arose a spirit of opposition to the shameless oppression of the "coal kings." The men began to form Unions and strike from time to time. In civilised districts they joined the Chartists body and soul. The great coal district of the North of England, shut off from all industrial intercourse, remained backward until, after many efforts, partly of the Chartists and partly of the more intelligent miners themselves, a general spirit of opposition arose in 1843. Such a movement seized the workers of Northumberland and Durham that they placed themselves at the forefront of a general Union of coal miners throughout the kingdom, and appointed W. P. Roberts, a Chartist solicitor, of Bristol, their "Attorney General," he having distinguished himself in earlier Chartist trials. The Union soon spread over a great majority of the districts; agents were appointed in all directions, who held meetings everywhere and secured new members; at the first conference of delegates, in Manchester, in 1844, there were 60,000 members represented, and at Glasgow, six months later, at the second conference, 100,000. Here all the affairs of the coal miners were discussed and decisions as to the greater strikes arrived at. Several journals were founded, especially the _Miners' Advocate_, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for defending the rights of the miners. On March 31st, 1844, the contracts of all the miners of Northumberland and Durham expired. Roberts was empowered to draw up a new agreement, in which the men demanded: (1) Payment by weight instead of measure; (2) Determination of weight by means of ordinary scales subject to the public inspectors; (3) Half-yearly renewal of contracts; (4) Abolition of the fines system and payment according to work actually done; (5) The employers to guarantee to miners in their exclusive service at least four days' work per week, or wages for the same. This agreement was submitted to the "coal kings," and a deputation appointed to negotiate with them; they answered, however, that for them the Union did not exist, that they had to deal with single workmen only, and should never recognise the Union. They also submitted an agreement of their own which ignored all the foregoing points, and was, naturally, refused by the miners. War was thus declared. On March 31st, 1844, 40,000 miners laid down their picks, and every mine in the county stood empty. The funds of the Union were so considerable that for several months a weekly contribution of 2s. 6d. could be assured to each family. While the miners were thus putting the patience of their masters to the test, Roberts organised with incomparable perseverance both strike and agitation, arranged for the holding of meetings, traversed England from one end to the other, preached peaceful and legal agitation, and carried on a crusade against the despotic Justices of the Peace and truck masters, such as had never been known in England. This he had begun at the beginning of the year. Wherever a miner had been condemned by a Justice of the Peace, he obtained a _habeas corpus_ from the Court of Queen's bench, brought his client to London, and always secured an acquittal. Thus, January 13th, Judge Williams of Queen's bench acquitted three miners condemned by the Justices of the Peace of Bilston, South Staffordshire; the offence of these people was that they refused to work in a place which threatened to cave in, and had actually caved in before their return! On an earlier occasion, Judge Patteson had acquitted six working-men, so that the name Roberts began to be a terror to the mine owners. In Preston four of his clients were in jail. In the first week of January he proceeded thither to investigate the case on the spot, but found, when he arrived, the condemned all released before the expiration of the sentence. In Manchester there were seven in jail; Roberts obtained a _habeas corpus_ and acquittal for all from Judge Wightman. In Prescott nine coal miners were in jail, accused of creating a disturbance in St. Helen's, South Lancashire, and awaiting trial; when Roberts arrived upon the spot, they were released at once. All this took place in the first half of February. In April, Roberts released a miner from jail in Derby, four in Wakefield, and four in Leicester. So it went on for a time until these Dogberries came to have some respect for the miners. The truck system shared the same fate. One after another Roberts brought the disreputable mine owners before the courts, and compelled the reluctant Justices of the Peace to condemn them; such dread of this "lightning" "Attorney General" who seemed to be everywhere at once spread among them, that at Belper, for instance, upon Roberts' arrival, a truck firm published the following notice: "NOTICE!" "PENTRICH COAL MINE. "The Messrs. Haslam think it necessary, in order to prevent all mistakes, to announce that all persons employed in their colliery will receive their wages wholly in cash, and may expend them when and as they choose to do. If they purchase goods in the shops of Messrs. Haslam they will receive them as heretofore at wholesale prices, but they are not expected to make their purchases there, and work and wages will be continued as usual whether purchases are made in these shops or elsewhere." This triumph aroused the greatest jubilation throughout the English working-class, and brought the Union a mass of new members. Meanwhile the strike in the North was proceeding. Not a hand stirred, and Newcastle, the chief coal port, was so stripped of its commodity that coal had to be brought from the Scotch coast, in spite of the proverb. At first, while the Union's funds held out, all went well, but towards summer the struggle became much more painful for the miners. The greatest want prevailed among them; they had no money, for the contributions of the workers of all branches of industry in England availed little among the vast number of strikers, who were forced to borrow from the small shopkeepers at a heavy loss. The whole press, with the single exception of the few proletarian journals, was against them; the bourgeois, even the few among them who might have had enough sense of justice to support the miners, learnt from the corrupt Liberal and Conservative sheets only lies about them. A deputation of twelve miners who went to London received a sum from the proletariat there, but this, too, availed little among the mass who needed support. Yet, in spite of all this, the miners remained steadfast, and what is even more significant, were quiet and peaceable in the face of all the hostilities and provocation of the mine owners and their faithful servants. No act of revenge was carried out, not a renegade was maltreated, not one single theft committed. Thus the strike had continued well on towards four months, and the mine owners still had no prospect of getting the upper hand. One way was, however, still open to them. They remembered the cottage system; it occurred to them that the houses of the rebellious spirits were THEIR property. In July, notice to quit was served the workers, and, in a week, the whole forty thousand were put out of doors. This measure was carried out with revolting cruelty. The sick, the feeble, old men and little children, even women in childbirth, were mercilessly turned from their beds and cast into the roadside ditches. One agent dragged by the hair from her bed, and into the street, a woman in the pangs of childbirth. Soldiers and police in crowds were present, ready to fire at the first symptom of resistance, on the slightest hint of the Justices of the Peace, who had brought about the whole brutal procedure. This, too, the working-men endured without resistance. The hope had been that the men would use violence; they were spurred on with all force to infringements of the laws, to furnish an excuse for making an end of the strike by the intervention of the military. The homeless miners, remembering the warnings of their Attorney General, remained unmoved, set up their household goods upon the moors or the harvested fields, and held out. Some, who had no other place, encamped on the roadsides and in ditches, others upon land belonging to other people, whereupon they were prosecuted, and, having caused "damage of the value of a halfpenny," were fined a pound, and, being unable to pay it, worked it out on the treadmill. Thus they lived eight weeks and more of the wet fag-end of last summer under the open sky with their families, with no further shelter for themselves and their little ones than the calico curtains of their beds; with no other help than the scanty allowances of their Union and the fast shrinking credit with the small dealers. Hereupon Lord Londonderry, who owns considerable mines in Durham, threatened the small tradesmen in "his" town of Seaham with his most high displeasure if they should continue to give credit to "his" rebellious workers. This "noble" lord made himself the first clown of the turnout in consequence of the ridiculous, pompous, ungrammatical ukases addressed to the workers, which he published from time to time, with no other result than the merriment of the nation. When none of their efforts produced any effect, the mine owners imported, at great expense, hands from Ireland and such remote parts of Wales as have as yet no labour movement. And when the competition of workers against workers was thus restored, the strength of the strikers collapsed. The mine owners obliged them to renounce the Union, abandon Roberts, and accept the conditions laid down by the employers. Thus ended at the close of September the great five months' battle of the coal miners against the mine owners, a battle fought on the part of the oppressed with an endurance, courage, intelligence, and coolness which demands the highest admiration. What a degree of true human culture, of enthusiasm and strength of character, such a battle implies on the part of men who, as we have seen in the Children's Employment Commission's Report, were described as late as 1840, as being thoroughly brutal and wanting in moral sense! But how hard, too, must have been the pressure which brought these forty thousand colliers to rise as one man and to fight out the battle like an army not only well-disciplined but enthusiastic, an army possessed of one single determination, with the greatest coolness and composure, to a point beyond which further resistance would have been madness. And what a battle! Not against visible, mortal enemies, but against hunger, want, misery, and homelessness, against their own passions provoked to madness by the brutality of wealth. If they had revolted with violence, they, the unarmed and defenceless, would have been shot down, and a day or two would have decided the victory of the owners. This law-abiding reserve was no fear of the constable's staff, it was the result of deliberation, the best proof of the intelligence and self-control of the working-men. Thus were the working-men forced once more, in spite of their unexampled endurance, to succumb to the might of capital. But the fight had not been in vain. First of all, this nineteen weeks' strike had torn the miners of the North of England forever from the intellectual death in which they had hitherto lain; they have left their sleep, are alert to defend their interests, and have entered the movement of civilisation, and especially the movement of the workers. The strike, which first brought to light the whole cruelty of the owners, has established the opposition of the workers here, forever, and made at least two-thirds of them Chartists; and the acquisition of thirty thousand such determined, experienced men is certainly of great value to the Chartists. Then, too, the endurance and law-abiding which characterised the whole strike, coupled with the active agitation which accompanied it, has fixed public attention upon the miners. On the occasion of the debate upon the export duty on coal, Thomas Duncombe, the only decidedly Chartist member of the House of Commons, brought up the condition of the coal miners, had their petition read, and by his speech forced the bourgeois journals to publish, at least in their reports of Parliamentary proceedings, a correct statement of the case. Immediately after the strike, occurred the explosion at Haswell; Roberts went to London, demanded an audience with Peel, insisted as representative of the miners upon a thorough investigation of the case, and succeeded in having the first geological and chemical notabilities of England, Professors Lyell and Faraday, commissioned to visit the spot. As several other explosions followed in quick succession, and Roberts again laid the details before the Prime Minister, the latter promised to propose the necessary measures for the protection of the workers, if possible, in the next session of Parliament, _i.e_., the present one of 1845. All this would not have been accomplished if these workers had not, by means of the strike, proved themselves freedom-loving men worthy of all respect, and if they had not engaged Roberts as their counsel. Scarcely had it become known that the coal miners of the North had been forced to renounce the Union and discharge Roberts, when the miners of Lancashire formed a Union of some ten thousand men, and guaranteed their Attorney General a salary of 1200 pounds a year. In the autumn of last year they collected more than 700 pounds, rather more than 200 pounds of which they expended upon salaries and judicial expenses, and the rest chiefly in support of men out of work, either through want of employment or through dissensions with their employers. Thus the working-men are constantly coming to see more clearly that, united, they too are a respectable power, and can, in the last extremity, defy even the might of the bourgeoisie. And this insight, the gain of all labour movements, has been won for all the miners of England by the Union and the strike of 1844. In a very short time the difference of intelligence and energy which now exists in favour of the factory operatives will have vanished, and the miners of the kingdom will be able to stand abreast of them in every respect. Thus one piece of standing ground after another is undermined beneath the feet of the bourgeoisie; and how long will it be before their whole social and political edifice collapses with the basis upon which it rests? {259} But the bourgeoisie will not take warning. The resistance of the miners does but embitter it the more. Instead of appreciating this forward step in the general movement of the workers, the property-holding class saw in it only a source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough to declare themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had hitherto received. It saw in the just demands of the non-possessing workers only impertinent discontent, mad rebellion against "Divine and human order;" and, in the best case, a success (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by "ill-intentioned demagogues who live by agitation and are too lazy to work." It sought, of course, without success, to represent to the workers that Roberts and the Union's agents whom the Union very naturally had to pay, were insolent swindlers, who drew the last farthing from the working-men's pockets. When such insanity prevails in the property-holding class, when it is so blinded by its momentary profit that it no longer has eyes for the most conspicuous signs of the times, surely all hope of a peaceful solution of the social question for England must be abandoned. The only possible solution is a violent revolution, which cannot fail to take place. THE AGRICULTURAL PROLETARIAT. We have seen in the introduction how, simultaneously with the small bourgeoisie and the modest independence of the former workers, the small peasantry also was ruined when the former Union of industrial and agricultural work was dissolved, the abandoned fields thrown together into large farms, and the small peasants superseded by the overwhelming competition of the large farmers. Instead of being landowners or leaseholders, as they had been hitherto, they were now obliged to hire themselves as labourers to the large farmers or the landlords. For a time this position was endurable, though a deterioration in comparison with their former one. The extension of industry kept pace with the increase of population until the progress of manufacture began to assume a slower pace, and the perpetual improvement of machinery made it impossible for manufacture to absorb the whole surplus of the agricultural population. From this time forward, the distress which had hitherto existed only in the manufacturing districts, and then only at times, appeared in the agricultural districts too. The twenty-five years' struggle with France came to an end at about the same time; the diminished production at the various seats of the wars, the shutting off of imports, and the necessity of providing for the British army in Spain, had given English agriculture an artificial prosperity, and had besides withdrawn to the army vast numbers of workers from their ordinary occupations. This check upon the import trade, the opportunity for exportation, and the military demand for workers, now suddenly came to an end; and the necessary consequence was what the English call agricultural distress. The farmers had to sell their corn at low prices, and could, therefore, pay only low wages. In 1815, in order to keep up prices, the Corn Laws were passed, prohibiting the importation of corn so long as the price of wheat continued less than 80 shillings per quarter. These naturally ineffective laws were several times modified, but did not succeed in ameliorating the distress in the agricultural districts. All that they did was to change the disease, which, under free competition from abroad, would have assumed an acute form, culminating in a series of crises, into a chronic one which bore heavily but uniformly upon the farm labourers. For a time after the rise of the agricultural proletariat, the patriarchal relation between master and man, which was being destroyed for manufacture, developed here the same relation of the farmer to his hands which still exists almost everywhere in Germany. So long as this lasted, the poverty of the farm hands was less conspicuous; they shared the fate of the farmer, and were discharged only in cases of the direst necessity. But now all this is changed. The farm hands have become day labourers almost everywhere, are employed only when needed by the farmers, and, therefore, often have no work for weeks together, especially in winter. In the patriarchal time, the hands and their families lived on the farm, and their children grew up there, the farmer trying to find occupation on the spot for the oncoming generation; day labourers, then, were the exception, not the rule. Thus there was, on every farm, a larger number of hands than were strictly necessary. It became, therefore, the interest of the farmers to dissolve this relation, drive the farm hand from the farm, and transform him into a day labourer. This took place pretty generally towards the year 1830, and the consequence was that the hitherto latent over-population was set free, the rate of wages forced down, and the poor-rate enormously increased. From this time the agricultural districts became the headquarters of permanent, as the manufacturing districts had long been of periodic, pauperism; and the modification of the Poor Law was the first measure which the State was obliged to apply to the daily increasing impoverishment of the country parishes. Moreover, the constant extension of farming on a large scale, the introduction of threshing and other machines, and the employment of women and children (which is now so general that its effects have recently been investigated by a special official commission), threw a large number of men out of employment. It is manifest, therefore, that here, too, the system of industrial production has made its entrance, by means of farming on a large scale, by the abolition of the patriarchal relation, which is of the greatest importance just here, by the introduction of machinery, steam, and the labour of women and children. In so doing, it has swept the last and most stationary portion of working humanity into the revolutionary movement. But the longer agriculture had remained stationary, the heavier now became the burden upon the worker, the more violently broke forth the results of the disorganisation of the old social fabric. The "over-population" came to light all at once, and could not, as in the manufacturing districts, be absorbed by the needs of an increasing production. New factories could always be built, if there were consumers for their products, but new land could not be created. The cultivation of waste common land was too daring a speculation for the bad times following the conclusion of peace. The necessary consequence was that the competition of the workers among each other reached the highest point of intensity, and wages fell to the minimum. So long as the old Poor Law existed, the workers received relief from the rates; wages naturally fell still lower, because the farmers forced the largest possible number of labourers to claim relief. The higher poor-rate, necessitated by the surplus population, was only increased by this measure, and the new Poor Law, of which we shall have more to say later, was now enacted as a remedy. But this did not improve matters. Wages did not rise, the surplus population could not be got rid of, and the cruelty of the new law did but serve to embitter the people to the utmost. Even the poor- rate, which diminished at first after the passage of the new law, attained its old height after a few years. Its only effect was that whereas previously three to four million half paupers had existed, a million of total paupers now appeared, and the rest, still half paupers, merely went without relief. The poverty in the agricultural districts has increased every year. The people live in the greatest want, whole families must struggle along with 6, 7, or 8 shillings a week, and at times have nothing. Let us hear a description of this population given by a Liberal member of Parliament as early as 1830. {264} "An English agricultural labourer and an English pauper, these words are synonymous. His father was a pauper and his mother's milk contained no nourishment. From his earliest childhood he had bad food, and only half enough to still his hunger, and even yet he undergoes the pangs of unsatisfied hunger almost all the time that he is not asleep. He is half clad, and has not more fire than barely suffices to cook his scanty meal. And so cold and damp are always at home with him, and leave him only in fine weather. He is married, but he knows nothing of the joys of the husband and father. His wife and children, hungry, rarely warm, often ill and helpless, always careworn and hopeless like himself, are naturally grasping, selfish, and troublesome, and so, to use his own expression, he hates the sight of them, and enters his cot only because it offers him a trifle more shelter from rain and wind than a hedge. He must support his family, though he cannot do so, whence come beggary, deceit of all sorts, ending in fully developed craftiness. If he were so inclined, he yet has not the courage which makes of the more energetic of his class wholesale poachers and smugglers. But he pilfers when occasion offers, and teaches his children to lie and steal. His abject and submissive demeanour towards his wealthy neighbours shows that they treat him roughly and with suspicion; hence he fears and hates them, but he never will injure them by force. He is depraved through and through, too far gone to possess even the strength of despair. His wretched existence is brief, rheumatism and asthma bring him to the workhouse, where he will draw his last breath without a single pleasant recollection, and will make room for another luckless wretch to live and die as he has done." Our author adds that besides this class of agricultural labourers, there is still another, somewhat more energetic and better endowed physically, mentally, and morally; those, namely, who live as wretchedly, but were not born to this condition. These he represents as better in their family life, but smugglers and poachers who get into frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers and revenue officers of the coast, become more embittered against society during the prison life which they often undergo, and so stand abreast of the first class in their hatred of the property-holders. "And," he says, in closing, "this whole class is called, by courtesy, the bold peasantry of England." Down to the present time, this description applies to the greater portion of the agricultural labourers of England. In June, 1844, the _Times_ sent a correspondent into the agricultural districts to report upon the condition of this class, and the report which he furnished agreed wholly with the foregoing. In certain districts wages were not more than six shillings a week; not more, that is, that in many districts in Germany, while the prices of all the necessaries of life are at least twice as high. What sort of life these people lead may be imagined; their food scanty and bad, their clothing ragged, their dwellings cramped and desolate, small, wretched huts, with no comforts whatsoever; and, for young people, lodging-houses, where men and women are scarcely separated, and illegitimate intercourse thus provoked. One or two days without work in the course of a month must inevitably plunge such people into the direst want. Moreover, they cannot combine to raise wages, because they are scattered, and if one alone refuses to work for low wages, there are dozens out of work, or supported by the rates, who are thankful for the most trifling offer, while to him who declines work, every other form of relief than the hated workhouse is refused by the Poor Law guardians as to a lazy vagabond; for the guardians are the very farmers from whom or from whose neighbours and acquaintances alone he can get work. And not from one or two special districts of England do such reports come. On the contrary, the distress is general, equally great in the North and South, the East and West. The condition of the labourers in Suffolk and Norfolk corresponds with that of Devonshire, Hampshire, and Sussex. Wages are as low in Dorsetshire and Oxfordshire as in Kent and Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire. One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in the Game Laws, which are more stringent than in any other country, while the game is plentiful beyond all conception. The English peasant who, according to the old English custom and tradition, sees in poaching only a natural and noble expression of courage and daring, is stimulated still further by the contrast between his own poverty and the _car tel est notre plaisir_ of the lord, who preserves thousands of hares and game birds for his private enjoyment. The labourer lays snares, or shoots here and there a piece of game. It does not injure the landlord as a matter of fact, for he has a vast superfluity, and it brings the poacher a meal for himself and his starving family. But if he is caught he goes to jail, and for a second offence receives at the least seven years' transportation. From the severity of these laws arise the frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers, which lead to a number of murders every year Hence the post of gamekeeper is not only dangerous, but of ill- repute and despised. Last year, in two cases, gamekeepers shot themselves rather than continue their work. Such is the moderate price at which the landed aristocracy purchases the noble sport of shooting; but what does it matter to the lords of the soil? Whether one or two more or less of the "surplus" live or die matters nothing, and even if in consequence of the Game Laws half the surplus population could be put out of the way, it would be all the better for the other half--according to the philanthropy of the English landlords. Although the conditions of life in the country, the isolated dwellings, the stability of the surroundings and occupations, and consequently of the thoughts, are decidedly unfavourable to all development, yet poverty and want bear their fruits even here. The manufacturing and mining proletariat emerged early from the first stage of resistance to our social order, the direct rebellion of the individual by the perpetration of crime; but the peasants are still in this stage at the present time. Their favourite method of social warfare is incendiarism. In the winter which followed the Revolution of July, in 1830-31, these incendiarisms first became general. Disturbances had taken place, and the whole region of Sussex and the adjacent counties has been brought into a state of excitement in October, in consequence of an increase of the coastguard (which made smuggling much more difficult and "ruined the coast"--in the words of a farmer), changes in the Poor Law, low wages, and the introduction of machinery. In the winter the farmers' hay and corn-stacks were burnt in the fields, and the very barns and stables under their windows. Nearly every night a couple of such fires blazed up, and spread terror among the farmers and landlords. The offenders were rarely discovered, and the workers attributed the incendiarism to a mythical person whom they named "Swing." Men puzzled their brains to discover who this Swing could be and whence this rage among the poor of the country districts. Of the great motive power, Want, Oppression, only a single person here and there thought, and certainly no one in the agricultural districts. Since that year the incendiarisms have been repeated every winter, with each recurring unemployed season of the agricultural labourers. In the winter of 1843-44, they were once more extraordinarily frequent. There lies before me a series of numbers of the _Northern Star_ of that time, each one of which contains a report of several incendiarisms, stating in each case its authority. The numbers wanting in the following list I have not at hand; but they, too, doubtless contain a number of cases. Moreover, such a sheet cannot possibly ascertain all the cases which occur. November 25th, 1843, two cases; several earlier ones are discussed. December 16th, in Bedfordshire, general excitement for a fortnight past in consequence of frequent incendiarisms, of which several take place every night. Two great farmhouses burnt down within the last few days; in Cambridgeshire four great farmhouses, Hertfordshire one, and besides these, fifteen other incendiarisms in different districts. December 30th, in Norfolk one, Suffolk two, Essex two, Cheshire one, Lancashire one, Derby, Lincoln, and the South twelve. January 6th, 1844, in all ten. January 13th, seven. January 20th, four incendiarisms. From this time forward, three or four incendiarisms per week are reported, and not as formerly until the spring only, but far into July and August. And that crimes of this sort are expected to increase in the approaching hard season of 1844- 45, the English papers already indicate. What do my readers think of such a state of things in the quiet, idyllic country districts of England? Is this social war, or is it not? Is it a natural state of things which can last? Yet here the landlords and farmers are as dull and stupefied, as blind to everything which does not directly put money into their pockets, as the manufacturers and the bourgeoisie in general in the manufacturing districts. If the latter promise their employees salvation through the repeal of the Corn Laws, the landlords and a great part of the farmers promise theirs Heaven upon earth from the maintenance of the same laws. But in neither case do the property-holders succeed in winning the workers to the support of their pet hobby. Like the operatives, the agricultural labourers are thoroughly indifferent to the repeal or non-repeal of the Corn Laws. Yet the question is an important one for both. That is to say--by the repeal of the Corn Laws, free competition, the present social economy is carried to its extreme point; all further development within the present order comes to an end, and the only possible step farther is a radical transformation of the social order. {268} For the agricultural labourers the question has, further, the following important bearing: Free importation of corn involves (how, I cannot explain _here_) the emancipation of the farmers from the landlords, their transformation into Liberals. Towards this consummation the Anti-Corn Law League has already largely contributed, and this is its only real service. When the farmers become Liberals, _i.e_., conscious bourgeois, the agricultural labourers will inevitably become Chartists and Socialists; the first change involves the second. And that a new movement is already beginning among the agricultural labourers is proved by a meeting which Earl Radnor, a Liberal landlord, caused to be held in October, 1844, near Highworth, where his estates lie, to pass resolutions against the Corn Laws. At this meeting, the labourers, perfectly indifferent as to these laws, demanded something wholly different, namely small holdings, at low rent, for themselves, telling Earl Radnor all sorts of bitter truths to his face. Thus the movement of the working-class is finding its way into the remote, stationary, mentally dead agricultural districts; and, thanks to the general distress, will soon be as firmly rooted and energetic as in the manufacturing districts. {269} As to the religious state of the agricultural labourers, they are, it is true, more pious than the manufacturing operatives; but they, too, are greatly at odds with the Church--for in these districts members of the Established Church almost exclusively are to be found. A correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_, who, over the signature, "One who has whistled at the plough," reports his tour through the agricultural districts, relates, among other things, the following conversation with some labourers after service: "I asked one of these people whether the preacher of the day was their own clergyman. "Yes, blast him! He is our own parson, and begs the whole time. He's been always a-begging as long as I've known him." (The sermon had been upon a mission to the heathen.) "And as long as I've known him too," added another; "and I never knew a parson but what was begging for this or the other." "Yes," said a woman, who had just come out of the church, "and look how wages are going down, and see the rich vagabonds with whom the parsons eat and drink and hunt. So help me God, we are more fit to starve in the workhouse than pay the parsons as go among the heathen." "And why," said another, "don't they send the parsons as drones every day in Salisbury Cathedral, for nobody but the bare stones? Why don't _they_ go among the heathen?" "They don't go," said the old man whom I had first asked, "because they are rich, they have all the land they need, they want the money in order to get rid of the poor parsons. I know what they want. I know them too long for that." "But, good friends," I asked, "you surely do not always come out of the church with such bitter feelings towards the preacher? Why do you go at all?" "What for do we go?" said the woman. "We must, if we do not want to lose everything, work and all, we must." I learned later that they had certain little privileges of fire-wood and potato land (which they paid for!) on condition of going to church." After describing their poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by saying: "And now I boldly assert that the condition of these people, their poverty, their hatred of the church, their external submission and inward bitterness against the ecclesiastical dignitaries, is the rule among the country parishes of England, and its opposite is the exception." If the peasantry of England shows the consequences which a numerous agricultural proletariat in connection with large farming involves for the country districts, Wales illustrates the ruin of the small holders. If the English country parishes reproduce the antagonism between capitalist and proletarian, the state of the Welsh peasantry corresponds to the progressive ruin of the small bourgeoisie in the towns. In Wales are to be found, almost exclusively, small holders, who cannot with like profit sell their products as cheaply as the larger, more favourably situated English farmers, with whom, however, they are obliged to compete. Moreover, in some places the quality of the land admits of the raising of live stock only, which is but slightly profitable. Then, too, these Welsh farmers, by reason of their separate nationality, which they retain pertinaciously, are much more stationary than the English farmers. But the competition among themselves and with their English neighbours (and the increased mortgages upon their land consequent upon this) has reduced them to such a state that they can scarcely live at all; and because they have not recognised the true cause of their wretched condition, they attribute it to all sorts of small causes, such as high tolls, etc, which do check the development of agriculture and commerce, but are taken into account as standing charges by every one who takes a holding, and are therefore really ultimately paid by the landlord. Here, too, the new Poor Law is cordially hated by the tenants, who hover in perpetual danger of coming under its sway. In 1843, the famous "Rebecca" disturbances broke out among the Welsh peasantry; the men dressed in women's clothing, blackened their faces, and fell in armed crowds upon the toll-gates, destroyed them amidst great rejoicing and firing of guns, demolished the toll-keepers' houses, wrote threatening letters in the name of the imaginary "Rebecca," and once went so far as to storm the workhouse of Carmarthen. Later, when the militia was called out and the police strengthened, the peasants drew them off with wonderful skill upon false scents, demolished toll-gates at one point while the militia, lured by false signal bugles, was marching in some opposite direction; and betook themselves finally, when the police was too thoroughly reinforced, to single incendiarisms and attempts at murder. As usual, these greater crimes were the end of the movement. Many withdrew from disapproval, others from fear, and peace was restored of itself. The Government appointed a commission to investigate the affair and its causes, and there was an end of the matter. The poverty of the peasantry continues, however, and will one day, since it cannot under existing circumstances grow less, but must go on intensifying, produce more serious manifestations than these humorous Rebecca masquerades. If England illustrates the results of the system of farming on a large scale and Wales on a small one, Ireland exhibits the consequences of overdividing the soil. The great mass of the population of Ireland consists of small tenants who occupy a sorry hut without partitions, and a potato patch just large enough to supply them most scantily with potatoes through the winter. In consequence of the great competition which prevails among these small tenants, the rent has reached an unheard- of height, double, treble, and quadruple that paid in England. For every agricultural labourer seeks to become a tenant-farmer, and though the division of land has gone so far, there still remain numbers of labourers in competition for plots. Although in Great Britain 32,000,000 acres of land are cultivated, and in Ireland but 14,000,000; although Great Britain produces agricultural products to the value of 150,000,000 pounds, and Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians _more_ than in the neighbouring island. {272a} How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the high rents paid. The Irish people is thus held in crushing poverty, from which it cannot free itself under our present social conditions. These people live in the most wretched clay huts, scarcely good enough for cattle-pens, have scant food all winter long, or, as the report above quoted expresses it, they have potatoes half enough thirty weeks in the year, and the rest of the year nothing. When the time comes in the spring at which this provision reaches its end, or can no longer be used because of its sprouting, wife and children go forth to beg and tramp the country with their kettle in their hands. Meanwhile the husband, after planting potatoes for the next year, goes in search of work either in Ireland or England, and returns at the potato harvest to his family. This is the condition in which nine-tenths of the Irish country folks live. They are poor as church mice, wear the most wretched rags, and stand upon the lowest plane of intelligence possible in a half-civilised country. According to the report quoted, there are, in a population of 8.5 millions, 585,000 heads of families in a state of total destitution; and according to other authorities, cited by Sheriff Alison, {272b} there are in Ireland 2,300,000 persons who could not live without public or private assistance--or 27 per cent. of the whole population paupers! The cause of this poverty lies in the existing social conditions, especially in competition here found in the form of the subdivision of the soil. Much effort has been spent in finding other causes. It has been asserted that the relation of the tenant to the landlord who lets his estate in large lots to tenants, who again have their sub-tenants, and sub-sub-tenants, in turn, so that often ten middlemen come between the landlord and the actual cultivator--it has been asserted that the shameful law which gives the landlord the right of expropriating the cultivator who may have paid his rent duly, if the first tenant fails to pay the landlord, that this law is to blame for all this poverty. But all this determines only the form in which the poverty manifests itself. Make the small tenant a landowner himself and what follows? The majority could not live upon their holdings even if they had no rent to pay, and any slight improvement which might take place would be lost again in a few years in consequence of the rapid increase of population. The children would then live to grow up under the improved conditions who now die in consequence of poverty in early childhood. From another side comes the assertion that the shameless oppression inflicted by the English is the cause of the trouble. It is the cause of the somewhat earlier appearance of this poverty, but not of the poverty itself. Or the blame is laid on the Protestant Church forced upon a Catholic nation; but divide among the Irish what the Church takes from them, and it does not reach six shillings a head. Besides, tithes are a tax upon landed property, not upon the tenant, though he may nominally pay them; now, since the Commutation Bill of 1838, the landlord pays the tithes directly and reckons so much higher rent, so that the tenant is none the better off. And in the same way a hundred other causes of this poverty are brought forward, all proving as little as these. This poverty is the result of our social conditions; apart from these, causes may be found for the manner in which it manifests itself, but not for the fact of its existence. That poverty manifests itself in Ireland thus and not otherwise, is owing to the character of the people, and to their historical development. The Irish are a people related in their whole character to the Latin nations, to the French, and especially to the Italians. The bad features of their character we have already had depicted by Carlyle. Let us now hear an Irishman, who at least comes nearer to the truth than Carlyle, with his prejudice in favour of the Teutonic character: {273} "They are restless, yet indolent, clever and indiscreet, stormy, impatient, and improvident; brave by instinct, generous without much reflection, quick to revenge and forgive insults, to make and to renounce friendships, gifted with genius prodigally, sparingly with judgment." With the Irish, feeling and passion predominate; reason must bow before them. Their sensuous, excitable nature prevents reflection and quiet, persevering activity from reaching development--such a nation is utterly unfit for manufacture as now conducted. Hence they held fast to agriculture, and remained upon the lowest plane even of that. With the small subdivisions of land, which were not here artificially created, as in France and on the Rhine, by the division of great estates, but have existed from time immemorial, an improvement of the soil by the investment of capital was not to be thought of; and it would, according to Alison, require 120 million pounds sterling to bring the soil up to the not very high state of fertility already attained in England. The English immigration, which might have raised the standard of Irish civilisation, has contented itself with the most brutal plundering of the Irish people; and while the Irish, by their immigration into England, have furnished England a leaven which will produce its own results in the future, they have little for which to be thankful to the English immigration. The attempts of the Irish to save themselves from their present ruin, on the one hand, take the form of crimes. These are the order of the day in the agricultural districts, and are nearly always directed against the most immediate enemies, the landlord's agents, or their obedient servants, the Protestant intruders, whose large farms are made up of the potato patches of hundreds of ejected families. Such crimes are especially frequent in the South and West. On the other hand, the Irish hope for relief by means of the agitation for the repeal of the Legislative Union with England. From all the foregoing, it is clear that the uneducated Irish must see in the English their worst enemies; and their first hope of improvement in the conquest of national independence. But quite as clear is it, too, that Irish distress cannot be removed by any Act of Repeal. Such an Act would, however, at once lay bare the fact that the cause of Irish misery, which now seems to come from abroad, is really to be found at home. Meanwhile, it is an open question whether the accomplishment of repeal will be necessary to make this clear to the Irish. Hitherto, neither Chartism nor Socialism has had marked success in Ireland. I close my observations upon Ireland at this point the more readily, as the Repeal Agitation of 1843 and O'Connell's trial have been the means of making the Irish distress more and more known in Germany. We have now followed the proletariat of the British Islands through all branches of its activity, and found it everywhere living in want and misery under totally inhuman conditions. We have seen discontent arise with the rise of the proletariat, grow, develop, and organise; we have seen open bloodless and bloody battles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. We have investigated the principles according to which the fate, the hopes, and fears of the proletariat are determined, and we have found that there is no prospect of improvement in their condition. We have had an opportunity, here and there, of observing the conduct of the bourgeoisie towards the proletariat, and we have found that it considers only itself, has only its own advantage in view. However, in order not to be unjust, let us investigate its mode of action somewhat more exactly. THE ATTITUDE OF THE BOURGEOISIE TOWARDS THE PROLETARIAT. In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for this is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the bourgeoisie, not in contrast with the proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the property-holder--_i.e_., the bourgeois. Before the privilege of property all other privileges vanish. The sole difference is this, that the bourgeois proper stands in active relations with the manufacturing, and, in a measure, with the mining proletarians, and, as farmer, with the agricultural labourers, whereas the so-called aristocrat comes into contact with the agricultural labourer only. I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. {276} In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted. True, these English bourgeois are good husbands and family men, and have all sorts of other private virtues, and appear, in ordinary intercourse, as decent and respectable as all other bourgeois; even in business they are better to deal with than the Germans; they do not higgle and haggle so much as our own pettifogging merchants; but how does this help matters? Ultimately it is self-interest, and especially money gain, which alone determines them. I once went into Manchester with such a bourgeois, and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful condition of the working-people's quarters, and asserted that I had never seen so ill-built a city. The man listened quietly to the end, and said at the corner where we parted: "And yet there is a great deal of money made here; good morning, sir." It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic bosh. Hence, Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the favourite study of these bartering Jews. Every one of them is a Political Economist. The relation of the manufacturer to his operatives has nothing human in it; it is purely economic. The manufacturer is Capital, the operative Labour. And if the operative will not be forced into this abstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man, who possesses, among other things, the attribute of labour force, if he takes it into his head that he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in the market, as the commodity "Labour," the bourgeois reason comes to a standstill. He cannot comprehend that he holds any other relation to the operatives than that of purchase and sale; he sees in them not human beings, but hands, as he constantly calls them to their faces; he insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash Payment is the only nexus between man and man." Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment." Money determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand pounds." He who has money is of "the better sort of people," is "influential," and what _he_ does counts for something in his social circle. The huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all relations are expressed in business terms, in economic categories. Supply and demand are the formulas according to which the logic of the English bourgeois judges all human life. Hence free competition in every respect, hence the _regime_ of _laissez-faire, laissez-aller_ in government, in medicine, in education, and soon to be in religion, too, as the State Church collapses more and more. Free competition will suffer no limitation, no State supervision; the whole State is but a burden to it. It would reach its highest perfection in a _wholly_ ungoverned anarchic society, where each might exploit the other to his heart's content. Since, however, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must have it to hold the equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns the power of government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way as far as possible. Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in the _Manchester Guardian_ the following letter to the editor, which was published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing: "MR. EDITOR,--For some time past our main streets are haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I should think that when one not only pays the poor-rate, but also contributes largely to the charitable institutions, one had done enough to earn a right to be spared such disagreeable and impertinent molestations. And why else do we pay such high rates for the maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect us so far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope the publication of these lines in your widely-circulated paper may induce the authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,--Your obedient servant, "A LADY." There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self- interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady;" she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no, the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxurious bourgeois. In other respects, too, the bourgeoisie assumes a hypocritical, boundless philanthropy, but only when its own interests require it; as in its Politics and Political Economy. It has been at work now well on towards five years to prove to the working-men that it strives to abolish the Corn Laws solely in their interest. But the long and short of the matter is this: the Corn Laws keep the price of bread higher than in other countries, and thus raise wages, but these high wages render difficult competition of the manufacturers against other nations in which bread, and consequently wages, are cheaper. The Corn Laws being repealed, the price of bread falls, and wages gradually approach those of other European countries, as must be clear to every one from our previous exposition of the principles according to which wages are determined. The manufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goods increases, and, with it, the demand for labour. In consequence of this increased demand wages would actually rise somewhat, and the unemployed workers be re-employed; but for how long? The "surplus population" of England, and especially of Ireland, is sufficient to supply English manufacture with the necessary operatives, even if it were doubled; and, in a few years, the small advantage of the repeal of the Corn Laws would be balanced, a new crisis would follow, and we should be back at the point from which we started, while the first stimulus to manufacture would have increased population meanwhile. All this the proletarians understand very well, and have told the manufacturers to their faces; but, in spite of that, the manufacturers have in view solely the immediate advantage which the Corn Laws would bring them. They are too narrow-minded to see that, even for themselves, no permanent advantage can arise from this measure, because their competition with each other would soon force the profit of the individual back to its old level; and thus they continue to shriek to the working-men that it is purely for the sake of the starving millions that the rich members of the Liberal party pour hundreds and thousands of pounds into the treasury of the Anti-Corn Law League, while every one knows that they are only sending the butter after the cheese, that they calculate upon earning it all back in the first ten years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. But the workers are no longer to be misled by the bourgeoisie, especially since the insurrection of 1842. They demand of every one who presents himself as interested in their welfare, that he should declare himself in favour of the People's Charter as proof of the sincerity of his professions, and in so doing, they protest against all outside help, for the Charter is a demand for the power to help themselves. Whoever declines so to declare himself they pronounce their enemy, and are perfectly right in so doing, whether he be a declared foe or a false friend Besides, the Anti-Corn Law League has used the most despicable falsehoods and tricks to win the support of the workers. It has tried to prove to them that the money price of labour is in inverse proportion to the price of corn; that wages are high when grain is cheap, and _vice versa_, an assertion which it pretends to prove with the most ridiculous arguments, and one which is, in itself, more ridiculous than any other that has proceeded from the mouth of an Economist. When this failed to help matters, the workers were promised bliss supreme in consequence of the increased demand in the labour market; indeed, men went so far as to carry through the streets two models of loaves of bread, on one of which, by far the larger, was written: "American Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Four Shillings per Day," and upon the much smaller one: "English Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Two Shillings a Day." But the workers have not allowed themselves to be misled. They know their lords and masters too well. But rightly to measure the hypocrisy of these promises, the practice of the bourgeoisie must be taken into account. We have seen in the course of our report how the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in every conceivable way for its own benefit! We have, however, hitherto seen only how the single bourgeois maltreats the proletariat upon his own account. Let us turn now to the manner in which the bourgeoisie as a party, as the power of the State, conducts itself towards the proletariat. Laws are necessary only because there are persons in existence who own nothing; and although this is directly expressed in but few laws, as, for instance, those against vagabonds and tramps, in which the proletariat as such is outlawed, yet enmity to the proletariat is so emphatically the basis of the law that the judges, and especially the Justices of the Peace, who are bourgeois themselves, and with whom the proletariat comes most in contact, find this meaning in the laws without further consideration. If a rich man is brought up, or rather summoned, to appear before the court, the judge regrets that he is obliged to impose so much trouble, treats the matter as favourably as possible, and, if he is forced to condemn the accused, does so with extreme regret, etc. etc., and the end of it all is a miserable fine, which the bourgeois throws upon the table with contempt and then departs. But if a poor devil gets into such a position as involves appearing before the Justice of the Peace--he has almost always spent the night in the station-house with a crowd of his peers--he is regarded from the beginning as guilty; his defence is set aside with a contemptuous "Oh! we know the excuse," and a fine imposed which he cannot pay and must work out with several months on the treadmill. And if nothing can be proved against him, he is sent to the treadmill, none the less, "as a rogue and a vagabond." The partisanship of the Justices of the Peace, especially in the country, surpasses all description, and it is so much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be expected. For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their class. And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the Justices of the Peace. The bourgeois may do what he will and the police remain ever polite, adhering strictly to the law, but the proletarian is roughly, brutally treated; his poverty both casts the suspicion of every sort of crime upon him and cuts him off from legal redress against any caprice of the administrators of the law; for him, therefore, the protecting forms of the law do not exist, the police force their way into his house without further ceremony, arrest and abuse him; and only when a working-men's association, such as the miners, engages a Roberts, does it become evident how little the protective side of the law exists for the working-men, how frequently he has to bear all the burdens of the law without enjoying its benefits. Down to the present hour, the property-holding class in Parliament still struggles against the better feelings of those not yet fallen a prey to egotism, and seeks to subjugate the proletariat still further. One piece of common land after another is appropriated and placed under cultivation, a process by which the general cultivation is furthered, but the proletariat greatly injured. Where there were still commons, the poor could pasture an ass, a pig, or geese, the children and young people had a place where they could play and live out of doors; but this is gradually coming to an end. The earnings of the worker are less, and the young people, deprived of their playground, go to the beer-shops. A mass of acts for enclosing and cultivating commons is passed at every session of Parliament. When the Government determined during the session of 1844 to force the all monopolising railways to make travelling possible for the workers by means of charges proportionate to their means, a penny a mile, and proposed therefore to introduce such a third class train upon every railway daily, the "Reverend Father in God," the Bishop of London, proposed that Sunday, the only day upon which working-men in work _can_ travel, be exempted from this rule, and travelling thus be left open to the rich and shut off from the poor. This proposition was, however, too direct, too undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was dropped. I have no room to enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one single session upon the proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice. An obscure member of Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating the relation of master and servant which seemed comparatively unobjectionable. The Government became interested in the bill, and it was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the strike among the miners in the North broke out, and Roberts made his triumphal passage through England with his acquitted working-men. When the bill was reported by the committee, it was discovered that certain most despotic provisions had been interpolated in it, especially one conferring upon the employer the power to bring before any Justice of the Peace every working-man who had contracted verbally or in writing to do any work whatsoever, in case of refusal to work or other misbehaviour, and have him condemned to prison with hard labour for two months, upon the oath of the employer or his agent or overlooker, _i.e_., upon the oath of the accuser. This bill aroused the working-men to the utmost fury, the more so as the Ten Hours' Bill was before Parliament at the same time, and had called forth a considerable agitation. Hundreds of meetings were held, hundreds of working-men's petitions forwarded to London to Thomas Duncombe, the representative of the interests of the proletariat. This man was, except Ferrand, the representative of "Young England," the only vigorous opponent of the bill; but when the other Radicals saw that the people were declaring against it, one after the other crept forward and took his place by Duncombe's side; and as the Liberal bourgeoisie had not the courage to defend the bill in the face of the excitement among the working-men, it was ignominiously lost. Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat is Malthus' Law of Population and the New Poor Law framed in accordance with it. We have already alluded several times to the theory of Malthus. We may sum up its final result in these few words, that the earth is perennially over-populated, whence poverty, misery, distress, and immorality must prevail; that it is the lot, the eternal destiny of mankind, to exist in too great numbers, and therefore in diverse classes, of which some are rich, educated, and moral, and others more or less poor, distressed, ignorant, and immoral. Hence it follows in practice, and Malthus himself drew this conclusion, that charities and poor-rates are, properly speaking, nonsense, since they serve only to maintain, and stimulate the increase of, the surplus population whose competition crushes down wages for the employed; that the employment of the poor by the Poor Law Guardians is equally unreasonable, since only a fixed quantity of the products of labour can be consumed, and for every unemployed labourer thus furnished employment, another hitherto employed must be driven into enforced idleness, whence private undertakings suffer at cost of Poor Law industry; that, in other words, the whole problem is not how to support the surplus population, but how to restrain it as far as possible. Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that "she bids him begone," for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the "surplus population" useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the violent exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population. Since, however, the rich hold all the power, the proletarians must submit, if they will not good-temperedly perceive it for themselves, to have the law actually declare them superfluous. This has been done by the New Poor Law. The Old Poor Law which rested upon the Act of 1601 (the 43rd of Elizabeth), naively started from the notion that it is the duty of the parish to provide for the maintenance of the poor. Whoever had no work received relief, and the poor man regarded the parish as pledged to protect him from starvation. He demanded his weekly relief as his right, not as a favour, and this became, at last, too much for the bourgeoisie. In 1833, when the bourgeoisie had just come into power through the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just reached its full development, the bourgeoisie began the reform of the Poor Law according to its own point of view. A commission was appointed, which investigated the administration of the Poor Laws, and revealed a multitude of abuses. It was discovered that the whole working-class in the country was pauperised and more or less dependent upon the rates, from which they received relief when wages were low; it was found that this system by which the unemployed were maintained, the ill-paid and the parents of large families relieved, fathers of illegitimate children required to pay alimony, and poverty, in general, recognised as needing protection, it was found that this system was ruining the nation, was-- "A check upon industry, a reward for improvident marriage, a stimulus to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing the effect of an increased population upon wages; a national provision for discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy, vicious, and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family life, hinder systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that which is already accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers. Moreover, in the provision of aliment, it sets a premium upon illegitimate children." (Words of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.) {286} This description of the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct; relief fosters laziness and increase of "surplus population." Under present social conditions it is perfectly clear that the poor man is compelled to be an egotist, and when he can choose, living equally well in either case, he prefers doing nothing to working. But what follows therefrom? That our present social conditions are good for nothing, and not as the Malthusian Commissioners conclude, that poverty is a crime, and, as such, to be visited with heinous penalties which may serve as a warning to others. But these wise Malthusians were so thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of their theory that they did not for one moment hesitate to cast the poor into the Procrustean bed of their economic notions and treat them with the most revolting cruelty. Convinced with Malthus and the rest of the adherents of free competition that it is best to let each one take care of himself, they would have preferred to abolish the Poor Laws altogether. Since, however, they had neither the courage nor the authority to do this, they proposed a Poor Law constructed as far as possible in harmony with the doctrine of Malthus, which is yet more barbarous than that of _laissez-faire_, because it interferes actively in cases in which the latter is passive. We have seen how Malthus characterises poverty, or rather the want of employment, as a crime under the title "superfluity," and recommends for it punishment by starvation. The commissioners were not quite so barbarous; death outright by starvation was something too terrible even for a Poor Law Commissioner. "Good," said they, "we grant you poor a right to exist, but only to exist; the right to multiply you have not, nor the right to exist as befits human beings. You are a pest, and if we cannot get rid of you as we do of other pests, you shall feel, at least, that you are a pest, and you shall at least be held in check, kept from bringing into the world other "surplus," either directly or through inducing in others laziness and want of employment. Live you shall, but live as an awful warning to all those who might have inducements to become "superfluous." They accordingly brought in the New Poor Law, which was passed by Parliament in 1834, and continues in force down to the present day. All relief in money and provisions was abolished; the only relief allowed was admission to the workhouses immediately built. The regulations for these workhouses, or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as to frighten away every one who has the slightest prospect of life without this form of public charity. To make sure that relief be applied for only in the most extreme cases and after every other effort had failed, the workhouse has been made the most repulsive residence which the refined ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent. The food is worse than that of the most ill-paid working-man while employed, and the work harder, or they might prefer the workhouse to their wretched existence outside. Meat, especially fresh meat, is rarely furnished, chiefly potatoes, the worst possible bread and oatmeal porridge, little or no beer. The food of criminal prisoners is better, as a rule, so that the paupers frequently commit some offence for the purpose of getting into jail. For the workhouse is a jail too; he who does not finish his task gets nothing to eat; he who wishes to go out must ask permission, which is granted or not, according to his behaviour or the inspector's whim, tobacco is forbidden, also the receipt of gifts from relatives or friends outside the house; the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are handed over, helpless and without redress, to the caprice of the inspectors. To prevent their labour from competing with that of outside concerns, they are set to rather useless tasks: the men break stones, "as much as a strong man can accomplish with effort in a day;" the women, children, and aged men pick oakum, for I know not what insignificant use. To prevent the "superfluous" from multiplying, and "demoralised" parents from influencing their children, families are broken up, the husband is placed in one wing, the wife in another, the children in a third, and they are permitted to see one another only at stated times after long intervals, and then only when they have, in the opinion of the officials, behaved well. And in order to shut off the external world from contamination by pauperism within these bastilles, the inmates are permitted to receive visits only with the consent of the officials, and in the reception-rooms; to communicate in general with the world outside only by leave and under supervision. Yet the food is supposed to be wholesome and the treatment humane with all this. But the intent of the law is too loudly outspoken for this requirement to be in any wise fulfilled. The Poor Law Commissioners and the whole English bourgeoisie deceive themselves if they believe the administration of the law possible without these results. The treatment, which the letter of the law prescribes, is in direct contradiction of its spirit. If the law in its essence proclaims the poor criminals, the workhouses prisons, their inmates beyond the pale of the law, beyond the pale of humanity, objects of disgust and repulsion, then all commands to the contrary are unavailing. In practice, the spirit and not the letter of the law is followed in the treatment of the poor, as in the following few examples: "In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the summer of 1843, a boy five years old was punished by being shut into the dead-room, where he had to sleep upon the lids of the coffins. In the workhouse at Herne, the same punishment was inflicted upon a little girl for wetting the bed at night, and this method of punishment seems to be a favourite one. This workhouse, which stands in one of the most beautiful regions of Kent, is peculiar, in so far as its windows open only upon the court, and but two, newly introduced, afford the inmates a glimpse of the outer world. The author who relates this in the _Illuminated Magazine_, closes his description with the words: "If God punished men for crimes as man punishes man for poverty, then woe to the sons of Adam!" In November, 1843, a man died at Leicester, who had been dismissed two days before from the workhouse at Coventry. The details of the treatment of the poor in this institution are revolting. The man, George Robson, had a wound upon the shoulder, the treatment of which was wholly neglected; he was set to work at the pump, using the sound arm; was given only the usual workhouse fare, which he was utterly unable to digest by reason of the unhealed wound and his general debility; he naturally grew weaker, and the more he complained, the more brutally he was treated. When his wife tried to bring him her drop of beer, she was reprimanded, and forced to drink it herself in the presence of the female warder. He became ill, but received no better treatment. Finally, at his own request, and under the most insulting epithets, he was discharged, accompanied by his wife. Two days later he died at Leicester, in consequence of the neglected wound and of the food given him, which was utterly indigestible for one in his condition, as the surgeon present at the inquest testified. When he was discharged, there were handed to him letters containing money, which had been kept back six weeks, and opened, according to a rule of the establishment, by the inspector! In Birmingham such scandalous occurrences took place, that finally, in 1843, an official was sent to investigate the case. He found that four tramps had been shut up naked under a staircase in a black hole, eight to ten days, often deprived of food until noon, and that at the severest season of the year. A little boy had been passed through all grades of punishment known to the institution; first locked up in a damp, vaulted, narrow, lumber-room; then in the dog-hole twice, the second time three days and three nights; then the same length of time in the old dog-hole, which was still worse; then the tramp-room, a stinking, disgustingly filthy hole, with wooden sleeping stalls, where the official, in the course of his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with cold, who had been spending three days there. In the dog-hole there were often seven, and in the tramp-room, twenty men huddled together. Women, also, were placed in the dog-hole, because they refused to go to church; and one was shut four days into the tramp-room, with God knows what sort of company, and that while she was ill and receiving medicine! Another woman was placed in the insane department for punishment, though she was perfectly sane. In the workhouse at Bacton, in Suffolk, in January, 1844, a similar investigation revealed the fact that a feeble-minded woman was employed as nurse, and took care of the patients accordingly; while sufferers, who were often restless at night, or tried to get up, were tied fast with cords passed over the covering and under the bedstead, to save the nurses the trouble of sitting up at night. One patient was found dead, bound in this way. In the St. Pancras workhouse in London (where the cheap shirts already mentioned are made), an epileptic died of suffocation during an attack in bed, no one coming to his relief; in the same house, four to six, sometimes eight children, slept in one bed. In Shoreditch workhouse a man was placed, together with a fever patient violently ill, in a bed teeming with vermin. In Bethnal Green workhouse, London, a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy was shut up in the reception-room with her two-year-old child, from February 28th to March 20th, without being admitted into the workhouse itself, and without a trace of a bed or the means of satisfying the most natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted to see her husband until the next morning, and then only in the presence of a female warder, who forced herself upon the wife at every succeeding visit, sending her away at the end of half-an-hour. In the workhouse at Middleton, in Lancashire, twelve, and at times eighteen, paupers, of both sexes, slept in one room. This institution is not embraced by the New Poor Law, but is administered under an old special act (Gilbert's Act). The inspector had instituted a brewery in the house for his own benefit. In Stockport, July 31st, 1844, a man, seventy-two years old, was brought before the Justice of the Peace for refusing to break stones, and insisting that, by reason of his age and a stiff knee, he was unfit for his work. In vain did he offer to undertake any work adapted to his physical strength; he was sentenced to two weeks upon the treadmill. In the workhouse at Basford, an inspecting official found that the sheets had not been changed in thirteen weeks, shirts in four weeks, stockings in two to ten months, so that of forty-five boys but three had stockings, and all their shirts were in tatters. The beds swarmed with vermin, and the tableware was washed in the slop-pails. In the west of London workhouse, a porter who had infected four girls with syphilis was not discharged, and another who had concealed a deaf and dumb girl four days and nights in his bed was also retained. As in life, so in death. The poor are dumped into the earth like infected cattle. The pauper burial-ground of St. Brides, London, is a bare morass, in use as a cemetery since the time of Charles II., and filled with heaps of bones; every Wednesday the paupers are thrown into a ditch fourteen feet deep; a curate rattles through the Litany at the top of his speed; the ditch is loosely covered in, to be re-opened the next Wednesday, and filled with corpses as long as one more can be forced in. The putrefaction thus engendered contaminates the whole neighbourhood. In Manchester, the pauper burial-ground lies opposite to the Old Town, along the Irk: this, too, is a rough, desolate place. About two years ago a railroad was carried through it. If it had been a respectable cemetery, how the bourgeoisie and the clergy would have shrieked over the desecration! But it was a pauper burial-ground, the resting-place of the outcast and superfluous, so no one concerned himself about the matter. It was not even thought worth while to convey the partially decayed bodies to the other side of the cemetery; they were heaped up just as it happened, and piles were driven into newly-made graves, so that the water oozed out of the swampy ground, pregnant with putrefying matter, and filled the neighbourhood with the most revolting and injurious gases. The disgusting brutality which accompanied this work I cannot describe in further detail. Can any one wonder that the poor decline to accept public relief under these conditions? That they starve rather than enter these bastilles? I have the reports of five cases in which persons actually starving, when the guardians refused them outdoor relief, went back to their miserable homes and died of starvation rather than enter these hells. Thus far have the Poor Law Commissioners attained their object. At the same time, however, the workhouses have intensified, more than any other measure of the party in power, the hatred of the working-class against the property- holders, who very generally admire the New Poor Law. From Newcastle to Dover, there is but one voice among the workers--the voice of hatred against the new law. The bourgeoisie has formulated so clearly in this law its conception of its duties towards the proletariat, that it has been appreciated even by the dullest. So frankly, so boldly had the conception never yet been formulated, that the non-possessing class exists solely for the purpose of being exploited, and of starving when the property-holders can no longer make use of it. Hence it is that this new Poor Law has contributed so greatly to accelerate the labour movement, and especially to spread Chartism; and, as it is carried out most extensively in the country, it facilitates the development of the proletarian movement which is arising in the agricultural districts. Let me add that a similar law in force in Ireland since 1838, affords a similar refuge for eighty thousand paupers. Here, too, it has made itself disliked, and would have been intensely hated if it had attained anything like the same importance as in England. But what difference does the ill-treatment of eighty thousand proletarians make in a country in which there are two and a half millions of them? In Scotland there are, with local exceptions, no Poor Laws. I hope that after this picture of the New Poor Law and its results, no word which I have said of the English bourgeoisie will be thought too stern. In this public measure, in which it acts _in corpore_ as the ruling power, it formulates its real intentions, reveals the animus of those smaller transactions with the proletariat, of which the blame apparently attaches to individuals. And that this measure did not originate with any one section of the bourgeoisie, but enjoys the approval of the whole class, is proved by the Parliamentary debates of 1844. The Liberal party had enacted the New Poor Law; the Conservative party, with its Prime Minister Peel at the head, defends it, and only alters some petty-fogging trifles in the Poor Law Amendment Bill of 1844. A Liberal majority carried the bill, a Conservative majority approved it, and the "Noble Lords" gave their consent each time. Thus is the expulsion of the proletariat from State and society outspoken, thus is it publicly proclaimed that proletarians are not human beings, and do not deserve to be treated as such. Let us leave it to the proletarians of the British Empire to re-conquer their human rights. {293} Such is the state of the British working-class as I have come to know it in the course of twenty-one months, through the medium of my own eyes, and through official and other trustworthy reports. And when I call this condition, as I have frequently enough done in the foregoing pages, an utterly unbearable one, I am not alone in so doing. As early as 1833, Gaskell declared that he despaired of a peaceful issue, and that a revolution can hardly fail to follow. In 1838, Carlyle explained Chartism and the revolutionary activity of the working-men as arising out of the misery in which they live, and only wondered that they have sat so quietly eight long years at the Barmecide feast, at which they have been regaled by the Liberal bourgeoisie with empty promises. And in 1844 he declared that the work of organising labour must be begun at once "if Europe or at least England, is long to remain inhabitable." And the _Times_, the "first journal of Europe," said in June, 1844: "War to palaces, peace unto cabins--that is a battle-cry of terror which may come to resound throughout our country. Let the wealthy beware!" * * * * * Meanwhile, let us review once more the chances of the English bourgeoisie. In the worst case, foreign manufacture, especially that of America, may succeed in withstanding English competition, even after the repeal of the Corn Laws, inevitable in the course of a few years. German manufacture is now making great efforts, and that of America has developed with giant strides. America, with its inexhaustible resources, with its unmeasured coal and iron fields, with its unexampled wealth of water-power and its navigable rivers, but especially with its energetic, active population, in comparison with which the English are phlegmatic dawdlers,--America has in less than ten years created a manufacture which already competes with England in the coarser cotton goods, has excluded the English from the markets of North and South America, and holds its own in China, side by side with England. If any country is adapted to holding a monopoly of manufacture, it is America. Should English manufacture be thus vanquished--and in the course of the next twenty years, if the present conditions remain unchanged, this is inevitable--the majority of the proletariat must become forever superfluous, and has no other choice than to starve or to rebel. Does the English bourgeoisie reflect upon this contingency? On the contrary; its favourite economist, M'Culloch, teaches from his student's desk, that a country so young as America, which is not even properly populated, cannot carry on manufacture successfully or dream of competing with an old manufacturing country like England. It were madness in the Americans to make the attempt, for they could only lose by it; better far for them to stick to their agriculture, and when they have brought their whole territory under the plough, a time may perhaps come for carrying on manufacture with a profit. So says the wise economist, and the whole bourgeoisie worships him, while the Americans take possession of one market after another, while a daring American speculator recently even sent a shipment of American cotton goods to England, where they were sold for re-exportation! But assuming that England retained the monopoly of manufactures, that its factories perpetually multiply, what must be the result? The commercial crises would continue, and grow more violent, more terrible, with the extension of industry and the multiplication of the proletariat. The proletariat would increase in geometrical proportion, in consequence of the progressive ruin of the lower middle-class and the giant strides with which capital is concentrating itself in the hands of the few; and the proletariat would soon embrace the whole nation, with the exception of a few millionaires. But in this development there comes a stage at which the proletariat perceives how easily the existing power may be overthrown, and then follows a revolution. Neither of these supposed conditions may, however, be expected to arise. The commercial crises, the mightiest levers for all independent development of the proletariat, will probably shorten the process, acting in concert with foreign competition and the deepening ruin of the lower middle-class. I think the people will not endure more than one more crisis. The next one, in 1846 or 1847, will probably bring with it the repeal of the Corn Laws {296} and the enactment of the Charter. What revolutionary movements the Charter may give rise to remains to be seen. But, by the time of the next following crisis, which, according to the analogy of its predecessors, must break out in 1852 or 1853, unless delayed perhaps by the repeal of the Corn Laws or hastened by other influences, such as foreign competition--by the time this crisis arrives, the English people will have had enough of being plundered by the capitalists and left to starve when the capitalists no longer require their services. If, up to that time, the English bourgeoisie does not pause to reflect--and to all appearance it certainly will not do so--a revolution will follow with which none hitherto known can be compared. The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1793 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged. Even the union of a part of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, even a general reform of the bourgeoisie, would not help matters. Besides, the change of heart of the bourgeoisie could only go as far as a lukewarm _juste-milieu_; the more determined, uniting with the workers, would only form a new Gironde, and succumb in the course of the mighty development. The prejudices of a whole class cannot be laid aside like an old coat: least of all, those of the stable, narrow, selfish English bourgeoisie. These are all inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty: conclusions, the premises for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical development, partly facts inherent in human nature. Prophecy is nowhere so easy as in England, where all the component elements of society are clearly defined and sharply separated. The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring about a peaceful solution; but it can be made more gentle than that prophesied in the foregoing pages. This depends, however, more upon the development of the proletariat than upon that of the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communistic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery. Communism stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and proletariat, recognises only its historic significance for the present, but not its justification for the future: wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do away with all class antagonisms. Hence it recognises as justified, so long as the struggle exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its oppressors as a necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just beginning; but it goes beyond this exasperation, because Communism is a question of humanity and not of the workers alone. Besides, it does not occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, _i.e_. Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual. Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing; and the more their action against the bourgeoisie will lose its savage cruelty. If, indeed, it were possible to make the whole proletariat communistic before the war breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that is no longer possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will be enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the proletariat, to enable the communistic party, with the help of events, to conquer the brutal element of the revolution and prevent a "Ninth Thermidor." In any case, the experience of the French will not have been undergone in vain, and most of the Chartist leaders are, moreover, already Communists. And as Communism stands above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat, it will be easier for the better elements of the bourgeoisie (which are, however, deplorably few, and can look for recruits only among the rising generation) to unite with it than with purely proletarian Chartism. If these conclusions have not been sufficiently established in the course of the present work, there may be other opportunities for demonstrating that they are necessary consequences of the historical development of England. But this I maintain, the war of the poor against the rich now carried on in detail and indirectly will become direct and universal. It is too late for a peaceful solution. The classes are divided more and more sharply, the spirit of resistance penetrates the workers, the bitterness intensifies, the guerilla skirmishes become concentrated in more important battles, and soon a slight impulse will suffice to set the avalanche in motion. Then, indeed, will the war-cry resound through the land: "War to the palaces, peace to the cottages!"--but then it will be too late for the rich to beware. TRANSLATORS NOTE. Being unable at this late day to obtain the original English, the translator has been compelled to re-translate from the German the passages quoted in the text from the following sources:--G. Alston, preacher of St. Philip's, Bethnal Green.--D. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E., "Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland," 1840.--The _Artisan_, 1842, October number.--J. C. Symonds, "Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad," Edin., 1839.--Report of the Town Council of Leeds, published in _Statistical Journal_, vol. ii., p. 404.--Nassau W. Senior, "Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the President of the Board of Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thomson, Esq.), London, 1837.--Report of the Children's Employment Commission.--Mr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, "On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester," 3rd Ed., 1841.--Factories' Inquiries Commission's Report.--E. G. Wakefield, M. P., "Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural Incendiarism," London, 1831.--A Correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_.--Anonymous pamphlet on "The State of Ireland," London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821.--Report of the Poor Law Commissioners: Extracts from Information received by the Poor Law Commissioners. Published by Authority, London, 1833. INDEX Accidents, 109, 143, 150, 164, 165, 294. Adulteration, 67, _et seq_. Apprentices, 169, 191, 197, _et seq_. 209. Charter, 225, _et seq_. 280, 296. Chartism, xiv., xix., 65, 123, 228, _et seq_. 275, 292. Chartists, 135, 176, 199, 231, _et seq_. 253, 258. Corn Laws, 113, 261, 268, 279, 280, 294. League, 122, 231, 268, 280. Repeal of, vi., 17, 231, 232, 275. Cottage System, v., 182, 183, 251, 252, 256. Crime--Form of Rebellion, 266, _et seq_. 274. Increase of, 130, _et seq_. Juvenile, 200, 204. Result of Overcrowding, 65, 120, 121. Diseases, Engendered by Dwellings, 201, 202. Filth, 35, 40, 41, 64, 96, 97. Occupation, 162-3, 177-8, 191-2, 206. Overwork, 153, 155, _et seq_. 171, 245-6. Want, 30, 73, 88, 108, 199, 210-11. Education--Means of, 108, _et seq_. 195, 200, 201, 202, 238, 254. Want of, 90, 91, 126, 129, 148, 149. Employment of Children, In Agriculture, 262, 263. In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 167, 171, _et seq_. 193. In House Industry, 191, _et seq_. In Mines, 241, 244, _et seq_. In the Night, 191, 207. Employment of Women, In Agriculture, 263. In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 160, _et seq_. 175, 192. In Mines, 241, 242, 248, 249. In Sewing, 209, _et seq_. Epidemics, vi., 37, 41, 61, 64, 98, 100, 110, 158. Factory Acts, x., xi., 17, 134, 151, 168, 116, 176, 188. Food--Adulteration of, 98. Insufficiency of, 32, 74, 101, 102, 193, 208. Quality of, 68, 71, 91, 140, 201. Free Trade, vii., viii., _et seq_. 183, 234, 268. Intemperance, 102, 127, 128. Inventions. 1, 4, _et seq_. 42, 134, _et seq_. 223, 224. Law--A Bourgeois Institution, 113, 130, 173, 176, 227, 281, 282, 288. New Poor, 174, 175, 230, 235, 262, _et seq_. 269, 284, _et seq_. Old Poor, 176, 284, 285. Of Wages, xi., 77, _et seq_. 219. Mortality, 100, 101, 104, _et seq_. 143, 150, 243. Parliament, 17, 96, 111, 214, 228, 251, 283, 287. Philanthropy, 27, 28, 88, 173, 212, 278. Police, 132, 221, 225, 226, 281, 282. Reform Bill, ix., 17, 214, 229, 285. Reserve Army, 85, 90. Schools--Day, 110, _et seq_. 173, 200, 207, 250. Night, 110, 250. Sunday, 111, 202, 250. Socialism, vi., vii., xii., 122, 236, _et seq_. 275, 297. Starvation, 25, 29, 73, 76, 88, 117, 167, 189, 285. Strikes, ix., xiv., xv., 168, 215, 218, 223, 224, 231, 254, 256, 257. Suicide, 115, 116. Surplus Population, 81, _et seq_. 139, 263, 266, 280, 287. Ten Hours' Bill, vii., 142, 172, 174, _et seq_. 230, 235, 284. Truck System, vii., viii., 182-3, 185, 252, 253. Ventilation of Dwellings, 36. Mines, 249. Towns, 27, 28, 36, 53, _et seq_. 63, 64, 96, _et seq_. Workrooms, 155, 156, 158. Workhouses, 287, _et seq_. Footnotes. {7} According to Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, London, 1836, vol. i., 1838, vol. ii., 1843, vol. iii. (official data), and other sources chiefly official. {20} Compare on this point my "Outlines for a Critique of Political Economy" in the _Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher_. {23} This applies to the time of sailing vessels. The Thames now is a dreary collection of ugly steamers.--F. E. {32} _Times_, Oct. 12th, 1843. {33} Quoted by Dr. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E, Fellow and late President of the Royal College of Physicians, etc. etc. "Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland and its Effects on the Health of Great Towns." Edinburgh, 1840. The author is a religious Tory, brother of the historian, Archibald Alison. {35a} "Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes in Great Britain with Appendix." Presented to both Houses of Parliament in July 1842, 3 vols. Folio. {35b} _The Artisan_, October, 1842. {38} "Arts and Artisan at Home and Abroad," by J. C. Symonds, Edinburgh, 1839. The author, as it seems, himself a Scotchman, is a Liberal, and consequently fanatically opposed to every independent movement of working- men. The passages here cited are to be found p. 116 _et seq_. {40a} It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere storing- rooms for rubbish, but dwellings of human beings. {40b} Compare Report of the Town Council in the Statistical Journal, vol. 2, p. 404. {49} "The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working-Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester." By James Ph. Kay, M.D. 2nd Ed. 1832. Dr. Kay confuses the working-class in general with the factory workers, otherwise an excellent pamphlet. {55} And yet an English Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the Report of the Children's Employment Commission, that these courts are the masterpiece of municipal architecture, because, like a multitude of little parks, they improve ventilation, the circulation of air! Certainly, if each court had two or four broad open entrances facing each other, through which the air could pour; but they never have two, rarely one, and usually only a narrow covered passage. {63} Nassau W. Senior. "Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the President of the Board of Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thompson, Esq.), London, 1837, p. 24. {64} Kay, loc. cit., p. 32. {65} P. Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England: its Moral, Social and Physical Condition, and the Changes which have arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour." "Fiat Justitia," 1833.--Depicting chiefly the state of the working-class in Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not a feature of Liberalism to chant the happiness of the workers. He is therefore unprejudiced, and can afford to have eyes for the evils of the present state of things, and especially for the factory system. On the other hand, he wrote before the Factories Enquiry Commission, and adopts from untrustworthy sources many assertions afterwards refuted by the Report of the Commission. This work, although on the whole a valuable one, can therefore only be used with discretion, especially as the author, like Kay, confuses the whole working-class with the mill hands. The history of the development of the proletariat contained in the introduction to the present work, is chiefly taken from this work of Gaskell's. {67} Thomas Carlyle. "Chartism," London, 1840, p. 28. {80} Adam Smith. "Wealth of Nations" I., McCulloch's edition in one volume, sect. 8, p. 36: "The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his master, but that of a free servant is at his own expense. The wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and servants of every kind, must be such as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to require. But though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave. The fund for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master or careless overseer." {87} And it came in 1847. {90a} Archibald Alison. "Principles of Population and their Connection with Human Happiness," two vols., 1840. This Alison is the historian of the French Revolution, and, like his brother, Dr. W. P. Alison, a religious Tory. {90b} "Chartism," pp. 28, 31, etc. {95} When as here and elsewhere I speak of society as a responsible whole, having rights and duties, I mean, of course, the ruling power of society, the class which at present holds social and political control, and bears, therefore, the responsibility for the condition of those to whom it grants no share in such control. This ruling class in England, as in all other civilised countries, is the bourgeoisie. But that this society, and especially the bourgeoisie, is charged with the duty of protecting every member of society, at least, in his life, to see to it, for example, that no one starves, I need not now prove to my _German_ readers. If I were writing for the English bourgeoisie, the case would be different. (And so it is now in Germany. Our German capitalists are fully up to the English level, in this respect at least, in the year of grace, 1886.) {100a} Dr. Alison. "Management of the Poor in Scotland." {100b} Alison. "Principles of Population," vol. ii. {100c} Dr. Alison in an article read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. October, 1844, in York. {104} "Manufacturing Population," ch 8. {105a} Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in Mines and Collieries and in the Trades and Manufactures in which numbers of them work together, not being included under the terms of the Factories' Regulation Act. First and Second Reports, Grainger's Report. Second Report usually cited as "Children's Employment Commission's Report." First Report, 1841; Second Report, 1843. {105b} Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. {106} Dr. Cowen. "Vital Statistics of Glasgow." {107} Report of Commission of Inquiry into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts. First Report, 1844. Appendix. {108a} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Reports, 3rd vol. Report of Dr. Hawkins on Lancashire, in which Dr. Robertson is cited--the "Chief Authority for Statistics in Manchester." {108b} Quoted by Dr. Wade from the Report of the Parliamentary Factories' Commission of 1832, in his "History of the Middle and Working- Classes." London, 1835, 3rd ed. {112a} Children's Employment Commission's Report. App. Part II. Q. 18, No. 216, 217, 226, 233, etc. Horne. {112b} _Ibid_. evidence, p. 9, 39; 133. {113a} _Ibid_. p. 9, 36; 146. {113b} _Ibid_. p. 34; 158. {113c} Symonds' Rep. App. Part I., pp. E, 22, _et seq_. {115a} "Arts and Artisans." {115b} "Principles of Population," vol. ii. pp. 136, 197. {116} We shall see later how the rebellion of the working-class against the bourgeoisie in England is legalised by the right of coalition. {117a} "Chartism," p. 34, _et seq_. {117b} _Ibid_., p. 40. {119} Shall I call bourgeois witnesses to bear testimony from me here, too? I select one only, whom every one may read, namely, Adam Smith. "Wealth of Nations" (McCulloch's four volume edition), vol. iii., book 5, chap. 8, p. 297. {120} "Principles of Population," vol. ii., p. 76, _et seq_. p. 82, p. 135. {122} "Philosophy of Manufactures," London, 1835, p. 406, _et seq_. We shall have occasion to refer further to this reputable work. {125} "On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester," etc. By the Rev. Rd. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, 3d Ed., London and Manchester, 1841, Pamphlet. {131a} "Manufacturing Population of England," chap. 10. {131b} The total of population, about fifteen millions, divided by the number of convicted criminals (22,733). {134a} "The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by Dr. A. Ure, 1836. {134b} "History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by E. Baines, Esq. {135} "Stubborn Facts from the Factories by a Manchester Operative." Published and dedicated to the working-classes, by Wm. Rashleigh, M.P., London, Ollivier, 1844, p. 28, _et seq_. {136} Compare Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report. {138} L. Symonds, in "Arts and Artisans." {140} See Dr. Ure in the "Philosophy of Manufacture." {141} Report of Factory Inspector, L. Homer, October, 1844: "The state of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches of cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men, between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and otherwise, who do not get more than 8 or 9 shillings a week, while children under thirteen years, working under the same roof, earn 5 shillings, and young girls, from sixteen to twenty years, 10-12 shillings per week." {143a} Report of Factories' Inquiry Commission. Testimony of Dr. Hawkins, p. 3. {143b} In 1843, among the accidents brought to the Infirmary in Manchester, one hundred and eighty-nine were from burning. {144} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, Power's Report on Leeds: passim Tufnell Report on Manchester, p. 17. etc. {145} This letter is re-translated from the German, no attempt being made to re-produce either the spelling or the original Yorkshire dialect. {147a} How numerous married women are in the factories is seen from information furnished by a manufacturer: In 412 factories in Lancashire, 10,721 of them were employed; of the husbands of these women, but 5,314 were also employed in the factories, 3,927 were otherwise employed, 821 were unemployed, and information was wanting as to 659; or two, if not three men for each factory, are supported by the work of their wives. {147b} House of Commons, March 15th, 1844. {147c} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4. {148a} For further examples and information compare Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report. Cowell Evidence, pp. 37, 38, 39, 72, 77, 59; Tufnell Evidence, pp. 9, 15, 45, 54, etc. {148b} Cowell Evidence, pp. 35, 37, and elsewhere. {148c} Power Evidence, p. 8. {149a} Cowell Evidence, p. 57 {149b} Cowell Evidence, p. 82. {149c} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4, Hawkins. {151} Stuart Evidence, p. 35. {152a} Tufnell Evidence, p. 91. {152b} Dr. Loudon Evidence, pp. 12, 13. {153a} Dr. Loudon Evidence, p. 16. {153b} Drinkwater Evidence, pp. 72, 80, 146, 148, 150 (two brothers); 69 (two brothers); 155, and many others. Power Evidence, pp. 63, 66, 67 (two cases); 68 (three cases); 69 (two cases); in Leeds, pp. 29, 31, 40, 43, 53, _et seq_. Loudon Evidence, pp. 4, 7 (four cases); 8 (several cases), etc. Sir D. Barry Evidence, pp. 6, 8, 13, 21, 22, 44, 55 (three cases), etc. Tufnell Evidence, pp. 5, 6, 16, etc. {154a} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. 21 (two cases). {154b} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Loudon Evidence, pp. 13, 16, etc. {155} In the spinning-room of a mill at Leeds, too, chairs had been introduced. Drinkwater Evidence, p. 80. {156} General report by Sir D. Barry. {157a} Power Report, p. 74. {157b} The surgeons in England are scientifically educated as well as the physicians, and have, in general, medical as well as surgical practice. They are in general, for various reasons, preferred to the physicians. {159a} This statement is not taken from the report. {159b} Tufnell, p. 59. {160a} Stuart Evidence, p. 101. {160b} Tufnell Evidence, pp. 3, 9, 15. {161} Hawkins Report, p. 4; Evidence, p. 14, etc. etc. Hawkins Evidence, pp. 11, 13. {162a} Cowell Evidence, p. 77. {162b} Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. 44. {162c} Cowell, p. 35. {163a} Dr. Hawkins Evidence, p. 11; Dr. Loudon, p. 14, etc.; Sir D. Barry, p. 5, etc. {163b} Compare Stuart, pp. 13, 70, 101; Mackintosh, p. 24, etc.; Power Report on Nottingham, on Leeds; Cowell, p. 33, etc.; Barry, p. 12; (five cases in one factory), pp. 17, 44, 52, 60, etc.; Loudon, p. 13. {167a} Stuart, p. 39. {167b} "Philosophy of Manufactures," by Dr. Andrew Ure, p. 277, _et seq_. {168a} _Ibid_., 277. {168b} _Ibid_., p. 298. {168c} _Ibid_., p. 301. {169} Dr. Andrew Ure. "Philosophy of Manufactures," pp. 405, 406, _et seq_. {174} Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, died 1885. {176} It is notorious that the House of Commons made itself ridiculous a second time in the same session in the same way on the Sugar Question, when it first voted against the ministry and then for it, after an application of the ministerial whip. {178} Let us hear another competent judge: "If we consider the example of the Irish in connection with the ceaseless toil of the cotton operative class, we shall wonder less at their terrible demoralisation. Continuous exhausting toil, day after day, year after year, is not calculated to develop the intellectual and moral capabilities of the human being. The wearisome routine of endless drudgery, in which the same mechanical process is ever repeated, is like the torture of Sisyphus; the burden of toil, like the rock, is ever falling back upon the worn-out drudge. The mind attains neither knowledge nor the power of thought from the eternal employment of the same muscles. The intellect dozes off in dull indolence, but the coarser part of our nature reaches a luxuriant development. To condemn a human being to such work is to cultivate the animal quality in him. He grows indifferent, he scorns the impulses and customs which distinguish his kind. He neglects the conveniences and finer pleasures of life, lives in filthy poverty with scanty nourishment, and squanders the rest of his earnings in debauchery."--Dr. J. Kay. {179a} _Manchester Guardian_, October 30th. {179b} "Stubborn Facts," p. 9 _et seq_. {181a} Drinkwater Evidence; p. 80. {181b} "Stubborn Facts," pp. 13-17. {184} _Sun_, a London daily; end of November, 1844. {186} I have neither time nor space to deal in detail with the replies of the manufacturers to the charges made against them for twelve years past. These men will not learn because their supposed interest blinds them. As, moreover, many of their objections have been met in the foregoing, the following is all that it is necessary for me to add: You come to Manchester, you wish to make yourself acquainted with the state of affairs in England. You naturally have good introductions to respectable people. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the workers. You are made acquainted with a couple of the first Liberal manufacturers, Robert Hyde Greg, perhaps, Edmund Ashworth, Thomas Ashton, or others. They are told of your wishes. The manufacturer understands you, knows what he has to do. He accompanies you to his factory in the country; Mr. Greg to Quarrybank in Cheshire, Mr. Ashworth to Turton near Bolton, Mr. Ashton to Hyde. He leads you through a superb, admirably arranged building, perhaps supplied with ventilators, he calls your attention to the lofty, airy rooms, the fine machinery, here and there a healthy-looking operative. He gives you an excellent lunch, and proposes to you to visit the operatives' homes; he conducts you to the cottages, which look new, clean and neat, and goes with you into this one and that one, naturally only to overlookers, mechanics, etc., so that you may see "families who live wholly from the factory." Among other families you might find that only wife and children work, and the husband darns stockings. The presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet questions; you find every one well-paid, comfortable, comparatively healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be converted from your exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation. But, that the cottage system makes slaves of the operatives, that there may be a truck shop in the neighbourhood, that the people hate the manufacturer, this they do not point out to you, because he is present. He has built a school, church, reading-room, etc. That he uses the school to train children to subordination, that he tolerates in the reading-room such prints only as represent the interests of the bourgeoisie, that he dismisses his employees if they read Chartist or Socialist papers or books, this is all concealed from you. You see an easy, patriarchal relation, you see the life of the overlookers, you see what the bourgeoisie _promises_ the workers if they become its slaves, mentally and morally. This "country manufacture" has always been what the employers like to show, because in it the disadvantages of the factory system, especially from the point of view of health, are, in part, done away with by the free air and surroundings, and because the patriarchal servitude of the workers can here be longest maintained. Dr. Ure sings a dithyramb upon the theme. But woe to the operatives to whom it occurs to think for themselves and become Chartists! For them the paternal affection of the manufacturer comes to a sudden end. Further, if you should wish to be accompanied through the working-people's quarters of Manchester, if you should desire to see the development of the factory system in a factory town, you may wait long before these rich bourgeoisie will help you! These gentlemen do not know in what condition their employees are nor what they want, and they dare not know things which would make them uneasy or even oblige them to act in opposition to their own interests. But, fortunately, that is of no consequence: what the working-men have to carry out, they carry out for themselves. {189} Grainger Report. Appendix, Part I., pp. 7, 15, _et seq_., 132- 142. {192a} Grainger's whole Report. {192b} Grainger Children's Employment Commission's Report. {193} Burns, Children's Employment Commission's Report. {194} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 47. {196} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 33. {197} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 37-40. {199} Children's Employment Commission's Report. {200a} See p. 112. {200b} Grainger Report and Evidence. {202} Horne Report and Evidence. {203} Dr. Knight, Sheffield. {205} Symonds Report and Evidence. {207} Scriven Report and Evidence. {208} Leifchild Report Append., Part II., p. L 2, ss. 11,12; Franks Report Append., Part II., p. K 7, s. 48, Tancred Evid. Append., Part II., p. I 76, etc.--Children's Employment Commission's Rep't. {210} See _Weekly Dispatch_, March 16th, 1844. {211} Thomas Hood, the most talented of all the English humorists now living, and, like all humorists, full of human feeling, but wanting in mental energy, published at the beginning of 1844 a beautiful poem, "The Song of the Shirt," which drew sympathetic but unavailing tears from the eyes of the daughters of the bourgeoisie. Originally published in _Punch_, it made the round of all the papers. As discussions of the condition of the sewing-women filled all the papers at the time, special extracts are needless. {214} "Arts and Artisans," p. 137, _et seq_. {221a} So called from the East Indian tribe, whose only trade is the murder of all the strangers who fall into its hands. {221b} "What kind of wild justice must it be in the hearts of these men that prompts them, with cold deliberation, in conclave assembled, to doom their brother workman, as the deserter of his order and his order's cause, to die a traitor's and a deserter's death, have him executed, in default of any public judge and hangman, then by a secret one; like your old Chivalry Fehmgericht and Secret Tribunal, suddenly revived in this strange guise; suddenly rising once more on the astonished eye, dressed not now in mail shirts, but in fustian jackets, meeting not in Westphalian forests, but in the paved Gallowgate of Glasgow! Such a temper must be widespread virulent among the many when, even in its worst acme, it can take such form in the few."--Carlyle. "Chartism," p. 40. {222a} Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 282. {222b} _Ibid_., p. 282. {223a} Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 367. {223b} _Ibid_., p. 366, _et seq_. {232} Compare Report of Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Leeds at the end of July and beginning of August. {235} See Introduction. {241} According to the census of 1841, the number of working-men employed in mines in Great Britain, without Ireland, was: Men over Men under Women over Women under Together 20 years 20 years 20 years 20 Years Coal mines 83,408 32,475 1,185 1,165 118,233 Copper mines 9,866 3,428 913 1,200 15,407 Lead mines 9,427 1,932 40 20 11,419 Iron mines 7,733 2,679 424 73 10,949 Tin mines 4,602 1,349 68 82 6,101 Various, the mineral not specified 24,162 6,591 472 491 31,616 Total 137,398 48,454 3,102 3,031 193,725 As the coal and iron mines are usually worked by the same people, a part of the miners attributed to the coal mines, and a very considerable part of those mentioned under the last heading, are to be attributed to the iron mines. {242} Also found in the Children's Employment Commission's Report: Commissioner Mitchell's Report. {259} The coal miners have at this moment, 1886, six of their body sitting in the House of Commons. {264} E. G. Wakefield, M.P. "Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural Incendiarism." London, 1831. Pamphlet. The foregoing extracts may be found pp. 9-13, the passages dealing in the original with the then still existing Old Poor Law being here omitted. {268} This has been literally fulfilled. After a period of unexampled extension of trade, Free Trade has landed England in a crisis, which began in 1878, and is still increasing in energy in 1886. {269} The agricultural labourers have now a Trade's Union; their most energetic representative, Joseph Arch, was elected M.P. in 1885. {272a} Report of the Poor Law Commission upon Ireland. {272b} "Principles of Population," vol. ii. {273} "The State of Ireland." London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821. Pamphlet. {276} Carlyle gives in his "Past and Present" (London, 1843) a splendid description of the English bourgeoisie and its disgusting money greed. {286} Extracts from Information received from the Poor Law Commissioners. Published by authority. London, 1833. {293} To prevent misconstructions and consequent objections, I would observe that I have spoken of the bourgeoisie as a _class_, and that all such facts as refer to individuals serve merely as evidence of the way of thinking and acting of a _class_. Hence I have not entered upon the distinctions between the divers sections, subdivisions and parties of the bourgeoisie, which have a mere historical and theoretical significance. And I can, for the same reason, mention but casually the few members of the bourgeoisie who have shown themselves honourable exceptions. These are, on the one hand, the pronounced Radicals, who are almost Chartists, such as a few members of the House of Commons, the manufacturers Hindly of Ashton, and Fielden of Todmordon (Lancashire), and, on the other hand, the philanthropic Tories, who have recently constituted themselves "Young England," among whom are the members of Parliament, D'Israeli, Borthwick, Ferrand, Lord John Manners, etc. Lord Ashley, too, is in sympathy with them. The hope of Young England is a restoration of the old "Merry England" with its brilliant features and its romantic feudalism. This object is of course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all historic development; but the good intention, the courage to resist the existing state of things and prevalent prejudices, and to recognise the vileness of our present condition, is worth something anyhow. Wholly isolated is the half-German Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, who, originally a Tory, goes beyond all those hitherto mentioned. He has sounded the social disorder more deeply than any other English bourgeois, and demands the organisation of labour. {296} And it did. 
28245	----	PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "PRISONERS OF POVERTY," "THE WHAT-TO-DO-CLUB," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," "ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION." BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1889. _Copyright, 1889,_ BY HELEN CAMPBELL. University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. _"But laying hands on another_ _To coin his labor and sweat,_ _He goes in pawn to his victim_ _For eternal years in debt."_ TO F. W. P. THE FRIEND IN WHOM JUSTICE AND TRUTH ARE SO DEEPLY IMPLANTED THAT BOTH ARE INSTINCTS, AND WHOSE MANHOOD HOLDS THE PROMISE OF WORK THAT WILL GO FAR TOWARD FULFILLING THE DEEPEST WISH OF THE GENERATION TO WHICH THE MAKER OF THESE PAGES BELONGS. PREFACE. The studies which follow, the result of fifteen months' observation abroad, deal directly with the workers in all trades open to women, though, from causes explained in the opening chapter, less from the side of actual figures than the preceding volume, the material for which was gathered in New York. But as months have gone on, it has become plain that many minds are also at work, the majority on the statistical side of the question, and that the ethical one is that which demands no less attention. Both are essential to understanding and to effort in any practical direction, and this is recognized more and more as organization brings together for consultation the women who, having long felt deeply, are now learning to think and act effectually. These pages are for them, and mean simply another side-light on the labor question,--the question in which all other modern problems are tangled, and whose solving waits only the larger light whose first gleams are already plain to see. HELEN CAMPBELL. HEIDELBERG, GERMANY, _October, 1888._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA 7 II. IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 19 III. THE SWEATING SYSTEM IN GENERAL 31 IV. AMONG THE SWEATERS 42 V. CHILD OF THE EAST END 54 VI. AMONG THE DRESSMAKERS 66 VII. NELLY, A WEST END MILLINER'S APPRENTICE 77 VIII. LONDON SHIRT MAKERS 90 IX. THE TALE OF A BARROW 100 X. STREET TRADES AMONG WOMEN 112 XI. LONDON SHOP-GIRLS 122 XII. FROM COVENT GARDEN TO THE EEL-SOUP MAN IN THE BOROUGH 131 XIII. WOMEN IN GENERAL TRADES 155 XIV. FRENCH AND ENGLISH WORKERS 167 XV. FRENCH BARGAIN COUNTERS 176 XVI. THE CITY OF THE SUN 184 XVII. DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS 194 XVIII. A SILK WEAVER OF PARIS 203 XIX. IN THE RUE JEANNE D'ARC 214 XX. FROM FRANCE TO ITALY 224 XXI. PRESENT AND FUTURE 234 PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. CHAPTER I. BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA. With the ending of the set of studies among the working-women of New York, begun in the early autumn of 1886 and continued through several months of 1887, came the desire to know something of comparative conditions abroad, and thus be better able to answer questions constantly put, as to the actual status of women as workers, and of their probable future in these directions. There were many additional reasons for continuing a search, in itself a heart-sickening and utterly repellant task. One by one, the trades open to women, over ninety in number, had given in their returns, some of the higher order meaning good wages, steady work and some chance of bettering conditions. But with the great mass of workers, the wages had, from many causes, fallen below the point of subsistence, or kept so near it that advance was impossible, and the worker, even when fairly well trained, faced a practically hopeless future. The search began with a bias against rather than for the worker, and the determination to do strictest justice to employer as well as employed. Long experience had taught what was to be expected from untrained, unskilled laborers, with no ambition or power to rise. Approaching the subject with the conviction that most of the evil admitted to exist must be the result of the worker's own defective training and inability to make the best and most of the wages received, it very soon became plain that, while this remained true, deeper causes were at work, and that unseen forces must be weighed and measured before just judgment could be possible. No denunciation of grasping employers answered the question why they grasped, and why men who in private relations showed warm hearts and the tenderest care for those nearest them became on the instant, when faced by this problem of labor, deaf and blind to the sorrow and struggle before them. That the system was full of evils was freely admitted whenever facts were brought home and attention compelled. But the easy-going American temperament is certain that the wrong of to-day will easily become righted by to-morrow, and is profoundly sceptical as to the existence of any evil of which this is not true. "It's pretty bad, yes, I know it's pretty bad," said one large employer of women, and his word was the word of many others. "But we're not to blame. I don't want to grind 'em down. It's the system that's wrong, and we are its victims. Competition gets worse and worse. Machinery is too much for humanity. I've been certain of that for a good while, and so, of course, these hands have to take the consequences." Nothing better indicates the present status of the worker than this very phrase "hands." Not heads with brains that can think and plan, nor souls born to grow into fulness of life, but hands only; hands that can hold needle or grasp tool, or follow the order of the brain to which they are bond-servants, each pulse moving to the throb of the great engine which drives all together, but never guided by any will of brain or joy of soul in the task of the day. There has been a time in the story of mankind when hand and brain worked together. In every monument of the past on this English soil, even at the topmost point of springing arch or lofty pillar, is tracery and carving as careful and cunning as if all eyes were to see and judge it as the central point and test of the labor done. Has the nineteenth century, with its progress and its boast, no possibility of such work from any hand of man, and if not, where has the spirit that made it vanished, and what hope may men share of its return? Not one, if the day's work must mean labor in its most exhausting form; for many women, fourteen to sixteen hours at the sewing machine, the nerve-force supplied by rank tea, and the bit of bread eaten with it, the exhausted bodies falling at last on whatever may do duty for bed, with no hope that the rising sun will bring release from trial or any gleam of a better day. With each week of the long search the outlook became more hopeless. Here was this army crowding into the great city, packed away in noisome tenement houses, ignorant, blind, stupid, incompetent in every fibre, and yet there as factors in the problem no man has yet solved. If this was civilization, better barbarism with its chance of sunshine and air, free movement and natural growth. What barbarism at its worst could hold such joyless, hopeless, profitless labor, or doom its victims to more lingering deaths? Admitting the almost impossibility of making them over, incased as they are in ignorance and prejudice, this is simply another count against the social order which has accepted such results as part of its story, and now looks on, speculating, wondering what had better be done about it. The philanthropist has endeavored to answer the question, and sought out many devices for alleviation, struggling out at last to the conviction that prevention must be attempted, and pausing bewildered before the questions involved in prevention. For them there has been active and unceasing work, their brooms laboring as vainly as Mrs. Partington's against the rising tide of woe and want and fruitless toil, each wave only the forerunner of mightier and more destructive ones, while the world has gone its way, casting abundant contributions toward the workers, but denying that there was need for agitation or speculation as to where or how the next crest might break. There were men and women who sounded an alarm, and were in most cases either hooted for their pains, or set down as sentimentalists, newspaper philanthropists, fanatics, socialists,--any or all of the various titles bestowed freely by those who regard interference with any existing order of things as rank blasphemy. Money has always been offered freely, but money always carries small power with it, save for temporary alleviation. The word of the poet who has sounded the depths of certain modern tendencies holds the truth for this also:-- "Not that which we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor and me." Yet it is the Anglo-Saxon conviction, owned by English and American in common, and unshaken though one should rise from the dead to arraign it, that what money would not do, cannot be done, and when money is rejected and the appeal made for personal consideration of the questions involved, there is impatient and instantaneous rejection of the responsibility. Evolution is supposed to have the matter in charge, and to deal with men in the manner best suited to their needs. If the ancient creed is still held and the worshipper repeats on Sunday: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," he supplements it on Monday and all other days, till Sunday comes again, with the new version, the creed of to-day, formulated by a man who fights it from hour to hour: "I believe in Father Mud, the Almighty Plastic; And in Father Dollar, the Almighty Drastic." It is because these men and women must be made to understand; because they must be reached and made to see and know what life may be counted worth living, and how far they are responsible for failure to make better ideals the ideal of every soul nearest them, that the story of the worker must be told over and over again till it has struck home. To seek out all phases of wretchedness and want, and bring them face to face with those who deny that such want is anything but a temporary, passing state, due to a little over-production and soon to end, is not a cheerful task, and it is made less so by those who, having never looked for themselves, pronounce all such statements either sensational or the work of a morbid and excited imagination. The majority decline to take time to see for themselves. The few who have done so need no further argument, and are ready to admit that no words can exaggerate, or, indeed, ever really tell in full the real wretchedness that is plain for all who will look. But, even with them, the conviction remains that it is, after all, a temporary state of things, and that all must very shortly come right. Day by day, the desire has grown stronger to make plain the fact that this is a world-wide question, and one that must be answered. It is not for a city here and there, chiefly those where emigrants pour in, and so often, the mass of unskilled labor, always underpaid, and always near starvation. It is for the cities everywhere in the world of civilization, and because London includes the greatest numbers, these lines are written in London after many months of observation among workers on this side of the sea, and as the prelude to some record of what has been seen and heard, and must still be before the record ends, not only here, but in one or two representative cities on the continent. London, however, deserves and demands chief consideration, not only because it leads in numbers, but because our own conditions are, in many points, an inheritance which crossed the sea with the pilgrims, and is in every drop of Anglo-Saxon blood. If the glint of the sovereign and its clink in the pocket are the dearest sight and sound to British eyes and ears, America has equal affection for her dollars, in both countries alike chink and glint standing with most, for the best things life holds. It remains for us to see whether counteracting influences are stronger here than with us, and if the worker's chance is hampered more or less by the conditions that hedge in all labor. The merely statistical side of the question is left, as in the previous year's work, chiefly to those who deal only with this phase, though drawn upon wherever available or necessary. There is, however, small supply. Save in scattered trades-union reports, an occasional blue book, and here and there the work of a private investigator, like Mr. Charles Booth, there is nothing which has the value of our own reports from the various bureaus of labor. The subject has until now excited little interest or attention, save with a few political economists, and the band of agitators who are the disciples, not of things as they are, but things as they ought to be. One of the most admirable and well-officered organizations in New York, "The Workingwoman's Protective Union," which gave invaluable assistance last year, has only a small and feeble imitation in London, in the Woman's Protective Union, founded by Mrs. Peterson, and now under the admirable management of Miss Black, but still struggling for place and recognition. Thus it will be seen that the work to be done here is necessarily more sketchy in character, though none the less taken from life in every detail, the aim in both cases being the same,--to give, as far as possible, the heart of the problem as it is seen by the worker, as well as by the eyes that may have larger interpretation for outward phases. The homes and daily lives of the workers are the best answers as to the comfort-producing power of wages, and in those homes we are to find what the wage can do, and what it fails to do, not alone for the East End, but for swarming lanes and courts in all this crowded London. The East End has by no means the monopoly, though novelists and writers of various orders have chosen it as the type of all wretchedness. But London wretchedness is very impartially distributed. Under the shadow of the beautiful abbey, and the towers of archiepiscopal Lambeth Palace; appearing suddenly in the midst of the great warehouses, and the press of traffic in the city itself, and thronging the streets of that borough road, over which the Canterbury pilgrims rode out on that immortal summer morning,--everywhere is the swarm of haggard, hungry humanity. No winter of any year London has known since the day when Roman walls still shut it in, has ever held sharper want or more sorrowful need. Trafalgar Square has suddenly become a world-wide synonym for the saddest sights a great city can ever have to show; and in Trafalgar Square our search shall begin, following one of the unemployed to the refuge open to her when work failed. CHAPTER II. IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. To the London mind nothing is more certain than that Trafalgar Square, which may be regarded as the real focus of the city, is unrivalled in situation and surroundings. "The finest site in Europe," one hears on every side, and there is reason for the faith. In spite of the fact that the National Gallery which it fronts is a singularly defective and unimpressive piece of architecture, it hardly weakens the impression, though the traveller facing it recalls inevitably a criticism made many years ago: "This unhappy structure may be said to have everything it ought not to have, and nothing which it ought to have. It possesses windows without glass, a cupola without size, a portico without height, pepper boxes without pepper, and the finest site in Europe without anything to show upon it." In spite of all this, to which the pilgrim must at once agree, the Square itself, with the Nelson Pillar and the noble lions at its base, nobler for their very simplicity; its fountains and its outlook on the beautiful portico of St. Martin's, the busy Strand and the great buildings rising all about, is all that is claimed for it, and the traveller welcomes any chance that takes him through it. Treasures of art are at its back, and within short radius, every possibility of business or pleasure, embodied in magnificent hotels, theatres, warehouses, is for the throng that flows unceasingly through these main arteries of the city's life. This is one phase of what may be seen in Trafalgar Square. But with early autumn and the shortening days and the steadily increasing pressure of that undercurrent of want and misery through which strange flotsam and jetsam come to the surface, one saw, on the long benches or crouched on the asphalt pavement, lines of men and women sitting silently, making no appeal to passers-by, but, as night fell, crouching lower in their thin garments or wrapping old placards or any sack or semblance of covering about them, losing memory in fitful sleep and waking with dawn to a hopeless day. This was the sight that Trafalgar Square had for those who passed through it, and who at last began to question, "Why is it? Who are they? They don't seem to beg. What does it mean?" The Square presently overflowed, and in any and every sheltered spot the same silent lines lay down at night along the Thames Embankment, in any covered court or passage, men rushing with early dawn to fight for places at the dock gates, breaking arms or dislocating shoulders often in the struggle, and turning away with pale faces, as they saw the hoped-for chance given to a neighbor, to carry their tale to the hungry women whose office was to wait. The beggars pursued their usual course, but it was quite plain that these men and women had no affinity with them save in rags. Day by day the numbers swelled. "Who are they? What does it mean?" still sounded, and at last the right phrase was found, and the answer came: "They are the 'unemployed.' There is no longer any work to be had, and these people can neither get away nor find any means of living here." For a time London would not believe its ears. There must be work, and so food for whoever was willing to work; but presently this cry silenced, and it became plain that somebody must do something. Food was the first thought; and from the Limehouse district, and a refuge known as the Outcasts' Home, a great van loaded with loaves of bread came in two or three times a week, taking back to the refuge in the empty cart such few as could be induced to try its mercies. Coffee was also provided on a few occasions; and as the news spread by means of that mysterious telegraphy current in the begging fraternity, suddenly the Square overflowed with their kind; and who wanted to work and could not, and who wanted no work on any consideration, no man could determine. With the story of this tangle, of the bewilderment and dismay for all alike, and the increasing despair of the unemployed, this chronicle has but indirectly to do. Trafalgar Square was emptied at last by means already familiar to all. Beggars skulked back to their hiding-places like wharf-rats to the rotten piles that shelter them; the unemployed dispersed also, showing themselves once more in the files that registered when the census of the unemployed was decided upon; and then, for the most part, were lost to public sight in the mass of general, every-day, to-be-expected wretchedness which makes up London below the surface. Scores of wretched figures crouched on the icy asphalt of the Square on a pouring night early in November, before its clearing had been ordered. The great van was expected, but had not appeared, and men huddled in the most sheltered corners of this most unsheltered spot, cowering under any rag of covering they had been able to secure. In a corner by the lions a pair had taken refuge,--a boy of ten or so, wrapped in two newspaper placards, and his bare feet tucked into a horse's nose-bag, too old and rotten for any further service in its own line of duty; over him crouched a girl, whose bent figure might have belonged to eighty, but whose face as she looked up showed youth which even her misery could not wipe out. She had no beauty, save soft dark eyes and a delicate face, both filled with terror as she put one arm over the boy, who sprung to his feet. "I'll not go where Nell can't," he said, the heavy sleep still in his eyes; "we're goin' to keep together, me an' Nell is." "'Tain't the van," the girl said, still holding him; "they tried to take him back to the Refuge the other night, and he's afraid of 'em. They don't take any over sixteen, and so I can't go, an' he's afraid somehow they'll take him in spite of me. I'd be willin' enough, for there's no more I can do for him, and he's too little for this sort of life; but he won't go." The girl's thin clothing was soaked with rain; she shivered as she spoke, but sat there with the strange patience in look and manner that marks the better class of English poor. "But is there nobody to give you a shelter on such a night? You must have somebody. What does it mean?" "I had a bit of a place till last Wednesday, but the rent was far behind and they turned me out. I was home then a day or two, but it's worse there than the streets. There was no work, and father drunk, and beating mother and all of us, and Billy worst of all; so the streets were better. I've tried for work, but there's none to be had, and now I'm waiting. Perhaps I shall die pretty soon, and then they can take Billy into the Refuge. I'm waiting for that." "But there must be work for any one as young and strong as you." The girl shook her head. "I've walked the soles off me shoes to find it. There's no work in all London. I can go on the streets, but I'd rather do this. My mother did her best for us all, but she's been knocked round till she's as near death as we. There's no work for man nor woman in all London." The boy had settled down at her feet again, satisfied that no attempt was to be made to separate them, and fell asleep instantly, one hand holding her dress. To leave the pair was impossible. Other cases might be as desperate, but this was nearest; and presently a bargain had been made with an old woman who sells roasted chestnuts in St. Martin's Lane, close by, and the two were led away to her shelter in some rookery in the Seven Dials. A day or two later the full story was told, and has its place as the first and strongest illustration of the state of things in this great city of London, where, as the year 1888 opens, official registers hold the names of over seventeen thousand men who wish to work at any rate that may be paid, but for whom there is no work, their names representing a total of over fifty thousand who are slowly starving; and this mass known to be but a part of that which is still unregistered, and likely to remain so, unless private enterprise seeks it out in lane and alley where it hides. The father was a "coal whipper" on the docks near Tower Hill, this meaning that he spent his days in the hold of a collier or on the deck, guiding the coal basket which ascends from the hold through a "way" made of broken oars lashed together, and by means of a wheel and rope is sent on and emptied. Whether in hold or on deck it is one of the most exhausting forms of labor, and the men, whose throats are lined with coal dust, wash them out with floods of beer. Naturally they are all intemperate, and the wages taken home are small in proportion to their thirst. And as an evening solace, the father, who had once been footman in a good family, and married the lady's maid (which fact accounted for the unusual quality of Nelly's English), beat them all around, weeping maudlin tears over them in the morning, and returning at night to duplicate the occasion for more. The mother had made constant fight for respectability. She did such dressmaking as the neighborhood offered, but they moved constantly as fortunes grew lower and lower, sheltering at last in two rooms in a rookery in Tower Hamlets. Here came the final disablement. The father, a little drunker than usual, pushed the wife downstairs and their Billy after her, the result being a broken hip for the first and a broken arm for the last. Nelly, who had begun to stitch sacks not long before, filled her place as she could, and cared for the other seven, all not much more than babies, and most of them in time mercifully removed by death. She was but twelve when her responsibility began, and it did not end when the mother came home, to be chiefly bedridden for such days as remained. The three little boys were all "mud-larks," that is, prowled along the river shore, picking up any odds and ends that could be sold to the rag-shop or for firewood, and their backs were scored with the strap which the father carried in his pocket and took out for his evening's occupation when he came. The mother, sitting up in bed and knitting or crocheting for a small shop near by, fared no better than the rest, for Billy, who tried to stand between them, only infuriated the brute the more. The crisis came when he one night stole the strap from his father's pocket and cut it into pieces. Nelly, who was now earning fair wages, had long thought that her mother's life would be easier without them; and now, as Billy announced that he had done for himself and must run, she decided to run too. "I told mother I'd have a bit of a room not far off," she said, "only where father wouldn't be likely to search us out, and I'd do for Billy and for her too what I could. She cried, but she saw it was best. Billy was just a bag of bones and all over strap marks. He'd have to mud-lark just the same, but he'd have more to eat and no beatings, and he'd always hung to me from the time he was born. So that is the way I did, and, bit by bit, I got a comfortable place, and had Billy in school, and kept us both, and did well. But then the wages began to go down, and every week they got lower till, where I'd earned twelve shillings a week sometimes, I was down to half and less than half that. I tried stitching for the sweaters a while, but I'd no machine, and they had more hands than they wanted everywhere, and I went back to the sacks. And at last they dismissed a lot too, and I went here and there and everywhere for another chance, and not one,--not one anywhere. I pawned everything, bit by bit, till we'd nothing left but some rags and straw to sleep upon, and the rent far behind; and then I went home when we were turned out, and that father took for his chance, and was worse than ever. "And so, when there was no work anywhere, though I was ready for anything, I didn't care what, and I saw we were just taking the bread from mother's mouth (though it's little enough she wanted), then I told Billy to stay with her, and I went out and to the Square and sat down with the rest, and wondered if I ought to sit there and wait to be dead, or if I hadn't the right to do it quicker and just try the river. But I saw all those I was with just as bad off and worse, and some with babies, and so I didn't know what to do, but just to wait there. What can we do? They say the Queen is going to order work so that the men can get wages; but they don't say if she is going to do anything for the women. She's a woman; but then I suppose a Queen couldn't any way know, except by hearsay, that women really starve; and women do for men first anyhow. But I will work any way at anything, if only you'll find it for me to do--if only you will." For one of the fifty-three thousand work and place have been found. For the rest is still the cry: "I will work any way at anything, if only you'll find it for me to do; if only you will." CHAPTER III. THE SWEATING SYSTEM IN GENERAL. "History repeats itself," is a very hackneyed phrase, yet, for want of any better or more expressive one, must lead such words as are to be said on an old yet ever new evil; for it is just forty years ago, since the winter of 1847-1848 showed among the working men and women of England conditions analogous to those of the present, though on a far smaller scale. Acute distress prevailed then as now. Revolution was in the air, and what it might mean being far less plain to apprehensive minds than it is to-day, a London newspaper, desirous of knowing just what dangers were to be faced, sent a commissioner to investigate the actual conditions of the working classes, and published his reports from day to day. Then, for the first time, a new word came into circulation, and "sweating" became the synonym, which it has since remained, for a system of labor which means the maximum of profit for the employer and the minimum of wages for the employed. The term is hardly scientific, yet it is the only one recognized in the most scientific investigation thus far made. That of 1847-1848 did its work for the time, nor have its results wholly passed away. Charles Kingsley, young then and ardent, his soul stirred with longing to lighten all human suffering, took up the cause of the worker, and in his pamphlet "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," and later, in the powerful novel "Alton Locke," showed every phase of the system, then in its infancy, and, practically, entirely unknown on the other side of the Atlantic. The results of this agitation became visible at once. Unions and Associations of various sorts among tailors and the one or two other trades to which the sweating system had applied, were organized and from year to year extended and perfected till it had come to be the popular conviction that, save in isolated cases here and there, the evil was to be found only among the foreign population, and even there, hedged in and shorn of its worst possibilities. This conviction remained and made part of the estimate of any complaints that now and then arose, and though the work of the organized charities, and of independent investigations here and there, demonstrated from year to year that it had increased steadily, its real scope was still unbelieved. Now, after forty years, the story tells itself again, this time in ways which cannot be set down as newspaper sensationalism or anybody's desire to make political capital. It is a Blue Book which holds the latest researches and conclusions, and Blue Books are not part of the popular reading, but are usually tucked away in government offices or libraries, to which the public has practically no access. A newspaper paragraph gives its readers the information that another report on this or that feature of public interest has been prepared and shelved for posterity, and there the matter ends. In the present case public feeling and interest have been so stirred by the condition of unexampled misery and want among masses eager to work but with no work to be had, that the report has been called for and read and discussed to a degree unknown to any of its predecessors. While it gives results only in the most compact form and by no means compares with work like that of Mr. Charles Peck in his investigations for the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, it still holds a mass of information invaluable to all who are seeking light on the cause of present evils. As with us the system is closely a part of the manufacture of cheap clothing of every order, tailoring leading, and various other trades being included, furniture makers, strange to say, being among the chief sufferers in these. With us the system is so clearly defined and so well known, at any rate in all our large centres of labor, that definition is hardly necessary. For England and America alike the sweater is simply a sub-contractor who, at home or in small workshops, undertakes to do work, which he in turn sublets to other contractors, or has done under his own eyes. The business had a simple and natural beginning, the journey-worker of fifty years ago taking home from his employers work to be done there either by himself or some member of his family. At this time it held decided advantages for both sides. The master-tailor was relieved from finding workshop accommodations with all the accompanying expense and from constant supervision of his work people, while good work was insured by the pride of the worker in his craft, as well as his desire not to lose a good connection. There was but the slightest subdivision of labor, each worker was able to make the garment from the beginning to the end, apprentices being employed on the least important parts. Work of this order has no further place in the clothing trade, whether tailoring or general outfitting, save for the best order of clothing. Increase of population cheapened material, the introduction of machinery and the tremendous growth of the ready-made clothing trade are all responsible for the change. The minutest system of subdivided labor now rules here as in all trades. When a coat is in question, it is no longer the master-tailor, journeyman and apprentices who prepare it, but a legion of cutters, basters, machinists, pressers, fellers, button-hole, and general workers, who find the learning of any one alone of the branches an easy matter, and so rush into the trade, the fiercest and most incessant competition being the instant result. In 1881 a census was taken in the East End of London which showed over fifteen thousand tailors at work, of whom more than nine thousand were women. The number of the latter at present is estimated to be about twelve thousand, much increase having been prevented by various causes, for which there is no room here. As the matter at present stands, every man and woman employed aims to become as fast as possible a sweater on his or her own account. For large employers this is not so easy; for the small ones nothing could be simpler, and here are the methods. If the trade is an unfamiliar one, there is first the initiation by employment in a sweater's shop, and a few months, or even weeks, gives all the necessary facility. Then comes the question of workroom; and here it is only necessary to take the family room, and hire a sewing machine, which is for rent at two shillings and sixpence, or sixty cents, a week. To organize the establishment all that is necessary is a baster, a machinist, a presser, and two or three women-workers, one for button-holing, one for felling, and one for general work, carrying home, etc. The baster may be a skilled woman; the presser is always a man, the irons weighing from seven to eighteen pounds, and the work being of the most exhausting description, no man being able to continue it beyond eight or ten years at the utmost. The sweater-employer often begins by being his own presser, or his own baster; but as business increases his personal labor lessens. In the beginning his profits are extremely small, prices varying so that it is impossible to make any general table of rates. Even in the same branch of trade hardly any two persons are employed at the same rate, and the range of ability appears to vary with the wage paid, subdivision of labor being thus carried to its utmost limit, and the sections of the divisions already mentioned being again subdivided beyond further possibility. So tremendous is the competition for work that the sweaters are played off against each other by the contractors and sub-contractors, the result upon the workers below being as disastrous as the general effect of the system as a whole. As one becomes familiar with the characteristics of the East End,--and this is only after long and persistent comings and goings in street and alley,--it is found that there are entire streets in Whitechapel or St. George's-in-the-East, the points where the tailoring trade seems to focus, in which almost every house contains one, and sometimes several, sweating establishments, managed usually by men, but now and then in the hands of women, though only for the cheapest forms of clothing. Here, precisely as in our own large cities, a room nine or ten feet square is heated by a coke fire for the presser's irons, and lighted at night by flaming gas-jets, six, eight, or even a dozen workers being crowded in this narrow space. But such crowding is worse here than with us, for reasons which affect also every form of cheap labor within doors. London, under its present arrangements, is simply an enormous smoke factory, and no quarter of its vast expanse is free from the plague of soot and smoke, forever flying, and leaving a coating of grime on every article owned or used, no matter how cared for. This is true for Belgravia as for the East End, and "blacks," as the flakes of soot are known, are eaten and drunk and breathed by everything that walks in London streets or breathes London air. There is, then, not only the foulness engendered by human lungs breathing in the narrowest and most crowded of quarters, but the added foulness of dirt of every degree and order, overlaid and penetrated by this deposit of fine soot; the result a griminess that has no counterpart on the face of the earth. "Cheap clothes and nasty" did not end with Kingsley's time, and these garments, well made, and sold at a rate inconceivably low, are saturated with horrible emanations of every sort, and to the buyer who stops to think must carry an atmosphere that ends any satisfaction in the cheapness. Setting aside this phase as an intangible and, in part, sentimental ground for complaint, the fact that the cheapness depends also upon the number of hours given by the worker--whose day is never less than fourteen, and often eighteen, hours--should be sufficient to ban the whole trade. Even for this longest day there is no uniformity of price, and with articles identically the same the rate varies with different sweaters, the increasing competition accentuating these differences more and more. The sweater himself is more or less at the mercy of the contractor, who says to him: "Here are so many coats, at so much a coat. If you won't do them at the price, there are plenty that will." Already well aware of this fact, the sweater, if the rate falls at all below his expectation, has simply to pursue the same course with the waiting worker in his shop, a slight turn of the screw, half a penny off here and a farthing there, bringing his own profit back to the rate he assumes as essential. There is no pressure from below to compel justice. For any rebellious worker a dozen stand waiting to fill the vacant place; and thus the wrong perpetuates itself, and the sweater, whose personal relation with those he employs may be of the friendliest, becomes tyrant and oppressor, not of his own will, but through sheer force of circumstances. Thus evils, which laws have not reached, increase from day to day. Inspectors are practically powerless, and the shameful system, degrading alike to employer and employed, grows by what it feeds on, and hangs over the East End, a pall blacker and fouler than the cloud of smoke and soot, also the result of man's folly, not to be lifted till human eyes see clearer what makes life worth living, and human hands are less weary with labor that profiteth not, but that deadens sense and soul alike. This is the general view of the system as a whole. For the special there must still be a further word. CHAPTER IV. AMONG THE SWEATERS. "'Nine tailors to make a man,' they say. Well, now if it takes that amount, and from some lots I've seen I should say it did, you've got to multiply by nine again if you count in the women. Bless your 'art!" and here, in his excitement, the inspector began to drop the _h_'s, which the Board School had taught him to hold to with painful tenacity. "Bless your 'art! a woman can't make a coat, and every tailor knows it, and that's one reason 'e beats 'er down and beats 'er down till 'ow she keeps the breath of life in the Lord only knows. Take the cheapest coat going and there's a knack to every seam that a woman don't catch. She's good for trousers and finishing, and she can't be matched for button-holes when she gives her mind to it, but a coat's beyond her. I've wondered a good bit over it. The women don't see it themselves, but now and again there's one that's up to every dodge but a coat seam, and she wants more money and couldn't be persuaded, no, not if Moses himself came to try it, that she isn't worth the same as the men. That's what I 'ear as I go, and I've been hup and down among 'em three years and over. Their dodges is beyond belief, not the women's,--poor souls! they're too ground down to 'ave mind enough left for dodges,--but the sweaters; Parliament's after 'em. There's enough, but ther's no man halive that I've seen that knows how to 'old a sweater to 'em. How's one or two inspectors to get through every sweating place in Whitechapel alone, let alone hall the East End? It's hup an' down an' hin and hout, and where you find 'em fair and square in a reg'lar shop, or in rooms plain to see, you'll find 'em in basements and backyards, and washhouses, and underground,--anywheres like so many rats, though, I'm blessed if I don't think the rats has the hadvantage. Now, the law says no working over hours, and I go along in the evening, about knocking-off time, and find everything all clear only a look in the sweater's heye that I know well enough. It means most likely that 'e's got 'is women locked up in a bedroom where the Parliament won't let me go, and that when my back's turned 'e'll 'ave 'em out, and grin in his sleeve at me and Parliament too. Or else 'e's agreed with 'em to come at six in the morning instead of eight. It's a twelve-hour day 'e's a right to, from eight to eight, but that way he make it fourteen and more, if I or some other inspector don't appear along. "Now, suppose I drop down unexpected,--an' that's the way,--before I've made three calls, and likely nailed every one in the house for violation, it's down the street like lightening that the hinspector's after 'em. Then the women are 'ustled out anywhere, into the yard, or in a dust bin. Lift up 'most anything and you'd find a woman under it. I've caught 'em with their thimbles on, hot with sewing, and now they drop 'em into their pockets or anywhere. They'd lose a job if they peeped, and so there's never much to be done for 'em. But why a woman can't make a coat is what I study over. Did you ever think it out, ma'am? Is it their 'ands or their heyes that isn't hup to it?" This position of the little inspector's problem must wait, though in it is involved that fatal want of training for either eye or hand which makes the lowest place the only one that the average needlewoman can fill. Their endurance equals that of the men, and often, in sudden presses of work, as for a foreign order, work has begun at seven o'clock on a morning and continued right on through the night and up to four or five of the next afternoon. The law demands an hour for dinner and half an hour for tea, but the first is halved or quartered, and the last taken between the stitches, but with no more stop than is necessary for swallowing. The penalties for violation of these acts are heavy and the inspectors work very thoroughly, various convictions having been obtained in 1886, the penalties varying from two pounds to ten pounds and costs. But the sweaters, though standing in terror of such possibility, have learned every device of evasion, and, as before stated, the women necessarily abet them for fear of losing work altogether. Let us see now what the profit of the average sweater is likely to be, and then that of the workwoman, skilled and unskilled, taking our figures in every case from the Blue Book containing Mr. Burnett's report and confirmed by many workers. A small sweater in Brunswick Street employed a presser and a machinist, with two women for button-holes and felling, his business being the production of tunics for postmen. For each of these he received two shillings, or half a dollar a coat, which he considered a very good price. He paid his presser 4_s._ 6_d._ ($1.12) per day; his machinist 5_s._ ($1.25); his button-holer 2_s._ 6_d._ (60c.), from which she must find twist and thread; and the feller 1_s._ 3_d._ (30c.), a total of thirteen shillings threepence. For twelve coats he received twenty-four shillings, his own profit thus being ten shillings and ninepence ($2.68) for his own labor as baster and for finding thread, soap, coke, and machine. The hours were from seven in the morning to ten in the evening, less time not sufficing to finish the dozen coats, this bringing the rate of wages for the highest paid worker to 4½_d._, or nine cents an hour. For the small sweater the profit is slight, but each additional machine sends it up, till four or five mean a handsome return. If work is slack, he has another method of lessening expenses, and thus increasing profits, arranging matters so that all the work is done the three last days of the week, starting on a Thursday morning, for instance, and pressing the workers on for thirty-three to thirty-six hours at a stretch, calling this two days' work, and paying for it at this rate. If they work fractions of a day, eight hours is called a half and four a quarter day, and the men submit with the same patience as the women. For the former this is in part a question of nationality, the sweater's workmen being made up chiefly of German and Polish Jews and the poorer foreign element. An English worker has generally learned the trade as a whole, and is secure of better place and pay; but a Polish Jew, a carpenter at home, goes at once into a sweater's shop, and after a few weeks has learned one branch of the trade, and is enrolled on the list of workers. For the women, however, there is a smaller proportion comparatively of foreigners. The poor Englishwoman, like the poor American, has no resource save her needle or some form of machine work. If ambitious, she learns button-holing, and in some cases makes as high as thirty shillings per week ($7.50). This, however, is only for the best paid work. Out of this she must find her own materials, which can never be less than two and sixpence (60c.). A woman of this order would do in a day twelve coats with six button-holes each, for the best class of work getting a penny a hole, or two cents. For commoner kinds the prices are a descending scale: three-quarters of a penny a hole, half a penny, eight holes for threepence, and the commonest kinds three holes for a penny. These are the rates for coats. For waistcoats the price is usually a penny for four button-holes, a skilled worker making sixteen in an hour. Many of these button-hole makers have become sweaters on their own account, and display quite as much ingenuity at cutting rates as the men at whose hands they may themselves have suffered. For the machinists and fellers the rates vary. A good machinist may earn five shillings a day ($1.25), but this only in the busy season; the feller, at the best, can seldom go beyond three or four, and at the worst earns but six or eight per week; while learners and general hands make from two to six shillings a week, much of their time being spent in carrying work between the shops and the warehouses. Six shillings a week represents a purchasing power of about forty cents a day, half of which must be reserved for rent; and thus it will be seen that the English workwoman of the lower grade is in much the same condition as the American worker, hours, wages, and results being nearly identical. The Jewish women and girls represent a formidable element to contend with, as they are now coming over in great numbers, and the question has so organized itself that each falls almost at once into her own place, and works with machine-like regularity and efficiency. In one of the houses in a narrow little street opening off from Whitechapel, were three women whose cases may be cited as representative ones. The first was a trouser machinist, and took her work from another woman, a sweater, who had it from city and other houses. She was paid threepence (6c.) a pair, and could do ten pairs a day, if she got up at six and worked till ten or eleven, which was her usual custom. In the next room was a woman who stitched very thick large trousers, for which she received fourpence a pair. She also had them from a woman who took them from a sub-contractor. She could make six and sometimes seven shillings a week, her rent being two shillings and sixpence. On the floor above was a waistcoat maker, who, when work was brisk, could earn eight and sometimes nine shillings a week; but who now, as work was slack, seldom went beyond six or seven. Out of this must be taken thread, which she got for eightpence a dozen. She worked for a small exporter in a street some ten minutes' walk away; but often had to spend two hours or more taking back her work and waiting for more to be given out. She fared better than some, however, as she knew women who many a time had had to lose five or six hours--"just so much bread out of their mouths." "The work has to be passed," she said, "and there's never any doubt about mine, because I was bound to the trade, and my mother paid a pound for premium, and I worked three months for nothing--two months of that was clear gain to them, for I took to it and learned quick. But it's a starvation trade now, whatever it used to be." "Why don't some of the best workers among you combine and get your work direct from the city house?" "I've 'ad that in me mind, but there's never money enough. There's a deposit to be made for guarantee, and the machine-rent and all. No, there's never money enough. It's just keeping soul and body together, and barely that. We don't see butcher's meat half a dozen times a year; it's tea and bread, and you lose your relish for much of anything else, unless sprats maybe, or a taste of shrimps. I was in one workshop a while where there was over-hours always, and one night the inspector happened along after hours, and no word passed down, and the man turned me into the yard and turned off the gas; but I had to work two hours after he was gone. I'm better off than the woman in the next room. She makes children's suits--coats and knickerbockers--for ha'penny a piece, with tuppence for finishing, and her cotton to find; and, do 'er best, she won't make over four shillings and threepence a week, sometimes less. There's a mother and daughter next door that were bound to their trade for three months, and the daughter gave three months' work to learn it; but the most they make on children's suits is eight shillings and sixpence the two, and they work fifteen and sixteen hours a day." This record of a house or two in Whitechapel is the record of street after street in working London. No trade into which the needle enters has escaped the system which has been perfected little by little till there is no loophole by which the lower order of worker can escape. The sweaters themselves are often kind-hearted men, ground by the system, but soon losing any sensitiveness; and the mass of eager applicants are constantly reinforced, not only by the steady pressure of emigrants of all nations, but by an influx from the country. In short, conditions are generally the same for London as New York, but intensified for the former by the enormous numbers, and the fact that outlying spaces do not mean a better chance. This problem of one great city is the problem of all; and in each and all the sweater stands as an integral part of modern civilization. Often far less guilty than he is counted to be, and often as much a sufferer as his workers from those above him, his mission has legitimate place only where ignorant and incompetent workers must be kept in order, and may well give place to factory labor. With skill comes organization and the power to claim better wages; and with both skilled labor and co-operation the sweater has no further place, and is transformed to foreman or superintendent. Till this is accomplished, the word must stand, as it does to-day, for all imaginable evil that can hedge about both worker and work. CHAPTER V. CHILD OF THE EAST END. "What is it to be a lady?" The voice was the voice of a small and exceedingly grimy child, who held in her arms one still smaller and even grimier, known to the neighborhood as "Wemock's Orlando." Under ordinary circumstances, neither Wemock's nor anybody's youngest could have excited the least attention in Tower Hamlets where every doorway and passage swarms with children. But Orlando had the proud distinction of having spent three months of his short life in hospital, "summat wrong with his inside" having resulted from the kick of a drunken father who objected to the sight or sound of the children he had brought into the world, these at present numbering but seven, four having been mercifully removed from further dispensation of strap and fist and heavy boot. Such sympathy as the over-worked drudges who constituted the wives of the neighborhood had to spare, had concentrated on Orlando, whose "inside" still continued wrong, and who, though almost three, had never been able to bear his weight on his feet, but became livid at once, if the experiment was tried,--a fact of perennial interest to the entire alley. Wemock's fury at this state of things was something indescribable. A "casual" at the Docks, with the uncertainty of work which is the destruction of the casual laborer, he regarded the children as simply a species of investment, slow of making any return, but certain in the end. Up to five, say, they must be fed and housed somehow, but from five on a boy of any spirit ought to begin a career as mud-lark to graduate from it in time into anything for which this foundation had fitted him. The girls were less available, and he blessed his stars that there were but three, and cursed them as he reflected that Polly was tied hand and foot to Orlando, who persisted in living, and equally persisted in clinging to Polly, who mothered him more thoroughly than any previous Wemock had been. Not that the actual mother had not some gleams of tenderness, at least for the babies. But life weighed heavily against any demonstration. She was simply a beast of burden, patient, and making small complaint, and adding to the intermittent family income in any way she could,--charing, tailoring, or sack-making when the machine was not in pawn, and standing in deadly terror of Wemock's fist. The casual, like most of the lower order of laborers, has small opinion of women as a class, and meets any remonstrance from them as to his habits with an unvarying formula. "I'm yer 'usban', ain't I?" is the reply to request or objection alike, and "husband" by the casual is defined as "a man with a right to knock his woman down when he likes." This simplifies responsibility, and, being accepted with little or no question by the women, allows great latitude of action. Wemock had learned that the strap was safer than a knock-down, however, as a dose of it overnight did not hinder his wife from crawling out of bed to prepare the breakfast and get to work, whereas a kick such as he preferred, had been known to disable her for a week, with inconvenient results as to his own dinners and suppers. "It's the liquor as does it. 'E's peaceable enough when the liquor's out of 'im. But their 'ands comes so 'eavy. They don't know how 'eavy their 'ands comes." Thus Mrs. Wemock, standing in the doorway, for the moment holding Orlando, who resented his transfer with a subdued howl of grief, and looked anxiously down the alley toward Polly's retreating figure. "'Ush now an' ma'll give him a winkle. Polly's gone for winkles. It's winkles we'll 'ave for supper, and a blessing it's there's one thing cheap and with some taste to it. A penny-'orth even, goes quite a way, but a penny-'orth ain't much when there's a child to each winkle an' may be two." "The churchyard's been a better friend to me than to you," said a thin and haggard-looking woman, who had come across the street for a look at Orlando. "Out of my seventeen, there ain't but six left an' one o' them is in the Colonies. There's small call to wish 'em alive, when there's nought but sorrow ahead. If we was ladies I suppose it might all be different." It was at this point that Polly's question was heard,--Polly, who had rushed back with the winkles and put the dish into her mother's hand and caught Orlando as if she had been separated from him hours instead of minutes. And Orlando in turn put his skinny little arms about her neck. Whatever might be wrong with his inside, the malady had not reached his heart, which beat only for Polly, his great dark eyes, hollow with suffering, fixing themselves on her face with a sort of adoration. "A lady?" Mrs. Wemock said reflectively, eying her winkles, "there's more than one kind, Polly. A lady's mostly one that has nought to do but what she likes, and goes in a carriage for fear she'll soil her feet. But I've seen real ladies that thought on the poor, and was in and out among 'em. That kind is 'ard to find, Polly. I never knew but two an' they're both dead. It's them as has money, that's ladies, and them that hasn't--why they isn't." "Then I can't be a lady," said Polly. "I heard Nelly Anderson say she meant to be a lady." "Lord keep you from that kind!" said the mother hastily, with a significant look at her neighbor, which Polly did not fail to note and puzzle over. Tending Orlando gave her much time for puzzling. She was known as an "old fashioned" child, with ways quite her own, always to be depended upon, and confiding in no one but Orlando, who answered her in a language of his own. "When I am a lady, we will go away somewhere together," Polly said. "I think I shall be a lady sometime, Orlando, and then we'll have good times. There are good times somewhere, only they don't get into the Buildings," and with a look at the sooty walls and the dirty passage she followed her mother slowly up the stairs, and took her three winkles and the big slice of bread and dripping, which she and Orlando were to share, into the corner. Orlando must be coaxed to eat, which was always a work of time, and before her own share had been swallowed, her father's step was on the stairs, and her mother turned round from the machine. "Keep out of the way, Polly. 'E's taken too much, I know by the step of 'im, and 'e won't 'alf know what he's about." Polly shrunk back. There was no time to get under the bed, which she often did, and she hugged Orlando close and waited fearfully. Both were silent, but she put her bread behind her. To see them eating sometimes enraged him, and he had been known to fling loaf and teapot both from the windows. Both were on the table now, two or three slices spread with dripping for the younger boys who would presently come in. Wemock sat down, his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out to their utmost length, and looked first at his wife who was stitching trousers, and then at Polly, whose eyes were fixed upon him. "I'll teach you to look at me like that, you brat," he said, rising slowly. "For the Lord's sake, Wemock!" his wife cried, for there was deeper mischief than usual in his tone. "Remember what you did to Orlando." "I'll do for him again. I've 'ad enough of him always hunder foot. Out o' the way, you fool." Polly looked toward the door. A beating for herself could be taken, but never for Orlando. Her mother had come between, and she saw her father strike her heavily, and then push her into the chair. "Go on with your trousers," he said. "There's no money at the Docks, and these children eating me out of house and home. A man might be master of his own. Come 'ere. You won't, won't you? Then--" There were oaths and a shriek from Orlando, on whom the strap had fallen; and then Polly, still holding him, rushed for the door, only to be caught back and held, while the heavy fist came down with cruel weight. "Wemock's a bit worse than common," they said in the next room as the sounds began; but the shrieks in another moment had drawn every one in the Buildings, and the doorway filled with faces, no one volunteering, however, to interfere with the Briton's right to deal with his own as he will. He had flung Polly from him, and she lay on the floor unconscious and bleeding. Orlando had crept under the bed, and lay there paralyzed with terror; and the mother shrieked so loudly that the brute slunk back and seated himself again with attempted indifference. "You've done for yourself this time," a neighbor said, and Wemock sprang up, too late to escape the policemen who had been brought by the sounds, not usual in broad daylight, and who suddenly had their hands upon him, while another stooped doubtfully over the child. "She's alive," he said. "They take a deal to kill 'em, such do, but she'll need the 'ospital. Her arm's broke." He lifted the arm as he spoke, and it fell limp, a cry of pain coming from the child, whose eyes had opened a moment and then closed with a look of death on the face. An ambulance was passing. Some one had been hurt on the Docks, where accidents are always happening, and was being carried to the hospital; and a neighbor ran down. "It's best to do it sudden," she said, "or Orlando 'll never let her go or her mother either," and she hailed the ambulance driver, who objected to taking two, but agreed when he found it was only a child. Polly came to herself at last, gasping with pain. A broken arm was the least of it. There was a broken rib as well, and bruises innumerable. But worse than any pain was the separation from Orlando, for whom Polly wailed, till, in despair, the nurse promised to speak to the surgeon and see if he might not be brought; and, satisfied with this hope, the child lay quiet and waited. She was in a clean bed,--such a bed as she had never seen, and her soft dark eyes examined the nurse and all the strange surroundings in the intervals of pain. But fever came soon, and in long days of unconscious murmurings and tossings, all that was left of Polly's thin little frame wasted away. "It is a hopeless case," the doctor said, "though after all with children you can never tell." There came a day when Polly opened her eyes, quite conscious, and looked up once more at the nurse with the old appeal. "I want Orlando. Where's Orlando?" "He can't come," the nurse said, after a moment, in which she turned away. "You promised," Polly said faintly. "I know it," the nurse said. "He should come if he could, but he can't." "Is he sick?" Polly said after a pause. "Did father hurt him?" "Yes, he hurt him. He hurt him very much, but he can never hurt him any more. Orlando is dead." Polly lay quite silent, nor did her face change as she heard the words; but a smile came presently, and her eyes lightened. "You didn't know," she said. "Orlando has come. He is right here, and somebody is carrying him. He is putting out his arms." The child had raised herself, and looked eagerly toward the foot of the bed, "She is bringing him to me. She says, 'Polly, you 're going to be a lady and never do what you don't want to any more.' I thought I should be a lady sometime, because I wanted to so much; but I didn't think it would be so soon. They won't know me in the Buildings. I'm going to be a lady, and never--" Polly's eyes had closed. She fell back. What she had seen no man could know, but the smile stayed. It was quite certain that something at least had come to her of what she wanted. CHAPTER VI. AMONG THE DRESSMAKERS. "An Englishman's house is his castle," and an Englishwoman's no less, and both he and she ward off intruders with an energy inherited from the days when all men were fighters, and intensified by generations of practice. Even a government inspector is looked upon with deep disfavor as one result of the demoralization brought about by liberal and other loose ways of viewing public rights. The private, self-constituted one, it may then be judged rightly, is regarded as a meddlesome and pestilent busybody seeking knowledge which nobody should wish to obtain, and another illustration of what the nineteenth century is coming to. Various committees of inquiry, from the Organized Charities and from private bodies of workers, visit manufactories and industries in general, where women are employed, to make it evident that there is a desire to know how they fare. Why this wish has arisen, and why things are not allowed to remain as the fathers left them, are two questions at present distracting the British employer's mind, and likely, before the inquiry is ended, to distract it more, as, day by day, the numbers increase of those who persist in believing that they are in some degree their brothers' keepers,--a doctrine questioned ever since the story of time began. Obstacles of every nature are placed in the way of legalized inspection, and evasion and subterfuge, masterly enough to furnish a congress of diplomatists with ideas, are in daily practice. Years of experience make the inspector no less astute, and so the war goes on. It will be seen then, what difficulties hedge about the private inquirer, who must go armed with every obtainable guarantee, and even then leave the field quite conscious that the informants are chuckling over a series of misleading statements, and that not much will be made of that case. So little organization exists among the workers themselves, and there is such deadly fear of losing a place that women and girls listen silently to statements, which they denounce afterwards as absolutely false. Natural as this is,--and it is one of the inevitable results of the system,--it is one of the worst obstacles in the way, not only of inquiry but any statements of results. "Of course he lied or she lied," they say, "but don't for anything in the world let them know that we said so or that you know anything about it." This injunction, which for the individual worker's sake must be scrupulously attended to, hampers not only inquiry but reform, and delays still further the attempts at organization made here and there. The system applied to dressmaking, our present topic, differs from anything known in America save in one of its phases, and merits some description, representing as it does some lingering remnant of the old apprentice system. For the West End there is generally but one method. And here it may be said that the West End ignores absolutely any knowledge of what the East End methods may be. Between them there is a great gulf fixed, and the poorest apprentice of a West End house regards herself as infinitely superior to the mistress of an East End business. For this charmed region of the West, whether large or small, has spent years in building up a reputation, and this is a portion of the guarantee that goes with the worker, who has learned her trade under their auspices. It is a slow process,--so slow, that the system is not likely to be adopted by hasty Americans. In a first-class house in the West End, Oxford and Regent Streets having almost a monopoly of this title, the premium demanded for an apprentice is from forty to sixty pounds. This makes her what is known as an "indoor apprentice," and entitles her to board and lodgings for two years. Numbers are taken at once, beds are set close together in the rooms provided, and board is made of the cheapest, to prevent loss. This would seem very small, but add to it the fact, that the apprentice gives from twelve to sixteen hours a day of time and a year of time as assistant after the first probation is past, and it will be seen, that, even with no fee, the house is hardly likely to lose much. The out-door apprentices pay usually ten pounds and board and lodge at home, but hours are the same; never less than twelve, and in the busy season, fourteen and sixteen. Tea is furnished them once a day, but no food, nor is there definite time for meals. In the case of in-door apprentices, with any rush of work, a supper is provided at ten, but the "out-doors" must bring such food as is needed. For them there is, as for learners, no pay for over-time; and the strain often costs the life of the country girls unused to confinement, who fall into quick consumption, induced not only by long hours of sitting bent over work, but by breathing air foul with the vile gas and want of ventilation, as well as, in many cases, the worst possible sanitary conditions. If the initiatory period is safely past, the apprentice becomes an "improver;" that is, she is allowed larger choice of work, looks on or even tries her own hand when draping is to be done, and if quick is shortly ranked as an assistant. With this stage comes a small wage. An out-door apprentice now earns from four to five shillings ($1.25) a week. The in-door one still receives only board, but soon graduates from second to first assistant, though the whole process requires not less than four years and is often made to cover six. As first assistant she is likely to have quarters slightly more comfortable than those of the apprentices, and she receives one pound a week,--often less, but never more. In case of over-time, this meaning anything over the twelve hours which is regarded as a day's work, various rates are paid. In the mourning department of one of the best known Oxford Street establishments, fourpence an hour is allowed. This rate is exceptionally high, being given because of the objection to evening work on black. The same house pays in the colored-suit department two and a half pence (5c.) an hour, and provides tea for the hands. Twopence an hour is given in several other houses, but for the majority nothing whatever. The forewoman of one of these establishments began as an apprentice something over thirty years ago, and in giving these details and many others not included, expressed her own surprise that the amount of agitation as to over-time had produced so little tangible result. "The houses are on the lookout, it's true," she said; "and each one is afraid of getting into the papers for violating the law, so the apprentice is looked out for a little better than she was in my time. I've worked many a time when there was a press of work--some sudden order to be filled--all night long. They gave us plenty of tea, a hot supper at ten, and something else at two, but they never paid a farthing, and it never came to one of us that we'd any right to ask it. There was one--a plucky little woman and a splendid hand. She was first assistant and we'd been going on like this a week one year. The girls fell fainting from their chairs. I did myself though I was used to it; and she stood up there at midnight, just before the manager came in and said, 'Girls, you've no right to take another stitch without pay. Who'll stand by me if I say so when Mr. B. comes in.' Not one spoke. 'Oh, you cowards!' she said. 'Not one? Then I'll speak for you.' Two rose up then and threw down their work. ''Tis a burning shame,' says they. 'Say what you like!' Mr. B. was there before the words were out of their mouths, 'What's this? what's this?' he said. 'Not at work and the order to go out at noon?' 'Pay us then for double work, and not drive us like galley slaves,' said Mrs. Colman, standing very straight, 'I speak for myself and for the rest. We are going home.' "The manager got purple. 'The first one that leaves this room, by G--, she'll never come back. What do you mean getting up this row, damn you?' 'I mean we're earning double, and ought to have it. Why shouldn't our pockets hold some of the profits on this order as well as yours?' 'Will you hush?' he says with his hand up as if he'd strike. 'No; not now, nor ever,' she says, she white and he purple, and out she walked; but none followed her. She never came back, and she was marked from that time, so she found it hard to get work. But she married again and went out to the Colonies, so she hadn't to fight longer. It's over-time now, as much as then, that is the greatest trouble. We had a Mutual Improvement Society when I was young, but oh, what hard work it was to go to it after nine in the evening and try to work, and it's hard work now, though people think you can be as brisk and wide awake after sewing twelve hours as if you'd been enjoying yourself." In 1875 a few dressmakers, who had observed intelligently various organizations among men-tailors, boot-makers, etc., started an association of the "dressmakers, milliners, and mantua makers," designed for mutual benefit, a subscription of twopence per week being added to a small entrance fee. Rules were drawn up, one or two of which are given illustratively. "Each person on joining is required to pay _one penny_ for a copy of the rules, _one penny_ for a card on which her payments will be entered, and _one shilling_ entrance fee--but the last may be paid by instalments of fourpence each. After thirty years of age the entrance fee shall be 6_d._ extra for every additional ten years. "Members not working in a business house, or not working in the above trades, can only claim sick benefits, but the usual death levy shall also be made for them. "In case of death each member will be called upon to contribute _sixpence_ to be expended as the deceased member may have directed. "When a member is disabled by sickness (excepting in confinements), a notice must be signed by two members as vouchers to the secretary, who shall appoint the member living nearest to the sick member, with one member of the committee, to visit her weekly, and report to the committee before the allowance is paid, unless special circumstances require a relaxation of this rule. The committee may require a medical certificate." Excellent as every provision was, and admirable work as was accomplished, the women, as is too often the case with women, lost mutual confidence, or could not be made to see the advantage of paying punctually, and the association dwindled down to a mere handful. In 1878 it reorganized, and its secretary, a working dressmaker, who learned her trade in a West End house, has labored in unwearied fashion to bring about some _esprit du corps_ and though often baffled, speaks courageously still of the better time coming when women will have some sense of the value of organization. Her word confirms the facts gathered at many points in both East and West End. The East has reduced wages to starvation limit. A pound a week can still be earned in some houses at the West End--though fourteen or sixteen shillings is more usual; but for the other side, fourteen is still the highest point, and the scale descends to five and six--in one case to three and sixpence. Over hours, scanty food, exhaustion, wasting sickness, and death, the friend at last, when the weary days are done;--this is the day for most. The American worker has distinct advantages on her side, the long unpaid apprenticeship here having no counterpart there, and the frightfully long working day being also shortened. Many other disabilities are the same, but in this trade the advantage thus far is wholly for the American worker. CHAPTER VII. NELLY, A WEST-END MILLINER'S APPRENTICE. What Polly had heard, listening silently, with "Wemock's Orlando" held close in her small arms, was quite true. Nelly Sanderson had determined to be a lady, and though uncertain as yet as to how it was to be brought about, felt that it must come. This she had made up her mind to when not much older than Polly, and the desire had grown with her. It was perfectly plain from the difference between her and Jim that Nature had meant her for something better than to stitch shirt-bodies endlessly. At twelve she had begun to do this, portions of two or three previous years having been spent in a Board School. Then her time for work and contribution to the family support had come. She was only a "feller," and took her weekly bundle of work from a woman, who, in turn, had it from another woman, who took it from a master-sweater, who dealt directly with the great city houses; and between them all, Nelly's wage was kept at the lowest point. But she did her work well, and was quick to a marvel; and her hope for the future carried her on through the monotonous days, broken only by her mother's scolding and Jim's insolence. Jim was the typical East End loafer,--a bullet head, closely cropped; dull round eyes, and fat nose, also rounded; a thick neck, and fat cheeks, in which were plainly to be seen the overdoses of beer and spirits he had drunk since he was ten or twelve years old. His mother had tried to keep him respectable. She had been a lady's maid; but that portion of her life was buried in mystery. It was only known she had come to Norwood Street when Nelly was a baby, and that very shortly Judkins, a young omnibus conductor, had fallen in love with her; and they had married, and taken rooms, and lived very comfortably till Jim was three or four years old. But the taste for liquor was too strong; and long days in fog and rain, chilled to the marrow under the swollen gray clouds of the London winter, were some excuse for the rush to the "public" at the end of each trip. The day's wages at last were all swallowed, and the wife, like a good proportion of workmen's wives, found herself chief bread-winner, and tried first one trade and then another, till Nelly's quick fingers grew serviceable. Nelly was pretty,--more than pretty. Even Jim had moments of admiration; and the Buildings, in which several of her admirers lived, had seen unending fights as to who had the best right to take her out on Sundays. Her waving red-brown hair, her great eyes matching it in tint to a shade, her long black lashes and delicate brows, the low white forehead and clear pale cheeks,--anybody could see that these were far and away beyond any girl in the Buildings. The lips were too full, and the nose no particular shape; but the quick-moving, slender figure, like her mother's, and the delicate hands, which Nelly hated to soil, and kept as carefully as possible,--all these were indications over which the women, in conclave over tea and shrimps, shook their heads. "'Er father was a gentleman, that's plain to see. She'll go the same way her mother did. I'd not 'ave one of my hown boys take up with her, not for no money." This seemed the general verdict in the Buildings; and though Nelly sewed steadily all day and every day, the women still held to it, the men hotly contesting it, and family quarrels over the subject confirming the impression. Nelly worked on, however, unmoved by criticism or approval, spending all that could be saved from the housekeeping on the most stylish clothes to be found in Petticoat Lane market, and denying herself even in these for the sake of a little hoard, which accumulated, oh! so slowly since it had been broken into, once for a new feather for her little hat, once for a day's pleasuring at Greenwich; and Nelly resolved firmly it should never happen again. One ambition filled her. This hateful East End must be left somehow. Somehow she must get to be the lady which she felt sure she ought to be. There were hints of this sometimes in her mother's talk; but it was plain that there was nobody to help her to this but herself. Already Jim drank more than his share. He was going the way of his father, dead years before in a drunken frolic; and the income made from the little shop her mother had opened, to teach him how to make a living, covered expenses, and not much more. Whatever was done for Nelly must be done by herself. The way had opened, or begun to open, at Greenwich. A tall, delicate girl, who proved to be a milliner's apprentice, had taken a fancy to her, and given her her first real knowledge of the delights of West End life. She had nearly ended her apprenticeship, and would soon be a regular hand; and Nelly listened entranced to the description of marvellous hats and bonnets, and the people who tried them on, and looked disgustingly at her own. "You've got a touch, I know," the new friend said approvingly. "You'd get on. Isn't there anybody to pay the premium for you?" Nelly shook her head sorrowfully. "They couldn't do without me," she said. "There's mother and Jim, that won't try to earn anything, and I stitch now twelve hours a day. I'm off shirts, and on trousers. Trousers pay better. I've made eighteen shillings a week sometimes, but you must keep at it steady ahead for that." "It's a pity," her companion said reflectively. "You'd learn quick. In three months you'd be an improver, and begin to earn, and then there's no knowing where you'd stop. You might get to be owner." Nelly turned suddenly. She had felt for some time that some one was listening to them. They were on the boat, sitting on the central seat, back to back with a row of merry-makers; but this was some one different. "I beg your pardon," he said; and Nelly flushed with pleasure at a tone no one had ever used before. "I have heard a little you were saying. I am interested in this question of wages, and very anxious to know more about it. I wish you would tell me what you know about this stitching." He had come round to their side--a tall blond man of thirty, dressed in light gray, and a note-book in his hand. He was so serious and gentle that it was impossible to take offence, and very soon Nelly was telling him all she knew of prices in cheap clothing of every sort, and how the workers lived. She hated it all,--the grime and sordidness, the drunken men and screaming children; and her eyes flashed as she talked of it, and a flush came to her cheeks. "You ought to have something better," the young man said presently, his eyes fixed upon her. "We must try to find something better." Nelly's companion smiled significantly, but he did not notice it. Evidently he was unlike most of the gentlemen she had seen in the West End. Yet he certainly was a gentleman. He took them to a small restaurant when Nelly had answered all his questions, and they dined sumptuously, or so it seemed to them, and he sat by them and told stories, and entertained them generally all the way home. "I shall go down the river next Sunday," he said low to Nelly as they landed. "Do you like to row? If you do, come to Chelsea to the Bridge, and we will try it from there." This was the beginning, and for many weeks it meant simply that he pleased his æsthetic sense, as well as convinced himself that he was doing a good and righteous deed in making life brighter for an East End toiler. He had given her the premium, and Nelly, without any actual lie, had convinced her mother that the West End milliner was willing to take her for only two months of time given, and then begin wages. She brought out her own little fund, swollen by several shillings taken from one of the sovereigns given her, and proved that there was enough here to keep them till she began to earn wages again; and Mrs. Judkins allowed herself at last to be persuaded, feeling that a chance had come for the girl which must not be allowed to pass. So Nelly's apprenticeship began. There was less rose-color than she had imagined. The hours were long, longer sometimes than her stitching had been, and many of the girls looked at her jealously. But Maria, her first friend, remained her friend. The two sat side by side, and Nelly caught the knack by instinct almost, and even in the first week or two caught a smile from Madame, who paused to consider the twist of a bow, quite Parisian in its effect, and said to herself that here was a hand who would prove valuable. Nelly went home triumphant that night, and even her mother's sour face relaxed. She had taken up trouser-stitching again, forcing Jim to mind the shop, and saying to herself that the family fortunes were going to mend, and that Nelly would do it. Sundays were always free. Nobody questioned the girl. The young men in the Buildings and the street gave up pursuit. Plainly Nelly was not for them, but had found her proper place in the West End. They bowed sarcastically, and said, "'Ow's your Royal 'Ighness?" when they met; but Nelly hardly heeded them. The long wish had taken shape at last,--she was going to be a lady. Summer ended. There was no more boating, but there were still long walks and excursions. The apprenticeship was over, and Nelly was now a regular hand, and farther advanced than many who had worked a year or two. She made good wages, often a pound a week. Her dress was all that such a shop demanded; her manner quieter every day. "She's a lady, that's plain," Maria said; and Madame agreed with her, and took the girl more and more into favor. Nelly had a little room of her own now, next to Maria. She seldom went home, save to take money to her mother, and she never stayed long. "It's best not," Mrs. Judkins said. "You're bound for something better, and you'll get it. This isn't your place. You're a bit pale, Nelly. It's the hours and the close room, I suppose?" "Yes; it's the hours," Nelly said. "When there's a press, we're often kept on till nine or ten; but it's a good place." She lingered to-day till Jim came in. Jim grew worse and worse, and she hurried away as she saw him swaggering toward the door; but there were tears in her eyes as she turned away. She passed her friend of the summer in Regent Street, and looked back for a moment. He had nodded, but was talking busily with a tall man, who eyed Nelly sharply. She had found that he lived in Chelsea, and was a literary man of some sort,--she hardly knew what,--and that his name was Stanley; beyond this she knew nothing. Some day he would make her a lady,--but when? There was need of haste. No one knew how great need. Another month or two, the winter well upon them, and there came a day when Madame, who, as Nelly entered the workroom, had stopped for a moment and looked at her, first in surprise, then in furious anger, burst out upon her in words that scorched the ears to hear. No girl like that need sit down among decent girls. March, and never show her shameful face again. Nelly rose silently, and took down her hat and shawl, and as silently went out, Madame's shrill voice still sounding. What should she do? The end was near. She could not go home. She must find Herbert, and tell him; but he would not be at home before night. She knew his number now, and how to find him. He must make it all right. She went into Hyde Park and walked about, and when she grew too cold, into a cocoa-room, and so the day wore away; and at five she took a Chelsea omnibus, and leaned back in the corner thinking what to say. The place was easily found, and she knocked, with her heart beating heavily, and her voice trembling as a maid opened the door and looked at her a moment. "Come this way," she said, certain it must be a lady,--a visitor from the country, perhaps; and Nelly followed her into a back drawing-room, where a lady sat with a baby on her lap, and two or three children about her. A little boy ran forward, then stood still, his frightened, surprised eyes on Nelly's eyes, which were fixed upon him in terror. "Whose is he?--whose?" she stammered. "He is Herbert Stanley, junior," the lady said with a smile. "I'm Mrs. Stanley. Good Heaven! what is it?" Nelly had stood for a moment, her hands reaching out blindly, the card with its name and number still in them. "I must go," she said. "I must look for the real Herbert. This is another." She fell as the words ended, still holding the card tight; and when they had revived her, only shook her head as questions were asked. The boy stood looking at her with his father's eyes. There could be no doubt. Nelly rose and looked around; then, with no word to tell who she might be, went out into the night. She crossed the street, and stood hesitating; and as she stood a figure came swiftly down the street on the other side, and ran up the steps of the house she had left. There was no doubt any more; and with a long, bitter cry Nelly fled toward the river. There was no pause. She knew the way well, and if she had not, instinct would have led her, and did lead, through narrow alleys and turnings till the embankment was reached. No stop, even then. A policeman saw the flying figure, and a man who tried to hinder her heard the words, "I shall never be a lady now," but that was all; and when he saw her face again the river had done its work, and the story was plain, though for its inner pages only the man who was her murderer has the key. CHAPTER VIII. LONDON SHIRT-MAKERS. Bloomsbury has a cheerful sound, and, like Hop Vine Garden and Violet Lane, and other titles no less reassuring, seems to promise a breath of something better than the soot-laden atmosphere offered by a London winter. But Hop Vine Garden is but a passage between a line of old buildings, and ends in a dark court and a small and dirty "public," the beer-pots of which hold the only suggestion of hops to be discovered. Violet Lane is given over to cat's-meat and sausage makers, the combination breeding painful suspicions in the seeker's mind, and Bloomsbury has long since ceased to own sight or smell of any growing thing. But, in a gray and forlorn old group of houses known as Clark's Buildings, will be found, on certain evenings in the month, a little knot of women, each with open account-book, studying over small piles of pence and silver, and if their looks are any indication, drawing very little satisfaction from the operation. They are the secretaries of the little societies organized by the late Mrs. Patterson, who, like many other philanthropists, came to see that till the workers themselves were roused to the consciousness of necessity for union, but little could be accomplished for them. A few of the more intelligent, stirred by her deep earnestness, banded together twelve years ago, and organized a society known as "The Society of Women Employed in Shirt, Collar, and Under-linen Making;" and here may be found the few who have, from long and sharp experience, discovered the chief needs of workers in these trades. When outward conditions as they show themselves at present have been studied, when homes and hours and wages and all the details of the various branches have become familiar, it is to this dim little hall that one comes for a final puzzle over all that is wrong. For it is all wrong; nor in any corner of working London, can any fact or figures make a right of the toil that is an old, old story; so old that there is even impatience if one tells it again. Numbers are unknown, each one who investigates giving a different result; but it is quite safe to say that five hundred thousand women live by the industries named in the society's title, not one of whom has ever received, or ever will receive, under the present system, a wage which goes beyond bare subsistence. Here, as in New York, or any other large city of the United States, the conditions governing the trade are much the same. The women, untrained and unskilled in every other direction, turn to these branches of sewing as the possibility for all, and scores wait for any and every chance of work from manufactory or small house. As with us, the work is chiefly put out, and necessarily at once arises the middle-man, or a gradation of middle-men, each of whom must have his profit, taken in every case--not from employer, but worker. The employer fixes his rates without reference to these. He is fighting, also, for subsistence, plus as many luxuries as can be added from the profits of his superior power over conditions. He may be, and often is, to those nearest him, kind, unselfish, eager for right. But the hands are "hands," and that is all; and the middle-man, of whom the very same statement may be true, deals with the hands with an equal obliviousness as to their connection with bodies and souls. The original price per dozen of the garments made may be the highest in the market, but before the woman who works is reached there are often five, and sometimes more, transfers. Where workers are employed on the premises, they fare better, being paid by the piece. The minutest divisions of labor prevail, even more than with us--a shirt passing through many hands, the weekly wage differing for each. The "fitter," for instance, must be a skilled workwoman, the flatness and proper set of the shirt front depending upon correct fitting at the neck. For this fitting in West End houses, the fitter receives a penny a shirt, and can in a week fit twenty dozen--this meaning a pound a week. But slack seasons reduce the amount, so that often she earns but nine or ten shillings, her average for the year being about fourteen. For the grades below her the sum is proportionately less. The most thoroughly skilled hand in either shirt-making or under-linen has been known to make as high as twenty-eight shillings a week ($7.00), but this is phenomenal; nor, indeed, does any such possibility remain, prices having gone down steadily for some years. A pound a week for a woman, as has been stated elsewhere, is regarded even by just employers as all that can be required by the most exacting; and with this standard in mind, a fall of three or four shillings seems a matter of slight importance. Taking the various industries in which women are employed, the needle, as usual, leading, and the shirt-makers being a large per cent of the number, there are in London nearly a million women, self-supporting and self-respecting, and often the sole dependence of a family. This excludes the numbers of thriftless and otherwise helpless poor whose work is variable, and who, at the best, can earn only the lowest possible wages as unskilled laborers. For the skilled ones, doing their best in long days of work, never less than twelve hours, the average earnings, after all chances of slack seasons and accidents have been taken into account, is never over ten shillings a week. It is worth while to consider what ten shillings can do. The allowance per head for rations for the old people in the Whitechapel Workhouse, one of the best of its class, is according to the authorities, three shillings eleven pence (96c.) per week, the quantity falling somewhat below the amount which physiologists regard as necessary for an able-bodied adult. These supplies are purchased by contract, and thus a full third lower than the single buyer can command. But she has learned that appetite is not a point to be considered, and for the most part confines herself to tea and bread and butter, with a cheap relish now and then. Thus four shillings a week is made to cover food, and three shillings gives her a small back room. For such lights, fire, and washing as cannot be dispensed with, must be counted another shilling. Out of the remaining two shillings must come her twopence a week, if she belongs to any trades-union, leaving one shilling and ten-pence for clothes, holidays, amusements, saving, and the possible doctor's bill, a sum for the year, at the utmost, of from four pounds fifteen shillings and ninepence, or a trifle under twenty dollars. These women are, every one of them, past-mistresses in the art of doing without; and they do without with a patient courage, and often a cheerfulness, that is one of the most pathetic facts in their story. It is the established order of things. Why should they cry or make ado? Yet, as the workshop has its own education for men, and gives us the order known as the "intelligent workman," so it gives us also the no less intelligent workwoman, possessing not only the natural womanly gift of many resources, but the added power of just so much technical training as she may have received in her apprenticeship to her trade. Miss Simcox, who has made a study of the whole question, comments on this, in an admirable article in one of the monthlies for 1887, emphasizing the fact that these women, fitted by experience and long training for larger work, must live permanently, with absolutely no outlook or chance of change, on the border-land of poverty and want. They know all the needs, all the failings of their own class. Many of them give time, after the long day's work is done, to attempts at organizing and to general missionary work among their order; and by such efforts the few and feeble unions among them have been kept alive. But vital statistics show what the end is where such double labor must be performed. These women who have character and intelligence, and unselfish desire to work for others, have an average "expectation of life" less by twenty years than that of the class who know the comfortable ease of middle-class life. It is one of these workers who said not long ago, her words being put into the mouth of one of Mr. Besant's characters: "Ladies deliberately shut their eyes; they won't take trouble; they won't think; they like things about them to look smooth and comfortable; they will get things cheap if they can. _What do they care if the cheapness is got by starving women?_ Who is killing this girl here? Bad food and hard work. Cheapness! What do the ladies care how many working girls are killed?" The individual woman brought face to face with the woman dying from overwork, would undoubtedly care. But the workers are out of sight, hidden away in attic and basement, or the upper rooms of great manufactories. The bargains are plain to see, every counter loaded, every window filled. And so society, which will have its bargains, is practically in a conspiracy against the worker. The woman who spends on her cheapest dress the utmost sum which her working sister has for dress, amusements, culture, and saving, preaches thrift, and it is certain the working classes would be better off if they had learned to save. Small wonder that the workers doubt them and their professed friendship, and that the breach widens day by day between classes and masses, bridged only by the work of those who, like the workers in the Women's Provident League, know that it is to the rich that the need for industry must be preached, not to the poor. Organization holds education for both, and it is now quite possible to know something of the methods of prominent firms with their workwomen, and to shun those which refuse to consider the questions of over-time, of unsanitary workrooms, of unjust fines and reductions, and the thousand ways of emptying some portion of the workwoman's purse into that of the employer. It is women who must do this, and till it is done, justice is mute, and the voice of our sisters' blood cries aloud from the ground. CHAPTER IX. THE TALE OF A BARROW. If the West End knows not the East End, save as philanthropy and Mr. Walter Besant have compelled it, much less does it know Leather Lane, a remnant of old London, now given over chiefly to Italians, and thus a little more picturesquely dirty than in its primal state of pure English grime. The eager business man hurrying down "that part of Holborn christened High," is as little aware of the neighborhood of Leather Lane and what it stands for, as the New Yorker on Broadway is of Mulberry Street and the Great Bend. For either or both, entrance is entrance into a world quite unknown to decorous respectability, and, if one looks aright, as full of wonders and discoveries as other unknown countries under our feet. Out of Leather Lane, with its ancient houses swarming with inhabitants and in all stages of decay and foulness, open other lanes as unsavory, through which the costers drive their barrows, chaffering with dishevelled women, who bear a black eye or other token that the British husband has been exercising his rights, and who find bargaining for a bunch of turnips or a head of cabbage an exhilarating change. There were many costers and many barrows, but among them all hardly one so popular as "old Widgeon," who had been in the business forty years; and as he had chosen to remain a bachelor, an absolutely unheard-of state of things, he was an object of deepest interest to every woman in Leather Lane and its purlieus. It was always possible that he might change his mind; and from the oldest inhabitant down to the child just beginning to ask questions, there was always a sense of expectation where Widgeon was concerned. He, in the meantime, did his day's work contentedly, had a quick eye for all trouble, and in such cases was sure to give overweight, or even to let the heavy penny or two fall accidentally into the purchase. His donkey had something the same expression of patient good-humored receptivity. The children climbed over the barrow and even on the donkey's back, and though Widgeon made great feint of driving them off with a very stubby whip, they knew well that it would always just miss them, and returned day after day undismayed. He "did for himself" in a garret in a dark little house, up a darker court; and here it was popularly supposed he had hidden the gains of all these forty years. They might be there or in the donkey's stable, but they were somewhere, and then came the question, who would have them when he died? To these speculations Nan listened silently, in the pauses of the machines on which her mother and three other women stitched trousers. Nothing was expected of her but to mind the baby, to see that the fire kept in, just smouldering, and that there was always hot water enough for the tea. On the days when they all stitched she fared well enough; but when she had carried home the work, and received the money, there was a day, sometimes two or three, in which gin ruled, and the women first shouted and sang songs, and at last lay about the floor in every stage of drunkenness. Gradually chances for work slipped away; the machines were given up, and the partnership of workers dissolved, and at twelve, Nan and the baby were beggars and the mother in prison for aggravated assault on a neighbor. She died there, and thus settled one problem, and now came the other, how was Nan to live? Old Widgeon answered this question. They had always been good friends from the day he had seen her standing, holding the baby, crippled and hopelessly deformed from its birth. His barrow was almost empty, and the donkey pointing his long ears toward the stable. "Get in," he said, "an' I'll give you a bit of a ride," and Nan, speechless with joy, climbed in and was driven to the stable, and once there, watched the unharnessing and received some stray oranges as she finally turned away. From that day old Widgeon became her patron saint. She had shot up into a tall girl, shrinking from those about her, and absorbed chiefly in the crooked little figure, still "the baby;" but tall as she might be, she was barely twelve, and how should she hire a machine and pay room rent and live? Widgeon settled all that. "You know how to stitch away at them trousers?" he had said, and Nan nodded. "Then I'll see you through the first week or two," he said; "but, mind! don't you whisper it, or I'll 'ave hevery distressed female in the court down on me, and there's enough hof 'em now." Nan nodded again, but he saw the tears in her eyes, and regarded words as quite unnecessary. The sweater asked no questions when she came for a bundle of work, nor did she tell him that she alone was now responsible. She had learned to stitch. Skill came with practice, and she might as well have such slight advantage as arose from being her mother's messenger. So Nan's independent life began, and so it went on. She grew no taller, but did grow older, her silent gravity making her seem older still. It was hard work. She had never liked tea, and she loathed the sight and smell of either beer or spirits, old experience having made them hateful. Thus she had none of the nervous stimulant which keeps up the ordinary worker, and with small knowledge of any cookery but boiling potatoes and turnips, and frying bacon or sprats, fared worse than her companions. But she had learned to live on very little. She stitched steadily all day and every day, gaining more and more skill, but never able to earn more than fourteen shillings a week. Prices went down steadily. At fourteen shillings she could live, and had managed even not only to pay Widgeon but to pick up some "bits of things." She was like her father, the old people in the alley said. He had been a silent, decent, hard-working man, who died broken-hearted at the turn his wife took for drink. Nan had his patience and his faithfulness; and Johnny, who crawled about the room, and could light a fire and do some odds and ends of house-keeping, was like her, and saved her much time as he grew older, but hardly any bigger. He had even learned to fry sprats, and to sing, in a high, cracked, little voice, a song known throughout the alley:-- "Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night, When sprats they isn't dear, To fry a couple o' dozen or so Upon a fire clear." There are many verses of this ditty, all ending with the chorus:-- "Oh, 'tis my delight of a Friday night!" and Johnny varied the facts ingeniously, and shouted "bacon," or anything else that would fry, well pleased at his own ingenuity. "He was 'wanting.' Nan might better put him away in some asylum," the neighbors said; but Nan paid no attention. He was all she had, and he was much better worth working for than herself, and so she went on. Old Widgeon had been spending the evening with them. Nan had stitched on as she must; for prices had gone down again, and she was earning but nine shillings a week. Widgeon seldom said much. He held Johnny on his knee, and now and then looked at Nan. "It's a dog's life," he said at last. "It's far worse than a dog's. You'd be better off going with a barrow, Nan. I'm a good mind to leave you mine, Nan. You'd get a bit of air, then, and you'd make--well, a good bit more than you do now." Widgeon had checked himself suddenly. Nobody knew what the weekly gain might be, but people put it as high as three pounds; and this was fabulous wealth. "I've thought of it," Nan said. "I've thought of it ever since that day you rode me and Johnny in the barrow. Do you mind? The donkey knows me now, I think. He's a wise one." "Ay, he's a wise one," the old man said. "Donkeys is wiser than folks think." He put Johnny down suddenly, and sat looking at him strangely; but Nan did not see. The machine whirred on, but it stopped suddenly as Johnny cried out. Widgeon had slipped silently from his chair; his eyes were open, but he did not seem to see her, and he was breathing heavily. Nan ran into the passage and called an old neighbor, and the two together, using all their strength, managed to get him to the bed. "It's a stroke," the woman said. "Lord love you, what'll you do? He can't stay here. He'd better be sent to 'ospital." "I'll be 'anged first," said old Widgeon, who had opened his eyes suddenly and looked at them both. "I was a bit queer, but I'm right enough now. Who talks about 'ospitals?" He tried to move and his face changed. "I'm a bit queer yet," he said, "but it'll pass; it'll pass. Nan, you'll not mind my being in your way for a night. There's money in me pocket. Maybe there's another room to be 'ad." "There's a bit of a one off me own that was me John's, an' him only gone yesterday," said the woman eagerly; "an' a bed an' all, an' openin' right off of this. The door's behind that press. It's one with this, an' the two belongs together, an' for two an' six a week without, an' three an' six with all that's in it, it's for anybody that wants it." "I'll take it a week," said old Widgeon, "but I'll not want the use of it more than this night. I'm a bit queer now, but it'll pass; it'll pass." The week went, but old Widgeon was still "a bit queer;" and the doctor, who was at last called in, said that he was likely to remain so. One side was paralyzed. It might lessen, but would never recover entirely. He would have to be looked out for. This was his daughter? She must understand that he needed care, and would not be able to work any more. Old Widgeon heard him in silence, and then turned his face to the wall, and for hours made no sign. When he spoke at last, it was in his usual tone. "I thought to end my days in the free air," he said, "but that ain't to be. And I'm thinking the stroke's come to do you a good turn, Nan. There's the donkey and the barrow, and everybody knowing it as well as they know me. I'll send you to my man in Covent Garden. He's a fair 'un. He don't cheat. He'll do well by you, an' you shall drive the barrow and see what you make of it. We'll be partners, Nan. You look out for me a bit, an' I'll teach you the business and 'ave an heye to Johnny. What do you say? Will you try it? It'll break me 'art if that donkey and barrow goes to hanybody that'll make light of 'em hand habuse 'em. There hain't such another donkey and barrow in all London, and you're one that knows it, Nan." "Yes, I know it," Nan said. "You ought to know, if you think I could do it." "There's nought that can't be done if you sets your mind well to it," said old Widgeon. "And now, Nan, 'ere's the key, and you get Billy just by the stable there to move my bits o' things over here. That court's no place for you, an' there's more light here. Billy's a good 'un. He'll 'elp you when you need it." This is the story of the fresh-faced, serious young woman who drives a donkey-barrow through certain quiet streets in northwest London, and has a regular line of customers, who find her wares, straight from Covent Garden, exactly what she represents. Health and strength have come with the new work, and though it has its hardships, they are as nothing compared with the deadly, monotonous labor at the machine. Johnny, too, shares the benefit, and holds the reins or makes change, at least once or twice a week, while old Widgeon, a little more helpless, but otherwise the same, regards his "stroke" as a providential interposition on Nan's behalf, and Nan herself as better than any daughter. "I've all the good of a child, and none o' the hups hand downs o' the married state," he chuckles; "hand so, whathever you think, I'm lucky to the hend." CHAPTER X. STREET TRADES AMONG WOMEN. "With hall the click there is to a woman's tongue you'd think she could 'patter' with the best of the men, but, Lor' bless you! a woman can't 'patter' any more'n she can make a coat, or sweep a chimley. And why she can't beats me, and neither I nor nobody knows." "To patter" is a verb conjugated daily by the street seller of any pretensions. The coster needs less of it than most vendors, his wares speaking for themselves; but the general seller of small-wares, bootlaces, toys, children's books, and what not, must have a natural gift, or acquire it as fast as possible. To patter is to rattle off with incredible swiftness and fluency, not only recommendations of the goods themselves, but any side thoughts that occur; and often a street-seller is practically a humorous lecturer, a student of men and morals, and gives the result in shrewd sentences well worth listening to. Half a dozen derivations are assigned to the word, one being that it comes from the rattled off _paternosters_ of the devout but hasty Catholic, who says as many as possible in a given space of time. Be this as it may, it is quite true that pattering is an essential feature of any specially successful street-calling, and equally true that no woman has yet appeared who possesses the gift. In spite of this nearly fatal deficiency, innumerable women pursue street trades, and, notwithstanding exposure and privation and the scantiest of earnings, have every advantage over their sisters of the needle. Rheumatism, born of bad diet and the penetrating rawness and fogs of eight months of the English year, is their chief enemy; but as a whole they are a strong, hardy, and healthy set of workers, who shudder at the thought of bending all day over machine or needle, and thank the fate that first turned them toward a street-calling. So conservative, however, is working England, that the needlewoman, even at starvation point, feels herself superior to a street-seller; and the latter is quite conscious of this feeling, and resents it accordingly. With many the adoption of such employment is the result of accident, and the women in it divide naturally into four classes: (1) The wives of street-sellers; (2) Mechanics, or laborers' wives who go out street-selling while their husbands are at work, in order to swell the family income; (3) The widows of former street-sellers; (4) Single women. Trades that necessitate pushing a heavy barrow, and, indeed, most of those involving the carrying of heavy weights, are in the hands of men, and also the more skilled trades, such as the selling of books or stationery,--in short, the business in which patter is demanded. Occasionally there is a partnership, and man and wife carry on the same trade, she aiding him with his barrow, but for the most part they choose different occupations. In the case of one man in Whitechapel who worked for a sweater; the wife sold water-cresses morning and evening, while the wife of a bobbin turner had taken to small-wares, shoe-laces, etc. as a help. Both tailor and turner declared that, if things went on as they were at present, they should take to the streets also; for earnings were less and less, and they were "treated like dirt, and worse." The women whose trades have been noted are dealers in fish, shrimps, and winkles, and sometimes oysters, fruit, and vegetables,--fruit predominating, orange-women and girls being as much a feature of London street life as in the days of pretty Nelly Gwynne. Sheep-trotters, too, are given over to women, with rice-milk, which is a favorite street-dainty, requiring a good deal of preparation; they sell curds and whey, and now and then, though very seldom, they have a coffee or elder-wine stand, the latter being sold hot and spiced, as a preventive of rheumatism and chill. To these sales they add fire-screens and ornaments (the English grate in summer being filled with every order of paper ornamentation), laces, millinery, cut flowers, boot and corset laces, and small-wares of every description, including wash-leathers, dressed and undressed dolls, and every variety of knitted articles, mittens, cuffs, socks, etc. It will be seen that the range in street trades is far wider for the English than for the American woman, to whom it would almost never occur as a possible means of livelihood. But London holds several thousands of these women, a large proportion Irish, it is true, with a mixture of other nationalities, but English still predominating. The Irishwoman is more fluent, and can even patter in slight degree, but has less intelligence, and confines herself to the lower order of trades. For both Irish and English there is the same deep-seated horror of the workhouse. All winter a young Irishwoman has sat at the corner of a little street opening from the Commercial Road, a basket of apples at her side, and her thin garments no protection against the fearful chill of fog and mist. She had come to London, hoping to find a brother and go over with him to America; but no trace of him could be discovered, and so she borrowed a shilling and became an apple-seller. "God knows," she said, "I'd be betther off in the house [workhouse], for it's half dead I am entirely; but I'd rather live on twopence a day than come to that." Practically she was living on very little more. An aunt, also a street-seller, had taken her in. She rented a small room near by, for which they paid two shillings a week, their whole expenses averaging sixpence each a day. Naturally they were half starved; but they preferred this to "the house," and no one who has examined these retreats can blame them. It is the poor who chiefly patronize these street-sellers, and they swarm where the poor are massed. The "Borough," on the Surrey side of the river, with its innumerable little streets and lanes, each more wretched than the last, has hundreds of them, no less than the better-known East End. Leather Lane, one of the most crowded and distinctive of the quarters of the poor, though comparatively little known, has also its network of alleys and courts opening from it, and is one of the most crowded markets in the city, rivalling even Petticoat Lane. The latter, whose time-honored name has foolishly been changed to Middlesex Street, is an old-clothes market, and presents one of the most extraordinary sights in London; but the trade is chiefly in the hands of men, though their wives usually act as assistants and determine the quality of a garment till the masculine sense has been educated up to the proper point. Any very small, very old, and very dirty street at any point has its proportion of street-sellers, whose dark, grimy, comfortless rooms are their refuge at night. Other rooms of a better order are occupied, it may be, by some relative or child to be supported; and higher still rank those that are counted homes, where husband and wife meet when the day's work is done. Like the needlewomen, the diet of the majority is meagre and poor to a degree. The Irishwoman is much more ready to try to make the meal hot and relishable than the Englishwoman, though even she confines herself to cheap fish and potatoes, herring or plaice at two a penny. A quiet, very respectable looking woman, the widow of a coster, sold cakes of blacking and small-wares, and gave her view of this phase of the question. "It's cheaper, their way of doing. Oh, yes, but not so livening. I could live cheaper on fish and potatoes than tea and bread and butter; but that ain't it. They're more trouble, an' when you've been on your legs all day, an' get to your bit of a home for a cup of tea, you want a bit of rest, and you can't be cooking and fussing with fish. There's always a neighbor to give you a jug of boiling water, if you've no time for fire, or it's summer, and tea livens you up a bit where a herring won't. I take mine without milk, and like it better without, and often I don't have butter on me bread. But I get along, and, please God, I'll be able to keep out of the 'house' to the end." The married women fare better. The men decline to be put off with bread and tea, and the cook-shops and cheap markets help them to what they call good living. They buy "good block ornaments," that is, small pieces of meat, discolored but not dirty nor tainted, which are set out for sale on the butcher's block. Tripe and cowheel are regarded as dainties, and there is the whole range of mysterious English preparations of questionable meat, from sausage and polonies to saveloys and cheap pies. Soup can be had, pea or eel, at two or three pence a pint, and beer, an essential to most of them, is "threepence a pot [quart] in your own jugs." A savory dinner or supper is, therefore, an easy matter, and the English worker fares better in this respect than the American, for whom there is much less provision in the way of cheap food and cook-shops. In fact the last are almost unknown with us, the cheap restaurant by no means taking their place. Even with bread and tea alone, there is a good deal more nourishment, since English bread is never allowed to rise to the over-lightness which appears an essential to the American buyer. The law with English breads and cakes of whatever nature appears to be to work in all the flour the dough can hold, and pudding must be a slab, and bread compact and dense to satisfy the English palate. Dripping is the substitute for butter, and the children eat the slice of bread and dripping contentedly. Fat of any sort is in demand, the piercing rawness of an English winter seeming to call for heating food no less than that of the Esquimaux for its rations of blubber and tallow. But the majority of the women leave dripping for the children, and if a scrap of butter cannot be had, rest contented with bread and tea, and an occasional pint of beer. For workingwomen as a class, however, there is much less indulgence in this than is supposed. To the men it is as essential as the daily meals, and the women regard it in the same way. "We do well enough with our tea, but a man must have his pint," they say; and this principle is applied to the children, the girls standing by while the boys take their turn at the "pot of mild." This for the best order of workers. Below this line are all grades of indulgence ending with the woman who earns just enough for the measure of gin that will give her a day or an hour of unconsciousness and freedom from any human claim. But the pressure of numbers and of competing workers compels soberness, the steadiest and most capable being barely able to secure subsistence, while below them is every conceivable phase of want and struggle, more sharply defined and with less possibility of remedy than anything found in the approximate conditions on American soil. CHAPTER XI. LONDON SHOP-GIRLS. "It's the ladies that's in the way, mum. Once get a lady to think that a girl isn't idling because she's sitting down, and the battle's won. But a lady comes into a shop blacker 'n midnight if every soul in it isn't on their feet and springing to serve her. I've got seats, but, bless you! my trade 'd be ruined if the girls used them much. 'Tisn't that I'm not willing, and me brother as well. It's the customers, the lady customers, that wouldn't stand it. Its them that you've got to talk to." Once more it is a woman who is apparently woman's worst enemy, and London sins far more heavily in this respect than New York, and for a very obvious reason, that of sharply defined lines of caste, and the necessity of emphasizing them felt by all whose position does not speak for itself. A "born lady" on entering a shop where women clerks were sitting, might realize that from eleven to fourteen hours' service daily might well be punctuated by a few moments on the bits of board pushed in between boxes, which do duty for seats, and be glad that an opportunity had been improved. Not so the wife of the prosperous butcher or baker or candlestick maker, rejoicing, it may be, in the first appearance in plush and silk, and bent upon making it as impressive as possible. To her, obsequiousness is the first essential of any dealing with the order from which she is emerging; and her custom will go to the shop where its outward tokens are most profuse. A clerk found sitting is simply embodied impertinence, and the floor manager who allows it an offender against every law of propriety; and thus it happens that seats are slipped out of sight, and exhausted women smile and ask, as the purchase is made, "And what is the next pleasure?" in a tone that makes the American hearer cringe for the abject humility that is the first condition of success as seller. Even the best shops are not exempt from this, and as one passes from west to east the ratio increases, culminating in the oily glibness of the bargain-loving Jew, and his no less bargain-loving London brother of Whitechapel, or any other district unknown to fashion. This, however, is a merely outward phase. The actual wrongs of the system lie deeper, but are soon as apparent. For the shop-girl, as for the needlewoman or general worker of any description whatsoever, over-time is the standing difficulty, and a grievance almost impossible to redress. That an act of parliament forbids the employment of any young person under eighteen more than eleven hours a day, makes small difference. Inspectors cannot be everywhere at once, and violations are the rule. In fact, the law is a dead letter, and the employer who finds himself suddenly arraigned for violation is as indignant as if no responsibility rested upon him. A committee has for many months been doing self-elected work in this direction, registering the names of shops where over-hours are demanded, informing the clerks of the law and its bearings, and urging them to make formal complaint. The same difficulty confronts them here as in the attempts to reduce over-time for tailoresses and general needlewomen--the fear of the workers themselves that any complaint will involve the losing of the situation; and thus silent submission is the rule for all, any revolt bringing upon them instant discharge. In a prolonged inquiry into the condition of shop-girls in both the West and East End, the needs to be met first of all summed themselves up in four: (1) more seats and far more liberty in the use of them; (2) better arrangements for midday dinner--on the premises if possible, the girls now losing much of the hour in a hurried rush to the nearest eatinghouse; (3) with this, some regularity as to time for dinner, this being left at present to the caprice of the manager, who both delays and shortens time; (4) much greater care in the selection of managers. A fifth point might well be added, that of a free afternoon each week. This has been given by a few London firms, and has worked well in the added efficiency and interest of the girls, but by the majority, is regarded as a wild and very useless innovation. The first point is often considered as settled, yet for both sides of the sea is actually in much the same case. Seats are kept out of sight, and for the majority of both sellers and buyers, there is the smallest comprehension of the strain of continuous standing, or its final effect. It is the popular conviction that women "get used to it," and to a certain extent this is true, the strong and robust adjusting themselves to the conditions required. But the majority must spend the larger portion of the week's earnings on the neat clothing required by the position, and to accomplish this they go underfed to a degree that is half starvation. It is this latter division of shop girls who suffer, not only from varicose veins brought on by long standing, but from many other diseases, the result of the same cause; yet, till women, who come as purchasers to the shops where women are employed, realize and remember this, reform under this head is practically impossible. The employer knows that, even if a few protest against the custom, his trade would suffer were it done away with; and thus buyer and seller form a combination against which revolt is impossible. The inquiry brought one fact to light, which, so far as I know, has as yet no counterpart in the United States, and this is, that in certain West End shops every girl must conform to a uniform size of waist, this varying from eighteen to twenty inches, but never above twenty. Tall or short, fat or lean, Nature must stand aside, and the hour-glass serve as model, the results simply adding one more factor of destruction to the number already ranged against the girl. The matter of regular meals has also far less attention than is necessary. Dinner is a "movable feast." The girls are allowed to go out only two or three at once, and often it is three o'clock or even later before some have broken the fast. Though there is often ample room for tea and coffee urns, the suggestion seems to be regarded as a dangerous innovation, holding under the innocent seeming, a possible social revolution. The thing that hath been shall be, and the obstinate hide-bound conservatism of the English shop-keeper is beyond belief till experience has made it certain. A few employers consider this matter. The majority ignore it as beneath consideration. The question of suitable floor managers is really the comprehensive one, including almost every evil and every good that can come to the shop girl, whether in the East or West End. Here, as with us, the girl is absolutely in his power. He governs the whole system of fines, one uncomfortable but necessary feature of any large establishment, and injustice in these can have fullest possible play. "The fines are an awful nuisance, that they are," said a bright-faced girl in one of the best-known shops of London--a great bazar, much like Macy's. "But then it all depends on the manager. Some of them are real nasty, you know, and if they happen not to like a girl, they stick on fines just to spite her. You see we're in their power, and some of them just love to show it and bully the girls no end. And worse than that, they're impudent too if a girl is pretty, and often she doesn't dare complain, for fear of losing the place, and he has it all his own way. This department's got a very fair manager, and we all like him. He's careful about fines, and plans about our dinners and all that, so we're better off than most. The manager does what he pleases everywhere." These facts are for the West End, where dealings are nominally fair, and where wages may, in some exceptional case, run as high as eighteen shillings or even a pound a week. But the average falls far below this, from ten to fourteen being the usual figures, while seven and eight may be the sum. This, for the girl who lives at home, represents dress and pocket-money, but the great majority must support themselves entirely. We have already seen what this sum can do for the shirt-maker and general needlewoman, and it is easy to judge how the girl fares for whom the weekly wage is less. In the East End it falls sometimes as low as three shillings and sixpence (84c.). The girls club together, huddling in small back rooms, and spending all that can be saved on dress. Naturally, unless with exceptionally keen consciences, they find what is called "sin" an easier fact than starvation; and so the story goes on, and out of greed is born the misery, which, at last, compels greed to heavier poor rates, and thus an approximation to the distribution of the profit which should have been the worker's. Here, as in all cities, the place seems to beckon every girl ambitious of something beyond domestic service. There are cheap amusements, "penny-gaffs" and the like, the "penny-gaff" being the equivalent of our dime museum. There is the companionship of the fellow-worker; the late going home through brightly-lighted streets, and the crowding throng of people,--all that makes the alleviation of the East End life; and there is, too, the chance, always possible, of a lover and a husband, perhaps a grade above, or many grades above, their beginning or their present lives. This alone is impulse and hope. It is much the same story for both sides of the sea; and here, as in most cases where woman's work is involved, it is with women that any change lies, and from their efforts that something better must come. CHAPTER XII. FROM COVENT GARDEN TO THE EEL-SOUP MAN IN THE BOROUGH. Now and then, in the long search into the underlying causes of effects which are plain to all men's eyes, one pauses till the rush of impressions has ceased, and it is possible again to ignore this many-sided, demanding London, which makes a claim unknown to any other city of the earth save Rome. But there is a certain justification in lingering at points where women and children congregate, since their life also is part of the quest, and nowhere can it better be seen than in and about Covent Garden Market,--a thousand thoughts arising as the old square is entered from whatever point. It is not alone the first days of the pilgrim's wanderings in London that are filled with the curious sense of home coming that makes up the consciousness of many an American. It is as if an old story were told again, and the heir, stolen in childhood, returned, unrecognized by those about him, but recalling with more and more freshness and certainty the scenes of which he was once a part. The years slip away. Two hundred and more of them lie between, it is true; but not two hundred nor ten times two hundred can blot out the lines of a record in which the struggle and the hope of all English-speaking people was one. For past or present alike, London stands as the fountain-head; and thus, whatever pain may come from the oppressive sense of crowded, swarming life pent up in these dull gray walls, whatever conviction that such a monster mass of human energy and human pain needs diffusion and not concentration, London holds and will hold a fascination that is quite apart from any outward aspect. To go to a point determined upon beforehand is good. To lose oneself in the labyrinth of lanes and alleys and come suddenly upon something quite as desirable, is even better; and this losing is as inevitable as the finding also becomes. The first perplexity arises from the fact that a London street is "everything by turns and nothing long," and that a solitary block of buildings owns often a name as long as itself. The line of street which, on the map, appears continuous, gives a dozen changes to the mile, and the pilgrim discovers quickly that he is always somewhere else than at or on the point determined upon. Then the temptation to add to this complication by sudden excursions into shadowy courts and dark little passages is irresistible, not to mention the desire, equally pressing, of discovering at once if Violet Lane and Hop Vine Alley and Myrtle Court have really any relation to their names, or are simply the reaching out of their inhabitants for some touch of Nature's benefactions. Violet Lane may have had its hedgerows and violets in a day long dead, precisely as hop vines may have flung their pale green bells over cottage paling, for both are far outside the old city limits; but to-day they are simply the narrowest of passages between the grimiest of buildings, given over to trade in its most sordid form, with never a green leaf even to recall the country hedgerows long since only memory. It is a matter of no surprise, then, to find that Covent Garden holds no hint of its past save in name, though from the noisy Strand one has passed into so many sheltered, quiet nooks unknown to nine tenths of the hurrying throng in that great artery of London, that one half expects to see the green trees and the box-bordered alleys of the old garden where the monks once walked. Far back in the very beginning of the thirteenth century it was the convent garden of Westminster, and its choice fruits and flowers rejoiced the soul of the growers, who planted and pruned with small thought of what the centuries were to bring. Through all chances and changes it remained a garden up to 1621, when much of the original ground had been swallowed up by royal grants, and one duke and another had built his town-house amid the spreading trees; for this "amorous and herbivorous parish," as Sidney Smith calls it, was one of the most fashionable quarters of London. The Stuart kings and their courts delighted in it, and the square was filled with houses designed by Inigo Jones, the north and east side of the market having an arcade called the "Portico Walk," but soon changed to the name which it has long borne,--the "Piazza." The market went on behind these pillars, but year by year, as London grew, pushed itself toward the centre of the square, till now not a foot of vacant space remains. At one of its stalls may still be found an ancient marketman, whose name, Anthony Piazza, is a memory of a parish custom which named after this favorite walk many of the foundling children born in the parish. There is nothing more curious in all London than the transformations known to this once quiet spot. Drury Lane is close at hand, and Covent Garden Theatre is as well known as the market itself. The convent has become a play-house. "Monks and nuns turn actors and actresses. The garden, formal and quiet, where a salad was cut for a lady abbess, and flowers were gathered to adorn images, becomes a market, noisy and full of life, distributing its thousands of fruits and flowers to a vicious metropolis." Two quaint old inns are still here; two great national theatres, and a churchyard full of mouldy but still famous celebrities,--the church itself, bare and big, rising above them. In the days of the Stuarts, people prayed to be buried here hardly less than in Westminster Abbey, and the lover of epitaph and monument will find occupation for many an hour. This strange, squat old building, under the shadow of the church, is the market, its hundred columns and chapel-looking fronts always knee-deep and more in baskets and fruits and vegetables, while its air still seems to breathe of old books, old painters, and old authors. "Night and morning are at meeting," for Covent Garden makes small distinction between the two, and whether it is a late supper or an early breakfast that the coffee-rooms and stalls are furnishing, can hardly be determined by one who has elected to know how the market receives and how it distributes its supplies. In November fog and mist, or the blackness of early winter, with snow on the ground, or cold rain falling, resolution is needed for such an expedition, and still more, if one would see all that the deep night hides, and that comes to light as the dawn struggles through. This business of feeding a city of four million people seems the simplest and most natural of occupations; but the facts involved are staggering, not alone in the mere matter of quantities and the amazement at the first sight of them, but in the thousands of lives tangled with them. Quantity is the first impression. Every cellar runs over with green stuff, mountains of which come in on enormous wagons and fill up all spaces left vacant, heaving masses of basket stumbling from other wagons and filling with instant celerity. In the great vans pour, from every market garden and outlying district of London, from all England, from the United Kingdom, from all the world, literally; for it is soon discovered that these enormous vehicles on high springs and with immense wheels, drawn by Normandy horses of size and strength to match, are chiefly from the railway stations, and that the drivers, who seem to be built on the same plan as the horses and vans, have big limbs and big voices and a high color, and that the bulging pockets of their velveteen suits show invoices and receipt books. Not alone from railway stations and trains, from which tons of cabbages, carrots, onions, and all the vegetable tribe issue, but from the docks where steamers from Rotterdam and Antwerp and India and America, and all that lie between, come the contributions, ranged presently in due order in stall and arcade. There is no hint of anything grosser than the great cabbages, which appear to be London's favorite vegetable. Meat has its place at Smithfield, and fish at Billingsgate, but the old garden is, in one sense, true to its name, and gives us only the kindly fruits of the earth, with their transformations into butter and cheese. In the central arcade fruit has the honors, and no prettier picture can well be imagined. For once under these gray skies there is a sense of color and light, and there is no surprise in hearing that Turner came here to study both, and that even the artist of to-day does not disdain the same method. It is the flower-market, however, to which one turns with a certainty gained at once that no disappointment follows intimate acquaintance with English flowers. There are exotics for those who will, but it is not with them that one lingers. It is to the hundreds upon hundreds of flower-pots, in which grow roses and geraniums and mignonette and a score with old-fashioned but forever beloved names. There are great bunches of mignonette for a penny, and lesser bunches of sweet odors for the same coin, while the violets have rows of baskets to themselves, as indeed they need, for scores of buyers flock about them,--little buyers chiefly, with tangled hair and bare feet and the purchase-money tied in some corner of their rags; for they buy to sell again, and having tramped miles it may be to this fountain-head, will tramp other miles before night comes, making their way into court and alley and under sunless doorways, crying "Violets! sweet violets!" as they were cried in Herrick's time. A ha'penny will buy one of the tiny bunches which they have made up with swift fingers, and they are bought even by the poorest; how, heaven only knows. But, in cracked jug or battered tin, the bunch of violets sweetens the foul air, or the bit of mignonette grows and even thrives, where human kind cannot. So, though Covent Garden has in winter "flowers at guineas apiece, pineapples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a quart,"--these for the rich only,--it has also its possibilities for the poor. They throng about it at all times, for there is always a chance of some stray orange or apple or rejected vegetable that will help out a meal. They throng above all in these terrible days when the "unemployed" are huddling under arches and in dark places where they lay their homeless heads, and where, in the hours between night and morning, the cocoa-rooms open for the hungry drivers of the big vans, who pour down great mugs of coffee and cocoa, and make away with mountains of bread and butter. A penny gives a small mug of cocoa and a slice of bread and butter, and the owner of a penny is rich. Often it is shared, and the sharer, half drunk still, it may be, and foul with the mud and refuse into which he crawled, can hardly be known as human, save for this one gleam of something beyond the human. Gaunt forms barely covered with rags, hollow eyes fierce with hunger, meet one at every turn in this early morning; and for many there is not even the penny, and they wait, sometimes with appeal, but as often silently, the chance gift of the buyer. Food for all the world, it would seem, and yet London is not fed; and having once looked upon these waifs that are floated against the pillars of the old market, one fancies almost a curse on the piles of food that is not for them save as charity gives it, and the flowers that even on graves will never be theirs. Men and women huddle here, and under the arches, children skulk away like young rats, feeding on offal, lying close in dark corners for warmth, and hunted about also like rats. It is a poverty desperate and horrible beyond that that any other civilized city can show; and who shall say who is responsible, or what the end will be? So the question lingers with one, as the market is left, and one passes on and out to the Strand and its motley stream of life, lingering through Fleet Street and the winding ways into the City, past St. Paul's, and still on till London Bridge is reached and the Borough is near. Fare as one may, north or south, west or east, there is no escape from the sullen roar of the great city, a roar like the beat of a stormy sea against cliffs. An hour and more ago, that perplexed and baffled luminary the sun has struggled up through strange shapes and hues of morning cloud, and for a few minutes asserted his right to rule. But the gleam of gold and crimson brought with him has given way to the grays and black which make up chiefly what the Londoners call sky, and over London Bridge one passes on into the dim grayness merging into something darker and more cheerless. On the Borough Road there should be some escape,--that Borough Road on which the Canterbury Pilgrims rode out on a morning less complicated, it is certain, by fog and mist and smoke and soot than mornings that dawn for this generation. Every foot of the way is history; the old Tower at one's back, and the past as alive as the present. "Merrie England" was at its best, they say, when the pages we know were making; but here as elsewhere, the name is a tradition, belied by every fact of the present. The old inns along the way still hold their promise of good cheer, and the great kitchens and tap-rooms have seen wild revelry enough; but even for them has been the sight of political or other martyr done to death in their court-yards, while no foot of playground, no matter how much the people's own, but has been steeped in blood and watered with tears of English matron and maid. If "Merrie England" deserved its name, it must have come from a determination as fixed as Mark Tapley's, to be jolly under any and all circumstances, and certainly circumstances have done their best to favor such resolution. The peasant of the past, usually represented as dancing heavily about a Maypole, or gazing contentedly at some procession of his lords and masters as it swept by, has no counterpart to-day, nor will his like come again. For here about the old Borough, where every stone means history and the "making of the English people," there are faces of all types that England holds, but no face yet seen carries any sense of merriment, or any good thing that might bear its name. It is the burden of living that looks from dull eyes and stolid faces, and a hopelessness, unconscious it may be but always apparent, that better things may come. The typical Englishman, as we know him, has but occasional place, and the mass, hurrying to and fro in the midst of this roar of traffic, are thin and eager and restless of countenance as any crowd of Americans in the same type of surroundings. Innumerable little streets, each dingier and more sordid than the last, open on either side. Hot coffee and cocoa cans are at every corner, their shining brass presided over by men chiefly. Here, as throughout East London, sellers of every sort of eatable and drinkable thing wander up and down. Paris is credited with living most of its life under all men's eyes, and London certainly may share this reputation as far as eating goes. In fact, working London, taking the poorest class both in pay and rank, has small space at home for much cookery, and finds more satisfaction in the flavor of food prepared outside. The throats, tanned and parched by much beer, are sensitive only to something with the most distinct and defined taste of its own; and so it is that whelks and winkles and mussels and all forms of fish and flesh, that are to the American uneatably strong and unpleasant, make the luxuries of the English poor. They are conservative, also, like all the poor, and prefer old acquaintances to new; and the costers and sellers of all sorts realize this, and seldom go beyond an established list. It is always "somethin' 'ot" that the workman craves; and small wonder, when one has once tested London climate, and found that, nine months out of twelve, fog and mist creep chill into bones and marrow, and that a fire is comfortable even in July. November accents this fact sharply, and by November the pea-soup and eel-soup men are at their posts, and about market and dock, and in lane and alley, the trade is brisk. Near Petticoat Lane, one of the oddest of London's odd corners, small newsboys rush up and take a cupful as critically as I have seen them take waffles from the old women purveyors of these delicacies about City Hall Park and Park Row, while hungry costers and workmen appear to find it the most satisfactory of meals. One must have watched the eel baskets at Billingsgate, and then read the annual consumption, before it is possible to understand how street after street has its eel-pie house, and how the stacks of small pies in the windows are always disappearing and always being renewed. It would seem with eel pies as with oysters, of which Sam Weller stated his conviction that the surprising number of shops and stalls came from the fact that the moment a man found himself in difficulties he "rushed out and ate oysters in reg'lar desperation." It is certain that some of the eaters look desperate enough; but the seller is a middle-aged, quiet-looking man, who eyes his customers sharply, but serves them with generous cupfuls. The sharpness is evidently acquired, and not native, and he has need of it, the London newsboys, who are his best patrons, being ready to drive a bargain as keen as their fellows on the other side of the sea. His stand is opposite a cat's-meat market, a sausage shop in significant proximity, and he endures much chaffing as to the make-up of his pea soup, which he sells in its season. But it is eels for which the demand is heaviest and always certain, and the eel-soup man's day begins early and ends late, on Saturdays lasting well into Sunday morning. He is prosperous as such business goes, and buys four "draughts" of eels on a Friday for the Saturday's work, a "draught" being twenty pounds, while now and then he has been known to get rid of a hundred pounds. This stall, to which the newsboys flock as being more "stylish" than most of its kind, is fitted with a cast-iron fireplace holding two large kettles of four or five gallon capacity. A dozen pint bowls, or basins as the Englishman prefers to call them, and an equal number of half-pint cups, with spoons for all, constitute the outfit; and even for the poorest establishment of the sort, a capital of not less than a pound is required. This stall has four lamps with "Hot Eels" painted on them, and one side of it is given to whelks, which are boiled at home and always eaten cold with abundance of vinegar, of which the newsboy is prodigal. At times fried fish are added to the stock, but eels lead, and mean the largest profit on the amount invested. Dutch eels are preferred, and the large buyer likes to go directly to the eel boats at the Billingsgate Wharf and buy the squirming draughts, fresh from the tanks in which they have been brought. To dress and prepare a draught takes about three hours, and the daughter of the stall-owner stands at one side engaged in this operation, cleaning, washing, and cutting up the eels into small pieces from half an inch to an inch long. These are boiled, the liquor being made smooth and thick with flour, and flavored with chopped parsley and mixed spices, principally allspice. For half a penny, from five to seven pieces may be had, the cup being then filled up with the liquor, to which the buyer is allowed to add vinegar at discretion. There is a tradition of one customer so partial to hot eels that he used to come twice a day and take eight cupfuls a day, four at noon and four as a night-cap. The hot-eel season ends with early autumn, and pea soup takes its place, though a small proportion of eels is always to be had. Split peas, celery, and beef bones are needed for this, and it is here that the cat's-meat man is supposed to be an active partner. In any case the smell is savory, and the hot steam a constant invitation to the shivering passers-by. This man has no cry of "Hot Eels!" like many of the sellers. "I touches up people's noses; 't ain't their heyes or their hears I'm hafter," he says, though the neat stall makes its own claim on the "heyes." In another alley is another pea-soup man, one-legged, but not at all depressed by this or any other circumstance of fate. He makes, or his wife makes, the pea soup at home, and he keeps it hot by means of a charcoal fire in two old tin saucepans. "Hard work?" he says. "You wouldn't think so if you'd been on your back seven months and four days in Middlesex Orspital. I was a coal heaver, and going along easy and natural over the plank from one barge to another, and there come the swell from some steamers and throwed up the plank and chucked me off, and I broke my knee against the barge. It's bad now. I'd ought to 'ad it hoff, an' so the surgeons said; but I wouldn't, an' me wife wouldn't, and the bone keeps workin' out, and I've 'ad nineteen months all told in the 'orspital, and Lord knows how me wife and the young uns got on. I was bad enough off, I was, till a neighbor o' mine, a master butcher, told me there was a man up in Clare Market, makin' a fortune at hot eels and pea soup, and he lent me ten shillings to start in that line. He and me wife's the best friends I've ever had in the world; for I've no memory of a mother, and me father died at sea. My oldest daughter, she's a good un, goes for the eels and cuts 'em up, and she an' me wife does all the hard work. I've only to sit at the stall and sell, and they do make 'em tasty. There's no better. But we're hard up. I'd do better if I'd a little more money to buy with. I can't get a draught like some of the men, and them that gets by the quantity can give more. The boys tells me there's one man gives 'em as much as eight pieces; that's what they calls a lumping ha'p'worth. And the liquor's richer when you boils up so many eels. What's my tin pot ag'in' his five-gallon one? There's even some that boils the 'eads, and sells 'em for a farthing a cupful; but I've not come to that. But we're badly off. The missus has a pair o' shoes, and she offs with 'em when my daughter goes to market, and my boy the youngest 's got no shoes; but we do very well, and would do better, only the cheap pie shop takes off a lot o' trade. I wouldn't eat them pies. It's the dead eels that goes into 'em, and we that handles eels knows well enough that they're rank poison if they ain't cut up alive, and the flesh of 'em squirming still when they goes into the boiling water. Them pies is uncertain, anyway, whatever kind you buy. I've seen a man get off a lot a week old, just with the dodge of hot spiced gravy poured out of an oil can into a hole in the lid, and that gravy no more'n a little brown flour and water; but the spice did it. The cat's-meat men knows; oh, yes! they knows what becomes of what's left when Saturday night comes, though I've naught to say ag'in' the cat's-meat men, for it's a respectable business enough. "I've thought of other ways. There's the baked-potato men, but the 'ansome can and fixin's for keeping 'em 'ot is what costs, you see. Trotters is profitable, too, if you've a start, that is, though it's women mostly that 'andles trotters, blest if I know why! I've a cousin in the boiled pudding business--meat puddings and fruit, too;--but it's all going out, along of the bakers that don't give poor folks a chance. They has their big coppers, and boils up their puddings by the 'undred; but I dare say there's no more need o' street-sellers, for folks go to shops for most things now. She's in Leather Lane, this cousin o' mine, and makes plum-duff as isn't to be beat; but she sells Saturday nights mostly, and for Sunday dinners. Ginger nuts goes off well, but there again the shops 'as you, and unless you can make a great show, with brass things shining to put your eyes out, and a stall that looks as well as a shop, you're nowhere. There's no chance for the poor anyhow, it seems to me; for even if you get a start, there's always some one with more money to do the thing better, and so take the bread out of your mouth. But 'better' 's only more show often, and me wife can't be beat for tastiness, whether it's hot eels or pea soup, and I'll say that long as I stand." So many small trades have been ruined by the larger shops taking them up, that the street-seller's case becomes daily a more complicated one, and the making a living by old-fashioned and time-honored methods almost impossible. It is all part of the general problem of the day, and the street-sellers, whether costers or those of lower degree, look forward apprehensively to changes which seem on the way, and puzzle their untaught minds as to why each avenue of livelihood seems more and more barred against them. For the poorest there seems only a helpless, dumb acquiescence in the order of things which they are powerless to change; but the looker-on, who watches the mass of misery crowding London streets or hiding away in attic and cellar, knows that out of such conditions sudden fury and revolt is born, and that, if the prosperous will not heed and help while they may, the time comes when help will be with no choice of theirs. It is plain that even the most conservative begin to feel this, and effort constantly takes more practical form; but this is but the beginning of what must be,--the inauguration of a social revolution in ideas, and one to which all civilization must come. CHAPTER XIII. WOMEN IN GENERAL TRADES. As investigation progresses, it becomes at times a question as to which of two great factors must dominate the present status of women as workers; competition, which blinds the eyes to anything but the surest way of obtaining the proper per cent, or the inherited Anglo-Saxon brutality, which, in its lowest form of manifestation, makes the English wife-beater. It is certain that the English workingwoman has not only the disabilities which her American sister also faces,--some inherent in herself, and as many arising from the press of the present system,--but added to this the apparent incapacity of the employer to see that they have rights of any description whatsoever. Even the factory act and the various attempts to legislate in behalf of women and child workers strikes the average employer as a gross interference with his constitutional rights. Where he can he evades. Where he cannot he is apt to grow purple over the impertinence of meddling reformers who cannot let well-enough alone. Such a representative of one class of English employers is to be found in a little street, not a stone's throw from Fleet Street, the great newspaper centre, where all day long one meets authors, editors, and journalists of every degree. Toward eight in the morning, as at the same hour in the evening, another crowd is to be seen, made up of hundreds upon hundreds of girls hurrying to the countless printing establishments of every grade, which are to be found in every street and court opening from or near Fleet Street. It is not newspaper interests alone that are represented there. The Temple, Inner, Outer, and Middle, with the magnificent group of buildings, also a part of the Temple's workings--the new courts of law, have each and all their quota of law printing, and a throng made up of every order of ability, from the reader of Greek proof down to the folder of Mother Siegel's Almanac, hurries through Fleet Street to the day's work. In a building devoted to the printing and sending out of a popular weekly of the cheaper order, the lower rooms met all requisitions as to space and proper ventilation. "We have nothing to hide," said the manager, "nothing at all. You may go from top to bottom if you will." This was said at what appeared to be the end of an hour or two of going from room to room, watching the girls at work at the multitudinous phases involved, and wondering how energy enough remained after twelve hours of it, for getting home. A flight of dark little stairs led up to a region even darker, and he changed color as we turned toward them. "This is all temporary," he said hastily. "We are very much crowded for space, and we are going to move soon. We do the best we can in the mean time. It's only temporary." This was the reason for the darkness. Stumbling up the open stairs, hardly more than a ladder, one came into a half story added to the original building, and so low that the manager bowed his head as he entered; nor was there any point at which he could stand freely upright, this well-fed Englishman nearly six feet tall. For the girls there was no such difficulty, and nearly two hundred were packed into the space, in which folding and stitching machines ran by steam, while at long tables other branches of the same work were going on by hand. The noise and the heat from gas-jets, steam, and the crowd of workers made the place hideous. The girls themselves appeared in no worse condition than many others seen that day, but were all alike, pale and anemic. Their hours were from 8 A. M. to 8 P. M., with an hour for dinner, usually from one to two. The law also allows half an hour for tea, but in all cases investigated, this time is docked if the girl takes it. Cheap "cocoa rooms" are all about, where a cup of tea or cocoa and a bun may be had for twopence; but even this is a heavy item to a girl who earns never more than ten shillings ($2.50) a week, and as often from four to seven or eight. No arrangement for making tea on the premises was to be found here or anywhere. "We mean to have a room," the employers said, "but we have so many expenses attendant on the growing business that there doesn't seem any chance yet." This employer brought his wage-book forward and showed with pride that several of his girls earned a pound a week ($5.00). But on turning back some pages, the record showed only fourteen and sixteen shillings for these same names, and after a pause the manager admitted that the pound had been earned by adding night work. This question of whether night work is ever done had been a most difficult one to determine. The girls themselves declared that it often was, and that they liked it because they got three shillings and their breakfast; but the managers had in more than one case denied the charge with fury. "It's over-work," the present one said, his eyes on the rows of figures. "When?" asked my companion quietly, and he burst into a laugh. "You've got me this time," he said. "You've given your word not to mention names, so I don't mind telling you. It's like this. There's a new firm to be floated, and they want two hundred thousand circulars on two days' notice. Of course it has to be night-work, and we put it through, but we give the girls time for supper, and provide a good breakfast, and there's hundreds waiting for the chance. But you've seen for yourselves. Some of them make a pound a week. What in reason does a woman want of more than a pound a week?" This remark is the stereotyped one of quite two-thirds the employers, whether men or women. The old delusion still holds that a man works for others, a woman solely for herself, and although each woman should appear with those dependent upon her in entire or partial degree arranged in line, it would make no difference in the conviction. It is quite true that many married women work for pocket-money, and having homes, can afford to underbid legitimate workers. But they are the smallest proportion of this vast army of London toilers, whose pitiful wage is earned by a day's labor which happily has no counterpart in length with us, save among the lowest grade of needlewomen. In the case under present consideration pay for over-time was allowed at the rate of fourpence an hour and a penny extra. If late five minutes the workwoman is fined twopence, and if not there by nine is "drilled," that is, sent away, or kept waiting near until two, when she goes on for half a day. If tardy, as must often happen with fogs and other causes, she is often "drilled" for a week, though "drilling" in this trade is used more often with men than with women, who are less liable to irregularities caused by drink. In some establishments the bait of sixpence a week for good conduct is offered, but this is deducted on the faintest pretext, and the worker fined as well, for any violation of regulations tacit or written. In another establishment piece-work alone was done, a popular almanac being folded at fourpence a thousand sheets. Railway tickets brought in from eight to ten shillings a week, and prize packages of stationery, fourpence a score, the folding and packing of prize doubling the length of time required and thus lessening wages in the same ratio. I have given phases of this one trade in detail, because the same general rules govern all. The confectionery workers' wages are at about the same rate, although a pound a week is almost unknown, the girls making from three shillings and sixpence (84c.) to fourteen and sixteen shillings weekly. A large "butter-scotch" factory pays these rates and allows the weekly good-conduct sixpence which, however, few succeed in earning. This factory is managed by two brothers who take alternate weeks, and the younger one exacts from the girls an hour more a day than the older one. Here the factory act applies, and inspectors appear periodically; but this does not hinder the carrying out of individual theories as to what constitutes a day. If five minutes late, sevenpence is deducted from the week's wages, which begin at three and sixpence and ascend to nine, the latter price being the utmost to be earned in this branch of the trade. In the cocoa rooms which are to be found everywhere in London where business of any sort is carried on, the pay ranges from ten to twelve shillings a week. The work is hard and incessant, although hours are often shorter. In both confectionery factories and the majority of factory trades, an hour is allowed for dinner, but the tea half hour refused or deducted from time. London in this respect, and indeed in most points affecting the comfort and well-being of operatives of every class, is far behind countries, the great manufacturing cities of which are doing much to lighten oppressive conditions and give some possibility of relaxation and improvement. Some of the best reforms in a factory life have begun in England, and it is thus all the more puzzling to find that indifference, often to a brutal degree, characterizes the attitude of many London employers, who have reduced wages to the lowest, and brought profits to the highest, attainable point. It is true that he is driven by a force often quite beyond his control, foreign competition, French and German, being no less sharp than that on his own soil. He must study chances of profit to a farthing, and in such study there is naturally small thought of his workers, save as hands in which the farthings may be found. Many a woman goes to her place of work, leaving behind her children who have breakfasted with her on "kettle broth," and will be happy if the same is certain at supper time. "There's six of us have had nought but kettle broth for a fortnight," said one. "You know what that is? It's half a quarter loaf, soaked in hot water with a hap'orth of dripping and a spoonful of salt. When you've lived on that night and morning for a week or two, you can't help but long for a change, though, God forgive me! there's them that fares worse. But it'll be the broth without the bread before we're through. There's no living to be had in old England any more, and yet the rich folks don't want less. Do you know how it is, ma'am? Is there any chance of better times, do you think? Is it that they _want_ us to starve? I've heard that said, but somehow it seems as if there must be hearts still, and they'll see soon, and then things'll be different. Oh, yes, they must be different." Will they be different? It is unskilled workers who have just spoken, but do the skilled fare much better? I append a portion of a table of earnings, prepared a year or two since by the chaplain of the Clerkenwell prison, a thoughtful and earnest worker among the poor, this table ranking as one of the best of the attempts to discover the actual position of the workingwoman at present:-- "Making paper bags, 4½_d._ to 5½_d._ per thousand; possible earnings, 5_s._ to 9_s._ a week. Button-holes, 3_d._ per dozen; possible earnings, 8_s._ per week. "Shirts 2_d._ each, worker finding her own cotton; can get six done between 6 A. M. and 11 P. M. "Sack-sewing, 6_d._ for twenty-five, 8_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ per hundred; possible earnings, 7_s._ per week. "Pill-box making, 1s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 1_s._ 3_d._ a day. "Button-hole making, 1_d._ per dozen; can do three or four dozen between 5 A. M. and dark. "Whip-making, 1_s._ per dozen; can do a dozen per day. "Trousers-finishing, 3_d._ to 5_d._ each, finding own cotton; can do four per day. "Shirt-finishing, 3_d._ to 4_d._ per dozen." So the list runs on through all the trades open to women. A pound a week is a fortune; half or a third of that amount the wages of two-thirds the women who earn in working London; nor are there indications that the scale will rise or that better days are in store for one of these toilers, patient, heavy-eyed, well-nigh hopeless of any good to come, and yet saying among themselves the words already given:-- "There must be hearts still, and they'll see soon, and then things'll be different. Oh, yes, they must be different." CHAPTER XIV. FRENCH AND ENGLISH WORKERS. It is but a narrow streak of silver main that separates the two countries, whose story has been that of constant mutual distrust, varied by intervals of armed truce, in which each nation elected to believe that it understood the other. Not only the nation as a whole, however, but the worker in each, is far from any such possibility; and the methods of one are likely to remain, for a long time to come, a source of bewilderment to the other. That conditions on both sides of the Channel are in many points at their worst, and that the labor problem is still unsolved for both England and the Continent, remains a truth, though it is at once evident to the student of this problem that France has solved one or two phases of the equation over which England is still quite helpless. There is a famous chapter in the history of Ireland, entitled "Snakes in Ireland," the contents of which are as follows:-- "There are no snakes in Ireland." On the same principle it becomes at once necessary in writing on the slums of Paris, to arrange the summary of the situation: "There are no slums in Paris." In the English sense there certainly are none; and for the difference in visible conditions, several causes are responsible. The searcher for such regions discovers before the first day ends that there are none practically; and though now and then, as all byways are visited, one finds remnants of old Paris, and a court or narrow lane in which crime might lurk or poverty hide itself, as a whole there is hardly a spot where sunshine cannot come, and the hideous squalor of London is absolutely unknown. One quarter alone is to be excepted in this statement, and with that we are to deal farther on. The seamstress in a London garret or the shop-worker in the narrow rooms of the East End lives in a gloom for which there is neither outward nor inward alleviation. Soot is king of the great city, and his prime ministers, Smoke and Fog, work together to darken every haunt of man, and to shut out every glimpse of sun or moon. The flying flakes are in the air. Every breath draws them in; every moment leaves its deposit on wall and floor and person. The neatest and most determined fighter of dirt must still be bond slave to its power; and eating and drinking and breathing soot all day and every day, there comes at last an acquiescence in the consequences, and only an instinctive battle with the outward effects. For the average worker, at the needle at least, wages are too low to admit of much soap; hot water is equally a luxury, and time if taken means just so much less of the scanty pay; and thus it happens that London poverty takes on a hopelessly grimy character, and that the visitor in the house of the workers learns to wear a uniform which shows as little as possible of the results of rising up and sitting down in the soot, which, if less evident in the home of the millionnaire, works its will no less surely. Fresh from such experience, and with the memory of home and work room, manufactory or great shop, all alike sombre and depressing, the cleanliness of Paris, enforced by countless municipal regulations, is at first a constant surprise. The French workwoman, even of the lowest order, shares in the national characteristic which demands a fair exterior whatever may be the interior condition, and she shares also in the thrift which is equally a national possession, and the exercise of which has freed France from the largest portion of her enormous debt. The English workwoman of the lowest order, the trouser-stitcher or bag-maker, is not only worn and haggard to the eye, but wears a uniform of ancient bonnet and shawl, both of which represent the extremity of dejection. She clings to this bonnet as the type and suggestion of respectability and to the shawl no less; but the first has reached a point wherein it is not only grotesque but pitiful, the remnants of flowers and ribbons and any shadowy hint of ornamentation having long ago yielded to weather and age and other agents of destruction. The shawl or cloak is no less abject and forlorn, both being the badge of a condition from which emergence has become practically impossible. These lank figures carry no charm of womanhood,--nothing that can draw from sweater or general employer more than a sneer at the quality of the labor of those waiting always in numbers far beyond any real demand, until for both the adjective comes to be "superfluous," and employer and employed alike wonder why the earth holds them, and what good there is in an existence made up simply of want and struggle. Precisely the opposite condition holds for the French worker, who, in the midst of problems as grave, faces them with the light-heartedness of her nation. She has learned to the minutest fraction what can be extracted from every centime, and though she too must shiver with cold, and go half-fed and half-clothed, every to-morrow holds the promise of something better, and to-day is thus made more bearable. She shares too the conviction, which has come to be part of the general faith concerning Paris, which seems always an embodied assurance, that sadness and want are impossible. Even her beggars, a good proportion of them laboriously made up for the parts they are to fill, find repression of cheerfulness their most difficult task, and smile confidingly on the sceptical observer of their methods, as if to make him a partner in the encouraging and satisfactory nature of things in general. The little seamstress who descends from her attic for the bread with its possible salad or bit of cheese which will form her day's ration, smiles also as she pauses to feel the thrill of life in the thronging boulevards and beautiful avenues, the long sweeps of which have wiped out for Paris as a whole everything that could by any chance be called slum. Even in the narrowest street this stir of eager life penetrates, and every Parisian shares it and counts it as a necessity of daily existence. If shoes are too great a luxury, the workwoman clatters along in _sabots_, congratulating herself that they are cheap and that they never wear out. Custom, long-established and imperative, orders that she shall wear no head-covering, and thus she escapes the revelation bound up in the London worker's bonnet. Inherited instinct and training from birth have taught her hands the utmost skill with the needle. She makes her own dress, and wears it with an air which may in time transfer itself to something choicer; and this quality is in no whit affected by the the cheapness of the material. It may be only a print or some woollen stuff of the poorest order; but it and every detail of her dress represent something to which the English woman has not attained, and which temperament and every fact of life will hinder her attaining. As I write, the charcoal-woman has climbed the long flights to the fifth floor, bending under the burden of an enormous sack of _charbon à terre_, but smiling as she puts it down. She is mistress of a little shop just round the corner, and she keeps the accounts of the wood and coal bought by her patrons by a system best known to herself, her earnings hardly going beyond three francs a day. Even she, black with the coal-dust which she wastes no time in scrubbing off save on Sundays when she too makes one of the throng in the boulevards, faces the hard labor with light-hearted confidence, and plans to save a sou here and there for the _dot_ of the baby who shares in the distribution of coal-dust, and will presently trot by her side as assistant. In the laundry just beyond, the women are singing or chattering, the voices rising in that sudden fury of words which comes upon this people, and makes the foreigner certain that bloodshed is near, but which ebbs instantly and peacefully, to rise again on due occasion. Long hours, exhausting labor, small wages, make no difference. The best worker counts from three to four francs daily as prosperity, and the rate has even fallen below this; yet they make no complaint, quite content with the sense of companionship, and with the satisfaction of making each article as perfect a specimen of skill as can be produced. Here lies a difference deeper than that of temperament,--the fact that the French worker finds pleasure in the work itself, and counts its satisfactory appearance as a portion of the reward. Slop work, with its demand for speedy turning out of as many specimens of the poorest order per day as the hours will allow, is repugnant to every instinct of the French workwoman; and thus it happens that even slop work on this side of the Channel holds some hint of ornamentation and the desire to lift it out of the depth to which it has fallen. But it is gaining ground, fierce competition producing this effect everywhere; and the always lessening ratio of wages which attends its production, must in time bring about the same disastrous results here as elsewhere, unless the tide is arrested, and some form of co-operative production takes its place. With the French worker in the higher forms of needle industry we shall deal in the next chapter, finding what differences are to be met here also between French and English methods. CHAPTER XV. FRENCH BARGAIN COUNTERS. "Yes, it is the great shops that have done that, madame. Once, you saw what was only well finished and a credit to the worker, and, even if the reward was small, she had pride in the work and her own skill, and did always her best. But now, what will you? The thing must be cheap, cheapest. The machine to sew hurries everything, and you find the workwoman sans ambition and busy only to hurry and be one with the machine. It is wrong, all wrong, but that is progress, and one must submit. When the small shops had place to live, and the great _magasins_ were not for ladies or any who wished the best, then it was different, but now all is changed, and work has no character. It is all the same; always the machine." More than once this plaint has been made, and the sewing-machine accused as the cause of depression in wages, of deterioration of all hand needlework, and of the originality that once distinguished French productions; and there is some truth in the charge, not only for Paris, but for all cities to which needlewomen throng. Machinery has gradually revolutionized all feminine industries in Paris, and its effect is not only on the general system of wages, but upon the moral condition of the worker, and family life as a whole has become to the student of social questions one of gravest importance. On the one hand is the conviction, already quoted, that it has brought with it deterioration in every phase of the work; on the other, that it is an educating and beneficent agent, raising the general standard of wages, and putting three garments where once but one could be owned. It is an old story, and will give food for speculation in the future, quite as much as in the past. But in talking with skilled workers, from dressmakers to the needlewomen employed on trousseaux and the most delicate forms of this industry, each has expressed the same conviction, and this quite apart from the political economist's view that there must be a return to hand production, if the standard is not to remain hopelessly below its old place. Such return would not necessarily exclude machinery, which must be regarded as an indispensable adjunct to the worker's life. It would simply put it in its proper place,--that of aid, but never master. It is the spirit of competition which is motive power to-day, and which drives the whirring wheels and crowds the counters of every shop with productions which have no merit but that of cheapness, and the price of which means no return to the worker beyond the barest subsistence. Subsistence in Paris has come to mean something far different from the facts of a generation ago. Wages have always been fixed at a standard barely above subsistence; but, even under these conditions, French frugality has succeeded not only in living, but in putting by a trifle month by month. As the great manufactories have sprung up, possibilities have lessened and altered, till the workwoman, however cheerfully she may face conditions, knows that saving has become impossible. If, in some cases, wages have risen, prices have advanced with them till only necessities are possible, the useful having dropped away from the plan, and the agreeable ceased to have place even in thought. Even before the long siege, and the semi-starvation that came to all within the walls of Paris, prices had been rising, and no reduction has come which even approximates to the old figures. Every article of daily need is at the highest point, sugar alone being an illustration of what the determination to protect an industry has brought about. The London workwoman buys a pound for one penny, or at the most twopence. The French workwoman must give eleven or twelve sous, and then have only beet sugar, which has not much over half the saccharine quality of cane sugar. Flour, milk, eggs, all are equally high, meat alone being at nearly the same prices as in London. Fruit is a nearly impossible luxury, and fuel so dear that shivering is the law for all but the rich, while rents are also far beyond London prices, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the utmost for the scanty sum at disposal. For the needlewoman the food question has resolved itself into bread alone, for at least one meal, with a little coffee, chiefly chicory, and possibly some vegetable for the others. But many a one lives on bread for six days in the week, reserving the few sous that can be saved for a Sunday bit of meat, or bones for soup. Even the system which allows of buying "portions," just enough for a single individual, is valueless for her, since the smallest and poorest portion is far beyond the sum which can never be made to stretch far enough for such indulgence. "I have tried it, madame," said the same speaker, who had mourned over the degeneration of finish among the workwomen. "It was the siege that compelled it in the beginning, and then there was no complaining, since it was the will of the good God for all. But there came a time when sickness had been with me long, and I found no work but to stitch in my little room far up under the roof, and all the long hours bringing so little,--never more than two and a half francs, and days when it was even less; and then I found how one must live. I was proud, and wished to tell no one; but there was an _ouvrière_ next me, in a little room, even smaller than mine, and she saw well that she could help, and that together some things might be possible that were not alone. She had her furnace for the fire, and we used it together on the days when we could make our soup, or the coffee that I missed more than all,--more, even, than wine, which is for us the same as water to you. It was months that I went not beyond fifty centimes a day for food, save the Sundays, and then but little more, since one grows at last to care little, and a good meal for one day makes the next that is wanting harder, I think, than when one wants always. But I am glad that I know; so glad that I could even wish the same knowledge for many who say, 'Why do they not live on what they earn? Why do they not have thrift, and make ready for old age?' Old age comes fast, it is true. Such years as I have known are double, yes, and treble, and one knows that they have shortened life. But when I say now 'the poor,' I know what that word means, and have such compassion as never before. It is the workers who are the real poor, and for them there is little hope, since it is the system that must change. It is the middleman who makes the money, and there are so many of them, how can there be much left for the one who comes last, and is only the machine that works? "All that is true of England, and I have had two years there, and thus know well; all that is true, too, here, though we know better how we can live, and not be always so _triste_ and sombre. But each day, as I go by the great new shops that have killed all the little ones, and by the great factory where electricity makes the machines go, and the women too become machines,--each day I know that these counters, where one can buy for a song, are counters where flesh and blood are sold. For, madame, it is starvation for the one who has made these garments; and why must one woman starve that another may wear what her own hands could make if she would? Everywhere it is _occasions_ [bargains] that the great shops advertise. Everywhere they must be more and more, and so wages lessen, till there is no more hope of living; and, because they lessen, marriage waits, and all that the good God meant for us waits also." On the surface it is all well. There is less incompetency among French than English workers, and thus the class who furnish them need less arraignment for their lack of thoroughness. They contend, also, with one form of competition, which has its counterpart in America among the farmers' wives, who take the work at less than regular rates. This form is the convent work, which piles the counters, and is one of the most formidable obstacles to better rates for the worker. Innumerable convents make the preparation of underwear one of their industries, and, in the classes of girls whom they train to the needle, find workers requiring no wages, the training being regarded as equivalent. Naturally, their prices can be far below the ordinary market one, and thus the worker, benefited on the one hand, is defrauded on the other. In short, the evil is a universal one,--an integral portion of the present manufacturing system,--and its abolition can come only from roused public sentiment, and combination among the workers themselves. CHAPTER XVI. THE CITY OF THE SUN. It is only with weeks of experience that the searcher into the under world of Paris life comes to any sense of real conditions, or discovers in what directions to look for the misery which seldom floats to the surface, and which even wears the face of content. That there are no slums, and that acute suffering is in the nature of things impossible, is the first conviction, and it remains in degree even when both misery and its lurking-places have become familiar sights. Paris itself, gay, bright, beautiful, beloved of every dweller within its walls, so dominates that shadows seem impossible, and as one watches the eager throng in boulevard or avenue, or the laughing, chattering groups before even the poorest café, other life than this sinks out of sight. The most meagrely paid needlewoman, the most overworked toiler in trades, indoors or out, seizes any stray moment for rest or small pleasures, and from a half-franc bottle of wine, or some pretence of lemonade or sugar water, extracts entertainment for half a dozen. The pressure in actual fact remains the same. Always behind in the shadow lurks starvation, and there is one street, now very nearly wiped out, known to its inhabitants still as "_la rue où l'on ne meurt jamais_"--the street where one never dies, since every soul therein finds their last bed in the hospital. This is the _quartier_ Mouffetard, where bits of old Paris are still discernible, and where strange trades are in operation; industries which only a people so pinched and driven by sharp necessity could ever have invented. The descent to these is a gradual one, and most often the women who are found in them have known more than one occupation, and have been, in the beginning at least, needlewomen of greater or less degree of skill. Depression of wages, which now are at the lowest limit of subsistence, drives them into experiments in other directions, and often failing sight or utter weariness of the monotonous employment is another cause. These form but a small proportion of such workers, who generally are a species of guild, a family having begun some small new industry and gradually drawn in others, till a body of workers in the same line is formed, strong enough to withstand any interlopers. "What becomes of the women who are too old to sew, and who have never gained skill enough to earn more than a bare living?" I asked one day of a seamstress whose own skill was unquestioned, but who, even with this in her favor, averages only three francs a day. "They do many things, madame. One who is my neighbor is now scrubber and cleaner, and is happily friends with a '_concierge_,' who allows her to aid him. That is a difficulty for all who would do that work. It is that the '_concierges_,' whether men or women, think that any pay from the '_locataires_' must be for them; and so they will never tell the tenant of a woman who seeks work, but will say always, 'It is I who can do it all. One cannot trust these from the outside.' But for her, as I say, there is opportunity, and at last she has food, when as '_couturière_' it was quite--yes, quite impossible. There was a child, an idiot--the child of her daughter who is dead, and from whom she refuses always to be separated, and she sews always on the sewing-machine, till sickness comes, and it is sold for rent and many things. She is proud. She has not wished to scrub and clean, but for such work is twenty-five centimes an hour, and often food that the tenant does not wish. At times they give her less, and in any case one calculates always the time and watches very closely, but for her, at least, is more money than for many years; sometimes even three francs, if a day has been good. But that is but seldom, and she must carry her own soap and brush, and pay for all. "That is one way, and there is another that fills me with terror, madame, lest I, too, may one day find myself in it. It is last and worst of all for women, I think. It is when they wear '_le cachemire d'osier_.' You do not know it, madame. It is the chiffonieress basket which she bears as a badge, and which she hangs at night, it may be, in the City of the Sun. _Voila_, madame. There are now two who are on their way. If madame has curiosity, it is easy to follow them." "But the City of the Sun? What is that? Do you mean Paris?" "No, madame. It is a mockery like the '_cachemire d'osier_.' You will see." It is in this following that the polished veneer which makes the outward Paris showed what may lie beneath. Certainly, no one who walks through the Avenue Victor Hugo, one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe, and including some of the gayest and most brilliant life of modern Paris, the creation of Napoleon III. and of Baron Haussman, would dream that hint of corruption could enter in. The ancient Rue de la Révolte has changed form and title, and the beautiful avenue is no dishonor to its present name. But far down there opens nearly imperceptibly a narrow alley almost subterranean, and it is through this alley that the two figures which had moved silently down the avenue passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes passing over everything to which the man's hook had not first directed her. Through the narrow way the pair passed into a sombre court, closed at the end by a door of wood with rusty latch, which creaks and objects as one seeks to lift it. Once within, and the door closed, the place has no reminder of the Paris just without. On the contrary, it might be a bit from the beggars' quarter in a village of Syria or Palestine, for here is only a line of flat-roofed huts, the walls whitewashed, the floors level with the soil, and the sun of the warm spring day pouring down upon sleeping dogs, and heaps of refuse alternating with piles of rags, in the midst of which work two or three women, silent at present, and barely looking up as the new comers lay down their burdens. A fat yet acrid odor rises about these huts, drawn out from the rags by the afternoon heat; yet, repulsive as it is, there is more sense of cleanliness about it than in the hideous basements where the same trade is plied in London or New York. There is a space here not yet occupied by buildings. The line of huts faces the south; a fence encloses them; and so silent and alone seems the spot that it is easy to understand why it bears its own individual name, and to the colony of _chiffoniers_ who dwell here has long been known as the City of the Sun. Doors stand open freely; honesty is a tradition of this profession; and the police know that these delvers in dust heaps will bring to them any precious object found therein, and that he who should remove the slightest article from one of these dwellings would be banished ignominiously and deprived of all rights of association. These huts are all alike; two rooms, the larger reserved for the bed, the smaller for kitchen, and in both rags of every variety. In the corner is a heap chiefly of silk, wool, and linen. This is the pile from which rent is to come, and every precious bit goes to it, since rent here is paid in advance,--three francs a week for the hut alone, and twenty francs a month if a scrap of court is added in which the rags can be sorted. On a fixed day the proprietor appears, and, if the sum is not ready, simply carries off the door and windows, and expels the unlucky tenant with no further formality. How the stipulated amount is scraped together, only the half-starved _chiffoniers_ know, since prices have fallen so that the hundred kilogrammes (about two hundred pounds) of rags, which, before the war, sold for eighty francs, to-day bring precisely eight. "In a good day, madame," said the woman, "we can earn three francs. We are always together, I and my man, and we never cease. But the dead season comes, that is, the summer, when Paris is in the country or at the sea; then we can earn never more than two francs, and often not more than thirty sous, when they clean the streets so much, and so carry away everything that little is left for us. It is five years that I have followed my man, and he is born to it, and works always, but the time is changed. There is no more a living in this, or in anything we can do. I have gone hungry when it is the sewing that I do, and I go hungry now, but I am not alone. It is so for all of us, and we care not if only the children are fed. They are not, and it is because of them that we suffer. See, madame, this is the child of my niece, who came with me here, and has also her man, but never has any one of them eaten to the full, even of crusts, which often are in what we gather." The child ran toward her,--a girl three or four years old, wearing a pair of women's shoes ten times too large, and the remainder of a chemise. Other clothing had not been attempted, or was not considered necessary, and the child looked up with hollow eyes and a face pinched and sharpened by want, while the swollen belly of the meagre little figure showed how wretched had been the supply they called food. All day these children fare as they can, since all day the parents must range the streets collecting their harvest; but fortunately for such future as they can know, these little savages, fighting together like wild animals, have within the last twenty years been gradually gathered into free schools, the work beginning with a devoted woman, who, having seen the City of the Sun, never rested till a school was opened for its children. All effort, however, was quite fruitless, till an old _chiffonier_, also once a seamstress, united with her, and persuaded the mothers that they must prepare their children, or, at least, not prevent them from going. At present the school stands as one of the wisest philanthropies of Paris, but neither this, nor any other attempt to better conditions, alters the fact that twelve and fourteen hours of labor have for sole result from thirty to forty sous a day, and that this sum represents the earnings of the average women-workers of Paris, the better class of trades and occupations being no less limited in possibilities. CHAPTER XVII. DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS. "If a revolution come again, I think well, madame, it will be the great shops that will fall, and that it is workwomen who will bear the torch and even consent to the name of terror, _pétroleuses_. For see a moment what thing they do, madame. Everywhere, the girl who desires to learn as _modiste_, and who, in the day when I had learned, became one of the house that she served, and, if talent were there, could rise and in time be mistress herself, with a name that had fame even,--that girl must now attempt the great shop and bury her talent in always the same thing. No more invention, no more grace, but a hundred robes always the same, and with no mark of difference for her who wears it, or way to tell which may be mistress and which the servant. It is not well for one or the other, madame; it is ill for both. Then, too, many must stand aside who would learn, since it is always the machine to sew that needs not many. It is true there are still houses that care for a name, and where one may be _artiste_, and have pride in an inspiration. But they are rare; and now one sits all day, and this one stitches sleeves, perhaps, or seams of waists or skirts, and knows not effects, or how to plan the whole, or any joy of composition or result. It is bad, and all bad, and I willingly would see the great shops go, and myself urge well their destruction." These words, and a flood of more in the same direction, came as hot protest against any visit to the Magasins du Louvre, an enormous establishment of the same order as the Bon Marché, but slightly higher in price, where hundreds are employed as saleswomen, and where, side by side with the most expensive productions of French skill, are to be found the _occasions_,--the bargains in which the foreigner delights even more than the native. "Let them go there," pursued the little _modiste_, well on in middle life, whose eager face and sad dark eyes lighted with indignation as she spoke. "Let those go there who have money, always money, but no taste, no perception, no feeling for a true combination. I know that if one orders a robe that one comes to regard to say, 'Yes, so and so must be for madame,' but how shall she know well when she is blunted and dead with numbers? How shall she feel what is best? I, madame, when one comes to me, I study. There are many things that make the suitability of a confection; there is not only complexion and figure and age, but when I have said all these, the thought that blends the whole and sees arising what must be for the perfect robe. This was the method of Madame Desmoulins, and I have learned of her. When it is an important case, a trousseau perhaps, she has neither eaten nor slept till she has conceived her list and sees each design clear. And then what joy! She selects, she blends with tears of happiness; she cuts with solemnity even. Is there such a spirit in your Bon Marché? Is there such a spirit anywhere but here and there to one who remembers; who has an ideal and who refuses to make it less by selling it in the shops? Again, madame, I tell you it is a debasement so to do. I will none of it." Madame, who had clasped her hands and half risen in her excited protest, sank back in her chair and fixed her eyes on a robe just ready to send home,--a creation so simply elegant and so charming that her brow smoothed and she smiled, well pleased. But her words were simply the echo of others of the same order, spoken by others who had watched the course of women's occupations and who had actual love for the profession they had chosen. Questions brought out a state of things much the same for both Paris and London, where the system of learning the business had few differences. For both millinery and dressmaking, apprenticeship had been the rule, the more important houses taking an entrance fee and lessening the number of years required; the others demanding simply the full time of the learner, from two to four years. In these latter cases food and lodging were given, and after the first six months a small weekly wage, barely sufficient to provide the Sunday food and lodging. If more was paid, the learner lived outside entirely; and the first year or two was a sharp struggle to make ends meet. But if any talent showed itself, promotion was rapid, and with it the prospect of independence in the end, the directress of a group of girls regarding such talent as developed by the house and a part of its reputation. In some cases such girls by the end of the third year received often five or six thousand francs, and in five were their own mistresses absolutely, with an income of ten or twelve thousand and often more. This for the exception; for the majority was the most rigid training,--with its result in what we know as French finish, which is simply delicate painstaking with every item of the work,--and a wage of from thirty to forty francs a week, often below but seldom above this sum. In the early stages of the apprenticeship there was simply an allowance of from six to ten francs per month for incidental expenses, and even when skill increased and services became valuable, five francs a week was considered an ample return. In all these cases the week passed under the roof of the employer, and Sunday alone became the actual change of the worker. The excessive hours of the London apprentice had no counterpart here or had not until the great houses were founded and steam and electric power came with the sewing-machine. With this new regime over-time was often claimed, and two sous an hour allowed, these being given in special cases. But exhausting hours were left for the lower forms of needle-work. The food provided was abundant and good, and sharp overseer as madame might prove, she demanded some relaxation for herself and allowed it to her employés. The different conditions of life made over-work in Paris a far different thing from over-work in London. For both milliners and _modistes_ was the keen ambition to develop a talent, and the workroom, as has already been stated, felt personal pride in any member of the force who showed special lightness of touch or skill in combination. "Work, madame!" exclaimed little Madame M., as she described a day's work under the system which had trained her. "But yes, I could not so work now, but then I saw always before me an end. I had the sentiment. It was always that the colors arranged themselves, and so with my sister, who is _modiste_ and whose compositions are a marvel. My back has ached, my eyes have burned, I have seen sparks before them and have felt that I could no more, when the days are long and the heat perhaps is great, or even in winter crowded together and the air so heavy. But we laughed and sang; we thought of a future; we watched for talent, and if there was envy or jealousy, it was well smothered. I remember one talented Italian who would learn and who hated one other who had great gifts; hated her so, she has stabbed her suddenly with sharp scissors in the arm. But such things are not often. We French care always for genius, even if it be but to make a shoe most perfect, and we do not hate--no, we love well, whoever shows it. But to-day all is different, and once more I say, madame, that too much is made, and that thus talent will die and gifts be no more needed." There is something more in this feeling than the mere sense of rivalry or money loss from the new system represented by the Bon Marché and other great establishments of the same nature. But this is a question in one sense apart from actual conditions, save as the concentration of labor has had its effect on the general rate of wages. Five francs a day is considered riches, and the ordinary worker or assistant in either dressmaking or millinery department receives from two and a half to three and a half francs, on which sum she must subsist as she can. With a home where earnings go into a common fund, or if the worker has no one dependent upon her, French thrift makes existence on this sum quite possible; but when it becomes a question of children to be fed and clothed, more than mere existence is impossible, and starvation stands always in the background. For the younger workers the great establishments, offer many advantages over the old system, and hours have been shortened and attempts made in a few cases to improve general conditions of those employed. But there is always a dull season, in which wages lessen, or even cease for a time, the actual number of working days averaging two hundred and eighty. Where work is private and reputation is established, the year's earnings are a matter of individual ability, but the mass of workers in these directions drift naturally toward the great shops which may be found now in every important street of Paris, and which have altered every feature of the old system. Whether this alteration is a permanent one, is a question to which no answer can yet be made. Wages have reached a point barely above subsistence, and the outlook for the worker is a very shadowy one; but the question as a whole has as yet small interest for any but the political economists, while the women themselves have no thought of organization or of any method of bettering general conditions, beyond the little societies to which some of the ordinary workers belong, and which are half religious, half educational, in their character. As a rule, these are for the lower ranks of needlewomen, but necessity will compel something more definite in form for the two classes we have been considering, as well as for those below them, and the time approaches when this will be plain to the workers themselves, and some positive action take the place of the present dumb acceptance of whatever comes. CHAPTER XVIII. A SILK-WEAVER OF PARIS. "No, madame, there is no more any old Paris. The Paris that I remember is gone, all gone, save here and there a corner that soon they will pull down as all the rest. All changes, manners no less than these streets that I know not in their new dress, and where I go seeking a trace of what is past. It is only in the churches that one feels that all is the same, and even with them one wonders why, if it is the same, fewer and fewer come, and that men smile often at those that enter the doors, and would close them to us who still must pray in the old places. Is there that consolation for the worker in America, madame? Can she forget her sorrow and want at a shrine that is holy, and feel the light resting on her, full of the glory of the painted windows and the color that is joy and rest? Because, if there had not been the church, my St. Etienne du Mont, that I know from a child, if there had not been that, I must have died. And so I have wondered if your country had this gift also for the worker, and, if it has not bread enough, has at least something that feeds the soul. Is it so, madame?" Poor old Rose, once weaver in silk and with cheeks like her name, looking at me now with her sad eyes, blue and clear still in spite of her almost seventy years, and full of the patience born of long struggle and acceptance! St. Etienne had drawn me as it had drawn her, and it was in the apse, the light streaming from the ancient windows, each one a marvel of color whose secret no man to-day has penetrated, that I saw first the patient face and the clasped hands of this suppliant, who prayed there undisturbed by any thought of watching eyes, and who rose presently and went slowly down the aisles, with a face that might have taken its place beside the pictured saints to whom she had knelt. Her _sabots_ clicked against the pavement worn by many generations of feet, and her old fingers still moved mechanically, telling the beads which she had slipped out of sight. "You love the little church," I said; and she answered instantly, with a smile that illumined the old face, "Indeed, yes; and why not? It is home and all that is good, and it is so beautiful, madame. There is none like it. I go to the others sometimes, above all to Nôtre Dame, which also is venerable and dear, and where one may worship well. But always I return here; for the great church seems to carry my prayers away, and they are half lost in such bigness, and it is not so bright and so joyous as this. For here the color lifts the heart, and I seem to rise in my soul also, and I know every pillar and ornament, for my eyes study often when my lips pray; but it is all one worship, madame, else I should shut them close. But the good God and the saints know well that I am always praying, and that it is my St. Etienne that helps, and that is so beautiful I must pray when I see it." This was the beginning of knowing Rose, and in good time her whole story was told,--a very simple one, but a record that stands for many like it. There was neither discontent nor repining. Born among workers, she had filled her place, content to fill it, and only wondering as years went on why there were not better days, and, if they were to mend for others, whether she had part in it or not. Far up under the roof of an old house, clung to because it was old, Rose climbed, well satisfied after the minutes in the little church in which she laid down the burden that long ago had become too heavy for her, and which, if it returned at all, could always be dropped again at the shrine which had heard her first prayer. "It is Paris that I know best," she said, "and that I love always, but I am not born in it, nor none of mine. It is my father that desired much that we should gain more, and who is come here when I am so little that I can be carried on the back. He is a weaver, madame, a weaver of silk, and my mother knows silk also from the beginning. Why not, when it is to her mother who also has known it, and she winds cocoons, too, when she is little? I have played with them for the first plaything, and indeed the only one, madame, since, when I learn what they are and how one must use them, I have knowledge enough to hold the threads, and so begin. It was work, yes, but not the work of to-day. We worked together. If my father brought us here, it was that all things might be better; for he loved us well. He sang as he wove, and we sang with him. If hands were tired, he said always: 'Think how you are earning for us all, and for the _dot_ that some day you shall have when your blue eyes are older, and some one comes who will see that they are wise eyes that, if they laugh, know also all the ways that these threads must go.' That pleased me, for I was learning, too, and together we earned well, and had our _pot au feu_ and good wine and no lack of bread. "That was the hand-loom, and when at last is come another that goes with steam, the weavers have revolted and sworn to destroy them all, since one could do the work of many. I hear it all, and listen, and think how it is that a man's mind can think a thing that takes bread from other men. I am sixteen, then, and skilful and with good wages for every day, and it is then that Armand is come,--Armand, who was weaver, too, but who had been soldier with the great Emperor, and seen the girls of all countries. But he cared for none of them till he saw me, for his thought was always on his work; and he, too, planned machines, and fretted that he had not education enough to make them with drawings and figures so that the masters would understand. When machines have come he has fretted more; for one at least had been clear in his own thought, and now he cannot have it as he will, since another's thought has been before him. He told me all this, believing I could understand; and so I could, madame, since love made me wise enough to see what he might mean, and if I had not words, at least I had ears, and always I have used them well. We are still one family when the time comes that I marry, and my father has good wages in spite of machines, and all are reconciled to them, save my brother. But the owners build factories. It is no longer at home that one can work; and in these the children go, yes, even little ones, and hours are longer, and there is no song to cheer them, and no mother who can speak sometimes or tell a tale as they wind, and all is different. And so my mother says always: 'It is not good for France that the loom is taken out of the houses;' and if she makes more money because of more silk, she loses things that are more precious than money, and it is all bad that it must be so. My father shakes his head. There are wages for every child; and he sees this, and does not so well see that they earned also at home, and had some things that the factory stops, for always. "For me, I am weaver of ribbons, and I love them well, all the bright, beautiful colors. I look at the windows of my St. Etienne and feel the color like a song in my heart, and while I weave I see them always, and could even think that I spin them from my own mind. "That is a fancy that has rest when the days are long, and the sound of the mill in my ears, and the beat of the machines, that I feel sometimes are cruel, for one can never stop, but must go on always. I think in myself, as I see the children, that I shall never let mine stand with them, and indeed there is no need, since we are all earning, and there is money saved, and this is all true for long. The children are come. Three boys are mine; two with Armand's eyes, and one with mine, whom Armand loves best because of this, but seeks well to make no difference, and we call him Etienne for my saint and my church. And, madame, I think often that more heaven is in him than we often know, and perhaps because I have prayed always under the window where the lights are all at last one glory, and the color itself is a prayer, Etienne is so born that he must have it, too. I take him there a baby, and he stretches his hands and smiles. He does not shout like the others, but his smile seems from heaven. He is an artist. He draws always with a bit of charcoal, with anything, and I think that he shall study, and, it may be, make other beautiful things that may live in a new St. Etienne, or in some other place in this Paris that I love; and I am happy. "Then comes the time, madame, that one remembers and prays to forget, till one knows that it may be the good God's way of telling us how wrong we are and what we must learn. First it is Armand, who has become revolutionary,--what you call to-day communist,--and who is found in what are called plots, and tried and imprisoned. It was not for long. He would have come to me again, but the fever comes and kills many; he dies and I cannot be with him,--no, nor even see him when they take him to burial. I go in a dream. I will not believe it; and then my father is hurt. He is caught in one of those machines that my mother so hates, and his hand is gone and his arm crushed. "Now the children must earn. There is no other way. For Armand and Pierre I could bear it, since they are stronger, but for Etienne, no. He comes from school that he loves, and must take his place behind the loom. He is patient; he says, even, he is glad to earn for us all; but he is pale, and the light in his eyes grows dim, save when, night and morning, he kneels with me under my window and feels it as I do. "Then evil days are here, and always more and more evil. Month by month wages are less and food is more. My mother is dead, too, and my father quite helpless, and my brother that has never been quite as others, and so cannot earn. We work always. My boys know well all that must be known, but at seventeen Armand is tall and strong as a man, and he is taken for soldier, and he, too, never comes to us again. I work more and more, and if I earn two francs for the day am glad, but now Etienne is sick and I see well that he cannot escape. 'It is the country he needs,' says the doctor. 'He must be taken to the country if he is to live;' but these are words. I pray,--I pray always that succor may come, but it comes not, nor can I even be with him in his pain, since I must work always. And so it is, madame, that one day when I return, my father lies on his bed weeping, and the priest is there and looks with pity upon me, and my Etienne lies there still, and the smile that was his only is on his face. "That is all, madame. My life has ended there. But it goes on for others still and can. My father has lived till I too am almost old. My brother lives yet, and my boy, Pierre, who was shot at Balaklava, he has two children and his wife, who is _couturière_, and I must aid them. I remain weaver, and I earn always the same. Wages stay as in the beginning, but all else is more and more. One may live, but that is all. Many days we have only bread; sometimes not enough even of that. But the end comes. I have always my St. Etienne, and often under the window I see my Etienne's smile, and know well the good God has cared for him, and I need no more. I could wish only that the children might be saved, but I cannot tell. France needs them; but I think well she needs them more as souls than as hands that earn wages, though truly I am old and it may be that I do not know what is best. Tell me, madame, must the children also work always with you, or do you care for other things than work, and is there time for one to live and grow as a plant in the sunshine? That is what I wish for the children; but Paris knows no such life, nor can it, since we must live, and so I must wait, and that is all." CHAPTER XIX. IN THE RUE JEANNE D'ARC. "No, madame, unless one has genius or much money in the beginning, it is only possible to live, and sometimes one believes that it is not living. If it were not that all in Paris is so beautiful, how would I have borne much that I have known? But always, when even the hunger has been most sharp, has been the sky so blue and clear, and the sun shining down on the beautiful boulevards, and all so bright, so gay, why should I show a face of sorrow? "I have seen the war, it is true. I have known almost the starving, for in those days all go hungry; most of all, those who have little to buy with. But one bears the hunger better when one has been born to it, and that is what has been for me. "In the Rue Jeanne d'Arc we are all hungry, and it is as true to-day, yes, more true, than in the days when I was young. The charitable, who give more and more each year in Paris, will not believe there is such a quarter, but for us, we know. Have you seen the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, madame? Do you know what can be for this Paris that is so fair?" This question came in the square before old Nôtre Dame, still the church of the poor, its gray towers and carved portals dearer to them than to the Paris which counts the Madeleine a far better possession than this noblest of all French cathedrals. Save for such reminder this quarter might have remained unvisited, since even philanthropic Paris appears to have little or no knowledge of it, and it is far beyond the distance to which the most curious tourist is likely to penetrate. On by the Halle aux Vins, with its stifling, fermenting, alcoholic odors, and then by the Jardin des Plantes, and beyond, the blank walls of many manufactories stretching along the Seine,--this for one shore. On the other lies La Rapée, with the windows of innumerable wine shops flaming in the sun, and further on, Bercy, the ship bank of the river, covered with wine-casks and a throng of drays and draymen; of _débardeurs_, whose business it is to unload wood or to break up old boats into material for kindling; and of the host whose business is on and about the river. They are of the same order as the London Dock laborers, and, like the majority of this class there and here, know every extremity of want. But it is a pretty picture from which one turns from the right, passing up the noisy boulevard of the Gare d'Orléans, toward the quarter of the Gobelins. This quarter has its independent name and place like the "City of the Sun." Like that it knows every depth of poverty, but, unlike that, sunshine and space are quite unknown. The buildings are piled together, great masses separated by blind alleys, some fifteen hundred lodgings in all, and the owner of many of them is a prominent philanthropist, whose name heads the list of directors for various charitable institutions, but whose feet, we must believe, can hardly be acquainted with those alleys and stairways, narrow, dark, and foul. The unpaved ways show gaping holes in which the greasy mud lies thick or mingles with the pools of standing water, fed from every house and fermenting with rottenness. The sidewalks, once asphalted, are cracked in long seams and holes, where the same water does its work, and where hideous exhalations poison the air. Within it is still worse; filth trickles down the walls and mingles under foot, the corridors seeming rather sewers than passages for human beings, while the cellars are simply reservoirs for the same deposits. Above in the narrow rooms huddle the dwellers in those lodgings; whole families in one room, its single window looking on a dark court where one sees swarms of half-naked children, massed together like so many maggots, their flabby flesh a dirty white, their faces prematurely aged and with a diabolical intelligence in their sharp eyes. The children are always old. The old have reached the extremity of hideous decrepitude. One would say that these veins had never held healthy human blood, and that for young and old pus had become its substitute. To these homes return many of the men who wait for work on the quays, and thus this population, born to crime and every foulness that human life can know, has its proportion also of honest workers, whose fortunes have ebbed till they have been left stranded in this slime, of a quality so tenacious that escape seems impossible. Many of the lodgings are unoccupied, and at night they become simply dens of wild beasts,--men and boys who live by petty thieving climbing the walls, stealing along the passages and up the dark stairways, and sheltering themselves in every niche and corner. Now and then, when the outrages become too evident, the police descend suddenly on the drinking, shouting tenants at will, and for a day or two there is peace for the rest. But the quarter is shut in and hedged about by streets of a general respectable appearance, and thus it is felt to be impossible that such a spot can exist. It is, however, the breeding-ground of criminals; and each year swells the quota, whose lives can have but one ending, and who cost the city in the end many times the amount that in the beginning would have insured decent homes and training in an industrial school. It is only the dregs of humanity that remain in such quarters. The better elements, unless compelled by starvation, flee from it, though with the tenacity of the Parisian for his own _quartier_, they settle near it still. All about are strange trades, invented often by the followers of them, and unknown outside a country which has learned every method of not only turning an honest penny, but doing it in the most effective way. Among them all not one can be stranger than that adopted by Madame Agathe, whose soft voice and plaintive intonations are in sharpest contrast with her huge proportions, and who began life as one of the great army of _couturières_. With failing eyesight and the terror of starvation upon her, she went one Sunday, with her last two francs in her pocket, to share them with a sick cousin, who had been one of the workmen at the Jardin des Plantes. He, too, was in despair; for an accident had taken from him the use of his right arm, and there were two children who must be fed. "What to do! what to do!" he cried; and then, as he saw the tears running down Madame Agathe's cheeks, he in turn, with the ease of his nation, wept also. "That is what has determined me," said Madame Agathe, as not long ago she told of the day when she had given up hope. "Tears are for women, and even for them it is not well to shed many. I say to myself, 'I am on the earth: the good God wills it. There must be something that I may do, and that will help these even more helpless ones.' And as I say it there comes in from the Jardin des Plantes a man who has been a companion to Pierre, and who, as he sees him so despairing, first embraces him and then tells him this: 'Pierre, it is true you cannot again hold spade or hoe, but here is something. There are never enough ants' eggs for the zoölogical gardens and for those that feed pheasants. I know already one woman who supplies them, and she will some day be rich. Why not you also?' "'I have no hands for any work. This hand is useless,' said Pierre; and then I spoke: 'But mine are here and are strong; you have eyes, which for me are well nigh gone. It shall be your eyes and my hands that will do this work if I may learn all the ways. It is only that ants have teeth and bite and we must fear that.' "Then Claude has laughed. 'Teeth! yes, if you will, but they do not gnaw like hunger. Come with me, Madame Agathe, and we will talk with her of whom I speak,--she who knows it all and has the good heart and will tell and help.' "That is how I begun, madame. It is Blanche who has taught me, and I have lived with her a month and watched all her ways, and learned all that these ants can do. At first one must renounce thought to be anything but bitten, yes, bitten always. See me, I am tanned as leather. It is the skin of an apple that has dried that you see on me and with her it is the same. We wear pantaloons and gauntlets of leather. It is almost a coat of mail, but close it as one may, they are always underneath. She can sleep when hundreds run on her, but I, I am frantic at first till I am bitten everywhere; and then, at last, as with bee-keepers, I can be poisoned no longer, and they may gnaw as they will. They are very lively. They love the heat, and we must keep up great heat always and feed them very high, and then they lay many eggs, which we gather for the bird-breeders and others who want them. Twice we have been forced to move, since our ants will wander, and the neighbors complain when their pantries are full, and justly. "Now eight and even ten sacks of ants come to me from Germany and many places. I am busy always, and there is money enough for all; but I have sent the children away, for they are girls, and for each I save a little _dot_, and I will not have them know this _métier_, and be so bitten that they, too, are tanned like me and have never more their pretty fresh skins. Near us now, madame, is another woman, but her trade is less good than mine. She is a bait-breeder, '_une éleveure des asticots_.' All about her room hang old stockings. In them she puts bran and flour and bits of cork, and soon the red worms show themselves, and once there she has no more thought than to let them grow and to sell them for eight and sometimes ten sous a hundred. But I like better my ants, which are clean, and which, if they run everywhere, do not wriggle nor squirm nor make you think always of corruption and death. She breeds other worms for the fishermen, who buy them at the shops for fishing tackle; but often she also buys worms from others and feeds them a little time till plump, but I find them even more disgusting. "An ant has so much intelligence. I can watch mine, madame, as if they were people almost, and would even believe they know me. But that does not hinder them from biting me; no, never; and because they are always upon me the neighbors and all who know me have chosen to call me the 'sister-in-law of ants.' "It is not a trade for women, it is true, save for one only here and there. But it is better than sewing; yes, far better; and I wish all women might have something as good, since now I prosper when once I ate only bread. What shall be done, madame, to make it that more than bread becomes possible for these workers?" CHAPTER XX. FROM FRANCE TO ITALY. In Paris, its fulness of brilliant life so dominates that all shadows seem to fly before it and poverty and pain to have no place, and the same feeling holds for the chief cities of the continent. It is Paris that is the key-note of social life, and in less degree its influence makes itself felt even at remote distances, governing production and fixing the rate of wages paid. Modern improvement has swept away slums, and it is only here and there, in cities like Berlin or Vienna, that one comes upon anything which deserves the name. The Ghetto is still a part of Rome, and likely to remain so, since the conservatism of the lowest order is stronger even in the Italian than in the French or German worker. But if civilization does not abolish the effects of low wages and interminable hours of labor, it at least removes them from sight, and having made its avenues through what once were dens, is certain that all dens are done away with. The fact that the avenue is made, that sunshine enters dark courts and noisome alleys, and that often court and alley are swept away absolutely, is a step gained; yet, as is true of Shaftesbury Avenue in London cut through the old quarters of St. Giles, the squalor and misery is condensed instead of destroyed, and the building that held one hundred holds now double or triple that number. For Paris the Rue Jeanne d'Arc already described is an illustration of what may lie within a stone's throw of quiet and reputable streets, and of what chances await the worker, whose scanty wages offer only existence, and for whom the laying up of any fund for old age is an impossibility. The chief misfortune, however, and one mourned by the few French political economists who have looked below the surface, is the gradual disappearance of family life and its absorption into that of the factory. With this absorption has come other vices, that follow where the family has no further place, and, recognizing this at last, the heads of various great manufactories--notably in Lyons and other points where the silk industry centres--have sought to reorganize labor as much as possible on the family basis. In the old days, when the loom was a part of the furniture of every home, the various phases of weaving were learned one by one, and the child who began by filling bobbins, passed on gradually to the mastery of every branch involved, and became judge of qualities as well as maker of quantities. In this phase, if hours were long, there were at least the breaks of the ordinary family life,--the care of details taken by each in turn, and thus a knowledge acquired, which, with the development of the factory system on its earliest basis, was quite impossible. There were other alleviations, too, as the store of songs and of traditions testifies, both these possibilities ceasing when home labor was transferred to the factory. On the other hand, there were certain compensations, in the fixing of a definite number of hours, of the rate of wages, and at first in freeing the home from the workshop element, the loom having usurped the largest and best place in every household. But, as machinery developed, the time of mother and children was again absorbed, and so absolutely that any household knowledge ended then and there, with no further possibility of its acquisition. It was this state of things, with its accumulated results, which, a generation or so later, faced the few investigators who puzzled over the decadence of morals, the enfeebled physiques, the general helplessness of the young women who married, and the whole series of natural consequences. So startling were the facts developed, that it became at once evident that a change must be brought about, if only as a measure of wise political economy; and thus it has happened for Lyons that the factory system has perfected itself, and matches or even goes beyond that of any other country, with the exception of isolated points like Saltaire in England, or the Chenney village in Connecticut. When it became evident that the ordinary factory girl-worker at sixteen or seventeen could not sew a seam, or make a broth, or care for a child's needs so well as the brute, the time for action had come; and schools of various orders, industrial and otherwise, have gradually risen and sought to undo the work of the years that made them necessary. Perfect in many points as the system has become, however, competition has so followed and pressed upon the manufacturer that the wage standard has lowered to little more than subsistence point, this fact including all forms of woman's work, without the factory as well as within. Leaving France and Germany and looking at Swiss and Italian workers, much the same statements may be made, the lace-workers in Switzerland, for instance, being an illustration of the very minimum of result for human labor. Like the lace-workers of Germany, the fabric must often grow in the dark almost, basements being chosen that dampness may make the thread follow more perfectly the will of the worker, whose day is never less than fifteen hours long, whose food seldom goes beyond black bread with occasional milk or cabbage soup, and whose average of life seldom exceeds forty years. There is not a thread in the exquisite designs that has not been spun from a human nerve stretched to its utmost tension, and the face of these workers once seen are a shadow forever on the lovely webs that every woman covets instinctively. Why an industry demanding so many delicate qualities--patience, perfection of touch, and long practice--should represent a return barely removed from starvation, no man has told us; but so the facts are, and so they stand for every country of Europe where the work is known. In Germany and Italy alike, the sewing-machine has found its way even to the remotest village, manufacturers in the large towns finding it often for their interest to send their work to points where the lowest rate possible in cities seems to the simple people far beyond what they would dream of asking. It is neither in attic nor basement that the Italian worker runs her machine, but in the open doorway, or even the street itself, sunshine pouring upon her, neighbors chatting in the pauses for basting or other preparation, and the sense of human companionship and interest never for an instant lost. For the Anglo-Saxon such methods are alien to every instinct. For the Italian they are as natural as the reverse would be unnatural; and thus, even with actual wage conditions at the worst, the privations and suffering, which are as inevitable for one as the other, are made bearable, and even sink out of sight almost. They are very tangible facts, but they have had to mean something very near starvation before the Italian turned his face toward America,--the one point where, it is still believed, the worker can escape such fear. It is hard for the searcher into these places to realize that suffering in any form can have place under such sunshine, or with the apparent joyousness of Italian life; and it is certain that this life holds a compensation unknown to the North. In Genoa, late in May, I paused in one of the old streets leading up from the quays, where hundreds of sailors daily come and go, and where one of the chief industries for women is the making of various forms of sailor garments. Every doorway opening on the street held its sewing-machine or the low table where cutters and basters were at work, fingers and tongues flying in concert, and a babel of happy sound issuing between the grand old walls of houses seven and eight stories high, flowers in every window, many-colored garments waving from lines stretched across the front, and, far above, a proud mother handing her _bambino_ across for examination by her opposite neighbor, a very simple operation where streets are but four or five feet wide. Life here is reduced to its simplest elements. Abstemious to a degree impossible in a more northern climate, the Italian worker in town or village demands little beyond macaroni, polenta, or chestnuts, with oil or soup, and wine as the occasional luxury; and thus a woman who works fourteen or even fifteen hours a day for a lire and a half, and at times only a lire (20c.), still has enough for absolute needs, and barely looks beyond. It is only when the little bundle has ceased to be _bambino_ that she thinks of a larger life as possible, or wonders why women who work more hours than men, and often do a man's labor, are paid only half the men's rate. In Rome, where these lines are written, the story is the same. There are few statistics from which one can glean any definite idea of numbers, or even of occupations. The army swallows all the young men, precisely as in France; but women slip less readily into responsible positions, and thus earn in less degree than in either France or Germany. In the Ghetto swarm the crowds that have filled it for hundreds of years, and its narrow ways hold every trade known to man's hands, as well as every form of drudgery which here reaches its climax. The church has decreed the relieving of poverty as one chief method of saving rich men's souls, and thus the few attempts made by the English colony to bring about some reconstruction of methods as well as thought have met with every possible opposition, till, within recent years, the necessity of industrial education has become apparent, and Italy has inaugurated some of the best work in this direction. Beyond Italy there has been no attempt at experiment. The work at best has been chiefly from the outside; but whether in this form, or assisted by actual statistics or the general investigation of others, the conclusion is always the same, and sums up as the demand for every worker and every master the resurrection of the old ideal of work; the doing away of competition as it at present rules, and the substitution of co-operation, productive as well as distributive; industrial education for every child, rich or poor; and that and recognition of the interests of all as a portion of our personal charge and responsibility, which, if I name it Socialism, will be scouted as a dream of an impossible future, but which none the less bears that name in its highest interpretation, and is the one solution for every problem on either side the great sea, between the eastern and western worker. CHAPTER XXI. PRESENT AND FUTURE. At the first glance, and even when longer survey has been made, both Paris and Berlin,--and these may stand as the representative Continental cities,--seem to offer every possible facility for the work of women. Everywhere, behind counter, in shop or café, in the markets, on the streets, wherever it is a question of any phase of the ordinary business of life, women are in the ascendant, and would seem to have conquered for themselves a larger place and better opportunities than either England or America have to show. But, as investigation goes on, this larger employment makes itself evident as obstacle rather than help to the better forms of work, and the woman's shoulders bear not only her natural burden, but that also belonging to the man. The army lays its hand on the boy at sixteen or seventeen. The companies and regiments perpetually moving from point to point in Paris seem to be composed chiefly of boys; every student is enrolled, and the period of service must always be deducted in any plan for life made by the family. Naturally, then, these gaps are filled by women,--not only in all ordinary avocations, but in the trades which are equally affected by this perpetual drain. In every town of France or Germany where manufacturing is of old or present date, the story is the same, and women are the chief workers; but, in spite of this fact, the same inequalities in wages prevail that are found in England and America, while conditions include every form of the sharpest privation. For England and America as well is the fact that law regulates or seeks to regulate every detail, no matter how minute, and that the manufacturer or artisan of any description is subject to such laws. On the continent, save where gross wrongs have brought about some slight attempt at regulation by the State, the law is merely a matter of general principles, legislation simply indicating certain ends to be accomplished, but leaving the means entirely in the hands of the heads of industries. Germany has a far more clearly defined code than France; but legislation, while it has touched upon child labor, has neglected that of women-workers entirely. Within a year or two the report of the Belgian commissioners has shown a state of things in the coal mines, pictured with tremendous power by Zola in his novel "Germinal," but in no sense a new story, since the conditions of Belgian workers are practically identical with those of women-workers in Silesia, or at any or all of the points on the continent where women are employed. Philanthropists have cried out; political economists have shown the suicidal nature of non-interference, and demonstrated that if the State gains to-day a slight surplus in her treasury, she has, on the other hand, lost something for which no money equivalent can be given, and that the women who labor from twelve to sixteen hours in the mines, or at any industry equally confining, have no power left to shape the coming generations into men, but leave to the State an inheritance of weak-bodied and often weak-minded successors to the same toil. For France and Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, at every point where women are employed, the story is the same; and the fact remains that, while in the better order of trades women may prosper, in the large proportion, constant and exhausting labor simply keeps off actual starvation, but has no margin for anything that can really be called living. For Paris and Berlin, but in greater degree for Paris, a fact holds true which has almost equal place for New York. Women-workers, whose only support is the needle, contend with an army of women for whom such work is not a support, but who follow it as a means of increasing an already certain income. For these women there is no pressing necessity, and in Paris they are of the _bourgeoisie_, whose desires are always a little beyond their means, who have ungratified caprices, ardent wishes to shine like women in the rank above them, to dress, and to fascinate. They are the wives and daughters of petty clerks, or employés of one order and another, of small government functionaries and the like, who embroider or sew three or four hours a day, and sell the work for what it will bring. The money swells the housekeeping fund, gives a dinner perhaps, or aids in buying a shawl, or some coveted and otherwise unattainable bit of jewelry. The work is done secretly, since they have not the simplicity either of the real _ouvrière_ or of the _grande dame_, both of whom sew openly, the one for charity, the other for a living. But this middle class, despising the worker and aspiring always toward the luxurious side of life, feels that embroidery or tapestry of some description is the only suitable thing for their fingers, and busy on this, preserve the appearance of the dignity they covet. Often their yearly gains are not more than one hundred francs, and they seldom exceed two hundred; for they accept whatever is offered them, and the merchants who deal with them know that they submit to any extortion so long as their secret is kept. This class is one of the obstacles in the way of the ordinary worker, and one that grows more numerous with every year of the growing love of luxury. There must be added to it another,--and in Paris it is a very large one,--that that of women who have known better days, who are determined to keep up appearances and to hide their misery absolutely from former friends. They are timid to excess, and spend days of labor on a piece of work which, in the end, brings them hardly more than a morsel of bread. One who goes below the surface of Paris industries is amazed to discover how large a proportion of women-workers come under this head; and their numbers have been one of the strongest arguments for industrial education, and some development of the sense of what value lies in good work of any order. In one industry alone,--that of bonnet-making in general, it was found a year or two since that over eight hundred women of this order were at work secretly, and though they are found in several other industries, embroidery is their chief source of income. Thus they are in one sense a combination against other women, and one more reason given by merchants of every order for the unequal pay of men and women. It is only another confirmation of the fact that, so long as women are practically arrayed against women, any adjustment of the questions involved in all work is impossible. Hours, wages, all the points at issue that make up the sum of wrong represented by many phases of modern industry, wait for the organization among women themselves; and such organization is impossible till the sense of kinship and mutual obligation has been born. With competition as the heart of every industry, men are driven apart by a force as inevitable and irresistible as its counterpart in the material world, and it is only when an experiment like that of Guise has succeeded, and the patient work and waiting of Père Godin borne fruit that all men pronounce good, that we know what possibilities lie in industrial co-operation. Such co-operation as has there proved itself not only possible but profitable for every member concerned, comes at last, to one who has faced women-workers in every trade they count their own, and under every phase of want and misery, born of ignorance first, and then of the essential conditions of competition, under-pay, and over-work, as one great hope for the future. The instant demand, if it is to become possible, is for an education sufficiently technical to give each member of society the hand-skill necessary to make a fair livelihood. Such knowledge is impossible without perfectly equipped industrial schools; and the need of these has so demonstrated itself that further argument for their adoption is hardly necessary. The constant advance in invention and the fact that the worker, unless exceptionally skilled, is more and more the servant of machinery, is an appeal no less powerful in the same direction. Twenty years ago one of the wisest thinkers in France, conservative, yet with the clearest sense of what the future must bring for all workers, wrote:-- "From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization--the principle and formula even of social progress, that _mechanical engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind_. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular, and for the classes whose only instrument of labor and of earning daily bread is a pair of feeble arms." The machine, the synonym for production at large, has refined and subtilized--even spiritualized itself to a degree almost inconceivable, nor is there any doubt but that the future has far greater surprises in store. But if metal has come to wellnigh its utmost power of service, the worker's capacity has had no equality of development, and the story of labor to-day for the whole working world is one of degradation. That men are becoming alive to this; that students of political economy solemnly warn the producer what responsibility is his; and that the certainty of some instant step as vital and inevitable is plain,--are gleams of light in this murky and sombre sky, from which it would seem at times only the thunderbolt could be certain. Organization and its result in industrial co-operation is one goal, but even this must count in the end only as corrective and palliative unless with it are associated other reforms which this generation is hardly likely to see, yet which more and more outline themselves as a part of those better days for which we work and hope. As to America thus far, our great spaces, our sense of unlimited opportunity, of the chance for all which we still count as the portion of every one on American soil, and a hundred other standard and little-questioned beliefs, have all seemed testimony to the reality and certainty of our faith. But as one faces the same or worse industrial conditions in London or any great city, English or Continental, with its congestion of labor and its mass of resultant misery, the same solution suggests itself and the cry comes from philanthropist and Philistine alike, "Send them into the country! Give them homes and work there!" Naturally this would seem the answer; but where? For when search is made for any bit of land on which a home may rise and food be given back from the soil, all England is found to be in the hands of a few thousand land-owners, while London itself practically belongs to less than a dozen, with rents at such rates that when paid no living wage remains. When once this land question is touched, it is found made up of immemorial injustices, absurdities, outrages, and for America no less than for the whole world of workers. It cannot be that man has right to air and sunshine, but never right to the earth under his feet. Standing-place there must be for this long battle for existence, and in yielding this standing-place comes instant solution of a myriad problems. This is no place for extended argument as to the necessity of land nationalization, or the advantages or disadvantages of Mr. George's scheme of a single tax on land values, with the consequent dropping of our whole complicated tariff. But believing that the experiment is at least worth trying, and trying patiently and thoroughly, the belief, slowly made plain and protested against till further protest became senseless and impossible, stands here, as one more phase of work to be done. In it are bound up many of the reforms, without which the mere fact of granted standing-room would be valueless. The day must come when no one can question that the natural opportunities of life can never rightfully be monopolized by individuals, and when the education that fits for earning, and the means of earning are under wise control, monopolies, combinations, "trusts,"--all the facts which represent organized injustice sink once for all to their own place. Differ as we may, then, regarding methods and possibilities, one question rises always for every soul alike,--What part have I in this awakening, and what work with hands or head can I do to speed this time to which all men are born, and of which to-day they know only the promise? From lowest to highest, the material side has so dominated that other needs have slipped out of sight; and to-day, often, the hands that follow the machine in its almost human operations, are less human than it. Matter is God, and for scientist and speculative philosopher, and too often for social reformer also, the place and need of another God ceases, and there is no hope for the toiler but to lie down at last in the dust and find it sweet to him. Yet for him, and for each child of man, is something as certain. Not the God of theology; not the God made the fetich and blindly worshipped; but the Power whose essence is love and inward constraint to righteousness, and to whom all men must one day come, no matter through what dark ways or with what stumbling feet. The vision is plain and clear of what the State must one day mean and what the work of the world must be, when once more the devil of self-seeking and greed flees to his own place, and each man knows that his life is his own only as he gives it to high service, and to loving thought for every weaker soul. The co-operative commonwealth must come; and when it has come, all men will know that it is but the vision of every age in which high souls have seen what future is for every child of man, and have known that when the spirit of brotherhood rules once for all, the city of God has in very truth descended from the heavens, and men at last have found their own inheritance. This is the future, remote even when most ardently desired; impossible, unless with the dream is bound up the act that brings realization. And when the nature and method of such act comes as question, and the word is, What can be done to-day, in the hour that now is?--how shall unlearned, unthinking minds bend themselves to these problems, when the wisest have failed, and the world still struggles in bondage to custom, the accumulated force of long-tolerated wrong--what can the answer be? There is no enlightener like even the simplest act of real justice. It is impossible that the most limited mind should not feel expansion and know illumination in even the effort to comprehend what justice actually is and involves. Instantly when its demand is heard and met, custom, tradition, old beliefs, everything that hampers progress, slip away, and actual values show themselves. The first step taken in such direction means always a second. It is the beginning of the real march onward; the ending of any blind drifting in the mass, with no consciousness of individual power to move. A deep conviction founded on eternal law is itself an education, and whoever has once determined what the personal demand in life is, has entered the wicket-gate and sees before him a plain public road, on which all humanity may journey to the end. Here then lies the answer, no less than in these last words, the ending of one phase of work which still has only begun. For the day is coming when every child born will be taught the meaning of wealth, of capital, of labor. Then there will be small need of any further schools of political economy, since wealth will be known to be only what the soul can earn,--that which adheres and passes on with it; and capital, all forces that the commonwealth can use to make the man develop to his utmost possibility every power of soul and body; and labor, the joyful, voluntary acceptance of all work to this end, whether with hands or head. Till then, in the fearless and faithful acceptance of every consequence of a conviction, in personal consecration to the highest demand, in increasing effort to make happiness the portion of all, lies the task set for each one,--the securing to every soul the natural opportunity denied by the whole industrial system, both of land and labor, as it stands to-day. This is the goal for all; and by whatever path it is reached, to each and every walker in it, good cheer and unflagging courage, and a leaving the way smoother for feet that will follow, till all paths are at last made plain, and every face set toward the city we seek! * * * * * _Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._ PRISONERS OF POVERTY WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS: THEIR TRADES AND THEIR LIVES. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," ETC. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. The author writes earnestly and warmly, but without prejudice, and her volume is an eloquent plea for the amelioration of the evils with which she deals. In the present importance into which the labor question generally has loomed, this volume is a timely and valuable contribution to its literature, and merits wide reading and careful thought.--_Saturday Evening Gazette._ She has given us a most effective picture of the condition of New York working-women, because she has brought to the study of the subject not only great care but uncommon aptitude. She has made a close personal investigation, extending apparently over a long time; she has had the penetration to search many queer and dark corners which are not often thought of by similar explorers; and we suspect that, unlike too many philanthropists, she has the faculty of winning confidence and extracting the truth. She is sympathetic, but not a sentimentalist; she appreciates exactness in facts and figures; she can see both sides of a question, and she has abundant common sense.--_New York Tribune._ Helen Campbell's "Prisoners of Poverty" is a striking example of the trite phrase that "truth is stranger than fiction." It is a series of pictures of the lives of women wage-workers in New York, based on the minutest personal inquiry and observation. No work of fiction has ever presented more startling pictures, and, indeed, if they occurred in a novel would at once be stamped as a figment of the brain.... Altogether, Mrs. Campbell's book is a notable contribution to the labor literature of the day, and will undoubtedly enlist sympathy for the cause of the oppressed working-women whose stories do their own pleading.--_Springfield Union._ It is good to see a new book by Helen Campbell. She has written several for the cause of working-women, and now comes her latest and best work, called "Prisoners of Poverty," on women wage-workers and their lives. It is compiled from a series of papers written for the Sunday edition of a New York paper. The author is well qualified to write on these topics, having personally investigated the horrible situation of a vast army of working-women in New York,--a reflection of the same conditions that exist in all large cities. It is glad tidings to hear that at last a voice is raised for the woman side of these great labor questions that are seething below the surface calm of society. And it is well that one so eloquent and sympathetic as Helen Campbell has spoken in behalf of the victims and against the horrors, the injustices, and the crimes that have forced them into conditions of living--if it can be called living--that are worse than death. It is painful to read of these terrors that exist so near our doors, but none the less necessary, for no person of mind or heart can thrust this knowledge aside. It is the first step towards a solution of the labor complications, some of which have assumed foul shapes and colossal proportions, through ignorance, weakness, and wickedness.--_Hartford Times._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. * * * * * _Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._ MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY. A STORY. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "PRISONERS OF POVERTY." 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. "Mrs. Helen Campbell has written 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity' with a definite purpose in view, and this purpose will reveal itself to the eyes of all of its philanthropic readers. The true aim of the story is to make life more real and pleasant to the young girls who spend the greater part of the day toiling in the busy stores of New York. Just as in the 'What-to-do Club' the social level of village life was lifted several grades higher, so are the little friendly circles of shop-girls made to enlarge and form clubs in 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity.'"--_Boston Herald._ "'Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author; but it is none the less interesting and none the less realistic. The plot is unpretentious, and deals with the simplest and most conventional of themes; but the character-drawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and highly finished to the slightest details. There is much quiet humor in the book, and it is handled with skill and reserve. Those who have been attracted to Mrs. Campbell's other works will welcome the latest of them with pleasure and satisfaction."--_Saturday Gazette._ "The best book that Helen Campbell has yet produced is her latest story, 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' which is especially strong in character-drawing, and its life sketches are realistic and full of vigor, with a rich vein of humor running through them. Miss Melinda is a dear lady of middle life, who has finally found her opportunity to do a great amount of good with her ample pecuniary means by helping those who have the disposition to help themselves. The story of how some bright and energetic girls who had gone to New York to earn their living put a portion of their earnings into a common treasury, and provided themselves with a comfortable home and good fare for a very small sum per week, is not only of lively interest, but furnishes hints for other girls in similar circumstances that may prove of great value. An unpretentious but well-sustained plot runs through the book, with a happy ending, in which Miss Melinda figures as the angel that she is."--_Home Journal._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid on receipt of price, by the publishers_, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. * * * * * _Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._ MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME. A NOVEL. BY HELEN CAMPBELL. AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB." One volume. 16mo. Cloth. $1.50 "Confirmed novel-leaders who have regarded fiction as created for amusement and luxury alone, lay down this book with a new and serious purpose in life. The social scientist reads it, and finds the solution of many a tangled problem; the philanthropist finds in it direction and counsel. A novel written with a purpose, of which never for an instant does the author lose sight, it is yet absorbing in its interest. It reveals the narrow motives and the intrinsic selfishness of certain grades of social life; the corruption of business methods; the 'false, fairy gold,' of fashionable charities, and 'advanced' thought. Margaret Wentworth is a typical New England girl, reflective, absorbed, full of passionate and repressed intensity under a quiet and apparently cold exterior. The events that group themselves about her life are the natural result of such a character brought into contact with real life. The book cannot be too widely read."--_Boston Traveller._ "If the 'What-to-do Club' was clever, this is decidedly more so. It is a powerful story, and is evidently written in some degree, we cannot quite say how great a degree, from fact. The personages of the story are very well drawn,--indeed, 'Amanda Briggs' is as good as anything American fiction has produced. We fancy we could pencil on the margin the real names of at least half the characters. It is a book for the wealthy to read that they may know something that is required of them, because it does not ignore the difficulties in their way, and especially does not overlook the differences which social standing puts between class and class. It is a deeply interesting story considered as mere fiction, one of the best which has lately appeared. We hope the authoress will go on in a path where she has shown herself so capable."--_The Churchman._ "In Mrs. Campbell's novel we have a work that is not to be judged by ordinary standards. The story holds the reader's interest by its realistic pictures of the local life around us, by its constant and progressive action, and by the striking dramatic quality of scenes and incidents, described in a style clear, connected, and harmonious. The novel-reader who is not taken up and made to share the author's enthusiasm before getting half-way through the book must possess a taste satiated and depraved by indulgence in exciting and sensational fiction. The earnestness of the author's presentation of essentially great purposes lends intensity to her narrative. Succeeding as she does in impressing us strongly with her convictions, there is nothing of dogmatism in their preaching. But the suggestiveness of every chapter is backed by pictures of real life."--_New York World._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. * * * * * _Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._ THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB. A STORY FOR GIRLS. BY HELEN CAMPBELL. 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. "'The What-to-do Club' is an unpretending story. It introduces us to a dozen or more village girls of varying ranks. One has had superior opportunities; another exceptional training; two or three have been 'away to school;' some are farmers' daughters; there is a teacher, two or three poor self-supporters,--in fact, about such an assemblage as any town between New York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them.... Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in our country."--_The Chautauquan._ 'The What-to-do Club' is a delightful story for girls, especially for New England girls, by Helen Campbell. The heroine of the story is Sybil Waite, the beautiful, resolute, and devoted daughter of a broken-down but highly educated Vermont lawyer. The story shows how much it is possible for a well-trained and determined young woman to accomplish when she sets out to earn her own living, or help others. Sybil begins with odd jobs of carpentering, and becomes an artist in woodwork. She is first jeered at, then admired, respected, and finally loved by a worthy man. The book closes pleasantly with John claiming Sybil as his own. The labors of Sybil and her friends and of the New Jersey 'Busy Bodies,' which are said to be actual facts, ought to encourage many young women to more successful competition in the battles of life."--_Golden Rule._ "In the form of a story, this book suggests ways in which young women may make money at home, with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawn, and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural storyteller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested with a certain ideal glamour, and we are thrilled and absorbed by an array of figures of receipts and expenditures, equally with the changeful incidents of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony. Fun and pathos, sense and sentiment, are mingled throughout, and the combination has resulted in one of the brightest stories of the season."--_Woman's Journal._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post paid, by publishers_, ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON. 
27519	----	THE SETTLEMENT OF WAGE DISPUTES The MacMillan Company New York · Boston · Chicago · Dallas Atlanta · San Francisco MacMillan & Co., Limited London · Bombay · Calcutta Melbourne The MacMillan Co. Of Canada, Ltd. Toronto THE SETTLEMENT OF WAGE DISPUTES by HERBERT FEIS, Ph.D. Associate Professor in Economics University of Kansas New York The MacMillan Company 1921 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Copyright, 1921, by The MacMillan Company. Set up and printed. Published October, 1921. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. To 37 Mellen St. PREFACE "The Settlement of Wage Disputes" falls naturally into two almost equal parts: the first an account of the present industrial situation in the United States, and of the factors which govern American wage levels at the present time; the second an attempt to formulate principles which might serve as the basis of a policy of wage settlement for the country. The proposals made in the second part are based on the theoretical analysis of the first part. Certain chapters in the first part (III and IV) may prove difficult for the ordinary reader. They are intended to be merely an analysis of a particular set of facts and tendencies--those which affect the present wage situation in the United States, or may affect it in the near future. Such an analysis of a particular set of facts is all that economic theory can successfully accomplish. This book was first projected in the summer of 1914. The Dress and Waist Industry of New York City had set up a Board of Protocol Standards to settle wage disputes. The late Robert C. Valentine was then engaged in finding a basis of wage settlement for the industry that would be of more than passing value--and as his assistant, I first became convinced that there could be no permanent peace under the wages system, once different interests became organized, unless a clear body of fundamentals principles applicable to all industries are supported and enforced. In the course of the work I have incurred many obligations both in the United States and Great Britain. I can only acknowledge a very few here. To my teachers, Prof. F. W. Taussig and W. Z. Ripley, I owe much, both for their instruction, direct help and example. In Great Britain, Mr. John A. Hobson, Mr. Henry Clay and Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb aided me greatly to understand British experience. My debt to the work of Judge Jethro W. Brown of the South Australia Industrial Court is heavy as the book shows. Above all I have to thank my friend Dr. Walter B. Kahn for his share in the work. H. F. _University of Kansas._ CONTENTS PAGE Chapter I--Introductory 1 § 1. In any attempt to formulate principles for use in the settlement of wage disputes, past experience furnishes much guidance. What this experience consists of. § 2. Such principles as have been used in the settlement of wage disputes have usually resulted from compromise; reason and economic analysis have usually been secondary factors. However, industrial peace cannot be secured by a recurrent use of expedients. § 3. The attitude most favorable to industrial peace. Chapter II--Some Pertinent Aspects of the Present Industrial Situation 8 § 1. The chief aims of any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace defined--the chief tests to be passed. A knowledge of present industrial facts essential to the formulation of sound policy. § 2. The present economic position of the wage earners. § 3. Their relations to the other groups in industry. The acceptance of the practice of collective bargaining essential to any policy of wage settlement in the United States to-day. Trade unionism must prove itself fit for this responsibility, however. § 4. The economic position of capital in the present industrial order. Its service to production. The problems to which the accumulation of capital has given rise. § 5. The economic position of the directors of industry. Industrial control an attribute of ownership. Two important suppositions used in this book, concerning: a. The forms of industrial income; b. The possible spread of public ownership, and its consequences for a policy of wage settlement. Chapter III--The Principles of Wages 35 § 1. A knowledge of the forces governing existing wage levels essential in any attempt to work out a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. § 2. Wage incomes determined by great number of forces. The three most important and constant among these stated. § 3. These three to be taken up in order. The volume of the flow of wealth in the county of the worker the first to be considered. Its relation to wages indirect, as all product is joint result. § 4. The scientific management theories of wages based on a misconception of the relation between the productive contribution of labor and wages. These theories merely an elaboration of one method of wage payment. They have perceived one important truth, however. § 5. The "group-demand" theory of wages as held by some trade unions, based on a similar misconception. Valid, sometimes, from group point of view; unsound from point of view of labor in general. § 6. The second important force determining wages is the relative plenty or scarcity of the different groups or agents of production. How this governs the share of the product going to wage earners. § 7. Many important modifying forces to the influence upon wages of relative plenty or scarcity. The most important considered. § 8. The forces determining the sharing out of the product of industry summarized. The idea of normal equilibrium in distribution a mistaken one. § 9. A brief analysis of the factors which determine actual plenty or scarcity of the different agents of production at any one time. § 10. The third important force introduced--the relative plenty or scarcity of different kinds of labor. The existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners discussed. The nature of an investigation of the principles of wages. Chapter IV--Principles of Wages (_Continued_) 69 § 1. We have next to examine the causes of formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners. § 2. What is meant by a "relatively separate group"? § 3. The causes of the existence of these groups in the United States to-day. Inequality of natural ability; inequality of opportunity; artificial barriers. All these contradictory to assumptions behind theory of general rate of wages. § 4. Trade unions another factor in the formation of relatively separate groups. Indirect effects in opposite direction. § 5. Each of these groups has a relatively independent economic career. There are a series of wage levels, all of which are governed to a considerable extent by the same forces. § 6. The way in which the relative plenty or scarcity of each kind or group of labor affects its wages. Other forces play a part also. § 7. The nature of wage "differentials." Chapter V--Wages and Price Movements 87 § 1. The transactions of distribution arranged in terms of money. How does this affect the outcome of distribution as regards wages? § 2. The characteristics of price movements. § 3. The direct and indirect effects of upward price movements upon the distribution of the product. § 4. The direct and indirect effects of falling price movements upon the distribution of the product. § 5. The doctrine of the "vicious circle of wages and prices" examined. Its meaning and importance. Chapter VI--Wages and Price Movements (_Continued_) 106 § 1. The problems of wage settlement arising out of upward price movements two in number: (a) Should wages be increased during such periods? (b) If so, on what basis should increases be arranged? The doctrine of the maintenance of the standard of life analyzed. § 2. An alternative method of adjustment proposed, based on a new index number. § 3. Periods of falling prices also present two problems of wage settlement, similar in essentials to those presented by upward movement. These problems discussed. Chapter VII--The Standard Wage 121 § 1. The remainder of the book will consist of an attempt to mark out principles of wage settlement that could be applied with relative peace and satisfaction in the settlement of wage disputes. § 2. Some preliminary notes on the subsequent exposition. The question of the political machinery required to put any policy of wage settlement into effect, avoided on the whole. § 3. The principle of wage standardization defined and explained. § 4. The characteristics of the standard wage examined. § 5. The effect of the standard wage on individual independence and initiative. § 6. The effect of the standard wage on the distribution of employment within the group. § 7. Its effect upon industrial organization, prices, and managerial ability. § 8. Its effect upon the output of the wage earners. This question cannot be satisfactorily discussed apart from the larger one--that of the effect of unionism upon production. § 9. Wage standardization and the "rate of turnover" of labor. Chapter VIII--The Standard Wage (_Continued_) 147 § 1. What variations or limitations should be introduced into the principle of standardization in view of the great area and economic diversity of the United States? § 2. Differences in natural or acquired advantage between different enterprises as a reason for modification and limitation of the principle. § 3. Differences in the character of the work performed by any large group of wage earners as a reason. § 4. Differences in the cost of living at different points within the area of standardization as a reason. § 5. The grounds for "nominal variations" in standard wage rates. The policy to be pursued in regard to payment for irregular employment. § 6. The possibility of maintaining standard wage rates over a large and diversified area considered. § 7. Up to the present, the progress of standardization has not proceeded in accordance with reasoned conclusions as to the results produced. § 8. Where should level of standardization be set? The doctrine of "standardization upward." § 9. The importance of the principle of standardization in wage settlement. Chapter IX--The Living Wage 177 § 1. The reasons for seeking separate principles for the settlement of the wages of the lowest paid groups. § 2. Wage statistics of these groups a matter of familiar knowledge. § 3. The definition of the living wage idea. An inescapable element of indefiniteness contained in it. § 4. The living wage principle put in the form of applied policy. § 5. Should the living wage principle be applied to male labor? The arguments for and against. § 6. The theoretical case for the living wage principle. The verdict of past experience favorable to its extension. § 7. The dangers which must be guarded against in applying it. § 8. It should be administered through machinery which makes possible careful study of facts of each industry. This machinery discussed. § 9. The question of the relation to be established between living wage for men and women difficult. Alternatives considered. § 10. A plan for the adjustment of the living wage to price changes. The basis of adjustment. § 11. The policy of adjustment--already discussed. § 12. The hope of the living wage policy. Chapter X--The Regulation of Wage Levels 209 § 1. Why there must be in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship between each and every group of wage earners. The limits of collective bargaining as a factor in industrial peace. § 2. In the beginning, the scheme must probably be based on an acceptance of existing wage "differentials." The reasons for this are of a practical kind. § 3. Any policy which planned to develop a scheme of wage relationships merely by maintaining existing differentials would be bound to fall to pieces in the end. The difficulties that would arise. § 4. Two principles proposed as the basis of the desired scheme of wage relationship. Their meaning as applied doctrines. § 5. These principles open to criticism both on practical and theoretical grounds. The chief criticisms examined and taken into account. § 6. Some notes on the best method of administering these principles. The necessity of avoiding political interference, if possible. Chapter XI--The Regulation of Wage Levels (_Continued_)--Wages And Prices 231 § 1. The scheme of wage relationship must recommend itself as just to the wage earners and the community in general. The ultimate distributive question to be met is the division of the product between profit and wages. § 2. Provision for the adjustment of wages to price movements would aid, however, towards reaching distributive goal. A policy of adjustment suggested. § 3. The difficulty of maintaining scheme of wage relationship of wages adjusted to price movements. The best method of adjustment a compromise. Chapter XII--The Regulation of Wage Levels (_Continued_)--Wages And Profits 239 § 1. The profits return in industry, under any policy of wage settlement, will be closely scrutinized. § 2. The possibility of measuring a "fair" profits return for all industry discussed. A method suggested. § 3. Would the principles of wage settlement worked out so far, produce a fair profits return? An open question. § 4. The scope and form of any measure designed to assure the desired distributive outcome can be discerned. § 5. The various steps in the formulation of such a measure reviewed. A measure tentatively suggested. § 6. The difficulties of calculating wage changes called for under the suggested measure. § 7. The chief practical weaknesses of the suggested measure examined. § 8. It would be open to theoretical criticism also. The alternatives even less satisfactory. Chapter XIII--A Concept of Industrial Peace 264 § 1. The hope for industrial peace in the United States. § 2. A policy of wage settlement composed out of the principles already set forth. § 3. What results might be expected from the adoption of these principles as a policy? § 4. The matter of economic security for the wage earners likely to be important for industrial peace. Hardly considered in this book. The question has been presented to the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations. § 5. Certain new ideas concerning industrial relationship have come to stay. They indicate the probable current of future change. THE SETTLEMENT OF WAGE DISPUTES CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY Section 1. In any attempt to formulate principles for use in the settlement of wage disputes, past experience furnishes much guidance. What this experience consists of.--Section 2. Such principles as have been used in the settlement of wage disputes have usually resulted from compromise; reason and economic analysis have usually been secondary factors. However, industrial peace cannot be secured by a recurrent use of expedients.--Section 3. The attitude most favorable to industrial peace. 1.--The industrial life of the United States is marked by an almost continuous series of open struggles between the employers and wage earners of its highly organized industries. No one defends these struggles for their own sake. There is a general inclination, however, to regard them as a necessary accompaniment of industrial activity and change. It must not be supposed that all labor troubles are merely wage controversies--that is to say, that they are all incidental to the settlement of the wage incomes of the laborers. Many of them arise in whole or part from a shifting and conflict of ideas about various other aspects of the industrial order. It is possible, however, to concentrate attention upon those conflicts which center around the settlement of wages. There is a quick and somewhat tumultuous stream of investigation directed to the invention and formulation of principles which could be used as a basis of settlement of wage controversies. In various countries such principles have been formally set forth and used. The awards of the War Labor Board are an example of their imperfect application. In the Industrial Court of the Commonwealth of Australia we have an example of the consistent use of one set of wage principles. The material that has arisen out of this process of discussion and experimentation is of the utmost value to any one endeavoring to work out a wage policy for industrial peace in the United States. It forms a body of doctrines. It gives evidence both as to the chief subjects of wage controversy, and indicates the suitability or the shortcomings of many of the principles or doctrines that might be proposed. Thus in any investigation of principles of wage settlement--with a view to industrial peace--we are not without the guidance of experience. This experience consists, firstly, of the principles worked out and applied in the decisions and orders of the courts or boards which have served as agents of wage settlement in the United States, England, Canada and the Australian dominions. Of almost equal value is the material growing out of those great industrial conflicts of recent years, in which claims have been put forward and agreement has been sought on the basis of some definite theory of wages. Such, for example, is the material prepared and presented in the course of the railway wage arbitrations in the United States and England. Such also is the evidence and material presented in the course of the inquiry recently held in Great Britain upon the wages of transport workers. 2.--It should be understood that the principles which have been used in wage settlements in the past were not ideal solutions. That is to say they were not arrived at solely by the use of reason, directed to the discovery of what is just and what is for the general good. The situation has been rather that described by Mr. Squires, when he writes: "Too often in the past arbitration has followed the line of least resistance. With much unction, the lion's share has been awarded to the lion. Decisions proposing another settlement were speedily forgotten because not enforced. Those submitting to arbitration frequently did so with the mental reservation that the decision to be acceptable must at least approximate the conditions they felt they would be able to establish by a show of strength. From this position to one of complacent acceptance of arbitrary decisions, applied not to an isolated group but seeking to comprehend all labor or a given class, is a long step for both employers and employees." And again: "In arbitrary wage adjustments the absence of well defined and acceptable standards to be used in wage determination as well as the difficulty in enforcing awards that did not conform closely to the law of supply and demand has forced arbitration to resort to the expediency of splitting the difference. Cost of living, proportionate expense of labor, and net profits, when taken into account have been more often evoked in defense of claims made than as a means of determining what claims were just under the circumstances."[1] So, also, with any attempt to devise principles which might serve as the basis of a policy of wage settlement in the United States. They would represent the effort to develop standards by which conflicting claims could be resolved. It is not desired to signify agreement by this admission with those who believe that all principles of wage settlement must be purely passive, with those who argue that wage settlement must perforce be nothing more than a recurrent use of expedients produced on the spur of the occasion out of the magical hat of the arbitrator. All that is meant is that no policy of wage settlement will succeed if its results diverge too greatly from the interests which it, in turn, would guide and restrain. Any policy of wage settlement must take into consideration the moral and social circumstances pertinent to the dispute as well as the economic. It must express active social and ethical claims as well as recognize economic facts. It must be supported by the sense that it is at least moderately just. Most attempts, furthermore, to settle wage disputes by the use of defined principles have resulted in an incoherence of policy due to the necessity of bowing to the facts of force. This interference of force and the consequent disturbance of policy is likewise to be expected in all future attempts. For, in all human affairs private interest will, on favorable occasions, revolt against laws or rules which restrain it. Again, in the United States all past attempts to settle wage disputes by reference to principles have been isolated and sporadic. They have, therefore, been virtually foredoomed to failure. For as will be made clearer as we progress, any successful attempt to base wage settlements upon principles will demand the consistent and courageous application of these principles for a not inconsiderable period, and to all important industries alike. Otherwise compromise and a search for any way out of the immediate crisis is the only possible principle of settlement. Any well-conceived policy of wage settlement must have regard for a far wider set of forces and facts than are presented by any single controversy. The objects of any policy could only be attained through a long series of decisions ranging throughout the field of industry, and related to each other. This, it is trusted, will become plain as the difficulties of formulating policy are discussed. 3.--Prof. Marshall in his great book has an arresting passage on the importance of the tendency to organization which characterizes the whole field of industry. He writes: "This is not a fitting place for a study of the causes and effects of trade combinations and of alliances and counter alliances among the employers and employed, as well as among traders and manufacturers. They present a succession of picturesque incidents and romantic transformations which arrest public attention and seem to indicate a coming change of our social arrangements now in one direction and now in another; and their importance is certainly great and grows rapidly. But it is apt to be exaggerated; for indeed many of them are little more than eddies such as have always flitted over the surface of progress. And though they are on a larger and more imposing scale in this modern age than before; yet now, as ever, the main body of the movement depends on the deep, silent, strong stream of the tendencies of normal distribution and exchange which 'are not seen' but which control the course of those episodes which 'are seen.' For even in conciliation and arbitration the central difficulty is to discover what is the normal level from which the decisions of the court must not depart far under penalty of destroying their own authority."[2] Writing in England in 1920, it seems to me as if the events of change in England were more than the surface movements he speaks of, and that slowly but definitely industrial arrangements are undergoing modification so as to give scope to new energies and ideas which will modify the "normal" distribution and exchange as he conceived it. The future in the United States is even less clearly marked. There too new purposes and claims are arising and will seek adjustment with established arrangements. The attitude of all those who really desire industrial peace must be that of readiness to judge such forces of change as may become active, by the balance of good or harm they seem to promise. For that is the attitude which alone can make possible a fusion of the conservatism of experience and of established interest, and the radicalism of hope and desire--by which fusion society can experience peaceful development. FOOTNOTES: [1] "New York Harbor Wage Adjustment," B. M. Squires, _Monthly Review of the U. S. Department of Labor_, Sept., 1918, page 19. [2] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics," 7th Edition, page 628. CHAPTER II--SOME PERTINENT ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT INDUSTRIAL SITUATION Section 1. The chief aims of any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace defined--the chief tests to be passed. A knowledge of present industrial facts essential to the formulation of sound policy.--Section 2. The present economic position of the wage earners.--Section 3. Their relations to the other groups in industry. The acceptance of the practice of collective bargaining essential to any policy of wage settlement in the United States to-day. Trade unionism must prove itself fit for this responsibility, however.--Section 4. The economic position of capital in the present industrial order. Its service to production. The problems to which the accumulation of capital has given rise.--Section 5. The economic position of the directors of industry. Industrial control an attribute of ownership. Two important suppositions used in this book, concerning: a. The forms of industrial income; b. The possible spread of public ownership, and its consequences for a policy of wage settlement. 1.--The problem of wage settlement may be regarded as the task of elucidation or invention of methods and principles in accordance with which the product of industry might be shared among the wage earners and the other participants in the product with relative peace and satisfaction. It is necessary and permissible, as has been remarked, to separate this problem from other closely related problems. However, any policy of wage settlement that might be adopted would be also an important influence in other industrial issues outside of those it settles directly. It would affect in numberless ways the relations between the groups concerned in production. It follows that no policy of wage settlement will work successfully unless it accomplishes two ends. First, it must represent convincingly the effort to divide the product of industry so as to satisfy the most widely held conceptions of justice in the industrial system. Second, it must contribute, wherever it is a factor, to such an adjustment of industrial relations as will command the voluntary support of all groups whose coöperation is necessary for the maintenance of industrial peace. For the accomplishment of these two objects, any policy must be based upon a knowledge of the present economic position of the various groups engaged in industry, and of the present state of industrial relations between them. It is obviously impossible to review these matters adequately in this book. The most that can be attempted is a brief survey of those aspects of these questions with which the problem of wage settlement must definitely concern itself. Such a survey will occupy this chapter. If it serves no other purpose, it will serve the important one of making clear the source of certain general presuppositions with which the problem of formulating a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace is approached. 2.--It is convenient to deal with the general field under survey by considering in the order stated, the present economic position, firstly, of the wage earners; secondly, of those who own invested capital; and thirdly, of those who direct industrial activity. Questions of industrial relationship between these groups can then be presented at the point at which they arise most pertinently. Such a loose order as this is dictated by the desire to avoid all questions except those which inevitably arise when studying the problem of wage settlement. To begin with the wage earners. The task of giving exact scope to the term "wage earners" may be shirked. The term may be taken to include, at least, all those grades of workers whose incomes would be governed directly by any scheme of wage settlement. When using the term in the course of theoretical discussion, as in the ordinary analysis of distribution, it may be taken to include also other grades of workers, whose incomes probably would not be so governed, as for example, assistant or department managers of large businesses. The recent past has witnessed important changes both in the economic position of the wage earners, and in the relations between them and the other groups engaged in industry. A close connection may be traced between the two lines of change. Up to the beginning of the present century, at any rate, it may be asserted that the wage earners of the country were not separated from the rest of the industrial community, either socially or economically; although at all times throughout the last century, there was to be found a section of recent immigrant labor which had not yet found its way into the main channels of economic society. The farms, the shops and private businesses of the small and semi-rural towns; these were the common origins and discipline of our industrial leaders and of the more skilled groups of wage earners. There was no great difference either of educational or of industrial opportunity between the mass of men. The few great financial centers of the East may have been the home of an established and separate economic class, but this class was not one of the most important industrial forces. The standard of life as well as the economic prospects of all wage earners who had been thoroughly absorbed into the community encouraged a feeling of equality and independence. The tradition of our period of industrial expansion was that most men should seek to operate their own farm or business (and be their own master). This tradition could flourish as long as a great variety of industrial opportunity existed for the ordinary individual. The first stages in the development of our natural resources, the course of mechanical invention and improvement, the rapid growth of our population--all these changes stimulated independent enterprise, and offered great hopes of success in enterprise to men possessed of common sense, energy, and character. No family felt itself placed in a fixed position in the industrial scale except by reason of its own inferior powers of utilizing opportunity. The wage earners were those workers who worked for some one else, but they did not form a separate class different in experience and outlook from their employers. The possession of wealth, under such circumstances indicated individual capacity, temperament, and ambition. That phase of American industry is certainly not entirely past, although it has not persisted to the extent that some of the industrial leaders whose rise was contemporaneous with the earlier stages of industrial expansion, are wont to argue. At the present time able and determined individuals, who in youth are manual workers frequently succeed in discovering openings to the higher industrial positions. The need for business ability is still too great to be supplied by any one level of society; all are drawn upon. The thought that each man can attain to the possession of a business of his own, or to a position of importance in some big business, is even now a common conviction and inspiration among the more skilled groups of wage earners. Yet the economic position of the wage earners in industry has undergone genuine change. The chief characteristics of the present situation are familiar knowledge. First of all, the percentage of employers to wage earners in industry has decreased.[3] Again most new undertakings in the important branches of productive industry require a large amount of capital, a specialized and rather rare capacity for organization and a considerable knowledge of a wide sphere of industry. Indeed, the undertaking of new business enterprises has itself become to no small extent the function of organizations rather than of individuals. Further the personal coöperation between employer and the best men among his wage earners which was in the past the ordinary method of business education is not often practised now. Industry is not a good education for the skilled and able wage earners. Industrial management has usually taken the view that there is no need or profit in educating the wage earners beyond the requirements of their specialized task. The gap between ordinary wage work and managerial work and ownership is in most industries great--the path upward hard to discover. The jobs which carry the easiest opportunities for advancement in many important industries are now the subordinate positions in the various executive, administrative or sales branches. These jobs tend to be given to young men from that section of society which has affiliations, direct or indirect, with the management of industry. The growth in importance of these branches has led to the development of a specialized form of education for industrial leadership which the wage earner does not receive. Indeed, with the ever increasing complexity of the problems of business enterprise, prolonged education, itself, has become of more importance in determining individual chances of success. All these developments have greatly lessened the chances of the ordinary wage earner for any position of ownership or control. They have tended to separate the wage earners from the groups controlling industry; they have taken away in a large measure the inspiration which work receives from hopes of steady advancement. When that hope is gone only the hope for high wages is left, and that is not a sufficiently potent common aim to insure the coöperation required for so complex an activity as modern industry. Simultaneously with the revolution in industrial structure and interacting with it in many ways, there has occurred a great change in the composition and character of the wage-earning body. The change that occurred between 1870 and 1910 in the sources of the immigration which has furnished the United States with the bulk of its supply of unskilled and semi-skilled labor, is a commonplace of American industrial history. The effects of this change have been largely governed by other industrial events, chief among which may be put the increased concentration of industry in and around a relatively small number of cities or regions. For as Mr. Chapin in his study of the sources of urban increase has stated: "Immigration has been the chief source of urban increase in the United States during the past quarter of a century."[4] There has assembled in each of our great cities a mass of workers, many of whom are of recent alien origin, quickly habituated to the routine of existence in crowded city streets and busy factories. The interchange of opinion and of sympathy between these lowest grades of industrial workers and the rest of the community is very imperfect. Their industrial position and outlook tends to be that of a separate class. As a rule, they are unorganized. It is of these grades of labor that Prof. Marshall has written "Some of these indeed rise; for instance, particular departments of some steel works are so fully manned by Slavs, that they are beginning efficiently to take the place of Irish and others who have hitherto acted as foremen: while large numbers of them are to be found in relatively light, but monotonous work in large cities. They may lack the resolute will which put many British, German and Scandinavian immigrants on terms of equality with native Americans. But they are quick withal, versatile; and as a rule, easily molded; they take readily to the use of machinery; and they have no tradition that could prevent them from doing their best in using semi-automatic machines, which are simple of handling, while doing complex work. Thus America has obtained a plentiful supply of people who are able and willing to do the routine work of a factory for relatively low wages, and whose aptitudes supplement those of the stronger races that constitute the great bulk of the white population."[5] They have sought chiefly such improvement in their position as might come from increased wages. They have remained in the regions of the will and of thought subject to those who controlled industry; for they themselves have been in a strange environment, and so have not been able to display, to any considerable extent, the qualities requisite to industrial leadership. The difference of viewpoint and even of economic interest between the groups of skilled craftsmen in industry and the unskilled grades is being gradually reduced. Industrial developments have tended to emphasize the measure of common interest between all grades of wage earners. The steady trend to standardization in production and to simplification of the machine processes has lessened somewhat the difference between the character of the work of the upper and lower grades of labor. Modern industrial developments have led to an increased emphasis upon "general ability" and a lessened emphasis upon "special ability." To quote Marshall again, "Manual skill that is so specialized that it is quite incapable of being transferred from one occupation to another is becoming steadily a less and less important factor in production. Putting aside for the present the faculties of artistic perception and artistic creation, we may say that what makes one occupation higher than another, what makes the workers of one town or country more efficient than those of another, is chiefly a superiority in general sagacity and energy which are not specialized to any one occupation."[6] As labor organization tends to become recognized as a regular part of the framework of industry, as the duties put upon trade union leadership are broadened in order that industry may give the wage earners collective representation, it is to be expected that stronger bonds will arise between the skilled and unskilled grades of wage earners than those which unite them at present.[7] The position of the female industrial workers remains to be noted since the employment of women in industry seems likely to increase. Women are employed, on the whole, on the lighter and more routine stages of the process of production. They have shown capacity, endurance and steadiness upon monotonous and nerve straining work both upon machine and hand tasks. It seems likely that they will continue to displace men in many of the simpler mechanical jobs. Many individual women wage earners have risen to tasks of responsibility and direction. This number will be greatly added to by improvement in the education of women for industry and by their continued self-assertion. Nevertheless, it is likely that the great bulk of women wage earners will continue to be employed as at present upon relatively simple, light and unskilled work. Such, in briefest outline, is the economic position of the wage earners in American industry to-day. There is a diversity of outlook and of animating spirit among the various groups or classes. There is no very settled opinion among them as to the place of the wage earner in the industrial system. There is besides a diversity of racial and sex faculty and adaptability. 3.--Change and diversity also mark the relationships between the wage earners and the other industrial groups. Up to the very recent past, the connection of the wage earners with the enterprise in which they served was limited practically to the fulfillment of the individual wage contracts which were made. The obligation of the wage earners to the enterprise which employed them has been considered at an end with the performance of the work they were employed to do. Similarly, the obligation of the enterprise to the wage earners has been considered fulfilled by the payment of wages earned. The wage earners have been called upon to give their whole-hearted efforts to their work by reason of the belief that such effort was to their own interest, and by reason of their own hopes and desires for advancement. The American wage earners have usually tackled their jobs with energy, good will, and sincerity. It is impossible to attempt to sketch here the development of the practice of collective bargaining, and the various concepts of industrial relationship to which the rise of trade unionism has given impulse. We are now in the midst of a struggle brought about by the efforts of the wage earners to add to their traditional rights of freedom of contract and of enterprise certain other rights. These may be collectively described as the right to organize and to use their organized strength collectively in all ways which may be reconciled with the public interest. Some of the greatest industrial conflicts of recent years have been consequences of the efforts of the wage earners to establish these additional rights both in fact and in law (as for example the strike in the steel and iron industry in 1919). Much headway has been made in the establishment of the rule of collective bargaining in industry. The scope of the matters usually settled by that method varies greatly between individual, establishments and industries. Organized labor has frequently received official recognition by the fact of its representation on bodies concerned with the investigation or control of the conditions of labor, or with general questions arising out of, or closely connected with, industrial activity--especially during the war. The President's Second Industrial Conference, which was appointed to make recommendations concerning the most urgent problems of industrial relationship that had been accentuated by the war, emphasized the need for the "deliberate organization" of the relationship between employer and employees in large industries, but contributed little to the matters in dispute. Their view was expressed as follows: "To-day we have a complex interweaving of vital interests. But we have as yet failed to adjust our human relations to the facts of an economic interdependence. The process toward adjustment, though slow, nevertheless goes on. Right relations between employer and employee, in large industries, can be promoted only by deliberate organization of that relationship. Not only must the theory that labor is a commodity be abandoned, but the concept of leadership must be substituted for that of mastership." The attitude of the community has been to take no step in advance of what resulted from the trial of argument and force by the directly interested parties. But it is probable that in the future public opinion will be more positive and will grant to labor organizations fuller recognition and greater participation in the control of industrial activity than heretofore. It will be impossible to develop any policy of wage settlement while certain of these questions of industrial relationship remain unsettled--particularly the question of the acceptance of the method of collective bargaining. Any proposals of wage policy must put that matter, at least, on firm ground. It is probable that in order to administer any policy of wage settlement some means of representation for the wage earners will be indispensable. And it is likely that satisfactory representation can only be obtained by the organization of the wage earners. Furthermore, this organization will have to be on a wider scale than shop organization, although shop organization may also be useful. Thus it may be said that it will be found necessary in any attempt to secure industrial peace in the United States by the enforcement of a policy of wage settlement, not only to recognize labor unions where they already exist, but also to give encouragement to some form of organization where none exists.[8] If in the trying times immediately ahead the trade unions give proof that they are more than servants of craft interests; if they stand up as democratic institutions capable of exercising power in industry and not abusing it; if their leaders show they can be humble, when made powerful, then that opposition to the growth of trade union power which is based on a genuine concern for the public welfare will be disarmed. If the trade unions show none of these qualities, the common sense of the community will resist them in the name of traditional equality and democracy. Popular movements such as trade unionism must make mistakes constantly, but because of the spirit behind them, they have great powers of recovery. The trade union movement, as a whole in the United States, has not yet shown a thorough comprehension of the economic system of which it is a part; it has, therefore, often erred in its efforts to end an evil or injustice. Particular unions and leaders have often pursued mean, short-sighted and self-seeking policies--which have reflected upon the whole movement. Much like other economic groups, when their own interest has not coincided with the general interest, they have frequently put their own interest first. It is the test of all great popular movements, however, that they show they possess the ability to pursue a just and generous policy even while they are hard pressed, provoked by injustice, and maligned. That is the trial which trade unionism faces in the United States to-day; it is the example trade unionism must set before it can expect willing acceptance as a fundamental industrial institution. Unless the union movement proves itself intelligent, disciplined, and aware of ethical considerations, a continuance of industrial conflict will be inevitable; for any practicable policy of wage settlement for industrial peace will require union participation. 4.--Let us pass now to the economic position of "capital" (the owners of capital) in the industrial order which uses it (of which they are a part). In a society where labor works upon the gifts of nature almost unaided by instruments invented by man and fashioned by previous human labor, the society must content itself with small numbers or little product or both. Modern industry has been shaped, perhaps predominantly, by the effort to support large numbers at a high standard of economic existence. Production has become greatly subdivided among specialized groups. In industry to-day, the wage earners of various kinds perform their tasks with the assistance of such equipment, machinery, and general organization as will serve to make their labor result in a large product. The means which make possible this effective employment of labor in industry are what we mean by the term "capital."[9] The section of the community which owns and directs the investment of the bulk of these means has received the name of capitalists. Almost all the capital accumulated within the United States is privately owned. Since the beginning of our industrial history the opportunities for accumulation have been left to individuals and the capital which industry has used has been provided by private owners. We have depended upon the personal motives of individuals to persuade them to refrain from the immediate consumption of some part of the product of industry which has come into their possession, and to lead them to put their savings at the further command of industry. The circumstances which have governed the course and direction of this accumulation, and the question of the amount of economic cost that it involved have been the subjects of much capable exposition and of very violent differences. Much accumulation has resulted from the fact that industrial or rent incomes have been at certain times distinct surpluses over the possible consumption of the individuals in receipt of them. Much has been prompted and maintained by the efforts of men to move ahead to success and power--that is by ambition and rivalry; much by the idea that pecuniary success is itself an achievement, a mark of ability and leadership. The ordinary hopes of the multitude of men, such as the desire for a secure existence for themselves and their family, and the wish to figure among their friends as an equal, have been the steadiest motives of all. Saving is not one of the most deeply implanted habits. It is a habit that is closely bound up with the qualities of personal ambition, calculation and the desire for responsibility. That is the reason why rich men are so seldom very likable. It is the reason also why those who are the most needy are at times least disposed to save when they have a chance. And if in the immediate future, the responsibility for accumulation is to be more widely diffused than at present, there will have to be a general cultivation of these qualities--qualities, indeed, most requisite for a complex, mechanical civilization like our own. The accumulation of capital, as has been said, enables industry to utilize such methods of production as result in a high volume of product for a given expenditure of effort. Much of the hopefulness and energy which has characterized our industrial life arose out of the belief that the continuous course of capital accumulation, since it made possible the utilization of new inventions and improved methods of production, was preparing the way for a future that would be marked by even a wider distribution of comfort than men saw around them. Thus it has been urged that by devotion to industry and by consuming less than was produced, the time would come when the world would be so well equipped that none of its workers would have to be in want of the economic essentials of a satisfactory life. In Mr. Keynes words, "Society was working not for the small pleasures of to-day, but for the future security and improvement of the race,--in fact for 'progress.' If only the cake were not cut, but was allowed to grow in the geometrical proportion predicted by Malthus of population, but not less true of compound interest, perhaps a day might come when there would be at last the enjoyment of our labors. In that day, overwork, overcrowding and underfeeding would come to an end and men secure of the comforts and necessities of the body could proceed to the nobler exercise of their faculties."[10] Under the guiding force of this conviction, and in the United States, with the extra stimulus of the belief that individual effort was throwing open vast new resources to the world, the course of accumulation has been viewed with approval and in the spirit of emulation. We, however, have recently been assailed by growing doubts in regard to the idea of economic progress based upon capital accumulation. We have witnessed the growth of severe tensions between those who receive the greatest share of the income from accumulated wealth and the other groups engaged in production. It is pertinent to inquire into the reasons for this change of feeling; for, within the sphere of its operation, any policy of wage settlement must aim to lessen or eliminate this cause of discontent. First of all it must be observed that the bulk of the accumulation has been accomplished by a relatively small number of individuals. If this concentration of wealth were peculiar to the United States it might be attributed to the fact that this country has undergone exceptionally rapid expansion, during which the opportunities for accumulation were both unusual and irregularly distributed. But the explanation seems to lie deeper, for the same condition is to be found in all advanced industrial nations. The opinion may be ventured that it is characteristic of such industrial arrangements as have prevailed in the United States, that the tendency towards diffusion of the results of advances in production (obscured, besides, by the growth of population) should lag seriously behind the tendency towards concentration.[11] The condition of inequality of wealth, heretofore a condition of the process of capital accumulation, is one of the chief causes of the embitterment of industrial relations. Firstly, it is one of the factors which tend to the creation of separate group interests. A high degree of inequality of accumulated wealth leads to a concentration of the control of the larger industrial enterprises within the hands of a small section of the community. The interest in high returns from accumulated wealth appears to be a group interest. And, indeed, if the lag of diffusion behind concentration passes a certain point it is in reality a group interest--in the sense of being opposed to the general interest. Secondly, great inequality of wealth leads to the growth of institutions incompatible with the purposes of a democracy. These are a cause of economic antagonism, which has its reflection in industrial relations. Thirdly, it has evil psychological effects. In a country bred upon the general ideas of democracy, not even political equality and a wide distribution of economic necessities and comforts will suffice to produce general contentment, if a top stratum of the community is possessed of the social advantages of vast wealth. Few are satisfied with their lot as long as they see others, often through no qualities of their own, more satisfactorily endowed with worldly goods. Lastly, although great inequality of wealth makes possible a high level of production, it also makes great waste possible. Thus, grave dissatisfaction surrounds that very process of capital accumulation which has been regarded as the high road of economic progress. Grave doubts have arisen as to the ultimate attainment of the vision at its end. The task is presented of directing and safeguarding the course of capital accumulation. It is evident that no policy of wage settlement can, of itself, do a great deal in this regard. Something it can do. That, it is ventured, should be along the following lines: it must aim to effect a distribution of the product of industry in which the return to the owners of accumulated capital does not exceed a point determined by weighing the following considerations: First, the service of capital in production, the sacrifice involved in much accumulation, and the need of assuring capital accumulation, as discussed above. Secondly, the evil effects of inequality of wealth as discussed above. Thirdly, the fact that the health, energy, and intelligence of those that carry out the work of production are no less important factors in effective production than capital itself. And that the possession and use of these qualities by individuals is to a considerable measure dependent upon their economic position here and now. These various considerations, it need hardly be said, cannot be weighed mechanically, but only by the use of the informed judgment. The policy of wage settlement must, in addition, give indirect encouragement to the growth of such industrial beliefs and institutions as will enable the wage earners to participate in the control over the conditions of production. Only then will the effect of industrial methods on the welfare of the wage earner receive constant attention, and the desire of the wage earners for self-improvement be given encouragement. In these directions, then, the policy of wage settlement can and should safeguard and direct the course of capital accumulation. 5.--The preceding discussion bears directly upon the next question to be considered, namely, the present economic position of those who perform the work of direction in industry. Only one or two aspects of this subject require attention in this investigation. It may be remarked, to begin with, that those who own the capital invested in industrial enterprises thereby possess the most general powers of control and direction over them. These powers they may exercise personally or through their agents--but in either case, the fact of ownership is the decisive influence in the settlement of these questions in which the wage earners are most interested. The fact that some of the capital invested in particular enterprises may not carry with it any rights of control or direction--as for example, the capital invested in railway bonds, or the temporary borrowings from the banks contracted by most industrial concerns--does not affect this truth. It is entirely conceivable that enterprises might be carried on wholly with the use of such capital as gave no title to control over the conduct of the enterprise; but at present, the opposite, generally speaking, is the fact. And as is to be expected the work of direction is dominated normally by the necessity of earning profit for the owners of the enterprise--though many other sentiments and motives may and do mingle with the motive of profit-making. These facts form the basis of two suppositions, by the aid of which the argument of this book is carried out. The first one is to this effect: that if rent incomes (in the sense of Ricardian rent) are left out of consideration, since they will not be directly affected by the policy of wage settlement, the product of industry is distributed in two major forms. These are to wit: that which is received by workmen in direct return for their labor, which is called wages; and that which goes to those who own, and therefore govern, directly or indirectly, the operation of industrial enterprises, which is called profits. It is hardly necessary to remark that the same individual may be in receipt of both forms of income. The second form of income "profits" is a mixed form of income which may be analyzed in different instances, into very different quantities of the elements which make it up. This mixed form of income, which goes to the owners of industry by virtue of their dual connection with industrial enterprise--the connection of ownership and direction--contains in some forms of enterprise a large element of what has been called "the wages of management"; in other forms this element may be almost entirely absent. So too with the element of "interest" and with the other elements which may enter into it. Throughout this inquiry the term "profits" will be used to indicate this mixed form of income. The second supposition supplies an answer to a question that must be faced in any attempt to formulate a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace in the United States. That question is whether it shall be taken for granted that the desire for private profit will continue to govern the performance of the tasks of industrial direction. The wage policy that is developed in the course of this book is based on the assumption that the large majority, if not all, of the industries which would be included in it, were it adopted, will remain privately owned and operated. At the same time, it is by no means outside of current possibilities that certain of our greatest industries may change over into some form of public ownership; and that this ownership would be accompanied either by direct public operation, or very considerable public regulation of their operation. Therefore, we are led to ask whether a wage policy conceived on the assumption of private ownership and control would be applicable to industries under public ownership. The answer will be different according to circumstances. If the régime of public ownership should become general, as is contemplated in the orthodox socialist theory, it is likely that, then, an attempt would be made to rest wage policy on principles fundamentally different than any that would be practicable under a régime of private enterprise. On the other hand, if public ownership should be extended only to a very few though important industries such as the railroads and coal mines, it is almost certain that the principles underlying the settlement of wages in the publicly owned industries would have to be the same as those applied in the privately owned. The general policy of operation might differ, however, in other respects. Thus, a policy of wage settlement formulated on the assumption of private ownership would not become unsuitable in the event that some industries became publicly owned. The relations between those who carry out the actual work of direction in industry and the wage earners have been touched upon already from the point of view of the wage earners. It has been stated that the policy of wage settlement should give encouragement to such arrangements as will enable the wage earners to participate in the control over the conditions of production. Alongside of this general aim may now be put one other, which cannot in any way be embodied in the terms of wage policy, but which should be given a leading place in the calculations of those who execute the wage policy and therefore possess educative influence. That purpose is to try, by the educative power of their position to give vitality to the idea that those who direct industry have a duty to weigh the public interest in their operations, and to emphasize the necessity of seeking a basis of coöperation with the wage earners which will give them all possible chance to find their work healthy and interesting. FOOTNOTES: [3] A. Marshall, Appendix N, "Industry and Trade," entitled "The Recent Increase in the Size of the Representative Business Establishment in the United States," has drawn up some tables on this very subject. He writes, "The table given below shows that the 208,000 establishments engaged in manufacture in 1900 had increased to 268,000; but meanwhile the total value of their output had increased from $4,831 M to $8,529 M: that is, their average output had increased from 232,000 to 318,000: if we go back to 1850, when workshops, etc., were reckoned in, we find the average output of an establishment to have been less than 4,000 dollars." And again "Industrial establishments having a less output than 100,000 dollars accounted for 20.7 per cent. of the whole in 1904; but only 17.8 in 1909. In the same years the share of establishments with output between 100,000 dollars and 1,000,000 dollars fell from 46.0 to 43.8, while that of grant businesses with not less than 1,000,000 dollars output rose from 38 per cent. to 43." [4] _Publications of the American Statistical Association_, Sept., 1914. [5] A. Marshall, "Industry and Trade," p. 149. See for analysis of occupations of immigrants, "Report of U. S. Ind. Commission," Vol. IX. [6] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (7th edition), page 206. [7] In an analysis of the trend toward union amalgamation published by Glocker in 1915, he concludes that "Instances in which the self interest of the skilled workers demand their amalgamation with the unskilled are still rare, however. If common laborers are admitted in the near future to unions of other workers in the same industry, they will be admitted not from self interest, but from more altruistic motives, from a growing spirit of class consciousness attended, perhaps, by a correspondingly growing realization of class responsibility"--"Amalgamation of Related Trades in Unions." _American Economic Review_, Sept., 1915, page 575. [8] Under the Kansas Industrial Court Law passed in 1920, no provision in that direction is made. The Court is instructed to deal either with organizations or with individuals. It is likely that the Court, in its efforts to get disputes settled before they reach it, will find it necessary to encourage organization. A related question which is bound to arise sooner or later is in regard to the stand that the court will take in disputes arising out of attempts to organize an industry. [9] It should be observed that the above definition of capital as the "means which make possible the effective employment of labor in industry" is a functional definition. To make the definition good, so to speak, it would be necessary to enter into an analysis of a complex series of interactions including a study of the action of the banking systems, and the methods of industrial finance. To attempt to state the various forms of capital would involve the same process--for capital is to some extent a secretion of the whole industrial organization. For present purposes it is better to disregard the finer shades of interaction involved in the process of creation of capital and the provision of capital to industry important as they are. It will suffice to take note only of the simpler and most fundamental aspect of the process. Thus it is not misleading, for present purposes, to say that the capital which is at the command of industry in the U. S. at the present time is the result of accumulation in private hands of some part of the product of past labor. [10] J. M. Keynes, "Economic Consequences of the Peace," pages 18-20. See also A. Marshall, "Industry and Trade," Appendix P headed "Possibilities of the Future." [11] In the very interesting study made by Prof. Bowley on "The Change in the Distribution of the National Income, 1880-1913" (Great Britain), page 27, a similar conclusion is stated. See also the article of Prof. A. A. Young entitled "Do the Statistics of the Concentration of Wealth in the United States mean what they are commonly assumed to mean?" In the March, 1917, issue of the _Journal of the American Statistical Association_. CHAPTER III--THE PRINCIPLES OF WAGES Section 1. A knowledge of the forces governing existing wage levels essential in any attempt to work out a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace.--Section 2. Wage incomes determined by great number of forces. The three most important and constant among these stated.--Section 3. These three to be taken up in order. The volume of the flow of wealth in the country of the worker the first to be considered. Its relation to wages indirect, as all product is joint result.--Section 4. The scientific management theories of wages based on a misconception of the relation between the productive contribution of labor and wages. These theories merely an elaboration of one method of wage payment. They have perceived one important truth, however.--Section 5. The "group-demand" theory of wages as held by some trade unions, based on a similar misconception. Valid, sometimes, from group point of view; unsound from point of view of labor in general.--Section 6. The second important force determining wages is the relative plenty or scarcity of the different groups or agents of production. How this governs the share of the product going to wage earners.--Section 7. Many important modifying forces to the influence upon wages of relative plenty or scarcity. The most important considered.--Section 8. The forces determining the sharing out of the product of industry summarized. The idea of normal equilibrium in distribution a mistaken one.--Section 9. A brief analysis of the factors which determine actual plenty or scarcity of the different agents of production at any one time.--Section 10. The third important force introduced--the relative plenty or scarcity of different kinds of labor. The existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners discussed. The nature of an investigation of the principles of wages. 1.--In the preceding chapter, an attempt was made to mark some of the broader tests which will confront any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace and to foresee the ends that must be accomplished. An effort was made to define some of the conditions of industrial peace. To what extent these conditions are attainable, and how they are to be sought, remains to be studied. The starting point of further study is a knowledge of the forces which govern the distribution of the product of industry at the present time in the United States--that is, a knowledge of the principles of distribution. Our intention, however, is to undertake that study only in so far as it is necessary to explain how wage incomes are determined. Such a partial study of the principles of distribution with the special purpose of making clear the factors that govern wage incomes will occupy the next two chapters. They will constitute a statement of wage principles. 2.--The distribution of the product of industry between the wage earners and the other groups who share in it is a continuous process in which each group asserts its own interests and purposes. Wages are settled through a series of separate bargains between the wage earners and the owners or directors of industrial enterprises. The outcome of these bargains, as regards wages, is determined by the interaction of a great number of circumstances or forces, some of which are relatively more constant and more important than others. We will begin our study of wage principles by considering those forces which are relatively the most important and the most constant. These have been cogently summarized as follows: "... the volume of the flow of wealth in the country of the worker; the relative plenty or scarcity of different agents of production; the relative plenty or scarcity of different kinds of labor."[12] They may be taken up in the order stated, at the same time noting the way their action is modified and complicated by other factors. One preliminary comment may be admissible. It is to the effect that there has been in the past a tendency to view the problem of distribution (and so, of wages) as if it consisted of making clear by analysis the balance or equilibrium of a few given and unchanging tendencies--which were deduced from human and physical nature. These forces furthermore, were frequently held to be universal; the conclusions based on them have often been likened to physical laws. Such a view obscures the fact that any analysis of distribution is but a description of the working of a particular industrial society at a particular time. To mistake what is a description of a particular society for a study of the action of physical laws has the effect of leading men to believe that the present must forever reappear in the future. 3.--The first factor, "the volume of the flow of wealth in the country of the worker," was never more under discussion than to-day, when from all sides demands are heard for the material means necessary to the realization of desires. As the matter is ordinarily put, the greater the product of industry is, the more there is for distribution among all. The truth of this statement seems obvious. Yet in interpreting it into policy more than usual care must be taken lest it be forgotten that other things may make a larger contribution to satisfactory living than an increase in these possessions which make up the flow of wealth. Instances are by no means lacking of increases of production obtained at the sacrifice of something more important to human life than the additional product secured. There is a "mean" here also between labor and leisure. All this, however, reads like a lawyer's brief about a simple matter. The greater the volume of goods and services resulting from the labor of society, the more there is to share out; and the greater in amount will the share of the wage earners be, even if their relative share is not increased.[13] The volume of production depends upon the quantity and quality of each and every agent that assists in production, and upon the organization of the separate powers, and above all upon the progress of invention and of the industrial arts. It depends directly upon: first, the natural resources of the country--which are ordinarily summarized in economic discussion under the term "land"--"by land is meant the material and the forces which nature gives freely for man's aid, in land and water, in air and light and heat;"[14] second, the "accumulated provision for the production of material goods"--capital--which was discussed in the preceding chapter; thirdly, on the labor of men and women--on the degree of spirit, skill, energy and intelligence which characterizes that labor; fourthly, on the quality of leadership which manifests itself in industrial affairs, and the success with which the elements of production are brought into well directed coöperation; fifthly, on the progress of invention and the industrial arts. The relationship between the volume of production and wages is indirect. Though it is true that the larger the product, the higher wages will be, all other forces remaining the same, the connection between them is by no means simple or direct. That is because the wage earners share in a product to the making of which other agents contribute. In our present industrial system work is done under direction, and by the aid of tools and machinery; it is highly subdivided. It is impossible to determine the contribution to total production of any group of workmen, or of all workmen. The product is a joint result in which the part played by any one group, instrument, or factor of production cannot be traced. Who, for example, is able to say how much productive activities have been aided by the invention of the telephone and the growth of the telephone system? The problem of the distribution of the product of modern industry is so difficult and so much to the fore because so many different people contribute in some way or other to the product and have a claim upon it. Wage incomes may be affected by changes in the volume of the product, no matter what the cause or nature of the change. If suddenly some new chemical fuel were discovered in the laboratory, or some business efficiency expert were to discover some formula which made motors go round, the labor now spent in coal mining could be turned to other tasks. The volume of economic goods produced would be increased. The product to be distributed would be greater, and wage incomes would rise. A similar result would ensue if the magic formula of the expert endowed all workingmen with greater skill and energy. Any addition to or subtraction from the capacity of any agent of production tends to affect not only its own income, but that of all claimants. The reward of any one agent of production, for example, labor, depends not only on its own part in production, but upon the contribution of all other factors. A craftsman in the United States may be no abler than his fellow workman in France, but may receive twice his wage. This line of reasoning must be qualified in one respect. There is some competition for employment between the several agents of production. Their relative efficiency will affect the demand for them, and so will also affect the share of the product each receives most directly. That is a phase of the subject that will be considered at greater length at another point.[15] 4.--Given an industrial society at work like the United States, producing each year a varied flow of commodities and services, the question arises as to what determines the share of that flow that goes to the wage earners. We have already seen that the larger the product is, the higher wages are likely to be. But what determines the sharing out? That is the next matter to be considered. First, however, let us examine briefly two theories of wages which are more or less current in certain quarters, and which are built upon partial or complete misunderstanding of the connection between wages and the work actually performed by the wage earners. The first theory, or rather group of theories, is that to which some of the leaders of the scientific management movement have given their sanction. The central idea of this group of theories is that in the output of the wage earners, considered either as individual output or as the output of a small group engaged on a common task, is to be found the final and just measure of wages. It is frequently assumed in the course of the reasoning used in support of these theories, that wages can and should measure a separate contribution which the individual wage earner makes to production. The positive, although hazy, belief which ordinarily underlies the scientific management theories of wages can be perceived in the following quotation from a speech of one of the leading advocates of the movement. "There are two ways in which wages can be advanced. One is the natural method, the proper method, the beneficial method, the one that tends to the uplift of the world. That is to make the advance depend absolutely on the effort of the worker. When the worker delivers more, it is perfectly proper that the returns should go up. In other words as unit costs go down wages can very properly rise, and they should rise. Under these circumstances, the worker is tremendously interested in seeing that the unit costs go down. There is a regular mathematical law here. Only to a certain extent can the unit cost go down and only to a certain extent can the wages go up.... On the other hand, when you raise wages without any connection whatever with the unit cost you inevitably find that the worker takes his bonus in the form of more leisure...."[16] At the risk of repetition, it may be remarked that the output of an individual or a group of individuals is of necessity but a contribution to a joint product, and is dependent upon many other things besides the effort of the individual. And, therefore, even if the view that each individual should get what he produces were found to be acceptable as a basis for distribution, any attempt to base wages solely upon considerations of individual or group output must rest on a false assumption. Any laws or principles for the determination of wages must reckon with a far wider and more numerous set of considerations than those taken into account by the scientific management theories of wages. These can only be understood by a study of the economic facts and arrangements which govern distribution, and by weighing many questions of social and economic expediency. To talk about basing wages solely on the effort of the worker is to ignore the obvious fact that much of the most laborious work is the worst paid. The exponents of scientific management have not discovered a law of wages; they have simply elaborated a method of wage payment. Mr. G. D. H. Cole has expressed that well. "Clearly, although scientific management methods may reduce the possible margin or error in determining piece-work prices, they cannot altogether remove it, and even if the time that ought to be taken for a job is clearly established a further complication confronts us. All the time-study in the world cannot show how much ought to be paid for a job. It can only show at most the length of time a job ought to take. That is to say, it cannot determine what is to be the standard of living or of remuneration of the workers.... This, indeed, is only another way of saying that Scientific Management has only devised a further method of payment under the wage system."[17] The exponents of these theories fell into the error of believing they have unveiled a law of wages because they grasped one important truth. That truth is that where the productivity of labor is high, where labor is efficient, there is a greater chance, all other circumstances being the same, of securing high wages than when the reverse is the case. Or as the matter has been put in one of the reports of the U. S. Industrial Commission (1912-16) "A close causal relationship exists between productive efficiency and _possible_ wages. Greater efficiency and output makes _possible_ higher wages in general and better conditions of employment and labor."[18] (Italics mine). That the scientific management doctrine of wages consists of nothing more than a method of wage payment is clearly established by its failure to substantiate in practice its claims of furnishing a scientific and equitable method of fixing wage rates. On that point the same Industrial Commission reports that "In analyzing the wage fixing problem in connection with scientific management two matters are considered; one--the "base-rate" sometimes called the day wage, which constitutes for any group of wage earners the minimum earnings or indicates the general wage level for that group, and two--added "efficiency payments" which are supposed to represent special additional rewards for special adjustments. The investigators sought in vain for any scientific methods devised or employed by scientific management for the determination of the base-rate, either as a matter of justice between the conflicting claims of capital and labor, or between the relative claims of individual and occupational groups."[19] As a method of wage payment, of course, the method of scientific management must be judged by its good and bad effects like other methods of wage payment. That, however, is not a task which need detain us. 5.--The other group of wage theories that is based upon a similar misconception of the relation between the productive contribution of labor and wages cannot be so briefly dealt with. This is the group of theories which has been named "the fixed group demand theory" and it has figured prominently in most discussions concerning restriction of output. This group of theories also rests upon the assumption that there is a fixed relation between the productive contribution of a group of workmen and the wages received by these workmen. The fixed group demand theory has been summarized as follows: "The demand for the labor of the group is determined by the demand for the commodity output of the group. The community--wealth and distribution remaining the same--has a fairly fixed money demand for the commodities of a group. It will devote about a given proportion of its purchasing power to these commodities, that is, if the prices of the group commodity are higher, it will buy less units and vice versa, but expend about the same purchasing power. Therefore, the demand for the labor of the group; profits remaining the same, is practically fixed, and increasing the group commodity output means simply conferring a benefit on the members of other groups as consumers without gain to the group itself. Therefore, to increase the efficiency and output of the group will not increase the group labor demand, and group wages. Decreasing the efficiency and output of the group will not decrease the group labor demand and the group wage."[20] Or in simpler terms, that the community will want a relatively fixed amount of the product which the group helps to produce. And thus if the group reduces the time needed to make that product, it will not benefit and may even be harmed, because the services of some of its members will be no longer needed. And, on the other hand, that the members of the group will not be harmed by keeping the products of its labor scarce and high. This line of reasoning, as held by some trade unionists, is valid on occasion, from the point of view of particular groups of workmen--especially during short periods. It is a fact that in many cases workmen employed in particular industries or occupations, may not be benefited and may even be injured by a display of extra effort or by the adoption of a new and more efficient method of production. The benefit of that extra effort or new method may not go _directly_ and _immediately_ to the group which makes the effort or utilizes the new method--it may not go to that group at all except in so far as they may be consumers of their own product. The question of an adequate supply of new houses is at present a vexed one and is likely to remain so for some years. Therefore it makes a good illustration of the difficulties involved in the question under discussion. Suppose it were possible for all the labor employed in the construction of houses to increase their effort and accomplish, let us say, a third again as much as at present. Would that increase of effort repay these workmen--would they receive higher wages? It is not a matter that can be argued with certainty. The expense of construction would fall rapidly, unless combination among the firms supplying building materials or among building contractors prevented such a fall. In the event that the cost of construction fell, there can be little doubt that more construction would be undertaken. Would the increased demand for construction lead immediately to an increase in demand for building labor sufficiently great to give employment to workmen who would not be needed on the old construction because of the increase in individual output? Would it be so great as to mean a more than proportionate increase in demand for building labor and a consequent rise in wages? Would its effect be felt immediately or only after the passage of some months, during which a number of the building laborers would be without employment? What will be the effect on employment two years hence? Looked at in this light, the skepticism of trade union groups in regard to appeals for an increase of effort is easy to understand. It arises from the simple desire of the group to protect their position in industry by the only means they possess. It is an attitude strengthened in many cases by the memory of weeks without work and efforts ignored. It is a bitterness, like to others, which men inherit from experience. Yet it can be stated with emphasis, that from the point of view of the wage earners as a whole, and of all of society, that any consistent adherence to this group demand theory of wages would be mistaken and unsound. The use of improved methods of production by any group, the more efficient performance of their work, may not result in a quick fall in the price of the product they are engaged upon, though sooner or later it usually does. The fall in price may or may not lead to rapid increase in the demand for the product of the group sufficiently great to give employment to all its members, or increased employment; although that result has usually appeared in the long run also. The fundamental fact is that the demand for the product of labor is ordinarily subject to indefinite increase. If labor is economized in one direction, the power dispensed with will be utilized in another direction. The community income of economic goods is a flow. Under our present system of division of labor each individual uses his share of the product (which he measures in terms of money) to buy the particular commodities, or to make the particular investments he desires. If he gets some commodities cheaper than formerly, he will buy more, or buy commodities he had not been able to buy hitherto or increase his investments. The demand of the community for the product of labor in general will ultimately keep pace with the supply of the product. Economies in production throughout the whole industrial field mean that there will be more commodities to be shared out. Thus, in spite of the fact that there may be, and often are, serious breaches of interest between particular groups of wage earners and society as a whole on the matter of increased production, there can be but one sound policy for labor as a whole. That is to strive to increase production up to a point where further effort would entail a sacrifice of welfare more important than that which the extra product might represent. Such general theoretical propositions as the above, however, will never be sufficient to persuade particular groups of wage earners to take a different view of the interests involved. It is easy to understand Carlyle's contempt for the smug complacency with which such propositions have often been put forward, when he wrote, "New Poor Law: Laissez faire, laissez passer! The master of horses, when the summer labor is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses: 'Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you; but work exists abundantly over the world: you are ignorant (or must I read you Political Economy pictures) that the steam engine always in the long-run creates additional work? Railways are forming in one quarter of this earth, canals in another, much cartage is wanted; somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, doubt it not, ye will find cartage, and good go with you!' They with protrusive upper lip snort dubiously; signifying that Europe, Asia, Africa and America be somewhat out of their beat: that what cartage may be wanted there is not too well known to them. _They_ can find no cartage. They gallop distracted along highways, all fenced in to the right and to the left. Finally under pains of hunger, they take to leaping fences; eating foreign property, and--we know the rest." The reasons are plain. First, because the fixed group demand theory is, after all, only one variation of the art of monopoly--though a variation in regard to which special conclusions may be drawn. Therefore, as long as monopoly is widely practised particular groups of wage earners will be likely to take advantage of whatever opportunities for monopoly may present themselves; even if it can be proved that the policy pursued injures the wage earners as a whole more than any other industrial group. Short-sighted selfishness will always arise in an atmosphere of distrust. If the wage earners, for example, believe that the product of their increased effort will serve but to add to the profits of rings or combinations controlling prices, they will not make that effort. They must be able to see that conscientious work really does contribute to the general good. And second, because at times, the general interest in effective production can only be served at the direct and serious expense of particular groups of wage earners. Such a situation arises, for example, when a skilled craft is faced with a revision of its processes that eliminates the need for skill, and results in the lowering of the wages of the group. This is a common event. Up to the present, such conflicts between particular interests and the general interest in effective production have been solved by a trial of economic strength, and by time. The viewpoint of the wage earners is clearly put in a statement by the National Organizer of The Transport Workers Federation (Great Britain) before the Court of Inquiry held upon the subject of the wages of the transport workers. He maintained "that the industry ought to carry to a greater extent than it had done hitherto the responsibility for the unemployment that was peculiar to it. He had always been quite frank with the employers. If they wanted a ship speedily dispatched he would not do it, if that meant that his men would be thrown out of work."[21] That, however, is a method which results ordinarily either in a sacrifice of welfare or production, or of both. The worst results incident to these conflicts could often be avoided by making them the subject of joint discussion by all those whose interests are directly involved. Discussion might lead to working compromise which would protect the wage earners against too great or too sudden loss. Even under the best arrangements, however, such conflicts of interest will be far from easy to resolve satisfactorily; they will remain in the words of Mr. Cole "a question, not of machinery, but of tact and temper."[22] 6.--We may now turn to the main question in hand. What forces do govern the sharing out of the product of industry in the United States to-day? What determines wage incomes? So far we have only examined the general proposition that the larger the product, the higher wages are likely to be, other things remaining unchanged. The relative plenty or scarcity of the different groups or agents of production is a constant and important force in the distribution of the product of industry. From the perception of its significance, spring many of the loose statements of the action of "supply and demand," which are ventured as complete explanations of the wage situation. It is not possible to give a simple explanation of the part which relative plenty or scarcity does play in the determination of wages. For other forces which affect distribution act simultaneously with it, and all intermingle their results. The influence of relative plenty or scarcity (to use an elliptic phrase) upon the outcome of distribution is easily understood if it is kept in mind that the distributive process is one of repeated negotiation and bargain. In this process each group or agent strives to get a high return for its services in production. There is a steady, though imperfect competition between the various units of each and every group or agent for employment; there is likewise a steady, though imperfect, competition for the use of the various units of each and every group or agent. These conditions require no elaboration. It is in this process of competition for employment, and competition to employ, that the return to labor--wages--is decided, simultaneously with the return to each and every group or agent. The return to labor will be high if the employment of the ordinary worker, _as part of a productive organization_, adds considerably to the total of market values produced. For if the ordinary wage earner, by his work, makes possible a considerable addition to the market values produced, competition among employers for men will lead to the payment of high wages, and vice versa. Now this last result will be largely determined by the relative plenty or scarcity of the various agents of production. If the productive organization has at its command a plentiful supply of capital; if in the community there are many men possessed of a high order of business ability; if then, labor for the commoner tasks of production is relatively scarce, the work of the ordinary wage earner will be a means of adding considerably to the total of market values produced. Or, as it is sometimes put, each use of labor will be an important use. Labor will be in great demand, and wages will be high. If the opposite conditions exist, the outcome will be reversed. In other words, there is a tendency for work to be highly valued when the number of men available for doing it is small and when the work is performed with the aid of highly perfected machinery, in a community in which able business men are plentiful. Each laborer will find his services easily sold for good wages; for his labor will be an important aid to production. A word of warning should be added to this summary conclusion. It does not follow that because the wage incomes of the individual laborers are high, the total relative share of the product which takes the form of wages will be high. The wages received by individual wage earners are no indication of the share of the product received by all wage earners. That depends not only on the return to each wage earner, but also on the total number of wage earners, and upon the number and return to each of the other agents of production. In China, for example, where most work is done by simple hand labor, wage incomes are low. But because the number of wage earners is great, and the amount of capital used is very small, the total share of the product that takes the form of wages is high. The opposite is true in the United States and England. There individual wage incomes are relatively high. But because of the great amount of capital employed, and the great call for business direction, it is doubtful whether much more than half the total product is received by wage earners.[23] 7.--Moreover, any statement as to the influence of the relative scarcity or plenty of the various groups or agents of production, as unqualified as that just made must be incorrect. It gives no clew to the importance of interacting factors. Here, as elsewhere in economics, many separate causes meet to produce a result. The disentanglement of their effects is frequently so difficult as to make more than an approach to the truth possible. The part each cause plays often remains somewhat obscure. Yet without reckoning with these interactions not even an approach to the truth is possible. So it is necessary to proceed now to a brief study of the other influences which play a part in distribution; and which lead to results somewhat different from those just described. First, account must be taken of the fact that the various groups or agents of production are not entirely complementary, as has been assumed up to this point. Their outstanding relation--that of coöperation in the production of a joint product--has already been studied. But there is also a measure of genuine competition between them for the field of employment. An unusually clear and detailed example of the nature of this competition is to be found in the report of the commission on "The Decline of the Agricultural Population in Great Britain." To quote "Many expedients, other than actually stopping the plow, were adopted to reduce the labor bill. But while manual labor has no doubt been economized to some extent by curtailing some of the operations which require it, the main cause of reduction is undoubtedly the extended use of labor saving machinery. This is referred to by the large majority of correspondents in all parts of the country. With the exception of the self-binding harvester, which was introduced into this country in the eighties, few machines for the performance of a specific manual operation have perhaps been invented since 1891 (unless milking machines, shearing machines, and perhaps potato diggers come within that category), but whereas twenty years ago labor saving machinery was fully employed by comparatively few, it has now become almost universal on all holdings of sufficient size to make its use practicable. The substitution of mechanical for horse or hand power, for mixed machinery, e.g., threshing machines, chaff cutters, pumps, etc., has taken place largely, although it has made comparatively little progress for tractive purposes. It may indeed, be questioned if steam is so largely employed in the cultivation of land as it was twenty years ago. But the displacement of manual labor arising from the greatly extended use of drills, horse hoes, mowers, binders, manure distributors and the like must have been in the aggregate very great and probably to this more than to any other single cause the reduced demand for farm laborers may be attributed."[24] As Professor Marshall has remarked of such cases of competition for employment between labor and capital as this, the competition is in reality between one kind of labor aided by much waiting, and another kind of labor aided by little waiting. Nevertheless, the fact of competition between the various groups or agents is a fact of no mean importance in distribution. As has already been suggested, the efficiency of the wage earners plays a part in determining their field of employment in this competition for employment. Secondly, the simpler statements of the action of the factor of relative plenty and scarcity, such as are represented by the marginal diagrammatic expositions familiar in economics, obscure the fact that distribution is a process in which human wills are actively engaged. The constant assertion of will is a real force in the working out of distribution. Each group with a claim to a share of the product, by organization, agitation, and other tricks of the market place strives to forward its interest. It explores, by pressure upon the price mechanism and otherwise, the full extent of the dependence of the industrial system upon it or its product, as when monopolists control prices, or a trade union strikes to enforce a wage demand. Each group or agent tends to favor or resist changes in laws, industrial methods, and institutions according as it expects to be benefited or otherwise by the change. This may be seen in the discussions surrounding the introduction of the eight hour day, or concerning the limitation of immigration. However, it is a careless exaggeration to state, as is frequently stated, that the attitude of groups to economic legislation must inevitably be determined by their economic interest. Every part of the industrial system yields at some time and occasion to the impact of the human will. Even changes in the arts of production may result therefrom, as is well exemplified in Mr. Clay's analysis of the way in which the standard of life of the wage earners may exert an influence over wage rates.... This conception of a standard of life, though fluctuating, is a relatively fixed thing in the flux of forces determining distribution. The workman, by combination tacit or explicit, fixes it and his employer adjusts production to it. The employer will do all in his power, usually with success, to secure an increase in output in return for every increase of wages, and where the local standard compels him to pay higher wages than his competitor in other districts to extract an amount of work correspondingly greater.[25] Or, take the hope entertained by the advocates of the living wage, that its enforcement would produce a better type of management in those industries to which the legislation is applicable. It is characteristic of the present industrial situation that no group should rest quietly under the dictation of what it is told is economic law or necessity. Given its way, each group tests anew the habits and arrangements by which it is constrained. Every time an industrial method is modified, the agents which share in distribution strike a slightly new balance. The direction of the stream of product changes with every modification of its banks. Some of these modifications occur so unexpectedly that they are not to be found upon the maps. The pilot, as Mark Twain said of the Mississippi, must carry the conformation in his head. Thirdly (this is usually stated as a limitation of the precision of economic analysis), such a simple analysis of the action of the factor of relative plenty or scarcity as has been given, takes no account of the existence of certain human traits and qualities. As a matter of fact each group or agent of production receives, not what it must receive, but rather what it manages to secure in the higgling of the market. Ignorance of the state of the market plays a part in distribution. A sense of fairness plays a part, as when an employer pays wages higher than are current because his business is prosperous. Anxiety plays a part, as when the fear of unemployment leads a man to accept a wage below that which he might have asked and secured if he had some money to fall back upon. Lastly, changes in distribution resulting from a change in the relative plenty or scarcity of the various groups or agents of production may, in turn, cause further changes in the actual state of plenty or scarcity; or may bring about changes in any of the other forces which affect distribution. For example, it is conceivable that an increase in men's wages in certain industries (due, let us say, to an improvement in productive methods) should be the cause of a withdrawal of a certain amount of juvenile labor from employment in these industries. This withdrawal might in turn lead to an increased demand in those industries for adult labor, and so in turn affect the distributive situation. The process of distribution is a process in which few changes can occur in any direction, without these changes in their turn giving rise to further changes. 8.--The foregoing exposition of the forces determining the share of the product of industry that goes to the wage earners can be briefly summarized. The process of distribution is carried out mainly by the action of competition; it is marked by active and stubborn self-assertion on the part of all groups which share in the product. One of the most important and constant factors in the determination of the outcome as regards wages is the relative plenty or scarcity of the various groups or agents of production. For the contribution made by the ordinary worker, _as a part of a productive organization_, to the total of market values produced, is largely settled thereby. However, other human qualities besides those which are ordinarily considered as to be active in the competitive process figure in the distributive outcome. Furthermore, changes in distribution, brought about by any other cause may in turn modify the relative plenty or scarcity of the various groups or agents of production, and thus result in further changes. And lastly, since the distributive situation at any given time, is dependent upon human arrangements, the idea that underlying all distributive action, there is a tendency to approach a point of "normal equilibrium" must be rejected. For human behavior is frequently directed to produce change, not repetition. The better informed that human beings and communities are of the consequences of their actions, the stronger the tendency mutually to control and adjust them for defined purposes. Therefore, the idea that the distributive situation at any given time is directed to a point of rest or equilibrium is incorrect. Many diverse tendencies, some of long standing, some of newer birth, act to produce future results different from those of the present or past. The concept of normal equilibrium is inadequate to account for the distributive situation at any given time; it is misleading with regard to prospective policy. 9.--The preceding sections were devoted to an explanation of the manner in which the relative plenty or scarcity of the various groups or agents of production influenced the sharing out of the product of industry, and of the interactions to which this factor was subject. It may now be asked what governs the actual state of relative plenty or scarcity of the various groups or agents of production. No answer could be returned to that question, however, without undertaking a far-reaching investigation of a great number of separate conditions and tendencies. The task is far beyond our present opportunity. It is worth while, however, for present purposes, to delimit the task sharply, and to attempt a brief enumeration of the most important of the conditions which determine, on the one hand, the need of the productive system for labor, and, on the other hand, the supply of labor--that is, of the relative plenty or scarcity of labor. The conditions which govern the need of the productive system for labor may be summarized as follows: Firstly, the consumption habits of the community, by which is decided the direction in which the productive powers are employed; secondly, the state of the productive arts, which governs the manner in which the various agents of production are combined for purposes of production; thirdly, the available supply of the agents of production, other than labor. Each of these are in return governed by a complex set of forces. The conditions determining the supply of labor may be summed up under two headings: Firstly, "the state of knowledge, and of ethical, social and domestic habits."[26] Secondly, the tide of immigration and emigration. The conditions which are summarized under the first heading govern the supply of labor in many different ways. They govern the length of the working day; they settle the regularity of work. They determine the number of the members of the family that seek work. They regulate the ages of entrance into industry and retirement from industry. They tend to govern the rate of growth of the population--both through the birth and the death rate. It should be clearly understood, however, that many of these habits or conditions are themselves, in a measure, a function of the level of production and of earnings. For example, the state of knowledge within a community is to-day very considerably affected by the financial support of education--by the amount the community can (as well as does) spend upon it. The importance of immigration and emigration is firstly, the addition or subtraction thereby made to or from the supply of labor, and, secondly, the influence of the immigrants upon those habits of the community, which in turn affect the supply of labor. 10.--The third of the forces quoted earlier in the chapter, as among those which play a constant and important part in the determination of wages, is the relative plenty or scarcity of different kinds of labor. The statement of this force acknowledges the existence of facts which up to this point have been barely recognized. It calls attention to the existence of considerable differences in the levels of earnings of different groups or kinds of labor. It suggests also that the relative plenty or scarcity of the different kinds of labor is the chief explanation of these wage differences. We shall investigate at some length the causes of these differences in the next chapter. Before going on to that subject, however, it is well to trace out the connection between the idea of "a general rate of wages" as it has been held, and the existence of different wage levels. The idea of a general rate of wages, as it appears in economic theory, rests upon certain broad assumptions. One of the most important of these is that there are no "differences of inborn gifts," which would lead to a limitation of the flow of labor into the upper grades, and thus lead to a separation of grades. A second important assumption is that of complete mobility of labor--no obstacles of habit, expense or ignorance to retard the flow of labor from place to place, or from industry to industry. A third assumption is the absence of combination among the workers. A fourth is that of equality of opportunity among the wage earners; and the absence of barriers of race, religion or sex. Granted these assumptions, the tendency to equality of earnings for labor demanding equal skill and effort and performed with equal efficiency is established. Competition among the workers for employment and among the employers for workmen would bring this about. Such differences of wages as would exist would arise from differences in the nature of the work performed. Thus Adam Smith wrote that "in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper" five circumstances would explain "a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counter balance a great one in others." These in his words were: "First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them."[27] All such differences would be such as "equalize the attractiveness of occupations" and would be "equalizing differences."[28] If these assumptions were realized in fact, it would be correct to view the problem of wages as the study of one set of relationships that governed a basic level of wages--called the general rate of wages--with purely supplementary studies of the circumstances governing equalizing differences. The problem of wages would be a study of forces which were uniformly influential in relation to the wages of all labor. For all wages bargains would be governed by them. In truth, however, practically none of the assumptions underlying the theory of a general rate of wages are perfectly realized in the United States to-day, and some of them stand in almost direct opposition to the fact. It has come about, therefore, that different kinds of labor have relatively independent economic fortunes. The forces which govern distribution do not effect them equally. Facts and circumstances which enter into the determination of the level of earnings of one kind of labor may not affect the level of earnings in other groups. The differences between the level of earnings of the various groups cannot be explained entirely as "equalizing differences." The "perfect liberty" of choice of Adam Smith does not exist. Therefore, an investigation of wage principles requires study of two sets of forces and relationships. Firstly, of the forces which govern the outcome of distribution as between each and all of the labor groups and the other agents of production.[29] And secondly, of the causes of the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners, and of the forces which govern the differences of wages between them. The first set of these distributive relationships has been the principal subject of this chapter. The other set will be the principal subject of the following chapter. Any policy of wage settlement must be based upon a knowledge of both sets. FOOTNOTES: [12] H. Clay, "Economics for the General Reader" (English edition), page 333. [13] See A. C. Pigou, "Wealth and Welfare," page 20. [14] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (7th edition), page 138. [15] See pages 56-8, this chapter. [16] Address of Mr. Harrington Emerson at the National Conference of the "Society of Industrial Engineers and Western Efficiency Society" on labor problems. [17] G. D. H. Cole, "The Payment of Wages," page 67. [18] Final Report of the Committee on Industrial Relations (1912-16). Report signed by Commissioners Manly, Walsh, Lennon, O'Connell, and Garrettson--the section on scientific management stated to be based on an investigation conducted by Frey, Valentine, and Hoxie, page 128, Vol. I. [19] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pages 131-2. [20] R. F. Hoxie, "Trade Unionism in the United States," page 162. [21] London _Times_, Feb. 7, 1920. [22] G. D. H. Cole, "Payment of Wages," page 30. Discussion of the speeding up question. The best analysis of the problem created by the introduction of new and simplifying machine processes in skilled trades is to be found in a volume called "Labor, Finance, and the War," Report of the Committee of Investigation (1917), The Econ. Section, British Assn. Advancement of Science. In the same volume there is a careful analysis of the whole question of limitation of output. See also the chapter called "Unemployment" in Lord Askwith's "Industrial Problems and Disputes." [23] See A. L. Bowley, "Distribution of Income in the United Kingdom Before the War." [24] Report of the Commission on the "Decline of Agricultural Population" (Great Britain), 1906, page 14, CD 3273. [25] H. Clay, "Economics for the General Reader," pages 237-38. See also Essay by the same author entitled, "The War and the Status of the Wage Earner" in a volume entitled, "The Industrial Outlook" for a more extensive analysis of the part played by the standard of life in fixing wages. [26] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (7th edition), page 642. [27] Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations" (Cannan's Ed.), Book I, pages 101-2. [28] F. W. Taussig, "Principles of Economics" (Revised Edition), Vol. II, page 124. [29] The phrase "each and all of the labor groups" is used to indicate that the level of earnings of all the labor groups is determined largely by forces which affect them greatly (those examined in this chapter), and yet that the determination of the level of earnings of each group is something of a separate process--due to the fact that the suppositions underlying the idea of a general rate of wages are not fulfilled. CHAPTER IV--PRINCIPLES OF WAGES (_Continued_) Section 1. We have next to examine the causes of formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners.--Section 2. What is meant by a "relatively separate group"?--Section 3. The causes of the existence of these groups in the United States to-day. Inequality of natural ability; inequality of opportunity; artificial barriers. All these contradictory to assumptions behind theory of general rate of wages.--Section 4. Trade unions another factor in the formation of relatively separate groups. Indirect effects in opposite direction.--Section 5. Each of these groups has a relatively independent economic career. There are a series of wage levels, all of which are governed to a considerable extent by the same forces.--Section 6. The way in which the relative plenty or scarcity of each kind or group of labor affects its wages. Other forces play a part also.--Section 7. The nature of wage "differentials." 1.--We have next, therefore, to look at the causes which lead to the maintenance of relatively separate groups of wage earners, and then at the forces which govern their relative levels of earnings. 2.--First of all let us make clear some of the characteristics of the relatively separate groups of wage earners in the United States to-day. They vary greatly both in size and in kind. They are apt, however, to be conceived as similar because of the force of logic. It is not entirely satisfactory to classify them either as horizontal groups (having reference to their position in the scale of skill, or of society) or as vertical groups (having reference to their separation by industries). For the position of certain groups may be due both to the influence of those forces which bring about horizontal divisions, and of those which bring about vertical divisions. Such, for example, is the position of a craft which requires a measure of education and training which those who are placed by circumstances at the bottom of the industrial scale cannot easily get, and which besides it is difficult to enter because of trade union regulations. Marshall has described the situation in England in terms that roughly fit the facts in the United States also. He suggests that the different occupations may be thought of "as resembling a long flight of steps of unequal breadth, some of them being so broad as to act as landing stages." "Or even better still," he writes, "we may picture to ourselves two flights of stairs, one representing the 'hard-handed industries' and the other 'the soft-handed industries'; because the vertical division between the two is in fact as broad and as clearly marked as the horizontal between any two grades."[30] The position of any relatively separate group is usually to be accounted for only as the result of many forces, each of which has some effect upon the rest. For example, barriers of custom or on vested right may limit the field of employment for women. This would tend to establish one level of earnings for women, and a different one for men. As a result women might find it harder to get the training necessary to enable them to compete with men. And so the interaction of causes would proceed. So much in the way of preliminary remark upon the characteristics of the relatively separate groups of wage earners in the United States to-day. 3.--Among the causes which account for the existence of these groups there are some which if they stood alone would merely modify the applicability of the idea of a general rate of wages. Such, for example, is the fact that the wage earner's knowledge of existing opportunities for employment is limited. Considerable discrepancies of wages for the same work may arise; although the facilities for the spread of information regarding wages has greatly improved, especially in the more skilled trades. Then there are, also, various expenses of removal, both material and psychological, such as are involved in the shifting of a family from the city in which it has long been established.[31] There are, also, the handicaps and hazards attached to the learning of a new job or trade even though the new job holds out hopes of considerably better wages than the old one. All such facts as these--for but a few examples have been chosen from among many--however, are reconcilable with the theory of a general rate of wages. They are but minor qualifications of a broad general principle. Other facts challenge that theory more seriously. They really do point to the existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners, each with an economic career somewhat independently determined. First among them must be put the inequality of natural ability possessed by individuals, and the consequent fact that the numbers who possess the inborn capacity required for certain kinds of work is relatively small. It results from this limitation of the higher forms of natural ability, that the wages received for the more skilled forms of labor may be considerably higher than for the less skilled forms without such an increase of numbers in the more skilled groups as would bring down their wages to the general level. The competition for employment on the tasks demanding skill is limited; separate groups develop. It is impossible to tell the extent to which differences in inborn capacity would lead to the formation of relatively separate groups of labor, if all the other assumptions underlying the theory of a general rate of wages were fulfilled in fact. Prof. Taussig has expressed this well. "What would be the differences in wages, and to how great an extent would groups and classes persist, if all had the same opportunities, and if choice of occupation were in so far perfectly free? Would wages then differ only so far as they might be affected by attractiveness, risk, and other causes of equalizing variations? Would coarse manual labor, for instance, then receive a reward nearly as high as any other labor, nay, conceivably (since the work is dirty and disagreeable) higher than any other? Would the soft-handed occupations lose entirely the advantages in pay which they now commonly have? The answer must depend on our view as to the limitation of natural abilities. It is clear that some gifted individuals--a few men of science and letters, inventors and engineers, business men and lawyers, physicians and surgeons--would tower above their fellows, and would obtain in a competitive society unusual rewards. But would physicians as a class secure higher rewards than mechanics as a class? They would do so only if the faculties which a capable physician must possess are found among mankind in a limited degree. And mechanics, in turn, would receive wages higher than those of day laborers only if it proved that but a limited number possessed the qualities needed. On this crucial point, to repeat, we are unable to pronounce with certainty. What are the relative effects of nature and of nurture in bringing about the phenomena of social stratification, we cannot say."[32] Next among the facts which account for the existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners are those which are usually summed up under the phrase inequality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity in the way of education and training, and in the way of healthy and strengthening environment would have to be assured before the theory of a general rate of wages could possibly apply. This equality of opportunity is not realized in the United States to-day. The United States has been the scene of continuous and heavy immigration. The mass of this immigration entered into the field of unskilled labor. The great majority of these workers because of the partly unavoidable handicap of their strangeness, and their ignorance of American life, and because of their poor education, did not have equal chances with the older inhabitants to rise in the industrial scale. They could not possibly make the same use of the common opportunities--even if their natural ability were on a par with those of the older inhabitants. Furthermore, the rapid growth of our great cities and the accompanying social changes, the growth in the size of the average industrial enterprise, and the progress of standardization have all lessened equality of opportunity. The chances of the children born in the lowest industrial groups to discover and fairly test their natural abilities have declined in relation to the chances of the children more fortunately born. These conditions have certainly checked the working out of those forces on which the theory of a general rate of wages rests. Thirdly, there is the fact that certain forms of work on which youthful labor is employed, give no preparation and training for the further stages of life and work; and these blind alley employments are filled by children born in the lowest industrial groups. Then there are the barriers of different kinds to free movement throughout all parts of the field of employment. There are the barriers of sex which have added to the crowding of certain occupations and industrial grades. There are the barriers of race and religion, which have affected the flow of labor between different industries. Lastly, there is the barrier of color, which has prevented the negroes from developing their natural ability. These barriers may be well justified, in part or in whole, by other considerations. That question need not be considered here. But they certainly contribute to the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners, with different levels of earnings. 4.--The existence and activities of labor unions are still another factor in the formation of relatively separate groups. In many cases labor organization tends to follow closely the lines of separation or unity established by the other causes of group separation or unity. There is often a tendency for a single union to include within its limits the whole of a group within which all the conditions underlying the idea of a general rate of wages are well fulfilled; or for various unions to merge or act together, if these conditions are well fulfilled between them. G. D. H. Cole has given a case in point. "Clearly the ease with which an industrial union can come into being depends upon the sharpness of the distinction between the skilled and unskilled in the industry concerned. Thus in the mining and textile industries, as we have already noted, there is no very sharp distinction between the two classes of workers. In mining, the boy who enters the pit has every chance of passing before many years have gone by into the ranks of the coal getters, who form the skilled section of the mining community. There is no sharp division or cleavage of interest between the main sections of the mining community. Promotion runs easily from one grade to another, and therefore, it is easier to realize a form of combination in which all the various sections are grouped together in a single industrial organization."[33]... This tendency, however, has not been perfectly realized by any means. It often happens that the scope of a labor union will coincide with the underlying facts of unity at one time, but not permanently. The limits of particular trade unions have sometimes been set by an accident of time or place; by some episode in union history. The internal politics of the union movement has been the decisive factor in still other instances. Furthermore, industrial conditions are constantly changing and creating new lines of group separation or unity, which may vary from the lines of the existing labor unions. Labor organization affects the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners both directly and indirectly. First as to its direct influence. A labor union is a combination of a number of individuals, formed with the intention of advancing the material welfare of the group and for such wider purposes as the group may agree upon. The chief peaceful method of unionism is collective bargaining; its chief combative method is the strike. Labor unionism is a factor in the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners, because each autonomous, or practically autonomous, trade union is a point of pressure upon the distributive mechanism. Each trade union strives to turn the balance of distribution in its own direction. This it does in a variety of ways. It may by its wage demands test out the nature of the demand for the products of its labor. It strives to force the price of these products up to the point which seems to promise the greatest wage income for the group. It may by its pressure on the employer bring about a revision of productive methods. It seeks by its strength to secure that portion of the product which, in its view, goes to the strongest contender for it. Unions, indeed, sometimes strive to restrict the flow of labor into their craft or industry by deliberate regulation or silent obstruction. Such instances are less important than formerly in all probability. On occasion unions may even play a part in determining the field of employment for their members. Thus G. D. H. Cole points out that in England the trade unions do not recognize "differences between skilled and less skilled workers as demarcation disputes, and do not recognize the right of unskilled workers to raise such cases against skilled unions. In fact, the skilled unions virtually claim the right to do such work as they think fit, and so far as they can enforce their claim, to exclude the less skilled where they think fit."[34] Again unionism may indirectly through its wage policy cause a slowing up of recruiting of new men into the craft or industry. In short, by every means at its command, a union strives to assert the importance of its group as against other interests. Thus, in respect to the activities just described, unionism must be included among the influences which lead to the formation and maintenance of relatively separate groups of wage earners. On the other hand, trade unionism in many indirect ways tends to have an effect in the opposite direction. By a constant adherence to certain broad policies, the trade union movement may contribute much to a realization of the conditions on which the idea of a general rate of wages is based. Such, for example, is the emphasis played by the trade union movement upon free and compulsory education, and the raising of the age of entry into industry. Such, also, is its advocacy of social legislation which is aimed to give more nearly equal opportunity to the lowest grades of industrial workers. Or, to take a third example, such is the result of the aid given by the skilled trade unions to the unskilled workers in their efforts to organize. Unionism works against the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners to the extent that its activities contribute towards the achievement of equality of opportunity for all wage earners, and to the extent that the strong groups come to the assistance of the weaker. 5.--The main cause of the formation of relatively separate groups of wage earners, with different, though closely related levels of earnings have now been considered. As a result of these influences, it must be concluded that the determination of the wage level of each of the various groups of wage earners is a sufficiently independent process to make it necessary to account for it as such. The various groups of wage earners have relatively separate economic careers so to speak. The economic fortune of each group is not settled merely as part of one general process, though the economic fortunes of all are intimately connected. The wage situation is not to be explained as consisting of one basic level of wages with a series of equalizing differences; but rather as consisting of a series of wage levels, all of which are governed to a considerable extent by the same forces or conditions.[35] 6.--We can now pass on the final question which confronts us. How are the differences between the level of earnings of the relatively separate groups of wage earners determined? The factors which determine the relative levels of earnings of each of the different groups may be put into two sets. First, those factors in regard to which each group stands alone and separate. Second, those which arise out of the dealings between the several groups. "The relative plenty or scarcity of the different kinds of labor" falls in the first set. It will be remembered that this was among the three forces which, earlier in the book, were stated to be among the most constant and important in the determination of wages. The processes by and through which the facts of relative plenty or scarcity work out their effect in the distributive result have already been examined. If the numbers in any group of wage earners are high relative to the uses in which the employment of the members of that group results in a considerable addition to the product of market values, the wages of that group will be low, and vice versa. The need of the productive system for any kind of labor, relative to the supply available to fill that need is an important factor in determining the reward paid for that labor. Furthermore, the statements in regard to the interactions to which the action of the factor of relative plenty or scarcity was subject, apply with equal force to the problem under discussion. Every human quality plays its part in the actual processes and negotiations by which the wages of the various groups of wage earners are settled. The outcome depends on many forces, some stable, some shifting and difficult to trace. Among those forces labor unionism, as the assertion of group economic power, holds a significant place. In one respect, indeed, the previous analysis does not apply accurately to the question of different, though closely related wage levels. It is probable that the opportunities for the substitution of one type or group of labor for another type or group are more extensive and numerous than the opportunities for the substitution of one agent of production for another. And this fact limits the differences of wage levels that may arise between different kinds or groups of labor. For substitution of one type or group of labor for another is one of the ways in which changes in the relative plenty or scarcity of the different types or groups are brought about. So much for the first set of forces--those in regard to which each group stands alone. The second set--those which arise out of the relationships between the various groups--remains for consideration. Among these is the influence of customary wage relationships upon the course of wage movements within an industry, and to a lesser extent throughout industry. Because of the existence of vague customary relationships, wage movements affecting some groups or classes of labor are likely to stimulate similar movements among other groups; though it is plain that the efforts of different groups may not meet with equal success. This is well exemplified in the case of railway labor, of which Mr. Stockett has written, "Indeed there is every likelihood that the existence of a powerfully organized and highly paid group of labor in any industry--such as the engineers and conductors in railway transportation--far from being detrimental, may in the long run, be beneficial to the interests of the unorganized and low paid workmen. There is a tendency among the employees to keep a close watch on the wages paid to other groups of their fellow workmen, and the differential between their wage and that of some other grade of employment is jealously guarded. Thus on the railways, wage increases usually advance in cycles, an advance to engineers being followed at a close interval by an equivalent advance to firemen, conductors and trainmen. Existing differentials are more jealously maintained among the train service employees than among other railway workers, but that the latter do aim to maintain their relative level below the skilled groups is evidenced by the reference in arbitration proceedings to the advances made by the train service employees and by their claims to proportionate advances. Thus an increase in the wages of a highly paid group of employees, on account of this tendency to maintain existing differentials tends to put in motion a cycle of wage advances extending to all grades of labor."[36] Public opinion and public agencies of wage settlement have in the past been inclined to give support to the idea of the maintenance of customary relationships, even when the justification was flimsy. Far more important is the factor of mutual aid between groups. For example, in pursuance of some general object skilled groups of labor have given support to minimum wage legislation for unskilled female labor; or again, such instances as the occurrence after the panic of 1907, when various organized groups of wage earners made common cause to resist wage reductions even for unskilled and unorganized labor. Such mutual aid plays its part in determining the wage levels of the different groups of wage earners. This concludes the explanation of the forces which govern the relative wage levels of the separate groups or classes of labor. The actually existing differences of earnings between different groups of labor can only be explained by the combined influence of all the forces discussed. 7.--Differences in the levels of earnings of various groups of wage earners have been called "differentials." An effort has been made to explain their causes. Several practical conclusions, in regard to them, may be deduced from the preceding discussion. Firstly, that these differentials (which may be measured by the differences between the average earnings of various occupations) result from, and in that sense represent, a large variety of actual forces; some of which can only be changed slowly and with much effort, as, for example, the relative plenty of the lowest grades of labor. As complete a knowledge as is obtainable of the various forces which produce these differentials is absolutely necessary to any project of wage regulation. Secondly, although they represent a large variety of actual forces, it is misleading to apply such adjectives as "normal" or "natural" to them. For such adjectives inevitably suggest that the condition to which they are applied corresponds to a set of facts from which divergence can be only temporary, and is probably accidental. That, however, is not true in regard to the wage differentials which exist at any given time. Thus, and thirdly, in any project of wage regulation, existing wage differentials can neither be accepted nor rejected blindly. A policy of wage settlement for industrial peace need not be based upon the acceptance and maintenance of all existing differentials. On the other hand, whatever revisions are undertaken should rest upon a knowledge of the forces which have established existing differentials. The policy of the South Australian Industrial Court, as expressed by its President, would seem to be a practical application of this view. To quote from one of his decisions: "Preëxisting or customary marginal differences are followed by this court as a prima facie rule, but the rule is only prima facie, and is subject to revision in the light of argument and evidence."[37] FOOTNOTES: [30] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (7th Edition), page 218. [31] For an interesting account--from the point of view of the visiting observer--of the mobility of American Labor, see the Board of Trade (Great Britain) investigation: "Working Class Rents, etc., in American Towns" (1911). CD 5609, Pt. V. "... As a consequence partly of the comparatively rapid industrial development of the country and partly of the scope of its resources, and acting in response to the opportunities which are offered, either in centers where urban industries may be more rapidly expanding, in agriculture or in mining the mobility of labor is unusually great. In fields of employment that are well known as centers towards which great numbers of foreigners drift; in which much of the labor is unskilled; in which work is especially laborious as in the iron and steel works, or especially intermittent as at the stock yards and packing houses of Chicago, the constantly changing stream of labor that passes through is a conspicuous factor of the situation. But in general, there is an unusual degree of movement and restless change." [32] F. W. Taussig, "Principles of Economics" (Revised Edition), Vol. II, page 142. [33] G. D. H. Cole, "Introduction to Trade Unionism," page 11. [34] G. D. H. Cole, "Introduction to Trade Unionism," page 61. [35] For an eloquent and incisive discussion of this whole subject, based, of course, on the facts of his own time, see the chapter in J. S. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy," entitled "Of the differences of wages in different employments." Book II, Chapter XIV, concludes: "Consequently the wages of each class have hitherto been regulated by the increase of its own population rather than of the general population of the country." Page 393. (Edition Ashley.) [36] J. N. Stockett, "Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," pages 165-6. See also account in Lord Askwith's "Industrial Problems and Disputes" of the influence of customary differentials upon wage movements during the war, pp. 400-26. [37] Page 232, Vol. II (1918-19), S. Aust. Ind. Reports, The Furniture Trades Case. CHAPTER V--WAGES AND PRICE MOVEMENTS Section 1. The transactions of distribution arranged in terms of money. How does this affect the outcome of distribution as regards wages?--Section 2. The characteristics of price movements.--Section 3. The direct and indirect effects of upward price movements upon the distribution of the product.--Section 4. The direct and indirect effects of falling price movements upon the distribution of the product.--Section 5. The doctrine of the "vicious circle of wages and prices" examined. Its meaning and importance. 1.--Up to this point the investigation of the forces which govern wage incomes has proceeded with only the most incidental acknowledgment of the fact that the whole series of processes which is described as production and distribution is performed with the aid of a monetary system. Production entails a constant comparison and calculation of money values. The transactions of distribution likewise. How does the intervention of a monetary system affect the outcome of distribution? How does it modify the share of the wage earners in the total product of industry? The subject of prices and price levels is one of the most difficult of economic subjects. However, our purposes do not require any inquiry into the general theory of the subject. It will suffice for us merely to recognize the existence of different types of price movements, without investigating except at particular points the conditions which govern them. 2.--It is common practice to use the term "price level" to denote the position of prices of commodities in general. The price level is never anything more than the concept of a collection of prices of particular commodities. It is convenient to be able to express the position of this collection of prices by a single figure. To do this, use is made of various statistical devices by which this collection of prices can be combined into one price--which will be statistically representative of the collection. That single figure is known as the Index Number of that collection of prices. Changes of the Index Number represent changes in the position of the collection of prices from which it has been statistically derived. All price changes are changes in the prices of particular commodities. Of course, a change in the price of one commodity may produce a change in the prices of other commodities. Relatively small and occasional changes in a few, or even in a great many of the prices which make up the price level, have no importance for the problem of wages. Indeed, if the price level remained nearly stationary there would be no necessity of undertaking this investigation of the effects of price change upon the distribution of the product. However, large and protracted changes in the price level do occur, and these are genuinely important factors in the distributive outcome. A study of the major price movements of the past makes clear the chief characteristics of these large and protracted changes in the price level. They are irregular changes. That is to say, all of the individual prices which make up the price level do not change at the same time, nor to the same extent. Certain prices may even change in opposite directions.[38] It is well to mark also, in passing, that the prices of some or many of those articles which occupy a very important place in all calculations of the cost of living of the wage earners--the articles of food and clothing, and shelter--may change in a different measure, or even in a different direction from the prices of the other commodities which compose the general price level. This possibility is the most genuine as regards food prices. Movements of food prices, and, indeed, of the prices of all agricultural products, are apt over short periods to be determined by weather conditions rather than by the industrial events which govern the general price movement. Mr. W. C. Mitchell in his book on business cycles studied the relation between the movements of retail food prices (the figures ordinarily used in cost of living investigations) and general business conditions during the 1890-1910 period in the United States. He writes in conclusion that "these figures (i.e., of 30 retail food prices) indicate a certain correspondence between retail prices and business conditions. In 1893, indeed, the thirty foods rose slightly instead of falling, but they declined during the dull years which followed the panic, and rose again when prosperity returned. The rise was slow until 1900-02; it became slow again in 1902-04; but rapid in 1905-07. The panic of 1907 came too late in the autumn to exercise much influence upon the average retail price level of that year. On the whole, this series reflects the course of business cycles better than might have been expected. For the supply of vegetables and animal foods varies in an arbitrary fashion determined by the weather, and the demand for staple foods is less affected by prosperity and depression than that for the more dispensable commodities."[39] Even over periods of some duration there may be a marked difference between the movement of food prices and other prices. 3.--Changes in the general level of prices must have prior causes, but they, themselves in turn cause economic disturbance. They give a tilt to the whole industrial system which manifests itself in the outcome of distribution. The effects upon the distribution of the product of an upward movement of prices are ordinarily different from those produced by a general decline in prices. It is well to begin with the first case--a period of a rise in the general price level. To give an accurate analysis of the successive interactions by which an upward movement in the general price level, once stimulated, asserts itself, is both a delicate and lengthy task. It cannot be attempted here.[40] It suffices to note the ordinary distributive results of the process; with the important reservation, however, that they do not occur in the measure that the rise is occasioned by a general reduction in the productivity of industry such as might be caused by war. There are firstly what may be called the direct results. Prime costs of production do not increase as rapidly as prices, and supplementary costs rise even less rapidly than prime costs. Prices rise faster than wages and interest charges, and rents tend to remain fixed by leases and other arrangements. Especially in the first year or two of rising prices, the rise in wages tends to be slow; in the later stages it ordinarily becomes more rapid.[41] Thus Mitchell in his study of wage and price movements during the Greenback Period in the United States (1860-80) writes that "... The table shows an almost universal rise of wages during the war--though a rise far from equal to the advance of wholesale or retail price."[42] And in his study of price and wage movements from 1890-1910 in the United States he writes, "The figures indicate that the prices of labor are influenced by changes in business conditions, but in less measure than the price of commodities, even at retail. The general average declines after the panic of 1893, recovers in 1896, advances in 1898-1903, makes very little gain in the dull year of 1904, and then rises rapidly again in 1904-7. But the degree of rise and fall is considerably less than that of commodities at wholesale and just about the same as that of food at retail."[43] The lag of wages behind prices varies in degree in different industries and occupations, for neither prices nor wages go up uniformly. The general direction of wage change is marked, but there is nevertheless considerable variation in the amount of wage change.[44] These variations in wage change are to be explained by the fact that the wage earners tend to fall into groups whose economic fortunes are in some measure independent of each other. They therefore are only slowly affected by changes in each other's position. On the other hand, since the increase in expenses of production in most industries tends to lag behind the rise in the price obtainable for products, profit returns increase during such periods, especially in industries in which the wages bill is an important part of the expenses of production. To quote Mitchell again, "The net resultant of these processes is to increase profits. Of chief importance is the fact that supplementary costs rise slowly in comparison with the physical volume of business.... In many instances prime costs also lag behind selling prices on the rise...."[45] The definite exception to this last conclusion is when the rise in prices is caused by general lowering of the productivity of industry. And so also it may be said that to the extent that higher prices are merely a mark of an increased cost of labor, or a drop in the efficiency of industrial enterprises, it does not follow that profits are growing. It is generally held that there is such a falling off in the efficiency of industrial enterprises, and an increase in the cost of labor in a period of very rapid business expansion and rising prices--especially toward the end of the period. Mitchell writes: "... Prosperity is unfavorable to economy in business management. When mills are running overtime, when salesmen are sought out by importunate buyers, when premiums are being offered for quick deliveries, when the railways are congested with traffic, then neither the over-rushed managers nor their subordinates have the time and the patience to keep waste down to the possible minimum. The pressure which depression applies to secure the fullest utilization of all material and labor is relaxed, and in a hundred little ways the cost of business creeps upward."[46] Then there are the indirect effects of the process of price change upward. Since profits generally are large, production tends to be stimulated and the volume of production increases. The turnover of industry is quickened somewhat. Plants are more fully utilized, and unemployment is small. More overtime is worked. The total earnings of the wage earners are likely to advance more than wage rates. The extent of the divergence between the increase in hourly or piece rates and weekly or yearly earnings is likely to vary greatly according to the nature of the causes of the price movement. When the price movement is just the reflex of a situation of depreciated paper money, for example, the volume of production may or may not be increasing. An interesting study of the divergence between hourly earnings and weekly earnings for the recent war period (Sept., 1914-March, 1919) is contained in one of the Reports of the National Industrial Conference Board. In the metal industries (those most directly affected by the war) the advance in weekly earnings for men was stated to be 103 per cent. as against 71 per cent. in hourly earnings. In the rubber and chemical industries the increases in weekly earnings were greater than in hourly earnings also, but not to the same extent as the above. In the textile industries the percentage increases were practically equal, while in the boot and shoe industry the increase in weekly earnings for men was less than the increase in hourly earnings. And for women in most industries the weekly earnings show the smaller per cent. of increase.[47] Of course, figures of yearly earnings would be more significant as a comparison. It is not easy to reach a general conclusion in the matter. It may be said that if the increase in prices is but the mark of an ordinary business revival--with no unfavorable attendant circumstances--weekly and yearly earnings will be favorably affected. Whether they will be affected sufficiently to prevent real wages from falling, particularly at the beginning of the period of rising prices, whether towards the end of the period real wages may not actually have increased--these are questions it is not possible to answer except as regards a concrete situation. And if the increase in prices is the result of currency inflation, or of a general falling off in the level of production, weekly earnings are likely to be even more unfavorably affected during the period of price increase than hourly rates. 4.--The effects of the process of falling prices may also be considered as direct and indirect. The direct results are somewhat of the opposite character to those just related for a period of rising prices. It is difficult to generalize about them. If the period of falling prices follows closely upon a period of sharply rising prices, during which latter period wage increases lagged greatly behind price increases, the tendency for wages to rise may continue to manifest itself for some time after prices have begun to drop. An example of such a period is furnished by the years immediately following the Civil War.[48] In the case of the price decline of the year--1920-21, however, wage decreases have come promptly--and this is more likely to be the ordinary case. Unless industry in general becomes more efficient during the period, a continued fall in the price level tends to bring about a fall of some degree in the wage level. However, just as in periods of rising prices the wage increase usually tends to lag behind the retail price increase, and even more behind the wholesale price increase, so in times of falling prices, wages often tend to fall more slowly than retail prices, and much more slowly than wholesale prices.[49] The wages of different groups do not fall equally. The same dispersion that was noted in times of rising prices is found equally in periods of falling prices. This is to be explained in the same way as the dispersion which occurs in periods of rising prices.[50] Organization, however, is likely to play a more decisive part in resistance to reduction of wages than in demands for increased wages. Industries in which the wage earners are highly organized generally find it more difficult to economize by way of wage reduction than industries in which the wage earners are not organized. The range of profits of industry during periods of falling prices will depend upon the nature of the causes which produce the decline. If it is simply the result of an increase in industrial efficiency, or progress in the industrial arts, profits will continue to be satisfactory and may even be on the increase. If, on the other hand, the price decline results from the occurrence of those short periods of forced liquidation known as crises, and is accompanied by that state of recuperative and cautious business activity known as depression, profits in most industries are apt to be quite low. Such was the 1893-96 period in the United States. During the period of forced liquidation and immediately thereafter, the number of bankruptcies is likely to be high.[51] No general statement is possible concerning the duration of such a period of depression and low profits; all accompanying circumstances play a complicating part in retarding or hastening business recovery.--The present depression of 1920-21 is almost of unprecedented duration, for example. Nor should it be supposed that the state of depression must be identical with the period of price decline.[52] Given favorable circumstances, the price decline soon leads to a search for new methods of economy in production. Raw materials are likely to fall in price. Supplementary costs are rapidly reduced. The price of labor tends to fall. Even though prices continue to fall slowly, profits may rise to a level encouraging to business activity. This may also be true of a period of liquidation not preceded by crisis. In conclusion, it can only be repeated, however, that confident generalization as to the direct effects of falling prices is impossible. Each business cycle has its own peculiar characteristics--it is unique as Mitchell says.[53] So, too, as to the indirect effects of a general fall in the price level. No one description can be given that will hold true of all instances. If the main cause at work is of the kind that may be called "natural," for example, a gradual increase in the productivity of industry, or a decided falling off in gold production, such periods are not necessarily periods of depression in industry. Employment may be constant and weekly and yearly earnings high. Thus the period of 1873-1896 in the United States was one of declining prices and it is generally admitted that that period was one of great industrial activity.[54] Moments of excessive activity are rarer in periods of falling prices than in periods of rising prices, but the average amount of unemployment may be either greater or less. Again, if the decline of prices is in reality a movement from a state of depreciated paper money to a gold standard, there is a possibility that the period may be one of industrial activity due to a prevailing confidence in a coming recovery. It is more likely, however, that such a period will be characterized by a falling off in business activity and an increase in unemployment, particularly at its commencement. Lastly, if the price movement is an indication of such a period of depression as may precede and usually does follow serious industrial crises, it is ordinarily accompanied by liquidation and curtailment of production. In these periods, and especially at their height, unemployment grows and earnings fall more than wage rates. Or wage rates may remain comparatively steady, but weekly and yearly earnings will fall. The extent to which this fall in earnings will go depends upon the seriousness of the industrial maladjustments.[55] Still it is safe to conclude that a period of serious depression following upon a crisis is the least favorable phase of the industrial cycle for the wage earners--notwithstanding the fact that wages frequently fall more slowly than wholesale prices, and somewhat more slowly than retail prices. 5.--Our object in discussing the effect of price movements on distribution is to discover how they complicate the problems of wage settlement. Before proceeding to this main purpose, however, it is desirable to pay particular attention to one doctrine of the relation of wage change to price change which figures prominently in current discussion. That is the doctrine known as the "vicious circle of wages and prices." It has been well stated by Mr. Layton: "It is often asserted that a rise in wages is only a move around a vicious circle, the argument being put thus; starting with a rise in wages achieved, let us say, as the result of a strike, the increased wage bill will add to the cost of production, and so raise prices; if the rise becomes general, the cost of living will increase and diminish the purchasing power of wages; this will produce a renewal of discontent among the working classes and result, perhaps, in a further demand, culminating in a strike for still higher wages."[56] This doctrine is affirmed somewhat indifferently, when the demands for increased wages are made during a period of a relatively steady price level, or during a period in which the price level is rising steadily. What elements of truth does it possess and what is its importance? The first thing to note is that the series of events visualized in the above quotation can be set into motion by any other cause which disturbs the price level just as well as by a demand for increased wages. For example, a great influx of gold into the United States may take place as a result of a steadily favorable balance in international trade. Bank reserves may mount, discount rates may fall, and if all other circumstances happen to be already favorable, a period of increased industrial activity may follow. Demand for basic products will increase and prices will begin to rise. With the tendency of prices to rise, the general demand for labor will increase. Wage demands will follow, and all the conditions required to make the theory applicable are supplied. Certain conclusions may be stated at once. Firstly, the industrial situation is rarely so balanced, no matter what the price situation, that a measure of wage increase may not be possible without an equivalent increase in prices. The distributive situation is never one of static equilibrium. The gain of one group or agent of production may simply be another's loss. Each group or agent strives for a large return. If wages go up, profits may go down, or new methods of production may be devised, or strikes may cease. The same possibilities exist in essentials, irrespective of any prior price movement. The movement of prices upward simply gives ground for the presumption that there is a greater possibility than usual of increasing wages without causing equivalent price increases. It is incorrect to reason that all participants in distribution must come off equally well in this succession of changes. A continuous testing out of the distributive effectiveness of the various agents of production, and of any divisions which may exist within each agent, occurs. The various groups of wage earners may be better or worse off than before. When the price level has shown a prior tendency to rise, there is good reason to believe that the wage earners stand to gain by a vigorous policy of assertion. For then in particular, unless the general rise in prices is to be accounted for by a reduction in the general productivity of industry (a possibility always to be considered), wage increases can come out of the extra income which the other agents are in receipt of because of the price movement. Secondly, in normal times the process visualized could not go on indefinitely. Sound banking practice imposes a limit upon credit expansion. In an abnormal time such as Europe is now passing through credit expansion may, indeed, continue beyond the point dictated by banking reserves. Thus depreciation ensues. This, in turn, is ordinarily limited by the desire to return to a gold basis; otherwise it results in financial chaos. Barring out this last eventuality, the process of price change has a final limit, which must set a limit upon wage increases. What these general theoretical propositions regarding the idea of the vicious circle do show, is that this idea is in itself an attempt at a complete theory of distribution. That theory, if consistently formulated, would be that the product of industry is already being shared out among the various agents of production in such a way that an attempt on the part of any agent to get more than what it is receiving at any particular time can result only in a price increase. For each agent, it is presumed, is getting its "normal" share as settled by the general economic position and certain unchangeable economic laws. The idea is but the shadow of the theories of normal distribution mentioned in preceding chapters. It does, in common with these theories indeed draw attention to certain fundamental economic relationships. These Judge Brown has expressed well in one of his decisions which reads, "The element of truth in the 'Theory of the Pernicious Circle' is that, at a given stage in the history of a particular society, there is a limit to the amount which should properly be awarded for wages,--both wages and profits have to be paid out of the price paid by the consumer. If, whether by collective bargaining or by strikes, or by judicial regulation on the part of the public authorities, an attempt is made to narrow unduly the margin of profit on capital, then there is likely to be a period of industrial dislocation, and every class in the community is likely to suffer."[57] But the idea has all the misleading effects which have been attributed to that general theory of distribution of which it is a corollary. It is derived from an analysis of the distributive process which does not fit all the facts. FOOTNOTES: [38] For data upon this irregularity, see the tables in W. C. Mitchell, "Report on Prices in the United States," 1914-18. See also his "Gold, Prices and Wages under the Greenback Standard." Tables 20-22 for study of dispersion of retail prices. [39] "Business Cycles," W. C. Mitchell, page 95. See also page 109. "In the case of animal and farm products, however, where dependence is not upon natural deposits of minerals and forests which have grown through decades, but upon the fruits of human labor during one or two seasons, frequent contradictions between the movement of prices on the one hand, and changes in business conditions on the other hand, seem likely to continue for a long time to come." See also "Gold, Prices, and Wages under the Greenback Standard," pages 48-54. [40] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles." Also B. M. Anderson, Jr., "The Value of Money." [41] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," pages 465-6, 476. [42] See W. C. Mitchell, "Gold, Prices, and Wages under the Greenback Standard," page 10. [43] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 132, Chart 13. See also F. W. Taussig, "Results of Recent Investigations on Prices in the U. S.," in _Yale Review_, Nov., 1893. [44] Mitchell writes with reference to the 1890-1910 period that "on examining the figures for separate industries, one finds there is less variety of fluctuation than in commodity markets. But still considerable differences appear between, say, cotton mills and foundries, or building trades and shoe factories. However, no industry escaped a reduction of wages after 1893, and none failed to register a large advance between 1894 and 1907," page 132, "Business Cycles." See also for 1914-1919 data, Research Report Number 20 of the National Industrial Conference Board on "War Time Increases of Wages." [45] W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," pages 468-9. [46] W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 483. The increased cost of labor arises from many causes besides the increase of wages. The less efficient workers receive fuller employment; extra rates are paid for "the tired labor of overtime"; there is likely to be an increase in the rate of labor turnover due to the rapidity of wage movements and the ease of getting a job; and lastly it is said that work is carried out with less energy when the workmen are secure in their employment. Mitchell goes so far as to write that "labor is a highly changeable commodity--its quality deteriorates as its price rises" (pages 476-7), "Business Cycles." See also J. C. Stamp, "The Effect of Trade Fluctuations on Profits," _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, July, 1918. [47] See Research Report No. 20, National Industrial Conference Board, "Wartime Changes in Prices." See also the controversy between the railways and railwaymen arising from the difference described by J. N. Stockett, Jr., "Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," pages 107-8: "In determining the increase in railway wages for the purpose of ascertaining whether wages have kept pace with increasing prices the question arises as to whether wages mean earnings or rates. The railways maintain that the cost of living argument is fundamentally directed to the establishment of the proposition that earnings have not kept pace with the increase in the price of commodities, and therefore wages, in connection with the cost of living, means earnings. The employees, on the other hand, contend that the computation of the increase in wages should be based on the assumption that wages mean rates of pay, and that the high earnings which the railways show for the men are the result of excessive hours worked. They claim that it is not valid to assert that wages have kept pace with the increase in prices, if an employee must work continually over the time set for the minimum day in order to make his wages bear the increased price of commodities." [48] W. C. Mitchell, "Gold, Wages and Prices under the Greenback Standard," page 102. [49] For examples, see W. C. Mitchell, "Gold, Wages, and Prices under the Greenback Standard," pages 102-3. [50] See pages 92-3, this chapter. [51] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," pages 438-44. [52] _Ibid._, page 558. [53] _Ibid._, pages 449-450. [54] See Laughlin, "Money and Prices," Chart III, page 86. [55] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 58. [56] W. T. Layton, "Introduction to the Study of Prices," Appendix C, page 128. [57] "The Carpenters' and Joiners' Case," Vol. I, S. Australian Ind. reports, page 174. CHAPTER VI--WAGES AND PRICE MOVEMENTS (_Continued_) Section 1. The problems of wage settlement arising out of upward price movements two in number: (a) Should wages be increased during such periods? (b) If so, on what basis should increases be arranged? The doctrine of the maintenance of the standard of life analyzed.--Section 2. An alternative method of adjustment proposed, based on a new index number.--Section 3. Periods of falling prices also present two problems of wage settlement, similar in essentials to those presented by upward movement. These problems discussed. 1.--We can now proceed to the consideration of the problems of wage settlement which arise out of price movements. First, we will deal with the problems presented by upward price movements. Then subsequently we shall take those questions presented by price movements downward. The problems presented by upward price movements are two in number. Firstly, is there any reason why wages should be increased during a period of advancing prices? Secondly, if there is reason, on what basis should the increases be arranged? The answer to the first of these questions is simple. In periods of rising prices wage increases tend to lag behind the retail price increase, and very much behind the wholesale price increase. The chief aim, therefore, of any plan for the adjustment of wages to upward price movement must be the protection of the interests of the wage earners. Changes in the distributive situation that are unfavorable--judged by reference to the distributive outcome to be sought by any policy of wage settlement--must be prevented, if possible. It is the second of the problems which presents the difficulty. There is one method of wage and price adjustment which holds an important place in current discussion. Indeed, it has tended to be the prevailing method although it has never been applied systematically in the United States.[58] That is the method based upon the doctrine of the maintenance of the standard of living. This doctrine aims to maintain real wages at a constant level throughout the course of price change. The labor unions have usually given it their support, finding in it a strong basis for their claims.[59] Is it the best possible method of adjustment considering the end to be attained? Its advantages are definite. It is a simple claim. It is a claim the justice of which could be denied only under unusual circumstances. It has in the past brought considerable benefits to the wage earners, because they have usually stood to gain by any vigorous assertion of their interests. What are its disadvantages? The first of its disadvantages is in the difficulty of interpreting the doctrine into practical policy. There has seemed to be one straightforward way of interpreting it. Investigations have been made from time to time of the commodities and services on which the working class household tends to spend the bulk of its income. As a result of these investigations budgets have been drawn up which were deemed sufficiently representative of the main currents of expenditure of the mass of wage earners at a given time and place. On the basis of this data an index number of the cost of living for the mass of wage earners, at the given time and place, has been prepared by methods too familiar to require explanation here. In the past the price collections ordinarily used were composed mainly of the prices of foodstuffs. But recent data covers a much wider portion of the total expenditure.[60] An index number for the cost of living having thus been prepared, it has been conceived that the variations in this index number were indicative of the change in the cost of living. This practice, however, is not altogether satisfactory. Firstly, the concept of a representative budget is necessarily more or less artificial; the budgets of wage earners, even in the same class, vary considerably in composition. Thus hardly any figure on the change of the cost of living has been given out without being challenged by one or other of the interested parties. Secondly, for all except the lowest grades of wage earners, the direction of expenditure changes somewhat as particular prices change in a different measure. This second disadvantage was noted particularly during the war, when the supplies of certain commodities were limited or rationed. Thirdly, and this difficulty is of a more serious nature, the prices of some or many of the articles which occupy an important place in all calculations of the cost of living of the wage earners may change in a different measure, or even in a different direction, from the prices of the other commodities produced within the country. Food prices in particular are apt to respond to different influences than those governing the general price level.[61] However, it is only from the course of change of the price level representing _all_ important commodities produced within the country that it is possible to get an indication of the change in the total conglomeration of market values, which has been called the product of industry. Even then the indication is far from an exact one. Let us consider the two cases in which the change in the prices of some or many articles important in the wage earners' budget diverges considerably from the change in the index number of the prices of all important commodities produced within the country. The first case is that in which the prices of the relatively small collection increase much faster than the index of general prices. Such might be the fact in the event of two bad harvests in succession. If wages are increased in accordance with the movement of the prices of the relatively limited collection of commodities, the result of the wage increase may be an increase in prices in general. As a result of this the wage earners may be better or worse off than before, depending upon circumstances. The second case is that in which the prices of the relatively small collection of articles may increase less than the index of prices in general. In this case any wage increase undertaken in accordance with the change of prices of the relatively small collection would fall considerably short of that which could have been ventured without fear of causing another price increase--and without waiting for the test of profit accumulation discussed elsewhere.[62] Fourthly, changes in a relatively small collection of prices, particularly if foodstuff prices bulk largely in the collection, are apt to be more convulsive than general price movements. They are likely to vary more than general price movements from year to year, and, indeed, from season to season. This is so, although it is true that retail prices tend to be far more stable than wholesale prices.[63] Lastly, as Mitchell states, as a business factor crops are less an effect than a cause of change in conditions. "Good crops tend to bring prosperity and poor crops depression in the seasons which follow...."[64] If foodstuffs fall because of a good harvest, it is more likely than not that the next industrial year will be a good year. There is, therefore, a preliminary presumption that there will be no occasion for wage reduction (if wage adjustments to falling prices are contemplated--which subject will be discussed immediately hereinafter). If foodstuff prices rise because of a poor harvest, there is a preliminary presumption that the succeeding industrial period will not be one of very great activity. Therefore, an increase in wages corresponding to the rise in the prices of food products would not serve to increase very much, if at all, the command of the wage earners over foodstuffs. This possibility of a divergence in the movement in the price of provisions and of wages was pointed out, indeed, by Adam Smith. To give the explanation in his words, "In a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty, there are funds in the hands of many of the employers of industry, sufficient to maintain and employ a greater number of people than had been employed the year before; and this extraordinary number cannot always be had. Those masters, therefore, who want more workmen bid against one another, in order to get them, which sometimes raises both the real and money price of their labor. The contrary of this happens in a year of sudden and extraordinary scarcity."[65] 2. Such are the disadvantages attaching to a policy of wage adjustment based on the doctrine of the maintenance of the standard of life. It may now be asked whether there is any alternative method to which smaller disadvantages attach? As to the matter of alternative, it is my opinion that a better plan of adjusting wages to price movements can be devised. The basis of it should be the change in the index number of prices of all important commodities produced within the country. Any scheme of adjustment arranged on that basis would have one distinct advantage. It would be representative of the fundamental distributive relationship--that is the relationship between the various levels of earnings and the total product of market values. It would assure a closer accord between wages and total product than the widely used method already studied. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that this plan also is not free from disadvantages and difficulties. Some difficulties of interpretation would remain. The selection of the ratio in which wages should be changed with reference to the course of price changes would be wholly a matter of judgment. For due to the changes in the expenses of production and to the changes in the volume of production, it will always be impossible to reason concerning profits merely from the facts of price change. And secondly, since all prices do not change equally, even if wages are increased in accordance with the changes in the index number of all prices, these wage increases might cause price changes in certain directions. Weighing all the difficulties, it may be that the best method that can be devised would be something in the way of a compromise between the two methods that have been discussed. That is, wage adjustment to a rising price (and to a falling price level--if such adjustment is contemplated) level could be made on the basis of the change in the price index number of all the important commodities produced within the country; but in the making of the index number, the prices of food, rent, and clothing could be given a heavy weight (50 per cent., for example) of the total. Such a compromise would tend to assure, on the one hand, that the wage change did express in a considerable measure the change in the cost of living. And, on the other hand, it would tend to keep wage changes in closer accord with the changes in the total value product of industry than any method based solely on a measurement of the change in the cost of living. In conclusion, however, it may be remarked that when the prices of the essentials of economic existence are increasing very rapidly, there is no way, under our wage system, by which the welfare of the lowest industrial classes can be effectively protected merely by wage adjustment. When supplies are short, if their distribution is left to the free play of the market, the poorest classes must come off badly. 3. There remain for consideration those questions of wage adjustment which are presented by downward price movements. They are two in number. Firstly, is there any reason why wages should be reduced during a period of declining prices? Secondly, if they should be reduced, on what basis should the reductions be arranged? In reference to the first question, three different types of situations may be distinguished on the basis of the analysis of the effects of price declines given in the preceding chapter. The first type is that in which the decline in prices is due to some such cause as the progress of invention or the development of the means of transport. In this case the fall of prices is brought about by an increase in the quantity of goods produced, and there is no reason why wages should be decreased. Indeed, there may even be occasion for an increase. The second case is that in which the decline in prices marks a period of reaction from a previous period of price increase and a tendency to limit production costs and to proceed cautiously, but is not accompanied by much forced liquidation and is not the result of any urgent necessity to reduce bank credit. In short, when the business conditions accompanying the price decline do not warrant apprehensions of a crisis, serious as they may be temporarily. Price declines of this sort may be considerable in extent; they will be gradual rather than violent. They are apt to be characterized by less dispersion than those which are precipitated by crises. In this case also there would seem to be no good reason why wages should be reduced. A decline of prices would be desirable, it is true. The industrial position would be improved thereby and industrial activity would be put upon a sound financial basis. Some contraction of credit is to be desired if, as is assumed in this case, the period of decline was preceded by one of considerable price increase and credit expansion. But these results may be obtained without any reduction in wage rates. The cost of labor will fall without any reduction in wage rates, as the amount of overtime work is lessened, as employment is concentrated upon the more efficient workers, and as workmen put more energy into their jobs in order to hold them. Such times as these usually lead, furthermore, to the introduction of new or forgotten economies, and to improvements in the method of production. Thus it can be concluded in this case that whatever reduction of the price level is required to restore industry to a sound financial basis can be accomplished without reducing wage rates. The third case is that in which the decline in prices is abrupt--at the beginning at all events--and is precipitated by much forced liquidation of a character disastrous to the enterprises forced to undertake it. In short, when it is brought about by an industrial crisis or when an industrial crisis is actively threatened. In this case the decline is usually preceded by a period of rapidly rising prices which brings about an over-extension of credit and puts heavy pressure upon the banking system. Maladjustments in industry manifest themselves and fear comes to govern all production. The price decline in different industries is apt to vary greatly in extent. In this case, as in the second, the process of price decline--the state of severe depression--tends to set in motion certain forces which work for recovery. The owners and directors of industry seek for economies. They strive to get greater output from the workers, and generally succeed since a job is more precious. Prime as well as supplementary costs are cut down. And yet if there has been great expansion of credit; if the banking system as a whole shows a very low reserve, and some banks suspend specie payment, a reduction in the wage level is necessarily essential to industrial recovery. This may be so especially, if buying is at a halt. The wage reduction should follow the price reduction. There would appear to be no compelling reason for the wage reduction to be in the same ratio as the price decline, since it is probable that the wage increases will have lagged behind prices in the preceding period. The conditions making the case should be clearly present; competition or control must be active, in order to insure that the reduction of wages really does assist price reduction. These important details will be considered at another point.[66] Against such a policy of wage reduction some arguments of weight can be brought forward. It may be said that all other branches of outlay will be subjected to a more severe overhauling when there can be no resort to wage reduction. It may also be argued out that the maintenance of wage levels would confer such indirect assistance to recovery as might come from the lessening of the fear that a future fall in wages will make present production unprofitable. The factor of industrial unrest and discontent is apt to be less menacing. Lastly, it may be said that wage reductions might be reflected in the efficiency of the least favorably placed groups of workers.[67] These objections should be overridden only if it is believed that a decline in the price level greater than that which could be secured without wage reduction must precede industrial recovery. Or that such a decline would, at all events, greatly facilitate the recovery. It must be believed that at the level of prices existing at the outset of the crises, or at a position somewhat but not markedly under that level, the margin of safety in the financial system by virtue of which modern industry is carried on, is too small--the ease with which the unfavorable turn of affairs could produce another crisis too great. Or that consumers will not resume buying until prices drop greatly. Under which circumstances the policy of wage reduction would be as much to the benefit of the wage earners as to the rest of the community. This case is to be distinguished from the previous one really only by the decided seriousness of the situation it reveals. In this case it is presumed that a decided judgment may be made that the price level must be greatly lowered before business operations can revive and be carried on with confidence in steady markets. In the previous one it is presumed that a decided judgment can be formed to the effect that the shock to business will be satisfactorily gotten over with just that reduction of prices that liquidation and a more careful conducting of business operations will bring about. The difference is, in the last analysis, one of degree. A price decline that is in reality a movement from a state of depreciated paper money back to a gold standard may be looked upon as a variant of the third case. For it is obvious that if the depreciation is extensive, the decline in the price level necessary to the attainment of the gold basis must also be extensive. There is a fourth possible case which will be described, but will not be followed up, since it is not applicable to the United States at the present time. It is the case of a country whose chief industries are export industries--the prices of the products of which are determined by world competition. This case is complex and not to be analyzed by a general rule. A few observations may be made. It is conceivable that a situation should arise in which a policy of wage reduction is expedient because the export industries are very gravely threatened by foreign competition. In such a situation it may be argued that any genuine necessity for a reduction of wages would be manifested by the pressure of the banking system, because of the outflow of gold that would occur consequent to a great falling off of exports. But, as we have seen during the war, such a banking situation may be avoided for a number of years by such devices as foreign loans, and the industries in question would decline in the meantime. On the other hand, any policy of general wage reduction could only be undertaken with caution. Situations of the sort described tend to call out the reserve energies of a country. They are always present to a greater or less extent. So much then in answer to the first question--as to whether there was any reason for wage reduction during periods of declining prices. The second question then presents itself--on what basis should such reductions as are advocated be arranged? On which subject the conclusions reached in the course of discussion of wage adjustment to upward price movement are applicable. These conclusions will be recalled at various points further on in the book. FOOTNOTES: [58] Nor has it for that matter been applied with consistency in Great Britain. See the Minority Report of the War Cabinet Committee on "Women's Wages," 1918, page 262. [59] Webb, "Industrial Democracy," Doctrine of the Vested Interests, pages 562-572, 595. [60] The data published in the monthly _U. S. Labor Bulletin_ covers most of the articles which are at all important in the wage earners' budget. The collection of such data, however, has remained spasmodic up to the present. See the article by H. S. Hanna in the October, 1919, issue of the Monthly Review of the U. S. Department of Labor. The Sumner Committee Report on the "Cost of Living in Great Britain" 1917 (CD 8980), covered food, rent, clothing, fares, fuel and light, insurance, and sundries. Data was collected for skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled labor. [61] See pages 89-91, Chapter V. [62] See Chapter XII. [63] "While these two series (i.e., of wholesale and retail food prices) agree closely in the general trend of fluctuations, the retail prices are much more stable. They lag behind the wholesale prices both on the rise and on the fall, but more on the fall than on the rise." Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 39. The tables given apply to the 1890-1910 period in the United States. They do not show fluctuations for periods less than a year. [64] W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 39. [65] Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations" (Cannan's Ed.), Vol. I, page 87. [66] See pages 203-7, Chapter IX. [67] These in general were the motives for the passing of the Temporary Regulation of Wages Act in England (1918). "During the period of six months from the passing of this act, any person who employs in any trade or industry a workman of a class to which a prescribed rate of wages as defined in the Act is applicable, shall pay wages to the workmen not less than the prescribed rate applicable to workmen of that class, or such other rate as may be substituted for the prescribed rate by the Interim Court of Arbitration ... and if he fails to do so, he will be guilty of an offense under this Act." CHAPTER VII--THE STANDARD WAGE Section 1. The remainder of the book will consist of an attempt to mark out principles of wage settlement that could be applied with relative peace and satisfaction in the settlement of wage disputes.--Section 2. Some preliminary notes on the subsequent exposition. The question of the political machinery required to put any policy of wage settlement into effect, avoided on the whole.--Section 3. The principle of wage standardization defined and explained.--Section 4. The characteristics of the standard wage examined.--Section 5. The effect of the standard wage on individual independence and initiative.--Section 6. The effect of the standard wage on the distribution of employment within the group.--Section 7. Its effect upon industrial organization, prices, and managerial ability.--Section 8. Its effect upon the output of the wage earners. This question cannot be satisfactorily discussed apart from the larger one--that of the effect of unionism upon production.--Section 9. Wage standardization and the "rate of turnover" of labor. 1.--In the first two chapters the aims towards which any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace should be directed were discussed. In the following four chapters an effort was made to throw into clear light the forces and relationships which determine wages at the present time. The way has thus been prepared for an attempt to work out principles for use in the settlement of industrial disputes. Past experience in industrial arbitration or adjudication is a fertile source of suggestion in this endeavor; although much of it has been rather like a search in the dark for objects not too well described beforehand. The definition of aims was an attempt to find out the objects of our search. The analysis of the present economic situation and of wage principles was an attempt to get acquainted with the area in which the search must go on. The remainder of this book will consist of an attempt to work out principles of wage settlement which could be applied in wage disputes with relative peace and satisfaction. If adopted, they would serve as a substitute for a resort to open force in such disputes. Their acceptance would mean that when ordinary collective bargaining fails as a means of settling wages, the dispute would be referred to some constituted authority, who would use these principles to reach a decision. 2.--The plan pursued in the subsequent exposition requires a few brief preliminary notes. First, in regard to the order of exposition. What follows is simply the direct statement of a series of principles (embodied in measures, as all principles must be). These principles, separately taken, cover most of the problems presented by wage disputes. Taken together they might be composed into a policy of wage settlement. Indeed, at the end of the book, an attempt is made to combine them into such a policy. Not that it is believed that any policy of wage settlement can really be wrought in a piece this way. But because it is believed that ultimately it will be recognized that wage disputes cannot be settled as isolated events. There will have to be recourse to thought out principles, systematically applied. It will be found that no single principle will suffice; that many principles will have to be combined and used with reference to each other. There will be, in short, a call for a unified policy of wage settlement. Secondly, in regard to the range of the exposition. The question of the political machinery that would have to be created in order to administer the proposed principles is on the whole avoided. To have attempted to discuss that question systematically would have greatly complicated this inquiry. In places, indeed, it will be found impossible to gauge the operation of some proposed principle without an understanding of the machinery by which it is applied. At such points an attempt is made to indicate the arrangements that would best serve the purposes in view. Thirdly, in the formulation of the principles suggested, past and present experiments in the application of such principles are liberally drawn upon for suggestion. No attempt will be made, however, to enumerate systematically the principles that have been applied in the pursuance of the aim of industrial peace. No effort will be made to classify the various theories or principles which have been put forward somewhere or sometime in the past, and then to submit each theory or principle to criticism.[68] Or, in other words, no attempt will be made to give a primer of opinions either as to the difficulties to be encountered in any attempt to formulate a policy of wage settlement, or of the suggested means of overcoming such difficulties. 3.--The first of the principles or measures which is put forward, is known as the principle of wage standardization. This principle has been well interpreted by Mr. Stockett: "The principle of standardization is designed to abolish within a given area the multiplicity of rates paid for similar service by the application of one standard rate for each occupation, minor differences in the nature of the work due to varying physical and other conditions being disregarded."[69] It represents the desire to do away with the great variety of wage rates for the same work which frequently exists, and the substitution therefor of a minimum wage rate. Good examples of its application are the wage agreements entered into by organized bodies of wage earners and employers. In these the standard rates agreed upon for the various occupations are the minimum to be paid for these occupations, regardless of the particular individuals employed, and of minor differences in the nature of the work performed. Trade union activity is undoubtedly responsible for the introduction into industry of the principle of standardization. By the device of the "common rule," so called, the possible influence upon the wage bargain of the economic position of the individual wage earner, or of the inefficiency or policy of the individual employer, is greatly curtailed. The common rule is a suitable instrument of expression for the group unity; by its use the competition for employment between the various members of the group is prevented from taking the form of underbidding.[70] The enforcement of standard rates throughout a large area hinders industries from locating in places because of the opportunities for the hire of labor at cheaper rates, notwithstanding the fact that other places may possess greater natural advantages. It puts all competing enterprises and localities comprised within the area of standardization upon the same plane. This is well brought out by a resolution brought forward in the 1920 Convention of the Cigar Makers which reads "Whereas, the cigar makers in local unions are working on prices in some instances ten to twenty dollars cheaper per thousand lower than the cigar makers and unions of different localities, and, Whereas cigar manufacturers are taking advantage of the situation, moving their factories or establishing branches of them in cheaper districts ... and, Whereas this is detrimental to the welfare of the cigar makers and detrimental to the principles of the Cigar Makers International Union be it resolved by this convention that the Cigar Makers International Union adopt as one of its aims the securing of a uniform bill of prices, taking into consideration all the local conditions and necessities of the trade and local interests of the cigar makers, etc...."[71] And finally the enforcement of standard rates tends to add to the competitive importance of able management. Shrewdness in bargaining with the labor force becomes a less important factor in economical production; ability to use the labor force, at the standard rate, to the best advantage becomes a more important factor. The tone of competition undergoes a change. The principle of wage standardization is already accepted in many branches of American industry. Even in those branches, however, there remain many open questions as to the limits of its applicability. It has in the main the approval of public opinion, as shown by its acceptance in all projects of wage regulation undertaken by the government in time of war, and by the report of the President's Second Industrial Conference. 4.--It is necessary to study the characteristics of standard wage rates in some detail, in order to be able to measure the effect of the introduction of the principle into industry, and in order, also, to mark out the limits of its applicability. The first characteristic of the standard wage to be noted is that it is only a minimum wage for the occupation for which it is enforced. Standard wage rates are not of necessity the actual wage rates received, by all or even a majority of the wage earners employed upon the tasks to which they apply. They do sometimes become the actual rates received by most of the wage earners concerned; they become the wage, ordinarily, of those workers who fall around the average in skill and experience. This fact is liable to misinterpretation. It may be taken to mean that the more efficient workmen do not receive recognition for their greater efficiency. What it usually would signify is that the wages of the less efficient members of the group are increased. As a matter of fact variations from the standard wage are commonly found. Mr. Collier, after an analysis of Australasian experience, concludes on this point "... But this is not saying that the minimum wage is necessarily the maximum. Although statistics as to wage distribution are largely lacking, the weight of opinion is contrary to this supposition. In some industries, such as the building trades, where contracts are made upon the basis of a legally fixed rate, this rate is frequently the maximum. Yet such instances are in the minority. Employers do not reduce the pay of their most competent workers because they are compelled to pay those less qualified at a minimum rate."[72] It will be found usually that the abler, the more skilled or more experienced workers in particular occupations receive higher wages than the standard, because of the special value of their services.[73] Occasionally also agreements are entered into for the employment of a small number of workers, who are acknowledged to be well below the ordinary level of efficiency in their trade or occupation, because of physical disability, old age or analogous causes. As Prof. McCabe has said, "Nearly all unions permit members who have become unable to command the minimum rate because of old age or physical infirmity to work for what they can get."[74] A second characteristic of standard wage rates is that they may take the form of time-rates, or payment by results, or any combination of the two. Trade union agreements in the United States include all these varieties. It is true that a system of standard time rates is likely to be more in accord with the sentiment underlying the standardization movement. For under a system of payment by results individual differences in capacity are apt to be more readily reflected in the actual wage payments. And the sentiment underlying the principle of standardization is nearer the idea of equal payment for equal effort or equal sacrifice within the group, than the idea of equal payment for equal product. This is illustrated in the report signed by the Labor Members of the Committee on Industrial Relations (1912-16) in reference to the wage payment systems of scientific management which reads, "... All of these systems of (i.e., of scientific management) payment tend to center the attention of the worker on his individual interest and gain and to repress the development of group consciousness and interest. Where the work of one man is independent of another, the individual has no motive to consider his fellow, since his work and pay in no wise depend on the other man. What either does will not affect the other's task or rates."[75] Furthermore, in some industries it is difficult under a system of payment by result to arrange that the actual wages received by the average members of the group for average effort, will be approximately equal. Those are the industries in which there are a great variety of jobs with different rates, which can only be more or less accurately estimated in the "price list"; or industries in which the working conditions vary greatly, either within the same factory or mine, or between different factories or mines engaged in similar work. Where the philosophy of unionism is firmly entrenched these two systems of wage payment tend to be so governed by the actions of the wage earners and employers as to lead to approximately the same results. The standard wage under a time-rate system tends to become the wage for an average or customary output. Employers tend to demand at least that output for the standard time wage, and strive to increase the customary output whenever the standard time-wage is increased. And, on the other hand, under a system of payment by results, there is frequently a tendency for the workers to keep their output around a certain general level; which level, indeed, is determined only by all the circumstances governing the group attitude in the particular shop or industry. The "Report on Collective Agreements in the United Kingdom" (1910) has stated this as follows: "Although the main distinction between time wages and piece wages is of the nature described above, it is of importance to note that, whether the method of remuneration adopted be expressed as payment by results or as payment by time, the amount of work performed and the time taken in performing the work are factors, both of which are, to a greater or less extent, taken into account in every agreement for the payment of wages. Thus, on the one hand, the employee who is working on time wages is expected by his employer to turn out in a given time not less than a more or less specifically agreed upon quantity of work--"to do a fair day's work"--while, on the other hand, a list of piece-wage rates usually has an implied, and in some cases has an explicit, reference to the amount of money which can be earned by a man working under the list in a given time."[76] The principle of standardization can and does find expression under either method of wage payment; its adoption does not exclude the system of payment by results. The terms of all such systems, however, should be made the subject of collective agreement. In that way the group interest in a defined minimum standard wage is protected, and the principle of standardization realized. As Prof. Pigou has written, "In order that the piece-wage system, and the benefit to production which it carries with it, may win further ground, what is required is to develop in these more difficult industries an adequate machinery for subordinating piece-wages, ... to the full control of collective bargaining."[77] 5.--Such then, being the leading characteristics of the standard wage, what results can be predicted for an attempt to introduce it throughout industry? During the decades which witnessed the introduction of wage standardization into industry in the United States, the most loudly expressed anxiety was in regard to its conceived effect upon individual independence and initiative. This question cannot be satisfactorily discussed apart from the larger one of which it is a part--that is the question of the influence of labor organization upon individual behavior. A few observations may be ventured with the explicit admission that they leave many sides of the question untouched. The "common rule" has come into operation only where the ground has been prepared for it, where there has been a growth of group consciousness and unity. Under such conditions its use and observance mould individual ambitions and actions in some measure. It is a device which attaches the individual to the group, and interests the individual in the group advancement more than he otherwise would be. On the other hand, it indirectly guards for the individual an independence and vigor of spirit often lost in modern industry. When the underlying philosophy of the "common rule" is deeply ingrained the problems of industrial direction are completely changed; they become more difficult. Production becomes a task involving the power to win men to their work. Where the ethics of the common rule are accepted, effective work on the part of wage earners depends upon interesting them as a group in their work. The usefulness of wage systems which aim to increase individual production through individual reward is not necessarily at an end. But all such systems are compelled to accommodate themselves to the widespread desire for a standard group minimum. 6.--Another question to which the introduction of the standard wage gives rise is that of its effect upon the distribution of the available employment among the members of the group to which the wage applies. This question should be distinguished from that of its possible effect on the total amount of employment. It has often been contended that the multiplicity of wage rates for approximately the same work in industries in which wages are not settled by collective bargaining, is to be accounted for, above all, by the varying efficiency of individual wage earners. And, therefore, it is argued, that any attempt to standardize wages must lead to a concentration of employment upon those members of the group who are the more efficient, and must deprive the relatively less efficient of their employment. It is almost impossible to say, except for concrete situations, to what extent irregularity of wage rates is due to differences in individual efficiency and to what extent to other causes. Such factors as differences in bargaining power, differences in the policy or efficiency of the employers, slight differences in the character of the work performed, local differences in the supply and demand situation for the type of labor in question, and the like, certainly account for a great many of the irregularities. Prof. Marshall has expressed one view of the matter well. He writes, "Cliffe Leslie and some other writers have naïvely laid stress on local variations of wages as tending to prove that there is little mobility among the working classes, and that competition among them for employment is ineffective. But most of the facts they quote ... are only half facts and when the missing halves are supplied, they generally support the opposite inference to that on behalf of which they are quoted."[78] In R. H. Tawney's study of "Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Industry" (Great Britain) a vigorous statement of the opposite view is given. He writes, "The wages paid to a group of workers in a given industry and a given area depend, in fact, very often not on the conditions obtaining in that industry in other areas, but on the conditions obtaining in that area in other industries."[79] It can be affirmed that the irregularity of wages is due to a considerable extent to other causes than differences in the efficiency of individuals. As D. A. McCabe writes, "Very little seems to be known as to differences of efficiency among men engaged in the same kind of work." But as he adds, "It is safe to assume, however, that they are not reflected in time-working trades with any exactness by the wages paid, even where there is no trade union minimum."[80] More to the point, it can be affirmed that the percentage of individuals in any occupation whose efficiency is decidedly below the average efficiency of the group is small. For, as a matter of fact, what really comes into question upon the introduction of wage standardization, is the employment of that small percentage of individuals whose efficiency is decidedly below that of group average. The employment of this small percentage in each group will be decisively affected by the general demand and supply situation of that group at the time when standardization is introduced. If the need for the services of a group is relatively great, employment at the standard rate will be given even to those members of the group who are decidedly below the average efficiency of the group. Such is the case during periods of industrial expansion. When the demand for the services of the group falls, however, it is probable that these men will be discharged first--more promptly than if wage standardization had not been introduced. There is probably some connection between the progress of the standard wage movement and the tendency to limit overtime in the industries in which the standard wage is enforced. Lastly, the effect of the enforcement of wage standardization upon the employment of the least efficient members of the group can be modified by special arrangements, whereby a wage lower than the standard is set for such individuals as are mutually acknowledged to be decidedly below the average of the group. In this regard Mr. Collier's report on the Australasian experience is a useful guide. He writes: "That workers may be displaced following the application of wage regulation to an industry is a fact sustained by the experience of Australasia. In New Zealand, many bona fide workers were thrown out of employment during the early years of the arbitration law. There was also considerable distress among the boot and clothing workers of Victoria. Many of the old, inefficient, and slow workers were discharged. But in each case other factors than labor legislation figured in the situation. We have seen that in the board trades of Victoria there has frequently been a decrease in the number of employees immediately after a determination became effective, but that in almost every instance this decline was temporary. After the period of adjustment, industry pursued its normal course. This seems to have been the general experience in this and other states."[81] It may be concluded that some redistribution of available employment will sometimes follow upon the introduction of the standard wage into industries in which wages were hitherto unstandardized, resulting in the partial or complete unemployment of the least efficient members of the group. As was said above, the extent of such redistribution will depend somewhat upon the demand and supply situation at the time when the standard wage is introduced. Those whose employment is reduced or taken away will either go into some work on which they compare more favorably with the other workers engaged, (leading to a further redistribution of employment perhaps), or will remain unemployed. The other members of the group will have increased employment. 7.--Still another possible effect of the introduction of the standard wage deserving of attention, is that which it may have upon industrial organization, and upon the level of managerial ability. As will be made clearer elsewhere, the enforcement of standard wage rates in an industry is usually equivalent in practice to the enforcement of those rates that are already being paid by the better organized units of that industry.[82] This leveling process may have any or all of several consequences. It may cause enterprises which had succeeded in competing partly because they paid lower wages than more efficient enterprises for the same grade of labor either to improve their productive methods, or gradually to cease production. It may result in a reduction of profit for certain enterprises. It may occasion an increase in the price of the commodities produced. It may result in an increase in the productive efforts of the wage earners. In the abstract, it is impossible to balance these various possibilities with complete assurance. The only inductive studies of value which give any indication of the probable result are those which have been made upon the results of living wage legislation. These, almost without exception, make the price increase resulting from standardization, inconsiderable.[83] They are witness to the fact that improvements in the level of industrial management and a gradual elimination of the less competent employers have frequently taken place. The opinion seems warranted that unless standardization is introduced under very unfavorable circumstances or in the form of an extremely violent upward movement, it will not cause a considerable or permanent rise of prices, but will rather bring improvement in industrial organization and lead to a more intelligent use of labor in industry. Along with this, there is reason to hope that it will have a favorable reaction on the efforts of the wage earners. 8.--The whole subject of the effect of wage standardization upon the output of the wage earners remains to be considered, however. It is an aspect of the subject which has been in the forefront of discussion. It also is a topic which cannot be satisfactorily discussed apart from a larger one--that of the effect of unionism upon production. The most bitter opposition to trade unionism has been connected with allegations made in this regard. These have taken different forms, but they almost always express one contention. That is that if a standard wage is set for work of a given kind, and if all men engaged upon that work receive that wage irrespective of small differences in ability, there will remain no stimulus for the abler workmen to exert themselves. Or in other words, that the standard wage makes slackers of all men. Sometimes this criticism is leveled only against the standard time wage; at other times against the standard guaranteed minimum wage, such as there used to be in the English coal fields; and, at still other times, against any method of wage payment which takes full power out of the hands of the employers to make an individual wage bargain with each worker. These contentions have some basis on occasion. More often they arise from a misconception of the place of the wage earner in industry, or from a general hostility to labor unionism. Wage standardization does not mean that all wage earners receive the same wage irrespective of differences in ability. It simply sets a minimum standard for all workers of the group who are about the average in ability. It is designed to end all differences in remuneration, save those which arise out of differences in ability. It may be worked out in systems of payment by results, as well as in systems of time payment. In reality a deeper conflict lies behind the antagonism to the standard wage--a conflict of social philosophy. Most unionists, it will be observed, are inclined to wave away all criticisms of the standard wage which rest upon its alleged effect upon output, no matter what the situation to which it may be addressed. In their opinion, these criticisms of the standard wage are based on a misconception of the place of the wage earner in industry. Or, as it is frequently put, they regard the worker in the same way as they do a machine, since they would have each worker paid solely according to his individual value to the industrial system. There exists a conflict between two views of the nature of industrial society, and of the way of industrial progress. In one the social importance of a high level of production predominates, and the wage earner is argued about merely as part of a productive organization. In the other, the wage earner is viewed primarily as a member of an occupational group or class, whose wages should be regulated by the standard of life of his group or class, rather than by strict measurement of his own individual capacity. This conflict is revealed, as R. F. Hoxie pointed out, in the antagonism between unionism and scientific management. To quote "much of the misunderstanding and controversy between scientific management and unionism ... results from the fact, that scientific management argues in terms of the individual worker or society as a whole, while the unions argue primarily in terms of group welfare." It is well to recognize these different philosophies. Is it possible to find common ground under the principle of standardization? Can the desire of the wage earners to be viewed primarily as members of occupational groups or classes be satisfied by the enforcement of standardization, without ignoring the need for a high level of production. It is usual to seek the common ground in the development of some variation of a system of differential time wages, or of a system of payment by results on the basis of a standardized price list. And certainly such ways of enforcing standardization, while at the same time giving special reward to individuals, deserve encouragement, provided they safeguard the group interest in a defined minimum standard wage. Still it is not likely that the solution for the problems of output that may arise as a consequence of the enforcement of the principle of standardization, _and of the acceptance of the philosophy to which it corresponds_, is to be found in the evolution of such methods of wage payment as these. For, as was observed above, if the philosophy of unionism is deeply implanted in the minds of the workers, the productive results under all methods of wage payment tend to be controlled in the end by the same influences. The views and motives of the wage earners and of the employers are likely to remain constant under different systems of wage payment--and thus the outcome is not likely to differ greatly. No matter what the method of wage payment, the question of output will be largely one of mutual confidence, of tact, and of fair dealing. It must be so in any arrangement, by which two or more groups mutually regulate their claims and desires. The conclusion that may be drawn as to the effect upon production of the enforcement of wage standardization is as follows. That its results may depend to some extent upon the success with which the principle can be adopted to those methods of wage payment under which wages are varied in accordance with small differences in in-unionism, and act accordingly, the system of wage earners believe heartily in the ideals and aims of unionism, and act accordingly, the system of wage payment adopted will be a factor of secondary importance in determining the effectiveness with which the wage earners perform their work. The motives and sentiments of the various organized groups will govern the action of the wage earners, and produce almost the same result under any system of wage payment. The state of industrial relations, the satisfaction the workers feel in their position, the reasonableness shown by the different groups, the intelligence or ignorance of labor leadership--these and similar other factors will, at bottom, govern the effort put forth by the wage earners. These are the matters to which all who realize the need for steady and willing effort in production will have to attend. The problem of maintaining a high level of production will be primarily one of developing the practice of open-handed and thoroughly understood negotiation between the directors of industry and the workmen. Barring the development of the practice of successful negotiation either industrial chaos or a return to individual bargaining must result. 9.--There is one other possible result of the enforcement of wage standardization which requires brief notice, because it was displayed prominently during the war. The demand during the war for certain essentials of warfare was abnormally great, and the result was a steady bidding up of wages for the supply of labor which could assist in the production of these essentials. This led to a constant shifting about of the wage earners from plant to plant. This movement not only hindered the effective organization of production, but also caused a considerable loss of working time, and fostered a continuous pre-occupation with the question of wages and related questions. In view of these facts, the various governmental agencies of wage settlement undertook to introduce into all wage contracts the principle of standardization throughout large areas. Witness, for example, the conclusion of the Shipbuilding Adjustment Board on the matter. "One of the most serious influences retarding the progress of the shipbuilding industry according to the unanimous testimony of the yard owners, and of the district officers of the Fleet Corporation who have come before us, is the shifting of men from yard to yard.... The only effective way to stop it is to remove its inciting cause, the variable wage rates paid by different yards in the same competitive region. With this purpose in view, we have sought in all our hearings to determine with accuracy the limits of each competitive region, so that we might extend over it a uniform wage scale for shipyard employees...."[84] The enforcement of wage standardization may serve to prevent wasteful shifting of the labor supply even in normal times. Theoretically, it should serve to limit the shifting of the labor supply to movement between different industries and occupations, and to cases which represent movement of unemployed wage earners to points where work exists. There would be, of course, innumerable cases of change based upon personal motives. FOOTNOTES: [68] An attempt to classify systematically and analyze the various theories of wages that have been used in attempts to settle wage controversies in accordance with defined principle has been made by Mr. Wilson Comption in an article entitled "Wage Theories in Industrial Arbitration." In its enumeration and discussion of the difficulties to be met in the application of principles, and of the attitude of most agencies of wage settlement it is particularly interesting. _American Economic Review_, June, 1916. [69] J. N. Stockett, "Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," page 75. [70] See Webb's "Industrial Democracy," Chapter 5, Part II. [71] Resolution No. 18 offered to 1920 Convention, _Cigar Makers Official Journal_, May 15, 1920. [72] P. S. Collier, "Minimum Wage Legislation in Australasia," Appendix VIII, Fourth Report of the Factory Investigating Commission, New York State (1915). See also R. H. Tawney's investigations of Retail Tailoring and Chainmaking Trades (Great Britain). [73] D. A. McCabe in his book, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," calls attention to two aspects of the subject that are frequently overlooked. Firstly, that "in any attempt to estimate the extent to which men receive wages above the minimum on account of superior efficiency, it is important to bear in mind that the minimum in different scales may stand in very different relation to the modal or predominant wage. The proportion of men receiving more than the union minimum is frequently large because the competitive wage has increased since the minimum was established" (page 116); and secondly, that "the extent to which differential wages are paid above the union minimum, when that rate is the rate actually paid to the men whose efficiency is about the average, varies widely in different trades.... Standardization of workmen and of work and the practice of dealing with large bodies of men as classes tend to standardize the wages paid in the railway service more than in trades calling for similar grades of skill in other industries" (page 117); so, too, "the tendency towards uniform rates for men engaged in the same kind of work is stronger in large establishments than in small establishments for the same reason" (page 117 ff.). Prominent among the factors which tend to make standard time rates actual rates he mentions: firstly, that the variations in efficiency within the membership of a time working union are not as likely to be as wide as among the men outside the union in the same trade, because the mere insistence on a standard rate tends to exclude some men much below the standard of competency. Secondly, practically all of the skilled trades unions require candidates for membership to prove their competency or be vouched for as competent by members who have worked with them. And thirdly, because the standard rate is the center of attention in negotiations and thus is made the presumptive rate (page 114-119). [74] D. A. McCabe, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," page 105. [75] Report signed by Commissioners Manly, Walsh, Lennon, O'Connell, and Garrettson. Vol. I, "Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations" (1912-16), page 132. [76] Report on Collective Agreements in the United Kingdom (1910) (CD 5366), page xiv. [77] A. C. Pigou, "Economics of Welfare," page 441. [78] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (7th Ed.), page 548. [79] R. H. Tawney, "Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Industry" (Great Britain), pages 110-111. See for similar view, 4th Report of N. Y. State Factory Investigating Commission, Vol. V (1915), testimony of Miss Van Kleeck. [80] D. A. McCabe, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," page 14. [81] P. S. Collier, "Minimum Wage Legislation in Australasia," Fourth Report of the Factory Investigation Commission, N. Y. State, 1915, page 8243. [82] See pages 172-5, Chapter VIII. [83] See for examples, the reports of the Minimum Wage Commissions of The District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Oregon. Also the studies by R. H. Tawney and M. E. Bulkely on the English experience. Those of P. S. Collier and M. B. Hammond, on the Australasian experience. [84] Decision as to wages, etc., in North Atlantic & Hudson River Shipyards, Shipbuilding Adjustment Board, reported in _U. S. Monthly Labor Review_, May, 1918, page 136. See in same issue of the review, "Decision for Shipyards of San Francisco Bay and Columbia River, and Puget Sound Districts," pages 68-78. Also report of Benjamin M. Squires in the _Monthly Labor Review_, 1918, Sept., on the "New York Harbor Wage Adjustments." CHAPTER VIII--THE STANDARD WAGE (_Continued_) Section 1. What variations or limitations should be introduced into the principle of standardization in view of the great area and economic diversity of the United States?--Section 2. Differences in natural or acquired advantage between different enterprises as a reason for modification and limitation of the principle.--Section 3. Differences in the character of the work performed by any large group of wage earners as a reason.--Section 4. Differences in the cost of living at different points within the area of standardization as a reason.--Section 5. The grounds for "nominal variations" in standard wage rates. The policy to be pursued in regard to payment for irregular employment.--Section 6. The possibility of maintaining standard wage rates over a large and diversified area considered.--Section 7. Up to the present, the progress of standardization has not proceeded in accordance with reasoned conclusions as to the results produced.--Section 8. Where should level of standardization be set? The doctrine of "standardization upward."--Section 9. The importance of the principle of standardization in wage settlement. 1.--We have now completed our analysis of the general effects to be expected from the enforcement of wage standardization throughout industry. That analysis was carried out on the underlying assumption that the general economic position of the industrial enterprises which would be included within any area of standardization was substantially alike. That assumption must now be given up. A further question must be faced. That is whether the principle of standardization, as put forward up to this point, should be limited or varied in any way because it would have to apply, as a matter of fact, to an area so great and so diversified in economic character as the United States, and to an industrial situation which is the product of a great number of separate impulses, and which is made up of a vast number of separate interests. 2.--We will consider in order the grounds upon which limitation or variation of the principle of standardization has been argued for in the past--limiting ourselves, as we must, to the most important. The first that may be taken up has arisen almost every time that wage standardization has been introduced into a craft or industry. It is the contention that, due to differences in natural or acquired advantage possessed by different enterprises in the same industry, certain going enterprises will be forced to cease production, if all are compelled to pay the same wage rates for the same work.[85] The weight of this contention must be decided in each case by the facts which support it. In some instances it may be clear that the vigorous and summary application of wage standardization would cause men to be thrown out of work, who could not easily find work elsewhere, and would make a considerable amount of fixed capital valueless or almost so. In those instances there would be reason for considering the extent to which the standardization should be carried out, and also what variations should be introduced into its application. That such cases are not infrequent is borne out by the Australasian experience of which Mr. Collier writes, "In regard to the practicability of the common rule, opinion differs. In some staple industries such as coal mining, it has been said to operate fairly. But its application to small industries and retail stores, where conditions vary more widely, is fraught with considerable risk and is proceeded with slowly.... While the power to enforce industrial conditions throughout a state or given territory is of unquestionable value, experience shows it must be exercised with caution."[86] The test to be applied in each instance should be the balance of interest involved, including a strong public interest in standardization as one of the elements in a policy of wage settlement. When weighing the facts for or against the limitation or variation for the reason under discussion, several distinctions should be made. Firstly, in regard to the nature of the difference in advantage possessed by the various units of the industry in question. Secondly, in regard to the way in which the differences in advantage are distributed among the various units of the industry. The case for limitation or variation is apt to be stronger when the difference in advantage is a natural difference than when it is an acquired difference. In either case, the decision must rest upon the balance of good and harm to be anticipated from a straightforward and unmodified application of the principle. But when the difference in advantage is a natural difference, such as exists between different mining areas, there is greater reason for deliberate procedure than otherwise. For the possibility that an abrupt suspension of certain enterprises be caused without compensating extension of other enterprises, is the more genuine. Such a situation was recognized, for example, in the case of the living wage legislation for agriculture in England; and thus instead of applying one standard wage throughout all districts, standardization was carried out by districts.[87] Even in this case, however, the various district advisory boards are under a strong and constant pressure (under the terms of the act) to bring the rates in the various districts to the same level. Such, also, to take another example was the situation recognized in the course of the attempt during the war to standardize the wages of the stevedores and longshoremen employed in the South Atlantic ports. Here straightforward and unmodified standardization would have caused, it was judged, the diversion of certain freight carrying steamship lines from ports in which they now operate. If the differences in advantage are in the nature of acquired differences, only convincing evidence of the permanent harm likely to result from general standardization would justify limitation or variation. For in this case, the necessity of paying standard wage rates is itself a powerful force towards overcoming conditions that have been declared a definite competitive disadvantage. Probably no extension of wage standardization in industry has ever taken place without injuring some individuals. It is the net balance of gain or loss that is significant. In most past instances when standardization has been enforced in an industry, marked by an unequal distribution of acquired advantages, the consequences have not verified the predictions of those who believed it would cause great disturbance and unemployment. On the contrary, it has frequently resulted in the development of better organization within the industry. Again, the case for the limitation or variation is apt to be the stronger, when the difference in advantage is between concentrated but widely separated areas, such as might exist between two ports, for example, than when the differences are between different units in the same industrial area or field. For in the second case, the possibility of causing lasting unemployment would be less. The distinction, however, is entirely one of degree. Whatever limitations or variations are admitted should not be settled arbitrarily; they should correspond to the facts which make them advisable. The union attitude in respect to the extension of wage standardization is sometimes as cautious as that of the employers. That is because those workers employed at the points which are supposed to possess the smaller advantages, natural or acquired, are not likely to support an unmodified application of the principle of standardization, unless they believe the consequent industrial changes will be beneficial, or at least not harmful, to themselves. The advice, if not the concurrence, of all interested parties is of the greatest value in arriving at a satisfactory determination. A good example of such an arrangement is to be found in the agricultural living wage legislation in Great Britain. It is provided therein that "When a district committee has been established for any area, it shall be the duty of the Committee to recommend to the Agricultural Wages Board, minimum rates of wages fixed under this act, and no variation or cancellation of such a rate shall have effect within that area unless ... recommended by the district wages committee."[88] 3.--Another possible ground for limitation or variation of the principle of standardization is set forth often in the contention that the character of the work performed by any large group of wage earners is not the same throughout the field of its employment. Such, for example, was the argument of the directors of the American railways, as summarized by Mr. Stockett: "... The railways oppose district standardization on the ground that rates cannot be disassociated from conditions and since conditions vary widely on different roads in such extensive territories as the railway districts they maintain that rates cannot be made uniformly applicable on all the roads. The amount of compensation, the roads hold, is governed by the labor performed, the skill and efficiency required, the responsibility and hazard involved, the discipline necessary, the rapidity of promotion, and the cost of living."[89] It is plain that the point of view which inspires the above argument is at variance with the beliefs that are behind the movement for wage standardization. The argument accords no validity to the belief that group unity and group aims deserve recognition in the settlement of wages. The doctrine of standardization on the contrary represents this belief, and sets groups standards above the existence of minor difference in the work performed by the group. The practical consequences of any wage policy which gave full recognition to these minor differences must also be weighed. These have been vigorously stated, for the case of railway labor, by Mr. Stockett. "... The employees maintain that the varying physical and traffic conditions in the different roads should not constitute a basis for the payment of various rates. It may be true, they hold, that physical conditions and traffic peculiarities differ as between different roads, but it would be impossible to determine a separate rate of pay for each special condition. In the course of development of the railways conditions are always changing. Grades may be leveled, additional tracks laid, curves straightened, passenger and freight densities may differ from year to year and from day to day. The attempt to determine the proper rates for each different condition and to change them as conditions change, the employees assert, is obviously absurd. The plan of fixing a standard rate governing an entire district may be illogical and its basis arbitrary, but it is deemed the best devised and does substantial justice in a broader sense than any other system."[90] Cases may arise, indeed, where the difference in the character of the work performed really means that the same name covers two relatively distinct occupations, and two or more quite different classes of wage earners. Such cases are probably rare. In circumstances where the constant differences between the character of the work performed by workers is relatively great, it will usually be found that they are distinguished into different groups.[91] It is a question of degree, of course. And if the existing distinctions do not fit the facts, those distinctions should be changed.[92] In unorganized industries, it will sometimes be found that the classification of occupations is very defective. If wage standardization were to be introduced into those industries, it would be found necessary to standardize occupations first. Such was the task undertaken, for example, by the War Labor Board in the Worthington Pump and Machinery case.[93] 4.--A third possible ground for limitation or variation of the principle of standardization is the existence of differences in the cost of living in the various main centers or regions to which a standard rate might be applied. Such variation would be represented, for example, by a collective agreement in accordance with which the wage scale at different points was varied in accordance with the relative cost of living at these points. Up to the present there has been a tendency to disregard differences in the cost of living when wage standardization has been extended. No constant tendency, for example, can be found in the agreements made by different local branches of the same national trade union to build up a wage scale in accordance with differences in the cost of living at different points.[94] The most complete body of material on the subject is contained in the report of the Investigating Commission of the Board of Trade (Great Britain) on Working Class Rents, etc., in the United States (1911). This commission studied the wage schedules of skilled men in the building, engineering and printing trades in twenty-eight of the large cities of the United States and compared these wage schedules with the calculated cost of food and rent in these towns--weighing food three times as heavily as rent. The results are presented by single cities, by geographical groups, and by population groups--i.e., cities grouped in accordance with size of population. _Real_ wages tended to be more equal as between population groups than between geographical groups. The range of the index number between geographical groups is from 85 to 104 (New York is taken as 100); between population groups from 89 to 100 (New York, 100). They reveal a tendency for money wages and living costs to be high in the largest cities, and for both money wages and living costs to decline in the cities making up the smaller population groups. No correlation can be found between living costs and money wages as between individual cities, however. The argument for variation or limitation because of differences in the cost of living is a two-fold one. Firstly, it may be argued that such a policy is calculated to maintain industrial activity in the smaller centers, where the cost of living is usually lower, in the face of the competition of the larger centers, in which the cost of living is usually higher. Secondly, it may be argued, that variations in the cost of living at different places are indications of the fact that at some places the economic essentials can be procured with a smaller expenditure of human labor and capital than at other places (since labor and capital can move between them) and, therefore, it is to the general interest to encourage industrial development at the points where the cost of living is relatively low. As to the first argument, it seems to me that there is considerable wisdom in the wish to encourage a diffusion of industrial development, rather than concentration at a few points. The strain on the social and political structure of the nation would be less, to-day, if our industrial population were more widely distributed; and our problems of civic and economic life would be simpler. That I believe to be true, although it is probable that the wage earners in New York City are better governed, have more freedom, and enjoy a healthier and more stimulating environment than the wage earners in the smaller industrial towns of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, for example. As to the second argument, it is true that differences in the cost of living do indicate that the essentials of economic life can be procured with a smaller expenditure of human labor and capital at some places than at others. There is a further question, however. Does not the ability of the enterprises established at the places where the cost of living is relatively high, to compete with the others, denote a compensating advantage in another stage of production? The answer depends on two conditions. Are the enterprises in genuine competition with each other? And secondly, do wages at the several places differ in correspondence with the differences in the cost of living? To the extent that these conditions hold true, any shift of industry away from the points where the cost of living is low, as a result of wage standardization, would not be uneconomical--in the sense of this argument. For then, the ability of the enterprises established at the points where the cost of living was relatively high to compete with the others would indicate that they benefited by some compensating advantage in their location. Still another matter to be noted is that if differences in the cost of living are recognized in the enforcement of standardization, there will be some tendency for the abler and more energetic workmen to drift to the points where money wages are higher. This movement is likely to occur even though real wages are the same at the different places. In addition to these theoretical considerations, one practical matter should be called to mind. The relative scale of the cost of living at the different points to which a standard wage might be applied does not usually remain fixed over a considerable period. Small changes and shifts in the relative scale occur constantly, and even large changes may take place within a short time. Experience has shown that wage differences which rest upon a fluctuating basis are apt to give rise to misunderstanding, and to be provocative of unrest. At best, only the relatively permanent and great differences in the cost of living between different points could be taken into consideration. Even then a great deal of arbitrary calculation might be involved. In view of the variety of considerations that bear upon the problem, only a tentative conclusion will be ventured. Namely, that when in any industry the wage scales prior to standardization do reflect the differences in the cost of living at the different centers in which the industry is carried on, such differences should be maintained. As has been remarked, only the relatively large and permanent differences could be taken into account. When, however, no such differences in wage scales is found prior to standardization, it will probably be inadvisable to introduce them, in order to encourage a wider geographical diffusion of industry.[95] 5.--There is yet another ground for limitation or variation of the principle of standardization. It is of a somewhat different character than those already considered. It is that in order to carry out the underlying idea of standardization--equal remuneration for the same type of work despite minor differences in conditions under which it is performed--it is necessary to introduce variations into the hourly or daily time rates (or equivalent piece-work schedules) paid in various sections of the industry. Such variations have been designated as "nominal variations" in the Australian courts. Distinctions may be drawn between different types of these so-called "nominal variations" according to the cause by which they are occasioned. The first type is that which rests on the fact that in certain trades or industries, it is extremely difficult or impossible to make the conditions of work even approximately uniform throughout the trade or industry. Agricultural work and coal mining may be cited as examples. In such trades or industries it is usually found that the principle of standardization can only be carried out satisfactorily under a system of time payment. For under a piece-work system a uniform scale of rates yields widely different earnings for labor of approximately the same type and quality. It may be, however, that a time-work system is ill suited to the trades or industries in question. In which case, the only alternative is to draw up different piece-work scales for different conditions of work. Different scales of this sort are to be found in the American coal mines for example. Such "nominal variations" between piece-work scales would appear to be justified when the differences of conditions upon which they rest are judged to be not subject to standardization. To be really practicable the differences of conditions should also be relatively great, fixed and measureable.[96] The second type is that which rests upon some difference in the "net advantages" of the same work carried on in different sections of the industry or occupation. For the purpose in hand, three sorts of difference in net advantage may be noted. The first sort would be represented by a claim for a higher rate than that stipulated in the general scale, because the work in question was carried on under conditions involving an _unusual_ degree of disagreeableness or risk. In my opinion, "nominal variations" based on such differences as these can safely be left to voluntary bargaining rather than enforced as a matter of policy. The conduct of almost any occupation involves differences in the conditions under which it is performed. Nobody entrusted with the duty of enforcing a policy of wage settlement would find it easy to define the conditions which warranted an addition to the standard rate. It would run the risk of being involved in a process of refined definition which would probably be futile. Justice Higgins stated this view aptly in a claim for "dirt" money. "My view," he writes, "is that the minimum rate of wages is not to be made to depend upon the degree of dirtiness of the work. A man must accept the conditions of the work to which he has devoted himself; and the court cannot be expected to define degrees of dirt or to express them in terms of money wages. If the employer puts the employee to work which is unnecessarily dirty, the remedy is in prohibition or in regulation--not in increase of wages. My decision in no way prevents the employer and employee from making a voluntary stipulation for dirt money in any particular case."[97] A second sort of difference in net advantage would be represented by a request on the part of an employer that certain payments in kind should be considered as part of the wage. An example of this would be the provision of meals. Such variations would seem to be permissible when the acceptance of the payment in kind is left optional with the workmen. A third sort of difference in net advantage, and possibly the most important, is that represented by differences in the regularity of employment in different sections of a trade or industry. This type of difference is exemplified in the work of longshoremen and lumbermen; some men being engaged on one type of work are employed regularly, while men engaged on other jobs are employed irregularly or casually. It is frequently claimed that irregular or casual work should be paid at higher rates than regular work. The justice of this claim seems apparent. Irregularity of work is undoubtedly a great handicap to the workman who seeks to maintain a well ordered life. Extra payment for irregularity of employment is a burden which can fairly be put upon an industry, or section of an industry--even if the irregularity is unavoidable. Yet the consequences of such a policy of "nominal variation" may be undesirable. It has been revealed by experience that there are some workmen who prefer irregular or casual work to regular work. And if higher wage rates are paid for irregular work this preference--an undesirable one, from the point of view of the community--is apt to be strengthened. On the other hand, it is usually true that only a small percentage of workmen prefer casual work to regular work. Most men engage in casual work because they cannot secure regular work. As was well established in the Court of Enquiry on the work and wages of transport workers (Great Britain) held early in 1920, the only real solution of the difficulty is the reorganization of the occupation so that the irregular and casual work is reduced to a minimum. Until that is accomplished, it is probable that the most advisable policy is to grant "nominal variations" for casual and irregular employment. These variations should not be so great as to influence the run of workmen to prefer casual work. The total earnings from regular work should be higher. Another policy that may be practicable, in many cases, is to define a minimum period of employment for all workmen engaged.[98] Such a policy puts strong pressure upon the industry to cut down irregularity of employment. Against such a policy stand the practical difficulties involved in determining the basis of any scheme of "nominal variations." The whole question is well surveyed in a decision of the Commonwealth Court of Australia which reads in part as follows: "The casual hand, I propose to define as an employee who is not employed for a fortnight continuously and who is not entitled to a week's notice before his employment is determined. A new light was thrown by the evidence in this case on the growing tendency of some men to depend on the high rates for casual work only, to enable them to work when they thought fit, and idle when they felt inclined.... The yearly return of so many seasonal hands for the wool and grain season, year after year, who look for casual work elsewhere in the meantime in shearing sheds--on the wharfs--in other industries and even in the Government temporary service--and prefer casual work is not an encouraging sign. The higher rates paid for casual work do, and will, encourage many men to rely on that class of labor. I do not think that is good for the community or for the employee. I have been asked not to encourage the tendency to prefer casual labor by granting high rates for casual labor. "Although the rates for casual labor ought not be so high as to induce men to become casual laborers, a higher rate must in fairness be allowed, where as in this industry, men, however anxious they may be to get permanent work, are not employed for the whole season without a break, and many of them are only employed a short broken part of the season, and some are employed for a day or a few days only."[99] 6.--In the examination of the reasons for and against limitation or variation of the principle of standardization, note must be taken of still one other argument of a somewhat different nature than those already dealt with. That argument is that it will prove impossible to maintain uniform standard wage rates throughout an industry in which the various enterprises are distributed over a wide area; in the several parts of which area the cost of living, the general conditions of labor, and the demand and supply situation for labor differ considerably. This contention is supported by two different lines of reasoning. The first is that, because of these differences, there will tend to be a flow of labor away from the less favorable points of employment within the area of standardization towards the more favorable. This flow, it is said, will cause a reappearance of the differentials which existed before standardization. The first comment to be made on this line of reasoning is explanatory, rather than contradictory. It is true that there may be some tendency for labor to flow from the less favorable points to the more favorable. But it must be remembered that the standard wage is intended only as a minimum. If differentials over the standard wage did arise in enterprises where the conditions of labor were worse than the average, or in regions where the cost of living was higher than the average, such differentials would not be incompatible with the ends sought, when standardization is enforced. Secondly, it may be commented that the experience of the past does not, in general, support the contention. In many industries the same standard wage scale applies over an area in which there are real differences of the kind set forth above, and no differentials as between the different points within the area have arisen--as, for example, on the railroads. This is to be accounted for, firstly, by the influence of the idea of standardization over trade union activity and policy; secondly, by the fact that relative money wages tend to govern, in a great measure, the calculations and movements of the wage earners; thirdly, by the fact that the application of the principle of standardization is in itself a strong force toward bringing about a leveling in the conditions of employment throughout an industry. The second line of reasoning with which this contention is supported is that the trade unions themselves will not long support any policy of standardization which does not make explicit allowances for such differences as are in question. It is said that the organization of the workers at the points where the cost of living was relatively high would insist upon a differential over other places for that reason. Such, for example, was the argument of the employers' counsel before the Court of Inquiry on the wages of transport workers (Great Britain), "... He submitted that one of the foundations of his argument was that in fixing wages they must have regard to the class of work. Having regard to the very great diversity of conditions and of methods in the different ports, and to the class of work done, he submitted that they could not standardize. They must do in the case of the ports as they did in the case of the coal mines."[100] There is but one pertinent comment to be made upon this opinion. If the wage earners' organizations, themselves, demand that variation be introduced into the policy of standardization, that demand should be granted. But it must be observed that these organizations must not give lip service to the application of the principle of standardization without variation, and once having secured it, make such a course impossible by demands for differentials over the uniform standard wage. In the face of such tactics, it will be impossible to maintain any definite policy of wage standardization. If the labor organizations desire the application of the principle of wage standardization without qualifications, they must be loyal to that desire, and they must not be swayed by small temporary advantages or by sectional interests. And, on the other hand, if they desire that the principle of standardization be applied with qualifications, they must not attempt to disguise demands for general wage increases as standardization movements. Such a policy is calculated to perpetuate industrial conflict. Such is the bearing of the pledge given by the representatives of the transport workers (Great Britain) incidental to their claim for a 16 shilling national minimum daily wage. "I am conscious that whatever your decision may be, if the principle of the minimum be established, some people in some ports are going to get more on the first settlement than others. We have faced that, and we have discussed it with the whole of our men. It was assumed by the chairman of the employers at the previous meeting, to take a striking illustration, that if Liverpool received 12 shillings per day and Glasgow 14 shillings, if you decided on 16 shilling a day, Glasgow would say 18 shilling, 'because I was above Liverpool before.' That is not so, my Lord. That is clearly understood by every member of the federation in every port in the country."[101] 7.--It may be hardly necessary to say, that up to the present, the various questions involved in the application of the principle of standardization in industry have not been settled by a careful study of the results produced. At the present time the manner in which the principle is applied is governed in the first instance, by the economic characteristics of the industry in question, and in the second instance by the area of influence of the various labor organizations, and by the degree of centralized control within each of them.[102] One of the circumstances which has played a part in determining the area of standardization in any industry is that success in the enforcement of collective agreements has depended largely upon whether all or most of the enterprises in competition with each other have been included in the same agreement. This circumstance has been sometimes decisive of the degree of centralized authority in the various trade unions. It has also tended to govern the attitude of particular trade unions towards the application of the principle of standardization without variation or modification.[103] The history of trade unionism is full of instances of organizations which have striven in vain to maintain uniform standardized wage rates throughout imperfectly organized areas.[104] Even when wage disputes have been settled by public agency, the usual procedure in the past has been to make the area covered by the agreement entirely dependent upon the area of dispute.[105] For all of that there has been in recent years a steady drift towards an extension of the area of standardization. In various industries careful thought has been given to the possibility of standardization on a national scale, though at present very few unions enforce such a scale.[106] On the railroads there are at present nation-wide wage scales. In Great Britain, to-day this is one of the most vexed of questions. Indeed Great Britain just has gone through a great coal strike in which it was one of the two great issues. The miners asked that "a levy be made upon each colliery company on every ton of coal raised to the surface to be used for ensuring the payment of wages agreed upon in a national wages settlement." The miners argue, and correctly, that district settlements would give unequal reward to men doing precisely the same work, and called upon for the same service.[107] 8.--The introduction of standardization into crafts or industries in which a variety of wage rates for substantially the same tasks exist gives rise to one other difficult problem. That is the determination of the level of standardization for each occupation. It will be argued, at a later point, that under any economic system in which labor organization is an accepted part of the economic structure, the wage levels established in different industries or occupations will have to be brought into relation with each other.[108] If that is so, the level of standardization of any industry or occupation would be determined in accordance with these principles, after they had been in operation for some time. As a matter of fact, however, under any policy of wage settlement, the enforcement of standardization will be something of an independent and prior process--prior, that is, to the application of any other principles intended to keep the wage levels in different industries or occupations in relation to each other. Standardization will be, so to speak, an initial stage of policy to be gone through before any other stages are entered upon. In this initial stage, the principal data that should be taken into consideration when fixing the level of standardization for any occupation is the actually existing variety of wage rates for that occupation. Where in the scale of actually existing rates the level of standardization is set must be a matter of judgment and compromise. That level of standardization should be chosen, which it is believed will produce more good and less harm than any other level that might be chosen. Or in other words, the level of standardization should be determined by a balance of the interests involved--that point being chosen at which, it is judged, the most favorable balance is established. There is current, indeed, one doctrine of standardization which holds that there is but one satisfactory level of standardization for an occupation in which wages have been hitherto unstandardized. That doctrine, crudely stated, is that the standard wage for the work in question should be the highest of the unstandardized wages.[109] That doctrine is called "standardization upward." If the suggested test is sound, it cannot be admitted that the doctrine of standardization upward is always valid. For there is no reason to believe that the level of the highest of the hitherto unstandardized rates is, of necessity, the one at which the most favorable balance of interests is established. In many cases there may be a presumption to that effect--if the doctrine is reasonably interpreted. That is to say, if it is taken to mean the higher range of wages, rather than the highest single wage. That presumption arises from the fact that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, the higher range of unstandardized wages indicates what wages may be enforced throughout the occupation without causing great disturbance and unemployment. The circumstances which would govern the correctness of this presumption are many and have already been discussed.[110] The actual range of difference between the various wage rates being paid for the same occupation in different enterprises should be given importance in the judgment as to whether standardization should take place at the level of the higher range of wages. Furthermore, in many cases where wages are standardized at a level lower than some of the wage rates already paid for the work in question, it would usually be sound to provide that these higher-wage rates should not be reduced at once. This ruling was adopted in the decisions of the War Labor Board and it has also been embodied in the so-called "saving clauses" in the American railway wage decisions.[111] 9.--The principle of standardization may be considered basic in any wage policy for industrial peace. This is not because the existence of various wage rates for the same work is the greatest source of industrial conflict. But because the establishment of clearly known wage rates for each type of labor, extending over the field of its employment (with whatever limitations or variations are admitted to the principle) is often essential to the operation of any other principles of wage settlement. The establishment of standard wage rates makes possible a clear knowledge of the economic position of the various classes of wage earners. Likewise, it makes possible the accurate measurement of wage change; and also makes for simplicity and uniformity in the application of changes. Lastly, it tends to produce a careful classification of the different kinds of work, in which the minor and local differences in the nature of the work are gradually eliminated. These are the reasons for the "strong public interest in standardization" which was spoken of above.[112] FOOTNOTES: [85] Thus, take the cautionary warning in the Report of Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Agreements (Great Britain) upon the proposal to make collective agreements entered into by joint industrial councils compulsory upon all enterprises engaged in the industry providing a certain majority (75 per cent. was the suggestion) of work people and employers in the industry or craft in question were represented in the council. "51--Attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the establishment of a scheme for dealing with proposals for extension of agreements, it would be necessary to provide for exceptions to be made in regard to individual firms or work people whose conditions of trade or employment were such as to differentiate them from the remainder of the trade to such an extent as to make the application of the agreement to them an inequitable proceeding." CD 6953, 1913, page 14. A bill embodying a clause providing for such a scheme for extension was proposed by the government in 1919 in return for certain concessions from the trade unions, but was withdrawn when the parliamentary labor leaders would not agree to the concessions. [86] P. S. Collier, Appendix VIII, 4th Report New York State Factory Investigating Commission, 1915, page 2113. [87] Much interesting material bearing on the question of district vs. national standardization is to be found in the report of the Commission on "Wages and Conditions of Employment in Agriculture" (Great Britain), 1919. An interesting bit of evidence was given by a farmer from Devonshire who was of the opinion "that the sticky nature of the ground in Essex induced a slow habit of moving, and he thought the Essex workmen did as much as could be expected in view of the labor involved in walking on wet land, during a large part of the year." Page 73. There is also much interesting material on the subject in the report of the Court of Inquiry into the "Wages and Conditions of Employment of Dock Labor" (Great Britain), 1920. The same problem has arisen, of course, many times in the course of trade union negotiations--for example, in the coal mines and railroads of the United States. [88] Section 12 (4), Trades Board Act, 1909, Restated in the Corn Production Act, 1917. [89] J. N. Stockett, Jr., "Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," page 23. [90] J. N. Stockett, Jr., "The Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," page 21. [91] See D. A. McCabe, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," pages 82-91. [92] For example, see the recommendations of the Interstate Commission regarding classification of railroad employees. _U. S. Monthly Bulletin of Labor_, Nov., 1915. [93] Decision in Re Employees vs. Worthington Pump and Machinery Corp., Docket No. 163, National War Labor Board; see also decision in the Corn Products Case. [94] For a recent statistical study of the subject see an article by Ogburn and Kelley in the _Journal of the American Statistical Ass'n._ for September, 1916. [95] The Commonwealth Court of Australia, while setting up as an ideal "uniform rates all around Australia" (see The Case of the Federated Storemen and Packers' Union, page 150, Vol. X, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports), has frequently awarded a different basic minimum wage for different cities within the commonwealth. [96] See D. A. McCabe, page 54, and 162-3 for a review of trade union policy in this matter, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions." [97] Case of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company vs. Federated Engine Drivers' and Foremen's Association of Australia. Pages 196-7 (Vol. X, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports). [98] Thus in one of its opinions the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations recommended that the flour mills in the state should pay their skilled men a monthly wage whether the mill is running or not, Docket 3803, Opinion regarding "continuity of production in the flour-milling industry," 1920. In another case, however, the Court refused to order the packing industries to guarantee a minimum amount of employment each week to its employees. Docket 3926, Wolff Packing Co., Case 1921. [99] Case of "Federated Storemen and Packers' Union of Australia vs. Skin & Hide Merchants' Association of Brisbane," page 651, Vol. X, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports. For an example of difficulties to be expected, see the attempt made to set up such a scheme of nominal variations in the Salt Case, No. 1, "South Australian Industrial Reports," Vol. I, page 16. [100] London _Times_, Feb. 12, 1920. [101] Court of Inquiry into Wages of Dock Labour, etc., as reported in the _Monthly Labor Review_, U. S. Dept. of Labor, May, 1920, page 57. [102] See D. A. McCabe, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," page 143. [103] See D. A. McCabe, "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," page 183. [104] For example, see "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," page 159. [105] Such now seems to be the policy of the most recent experiment in wage settlement in the United States--the Court of Industrial Relations of Kansas. [106] For a study of the influences which have governed the area of standardization in the United States, see Chapter III, especially page 120, etc., "The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions," by D. A. McCabe; also article in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ for 1912, pages 425-443. [107] See the statement of Frank Hodges, Secretary of the Miners' Federation, in the London _Observer_, April 17, 1921. [108] See Chapters X and XI. [109] An interesting statement of the doctrine of "standardization upward" is to be found in the evidence of Mr. J. H. Thomas (then Assistant Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants) before the "Commission of Inquiry into Industrial Agreements" (Great Britain), CD 6953, 1910, Q 13902. Chairman: I think there are eight railways running into Manchester. You were talking about uniformity in such a case. Supposing that five out of the eight railways had a particular rate for a particular class of labor, would you apply that rate to the other three railways? A: It may be that the five should be lower than the three, and in that case, I certainly would not apply the lower to the others. I would apply the higher rate as being the uniform rate; but think that would be got over by the suggestion that I have made whereby the rate would be determined for Manchester, for example, by one authority. Q 13903--I will assume for the moment that the three are less than the five. Would you then make the rate that the five are paying a minimum rate? A: Yes, if the three were less than the five, then the rate of the five would be the rate, but if one was higher than the seven, then the other seven would come up to the one quite naturally. For another good example, see the claim of the Unions in the Engineering and Foundry Trades (Special District Cases), Committee on Production Reports (Great Britain), Vol. II, New Series (545). [110] See pages 138-9, Chapter VII, also pages 192-5, Chapter IX. [111] Justice Higgins of the Commonwealth Court of Australia has dissented from the saving clause idea simply on the ground that if the unions desire standardization and uniformity, they "must take the rough with the smooth," Case of the Federated Shoremen & Packers' Union, page 150, Vol. X, "Commonwealth Arbitration Reports." [112] Compare J. N. Stockett, Jr., "Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages," pages 46-47. CHAPTER IX--THE LIVING WAGE Section 1. The reasons for seeking separate principles for the settlement of the wages of the lowest paid groups.--Section 2. Wage statistics of these groups a matter of familiar knowledge.--Section 3. The definition of the living wage idea. An inescapable element of indefiniteness contained in it.--Section 4. The living wage principle put in the form of applied policy.--Section 5. Should the living wage principle be applied to male labor? The arguments for and against.--Section 6. The theoretical case for the living wage principle. The verdict of past experience favorable to its extension.--Section 7. The dangers which must be guarded against in applying it.--Section 8. It should be administered through machinery which makes possible careful study of facts of each industry. This machinery discussed.--Section 9. The question of the relation to be established between living wage for men and women difficult. Alternatives considered.--Section 10. A plan for the adjustment of the living wage to price changes. The basis of adjustment.--Section 11. The policy of adjustment--already discussed.--Section 12. The hope of the living wage policy. 1.--In the brief survey earlier in this book of the present industrial situation in the United States, it was concluded that the improvement of the economic position of the lowest paid groups of wage earners was one of the chief objects to be borne in mind when striving to work out a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. In the following chapters a study was made of the causes of the formation and existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners, and of the forces which determine the level of earnings for the various groups. It was observed that the lowest paid groups of wage earners tended to be separated from the more fortunate groups; they have relatively independent economic fortunes. Two reasons exist, therefore, for giving separate treatment to the question of the principles by which the wages of these least favorably placed groups of wage earners should be settled--as part of the policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. Firstly, because their economic position is a matter of special concern; secondly, because the wage incomes of these groups are determined, in part, by forces which do not affect equally, or in the same way, the wages of the other groups. The living wage principle as put forth in this chapter is the principle suggested for use in the settlement of wages for these least favorably placed groups of workers. It is the second of the measures, intended to form a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. 2.--It is not necessary to give here the wage statistics for the groups of wage earners who are lowest in the industrial scale. They form the record of the fact that a considerable percentage of all female industrial wage earners, and some groups of male wage earners who perform unskilled work, are in receipt of wages insufficient to enable them to live according to those conceptions of the minimum level of satisfactory economic existence which have been formulated by public agencies from time to time.[113] 3.--The general idea of the living wage is not a new one. It has been the subject of many definitions. A comparison of a few of the best attempts to express the idea shows, on the one hand, the definite purpose which is its inspiration and, on the other hand, an inescapable element of indefiniteness which persists in all instances where the idea has been enacted into policy. The definition given to the living wage idea by the South Australian Industrial Court (an agency which has made searching efforts to explain its underlying assumptions) is that all wage earners should receive "a wage that will meet the reasonable and normal needs of the average citizen in a particular locality."[114] In the declaration of the war labor policy of the Dominion of Canada one can read that "all workers, including common laborers shall be entitled to a wage ample to enable them with thrift to maintain themselves and families in decency and comfort, and to make reasonable provision for old age."[115] And contained among those principles laid down for the guidance of the United States War Labor Board is the following, "In fixing wages, minimum rates of pay shall be established which will insure the subsistence of the worker and his family in health and comfort."[116] These definitions reveal clearly the aim which inspires them. They express a determination to secure for the least favorably placed members of the industrial community wages sufficient to enable them to share with the rest of the community prospects of an active and happy life, as the run of men understand that idea at any time and place. Still all these definitions--including the one just given--assert a goal sufficiently indefinite to permit, and indeed necessitate interpretation according to the circumstances under which the idea is translated into policy. The clarity of the idea arises from a simple belief. That belief is that any body of individuals of average honesty, though they disagree in many things, can reach a large measure of agreement as to the minimum income which will enable the ordinary wage earner to live a life which satisfies, in a minimum measure, the ideals of life current in the community. The indefiniteness of the idea arises out of the fact that it is not likely that this body of men will be in complete agreement as to this minimum income; and therefore the wage finally settled upon is likely to represent a compromise between conflicting opinions. This is well brought out in a passage contained in one of the reports of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. "... Cost of living is such an unstandardized subject that a mathematically accurate determination is impossible. In each conference there are as many different opinions as there are members. In general, the employers want a wage sufficient to maintain existing standards of living in the industry, while the employees contend that the standard of living should be improved. The wage finally agreed upon is not a scientific determination based solely on facts, but rather a compromise of opinion between the two groups, modified as it may be, by the opinion of the public."[117] The reference contained in practically all definitions of the living wage principle to the standards of a particular time and place assists greatly in interpreting the principle into policy.[118] For this reference is tantamount to saying that the standard of economic life which shall be deemed to satisfy the principle, should be fixed primarily by comparison with the standard of life of the wage earning and middle classes in the community at the given time. This comparison tends to govern the content of the living wage idea. It brings the living wage determination into direct relation with--or makes it relative to--the productive capacity of the industrial system at the time and place in question. For a study of the standard of life of the wage earners and the middle classes of the community is of great assistance in indicating the standard of life to which it may be possible to raise even the worst paid industrial groups, by those adjustments in production and distribution which it is the object of a living wage policy to produce. This essential relativity of the living wage idea is well pointed out in a decision of Justice Brown of the South Australian Industrial Court. "... The statutory definition of the living wage is a wage adequate to meet the normal and reasonable needs of the worker. In other words, the conception is ethical rather than economic. The Court has not to determine the value of the services rendered, but to determine what is necessary to meet normal and relative needs. It should be obvious that in the interpretation of reasonable needs the court cannot be wholly indifferent to the national income. The reasonable needs of the worker in a community where national income is high are greater than the reasonable needs of the worker in a community where the national income is low."[119] The living wage has ordinarily been assessed on different bases for men and women. The basis of assessment for each has been the subject for much controversy. The most generally upheld basis of assessment is, in the case of the male wage earner, to assess his needs on the supposition that he is the supporter of a family consisting of himself, wife, and two or three small children; and in the case of the female wage earner, to assess her needs on the supposition that she is living alone, and is dependent upon her own earnings for her support, and that she has no other obligations. These bases of assessment do not meet all of the demands of logic--applied to the living wage idea--nor, as will be seen, is the choice of different bases of assessment for men and women entirely free of difficulty.[120] The reasoning, which has been used ordinarily in support of the suggested basis of assessment for men is well set forth in another decision of Justice Brown, "I look upon the maintenance of home life as of supreme importance to the community. I regard the wage paid to the adult male as essentially and in substance a family wage. True, so far as single men are concerned, it has long been settled that the minimum (living) wage should not be less than that of the married man. In other words, in discussing the needs of the male worker, a man with a family to support has been taken as a basis of assessment. Any other conclusion would prejudice the married man in search of employment and would tend to produce sterility of the population, and would place the industrial court in the invidious position of fixing wages at a rate which would make it difficult, if not impossible, for single men to save something for the time when they may have the felicity to become supporters of a family."[121] The argument in support of the suggested basis of assessment for women rests upon a sentiment to the effect that every worker should earn, at least, enough to enable her to support herself, even though the actual necessity does not exist in many cases, and though in many other cases the female wage earner has obligations beyond self-support. 4.--After these preliminaries, it is possible to make more definite recommendations concerning living wage policy--with a view towards the adoption of the living wage principle as part of a policy of wage settlement. Firstly, as to scope. It should apply to all groups of workers whose average annual earnings fall below the sum settled upon by the constituted agency as the minimum necessary for the fulfillment of the living wage idea. The statistical definition of the term "average" as just used should also be left to the constituted agency. Allowance should be made in each occupation for a small percentage of sub-ordinary workers. Secondly, as to the basis of assessment of the living wage, and the procedure by which it should be fixed. There should be an extensive and (so far as it is possible) impartial investigation of the cost of that minimum standard of economic life which it is the intention of living wage policy to secure for all industrial wage earners. In the determination of what should be included in the minimum standard, attention should be paid to the income levels of the wage earners in general, and of the middle classes. The wages now received by the lowest paid groups would also be an important consideration. The living wage settled upon by this process of investigation should be in the form of a weekly standard wage. It should be considered as a minimum only for any occupation to which it is applied. Like other standard wage rates, it should be subject to limitation or variation in accordance with the conclusions reached on that subject in the preceding chapters.[122] The questions which arise out of the fact that it would have to be enforced in a number of different industries, and under widely different conditions will be considered at a later point.[123] The bases of assessment for men and women should be those discussed and approved in the preceding section. The living wage that is fixed should be subject to reconsideration and revision at definite periods; aside from the revisions which may be called for as the result of price movement,[124] or under the profits test which is suggested later in the book.[125] 5.--So much then for the central features of the living wage proposals. We have now to consider the probable result of their enforcement; and any criticisms to which they may be fairly subject in their proposed form. Thus we will be enabled to discover what modifications, large or small, are advisable. Objection may be taken, first of all, against the scope of these proposals. So far living wage legislation in the United States has been applied to female industrial workers only. The argument against the extension of the principle to male wage earners is put on two grounds--the constitutional and the economic. On the constitutional argument, only the briefest comment will be attempted; and that without any intention to dogmatize upon a most complicated subject. That is that the test of the constitutionality of these proposals should be the balance of good or harm they promise. The constitution is at bottom but a very wise guide as to what public good and harm consists of. But as the conditions and facts which determine good and harm change, these changes should be reflected in the interpretation of the constitution. These living wage proposals do not, it seems to me, offend against any of the fundamental ideas which the constitution contains. The economic argument against the extension of the living wage policy to male wage earners is usually based on the contention that it is unnecessary, or that it has a bad effect upon the spirit and character of the male wage earners concerned, or upon both these contentions. As to its necessity, the statistics of wages for the least favorably placed groups of male wage earners, and observation of their economic handicaps offer sufficient evidence. As to the belief that the extension would be destructive of the spirit or character of the male wage earners concerned, there is little or no factual support for that view, and much to refute it. A minimum level of economic existence is requisite to the growth and development of personal initiative and of a spirit of self-confidence. Vigor and independence of temper and action is not bred in a position of extreme economic dependence. One does not have to be blind to the dangers of paternalistic legislation to believe that living wage policy for male wage earners is justified, under modern industrial conditions. All the more so, since experience with living wage legislation proves that it encourages voluntary organization among the wage earners. And this fact, indeed, is also a fair answer to the tough dislike of the American labor unions for all other methods of settling the wages of male workers than that of collective bargaining. 6.--We may now pass from the possible objections to the scope of these proposals, to those which may be fairly leveled against their substance. Although the living wage principle has been used in wage settlement throughout the Australian Dominions, in many English industries, and in a limited number of industries in some of the American states, the controversy which arose over it, when first it was introduced, is far from quieted. This is explained, in part, by the extreme difficulty of getting evidence as to its results which is beyond the shadow of doubt. That is due, in part, to the great variety of conditions under which it has operated. Its results are always complicated by circumstances which differ from place to place. Again, there is the fact that such experiments as that of the living wage are apt to be judged from a rapidly changing viewpoint. The very conscientious efforts which have been made, however, to measure the effect of the various experiments with living wage legislation furnish us with much valuable material on most of the debated matters. No attempt can be made here to reproduce the various sides of the controversy, or to summarize the evidence which has been collected upon the disputed aspects of the subject.[126] Much of it covers the same matters which were treated in our analysis of the principle of wage standardization. In my opinion, the existing evidence warrants the advocacy of an extension of the living wage policy in the United States. It furnishes us also with valuable instruction as to the form in which the policy is likely to work out most satisfactorily. The value of the living wage principle as an instrument for bringing about an improvement in the economic condition of the lowest grades of industrial workers, without producing equivalent harm in any other direction, is also supported by general theoretical reasoning; that is, by a study of the forces which govern wages in general, and the wages of these lowest groups in particular. In the study of these forces, earlier in the book, it was pointed out that the outcome of distribution may be affected by just such assertions of purpose as that represented by the living wage policy. If labor organization has been able to increase the wages of certain groups of wage earners without doing equivalent harm in any other direction, there is reason for believing that a living wage policy can accomplish something of the same result for the lowest grades of industrial labor, which have been up to the present practically without organization. And, indeed, in England, the Trades Boards, which are the machinery of the living wage policy, are ordinarily regarded as fulfilling practically the same functions as organization does for the more favorably placed groups.[127] Furthermore, the nature of certain of the forces which account for the low wage levels of the groups that would be affected by the living wage policy, give the above argument special force. For among those forces are these: that their wages have been, at times, less than the amount necessary to enable them to do as efficient work as they were capable of doing; and so low, frequently, as to make the struggle for self-improvement and advancement, for members of these groups, a very difficult matter. Thus the numbers in these groups have been kept greater than they would have been otherwise. Furthermore, their wages have been, at times so low that efficient industrial management counted little in success. Furthermore, these groups have had practically no organization or leadership to prevent their employment under conditions most unfavorable to their health, energy, and general welfare. And lastly, that the present industrial system has a tendency to take advantage of economic weakness wherever it exists. Against these considerations must be put, perhaps, the submission shown by these groups to the course of industrial development, and the constant service they have given, in their position of dependence, in monotonous and wearisome work. The case of the living wage policy rests upon the opinion that the introduction of living wage standards will give rise to a series of adjustments in production and distribution. And that the net sum of the results of these adjustments, perhaps only after a temporary period of dislocation in some instances, will be to increase the wages of the lowest grades of wage earners--without doing equivalent harm in any other direction. It also rests on the opinion that the permanent economic advancement of these lowest groups of wage earners is a practicable ideal--though fate seems to take a special delight in dealing harshly with this particular ideal. 7.--Among the adjustments, however, which general reasoning suggests as a possible consequence of the enforcement of a living wage policy are some which it is the part of policy to guard against. Existing evidence shows that they have not often followed upon previous enforcements of living wage policy; yet they must be borne in mind. They are firstly: the possibility that employment of the wage earners who are affected by the living wage policy may be permanently reduced. This may result either because of price increase in the commodities produced by these wage earners, or because of substitution into their occupations of other classes of labor or of machinery. And secondly: the possibility that the enforcement of the living wage policy will bring about a concentration of employment upon the more efficient members of the groups affected, and thus throw out of employment the very individuals who are most in need of help. And thirdly: the possibility that there will be an increase in the numbers of those groups which the living wage principle is designed to aid, with consequences similar to those suggested under the second heading. In my opinion, the chances that any of these things will result from the enforcement of a living wage policy in the United States to-day are small. Yet to put the matter summarily,--these are the dangers which those entrusted with the administration of a living wage policy would have to be alive to; and if they become real, seek to overcome, by shaping their policy according to the facts that confront them. The factors which will determine whether any or all of these undesirable results will ensue are many. They cannot be balanced in the abstract. Yet general reasoning enables us to discern those which will make that likelihood greater or smaller in any occupation or industry. We may start by enumerating those factors which enter into the likelihood that a reduction of employment will result from the enforcement of a living wage policy. They are: Firstly, the amount of wage increase undertaken; secondly, the importance of the wages received by the groups in question in the total expenses of production; thirdly, the shape of the demand curve for the products of the groups; fourthly, the chances for improvements in the methods of production; fifthly, the chances of encouraging better business management by enforcing living wage standards; sixthly, the effect of the wage increases upon the efficiency of the groups affected, and their fitness for advancement to more skilled work; seventhly, upon the opportunities for substitution of machinery; and lastly upon the ultimate effects of the introduction of machinery on the employment of these groups. Turning now to the second possibility, that the enforcement of living wage standards will cause a concentration of employment upon the more efficient workmen, thus throwing out of employment those most in need of help, here, too, a great number of factors have to be reckoned with. They, however, have already been dealt with in the previous discussion of the effect of standardization upon the distribution of employment. There is no need of enumerating them again in this place. One point of difference should be observed, however. The differences of individual efficiency among the workers that would be affected by the living wage policy are more substantial than the differences of individual efficiency among the members of the more skilled wage earners. And, therefore, while it would be unnecessary to make any special provision for the least efficient members of the more skilled groups upon the introduction of standardization, it might at the start be decidedly good policy to make special provision for the least efficient members of the unskilled groups. Under practically all living wage legislation special provision is made for them. It should also be remarked in this connection, that the probable greater range of individual efficiency among the unskilled as compared with the skilled is in some measure to be attributed to their present low wage levels. Inefficiency is likely to grow upon itself. Mr. Aves has remarked pertinently in this regard, "As with the 'unemployed' or the 'unfair employer' so with the 'incompetent' and the 'slow,' none of these represent well defined classes. All are elastic. Some can be created and all merge by imperceptible degrees into the classes above."[128] The enforcement of a living wage policy, it may be hoped, would in itself reduce the range of individual efficiency among the unskilled. For it would keep from the ranks of the "incompetent" and "slow" some who might have found place elsewhere had their chances been somewhat better. We turn to the third possibility--that as a result of enforcement of a living wage policy there will be an increase in numbers in those groups who fall within its scope. Here the pertinent factors are: Firstly, the movement out of the lowest paid groups into those more favorably placed, owing to the effect of increased wages upon individual capacity and the use of individual opportunity; secondly, upon the movement from other groups into the groups affected by the living wage policy, due to the wage increases brought about by the policy, and thirdly, upon the effect of these wage increases upon the frequency of family labor, and upon the age of entry into and retirement from industry. 8.--So much, then, for the possible undesirable consequences of the application of the living wage principle. It is evident that the policy must be put in such a form as will make possible a careful study of the facts of each industry or occupation and adaptation to these facts. The following proposals are made primarily with the view that they will permit this flexibility. They are also designed, however, to fit into the other requirements of the general policy of wage settlement for industrial peace, which is under study. It is proposed that there should be in every industry which is included within the general scheme of wage settlement a joint council or board. There might also be occupational boards or councils. These councils or boards should consist of representatives of the workers and of the employers. Representatives of the public might act upon these boards or councils in advisory capacity. There might be both a central board or council, and various district boards or councils in each industry. These joint boards could be given other duties outside of the administration of the living wage policy. That matter will be taken up at a later point. Here, note will be taken only of the part they could play in the administration of the living wage policy. The joint boards or councils should be advisory to the central authority which is constituted to administer the policy of wage settlement as a whole. The functions of this central authority in regard to the formulation and declaration of the living wage for men and women have already been discussed. It should be provided, however, that the central authority should make no living wage declaration or hand down any order until it has received the report of the joint boards or councils in the industries or occupations in question upon the subject of such decisions or orders. The report of the joint boards or councils should be given great weight by the central authority in arriving at decisions. The joint boards or councils should be permitted to submit both majority and minority reports to the central authority. Among the matters arising in the course of the administration of the living wage policy, upon which the joint boards or councils should be called upon to advise the central authority, are the following: Firstly, upon the wage to be prescribed in that industry or occupation. Each joint council should be free to recommend a wage less than the wage declared to be a living wage by the central authority, giving its reasons for the same. It should also be free to recommend a wage more than the declared living wage, giving its reasons in this case also. The conclusions reached in regard to "nominal variations" as between different sections of an industry are equally valid as between industries or occupations.[129] Secondly, upon questions connected with the form of wage payment, and the arrangement of piece-work lists designed to yield the prescribed living wage. Thirdly, upon the question of sub-ordinary workers in an occupation or industry, and upon the issuance of permits for the same to work for less than the prescribed wage. Fourthly, as to whether the wage fixed for any industry or occupation should be varied or limited. Fifthly, upon any difficulties that may present themselves because of the fact that the living wages for men and women are assessed on different bases. Lastly, upon these boards or councils should rest the duty of observing how well the declarations or orders of the central authority are observed; and of studying the effect of the prescribed wages upon these classes of wage earners that the living wage policy is designed to help, and upon the industry in general; and of reporting periodically to the central authority upon the same. It is true that the procedure of these councils would consist largely of the compromise of conflicting opinions. It will be the duty of the central authority, however, to prevent them from settling down to that régime--nor should the central authority consider itself bound to accept the advice of these joint councils or boards. 9.--The determination of the relation between the living wage for men and women is one of the difficult questions that will have to be met in the course of the enforcement of any living wage policy. The position of women, both in industry and in society is at present undergoing change. The limit and direction of this change cannot be marked out with certainty. Therefore, the presuppositions upon which present policy may be constructed may become invalid in a comparatively short time. The unsatisfactoriness of leaving the question to be settled by the decision of the market has become increasingly plain. That policy produces, on the one hand, a constant effort on the part of the employers to so modify their processes of production as to take advantage of the low range of women's wages, irrespective of the effect on men's wages and of the suitability of the occupation in question for women; and, on the other hand, a constant effort on the part of the men to keep the women out of all new employments. The best advised foundation for present policy, in my opinion, is the two separate bases of assessment, suggested above.[130] In its favor, it may be pointed out that it corresponds to a certain extent to the existing relation between the wages of men and women in industry, and it would not, therefore, produce any violent change. Its unsatisfactoriness lies in the possibility that it may gradually lead to a displacement of men by women in many employments. On the question of whether such displacement is to be desired, there is room for the very deepest differences of opinion. It seems to me, however, that the industrial history of the nineteenth century proves the supreme importance of the wage of the head of the family to the general welfare of the family. For that reason, it is, in my opinion, wise to protect the wage of the male head of the family; and thus to provide that when men and women are employed upon the same work or when women are introduced into employments hitherto filled by men, the wage rates for men should be enforced throughout the employment. This ruling could be interpreted in some cases in terms of the relative efficiency of men and women, if there was a clear difference of efficiency. Of course, if the term "relative efficiency" is construed to include the difference in the indirect or overhead expense involved in the employment of male or female labor in any occupation, such a policy would amount to throwing open every field of employment to women. There are a number of alternative policies that might be pursued in order to ensure that the use of different bases of assessment for the living wage for men and women should not lead to haphazard displacement of men by women. Justice Brown in the Printing Trades Case has called attention to the most important of them. "... I suggest," he writes, "that with respect to any industry or grade, where the prima facie formula above (that is, a different living wage for men and women) is challenged, evidence should be given to show that it is desirable, having in view the interests of all parties and of the community, that men should be retained in that industry or grade even though such retention might involve some departure from the formula in question. Where such evidence is satisfactory there are several alternatives open to an industrial court. (1) To fix the same wage for women as for men. (2) To fix a ratio wage where it is proved to the satisfaction of the Court that the average woman is not of equal value to the employer. (3) To exclude women. (4) To accept the prima facie mode of assessment, but to limit the proportion of women who may be employed by any particular employer in any particular industry or grade.... The task of choosing may often be one of extreme difficulty and delicacy."[131] The task of fixing the relation between men's wages and women's wages will be even more delicate when the introduction of women into a field of employment follows upon a modification of the processes of production involved.[132] As was said above, to give advice upon the question of the relation between men's wages and women's wages, should be one of the duties of the joint boards or councils in the various industries. The course to be pursued should be decided upon by balancing all of the interests involved. It is to be desired that the same policy be pursued throughout all industries or occupations rather than divergent ones, and the central authority should strive to attain unity of policy. 10.--The complications introduced into the administration of the living wage principle by changes in the general price level have yet to be dealt with. It has been seen that changes in the general price level affect the outcome of distribution and, for that reason, any policy of wage settlement must include provision for the adjustment of wages to price changes. We have now to consider how this adjustment can best be carried out. The central authority is obviously the most suitable body to supervise the process of adjustment. The adjustment to price change should be expressed as a percentage addition to or subtraction from the existing wage. The central authority should be charged with the collection of all necessary price data. This body should then proceed upon the advice of the joint boards or councils in the industries concerned. Unless some strong reason to the contrary exists, however, a uniform policy of adjustment should be pursued--resting upon the following principles. 11.--The conclusions reached in Chapter V in regard to the policy to be pursued in the adjustment of wages to changes in the price level fall into two groups. Firstly, those which have to do with the choice of the basis of calculation of wage adjustments. Secondly, those which have to do with the choice of the actual policy of adjustment during times of rising and falling prices. The same division and order is maintained in the following attempt to sketch out a good plan of adjustment of living wage rates. First, then, these wage rates should be varied in accordance with the movement of a price index number. This index number should represent the prices of all the important commodities produced within the country, but so weighted as to give a defined importance (50 per cent. was suggested) to the prices of those classes of foodstuffs, clothing, housing accommodations, and other commodities upon which the wage earners tend to spend the bulk of their income. It was sufficiently emphasized in the earlier discussion of this subject that this basis of calculation was in the nature of a compromise, and was not beyond criticism. Adjustments should not be undertaken unless the index number of prices has moved at least 5 per cent. (the figure is meant to be merely a suggestion) and adjustment should not be more frequent than twice a year (again a suggestion, only). Secondly, as to the policy of adjustment to be pursued in times of rising and falling price levels, respectively. The policy for a period of rising prices can be very briefly stated. All wage rates prescribed under the living wage policy should be increased by the same percentage as the index number of prices moves upward. There is one case in which this policy cannot be justified theoretically. That is when the increase of prices can be wholly or mainly accounted for by a falling off in the general level of industrial productivity. However, in my opinion, it will be hardly practicable to attempt to distinguish this case from other cases of price increase,--save in an entirely exceptional circumstance, such as a period of war invasion. The policy to be pursued during a period of falling prices cannot be stated so briefly. The difficulties involved have already been discussed at length.[133] The following policy based upon that analysis is tentatively suggested. The complexities of the subject are too great to permit of dogmatism. Firstly, the occasion for the price decline may be such as was termed "natural," as for example when it is brought about by a general advance in the arts of production, or by the development of the means of transport. In this case, it will be satisfactory to keep wage rates unchanged, though prices decline. It is in these periods that chance is afforded of bringing about genuine improvement in the economic position of the least favorably placed groups of wage earners. Secondly, the price decline may be a sign of reaction from a previous period of rapid price increase, and of a general tendency on the part of entrepreneurs to keep down production costs and to proceed with circumspection throughout. Nevertheless if little forced liquidation occurs; if there has been no serious overextension of credit during the previous period; if the maintenance of the existing price level, or of a slightly lowered one, would not impose too great a strain upon the banking system--there would be no good cause to reduce wages. This judgment rests on the supposition that the facts of the industrial situation give promise that industrial recovery will take place even if prices do not drop greatly, and drop gradually rather than sharply. Thirdly, the price decline may be caused--at the beginning at all events--by much forced liquidation of a character that is disastrous to the enterprises compelled to liquidate. It may have been preceded by a great over-expansion of credit; and the maintenance of the existing price level might mean a steady source of danger to the banking and commercial system. Then the soundest policy is to reduce wages as prices fall. To the extent that the trouble may be due to special causes such as over-investment in particular directions, this reduction of wages may be unnecessary. But it will probably be found that the recovery from a genuine industrial crisis will be facilitated if a heavy price decline is stimulated by wage reduction. No wage reductions should be undertaken unless conditions making the case are clearly present. The central authority could avail itself of the advice of the Federal Reserve Board. The lowering of wage rates might be put off until the price decline has reached, say, eight or ten per cent. And the percentage of the reduction of wages might be smaller than the percentage of price decline; say, a three per cent. reduction of wages for every four per cent. reduction in prices. Lastly, when it is judged that the pressure on the financial system is definitely at an end, no further reduction in wages should be ordered even though the price decline continues.[134] In concluding this discussion one general reflection may be permitted. That is to the effect that no policy of wage settlement will, in itself, suffice to protect the standard of life of the lowest industrial classes during critical industrial times; whether such a time be one of rapidly rising prices of foodstuffs due to poor harvests, or to war, or whether it be a period of industrial panic and precipitate price decline. Much can be done to protect the standard of life of these classes by measures outside of the scope of any policy of wage settlement. The suggestion made by Professor Taussig that it may be possible to regularize the supplies of the principal agricultural products from year to year deserves careful consideration.[135] The best policy, undoubtedly, is one which would enable and encourage the lowest paid industrial classes to accumulate something for hard times. 12.--The design of the living wage policy is to procure for all members of the industrial community the economic essentials of a hopeful and active life. Ultimate success in the maintenance of any conceived standard of life, will, in the long run, depend upon those general relationships which were examined in the earlier chapters. The more productive the industrial organization as a whole is, the better are the chances for the least favored industrial groups to improve their economic condition. The less the economic waste, due to maldistribution and to other causes, the greater the product of industry will be. The greater the economic capacity of the lowest grades of wage earners, the more general their intelligence and the steadier their spirit, the more determined their organization, the better will be their chances of increasing their share of the total product. And lastly, the smaller in numbers these are compared with the need of the economic system for them, the stronger their economic position will be. This is but to restate some of the important influences governing the wages of the lowest groups of industrial workers. But to restate them is to emphasize the fact that the living wage policy must be looked upon merely as one agency among many, directed to the same end. In economic affairs, as in political affairs, to bring about a change in one place it is necessary to bring about a change in many places. FOOTNOTES: [113] The best short summaries of the pre-war wage situation are--"The Standard of Living among the Industrial People of America" (1911), by F. H. Streightoff, and an article by C. E. Persons in the February, 1915, issue of _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_. For a more extensive study see the Report of the Commission of Enquiry of the Board of Trade (Great Britain) into working class rents, etc., which contains material of great value. A recent comprehensive survey of wages in the United States, undertaken by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the War Industries Board was published in May, 1920. It is Bulletin No. 265, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Industrial Survey in Selected Industries in the United States, 1919." [114] South Australian Ind. Reports. Vol. 2-3--1919. Page 6--Submission by Employees in Cardboard Box Industry. Quoted from Printing Trades Case. [115] _Labor Gazette of the Dominion of Canada_, August, 1918, page 617. [116] As reported in the _Survey_, April 6, 1918. [117] Second Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board, District of Columbia (1919), page 18. [118] An excellent study of the technique of measurement of the cost of living is that by W. F. Ogburn, "Measurement of the Cost of Living and Wages." No. 170, _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ (1919). The article helps to put much firm ground under the feet of those engaged in cost of living investigations for the United States. For a description of the methods pursued in official cost of living investigations in Great Britain, see the account by F. H. McLeod in the June, 1919, issue of the _U. S. Monthly Labor Bulletin_, page 119. [119] The Plumber's Case, South Australian Industrial Reports (Volume I, 1916-18), page 122. [120] See pages 199-202, this chapter, for further discussion of this question. [121] The Printing Trades Case, South Australian Industrial Reports, Vol. II, 1918-19, page 35. [122] See Chapters VII-VIII. [123] See pages 192-6, this chapter. [124] See pages 202-7, this chapter. [125] See Chapter XII. [126] A valuable collection of evidence in support of living wage legislation is contained in the briefs presented in the cases of Stettler v. O'Hara (The Oregon Minimum Wage Case) published by the National Consumers' League. This collection of evidence is brought up to date in the new brief just published in defense of the Minimum Wage Commission--District of Columbia (Children's Hospital vs. Minimum Wage Board), 1921. For a collection of theoretical opinions on various aspects of the subject, see the symposium on the Minimum Wage Problem, which is printed as Appendix III, Vol. I, 4th Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission (1915), pages 592-827. An excellent bibliography on the subject by Miss Irene Osgood Andrews is to be found in Appendix III, 3rd Report of the same Commission (1913). The best studies of the Australasian experience are those of M. B. Hammond (especially the articles in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ for Nov., 1914, and May, 1915), and P. S. Collier, Appendix VII, 4th Report of the N. Y. State Factory Investigating Commission. The bulletins of the Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington (D. C.), Minimum Wage Commissions are the best studies of the effects of American legislation. Upon the results of the British Trades Boards see the studies of R. H. Tawney on the Chainmaking and Tailoring Trades and that of M. E. Bulkely on the Box Making Industry. The Parliamentary Debates 5th Series (Vols. 96-97, 107-108, Hansard), cover every aspect of the English experience. [127] The best theoretical statement of the dangers and difficulties presented is the article by F. W. Taussig, "Minimum Wages for Women," in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, June, 1916. The evidence, however, seems to me to stand against the skepticism expressed therein. [128] Report on Wage Boards and Industrial and Condition Acts of Australia and New Zealand (1908). [129] See pages 160-6, Chapter VIII. [130] See pages 183-4, this chapter. [131] The Printing Trades Case, South Australian Industrial Reports, Vol. II (1918-19), page 252. [132] The suggestion put forward in the "Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women and Industry" (Great Britain), 1918, is as follows: "In such cases," the report reads, "the time rates for the simplified process or simplified machine should be determined as if this was to be allocated to male labor less skilled than the male labor employed before simplification. Only where it was definitely shown by employers that the value of the woman's work on the simplified process or machine was less than the value of the unskilled man, should the woman, if her introduction is agreed to, receive less than the unskilled man's rate in proportion to the value of her work." Page 192. [133] See pages 114-20, Chapter VI. [134] A number of collective agreements in which the arrangements for wage adjustment to price decline are similar to those suggested here, have recently been negotiated in England. The wage scales established in 1919 for many grades of railroad workers are an example. So also, the agreement of the Wool Textile Industrial Council, in October, 1919. The following agreement made for the Yorkshire Dyeing and Finishing Industry in March, 1919, may be given as an example. "(7) When the index figure as defined in classes 4 and 5 hereof exceeds 107 per cent. the War Wages shall be:-- "To male and female timeworkers--107.90 per cent. of the basis wage. "To male and female pressworkers--85.672 per cent. of the basis wage. "To hand pressers--64.254 per cent. of the basis wage, and when the index figure is 107 or less, but not less than 100, the percentage war wages of timeworkers shall be equal to the index figures; for every 1 per cent. decrease in the index figure below 100 the war wages of timeworkers shall be decreased 3/4 of 1 per cent. The ratio of percentage war wages of timeworkers, pieceworkers and pressers respectively, shall for all index figures, be the same as that shown for index figures, exceeding 107." [135] "Cost of Living and Wages," F. W. Taussig, _Collier's Weekly_, Sept. 27, 1919. CHAPTER X--THE REGULATION OF WAGE LEVELS Section 1. Why there must be in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship between each and every group of wage earners. The limits of collective bargaining as a factor in industrial peace.--Section 2. In the beginning, the scheme must probably be based on an acceptance of existing wage "differentials." The reasons for this are of a practical kind.--Section 3. Any policy which planned to develop a scheme of wage relationships merely by maintaining existing differentials would be bound to fall to pieces in the end. The difficulties that would arise.--Section 4. Two principles proposed as the basis of the desired scheme of wage relationship. Their meaning as applied doctrines.--Section 5. These principles open to criticism both on practical and theoretical grounds. The chief criticisms examined and taken into account.--Section 6. Some notes on the best method of administering these principles. The necessity of avoiding political interference, if possible. 1.--We have now completed that part of this inquiry which was concerned with the formulation of principles suitable for the regulation of the wages of the lowest paid industrial groups. The task remains of working out principles which could be used satisfactorily in the settlement of wages for all other groups of wage earners. The subject may be introduced by recalling certain matters, set forth in the preceding analysis of wage principles. It was seen that while the wages of each and every group of wage earners were governed, in a great measure, by forces which acted upon them all in common, yet the wages of each group were settled somewhat independently of all the rest. Again, it was seen that one of the leading characteristics of the present distributive situation is the use of the group will and group power to serve group purposes. Wage movements in different industries or occupations begin independently of each other; yet because of the firm determination on the part of most groups of wage earners to maintain their position in the industrial scale, a wage movement in one part of the field of industry tends frequently to give rise to similar movements throughout the field. This tendency for the actions of one group to give rise to action on the part of other groups arises from the existence of some "power of interchange or close connection" as Mr. Aves has said. Before the use of group power becomes common and the sense of group interest becomes highly developed, that interchange or interconnection tends to exist only between classes or groups of workmen who can easily move into each other's field of employment. But with the extension and encouragement of unionism, with a constantly growing volume of public discussion of wage questions, there has arisen an interconnection between wage movements in groups very far apart in the industrial scale.[136] As long as wave movements in different industries and occupations are considered independently of each other, and the claims of each group are judged with only incidental reference to the claims of the other groups, the use of group strength will continue to be a conspicuous characteristic of distribution. The constant assertion of group power will cease only if all groups are brought within some acceptable plan of wage settlement, under which group wages are settled by principles recognized as fair. The problem is to establish an ordered scheme of wage relationship _between_ each and every group of wage earners--which scheme of relationship will do justice _between_ them, and which will also effect such a distribution of the product of industry between _all_ the wage earners and the other claimants to a share in the product, as will justify it to the wage earners and to the community in general. If the objection be raised that the establishment of such a scheme of wage relationship is not practicable, doubt must be admitted. Yet it is probably essential to industrial peace,--under our present industrial system, or under an alternative one. It would seem to be the only substitute for the continued reliance of each group upon group power. There has been a strong tendency, both in the United States and England, to believe that industrial peace could be secured by the development of joint industrial or occupational councils throughout industry--which councils would assure fair and complete consideration of all wage questions which arise. It would be a serious error to underestimate the possible value of such joint councils to the cause of industrial peace. Indeed, throughout this study of the means of industrial peace great reliance will be placed upon them. Yet I do not believe that their creation will suffice to bring industrial peace. Such joint councils are among the most satisfactory instruments yet devised for the conduct of collective bargaining. But will collective bargaining keep such an interdependent industrial society as our own at work peacefully? Can the philosophy of compromise be developed to that extent? Joint industrial councils can produce understanding between employers and wage earners; they can foster a spirit of coöperation between all groups engaged in a productive industry; they can stand in the way of the creation of such intolerable conditions of labor as have, on occasion in the past, led to a spontaneous revolt in an industry; they can foster reasonableness and compromise. But it is difficult to see how they can work out principles of wage settlement for any industry which will have sufficient authority over the actions of those engaged in it in times of stress. Before industrial peace can be obtained, particular groups of wage earners must forbear from pressing to the utmost the bargaining advantages they possess. This forbearance will come only from a knowledge of an interest larger than their own. There will have to be a recognition by all sides of principles which represent aims to which all subscribe, and which do justice to the interests of each. 2.--What then is required, to repeat, is a policy by which wages in various industries and occupations are brought into relation with each other. This policy should be calculated to result in such a distribution of the product of industry as would justify it to the wage earners and community in general. The scheme of wage relationship would have to rest upon expressed principles. In the beginning any policy which has as its aim the establishment of a scheme of wage relationship must accept and protect the existing wage levels of each group of wage earners. That would mean, of course, accepting the wage relationships existing between them. The reasons for this are practical, rather than theoretical. They are: Firstly, because it will be impossible to win general consent for any policy of wage settlement which does not guarantee to all wage earners at least their existing rates of wages. Secondly, because the existing relationships between the wage levels of the different groups of workers represent, though only vaguely and roughly, customary relationships, and they therefore have, on occasion, meaning to the wage earners. Thirdly, the mere fact that they exist makes them the most convenient basis for the very careful process of comparison and calculation involved in any attempt to establish gradually a scheme of wage relationships based upon principles. It should be kept in mind, however, that the reasons for their acceptance are of a practical nature, and that no theoretical considerations compel an unquestioning acceptance of them, as is sometimes urged. 3.--Since, on practical grounds, it is held that any attempt to create an ordered scheme of wage relationship must begin by accepting existing wage levels, it may be judged by some that the scheme that is sought could be developed merely by maintaining these relationships. That would mean that existing differentials would be maintained as customary differentials. That policy, it is true, would have the advantages of simplicity and continuity. But it would be found impossible to maintain. For the scheme of wage relationship to which it would give rise would lack the authority of principle--without which no scheme of wage relationship will receive voluntary and steady support from the various groups of wage earners. The wage earners will not voluntarily accept a place in the industrial scale, unless it is felt that the scale is the result of the application of rules of acknowledged fairness. The existing scale of wage relationship, however, has not been determined either by considerations of justice or of the general interest. Nor has it, as is sometimes claimed, the authority of being altogether necessary. It is the product of a multitude of forces, some of which may be given different importance in the future than they had in the past. It is easy to foresee the difficulties with which a policy which planned to create an ordered scheme of wage relationships by maintaining existing differentials would be confronted. Claims will constantly be presented by particular groups for some improvement in their economic position. These claims could not be disregarded merely on the score that they contravened the scheme of established differentials. The issue that would arise is clearly exemplified by statements made in the course of two of the most important industrial conflicts that occurred in England of recent years. "We claim," the Secretary of one of the Shop Committees of the Molders' Union wrote in defense of the demand of his union for differential treatment under an award made for the whole of Engineering Trades--which demand provoked the molders' strike, "we claim that our work is totally different in many ways from the other departments in the engineering industry. It is arduous, dirty, dangerous, hot, unhealthy, and highly skilled, and we claim separate treatment on these grounds. There is no other department in the engineering industry with so high a percentage of sickness or accidents.... You mention the employers' attitude towards the molders' application--a refusal to grant to molders any separate consideration because other classes of workers would also expect it. To me such an attitude is both unfair and untenable. If the molder can prove that his conditions of working are vile, dangerous and unhealthy, it is surely fair to ask for a proper recompense for such work...."[137] And consider this extract from one of the reports of the Coal Industry Commission, signed by six members of the Commission. "It will, however, be said that desirable as may be an improvement in the miners' conditions, the industry will not bear the cost of a reduction in hours, even if the aggregate output is, by an increase in numbers and, therefore, in the wages bill restored to its pre-war level, without involving a considerable advance in the price of coal, with possible adverse effects on our export trade, on manufacturing industry generally, and on the domestic consumer. We have to observe that if the improvement in the miner's standard of life is really required for the greater efficiency of the industry itself, or in the national interest, the fact that it might involve a temporary increase in the price of coal would not be conclusive against it. Moreover, if hours of labor have been reduced in other industries, and if the standard of life has been advanced among other sections of the community, it would be unsuitable to withhold a similar advance from the miners, merely because the others have got in first."[138] In short, under any scheme of wage relationship based on the preservation of existing differentials, it could not be established in the face of any claim that the relative position of a group was determined either by consideration of justice, or by implacable necessity. Therefore, that scheme would not receive the constant and widespread support requisite to its successful operation.[139] So far then, in this chapter, two conclusions have been reached. Firstly, that the course of wage settlement in each industry or occupation cannot be a process entirely independent from the course of wage settlement in every other industry and occupation. Secondly, that although the first step in the establishment of any scheme of wage relationship is the acceptance of existing wage levels and differentials, the policy must provide for the reconsideration of these differentials in the light of affirmed principles; with the aim of gradually evolving in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship, upheld by common consent to the principles on which it rests. 4.--Thus we are put under the necessity of attempting to formulate principles or standards by which all claims made by groups of wage earners for reconsideration of existing wage differentials could be judged. This is not a task to be lightly undertaken. Nor is it to be expected that such clear principles of wage relationship can be elaborated as to escape the necessity of deciding many claims by an appeal to compromise and by taking refuge in a general sense of equity. All that it is hoped to do is to suggest certain lines along which a satisfactory formulation of the required principles of wage relationship may be sought. It might be possible gradually to construct such an ordered scheme of wage relationship as has been declared essential to industrial peace by applying to successive wage controversies, as they arose, two central doctrines. These doctrines are: Firstly, the doctrine of the unity of the wage income and of the wage earners--by which is meant that the wages of all groups should be regarded as part of one general wage income, to be shared out among all wage earners in as nearly equal proportions, as is practicable, without special favor to any one. And, secondly, what may be called for a lack of a better name, the doctrine of special reward--by which is meant, that the wage differentials between the standard wage levels of different types of labor should be regarded as special rewards, given in order to make it reasonably certain that industry will be provided with at least the existing proportion of the more skilled grades of labor, and to make it reasonably certain also that the more arduous, irregular, dangerous and disagreeable work will command the service of as much labor as at present. It should be observed, first of all, that neither of these two doctrines upholds the rights of particular groups of wage earners. They aim to bring all wage earning groups to perceive that they are part of a larger whole; they emphasize the fact that the wages of each group are what they are, more because the total wage income is what it is, than because of the special type of work performed by the group. They, however, recognize the necessity of giving extra reward for the training and skill or natural ability required for particular kinds of work, for more than common danger or disagreeableness incurred in the performance of particular kinds of work, and the like--in short, for all those factors which elevate a job above what is called common labor. As an applied doctrine, the doctrine of the unity of wage income and of the wage earners means that the same wage should be paid throughout industry for work which requires approximately the same human qualities, and which makes approximately the same demands upon the individual. The common effort involved in production is emphasized, rather than the differences between the work performed by workers in different parts of the field of production. As an applied doctrine, the doctrine of extra reward means that certain groups of wage earners should receive higher wages than other groups, because the work they perform is deemed to require considerably higher individual qualities or talents, or to make considerably greater demands upon the individuals engaged upon it.[140] The extra reward should not be regarded primarily as an ethical right; but rather as a payment to ensure the development and exercise of those higher qualities and talents required in the performance of the more skilled industrial tasks, and to ensure also the performance of the more arduous, irregular, disagreeable, and less desirable industrial tasks. It is a recognition of the fact that the spirit of serving without direct reward is not a sufficiently strong and constant motive to persuade men to make the special efforts, or to undergo the special disadvantages required for some kinds of work. It is an incentive to the development of those abilities and talents which are relatively scarce in industry; it is also an incentive to the undertaking of those tasks which the run of men, at any given time and place, regard as unusually difficult or undesirable. The extra reward for different kinds of work which are judged to require for their performance qualities equally difficult to secure, and which subject individuals to the same hardships should be the same. The test of the special reward must be in any particular case, the amount necessary to secure the performance of the work in question. The conscientious and consistent application of these two doctrines in settlement of wage controversies which involve the reconsideration of established differentials should result in the gradual building up of an ordered scheme of wage relationship, such as is sought. This scheme would rest upon fairly widely held ideas as to the most suitable basis for wage differences. It would not make greater call upon the human sense of fairness than must be made by any plan which hopes to secure industrial peace by getting all parties to industrial conflict to agree upon rules or principles for the settlement of the claims of each. Whether that aim, itself, is a fanciful one, need not be again debated here. 5.--Lest it appear that the above proposals have been put forward without giving due weight to their defects, it is now well to consider certain criticisms to which they may be fairly open. Two objections, in particular, are likely to be made. One is of practical nature, the other of a theoretical nature. They may be considered in that order. The objection of a practical nature is that it will not be possible to apply the suggested principles either accurately or consistently, and this for two reasons. Firstly, it may be asserted that the application of the proposed doctrines would require a scientific comparison of the characteristics of different kinds of work, which comparison is declared to be unobtainable. Secondly, it may be said that in order to fix such wage differentials as are reasonably certain to accomplish the ends for which they are set, it will be necessary to have a precise knowledge of many facts and forces. This knowledge may be declared to be unobtainable. No simple or very final answer can be returned to these doubts. It must be admitted that it will always remain difficult to compare occupations except in general descriptive terms. The relative training and talents required for different kinds of work, and the relative demands made upon the individual by different kinds of work will always remain, to a great extent, a matter of opinion. It is also true that only a general knowledge can be obtained of the factors governing the supply of any particular sort of labor at a given time, and the probable effect of any wage change upon that supply. The differentials which would be established from a consideration of such material could not claim to be more than a practical approximation to the differentials which would carry out the intention of the policy. Still, scientific method could be pushed further than it has been in the comparison of occupations. The statements of the various interested parties would be a valuable guide in the estimate of occupations. Furthermore, only the major relationships between occupations would have to be taken into consideration. For example, if the question at issue was whether the wages of miners were too low as compared with wages in other industries--that is to say, whether a demand on the part of the miners for an improvement in their relative economic position was justified--only the most important of mining occupations would have to be taken into account in reaching a decision. There would be small risk of error in applying a decision, based upon a study of the work performed and of the income received in the most important mining occupations, to the less important mining occupations also. And indeed such would prove probably the only practicable policy. Furthermore, revision of the existing differentials would be undertaken only when the case for revision seemed definite and clear. As for example, it was clear in England before the war, that railroad labor was underpaid; or, as was clear to the whole of the recent President's commission on the wages of coal miners, that the wages of the miners were too low, relative to wages in other industries--though the commission differed on the amount of wage increase to be awarded. But perhaps the most significant answer to those objections which rest on practical grounds is the fact that any wage level that might be set for any occupation under the proposed principles would be but the minimum standard wage for that occupation. And no element in the whole policy of wage settlement should stand in the way of the payment of a higher wage than that fixed by the central authority for any type of work. Thus no fear would have to be entertained that any industry would be faced with a shortage of labor due to the difficulty of getting precise knowledge on which to base wage differentials. Here, indeed, we approach very close to that other objection which may be put forward on theoretical grounds. Which objection is that all attempts at revision of existing wage differentials would involve a risk of producing, on the one hand, a shortage of certain kinds of labor, and, on the other hand, an oversupply of other kinds. It is reasoned that in spite of every effort of careful calculation of wage differentials, some danger of over or undersupply of certain kinds of labor will always be present. These fears would be based upon a misconception of the nature of the policy of wage settlement that is proposed. As has already been emphasized, the wage level that would be fixed for any kind of labor would be but a minimum standard wage. There is no part of the proposed policy of wage settlement which would interfere with the payment of higher wages than the standard minimum. Therefore, no industry would find itself unable to secure the labor it required merely because of the differentials established by the central authority. Each industry would still retain all its powers of bargaining for the labor it needs. Nor, on the other hand, would there be any serious danger that the wage rates set for any industry or occupation would be so high as to add to any already existing possibilities of oversupply of certain types of labor. For, after all, the central authority would consider the question of the revision of existing wage differentials only when the question is pressed upon it by the failure of the workers and employers to agree. The central authority would not be likely to declare wage rates higher than those contended for by the wage earners or lower than those contended for by the employers. And it is not too much to presume that in practically all cases neither of the two sides presses claims from which they do not expect to benefit. The employers are not likely to seek such wage rates as will not procure the needed labor supply; and only in rare cases are the wage earners likely to press for increases of wages that would bring about an increased measure of unemployment.[141] When those rare cases arise, indeed, it will be the duty of the central authority to protect the interested parties against their own bad judgment. Thus it cannot be admitted that the application of the proposed principles would produce an intensification of the already existing possibilities that particular industries or occupations would be short of the kind of labor they need, or that they would be overcrowded. This conclusion is greatly strengthened by the thought that under our present practices, wage settlements are constantly being reached without any reward whatsoever for the disturbance of customary differentials; and serious maladjustments in the supply of labor do not often result because of that. 6.--A note upon the procedure by which it is expected that the proposed principles would be brought into operation may help to explain away remaining doubts. First of all, it may be emphasized that nothing in these proposals contemplates the discontinuance of collective bargaining throughout industry. Rather the creation of joint industrial or occupational boards or councils (those suggested in the course of the living wage discussion) is advised. Only when any wage question cannot be settled peacefully by collective bargaining is it proposed that the central authority should enter into the dispute. It is to be expected that as the principles followed by the central authority in its decisions become known and understood--that is, as the probable result of disagreement, and of reference to the central authority become predictable--the agreements reached by collective bargaining would tend to approximate those which would result from reference to the central authority. For example, if a series of decisions expounded the doctrine that the existing relationships between the wages of the miners, railway conductors, and bricklayers are in accordance with the principles recognized by the central authority, the course of negotiation in these occupations will be governed, to some extent, by that knowledge. Such an outcome is to be expected, no matter what the principles upheld by the central authority--provided they are consistently upheld. Thus Judge Higgins records of the Australasian experience that "It is quite common now for the parties to ask the decision or guidance of the Court on a few main subjects in dispute and then to agree as to all the other items--even hundreds of items--in the light of the Court's findings; anticipating the application of the Court's principles."[142] Since we are on the subject of the method and machinery of application of the policy of wage settlement, one other aspect of the matter may be briefly noted. That is, that if any policy of wage settlement is to succeed, the course of wage decision must be kept as free from all political interference as possible.[143] Spending departments should not be given powers of decision which clash with those of the central authority. Appeals to the higher executive officers of the state must be avoided to the utmost possible extent. Conjecture as to the measure in which these conditions can be realized in the United States at the present time may be withheld. But unless they are realized in a high degree, wage settlement will continue to be a matter of force and opportunism. Freedom from political interference can be obtained, and the elimination of the necessity for frequent appeal to the higher executive officers of the state will be possible, only if the policy of wage settlement which is adopted has the vigorous support of all groups immediately concerned in wage settlement. FOOTNOTES: [136] See for examination of this question, "Report of Wage Boards and Industrial and Conciliation Acts of Australia and New Zealand." E. Aves (1908), page 38. Mr. Henry Clay in a review of the wage position before the National Council of the Pottery Industry (Great Britain), made an interesting statement in this regard. He said "... the one great lesson which the war taught everybody (including Government Departments) was that it was dangerous to make a change in the wages or basis of earnings of one section of workers or of one industry unless they considered what would be the effect on all related classes and grades of workers." Printed in the Staffordshire _Sentinel_, Oct. 8, 1920. See also Chapter 39, Lord Askwith's "Industrial Problems and Disputes" for a narrative account of the trouble caused by sectional wage advances during the war. [137] Letter printed in London _Times_, January 13, 1920. [138] Report of the Coal Industry Commission (1919), Majority Report, pages 15-16. For another interesting case, see that of Various Toronto Firms vs. Pattern Makers under the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act, in which case the pattern makers claimed differential treatment over machinists and molders. Reported in Jan., 1919, _Canadian Labor Gazette_. [139] The various courts in the Australian dominions tended on the whole to confirm existing differentials, occasionally changing the relative position of particular groups, when it has seemed clear to the court that the wages of these groups as compared to other groups is "unreasonable" considering all those factors which are considered to form the ground of "reasonableness" in the matter of differentials. Thus Justice Brown of the Industrial Court of South Australia has expressed himself on this very subject. "In the matter of such perplexity some guidance is afforded to the court by custom. It seems to me I cannot do better than proceed on this basis. I shall state the preëxisting wage, consider whether it is prima facie unreasonable applied to preëxisting conditions, and then if I find it not prima facie unreasonable, I shall consider whether any variations of the wage should be made in view of conditions now existing." (Hook Boys' Case--South Australia Industrial Reports, Vol. I, 1916-7, page 29.) [140] It is in this light that the Commonwealth Court of Australia looks upon its secondary wage. "The secondary wage is remuneration for any exceptional gifts or qualifications not of the individual employee, but gifts or qualifications necessary for the performance of the functions." H. B. Higgins, "A New Province for Law and Order," _Harvard Law Review_, March, 1915. [141] Mr. and Mrs. Webb have described aptly the usual trade union calculations in the formulation of their claims. "The Trade Unionist has a rough and ready barometer to guide him in this difficult navigation. It is impossible, even for the most learned economist or the most accomplished business men, to predict what will be the result of any particular advance of the Common Rule. So long, however, as a Trade Union without in any way restricting the numbers entering its occupation, finds that its members are fully employed, it can scarcely be wrong in maintaining its Common Rules at the existing level, and even, after a reasonable interval, in attempting gradually to raise them.... To put it concretely, whenever the percentage of the unemployed in any particular industry begins to rise from the 3 or 5 per cent characteristic of 'good trade' to the 10, 15 or even 25 per cent. experienced in 'bad trade' there must be a pause in the operatives' advance movement." "Industrial Democracy," pages 738-9. [142] H. B. Higgins, "A New Province for Law and Order," _Harvard Law Review_, Dec., 1920, page 114. [143] Justice Higgins, the head of the Commonwealth Court of Australia, has recently resigned because of the action of the legislature in providing that the executive may set up special and independent tribunals of appeal above the Court of Arbitration. His letter giving the reasons for his resignation (printed in the Melbourne _Argus_, Oct. 26, 1920), gives most convincingly the case for freedom from political interference. One passage of explanation in it is as follows: "On the other hand, a permanent court of a judicial character tends to reduce conditions to system, to standardize them, to prevent irritating contrasts. It knows that a reckless concession made in one case will multiply future troubles. A union that knows that a certain claim is likely to be contested by the court will bring pressure to bear for a special tribunal; and the special tribunal appointed by the government will be apt to yield to demands for the sake of continuity in the one industry before it, regardless of the consequences in other industries. The objectives of the permanent court and of the temporary tribunals are, in truth, quite different--one seeks to provide a just and balanced system which will tend to continuity of work in industries generally, whereas the other seeks to prevent or to end a present strike in its own industry." See also Lord Askwith's "Industrial Problems and Disputes" for another expression of the same view. CHAPTER XI--THE REGULATION OF WAGE LEVELS--(_Continued_)-- WAGES AND PRICES Section 1. The scheme of wage relationship must recommend itself as just to the wage earners and the community in general. The ultimate distributive question to be met is the division of the product between profit and wages.--Section 2. Provision for the adjustment of wages to price movements would aid, however, towards reaching distributive goal. A policy of adjustment suggested.--Section 3. The difficulty of maintaining scheme of wage relationship of wages adjusted to price movements. The best method of adjustment a compromise. 1.--In the last chapter the reasons for seeking an ordered scheme of wage relationship in industry were discussed, and some suggestions were made in regard to such a scheme. One essential to its success was pointed out. That is, that under it the distribution of the product of industry should recommend itself as just to the wage earners and the community in general. The possibility of satisfying this requirement remains to be considered. The ultimate distributive question to be met in any attempt to formulate a policy of wage settlement is the distribution of the product of industry between wages and profits (rent incomes, in the Ricardian sense, being left out of the question). It is entirely conceivable that a policy of wage settlement should be put into practice which would take note only of the facts of this relation. However, there are distinct advantages to be obtained by taking note of an intermediate relation. That is the relation between wages and changes in the price level. The relation between wages and general price movements has been discussed. It has been seen that movements in the general level of prices affect the outcome of distribution. They occasion changes in the distributive situation; and these changes may be desirable or undesirable--having reference to the distributive result that is sought. Any plan by which such changes as are undesirable are prevented from taking place would contribute, therefore, to the attainment of the aims of the proposed policy; and would be a valuable adjunct to the policy. The conclusions reached in the previous discussion on this subject make up a plan suitable for the purpose. They may now be fitted into the body of these proposals. Then in the following chapter that most difficult problem of wage settlement can be considered--the problem of governing the distribution of the product between profit and wages in order that a just distribution may result. 2.--The results of the discussion in Chapter V concerning a plan for the adjustment of wages to price change may be applied at this point without further comment. The central authority in its decisions should take note of all changes in the approved price index number since the time when the wage rates which are up for reconsideration were fixed. It should then in its awards adjust these wage rates to price changes in accordance with the following policy. It need hardly be explained that other considerations besides the fact of price change may enter into the award, as the adjustment of wages to price change is merely one part of a larger policy. The measure of price change by which the central authority should be guided--that is, the approved index number,--should be the movements of the index number of the prices of all important commodities produced within the country; this index number to be so weighted as to give a defined importance (50 per cent. suggested) to the prices of those classes of foodstuffs, clothing, housing accommodations and other commodities, upon which the wage earners spend the larger part of their income. It will be noted that this measure of price change is the same as that used in the adjustment of wages prescribed under the living wage policy. And, as was recommended in the discussion of living wage policy, so it is recommended here, that adjustments should not be undertaken unless the index number of prices has moved at least 5 per cent., and that adjustment should not be more frequent than twice a year. In regard to the actual policy of adjustment to be pursued in periods of rising and falling prices, here also, save in one important respect, the same policy that was sketched out for living wage adjustments should be followed. 3.--The one point in which it may be advisable to depart from the policy laid down for living wage adjustments is in regard to the _amount_ of wage change that should be undertaken for movements in the price level. In the earlier discussion it was suggested that wherever wages were adjusted to price changes, the adjustments should be on the basis of equal percentages. If this basis were to be used in adjusting the wages of all other groups of workers it is evident that during periods of changing prices there would be a different set of wage differentials for every position of the price level. And, furthermore, during periods of rising prices, the lowest paid classes of workers--those who could do least to meet the rise in the cost of living by changing their consumption habits--would receive the smallest wage increases. A great diversity of practice characterized the attempts at adjustment which were made during the period of rapid price increase inaugurated by the war. No two agencies of adjustment used the same basis. Possibly the most widespread practice has been to increase all wage levels by the same _absolute_ amount--which amount has been ordinarily calculated as a percentage of some basic wage (frequently the living wage). The advantages of that method are firstly, its simplicity, and secondly, the fact that if it favors any groups, it favors those whose needs are greatest. Justice Higgins has justified it as follows: "When the Court has increased the basic wage because of abnormal increase of prices due to the war it has not usually increased the secondary wage. It has merely added the old secondary wage, the old margin, to the new basic wage. It is true that the extra commodities which the skilled man usually purchases with his extra wages become almost as indispensable in his social habits, as the commodities purchased by the unskilled man, and have no less increased in price; but the Court has not seen fit to push its principles to the extreme in the abnormal circumstances of the war, and the moderate course taken has been accepted without demur."[144] Still as a permanent policy, the suitability of this method is not beyond question. The problem to be faced in the choice of method is, after all, this. Given a scheme of wage differentials, which are in accord with certain defined principles, at a given position of the price level, what method of adjustment is best calculated to produce such differentials as will be in accord with these principles, at all positions of the price levels? That sounds like a problem in astronomy. But it is not. It can be more understandably, but less accurately, put by asking, what system of adjustment is best calculated to maintain the same _relative_ position of the various groups of wage earners throughout all price movements? Under either of the two methods touched upon--that of change by equal percentages, and that of change by the same absolute amount for all groups--the differentials cannot be held in close accord with any such original principles of wage relationship as have been suggested. It cannot be helped. We have come to another point at which the aims of policy can only be imperfectly realized. It seems to me that the best method would be some sort of compromise between the two alternatives that have been presented. A compromise would make allowance, firstly; for the fact that in times of rising prices, those groups whose wages are lowest cannot meet the rise in the cost of living by changing their consumption habits as easily as can the more fortunately placed groups, and secondly; in times of rising prices, the movements of the wage earners from industry, or from occupation to occupation are governed, within limits, by calculations of the absolute change in the wages paid for different kinds of labor, rather than by calculations of relative change. It nevertheless would prevent the relative position of different grades of labor from changing so radically as to lead to great discontent and possibly to derangements in the distribution of the labor supply. It can be claimed, in addition, for this compromise method that its results would be in accord with the general trend of changes in the differentials that have occurred in the past in periods of rapid price movement. An inspection of the available material seems to show that in times of rapidly rising prices the _relative_ differentials between the lower grades of wage earners and the upper grades decrease, while the _absolute_ differentials increase--and the reverse in times of rapidly declining prices. They are in accord, for example, with the results obtained by analyzing the course of differentials during the war (1914-1919) in the industries for which wage data was gathered by the National Industrial Conference Board--"Report Wartime Changes in Wages." The data extends over the Metal, Cotton, Wool, Silk, Boot and Shoe, Paper, Rubber and Chemical Manufacturing Industries. If the wage earners are classified into five groups according to their pre-war wages, it is found that the relative wages of the least paid groups (pre-war standards) increased most, and so on in order to the best paid groups, the relative wages of which increased least; the absolute increases, however, are in exactly the opposite order.[145] They are borne out also by Mitchell's studies of price movements in the United States.[146] In conclusion, it may be said, that no matter which of the above methods is adopted, it should be applied with as much consistency as can be attained. The process of wage adjustment to movements of the price level cannot be left in the field of guess work, where it now rests, without giving rise to much quarreling and discontent. FOOTNOTES: [144] H. B. Higgins, "A New Province for Law and Order," _Harvard Law Review_, Jan., 1919. The Commission acting under the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act, carried this line of reasoning to its further logical consequences by awarding in some cases higher _absolute_ increases to the lowest paid men, and so on up the scale to the highest paid men who received the smallest increase. The large increases granted to the lowest paid men were justified by the Commission as necessary to bring their wages up to a living wage level. See, for example, the Report of the Commission on Disputes in Coal Mining and Other Industries in Nova Scotia. _Canadian Labor Gazette_, July, 1918. For a similar policy based on the same grounds, see the "Arbitration Award in Certain Packing Industries in the United States." _U. S. Monthly Labor Review_, May, 1918. [145] The figures are: ----------------------------------------------------------- (Wage groups) (Group average) 1914, wages Relative increase Absolute increase, earnings per hour of wages earnings per hour ----------------------------------------------------------- .15-.20 208% .193 .20-.25 187% .188 .25-.30 185% .230 .30-.35 184% .266 .35-.40 174% .268 ----------------------------------------------------------- Such figures as these are not, of course, sufficient ground for confident generalization, but they support an imputation that the compromise method does furnish the best solution of the difficulties the problem presents. [146] See W. C. Mitchell, "Business Cycles," page 134. Also W. C. Mitchell, "History of the Greenbacks," pages 33-37, 123-145. CHAPTER XII--THE REGULATION OF WAGE LEVELS--(_Continued_) WAGES AND PROFITS Section 1. The profits return in industry, under any policy of wage settlement, will be closely scrutinized.--Section 2. The possibility of measuring a "fair" profits return for all industry discussed. A method suggested.--Section 3. Would the principles of wage settlement worked out so far, produce a fair profits return? An open question.--Section 4. The scope and form of any measure designed to assure the desired distributive outcome can be discerned.--Section 5. The various steps in the formulation of such a measure reviewed. A measure tentatively suggested.--Section 6. The difficulties of calculating wage changes called for under the suggested measure.--Section 7. The chief practical weaknesses of the suggested measure examined.--Section 8. It would be open to theoretical criticism also. The alternatives even less satisfactory. 1.--We can now enter upon the further question of whether the principles so far formulated, if used in wage settlement, would produce such distributive results as would justify them to the wage earners and the community in general. It need hardly be said that the criterion of justice which will be applied by public opinion to any policy of wage settlement will not be a simple and clearly defined rule, but will be, rather, one joint in a loosely articulated social philosophy. The distributive justice of any set of wage principles will be judged by the shares of the product of industry which take the form of wages and profits, respectively. It is true that general satisfaction with them will be largely governed by the course of real wages after they have been in force a while. If real wages tended to increase in the period following their adoption, they would receive far greater approval and much sturdier defense than if real wages fall during that period. Most witnesses of the Australian experiments in wage settlement make that point clear.[147] But in either case, if the organizations of the wage earners in the United States become as powerful as they are in England to-day, and if the class-consciousness of the wage earners becomes as acute, any policy of wage settlement will be severely scrutinized in regard to the profits return prevailing throughout industry also. If, with the principles in force, the general level of profits throughout the field of industry consistently and considerably exceeded what was deemed to approximate a fair return, it will be held that they give the wage earners too small a share in the product of the industry. If the general level of profits throughout the field of industry tended to approximate a return thought to be fair, the principles will recommend themselves to the wage earners and to the community in general, as just. It may be added that the opinion held in regard to the justice of the principles of wage settlement may also be influenced, in some degree, by the distribution of the profits return in industry. If a comparatively few great industrial corporations earn very great profits, it is likely to arouse greater dissatisfaction than if the same amount of profits are earned by a larger number of enterprises. It is beyond the scope of any policy of wage settlement, however, to control the distribution of profits among the enterprises engaged in an industry. There are some groups who would argue that no division of the product of industry is fair unless it gives to the wage earners the whole of the product. Such a view, of course, amounts to a desire to revise the whole of the present economic system fundamentally. No policy of wage settlement akin to that put forward in this book could win favor in their eyes. And if their opinion should become dominant, industrial peace would have to be sought by arrangements far different from those under discussion. For those arrangements rest on the supposition that the country will continue to desire to depend, in the main, upon private accumulation for capital, and individual ambition for business leadership. 2.--It is possible by bringing into balance a numerous set of factors, to give a reasonably definite meaning to the idea of a fair profits return. That is to say, by weighing all relevant considerations, it is possible to define a general level of profits for industry as a whole, which would represent a just and sound division of the product of industry between wages and profits. The relevant considerations are those which will be likely to hold an important place in the better informed sections of public opinion during the period for which these proposals are intended; and which are admissible as sound and pertinent, on the supposition that the industrial system is to continue to depend mainly upon private initiative and private accumulation. The most important of these considerations are, in my opinion, as follows: First: that the ethical ideas of reward according to need, or reward according to sacrifice, would call for the elimination of the greatest present inequalities of reward; and that these ethical ideas must be given rank among the factors which deserve real consideration when arrangements affecting the distribution of the product are being made. Secondly: the service of capital in effective production, the sacrifice involved in much accumulation, and the risk involved in much investment; the great need of assuring continued capital accumulation and investment. Likewise, the importance to industry of active and enterprising leadership. Thirdly: the social and economic evil effects of great inequality of wealth. Fourthly: the fact that the health, energy, spirit, and intelligence of the wage earners are factors of high importance in the creation of a stable and effective industrial régime, and that the development and display of these qualities by individuals are affected by their economic conditions and surroundings, here and now. Likewise, the importance of giving the best possible opportunity to all to develop their natural ability. The general level of profits that would be settled upon by comparing and weighing these considerations could be defended as just and sound. The figure (which would be expressed in the form of a percentage, e.g. 12 per cent.) derived from the balance of these factors could be put forward as the mark of just distribution. The distributive goal for the policy of wage settlement would be to achieve a division of the product between wages and profits, such that the general level of profits throughout the field of industry (the basis of calculation of which will be considered at a later point) would approximate the figure defined as just. It is plain that if the suggested method is used to define a just level of profits, differences of opinion will manifest themselves in the process. The facts and circumstances that would have to be studied cannot be subjected to exact measurement. For example, the possible bad social and economic effects which may be produced by various degrees of inequality of distribution can only be guessed at in a general way. Or, to take another example, the motives and conditions which govern the bulk of private accumulation and the sacrifices involved therein are questions about which controversy continues to range. The profits return that one man may judge ample to assure an adequate flow of accumulation and investment will not appear to be so, in another man's judgment. Indeed, even differences in the general philosophy with which all men parade through life will lead to differences of opinion. For example, one man may believe a community to be better off if every man's income is increased somewhat, though the inequality of wealth within the community be thereby increased; while another man may believe that the poorer community, with the lesser inequality of wealth is likely to be more happy, and perhaps, in the end more prosperous. In spite, however, of the existence of such extensive ground for differences of opinion, it seems to me that an agreement may be expected which will be fair and sound enough to be accepted as a serviceable criterion of the distributive consequences of the policy of wage settlement. 3.--What grounds, if any, are there for the belief that the principles of wage settlement so far proposed would bring about a division of the product between wages and profits that would meet the test of just and sound distribution suggested above? The principles, so far proposed, leave the determination of the profits return predominantly to the action of industrial competition, reënforced by the action of public opinion in the direction of preventing the return from mounting to an obviously excessive point. They offer no safeguard against the reduction of the profit return below that point set as the mark of just and sound distribution, save the public will to continue the present system and a general knowledge of the motives and conditions upon which it rests. Nor could they very well. It is true that the enactment of the principles suggested up to this point would mean the imposition of certain genuine restrictions upon the actions of those who direct industry, as for example, in connection with the living wage program. It would give all wage earners the benefits of organization. It would make for rapid and certain compensation for price movements. It would prevent wage reductions merely because of the poverty of any group. Nevertheless, if the analysis of distribution made earlier in the book is substantially correct, the answer to the question at the head of this section must be that there would be no very compelling tendency for distribution to result justly, under the enforcement of the wage principles so far proposed. The distributive result would still depend largely upon the reality and intensity of industrial competition, upon the strength, activity, and foresightedness of the wage earners' organizations, upon the will and spirit of the directors of industry, and upon the quality and liveness of public opinion. That admission can be made, even though it is believed that under the suggested principles the outcome of distribution would be nearer the desired outcome than it is at present; and that there would be a clearer perception of the public interest in the outcome of distribution than at present. 4.--If a measure could be devised which would help to bring about the desired distributive outcome, without greatly weakening in some other direction the policy as already conceived, such a measure would be a most worth-while addition to the policy. It is possible to discern clearly what the scope and form of such a measure must be. Firstly: Such a measure should not single out the profits of particular enterprises for division or transfer to the wage earners, if the profits of these particular enterprises are in excess of what is conceived to be a just profit level for industry as a whole. For, in the first place, if the principle of standardization is enforced throughout industry, the excess profits of particular enterprises may frequently be the result of superior business ability, and to take them away would be to discourage the development and use of that ability. And, in the second place, even if it is acknowledged that this is not the true explanation of the great profits of very many enterprises, but that these are accounted for rather by the possession of special privileges or the weakness of competition, nevertheless, to adopt a policy under which these profits are transferred to the wage earners would lead to wastefulness and extravagance in business operation. And lastly, there is the fact that to make wages in any enterprise contingent upon the profit returns of that enterprise is contrary to the ordinary trade union policy. Nothing in this conclusion is meant to imply that the wage earners should not be free to enter into wage agreements calling for more than the standard wage. Or that profit sharing arrangements should not be permitted--on the contrary, such arrangements should be encouraged, provided the standard wage and the right of the wage earners' organization to be fully represented in such arrangements are not brought into question. The conclusion just reached is meant to apply also in the opposite case--that is, in the case of the profits of particular enterprises falling below the level defined as just and sound industry as a whole. The wages of the workers engaged in these enterprises should not, for that reason, be reduced. This conclusion, it is believed, is amply explained by what has been written in various other connections. Secondly: Even if almost all or all of the enterprises engaged in a particular industry should be in receipt of profits considerably in excess of what is conceived to be a fair profit return for industry as a whole, no attempt should be made to transfer the extra profits to the wage earners engaged in it by increasing their wages. Or to state the matter so as to include both this case and its opposite, the wages in any particular industry should not be adjusted by reference to the profits in that industry. It is clear that here we are upon difficult and very hotly disputed ground. At present, wages in different industries or occupations are not settled in accordance with any principle which includes them all and which is the basis of an ordered scheme of wage relationship. The existence of a very high profits return throughout a particular industry is an almost prima facie justification for a wage demand on the part of the wage earners employed in it. So too in the opposite case. And as long as wages are settled, as at present, it must be so; for the wage earners in each industry or occupation are dependent upon their own activity to make good their claims as against the other participants in distribution. It is this very state of affairs, however, that it is sought to supersede. In an earlier chapter it was argued that in order to maintain industrial peace, wages in different industries and occupations will have to be brought into relation with each other, which relation should rest upon defined principle. It is plain that, if any other principle were also to be adopted, under which wages in particular industries were adjusted by reference to the profits return in these industries, that scheme of relationship would be constantly disturbed. If wages in particular industries were adjusted with reference to the profits return in those industries, the result would be a series of uncoördinated wage movements in different parts of the industrial field, and the re-creation of a state of affairs not much different from the present. Then, too, if wages were to be adjusted with reference to the profits return in particular industries, the method that has been advocated of settling upon a criterion of just profits would not be suitable. A separate mark of fair profits would have to be set up for each industry; for different industries involve different degrees of risk and have different initial periods of little or no profits. What might correctly be considered an excessive profit for one industry might be but a fair profit for another. The task of setting up different criteria for the different industries would be extremely delicate, if it were possible at all. The same conclusion holds true in the opposite case wherein the profits in most all or all of the enterprises engaged in a particular industry are considerably below what is conceived as a fair profits return for industry as a whole. Cases will arise in which it may be to the interest of the wage earners in particular industries to accept wage reductions, because the industry is doing poorly. In such cases, however, the wage earners may be expected to agree--perhaps, only after a while--to wage reduction, in the course of wage bargaining. If, however, the wage earners will not agree that their interests are served by reduction, it will probably be sound policy to back them up. It must be admitted that this conclusion as to the inadvisability of adjusting wages by reference to the profits return of particular industries is not set down without hesitation. It is plain that if that idea is to be rejected, the policy of wage settlement as a whole must give some other guarantee of distributive justice to the wage earners. And, indeed, if after a certain period of operation and education it was found that very large profits were accruing steadily in certain industries, and if it did not seem likely that these profits would be reduced to what is conceived to be a fair level either by the forces of competition or public opinion, it might be found wiser to pursue the opposite course--that is, grant wage increases in those industries even at the risk of breaking down the scheme of wage relationship. Much will depend upon the way in which the employers respond to the purposes embodied in the policy of wage settlement. And upon the success of the wage earners and employers in reaching, by collective bargaining, agreements satisfactory to both. Justice W. Jethro Brown of the Industrial Court of South Australia has stated the problem with great clearness. He writes, "With respect to such an issue, one is on the horns of a dilemma. (1) If unusually high profits are being made in an industry, ought not the employees to have a right to share therein? (2) If one does award high rates of wages, is not one inviting discontent amongst other classes of workers in allied industries or industries generally? Employees are so apt to judge themselves well or ill treated by a comparison of nominal wages without any reference to conditions of industry. In various judgments I have held that it would be quite permissible, if not appropriate, for the Court to take into consideration the fact that an industry is prosperous. On the other hand, as a matter of practice I have tried to work towards an ordered scheme of wages throughout the industry of the community as a whole."[148] If the above conclusions are accepted, it must be agreed that the scope of any measure designed to help in the attainment of the desired distributive outcome must be the whole field of industrial enterprise to which the policy of wage settlement applies. The question that remains is, whether it is possible to devise a principle of wage settlement by which wages as a whole can be adjusted by reference to the profit situation in industry as a whole. That is to say, whether any measure can be elaborated by which all wages could be adjusted, according as profits in industry as a whole exceeded, approximated, or fell below the profits level that is taken to mark just and sound distribution of the product of industry. 5.--It is plain that if the measure is of such a character that no great harm can result from the possible error involved in the process of calculation, it can be adopted with less hesitation than if the opposite were the case. That is one of the considerations prompting the following proposals. Let us presume, in order that the proposals may be put in definite form, that the profits return for industry as a whole which is agreed upon as just is a 12 per cent. return. The next step would be the invention of some method by which the profits return of industry as a whole at any given time can be measured. This would be a matter of considerable difficulty; yet it is, in my opinion, not beyond the range of practical attainment.[149] The following method, for example, might not be too unsatisfactory. Let a certain number of enterprises be selected in each industry which comes within the field of wage regulation. The selections should be representative of the industry. If there is a variety of types of enterprises within the industry viewed from the standpoint of productive efficiency, the selected enterprises should tend to represent the more efficient sections of the industry. Then a valuation of these enterprises should be made. A standardized method should then be devised for keeping account of the profits of these selected enterprises. That might necessitate the inauguration of standard methods of accounting throughout all industry--which is a result to be favored. The profits return from the selected enterprises in all industries should be combined into an index number of profits. Possibly, in making up the index number, the figures for each industry should be weighted according to the number of wage earners employed in the industry. The resulting weighted average would be a reliable record of the profits return throughout industry at the particular time. The statistical method just described, however, is meant rather in the nature of a suggestion than as a declaration that it is the best method. Suppose the index number of profits so calculated for a given period of time proves to be, for example, 18 per cent.--6 per cent. higher than the approved level of profits. On the basis of this profit showing, the wages of all classes of wage earners could be increased for the subsequent period, with some hope of effecting a transfer to the wage earners of at least part of the product of industry represented by the 6 per cent. extra profit. That is to say, that whenever the index of profits showed a profits return in excess of this conceived just return, wages throughout industry should be increased to such an extent as is calculated to bring the profits return down to the approved level. Whenever the index of profits showed a profits return approximately equal to or less than the approved level, no wage change should be undertaken. For if the profits return was approximately equal to the approved level, it can be concluded that the distributive result is approximately that which is desired. And if the profits return is under the approved level, it would probably be both impracticable and inadvisable to reduce wages throughout the industry. For since no direct control is exercised over profits, the falling of the profits return to a point below the appointed mark of just and sound distribution, would be but the outcome of industrial competition. While it is conceivable, in particular cases, that the community would be better off if the profits return was greater than the return thereby produced, the contrary presumption is more likely to be correct under present conditions. For it is both desirable and likely that the figure that would be set as the mark of just and sound distribution will err on the side of being higher than the profits return required to assure adequate accumulation and investment. 6.--So much for the basis of the proposed measure. It is desirable to examine briefly its chief advantages and disadvantages. But first note must be taken of another problem that would arise in the attempt to enforce it. If the wages of all classes or groups of wage earners are to be increased when the profits return in industry as a whole is above the approved level, the question arises as to the best way to calculate the wage increases, and the most satisfactory basis for distributing them among the different groups of wage earners. If both of these calculations can be kept simple, it will be a distinct advantage. Possibly the most simple and satisfactory way is to determine the absolute amount of the extra profits, and of the total wages bill for the representative enterprises--putting one in terms of a percentage of the other. For example, if it be calculated that the profits of these enterprises in excess of the approved level be one hundred million dollars, and the total wages bill of the same enterprises two billion dollars, the amount of wage increase to be awarded should be stated as 5 per cent. That is, the wage increase to be awarded should total 5 per cent. of the total wages bill. And here the second problem arises. How should this wage increase be distributed among the various groups or classes of labor? It is probable that the most satisfactory method would be to raise the wages of all groups or classes of labor, including those groups whose wages were determined under the living wage policy, by the same absolute amount. This method does not meet all the demands of our previous reasoning regarding wage differentials. It would, however, be the only way to avoid too much complication in the determination of wages for different groups or classes of labor. 7.--What would be the chief difficulties and disadvantages attendant upon the application of the measure just sketched out? And what are the chief advantages which it gives promise of? These are the questions which now present themselves. First of all, certain difficulties of a practical nature must be faced. For example, there would be difficulty of settling upon a satisfactory method of calculating the profits return of industry. The most satisfactory method of calculation would probably be in the form of a percentage earned upon capital. If that basis of calculation is chosen, however, some method must be decided upon for the measurement of the capital value of all those enterprises, the profits return of which is combined to form the index number of profits. Probably the best way of meeting the difficulties would be to have such a capital valuation of these enterprises as has just been completed for the United States railways. And thereafter standard methods of recording new capital investment should be enforced. Such an evaluation would appear to be an unwelcome but inevitable preliminary to any attempt to measure and record business earnings. Experience has shown the vast labor and large margin of error involved in formal evaluations. Under the proposals made in this chapter, however, errors made in the evaluation of particular enterprises would be of no great consequence to these enterprises. Only the combined or general profits figure would be used in the course of wage adjustment. Second among the difficulties of a practical nature is that which comes from the necessity of defining clearly what is to be considered profits.[150] Clearly the earnings put back into the depreciation account should not be counted as profits. Loss or gain from the change in the value of the stock held should not be taken into account. Nor should taxes paid before the distribution of dividends be so counted. Bonus stock dividends, representing reinvestment out of current earnings should be counted as profits, as well as being recorded as additions to invested capital. Capital borrowed from banks should not be considered as capital--and the interest paid on such borrowings should be considered as a business expense. The question of the treatment to be accorded salaries of direction could be settled by reference to arbitrary rules drawn up upon the subject--some allowance being made in the case of partnerships or of businesses operating under private direction to compensate for the salaries of direction that are paid in large incorporated enterprises. Thirdly, provision would have to be made for the reconsideration, at stated intervals, of the profits return that is set as the mark of just and sound distribution. Thus heed could be taken of any significant changes in the price level, in the conditions of supply and demand for capital, or in any of the other relevant considerations. Likewise, provision would have to be made for the periodical revision of the list of enterprises and industries used in the computation of the profits return for industry as a whole. These matters, though vital, must be left without detailed consideration. Nevertheless, it is idle to overlook the amount of labor that would be involved in any attempt to keep a record of the profits return in industry. It would be dreary, and of a type demanding specialized knowledge and disinterestedness. Furthermore, any such plan would probably have to be put through in the face of the resentment of most business men. That resentment, however, is likely to flash out against any proposals that look forward to securing industrial peace by giving the wage earners a more assured position in industry, and ready access to the facts of business operation. The standpat temper of those business men who argue that their business is entirely their own private concern would make impossible any policy of wage settlement that did not throw the balance of industrial power in their hands. Unless they visualize their position in different terms than these, little hope can be entertained that any proposals calling for a record of profits will be supported by them. But then it is the normal rôle of the peace-maker to seek concessions that contestants are not ready to make; to plead general necessity where contestants see only their own; to represent each side to the other in its best light. 8.--Besides these difficulties of a precise and practical kind, certain weaknesses of a more theoretical nature may be urged against the measure. First, it may be argued that since the policy exerts no direct control over profits, there is little reason to believe that profits will be kept down to an approved level. This criticism would or would not be justified by the event, according as industrial competition were effective; according as employers acted up to the purposes and spirit of the policy of wage settlement, and gave the general interest a place alongside of their particular interests; according as government regulation of industry was competently carried out; and lastly, according to the measure in which public opinion made itself felt on the subject. Any such plan as the proposed, by clarifying ideas on the subject, would do much in the way of making public opinion more decisive than at present. It would serve to inform the community that wages can be increased without equivalent price increase, whenever the possibility exists. It would provide employers with a code of honor in industrial relations. And lastly, it must be remembered that the alternative to some such policy of wage increase is a system of direct profits control (leaving out of consideration the possibility of more general and fundamental change). It is conceivable that a policy of direct profits control for all industry can be worked out, which would not penalize and discourage productive capacity. But it would be an extraordinarily hard job and would necessitate a detailed study of the facts of each particular industry. No doubt a policy of direct profits control is to be strongly advised in particular cases. As, for example, on the American railways at present, where the rate-making power is in the hands of a public body; or in the case of the English coal mines, where the question of control is comparatively simple, and the occasion for control plain. But as a policy for all industries it would involve, in my opinion, an entirely impracticable amount of regulation, and it would be likely to lessen the effectiveness of production and to lead to the wasteful conduct of industry. Therefore, it must be concluded that some such attempt to control profits indirectly as has been proposed--depending upon the forces of competition, trade union activity, public opinion and government regulation--is to be preferred. There is another possible criticism of a theoretical sort. It may be pointed out that it is proposed to increase wages on the basis of data derived from the whole field of industry. And it may be argued, therefore, that the increases undertaken by the reason of the showing of that data may be considerably greater than particular industries could stand, without an increase in the price of their products. On the other hand, they may be considerably less than the increase required in other industries to reduce the profits return to approximately the approved level. As to the first possibility, it is entirely conceivable. A wage movement based upon the profits return from all industries and applied equally to all groups of wage earners might cause price increases in particular industries and possibly temporary dislocation and even some unemployment. Such price changes and dislocations, however, are constantly occurring in industry in the absence of any policy of wage settlement, due to the effect of wage increases in one industry on wage movements in other industries. There is little reason to believe that the measure advocated will add considerably to the frequency of their occurrence. It might in one respect serve to lessen the extent of such disturbances. It might make less frequent the recurrence of wage demands, originating in particular industries because of high profits in these industries, and spreading over a large part of the field of industry. For, as has been emphasized, organized groups of wage earners will not accept passively a change for the worse in their position in the economic scale. Finally, there is a safeguard in the fact that no wage increase need occur in any industry except upon the demand of the wage earners in that industry. Joint discussion might make it clear that wage increases could not be well afforded in particular industries, and joint agreement reached upon that fact. The self-interest of the wage earners, here as elsewhere, would prove to be some sort of a check upon unwise wage increases. As to the second possibility--that wage increases undertaken on the showing of data derived from all industries may be considerably less than the increases required in particular industries to bring down the profits return in those industries to the approved level--that, too, is entirely conceivable. But against this disadvantage must be weighed those which would be attendant upon any measure by which wages in particular industries are adjusted by reference to the profits return in those industries, which subject has already been considered. The fact must be accepted. In any plan such as the one proposed, faith would have to be put in the power of indirect influences to keep the profits return in particular industries from greatly and consistently exceeding the approved level. By way of conclusion, it may be made clear that any such plan as the proposed would call for the assent of the wage earners to the doctrine that, when the profits return in particular industries is greatly in excess of the approved level for industry as a whole, the community in general have the leading claim to those profits. It is plain that union assent to that doctrine would be forthcoming only if the community made effective its claims. The attainment of a just distributive outcome--one based upon considerations of the general interest--will be essential to the success of any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. FOOTNOTES: [147] M. B. Hammond, "Wage Boards in Australia," _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, November, 1914, February, March, 1915. E. Aves, "Report on Wage Boards and Industrial and Conciliation Acts of Australia and New Zealand" (1908). [148] Letter dated March 16, 1920. [149] See pages 256-60, this chapter, for a further consideration of this question. [150] W. J. Ashley, in an article in the _Economic Journal_, December, 1910, entitled "The Statistical Measurement of Profit," reveals the many serious problems involved in the measurement of profit--when no prior preparation (such as the compulsory standardization of methods of accountancy) has been undertaken. The question of profit measurement he aptly states as that of finding out "what the suppliers of capital to business concerns get in the long run over and above the capital they actually put in them" (page 549). Unless prior preparation is undertaken for the purpose in hand, it is probable that his conclusion does not overstate the difficulties much, if at all. He writes, "Modern 'trust finance'--the finance of great new industrial combinations, creates difficulties in the way of gain statistics that will tax the highest skill of the economist and accountant--if, indeed, they are not insuperable" (page 549). There would appear to be no good reason, however, why prior preparation, such as is suggested, could not be undertaken; nor would that task be one of extreme difficulty. CHAPTER XIII--A CONCEPT OF INDUSTRIAL PEACE Section 1. The hope for industrial peace in the United States.--Section 2. A policy of wage settlement composed out of the principles already set forth.--Section 3. What results might be expected from the adoption of these principles as a policy?--Section 4. The matter of economic security for the wage earners likely to be important for industrial peace. Hardly considered in this book. The question has been presented to the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations.--Section 5. Certain new ideas concerning industrial relationship have come to stay. They indicate the probable current of future change. 1.--The hope that a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace may be adopted by consent, rests upon the supposition that there exists in the United States to-day a considerable measure of agreement upon a practicable ideal of industrial society. To put the matter more expressly, if half of the community sincerely believed in a policy of the greatest possible freedom of individual enterprise, and the other half were ardent believers in the desirability of a socialist state, the hope of the adoption of a policy of wage settlement would be fatuous. It may seem to many that this necessary measure of agreement upon a practicable ideal of industrial society does not exist in the United States to-day. And, therefore, that the process of debate and conflict in industrial affairs,--as we know it to-day--must continue for a much longer time before the country will be ready to agree upon any policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. In short, that more heads must be broken in order that reasonableness and light may enter into them. Still, various reflections should encourage us to go ahead in the search for some policy of wage adjustment for which the necessary general consent can be won. First of all, there is the fact that there is urgent need for industrial peace; that great suffering, and the constant disruption of industry, will be an accompaniment of a continuation of industrial conflict. And it is essential to the settlement of most economic issues, as well as political, that the members of a society do take heed of the needs of the society. It is the origin and justification of the habit of political compromise. Secondly, it is not easy after all to be cocksure as to what men will or will not agree to until they are directly faced with the task of decision. It is not easy to tell at what point in the conflict of "opposite convictions" an end may be made of the conflict.[151] It is usual that doubt be present in many men's minds when a grave decision is made by society. The constitution of the United States was adopted in the midst of a struggle of ideas, so violent that all agreement seemed to be precluded. The chances of agreement can rarely be certainly known until all possible grounds of agreement are explored. Thirdly, the belief that the continued battle of ideas will ultimately lead to agreement, and eventuate into policy is an optimistic belief which is not always supported by the facts. Sometimes, indeed, it does, as in the case of woman suffrage. Sometimes, however, it ends in the resort to force. And frequently not even the resort to force produces a solution of the difficulty. The conflict goes on even after the use of open force is surrendered. Lastly, it is possible, and indeed necessary so to frame policy, that even while it maintains peace and produces coöperation between conflicting interests and ideas, it does not stereotype forever the terms of peace and coöperation. Agreement is often obtained for an economic or political policy in the knowledge that it can be changed if different ideas come to prevail. A policy of wage adjustment, like any other measure, would have to be always subject to reconsideration and amendment. Indeed, it might carry provision in itself for such reconsideration; it might be adopted as an experiment for a definite period of years. 2.--In the preceding chapters the main problems that must arise in the course of any attempt to settle wages by official authority have been discussed. These problems were considered with reference to the possible formulation of a satisfactory policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. That policy may now be presented as a whole. Only in that way, indeed, can the significance of any particular principle of settlement be understood. It is presumed that whatever policy is put into force will be administered by a government agency, with and by the consent and support of both the wage earners and the employers. It is also presumed that the method of collective bargaining is accepted throughout industry. Indeed, the existence of organized joint boards or councils of wage earners and employers would be almost essential to the success of any policy. The central constituted agency for the administration of the policy should be a commission or court. The policy should then provide that whenever a dispute arises incidental to the settlement of wages in any industry included within the scope of the policy, which dispute is not settled by the ordinary course of collective bargaining, it should be referred to this commission or court. All sides should be permitted to submit evidence bearing upon the case. The court or commission should have its own expert staff, and its own record and statistical office; and it should be its duty to know the wage situation throughout industry.[152] Every possible effort should be made by the commission or court to render judgment without litigation. The commission or court should give in full the principles and the data upon which it bases its decisions. The wage policy of the commission or court should rest upon the following principles: _First_--The principle of standardization should be applied throughout industry. Wages should be standardized by occupations, despite minor differences in the character of the work performed by the same occupational group, or in the conditions under which the work is performed. Standard rates should be understood to be merely minimum rates; and the principle of standardization should be construed so as to permit of all methods of wage payment. When the introduction of standardization into a hitherto unstandardized industry or occupation is deemed to involve the possibility of doing more injury to certain sections of the wage earners and employers affected than it promises definite good, the application of the principle should be limited or varied so as to avoid producing such injury. Differences in the natural advantages possessed by various enterprises in the same industry, and relatively great and permanent differences in the cost of living in different localities--these are likely to be the chief grounds for limitation or variation in the application of the principle. The exceptions or variations admitted on these grounds would vary greatly in character and extent no doubt. It is to be expected that they would be numerous. Under certain conditions it might also prove advisable to grant "nominal variations" of the standard wage. Such "nominal variations" would ordinarily be established to compensate for differences of conditions of work governing output in piece-working trades, when such differences of conditions must be accepted as permanent, as in coal mining; or to cover payment in kind or to make up for irregularity of employment. The process of wage standardization should be regarded as an independent process, as a process logically prior to the other principles of wage settlement (though they may all be applied at the same time). That is to say, the determination of the level of standardization should be fixed upon independently of all other principles of wage settlement. The principal data to be taken into consideration when fixing the level of standardization should be the actual variety of wage rates in the industry or occupation in question. Wherein the scale of actually existing wage rates, the level of standardization is set will be a matter of judgment and compromise. Usually the correct level will be at the higher range of the wage rates already being paid. If any of the existing wage rates in an industry or occupation are higher than the level of standardization which is fixed, the higher rates should ordinarily not be lowered to the level of standardization. _Secondly_--The wages of those groups of wage earners who are at the bottom of the industrial scale should be regulated upon the living wage principle. That is to say, the policy of wage settlement for these groups should represent a consistent effort to secure to them a wage at least sufficient to permit them to satisfy their "normal and reasonable needs." These needs must be interpreted in the light of and by direct comparison with the standard of life of the wage earners in general, and of the middle classes in the community. In the determination of the living wage, the existing level of wages for the groups in question will also be an important consideration. The declared living wage--that wage which it is sought to secure for all industrial workers--should be assessed upon a different basis for male and female workers; but if, in particular cases, it is deemed best to safeguard the interests of male workers, or to keep women out of particular industries, this rule could be departed from in any one of a number of suggested ways. The most important of these possible departures from the ordinary basis of assessment is the enforcement of the same wage rates for men and women when they are employed upon the same work. The living wage in any industry should be a standard wage, subject to all the qualifications and limitations of other standard wage rates. The success of the living wage policy will depend in a great degree upon the good judgment with which it is adapted to the conditions obtaining in each individual industry or occupation in which it is enforced. Therefore, the court or commission should proceed upon the advice of the joint boards or councils concerned. It should be the function of each joint council to give definite advice to the central authority upon every feature of the policy to be pursued in its field--particularly upon the subject of the wages to be prescribed. The central authority should give no ruling in any industry until after the report of the joint council of that industry. Each joint council should have the further duty of observing and reporting upon the effect of the living wage policy in its industry or occupation. The living wage policy should be administered in such a way as to spread among the wage earners, the employers, and the public an understanding of the hope and purpose it embodies and a clear knowledge of the factors which will govern its success. Not the least of which factors will be the determination of all grades of wage earners to make good use of whatever new measure of participation in industry they may secure; and the recognition by the employers that the standard of life of their workers is one of their important concerns. _Thirdly_--The wages of all groups of wage earners not included in the scope of the living wage policy should be settled by reference to principles which apply equally to them all. The wage decisions, at the inauguration of the policy, must rest upon the acceptance and protection of existing wage levels, and of existing wage relationships. However, as cases arise, which bring up the question of the relative positions on the wage scale of the workers engaged in different industries and occupations (and such cases will arise constantly), they should be settled as part of a general process of building up in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship. This scheme should rest upon defined principles. These principles should be two in number. They were set forth, both as theoretical and applied doctrines under the titles of the "principle of the unity of the wage income and of the wage earners," and the "principle of extra reward." Wage awards for different industries and occupations should be constantly related to each other. The underlying emphasis in the whole series of awards for different industries and occupations should be that the wages of each group are what they are, more because the total wage income is what it is than because of the special type of work performed by any group. The same wage should be paid throughout industry for different kinds of work which require approximately the same human qualities and which make approximately the same demands upon the individual. The wage differentials that are established should be such as will make it reasonably certain that industry will be provided with at least the existing proportion of the more skilled grades of labor, and to make it reasonably certain also that the more arduous, dangerous, irregular, and disagreeable work will command the service of as much labor as at present. The hopes for the establishment of any scheme of wage relationship will be realized or not, according as particular groups of wage earners are willing to accept a wage that may be less than that which they might secure by the continued use of their own group strength. This last remark applies in particular to those groups of wage earners, whose economic position, as organized groups, is very strong by virtue of the fact that the work they perform is essential to the economic existence of the whole community--such, for example, as the railway men, the bank clerks, the printers, and the miners. _Fourthly_--With a view to preventing those changes in the distributive situation which may result from price movements, and which are undesirable--judged by reference to the distributive outcome that is sought--all wages including those prescribed under the living wage policy should be promptly adjusted to movements in the general price level. The measure of price change should be the movement of the index number of prices of all the important commodities produced within the country--the index number to be so weighted as to give a defined importance (50 per cent. was suggested) to the prices of those classes of foodstuffs, clothing, housing accommodation, and other commodities upon which the wage earners spend a very great part of their income. The policy of adjustment to be pursued in times of rising and falling prices and the amount of wage adjustment to be undertaken in response to price movements of different degrees and character--in short, all the rules by which the adjustment of wages to price movements should be carried out--were considered, at some length, in several of the earlier chapters, and can hardly be produced satisfactorily in summary form. Special care should be taken to protect the standard of life of the least favorably placed groups of wage earners during periods of a rising price level. _Fifthly_--In order to bring about such a distributive outcome as will recommend the policy of wage settlement to the wage earners and to the community in general, some profits test should be devised. This profits test should be used to mark and measure the distributive situation in industry as a whole, indicating, as it will, the share in the product of industry that is taking the form of profits. Whenever the general range of profits in industry exceeds that profits return which is conceived to be just and sound, the wages of all groups of workers should be increased in an attempt to transfer the extra profits to the wage earners. The calculation of the wage increase to be awarded, when the profits test shows that the profits return in industry as a whole is greater than that conceived to be a fair return, and the basis of distribution of this wage increase among the various groups of wage earners, were dealt with at some length and cannot be described more summarily. In order to apply any profits test, such as the suggested one, it would probably be necessary to enforce standardized accounting methods throughout industry. The most satisfactory policy would not attempt any direct control of profits. Nor would it make provision for the transfer of the extra profits that may be earned by particular enterprises or industries to the wage earners of those particular enterprises or industries. The forces of industrial competition, trade union activity, public opinion, and government regulation would have to be depended upon to keep the profits return of industry at approximately the level which may be set as the mark of just and sound distribution. A policy of direct control of profits may, however, be advisable in particular industries or on special occasions. The continued assent of the wage earners to any policy of wage settlement will be largely governed by the success of the community in making good its claim to a large part of the extra profits which may accrue to particular enterprises or industries. _Sixthly_--Any policy of wage settlement of the type considered above should give encouragement to the organization of labor throughout industry. It would have to make use of joint councils or boards in many ways (there may be some craft joint councils also). The English and Australian experience seems to prove that. To quote Justice Higgins of the Commonwealth Court of Australia, "The system of arbitrations adopted by the act is based on unionism. Indeed, without unions, it is hard to conceive how arbitration could be worked."[153] Still, once a dispute has come up before the central authority, the final power to render decisions should rest intact in its hands. All organizations of wage earners or employers should be compelled (if necessary) to agree to a policy of open membership. Such a policy of open membership should suffice to prevent monopolistic action on the part of the union in any industry or trade.[154] It would also be well if shop rules could be brought within the field of public supervision, but that may prove impracticable. Finally, it may be said that no part of the policy should interfere with the development of profit-sharing plans--provided such plans are the product of joint agreement between the employers and the workers engaging in them; and if the workers immediately concerned so desire, the labor organizations should be given full representation in the arrangements. Nor, indeed, should it discourage any movement towards the participation of the workers in the control of industry, whatever the scope of such participation. On the contrary, by creating mutual confidence between the wage earners and the directors of industry, and by giving both the wage earners and the employers training in the art of mutual agreement, it should prepare the way for the growth of such participation. These principles of wage settlement would, it is believed, form a sound and forward looking policy of wage settlement for industrial peace. Nevertheless, they are not put forward with the idea that they, or any similar set of principles for the settlement of wages, would be workable in practice without many hitches, and without the need for constant adaptation to the facts encountered. Nor without a suspicion of the hard blows and unexpected eventualities which fate usually has in store for fine proposals. 3.--Ultimately, of course, behind any proposals for industrial peace there is a striving to catch sight of a future industrial society more content, more generous and creative than that of the present time. To the ordinary observer no such ultimate question appears to be involved in an ordinary wages dispute. Yet it is there. The trade union leader fighting for a wage increase does not always see his demand as a plain group claim for greater reward; it frequently appears as an act of justice to his class, a step towards improving their position and power in industrial society. To the employer more often the struggle is merely to protect his profits. But beyond that in many cases there is a fear lest industrial growth and extension be obstructed. Any policy of wage settlement that is more than a weakly supported truce must throw some rays of hope into the future. What type of future industrial society may be envisaged if any principles of wage settlement similar in substance to those discussed in this book should be adopted? What suggestions for the future are contained in them? It is not easy to see. Only a few features of the future can be discerned and those sketchily. Industry would still be carried on in the main by private enterprise and competitive activity. Particular industries, as for example, the railroads, may become government owned or government operated enterprises. But even so, wages in those industries would be, in all probability, determined by the same principle as wages in other industries, and by the same agency. The function of capital accumulation would still be a private function. The tasks of industrial direction would still be carried out by the will of those who owned industry; although, in many industries the power and duty of deciding some of the important questions of direction, especially those which affect the wage earners most directly, might be in the hands of a council or board on which the wage earners are strongly represented. It may be hoped that all wage earners, except those judged sub-ordinary, would be in receipt of a wage at least sufficient to enable them to maintain themselves (and in the case of men, their family) at a standard of life which did not compare too unfavorably with the standard of life of the rest of the community. By virtue of this, the way would be opened for even the lowest grades of the wage earners to take advantage of the opportunities that are provided for physical and mental life and education. The ideal would be to ensure that the whole of the industrial population had that original grant of health, security, and hope which is required to give reality to the idea of equality of opportunity. It is vain, perhaps, to attempt to predict whether the level of production throughout industry would rise or fall; for that will be affected in a decisive measure by influences over which the policy of wage settlement will have little or no control. The proposals made would give adequate encouragement to the accumulation of capital, and to the carrying out of business ventures. It would succeed also, it may be hoped, in securing the active interest of the wage earners in a high level of production, by bringing about such a distributive outcome as appears just to the wage earners, and by giving adequate expression to the aspirations of the wage earners. In an industrial system, largely dominated by the single motive of personal gain, it is not likely that any one group or class will respond to a general need for high production unless its interests are thereby directly served. If the policy adopted brought about a broadening of the motives on which the system rests and operates, there is much ground for the belief that the level of production would be favorably affected. However, as was said above, the possibility of such a result will be largely governed by influences outside of the present field of study. There remain the questions of the distribution of wealth and of opportunity. Here, also, any conclusions that are ventured must rest upon an insufficient knowledge of the events which will govern the future. One of the chief requirements that proposals made were designed to satisfy is the attainment of such a distributive outcome as may be judged to be both just and sound--weighing all relevant considerations. Yet it would probably be over-optimistic to believe that the result would satisfy the intention. For all that, the general desire for a high level of production will largely depend upon the fulfillment of that intention. The wage earners will only continue to subscribe to a doctrine of high production if they trust to the action of the distributive mechanism to bring them a fair share of the resulting product. Here we are at the very storm center of socialist economics. The question is, to what extent, as a matter of fact, do the wage earners share in the result of increased productive efficiency? To that question, the policy of wage settlement must furnish a satisfactory answer--though, of course, no answer will be satisfactory to all men. The question of the prospective distribution of wealth, however, can hardly be considered apart from the question of the future course of growth in population. Even if the wage earners do receive that share of the product of industry which represents a just and sound distributive outcome, will that mean a gradual evolution of higher permanent standards of living among the poor, and give them a fair start in the struggle for opportunity? Or will it mean but a greater rate of increase in population, such as will more than keep pace with the ability of our natural resources and the advances in production and invention to provide the basis of a rising standard of life for all the population? In the latter case, groups will remain at the bottom of the industrial scale whose economic position will be so unfavorable under any social arrangements as to prevent the individual members of these groups to fairly develop and test their natural ability. In which case the handicap of inequality would be very real. The nineteenth century has left us with a hopeful outlook in regard to the possibility of maintaining a progressive standard of living throughout the community; but the events, purposes, and habits which will determine the outcome are too many, and their relative influence is too indeterminate to warrant any certain predictions. However, even if the menace of population is avoided, even if the general level of production is raised, and if, besides, the distributive outcome laid down as a goal for the policy of wage settlement is attained, nevertheless, there would remain a considerable measure of inequality of wealth. For, it is to be anticipated, that in the course of the development of our industrial organization, the amount of invested capital relative to the number of wage earners will grow. This means that the absolute amount of the product of industry which takes the form of profits will increase, even if the relative share does not. As Professor Taussig has written, "In general, the very forces which make the total income of society high and the general rate of wages high cause the proportion of income which forms return on capital to be large."[155] And any continued increase in the absolute amount of the product of industry taking the form of profits will be likely to lead to a considerable measure of inequality of wealth; unless the amount of accumulation and investment on the part of the wage earners is largely increased. So much for the question of the distribution of wealth. Is it possible to venture any definite conclusions, at all, regarding the distribution of opportunity? The idea of equality of opportunity is not an easy one to define in terms of facts. It can be said that it would be realized, in the economic sphere, if such economic conditions prevail, as gave all individuals an approximately equal chance to follow their inclinations, and to make whatever use of their natural abilities they desire. If that definition is near the heart of the matter, it is evident that in a society in which there is considerable inequality of wealth it will not be possible to secure equality of opportunity. As Mr. Tawney has remarked, "Talent and energy can create opportunity. But property need only wait for it." Under almost all circumstances there is a tendency for the distribution of opportunity to conform to the distribution of wealth. Still it is not to be concluded that this tendency is unconditional. If it proves possible to secure to every industrial family (except perhaps the most incapable) such a minimum standard of economic life, and such a degree of economic security as will bring it about that these families are not gravely handicapped in their efforts to utilize the existing opportunities for education and for economic advancement, an important step towards equality of opportunity will have been accomplished. It is true that a small section of the population will be strongly favored from the start. But, in an environment which encourages individual effort, the most important step in the process of securing equality of opportunity is to get rid of the serious obstacles to the development and active use of the natural ability of those born low in the industrial order. 4.--One important factor in industrial peace, which might well be given consideration in the formulation of a policy of wage settlement for industrial peace, has received but scant mention in this effort to formulate the terms of policy. It is the question of economic security for the wage earners. It is argued by some students of our industrial troubles that the fundamental desire of most workers is not for advancement, or even for high wages, but rather for secure and steady employment at customary rates. That this desire is often uppermost in the struggles of individuals and organizations is undoubtedly true; though the relative ease with which work was to be found in normal times in the United States has prevented the question of insecurity from being as acute a problem as in Great Britain, for example. The principles of wage settlement that have been put forward contain but one measure which might prove useful in an attempt to modify the insecurity of the wage earner in a modern industrial community. They provide for the establishment of joint boards or councils in each industry which are intended to have those phases of industrial activity which effect the welfare of the wage earners under constant observation. These councils might conceivably work out plans in different industries intended to steady the employment of the wage earners, and methods of insurance against the worst vicissitudes of their employment. In the pottery trade of England, for example, the industrial council has been giving consideration to the question of an Unemployment Insurance Fund for the industry. The possibilities of coöperation between employers and employed in that direction are genuine. The realization of any such plans will depend, of course, upon the growth of mutual trust, and upon the ability of all parties to work for a common end. They require that every important business man and labor leader be a statesman in the sphere of business. In the act establishing the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, and governing its operations, there is a provision which gives the Court a power which might enable it to deal with the question of irregularity of industrial activity. It is new in the history of industrial regulation in this country. It provides that the establishments covered by the act "shall be operated with reasonable continuity and efficiency in order that the people of this state may live in peace and security and be supplied with the necessaries of life"; it makes it unlawful for any establishment "wilfully to limit or cease operations for the purpose of limiting production or transportation or to affect prices for the purpose of avoiding any of the provisions of the act."[156] It further provides that such industries as are affected by changes in seasons, market conditions or other conditions inherent in the business may apply to the Court for an order fixing rules and practices to govern its operations. This provision may mean a great deal or very little, according as the Court and the higher courts interpret the idea of "reasonable continuity." If it is taken to mean simply that the enterprises covered by the act should not limit production in accordance with some agreement with each other in order to increase profits, or to fight the unions, it will have little or no importance as regards the question of security of employment. And that is probably the interpretation that will be given to it. It will be hardly possible to work out a plan for regularity of operation by mandate of a court, and under penalty. Such rules and practices as the Court may lay down will probably take cognizance of the laws of the market which ordinarily govern business operations. To rule otherwise would mean embarking upon a comprehensive reform of business operations; it would necessitate the development of some other gauge of business operation than business profits. Only one case which has come before the Court has brought up this question of continuity of operation. The Court investigated a complaint that the flour mills at Topeka were reducing production. It found that the mills were running at sixty per cent. capacity; and that the cause of this reduced operation was a falling off in the flour market, due to world-wide economic changes beyond the control of the industry and the Court. The Court found this limitation of production not unreasonable. It gave no sign of making any radical use of its powers to control the regularity of production, nor of interfering with the ordinary processes of business operation. This policy it tempered with concern for the workers--suggesting to the millers that they put their "skilled and faithful" employees on a monthly pay system. It appointed a committee to draw up rules and regulations to be observed in the operation of the industry, and to keep it informed. 5.--In the coming years there will take place in the United States much controversy and a great variety of experiments in wage settlement. To the realists of all parties, this course of controversy and experimentation will appear to be only a struggle for power. To the rest, it may appear that there are ideas at work; ideas springing partly from the example of political change, and partly from the fact that the industrial world has undergone such a rapid revolution. It is impossible to predict the ideas which will have the most abiding force. It is impossible even to assert that society will make a satisfactory choice among them. In the present confusion of counsel, two relatively new ideas, in particular, appear to me to be likely to endure and be accepted by society. The first is the idea that the welfare of the wage earners in each particular industry is one of the major questions in the conduct of that industry; and that the wage earners should participate effectively in those activities of direction by which the conditions of labor are determined. The second idea is that the whole body of wage earners in industry should possess the means of checking the action of private enterprise, when they can prove clearly that the methods of production that are being pursued are wasteful either of human or of material resources. An example of such a protest is that of the English coal miners against the organization of their industry--which was one of the grounds for the appointment of the Coal Commission. It would not appear to be impossible to reconcile the action of private investment and private enterprise with this concept of the right of the wage earners to exert control over the policy of production, in so far as they can establish the fact that human or material resources are not being well applied--the general interest being the test. The main current of industrial change will be, in my opinion, in the direction indicated by these two ideas. And change in that general direction is, it seems to me, essential to the peaceful conduct of industry, for only in some such way will a sense of common interest be established--which sense alone can hold together an undertaking so dependent upon a division of function as is modern industry. Through all changes, it will remain true that effective production depends upon the willingness to work hard for the sake of working well, and upon the existence of strong habits of self-dependence. FOOTNOTES: [151] "As law embodies beliefs that have triumphed in the battle of ideas, and have then translated themselves into action, while there is still doubt, while opposite convictions still keep a battle front against each other, the time for law has not yet come; the notion destined to prevail is not yet entitled to the field," "Law and the Court," address by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., before the Harvard Law School Association. [152] In this matter the Kansas Industrial Court law sets a good example by authorizing the Court to build up a staff of accountants, engineers and such other experts as it may need for the proper conduct of its operations. [153] H. B. Higgins, "A New Province for Law and Order," _Harvard Law Review_, March, 1915, page 23. [154] "Where the union admits all qualified workers to membership, under reasonable conditions, such a rule cannot become the basis of monopoly." U. S. Ind. Comm'n. Report (1915), Vol. I, page 116. Report signed by Commissioners Manly, Walsh, Lennon O'Connell and Garretson. [155] F. W. Taussig, "Principles of Economics," Vol. II, page 205. Revised Ed. [156] Sections 6 and 16 Act Creating Court of Industrial Relations, Kansas, 1920. 
28991	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original diagrams. See 28991-h.htm or 28991-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28991/28991-h/28991-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28991/28991-h.zip) THE NEXT STEP A Plan for Economic World Federation by SCOTT NEARING Author of _The American Empire_ Ridgewood, New Jersey Nellie Seeds Nearing 1922 * * * * * * _By the same author_ WAGES IN THE UNITED STATES. FINANCING THE WAGE EARNER FAMILY. REDUCING THE COST OF LIVING. ANTHRACITE. POVERTY AND RICHES. SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT. SOCIAL RELIGION. WOMEN AND SOCIAL PROGRESS. (Collaboration with Nellie Nearing) THE SUPER RACE. ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS. THE NEW EDUCATION. ECONOMICS. COMMUNITY CIVICS. (Collaboration with Jessie Field) SOLUTION OF THE CHILD LABOR PROBLEM. SOCIAL SANITY. THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. * * * * * * Copyright, 1922 All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America _This book is dedicated to the task of emancipating the human race from economic servitude_ "The community needs service first, regardless of who gets the profits, because its life depends on the service it gets." "Organizing for Work." H.L. GANTT. "It is not common language, literature and tradition alone, nor yet clearly defined or strategic frontiers, that will in the future give stability to the boundary lines of Europe, but rather such distribution of its supplies of coal and iron as will prevent any of the great nations of Europe becoming strong enough to dominate or absorb all the others." "The Economic Basis of an Enduring Peace." C.W. MACFARLANE. "Men cannot exist in their present numbers on the earth without world co-operation." "Our Social Heritage." GRAHAM WALLAS. "The real way, surely, in which to organize the interests of producers is by working out a delimitation of industry, and confiding the care of its problems to those most concerned with them. This is, in fact, a kind of federalism in which the powers represented are not areas but functions." "Foundations of Sovereignty." H.J. LASKI. SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT Men progress in proportion as they are able to fit themselves for life, and to fit life to themselves. Both processes go on unceasingly. Recent economic changes have brought the remotest parts of the world into close contact with "civilization" at the same time that they have increased the dependence of one part of the world upon another part. Oddly enough, this interdependence has been intensified under a system of society that deified competition. The conflicts, inevitably resulting from such a contradiction, have taken a terrible toll in life and well-being, and have left Europe in chaos. The successful organization of the life of the world is impossible without the organization of its economic affairs. For the present plan of competition between groups, classes and nations there must be substituted a means of co-operative living. The organization of a producers society will provide that means. Local initiative must be preserved; self-government in economic affairs must be assured, and the economic activities of the world must be federated in such a way that all economic problems of world concern will be brought under some central authority which is representative of the various interests involved at the same time that it controls the disposition of economic life. A world parliament composed of representatives elected by the workers in the various producing groups would provide such a central authority, and would furnish the means of directing the economic experiments of the race. Economic emancipation is the objective. The means for its attainment is a society organized in terms of producers groups, and living in accordance with the highest known standards of intelligent social direction. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER HEADINGS 1. _A World Economic Program_ CHAPTER I. THE NEW ECONOMIC LIFE 13 CHAPTER II. THE ECONOMIC MUDDLE 28 2. _World Economic Organization_ III. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS 51 IV. ECONOMIC SELF-GOVERNMENT 76 V. A WORLD PRODUCERS' FEDERATION 100 VI. WORLD ADMINISTRATION 119 3. _Economic Progress_ CHAPTER VII. TRIAL AND ERROR IN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 135 VIII. ECONOMIC LIBERATION 151 WHAT TO READ 164 SECTION HEADINGS CHAPTER I. THE NEW ECONOMIC LIFE 13 1. The Historic Present. 2. Economic Needs. 3. Worldizing Economic Activity. 4. The Basis of a World Program. 5. The League of Nations Failure. 6. Axioms of Economic Reorganization. CHAPTER II. THE ECONOMIC MUDDLE 28 1. Bankruptcy and Chaos. 2. Localized Problems. 3. World Problems. 4. Competition for Economic Advantage. 5. Distribution of the World's Wealth. 6. The Livelihood Struggle. 7. Guaranteeing Livelihood. 8. Distribution and the Social Revolution. 9. A New Order. 10. The Basis of World Reconstruction. CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS 51 1. The Social Structure. 2. Specialization, Association, Co-operation. 3. Three Lines of Economic Organization. 4. Economic Forms. 5. Limitations on Capitalism. 6. The Growth of Capitalism. 7. Effective Economic Units. 8. Classes of Economic Units. 9. The Ideal and the Real. CHAPTER IV. ECONOMIC SELF-GOVERNMENT 76 1. Maximum Advantage. 2. The Essentials for Maximum Returns. 3. Centralized Authority. 4. An Ideal Economic Unit. 5. Rewarding Energy. 6. The Ownership of the Economic Machinery. 7. Economic Leadership. 8. The Selection of Leaders. 9. The Detail of Organization. 10. The Progress of Self-Government. CHAPTER V. A WORLD PRODUCERS' FEDERATION 100 1. World Outlook. 2. The Need of Organization. 3. Present-day Economic Authority. 4. Federation as a Way Out. 5. Building a Producers' Federation. 6. Four Groups of Federations. 7. The Form of Organization. 8. All Power to the Producers! CHAPTER VI. WORLD ADMINISTRATION 119 1. The Basis for World Administration. 2. The Field of World Administration. 3. Five World Problems. 4. Work of the Administrative Boards. 5. The Resources and Raw Materials Board. 6. The Transport and Communication Board. 7. The Exchange, Credit and Investment Board. 8. The Budget Board. 9. The Adjudication of Disputes Board. 10. The Detail of World Administration. CHAPTER VII. TRIAL AND ERROR IN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 135 1. Trying Things Out. 2. The Capitalist Experiment. 3. The Cost of Experience. 4. Education. 5. Pacing the Future. 6. Accumulating Social Knowledge. 7. Conscious Social Improvement. 8. The Barriers to Progress. 9. Next Steps. 10. The Success Qualities. CHAPTER VIII. ECONOMIC LIBERATION 151 1. Why Organize? 2. Freedom from Primitive Struggle. 3. Freedom from Servility. 4. Wisdom in Consumption. 5. Leisure for Effective Expression. 6. Culture and Human Aspiration. WHAT TO READ 164 THE NEXT STEP I. THE NEW ECONOMIC LIFE 1. _The Historic Present_ The knell of a dying order is tolling. Its keynote is despair. Gaunt hunger pulls at the bell-rope, while dazed humanity listens, bewildered and afraid. Uncertainty and a sense of futility have gripped the world. They are manifesting themselves in unrest, disillusionment, the abandonment of ideals, opportunism, and a tragic concentration on the life of the moment, which alone seems sure. The future promises so little that even the most hopeful pause on its threshold, hesitant, and scarce daring to penetrate its mystery. The war showed the impotence of the present order to assure even a reasonable measure of human happiness and well-being. Of what profit the material benefits of a civilization that takes a toll of thirty-five millions of lives and that wrecks the economic machinery of a continent in four short years? Yet the failure of the revolutionary forces to avail themselves of the opportunity presented by the war proved the unreadiness of the masses to throw off the yoke of the old régime and to lay the foundations of a new order. The world rulers painted a picture of liberated humanity that led tens of millions to fight with the assurance that victory would make that hope a reality. The workers yearned for the social revolution and for the establishment of the co-operative commonwealth with its promise of equality and fraternity. But the events that staggered the world between 1914 and 1920 shattered both ideals. Now that the terrible conflict has ceased, we pause and reflect. Millions are weary, millions are old, millions are broken, millions are disappointed, and the weary ones, the old ones, the broken ones and the disappointed ones have lost their vision and have abandoned their faith. Yet life sweeps on--its unity unimpaired, its continuity unbroken, its force unchecked, its vigor unabated. Multitudes have been born since the end of the Great War, and other multitudes, who were babes in arms when the Great War began, are growing into young manhood and womanhood. The war, with its hardships and its fearful losses, is history. The present, merging endlessly with the future, makes of each day a to-morrow in which hundreds of millions of those who now inhabit the earth will live. How? That is the question which the world to-day faces. The answer is in our hands. 2. _Economic Needs_ Humanity has always been face to face with the bread and butter problem because people must have food and clothing and a roof over their heads or pay the penalty in physical suffering. Under the present world order, for lack of these simple economic requirements, millions of poverty-stricken workers perish each year, of slow starvation and exposure in Paris, London, Chicago, Tokyo; of famine in China, Egypt and India. Some issues present themselves for consideration only occasionally. The demand for economic necessaries each day recurs with tireless insistence in the life of every individual. Men have learned this fact through frightful experiences, and they look forward with hope or with dread to the comfort of plenty or to the disaster of want. So effectually have these forces entered into everyday life that they color all aspects of human existence, and people continually think and act in terms of economic hardship or of economic well-being. This simple fact of economic determinism--the influence of the livelihood struggle upon the conduct of individuals and of societies--plays a fateful part in shaping both biography and history. The economic issues before primitive society were comparatively simple ones. The producer--the hunter, herder, farmer--snared his game and cooked it, tended his goats and lived on their milk and flesh, planted and reaped his crops, and used them to sustain life. Later, the baker, the saddler, the tailor and the carpenter spent their energies in producing the articles of their trade and in disposing of them. The herdsman could live on his hills, the farmer in his valleys and the artisans in their towns, content and at peace with the remainder of the world, neither knowing nor caring what was happening to their fellow dwellers on the planet. Confined within its narrow bounds, primitive thought was as local as primitive life. But such isolation is no longer possible. The currents of economic life, like most other phases of human activity, have swept beyond the local forests, the grass lands, the tilled fields, the oven and the carpenter's bench, and gaining momentum in their ever-widening course, they have circled the world. 3. _Worldizing Economic Activity_ The past hundred years have witnessed a speedy worldizing of human affairs built upon a transformation in the ways of making a living. These changes have been effected by the industrial revolution, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century began to make itself felt in Great Britain. Its influence spread over Europe, America and Australia during the last three-quarters of the nineteenth century, but it did not reach Japan until 1860. Almost within the memory of the present generation, therefore, the scope of trade, manufacture and finance, the search for markets, the organization and unification of labor and of popular thinking about economic problems, have passed from a local into a world field. The inventions and discoveries which were the immediate cause of the industrial revolution succeeded one another with a bewildering rapidity that is well illustrated in the case of communication. The steamboat, first made practicable in 1807, and the locomotive, invented about 1815, provided the means of rapid transportation of goods, people and messages. The power press (1814) and the manufacture of paper from wood-pulp (begun in 1854) made possible cheap and abundant reading matter. The telegraph, invented about 1837, laid the basis for instantaneous communication. The first trans-Atlantic cable (1858) annihilated the water barrier to thought. The telephone (1876) and the wireless (1896) brought the more remote parts of each country and of the world within easy reach of the centers of civilization, while the radio-phone (1921) enables millions to sit around a common table for thought, instruction or enjoyment. The camera (1802) supplemented by the moving picture process (1890) has enabled those who do not read to secure information that was formerly reserved for the learned and the cultured. Thus steam, electricity, and a number of other discoveries and inventions in the realm of natural science have brought the minds of the world in as close touch as were the inhabitants of a fifteenth century Italian city. The effects of industrialism date only from history's yesterday, yet its results have already been momentous and far-reaching. This is particularly true of the close dependence of industries upon supplies of raw materials and fuels, of the volume and the variety of the goods produced and transported, of the speed with which communications are sent, of the widened opportunities for travel, and of the immense amount of information on the printed page and the film that goes, each day, from one part of the world to another. Nature has not scattered coal, iron, copper and sugarland over the earth in the same lavish way that she has distributed air and sunshine. On the contrary, the important resources from which industry derives its raw materials and its fuels are found within very limited areas to which the remainder of the world must go for the commodities that supply its basic industries. Within each country raw materials are produced at one point and shipped elsewhere. Ore, coal, grain and meat-animals make up the bulk of the freight tonnage in Europe, in America and in Australia. A similar economic relation exists between the various countries, some of which produce far more than their proportionate share of minerals and fuels. Thus, in 1913, the United States, with but 7 per cent of the world's population, produced 36 per cent and consumed 37 per cent of the world's iron ore supply. The figures for the other important nations were: ("World Atlas of Commercial Geology," Dept. of the Interior, Washington, 1921, p. 27) Per Cent Per Cent Produced Consumed Germany 20 27 Britain 9 14 France 12 7 Russia 5 5 Belgium 0 4 Spain 6 1 Only in France and Spain did production exceed consumption. Four of the remaining countries used more iron ore than they produced, which meant that they were forced to depend upon some other country for their supply. Belgium, with her many industries, imported practically all of the iron ore that she used. Coal furnishes an even more striking illustration of the economic dependence of one part of the world upon another. The production and consumption of coal, for 1913, in millions of tons, were as follows: Tons Tons Produced Consumed United States 517 495 Britain 292 217 Germany 191 167 France 40 60 Italy 1 10 Austria-Hungary 17 30 The United States, Britain and Germany produced, in this one year, 121 millions of tons of coal that were either stored or exported. France, Italy and Austria, together with many of the smaller industrial countries of Europe were forced to depend upon their neighbors for coal. In the case of Italy, practically all of the coal used was imported. Again, the United States and Spain are alone among the principal countries producing a surplus of copper. Out of a consumption (1913) of 127,000 tons, Britain imported 126,572; France imported 91,437 of the 91,486 tons consumed, and Germany, out of 259,300 tons consumed, imported 234,000 tons. These figures of the production and consumption of iron, coal and copper tell the story of an economic interdependence that makes isolated industrial life virtually impossible. Manufacturing and transport depend for their maintenance upon minerals and fuels, and those countries that propose to manufacture and to transport must either produce minerals themselves or depend upon some other country that does produce them. In practice, a few countries are enabled to produce more of the minerals and fuels than they themselves use, and to sell the surplus to their needy neighbors. With the spread of the industrial system, this dependence will increase rather than diminish because of the way in which the reserve supplies of minerals and fuels are distributed. The principal deposits of iron, coal, copper and petroleum are apparently in the Western Hemisphere, and particularly in North America. In so far as this is true, the remainder of the world will be compelled to look to the Americas for these basic commodities. Out of a total world product of iron ore (1913) of 177 millions of tons, the United States produced 63 millions (over a third) because that country is far better supplied with available iron ore deposits than is any other country. Since the war, France holds the second largest deposits, but the third largest are in Newfoundland, the fourth largest in Cuba, and the fifth largest in Brazil, whose "enormous deposits are almost untouched" ("Atlas," p. 26). As for coal, about three-fourths of the world's known reserves are in North America. The largest known reserves of copper are in North and South America--those of Canada and Mexico are comparatively important; those of Chili probably greater than any other country except the United States. Petroleum is also highly localized. Between 1857 and 1918 the world's production of petroleum was 1,005 millions of tons. Of this total, three-fifths came from the United States, while seventeen-twentieths came from the United States and Russia. Indeed, resources are limited and localized to such a point that the economic survival of many parts of the industrial world depends upon the continued importation of raw materials from other countries or from other continents. This localization of resources has resulted in a corresponding localization of many of the basic industries. Germany thus became a manufacturing center and Argentina a producer of food. Necessarily these two countries exchange their products, the Germans eating Argentinian wheat reaped by German machinery. So complete has this specialization become, that industrial communities, and even industrial countries, like Britain and Germany, have ceased to produce sufficient food for their maintenance, and have relied, instead, on the American, African and Australian grain fields.[1] In order to buy wheat, these countries must sell manufactured goods. In order to manufacture, they are compelled to import the raw materials and fuels--cotton, copper, rubber, petroleum, coal, iron. The countries with highly developed industries have therefore ceased to be self-sufficient. Their whole economic life has become a part and parcel of the life of the world. This world interdependence is reflected in the growth of world commerce from a total value of 1,659 millions of dollars in 1820, 4,049 millions in 1850, and 20,105 millions in 1900, to 75,311 millions in 1919. Meanwhile, the nominal tonnage of steam and sailing vessels increased from 5.8 millions of tons in 1820 to 12.3 millions of tons in 1850, to 20.5 millions in 1900, and to 32.2 millions in 1919. Resources are sought after, raw materials are transported and manufactured into usable products, manufactured products are exchanged for food and raw materials, and the cycle is thus completed. In its course, all of the principal countries and all of the continents are drawn upon for the means of maintaining economic life. While the industrial revolution broke the spell of isolation that lay so heavily upon the remote parts of the world, the driving power of the economic forces that followed in its wake, has battered down the geographic barriers that separate men, almost to the vanishing point. Peoples work together, exchange the products of their labor, travel, accumulate and spread news, broadcast ideas and organize and co-ordinate business ventures and labor unions, without any great consideration for geography, and despite the political boundary lines that separate nations. A century of rapid economic development has brought the world into a physical unity the like of which it has never before experienced. Through the ages, human brotherhood has been the theme of philosophers and poets. Recent economic changes have established a world fellowship, not, to be sure, of the kind about which utopists had dreamed, but one growing out of the exigencies of world interdependence. Tens of millions are to-day co-operating in production and exchange, not because of any sweet reasonableness but because the pre-emptory demands of existence leave them no choice. Of necessity, therefore, since they are in constant touch with one another, they begin to learn one another's little ways; to inquire into the personalities of the "foreigners" that pass them on the street, work with them elbow to elbow in the shops, and eat with them at the same restaurant tables. This new brotherhood is an outgrowth of day-to-day relations in an industrial community. Old time questions were of a kind that divided men. "Are you a Christian?" "Where were you born?" "Can you speak Spanish?" No matter how a man answered these questions he got himself into difficulty. If he was a Christian, he found two-thirds of the world confronting him with different religious beliefs. If he was born in France, he was compelled to assume all of the enmities, hatreds and antagonisms felt by Frenchmen for their rivals. If he spoke anything except Spanish, he was a "foreigner" in Spain. The old world was a separatist world, lined with walls, fences, boundary stakes and frontiers. Modern questions bring men into touch with one another. "Can you repair a locomotive?" "Do you understand coal mining?" "Can you carry us safely to Japan?" "Will you take shoes in exchange for petroleum?" "Are you able to get along with people?" "Have you any surplus wheat?" "How do you suppose we can get rid of the boll-weevil?" "Let us show you a new style tractor." If a man can repair an engine, he is wanted in an engine shop. If he can dig coal, he is needed in a coal mine. If he has shoes to exchange for fuel, he finds a ready customer. If he can get along with an odd assortment of his fellows, he is in demand everywhere. The new world is a co-operative world in which people are working together, living together, thinking together; and a test of man's capacity to take part in its activities lies in his ability to be an effective, co-operating member of a world group. [Footnote 1: Before the war Great Britain imported about half of her food. By 1920 she was importing about three-quarters of it. On the basis of the 1919-1920 harvests, British wheat sufficed for less than a third of the British population. See "The Fruits of Victory," Norman Angell, Glasgow. Collins, 1921, p. 9.] 4. _The Basis of a World Program_ With economic life established on a world scale, it is inevitable that the range of men's thoughts and the lines of their social groupings should assume the same general scope. The late war made it quite apparent that war means world war, and that a real peace is impossible unless it is a world peace. The post-war experience has shown with equal clearness, that prosperity means world prosperity, and that it is impossible to destroy the economic well-being of an integral part of the world without destroying the well-being of the whole world. These things were suspected before the war, when they formed the themes of moral dissertations and scholarly essays, of syndicalist pamphlets, socialist programs and revolutionary appeals. But it required the hard knocks of the past eight years to lift them so far out of the realm of theory into that of reality, that any thinking human being who faces the facts must admit their truth.[2] The economics of the modern world make it inevitable that thinkers on public questions, particularly on economic questions, should frame their thoughts in world terms, and that the practical plans for the organization and direction of human affairs should be built around an idea which includes these three elements: 1. _Any workable plan for the organization of the world must have an economic foundation._ 2. _Such a plan must include all of the economically essential portions of the world._ It will be ineffective if it is confined to any one nation, to any one group of nations, or to any one continent. 3. _Such a plan must rely, for its fulfillment, on world thinking and world organization._ These propositions do not imply that economic forces and world organization must become the centers of exclusive attention. There are potent forces, other than economic ones, and there are forms of local organization that must be developed or perpetuated as a matter of course. But for the moment the economic forces and the world phases of organization have assumed a position of primary importance. [Footnote 2: The Manchester Guardian Commercial, Supplement for April 20, 1922, page IV, carries an advertisement signed by Sir Charles W. Macara, Chairman and Managing Director of Henry Bannerman and Sons, Ltd., Chairman of the Manchester Cotton Employers Association, etc., which contains a very forceful presentation of this point. "It is impossible for any country to expect to win economic success at the expense or in total indifference to the success of others.... The good of one country is bound up with the good of another, and it is only by studying what will be mutually advantageous that we shall find the key to our good fortune.... The whole world is interdependent, and you cannot injure one member of the international body without injuring all the rest."] 5. _The League of Nations Failure_ The principal scheme recently advanced as a means of co-ordinating the life of the world--the League of Nations Covenant--violates all three of these essential principles. In the first place, the League Covenant, with certain minor exceptions, is a political and not an economic document, devoting its attention to territorial integrity and the preservation of sovereignty, and passing over such economic problems as resource control, and the competition for raw materials, markets and investment opportunities as though they were non-existent. In the second place instead of concerning itself with all of the integral parts of the world, it treats nations other than the "big five" (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States) as though they were of second or of third rate importance. China, India, Germany, Russia and Latin America, with considerably more than half of the world's population, and with at least half of the world's essential resources, were slighted or ignored. In the third place, the League Covenant is not based on world thinking. On the contrary, it was designed to set up one part of the world, the victorious Allies, against four other parts of the world: the enemy countries, Soviet Russia, the undeveloped (unexploited) countries, and the small and powerless countries. Political, sectional and provincial in its point of view, the League, as a means of world organization, was destined, from its inception, to pathetic failure. World economic life is an established fact of such moment that it must be reckoned with in any scheme for social rebuilding. A capacity for organization and for conscious improvement distinguishes man from most of the animals. In the past, men have organized the army, the church, the city, the nation, the school. The events surrounding the industrial revolution have placed a new task on their shoulders--the task of organizing world economic life. Without doubt this is the largest and the most intricate problem in organization that the human race has ever faced. On the other hand, the interdependence of economic life invites co-ordination, while the advances in organization methods, particularly among the masses of the people, render the transition from local to world organization quite logical and relatively easy--far easier, certainly, than the first hesitating steps that the race took in the direction of co-operative activities. Even though the task were far more difficult than it is, the race must perform it or pay an immense price in hardship, suffering and decimation. The work is already begun. Private capitalists have built world systems of trade, transport and banking. Soviet Russia has made an heroic attempt to organize one portion of the earth's surface along economic lines. For the most part, however, the task of co-ordinating the world's economic life awaits the courage and the genius of a generation that shall add this triumph to the achievements of the race. 6. _Axioms of Economic Reorganization_ Certain well-defined and widely understood principles, that might almost be called axioms of social procedure, are to be reckoned with in any effort at world economic reorganization. For convenience of discussion, they may be summarized thus: 1. _The wheels of industry must be kept turning smoothly, regularly and efficiently._ A country like Russia, consisting, for the most part of agricultural villages, can survive, even though machine industries practically cease to function, while such countries as Germany and Britain, built of Bremens, Hamburgs, Essens, Glasgows and Manchesters are dependent for their food supply as well as for their supply of raw materials upon the continued production and transport of commodities. The State of Rhode Island, with its 97.5 per cent of city and town dwellers, typifies this dependence. Given such concentrated populations engaged in specialized industries, and the cessation of production means speedy starvation for those that cannot migrate. 2. _Provision must be made for improvements and betterments._ The increase of population and the normal advances in science and industry both demand a volume of product adequate to cover the necessary increases in equipment. 3. _The people who do the work must dispose of the products they turn out._ They may consume them all, or they may reserve a portion of them for new roads, for additional rolling stock, for the advancement of art and learning. Whatever the character of the decision, the right and power to make it rests with those who produce the goods of which a disposition is being made. 4. _Justice and fair dealing must be embodied in the scheme of production and distribution._ This does not mean absolute justice, but as much justice as the collective intelligence and will of the community are able to put into force. For the attainment of such a result, the forms of social life must be constantly altered to keep pace with economic change. 5. _The foregoing principles must apply, not to one man, or class, or people, but to all men, all classes and all peoples._ Recent events have shown that an injury to one is an injury to all. Reasoning, foresight and experience will convince the people of the world that a benefit to one is a benefit to all. While men continue to live together, their livelihood problems must be thought about collectively, and the solutions that are determined upon must be applied to all, without discrimination. How shall such results be obtained? By what means is it possible to lead men to a world vision? Who can persuade them to work toward the building of a sounder society than that with which the world is now laboring? Of all the issues that confront the teachers of men, this is one of the most pressing and most insistent. Those who have taken upon themselves the task of seeking out and of expounding ideas have seldom faced a graver responsibility than that with which they are at the moment confronted. World facts demand world thoughts and world acts, before the human race can adopt saner, wiser and more enlightened economic policies. World thoughts and acts are impossible without world understanding. Therefore it is world understanding that is most imperatively needed in this critical hour. The people of the world have many things in common--economic interests, science, art, ideas, ideals. Ranged against these common interests there are the traditions, prejudices, hatreds, national barriers, sectarian differences, language obstacles and racial conflicts that have proved so effective in keeping the peoples separated. The common interests are the vital means of social advancement, and it is upon them that the emphasis of constructive thinking must be laid in an effort to promote world understanding. There is no need to apologize, then, for adding to groaning library shelves a book dealing with world economics, the purpose of which is to propose a plan that will pull together the scattered threads of world economic life. The time is so ripe for an examination of these problems that no man may consider himself informed who has not pondered them deeply, and no man may consider that he has done his duty as a member of this generation, who has not helped, at least in some degree, to unify the world's economic activities. Most particularly does this apply both to the statesmen and other public men who are striving to rejuvenate a dying order, and to the organizers and leaders of the new order that is even now pressing across the threshold of the western world. II. THE ECONOMIC MUDDLE 1. _Bankruptcy and Chaos_ World economic affairs are in a muddle. Famine has gripped Central Europe since 1918; unemployment is rife in Japan, Argentina, Britain, and the United States; business depression is felt in all of the principal industrial countries; producer and consumer alike find the world's economic machinery sadly out of gear. There have been innumerable predictions of "better times ahead," but among those who are closely connected with industry, there is serious concern over the future of the present economic system, while a formidable array of students and investigators agree with Bass and Moulton that: "It is not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that all of continental Europe might in the course of the next twenty-five years, or even sooner, go the way that Russia has already gone. It would not necessarily be through the instrumentality of Bolshevism; it might easily go in the Austrian way." ("America and the Balance Sheet of Europe." New York. Ronald Press. 1921. p. 138-9.) The cause for such gloomy utterances may be found in those superficial indications of chaos such as the breakdown of exchange and of international trade; the severe business depression; the waste and inefficiency of industry; the prevalence of unrest and sabotage, and the preparations for future wars. Traditionally, the old institutions still exist and are cherished by those who believe that they will be rehabilitated and re-established. But as the months succeed one another and lengthen into years, without any evidence that "things will right themselves as soon as the war is over," it becomes increasingly apparent, even to the conservative that the situation is far from what they had promised themselves it would be. Europe's day-to-day experience between 1919 and 1922 has convinced millions that some disaster impends. For the most part, however, they fail to realize that the "disaster" is already upon them. The disorganization of the world's financial structure, following on the drains of the war and the debauches and exactions of the peace, has been the object of much comment, with the emphasis laid on the aspects rather than on the essential characteristics of the breakdown. One of the basic assumptions of the present economic order is that promises to pay must be redeemed at par. Failing in this redemption, the promisor is declared bankrupt, and beyond the pale of reputable business society. During the past eight years, most of the leading countries of Europe have become bankrupt. Before the World War, the sixteen principal belligerents had total debts of 28,660 millions of dollars, with a total note circulation of 5,000 millions, making a total of promises to pay amounting to something more than 33 billions of dollars. When the Treaty of Paris was signed, these sixteen countries reported debts of 171,633 millions of dollars and paper money issues of 77,954 millions, making a total of promises to pay about eight times the volume of 1913. Since the signing of the Treaty, most of the European countries, belligerents and neutrals alike, have continued to pile up obligations. According to the estimates of O.P. Austin, of the National City Bank of New York, world indebtedness was 43 billions of dollars in 1913, 205 billions in 1918 and 400 billions in 1921. ("Our Eleven Billions," R. Mountsier. Seltzer. 1922. p. 43.) A point has now been reached where the French, Russian, Italian, German, Austrian and Hungarian debts are equal to at least half of the total estimated national wealth. When it is remembered that most of this wealth is in private hands, and heavily encumbered with private mortgages; that the cities have issued enormous numbers of bonds against the same wealth, and that even though the wealth were in public hands it could not be liquidated for anything like its estimated value, it must be apparent that the capitalist world--particularly that part lying in Central Europe--has put itself into a position where its governments cannot meet their promises to pay. Nor is this the worst. The war experience taught European government officials that it was possible to make money and pay debts with the aid of printing presses. The rapid increase in prices, and the unwillingness of the owning classes to pay for the war by means of a capital levy, placed the governments in a position where the ordinary expenses, plus the costs of the war, the interest on the war bonds, the costs of reparations and other extraordinary expenses amounted to far more than the total government revenue. As lately as 1920, all of the European belligerents, with the exception of Great Britain, all of the European neutrals, except Sweden, and all of the other principal countries of the world except Peru and the United States, reported expenditures in excess of receipts. The deficit for Austria amounted to 38 per cent of its expenditures. In other principal countries the ratio of deficit to expenditure was: Belgium 69 per cent France 57 " " Germany 46 " " Italy 21 " " Japan 17 " " ("Our Eleven Billions," p. 40-41). These events led inevitably to a demoralization of the foreign exchange market, which reflects the measure of confidence felt by the business men of one community in the promises to pay made by the government of another community. The exchange values of the non-warring countries remained generally near to par during the entire war and post war period. Japanese exchange fluctuated very little; British pounds, which up to the time of the war were recognized the world over as the standard of value, fell to about three fifths of their par value as expressed in dollars; the French franc and the Italian lira fell to a quarter of their par values, while the Russian ruble, the German mark, the Austrian and the Polish crowns fell to less than one-tenth of one per cent of par. In addition to the serious depreciation of these various currencies, their values fluctuated from day to day and hour to hour, making business transactions difficult or impossible. Coupled with the disorganization of exchange has been the economic depression which, beginning in March, 1920, spread like a tidal wave, bringing disaster and hardship to workers, farmers and business men. With abundant crops, with industries united into great combinations, with the banks more efficiently organized than ever before in modern times, there should have been no crisis according to the accepted economic philosophy, or, if there was a temporary set-back following the strain of the war, it should have been a regulated panic. But despite the predictions the depression came, and proved to be one of the most severe that the modern world has experienced. The thoughtful man noting these facts, and then learning that, beginning with the hard times of 1814, there have been seventeen of these breakdowns in the economic machinery of the United States, with corresponding derangements in France, Britain, Germany and the other industrial countries; and learning further that there is a tendency for such catastrophes to become more, rather than less severe, begins to wonder whether the difficulty is not very much more deep-seated than many public men would have him believe. Even the most stalwart supporters of the present order must agree that the system does not function smoothly. There are many bumps, jars and hitches, and considerable friction. Another evidence of economic chaos is furnished by the extent of industrial waste. Studies in industrial efficiency have led recently to the publication of a number of reports, the most ambitious of which, "Waste in Industry," issued by the Committee on the Elimination of Waste in Industry of the Federated Engineering Societies of the United States, describes waste under four aspects: 1. Low production caused by faulty management of materials, plant, equipment and men. 2. Interrupted production, caused by idle men, idle materials, idle plant and idle equipment. 3. Restricted production, intentionally caused by owners, management or labor. 4. Lost production, caused by ill health, physical defects and industrial accidents. (Page 8.) With these various kinds of waste in mind the committee made a survey of some of the leading industries in the United States, and drew up a table showing the percentage of waste found in each industry. The figures were as follows: Men's Clothing Manufacturing 63.78 per cent Building Industry 53.00 " " Printing 57.61 " " Boot and Shoe Manufacturing 40.93 " " Metal Trades 28.66 " " Textile Manufacturing 49.20 " " The bulk of the responsibility for this waste is placed on "management,"--the lowest percentage (50 per cent) in Textile Manufacturing, and the highest (81 per cent) in the Metal Trades. The remainder of the responsibility is shared by labor, with a minimum of 9 per cent in the Metal Trades and a maximum of 28 per cent in Printing, and by miscellaneous causes, with a minimum of 9 per cent in Men's Clothing and Printing and a maximum of 40 per cent in Textile Manufacturing. (Page 9.) There are a number of angles from which this result may be viewed. Waste may be looked upon merely as the index of industrial inefficiency due to the failure of the industrial mechanism to adjust itself to the demands made upon it. In that case the remedy for the waste is superior adjustment of the present system to itself. On the other hand, if the waste is the result of friction generated within the system, there must be some change in the system before it can be eliminated. The latter explanation seems to tally with the facts more thoroughly than does the former. Certainly, the unrest, bitterness and general sabotage which are encountered throughout the industrial order would point to the conclusion that the economic system is generating its own condition of chaos. Sabotage, or "go slow," is becoming the dominant note of the entire economic system. "Get the most you can out and put the least possible in," is the theory upon which both workers and owners are operating. There has been much comment upon the tendency of the workers to use the go slow tactics. The real withholding of productive effort, however, takes place among the owners and managers of industry. Industrial leaders are well versed in the law of monopoly profit: "Minimum product at maximum price." The railroad men have rephrased the law thus: "All that the traffic will bear." Industry has been organized and capitalized and is now owned by a group whose interests lie, not in the extent of production, but in the volume of profit. When profit is no longer forthcoming, the owners practice the conscious withholding of efficiency. In accordance with this general policy the control of industry is shifting from the hands of engineers into the hands of financial experts "who are unremittingly engaged in a routine of acquisition, in which they habitually reach their ends by a shrewd restriction of output; and yet they continue to be entrusted with the community industrial welfare, which calls for maximum production." ("The Engineers and the Price System," Thorstein Veblen. Huebsch. 1921. p. 40-41.) The recent cry of the American farmer: "Produce only what you need for your own keep," is a crude effort to imitate the successful tactics of the business world in limiting production to the volume that will yield the greatest possible profit to the owner. War-menace constitutes another indication of the chaos existing in modern economic society. The purpose of economic activity is to produce wealth. The purpose of war is to destroy it. The two are therefore in direct antagonism; yet the greatest war machines are maintained by the greatest industrial nations. To reply that they have the big war machines because they can afford to pay for them, is no conclusive answer. The organizing of nations for war came into present-day society with the present industrial system. Industrial leaders have engaged in a great competitive struggle from which the final appeal was always the appeal to arms. Furthermore, one of the most profitable businesses has been that of making the munitions and supplies required for the prosecution of war. Nor is there wanting evidence that modern wars have been made for profits--that they have been "commercial wars," as President Wilson put it. There is no longer any question but that the forces behind the world war were in the main economic. The war was fought by capitalist empires, for the furtherance of capitalist enterprises. The publication of the secret treaties entered into by the Allies in 1916 gives conclusive proof of the land grabbing character of the Allies' intentions. There can scarcely be any question of the existence of similar intentions on the side of the Central Empires. The forces that constituted the war menace in 1914 were the economic forces arising out of the competitive economic régime that dominated the European world at that time. Since the ending of the war, these forces have been augmented rather than abated. To them there must be added the other element of danger that threatens to throw Europe again into turmoil. Soviet Russia is and for a time must remain a source of international bitterness among the great capitalist nations, while the struggle for the control of the Near East is fraught with consequences as momentous as was the pre-war German dream of a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad. Unrest in Egypt, India, Korea, and the other countries held in subjection by the power of the bayonet; the contest between Japan, Britain and the United States for the control of the Pacific and the exploitation of China; the unrest and revolution that are stirring in China; the keen intensity of the struggle for foreign markets and for such strategic resources as the supply of petroleum, are all suggestive of a situation resembling an open gasoline can surrounded by lighted matches. And to add the last, and the most realistic touch to the picture, there are a million more men under arms in Europe than there were in 1913, while the military and naval authorities in all of the leading countries are busy planning how and where the next war is to be fought. (See "The Next War," Will Erwin. Dutton, 1921; "The Coming War with America," John MacLean. British Socialist Party, 1920; "War in the Future," F. von Bernbardi. Berlin, 1920; "The Inevitable War between Japan and America," F. Wencker. Stuttgart, 1921; "Coal, Iron and War," E.C. Eckel. New York, Holt, 1920, etc.) Before the grass was green over the graves where lies the flower of Europe's manhood, leaders of the present order were busy with the blueprints of another carnage. The facts speak for themselves. The existence of such chaos is a matter of every day comment and experience. Though its nature and its causes are little understood, there is no issue of more immediate concern to the western world than the intelligent solution of the vexing questions arising out of the production and distribution of wealth. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the entire western world was so organized that one group or class owned the land, the machines and the productive devices with which other groups or classes worked in order to live. The establishment of this "capitalist" system between 1750 when it had its start in England, and 1860, when it secured a foothold in Japan, has raised certain questions of economic procedure which lie at the background of the economic problems which men are seeking to understand and to solve. There is no necessity for an elaborate discussion of these problems, since they are at the moment quite generally under the dissecting knife of social students, reformers and revolutionaries. They may be divided into two main groups:--those which are localized in character and those which are world-wide in character. Perhaps the latter group might be called "worldized." 2. _Localized Problems_ There are a number of outstanding economic problems that affect locally, each community that has adopted the capitalist system. Among the most important of them are: 1. The relations between the job owner and the job taker. These relations involve the question as to whether job control shall be vested in those who hold the property or in those who do the work. The issue is an old one, intensified to-day by the absentee ownership which stocks and bonds make possible, and aggravated by the presence of vast industrial establishments in which there are employed thousands of workers without the possibility of any direct contact between job owners and job takers. 2. The distribution of wealth and income. Another old issue has returned to plague a society that makes it possible for some to enjoy "progress" while others must suffer from "poverty." Labor saving machinery has increased the quantity of the industrial product, but as yet there has been no general effort to see that the advantages of this wealth production go to those who are in need of food, clothing and shelter. Indeed, under the present order, millions of those who work are called upon to accept a standard of living which represents less than physical health and social decency, while those who own the land and the machinery with which the wealth is produced are able to exact a rent or unearned income that keeps them permanently on easy street. This embittering contrast between the house of have and the house of want is leading to-day, as it has in any historical society, to division and conflict, for, as Madison wisely observed in the Federalist, "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property." 3. The interrelation of industries. So long as there was a direct connection between a worker and the product which he turned out, economic life was simple. When, however, the coal dug in eastern Pennsylvania was used to heat houses in Minneapolis, while wheat grown in Dakota was milled in Duluth, made into crackers in Boston and sold all over New England, there arose the problem of the relation between mining, wheat raising, transport, manufacturing, and merchandising. Thus far the banker has acted as the go-between in holding this machinery together, but he labors under two important disqualifications: first, he does not represent anyone except himself and his fellow owners and is therefore not socially responsible for what he does; in the second place, like every other business man, he is out to make a profit rather than to render the community a service. Hence the structure of industrial society rests in chaotic dependence upon the ambitions and foibles of self-selected financiers. 4. Attempts at government control of industry. The irritated people, incensed by repeated acts of economic tyranny, have turned to the political state, which has been thought of as the guardian of popular rights in a democracy, and through regulatory legislation the appointment of commissions, and even through state competition they have sought to bring obstreperous business interests under the wing of state control. These efforts have generally failed: the business interests, through their control of the economic surplus, have dominated the commissions and have used the machinery of the political state as the instrument for further exploiting ventures; the police, the courts, the executive power, the military--all have been employed by the owners and exploiters against the workers. The issue between the empires of industry and the political state still remains one of the most vexing in the field of public life. These problems of job control, of wealth and income distribution, of industrial inter-relations and of the relation between the state and industry are pressing for solution in every important centre of modern economic life. Each constitutes a disturbing element and contributes its mite to the aggregate of social instability and unrest that are racking the economic world. 3. _World Problems_ Aside from these problems, localized in character, though world-wide in their distribution, there are a number of other problems of a world character which also are factors in the disorganization of economic life. One of these world problems is the competitive struggle between economic groups for trade, markets, resources and investment opportunities; another is, the excessive concentration of the world's wealth in a few centres. 4. _Competition for Economic Advantage_ The issue of non-redeemable promises to pay has crippled the world's credit machinery. The competition for economic advantage has played havoc with the world's social stability. Theoretically the coffee grower of Brazil and the agricultural machine manufacturer of Illinois produce and exchange those things that they can turn out most advantageously. Practically the resources of the world are monopolized by powerful financial interests each striving to destroy its rivals, each seeking its own enrichment, and each busy reinvesting the surplus wealth which piles up as the result of exploitation at home and abroad. Competition for economic advantage has followed the line of greatest profit. The present age inherited from the medieval economic world certain time-honored trade rivalries such as those which had existed between Rome, Carthage and Corinth in classic times, or between Holland, France and England in more modern days. These trade rivalries concern themselves with: 1. The transport of goods and people. 2. The financing of such transactions through bills of exchange, and the like. 3. The insuring of trading ventures. The people which succeeded in obtaining the carrying trade quite generally secured the banking and insurance business, both of which until recent years, have been principally concerned with trading. The trade of the middle ages was small in volume, and was carried on, for the most part, in valuable commodities, since the cost of transporting bulky, cheap articles was generally prohibitive. With the emergence of modern industry, and its production of large amounts of surplus commodities, important industrial groups like Britain and Germany which depended for their prosperity on their ability to find foreign markets for their surplus commodities, have been driven to a fierce struggle for these markets. Latterly the effort to dispose of surplus has taken a new form--the investment of capital in foreign enterprises. Instead of trying to sell an electrical plant to the city of Buenos Aires, a German business adventurer (enterpriser) secures a contract to build the plant, buys the equipment from the German General Electric Company, takes the bonds of the City of Buenos Aires in payment for the plant, and finances the transaction by selling the bonds to a German banking syndicate. Through this process, the German (or Belgian, or British) business world invests its funds in "undeveloped" countries. At the outbreak of the World War, foreign investment had become a science, with the British leading all of the investing nations. C.K. Hobson, in his book, "The Export of Capital," and in a later article in the "Annals of the American Academy" for November, 1916, throws some important side-lights on British foreign investments. He notes that for some years preceding the war, Britain had never invested less than 500 millions of dollars per year in foreign countries and that just before the outbreak of the war, the annual export of capital had reached a total of a billion dollars per year. In 1913 the British foreign investments were approximately 20 billions of dollars, distributed geographically in a most significant fashion. The largest investment (3,750 millions of dollars) was in the United States; then came Canada with 2,500 millions; following were India, 1,800 millions, South Africa, the same amount, Australia, 1,500 millions, and Argentina a like sum. The British investments in Belgium, France, Germany and Austria were negligible. Thus it was in the new and undeveloped countries, not in the old and developed ones that Britain sought her investment opportunities. In their efforts to play at this great game of imperialism, and to win their share of profitable business, Germany, France, Japan, Belgium and the United States were dogging the British heels. Each of the important producing countries must provide itself with the essential raw materials--coal, iron, copper, cotton, rubber, wheat, etc., upon which the continuance of its industrial life depends. Consequently each of these countries busies itself to secure the control of the largest possible reserves of the raw materials most needed by its own industries. The case of petroleum is peculiarly instructive. When it became apparent, in the early years of the present century that oil burning ships, motor vehicles and air craft were bound to play a determining part in the economic life of the immediate future, various interests such as the Shell Transport, Royal Dutch and the Standard Oil, with the open or tacit backing of their respective state departments, entered on a campaign to secure the world's supply of petroleum. In Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Russia and the United States this struggle has been waged, and it still continues to be one of the most active contests for economic power that has been fought in recent times. Petroleum-hunger is only one of the many economic factors that drive modern nations. The efforts to control the coal and iron of Alsace and Lorraine, the Saar and the Ruhr undoubtedly played a leading rôle in making the War of 1914 and the Peace of 1919. The partition of Upper Silesia was based on the same contest for iron and coal. Wherever the coal veins or iron deposits are, there, likewise, are gathered together the representatives of industrial enterprise, which depends for its life upon iron and coal. As the resources of the earth become better known, and their extent more definitely established, there is every reason to believe that, with the continuance of the present economic system, the necessity for exploiting them will become greater, and the attempts to dominate them will become more aggressive. Whether the object of the contest be trade, markets, investment opportunities or resources, the result is the same--rivalry, antagonism, bitterness, hatred, conflict. Probably it is fair to say that these economic rivalries constitute the largest single force now operating to keep people apart and to continue the economic desolation and chaos under which the world is suffering. 5. _Distribution of the World's Wealth_ There is another problem of world scope--the concentration of wealth in a very few countries. At the present moment the wealth of the world is distributed roughly as follows: Great Britain 120 billions of dollars France 100 " " " United States 330 " " " ---- Total 550 " " " Germany 20 billions of dollars Russia 40 " " " Italy 25 " " " Japan 40 " " " Belgium 15 " " " Argentina 25 " " " Canada 25 " " " ---- Total 190 " " " Probably all of the other nations combined could not show a wealth total of more than 100 billions. Great Britain, France and the United States have just about 12 per cent of the population of the world, yet they probably hold somewhere in the neighborhood of two-thirds of the world's wealth. The United States alone, at the moment, has nearly half of the world's gold supply and more than a third of the world's wealth. Of course these wealth estimates are not to be accepted in detail, particularly in view of the wide fluctuations in the exchange rate. They serve, however, to give an idea of the relative wealth positions of the leading countries. The present economic position of the United States in particular, is a perilous one. The estimated wealth of the United States is greater than that of the four richest nations of the world combined. Within a decade, the country has become the world's chief money lender, the world's principal mortgage holder, the world's richest treasure house. The results are inevitable. The United States will be an object of envy, jealousy, suspicion, cajolery and hatred in the eyes of those peoples who concern themselves with the present system of competition for economic supremacy. She holds the wealth and power that they desire and they cannot rest content until they secure it. Past periods of civilization have witnessed the concentration of wealth and power in some great city, like Carthage, or in some isolated region, like Italy. All around were the "barbarians"--those who had less of the good things of life than were at the disposal of the citizens of the metropolis. Where two of these centres existed at the same time, they warred for supremacy until one or both were destroyed. Before the war the centre of the world's economic power was Great Britain. To-day the economic centre has shifted to the United States, while Britain is still the world's greatest political power. The struggle between these two empires for the political suzerainty of the planet must continue until one is victorious, or until both have been reduced to impotence. 6. _The Livelihood Struggle_ Behind these struggles between various political and economic groups, there is a broader reality in the shape of a billion and three quarters of people, inhabiting the surface of the earth,--people of various races, religions, nationalities, who, with all of their differences, have this in common: that they are seeking life, striving to improve the opportunities for its enjoyment, yearning for its enrichment, and, despite the innumerable disappointments which they have suffered in the past, willing to pay handsomely, in vast and patient effort for each tiny gain that they secure. One of the chief concerns of these human multitudes is the struggle for livelihood--for the means of continuing physical existence and of gaining the surplus and leisure out of which grow the higher life satisfactions. All men have certain simple economic needs--for food and shelter. Denied these, they perish. Given them, they are able to devote their remaining energies to one of the many lines of activity that men have developed. What are these other wants of men, aside from the primitive needs for food and shelter? Most prominent is the desire for human companionship, friendship, love. Again, mankind has accumulated a vast store of knowledge, of philosophy, of imagery, of artistic expression. Love, truth and beauty sound an appeal that finds some answering echo in each life. The leisure and the culture of the world, in the immediate past, have been the heritage of a favored few: to-day they are the objectives of the many. Heretofore it has been the belief of the aristocrats that the best of life was none too good for them. To-day that idea has spread among the people. Dimly, inarticulately, they feel that the world's advantages are for them and for their children. Before the cultural advantages of life may be enjoyed by the many, wealth must be produced in sufficient quantities to provide food and shelter. This provision of the economic necessaries is not a far goal. Livelihood, when secured, does not make of man either a saint or an artist, but it is a necessary step in the pursuit of either goodness or beauty. The body must be fed before it will function, just as the engine must be fed with fuel before it will run. The provision of a supply of economic essentials is not the ultimate object of life, but until some such provision is made, life in its fullest terms is impossible. 7. _Guaranteeing Livelihood_ The millions who inhabit the earth have a direct and immediate interest in organizing economic life in such a way that the supply of economic goods is made regular and certain. This is the premise on which all constructive thinking about economics is necessarily founded. How is this hope to be realized? What means are at hand to insure the ultimate success of these efforts to guarantee livelihood? Nature has provided an ample supply of the resources out of which the economic necessaries may be produced. These resources fall mainly into three general classes: 1. Climate, including those conditions of light, air, rainfall and temperature that make possible the maintenance of life in its many forms. 2. Fertility, including those qualities of the earth that are useful to man in the pursuit of his economic activities. 3. Power, including those forces of nature which man may harness and compel to do his bidding. Climate, fertility and power are variously distributed over the earth. The heat near the equator and the cold of the arctic regions make any highly organized forms of economic life difficult. Consequently it is in the temperate zones that industrial civilizations have developed. The deposits of minerals and fuels are quite uneven. Take iron as an example. The available deposits of iron ore are concentrated mainly in Brazil, Cuba, the Appalachians and the Great Lake Basin, so that the Americas and particularly North America have far more than a proportionate share of the iron ore supply. Copper, coal and petroleum are distributed with even greater irregularity. Equally uneven is soil fertility. Beside a garden spot, like the Mississippi Valley, lies a great Colorado-Utah desert. Nature has provided those requisites upon which man must depend for his economic life. They are scattered it is true, and with the present political barriers holding peoples apart, many of them are politically unavailable but, economically, they are an open door to the future. Men have met with considerable success in availing themselves of nature's bounty, and of converting it into useful and pleasing forms. All of the tools, weapons, textiles, metals, wheels, machines, have been the result of human effort and ingenuity, spread over long periods of time, and gradually accumulated and concentrated. At last a day seems to have dawned when machinery, applied to nature's bounty, could produce the wealth necessary to support the world's existing population on a minimum standard of living. Certainly the energy and wealth which went into the five war years would have fed and clothed the people for that period. 8. _Distribution and the Social Revolution_ Men have succeeded in kindling fires, making wheels, separating the metal from the ore, harnessing electrical power and communicating their thoughts to one another and to their descendants, but they have not made themselves masters of those forces which work through fire and wheels. Men have met the immediate economic problem by devising methods for producing food, clothes and roof-trees, but they have been overwhelmed by the social implications of these productive forces. Before the problem of sharing the proceeds of their labor, they have stopped, and the whole economic progress of the race now stands like an engine stalled, awaiting some solution of the problems of distribution. Through the ages various methods of making a living were inaugurated successively. Medieval Europe had worked out a combination of herding, agriculture, craft industry and trade that made a stable life for an agricultural village a practical possibility. This period of economic stability--this golden age--was followed by a series of events that threw the fat into the fire. First in England, and then in all of the important countries of Europe, the industrial revolution turned the simple grazing, farming, craft-industry life of the village topsy-turvy, by providing a new method of converting nature's bounty into goods and services calculated to meet the increasing needs and wants of mankind. So far-reaching was the change that it has compelled a reorganization of virtually all phases of social life, but for the present purpose, it has been felt chiefly in four fields: manufacturing, commerce, wealth-surplus and population. The efficiency of the new manufacturing processes has provided a large surplus of goods that must be taken somewhere, exchanged for food and raw materials, which must, in turn, be brought to the producers of manufactured goods. In the course of these transactions, a generous share of the values produced goes, in the form of profit, to the owners of the industry, another considerable portion goes into reinvestment, thus swelling the volume of productive capital. The increased wealth, the larger capital and the greater amount of surplus all make possible the maintenance of a larger population. Thus it has come about during the past century, that the production of goods, the transport of goods, and the population, have all been increasing at a rate unheard of during the previous thousand years. The suddenness of these economic changes has swept the world away from its accustomed moorings, out upon an uncharted sea. Only yesterday the race was struggling to make a meagre living: to-day the centres of industry are glutted with bulging warehouses and equipped with idle machinery that will produce unheard of quantities of shoes and blankets and talking machine records, if the owners will but give the word to the workers who are eager to perform those services that yield them a living. Only yesterday the world was maintained by local production: to-day it depends upon transport and exchange. All of these changes in the accustomed ways and acts of men have been brought about in the course of an economic revolution. The tidal wave of the industrial revolution has not stopped with the economic world. No phase of life has been exempt from the power of its magic. The school, the church, the family, the home, the state, have all felt its transforming might. The aggregate of these changes is the profound social revolution that has been for some time, and that is at present tearing the fabric of the old society to tatters, while beneath its surface-chaos is forming the nucleus of a new social order. 9. _A New Order_ The results of profound changes such as those that are now occurring, must be chaos except in so far as the ingenuity and organizing capacity of man re-establishes order. The people in the world are in very much the position of a valley population suffering from a disastrous flood. Their houses and fruit-trees--the product of generations of labor--have been swept away. The valley is filled with debris. As the water recedes, the wreckage must first be picked up, then the whole population must fall to with a will and rebuild the community--put up houses, re-plant trees, re-make gardens, repair roads. The social revolution has not swept everything away, but it has modified the form of social institutions, and some of them, such as the old time farm home, the individual workshop and the agricultural village have been obliterated in many localities. How shall the new society be rebuilt? Only as the old was built--by the expenditure of human effort and under the guidance of the best wisdom that the community can muster. There are a number of points of view from which the present-day economic chaos may be regarded. The humanitarian feels pity for the suffering and hardship imposed upon multitudes of the world's population. The conservative laments the alterations which are being made in the established order. The liberal regrets that the changes are occurring so rapidly that construction cannot keep pace with destruction. The radical sees, in these fundamental changes, the dawn of his millennium. The scientist and the engineer upon whose shoulders will rest the burden of rebuilding the new society, tighten their belts and turn to the mightiest task that men have ever faced. The economic muddle in which the world now finds itself is one of many transition periods in the history of civilization,--a phase of the great revolution. Like any period of chaos, it is the seed-ground of the new order--the demolition which precedes construction. Some day men may be wise enough and sufficiently well organized and equipped to demolish and construct at the same time. As yet no such stage has been reached. During the intervals of chaos which separate two periods of forward movement (the dark ages of the world, as they are sometimes called) the masses agonize and suffer, groping blindly and crying out for guidance. Such is the period in which the world now finds itself. Out of this chaos, men must bring order; and to do this they must discover the foundations upon which the new order can be successfully built. This is the work of the engineers, the constructors of the new society.[3] 10. _The Basis of World Reconstruction_ Asiatics, Europeans, Africans, Americans, Australians--all people who follow the movement of events realize that the crisis confronting the capitalist world is a serious one. Informed men like J.M. Keynes and Frank Vanderlip believe that the situation is perilous. While many persons see that something is wrong, and while some see what is wrong, there is a great diversity of opinion as to the remedies that should be adopted. What most of the writers fail to see, or at least to realize, is that economic organization is the basis--the only possible basis--for the reconstruction of the world. The time has passed when political readjustments will meet the world situation. The events accompanying the industrial revolution have hammered the world into a closely knit economic whole, and until this fact is understood, and made the basis of world thought and world building, there can be no permanent solution of the world's problems. The present chaos in world relations cannot be met and settled by war, legislation, diplomacy or any similar means. All of the steps in these fields imply some adjustment of political relationships, and it is the economic institutions rather than the political institutions of the world that are in need of constructive effort. If a town is suffering from a break in the water-main, there are two things that may be done! The old pipe may be patched or a new pipe may be put in its place. It is sometimes possible for the engineers to patch the old main temporarily, while they are getting in a new one. The same situation confronts the people of the world. Their economic life is disorganized and chaotic. Shall it be reorganized along old lines, slightly modified in the light of experience, or shall it be built on fundamentally different lines? [Footnote 3: "Engineering is the science of controlling the forces and of utilizing the materials of nature for the benefit of man, and the art of organizing and directing human activities in connection therewith." (Resolution of the Engineering and Allied Technical Societies in creating the Federated American Engineering Societies. "Waste in Industry" 1921, p. IV).] III. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS 1. _The Social Structure_ When a town or a city decides to repair a water system or to replace an old system by a new one, the plans are made and the work is carried on in accordance with the soundest principles known to the engineering profession. There are communities which neglect their water systems, and which suffer accordingly. But for the most part, the water supply is looked upon as so vital a factor in the common life that no pains are spared to have it reflect the last word in sanitation and efficiency. The same reasoning must apply to the economic machinery upon which a community depends for the supply of its necessaries and comforts. Economic life touches every home. No human being who eats food, wears clothes, lives in a house, rides on street cars or reads papers and books can escape its all pervasive influence. Therefore when changes are made in an established system of economic life, or when a new economic system is substituted for an old one, it behooves the people concerned to see that the work of reorganization is done in accordance with the soundest known principles of social science. The principles of social science, like the principles of engineering, are matters of profound concern to those who are compelled to depend for health and livelihood on the outcome of a social experiment. The social scientist studies society as the natural scientist studies nature, by examining the social forms, the social forces, the ways of handling or of administering these forces, and the means of making social improvements. The social scientist, like the scientist working in any other field, is concerned with making those additions to knowledge which will prove of the greatest ultimate advantage to the human race. The principles of social activity are not yet so well known as those of astronomy, physics, mechanics or biology, but they operate none the less surely. Until these principles are understood, and until men plan their activities in relation to them, there will be no possibility of a rationally organized and wisely managed society. The physicist who planned a pump on the supposition that water is always liquid in form would get no farther than the social scientist who advocated social changes on the theory that the only motive that animated mankind was the economic one. Mankind is not wholly ignorant of the principles underlying social structure and social activities. Philosophers and statesmen worked over them in the ancient world. Within the past two centuries a flood of books and pamphlets has appeared dealing with social organization. To be sure, most of these publications have been of a political nature, but the effort was made none the less to understand society and its workings. The investigations, analyses, comparisons and conclusions are formulating themselves gradually into certain well-defined social laws, which men recognize as essential factors in social thinking. Some of the more important among these social laws or principles which have been determined by the painful processes of trial and error are those relating to the manner in which the structure of society is built up. Society is not a collection of people, in the sense that a basket of eggs is a collection of eggs. Quite the contrary, society is a structure formed through the association of individuals and of groups having some common interests and some co-operative functions or activities. A family, for example, consists of a number of persons, usually connected by blood ties, living together in a common dwelling. A chamber of commerce consists of individuals, firms and corporations, doing business in one locality, and all concerned with the maintenance of certain property rights. The British Miners Federation is composed of local and of district organizations, which are built up around collieries, towns, and coal deposits. The local union is composed of individual mine workers. The district organization is composed of a number of locals in the same field. The federation is composed of these lesser organizations. No matter which one of the many forms of human association is examined, the same thing will be found true. Each social group is composed either of individuals or of lesser social groups which have certain common interests and certain co-operative activities, and which band themselves together in response to their interests and in pursuance of these activities. It is this organic structure of society to which Hobson applies the phrase "the federal units which society presents." ("Work and Wealth." J.A. Hobson. Macmillan. 1914. p. vi.) Among primitive peoples who have simple forms of social organization, each individual is connected with some association like the clan or tribe which is state, church and family, all in one. The stories of the Jewish patriarchs are good illustrations of this stage in social evolution. In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups--to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group. Without making too much of the comparison between a living organism, like the human body, and a society, the similarities between the two are striking. The human body consists of various systems, such as the circulatory system, the nervous system, the digestive system. Each of these systems is composed of many parts, having separate functions to perform. The circulatory system, for example, consists of the heart, veins, arteries, capillaries, the blood, etc. These various parts of each system are in their turn made up of different kinds of tissue. The heart is a complicated organ consisting of muscle tissue, nerve fibers, blood vessels, etc. Muscles, nerves and blood vessels are in their turn composed of living cells, each of which contains the mechanism of a life cycle. Among the unit cells, the various tissues, organs and systems of the body, there is a working harmony. The whole complex machine functions in unison. If one of the organs fails to do its work,--if the heart fails to pump blood or if the lungs fail to inhale oxygen,--the whole body ceases to function or "dies." Throughout the series, from the single cell to the entire organism, the human body is built up compositely. This method of composite structure holds equally true in the composition of modern society. A modern society or community consists of various systems, such as the educational system, the economic system, the political system. Each of these systems is, in its turn, composed of institutions. Thus, for example, the educational system consists of the common schools, the high schools, the normal and professional schools and universities, the special schools, and so on. Each city school system is a going concern with its pupils, teachers, officials, school buildings, textbooks, courses of study. Each school building, each class room, each group of pupils, is a social unit, composed either of individuals or of groups. Like the single cell of the human body, the individual pupil is a living organism, and it is out of a multitude of such organisms variously grouped that school systems are built. The social machinery, like the machinery of the body, must work smoothly, otherwise misery will be the inevitable result. If the educational or the economic life of a community breaks down, the whole community suffers, as does the body through the failure of an important organ. If the stoppage is significant enough, as for example, a stoppage of the economic machinery like that experienced by central Europe since 1919, the social organism "dies,"--that is, it is resolved into its constituent elements, some of which may disappear. Those who object to the comparison between society and a living organism like the body, find more satisfaction in likening the social machine to an automobile, with its self-starter, its ignition system, its lighting system, its steering gear, its driving mechanism. Each of the systems is in turn composed of parts. Each part is made of wood, iron, copper, rubber, and these materials are, in turn, composed of molecules and atoms in certain combination. The automobile is not self-acting, like the body or like society, but the failure of one of its essential parts like the ignition system, means the failure of the whole machine. Society, like the human being, or like the engine, is a highly complex mechanism, and like them it cannot function successfully unless its various parts function in harmony. The major problem before a society is therefore the working out of a system of inter-relations between its parts, that will make harmonious functioning possible and easy. Just as the mechanical engineer who builds the automobile puts into it the results of his wisdom in an effort to make it effective, so the social engineer devotes himself to the problem of making society function in the way that will yield the largest results to the individuals composing it. 2. _Specialization, Association, Co-operation_ Every social group except the horde, which is an aggregation of unspecialized and non-co-operating individuals, is constructed on the principle of: 1. Specialization 2. Association 3. Co-operation The social group--the family, the school, the factory--takes upon itself the performance of a particular social function--it specializes itself. Each group associates itself with other groups--families with families, schools with schools, factories with mines and stores. Finally, these associated groups work together or co-operate, exchanging the products which their specializations have created, and uniting their efforts in the furtherance of their common interests. These developments take time, and some communities are more highly specialized than others, but all societies which enter intimately into the life of the modern world are thus constituted. The more advanced the society, the more numerous and the more complex are the relations between its component parts. The agricultural inhabitants of the Ganges Delta have evolved a far more complex society than that of the aborigines of Australia, but the civilization at the mouth of the Ganges is simplicity itself compared with that of Britain, Belgium or Japan. In the Ganges Delta each family group has a homestead. Outside of the homestead, the community life is almost wholly unspecialized. Even where the homesteads are clustered together there are no stores, no recreation centres, and few churches or schools except in the larger towns or in the market towns, of which there are a very few, since only about one per cent of the people live in towns or cities. Practically the entire population is occupied with the work of the homestead, and the work of each homestead is very like the work of every other homestead. ("The Economic Life of a Bengal District." J.C. Jack. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1916. pp. 1 to 40.) How different is the French, German or Italian village, with its various crafts, trades, professions, industries, recreation centres, schools, churches and the like. Every such European community of three or four thousand persons is in itself a complex society, while the industrial city of fifty thousand people is a hive of related social activity. The more highly specialized the group, the more complex, intricate and precise are its workings. This principle of social federation through specialization, association and co-operation is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of the present economic system. In each centre of population, in each town or city, in each state, in each nation, in the world at large,--the economic system is divided into various elemental economic groups or units, falling under six main headings: 1. The extractive units, which are concerned with the taking of wealth from nature's storehouse--the farm, the mine, the lumber camp. 2. The fabricating units, which are busy changing the products of farm, mine and lumber-camp into semi-finished or finished forms--the mill, the smelter, the factory. 3. The transportation units, which carry goods or people or messages from place to place--railroads, ships, trucks, telephones. 4. The merchandising units, which assemble the goods turned out by the fabricators and distribute them to the users, wholesalers, jobbers, retailers. 5. Personal service units, which render a service to the consumer in some direct, personal way--housekeepers, educators, entertainers, health experts. 6. The financial units, which are concerned with the handling of money and of credit (the counters of the economic system) banks, loan associations, credit houses. These are some of the main divisions of the economic system as it exists at the present time. Each division is a great net-work of economic inter-relations, specialized and subdivided into individual plants, factories, departments and the like. Take, as an example, one group, the manufacturing industries of the United States. When the Census of 1914 was compiled, the manufacturing industries were classed in fourteen groups,--food and food products, textiles, iron and steel and their products, lumber and its remanufactures, etc. There were 496,234 wage-earners working in 59,317 food and food products establishments, 1,498,644 wage-earners in 22,995 textile establishments, 1,061,058 individuals working in 17,719 iron and steel establishments, and so forth. Each of the fourteen subdivisions of the manufacturing industries of the United States employ hundreds of thousands of men and women who are at work in tens of thousands of establishments in thousands of cities and town. The same kind of specialization is to be found throughout the various modern industries, and in the different industrial countries. Each one of the larger establishments--each factory or plant--is in turn composed of departments, divisions, shops and the like. Whether the individual establishment or the individual department be regarded as the unit of economic activity, the outstanding feature of the manufacturing industry is the immense number of units that must be in working order and co-operating harmoniously with the others before the whole can function smoothly. And this is but one of the general divisions of industry. At the time of the Census of 1920 there were in the United States alone, 6,447,998 farms; in 1914 there were 275,791 manufacturing establishments; in 1910 there were 1,127,926 retail dealers and 50,123 wholesale dealers. Literally, there are millions of productive economic units in this one country which are specialized, which are associated in their activities and which must be put on a co-operative basis if effective results are to be obtained from them. 3. _Three Lines of Economic Organization_ So much, then, for the interdependence of the various economic groups under the present forms of society. This interdependence runs throughout the capitalist system. Farms depend on railroads, railroads on mines, mines on factories, factories on farms, and so on. This extreme specialization of the economic system is the product of the past two hundred years, the outcome primarily of the industrial revolution. The experience of society with these specialized economic forms does not, therefore, extend over more than five or six generations. This experience is sufficient, however, to indicate, that there are three general lines along which economic organization may develop: 1. _Economic "states rights" or individualism_--the theory upon which the present day industry as well as the modern state was founded. Under this theory each economic group must be free to go its way, cutting a path for itself through the ranks of its competitors, and making its triumphant advance over their prostrate remains. 2. _Economic bureaucracy_, involving the concentration of economic authority in the hands of a centralized group which, knowing little or nothing about the requirements of particular localities, is nevertheless in a position to legislate for them and to enforce its mandates. 3. _Economic federation or federalism_, with local groups enjoying local autonomy in all local matters, and only so much centralized control as is necessary for the unified direction of the entire enterprise. American industry has had considerable experience with the two first forms of organization. Until the period of the Civil War, competition was the generally accepted rule in all phases of economic life. With the formation of the Standard Oil Company in 1870, a new principle was demonstrated, and the idea of centralization was embodied in a form that served as the model for the American trust movement. By the time of the late nineties, this principle of centralization had been carried so far that a reaction set in, and when the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901 local autonomy was recognized as one of the essential principles around which its structure was built. Experience points to the system of local autonomy in local matters and to the central control of general matters as the most workable in a complex society. In the first instance, under such a system, each local unit is responsible for its own activities and for its own discipline. It is obvious that no matter how efficient the bureaucracy, it would hardly be possible for a centralized authority to control, from one point, the six millions of farms and the quarter million industrial establishments of the United States. It is only where the handling of local matters rests with those immediately concerned that the highest degree of local pride, initiative and energy can be generated and maintained. Such a system leaves the central authority free from detail so that it may devote all of its energies to decisions on matters of general policy, and to such procedure as affects the welfare of the whole rather than of any particular part. Economic society, to be organized successfully, must be built of units that will prove self-acting and self-directing in all matters of purely local concern. At the same time, a scheme of economic life must be devised that will make it easy and natural for these economic units to function co-operatively in all matters connected with the well-being of the whole industry or of the whole economic society. 4. _Economic Forms_ Much has been done to organize the economic life of the planet, particularly during the past two centuries. Prior to the industrial revolution the economic life of the masses of the people, with the exception of a little trading and shipping, was localized and individualized in the village, the commune, the homestead and the home. The industrial revolution, with its dependence upon mechanical power, served to concentrate economic life in larger units--the factory, the plant, the industrial city. As a matter of necessity, organization followed in the wake of this concentration. The owners of industry organized on the one side: the workers organized on the other. Besides these two major forms of organization within the field of industry, there was the organization of the state, which has played a leading rôle in the life of present-day society. The organization of the owners, which is far more complex and more highly developed than that of the workers, has followed four general lines: 1. The organization of one line of industry. Woolen mills in Massachusetts and in New York unite to form the American Woolen Company: sugar refineries are consolidated into the American Sugar Refining Company. 2. The organization of those industries which are concerned with the turning out of one product--industrial integration. The iron ore beds of Michigan, the coal and coke industries of Pennsylvania, lime-stone quarries, smelters, converters, rolling-mills, railroad connections and selling organizations all unite into the Cambria Steel Company or the Carnegie Steel Company. Timber tracts, ore properties, mills, mines and selling agencies join to form the International Harvester Company. 3. The organization of unlike and unrelated industries--manufacturing industries, public utilities, insurance companies, railroads, trust companies and banks brought under the financial control of Morgan and Company or of some other banking syndicate. 4. The banding together of these various groups in mutual welfare associations such as chambers of commerce, boards of trade, manufacturers' associations and so on. None of these organizations has any primary interest in geographic areas or in national boundaries. Half of the business of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey is carried on outside of the United States; the International Harvester Company puts up plants in Canada and in Russia; United States Steel buys properties in Mexico; The National City Bank opens agencies in Cuba and in Argentina. The great modern business units deal, not with political boundaries, but with economic areas. They seek out, as the field for their operations, abundant resources, cheap labor, attractive markets. The present economic system has made great strides toward the world organization of economic life in a comparatively short time. Australia, Canada and the United States furnish excellent illustrations of the way in which continents have been surveyed, spanned with steel, populated and exploited in three or four generations. So completely has the economic system been altered that the seventeenth century world would not recognize its infant great-grandson of the twentieth century. 5. _Limitations on Capitalism_ Important changes have been made in the structure of society since the inauguration of the present economic system, but these changes have not been radical enough to keep pace with the still more radical changes that have occurred in the mechanism of economic production and exchange. The chief failure of the present order is its failure to readjust social machinery in conformity with the economic changes that have occurred in society, and this failure is due, in large measure, to the limitations contained within the capitalist system. Like all social systems which attain to positions of consequence, the capitalist system has played an important rôle in the development of society, and like all such systems, it has had its day. The needs of the community have advanced to a point at which they cannot be met under capitalism, whose chief failure to function more effectively in the present crisis may be traced to: 1. _Excessive centralization of the determining control of industry in the hands of financial manipulators, who do not even enjoy the advantage of owning the industries which they dominate._ Through shrewd financial dealing they have maneuvered themselves into positions of importance, which they hold because of their ability to manipulate, a political rather than an industrial virtue. The necessary result of this concentration of authority is a denial of local self-determination and a corresponding loss of local initiative. The less local initiative there is, the more centralization is required to keep the machinery running, until a point is reached where all power and authority are exercised from the centre, and the local group is as devoid of spontaneity as it is of authority. At somewhere about this point, the friction involved in administration becomes so great that the whole of the social energy is consumed in the routine of keeping the social machinery running, and there is no surplus, either for leisure or improvement. This was the outcome of a similar centralization of authority under Feudalism, and it shows itself in any organization that permits itself to drift into the danger-zone of bureaucracy. 2. _A second obstacle to the further development of the present economic system is nationalism._ The political state has become an adjunct to the capitalist economic system. It relies for one of its sources of driving power upon a concept of nationalism which places the political boundary lines that happen to surround a people first among the public limitations on conduct. "My country, right or wrong," becomes a catch phrase on the lips of school children. Whatever transpires inside these political boundary lines is sanctified by its association with the fatherland, while events having their origin outside of the country must be correspondingly discounted. Since the middle of the nineteenth century the business men of every great industrial nation have been compelled to go abroad for raw materials, for markets and for investment opportunities. In order to obtain these economic advantages, the citizens of the civilized nations have not hesitated to plunder the natives, and if they resisted, to murder them--as Britain has done in India, as Belgium has done in the Congo, as Japan has done in Korea, as the United States has done in the Philippines and Hayti. This robbing and murdering is sanctified by the fact that "our interests were in danger" or that "our flag was fired upon" or that "our citizens have lost lives and property." But during the past few decades the exploiting nations have found more than natives to deal with. In almost every instance there have been at least two claimants for each choice economic morsel, and a conflict has frequently resulted, like that between Russia and Japan for the control of Eastern Asia or between Germany and France for the control of the iron and coal deposits of Western Europe. In such cases the wars are justified to the home populations as necessary defensive measures. The justification may or may not be complete, but the bills must be paid, and they have proved to be inordinately high. The cost of killing African natives or unarmed Haytians is comparatively low, but the cost of killing Frenchmen and Germans is enormous. If, as some experts have estimated, the direct cost of the Great War was 250 billions of dollars, and if only 10 millions were killed, it cost something like $25,000 to kill each of the ten millions. It is at this point that nationalism breaks down because of the sheer inability of the peoples to foot the bills that have been contracted in destroying their "enemies"--namely, the citizens of other nations. When this point is reached--when the costs of expansion beyond boundary lines of a nation are so great that the people who do the country's work cannot or will not meet them, the end of the system that depends upon expansion is already in sight. That point has been reached and passed in capitalist society. While the costs of expansion were merely the cost of subduing naked savages, the business was a remunerative one; but when, to these ordinary costs must be added the stupendous price of capturing trenches protected by barbed wire entanglements, of bombing whole countrysides, of desolating states and wiping out industries, not to mention the cost of building forty million dollar ships that can be sunk in six or seven minutes with one well aimed torpedo, the limit has been reached, and bankruptcy sooner or later ensues. Capitalism is now paying that price throughout most of Europe. 3. _A third obstacle to the continuance of the capitalist system lies in the fact that it has fallen into the hands of profiteers (bankers and absentee owners) whose chief purposes are to control economic machinery for the money there is in it, and to guarantee their clients (investors) an opportunity to live without working on the labor of others._ By the very nature of their connections the managers of industry are denied the right to think in economic terms. Their function is to "make money" by exploiting nature and men. They are therefore profiteers rather than producers, and no economic system can hope to survive unless it is based on production rather than profiteering. 4. _The present economic system is in the hands of those who are responsible to wealth (stockholders) and not to the masses of the people._ A small fraction of the people in a modern industrial community--one in 30 or 40 or 50--holds the controlling vote in the strategic industrial enterprises, and says the final word on all questions of industrial policy. Their interest is a property interest. Automatically they are precluded and prevented from thinking or acting in the interest of the general welfare, since their clientèle, which is seeking to live on the labor of the masses of their fellow citizens, is only a minute part of the general public. 5. _There is another limitation arising out of the third and fourth, just enumerated--the limitation imposed upon the whole of society by the incessant struggle between the owners of industry and the workers in industry._ While the owning class continues, without labor, to derive an income from the labor of the workers, the former will grip their privileges, while the latter will oppose, obstruct, attack and ultimately deny the rights of the owners. These five limitations: centralization, nationalism, profiteering, the handling of economic affairs in the name of property rather than in that of human welfare, and the class struggle--make it difficult or impossible for the directors of the present economic system to extend it in response to the pressing demand for expansion. Like other social systems that have prevailed in historic times, the capitalist system of economic control has its limitations, and like many another system, it seems to have reached them. 6. _The Growth of Capitalism_ The existing economic order has grown to its present proportions competitively and nationalistically, without any centralized supervisory control (without any board of strategy) just as one of the Canadian cities out upon the plains has grown, or rather sprawled over the prairie--each man building how and when and where he liked, each industry choosing its own location, stores, schools, churches, theatres, squatting at those points that seemed to be the centres of the crowd life. Mines have been opened, factories established, railroads built, electric plants constructed, by some individual or corporation interested in making a profit on the investment, and with little or no relation to the well-being of the community. There has been no recognized intelligent guidance behind the development of the industrial system. In so far as the present economic life was planned, it was planned locally, by the directors of one industry, by the chamber of commerce of some city, by a far-sighted banker or financier who insisted upon thinking in terms of the coming business generation. For the most part the system grew, however, like stalks of corn in a field, each stalk drawing its own nourishment from the soil and making what progress it could along its own path toward the zenith. Another serious drawback in the growth of the present economic system is that much of it was developed as an underground organization. Even had they decided to do so, individual business men have not been free to plan ahead and work out a business policy in the light of day. On the one side were the jealous competitors, watching every move and eager to profit by any bit of information that they could secure with regard to the plans of their rivals. On the other side was the government, with its conspiracy laws and its anti-trust laws, ready to swoop down on the business director who planned too broadly or thought too far into the future. Then, too, there was an ever-growing force in a public opinion that was suspicious of profiteers, no matter what their professions. With competitors on the watch here, and government officials yonder, there was nothing for it but to work in secret, to shadow the new policies in mystery and to get as far as possible without being found out. Far-reaching changes have taken place, of late, in the type of men who have held the reins of control over industry. During its early years the economic machinery was constructed by men who had worked at their trades; men who had begun at the bottom and climbed into a place of authority; men who had a first-hand knowledge of the processes underlying their industries. Latterly, however, with bankers and other professional manipulators in control of economic life, the engineers, with their intimate knowledge of forces and processes have been pushed into the background, and the actual work of direction has been shifted from producers to money makers. Again, the present economic system, built for the profit of the builder rather than for the welfare of the community, represents, not the science of organization for production and use, but the science of organization for exploitation and profiteering. These are some of the reasons why the economic life of the modern world has grown at haphazard. Each industrial director put his own ideas into his business, and as it grew in response to them, the various businesses differed as much in shape, size and character as did the early factory buildings. The time seems to have arrived when a new working plan of economic life may be adopted. The faults and failures of the old are glaring and the clamor for the new is reasonable and insistent. The construction of factory buildings has been evolved into a science. Why cannot the same thing be done with the whole scheme of economic organization? Men no longer erect factory buildings according to personal whim or to the chance ideas of some budding architect. Instead they consult scientists in factory construction who have devoted years to the study and to the practical supervision of the detail of factory building. Can less be demanded of the community which hopes to build its economic life soundly and solidly? A modern steel plant, like that at Gary, Indiana, is carefully planned before a sod is turned. The organization of the works is thought out, sketched, drawn in detail, blue-printed, so that each group of workers that participates in the construction is given a blue print that specifies what is to be done, and where and how. When all of the tasks are completed a steel plant has been called into being. But suppose that each of the eighty gangs of workers, busy on the plant, had followed the lines of its fancy or of its own special interest! The result would resemble the helter-skelter of modern economic society. 7. _Effective Economic Units_ Economic life has been haphazard in the past. In the future it will be one of the most scientifically built of all human institutions. It is so vital a part of the social life, and it yields itself so readily to structural co-ordination that the best structural minds will turn to it perforce, as the logical field for their activities. The economic structure of the future, to be sound, must be built of effective working units. It is as impossible to build a live social system with dead component elements as it is to build a live body with dead cells. At least for the time being, an intricate and complicated structure is needed to handle the problem of livelihood. As time goes on, the nature of the economic system may be greatly modified, and its structure simplified correspondingly. While the complicated economic structure remains, however, the problem will be one of co-relating the activities of vast numbers of economic units, and of prevailing on them to function with less friction and greater harmony. Like every social structure, the economic system will be built up of lesser social groups, beginning with the simplest local body of farmers, miners or mill workers, and continuing on, by successive stages of organization to the largest and most highly complex groups in the community. The nature of each of the units that enters into the economic structure must vary with the locality, with the industry, and so on, hence it will prove to be impossible to lay down any arbitrary rules concerning their organization. It is possible, however, to suggest certain characteristics that must be present in effective working units: 1. _The economic unit, which is to be built into the new society as stones are built into a wall, must bear a very close relation to the present working forms of economic life._ Ultimately, the economic units of which society is composed will differ completely from those now existing. It is quite out of the question, however, to build a new economic structure and new economic units at the same time. Habit and convention are too strong. Innovation is too terrifying and too problematical. The life of local economic units will be carried on to-morrow very much as it is carried on to-day by the masses of the people. The most workable economic superstructure, for a new society, will be built upon an answer to the question: "How is work done now?" This method of approach takes the basic economic activities of the masses of the people for granted and seeks to build them into a sounder type of super-organization than that now existing. 2. _The economic unit, whatever its size and function, must be sufficiently homogeneous and coherent so that it will retain its unity even in the face of severe stresses and strains._ That is, it must be in a state of relatively stable equilibrium. 3. _The economic unit must be autonomous--self-governing, self-motivating, and in a sense, self-sufficing._ 4. _The organization and management of the unit must make possible an efficiency in production that will supply human needs and furnish the means of providing some comforts for the population._ 5. _Units must be so organized that they will work effectively with other units in the same industry and in related industries._ Whether plans are being made for the rebuilding of existing economic institutions or for the establishment of new ones, these general rules hold good. They have as their objective, a workable social system that will turn the wealth of nature's storehouse into usable forms, and that will procure the distribution of the good things of life, in an equitable manner, among the groups that have assisted in their production. 8. _Classes of Economic Units_ Those who are concerned with the establishment of a working basis for economic society must bear constantly in mind the purpose of economic organization--to provide livelihood on the most effective possible terms. The economic system is not called on to perform any other function. Economic function would seem to be most effectively aided by some organization of the economic units that would provide a structurally sound skeleton for the whole economic mechanism. The needs of particular localities, the requirements of larger groups within one industry, the economic relations of continental areas, and finally the world organization of industries must be provided for. In order to meet this situation, it would seem desirable to think in terms of several different grades or classes of economic units. As a working basis, four are suggested: 1. _The local unit, which would be some particular phase of the economic process that normally functions as a whole._ This unit is now a working part of the present economic order, and whether it is a colliery in Wales, a division of the P.L.M. Railroad in France, a mill in Bombay, or a farming community in Saskatchewan, it would continue the process of turning out goods and services under the new economic régime as it does under the present one. 2. _District units composed of a number of neighboring local units in the same industry or in closely related and co-operative industries._ The district is an aggregation of conveniently situated local units, and is organized as a ready means of increasing the efficiency of the groups concerned. It might cover the tobacco factories of Havana, the coal mining industry of the Pennsylvania anthracite fields or the dock working activities of Belfast. 3. _The divisional units which would be designed to cover a convenient geographic area, and to include all of the economic activities in a particular major industry within that area._ The boundaries of the districts would vary from one industry to another. The boundaries of the divisions would be uniform for all industries. The whole world would therefore be partitioned into a number of divisions, such, for example, as: North America, South America, South Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, Northern Europe, Northern Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Australia. In setting the boundary lines of these divisions, economic homogeneity, geographic unity, the distribution of the world population and the character of existing civilization would all be called into question. Under such a grouping would fall the agricultural workers of Southern Asia, the transport workers of North Europe, the manufacturing workers of North America. 4. _World industrial units, so designed as to include within their scope all of the producers of the world classified in accordance with their occupations._ To-day, the outstanding method of classifying the people of the world is to take them in relation to their political affiliations. The new grouping would arrange all of the peoples in accordance with their economic activities. A simple form of classification would include: agriculture, the extractive industries, manufacturing, transport, trade, housekeeping, and general (miscellaneous) trades. The classification might be made far more elaborate, but for clarity of discussion a simple classification is of great assistance. Every person in the world who performed a useful service would belong to one of these great industrial or occupational groups, and the aggregate of the membership of the groups would equal the aggregate of all the producers of the world. Under this plan, therefore, each individual would have a series of economic affiliations. He might, for example, be a docker on the French Line at Le Havre (local affiliation); a dock worker in the Le Havre district (district affiliation); a transport worker of North Europe (divisional affiliation); a worker in the transport industries of the world (industrial affiliation). Since each of the producers in the world would have this series of relations, all of the producers would be grouped together in local, in district, in divisional and in world industrial groups, so that the economic life of the world would present the picture of a completed economic structure very similar to the political structure that has been evolving for many centuries, and which has reached its highest forms of development in such new countries as Australia and the United States, where each person is a citizen in a borough, city or town, in a county, in a state and in the whole nation or federation of states. While political life has been thus organized about the administration of certain public affairs, economic life has remained disorganized, or has been organized largely with an eye to owners' profits. The producers society will be organized in economic terms very much as the present society is organized in political terms. Each producer will be a participant in the life of economic units, graduated from the local economic unit to the world industry. 9. _The Ideal and the Real_ This is, of course, an idealized picture, subject to an infinitude of modifications, just as an architect's plan for "a bungalow in the woods" or a city planner's scheme for a model town is idealized and subject to modifications. It is not a working drawing, but a general design which is intended to place the whole subject of economic reorganization on a plane where it can be discussed as a matter of practical social science. The plan presented here is simplified as far as possible in order that attention may be concentrated on the essential issues that the world faces. Too much time and energy have already gone into contentions over details, when there was no general plan in view. Let no man deceive himself with the delusion that the solution of the world's economic problem is a simple matter, but at the same time, each one who is striving toward a better world may rest with the assurance that there are certain simple and fundamental principles that underlie world economic organization. Society is structural, and as a structure it must function; the economic world is built up of working units that are compelled, by the nature of modern industry to work co-operatively, but the very nature of the political structure of modern society hampers this co-operative work in many essential directions; federation seems to be the logical answer to the enigma of effective social organization, and it only remains to organize a workable series of economic units and to build them into a world structure--a world structure in terms of production rather than of politics. The world is sadly muddled. Millions pay for this muddling with their lives; tens of millions pay with bitter suffering. The owners have had their day. The opportunity for the producers has well-nigh come. The men and women who are responsible for the work that is involved in the economic reorganization of the world must see the whole plan as well as the multiplicity of detail, and must work with the whole plan vividly before their eyes if they are not to be blinded and led astray by the multitude of will-o'-the-wisps that flit across the path. IV. ECONOMIC SELF-GOVERNMENT 1. _Maximum Advantage_ Economic society consists of unit groups or organs which are established for the performance of certain functions. Mines and other extractive units take nature's stores from their age-old resting place and prepare them for the railroad, the factory or the home; the transport units convey goods and people; the merchandising units bring together many varieties of goods, and act as a distributing agency for those who will consume the products of mine and factory. The existence of a unit of economic organization is therefore a proof of the presence of some economic function. The whole structure of economic society has developed in response to the economic needs and in accordance with the economic activities of the community in which it exists. When a part of the economic structure is built, it is expected to function. Mines, when opened, must produce coal; railroads, when completed, must provide transportation. Side by side with the problems involved in the kind of groupings that make up economic society, there is the question of the handling and direction of these groups. No economic institution is of value unless it will perform some useful service by turning out an economic good or by affording a benefit that corresponds to some human need. Each rational person, and every self-directing social group seeks to get the largest possible return in the form of satisfaction for the time and the energy invested in any given enterprise. This law of maximum advantage--which applies with double force to social enterprises, underlies all intelligently directed effort. Unintelligent effort concerns itself with the principle of minimum outlay--seeking to ascertain the least possible expenditure of energy that will yield a subsistence. This is one of the essential distinctions between the present day society and most of those that have proceeded it. Likewise it is the difference between the more and the less highly civilized portions of the earth at the present time. The individual or the group--operating on a very narrow margin, or on a deficit that involves constant misery and that may at any time spell disaster, tends to slip by with the least possible misery or suffering, or, to put it more technically, tends to expend the least possible amount of energy that is required for survival. The moment the tables are turned, and the individual or the group operates on a surplus which permits the enjoyment of more than the bare necessaries, the law of minimum outlay is supplanted by the law of maximum returns. The truth of this principle is strikingly illustrated in Canada, Australia, Argentina, and other relatively new societies where resources are abundant and surplus is large. The same men and women who, under European conditions of narrow marginal living, were satisfied to survive with the least possible expenditure of effort, are transformed into creatures operating on another economic plane. In these new and fertile countries, where the individual, and indeed, the entire group is able to live above the line of bare subsistence, and where surplus is so easily accumulated, the individual devotes himself untiringly to the economic struggle. It is not because they are poor, but because they have a chance to get rich that these people are willing to expend unusual effort. Just as the individual, working on a basis of economic surplus, directs his energies to the task of insuring and of increasing the surplus, so the group, which has a similar economic advantage, devotes itself to the task of building up a surplus as soon as it realizes the possibility of increasing its returns through an increase in the energy and intelligence devoted to group purposes. The personal comfort and the industrial prosperity of temperate zone civilizations depend, at the present moment, in great measure upon the supply of coal which is available. Certain parts of the earth, such as Wales, the Saar Basin and Newfoundland contain coal deposits upon which the entire industrial society is dependent for its survival. It is, then, a matter of the gravest importance to secure a maximum coal output, at least to the point of satisfying the minimum demands of the community. Whatever men and machinery are required to produce the ration of coal upon which industrial efficiency depends must be directed toward that goal. At the same time, waste, inefficiency and dis-employment, whether of men or of machines must be reduced to a minimum. What volume of production constitutes a maximum of return under a given set of circumstances, experiment alone will decide, but the individual and the social effort to secure this return must be unremitting. Such maximum returns will be obtained by society when each productive unit is operating at maximum efficiency. The efficiency of the human body depends upon the efficient operation of the digestive system, the respiratory system, the circulatory system, and so on. The stomach, the lungs, the heart must all function smoothly to maintain bodily health. The body cannot function as a body. It functions through the aggregate activities of its various organs. The same thing is true of a society. It is impossible for the economic system to secure its maximum returns as a system. It will work only through the co-operative functioning of its various constituent elements. If the efficiency (health) of the economic system is to be preserved, it will be accomplished through the effective working of the mines and other extractive units; the mills, and the other fabricating units; the railroads and other transport units. Each one of these constituent elements of the whole economic society must be self-efficient, in order that there may be a high standard of efficiency in the entire economic system. The units of which the economic system is composed must therefore be self-motivating and self-acting. They must be "alive." If one part of the economic body is dead, the whole will eventually disintegrate and decay. 2. _The Essentials for Maximum Returns_ The efficiency of the economic unit--the mine, the factory, the railroad division--depends upon the attitude of the individual human beings of which the unit is composed. Just as the entire economic system is made up of an aggregate of functioning units, so each unit is made up of functioning individuals. What would a coal mine be without its pick miners, road men, drivers, door-men, dumpers? The efficiency of the economic unit cannot be maintained unless the individuals who compose it are self-acting, intelligent beings, who know what they want and why they want it; who know the ends they desire to attain and how to reach them. Without this beginning there can be no lasting efficiency in a society that is dependent for its success upon the self-generated activity of autonomous groups. In order that society may enjoy a maximum of return for its outlay of labor and machinery, therefore: 1. _The human values present in each economic unit must be maintained at a high level through an appeal to the finest qualities of the individual human being._ That appeal must be strong enough and constant enough, when coupled with the economic appeal, to provide a reason or incentive for continued activity. 2. _The integrity and permanence of the unit must be preserved._ The economic unit is one of the tools with which society does its work, and is the means relied upon for the production of livelihood. Like the axe of the woodsman or the lathe of the mechanic, the social tools and machinery must be kept in effective working order if society is to receive a return for its outlay of labor and materials. Three items enter into the maintenance of this efficiency: (a) current repairs, (b) periodic rebuilding, and (c) ultimate replacement. This is as true of any part of the social structure as it is of mechanical devices. The more complicated the structure the more necessary are rebuilding and replacement. 3. _The productivity of the unit must be kept up to a high level of efficiency._ This is the purpose for which the unit exists. Efficiency is the product of the individual activity of the group members, and of the working effectiveness of the mechanism with which they accomplish their tasks. Thus both are essential to efficiency in production. 4. _Self-motivation and co-operation are the two fundamentally important requirements in the working of all economic units._ The former is the best guarantee of the continuous functioning of the unit. The latter links together the different units, making them working parts of the whole economic system. Here are four indispensable requirements--the maintenance of human values, the preservation of group integrity and permanence, productive efficiency and self-generated activity--for the building and successful continuance of economically sound unit groups. If society is to secure maximum returns, if the economic mechanism is to yield its largest quota of goods and services to mankind, the units out of which society is built must meet these requirements which constitute four of the essential pre-requisites to the success of any economic experiment. 3. _Centralized Authority_ Granted the desirability of efficiency in economic organization, the question at once arises as to how this efficiency is to be guaranteed. Up to this point the means adopted to secure such an end have consisted in concentrating economic authority in the hands of a small owning and managing class, and in leaving with the members of this class the determination of policy and of methods of procedure. The concentration of administrative authority at one point has proved impracticable, first because of the great amount of red tape involved in the handling of the endless detail, and second because of the resulting destruction of initiative and enterprise. Such a centralization of social function would be just as cumbersome as a like centralization of all bodily functions in the higher brain centres. If men were compelled to reason about and to direct each step, each movement of eyes or hands, each breath, each heart-beat, the attention would never pass beyond the boundaries of such pressing and never-ending routine. Many bodily organs, like the stomach, function involuntarily. Walking becomes habitual. It is only when the stomach and the legs fail to work properly that they become the objects of attention. The same thing should be true of a well-directed economic system. Each local unit should function locally and autonomously, and the problems of local function should never come to the attention of a more central authority until there is some failure to work on the part of the local unit. Those who despair of the future of society, and who feel that effective co-operation between social groups is impossible, should remember that the organs of the human body have been gaming experience in co-operative and harmonious function for hundreds of thousands or for millions of years, while the organization of society is an art that is still in its extreme infancy. The astonishing thing about the various social groups is not that they work so badly together, but that they work so well. As the centralization of authority increases, the amount of red-tape piles up until more social energy is consumed in overcoming social inertia and the friction that is the result of social function, than is produced by the function in question. When this point is reached, the social machinery operates at a constant loss, and it is only a question of time when it will cease to operate altogether, and the social machinery will begin to disintegrate into its constituent elements. The greater the degree, therefore, of localization, provided the mechanism can be held together and kept in working order, the less the loss in social energy. 4. _An Ideal Economic Unit_ The social group thus faces two problems: One is the development of sufficient energy to keep the social machinery going. This problem is tied up with the stimulation of human wants, as it is only from the aroused energies of men and women that the social energy is derived. The other is the reduction of social friction and other forms of social waste to a minimum, in order that the largest possible amount of social energy may be devoted to the work of driving society. The present social order relies, in part, for its driving power on man's desire for personal economic advantage. Where the rewards have been considerable, large amounts of energy and ingenuity have been developed as the result of this stimulus. The worker, the manager, the whole producing unit strove to excel, both because failure carried with it the penalty of destruction (bankruptcy or unemployment) and because success carried with it the probability of large economic rewards (profits). The result was an outpouring of social energy in the various independent local groups. The real difficulty inherent in the earlier stages of the present order was not its failure to secure abundant human exertion, but its failure to provide any means of co-operation between individuals and between groups. The same set of social principles which decreed local rewards and local punishments for initiative and enterprise, or for the lack of them, was built upon the theory that "competition is the life of trade." Thus, while the present economic system, in its earlier stages tended to stimulate initiative, its form made co-operation difficult or impossible. The ideal economic unit would be one capable of generating its own driving power, and given a legitimate exchange of commodities and services with other units, one that could maintain its own energy and efficiency. A society composed of such units would have great vitality because its energy would be generated in a large number of more or less independent localities. A study of the agricultural village of Central Europe or of the Mexican Indians shows how workable and how stable such a form of society really is. The only practicable method of maintaining efficiency and of reducing the friction incident to social function is to erect a form of local self-government that will make possible both the stimulation of initiative and effective co-operation between groups. 5. _Rewarding Energy_ The issue of economic self-government resolves itself into two questions, which the average human being will sooner or later ask: 1. What do I get out of it? 2. Who is to be the boss? The intelligent man or woman cannot be expected to exert himself freely for the building of a palace at Versailles, on whose grounds he can never set foot, or for the maintenance of a Palm Beach that he sees only on the screen. The economic necessities are too immediate and the economic urge is too strong. Before the individual will expend his maximum energy upon the economic process, he must see tangible results such as bread, shoes, schools, and holidays. One of the strongest arguments that the present economic system advances in favor of its continuance is the showing of large tangible returns in the form of economic goods. To be sure these results have not been secured by everyone, but there is neighbor Pitt who started as a stable boy, and who now owns the largest garage in the city; there is neighbor Wallace who began life as a grocery clerk and to-day is master of many acres of coal and timber. Besides, yonder store is filled with the good things of life, ready for anyone who has the money to buy them. Many persons, under the present system, make enough to buy all of them and others beside. So the argument runs, and those who advance it can give a wealth of instances to prove the point. The huge rewards of the present system even though they have gone to the very few, have been turned over to those who could survive in the struggle. Everyone knows that the winners in a lottery are few and the losers many, yet each buys a ticket because he hopes and expects to be one of the winners. Society, as reconstructed, must be less of a gambling venture and more of an established certainty, with the material rewards going to those who are responsible for producing them. And each person who thus shares in the economic rewards of society must see the connection between the energy expended and the share received. Only while such a connection apparently exists will economic effort be expended by the normal individual. 6. _The Ownership of the Economic Machinery_ The individual cannot be expected to exert himself where there is no apparent connection between the effort expended and the return for his effort. Neither can he be expected to exert himself in the interest of economic machinery that belongs to someone else. His interest can be maintained only by the hope of a return for the effort that he expends, and by a sense of control over the job on which he works. Among the various experiments that society has tried, in an effort to attain these ends, none has been more successful than self-government. The application of the principle of self-government to the economic world involves the control of economic machinery and economic policy in each unit by those who compose the unit. The members of each economic group must be supreme in their own field, except in so far as their decisions affect the welfare of other units. In such cases the decision must rest with that larger economic group to which the involved economic units belong. Thus the aim of economic self-government is to keep the responsibility centered upon those who would normally be the most concerned in getting results. All matters of policy will therefore be decided by those individuals or groups that are directly involved. Where possible such decisions should be reached in open meetings corresponding to the tribal council or the town meeting. Such meetings may always be held in local economic units, such as collieries, departments of factories and the like. Where it proves impossible to get the members of an economic group all into one meeting place, their affairs must necessarily be transacted by representatives, chosen as directly as possible. 7. _Economic Leadership_ The decisions having been made with regard to matters of policy, the next and equally important question arises: "Who shall be entrusted with the duty of seeing that policies once decided upon are carried out? Who shall be entrusted with leadership in economic affairs?" Those who are entrusted with the carrying out of economic policy in a producers' society may be divided, roughly, into two classes: the executive and the expert. The executive is the director of general policy. The expert is the specialist, selected to do a particular piece of work. For example, the representatives of District 2, United Mine Workers of America decide that, as a matter of general policy, they will advocate the nationalization of the coal mines, and they instruct their president and their executive board accordingly. The executives of District 2 are therefore charged with the duty of organizing a propaganda, which, to be effective, must consist of a well-ordered summary of facts about the coal mining industry, put in a form that can be easily understood by the average man, and distributed in such a manner that it will reach the people responsible for coal mine nationalization. Here, then, are three distinct tasks: (1) an investigation of the facts; (2) a plan for nationalization; and (3) an advertising campaign. The first two of these tasks, to be well done, must be placed in the hands of engineers, statisticians and mine experts. The third will fall to the lot of an advertising or publicity man. The president of District 2 is an executive, charged with the duty of seeing that a program of mine nationalization is carried forward. The engineers, statisticians and advertising men that he secures to do the work in their respective fields are experts. These distinctions have been well established in the world of government and of business, and they are rapidly finding their way into the world of labor. There can be no great difference of opinion about the expert. He is a technically trained man, and as a chemist, an electrician, or as an auditor of accounts he has a special field in which he is supposed to be a master craftsman. The selection of such an expert, therefore, is a question of finding men with the knowledge and experience necessary for the doing of a certain piece of work. 8. _The Selection of Leaders_ The situation is far more complicated when it comes to the selection, of the executive. He is the keystone of the social arch--the binding force that holds the various parts of the group apart and together. Upon his decisions may depend the success or the failure of an entire enterprise, because, tie him with red tape as you will, he still has a margin of free choice in which he registers his success or failure as an executive. The executive is put in office to do the will of a constituency and to carry out a certain policy. But what is the will of the constituency, and which one of a half dozen lines of action will most completely and effectively carry out the policy in question? The executive must find an answer to those questions, and he must find it hour after hour and day after day. Society has striven for ages to devise a successful method of picking executives, and of keeping a watchful eye on them after they assume the reins of government. There are three general ways in which the selection may be made: 1. Through heredity--the leadership descending from one generation to the next in the line of blood relationship. This is the method practiced in all countries that have kings, aristocrats, plutocrats or others who automatically inherit power from their ancestors. 2. Through self-selection--the leadership being assumed by those who are the quickest to seize it. Primitive, disorganized or unorganized societies or associations pick their leaders in this way. The strongest, the most courageous, the most cunning, press to the front in an emergency, and their leadership is accepted as a matter of course by those who are less strong or courageous or cunning. The leaders of a miscellaneous mob are apt to be thus self-selected. The leaders of new activities, like the organized business of the United States and Canada, have been, for the most part, self-selected. Seeing opportunities for economic advantage, they have grasped them before their fellows realized what was happening. The great accumulations of economic power that were made in this way during the past generation are now being passed from father to son, and the leadership in American economic life is therefore tending to fall into an hereditary caste or class. There is still, however, a considerable margin of self-selection of American economic leadership. 3. Through social selection--the right and duty of leadership being assigned by the group, after some form of deliberation to a designated individual. This is the method common to all highly organized and self-conscious societies that are not dominated by a system of hereditary caste rule. Public officials in most of the countries of the world, officials of trade unions and other voluntary associations are usually selected in this manner. The selection of executive leadership in any organized society must be through heredity or through group choice. Self-selection is necessarily confined to new or temporary or loosely organized groups. 9. _The Details of Organization_ These general principles of economic self-government may be applied to local, district, divisional and to world economic groupings. To be sure the application, in each instance, will be varied in accordance with the peculiar needs in question, but a general scheme of procedure may be suggested somewhat as follows: 1. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF A LOCAL ECONOMIC UNIT IN A GIVEN INDUSTRY--A MINE, FACTORY, STORE-- a. The entire working force would meet at regular intervals, in a shop meeting, or colliery meeting, or store meeting, to transact general business. b. At such a meeting a shop committee selected by those present, would be charged with the responsibility of directing affairs in the shop that had selected it. The shop committee would consist of a small group, varying in size with the size of shop, under the chairmanship of a person selected by the workers at the same time they elected the committee. c. This chairman of the shop committee would be called the shop chairman. His duties would correspond roughly with those of the present-day foreman, or with those of the shop-steward or shop chairman in some of the more advanced of the British industries. In reality this shop chairman would be the shop executive, holding office while he could retain the good will of his shop-mates, and while he could give a satisfactory account of his shop in the way of production and discipline. d. Where there were a number of departments in a large factory, store or other establishment, there would be a plant committee made up of the chairmen of all shop committees in the plant. e. Where plant committees were organized, it would be their duty to designate one of their members as chairman. This plant committee chairman would therefore be what, under present conditions, is the general manager of the plant, with his fellow committeemen as his executive committee or board of managers. f. Each economic unit, whether shop or plant, would have its engineers or experts, picked, like other workers, by the shop committee or the plant committee, and responsible to that committee for the particular tasks assigned to them. All participation in the activities of this basic economic unit--hiring and firing as it is called--would be determined by the shop committees and by the plant committee, each with final local jurisdiction, subject, of course, to a referendum of the workers in the department or the plant concerned. By this means, the members of each basic economic group would be made the sole judges as to those with whom they should work. Each group would therefore have an opportunity to set its own group standards and to build up its own group spirit. The individual worker, in order to secure a job, or work place, must therefore subject himself to the scrutiny of his prospective shop-mates, perhaps even to work for a time on probation, and this to prove his fitness to join the group and thus to participate in its activities. Such a plan would provide a self-governing and self-directing economic unit, capable of adaptation to the various phases of economic life, and at the same time capable of generating its own social steam, and thus driving itself forward on the path of its own activities. Farming, hand-craft industries, and other occupations in which the worker owns his own tools, and is worker, manager and business-man combined, would be forced to organize a local unit more nearly approximating the medieval guild or some of the modern organizations for producers' co-operation. The general principles of organization would be the same in the one case as in the other, power and control being held locally by self-directing, autonomous groups. This plan for the organization of a local self-governing economic unit represents an attempt to apply the best principles of economic and political science to the working out of an intelligently directed society. 2. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF AN ECONOMIC DISTRICT IN A GIVEN INDUSTRY. a. The district would consist of a number of economic units in the same or in an immediately related field of industry. For example, it might be formed of steel mills alone, or of machine shops and steel mills, or of machine shops, steel mills, and foundries. The decision on the matter of membership in the district would rest, first with the local economic units that united to form the district, and second, with the industries immediately concerned. The purpose of the organization would be to link together those economic units that were most dependent upon one another, and that therefore had the most interests in common. b. When formed, the organization would apply for recognition to the divisional organization of its particular industry. If the district comprised manufacturing industries, it would apply to the divisional organization of the manufacturing industries; if the district comprised coal mines, it would apply to the divisional organization of the extractive industries. It would be to the interest of the divisional organization to recognize only such district organizations as did not involve the divisional organization in jurisdictional disputes. c. After securing recognition from the divisional organization, the district organization would be the judge of its own membership, and would be in a position to add such local economic units as were to its advantage in pursuit of its general policy. d. The control over the affairs of the district would be in the hands of a district committee, elected directly by the workers of the district, each group of workers voting by ballot in its own shop. A. When the elections for membership of the district committee were held, the members of the plant committees, or of the shop committees where there were no plant committees, would be the candidates. By this means, only those of recognized standing in a local group could become candidates for the higher offices. At the same time, the local group, when it elected to local office would be nominating for higher office. B. When a plant committeeman was elected to the district committee, his position in the plant committee would be filled by special election. e. The district committee would be a large body, consisting of at least one representative from each of the plants or shops in the district. f. The routine work of the district committee would be handled by the district executive committee, picked by the district committee from its own membership, and responsible to it as a board of managers. g. Each district would have its staff of engineers, experts or inspectors, whose duty it would be to check up on the technical side of the activities in the district, very much as a county agricultural agent or a district sales manager checks up on the work of those who come within his jurisdiction. These experts would be selected by the district executive committee, subject to the approval of the district committee. h. Where possible, important issues confronting the district would be brought to the attention of the workers in the district through one or a series of mass meetings. Where this proved to be impossible, newspapers, leaflets, and other forms of printed information must suffice. i. The district would therefore be a self-governing group of economic units, engaged in activities that fell within one of the main divisions of industry. It would be the judge of its own economic affairs and would be autonomous in all matters affecting only the district. 3. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF A GEOGRAPHIC DIVISION WITHIN A GIVEN INDUSTRIAL OR OCCUPATIONAL GROUP. a. The division would consist of a convenient geographic area, in so far as possible contiguous and closely bound together by transport facilities, related economic interests, etc. North America, South America, South Africa, and Mediterranean Basin, Northern Europe, Northern Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia, and Australia might be agreed upon as such divisions. b. The organization of the division is, in the main, a replica of the organization of the district, with two exceptions: A. The scope of the organization is limited geographically to the division in question, and covers all of this division, whereas the district organization includes a group of local economic units, which are not necessarily contiguous, and are in no particular geographic relation to one another. While the district organization is strictly industrial, the divisional organization is industrial and geographic. B. The organization is definitely limited to the major occupational groups, each of the groups covering the whole of the division. Hence there would be, in each division, a division organization of transport workers, a division organization of agricultural workers, a division organization of those engaged in manufacturing and so on, making a divisional organization for each of the major industrial groups. A district might comprise only one branch of an industry such as textile manufacturing or electric transport. All of these districts would be included, however, in the particular divisional organization with which they would logically affiliate. Thus there might be a district organization for the textile workers of Lyons and vicinity, and another district organization for the metal workers of St. Etienne and vicinity. Both districts would be included in the divisional organization of the manufacturing industries of the Mediterranean Basin. c. The control of each industry within a division would be vested in a divisional congress, elected directly by all of the workers in the division who were engaged in that industry. A. The members of this congress would be elected by districts, with a minimum of at least one member from each district, and an additional member from each district for each additional quota of workers over a specified minimum. The details would necessarily vary with the division, but if there were 100 districts in a division, with a million workers in all of the districts, each district might be allowed a minimum of two members in the divisional congress, with one additional member for each 5,000 workers in excess of 10,000. Under such an arrangement, a district with 25,000 workers would have five representatives in the congress, and so on. B. The members of the district committees are the candidates for election to the divisional congresses. d. The divisional congress meets at least once in each year, and within thirty days of its election. e. The divisional congress picks from its own membership a divisional executive committee, which meets at intervals through the year, and is responsible for the affairs of the division when the divisional congress is not in session. f. The divisional congress selects from its membership a divisional executive board which sits constantly. Its members are members of the division executive committee, and it is responsible to the division executive committee when the division congress is not in session. g. Each divisional executive board picks a staff of experts or engineers, who are approved by the divisional executive committee, and who constitute the technical general staff of the division. 4. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERAL INDUSTRIAL GROUP ON A WORLD BASIS. a. The general industrial group, or general occupational group, would be a major subdivision of the world's industrial life. All of those producers who were engaged in like activities would be classed together, and the number of these world industrial groups would be determined as a matter of administrative convenience. The producers of the world might, for example, be divided into the following major industrial groups: agriculture, the extractive industries, manufacturing, transport, trade, housekeeping, and general (miscellaneous) workers. Some such economic grouping of producers would include all who are employed in producing goods and services and would provide the basis for an alignment of the world's population in terms of what the producers did rather than in terms of where they lived. b. Thus far, in the detailed statement of local, district and divisional organization, only the barest outline has been given, first because it was the intention to discuss the world economic problem rather than the local problem, and second because the internal structure of each industry would be determined largely by that industry, and would, of necessity, vary considerably with the varying industrial conditions. The organized world industries, however, are the economic framework of the producers' society, and their organization becomes a matter of the most supreme concern to producers everywhere. c. The control of affairs in each of the major industrial groups would be vested in a congress of from 500 to 1000 members, meeting at least as often as once in each January. A. The members of the divisional congresses, within these same industrial groups, are the candidates for election to the world congress. They are voted for directly by the workers in each division, and if they are elected to the industrial congress, the places thus made vacant in the divisional congress are filled by special election. B. Each division would send a minimum of twenty members to the industrial congress, and an additional member for each specified quota of workers. d. The industrial congress would pick an executive committee from its own membership. This committee would meet at regular intervals, and would be responsible for the conduct of the industry when the industrial congress was not in session. e. The congress would pick a number of additional committees to deal with the various problems arising within each industry. These committees might be called policy committees. In practice, and for the sake of greater effectiveness, it might be desirable for the industrial congress to select a chairman, permit him to pick his committee from the membership of the congress, and then endorse the whole committee, very much as a minister in a responsible government picks his cabinet. Since these committees would be concerned with problems of policy on one side and with problems of administration on the other, such a method would develop a far more harmonious working group. f. The chairmen of these various policy committees together with the chairman of the executive committee would constitute the board of managers of the industry, which would be the responsible directing authority for the world industrial group. g. Connected with each of these committees, and selected by them, there would be a board of engineers and experts, responsible for the technical side of the industry. A diagram may help to visualize the relations existing between the various parts of the world organization. (p. 98.) 10. _The Progress of Self-government_ This outline of the organization of one of the major world economic units is tentative and suggestive rather than arbitrary or final. The details of the plan would necessarily vary from one industry to another and from one district and one division to another. All such matters of detail would be subject to the decisions made by the district committees, by the divisional congresses and by the world congress of each industrial group. The aim of the plan is to build up an economic structure that will be efficient and at the same time sufficiently elastic to meet the changing needs of the times. Production is always necessary, but the methods vary from one age to another. The changes which occur in the economic activities of a population must find their counterpart in the changing economic structure of that community, otherwise disorganization and chaos will inevitably result. The means best calculated to preserve the efficiency and to guarantee the mobility of the economic life of the world is self-government. No other known means of directing and controlling social affairs will secure permanent results, either of efficiency or of mobility. PLAN FOR THE WORLD ORGANIZATION OF ONE INDUSTRIAL OR OCCUPATIONAL GROUP -------------------------------- | | | Industrial Board of Managers, | Sits | composed of committee chairmen | Continually | | -------------------------------- /|\ / | \ Each division / | \ represented on / | \ each committee / | \ --------- ---------- --------- |Policy | |Industrial| |Policy | |Committee| |Executive | |Committee| | | |Committee | | | --------- ---------- --------- \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \|/ ----------------------------------- | Industrial Congress consisting of | Meets in January, | representatives from each of the | no division less | world divisions | than twenty members. ------------------------------------- /|\ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ ---------- ------------- --------- \ | | | | | | The producers of each |Australian| |Mediterranean| |North | of the world divisions |Division | |Division | |American | are the qualified | | | | |Division | electors for each | | | | | | industry in each ---------- ------------- --------- division. Self-government is present to some degree in every form of society of which there is a record. Under some circumstances it is confined to one caste or class. Again it is the right of the whole society. In one place it is confined to political affairs alone. In others it is present in all public activities. Everywhere, however, there is self-government of some kind. Recent generations have devoted their attention to the fostering of political self-government, and to the organization of a multitude of voluntary associations based on the self-governing principle. Generation by generation the peoples have been prepared to assume an ever-increasing authority over the complicated mechanism of public affairs. Self-government in the clan or in the agricultural village was a simple matter compared with the management of public affairs in a modern economic society. It is this task, however, that confronts the present generation. The principle of self-direction, extended into the complex field of economic relationships, must be relied upon to pull together the scattering threads of economic activities. That this task involves an immense amount of propaganda and educational activity, goes without saying. That it is the only sound basis for social procedure seems to be the conclusion inevitably arising out of a careful examination of the premises. The organization of sound economic groups is a problem in the field of social engineering. The preparation of the industrial populations for economic self-government is a problem in the field of education. Both of these problems lie at the root of any effective reorganization of the world's economic affairs. V. A WORLD PRODUCERS' FEDERATION 1. _World Outlook_ An organization of producers into groups corresponding with their occupations lays the basis for world thinking and world federation. Each active member of society would then be directly associated with a group that was world wide in its scope, so that transport workers, miners, farmers and other producers would be in constant touch with similarly occupied men and women on every continent. One of the principal disadvantages of the present organization of society is the sectionalism arising out of the political divisions established by national boundary lines. In a world where all of the producers were organized along lines corresponding with their occupations, sectionalism would have much less chance to play a rôle in the lives of the people. To be sure issues would arise between the various economic groups, but each individual would be affiliated with a world organization, and the scope of his interests and of his thinking would therefore be much broader than it is under the present system of political divisions. World thoughts and world views on a hitherto unknown scale would be the logical outcome of world economic affiliations in producer groups. The organization of society along the lines of production will therefore necessarily broaden the outlook of those whose visions are now limited by the confines of a political state, and the present ties of loyalty which bind the individual within a geographic area would then attach him to a world organization and would compel him to think in world terms. That there are limitations imposed by the affiliation of the individual with an economic group cannot be denied, but such limitations are far less drastic than those prescribed by restricted geographic areas. 2. _The Need of Organization_ The organization of society in terms of economic activity, building up through intimate local units, through district and divisional units to world organization within the major industrial groups does not provide any basis for effective co-operation between the individual groups. The metal workers of the world might produce machinery and the farmers wheat, but by what means are they to exchange their product and regulate their output in a way to secure the maximum of advantage on both sides? There are two outstanding characteristics of present-day economic life. One is its world scope. The other is the intimate and constant inter-working of the various parts of the economic machine so well described by J.A. Hobson in his book on "The Industrial System." Agriculture, mining, transportation, manufacturing and so on are all linked into one functioning mechanism. To be sure there are times when the machine does not work very well--as after a great economic depression, but the purpose is there, the intermittent working harmony of the mechanism is unquestioned, the experience in world economic activity is a permanent part of the heritage of the race, and there remains only the task of making world economic relations more effective and more permanent than they have been in the past. The ice has been broken in the sea of world economic life and the human race has already taken many a plunge in its waters. Under any form of society that can be foreseen in the immediate future, the need of close co-operation between the various parts of the world economic mechanism will tend to increase rather than to diminish, and it is therefore of great importance to have at hand a means of maintaining and facilitating the contacts between the different economic groups. The present system has given economic life an exceptional opportunity to grow within the boundaries of single nations, and to co-operate within those areas that are not sacred to competition. Meanwhile the need for world co-operative organization has grown steadily with the evolution of economic life on a world plane, fostered by some of the clearest visioned among the men who are responsible for the direction of the economic world. 3. _Present-day Economic Authority_ Under the present system of society the linking together of the various parts of the economic world is a private matter. Mines, factories and mills use the railroads as a means of transporting their products. The intermediary in this as in other transactions between the various branches of the economic world is the bank. Thus the banker, who provides the credit, and through whose private institution financial transactions take place, becomes the arbiter of economic destiny, rendering decisions upon which the well-being of the masses or producers depends, yet wholly irresponsible for the results that follow on these decisions. Using the people's money, possessed of vast authority over the jobs and the property of the producers, the banker is answerable only to other financiers who have a similar power and who enjoy a similar freedom from social restraint. Within the scope of the law prohibiting fraud and theft, and subject to the limitations of conscience the bankers and their confreres follow the dictates of their own inclinations. Quite naturally, under the circumstances, they have grown rich, and powerful far beyond the extent of their riches, since their control of the credit--upon which the whole business community depends--and their easy access to other people's money in the form of insurance premiums and savings bank deposits, place them in a strategic position which permits them to dominate and to dictate outside the boundaries of their ownership. The power now exercised by the bankers will, in a producers' society, be under the control of public servants whose business it will be to link up the various lines of activity within the economic machine. At one stage in the development of the world's economic life it was necessary to take out of the hands of private individuals the right to issue money, and to make of money issue a public function. To-day no one questions the desirability of having money issued by public authority, and the right to issue money is recognized as one of the important attributes of sovereignty. Meanwhile there has been a change in the character of the medium of exchange. Credit and not money is employed to adjust most of the relations between economic groups. In 1920, for example, the total amount of money in circulation in the United States, including gold, silver, and all forms of paper money was only 6,088 millions of dollars, while the bank-clearings--that is, the exchange of checks between banks--totaled 462,920 millions of dollars. If to these figures are added the volume of checks drawn and accepted on the same bank, the amount of commercial paper discounted, etc., some idea may be obtained of the importance of credit transactions as compared with the use of cash under the present system. Nevertheless, while the right to issue money has become a public function, the right to issue credit remains in the hands of private bankers. Under a producers' society, the relation between the various groups of producers will be maintained through a system of book-keeping that will charge against each economic group what it uses in the form of raw materials, machinery and the like, and will credit each group with the value of its product. Such a system is in vogue in any large industrial plant, where each department keeps its own accounts, charges the other departments with what they get from it and credits them with what they receive. The whole is handled through a central book-keeping system. The principle of social book-keeping is not new, therefore, but is an essential link in any large and complex economic organization. It merely remains to apply the principle to producers' groups instead of to the affairs of a private banker or to the book-keeping system of some great industrial trust. How shall a joint control be exercised by all of the producers' groups over those economic activities, such as the handling of credit, or social book-keeping, that affect more than one of them? The obvious answer is that they can be transacted through some organization in which all of the groups participate on a footing of economic equality. Common, interests will sooner or later compel common action, or action through a joint board. The point has been reached in the economic history of the world where some such common action of the producing groups is vitally essential to their continued well-being. The logic of economic development is compelling men to turn from the owners' society of the present day to a producers' society, organized by the producing groups and functioning in those cases where the single group of producers finds effective function impossible. 4. _Federation as a Way Out_ Experience has shown that the best way to secure co-operation among a number of groups having more or less divergent interests is through a federated or federal system of organization, under which each of the constituent groups retains control over those matters which relate exclusively to the affairs of that group, while all matters affecting the well-being of two or more groups are handled through the central organization or federation. The United States of America is an association of sovereign states, each of which retains the right to decide those matters which are of importance to that state alone, while all questions of interstate concern are automatically referred to the Federal Government. At the same time, matters of common concern to all of the states such as the coinage of money, relations with foreign governments, the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the states, and the like, are also under exclusively federal jurisdiction. By this means, those questions which are of local moment may be settled within the state in which they arise, while all questions affecting the interests of more than one state, and those having to do with the common interests of all the states, fall within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. The organization of business has followed similar lines of federation. During the early years of capitalism there was a strong tendency to concentrate all of the power of a given business at one point, and in the hands of one man. With the growth of large enterprises, however, such centralization became unworkable. Instead of a single generalissimo, business organized the general staff. The corporation with its board of directors (executive committee) helped to make the transition, and when the United States Steel Corporation was formed, at the peak of the period of American trust organization, its constituent companies were given large scope for individual initiative and activity. The tendency toward departmental autonomy in large businesses is also very marked. Bitter experience with "one man" concerns and top-heavy organizations convinced business men that the road to success lay along the path of federated autonomous units rather than of highly centralized bureaucracies. The labor movement has had the same experience in many of the more advanced countries of the world. There has been almost a century of local, independent groups, each one acting on its own initiative. The failure of such a divide-and-perish course was predicted from the beginning. Then there have been highly centralized organizations of considerable extent and power, like the American Knights of Labor, which flourished for a time and then dried up and blew away. But out of the hundred years experience, the labor movement, as at present organized in Germany, Britain, Belgium, the United States, etc., is an exponent of the social principle that local autonomy must be preserved in all local matters, while questions of general concern must be referred to some general body which represents the general interest. One of the most insuperable difficulties before the world at the present time is the lack of any central authority to which may be referred those matters of general and vital concern that affect the peoples of more than one nation. The peoples feel this lack. They are aware of the fact that industry, science, commerce, art, literature have all leaped the national boundary fence. This is particularly true of Western Europe, whose economic life is closely interwoven, and dependent on certain centers of coal and iron production, and whose political boundaries were determined before the present economic system was dreamed of. The importing of food and of raw materials, the development of markets and of investment opportunities, the organization of means for the transport and the exchange of commodities are matters of common concern to all of the important countries of Western Europe. Before the outbreak of the world war, Europe was an economic net-work of transport, finance and trade, and as a matter of course, communication and travel were common between all of the industrial countries. But while there were so many matters of common concern to Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Belgium, there was no central authority to which these questions could be referred for decision when the threads of mutual interest became tangled. Instead, secret and competitive statecraft made the tangle worse. The mass of conflicting jurisdictions and of petty jealousies that have grown up among the two score of independent and sovereign states of Europe made a conflict almost inevitable. Under a federated system of the European states, civil war would be possible, but the chances of a conflict would be greatly lessened by the presence of a central authority before whom questions of divergent interests could be publicly threshed out. For when issues arise between organizations of equal and parallel jurisdiction, a conflict can frequently be avoided if there is some commonly recognized and superior authority before whom the points in dispute may be laid, and whose decision will prove binding on both parties. What is so obviously true of Europe is also true of the remainder of the Western world, though to a lesser degree. The economic, social and cultural life of civilization has passed beyond national boundaries. Until this fact is recognized, and until some organization is created with a jurisdiction as wide as the problems at issue, misunderstanding, conflict and catastrophe will continue to occur. 5. _Building a Producers' Federation_ The first step in economic reorganization is the recognition or establishment of local district, divisional and world groups of producers affiliated along the lines of their economic activities. This is a simple acceptance, in social terms, of the economic forms that have been evolving since the industrial revolution. The second step in economic reorganization is the recognition or establishment of local, district, divisional and world federations of the local, district, divisional and world industrial groups. This second step must be taken in order that there may be some authority competent to deal with those problems which are common to two or more of the groups in question. There are two general types of problems that the federations of industrial groups will be called upon to handle: 1. Those problems involving inter-relations between the various producing groups, such as the factory workers, transport workers, agricultural workers and the like, that must exchange their products and receive from one another the materials upon which existence depends. 2. Those problems which are common to all producing groups simply because they are common to men and women who are trying to live and to function together. The water-supply, roads, education, are questions of this type. Problems of the second sort, and the issues raised by them, cannot be entered upon at this point. The same federal authority that is charged with the control over inter-industrial problems will likewise charge itself, in each instance, with these common questions not immediately related to industry. This is not an attempt to under-estimate the importance of non-industrial problems, but to confine attention, for the moment, to matters directly related to production, with the conviction that when a mechanism is developed capable of handling the industrial problems there will be less difficulty in taking care of those not so closely related to industry. 6. _Four Groups of Federations_ The issues arising between industrial groups, and those problems common to all groups, will best be handled by federations having a jurisdictional scope parallel to that of the separate groups of which the federations are composed. If these component groups are local economic units, the federation will be local in character. If they are district economic units, the federation will have a district as its sphere, and so on. By this means, there will be created a series of federations or joint organizations, beginning with the federation of local economic units, and ending with a federation of world industries. Throughout this enlarging series of federations the principle of local autonomy will be maintained in all of its rigor, and no matter will be referred to a federation that can be handled by a local group. At the same time, the principle of federal authority will be asserted, and those matters that concern the welfare of more than one group of parallel jurisdiction, will be referred automatically to the federal authority under whose control the group in question falls. The most elemental of the federations would be the local producers' federation, which would correspond, quite accurately, to the town or the city of the present day, save that its size and character would of necessity be much better regulated than the character and size of the present-day town or city. The modern city has been built as a profiteer's paradise. From the construction of houses to the erection of office buildings, the one foremost question: "What per cent will it yield?" has been the guiding principle behind city construction. The local industrial federation will have, as its chief task, the provision of a living and working place for people, hence the character of the industrial community will be determined with a view to the well-being of the inhabitants rather than to the profit of landlords. The local federation would be under the control of a local council, the members of which would be elected by the producing units or groups composing the local federation, very much as the modern city is managed by a council elected by wards or aldermanic districts. Except for the choice of representatives on the council by occupational groups, rather than by geographic divisions, the local federation would closely resemble the municipal government of the present day. In addition to its present functions, however, it would assume the task of dealing with issues arising between two or more of the local producing groups. That is, it would have economic as well as political functions, although it would not necessarily carry on any more productive enterprises (gas, water, house-construction, abbatoirs) than do municipalities at the present time. The local producers' federation would be responsible for two chief lines of activity. On the one hand, it would seek to maintain working relations between the various local economic groups by adjudicating those local questions that affected two or more of the groups. On the other hand, it would take charge of, and administer, those matters of common concern, such as the water supply, the local educational institutions, and so on. This second group of functions would be similar to those now performed by the city council, the board of health, the board of education. There would be a local producers' federation wherever a number of local industrial units agreed to function together. Counties, cities, boroughs, and school districts are, at the present time, organized very much in that way. The local producers' federation would therefore differ little from the existing local groups, such as towns and cities, save that its constituent elements would be occupational groups rather than geographic divisions, and that it would be functioning in the economic as well as in the political field. The second series of federations might be called the producers' district federations. They would include all district industrial groups within a given economic field. Such a district federation would correspond, roughly, to the present state as it exists in Mexico or Australia, or to the provinces in Canada. The district federation would function in three ways. First, there would be the issues arising between the industrial organizations that composed the district federation; second, there would be the issues arising between local federations within the district, and third, there would be those common matters, like health, education, highways and so on. The third series of federations would be the divisional producers federations, which would correspond, roughly, to such aggregations of states as the Commonwealth of Australia or the United States of America. The boundaries of such a federation would follow the boundaries of the principal land areas and the chief population centers. North America, South America, South Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, Northern Europe, Northern Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Australia would furnish a working basis for separating the world into such geographical divisions. Each of these divisional federations would function along the same general lines as the local and district groups. The fourth, in the series of federations, would be the world producers' federation, which would be an organization composed of all of the major industrial groups. These groups, each of which would be organized on a world-wide basis, would unite in the world producers' federation in order to further those interests that were of consequence to two or more of them, as well as those common interests that were of concern to all alike. The world producers' federation would be built on the same principle as the local producers' federation, but unlike this latter federation, the world federation has no prototype existing at the present time. The world producers' federation would be a world authority, linking up those interests of world consequence that are now waving about like cobwebs in the wind. Throughout its entire course this outline has been designed in such a way as to separate sharply the producing units and the administrative groups (federations). The local, district, divisional and world industrial units are the back-bone of the public machinery in a producers' society. For the purposes of facilitating the work of administration, these producers' groups are brought together, at various points, in local, district, divisional and in a world producers' federation, all of which federations derive their power directly from the industrial producers' groups. The world producers' federation therefore has no direct relations with the local producers' federation, any more than the government of a county, in a modern state, has with the central federal authority. The authority of the world producers' federation, like that of the local, district and divisional producers' federations, is derived from its constituent industrial member groups, and is confined to the questions that are of immediate concern to a number of them, or that are the common concern of all. This arrangement will make difficult the production of a state of present type which has drifted far away from some of the most pressing necessities of the common life, and into the hands of politicians,--a situation that permits tyranny on the one hand, and that makes any adequate check on the activities of these political rings difficult or impossible. This danger would be considerably reduced by delegating administrative power to the federations, holding each within its prescribed range, and keeping the real power in the hands of the local, district, divisional and world industrial groups. The decision of the world producers' federation would therefore be binding on the industrial groups, and not upon the local, district and divisional producers' federations, except in so far as the industrial groups compelled these federations to follow the policy of the world producers' federation. It is probable that an exception would have to be made in the case of issues arising between two divisional producers' federations. The burden of settling such an issue should rest, however, on the industrial groups rather than on the world producers' federation. This withholding of authority from the federations in general, and from the world producers' federation in particular may be open to criticism, but it has several strong points in its favor. Through its control of resources, transport and the like, the world producers' federation will wield an immense power. Its constituent members, having aided in its decisions of policy, may follow a similar course of action in the divisional and the district producers' federations. Again, the alternative to the organization of a series of disconnected federations is a centralized bureaucracy of such magnitude, and holding such vast power, that it would be both unwieldy and dangerous, beside violating that very essential rule of local authority in local affairs. The separation of the federations would compel each of them to specialize on particular problems of administrative routine. Questions that were to be carried to wider authorities would be carried by and through the various constituent industrial groups. The structural organization of the world producers' federation would be similar to that of the United States of America or that of the Russian Federated Soviet Republic. The constituent groups would be economic and occupational rather than political or geographic, but the principle of federated autonomous groups would be the same. Each of the major industrial groups that belonged to the world producers' federation would have sovereign power over those matters which affected that group alone. The federation, on the other hand, would have jurisdiction over matters affecting two or more of the world industrial groups, as well as over those matters which were of common concern to all of the member groups. 7. _The Form of Organization_ The general lines of organization for the world producers' federation would be somewhat as follows: 1. The workers in each of the major industrial groups would vote in June of each year for the members of a world parliament which would be the central authority in the world producers' federation. 2. The world parliament would consist of from 800 to 1000 delegates, elected in each of the major industrial groups by the producers in that group. a. Each industrial group would be entitled to at least 50 members in the world parliament, and to one additional member for each 50,000 workers over two and one half millions. But no group would be entitled to more than 150 members in the world parliament. b. The members of the world parliament would be elected by popular vote in each of the major industrial groups, the franchise being extended to all producers, including those who had been producers and were rendered incapable of activity through age or infirmity. c. Each industrial division would be entitled to at least five members of the parliamentary delegation from that particular industrial group, but the details of representation from each of the major industrial groups would be left in the hands of the group. 3. The world parliament would be elected in June and would meet in July of each year. Since the world congresses of each of the major industrial groups would meet in the preceding January, they would have six months to thresh out their individual problems, before they were called upon to consider the general problems confronting all of the groups. 4. The world parliament would select, from its own membership, an executive committee equal in size to ten per cent of the total membership of the parliament. a. On this executive committee each of the world industrial groups would be entitled to at least five members. b. The executive committee would be the steering committee of the world parliament, and when the world parliament was not in session, the executive committee would be the responsible body. c. The executive committee would meet once in four months, or oftener at its discretion. 5. The executive committee would select, from its membership, a number of administrative boards, at the same time naming the chairman of each board. Each of these administrative boards would be charged with the responsibility of handling a unit problem, such as the control of resources, the control of transport, and the like. 6. The chairmen of the various administrative boards would constitute the executive heads of the world producers' federation. They might be called the world producers' federation board of managers. This board of managers would be responsible to the world parliament executive committee. a. If, at any time, the board of managers failed to secure a vote of confidence from the world parliament executive committee, on any matter involving a question of general policy, the board of managers would be automatically dissolved, and the executive committee would proceed at once to select a new board that would replace the old one. b. If the executive committee failed to select a board of managers that could secure a vote of confidence, the world parliament would be automatically summoned to meet one month from the day on which this failure to elect occurred. c. As soon as it convened, the world parliament would proceed, as a first order of business, to the election of an executive committee which would function. d. If the parliament failed to elect an executive committee capable of functioning, the parliament would be automatically dissolved, a special election would be held within ten days, a new parliament would be selected, and would assemble thirty days from the date of this special election. e. By these means, the whole machinery of the world producers' federation would be rendered immediately responsive at all times to the sentiment of its constituency, and the board of managers would be compelled to function in line with the policy of the executive committee and of the world parliament, or turn the work over to another group. PLAN FOR WORLD ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION ---------------------------------- | | The world | Board of Managers consists of | executive | chairman of administrative boards| with one | | member from | | each industry. ---------------------------------- /|\ / | \ / | \ / | \ / | \ --------------- -------------- -------------- |Administrative | |Administrative| |Administrative| |Board | |Board | |Board | --------------- -------------- -------------- \ | / Boards of \ | / experts and \ | / specialists with \ | / chairmen selected by the \|/ world executive committee. --------------------------------------- | | Committee meets | World Executive Committee consists of | quarterly. No | ten per cent of World Parliament | industry less than | | five members. --------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | | Meets in July | World Parliament consists of representatives | July. No | selected directly by the producers in each of| industry less | the major industrial groups | than fifty | | members. ---------------------------------------------- /|\ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ / | \ \ ------------ ---------- ------------ \ | | | | | | The producers in |Machine Man-| |Transport | |Agricultural| each of the major |ufacturing | |Industries| |Industries | industrial groups |Industries | | | | | are the qualified | | | | | | electors of the | | | | | | industry. ------------ ---------- ------------ 7. The world parliament would exercise, directly, or by delegated authority, all legislative, executive and judicial functions that pertained to its activities. It would therefore create the departments or subdivisions necessary to the carrying out of these various functions. The members of the world parliament would be elected for one year, subject to recall at any time by the constituency that elected them. The parliament would decide on the qualifications of its own members. This proposed plan for the organization of a world producers' federation will be made clearer by a diagram. (p. 116.) 8. _All Power to the Producers!_ The plan for a world producers' federation is designed with the object of placing all power in the hands of the producers. The society of the present day vests power--particularly economic power--in the hands of the owners of economic resources and machinery. Their public institution is the capitalist state, and their rule is perpetuated by the manipulation of its machinery. Under this order of society, the chief emphasis is placed on owning rather than on working. The largest material rewards and the greatest amount of social prestige go to the owners. The present society sanctifies ownership, and raises the owner to a position of moral superiority. The same system which dignifies ownership can scarcely recognize work as of supreme social consequence. The worker is therefore placed in a position inferior to that of the owner. His economic rewards are less, his place on the social ladder is lower, and his children are taught in the schools the necessity of getting out of his class into the society of those who are able to live without working. It is hardly necessary to remark that in a community dependent for its existence upon labor, the teaching of such a philosophy points the way to class conflict and ultimately to social disintegration. If the community is dependent upon production for its existence, there must be sufficient incentive to continue production, otherwise the community dies. The disastrous consequences that must of necessity follow on the economic order as it is constituted at the present time are already in evidence,--strikingly so in the case of the European breakdown. The owning class society is coming to an end--falling of its own weight. The time has come when the producers must take the control of the world into their own hands or suffer disaster. Man's sense of justice tells him that the product should belong to him who is responsible for creating it, and his experience teaches him that human beings take a greater interest in that which is theirs than they take in the property of another. The results of production should go to the producers; the machinery of production and the materials entering into production should belong to those responsible for the carrying on of the productive process. How shall these things be? Only when the producers themselves decide to make them come true. All power to the producers! This sentence carries with it the key to the society of the future. VI. WORLD ADMINISTRATION 1. _The Basis for World Administration_ When the producers of the world are organized along the lines of their economic activities, and are federated in local, district and divisional federations, and in a world producers' federation, the structural side of the producers society will be complete. Such a structure is built for use, not for appearance, and its effectiveness depends upon the way in which it works. The handling or administration of the producers society is therefore the determining factor in its success. A world producers' society may fail as miserably as any other form of social organization unless it is deliberately utilized to attain the ends for which it was created. The establishment of a world parliament consisting of representatives from the major industrial groups would create an authority more powerful than that of any existing state because, in the first place, it would be more extensive than any existing state. But even supposing that one of the great nations--Britain or the United States--was to conquer the world and attempt to administer it, the world producers' federation would be far more effective than such a victor, because its rule would be founded on the will and on the consent of the governed and not on the imperial foundation of organized might. The world producers' federation could therefore look for a support from its constituency that no empire could hope to demand from its conquered subjects. The centralization involved in maintaining the authority of an imperial ruling class in a large and complex state is so great that it invariably results in friction and disaffection. The self-governing state, less efficiently co-ordinated and centralized, still has a far better chance for survival. Its energy-generating centres are so much more numerous and more localized than those of the class governed empire that they necessarily reach a larger share of the population. The roots of the self-governing social group may go no deeper than the roots of the group under a bureaucratic government, but there are more of them, and they go to more places. The foundations are sounder because they are broader. In addition to these functional advantages of self-government, it possesses an immense asset in the sense of proprietorship that leads the citizens of a self-governing community to stand by the community organization because they feel that they have built it and that it is their own. A self-governing community therefore carries within itself the means of its own perpetuation in the enthusiasm and devotion of its population to an institution in which they feel a sense of workmanship and of the pride of possession. A world parliament, organized on the basis of self-governing industrial groups, would be unique in two respects. First, in that it was of world extent, and second in that it was built upon the industrial affiliations of its citizenship. If such an organization were handled in a way to hold the allegiance of its constituent members, its decisions on matters of world importance would carry an immense authority. 2. _The Field of World Administration_ There, in fact, would be the test of world government efficacy--in its ability to leave the handling of local problems to local groups, and to concentrate its energies on the administration of those problems which have assumed a distinctively world scope. Such capacity to understand the difference between the business of local groups and the business of the world organization would be the touchstone of world statesmanship, the criterion by which the master political minds of the age could be tested. The short-sighted, narrow-visioned leader of world affairs would seek to gain and to hold power for himself and for his immediate local interests. The presence of many such men in positions of power would soon split the world government into a series of factions, each one seeking to destroy the others and to take away their authority. Such a competitive stage would represent little advance over the present nationalism. A world government has no virtue in itself, and may as easily degenerate into a scramble for office as may any other phase of group relationship. Its success would only be possible where its power was strictly limited to the control of those matters that had reached a plane of world importance. Even then success would be impossible unless those responsible for making essential decisions saw the world problems as wholes rather than as localized and separable problems. Grave issues hang on the method in which the world problems are approached and handled. Success is not assured by any means. Still, the dangers and disadvantages of a plan do not condemn it unless they outweigh the apparent advantages. The people of the western world face a number of serious problems that cannot be solved by the existing nations. Some step must be taken to cope with the new situation that has followed on the heels of the industrial revolution, and in so far as the actual practices of life have evolved to a world plane, and in so far as they concern the workers in more than one industry, it must be apparent that nothing less than some world authority will suffice to cope with the issues that they present. A number of economic questions, such as the control of resources and of transport, have already passed beyond the boundary of the individual nation, and have reached a stage of world importance where they can be handled only on a world basis. In the normal course of social evolution, other questions will, in like manner, emerge into a place of world consequence. As rapidly as such developments occur, the administration of the world issues must be delegated to the world parliament and to its appointees and subordinate bodies. 3. _Five World Problems_ There are a number of problems that have passed beyond the control of any single nation, and that should therefore be made the subject of world administration. Among them are: (1) the control of resources and raw materials, (2) transport (3) exchange, credit and investment, (4) the world economic budget, and (5) adjudication of world disputes. Under a world producers' federation, the administration of these five problems would be in the hands of five administrative boards selected by the executive committee of the world parliament. Each administrative board would select and organize a staff of experts and specialists in its own field, and would present the outline of its proposed activities to the world parliament very much as the department of a modern government presents its budget to the parliament of its state. This presentation would take place through the executive committee of the world parliament, and it would be necessary to secure the endorsement of that committee before the plan could go before the parliament. When the plan was approved, the administrative board would begin to function as a part of the machinery of the world producers' federation. Thereafter it would serve as a part of the world administrative mechanism, the working organization of which would remain intact, even should there be a change of policy, in exactly the same way that the department of state or of agriculture, in any modern government, remains intact through the various changes of party in power. The specialists and experts who made up the staffs of the administrative boards would secure their appointments as the result of civil service examinations, and would continue in their positions until some question arose as to their efficiency. Each administrative board would be organized into a series of departments corresponding with the unit problems coming before the boards, with one specialist or department head charged with the direction of each of these departments. In the raw materials and resources board, for example, there might be one department for each of the more important resources such as coal, iron, copper, cotton, wool, timber, and the like. In the same way, the work of the transport board might be divided into departments covering shipping on the high seas, inland water transport between divisions, inter-divisional land transport, aerial navigation not wholly within one division, and so forth. In each instance, the task of providing an adequate supply of the commodity or an efficient service, would fall to the department or departments involved, while the administrative board itself would sit as a court of last resort, and as a board of strategy for the field in which it was functioning. The administrative board would thus be a group primarily of experts, charged with the specific task of handling some problem of world moment, and responsible to the board of managers of the world producers' federation for the success of its activities. 4. _Work of the Administrative Boards_ A separate administrative board would be established to handle each of the important administrative problems confronting the world producers' federation. At the outset there would be such problems as resources, transport, credit and exchange, budget, and the adjudication of disputes affecting more than one division or more than one of the major industrial groups. It is neither possible nor desirable to draw up a working program for any one of these boards. Such details must be met and solved when the task of administrative work begins. At this point it is only necessary to suggest some of the more important fields in which the boards would operate, and to bring forward typical instances of their functioning. 5. _The Resources and Raw Materials Board_ The survival of a modern industrial centre like the Manchester District of England or the Lille-Roubaix district of France depends upon the supplies of raw material which it is able to secure from and through other industrial groups. These supplies are in turn dependent upon the available deposits of raw materials, the power, and the fertility of the soil. Raw materials and resources are thus the foundation upon which all productive enterprise is based, and it would be one of the first duties of a producers' society to handle this issue successfully. Some idea of the extent to which a modern industrial community is dependent for its survival upon imported raw materials may be gained from an examination of the trade figures for Great Britain. In 1920 the total value of British imports was 1,936 millions of pounds sterling. Of this amount, 767 millions (more than a third) were for food, drink and tobacco, while another third (711 millions) were for raw materials. Under these two general headings were included such items as grain and flour 232 millions, meat 142 millions, cotton and cotton waste 257 millions and wool and wool rags 94 millions of pounds sterling. The two main items of food and raw materials, covered more than three quarters of all British imports. (Statesman's Year Book.) But Britain is a relatively small and very much isolated community, lacking some of the essential resources. It is therefore quite natural that her trade figures should show such a result. The same thing is of course true of Japan, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, France, and in fact most of the important industrial countries. This is taken as a matter of course. Oddly enough, however, it is likewise true of the United States, which is as near to industrial self-sufficiency as any of the leading industrial nations. Among the 5,278 millions of dollars worth of commodities imported by the United States in 1920, there were 40 million pounds of aluminum, 143 million pounds of rice, 345 million pounds of cocoa and cacao, 1,297 million pounds of coffee, 510 million pounds of hides, 152 million pounds of fresh meat, 603 million pounds of India rubber, 260 million pounds of wool, 510 million pounds of paper stock, 1,460 million pounds of paper, 8,074 million pounds of sugar, 4,459 million gallons of crude oil, 130 million skins, and so on. Here are extensive imports of hides, oil, paper, sugar, coffee, wool and rubber--seven of the most important items of modern commerce. Well supplied as it is with varieties of climate and resources, the United States is nevertheless compelled to import large amounts of some of the most essential raw materials. Like the nations of Europe, it is forced to depend, for these and other industrial essentials, upon portions of the economic world that lie outside the national boundaries. An examination of these and similar figures tells the story of the industrial future--a story of limited, localized resources upon which the expanding industries will be compelled to make ever increasing demands. Since all of these demands cannot be met there must ensue a ferocious struggle among the nations to secure and hold the resource key to economic advantage. The beginnings of that struggle have already been witnessed in the contest between France and Germany for the coal and iron deposits of Western Europe. Its next stage will include a struggle between Great Britain and the United States for the possession of the world's reserves of oil. Such a struggle, with its appalling toll of suffering and chaos can be obviated in only one way, by an apportionment, among the users, of the chief raw materials, through an agency in whose direction all of those concerned have a share. This result could be accomplished by the resources and raw materials board of the world producers' federation. The activities of the resources and raw materials board will include: 1. A survey of all available resources and raw materials. 2. A survey of the present consumption of these raw materials. 3. A survey of the present production and of the possible production of these materials. 4. A production budget, assigning to each of the producing areas the amounts of materials that they are responsible for producing. 5. A consumption budget, assigning to the various using areas their quotas of the materials produced. 6. Provision for the increase in production necessary to meet the demands of the consumers of raw materials. 7. Final decisions as to which resources should be used, and for what purposes. This board would have under its immediate control the destiny of the whole producing world. It would not own the resources any more than the postal department of a government owns the post offices and the mail trucks, but in one case, as in the other, the power to decide on the service to be rendered would rest with the administrative officers. The need for some central control over the world's resources, and of some clearing house for raw materials seems quite obvious. The world producers' federation faces no more important or pressing issue. In this field alone, through its elimination of sources of conflict and its regularizing of raw material supplies, the world producers' federation could undoubtedly justify its existence. 6. _The Transport and Communication Board_ The transport and communication board would have jurisdiction over all of those activities involving the transfer of goods, of people and of messages, not wholly within one division. Such a plan has been worked out in part in the United States of America, where commerce between the states (interstate commerce) is under the control of the Federal Government, while commerce wholly within one state is under the control of that state. The same principle, applied to a producers' society, would leave local transport in local hands, while all matters concerning world transport would be under the control of the world producers' federation. The present economic system depends on the shipment of goods from one point to another. Raw materials are sent from the place of their origin to the fabricating establishment that consumes them. In some cases, these distances are small, but when Cuba sends iron ore to the United States, or when Brazil ships coffee to Europe, or when England sends coal to Italy, the distances are considerable and the means of efficient transport are correspondingly important. The same thing holds true of the marketing of finished products. Many of the goods turned out by the present-day industry--particularly machinery--are very bulky and heavy. Each of the manufacturing nations sells its goods, not only within its own borders, but at the ends of the earth. The transport of goods thus becomes supremely important. The transport of goods and of people is only one aspect of the work coming under the direction of the transport and communication board. In addition, there would be: 1. The postal system, which is already on a world basis. 2. The express system, which is really only a branch of the postal system, and which is also on a world basis at the present time. 3. Telephone, telegraph and wireless machinery, which are in their very nature wider than the boundaries of one nation, and which are to-day among the chief means of holding the people of the world close together. The mechanism of transport constitutes a vast net-work of inter-relations that have been carried farther toward a world basis than any other phase of the world's economic life. The nature of ocean transport, of the postal service, of the express service and of the telephone and telegraph made this inevitable. The inventions and discoveries of the past century have worldized transport without the necessity of any intervention from a producer's society. While the work of the transport and communication board would be of vital consequence, it would be relatively simple, in that it would involve little innovation, but rather the unification and co-ordination of existing agencies. 7. _The Exchange, Credit and Investment Board_ Many economic writers have characterized the processes of exchange as "non-productive" activities, nevertheless, under the present economic order they lie closer to the seat of power than any other single group of activities. The rise of the banker to his present commanding position is due, primarily, to his control over money, and to his power to issue or to withhold credit. A producers' society may lay far less emphasis on money and its derivatives than does the present system, yet the money function will remain and the money forces will doubtless play some part for a very long period in the new economic order. Money will owe its position of importance, under a producers' society, to the need for a medium of exchange, and until men discover a means more effective than money for the facilitating of exchange, money will continue to play an economic rôle. The inhabitant of a modern industrial community buys many things each day. For the newspaper he spends a penny or two; for the street-car ride, five or ten cents; for fruit, groceries, and other food products, a number of small sums. These transactions, in a country of fifty millions of people, aggregate tens of millions for each day. There are three possible ways in which such transactions may be carried on: (1) each party may give the other some commodity or service--a bunch of carrots for a street-car ride, a sack of flour for a hat, (2) Money may be employed. (3) A system of book-keeping may be devised, and each purchaser may use a credit card, or some similar device. Barter is impossible. Money is the usual means of facilitating exchange. Bookkeeping, on a scale requisite for all petty transactions would be an immensely intricate mechanism. The chances are that at the outset, a producers' society will be compelled to follow the practices of present-day economic life, and to distinguish between the two chief uses of money: money as a means of making change and money as a basis for credit. This distinction has been pretty well established in all parts of the world. The business man buys his morning paper and his lunch with the change that he carries in his pocket. He buys his automobile or his factory building with a check (credit). Money as a means of making change will continue under a producers' society until some more satisfactory means of handling minor transactions is discovered. Money as a basis for credit will be superseded by a system of social book-keeping. The money used at the present time is based on an amount of some commodity, such as gold. A producers' society will undoubtedly substitute for this commodity base some unit of productive effort--an hour's labor or a day's labor in a given industry. Such an idealized labor production period could be used as a basis for all value computations. There are a number of requirements for such a value measure:--(1) It must be reasonably stable; (2) it must be generally recognized and accepted; (3) it must be the medium in which all values in all parts of the economic world are calculated. With a standardized labor unit of value once determined, there would be several methods of procedure. One would be to issue a certificate for each unit of labor performed. The pay-check would then serve as money. Another method would be for the world parliament to issue metal and paper money, using the labor unit instead of gold as the basis of value. In the former case, there would be a labor check, or piece of money in the community for each unit of labor performed. In the latter case, only so much money would be issued as was required for the ordinary purposes of making change. The latter method is the one now in use. The former would represent a distinct step in advance, in that there would be a certificate of purchasing power in the community for each unit of goods and services that was produced. There would be still a third method of handling the problem, by having the world producers' federation issue paper currency stamped with the statement "this is a mark" or "this is a franc," and making it receivable for all legal and public obligations. If the amount of this "fiat" money were carefully regulated, it would probably serve all of the purposes for which money is needed. Whatever its character, it is essential that all money and credit should be publicly issued and under public control. The first problem confronting the exchange and credit board would be to establish some such generally acceptable standard of value. The chaos now existing in exchange rates is but a foretaste of the difficulties that confront a world which is attempting to carry on economic transactions with scores of different moneys and of differing financial systems. The exchange and credit board would have three other important fields of activity: 1. The computation of the values produced by the various industrial groups. This result would be accomplished by establishing a clearing house for reports on production in all industries and in all parts of the world. 2. The financing or exchange of materials between the various producing groups. This activity is now carried on by the commercial banker, who handles trade acceptances, bills of exchange, and the like. It need be no more than a system of book-keeping, with the balances entered as loans from the industries that produce a surplus to those that are using more than they produce. Such a situation would of necessity be temporary, since the aim of the central authority would be to balance values in such a way that there would be an equilibrium all around, with no surpluses and no deficits. Such an ideal condition would never be reached, but it could be approximated. 3. Transfers of capital, or loans negotiated between various industrial groups, and covering more than one division. These loans would take the form of adverse balances in the general clearing between producing groups, and would cover the advances for improvements and betterments, that one producing group would make to another, or that the world producers' federation would make to one of the producing groups. The exchange and credit board would, in reality, be the book-keeping department for the world producers' federation, whose exchange transactions would be planned and handled through this department. 8. _The Budget Board_ Two principal functions would be performed by the budget board. On the one hand it would be charged with budgeting or planning the transactions involved in the world organization of economic life. This function would include the estimates of the requirements of the major economic groups during a given year, and the estimate of the sources from which these requirements were to be met. On the other hand, it would be responsible for preparing the budget of the world producers' federation, and of deciding upon the course that must be adopted in order to meet these necessary outlays. Thus the board would correspond, in a sense, to the finance committee of a modern parliament or to the department of finance in a modern cabinet. 9. _The Adjudication of Disputes Board_ The organization of the world producers' federation places before it certain judicial functions. The federation would be called upon to adjudicate: 1. Disputes between any of the industrial groups involving more than one division. 2. Disputes between one of these industrial groups and the world producers' federation. 3. Disputes between various departments of the world producers' federation and its subdivisions. These functions would devolve upon the adjudication of disputes board, which would constitute a court or committee of review, charged with the duty of hearing issues in dispute before they went to the board of managers, the executive committee and the world parliament for final decision. The adjudication of disputes board would not be, in any sense, a court of last resort. Rather it would be a court of original jurisdiction, sifting out the issues as they arose, and presenting its findings to a higher body. Most of its decisions would, as a matter of routine, be final, but on any issue of importance, the right of final decision would rest in the world parliament, unless that right were assumed by the people through a dissolution of the parliament. The present governmental system, with its checks and balances--legislative, executive and judiciary--has proved far from satisfactory, since it results either in a deadlock between the various authorities, or else some one of them, as for example, the courts in the United States, assume the final authority. In neither case is it possible for the average man to get to the bottom of the difficulty. With all the functions of government centering in the world parliament, there would be less chance of friction between the various parts of the governmental machinery, and a greater likelihood of effective co-operation between the various departments of the government. Above all, the citizen would know where to look for action and where to place the responsibility for failure to act. 10. _The Detail of World Administration_ There is something of the grotesque in discussing the problems that would come for solution before a world producers' federation. The organization in question does not exist. How impossible, then, to predict what it will do when it comes into being. Still, the effectiveness of any proposal must be determined by its results in the realm of those routine affairs with which the organization will be called upon to deal. A world producers' federation will be constituted for the purpose of handling certain world economic problems, and the means by which this control will be exercised is a matter of the first importance. The plan for world administration, as here outlined, is based on two general ideas. The first is that certain problems of world importance would come before the world parliament for solution; the second is that in dealing with any problems of administration, local autonomy should be preserved, the function of each administrative group should be clearly defined, and the control of the central authority should be exerted primarily for the purpose of approving or of disapproving the actions of the administrative divisions, leaving with them the task of initiating and carrying out the plans involved in the work of their respective divisions. With these simple principles of administration in mind, it is easy to plan almost any kind of administrative organization. The real test will come when an issue is raised over the status of a given problem. When has the question of resource distribution ceased to be a local matter and become a world matter? When has the problem of credit become a world problem? To such questions there is but one answer: when these matters are of vital concern to more than one division or to more than one of the major industrial groups--in other words, when they pass beyond the control of one group, they are matters for world jurisdiction. No plan can be drafted that will anticipate the difficulties of world economic organization. The utmost that men can hope to do is to draft a set of working rules that will enable them to act wisely when confronted by difficulties. The world is still in a state of chaos. There are many local authorities, but no central authority. There are plans and policies, looking to the relief of the more pressing economic and social difficulties, but all of them are conditioned upon the establishment of some world power that shall prove competent to handle world affairs. Out of this chaos there must emerge, first, clear thinking as to the next steps that are to be taken in the reorganization of the world; second, a willingness to make the concessions necessary to this reorganization, and third a conscious purpose to build a better living place for human society. VII. TRIAL AND ERROR IN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 1. _Trying Things Out_ A society, like the individuals of which it is composed, learns first by trial and error. The earliest lessons that the human race received were obtained by this method, and all new information is thus secured. The numerous economic difficulties that lie ahead of the present generation must be met and solved by the method of trial and error, or, as it is sometimes called in political jargon, "muddling through." During historic times men have spent vast stores of energy in trying things out. It has frequently been observed that man is a social animal. It might be said with equal truth that he is an experimenting animal. He is curious, he is venturesome, he enjoys change, he relishes novelty, he is eager to better his condition. Animals live on from generation to generation, building nests after the same pattern and migrating over the same territories. But man investigates, ponders, experiments, improves. This principle of experiment--the appeal to trial and error--holds true of social as well as of individual life. The hunter tries out a new snare or weapon, the machinist constructs a new tool, the chemist works out a new formula, the architect creates a new variety of arch or buttress, the educator writes a new kind of text-book, the sanitary engineer devises new methods for securing and safeguarding a water supply, the statesman plans a new system of roads that will open up the rural districts, the social scientist draws the design for a new type of economic organization. From the most personal to the most social, from the most local to the most general or universal, human activities are directed over new fields and into new channels on the principle of experiment, by the method of trial and error. The scientist or inventor works in his laboratory or in his shop, devoting his energies to investigation and research which are nothing more than the application of the principle of trial and error to the particular problems with which his science is confronted. Once the experimenter has discovered a way to compel mechanical power to toil for man, or to destroy the typhoid germ, or to talk across a continent without wires, the next task is to find a better way or an easier way. Far from decreasing the necessity for experiment, each new discovery in the realm of natural science opens the door to additional possibilities. To-day every important college, most cities, many industries, and public institutions maintain experimental laboratories in the various fields of applied knowledge, and employ highly trained experts whose sole duty it is to try things out. Inventors frequently hit upon new ideas or upon novel devices by chance, but for every such chance discovery, there are scores and probably hundreds of ideas and devices that have been carefully thought out, worked over, rejected, revised, modified, until they produced the desired results. There is a margin of chance in all experiment, but surrounding it there is a vast field of careful thinking and planning and of endless purposeful endeavor. These observations are commonplaces in the laboratory and in the department of research. They have filtered through to thinking people who begin to understand the part that experiment plays in all forms of scientific progress. There is a general agreement that if there is to be an increase in the knowledge that men possess regarding the mechanical forces, the only sure way of gaining this knowledge is to weigh, measure, describe and classify. This applies to solids, liquids, gases, rocks, plants, animals, and even to the structure and function of the human body. But when it comes to social institutions, even the wisest hesitate and question. Is it possible that social knowledge can be gained only in this way? There is no other way! Like the individuals of which it is composed, society must investigate, experiment, and learn through trial and error. Indeed, that is the tacitly accepted method by which social knowledge is accumulated. History is a record of social experiments--not so consciously directed nor so carefully planned as the experiments that are taking place in the chemical laboratory, but experiments none the less. What other explanation can account for the many forms of family relationship, the many varieties of religious organizations, the numerous types of political institutions, the multitude of educational institutions. "Educational experiments" are the commonplaces of the pedagog. Slavery was one of society's economic experiments, feudalism was another, capitalism is a third. Through successive generations these institutions have been built up, reformed, discarded and replaced. The history of social institutions is a history of social experiment--of community progress through trial and error. Obstacles are thrown in the way of the social experimenter. Vested interests seek to convince the credulous and the ignorant that whatever is, is right. The jobs of office holders, the possessions of property owners, the security of ruling classes, depend upon their ability to sit on the lid of social experiment. "Do not touch, do not think, do not question!" is the warning of masters to their social vassals. Those who eat of the apple of experiment acquire the knowledge of good and evil, and with this knowledge comes the desire to reject and destroy the evil while they hold fast and augment the good. Those who have learned, and who have dared to protest, have been ridiculed, persecuted, outlawed. Sometimes their bones have bleached on the gibbet or rotted in dungeons. Still, the jail, the gallows and the lynching-bee have not kept experimenters quiet in the past, and they will probably not do so in the future. During recent times--particularly in the last fifty years--the changes in economic and social life have been so rapid that the "always was and always will be" protest is having a harder and harder time to make itself heard above the clatter of the social house-wreckers, and the rap and beat of the social construction engineers. 2. _The Capitalist Experiment_ The present economic society is an experiment--less than a century old in most parts of the world. It has evolved rapidly through a series of forms, corresponding with the rapid advances in the methods by which men wrested a living from nature. The masses of the people in industrial countries have abandoned their farms, their villages and their rural life, have moved into the cities, and have gone to work in the mines, factories, mills, stores and offices, very much as the mechanics and farmers dropped their accustomed tools and rushed to the gold fields of California and Australia. Within two or three generations the whole basis of life has been shifted and a new order has been established. This change has been made for the purpose of securing a better living. The people in the industrial countries have accepted capitalism as an essentially desirable means of gaining a livelihood. The new order has given them an opportunity for mass living that has been reserved in the past for a small percentage of the people. It has provided an immense number of things, for the most part inconsequential and tawdry, but things nevertheless which would appeal to the possessive instincts of those who had never enjoyed many possessions. The new order has made each family in an industrial district doubly dependent--dependent on a job which it can in no wise control, and dependent on the economic mechanism for the supply of goods and services without which mass city life is quite impossible. The rural family had a supplementary source of living in its chickens, pigs, cows, goats, bees and garden. Fuel was cheap and nature provided berries, nuts and game. Life was rough, but the means of maintaining it were relatively abundant. City life has cut away almost all of these forms of supplementary income, at the same time that it has imposed upon the family the need to pay for practically all goods and services. The city breadwinner must get and hold a job, if his family is to live. Mass life in cities, mass work in factories, job-dependence--all of these experiments are being made in a field that up to the present time has been virtually untouched by the human race. Mankind has gone into these experiments hopefully, trustingly, blindly, without any guarantee of their workability. A casual examination of the premises on which the capitalist experiment is built will show the extremely precarious position in which the people who are dependent upon it now find themselves. The capitalist experiment is built on the assumption that competition rather than co-operation is the effective means of promoting social well-being. Acting under this theory, each man is to forage for himself. This individual activity was relied upon to promote initiative and to stimulate ambition. In practice, capitalist society has been compelled to abandon competition in many of its aspects. Monopoly is the opposite of competition, yet the modern capitalist world is full of monopoly because monopoly pays better than competition--it is a more workable economic scheme. Following out the assumption that competition is the life of economic society, one arrives at a necessary corollary to the general theory. The purpose of competition is to injure, wipe out and dispose of the competitor. Therefore the misfortune of our competitors is our good fortune. This would lead, as applied to the actual conditions of life, to some such formula as: 1. Bankrupt your competitor and you will profit. 2. Impoverish your neighbor and you will benefit. 3. Injure your fellow-man and you will gain. Stated thus baldly and harshly, these three propositions sound incredibly silly, particularly in view of the example the world has just had of large scale competition--the World War--yet they are a fair picture of the line of thought and conduct accepted as rational by modern economic society. The normal processes of competition are directed to the destruction of competitors. War is a frankly avowed means of smashing rivals. Nationalism is built on the theory that "our" nation is superior to all other nations, and that, in the long run, it is capable of defeating (injuring) them. The practice of such ideas render an effective organization of society virtually impossible, and it renders social catastrophe almost inevitable. Bankruptcy breeds bankruptcy. Impoverishment is a contagious economic plague. Injury leads to bitterness, hatred and further injury. These logical fruits of competition once admitted into the economic body, threaten its very life. The tenets upon which capitalism is founded have already been abandoned in part by their sponsors as unworkable. But at best they represent a standard of social morality that is essentially destructive of social well-being. The human race has no guarantee of the success of any experiment, and recent experiences with the war, and with the present post-war plight of Europe suggest that the capitalist experiment will fail disastrously unless some extraordinarily successful efforts are made to put things to rights. Society experiments, trying first one means of advancement and then another. A certain number of these new ventures, which prove to be of social advantage, are adopted and incorporated into the social structure. The vast majority are rejected as inadequate to meet the social need. Capitalism is apparently in this latter class. 3. _The Cost of Experience_ Experiment is the necessary road to new experience, and the cost of experiment is written in the immense wastes that it involves. Experience gained through experiment is sometimes very costly. It is never cheap. Frequently these costs, measured in terms of misery, are so great as to overbalance the advantages gained through the experiment. If, therefore, there were another way to gain knowledge except through the processes of experiment, it would result in an immense saving for mankind. 4. _Education_ There is a way, other than experiment, in which knowledge may be gained. Instead of relying on experiment (direct experience) for the spreading of knowledge, it is possible to utilize the indirect channel called education. If this method is followed, and the results of the race experiment and experience are made available to the young of each generation, the need for experiment will be limited to a narrow field, since most of the necessary knowledge will be communicated through education. The individual need not repeat all of the experiments of his ancestors with animal breeding, harvesting, weaving, smelting, writing, house-building, etc. One by one these arts and crafts were built up--each generation adding its quota to the total of knowledge. These results of past experience, which were first passed from hand to hand, then from mouth to mouth, and finally written down, and which have been handed from generation to generation through the processes of education, are among the most important of all social assets. The farther the race goes in its accumulation of knowledge, the more important does education become, since there is more to transmit from one generation to the next. Among primitive people the educational process is completed at a very early age. With the emergence of arts and crafts, the apprenticeship to life becomes longer. At the present time, the individual may continue his education as long as he is capable of acquiring new ideas. Under the present society, therefore, the educational processes are the chief reliance for the transmission of new ideas. 5. _Facing the Future_ The accumulated knowledge of the ages, handed on from one generation to the next, enables the scientist to suggest the direction in which new experiments should be made as well as to predict their probable outcome. His work ceases to be haphazard. It has a well-understood policy and common problems. Particularly in the realm of natural science, has there been a vast accumulation of verified knowledge, from which there have been deduced principles and laws which enable the electrician or the astronomer to predict the action of the electric current or the course of the stars with almost unerring accuracy. To be sure, these predictions do sometimes go wrong, but for the most part they are founded on verified and tested hypotheses. The past thus advises the present, which, from the vantage ground so gained, prepares its contribution to the future. If each generation were compelled to learn how to build fires, to employ language, to shape pottery, to weave, to print and to harness electricity all over again, it would seldom get farther than the rudiments of what is now called civilization. The new knowledge that is gained in each generation is obtained through experiment, but many costly errors are avoided in these experiments through the wisdom that is based on the accumulated knowledge of the past. Thus each generation of scientists accepts from its predecessors a trust for the future. Not only must it preserve the body of knowledge, but it must verify, amplify and enrich it. This is as true of the social scientist as it is of the natural scientist. The difference between them is that the natural scientist has worked out his technique and established his field, while the social scientist has reached only the threshold. 6. _Accumulating Social Knowledge_ Social knowledge is yet in its infancy. It is only within the century that Comte, Buckle, Marx, Spencer and other historians and sociologists have made an attempt to place the accumulations of social knowledge on a par with the accumulations of mathematical or chemical knowledge. Until some effort was made to study society in a scientific spirit, there was no reason for supposing that men might be able to cope with social ills or to prevent social disaster. Even to-day, while there is no longer any question as to the possibility of classifying social facts, and while sociology is regarded as a science of great promise, the feeling lingers that social events are fore-ordained. Many people feel to-day about social disaster as the men of the middle ages felt about the plague--that it is outside the field of man's preventive power. Another fatalistic school of thought holds that men learn their social lessons only through failure and disaster. According to the first line of thought it is useless to interfere with social processes because they are in the hands of the gods; according to the second, men will not interfere until they have been whipped into rebellion by the adverse conditions surrounding them. Men in the past have modified the course of human events in the most profound way. The first smelter of iron and the first constructor of a wheel began a series of events that is still molding social life. It is quite possible to say that these events were fore-ordained, but it is at least equally possible to reply that the same process of fore-ordination is still busy, and that the changes that it will make through the present generation will be at least as important as those which it has made in the preceding ages. Those who believe that the race learns only through hardships and suffering should bear in mind: first, that most of the knowledge communicated to the individuals of each generation is communicated indirectly through some process of education; second, that society is composed of those individuals; third, that modern communities have built a vast machine whose sole purpose it is to influence opinion by teaching (indirectly) in the school, in the church, through the printed page and the film. In Japan this machine is employed to teach the people the sanctity of the emperor; in Britain it is used to convince the masses of the sanctity of business-as-usual; in France it is used to proclaim the sanctity of property; in Russia it is used to inculcate the sanctity of the revolution. If people learned only through first hand experience, these propaganda machines would be failures. In practice, they are highly successful. Social disaster is not the only path to social knowledge. It is not necessary for a generation to suffer from typhus or to be ruined by war in order to be convinced that these dread diseases are menaces. The desire to prevent famine is felt by millions who have never come any nearer to it than the stories in the papers. Society learns, indirectly, through education--slowly of course, but none the less surely. The average man is convinced of the desirability of trying to avoid disease, hunger and the other ills that effect him personally and immediately. He is not yet convinced of the efficacy of a similar attitude toward war, revolution and other disasters which inevitably destroy some portion of society, and which, in the end will prove as preventable as disease and famine. Social disaster seems more inevitable because it strikes more people at one time, while individual disaster has been more carefully studied, is better understood and is more localized. Grave dangers menace present-day society. Economic breakdown, war and social dissolution with their terrible scourges--pestilence and famine--have already overtaken millions. It is plain that some new course of social action must be planned; that some social experiment must be inaugurated that will ward off the impending disasters. Social experiments should be made, as chemical and electrical experiments are made, after all of the available facts have been carefully considered and digested. The results of such wisely planned experiments in the social field may be just as dramatic as the results of similarly planned experiments in the field of natural science. Never in the history of social change has there been an intelligent direction of social processes. Many men in many ages have had ideals and aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part, as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere--unexpected and unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill a different point of view with regard to these matters. On the contrary, there has been a determined effort to convince men that social changes were beyond their ken. The air of mystery has been blown away from natural phenomena, but it is encouraged and permitted to surround social changes. While it endures, an intelligent direction of social life is, of course, quite out of the question. This attitude is being broken down, however. The past hundred years of experiment and experience with a competitive order have convinced multitudes that such an order is unworkable. During the same period, the development of economic organization on ever broader lines has emphasized the need of common purposes and common activities. Recent social experience teaches plainly that an injury to one is an injury to all; that a benefit to one is a benefit to all; that men rise in the scale of well-being with their fellows and not from them, and that a co-operative social life is the only one that will prove livable and workable. These four propositions include the best thinking of the modern world on the fundamentals of a social structure that will prove livable and workable. The acceptance of any such standards of social life involves a right-about-face in the basic social philosophy of the world. 1. _The doctrine of laissez-faire must be accepted for what it is--an exploded theory that has promoted, not social well-being, but the interests of favored classes._ 2. _Catastrophe must be recognized as the most costly avenue to progress._ 3. _Social science must be made at least as effective, in guiding the life of the world as is physical science._ Social science alone will not protect men from the dangers that surround them. Every social group is dependent for its effectiveness upon the kind of individuals of which it is composed, and their ideas and ideals limit the ideas and ideals of the group. At the same time, a carefully thought out course of social action, like a carefully thought out course of individual action presents a standard toward which society may work. A plan for social organization is like the blue-print with which the mechanic works. Science comprises his rules and methods of procedure, but the driving power comes, not from the blue-print and not from the formulas, but from the man himself. This holds equally true of society. 7. _Conscious Social Improvement_ Conscious social improvement is the improvement made by society in pursuance of plans that are prepared and carried out with the knowledge and approval of the mass of the community. It is the product of community intelligence directed to public affairs. The individual can make conscious improvements in his condition only through observation, analysis, conclusion and experiment. The community is under the same limitations. Its progress will be intelligent only when it works rationally and purposefully upon the problems with which it is confronted. The individual faced with a perplexing situation in his business or in his private life, sits down and goes over the matter, examining it point by point, until he thinks that he has a solution for his difficulties. Society, under similar circumstances, must follow a like course of action. People must ponder and discuss the issues before them until there is some consensus of opinion as to what course should be followed. It is only under such conditions of intelligently directed social action that conscious social improvement is made. Conscious social improvement is therefore practicable when the available knowledge about social problems has been socialized or popularized to a degree that renders the community intelligent concerning its own affairs. The task of popularizing any form of knowledge falls primarily to the educator, the journalist and the other moulders of public opinion. 8. _The Barriers to Progress_ There are two important barriers to intelligent social progress. One is the lack of organized knowledge concerning social matters. The other is the restriction of this knowledge to a tiny fraction of the population. Social science, still in its infancy, has ahead of it decades of advancement before it attains a position corresponding with that of the physical sciences. Even at that its progress must be slower, first because of the intricate nature of social phenomena, and second because of the herculean efforts that the vested interests make to destroy any form of social experiment that threatens their privileges. Equally serious, as a limitation on the efficacy of social knowledge, is its restriction to a very small fraction of the community. Progress in the physical sciences is initiated in the laboratory, without any considerable participation by outsiders, but progress in social science depends on the attitude if not on the consent of the community, and therefore the socialization of social knowledge becomes one of the indispensable elements in social progress. The handling of social problems has been confined, in the past, to a very small minority of each community. An aristocracy or plutocracy has taken charge of domestic and foreign affairs, and has made the decisions on which community well-being has depended. With the advent of "popular government" certain of these decisions have been turned over to the masses of the people or have been seized by them. The essential economic decisions, however, are still made by the owners of private wealth. If there is to be an organization of economic society that will function successfully and autonomously, the knowledge on which the decisions affecting economic policy are made must be public property. Until that step is taken the economic life of society will be directed by the chance desires of those who own the machinery of production. Social students will accumulate knowledge and reach deductions, but that is not enough. The task is not completed until the results of their researches are common property. Recent inventions and discoveries make the distribution of knowledge comparatively easy. Cheap paper, rapid printing, the newspaper, the magazine, the book, have all facilitated the scattering of information to those who could read, and in the western world this is more than nine-tenths of the adult population. For those who cannot read, the camera is an educational power. The machinery for public education--the schools, the press, the lecture-platform, has grown within a century to a point that renders possible the speedy distribution of knowledge to the most remote parts of the world. One of the greatest single steps in the reconstruction of the economic life of the world is the use of this machinery to distribute such information as is essential to a clear understanding of the economic problem and the normal course of its development. 9. _Next Steps_ Accept the foregoing analysis, and what lies immediately ahead of society? 1. The socialization and persistent distribution of extant knowledge. 2. A decision with regard to the next great social experiment. 3. The selection of the group best able to carry through this adventure. 4. The preparation of this group for its task. 5. The placing of the task upon their shoulders, and the backing of them with every possible assistance. The working out of the detail of this program is far afield from the purpose of the present study, which must confine itself to the problems of world economics. Let it suffice to indicate here that in pursuance of the program outlined above there must be inaugurated a widespread propaganda the object of which will be to get the facts and their implications to the people: the facts regarding the disintegration of the present order; regarding the possibilities of a new society; regarding the next steps that are necessary in its establishment. This propaganda is being carried on by those branches of the labor movement that are concerned with the working out of a new order of society. Since it is apparent that the organized producers will be the dominant element in the new society, they are its logical architects and builders. It is to this end that the energies of labor education must be directed. When the producers are ready for their stupendous task, and when the time is ripe, they will assume the responsibility for erecting the superstructure of the new society. They will make costly blunders, some of which may be anticipated. They will be compelled to face difficult questions of tactics. In the course of their activities they will make day-to-day decisions that will play a vital part in the ultimate outcome of their experiments. 10. _The Success Qualities_ For the rest, the movement for a producers' society needs an emphasis on those qualities that will bring triumph out of defeat, and that can convert the most menacing situations into assets: 1. A willingness to learn better ways of doing things, and to abandon outgrown ideas and ideals for new ones. 2. A faith that will stand up under failure. 3. A vision that sees beyond a lowering horizon. 4. The courage to keep looking and trying, even in the face of difficulties that seem insuperable. All human achievement is conditioned on these qualities, and their development is a pre-requisite to successful experiment. VIII. ECONOMIC LIBERATION 1. _Why Organize?_ From many sides echo voices urging the human race to co-operate for the general advantage. The world, torn and distracted by the subsistence struggle, yearns toward a method of life that will ease the strain and relieve the heart-ache that are involved in the present-day conflict. It seems that this world-need can be met by a world economic organization built along the lines of productive activity controlled by those who produce, and sufficiently powerful to utter the final word with regard to the disposition of resources and raw materials, of transport, of credit, and of the more general phases of production and consumption. There can be little difference of opinion concerning the necessity for some such organization. A question may well be raised, however, with regard to the probable developments of so vast a world machine. What are its ultimate purposes? Why, in the last analysis, do men seek to improve the economic and political structure of human society? Why organize at all? There is a clear-cut answer to these questions: Men desire changes and improvements in their economic life in order that they may attain greater freedom, and they organize for the purpose of making these changes and improvements more easily. Man is subject to many drastic limitations. First, there are the physical limitations of his own body--its height, its reach, its flexibility, its resistance, its fund of energy. Then he is limited by nature--by the climate, the altitudes, the fertility of the soil, the deposits of minerals, the movement of water. Man is further limited by habit, custom, tradition, and by the opinions of his friends and neighbors. Again, he is limited by ignorance, by fear, by cowardice, by prejudice, and by his own lack of understanding as to the true nature of freedom. In addition to all of these restrictions he is limited by the economic bonds that hold him to his job, that tempt him with gain, that drive him, day by day, to seek for food, clothing, shelter: for comfort and luxury. Only dimly do men realize these limitations. The more they learn, the more clearly they understand the nature of the bonds that hold them, and the better are they prepared to break down the most hampering barriers, and to follow where aspiration and hope beckon. Yet, even among the masses of the people, who have had little time to learn, and less in which to reflect, there is a persistent longing to be free. The plea for liberty always awakens a response in them because, through their own lives they come into such intimate contact with the hateful burdens that oppression lays upon its victims. The longing to be free is probably one of the most widely distributed of human qualities, and one, moreover, which men share with many of the higher animals. The World War focused this longing and raised it to a pitch of frenzied exaltation, under the spell of which hundreds of millions fought and worked, as they thought, for liberty. The fact that they were mistaken in their ideas regarding the purposes of the war does not in any sense detract from the sincerity of their desires, nor from the earnestness of their efforts. The World War fervor was typical of the eager attempts that men have made at intervals all through history, to win freedom against immense odds. During the past three or four centuries this struggle has been particularly severe in the political, the social and in the economic fields alike. Although the Dark Ages almost obliterated the expression of creative energy in the Western World, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the industrial revolution, following in quick succession, proclaimed its reawakening, and to-day there is scarcely a group of people--in Egypt, in Ireland, in Korea, in the Philippines, or in dark, enslaved Africa that does not hold a molten mass of sentiment surging toward freedom,--a seething, smouldering pressure, continually seeking an outlet. Economic emancipation does not include all aspects of freedom. Many other chains remain to be broken. But the economic organization of the world would be one step in the direction of freedom, and would burst many a bond that now holds the human race in subjection. 2. _Freedom from Primitive Struggle_ The first step in economic liberation is to free man from the more savage phases of the life struggle--the struggle against nature: the struggle with other men. Since those far-off times when men lived by tearing away clusters of nuts, by picking berries, by digging roots, by snaring fish and by clubbing game, they have been compelled to wrest from nature the means of subsistence. In this struggle, there have been the terrible phantoms of hunger, thirst, cold, darkness and physical suffering of every sort, driving men on. He who won in the contest with nature was able to escape the worst of these miseries, but he who lost was tortured by them as long as life remained in his body. The race is saddled, even to-day, by an oppressive fear of these physical hardships that makes the strongest a willing servant of any agency that will promise to ward them off. The first victory that men must gain in their battle for economic liberation, will be won when hunger, thirst, cold, darkness and other aspects of physical suffering are banished from the lives of all people as effectively as yellow fever and cholera have been banished from the western world during recent generations. This end has already been attained for the favored few in most countries, but famine still stalks periodically among the peoples of Asia, and even Europe, since the Great War, has felt its grip. Among the industrial workers of the imperial countries, and among the citizens of the exploited countries, the wolf is a far more frequent visitor than is the fatted calf. Liberation from this widespread physical hardship can be achieved by producing enough of the necessaries of life to feed, clothe and house all of the people of the world, and by supplementing an adequate production by a system of distribution that will eliminate hunger and cold. Machine industry has made such an achievement possible. It only remains for a world economic organization to co-ordinate the resources, the productive machinery and the labor, and to distribute the commodities produced to those who need them. The conflict with nature is but one aspect of the primitive struggle in which men are engaged. In addition, there is the struggle of man against man; not to aid, to emulate, to excel, but to rob, cripple and destroy. The existing economic system is built upon the assumed desirability of a struggle whose outward manifestations are: (1) competition between economic groups; (2) the class war between owners and workers, and (3) wars between the nations. Throughout the business world one establishment seeks to build up its organization by wiping out its competitors; one class seeks to win supremacy at the expense of a rival class, and one nation seeks to found its greatness on the prostrate remains of those opposing nations that it has been able to overthrow. These three phases of competition are accompanied by three forms of war--the economic war, the class war and international wars. All three forms of war have an economic background. The economic war is the contest for resources, trade, markets, monopolies and investment opportunities. The class war between the exploiter and the exploited, grows out of the economic relations existing between the owner and the worker. International wars are fought for economic advantage--for resources, trade, markets. The object of all war is the destruction of a rival by resorting to those measures calculated to bring the desired result. Since all is fair in war, the end (destruction) justifies the means, no matter what it may be. What need is there to speak to this generation of the devastation caused by these wars? of the killing, the maiming, the famine, the disease, the disorganization and chaos? The western world has not yet recovered from the latest international war, while the economic war and the class war are being fought on the six continents and the seven seas. The cost of wars in blood, treasure, happiness and usefulness is an intolerable one. The chains with which Mars loads the human race weigh men down to the earth. The organization of a world producers' society would go far toward freeing men from the ravages of war. The necessity for economic competition being removed, and exploitation being done away with, the basis of international war and of the class war would be swept away. Thus the same economic world organization that enabled man to free himself from the more brutal phases of the struggle with nature would likewise enable him to eliminate the principal causes of war. 3. _Freedom from Servility_ The organization of a producers' society would do more than abolish the cruder aspects of the present economic struggle. It would lay the foundation for a new culture founded on the dignity and the worth of labor. There are two groups of human instincts in ceaseless contention for supremacy--the possessive and the creative. Both are of immediate economic importance, and the triumph of the one usually means the subordination of the other. The instincts which urge in the direction of acquisition and accumulation tend to make the man a conservator. Once let him possess an abundance of the world's goods and his chief object is to hold what he has gained. The instincts which urge toward construction and creation tend to make man an innovator, initiator, an improver. The side of man's nature that urges him to possess, directs him toward wealth and power. The side of his nature that leads him to create points to invention, to craftmanship, to artistry. Thus the possessive and the creative instincts are not merely at odds. Possession leads to status while creation leads to improvement. There are some natures that are definitely inclined toward acquisition. There are others as firmly set in the direction of creation. For such natures the social standards possess little importance. They have their bent and they follow it. The great mass of men, however, have no positive set in either direction. Their lives will be primarily possessive or primarily creative, depending upon the kind of training that they receive. Modern society lays its emphasis on possession and accumulation, and upon the wealth and power which they yield. The owner of land or of capital, under the present economic order, is not required to work for his living. His rents and dividends furnish him a source of income far more regular and much more dependable than the wage of the worker, or even than the salary of the man higher up. The rewards of the property owner, moreover, are far larger than those of the worker. Compare the income tax returns of Germany, Britain and the United States with the wage scales from the same countries. The incomes above ten thousand dollars (two thousand pounds or 40,000 marks in pre-war values) per year are derived largely or exclusively from the ownership of property. It pays far better to own than it does to work. The ownership of capital, like the ownership of land, carries with it power over those who must use the capital and work the land, thus setting up an owning group or class which is able to control the lives of the workers, at least to the extent of taking a part of their product and living upon it without rendering any commensurate service in return. With the economic rewards go social honors and distinctions, and the wealthy enjoy social as well as economic privileges. They develop a system of dress, of language, of manners and customs that will distinguish them as far as possible from the common herd, namely, those who work for a living. Veblen describes the process admirably in his "Theory of the Leisure Class." The leisure class, he says, has its origin in some form of ownership, on which it builds the structure of its prerogatives. The existence of an owning, ruling class divides society into factions, whose contentions threaten the destruction of any social group in which they take place. From the intolerable social situation which they create, there seems to be but one logical means of escape, and that is through the establishment of a society in which labor and not parasitism is the ideal toward which children are taught to strive. Such a society would shift the emphasis from possession to creation (production) by rewarding the worker rather than the owner. This result may be accomplished quite simply by giving the chief rewards to those who create, and by denying to the owner any direct reward for his ownership. Another step in the same direction could be taken by limiting individual ownership to the things that men use, and concentrating in the producing group the ownership of all productive tools. When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own. Furthermore, since ownership of itself would involve no power over others, another important incentive to accumulation would be removed. A producers' society, as a matter of course, would accord the most honor to those who engaged in productive activity, thus registering the social opinion in favor of creating rather than of possessing and exploiting. With the economic and the social rewards going to producers, the young of each generation would learn that it was more worth while to be a producer than to be an owner. Again a producers' society would aim to secure the common participation in the necessary social tasks--the drudgery and the "dirty-work." With the essential work performed in part by all able-bodied persons, no stigma would attach to those who were engaged in it, the class of economic pariahs would be eliminated, and each participant in the necessary economic work of the world would feel that he belonged to the group in which he was playing so important a rôle. "But," argues the doubter, "all of this is against human nature. How is it possible to expect that men will stop possessing, or will lose the desire for possession?" They cannot be expected to do either, of course. But it so happens that, in any industrial society, the group living on its ownership is a very small one compared with the group living by its labor. The preference, in an industrial community, can therefore easily incline to labor rather than to ownership. As for the chief rewards of life going to producers rather than to owners, this is historically practicable. Greek society worked out an elaborate system of honors and rewards for those who could create. Human nature has not been fairly or adequately tested in recent years. Only certain of its phases have been developed by social demands, and those phases--the possessive instincts--are among the least socially advantageous of human qualities. An emphasis on production rather than on accumulation would have another important result--more important, in a sense, than any of those named. It would establish a feeling of self-respect among those who work by giving them the only conceivable economic basis for self-respect--the ownership and control of their jobs. While one man owns a job on which another man must work in order to live, the job-owner is the master, and the job-taker is his vassal. Necessarily, the vassal occupies a position of servility. When he asks for an opportunity to work, he is asking for an opportunity to live. When he takes a job he is binding his life and his conduct under terms prescribed by the job-owner. If he has a family, or owns a home, or is in any way tied to one spot, he is doubly bound. The establishment of a producers' society would make each man his own master in somewhat the same sense that the farmer or the artisan who owns his land or tools is the arbiter of his own economic destiny. That is, he would own his job and share in its control. Thus society would eliminate the inequalities that are now created by the concentration of ownership and power in a few hands, and would establish a relative equality among those who produced. The great fear of the modern worker--the fear of unemployment or job-loss--would also be eliminated, since the producers, in a society of which they had control, would be able to hold their own jobs. These various means would serve to dignify labor and production, and to establish a society in which prestige and honor would attach to creation rather than to ownership. 4. _Wisdom in Consumption_ One of the chief weapons of a leisure class is some mark that will easily distinguish its members from the workers. This mark, in modern society, is conspicuous consumption. By the quality and style of its wearing apparel, by the scale of its housing, by the multitude of its possessions, its luxuries and its enjoyments, the leisure class sets itself apart from the remainder of the community, advertising to the world, in the most unmistakable manner, its capacity to spend more than the members of the working class can earn. This need for distinction through consumption has set a living standard which the less well-to-do families seek to emulate. Among the leisured, there is an eager race to decide which can spend the most lavishly, while those of less economic means make a determined effort to put on front and to appear richer than they really are. The result of this competition among neighbors is an absurd attention to the quantity and to the cost of possessions, with a comparative indifference to their intrinsic beauty or to their utility. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the rapidly altering styles of woman's dress. One season silk stockings and low-cut waists are worn in the middle of winter: the next, expensive furs appear in mid-summer. With little reference to artistic effect, and with even less attention to the needs of the individual, the procession of the styles moves across the social stage with tens of millions eagerly watching for the tiniest change in cut or color. The devotion of an entire class to this conspicuous leisure has no social justification save the silly argument that "it makes work." It is one of the logical products of a stratified or class society where the lower classes seek to ape the upper classes, while the latter engage in a mad scramble to determine which shall set the most grotesque standards of social conduct. A producers' society will of necessity take a stand of far-reaching consequence on the question of consumption. In the first place it will realize that one of the most signal failures of the present order lies in the inability of the people to find either happiness or growth in the accumulation of possessions. If the multitude of things owned would satisfy men's needs, the upper classes of the present society would be the happiest that the world has ever known, since they are able to command a quantity and a variety of things that far surpasses previous historic records. Instead of bringing happiness, however, these things have merely brought care, anxiety and finally disillusionment. Now, as always, it is true that a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions, or, as Carlyle puts it, "Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom." The citizens of a producers' society will therefore teach to their children, and will practice an abstemiousness in the midst of plenty--a withdrawal from possessions--in order that the body may have enough, but not too much, and that the spirit may be freed from an undue weight of things. The Greeks understood the principle well; so did the American Indians. They desired, not many things, but an enrichment of life, which they realized could come only through understanding, tranquillity and inner growth. As a matter of course, a producers' society will enforce the axiom: No luxuries for any until the necessaries are supplied to all. This corresponds with the well-established practice of many primitive peoples. It is likewise the application of the highest ethical principles to economic life, and is the course of procedure that man's most elemental sense of justice demands. A more or less rigid adherence to the principle of necessaries first, and an understanding of the futility of seeking for happiness through possessions, will place a rigid limitation upon the amount of time devoted to satisfying economic needs, and will release a generous share of time and energy that may be devoted to supplying the other needs of man. Heretofore, leisure has been absorbed by one class or group. Under a producers' society it would be distributed, like any other social advantage, on an equitable basis. Already sufficient advances have been made in machine production to enable the human race to produce the economic necessaries of each day in a few hours of labor--two, or three, or four, perhaps. It remains for a producers' society to take advantage of this productive efficiency, and to convert the increased productivity, not, as at present, into more goods, but rather into more free time for people. 5. _Leisure for Effective Expression_ The primary aim of a producers' society would be leisure rather than goods--an opportunity for expression rather than an increase in the amount of possessions. One of its great tasks would therefore be the education of its citizenship in the effective use of leisure. This new, socialized leisure, which yesterday was a privilege of the ruling classes and of many of the artisans and farmers, which is to-day the heritage of primitive peoples, and which has been so largely lost in the rush of machine production, will be used: (1) to make and to maintain social contacts; (2) for creative activities; (3) for recreation, and (4) for whatever other means are necessary to promote the growth of the individual. An effective society must be composed of effective individuals. In no other way can a high social standard be maintained. The growth of the individual, in a modern community depends, in large measure, on the way in which he uses his leisure. 6. _Culture and Human Aspiration_ At various stages in the development of society there have emerged cultures founded on some particular group of human aspirations. Thus the forward-looking side of man's nature expressed itself. After he had finished the daily tasks by means of which he earned a subsistence, or, more usually, as a member of a leisure class that was exempt from the necessity of labor, the man dominated by strong creative impulses sought to embody, in some concrete form, the desires which he felt springing up within him, and which could not be satisfied by physical activity. He turned, therefore, to drawing, to painting, to music, to speculation, to discussion. The present age has not as yet developed its culture, and it seems now as though capitalism, with its heritage of revolution, and its curse of instability and hurry, would not persist long enough to establish a well-defined culture. Hence, in the present society, multitudes feel that certain finer things are excluded from their lives because the ground is so littered with possessions, and because life is too harried and too sordid to give them place. These forces, the creative impulses of the artist and the builder, yearn unspeakably for expression. Each human breast holds a void that is the result of their suppression, and it is this, perhaps, more than anything else, that accounts for the unrest and dissatisfaction that are so characteristic of the present generation. In the past only the favored few had a chance to express their most holy aspirations. The development of modern industry, with its facility in the production of livelihood, promises a time, and that at no very great distance, when this opportunity may be common property, and men everywhere may be able to participate in that unending search after love, beauty, justice, truth--the highest of which humanity is capable. All of these things lie outside the realm of economics, yet none of them is possible for the masses of mankind until there is established a system of economic life that will provide the necessaries upon which physical health depends, together with an amount of leisure sufficient to enable a generation to find itself. This is the goal toward which men are working in their efforts to organize economic life, as they strive to provide a fit dwelling-place for the descendants of the world's seventeen hundred millions. WHAT TO READ No reader should accept the statements made in this book unless they appeal to his reason and correspond with his experience, nor should he reject them merely because they run counter to his prejudices or his convictions. If the subject-matter of the book is as important as the author believes that it is, the reader should not stop with these brief chapters, but should search farther. The many recent articles, pamphlets and books devoted to economic and social reconstruction give an excellent chance for selection. Here are a few suggestions: H. deB. Gibbins has written one of the best descriptive books on the economic changes surrounding the industrial revolution. ("Industry in England" London, Methuen, 1896.) See also his "Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century" (London, Chambers, 1903). Supplement this by reading another old book, "Recent Economic Changes," by D.A. Wells. (New York, Appleton, 1898.) More up to date, and in the same field, are "The Great Society," (Graham Wallas, New York, Macmillan, 1914, Chapter I); "Economic Consequences of the Peace," J.M. Keynes, (New York, Harcourt, 1920, Chapter II); "The Fruits of Victory," Norman Angell (Glasgow, Collins, 1921) Chapters I and II. The economic chaos resulting from the war has been described with journalistic accuracy by Frank A. Vanderlip, American banker, in his "What Happened to Europe?" (New York, Macmillan, 1919) and in "What Next in Europe?" (New York, Harcourt, 1922). The European situation is dealt with in great detail by the "Manchester Guardian Commercial." Beginning with April 20, 1922, the "Commercial" has published a very complete series of articles under the general editorship of J.M. Keynes. The series is entitled "Reconstruction in Europe." "America and the Balance Sheet of Europe" (J.F. Bass and H.G. Moulton, New York, Ronald Press, 1921) is a study by two experts that goes into great detail with regard to budgets, public finances, exchange rates and the like. "Our Eleven Billion Dollars" (Robert Mountsier, New York, Seltzer, 1922) gives the same facts, brought up to date and popularized. The science of economic organization is approached from three quite different positions. First, there are writers who discuss ways of making the economic mechanism efficient. ("Theory and Practice of Scientific Management," Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917; "The Administration of Industrial Enterprises," Edward David Jones, New York, Longmans, 1920; "Principles of Scientific Management," F.W. Taylor, New York, Harpers, 1911.) In the second place, there are writers like Thorstein Veblen ("The Engineers and the Price System," New York, Huebsch, 1921, and "The Theory of Business Enterprise," New York, Scribners, 1904) and H.L. Gantt ("Organization for Work," New York, Harcourt, 1919) who desire to see vital changes made in the aims of the whole economic order. Third, there are reformers and radicals who write of a re-made or revolutionized economic order. At the present time these radical writers fall into three general groups: (1) The Syndicalists of France, (2) the Guild Socialists of Britain, and (3) writers who describe actual economic experiments that are going on in Russia, and to a lesser degree elsewhere. (Note that the "One Big Union" movement of Canada and Australia and the "Industrial Workers of the World" movement in the United States have produced much controversial material but little constructive writing.) French Syndicalism is well presented by E. Pataud and E. Pouget ("Syndicalism," Oxford, 1913); by Bertrand Russell ("Proposed Roads to Freedom," New York, Holt, 1919) and by Georges Sorel ("Reflections on Violence," New York, Huebsch, 1912). The case for Guild Socialism is stated by A.R. Orage ("National Guilds," London, Bell, 1914), by G.R.S. Taylor ("The Guild State," Allen and Unwin, 1919), and by G.D. H. Cole ("Self-Government in Industry," London, Bell, 1918, "Chaos and Order in Industry," London, Methuen, 1920, and "Guild Socialism Re-stated," London, Parsons, 1920). Actual experiments in the control of economic life by the producers are described by C.L. Goodrich ("The Frontier of Control," New York, Harcourt, 1920), who seeks to answer the question: How much control over industry do the rank and file of those who work in it and their organizations in fact exercise? "The Collectivist State in the Making," (Emil Davies, London, Bell, 1914) and "Socialism in Theory and Practice," (H.W. Laidler, New York, Macmillan, 1919), cover somewhat the same ground. The Whitley Committee, in its "Report of an Enquiry into Works Committees" (Great Britain, Labor Ministry) goes into detail on this point. The experiments in Russia are nowhere adequately covered, "The Soviets at Work" (Lenin) was a prediction and a hope rather than a review of achievements. More recent books have been either violently partisan or else so superficially descriptive that they conveyed no idea of the actual state of the economic experiment. It is, of course, in Russia, that the experiments in workers' control are being carried forward on the largest and most complete scale. There are many other books in English, books in German, French and Russian, pamphlets, magazine articles by the thousands, and reports of special investigations in various technical fields, all of which offer ample opportunity for further study along the lines suggested in this book. INDEX Acquisition, menace of, 156 Administration, basis of world, 119 Administrative and producing groups, 111 Administrative authority, concentration of, 81 Administration boards, function of, 122 America, resource monopoly of, 19 American imports, 125 American industry, phases of, 59 Association, scope of, 53 Authority, centralization of, 81 Bankers, as arbiters of industry, 102 Bankers, power of, 102 Barriers to progress, 147 Basic industries, and resources, 19 British foreign investments, 39 Brotherhood, new possibilities of, 20 Budget board, 131 Budget deficits, 30 Business and geographic lines, 62 Business federation, development of, 105 Business organization, nature of, 61 Business, world character of, 62 Capital, transfers of to producer groups, 131 Capitalism and nationalism, 63 Capitalism and profiteering, 65 Capitalism and the class struggle, 66 Capitalism, assumptions of, 139 Capitalism, centralization of, 63 Capitalism, establishment of, 36 Capitalism, failure of, 62 Capitalism, growth of, 66 Capitalism in the Western world, 36 Capitalism, initiative under, 63 Capitalism, limitations on, 62 Capitalism, modifications in, 140 Capitalism, plutocracy under, 65 Capitalism, world rôle of, 62 Capitalist experiment, 138 Catastrophe, menace of, 146 Centralization, in American industry, 59 Chance, part of in progress, 136 Change and chaos, 48 Chaos and change, 48 Class struggle, and capitalism, 66 Climate and civilization, 45 Civilization and climate, 45 Coal, as a factor in civilization, 78 Coal, production of, 17 Coal surplus, where found, 18 Commerce, growth of, 20 Commodity basis for money, 129 Communication, as a world problem, 127 Communication, development of, 16 Competition, and war, 34 Competition, justification of, 38 Competition, morality of, 140 Competition, place of, 139 Competition, profit incentive in, 39 Conflict and economic antagonism, 41 Conscious social improvement, 146 Consumption, education for, 161 Consumption, wisdom in, 159 Co-operation, in modern industry, 37 Co-operation, necessity for, 80 Co-operative world organization, 102 Copper production, world figures, 18 Credit, as a business factor, 103 Creation, stimulation of, 157 Creative forces, scope for, 163 Culture and human aspiration, 162 Debts of European nations, 29 Deficits, in European budgets, 30 Depression, present condition of, 13 Disputes, adjustment of, 132 Disputes board, 132 Distribution and the social revolution, 46 Distribution of world wealth, 42 Distribution of resources, 17 District and division compared, 93 District committees, 91 Divisional congress, organization of, 94 District economic units, 72 District organization, detail of, 90 Divisional and district organization compared, 93 District federations, functions of, 110 Divisional federations, listed, 111 Divisional organization, 72 Economic activity, worldizing of, 15 Economic affiliations, series of, 73 Economic authority, location of, 102 Economic aggression, future of, 125 Economic bureaucracy, 59 Economic causes of war, 34 Economic change, working basis for, 70 Economic changes, frequency of, 62 Economic chaos, source of, 33 Economic competition, extent of, 38 Economic co-operation, necessity for, 20 Economic depression, results of, 31 Economic determinism, effects of, 15 Economic disaster, menace of, 29 Economic disintegration, signs of, 31 Economic district organization, 90 Economic evolution illustrated, 66 Economic federalism, 59 Economic forms, 60 Economic foundations, 51 Economic foundations for world organization, 23 Economic groupings, listed, 57 Economic institutions, instability of, in Europe, 28 Economic interdependence, 18 Economic isolation no longer possible, 15 Economic justice, need for, 26 Economic leadership, 85 Economic life, chaos in, 67 Economic life, new basis for, 47 Economic machinery, ownership of, 84 Economic muddle, 28 Economic organization by divisions, 92 Economic organization, details of, 88 Economic organization, need for science in, 69 Economic needs, 14 Economic needs, enumerated, 44 Economic organization, by districts, 72 Economic organization, lines of, 58 Economic organization, nature of, 60 Economic organization, world units of, 72 Economic power, and the bankers, 103 Economic power, for the producers, 117 Economic problems, enumerated, 36 Economic problems, growing complexity of, 15 Economic problems, nature of, 36 Economic program, basis for, 22 Economic questions of world scope, 121 Economic reconstruction, principles of, 25 Economic rivalries and war, 41 Economic self-government illustrated, 88 Economic statesmanship, 23 Economic states rights, 59 Economic structure, nature of, 69 Economic structure, variation in, 69 Economic system, divisions of, 57 Economic units, character of, 70 Economic units, classes of, 71 Economic units, efficiency in, 69 Economic units, integrity of, 80 Economic units, local control of, 89 Economic units, nature of local units, 71 Economic units, needs of, 79 Economic units, productivity in, 80 Economic world outlook, 28 Education, function of, 141 Education, possibilities of, 142 Energy, rewarding of, 83 Engineers, present position of, 34 European bankruptcy, threat of, 28 European budget deficits, 30 European war debts, 29 Exchange and credit board, 128 Executive, functions of, 86 Executives, selection of, 86 Expansion, costs of, 64 Experience, costs of, 141 Experiment, social value of, 135 Experiment, uncertainty of, 140 Expert, selection of, 86 Exploitation, increase of, 41 Federalism, principle of, 53 Federation, in social organization, 104 Finance, derangement in, 29 Financial imperialism, costs of, 64 Financial imperialism illustrated, 39 Food Imports of Great Britain, 19 Financial stability, basis for, 29 Forethought, possibilities of, 142 Foreign exchange, demoralization of, 31 Foreign investment as a science, 39 Freedom, human desire for, 152 Freedom, struggles for, 152 Functional economic units, 57 Geographic divisions, organization of, 92 Geographic units, scope of, 72 Government control of industry, 37 Great Britain, food imports of, 19 Great Britain, foreign investments of, 39 Great revolution, phases of, 49 Hard times, history of, 31 Hiring and firing, new plan for, 89 Human aspiration and culture, 162 Human effort, results of, 46 Human nature, limitations on, 158 Human values, conservation of, 79 Hunger struggle, elimination of, 153 Ideal and the real, 74 Improvements and betterments, 25 Imperialism, costs of, 64 Imports of the United States, 125 Income distribution, 36 Indebtedness, since the war, 29 Industrial change, through discovery and invention, 16 Industrial efficiency, need of, 25 Industrial federation, groups of, 108 Industrial federations, problems of, 107 Industrial leaders, change in type, 67 Industrial organization, evolution of, 61 Industrial revolution, and production, 47 Industrial revolution, effects of, 47 Industrial revolution, spread of, 15 Industrial revolution, suddenness of, 47 Industrial system, characteristics of, 101 Industrial waste, 32 Industrial waste, responsibility for, 32 Industrialism, effects of, 16 Industries, interrelation of, 37 Industry, dependence on raw material, 16 Industry, divisional organization of, 92 Industry, government control of, 37 Initiative, loss of under capitalism, 63 Initiative, stimulation of, 83 Intelligent social direction, 145 Iron ore, production of, 17 Job-ownership, 36 Judiciary, basis for, 132 Knowledge, accumulations of, 143 Knowledge, additions to, 143 Knowledge through suffering, 144 Knowledge, through trial and error, 135 Labor federation, development of, 105 Labor units of value, 129 Laissez-faire, abandonment of, 146 Leadership, changes in type of, 67 Leadership, classes of, 86 Leadership in economic affairs, 85 Leadership, methods of selection, 87 Leadership, selection of executives, 86 Leadership, through heredity, 87 Leadership, through self-selection, 87 Leadership, through social choice, 88 League Covenant, principles of, 23 League of nations failure, 23 Leisure, function of, 162 Liberty, through producers' organization, 159 Life, continuity of, 14 Limitations on capitalism, 62 Livelihood, guarantee of, 45 Livelihood struggle, 43 Loans, under a producers society, 131 Local autonomy, necessity for, 60 Local economic problems, 36 Local economic units described, 71 Local economic units, details of, 88 Local federations, character of, 109 Local federations, problems of, 109 Local initiative under capitalism, 63 Machine ownership and self-government, 85 Manufacturing, divisions of, 58 Mass life, effects of, 139 Mass meetings, for public issues, 92 Maximum advantage, law of, 75 Maximum efficiency, need of, 78 Maximum returns, essentials for, 79 Meliorism, interest in, 74 Militarism, in Europe, 35 Minimum outlay, law of, 77 Modern business methods illustrated, 39 Modern warfare, costs of, 64 Money as a commodity, 129 Money, function of, 128 Money, future of, 128 Money, labor as a basis for, 129 Money, present uses of, 129 Monopoly profit, law of, 33 National boundaries and business, 62 Nationalism and capitalism, 63 Nationalism, and existing problems, 121 Nationalism, and world progress, 63 Nationalism, costs of, 64 Nationalism, failure of, 64 Nationalism, narrowness of, 64 Natural resources, classified, 45 Necessities, provision of, 161 Next steps, 149 Next war, preparations for, 35 Organic function, 54 Organic nature of society, 53 Organization, difficulties in, 152 Organization, need for, 151 Organization of world federation, 113 Organization, world need of, 101 Owners, organization of, 61 Ownership of economic machinery, 84 Paper money, issues of, 29 Parliament, for the world, 113 Physical hardship, elimination of, 154 Plutocracy, growth of, 65 Policy, decision of by self-direction, 85 Political federation, experience with, 104 Political life, organization of, 73 Politics, elimination of, 112 Possession, emphasis on, 156 Poverty, losses through, 14 Power, centralization in industrial groups, 112 Present-day economic problems, 36 Primitive society, economic issues in, 15 Primitive struggle, freedom from, 153 Producer groups, organization of, 73 Producers, future of, 117 Producers, power to, 117 Producers' federations, by districts, 110 Producers' federations, groups of, 108 Producers' world federation, character of, 111 Producer groups, control of industry by, 104 Production, necessity for, 44 Production of raw materials, 17 Productivity, necessity for maintaining, 80 Producing and administrative groups, 111 Production versus profit, 33 Profit and competition, 39 Profit versus welfare, 68 Profiteers, and capitalism, 65 Progress, barriers to, 147 Progress of self-government, 97 Progress through experiment, 137 Raw materials, limitations on, 17 Raw materials, struggle for, 39 Reconstruction, economic basis for, 49 Reconstruction, principles of, 25 Resource control, as a world problem, 122 Resources and raw materials board, 124 Resources, relation of to basic industries, 19 Results and initiative, 84 Sabotage, 33 Science and society, 51 Sectionalism, failure of, 100 Self-government in local economic affairs, 88 Self-motivation, need of, 80 Self-government, progress of, 97 Selection of leaders, 87 Separatism, passing of, 20 Servility, elimination of, 155 Shop committees, organization of, 88 Social administration, difficulties of, 74 Social book-keeping, function of, 103 Social change and intelligence, 145 Social disaster, as a means to knowledge, 144 Social drive, basis of, 82 Social experiment, basis for, 145 Social federation and social activity, 57 Social groups, federation of, 57 Social functions, specialization of, 56 Social improvement, 146 Social inertia as a problem, 82 Social knowledge, accumulations of, 143 Social knowledge, limitations on, 52 Social machinery and body machinery, 54 Social organization, of the owners, 61 Social organization through federation, 104 Social organization, through producers, 117 Social philosophy, restatement of, 146 Social problems, handling of, 148 Social relations, growing complexity of, 56 Social revolution and distribution, 46 Social science, future of, 148 Social science, needs of, 146 Social science, principles of, 51 Social structure, nature of, 61, 69 Society, as an organism, 53 Society, science of, 52 Sources of economic waste, 32 Soviet Russia, and world peace, 34 Specialists, place of in world administration, 123 Specialization in society, 55 Standard Oil Company, 59 Statesmanship, economic foundations of, 23 Success qualities, 150 Suffering as a basis for progress, 144 Surplus, effect on human effort, 77 Transport, place of in industry, 127 Trial and error in society, 135 Underground organization of business, 67 Value, new standards of, 130 War, economic causes of, 34 War debts, 29 War, elimination of, 154 World finance, chaos in, 29 War, forms of, 154 War, increased cost of, 64 War, new preparations for, 35 War, object of, 155 War promises, failure of, 13 War-menace, and chaos in industry, 34 Waste in industry, 32 Wealth concentration, effects of, 43 Wealth distribution, 36 Wealth, distribution of, 42 Wealth of nations, 42 World administration, 119 World administration, basis of, 119 World administration, detail of, 133 World administration, field of, 120 World authority, lack of, 106 World commerce, growth of, 20 World common interests, 26 World conflict, sources of, 27 World disillusionment, 13 World economic organization, detail of, 88 World economic organization, diagram of, 97 World economic questions, 121 World economic solidarity, 22 World economics and the League, 23 World economics, chaos in, 28 World federation, detail of organization, 113 World industrial congress, organization of, 96 World industrial units, 72 World industry, organization of, 95 World isolation, passing of, 20 World need of organization, 101 World organization, beginnings in, 24 World organization, principles of, 25 World parliament, organization of, 113 World organization, problem of, 24 World parliament, possibilities of, 120 World politics and the League, 23 World problems, enumerated, 122 World problems, method of approach, 121 World producers' federation, character of, 111 World producers' federation, form of, 107 World producers' federation, scope of, 112 World producers' federation, structure of, 113 World reconstruction, basis for, 49 World resources, distribution of, 17 World thinking and organization, 26 World thinking, basis for, 100 World thinking, economic basis of, 22 World wealth, distribution of, 42 Worldizing economic activity, 15 HAMMOND PRESS W.B. CONKEY COMPANY CHICAGO 
29065	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: Bremer Baumwollbörse, Bremen.] BREMEN COTTON EXCHANGE 1872/1922 BY A. W. CRAMER PRESIDENT OF THE BREMEN COTTON EXCHANGE TRANSLATED BY CH. F. C. UHTE, BREMEN 1922 FRANZ LEUWER VERLAG BREMEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED COPYRIGHT 1922 BY FRANZ LEUWER BREMEN PRINTED BY H. M. HAUSCHILD · BREMEN A JUBILEE GIFT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BREMEN COTTON EXCHANGE FIFTY YEARS. A period covering 50 years is sure to show to the surviving and the younger generations certain milestones, which indicate a trend of human thought, or memorize important occurrences. We may look back upon mighty wars, or religious upheavals or the cruelties committed in both, or another may recall the peaceful thrifty life with its underlying romantic thought. Later generations may possibly call this episode of the last 50 years the Period of Economic Development. Every epoch has its dominating spirit; sometimes it is a God of War, sometimes a religious martyr, sometimes it takes the shape of a great poet and even the thoughts and lives of the every-day citizen are the replica of the spirit of its time. The embodiment of the spirit of the last 50 years is a Hercules. This famous demi-god executed 12 wondrous deeds, the names of which were painfully instilled into us at school, but his mighty deeds made no impression on the history of his time. Our Hercules has successfully achieved more than twelve wonderful works, nor need we look far afield to see the lasting imprint of his footsteps; we have always before us the great works of our time. We are the lucky ones, who are privileged to step anywhere on our northern shore into a carriage, far more commodious than the ancient stage coach, compose ourselves for sleep, and allow ourselves to be whirled away, in order to find ourselves the following noon, seated at a comfortable meal on the heights of the Rigi. We have crossed the Atlantic Ocean in six days, we talk and listen to a friend, and it is nothing to us that he is a thousand kilometres distant. By pressing a button, we illuminate our house, by pulling a lever, we light up a whole town. From the birds we have purloined the art of flying, and many other wonders have the past fifty years showered upon us, and yet, all this is not the real monument of our time, but it is "WORK!" That systematic work, which is sure of its own goal, is the origin of all the wonders of the past half century, and which has set its own seal upon the special character of our own time. If we consider the life of animals and even plants, we find that all adapt themselves to the demands of nature. This is the original primitive condition. But already the bird building its nest for greater comfort and protection of its young, interferes with nature's original conditions. No doubt, mankind once lived under primitive adaptation, and possibly the idealistic thought of paradise may be the echo of those far away days. When, however, mankind began to people the earth, necessity drove them to assist nature and thus "WORK" was created. For a long period this work was infinitesimal, and many races could still live from nature's storehouse. Their wants were few, so that the thought of exploiting nature for the benefit of improved conditions, never entered their heads. For forty years, Moses traversed the desert with the people of Israel, searching for gifts from Heaven, but they did not know, that--he who wishes to live upon milk and honey--must work to obtain them. By degrees, people began to try and win more from Dame Nature than she was willing to give unaided. They were forced, thereto, by their ever increasing numbers and by the individual demands on life. This healthy thought for improvement was frequently interrupted and, temporally, even entirely suspended, for in the human mind dwell not only great and lofty thoughts, but envy, strife and hatred have also a place. The history of mankind bristles with ugly deeds, wars, enslaving of nations and even extermination. Entire periods know nothing of peaceful development, but quietly and persistently "WORK" gained ground and forced itself, despite resistance, upon mankind. Only the more modern times have shown us the might and the blessing which lies dormant in "Work". Like an avalanche, the knowledge swept fifty years ago across the people, that quite different means were required for mutual benefit and culture, than those provided by nature itself. That was the triumphal entrance of "Work" towards a definite goal. Words fail to adequately describe what the last fifty years have brought us, in inventions and kindred achievements, and what is the result of this Herculean work? An expansion undreamt of in the annals of history. By 50% the population of several countries had increased, they became too small to feed and clothe their people from their own resources, but the new spirit, which dominated all, has solved this problem, and great blessings have been vouchsafed to humanity. The "hard at work" countries had much better food, clothing, health and enjoyment, and each individual shared in the vast improvement of the general conditions of life. What are the driving forces which put this gigantic machinery into motion? To enumerate them all would be impossible. The workman, who wields the hammer, the woman, who keeps home and hearth bright and cheerful, the patient teacher who moulds the juvenile mind, the professor, who disperses the deeper knowledge of science, the engineer, with his intricate machinery, the inventor, with his fertile brain, and, last not least the merchant, who constantly opens new roads for the interchange of goods, all--and every one of them are cogs in the wheels of the engines of progress. The laws and rules which govern this world of activity cannot be determined. Each single one of the co-workers has the purpose and goal of his own endeavour before his eyes, but the human mind is incapable of guiding or even viewing, the concentrated action of all the forces at work. We have given a cursory glance at the general economic development which started in the slowest possible way, and marched with double quick speed during the last fifty years, but now we shall turn to our own particular sphere. We celebrate, to-day, the fiftieth anniversary of the Establishment of the Bremen Cotton Exchange, and with this book of sketches and sidelights on what we have felt and experienced, we wish to contribute a small offering to this festivity. COTTON. Cotton grows in almost every part of the Globe where the climatic conditions are favorable. The plant requires a moderate amount of moisture, but a good deal of sunshine and also warm nights. Countries with a moist warm climate are suitable for the raising of particular good qualities. The chief country of production is the southern part of the United States of North America. Considerable crops are also grown in East India and Egypt, and lesser quantities come from the Caucasus, Turkestan, China, Brazil, Argentine, Peru and Africa. The continental consumption looks for the greater part to American cotton, but, also, East Indian is extensively used. In the Southern States of America, the first cotton ripens in August. The bolls containing cotton, will grow well into the Autumn, and even in Winter new bolls will be formed, and it is only a killing frost, which terminates the productive force of the plant. When the bolls are ripe, they open, and then the picking commences. As a rule, the first pickings are the best as to color and cleanness, and the longer the bolls are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather in Autumn and Winter, the more the quality will deteriorate. The picked cotton consists of two thirds of seed and one third of actual cotton. In order to obtain the fibre, the cotton is passed through a ginning machine. From the seeds, edible oil is gained and the residue is manufactured into food for cattle, while the cotton is formed into bales in specially constructed presses. It is natural, that cotton should show a great diversity of quality, owing to the influence of weather during the long period of picking. The color of cotton covers a fair range, one sees not only snow white and creamy cotton, but also bluish, grey, red and mixed colors. The value of cotton is determined by its quality and character. Of chief importance is the percentage of the loss during the cleaning process in the cotton mill. A normal percentage of loss for medium grades is 10%, this is likely to be higher, if the cotton has been picked during moist weather and contains much unripe cotton. The color is also of great importance, discolored cotton has a decidedly lower value, especially when this cannot be rectified by bleaching which is mainly the case with heavily spotted or bluish cotton. An even greater factor, than the outward appearance, is the inner value, which is represented by the length and strength of the fibre (staple). The staple length of common American cotton is from 24-28 mm. In great request are the qualities, which have a longer staple than 28 mm, especially when the staple is even, silky and strong. A difference of only 1/2 mm in the length of the staple, may mean a difference of 10% in the value. It is of the greatest importance to the cotton merchant as well as to the spinner, that the cotton is correctly judged as regards its outward appearance and the length of staple, this adjudication or classing is by no means an easy task. A certain system has been adopted by which the outward appearance of the cotton is fixed by so-called standards into classes. A certain number of cotton samples are arranged in a suitable flat box, in such a way that their surface represents the color and cleanness of the respective class. If a lot of cotton is to be classed, samples are drawn from every bale, these are placed together, sample by sample, and the total thus gained, is compared with the standard. In this way an opinion is formed, whether the cotton is equal to the class represented by the standard, or whether it is below it, in which case, this difference in class has to be valued. The judging of the staple is a very difficult task, 1/2 mm is of importance, and yet it is impossible to measure staple correctly. Anybody, even with the greatest dexterity in his fingers, will not be able to draw from a piece of cotton the single fibres, place them in such a way next to each other, that they appear like Swedish matches in a box. A good expert, however, is able to draw the staple in a manner, that the average length will be accurately judged. To give a correct opinion on cotton, rooms with a good light are required, much experience and good judgment. Next in importance for continental consumption is Egyptian and East Indian cotton. The former is divided into two kinds, the long stapled, which grows on the lower Nile, the Delta, and the shorter stapled, Upper Egyptian cotton. The long stapled Egyptian is utilised for the very finest yarns, and its only rival is or was Sea-Island cotton. This latter grows on a group of islands, not far from the shore of Georgia which have a moist warm climate, but the boll-weevil has played serious havoc with that crop, and the cultivation has been greatly curtailed. East India produces shorter stapled descriptions of great variety, but each has a character of its own, and yet to differentiate between them, is a knotty problem, especially, as now and then, one comes across a somewhat fraudulent mixture. The names are mostly derived from the locality in which they grow, while the climate and condition of the ground give the character, and in some cases, even distinctive smell, for instance, Oomra cotton smells like musk; occasionally the smell is an indisputable proof of origin. It has taken the continental cotton industry a long time to grow from small beginnings to its present importance. The never lacking competition has brought about a great improvement in the quality and variety of the articles produced. It is astounding to compare the raw material in the fields, with the finished articles in the windows of some lady's outfitting shop. It requires many diligent hands and high class technical guidance, to transfer Nature's present of raw cotton into the manifold articles, which the people, nowadays, require and desire. The variety of these articles is countless: cloth, as fine as a spider's web, and coarse fustian, here finest batiste, and there, strong drill for overalls. Each finished article requires its own particular raw material, low qualities cannot produce fine goods, and it is also impossible to utilise high qualities for low grade goods. The very arbitrary law for economic production, makes it a duty for every spinner to select just that quality of cotton, which is most suitable for his purpose, and it is the task of commerce to adapt the offers and deliveries to the requirements of the consumer. THE OLD TIME. In the year 186.., in the old narrow office, father and son met, the latter, a newly made partner. He had been, according to ancient custom, a volunteer for several years in London, where he had been well received amongst English families. But it was with strange feelings that he entered his father's office for the first time after many years of absence. His horizon had widened, while here, little or nothing was changed. The old office furniture, which had done good service for generations, was the same, as no merchant ever thought of altering anything for merely a greater personal comfort, but the old fashioned standup desks and the well worn leather seats of the high office stools, did not look as inviting as of old. His memory had mellowed and idealized their appearance. Of course, the influence of the mother was not permitted in the sacred precincts of the office, even most of the cleaning was done by the youngest apprentice. But from the grey walls looked down proudly, the models of the sailing vessels which carried their houseflag to distant shores. During the long hours of a voyage, they had been fashioned by captains or clever sailors, and were a constant reminder of deeds nobly done. Here is the "Anne Marie", a tea clipper of graceful lines, like a swallow, which made the journey from China to London in 80 days, and had earned, besides a good freight, a high premium for bringing the first tea of the new crop to the epicures in London. There is the "Katharina", much heavier in build, she took 180 days to fetch wet sugar and hemp from Manilla. One may wonder, whether captain and crew ever thought of the enjoyments of life, while they ploughed the sea for 6 months. Yonder, in the full light from the window is the "Nordstern", a whaler, and underneath a picture of the crew. These wild and rough fellows took their lives in their hands, on the perilous journey from Honolulu to the Polar Seas. They had no regular wages, but shared in the profits from the sale of the oil and whalebone. Their hard earned money, however, was mostly dissipated in San Francisco, during a few days of riotous jubilation. After some desultory talking, the son carefully broached the following subject: "There is the "Augusta" ready in port to sail for Baltimore, to bring a cargo of tobacco. Pity, that the heavy Kentucky barrels fill only half the freight room and leave so much space empty. I think, father, we ought to fill it up with light goods, principally with cotton." "Cotton, my dear boy! I fancy, you must be dreaming of the old firm of B. & F. You remember, F. told his agent, in the West Indies, to add to the cargo of Asphalt and cocoanuts, 200 bales of cotton. His bad handwriting led to the mistake that 2000 bales were shipped, the moment they were afloat, the Southern Ports were blockaded, which caused an unprecedented rise in the price of cotton, so that the last of the 2000 bales were sold at "one Thaler" per pound (equal then to three marks)." "I do not think, father, that such luck is likely to repeat itself, but the fact remains, that we have room empty, which easily might carry freight, besides, I hear, that there is an increasing demand for cotton, as several new cotton mills are being started in Germany." "Yes, that is all very well, but think of the enormous risk of the cotton trade. The fluctuations in prices are fabulous, recently, they have been going down and down. My friend W. has been holding cotton for 3 years and has never seen his price back yet. A loss he will not take, he declares 'that he will hold that cotton till he is black in the face.'" "That is a wrong policy, W. ought to have sold the cotton long ago, replaced the same by a lower priced purchase, this would have saved him charges and loss of interest, and would have cheapened his original purchase." "This is a new method of doing business, we--old Bremen people--stick firmly to an enterprise, until the success is secured. That is the old Hanseatic spirit." "One might almost call it stubbornness, the present time requires quick thinking and turning." "All right, but from whom will you take the money which is required by this modern way of doing business? The local money-broker has no spare cash for it." "No, father, but I can assure you, that in London people are not adverse to assist the legitimate trade, and besides, several of the great London Bankers come from this neighbourhood and are very well disposed towards Bremen." * * * * * The "Augusta" brought, besides her cargo of tobacco, 1038 bales of cotton, quite a big quantity for that time. QUESTIONS OF LAW IN THE PAST. According to the Universal German Commercial Law, and later, according to the Civil Code of Law, the buyer has the right to cancel the contract, or to demand a reduction in price, if the goods delivered do not equal the quality guaranteed. Experts had to decide, whether the quality tendered was up to the guarantee.--These experts were appointed by the law, in accordance with the proposals of the parties concerned. The cotton trade followed, in olden days, this same procedure, but the weak point, was the verdict of the experts, because there were no experts in Germany outside Bremen, and no party could forecast the likely result of the verdict. A far worse consequence of the Law Conditions was for the cotton trade, the fact, that the law made no difference, whether the goods differed much or little from the stipulated quality. In both cases, the buyer had the right to place the goods at the disposal of the seller. The result of this, was most damaging to the Trade, sometimes, the sellers had the worst of it, sometimes the buyers. A few examples taken from actual experience will best explain this: Extracts from business letters of past years. We have received to-day your 100 bales of cotton, but find the quality not up to our expectations. You have to deliver us middlingfair, but the cotton is hardly goodmiddling. We cannot use the cotton, as it is unsuitable for our hosiery yarns. We place the 100 bales at your disposal. * * * * * We insist upon your taking delivery of the 100 bales. The quality is perfectly correct, you can ask any expert in Bremen about it. * * * * * We have nothing to do with your Bremen Experts, if need be, our local experts will decide. We have no doubt that you know the law on this point. The fact remains, that we place the 100 bales at your disposal. * * * * * Your intention to place the 100 bales at our disposal is caused, no doubt, by the fall in prices. We know very well that if it comes to law, experts will decide, who know nothing about it, moreover, the verdict will only be given after many months. This is unbearable; what allowances do you want? * * * * * If you wish us to use the cotton, we demand an allowance of.... * * * * * Your demand is preposterous, but we have to agree to it, as we cannot help ourselves. We prefer not to make you any offers in future. * * * * * I am sorry to inform you, that the 100 bales are not equal to the sample, consequently, I place the cotton at your disposal. * * * * * The buying sample has been taken from the actual bales delivered, a difference in the quality is quite impossible. We insist upon your keeping the 100 bales. * * * * * I am sending you a few samples of the delivered cotton, any child can see that they are different from the buying sample. * * * * * The samples sent to us are of no account. 100 bales represent a big quantity of cotton, amongst which, a few inferior flakes are sure to be found, if one searches diligently for them. We cannot agree to your demands. * * * * * My lawyer tells me, that every bale and every part of the bales must be equal to the sample. I have opened several bales and find the contents very irregular. There are good and bad flakes in them, I can only use regular cotton. The 100 bales are at your disposal. * * * * * Your 100 bales turn out very badly indeed and are much below the guaranteed quality. What allowance are you willing to make us? * * * * * There can be no question of an allowance, if the 100 bales do not suit you, why do you not place them at our disposal, as you did in a previous case. This time, however, prices have advanced, while last time, they had fallen, now perhaps the case will appear to you in a different light. * * * * * You surely never expect me to take bad cotton instead of good? I cannot return the cotton, as I cannot stop my mill. I propose, that experts fix the lower value, and you pay me the difference according to law. * * * * * If you wish to invoke the law, you must remember, that the cotton is not allowed to be touched, till the experts have made their report and the legal verdict has been given. You say, "you must use the cotton at once," while our agent tells us, "that a few bales have already been spun." This finishes your claim, and we refuse to do anything in the matter. * * * * * A spinner bought direct from America 100 bales of a certain class. The market rose rapidly, and when the bales arrived, they were much inferior, in fact, fully two classes too low. The spinner complained bitterly to the shipper, and demanded an allowance, which the latter refused, on the plea, that, for the price of the contract, he could only deliver low quality. * * * * * From these examples it will be seen that the cotton Trade had no suitable foundation in the Law. ORIGIN OF THE BREMEN COTTON EXCHANGE. During the war of 1870/71 the cotton trade had suffered a serious relapse, but shortly afterwards, the Bremen people began seriously to consider means and ways to put the trade on a proper footing. The industry had expanded, and the occasional chance business had been replaced by a more regular and closer connection with the spinners. The main thing to do now, was to find a proper basis upon which a regular market could be built up. The various questions of law had to be adjusted in a broad minded manner, to suit the particular need of the cotton market. Liverpool offered a good example for this, as there, everything had been adapted to the peculiarities of the cotton trade. Here, in Bremen, first of all, the credit system had to be abolished. It was manifestly impossible to increase the import, as long as the importer was obliged to sell the cotton on 3-4 months open credit. A good stock of cotton is the first necessity for a market of any importance, but how to obtain it, if the needful capital is lacking to pay for the cotton? The risk of the great price fluctuations, which are indigenous to cotton, gave the whole trade a bad name, and everybody, who had anything to do with it, lost prestige. Was it worth while to follow up the idea of starting a cotton market? We must praise the men, who made it practically their life's work, to overcome the difficulties, and must admire the cleverness with which they left certain items for the future to solve. The men who laboured hard for this object, formed themselves into the "Committee for the Bremen Cotton Trade", later on, the name was changed, and on the 1st of October 1872, everything was ready, and under the new name of "Bremer Baumwollbörse" an organisation was started, which has since become known all over the cotton world. On the 1st of October 1922, its birthday re-occurs for the fiftieth time. Political occurrences make a deeper impression than those which fall into the sphere of National Economics, but the present has taught us, that the latter are by no means to be despised, in fact, deserve more attention than was given to them previously. It may be worth while to recall, that through the influence of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange", a well regulated trade of first magnitude has been built up. We are forced to observe the development of national economy, not only in our own country, but also, that in foreign countries, and by keeping the important factors constantly before us, we can learn a good deal. ARBITRATIONS AND APPEALS. The department of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" which deals with questions relating to actual cotton, has a staff of sworn classers. It is their duty to fix, with the aid of the various standards, the class of cotton, or to pronounce an opinion on it, or to settle the disputes between buyer and seller, as far as they refer to the quality of cotton. American cotton is divided into a number of classes, and each has its standard. Originally, these standards were obtained from Liverpool, but later on, Bremen produced the standards independently. There are original standards and standard copies; the former, remain unchanged, while the latter are renewed every year, because, through constant use, they are liable to deteriorate. The freshly made up standards are subject to the examination and approval of a Committee, elected for that purpose, and which consists of Members of the Trade and the Industry. The sworn classers are nominated by the directors, and concern themselves solely with the classing and arbitrating of cotton. They have sworn a solemn oath, to conduct their office with absolute impartiality; this is further safeguarded by the fact, that the names of the parties interested are kept strictly secret. If a party consider, that they have a right to complain about the verdict of the classers, they can appeal against the decision. The verdict of the appeal is given by Appeal Judges, who are appointed by a Committee, elected for that purpose. They are selected from the merchants and spinners, and great care is exercised that they possess the necessary expert knowledge. The names of the interested parties are also withheld from the appeal judges, nor are they informed whether buyer or seller have appealed. It is of great advantage to the whole arbitration system, that the appeal judges are actively engaged in the cotton business, by this means a bureaucratic verdict is avoided. Up to a point, the arbitrators and appeal judges work together, and thereby, the former remain in close touch with the general business life, which is of importance for various reasons. It is not sufficient for a correct verdict, to simply compare the cotton with the standards, the judges must know, how the difference in the quality is to be valued; and how far the character of each crop is to be taken into consideration, etc. etc. It is therefore apparent, that the judging of cotton requires a certain connection with the actual business activity, and, it is certain, that only the commerce itself can produce and educate the individuals, who are chosen to pronounce an expert opinion upon questions of such importance and difficulty. * * * * * The "Bremen Cotton Exchange" does not only decide questions concerning quality, but settles also all other disputes, which may arise between members. These decisions are given by, what may be called, a court of arbitration and a court of appeal. To the former each party appoints its own expert, while the Exchange appoints the experts to the latter. The conditions of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" are adapted to the common law, but take into account, the decided peculiarities of the cotton trade. The following is an explanation of an important point, where the conditions differ from the Common Law. A deviation from the guaranteed quality, does not give the buyer the right to cancel the contract. He is awarded an allowance, when the difference is small; if the inferiority be greater, penalty is added to the allowance, but, when a heavy allowance is not likely to compensate the buyer for the damage sustained, he may return the cotton, but not by cancelling the contract. In such cases, the contract will be what is called, "regulated" or "invoiced back", in which method, the market differences are duly taken into account, with the addition of penalty for the guilty party. When sales are made for specified deliveries, and these should not be made within the proper time, the buyer has also the right of invoicing back, in the manner described. This invoicing back, takes the place of the cancelling of a contract, according to law. It is possible, that when a party practically goes by default on a contract, through a very inferior tender, or by a late delivery, they may yet be entitled to claim from the other party, a difference in price. For instance: Somebody sells cotton at 22 cents, the market drops to 20 cents, the contract is invoiced back for bad delivery, then, the seller, who is the guilty party, has a claim against the buyer, for a difference in the market of 2 cents less penalty of 2% = 0.44 cents, equalling 1.56 cents net. This claim would not be possible according to Common Law. The conditions of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" make it a principal, that no party shall take an advantage of the market fluctuations. In the above case, the buyer would have a profit of 2 cents, if he could have simply cancelled the contract on account of bad delivery, because he could have immediately re-bought the cotton at 20 cents, while all his calculations were based on a purchase at 22 cents. This apparently strange fact, that the innocent should pay to the guilty, is the direct consequence of the elimination of market fluctuations from the Law Codes. It has been of great benefit to all concerned, that any differences of opinions are promptly settled by the "Bremen Cotton Exchange", and not by having resort to a costly and wearisome law suit. Everybody in cotton knows, that quarreling is always bad business, and, it is with some pride, that the cotton Exchange looks back upon the big number of decisions given. Only very rarely has it happened, that disputes have been referred to the ordinary Law Courts. The "Bremen Cotton Exchange" has, according to the Rules, the power to do so, but that right is only exercised, where purely matters of Law are concerned. THE UNION WITH THE INDUSTRY. The Bremen Cotton Market made slow progress and now and then the progressive movement was interrupted. It required courage to pursue the projected course, but "never despair" was the motto which finally carried the day. It became apparent, that the "weal or woe", of the market depended upon the attitude of the Industry. Far sighted men strove hard to awaken an interest for Bremen amongst the spinners, who still utilised considerably the Liverpool market. The following letters bear witness how this idea was received: Bremen, ... 1886. The time has arrived, when the South German Cotton Industry should decide to come a step nearer to the sea. Frequently, complaints have been made about mutual misunderstandings, and that this lack of understanding had given rise to friction. If the spinners would unite with the Bremen cotton trade, an opportunity would be created for eliminating these misunderstandings. By talking matters over in a friendly spirit, and becoming known to each other, common interests could be defended and furthered. There is no danger that the spinners might be outvoted in Bremen, for there is a strong feeling here, that the common welfare must predominate, and that the Bremen trade depends, to a large extent, upon the goodwill of the Industry. * * * * * Augsburg, ... 1886. We note with pleasure the suggestions, which we received from you verbally, and by letter, and are convinced that the reasons which you advance for a union with your market, are perfectly correct. Many of our spinners are a little out of the world, and it would be of advantage to them, to come into closer touch with the foreign and oversea trade. We shall gladly come to Bremen, after the necessary arrangements have been made in Augsburg. We do not wish to be merely affiliated, but desire to become active workers; for this purpose, we should require full membership, with voting power. We shall take care that Bremen--as a German Sea Port--attains the position in the cotton World, which it deserves. * * * * * In July 1886, the entry of the German Spinners into the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" became an accomplished fact. The arrangements, which the trade had made, for dealing with the cotton business in a just and fitting manner, were pronounced excellent. It was resolved with great enthusiasm, to unite forces for the fostering and regulating of the cotton Import Trade, thereby, creating for Bremen, a great Cotton market, and for the spinners, an easier way of obtaining their raw material. Six spinners joined the Board of Directors of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange". The German Spinners Unions were now united with the Bremen Cotton Exchange, but, in the course of time, Swiss and Austria-Hungarian spinners followed suit. Through this fusion, "The Bremen Cotton Exchange" gained greatly in importance, influence and business activity, so that it stood on equal terms with the great foreign Exchanges. At many meetings, spinners and merchants have peacefully sat at the same Board table, although the interests of both groups are frequently opposed to each other. Now and then, this has been apparent, but on the principle that good reasons must give way to better ones, differences of opinions were settled after proper discussion. Mutual understanding and a determination to pay due respect to the interests of the other party, have always been the leading spirit of the meetings. To-day, it stands beyond any doubt that through this fusion, great benefits have accrued to both parties, and to the far sighted men, who brought this about, great honor, praise and veneration are due. In the following we give a few figures concerning the number of Members and the activity of the Bremen Cotton Exchange: Year Members Arbitrations Appeals 1887 184 300 446 bales 29 642 bales 1892 253 653 567 " 70 340 " 1897 356 1 089 956 " 67 048 " 1902 449 1 295 441 " 63 692 " 1907 673 2 396 128 " 208 402 " 1912 717 2 554 284 " 315 597 " 1913 719 2 165 657 " 245 576 " 1920 610 405 058 " 80 698 " 1921 663 1 041 608 " 215 066 " We cannot possibly conclude this chapter, without drawing attention to the fact, that if the commerce has reached its present greatness by its own endeavours, the industry is fully entitled to an equal share of praise. The German cotton industry had to pass through many a hard fight. There was a time, when German goods were deemed inferior, mainly for the reason that they were not known. The German Export Trade owes something like an apology to the Industry, for the poor support it gave at first to the exertions of the Manufacturers, to create a market for their goods in foreign countries. It took a long time before German goods were appreciated in foreign markets, but, eventually, they gained for themselves a high class reputation. The "Bremen Cotton Exchange", views with pride, the success of their fellow members of the Industry. FINANCIAL ITEMS. In those days, when the world spoke of the five "Great Powers", money was called the sixth "Great Power" and that with full right. It is a fact, that money means power, and that in a wider sense of the word than is generally accepted. The power of a state is limited, the power of money is unlimited, it is international. It seems ever to rejuvenate and augment itself, and it constantly draws bigger multitudes under its sway. A man who is a power in financial circles, plays his role in the world. England owes its enormous influence in politics and national economy to money. There have been other countries possessing great riches, but the working, creating and ruling capital, was English. Previous to the English, German tribes were known on the sea. Daring mariners left our shores, and did a thriving business in all parts of the adjoining seas, where they founded settlements in the northern waters, and on the Baltic. How is it, that Germany has not gained riches, and why has it not participated in the treasures of the world, which, up to a few hundred years ago, were lying open to everybody? For the most part the unfavorable geographical position is to blame. On all sides, hemmed in by foreign countries, it had to suffer wars upon wars. A hundred years ago, Germany might still have had a chance to gain for itself a position in the world, but, at that time, it was lying in the dust, bleeding from a thousand wounds. The wars, which Napoleon waged against the German states, had reduced it to a poverty stricken country. All stamina seemed to have disappeared through the Napoleonic reign, the wars themselves and the contributions to the same, which the enemy mercilessly exacted, brought about a condition, which stifled all enterprise, and reduced the people to misery. Deep thought, poetry and music had to take the place of bodily welfare. In their poverty, the inhabitants could not grasp the advantages offered to other nations. Under these conditions, England gained the mastery over half of the globe, politically, and in an economic sense. The colonies provided vast supplies, which were cleverly exploited, riches increased, business relations with the European Continent were opened and enlarged, and one fine day, England was the general provider to the Continent for nearly everything required. The extension of Trade was closely followed by the development of the Banking system, which, after all, may be called a branch of the trade. In the colonies, English banks were established, and every ton of rice or grain, every pound of cotton or spice, had to be paid through the intermediary of the banker, who, of course, derived a profit from the transactions. When 50 years ago, Germany awakened from its long impotence, her citizens were received, without prejudice, all over the world, and no obstacles were placed in the way of their diligence. This fact, we wish gladly and thankfully to record. Many Germans were successful in gaining a firm footing in the English Colonies, as well as in America, and to attain there important positions. They formed a link between their home country and the centres of trade and finance. Valuable services were rendered by them to the German trade, but London remained the Banker of the world, and when an industry began to grow in Germany, it was, in many cases, the English, who furnished the first capital. When the cotton market started to develop in Bremen, most of the financing was done by English bankers, anyhow at first. Later on, German Banks participated, and it is greatly to their credit, that they showed such great interest and understanding for the requirements of that trade. In the year 1871, the first German Bank of importance opened its doors in Bremen, and others followed, as the trade expanded. The cotton trade remained, in a certain measure, true to the English banks, while the other branches of commerce worked mostly through German banks, and a great incentive was given to this, by the fact, that American bankers considered German money equal to the American and English values. How do we pay for the cotton, which we import? The planter receives the purchase price from the shipper, through any one of the numerous banks in the South. Of course, we cannot give the actual dollars to the shipper, consequently, he or his banker has to advance them for a short period. Before the war, we opened a credit with English or German banks, in favor of the shipper, a so-called reimbursement credit, by which he could recover his advanced purchase price. When opening this credit, we took care, however, to have proof that the goods, for which we intended to pay, were certain to reach us eventually. We made the condition, that, against the reimbursement credit, the shipping documents were to be delivered. Against delivery of these documents, the shipper drew a draft upon our bankers, discounted the same, and the matter was settled. Now the bank was in possession of the documents, and by accepting the draft, had guaranteed to pay the purchase price. The position between the bank and ourselves, was cleared in various ways, which depended upon private arrangements. We, as cotton importers, had to receive the purchase price from the consumer in the interior, before we could satisfy our bank. As the sale of the goods could not always be effected promptly, we remained debtors to the bankers for the purchase price, while they were in possession of the goods or the documents. The settlement of transactions of this kind, requires a certain amount of trust and confidence, which the bankers have to grant to the merchants, on the other hand, they have their security in the value of the goods in their keep. The banks have always given a full measure of trust to the Bremen cotton trade, while the commerce has made every arrangement to safeguard the interests of the bankers. In this connection, we mention the establishment of the "Bremer Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft" which was founded in 1877, through their Agency the bank obtained, in a simple form, the security of the cotton itself. The hypothecation of goods against an overdraft on the bank, was new in those days, but later, it became common practice, and the old established forwarding houses made similar arrangements to those of the Bremer Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft. It became the custom to issue warrants against the cotton stored. The warehouse owners were, thereby, obliged to keep the cotton, until the holder of the warrant gave it free. With growing trade, the co-operation of the banks increased considerably, and for a long period, business was satisfactorily settled, but the war caused here, like everywhere else, a certain amount of confusion. The settlement with the German banks was easy, but it was impossible, during the long period of the war, to let that cotton remain untouched, which was hypothecated in favor of foreign banks. Thus, a peculiar position in law was created, between the warrant holder and the previous owners of the cotton. The settlement of these questions lies with the respective committees of the peace commission. The financial treatment of the import business after the war, is vastly different from previous methods. The American bankers play a far more prominent part, as the German importer pays in dollars on arrival of the goods in port, and he has to buy the dollars at a rate of exchange, which is subject to the vagaries of the Stock Exchange.--Recently a moderate credit has been given to the importer, but the further development of affairs is uncertain. BUSINESS IN FUTURES. Cotton is sold to a large extent for distant delivery, but "future" transactions are only those which are concluded on a specified "future" exchange, under the rules and regulations of that particular exchange. Here be it mentioned, that the Bremen Cotton Exchange is no exchange within the meaning of the law. It has no regular hours of attendance, nor has it special rules regulating the business in "futures". The important "future" exchanges are Liverpool and New-York, and in a lesser degree, Havre, Alexandria and New Orleans. Within the specified hours of the "future" markets, large quantities of cotton contracts change hands. There, buyers and sellers are constantly in attendance, and it requires only a nod of the head to conclude a contract for thousands of bales. The Rules, referring to "futures", do not differ essentially from those governing the general trade, for it must be borne in mind, that all "future" contracts demand the delivery of actual cotton. Nobody can escape this duty, if he has sold futures, he must deliver, unless he buys the contract back before it falls due, or vice versa, which, of course, refers also to any ordinary delivery contract. In fact, all transactions for delivery are settled either by previous transfer or by fulfilment. It is noticeable how the stocks in New-York increase or decline, in accordance with the tenders, against "futures". No doubt, the great majority of the dealers intend to close their contracts before they fall due, and the opportunity to do this, presents itself every minute. In this, the "future" markets offer a great advantage, or, if you like, a great temptation. In former days, the dealing in "futures" had no legal protection in Germany, and nowadays only under certain assumptions. Dealing in futures came within the gaming act, and claims arising therefrom, were not actionable. The Bremen Cotton Exchange has never accepted this view, but has constantly fought against it, for very good reasons. The following explanation will make it clear, that, as far as cotton is concerned, the trading in futures is of great economic importance, and not practised for snatching easily earned profits. HEDGES. A great market has the duty to adapt itself to all the requirements of the Trade, and these are ever changing. For instance, new districts are opened for commercial enterprise, new methods of doing business develop, bringing increased activity in their train, and all this, has to be regulated or arranged for. Many things did not bother us in the past, as the following few questions will show: How can we, without risk of the market, sell cotton in Spring, which will only be grown in Autumn? How can a planter sell the cotton which he has picked, when there are no buyers at the moment? How can a manufacturer protect himself against a decline in the price of cotton, while his goods are being prepared for the market? How can a manufacturer accept orders for late deliveries, without possessing the cotton? How can an importer take advantage of the great quantity of offers, which flood the market, during the first few months of the gathering of the crop? To anybody in the cotton trade, these questions present no difficulties, but, for the outside world, be it mentioned, that it is the "future" market that furnishes the means to overcome these apparent anomalies. It is the "future" contract, which eliminates the risk of the market from the carefully managed cotton business. Anybody who sells new crop cotton, buys a "future" contract as provisional cover, it is then immaterial to him, whether the market advances or declines. His actual sale price is the stipulated price, and the differences which arise from the "future" contract, are added or deducted. A planter, who cannot sell his cotton for the moment, sells the equivalent amount of "futures". A bank takes charge of the cotton and the "future" contract, and pays the price of the day. When the cotton is finally sold, the bank is reimbursed by receiving the then existing price of the day: plus or minus the differences on the "future" contract. A spinner finds himself, now and then, in the position that he cannot effect sales against his production. With a decline in prices, mostly, the cessation of the demand coincides. By selling a "future" contract, he can safeguard himself. When the demand is brisk, a spinner may find himself obliged to book orders, although the time for buying the raw material is not propitious. Here also, the "futures" give the necessary assistance. The receipts of cotton are naturally biggest in the first few months of the new season. Should an importer miss this opportunity of acquiring most desirable cotton? No, he can buy, with impunity, as much cotton as he considers advisable, for against each purchase, he can put out a provisional sale of "futures". In the cotton trade therefore, two transactions are frequently coupled. The main transaction, is the trading in the actual article, while the accompanying "futures", are a safety measure against the fluctuations of the market. This combination of actual cotton and "futures", is called a "Hedge"--the origin of this name is obscure. The "hedge" is a peculiarity of the cotton trade, it may even be called, its life condition. The supreme Court of Law has, in many decisions, upheld this condition. The endeavours of the cotton trade have always been directed towards the minimising of the market risk, and for this reason, "futures" have always played an important part in cotton business. What are the forces which put life into the "future" market? The world's trade is large, and every minute will find people, who, in the pursuance of legitimate interests, buy or sell. When both groups are fairly equal, the market is steady, while a decline or an advance is caused by a preponderance of one over the other; finally, this adjusts itself again, by the fact, that a rapid advance will produce sellers and vice versa. A further element in the market, is the "jobber", whose main object is to take advantage of the small fluctuation caused by chance, but we must not forget the big speculators. By these, we do not mean those despicable people who aim to snatch a profit, and who, on having to face a loss, plead the gaming act. Experience and force of circumstances have, luckily, driven these parasites almost out of the market. But we do mean those big operators, who having weighed carefully "the pros and cons" of the situation, cause the great "bull" or bear movements. TECHNICALITIES. For those who wish to obtain information concerning the cotton trade from this pamphlet, certain subjects are here elaborated, which were, so far, only indicated in connection with other explanations. Of first importance are the shipping documents, which consist of bills of lading and insurance certificates. There are three kinds of bills of lading: Port Bills of Lading, Custody Bills of Lading, and Through Bills of Lading. The first must be signed by the captain of the steamer, who has undertaken to carry the goods, or by a duly authorized shipping agent. They are, therefore, an absolute guarantee on the part of the ship, to deliver the goods to the holder of the bill of lading. Unfortunately, this obligation is frequently restricted by the insertion of certain inconspicuous clauses. The "custody bills of lading" are signed by a shipping agent, they acknowledge receipt of the goods, and promise the forwarding in due course. In order to obtain equal value with the "port bill of lading," they should, later on, be supplemented by a so-called "master's receipt", which is an acknowledgment by the captain, that he has actually accepted the goods for forwarding, in accordance with the conditions of the custody bill of lading. They are used when the goods have arrived at the port, previous to the ship. The "through or railway" bills of lading, oblige the railway companies to forward the goods from a place in the interior of America, to their destination. A master's receipt is not necessary, but desirable, as it is an easy means of ascertaining by which steamer the goods are coming forward. At one time, "through or railway bills of lading" were not a properly valid document, as the railway companies were not in duty bound to forward the goods. Now, however, a change in the American Law binds the companies to this duty. The "Insurance certificate" confirms, that the goods have been insured on the terms of an insurance policy, which remains in America, and in case of claims, it has the same documentary value as the policy itself. When "total loss", "general average" or "particular average" occur, claims on the insurer can be made, which must be substantiated in the port of discharge. Any claim, referring to difference in quality or loss in weight, has to be made on receiving the goods, and the complaint has to be lodged within a certain specified time. On these points, the Bremen Cotton Exchange has specific rules which are easily understood. If one party to a purchase or sale contract goes by default, the other party is obliged to send in their claim within the time stipulated by the rules of the Bremen Cotton Exchange, this is most important, as the non-observance may mean the loss of any right to claim. The method in which these claims are made up, is easily seen from the Rules of the Bremen Cotton Exchange. If one party suspends payment, all unfulfilled contracts are immediately settled, without any action of the other party. The obligation to take or make delivery ceases, and, instead of this, the difference in price is fixed which exists between the date of contract, and the time when payment was suspended. These differences in price are put to account between the parties concerned. It can thus easily happen, that the solvent concern has to pay a considerable amount to the other party, through whose fault the contract was not carried out, and yet, this constitutes no loss to the paying party, as they can at once cover themselves at the existing prices. The advantage of this procedure lies in the fact, that the solvent concern is not left in uncertainty, whether their contracts will be fulfilled or not, while, otherwise, this decision would rest with the liquidators, who, according to Common Law, are not obliged to declare themselves, until the stipulated time for delivery has been reached. Of great importance in the cotton trade is the business for future delivery, and that in a two-fold form. All transactions in "futures" are governed by the stringent rules of the respective Exchanges, which refer, particularly, to the price differences caused by the fluctuations in the market, and the safeguarding of the interests thus created. Indirectly, every buyer comes frequently into contact with the "future" business, because, for years past, the importing of cotton has not been done at fixed prices, but at so many points "on" or "off" certain "futures" in New-York, for instance, a purchase is made of "goodmiddling" October/November shipment at 200 points "on" December, or lowmiddling at 200 points "off". At any period up to the time of shipment, or even of arrival of the cotton, the buyer can elect to fix the price on the market of the following day. Should then December in New-York stand at 20 cents, the price for "goodmiddling" would be 22 cents or 18 cents for "lowmiddling". Very peculiar is the "hedge" business, to which reference has been made, and it might be advisable to give a few examples as an explanation. A spinner is obliged to buy cotton to prevent stoppage of his mill, a sale of yarn is impossible for the moment and he decides on a "hedge" transaction. He buys "goodmiddling" at 22 cents, and sells at the same time in New-York 200 December "futures" at 20 cents. Later on, the market advances to 22 cents, and at this price the spinner covers his "future" contract, thereby, losing 2 cents. The purchase price of his 200 bales is now not 22 but 24 cents. As the movements of cotton and cotton products run on parallel lines, he has the same chance, for the sale of his production, on the basis of 24 cents, as he had at 22 cents. He gained a longer period to effect a favorable sale, while the chances of the market remained the same. It would have made no difference had the market declined to 18 cents, with a consequent gain of 2 cents, instead of a loss of 2 cents. The cotton would then have cost 20 cents, but this would have been no advantage to him, as the opportunity for selling his yarns would also have been on the basis of 20 cents. A spinner sells his yarns for a distant delivery, at that moment, however, it does not suit him to buy the cotton, he prefers to cover himself in futures, and therefore buys 200 bales December "futures" in New-York at 20 cents. He has calculated that the sale price of his yarns allows him to pay 24 cents for goodmiddling. He watches the market for a favorable opportunity to buy "goodmiddling", he succeeds in buying 200 bales at 300 "on" December. On arrival of the 200 bales, he fixes the price with his seller, now he must be careful to liquidate his "future" contract at the same moment. Both are done at 18 cents, and he loses 2 cents on his "futures". The cotton, however, costs him 18 cents, plus the 300 points "on", equal to 21 cents, he therefore makes a profit of 3 cents on the calculated purchase price of 24 cents, from this are to be deducted, the 2 cents loss on the "futures", remaining, one cent net profit. The fluctuations of the market had nothing to do with this profit, which he had, so to say, in his pocket right from the commencement, as he had sold his yarns on the basis of 24 cents for cotton, with "futures" at 20 cents, in fact, he bought his cotton at 300 "on" for goodmiddling, with the value of "futures" at 20 cents, which equals 23 cents. The hedge business, therefore, does away with the market risk, now in what consists its value? The profit on cotton does not lie in the fluctuations of the market, one has to look for it elsewhere. The chances of profit-making are to be found for the merchant in judicious buying, while, for the manufacturer, they consist in the lucrative production of his finished articles. The merchant requires for advantageous buying, far reaching connections and a wide spread organisation, he has to survey the entire field of cotton production, he must watch for every opportunity where cotton is pressed for sale, he must know which district has grown the qualities mostly preferred, in short, he has to keep himself extremely well posted. The consumer has to work with the same tension, to find the devious ways which lead to a profitable result in his business. Hardly ever do big profits stare one in the face, and should a particular good opportunity arise, it never lasts long, as everybody wishes to participate in it, which, of course, spoils the best chance. For the common welfare, competition tends to reduce the prices of everything to the lowest possible level, that is the natural course of events. Occasional deviations are simply exceptions, that, according to the old proverb: "prove the rule". What is the technical value of a market? The most pressing requirement for a spinner is a big supply, and this, naturally, collects in a big market. The manifold demands which a spinner places upon the quality, can only be satisfied by a great selection. Given a good supply, one of the main conditions of the industry has been fulfilled. An active market has a further calling, it regulates the prices, and, thereby, enables the industry to buy the raw material at a figure, warranting a successful competition in the trade of the world. MARKET ACTIVITY IN BREMEN. Future transactions, of course, entail certain expenses, which constitute something of a burden on the running business, while economy is a necessity for every mercantile enterprise. Out of this, originated the desire to establish a "future" market in Bremen. People felt sure that it would greatly assist the development of the market, to be able to trade in "futures" within their own portals. A certain amount of ambition may also have lent its weight. The establishment took place, though, not under the auspices of the Bremen Cotton Exchange, but in the form of an independent society. Early in 1914, the market commenced its activities, and it was soon found, that all expectations were realised, and even surpassed. The clearing house, which was started simultaneously, fulfilled all requirements. The business with the spinners had now a foundation, which answered all demands of modern times. Covering transactions, which previously were cabled to New-York and Liverpool, could be executed here every minute within business hours. Where orders from spinners were concerned, the whole transaction could be done by telephone. The "future" market blossomed out in such a way, that no fears were entertained for its successful future. The coping stone had been set on the edifice of the Bremen Cotton Market. * * * * * With the growth of the industry in Germany, the Bremen cotton trade expanded, and the business with the surrounding countries grew in proportion. Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Belgium, all became faithful customers, and the Bremen Cotton Exchange hummed with activity. Here, was the centre of all the efforts to provide the consumer with the desired material at the lowest prices. Every evening, at a late hour, when the last news from America had arrived, a flood of telegrams carried advantageous offers down to the smallest and most distant places on the Continent. Not only the cotton spinner, but also the weaver, the printer and the wholesale dealer took an interest in the Bremen offers, like clockwork operated the business intercourse between the cotton factor and the cotton consumer. THE WAR. The Bremen Cotton Exchange has never occupied itself with politics, but, of course, the members could not help taking serious notice of occurrences which shook the world's foundation. Together, with the expansion of business, grew also a political apprehension. France was lending milliards upon milliards to the Russian Czardom, with the express condition, that the money had to be expended in preparation for a war against Germany. One saw, that France gave Egypt to England, although it did not own it, on the other hand, England ceded Marocco to France, without having any sovereign right over that country. That Germany had interests in both places, was overlooked. The English newspapers, so widely read in Bremen for their business news, brought articles upon articles, picturing the dangers of a German Invasion. In the most lurid of colors, the cruelties of the war were painted, that was supposed to threaten England, and all this, for no other purpose, than to inflame the passions of the English people. What did the commerce do in face of these threatening symptoms?--Nothing! Without an anxious thought, people looked after their business, and showed an optimism, which to-day, is inexplicable. On the 25th of July in 1914--after the Austria-Serbian ultimatum--careful merchants insured their afloat cotton against war risks. The big German Insurance Companies took this risk for 1/8%, let us repeat it, one eighth per cent! How was it that the insurance companies were so unconcerned? At the same time in Bremen, and at other places in Germany, many insurances were covered with English companies. Did nobody see danger ahead? All political misgivings of those days were silenced by the feeling, that to think of war was monstrous and to believe in war, an impossibility, on account of the highly developed economic relations which connected all countries. Yet the war came! At the outbreak, many cargoes of cotton owned by Bremen merchants were afloat, and many "future" contracts were open in the Liverpool market. Later on, the cargoes were taken by the enemy, and the Liverpool contracts were liquidated, in accordance with a certain system, but without the consent of the other parties to the contract, and without reservation of their rights. Bremen had a considerable stock of cotton at the commencement of the war, consequently was in a position to supply the German cotton mills for a long time. If proof had been needed to show the advantage of having an important cotton market in Bremen, the war would have furnished it. The cotton trade was not satisfied to deal only with the existing supply, but did its very utmost to secure fresh imports, and was successful, by means and ways hitherto unknown, to bring considerable quantities of cotton into Germany, where it was of great service. The Cotton Exchange does not trade, but under the war-conditions and in the knowledge of being the centre of commerce and industry, a courageous attempt was made. At the instigation of the Exchange, commerce and the spinners of Germany and Austria-Hungaria united, to give a bid for one million bales of cotton to the Americans. Cotton was no contraband of war, and America was neutral, so no difficulties seemed to be in the way of executing this plan. The buyer was prepared to pay the price which the Americans might demand, and the goods were to be paid in hard cash dollars. Yet the offer was not accepted, although America had sufficient reason to seek an outlet for the big crop it had grown, and that nobody wanted under the war conditions. Politics were too mighty for the reasons of commerce! After a while, all connections ceased with America. The Bremen Cotton Exchange and the cotton trade were at a stand-still. Now and then, the Exchange tried to place their establishment at the disposal of the trade in substitutes, but only with moderate success. To build up a lasting trade in substitutes was as impossible as it was to find a market for the substitutes, when once cotton began to appear again. THE RE-OPENING OF THE MARKET. After the armistice, the possibility presented itself again, of supplying the German cotton industry with raw material. The government, however, made certain stipulations under which the import might be carried on, but no hymn of praise can be sung about them. Notwithstanding all difficulties, cotton found its way into the country, and when, finally, all government measures were cancelled, the legitimate business was restarted. All round the Bremen market, competition had grown. Rotterdam made great exertions to push Bremen aside, even Copenhagen made similar endeavours. A few American firms, which were hostile to Germany, did their best to circumvent Bremen. These efforts, however, were not crowned with success, Bremen regained its position. It has been shown that the natural development through many years, cannot be killed and artificially replaced. The manifold relations, started in peace-time, of personal or business character, showed their value. The economic life flows through a great network of channels, should these be artificially closed, they will re-open again of their own accord, as soon as the barriers have been removed. During the war, the German cotton industry either stood still, or worked only with a small percentage of its machinery. The government had husbanded the supply of cotton most carefully, so that, after an unexpectedly long war, a little was still left over. The mills which were running, displayed great assiduity in procuring and utilizing substitutes for cotton. Paper, wood, cellulose, reed and nettle fibres, and other materials were tried, some were manufactured quite extensively. During the war they did good service, but in normal times, they cannot usurp the place of cotton. After surmounting many difficulties, the German cotton industry is once more in full swing, and with it, Bremen is again the important continental cotton market. The surrounding countries buy in Bremen as of old, though some outlets are still closed, owing to political and economic reasons. During the last three years, before the war, the import of North American cotton to Bremen averaged 2 500 000 bales, during the season 1920/21, it reached 1 200 000 bales, and in 1921/22, 1 500 000 bales, the decline, against the former years, is caused, partly, by the disappearance of some outlets, and partly, by the shorter working day. AMERICAN CROPS AND CONSUMPTION. The activity of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" depends, to a large extent, upon the import figures, and these again are under the influence of the various crops. In America, big crops alternate with small ones, the cause for this diversity is to be found in the climate conditions, and also in the ruling range of price. High prices stimulate an extensive planting and a careful cultivation of the ground, while low prices have the contrary effect. The crop figures from 1872-1914, were ascending, an occasional decline was made good later on. The following figures will make this clear. American crops: 1872 3 650 000 bales 1875 4 302 000 " 1878 4 745 050 " 1881 5 136 000 " 1884 5 477 000 " 1887 6 884 000 " 1891 8 940 000 " 1894 10 025 000 " 1898 10 985 000 " 1901 9 749 000 " 1904 13 697 000 " 1907 11 326 000 " 1910 11 966 000 " 1913 14 614 000 " 1914 16 738 000 " 1915 12 013 000 " 1916 12 664 000 " 1917 12 345 000 " 1918 12 817 000 " 1919 11 921 000 " 1920 13 711 000 " 1921 8 000 000[1]" [1] estimated. The reverse, which the production suffered since 1914, is remarkable, it is largely accounted for, by the want of artificial manure. German potash could not be obtained, and this was largely used by all cotton states, with the exception of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, which do not require that kind of fertilizer. In addition, the boll weevil has become a dreaded enemy of the cotton plant. The insect world produces quite an army of little fiends, that viciously attack and reduce the crop, many have disappeared, but the boll weevil is, at present, the arch-enemy; it is a small beetle which bores into the bolls to deposit its eggs there. The following figures give the distribution of the American crops. ¦ Export from America ¦ ¦ Taken by ¦ ¦ to ¦ ¦ American ¦ Percentage ¦ Great ¦Continent, ¦Total in ¦ Spinners ¦of the crop ¦Britain ¦Japan etc. ¦thousands¦(in thousands¦used by the ¦in thousands of bales¦of bales ¦ of bales) ¦ U.S.A. + + + + + 1871/72 ¦ 1 474 ¦ 483 ¦ 1 957 ¦ 1 097 ¦ 37 1874/75 ¦ 1 833 ¦ 841 ¦ 2 674 ¦ 1 201 ¦ 31 1877/78 ¦ 2 047 ¦ 1 309 ¦ 3 356 ¦ 1 496 ¦ 31 1880/81 ¦ 2 832 ¦ 1 733 ¦ 4 565 ¦ 1 938 ¦ 29 1883/84 ¦ 2 485 ¦ 1 432 ¦ 3 917 ¦ 1 877 ¦ 33 1886/87 ¦ 2 704 ¦ 1 741 ¦ 4 445 ¦ 2 088 ¦ 32 1890/91 ¦ 3 345 ¦ 2 446 ¦ 5 791 ¦ 2 640 ¦ 30 1893/94 ¦ 2 861 ¦ 2 371 ¦ 5 232 ¦ 2 291 ¦ 30 1896/97 ¦ 3 022 ¦ 2 957 ¦ 5 979 ¦ 2 792 ¦ 32 1900/01 ¦ 3 050 ¦ 3 488 ¦ 6 538 ¦ 3 547 ¦ 34 1903/04 | 2 577 | 3 455 | 6 032 | 3 935 | 39 1906/07 | 3 750 | 4 614 | 8 364 | 5 005 | 37 1909/10 | 2 430 | 3 778 | 6 208 | 4 256 | 40 1912/13 | 3 604 | 5 176 | 8 780 | 5 389 | 38 1913/14 | 3 419 | 5 447 | 8 866 | 5 503 | 38 1914/15 | 3 798 | 4 571 | 8 369 | 6 088 | 40 1915/16 | 2 866 | 3 185 | 6 051 | 6 810 | 53 1916/17 | 2 888 | 3 076 | 5 764 | 6 914 | 55 1917/18 | 2 247 | 2 179 | 4 426 | 7 073 | 59 1918/19 | 2 621 | 3 025 | 5 646 | 5 460 | 48 1919/20 | 3 062 | 3 300 | 6 362 | 6 131 | 50 1920/21 | 1 583 | 3 771 | 5 353 | 4 914 | 48 1921/22 | 1 946 | 4 586 | 6 532 | 6 308 | 50 From these statistics the important lesson to be learnt, is, that America has surpassed all other countries in the growth of the cotton industry. Fifty years ago, and later, America used only about 30% of the crop for home consumption, while now, it requires more than half. Equally remarkable is also the rapid growth of Japan. For many decades after 1872, Japan used hardly any American cotton, but in 1913, it took 465 000 bales; in 1920 780 000 bales; in 1921: 600 000 bales, and the estimate for 1922, is 800 000 bales. Besides this, a great many other descriptions are spun there. The use of East Indian cotton is even greater than that of American, and it reached two thirds of East India's consumption, thus placing Japan, after America and England, in the third place of cotton consuming countries. During the first half year of 1921, it has even outdone America and England, because these two countries were in the throes of a crisis. For many decades, England had almost a monopoly for providing Asia, and the rest of the world, with cotton goods, and required a corresponding amount of raw material, but now, it has lost that position. Grave concern is felt in England, as well as in the whole of Europe, regarding the future of the cotton industry, as it seems impossible to prevent a further expansion in America and Japan, besides that, there is the growing menace of the boll weevil, which many people consider an unwelcome guest, that has come to stay. Amongst the other cotton growing countries, Brazil perhaps, offers the best prospect, on account of the great interest taken there in the cultivation of the cotton plant, also, the Argentine gives rise to some hope. BREMEN'S POSITION IN COMPARISON TO THE RIVAL MARKETS. The following figures are intended to show how the imports of Bremen, and its consequent importance, have grown in comparison to the great rival markets of Liverpool and Havre: The Import was to | Bremen | Liverpool | Havre | in 1000 | in 1000 | in 1000 | bales | bales | bales + + + 1880/81 | 452 | 2 843 | 543 1883/84 | 422 | 2 470 | 465 1886/87 | 493 | 2 694 | 471 1890/91 | 911 | 2 314 | 525 1893/94 | 832 | 2 732 | 578 1896/97 | 1 213 | 2 683 | 672 1900/01 | 1 546 | 2 478 | 711 1903/04 | 1 757 | 2 081 | 690 1906/07 | 2 083 | 3 251 | 863 1909/10 | 1 760 | 2 089 | 948 1912/13 | 2 216 | 3 066 | 1 001 1913/14 | 2 619 | 2 903 | 1 021 1919/20 | 385 | 2 477 | 555 1920/21 | 1 279 | 1 525 | 583 There are not exact statistics before 1880, however, Bremen's yearly import will have been 2-300 000 bales. From small beginnings, quite a creditable result has been reached, that is worthy of some consideration. History frequently chronicles the decay of some once flourishing commercial centre, and nobody knows to-day, the exact reason. Was it an opportunity missed? Of such, no records are kept in the book of time. Should anybody compile a history of lost opportunities, it might easily require a bigger volume, than that needed for the story of opportunities taken at the crucial moment. The river, on which Bremen is situated, was so heavily silted up, that sometimes in Summer, one could wade through it; no sea-going vessel could reach the town. Under these circumstances, the opportunity of establishing a cotton market in Bremen might easily have been missed. The trade which was indigenous to Bremen passed, in the second half of the 19th century, through a period of transition. The shipping business from olden times, a main stay of Bremen's commerce, had to adapt itself to more modern requirements. The small vessels hitherto used, had to make way for bigger ones, the steamship had entered into the world's traffic. There was hardly a proper connecting link with the interior, no water ways existed, and the efficiency of the railways was extremely poor. Surely, these were not conditions that cried for the opening of a market centre. Yet it was established, it grew and blossomed into success. Was this chance or method? We owe many thanks to the State of Bremen for its co-operation, for, with astounding energy, this small state undertook to build a sea-port in Bremen town. This necessitated the deepening of the river "Weser", to which work the neighbouring states lent no help, but rather, placed difficulties in the way. This grand work deserves an essay of its own, on account of its influence on the commercial, political and economic position of Bremen. Here only, be it mentioned, that the furtherance of the cotton trade was a constant stimulus to this great plan. The authorities and the representatives of the trade were in the best harmony, and the most perfect arrangements were made for the dealing with cotton. Great practical knowledge and experience was shown, in settling the question of how to raise the interests and amortization needed for the vast expenditure, and of how much the trade could bear without crippling it. The state furnished the capital for the building of great warehouses, and within a number of years their cost was paid off, as planned. In this way, Bremen became equipped with all modern requirements for the handling and storing of cotton, which, even to-day, are unsurpassed. The port has the highest reputation for the quick and painstaking unloading and dispatching of cotton cargoes. The co-operation of the banks has already been mentioned, but we do not deem it superfluous to repeat, that without capital, no enterprise can be effectively launched, and all roads to successful completion are barred. Fifty years ago Bremen was poor in capital. What existed of riches, and was not needed in business, was, by preference, locked up in American securities, very little was left liquid for the Cotton Trade, although big amounts were needed to handle the import of cotton. Credit is not given by merely asking for it, only he is entitled to it, who is sure that he can fulfil his obligation. To incur debts, trusting to luck to pay back, is bad policy. It is unfair dealing to accept goods on credit in the hope that their sale will leave a profit, this is only permissible, when sufficient capital is in existence to pay for the goods, even though a loss takes the place of the expected profit. As these views dominated the trade, close connections could be started with the banks. State and banks have greatly helped the growth of the Bremen cotton trade, besides them, however, the assistance of many others must be gratefully acknowledged. Most particular reference has to be made to the forwarding trade. With admirable energy, the forwarding houses made all arrangements for the careful and expeditious handling of the technical part of the cotton trade. Right from the beginning, they worked on the principle of trustworthiness and reliability, well knowing, that only by these, a mutual confidence between all parties could be established. The great trust shown, alike by shippers and receivers, to the Bremen Forwarding firms, has made the dealing so easy and satisfactory. The post and telegraphic authorities have likewise been imbued with good will towards the needs of commerce, thereby assisting considerably the furtherance of trade. The harmonious cooperation of so many powerful allies, enhanced the value of the work done by the cotton market itself, though, never for a moment, must the diligent work slacken, lest the budding tree should stop growing. Anybody engaged in the cotton business has to be at his post every minute, always ready to take a given opportunity. Exact information concerning the conditions in America, as well as personal connections in that country, are of great value. It is characteristic of the German merchant to follow up a business once he has commenced it, and this close attention, from early youth to ripe old age, has contributed materially to the success of the Bremen cotton trade. FLUCTUATIONS IN PRICES. In the Spring of 1921, the following conversation might have been overheard between an American and a German. A.: You see the consequences of the war are worse for the victor than for the vanquished. G.: Only apparently, and for the moment. The future, I fear, will teach us something different. A.: Nobody can look into the future. At the present minute, we witness the biggest economic collapse that the world has ever seen, all countries suffer from it, except Germany. All states had made preparations for peace, now the stored up goods are lying there and nobody wants them, not even Germany. We thought, that Germany, bare of everything, would swallow anything. G.: The reason is, that Germany cannot pay. Her gold and tangible gold values have been taken from her. Why do not the other countries buy? Their peace production has been lying idle for years, consequently, the shelves must be fairly empty. A.: Quite right, but prices have risen to an unreasonable height. During the war, a most wasteful regime prevailed; everybody made big profits or received huge wages, and accustomed himself to a most sumptuous life. Now, vengeance is upon them, for nature does not allow herself to be ravished, nor does she present gifts for extravagant living. G.: If prices have been driven to an unreasonable level by wasteful workings, then, a big decline in prices is the only remedy. A.: We are in the midst of a phenomenal collapse of prices. Cotton is a barometer for all other goods. The price in America is, to-day, 11 cents, a short while ago, it was 40 cents. G.: What does the planter say to this? A.: The cost of production is for him this season about 25-30 cents per pound. He has worked for nothing, and besides, loses a good deal of money, as his means are small, he will be heavily in debt. G.: And the further consequences? A.: The planter is absolutely unable to produce a similar crop. It is the old story, when prices are too low the crop will be curtailed. G.: We have always experienced that low prices are followed by high ones. What other consequences is this collapse in prices likely to have? A.: All cotton goods fall in the same proportion as the raw material, this means a bad crisis for commerce and industry, and an unprecedented amount of unemployment. Besides, this collossal drop in prices has caused other very peculiar situations. G.: Of what nature? A.: It is well known that cotton is rarely bought at a fixed price, but generally, at the "future" price of the day on which the buyer "calls" his cotton, plus or minus the agreed upon difference for the quality bought. Now, several American houses sold low qualities, at 12.50 cents "off". At that time, "futures" were 40 cents, so that the seller calculated to receive about 27.50 cents, to-day, "futures" are 11 cents, so that, if the buyer "calls" his cotton to-day, he receives it for nothing, and can claim 1.50 cents per pound as well. G.: Impossible! No German law would permit a buyer to demand his goods, without paying a price at all, and be justified in claiming money in addition from the seller. A.: What decision would the Bremen Cotton Exchange give? Two possibilities are to be taken into account. If the seller has taken a "future" contract as cover, he has no loss, even if he gives the cotton for nothing, and pays 1.50 cents in addition, because the difference in the "futures" indemnifies him. But if he has no "futures", what then? to part with valuable cotton for nothing, and pay good money as well, would exceed the demands of Shylock. G.: The "Bremen Cotton Exchange" would probably decline to adjudicate, it has the right to refer it to the ordinary law courts. A.: A hard nut to crack for the law! German and American agree on the following: It is a peculiar thing that cotton has always new riddles in store for us. The fluctuations in prices are enough to drive a man mad. Woe to him, who is drawn into that maelstrom. The hedges are a safe guard against price fluctuations. The careful merchant thinks he is on solid ground, when, all of a sudden, the premium for the quality begins to rock and he wonders what is worse? the fluctuation of the "future" market, or those of the premiums. Hundreds of thousands of bales have been sold, at a premium of 10 to 15 cents for goodmiddling, to-day, the premium is 3 cents, that spells hard times for the cotton market. It is a consolation, that bad times are quickly followed by good ones, and that the darkest hour is before dawn. Cotton typifies life and death, joy and sorrow. It is like an untamed animal, it deals serious wounds, it indulges in "buck jumps", that none can foretell, nobody has ever driven it in harness. And yet, he, who deals with it quietly, carefully and pluckily, will always remain fresh and full of life. Cotton is king! THE EXCHANGE BUILDING. In the year 1902, the Bremen Cotton Exchange opened the doors to its various tenants, and, as the outward appearance of a man has an influence on the impression he makes upon us, so does the building which houses the cotton trade, play its part. Previous to that date, the business of the Exchange was carried on in rented rooms, but with expanding trade, these became inadequate, and a new building was contemplated; the idea was, to make the outward appearance worthy of the importance of Bremen's cotton trade, with due consideration to the local conditions. Bremen can boast of a thousand years history, and has many fine examples of ancient architecture, notably around the market place. There you find in the rich ornate style of the renaissance, the "Rathaus" (town hall) and in another style, that however blends harmoniously, is the "Schütting" (the seat of the chamber of commerce), the "Dom" (cathedral), the "General Exchange", as well as a number of private houses of a later date. The combined appearance of these various buildings, form an imposing picture. The site for the new exchange is situated in this very neighbourhood, consequently, a building had to be designed that fitted in with the whole scheme. Prominent architects competed, and the plans that gained the first price were accepted, and commissioned for execution. Unfortunately, it was proved later on, that the choice had not been a lucky one. The architect adopted the style of the ancient "Rathaus", but the rich ornamentations of this architecture, proved its doom. Beautiful as the effect was on the smaller, gracefully built, Rathaus, yet on the ponderous building of the "Exchange", it was utterly unsuitable, and another thing the architect did not consider sufficiently: The old guild masters, with their circumspection and devotion, erected buildings to last an eternity, while now-a-days, all is hurry and scurry, the sooner the job is finished the better, as fresh orders are waiting. This may, possibly, be some excuse for the little care bestowed upon the selection of the material. The soft sandstone selected, was excellently suited to the quick sculpturing of the over-rich ornaments, nevertheless, it was a ghastly mistake to have chosen it. Ten years after the building was finished one of the decorations, loosened by the weather, fell, and killed a member of the Exchange. An examination showed that a great number of projecting stones were so weatherworn, that they crumbled in the hand. An ugly scaffolding had to be erected to protect the street traffic. Measures were at once taken to construct the front of the building more solidly; the most prominent experts were asked for their advice, but the war broke out, and nothing could be done. During the first years after the war, want of money prevented the starting of the repairs. These had become more extensive, owing to the revolution, when the building had been under artillery and rifle fire. At last, however, came the propitious moment, when one could think seriously of beginning the work. It was thought of raising half the estimated cost of 15 millions, by voluntary contributions from the trade and the industry, and both responded nobly to the call. But the moment the money was secured, most of it melted quickly away, through the depreciation of the Mark. Nevertheless, this day of the 50th anniversary sees the work in full swing, and it will not be long, before the too richly carved front of the building will have given place, to one of greater simplicity and nobility, which better express the wishes of the Cotton Exchange. The interior of the Exchange is entirely adapted to the needs of the business, special attention is being paid to the light. The judging and valuing of cotton, require a pure and clear day light, this is of such importance, that it cannot receive too much consideration. A portion of the building is reserved for the Cotton Exchange, while the remainder is utilised as offices for the various cotton firms, unfortunately, there is not room enough for all of them. It would be of great advantage, if all the firms could be housed under one roof, and plans for this are contemplated, but when they will be executed, depends entirely upon the economic development of the future. WORLD-WIDE BUSINESS. A New-York commission agent, who has connections all over the world, receives a telephonic message from Texas to sell 100 bales of "futures". At the same moment, he receives a cable to buy a 100 bales of "futures", both orders equalize each other, the execution is easy, a few words on the telephone, a cable, a letter, and the business is done. Such transactions are daily occurrences, they leave no particular impression, nor call for any deep thought. And yet, it is very interesting to probe deeply to find the origin of this business. A planter in Texas has worked hard for six months with his entire family, to raise his cotton crop. In the early days of Spring, the ground had to be cleared and ploughed to prepare it for the seed. Then comes the time of sowing, and soon afterwards, the weeds require attention. Hardly have these been uprooted, when the injurious insects make their appearance, they are destroyed by artificial means. Over and over again, the fields require most careful attention, till, at last, the cotton begins to ripen. In the broiling sun it is picked, and only then, the planter is sure about the out-turn of his crop. The prices are favorable at the moment, and he makes his calculations. For extra help, he had spent so much, and for the frugal life of his family and himself, a further amount was required, but the account was all right. If he could obtain the present price for cotton, he could pay for everything, and have a margin to the good. He decided to secure the price by giving the afore-mentioned order. In the family of a landed proprietor in Hungary, was joyful excitement, the daughter of the house had become engaged to be married. The wedding was to take place soon, and the question of the trousseau was discussed. This, resulted in a visit to a merchant in a neighbouring town, who discovered that his stocks had run too low for the reputation of his business; at once, he gave a commission to the wholesale merchant, who, in turn, sent a considerable order to the manufacturer. Thus it goes on, till finally, the mill that spins the yarn, buys the cotton in Bremen, where the merchant cables New-York, to cover the "futures". The business, so unconcernedly done in New-York, had deep lying reasons, which never came within the vision of the commission agent. In a similar manner, the world's transactions are governed. We do not look beyond our own particular horizon, we take what the minutes bring us, without troubling our sluggish mind for the "whys" and "wherefores". Nothing, however, is done in the world's eternal circle, without cause and effect. Should our mental capacity be able to grasp every transaction in its entirety, we should see, that a never ending thread connects all of us who live and work. When the thread is broken, disorder and confusion replace the organisation, that is as finely balanced as the delicate works of a clock, and endless trouble is required to piece the thread together again. CONCLUSION. The jubilee of the "Bremen Cotton Exchange" takes place at a time, when all economic conditions are in dire confusion. Never before, was the economic life, embracing all countries, so finely spun, as in our modern times, and now, the net is torn in untold places. The old Europe, predominant for over two thousand years in all spheres, lies bleeding from serious wounds, and the question is, what part will it play in the future, what will be its fate? Finally lost is the dominant position in the region of Finance. No longer does it reap the interests and means, which originated from the economic assistance it gave to countries in other parts of the globe. On the contrary, Europe, itself, has to pay interests, and within Europe, between the different countries, obstructions and impediments are heaped upon each other, to surmount them, is a work for "giants"! The only consolation is, that it is not the first time that Europe and our own Germany were in sore distress. In all previous cases, it recuperated, and rose, like a Phoenix, from the rejuvenating fire. The plague and other dread epidemics have devastated towns and countries, wars have destroyed peoples and their culture. Final ruin we see, only in cases, where discord and lack of reason have permanently come to reign. The continued depreciation of currency in the affected countries, is one of the causes of the many grievances. No remedy has yet been discovered for it, but it must be apparent to everybody, that the most precious treasure possessed by man, is not GOLD, but "WORK"! Work alone, however, is not in all circumstances a protection against misery. The possibility must exist to use it correctly in exchange for other goods. The overthrow of all to which we have been accustomed, is likely to cloud our vision, but, ultimately, we have to acknowledge that men and nations depend upon each other, and that, in the exchange of our earthly goods, life and the pleasures of life can be found for each individual. Amidst all this oppression and tribulation, it is a blessing to be able to look back upon a successful past. This privilege, however, has stern duties: to keep up the traditions of the past, to adhere to the approved fundamental principles, to regain the lost, to strive and build up afresh. With this determination, the Bremen Cotton Exchange celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. 
29258	----	2 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume LXXX] [Number 2 Whole Number 186 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND AN ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION BY HARRIETT BRADLEY, Ph.D. _Assistant Professor of Economics, Vassar College Sometime University Fellow in Economics_ New York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS LONDON: P.S. KING & SON, LTD. 1918 "It fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted." _From speech made in the House of Commons, 1597_ To EMILIE LOUISE WELLS CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 11 The subject of inquiry--No attempt hitherto made to verify the different hypothetical explanations of the enclosures--Nature of the evidence. CHAPTER I THE PRICE OF WOOL 18 Accepted theory of enclosure movement based on price of wool--Enclosures began independently of Black Death and before expansion of woollen industry--Price of wool low as compared with that of wheat in enclosure period--Seventeenth-century conversions of pasture to arable--Of arable to pasture--Conversion not explained by change in prices or wages--Double conversion movement due to condition of soil--Summary. CHAPTER II THE FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS 51 Dr. Russell on soil fertility--Insufficient manure--Statistical indications of yield--Compulsory land-holding--Desertion of villains--Commutation of services on terms advantageous to serf--Low rent obtained when bond land was leased--Remission of services--Changes due to economic need, not desired for improved social status--Poverty of villains--Cultivation of demesne unprofitable. CHAPTER III THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN FIELDS 73 Growing irregularity of holdings--Consolidation of holdings--Turf boundaries plowed under--Lea land--Restoration of fertility--Enclosure by tenants--Land used alternately as pasture and arable--Summary of changes. CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 86 Enclosure by small tenants difficult--Open-field tenants unprofitable--Low rents--Neglect of land--High cost of living--Enclosure even of demesne a hardship to small holders--Intermixture of holdings a reason for dispossessing tenants--Higher rents from enclosed land another reason--Poverty of tenants where no enclosures were made--Exhaustion of open fields recognised by Parliament--Restoration of fertility and reconversion to tillage--New forage crops in eighteenth century--Recapitulation and conclusion. INDEX 109 INTRODUCTION The enclosure movement--the process by which the common-field system was broken down and replaced by a system of unrestricted private use--involved economic and social changes which make it one of the important subjects in English economic history. When it began, the arable fields of a community lay divided in a multitude of strips separated from each other only by borders of unplowed turf. Each landholder was in possession of a number of these strips, widely separated from each other, and scattered all over the open fields, so that he had a share in each of the various grades of land.[1] But his private use of the land was restricted to the period when it was being prepared for crop or was under crop. After harvest the land was grazed in common by the village flocks; and each year a half or a third of the land was not plowed at all, but lay fallow and formed part of the common pasture. Under this system there was no opportunity for individual initiative in varying the rotation of crops or the dates of plowing and seed time; the use of the land in common for a part of the time restricted its use even during the time when it was not in common. The process by which this system was replaced by modern private ownership with unrestricted individual use is called the enclosure movement, because it involved the rearrangement of holdings into separate, compact plots, divided from each other by enclosing hedges and ditches. The most notable feature of this process is the conversion of the open fields into sheep pasture. This involved the eviction of the tenants who had been engaged in cultivating these fields and the amalgamation of many holdings of arable to form a few large enclosures for sheep. The enclosure movement was not merely the displacement of one system of tillage by another system of tillage; it involved the temporary displacement of tillage itself in favor of grazing. In this monograph two things are undertaken: first, an analysis of the usually accepted version of the enclosure movement in the light of contemporary evidence; and, secondly, the presentation of another account of the nature and causes of the movement, consistent with itself and with the available evidence. The popular account of the enclosure movement turns upon a supposed advance in the price of wool, due to the expansion of the woollen industry in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Landlords at this period (we are told) were increasingly eager for pecuniary gain and, because of the greater profit to be made from grazing, were willing to evict the tenants on their land and convert the arable fields to sheep pasture. About the end of the sixteenth century, it is said, this first enclosure movement came to an end, for there are evidences of the reconversion of pastures formerly laid to grass. An inquiry into the evidence shows that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat during the sixteenth century. Moreover, the conversion of arable land to pasture did not cease when the contrary process set in, but continued throughout the seventeenth century with apparently unabated vigor. These facts make it impossible to accept the current theory of the enclosure movement. There is, on the other hand, abundant evidence that the fertility of much of the common-field land had been exhausted by centuries of cultivation. Some of it was allowed to run to waste; some was laid to grass, enclosed, and used as pasture. Productivity was gradually restored after some years of rest, and it became possible to resume cultivation. The enclosure movement is explained not by a change in the price of wool, but by the gradual loss of productivity of common-field land. This explanation is not made here for the first time. It is advanced in Denton's _England in the Fifteenth Century_[2] and Gardiner, in his _Student's History of England_,[3] accepts it. Prothero[4] and Gonner[5] give it some place in their works. Dr. Simkhovitch, at whose suggestion this inquiry was undertaken, has for some time been of the opinion that deterioration of the soil was the fundamental cause of the displacement of arable farming by grazing.[6] This explanation, however, stands at the present time as an unverified hypothesis, which has been specifically rejected by Gibbins, in his widely used text-book,[7] and by Hasbach,[8] who objects that Denton does not prove his case. In this respect the theory is no more to be criticised than the theory which these authorities accept, for that does not rest upon proof, but upon the prestige gained through frequent repetition. But the matter need not rest here. It is unnecessary to accept any hypothetical account of events which are, after all, comparatively recent, and for which the evidence is available. Of the various sources accessible for the study of the English enclosure movement, one type only has been extensively used by historians. The whole story of this movement as it is usually told is based upon tracts, sermons, verses, proclamations, etc. of the sixteenth century--upon the literature of protest called forth by the social distress caused by enclosure. Until very recently the similar literature of the seventeenth century has been neglected, although it destroys the basis of assumptions which are fundamental to the orthodox account of the movement. Much of significance even in the literature of the sixteenth century has been passed over--notably certain striking passages in statutes of the latter half of the century, and in books on husbandry of the first half. Details of manorial history derived from the account rolls of the manors themselves, and contemporary manorial maps and surveys, as well as the records of the actual market prices of grain and wool, have been ignored in the construction of an hypothetical account of the movement which breaks down whenever verification by contemporary evidence is attempted. The evidence is in many respects imperfect. It would be of great value, for instance, to have access to records of grain production over an area extensive enough, and for a long enough period, to furnish reliable statistical indications of the trend of productivity. It would be helpful to have exact information about the amount of land converted from arable to pasture in each decade of the period under consideration, and to know to what extent and at what dates land was reconverted to tillage after having been laid to grass. There are no records to supply most of this information. It is possible that the materials for a statistical study of soil productivity are in existence, but up to the present time they have not been published, and it is doubtful if this deficiency will be supplied. It is even more doubtful whether more can be learned about the rate of conversion of arable land to pasture than is now known, and this is little. Professor Gay has made a careful study of the evidence on this question, and has analysed the reports of the government commissions for enforcing the husbandry statutes before 1600,[9] and Miss Leonard has made the returns of the commission of 1630 for Leicestershire available.[10] The conditions under which these commissions worked make the returns somewhat unreliable even for the years covered by their reports, and much interpolation is necessary, as there are serious gaps in the series of years for which returns are made. For dates outside of the period 1485-1630 we must rely entirely on literary references. Unsatisfactory as our statistical information is on this important question, it is far more complete than the evidence on the subject of the reconversion to tillage of arable land which had been turned into pasture. It is to the unfortunate social consequences of enclosure that we owe the abundance of historical material on this subject. Undoubtedly much land was converted to pasture in a piece-meal fashion, as small holders saw the possibility of making the change quietly, and without disturbing the rest of the community. If enclosure had taken no other form than this, no storm of public protest would have risen, to express itself in pamphlets, sermons, statutes and government reports. Enclosure on a large scale involved dispossession of the inhabitants, and a complete break with traditional usage. For this reason the literature of the subject is abundant. When, however, the process was reversed, and the land again brought under cultivation, there was involved no interference with the rights of common holders. It was to the interest of no one to oppose this change, and no protest was made to call the attention of the historian to what was being done. References to the process are numerous enough only to prove that reconversion of land formerly laid to grass took place during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries--to an extent of which not even an approximate estimate can be made. Imperfect as the evidence is from some points of view, it is nevertheless complete for the purposes of this monograph. It would be impossible, with the material at hand, to reconstruct the progress of the enclosure movement, decade by decade, and county by county, throughout England. My intention, however, is not so much to describe the movement in detail as it is to give a consistent account of its nature and causes. Even a few sixteenth-century instances of the plowing up of pasture land should be enough to arrest the attention of historians who believe that the conversion of arable land to pasture during this period is sufficiently explained by an assertion that the price of wool was high. What especial circumstances made it advantageous to cultivate land which had been under grass, while other land was being withdrawn from cultivation? Contemporary writers speak of the need of worn land for rest for a long period of years, and remark that it will bear well again at the end of the period. Evidence such as this is significant without the further information which would enable us to estimate the amount of land affected. For our purposes, also, the notice of enclosure of arable land for pasture on one group of manors in the early thirteenth century is important as an indication that the fundamental cause of the enclosure movement was at work long before the Black Death, which is usually taken as the event in which the movement had its beginning. Low rents, pauperism, and abandonment of land are facts which indicate declining productivity of the soil, and statistical records of the harvests reaped are not needed when statutes, proclamations, and books of husbandry describe the exhausted condition of the common fields. The fact that the enclosure movement continued vigorously in the seventeenth century is conclusively established, and when this fact is known the impossibility of estimating the comparative rate of progress of the movement in the preceding century is of no importance. Upon one point at least, the evidence is almost all that could be desired. The material for a comparison of the prices of wheat and wool throughout the most critical portion of the period has been made accessible by Thorold Rogers.[11] It is to this material that the defenders of the theory that enclosures are explained by the price of wool should turn, for they will find a fall of price where they assume that a rise took place. Instead of an increase in the supply of wool due to a rise in its price, there is indicated a fall in the price of wool due to an increase in the supply. The cause of the increase of the supply of wool must be sought outside of the price conditions. Acknowledgment should here be made of my indebtedness to Dr. V. G. Simkhovitch of Columbia University, without whose generous help this study would not have been planned, and whose criticism and advice have been invaluable in bringing it to completion. Professor Seager also has given helpful criticism. Professor Seligman has allowed me the use of books from his library which I should otherwise have been unable to obtain. For material which could not be found in American libraries I am indebted to my mother and father, who obtained it for me in England. Footnotes: [1] V. G. Simkovitch, _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxvii, p. 398. [2] (London, 1888), pp. 153-154. Denton refers here to Gisborne's _Ag. Essays_, as does Curtler, in his _Short Hist. of Eng. Ag._ (Oxford, 1909), p. 77. [3] Vol. i, p. 321. [4] _English Farming Past and Present_ (London, 1912), p. 64. [5] _Common Land and Enclosure_, p. 121. [6] See _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxxi, p. 214. [7] _Industry in England_ (New York, 1897), p. 181. [8] _Hist. of the Eng. Ag. Laborer_ (London, 1908), p. 31. [9] _Pub. Am. Ec. Assoc._, Third Series (1905), vol vi, no. 2, pp. 146-160: "Inclosure Movement in England." [10] _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series (1905), vol. xix, pp. 101-146: "Inclosure of Common Fields." [11] _Cf. infra_, p. 26. CHAPTER I THE PRICE OF WOOL The generally accepted version of the enclosure movement turns upon supposed changes in the relative prices of wool and grain. The conversion of arable land to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is accounted for by the hypothesis that the price of wool was rising more rapidly than that of grain. The beginning of the enclosure movement, according to this theory, dates from the time when a rise in the price of wool became marked, and the movement ended when there was a relative rise in the price of agricultural products. Before the price of wool began to rise, it is supposed that tillage was profitable enough, and that nothing but the higher profits to be made from grazing induced landholders to abandon agriculture. The agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century are regarded as due simply to the temporary shortage of labor caused by the Black Death. High wages at this time caused the conversion of some land to pasture, according to the orthodox theory, and from time to time during the next two centuries high wages were a contributing factor influencing the withdrawal of land from tillage; but the great and effective cause of the enclosure movement, the one fundamental fact which is insisted upon, is that constant advances in the price of wool made grazing relatively profitable. It is usually accepted without debate that the withdrawal of arable land from tillage did not begin until after the Black Death, that the enclosures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were caused by a rise in the price of wool, and that the conversion of arable land to pasture ceased when this cause ceased to operate. Against this general explanation of the enclosure movement, it is urged, first, that the withdrawal of land from cultivation began long before the date at which the enclosure movement, caused by an alleged rise in the price of wool, is ordinarily said to have begun. The fourteenth century was marked by agrarian readjustments which have a direct relation to the enclosure movement, and which cannot be explained by the Black Death or the price of wool. Even in the thirteenth century the causes leading to the enclosure movement were well marked. Secondly, the cause of the substitution of sheep-farming for agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of grain, because statistics show that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century, and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat in the sixteenth century. Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the seventeenth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for landowners at the same time to convert a large amount of grass-land to tillage, including enclosures which had formerly been taken from the common fields. If these facts are accepted the explanation of the enclosure movement which is based upon a comparison of the prices of wheat and wool must be rejected, and the story must be told from a different point of view. Taking up these points in order, we shall inquire first into the causes of the agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century. A generation after the Black Death, the commutation of villain services and the introduction of the leasehold system had made notable progress. The leasing of the demesne has been attributed to the direct influence of the pestilence, which by reducing the serf population made it impossible to secure enough villain labor to cultivate the lord's land. The substitution of money rents in place of the labor services owed by the villains has been explained on the supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence took advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduction in numbers to free themselves from servile labor and thus improve their social status. The connection between the Black Death and the changes in manorial management which are usually attributed to it could be more convincingly established had not several decades elapsed after the Black Death before these changes became marked. A recent intensive study of the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester during this period confirms the view of those who have protested against assigning to the Black Death the revolutionary importance which is given it by many historians. On these estates the Black Death "produced severe evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid return to the _status quo_ of 1348."[12] The great changes which are usually attributed to the plague of 1348-1350 were under way before 1348, and were not greatly accelerated until 1360, possibly not before 1370, and cannot, therefore, have been due to the Black Death. Levett and Ballard devote especial attention to the effect of the Black Death upon the substitution of money payments for labor services and rents in kind, but their study also brings out the fact that the difficulty in persuading tenants to take up land on the old terms (usually ascribed to the Black Death) began before the pestilence, and continued long after its effects had ceased to exert any influence. Before the Black Death landowners were unable to secure holders for bond land without the use of force. A generation after the Black Death they were still contending with this problem, and it had become more serious than at any previous time. Whatever the significance of the Black Death, it must not be advanced as the explanation of a condition which arose before its occurrence, nor of events which took place long after its effects were forgotten. One result of the pestilence was, indeed, to place villains in a stronger position than before, but the changes which took place on this account must not be allowed to obscure the fact that landowners were already facing serious difficulties before 1348. Holders of land were already deserting, and the tenements of those who died or deserted could frequently be filled only by compulsion. Villains were refusing to perform their services _on account of poverty_, and they were already securing reductions in their rents and services. The temporary reduction of the population by the Black Death has been advanced as the reason for the ability of the villains of the decade 1350-1360 to enforce their demands; but without the help of any such cause, villains of an earlier period were obtaining concessions from their lords, and after the natural growth of the population had had ample time to replace those who had died of the pestilence, the villains were in a stronger position than ever before, if we are to estimate their strength by their success in lightening their economic burdens. The Black Death at the most did no more than accelerate changes in the tenure of land which were already under way. Villain services were being reduced, and the size of villain holdings increased. The strength of the position of the serfs lay not so much in the absence of competition due to a temporary reduction in their numbers as in their poverty. Tenants could not be held at the accustomed rents and services because it was impossible to make a living from their holdings. The absence of competition for holdings was no temporary thing, due to the high mortality of the years 1348-1350, but was chronic, and was based upon the worthlessness of the land. The vacant tenements of the fourteenth century, the reduction in the area of demesne land planted, the complaints that no profit could be made from tillage, the reduction of rents on account of the poverty of whole villages, all point in the same direction. These matters will be taken up more fully in a later chapter. Here it need only be pointed out that the withdrawal of land from cultivation was under way because tillage was unprofitable. If tillage was unprofitable in the fourteenth century, so unprofitable that heirs were anxious to buy themselves free of the obligation to enter upon their inheritance, while established landholders deserted their tenements, the enclosure of arable land for pasture in the fifteenth century is seen in a new light. When there was no question of desiring the land for sheep pasture, it was voluntarily abandoned by cultivators. Displacement of tillage due to an internal cause precedes displacement of tillage for sheep pasture. The process of withdrawing land from cultivation began independently of the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death and independently of any change in the price of wool; the continuation of this process in the fifteenth century is not likely to depend entirely upon a rise in the price of wool. That the enclosures of the fifteenth century were in reality merely a further step in the readjustments under way in the fourteenth century cannot be doubted. And that the whole process was independent of the especial external influence upon agriculture exerted in the fourteenth century by the Black Death and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the growth of the woollen industry is shown in the case of a group of manors where the essential features of the enclosure movement appeared in the thirteenth century. More than a hundred years before the Black Death the Lord of Berkeley found it impossible to obtain tenants for bond land at the accustomed rents. Villains were giving up their holdings because they could not pay the rent and perform the services. The land which had in earlier times been sufficient for the maintenance of a villain and his family and had produced a surplus for rent had lost its fertility, and the holdings fell vacant. The land which reverted to the lord on this account was split up and leased at nominal rents, when leaseholders could be found, just as so much land was leased at reduced rents by landowners generally in the fourteenth century. Moreover, some of the land was unfit for cultivation at all and was converted to pasture under the direction of the lord.[13] If the disintegration of manorial organization observed in the fourteenth century and earlier was not due to the Black Death; if this disintegration was under way before the pestilence reduced the population, and was not checked when the ravages of the plague had been made good; if tillage was already unprofitable before the fifteenth century with its growth of the woollen industry; and if land was being converted to pasture at a time when neither the price of wool nor the Black Death can be offered as the explanation of this conversion; then there is suggested the possibility that the whole enclosure movement can be sufficiently accounted for without especial reference to the prices of wool and grain. If the enclosure movement began before the fifteenth century and originated in causes other than the Black Death, the discovery of these original causes may also furnish the explanation of the continuance of the movement in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The amount of land under cultivation was being reduced before the date at which the price of wool is supposed to have risen sufficiently to displace agriculture for the sake of wool growing, and this early reduction in the arable cannot, clearly, be accounted for by reference to the prices of wool and grain. But it also happens that, in the very period when an increase in the demand for wool is usually alleged as the cause of the enclosures, the price of wool fell relatively to that of grain. The increase in sheep-farming in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, together with the fact that the domestic cloth manufacture was being improved at this time, has been the basis of the assumption that the price of wool was rising. The causal sequence has been supposed to be: (1) an increase in the manufacture of woollens; (2) an increase in the demand for wool; (3) an increase in the price of wool; (4) an increase in wool-growing at the expense of tillage, and the enclosure of common lands. If, as a matter of fact, the price of wool fell during this period, the causal sequence is reversed. If the price of wool fell, the increase in the manufacture of woollens has no relation to the enclosure movement, unless it is its result, and we are forced to look elsewhere for the cause of the increase of sheep-farming. The accompanying tables and chart, showing the changes in the price of wool and of wheat from the middle of the thirteenth century through the first quarter of the sixteenth century, have been prepared from the materials given by Thorold Rogers in his _History of Agriculture and Prices in England_.[14] The averages given in his tables are based upon records of actual sales. They furnish, therefore, the exact information needed in connection with the theory that a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of wheat was the cause of the enclosure movement in England. In the century and a half before 1400, there were wide fluctuations in the prices of both commodities, but the price of wool rose and fell with that of wheat. The first quarter of the fourteenth century was a period of falling prices. The fall continued in the case of wool until about the middle of the century, when a recovery began, culminating about 1380. A rise in the price of wheat occurred sooner than that of wool and reached its climax about 1375. In the last quarter of the century the prices of both wool and wheat fell, with a slight recovery in the last decade of the century. TABLE I PRICES OF WHEAT AND WOOL, 1261-1582. DECENNIAL AVERAGES Wheat, per Wool, per quarter tod (28 lbs.) s. d. s. d. 1261-1270 4 8-5/8 9 - 1271-1280 5 7-3/4 9 2 1281-1290 5 0-7/8 8 10 1291-1300 6 1-1/8 7 10 1301-1310 5 7-1/4 9 - 1311-1320 7 10-1/4 9 11 1321-1330 6 11-5/8 9 7 1331-1340 4 8-3/4 7 3 1341-1350 5 3-1/8 6 10 1351-1360 6 10-5/8 6 7 1361-1370 7 3-1/4 9 3 1371-1380 6 1-1/4 10 11 1381-1390 5 2 8 - 1391-1400 5 3 8 4 1401-1410 5 8-1/4 9 2-1/2 1411-1420 5 6-3/4 7 8-1/4 1421-1430 5 4-3/4 7 5-1/2 1431-1440 6 11 5 9 1441-1450 5 5-3/4 4 10-1/2 1451-1460 5 6-1/2 4 3-3/4 1461-1470 5 4-1/2 4 11-1/2 1471-1480 5 4-1/4 5 4 1481-1490 6 3-1/2 4 8-1/2 1491-1500 5 0-3/4 6 0-1/2 1501-1510 5 5-1/2 4 5-3/4 1511-1520 6 8-3/4 6 7-1/4 1521-1530 7 6 5 4-1/4 1531-1540 7 8-1/2 6 8-3/4 1541-1550 10 8 20 8 1551-1560 15 3-3/4 15 8 1561-1570 12 10-1/4 16 - 1571-1582 16 8 17 - TABLE II PRICES OF WHEAT AND WOOL. LONG PERIOD AVERAGES Wheat, per Wool, per Date quarter tod s. d. s. d. 1261-1400 5 11 8 7 1351-1400 6 1-3/4 8 7 1401-1460 5 9 6 2-1/2 1461-1500 5 6-1/2 5 3 1501-1540 6 10-1/4 5 9-1/2 [Illustration: Graph] After 1400 the price of wheat held at about the average price of the previous period, but for sixty years the price of wool fell, without a check in its downward movement. It is in this period that the woollen industry entered upon the period of expansion which is supposed to have been the cause of the enclosure movement, but there was no rise in the price of wool. Instead, there was a decided fall.[15] The average price for the decade 1451-1460 was just about one-half of the average price for the period 1261-1400. (The average price of wool in the last fifty years of the fourteenth century happens to be the same as the average for the period 1261-1400. Either the longer or the shorter period may be used indifferently as the basis for comparison). The average price for the period 1401-1460 was 25 per cent lower than the average for the preceding half-century. A comparatively slight depression in the price of wheat in the same period is shown in the tables. The average for 1401-1461 is only three per cent lower than that for 1265-1400 (seven per cent lower than the average for 1351-1400). Before 1460, then, there was nothing in market conditions to favor the extension of sheep farming, but there is reason to believe that the withdrawal of land from tillage had already begun. Leaving aside the enclosure and conversion of common-field land by the Berkeleys in the thirteenth century, we may yet note that "An early complaint of illegal enclosure occurs in 1414 where the inhabitants of Parleton and Ragenell in Notts petition against Richard Stanhope, who had inclosed the lands there by force of arms." Miss Leonard, who is authority for this statement, also refers to the statute of 1402 in which "depopulatores agrorum" are mentioned.[16] In a grant of Edward V the complaint is made that "this body falleth daily to decay by closures and emparking, by driving away of tenants and letting down of tenantries."[17] It is strange, if these enclosures are to be explained by increasing demand for wool, that this heightened demand was not already reflected in rising prices. But, it may be urged, the true enclosure movement did not begin until after 1460. If a marked rise in the price of wool occurred after 1460, it might be argued that enclosures spread and the price of wool rose together, and that the latter was the cause of the former. Turning again to the record of prices, we see that although the low level of the decade 1451-1460 marks the end of the period of falling prices, no rise took place for several decades after 1460. Rous gives a list of 54 places "which, within a circuit of thirteen miles about Warwick had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486."[18] Two or three years later acts were passed against depopulation in whose preambles the agrarian situation is described: The Isle of Wight "is late decayed of people, by reason that many townes and vilages been lete downe and the feldes dyked and made pastures for bestis and cattalles." In other parts of England there is "desolacion and pulling downe and wylfull wast of houses and towns ... and leying to pasture londes whiche custumably haue ben used in tylthe, wherby ydlenesse is growde and begynnyng of all myschevous dayly doth encrease. For where in some townes ii hundred persones were occupied and lived by their lawfull labours, now ben there occupied ii or iii herdemen, and the residue falle in ydlenes."[19] It may be remarked that while the price records show conclusively that no rise in the profits of wool-growing caused these enclosures, the language of the statutes shows also that scarcity of labor was not their cause, since one of the chief objections to the increase of pasture is the unemployment caused. It would seem hardly necessary to push the comparison of the prices of wool and wheat beyond 1490. In order to establish the contention that the enclosure movement was caused by an advance in the price of wool, it would be necessary to show that this advance took place before the date at which the enclosure problem had become so serious as to be the subject of legislation. By 1490 statesmen were already alarmed at the progress made by enclosure. The movement was well under way. Yet it has been shown that the price of wool had been falling for over a century, instead of rising, and that the price of wheat held its own. Even if it could be established that the price of wheat fell as compared with that of wool after this date, the usually accepted version of the enclosure movement would still be inadequate. But as a matter of fact the price of wheat rose steadily after 1490, reaching a higher average in each succeeding decade, while the price of wool wavered about an average which rose very slowly until 1535. The entries on which these wool averages are based are few, and greater uncertainty therefore attaches to their representativeness than in the case of the prices of earlier decades, but the evidence, such as it is, points to a more rapid rise in the price of wheat than in the price of wool. Between 1500 and 1540 the average price of wheat was nearly 24 per cent above that of the previous forty years, but the average price of wool rose only ten per cent. There are only nine entries of wool prices for the forty-six years after 1536, but these are enough to show that the price of wool, like that of wheat and all other commodities, was rising rapidly at this time. The lack of material upon which to base a comparison of the actual rate of increase of price for the two commodities makes further statistical analysis impossible, but a knowledge of prices after the date at which the material ceases would add nothing to the evidence on the subject under consideration. Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_ was written in 1516, with its well-known passage describing contemporary enclosures in terms similar to those used in the statutes of thirty years before, and complaining that the sheep that were wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so great devowerers and so wylde, that they eate up, and swallow downe the very men them selfes. They consume, destroye, and devoure whole fields, howses, and cities. For looke in what partes of the realme doth growe the fynest, and therfore dearest woll, there noblemen, and gentlemen: yea and certeyn Abbottes ... leave no grounde for tillage, thei inclose al into pastures: thei throw doune houses: they plucke downe townes, and leave nothing standynge, but only the churche to be made a shepe-howse.[20] These enclosures were not caused by an advance in the price of wool relatively to that of wheat, as the rise in the price of wool in the decade 1510-1520 was no greater than that of corn. Nor does sheep farming seem to have been especially profitable at this time, as More himself attributes the high price of wool in part to a "pestiferous morrein." Again, the complaint is also made that unemployment was caused, showing that scarcity of labor was not the reason for the conversion of arable to pasture: The husbandmen be thrust owte of their owne, ... whom no man wyl set a worke, though thei never so willyngly profre themselves therto. For one Shephearde or Heardman is ynoughe to eate up that grounde with cattel, to the occupiyng wherof aboute husbandrye manye handes were requisite.[21] In 1514 a new husbandry statute was passed, penalising the conversion of tillage to pasture, and requiring the restoration of the land to tillage. It was repeated and made perpetual in the following year. In 1517 a commission was ordered to enquire into the destruction of houses since 1488 and the conversion of arable to pasture. In 1518 a fresh commission was issued and the prosecution of offenders was begun. These facts are cited as a further reminder of the fact that the period for which the prices of wool and wheat are both known is the critical period in the enclosure movement. It is the enclosures covered by these acts and those referred to by Sir Thomas More which historians have explained by alleging that the price of wool was high. As a matter of record, the course of prices was such as to encourage the extension of tillage rather than of pasture. After an examination of these price statistics it hardly seems necessary to advance further objections to the accepted account of the enclosure movement, based as it is upon the assumption that price movements in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were exactly opposite to those which have been shown to take place. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Rogers' figures within the limits required for our purpose, and the evidence based on these figures is in itself conclusive. Even without this evidence, however, there is sufficient reason for rejecting the theory that changes in the prices of grain and wool account for the facts of the enclosure movement. For one thing, if the price of wool actually did rise (in spite of the statistical evidence to the contrary) and if this is actually the cause of the enclosure movement, the movement should have come to an end when sufficient time had elapsed for an adjustment of the wool supply to the increasing demand. If the movement did not come to an end within a reasonable period, there would be reason for suspecting the adequacy of the explanation advanced. As a matter of fact, it is usually thought that the enclosure movement did end about 1600. Much land which had not been affected by the changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (it is usually asserted) escaped enclosure altogether until the need for better agriculture in the eighteenth century ushered in the so-called second enclosure movement, which did not involve the conversion of tilled land to pasture. This alleged check in the progress of the enclosure movement is inferred from the fact that new land, and even some of the land formerly withdrawn from the common-fields to be converted to pasture, was being tilled. This is interpreted by economic historians as evidence that arable land was no longer being converted to pasture. We are told by Meredith, for instance, that "Moneyed men at the end of Elizabeth's reign were beginning to find it profitable to sink money in arable farming, a fact which points to the conclusion that there was no longer any differential advantage in sheep-raising."[22] Cunningham is also of the opinion that "So far as such a movement can be definitely dated, it may be said that enclosure for the sake of increasing sheep-farming almost entirely ceased with the reign of Elizabeth."[23] Innes gives as the cause of this supposed check in the reduction of arable land to pasture that "The expansion of pasturage appears to have reached the limit beyond which it would have ceased to be profitable."[24] It is indeed reasonable that the high prices which are supposed to have been the cause of the sudden increase in wool production should be gradually lowered as the supply increased, and that thus the inducement to the conversion of arable to pasture would in time disappear. The theory that the enclosure movement was due to an increase in the price of wool would be seriously weakened if the movement continued for a time longer than that required to bring about an adjustment of the supply to the increased demand. For the sake of consistency, then, this point in the account of the enclosure movement is necessary. It would follow naturally from the original explanation of the movement as the response to an increased demand for wool, as reflected in high prices. With the decrease in prices to be expected as the supply increased, the incentive for converting arable to pasture would be removed. Historians sometimes speak of other considerations which might have contributed to the cessation of the enclosure movement. Ashley, for instance, suggests that landowners found that to "devote their lands continuously to sheep-breeding did not turn out quite so profitable as was at first expected."[25] Others refer to the contemporary complaints of the bad effect of enclosure upon the quality of wool. The breed of sheep which could be kept in enclosed pastures was said to produce coarser wool than those grazing on the hilly pastures, and this deterioration in the quality of wool so cut down the profits from enclosures that men now preferred to plow them up again, and resume tillage. The extent to which the plowing up of pasture can be attributed to this cause must be very slight, however, as even contemporaries disagreed as to the existence of any deterioration in the quality of the wool. Some authorities even state that the quality was improved by the use of enclosed pasture: when Cornwall, through want of good manurance lay waste and open, the sheep had generally little bodies and coarse fleeces, so as their wool bare no better name than Cornish hair ... but since the grounds began to receive enclosure and dressing for tillage, the nature of the soil hath altered to a better grain and yieldeth nourishment in greater abundance to the beasts that pasture thereupon; so as, by this means ... Cornish sheep come but little behind the eastern flocks for bigness of mould, _fineness of wool, etc._[26] The plowing up of pasture land for tillage cannot, then, be explained by the effect of enclosure upon the quality of wool. It has been ordinarily taken as an indication that the price of grain was now rising more rapidly than that of wool, partly because a relaxation of the corn-laws permitted greater freedom of export, and partly because the home demand was increasing on account of the growth of the population. Graziers were as willing to convert pastures to corn-fields for the sake of greater profits as their predecessors had been to carry out the contrary process. The deciding factor in the situation, according to the orthodox account, was the relative price of wool and grain. When the price of wool rose more rapidly than that of grain, arable land was enclosed and used for grazing. When the price of grain rose more rapidly than that of wool, pastures were plowed up and cultivated. Up to this point, the account is consistent. If the price of wool was rising more rapidly than that of grain during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (in spite of the statistical evidence to the contrary) it is reasonable that the differential advantage in grazing should finally come to an end when a new balance between tillage and grazing was established. It is not even surprising that the conversion of arable to pasture should have continued beyond the proper point, and that a contrary movement should set in. Bacon, in 1592, remarked that men had of late been enticed by the good yield of corn and the increased freedom of export to "break up more ground and convert it to tillage than all the penal laws for that purpose made and enacted could ever by compulsion effect."[27] In 1650 Lord Monson plowed up 100 acres of Grafton Park, which had formerly been pasture, and there are many other records showing a tendency to convert pasture to arable in the seventeenth century.[28] It is true that men were able to make a profit from agriculture by the end of the sixteenth century. But there is one difficulty which has been overlooked: the withdrawal from agriculture of common-field land did _not_ cease. The protests against depopulating enclosure continue, and government reports and surveys show that enclosure for pasture was proceeding at as rapid a rate as in the sixteenth century. Miss Leonard's article on "Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century"[29] contains a mass of evidence which is conclusive. A few quotations will indicate its character: "In Leicestershire the enclosures of Cottesbach in 1602, of Enderby about 1605, of Thornby about 1616, were all accomplished by a lessening of the land under the plough. Moore, writing in 1656, says: 'Surely they may make men as soon believe there is no sun in the firmament as that usually depopulation and decay of tillage will not follow inclosure in our inland countyes.'" (p. 117). Letters from the Council were written in 1630 complaining of "'enclosures and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto depopulation.... There appeares many great inclosures ... all wch are or are lyke to turne to the conversion of much ground from errable to pasture and be very hurtfull to the commonwealth.... We well know wth all what ye consequence will be, and in conclusion all turne to depopulation!'" (p. 128). Forster, writing in 1664, says, "there hath been of late years divers whole lordships and towns enclosed and their earable land converted into pasture!" (p. 142). Frequently the same proprietor in the same year plowed up pasture land for corn and laid arable to pasture. Tawney cites a case in which ninety-five acres of ancient pasture were brought under cultivation while thirty-five acres of arable were laid to grass.[30] In 1630 the Countess of Westmoreland enclosed and converted arable, but tilled other land instead.[31] The enclosure movement, then, did not end at the time when it is usually thought to have ended. Since it is difficult to suppose that the price of wool could have been advancing constantly throughout two centuries, without causing such a readjustment in the use of land that no further withdrawal of land from tillage for pasture would be necessary, the continuance of the conversion of arable to pasture in the seventeenth century throws suspicion upon the whole explanation of the enclosure movement as due to the increased demand for wool. Miss Leonard, indeed, advances the hypothesis that the price of wool ceased to be the cause of enclosure during the seventeenth century, but that other price changes had the same effect: The increase in pasture in the sixteenth century was rendered profitable by the rapid increase in the price of wool, but, in the seventeenth century, this cause ceases to operate. The change to pasture, however, continued, partly owing to a great rise in the price of cattle, and partly because the increase in wages made it less profitable to employ the greater number of men necessary for tilling the fields.[32] The assumption that wages and the price of cattle advanced sufficiently in the seventeenth century to account for the change to pasture are no better justified than the assumption of the rapid rise in the price of wool in the sixteenth century. If the price of meat and dairy products rose in the seventeenth century, so did the price of grain and other foods. The relative rate of increase is the only point significant for the present discussion. No statistics are available to show whether the price of cattle rose more rapidly than that of grain, and the evidence afforded by the reduction of arable land to pasture is counterbalanced by the equally well-established fact that much pasture land was plowed and planted in this period. It is equally probable on the basis of this evidence that the prices of wheat and barley advanced more rapidly than those of meat and butter and cheese. The same difficulty is met in the suggestion that the increase in pasturage was due partly to higher wages for farm labor. The extension of tillage over much land formerly laid to pasture as well as that which had never been plowed at all is sufficient cause for doubting a prohibitive increase in wages. Moreover, in modern times, wages lag in general rise of prices. Unless conclusive evidence is presented to show that this was not the case in the seventeenth century, it must be assumed to be inherently probable that the increased wages of the time were more than offset by the rapidly advancing prices. During the seventeenth century, then, when it is admitted that the high price of wool was not the cause which induced landowners to convert arable to pasture, it cannot be shown that the high price of cattle or exorbitant wages will account for the withdrawal of land from cultivation. This is an important point, for historians frequently support their main contention with regard to the enclosure movement (_i. e._, that it was caused by an increase in the price of wool), by the statement that increasing wages made landlords abandon tillage for sheep-farming, with its smaller labor charges. It has been shown that the conversion of arable to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot be explained by the price of wool, but it may still be urged that agriculture was rendered unprofitable by high wages. Indeed, it is usually stated that the withdrawal of land from cultivation which took place in the fourteenth century was due to the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death. In the fifteenth century population was reduced by the Wars of the Roses; and throughout the period under consideration, agriculture had to meet the competition of the growing town industries for labor. Is it not possible that these influences caused an exorbitant rise in wages which would alone account for the substitution of sheep-farming for tillage? The obvious character of the enclosure movement makes it impossible to accept this hypothesis. The conversion of arable land to pasture was caused by no demand for higher wages, which made tillage unprofitable. The unemployment and pauperism caused by the enclosure of the open fields are notorious, and it is to these features of the enclosure movement that we owe the mass of literature on the subject. Enclosures called forth a storm of protest, because they took away the living of poor husbandry families. The acute distress undergone by those who were evicted from their holdings is sufficient indication of the difficulty of finding employment, and it is impossible that wages could remain at an exorbitant level when the enclosure of the lands of one open-field township made enough men homeless to supply any existing dearth of labor in all of the surrounding villages. If agriculture was unprofitable, it was not because laborers demanded excessive wages, but because of the low productivity of the land. The significance of contemporary complaints of high wages is missed if they are interpreted as an indication of an exorbitant increase in wages. The facts are, rather, that land was so unproductive that farmers could not afford to pay even a low wage. If it were necessary to argue the point further, it could be pointed out that wages even in industry were not subject to that steady rise which would have to be assumed, if high wages are to furnish the explanation of the substitution of pasture for tillage from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth. The statistical data on this subject are fragmentary, but Thorold Rogers' calculations for the period 1540-1582 are significant. In this period wages rose 60 per cent above the average of the previous century and a half; but the market prices of farm produce rose 170 per cent.[33] The rise in wages was far from keeping pace with the rise in selling prices, and the displacement of agriculture for grazing at this time must be due to some cause other than the greater number of laborers needed in agriculture. If, during certain periods within the four centuries under consideration wages advanced more rapidly than the prices of produce (statistical information on this subject is lacking) the continuous withdrawal of land from tillage during periods when wages fell remains to be explained by some cause other than high wages. Nor can high wages account for the conversion of tilled land to pasture simultaneously with the conversion of pasture land to tillage in the seventeenth century. If wages were exorbitantly high in the seventeenth century, and if this is the reason for the laying to pasture of so much arable, how could farmers afford to cultivate the large amount of fresh land which they were bringing under the plow? Is this accounted for not by any expectation of profit from this land but by the statutory requirement that no arable should be laid to pasture unless an equal amount of grass land were plowed in its stead? Pasture in excess of the legal requirements was plowed up, and persons who did not wish to convert any arable to pasture are found increasing their tilled land by bringing grass land under cultivation. The movement cannot be explained, therefore, merely on the basis of the husbandry statutes. Nor is the law itself to be dismissed without further examination, for in it we find the explicit statement that fresh land could be substituted for that then under cultivation, because common-field land was in many cases exhausted; it was therefore better to allow this to be laid to grass while better land was cultivated in its place.[34] Here then, is the simple explanation of the whole problem. The land which was converted from arable to pasture was worn out; but there was fresh land available for tillage, and some of this was brought under cultivation. No alternative explanation can be worked out on the basis of hypothetical wage or price movements. The historian is indeed at liberty to form his own theories as to the trend of prices in the seventeenth century, for he is unhampered by the existence of known records such as those for the sixteenth century; but it is impossible to construct any theory of prices which will explain why the conversion of arable land to pasture continued at a time when much pasture land was being plowed up. It is necessary to choose a theory of prices which will explain either the extension of tillage or the extension of pasture; both cannot be explained by the same prices. If, as some historians assume, the increase of population or some such factor was causing a comparatively rapid increase in the price of grain in this period, the continued conversion of arable to pasture requires explanation. If, as Miss Leonard supposes, the contrary assumption is true, and the products of arable land could be sold to less advantage than those of pasture, then the cause of the conversion of pasture to arable must be sought. It is not only in the seventeenth century that this double conversion movement took place. In the second half of the fourteenth century pastures were being plowed up. At Holway, 1376-1377, three plots of land which had been pasture were converted to arable.[35] In this period much land was withdrawn from cultivation. The explanation usually advanced by historians for the conversion of arable to pasture at this time is that the scarcity of labor since the Black Death (a quarter of a century before) made it impossible to cultivate the land as extensively as when wages were low, or when serf labor was available. If this is the whole case, it is difficult to account for the conversion to arable of land already pasture. Other factors than the supposed scarcity of labor were involved; land in good condition, such as the plots of pasture at Holway, repaid cultivation, but the yield was too low on land exhausted by centuries of cultivation to make tillage profitable. In the sixteenth century, also, the restoration of cultivation on land which had formerly been converted from arable to pasture was going on. Fitzherbert devotes several chapters of his treatise on surveying to a discussion of the methods of amending "ley grounde, the whiche hath ben errable lande of late," (ch. 27) and "bushy ground and mossy that hath ben errable lande of olde time" (ch. 28). This land should be plowed and sown, and it will produce much grain, "with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar tha it will beare plentye of corne, withoute donge", and then lay it down to grass again. Tusser also describes this use of land alternately as pasture and arable.[36] A farmer on one of the manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke, had an enclosed field in 1567, which afforded pasture for 900 sheep as well as an unspecified number of cattle, "_qui aliquando seminatur, aliquando iacet ad pasturam_."[37] The motives of this alternating use of the land would be clear enough, even though they were not explicitly stated by contemporaries; arable land which would produce only scant crops unless heavily manured made good pasture, and after a longer or shorter period under grass, was so improved by the manure of the sheep pasturing on it and by the heavy sod which formed that it could be tilled profitably, and was therefore restored to tillage. The fact of two opposite but simultaneous conversion movements is unaccountable under the accepted hypothesis of the causes of the enclosure movement, which turns upon assumptions as to the relative prices of grain and wool or cattle or wages. The authorities for this theory have necessarily neglected the evidence that pasture land was converted to arable in the sixteenth century and that arable land was converted to pasture in the seventeenth, and have separated in time two tendencies which were simultaneous. They have described the increase in pasturage at the expense of arable in the early period, and the increase of arable at the expense of pasture in the later period, and have explained a difference between the two periods which did not exist by a change in the ratio between the prices of wool and grain for which no proof is given. It has been shown in this chapter that the conversion of arable to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been caused by increased demand for wool, since the price of wool relatively to that of grain fell, and the extension of tillage rather than of pasture would have taken place had price movements been the chief factor influencing the conversion of land from one use to the other. It has also been shown that the conversion of arable to pasture did not cease at the beginning of the seventeenth century. If the principal cause of the enclosure movement had been the increasing demand for wool, this cause would have ceased to operate when time had elapsed for the shifting of enough land from tillage to pasture to increase the supply of wool. That the conversion of arable to pasture did not cease after a reasonable time had passed is an indication that its cause was not the demand for wool. When it is found that pasture was being converted to arable at the same time that other land was withdrawn from cultivation and laid to grass, the insufficiency of the accepted explanation of the enclosure movement is made even more apparent. A change in the price of wool could at best explain the conversion in one direction only. The theory that the cause of the enclosure movement was the high price of wool must be rejected, and a more critical study must be made of the readjustments in the use of land which became conspicuous in the fourteenth century, but which are overlooked in the orthodox account of the enclosure movement. Footnotes: [12] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death on the Estates of the See of Winchester_ (Oxford, 1916), p. 142. [13] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_ (Gloucester, 1883), vol. i, pp. 113-160. [14] (Oxford, 1866-1902), vols. i, iv. [15] Increase in manufacture of woollen cloth constituted no increase in the demand for wool in so far as exports of raw wool were reduced. [16] _Royal Historical Soc. Trans._, N. S. (1905), vol. ix, p. 101, note 2. [17] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 159. [18] Gay, _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ (1902-1903), vol. xvii, p. 587. [19] Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_ (London, 1913), vol. ii, pp. 235-237. [20] More, _Utopia_ (Everyman edition), p. 23. [21] _Ibid._, p. 24. [22] _Outlines of the Economic History of England_ (London, 1908), p. 118. [23] _Growth of Eng. Ind. and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), p. 180. [24] _England's Industrial Development_ (London, 1912), p. 247. [25] _English Economic History_ (New York, 1893), part ii, p. 262. [26] Carew, _Survey of Cornwall_ (London, 1814), p. 77. [27] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times_, 1903, part i, p. 101. [28] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_ (Oxford, 1916), p. 87. For other examples, _cf. infra_, pp. 84, 99-101. [29] Leonard, _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, 1905. Gonner in _Common Land and Inclosure_ covers much the same ground, but does not bring out as clearly the extent to which the seventeenth century enclosures were accompanied by conversion of tilled land to pasture. [30] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Cen._ (London, 1912), p. 391. [31] _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._ (1905), vol xix, note 1, p. 113. [32] _Ibid._, pp. 116-117. [33] Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. iv, p. 757. [34] _Cf. infra_, p. 98. [35] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death_, p. 129. [36] _Cf. infra_, p. 82. [37] Tawney, _op. cit._, p. 220, note 1. [38] _Infra_, p. 78, 81, 98-9. CHAPTER II THE FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS Up to this point attention has been given chiefly to the theory that the enclosure movement waxed and waned in response to supposed fluctuations in the relative prices of wool and grain, and it has been found that this theory is untenable. It is now necessary to consider more closely the true cause of the conversion of arable land to pasture--the declining productivity of the soil--and the cause of the restoration of this land to cultivation--the restoration of its fertility. The connection between soil fertility and the system of husbandry has been explained by Dr. Russell, of the Rothamsted Experiment Station: Virgin land covered with its native vegetation appears to alter very little and very slowly in composition. Plants spring up, assimilate the soil nitrates, phosphates, potassium salts, etc., and make considerable quantities of nitrogenous and other organic compounds: then they die and all this material is added to the soil. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria also add to the stores of nitrogen compounds. But, on the other hand, there are losses: some of the added substances are dissipated as gas by the decomposition bacteria, others are washed away in the drainage water. These losses are small in poor soils, but they become greater in rich soils, and they set a limit beyond which accumulation of material cannot go. Thus a virgin soil does not become indefinitely rich in nitrogenous and other organic compounds, but reaches an equilibrium level where the annual gains are offset by the annual losses so that no net change results. This equilibrium level depends on the composition of the soil, its position, the climate, etc, and it undergoes a change if any of these factors alter. But for practical purposes it may be regarded as fairly stationary. When, however, the virgin soil is broken up by the plough and brought into cultivation the native vegetation and the crop are alike removed, and therefore the sources of gain are considerably reduced. The losses, on the other hand, are much intensified. Rain water more readily penetrates, carrying dissolved substances with it: biochemical decompositions also proceed. In consequence the soil becomes poorer, and finally it is reduced to the same level as the rate of gain of nitrogenous matter. A new and lower equilibrium level is now reached about which the composition of the soil remains fairly constant; this is determined by the same factors as the first, _i. e._ the composition of the soil, climate, etc. Thus each soil may vary in composition and therefore in fertility between two limits: a higher limit if it is kept permanently covered with vegetation such as grass, and a lower limit if it is kept permanently under the plough. These limits are set by the nature of the soil and the climate, but the cultivator can attain any level he likes between them simply by changing his mode of husbandry. The lower equilibrium level is spoken of as the inherent fertility of the soil because it represents the part of the fertility due to the soil and its surroundings, whilst the level actually reached in any particular case is called its condition or "heart", the land being in "good heart "or "bad heart", according as the cultivator has pushed the actual level up or not; this part of the fertility is due to the cultivator's efforts. The difference between the higher and lower fertility level is not wholly a question of percentage of nitrogen, carbon, etc. At its highest level the soil possesses a good physical texture owing to the flocculation of the clay and the arrangement of the particles: it can readily be got into the fine tilth needed for a seed bed. But when it has run down the texture becomes very unsatisfactory. Much calcium carbonate is also lost during the process: and when this constituent falls too low, the soil becomes "sour" and unsuited for crops. The simplest system of husbandry is that of continuous wheat cultivation, practiced under modern conditions in new countries. When the virgin land is first broken up its fertility is high; so long as it remains under cultivation this level can no longer be maintained, but rapidly runs down. During this degradation process considerable quantities of plant food become available and a succession of crops can be raised without any substitution of manure ... After a time the unstable period is over and the new equilibrium level is reached at which the soil will stop if the old husbandry continues. In this final state the soil is often not fertile enough to allow of the profitable raising of crops; it is now starving for want of those very nutrients that were so prodigally dissipated in the first days of its cultivation, and the cultivator starves with it or moves on. Fortunately recovery is by no means impossible, though it may be prolonged. It is only necessary to leave the land covered with vegetation for a period of years when it will once again regain much of the nitrogenous organic matter it has lost.[39] Dr. Russell adds that soil-exhaustion is essentially a modern phenomenon, however, and gives the following reasons for supposing that the medieval system conserved the fertility of the soil. First, the cattle grazed over a wide area and the arable land all received some dung. Thus elements of fertility were transferred from the pasture land to the smaller area of tilled land. This process, he admits, involved the impoverishment of the pasture land, but only very slowly, and the fertility of the arable was in the meanwhile maintained. Secondly, the processes of liming and marling the soil were known, and by these means the necessary calcium carbonate was supplied. Thirdly, although there was insufficient replacement of the phosphates taken from the soil, the yield of wheat was so low that the amount of phosphoric acid removed was small, and the system was permanent for all practical purposes. One of the facts given in substantiation of this view is that the yield after enclosure increased considerably.[40] In discussing these points, it will be well to begin with the evidence as to exhaustion afforded by the increased yield under enclosure. The improvement in yield took place because of the long period of fallow obtained when the land was used as pasture; or, in the eighteenth century, with the increase in nitrogenous organic matter made possible when hay and turnips were introduced as field forage crops. That is, the increase in yield depended either upon that prolonged period of recuperation which will _restore fertility_, or upon an actual increase in the amount of manure used. Apparently, then, open-field land had become exhausted, since an increase in yield could be obtained by giving it a rest, without improving the methods of cultivation, etc., or by adding more manure. There was not, as Dr. Russell supposes, enough manure under the medieval system of husbandry to maintain the fertility of the soil. It is true that the husbandman understood the value of manure, and took care that the land should receive as much as possible, and that he knew also of the value of lime and marl. But, as Dr. Simkhovitch says: It is not within our province to go into agrotechnical details and describe what the medieval farmer knew, but seldom practiced for lack of time and poor means of communication, in the way of liming sour clay ground, etc. Plant production is determined by the one of the necessary elements that is available in the least quantity. It is a matter of record that the medieval farmer had not enough and could not have quite enough manure, to maintain the productivity of the soil.[41] The knowledge of the means of maintaining and increasing the productivity of the soil is one thing, but the ability to use this knowledge is another. The very origin and persistence of the cumbersome common-field system in so many parts of the world is sufficient testimony as to the impossibility of improving the quality of the soil in the Middle Ages. The only way in which these men could divide the land into portions of equal value was to divide it first into plots of different qualities and then to give a share in each of these plots to each member of the community. They never dreamed of being able to bring the poor plots up to a high level of productivity by the use of plentiful manuring, etc., but had to accept the differences in quality as they found them. The inconvenience and confusion of the common-field system were endured because, under the circumstances, it was the only possible system. Very few cattle were kept. No more were kept because there was no way of keeping them. In the fields wheat, rye, oats, barley and beans were raised, but no hay and no turnips. Field grasses and clover which could be introduced in the course of field crops were unknown. What hay they had came entirely from the permanent meadows, the low-lying land bordering the banks of streams. "Meadow grass," writes Dr. Simkhovitch, "could grow only in very definite places on low and moist land that followed as a rule the course of a stream. This gave the meadow a monopolistic value, which it lost after the introduction of grass and clover in the rotation of crops."[42] The number of cattle and sheep kept by the community was limited by the amount of forage available for winter feeding. Often no limitation upon the number pastured in summer in the common pastures was necessary other than that no man should exceed the number which he was able to keep during the winter. The meadow hay was supplemented by such poor fodder as straw and the loppings of trees, and the cattle were got through the winter with the smallest amount of forage which would keep them alive, but even with this economy it was impossible to keep a sufficient number. The amount of stall manure produced in the winter was of course small, on account of the scant feed, and even the more plentiful manure of the summer months was the property of the lord, so that the villain holdings received practically no dung. The villains were required to send their cattle and sheep at night to a fold which was moved at frequent intervals over the demesne land, and their own land received ordinarily no dressing of manure excepting the scant amount produced when the village flocks pastured on the fallow fields. The supply of manure, insufficient in any case to maintain the fertility of the arable land, was diminishing rather than increasing. As Dr. Russell suggested in the passage referred to above, the continuous use of pastures and meadows causes a deterioration in their quality. The quantity of fodder was decreasing for this reason, almost imperceptibly, but none the less seriously. Fewer cattle could be kept as the grass land deteriorated, and the small quantity of manure which was available for restoring the productivity of the open fields was gradually decreasing for this reason. Soil exhaustion went on during the Middle Ages not because the cultivators were careless or ignorant of the fact that manure is needed to maintain fertility, but because this means of improving the soil was not within their reach. They used what manure they had and marled the soil when they had the time and could afford it, but, as the centuries passed, the virgin richness of the soil was exhausted and crops diminished. The only crops which are a matter of statistical record are those raised on the demesne land of those manors managed for their owners by bailiffs who made reports of the number of acres sown and the size of the harvest. These crops were probably greater than those reaped from average land, as it is reasonable to suppose that the demesne land was superior to that held by villains in the first place, and as it received better care, having the benefit of the sheep fold and of such stall manure as could be collected. Even if it were possible to form an accurate estimate of the average yield of demesne land, then, we should have an over-estimate for the average yield of ordinary common-field land. No accurate estimate of the average yield even of demesne land can be made, however, on the basis of the few entries regarding the yield of land which have been printed. Variations in yield from season to season and from manor to manor in the same season are so great that nothing can be inferred as to the general average in any one season, nor as to the comparative productivity in different periods, from the materials at hand. For instance, at Downton, one of the Winchester manors, the average yield of wheat between 1346 and 1353 was 6.5 bushels per acre, but this average includes a yield of 3.5 bushels in 1347 and one of 14 bushels in 1352,[43] showing that no single year gives a fair indication of the average yield of the period. For the most part the data available apply to areas too small and to periods too brief to give more than the general impression that the yield of land was very low. In the thirteenth century Walter of Henley and the writer of the anonymous _Husbandry_ are authorities for the opinion that the average yield of wheat land should be about ten bushels per acre.[44] At Combe, Oxfordshire, about the middle of the century, the average yield during several seasons was only 5 bushels.[45] About 1300, the fifty acres of demesne planted with wheat at Forncett yielded about five-fold or 10 bushels an acre (five seasons).[46] Between 1330 and 1340, the average yield (500 acres for three seasons), at ten manors of the Merton College estates was also 10 bushels.[47] At Hawsted, where about 60 acres annually were sown with wheat, the average yield for three seasons at the end of the fourteenth century was a little more than 7-1/2 bushels an acre.[48] Statistical data so scattered as this cannot be used as the basis of an inquiry into the rate of soil exhaustion. Where the normal variation from place to place and from season to season is as great as it is in agriculture, the material from which averages are constructed must be unusually extensive. So far as I know, no material in this field entirely satisfactory for statistical purposes is accessible at the present time. There is, however, one manor, Witney, for which important data for as many as eighteen seasons between 1200 and 1400 have been printed. A second suggestive source of information is Gras's table of harvest statistics for the whole Winchester group of manors, covering three different seasons, separated from each other by intervals of about a century. The acreage reported for the Winchester manors is so extensive that the average yield of the group can be fairly taken to be the average for all of that part of England. Moreover, Witney seems to be representative of the Winchester group, if the fact that the yield at Witney is close to the group average in the years when this is known can be relied upon as an indication of its representativeness in the years when the group average is not known. The average yield for all the manors in 1208-1209 was 4-1/3 bushels per acre; for Witney alone, 3-2/3. In 1396-1397 the yield of the group and the yield at Witney are, respectively, 6 and 6-1/4 bushels per acre.[49] Table III shows the yield of wheat on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester in the years 1209, 1300 and 1397. If it could be shown that these were representative years, we should have a means of measuring the increase or decrease in productivity in these two centuries. Some indication of the representativeness of the years 1300 and 1397 is given by a comparison of prices for these years with the average prices of the period in which they lie. The price in 1300 was about 17 per cent below the average for the period 1291-1310,[50] an indication that the crop of nine bushels per acre reaped in 1299-1300 was above the normal. The price of wheat in 1397 was very slightly above the average for the period;[51] six bushels an acre or more, then, was probably a normal crop at the end of the fourteenth century. This conclusion is supported also by the fact that the yield in that year at Witney was approximately the same as the average of the eleven seasons between 1340 and 1354 noted in Table V. The price of wheat in the year 1209-1210 is not ascertainable. Walter of Henley's statement that the price of corn must be higher than the average to prevent loss when the return for seed sown was only three-fold[52] is an indication that the normal yield must have been at this time at least three-fold, or six bushels, so that the extremely low yield of the year 1208-1209 can hardly be considered typical. This examination of the yield in the three seasons shown in the table gives these results: at the beginning of the thirteenth century the average yield was probably about six bushels and certainly not more than ten; at the beginning of the fourteenth century the average was less than nine bushels--how much less, whether more or less than six bushels, is not known--at the end of the fourteenth century the yield was about six bushels. TABLE III YIELD OF WHEAT ON THE MANORS OF THE BISHIPRIC OF WINCHESTER[53] _Area sown_ _Produce_ _Ratio produce_ _Date_ _Acres_ _Bushels per acre_ _to seed_ 1208-1209 6838 4-1/3 2-1/3 1299-1300 3353 9[54] 4 1396-1397 2366-1/2 6 3 TABLE IV ACERAGE PLANTED WITH GRAINS ON THE MANOR OF THE BISHOPRIC OF WINCHESTER[55] _Wheat_ _Mancorn and Rye_ _Barley_ 1208-1209 5108 492 1500 1299-1300 2410 175 800 TABLE V YIELD OF WHEAT AT WITNEY[56] _Date_ _Bushels per acre_ _Acres sown_ 1209 3-2/3 417 1277 8-1/2 180 1278 ... 191 1283 8-1/2 ... 1284 10-1/2 ... 1285 7-1/4 ... 1300 (7-10) ... 1340 5-1/2 126 1341 7-1/2 138 1342 6 132 1344 ... 129 1346 5-1/2 127 1347 6-1/2 128 1348 6-3/4 138 1349 4-3/4 128 1350 5-1/4 ... 1351 6-1/2 ... 1352 8-1/2 ... 1353 5 ... 1397 6-1/4 51-1/2 The yield of the soil in single seasons at widely separated intervals is a piece of information of little value for our purpose. These tables reveal other facts of greater significance. The yield for the year gives almost no information about the normal yield over a series of years, but the area planted depends very largely upon that yield. The farmer knows that it will pay, on the average, to sow a certain number of acres, and the area under cultivation is not subject to violent fluctuations, as is the crop reaped. The area sown in any season is representative of the period; the crop reaped may or may not be representative. Land which, over a series of years, fails to produce enough to pay for cultivation is no longer planted. If the fertility of the soil is declining, this is shown by the gradual withdrawal from cultivation of the less productive land, as it is realized that it produces so little that it no longer pays to till it. Table IV shows that in fact this withdrawal of worn out land from cultivation was actually taking place. The area sown with wheat on the twenty-five manors for which the statistics for both periods are available was reduced by more than fifty per cent between the beginning and the end of the thirteenth century. A similar reduction in the area planted with all of the other crops, mancorn, rye, barley and oats, took place. A process of selection was going on which eliminated the less fertile land from cultivation. If six bushels an acre was necessary to pay the costs of tillage, land which returned less than six bushels could not be kept under the plow. The six bushel crop which seems to be normal in the fourteenth century is not the average yield of all of that land which had been under cultivation at an earlier time, but only of the better grades of land. Plots which had formerly yielded their five or six bushels an acre had become too barren to produce the bare minimum which made tillage profitable, and their produce no longer appeared in the average. Even with the elimination of the worst grades of land the average yield fell, because the better land, too, was becoming less fertile. At Witney (Table V) the area planted with wheat fell from about 180 acres in 1277 to less than 140 acres in 1340; but, in spite of this reduction in the amount of land cultivated, the average annual yield after 1340 was less than 6-1/2 bushels, while it had been about 8-1/2 bushels per acre in the period 1277-1285. This withdrawal of land from cultivation took place without the occurrence of any such calamity as the Black Death, which is ordinarily mentioned as the cause of the reduction of arable land to pasture in so far as this took place before 1400. It affords an indirect proof of the fact that much land was becoming barren. These statistical indications of declining productivity of the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry--poverty which can be explained only by the barrenness of their land. Many of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are familiar--the substitution of money payments for villain services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation and leasing of bond-holdings, the subdividing and leasing of the demesne. A point which has not been dwelt upon is the favorable pecuniary terms upon which the villains commuted their services. Where customary relations were replaced by a new bargain, the bargain was always in favor of the tenant. What was the source of this strategic advantage of the villain? The great number of holdings made vacant by the Black Death and the scarcity of eligible holders placed the landowner at a disadvantage, but this situation was temporary. How can the difficulty of filling vacant tenements before the Black Death be accounted for, and why were villains still able to secure reductions in their rents a generation after its effects had ceased to be felt? Even before the Black Death, it was frequently the case that villain holdings could be filled only by compulsion. The difficulty in finding tenants did not originate in the decrease in the population caused by the pestilence. There is little evidence that there was a lack of men qualified to hold land even after the Black Death, but it is certain that they sought in every way possible to avoid land-holding. The villains who were eligible in many cases fled, so that it became exceedingly difficult to fill a tenement when once it became vacant. Land whose holders died of the pestilence was still without tenants twenty-five and thirty years later, although persistent attempts had been made to force men to take it up. When compulsion succeeded only in driving men away from the manor, numerous concessions were made in the attempt to make land-holding more attractive. It is important to notice that these concessions were economic, not social. The force which was driving men away was not the desire to escape the incidents of serfdom, but the impossibility of making a living from holdings burdened with heavy rents. These burdens were eased, grudgingly, little by little, by landlords who had exhausted other methods of keeping their land from being deserted. It was necessary to reduce the rent in some way in order to permit the villains to live. The produce of a customary holding was no longer sufficient to maintain life and to allow the holder to render the services and pay the rent which had been fixed in an earlier century when the soil was more fertile. Notices of vacated holdings date from before 1220 on the estates of the Berkeleys. Thomas the First was lord of Berkeley between 1220 and 1243, and Such were the tymes for the most part whilest this Lord Thomas sate Lord, That many of his Tenants in divers of his manors ... surrendred up and least their lands into his hands because they were not able to pay the rent and doe the services, which also often happened in the tyme of his elder brother the Lord Robert.[57] This entry in the chronicle is significant, for it is typical of conditions on many other manors at a later date. The tenants were not able to pay the rent and do the services, and therefore gave up the land. It was leased, when men could be found to take it at all, at a rent lower than that which its former holders had found so oppressive. It is interesting to note that much of this land was soon after enclosed and converted to pasture, more than a century before the event which is supposed to mark the beginning of the enclosure movement. The productivity of the land had declined; its holders were no longer able to pay the customary rent, and the lord had to content himself with lower rents; the productivity was so low in some cases that the land was fit only for sheep pasture. Land holding was regarded as a misfortune in the fourteenth century. The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note of the prevailing custom of fining these heirs for the privilege of refusing the land: In 1340 J. F., who held a messuage and half a virgate, had to pay two shillings for permission to give up the land, because he was unable to render the services due from it. Three other men at the same time paid six pence each not to be compelled to take up customary land ... at Woolston, 1340, R. G. gave up his messuage and half virgate because he could not render the necessary services; whereupon T. S. had to pay three shillings three pence that he might not be forced to take the holding, and another villain paid six shillings eight pence for the same thing.[58] Miss Levett mentions the fact that cases were fairly frequent at the Winchester manors in the fourteenth century where a widow or next of kin refused to take up land on account of poverty or impotence;[59] and three villains of Forncett gave up their holdings before 1350 on account of their poverty.[60] In case no one could be found who would willingly take up the land, the method of compulsion was tried. The responsibility for providing a tenant in these cases seems to have been shifted to the whole community. A villain chosen by the whole homage had to take up the land. At Crawley in 1315 there were two such cases. A fine was paid by one villain for a cottage and ten acres "_que devenerunt in manus domini tanquam escheata pro defectu tenentium & ad que eligebatur per totam decenuam_." At Twyford in 13433-1344, J. paid a fine for a messuage and a half virgate of land, "_ad que idem Johannes electus est per totum homagium_."[61] In other entries cited by Page, the element of compulsion is unmistakable: the new holder of land is described as "_electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus_," a phrase which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[62] This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in 1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left the manor rather than obey. "_Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et recesserunt nocitante._"[63] At Nailesbourne, in the same year, "_Robertus le Semenour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere recusavit_."[64] The problem which confronted landowners during the Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant. At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 _d._ in place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement which had been made before the Black Death,[65] and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "_tradita toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines_."[66] In spite of the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled, the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away secretly' and to be no more found."[67] Page describes a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf "_recessit a dominio et dereliquit terram suam_." At Chilton, between 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by night.[68] At Forncett, "Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tenements had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs especially who were relinquishing their land; for a larger proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements."[69] This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity of the land. The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they had. They were excused of a part of their services in some cases, and in others all of the services were definitely commuted for small sums of money. When no tenants for vacant land could be secured who would perform the customary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to commute them. "'So and so holds such land for rent, because no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is that the money rent paid in these cases was always less than the value of the services which had formerly been exacted from the land; not only that, it was less than the money equivalent for which those services had sometimes been commuted, an amount far less than the market value of the services in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the traditional services, "_quia nullus tenere voluit_," he contracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than twenty-five shillings and included the church scot for one virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total services of _one_ virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty shillings. At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.[70] At Forncett and on the manors of the Berkeley estates commutation had little part in the disappearance of labor dues. The vacated land was leased in larger or smaller parcels at the best rents which could be obtained. This rent bore no relation to the value of the services formerly due from the land. The customary tenements which had been the units upon which labor dues were assessed were broken up, and the acres leased separately, or in new combinations, to other men.[71] At Forncett, as in the case of the Winchester manors where the services were commuted, the terms of the new arrangement can be compared with those of the old, and it is seen that the money rent obtained was less than the value of the services formerly due. The customary services were here valued at over two shillings per acre; the average rent obtained was less than one shilling an acre. The net pecuniary result of the change, then, was the same as though the services had been commuted for money at less than their value. Another method of reducing rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[72] She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money instead. The amount of work needed each year on the demesne varied according to the size of the harvest, etc., but the number of days' works for which the tenants was liable was fixed. The surplus of works owed above those needed were "sold" each year to the villains. Frequently the number of works sold exceeded the number performed, although formal commutation of dues had not taken place. At Nailesbourne (1348-1349), 4755 works were due from the villains, but nearly 4000 of these were sold.[73] If the Bishop had merely wished to avoid waste, then, in ceasing to require the performance of villain services on his manors, he would have required the payment of the money equivalent of these services. When the services were excused, and the customary alternative of a money payment also, the change was clearly an intentional reduction in the burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and the burden of the tenant was less. The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the foregoing illustrations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is speaking of the various circumstances attending the introduction of money payments. In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so far the initiative in selling services came from the class of landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me, with the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds primarily towards an improvement of their social condition; the redemption of irksome services was a conspicuous manifestation of this policy.[74] This paragraph contains several suggestions which are shown to be misleading by a study of the extracts from the original sources embodied in the essay of whose preface it forms a part. It is true that the cultural policy of William of Wykeham was an extravagant one, and that he was in need of money when the system of tenure was being revolutionized on his estates; but it is misleading to interpret the changes which took place as measures for the prompt conversion into cash of the episcopal revenues. No radical changes in the system of payment were necessary in order to secure cash, for the system of selling surplus services to the villains had become established decades before the time of this bishop, and no formal commutation of services was necessary in order to convert the labor dues of the villains into payments in money. The bulk of the services were not performed, even before commutation, and the lord received money for the services not used on the demesne. The essential feature of the changes which took place was a reduction in the amount paid--a reduction which the bishop must have resisted so far as he dared, just as other landowners must have resisted the reductions which their tenants forced them to make at a time when they were in need of money. The commutation of services was incidental, and was only a slight modification of the system formerly in use, but, whether services were commuted or were in part excused, the result was a lessening of the burden borne by the tenant, and the reduction of the rent received by the lord. It is true, as Professor Vinogradoff states, that there were powerful tendencies in the life of the peasants which made for this result. In fact no initiative in selling services--at these rates--could have come from the side of the landowners. The change was forced upon them. Unless they compromised with their tenants and reduced their rents they soon found vacant tenements on their hands which no one could be compelled to take. The amount of land which was finally leased at low rents because the former holders had died or run away and no one could be forced to take it at the old rents is evidence of the reluctance with which landowners accepted the situation and of their inability to resist the change in the end. But it is not true that the most comprehensive of these tendencies was the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains, and their desire to improve their social condition. The immediate affect of the commutation of services and similar changes at this time was to leave their social condition untouched, whatever the final result may have been. These villains did not buy themselves free of the marks of servitude. Their gradual emancipation came for other reasons. At Witney, for example, where the works of all the native tenants had been commuted by 1376, they were still required to perform duties of a servile character: they were all to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont to do.[75] This example, taken at random, is typical of the continuance of conditions which should make the historian hesitate before adopting the view that the social condition of the peasants was improved by the new arrangements made as to the bulk of their services and rents. But more than that, the terms of the new arrangements are not those which would be offered by well-to-do cultivators in whose hands the profits from the soil had accumulated. In all of these cases the new terms were advantageous to the tenants, not to the lord, and advantageous in a strictly pecuniary way. The lord had to grant these terms because the tenants were in the most miserable poverty, and could no longer pay their accustomed rent. Neither the Black Death, whose effects were evanescent, nor the desire of prosperous villains to free themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom was an important cause in the sequence of agrarian changes which took place in the fourteenth century. Serfdom as a status was hardly affected, but a thousand entries record the poverty and destitution which made it necessary to lighten the economic burdens of the serfs. At Brightwell, for example, the works of three half-virgaters were relaxed, the record reads, because of their poverty (1349-1350).[76] Some villains had no oxen, and were excused their plowing on this account, or were allowed to substitute manual labor for carting services.[77] At Weston, in 1370, a tenant "_non arat terram domini causa paupertate_."[78] At Downton, in 13766-1377, no money could be collected from the villains in place of the services they owed in haymaking.[79] Frequently when services were commuted for money, the record of the fact is accompanied by the statement that the change was made on account of the poverty of the tenants. At Witney, for instance, the works and services of all the native tenants were commuted at fixed payments (_ad certos denarios_) by favour of the lord as long as the lord pleases, on account of the poverty of the homage.[80] The reduction in rent in this case was at least a third of the total. The value of the customary services commuted was at least ten shillings six pence per acre, and they were commuted at six shillings eight pence. Other explicit references to the poverty of the tenants as the cause of commutation are quoted by Page: At Hinton, Berks, the Bailiff reports in 1377, that the former lord before his death had commuted the services of the villains for money, "eo quod customarii impotentes ad facienda dicta opera et pro eorum paupertate" ... At Stevenage, 1354, S. G. "tenuit unam vergatam reddendo inde per annum in serviciis et consuetudinibus xxii solidos. Et dictus S. G. pauper et impotens dictam virgatam tenere. Ideo concessum est per dominum quod S. G. habeat et teneat predictam terram reddendo inde xiii solidos iv denarios pro omnibus serviciis et consuetudinibus."[81] In connection with the matter of heriots, also, evidences of extreme poverty are frequent. Frequently when a tenant died there was no beast for the lord to seize. The heriot of a virgate was generally an ox, or money payment of its value. But the amount as often reduced "propter paupertatem," and sometimes when a succeeding tenant could not pay, a half acre was deducted from the virgate and held by the lord instead of the heriot.[82] The rate at which the value of these holdings declined when their tenants possessed too few cattle was rapid. Land without stock is worthless. The temptation to sell an ox in order to meet the rent was great, but when the deficiency was due to declining productivity of the soil, there was no probability that it would be made up the following year even with all the stock, and with fewer cattle the situation was hopeless. After this process had gone on for a few years nothing was left, not even a yoke of oxen for plowing. Whatever means had been taken to keep up the fertility of the land, attend to the drainage, _etc._, were of necessity neglected, and finally the hope of keeping up the struggle was abandoned. The spirit which prompted the reply of the Chatteris tenant when he was ordered by the manorial court to put his holding in repair can be understood: "_Non reparavit tenementum, et dicit quod non vult reparare sed potius dimittere et abire._"[83] If he left the manor and joined the other men who under the same circumstances were giving up their land and becoming fugitives, it was not with the hope of greatly improving his condition. Some of the fugitives found employment in the towns, but this was by no means certain, and the records frequently state that the absent villains had become beggars.[84] The declining productivity of the soil not only affected the villains, but reduced the profits of demesne cultivation. It has already been seen that the acreage under crop was steadily decreasing, as more and more land reached a stage of barrenness in which it no longer repaid cultivation. This process is seen from another angle in the frequent complaints that the customary meals supplied by the lord to serfs working on the demesne cost more than the labor was worth. According to Miss Levett: This complaint was made on many manors belonging to the Bishop of Winchester in spite of the fact that if one may judge from the cost of the "Autumn Works" the meals were not very lavish, the average cost being 1 _d._ or 1-1/4 _d._ per head for each _Precaria_.... The complaint that the system was working at a loss comes also from Brightwaltham (Berkshire), Hutton (Essex), and from Banstead (Surrey), as early as 1325, and is reflected in contemporary literature. "The work is not worth the breakfast" (or the _reprisa_) occurs several times in the Winchester Pipe Rolls.... By 1376 the entry is considerably more frequent, and applies to ploughing as well as to harvest-work.[85] At Meon 64 acres of ploughing were excused _quia non fecerunt huiusmodi arrura causa reprisae_. A similar note occurs at Hambledon (_Ecclesia_) and at Fareham with the further information that the ploughing was there performed _ad cibum domini_. At Overton four virgates were excused their ploughing _quia reprisa excedit valorem_.[86] Miss Levett quotes these entries as an explanation for the tendency to excuse services, forgetting that the lord could usually demand a money equivalent for services not required for any reason. We have here the reason why so few services are demanded, but no explanation of the failure to require money instead. The fundamental cause of the worthlessness of the labor on the demesne is the fact which accounts for the absence of a money payment for the work not performed. The demesne land was worn out, and did not repay costs of cultivation; the bond land was worn out, and the villains were too poor to "buy" their labor. The profits of cultivating this unproductive land were so small that a deficit arose when it was necessary to meet the cost of maintaining for a few days the men employed on it. It is not surprising that men who had families to support and were trying to make a living from the soil abandoned their worthless holdings and left the manor. The lord had only to meet the expense of food for the laborers during the few days when they were actually at work plowing the demesne or harvesting the crop. How could the villain support his whole family during the entire year on the produce of worse land more scantily manured? In this low productivity of the land is to be found the reason for the conversion of much of the demesne into pasture land, as soon as the supply of servile labor failed. It was, of course, impossible to pay the wages of free men from the produce of soil too exhausted to repay even the slight cost incidental to cultivating it with serf labor. The bailiffs complained of the exorbitant wages demanded by servants in husbandry; these wages were exorbitant only because the produce of the land was so small that it was not worth the pains of tillage. The most important of the many causes which were at work to undermine the manorial system in the fourteenth century is, therefore, plain. The productivity of the soil had declined to a point where villain holdings would no longer support the families which cultivated them and where demesne land was sometimes not worth cultivation even by serf labor. Under these conditions, the very basis of the manor was destroyed. The poverty of the peasants, the difficulty with which tenants could be found for vacant holdings, even though the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon eligible villains, and even though the servile burdens were considerably reduced, and the frequency with which these serfs preferred the uncertainty and risk of deserting to the certain destitution and misery of land-holding, are facts which are intimately connected, and which are all due to the same cause. It had been impossible to maintain the productive capacity of the land at a level high enough to provide a living for the tillers of the soil. Footnotes: [39] E. J. Russell, _The Fertility of the Soil_, Cambridge, 1913, pp. 43-46. [40] _Ibid._, pp. 48-52. [41] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, p. 394. [42] _Ibid._, p. 393. [43] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death_, p. 216. [44] _Walter of Henley's Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, etc._, ed. by Elizabeth Lamond (London, 1890), pp. 19, 71. [45] Curtler, _Short History of English Agriculture_, p. 33. [46] Davenport, _Econ. Dev. of a Norfolk Manor_ (Cambridge, 1906), p. 30. [47] Rogers, _History of Agriculture, etc._, vol. i, pp. 38-44. [48] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 215-218. [49] Unfortunately, the figures for the year 1299-1300 reveal an error which makes it impossible to use the test of the representativeness of Witney in a third season with accuracy. The acreage planted is obviously understated, and it is possible to make only a rough estimate of the correct acreage. The acceptance of the area given by Gras (82 acres) results in the conclusion that 22 bushels per acre was reaped. The suspicion that this result must be incorrect is confirmed when it is found, also, that 68-1/4 quarters of seed were sown--an amount sufficient for 270 acres at the average rate of 2 bushels per acre, or for 220 acres at the rate of 2-1/2 bushels per acre, which Ballard gives as the rate usual at Witney. (Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 192.) In 1277 the acreage sown with wheat at Witney was 180 acres, and in 1278, 191. (_Ibid._, p. 190.) If 3 bushels per acre were sown in 1299, the area in this year also was 180 acres. If these estimates are used instead of the figure 82, as indicating the correct acreage, the yield for the year is found to be between 7 and 10 bushels per acre, in a season in which the average yield for the whole group of manors was 9 bushels per acre. The figures at Witney in the three seasons where a comparison with the general average for the group is possible deviate from it within limits narrow enough to indicate that conditions at Witney were roughly typical. [50] Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. i, p. 228. [51] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 234; vol. iv, p. 282. [52] _Op. cit._, p. 19. [53] Gras, _Evol. of the Eng. Corn Market_ (Cambridge, 1915), appendix A. [54] Gras gives 1.35 quarters as the acre produce, or nearly 11 bushels. This figure is incorrect, as it is derived by dividing the total produce of 42 manors by the total acreage planted on only 38 manors. The produce of the four manors on which the acreage planted is unknown amounts to nearly 750 quarters, a large item in a total of only 4527 quarters for the whole group of manors. The ratio of produce to seed, however, is independent of the number of acres planted, and these four manors are included in the computation of this figure. [55] Gras, _op. cit._, appendix A. These figures are given only for the manors for which the acreage planted in both periods is known--25 in the case of wheat, 4 in the case of the other grains. [56] Gras, _op. cit._, appendix A; Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 190, 203. [57] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, vol. i, p. 113. [58] Page, _End of Villainage_ (Publications of the American Economic Association, Third Series, 1900, vol. i, pp. 289-387), at p. 324, note 2. [59] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 83. [60] Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 71. [61] Page, _op. cit._, p. 345. [62] _Ibid._, p. 340, note 1, and Levett, p. 85. [63] _Ibid._, p. 340, note 1. [64] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 85. [65] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 85. [66] Page, _op. cit._, p. 340. [67] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 135. [68] Page, _op. cit._, p. 344, note 2. [69] Davenport, _Decay of Villainage_, p. 127. For further evidence of the voluntary relinquishment of land in this period, see Seebohm, _Eng. Village Community_ (London, 1890), p. 30, note 4, and Davenport, _Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor_, pp. 91, 71, 72. [70] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 42-43. [71] Davenport, _Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor_, p. 78, and Smyth, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 113. [72] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 157. "On many manors the majority of the services owed were simply dropped, neither sold nor commuted. They were evidently in many cases inefficient, expensive, and inelastic." [73] _Ibid._, p. 89. [74] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. v. [75] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 199. [76] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 108. [77] _Ibid._, pp. 38, 115. [78] Page, _op. cit._, p. 342, note 2. [79] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 115. [80] _Ibid._, p. 200. [81] Page, _op. cit._, p. 342, note 2. [82] Seebohm, _op. cit._, p. 30, note 2. [83] Page, _End of Villainage_, p. 365. [84] _Ibid._, p. 384. [85] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 157. [86] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 121. CHAPTER III THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN-FIELDS For the reasons given in the last chapter, bailiff-farming rapidly gave way to the various forms of the leasehold system in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The economic basis of serfdom was destroyed; a servile tenement could no longer be depended upon to supply an able-bodied man to do work on the demesne for several days a week throughout the year, with extra helpers from his family at harvest time. The money received in commutation of customary labor, or as rent from land which had formerly been held for services was far less than the value of the services, and would not pay the wages of free men hired in place of the serfs who had formerly performed the labor. Moreover, the demesne land itself was for the most part so unproductive that it had hardly paid to cultivate it even at the slight expense incurred in furnishing food for the serfs employed; it was all the more a waste of money to hire men to plow it and sow it. The text books on economic history usually give a careful account of the various forms of leases which were used as bailiff-farming was abandoned. We are told how the demesne was leased either as a whole or in larger or smaller pieces to different tenants and sets of tenants, for lives, for longer or shorter periods of years, with or without the stock which was on it, and, in some cases, with the servile labor of some of the villains, when this had not all been excused or commuted into money payments. Arrangements necessarily differed on the different manors, and the exact terms of these first experimental leases do not concern us here. The fact which does interest us is that with the cessation of bailiff farming the last attempt at keeping the land distributed in fairly equal shares among a large number of tenants was abandoned. Bond land had been divided into portions which were each supposed to be sufficient for the maintenance of a laborer and his family. As long as the demesne was cultivated for the lord, it was to his interest to prevent the concentration of holdings in a few hands, unless some certain provision could be made to insure the performance of the labor due from all of them. But even when the demesne was still being managed for the lord, it had already become necessary in some cases to allow one man to hold two or more of these portions, for the productivity had so declined that one was no longer enough. Now, with the leasing of the demesne, the lord no longer had an interest in maintaining the working population of the manor at a certain level, but was concerned with the problem of getting as much rent as possible. When the demesne and the vacant bond tenements began to be leased, the land was given to the highest bidder, and the competitive system was introduced at the start. This led to the gradual accumulation of large holdings by some tenants, while other men were still working very small portions, and others occupied holdings of every intermediate size. The uniformity of size characteristic of the early virgates disappeared. In this chapter these points will be considered briefly, and a study will also be made of the way in which these new holders managed their lands. In the first place, as the more destitute villains were giving up their holdings and leaving the manor, and as no one could be found to take their places on the old terms, the landlords gave up the policy of holding the land until someone should be willing to pay the accustomed services and let the vacant lands at the best rents obtainable. Freeholders, and villains whose land was but lightly burdened, and those who by superior management had been able to make both ends meet, were now able to increase their holdings by adding a few acres of land which had been a part of the demesne or of a vacated holding. The case of the man at Sutton, who took up three virgates and a cotland, has already been mentioned. Another case of "engrossing," as it was called, dated from 1347-1348 at Meon, where John Blackman paid fines for one messuage with ten acres of land, two other messuages with a virgate of land each, one parcel of four acres, and another holding whose nature is not specified.[87] Legislators who observed this tendency issued edicts against it. No attempt was made to discover the underlying cause of which it was merely a symptom. The first agrarian statutes were of a characteristically restrictive nature, and no constructive policy was attempted by the government until after a century of futile attempts to deal with the separate evils of engrossing, enclosure, conversion to pasture, destruction of houses and rural depopulation. The first remedy these evils suggested was limitation of the amount of land which one man should be allowed to hold.[88] In 1489 the statutes begin to prohibit the occupation of more than one farm by the same man, or to regulate the use of the land so occupied. The statute of 1489 refers to the Isle of Wight, where "Many dwelling places, fermes, and fermeholdes have of late tyme ben used to be taken in to oon manys hold and handes, that of old tyme were wont to be in severall persons holdes and handes."[89] The proclamation of 1514 regulated the use of land held by all persons who were tenants of more than _one_ farm.[90] A law of 1533 provides that no person should occupy more than _two_ farms.[91] The old villain holdings did not necessarily pass intact into the hands of one holder, but were sometimes divided up and taken by different men, a few acres at a time. One Richard Grene in 1582 held lands of which ten and a half acres had been gradually acquired through as many as ten grants. This land had formed part of six other holdings, and much of the rest of the land belonging to these holdings had also been alienated.[92] The Inquisition of 1517 reported numerous cases of engrossing, and Professor Gay notes some of the entries in the returns of the Inquisition of 1607 which are also interesting in this connection: W. S. separated six yardlands from a manor house and put a widow in the house, a laborer in the kitchen and a weaver in the barn. The land was divided between two tenants who already had houses, and presumably, other land, and were taking this opportunity to enlarge their holdings of land. G. K. took from a farmhouse the land which formed part of the same tenement and leased the house to a laborer who had "but one acre of land in every field."[93] The growing irregularity of holdings, combined with the decrease in the number of holders whose interests had to be consulted, made it easier than it had formerly been to modify the traditional routine of husbandry. Even though the new land acquired by tenants from the demesne or from old bond-holdings did not happen to be adjacent to strips already in their possession, exchange could accomplish the desired result. At Gorleston, Suffolk, a tenant sublet about half of his holding to eight persons, and at the same time acquired plots of land for himself from another eight holdings.[94] Before 1350 exchanges, sales and subletting of land by tenants had become general on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester. It is unusual to find more than two cases of exchanges in any one year, even on a large manor; but Miss Levett adds: "On the other hand, one can hardly look through the fines on any one of the episcopal manors for a period of ten years without finding one or two. From the close correspondence of the areas exchanged, together with exact details as to position, it is fairly clear that the object of the exchange was to obtain more compact holdings."[95] Fitzherbert writes that "By the assente of the Lordes and tenauntes, euery neyghbour may exchange lands with other."[96] This practice was especially sanctioned by law in 1597 "for the more comodious occupyinge or husbandrie of anye Land, Meadows, or Pastures,"[97] but it was common in the open-field villages before the legal permission was given. Tawney reproduces several maps belonging to All Souls' Muniment Room, which show the ownership of certain open-field holdings of about 1590. Here consolidation of plots had proceeded noticeably. There are several plots of considerable size held by a single tenant. The advantage of consolidated holdings are considerable. In the first place, the turf boundaries between the strips could be plowed up, or the direction of the plowing itself could be changed, if enough strips were thrown together. Fitzherbert advises the farmer who has a number of strips lying side by side and who hath no dung nor shepe to compost nor dung his land withall. Then let the husband take his ploughe, and cast al such landes three or four tymes togider, and make theyr rigge theyr as ye raine was before.... And so shel he finde new moulde, that was not sene in an hundred yeres before, the which must nedes gyue more corne than the other dydde before.[98] In two Elizabethan surveys examined by Corbett, we have evidence that the theoretical advantages urged by Fitzherbert were not unknown in practice. It is now and then stated that the _metae_ between strips have been plowed up. But sometimes, even though all of the strips in a furlong had been acquired by the same owner, and enclosed, the land was left in strips. Some of the pieces were freehold, others copyhold, and the lord may have objected to having the boundaries obliterated.[99] Cross plowing is also occasionally referred to in these surveys, but it was apparently rare.[99] The possibility of improvement in this direction, although not to be ignored, was, however, comparatively slight. The important changes which resulted from the increased size of the holdings were not so much in the direction of superior management of the land, as in that of making a selection between the different qualities of land, and cultivating only the land in comparatively good condition. Tenants taking up additional land cultivated only a part of their enlarged holdings. The least productive strips were allowed to become overgrown with grass. The better strips were kept under crop. If we are to accept the testimony of Fitzherbert and Tusser, strips of grass in the common fields, or lea land, as it was called, were a feature of every open-field township, by the sixteenth century. According to Fitzherbert, "in euery towneshyppe that standeth in tillage in the playne countrye, there be ... leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses and mares vpon."[100] According to Tusser, the process of laying to grass unproductive land was still going on. Land arable driuen or worne to the proofe, and craveth some rest for thy profits behoof, With otes ye may sowe it the sooner to grasse more sooner to pasture to bring it to passe.[101] The later surveys give additional evidence of the extent to which the new tenantry had restricted the area of cultivation in the old fields which had once been entirely arable land. The most noteworthy feature of the survey of East Brandon, Durham (1606), was, according to Gray, the appearance in certain fields of meadow along-side the arable. Lowe field was almost transformed by such procedure, for seldom did the tenants retain any arable there. Instead they had large parcels of meadow, sometimes as many as twenty acres; nor does anything indicate that these parcels were enclosed. They seem, rather to have remained open and to point to a gradual abandonment of arable tillage. Such an abandonment is more clearly indicated by another survey of this series, that of Eggleston.... Presumably the fields had once been largely arable. When, however, the survey was made, change had begun, though not in the direction of enclosure, of which there was still little. Conversion to meadow had proceeded without it: nearly all the parcels of the various tenants in East field and West field are said to have been meadow; arable still predominated only in Middle field, and even there it had begun to yield.[102] At Westwick, Whorlton, Bolam and Willington in Durham, and at Welford, Northamptonshire, a similar transformation had taken place.[103] This land was obviously withdrawn from cultivation not because the tenants preferred grass land, or because grass land was more valuable than arable, but because it could be plowed only at a loss. Where, as at Greens Norton, arable and leas are valued separately in the survey, the grass land is shown to be of less value than the land still under cultivation.[104] The land craved rest, (to use Tusser's phrase), and the grass which grew on it was of but little value. Here we have no capitalist systematically buying up land for grazing, but a withdrawal of land from cultivation by the tenants themselves, even though they were in no position to prepare it properly for grazing purposes. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized. It is true that pasture, properly enclosed and stocked, was profitable, and that men who were able to carry out this process became notorious among their contemporaries on account of their gains. But it is also true that the land which was converted to pasture by these enclosers was fit for nothing else. Husbandmen had had to withdraw much of their open-field ground from tillage simply because it was so unproductive that they could not count on a bare return of seed if they planted it. The pasturage for an additional horse or cow which these plots furnished was pure gain, and was not the object of the conversion to grass. The unproductive strips would have been left untilled even though no alternative use had been possible. They were unfit for cultivation. The advantage of holding this lea land did not end, however, with the fact that a few additional horses or cows could be kept on the grass which sprang up. This was undoubtedly of some value, but the greatest advantage lay in the fact that this land gradually recovered its strength. When the strips which were kept under cultivation finally produced in their turn so little that they had to be abandoned, the tenant who had access to land which had been laid to grass years before could plow this instead, for it had regained its fertility and had improved in physical quality. Fitzherbert recommends a regular interchange between "Reyst" ground and arable land which had become exhausted. When the grass strips become mossy and make poor pasture, plow them up and plant them; when arable strips fail to produce good crops, lay them to grass. Lea ground, "the whiche hath ben errable land of late" should be plowed up. And if a man haue plentie of suche pasture, that wil be mossie euery thyrd yere, lette hym breake vp a newe piece of gronde, and plowe it and sowe it (as I haue seyde before), and he shal haue plentye of corne, with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar thu it will beare plentye of corne, without donge, and it will beare much better grasse, x or xii yere after.... Reyst grounde if it be dry, will bringe much corne, for the mosse will rotte, and the moll hillockes will amende the ground wel.[105] Tusser's references to the practice of plowing up lea ground and laying other land to grass are so incidental as to be good evidence of the fact that this was not merely the recommendation of a theorist, but a common practice, the details of which were familiar to those for whom he intended his book. A passage in which he refers to the laying to grass of land in need of rest has already been quoted.[106] In discussing the date at which plowing should take place he mentions the plowing up of lea land as well as of fallow.[107] The superior value of enclosed pasture to open-field leas, and of enclosed arable to open-field arable, is not only asserted by Fitzherbert and others who are urging husbandmen to enclose their land, but appears also when manorial surveys are examined. It would seem, therefore, that the tenants would have been anxious to carry the process to an end and enclose their land. Undoubtedly the larger holders were desirous of making the change, but as long as the rights of the lesser men were respected, it was almost impossible to carry it out. The adjustment of conflicting and obscure claims was generally held to be an insuperable obstacle, even by those who urged the change most strongly, while those who on principle opposed anything in the way of enclosure took comfort in the fact that holdings were so intermixed that there was little prospect of accomplishing the change: Wheare (men) are intercominers in comon feildes and also haue theare portions so intermingled with an other that, thoughe they would, they could not inclose anie parte of the saide feldes so long as it is so.[108] Just as the services of a promoter are needed in the formation of a modern industrial combination, pressure from above was usually necessary in order to overcome the difficulties of the situation. The Lord of Berkeley (1281-1321) drewe much profitt to his Tenants and increase of fines to himselfe ... by makeing and procuringe to bee made exchanges of land mutually one with an other, thereby casting convenient Parcells togeather, fitting it for an inclosure and conversion. And by freeinge such inclosures from all comonage of others.[109] A landlord of this sort would do much to override the opposition of those who, through conservatism, fear of personal loss, or insistence upon more than their share of the benefits of the readjustment, made it impossible for tenants to carry out these changes unassisted. Where tenants with or without the assistance of the lord had managed to enclose some of their land and free it from right of common, they were in a position to devote it to sheep-farming if they chose to do so. Ordinarily they did not do this. If, as has been claimed, the large-scale enclosures which shall be considered later were made because of an increasing demand for wool, it is surprising that these husbandmen were willing to keep enclosed land under cultivation, and even to plow up enclosed pasture. The land had to be kept under grass for a part of the time, whether it was open or enclosed, because if kept continuously under the plow it became unproductive; and it was better to have this land enclosed so that it could be used advantageously as pasture during the period when it was recovering its strength. But the profits of pasturage were not high enough to prevent men from plowing up the land when it was again in fit condition. At Forncett, the tenants had begun sheep-farming by the end of the fourteenth century, and had also begun to enclose land in the open-fields; the situation was one, therefore, in which agriculture was likely to be permanently displaced by grazing, according to the commonly accepted theory of the enclosure movement. This change failed to take place; not because enclosures ceased to be made--nearly half of the acreage of the fields was in enclosures by 1565--but because the tenants preferred to cultivate this enclosed land.[110] If the enclosures had been pasture when they were first made, they did not remain permanently under grass. Like the land still in the open fields, and like the small enclosures in Cheshire reported by the commission of 1517, they were sometimes plowed and sometimes laid to grass, according to the condition of the soil. In a Cheshire village, two tenants had small enclosures in the same field, which were treated in this way. At the time the commission visited the place, one of these closes was being used as pasture, and the other was in cultivation. John Monkesfield's close, which had been made six years before, _continet in se duas acras & diversis temporibus fuit in cultura & aliis temporibus in pastura & nunc occupata est in pastura._[111] John Molynes' close of one acre had been made the year before and _fuit antea in pastura & nunc occupata est in cultura._ It had evidently been a strip of lea land which had been so improved by being kept under grass that it was in fit condition for cultivation, while John Monkesfield's close had been plowed long enough and was just at this time in need of rest. These men were apparently unaffected by any increasing demand for wool, but were managing their land according to its needs. By the sixteenth century, then, some enclosures had appeared in the open fields, and the old common-field system was disintegrating. The old customary holdings had been so altered that they were hardly recognizable. Some tenants held a great number of acres, and had managed by purchase or exchange to get possession of a number of adjacent strips, which they might, under certain conditions, be able to enclose. Much of the land, however, was withdrawn from cultivation, and for years was allowed to remain almost in the condition of waste. For the most part, however, there had been no revolutionary change in the system of husbandry. The framework remained. The whole community still possessed claims extending over most of the land. The village flocks pastured on the stubble and the fallows of the open fields. The advantages which could in theory be derived from the control of several adjacent strips of land were reduced to a minimum by the necessity of maintaining old boundaries to mark off from each other lands of differing status. Even where the consolidation of holdings had proceeded to some extent, the tenants who had acquired the most compact holdings in comparison with the majority still possessed scattered plots of land separated from each other by the holdings of other men, and some of the smaller holders had no two strips which touched each other. When the tenants had been left to themselves, all of the changes which took place before the eighteenth century, numerous as they were, usually left the fields in a state resembling more their condition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than that of the nineteenth century. FOOTNOTES: [87] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 49, note. [88] A speech on enclosures commending bills proposed in 1597 contrasts the constructive character of that legislation with the earlier laws: "Where the gentleman that framed this bill hath dealt like a most skilful chirugien, not clapping on a plaster to cover the sore that it spread no further, but searching into the very depths of the wound that the life and strength which hath so long been in decay by the wasting of towns and countries may at length again be quickened and repaired." Bland, Brown & Tawney, _Eng. Econ. History--Select Documents_, pp. 271-272. [89] 4 H. 7, c. 16, as quoted by Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_, p. 237. [90] Leadam, _Domesday of Inclosures_ (London, 1897), p. 7 [91] 25 H. 8, c. 13. [92] Gray, _English Field Systems_ (Cambridge, 1915), pp. 95-96. [93] "Midland Revolt," _R. H. S. Trans._, New Series, vol. xviii, p. 230. [94] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem_, pp. 164-165. [95] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 52-53. [96] _Husbandry_ (ed. English Dialect Society, 1882), p. 77. [97] 39 El., c. i, vi. [98] _Surveying_ (2nd ed., 1567), ch. 24. [99] Corbett, "Elizabethan Village Surveys," _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series, vol. ii, pp. 67-87. [100] _Surveyinge_, ch. 41. [101] _Five Hundred Points_ (London, 1812). [102] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 106-107. [103] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 35, 106-107. [104] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_, pp. 100-101. [105] Fitzherbert, _Surveyinge_, chs. 27 and 28. [106] See p. 79. Another reference to this process is made in October's _Husbandry_, vol. 22, ch. 17. [107] Tusser, January's _Husbandry_, vol. 47, ch. 32. [108] _A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England_, ed. by Elizabeth Lamond, Cambridge, 1893. [109] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, vol. ii, pp. 159-160. [110] Davenport, _Norfolk Manor_, pp. 80-81. [111] Leadam, _op. cit._, pp. 641-644. CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE Enclosure made by the tenants themselves by common agreement aroused no opposition or apprehension. No diminution of the area under tillage beyond that which had already of necessity taken place occurred, and the grass land already present in the fields was made available for more profitable use. The Doctor in Hales' dialogue carefully excepts this sort of enclosure from condemnation: I meane not all Inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such Inclosures as turneth commonly arable feildes into pastures; and violent Inclosures, without Recompense of them that haue the right to comen therein: for if the land weare seuerallie inclosed to the intent to continue husbandrie theron, and euerie man, that had Right to commen, had for his portion a pece of the same to him selfe Inclosed, I thincke no harm but rather good should come therof, yf euerie man did agre theirto.[112] In this passage Hales recognizes the theoretical possibility of a beneficial sort of enclosure, but the conditional form in which his remarks are thrown indicates that, so far as he knew, there was little systematic division of the land among the tenants by common consent. Orderly rearrangement of holdings into compact plots suitable for enclosure was difficult unless the small holders had all disappeared, leaving in the community only men of some means, who were able to undertake the expenses of the readjustment. In most villages, however, holdings of all sizes were the rule. Some tenants had almost no land under cultivation, but picked up a living by working for others, and by keeping a few sheep on the commons and on the fallow lands of the town. There was thus always a fringe of peasant families on the verge of destitution. They were being gradually eliminated, but the process was extremely slow. A few of them in each generation, feeling as a realized fact the increasing misery which has been predicted for the modern industrial laborer, were forced to give up the struggle. Their land passed into the hands of the more prosperous men, who were thus gradually accumulating most of the land. In some cases, no doubt, all of the poorer tenantry were drained off in this fashion, making it possible for those who remained to consolidate their holdings and enclose them in the fashion advocated by Fitzherbert, keeping a part under tillage until it needed a rest, and pasturing sheep and cattle in the closes which were under grass. It is impossible to estimate the number of these cases. What we do know is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no such stage had been reached in hundreds of English townships. The enclosures which had been made by the tenants were of a few acres here and there. The fields for the most part were still open and subject to common, and consisted in part of poor pasture land. We do know also that many landlords took matters into their own hands, dispossessed the tenants, and enclosed a part or all of the land for sheep pastures. The date at which this step was made, and the thoroughness with which it was carried out, depended very much upon the character and needs of the landlord, as well as upon local circumstances affecting the condition of the soil and the degree of poverty suffered by the tenants. The tendency for landlords to lose patience with the process which was gradually eliminating the poorer men and concentrating their land in the hands of the more prosperous is not characteristic of any one century. It began as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, and it extended well into the seventeenth. By 1402 clergy were being indicted as _depopulatores agrorum_.[113] In the fifteenth century statutes against enclosure and depopulation were beginning to be passed, and Rous gives a list of fifty-four places near Warwick which had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486.[114] For the sixteenth century, we have the evidence of numerous statutes, the returns of the commissions, doggerel verse, popular insurrections, sermons, _etc._ Miss Leonard's study of the seventeenth-century enclosures is confirmed by additional evidence presented by Gonner that the movement was unchecked in this period. In 1692, for instance, Houghton was attacking the "common notion that enclosure always leads to grass," by pointing out a few exceptions.[115] In 1695 Gibson spoke of the change from tillage to pasture, which had been largely within living memory.[116] There is no reason to believe that the landowners who carried out this process were unusually mercenary and heartless. The need for putting their land to some remunerative use was imperative, and it is surprising that the enclosure movement was of such a piece-meal character and extended over so many years, rather than that it took place at all. There was little rent to be had from land which lay for the most part in open fields, tilled by men who had no capital at their command for improving the condition of the soil, or for utilizing profitably the portion of the land which was so impoverished that it could not be cultivated. Poor tenants are unprofitable tenants; it is difficult to collect rent from them and impossible to raise their rent, and they attempt to save by exploiting the land, leaving it in worse condition than when they received it. Contemporary references to the poverty of these open-field tenants all confirm the impression given by Hales: They that be husbandmen now haue but a scant lyvinge therby.[117] I that haue enclosed litle or nothinge of my grond could (never be able) to make vp my lordes rent weare it not for a little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens that I doe rere vpon my ground: whereof, because the price is sumwhat round, I make more cleare proffitt than I doe of all my corne and yet I haue but a bare liuinge.[118] Harrison, at the end of the century, writes of the open-field tenants: They were scarce able to liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure poundes at the vttermost by the yeare.[119] The tenant who could not pay this rent without selling stock was, of course, one of those who would soon have to give up his land altogether, if the landlord continued to demand rent. If he sold his horses and oxen to raise the rent one year, he was less able to work his land properly the next year, and the crop, too small in the first place to enable him to cover expenses, diminished still more. When the current income was ordinarily too small to cover current expenses, no relief was to be found by reducing the capital. A time came when these men must be either turned away, and their land leased to others, or else allowed to stay and make what poor living they could from the soil, without paying even the nominal rent which was to be expected of them. Lord North's comment on the enclosure movement as he saw it in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the state of affairs which led to the eviction of these husbandmen: Gentlemen of late years have taken up an humor of destroying their tenements and cottages, whereby they make it impossible that mankind should inhabit their estates. This is done sometimes barefaced because they harbour poor that are a charge to the parish, and sometimes because the charge of repairing is great, and if an house be ruinous they will not be at the cost of rebuilding and repairing it, and cast their lands into very great farms which are managed with less housing: and oftimes for improvement as it is called which is done by buying in all freeholds, copyholds, and tenements that have common and which harboured very many husbandry and labouring families and then enclosing the commons and fields, turning the managry from tillage to grasing.[120] Not only were these men able to pay little rent for the land they held, but, as has been suggested, they were unable to maintain the land in proper condition by the use of manure and marl. These expenses were beyond the means of the farmer who was falling behind; they neglected the soil because they were poor, and they were poor because the yield of the land was so low; but their neglect caused it to decline even more. Fitzherbert, who deplores the fact that marl is no longer used in his time, points out that not only the leaseholder, who is averse to making improvements on account of the insecurity of his tenure, but the freeholder, also, is neglecting his land; although He knoweth well, he shall take the profits while he liueth, & his heyres after him, a corrage to improw his owne, the which is as good as and he purchased as much as the improwment cometh to.[121] But if he spent money on marling the soil, he would have nothing to live on while waiting for the crop. The very poverty of the small holders made it necessary for them to sink in still greater poverty, until the lord deprived them of the land, or until they became so discouraged that they gave it up of their own volition. They might easily understand the force of Fitzherbert's arguments without being able to follow his advice. "Marle mendeth all manor of grounde, but it is costly."[122] The same thing is true of manure. According to Denton, the expense of composting land was almost equivalent to the value of the fee simple of the ground. He refers to a record of the early fourteenth century of the payment of more than twice the ordinary rent for composted land.[123] With manure at high prices, the man in difficulty might be tempted to sell what he had; it was certainly out of the question for him to buy more. Or, what amounted to the same thing, he might sell hay or straw, and so reduce the forage for his cattle, and return less to the soil by means of their dung. Dr. Simkhovitch points out the difference between the farmer who is unable to meet expenses in a particular year because of an exceptionally bad season, and one who is suffering because of progressive deterioration of his farm. The first may borrow and make good the difference the following year; the latter will be unable to extricate himself. He neither has means to increase his holding by renting or buying more land, nor to improve the land which he has already. His distress is cumulative: Only one with sufficient resources can improve his land. By improving land we add to our capital, while by robbing land we immediately add to our income; in doing so, however, we diminish out of all proportion our capital as farmers, the productive value of our farm land. The individual farmer can therefore improve his land only when in an economically strong position. A farmer who is failing to make a living on his farm is more likely to exploit his farm to the utmost; and when there is no room for further exploitation he is likely to meet the deficit by borrowing, and thus pledging the future productivity of his farm.[124] While small holders in the open fields were in no position to pay higher rents, the land owners were suffering. Prices were rising, and while the higher price of farm produce in the market was of little help to the tenant whose own family used nearly everything he could raise, the landlords felt the pressure of an increasing cost of living. Many of us [says the Gentleman, in Hales' dialogue] haue bene driuen to giue over oure houshold, and to kepe either a chambere in london, or to waight on the courte Vncalled, with a man and a lacky after him, wheare he was wonte to kepe halfe a score cleane men in his house, and xxtie or xxxtie other persons besides, everie day in the weke.... We are forced either to minyshe the thirde parte of our houshold, or to raise the thirde parte of our Revenues.[125] It was difficult for the landowners to make economic use of even those portions of the land which were not in the hands of customary tenants. If they were willing to invest capital in enclosing demesne land and stocking it with sheep, without disturbing their small tenants, they found it impossible to do so. Not only did the poorer tenants have to cultivate land which was barely productive of more than the seed used, because they could not afford to allow it to lie idle as long as it would produce anything; not only did they allow the land which was under grass to remain practically waste, because they could not afford to enclose it and stock it with sheep; not only did they neglect manuring and marling the land because these improvements were beyond their means, so that the land was constantly growing poorer in their hands, and so that they could pay very little rent; but they were also tenacious of their rights of common over the rest of the land, and resisted all attempts at enclosure of the holdings of the more prosperous tenants, because they had to depend for their living largely upon the "little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens" which were maintained partly by the gleanings from other men's land when it lay common. They undoubtedly suffered when the lord himself or one of the large leaseholders insisted on enclosing some of the land. If the commonable area was reduced, or if the land enclosed was converted from arable to pasture (as it usually was), the means by which they made their living was diminished. The occasional day's wages for labor spent on the land converted was now withdrawn, and the pasturage for the little flock was cut down. The practical effect of even the most innocent-looking enclosures, then, must have been to deprive the poorer families of the means of livelihood, even though they were not evicted from their worthless holdings. Enclosures and depopulation were inseparably linked in the minds of contemporaries, even when the greatest care was taken by the enclosing authorities to safeguard the rights of the tenants. These rights, however, seriously interfered with the most advantageous use of land, and often were disregarded. Not only did the small holders have rights of common over the rest of the land, but their own strips were intermingled with those of the lord and the large holders. The typical problem confronting the enclosing landlord is shown below: HOLDINGS IN OPEN FIELD, WEST LEXHAM, NORFOLK, 1575[126] _Strips in Furlong A_ _Strips in Furlong B_ 1. Will Yelverton, freeholder. 1. Robert Clemente, freeholder. 2. Demesne. 2. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 4. Will Yelverton. 4. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 9. Demesne. 9. Will Lee, freeholder. 10. Glebe. 10. Will Gell, copyholder. 11. Demesne. 11. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 13. Glebe. 13. Demesne. If, as was probably the case, the product from these demesne strips was so small that the land was fit only for conversion to pasture, the pecuniary interest of the lord was to be served best by enclosing it and converting it. But should he make three enclosures in furlong A, and two in furlong B, besides taking pains to leave a way clear for Will Yelverton and Lee and Gell to reach their land? Or should he be content merely with enclosing the larger plots of land, because of the expense of hedging and ditching the smaller plots separately from the rest? If he did this, the unenclosed portions would be of little value, as the grass which grew on them could not be properly utilized for pasture. The final alternative was to get possession of the strips which did not form part of the demesne, so that the whole could be made into one compact enclosure. In order to do this it might be necessary to dispossess Will Lee, Will Gell, _etc._ The intermingling of holdings, in such a way that small holders (whose own land was in such bad condition that they could not pay their rents) blocked the way for improvements on the rest of the land, was probably responsible for many evictions which would not otherwise have taken place. But not all evictions were due to this cause alone. The income to the owner from land which was left in the hands of customary tenants was much lower than if it was managed by large holders with sufficient capital to carry out necessary changes. Where it is possible to compare the rents paid by large and small holders on the same manor, this fact is apparent: AVERAGE RENT PER ACRE OF LAND ON FIVE MANORS IN WILTSHIRE, 1568[127] I II III s. d. s. d. s. d. Lands held by farmers 1 6 7 3/4 1 5 3/4 Lands held by customary tenants 7 1/2 5 1 0 3/4 IV V s. d. s. d. Lands held by farmers 1 1 3/4 1 5 1/2 Lands held by customary tenants 5 3/4 5 3/4 The differences in these rents are sufficient to be tempting to the lord who was seeking his own interest. The large holders were able to expend the capital necessary for enclosing and converting the part of the land which could not be profitably cultivated because of its bad condition. The capital necessary for this process itself was considerable, and besides, it was necessary to wait several years before there was a return on the investment, while the sod was forming, to say nothing of the large expenditure necessary for the purchase of the sheep. The land when so treated, however, enabled the investor to pay higher rents than the open-field husbandmen who "rubbed forth their estate in the poorest plight."[128] A lord who was willing to consider only pecuniary advantage had everything to gain by clearing the land entirely of small holders, and putting it in the hands of men with capital. It is, therefore, to the credit of these landowners that there are so few authentic cases of the depopulation of entire villages and the conversion of all of the arable land into sheep runs. These cases made the lords who were responsible notorious and were, no doubt, exceptional. Nearly fifteen hundred places were covered by the reports of the commissions of 1517 and 1607, and Professor Gay has found among these "but a round dozen villages or hamlets which were all enclosed and emptied of their inhabitants, the full half of them in Northamptonshire."[129] For the most part, the enclosures reported under the inquisitions as well as those indicated on the maps and surveys of the period involved only small areas, and point to a process of piece-meal enclosure. The landowners seem to have been reluctant to cause hardship and to have left the open-field tenants undisturbed as far as possible, contenting themselves with the enclosure and conversion of small plots of land. The social consequences of so-called depopulating enclosure were serious, but they are not seen in their proper perspective when one imagines the condition of the evicted tenants to have been fairly good before they were dispossessed. The cause lying back of the enclosure movement was bringing about the gradual sinking of family after family, even when no evictions were made. To attribute the poverty and misery of the rural population to the enclosure movement is to overlook the unhappy condition of the peasants, even where no enclosures had been made. Enclosures had been forbidden in the fields of royal manors in Northamptonshire, but this did not protect the peasantry from destitution. The manor of Grafton, for instance, was surveyed in 1526 and a note was made at the end of the survey that the revenue drawn from the lordship had lately been increased, but "there can no ferther enprovemente there be made and to kepe the tenantries standyng. Item the tenauntriez there be in sore decaye." The surveyor of Hartwell also notes that the "tenements there be in decay."[130] The economic basis of the unfortunate social changes which were associated with the process of enclosure came gradually to be recognized. It was evidently futile to enact laws requiring the cultivation of land "wasted and worn with continual plowing and thereby made bare, barren and very unfruitfull."[131] Merely restrictive and prohibitory legislation was followed by the suggestion of constructive measures. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. In the act of 1552, however, an attitude somewhat more reasonable is to be seen. It was provided that land which had been under cultivation within a certain number of years preceding the act should be tilled, "_or so much in quantity_."[132] Public men were also urging that less time be devoted to the futile attempt to force men to cultivate land unfit for tillage, and that encouragement be given instead to measures for improving the waste, and bringing fresh land under the plow.[133] After a time, moreover, another fact became apparent: there was a marked tendency to break up and again cultivate the land which in former generations had been converted to pasture. The statute of 1597 not only contained a proviso permitting the conversion of arable fields to pasture on condition that other land be tilled instead,[134] thus tacitly admitting that the reason for withdrawing land from cultivation was not the low price of grain, but the barrenness of the land, but also explicitly referred to this fact in another proviso permitting the conversion of arable land to pasture temporarily, _for the purpose of recovering its strength_: Provided, nevertheless, That if anie _P_son or Body Pollitique or Corporate hath ... laide or hereafter shall lay anie grownde to graze, or hathe used or shall use the same grownde with shepe or anie other cattell, which Grownde hath bene or shall be dryven or worne owte with Tillage, onely upon good Husbandrie, and with intente bona fide withowt Fraude or Covyne the same Grownde shall recover Harte and Strengthe, an not with intent to continue the same otherwise in shepe Pasture or for fattinge or grazinge of Cattell, that no such _P_son or Body Politike or Corporate shall be intended for that Grownde a Converter within the meaning of this Lawe.[135] A speaker in the House of Commons commends these provisions: For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and therefore, if it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may now by this law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of ground while the first gathers strength, which will be a means that the earth yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her own excess. And this did the former lawmakers overslip, tyeing the land once tilled to a perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled.[136] Several years before the passage of this statute, Bacon had remarked that men were breaking up pasture land and planting it voluntarily.[137] In 1619, a commission was appointed to consider the granting of licenses "for arable lands converted from tillage to pasture." The proclamation creating this commission, after referring to the laws formerly made against such conversions, continues: As there is much arable land of that nature become pasture, so is there by reason thereof, much more other lands of old pasture and waste, and wood lands where the plough neuer entred, as well as of the same pasture lands so heretofore conuerted, become errable, and by husbandrie made fruitfull with corne ... the quantitie and qualitie of errable and Corne lands at this day doth much exceed the quantitie that was at the making of the saide Lawe.... As the want thereof [of corn] shall appeare, or the price thereof increase, all or a great part of those lands which were heretofore converted from errable to pasture and have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulness, will be reduced to Corne lands againe, to the great increase of graine to the Commonwealth and profite to each man in his private.[138] John Hales had protested against depopulating enclosures, in 1549, by appealing to the public spirit of landowners. They increased their profits by converting arable land to pasture, but, he argued, It may not be liefull for euery man to vse his owne as hym lysteth, but eueyre man must vse that he hath to the most benefyte of his countrie. Ther must be somethynge deuysed to quenche this insatiable thirst of greedynes of men.[139] But now it was no longer necessary to persuade the owners of this same land to forgo their own interests for the sake of the public good. Those whose land had been used as pasture for a great number of years were finding it valuable arable, because of its long period of rest and regeneration. Land which had been converted to pasture was being put under the plow because of the greater profit of tillage. So great was the profit of cultivating these pastures that landlords who were opposed to having pastures broken up by leaseholders had difficulty in preventing it. Towards the end of the sixteenth century at Hawsted, and in the beginning of the seventeenth, a number of leases contained the express provision that no pastures were to be broken up. In 1620 and the years following, some of the leases permitted cultivation of pasture, on the condition that the land was to be laid to grass again five years before the expiration of the lease.[140] There is no doubt of the fact that much land was being converted from pasture to arable in this period. Evidence of this tendency multiplies as the century advances. In 1656 Joseph Lee gave a list of fifteen towns where arable land hitherto converted to pasture had been plowed up again within thirty years.[141] Barren and insufficiently manured land did not produce good crops merely because other land had been given an opportunity to recover its strength. The conversion of open-field arable to pasture went on unchecked in the seventeenth century because it had not yet had the benefit of the prolonged rest which made agriculture profitable, and without which it had become impossible to make a living from the soil. The lands which have been "heretofore converted from errable to pasture.... have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulnesse," and are therefore being plowed again; but the land which has escaped conversion, and has been tied to the "perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled," is "faint and feeble-hearted," and is being laid to grass, for pasture is the only use for which it is suited. The cause of the conversion of arable fields to pasture is the same as that which caused the same change on other lands at an earlier date--so low a level of productivity that the land was not worth cultivating. Lands whose fertility had been restored were put under cultivation and plowed until they were again in need of rest. Thus the final result was about the same whether an enclosing landlord cut across the gradual process of readjustment of land-holding among the tenants, and converted the whole into pasture, or whether the process was allowed to go on until none but large holders remained in the village. In both cases the tendency was towards a system of husbandry in which the fertility of the soil was maintained by periodically withdrawing portions of it from cultivation and laying it to grass. In the one case, cultivation was completely suspended for a number of years, but was gradually reintroduced as it became evident that the land had recovered its strength while used as pasture. In the other, the grazing of sheep and cattle was introduced as a by-industry, for the sake of utilizing the land which had been set aside to recover its strength, while the better land was kept under the plow. Whether enclosures were made for better agriculture, then, as Mr. Leadam contends, or for pasture, as is argued by Professor Gay,[142] the arable enclosures were used as pasture for a part of the time and the enclosed pastures came later to be used for tillage part of the time, and the two things amount to the same thing in the end. This end, however, had still not been reached in a great number of open-field villages by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and we should expect to find that the history of the land in this century was but a repetition of what had gone before, in so far as the fields which had not hitherto been enclosed are concerned. But, during the seventeenth century, an agricultural revolution was taking place. Experiments were being made with new forage crops. For one thing, it was found that turnips could be grown in the fields and that they made excellent winter forage; and grass seeding was introduced. The grasses and clovers which were brought from Holland not only made excellent hay, but improved the soil rapidly. The possibility of increasing the amount of hay at will put an end to the absolute scarcity of manure--the limiting factor in English agriculture from the beginning. And the comparative ease with which the artificial grasses could be made to grow did away with the need of waiting ten or fifteen years, or perhaps half a century, for natural grass to cover the fields and restore their productiveness. Only with the introduction of grass seeding did it become possible to keep a sufficient amount of stock, not only to maintain the fertility of the soil, but to improve it steadily. The soil instead of being taxed year after year under the heavy strain of grain crops was being renovated by the legumes that gathered nitrogen from the air and stored it on tubercles attached to their roots. The deep roots of the clover penetrated the soil, that no plow ever touched. Legumes like alfalfa, producing pound by pound more nutritious fodder than meadow grass, produced acre by acre two and three times the amount, and when such a field was turned under to make place for a grain crop, the deep and heavy sod, the mass of decaying roots, offered the farmer "virgin" soil, where previously even five bushels of wheat could not be gathered.[143] As the value of these new crops became generally recognized, some effort was made to introduce them into the regular rotation of crops in the fields which were still held in common, but, for the most part, these efforts were unsuccessful, and new vigor was given to the enclosure movement. Frequently persons having no arable land of their own had right of common over the stubble and fallow which could not be exercised when turnips and clover were planted; for reasons of this sort, it was difficult to change the ancient course of crops in the open fields. For example, late in the eighteenth century (1793) at Stiffkey and Morston, the improvements due to enclosure are said to have been great, for: being half-year land before, they could raise no turnips except by agreement, nor cultivate their land to the best advantage.[144] At Heacham the common fields were enclosed by act in 1780, and Young notes: Before the enclosure they were in no regular shifts and the field badly managed; now in regular five-shift Norfolk management.[145] At Northwald, about 3,000 acres of open-field land were enclosed in 1796 and clover was introduced. The comment made is that "the crops bear quite a new face." The common field of Brancaster before enclosure in 1755 "was in an open, rude bad state; now in five or six regular shifts."[146] Hitherto there had been only one way of restoring fertility to land; converting it to pasture and leaving it under grass for a prolonged period. Now it could be speedily improved and used intensively. Arthur Young describes the modern method of improvement in his account of the changes made in Norfolk husbandry before 1771: From forty to fifty years ago, all the northern and western and a great part of the eastern tracts of the county were sheep walks, let so low as from 6 _d._ to 1_s._ 6 _d._ and 2 _s._ an acre. Much of it was in this condition only thirty years ago. The improvements have been made by the following circumstances. First. By enclosing without the assistance of Parliament. Second. By a spirited use of marl and clay. Third. By the introduction of an excellent course of crops. Fourth. By the introduction of turnips well hand-hoed. Fifth. By the culture of clover and ray-grass. Sixth. By the lords granting long leases. Seventh. By the country being divided chiefly into large farms.[147] The evidence which has been examined in this monograph reveals the far-reaching influence of soil exhaustion in English agrarian history in the centuries before the introduction of these new crops. As the yield of the soil declined, the ancient arable holdings proved incapable of supporting their cultivators, and a readjustment had to be made. The pressure upon subsistence was felt while villainage was still in force, and the terms upon which serfdom dissolved were influenced by this fact to an extent which has hitherto not been recognized. The economic crisis involved in the spread of the money economy threw into relief the destitution of the villains; and the easy terms of the cash payments which were substituted for services formerly due, the difficulty with which holders for land could be obtained on any terms, the explicit references to the poverty of whole communities at the time of the commutation of their customary services, necessitate the abandonment of the commonly accepted view that growing prosperity and the desire for better social status explain the substitution of money payments for labor services in the fourteenth century. The spread of the money economy was due to the gradual integration of the economic system, the establishment of local markets where small land holders could sell their produce for money. Until this condition was present, it was impossible to offer money instead of labor in payment of the customary dues; as soon as this condition was present, the greater convenience of the use of money made the commutation of services inevitable. In practise money payments came gradually to replace the performance of services through the system of "selling" works long before any formal commutation of the services took place. But, whatever the explanation of the spread of the money economy in England during this period, it is not the prosperity of the villains, for, at the moment when the formal change from payments in labor to money payments was made, the poverty and destitution of the landholders were conspicuous. That this poverty was due to declining fertility of the soil cannot be doubted. Land in demesne as well as virgate land was showing the effects of centuries of cultivation with insufficient manure, and returned so scant a crop that much of it was withdrawn from cultivation, even when serf labor with which to cultivate it was available. Exhaustion of the soil was the cause of the pauperism of the fourteenth century, as it was also of the enclosure and conversion to pasture of arable land in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Systematic enclosure for the purpose of sheep-farming on a large scale was but the final step in a process of progressively less intense cultivation which had been going on for centuries. The attention of some historians has been devoted too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom contemporary invective was directed, and the process which was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has escaped their notice. The three-field system was breaking down as it became necessary to withdraw this or that exhausted plot from cultivation entirely for a number of years. The periodic fallow had proved incapable of keeping the land in proper condition for bearing crops even two years out of three, and everywhere strips of uncultivated land began to appear in the common fields. This lea land--waste land in the midst of the arable--was a common feature of sixteenth and seventeenth century husbandry. The strips kept under cultivation gave a bare return for seed, and the profit of sheep-raising need not have been extraordinarily high to induce landowners to abandon cultivation entirely under these conditions. A great part of the arable fields lay waste, and could be put to no profitable use unless the whole was enclosed and stocked with sheep. The high profit made from sheep-raising cannot be explained by fluctuations in the price of wool. The price of wool fell in the fifteenth century. Sheep-farming was comparatively profitable because the soil of the ancient fields was too barren to repay the costs of tillage. Land which was in part already abandoned, was turned into pasture. The barrenness and low productivity of the common fields is explicitly recognised by contemporaries, and is given as the reason for the conversion of arable to pasture. Its use as pasture for a long period of years gave it the needed rest and restored its fertility, and pasture land which could bear crops was being brought again under cultivation during the centuries in which the enclosure movement was most marked. Footnotes: [112] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. 49. [113] 4 H. 4, c. 2. Miss Leonard calls attention to this statute. "Inclosure of Common Land in the Seventeenth Century." _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series, vol. xix, p. 101, note 2. [114] _Cf. supra_, p. 27. [115] Gonner, _Common Land and Inclosure_, p. 162. [116] Leonard, _op. cit._, p. 140, note 2. [117] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. 90. [118] _Ibid._, pp. 56-57. [119] _Description of Britain_ (_Holinshed Chronicles_, London, 1586), p. 189. [120] Leonard, _op. cit._, vol. xix, p. 120. [121] _Surveyinge_, ch. 28. [122] _Ibid._, ch. 32. [123] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 150. [124] "Rome's Fall Reconsidered," _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxxi, pp. 217, 220. [125] Lamond, _Common Weal of this Realm of England_, pp. 19-20. [126] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century_, pp. 254-255. [127] Tawney, _op. cit._, p. 256. [128] Carew, as quoted by Leonard, _op. cit._, vol. xix, p. 137. [129] "Enclosures in England," _Quarterly Journal of Ec._, vol. xvii, p. 595. [130] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_, pp. 73-4. [131] The reason stated in the preamble of many of the Durham decrees granting enclosure permits (Leonard, _op. cit._, p. 117). [132] 5 & 6 Ed. 6, c. 5. Re-enacted by 5 El., c. 2. [133] Memorandum addressed by Alderman Box to Lord Burleigh in 1576, Gonner, _op. cit._, p. 157. [134] 39 El., ch. 2, proviso iii. [135] _Ibid._, proviso iv. [136] Bland, Brown & Tawney: _Select Documents_, p. 272. [137] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times_, part ii, p. 99. [138] _Ibid._, p. 99. [139] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. lxiii. [140] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 235-243. [141] Leonard, "Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century," _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, N. S., vol. xix, p. 141, note. [142] For this controversy see, "The Inquisitions of Depopulation in 1517 and the 'Domesday of Inclosures,'" by Edwin F. Gay and I. S. Leadam, _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, 1900, vol. xiv, pp. 231-303. [143] Simkhovitch, _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, pp. 400, 401. [144] _Board of Agriculture Report, Norfolk_, ch. vi. [145] _Ibid._, ch. vi. [146] _Ibid._ [147] Bland, Brown and Tawney, _op. cit._, pp. 530-531. INDEX Abbot's Ripton, 61 Arable, 11; area reduced, 22, 24, 27, 54-56, 70, 80; barren, 12, 16-17, 23, 47, 49, 55-56, 58, 62, 70, 72, 79, 81, 97-99, 101, 106; fertility restored, 13, 41-42, 46-47, 81-82, 98-99, 101, 103; converted to pasture, 11-12, 14, 18-19, 23, 27-28, 30, 32, 35-36, 58, 71, 84, 88, 90, 99; cultivation resumed, 12, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 99-101; lea strips, 41, 79-84, 87, 106; enclosed, 83-84, 102 Ashley, 33 Bacon, 99 Bailiff-farming, 50, 70, 73-74 Ballard, 20, 50, 59-60, 63, 70, 77 Barley, 37, 56 Beggars, 70 Berkeley estates, 23, 27, 58, 63, 83 Black Death, 16, 18-23, 38, 41, 56-57, 60, 67 Bolam, 80 Bond land deserted, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; refused, 59; no competition for, 21; vacant, 22-23, 57-58, 62, 66, 72; compulsory holding of, 21, 57, 59-60, 62, 72; leased, 23, 57, 62, 75-76; rents of, 16, 20-21, 57-58, 63, 66-68 Brightwell, 68 Burwell, 61 Cattle, 48-49, 69, 91, 102 Carew, _Survey of Cornwell_, 33 Chatteris, 70 Clover, 102, 104 Combe, 51 Commissions on enclosure, engrossing, etc., 15, 30, 84 Common-field system, 11, 48, 85; stability of, 82, 85, 87, 103; disintegration of, chapter III Commutation of villain services, 19, 56-57, 64-69, 73, 105 Concessions to villains, 57, 59, 62-64, 66, 69; see villain services, rents Conversion, arable to pasture, 11-12, 14, 18-19, 23, 27-28, 30, 32, 35-36, 39-43, 58, 71, 84, 88, 90, 99; pasture to arable, 19, 31, 34-36, 39-43, 84; both, 19, 35-36, 39-43, 84; reconversion of open-field land formerly laid to grass, 13, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 99-101 Convertible husbandry, 41-42, 81-82, 84, 102 Corbett, 78 Corn-laws, 33-34 Cornwall, 33 Cost of living, 92 Crawley, 59 Crops, 48, 102-104 Cross-plowing, 78 Cunningham, 32 Curtler, 13 Demesne, leased, 19-20, 57, 73; intermixed with tenant land, 94-95 Denton, 13, 27, 91 Depopulation, 27-30, 94, 96 Desertion, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72 Downton, 50, 68 East Brandon, 79 Emparking, 27 Enclosed land, pasture, 33, 87; tilled, 83-84, 102; convertible husbandry, 41-42, 81, 84, 101-102 Enclosure, defined, 11-12; progress of, 27-43, 87-88; early, 16, 18-19, 22-23, 27, 58; seventeenth century, 12, 17, 31, 35-37, 39, 88; eighteenth century, 31, 103-104; causes, see productivity, soil-exhaustion, prices; social consequences, 15, 29-30, 97, see depopulation, unemployment, eviction; literature of, 14-15; opposition to, 82, 93; effect on quality of wool, 33; for sheep-farming, 12, 19, 22, 24, 28, 37, 42-44, 83-84, 87-88, 90, 96, 98; enclosed land cultivated, 83-84, 102 Engrossing, 75; see holdings, amalgamation of Eviction of tenants, 12, 15, 27, 30, 38, 90, 94, 96 Fallow, 11, 47, 85, 87, 106; see pasture, lea land Fertility, see productivity, soil-exhaustion; fertility restored, 13, 41-42, 46-47, 81-82, 98-99, 101, 103 Fines, 59 Fitzherbert, 41, 77-79, 81-82, 91 Forage, 49, 91, 102 Forncett, 51, 61, 63, 84 Gay, Professor E. F., 15, 96, 102 Gonner, E. C. K., 13, 88 Gorleston, 77 Grafton Park, 34 Gras, Norman, 51 Gray, H. L., 79 Grazing, 11, 18, 46; profits from, 80; see sheep-farming, pasture Hales, John, 86, 89, 92, 100 Harrison, Description of Britain, 89 Hasbach, 13 Hawsted, 100 Hay, 48-49, 91, 102 Heriots, 69 Holdings, deserted, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; refused by heir, 59; vacant, 22-23, 57-58, 62, 66, 72; intermixed, 11, 77-78, 85, 94-95; amalgamated, 12, 56, 74-75; divided, 76 Holway, 41 Houses, destruction of, 90 _Husbandry_, Anonymous, 51 Innes, 32 Isle of Wight, 28, 76 Labor, supply of, 18, 22-23, 38, 41; see wages, unemployment Landlords, enclosure by, 12, 96, 100, 106 Leadam, 102 Lea-land, 41, 79, 80-84, 87, 106 Lee, Joseph, 101 Leicestershire, 15 Leonard, E. M., 15, 27, 35-36, 40, 88 Levett, A. E., 20, 50, 59-60, 63, 70, 77 Manorial system, readjustments in fourteenth century, 19 _et seq._ Manure, 41-42, 46-50, 78, 90, 102; see sheep-fold, marl Markets, local, 105 Marl, 46, 50, 90-91, 104 Meadow, 48-49 Meredith, 32 Merton College, 51 Money-economy, 105; see commutation of services Monson, Lord, 34 More, Sir Thomas, 29-30 Nailesbourne, 60, 64 North, Lord, 90 Northwald, 104 Open-field land, see common-field system, enclosures, lea-land Page, 60-61, 68 Pasture, waste, 46, 49, 93; fallow pasture, 11, 49, 82, 85, 93; lea strips, 41, 79-84, 87, 106; enclosed, 33, 82, 87; converted to arable, 19, 31, 34, 36, 39-43, 84; profits of, 12, 18, 30, 32-33, 107; leased, 100 Pauperism, see poverty Pembroke, 41 Population, 34 Poverty, villains, 16, 21, 56, 59, 67-69, 72, 106; small tenants, 87, 90-91, 97 Prices, sixteenth century, 92; wool and wheat, 12, 17-19, 24-33, 36-37, 40, 53; seventeenth century, 36-37 Productivity, 14, 38, 41, 44-48, 50-56, 90; see soil-exhaustion Profits, tillage, 22, 34, 39, 41, 58, 70, 72, 89-92; pasture, 12, 18, 30, 32-33, 96, 107 Protests against enclosures, 14-15, 38 Prothero, 13 Reconversion, pasture to arable, 12, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 90, 101 Rents, 16, 20-21, 57-58, 63, 66-68, 73, 89-90, 95 Rogers, J. T., 17, 26, 31, 39 Rotation of crops, 11, 103-104 Rothamsted Experiment Station, 44 Rous, 27, 88 Russell, 44, 46-47, 49 Seager, 17 Seligman, 17 Sheep, 12, 29 Sheep-farming, 12, 19, 22, 24, 28, 37, 42-44, 83-84, 87-88, 90, 96, 98 Sheep-fold, 49-50 Simkhovitch, 13, 17, 47-48, 91 Smyth, John, 23, 58 Soil-exhaustion, 12, 16-17, 23, 47, 49, 55-56, 58, 62, 70, 72, 79-81, 97-99, 101, 106 Statutes of husbandry, 28, 30, 39-40, 75-76, 88, 97-99 Stiffkey, 103 Stock and land lease, 73 Strips, 11, 85, 94-95; exchanged, 77 Tawney, 77 Tenants, elimination of, 87; evicted, 12, 15, 27, 30, 38, 90, 94, 96; poverty, 87, 90-91, 97; enclosure by, 15, 82-87; opposition to enclosure, 82, 93; rents of, 89-90, 95 Therfield, 60, 61 Turf-borders, 11; plowed under, 78 Turnips, 102-104 Tusser, 41, 79, 82 Twyford, 59 Unemployment, 28, 30, 38 Utopia, 29-30 Villains, poverty, 16, 21, 56, 59, 67-69, 72, 106; compelled to take land, 21, 57, 59-60, 62, 72; desertion of, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; social status with relation to commutation, 20, 57, 65, 67-68 Villain-services, 58-59; reduced, 21, 62-64, 72; commuted, 19-20, 56-57, 62, 64-69, 73, 105; sold, 64, 66, 105; excused, 70-71; leased, 73; retained, 67 Vinogradoff, 65-66 Virgate, 74; value of services, 62-63 Wages, 18, 36-39, 72-73 Walter of Henley, 51, 53 Waste, 12, 46, 49, 93, 98 Westmoreland, Countess of, 36 Weston, 61, 68 Westwick, 80 Wheat, yield, 47, 50-56, 90; prices, 12, 17-19, 24-31, 32-33, 36-37, 40, 53 Whorlton, 80 Winchester, Bishopric of, 20, 50, 51-54, 60-61, 63, 70, 77 Witney, 51-53, 55-56, 67-68 Wool, demand for, 12, 22, 24-25, 29, 32, 42, 43; price of, 12, 17-19, 22, 24-33; quality, 33 Woollen industry, expansion of, 12, 22, 24-25 Woolston, 59 Young, Arthur, 104 Columbia University in the City of New York The University includes the following: Columbia College, founded in 1754, and Barnard College, founded in 1889, offering to men and women, respectively, programs of study which may be begun either in September or February and which lead normally in from three to four years to the degrees of Bachelor of Arts. 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The following printing errors were corrected: "it" corrected to "is" (page 16/172) ' corrected to " (page 27/183) "villians" corrected to "villains" (page 67/223) missing closing quotation mark added (page 69/225) "sieze" corrected to "seize" (page 69/225) "demense" corrected to "demesne" (page 73/229, 3 times) missing "to added (page 78/234) (although not [to] be ignored) "and and" corrected to "and" (page 80/236) Footnote [38] has no corresponding marker in the text. Page 78 contains three footnote markers (two of which are marked with the same number - [99]) but only two footnotes. Additional spacing after some of the block quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as is in the original text. 
14562	----	Proofreading Team THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND A HISTORY FOR THE TIMES BY JAMES GODKIN AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES' LATE IRISH CORRESPONDENT OF 'THE TIMES' LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1870 LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET PREFACE. It would be difficult to name any subject so much discussed during the last half century as 'the condition of Ireland.' There was an endless diversity of opinion; but in one thing all writers and speakers agreed: the condition was morbid. Ireland was always sick, always under medical treatment, always subject to enquiries as to the nature of her maladies, and the remedies likely to effect a cure. The royal commissions and parliamentary committees that sat upon her case were innumerable, and their reports would fill a library. Still the nature of the disease, or the complication of diseases, was a mystery. Sundry 'boons' were prescribed, by way of experiment; but, though recommended as perfect cures, they did the patient no good. She was either very low and weak, or so dangerously strong and violent that she had to be put under restraint. Whenever this crisis arrived, she arrested the special attention of the state doctors. Consultations were held, and it was solemnly determined that something should be done. Another effort should be made to discover the _fons malorum_, and dry it up if possible. A diseased nation, subject to paroxysms of insanity, and requiring 30,000 keepers, was a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious financial burden. Yet many contended that all such attempts were useless. It was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin of a negro. The patient was incurable. Her ailment was nothing but natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a _post mortem_ examination, for which it was hoped emigration, and the help of improving landlords, would soon afford an opportunity. In the meantime, the strait waistcoat must be put on, to keep the patient from doing mischief. But at length a great physician arose, who declared that this state of things should not continue; the honour, if not the safety, of England demanded that the treatment should be reversed. Mr. Gladstone understands the case of Ireland, and he has courage to apply the proper remedies. Yet the British public do not understand it so well; and he will need all the force of public opinion to sustain him and his cabinet in the work of national regeneration which they have undertaken. It is not enough for a good physician to examine the symptoms of his patient. He must have a full and faithful history of the case. He must know how the disease originated, and how it was treated. If injuries were inflicted, he must know under what circumstances, how they affected the nervous system, and whether there may not be surrounding influences which prevent the restoration of health, or some nuisance that poisons the atmosphere. Such a history of the case of Ireland the author has endeavoured to give in the following pages. It it is no perfunctory service. He resolved to do it years ago, when he finished his work on the Irish Church Establishment, and it has been delayed only in consequence of illness and other engagements. He does not boast of any extraordinary qualifications for the work. But he claims the advantage of having studied the subject long and earnestly, as one in which he has been interested from his youth. He has written the history of the country more or less fully three times. During his thirty years' connexion with the press, it has been his duty to examine and discuss everything that appeared before the public upon Irish questions, and it has always been his habit to bring the light of history to bear upon the topics of the day. Twenty years ago he was an active member of the Irish Tenant League, which held great county meetings in most parts of the island; and was enthusiastically supported by the tenant farmers, adopting resolutions and petitions on the land question almost identical with those passed by similar meetings at the present time. Then Mr. Sharman Crawford was the only landlord who joined in the movement; now many of the largest proprietors take their stand on the tenant-right platform. And after a generation of sectarian division and religious dissension in Ulster, stimulated by the landed gentry, for political purposes, the Catholic priests and the Presbyterian clergy have again united to advocate the demands of the people for the legal protection of their industry and their property. There is scarcely a county in Ireland which the author of this volume has not traversed more than once, having always an eye to the condition of the population, their mode of living, and the relations of the different classes. During the past year, as special commissioner of the _Irish Times_, he went through the greater part of Ulster, and portions of the south, in order to ascertain the feelings of the farmers and the working classes, on the great question which is about to engage the attention of Parliament. The result of his historical studies and personal enquiries is this:--All the maladies of Ireland, which perplex statesmen and economists, have arisen from injuries inflicted by England in the wars which she waged to get possession of the Irish land. Ireland has been irreconcilable, not because she was conquered by England, not even because she was persecuted, but because she was robbed of her inheritance. If England had done everything she has done against the Irish nation, omitting the _confiscations_, the past would have been forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been one people. Even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates. And the banished chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in the ruin of their lords. All that is really important in the history of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the two nations for the possession of the soil. The Reformation was in reality nothing but a special form of the land war. The oath of supremacy was simply a lever for evicting the owners of the land. The process was simple. The king demanded spiritual allegiance; refusal was high treason; the punishment of high treason was forfeiture of estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. Any other law they might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. This law fixed its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible, without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable. Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an instrument of spoliation. The agrarian wars were kept up from generation to generation, Ireland always making desperate efforts to get back her inheritance, but always crushed to the earth, a victim of famine and the sword, by the power of England. The history of these wars, then, is the history of the case of the Irish patient. Its main facts are embodied in the general history of the country. But they have recently been brought out more distinctly by authors who have devoted years to the examination of the original state papers, in which the actors themselves described their exploits and recorded their motives and feelings with startling frankness. When a task of this kind has been performed by a capable and conscientious historian, it would be a work of supererogation for another enquirer to undergo the wearisome toil, even if he could. I have, therefore, for the purpose of my argument, freely availed myself of the materials given to the public by Mr. Froude, the Rev. C.P. Meehan, and Mr. Prendergast, not, however, without asking their permission, which was in each case most readily and kindly granted. The ancient state of Ireland, and especially of Ulster, is so little known in England, that I was glad to have the facts vouched for by so high an authority as Mr. Froude, and a writer so full of the instinctive pride of the dominant nation; the more so as I have often been obliged to dissent from his views, and to appeal against his judgments. Beguiled by the beauty of his descriptions, I am afraid I have drawn too largely on his pages, in proving and illustrating my case; but I feel confident that no one will read these extracts without more eagerly desiring to possess the volumes of his great work from which they are taken. I have similar acknowledgments to make to Father Meehan and Mr. Prendergast, both of whom are preparing new editions of their most valuable works. The royal charters, and other documents connected with the Plantation of Ulster, are printed in the 'Concise View of the Irish Society,' compiled from their records, and published by their authority in 1832. Whenever I have been indebted to other writers, I have acknowledged my obligation in the course of the work. In preparing it, I have had but one object constantly in view: to present to the public a careful collection and an impartial statement of facts on the state of Ireland, for the right government of which the British people are now more than ever responsible. I shall be thankful if my labours should contribute in any measure, however humble, to the new conquest of Ireland 'by justice' of which Mr. Bright has spoken. His language is suggestive. It is late (happily not 'too late') to commence the reign of justice. But the nation is not to be despised which requires nothing more than _that_ to win its heart, while its spirit could not be conquered by centuries of injustice. Nor should it be forgotten by the people of England that some atonement is due for past wrongs, not the least of which is the vilification and distrust from which the Irish people have suffered so much. 'The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?' Some manifestation of Christian magnanimity just now would greatly help the work of national reconciliation. The time is favourable. The Government enjoys the prestige of an unparalleled success. The only Prime Minister that ever dared to do full justice to Ireland, is the most powerful that England has had for nearly a century. He has in his Cabinet the only Chief Secretary of Ireland that ever thoroughly sympathised with the nation, not excepting Lord Morpeth; the great tribune of the English people, who has been one of the most eloquent advocates of Ireland; an Ex-Viceroy who has pronounced it felony for the Irish landlords to avail themselves of their legal rights, although he put down a rebellion which that felony mainly provoked; another Ex-Governor, who was one of the most earnest and conscientious that ever filled the viceregal throne, and who returned to Parliament to be one of the ablest champions of the country he had ruled so well; not to mention other members of commanding ability, who are solemnly pledged to the policy of justice. In these facts there is great promise. He understands little of 'the signs of the times,' who does not see the dangers that hang on the non-fulfilment of this promise. J.G. LONDON: _January 20_, 1870. CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTION II. THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS III. SHANE O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER IV. EXTERMINATING WARS V. AN IRISH CRUSADE VI. THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES VII. GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE VIII. THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS IX. THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER X. THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER XI. THE REBELLION OF 1641 XII. THE PURITAN PLANTATION XIII. THE PENAL CODE. A NEW SYSTEM OF LAND WAR XIV. ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY XV. POVERTY AND COERCION XVI. THE FAMINE XVII. TENANT-RIGHT IN ULSTER XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES' XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN 313 XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM 328 XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH 346 XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES' 356 XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY 381 XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL 387 XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES 401 XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN 424 THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. As the hour approaches when the legislature must deal with the Irish Land question, and settle it, like the Irish Church question, once for all, attempts are redoubled to frighten the public with the difficulties of the task. The alarmists conjure up gigantic apparitions more formidable than those which encountered Bunyan's Pilgrim. Monstrous figures frown along the gloomy avenue that, leads up to the Egyptian temple in which the divinity, PROPERTY, dwells in mysterious darkness. To enter the sanctuary, we are solemnly assured, requires all the cardinal virtues in their highest state of development--the firmest faith, the most vivid hope, and the charity that never faileth. But this is not the only country that has had a land question to settle. Almost every nation in Europe has done for itself what England is now palled upon to do for Ireland. In fact, it is a necessary process in the transition from feudalism to constitutional self-government. Feudalism gave the land to a few whom it made princes and lords, having forcibly taken it from the many, whom it made subjects and serfs. The land is the natural basis of society. The Normans made it the artificial basis of a class. Society in nearly every other country has reverted back to its original foundations, and so remains firm and strong without dangerous rents or fissures. No doubt, the operation is difficult and critical. But what has been done once may be done again; and as it was England that kept Irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad foundations. Giving up the Viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission of Ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for England, we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the Irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. Let the imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of things--thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial Union of the two nations united together in one State--thus only can they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element. It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors, even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof. The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted defilement from his lips.' It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong. The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches and monasteries. Even the Saxon saints were flung down out of their shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the Christian conqueror. Everything Saxon was vile, and the word 'Englishry' implied as much contempt and scorn as the word 'Irishry' in a later age. In fact, the subjugated Saxons gradually became infected with all the vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among the Irish in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history, is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. 'Who dare,' he says, 'compare the English, the most degraded of all races under heaven, with the Welsh? In their own country they are the serfs, the veriest slaves of the Normans. In ours whom else have we for our herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog kennels, ay, even of our privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was, according to this authority, a proverbial expression. The Saxon writers lamented their miserable subjection in a monotonous wail for many generations. So late as the seventeenth century an English author speaks in terms of compassion of the disinherited and despoiled families who had sunk into the condition of artisans, peasants, and paupers. 'This,' says M. Thierry, 'is the last sorrowful glance cast back through the mist of ages on that great event which established in England a race of kings, nobles, and warriors of foreign extraction. The reader must figure to himself, not a mere change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors, but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the _status_ merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of records and deeds, _a clothing of the soil_. He must not picture to himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting England, and consequently all English. He must bear in mind that there were two distinct nations--the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman invaders, dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might contemplate two countries--the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax--the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles--the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles--that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy--not the envy of the poor at the sight of opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on looking upon the spoilers. Lastly, to complete the picture, these two countries are in some sort interwoven with each other--they meet at every point, and yet they are more distinct, more completely separated, than if the ocean rolled between them.' Does not this picture look very like Ireland? To make it more like, let us imagine that the Norman king had lived in Paris, and kept a viceroy in London--that the English parliament were subordinate to the French parliament, composed exclusively of Normans, and governed by Norman undertakers for the benefit of the dominant State--that the whole of the English land was held by ten thousand Norman proprietors, many of them absentees--that all the offices of the government, in every department, were in the hands of Normans--that, differing in religion with the English nation, the French, being only a tenth of the population, had got possession of all the national churches and church property, while the poor natives supported a numerous hierarchy by voluntary contributions--that the Anglo-Norman parliament was bribed and coerced to abolish itself, forming a union of England with France, in which the English members were as one to six. Imagine that in consequence of rebellions the land of England had been confiscated three or four times, after desolating wars and famines, so that all the native proprietors were expelled, and the land was parcelled out to French soldiers and adventurers on condition that the foreign 'planters' should assist in keeping down 'the mere English' by force of arms. Imagine that the English, being crushed by a cruel penal code for a century, were allowed to reoccupy the soil as mere tenants-at-will, under the absolute power of their French landlords. If all this be imagined by English legislators and English writers, they will be better able to understand the Irish land question, and to comprehend the nature of 'Irish difficulties,' as well as the justice of feeble, insincere, and baffled statesmen in casting the blame of Irish misery and disorder on the unruly and barbarous nature of Irishmen. They will recollect that the aristocracy of Ireland are the high-spirited descendants of conquerors, with the instinct of conquest still in their blood. The parliament which enacted the Irish land laws was a parliament composed almost exclusively of men of this dominant race. They made all political power dependent on the ownership of land, thus creating for themselves a monopoly which it is not in human nature to surrender without a struggle. The possession of this monopoly, however, fully accounts for two things--the difficulty which the landlords feel in admitting the justice of the tenant's claims for the legal recognition of the value which his labour has added to the soil, and the extreme repugnance with which they regard any legislation on the subject. Besides, the want of sympathy with the people, of earnestness and courage in meeting the realities of the case, is conspicuous in all attempts of the kind during the last half-century. Those attempts have been evasive, feeble, abortive--concessions to the demand that _something_ must be done, but so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the power of the eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation dependent on the land for their existence. Hence has arisen a great amount of jealousy, distrust, and irritability in the landlord class towards the tenantry and their advocates. The Irish race, to adopt Thierry's language, are full of 'malignant envy' towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but because they have the people so completely in their power, so entirely at their mercy for all that man holds most dear. The tenants feel bitterly when they think that they have no legal right to live on their native land. They have read the history of our dreadful civil wars, famines, and confiscations. They know that by the old law of Ireland, and by custom from times far beyond the reach of authentic history, the clans and tribes of the Celtic people occupied certain districts with which their names are still associated, and that the land was inalienably theirs. Rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was 'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction of the people even for non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were things never heard of among the Irish under their own rulers. The chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and these he might forfeit. But as the clansmen could not control his acts, they could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations. History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the government in the reign of James I.--and James himself in repeated proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they did. Yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and Scotch settlers. Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the foundations of Irish landlordism. They declare that those foundations were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open from which that blood issued so profusely. The facts of the conquest and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question, and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and fostering mutual distrust between them. But the time for evasion and timidity has passed. We must now honestly and courageously face the stern realities of this case. Among these realities is a firm conviction in the minds of many landlords that they are in no sense trustees for the community, but that they have an absolute power over their estates--that they can, if they like, strip the land clean of its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep or cattle instead, or lay it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness, or sow it with salt. That is in reality the terrific power secured to them by the present land code, to be executed through the Queen's writ and by the Queen's troops--a power which could not stand a day if England did not sustain it by overwhelming military force. Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. Right or wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural rights of the people whom Providence placed in this country. With bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to root a nation out of its own land. Painful as this state of feeling is, there is no use in denying that it exists. Here, then, is the deep radical difference that is to be removed. Here are the two conflicting forces which are to be reconciled. This is the real Irish land question. All other points are minor and of easy adjustment. The people say, and, I believe, sincerely, that they are willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public valuation--not a rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties, which might be raised so as to ruin the occupier. The feelings of these two parties often clash so violently, there is such instinctive distrust between them, the peace and prosperity of the country depend so much on their coming to terms and putting an end to their long-standing feud, that it is still more imperatively necessary than in the Church question, that a third party, independent, impartial, and authoritative, should intervene and heal the breach. There was one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever--'_the want of tenure_.' All the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed industry and impeded social progress. It seems strange that any evidence should be thought necesary to prove that a man will not sow if he does not hope to reap, and that he will not build houses for strangers to enjoy. This would be taken as an axiom anywhere out of Ireland. Of all the people in Europe, the Irish have suffered most from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the country. Whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims; and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists were ecclesiastics. The extent to which they were slaughtered in the perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the English, is something awful to contemplate, not to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which those wars entailed. On several occasions the Celtic race seemed very nearly extinct. The penal code, with all its malign influence, had one good effect. It subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by suffering. Since that time, in spite of occasional visitations of calamity, they have been steadily rising in the social scale, and they are now better off than ever they were in their whole history. When we review the stages by which they have risen, we cannot but feel at times grieved and indignant at the opportunities for tranquillising and enriching the country which were lost through the ignorance, apathy, bigotry, and selfishness of the legislature. There was no end of commissions and select committees to inquire into the condition of the agricultural population, whenever Parliament was roused by the prevalence of agrarian outrages. They reported, and there the matter ended. There were always insuperable difficulties when the natives were to be put in a better position. Between 1810 and 1814, for example, a commission reported four times on the condition of the Irish bogs. They expressed their entire conviction of the practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent of land lying waste. In 1819, in 1823, in 1826, and in 1830, select committees inquired into and reported on drainage, reclamation of bogs and marshes, on roads, fisheries, emigration, and other schemes for giving employment to the redundant population that had been encouraged to increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. When, by the Emancipation Act in 1829, the forty-shilling franchise was abolished, the peasant lost his political value. After the war, when the price of corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing, labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung out to wither on the highway. Then came Lord Devon's Land Commission, which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine. The Irish population was now at its highest figure--between eight and nine millions. Yet, though there had been three bad seasons, it was clearly proved at that time that by measures which a wise and willing legislature would have promptly passed, the whole surplus population could have been profitably employed. In this great land controversy, on which side lies the truth? Is it the fault of the people, or the fault of the law, that the country is but half cultivated, while the best of the peasantry are emigrating with hostile feelings and purposes of vengeance towards England? As to the landlords, as a class, they use their powers with as much moderation and mercy as any other class of men in any country ever used power so vast and so little restrained. The best and most indulgent landlords, the most genial and generous, are unquestionably the old nobility, the descendants of the Normans and Saxons, those very conquerors of whom we have heard so much. The worst, the most harsh and exacting, are those who have purchased under the Landed Estates Court--strangers to the people, who think only of the percentage on their capital. We had heard much of the necessity of capital to develope the resources of the land. The capital came, but the development consists in turning tillage lands into pasture, clearing out the labouring population and sending them to the poorhouse, or shipping them off at a few pounds per head to keep down the rates. And yet is it not possible to set all our peasantry to work at the profitable cultivation of their native land? Is it not possible to establish by law what many landlords act upon as the rule of their estates--namely, the principle that no man is to be evicted so long as he pays a fair rent, and the other principle, that whenever he fails, he is entitled to the market value by public sale of all the property in his holding beyond that fair rent? The hereditary principle, rightly cherished among the landlords, so conservative in its influence, ought to be equally encouraged among the tenants. The man of industry, as well as the man of rank, should be able to feel that he is providing for his children, that his farm is at once a bank and an insurance office, in which all his minute daily deposits of toil and care and skill will be safe and productive. This is the way to enrich and strengthen the State, and to multiply guarantees against revolution--not by consolidation of farms and the abandonment of tillage, not by degrading small holders into day labourers, levelling the cottages and filling the workhouses. If the legislature were guided by the spirit that animates Lord Erne in his dealings with his tenantry, the land question would soon be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. 'I think,' said his lordship, 'as far as possible, every tenant on my estate may call his farm his castle, as long as he conducts himself honestly, quietly, and industriously; and, should he wish to leave in order to find a better landlord, I allow him to sell his farm, provided he pleases me in a tenant. Therefore, if a man lays out money on his farm judiciously, he is certain to receive back the money, should he wish to go elsewhere.' He mentioned three cases of sale which occurred last year. One tenant sold a farm of seventy acres in bad order for 570 l., another thirty acres for 300 l., and a third the same number of acres in worse condition for 200 l. The landlord lost nothing by these changes. His rent was paid up, and in each case he got a good tenant for a bad one. Lord Erne is a just man, and puts on no more than a fair rent. But all landlords are not just, as all tenants are not honest. Even where tenant-right is admitted in name, it is obvious that the rent may be raised so high as to make the farm worth nothing in the market. To give to the tenant throughout the country generally the pleasant feeling that his farm is his castle, which he can make worth more money every day he rises, there must be a public letting valuation, and this the State could easily provide. And then there should be the right of sale to the highest solvent bidder. This might be one way of securing permanent tenure, or stimulating the industry and sustaining the thrift of the farmer. But the nature of the different tenures, and the effect of each in bracing up or relaxing the nerves of industry, will be the object of deliberation with the Government and the legislature. It is said that, in the hands of small farmers, proprietorship leads to endless subdivision; that long leases generally cause bad husbandry; that tenants-at-will often feel themselves more secure and safe than a contract could make them; that families have lived on the same farm for generations without a scrape of a pen except the receipt for rent. On the other hand, there is the general cry of 'want of tenure;' there is the custom of serving notices to quit, sometimes for other reasons than non-payment of rent; there are occasional barbarities in the levelling of villages, and dragging the aged and the sick from the old roof-tree, the parting from which rends their heart-strings; and, above all, there is the feeling among the peasantry which makes them look without horror on the murder of a landlord or an agent who was a kind and benevolent neighbour; and, lastly, the paramount consideration for the legislature, that a large portion of the people are disaffected to the State, and ready to join its enemies, and this almost solely on account of the state of the law relating to land. Hence the necessity of settling the question as speedily as possible, and the duty of all who have the means to contribute something towards that most desirable consummation, which seems to be all that is wanted to make Irishmen of every class work together earnestly for the welfare of their country. It is admitted that no class of men in the world has improved more than the Irish landlords during the last twenty years. Let the legislature restore confidence between them and the people by taking away all ground for the suspicion that they wish to extirpate the Celtic race. Nor was this suspicion without cause, as the following history will too clearly prove. A very able English writer has said: 'The policy of all the successive swarms of settlers was to extirpate the native Celtic race, but every effort made to break up the old framework of society failed, for the new-comers soon became blended with and undistinguishable from the mass of the people--being obliged to ally themselves with the native chieftains, rather than live hemmed in by a fiery ring of angry septs and exposed to perpetual war with everything around them. Merged in the great Celtic mass, they adopted Irish manners and names, yet proscribed and insulted the native inhabitants as an inferior race. Everything liberal towards them is intercepted in its progress. 'The past history of Ulster is but a portion of Scottish history inserted into that of Ireland--a stone in the Irish mosaic of an entirely different quality and colour from the pieces that surround it. 'Thus it came to pass that, through the confiscation of their lands and the proscription of their religion, popery was worked by a most vehement process into the blood and brain of the Irish nation.' It has been often said that the Irish must be an inferior race, since they allowed themselves to be subjugated by some thousands of English invaders. But it should be recollected, first, that the conquest, commenced by Henry II. in the twelfth century, was not completed till the seventeenth century, when the King's writ ran for the first time through the province of Ulster, the ancient kingdom of the O'Neills; in the second place, the weakness of the Celtic communities was not so much the fault of the men as of their institutions, brought with them from the East and clung to with wonderful tenacity. So long as they had boundless territory for their flocks and herds, and could always move on 'to pastures new,' they increased and multiplied, and allowed the sword and the battle-axe to rest, unless when a newly elected chief found it necessary to give his followers 'a hosting'--which means an expedition for plunder. Down to the seventeenth century, after five hundred years' contact with the Teutonic race, they were essentially the same people as they were when the ancient Greeks and Romans knew them. They are thus described by Dr. Mommsen in his 'History of Rome:'--'Such qualities--those of good soldiers and of bad citizens--explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all States and have _founded none_. Everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march, preferring movable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms as a system of organised pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the Roman historian, Sallust, acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true 'soldiers of fortune' of antiquity, as pictures and descriptions represent them, with big but sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long moustaches--quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the upper lip--in the variegated embroidered dresses which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off, with a broad gold ring round their neck, wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation--even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. War-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and Hellenes in the earliest times. Many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages, particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accustomed in war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; in peace also they fought with each other in splendid equipments, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed in due course. In this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier life, constantly occupied in fighting and in their so-called feats of heroism. They were dispersed from _Ireland_ and Spain to Asia Minor, but all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring, and they nowhere created a great state or developed a distinctive culture of their own.' Such were the people who once almost terminated the existence of Rome, and were afterwards with difficulty repulsed from Greece, who became masters of the most fertile part of Italy and of a fair province in the heart of Asia Minor, who, after their Italian province had been subdued, inflicted disastrous blows on successive Roman generals, and were only at last subjugated by Cæsar himself in nine critical and sometimes most dangerous campaigns, B.C. 51. Niebuhr observes that at that time the form of government was everywhere an hereditary monarchy, which, when Cæsar went into Gaul, had been swallowed up, as had the authority of the Senate, in the anarchy of the nobles. Their freedom was lawlessness; an inherent incapacity of living under the dominion of laws distinguishes them as barbarians from the Greeks and Italians. As individuals had to procure the protection of some magnate in order to live in safety, so the weaker tribes took shelter under the patronage of a more powerful one. For they were a disjointed multitude; and when any people had in this manner acquired an extensive sovereignty, they exercised it arbitrarily until its abuses became intolerable, or their subjects were urged by blind hatred of their power to fall off from them, and gather round some new centre. The sole bond of union was the Druidical hierarchy which, at least in Cæsar's time, was common to both nations. Both of them paid obedience to its tribunal, which administered justice once a year--an institution which probably was not introduced till long after the age of migrations, when the expulsion of the vanquished had ceased to be regarded as the end of war, and which must have been fostered by the constant growth of lawlessness in particular states--being upheld by the _ban_, which excluded the contumacious from all intercourse in divine worship and in daily life with the faithful. The huge bodies, wild features, and long shaggy hair of the men, gave a ghastliness to their aspect. This, along with their fierce courage, their countless numbers, and the noise made by an enormous multitude of horns and trumpets, struck the armies arrayed against them with fear and amazement. If these, however, did not allow their terror to overpower them, the want of order, discipline, and perseverance would often enable an inferior number to vanquish a vast host of the barbarians. Besides, they were but ill equipped. Few of them wore any armour; their narrow shields, which were of the same height with their bodies, were weak and clumsy; they rushed upon their enemies with broad thin battle-swords of bad steel, which the first blow upon iron often notched and rendered useless. Like true savages, they destroyed the inhabitants, the towns, and the agriculture of the countries they conquered. They cut off the heads of the slain, and tied them by the hair to the manes of their horses. If a skull belonged to a person of rank, they nailed it up in their houses and preserved it as an heirloom for their posterity, as the nobles in rude ages do stag-horns. Towns were rare amongst them; the houses and the villages, which were very numerous, were mean, the furniture wretched--a heap of straw covered with skins served both for a bed and a seat. They did not cultivate corn save for a very limited consumption, for the main part of their food was the milk and the flesh of their cattle. These formed their wealth. Gold, too, they had in abundance, derived partly from the sandy beds of their rivers, partly from some mines which these had led them to discover. It was worn in ornaments by every Gaul of rank. In battle he bore gold chains on his arms and heavy gold collars round his neck, even when the upper part of his body was in other respects quite naked. For they often threw off their parti-coloured chequered cloaks, which shone with all the hues of the rainbow, like the picturesque dress of their kinspeople the Highlanders, who have laid aside the trousers of the ancient Gauls. Their duels and gross revels are an image of the rudest part of the middle ages. Their debauches were mostly committed with beer and mead; for vines and all the plants of southern regions were as yet total strangers to the north of the Alps, where the climate in those ages was extremely severe; so that wine was rare, though of all the commodities imported it was the most greedily bought up. Ulster was known in ancient times as one of the five Irish 'kingdoms,' and remained unconquered by the English till the reign of James I., when the last prince of the great house of O'Neill, then Earl of Tyrone, fled to the Continent in company with O'Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel, head of another very ancient sept. Up to that period the men of Ulster proudly regarded themselves as 'Irish of the Irish and Catholic of the Catholics.' The inhabitants were of mixed blood, but, as in the other provinces of the island, the great mass of the people, as well as the ruling classes, were of Celtic origin. Those whom ethnologists still recognise as aborigines, in parts of Connaught and in some mountainous regions, an inferior race, are said to be the descendants of the Firbolgs, or Belgae, who formed the third immigration. They were followed and subdued by the Tuatha de Danans--men famed for their gigantic power and supernatural skill--a race of demigods, who still live in the national superstitions. The last of the ancient invasions was by the Gael or Celt, known as the Milesians and Scoti. The institutions and customs of this people were established over the whole island, and were so deeply rooted in the soil that their remnants to this day present the greatest obstacles to the settlement of the land question according to the English model, and on the principles of political economy, which run directly counter to Irish instincts. It is truly wonderful how distinctly the present descendants of this race preserve the leading features of their primitive character. In France and England the Celtic character was moulded by the power and discipline of the Roman Empire. To Ireland this modifying influence never extended; and we find the Ulster chiefs who fought for their territories with English viceroys 280 years ago very little different from the men who followed Brennus to the sack of Home, and encountered the legions of Julius Cæsar on the plains of Gaul. Mr. Prendergast observes, in the introduction to his 'Cromwellian Settlement' that when the companions of Strongbow landed in the reign of Henry II. they found a country such as Cæsar had found in Gaul 1200 years before. A thousand years had passed over the island without producing the slightest social progress--'the inhabitants divided into tribes on the system of the clansmen and chiefs, without a common Government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with Brehons, Shaunahs, minstrels, bards, and harpers, in all unchanged, except that for their ancient Druids they had got Christian priests. Had the Irish remained honest pagans, Ireland perhaps had remained unconquered still. Round the coast strangers had built seaport towns, either traders from the Carthaginian settlements in Spain, or outcasts from their own country, like the Greeks that built Marseilles. At the time of the arrival of the French and Flemish adventurers from Wales, they were occupied by a mixed Danish and French population, who supplied the Irish with groceries, including the wines of Poitou, the latter in such abundance that they had no need of vineyards.' If vineyards had been needed, we may be sure they would not have been planted, for the Irish Celts planted nothing. Neither did they build, except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. Mr. Prendergast is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly Celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in which the Irish princes delighted to dwell. 'Unlike England,' he says, 'then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls and villains, as the English peasantry were called, the dwellings of the Irish chiefs were of wattles or clay. It is for robbers and foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security; for native rulers, there is no such fortress _as justice and humanity_.' This is very fine, but surely Mr. Prendergast cannot mean that the Irish chiefs were distinguished by their justice and humanity. The following touch is still grander:--'The Irish, like the wealthiest and highest of the present day, loved detached houses surrounded by fields and woods. Towns and their walls they looked upon as tombs or sepulchres, &c.' As to fields, there were none, because the Irish never made fences, their patches of cultivated land being divided by narrow strips of green sod. Besides, they lived in villages, which were certainly surrounded by woods, because the woods were everywhere, and they furnished the inhabitants with fuel and shelter, as well as materials for building their huts. But further on this able author expresses himself much more in accordance with the truth of history, when he states that the 'Irish enemy' was no _nation_ in the modern sense of the word, but a race divided into many nations or tribes, _separately_ defending their lands from the English barons in the immediate neighbourhood. There had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty overthrown; the Irish had _no national flag_, nor any capital city as the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration of law.' He might have added that they had no _mint_. There never was an Irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. Some stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad, but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter prevailed in Ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows. Even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before the arrival of the Celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared at the time of the English invasion. Any handy men could build a house of mud and wattles. Masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers, &c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. Spinning and weaving were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off when fighting or any other serious work was to be done. I should be sorry to disparage the Celtic race, or any other race, by exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony to their merits. But with me the truth of history is sacred. Both sides of every case should be fairly stated. Nothing can be gained by striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes the trouble to study the subject. I write in the interest of the people--of the toiling masses; and I find that they were oppressed and degraded by the ruling classes long before the Norman invader took the place of the Celtic chief. And it is a curious fact that when the Cromwellians turned the Catholic population out of their homes and drove them into Connaught, they were but following the example set them by the Milesian lords of the soil centuries before. The late Mr. Darcy Magee, a real lover of his country, in his Irish history points out this fact. The Normans found the population divided into two great classes--the free tribes, chiefly if not exclusively Celtic, and the unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the subjugated races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by the sword, and the offspring of foreign mercenary soldiers. 'The unfree tribes,' says Mr. Darcy Magee, 'have left no history. Under the despotism of the Milesian kings, it was high treason to record the actions of the conquered race, so that the Irish Belgae fared as badly in this respect at the hands of the Milesian historians as the latter fared in after times from the chroniclers of the Normans. We only know that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors. One thing is certain--the jealous policy of the superior race never permitted them to reascend the plane of equality from which they had been hurled at the very commencement of the Milesian ascendency.' Mr. Haverty, another Catholic historian, learned, accurate, and candid, laments the oppression of the people by their native rulers. 'Those who boasted descent from the Scytho-Spanish hero would have considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, _ollavs_, or physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the _Firbolgs_ and the _Tuatha-de-Danans_--the former people, in particular, being still very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in the west. These were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant exactions of the dominant race, _in order to support their unbounded hospitality_ and defray the expenses of costly assemblies; but this oppression must have caused perpetual discontent, and the hard-working plebeians, as they were called, easily perceived that their masters were running headlong to destruction, and that it only required a bold effort to shake off their yoke.' Then follows an account of a civil war, one of the leaders of the revolution being elected king at its termination. Carbry reigned five years, during which time there was no rule or order, and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak.' Dr. Lynch, author of _Cambrensis Eversus_, expresses his astonishment at the great number of ancient Irish kings, most of whom were cut off by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body of his predecessor. But upon applying his mind to the more profound consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in the phenomenon 'than that the human family should proceed from one man--the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.' His learned translator, the Rev. Matthew Kelly, of Maynooth, sees proof of amendment in the fact that between 722 and 1022 twelve Irish kings died a natural death. This candid and judicious writer observes in a note--'It appears from the Irish and English annals that there was perpetual war in Ireland during more than 400 years after the invasion. It could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during the first century, for English and Irish are constantly found fighting under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival lords and princes of both nations. This was the case even from the commencement.'[1] [Footnote 1: Vol. i. p.216.] Many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of English invaders. Why did not the Irish nation rise _en masse_, and drive them into the sea? The answer is easy. There was no Irish nation. About half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages, divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary--some, perhaps, hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted them. It was religion that first gave the Irish race a common cause. In the very year of the English invasion (1171) there were no fewer than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the Irish chiefs themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders. Hence the Pope said--'_Gens se interimit mutua cæde_.' The Pope was right. The clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination. Not only the _Bashall Isa_, or 'the staff of Jesus,' but many other relics were used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the peace, but in vain. The King of Connaught once broke a truce entered into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all, that he might get the King of Meath into his clutches. Hence the Rev. Mr. Kelly is constrained to say--'It is now generally admitted by Catholic writers that however great the efforts of the Irish clergy to reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the picture of anarchy drawn by Pope Adrian is hardly overcharged.' Indeed, some Catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing a strong central government. This, however, was not accomplished till after a struggle of centuries, during which, except in brief intervals, when a strong prince was able to protect his people, the national demoralisation grew worse and worse. An Oxford priest, who kept a school at Limerick, writing so late as 1566 of the Irish nobles, says--'Of late they spare neither churches nor hallowed places, but thence also they fill their hands with spoil--yea, and sometimes they set them on fire and kill the men that there lie hidden.' Mr. Froude, following the Irish MSS. in the Rolls House, has presented graphic pictures of the disorders of the Irishry in the reign of Queen Mary. 'The English garrison,' he says, 'harassed and pillaged the farmers of Meath and Dublin; the chiefs made forays upon each other, killing, robbing, and burning. When the war broke out between England and France, there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of nationality; the young Earl of Kildare, in reward to the Queen who had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of the patriots. Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits to which, by the exertions of Henry VIII., the circuits of the judges had been extended. And with the Brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant.' The correctness of this view is too well attested by the records which the learned historian brings to light, adopting the quaint and expressive phraseology of the old writers whom he quotes. For example:-- 'The lords and gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their neighbours abroad--working everyone his own wilful will for a law--to the spoil of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of the same. The idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never the better. The common people, having nothing left to lose, became as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and robbing by night. Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury their own quarrels, to join against the Queen and the English.' At the time when the crown passed to Elizabeth the qualities of the people were thus described by a correspondent of the council, who presents the English view of the Irishry at that time:-- 'The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish showeth them to be fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue and refrain and forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him listeth. They neither love nor dread God, nor yet hate the devil. They are worshippers of images and open idolaters. Their common oath they swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as holy religion. Their chief and solemnest oath is by their lord or master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure to pay a fine or sustain a worse turn. The Sabbath-day they rest from all honest exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied. They do not honour their father and mother as much as they do reverence strangers. For every murder that they commit they do not so soon repent, for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease killing all that name. They do not so commonly commit adultery; not for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the law of the realm, to the lands they possess. They steal but from the strong, and take by violence from the poor and weak. They know not so well who is their neighbour as who they favour; with him they will witness in right and wrong. They covet not their neighbours' good, but command all that is their neighbours' as their own. Thus they live and die, and there is none to teach them better. There are no ministers. Ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had, neither church nor parish, but all decayed. People will not come to inhabit where there is no defence of law.' After six years of _discipline and improvement_ Sir Henry Sidney, in 1566, described the state of the four shires, the Irish inhabitants, and the English garrison, in the following terms:--'The _English Pale_ is overwhelmed with vagabonds--stealth and spoil daily carried out of it--the people miserable--not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend 20 l. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor victual. The soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in any dangerous service.' A sort of 'special correspondent' or 'commissioner,' as we should call him now, furnished to Cecil a detailed account of the social condition of the people, which of course he viewed with English eyes. He found existing among them a general organisation wherever the Irish language was spoken--the remnants of a civilisation very ancient, but now fast tending to ruin. Next to the chiefs were the priesthood, and after them came a kind of intellectual hierarchy, consisting of four classes of spiritual leaders and teachers, which were thus described. The first was called the Brehon, or the judge. These judges took 'pawns' of both the parties, and then judged according to their own discretion. Their property was neutral, and the Irishmen would not prey upon them. They had great plenty of cattle, and they harboured many vagabonds and idle persons. They were the chief maintainers of rebels, but when the English army came to their neighbourhood they fled to the mountains and woods 'because they would not succour them with victuals and other necessaries.' The next sort was called _Shankee_, who had also great plenty of cattle wherewith they succoured the rebels. They made the ignorant men of the country believe that they were descended from Alexander the Great, or Darius, or Cæsar, 'or some other notable prince, which made the ignorant people run mad, and care not what they did.' This, the correspondent remarked, 'was very hurtful to the realm.' Not less hurtful were the third sort called _Denisdan_, who not only maintained the rebels, but caused those that would be true to become rebellious--'thieves, extortioners, murderers, raveners, yea, and worse if it was possible.' These seem to have been the historians or chroniclers of the tribe. If they saw a young man, the descendant of an O' or a Mac, with half a dozen followers, they forthwith made a rhyme about his father and his ancestors, numbering how many heads they had cut off, how many towns they had burned, how many virgins they had deflowered, how many notable murders they had done, comparing them to Hannibal, or Scipio, or Hercules, or some other famous person--'wherewithal the poor fool runs mad, and thinks indeed it is so.' Then he will gather a lot of rascals about him, and get a fortune-teller to prophesy how he is to speed. After these preliminaries he betakes himself with his followers at night to the side of a wood, where they lurk till morning. And when it is daylight, then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. Then must they have a bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray for them, yea, and praise their doings, and say, 'His father was accustomed so to do, wherein he will rejoice.' The fourth class consisted of 'poets.' These men had great store of cattle, and 'used all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. They were maintainers of witches and other vile matters, to the blasphemy of God, and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.' These four septs were divided in all places of the four quarters of Ireland, and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as Aran, the land of the Saints, Innisbuffen, Innisturk, Innismain, and Innisclare. These islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were 'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground, pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description Mr. Froude remarks in a note--'At present they are barren heaps of treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there are no hands to catch them. _The change is a singular commentary upon modern improvements_.' There were many branches belonging to the four septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means of information. For example, 'there was the branch of Gogath, the glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. There was another called the Carrow, a gambler, who generally went about naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his head. Then there was a set of women called Goyng women, blasphemers of God, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the people.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude's History, of England, vol. viii. chap. vii.] Mr. Froude says that this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an Irishman, even though a convert to Anglicanism, and anxious to please his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and discrimination. If Mr. Froude's great work has any fault, it is his unconscious prejudice against Ireland. He knows as well as anyone the working of the feudal system and the clan system in Scotland in the same age. He knows with what treachery and cruelty murders were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers--how anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he says--'_They manage things strangely in Ireland._ The old O'Neill, instead of being irritated, saw in this exploit a proof of commendable energy. He at once took Shane into favour, and, had he been able, would have given him his dead brother's rights.' CHAPTER II. THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS. Shane O'Neill was a man of extraordinary ability and tremendous energy, as the English found to their cost. He was guilty of atrocious deeds; but he had too many examples in those lawless times encouraging him to sacrifice the most sacred ties to his ambition. He resolved to seize the chieftainship by deposing his father and banishing him to the Pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. He was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the baron of Dungannon should be adopted by England as the rightful heir, and made Earl of Tyrone. This title he spurned, and proclaimed himself the O'Neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of Ulster, to which office he was elected by his people, taking the usual oath with his foot upon the sacred stone. This was an open defiance of English power, and he prepared to abide the consequences. He thought the opportunity a favourable one to recover the supremacy of his ancestors over the O'Donels. He accordingly mustered a numerous army, and marched into Tyrconnel, where he was joined by Hugh O'Donel, brother of Calvagh, the chief, with other disaffected persons of the same clan. O'Donel had recourse to stratagem. Having caused his cattle to be driven out of harm's way, he sent a spy into the enemy's camp, who mixed with the soldiers, and returning undiscovered, he undertook to guide O'Donel's army to O'Neill's tent, which was distinguished by a great watch-fire, and guarded by six galloglasses on one side and as many Scots on the other. The camp, however, was taken by surprise in the dead of night, and O'Neill's forces, careless or asleep, were slaughtered and routed without resistance. Shane himself fled for his life, and, swimming across three rivers, succeeded in reaching his own territory. This occurred the year before he cast off his allegiance to England. He was required to appear before Elizabeth in person to explain the grounds on which he had claimed the chieftainship. He consented, on condition that he got a safe-conduct and money for the expenses of his journey. At the same time he sent a long letter to the Queen, complaining of the treatment he had received, and defending his pretensions. The letter is characteristic of the man and of the times. He said: 'The deputy has much ill-used me, your Majesty; and now that I am going over to see you, I hope you will consider that I am but rude and uncivil, and do not know my duty to your Highness, nor yet your Majesty's laws, but am one brought up in wildness, far from all civility. Yet have I a good will to the commonwealth of my country; and please your Majesty to send over two commissioners that you can trust, that will take no bribes, nor otherwise be imposed on, to observe what I have done to improve the country, and hear what my accusers have to say; and then let them go into the Pale, and hear what the people say of your soldiers, with their horses, and their dogs, and their concubines. Within this year and a half, three hundred farmers are come from the English Pale to live in my country, where they can be safe. 'Please your Majesty, your Majesty's money here is not so good as your money in England, and will not pass current there. Please your Majesty to send me three thousand pounds in English money to pay my expenses in going over to you, and when I come back I will pay your deputy three thousand pounds Irish, such as you are pleased to have current here. Also I will ask your Majesty to marry me to some gentlewoman of noble blood meet for my vocation. I will make Ireland all that your Majesty wishes for you. I am very sorry your Majesty is put to such expense. If you will trust it to me, I will undertake that in three years you will have a revenue, where now you have continual loss.' Shane suspected evil designs on the part of the English, and not without reason. The object of the summons to England was to detain him there with 'gentle talk' till Sussex could return to his command with an English army powerful enough to subjugate Ulster. For this purpose such preparations were made by the English Government in men and money, 'that rebellion should have no chance; and,' says Mr. Froude, 'so careful was the secresy which was observed, to prevent Shane from taking alarm, that a detachment of troops sent from Portsmouth sailed with sealed orders, and neither men nor officers knew that Ireland was their destination till they had rounded the Land's End.' The English plans were well laid. Kildare, whom Elizabeth most feared, had accepted her invitation to go to London, and thus prevented any movement in the south, while O'Donel was prepared to join the English army on its advance into Ulster; and the Scots, notwithstanding their predilection for Mary Stuart, were expected to act as Argyle and his sister should direct. But Shane had a genius for intrigue as well as Elizabeth, and he was far more rapid than her generals in the execution of his plans. By a master-stroke of policy he disconcerted their arrangements. He had previously asked the Earl of Argyle to give him his daughter in marriage, in order that he might strengthen his alliance with the Ulster Scots. It is true that she had been already married to his rival, O'Donel; but that was a small difficulty in his way. The knot was tied, but he had no hesitation in cutting it with his sword. 'The countess' was well educated for her time. She was also a Protestant, and the government had hopes that her influence would be favourable to 'civility and the Reformation' among the barbarians of the north. But whatever advantages the presence of the fair Scottish missionary might bring, Shane O'Neill did not see why they should not be all his own, especially as he had managed somehow to produce a favourable impression on her heart. Accordingly he made a dash into Tyrconnel, and carried off both the lady and her husband to his stronghold, Shane's Castle, on the banks of Lough Neagh. Her Scotch guard, though fifteen hundred strong, had offered no resistance. O'Donel was shut up in a prison, and his wife became the willing paramour of the captor. 'The affront to McConnell was forgiven or atoned for by private arrangement, and the sister of the Earl of Argyle--an educated woman for her time, not unlearned in Latin, speaking French and Italian, counted sober, wise, and no less subtle--had betrayed herself and her husband. The O'Neills, by this last manoeuvre, became supreme in Ulster. Deprived of their head, the O'Donels sank into helplessness. The whole force of the province, such as it was, with the more serious addition of several thousand Scotch marauders, was at Shane's disposal, and thus provided, he thought himself safe in defying England to do its worst.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, Ibid.] Meantime, Sussex had arrived in Dublin preceded by his English forces. He made a rapid preliminary movement to the north, and seized the Cathedral of Armagh, in order to make it a fortified depôt for his stores. He then fell back into Meath, where he was joined by Ormond with flying companies of galloglasses. Soon after a singular attack was made on the English garrison at Armagh. Seeing a number of kernes scattered about the town, the officer in command sallied out upon them, when O'Neill suddenly appeared, accompanied by the Catholic Archbishop, on a hill outside the walls. 'The English had but time to recover their defences when the whole Irish army, led by a procession of monks, and every man carrying a fagot, came on to burn the cathedral over their heads. The monks sang a mass; the primate walked three times up and down the lines, willing the rebels to go forward, for God was on their side. Shane swore a great oath not to turn his back while an Englishman was alive; and with scream and yell his men came on. _Fortunately there were no Scots among them._ The English, though out-numbered ten to one, stood steady in the churchyard, and, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight, drove back the howling crowd. The Irish retired into the friars' houses outside the cathedral close, set them on fire, and ran for their lives.' 'So far,' adds Mr. Froude, 'all was well. After this there was no more talk of treating, and by the 18th, Sussex and Ormond were themselves at Armagh with a force--had there been skill to direct it--sufficient to have swept Tyrone from border to border.' The English historian exults in the valour of the small garrison of his countrymen, well-disciplined and sheltered behind a strong wall, in resisting the assault of a howling multitude of mere Irish, and he observes significantly, that 'fortunately there were no _Scots_ among them.' But he is obliged immediately after to record an Irish victory so signal that, according to the lord deputy himself, 'the fame of the English army so hardly gotten, was now vanished.' Yet Mr. Froude does not, in this, lay the blame of defeat upon the _nationality_ of the vanquished. It is only the Irish nation that is made the scape-goat in such cases. It was July, but the weather was wet, the rivers were high, Ormond was ill, Sussex would not leave his friend, and so the English army stayed in town doing nothing till the end of the month, when their failing provisions admonished them that an Irish hosting would be desirable. O'Neill, who seems to have been aware of the state of things, presented the appropriate temptation. Spies brought the lord deputy word that in the direction of Cavan there were herds of cows, which an active party might easily capture. These spies, with ardent professions of loyalty, offered to guide the English troops to the place where the booty would be found, their object being to draw them among bogs and rivers where they might be destroyed. The lord deputy did not think it necessary to accompany this host, which consisted of 200 horse, 500 men-at-arms, and some hundreds of the loyal Irish of the Pale. Shane intended to attack them the first night while resting on their march. But they escaped by an alteration of the route. Next morning they were marching on the open plain, miles from any shelter of hill or wood, when the Irish chief, with less than half their number, pursued them, and fell upon the cavalry in the rear, with the cry, '_Laundarg Aboo_--the Bloody Hand--Strike for O'Neill!' The English cavalry commanded by Wingfield, seized with terror, galloped into the ranks of their own men-at-arms, rode them down, and extricated themselves only to fly panic-stricken from the field to the crest of an adjoining hill. Meantime, Shane's troopers rode through the broken ranks, cutting down the footmen on all sides. The yells and cries were heard far off through the misty morning air. Fitzwilliam, who had the chief command, was about a mile in advance at the head of another body of cavalry, when a horseman was observed by him, galloping wildly in the distance and waving his handkerchief as a signal. He returned instantly, followed by his men, and flung himself into the _mêleé_. Shane receiving such a charge of those few men, and seeing more coming after, ran no farther risk, blew a recall note, and withdrew unpursued. Fitzwilliam's courage alone prevented the army from being annihilated. Out of 500 English 50 lay dead, and 50 more were badly wounded. The survivors fell back to Armagh 'so _dismayed_ as to be unfit for farther service.' Pitiable were the lamentations of the lord deputy to Cecil on this catastrophe. It was, said he, 'by cowardice the dreadfullest beginning that ever was seen in Ireland. Ah! Mr. Secretary, what unfortunate star hung over me that day to draw me, that never could be persuaded to be absent from the army at any time--to be then absent for a little disease of another man? _The rearward was the best and picked soldiers in all this land._ If I or any stout man had been that day with them, we had made an end of Shane--which is now farther off than ever it was. Never before durst Scot or Irishman look on Englishmen in plain or wood since I was here; and now Shane, in a plain three miles away from any wood, and where I would have asked of God to have had him, hath, with 120 horse, and a few Scots and galloglasse, _scarce half in numbers_, charged our whole army, and by the cowardice of one wretch whom I hold dear to me as my own brother, was like in one hour to have left not one man of that army alive, and after to have taken me and the rest at Armagh. The fame of the English army, so hardly gotten, is now vanished, and I, wretched and dishonoured, by the vileness of other men's deeds.' This is real history that Mr. Froude has given us. It places the actors before us, enables us to discern their characters, tells us who they are and what they have done. It shows also the value and the necessity of documentary evidence for establishing the truth of history. How different from the vague, uncertain, shadowy representations derived from oral tradition, or mere reports, though contemporary, circulated from mouth to mouth, and exaggerated according to the interests of one party or the other. Let us for illustration compare Mr. Froude's vivid picture of this battle, so disastrous to the English, with the account given of the same event by the Annalists called the Four Masters. These writers had taken great pains to collect the most authentic records of the various Irish tribes from the invasion by Henry II. to the period of which we are writing. They were intensely Irish, and of course glad of any opportunity of recording events creditable to the valour of their countrymen. They lived in Donegal, under the protection of O'Donel, but they showed themselves quite willing to do full justice to his great rival O'Neill. The presence of the lord deputy, the Earl of Ormond, and other great men at Armagh, with a select English army, would naturally have roused their attention, and when that army was encountered and vanquished in the open field by the Irish general, we should have expected that the details of such a glorious event would have been collected with the greatest care from the accounts of eye-witnesses. The bards and historiographers should have been on the alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. They were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse whatever for ignorance. Yet here is the miserably cold, _jejune_, feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the Annals of the Four Masters:--'The Lord Justice of Ireland, namely Thomas Fitzwalter (Sussex), marched into Tyrone to take revenge for the capture of Caloach O'Donel, and also for his own quarrels with the country. He encamped with a great army at Armagh, and constructed deep entrenchments and impregnable ramparts about the great church of Armagh, which he intended to keep constantly guarded. O'Neill, i.e. John, having received intelligence of this, sent a party of his faithful men and friends with Caloach O'Donel to guard and keep him from the Lord Justice, and they conveyed him from one island to another, in the recesses and sequestered places of Tyrone. After some time the Lord Justice sent out from the camp at Armagh, a number of his captains with 1000 men to take some prey and plunder in Oriel. O'Neill, having received private information and intelligence of those great troops marching into Oriel, proceeded privately and silently to where they were, and came up to them after they had collected their prey; a battle ensued in which many were slain on both sides; and finally the preys were abandoned, and fell into the hands of their original possessors on that occasion.' That is the whole account of the most signal victory over the English that had crowned the arms of Ulster during those wars! Not a word of the disparity of the forces, or the flight of the English cavalry, or the slaughter of the Englishmen-at-arms, or the humiliation and disabled condition of the garrison at Armagh. Equally unsatisfactory is the record of the subsequent march through Tyrone by Sussex, in the course of which his army slaughtered 4000 head of cattle, which they could not drive away. Of this tremendous destruction of property the Four Masters do not say a word. Such omissions often occur in their annals, even when dealing with contemporary events. Uncritical as they were and extremely credulous, how can we trust the records which they give of remote ages? CHAPTER III. O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER. The moral atmosphere of Elizabeth's court was not favourable to public virtue. Strange to say at this time Lord Pembroke seemed to be the only nobleman connected with it whose patriotism could be depended on; and, according to Cecil, there was not another person, 'no not one' who did not either wish well to Shane O'Neill, or so ill to the Earl of Sussex as 'rather to welcome the news than regret the English loss!' It would be difficult to find 'intriguing factiousness' baser than this even in barbarous Ireland. The success of O'Neill, however, had raised him high in the opinion of the Queen, who proposed, through the Earl of Kildare, to leave him in possession of all his territories, and let him govern the Irish 'according to Irish ideas' if he would only become her vassal. Sussex had returned to Dublin with the remnant of his army, while Fitzwilliam was dispatched to London to explain the disaster, bearing with him a petition from the Irish Council, that the troops who had been living in free quarters on the tenants of the Pale should be recalled or disbanded. 'Useless in the field and tyrannical to the farmer, they were a burden on the English exchequer, and answered no purpose but to make the English name detested.' To O'Neill the Queen sent a pardon, with a safe conduct to England, if he could be prevailed on to go. In the meantime Shane sent a message to the lord deputy, demanding the removal of the garrison from Armagh. One of his messengers, Neill Grey communicated secretly with Lord Sussex, affecting to dislike rebellion, and intimating that he might help the English to get rid of his master. The lord deputy, without the least scruple or apparent consciousness of the criminality or disgrace of the proceeding, actually proposed to this man that he should murder O'Neill. This villanous purpose he avows in his letter to the Queen. 'In fine,' said he, 'I breake with him to kill Shane; and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marcs of land by the year to him, and to his heirs, for his reward. He seemed desirous to serve your Highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life. What he will do I know not, but I assure your Highness he may do it without danger if he will. And if he will not do that he may in your service, there will be done _to him_ what others may. God send your Highness a good end.' This English nobleman was, it seems, pious as well as honourable, and could mingle prayers with his plots for assassination. Mr. Froude suggests extenuating circumstances: 'Lord Sussex, it appears, regarded Shane as a kind of wolf, whom having failed to capture in fair chase he might destroy by the first expedient that came to his hand.' And 'English honour, like English coin, lost something of its purity in the sister island.' Of course; it was the Irish atmosphere that did it all. But Sussex was not singular in this mode of illustrating English honour. A greater than he, the chivalrous Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote to a friend in Munster, recommending the treacherous assassination of the Earl of Desmond, as perfectly justifiable. And this crime, for which an ignorant Irishman would be hanged, was deliberately suggested by the illustrious knight whilst sitting quietly in his English study.[1] But what perplexes the historian most of all is that the Queen of England showed no resentment at the infamous proposal of Sussex. 'It is most sadly certain, however, that Sussex was continued in office, and inasmuch as it will be seen that he repeated the experiment a few months later, his letter could not have been received with any marked condemnation.' Yet Elizabeth was never in Ireland. [Footnote 1: See Life of Sir Walter Raleigh.] Fitzwilliam, however, returned with reinforcements of troops from Berwick, with which the deputy resolved to repair the credit of the English arms, and to set the Irish an example of civilised warfare. How did he do this? Dispatching provisions by sea to Lough Foyle, he succeeded this time in marching through Tyrone, 'and in destroying on his way 4,000 cattle, which he was unable to carry away. He had left Shane's cows to rot where he had killed them; and thus being without food, and sententiously and characteristically concluding that man by his policy might propose, but God at His will did dispose; Lord Sussex fell back by the upper waters of Lough Erne, sweeping the country before him.' When the Irish peasantry saw the carcasses of their cattle rotting along the roads, while their children were famished for want of milk, they must have been most favourably impressed with the blessings of British rule! Shane, instead of encountering the deputy on his own territory, amused himself burning villages in Meath. Neither of those rulers--those chief protectors of the people--seems to have been conscious that he was doing anything wrong in destroying the homes and the food of the wretched inhabitants, whom they alternately scourged. On the contrary, the extent of devastation which they were able to effect was supposed to put them in a better position for meeting together, and treating as honourable and gallant representatives of their respective nations. In accordance with the desire of the Queen, Shane, fresh from the work of destruction in the Pale, was invited to a conference with Kildare. They met at Dundalk, and the Irish chief consented to wait upon Elizabeth in London, being allowed to name his own conditions. In doing so he implied 'that he was rather conferring a favour than receiving one, and that he was going to England as a victorious enemy permitting himself to be conciliated.' He demanded a safe-conduct so clearly worded that, whatever was the result of his visit, he should be free to return; he required 'a complete amnesty for his past misdeeds, and he stipulated that Elizabeth should pay all expenses for himself and his retinue; the Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and Kildare must receive him in state at Dundalk, and escort him to Dublin; Kildare must accompany him to England; and, most important of all, Armagh Cathedral must be evacuated. He did not anticipate treachery; and either he would persuade Elizabeth to recognise him, and thus prove to the Irish that rebellion was the surest road to prosperity and power, or, at worst, by venturing into England, and returning unscathed, he would show them that the Government might be defied with more than impunity.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude.] These terms, so humiliating to English pride, were advocated in the Council 'for certain secret respects;' and even Sir William Cecil was not ashamed to say, 'that, in Shane's absence from Ireland,' _something might be cavilled against him or his_, for non-observing the covenants on his side; and so the pact being infringed, the matter might be used as should be thought fit. With this understanding Elizabeth wrote, making all the ignominious concessions demanded, save one, the evacuation of the cathedral. Shane replied in lofty terms that, although for the Earl of Sussex he would not mollify one iota of his agreement, yet he would consent at the request of her Majesty. 'Thus,' says Mr. Froude, 'with the Earl of Kildare in attendance, a train of galloglasse, 1,000 l. in hand, and a second 1,000 l. awaiting for him in London, the champion of Irish freedom sailed from Dublin, and appeared on the second of January at the English court.' It is stated that Cecil, Pembroke, and Bacon, received him privately on his arrival, instructed him how to behave in the royal presence, gave him the promised money, and endeavoured to impress upon him the enormity of his offences. But, to every appeal made to his conscience, Shane answered by a counter appeal about money; 2,000 l. was a poor present from so great a Queen; he was sure their honours would give him a few more hundreds. He agreed, however, to make a general confession of his sins in Irish and English; and, thus tutored, Elizabeth received him in state on January 6, 1562, attended by the Council, the peers, the foreign ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, who gazed 'as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert.' The scene is very graphically described by Mr. Froude: 'O'Neill stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back, and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. Behind him followed his galloglasse, bare-headed and fair-haired, with shirts of mail which reached their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoulders, and short broad battle-axes in their hands. At the foot of the throne the chief paused, bent forward, threw himself on his face upon the ground, and then, rising upon his knees, spoke aloud in Irish!' Camden says he 'confessed his crime and rebellion with howling,' and Mr. Froude adds that, to his hearers, the sound of the words 'was as the howling of a dog.' He said:-- 'Oh! my most dread sovereign lady and queen, like as I Shane O'Neill, your Majesty's subject of your realm of Ireland, have of long time desired to come into the presence of your Majesty to acknowledge my humble and bounden subjection, so am I now here upon my knees by your gracious permission, and do most humbly acknowledge your Majesty to be my sovereign lady and Queen of England, France, and Ireland; and I do confess that, for lack of civil education, I have offended your Majesty and your laws, for the which I have required and obtained your Majesty's pardon. And for that I most humbly, from the bottom of my heart, thank your Majesty, and still do with all humbleness require the continuance of the same; and I faithfully promise here before Almighty God and your Majesty, and in presence of all these your nobles, that I intend, by God's grace, to live hereafter in the obedience of your Majesty as a subject of your land of Ireland. 'And because this my speech, being Irish, is not well understanded, I have caused this my submission to be written in English and Irish, and thereto have set my hand and seal; and to these gentlemen, my kinsmen and friends, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to be merciful and gracious.' Camden remarks that the bare-headed galloglasse, with long dishevelled hair, crocus-dyed shirts, wide sleeves, short jackets, shaggy cloaks, &c., were objects of great wonder to the Londoners; while the hauteur of the Irish prince excited the merriment of the courtiers, who styled him 'O'Neill the Great, cousin to St. Patrick, friend to the Queen of England, enemy to all the world besides.' Notwithstanding Shane's precautions with respect to the safe-conduct, English artifice outdid Irish cunning. With all their horror of the Jesuits, Elizabeth's ministers in this case practised mental reservation. True, the Government had promised to permit him to return to Ireland, but then the time of his stay had not been specified. Various pretexts were invented to detain him. He must be recognised as his father's heir; the cause must be pleaded before the English judges; the young Baron of Dungannon must come over and be heard on the other side. O'Neill was told that he had been sent for, while Cecil wrote privately to Fitzwilliam to keep him safe in Ireland. While the prince was thus humoured with vain excuses, he was occupied in pleading his own cause by flattering communications to the Queen, 'whose fame was spoken of throughout the world.' He wished to study the wisdom of her government, that he might know better how to order himself in civil polity. He was most urgent that her Majesty would give him 'some noble English lady for a wife, with augmentation of living suitable.' If she would give him his father's earldom, he would make her the undisputed sovereign of willing subjects in Ulster; he would drive away all her enemies, save her from all further expense, and secure for her a great increase of revenue. He begged in the meantime, that he might be allowed to attend her favourite, Lord Robert Cecil, in order to learn 'to ride after the English fashion, to run at the tilt, to hawk, to shoot, and use such other good exercises as the said good lord was most apt unto.' Thus month after month passed away, and Shane was still virtually a prisoner. 'At length,' says Mr. Froude, 'the false dealing produced its cruel fruit, the murder of the boy who was used as the pretext for the delay. Sent for to England, yet prevented from obeying the command, the young Baron of Dungannon was waylaid at the beginning of April in a wood near Carlingford by Turlogh O'Neill. He fled for his life, with the murderers behind him, till he reached the bank of a deep river, which he could not swim, and there he was killed.' This event brought matters to a crisis, and Shane's cause was triumphant. By articles entered into between him and the Queen it was agreed that he was to be constituted captain or governor of Tyrone 'in the same manner as other captains of the said nation called O'Nele's had rightfully executed that office in the time of King Henry VIII. And, moreover, he was to enjoy and have the name and title of O'Nele, with the like authority as any other of his ancestors, with the service and homage of all the lords and captains called _urraughts_, and other nobles of the said nation of O'Nele.' All this was upon the condition 'that he and his said nobles should truly and faithfully, from time to time, serve her Majesty, and, where necessary, wage war against all her enemies in such manner as the Lord Lieutenant for the time being should direct.' The title of O'Neill, however, was to be contingent on the decision of Parliament as to the validity of the letters-patent of Henry VIII. Should that decision be unfavourable, he was to enjoy his powers and prerogatives under the style and title of the Earl of Tyrone, with feudal jurisdiction over the northern counties. The Pale was to be no shelter to any person whom he might demand as a malefactor. If any Irish lord or chief did him wrong, and the deputy failed within twenty-one days to exact reparation, Shane might raise an army and levy war on his private account. An exception was made on behalf of the loyal O'Donel, whose cause was to be submitted to the arbitration of the Irish earls. The 'indenture' between the Queen and O'Neill was signed by the high contracting parties, and bears date April 30, 1562. The English historian indignantly remarks: 'A rebel subject treating as an equal with his sovereign for the terms on which he would remain in his allegiance was an inglorious spectacle; and the admission of Shane's pretensions to sovereignty was one more evidence to the small Ulster chiefs that no service was worse requited in Ireland than fidelity to the English crown. The Maguires, the O'Reillys, the O'Donels--all the clans who had stood by Sussex in the preceding summer--were given over to their enemy bound hand and foot. But Elizabeth was weary of the expense, and sick of efforts which were profitless as the cultivation of a quicksand. True it was that she was placing half Ireland in the hands of an adulterous, murdering scoundrel, but the Irish liked to have it so, and she forced herself to hope that he would restrain himself for the future within the bounds of decency.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude.] In that hope she was soon disappointed. Shane with his galloglasse returned in glory, his purse lined with money and honour wreathed about his brows. He told the northern chiefs that he had gone to England not to lose but to win, and that they must henceforth submit to his authority, or feel his power. The O'Donels, relying on English promises, dared to refuse allegiance to the O'Neill, whereupon, without consulting the lord deputy, 'he called his men to arms and marched into Tyrconnel, killing, robbing, and burning in the old style through farm and castle.' The Irish historians, however, make excuses for O'Neill, affirming that he was released from his obligations by the bad faith of the lord deputy. He it was who gave him a safe conduct to Dublin, that he might take the oath of allegiance according to promise; but the document was so ingeniously worded that its meaning might be twisted so as to make him a prisoner. He was informed of this treachery, and, as Mr. Froude remarks, 'Shane was too cunning a fish, and had been too lately in the meshes, to be caught again in so poor a snare.' A most attractive bait was provided by Sussex in the person of his sister, who had been brought over to Dublin, and who might be won by the great northern chief if he would only come up to the viceregal court to woo her. 'Shane glanced at the tempting morsel with wistful eyes. Had he trusted himself in the hands of Sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing and a rough nuptial knot about his neck. At the last moment a little bird carried the tale to his ear. He had been advertized out of the Pale that the lady was brought over only to entrap him, and if he came to the deputy he should never return.' He therefore excused himself by alleging that his duty to the Queen forbade him to leave the province while it was in such a disturbed condition, the disturbance being caused chiefly by his own predatory excursions into the territories of the O'Donels and Maguires. Shane took charge of the affairs of the Church as well as of the State. The Catholic primate refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth as the head of the Church, the see was declared vacant, and a _congé d'élire_ was sent down for the appointment of 'Mr. Adam Loftus,' an Englishman, who came over as the lord deputy's chaplain. The answer returned and reported by Sussex to the Queen was 'that the chapter there, whereof the greater part were Shane O'Neill's horsemen, were so sparkled and out of order that they could by no means be assembled for the election. In the meantime the lord deputy began to apprehend that O'Neill aspired, not without some hope of success, to the sovereignty of the whole island. It was found that he was in correspondence with the Pope, and the Queen of Scots, and the King of Spain. No greater danger, wrote Sussex, had ever been in Ireland. He implored the Queen not to trifle with it, declaring that he wished some abler general to take the command, not from any want of will, 'for he would spend his last penny and his last drop of blood for her Majesty.' Right and left Shane was crushing the petty chiefs, who implored the protection of the Government. Maguire requested the deputy to write to him in English, not in Latin, because the latter language was well known, and but few of the Irish had any knowledge of the former, in which therefore the secrets of their correspondence would be more safe. Here is a specimen of his English: 'I know well that within these four days the sayed Shan will come to dystroy me contrey except your Lordshypp will sette some remedy in the matter.' He did indeed go down into Fermanagh with 'a great hoste.' As Maguire refused to submit, Shane 'bygan to wax mad, and to cawsse his men to bran all his corn and howsses.' He spared neither church nor sanctuary; three hundred women and children were piteously murdered, and Maguire himself, clean banished, as he described it, took refuge with the remnant of his people in the islands on the lake, whither Shane was making boats to pursue him. 'Help me, your lordship,' the hunted wretch cried, in his despair, to Sussex. 'Ye are lyke to make hym the strongest man of all Erlond, for every man wyll take an exampull by the gratte lostys; take hyd to yourself by thymes, for he is lyke to have all the power from this place thill he come to the wallys of Gallway to rysse against you.'[1] [Footnote 1: Wright's Elizabeth, vol. i. p.73.] It is the boast of the Irish that when Shane had subdued all his opponents, he ruled Tyrone for some time with such order, 'that if a robbery was committed within his territory, he either caused the property to be restored, or reimbursed the loser out of his own treasury.'[1] [Footnote 1: Haverty's History of Ireland, p.300.] The perplexity of the Government in this critical emergency is vividly described by Mr. Froude: 'Elizabeth knew not which way to turn. Force, treachery, conciliation had been tried successively, and the Irish problem was more hopeless than ever. In the dense darkness of the prospects of Ulster there was a solitary gleam of light. Grown insolent with prosperity, Shane had been dealing too peremptorily with the Scots; his countess, though compelled to live with him, and to be the mother of his children, had felt his brutality and repented of her folly, and perhaps attempted to escape. In the daytime, when he was abroad marauding, she was coupled like a hound to a page or a horse-boy, and only released at night when he returned to his evening orgies. The fierce Campbells were not men to bear tamely these outrages from a drunken savage on the sister of their chief, and Sussex conceived that if the Scots, by any contrivance, were separated from Shane, they might be used as a whip to scourge him.' At length Sussex, determined to crush the arch-rebel, marched northward in April, 1563, with a mixed force of English and Irish, ill-armed, ill-supplied, dispirited and almost disloyal. The diary of the commander-in-chief is, perhaps, the funniest on record: 'April 6: The army arrived at Armagh. April 8: The army marches back to Newry to bring up stores and ammunition left behind. April 11: The army advances again to Armagh, where it waits for galloglasse and kerne from the Pale. April 14: The commander-in-chief answers a letter from James M'Connell. April 15: The army goes upon Shane's cattle, of which it takes enough to serve it, but would have taken more if it had had galloglasse.' Next day it returns to Armagh. There it waits three days for the galloglasse, and then sends back for them to Dublin. On April 20, again writes M'Connell, because he did not come according to promise. April 21: The army surveys the Trough mountains. April 22: The pious commander winds up the glorious record in these words: 'To Armagh with the spoil taken which would have been much more if we had had galloglasse, and because St. George even forced me, her Majesty's lieutenant, to return to divine service that night. April 23: Divine service.' Subsequently his lordship's extreme piety caused him the loss of 300 horses, which he naïvely confesses thus: 'Being Easter time, and he having travelled the week before, and Easter day till night, thought fit to give Easter Monday to prayer, and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses.' To this Mr. Froude adds the pertinent remark: 'The piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to Neil Greg to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration.' In connexion with the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill Lord Elcho proposed Solomon's plan of settling the dispute of the two mother Churches about Ireland. He would cut the country in two, establishing Protestantism in the north and Catholicism in the south. When an experienced member of the House of Commons makes such a proposition in this age, we should not be surprised that Sir Thomas Cusack in the year 1563 proposed to Queen Elizabeth that Ireland should be divided into four provinces, each with a separate president, either elected by the people or chosen in compliance with their wishes. O'Neill was to have the north, the Clanrickards the west, the O'Briens or Desmonds the south, and thus the English might be allowed the undisturbed enjoyment of the Pale. This notable scheme for settling the Irish question was actually adopted by the Queen, and she wrote to Sussex, stating that, as his expedition to the north had resulted only in giving fresh strength to the enemy, she 'had decided to come to an end of the war of Ulster by agreement rather than by force.' To Shane she was all compliance. He had but to prove himself a good subject, and he might have any pre-eminence which her Majesty could grant without doing any other person wrong. 'If he desired to have a council established at Armagh, he should himself be the president of that council; if he wished to drive the Scots out of Antrim, her own troops would assist in the expulsion; if he was offended with the garrison in the cathedral, she would gladly see peace maintained in a manner less expensive to herself. To the primacy he might name the person most agreeable to himself, and with the primacy, as a matter of course, even the form of maintaining the Protestant Church would be abandoned also. In return for these concessions the Queen demanded only that Shane, to save her honour, should sue for them as a favour instead of demanding them as a right. The rebel chief consented without difficulty to conditions which cost him nothing, and after an interview with Cusack, O'Neill wrote a formal apology to Elizabeth, and promised for the future to be her Majesty's true and faithful subject. Indentures were drawn up on December 17, in which the Ulster sovereignty was transferred to him in everything but the name, and the treaty required only Elizabeth's signature, when a second dark effort was made to cut the knot of the Irish difficulty.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, vol. viii. p.48.] This second 'dark effort' was nothing less than an attempt to murder O'Neill by means of poison. He could not be conquered; he could not be out-manoeuvred; he could not be assassinated in the ordinary way. But the resources of Dublin Castle, and of English ingenuity, were not exhausted. The lord deputy was of course delighted with the reconciliation which had been effected with the Ulster prince. What could be more natural than to send him a present of the choicest wine from the viceregal cellars? certainly few presents could be more agreeable. Shane and his household quaffed the delicious beverage freely enough we may be sure, without the slightest suspicion that there was death in the cup. But the wine was mingled with poison. Those who drank it were quickly at the point of death. O'Neill might thank his good constitution for his recovery from an illness almost mortal. The crime was traced to an Englishman named Smith, who, if employed by Lord Sussex, did not betray the guilty secret. Mr. Froude admits that the suspicion cannot but cling to him that this second attempt at murder was not made without his connivance; 'nor,' he adds, 'can Elizabeth herself be wholly acquitted of responsibility. She professed the loudest indignation, but she ventured no allusion to his previous communication with her, and no hint transpires of any previous displeasure when the proposal had been made openly to herself. The treachery of an English nobleman, the conduct of the inquiry, and the anomalous termination of it, would have been incredible even in Ireland, were not the original correspondence extant, in which the facts are not denied.' O'Neill of course complained loudly to the Queen, whereupon she directed that a strict investigation should take place, in order that the guilty parties should be found out and punished, 'of what condition soever the same should be.' In writing to the lord deputy she assumed that Smith had been committed to prison and would be brought to condign punishment. That person, after many denials, at length confessed his guilt, and said that his object was to rid his country of a dangerous enemy. This motive was so good in the eye of the Government that it saved the life of the culprit. Sir Thomas Cusack, writing to Cecil, March 22, 1564, says, 'I persuaded O'Neill to forget the matter, whereby no more talk should grow of it; seeing there is no law to punish the offender other than by discretion and imprisonment, which O'Neill would little regard except the party might be executed by death, and that the law doth not suffer. So as the matter be wisely pacified, it were well done to leave it.' Shane was probably aware that Smith was but an instrument, who would be readily sacrificed as a peace-offering. The sketch which Mr. Froude gives of Ulster and its wild sovereign at this time is admirably picturesque. 'Here then, for the present, the story will leave Shane safely planted on the first step of his ambition, in all but the title, sole monarch of the North. He built himself a fort on an island in Lough Neagh, which he called _Foogh-ni-gall_, or, Hate of Englishmen, and grew rich on the spoils of his enemies, the only strong man in Ireland. He administered justice after a paternal fashion, permitting no robbers but himself; when wrong was done he compelled restitution, or at his own cost redeemed the harm "to the loser's contentation." Two hundred pipes of wine were stored in his cellars; 600 men-at-arms fed at his table, as it were his janissaries; and daily he feasted the beggars at his gate, saying, it was meet to serve Christ first. Half wolf, half fox, he lay couched in his Castle of Malepartuis, with his emissaries at Rome, at Paris, and at Edinburgh. In the morning he was the subtle pretender to the Irish throne; in the afternoon, when the wine was in him, he was a dissolute savage, revelling in sensuality with his unhappy countess, uncoupled from her horseboy to wait upon his pleasure. He broke loose from time to time to keep his hand in practice. At Carlingford, for example, he swept off one day 200 sheep and oxen, while his men violated sixty women in the town; but Elizabeth looked away and endeavoured not to see. The English Government had resolved to stir no sleeping dogs in Ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if they would bite. Terence Daniel, the dean of those rough-riding canons of Armagh, was installed as primate; the Earl of Sussex was recalled to England; and the new archbishop, unable to contain his exultation at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to Cecil to say how the millennium had come at last, glory be to God!' As a picture of Irish savage life this is very good. But the historian has presented a companion picture of English civilised life, which is not at all inferior. Sir Thomas Wroth and Sir Nicholas Arnold were sent over to reform the Pale. They were stern Englishmen, impatient of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for Irishmen than for wolves. In the Pale they found that peculation had grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by habit into rights: and a captain's commission was thought ill-handled if it did not yield, beyond the pay, 500 l. a year. They received pay for each hundred men, when only sixty were on the roll. The soldiers, following the example of their leaders, robbed and ground the peasantry. In fact, the Pale was 'a weltering sea of corruption--the captains out of credit, the soldiers mutinous, the English Government hated; every man seeking his own, and none that which was Christ's.' The purification of the Pale was left to Arnold, 'a hard, iron, pitiless man, careful of things and careless of phrases, untroubled with delicacy, and impervious to Irish enchantments. The account books were dragged to light, where iniquity in high places was registered in inexorable figures. The hands of Sir Henry Ratcliffe, the brother of Sussex, were not found clean. Arnold sent him to the Castle with the rest of the offenders. Deep, leading drains were cut through the corrupting mass. The shaking ground grew firm, and honest healthy human life was again made possible. With the provinces beyond the Pale, Arnold meddled little, save where, taking a rough view of the necessities of the case, he could help the Irish chiefs to destroy each other.' To Cecil, Arnold wrote thus: 'I am with all the wild Irish at the same point I am at with bears and ban-dogs; when I see them fight, so they fight earnestly indeed, and tug each other well, I care not who has the worst.' 'Why not, indeed?' asks Mr. Froude; 'better so than hire assassins! Cecil, with the modesty of genius, confessed his ignorance of the country, and his inability to judge; yet, in every opinion which he allowed himself to give, there was always a certain nobility of tone and sentiment.' Nobility was scarcely necessary to induce a statesman to revolt against the policy of Arnold. A little Christianity, nay a slight touch of humanity, would have sufficed for that purpose. Sussex was a nobleman, and considered himself, no doubt, a very godly man, but everyone must admit that, in all heroic qualities, he was incomparably beneath the uncultured Shane O'Neill, while in baseness and wickedness he was not far behind his northern foe, 'half wolf, half fox.' Cecil, however, was a man of a very different stamp from Sussex. Evidently shocked at the prevailing English notions about the value of Irish life, he wrote to Arnold: 'You be of that opinion which many wise men are of, from which I do not dissent, being an Englishman; but being, as I am, a Christian man, I am not without some perplexity, to enjoy of such cruelties.' The work of reform, however, did not prove so easy a task. Arnold's vigour was limited by his powers. The paymasters continued to cheat the Government by false returns. The Government allowed the pay to run in arrear, the soldiers revenged themselves by oppressing and plundering the people; and 'so came to pass this wonderful phenomenon, that _in O'Neill's country_ alone in Ireland--defended as it was from attacks from without, and enriched with the plunder of the Pale--_were the peasantry prosperous, or life or property secure_.' This fact might suggest to the English historian that the evils of Ireland do not all proceed from blood or race; and that the Saxon may be placed in circumstances which make him as false, as dishonest, as lazy, as disordered, as worthless as the Celt, and that even men of 'gentle blood' may become as base as their most plebeian servants. Nor did zeal for religious reformation redeem the defects of the Anglo-Irish rulers. The Protestant bishops were chiefly agitated by the vestment controversy. 'Adam Loftus, the titular primate, to whom,' says Mr. Froude, 'sacked villages, ravished women, and famine-stricken skeletons crawling about the fields, were matters of everyday indifference, shook with terror at the mention of a surplice.' Robert Daly wrote in anguish to Cecil, in dismay at the countenance to 'Papistry,' and at his own inability to prolong a persecution which he had happily commenced. An abortive 'devise for the better government of Ireland' gives us some insight into the condition of the people. 'No poor persons should be _compelled_ any more to work or labour by the day, or otherwise, without meat, drink, wages, or some other allowance during the time of their labour; no earth tillers, nor any others inhabiting a dwelling, under any lord, should be distrained or punished, in body or goods, for the faults of their landlord; nor any honest man lose life or lands without fair trial by parliamentary attainder, according to the ancient laws of England and Ireland.' Surely it was no proof of incurable perversity of nature, that the Irish peasantry were discontented and disaffected, under the horrid system of oppression and slavery here laid before the English Government. As remedial measures, it was proposed that a true servant of God should be placed in every parish, from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway; that the children should be taught the New Testament and the Psalms in Latin, 'that they, being infants, might savour of the same in age as an old cask doth;' that there should be a university for the education of the clergy, 'and such godly discipline among them that there should be no more pluralities, no more abuse of patronage, no more neglect, or idleness, or profligacy.' Mr. Froude's reflection upon this projected policy is highly characteristic:-- 'Here was an ideal Ireland painted on the retina of some worthy English minister; but the real Ireland was still the old place. As it was in the days of Brian Boroihme and the Danes, so it was in the days of Shane O'Neill and Sir Nicholas Arnold; and the Queen, who was to found all these fine institutions, cared chiefly to burden her exchequer no further in the vain effort _to drain the black Irish morass_, fed as it was from the perennial fountains of Irish NATURE.'[1] [Footnote 1: Vol. viii. p.377.] The Queen, however, thought it more prudent to let Shane have his way in Ulster. To oblige him, she would remove the Protestant primate, Loftus, to Dublin, and appoint his own nominee and friend, Terence Daniel. The Pope had sent a third archbishop for the same see, named Creagh; but, when passing through London, he was arrested, and incarcerated in the Tower, 'where he lay in great misery, cold, and hunger, without a penny, without the means of getting his single shirt washed, and without gown or hose.' At last he made his escape by gliding over the walls into the Thames. The events of 1565 made the English Government more than ever anxious to come to terms with the chieftain 'whom they were powerless to crush.' Since the defeat of the Earl of Sussex, continues Mr. Froude, 'Shane's influence and strength had been steadily growing. His return unscathed from London, and the fierce attitude which he assumed on the instant of his reappearance in Ulster, convinced the petty leaders that to resist him longer would only ensure their ruin. O'Donel was an exile in England, and there remained unsubdued in the North only the Scottish colonies of Antrim, which were soon to follow with the rest. O'Neill lay quiet through the winter. With the spring and the fine weather, when the rivers fell and the ground dried, he roused himself out of his lair, and with his galloglasse and kerne, and a few hundred harquebussmen, he dashed suddenly down upon the Red-shanks, and broke them utterly to pieces. Six or seven hundred were killed in the field, James M'Connell and his brother, Sorleyboy, were taken prisoners, and, for the moment, the whole colony was swept away. James M'Connell, himself badly wounded in the action, died a few months later, and Shane was left undisputed sovereign of Ulster.' Primate Daniel announced to the Queen this 'glorious victory over a malicious and dangerous people' who were gradually fastening on the country; and Sir Thomas Cusack urged that now was the time to make O'Neill a friend for ever, an advice which was backed up by the stern Arnold. 'For what else could be done? The Pale,' he pleaded, 'is poor and unable to defend itself. If he do fall out before the beginning of next summer, there is neither outlaw, rebel, murderer, thief, nor any lewd nor evil-disposed person--of whom God knoweth there is plenty swarming in every quarter among the wild Irish, yea and in our own border too--which would not join to do what mischief they might.' But Shane did not wait for further royal overtures. He saw that with the English Government might was right, and that the justice of his cause shone out more brightly in proportion to the increase of his power. Thus encouraged in his course of aggression and conquest, he seized the Queen's Castles of Newry and Dundrum. He then marched into Connaught, demanding the tribute due of old time 'to them that were kings in that realm.' He exacted pledges of obedience from the western chiefs, and spoiled O'Rourke's country, and returned to Tyrone driving before him 4,000 head of cattle. While proceeding at this rate he wrote soothing and flattering words to the Queen. It was for her majesty he was fighting; he was chastising her enemies and breaking stiff-necked chiefs into her yoke; and he begged that she would not credit any stories which his ill-willers might spread abroad against him. On the contrary he hoped she would determine his title and rule without delay, and grant him, in consideration of his good services, some augmentation of living in the Pale. Elizabeth, however, excused his conduct, saying 'we must allow something for his wild bringing-up, and not expect from him what we should expect from a perfect subject. If he mean well he shall have all his reasonable requests granted.' But there was among Elizabeth's advisers a statesman who felt that this sort of policy would never do. Sir Henry Sidney, on being requested to take charge of the Government of Ireland, urged the absolute necessity of a radical change. The power of O'Neill, and such rulers as he, must be utterly broken, and that by force, at whatever cost. And this, he argued, would not only be sound policy but true economy. The condition of Ireland was unexampled; free from foreign invasion, the sovereignty of the Queen not denied, yet the revenue so mean and scanty that 'great yearly treasures were carried out of the realm of England to satisfy the stipends of the officers and soldiers required for the governance of the same.' He must have 10,000 l. or 12,000 l. to pay out-standing debts and put the army in proper condition. As for his own remuneration, the new viceroy, as he could expect nothing from the Queen, would be content with permission to export six thousand kerseys and clothes, free of duty. Sir Henry Sidney struck out the only line of policy by which the English government of Ireland could be made successful or even possible. He said: 'To go to work by force will be chargeable, it is true; but if you will give the people justice and minister law among them, and exercise the sword of the sovereign, and put away the sword of the subject, _omnia hæc adjicientur vobis_--you shall drive the now man of war to be an husbandman, and he that now liveth like a lord to live like a servant, and the money now spent in buying armour, and horses, and waging of war, shall be bestowed in building of towns and houses. By ending these incessant wars ere they be aware, you shall bereave them both of force and beggary, and make them weak and wealthy. Then you can convert the military service due from the lords into money; then you can take up the fisheries now left to the French and the Spaniards; then you can open and work your mines, and the people will be able to grant you subsidies.'[1] When the lord deputy arrived in Ireland he found a state of things in the Pale far worse than he could have imagined. It was 'as it were overwhelmed with vagabonds; plunder and spoils daily carried out of it; the people miserable; not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend 20 l.; without horse, armour, apparel, or victual. The soldiers were worse than the people: so beggarlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; never a married wife among them, and therefore so allied with Irishwomen that they betrayed secrets, and could not be trusted on dangerous service; so insolent as to be intolerable; so rooted in idleness as there was no hope by correction to amend them.' In Munster a man might ride twenty or thirty miles and find no houses standing in a country which he had known as well inhabited as many counties in England. 'In Ulster,' Sidney wrote, 'there tyrannizeth the prince of pride; Lucifer was never more puffed up with pride and ambition than that O'Neill is; he is at present the only strong and rich man in Ireland, and he is the dangerest man and most like to bring the whole estate of this land to subversion and subjugation either to him or to some foreign prince, that ever was in Ireland.' He invited this Lucifer to come into the Pale to see him, and Shane at first agreed to meet him at Dundalk, but on second thoughts he politely declined, on the ground that the Earl of Sussex had twice attempted to assassinate him, and but for the Earl of Kildare would have put a lock upon his hands when he was passing through Dublin to England. Hence his 'timorous and mistrustful people' would not trust him any more in English hands. In fact O'Neill despised any honours the Queen could confer upon him. 'When the wine was in him he boasted that he was in blood and power better than the best of their earls, and he would give place to none but his cousin of Kildare, because he was of his own house. They had made a wise earl of M'Carthymore, but Shane kept as good a man as he. Whom was he to trust? Sussex gave him a safe-conduct and then offered him the courtesy of a handlock. The Queen had told him herself that, though he had got a safe-conduct to come and go, the document did not say when he was to go; and, in order to get away from London, he was obliged to agree to things against his honour and profit, and he would never perform them while he lived.' That treachery drove him into war. 'My ancestors,' he said, 'were kings of Ulster; and Ulster is mine, and shall be mine. O'Donel shall never come into his country, nor Bagenal into Newry, nor Kildare into Dundrum, or Lecale. They are now mine. With this sword I won them, with this sword I will keep them.' Sidney, indignant at these pretensions, wrote thus to Leicester: 'No Atila nor Yotila, no Vandal nor Goth that ever was, was more to be dreaded for over-running any part of Christendom, than this man is for over-running and spoiling of Ireland. If it be an angel of heaven that will say that ever O'Neill will be a good subject till he be thoroughly chastised, believe him not, but think him a spirit of error. Surely if the queen do not chastise him in Ulster, he will chase all hers out of Ireland. Her majesty must make up her mind to the expense, and chastise this cannibal.' He therefore demanded money that he might pay the garrison and get rid of the idle, treacherous, incorrigible soldiers which were worse than none. Ireland, he said, would be no small loss to the English crown. It was never so likely to be lost as then, and he would rather die than that it should be lost during his government. The queen, however, sent money with the greatest possible reluctance, and was strangely dissatisfied with this able and faithful servant, even when his measures were attended with signal success. [Footnote 1: Opinions of Sir H. Sidney, Irish MSS., Rolls House; Froude, p.385.] In the meantime O'Neill zealously espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots. His friendship with Argyle grew closer, and he proposed that it should be cemented by a marriage. 'The countess' was to be sent away, and Shane was to be united to the widow of James M'Connell, whom he had killed--who was another half-sister of Argyle, and whose daughter he had married already and divorced. Sidney wrote, that was said to be the earl's practice; and Mr. Froude, who has celebrated the virtues of Henry VIII., takes occasion from this facility of divorce to have another fling at 'Irish nature.' He says:--'The Irish chiefs, it seemed, three thousand years behind the world, retained the habits and the moralities of the Greek princes in the tale of Troy, when the bride of the slaughtered husband was the willing prize of the conqueror; and when only a rare Andromache was found to envy the fate of a sister Who had escaped the bed of some victorious lord.' After a brief and brilliant campaign, in which Shane 'swept round by Lough Erne, swooped on the remaining cattle of Maguire, and struck terror and admiration into the Irishry,' he wrote a letter to Charles IX. of France, inviting his co-operation in expelling the heretics, and bringing back the country to the holy Roman see. The heretic Saxons, he said, were the enemies of Almighty God, the enemies of the holy Church of Rome, the King's enemies, and his. 'The time is come when we all are confederates in a common bond to drive the invader from our shores, and we now beseech your Majesty to send us 6,000 well-armed men. If you will grant our request there will soon be no Englishmen left alive among us, and we will be your Majesty's subjects ever more.' This letter was intercepted, and is now preserved among the Irish MSS. Sidney resolved to adopt a new plan of warfare. His campaigns would not be mere summer forays, mere inroads of devastation during the few dry weeks of August and September. He would wait till the harvest was gathered in, place troops in fortresses, and continue hostilities through the winter. He adopted this course because 'in the cold Irish springs, the fields were bare, the cattle were lean, and the weather was so uncertain that neither man nor horse could bear it, whereas in August _food everywhere was abundant_, and the soldiers would have time to become hardened to their work.' They could winter somewhere on the Bann; harry Tyrone night and day without remission, and so break Shane to the ground and ruin him. There was no time to be lost. Maguire had come into Dublin, reporting that his last cottage was in ashes, and his last cow driven over the hill into Shane's country; while Argyle, with the whole disposable force of the western isles, was expected to join him in summer. O'Neill himself, after an abortive attempt to entrap Sidney at Dundalk, made a sudden attack on that town in July; but his men were beaten back, 'and eighteen heads were left behind to grin hideously over the gates.' He then returned to Armagh and burned the cathedral to the ground, to prevent its being again occupied by an English garrison. He next sent a swift messenger to Desmond, calling for a rising in Munster. 'Now was the time or never' to set upon the enemies of Ireland. If Desmond failed, or turned against his country, God would avenge it on him. But Desmond's reply was an offer to the deputy 'to go against the rebel with all his power. The Scots also held back.' Shane offered them all Antrim to join him, all the cattle in the country, and the release of Sorleyboy from captivity; but Antrim and its cattle they believed that they could recover for themselves, and James M'Connell had left a brother Allaster, who was watching with eager eyes for an opportunity to revenge the death of his kinsman, and the dishonour with which Shane had stained his race. In the meantime troops and money came over from England, and on September 17, Colonel Randolph was at the head of an army in Lough Foyle; and the lord deputy took the field accompanied by Kildare, the old O'Donel, Shane Maguire, and O'Dogherty. So that this war against O'Neill was waged for the dispossessed Irish chiefs as well as for England. Armagh city they found a mere heap of blackened stones. Marching without obstruction to Ben brook, one of O'Neill's best and largest houses, which they found 'utterly burned and razed to the ground,' thence they went on towards Clogher, 'through pleasant fields, and villages so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm was like it.' The Bishop of Clogher was out with Shane in the field. 'His well-fattened flock were devoured by Sidney's men as by a flight of Egyptian locusts.' 'There we stayed,' said Sidney, 'to destroy the corn; we burned the country for 124 miles compass, and we found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most harm.' But he says not a word of the harm he was doing to the poor innocent peasantry, whose industry had produced the crops, to the terrified women and children whom he was thus consigning to a horrible lingering death by famine. This was a strange commencement of his own programme to treat the people with justice. The lord deputy expected to meet Randolph at Lifford; but struck with the singular advantages presented by Derry, then an island, for a military position, he pitched his tents there, and set the troops to work in erecting fortifications. Nothing then stood on the site of the present city, save a decrepid and deserted monastery of Augustine monks, which was said to have been built in the time of St. Columba. Sidney stayed a few days at Derry, and then, leaving Randolph with 650 men, 350 pioneers, and provisions for two months, he marched on to Donegal. This was once a thriving town, inhabited by English colonists. At the time of Sidney's arrival it was a pile of ruins, 'in the midst of which, like a wild beast's den, strewed round with mangled bones, rose the largest and strongest castle which he had seen in Ireland. It was held by one of O'Donel's kinsmen, to whom Shane, to attach him to his cause, had given his sister to wife. At the appearance of the old chief with the English army, it was immediately surrendered. O'Donel was at last rewarded for his fidelity and sufferings; and the whole tribe, with eager protestations of allegiance, gave sureties for their future loyalty.' Sidney next directed his march to Ballyshannon, and on by the coast of Sligo. Passing over the bogs and mountains of Mayo, they came into Roscommon, and then, 'leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in England or Ireland all utterly waste,' the army crossed the Shannon at Athlone, swimming 'for lack of a bridge.' The results of this progress are thus summed up by Mr. Froude. 'Twenty castles had been taken as they went along and left in hands that could be trusted. In all that long and painful journey Sidney was able to say that there had not died of sickness but three persons; men and horses were brought back in full health and strength, while her majesty's honour was re-established among the Irishry, and grown to no small veneration--"an expedition comparable only to Alexander's journey into Bactria," wrote an admirer of Sidney to Cecil--revealing what to Irish eyes appeared the magnitude of the difficulty, and forming a measure of the effect which it produced. The English deputy had bearded Shane in his stronghold, burned his houses, pillaged his people, and had fastened a body of police in the midst of them, to keep them waking in the winter nights. He had penetrated the hitherto impregnable fortresses of mountain and morass; the Irish who had been faithful to England were again in safe possession of their lands and homes. The weakest, maddest, and wildest Celts were made aware that, when the English were once roused to effort, they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal.'[1] [Footnote 1: Vol. viii. p.407.] O'Neill had followed the lord deputy to Lifford, and then marched on to the Pale, expecting to retaliate upon the invaders with impunity. But he was encountered by Warren St. Leger, lost 200 men, and was at first hunted back over the border. He again returned, however, with 'a main army,' burned several villages, and in a second fight with St. Leger, compelled the English to retire, 'for lack of more aid;' but they held together in good order, and Shane, with the Derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O'Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his unguarded side.' In order to accomplish this object, he hovered cautiously about the Foyle, watching for an opportunity to attack the garrison. But Randolph fell upon him by surprise, and after a short sharp action, the O'Neills gave way. O'Dogherty with his Irish horse chased the flying crowd of his countrymen, killing every person he caught; and Shane lost 400 men, the bravest of his warriors. The English success was dearly bought, for Randolph leading the pursuit, was struck by a random shot, and fell dead from his horse. Before the Irish chief could recover from this great disaster, Sidney 'struck in again beyond Dundalk, burning his farms and capturing his castles. The Scots came in over the Bann, wasting the country all along the river side. Allaster M'Connell, like some chief of Sioux Indians, sent to the captain of Knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and _the wives and bairns_ that he had slain. Like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate Shane on every point where they could fasten; while in December the old O'Donel came out over the mountains from Donegal, and paid back O'Neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile. The tide of fortune had turned too late for his own revenge: worn out with his long sufferings, he fell from his horse, at the head of his people, with the stroke of death upon him; but before he died, he called his kinsmen about him, and prayed them to be true to England and their queen, and Hugh O'Donel, who succeeded to his father's command, went straight to Derry, and swore allegiance to the English crown. 'Tyrone was now smitten in all its borders. Magennis was the last powerful chief who still adhered to Shane's fortunes; the last week in the year Sidney carried fire and sword through his country, and left him not a hoof remaining. It was to no purpose that Shane, bewildered by the rapidity with which disasters were piling themselves upon him, cried out now for pardon and peace; the deputy would not answer his letter, and nothing was talked of but his extirpation by war only.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, p.413.] The war, however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the Derry garrison. By the death of their commander left 'a headless people,' they suffered from want of food and clothing. They also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead. By the middle of November 'the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;' many of the best men went away because there was none to stay them. The secret of the dreadful malady--something like the cholera--was discovered in the fact that the soldiers had built their sleeping quarters over the burial-ground of the abbey, 'and the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them.' The officer who succeeded to the command applied the most effectual remedy. He led the men at once into the pure air of the enemies' country, and they returned after a few days driving before them 700 horses and 1,000 cattle. He assured Sidney, that with 300 additional men, he could so hunt the rebel, that ere May was passed, he should not show his face in Ulster. But the 'Black Death' returned after a brief respite; and, says Mr. Froude, in the reeking vapour of the charnel-house, it was indifferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies. By the middle of March there were left out of 1,100 but 300 available to fight. Reinforcements had been raised at Liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing. The English council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the Bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation. The huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification. At the end of April, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith's forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings. The flames at last reached the powder magazine: thirty men were blown to pieces by the explosion, and the rest, paralysed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration. St. Loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in Knockfergus. Such was the fate of the first efforts for the building of Londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations. Elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her noble nature, 'perceiving the misfortune not to come of treason, but of God's ordinance,' bore it well; she was willing to do that should be wanting to repair the loss; and Cecil was able to write cheerfully to Sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.'[1] [Footnote 1: Page 410.] In the meantime Shane O'Neill, hard pressed on every side, earnestly implored the cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, in the name of their great brother the duke, to bring the _Fleur-de-lys_ to the rescue of Ireland from the grasp of the ungodly English. 'Help us,' he cried, blending _Irish-like_ flattery with entreaty: 'when I was in England, I saw your noble brother, the Marquis d'Elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow. If the most Christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us. I alone in this land sustain his cause.' To propitiate his holiness, Primate Daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and Creagh received his crosier, and was taken into O'Neill's household. 'All was done,' says the English historian, 'to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless. The Pope sat silent or muttering his anathemas with bated breath. The Guises had work enough on hand at home to heed the _Irish wolf_, whom the English, having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.' His own people, divided and dispirited, began now to desert the failing cause. In May, by a concerted movement, the deputy with the light horse of the Pale overran Tyrone, and robbed the farmers of 3,000 cattle, while the O'Donels mustered their forces for a great contest with Shane, now struggling, almost hopelessly, to maintain his supremacy. The O'Neills and O'Donels met on the banks of the Foyle near Lifford. The former were superior in number, being about 3,000 men. After a brief fight 'the O'Neills broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the Irish battle cries had died away over moor and mountain, but 200 survived of those fierce troopers, who were to have cleared Ireland for ever from the presence of the Saxons. For the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the seagulls whirling over them with scream and cry, as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of Lough Foyle. Shane's foster-brethren, faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself with half-a-dozen comrades rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies. His first desperate intention was to throw himself at Sidney's feet, _with a slave's collar upon his neck_; but his secretary, Neil M'Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope. Sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh, the Countess of Argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. M'Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the M'Connells.' Acting on this advice, O'Neill took his prisoner, 'the countess, his secretary, and fifty men to the camp of Allaster M'Connell, in the far extremity of Antrim. He was received with dissembled gratulatory words.' For two days all went on well, and an alliance was talked of. But the vengeance of his hosts was with difficulty suppressed. The great chief who was now in their power, had slain their leaders in the field, had divorced James M'Connell's daughter, had kept a high-born Scottish lady as his mistress, and had asked Argyle to give him for a wife M'Connell's widow, who, to escape the dishonour, had remained in concealment at Edinburgh. On the third evening, Monday June 2, when the wine and the whiskey had gone freely round, and the blood in Shane's veins had warmed, Gilespie M'Connell, who had watched him from the first with an ill-boding eye, turned round upon M'Kevin, and asked scornfully, 'whether it was he who had bruited abroad that the lady his aunt did offer to come from Scotland to Ireland to marry with his master?' M'Kevin meeting scorn with scorn said, that if his aunt was Queen of Scotland she might be proud to match with the O'Neill. 'It is false,' the fierce Scot shouted; 'my aunt is too honest a woman to match with her husband's murderer.' 'Shane, who was perhaps drunk, heard the words, and forgetting where he was, flung back the lie in Gilespie's throat. Gilespie sprung to his feet, ran out of the tent, and raised the slogan of the Isles. A hundred dirks flashed into the moonlight, and the Irish, wherever they could be found, were struck down and stabbed. Some two or three found their horses and escaped, all the rest were murdered; and Shane himself, gashed with fifty wounds, was wrapped in a kern's old shirt, and flung into a pit, dug hastily among the ruined arches of Glenarm. Even there, what was left of him was not allowed to rest. Four days later, Piers, the captain of Knockfergus, hacked the head from the body, and carried it on a spear's point through Drogheda to Dublin, where, staked upon a pike, it bleached on the battlements of the castle, a symbol to the Irish world of the fate of Celtic heroes.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, p.418, &c.] Mr. Froude might have added: Celtic heroes struck down by Celtic hands. No lord deputy could boast of a victory over Shane O'Neill in the field. Irish traitors in English pay, Irish clans moved by vengeance, did the work of England in the destruction of the great principality of the O'Neills, and it was by _their_ swords, not by English valour, that Sidney 'recovered Ireland for the crown of Elizabeth.' Whatever may have been the faults of Shane O'Neill, and no doubt they were very great, though not to be judged of by the morality of the nineteenth century, his talents, his force of character, his courage and capacity as a general, deserved more favourable notice from Mr. Froude, who, in almost every sentence of his graphic and splendid descriptions, betrays an animosity to the Celtic race, very strange in an author so enlightened, and evincing, with this exception, such generous sympathies. After so often reviling the great Irish champion by comparing him to all sorts of wild beasts, the historian thus concludes:-- 'So died Shane O'Neill, one of those champions of Irish nationality, who under varying features have repeated themselves in the history of that country with periodic regularity. At once a _drunken ruffian_, and a keen and fiery patriot, the representative in his birth of the line of the ancient kings, the ideal in his character of all which Irishmen most admired, regardless in his actions of the laws of God and man, yet the devoted subject in his creed of the holy Catholic Church; with an eye which could see far beyond the limits of his own island, and a tongue which could touch the most passionate chords of the Irish heart; the like of him has been seen many times in that island, and the like of him may be seen many times again till the Ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard his spots. Numbers of his letters remain, to the Queen, to Sussex, to Sidney, to Cecil, and to foreign princes; far-reaching, full of pleasant flattery and promises which cost him nothing, but showing true ability and insight. Sinner though he was, he too in his turn was sinned against; in the stained page of Irish misrule there is no second instance in which an English ruler stooped to treachery, or to the infamy of attempted assassination; and it is not to be forgotten that Lord Sussex, who has left under his own hand the evidence of his own baseness, continued a trusted and favoured councillor of Elizabeth, while Sidney, who fought Shane and conquered him in the open field, found only suspicion and hard words.' CHAPTER IV. EXTERMINATING WARS. Mr. Froude's magnificent chapter on Ireland, in the eleventh volume of his history, just published, ought to be studied by every member of the legislature before parliament meets. If a nation has a conscience, England must feel remorse for the deeds done in her name in Ireland; and ought to make amends for them, if possible. The historian has well described the policy of Queen Elizabeth. She was at times disposed to forbearance, but 'she made impossible the obedience she enjoined. Her deputies and her presidents, too short-sighted to rule with justice, were driven to cruelty in spite of themselves. It was easier to kill than to restrain. Death was the only gaoler which their finances could support, while the Irish in turn lay in wait to retaliate upon their oppressors, and atrocity begat atrocity in hopeless continuity.' Whenever there was a failing in any enterprise, the queen conceived 'a great misliking of the whole matter;' but success covered a multitude of sins. When the Irish were powerful, and the colony was in danger, she thought it 'a hard matter to subvert the customs of the people which they had enjoyed, to be ruled by the captains of their own nation. Let the chiefs sue for pardon, and submit to her authority, and she would let them have their seignories, their captaincies, their body-guards, and all the rest of their dignities, with power of life and death over their people. But,' says Mr. Froude, 'it was the curse of the English rule that it never could adhere consistently to any definite principle. It threatened, and failed to execute its threats. It fell back on conciliation, and yet immediately, by some injustice or cruelty, made reliance on its good faith impossible.' Essex seemed to understand well the nature and motive of the queen's professions, and he resolved to make some bold attempts to win back her favour. He had made a sudden attack on Sir Brian O'Neill of Clandeboye, with troops trained in the wars of the Low Countries, and in a week he brought him to abject submission, which he expressed by saying that 'he had gone wickedly astray, wandering in the wilderness like a blind beast.' But it was the misfortune of Sir Brian, or M'Phelim, that he still held his own territory, which had been granted by the queen to Essex. 'The attempt to deprive him had been relinquished. He had surrendered his lands, and the queen, at Essex's own intercession, had reinstated him as tenant under the crown. It seems, however, as if Essex had his eye still upon the property.' Under such circumstances, it was easy to assume that O'Neill was still playing false. So he resolved that he should not be able to do so any longer. 'He determined to make sure work with so fickle a people.' He returned to Clandeboye, as if on a friendly visit. Sir Brian and Lady O'Neill received him with all hospitality. The Irish Annalists say that they gave him a banquet. They not only let him off safe, but they accompanied him to his castle at Belfast. There he was very gracious. A high feast was held in the hall; and it was late in the night when the noble guest and his wife retired to their lodging outside the walls. When they were supposed to be asleep, a company of soldiers surrounded the house and prepared to break the door. 'The O'Neills flew to arms. The cry rang through the village, and the people swarmed out to defend their chief; but surprised, half-armed, and outnumbered, they were overpowered and cut to pieces. Two hundred men were killed. The Four Masters add that the women were slain. The chieftain's wife had female attendants with her, and no one was knowingly spared. The tide being out, a squadron of horse was sent at daybreak over the water into the "Ardes," from which, in a few hours, they returned with 3,000 of Sir Brian's cattle, and with a drove of stud mares, of which the choicest were sent to Fitzwilliam. Sir Brian himself, his brother, and Lady O'Neill, were carried as prisoners to Dublin, where they were soon after executed.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, vol. xi. p.179.] Essex did not miscalculate the probable effect of this exploit. It raised him high in the estimation of the Anglo-Irish of the Pale. 'The taint of the country was upon him; he had made himself no better than themselves, and was the hero of the hour.' The effect of such conduct and such a spirit in the rulers, may be imagined. A few weeks later, Sir Edward Fitton wrote: 'I may say of Ireland, that it is quiet; but if universal oppression of the mean sort by the great; if murder, robberies, burnings make an ill commonwealth, then I cannot say we are in a good case ... Public sentiment in Dublin, however, was unanimous in its approbation. Essex was the man who would cauterize the long-standing sores. There was a soldier in Ireland at last who understood the work that was to be done, and the way to set about it. Beloved by the soldiers, admirable alike for religion, nobility, and courtesy, altogether the queen's, and not bewitched by the factions of the realm, the governor of Ulster had but to be armed with supreme power, and the long-wished-for conquest of Ireland would be easily and instantly achieved.' These feelings were not unnatural to the party in Dublin, now represented by the men who recently declared that they rejoiced in the election of a Fenian convict in Tipperary, and declared that they would vote for such a candidate in preference to a loyal man. But how did Queen Elizabeth receive the news of the treacherous and atrocious massacre at Belfast? She was not displeased. 'Her occasional disapprobation of severities of this kind,' says Mr. Froude, 'was confined to cases to which the attention of Europe happened to be especially directed. She told Essex that he was a great ornament of her nobility, she wished she had many as ready as he to spend their lives for the benefit of their country.' Thus encouraged by his sovereign, and smarting under the reproach of cowardice cast on him by Leicester, Essex determined to render his name illustrious by a still more signal deed of heroism. After an unprovoked raid on the territories of O'Neill in Tyrone, carrying off cattle and slaughtering great numbers of innocent people whom his soldiers hunted down, he perpetrated another massacre, which is certainly one of the most infamous recorded in history. A great number of women and children, aged and sick persons, had fled from the horrors that reigned on the mainland, and taken refuge in the island of Rathlin. The story of their tragic fate is admirably told by Mr. Froude:--'The situation and the difficulty of access had thus long marked Rathlin as a place of refuge for Scotch or Irish fugitives, and, besides its natural strength, it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of St. Columba. A mass of broken masonry, on a cliff overhanging the sea, is a remnant of the castle in which Robert Bruce watched the leap of the legendary spider. To this island, when Essex entered Antrim, M'Connell and other Scots had sent their wives and children, their aged and their sick, for safety. On his way through Carrickfergus, when returning to Dublin, the earl ascertained that they had not yet been brought back to their homes. The officer in command of the English garrison (it is painful to mention the name either of him, or of any man concerned in what ensued) was John Norris, Lord Norris's second son, so famous afterwards in the Low Countries, grandson of Sir Henry Norris, executed for adultery with Anne Boleyn. Three small frigates were in the harbour. The summer had been hot and windless; the sea was smooth, there was a light and favourable air from the east; and Essex directed Norris to take a company of soldiers with him, cross over, and--' What? Bring those women and children, those sick and aged folk, back to their homes? Essex had made peace by treaty with the O'Neill. He had killed or chased away every man that could disturb the peace; and an act of humanity like this would have had a most conciliatory effect, and ought to recommend the hero to the queen, who should be supposed to have the heart as well as the form of a woman. No; the order was, to go over '_and kill whatever he could find!_' Mr. Froude resumes: 'The run of the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given, the English had landed, close to the ruins of the church which bears St. Columba's name. Bruce's castle was then standing, and was occupied by a score or two of Scots, who were in charge of the women. But Norris had brought cannon with him. The weak defences were speedily destroyed, and after a severe assault, in which several of the garrison were killed, the chief who was in command offered to surrender, if he and his people were allowed to return to Scotland. The conditions were rejected. The Scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in the place, except the chief and his family (who were probably reserved for ransom), was immediately put to the sword. Two hundred were killed in the castle. It was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore. There was no remorse, nor even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed. Sorleyboy and other chiefs, Essex coolly wrote, had sent their wives and children into the island, "which be all taken and executed to the number of six hundred. Sorleyboy himself," he continued, "stood upon the mainland of the Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he there lost all that he ever had!" The impression left upon the mind by this horrible story, is increased by the composure with which even the news of it was received. "Yellow-haired Charley," wrote Essex to the queen, "might tear himself for his pretty little ones and their _dam_," but in Ireland itself the massacre was not specially distinguished in the general system of atrocity. Essex described it himself as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and Elizabeth, in answer to his letters, bade him tell John Norris, "the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services."' I have transcribed this narrative partly for the sake of the reflection with which Mr. Froude concludes. He says: 'But though passed over and unheeded at the time, and lying buried for three hundred years, the bloody stain comes back to the light again, not in myth or legend, but in the original account of the nobleman by whose command the deed was done; and when the history of England's dealings with Ireland settles at last into its final shape, that hunt among the caves at Rathlin will not be forgotten.'[1] It was for services like these that Essex got the barony of Farney, in the county Monaghan. He had mortgaged his English estates to the queen for 10,000 l.,and after his plundering expeditions in Ireland he went home to pay his debts. [Footnote 1: History of England, vol. xi. p.184.] Further on Mr. Froude has another reflection connected with the death of Essex, supposed to have been poisoned, as his widow immediately after married Leicester. He says: 'Notwithstanding Rathlin, Essex was one of the noblest of living Englishmen, and that such a man could have ordered such a deed, being totally unconscious of the horror of it, is not the least instructive feature in the dreadful story.' It is certainly a strange fact that nearly all the official murderers who ruled in Ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety. Thus, from the first, Protestantism was presented to the Irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty. Essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting 'more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.' His opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable. 'The Gospel had been preached to them,' he said, 'but they were neither Papists nor Protestants--of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity. There was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity!--atheism, atheism!--no religion, no religion!' What such tiger-like slaughterers of women and children, such ruthless destroyers, could have meant by religion is a puzzle for philosophers. Sidney reluctantly resumed the office of viceroy in 1575. Tirlogh O'Neill congratulated the Government on his appointment, 'wretched Ireland needing not the sword, but sober, temperate, and humane administration.' Though it was winter, the new deputy immediately commenced a progress through the provinces. Going first to Ulster, he saw Sorleyboy, and gave him back Rathlin. He paid a friendly visit to the O'Neill, who gave him an assurance of his loyalty. Leinster he found for the most part 'waste, burnt up and destroyed.' He proceeded by Waterford to Cork. He was received everywhere with acclamation. 'The wretched people,' says Mr. Froude, how truly!--'sanguine then, as ever, in the midst of sorrow, looked on his coming as the inauguration of a new and happier era.' So, in later times, they looked on the coming of Chesterfield, and Fitzwilliam, and Anglesey. But the good angel was quickly chased away by the evil demon--invoked under the name of the 'Protestant Interest.' The Munster and the Connaught chiefs all thronged to Sidney's levées, weary of disaffection, and willing to be loyal, if their religion were not interfered with, 'detesting their barbarous lives,'--promising rent and service for their lands. 'The past was wiped out. Confiscation on the one hand, and rebellion on the other, were to be heard of no more. A clean page was turned.' Even the Catholic bishops were tractable, and the viceroy got 'good and honest juries in Cork, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged.' Enjoying an ovation as he passed on to Limerick and Galway, he found many grievances to be redressed--'plenty of burnings, rapes, murders, besides such spoil in goods and cattle as in number might be counted infinite, and in quantity innumerable.' Sir William Drury was appointed president of Munster; and he was determined that in his case the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain. Going round the counties as an itinerant judge, he gleaned the malefactors Sidney had left, and hanged forty-three of them in Cork. One he pressed to death for declining to plead to his indictment. Two M'Sweenys, from Kerry, were drawn and quartered. At Limerick he hanged forty-two, and at Kilkenny thirty-six, among which he said were 'some good ones,' as a sportsman might say, bagging his game. He had a difficulty with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is the only preacher of righteousness.' But the gallows was far too slow, as an instrument of reform and civilisation, for Malby, president of Connaught; and as modern evictors in that province and elsewhere have chosen Christmas as the most appropriate season for pulling down dwellings, extinguishing domestic fires, and unhousing women and children, so Malby chose the same blessed season for his 'improvements' in 1576. It is such a model for dealing with the Fenians and tenants on the Tory plan, that I transcribe his own report, which Mr. Froude has found among the Irish MSS. 'At Christmas,' he wrote, 'I marched into their territory, and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another course; and so with determination _to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young_, I entered their mountains. I burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. Then I burnt Ulick Burke's country. In like manner I assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered. I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. I would not hearken, but went on my way. The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to me. I found it was but dallying to win time, so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as I left his brother; and what people was found had as little favour as the other had. _It was all done in rain and frost and storm_, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them.' And so Malby and his soldiers enjoyed a merry Christmas; and when Walsingham read his letters, giving an account of his civilising progress, to the Queen, she, too, must have enjoyed a fresh sensation, a new pleasure amidst the festivities and gallantries of her brilliant court. Mr. Froude has rendered a timely service in this Christmas time to the Coercionists, the Martial Law men, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension men of our own day. He has shown them their principles at work and carried out with a vengeance, and with what results! He has admirably sketched the progress of English rule in Ireland up to that time--a rule unchanged in principle to the present hour, though restrained in its operation by the spirit of the age. Mr. Froude says: 'When the people were quiet, there was the rope for the malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch. When they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast. These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers,--these, and so far _only_ these were the symbols of the advance of English rule; yet even Sidney could not order more and more severity, and the president of Munster was lost in wonder at the detestation with which the English name was everywhere regarded. Clanrickard was sent to Dublin, and the deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and Elizabeth's leniency in Ireland, as well as England, was alive and active towards the great, although it was dead towards the poor. She could hear without emotion of the massacres at Rathlin or Slievh Broughty; but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight. She forbade Sidney to touch him.'[1] [Footnote 1: Vol. xi, p.197.] Next came the great Desmond Rebellion, by which Munster was desolated. The Pope had encouraged an expedition against the heretics in Ireland, and some Spanish forces joined in the enterprise. It was organised by an English ecclesiastic, named Sanders, and an exiled Geraldine, named Fitzmaurice of Kerry, both able and energetic men. The Spaniards landed at Dingle in 1579. In a few days all Kerry and Limerick were up, and the woods between Mallow and the Shannon 'were swarming with howling kerne.' 'The rebellion,' wrote Waterhouse, 'is the most perilous that ever began in Ireland. Nothing is to be looked for but a general revolt.' Malby took the command against them, joined by one of the Burkes, Theobald, who when he saw Fitzmaurice struck by a ball and staggering in his saddle, rode at him and cut him down. The Papal standard was unfolded in this battle. Malby then burnt the Desmonds' country, killing all the human beings he met, up to the walls of Askeaton. When opportunity offered, Desmond retaliated by sacking and burning Youghal. For two days the Geraldines revelled in plunder; they violated the women and murdered all who could not escape. At length Elizabeth was roused to the greatness of the danger, her parsimony was overcome. A larger force was drawn into Ireland than had ever been assembled there for a century. Ormond, the hereditary enemy of Desmond, was appointed commander-in-chief; and Burghley, writing to him in the name of the queen, concluded thus: 'So now I will merely say, Butler aboo, against all that cry in the new language--Papa aboo, and God send your hearts' desire to banish and vanquish those cankered Desmonds!' The war now raged, and, as usual, the innocent people, the cultivators of the soil, were the first victims. 'We passed through the rebel countries,' wrote Pelham, 'in two companies, burning with fire _all habitations, and executing the people_ wherever we found them.' Mr. Froude says: '_Alone_ of all the English commanders he expressed remorse at the work.' Well, if the creatures they destroyed were horses, dogs, or cats, we should expect a man of ordinary human feelings to be shocked at the wholesale butchery. But the beings slaughtered were men and women and children--Christians found unarmed and defenceless in their dwellings. Let the English imagine such a war carried on in Kent or Yorkshire, by Irish invaders, killing in the name of the Pope. The Irish Annalists say that Pelham and Ormond killed the blind and the aged, women and children, sick and idiots, sparing none. The English, as usual, had help from an Irish chief in the work of destruction. Ormond had in his train M'Carthymore, 'who, believing Desmond's day to be done, hoped, by making himself useful, to secure a share of the plunder.' Dividing their forces, Pelham marched on to Dingle, 'destroying as he went, with Ormond parallel to him on the opposite side of the bay, the two parties watching each other's course at night across the water by the flames of the burning cottages!' The fleet was waiting at Dingle. There was a merry meeting of the officers. 'Here,' says Sir Nicholas White, 'my lord justice and I gathered cockles for our supper.'[1] The several hunting parties compared notes in the evening. Sometimes the sport was bad. On one occasion Pelham reported that his party had hanged a priest in the Spanish dress. 'Otherwise,' he says, 'we took small prey, and killed less people, though we reached many places in our travel!' At Killarney they found the lakes full of salmon. In one of the islands there was an abbey, in another a parish church, in another a castle, 'out of which there came to them a fair lady, the rejected wife of Lord Fitzmaurice.' Even the soldiers were struck with the singular loveliness of the scene. 'A fairer land,' one of them said, 'the sun did never shine upon--pity to see it lying waste in the hands of traitors.' Mr. Froude, who deals more justly by the Irish in his last volumes, replies: 'Yet it was by those traitors that the woods whose beauty they so admired had been planted and fostered. Irish hands, unaided by English art or English wealth, had built Muckross and Innisfallen and Aghadoe, and had raised the castles on whose walls the modern poet watched the splendour of the sunset.' [Footnote 1: Carew Papers; Froude, vol. xi. p.225.] Ormond was the arch-destroyer of his countrymen. In a report of his services he stated that in this one year 1580, he had put to the sword 'forty-six captains and leaders, with 800 notorious traitors and malefactors, _and above_ 4,000 other people.'[1] In that year the great Desmond wrote to Philip of Spain that he was a homeless wanderer. 'Every town, castle, village, farm-house belonging to him or his people had been destroyed. There was no longer a roof standing in Munster to shelter him.' Hunted like a wolf through the mountains, he was at last found sleeping in a hut and killed. In vain his wife pleaded with Ormond, and threw herself on his protection. Even she was not spared. Mr. Froude gives an interesting account of Desmond's last hours. He was hunted down into the mountains between Tralee and the Atlantic. M'Sweeny had sheltered him and fed him through the summer, though a large price was set on his head; and when M'Sweeny was gone, killed by an Irish dagger, the earl's turn could not be distant. Donell M'Donell Moriarty had been received to grace by Ormond, and had promised to deserve his pardon. This man came to the captain of Castlemayne, gave information of the hiding-place, a band was sent--half-a-dozen English soldiers and a few Irish kerne, who stole in the darkness along the path which followed the stream--the door was dashed in, and the last Earl of Desmond was killed in his bed. [Footnote 1: Carew Papers; Froude, vol. xi. p.225.] Ormond had recourse to a horrible device to extinguish the embers of the rebellion. It was carrying out to a diabolical extent the policy of setting one Irishman against another. If the terror-stricken wretches hoped for pardon, they must deserve it, by murdering their relations. Accordingly sacks full of the heads of reputed rebels were brought in daily. Yet concerning him Mr. Froude makes this singular remark: 'To Ormond the Irish were human beings with human rights. To the English they were _vermin, to be cleared from off the earth_ by any means that offered.' Consequently, when it was proposed to make Ormond viceroy, the Pale was in a ferment. How could any man be fit to represent English power in Dublin Castle, who regarded the Irish as human beings! Not less curious is the testimony which the historian bears to the character of the English exterminators. He says, 'They were honourable, high-minded men, full of natural tenderness and gentleness, to every one with whom they were placed in _human relations_. The Irish, unfortunately, they looked upon as savages who had refused peace and protection when it was offered to them, and were now therefore to be _rooted out and destroyed_.' A reformer in 1583, however, suggested a milder policy. He recommended that 'all Brehons, carraghs, bards, rhymers, friars, monks, jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such-like should be executed by martial law, and that with this clean sweep the work of death might end, and a new era be ushered in with universities and schools, a fixed police, and agriculture, and good government.' When the English had destroyed all the houses and churches, burnt all the corn, and driven away all the cattle, they were disgusted at the savage state in which the remnant of the peasantry lived. A gentleman named Andrew Trollope gave expression to this feeling thus: 'The common people ate flesh if they could steal it, if not they lived on shamrock and carrion. They never served God or went to church; they had no religion and no manners, but were in all things more barbarous and beast-like than any other people. No governor shall do good here,' he said, 'except he show himself a Tamerlane. If hell were open and all the evil spirits abroad, they could never be worse than these Irish rogues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, vol. xi. p.246.] The population of Ireland was then by slaughter and famine reduced to about 600,000, one-eighth of the population of England; but far too many, in the estimation of their English rulers. Brabason succeeded Malby in Connaught, and surpassed him in cruelty. The Four Masters say: 'Neither the sanctuary of the saint, neither the wood nor the forest valley, the town nor the lawn, was a shelter from this captain and his people, till the whole territory was destroyed by him.' In the spring of 1582 St. Leger wrote from Cork: 'This country is so ruined as it is well near unpeopled by the murders and spoils done by the traitors on the one side, and by the killing and spoil done by the soldiers on the other side, together with the great mortality in town and country, which is such as the like hath never been seen. There has died by famine only not so few as 30,000 in this province in less than half a year, besides others that are hanged and killed.' At length the world began to cry shame on England; and Lord Burghley was obliged to admit that the English in Ireland had outdone the Spaniards in ferocious and blood-thirsty persecution. Remonstrating with Sir H. Wallop, ancestor of Lord Portsmouth, he said that the 'Flemings had not such cause to rebel against the oppression of the Spaniards, as the Irish against the tyranny of England.' Wallop defended the Government; the causes of the rebellion were not to be laid at the door of England at all. They were these, 'the great affection they generally bear to the Popish religion, which agreeth with their humour, that having committed murder, incest, thefts, with all other execrable offences, by hearing a mass, confessing themselves to a priest, or obtaining the Pope's pardon, they persuade themselves that they are forgiven, and, hearing mass on Sunday or holyday, they think all the week after they may do what heinous offence soever and it is dispensed withal.' Trollope said they had no religion. Wallop said they had too much religion. But their nationality was worse than their creed. Wallop adds, 'They also much hate our nation, partly through the general mislike or disdain one nation hath to be governed by another; partly that we are contrary to them in religion; and lastly, they seek to have the government among themselves.' The last was the worst of all. Elizabeth wished to heal the wounds of the Irish nation by appointing Ormond lord deputy. He was a nobleman of Norman descent. His family had been true to England for centuries. He had commanded her armies during this exterminating war, and, being a native of the country, he would be best fitted to carry on the work of conciliation after so much slaughter. But, says Mr. Froude, 'from every English officer serving in the country, every English settler, every bishop of the Anglo-Irish Church, there rose one chorus of remonstrance and indignation; to them it appeared as a proposal now would appear in Calcutta to make the Nizam Viceroy of India.'[1] Wallop wrote that if he were appointed, there would be 'no dwelling in the country for any Englishman.' [Footnote 1: Ibid. p.202.] The fear that a merciful policy might be adopted towards Ireland sorely troubled Wallop and Archbishop Loftus; but they were comforted by a great prize--an archbishop fell into their hands. Dr. Hurley refused to give information against others. Walsingham suggested that he should be put to the torture. To him Archbishop Loftus wrote with unction. 'Not finding that easy method of examination do any good, we made command to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as your honour advised us, which was to _toast his feet_ against the fire with hot boots.' He confessed something. They asked permission to execute him by martial law. The queen took a month to consider. She recommended an ordinary trial for high treason, and if the jury did not do its duty, they might take the shorter way. She wished for no more torture, but 'for what was past her majesty accepted in good part their careful travail, and greatly commended their doings.' The Irish judges had repeatedly decided that there was no case against Archbishop Hurley; but on June 19, 1584, Loftus and Wallop wrote to Walsingham, 'We gave warrant to the knight-marshal to do execution upon him, which accordingly was performed, and thereby the realm rid of a most pestilent member.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, vol. xi. p.264.] This was the last act of these two lords justices. Sir John Perrot, the new viceroy, made a speech which sent a ray of hope athwart the national gloom. It was simply that the people might thenceforth expect a little justice and protection. He told the natives that 'as natural-born subjects of her majesty she loved them as her own people. He wished to be suppressed and universally abolished throughout the realm the name of a churle and the crushing of a churle; affirming that, however the former barbarous times had desired it and nourished it, yet he held it tyrannous both in name and manner, and therefore would extirpate it, and use in place of it the titles used in England, namely, husbandmen, franklins or yeomen.' 'This was so plausible,' wrote Sir G. Fenton, 'that it was carried throughout the whole realm, in less time than might be thought credible, if expressed.' The extirpation of the Munster Geraldines, in the right line, according to the theory of the 'Undertakers' and the law of England in general, vested in the queen the 570,000 acres belonging to the late earl. Proclamation was accordingly made throughout England, inviting 'younger brothers of good families' to undertake the plantation of Desmond--each planter to obtain a certain scope of land, on condition of settling thereupon so many families--'none of the native Irish to be admitted' Under these conditions, Sir Christopher Hatton took up 10,000 acres in Waterford; Sir Walter Raleigh 12,000 acres, partly in Waterford and partly in Cork; Sir William Harbart, or Herbert, 13,000 acres in Kerry; Sir Edward Denny 6,000 in the same county; Sir Warren St. Leger, and Sir Thomas Norris, 6,000 acres each in Cork; Sir William Courtney 10,000 acres in Limerick; Sir Edward Fitton 11,500 acres in Tipperary and Waterford, and Edmund Spenser 3,000 acres in Cork, on the beautiful Blackwater. The other notable Undertakers were the Hides, Butchers, Wirths, Berkleys, Trenchards, Thorntons, Bourchers, Billingsleys, &c. Some of these grants, especially Raleigh's, fell in the next reign to Richard Boyle, the so-called '_great_ Earl of Cork '--probably the most pious hypocrite to be found in the long roll of the 'Munster Undertakers.' CHAPTER V. AN IRISH CRUSADE. In 1602, the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, in obedience to instructions from the Government in London, marched to the borders of Ulster with a considerable force, to effect, if he could, the arrest of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, or to bring him to terms. Since the defeat of the Irish and Spanish confederacy at Kinsale, O'Neill comforted himself with the assurance that Philip III. would send another expedition to Ireland to retrieve the honour of his flag, and avenge the humiliation it had sustained, owing to the incompetency or treachery of Don Juan d'Aquila. That the king was inclined to aid the Irish there can be no question; 'for Clement VIII., then reigning in the Vatican, pressed it upon him as a sacred duty, which he owed to his co-religionists in Ireland, whose efforts to free themselves from Elizabeth's tyranny, the pontiff pronounced to be a _crusade_ against the most implacable heretic of the day.'[1] [Footnote 1: Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell. By the Rev. P.C. Meehan, M.R.I.A.] If Mr. Meehan's authorities may be relied upon, Queen Elizabeth was, in intention at least, a murderer as well as a heretic. He states that while she was gasping on her cushions at Richmond, gazing on the haggard features of death, and vainly striving to penetrate the opaque veil of the future, she commanded Secretary Cecil to charge Mountjoy to entrap Tyrone into a submission, on diminished rank as Baron of Dungannon, and with lessened territory; or if possible, to have his head, before engaging the royal word. It was to accomplish either of these objects, that Mountjoy marched to the frontier of the north. 'Among those employed to murder O'Neill in cold blood, were Sir Geoffry Fenton, Lord Dunsany, and _Henry Oge O'Neill._ Mountjoy bribed one Walker, an Englishman, and a ruffian calling himself Richard Combus, to make the attempt, but they all failed.'[1] Finding it impossible to procure the assassination of 'the sacred person of O'Neill, who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,' he wrote to Cecil from Drogheda, that nothing prevented Tyrone from making his submission but mistrust of his personal safety and guarantee for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank. The lords of Elizabeth's privy council empowered Mountjoy to treat with O'Neill on these terms, and to give him the required securities. Sir Garret Moore and Sir William Godolphin were entrusted with a commission to effect this object. But while the lord deputy, with a brilliant retinue, was feasting at Mellifont, a monastery bestowed by Henry VIII. on an ancestor of Sir Garret Moore, by whom it was transformed into a 'fair mansion,' half palace, half fortress, a courier arrived from England, announcing the death of the queen. Nevertheless the negotiations were pressed on in her name, the fact of her decease being carefully concealed from the Irish. Tyrone had already sent his secretary, Henry O'Hagan, to announce to the lord deputy that he was about to come to his presence. Accordingly on March 29, he surrendered himself to the two commissioners at Tougher, within five miles of Dungannon. On the following evening he reached Mellifont, when, being admitted to the lord deputy's presence, 'he knelt, as was usual on such occasions;' and made penitent submission to her majesty. Then, being invited to come nearer to the deputy, he repeated the ceremony, if we may credit Fynes Moryson, in the same humiliating attitude, thus:-- 'I, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, do absolutely submit myself to the queen's mercy, imploring her gracious commiseration, imploring her majesty to mitigate her just indignation against me. I do avow that the first motives of my rebellion were neither malice nor ambition; but that I was induced by fear of my life, to stand upon my guard. I do therefore most humbly sue her majesty, that she will vouchsafe to restore to me my former dignity and living. In which state of a subject, I vow to continue for ever hereafter loyal, in all true obedience to her royal person, crown, and prerogatives, and to be in all things as dutifully conformable thereunto as I or any other nobleman of this realm is bound by the duty of a subject to his sovereign, utterly renouncing the name and title of O'Neill, or any other claim which hath not been granted to me by her majesty. I abjure all foreign power, and all dependency upon any other potentate but her majesty. I renounce all manner of dependency upon the King of Spain, or treaty with him or any of his confederates, and shall be ready to serve her majesty against him or any of his forces or confederates. I do renounce all challenge or intermeddling with the Uriaghts, or fostering with them or other neighbour lords or gentlemen outside my country, or exacting black-rents of any Uriaghts or bordering lords. I resign all claim and title to any lands but such as shall now be granted to me by her majesty's letters patent. Lastly, I will be content to be advised by her majesty's magistrates here, and will assist them in anything that may tend to the advancement of her service, and the peaceable government of this kingdom, the abolishing of barbarous customs, the clearing of difficult passes, wherein I will employ the labours of the people of my country in such places as I shall be directed by her majesty, or the lord deputy in her name; and I will endeavour for myself and the people of my country, to erect civil habitations such as shall be of greater effect to preserve us against thieves, and any force but the power of the state.' [Footnote 1: See Life and Letters of Florence M'Carthy. By D. M'Carthy, Esq.] To this act of submission Tyrone affixed his sign manual, and handed it to the deputy, who told him he must write to Philip III. of Spain, to send home his son Henry, who had gone with Father M'Cawell to complete his studies in Salamanca. The deputy also insisted that he should reveal all his negotiations with the Spanish court, or any other foreign sovereign with whom he maintained correspondence; and when the earl assured him that all these requirements should be duly discharged, the lord deputy in the queen's name promised him her majesty's pardon to himself and followers, to himself the restoration of his earldom and blood with new letters patent of all his lands, excepting the country possessed by Henry Oge O'Neill, and the Fews belonging to Tirlough Mac Henry O'Neill, both of whom had recently taken grants of their lands, to be holden immediately from the queen. It was further covenanted that Tyrone should give 300 acres of his land to the fort of Charlmont, and 300 more to that of Mountjoy, as long as it pleased her majesty to garrison said forts. Tyrone assented to all these conditions, and then received the accolade from the lord deputy, who, a few months before, had written to Queen Elizabeth, that he hoped to be able to send her that ghastliest of all trophies--her great rebel's head! On April 4, the lord deputy returned to Dublin accompanied by the great vassal whom he fancied he had bound in inviolable loyalty to the English throne. To make assurance doubly sure, the day after James was proclaimed, Tyrone repeated the absolute submission made at Mellifont, the name of the sovereign only being changed. He also despatched a letter to the King of Spain stating that he had held out as long as he could, in the vain hope of being succoured by him, and finally when deserted by his nearest kinsmen and followers, he was enforced as in duty bound to declare his allegiance to James I., in whose service and obedience he meant to live and die. The importance of this act of submission will appear from a manifesto issued by O'Neill three years before, dated Dungannon, November 16, 1599, and subscribed 'O'Neill.' This remarkable document has been published for the first time by Father Meehan. '_To the Catholics of the towns in Ireland._ 'Using hitherto more than ordinary favour towards all my countrymen, who generally by profession are Catholics, and that naturally I am inclined to affect [esteem] you, I have for these and other considerations abstained my forces from tempting to do you hindrance, and because I did expect that you would enter into consideration of the lamentable state of our poor country, most tyrannically oppressed, and of your own gentle consciences, in maintaining, relieving and helping the enemies of God and our country in wars infallibly tending to the promotion of heresy: But now seeing you are so obstinate in that which hereunto you continued of necessity, I must use severity against you (whom otherwise I most entirely love) in reclaiming you by compulsion. My tolerance and happy victories by God's particular favour doubtless obtained could work no alteration in your consciences, notwithstanding the great calamity and misery, whereunto you are most likely to fall by persevering in that damnable state in which hereunto you have lived. Having commiseration on you I thought it good to forewarn you, requesting every of you to come and join with me against the enemies of God and our poor country. If the same you do not, I will use means to spoil you of all your goods, but according to the utmost of my power shall work what I may to dispossess you of all your lands, because you are the means whereby wars are maintained against the exaltation of the Catholic faith. Contrariwise, whosoever it shall be that shall join with me, upon my conscience, and as to the contrary I shall answer before God, I will employ myself to the utmost of my power in their defence and for the extirpation of heresy, the planting of the Catholic religion, the delivery of our country of infinite murders, wicked and detestable policies by which this kingdom was hitherto governed, nourished in obscurity and ignorance, maintained in barbarity and incivility, and consequently of infinite evils which were too lamentable to be rehearsed. And seeing these are motives most laudable before any men of consideration, and before the Almighty most meritorious, which is chiefly to be expected, I thought myself in conscience bound, seeing God hath given me some power to use all means for the reduction of this our poor afflicted country into the Catholic faith, which can never be brought to any good pass without either your destruction or helping hand; hereby protesting that I neither seek your lands or goods, neither do I purpose to plant any in your places, if you will adjoin with me; but will extend what liberties and privileges that heretofore you have had if it shall stand in my power, giving you to understand upon my salvation that chiefly and principally I fight for the Catholic faith to be planted throughout all our poor country, as well in cities as elsewhere, as manifestly might appear by that I rejected all other conditions proffered to me this not being granted. I have already by word of mouth protested, and do now hereby protest, that if I had to be King of Ireland without having the Catholic religion which before I mentioned, I would not the same accept. Take your example by that most Catholic country, France, whose subjects for defect of Catholic faith did go against their most natural king, and maintained wars till he was constrained to profess the Catholic religion, duly submitting himself to the Apostolic See of Rome, to the which doubtless we may bring our country, you putting your helping hand with me to the same. As for myself I protest before God and upon my salvation I have been proffered oftentimes such conditions as no man seeking his own private commodity could refuse; but I seeking the public utility of my native country will prosecute these wars until that generally religion be planted throughout all Ireland. So I rest, praying the Almighty to move your flinty hearts to prefer the commodity and profit of our country, before your own private ends.' As a crusader, the O'Neill was a worthy disciple of the King of Spain. The Catholics of the south had no wish to engage in a religious war, but the northern chief aspiring to the sovereignty of the whole island, resolved to reclaim them by compulsion, seeing that his tolerance and happy victories had worked no change in their consciences, and they still persevered in that 'damnable state' in which they had lived. From his entire love and commiseration he forewarned them that if they did not come and join him against the enemies of God and 'our poor country,' he would not only despoil them of all their goods, but dispossess them of all their lands. The extirpation of heresy, the planting of the Catholic religion, he declared could never be brought to any good pass without either the destruction or the help of the Catholics in the towns of the south and west. He did not want their lands or goods, nor did he intend to plant others in their places _if they would adjoin with him_. Pointing to the example of France, he vowed that he would prosecute those wars until the Catholic religion should be planted throughout all Ireland, praying that God would move their flinty hearts to join him in this pious and humane enterprise. In those times when religious wars had been raging on the continent, when the whole power of Spain was persistently employed to exterminate Protestants with fire and sword and every species of cruelty, it is not at all surprising that a chief like O'Neill, leading such a wild warlike life in Ulster, should persuade himself that he would be glorifying God and serving his country by destroying the Catholic inhabitants of the towns, that is all the most civilised portion of the community, because they would not join him in robbing and killing the Protestants. But it is not a little surprising that an enlightened, learned, and liberal Catholic priest, writing in Dublin in the year 1868, should give his deliberate sanction to this unchristian and barbarous policy. Yet Father Meehan writes: 'But no; not even the dint of that manifesto, _with the ring of true steel in its every line_, could strike a spark out of their hearts, for they were chalky.'[1] [Footnote 1: Page 34.] It was very natural that the English Government should act upon the same principle of intolerance, especially when they had the plea of state necessity. They did not yet go the length of exterminating Catholicity by the means with which the O'Neill threatened his peaceable and industrious co-religionists in the towns. All they required was that the Catholics should cease to harbour their priests, and that they should attend the Protestant churches. Remarking upon the proclamation of Chichester to this effect Mr. Meehan says:--'Apart from the folly of the king, who had taken into his head that an entire nation should, at his bidding, apostatise from the creed of their forefathers, the publishing such a manifesto in Dungannon, in Donegal, and elsewhere was a bitter insult to the northern chieftains, whose wars were _crusades_,--the natural consequence of faith,--stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, assisted by Spain, then the most Catholic kingdom in the world.' Does not Mr. Meehan see that crusading is a game at which two can play? And if wars which were crusades were the natural consequence of the Catholic faith, were stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, and assisted by Spain, for the purpose of destroying the power of England, everywhere as well as in Ireland, and abolishing the Reformation,--does it not follow as a necessary consequence that the English Government must in sheer self-defence have waged a war of extermination against the Catholic religion, and have regarded its priests as mortal enemies? No better plea for the English policy in Ireland was ever offered by any Protestant writer than this language, intended as a condemnation, by a very able priest in our own day. It was no doubt extreme folly for King James I. to expect that a nation, or a single individual, should apostatise at his bidding; but it was equal folly in the King of Spain to expect Protestants to apostatise at his bidding; and if possible still greater folly for O'Neill to expect the Catholic citizens of Munster to join him in the bloody work of persecution. It was, then, the Spanish policy stimulated by the Sovereign Pontiff that was the standing excuse of the cruel intolerance and rancorous religious animosity which have continued to distract Irish society down to our own time. Persecution is alien to the Irish race. The malignant _virus_ imported from Spain poisoned the national blood, maddened the national brain, and provoked the terrible system of retaliation that was embodied in the Penal Code, and which, surviving to our own time, still defends itself by the old plea--the intrusion of a foreign power attempting to overrule the government of the country. CHAPTER VI. THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES. The accession of James I. produced a delirium of joy in the Catholics of the south. Their bards had sung that the blood of the old Celtic monarchs circulated in his veins, their clergy told them that as James VI. of Scotland he had received supplies of money from the Roman court, and above all Clement VIII. then reigning, had sent to congratulate him on his accession, having been solicited by him to favour his title to the crown of England, which the Pope guaranteed to do on condition that James promised not to persecute the Catholics. The consequence was that the inhabitants of the southern towns rose _en masse_ without waiting for authority, forced open the gates of the ancient churches, re-erected the altars and used them for the public celebration of worship. The lord deputy was startled by intelligence to this effect from Waterford, Limerick, Cork, Lismore, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Wexford, &c. The cathedrals, churches, and oratories were seized by the people and clergy, Father White, Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford, being the leader in this movement, going about from city to city for the purpose of 'hallowing and purifying' the temples which Protestantism had desecrated. The mayors of the cities were rebuked by Mountjoy as seditious and mutinous in setting up 'the public exercise of the Popish religion,' and he threatened to encamp speedily before Waterford, 'to suppress insolences and see peace and obedience maintained.' The deputy kept his word, and on May 4, 1603, he appeared before Waterford at the head of 5,000 men, officered by Sir R. Wingfield, and others who had distinguished themselves during Tyrone's war. 'There is among the family pictures at Powerscourt,' says Mr. Meehan, 'a portrait of this distinguished old warrior, whose lineal descendant, the present noble lord, has always proved most generous to his Catholic tenantry.' The reverend gentleman gives an amusing sketch of a theological encounter between the old warrior and Father White and a Dominican friar, who came forth to the camp under a safe-conduct, both wearing their clerical habits and preceded by a cross-bearer. The soldiers jeered at the sacred symbol, and called it an idol. Father White indignantly resented the outrage, when Sir Richard Wingfield threatened to put an end to the controversy by running his sword through the Vicar-Apostolic. 'The deputy however was a bookish man, at one period of his life inclined to Catholicity, and he listened patiently to Father White on the right of resisting or disobeying the natural prince; but when the latter quoted some passage thereanent in the works of St. Augustine, Mountjoy caused to be brought to him out of his tent the identical volume, and showed to the amazement of the bystanders, that the context explained away all the priest had asserted.' The noble theologian told Father White that he was a traitor, worthy of condign punishment for bringing an idol into a Christian camp and for opening the churches by the Pope's authority. Father White appeared in the camp a second time that day, making a most reasonable request. He fell on his knees before the deputy, begging liberty of conscience, free and open exercise of religion, protesting that the people would be ready to resist all foreign invasion were that granted; and finally beseeching that some of the ruined churches might be given to the Catholics, who were ready to rebuild them, and pay for them a yearly rent into his majesty's exchequer. But the deputy was inexorable, and all he would grant was leave to wear clerical clothes, and celebrate mass in private houses. Mountjoy entered Waterford, received from the citizens the oath of allegiance, and made over the city churches to the small section of Protestants. At the same time he sent despatches to other towns ordering the authorities to evict the Roman Catholics from the places of worship. And then proceeding to Cork, and thence through Cashel to Dublin, he undid all that the clergy had done with respect to the churches, 'leaving perhaps to future statesmen,' writes Father Meehan, 'living above the atmosphere of effete prejudices, the duty of restoring to the Catholics of Ireland those grand old temples, which were never meant to accommodate a fragment of its people.'[1] [Footnote 1: Page 30.] When Mountjoy returned to Dublin he found that he had been created Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with two-thirds of the deputy's allowance, Sir George Carew, appointed deputy during his absence in England, receiving the other third together with his own pay as treasurer-at-war. Mountjoy was also informed that the royal pardon had been granted to Tyrone under the great seal, and that all other grants made to him by the lord deputy had been confirmed. The king concluded by requesting that he would induce Tyrone to go with him to London, adding, 'as we think it very convenient for our service, and require you so to do; and if not that at least you bring his son.' Along with these instructions came a protection for O'Neill and his retinue. It was supposed that James felt grateful to the Ulster chieftain for the services he had rendered him during the late queen's reign; and it is stated by Craik that after the victory of the Blackwater, he sent his secretary O'Hagan to Holyrood, to signify to his majesty that if he supplied him with money and munitions he would instantly march on Dublin, proclaim him King of Ireland, and set the crown upon his head. In compliance with the sovereign's request, Mountjoy, with a brilliant suite, accompanied by Tyrone and Rory O'Donel, embarked in May 1603, and sailed for Holyhead. But when they had sighted the coast of Wales, the pinnace was driven back by adverse winds, and nearly wrecked in a fog at the Skerries. They landed safe, however, at Beaumaris, whence they rode rapidly to Chester, where they stopped for the night, and were entertained by the mayor. The king's protection for the O'Neill was not uncalled for. Whenever he was recognised in city or hamlet, the populace, notwithstanding their respect for Mountjoy, the hero of the hour, pursued the earl with bitter insults, and stoned him as he passed along. Throughout the whole journey to London, the Welsh and English women assailed him with their invectives. Not unnaturally, for 'there was not one among them but could name some friend or kinsman whose bones lay buried far away in some wild pass or glen of Ulster, where the object of their maledictions was more often victor than vanquished.'[1] The king, however, gave the Irish chiefs a gracious reception, having issued a proclamation that he had restored them to his favour, and that they should be 'of all men honourably received.' This excited intense disgust amongst English officers who had been engaged in the Irish wars. Thus Sir John Harrington, writing to a bishop, said: 'I have lived to see that damnable rebel, Tyrone, brought to England, honoured and well liked. Oh, what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters! How I did labour after that knave's destruction! I adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, eat horseflesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy him; and now doeth Tyrone dare us old commanders with his presence and protection.' [Footnote 1: Father Meehan.] In fact the favour of the king went to an excess fatal to its object, by conceding powers incompatible with his own sovereignty, leading to disorders and violence, and exciting jealousy and mortal enmity in those who were charged with the government in Ireland. The lords of the Privy Council, with the king's consent, gave O'Neill authority for martial law, 'to be executed upon any offenders that shall live under him, the better to keep them in obedience.' It was ordered that the king's garrisons should not meddle with him or his people. The king also invested O'Donel with all the lands and rights of ancient time belonging to his house, excepting abbeys and other spiritual livings, the castle and town of Ballyshannon, and 1,000 acres adjoining the fishing there. He also received the style and title of Earl of Tyrconnel, with remainder to his brother Caffar, the heirs male apparent being created Barons of Donegal. He was formally installed in Christ Church Cathedral on the 29th of September following, in presence of Archbishop Loftus and a number of high officials. Tyrone, however, was dogged by spies while he was in London, and one Atkinson swore informations to the effect that he was in the habit of entertaining a Jesuit named Archer, who was intriguing with the foreign enemies of England, and who was held by Irish royalists for 'the most bloody and treacherous traitor, who could divert Tyrone and all the rest from the king, and thrust them again into actual rebellion.' In the meantime, Sir George Carew was pursuing a policy in Ireland which must of necessity involve the north in fresh troubles. In his letters to England, he complained that the country 'so swarmed with priests, Jesuits, seminarists, friars, and Romish bishops, that if speedy means were not used to free the kingdom of this wicked rabble, which laboured to draw the subjects' hearts from their due obedience to their prince, much mischief would burst forth in very short time. For,' he said, 'there are here so many of this wicked crew, that are able to disquiet four of the greatest kingdoms in Christendom. It is high time they were banished from hence, and none to receive, or aid, or relieve them. Let the judges and officers be sworn to the supremacy; let the lawyers go to the church and show conformity, or not plead at the bar; and then the rest by degrees will shortly follow.' Carew was succeeded as deputy by Sir Arthur Chichester, descended from a family of great antiquity in Devon. He had served in Ireland as governor of Carrickfergus, admiral of Lough Neagh, and commander of the Fort of Mountjoy. Father Meehan describes him as malignant and cruel, with a physiognomy repulsive and petrifying; a Puritan of the most rigid character, utterly devoid of sympathy, solely bent on his own aggrandisement, and seeking it through the plunder and persecution of the Irish chieftains. That is the Irish view of his character. How far he deserved it the reader will be able to judge by his acts. He was evidently a man of strong will, an able administrator and organiser; and he set himself at once, and earnestly, to the establishment of law and order in the conquered territories of the Irish princes. He sent justices of assize throughout Munster and Connaught, reducing the 'countries or regions' into shire-ground, abolishing cuttings, cosheries, spendings, and other customary exactions of the chiefs, by which a complete revolution was effected. He issued a proclamation, by the king's order, commanding all the Catholics, under penalties, to assist at the Church of England service; proscribing priests, and other ecclesiastical persons ordained by authority from the see of Home; forbidding parents to send their children to seminaries beyond the seas, or to keep as private tutors other than those licensed by the Protestant archbishop or bishop. If any priest dared to celebrate mass, he was liable to a fine of 200 marks, and a year's imprisonment; while to join the _Romish_ Church was to become a traitor, and to be subject to a like penalty. Churchwardens were to make a monthly report of persons absent from church, and to whet the zeal of wardens and constables, for each conviction of offending parties, they were to have a reward of forty shillings, to be levied out of the recusant's estate and goods. Catholics might escape these penalties by quitting the country, and taking the oath of abjuration, by which they bound themselves to abjure the land and realm of James, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, to hasten towards a certain port by the most direct highway, to diligently seek a passage, and tarry there but one flood and ebb. According to one form, quoted by Mr. Meehan, the oath concluded thus: 'And, unless I can have it (a passage) in such a place, I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, essaying to pass over, so God me help and His holy judgment.' The deputy found some difficulty in bending the consciences of the Dublin people to the will of the sovereign in matters of faith; but the said will was to be enforced _circa sacra_ at all hazards; so he summoned sixteen of the chief citizens and aldermen before the Privy Council, and censured them for their recusancy, imprisoned them in the castle during pleasure, inflicting upon six a fine of 100 l. each, and upon three 50 l. each. The king was delighted with this evangelical method of extending reformed religion in Ireland. Congratulating his deputy, he expressed a hope that many, by such means, would be brought to conformity in religion, who would hereafter 'give thanks to God for being drawn by so gentle a constraint to their own good.' The 'gentle constraint' was imposed in all directions. The Privy Council decreed that none but a member of the Church of England could hold any office under the Crown. The old Catholic families of the Pale humbly remonstrated, and their chief men were flung into prison. Sir Patrick Barnwell, their agent, was sent to London by order of the king, and was forthwith committed to the Tower for contempt. Henry Usher, then Archbishop of Armagh, carried out the system of exclusion in his own diocese, which included the territories of Tyrone. All 'Papists' were forbidden to assist at mass, on pain of forfeiture of their goods and imprisonment. In a like manner, the Catholic worship was prohibited even in the residence of the Earl of Tyrconnel. He and Tyrone strongly remonstrated against this violation of the royal word, that they and their people might have liberty for their worship in private houses. The answer was decided. His majesty had made up his mind to disallow liberty of worship, and his people, whether they liked it or not, should repair to their parish churches. In addition to this religious grievance, which excited the bitterest feelings of discontent, the two earls were subjected to the most irritating annoyances. They complained that their people were plundered by sheriffs, under-sheriffs, officers, and soldiers; and that even their domestic privacy was hourly violated, that their remonstrances were unheeded, and their attempts to obtain legal remedies were frustrated. At the same time their vassals were encouraged to repudiate their demands for tribute and rent. Bishop Montgomery of Derry was a dangerous neighbour to O'Neill. Meeting him one day at Dungannon, the earl said: 'My lord, you have two or three bishopricks, and yet you are not content with them, but seek the lands of my earldom.' 'My lord,' replied the bishop, 'your earldom is swollen so big with the lands of the Church, that it will burst if it be not vented.' If he had confined his venting operations to the chiefs, and abstained from bleeding the poor people, it would have been better for Protestantism. For we read that he sent bailiffs through the diocese of Raphoe, to levy contributions for the Church. 'For every cow and plough-horse, 4 d.; as much out of every colt and calf, to be paid twice a year; and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country; and 8 d. a year for every married couple.' This bishop seems to have been greatly impressed with the 'commodities' of O'Cahan's country, which he describes with much unction in a letter to the Earl of Salisbury. He said that the country was 'large, pleasant, and fruitful; twenty-four miles in length between Lough Foyle and the Bann; and in breadth, from the sea-coast towards the lower parts of Tyrone, 14 miles.' He states that O'Cahan was able to assist the Earl of Tyrone, during his war, with 1,200 foot and 300 horse, the ablest men that Ulster yielded; and, by the confession of gentlemen of the first plantation, had oftener put them to their defence than any enemy they had to do with, not suffering them to cut a bough or build a cabin without blows. When Tyrone was driven to his fastness, Glenconkeine, O'Cahan sent him 100 horse and 300 foot, and yet made good his own country against the army lying round about him, adding, that his defection 'did undo the earl, who, as he had his country sure behind him, cared little for anything the army could do to him.' The bishop was, therefore, very anxious that Tyrone should not have any estate in O'Cahan's country, 'since he was of great power to offend or benefit the poor infant city of Derry, its new bishop and people, cast out far from the heart and head into the remotest part of Ireland, where life would be unsafe until the whole region was well settled with civil subjects. If this be not brought to pass, we may say: "_fuimus Troes,--fuit Ilium_."'[1] [Footnote 1: Meehan, p.79.] The defection of O'Cahan was, no doubt, a very serious matter to O'Neill. Their case was referred for adjudication to the lord deputy, Chichester, before whom they personally pleaded. Their contradictory statements, and the eagerness of each for the support of a ruler whom they regarded as a common enemy, accounts for the facility with which their power was ultimately destroyed. They at the same time throw much light on the condition of Ulster before the confiscation of James I., proving that it was by no means so poor and wild and barren a region as it is generally represented by modern writers. The two chiefs had a personal altercation at the council table, and O'Neill so far lost his temper as to snatch a paper out of the hand of O'Cahan. Whereupon Sir John Davis remarked: 'I rest assured, in my own conceit, that I shall live to see Ulster the best reformed province in this kingdom; and as for yourself, my lord, I hope to live to see you the best reformed subject in Ireland.' To this the haughty chief replied with warmth, that he hoped 'the attorney-general would never see the day when injustice should be done him by transferring his lands to the Crown, and thence to the bishop, who was intent on converting the whole territory into his own pocket.' Acting under the advice of the bishop, O'Cahan employed a skilful hand to draw up a statement of his case, which was presented on May 2, 1607, in the form of 'the humble petition of Donald Ballagh O'Cahan, chief of his name,' addressed to the lord deputy and council. He declared that for 3,000 years and upwards, he and his ancestors had been possessed of a country called 'O'Cahan's country,' lying between the river Bann and Lough Foyle, without paying any rent, or other acknowledgment thereof to O'Neill, saving that his ancestors were wont to aid O'Neill twice a year if he had need, with risings of 100 horse and 300 foot, for which O'Cahan had in return O'Neill's whole suit of apparel, the horse that he rode upon, and 100 cows in winter. He also paid 21 cows every year in the name of _Cios'righ_, the king's rent, or the king's rent-cess. He alleged that Queen Elizabeth had granted him his country to be held immediately from her majesty at the accustomed rent, by virtue of which he enjoyed it for one whole year without paying, or being craved payment, of any rent or duty, until the Earl of Tyrone, on his return from England, alleged that he had got O'Cahan's country by patent, from the king, who had made him vassal to Tyrone and his heirs for ever, imposing the annual payment of 100 cows, with the yearly rent of 200 l. He had also claimed the fishing of the Bann; he preyed yearly upon other parts of his country, and drew from him his best tenants. He therefore prayed for the protection of the lord deputy against these unjust demands and usurpations. On the 23rd of the same month, O'Neill made a counter statement to the following effect: O'Cahan had no estate in the territory that was by a corruption of speech called O'Cahan's country; nor did he or any of his ancestors ever hold the said lands but as tenants at sufferance, servants and followers to the defendant and his ancestors. His grandfather Con O'Neill was seised in fee of those lands before he surrendered to Henry VIII., 'and received yearly, and had thereout, as much rents, cutting, spending and all other duties as of any other lands which he had in demesne,' within the province of Ulster and territory of Tyrone, and that after Con's surrender the territories were all re-granted with the rents, customs, duties, &c. as before. He was ready to prove that the ancestors of O'Cahan never enjoyed the premises at any time, but at the will and sufferance of O'Neill and his ancestors. A few days after, he despatched a memorial to the king setting forth his grievances, in which he stated that there were so many that sought to deprive him of the greatest part of the residue of his territory that without his majesty's special consideration he should in the end have nothing to support his 'estate' or rank. For the Lord Bishop of Derry, not content with the great living the king had bestowed upon him, sought to have the greater part of the earl's lands, to which none of his predecessors had ever laid claim. And he also set on others to question his titles which had never before before doubted. He therefore humbly besought the king to direct that new letters patent should be made out re-conveying to him and his heirs the lands in dispute, being, he said, 'such a favour as is appointed by your majesty to be extended to such of your subjects of this kingdom as should be suitors for the same, amongst whom I will during my life endeavour to deserve to be in the number of the most faithful, whereunto not only duty, but also your majesty's great bounty, hath ever obliged me.' This was dated at Mellifont on May 26, 1607. It does not appear that any answer was received to his appeals to the king, nor is it likely that it served his cause, for it is seldom safe to appeal from an agent or deputy to the supreme authority. The Privy Council in Dublin, however, made a report confirming to some extent the claims put forth by Tyrone. A jury had been appointed to inquire into the boundaries and limits of the lands granted by Queen Elizabeth, and they found that they extended from the river Fuin to Lough Foyle, and from Lough Foyle by the sea-shore to the Bann, and thence to the east of Lough Neagh. Within these limits they found that there existed the territory called O'Cahan's, Glenconkeine and Killetragh, which were not the lands of the O'Neills, '_but held by tenants having estates in them equivalent to estates of freehold_.' The jury could not determine what rents the tenants of said lands were accustomed to pay, but they found generally that all lands within the limits of Tyrone, except the lands of the church, rendered to O'Neill bonnaght or free quarters for armed retainers, 'rising out, cutting and spending.' The parties, however, did not abide by the decision of the privy council, but kept up their contention in the courts of law. It was quite clear that matters could not remain long in that unsettled state, with so many adventurers thirsting for the possession of land, which was lying comparatively idle. It was thought desirable to appoint a president of Ulster, as there had been a president of Munster. The Earl of Tyrone applied to the king for the office, evidently fearing that if Chichester were appointed, he must share the fate of the Earl of Desmond. On the other hand, it was felt that with his hereditary pretensions, impracticable temper, and vast influence with the people, it would be impossible to establish the English power on a permanent basis until he was got out of the way. This was not difficult, with unprincipled adventurers who were watching for opportunities to make their fortunes in those revolutionary times. Among these was a person named St. Lawrence, Baron of Howth. This man worked cunningly on the mind of the lord deputy, insinuating that O'Neill was plotting treason and preparing for a Spanish invasion. He even went so far as to write an anonymous letter, revealing an alleged plot of O'Neill's to assassinate the lord deputy. It was addressed to Sir William Usher, clerk of the council, and the writer began by saying that it would show him, though far severed from him in religion, how near he came home to him in honesty. He was a Catholic, and professed to reveal what he had heard among Catholic gentlemen, 'after the strictest conditions of secresy.' The conspirators were, in the first place, to murder or poison the lord deputy when he came to Drogheda, 'a place thought apt and secure to act the same.' They thought it well to begin with him, because his authority, wisdom, and valour stood only in the way of their first attempts. Next after him they were to cut off Sir Oliver Lambert, whom for his own judgment in the wars, his sudden resolution, and undertaking spirit, they would not suffer to live. These two lights thus put out, they would neither fear nor value any opposite in the kingdom. The small dispersed garrisons must either through hunger submit themselves to their mercy, or be penned up as sheep to the shambles. They held the castle of Dublin for their own, neither manned nor victualled, and readily surprised. The towns were for them, the country with them, the great ones abroad prepared to answer the first alarm. The Jesuits warranted from the Pope and the Catholic king would do their parts effectually, and Spanish succours would not be wanting. These secrets greatly troubled the sensitive conscience of Lord Howth. From the time he was entrusted with them, he said, 'till I resolved to give you this caveat, my eyelids never closed, my heart was a fire, my soul suffered a thousand thousand torments; yet I could not, nor cannot persuade my conscience, in honesty, to betray my friends, or spill their bloods, when this timely warning may prevent the mischief.' In conclusion, he said, 'though I reverence the mass and the Catholic religion equal with the devoutest of them, I will make the leaders of this dance know that I prefer my country's good before their busy and ambitious humours.' It is related of this twenty-second baron of Howth, known as Sir Christopher St. Lawrence, that having served in Ulster under Essex, and accompanied him in his flight to England, he proposed to murder Lord Grey de Wilton, lest he should prejudice the queen's mind against her former favourite, if he got access to her presence before him; that he had commanded a regiment of infantry under Mountjoy, and that when that regiment was disbanded, he became discontented, not having got either pension or employment; that having gone as a free lance to the Low Countries, and failed to advance himself there as he expected, through the interest of Irish ecclesiastics, he returned to England, and skulked about the ante-chambers of Lord Salisbury, waiting upon Providence, when he hit upon the happy idea of the revelations which he conveyed under the signature of' A.B.'[1] [Footnote 1: Meehan, p.103.] After some time he acknowledged the authorship of the letter privately, but refused to come forth publicly as an informer, nor was he able to produce any corroboration of the improbable story. Ultimately, however, when pressed by Chichester, he induced his friend Baron Devlin to swear an information to the same effect, revealing certain alleged conversations of O'Neill. In the meantime St. Lawrence cunningly worked upon the fears of the earl, giving him to understand that his ruin was determined on, and that he had better consult his safety, by leaving the country. It appears that he received intimations to the same effect from his correspondents in Spain and in London. At all events, he lost heart, became silent, moody, and low-spirited, suspecting foul play on the part of the king, who was very urgent that he should be brought over to London, in which case Tyrone was led to believe that he would certainly be sent to the Tower, and probably lose his head. With such apprehensions, he came to the conclusion that it was idle to struggle any longer against the stream. He had for some weeks been engaged quietly making preparations for his flight. He had given directions to his steward to collect in advance one half of his Michaelmas rents, leading the lord deputy to think that he did so either to provide funds for his journey to London, or to defray the expenses of his son's projected marriage with the daughter of Lord Argyle. Meanwhile a vessel had been purchased by Cu-Connaught Maguire, and Bath, the captain of this vessel, assured the Earl of Tyrconnel, whom he met at Ballyshannon, that he also would lose his life or liberty if he did not abandon the country with O'Neill. On September 8, Tyrone took leave of the lord deputy, and then spent a day and night at Mellifont with his friend Sir Garret Moore, who was specially dear to him as the fosterer of his son John. The earl took his leave with unusual emotion, and after giving his blessing according to the Irish fashion to every member of his friend's household, he and his suite took horse and rode rapidly by Dundalk, over the Fews to Armagh, where he rested a few hours, and then proceeded to Creeve, one of his crannoges or island habitations, where he was joined by his wife and other members of his family. Sir Oliver Lambert in a communication to the Irish Government, relating to the affairs of Ulster, made some interesting allusions to O'Neill. He states that he had apologised for having appealed to the king in the case between him and O'Cahan, and said that he felt much grieved in being called upon so suddenly to go to England, when on account of his poverty he was not able to furnish himself as became him for such a journey and for such a presence. In all things else, said Sir Oliver, 'he seemed very moderate and reasonable, albeit he never gave over to be a general solicitor in all causes concerning his country and people however criminal.' He thought the earl had been much abused by persons who had cunningly terrified, and diverted him from going to the king; 'or else he had within him a thousand witnesses testifying that he was as deeply engaged in these secret treasons as any of the rest, whom they knew or suspected.' At all events he had received information on the previous day from his own brother Sir Cormac O'Neill, from the primate, from Sir Toby Caulfield and others, that the earl had taken shipping with his lady, the Baron of Dungannon, his eldest son, and two others of his children, John and Brien, both under seven years old, the Earl of Tyrconnel, and his son and heir, an infant, not yet a year old, his brother Caffar O'Donel, and his son an infant two years old, 'with divers others of their nearest and trusted followers and servants, as well men as women, to the number of between thirty and forty persons.' The Rev. Mr. Meehan gives graphic details of the flight of his two heroes. Arrived at Rathmullen they found Maguire and Captain Bath laying stores of provisions on board the ship that had come into Lough Swilly under French colours. Here they were joined by Rory, Earl of Tyrconnel. At noon on Friday they all went on board and lifted anchor, but kept close to the shore waiting for the boats' crews, who were procuring water and fuel; but they had to wait till long after sunset, when the boats came with only a small quantity of wood and water. According to a fatality which makes one Irishman's extremity another Irishman's opportunity, the foraging party was set upon by M'Sweeny of Fanad, who churlishly prevented them getting a sufficient supply of these necessaries. This barbarous conduct is accounted for by Mr. Meehan, from the fact, that this M'Sweeny had recently taken a grant of his lands from the crown. At midnight, September 14, 1607, they spread all sail and made for the open sea, intending, however, to land on the Island of Arran, off the coast of Donegal, to provide themselves with more water and fuel. The entire number of souls on board this small vessel, says O'Keenan in his narrative, was ninety-nine, having little sea store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated. Unable to make the island of Arran, owing to a gale then blowing off the land, and fearing to be crossed by the king's cruisers, they steered for the harbour of Corunna in Spain. But for thirteen days, continues O'Keenan, 'the sea was angry, and the tempest left us no rest; and the only brief interval of calm we enjoyed, was when O'Neill took from his neck a golden crucifix containing a relic of the true cross, and trailed it in the wake of the ship. At that moment, two poor merlins with wearied pinions sought refuge in the rigging of our vessel, and were captured for the noble ladies, who nursed them with tenderest affection.' After being tempest-tossed for three weeks, they dropped anchor in the harbour of Quilleboeuf in France, having narrowly escaped shipwreck, their only remaining provisions being one gallon of beer and a cask of water. They proceeded to Brussels and thence to Louvain, where splendid accommodation was provided for them. In several of the cities through which they passed they received ovations, their countrymen clerical and military having prepared for their reception with the greatest zeal and devotion. The King of Spain was of course friendly, but to avoid giving offence to King James he discouraged the stay of the exiles in his dominions, and they found their final resting-place at Rome, where the two earls were placed upon the Pope's civil list, which, however, they did not long continue to burden. Tyrconnel fell a victim to the malaria, and died on July 28, 1608. 'Sorrowful it was,' say the Four Masters, 'to contemplate his early eclipse, for he was a generous and hospitable lord, to whom the patrimony of his ancestors seemed nothing for his feastings and spending.' His widow received a pension of 300 l. a year out of his forfeited estates. O'Neill survived his brother earl eight years, having made various attempts to induce the King of Spain to aid him in the recovery of his patrimony. He died in 1616, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Sir Francis Cottington, announcing the event from Madrid, said, 'The Earl of Tyrone is dead at Rome; by whose death this king saves 500 ducats every month, for so much pension he had from here, well paid him. Upon the news of his death, I observed that all the principal Irish entertained in several parts of this kingdom are repaired unto this court.' CHAPTER VII. GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE. The flight of the earls caused great consternation to the Irish Government. Letters were immediately despatched to the local authorities at every port to have a sharp look out for the fugitives, and to send out vessels to intercept them, should they be driven back by bad weather to any part of the coast. At the same time the lord deputy sent a despatch to the Government in London, deprecating censure for an occurrence so unexpected, and so much to be regretted, because of the possibility of its leading to an invasion by the Spaniards. In other respects it was regarded by the principal members of the Irish Government, and especially by the officials in Ulster, as a most fortunate occurrence. For example, Sir Oliver Lambert, in his report to the lords of the council, already referred to, said:--'But now these things are fallen out thus, contrary to all expectation or likelihood, by the providence of God I hope, over this miserable people, for whose sake it may be he hath sent his majesty this rare and unlocked for occasion: whereby he may now at length, with good apprehension and prudent handling, repair an error which was committed in making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, without regard of the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service, and the commonwealth's, that are so much interested in the honest liberty of that sort of men, which now, in time, I commend unto your lordships' grave consideration and wisdom, and will come to that which nearest concerns ourselves and the whole.' According to Sir John Davis, in his letter to the first minister, Lord Salisbury, Tyrone could not be reconciled in his heart to the English Government, because 'he ever lived like a free prince, or, rather, like an absolute tyrant, there. The law of England, and the ministers thereof, were shackles and handlocks unto him.' He states that _after the Irish manner_, he made all the tenants of his land _villeins_. 'Therefore to evict any part of that land from him was as grievous unto him as to pinch away the quick flesh from his body ... Besides,' the attorney-general added, 'as for us that are here, we are glad to see the day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law, as civil government, hath banished Tyrone out of Ireland, which the best army in Europe, and the expense of two millions of sterling pounds did not bring to pass. And we hope his majesty's happy government will work a greater miracle in this kingdom, than ever St. Patrick did; for St. Patrick did only banish the poisonous worms, but suffered the men full of poison to inhabit the land still; but his majesty's blessed genius will banish all that generation of vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a right fortunate island.' Again, Sir Geoffry Fenton, writing to Salisbury on the same subject, says, 'And now I am to put your lordship in mind what a door is open to the king, if the opportunity be taken, and well converted, not only to pull down for ever these two proud houses of O'Neill and O'Donel, but also to bring in colonies to plant both countries, to a great increasing of his majesty's revenues, and to establish and settle the countries perpetually in the crown; besides that many well-deserving servitors may be recompensed in the distribution; a matter to be taken to heart, for that it reaches somewhat to his majesty's conscience and honour to see these poor servitors relieved, whom time and the wars have spent, even unto their later years, and now, by this commodity, may be stayed and comforted without charges to his majesty.' This advice was quite in accordance with the views of the prime minister, who in a letter to Chichester said, 'I do think it of great necessity that those countries be made the king's by this accident; that there be a mixture in the plantation, the _natives_ made his majesty's tenants of part, but the rest to be divided among those that will _inhabit_; and in no case any man is suffered to embrace more than is visible he can and will _manure_. That was an oversight in the plantation of Munster, where 12,000 acres were commonly allotted to bankrupts and country gentlemen, that never knew the disposition of the Irish; so as God forbid that those who have spent their blood in the service should not of all others be preferred.' It was because this idea of manuring, i.e. residence and cultivation, was carried out in Ulster, that the plantation has proved so successful. But Davis would allow but small space comparatively to the natives, whom he compared to weeds which, if too numerous, would choke the wheat. With him the old inhabitants were simply a nuisance from the highest to the lowest; and if there were no other way of getting rid of them, he would no doubt have adopted the plan recommended by Lord Bacon, who said, 'Some of the chiefest of the Irish families should be transported to England, and have recompense there for their possessions in Ireland, till they were cleansed from their blood, incontinency, and theft, which were not the lapses of particular persons, but the very laws of the nation.' The Lord Deputy Chichester, however, agreed thoroughly with his attorney-general, for he certainly made no more account of rooting out the 'mere Irish' from their homes than if they were the most noxious kinds of weeds or vermin. 'If,' said he, writing to Lord Salisbury, 'I have observed anything during my stay in this kingdom, I may say it is not _lenity_ and good works that will reclaim the Irish, but _an iron rod_, and severity of justice, for the restraint and punishment of those firebrands of sedition, _the priests_; nor can we think of any other remedy but to proclaim _them, and their relievers and harbourers, traitors_.' Considering that those Englishmen were professedly Christian rulers, engaged in establishing the reformed religion, the accounts which they give with perfect coolness of their operations in this line, are among the most appalling passages to be met with in the world's history. For instance, the lord deputy writes: 'I have often said and written, it is _famine that must consume the Irish_, as our _swords_ and other endeavours worked not that, speedy effect which is expected; _hunger_ would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ against them than the sword.' He spared no means of destruction, but combined all the most fearful scourges for the purpose of putting out of existence the race of people whom God in his anger subjected to his power. Surely the spirit of cruelty, the genius of destruction, must have been incarnate in the man who wrote thus: 'I burned all along the Lough (Neagh) within four miles of Dungannon, and killed 100 people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex soever, besides _many burned to death_. We killed man, _woman and child_, horse, beast, and whatsoever we could find.' At the time of the flight of the earls, however, he was very anxious about the safety of the kingdom. He was aware that the people were universally discontented, he had but few troops in the country, and little or no money in the treasury, so that in case of a sudden invasion, it was quite possible that the maddened population would rise and act in their own way upon his own merciless policy of extermination. He therefore hastened to issue a proclamation for the purpose of reassuring the inhabitants of Ulster, and persuading them that they would not suffer in any way by the desertion of their chiefs. In this proclamation, headed by 'The _Lord Deputy and Counsell_,' it was stated that Tyrone and Tyrconnel and their companions had lately embarked themselves at Lough Swilly and had secretly and suddenly departed out of this realm without license or notice. The Government was as yet uncertain about their purpose or destination. But inasmuch as the manner of their departure, considering the quality of their persons, might raise many doubts in the minds of his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, and especially the common sort of people inhabiting the counties of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, who might suppose they were in danger to suffer prejudice in their _lands_ and goods for the contempt or offence of the earls,--they were solemnly assured that they had nothing whatever to fear. The words of the proclamation on this point are: 'We do therefore in his majesty's name declare, proclaim, and publish that all and every his majesty's good and loyal subjects inhabiting those countries of Tyrone and Tyrconnel shall and may quietly and securely possess and enjoy all and singular _their lands and goods_ without the trouble or molestation of any of his majesty's officers or ministers or any other person or persons whatsoever as long as they disturb not his majesty's peace, but live as dutiful and obedient subjects. And forasmuch as the said earls to whom his majesty, reposing special trust in their loyalty, had committed the government of the said several countries are now undutifully departed, therefore his Majesty doth graciously receive all and every of his said loyal subjects into his own immediate safeguard and protection, giving them full assurance to defend them and every of them by his kingly power from all violence or wrong, which any loose persons among themselves or any foreign force shall attempt against them. And to that end, we the lord deputy and council have made choice of certain commissioners as well Irish as English, residing in the said several countries, not only to preserve the public peace there, but also to administer speedy and indifferent justice to all his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, which shall have any cause of complaint before them.' All governors, mayors, sheriffs, justices of peace, provost-marshals, bailiffs, constables, and all other his majesty's ministers whatsoever were strictly charged to use their utmost endeavours faithfully and diligently to keep the people in their duty and obedience to his majesty and the laws of the realm. The assurance thus given that the subjects and tenants of the absconding princes should securely possess and enjoy their lands and be protected from all oppression under the sceptre of King James would have been very satisfactory had the royal promise been realised, but conciliation was then absolutely necessary, for the lord deputy himself stated that 'the kingdom had not been in the like danger these hundred years, as we have but few friends and no means of getting more.' The foregoing proclamation was issued from Rathfarnham on September 10. On November 9 following, another proclamation of a general nature was published and widely circulated in order to justify the course the Government adopted. According to this document it was known to all the world 'how infinitely' the fugitive earls had been obliged to the king for his singular grace and mercy in giving them free pardon for many heinous and execrable treasons, above all hope that they could in reason conceive, and also in restoring the one to his lands and honours justly forfeited, and in raising the other 'from a very mean estate to the degree and title of an earl, giving him withal large possessions for the support of that honour, before either of them had given any proof of loyalty, or merited the least favour.' Even in the point of religion, which served as a cloak for all their treasons, they got no provocation or cause of grievance. For these and other causes it was announced that his majesty would seize and take into his hands all the lands and goods of the said fugitives. But he would, notwithstanding, extend such grace and favour to the loyal inhabitants of their territories that none of them should be 'impeached, troubled, or molested in _their own lands_, goods, or bodies, they continuing in their loyalty, _and yielding unto his majesty such rents and duties as shall be agreeable to justice and equity_.' This assurance was repeated again emphatically in these words: 'His most excellent majesty doth take all the good and loyal inhabitants of the said countries, together with their wives and children, land and goods, into his own immediate protection, to defend them in general against all rebellions and invasions, and to right them in all their wrongs and oppressions, offered or to be offered unto them by any person whatsoever, etc.' CHAPTER VIII. THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS. Before proceeding to notice the manner in which these promises of justice, equity, and protection to the occupiers of the land were fulfilled, it is well to record here the efforts made by King James and his ambassador to discredit the fugitive earls on the Continent, and the case which they made out for themselves in the statement of wrongs and grievances which they addressed to the king soon after. There was great alarm in England when news arrived of the friendly reception accorded to the Irish chiefs by the continental sovereigns through whose dominions they passed, and especially by the King of Spain, who was suspected of intending another invasion of Ireland. Consequently the most active preparations were made to meet the danger. In every street of the metropolis drums were beating for recruits, and large detachments were sent in all possible haste to reinforce the Irish garrisons. Sir Charles Cornwallis was then English ambassador at Madrid; and lest his diplomatic skill should not be up to the mark, James himself sent him special and minute instructions as to the manner in which he should handle the delicate subjects he had to bring before the Spanish sovereign. There has been seldom a better illustration of the saying, that the use of speech is to conceal thought, than in the representations which the ambassador was instructed to make about Irish affairs. Indeed Cornwallis had already shown that he scarcely needed to be tutored by his sovereign. In a preliminary despatch he had sent an account of his conversation with Philip III.'s secretary of state about the fugitive earls. He told him that though they had been guilty of rebellions and treasons they had not only been pardoned, but loaded with dignities such as few or none of the king's ancestors had ever bestowed on any of the Irish nation. He had conferred upon them an absolute and, 'in a manner, unlimited government in their own countries, nothing wanting to their ambitions but the name of kings, and neither crossed in anything concerning their civil government, nor so much as in act or imagination molested, or in any sort questioned with, for their consciences and religion.' He thought therefore that they would never have fled in such a way, unless they had been drawn to Spain by large promises in the hope of serving some future turns. The secretary listened to this insinuation with much impatience, and declared solemnly, laying his hand on his breast with an oath, that of the departure and intention of the earls there was no more knowledge given to the king or any of his state than to the ambassador himself. He added that there had been much consumption of Spanish treasure by supporting strangers who had come from all parts. In particular they had a bitter taste of those who had come from James's dominions; and they would have suffered much more, 'if they had not made a resolute and determined stop to the running of that fountain and refused to give ear to many overtures.' The ambassador expressed his satisfaction at this assurance, and then endeavoured to show how unworthy those Irish princes were of the least encouragement. Their flight was the result of madness, they departed without any occasion of 'earthly distaste' or offence given them by their sovereign, whose position towards the Irish was very different from that of the late queen. Elizabeth had employed against their revolts and rebellions only her own subjects of England, who were not accustomed either to the diet of that savage country, or to the bogs, and other retreats which that wild people used. But now, the king his master, being possessed of Scotland, had in that country, 'near adjoining to the north part of Ireland, a people of their own fashion, diet, and disposition, that could walk their bogs as well as themselves, live with their food, and were so well practised and accustomed in their own country to the like, that they were as apt to pull them out of their dens and withdrawing places, as ferrets to draw rabbits out of their burrows.' Moreover all other parts of Ireland were now reduced to such obedience, and so civil a course, and so well planted with a mixture of English, that there was not a man that showed a forehead likely to give a frown against his majesty, or his government. Cornwallis went on to plead the incomparable virtues of the king his master, among which liberality and magnificence were not the least. But if he had given largely, it was upon a good exchange, for he had sowed money, which of itself can do nothing, and had reaped hearts that can do all. As for the alleged number of 'groaning Catholics,' he assured the secretary that there were hardly as many hundreds as the fugitives reckoned thousands. According to his report the minister heard him with great attention, and at the conclusion protested, that he joined with him in opinion that those fugitives were dangerous people and that the Jesuits were turbulent and busy men. He assured him on the word of a caballero, that his majesty and council had fully determined never to receive or treat any more of those 'straying people;' as they had been put to great inconvenience and cost, how to deliver themselves from those Irish vagabonds, and continual begging pretenders. This despatch, dated October 28, 1607, was crossed on the way by one from the English minister Salisbury, dated the 27th, giving the king's instructions 'concerning those men that are fled into Spain.' Cornwallis was directed not to make matters worse than they really were, because the end must be good, 'what insolencies soever the Jesuits and pack of fugitives there might put on. King James knew that this remnant of the northern Irish traitors had been as full of malice as flesh and blood could be, no way reformed by the grace received, but rather sucking poison out of the honey thereof.' He knew also that they had absolutely given commission to their priests and others to abandon their sovereign if Spain would entertain their cause. But this he could not demonstrably prove _in foro judicii_, though clear _in foro conscientiæ_, and therefore punishment would savour of rigour. So long as things were in that state his majesty was obliged to suffer adders in his bosom, and give them means to gather strength to his own prejudice, whereas now the whole country which they had possessed would be made of great use both for strength and profit to the king. What follows should be given in his majesty's own words:-- 'Those poor creatures who knew no kings but those petty lords, under the burden of whose tyranny they have ever groaned, do now with great applause desire to be protected by the immediate power, and to receive correction only from himself, so as if the council of Spain shall conceive that they have now some great advantage over this state, where it shall appear what a party their king may have if he shall like to support it, there may be this answer: that those Irish without the King of Spain are poor worms upon earth; and that when the King of Spain shall think it time to begin with Ireland, the king my master is more like than Queen Elizabeth was, to find a wholesomer place of the King of Spain's, where he would be loath to hear of the English, and to show the Spaniards who shall be sent into Ireland as fair a way as they were taught before. In which time the more you speak of the base, insulting, discoursing fugitives, the more proper it will be for you. In the meantime upon their departure, not a man hath moved, neither was there these thirty years more universal obedience than there is now. Amongst the rest of their barbarous lies I doubt not but they will pretend protection for religion, and breach of promise with them; wherein you may safely protest this, that for any, of all those that are gone, there never was so much as an offer made to search their consciences.' Not content with the labours of his ambassadors at the various continental courts, to damage the cause of the Irish earls, the king issued a proclamation, which was widely dispersed abroad. His majesty said he thought it better to clear men's judgments concerning the fugitives, 'not in respect of any worth or value in these men's persons, being base and rude in their original,' but to prevent any breach of friendship with other princes. For this purpose he declared that Tyrone and Tyrconnel had not their creation or possessions in regard of any lineal or lawful descent from ancestors of blood or virtue, but were only conferred by the late queen and himself for some reasons of state. Therefore, he judged it needless to seek for many arguments 'to confirm whatsoever should be said of these men's corruption and falsehood, whose heinous offences remained so fresh in memory since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only withdraw themselves from their personal obedience to their sovereign, but were content to sell over their native country, to those who stood at that time in the highest terms of hostility with the crowns of England and Ireland.' 'Yet,' adds the king, 'to make the absurdity and ingratitude of the allegation above mentioned so much the more clear to all men of equal judgment, we do hereby profess in word of a king that there was never so much as any shadow of molestation, nor purpose of proceeding in any degree against them for matter concerning religion:--such being their condition and profession, to think murder no fault, marriage of no use, nor any man worthy to be esteemed valiant that did not glory in rapine and oppression, as we should have thought it an unreasonable thing to trouble them for any different point in religion, before any man could perceive by their conversation that they made truly conscience of any religion. The king thought these declarations sufficient to disperse and to discredit all such untruths as these contemptible creatures, so full of infidelity and ingratitude, should discharge against him and his just and moderate proceedings, and which should procure unto them no better usage than they would wish should be afforded to any such pack of rebels born their subjects and bound unto them in so many and so great obligations.' Such was the case of the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. The Rev. C.P. Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the Public Record Office, London. These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[1] O'Neill's defence is headed, 'Articles Exhibited by the Earl of Tyrone to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, declaring certain Causes of Discontent offered Him, by which he took occasion to Depart His Country.' The statement is divided into twenty items, of which the following is the substance: It was proclaimed by public authority in his manor of Dungannon, that none should hear mass upon pain of losing his goods and imprisonment, and that no ecclesiastical person should enjoy any cure or dignity without swearing the oath of supremacy and embracing the contrary religion, and those who refused so to do were actually deprived of their benefices and dignities, in proof of which the earl referred to the lord deputy's answer to his own petition, and to the Lord Primate of Ireland, who put the persecuting decree into execution. The Earl of Devon, then lord-lieutenant, had taken from him the lands of his ancestors called the Fews, in Armagh, and given them to other persons. He was deprived of the annual tribute of sixty cows from Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's country called Inishowen, which tribute had never been brought into question till James's reign. The same lord-lieutenant had taken from him the fishings of the Bann, which always belonged to his ancestors, and which he was forced to purchase again. Portions of his territory had been taken 'under colour of church-lands, a thing never in any man's memory heard of before.' One Robert Leicester an attorney had got some more of the earl's land, which he transferred to Captain Leigh. 'So as any captain or clerk had wanted means, and had no other means or device to live, might bring the earl in trouble for some part or parcel of his living, falsely inventing the same, to be concealed or church-land.' The Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Derry and Clogher claimed the best part of the earl's whole estate, as appertaining to their bishoprics, 'which was never moved by any other predecessors before, other than that they had some _chiefry_ due to them, in most part of all his living, and would now have the whole land to themselves as their domain lands, not content with the benefit of their ancient registers, which the earl always offered, and was willing to give without further question. O'Cahan, 'one of the chiefest and principalest of the earl's tenants, was set upon by certain of his majesty's privy council, as also by his highness's counsel-at-law, to withdraw himself and the lands called _Iraght-I-Cahan_ from the earl, being a great substance of his living;' and this although O'Cahan had no right to the property except as his _tenant at will_, yielding and paying all such rents, dues, and reservations as the other tenants did. He complained that at the council table in Dublin it was determined to take two-thirds of O'Cahan's country from him; and he perceived by what Sir John Davis said, that they had determined to take the other third also. They further made claim in his majesty's behalf to four other parcels of the earl's land, which he named, being the substance of all that was left, and began their suit for the same in the court of exchequer. In fine he felt that he could not assure himself of anything by the letters patent he had from the king. Whenever he had recourse to law his proceedings were frustrated by the government; so that he could not get the benefit of his majesty's laws, or the possession of his lands; 'and yet any man, of what degree soever, obtained the extremity of the law with favour against him, in any suit.' Although the king had allowed him to be lieutenant of his country, yet he had no more command there than his boy; the worst man that belonged to the sheriff could command more than he, and that even in the earl's own house. If they wanted to arrest any one in the house they would not wait till he came out, but burst open the doors, and 'never do the earl so much honour in any respect as once to acquaint him therewith, or to send to himself for the party, though he had been within the house when they would attempt these things; and if any of the earl's officers would by his direction order or execute any matter betwixt his own tenants, with their own mutual consent, they would be driven not only to restore the same again, but also be first amerced by the sheriff, and after indicated as felons, and so brought to trial for their lives for the same; so as the earl in the end could scarce get any of his servants that would undertake to levy his rents.' According to law the sheriff should be a resident in the county, have property there, and be elected by the nobility and chief gentlemen belonging to it; but the law was set aside by the lord deputy, who appointed as sheriffs for the counties Tyrone and Armagh Captain Edmund Leigh and one Marmaduke Whitechurch, dwelling in the county of Louth, both being retainers, and very dear friends to the Knight-marshal Bagenal, who was the only man that urged the earl to his last troubles. Of all these things 'the earl did eftsoons complain to the lord deputy, and could get no redress, but did rather fare the worse for his complaints, in respect they were so little regarded.' [Footnote 1: Page 192.] The earl understanding that earnest suit had been made to his majesty for the presidentship of Ulster, made bold to write to the king, humbly beseeching him not to grant any such office to any person over himself, 'suspecting it would be his overthrow, as by plain experience he knew the like office to be the utter overthrow of others of his rank in other provinces within the realm of Ireland.' He also wrote to the Earl of Salisbury, who replied that the earl was not to tie his majesty to place or displace officers at his (the earl's) pleasure in any of his majesty's kingdoms. This was not the earl's meaning, but it indicated to him pretty plainly that he had no favour to expect from that quarter. The office was intended for Sir Arthur Chichester, and he much feared that it would be used for his destruction without his majesty's privity. Therefore, seeing himself envied by those who should be his protectors, considering the misery sustained by others through the oppression of the like government, he resolved to sacrifice all rather than live under that yoke. The next item is very characteristic. The earl's nephew Brian M'Art happened to be in the house of Turlough M'Henry, having two men in his company. Being in a merry humour, some dispute arose between him and a kinsman of his own, who 'gave the earl's nephew a blow of a club on the head, and tumbled him to the ground; whereupon, one of his men standing by and seeing his master down, did step up with the fellow and gave him some three or four stabs of a knife, having no other weapon, and the master himself, as it was said, gave him another, through which means the man came to his death. Thereupon, the earl's nephew and his two men were taken and kept in prison till the next sessions holden in the county Armagh, where his men were tried by a jury of four innocent and mere ignorant people, having little or no substance, most of them being bare soldiers and not fit, as well by the institution of law in matters of that kind as also through their own insufficiency, to be permitted or elected to the like charge; and the rest foster-brethren, followers, and very dear friends to the party slain, that would not spare to spend their lives and goods to revenge his death. Yet all that notwithstanding were they allowed, and the trial of these two gentlemen committed to them, through which means, and the vigorous threatening and earnest enticements of the judges, they most shamefully condemned to die, and the jury in a manner forced to find the matter murder in each of them, and that, not so much for their own offences, as thinking to make it an evidence against the master, who was in prison in the Castle of Dublin, attending to be tried the last Michaelmas term, whose death, were it right or wrong, was much desired by the lord deputy. Again, the earl had given his daughter in marriage to O'Cahan with a portion of goods. After they had lived together for eight years, O'Cahan was induced to withdraw himself from the earl, and at the same time, by the procurement of his setters on, he turned off the earl's daughter, kept her fortune to himself, and married another. The father appealed to the lord deputy for justice in vain. He then took proceedings against O'Cahan, at the assizes in Dungannon. But the defendant produced a warrant from the lord deputy, forbidding the judges to entertain the question, as it was one for the Lord Bishop of Derry. The Bishop of Derry, however, was the chief instigator of the divorce, and therefore no indifferent judge in the case. Thus the earl's cause was frustrated, and he could get no manner of justice therein, no more than he obtained in many other weighty matters that concerned him. The next complaint is about outrages committed by one Henry Oge O'Neill, one Henry M'Felemey and others, who at the instigation of the lord deputy, 'farther to trouble the earl,' went out as a wood-kerne to rob and spoil the earl and his nephew, and their tenants. They committed many murders, burnings, and other mischievous acts, and were always maintained and manifestly relieved amongst the deputy's tenants and their friends in Clandeboye, to whom they openly sold the spoils. They went on so for the space of two years, and the earl could get no justice, till at length they murdered one of the deputy's own tenants. Then he saw them prosecuted, and the result was, that the earl cut them all off within a quarter of a year after. But the lord deputy was not at all pleased with this. Therefore he picked up 'a poor rascally knave' and brought him to Dublin, where he persuaded him to accuse above threescore of the earl's tenants of relieving rebels with meat, although it was taken from them by force. For the rebels killed their cattle in the fields, and left them dead there, not being able to carry them away; burnt their houses, took what they could of their household stuff, killed and mangled themselves. 'Yet were they, upon report of that poor knave, who was himself foremost in doing these mischiefs, all taken and brought to their trial by law, where they were, through their innocency, acquitted, to their no small cost; so as betwixt the professed enemy, and the private envy of our governors, seeking thereby to advance themselves, there was no way left for the poor subject to live.' One Joice Geverard, a Dutchman, belonging to the deputy, was taken prisoner on his way from Carrickfergus to Toome, and he was compelled to pay to his captors a ransom of 30 l. For this the lord deputy assessed 60 l. on the county, and appointed one-half of it to be taken from O'Neil's tenants, being of another county, and at least twelve miles distant from the scene of the outrage, perpetrated by a wood-kerne, 'and themselves being daily killed and spoiled by the said wood-kerne, and never no redress had to them.' Several outrages and murders perpetrated by the soldiers are enumerated; but they were such as might have been expected in a state bordering on civil war, which was then the condition of the province. If, however, Tyrone is to be believed, the rulers themselves set the example of disorder. Sir Henry Folliott, governor of Ballyshannon, in the second year of his majesty's reign, came with force of arms, and drove away 200 cows from the earl's tenants, 'and killed a good gentleman, with many other poor men, women, and children; and besides that, there died of them above 100 persons with very famine, for want of their goods; whereof the earl never had redress, although the said Sir Henry could show no reasonable cause for doing the same.' Finally the earl saw that the lord deputy was very earnest to aggravate and search out matters against him, touching the staining of his honour and dignity, scheming to come upon him with some forged treason, and thereby to bereave him of both his life and living. The better to compass this he placed his 'whispering companion,' Captain Leigh, as sheriff in the county, 'so as to be lurking after the earl, to spy if he might have any hole in his coat.' Seeing then that the lord deputy, who should be indifferent, not only to him but to the whole realm, having the rod in his own power, did seek his destruction, he esteemed it a strife against the stream for him to seek to live secure in that kingdom, and therefore of both evils he did choose the least, and thought it better rather to forego his country and lands, till he had further known his majesty's pleasure--to make an honourable escape with his life and liberty only, than by staying with dishonour and indignation to lose both life, liberty, and country, which much in very deed he feared. Indeed the many abuses 'offered' him by Sir John Davis, 'a man more fit to be a stage player than a counsel,' and other inferior officers, might be sufficient causes to provoke any human creature, not only to forego a country, were it ever so dear to him, but also the whole world, to eschew the like government. And thus he concludes his appeal to his 'most dread sovereign:' 'And so referring himself, and the due consideration of these, and all other his causes, to your majesty's most royal and princely censure, as his only protector and defender, against all his adversaries, he most humbly taketh his leave, and will always, as in bounden duty, pray.' The Earl of Tyrconnel's statement contains no less than forty-four items under the following heading: 'A note, or brief collection of the several exactions, wrongs, and grievances, as well spiritual as temporal, wherewith the Earl of Tyrconnel particularly doth find himself grieved and abused by the king's law ministers in Ireland, from the first year of his majesty's reign until this present year of 1607: to be presented to the king's most excellent majesty.' _Imprimis_, all the priests and religious persons dwelling within the said earl's territories were daily pursued and persecuted by his majesty's officers. Sir Arthur Chichester told him, in the presence of divers noblemen and gentlemen, that he must resolve to go to church, or he would be forced to go. This was contrary to the toleration which had been till then enjoyed, and he resolved rather to abandon lands and living, yea, all the kingdoms of the earth, with the loss of his life, than to be forced utterly against his conscience to any such practice. When Sir George Carew was lord deputy, Captain Nicholas Pynnar and Captain Basil Brook, officers of the king's forces at Lifford, plundered the earl's tenants there, taking from them 150 cows, besides as many sheep and swine as they pleased. Not satisfied with this spoil, they most tyrannically stripped 100 persons of all their apparel. These outrages the earl complained of 'in humble wise' to the lord deputy, and could find no remedy; for the same year the garrisons of Lough Foyle, and Ballyshannon took from the earl's tenants 400 cows for the victualling of the soldiers; and although the English council wrote to the lord deputy, requiring him to pay for the cattle in English money, the payment was never made. When, in pursuance of a promise made to him by the lord deputy, he appeared before the king, to get new letters patent of his territories, &c., his property, in Sligo, Tyrawly, Moylurg, Dartry, Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's country, and all Sir Nial O'Donel's lands, were excepted and kept from him, together with the castle of Ballyshannon and 1,000 acres of land, and the whole salmon-fishing of the river Erne, worth 800 l. a year, 'the same castle being one of the earl's chieftest mansion houses.' They also took from him 1,000 acres of his best land, and joined it to the garrison of Lifford for the king's use, without any compensation. There were seven sheriffs sent into Tyrconnel, by each of which there was taken out of every cow and plough-horse 4 d., and as much out of every colt and calf twice a year, and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country, and eight pence a year for every married couple.' Sir Nial O'Donel was committed to prison by Tyrconnel, for usurping the title of O'Donel and taking his herds and tenants. 'He broke loose from prison and killed some of his Majesty's subjects. For this the earl prosecuted him under a special warrant from the lord deputy; but notwithstanding all this, Carew gave warrants to Captains Pynnar, Brook, and Bingley, to make reprisals upon the earl's tenants for the pretender's use. Accordingly three English companies joining with nine score of Sir Nial's men, seized and carried away 500 cows, 60 mares, 30 plough-horses, 13 horses, besides food and drink to support the assailants for six weeks. They were guilty of many other extortions, the country being extremely poor after the wars, and 17 of the earl's tenants were hindered from ploughing that season. A certain horse-boy, who was sentenced to be hanged for killing one Cusack, was promised his life by Sir George Carew, if he accused Tyrconnel as having employed him to commit the murder. The boy did make the accusation, which served no purpose 'but to accelerate his hanging.' Thus betrayed, he declared at the gallows, and in the presence of 400 persons, the sheriff of the county, and the portreve of Trim, he retracted the false confession. A similar attempt was made with an Englishman, who was kept a close prisoner without food, drink, or light, in order to get him to accuse the earl of Cusack's murder. All such, with many other of the said Carew's cruel and tyrannical proceedings, the earl showed to the council in England, which promised to give satisfaction by punishing the said Carew, who at his arrival in England did rather obtain greater favours than any reprehension or check of his doings, so as the earl was constrained to take _patience_ for a full satisfaction of his wrongs. Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Derry, levied 100 l. off Tyrconnel's tenants for the building of a church in that city, but the money was applied by Sir Henry to his own use. Carew ordered the troops under Sir H. Docwra, Sir H. Folliott, Sir Ralph Constable, Sir Thomas Roper, and Captain Doddington, to be quartered for three months upon Tyrconnel's people, 'where they committed many rapes, and used many extortions, which the earl showed, and could neither get payment for their victuals nor obtain that they should be punished for their sundry rapes and extortions.' Indeed there was never a garrison in Tyrconnel that did not send at their pleasure private soldiers into the country to fetch, now three beeves, now four, as often as they liked, until they had taken all; and when the earl complained, Carew seemed rather to flout him than any way to right him. Sir H. Folliott's company on one occasion took from his tenants thirty-eight plough-horses, which were never restored or paid for; at another time they took twenty-one, and again fourteen. This being done in the spring of the year the tenants were hindered from ploughing as before. During a whole year Folliott took for the use of his own house, regularly every month, six beeves and six muttons, without any manner of payment. Captain Doddington and Captain Cole made free with the people's property in the same manner. 'All these injuries he laid in a very humble manner before the lord deputy, but instead of obtaining redress he was dismissed by him in a scoffing manner, and even a lawyer whom he employed was threatened by Carew in the following terms:--that he and his posterity should smart for his doings until the seventh generation; so that all the earl's business was ever since left at random, and no lawyer dared plead in his cause.' Tyrconnel killed some rebels, and captured their chief, whom his men carried to Sir H. Folliott to be executed. Sir Henry offered to spare his life if he could accuse the earl of any crime that might work his overthrow. He could not, and he was hanged. In order to settle a dispute between the earl and Sir Nial, the English _protégé_ and pretender to the chieftainship, twelve tenants of each were summoned to be examined by the king's officers in the neighbourhood. 'The earl's men were not examined, but locked up in a room; and the vice-governor, upon the false deposition of Sir Nial's men, directed warrants, and sent soldiers to the number of 300, to bring all the earl's tenants unto Sir Nial, to the number of 340 persons, who paid half-a-crown a piece, and 12 d. for every cow and garron, as a fee unto the captains, whereby they lost their ploughing for the space of twenty-eight days, the soldiers being in the country all the while. One Captain Henry Vaughan, being sheriff in the year 1605, got a warrant to levy 150 l. to build a sessions house. He built the house of timber and wattles. It was not worth 10_l_, and it fell in three months. Nevertheless he levied every penny of the money, and the people had to meet a similar demand the next year, to build another house. It was a rule with the governors of the local garrisons to offer his life to every convict about to be executed, and also a large reward, if he could accuse the earl of some detestable crime. No less than twenty-seven persons hanged in Connaught and Tyrone were offered pardon on this condition. He was at the same sessions called to the bar for hanging some wood-kerne, although he had authority from the king to execute martial law. Shortly after, by the lord deputy's orders, the horse and foot soldiers under Docwra and Folliott were cessed upon the country, where they for four months remained, and paid nothing for their charges of horse-meat or man's meat.' In the year 1606 the lord deputy came to Ballyshannon, where, being at supper, he demanded of the earl what right he had to the several territories he claimed. He replied that his ancestors had possessed them for 1,300 years, and that the duties, rents, and homages were duly paid during that time. Whereupon the lord deputy said, 'the earl was unworthy to have them, he should never enjoy them, the State was sorry to have left so much in his possession, and he should take heed to himself or else the deputy would make his pate ache.' The matters in dispute between him and Sir Nial being referred on that occasion to the lord deputy, both parties having submitted their papers for examination, every case was decided against Tyrconnel, all his challenges frustrated, 300 l. damages imposed, and his papers burned; while Sir Nial's papers were privately given back to him. The result was that at the next sessions Sir Nial had the benefit of all his papers, his opponent having nothing to show to the contrary. The fishery of Killybegs, worth 500 l. a season, had belonged to Tyrconnel's ancestors for 1,300 years. But it was taken from him without compensation, by Sir Henry Folliott and the Bishop of Derry, with the ultimate sanction of the lord deputy, who confirmed the bishop in possession 'both for that season and for all times ensuing.' Sir H. Folliott on one occasion took away for his carriage the horses that served the earl's house with fuel and wood for fire, 'and the soldiers, scorning to feed the horses themselves, went into the earl's house, and forcibly took out one of his boys to lead them, and ran another in the thigh with a pike for refusing to go with him.' He had a number of tenants, who held their lands 'by lease of years for certain rents.' Yet the lord deputy sent warrants to them, directing them to pay no rents, and requiring the Governor of Derry 'to raise the country from time to time, and resist and hinder the earl from taking up his rents.' To crown all, when Tyrconnel made a journey into the Pale to know the reason why he was debarred from his rents, he lodged on his way in the Abbey of Boyle. He had scarcely arrived there when the constable of the town, accompanied by twenty soldiers, and all the churls of the place, surrounded and set fire to the house where he lay, he having no company within but his page and two other serving men. 'But it befell, through the singular providence of Almighty God, whose fatherly care he hath ever found vigilant over him, that he defended himself and his house against them all the whole night long, they using on the other side all their industry and might to fire it, and throwing in of stones and staves in the earl's face, and running their pikes at him and swords until they had wounded him, besides his other bruisings, with stones and staves in six places; they menacing to kill him, affirming that he was a traitor to the king, and that it was the best service that could be rendered to his majesty to kill him. And that all this is true, Sir Donough O'Conor, who was taken prisoner by the same men, because he would not assist them in their _facinorous_ and wicked design of killing the earl, will justify; but in the morning the earl was rescued by the country folk, which conveyed him safely out of the town. And when the earl complained, and showed his wounds unto the lord deputy, he promised to hang the constable and ensign, but afterwards did not once deign so much as to examine the matter or call the delinquents to account, by reason whereof the earl doth verily persuade himself--which his surmise was afterwards confirmed in time, by the credible report of many--that some of the State were sorry for his escape, but specially Sir Oliver Lambert, who had purposely drawn the plot of the earl's ruin.' [Transcriber's note: marker for following footnote is missing in the original] [Footnote: Meehan's Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, pp. 192-224.] CHAPTER IX. THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER. Sir Toby Caulfield, accompanied by the sheriffs of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, followed quickly the proclamation of the lord deputy to the people of Ulster, and took possession of the houses, goods, and chattels of the fugitive earls. Sir Toby was further empowered to act as receiver over the estates, taking up the rents according to the Irish usage until other arrangements could be made. His inventory of the effects of O'Neill in the castle of Dungannon is a curious document, showing that according to the ideas of those times in the matter of furniture 'man wants but little here below.' The following is a copy of the document taken from the memorandum roll of the exchequer by the late Mr. Ferguson. It is headed, '_The Earl of Tyrone's goods, viz._' The spelling is, however, modernised, and ordinary figures substituted for Roman numerals. _The Earl of Tyrone's Goods, viz._ £. s. d. Small steers, 9 at 10 s. 4 10 0 60 hogs, at 2 s. 6 d. 7 10 0 2 long tables, 10 s. 2 long forms, 5 s.; an old bedstead, 5 s. An old trunk, 3 s.; a long stool, 12 d. 3 hogsheads of salt, 28 s. 6 d.; all valued at 4 12 6 A silk jacket 0 13 4 8 vessels of butter, containing 4-1/2 barrels 5 17 6 2 iron spikes 0 2 0 A powdering tub 0 0 6 2 old chests 0 4 0 A frying-pan and a dripping-pan 0 3 0 5 pewter dishes 0 5 0 A casket, 2 d.; a comb and comb case, 18 d. 0 1 8 2 dozen of trenchers and a basket 0 0 10 2 eighteen-bar ferris 0 6 0 A box and 2 drinking glasses 0 1 3 A trunk 1; a pair of red taffeta curtains 1; other pair of green satin curtains 4 5 0 A brass kettle 0 8 6 'A payer of covyrons' 0 5 0 2 baskets with certain broken earthen dishes and some waste spices 0 2 0 Half a pound of white and blue starch 0 0 4 A vessel with 11 gallons of vinegar 0 3 0 17 pewter dishes 0 15 0 3 glass bottles 0 1 6 2 stone jugs, whereof 1 broken 0 0 6 A little iron pot 0 1 6 A great spit 0 1 6 6 garrons at 80 s. apiece 9 0 0 19 stud mares, whereof [some] were claimed by Nicholas Weston, which were restored to him by warrant, 30 l. 9 s. being proved to be his own, and so remaineth 17 0 0 With respect to rents, Sir Toby Caulfield left a memorandum, stating that there was no certain portion of Tyrone's land let to any of his tenants that paid him rent, and that such rents as he received were paid to him partly in money and partly in victuals, as oats, oatmeal, butter, hogs, and sheep. The money-rents were chargeable on all the cows, milch or in calf, which grazed on his lands, at the rate of a shilling a quarter each. The cows were to be numbered in May and November by the earl's officers, and 'so the rents were taken up at said rate for all the cows that were so numbered, except only the heads and principal men of the _creaghts_, as they enabled them to live better than the common multitude under them, whom they caused to pay the said rents, which amounted to about twelve hundred sterling Irish a year. 'The butter and other provisions were usually paid by those styled horsemen--O'Hagans, O'Quins, the O'Donnillys, O'Devolins, and others.' These were a sort of middle men, and to some of them an allowance was made by the Government. 'Thus for example, Loughlin O'Hagan, formerly constable of the castle of Dungannon, received in lieu thereof a portion of his brother Henry's goods, and Henry O'Hagan's wife and her children had all her husband's goods, at the suit of her father Sir G. O'Ghy O'Hanlon, who had made a surrender of all his lands to the crown.' The cattle were to be all numbered over the whole territory in one day, a duty which must have required a great number of men, and sharp men too; for, if the owners were dishonestly inclined, and were as active in that kind of work as the peasantry were during the anti-tithe war in our own time, the cattle could be driven off into the woods or on to the lands of a neighbouring lord. However, during the three years that Caulfield was receiver, the rental amounted to 12,000 l. a year, a remarkable fact considering the enormous destruction of property that had taken place during the late wars, and the value of money at that time. A similar process was adopted with regard to the property of O'Donel, and guards were placed in all the castles of the two chiefs. In order that their territories might pass into the king's possession by due form of law, the attorney-general, Sir John Davis, was instructed to draw up a bill of indictment for treason against the fugitive earls and their adherents. With this bill he proceeded to Lifford, accompanied by a number of commissioners, clerks, sheriffs, and a strong detachment of horse and foot. At Lifford, the county town of Donegal, a jury was empanelled for the trial of O'Donel, consisting of twenty-three Irishmen and ten Englishmen. Of this jury Sir Cahir O'Dogherty was foreman. He was the lord of Inishowen, having the largest territories in the county next to the Earl of Tyrconnel. The bill being read in English and Irish, evidence was given, wrote the attorney-general, 'that their guilty consciences, and fear of losing their heads, was the cause of their flight.' The jury, however, had exactly the same sort of difficulty that troubled the juries in our late Fenian trials about finding the accused guilty of compassing the death of the sovereign. But Sir John laboured to remove their scruples by explaining the legal technicality, and arguing that, 'whoso would take the king's crown from his head would likewise, if he could, take his head from his shoulders; and whoever would not suffer the king to reign, if it lay in his power, would not suffer the king to live.' The argument was successful with the jury. In all the conflicts between the two races, whether on the field of battle or in the courts of law, the work of England was zealously done by Celtic agents, who became the eager accusers, the perfidious betrayers, and sometimes the voluntary assassins of men of their own name, kindred, and tribe. The commissioners next sat at Strabane, a town within two or three miles of Lifford, where a similar jury was empanelled for the county Tyrone, to try O'Neill. One of the counts against him was that he had treasonably taken upon him the name of O'Neill. In proof of this a document was produced: 'O'Neill bids M'Tuin to pay 60 l.' It was also alleged that he had committed a number of murders; but his victims, it was alleged, were criminals ordered for execution in virtue of the power of life and death with which he had been invested by the queen. He was found guilty, however; and Henry Oge O'Neill, his kinsman, who was foreman of the jury, was complimented for his civility and loyalty, although he belonged to that class concerning which Sir John afterwards wrote, 'It is as natural for an Irish lord to be a thief as it is for the devil to be a liar, of whom it was written, he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.' True bills having been found by the grand juries, proceedings were taken in the Court of King's Bench to have the fugitive earls and their followers attainted of high treason. The names were:--'Hugh earl of Tyrone, Rory earl of Tyrconnel, Caffar O'Donel, Cu Connaught Maguire, Donel Oge O'Donel, Art Oge, Cormack O'Neill, Henry O'Neill, Henry Hovenden, Henry O'Hagan, Moriarty O'Quinn, John Bath, Christopher Plunket, John O'Punty O'Hagan, Hugh O'Galagher, Carragh O'Galagher, John and Edmund M'Davitt, Maurie O'Multully, Donogh O'Brien, M'Mahon, George Cashel, Teigue O'Keenen, and many other false traitors, who, by the instigation of the devil, did conspire and plot the destruction and death of the king, Sir Arthur Chichester, &c.; and did also conspire to seize by force of arms the castles of Athlone, Ballyshannon, Duncannon, co. Wexford, Lifford, co. Donegal, and with that intent did sail away in a ship, to bring in an army composed of foreigners to invade the kingdom of Ireland, to put the king to death, and to dispose him from the style, title, power, and government of the Imperial crown.' The lord deputy and his officers, able, energetic, farseeing men, working together persistently for the accomplishment of a well-defined purpose, were drawing the great net of English law closer and closer around the heads of the Irish clans, who struggled gallantly and wildly in its fatal meshes. The episode of Sir Cahir O'Dogherty is a romance. On the death of Sir John O'Dogherty, the O'Donel, in accordance with Irish custom, caused his brother Phelim Oge to be inaugurated Prince of Inishowen, because Cahir, his son, was then only thirteen years of age, too young to command the sept. But this arrangement did not please his foster brothers, the M'Davitts, who proposed to Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Derry, that their youthful chief should be adopted as the queen's O'Dogherty; and on this condition they promised that he and they would devote themselves to her majesty's service. The terms were gladly accepted. Sir Cahir was trained by Docwra in martial exercises, in the arts of civility, and in English literature. He was an apt pupil. He grew up strong and comely; and he so distinguished himself before he was sixteen years of age in skirmishes with his father's allies, that Sir Henry wrote of him in the following terms: 'The country was overgrown with ancient oak and coppice. O'Dogherty was with me, alighted when I did, kept me company in the greatest heat of the fight, behaved himself bravely, and with a great deal of love and affection; so much so, that I recommended him at my next meeting with the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, for the honour of knighthood, which was accordingly conferred upon him.' The young knight went to London, was well received at court, and obtained a new grant of a large portion of the O'Dogherty's country. He married a daughter of Lord Gormanstown, a catholic peer of the Pale, distinguished for loyalty to the English throne, resided with his bride at his Castle of Elagh, or at Burt, or Buncranna, keeping princely state, not in the old Irish fashion, but in the manner of an English nobleman of the period; hunting the red deer in his forest, hawking, or fishing in the teeming waters of Lough Foyle, Lough Swilly, and the Atlantic, which poured their treasures around the promontory of which he was the lord. His intimate associates were officers and favourites of the king. Docwra had given up the government of Derry and retired to England. He was succeeded by Sir George Paulet, a man of violent temper. Sir Cahir had sold 3,000 acres of land, which was to be planted with English; and, in order to perfect the deed of sale, it was necessary to have the document signed before the governor of Derry. It had been reported to the lord deputy that Sir Cahir, not content with his position, intended to leave the country, probably with the design of joining the fugitive earls in an attempt to destroy the English power in Ireland. He was therefore summoned before the lord deputy; and Lord Gormanstown, Thomas Fitzwilliam of Merrion, and himself, were obliged to give security that he should not quit Ireland without due notice and express permission. This restraint had probably irritated his hot impetuous spirit, and made it difficult for him to exercise due self-control when he came in contact with the English governor of Derry, with whom his relations were not improved by the suspicions now attaching to his loyalty. Accordingly, while the legal forms of the transfer were being gone through, the young chief made a remark extremely offensive to Paulet, which was resented by a blow in the face with his clenched fist. Instead of returning the blow, young O'Dogherty hurried away to consult the M'Davitts, whose advice was that the insult he received must be avenged by blood. The affair having been immediately reported to the lord deputy, who apprehended that mischief would come of it, he sent a peremptory summons to Sir Cahir, requiring him to appear in Dublin, 'to free himself of certain rumours and reports touching disloyal courses into which he had entered, contrary to his allegiance to the king, and threatening the overthrow of many of his majesty's subjects.' His two sureties were also written to, and required to 'bring in his body.' But O'Dogherty utterly disregarded the lord deputy's order. Taking counsel with Nial Garve O'Donel, he resolved to seize Culmore Fort, Castle Doe, and other strong places; and then march on Derry, and massacre the English settlers in the market square. Towards the close of April, Sir Cahir invited Captain Harte, governor of Culmore Castle, on the banks of the Foyle, about four miles from Derry, with his wife and infant child, of which he was the godfather, to dine with him at his Castle of Elagh. The entertainment was sumptuous, and the pleasures of the table protracted to a late hour. After dinner the host took his guest into a private apartment, and told him that the blow he had received from Paulet demanded a bloody revenge. Harte remonstrated; O'Dogherty's retainers rushed in, and, drawing their swords and skeines, declared that they would kill his wife and child in his presence, unless he delivered up the castle of Culmore. The governor was terrified, but he refused to betray his trust. Sir Cahir, commanding the armed men to retire, locked the chamber door, and kept his guest imprisoned there for two hours, hoping that he would yield when he had time for reflection. But finding him still inflexible, O'Dogherty grew furious, and vented his rage in loud and angry words. Mrs. Harte, hearing the altercation, and suspecting foul play, rushed into the room, and found Sir Cahir enforcing his appeal with a naked sword pointed at her husband's throat. She fell on the floor in a swoon. Lady O'Dogherty ran to her assistance, raised her up, and assured her that she knew nothing of her husband's rash design. The latter then thrust the whole party down-stairs, giving orders to his men to seize Captain Harte. Meantime, Lady Harte fell on her knees, imploring mercy, but the only response was an oath that she and her husband and child should be instantly butchered if Culmore were not surrendered. What followed shall be related in the words of Father Meehan: 'Horrified by this menace, she consented to accompany him and his men to the fort, where they arrived about midnight. On giving the pass word the gate was thrown open by the warder, whose suspicions were lulled when Lady Harte told him that her husband had broken his arm and was then lying in Sir Cahir's house. The parley was short, and the followers of Sir Cahir, rushing in to the tower, fell on the sleeping garrison, slaughtered them in their beds, and then made their way to an upper apartment where Lady Harte's brother, recently come from England, was fast asleep. Fearing that he might get a bloody blanket for his shroud, Lady Harte followed them into the room, and implored the young man to offer no resistance to the Irish, who broke open trunks, presses and other furniture, and seized whatever valuables they could clutch. Her thoughtfulness saved the lives of her children and her brother; for as soon as Sir Cahir had armed his followers with matchlocks and powder out of the magazine, he left a small detachment to garrison Culmore, and then marched rapidly on Derry, where he arrived about two o'clock in the morning. Totally unprepared for such an irruption, the townsfolk were roused from their sleep by the bagpipes and war-shout of the Clan O'Dogherty, who rushed into the streets, and made their way to Paulet's house, where Sir Cahir, still smarting under the indignity of the angry blow, satisfied his vow of vengeance by causing that unhappy gentleman to be hacked to death with the pikes and skeines of Owen O'Dogherty and others of his kindred. After plundering the houses of the more opulent inhabitants, seizing such arms as they could find, and reducing the young town to a heap of ashes, Sir Cahir led his followers to the palace of Montgomery the bishop, who fortunately for himself was then absent in Dublin. Not finding him, they captured his wife, and sent her, under escort, to Burt Castle, whither Lady O'Dogherty, her sister-in-law and infant daughter, had gone without warders for their protection. It was on this occasion that Phelim M'Davitt got into Montgomery's library and set fire to it, thus destroying hundreds of valuable volumes, printed and manuscript, a feat for which he is not censured--we are sorry to have to acknowledge it--by Philip O'Sullivan in his account of the fact. Elated by this successful raid, Sir Cahir called off his followers and proceeded to beleaguer Lifford, where there was a small garrison of English who could not be induced to surrender, although suffering severely from want of provisions. Finding all his attempts to reduce the place ineffectual, he sent for the small force he had left in Culmore to join the main body of his partisans, and then marched into M'Swyne Doe's country.' Meantime news of these atrocities reached Dublin, and the lord deputy immediately sent a force of 3,000 men, commanded by Sir Richard Wingfield, Sir Thomas Roper, and Sir Toby Caulfield, with instructions to pursue the revolted Irish into their fastnesses and deal with them summarily. He himself set out to act with the troops, and on reaching Dundalk published a proclamation, in which he offered pardon to all who laid down their arms, or would use them in killing their associates. He took care, however, to except Phelim M'Davitt from all hope of mercy, consigning him to be dealt with by a military tribunal. The English force in the interval had made their way into O'Dogherty's country, and coming before Culmore, found it abandoned by the Irish, who, unable to carry off the heavy guns, took the precaution of burying them in the sea. Burt Castle surrendered without a blow. Wingfield immediately liberated the inmates, and sent Bishop Montgomery's wife to her husband, and Lady O'Dogherty, her infant daughter and sister-in-law, to Dublin Castle. As for Sir Cahir, instead of going to Castle Doe, he resolved to cross the path of the English on their march to that place, and coming up with them in the vicinity of Kilmacrenan, he was shot dead by a soldier. The death of the young chieftain spread panic among his followers, most of whom flung away their arms, betook themselves to flight, and were unmercifully cut down. Sir Cahir's head was immediately struck off and sent to Dublin, where it was struck upon a pole at the east gate of the city. O'Dogherty's country was now confiscated, and the lord deputy, Chichester, was rewarded with the greatest portion of his lands. But what was to be done with the people? In the first instance they were driven from the rich lowlands along the borders of Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly, and compelled to take refuge in the mountain fastnesses which stretched to a vast extent from Moville westward along the Atlantic coast. But could those 'idle kerne and swordsmen,' thus punished with loss of lands and home for the crimes of their chief, be safely trusted to remain anywhere in the neighbourhood of the new English settlers? Sir John Davis and Sir Toby Caulfield thought of a plan by which they could get rid of the danger. The illustrious Gustavus Adolphus was then fighting the battles of Protestantism against the house of Austria. In his gallant efforts to sustain the cause of the Reformation every true Irish Protestant sympathised, and none more than the members of the Irish Government. To what better use, then, could the 'loose Irish kerne and swordsmen' of Donegal be turned than to send them to fight in the army of the King of Sweden? Accordingly 6,000 of the able-bodied peasantry of Inishown were shipped off for this service. Sir Toby Caulfield, founder of the house of Charlemont, was commissioned to muster the men and have them transported to their destination, being paid for their keep in the meantime. A portion of his account ran thus: 'For the dyett of 80 of said soldiers for 16 daies, during which tyme they were kept in prison in Dungannon till they were sent away, at iiiid le peece per diem; allso for dyett of 72 of said men kept in prison at Armagh till they were sent away to Swethen, at iiiid le peece per diem,' &c., &c. Caulfield was well rewarded for these services; and Captain Sandford, married to the niece of the first Earl of Charlemont, obtained a large grant of land on the same score. This system of clearing out the righting men among the Irish was continued till 1629, when the lord deputy, Falkland, wrote that Sir George Hamilton, a papist, then impressing soldiers in Tyrone and Antrim, was opposed by one O'Cullinan, a priest, who was rash enough to advise the people to stay at home and have nothing to do with the Danish wars. For this he was arrested, committed to Dublin Castle, tortured and then hanged. With regard to the immediate followers of O'Dogherty in his insane course, many of the most prominent leaders were tried by court-martial and executed. Others were found guilty by ordinary course of law. Among these was O'Hanlon, Sir Cahir's brother-in-law. Pie was hanged at Armagh; and his youthful wife was found by a soldier, 'stripped of her apparel, in a wood, where she perished of cold and hunger, being lately before delivered of a child.' M'Davitt, the firebrand of the rebellion, was convicted and executed at Derry. At Dungannon Shane, Carragh O'Cahan was found guilty by 'a jury of his _kinsmen_' and executed in the camp, his head being stuck upon the castle of that place--the castle from which his brother was mainly instrumental in driving its once potent lord into exile. At the same place a monk, who was a chief adviser of the arch-rebel, saved his life and liberty by tearing off his religious habit, and renouncing his allegiance to the Pope. Father Meehan states that many of the clergy, secular and regular, of Inishown might have saved their lives by taking the oath of supremacy. It was a terrible time in Donegal. No day passed without the killing and taking of some of the dispersed rebels, one betraying another to get his own pardon, and the goods of the party betrayed, according to a proviso in the deputy's proclamation. Among the informers was a noble lady, the mother of Hugh Roe O'Donel and Rory Earl of Tyronnel, who accused Nial Garve, her own son-in-law, of complicity in O'Dogherty's revolt, for which she got a grant of some hundreds of acres in the neighbourhood of Kilmacrenan. The insurgent leaders and the dangerous kerne having been effectually cleared off in various ways, the whole territory of Inishown was overrun by the king's troops. The lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, with a numerous retinue, including the attorney-general, sheriffs, lawyers, provosts-martial, engineers, and 'geographers,' made a grand 'progress,' and penetrated for the first time the region which was to become the property of his family. It was a strange sight to the poor Irish that were suffered to remain. 'As we passed through the glens and forests,' wrote Sir John Davis, 'the wild inhabitants did as much wonder to see the king's deputy as the ghosts in Virgil did to see �neas alive in hell.' In this exploring tour a thorough knowledge of the country was for the first time obtained, and the attorney-general could report that 'before Michaelmas he would be ready to present to his majesty a perfect survey of six whole counties which he now hath in actual possession in the province of Ulster, of greater extent of land than any prince in Europe hath in his own hands to dispose of.' A vast field for plantation! But Sir John Davis cautioned the Government against the mistakes that caused the failure of former settlements, saying, that if the number of the Scotch and English who were to come to Ireland did not much exceed that of the natives, the latter would quickly 'overgrow them, as weeds overgrow corn.' O'Cahan, who was charged with complicity in O'Dogherty's outbreak, or with being at least a sympathiser, had been arrested, and was kept, with Nial Garve, a close prisoner in Dublin Castle. An anonymous pamphleteer celebrated the victories that had been achieved by the lord deputy, giving to his work the title, 'The Overthrow of an Irish Rebel,' having for its frontispiece a tower with portcullis, and the O'Dogherty's head impaled in the central embrazure. The spirit of the narrative may be inferred from the following passage: 'As for Tyrone and Co., or Tyrconnel, they are already fled from their coverts, and I hope they will never return; and for other false hearts, the chief of note is O'Cahan, Sir Nial Garve, and his two brothers, with others of their condition. They have holes provided for them in the castle of Dublin, where I hope they are safe enough from breeding any cubs to disquiet and prey upon the flock of honest subjects.' O'Cahan and his companion, however, tried to get out of the hole, although the lord deputy kept twenty men every night to guard the castle, in addition to the ordinary ward, and two or three of the guards lay in the same rooms with the prisoners. Their horses had arrived in town, and all things were in readiness. But their escape was hindered by the fact that Shane O'Carolan, who had been acquitted of three indictments, cast himself out of a window at the top of the castle by the help of his mantle, which broke before he was half way down; and though he was presently discovered, yet he escaped about supper time. 'Surely,' exclaimed the lord deputy, 'these men do go beyond all nations in the world for desperate escapes!' The prisoners were subsequently conveyed to the Tower, where they remained many years closely confined, and where they ended their days. Sir Allen Apsley, in 1623, made a report of the prisoners then in his custody, in which he said, 'There is here Sir Nial Garve O'Donel, a man that was a good subject during the late queen's time, and did as great service to the state as any man of his nation. He has been a prisoner here about thirteen years. His offence is known specially to the Lord Chichester. Naghtan, his son, was taken from Oxford and committed with his father. I never heard any offence he did.' While O'Cahan was in prison, commissioners sat in his mansion at Limavaddy, including the Primate Usher, Bishop Montgomery of Derry, and Sir John Davis. They decided that by the statute of 11 Elizabeth, which it was supposed had been cancelled by the king's pardon, all his territory had been granted to the Earl of Tyrone, and forfeited by his flight. It was, therefore, confiscated. Although sundry royal and viceregal proclamations had assured the tenants that they would not be disturbed in their possessions, on account of the offences of their chiefs, it was now declared that all O'Cahan's country belonged to the crown, and that neither he nor those who lived under him had any estate whatever in the lands. Certain portions of the territory were set apart for the Church, and handed over to Bishop Montgomery. 'Of all the fair territory which once was his, Donald Balagh had not now as much as would afford him a last resting-place near the sculptured tomb of Cooey-na-gall. O'Cahan got no sympathy, and he deserved none; for he might have foreseen that the Government to which he sold himself would cast him off as an outworn tool, when he could no longer subserve their wicked purposes.'[1] 'Thus were the O'Cahans dispossessed by the colonists of Derry, to whom their broad lands and teeming rivers were passed, _mayhap_ for ever. Towards the close of the Cromwellian war in Ireland, the Duchess of Buckingham, passing through Limavaddy, visited its ancient castle, then sadly dilapidated, and, entering one of the apartments, saw an aged woman wrapped in a blanket, and crouching over a peat fire, which filled the room with reeking smoke. After gazing at this pitiful spectacle, the duchess asked the miserable individual her name; when the latter, rising and drawing herself up to her full height, replied, "I am the wife of the O'Cahan."'[Father Meehan dedicates his valuable work to the lord chancellor of Ireland, the Right Hon. Thomas O'Hagan,--the first Catholic chancellor since the Revolution. Descended from the O'Hagans, who were hereditary justiciaries and secretaries to the O'Neill, he is, by universal consent, one of the ablest and most accomplished judges that ever adorned the Irish Bench. His ancestors were involved in the fortunes of Tyrone. How strange that the representative of the judicial and literary clan of ancient Ulster should now be the head of the Irish magistracy!] [Footnote 1: Meehan, p.317.] CHAPTER X. THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER. In the account which the lord deputy gave of the flight of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, he referred to the mistake that had been committed in making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, '_without regard to the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service, or the commonwealths, that are so much interested in the honest liberty of that sort of men_.' And he considered it a providential circumstance that the king had now an opportunity of repairing that error, and of relieving the natives from the exactions and tyranny of their former barbarous lords. How far this change was a benefit to the honest freeholders and the labouring classes may be seen from the reports of Sir Toby Caulfield to the lord deputy, as to his dealings with those people. He complains of his ill success in the prosecution of the wood-kerne. He had done his best, and all had turned to nothing. When the news of the plantation came, he had no hope at all, for the people then said it would be many of their cases to become wood-kerne themselves out of necessity, 'no other means being left for them to keep being in this world than to live as long as they could by scrambling.' They hoped, however, that so much of the summer being spent before the commissioners came down, 'so great cruelty would not be showed as to remove them upon the edge of winter from their houses, and in the very season when they were employed in making their harvest. They held discourse among themselves, that if this course had been taken with them in war time, it had had some colour of justice; but being pardoned, and their land given them, and they having lived under law ever since, and being ready to submit themselves to the mercy of the law, for any offence they can be charged withal, since their pardoning, they conclude it to be the greatest cruelty that was ever inflicted upon any people.' It is no wonder that Sir Toby was obliged to add to his report this assurance: 'There is not a more discontented people in Christendom.' It is difficult to conceive how any people in Christendom could be contented, treated as they were, according to this account, which the officer of the Government did not deny; for surely no people, in any Christian country, were ever the victims of such flagrant injustice, inflicted by a Government which promised to relieve them from the cruel exactions of their barbarous chiefs--a Government, too, solemnly pledged to protect them in the unmolested enjoyment of their houses and lands. How little this policy tended to strengthen the Government appears from a confession made about the same time by the lord deputy himself. He wrote: 'The hearts of the Irish are against us: we have only a handful of men in entertainment so ill paid, that everyone is out of heart, and our resources so discredited, by borrowing and not repaying, that we cannot take up 1,000 l. in twenty days, if the safety of the kingdom depended upon it. The Irish are hopeful of the return of the fugitives, or invasion from foreign parts.' But the safety of England, do what she might in the way of oppression, lay then, as it lay often since, and ever will lie, in the tendency to division, and the instability of the Celtic character. The Rev. Mr. Meehan, with all his zeal for Irish nationality, admits this failing of the people with his usual candour. He says: 'These traits, so peculiar to the Celtic character, have been justly stigmatised by a friendly and observant Italian (the Nuncio Rinuccini) who, some thirty years after the period of which we are writing, tells us that the native Irish were behind the rest of Europe in the knowledge of those things that tended to their material improvement--indifferent agriculturists, living from hand to mouth--caring more for the sword than the plough--good Catholics, though by nature barbarous--and placing their hopes of deliverance from English rule on foreign intervention. For this they were constantly straining their eyes towards France or Spain, and, no matter whence the ally came, were ever ready to rise in revolt. One virtue, however--intensest love of country--more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserve to be called; but to establish anything like strict military discipline or organisation among themselves, it must be avowed they had no aptitude.' This, says Mr. Meehan, 'to some extent, will account for the apathy of the Northern Catholics, while the undertakers were carrying on the gigantic eviction known as the plantation of Ulster; for, since Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's rebellion till 1615, there was only one attempt to resist the intruders, an abortive raid on the city of Derry, for which the meagre annals of that year tell us, six of the Earl of Tyrone's nearest kinsmen were put to death. Withal the people of Ulster were full of hope that O'Neill would return with forces to evict the evicters, but the farther they advanced into this agreeable perspective, the more rapidly did its charms disappear. The proclamations against wood-kerne present a curious picture of these 'plantation' times. The lord deputy, in council, understood that 'many idle kerne, loose and masterless men, and other disordered persons, did range up and down in sundry parts of this kingdom, being armed with swords, targets, pikes, shot, head-pieces, horsemen's staves, and other warlike weapons, to the great terror of his majesty's well-disposed subjects, upon whom they had committed many extortions, murders, robberies, and other outrages. Hence divers proclamations had been published in his majesty's name, commanding that no person of what condition soever, travelling on horseback, should presume to carry more arms than one sword or rapier and dagger; and that no person travelling on foot should carry any weapons at all. Twenty days were allowed for giving the arms to the proper officers. If the proclamation was not obeyed within that time, the arms were to be seized for the king's use, and the bearers of them committed to prison. On July 21, 1609, a commission was issued by the crown to make inquisition concerning the forfeited lands in Ulster after the flight of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel. The commissioners included the Lord-Deputy Chichester, the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, Sir John Davis, attorney-general; Sir William Parsons, surveyor-general, and several other public functionaries. This work done, King James, acting on the advice of his prime minister, the Earl of Salisbury, took measures for the plantation of Ulster, a project earnestly recommended by statesmen connected with Ireland, and for which the flight of O'Neill and O'Donel furnished the desired opportunity. The city of London was thought to be the best quarter to look to for funds to carry on the plantation. Accordingly, Lord Salisbury had a conference with the lord mayor, Humphry Weld, Sir John Jolles, and Sir W. Cockaine, who were well acquainted with Irish affairs. The result was the publication of 'Motives and Reasons to induce the City of London to undertake the Plantation in the North of Ireland.' The inducements were of the most tempting character. It is customary to speak of Ulster, before the plantation, as something like a desert, out of which the planters created an Eden. But the picture presented to the Londoners was more like the land which the Israelitish spies found beyond Jordan--a land flowing with milk and honey. Among 'the land commodities which the North of Ireland produceth' were these:--the country was well watered generally by abundance of springs, brooks, and rivers. There was plenty of fuel--either wood, or 'good and wholesome turf.' The land yielded 'store of all necessary for man's sustenance, in such a measure as may not only maintain itself, but also furnish the city of London yearly with manifold provision, especially for their fleets--namely, with beef, pork, fish, rye, bere, peas, and beans.' It was not only fit for all sorts of husbandry, but it excelled for the breeding of mares and the increase of cattle; whence the Londoners might expect 'plenty of butter, cheese, hides, and tallow,' while English sheep would breed abundantly there. It was also held to be good in many places for madder, hops, and woad. It afforded 'fells of all sorts in great quantity, red deer, foxes, sheep, lambs, rabbits, martins and squirrels,' &c. Hemp and flax grew more naturally there than elsewhere, which, being well regarded, would give provision for canvas, cables, cording, besides thread, linen cloth, and all stuffs made of linen yarn, 'which are more fine and plentiful there than in all the rest of the kingdom.' Then there were the best materials of all sorts for building, with 'the goodliest and largest timber, that might compare with any in his majesty's dominions;' and, moreover, the country was 'very plentiful in honey and wax.' The sea and the rivers vied with the land in the richness of their produce. 'The sea fishing of that coast was very plentiful of all manner of usual sea fish--there being yearly, after Michaelmas, for taking of herrings, above seven or eight score sail of his majesty's subjects and strangers for lading, besides an infinite number of boats for fishing and killing.' The corporation were willing to undertake the work of plantation if the account given of its advantages should prove to be correct. With the caution of men of business, they wished to put the glowing representations of the Government to the test of an investigation by agents of their own. So they sent over 'four wise, grave, and discreet citizens, to view the situation proposed for the new colony.' The men selected were John Broad, goldsmith; Robert Treswell, painter-stainer; John Rowley, draper; and John Munns, mercer. On their return from their Irish mission they presented a report to the Court of Common Council, which was openly read. The report was favourable. A company was to be formed in London for conducting the plantation. Corporations were to be founded in Derry and Coleraine, everything concerning the colony to be managed and performed in Ireland by the advice and direction of the company in London. It was agreed between the Privy Council and the City that the sum of 20,000 l. should be levied, 15,000 l. for the intended plantation, and 5,000 l. 'for the clearing of private men's interest in the things demanded.' That 200 houses should be built in Derry, and room left for 300 more. 'That 4,000 acres lying on the Derry side, next adjacent to the wherry, should be laid thereunto--bog and barren mountain to be no part thereof, but to go as waste for the city; the same to be done by indifferent commissioners.' The royal charters and letters clearly set forth the objects of the plantation. James I., in the preamble of the charter to the town of Coleraine, thus described his intentions in disposing of the forfeited lands to English undertakers: 'Whereas there can be nothing more worthy of a king to perform than to establish the true religion of Christ among men hitherto depraved and almost lost in superstition; to improve and cultivate by art and industry countries and lands uncultivated and almost desert, and not only to stock them with honest citizens and inhabitants, but also to strengthen them with good institutions and ordinances, whereby they might be more safely defended not only from the corruption of their morals but from their intestine and domestic plots and conspiracies, and also from foreign violence: And whereas the province of Ulster in our realm of Ireland, for many years past, hath grossly erred from the true religion of Christ and divine grace, and hath abounded with superstition, insomuch that for a long time it hath not only been harassed, torn, and wasted by private and domestic broils but also by foreign arms: We therefore, deeply and heartily commiserating the wretched state of the said province, have esteemed it to be a work worthy of a Christian prince, and of our royal office, to stir up and recal the same province from superstition, rebellion, calamity, and poverty, which heretofore have horribly raged therein, to religion, obedience, strength, and prosperity. And whereas our beloved and faithful subjects the mayor and commonalty and citizens of our city of London, burning with a flagrant zeal to promote such our pious intention in this behalf, have undertaken a considerable part of the said plantation in Ulster, and are making progress therein'. King James, having heard very unsatisfactory reports of the progress of the plantation, wrote a letter to the lord deputy in 1612, strongly complaining of the neglect of the 'Londoners' to fulfil the obligations they had voluntarily undertaken. He had made 'liberal donations of great proportions of those lands to divers British undertakers and servitors, with favourable tenures and reservations for their better encouragement; but hitherto neither the safety of that country, nor the planting of religion and civility among those rude and barbarous people, which were the principal motives of that project, and which he expected as the only fruits and returns of his bounty, had been as yet any whit materially effected. He was not ignorant how much the real accomplishment of the plantation concerned the future peace and safety of that kingdom; but if there was no reason of state to press it forward, he would yet pursue and effect that object with the same earnestness, 'merely for the goodness and morality of it; esteeming the settling of religion, the introducing of civility, order, and government among a barbarous and unsubjected people, to be acts of piety and glory, and worthy also a Christian prince to endeavour.' The king therefore ordered that there should be a strict inquiry into the work done, because 'the Londoners pretended the expense of great sums of money in that service, and yet the outward appearance of it was very small.' The lord deputy was solemnly charged to give him a faithful account without care or fear to displease any of his subjects, English or Scottish, of what quality soever.' Sir Josias Bodley was the commissioner appointed for this purpose. He reported very unfavourably, in consequence of which his majesty called upon the Irish society and the several companies to give him an account of their stewardship. He also wrote again to the lord deputy in 1615. The language the king uses is remarkable, as proving the _trusteeship_ of the companies. Referring to Bodley's report he said:-- 'We have examined, viewed, and reviewed, with our own eye, every part thereof, and find greatly to our discontentment the slow progression of that plantation; some few only of our British undertakers, servitors, and natives having as yet proceeded effectually by the accomplishment of such things in all points as are required of them by the articles of the plantation; the rest, and by much the greatest part, having either done nothing at all, or so little, or, by reason of the slightness thereof, to so little purpose, that the work seems rather to us to be forgotten by them, and to perish under their hand, than any whit to be advanced by them; some having begun to build and not planted, others begun to plant and not built, and all of them, in general, retaining the Irish still upon their lands, the avoiding of which was the fundamental reason of that plantation. We have made a collection of their names, as we found their endeavours and negligences noted in the service, which we will retain as a memorial with us, and they shall be sure to feel the effects of our favour and disfavour, as there shall be occasion. It is well known to you that if we had intended only (as it seems most of them over-greedily have done) our present profit, we might have converted those large territories to our escheated lands, to the great improvement of the revenue of our crown there; but we chose rather, for the safety of that country and the civilizing of that people, to part with the inheritance of them at extreme undervalues, and to make a plantation of them; and since we were merely induced thereunto out of reason of state, we think we may without any breach of justice make bold with their rights who have neglected their duties in a service of so much importance unto us, and by the same law and reason of state resume into our hands their lands who have failed to perform, according to our original intention, the articles of plantation, and bestow them upon some other men more active and worthy of them than themselves: and the time is long since expired within which they were bound to have finished to all purposes their plantation, so that we want not just provocation to proceed presently with all rigour against them.' He gave them a year to pull up their arrears of work, and in conclusion said to Chichester: 'My lord, in this service I expect that zeal and uprightness from you, that you will spare no flesh, English or Scottish; for no private man's worth is able to counterbalance the particular safety of a kingdom, which this plantation, well accomplished, will procure.' Two or three years later, Captain Pynnar was sent to survey the lands that had been granted to the undertakers, and to report upon the improvements they had effected. A few notices from his report will give an idea of the state of Ulster at the commencement of this great social revolution:-- Armagh was one of the six counties confiscated by James I. The territory had belonged to the O'Neills, the O'Hanlons, the O'Carrols, and M'Kanes, whose people were all involved more or less in the fortunes of the Earl of Tyrone, who wielded sovereign power over this portion of Ulster. The plantation scheme was said to be the work of the Privy Council of Ireland, and submitted by them for the adoption of the English Government. It was part of the plan that all the lands escheated in each county should be divided into four parts, whereof two should be subdivided into proportions consisting of about 1,000 acres a piece; a third part into proportions of 1,500 acres; and the fourth in proportions of 2,000 acres. Every proportion was to be made into a parish, a church was to be erected on it, and the minister endowed with glebe land. If an incumbent of a parish of 1,000 acres he was to have sixty; if of 1,500 acres, ninety; and if 2,000 acres, he was to have 120 acres; and the whole tithes and duties of every parish should be allotted to the incumbent as well as the glebe. The undertakers were to be of several sorts. 1st, English and Scotch, who were to plant their proportions with English and Scotch tenants; 2nd, servitors in Ireland, who might take English or Scotch tenants at their choice; 3rd, natives of the county, who were to be freeholders. With respect to the disposal of the natives, it was arranged that the same course should be adopted as in the county of Tyrone, which was this: some were to be planted upon two of the small proportions, and upon the glebes; others upon the land of Sir Art O'Neill's sons and Sir Henry Oge O'Neill's sons, 'and of such other Irish as shall be thought fit to have any _freeholds_; some others upon the portions of such servitors as are not able to inhabit these lands with English or Scotch tenants, especially of _such as best know how to rule and order the Irish_. But the swordsmen (that is, the armed retainers or soldiers of the chiefs) are to be transplanted into such other parts of the kingdom as, by reason of the wastes therein, are fittest to receive them, namely, into Connaught and some parts of Munster, where they are to be dispersed, and not planted together in one place; and such swordsmen, who have not followers or cattle of their own, to be disposed of in his majesty's service.' This provision about planting the swordsmen, however, was not carried out. The whole county of Armagh was found to contain 77,300 acres of arable and pasture land, which would make 60 proportions. That county, as well as other parts of ancient Ireland, was divided into ballyboes, or townlands, tracts of tillage land surrounding the native villages unenclosed, and held in _rundale_, having ranges of pasture for their cattle, which were herded in common, each owner being entitled to a certain number of 'collops' in proportion to his arable land. As these ballyboes were not of equal extent, the English made the division of land by acres, and erected boundary fences. The primate's share in this county was 2,400 acres. The glebes comprised 4,650 acres; the College of Dublin got 1,200, and the Free School at Armagh 720; Sir Turlough M'Henry possessed 9,900 acres, and 4,900 had been granted to Sir Henry Oge O'Neill. After these deductions, there were for the undertakers 55,620 acres, making in all forty-two proportions. Number one in the survey is the estate of William Brownlow, Esq., which contained two proportions, making together 2,500 acres. Pynar reported as follows: 'Upon the proportion of Ballenemony there is a strong stone house within a good island; and at Dowcoran there is a very fair house of stone and brick, with good lyme, and hath a strong bawne of timber and earth with a pallizado about it. There is now laid in readiness both lyme and stone, to make a bawne thereof, the which is promised to be done this summer. He hath made a very fair town, consisting of forty-two houses, all which are inhabited with English families, and the streets all paved clean through; also two water-mills and a wind-mill, all for corn, and he hath store of arms in his house.' Pynar found 'planted and estated' on this territory 57 families altogether, who were able to furnish 100 men with arms, there not being one Irish family upon all the land. There was, however, a number of sub-tenants, which accounts for the fact that there was 'good store of tillage.' Five of the English settlers were freeholders, having 120 acres each; and there were 52 leaseholders, whose farms varied in size from 420 acres to 5; six of them holding 100 acres and upwards. This was the foundation of the flourishing town of Lurgan. Mr. Obens had 2,000 acres obtained from William Powell, the first patentee. He had built a bawne of sods with a pallizado of boards ditched about. Within this there was a 'good fair house of brick and lyme,' and near it he had built four houses, inhabited by English families. There were twenty settlers, who with their under-tenants were able to furnish forty-six armed men. This was the beginning of Portadown. The fourth lot was obtained from the first patentee by Mr. Cope, who had 3,000 acres. 'He built a bawne of lyme and stone 180 feet square, 14 feet high, with four flankers; and in three of them he had built very good lodgings, which were three stories high.' He erected two water-mills and one wind-mill, and near the bawne he had built fourteen houses of timber, which were inhabited by English families. This is now the rich district of Lough Gall. It should be observed here that, in all these crown grants, the patentees were charged crown rents only for the _arable_ lands conveyed by their title-deeds, bogs, wastes, mountain, and unreclaimed lands of every description being thrown in gratuitously; amounting probably to ten or fifteen times the quantity of demised ground set down in acres. Lord Lurgan's agent, Mr. Hancock, at the commencement of his evidence before the Devon Commission, stated that 'Lord Lurgan is owner of about 24,600 acres, with a population of 23,800, under the census of 1841'--that is, by means of original reclamation, drainage, and other works of agricultural improvement, Mr. Brownlow's 2,500 acres of the year 1619, had silently grown up to 24,600 acres, and his hundred swordsmen, or pikemen, the representatives of 57 families, with a few subordinates, had multiplied to 23,800 souls. Now Mr. Hancock founds the tenant-right custom upon the fact that few, if any, of the 'patentees were wealthy;' we may therefore fairly presume that the _settlers built their own houses, and made their own improvements at their own expense_, contrary to the English practice.' As the population increased, and 'arable' land became valuable, bogs, wastes, and barren land were gradually reclaimed and cultivated, through the hard labour and at the cost of the occupying tenantry, until the possessions of his descendants have spread over ten times the area nominally demised by the crown to their progenitor. This process went on all over the province. Sixteen years passed away, and in the opinion of the Government the London companies and the Irish Society, instead of reforming as Irish planters, went on from bad to worse. Accordingly, in 1631, Charles I. found it necessary to bring them into the Star Chamber. In a letter to the lords justices he said:-- 'Our father, of blessed memory, in his wisdom and singular care, both to fortify and preserve that country of Ireland from foreign and inward forces, and also for the better establishment of true religion, justice, civility, and commerce, found it most necessary to erect British plantations there; and, to that end, ordained and published many politic and good orders, and for the encouragement of planters gave them large proportions and privileges. Above the rest, his grace and favour was most enlarged to the Londoners, who undertook the plantation of a considerable part of Ulster, and were specially chosen for their ability and professed zeal to public works; and yet advertisements have been given from time to time, not only by private men, but by all succeeding deputies, and by commissioners sent from hence and chosen there, and being many of them of our council, that the _Londoners for private lucre_ have broken and neglected both their general printed ordinances and other particular directions given by us and our council here, so as if they hall escape unpunished all others will be heartened to do the like, and in the end expose that our kingdom to former confusions and dangers; for prevention whereof we have, upon mature advice of our councillors for those causes, caused them to be questioned in our high court of Star-chamber here, whence commission is now sent to examine witnesses, upon interrogatories, for discovery of the truth; and because we understand that the Londoners heretofore prevailed with some, from whom we expected better service, that in the return of the last commission many things agreed under the hands of most commissioners were not accordingly certified: Now that our service may not surfer by like partiality, we will and require you to have an especial eye to this business; and take care that this commission be faithfully executed, and that no practice or indirect means be used, either to delay the return or to frustrate the ends of truth in every interrogatory.' This proceeding on the part of the crown was ascribed to the influence of Bishop Bramhall, who had come over with Lord Strafford as his chaplain. The result was, that in 1632 the whole county of Londonderry was sequestrated, and the rents levied for the king's use, the Bishop of Derry being appointed receiver and authorised to make leases. The lord chancellor, with the concurrence of the other judges, decreed that the letters patent should be surrendered and cancelled. This decree was duly executed. Cromwell reinstated the companies in their possessions, and Charles II., instead of reversing the forfeiture, granted a new charter. This charter founded a system of protection and corporate exclusiveness, the most perfect perhaps that ever existed in the three kingdoms. He began by constituting Londonderry a county, and Derry city a corporation--to be called Londonderry. He named the aldermen and burgesses, who were to hold their offices during their natural lives. He placed both the county and city under the control of 'the Irish Society,' which was then definitely formed. He appointed Sir Thomas Adams first governor, and John Saunders, deputy governor. He also appointed the twenty-four assistants, all citizens of London. He invested the society with full power 'to send orders and directions from, this kingdom of England into the said realm of Ireland, by letters or otherwise, for the ordering, directing, and disposing of all and all manner of matters and things whatsoever of and concerning the same plantation, or the disposition or government thereof. The grant of property was most comprehensive:-- 'We also will, and, by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do give, grant, and confirm to the said society of the governor and assistants [London] of the new plantation in Ulster within the realm of Ireland, and their successors: 'All that the city, fort, and town of Derry, and all edifices and structures thereof, with the appurtenances, in the county of the city of Derry aforesaid, in the province of Ulster, in our realm of Ireland; and also the whole island of Derry, with the appurtenances, and all lands and the whole ground within the island of Derry aforesaid, in the said county of the city of Derry, otherwise Londonderry, within the province of Ulster, in our aforesaid realm of Ireland. And also all those lands next adjacent to the said city or town of Derry, lying and being on or towards the west part of the river of Loughfoyle, containing by estimation four thousand acres, besides bog and barren mountains, which said bog and barren mountains may be had and used as waste to the same city belonging. And also all that portion and proportion of land by the general survey of all the lands in the aforesaid late county of Coleraine, now Londonderry, heretofore taken, called the great proportion of Boughtbegg, lying and being in the barony or precinct of Coleraine, now Londonderry, within the province of Ulster aforesaid, in our said realm of Ireland; that is to say, all lands, tenements, and other hereditaments, called and known by the names, and situate, lying, and being in or within the several towns, villages, hamlets, places, balliboes, or parcels of land following, that is to say: Hacketbegg, being two balliboes of land; Aglakightagh, being two balliboes of land; Altybryan, being one balliboe of land; Bratbooly, being one balliboe of land; Hackmoore, being one balliboe of land; Tirecurrin, being one balliboe of land; Edermale, being one balliboe of land; Lennagorran, being one balliboe of land; Knockmult, being one balliboe of land; Boughtmore, being one balliboe of land; Boughtbegg, being one balliboe of land, &c. 'We will also, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant and confirm to the said society of the governor and assistants [London] of the new plantation in Ulster, and their successors, that they and their successors, and also all their assigns, deputies, ministers, and servants shall and may have full liberty of fishing, hawking, and fowling in all the places, tenements, shores, and coasts aforesaid, at their will and pleasure. 'And that it shall and may be lawful to and for them and every of them to draw and dry their nets, and pack the fishes there taken upon any part of the shores and coasts aforesaid where they shall fish; and the salmons and other fishes there taken to take thence and carry away without any impediment, contradiction, or molestation of us or others whomsoever, wheresoever it shall happen to be done. 'And that in like manner they may have the several fishings and fowlings within the city of Londonderry aforesaid, and in all lands and tenements before mentioned to be granted and confirmed to the said society of the governor and assistants [London] of the new plantation in Ulster and their successors, and in the river and water of Loughfoile, to the ebb of the sea, and in the river or water of Bann to Loughneagh.' The grants were made without any reservation in favour of the tenants or the old inhabitants, saving some portions of land given by letters patent by his grandfather to 'certain _Irish gentlemen_ in the said county of Londonderry, heretofore inhabiting and residing, and who were heretofore made freeholders, and their successors, under a small yearly rent,' which was to be paid to the Irish Society. Even the Irish gentlemen were not allowed to hold their ancient inheritance directly under the crown. I am informed that there is but one Roman Catholic landed gentleman now remaining in the whole province of Ulster. The Londoners had extraordinary privileges as traders. They had free quarters in every port throughout the kingdom, while they treated all but the members of their own body as 'foreigners.' They knew nothing of reciprocity:--'And further we will, and, by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant and confirm to the said mayor and commonalty and citizens of our city of Londonderry aforesaid, that all citizens of the said city of Londonderry and liberty of the same (as much as in us is) be for ever quit and free, and all their things throughout all Ireland, of all tolls, wharfage, murage, anchorage, beaconage, pavage, pontage, piccage, stallage, passage, and lestage, and of all other tolls and duties.' The 'foreigners,' including all his majesty's subjects but the favoured few within the walls of Derry, were forbidden to buy or sell, or practise any trade in this sanctuary of freedom and head-centre of 'civility.' 'And that merchants and others which are not of the freedom of the city of Londonderry aforesaid shall not sell by retail any wines or other wares whatsoever within the same city of Londonderry, the suburbs, liberties, or franchises of the same, upon pain of forfeiture for the things so bought, or the value thereof, to the use of the mayor and commonalty and citizens of the city of Londonderry aforesaid. And also that no person being a foreigner from the freedom of the city aforesaid shall use or exercise within the same city, liberties or suburbs of the same, any art, mystery, or manual occupation whatsoever, to make his gain and profit thereof, upon pain of forfeiture of forty shillings for every time wherein such person shall use or exercise within the said city of Londonderry, liberties, and suburbs of the same, any art, mystery, or manual occupation as aforesaid.' Foreigners were not allowed to buy from or sell to foreigners, and there was to be no market for the accommodation of the unprivileged inhabitants within seven miles of the city. Similar exclusive privileges were conferred upon the corporation of Coleraine. Such was the system established by the City of London in its model communities in Ireland--normal schools of freedom, fountains of civilising and Christianising influences which were to reclaim and convert the barbarous and superstitious natives into loyal subjects and enlightened Protestants! What the natives beheld in Londonderry was, in fact, a royal organisation of selfishness, bigotry, and monopoly, of the most intensely exclusive and repulsive character. In one sense the Londoners in Derry showed that they peculiarly prized the blessings of civilisation, for they kept them all to themselves. The fountain was flowing in the most tempting manner before the thirsty Irish, but let them dare to drink of it at their peril! A fine which no Irishman was then able to pay must be the penalty for every attempt at civilisation! The representatives of Derry and Coleraine were not only elected without cost, but paid for their attendance in Parliament. From the very beginning, the greatest possible care was taken to keep out the Irish. The society, in 1615, sent precepts to all the companies requiring each of them to send one or two artisans, with their families, into Ulster, to settle there; and directions were also given, in order that Derry might not in future be peopled with Irish, that twelve Christ's Hospital and other poor children should be sent there as apprentices and servants, and the inhabitants were to be prohibited from taking Irish apprentices. Directions were also given to the companies, to repair the churches on their several proportions, and furnish the ministers with a bible, common-prayer book, and a communion cup. The trades which the society recommended as proper to introduce into Ulster were, weavers of common cloth, fustians, and new stuffs, felt-makers and trimmers of hats, and hat-band makers, locksmiths and farriers, tanners and fellmongers, iron makers, glass-makers, pewterers, coast fishermen, turners, basket-makers, tallow-chandlers, dyers, and curriers. The Christ's Hospital children arrived safe, and became the precious seed of the 'prentice boys. In 1629 the following return was made of the total disbursements by the Londoners in Derry from January 2, 1609, to this year:-- £ For 77-1/2 houses at 140 l. a house 10,850 For 33 houses at 80 l. a house 2,680 For the Lord Bishop's house 500 For the walls and fortifications 8,357 For digging the ditch and filling earth for the rampire 1,500 For levelling earth to lay the rampire 500 For building a faggot quay at the water-gate 100 For two quays at the lime kilns 10 For the building of the town house 500 For the quays at the ferry 60 For carriage and mounting the ordnance 40 For arms 558 For a guardhouse 50 For the platforms for bulwarks 300 For some work done at the old church 40 For some work done at the town pike 6 For sinking 22 cellars, and sundry of the houses not done at first, at 20 s. cellar, one with another 440 For the building of lime kilns 120 ______ 26,611 ______ Sum total, as given in the Commissioners' account 27,197 The exclusive and protective system utterly failed to accomplish its purpose in keeping out the Irish. Sir Thomas Phillips made a muster-roll in 1622, in which he gives 110 as the number of settlers in the city of Derry capable of bearing arms. There are but two Irish names in the list--Ermine M'Swine, and James Doherty. The first, from his Christian name, seemed to have been of mixed blood, the son of a judge, which would account for his orthodoxy. But his presence might have reminded the citizens unpleasantly of the Irish battle-axes. Never were greater pains taken to keep a community pure than within the sacred precincts of the Derry walls; and never was Protestantism more tenderly fostered by the state--so far as secular advantages could do it. The natives were treated as 'foreigners.' No trade was permitted except by the chartered British. They were free of tolls all over the land, and for their sake restrictions were placed on everybody that could in any way interfere with their worldly interests. So complete was the system of exclusion kept up by the English Government and the London corporation, in this grand experiment for planting religion and civility among a barbarous people, that, so late as the year 1708, the Derry corporation considered itself nothing more or less than _a branch of the City of London_! In that year they sent an address to the Irish Society, to be presented through them to the queen. 'In this address they stated themselves to be a branch of the City of London. The secretary was ordered to wait upon the lord lieutenant of Ireland with the address and entreat the favour of his lordship's advice concerning the presenting of the same to her majesty.' A few days after it was announced that the address had been graciously received, and published in the _Gazette_. The Irish were kept out of the enclosed part of the city till a late period. In the memory of the present generation there was no Catholic house within the walls, and I believe it is not much longer since the Catholic servants within the sacred enclosure were obliged to go outside at night to sleep among their kinsfolk. The English garrison did not multiply very fast. In 1626 there were only 109 families in the city, of which five were families of soldiers liable to be removed. Archbishop King stated that in 1690 the whole of the population of the parish, including the Donegal part, was about 700. But the irrepressible Irish increased and multiplied around the walls with alarming rapidity. The tide of native population rose steadily against the ramparts of exclusion, and could no more be kept back than the tide in the Foyle. In the general census of 1800 there were no returns from Derry. But in 1814 it was stated in a report by the deputation from the Irish Society, that the population amounted at that time to 14,087 persons. This must have included the suburbs. In the census of 1821 the city was found to have 9,313 inhabitants. The city and suburbs together contained 16,971. The report of the commissioners of public instruction in 1831 made a startling disclosure as to the effect of the system of exclusion in this 'branch of the City of London.' In the parish of Templemore (part of) there were-- Members of the Established Church 3,166 Presbyterians 5,811 Roman Catholics 9,838 The report of 1834 gave the Roman Catholics, 10,299; the Presbyterians, 6,083; and the Church only 3,314. The figures now are--Catholics 12,036 Protestants of all denominations 8,839 Majority of Irish and Catholics in this 'branch of the City of London' 3,197 This majority is about equal to the whole number which the exclusive system, with all its 'protection' and 'bounties,' could produce for the Established Church in the course of two centuries! If the Irish had been admitted to the Pale of English civilisation, and instructed in the industrial arts by the settlers, the results with respect to religion might have been very different. In the long run the Church of Rome has been the greatest gainer by coercion. Derry has been a miniature representation of the Establishment. The 'prentice boys, like their betters, must yield to the spirit of the age, and submit with the best grace they can to the rule of religious equality. The plantation was, however, wonderfully successful on the whole. In thirty years, towns, fortresses, factories, arose, pastures, ploughed up, were converted into broad corn-fields, orchards, gardens, hedges, &c. were planted. How did this happen? 'The answer is that it sprang from the security of tenure which the plantation settlement supplied. The landlords were in every case bound to make fixed estates to their tenants at the risk of sequestration and forfeiture. Hence their power of selling their plantation rights and improvements. This is the origin of Ulster tenant-right.' Yet the work went on slowly enough in some districts. The viceroy, Chichester, was not neglected in the distribution of the spoils. He not only got the O'Dogherty's country, Innishown, but a large tract in Antrim, including the towns of Carrickfergus and Belfast. An English tourist travelling that way in 1635 gives a quaint description of the country in that transition period:-- On July 5 he landed at Carrickfergus, where he found that Lord Chichester had a stately house, 'or rather like a prince's palace.' In Belfast, he said, my Lord Chichester had another _daintie_, stately palace, which, indeed, was the glory and beauty of the town. And there were also _daintie_ orchards, gardens, and walks planted. The Bishop of Dromore, to whom the town of Dromore entirely belonged, lived there in a 'little timber house.' He was not given to hospitality, for though his chaplain was a Manchester man, named Leigh, he allowed his English visitor to stop at an inn over the way. 'This,' wrote the tourist, 'is a very dear house, 8 d. ordinary for ourselves, 6 d. for our servants, and we were overcharged in _beere_.' The way thence to Newry was most difficult for a stranger to find out. 'Therein he wandered, and, being lost, fell among the Irish _touns_.' The Irish houses were the poorest cabins he had seen, erected in the middle of fields and grounds which they farmed and rented. 'This,' he added, 'is a wild country, not inhabited, planted, nor enclosed.' He gave an Irishman 'a groat' to bring him into the way, yet he led him, like a villein, directly out of the way, and so left him in the lurch. Leaving Belfast, this Englishman said: 'Near hereunto, Mr. Arthur Hill, son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000 l. per annum. Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted. They sit upon a rack-rent, and pay 5 s. or 6 s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent good _corne_.' According to the Down survey, made twenty-two years later, Dromore had not improved: 'There are no buildings in this parish; only Dromore, it being a market town, hath some old thatched houses and a ruined church standing in it. What other buildings are in the parish are nothing but removeable _creaghts_.' To the economist and the legislator, the most interesting portions of the state papers of the 16th and 17th centuries are, undoubtedly, those which tell us how the people lived, how they were employed, housed, and fed, what measure of happiness fell to their lot, and what were the causes that affected their welfare, that made them contented and loyal, or miserable and disaffected. Contemporary authors, who deal with social phenomena, are also read with special interest for the same reason. They present pictures of society in their own time, and enable us to conceive the sort of life our forefathers led, and to estimate, at least in a rough way, what they did for posterity. Harris was moved to write his 'History of Down' by indignation at the misrepresentations of the English press of his day. They had the audacity to say that 'the Irish people were uncivilised, rude, and barbarous; that they delighted in butter _tempered_ with oatmeal, and sometimes flesh without bread, which they ate raw, having first pressed the blood out of it; and drank down large draughts of usquebaugh for digestion, reserving their little corn for the horses; that their dress and habits were no less barbarous; that cattle was their chief wealth; that they counted it no infamy to commit robberies, and that in their view violence and murder were in no way displeasing to God; that the country was overgrown with woods, which abounded in wolves and other voracious animals,' &c. It was, no doubt, very provoking that such stories should be repeated 130 years after the plantation of Ulster, and Harris undertook, with laudable patriotism, to show 'how far this description of Ireland was removed from the truth, from the present state of only one county in the kingdom.' The information which the well-informed writer gives is most valuable, and very much to the purpose of our present inquiry. More than half the arable ground was then (in 1745) under tillage, affording great quantities of oats, some rye and wheat, and 'plenty of barley,' commonly called English or spring barley, making excellent malt liquor, which of late, by means of drying the grain with Kilkenny coals, was exceedingly improved. The ale made in the county was distinguished for its fine colour and flavour. The people found the benefit of '_a sufficient tillage_, being not obliged to take up with the poor unwholesome diet which the commonalty of Munster and Connaught had been forced to in the late years of scarcity; and sickness and mortality were not near so great as in other provinces of the kingdom.' Yet the county Down seemed very unfavourable for tillage. The economists of our time, perhaps our viceroys too, would say it was only fit for bullocks and sheep. It was 'naturally coarse, and full of hills; the air was sharp and cold in winter, with earlier frosts than in the south, the soil inclined to _wood_, unless constantly ploughed and kept open, and the low grounds degenerated into morass or bog where the drains were neglected. Yet, by the constant labour and industry of the inhabitants, the morass grounds had of late, by burning and proper management, produced surprisingly large crops of rye and oats. Coarse lands, manured with lime, had answered the farmers' views in wheat, and yielded a great produce, and wherever marl was found there was great store of barley. The staple commodity of the county was linen, due care of which manufacture brought great wealth among the people. Consequently the county was observed to be 'populous and flourishing, though it did not become amenable to the laws till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, nor fully till the reign of James I.' The English habit, language, and manners almost universally prevailed. 'Irish,' says Harris, 'can be heard only among the inferior rank of _Irish Papists_, and even that little diminishes every day, by the great desire the poor natives have that their children should be taught to read and write in the English tongue in the Charter, or other English Protestant schools, to which they willingly send them.' The author exults in the progress of Protestantism. There were but two Catholic gentlemen in the county who had estates, and their income was very moderate. When the priests were registered in 1704 there were but thirty in the county. In 1733 the books of the hearth-money collectors showed-- Protestant families in the county Down 14,000 Catholic families 5,210 Total Protestants, reckoning five a family 70,300 Total Catholics 26,050 ______ Protestant majority 44,250 Our author, who was an excellent Protestant of the 18th century type, with boundless faith in the moral influence of the Charter schools, would be greatly distressed if he could have lived in these degenerate days, and seen the last religious census, which gives the following figures for the county of Down:-- Protestants of all denominations 202,026 Catholics 97,240 _______ Total population 299,266 The total number of souls in the county in the year 1733 was 96,350. These figures show that the population was more than trebled in 130 years, and that the Catholics have increased nearly fourfold. The history of the Hertfort estate illustrates every phase of the tenant-right question. It contains 66,000 acres, and comprises the barony of Upper Massereene, part of the barony of Upper Belfast, in the county of Antrim, and part of the baronies of Castlereagh and Lower Iveagh, in the county of Down; consisting altogether of no less than 140 townlands. It extends from Dunmurry to Lough Neagh, a distance of about fourteen miles as the crow flies. When the Devon commission made its inquiry, the population upon this estate amounted to about 50,000. It contains mountain land, and the mountains are particularly wet, because, unlike the mountains in other parts of the country, the substratum is a stiff retentive clay. At that time there was not a spot of mountain or bog upon Lord Hertfort's estate that was not let by the acre. About one-third of the land is of first-rate quality; there are 15,000 or 16,000 acres of mountain, and about the same quantity of land of medium quality. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign this property formed a section of the immense territory ruled over by the O'Neills. One of these princes was called the Captain of _Kill-Ultagh_. In those times, when might was right, this redoubtable chief levied heavy contributions on the settlers, partly in retaliation for aggressions and outrages perpetrated by the English upon his own people. The queen, with the view of effecting a reconciliation, requested the lord deputy, Sir H. Sidney, to pay the Irish chief a visit. He did so, but his welcome was by no means gratifying. In fact, O'Neill would not condescend to receive him at all. His reason for exhibiting a want of hospitality so un-Irish was this:--He said his 'home had been pillaged, his lands swept of their cattle, and his vassals shot like wild animals.' The lord deputy, in his notes of the northern tour, written in October, 1585, says:--'I came to Kill-Ultagh, which I found rich and plentiful, after the manner of these countries. But the captain was proud and insolent; he would not come to me, nor have I apt reason to visit him as I would. But he shall be paid for this before long; I will not remain in his debt.' The 'apt reason' for carrying out this threat soon occurred. Tyrone had once more taken the field against the queen; the captain joined his relative; all his property was consequently forfeited, and handed over to Sir Fulke Conway, a Welsh soldier of some celebrity. Sir Fulke died in 1626, and his brother, who was a favourite of Charles I., succeeded to the estate, to which his royal patron added the lands of Derryvolgie, thus making him lord of nearly 70,000 statute acres of the broad lands of Down and Antrim. The Conways brought over a number of English and Welsh families, who settled on the estate, and intermarrying with the natives, a race of sturdy yeomen soon sprang up. The Conways were good landlords, and greatly beloved by the people. With the addition made to the property the king conferred upon the fortunate recipient of his bounty the title of Baron. At the close of 1627, Lord Conway began the erection of a castle (finished in 1630) on a picturesque mount overlooking the Lagan, and commanding a view of the hills of Down. During the struggles of 1641 the castle was burned down, together with the greater part of the town, which up to this time was called Lisnagarvah, but thenceforth it received the name of Lisburn. Very little, however, had been done by the settlers when the outbreak occurred, for an English traveller in 1635 remarked that 'neither the town nor the country thereabouts was _planted_, being almost all woods and moorish.' About a month after the breaking out of the rebellion the king's forces, under Sir George Rawdon, obtained a signal victory over the Irish commanded by Sir Phelim O'Neill, Sir Con M'Guinness, and General Plunket. In 1662 the town obtained a charter of incorporation from Charles II., and sent two members to the Irish parliament, the church being at the same time made the cathedral for Down and Connor. The Conway estates passed to the Seymours in this way. Popham Seymour, Esq., was the son of Sir Edward Seymour, fourth baronet, described by Bishop Burnet as 'the ablest man of his party, the first speaker of the House of Commons that was not bred to the law; a graceful man, bold and quick, and of high birth, being the elder branch of the Seymour family.' Popham Seymour inherited the estates of the Earl of Conway, who was his cousin, under a will dated August 19, 1683, and assumed in consequence the surname of Conway. This gentleman died unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother Francis, who was raised to the peerage in 1703 by the title of Baron Conway, of Kill-Ultagh, county Antrim. His eldest son, the second baron, was created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertfort in 1750. In 1765 he was Viceroy of Ireland, and in 1793 he was created Marquis of Hertfort. The present peer, born in the year 1800, is the fourth marquis, having succeeded his father in 1842. Lisburn is classic ground. It represents all sorts of historic interest. On this hill, now called the Castle Gardens, the Captain of Kill-Ultagh mustered his galloglasse. Here, amid the flames of the burning town, was fought a decisive battle between the English and the Irish, one of the Irish chiefs in that encounter being the ancestor of the restorer of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The battle lasted till near midnight, when the Irish were put to flight, leaving behind them dead and wounded thrice the number of the entire garrison. Here, on this mount, stood William III. in June, 1690. I saw in the church the monument of Jeremy Taylor, and the pulpit from which the most eloquent of bishops delivered his immortal sermons. I saw the tablet erected by his mother to the memory of Nicholson, the young hero of Delhi, and those of several other natives of Lisburn who have contributed, by their genius and courage, to promote the fame and power of England. Among the rest Lieutenant Dobbs, who was killed in an encounter with Paul Jones, the American pirate, in Carrickfergus Bay. I received a hospitable welcome from a loyal gentleman in the house which was the residence of General Munroe, the hero of '98, and saw the spot in the square where he was hanged in view of his own windows. But I confess that none of the monuments of the past excited so much interest in my mind as the house of Louis Crommelin, the Huguenot refugee, who founded the linen manufacture at Lisburn. That house is now occupied by Mr. Hugh M'Call, author of 'Our Staple Manufactures,' who worthily represents the intelligence, the public spirit, and patriotism of the English and French settlers, with a dash of the Irish ardour, a combination of elements which perhaps produces the best 'staple' of character. I stood upon the identical oak floor upon which old Crommelin planned and worked, and in the grave-yard Mr. M'Call deciphered for me the almost obliterated inscriptions, recording the deaths of various members of the Crommelin family. Their leader, Louis himself, died in July, 1727, aged 75 years. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove three quarters of a million of Protestants out of France. A great number settled in London, where they established the arts of silk-weaving in Spitalfields and of fancy jewellery in St. Giles's. About 6,000 fled to Ireland, of whom many settled in Dublin, where they commenced the silk manufacture, and where one of them, La Touche, opened the first banking establishment. Wherever they settled they were missionaries of industry, and examples of perseverance and success in skilled labour, as well as integrity in commerce. Many of those exiles settled in Lisburn, and the colony was subsequently joined by Louis Crommelin, a native of Armandcourt near St. Quentin, where for several centuries his forefathers had carried on the flaxen manufacture on their own extensive possessions in the province of Picardy. Foreseeing the storm of persecution, the family had removed to Holland, and, at the personal request of the Prince of Orange, Louis came over to take charge of the colonies of his countrymen, which had been established in different parts of Ireland. The linen trade had flourished in this country from the earliest times. Linen formed, down to the reign of Elizabeth, almost the only dress of the population, from the king down--saffron-coloured, and worn in immense flowing robes, occasionally wrapped in various forms round the body. Lord Stafford had exerted himself strenuously to improve the fabric by the forcible introduction of better looms; but little had been done in this direction till the Huguenots came and brought their own looms, suited for the manufacture of fine fabrics. Mark Dupre, Nicholas de la Cherois, Obre, Rochet, Bouchoir, St. Clair, and others, whose ashes lie beside the Lisburn Cathedral and in the neighbouring churchyards, and many of whose descendants still survive among the gentry and manufacturers of Down and Antrim, were, with Crommelin, the chief promoters of the linen trade which has wrought such wonders in the province of Ulster. Lord Conway granted the Lisburn colonists a site for a place of worship, which was known as the French Church, and stood on the ground now occupied by the Court-house in Castle Street. The Government paid 60 l. a year to their first minister, Charles de la Valade, who was succeeded by his relative, the Rev. Saumarez du Bourdieu, distinguished as a divine and a historian. His father was chaplain to the famous Schomberg, and when he fell from his horse mortally wounded the reverend gentleman carried him in his arms to the spot on which he died a short time after. Talent was hereditary in this family, the Rev. John du Bourdieu, rector of Annahilt, was author of the Statistical Surveys of Down and Antrim, published by the Royal Dublin Society. Referring to his ancestors he says that his father had been fifty-six years minister of the French Church in Lisburn. Mr. M'Call states that, for some time before his death in 1812, he held the living of Lambeg, the members of the French Church having by that time merged into union with the congregation of the Lisburn Cathedral. A similar process took place in Dublin, Portarlington, and elsewhere, the descendants of the Huguenots becoming zealous members of the Established Church. Du Bourdieu informs us that Louis Crommelin obtained a patent for carrying on and improving the linen manufacture, with a grant of 800 l. per annum, as interest of 10,000 l., to be advanced by him as a capital for carrying on the same; 200 l. per annum for his trouble; 120 l. per annum for three assistants; and 160 l. for the support of the chaplain. Mr. M'Call, in his book, copies the following note of payments made by the Government from 1704 to 1708:-- £ s. d. Louis Crommelin, as overseer of linen manufacture 470 19 0 W. Crommelin, salary and rent of Kilkenny factory 451 6 7 Louis Crommelin, to repay him for sums advanced to flax dressers and reed makers, and for services of French ministers 2,225 0 0 Louis Crommelin, for individual expenses and for sums paid Thomas Turner, of Lurgan, for buying flax-seed and printing reports 993 4 0 Louis Crommelin, three years' pension 600 0 0 French minister's two years' pension 120 0 0 _______________ Total £4,860 9 7 It should be mentioned, that when the owner of Lisburn, then Earl of Hertfort, held the office of lord lieutenant in 1765, with his son, Viscount Beauchamp, as chief secretary, he rendered very valuable services to the linen trade, and was a liberal patron of the damask manufacture, which arrived at a degree of perfection hitherto unequalled, in the hands of Mr. William Coulson, founder of the great establishment of that name which still flourishes in Lisburn, and from whom not only the court of St. James's but foreign courts also received their table linen. Du Bourdieu mentions that Lisburn and Lurgan were the great markets for cambrics--the name given to cloth of this description, which was then above five shillings a yard; under that price it was called lawn. In that neighbourhood cambric had been made which sold for 1 l. 2 s. 9 d. a yard unbleached. The principal manufacturing establishments in addition to Messrs. Coulsons' are those of the Messrs. Richardson and Co. and the Messrs. Barbour. Lord Dufferin has written the ablest defence of the Irish landlords that has ever appeared. In that masterly work he says: 'But though a dealer in land and a payer of wages, I am above all things an Irishman, and as an Irishman I rejoice in any circumstance which tends to strengthen the independence of the tenant farmer, or to add to the comfort of the labourer's existence.' If titles and possessions implied the inheritance of religion and blood, Lord Dufferin ought indeed to be 'Irish of the Irish' as the men of Ulster in the olden times proudly called themselves. On the railroad from Belfast to Bangor there is a station constructed with singular beauty, like the castellated entrance to a baronial hall, and on the elaborately chiselled stone we read 'Clandeboye.' Under the railway from Graypoint on Belfast Lough runs a carriage-drive two miles long, to the famous seat of the O'Neills, where his lordship's mansion is situated, enclosed among aged trees, remembrancers of the past. Perhaps, there is no combination of names in the kingdom more suggestive of the barbaric power of the middle ages and the most refined culture of modern civilisation. The avenue, kept like a garden walk, with a flourishing plantation on each side, was cut through some of the best farms on the estate, and must have been a work of great expense. Taking this in connection with other costly improvements, among which are several picturesque buildings for the residence of workmen--model lodging-houses resembling fancy villas at the seaside--we can understand how his lordship, within the last fifteen years, has paid away in wages of labour the immense sum of 60,000 l., at the rate of 4,000 l. a year. The Abbot of Bangor never gave employment like that. William O'Donnon, the last of the line, was found in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII. to be possessed of thirty-one townlands in Ards and Upper Clandeboye, the grange of Earbeg in the county Antrim, the two Copeland Islands, the tithes of the island of Raghery, three rectories in Antrim, three in Down, and a townland in the Isle of Man. The abbey, some of the walls of which still remain, adjoining the parish church, was built early in the twelfth century. We are informed by Archdall, that it had so gone to ruin in 1469 through the neglect of the abbot, that he was evicted by order of Pope Paul II., who commanded that the friars of the third order of St. Francis should immediately take possession of it, which was accordingly done, says Wadding, by Father Nicholas of that order. The whole of the possessions were granted by James I. to James Viscount Clandeboye. Bangor was one of the most celebrated schools in Ireland when this island was said to have been 'the _quiet_ abode of learning and sanctity.' As to the quiet, I could never make out at what period it existed, nor how the 'thousands' of students at Bangor could have been supported. The Danes came occasionally up the lough and murdered the monks _en masse_, plundering the shrines. But the greatest scourges of the monasteries in Down and elsewhere were, not the foreign pagans and pirates, but the professedly Christian chiefs of their own country. It appears, therefore, that neither the Irish clergy nor the people have much reason to regret the flight of the Celtic princes and nobles, who were utterly unable to fulfil the duties of a government; and who did little or nothing but consume what the industry of the peasants, under unparalleled difficulties, produced. The people of Clandeboye and Dufferin might have been proud that their chief received 40 l. a year as a tribute or blackmail from Lecale, that he might abstain from visiting the settlers there with his galloglasse; but Lord Dufferin, the successor of the O'Neill of Clandeboye, spends among the peasantry of the present day 4,000 l. a year in wages. And how different is the lot of the people! Not dwelling in wattled huts under the oaks of the primeval forest, but in neat slated houses, with whitewashed walls, looking so bright and pretty in the sunshine, like snowdrops in the distant landscape. On the hill between Bangor and Newtownards, Lord Dufferin has erected a beautiful tower, from which, reclining on his couch, he can see the country to an immense extent, from the mountains of Antrim to the mountains of Mourne, Strangford Lough, Belfast Lough, the Antrim coast, and Portpatrick at the other side of the Channel, all spread out before him like a coloured map. CHAPTER XI. THE REBELLION OF 1641. The Rebellion of 1641--generally called a 'massacre'--was undoubtedly a struggle on the part of the exiled nobles and clergy and the evicted peasants to get possession of their estates and farms, which had been occupied by the British settlers for nearly a generation. They might probably have continued to occupy them in peace, but for the fanaticism of the lords justices, Sir John Parsons and Sir John Borlace. It was reported and believed that, at a public entertainment in Dublin, Parsons declared that in twelve months no more Catholics should be seen in that country. The English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters were determined never to lay down their arms till they had made an end of Popery. Pym, the celebrated Puritan leader, avowed that the policy of his party was not to leave a priest alive in the land. Meantime, the Irish chiefs were busy intriguing at Rome, Madrid, Paris, and other continental capitals, clamouring for an invasion of Ireland, to restore monarchy and Catholicity--to expel the English planters from the forfeited lands. Philip III. of Spain encouraged these aspirations. He had an Irish legion under the command of Henry O'Neill, son of the fugitive Earl of Tyrone. It was reported that, in 1630 there were in the service of the Archduchess, in the Spanish Netherlands alone, 100 Irish officers able to command companies, and 20 fit to be colonels. There were many others at Lisbon, Florence, Milan, and Naples. They had in readiness 5,000 or 6,000 stand of arms laid up at Antwerp, bought out of the deduction of their monthly pay. The banished ecclesiastics formed at every court a most efficient diplomatic corps, the chief of these intriguers being the celebrated Luke Wadding. Religious wars were popular in those times, and the invasion of Ireland would be like a crusade against heresy. But with the Irish chiefs the ruling passion was to get possession of their homes and their lands. The most active spirit among these was Roger, or Rory O'Moore, a man of high character, great ability, handsome person, and fascinating manners. With him were associated Conor Maguire, Costelloe M'Mahon, and Thorlough O'Neill, Sir Phelim O'Neill, Sir Con Magennis, Colonel Hugh M'Mahon, and the Rev. Dr. Heber M'Mahon. O'Moore visited the country, went through the several provinces, and, by communicating with the chiefs personally, organised the conspiracy to expel the British and recover the kingdom for Charles II. and the Pope. The plan agreed upon by the confederates was this:--A rising when the harvest was gathered in; a simultaneous attack on all the English fortresses; the surprise of Dublin Castle, said to contain arms for 12,000 men; and to obtain for these objects all possible aid, in officers, men, and arms, from the Continent. The rising took place on the night of October 22, 1641. It might have been completely successful if the Castle of Dublin had been seized. It seemed an easy prey, for it was guarded only by a few pensioners and forty halberdiers, who would be quickly overpowered. But the plot was made known to the lords justices by an informer when on the eve of execution. Sir Phelim O'Neill was one of those 'Irish gentlemen' who, by royal favour, were permitted to retain some portions of their ancient patrimonies. At this time he was in possession of thirty-eight townlands in the barony of Dungannon, county Tyrone, containing 23,000 acres, then estimated to be worth 1,600 l. a-year, equal to some 10,000 l. of our money. Charles Boulton held by lease from the same chief 600 acres, at a yearly rent of 29 l. for sixty years, in consideration of a fine of 1,000 l. In 1641 this property yielded a profit rent of 150 l. a year. Three townlands in the same barony were claimed by George Rawden of Lisnagarvagh, as leased to him by Sir Phelim under the rent of 100 l., estimated to be worth 50 l. per annum. Sir Phelim might, therefore, have been content, so far as property was concerned. But, setting aside patriotism, religion, and ambition, it is likely enough that he distrusted the Government, and feared the doom pronounced in Dublin Castle against all the gentlemen of his creed and race. At all events he put himself at the head of the insurrection in Ulster. He and the officers under his command, on the night of the 22nd, surprised and captured the forts of Charlemont and Mountjoy. The towns of Dungannon, Newry, Carrickmacross, Castleblaney, Tandragee fell into the hands of the insurgents, while the O'Reillys and Maguires overran Cavan and Fermanagh. Sir Conor Magennis wrote from Newry to the Government officers in Down: 'We are for our lives and liberties. We desire no blood to be shed; but, if you mean to shed our blood, be sure we shall be as ready as you for that purpose.' And Sir Phelim O'Neill issued the following proclamation:-- 'These are to intimate and make known unto all persons whatsoever, in and through the whole country, the true intent and meaning of us whose names are hereunto subscribed: 1. That the first assembling of us is nowise intended against our sovereign lord the king, nor hurt of any of his subjects, either English or Scotch; but only for the defence and libertie of ourselves and the Irish natives of this kingdom. And we further declare that whatsoever hurt hitherto hath been done to any person shall be presently repaired; and we will that every person forthwith, after proclamation hereof, make their speedy repaire unto their own houses, under paine of death, that no further hurt be done unto any one under the like paine, and that this be proclaimed in all places. 'PHELIM O'NEILL. 'At Dungannon, the 23rd October, 1641.' It is easy for an insurgent chief to give such orders to a tumultuous mass of excited, vindictive, and drunken men, but not so easy to enforce them. The common notion among Protestants, however, that a midnight massacre of all the Protestant settlers was intended, or attempted, is certainly unfounded. Though horrible outrages were committed on both sides, the number of them has been greatly exaggerated. Mr. Prendergast quotes some contemporary authorities, which seem to be decisive on this point. In the same year was published by 'G.S., minister of God's word in Ireland,' 'A Brief Declaration of the Barbarous and Inhuman Dealings of the Northern Irish Rebels ...; written to excite the English Nation to relieve our poor Wives and Children that have escaped the Rebels' savage Cruelties.' This author says, it was the intention of the Irish to massacre all the English. On Saturday they were to disarm them; on Sunday to seize all their cattle and goods; on Monday, at the watchword 'Skeane,' they were to cut all the English throats. The former they executed; the third only (that is the massacre) they failed in. That the massacre rested hitherto in intention only is further evident from the proclamation of the lords justices of February 8, 1642; for, while offering large sums for the heads of the chief northern gentlemen in arms (Sir Phelim O'Neill's name heading the list with a thousand pounds), the lords justices state that the massacre had failed. Many thousands had been robbed and spoiled, dispossessed of house and lands, many murdered on the spot; but the chief part of their plots (so the proclamation states), and amongst them a universal massacre, had been disappointed. But, says Mr. Prendergast, after Lord Ormond and Sir Simon Harcourt, with the English forces, in the month of April, 1642, had burned the houses of the gentry in the Pale, and committed slaughters of unarmed men, and the Scotch forces, in the same month, after beating off Sir Phelim O'Neill's army at Newry, drowned and shot men, women, and priests, in that town, who had surrendered on condition of mercy, then it was that some of Sir Phelim O'Neill's wild followers in revenge, and in fear of the advancing army, massacred their prisoners in some of the towns in Tyrone. The subsequent cruelties were not on one side only, and were magnified to render the Irish detestable, so as to make it impossible for the king to seek their aid without ruining his cause utterly in England. The story of the massacre, invented to serve the politics of the hour, has been since kept up for the purposes of interest. No inventions could be too monstrous that served to strengthen the possession of Irish confiscated lands. 'A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English Forces in the North of Ireland,' published in 1642, states that on Monday, May 5, the common soldiers, without direction from the general-major, took some eighteen of the Irish women of the town [Newry], stripped them naked, threw them into the river, and drowned them, shooting some in the water. More had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers were made examples of. 'A Levite's Lamentation,' published at the same time, thus refers to those atrocities: 'Mr. Griffin, Mr. Bartly, Mr. Starkey, all of Ardmagh, and murdered by these bloudsuckers on the sixth of May. For, about the fourth of May, as I take it, we put neare fourty of them to death upon the bridge of the Newry, amongst which were two of the Pope's pedlers, two seminary priests, in return of which they slaughtered many prisoners in their custody.' A curious illustration of the spirit of that age is given in the fact that an English officer threw up his commission in disgust, because the Bishop of Meath, in a sermon delivered in Christ Church, Dublin, in 1642, pleaded for mercy to Irish women and children. The unfortunate settlers fled panic-stricken from their homes, leaving behind their goods, and, in many cases, their clothes; delicate women with little children, weary and footsore, hurried on to some place of refuge. In Cavan they crowded the house of the illustrious Bishop Bedell, at Kilmore. Enniskillen, Derry, Lisburn, Belfast, Carrickfergus, with some isolated castles, were still held by the English garrisons, and in these the Protestant fugitives found succour and protection. Before their flight they were in such terror that, according to the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, rector of Tynan, for three nights no cock was heard to crow, no dog to bark. The city of London sent four ships to Londonderry with all kinds of provisions, clothing, and accoutrements for several companies of foot, and abundance of ammunition. The twelve chief companies sent each two pieces of ordnance. No doubt these liberal and seasonable supplies contributed materially to keep the city from yielding to the insurgent forces by which it was besieged. Meantime the Government in Dublin lost not a moment in taking the most effectual measures for crushing the rebellion. Lord Ormond, as lieutenant-general, had soon at his disposal 12,000 men, with a fine train of field artillery, provided by Strafford for his campaign in the north of England. The king, who was in Scotland, procured the dispatch of 1,500 men to Ulster; and authorised Lords Chichester and Clandeboye to raise regiments among their tenants. Thus the 'Scottish army' was increased to about 5,000 foot, with cavalry in proportion. The Irish, on the other hand, were ill-provided with arms and ammunition. They were not even provided with pikes, for they had not time to make them. The military officers counted upon did not appear, though they had promised to be on the field at fourteen days' notice. Rory O'Moore, like 'Meagher of the sword' in 1848, had never seen service; and Sir Phelim O'Neill, like Smith O'Brien, was only a civilian when he assumed the high-sounding title of 'Lord General of the Catholic army in Ulster.' He also took the title of 'the O'Neill.' The massacre of a large number of Catholics by the Carrickfergus garrison, driving them over the cliffs into the sea at the point of the bayonet, madly excited the Irish thirst for blood. Mr. Darcy Magee admits that, from this date forward till the arrival of Owen Roe O'Neill, the war assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of O'Moore, O'Reilly, and Magennis. 'That Sir Phelim permitted, if he did not in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. Brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning.' The same eulogy would equally apply to many of the English generals. Cruelty was their only crime. The Irish rulers of those times, if not taken by surprise, felt at the outbreak of open rebellion much as the army feels at the breaking out of a war, in some country where plenty of prize money can be won, where the looting will be rich and the promotion rapid. Relying with confidence on the power of England and the force of discipline, they knew that the active defenders of the Government would be victorious in the end, and that their rewards would be estates. The more rebellions, the more forfeited territory, the more opportunities to implicate, ruin, and despoil the principal men of the hated race. The most sober writer, dealing with such facts, cannot help stirring men's blood while recording the deeds of the heroes who founded the English system of government in Ireland, and secured to themselves immense tracts of its most fertile soil. What then must be the effect of the eloquent and impassioned denunciations of such writers as Mr. Butt, Mr. A.M. Sullivan, and Mr. John Mitchell, not to speak of the 'national press'? Yet the most fiery patriot utters nothing stronger on the English rule in Ireland than what the Irish may read in the works of the greatest statesmen and most profound thinkers in England. The evil is in the facts, and the facts cannot be suppressed because they are the roots of our present difficulties. Mr. Darcy Magee, one of the most moderate of Irish historians, writing far away from his native land, not long before he fell by the bullet of the assassin--a martyr to his loyalty--sketches the preliminaries of confiscation at the commencement of this civil war. In Munster, their chief instruments were the aged Earl of Cork, still insatiable as ever for other men's possessions, and the president, St. Leger: in Leinster, Sir Charles Coote. Lord Cork prepared 1,100 indictments against men of property in his province, which he sent to the speaker of the Long Parliament, with an urgent request that they might be returned to him, with authority to proceed against the parties named as outlaws. In Leinster, 4,000 similar indictments were found in the course of two days by the free use of the rack with witnesses. Sir John Read, an officer of the king's bedchamber, and Mr. Barnwall of Kilbrue, a gentleman of threescore and six, were among those who underwent the torture. When these were the proceedings of the tribunals in peaceable cities, we may imagine what must have been the excesses of the soldiery in the open country. In the south, Sir William St. Leger directed a series of murderous raids upon the peasantry of Cork, which at length produced their natural effect. Lord Muskerry and other leading recusants, who had offered their services to maintain the peace of the province, were driven by an insulting refusal to combine for their own protection. The 1,100 indictments of Lord Cork soon swelled their ranks, and the capture of the ancient city of Cashel, by Philip O'Dwyer, announced the insurrection of the south. Waterford soon after opened its gates to Colonel Edmund Butler; Wexford declared for the Catholic cause, and Kilkenny surrendered to Lord Mountgarret. In Wicklow, Coote's troopers committed murders such as had not been equalled since the days of the pagan Northmen. Little children were carried aloft writhing on the pikes of these barbarians, whose worthy commander confessed that 'he liked such frolics.' Neither age nor sex was spared, and an ecclesiastic was especially certain of instant death. Fathers Higgins and White of Naas, in Kildare, were given up by Coote to these 'lambs,' though, each had been granted a safe-conduct by his superior officer, Lord Ormond. And these murders were taking place at the very time when the Franciscans and Jesuits of Cashel were protecting Dr. Pullen, the Protestant chancellor of that cathedral and other Protestant prisoners; while also the castle of Cloughouter, in Cavan, the residence of Bishop Bedell, was crowded with Protestant fugitives, all of whom were carefully guarded by the chivalrous Philip O'Reilly. In Ulster, by the end of April, there were 19,000 troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field. Newry was taken by Monroe and Chichester. Magennis was obliged to abandon Down, and McMahon Monaghan; Sir Phelim was driven to burn Armagh and Dungannon and to take his last stand at Charlemont. In a severe action with Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart, he had displayed his usual courage with better than his usual fortune, which, perhaps, we may attribute to the presence with him of Sir Alexander McDonnell, brother to Lord Antrim, the famous _Colkitto_ of the Irish and Scottish wars. But the severest defeat which the confederates had was in the heart of Leinster, at the hamlet of Kilrush, within four miles of Athy. Lord Ormond, returning from a second reinforcement of Naas and other Kildare forts, at the head, by English account, of 4,000 men, found on April 13 the Catholics of the midland counties, under Lords Mountgarrett, Ikerrin, and Dunboyne, Sir Morgan Cavenagh, Rory O'Moore, and Hugh O'Byrne, drawn up, by his report 8,000 strong, to dispute his passage. With Ormond were the Lord Dillon, Lord Brabazon, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Charles Coote, and Sir T. Lucas. The combat was short but murderous. The confederates left 700 men, including Sir Morgan Cavenagh and some other officers, dead on the field; the remainder retreated in disorder, and Ormond, with an inconsiderable diminution of numbers, returned in triumph to Dublin. For this victory the Long Parliament, in a moment of enthusiasm, voted the lieutenant-general a jewel worth 500 l. If any satisfaction could be derived from such an incident, the violent death of their most ruthless enemy, Sir Charles Coote, might have afforded the Catholics some consolation. That merciless soldier, after the combat at Kilrush, had been employed in reinforcing Birr and relieving the castle of Geashill, which the Lady Letitia of Offally held against the neighbouring tribe of O'Dempsey. On his return from this service he made a foray against a Catholic force, which had mustered in the neighbourhood of Trim; here, on the night of the 7th of May, heading a sally of his troop, he fell by a musket shot--not without suspicion of being fired from his own ranks. His son and namesake, who imitated him in all things, was ennobled at the Restoration by the title of the Earl of Mountrath. The Long Parliament would not trust the king with an army in Ireland. They consequently took the work of subjugation into their own hands. Having confiscated 2,500,000 acres of Irish land, they offered it as security to 'adventurers' who would advance money to meet the cost of the war. In February, 1642, the House of Commons received a petition 'of divers well affected' to it, offering to raise and maintain forces at their own charge 'against the rebels of Ireland, and afterwards to receive their recompense out of the rebels' estates.' Under the act 'for the speedy reducing of the rebels' the adventurers were to carry over a brigade of 5,000 foot and 500 horse, and to have the right of appointing their own officers. And they were to have estates given to them at the following rates: 1,000 acres for 200 l. in Ulster, for 300 l. in Connaught, for 450 l. in Munster, and 600 l. in Leinster. The rates per acre were 4 s., 6s., 8s., and 12 s. in those provinces respectively. The nature of the war, and the spirit in which it was conducted, may be inferred from the sort of weapons issued from the military stores. These included scythes with handles and rings, reaping-hooks, whetstones, and rubstones. They were intended for cutting down the growing corn, that the people might be starved into submission, or forced to quit the country. The commissary of stores was ordered to issue Bibles to the troops, one Bible for every file, that they might learn from the Old Testament the sin and danger of sparing idolaters. The rebellion in Ulster had almost collapsed before the end of the year. The tens of thousands who had rushed to the standard of Sir P. O'Neill were now reduced to a number of weak and disorganised collections of armed men taking shelter in the woods. The English garrisons scoured the neighbouring counties with little opposition, and where they met any they gave no quarter. Sir William Cole, ancestor of the Earl of Enniskillen, proudly boasted of his achievement in having 7,000 of the rebels famished to death within a circuit of a few miles of his garrison. Lord Enniskillen is an excellent landlord, but the descendants of the remnant of the natives on his estate do not forget how the family obtained its wealth and honours. The Government, however, seemed to have good reason to congratulate itself that the war was over with the Irish. To these Sir Phelim O'Neill had shown that there is something in a name: but if the name does not represent real worth and fitness for the work undertaken, it is but a shadow. It was so in Sir Phelim's O'Neill's case. Though he had courage, he was a poor general. But another hero of the same name soon appeared to redeem the honour of his race, and to show what the right man can do. At a moment when the national cause seemed to be lost, when the Celtic population in Ulster were meditating a wholesale emigration to the Scottish Highlands--'a word of magic effect was whispered from the sea-coast to the interior.' Colonel Owen Roe O'Neill had arrived off Donegal with a single ship, a single company of veterans, 100 officers, and a quantity of ammunition. He landed at Doe Castle, proceeded to the fort of Charlemont, met the heads of the clans at Clones in Monaghan, was elected general-in-chief of the Catholic forces, and at once set about organising an army. The Catholics of the whole kingdom had joined a confederation, which held its meetings at Kilkenny. A general assembly was convened for October 23, 1642. The peerage was represented by fourteen lords and eleven bishops. Generals were appointed for each of the other provinces, Preston for Leinster, Barry for Munster, and Burke for Connaught. With the Anglo-Irish portion of the confederacy the war was Catholic, and the object religious liberty. With them there was no antipathy or animosity to the English. There was the Pope's Nuncio and his party, thinking most of papal interests, and there was the national party, who had been, or were likely to be, made landless. The king, then at Oxford, was importuned by the confederation on the one side and the Puritans on the other; one petitioning for freedom of worship, the other for the suppression of popery. Pending these appeals there was a long cessation between the Irish belligerents. Ormond had amused the confederates with negotiations for a permanent peace and settlement, from spring till midsummer, when Charles, dissatisfied with these endless delays, dispatched to Ireland a more hopeful ambassador. This was Herbert, Earl of Glamorgan, one of the few Catholics remaining among the English nobility, son and heir to the Marquis of Worcester, and son-in-law to Henry O'Brien, Earl of Thomond. Of a family devoutly attached to the royal cause, to which it is said they had contributed not less than 200,000 l., Glamorgan's religion, his rank, his Irish connections, the intimate confidence of the king which he was known to possess, all marked out his embassy as one of the utmost importance. The earl arrived in Dublin about August 1, and, after an interview with Ormond, proceeded to Kilkenny. On the 28th of that month, preliminary articles were agreed to and signed by the earl on behalf of the king, and by Lords Montgarrett and Muskerry on behalf of the confederates. It was necessary, it seems, to get the concurrence of the Viceroy to these terms, and accordingly the negotiators on both sides repaired to Dublin. Here Ormond contrived to detain them ten long weeks in discussions on the articles relating to religion; it was the 12th of November when they returned to Kilkenny, with a much modified treaty. On the next day, the 13th, the new Papal Nuncio, a prelate who, by his rank, his eloquence, and his imprudence, was destined to exercise a powerful influence on the Catholic councils, made his public entry into that city. This personage was John Baptist Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo in the marches of Ancona, which see he had preferred to the more exalted dignity of Florence. From Limerick, borne along on his litter, such was the feebleness of his health, he advanced by slow stages to Kilkenny, escorted by a guard of honour, despatched on that duty by the supreme council. The pomp and splendour of his public entry into the Catholic capital was a striking spectacle. The previous night he slept at a village three miles from the city, for which he set out early on the morning of November 13, escorted by his guard and a vast multitude of the people. Five delegates from the supreme council accompanied him. A band of fifty students, mounted on horseback, met him on the way, and their leader, crowned with laurel, recited some congratulatory Latin verses. At the city gate he left the litter and mounted a horse richly housed; here the procession of the clergy and the city guilds awaited him: at the market cross, a Latin oration was delivered in his honour, to which he graciously replied in the same language. From the cross he was escorted to the cathedral, at the door of which he was received by the aged bishop, Dr. David Rothe. At the high altar he intonated the _Te Deum_, and gave the multitude the apostolic benediction. Then he was conducted to his lodgings, where he was soon waited upon by Lord Muskerry and General Preston, who brought him to Kilkenny Castle, where, in the great gallery, which elicited even a Florentine's admiration, he was received in stately formality by the president of the council--Lord Mountgarrett. Another Latin oration on the nature of his embassy was delivered by the Nuncio, responded to by Heber, Bishop of Clogher, and so the ceremony of reception ended.[1] [Footnote 1: Darcy Magee, vol. ii. p.128.] After a long time spent in negotiations, the celebrated Glamorgan treaty was signed by Ormond for the king, and Lord Muskerry and the other commissioners for the confederates. It conceded, in fact, all the most essential claims of the Irish--equal rights as to property, in the army, in the universities, and at the bar; gave them seats in both houses and on the bench; authorised a special commission of oyer and terminer, composed wholly of confederates; and declared that 'the independency of the parliament of Ireland on that of England' should be decided by declaration of both houses 'agreeably to the laws of the kingdom of Ireland.' In short, this final form of Glamorgan's treaty gave the Irish Catholics, in 1646, all that was subsequently obtained, either for the church or the country, in 1782, 1793, or 1829. 'Though some conditions were omitted, to which Rinuccini and a majority of the prelates attached importance, Glamorgan's treaty was, upon the whole, a charter upon which a free church and a free people might well have stood, as the fundamental law of their religious and civil liberties.' General O'Neill was greatly annoyed at these delays. Political events in England swayed the destiny of Ireland then as now. The poor vacillating, double-dealing king was delivered to the Puritans, tried, and executed. But before Cromwell came to smash the confederation and everything papal in Ireland, the Irish chief gladdened the hearts of his countrymen by the glorious victory of Benburb, one of the most memorable in Irish history. In a naturally strong position, the Irish, for four hours, received and repulsed the various charges of the Puritan horse. Then as the sun began to descend, pouring its rays upon the enemy, O'Neill led his whole force--five thousand men against eight--to the attack. One terrible onset swept away every trace of resistance. There were counted on the field 3,243 of the Covenanters, and of the Catholics but 70 killed and 100 wounded. Lord Ardes, and 21 Scottish officers, 32 standards, 1,500 draught horses, and all the guns and tents, were captured. Monroe fled to Lisburn and thence to Carrickfergus, where he shut himself up till he could obtain reinforcements. O'Neill forwarded the captured colours to the Nuncio at Limerick, by whom they were solemnly placed in the choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, and afterwards, at the request of Pope Innocent, sent to Rome. The _Te Deum_ was chanted in the confederate capital; penitential psalms were sung in the northern fortresses. 'The Lord of Hosts,' wrote Monroe, 'has rubbed shame on our faces till once we are humbled.' O'Neill emblazoned the cross and keys on his banner with the Red Hand of Ulster, and openly resumed the title originally chosen by his adherents at Clones, 'the Catholic Army.' The stage of Irish politics now presented the most extraordinary complications political and military. The confederation was occupied with endless debates and dissensions. Commanders changed positions so rapidly, the several causes for which men had been fighting became so confused in the unaccountable scene-shifting, giving glimpses now of the king, now of the commonwealth, and now of the pope, that no one knew what to do, or what was to be the end. The nuncio went home in disgust that his blessings and his curses, which he dispensed with equal liberality, had so little effect. At length appeared an actor who gave a terrible unity to the drama of Irish politics. Cromwell left London in July 1649, 'in a coach drawn by six gallant Flanders mares,' and made a grand progress to Bristol. He landed at Ring's End, near Dublin, on August 14. He entered the city in procession and addressed the people from 'a convenient place,' accompanied by his son Henry, Blake, Jones, Ireton, Ludlow, Hardress, Waller, and others. The history of Cromwell's military exploits in Ireland is well known. I pass on, therefore, to notice the effects of the war on the condition of the people. As usual, in such cases, the destruction of the crops and other provisions by the soldiers, brought evil to the conquerors as well as to their victims. There had been a fifteen years' war in Ulster, when James I. ascended the throne, and it left the country waste and desolate. Sir John Davis, his attorney-general, asserted the unquestionable fact that perpetual war had been continued between the two nations for 'four hundred and odd years,' and had always for its object to 'root out the Irish.' James was to put an end to this war, and, as we have seen, the lord deputy promised the people 'estates' in their holdings. The effect of this promise, as recorded by Davis, is remarkable. 'He thus made it a year of jubilee to the poor inhabitants, because every man was to return to his own house, and be restored to his ancient possessions, and they all went home rejoicing.' Poor people! they soon saw the folly of putting their trust in princes. Now, after a seven years' war, the nation was again visited with famine, and the country converted into a wilderness. Three-fourths of the cattle had been destroyed; and the commissioners for Ireland reported to the council in England in 1651, that four parts in five of the best and most fertile land in Ireland lay waste and uninhabited, stating that they had encouraged the Irish to till the land, promising them the enjoyment of the crops. They had also given orders 'for enforcing those that were removed to the mountains to return.' The soldiers were employed to till the lands round their posts. Corn had to be imported to Dublin from Wales. So scarce was meat that a widow was obliged to petition the authorities for permission to kill a lamb; and she was 'permitted and lycensed to kill and dresse so much lambe as shall be necessary for her own eating, not exceeding three lambes for this whole year, notwithstanding any declaration of the said Commissioners of Parliament to the contrary.'[A] This privilege was granted to Mrs. Buckley in consideration of 'her old age and weakness of body.' In 1654 the Irish revenue from all sources was only 198,000 l., while the cost of the army was 500,000 l. A sort of conditional amnesty was granted from necessity, pending the decision of Parliament, and on May 12, 1652, the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered on terms signed at Kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and the September following, when the Ulster forces surrendered. By these Kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection on laying down their arms; those who should not be satisfied with the conclusions the Parliament might come to concerning the Irish nation, and should desire to transport themselves with their men to serve any foreign state in amity with the Parliament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose. But the Commissioners undertook faithfully to mediate with the Parliament that they might enjoy such a remnant of their lands as might make their lives comfortable at home, or be enabled to emigrate. [Footnote 1: Prendergast, the Cromwellian Settlement, p.16.] The Cromwellian administration in Ireland effected a revolution unparalleled in history. Its proceedings have been well summarised by Mr. Darcy Magee:-- The Long Parliament, still dragging out its days under the shadow of Cromwell's great name, declared in its session of 1652 the rebellion in Ireland 'subdued and ended,' and proceeded to legislate for that kingdom as a conquered country. On August 12 they passed their Act of Settlement, the authorship of which was attributed to Lord Orrery, in this respect the worthy son of the first Earl of Cork. Under this act there were four chief descriptions of persons whose status was thus settled: 1. All ecclesiastics and royalist proprietors were exempted from pardon of life or estate. 2. All royalist commissioned officers were condemned to banishment, and the forfeit of two-thirds of their property, one-third being retained for the support of their wives and children. 3. Those who had not been in arms, but could be shown, by a parliamentary commission, to have manifested 'a constant, good affection' to the war, were to forfeit one-third of their estates, and receive 'an equivalent' for the remaining two-thirds west of the Shannon. 4. All husbandmen and others of the inferior sort, 'not possessed of lands or goods exceeding the value of 10 l.,' were to have a free pardon, on condition also of transporting themselves across the Shannon. This last condition of the Cromwellian settlement distinguished it, in our annals, from every other proscription of the native population formerly attempted. The great river of Ireland, rising in the mountains of Leitrim, nearly severs the five western counties from the rest of the kingdom. The province thus set apart, though one of the largest in superficial extent, had also the largest proportion of waste and water, mountain and moorland. The new inhabitants were there to congregate from all the other provinces before the first day of May, 1654, under penalty of outlawry and all its consequences; and when there, they were not to appear within two miles of the Shannon, or four miles of the sea. A rigorous passport system, to evade which was death without form of trial, completed this settlement, the design of which was to shut up the remaining Catholic inhabitants from all intercourse with mankind, and all communion with the other inhabitants of their own country. A new survey of the whole kingdom was also ordered, under the direction of Dr. William Petty, the fortunate economist who founded the house of Lansdowne. By him the surface of the kingdom was estimated at 10,500,000 plantation acres, three of which were deducted for waste and water. Of the remainder, above 5,000,000 were in Catholic hands, in 1641; 300,000 were church and college lands; and 2,000,000 were in possession of the Protestant settlers of the reigns of James and Elizabeth. Under the Protectorate, 5,000,000 acres were confiscated; this enormous spoil, two-thirds of the whole island, went to the soldiers and adventurers who had served against the Irish, or had contributed to the military chest, since 1641--except 700,000 acres given in 'exchange' to the banished in Clare and Connaught; and 1,200,000 confirmed to 'innocent Papists.' Such was the complete uprooting of the ancient tenantry or clansmen from their original holdings, that, during the survey, orders of parliament were issued to bring back individuals from Connaught to point out the boundaries of parishes in Munster. It cannot be imputed among the sins so freely laid to the historical account of the native legislature, that an Irish parliament had any share in sanctioning this universal spoliation. Cromwell anticipated the union of the kingdoms by 150 years, when he summoned, in 1653, that assembly over which 'Praise-God Barebones' presided; members for Ireland and Scotland sat on the same benches with the commons of England. Oliver's first deputy in the government of Ireland was his son-in-law Fleetwood, who had married the widow of Ireton; but his real representative was his fourth son Henry Cromwell, commander-in-chief of the army. In 1657, the title of lord deputy was transferred from Fleetwood to Henry, who united the supreme civil and military authority in his own person until the eve of the restoration, of which he became an active partisan. We may thus properly embrace the five years of the Protectorate as a period of Henry Cromwell's administration. In the absence of a parliament, the government of Ireland was vested in the deputy, the commander-in-chief, and four commissioners, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones, and Weaver. There was, moreover, a high court of justice, which perambulated the kingdom, and exercised an absolute authority over life and property greater than even Strafford's Court of Star Chamber had pretended to. Over this court presided Lord Lowther, assisted by Mr. Justice Donnellan, by Cooke, solicitor to the parliament on the trial of King Charles, and the regicide Reynolds. By this court, Sir Phelim O'Neill, Viscount Mayo, and Colonels O'Toole and Bagnall were condemned and executed; children of both sexes were captured by thousands, and sold as slaves to the tobacco-planters of Virginia and the West Indies. Sir William Petty states that 6,000 boys and girls were sent to those islands. The number, of all ages, thus transported, was estimated at 100,000 souls. As to the 'swordsmen' who had been trained to fighting, Petty, in his _Political Anatomy_, records that 'the chiefest and most eminentest of the nobility and many of the gentry had taken conditions from the King of Spain, and had transported 40,000 of the most active, spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of war.' The chief commissioners in Dublin had despatched assistant commissioners to the provinces. The distribution which they made of the soil was nearly as complete as that of Canaan among the Israelites; and this was the model which the Puritans had always before their minds. Where a miserable residue of the population was required to till the land for its new owners, they were tolerated as the Gibeonites had been by Joshua. Irish gentlemen who had obtained pardons were obliged to wear a distinctive mark on their dress on pain of death. Persons of inferior rank were distinguished by a black spot on the right cheek. Wanting this, their punishment was the branding-iron or the gallows. No vestige of the Catholic religion was allowed to exist. Catholic lawyers and schoolmasters were silenced. All ecclesiastics were slain like the priests of Baal. Three bishops and 300 of the inferior clergy thus perished. The bedridden Bishop of Kilmore was the only native clergyman permitted to survive. If, in mountain recesses or caves, a few peasants were detected at mass, they were smoked out and shot. Thus England got rid of a race concerning which Mr. Prendergast found this contemporary testimony in a MS. in Trinity College library, Dublin, dated 1615:-- 'There lives not a people more hardy, active, and painful ... neither is there any will endure the miseries of warre, as famine, watching, heat, cold, wet, travel, and the like, so naturally and with such facility and courage that they do. The Prince of Orange's excellency uses often publiquely to deliver that the Irish are souldiers the first day of their birth. The famous Henry IV., late king of France, said there would prove no nation so resolute martial men as they, would they be ruly and not too headstrong. And Sir John Norris was wont to ascribe this particular to that nation above others, that he never beheld so few of any country as of Irish that were idiots and cowards, which is very notable.' At the end of 1653, the parliament made a division of the spoil among the conquerors and the adventurers; and, on September 26, an act was passed for the new planting of Ireland by English. The Government reserved for itself the towns, the church lands, and the tithes, the established church, hierarchy and all, having been utterly abolished. The four counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork were also reserved. The amount due to the adventurers was 360,000 l. This they divided into three lots, of which 110,000 l. was to be satisfied in Munster, 205,000 l. in Leinster, and 45,000 l. in Ulster, and the moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment--Waterford, Limerick, and Tipperary, in Munster; Meath, Westmeath, King's and Queen's Counties, in Leinster; and Antrim, Down, and Armagh, in Ulster. But, as all was required by the Adventurers Act to be done by lot, a lottery was appointed to be held in Grocers' Hall, London, for July 20, 1653, to begin at 8 o'clock in the morning, when lots should be first drawn in which province each adventurer was to be satisfied, not exceeding the specified amounts in any province; lots were to be drawn, secondly, to ascertain in which of the ten counties each adventurer was to receive his land--the lots not to exceed in Westmeath 70,000 l., in Tipperary 60,000 l., in Meath 55,000 l., in King's and Queen's Counties 40,000 l. each, in Limerick 30,000 l., in Waterford 20,000 l., in Antrim, Down, and Armagh 15,000 l. each. And, as it was thought it would be a great encouragement to the adventurers (who were for the most part merchants and tradesmen), about to plant in so wild and dangerous a country, not yet subdued, to have soldier planters near them, these ten counties, when surveyed (which was directed to be done immediately, and returned to the committee for the lottery at Grocers' Hall), were to be divided, each county by baronies, into two moieties, as equally as might be, without dividing any barony. A lot was then to be drawn by the adventurers, and by some officer appointed by the Lord General Cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the adventurers, and which for the soldiers. The rest of Ireland, except Connaught, was to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers for their arrears, amounting to 1,550,000 l., and to satisfy debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the army of the commonwealth amounting to 1,750,000 l. Connaught being by the parliament reserved and appointed for the habitation of the Irish nation, all English and Protestants having lands there, who should desire to remove out of Connaught into the provinces inhabited by the English, were to receive estates in the English parts, of equal value, in exchange. The next thing was to clear out the remnant of the inhabitants, and the overture to this performance was the following merciful proclamation:-- 'The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England having by one act lately passed (entitled an Act for the Settling of Ireland) declared that _it is not their intention to extirpate this whole nation_, but that mercy and pardon for life and estate be extended to all husbandmen, plowmen, labourers, artificers, and others of the inferior sort, in such manner as in and by the said Act is set forth: for the better execution of the said Act, and that timely notice may be given to all persons therein concerned, it is ordered that the Governor and Commissioners of Revenue, or any two or more of them, within every precinct in this nation, do cause the said Act of Parliament with this present declaration to be published and proclaimed in their respective precincts _by beat of drumme and sound of trumpett_, on some markett day, within tenn days after the same shall come unto them within their respective precincts. 'Dated at the Castle of Kilkenny, this 11th October, 1652. 'EDMUND LUDLOW, MILES CORBET, 'JOHN JONES, R. WEAVER.' A letter from Dublin, dated December 21, 1654, four days before Christmas, says the 'transplantation is now far advanced, the men being gone to prepare their new habitations in Connaught. Their wives and children and dependants have been, and are, packing away after them apace, and all are to be gone by the 1st of March next.' In another letter the writer _naïvely_ remarks, 'It is the nature of this people to be rebellious, and they have been so much the more disposed to it, having been highly exasperated to it by the transplanting work.' The temper of the settlers towards the natives may be inferred from a petition to the lord deputy and council of Ireland, praying for the enforcement of the original order requiring the removal of all the Irish nation into Connaught, except boys of fourteen and girls of twelve. 'For we humbly conceive,' say the petitioners, 'that the proclamation for transplanting only the proprietors, and such as have been in arms, will neither answer the end of safety nor what else is aimed at thereby. For the first purpose of the transplantation is to prevent those of natural principles' (i.e. of natural affections) 'becoming one with these Irish, as well in affinity as idolatry, as many thousands did who came over in Elizabeth's time, many of which have had a deep hand in all the late murders and massacres. And shall we join in affinity,' they ask, 'with a people of these abominations? Would not the Lord be angry with us till He consumes us, having said--"the land which ye go to possess is an unclean land, because of the filthiness of the people who dwell therein. Ye shall not, therefore, give your sons to their daughters, nor take their daughters to your sons," as it is in Ezra ix. 11, 12, 14. "Nay, ye shall surely root them out, lest they cause you to forsake the Lord your God." Deut. c. vii. &c.' In this way they hoped that 'honest men' would be encouraged to come and live amongst them, because the other three provinces (that is, all the island but Connaught) would be free of 'tories,' when there was none left to harbour or relieve them. They would have made a clean sweep of Munster, Leinster, and Ulster, so that 'the saints' might inherit the land without molestation. If any Protestant friends of the Irish objected to this thorough mode of effecting the work of Irish regeneration, Colonel Lawrence 'doubted not but God would enable that authority yet in being to let out that dram of rebellious bloud, and cure that fit of sullenness their advocate speaks of.' The commissioners appointed to effect the transplantation were painfully conscious of their unworthiness to perform so holy a work, and Were overwhelmed with a sense of their weakness in the midst of such tremendous difficulties, so that they were constrained to say: 'The child is now come to the birth, and much is desired and expected, but there is no strength to bring forth.' They therefore fasted and humbled themselves before the Lord, inviting the officers of the army to join them in lifting up prayers, 'with strong crying and tears, to Him to whom nothing is too strong, that His servants, whom He had called forth in this day to act in these great transactions, might be made faithful, and carried on by His own outstretched arm, against all opposition and difficulty, to do what was pleasing in His sight.' It is true they had this consolation, 'that the chiefest and eminentest of the nobility and many of the gentry had taken conditions from the king of Spain, and had transported 40,000 of the most active, spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of war.' The priests were all banished. The remaining part of the whole nation was scarce one-sixth of what they were at the beginning of the war, so great a devastation had God and man brought upon that land; and that handful of natives left were poor labourers, simple creatures, whose sole design was to live and maintain their families.' Of course there were many exceptions to this rule. There were some of the upper classes remaining, described in the certificates which all the emigrants were obliged to procure, like Sir Nicholas Comyn, of Limerick, 'who was numb at one side of his body of a dead palsy, accompanied only by his lady, Catherine Comyn, aged thirty-five years, flaxen-haired, middle stature; and one maid servant, Honor M'Namara, aged twenty years, brown hair, middle stature, having no substance,' &c. From Tipperary went forth James, Lord Dunboyne, with 21 followers, and having 4 cows, 10 garrons, and 2 swine. Dame Catherine Morris, 35 followers, 10 cows, 16 garrons, 19 goats, 2 swine. Lady Mary Hamilton, of Roscrea, with 45 persons, 40 cows, 30 garrons, 46 sheep, 2 goats. Pierce, Lord Viscount Ikerrin, with 17 persons, having 16 acres of winter corn, 4 cows, 5 garrons, 14 sheep, 2 swine, &c. There were other noblemen, lords of the Pale, descended from illustrious English ancestors, the Fitzgeralds, the Butlers, the Plunkets, the Barnwells, the Dillons, the Cheevers, the Cusacks, &c., who petitioned, praying that their flight might not be in the winter, or alleging that their wives and children were sick, that their cattle were unfit to drive, or that they had crops to get in. To them dispensations were granted, provided the husbands and parents were in Connaught building huts, &c., and that not more than one or two servants remained behind to look after the respective herds and flocks, and to attend to the gathering in and threshing of the corn. And some few, such as John Talbot de Malahide, got a pass for safe travelling from Connaught to come back, in order to dispose of their corn and goods, giving security to return within the time limited. If they did not return they got this warning in the month of March--that the officers had resolved to fill the jails with them, 'by which this bloody people will know that they (the officers) are not degenerated from English principles. Though I presume we should be very tender of hanging any except leading men, yet we shall make no scruple of sending them to the West Indies,' &c. Accordingly when the time came, all the remaining crops were seized and sold; there was a general arrest of all 'transplantable persons. All over the three provinces, men and women were hauled out of their beds in the dead hour of night to prison, till the jails were choked.' In order to further expedite the removal of the nobility and gentry, a court-martial sat in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and ordered the lingering delinquents, who shrunk from going to Connaught, to be hanged, with a placard on the breast and back of each victim--'_For not transplanting.'_ Scully's conduct at Ballycohy, was universally execrated. But what did he attempt to do? Just what the Cromwellian officers did at the end of a horrid civil war 200 years ago, with this difference in favour of Cromwell, that Scully did not purpose to 'transplant,' He would simply uproot, leaving the uprooted to perish on the highway. His conduct was as barbarous as that of the Cromwellian officers. But what of Scully? He is nothing. The all-important fact is, that, in playing a part worse than Cromwellian, he, _acting according to English law, was supported by all the power of the state_; and if the men who defended their homes against his attack had been arrested and convicted, Irish judges would have consigned them to the gallows; and they might, as in the Cromwellian case, have ordered a placard to be put on their persons:-- 'FOR NOT TRANSPLANTING!' In fact the Cromwellian commissioners did nothing more than carry out fully the _principles_ of our present land code. Nine-tenths of the soil of Ireland are held by tenants at will. It is constantly argued in the leading organs of English opinion, that the power of the landlords to resume possession of their estates, and turn them into pastures, evicting all the tenants, is _essential_ to the rights of property. This has been said in connection with the great absentee proprietors. According to this theory of proprietorship, the only one recognised by law, Lord Lansdowne may legally spread desolation over a large part of Kerry; Lord Fitzwilliam may send the ploughshare of ruin through the hearths of half the county Wicklow; Lord Digby, in the King's County, may restore to the bog of Allen vast tracts reclaimed during many generations by the labour of his tenants; and Lord Hertfort may convert into a wilderness the district which the descendants of the English settlers have converted into the garden of Ulster. If any or all of those noblemen took a fancy, like Colonel Bernard of Kinnitty or Mr. Allen Pollok, to become graziers and cattle-jobbers on a gigantic scale, the Government would be compelled to place the military power of the state at their disposal, to evict the whole population in the queen's name, to drive all the families away from their homes, to demolish their dwellings, and turn them adrift on the highway, without one shilling compensation. Villages, schools, churches would all disappear from the landscape; and, when the grouse season arrived, the noble owner might bring over a party of English friends to see his '_improvements!_' The right of conquest so cruelly exercised by the Cromwellians is in this year of grace _a legal right_; and its exercise is a mere question of expediency and discretion. There is not a landlord in Ireland who may not be a Scully if he wishes. It is not law or justice, it is not British power, that prevents the enactment of Cromwellian scenes of desolation in every county of that unfortunate country. It is self-interest, with humanity, in the hearts of good men, and the dread of assassination in the hearts of bad men, that prevent at the present moment the immolation of the Irish people to the Moloch of territorial despotism. It is the effort to render impossible those human sacrifices, those holocausts of Christian households, that the priests of feudal landlordism denounce so frantically with loud cries of '_confiscation_.' The 'graces' promised by Charles I. in 1628 demonstrate the real wretchedness of the country to which they were deceitfully offered, and from which they were treacherously withdrawn. From them we learn that the Government soldiers were a terror to more than the king's enemies, that the king's rents were collected at the sword's point, and that numerous monopolies and oppressive taxes impoverished the country. There was little security for estates in any part of Ireland, and none at all for estates in Connaught. No man could sue out livery for his lands without first taking the oath of the royal supremacy. The soldiers enjoyed an immunity in the perpetration of even capital crimes, for the civil power could not touch them. Those who were married, or had their children baptized, by Roman Catholic priests, were liable to fine and censure. The Protestant bishops and clergy were in great favour and had enormous privileges. The patentees of dissolved religious houses claimed exemption from various assessments. The ministers of the Established Church were entitled to the aid of the Government in exacting reparation for clandestine exercises of spiritual jurisdiction by Roman Catholic priests, and actually appear to have kept private prisons of their own. They exacted tithes from Roman Catholics of everything titheable. The eels of the rivers and lakes, the fishes of the sea paid them toll. The dead furnished the mortuary fees to the 'alien church' in the shape of the best clothes which the wardrobe of the defunct afforded. The government of Wentworth, better known as the Earl of Strafford, is highly praised by high churchmen and admirers of Laud, but was execrated by the Irish, who failed to appreciate the mercies of his star-chamber court, or to recognise the justice of his fining juries who returned disagreeable verdicts. The list of grievances, transmitted by the Irish House of Peers in 1641 to the English Government, cannot be regarded as altogether visionary, for it was vouched by the names of lords, spiritual and temporal, whose attachment to the English interest was undoubted. The lord chancellor (Loftus), the archbishop of Dublin (Bulkeley), the bishops of Meath, Clogher, and Killala were no rebels, and yet they protested against the grievances inflicted on Ireland by the tyranny of Strafford. According to these contemporary witnesses, the Irish nobles had been taxed beyond all proportion to the English nobles; Irish peers had been sent to prison although not impeached of treason or any capital offence; the deputy had managed to keep all proxies of peers in the hands of his creatures, and thus to sway the Upper House to his will; the trade of the kingdom had been destroyed; and the 'graces' of 1628 had been denied to the nation, or clogged by provisoes which rendered them a mockery. And yet, in the face of such evidence of misery and misgovernment, the Archbishop of Dublin asserted in a charge to his clergy, that 'all contemporary writers agree in describing the flourishing condition of the island, and its rapid advance in civilisation and wealth, when all its improvement was brought to an end by the catastrophe of the Irish rebellion of 1641'--the very year in which the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons agreed in depicting the condition of Ireland as utterly miserable! But Archbishop Trench not only contradicts the authentic contemporary records, in picturing as halcyon days one of the most wretched periods of Irish history, but also wrongfully represents one of the saddest episodes of that history. He reminded his clergy 'that the number of Protestants who were massacred by the Roman Catholics during the rebellion was, by the most moderate estimate, set down as 40,000.' His grace seems to have been unacquainted with the contemporary evidence collected by the Protestant historian Warner, who examined the depositions of 1641, on which the story of the massacre was based, and found the estimate of those who perished in the so-called massacre to have been enormously exaggerated. He calculated the number of those killed, 'upon evidence collected within two years after the rebellion broke out,' at 4,028, besides 8,000 said to have perished through bad usage. The parliament commissioners in Dublin, writing in 1652 to the commissioners in England, say that, 'besides 848 families, there were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned 6,062. Thus there were two estimates--one of 12,000, the other of 10,000--each of which was far lower than the estimate of 40,000, which his grace calls 'the most moderate.' It turns out, moreover, that the argument based by Archbishop Trench on the false estimate of those said to have been massacred, is wholly worthless for the purpose intended by his grace. The disproportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics, which appears by the census of 1861, cannot be accounted for by the statistics of 1641--be those statistics true or false. For the proportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics was higher in 1672--thirty years after the alleged massacre--than in 1861. The Protestants in 1672, according to Sir W. Petty, numbered 300,000, and the Roman Catholics 800,000; while in 1861 there were found in Ireland only 1,293,702 Protestants of all denominations to 4,505,265 Roman Catholics. It follows from these figures, as has been already remarked by Dr. Maziere Brady, that there has been a relative decrease of Protestants, as compared with Roman Catholics, of 395,772 persons. And this relative decrease was in no way affected--inasmuch as it took place since the year 1672--by the alleged massacre of 1641. CHAPTER XII. THE PURITAN PLANTATION. It is a fearful thing to undertake the destruction of a nation by slaughter, starvation, and banishment. When we read of such enormities, perpetrated by some 'scourge of God,' in heathen lands and distant ages, we are horrified, and we thank Providence that it is our lot to be born in a Christian country. But what must the world think of our Christianity when they read of the things that, in a most Bible-reading age, Englishmen did in Ireland? The work of transplanting was slow, difficult, and intensely painful to the Irish, for Connaught was bleak, sterile, and desolate, and the weather was inclement. The natural protectors of many families had been killed or banished, and the women and children clung with frantic fondness to their old homes. But for the feelings of such afflicted ones the conquerors had no sympathy. On the contrary, they believed that God, angry at their lingering, sent his judgments as a punishment. Mr. Prendergast has published a number of letters, written at the time by the English authorities and others, from which some interesting matters may be gleaned. The town of Cashel had got a dispensation to remain. 'But,' says the writer, 'the Lord, who is a jealous God, and more knowing of, as well as jealous against their iniquity than we, by a fire on the 23rd inst. hath burned down the whole town in little less than a quarter of an hour, except a few houses that a few English lived in,' &c. In consequence of the delay, the Irish began to break into 'torying' (plundering). 'The tories fly out and increase. What strange people, not to starve in peace.' To be inclined to plunder under such circumstances, with so gracious a Government, must be held to be a proof of great natural depravity, as well as of a peculiar incapacity to respect, or even to understand, the rights of property. At length, however, the land was ready for the enjoyment of the officers and soldiers. On August 20, 1655, the lord deputy, Fleetwood, thus addressed one of the officers:-- 'Sir,--In pursuance of his highness's command, the council here with myself and chief officers of the army having concluded about disbanding part of the army, in order to lessening the present charge, it is fit that your troope be one. And, accordingly, I desire you would march such as are willing to plant of them into the barony of Shelmaliere, in the county of Wexford, at or before the first day of September, where you shall be put into possession of your lands, for your arrears, according to the rates agreed on by the committee and agents. As also you shall have, upon the place wherein you are, so much money as shall answer the present three months' arrear due to you and your men, but to continue no longer the pay of the army than upon the muster of this August. The sooner you march your men the better; thereby you will be enabled to make provision for the winter.' After some sweetening hints that they will be perhaps paid hereafter as a militia he concludes:-- 'And great is your mercy, that after all your hardships and difficulties you may sit down, and, if the Lord give His blessing, may reape some fruits of your past services. Do not think it a blemish or underrating of your past services, that you are now disbanded; but look upon it as of the Lord's appointing, and with cheerfulness submit thereunto; and the blessing of the Lord be upon you all, and keep you in His fear, and give you hearts to observe your past experience of signal appearances. And that this fear may be seen in your hearts, and that you may be kept from the sins and pollutions which God hath so eminently witnessed against in those whose possessions you are to take up, is the desire of him who is 'Your very affectionate friend, to love and serve you, 'CHARLES FLEETWOOD.' He congratulated them that, 'having by the blessing of God obtained their peace, they might sit down in the enjoyment of the enemies' fields and houses, which they planted not nor built not. They had no reason to repent their services, considering how great an issue God had given.' Yet many refused to settle, and sold their debentures to their officers. What could they do with the farms? They had no horses or ploughs, no cattle to stock the land, no labourers to till it. Above all, they had no women. Flogging was the punishment for amours with Irish girls, and marriage with the idolatrous race was forbidden under heavy penalties. Hence the soldiers pretended that their wives were converted to Protestantism. But this was to be tested by a strict examination of each as to the state of her soul, and the means by which she had been enlightened. If she did not stand the test, her husband was degraded in rank, and, if disbanded, he was liable to be sent to Connaught with the fair seducer. The charms of the Irish women, however, proved irresistible, and the hearts of the pious rulers were sorely troubled by this danger. 'In 1652, amongst the first plans for paying the army their arrears in land, it was suggested there should be a law that any officers or soldiers marrying Irishwomen should lose their commands, forfeit their arrears, and be made incapable of inheriting lands in Ireland. No such provision, however, was introduced into the act, because it provided against this danger more effectually by ordering the women to transplant, together with the whole nation, to Connaught. Those in authority, however, ought never to have let the English officers and soldiers come in contact with the Irishwomen, or should have ordered another army of young Englishwomen over, if they did not intend this provision to be nugatory. Planted in a wasted country, amongst the former owners and their families, with little to do but to make love, and no lips to make love to but Irish, love or marriage must follow between them as necessarily as a geometrical conclusion follows from the premises. For there were but few who (in the language of a Cromwellian patriot), ----'rather than turne From English principles, would sooner burne; And rather than marrie an Irish wife, Would batchellers remain for tearme of life.' About forty years after the Cromwellian Settlement, and just seven years after the Battle of the Boyne, the following was written: 'We cannot so much wonder at this [the quick "degenerating" of the English of Ireland], when we consider how many there are of the children of Oliver's soldiers in Ireland who cannot speak one word of English. And (which is strange) the same may be said of some of the children of King William's soldiers who came but t'other day into the country. This misfortune is owing to the marrying Irishwomen for want of English, who come not over in so great numbers as are requisite. 'Tis sure that no Englishman in Ireland knows what his children may be as things are now; they cannot well live in the country without growing Irish; for none take such care as Sir Jerome Alexander [second justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland from 1661 to his death in 1670], who left his estate to his daughter, but made the gift void if she married any Irishman;' Sir Jerome including in this term 'any lord of Ireland, any archbishop, bishop, prelate, any baronet, knight, esquire, or gentleman of Irish extraction or descent, born and bred in Ireland, or having his relations and means of subsistence there,' and expressly, of course, any 'Papist.'--'True Way to render Ireland happy and secure; or, a Discourse, wherein 'tis shown that 'tis the interest both of England and Ireland to encourage foreign Protestants to plant in Ireland; in a letter to the Hon. Robert Molesworth.'[1] [Footnote 1: Cromwellian Settlement, p.130.] The impossibility of getting a sufficient number of settlers from England to cultivate the land, produce food, and render the estates worth holding, led to some fraudulent transactions for the benefit of the natives who were 'loath to leave.' The officers in various counties got general orders giving dispensations from the necessity of planting with English tenants, and liberty to take Irish, provided they were not proprietors or swordsmen. But the proprietors who had established friendships with their conquerors secretly became tenants under them to parts of their former estates, ensuring thereby the connivance of their new landlords against their transplantation. On June 1, 1655, the commissioners for the affairs of Ireland (Fleetwood, lord deputy, one of them), being then at Limerick, discovered this fraud, and issued a peremptory order revoking all former dispensations for English proprietors to plant with Irish tenants; and they enjoined upon the governor of Limerick and all other officers the removing of the proprietors thus sheltered and their families into Connaught, on or before that day three weeks. But, happily, says Mr. Prendergast, all penal laws against a nation are difficult of execution. The officers still connived with many of the poor Irish gentry and sheltered them, which caused Fleetwood, then commander of the parliament forces in Ireland, upon his return to Dublin, and within a fortnight after the prescribed limit for their removal was expired, to thunder forth from Dublin Castle a severe reprimand to all officers thus offending. Their neglect to search for and apprehend the transplantable proprietors was denounced as a great dishonour and breach of discipline of the army; and their entertaining any of them as tenants was declared a hindrance to the planting of Ireland with English Protestants. 'I do therefore,' the order continued, 'hereby order and declare, that if any officer or soldier under my command shall offend by neglect of his duty in searching for and apprehending all such persons as by the declaration of November 30, 1654, are to transplant themselves into Connaught; or by entertaining them as tenants on his lands, or as servants under him, he shall be punished by the articles of war as negligent of his duty, according to the demerit of such his neglect.' The English parliament resolved to clear out the population of all the principal cities and seaport towns, though nearly all founded and inhabited by Danes or English, and men of English descent. In order to raise funds for the war, the following towns were offered to English merchants for sale at the prices annexed:--Limerick, with 12,000 acres contiguous, for 30,000 l., and a rent of 625 l. payable to the state; Waterford, with 1,500 acres contiguous, at the same rate; Galway, with 10,000 acres, for 7,500 l., and a rent of 520 l.; Wexford, with 6,000 acres, for 5,000 l., and a rent of 156 l. 4 s. There were no bidders; but still the Government adhered to its determination to clear out the Irish, and supply their place with a new English population. Artisans were excepted, but strictly limited in number, each case being particularly described and registered, while dispensations were granted to certain useful persons, on the petition of the settlers who needed their services. On July 8 in the same year, the governor of Clonmel was authorised to grant dispensations to forty-three persons in a list annexed, or as many of them as he should think fit, being artificers and workmen, to stay for such time as he might judge convenient, the whole time not to exceed March 25, 1655. On June 5, 1654, the governor of Dublin was authorised to grant licences to such inhabitants to continue in the city (notwithstanding the declaration for all Irish to quit) as he should judge convenient, the licences to contain the name, age, colour of hair, countenance, and stature of every such person; and the licence not to exceed twenty days, and the cause of their stay to be inserted in each licence. Petitions went up from the old native inhabitants of Limerick; from the fishermen of Limerick; from the mayor and inhabitants of Cashel, who were all ordered to transplant; but, notwithstanding these orders, many of them still clung about the towns, sheltered by the English, who found the benefit of their services. The deserted cities of course fell speedily into ruins. Lord Inchiquin, president of Munster, put many artisans, menial servants, grooms, &c. in the houses, to take care of them in Cork; still about 3,000 good houses in that city, and as many in Youghal, out of which the owners had been driven, were destroyed by the soldiers, who used the timber for fuel. The council addressed the following letter to Secretary Thurloe:-- 'Dublin Castle, March 4, 1656. 'Right Honourable,--The council, having lately taken into their most serious consideration what may be most for the security of this country, and the encouragement of the English to come over and plant here, did think fitt that all Popish recusants, as wel proprietors as others, whose habitations are in any port-towns, walled-towns, or garrisons, and who did not before the 15th of September 1643 (being the time mentioned in the act of 1653 for the encouragement of adventurers and soldiers), and ever since profess the Protestant religion, should remove themselves and their families out of all such places, and two miles at the least distant therefrom, before the 20th of May next; and being desirous that the English people may take notice, that by this means there will be both security and conveniency of habitation for such as shall be willing to come over as planters, they have commanded me to send you the enclosed declaration, and to desire you that you will take some course, whereby it may be made known unto the people for their encouragement to come over and plant in this country. 'Your humble servant, 'THOMAS HERBERT, Clerk of the Council.' On July 23, 1655, the inhabitants of Galway were commanded to quit the town for ever by the 1st of November following, the owners of houses getting compensation at eight years' purchase. 'On October 30, this order was executed. All the inhabitants, except the sick and bedrid, were at once banished, to provide accommodation for English Protestants, whose integrity to the state should entitle them to be trusted in a place of such importance; and Sir Charles Coote, on November 7, received the thanks of the Government for clearing the town, with a request that he would remove the sick and bedrid as soon as the season might permit, and take care that the houses while empty were not spoiled by the soldiery. The town was thus made ready for the English. There was a large debt of 10,000 l., due to Liverpool for their loss and suffering for the good cause. The eminent deservings and losses of the city of Gloucester also had induced the parliament to order them 10,000 l., to be satisfied in forfeited lands in Ireland. The commissioners of Ireland now offered forfeited houses in Galway, rated at ten years' purchase, to the inhabitants of Liverpool and Gloucester, to satisfy their respective debts, and they were both to arrange about the planting of it with English Protestants. To induce them to accept the proposal, the commissioners enlarged upon the advantages of Galway. It lay open for trade with Spain, the Straits, the West Indies, and other places; no town or port in the three nations, London excepted, was more considerable. It had many noble uniform buildings of marble, though many of the houses had become ruinous by reason of the war, and the waste done by the impoverished English dwelling there. No Irish were permitted to live in the city, nor within three miles of it. If it were only properly inhabited by English, it might have a more hopeful gain by trade than when it was in the hands of the Irish that lived there. There never was a better opportunity of undertaking a plantation and settling manufacturers there than the present, and they suggested that it might become another Derry.'[1] [Footnote 1: The Cromwellian Settlement.] Some writers, sickened with the state of things in Ireland, and impatient of the inaction of our rulers, and of the tedious forms of constitutional government, have exclaimed: 'Oh for one day of Oliver Cromwell!' Well, Ireland had him and his worthy officers for many years. They had opportunities, which never can be hoped for again, of rooting out the Irish and their religion. '_Thorough_' was their word. They dared everything, and shrunk from no consequences. They found Dublin full of Catholics; and on June 19, 1651, Mr. John Hewson had the felicity of making the following report on the state of religion in the Irish metropolis:-- 'Mr. Winter, a godly man, came with the commissioners, and they flock to hear him with great desire; besides, there is in Dublin, since January last, about 750 Papists forsaken their priests and the masse, and attends the public ordinances, I having appointed Mr. Chambers, a minister, to instruct them at his own house once a week. They all repaire to him with much affection, and desireth satisfaction. And though Dublin hath formerly swarmed with Papists, I know none (now) there but one, who is a chirurgeon, and a peaceable man. It is much hoped the glad tidings of salvation will be acceptable in Ireland, and that this savage people may see the salvation of God.' Political economists tell us that when population is greatly thinned by war, or pestilence, or famine, Nature hastens to fill up the void by the extraordinary fecundity of those who remain. The Irish must have multiplied very fast in Connaught during the Commonwealth; and the mixture of Saxon and Celtic blood resulting from the union of the Cromwellian soldiers with the daughters of the land must have produced a numerous as well as a very vigorous breed in Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Cork, East and West Meath, King's and Queen's Counties, and Tyrone. But these were not 'wholly a right seed.' This was to be found only in the union of English with English, newly arrived from the land of the free. The more precious this seed was, the more care there should be in bringing it into the field. This matter constituted one of the great difficulties of the plantation. There were plenty of Irish midwives: they might have been affectionate and careful, possibly skilful; but if they had any good quality, the council could not see it. On the contrary, it gave them credit for many bad qualities, the worst of all being their idolatry and disloyalty. It was really dreadful to think of English mothers and their infants being at the mercy of Irish nurses. Consequently, after much deliberation, and 'laying the matter before the Lord' in prayer, it was resolved to bring over a state nurse from England, and to her special care were to be entrusted all the _accouchements_ in the city of Dublin. Endowed with such a monopoly, it was natural enough that she should be an object of envy and dislike to those midwives whom she had supplanted. She was therefore annoyed and insulted while passing through the streets. To put a stop to these outrages, a proclamation was issued from Dublin Castle for her special protection, which began thus:-- _By the Commissioners of Parliament for the Affairs of Ireland_. 'Whereas we are informed by divers persons of repute and godliness, that Mrs. Jane Preswick hath, through the blessing of God, been very successful within Dublin and parts about, through the carefull and skillfull discharge of her midwife's duty, and instrumental to helpe sundry poore women who needed her helpe, which bathe abounded to the comfourte and preservation of many English women, who (being come into a strange country) had otherwise been destitute of due helpe, and necessitated to expose their lives to the mercy of Irish midwives, ignorant in the profession, and bearing little good will to any of the English nation, which being duly considered, we thought fitt to evidence this our acceptance thereof, and willingness that a person so eminently qualified for publique good and so well reported of for piety and knowledge in her art should receive encouragement and protection,' &c. Cromwell and his ministers did not hesitate about applying heroic remedies for what they conceived to be grievances. The Irish parliament was abolished, like the Irish churches, the Irish cities, and everything else that could be called Irish, except the thing for which they fought--_the land_, which was to be Irish no more. The new England which the Protector established in the Island of Saints was represented, like Scotland, in the united parliament at Westminster--which first assembled in 1657. In that parliament, Major Morgan represented the county of Wicklow. In speaking against some proposed taxation for Ireland, he said, among other things, the country was under very heavy charges for rewards paid for the destruction of three beasts--the wolf, the priest, and the tory. 'We have three beasts to destroy,' he said, 'that lay burdens upon us. The first is a wolf, on whom we lay 5 l. a head if a dog, and 10 l. if a bitch. The second beast is a priest, on whose head we lay 10 l.; if he be eminent, more. The third beast is a tory, on whose head, if he be a public tory, we lay 20 l.; and 40 s. on a private tory. Your army cannot catch them: the Irish bring them in; brothers and cousins cut one another's throats.' In May, 1653, the council issued the following printed declaration. 'Upon serious consideration had of the great multitudes of poore swarming in all parts of this nacion, occasioned by the devastation of the country, and by the habits of licentiousness and idleness which the generality of the people have acquired in the time of this rebellion; insomuch that frequently some are found feeding on carrion and weeds,--some starved in the highways, and many times poor children who have lost their parents, or have been deserted by them, are found exposed to and some of them fed upon _by ravening wolves and other beasts and birds of prey._' No wonder the wolves multiplied and became very bold, when they fed upon such dainty fare as Irish children! By what infatuation, by what diabolical fanaticism were those rulers persuaded that they were doing God a service, or discharging the functions of a Government, in carrying out such a policy, and consigning human beings to such a fate! By a printed declaration of June 29, 1653, published July 1, 1656,[1] the commanders of the various districts were to appoint days and times for hunting the wolf; and persons destroying wolves and bringing their heads to the commissioners of the revenue of the precinct were to receive for the head of a bitch wolf, 6 _l_; of a dog wolf, 5 _l_; for the head of every cub that preyed by himself, 40 s.; and for the head of every sucking cub, 10 _s_: The assessments on several counties to reimburse the treasury for these advances became, as appears from Major Morgan's speech, a serious charge. In corroboration it appears that in March, 1655, there was due from the precinct of Galway 243 l. 5 s. 4 d. for rewards paid on this account. But the most curious evidence of their numbers is that lands lying only nine miles north of Dublin were leased by the state in the year 1653, under conditions of keeping a hunting establishment with a pack of wolf hounds for killing the wolves, part of the rent to be discounted in wolves' heads, at the rate in the declaration of June 29, 1653. Under this lease Captain Edward Piers was to have all the state lands in the barony of Dunboyne in the county of Meath, valued at 543 l. 8 s. 8 d., at a rent greater by 100 l. a year than they then yielded in rent and contribution, for five years from May 1 following, on the terms of maintaining at Dublin and Dunboyne three wolf-dogs, two English mastiffs, a pack of hounds of sixteen couple (three whereof to hunt the wolf only), a knowing huntsman, and two men and one boy. Captain Piers was to bring to the commissioners of revenue at Dublin a stipulated number of wolf-heads in the first year and a diminishing number every year; but for every wolf-head whereby he fell short of the stipulated number, 5 l. was to be defalked from his salary.[2] [Footnote 1: A/84, p.255. Republished 7th July, 1656.--'Book of Printed Declarations of the Commissioners for the Affairs of Ireland.' British Museum.] [Footnote 2: Cromwellian Settlement, p.154.] Twenty pounds was paid for the discovery of a priest, the second 'burdensome beast,' and to harbour him was death. Again I avail myself of the researches of Mr. Prendergast, to give a few orders on this subject. '_August_ 4, 1654.--Ordered, on the petition of Roger Begs, priest, now prisoner in Dublin, setting forth his miserable condition by being nine months in prison, and desiring liberty to go among his friends into the country for some relief; that he be released upon giving sufficient security that within four months he do transport himself to foreign parts, beyond the seas, never to return, and that during that time he do not exercise any part of his priestly functions, nor move from where he shall choose to reside my above five miles, without permission. Ordered, same date, on the petition of William Shiel, priest, that the said William Shiel being old, lame, and weak, and not able to travel without crutches, he be permitted to reside in Connaught where the Governor of Athlone shall see fitting, provided, however, he do not remove one mile beyond the appointed place without licence, nor use his priestly function.' At first the place of transportation was Spain. Thus:--'_February_ 1, 1653. Ordered that the Governor of Dublin take effectual course whereby the priests now in the several prisons of Dublin be forthwith shipped with the party going for Spain; and that they be delivered to the officers on shipboard for that purpose: care to be taken that, under the colour of exportation, they be not permitted to go into the country.' '_May_ 29, 1654.--Upon reading the petition of the Popish priests now in the jails of Dublin; ordered, that the Governor of Dublin take security of such persons as shall undertake the transportation of them, that they shall with the first opportunity be shipped for some parts in amity with the Commonwealth, provided the five pounds for each of the said priests due to the persons that took them, pursuant to the tenor of a declaration dated January 6, 1653, be first paid or secured.' The commissioners give reasons for this policy, which are identical with what we hear constantly repeated at the present day in Ireland and England and in most of the newspapers conducted by Protestants. For two centuries the burden of all comments on Irish affairs is 'the country would be happy but for priests and agitators.' 'Hang or banish the priests!' cry some very amiable and respectable persons, 'and then we shall have peace.' 'We can make nothing of those priests,' says the improving landlord, or agent, 'they will not look us straight in the face.' On December 8, 1655, in a letter from the commissioners to the Governor of Barbadoes, advising him of the approach of a ship with a cargo of proprietors deprived of their lands, and then seized for not transplanting, or banished for having no visible means of support, they add that amongst them were three priests; and the commissioners particularly desire they may be so employed as they may not return again where that sort of people are able to do much mischief, having so great an influence over the Popish Irish, and alienating their affections from the present Government. 'Yet these penalties did not daunt them, or prevent their recourse to Ireland. In consequence of the great increase of priests towards the close of the year 1655, a general arrest by the justices of the peace was ordered, under which, in April, 1656, the prisons in every part of Ireland seem to have been filled to overflowing. On May 3, the governors of the respective precincts were ordered to send them with sufficient guards from garrison to garrison to Carrickfergus, to be there put on board such ship as should sail with the first opportunity for the Barbadoes. One may imagine the pains of this toilsome journey by the petition of one of them. Paul Cashin, an aged priest, apprehended at Maryborough, and sent to Philipstown on the way to Carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick, and, being also extremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint for want of friends and means of relief. On August 27, 1656, the commissioners, having ascertained the truth of his petition, ordered him sixpence a day during his sickness; and (in answer probably to this poor prisoner's prayer to be spared from transportation) their order directed that it should be continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to Carrickfergus, in order to his transportation to the Barbadoes.' At Carrickfergus the horrors of approaching exile seem to have shaken the firmness of some of them; for on September 23, 1656, Colonel Cooper, who had the charge of the prison, reporting that several would under their hands renounce the Pope's supremacy, and frequent the Protestant meetings and no other, he was directed to dispense with the transportation, if they could give good Protestant security for the sincerity of their professions. As for the third beast--the tory, the following extract gives an idea of the class to which he belonged, or, rather, from which he sprang. 'And whereas the children, grandchildren, brothers, nephews, uncles, and next pretended heirs of the persons attainted, do remain in the provinces of Leinster, Ulster, and Munster, having little or no visible estates or subsistence, but living only and coshering upon the common sort of people who were tenants to or followers of the respective ancestors of such persons, waiting an opportunity, as may justly be supposed, to massacre and destroy the English who, as adventurers or souldiers, or their tenants, are set down to plant upon the several lands and estates of the persons so attainted,' they are to transplant or be transported to the English plantations in America.'[1] [Footnote 1: Act for Attainder of the Rebels in Ireland, passed 1656. Scobell's 'Acts and Ordinances.'] No wonder that Mr. Prendergast exclaims:-- 'But how must the feelings of national hatred have been heightened, by seeing every where crowds of such unfortunates, their brothers, cousins, kinsmen, and by beholding the whole country given up a prey to hungry insolent soldiers and adventurers from England, mocking their wrongs, and triumphing in their own irresistible power!' Every possible mode of repression that has been devised at the present time as a remedy for Ribbonism was then tried with unflinching determination. John Symonds, an English settler, was murdered near the garrison town of Timolin, in the county Kildare. All the Irish inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood were immediately transported to Connaught as a punishment for the crime. A few months after two more settlers were murdered at Lackagh. 'All the Irish in the townland of Lackagh were seized; four of them by sentence of court-martial were hanged for the murder, or for not preventing it; and all the rest, thirty-seven in number, including two priests, were on November 27 delivered to the captain of the "Wexford" frigate, to take to Waterford, there to be handed over to Mr. Norton, a Bristol merchant, to be sold as bond slaves to the sugar-planters in the Barbadoes. Among these were Mrs. Margery Fitzgerald, of the age of fourscore years, and her husband, Mr. Henry Fitzgerald of Lackagh; although (as it afterwards appeared) the tories had by their frequent robberies much infested that gentleman and his tenants--discovery that seems to have been made only after the king's restoration.' The penalties against the tories themselves were to allow them no quarter when caught, and to set a price upon their heads. The ordinary price for the head of a tory was 40 s.; for leaders of tories, or distinguished men, it varied from 5 l. to 30 l. 'But,' continues Mr. Prendergast, 'a more effective way of suppressing tories seems to have been to induce them, as already mentioned, to betray or murder one another--a measure continued after the Restoration, during the absence of parliaments, by acts and orders of state, and re-enacted by the first parliament summoned after the Revolution, when in that and the following reigns almost every provision of the rule of the parliament of England in Ireland was re-enacted by the parliaments of Ireland, composed of the soldiers and adventurers of Cromwell's day, or new English and Scotch capitalists. In 1695 any tory killing two other tories proclaimed and on their keeping was entitled to pardon--a measure which put such distrust and alarm among their bands on finding one of their number so killed, that it became difficult to kill a second. Therefore, in 1718, it was declared sufficient qualification for pardon for a tory to kill one of his fellow-tories. This law was continued in 1755 for twenty-one years, and only expired in 1776. Tory-hunting and tory-murdering thus became common pursuits. No wonder, therefore, after so lengthened an existence, to find traces of the tories in our household words. Few, however, are now aware that the well-known Irish nursery rhymes have so truly historical a foundation:-- 'Ho! brother Teig, what is your story?' 'I went to the wood and shot a tory:' 'I went to the wood, and shot another;' 'Was it the same, or was it his brother?' 'I hunted him in, and I hunted him out, Three times through the bog, and about and about; Till out of a bush I spied his head, So I levelled my gun and shot him dead.' After the war of 1688, the tories received fresh accessions, and, a great part of the kingdom being left waste and desolate, they betook themselves to these wilds, and greatly discouraged the replanting of the kingdom by their frequent murders of the new Scotch and English planters; the Irish 'choosing rather' (so runs the language of the act) 'to suffer strangers to be robbed and despoiled, than to apprehend or convict the offenders.' In order, therefore, for the better encouragement of strangers to plant and inhabit the kingdom, any persons presented as tories, by the gentlemen of a county, and proclaimed as such by the lord lieutenant, might be shot as outlaws and traitors; and any persons harbouring them were to be guilty of high treason.[1] Rewards were offered for the taking or killing of them; and the inhabitants of the barony, of the ancient native race, were to make satisfaction for all robberies and spoils. If persons were maimed or dismembered by tories, they were to be compensated by 10 l.; and the families of persons murdered were to receive 30 l.' [Footnote 1: The Cromwellian Settlement, p.163, &c.] The Restoration at length brought relief and enlargement to the imprisoned Irish nation. They rushed across the Shannon to see their old homes; they returned to the desolated cities, full of hope that the king for whom they had suffered so much would reward their loyalty, by giving them back their inheritances--the 'just satisfaction' promised at Breda to those who had been unfairly deprived of their estates. The Ulster Presbyterians also counted on his gratitude for their devotion to his cause, notwithstanding the wrongs inflicted on them by Strafford and the bishops in the name of his father. But they were equally doomed to disappointment. Coote and Broghill reigned in Dublin Castle as lords justices. The first parliament assembled in Dublin for twenty years, contained an overwhelming majority of undertakers, adventurers, and Puritan representatives of boroughs, from which all the Catholic electors had been excluded. 'The Protestant interest,' a phrase of tremendous potency in the subsequent history of Ireland, counted 198 members against 64 Catholics in the Commons, and in the Lords 72 against 21 peers. A court was established under an act of parliament in Dublin, to try the claims of 'nocent' and 'innocent' proprietors. The judges, who were Englishmen, declared in their first session that 168 were innocent to 19 nocent. The Protestant interest was alarmed; and, through the influence of Ormond, then lord lieutenant, the duration of the court was limited, and when it was compelled to close its labours, only 800 out of 3,000 cases had been decided. If the proportions of nocent and innocent were the same, an immense number of innocent persons were deprived of their property. In 1675, fifteen years after the Restoration, the English settlers were in possession of 4,500,000 acres, while the old owners retained 2,250,000 acres. By an act passed in 1665, it was declared that no Papist, who had not already been adjudged innocent, should ever be entitled to claim any lands or settlements.' Any movement on the part of the Roman Catholics during this reign, and indeed, ever since, always raised an alarm of the 'Protestant interest' in danger. While the panic lasted the Catholics were subjected to cruel restrictions and privations. Thus Ormond, by proclamation, prohibited Catholics from entering the castle of Dublin, or any other fortress; from holding fairs or markets within the walls of fortified towns, and from carrying arms to such places. By another proclamation, he ordered all the _relatives_ of known 'tories' to be arrested and banished the kingdom, within fourteen days, unless such tories were killed or surrendered within that time. There was one tory for whose arrest all ordinary means failed. This was the celebrated Redmond O'Hanlon, still one of the most popular heroes with the Irish peasantry. He was known on the continent as Count O'Hanlon, and was the brother of the owner of Tandragee, now the pretty Irish seat of the Duke of Manchester. As no one would betray this outlaw, who levied heavy contributions from the settlers in Ulster, it was alleged and believed that the viceroy hired a relative to shoot him. 'Count O'Hanlon,' says Mr. D. Magee, 'a gentleman of ancient lineage, as accomplished as Orrery, or Ossory, was indeed an outlaw to the code then in force; but the stain of his cowardly assassination must for ever blot the princely escutcheon of James, Duke of Ormond.'[1] [Footnote 1: See 'The Tory War of Ulster,' by John P. Prendergast, author of 'The Cromwellian Settlement.' This pamphlet abounds in the most curious information, collected from judicial records, descriptive of Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution--A.D. 1660-1690.] CHAPTER XIII. THE PENAL CODE, A NEW SYSTEM OF LAND-WAR. The accession of James II. was well calculated to have an intoxicating effect on the Irish race. He was a Catholic, he undertook to effect a counter-reformation. He would restore the national hierarchy to the position from which it had been dragged down and trampled under the feet of the Cromwellians. He would give back to the Irish gentry and nobility their estates; and to effect this glorious revolution, he relied upon the faith and valour of the Irish. The Protestant militia were disarmed, a Catholic army was formed; the corporations were thrown open to Catholics. Dublin and other corporations, which refused to surrender their exclusive charters, were summarily deprived of their privileges; Catholic mayors and sheriffs, escorted by troops, went in state to their places of worship. The Protestant chancellor was dismissed to make way for a Catholic, Baron Rice. The plate of Trinity College was seized as public property. The Protestants, thoroughly alarmed by these arbitrary proceedings, fled to England in thousands. Many went to Holland and joined the army of the Prince of Orange. Dreadful stories were circulated of an intended invasion of England by wild Irish regiments under Tyrconnel. There was a rumour of another massacre of the English, and of the proposed repeal of the act of settlement. Protestants who could not cross the channel fled to Enniskillen and to Derry, which closed its gates and prepared for its memorable siege. James, who had fled to France, plucked up courage to go to Ireland, and make a stand there in defence of his crown. His progress from Kinsale to Dublin was an ovation. Fifteen royal chaplains scattered blessings around him; Gaelic songs and dances amused him; he was flattered in Latin orations, and conducted to his capital under triumphal arches. In Dublin the trades turned out with new banners; two harpers played at the gate by which he entered; the clergy in their robes chanted as they went: and forty young girls, dressed in white, danced the ancient _rinka_, scattering flowers on the newly sanded streets. Tyrconnell, now a duke, the judges, the mayor and the corporation, completed the procession, which moved beneath arches of evergreens, and windows hung with 'tapestry and cloth of arras.' The recorder delivered to his majesty the keys of the city, and the Catholic primate, Dominick Maguire, waited in his robes to conduct him to the royal chapel, where the _Te Deum_ was sung. On that day the green flag floated from the main tower of the castle, bearing the motto, 'Now or never--now and for ever.' The followers of James, according to Grattan, 'though papists, were not slaves. They wrung a constitution from King James before they accompanied him to the field.' A constitution wrung from such a man was not worth much. His parliament passed an act for establishing liberty of conscience, and ordering every man to pay tithes to his own clergy only, with some other measures of relief. But he began to play the despot very soon. The Commons voted him the large subsidy of 20,000 l. He doubled the amount by his own mere motion. He established a bank, and by his own authority decreed a bank monopoly. He debased the coinage, and fixed the prices of merchandise by his own will. He appointed a provost and librarian in Trinity College without the consent of the senate, and attempted to force fellows and scholars on the university contrary to the statutes. The events which followed are well known to all readers of English history. Our concern is with their effects on the land question. One of the measures passed by this parliament was an act repealing the act of settlement. But, soon after the Revolution, measures were taken to render that settlement firmer than ever. A commission was appointed to enquire into the forfeited estates; and the consequence was that 1,060,792 acres were declared escheated to the crown. In 1695 King William, in his speech, read to the Irish parliament, assured them that he was intent upon the firm settlement of Ireland upon a Protestant basis. He kept his word, for when he died there did not remain in the hands of Catholics one-sixth of the land which their grandfathers held, even after the passing of the act of settlement. The acts passed for securing the Protestant interest formed the series known as the penal code, which was in force for the whole of the eighteenth century. It answered its purpose effectually; it reduced the nation to a state of poverty, degradation, and slavishness of spirit unparalleled in the history of Christendom, while it made the small dominant class a prodigy of political and religious tyranny. Never was an aristocracy, as a body, more hardened in selfishness, more insolent in spirit; never was a church more negligent of duty, more intensely and ostentatiously secular. Both church and state reeked with corruption. The plan adopted for degrading the Catholics, and reducing all to one plebeian level, was most ingenious. The ingenuity indeed may be said to be Satanic, for it debased its victims morally as well as socially and physically. It worked by means of treachery, covetousness, perfidy, and the perversion of all natural affections. The trail of the serpent was over the whole system. For example, when the last Duke of Ormond arrived as lord lieutenant in 1703, the Commons waited on him with a bill 'for discouraging the further growth of Popery,' which became law, having met his decided approval. This act provided that if the son of a Catholic became a Protestant, the father should be incapable of selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. If a child ever so young professed to be a Protestant, it was to be taken from its parents, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts, that if a Papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than _one-third of the amount of the rent_, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between _all_ his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause vests in the crown all advowsons possessed by Papists. A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides, that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of 30 l. per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale:--For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 50 l.; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered, 20 l.; and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, 10 l. In judging the Irish peasantry, we should try to estimate the effects of such a system on any people for more than a century. It will account for the farmer's habit of concealing his prosperity, and keeping up the appearance of poverty, even if he had not reason for it in the felonious spirit of appropriation still subsisting under legal sanction. We are too apt to place to the account of race or religion the results of malignant or blundering legislation. We are not without examples of such results in England itself. In the winter of 1831-2, a very startling state of things was presented. In a period of great general prosperity, that portion of England in which the poor laws had their most extensive operation, and in which by much the largest expenditure of poor-rates had been made, was the scene of daily riot and nightly incendiarism. There were ninety-three parishes in four counties, of which the population was 113,147, and the poor-law expenditure 81,978 l., or 14 s. 5 d. per head; and there were eighty parishes in three other counties, the population of which was 105,728, and the poor-law expenditure 30,820 l., or 5 s. 9 d. a head. In the counties in which the poor-law expenditure was large, the industry and skill of the labourers were passing away, the connection between the master and servant had become precarious, the unmarried were defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and incendiarism prevailed. In the counties where the expenditure was comparatively small, there was scarcely any instance of disorder; mutual attachment existed between the workman and his employer; the intelligence, skill, and good conduct of the labourers were unimpaired, or increased. This striking social contrast was only a specimen of what prevailed throughout large districts, and generally throughout the south and north of England, and it proved that, either through the inherent vice of the system, or gross mal-administration in the southern counties, the poor-law had the most demoralising effect upon the working classes, while it was rapidly eating up the capital upon which the employment of labour depended. This fact was placed beyond question by a commission of enquiry, which was composed of individuals distinguished by their interest in the subject, and their intimate knowledge of its principles and details. Its labours were continued incessantly for two years. Witnesses most competent to give information were summoned from different parts of the country. The commissioners had before them documentary evidence of every kind calculated to throw light on the subject. They personally visited localities, and examined the actual operation of the system on the spot; and when they could not go themselves, they called to their aid assistant commissioners, some of whom extended their enquiries into Scotland, Guernsey, France, and Flanders; while they also collected a vast mass of interesting evidence from our ambassadors and diplomatic agents in different countries of Europe and America. It was upon the report of this commission of enquiry that the act was founded for the amendment and better administration of the laws relating to the poor in England and Wales (4 and 5 William IV., cap. 76). A more solid foundation for a legislative enactment could scarcely be found. The importance of the subject fully warranted all the expense and labour by which it was obtained. One of the most astounding facts established by the enquiry was the wide-spread demoralisation which had developed itself in certain districts. Home had lost its sanctity. The ties that bind parents and children were loosened, and natural affection gave place to intense selfishness, which often manifested itself in the most brutal manner. Workmen grew lazy and dishonest. Young women lost the virtue which is not only the point of honour with their sex, but the chief support of all other virtues. Not only women of the working classes, but in some cases even substantial farmers' daughters, and sometimes those who were themselves the actual owners of property, had their illegitimate children as charges on the parish, regularly deducting the cost of their maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace. The system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a shocking want of self-respect. Dr. Burn has given a graphic sketch of the duties of an overseer under the old poor-law system in England. 'His office is to keep an extraordinary watch to prevent people from coming to inhabit without certificates; to fly to the justices to remove them. Not to let anyone have a farm of 10 l. a year. To warn the parishioners, if they would have servants, to hire them by the month, the week, or the day, rather than by any way that can give them a settlement; or if they do hire them for a year, then to endeavour to pick a quarrel with them before the year's end, and so to get rid of them. To maintain their poor as cheaply as they possibly can, and not to lay out twopence in prospect of any future good, but only to serve the present necessity. To bargain with some sturdy person to take them by the lump, who yet is not intended to take them, but to hang over them _in terrorem_, if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance. To send them out into the country a begging. To bind out poor children apprentices, no matter to whom, or to what trade; but to take special care that the master live in another parish. To move heaven and earth if any dispute happen about a settlement; and, in that particular, to invert the general rule, and stick at no expense. To pull down cottages: _to drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few, as they possibly can; that is, to depopulate the parish, in order to lessen the poor's-rate_. To be generous, indeed, sometimes, in giving a portion with the mother of a bastard child to the reputed father, on condition that he will marry her, or with a poor widow, _always provided that the husband_ be settled elsewhere; or if a poor man with a large family happen to be industrious, they will charitably assist him in taking a farm in some neighbouring parish, and give him 10 l. to pay his first year's rent with, that they may thus for ever get rid of him and his progeny.' The effect of this system was actually to depopulate many parishes. The author of a pamphlet on the subject, Mr. Alcock, stated that the gentlemen were led by this system to adopt all sorts of expedients to hinder the poor from marrying, to discharge servants in their last quarter, to evict small tenants, and pull down cottages; so that several parishes were in a manner depopulated, while England complained of a want of useful hands for agriculture, manufactories, for the land and sea service. 'When the minister marries a couple,' he said, 'he rightly prays that they may be fruitful in the procreation of children; but most of the parishioners pray for the very contrary, and perhaps complain of him for marrying persons, that, should they have a family of children, might likewise become chargeable.' Arthur Young also described the operation of the law in his time, in clearing off the people, and causing universally 'an open war against cottages.' Gentlemen bought them up whenever they had an opportunity, and immediately levelled them with the ground, lest they should become 'nests of beggars' brats.' The removal of a cottage often drove the industrious labourer from a parish where he could earn 15 s. a week, to one where he could earn but 10 s. As many as thirty or forty families were sent off by removals in one day. Thus, as among the Scotch labourers of the present day, marriage was discouraged; the peasantry were cleared off the land, and increasing immorality was the necessary consequence. There was another change in the old system, by which the interests of the influential classes were made to run in favour of the 'beggars' nests,' which were soon at a premium. The labourer was to be paid, not for the value of his labour, but according to the number of his family; the prices of provisions being fixed by authority, and the guardians making up the difference between what the wages would buy and what the family required. The allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over. The effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got 9 s. a week wages, required nine gallon loaves, or 13 s. 6 d. a week, so that he had a pension of 4 s. 6 d. over his wages. Another man, with a wife and five children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had 12 s. a week to support him. The increase of allowance according to the number of children acted as a direct bounty upon marriage. The report of the Committee of the House of Commons on labourers' wages, printed in 1824, describes the effect of this allowance system in paralysing the industry of the poor. 'It is obvious,' remarked the committee, 'that a disinclination to work must be the consequence of so vicious a system. He whose subsistence is secure without work, and who cannot obtain more than a mere sufficiency by the hardest work, will naturally be an idle and careless labourer. Frequently the work done by four or five such labourers does not amount to what might easily be performed by a single labourer at task work. A surplus population is encouraged: men who receive but a small pittance know that they have only to marry and that pittance will be increased proportionally to the number of their children. When complaining of their allowance, they frequently say, "We will marry, and then you must maintain us." This system secures subsistence to all; to the idle as well as the industrious; to the profligate as well as the sober; and, as far as human interests are concerned, all inducements to obtain a good character are taken away. The effects have corresponded with the cause: able-bodied men are found slovenly at their work, and dissolute in their hours of relaxation; a father is negligent of his children, the children do not think it necessary to contribute to the support of their parents; the employer and employed are engaged in personal quarrels; and the pauper, always relieved, is always discontented. Crime advances with increasing boldness; and the parts of the country where this system prevails are, in spite of our gaols and our laws, filled with poachers and thieves.' Mr. Hodges, chairman of the West Kent quarter sessions, in his evidence before the emigration committee, said, 'Formerly, working people usually stayed in service till they were twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five years of age, before they married; whereas they now married frequently under age. Formerly, these persons had saved 40 l. and 50 l. before they married, and they were never burdensome to the parish; now, they have not saved a shilling before their marriage, and become immediately burdensome.' The farmers were not so discontented with this allowance system as might be supposed, because a great part of the burden was cast upon other shoulders. The tax was laid indiscrimately upon all fixed property; so that the occupiers of villas, shopkeepers, merchants, and others who did not employ labourers, had to pay a portion of the wages for those that did. The farmers were in this way led to encourage a system which fraudently imposed a heavy burden upon others, and which, by degrading the labourers, and multiplying their numbers beyond the real demand for them, must, if allowed to run its full course, have ultimately overspread the whole country with the most abject poverty and wretchedness. There was another interest created which tended to increase the evil. In the counties of Suffolk, Sussex, Kent, and generally through all the south of England, relief was given in the shape of house accommodation, or free dwellings for the poor. The parish officers were in the habit of paying the rent of the cottages; the rent was therefore high and sure, and consequently persons who had small pieces of ground were induced to cover them with those buildings. On this subject Mr. Hodges, the gentleman already referred to, remarks: 'I cannot forbear urging again that any measure having for its object the relief of the parishes from their over population, must of necessity become perfectly useless, unless the act of parliament contains some regulations with respect to the erecting and maintaining of cottages. I am quite satisfied that the erecting of cottages has been a most serious evil throughout the country. The getting of the cottage tempts young people of seventeen and eighteen years of age, and even younger, to marry. It is notorious that almost numberless cottages have been built by persons speculating on the parish rates for their rents.' The evils of this system had reached their height in the years 1831-2. That was a time when the public mind was bent upon reforms of all sorts, without waiting for the admission from the Tories that the grievances of which the nation complained were 'proved abuses.' The reformers were determined no longer to tolerate the state of things, in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor-rates, or in voluntary charities; in which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice--the able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence--the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling in such society as that of a large workhouse without discipline or classification--the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding both in kind and amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support. The farmer paid 10 s. in the pound in poor-rates, and was in addition compelled to employ supernumerary labourers not required on his farm, at a cost of from 100 l. to 250 l. a year; the labourer had no need to hasten himself to seek work, or to please his master, or to put a restraint upon his temper, having all the slave's security for support, without the slave's liability to punishment. The parish paid parents for nursing their little children, and children for supporting their aged parents, thereby destroying in both parties all feelings of natural affection and all sense of Christian duty. I hope I shall be excused in giving, from a former work of my own, these home illustrations to prove that bad laws can degrade and demoralize a people in a comparatively short time, in spite of race and creed and public opinion; and that, where class interests are involved, the most sacred rights of humanity are trampled in the mire of corruption. Even now the pauperism resulting of necessity from the large-farm system is degrading the English people, and threatening to rot away the foundations of society. On this subject I am glad to find a complete corroboration of my own conclusions in a work by one of the ablest and most enlightened Christian ministers in England, the Rev. Dr. Rigg. He says:-- 'Notwithstanding a basis of manly, honest, and often generous qualities, the common character of all the uneducated and unelevated classes of the English labouring population includes, as marked and obvious features, improvidence, distrust of their superiors, discontent at their social position, and a predominant passion for gross animal gratification. Of this general character we regard the rude, heavy, unhopeful English peasant, who knows no indulgence or relaxation but that of the ale-house, and lives equally without content and without ambition, as affording the fundamental type, which, like all other things English, possesses a marked individuality. It differs decidedly from the Irish type of peasant degradation. Something of this may be due to the effect of race. The Kelt and the Saxon may be expected to differ. Yet we think but little stress is to be laid upon this. There is, probably, much more Keltic blood in the southern and western counties of England, and, also, more Saxon blood in some of the southern and even western parts of Ireland, than has been generally supposed. We apprehend that a Saxon population, under the same conditions as the southern and western Irish peasantry, would have grown up into very much the same sort of people as the Irish have been; while a Keltic population, exposed to the same influences, through successive generations, as the midland and southern peasantry of England, would not have been essentially different at the present day from the actual cultivators of the soil. 'The Irish peasant is poorer and yet more reckless than the Englishman; but he is not so sullen or so spiritless. His body is not so muscular or so strongly-set as that of the Anglo-Saxon husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less persevering and less vigorous labourer; but, as a general rule, his stature is taller and his step far more free and elastic than that of the sturdy but slow and stunted labourer of our southern counties. There are wild mountainous districts of the west, indeed, in which the lowest type of the Irish peasantry is found, that must be taken as exceptions to our general statement; and as many from those regions cross the Channel to tramp through England in the complex character of mendicant labourers, no doubt some have received from them an impression as to the Irish peasantry very different from what our observations are intended to convey. But no one can have travelled through the south of Ireland without having noticed what we state. The Tipperary and Kilkenny peasantry are proverbially tall; Connemara has been famed for its "giants," and many of both sexes throughout the south, are, spite of their rags, fine figures, and graceful in their movements. While looking at them, we have ceased to wonder at what has been regarded as no better than the arch-agitator's blarney, when he spoke of the Irish as the "finest pisantry in the world;" and we have even felt saddened as we mentally contrasted with what we saw before us the bearing and appearance of our own southern labourers. For the tattered Irish peasant, living in a mud hovel, is, after all, a gentleman in his bearing; whereas there is generally either a cringing servility or a sullen doggedness in the demeanour of the south Saxon labourer. The Irishman is, besides, far more intelligent and ready-witted than the Saxon husbandman. The fact is that the Irishman, if underfed, has not been overworked. His life has not been one of unceasing and oppressive labour. Nor has his condition been one of perpetual servitude. With all his poverty, he has been, to a considerable extent, his own master. Half-starved, or satisfying his appetite on light and innutritious fare,--far worse housed and clad than the poorest English labourer, often, indeed, almost half-naked,--oppressed by middle-men, exactors of rack-rent; with all this the Irish cottier has been, from father to son, and from generation to generation, _a tenant, and not merely a day labourer_.'[1] [Footnote 1: 'Essays for the Times, on Ecclesiastical and Social Subjects,' by James H. Rigg, D.D. London, 1866.] CHAPTER XIV. ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Let us, then, endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about race and religion in dealing with this Irish land question. Identity of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the Ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was their interest to banish them--to substitute grazing for tillage, and cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry. The letters of Primate Boulter contain much valuable information on the state of Ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations of the land question, which, I fancy, will be new and startling to many readers. Boulter was lord primate of Ireland from 1724 to 1738. He was thirteen times one of the lords justices. As an Englishman and a good churchman, he took care of the English interests and of the establishment. The letters were written in confidence to Sir Robert Walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended for publication. An address 'to the reader' from some friend, states truly that they give among other things an impartial account of 'the distressed state of the kingdom for want of _tillage_, the vast sums of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal calamities thereon, the want of trade and the regulation of the English and other coins, to the very great distress of all the manufacturers,' &c. They show that he was a man of sound judgment, public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in which he lived. His evidence with regard to the relations of landlord and tenant in Ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment. Lord Dufferin could not have read the letters when he wrote his book; otherwise I should think his apology for the landlords of the last century would have been considerably modified. Primate Boulter repeatedly complained to Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, and other ministers, that the Ulster farmers were deserting the country in large numbers, emigrating to the United States, then British colonies, to the West Indies, or to any country where they hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves to work for a number of years _as slaves_ in payment of their passage out. The desire to quit the country of their birth is described by the primate as a mania. Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1728 he says:--'We are under great trouble here about a frenzy that has taken hold of very great numbers to leave this country for the West Indies, and we are endeavouring to learn what may be the reasons of it, and the proper remedies.' Two or three weeks later he reported to the Duke of Newcastle that for several years past some agents from the colonies in America, and several masters of ships, had gone about the country 'and deluded the people with stories of great plenty and estates to be had for going for in those parts of the world.' During the previous summer more than 3,000 men, women, and children had been shipped for the West Indies. Of these, not more than one in ten were men of substance. The rest hired themselves for their passage, or contracted with masters of ships for four years' servitude, 'selling themselves as servants for their subsistence.' The whole north was in a ferment, people every day engaging one another to go next year to the West Indies. 'The humour,' says the primate, 'has spread like a contagious distemper, and the people will hardly hear anybody that tries to cure them of their madness. The worst is that it affects only _Protestants_, and reigns chiefly in the North, which is the seat of our linen manufacture.' As the Protestant people, the descendants of the English and Scotch who had settled in the country in the full assurance that they were building homes for their posterity, were thus deserting those homes in such multitudes, their pastors sent a memorial to the lord lieutenant, setting forth the grievances which they believed to be the cause of the desertion. On this memorial the primate wrote comments to the English Government, and, in doing so, he stated some astounding facts as to the treatment of the people by their landlords. He was a cautious man, thoroughly acquainted with the facts, and writing under a sense of great responsibility. In order to understand some of those facts, we should bear in mind that the landlords had laid down large portions of their estates in pasture, to avoid the payment of tithes, and that this burden was thrown entirely upon the tenants who tilled the land. Now, let my readers mark what the primate states as to their condition. He says:--'If a landlord takes too great a portion of the profits of a farm for his share by way of rent (as the tithe will light on the tenant's share), the tenant will be impoverished; but then it is not the tithe, but the increased rent that undoes the farmer. And, indeed, in this country, where I fear the tenant hardly ever has more than one-third of the profits he makes of his farm for his share, and too often but a _fourth_, or, perhaps, a _fifth part_, as the tenant's share is charged with the tithe, his case is, no doubt, hard, but it is plain from what side the hardship arises.' What the gentlemen wanted to be at, according to the primate, was, that they might go on raising their rents, and that the clergy should receive their old payments. He admits, however, that the tenants were sometimes cited to the ecclesiastical courts, and if they failed to appear there, they stood excommunicated; and he adds, 'possibly when a writ _de excommunicato capiendo_ is taken out, and they find they have 7 l. or 8 l. to pay, _they run away_, for the greatest part of the occupiers of the land here are so poor, that an extraordinary stroke of 8 l. or 10 l. falling on them is certain ruin to them.' He further states that, to his own knowledge, many of the clergy had chosen rather to lose their 'small dues' than to be at a certain great expense in getting them, 'and at an uncertainty whether the farmer would not at last _run away without paying anything_.' Such was the condition of the Protestants of Ulster during the era of the penal code; and it is a curious fact that it was the Presbyterians and not the Catholics that were forced by the exactions of the Protestant landlords and the clergy to run away from the country which their forefathers had been brought over to civilize. But there was another fact connected with the condition of Ulster which I dare say will be almost incredible to many readers. The tenantry, so cruelly rack-rented and impoverished, were reduced by two or three bad seasons to a state bordering upon famine. There was little or no corn in the province. The primate set on foot a subscription in Dublin, to which he himself contributed very liberally. The object was to buy food to supply the necessities of the north, and to put a stop to 'the great desertion' they had been threatened with. He hoped that the landlords would 'do _their_ part by remitting some arrears, or making some abatement of their rents.' As many of the tenants had eaten the oats they should have sowed their lands with, he expected the landlords would have the good sense to furnish them with seed; if not, a great deal of land would lie waste that year. And where were the provisions got? Partly in Munster, where corn was very cheap and abundant. But the people of Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Clonmel objected to have their provisions sent away, although they were in some places 'as cheap again as in the north; but where dearest, at least one-third part cheaper.' Riotous mobs broke open the store-houses and cellars, setting what price they pleased upon the provisions. And, what between those riots and the prevalence of easterly winds, three weeks elapsed before the 3,000 l. worth of oats, oatmeal, and potatoes could be got down to relieve the famishing people of the north, which then seemed black enough, even to its own inhabitants. Hence the humane primate was obliged to write: 'The humour of going to America still continues, and the scarcity of provisions certainly makes many quit us. There are now seven ships at Belfast that are carrying off 1,000 passengers thither, and if we knew how to stop them, as most of them can neither get victuals nor work at home, it would be cruel to do it.' The Presbyterian clergy suffered greatly from the impoverishment of their people. Several of them who had been receiving a stipend of 50 l. a year, had their incomes reduced to less than 15 l. In their distress they appealed to the primate, and, staunch churchman as he was, they found in him a kind and earnest advocate. Writing to Sir Robert Walpole, on March 31, 1729, he pleaded for the restoration of 400 l. a year, which had been given to the non-conforming clergy of Ireland from the privy purse, in addition to the 1,200 l. royal bounty, which, it appears, had been suspended for two years, owing to the death of the late king. 'They are sensible,' said his grace, 'there is nothing due to them, nor do they make any such claim; but as the calamities of this kingdom are at present very great, and by the desertion of many of their people to America, and the poverty of the greatest part of the rest, their contributions, particularly in the north, are very much fallen off, it would be a great instance of his majesty's goodness if he would consider their present distress.' In our own days a Presbyterian minister would be considered to deserve well of his country if he emigrated to America, and took with him as many of the people as he could induce to forsake their native land. But what was the great plea which Primate Boulter urged on the English Minister on behalf of the Presbyterian clergy of his day? It was, that they had exerted their influence to prevent emigration. 'It is,' he said, 'but doing them justice to affirm that they are very well affected to his majesty and his royal family, and by the best enquiries I could make, do their best endeavours to keep their congregations from deserting the country, not more than one or two of the younger ministers having anyways encouraged the humour now prevailing here. And his majesty's goodness in giving them some extraordinary relief on this occasion of their present great distress would undoubtedly make them _more active to retain their people here_. I cannot help mentioning on this occasion that, what with scarceness of corn in the north, _and the loss of all credit there_, and by the numbers that go, or talk of going, to America, and with the disturbances in the south, this kingdom is at present in a deplorable condition.' In a statement previously made to the Bishop of London, the Irish primate earnestly solicited his correspondent to use his influence to prevent the Irish landlords from passing a law to strip the established clergy of their rights with respect to the tithe of agistment. They had entered into a general combination, and formed a stock purse to resist the payment of tithe, except by the poor tenants who tilled the soil, a remarkable contrast to the zeal of the landlords of our own time in defending church property against 'spoliation' by the imperial legislature, and to the liberality with which many of them are now contributing to the Sustentation Fund. How shall we account for the change? Is it that the landlords of the present day are more righteous than their grandfathers? Or is it that the same principle of self-interest which led the proprietors of past times to grind the tenantry and rob the Church, now operates in forms more consistent with piety and humanity, and by its subtle influence illustrates the maxim of the poet-- Self-love and social is the same. However that may be, the primate contented himself in this letter with a defence of the Church, in which he admitted matters of real grievance, merely alluding to other grievances, 'such as raising the rents unreasonably, the oppression by justices of the peace, seneschals, and other officers in the country.' From the pictures of the times he presents we should not be surprised at his statement to the Duke of Newcastle, that the people who went to America made great complaints of the oppressions they suffered, and said that those oppressions were one reason of their going. When he went on his visitation, in 1726, he 'met all the roads full of whole families that had left their homes to beg abroad,' having consumed their stock of potatoes two months before the usual time. During the previous year many hundreds had perished of famine. What was the cause of this misery, this desolating process going on over the plains of Ulster? The archbishop accounts for it by stating that many persons had let large tracts of land, from 3,000 to 4,000 acres, which were stocked with cattle, and had no other inhabitants on their land than so many cottiers as were necessary to look after their sheep and black cattle, '_so that, in some of the finest counties, in many places there is neither house nor cornfield to be seen in ten or fifteen miles' travelling_, and daily in some counties many gentlemen, as their leases fall into their hands, tie up their tenants from tillage; and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into foreign service at the hazard of their lives if taken, because they cannot get land to till at home.' My readers should remember that the industrious, law-abiding, bible-loving, God-fearing people, who were thus driven by oppression from the fair fields of Ulster, which they had cultivated, and the dwellings which they had erected, to make way for sheep and cattle--because it was supposed by the landlords that sheep and cattle paid better--were the descendants of British settlers who came to the country under a royal guarantee _of freeholds and permanent tenures_. Let them picture to their minds this fine race of honest, godly people, rack-rented, crushed, evicted, heart-broken--men, women, and children--Protestants, Saxons, cast out to perish as the refuse of the earth, by a set of landed proprietors of their own race and creed; and learn from this most instructive fact that, if any body of men has the power of making laws to promote its own interest, no instincts of humanity, no dictates of religion, no restraints of conscience can be relied upon to keep them from acting with ruthless barbarity, and doing more to ruin their country than a foreign invader could accomplish by letting loose upon it his brutal soldiers. How much more earnestly would Boulter have pleaded with the prime minister of England on behalf of the wretched people of Ulster if he could have foreseen that ere long those Presbyterian emigrants, with the sense of injustice and cruel wrong burning in their hearts, would be found fighting under the banner of American independence--the bravest and fiercest soldiers of freedom which the British troops encountered in the American war. History is continually repeating itself, yet how vainly are its lessons taught! The same legal power of extermination is still possessed by the Irish landlords after sixty-nine years of imperial legislation. Our hardy, industrious people, naturally as well disposed to royalty as any people in the world, are still crowding emigrant ships in all our ports, deserting their country with the same bitter feelings that animated the Ulster men a century ago, hating our Government with a mortal hatred, and ready to fight against it under a foreign flag! We have no Primate Boulter now in the Protestant hierarchy to plead the cause of an unprotected tenantry; but we have the press, which can concentrate upon the subject the irresistible force of public opinion. As a churchman, Primate Boulter naturally regarded the land question in its bearings on the interests of the Establishment. Writing to Sir Robert Walpole in 1737 he said that he had in vain represented to the landlords that, by destroying the tithe of agistment, they naturally discouraged tillage, lessened the number of people, and raised the price of provisions. By running into cattle they caused the young men to enlist in foreign service for bread, there being no employment for them at home, 'where two or three hands can look after some hundreds of acres stocked with cattle.' And by this means, said the primate, 'a great part of our churches are neglected; in many places five, six, or seven parishes bestowed on one incumbent, who, perhaps, with all his tithes, scarce gets 100 l. a year.' But there was at that time a member of the Irish House of Commons who was capable of taking a more enlarged view of the Irish question. This was Mr. Arthur Dobbs, who belonged to an old and honourable Ulster family--the author of a book on the 'North-west Passage to India,' and of a very valuable work on the 'Trade of Great Britain and Ireland.' He was intimately acquainted with the working of the Irish land system, for he had been many years agent of the Hertfort estate, one of the largest in Ireland. There is among Boulter's letters an introduction of Mr. Dobbs to Sir Robert Walpole, recommending him as a person of good sense, who had applied himself to the improvement of trade, and to the making of our colonies in America of more advantage than they had hitherto been. He was afterwards made Governor of North Carolina. I have mentioned these facts in the hope of securing the attention of landlords and statesmen to the following passage from his book accounting for the deplorable condition of the province of Ulster at that time, and the emigration of its industrious and wealth-producing inhabitants. In my humble opinion it furnishes irresistible arguments in favour of a measure which should settle the Irish land question in such a manner that it would speak to the people of Ireland in the words of holy writ: 'And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.' Mr. Dobbs says:-- 'How can a tenant improve his land when he is convinced that, after all his care and toil, his improvements will be overrated, and he will be obliged to shift for himself? Let us place ourselves in his situation and see if we should think it reasonable to improve for another, if those improvements would be the very cause of our being removed from the enjoyment of them. I believe we should not. Industry and improvements go very heavily on when we think we are not to have the property in either. What can be expected, then, from covenants to improve and plant, when the person to do it knows he is to have _no property in them_? There will be no concern or care taken to preserve them, and they will run to ruin as fast as made or planted. What was it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to America but high rents, bad seasons, and want of good tenures, or a permanent property in their land? This kept them poor and low, and they scarce had sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist or till their ground. They never had anything to store, all was from hand to mouth; so one or two bad crops broke them. Others found their stock dwindling and decaying visibly, and so removed before all was gone, while they had as much left as would pay their passage, and had little more than what would carry them to the American shore. 'This, it may be allowed, was the occasion of the poor farmers going who had their rents lately raised. But it may be objected that was not the reason why rich farmers went, and those who had several years in beneficial leases still unexpired, who sold their bargains and removed with their effects. But it is plain they all went for the same reason; for these last, from _daily examples before them_, saw the present occupiers dispossessed of their lands at the expiration of their leases, and no preference given to them; so they expected it would soon be their own case, to avoid which, and make the most of the years still unexpired, they sold, and carried their assets with them to procure a settlement in a country where they had reason to expect a permanent property.' It is a curious fact that sentiments very similar were published by one of Cromwell's officers about a century before. The plea which he put forth for the Irish tenant in the dedication of his work on Ireland to the Protector, has been repeated ever since by the tenants, but repeated in vain: Captain Bligh, the officer alluded to, said: 'The first prejudice is, that if a tenant be at ever so great pains or cost for the improvement of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater rack-rent upon himself, or else invests his landlord with his cost and labour _gratis_, or at least lies at his landlord's mercy for requital; which occasions a neglect of all good husbandry, to his own, the land, the landlord, and the commonwealth's suffering.' Now, this, I humbly conceive, might be removed, if there were a law enacted, by which every landlord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his clear improvement, or else suffer him _or his_ to enjoy it so much longer or till he hath had a proportionable requital.' But although Primate Boulter protested against the conduct of the landlords--all Episcopalians--who were ruining the church as well as the country, the established clergy, as a body, were always on the side of the oppressors. The Test Act placed the Presbyterians, like the Papists, in the position of an inferior race. 'In the city of Londonderry alone, which Presbyterian valour had defended, ten out of twelve aldermen, and twenty out of twenty-four burgesses, were thrust out of the corporation by that act, which placed an odious mark of infamy upon at least one-half the inhabitants of the kingdom.' Presbyterians could not legally keep a common school. The _Edinburgh Review_ says: 'All the settlements, from first to last, had the effect of making the cause of the church and the cause of the landlords really one. During the worst days of landlord oppression it never identified itself with the interests of the people, but uniformly sustained the power and privileges of the landlords.' It was vain to expect justice from the Irish parliament. The people of Ireland never were governed exclusively, or at all, by her own Sovereign, her own Lords, and her own Commons. Ireland was 'in the custody of England,' just as much before the Union as during the last sixty-seven years. Even during the few brief years of her spasmodic 'independence,' the mass of the nation formed no part of the 'Commons of Ireland.' It was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament--a body representing the colonial aristocracy--acting as undertakers for the Government of England, for whose interest exclusively this island was to be ruled. Provided this result was secured, it did not matter much, at the other side of the Channel, how the Irish people were treated. Indeed, they were not recognised as the people of Ireland, or any part thereof. Even philosophic liberals, like Lord Charlemont, were shocked at the idea of a Papist getting into the Irish House of Commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation. The antipathy was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in the West Indies and the United States. Hence the remorseless spirit in which atrocities were perpetrated in 1798. Mr. Daunt has shown that a large proportion of the Irish House of Lords consisted of men who were English to all intents and purposes--many of them by birth, and many by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to what Lord Chancellor Clare called 'our damnable country.' It may be that in some years after the abolition of the Establishment--after some experience of the _régime_ of religious equality--the two races in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation. But the '_self_' must be one body animated by one spirit; not two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each determined to kill or be killed. If England were to let go her hold even now, something like this would be the Irish 'situation.' The abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is awful. In his 'Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket,' the Hon. David Plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the Irish parliament, 'the English Government had nearly abandoned the _sham_ of treating the Irish parliament as an independent legislature; the treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners. All efforts tending to reform of parliament or concession to the Catholics had been given up as useless. Grattan and some of his immediate followers had seceded from an assembly too degraded to appreciate their motives, or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of independence in the House of Commons ministers still laboured to bring under their control. Scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition on the most important divisions, while Government could at any time readily whip a majority of 100.' According to a Government return made in 1784, by Pitt's direction, 116 nomination seats were divided between some 25 proprietors. Lord Shannon returned no less than 16 members, and the great family of Ponsonby returned 14; Lord Hillsborough, 9, the Duke of Leinster, 7, and the Castle itself 12. Eighty-six seats were _let out_ by the owners, in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions. No less than 44 seats were occupied by placemen, 32 by gentlemen who had promises of pensions, 12 by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices from Government. The regular opposition appears to have been limited to 82 votes, of which 30 belonged to Whig nominees, and the rest to the popular party. It is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which Mr. Plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes. He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under these circumstances, the people would not have responded. 'Gloomy and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament, and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the _intolerable tyranny_ under which they suffered. There can be no doubt that this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a misgovernment, ancient and recent, _which seems to have been always adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the Irish character_; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite project of the Union.' Mr. Plunket, after describing the classes of 'representatives' that his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons, further says: 'It is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour. The members of the majority who voted for the Union _were not_ the representatives of the people, _but the hired servants of the Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose_.' Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution, the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the Roman Catholic population, which the penal code had '_dis-boned_.' Up to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of politicians. According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in politics than the women and children. Macaulay uses a still more contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question. Nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some of the poor Celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the question to the most liberal portion of the ruling race--'Are we not men? Have not we also some rights?' The appeal was responded to in the Irish parliament, and in 1793 the elective franchise was conceded to Roman Catholics. It was the first concession, and the least that could be granted. But the bare proposal excited the utmost indignation in the Tory party, and especially in the Dublin corporation, where the Orange spirit was rampant. That body adopted an address to the Protestants of Ireland, which bears a remarkable resemblance in its spirit and style to addresses lately issued by Protestant Defence Associations. Both speak in the kindest terms of their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, disclaim all intention of depriving them of any advantages they enjoy under our glorious constitution, declaring that their objects are purely _defensive_, and that they want merely to guard that constitution against the aggressions of the Papacy quite as much for the sake of Roman Catholics as for the sake of Protestants. 'Countrymen and friends,' said the Dublin Tories, seventy-five years ago, 'the firm and manly support which we received from you when we stood forward in defence of the Protestant Ascendancy, deserves our warmest thanks. We hoped that the sense of the Protestants of Ireland, declared upon that occasion, would have convinced our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects that the pursuit of political power was for them a vain pursuit; for, though the liberal and enlightened mind of the Protestant receives pleasure at seeing the Catholic exercise his religion with freedom, enjoy his property in security, and possess the highest degree of personal liberty, yet, experience has taught us that, without the ruin of the Protestant establishment, the Catholic cannot be allowed the smallest influence in the state.' Those men were as thoroughly convinced as their descendants, who protest against concession to-day, that all our Protestant institutions would go to perdition, if Papists, although then mere serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. They were equally puzzled to know why Roman Catholics were discontented, or what more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable happiness of their lot. 'We entreat you,' the Dublin corporation said to their Protestant brethren throughout the country--'we entreat you to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the Roman Catholics to rest content with the most perfect toleration of their religion, the fullest security of their property, and the most complete personal liberty; but, by no means, now or hereafter, to attempt any interference in the government of the kingdom, as such interference would be incompatible with the Protestant Ascendancy, which we have resolved with our lives and fortunes to maintain.' Lest any doubt should exist as to what they meant by 'Protestant Ascendancy,' they expressly defined it. They resolved that it consisted in a Protestant King of Ireland; a Protestant Parliament, Protestant electors and Government; Protestant benches of justice; a Protestant hierarchy; the army and the revenue, through all their branches and details, Protestant; and this system supported by a connection with the Protestant realm of Britain. The power of the political franchise to elevate a degraded people, to convert slaves into men, is exhibited before the eyes of the present generation in the Southern States of America; even where differences of race and colour are most marked, and where the strongest natural antipathies are to be overcome. We may judge from this what must have been the effect of this concession on the Irish Celts. The forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political influence in their respective counties, for the representation of which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. The abolition of this franchise by the Emancipation Act made that measure a grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to increase them so long as they served their political purpose. It was one of the great drawbacks which deprived emancipation of the healing effect it would otherwise have produced. If--as Pitt intended--that measure had formed part of the Union arrangements; if the forty-shilling freeholders had been spared, and the priesthood had been endowed, we should never have had an agitation for repeal or even for the separation of the church from the state. Pitt's plan of the Union included the abolition of Protestant Ascendancy. Edmund Burke, in one of his letters on Ireland, said: 'A word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin. Thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or city hall, where having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the speaker of the House of Commons, in great pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came. That word is Ascendancy. The word is not absolutely new.' He then gives its various meanings, and first shows what it does _not_ signify in the new sense. Not influence obtained by love or reverence, or by superior management and dexterity; not an authority derived from wisdom or virtue, promoting the happiness and freedom of the Roman Catholic people; not by flattering them, or by a skilful adaptation to their humours and passions. It means nothing of all these. Burke then shows what it does mean. 'New ascendancy is old mastership. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one sect of people in Ireland to consider themselves the sole citizens in the commonwealth, and to keep a dominion over the rest, by reducing them to absolute slavery under a military power; and thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution, as a military booty, solely among themselves. This ascendancy, by being a _Protestant_ ascendancy, does not better it, from a combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. By the use that is frequently made of the term, and the policy that is grafted on it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or better than the name of a persecuting faction, with a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its own, upon the ground of which it persecutes other men; for the patrons of this Protestant ascendancy neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word Protestant.... The whole is nothing but pure and perfect malice. It is indeed a perfection in that kind, belonging to beings of a higher order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.... Let three millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrading, and nothing more is required of them.... The word _Protestant_ is the charm that locks up in a dungeon of servitude three millions of people. Every thoughtful reader of the debates in parliament on the state of Ireland, must have been struck with the difference of opinion between the Liberals and the Conservatives, as to the facts of the case. A still more violent difference was presented in the British parliament, in the year 1797, when there were great debates in both houses on the subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being that the reign of terror established by the Irish Government prevented the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling faction was daily perpetrating against the mass of the king's subjects. The debate arose in the Lords, on a motion by Lord Moira for an address to the king on the state of Ireland. He described the horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. Orange loyalty was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless Roman Catholic population in Ulster. Lord Gosford's description of the scenes of desolation in his own county, Armagh, is well known. He did what he could to prevent the burning of Roman Catholic houses, and the personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while their Orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them Cromwell's alternative. But his mercy injured his reputation, and he felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he wished to uphold Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as much as any of his accusers. He only asked that the poor Catholic should be allowed to live in peace. In the debate referred to, Lord Moira declared that ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates; and many of them wounded in their persons. The discontent, he said, was not confined to one sect. He ascribed the state of things to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the Catholics, and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and having no better warrant than anonymous information. But for all this the Irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted acts of indemnity. According to Earl Fitzwilliam 'whole parishes, baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's peace.' Mr. Fox brought forward a similar motion in the House of Commons, pleading the cause of justice and humanity in a noble speech, and boldly affirming principles of government for Ireland, which Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Bright are now endeavouring to have carried out by the imperial parliament after seventy years of concession, extorted by three rebellions. Mr. Fox expressed his abhorrence of 'the truly diabolical maxim' of '_Divide el impera_,' by which the government of Ireland was conducted. He hoped that the discontent which threatened the separation of Ireland would be dissipated without the necessity of war. 'But now,' he said, 'the extremity of rigour has been tried--the severity of despotism has been let loose--and the Government is driven to that state when the laws are not to be put into execution, but to be superseded.' The motion was seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, who said: 'Whoever has seen Ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression--has seen the shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant Government, and an enslaved and impoverished people.' The motion was rejected by a majority of 136. Lord Moira made a last and an almost despairing appeal on November 22, in the same year. In his speech he said: 'I have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the English and the Irish. I have seen troops that have been sent full of this prejudice, that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to the British Government. I have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen the most grievous oppression exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to the Government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of London. He who states these things should be prepared with proofs. I am prepared with them.' He then went into a number of horrifying details, and concluded as follows: 'You say that the Irish are insensible to the benefits of the British constitution, and you withhold all these benefits from them. You goad them with harsh and cruel punishments, and a general infliction of insult is thrown upon the kingdom. I have seen, my lords, a conquered country held by military force; _but never did I see in any conquered country such a tone of insult as has been adopted by Great Britain towards Ireland_. I have made a last effort. I acquit my conscience; I have done my duty.' In subsequent debates, the following sentiments were uttered by the leading Whig statesmen of the day: 'The treatment of Ireland,' said Mr. Fox, 'was such as to harrow up the soul. It was shocking to think that a nation of brothers was thus to be trampled on like the most remote colony of conquered strangers.... The Irish people have been scourged by the iron hand of oppression, and subjected to the horrors of military execution, and are now in a situation too dreadful for the mind to contemplate without dismay. After the inhuman dragooning and horrible executions, the recital of which makes the blood run cold--after so much military cruelty, not in one, but in almost every part of the country--is it possible for this administration to procure unanimity in Ireland?' On March 22, 1798, the Duke of Bedford moved an address to the king, asking him to change his ministers, and alluding to the state of Ireland, as it was before the breaking out of the Rebellion. He said: 'Were I to enter into a detail of the atrocities which have been committed in Ireland, the picture would appal the stoutest heart. It could be proved that the most shocking cruelties have been perpetrated; but what could be expected if men kept in strict discipline were all at once allowed to give loose to their fury and their passions?' Lord Holland was persuaded that his majesty's ministers could not tranquillise Ireland even by conciliation. 'How could they conciliate whose concessions are always known to be the concessions of weakness and of fear, and who never granted to the Irish--the most generous people upon earth,--anything without a struggle or resistance?' Lord William Russell, in June following, said: 'A man's loyalty was to be estimated by the desire he testified to imbrue his hands in his brother's blood.' Sheridan asked: 'After being betrayed, duped, insulted--disappointed in their dearest hopes, and again thrown into the hands of the rulers they detested and despised, was it impossible they should feel emotions of indignation? The struggle is not one of partial disaffection, but it is a contest between the people and the Government.' Mr. Tierney said: 'It was certain the people were in arms against the Government, nor was it easy to conceive how--having been scourged, burnt, and massacred--they could have any other feeling than aversion to that Government.' Every motion on the subject in both houses was rejected by overwhelming majorities. So little impression did the reports of the appalling facts which were of daily occurrence in Ireland make upon that Tory Government, that the speeches of ministers read exactly like the speeches of Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Hardy, Lord Mayo, and Mr. Warren, in the past session. Lord Grenville, the home secretary, professed the most profound respect for the independence of the Irish parliament, and he could not think of interfering in the least with its privileges, however the empire might suffer from its excesses. 'The motion of Lord Moira was not only unnecessary, it was highly mischievous.' He dwelt on the improved state of Ireland, and the tranquillity of the people. If there were partial excesses on the part of the military, they were unavoidable, and could only be deplored. 'He was unable to discern what should alienate the affections of Ireland. For the whole space of thirty years his majesty's Government had been distinguished by the same uniform tenderness of regard, by the same undeviating adherence to the mild principles of a conciliatory system.... If any cruelties had been practised, they must have been resisted by a high-spirited people. Were there no courts of justice? The conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable. The system recommended by Lord Moira would only tend to villify the Irish Government.' Then came the fatal announcement which sounded the death-knell of thousands of the Irish people, and caused the destruction of millions' worth of property. The home secretary said: 'The contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to the spirited exertions of the British military should we owe the preservation of Irish laws, of Irish property, and of Irish lives!' To this the Marquis of Downshire added 'that he was not afraid of the effects of coercion. Every concession had been made that could be made towards Ireland. Every Catholic was as free as the safety of the state would admit. Were the Catholics to have an equal share in the government with the Protestants, the Government and the country would be lost.' I will conclude by quoting the remarks of Mr. Fox, referred to above: 'If you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force to keep them in obedience. Can you convince them by the musket that their principles are false? Can you prove to them by the bayonet that their pretensions are unjust? Can you demonstrate to them by martial law that they enjoy the blessings of a free constitution? No, it is said, but they may be deterred from the prosecution of the objects which you have determined to refuse. But on what is this founded? On the history of Ireland itself? No; for the history of Ireland proves that, though repeatedly subdued, it could not be kept in awe by force; and the late examples will prove the effect which severity may be expected to produce.... I would therefore concede; and if I found I had not conceded enough, I would concede more. I know of no way of governing mankind, but by conciliating them.... My wish is that the whole people of Ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same operation of government. ... I would have the whole Irish government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I firmly believe, according to an Irish expression, the more she is under Irish government, the more she will be bound to English interests. ... I say, therefore, try conciliation, but do not have recourse to arms.' He warned and implored in vain. The Union had been determined on; and it was thought that it could be effected only after the prostration of civil war, into which, therefore, the unfortunate people were goaded. CHAPTER XV. POVERTY AND COERCION. We are now in the nineteenth century, without any relief for the Irish peasantry. The rebellion of '98, so cruelly crushed, left an abiding sense of terror in the hearts of the Roman Catholic population. Their condition was one of almost hopeless prostration. The Union was effected without the promised relief from their religious disabilities which was to be one of its essential conditions. The established church was secured, the rights of property were secured, but there was no security for the mass of the people. Domestic politics were almost forgotten in the gigantic struggle with Napoleon, which exhausted the energies of the empire. Any signs of political life that showed themselves in Ireland were connected with Catholic emancipation, and the visit of George IV., in 1820, held forth promises of relief which excited unbounded joy. The king loved his Irish subjects, and would never miss an opportunity of realising the good wishes for their happiness which he had so often and so fervently expressed to his Whig friends, when he was Prince Regent. O'Connell's agitation commenced soon after, and in nine years after the royal visit emancipation was extorted by the dread of civil war, frankly avowed by the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. But this boon left the masses nearly where they had been, only more conscious of their power, and more determined to use it, in the removal of their grievances. Lord Redesdale, writing to Lord Eldon in 1821, said:--'In England the machine goes on almost of itself, and therefore a bad driver may manage it tolerably well. It is not so in Ireland. The country requires great exertion to bring it into a state of order and submission to law. The whole population--high and low, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant--must all be brought to obedience to law; all must be taught to look up to the law for protection. The gentry are ready enough to attend grand juries, to obtain presentments for their own benefit, but they desert the quarter-sessions of the peace. The first act of a constable in arresting must not be to knock down the prisoner; and many, many reforms must be made, which only can be effected by a judicious and able Government _on the spot_. Ireland, in its present state, cannot be governed in England. If insubordination compels you to give, how are you to retain by law what you propose to maintain while insubordination remains? It can only be by establishing completely the empire of the law.' Sir Archibald Alison ascribed the unhappy relations of classes in Ireland to what he calls 'the atrocious system of confiscation, which, in conformity with feudal usages, the victors introduced on every occasion of rebellion against their authority.' Sir George Nicholls has shown, in his valuable history of the Irish poor law, that as early as 1310 the parliament assembled at Kilkenny resolved that none should keep Irish, or kern, in time of peace to live upon the poor of the country; 'but those which will have them shall keep them at their own charges, so that the free tenants and farmers be not charged with them.' And 130 years afterwards, the parliament assembled in Dublin declared that divers of the English were in the habit of maintaining sundry thieves, robbers, and rebels, and that they were to be adjudged traitors for so doing, and suffer accordingly. In 1450, this class of depredators had increased very much, and by their 'thefts and manslaughters caused the land to fall into decay, poverty wasting it every day more and more; whereupon it was ordained that it should be lawful for every liege man to kill or take notorious thieves, and thieves found robbing, spoiling, or breaking houses; and that every man that kills or takes any such thieves shall have one penny of every plough, and one farthing of every cottage within the barony where the manslaughter is done, for every thief.' These extracts show a very barbarous state of society, but Sir George Nicholls remarks that at the same period the condition of England and Scotland was very similar, save only that that of Ireland was aggravated by the civil conflicts between the colonists and the natives. There were some efforts made in Ireland, by various enactments, to put down this evil, and to provide employment for the large numbers that were disposed to prey upon the industry of their neighbours, by robbery, beggary, and destruction of property. But while there was a legal provision made for the poor in England, there was none in Ireland, where the people were, _en masse_, deprived of the means of self-support by the action of the Government. Hence, so late as the year 1836, the poor-law commissioners reported to the following effect:-- It appeared that in Great Britain the agricultural families constituted little more than a fourth, whilst in Ireland they constituted about two-thirds, of the whole population; that there were in Great Britain, in 1831, 1,055,982 agricultural labourers; in Ireland, 1,131,715, although the cultivated land of Great Britain amounted to about 34,250,000 acres and that of Ireland only to about 14,600,000. So that there were in Ireland about five agricultural labourers for every two that there were for the same quantity of land in Great Britain. It further appeared that the agricultural progress of Great Britain was more than four times that of Ireland; in which agricultural wages varied from sixpence to one shilling a day; the average of the country being about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the earnings of the labourers came, on an average of the whole class, to from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the year round. Thus circumstanced, the commissioners observed, 'It is impossible for the able-bodied in general to provide against sickness or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the destitution of their widows and children in the contingent event of their own premature decease. A great portion of them are, it is said, insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. Their habitations are wretched hovels, several of a family sleep together on straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes even without so much to cover them; their food commonly consists of dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day. There are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek sustenance in wild herbs. They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide. Some go in search of employment to Great Britain, during the harvest; others wander through Ireland with the same view. The wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg; but they do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from home, that they may not be known. Mendicity, too, is the sole resource of the aged and impotent of the poorer classes in general, when children or relatives are unable to support them. To it, therefore, crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture, and general crime.' Such was the wretched condition of the great body of the labouring classes in Ireland; 'and with these facts before us,' the commissioners say, 'we cannot hesitate to state that we consider remedial measures requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor. What those measures should be is a question complicated, and involving considerations of the deepest importance to the whole body of the people, both in Ireland and Great Britain.' Sir George Nicholls, who had been an English poor-law commissioner, was sent over to Ireland to make preliminary enquiries. He found that the Irish peasantry had generally an appearance of apathy and depression, seen in their mode of living, their habitations, their dress and conduct; they seemed to have no pride, no emulation, to be heedless of the present and careless of the future. They did not strive to improve their appearance or add to their comforts: their cabins were slovenly, smoky, dirty, almost without furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. The woman and her children were seen seated on the floor, surrounded by pigs and poultry: the man lounging at the door, which could be approached only through mud and filth: the former too slatternly to sweep the dirt and offal from the door, the latter too lazy to make a dry footway, though the materials were close at hand. If the mother were asked why she did not keep herself and her children clean with a stream of water running near the cabin, her answer invariably was--Sure, how can we help it? We are so poor.' The husband made the same reply, while smoking his pipe at the fire or basking in the sunshine. Sir George Nicholls rightly concluded that poverty was not the sole cause of this state of things. He found them also remarkable for their desultory and reckless habits. Though their crops were rotting in the fields from excessive wet, and every moment of sunshine should be taken advantage of, yet if there was a market, a fair, or a funeral, a horse-race, a fight, or a wedding, forgetting everything else, they would hurry off to the scene of excitement. Working for wages was rare and uncertain, and hence arose a disregard of the value of time, a desultory, sauntering habit, without industry or steadiness of application. 'Such,' he proceeds, 'is too generally the character and such the habits of the Irish peasantry; and it may not be uninstructive to mark the resemblance which these bear to the character and habits of the English peasantry in the pauperised districts, under the abuses of the old poor law. Mendicancy and indiscriminate almsgiving have produced in Ireland results similar to what indiscriminate relief produced in England--the like reckless disregard of the future, the like idle and disorderly conduct, and the same proneness to outrage having then characterised the English pauper labourer which are now too generally the characteristics of the Irish peasant. An abuse of a good law caused the evil in the one case, and a removal of that abuse is now rapidly effecting a remedy. In the other case the evil appears to have arisen rather from the want than the abuse of a law; but the corrective for both will, I believe, be found to be essentially the same.' The expectation that such a neglected people, made wretched by bad land laws, should be loyal, was surely unreasonable. For them, it might be said, there was no Government, no protection, no encouragement. There could not be more tempting materials for agitators to work upon. Lord Cloncurry vividly sketches the state of things resulting from the want of principle and earnestness among politicians in dealing with Irish questions at that time. 'From the Union up to the year 1829, the type of British colonial government was the order of the day. The Protestants were upheld as a superior caste, and paid in power and official emoluments for their services in the army of occupation. During the second viceroyalty of Lord Anglesea, an effort was made by him to evoke the energies of the whole nation for its own regeneration. That effort was defeated by the conjoint influence of the cowardice of the English cabinet, the petulance of Mr. Stanley, and the unseasonable violence and selfishness of the lately emancipated popular leaders. Upon Lord Anglesea's recall the modern Whig model of statemanship was set up and followed: popular grievances were allowed to remain unredressed; the discontent and violence engendered by those grievances were used from time to time for party purposes; the people were hung and bayoneted when their roused passions exceeded the due measure of factious requirement; and the state patronage was employed to stimulate and to reward a staff of demagogues, by whom the masses were alternately excited to madness, and betrayed, according to the necessities of the English factions. When Russells and Greys were out or in danger, there were free promises of equal laws and privileges and franchises for oppressed Ireland; the minister expectant or trembling for his place, spoke loudly of justice and compensation, of fraternity and freedom. To these key-notes the place-hunting demagogue pitched his brawling. His talk was of pike-making, and sword-fleshing, and monster marching. The simple people were goaded into a madness, the end whereof was for them suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the hulks, and the gallows; for their stimulators, silk gowns and commissionerships and seats on the bench. Under this treatment the public mind became debauched; the lower classes, forced to bear the charges of agitation, as well as to suffer its penalties, lost all faith in their social future; they saw not and looked not beyond the momentary excitement of a procession or a monster meeting.' Sir Robert Peel, when introducing the Emancipation Bill, had to confess the utter failure of the coercive policy which had been so persistently pursued. He showed that Ireland had been governed, since the Union, almost invariably by coercive acts. There was always some political organisation antagonistic to the British Government. The Catholic Association had just been suppressed; but another would soon spring out of its ashes, if the Catholic question were not settled. Mr. O'Connell had boasted that he could drive a coach-and-six through the former act for its suppression; and Lord Eldon had engaged to drive 'the meanest conveyance, even a donkey cart, through the act of 1829.' The new member for Oxford (Sir Robert Inglis) also stated that twenty-three counties in Ireland were prepared to follow the example of Clare. 'What will you do,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'with that power, that tremendous power, which the elective franchise, exercised under the control of religion, at this moment confers upon the Roman Catholics? What will you do with the thirty or forty seats that will be claimed in Ireland by the persevering efforts of the agitators, directed by the Catholic Association, and carried out by the agency of every priest and bishop in Ireland?' If Parliament began to recede there could be no limit to the retrogression. Such a course would produce a reaction, violent in proportion to the hopes that had been excited. Fresh rigours would become necessary; the re-enactment of the penal code would not be sufficient. They must abolish trial by jury, or, at least, incapacitate Catholics from sitting on juries. 2,000,000 of Protestants must have a complete monopoly of power and privilege in a country which contained 5,000,000 of Catholics, who were in most of the country four to one--in some districts twenty to one--of the Protestants. True, there were difficulties in the way of a settlement. 'But,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'what great measure, which has stamped its name upon the era, has ever been carried without difficulty? At the present moment there is a loud cry in the English press for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and for the old remedy, coercion. Those who raise the cry would do well to read Mr. Shiel's speech at the Clare election in 1828. He said:-- 'We have put a great engine into action, and applied the entire force of that powerful machinery which the law has placed under our control. We are masters of the passions of the people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible effect. But, sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to sunder the strongest ties by which the different classes of society are fastened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state of society itself? Do you think that Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided by any external co-operation, brought the country to this great crisis of agitation? Mr. O'Connell, with all his talent for excitation, would have been utterly powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied with a great conspirator against the public peace; and I will tell you who that confederate is--it is the law of the land itself that has been Mr. O'Connell's main associate, and that ought to be denounced as the mighty agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression is the wand of this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code? Break the wand of this political Prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... In no other country, except in this, would such a revolution have been effected. Wherefore? Because in no other country are the people divided by the law from their superiors, and cast into the hands of a set of men who are supplied with the means of national excitement by the system of government under which we live. Surely, no man can believe that such an anomalous body as the Catholic Association could exist excepting in a community that has been alienated from the state by the state itself. The discontent and the resentment of 7,000,000 of the population have generated that domestic government which sways public opinion, and uses the national passions as the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and idle air. But when what they tell the people is true--when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced of which what has taken place at this election is only an example. The whole body of the people having been previously excited, the moment any incident such as this election occurs, all the popular passions start simultaneously up, and bear down every obstacle before them. Do not, therefore, be surprised that the peasantry should throw off their allegiance when they are under the operation of emotions which it would be wonderful if they could resist. The feeling by which they are actuated would make them not only vote against their landlord, but would make them scale the batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach; and, gentlemen, give me leave to ask you whether, after due reflection upon the motives by which your vassals (for so they are accounted) are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any measure of severity in their regard?' The greatest warrior of the age rebuked the men who cried in that day that the sword should be the arbiter of the Irish question; and Sir Robert Peel, in his own vindication of the Emancipation Act, said:-- 'I well know that there are those upon whom such considerations as these to which I have been adverting will make but a faint impression. Their answer to all such appeals is the short, in their opinion the conclusive, declaration--" The Protestant constitution in church and state must be maintained at all hazards, and by any means; the maintenance of it is a question of principle, and every concession or compromise is the sacrifice of principle to a low and vulgar expediency." This is easily said; but how was Ireland to be governed? How was the Protestant constitution in church and state to be maintained in that part of the empire? Again I can anticipate the reply--"By the overwhelming sense of the people of Great Britain; by the application, if necessary, of physical force for the maintenance of authority; by the employment of the organised strength of government, the police and the military, to enforce obedience to the law." I deliberately affirm that a minister of the crown, responsible at the time of which I am speaking for the public peace and the public welfare, would have grossly and scandalously neglected his duty if he had failed to consider whether it might not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population--which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and energy of a free man--which had, in the twinkling of an eye, made all considerations of personal gratitude, ancient family connection, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of worldly advantage, subordinate to the all-absorbing sense of religious obligation and public duty--whether, I say, it might not be possible that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the barriers which, under ordinary circumstances, the habits of military obedience and the strictness of military discipline opposed to all such external influences.' The officer who commanded the military force in Clare during the election, testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. On July 20, Lord Anglesea wrote as follows:-- 'We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic factions. It is certain that, on July 12, the guard at the castle had Orange lilies about them.' On July 26, the viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:--'The priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the Catholics of the army. I think it important that the depôts of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of Scotland, or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey this opinion to Lord Hill.' Emancipation was carried, and the people were disaffected still. And why should they not be disaffected still? Emancipation had done nothing for them. The farmers were still at the mercy of the landlords, whose pride they humbled at the hustings of Clare and Waterford. They were still tormented by the tithe-proctor seizing the tenth of all that their labour produced on the land. The labourers were still wretched, deprived of the forty-shilling freehold, which protected them from the horrors of eviction and of transportation in a floating hell across the Atlantic. I well remember the celebrated anti-tithe war in 1831, as well as the system by which it was provoked, and I can bear witness to the accuracy of the following description of the tithe-proctor by Henry Grattan. He said:-- 'The use of the tithe-farmer is to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and so enable the parson to absent himself from his duty. The powers of the tithe-farmer are summary laws and ecclesiastical courts; his livelihood is extortion; his rank in society is generally the lowest; and his occupation is to pounce on the poor in the name of the Lord! He is a species of wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.' A single tithe-proctor had on one occasion processed 1,100 persons for tithes, nearly all of the lower order of farmers or peasants, the expense of each process being about 8 s. They had heard of opinions delivered in parliament, on the platform, and from the press by Protestant statesmen of the highest consideration, that it was a cruel oppression to extort in that manner from the majority of the tillers of the soil the tenth of its produce, in order to support the clergy of another church, who, in many cases, had no flocks, or only a few followers, who were well able to pay for their own religious instruction. The system would be intolerable even were the state clergy the pastors of the majority; but as the proportion between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics was in many parts as one to ten, and in some as one to twenty, the injustice necessarily involved in the mode of levying the impost was aggravated a hundredfold. It would be scarcely possible to devise any mode of levying an impost more exasperating, which came home to the bosoms of men with more irritating, humiliating, and maddening power, and which violated more recklessly men's natural sense of justice. If a plan were devised for the purpose of driving men into insurrection, nothing could be more effectual than the tithe-proctor system. Besides, it tended directly to the impoverishment of the country, retarding agricultural improvement and limiting production. If a man kept all his land in pasture, he escaped the impost; but the moment he tilled it, he was subjected to a tax of ten per cent. on the gross produce. The valuation being made by the tithe-proctor--a man whose interest it was to defraud both the tenant and the parson--the consequence was, that the gentry and the large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden; they even avoided mowing the meadows in some cases, because then they should pay tithe for the hay. There was besides a tax called church cess, levied by Protestants in vestry meetings upon Roman Catholics for cleaning the church, ringing the bell, washing the minister's surplice, purchasing bread and wine for the communion, and paying the salary of the parish clerk. This tax was felt to be a direct and flagrant violation of the rights of conscience, and of the principles of the British constitution; and against it there was a determined opposition, which manifested itself in tumultuous and violent assemblages at the parish churches all over the country on Easter Monday, when the rector or his curate, as chairman of the meeting, came into angry collision with flocks who disowned him, and denounced him as a tyrant, a persecutor, and a robber. But the tithe impost was the one most grievously felt, and at last the peasantry resolved to resist it by force. Nothing could be more violent than the contrasts presented at this time in the social life of Ireland. On the one side there was a rapid succession of atrocities and tragedies fearful to contemplate: the bailiffs, constabulary, and military driving away cattle, sheep, pigs, and geese to be sold by public auction, to pay the minister who had no congregation to whom he could preach the gospel; the cattle-prisons or 'pounds' surrounded by high walls, but uncovered, wet and dirty, crowded with all sorts of animals, cold and starved, and uttering doleful sounds; the driving away of the animals in the night from one farm to another to avoid seizures; the auctions without bidders, in the midst of groaning and jeering multitudes; the slaughter of policemen, and in some instances of clergymen, with fiendish expressions of hatred and yells of triumph; the mingling of fierce passions with the strongest natural affections; the exultation in murder as if it were a glorious deed of war; the Roman Catholic press and platform almost justifying those deeds of outrage and blood; the mass of the Roman Catholic population sustaining this insurrection against the law with their support and sympathy and prayers, as if it were a holy war, in which the victims were martyrs. On the other side were presented pictures which excited the deepest interest of the Protestant community throughout the United Kingdom. We behold the clergyman and his family in the glebe-house, lately the abode of plenty, comfort, and elegance, a model of domestic happiness and gentlemanly life; but the income of the rector fell off, till he was bereft of nearly all his means. In order to procure the necessaries of life for his family, he was obliged to part with the cows that gave milk for his household, the horse and car, which were necessary in the remote place where his glebe-house was situated, and everything that could be spared, till at length he was obliged to make his greatest sacrifice, and to send his books--the dear and valued companions of his life--to Dublin, to be sold by auction. His boys could no longer be respectably clad, his wife and daughters were obliged to part with their jewellery and all their superfluities. There was no longer wine or medicine, that the mother was accustomed to dispense kindly and liberally to the poor around her, in their sickness and sorrow, without distinction of creed. The glebe, which once presented an aspect of so much comfort and ease and affluence, now looked bare and desolate and void of life. But for the contributions of Christian friends at a distance, many of those once happy little centres of Christian civilisation--those well-springs of consolation to the afflicted--must have been abandoned to the overwhelming sand of desolation swept upon them by the hurricane of the anti-tithe agitation. During this desperate struggle, force was employed on several occasions with fatal effect. At Newtownbarry, in the county of Wexford, some cattle were impounded by a tithe-proctor. The peasantry assembled in large numbers to rescue them, when they came into collision with the yeomanry, who fired, killing twelve persons. It was a market day, and a placard was posted on the walls: 'There will be an end of church plunder; your pot, blanket, and pig will not hereafter be sold by auction to support in luxury, idleness, and ease persons who endeavour to make it appear that it is essential to the peace and prosperity of the country and your eternal salvation, while the most of you are starving. Attend to an auction of your neighbours' cattle.' At Carrickshock there was a fearful tragedy. A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the court of exchequer, and entrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong body of police, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and dispatch. Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for their visitors. But the yeomanry pushed boldly on. Suddenly an immense assemblage of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them. A terrible hand-to-hand struggle ensued, and in the course of a few moments eighteen of the police, including the commanding officer, were slaughtered. The remainder consulted safety and fled, marking the course of their retreat by the blood that trickled from their wounds. A coroner's jury pronounced this deed of death as 'wilful murder' against some persons unknown. A large government reward was offered, but it failed to produce a single conviction. At Castlepollard, in Westmeath, on the occasion of an attempted rescue, the chief constable was knocked down. The police fired, and nine or ten persons were killed. One of the most lamentable of these conflicts occurred at Gurtroe, near Rathcormac, in the county of Cork. Archdeacon Ryder brought a number of the military to recover the tithes of a farm belonging to a widow named Ryan. The assembled people resisted, the military were ordered to fire, eight persons were killed and thirteen wounded; and among the killed was the widow's son. These disorders appealed with irresistible force to the Government and the legislature, to put an end to a system fraught with so much evil, and threatening the utter disruption of society in Ireland. In the first place, something must be done to meet the wants of the destitute clergy and their families. Accordingly, Lord Stanley brought in a bill, in May 1832, authorising the lord lieutenant of Ireland to advance 60,000 l. as a fund for the payment of the clergy, who were unable to collect their tithes for the year 1831. This measure was designed to meet the present necessity, and was only a preliminary to the promised settlement of the tithe question. It was therefore passed quickly through both Houses, and became law on June 1. But the money thus advanced was not placed on the consolidated fund. The Government took upon itself the collection of the arrears of tithes for that one year. It was a maxim with Lord Stanley that the people should be made to respect the law; that they should not be allowed to trample upon it with impunity. The odious task thus assumed, produced a state of unparalleled excitement. The people were driven to frenzy, instead of being frightened by the chief secretary becoming tithe-collector-general, and the army being employed in its collection. They knew that the king's speech had recommended the settlement of the tithe question. They had heard of the evidence of Bishop Doyle and other champions, exposing what they believed to be the iniquity of the tithe system. They had seen the condemnation of it in the testimony of the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, who declared his conviction that it could not be collected except at the point of the bayonet, and by keeping up a chronic war between the Government and the Roman Catholic people. They had been told that parliamentary committees had recommended the complete extinction of tithes, and their commutation into a rent-charge. Their own leaders had everywhere resolved:-- 'That it was a glaring wrong to compel an impoverished Catholic people to support in pampered luxury the richest clergy in the world--a clergy from whom, the Catholics do not experience even the return of common gratitude--a clergy who, in times past, opposed to the last the political freedom of the Irish people, and at the present day are opposed to reform and a liberal scheme of education for their countrymen. The ministers of the God of charity should not, by misapplication of all the tithes to their own private uses, thus deprive the poor of their patrimony; nor should ministers of peace adhere with such desperate tenacity to a system fraught with dissension, hatred, and ill-will.' The first proceeding of the Government to recover the tithes, under the act of June 1, was therefore the signal for general war. Bonfires blazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the Church and the Government thus became more obnoxious to the people than ever. Lord Stanley being the commander-in-chief on one side, and Mr. O'Connell on the other, the contest was embittered by their personal antipathies. It was found that the amount of the arrears for the year 1831 was 104,285 l., and that the whole amount which the Government was able to levy, after putting forth its strength in every possible way, was 12,000 l., the cost of collection being 15,000 l., so the Government was not able to raise as much money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. This was how Lord Stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people should be made to respect the law. But the Liberal party among the Protestants fully sympathised with the anti-tithe recusants. Of course the Government did not persevere in prosecutions from which no parties but the lawyers reaped any advantage; consequently, all processes under the existing law were abandoned. It was found that, after paying to the clergy the arrears of 1831 and 1832, and what would be due in 1833, about a million sterling would be required, and this sum was provided by an issue of exchequer bills. The reimbursement of the advance was to be effected by a land tax. Together with these temporary arrangements to meet the exigency of the case, for the payment of the clergy and the pacification of Ireland, an act was passed to render tithe composition in Ireland compulsory and permanent. But Ireland was not yet pacified.[1] [Footnote 1: The foregoing sketch of the tithe war was written by the author seven years ago for Cassell's _History of England_, from which it is now extracted.] CHAPTER XVI. THE FAMINE. It had often been predicted by writers on the state of Ireland, that, owing to the rottenness at the foundation of the social fabric, it would come down with a crash some day. The facts reported by the census commissioners of 1841 showed that this consummation could not be far off. Out of a population of 8,000,000, there were 3,700,000 above the age of five years who could neither read nor write; while nearly three millions and a half lived in mud cabins, badly thatched with straw, having each but one room, and often without either a window or a chimney. These figures indicate a mass of ignorance and poverty, which could not be contemplated without alarm, and the subject was, therefore, constantly pressed upon the attention of parliament. As usual in cases of difficulty, the Government, feeling that something should be done, and not knowing what to do, appointed in 1845 a commission to enquire into the relations between landlords and tenants, and the condition of the working classes. At the head of this commission was the Earl of Devon, a benevolent nobleman, whose sympathies were on the side of the people. Captain Kennedy, the secretary to the commissioners, published a digest of the report of the evidence, which presented the facts in a readable form, and was the means of diffusing a large amount of authentic information on the state of Ireland. The commissioners travelled through the country, held courts of enquiry, and examined witnesses of all classes. As the result of their extensive intercourse with the farming classes, and their own observations, they were enabled to state that in almost every part of Ireland unequivocal symptoms of improvement, in spite of many embarrassing and counteracting circumstances, continually presented themselves to the view, and that there existed a very general and increasing spirit and desire for the promotion of such improvement, from which the most beneficial results might fairly be expected. Indeed, speaking of the country generally, they add: 'With some exceptions, which are unfortunately too notorious, we believe that at no former period did so active a spirit of improvement prevail; nor could well directed measures for the attainment of that object have been proposed with a better prospect of success than at the present moment.' But this improvement produced no sensible effect upon the condition of the labouring people. However brightly the sun of prosperity might gild the eminences of society, the darkness of misery and despair settled upon the masses below. The commissioners proceed: 'A reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is still badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. Our personal experience and observation during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements; and we cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain.' It was deeply felt that the well-being of the whole United Kingdom depended upon the removal of the causes of this misery and degradation; for if the Irish people were not elevated, the English working classes must be brought down to their level. The facility of travelling afforded by railways and steam-boats caused such constant intercourse between England and Ireland, that Irish ignorance, beggary, and disease, with all their contagion, physical and moral, would be found intermingling with the British population. It would be impossible to prevent the half-starved Irish peasantry from crossing the Channel, and seeking employment, even at low wages, and forming a pestiferous Irish quarter in every town and city. The question, then, was felt to be one whose settlement would brook no further delay. It was found that the potato was almost the only food of the Irish millions, and that it formed their chief means of obtaining the other necessaries of life. A large portion of this crop was grown under the system, to which the poorest of the peasantry were obliged to have recourse, notwithstanding the minute subdivision of land. There were in 1841, 691,000 farms in Ireland exceeding one acre in extent. Nearly one half of these were under five acres each. The number of proprietors in fee was estimated at 8,000--a smaller number, in proportion to the extent of territory, than in any other country of Western Europe except Spain. In Connaught, several proprietors had 100,000 acres each, the proportion of small farms being greater there than in the rest of Ireland. The total number of farms in the province was 155,842, and of these 100,254 consisted of from one to five acres. If all the proprietors were resident among their tenantry, and were in a position to encourage their industry and care for their welfare, matters would not have been so bad; but most of the large landowners were absentees. It frequently happened that the large estates were held in strict limitation, and they were nearly all heavily encumbered. The owners preferred living in England or on the Continent, having let their lands on long leases, or in perpetuity to 'middlemen,' who sublet them for as high rents as they could get. Their tenants again sublet, so that it frequently happened that two, three, or four landlords intervened between the proprietor and the occupying tenant, each deriving an interest from the land. The head landlord, therefore, though ever so well disposed, had no power whatever to help the occupying tenants generally, and of those who had the power very few felt disposed. There were extensive districts without a single resident proprietor. For a few weeks after the blight of the potato crop in 1846 the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs and any little effects they had. But pigs, fowl, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The better class of farmers lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss their servants, and this numerous class became the first victims of starvation; for when they were turned off, they were refused admission by their relations, who had not the means of feeding them. Tailors, shoemakers, and other artisans who worked for the lower orders, lost their employment, and became destitute also. While the means of support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it involved the whole population in its crushing grasp. It was painfully interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts of the country where its ravages were least felt. The small farmer had only his corn, designed for rent and seed: he was obliged to take it to the mill to ward off starvation. The children of the poor, placed on short allowance, were suffering fearfully from hunger. Mothers, heart-broken and worn down to skeletons, were seen on certain days proceeding in groups to some distant depôt, where Indian meal was to be had at reduced prices, but still double that of the ordinary market. As they returned to their children, with their little bags on their heads, a faint joy lit up their famine-stricken features. When the visitors entered a village their first question was: 'How many deaths?' '_The hunger is upon us_,' was everywhere the cry; and involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease. In fact, as they passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they lived; and Mr. W.G. Forster, in his report, said: 'I have no doubt whatever, that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; and that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour. But the springs of this charity must be rapidly dried up. Like a scourge of locusts, _the hunger_ daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it. One class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin.'[1] [Footnote 1: Transactions during the Famine in Ireland, Appendix III.] The same benevolent gentleman describes the domestic scenes he saw in Connaught, where the poor Celts were carried off in thousands:-- 'We entered a cabin. Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly; their little limbs, on removing a portion of the covering, perfectly emaciated; eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation. Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not nor noticed us. On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled old woman, imploring us to give her something, baring her limbs partly to show how the skin hung loose from her bones, as soon as she attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman with sunken cheeks, a mother, I have no doubt, who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries; but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair. Many cases were widows, whose husbands had been recently taken off by the fever, and thus their only pittance obtained from the public works was entirely cut off. In many the husbands or sons were prostrate under that horrid disease--the result of long-continued famine and low living--in which first the limbs and then the body swell most frightfully, and finally burst. We entered upwards of fifty of these tenements. The scene was invariably the same, differing in little but the manner of the sufferers, or of the groups occupying the several corners within. The whole number was often not to be distinguished, until the eye having adapted itself to the darkness, they were pointed out, or were heard, or some filthy bundle of rags and straw was seen to move. Perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and heart-rending spectacle. Many were too weak to stand, their little limbs attenuated, except where the frightful swellings had taken the place of previous emaciation. Every infantile expression had entirely departed; and, in some reason and intelligence had evidently flown. Many were remnants of families, crowded together in one cabin; orphaned little relatives taken in by the equally destitute, and even strangers--for these poor people are kind to each other, even to the end. In one cabin was a sister, just dying, lying beside her little brother, just dead. I have worse than this to relate; but it is useless to multiply details, and they are, in fact, unfit.' In December, 1846, Father Mathew wrote to Mr. Trevelyan, then secretary of the treasury, that men, women, and children were gradually wasting away. They filled their stomachs with cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, &c., to appease the cravings of hunger. There were then more than 5,000 half-starved wretches from the country begging in the streets of Cork. When utterly exhausted, they crawled to the workhouse to die. The average of deaths in that union was then over a hundred a week. From December 27, in 1846, to the middle of April, in 1847, the number of human beings that died in the Cork workhouse was 2,130! And in the third week of the following month the free interments in the Mathew cemetery had risen to 277--as many as sixty-seven having been buried in one day. The destruction of human life in other workhouses of Ireland kept pace with the appalling mortality in the Cork workhouse. According to official returns, it had reached in April the weekly average of twenty-five per 1,000 inmates; the actual number of deaths being 2,706 for the week ending April 3, and 2,613 in the following week. Yet the number of inmates in the Irish workhouses was but 104,455 on April 10. The size of the unions was a great impediment to the working of the poor law. They were three times the extent of the corresponding divisions in England. In Munster and Connaught, where there was the greatest amount of destitution, and the least amount of local agency available for its relief, the unions were much larger than in the more favoured provinces of Ulster and Leinster. The union of Ballina comprised a region of upwards of half a million acres, and within its desert tracts the famine assumed its most appalling form, the workhouse being more than forty miles distant from some of the sufferers. As a measure of precaution, the Government had secretly imported and stored a large quantity of Indian corn, as a cheap substitute for the potato, which would have served the purpose much better had the people been instructed in the best modes of cooking it. It was placed in commissariat, along depôts the western coast of the island, where the people were not likely to be supplied on reasonable terms through the ordinary channels of trade. The public works consisted principally of roads, on which, the men were employed as a sort of supplement to the poor law. Half the cost was a free grant from the treasury, and the other half was charged upon the barony in which the works were undertaken. The expense incurred under the 'Labour Rate Act, 9 and 10 Viet. c. 107,' amounted to 4,766,789 l. It was almost universally admitted, when the pressure was over, that the system of public works adopted was a great mistake; and it seems wonderful that such grievous blunders could have been made with so many able statesmen and political economists at the head of affairs and in the service of the Government. The public works undertaken consisted in the breaking up of good roads to level hills and fill hollows, and the opening of new roads in places where they were not required--works which the people felt to be useless, and at which they laboured only under strong compulsion, being obliged to walk to them in all weathers for miles, in order to earn the price of a breakfast of Indian meal. Had the labour thus comparatively wasted been devoted to the draining, sub-soiling, and fencing of the farms, connected with a comprehensive system of arterial drainage, immense and lasting benefit to the country would have been the result, especially as works so well calculated to ameliorate the soil, and guard against the moisture of the climate, might have been connected with a system of instruction in agricultural matters of which the peasantry stood so much in need, and to the removal of the gross ignorance which had so largely contributed to bring about the famine. As it was, enormous sums were wasted. Much needless hardship was inflicted on the starving people in compelling them to work in frost and rain when they were scarcely able to walk, and, after all the vast outlay, very few traces of it remained in permanent improvements on the face of the country. The system of government relief works failed chiefly through the same difficulty which impeded every mode of relief, whether public or private--namely, the want of machinery to work it. It was impossible suddenly to procure an efficient staff of officers for an undertaking of such enormous magnitude--the employment of a whole people. The overseers were necessarily selected in haste; many of them were corrupt, and encouraged the misconduct of the labourers. In many cases the relief committees, unable to prevent maladministration, yielded to the torrent of corruption, and individual members only sought to benefit their own dependants. The people everywhere flocked to the public works; labourers, cottiers, artisans, fishermen, farmers, men, women, and children--all, whether destitute or not, sought for a share of the public money. In such a crowd, it was almost impossible to discriminate properly. They congregated in masses on the roads, idling under the name of work, the really destitute often unheeded and unrelieved because they had no friend to recommend them. All the ordinary employments were neglected; there was no fishing, no gathering of sea-weed, no collecting of manure. The men who had employment feared to lose it by absenting themselves for any other object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to obtain it. The whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in road-making. It became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or the cultivation of the land would be neglected. Works undertaken on the spur of the moment, not because they were needful, but merely to employ the people, were in many cases ill chosen, and the execution equally defective. The labourers, desirous to protract their employment, were only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. The favouritism, the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases were shockingly demoralising. In order to induce the people to attend to their ordinary spring work, and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of distributing free rations. On March 20, therefore, a reduction of twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place, and the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous relief was brought into full operation. The authority under which this was administered was called the 'Temporary Relief Act,' which came into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution was at its height, and three millions of people received their daily rations. Sir John Burgoyne truly describes this as 'the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country.' Never in the history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner by the public bounty. It was a most anxious time--a time of tremendous labour and responsibility to those who had the direction of this vast machinery. A member of the Board of Works thus describes the feeling which no doubt pervaded most of those that were officially connected with the administration of relief: 'I hope never to see such a winter and spring again. I can truly say, in looking back upon it even now, that it appears to me not a succession of weeks and days, but one long continuous day, with occasional intervals of night-mare sleep. Rest one could never have, when one felt that in every minute lost a score of men might die.' Mr. Trevelyan was then secretary of the treasury, and it was well that a man so enlightened, energetic, and benevolent occupied the post at such a time. He was indefatigable in his efforts to mitigate the calamity, and he wrote an interesting account of 'The Irish Crisis' in the _Edinburgh Review_. Having presented the dark side of the picture in faithfully recording the abuses that had prevailed, it is right to give Mr. Trevelyan's testimony as to the conduct of the relief committees during this supreme hour of the nation's agony. 'It is a fact very honourable to Ireland that among upwards of 2,000 local bodies to whom advances were made under this act, there is not one to which, so far as the Government is informed, any suspicion of embezzlement attaches.' The following statement of the numbers receiving rations, and the total expenditure under the act in each of the four provinces, compared with the amount of population, and the annual value assessed for poor-rate, may serve to illustrate the comparative means and destitution of each province:-- -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Population | Valuation | Greatest | Total | | | | | Number of |Expenditure | | | | | Rations given | | | | | | out | | |---------|-------------|------------|----------------|------------| | | | £ | | £ | |Ulster | 2,386,373 | 3,320,133 | 346,517 | 170,508 | |Leinster | 1,973,731 | 4,624,542 | 450,606 | 308,068 | |Munster | 2,396,161 | 1,465,643 | 1,013,826 | 671,554 | |Counaught| 1,418,859 | 1,465,643 | 745,652 | 526,048 | | |-------------|------------|----------------|------------| | | 8,175,124 | 13,187,421 | 2,556,601 | 1,676,268 | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Private benevolence did wonders in this crisis. The British Association raised and distributed 269,302 l. The queen's letter, ordering collections in the English churches, produced 200,738 l. But the bounty of the United States of America transcended everything. The supplies sent across the Atlantic were on a scale unparalleled in the history of the world. Meetings were held in Philadelphia, Washington, New York, and other cities, in quick succession, presided over by the first men in the country. All through the States the citizens evinced an intense interest, and a noble generosity worthy of the great Republic. The railway companies carried free of charge all packages marked 'Ireland.' Public carriers undertook the gratuitous delivery of packages intended for the relief of Irish distress. Storage to any extent was offered on the same terms. Ships of war, without their guns, came to the Irish shores on a mission of peace and mercy, freighted with food for British subjects. Cargo after cargo followed in rapid succession, until nearly 100 separate shipments had arrived, our Government having consented to pay the freight of all donations of food forwarded from America, which amounted in the whole to 33,000 l. The quantity of American food consigned to the care of the Society of Friends was nearly 10,000 tons, the value of which was about 100,000 l. In addition to all this, the Americans remitted to the Friends' Committee 16,000 l. in money. They also sent 642 packages of clothing, the precise value of which could not be ascertained. There was a very large amount of remittances sent to Ireland, during the famine, by the Irish in the United States. Unfortunately, there are no records of those remittances prior to 1848; but since that time we are enabled to ascertain a large portion of them, though not the whole, and their amount is something astonishing. The following statement of sums remitted by emigrants in America to their families in Ireland, was printed by order of Parliament:--During the years 1848, 460,180 l.; 1849, 540,619 l.; 1850, 957,087 l. 1851, 990,811 l. The arrival of the American ships naturally excited great interest at the various ports. 'On Monday, April 13,' writes Mr. Maguire, 'a noble sight might be witnessed in Cork harbour--the sun shining its welcome on the entrance of the unarmed war-ship Jamieson, sailing in under a cloud of snowy canvas, her great hold laden with bread-stuffs for the starving people of Ireland. It was a sight that brought tears to many an eye, and prayers of gratitude to many a heart. It was one of those things which one nation remembers of another long after the day of sorrow has passed. Upon the warm and generous people to whom America literally broke bread and sent life, this act of fraternal charity, so gracefully and impressively offered, naturally produced a profound and lasting impression, the influence of which is felt at this moment.' The clergy, Protestant and Roman Catholic, almost the only resident gentry in several of the destitute districts, worked together on the committees with commendable zeal, diligence, and unanimity. Among the Roman Catholic clergy, Father Mathew was at that time by far the most influential and popular. The masses of the peasantry regarded him as almost an inspired apostle. During the famine months, he exerted himself with wonderful energy and prudence, first, in his correspondence with different members of the Government, earnestly recommending and urging the speedy adoption of measures of relief; and next, in commending those measures to the people, dissuading the hungry from acts of violence, and preaching submission and resignation under that heavy dispensation of Providence. Of this there are ample proofs in the letters published by Mr. Maguire, M.P. 'It is not to harrow your feelings, dear Mr. Trevelyan,' he wrote, 'I tell this tale of woe. No; but to excite your sympathy in behalf of our miserable peasantry. It is rumoured that the capitalists in the corn and flour trade are endeavouring to induce the Government not to protect the people from famine, but to leave them at their mercy. I consider this a cruel and unjustifiable interference. I am so unhappy at the prospect before us, and so horror-struck by the apprehension of our destitute people falling into the ruthless hands of the corn and flour traders, that I risk becoming troublesome, rather than not lay my humble opinions before you.' Again: 'I hail with delight the humane, the admirable measures for relief announced by my Lord John Russell; they have given universal satisfaction. But of what avail will all this be, unless the wise precautions of Government will enable the toiling workman, after exhausting his vigour during a long day to earn a shilling, to purchase with that shilling a sufficiency of daily food for his generally large and helpless family?' Father Mathew earnestly pleaded for out-door relief, in preference to the workhouse, foreseeing the danger of sundering the domestic bonds, which operate so powerfully as moral restraints in Ireland. The beautiful picture which he drew of the Irish peasant's home in his native land was not too highly coloured, as applied to the great majority of the people:--'The bonds of blood and affinity, dissoluble by death alone, associate in the cabins of the Irish peasantry, not only the husband, wife, and children, but the aged parents and the married couple and their destitute relatives, even to the third and fourth degree of kindred. God forbid that political economists should dissolve these ties! should violate these beautiful charities of nature and the gospel! I have often found my heart throb with delight when I beheld three or four generations seated around the humble board and blazing hearth; and I offered a silent prayer to the great Father of all that the gloomy gates of the workhouse should never separate those whom such tender social chains so fondly link together.' The following is a tabular view of the whole amount of voluntary contributions during the Irish famine, which deserves a permanent record for the credit of our common humanity:-- £ s. d. £ s. d. Local contributions officially reported in 1846 104,689 18 1 Local contributions officially reported in 1847 199,569 4 1 British Relief Association, total received 470,041 1 2 say five-sixths for Ireland 391,700 17 8 General Central Relief Committee, College Green 83,934 17 11 Less received from British Relief Association 20,190 0 0 _____________ 63,744 17 11 Irish Relief Association, Sackville Street 42,446 5 0 Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, London 42,905 12 0 Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, Dublin 198,313 15 3 Less received from Committee of the Society of Friends in London, and interest 39,249 19 11 _____________ 159,063 15 4 Indian Relief Fund 13,919 15 2 National Club, London 19,928 12 2 Wesleyan Methodist Relief Fund, London 20,056 14 4 Irish Evangelical Society, London 9,264 9 9 Baptists' Relief Fund, London 6,141 11 2 Ladies' Irish Clothing Society, London 9,533 4 0 Less received from British Association, &c. 5,324 12 11 _____________ 4,208 11 1 Ladies' Relief Association for Ireland 19,584 0 9 Less received from Irish Relief Association and for sales of manufactures 7,659 6 7 _____________ 11,924 14 2 Ladies' Industrial Society for encouragement of labour among the peasantry 1,968 12 8 Less received from Irish Relief Association 1,500 0 0 _____________ 468 12 8 Belfast Ladies' Association for the relief of Irish Distress 2,617 1 6 Belfast Ladies' Industrial Association for Connaught 4,615 16 1 There were also two collections in Belfast for general purposes, the amount of which exceeded 10,000 0 0 CHAPTER XVII. TENANT-RIGHT IN ULSTER. The Earl of Granard has taken a leading part in the movement for the settling of the land question, having presided at two great meetings in the counties in which he has large estates, Wexford and Longford, supported on each occasion by influential landlords. He was the first of his class to propose that the question should be settled on the basis of tenant-right, by legalising and extending the Ulster custom. A reference to this custom has been frequently made recently, in discussions on the platform and in the press. I have studied the history of that province with care; and I have during the year 1869 gone through several of its counties with the special object of inquiring how the tenant-right operates, and whether, and to what extent, it affords the requisite security to the cultivators of the soil; and it may be of some service that I should give here the result of my enquiries. Of the six counties confiscated and planted in Ulster, Londonderry, as I have already remarked, was allotted to the London companies. The aspect of their estates, is on the whole, very pleasing. In the midst of each there is a small town, built in the form of a square, with a market-house and a town-hall in the centre, and streets running off at each side. There are almost invariably three substantial and handsome places of worship--the parish church, always best and most prominent, the presbyterian meeting-house, and the catholic chapel, with nice manses for the ministers, all built wholly or in part by grants from the companies. Complaints were constantly made against the Irish Society for its neglect of its trust, for refusing to give proper building leases, and for wasting the funds placed at its disposal for public purposes. The details are curious and interesting, throwing much light on the social history of the times. The whole subject of its duties and responsibilities, and of its anomalous powers, was fully discussed at a meeting of the principal citizens, most of them strongly Conservative, on the 28th of May, 1866. There had been a discussion on the subject in the House of Commons, in which Lord Claud Hamilton, then member for the borough, distinguished himself. Mr. Maguire brought the Society before Parliament in an able speech. The legislature, as well as the public, were then preoccupied with the Church question. But, doubtless, the maiden city will make her voice heard next session, and insist on being released from a guardian who always acted the part of a stepmother. The Irish Society has been before three parliamentary tribunals, the Commissioners of Municipal Corporations for England and Wales, the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the state of the Corporation of London, and the Irish Municipal Commissioners. The English Commissioners say:--'We do not know of any pretext or argument for continuing this municipal supremacy of the Irish Society. A control of this kind maintained at the present day by the municipality of one town in England over another town in Ireland, appears to us so indefensible in principle, that our opinion would not have been changed, even if it were found that hitherto it has been conducted with discretion and forbearance.' The Irish commissioners affirmed 'that the Irish Society in their original institution were created for the purpose of forwarding the interests and objects of the Plantation, and not for mere private gain; and that of the large income which they receive from their possessions in Londonderry, a very inadequate and disproportionate share is applied for the public purposes, or other objects connected with the local interests of the districts from which the revenues of the society are drawn.' The corporation of Derry cannot put a bye-law in force till it receives the approval of the Irish Society. And what is this tribunal whose fiat must stamp the decision of the Derry corporation before it can operate in the smallest matter within the municipal boundary? The members are London traders, totally ignorant of Ireland. They are elected for two years, so that they must go out by the time they acquire any information about their trust, to make way for another batch equally ignorant. Having everything to learn during their term of office, if they have time or capacity to learn anything about the matter, they must submit to the guidance of the governor, who is elected virtually, though not formally, for life; and the members of the Derry corporation believe him to be the autocrat of the society. Mr. James P. Hamilton, now the assistant-barrister for Sligo, at the great meeting of the citizens of Derry already mentioned, pronounced the governors to be 'the most ignorant, the most incompetent, and the most careless governors that ever were inflicted on a people.' Mr. Hamilton quoted from the answer of the corporation of London in 1624 to the Privy Council, which required them to convey 4,000 acres to the citizens of Derry. The corporation replied that they had allotted 1,500 acres for the use of the mayor and other civil officers. That was either true or false. If true, by what right did they recall the grant, and re-possess themselves of those lands? By the articles they were bound to make quays, which were not made. They were bound to give bog and mountain for the city common, which they never gave. The corporation had a tract called the sheriffs mountain, but the city was robbed of it by her cruel stepmother, the Irish Society. The society was bound to give 200 acres for a free school, and if this had been done Derry might have had a rich foundation, rivalling Westminster or the Charter School. Mr. Hamilton, conservative as he is, with the heart of a true Irishman, indignantly asks, 'Why is this national grievance and insult continued for the profit of no one? Their very name is an insult and a mockery--_The Governor and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation in Ulster_! What do they govern? They don't govern us in any sense of the word. They merely hold our property in a dead grip, without any profit to themselves, and to our great disadvantage.' The city is overwhelmed with debt--debt for the new quays, debt for the new bridge, debt for the public works of the corporation, which has struggled to improve the city under the incubus of this alien power, contending with debt, want of tenure, and other difficulties, which would all have been avoided if the city had the lands which these Londoners hold in their possession and use as their own pleasure dictates, half the revenues being spent in the management. Mr. William Hazlett, a magistrate of Derry, one of its ablest and most respected citizens, stated that from 1818 to 1847 the expenses of management were 60 per cent. The royal commissioners set it down thus--Total expenditure, 219,898 l.; management, 133,912 l. The law expenses were, during the same period, 40,000 l. 'This item of itself,' says Mr. Hazlett, 'must be considered an intolerable grievance, for it was laid out for the oppression of the people who should have benefited by the funds so squandered in opposing the very parties who supplied the money, with which they were themselves harassed. If a tenant applies for a lease, and the society consents to grant one, it is so hampered with obstructive clauses that his solicitor objects to his signing it, and says that from its nature it could not be made a negotiable instrument on which to raise money. The tenant remonstrates, but the reply of the city is--"That is our form of lease; you must comply with it or want!" If you go to law with them, they may take you into Chancery, and fight you with your own money.' Mr. Hazlett gave a remarkable illustration of this, which shows the spirit in which this body thinks proper to fulfil its duties as steward of this property. The Devon Land Commission recommended that leases of lives renewable for ever should be converted into fee-farm grants, which would be a valuable boon to the tenant without any loss to the owner. A bill founded on the recommendation was introduced to parliament. Did the enlightened and liberal Irish Society hail with satisfaction this wise measure of reform? On the contrary, the governor went out of his way to oppose it. Having striven in vain, with all the vast influence of the corporation, to have the bill thrown out, he endeavoured to get the society exempted from its operation. When, in spite of his efforts, the bill became law, the governor utterly refused to act on it, and brought the matter before the Master of the Rolls and the House of Lords. From these renewable leases the society had an income of about 2,500 l. yearly. And what amount did they demand--these moderate and discreet gentleman, 'The Governor and Assistants, London, of the new Plantation of Ulster'--for their interest in the renewable leases? Not less than 100,000 l., or about 40 years' purchase. In the year 1765, when the city of Derry was fast hastening to decay under this London government, the society was induced by an increase of 37 per cent. on the rent, to grant those renewable leases. 'And but for the granting of those leases,' said Mr. Hazlett, 'we should have no standing-ground in this city, nor should we even have the right to meet in this hall as we do to-day.' Other striking facts illustrating the paternal nature of this foreign government of the 'New Plantation' were produced by Mr. Thomas Chambers, a solicitor who had defended the Rev. J.M. Staples in a suit brought by the society, and which cost them 40,000 l. of the public money to win, after dragging the reverend gentleman from one court to another, regardless of expense. Originally, as we have seen, the city got a grant of 4,000 acres for the support of the corporation; but actually received only 1,500, valued then at 60 l., a year. This land was forfeited and transferred to the bishop in the reign of Charles I. Ultimately the bishop gave up the land and the fishery, for which the see received, and still receives, 250 l. a year. The society got, hold of the 1,500 acres, and refused to give them back to the city, which, with the alienation of the sheriff's mountain, and the raising of the city rents (in 1820) from 40 l. to 600 l. a year, left it 1,000 l. a year worse than it had been previously. The result of this policy of a body which was established for promoting 'civility' in Ireland, was, that the credit of the corporation went down rapidly. Executions were lodged against them, and all their property in quays, markets, &c. was swept away, the bridge being saved only by the intervention of a special act of parliament. In 1831, however, the society granted the corporation an allowance of 700 l. When the reformed corporation came in, and found that they were so far emancipated from the thraldom of the London governor that they could go before parliament themselves, the society was constrained to increase its dole to 1,200 l. a year. Mr. Isaac Colhoun, at the meeting referred to, produced from the accounts of the society for the previous year, published in the local papers, the following items:-- £ s. d. Amount of the present increased income 11,091 17 5 ________________ Incidental expenses as per general agents' account for 1865 114 3 0-1/2 Law expenses 492 7 11 Salaries to general agent, deputy, vice-admiral, surveyor, and others 926 16 6 Pension to general agent 250 0 0 Visitation expenses, 1865 539 19 6 Surveying expenses 50 0 0 Salary of clerk and porter's wages 197 10 0 Coal, gas, printing, stationery, advertisements 449 11 5 Salary to secretary and assistant governor, and 'assistants' for attendance at 51 meetings 549 1 6 ________________ 4,094 1 6 Here, then, is a trust fund amounting to about 12,000 l. a year, and the trustees actually spend one-third in its management! And what is its management? What do they do with the money? Mr. Pitt Skipton, D.L., a landed proprietor, who has nothing to gain or lose by the Irish Society, asks, 'Where is our money laid out now? Not on the estate of the Irish Society, but on the estates of the church and private individuals--on those of owners like myself who give their tenants perpetuity, because it is their interest to do so. We should wish to see the funds of the society so expended that we could see some memorial of them. But where is there in Derry any monument wholly erected by the society which they were not specially forced to put up by charter, with the exception of a paltry piece of freestone within one of the bastions bearing their own arms.' Let us only imagine what the corporation of Derry could do in local improvements with this 12,000 l. a year, which is really their own property, or even with the 4,000 l. a-year squandered upon themselves by the trustees! Some of these worthy London merchants, it seems, play the _rôle_ of Irish landlords when travelling on the Continent, on the strength of this Derry estate, or their _assistantship_ in its management. 'I object,' says Mr. J.P. Hamilton, 'if I take a little run in the summer vacation to Paris or Brussels, to meet a greasy-looking gentleman from Whitechapel or the Minories, turned out sleek and shining from Moses', and to be told by him that he has a large property in _Hireland_, in a place called Derry, and that his tenantry are an industrious, thriving set of fellows, quite remarkable for their intelligence, but that it is all owing to his excellent management of his property and his liberality.' Mr. Hazlett presented a still funnier picture of the Irish 'visitations' of the members of the society, with their wives and daughters every summer. Gentlemen in London regard it as a fine lark to get elected to serve in the Irish Society, as that includes a summer trip to Ireland free of expense, with the jolliest entertainment. One gentleman, being asked by another whether he was ever in Ireland, answered--'No, but I intend to get on the Irish Society next year and then I'll have a trip. What kind of people are they over there? Do they all speak Irish?' 'Oh, no; they are a very decent, civilised people.' 'Oh, I'm glad they don't speak Irish; for none of us do, of course; but my daughter can speak French.' 'They had a great siege one time over there?' 'Oh, yes; the Derry people are proud of the siege.' 'Ah, yes, I see; happened in the reign of King John, I believe.' But the heaviest charge laid at the door of the Irish Society is its persistent refusal to grant proper tenures for building. By this, even more than their reckless squandering of the revenues of a fine estate, which is not their own, they have obstructed the improvement of the city. They might possibly be compelled to refund the wasted property of their ward, but they could never compensate for stunting and crippling her as they have done. Fortunately, there is a standard by which we are able to measure this iniquity with tolerable accuracy. Dr. William Brown, of Derry, testified that it was the universal conviction of the people of Derry, of all classes and denominations, that, by the mismanagement of their trust, the Irish Society had converted the crown grant from the blessing it was intended to be, and which it would have been under a just administration, into something more akin to a curse. For anything that saps the self-reliant and independent spirit of a community must always be a curse. Within the last hundred years Belfast was not in advance of Derry in population, in trade, in capital, or in any other element constituting or conducing to prosperity. Its river was not so navigable, and by no means so well adapted to foreign, especially transatlantic trade. The country surrounding it was not superior in soil, nor the inhabitants in intelligence and enterprise. It had no estate, as Derry had, granted by the crown to assist in the development of civilisation, education, and commerce. Its prospects, then, were inferior to those of Derry. But Belfast had the one thing, most needful of all, that Derry had not. It had equitable building tenures. And of this one advantage, look at the result! 'Belfast is now seven times the size of Derry; and is in possession of a trade and a trade capital which Derry can never hope to emulate, while smothered by the stick-in-the-mud policy of that miserable anachronism the Irish Society.' The London companies which have estates in the county Derry claimed to be entitled to all the surplus revenue after the cost of management was deducted. This was the question raised by the celebrated 'Skinners' case,' ultimately decided by the House of Lords. The effect of the decision was, that the society was a trustee, not for the companies but for the public objects defined in the charter and the 'articles of agreement.' Lord Langdale's language on the subject is perfectly clear and explicit. He declared that the Irish Society have not, 'collectively or individually,' any beneficial interest in the estates. In a sense they are trustees. They have important duties to perform; but their powers and duties have all reference to the _Plantation_, whose object was purely public and political. Adverting to this judgment, it is not Derry alone that is interested in the abolition of the Irish Society. Its objects 'affected the general welfare of Ireland and the whole realm.' The city of London, in its corporate capacity, had no beneficial interest in the estates. 'The money which it had advanced was early repaid, and the power which remained, or which was considered to remain, was, like that of the society, an entrusted power for the benefit of the plantation and those interested in it. The Irish Society seems to have been little, if anything, more than the representative or instrument of the city for the purposes of the Plantation.' I subjoin the text of the concluding part of the judgment in the _Skinners' Case_, the report of which fills a very bulky volume:-- Lord Langdale said: 'The mistaken views which the society may have subsequently taken of its own situation and duties (and I think that such mistaken views have several times been taken) do not vary the conclusion to be deduced from the charter and the circumstances contemporary with the grant of the first charter. I am of opinion that the powers granted to the society and the trusts reposed in them were in part of a general and public nature, independent of the private benefit of the companies of London, and were intended by the crown to benefit Ireland and the city of London, by connecting the city of Londonderry and the town of Coleraine and a considerable Irish district with the city of London, and to promote the general purposes of the Plantation, not only by securing the performance of the conditions imposed on ordinary undertakers, but also by the exercise of powers and the performance of trusts not within the scope of those conditions. The charter of Charles II. expressly recites that the property not actually divided was retained for the general operation of the Plantation.' CHAPTER XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN. If there are sermons in stones I ought to have learned something from the ruins of the castle built by Sir Arthur Hill, the founder of the house of Downshire, in which they show the chamber occupied by William III. while his army was encamped at Blaris Moor. This was once a royal fort, and among the most interesting memorials of the past are the primitive gates, long laid aside from duty, the timber gradually mouldering away from the huge nails, which once added to their massive strength. Hillsborough was incorporated by Charles II., and sent two members to parliament. The Hills rose rapidly in rank and influence. In 1717, Trevor Hill, Esq., was created Viscount of Hillsborough and Baron Hill. In 1756, Wills, the second viscount, was made Earl of Hillsborough, and in 1789 he became Marquis of Downshire. Hillsborough is the most perfect picture of a feudal establishment that I know. On one side of the little, quiet, tradeless town are the ruins of the old castle, with its park and its fine ancestral trees, through the thick foliage of which pierces the spire of the church, lofty and beautiful. On the other side, and quite close to the town, is 'the new castle'--an immense building of cut stone, in the Greek style, two storeys high, shut in by high walls from the view of the townsfolk. Then there is the small market-square, with the court-house in the centre, the hotel at the top, and other buildings of a better class on the opposite side. From the hill, which is crowned by these buildings, descend small streets, in which dwell the inhabitants, all more or less dependent on the lord of the manor, all cared for by him, and many of them pensioned when disabled by age or infirmity. There is a monument erected to the memory of the late marquis's father on a hill to the south of the town. The view from this point is glorious. Belfast lies a little beyond, enveloped in the smoke emitted from its numerous tall chimneys. To the left is the range of the Antrim highlands, continued along the coast of the Lough towards Carrickfergus, and from which the Cave Hill stands out in bold relief, looking down on the numerous pretty villas with which the taste of wealthy manufacturers and merchants has adorned those pleasant suburbs. Westward towards Lough Neagh, swelling gradually--southward towards Armagh, and round to Newry, the whole surface of the country gently undulating, presents a vast picture of quiet beauty, fertility, and plenty that can be rivalled only in England. The tall crowded stocks along the ridges of the corn-fields attested the abundance of the crops--the rich greenness and warmth of the landscape showing how well the ground has been drained, manured, and cultivated. The neat, white-walled houses gleaming amidst the verdure of sheltering trees and trimmed hedges tell the thoughtful observer that the people who dwell in this land belong to it, are rooted in it, and ply their industry under the happy feeling that, so far as their old landlords are concerned, their lot is one of 'quietness and assurance for ever.' Nowhere--even on the high ranges about Newry, where the population is far too dense, where the patchwork cultivation creeps up the mountain side, and the hand of industry snatches a precarious return from a poor, cold, ungrateful soil, amidst desolating tempests and blighting fogs--not even there did I notice the least trace of evictions or clearances. No black remnant of a wall tells that where sheep now browze and lambs frisk there was once a fireside, where the family affections were cherished, and a home where happy children played in the sunshine. This is the field of capital and enterprise; here we have an aristocracy of wealth, chiefs of industry, each of whom maintains an army of 'hands' more numerous than the swordsmen of Shane O'Neill when he reigned in his castle yonder on the banks of Lough Neagh. But here also is the aristocracy of rank--lords of ancient lineage, descended from heroes--men who have left magnificent monuments of their creative genius. They have not only founded great houses, but they have laid deep and broad the foundations of a social system to whose strength and beauty every age has been adding something, and which now wants only one topmost stone to make it perfect. I read on the monument to Lord Downshire the expressive motto of the Downshire family--_Per Deum et ferrum obtinui._ No family ever made better use of the power thus obtained. The inscription states that the third marquis was 'alike distinguished for patriotism, rectitude of principle, and honesty of purpose. Upholding his station with becoming dignity, he was also mindful of the wants of others, and practised his duties with benevolence and humility, which won the regard of every virtuous mind, adding lustre to his exalted rank.' Although these words were engraved upon a monument by the friends and admirers of their object, they are perfectly true, and they would be equally true of the late marquis. Lord Downshire is esteemed as the best of landlords. He charges 33 per cent. less for his land than it is worth--than the tenants would be able to pay. Tenant-right on his property sells for an enormous amount. He never evicts a tenant, nor even threatens to evict those who vote against him. What he has done for the contentment and prosperity of his tenants, with so much honour and happiness to himself, other landlords may do with like results. The late lord, his father, and his grandfather pursued the same course. They let their lands at a low valuation. They encouraged improvements--they allowed the free enjoyment of tenant-right; but they refused to allow sub-letting or subdivision of the land. They consolidated farms only when tenants, unable to retain small, worn-out holdings, wished to sell their tenant-right and depart. The consequence is that there is great competition for land on the Downshire estates. The tenant-right sells easily for 30 l. to 40 l. an Irish acre, the rent being on an average about 28 s. If a tenant is not able to pay his way, he is let run on in arrears perhaps for two or three years. Then he feels the necessity of selling; but the arrears are deducted, and also debts that he may owe to his neighbours, before he departs with the proceeds in his pocket. The late marquis seems to have been almost idolised by the tenants. On or off the estate, in town or country, I have heard nothing of him but praise of the warmest and most unqualified kind; and, what is more remarkable, his late agent, Mr. Filgate, was universally respected for his fairness in the discharge of his duties. The way in which I heard this spoken of by the people convinces me that there is nothing that wins their confidence so much as strict impartiality, and justice, calmly, kindly, but firmly administered. The people to whom I spoke laid stress on the fact that Mr. Filgate listened quietly to the statements of both sides, carefully enquired into the merits of each, and decided accordingly. There was no favouritism, they said, no partiality; no hasty decision in a fit of anger, or passion, or impatience; no refusal to listen to reason. I observed to one of the tenants, 'You admit that the rents are much lower than on other estates, much lower than the value of the lands, and that during the last twenty years the tenant-right has increased in value. Suppose, then, that the marquis should raise the rents, say twenty-five per cent., what would be the consequence? Would they pay the increase willingly?' 'Willingly!' he exclaimed, 'no, there would be rebellion! The late lord could do anything with the people; he could raise the country. But you see when they bought the tenant-right they believed they could never be robbed of the value for which they paid by raising the rent.' What can be better than the social picture which Harris presents of the state of society here 130 years ago? 'The inhabitants are warm and well clad at church, fairs, and markets. Tillage and the linen manufacture keep them in constant employment; a busy and laborious life prevents excess and breaches of the laws, which in no part of the kingdom are more reverenced. The people are regular in their attendance on public worship. Few breaches of the peace, felonies, burglaries, or murders come before the judges at the assizes; convictions for capital offences seldom happen. Men travel securely by day, and are afraid of little disturbance at night to keep them on their guard. Every man sits down securely under his vine and his figtree, and enjoys with comfort the fruit of his honest labours.' He ascribes in the main this prosperity to what he calls '_the spirit of tillage_.' Until that spirit arose in Ulster, the Irish had to send to America for their daily bread, 'which,' he says, 'to the astonishment of all Europe, has been often our weakness.' Viewing the whole social condition of the county, he exclaims, 'Such are the happy effects of a well-peopled country, _extensive tillage, the linen manufacture, and the Protestant religion_.' In the first year of the present century, the Dublin Society (not yet 'Royal') employed 'land commissioners' to enquire into the condition of agriculture in the several counties of Ireland. The Rev. John Dubourdieu, rector of Annahilt, in this county, was their commissioner for Down and Antrim. He states that the rent was then on an average 20 s. the _Irish_ acre (three equal to five English), allowing for the mountains and bogs, which he computed at 44,658 acres. The rental of the county he sets down at 300,000 l. The net annual value of property assessed under the Tenement Valuation Act is now 743,869 l. This is considerably under the letting value, it is supposed, 25 per cent. If this be so, the county yields to the proprietors a revenue of about 1,000,000 l. a year. If we add the value of the tenant-right, and of the fixtures of all sorts--houses, mills, roads, bridges--as well as the movable property and stock, we may get some idea of the enormous aggregate of wealth which the labour of man has created on this strip of wild wooded hills, swampy plains, and bogs. Now, what has effected this marvellous change? The tenants, with one voice, exclaim, 'our labour, our capital, our skill, our care, and self-denial. It was we that cleared away the woods which it was so difficult to eradicate. It was we who drained away the bogs and morasses, and by the help of lime and marl converted them into rich land. It was we that built the dwelling-houses and offices. It was we that made the fences, and planted the hedge-rows and orchards. It was we that paid for the making of the roads and bridges. The landlords gave us the wild country to work upon; we have done the rest. Our industry enabled them to build their stately mansions, and we have continued to pay to them their princely revenues. Our forefathers came with them as settlers, that they might "plant" the country with a loyal and industrious race of people, and they came on the assurance that they and their children's children were to remain for ever rooted where they were planted. They did their duty faithfully and well by the land, by the landlords, and by the Government. Where the children that inherited their rights failed, their interest in their farms has been purchased dearly by others of the same race who have taken their places. By what right, then, can they be turned out?' It is not possible, if it were desirable, to introduce the 'high farming system' in this county. But if possible, would it be desirable? In the eye of a scientific agriculturist it might be better that all those comfortable farm-houses, with the innumerable fences crossing the landscape in every possible form, making all sorts of mathematical figures, presenting the appearance of an immense variegated patchwork--were levelled and removed so that the plough and all the modern machinery might range unobstructed over hill and vale. But assuredly it would not seem better to the philanthropist, the Christian, or the statesman. To the chancellor of the exchequer it would make the most serious difference; for a few herds and ploughmen would consume but a very small portion indeed of the excisable articles now used by the tenant farmers of this county. I have taken some notes on the diet of this people which may be instructive. At the beginning of the present century the small farmers were generally weavers. There was an obvious incompatibility in the two occupations, and the farms were neglected. Gradually this evil has been corrected, especially since the famine. The weavers have become cottiers, and the farmers have devoted themselves to their agricultural operations exclusively with the more energy since railroads have so facilitated the quick sale of produce, particularly that sort of produce which enables the occupiers to supply the markets with the smaller necessaries of life, and with which large farmers would not trouble themselves. Daily labourers working from 6 A.M., to 6 P.M. in large fields with machinery cannot do the hundreds of little matters which the family of the small holder attends to every hour of the day, often in the night--and which give work to women and children as well as the men--work of the most healthful character and most free from demoralizing influences. On a farm of fifteen to thirty acres there is constant employment of a profitable kind for the members of a household, including women and children. The effect of good drainage is that farming operations can be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are high. Oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the hay-making, and all the harvest operations. It is by the ceaseless activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs, &c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, and that towns grow up and prosper. If Down and Antrim had been divided into farms of thousands of acres each, like Lincolnshire, what would Belfast have become? Little more than a port for the shipping of live stock to Liverpool and Glasgow. Before the famine, the food of the small farmers was generally potatoes and milk three times a day, with a bit of meat occasionally. But salt herrings were the main reliance for giving a flavour to the potato, often 'wet' and bad. After the failure of the potatoes, their place was supplied by oatmeal in the form of 'stirabout.' Indian meal was subsequently found cheaper and more wholesome. But of late years the diet of the farmers in these parts has undergone a complete revolution. There is such brisk demand for butter, eggs, potatoes, and other things that used to be consumed by the family, that they have got into the habit of taking tea, with cakes and other home-made bread twice, or even three times, a day. The demand for tea is, therefore, enormous. There is one grocer's establishment in Belfast which has been able to produce a mixture that suits the taste of the people, and the quantity of tea sold by it is a ton a day. This is the business of but one out of many houses in Belfast. Then there is the brisk trade in such towns as Newtownards, Lisburn, Ballymena, &c. In pastoral districts the towns languish, the people pine in poverty, and the workhouses are in request. In a financial point of view, therefore, it is manifestly the interest of the state to encourage 'the spirit of tillage.' It is thus that most will be got out of the ground, that most revenue will be raised, and that the other elements of national power will be most fully developed. How can this encouragement be most effectually given? Security for the farmer is essential--of what nature should the security be? The phrase 'unexhausted improvements' is often used. But should the legislature contemplate, or make provision for the exhaustion of improvements? Is the improving tenant to be told that his remedy is to retrograde--to undo what he has done--to take out of the land all the good he has put in it, and reduce it to the comparative sterility in which he, or those whom he represents, first received it? Should not the policy of the legislature rather be to keep up improvements of the soil, and its productive power at the highest possible point, and make it the interest of the occupier never to relax in his exertions? The rower will not put forth all his strength unless he believes he will win. In other races, though many start, only one or two can receive the prize. In this race of agricultural improvement all competitors might win ample rewards. But will they put forth all their energies--is it in human nature that they should--was it ever done by any people, if the prizes are to be seized, enjoyed, and flaunted before their eyes by others, who may be strangers, and who never helped them by their sympathy in their toilsome course of training and self-denial? It is because the landlords of the county Down have been so often in the same boat with their tenants, and with so much good faith, generous feeling, and cordial sympathy encouraged their exertions, and secured to them their just rewards, that this great county presents to the world such a splendid example of what industry, skill, and capital can accomplish. Is it not possible to extend the same advantages through the whole island without wronging the landlord or degrading the tenant? The stranger is at first surprised to see so large a town as Newtownards, with its handsome square, its town-hall, its wide, regular streets, its numerous places of worship, and a population of 9,500, in a place without visible factories, and without communication with the sea, within eight miles of Belfast, and three miles of Bangor, which, though a seaport, is but one-fourth of the size. But although there are no great mills sending forth volumes of smoke, Newtownards is really a manufacturing town. Those clean, regular streets, with their two-storey houses, uniform as a district in the east of London, are inhabited by weavers. In each house there is one loom at least, in most two or three, and in some as many as six. The manufacture of woollen and cotton goods of finer qualities than can be produced by the power-loom is carried on extensively. I saw one man working at a piece of plaid of six colours, a colour on every shuttle, With the help of his wife, who assisted in winding, he was able to earn only 8 s. a week by very diligent work from early morning till night. There is a general complaint of the depression of trade at present. Agents, chiefly from Glasgow houses, living in the town, supply the yarn and pay the wages. I was struck with the number of public-houses in all the leading streets. How far they are supported by the weavers I cannot say, but whether or not they can dispense with the glass, they must have their tobacco, and when this luxury is deducted, and a shilling a week for the rent of the cottage, it is hard to understand how a family of six or eight can be supported on the weekly wages. The trade of muslin embroidery once flourished here, and in the pretty little neighbouring town of Comber; but it has so fallen off that now the best hands, plying the needle unceasingly during the long, long day, can earn only three or four shillings a week. Before the invention of machinery for flax-spinning, the manufacture of fine thread by hand-labour was a most profitable employment. Wonders were wrought in this way by female fingers. The author of 'Our Staple Manufactures' states that in 1799, out of a pound and a half of flax, costing 10 s., a woman produced yarn of the value of 5 l. 2 s. 6 d. Miss M'Quillan, of Comber, spun 94 hanks out of one pound of flax, splitting the fibre with her needles to give this degree of fineness. But alas! what a change to the cottage hearth! The song of the wheel's no more-- The song that gladdened with guileless mirth The hearths and homes of the poor! But here, and in all the small towns about, they have still the weaving, and it is carried on to a considerable extent by persons who hold a few acres of land, throwing aside the shuttle while putting in the crops and doing the harvest work. Thus combining the two pursuits, these poor people are able, by extraordinary industry, to earn their daily bread; but they can do little more. The weavers, as a class, appear to be feeble and faded specimens of humanity, remarkably quiet, intelligent, and well-disposed--a law-abiding people, who shrink from violence and outrage, no matter what may be their grievances. It is cruel to load them too heavily with the burdens of life, and yet I am afraid it is sometimes done, even in this county, unnecessarily and wantonly. What I have said of the Downshire and Londonderry estates, holds good with respect to the estates of the other large proprietors, such as Lord Roden, the kindest of landlords, almost idolised, even by his Catholic tenants; Lord Annesley; the trustees of Lord Kilmurray; Sir Thomas Bateson, and others. But I am sorry to learn that even the great county Down has a share of the two classes which supply the worst species of Irish landlords--absentees who live extravagantly in England, and merchants who have purchased estates to make as large a percentage as possible out of the investment. It is chiefly, but not wholly, on the estates of these proprietors that cases of injustice and oppression are found. In the first class it is the agent that the tenants have to deal with; and whether he be humane or not matters little to them, for, whatever may be his feelings, the utmost penny must be exacted to keep up the expensive establishments of the landlord in England, to meet the cost of a new building, or the debt incurred by gambling on the turf and elsewhere. Every transaction of the kind brings a fresh demand on the agent, and even if he be not unscrupulous or cruel, he must put on the screw, and get the money at all hazards. I have been assured that it is quite usual, on such estates, to find the tenantry paying the highest rent compatible with the maintenance of bare life. There is in the county of Down a great number of small holders thus struggling for existence. As a specimen let us take the following case:--A man holds a dozen acres of land, for which he pays 2 l. 10 s. per acre. He labours as no slave could be made to work, in the summer time from five o'clock in the morning till six in the evening. He can hardly scrape together a pound beyond the rent and taxes. If a bad season comes, he is at starvation point: he falls into arrears with the landlord, and he is forced by the bailiff to sell off his small stock to pay the rent. Without the excuse of pecuniary difficulties, the merchant landlord is not a whit less exacting, or more merciful. He looks upon the tenants as he would on so many head of cattle, and his sole consideration is what is the highest penny he can make out of them. Not far from Belfast lived a farmer who cultivated a few acres. Sickness and the support of a widowed sister's family forced him into arrears of rent. Ejectment proceedings were taken, and one day when he returned to his house, he found his furniture thrown out on the road, the sister and family evicted, and the door locked. He was offered as much money as would take him to America, but he would not be allowed to sell the tenant-right. Here is another case illustrative of the manner in which that right is sometimes dealt with:--A respectable man purchased a farm at 10 l. an acre. It was very poor land, much of it unfit for cultivation. Immediately on getting possession a surveyor came and added two acres to the former measurement. The incoming tenant was at the same time informed that the rent was raised to an extent that caused the possession to be a dead loss. On threatening to throw up the concern, some reduction was made, which brought the rent as close as possible to the full letting value. I have been told by a well-informed gentleman, whose veracity I cannot doubt, that it is quite common in the county of Down (and indeed I have been told the same thing in other counties) to find an _improving_ tenant paying 2 l. to 3 l. an acre for land, which he has at his own expense brought up to a good state of cultivation, while the adjoining land of his lazy neighbour--originally of equal value--yields only 20 s. to 35 s. an acre. The obvious tendency of this unjust and impolitic course on the part of landlords and agents, is to discourage improvements, to dishearten the industrious, and to fill the country with thriftless, desponding, and miserable occupiers, living from hand to mouth. There are circumstances under which even selfish men will toil hard, though others should share with them the benefit of their labours; but if they feel that this partnership in the profits of their industry is the result of a system of legalised injustice, which enables unscrupulous men to appropriate at will the whole of the profits, their moral sense so revolts against that system that they resolve to do as little as they possibly can. The consequence of these painful relations of landlord and tenant, even in this comparatively happy county, is a perceptible degeneracy in the manhood of the people. Talk to an old inhabitant, who has been an attentive observer of his times, and he will tell you that the vigorous and energetic, the intelligent and enterprising, are departing to more favoured lands, and that this process has produced a marked deterioration in the population within his memory. He can distinctly recollect when there were more than double the present number of strong farmers in the country about Belfast. He declares that, with many exceptions of course, the land is getting into the hands of a second or third class of farmers, who are little more than servants to the small landlords. Even where there are leases, such intelligent observers affirm that they are so over-ridden with conditions that the farmer has no liberty or security to make any great improvements. Were it otherwise he would not think a thirty-one years' lease sufficient for the building of a stone house, that would be as good at the end of a hundred years as at the end of thirty. All the information that I can gather from thoughtful men, who are really anxious for a change that would benefit the landlords as well as themselves, points to the remedy which Lord Granard has suggested, as the most simple, feasible, and satisfactory--the legalisation and extension of the tenant-right custom. They rejoice that such landlords now proclaim the injustice which the tenant class have so long bitterly felt--namely, the presumption of law that all the improvements and buildings on the farm belong to the lord of the soil, although the notorious fact is that they are all the work of the tenant. And here I will take the opportunity of remarking that the legislature were guilty of strange oversight, or deliberate injustice, in the passing of the Incumbered Estates Act. Taking advantage of an overwhelming national calamity, they forced numbers of gentlemen into a ruinous sale of their patrimonial estates, in order that men of capital might get possession of them. But they made no provision whatever for the protection of the tenants, or of the property which those tenants had created on these estates. Many of those were tenants at will, who built and planted in perfect and well-grounded reliance on the honour and integrity of their old landlords. But in the advertisements for the sale of property under the Landed Estates Court, it was regularly mentioned as an inducement to purchasers of the Scully type that the tenants had no leases. The result of this combination of circumstances bearing against the cultivators of the soil--the chief producers of national wealth--is a deep, resentful sense of injustice pervading this class, and having for its immediate objects the landlords and their agents. The tenants don't speak out their feelings, because they dare not. They fear that to offend the _office_ in word or deed is to expose themselves and their children to the infliction of a fine in the shape of increased rent, perhaps at the rate of five or ten shillings an acre in perpetuity. One unfortunate effect of the distrust thus generated, is that when enlightened landlords, full of the spirit of improvement, like Lord Dufferin and Lord Lurgan, endeavour, from the most unselfish and patriotic motives, to make changes in the tenures and customs on their estates, they have to encounter an adverse current of popular opinion and feeling, which is really too strong to be effectually resisted. For example: In order to correct the evils resulting from the undue competition for land among the tenants, they limit the amount per acre which the outgoing tenant is permitted to receive; but the limitation is futile, because the tenants understand one another, and do what they believe to be right behind the landlord's back. The market price is, say, 20 l. an acre. The landlord allows 10 l.; the balance finds its way secretly into the pocket of the outgoing tenant before he gives up possession. As a gentleman expressed it to me emphatically, 'The outgoing tenant _must_ be satisfied, and he _is_ satisfied.' Public opinion in his own class demands it; and on no other terms would it be considered lucky to take possession of the vacant farm. CHAPTER XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM. I find from the Antrim Survey, published in 1812, that at that time leases were general on the Hertfort estate. There were then about 3,600 farmers who held by that tenure, each holding, on an average, twenty English acres, but many farms contained 100 acres or more. Mr. Hugh M'Call, of Lisburn, the able author of 'Our Staple Manufactures,' gives the following estimates of the rental. In 1726, it was 3,500 l.; in 1768, it was 12,000 l.; and for 1869, his estimate is 63,000 l. Taking the estimate given by Dean Stannus, as 10 l. or 12 l. an acre, the tenant-right of the estate is worth 500,000 l. at the very least, probably 600,000 l. is the more correct figure. This vast amount of property created by the industry and capital of the tenants, is held at the will of an absentee landlord, who has on several occasions betrayed an utter want of sympathy with the people who lie thus at his mercy. There are tenant farmers on the estate who hold as much as 100 to 200 acres, with handsome houses built by themselves, whose interest, under the custom, should amount to 1,500 l. and 2,500 l. respectively, which might be legally swept away by a six months' notice to quit. The owners of this property might be regarded as very independent, but in reality, unless the spirit of martyrdom has raised them above the ordinary feelings of human nature, they will take care to be very humble and submissive towards Lord Hertfort's agents. If words were the same as deeds, if professions were always consistent with practice, the tenants would certainly have nothing to fear; for great pains have been taken from time to time, both by the landlord and agent, to inspire them with unbounded confidence. In the year 1845, the tenants presented an address to Lord Hertfort, in which they said:--'It is a proud fact, worthy to be recorded, that the tenant-right of the honest and industrious man on your lordship's estate is a certain and valuable tenure to him, so long as he continues to pay his rent.' To this his lordship replied in the following terms:--'I am happy to find that the encouragement I have given to the improvement of the land generally has been found effectual, and I trust that the advantage to the tenant of the improved system of agriculture will be found to increase; and I beg to assure you that with me the right of the improving tenant shall continue to be as scrupulously respected as it has been hitherto by my ancestors. Your kindness alone, independent of the natural interest which I must ever feel as to everything connected with this neighbourhood, affords a powerful inducement to my coming among you, and I hope to have the pleasure of often repeating my visit.' Twenty-four years have since elapsed, and during all that time the marquis has never indulged himself in a repetition of the exquisite pleasure he then enjoyed. At a banquet given in his honour on that occasion, he used the following language, which was, no doubt, published in the _Times_, and read with great interest in London and Paris:--'This is one of the most delightful days I ever spent. Trust me, I have your happiness and welfare at heart, and it shall ever be my endeavour to promote the one and contribute to the other.' The parting scene on this occasion must have been very touching; for, in tearing himself away, his lordship said: 'I have now come to the concluding toast. It is, "Merry have we met, and merry may we _soon_ meet again!"' The tenants could scarcely doubt the genuineness of their landlord's feelings, for on the same occasion Dean Stannus said: 'I feel myself perfectly justified in using the term "a good landlord;" because his lordship's express wish to me often was, "I hope you will always keep me in such a position that I may be considered the friend of my tenants."' But as he did not return to them, a most respectable deputation waited upon him in London in the year 1850, to present a memorial praying for a reduction of rent on account of the potato blight and other local calamities which had befallen the tenantry. The memorialists respectfully showed 'that under the encouraging auspices of the Hertfort family, and on the faith of that just and equitable understanding which has always existed on this estate--that _no advantage would be taken of the tenant's improvements in adjusting the letting value of land_, they had invested large sums of money in buildings and other improvements on their farms, and that this, under the name of tenant-right, was a species of sunk capital that was formerly considered a safe repository for accumulated savings, which could be turned to account at any time of difficulty by its sale, or as a security for temporary advances.' In his reply, Lord Hertfort said, 'I seek not to disturb any interest, much less do I wish to interfere by any plan or arrangement of mine with the tenant-right which my tenants have hitherto enjoyed, and which it is my anxious wish to preserve to them.' The faith and hope inspired by these assurances of the landlord were repeatedly encouraged and strengthened by the public declarations of his very reverend agent, Dean Stannus. At a meeting of the Killultagh and Derryvolgie Farming Society, in 1849, he stated that he had great pleasure in subscribing to almost everything said by Mr. M'Call. He had taken great pains to convince the late Lord Hertfort that tenant-right was one of the greatest possible boons, _as well to the landlords themselves_ as to the tenants. So advantageous did he regard it to the interest of Lord Hertfort and the tenants, that if it were not preserved he would not continue agent to the estate. Tenant-right was his security for the Marquis of Hertfort's rent, and he would not ask a tenant to relinquish a single rood of land without paying him at the rate of 10 l. to 12 l. an acre for it. Firmly believing in the statements thus emphatically and solemnly made to them from time to time, that on this estate tenant-right was as good as a lease, the tenants went on building houses, and making permanent improvements in Lisburn and elsewhere, depending on this security. And, indeed, the value of such security could scarcely be presented under more favourable circumstances. The absentee landlord receiving such a princely revenue, and absorbed in his Parisian pursuits, seemed to leave everything to his agent. The agent was rector of the parish of Lisburn, a dignitary of the Church, a gentleman of the highest social position, with many excellent points in his character, and pledged before the world, again and again, to respect rigidly and scrupulously the enormous property which a confiding tenantry had invested in this estate. If, under these circumstances, the security of tenant-right fails, where else can it be trusted? If it be proved, by open and public proceedings, that on the Hertfort estate, the distinctly recognised property of the tenant is liable to be seized and wrested from him by the agent, it is clear to demonstration that such property absolutely requires the protection of law. This proof, I am sorry to say, is forthcoming. Let my readers reflect for a moment on what might have been done for Lisburn and the surrounding country if the Marquis of Hertfort had rebuilt his castle and resided among his people. What an impulse to improvement of every kind, what employment for tradesmen of every class, what business for shops might have resulted from the local expenditure of 50,000 l. or 60,000 l. a year! What public buildings would have been erected--how local institutions would have flourished! The proverb that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' does not apply to the relations of landlord and tenant. But there is another proverb that applies well--'Out of sight, out of mind.' Of this I shall now give two or three illustrations. Some years ago, it was discovered that no lease of the Catholic chapel at Lisburn could be found, and in the recollection of the oldest member of the congregation no rent had been paid. Kent, however, was now demanded, and the parish priest agreed to pay a nominal amount, which places the congregation at the mercy of the office. Ground was asked some time ago to build a Presbyterian Church, but it was absolutely refused. A sum of money was subscribed to build a literary institute, but, though a sort of promise was given for ground to build it on, it was never granted, and the project fell through. Lord Hertfort spends no portion of his vast income where it is earned. His estate is like a farm to which the produce is never returned in the shape of manure, but is all carted off and applied to the enrichment of a farm elsewhere. One might suppose that where such an exhausting process has been going on for so long a time an effort would be made at some sort of compensation, especially at periods of calamity. Yet, when the weavers on his estate were starving, owing to the cotton famine during the American war, his lordship never replied to the repeated applications made to him for help to save alive those honest producers of his wealth. The noble example of Lord Derby and other proprietors in Lancashire failed to kindle in his heart a spark of humanity, not to speak of generous emulation. The sum of 3,000 l. was raised in Lisburn, and by friends in Great Britain and America, which was expended in saving the people from going _en masse_ to the workhouse. Behold a contrast! While the great peer, whose family inherited a vast estate for which they never paid a shilling, was deaf to the cries of famishing Christians, whom he was bound by every tie to commiserate and relieve, an American citizen, who owed nothing to Ireland but his birth--Mr. A.T. Stewart, of New York--sent a ship loaded with provisions, which cost him 5,000 l. of his own money, to be distributed amongst Lord Hertfort's starving tenants, and on the return of the ship he took out as many emigrants as he could accommodate, free of charge. The tourist in Ireland is charmed with the appearance of Lisburn--the rich and nicely cultivated town parks, the fields white as snow with linen of the finest quality, the busy mills, the old trees, the clean streets, the look of comfort in the population, the pretty villas in the country about. Mrs. S.C. Hall says that there is, probably, no town in Ireland where the happy effects of English taste and industry are more conspicuous than at Lisburn. 'From Drumbridge and the banks of the Lagan on one side, to the shores of Lough Neagh on the other, the people are almost exclusively the descendants of English settlers. Those in the immediate neighbourhood of the town were mostly Welsh, but great numbers arrived from the northern English shires, and from the neighbourhood of the Bristol Channel. The English language is perhaps spoken more purely by the populace of this district than by the same class in any other part of Ireland. The neatness of the cottages, and the good taste displayed in many of the farms, are little, if at all, inferior to aught that we find in England, and the tourist who visits Lough Neagh, passing through Ballinderry, will consider it to have been justly designated _the garden of the north._ The multitude of pretty little villages, scattered over the landscape, each announcing itself by the tapering tower of a church, would almost beguile the traveller into believing that he was passing through a rural district in one of the midland counties of England.' We have seen that after General Conway got this land, it was described by an English traveller as still uninhabited--'all woods and moor.' Who made it the garden of the north? The British settlers and their descendants. And why did they transform this wilderness into fruitful fields? Because they had permanent tenures and fair rents. The rental 150 years ago was 3,500 l. per annum. Allow that money was three times as valuable then as it is now, and the rental would have been about 10,500 l. It is now nearly six times that amount. By what means was the revenue of the landlord increased? Was it by any expenditure of his own? Did any portion of the capital annually abstracted from the estate return to it, to fructify and increase its value? Did the landlord drain the swamps, reclaim the moors, build the dwellings and farmhouses, make the fences, and plant the orchards? He did nothing of the kind. Nor was it agricultural industry alone that increased his revenue. He owes much of the beauty, fertility, and richness of his estate to the linen manufacture, to those weavers to the cries of distress from whose famishing children a few years ago the most noble marquis resolutely turned a deaf ear. But, passing from historical matters to the immediate purpose of our enquiry, let it suffice to remark that from Lisburn as a centre the linen trade in all its branches--flax growing, scutching, spinning, weaving and bleaching--spread over the whole of the Hertfort estate, giving profitable employment to the tenants, circulating money, enabling them to build and improve and work the estate into the rich and beautiful garden described by Mrs. Hall;--all this work of improvement has been carried on, all or nearly all the costly investments on the land have been made, without leases and in dependence on tenant-right. We have seen what efforts were made by landlord and agent to strengthen the faith of the tenants in this security. We have seen also from the historical facts I have adduced the sort of people that constitute the population of the borough of Lisburn. If ever there was a population that could be safely entrusted with the free exercise of the franchise it is the population of this town--so enlightened, so loyal, so independent in means, such admirable producers of national wealth, so naturally attached to British connection. Yet for generations Lisburn has been a pocket borough, and the nominee of the landlord, often a total stranger, was returned as a matter of course. The marquis sent to his agent a _congé d'élire_, and that was as imperative as a similar order to a dean and chapter to elect a bishop. In 1852 the gentleman whom the Lisburn electors were ordered to return was Mr. Inglis, the lord advocate of Scotland. They, however, felt that the time was come when the borough should be opened, and they should be at liberty to exercise their constitutional rights. A meeting of the inhabitants was therefore held, at which Mr. R. Smith was nominated as the popular candidate. The contest was not political; it was simply the independence of the borough against the _office_. Dean Stannus, as agent to an absentee landlord, was the most powerful personage in the place, virtually the lord of the manor. Before the election that gentleman published a letter in a Belfast paper contradicting a statement that had appeared to the effect that Lord Hertfort took little interest in the approaching contest, in which letter he said: 'I have the best reason for knowing that his lordship views with intense interest what is passing here, and that he is most anxious for the return of Mr. Inglis, feeling that the election of such a representative (which I am now enabled to say is _certain_) will do much credit to the borough of Lisburn, and that this _unmeaning_ contest will, at all events, among its other effects, prove to his lordship whom he may regard as his _true_ friends in his future relations with this town.' Notwithstanding this warning, so significantly emphasized, the candidate whom the voters selected as their real representative was returned. Now no one can blame the marquis or his agent for wishing that the choice had fallen upon Mr. Inglis. So far as politics were concerned, the contest _was_ unmeaning; but so far as the rights of the people and the loyal working of the British constitution were concerned, the contest was full of meaning, and if the landlord and his agent respected the constitution more than their own personal power they would have frankly acquiesced in the result, feeling that this Protestant and Conservative constituency had conscientiously done its duty to the state. But who could have imagined, after all the solemnly recorded pledges I have quoted, that they would have instantly resolved to punish the independent exercise of the franchise by inflicting an enormous and crushing fine amounting to nothing less than the whole tenant-right property of every adverse voter who had not a lease! Immediately after the election 'notices to quit' were served upon every one of them. In consequence of this outrageous proceeding a public meeting was held, at which a letter from John Millar, Esq., a most respectable and wealthy man (who was unable to attend) was read by the secretary. He said: 'I have at various times purchased places held from year to year, relying on the custom of the country, and on the declared determination of the landlord and his agent to respect such customary rights of property, for the continued possession of it. I have besides taken under the same landlord several fields as town parks, which were in very bad order. These fields I have drained and very much improved. I have always punctually paid the rent charged for the several holdings, and, I think I may venture to say, performed all the duties of a good tenant. At the last election, however, I exercised my right as a citizen of a free country, by giving my votes at Hillsborough and Lisburn in favour of the tenant-right candidates, without reference to the desires or orders of those who have no legal or constitutional right to control the use of my franchise. I have since received from the office a notice to quit, desiring me to give up possession of all my holdings, as tenant from year to year, in the counties of Down and Antrim, without any intimation that I shall receive compensation, and without being able to obtain any explanation of this conduct towards me except by popular rumour.' At the same meeting Mr. Hugh M'Call said that he had looked over some documents and found that the individuals in Lisburn who had received notices to quit held property to the value of 3,000 l., property raised by themselves, or purchased by them with the sanction of the landlord. In one case the agent himself went into the premises where buildings were being erected, and suggested some changes. In fact the improvements were carried out under his inspection as an architect. Yet he served upon that gentleman a notice to quit. Some of the tenants paid the penalty for their votes by surrendering their holdings; others contested the right of eviction on technical points, and succeeded at the quarter sessions. One of the points was, as already mentioned, that a dean and rector could not be legally a land agent at the same time. It was, indeed, a very ugly fact that the rector of the parish should be thus officially engaged, not only in nullifying the political rights of his own Protestant parishioners, but in destroying their tenant-right, evicting them from their holdings, which _they_ believed to be legal robbery and oppression, accompanied by such flagrant breach of faith as tended to destroy all confidence between man and man, and thus to dissolve the strongest bonds of society. Sad work for a dignitary of the church to be engaged in! In April, 1856, there was another contested election. On that occasion the marquis wrote to a gentleman in Lisburn that he would not interfere 'directly or indirectly to influence anybody.' Nevertheless, notices to quit, signed by Mr. Walter L. Stannus, assistant and successor to his father, were extensively served upon tenants-at-will, though it was afterwards alleged that they were only served as matters of form. But what, then, did they mean? They meant that those who had voted against the office had, _ipso facto, forfeited their tenant-right property._ Many other incidents in the management of the estate have been constantly occurring more recently, tending to show that the most valuable properties created by the tenants-at-will are at the mercy of the landlord, and that tenant-right, so called, is not regarded by him as a matter of _right_ at all, but merely as a _favour_, to be granted to those who are dutiful and submissive to the office in all matters, political and social. For instance, one farmer was refused permission to sell his tenant-right till he consented to sink 100 l. or 200 l. in the shares of the Lisburn and Antrim railway, so that, as he believed, he was obliged to throw away his money in order to get his right. The enormous power of an office which can deal with property amounting to more than half a million sterling, in such an arbitrary manner, necessarily generates a spirit of wanton and capricious despotism, except where the mind is very well regulated and the heart severely disciplined by Christian duty. Of this I feel bound to give the following illustration, which I would not do if the fact had not been made public, and if I had not the best evidence that it is undeniable. George Beattie, jun., a grocer's assistant in Lisburn, possessed a beautiful greyhound which he left in charge of George Beattie, sen., his uncle, on departing for America. This uncle possessed a farm on the Hertfort estate, the tenant-right of which he wanted to sell. Having applied to Mr. Stannus for permission, the answer he received was that he would not be allowed to sell until the head of the greyhound was brought to the office. The tenant remonstrated and offered to send the dog away off the estate to relatives, but to no effect. He was obliged to kill the greyhound, and to send its head in a bag to Lord Hertfort's office. It was a great triumph for the agent. What a pretty sensational story he had to tell the young ladies in the refined circles in which he moves. How edifying the recital must have been to the peasantry around him! How it must have exalted their ideas of the civilising influence of land agency. 'It is quite a common thing,' says a gentleman well acquainted with the estate, 'when a tenant becomes insolvent, that his tenant-right is sold and employed to pay those of his creditors who may be in favour. I know a lady who made application to have a claim against a small farmer registered in the office, which was done, and she now possesses the security of the man's tenant-right for her money.' The case of the late Captain Bolton is the last illustration I shall give in connection with this estate. Captain Bolton resided in Lisburn, and he was one of the most respected of its inhabitants. He was the owner of four houses in that town, a property which he acquired in this way:--The site of two of them was obtained by the late James Hogg, in lieu of freehold property surrendered. On this ground, his son, Captain Bolton's uncle, built the two houses entirely at his own expense. Two other houses, immediately adjoining, came into the market, and he purchased the out-going tenant's 'good-will' for a sum of about 40 l. These houses were thatched, and in very bad condition. He repaired them and slated them, and thus formed a nice uniform block of four workers' houses. Captain Bolton inherited these from his uncle and retained uninterrupted possession till 1852, when he voted for Johnston Smyth at the election of that date. Immediately afterwards he received a notice to quit, an ejectment was brought in due time, the case was dismissed at the quarter sessions, an appeal was lodged, but it was again dismissed at the assizes. Undaunted by these two defeats, the persistent agent served another notice to quit. The captain was a man of peace, whose nerves could not stand such perpetual worrying by litigation, and he was so disgusted with the whole affair that he tied up the keys, and sent them to Lord Hertfort's office. In his ledger that day he made the following entry:--'Plundered, this 20th December 1854, by our worthy agent to the marquis, because I voted for Smyth and the independence of the borough.--J.B.' The houses remained in the hands of the agent till the next election, when Captain Bolton voted for Mr. Hogg, the office candidate. The conscientious old gentleman--as good a conservative as Dean Stannus--voted from principle in both cases and not to please the agent or anyone else. The agent, however, thought proper to regard it as a penitent act, and as the tenant had ceased to be naughty, and had, it was assumed, shown proper deference to his political superiors, he received his houses back again, retaining the possession of them till his death. The profit rent of the houses is 20 l. a year. Either this rent belonged to Captain Bolton or to Lord Hertfort. If to Captain Bolton, by what right did Dean Stannus take it from him and give it to the landlord? If to the landlord, by what right did Dean Stannus take it from Lord Hertfort and give it to Captain Bolton? However, the latter gentleman having no doubt whatever, first or last, that the property was his own, bequeathed the houses to trustees for the support of a school which he had established in Lisburn. The school, it appears, had been placed in connection with the Church Education Society, and as it did not go on to his satisfaction, he placed it in connection with the National Board of Education, having appointed as his trustees John Campbell, Esq., M.D., William Coulson, Esq., and the Rev. W.J. Clarke, Presbyterian minister, all of Lisburn. Dr. Campbell died soon after, and Mr. Coulson refused to act, so that the burden of the trust fell upon Mr. Clarke, who felt it to be his duty to carry it out to the best of his ability. Dean Stannus, however, was greatly dissatisfied with the last will and testament of Captain Bolton. Yet the dying man had no reason to anticipate that his affectionate pastor would labour with all his might to abolish the trust. Dean Stannus paid the captain a visit on his deathbed, and while administering the consolations of religion he seemed moved even to tears. To a friend who subsequently expressed doubt, the simple-minded old Christian said: 'I will trust the dean that he will do nothing in opposition to my will. He was here a few days ago and wept over me. He loves me, and will carry out my wishes.' The captain died in April, 1867. He was scarcely cold in his grave when the agent of Lord Hertfort took proceedings to eject his trustees, and deprive the schools of the property bequeathed for their support. Not content with this, he took proceedings to get possession of the schoolhouse also, deeming it a sufficient reason for this appropriation of another man's property, this setting aside of a will, this abolition of a trust, that, in his opinion, the schools ought to be under the patronage of the rector, and in connection with the Church Education Society. He had a perfect right to think and say this, and it might be his conscientious conviction that the property would be thus better employed; but he ought to know that the end does not sanctify the means; that he had no right to substitute his own will for that of Captain Bolton, and that he had no right to take advantage of the absence of an act of parliament to possess himself of the rightful property of other people. Unfortunately, too, he was a judge in his own case, and he did not find it easy to separate the rector of the parish from the agent of the estate. It is a significant fact that when his son, Mr. Stannus, handed his power of attorney to Mr. Otway, the assistant-barrister, that gentleman refused to look at it, saying, 'I have seen it one hundred times;' and the Rev. Mr. Clarke, while waiting in the court for the case to come on, observed that all the ejectment processes were at the suit of the Marquis of Hertfort. The school-house was built by Mr. Bolton, at his own expense twenty-eight years ago, and he maintained it till his death. The Rev. W.J. Clarke, the acting trustee, bravely defended his trust and fought the battle of tenant-right in the courts till driven out by the sheriff. He was then called on to perform the same duty with regard to the school-house. He has done it faithfully and well, and deserves the sympathy of all the friends of freedom, justice, and fair dealing. 'I shall never accept a trust,' he says, in a letter to the _Northern Whig_--'I shall never accept a trust, and permit any man, whether nobleman, agent, or bailiff, to alienate that trust, without appealing to the laws of my country; and if the one-sidedness of such laws shall enable Dean and Mr. Stannus to confiscate this property, and turn it from the purpose to which benevolence designed it, then, having defended it to the last, I shall retire from the field satisfied that I have done my duty to the memory of the dead and the educational interests of the living.' Nor can we be surprised at the strong language that he uses when he says: 'The history of the case rivals, for blackness of persecution, anything that has happened in the north of Ireland for many years. But such a course of conduct only recoils on the heads of those who are guilty of it, and it shall be so in this case. The Marquis of Hertfort will not live always, and the power of public opinion may be able to reach his successor, and be felt even in Lisburn.' Dean Stannus, in his evidence before the Devon commission, stated that only a small portion of the estate was held by lease. The leases were obtained in a curious way. In 1823 a system of fining commenced. If a tenant wanted a lease he was required to pay in cash a fine of 10 l. an acre, which was equal to an addition of ten shillings an acre to the rent for twenty years, not counting the interest on the money thus sunk in the land. Yet, such was the desire of the tenants to have a better security than the tenant-right custom, always acknowledged on the estate, that 'every man who had money took advantage of it.' Mr. Gregg, the seneschal of the manor, gave an illustration of the working of this fining system. A tenant sold his farm of fourteen acres for 205 l., eight of the fourteen acres being held at will. The person who bought the farm was obliged to take a lease of the eight acres, and to pay a proportional fine in addition to the sum paid for the tenant-right. Dean Stannus said 'he would wish to see the tenant-right upheld upon the estate of Lord Hertfort, as it always had been. It is that,' he said, 'which has kept up the properties in the north over the properties in other parts of Ireland. It is a security for the rent in the first instance, and reconciles the tenants to much of what are called grievances. If you go into a minute calculation of what they have expended, they are not more than paid for their expenditure.' It transpired in the course of the examination that a man who had purchased tenant-right, and paid a fine of 10 l. an acre on getting a lease, would have to pay a similar fine over again when getting the lease renewed. The result of these heavy advances was that the middle-class farmers lived in constant pecuniary difficulties. They were obliged to borrow money at six per cent. to pay the rent, but they borrowed it under circumstances which made it nearly 40 per cent., for it was lent by dealers in oatmeal and other things, from whom they were obliged to purchase large quantities of goods at such a high rate that they sold them again at a sacrifice of 33 per cent. Mr. Joshua Lamb, another witness, stated that the effect of the fining system had been to draw away a great deal of the accumulated capital out of the hands of the tenantry, as well as their anticipated savings for years to come, by which the carrying out of improved methods of agriculture was prevented. Still, the existence of a lease for 31 years doubled the value of the tenant-right. This witness made a remarkable statement. With respect to this custom he said: The 'effect of this arrangement, when duly observed, is to prevent all disputes, quarrels, burnings, and destruction of property, so common in those parts of Ireland where this practice does not prevail. Indeed, so fully are farmers aware of this, that very few, except the most reckless, would venture on taking a farm without obtaining the outgoing tenant's "good-will." Such a proceeding as taking land "over a man's head," as it is termed, is regarded here as not merely dishonourable, but as little better than robbery, and as such held in the greatest detestation.' He added that the justice of this arrangement was obvious--'because all the buildings, planting, and other improvements, being entirely at the tenant's expense, he has a certain amount of capital sunk in the property, for which, if he parts with the place, he expects to be repaid by the sale of the tenant-right. He knew no case in the county in which the tenant, or those from whom he purchased, had made no improvements.' The first marquis occasionally visited the estate, and was proud of the troops of yeomanry and cavalry which had been raised from his tenantry. The second marquis, who died in 1822, was only once in that part of Ireland. The third marquis--he of Prince Regent notoriety--never set foot on the property; and the present, who has been reigning over 140 townlands for nearly thirty years, has never been among his subjects except during a solitary visit of three weeks in October, 1845, when, it is said, he came to qualify for his ribbon (K.G.) that he might be able to say to the prime minister that he was a resident landlord. He has resided almost entirely in Paris, cultivating the friendship of Napoleon instead of the welfare of the people who pay him a revenue of 60,000 l. a year. Bagatelle, his Paris residence, has, it is said, absorbed Irish rents in its 'improvements', till it has been made worth three quarters of a million sterling. If the residence cost so much, fancy may try to conceive the amount of hard-earned money squandered on the luxuries and pleasures of which it is the temple--the most Elysian spot in the Elysian fields. The following curious narrative appeared in a Belfast newspaper, and was founded on a speech made by Dean Stannus at a public meeting. The venerable Dean of Ross and his son, Mr. W.T. Stannus, had been deputed to go to Paris to wait on Lord Hertfort, and urge him to assist in the expense of finishing the Antrim Junction Railway. The dean is in his eighty-first year; fifty-one years of his life have been spent in the management of the Hertfort estate, and whatever difference of opinion may exist as to his arrangements with the tenantry, every one who knows anything of the affair must admit that there never existed a more faithful representative of a landowner. On arriving in Paris he found the marquis ill, so much so that neither the dean nor his son could get an interview. For three days the venerable gentleman danced attendance on his chief, and on Monday the fourth attempt was made, the dean sent up his name, and had a reply that 'the marquis was too ill to see anyone.' Next day, however, the marquis condescended to receive his agent, and the subject of the railway was introduced. The dean told him that Lord Erne had given 200,000 l. towards the railway projects on his property--that Lords Lucan, Annesley, and Lifford had contributed largely, and that Lord Downshire had been exceedingly liberal in promoting lines on his estate. But all was vain. The noble absentee, who drains about 60,000 l. a year from his Irish property, and who often pays 5,000 l. for a picture, refused to lend 15,000 l. to aid in finishing a railway, which runs for three-fourths of the mileage through his own estate. During the interview Mr. W.T. Stannus urged on the marquis that the investment would be the best that could be made, as preference shares paying five per cent. would be allocated to him as security for the amount. All arguments and entreaties, however, were lost on the noble invalid. Even the appeal of the old gentleman who, for more than half a century, had managed the estate so advantageously for the successive owners of that splendid property, was made in vain. 'You never refused me anything before,' urged the dean, 'and I go away in very bad spirits.' What a wonderful history lies in this episode of Irish landlordism. Here is an unmarried nobleman whose income from investments in British and French securities is said to exceed 30,000 l. a year, besides the immense revenue of his English and Irish estates, and yet he refuses to part with 15,000 l. towards aiding in the construction of a railway on his own property. CHAPTER XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH. Among the undertakers in the county of Armagh were the two Achesons, Henry and Archibald, ancestors of Lord Gosford, who founded Market Hill, Richard Houlston, John Heron, William Stanbowe, Francis Sacheverell, John Dillon, John Hamilton, Sir John Davis, Lord Moore, Henry Boucher, Anthony Smith, Lieutenant Poyntz, and Henry M'Shane O'Neill. In connection with each of these settlements Pynar uses the phrase, 'I find planted and estated.' What he means is more fully explained in his reference to the precinct of Fews, allotted to Scottish undertakers, where Henry Acheson had obtained 1,000 acres. The surveyor says: 'I find a great number of tenants on this land: but not any that have any estates but by promise, and yet they have been many years upon the land. There are nominated to me two freeholders and seventeen leaseholders, all which were with me, and took the oath of supremacy, and petitioned unto me that they might have their leases, the which Mr. Acheson seemed to be willing to perform it unto them presently. These are able to make thirty men with arms. Here is great store of tillage.' The whole of the reports indicate that the Crown required of the undertakers two things. First, that they should themselves reside on the land, that they should build strong houses, fortified with bawns, and keep a certain number of armed men for the defence of the settlement. Secondly, that the English and Scotch settlers who were expected to reclaim the land and build houses, were to have 'estates' in their farms, either as freeholders or lessees. The grants were made to the undertakers on these conditions--they should be resident, and they should have around them a number of independent yeomanry to defend the king when called upon to do so. Everything connected with the plantation gives the idea of permanent tenures for the settlers. A curious fact is mentioned about Sir John Davis, who had been so active in bringing about the plantation. He obtained a grant for 500 acres. 'Upon this,' says Pynar, 'there is nothing at all built, nor so much as an English tenant on the land.' It seems his tenants were all of the class for whose extirpation he pleaded, as weeds that would choke the Saxon crop. Henry M'Shane O'Neill got 1,000 acres at Camlagh, 'but he being lately dead, it was in the hands of Sir Toby Caulfield, who intended to do something upon it, for as yet there was nothing built.' Sir Toby was the ancestor of the Earl of Charlemont, always one of the best landlords in Ulster. It is gratifying to find that both the undertakers and the original tenants are still fairly represented--a considerable number of the former having founded noble houses, and the latter having multiplied and enriched the land to such an extent that, though the population is dense and the farms are generally very small, they are the most prosperous and contented population in the kingdom. Leases were common in this county at the close of the last century, but the terms were short--twenty-one years and one life. Some had leases for thirty-one years or three lives, and there were some perpetuities. Land was then so valuable that when a small estate came into the market--large estates hardly ever did--they brought from twenty-five to thirty years' purchase. The large tracts of church land, which are now among the richest and most desirable in the country, presented at the close of the last century, a melancholy contrast to the farms that surrounded them. The reason is given by Sir Charles Coote. It is most instructive and suggestive at the present time. He says, 'It is very discouraging for a wealthy farmer to have anything to do with church lands, as his improvements cannot even be secured to him during his own life, or the life of his landlord, but he may at any time be deprived of the fruits of his industry, by the incumbent changing his living, as his interest then terminates.' This evil was remedied first by making the leases renewable, on the payment of fines, and, in our own time, an act was passed enabling the tenants to convert their leaseholds into perpetuities. The consequence is, that the church lands now present some of the finest features in the social landscape, occupied by a class of resident gentry, an essential link, in any well-organised society, between the people and the great proprietors. The Board of Trinity College felt so strongly the necessity of giving fixed tenures, if permanent improvements were to be effected on their estates, that, without waiting for a general measure of land reform, they obtained, in 1861, a private act of parliament giving them power to grant leases for ninety-nine years. 'The legislature,' says Dr. Hancock, 'thus gave partial effect in the case of one institution to the recommendation which the Land Occupation Commissioners intended to apply to all estates in the hands of public boards in Ireland.' Armagh was always free from middlemen. The landlord got what Sir Charles Coote calls a rack rent from the occupying tenant, and it was his interest to divide rather than consolidate farms, because the linen trade enabled the small holder to give a high rent, while the custom of tenant-right furnished an unfailing security for its payment. The country, when seen from an elevation, is one continuous patchwork of corn, potatoes, clover, and other artificial grasses. Wonders are wrought in the way of productiveness by rotation of crops and house-feeding. Cattle are not only fattened much more rapidly than on the richest grazing land, but large quantities of the best manure are produced by the practice of house-feeding. The more northern portions of the county, bordering on Down and Lough Neagh, and along the banks of the rivers Bann and Blackwater, are naturally rich, and have been improved to the highest degree by ages of skilful cultivation. But other parts, particularly the barony of Fews, embracing the high lands stretching to the Newry mountains, and bordering on the County Monaghan, were, about the close of the last century, nearly all covered with heather, and absolutely waste. Sir Charles Coote remarked, in 1804, that it had been then undergoing reclamation. Within the last fifteen years the land had doubled in value, and was set at the average rate of 16 s. an acre. Mr. Tickell, referring to this county, remarked that the Scotch and English settlers chiefly occupied the lowland districts, and that the natives retired to this poor region, retaining their old language and habits; and he was occasionally obliged to swear interpreters where witnesses or parties came from the Fews, which were 'very wild, and very unlike other parts of the county of Armagh.' Now let us see what the industry of the people has done in that wild district. The farms are very small, say from three to ten English acres. They have been so well drained, cleared, sub-soiled, and manured, that the occupier is able to support on one acre as many cattle as on three acres when grazed; while affording profitable employment to the women and children. Great labour has been bestowed in taking down crooked and broad fences. Every foot of ground is cultivated with the greatest care, and in the mountain districts, patches of land among rocks, inaccessible to horses, are tilled by the hand. In many cases in the less exposed districts, two crops in the year are obtained from the same ground, viz., winter tares followed by turnips or cabbages, and rape followed by tares, potatoes, turnips, or cabbages. These crops are succeeded by grain or flax the next year, with which clover is sown for mowing and stall-feeding, yielding two or three cuttings. The green crops are so timed as to give a full supply for house-feeding throughout the year. Nothing is neglected by those skilful and thrifty farmers; the county is famous for orchards, and when I was in the city of Armagh, last autumn, I saw in the market square almost as many loads of apples as of potatoes. The connection of large grazing farms with pauperism, as cause and effect, has not received sufficient attention from the friends of social progress. I resolved last year to test this matter by a comparison. We have at present no check upon the legally enforced depopulation of this country except the _interest_ of the landlords, or what they imagine to be their interest. It is well that the question should be determined whether it is really for the benefit of the owners of the land that they should clear it of Christians and occupy it with cattle--in other words, whether Christians or cattle will pay more rent and taxes. I omit all higher considerations, because some of the most philanthropic and enlightened defenders of the present land system have defended it on this low ground. In order to make the test complete and unexceptionable, I have selected a comparatively poor district for tillage, and one of the richest I could find for grazing, giving all possible natural advantages to Scullyism. But the test would not be fair unless the occupiers of the poorer land had a tolerably secure tenure so long as they paid the highest rent that a reasonable agent could impose. I thought also that possible objections would be obviated if the tenantry were destitute of 'the fostering care of a resident landlord.' Therefore, instead of selecting the tenants of Lord Downshire, or Lord Roden, or Lord Dufferin, I have fixed upon the tenants of Lord Kilmorey, because he and the producers of the rents which he enjoys have never seen one another in the flesh, and they have never received one word of encouragement or instruction from him in the whole course of their lives. Accordingly, with the Union of Kilkeel, which comprises the Mourne district, I have compared the Union of Trim, which comprises some of the richest grazing land in Ireland. Travellers have noted that population always grows thick on rich lands, while it is sparse on poor lands. No one requires to be told the reason of this. The Unions of Kilkeel and Trim have populations very nearly equal--viz., Kilkeel, 22,614; Trim, 22,918. The total arable land in Kilkeel is 50,000 statute acres, giving 2 1/3 acres on an average for each person, and 14 acres for each holding. Trim contains 119,519 statute acres, giving 5 acres to each person, and 42 to each holding. In Mourne the area of land under crops is 20,904 acres (nearly half), giving one acre of tillage to each inhabitant, and 6 acres to each holding of 14 acres. In Trim the area under crops is 38,868 acres, giving 2 acres for each inhabitant, and 14 for each holding of 42 acres. The significance of these figures is shown by the Government valuation in 1867. The valuation of Mourne Union is 40,668 l., the average for each person being 2 l. and for each holding 11 l. The valuation of Trim is 109,068 l., allowing 5 l. for each person and 38 l. for each holding. In other words, the capability of the land of Trim to support population is as five to two when compared with Mourne; but whereas in Mourne 2 1/3 acres support one person, in Trim it takes 5 acres to support one person--about double the quantity. As the value of the land in Meath is more than double what it is in Mourne, each acre in Meath ought to maintain its man. That is, if Meath were cultivated like Down, its population ought to be _five times as large as it is_! But this is not the whole case. The Mourne population may be too large. With so many families crowded on such a small tract of poor land, the Union must be overwhelmed with pauperism. If so, the case for tenant-right and tillage would fall to the ground, and Scullyism would be triumphant. Let us see, then, how stands this essential fact. The number of paupers in the workhouse and receiving outdoor relief in the Union of Trim, in 1866, was 2,474. This large amount of pauperism is not peculiar to Trim. It belongs to other Unions of this rich grazing district, which so fully realises the late Lord Carlisle's ideal of Irish prosperity. Navan Union has 3,820 paupers, and Kells has 1,306. Now, the population of Trim and Mourne being nearly the same, and Trim being twice as rich as Mourne, and not half as thickly peopled, it follows that Mourne ought to have at least four times as many paupers as Trim--that is, it ought to have 9,896. But it actually has only 521 persons receiving relief in and out of the workhouse! Consequently, Scullyism and grazing produce nearly twenty times the amount of poverty and misery produced by tenant-right and tillage. I have not overlooked the difference of race and religion. On the contrary, they were uppermost in my mind when rambling among the nice, clean, comfortable, orderly homesteads of Mourne, reminding me strongly of Forth and Bargy in the county Wexford. I said to the owner and driver of my car, who is a Roman Catholic, 'Do the Roman Catholics here keep their houses and farms in as nice order as the Presbyterians?' He answered, 'Why should they not? Are they not the same flesh and blood?' According to the census of 1861, the Roman Catholics greatly outnumber the Protestants in this Union. The exact figures are:-- Total population of Mourne Union 22,614 Protestants of all denominations 8,080 Roman Catholics 14,534 The result of this comparison may perhaps make a better impression on the reader's mind if cast in the form of tables, as given on succeeding page. Table Headings: Col A. Population in 1861 Col B. No. of Holdings in 1864 Col C. Total Area (in Stat. Acres) Col D. Area under Crops, 1864 (in Stat. Acres) Col E. Valuation in 1807 (in £) Col F. No. in Workhouse and receiving Out-door Relief Col G. Protestants of all denominations Col H. Roman Catholics ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TENANT-RIGHT AND TILLAGE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Names of Unions | A. | B. | C. | D. | E. | F. | G. | H. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kilkeel |22,614| 3,540| 50,000|20,904| 40,668| 521 |8,080|14,534 Average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | 2-1/2 | 1 | 2 | | | Average for each| | | | | | | | holding | | | 14 | 6 | 11 | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- LARGE FARMS AND GRAZING. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trim |22,918| 2,816|119,519|38,867|109,068|2,474|1,700|21,218 Average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | 5 | 2 | 5 | | | Average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | 42 | 14 | 38 | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Kilkeel Union there were 4,012 acres of flax in 1864, which at 20 l. an acre would produce 80,000 l., considerably more than the rental of the entire district. Trim, in that year, produced only 78 acres of flax. What everyone wants to know now is this--whether any measure can be devised that will satisfy the cultivators of the soil without wronging the landlords, or militating against the interests of the state. A measure that will not satisfy the tenants and put an end to their discontent, would be manifestly useless. It would be but adding to the numerous legislative abortions that have gone before it. A man engaged in such enquiries as this, is to ascertain what will satisfy the people. It is for the legislature to determine whether it can be rightly or safely granted. I have, therefore, directed my attention to this point in particular, and I have ascertained beyond question, from the best possible sources of information, that nothing will satisfy the people of this country but what they do not hesitate to name with the most determined emphasis--'Fixity of Tenure.' Whether they are Protestants or Catholics, Orangemen or Liberals, Presbyterians or Churchmen, this is their unanimous demand, the cry in which they all join to a man. Every case in which tenant-right is disregarded, or in which, while admitted nominally, an attempt is made to evade it, or to fritter it away, excites the bitterest feeling, in which the whole community sympathises. They deny, however, that the existing tenant-right is a sufficient security:-- Because it depends on the option of the landlord, and cannot be enforced by law. Because even the best disposed landlord may be influenced to alter his policy by the advice of an agent, by the influence of his family, or by the state of his finances. Because a good landlord, who knows the tenants and cares for them, may be succeeded by a son who is a 'fast young man,' addicted to the turf and overwhelmed in debt, while the estate gets into the hands of usurers. Because in such a case the law affords no protection to the property of the tenant, which his family may have been accumulating on the land since the first of them came over from England or Scotland, and settled around their commander, after helping by their swords to conquer the country, and preserve it to the crown of England. Because it is not in human nature to avoid encroaching on the rights and property of others, if it can be done at will--done legally, and done under the pretext that it is necessary for 'improvement,' and will be a benefit even to those who are despoiled. Because the custom is no protection to a man's political rights as a British subject. No tenant farmer can vote against his landlord in obedience to his conscience without the risk of ruining his family. The greater his interest in the land, the larger his investments, the heavier his stake; the greater his accumulations in his bank--the farm--the greater will be his dependence, the more complete his political bondage. He has the more to lose. Therefore, if a Conservative, he must vote for a Radical or a Catholic, who would pull down the Church Establishment; or if a Catholic, he must vote for a 'No-popery' candidate, who ignores tenant-right, and against a Liberal statesman, whose life has been devoted to the interests of the country. It appears to me that the difficulty of settling this question is much aggravated by the importation of opinions from the United States hostile to the aristocracy; and as this source of discontent and distrust is likely to increase every year, the sooner the settlement is effected the better. What is the use of scolding and reviling the tenant's advocates? Will that weaken one iota the tremendous force of social discontent--the bitter sense of legal injustice, with which the legislature must deal? And will the legislature deal with it more effectually by shutting its eyes to facts? CHAPTER XXI. FARNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES.' When the six Ulster counties were confiscated, and the natives were all deprived of their rights in the soil, the people of the county Cavan resolved to appeal for justice to the English courts in Dublin. The Crown was defended by Sir John Davis. He argued that the Irish could have no legal rights, no property in the land, because they did not enclose it with fences, or plant orchards. True, they had boundary marks for their tillage ground; but they followed the Eastern custom in not building ditches or walls around their farms. They did not plant orchards, because they had too many trees already that grew without planting. The woods were common property, and the apples, if they had any, would be common property too, like the nuts and the acorns. The Irish were obliged to submit to the terms imposed by the conquerors, glad in their destitution to be permitted to occupy their own lands as tenants at will. The English undertakers, as we have seen, were bound to deal differently with the English settlers; but their obligations resolved themselves into promises of freeholds and leases which were seldom granted, so that many persons threw up their farms in despair, and returned to their own country. In the border county of Monaghan, we have a good illustration of the manner in which the natives struggled to live under their new masters. The successors of some of those masters have in modern times taken a strange fancy to the study of Irish antiquities. Among these is Evelyn P. Shirley, Esq., who has published 'Some Account of the Territory or Dominion of Farney.' The account is interesting, and, taken in connection with the sequel given to the public by his agent, Mr. W. Steuart Trench, it furnishes an instructive chapter in the history of the land war. The whole barony of Farney was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Walter Earl of Essex in the year 1576, in reward for the massacres already recorded. It was then an almost unenclosed plain, consisting chiefly of coarse pasturage, interspersed with low alder-scrub. When the primitive woods were cut down for fuel, charcoal, or other purposes, the stumps remained in the ground, and from these fresh shoots sprang up thickly. The clearing out of these stumps was difficult and laborious; but it had to be done before anything, but food for goats, could be got out of the land. This was 'the M'Mahons' country,' and the tribe was not wholly subdued till 1606, when the power of the Ulster chiefs was finally broken. The lord deputy, the chancellor, and the lord chief justice passed through Farney on their way to hold assizes for the first time in Derry and Donegal. They were protected by a guard of 'seven score foot, and fifty or three score horse, which,' wrote Sir John Davis, 'is an argument of a good time and a confident deputy; for in former times (when the state enjoyed the best peace and security) no lord deputy did ever venture himself into those parts, without an army of 800 or 1000 men.' At this time Lord Essex had leased the barony of Farney to Evor M'Mahon for a yearly rent of 250 l. payable in Dublin. After fourteen years the same territory was let to Brian M'Mahon for 1,500 l. In the year 1636, the property yielded a yearly rent of 2022 l. 18 s. 4 d. paid by thirty-eight tenants. A map then taken gives the several townlands and denominations nearly as they are at present. Robert Earl of Essex, dying in 1646, his estates devolved on his sisters, Lady Frances and Lady Dorothy Devereux, the former of whom married Sir W. Seymour, afterwards Marquis of Hertfort, and the latter Sir Henry Shirley, Bart., ancestor of the present proprietor of half the barony. Ultimately the other half became the property of the Marquis of Bath. At the division in 1690, each moiety was valued at 1313 l. 14 s. 4-1/2 d. Gradually as the lands were reclaimed by the tenants, the rental rose. In 1769 the Bath estate produced 3,000 l., and the Shirley estate 5,000 l. The total of 8,000 l. per annum, from this once wild and barren tract, was paid by middlemen. The natives had not been rooted out, and during the eighteenth century these sub-tenants multiplied rapidly. According to the census in 1841 the population of the barony exceeded 44,000 souls, and they contributed by their industry, to the two absentee proprietors, the enormous annual revenue of 40,000 l., towards the production of which it does not appear that either of them, or any person for them, ever invested a shilling. Mr. S. Trench was amazed to find 'more than one human being for every Irish acre of land in the barony, and nearly one human being for every 1 l. valuation per annum of the land.' The two estates join in the town of Carrickmacross. When Mr. Trench arrived there, March 30, 1843, to commence his duties as Mr. Shirley's agent, he learned that the sudden death of the late agent in the court-house of Monaghan had been celebrated that night by fires on almost every hill on the estate, 'and over a district of upwards of 20,000 acres there was scarcely a mile without a bonfire blazing in manifestation of joy at his decease.' Mr. Trench says, the tenants considered themselves ground down to the last point by the late agent. As he relates the circumstances, the people would seem to be a very savage race; and he gives other more startling illustrations to the same effect as he proceeds. But here, as elsewhere, he does not state all the facts, while those he does state are most artistically dressed up for sensational effect, Mr. Trench himself being always the hero, always acting magnificently, appearing at the right place and at the right moment to prevent some tremendous calamity, otherwise inevitable, and by some mysterious personal influence subduing lawless masses, so that by a sudden impulse, their murderous rage is converted into admiration, if not adoration. Like the hearers of Herod or of St. Paul, when he flung the viper off his hand, they are ready to cry out, 'He is a god, and not a man.' Of course he, as a Christian gentleman, was always 'greatly shocked,' when these poor wretches offered him petitions on their knees. Still he relates every case of the kind with extraordinary unction, and with a picturesqueness of situation and detail so stagey that it should make Mr. Boucicault's mouth water, and excite the envy of Miss Braddon. Not even she can exceed the author of 'Realities of Irish Life,' in prolonging painful suspense, in piling up the agony, in accumulating horrors, in throwing strong lights on one side of the picture and casting deep shade on the other. It is with the greatest reluctance that I thus allude to the work of Mr. Trench. I do so from a sense of duty, because I believe it is one of the most misleading books on Ireland published for many years. It has made false impressions on the public mind in England, which will seriously interfere with a proper settlement of the land question. The mischief would not be so great if the author did not take so much pains to represent his stories as realities 'essentially characteristic of the country.' It is very difficult to account for the exaggeration and embellishment in which he has permitted himself to indulge, with so many professions of conscientious regard for truth. They must have arisen from the habit of reciting the adventures to his friends during a quarter of a century, naturally laying stress on the most sensational passages, while the facts less in keeping with startling effects dropped out of his memory. Very few of the actors in the scenes he describes now survive. Those who do, and who might have a more accurate memory, are either so lauded that it would be ungrateful of them to contradict--or so artfully discredited as 'virulent' and base that people would not be likely to believe them if their recollections were different. There is one peculiarity about Mr. Trench's dialogues. There were never any witnesses present. He always took the wild Irishman, on whom he operated so magically, into his private office; or into a private room in the house of the 'subject;' or into a cell alone, if secrets were to be extracted from a Ribbonman in gaol. Even conversations with the gentler sex, who knelt before him as if he were a bishop, were not permitted to reach the ear of his chief clerk. On some matters, however, others have spoken since his book appeared. He is very precise about the trial for an agrarian murder in Monaghan, giving details from his own actual observation. Mr. Butt, Q.C., who was engaged in the case, has published a letter, stating that Mr. Trench was quite mistaken in his account. It seems strange that he did not refresh his memory by looking at a report of the trial in some newspaper file. Mr. Trench 'adds his testimony to the fact that Ireland is not altogether unmanageable,' that 'justice fully and firmly administered is always appreciated in the end.' And at the conclusion of his volume he says:-- 'We can scarcely shut our eyes to the fact that the circumstances and feelings which have led to the terrible crime of murder in Ireland, are usually very different from those which have led to murder elsewhere. The reader of the English newspaper is shocked at the list of children murdered by professional assassins, of wives murdered by their husbands, of men murdered for their gold. In Ireland that dreadful crime may almost invariably be traced to a wild feeling of revenge for the national wrongs, to which so many of her sons believe that she has been subjected for centuries.' There is a mistake here. No murders are committed in Ireland for 'national wrongs.' The author has gathered together, as in a chamber of horrors, all the cases of assassination that occurred during the years of distress, provoked by the extensive _evictions_ which succeeded the _famine_, and by the infliction of great hardships on tenants who, in consequence of that dreadful calamity, had fallen into arrears. People who had been industrious, peaceable, and well-conducted were thus driven to desperation; and hence the young men formed lawless combinations and committed atrocious murders. But every one of these murders was agrarian, not national. They were committed in the prosecution of _a war_, not against the Government, but against the landlords and their agents and instruments. It was a war _pro aris et focis_, waged against local tyrants, and waged in the only way possible to the belligerents who fought for home and family. Mr. Trench always paints the people who sympathise with their champions as naturally wild, lawless, and savage. If he happens to be in good humour with them, he makes them ridiculous. His son, Mr. Townsend Trench, who did the illustrations for the work, pictures the peasantry as gorillas, always flourishing shillelaghs, and grinning horribly. With rare exceptions, they appear as an inferior race, while the ruling class, and the Trenches in particular, appear throughout the book as demigods, 'lords of the creation,' formed by nature to be the masters and guides and managers of such a silly, helpless people. Nowhere is any censure pronounced upon a landlord, or an agent, with one exception, and this was the immediate predecessor of Mr. Trench at Kenmare. To his gross neglect in allowing God to send so many human beings into the world, he ascribes the chaos of misery and pauperism, which he--a heaven-born agent--had to reduce to order and beauty. But there were other causes of the 'poetic turbulence' which he so gloriously quelled, that he might have brought to light, had he thought proper, for the information of English readers. He might have shown--for the evidence was before him in the report of the Devon Commission--with what hard toil and constant self-denial, amidst what domestic privations and difficulties, Mr. Shirley's tenants struggled to scrape up for him his 20,000 l. a year, and how bitterly they must have felt when the landlord sent an order to add one-third to their rack-rent. I will supply Mr. Trench's lack of service, and quote the evidence of one of those honest and worthy men, given before the Devon Commissioners. Peter Mohun, farmer, a tenant on the Shirley estate, gave the following evidence:-- 'What family have you?--I am married, and have two daughters, and my wife, and a servant boy. 'What rent do you pay?--Sometime ago I paid 3 l. 19 s. 11d. I was doing well at that time; and then my rent was raised to 5 l. 19 s. 9 d., and sometimes 6 l., and one year 5 l. 19 s. 6 d. 'How do you account for the difference?--I do not know; perhaps by the bog rent. We had the bog free before, and we were doing well; and then we were cut down from the bog, and we were raised from 3 l. 19 s. 11 d. to 6 l. We are beaten down now quite. 'What does the county-cess come to?--Sometimes we pay 1 s. 6-1/2 d. an acre, and oftener 1 s. 7-1/2 d., the half-year. 'Have you paid your rent pretty punctually?--Yes, I have done my best so far to pay the rent. 'How much do you owe now?--I believe I shall pay the rent directly after May; I am clear till May. I cannot pay it till harvest comes round. 'How do you get the money to pay the rent?--When I had my land cheap, and myself a youth, I was a good workman, and did work by the loom, and I would be mowing in the summer season, and earn a good deal, and make a little store for me, which has stood by me. I buy some oats and make meal of it, and I make money in that way. It was not by my land I was paying my rent, but from other sources. 'How much wheat have you now?--Half an acre, rather above. 'How much oats have you?--Half a rood. 'How much potato land shall you have?--Three and a half roods besides the garden. 'Have you any clover?--Very near a rood of clover. 'What is the smallest quantity of land that you think a man who has no other means of support can subsist and pay rent upon?--I was paying rent well myself when I had three acres, when I was paying 3 l. 19 s. 11 d. 'You weave a little?--Yes, but very little; but there was a good price for the barrel of wheat, and for pigs, and so I made a little store. But as for any man to support himself out of a small farm, at the high price of land, and the price of labour that is going, it is impossible. 'What is the smallest farm upon which a man can support himself at the present rate of rent, taking a man with five or six children?--That is a hard question. 'Supposing a man to pay 35 s. an acre, and to have two acres, and to be obliged to live out of the farm, do you think he could do it and pay rent?--He could not; his land must be very good. Unless he lived near a town, and had cheap land, it would be impossible. But a man with five acres, at a moderate rent, he could support his family upon it. 'What should you earn at weaving?--I only weave for my own family. I weave my own shirt. 'Do your family ever spin any wool and weave it?--Yes. 'Do you live upon the Shirley estate?--Yes. 'How much bog do you require to keep your house in fuel?--Half a rood, if it was good; but it is bad bog ground, red mossy turf, white and light; it requires more than the black turf. 'What do you pay for half a rood of turf?--It is 13 s. 4 d. for a rood--that is, 6 s. 8 d. for half a rood. There is 4 s. 6 d. paid for bad bog. 'Do you pay anything for the ticket of leave to cut?--Yes, I do; I have not a ticket unless I pay 6 d. for it. 'That is over and above the 4 s. 6 d.?--Yes. 'Did you ever pay more than 6 s. 8 d. for the bog in the late agent's time?--He took the good bog off us; we were paying 6 s. 8 d. for it. They left us to the bad bog, and we do not pay so high for that. 'Was the good bog dearer or cheaper than the bad bog at 4 s. 6 d.?--Half a rood of the good bog was worth half an acre or an acre of the other. The bad bog smokes so we have often to leave the house: we cannot stay in it unless there is a good draught in the chimney.' The Rev. Thomas Smollan, P.P., has published a letter to the Earl of Dunraven, a Catholic Peer, to whom Mr. Trench has dedicated his book. In this letter the parish priest of Farney says:-- 'In pages 63 and 64 Mr. Trench tells his readers that on the very night the news of the late agent's sudden death, in the county courthouse of Monaghan, reached Carrickmacross, "fires blazed on almost every hill on the Shirley estate, and over a district of more than 20,000 acres there was scarcely a mile without a bonfire blazing in manifestation of joy at his decease." This paragraph, my lord, taken by itself and unexplained in any way, would at once imply that the people were inhuman, almost savages, whom Mr. Trench was sent to tame--that they were insensible to the agent's sudden death, a death so sudden that it would make an enemy almost relent. Mr. Trench assigns no cause for this strange proceeding except what we read in page 64, and what he learned from the chief clerk, viz., "that the people were much excited, that they were ground down to the last point by the late agent, and they were threatening to rise in rebellion against him," &c. One would think that Mr. Trench having learned so much on such authority, would have set to work to try and find out the cause of the discontent and apply a remedy. He does not say in his book that he did so, but seems still unable to understand this to him incomprehensible proceeding. However, I am of opinion that Mr. Trench knew the whole of it, if not then at all events before "The Realities" saw the light, for in a speech of his, when Lord Bath visited Farney (page 383), he said, "A dog could not bark on the estate without it coming to his knowledge." And therefore I say that a man so inquisitive as to find out the barking of a dog on the Bath estate, who had so many sources of information close at hand, could not have been long without knowing the causes of the "excitement, threatened rebellion, bonfires, &c., on the Shirley estate," if he had only wished for the information. Either he knew the cause of all this when he wrote his book, or he did not. If he did, I say he was bound in fair play to tell it to the public; if he did not know it his self-laudation in his speech goes for nought. But, my lord, with your permission, I will inform your lordship, Mr. Trench, and the public, as to some of the causes of so remarkable an occurrence, which could not pass unobserved by Mr. Trench. At the memorable election of 1826, Evelyn John Shirley, Esq., and Colonel Leslie, father of the present M.P., contested the county of Monaghan, and the former brought all his influence to bear on his tenants to vote for himself (Shirley) and Leslie, who coalesced against the late Lord Rossmore. The electors said "they would give one vote for their landlord, and the other they would give for their religion and their country;" the consequence was, Shirley and Westenra were returned, and Leslie was beaten. Up to this time Mr. Shirley was a good landlord, and admitted tenant-right to the fullest extent on the property, but after that election he never showed the same friendly feelings towards the people. Soon after the election Mr. Humphrey Evatt, the agent, died, and was succeeded in the agency by Mr. Sandy Mitchell, who very soon set about surveying and revaluing the estate, of course at the instance of his master, Evelyn John Shirley, Esq. He performed the work of revaluation, &c., and the result was that the rents were increased by one-third and in some cases more. The bog, too, which up to this time was free to the tenants, was taken from them and doled out to them in small patches of from twenty-five to forty perches each, at from 4 l. to 8 l. per acre. At the instance of the then parish priest, President Reilly, Mr. Shirley gave 5 l. per year to a few schools on his property, without interfering in any way with the religious principles of the Catholics attending these schools; but the then agent insisted on having the authorised version of the Bible, without note or comment, read in those schools by the Catholic children. The bishop, the Most Rev. Dr. Kernan, could not tolerate such a barefaced attempt at proselytism, and insisted on the children being withdrawn from the schools. For obeying their bishop in this, the Catholic parents were treated most unsparingly. I have before me just now a most remarkable instance of the length to which this gentleman carried his proselytising propensities, which I will mention. In the vestry, or sacristy, attached to Corduff Chapel, was a school taught by a man named Rush, altogether independent of the schools aided by Mr. Shirley, and by largely subsidising the teacher, the then agent actually introduced his proselytism into that school too. The priests and people tried legal means to get rid of the teacher, but without success, and in the end the people came by night and knocked down the sacristy, so that in the morning when the teacher came he had no house to shelter him. The Catholics were then without a school, and in order to provide the means of education for them the Rev. F. Keone, administrator, under the Most Rev. Dr. Kernan, applied for aid to the Commissioners of National Education, and obtained it; but where was he to procure building materials? The then agent, in his zeal for "converting" Catholics, having issued an order forbidding the supplying of them from any part of the Shirley estate, which extends over an area of fifteen miles by ten, Father Keone went on the next Sunday to the neighbouring chapels outside the Shirley estate, told his grievances, and on the next day the people came with their horses and carts and left sand, lime, and stones in sufficient quantities to build the house inside the chapel-yard. The priest and people thought it necessary to "thatch" their old chapel, and, though strange it may seem, the agent actually served an ejectment process on the father of the two boys who assisted the priest to make the collection at the chapel door for so absolutely necessary a work. I may add, this man owed no rent. Lastly, the then agent was in the habit of arranging matrimonial alliances, pointing out this girl as a suitable match for that boy, and the boy must marry the girl or give up his farm. These facts being true, my lord, and more which I might state, but that I have trespassed too much already on your lordship's time, I ask you, my Lord Dunraven--I ask any impartial man, Irishman or Englishman--for whom Mr. Trench wrote his "book," is it strange or wonderful that the Catholic people, so treated, would rejoice--would have bonfires on the hill tops at their deliverance from such conduct? I flatter myself that you, my lord--that the learned reading public--that the English people would sympathise with any people so treated for conscience' sake; and having pronounced the sentence of condemnation against Mr. Trench for not having noticed these facts, that you will direct your name to be erased from the "book." I have the honour to remain, my lord, with the most profound respect, your lordship's faithful servant.' 'THOMAS SMOLLAN, P.P. 'Clones, Feb. 15, 1869.' The electors of Monaghan, in their simplicity, thought they were fairly exercising the rights conferred by the constitution when they gave one vote for the landlord, and one for their religion and their country, thus securing the return of one Liberal. But Mr. Shirley soon taught them that the blessings of our glorious constitution belong not to the tenant, but to the landlord; and so he punished their mistake by adding one-third to their rent, and depriving them of proper fuel. Not content with this, he carried the war into their chapels and schools, and punished them for their religion. These facts may help to explain the scenes which Mr. Trench describes so poetically. The persecuting agent died suddenly in the court-house. The landlord and a new agent, Mr. Trench, arrived at Carrickmacross; and the tenants presented a petition, imploring him to remove the new and intolerable burden that had been put on their shoulders. They were told to come back for an answer on the following Monday:-- '"Monday! Monday!" was shouted on all sides. The most frenzied excitement ensued. Hats were thrown in the air, sticks were flourished on all sides, and the men actually danced with wild delight. After a little time, however, the crowd cleared away, and the news flew like wildfire over the town and country, that the whole tenantry were told to come in on Monday next, that they might know the amount of the reduction to be granted, and have all their grievances removed!' Mr. Shirley quickly repented having given the invitation, and sent out a circular countermanding it, and requesting the tenants to stay at home. On Monday, however, a vast excited mass assembled to hear his _ultimatum_, which was announced by the new agent. 'He would not reduce their rents. They might give up their lands if they pleased; but they had little or no cause of complaint.' They insisted on his mounting a chair and making a speech. He softened the message as well as he could. When he had done there was a dead silence. In describing what follows Mr. Trench surpasses the wildest romancers in piling up the agony. I copy the description that the reader may see the difference between romance and history. 'There was a dead silence when I stopped speaking. It was broken by a stentorian voice. '"Then you won't reduce our rents?" '"I have already given you Mr. Shirley's answer upon that point," said I. "Stranger as I am, it is impossible for me to form any opinion as to whether they are too high or not." '"_Down on your knees, boys!_" shouted the same voice; "we will ask him once more upon our knees!" and to my horror and amazement the vast crowd, almost all at least who were in my immediate vicinity, dropped suddenly on their knees, and another dead silence ensued. 'It was a dreadful spectacle. Their hats were on their heads, and their sticks in their hands, some leaning upon them as they knelt, others balancing and grasping them. It was fearful to see the attitude of supplication, due only to a higher power, thus mingled with a wild defiance. '"_We ask you upon our knees, for God's sake, to get us a reduction of our rents!_" again the same voice cried aloud. 'I was greatly shocked. I instantly got down off the chair. I entreated them to rise. I told them that I was distressed beyond measure, but that I had given them the only message I was authorised to give; and quite overcome by such a scene, I endeavoured to move again across the crowded space from the office, in order to enter the house, and report proceedings to Mr. Shirley, intending to request that he would himself appear and address his excited tenantry. 'The moment I moved towards the door, the vast crowd leaped again to their feet; I was instantly surrounded, hustled, and prevented from getting near it. I bore this good-humouredly, and the door being quite close to me, I had no doubt they would ultimately let me in. But whilst this scene was going on, a shout was raised by those who were at a distance up the road leading to the town, and who had not heard what had been said. "Bring him up--bring him up, and let us see him!" In a moment I was seized, and though I resisted to my utmost, I was dragged up the narrow road which led from Shirley House to the town. I was kicked and beaten, and pushed and bruised, my hat knocked off, and my clothes torn; and in this state I was dragged into the main street of Carrickmacross. 'Here a scene of the wildest excitement took place, some cried one thing--some another. I was beaten again, my clothes torn off my back, and sticks whirled over my head. Four or five policemen met me as I was being dragged along, but they might as well have attempted to stop the rushing of an Atlantic wave, as to stern the crowd that had assembled around me; _and they only looked on and let me pass_.' If the sub-inspector, who was present, and his men acted in this manner, I venture to say it is the only instance in the whole history of the force in which the Royal Irish constabulary were guilty of such a cowardly neglect of duty. However, not only the police, but the best part of the crowd deserted this strange gentleman, and he was 'left in the hands of the vilest and most furious of the mob.' Where was Mr. Shirley? Where were the clergy and the respectable inhabitants of the town? The mob dragged him along towards Loughfea Castle--a mile and a half--whither they heard Mr. Shirley had fled, still beating, kicking, and strangling their victim, without any object; for how could they serve their cause by killing an agent who had never injured them? And how easy it was to kill him if they wished! But here comes the climax; he asked the murderous multitude to let him stop a few moments to breathe--he then proceeds: 'I shall never forget that moment. I was then about a mile from the town on the broad and open road leading to Loughfea Castle. I turned and looked around me, thinking my last hour was come, and anxious to see if there was one kind face, one countenance, I had ever seen before, who could at least tell my friends how I had died. But I looked in vain. The hills were crowded with people. The long line of road was one mass of human beings, whilst those immediately around me, mad with excitement, seemed only to thirst for my blood. 'Having got a few moments' breathing-time, and seeing all appeal to be vain, I turned again on my way, determined, however, to hold out to the last, as I felt that to fall or to faint must be certain death. Just then I became conscious of an able hand and a stout heart beside me, and I heard a whisper in my ear: "They are determined to have your blood, but hold up, they shall have mine first." The speaker grasped my arm firmly under his own, and walked on steadily by my side. 'By this time I was _completely naked with the exception of my trousers_. My coat, even my shirt, had been torn off, and I walked on, still beaten and ill-treated, like a man to execution; my head bare, and _without any clothes from my waist upwards_. To increase the misery of my situation, I found that my friend had been beaten and dragged away in spite of himself, and again I was left alone in the hands of those merciless men. I felt also I could now go no further, and that a last effort must be made before my senses left me from exhaustion. Stopping therefore once more, I asked to be led towards a high bank at the roadside, and leaning against this I turned and faced those whom I now believed would soon become my murderers. '"I can go no further," said I; "what have you brought me here for? What do you want me to do?" Again the same voice which I had first heard at the office, though I could not identify the speaker from the shouting and confusion around me, cried aloud, "We want a reduction of our rents, will you promise to get us that?" 'There are times of instant danger, when it is said that the whole of a man's past life rushes before him in the spaces of a single moment. If ever there be such a time, this was such to me. I stood there, exhausted, without one friendly face on which to rest, and surrounded by _the worst of ten thousand men who seemed determined to have a victim_. I knew and felt all this. So I said very quietly, as a last effort to save my life, and hoping they would name something I could promise to ask, '"And what reduction will you be content with?" 'Again the same voice replied, '"We will never pay more than one-half our present rents." '"Then," said I, "there ends the matter, _I never will promise that_." 'There was a pause, and a dead silence. I stood _naked and bareheaded before them_. They stood opposite to me, with their sticks clenched in their hands, ready to strike. I looked at them, and they at me. They hesitated; _no one would strike me first_. I saw that they wavered, and instinctively, in a moment I _felt_ that I had won. This sudden revulsion of feeling--though I was still externally motionless--sent the blood throbbing to my temples with a rush that became almost oppressive. But the strange pause continued--when at length a shout was raised from the old stentorian voice again, "Stand off, boys--for your lives! no one shall harm him--he is a good man after all!" and in a moment I was surrounded by a new set of faces, who dashed furiously towards me. They raised me on their shoulders, swept my old enemies away from me, procured me some water to drink, and carried me, now completely overcome, exhausted, and almost fainting, into the demesne of Loughfea. 'Here again these suddenly converted friends desired me to get up on a chair, and speak to the crowd now assembled before the castle. I did so. A reaction for the moment had taken place within me, and I felt some return of strength. 'I told the people I had never injured them. That it was a shame, and a disgrace of which I had not believed any Irishman to be capable, to treat a stranger as they had dealt with me that day. That in my own country I could have as many to fight for me as were now against me, and in short I abused them right heartily and soundly. They bore it without a murmur. My new friends cheered me vociferously, and I was carried, now quite unable to walk, into the Castle of Loughfea. Mr. Shirley's architect here appeared upon the scene, and perceiving that the people were much exasperated at not finding Mr. Shirley at the castle, and that some of the most violent were disposed in consequence to make a fresh attack upon me as I was being carried exhausted inside the gates, he promised to speak to Mr. Shirley in their favour, and in some degree calmed their feelings. The excitement was past. Mr. Shirley had not been there, and the people at last quietly dispersed. 'In the evening I was conveyed in a covered carriage to Carrickmacross, blackened with bruises, stiff and sore, and scarcely able to stand--musing over the strange transactions which had happened that day--and wrapped in a countryman's frieze coat which had been borrowed to cover _my nakedness_.'[1] [Footnote 1: Realities of Irish Life, chap. v.] When the reader recovers his breath after this. I will ask him to turn to the history of this transaction--bad enough in itself--and see what fancy and art can do in dressing up a skeleton so that it becomes 'beautiful for ever.' Mr. Trench himself shall be the historian, writing to the authorities when the occurrences were all fresh in his mind. The narrative was handed in to the Devon commissioners as his _sworn evidence_: '_William Steuart Trench, esq., agent._ 'Have there been any agrarian outrages, and in what have they originated?--There have been none, except _during a late short period of peculiar local excitement_. 'Will you state the particulars of that excitement, and what then occurred?--I think my best mode of doing so will be by handing in the copy of a letter which I addressed to a local magistrate for the information of government.--[_The witness read the following letter_:--] 'Dear Sir--In reply to your communication, enclosing a letter from Mr. Lucas, requesting that I should give a statement of the particulars which occurred to me in Carrickmacross, on Monday last, I beg leave to lay before you the facts, as follows:-- 'Mr. Shirley has recently appointed me to the agency over his Monaghan estate. We both arrived here on Thursday, the 30th of March, and on the following morning we went together into the office; and having remained there about an hour, we were much surprised, on our return, to find an immense mass of people outside the door, who immediately presented a petition to Mr. Shirley, requesting a reduction of rent. 'Mr. Shirley declined giving an immediate answer to such an unexpected request; but having read the petition, he told them he would give an answer to it on the Monday following. By Saturday, however, he had arrived at a full conclusion upon the point, and, anxious to avoid any unpleasant altercation with his tenants, he thought it advisable to let his determination be known as soon as possible; and accordingly, on Saturday, he issued and circulated a printed notice, stating the determination at which he had arrived, and declining any further communications upon the subject. I enclose a copy of the notice. 'Notwithstanding this notice, the people came in on Monday in immense numbers; and at about 11 o'clock in the forenoon, the upper part of the street opposite to Shirley House, where we were residing, was filled with dense masses of men. I then thought it my duty to go out, and repeat to them in my capacity as agent, the determination at which their landlord had arrived. I did so in the mildest terms. I told them I had been able to go over only a part of the estate; but that from what I had seen, I was of opinion that a better system of farming and of general management of their land, was in my judgment much more required than a reduction of the rent. That I knew Mr. Shirley had the kindest feeling towards them, and that I was myself quite prepared and willing to render them any assistance--to go to every man's farm, if possible, and to assist them by my counsel and advice. But that as Mr. Shirley had come to a determination to make no present reduction in his rental, I did expect that all who were able to pay their rents would come in and do so; that the utmost leniency would be extended towards those who could not pay; but that my duty was plain, and if those who really were able to pay, refused to come forward and do so, that I had no alternative left but to take advantage of the power which the law afforded for the recovery of the rent--and this I was fully prepared and determined to do, if driven to that unpleasant necessity. I also made some further observations, of less importance; but my manner towards them was quiet and calm, and I expressed myself most anxious to do everything in my power to promote their welfare and comfort. '_I then attempted to return to the house, across the street; but the mob closed in upon me, and prevented my doing so_, _and with much violence dragged me up into the town, where I was repeatedly struck and kicked, and nearly strangled, and my coat torn to pieces._ '_The mob continued thus to ill-treat me for about a mile along the road to Lough Fea, Mr. Shirley's residence, repeatedly kicking me, especially when I showed symptoms of exhaustion, and pressing their hands violently upon my throat, till I was almost overcome by fatigue, heat and pain._ '_All this appeared to be done for the purpose of forcing me to promise to induce Mr. Shirley to lower the rents to 10 s. per acre (upwards of fifty per cent.). This I refused to do. They then brought me on to Lough Fea, where they thought Mr. Shirley was; and upon not finding him, they appeared much exasperated. Mr. Shirley's architect then appeared, and by promising to speak to Mr. Shirley in their favour, and by requesting them to send a deputation, instead of coming in a manner like the present, he induced them to desist from further injury to me._ 'Believe me, dear Sir, very truly yours, '(Signed) 'WILLIAM STEUART TRENCH. 'Carrickmacross, April 8, 1844. 'What has been the general demeanour of the people towards you since that time?--Though they resisted my measures for the recovery of the rent, _to myself they have been perfectly civil; nor have I received any personal insult or unpleasantness, arising from the above cause since that period._ 'How long did this kind of combination exist?--For about six months.' Setting aside the embellishments, let us note one or two differences as to facts. In the book the suddenly converted friends placed him on a chair and asked him to make a speech before the castle door. He did so, and there is a grand statuesque picture of the hero, naked to the waist, and standing on the chair as lofty pedestal. In the torn coat the artist could never have made him look like Apollo. Even the shirt would have been too commonplace; so off went the shirt. Three or four times attention is directed to the fact of the nakedness by the hero himself, while the pencil of the filial illustrator has rendered him immortal in this primitive costume. In his speech he 'abused them heartily and soundly.' Yet they cheered him vociferously, and then carried him into the castle, where he could get nothing to cover his nakedness but a countryman's frieze coat. It was when he had been cheered vociferously, and kindly carried in, that Mr. Shirley's architect appeared on the scene. Mr. Trench has not been just to that gentleman, for he really came to his rescue, and perhaps saved his life, by giving the people the only sensible advice they got that day. In his sworn statement, made twenty-five years ago, Mr. Trench said: 'Mr. Shirley's architect then appeared, and by promising to speak to Mr. Shirley in their favour, and by requesting them to send a deputation, instead of coming in a manner like the present, _he induced them to desist from further injury to me._' If we had contemporary accounts of all the other romantic scenes which have fascinated so many readers, the 'Realities' would lose much of their gilding. Indeed, in most cases the internal evidence is sufficient to convince us that the sensationalist has been laying on his colours pretty heavily. In the sketch of the Farney rent campaign, however, I am willing to accept Mr. Trench as a faithful historian. It is a most suggestive narrative, because it shows what mischief could be done by driving the agricultural population to desperation. A general strike against the payment of rent would convulse society. If the war which raged in Farney had spread all over the island, the landlords would be in serious difficulty. The British army might then have become rent collectors, as they had been tithe collectors in 1831.' Mr. Shirley resolved, after much deliberation, to enforce his legal rights to the utmost. The bailiff was sent to warn the backward tenants to come in with the rent, and he everywhere received the same answer--'We will pay no rent till our grievances are redressed.' Now all the missiles of the law were showered on the recusants--notices to quit, _latitats_, processes for arrears, &c. Grippers, process-servers, keepers, drivers, were in full requisition. The grippers were to arrest all tenants against whom decrees had been obtained at the quarter-sessions; the keepers were employed to watch the crops that had been seized; and the drivers were to bring the cattle, sheep, horses, or pigs to pound. These constituted the landlord's army, having the police as a reserve, and the military if necessary. On the other hand, the tenants organised a body called the 'Molly Maguires'--stout young men dressed up in women's clothes, their faces disguised and besmeared in the most fantastic manner. These men waylaid and maltreated the officers of the law so severely, that in a short time no money could induce a gripper, process-server, driver or bailiff to show his nose on the estate. In this dilemma, Mr. Shirley, as commander-in-chief, ordered his lieutenant and his subordinates to go forth, with a body of police, and drive in all the cattle they could seize on the lands of the defaulting tenants. The expedition started one fine morning, led on by the mounted bailiff, a fat man, trembling like a hare at the thought of encountering the 'Molly Maguires.' Mr. Trench's description of this foray is very graphic:--'No sooner had this formidable party appeared upon the roads in the open country, than the people rushed to the tops of the numerous hills with which the district abounds; and as we moved forward, they ran from one hill to another shouting and cheering with wild defiant cries, and keeping a line parallel to that in which our party was travelling. 'The object of our expedition was clearly understood by the people; and the exact position of our company was indicated to those in the lowlands by the movements of the parties on the hills; and accordingly, as we advanced, every beast belonging to every tenant who owed rent was housed or locked up, or driven somewhere away. Thus, as we had no legal right to break open any door, or take any cattle out of any house, but only to seize those we might find in the open fields and upon the lands of the defaulting tenants, we soon perceived (as we might have known before we started) that we were likely to return without success. The bailiff declared with a sigh, "that not a hoof nor a horn was left in the whole country-side." 'At length when about to return home, without having secured any booty whatever, we came unexpectedly upon a poor little heifer calf, browsing quietly on the long grass beside a hedge. The bailiff having ascertained that she was grazing on the land of a tenant who was a defaulter, we seized upon the unhappy little beast, and drove it ingloriously home to the pound at Carrickmacross, a distance of about two miles, amidst the jeers and laughter of the populace, at the result of our formidable day's driving.' Thus baffled, Mr. Shirley resolved to try another move. He applied to the authorities in Dublin for an order for 'substitution of service.' That is, instead of delivering the legal notices at the houses of the parties, which was impracticable, they were to be posted up on the chapel-door. To effect this object, a large police force was necessary, and it was accompanied by a stipendiary magistrate. 'As soon as the party came near the chapel grounds a shout of defiance was raised by the peasantry, who began to crowd into the chapel yard, and with uplifted sticks and threatening gestures swore that they would never allow the walls of the chapel to be desecrated by such a notice. The bailiff, a most respectable and temperate man, did his utmost to pacify the excited mob. He reasoned with them as best he could; and assured them that no desecration was intended--that he was only carrying out the law, which required that the notice should be posted on the chapel walls. But his voice had no more power than if he had spoken to a storm of wind; they leaped and danced madly about, whirling their sticks over their heads, and shouting that they would never allow him to touch the sacred edifice. 'The stipendiary magistrate now ordered him to do his duty, and that he would be protected in doing it by the police, and he, trembling with fear, as well he might, at length approached with the notice in his hand to post it in due form. No sooner had he approached towards the chapel than a volley of stones sent him staggering back, though none actually struck him. The police were now ordered to advance. They did so amidst another shower of stones. The storm of missiles still continuing and several of the police having been struck and injured, they were at length ordered to fire. They aimed low, and directing their fire straight into the crowd of stone-throwers, they soon checked the vigour of the assault--six or seven men fell under the volley and rolled upon the ground. There was a short pause, a dead silence ensued--but it was only for a moment, and before the police could recover themselves and load again, a furious rush was made upon them by the enraged populace. Stones were seen flying as thick as hail; and finally the police, apprehending that they must be annihilated if they remained, ran to their cars, which were waiting at a little distance, and drove into Carrickmacross as fast as the horses could gallop, accompanied by the stipendiary magistrate! 'The field thus quickly won, remained in the possession of the insurgents. One of the rioters was killed upon the spot--shot through the body. The others who fell were only slightly injured; one had his ear taken off, another was wounded in the finger, another shot in the arm.' This was 'the battle of Magheracloon.' Mr. Trench wisely recommended a cessation of hostilities till the harvest was gathered in, promising the landlord that he would then by quiet means, acting on the tenants individually and privately, induce them to pay their rents. He succeeded, but as Mr. Shirley declined to adopt his plans for the better management of the estate, he resigned. He came back, however, after some years, as agent to the Marquess of Bath--a post which he occupies still, being manager-in-chief at the same time of the large estates of the Marquess of Lansdowne, in Kerry, and Lord Digby, in the King's County. In all these undertakings, ably assisted by his sons and his nephew, he has been pre-eminently successful. If the Farney men had been driven off in 1843, or swept away by the famine, it would have been said that their fate was inevitable, nothing could be made of them. They were by nature prone to disorder and rebellion. Well, Lord Bath visited his estate in 1865. On that occasion a banquet was given to the tenants, at which Mr. Trench made an eloquent speech. Referring to the outbreak in 1848, he said: 'And yet never, my Lord, never even in the worst of times, did I bate one jot of heart or hope in the noble people of Farney, never for one moment did I doubt their loyalty to their Queen, their loyalty to their country, their respect for their landlord, and above all, that they would be true and loyal to themselves.' So much for the incurable perversity of the Celtic race, for the 'black morass of Irish nature' that can never be drained! The people of Farney got justice, and they were contented and orderly. They got security, and they were industrious and thriving. They got protection under the constitution, and they were loyal. Densely peopled as the estate is, the agent could not coax one of them to emigrate; and after his former experience at Farney, he did not venture on eviction, though, no doubt, he would gladly repeat the Kenmare experiment in thinning the masses with which he has had to deal. Mr. Horsman, a prophet of the same school of economists, says that Providence sent the famine to relieve the landlords, by carrying away a third of the population, and he seems to think it desirable that another third should be got rid of somehow. CHAPTER XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY. Belfast, not being blessed with a cathedral like Armagh and Derry, is not called a 'city.' It is only a 'town;' but it is the capital of Ulster, and surpasses all other places in Ireland in the rapidity of its progress and in its prosperity. It can boast but little of its antiquity. There is probably not a house in the borough more than 150 years old. The place is first noticed by history in 1178, merely as the site of a fort of the O'Neills, which was destroyed by John De Courcy. It was only a poor village at the time of Bruce's invasion, in 1315, though Spencer erroneously calls it 'a very good town.' It was so insignificant in 1586 that Holinshed does not mention it among the towns and havens of Down and Antrim. Whatever town existed there had been destroyed by the Earl of Kildare when lord-deputy. In 1552 it was repaired and garrisoned, and shortly after it was granted by the crown to Hugh O'Neill of Clandeboye. In 1571 the castle, with a large portion of territory adjoining it, was bestowed upon Sir Thomas Smith and his son. The latter was assassinated by the 'wicked, barbarous, and uncivil people;' and the former, not being able to fulfil the conditions of his tenure, the district reverted with the whole earldom of Ulster to the crown in the reign of James I. Belfast was then surrounded by extensive forests, abounding in fine timber for building. The best specimen--perhaps the only one in the kingdom--of a forest like what covered the country at that time, still exists at Shane's Castle, the magnificent demesne of Lord O'Neill, where may be seen enormous oaks decaying with age, under whose shade probably the famous Shane marshalled his galloglasse. In 1613 the castle and manor of Belfast were granted to Sir Arthur Chichester, lord-deputy, ancestor of the Marquis of Donegal, who did so much to effect the final conquest of Ulster. He may be said to be the founder of the town. From the estates of his family, in Devonshire, and from Scotland, many families came over and made a strong settlement here. Ultimately it became a corporation sending two members to the Irish Parliament. The chief magistrate was called 'the sovereign;' and the first who held the office was Thomas Pottinger, ancestor of the celebrated Sir Henry Pottinger. In 1758 the population was 8,549; in 1821, it was 37,000; in 1831, it was 53,000; in 1841, it had increased to 75,000; in 1851, it amounted to 103,000; and the last census shows it to be 121,602. About 1,500 houses are built annually in the borough, and the present population is estimated at 150,000. The rateable property is more than 394,000 l. The sum of 560,000 l. has been spent on the harbour improvements, to which is to be added 250,000 l. for building new docks. I remember the quays when they were small, irregular, inconvenient, dirty, and when the channel worked its doubtful course through shifting masses of liquid mud, at low water. Now there are quays which extend in a line about a mile, covered with spacious sheds for the protection of the goods being shipped and unshipped. There are docks of all sorts, and great shipbuilding establishments standing on ground created out of the floating chaos of mud. 'Year by year,' as one of its poets has said, 'Belfast is changing its aspect and overstepping its former boundaries, climbing the hill-side, skirting the river margin, and even invading the sea's ancient domain. 'Ambition's mistress of the fertile land, Shuts out the ocean and usurps the strand.' Among the 'usurpations' is Queen's Island, a beautiful people's park, standing in the midst of the Lough. The people of Belfast have effected all these vast improvements from their own resources, without a shilling from the lord of the soil, without any help from Government, except a loan of 100,000 l. from the Board of Works. Belfast is the 'linen capital' of the empire, as Manchester is the 'cotton capital.' The linen trade was fostered in its infancy there by Strafford, and encouraged by William III., as a set-off against the abolition of the woollen trade. The first spinning of flax by steam power was commenced in 1830, by the Messrs. Mulholland, who employ 2,000 hands, principally females. Mills have sprung up in every direction, and it is estimated that they give employment to 15,000 persons. To supply the consumption of flax, in addition to the home produce, about 50,000 tons are imported every year. Linen is the staple manufacture; but industrial arts of every kind flourish, with all the usual manifestations of wealth. We have seen in a former chapter that the people of Londonderry, vexed that the maiden city has been left so far behind her younger sister, ascribe the difference to the fact that the Belfast manufacturers were favoured with long building tenures. We hear it said often that the Marquis of Donegal gave his tenants perpetuity leases, implying that he acted very liberally in doing so. If, however, you speak to persons acquainted with the local history, they will ascribe this advantage to 'Lord Donegal's necessities.' If you ask an explanation of this phrase, you will be told that towards the end of last century, and later, Lord Donegal was obliged to adopt extraordinary methods for raising money, and that the perpetuity leases in question were purchased, and at a very high rate too. You will further learn that the tenants were compelled to take the leases, and pay heavy fines for them in lump sums, and that if unable to produce the money they were evicted, and their farms were given to others who were able to pay. It is alleged that his agent got leases in blank, ready to be filled up when the cash was forthcoming, and that all the cash did not reach the landlord's hands. At any rate, attempts have been made to break some of the leases. There has been long pending litigation on the subject. Whatever may be the defects of title on the part of the landlord, the tenant must suffer. Dr. Hancock alludes to this fact in his first report. Referring to Sir John Romilly's Leasing Powers Bill, he says:-- 'The details of these Bills it is not necessary now to refer to; but there was one principle provided for in them which has been neglected in subsequent measures. In the ordinary course of business a tenant does not investigate his landlord's title; the cost of doing so would be nearly always too great; besides, the landlord would not think of consenting to the investigation on every occasion of granting a lease. It follows from this that it is a great hardship, if a flaw should be discovered in a landlord's title, that leases granted before the tenants had any notice of the litigation should be bad. Take the case of the estate which the late Duke of Wellington and Mr. Leslie recovered from Lord Dungannon after he had been for years in possession; or the case which is now pending for so many years between the Marquis of Donegal and Viscount Templemore. Is it not a great hardship that leases which tenants took, trusting in the title of Lord Dungannon or Viscount Templemore, who were then visible owners of great estates, should afterwards turn out to be worthless on some point of law in title-deeds which they never had the opportunity of seeing; and which may be so subtle as to take Courts of Law years to decide?' Dr. Hancock says the principle that in such cases the tenant should be protected, was neglected in subsequent measures. Now, what must the tenants think of legislation that subjects them to be robbed of their dearly-bought leases because of flaws, frauds or blunders with which they could have nothing to do? The leases granted to the tenants of Lord Donegal, however, in Belfast and the neighbourhood were generally valid, and to these perpetuities we must undoubtedly ascribe the existence of a middle class of remarkable independence of character, and the accumulation of capital for manufactures and commerce. Had Lord Donegal been able to hold the town in a state of tutelage and dependence--had he been an 'improving landlord' of the modern type, with an agent like Mr. Trench, so vigilant and curious that a dog could not bark on the estate without his knowledge and consent, Belfast might have been far behind Derry to-day--as stationary as Bangor, Hillsborough, Antrim, or Randalstown. Under such paternal care as Mr. Trench bestows upon tenants, with his omnipresent surveillance, there could be no manly self-reliance, no freedom of speech or action, no enterprise. The agent would take care that no interests should grow up on the estate, which his chief could not control or knock down. It is not likely that Lord Donegal would have suffered the landscape to be spoiled, the atmosphere of the deer park and gardens to be darkened and tainted by the smoke of factory chimneys, which could add nothing to his rental, while crowding around him the race which his great progenitor did so much to extirpate. So Belfast may well be thankful that the Marquis of Donegal, for some generations, could not afford to be 'an improving landlord,' fond of paternal intermeddling with other people's affairs, playing the part of Providence to an inferior race. But there is one memorable fact connected with those perpetuity leases which applies more immediately to our purpose. The tenants who were evicted to make way for the men who had money to advance to the lord of the soil, feeling themselves seriously aggrieved, formed the first of the more modern agrarian combinations under the title of 'the Hearts of Oak;' which continued for a long time to disturb the peace in Antrim and Down. The farms being extensively turned into pasture by the landlords and large graziers, there was no employment for the houseless wanderers, no provision of any kind for their support. They consequently had no respect for the rights of property, in the vindication of which their homes had been demolished and their families sacrificed, because they were not able to purchase fixity of tenure. It was, however, very fortunate for Belfast that the landlord was obliged to sell it; that the head of the great house founded by the conqueror of Ulster, enriched with territory so vast, should have been under the necessity of giving a perpetual property in the soil to some of the sons of industry. By that simple concession he did more to advance the prosperity of the town, than could have been accomplished by centuries of fostering care, under the shadow of feudalism. Belfast shows, on a grand scale, what might be done on many an estate in Ireland, in many a town and village where the people are pining away in hopeless misery, if the iron bonds of primogeniture and entail which now cramp landed property were struck off. The Greek philosopher declared that if he had a standing-place he could move the earth. Give to capital the ground of perpetuity of tenure, whereon to plant its machinery, and it will soon lift this island from the slough of despond. Then may it be said more truly than Grattan said it in 1782, that Ireland had got nearer to the sun. CHAPTER XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL. The history of the Manor of Geashill in the King's County furnishes another instructive illustration of the land question and of the effect upon the people of the system of management, under the new school of agents, of which Mr. Steuart Trench may be regarded as the brightest ornament, if not the apostle. The epoch was favourable for his mission, and he was the man for the epoch; he had been quietly training himself for the restoration of disordered estates, and the critical emergencies of the times thrust him into the front rank of social reformers. When he describes the wonderful revolutions wrought by his instrumentality, the whirlwinds on which he rode, the storms which he directed and quelled, the chaos out of which he evoked order, he assumes that the hurricane and the chaos were the normal state of things. A mysterious pestilence had blighted the principal food of the people for two or three years, and brought on a desolating famine. Millions perished by that visitation chiefly because the legislature had persistently refused up to that period to make any provision for the Irish poor such as it had made centuries before for the English poor, and because no care had been taken to distribute the population over the waste lands which their labour would have reclaimed and fertilized; or to improve their position, so that they might not be wholly dependent on one sort of food, and that the most precarious and perishable. Mr. Sadler, in his work on Population, had proved that, even in the case of Ireland before the famine, there was really no 'surplus population;' that if the resources of the country had been developed by a wise Government, sympathising with the people, the text which he adopted would have been applicable there: 'Dwell in the land, and verily ye shall be fed.' There was hasty legislation to meet the emergency, but in all the haste, the heartless economists found time to devise clauses and provisions, by means of which, when the small farmers had consumed all their stock to keep their families alive, they were compelled to relinquish their holdings in order to get food for their famishing children. They must submit to the workhouse test, they must not hold more than a quarter of an acre of land, if they would get relief. Under the dire instigation of hunger, in the stupor and recklessness of their misery, they accepted any terms the landlords chose to impose, and so whole villages disappeared from the landscape, swept off with the besom of destruction. The political economists (all the new school of land-agents are rigid political economists), taught by their prophet Malthus, ascribed the famine and every other social evil to surplus population, and to the incurably lazy and thriftless habits of the Celtic race. According to them the potato blight had only hastened an inevitable catastrophe. Therefore they set to work with all their agencies and all their might to get rid of the too prolific race, and to supplant the native cultivators by British settlers and wealthy graziers. This has been done ever since by a quiet and gradual process, steadily, systematically, inexorably, propelled by many powerful tendencies of the age, and checked only by assassination. What are the agrarian outrages which have become so terribly rife of late, but the desperate struggles of a doomed race to break the instruments which pluck them out of their native soil? A generation of instruction in the national schools and a generation of intercourse with the free citizens of the United States, who call no man 'master' under heaven--have taught them that it is an enormous iniquity to sacrifice humanity to property, to make the happiness, the freedom, the very existence of human beings, secondary to the arbitrary power and self-interest of a small class called landlords. They regard the 'improving landlord' system as nothing but a legal and civilised continuation of the barbarous policy of extermination by fire and sword which we have seen pursued so ruthlessly in the seventeenth century. It is still the land-war, conducted according to modern tactics, aiming with deadly effect at the same object, the slow but sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'Celtic race.' This may be a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. Until such time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the legal attempts to crush them out of the country. In this self-defensive war, they cannot cope with the armed power of England in the open field; and they are driven upon the criminal resource of the oppressed in all ages and all lands--secret combination and assassination. For this crime they feel no remorse; first, because it is _war_--just as the soldier feels no remorse for killing the enemy in a battle; and, secondly, because their conquerors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught them too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of making light of human life. Poor ignorant creatures, they cannot see that, while the most illustrious noblemen in England won applause and honours by shooting down Irish women and children like seals or otters, the survivors of the murdered people should be execrated as cruel, barbarous, and infamous for shooting the men that pull down the rooftrees over the heads of their helpless families and trample upon their household gods. These convictions of theirs are very revolting to our feelings, but they are facts; and as facts the legislature must deal with them. If there be a people, otherwise singularly free from crime, who regard the assassination of the members of a certain class with indifference, or approbation, the phenomenon is one which political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which cannot be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bringing railing accusations against the nation. Mr. Trench speaks with something like contempt or pity of 'good landlords,' a class which he contradistinguishes from 'improving landlords.' But it should be remembered that by this last phrase he always means agents of the Trench stamp. For he observes that the landlord himself cannot possibly do much more than authorize his agent to do what he thinks best; and it is rather an advantage that the proprietor should be an absentee, otherwise his good nature might prompt him to interrupt the work of improvement. Now there is this to be said of the good landlords, who may be counted by hundreds, and who are found in all the counties of Ireland. Their estates are free from the 'poetic turbulence' in which Mr. Trench is the 'stormy petrel.' They preserved their tenants through the years of famine, and have them still on their estates. Nor should the fact be omitted that among those good landlords, who abhor the idea of evicting their tenants, are to be found the lineal descendants of some of the most cruel exterminators of the seventeenth century. Their goodness has completely obliterated, among their people, the bitter memories of the past. The present race of Celts would die for the men whose ancestors shot down their forefathers as vermin. But the improving landlords run their ploughshares through the ashes of old animosities, turning up embers which the winds of agitation blow into flames. We seldom hear of Ribbonism till the improving agent comes upon the scene, warring against natural rights, warring against the natural affections, warring against humanity, warring against the soul. These remarks bring us to the case of the barony of Geashill, the estate of Lord Digby, to which Mr. Trench became agent in 1857. Lord Digby desired to obtain his services, but he did not communicate his desire to Mr. Trench himself, though nothing would seem easier. It was first conveyed by Lieut.-General Porter, the confidential friend of Lord Digby, and next by Mr. Brewster, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland. When the police received a notice that the new landlord of Geashill would certainly meet with a 'bloody death' if he persisted in his threatened dealings with the tenants, there was no more time for diplomatic delicacy in approaching Mr. Trench. The landlord's extremity is Mr. Trench's opportunity. When leases are to be broken, when independent rights are to be extinguished, or 'contracted away,' when an overcrowded estate is to be thinned at the least possible cost to the owner, when a rebellious tenantry are to be subdued, and Ribbonmen are to be banished or hanged, Mr. Trench is the man to do the work of improvement. He admits that he never had before him an uglier job than this at Geashill, and he had the worst apprehensions as to the danger of the enterprise. It was nothing less than to break 120 leases, which had been granted from time to time by the late Lord Digby during the sixty years that he had enjoyed the property. The value of these leases was 30,600 l., for the terms unexpired after his death. Among those 120 leaseholders were the descendants of English settlers, gentlemen farmers, one of them a magistrate, and a number of substantial yeomen, the sort of men the country so much wanted to form an independent middle class. But to an 'improving landlord,' the existence of such a class on his estate is intolerable. At all hazards they must be made tenants-at-will, and brought completely under his control. They had built houses and planted trees; they had reclaimed the deep bog and converted it into good arable land. They had employed the peasantry, and given them plots of ground, and, more than all, they had allowed a number of families to squat on bits of bog by the roadside, where they lived as well as they could; working when there was a demand for labour, cutting turf and selling it in the neighbouring town of Tullamore, and perhaps carrying on some little dealings. At all events they had survived the famine; and there they were in 1857 with their huts standing on their 'estates,' for they had paid no rent for twenty years, and they had as good a title in law as Lord Digby himself. Mr. Trench seems to have been horrified at not finding the names of these householders in the rent-books of the estate! The idea!--that there should be within the four corners of the King's County, even on the bog of Allen, a number of natives holding land, without a landlord! It was monstrous. But as they could not be evicted for non-title, they were all severally tempted by the offer of money, in sums varying from 5 l. to 20 l. each, to sell their freeholds to the landlord. Pity they were not preserved as a remnant of the antediluvian period, ere the ancient tenures were merged in floods of blood. Like a bit of primitive forest, they would be more interesting to some minds than the finest modern plantation. It was not so easy to deal with the 120 leaseholders. To what extent they had improved their farms before they got the leases, Mr. Trench does not say. But as the absentee landlord had done nothing, and spent nothing, whatever increase to the value had been made was undoubtedly the work of the tenants; and after the leases were obtained, they would naturally feel more confidence in the investment of their savings in the land. However that may be, a professional man, employed by Lord Digby, estimated the value over and above the reserved rent at 30,600 l., which sum the new landlord proposed to put into his own pocket, by increasing the rent one-third. The plea for this sweeping confiscation was, that the late Lord Digby, cousin to the present, had only a life interest in the Irish estate, and therefore, the leases were all illegal and worthless. Accordingly the new lord commenced proceedings to evict the whole of the tenantry for non-title. They were astounded. They held meetings; they deliberated; they appealed to the landlord; they appealed to the executors of the late peer, who had large estates in England, and died worth a million sterling in the funds, all of which he willed away from the heir of his title and Irish estates. Says Mr. Trench:-- 'It may readily be supposed that circumstances so peculiar as these created considerable anxiety in the district. The tenantry, _many_ of them large and respectable land-holders, now learned, for the first time, that their leases were good for nothing in law. They had been duly 'signed, sealed, and delivered' to them under a full belief on their part that the contract was not only just and honourable, but also perfectly legal; and their feelings may be imagined when they found that they were suddenly threatened with a total loss of the property which they had always looked upon as secure.'[1] [Footnote 1: 'Realities of Irish Life,' p.314.] Pending the ejectment proceedings, they were knocked about from post to pillar, without getting any satisfaction. The landlord referred them to the executors, although he knew well they had no legal claim on them whatever, and that to legal claims only could they pay any attention. The executors again referred them to their landlord, who was determined to break the leases, come what would. Now, if the Irish law regulating the relations of landlord and tenant were based upon justice and equity, the wrong done by the late earl, if any, was a wrong for which the tenants should in no way be held responsible. The wrong was done to the heir-at-law. To him, and not to the tenants, compensation should have been made by the executors. And after all, it was really to him that the money was advanced to buy up the leases, in order to save him from assassination, for the tenants had no legal claim upon them. The natural, proper, and honest course, then, for the landlord, was to have kept the 30,600 l. as compensation to himself for the mistake of his predecessor, and to let the leases stand. If he considered the peace of the country, if he wished to inspire in the minds of the people respect for the rights of property, or confidence in the Government, he would not have adopted the desperate course of breaking 120 contracts, kindling the flames of agitation, and planting Ribbon lodges all over a district hitherto peaceful and tranquil. But he was bent on crushing the independent yeomanry into the abject condition of tenants-at-will. To carry out this purpose, Mr. Trench was indispensable. He knew how to tame the wild Irish. And Mr. Trench was equal to the occasion. He went to reside a few weeks at Tullamore, to reconnoitre the enemy's position. He writes as if this was the first time he made acquaintance with the estate. But his own residence was in the Queen's County, not far off; and there is good reason to believe that he knew all about Geashill long before; and all about every estate belonging to an English absentee in the four provinces; for he had, growing up around him, a young generation of land-agents, trained in all the arts of modern management, and one of the ablest of these, his son, Mr. T.W. Trench, became his partner in this agency. Mr. Trench's tactics are not new, though he excels all men in their skilful application. His plan, adopted on all occasions, is to divide and conquer. Violent measures being dangerous and contrary to his own feelings, he trusts to diplomacy, dealing with individuals, taken separately into a private room, where his irresistible personal fascination invariably brings matters to a satisfactory issue. In this case, he went over to the English executors, and persuaded them to advance the 30,600 l. to be distributed among the tenants, under the guarantee of Lord Digby that this sum would cover all possible claims. Thus provided with funds, he summoned the tenants, not all, but ten of the most influential, to meet him at Geashill. He left this meeting, purposely, to the last day and the last hour, as a piece of generalship. He says:-- 'They appeared puzzled and anxious, and very uncertain what to do. At length one of them proposed that they should do nothing until they had had an opportunity of consulting the remainder of the leaseholders, of whom there were upwards of 120 upon the estate. '"No," replied I, "you must come to a decision now; there is a messenger at the door on horseback, to ride to the telegraph station at Portarlington to stop the English witnesses coming over. This must be done within an hour, or they will start for Ireland, and _then_ it will be out of my power to stop the lawsuit. You must determine _now_, each man for himself, or the lawsuit must go on." '"Will you state the amount of money you will give to each of us?" asked one of the party. '"Certainly," replied I, "if you will _each come separately with me into another room_." 'They did so. I named to each an amount something less than the sum set down by the notary, partly as a reserve, lest any tenants holding under these leaseholders should afterwards require to be paid, and partly lest it might be supposed we were yielding to a legal claim already granted. After a little consideration, they all severally signed the consent for judgment.' The other leaseholders followed. The leases were all surrendered, and the holders became tenants-at-will. I had the pleasure of meeting one of the most influential of them a short time ago at Geashill--a fine tall, patriarchal-looking gentleman, the representative of one of the English settlers. He was waiting about humbly and patiently for an opportunity of speaking to the young agent, who is as courteous and kind as he is efficient. But I could not help reflecting how different would be the bearing of the tenant if he had been still in possession of his lease! His dwelling-house was not as grand as the stylish villa which the landlord has erected beside it. But every stick and stone about the place were his own property. So also were the old timber trees, which his ancestors planted. But now every stick and stone and tree belong to Lord Digby, and as such the agent exhibits them to visitors--the buildings, the gardens, the trees, the hedges, the rich pasture fields, all having such a look of comfort and independence. I asked, 'Did you ever know a place like this old home of yours to have been made by a tenant-at-will?' He answered in the negative. The tenant on an 'improved estate' must be very careful about his speech. An agent has a hundred eyes and a hundred ears. People who seek 'favours' at the office, find it useful to be spies upon their neighbours, to detect violations of the 'rules of the estate.' It is mainly through the spy-system that Mr. Steuart Trench, according to his own avowal, won most of his victories over refractory tenants. For example, on this estate he had a woman acting as a spy at the meetings of the Ribbonmen; and he boasted that a dog could not bark at Farney without his knowledge. I refer to this matter here again for the purpose of saying that I cannot regard as an improvement of the country a system which establishes a despot on every estate, which degrades the tenant into a day-labourer, which--land being limited and scarce--substitutes the old, barbarous, pastoral system for tillage, which banishes the poor and enslaves the rich. Lord Digby levelled cottages, gardens, farms, manured the land, got an enormous crop, which in one year paid all the expenses; and then laid out the land in vast tracts of pasture, for which he gets from 30 s. to 40 s. an acre. That is improvement for _him_, but not for the people, not for the country, not for the state, not for the Queen. It may crush Ribbonism. But for every Ribbonman crushed, a hundred Fenians spring up; and disaffection becomes not a mere local plague, but an endemic. Mr. Trench gives a significant hint to other landlords to follow the example of Lord Digby, assuring them that it will '_pay_.' A still more flagrant case of lease-breaking occurred some years ago in the county of Galway. Dr. Hancock has put the facts of this case before the Government in his recent report:-- 'The plaintiff was the Rev. Dr. O'Fay, parish priest of Craughwell, in the county of Galway, and the defendant the landlord on whose estate the priest resided. About ten years ago the priest was induced to take a farm that had been held by a former parish priest; the previous proprietor, the father of the defendant, promising a lease for three lives, or thirty-one years. After the priest entered into possession the landlord ascertained that he could not fulfil his promise. 'As he did not possess such a power under the terms of the estate settlement, he offered, instead, a lease for the priest's own life, and 20 l. to aid in building a house. The priest continued in possession of the farm, and paid the rent agreed on, thus, as he alleged, accepting the arrangement proposed. He was on excellent terms with the landlord, and expended 70 l. in permanent improvements, and did not ask for the 20 l. which the landlord had promised. In 1854 the landlord died, and his son, the defendant, succeeded to the property. He gave notice to all his yearly tenants of an intention to raise their rents. The priest claimed to have a promise of a lease, and the agent of the property, during the landlord's absence abroad, admitted this claim, and did not raise the rent. The landlord said he had no notice of his father's promise; he, however, allowed the priest to remain in possession, and the priest expended 400 l. in buildings, on the faith that he would not be disturbed. A dispute subsequently arose about trespass, and the fences on the boundary between the priest's farm and some land in the possession of the landlord. The landlord served notice to quit, and brought an ejectment. After some delay judgment was given in his favour, subject to an application to the Court of Chancery to compel him to fulfil his father's promise of a lease.' The Master of the Rolls thus characterised the law which justifies the robbery of the tenants by unscrupulous and vindictive landlords:-- 'Even if the Rev. Dr. O'Fay had no claim except as tenant from year to year, I have no hesitation in stating that, although in point of law on the authorities I have referred to, and particularly the case of Felling _v._ Armitage, the petitioner's suit could not be sustained, _yet noticing can be more repugnant to the principles of natural justice than that a landlord should look on at a great expenditure carried on by a tenant from year to year, without warning the tenant of his intention to turn him out of possession_. The defendant's offer to allow Dr. O'Fay to remove the buildings was a mockery. _I have no jurisdiction to administer equity in the natural sense of that term, or I should have no difficulty whatever in making a decree against the defendant._ I am bound to administer an artificial system, established by the decisions of eminent judges, such as Lord Eldon and Sir William Grant, and _being so bound, I regret much that I must administer injustice in this case, and dismiss the petition_, but I shall dismiss it without costs. _I should be very glad for the sake of justice that my decision should be reversed by the Court of Appeal._' Lest it might be supposed that this was the opinion of a single judge, we find in the Court of Appeal equally strong views stated:--It was thrown out that it was a case for amicable settlement, but the respondent's counsel assured the Court that his client 'had resolved to spend his fortune, if necessary, in resisting the claim of the Rev. Dr. O'Fay.' Lord Justice Blackburne pronounced this to be a very irrational determination, although he had to decide that the claim could not be sustained in law or equity. Lord Chancellor Napier, in concluding his judgment, said:-- 'I think I am not overstepping my duty in suggesting to the respondent, that, under all the circumstances of this case, he will best maintain the character and honour of a British officer, satisfy the exigencies of justice, and uphold the rights of property, by making _such an arrangement_ with Dr. O'Fay, as to the possession of this farm, _as may leave him the full benefit of an expenditure made in good faith, and with the reasonable expectation of having the full benefit of it sufficiently secured by an undisturbed possession_.' It is a favourite theory with the new school of agents and improving landlords, that long leases cause bad cultivation; in other words, that industry prospers best where there is no security that you can reap what you have sown, except the honour of a man whose interest it is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can _legally_ do. Now, in every class and profession, there are failures,--persons that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. If such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. Others may imitate their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their habits of expenditure, and so get into a state of hopeless poverty on a good estate. If there are cases where industrious sober men are the worse for having an old lease, it should be remembered that the most insecure of all tenures is a lease dependent on a single bad life, which may drop at any hour. But there are other causes of the facts urged against long tenures, for which the legislature is responsible, not the unimproving tenant. Dr. Hancock explains this point very satisfactorily:-- 'Instances of bad cultivation and neglect of improvements, where long leases exist, are sometimes brought forward to show the inutility of tenure as a security for capital, and the strange economic theory is propounded that a precarious interest is more favourable to the investment of capital than a secure one. As well might the state of landed property in Ireland before the Incumbered Estates Court was established be adduced as an argument against property in land. The remedy, however, which the legislature applied to incumbered estates of large proprietors was not to destroy property in land, but simply to secure its prompt, cheap, and effectual transfer to solvent hands. 'For tenants' interests under leases where the value is small, and where the interests have become complicated, the Landed Estates Court is too expensive, and so these interests remain often for years untransferred, in the hands of some one who has a very limited and often uncertain interest in them. Such a leaseholder is deterred from making improvements by the state of the law which deprives him of the entire value of his improvements if anyone should disturb him under a prior charge or claim, however obscure or unknown, affecting his interest. The remedy is to be found in an extension of the principle of the Record of Title Act to the local registry of small leasehold interests, and in the providing for the local sale of such interests in a cheap manner, with an absolute title.' CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES. We have been told over and over again that the business of Ireland, and all its improvements, requiring education and integrity, are carried on 'by the Protestants, by whose intelligence, and labour, mental and bodily, its prosperity, such as it is, has been produced.' This assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk--of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant, standing close to the altar, reciting to God and the world the number of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting his excellent moral condition with the degraded Catholic--the vile publican and sinner, overwhelmed with enormous guilt. These monopolising Pharisees, who laboured at such a rate to assert their natural superiority, as the favourites of Heaven, and members of the Sovereign's church, over a race which England enabled them to subjugate and impoverish, have found no trumpeter so loud as Master Fitzgibbon, a chancery judge. In the same spirit the last census has been analysed by one of the ablest defenders of the Irish establishment, the Rev. Dr. Hume, of Liverpool, in order to prove that everything good in Ireland has been done by the Protestants, and everything bad by the Catholics. But he does not state fairly the conditions of the race. He does not state that one of the competitors had been master for centuries, well-fed, well-trained, possessed of all advantages which give strength, skill, courage, and confidence, while the other was ill-fed, untrained, enfeebled, and _over-weighted_, having to work out of himself the slavish spirit which oppression had produced, and to gain, by extra efforts, the skill which the law had forbidden him to acquire. Nevertheless the Catholics have acquired skill, and the extent to which the empire is dependent on their knowledge of the industrial arts is much greater than many people suppose. Of the farming class in Ireland, 76 per cent. are Roman Catholics. But we are indebted to the obnoxious race in other respects than as producers of food. From the classification of occupations and professions, we learn that the Roman Catholics bear the following proportions to the Protestants of all denominations. Persons employed in the manufacture of: Roman Catholics. Skin clothing .77 per cent. Woollen do. .88 " Flax do. .43 " Cotton do. .53 " Straw do. .66 " Silk do. .66 " Miscellaneous do. .67 " In producing furniture .84 " In unclassed industrial employments .84 " In amusements .80 " In architecture .78 " In making machinery .76 " In conveyance and travelling .73 " In literature and education .56 " In charity and benevolence .52 " In health .50 " In science and art .47 " In justice and government .46 " In banking and agency .40 " There are other suggestive figures in the census, bearing on this question. While three-fourths of the farmers are Catholics, three-fourths of the land-agents are Protestants, who, as a rule, have an unconquerable antipathy to the Catholic clergy, as the only obstacle to their absolute power over the tenants, with whom they find it hard to sympathise. Of farm labourers and domestic servants, nine out of ten belong to the race supposed by some to be incapable of virtue and loyalty. Again, of the whole British army of all ranks, 37 per cent. are Irishmen, and of these Irish soldiers, 67 per cent. are Catholics. More than three-fourths of the magistrates are Protestants; and they bear about the same proportion on the grand juries. According to the theory and practice of the constitution, all power, legislative and administrative, must be based on the ownership of land. The rate-payers have a voice indeed, but it is generally nothing but an echo of the landlord's voice; what else can it be when they are tenants-at-will, depending on the mercy of the proprietor for the means of existence? In county offices, the Protestants have an overwhelming majority. It is the same in all the offices filled by government patronage, except the judges of the superior courts. There Catholics are in the majority, because they had obtained seats in the House of Commons. On the boards of guardians the mass of the poor might expect that a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire. But half the guardians are _ex-officio_ members, as magistrates; nearly all landlords and Protestants. They have in addition 'property votes,' and 'residence votes;' so that, with their influence over the elections, they are generally able to pack the board; and in that case the officials are almost invariably Protestants and conservatives. I know a union in which three-fourths of the rate-payers are Roman Catholics; and yet, with the utmost efforts of the priests, they were not able to elect a single Catholic guardian. To meet the landlord pressure, some of the rate-payers were required to sign their voting papers in presence of their pastors, yet so terrible was that pressure that they afterwards took them to the agent's office, and, to make assurance doubly sure, tore them up before his face. I have been told by a priest, that such is the mortal dread of eviction, or of a permanent fine in the form of increased rent, that he had known tenants who, when produced in the witness-box, denied on oath acts of oppression of which they had been bitterly complaining to himself, and which he well knew to be facts. Thus the land-war rages at every board of guardians, in every dispensary, in every grand jury room, at every petty sessions, in every county court, in every public institution throughout the kingdom. The land-agent is the commanding officer, his office is a garrison, dominating the surrounding district. He is able, in most cases, to defy the confessional and the altar; because he wields an engine of terror generally more powerful over the mind of the peasantry than the terrors of the world to come. Armed with the 'rules of the estate' and with a notice to quit, the agent may have almost anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of the tenant. The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family. It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents. The passion for the possession of land is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates with 'the deepest notes of woe.' By the agent of an improving landlord it is generally touched so cunningly, that its most exquisite torture cannot easily be proved to be a grievance. He presents an alternative to the tenant; he does less than the law allows. He could strike a mortal blow, but he lends a helping hand. Resistance entails ruin; compliance secures friendship. Give up the old _status_, and accept a new one: cease to stand upon _right_, consent to hang upon _mercy_, and all may be well. Passing a cottage by the road-side, one of the kindest and best of those agents said to me, 'See with what infatuation these people cling to their old places! There is a man in that dilapidated cabin, with only one acre of ground. It is an eyesore. I have offered him a nice new slated cottage with ten acres, within a short distance, and he obstinately refuses to quit.' Why did he refuse? I suppose, because the place was _his own_. The house was probably built by his father; it is the house in which he was born, endeared to him, no doubt, by many powerful associations, little appreciated by those who never condescend to read the 'simple annals of the poor.' He felt, that if, like his neighbours, he moved into a house built by the landlord, he would cease to be a free man, and would pass under the yoke of a _master._ I was with some visitors in one of the new cottages. The wife of the cottier with smiles assented to all that was said as to the neatness and comfort of the place. I thought the smiles were forced. I was last in going out, and I heard her heave a heavy sigh. Perhaps she longed for the old home and its freedom, envying the lot of the sturdy peasant to whom I have alluded. Poor fellow! he must give way at last. But his proud manhood is the stuff of which Hampdens are made. I have devoted much time and attention to personal enquiries from town to town, from village to village, and from house to house, seeking corroborative evidence from men of all ranks and professions, on the effect of the _Improved Land System_ on the working classes, and I will here faithfully record as briefly as possible the result of my enquiries. I must premise a few words as to the principles of the system which is called 'English.' 1. There is the principle of _contract_, by which alone any tenant is to be permitted to occupy land. There is to be no foothold in the island, from the centre all round to the sea, from the top of the highest mountain to the shore at low-water-mark, for any Irishman in his native land, unless he obtains it by contract from a landlord and pays for it. 2. There is the principle of _compensation_ for unexhausted improvements at the rate of five or six per cent. on the outlay, provided the improvements have been made with the knowledge and consent of the landlord. A certain number of years is held to be sufficient to recoup the tenant for his outlay. If he is removed before that time he is entitled to the balance of his invested capital; just as if the relation were strictly commercial, and as if he had no further claim than his percentage. If the landlord makes the improvement--which he prefers doing, on the new system--he requires the tenant to pay at the rate of four to six per cent. in the form of rent--a clear gain to the landlord, who can borrow money on much lower terms, and can hardly invest his capital so profitably or so safely elsewhere. 3. _Absenteeism_ is no disadvantage or loss to the country. This principle is in great favour with the agents. There is no theme on which they are so eloquent or so argumentative. In the absence of the landlord the agent is all-powerful. What the Irish lord deputy was to the Tudors and Stuarts, the Irish agent now is to the great absentee proprietor residing in London or Paris. He will undertake to demonstrate that the West-end of London would be just as prosperous if the Queen and her court resided constantly at Balmoral or Killarney; if the parliament met alternately in Edinburgh and Dublin, and if the government offices were all at Liverpool. With the blessing of absenteeism, houses in London would be built as fast, and would bring as high rents; trade would be as brisk, artizans of all sorts as well paid, life as happy, and the Londoners as well content. The Irish, however, have, in their ignorance of political economy, conceived the idea, that if the millions sterling sent annually out of the country to London were spent among those by whose labour the money is made, there would be more employment for all sorts of tradesmen, more business for the shopkeepers, more opportunities of advancement for the farmers' sons, more houses built, more trees planted, more land reclaimed, more factories established, more money stirring, more wealth, more life, more enjoyment, an immense increase of national prosperity. The agents say that this is all a delusion. 4. The next principle of the new agents is this--and to carry it out is the aim of all their improvements--that their mission is to produce the greatest amount of rent from the smallest number of tenants. 5. To reduce the population by _emigration_ or other means until there is barely a sufficient number of labourers to attend the agricultural machines, and herd the cattle. 6. To discourage _marriage_ in every possible way, and to diminish pauperism till there shall be no further use of the workhouses but to serve as lying-in hospitals for the thrifty spinsters, as they do in Cumberland and Westmoreland--where the arrangement seems the most natural thing in the world. It is certainly not an unnatural consequence of the practice of men and women sleeping in the same apartment. Now let us see the working of this new system in Ireland; for it is at work more or less extensively in all the four provinces. The rules of the estate, when rigidly enforced, as they generally are by the improving agents, tend steadily, powerfully, to break down the small farmers. They are disappearing by thousands every year. Some take their chance across the Atlantic. Others fall into the condition of labourers, and may earn 2 s. a day on the estate. This will last for awhile until the land is drained, manured, and turned into permanent pasture. Then their occupation is gone. There is nothing more for them to do. There is no place for them, no room, no support in their native land. The grass will grow without their labour, and the bullocks will fatten without their care. We are constantly hearing of the immense rise in wages since the famine. Well, they are nominally higher, but in the old times the labourer could get more for 8 d. or 10 d. than he can now get for 1 s. 6 d. or 2 s. Fuel is now three times as dear as it was, because the 'rules of the estate' will not allow the tenants to sell turf even on the verge of extensive bogs. Milk, which was formerly abundant and very cheap, is scarcely to be had at all now in the country towns and villages, because the land is devoted to feeding sheep and 'dry cattle.' Under the old system, the cottiers in the small towns and villages, as well as on the roads in the country, were enabled to keep pigs. The pig paid the rent, and made manure which was put out on the ground of some neighbouring farmer, hired as 'conacre.' The crop of potatoes thus obtained was a great help in the winter months, when employment was rarely to be had. This practice still prevails in Ulster. The farmer puts in the crop for the manure, the cottier paying the farmer's rent--5 s. to 10 s. a rood, or whatever it may be. With this help the family get over the winter, and feed the pig, without which help, they say, it would be impossible to exist, even with constant employment at a shilling a day. But on the estates of improving landlords in the other provinces, the rules forbid the tenant to give the use of any ground for conacre. He must not, on pain of eviction, take manure for such a purpose, though it would help to enrich his land for the ensuing year. The evicted cottiers and small farmers are forced to go to towns and villages, shut up in unwholesome rooms. When they have been thus so far got rid of, the most ingenious devices are resorted to in order to render it impossible for them to live. By the 'rules of the estate,' the supply of necessaries is cut off on every side. Without fuel, without milk, without potatoes, unless bought at a high rate for ready money, how are they to live? The strong members of the poor man's family emigrate or go to service; the weak ones and the young children pine away in a state of semi-starvation, preferring that to the best fare in the hated workhouse. The people are fully sensible of the causes of these privations. They know that they have been forced into this condition by the landlords and their improving agents, induced in some cases by the temptation of a few pounds to surrender their little holdings. The lord lieutenant of the King's County has thus cleared an immense district, and has himself become a grazier and a cattle-dealer on a monster scale, attending the markets in person, and driving hard bargains with the farmers and jobbers. By such means the population of that county has been reduced one-third in the last twenty years. The moral aspect of this new system is worthy of consideration. It is thus presented by Archdeacon Redmond of Arklow, one of the most moderate and respected parish-priests in Ireland. When lately presenting an address to Lord Granard from his Wexford tenantry, he said:-- 'I have always heard the house of Forbes eulogised for its advocacy of civil and religious liberty, and the name of Grogan Morgan has become a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in Ireland. He never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible famine. Under his fostering care they have all tided over the calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. He did not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off beings made in God's image, and to drive them to the poorhouse, the fever-shed, or the emigrant ship, to whiten the bottom of the sea with their bones, or to face the moral and physical perils of the transatlantic cities. He did not read his bible, like Satan, backwards, nor did he turn out the Son of God in the person of His poor. Hence his name is in benediction, and his estates are more prosperous than the estates of those who forget God in their worldly wisdom, and would seem to have no belief in a judgment to come. What a happiness it is, my Lord and Lady Granard, for you to have such a heritage, and to know that you live in the hearts of your tenantry, who would spill the last drop of their blood to shield you and your dear children from hurt and harm!' Let it not be supposed that such sentiments are peculiar to the Catholic clergy, or that their causes exist only in the south and west. The Rev. Dr. Drew, a rector in the county Down, an Orange chaplain, a veteran champion of Protestantism and Toryism, but an honourable and humane man, wrote the following letter last autumn:-- If the magnificent lecture of Mr. Butt had done nothing more than elicit this letter from Dr. Drew, it would have been much. But will not the thoughts of many hearts be revealed in the same manner? What a number of plain-speaking Drews we shall have denouncing tyranny when their consciences are relieved from the incubus of the Establishment! _To Isaac Butt, Esq., LL.D._ 'My dear Butt--If every other man in the world entertained doubts of my sincerity, you, at least, would give me credit for honesty and just intentions. I write to you accordingly, because my mind has been stirred to its inmost depths by the perusal of your address in my native city of Limerick. I do not regard the subject of your address as a political one. It ought to be regarded solely as a question of humanity, justice, common sense, and common honesty. I wish my lot had never been cast in rural places. As a clergyman I hear what neither landlords nor agents ever hear. I see the depression of the people; their sighs and groans are before me. They are brought so low as often to praise and glorify those who, in their secret hearts, are the objects of abhorrence. All this came out gradually before me. Nor did I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good landlords--never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. Tenant-right is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is almost invariably used to the landlord's advantage. Here we have an election in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think or act for himself. What right any one man has to demand the surrender of another's vote, I never could see. It is an act of sheer felony--a perfect "stand-and-deliver" affair. To hear a man slavishly and timorously say, "I must give my votes as the landlord wishes," is an admission that the legislature, which bestowed the right of voting on the tenant, should not see him robbed of his right, or subsequently scourged or banished from house and land, because he disregarded a landlord's nod, or the menace of a land agent. At no little hazard of losing the friendship of some who are high and good and kind, I write as I now do.--Yours, my dear Butt, very sincerely, 'THOMAS DREW. 'Dundrum, Clough, County Down, September 7, 1868.' Some resident landlords employ a considerable number of labourers, to each of whom they give an excellent cottage, an acre of land, and the grass of a cow, with work all the year round at seven shillings a week. The tenants are most comfortable and most grateful, while the praise of those landlords is in the mouths of the peasantry all round the country. But these considerate landlords are in a minority. As a rule, on the estates where the improvement system is going on, where farms are being consolidated, and grazing supersedes tillage, an iron pressure weighs upon the labouring classes, crushing them out of the country. It is a cold, hard, calculating, far-reaching system of inhumanity, which makes the peasant afraid to harbour his own flesh and blood. It compels the grandmother to shut the door in the face of the poor homeless orphan, lest the improving agent should hear of the act of sheltering him from the pitiless storm, not more pitiless than the agent himself. The system of terrorism established by the threats of eviction de-humanizes a people remarkable for their hospitality to the poor. Mr. Thomas Crosbie, of Cork, a gentleman whom I believe to be as truthful and honourable as any agent in Ireland, gives appalling illustrations of this in his account of 'The Lansdowne Estates,' published in 1858. Mr. Trench has given the English public several pretty little romances about these estates; but he omitted some realities that ought to have impressed themselves upon his memory as deeply as any of his adventures. Mr. Crosbie found that the 'rules of the estate,' which were rigidly enforced, forbid tenants to build houses for their labourers, 'the consequence of which was that men and women servants, no matter how great the number, must live under one roof.' The rules forbid marriage without the agent's permission. A young couple got married, and were chased away to America; and 'the two fathers-in-law were not merely warned; they were punished for harbouring their son and daughter, by a fine of a gale of rent.' It was a rule 'that no stranger be lodged or harboured in any house upon the estate, lest he should become sick or idle, or in some way chargeable upon the poor-rates.' 'Several were warned and punished for giving lodging to a brother-in-law, a daughter,' &c. 'A poor widow got her daughter married without the necessary permission; she was served with a notice to quit, which was withdrawn on the payment of three gales of rent.' Mr. Crosbie gives a number of cases of the kind. The following are the most remarkable. A tenant, Timothy Sullivan, of Derrynabrack, occasionally gave lodging to his sister-in-law, whilst her husband was seeking for work. He was afraid to lodge both or either; 'but the poor woman was in low fever, and approaching her confinement. Even under such circumstances his terror was so great that he removed her to a temporary shed on Jeremiah Sullivan's land, where she gave birth to a child. She remained there for some time. When "the office" heard of it, Jeremiah Sullivan was sent for and compelled to pay a gale of rent (as fine), and to throw down the shed. Thus driven out, and with every tenant on the estate afraid to afford her a refuge, the miserable woman went about two miles up the mountain, and, sick as she was, and so situated, took shelter in a dry _cavern_, in which she lived for several days. But her presence even there was a crime, and a mulct of another gale of rent was levied off Jeremiah Sullivan. Thus, within three weeks he was compelled to pay two gales of 3 l. 2 s. 6 d. each. It was declared also that the mountain being the joint property of Jeremiah Sullivan, Timothy Sullivan, and Thady Sullivan, Timothy Sullivan was a participator in the crime, and should be fined a gale of rent. The third, it appears, escaped.' 'S.G.O.' narrated another horrifying case in the _Times_, at the period of its occurrence, in 1851. Abridged, it runs thus:--'An order had gone forth on the estate (a common order in Ireland) that no tenant was to admit any lodger into his house. This was a general order. It appears, however, that sometimes special orders were given; and one was promulgated that Denis Shea should not be harboured. This boy had no father living. He had lived with a grandmother, who had been turned out of her holding for harbouring him. He had stolen a shilling, a hen--done such things as a neglected twelve-year-old famishing child will do. One night he came to his aunt Donoghue, who lodged with Casey. The latter told the aunt and uncle not to allow him into the house, as the agent's drivers had given orders about him. The aunt beat him away with a pitchfork, the uncle tied his hands with cord behind his back. The poor child crawls to the door of a neighbour, and tries to get in. The uncle is called to take him away, and he does so. He yet returns with hands still tied behind, having been severely beaten. The child seeks refuge in other cabins; but all were forbidden to shelter him. He is brought back by some neighbours in the night, who try to force the sinking child in upon his relation. There is a struggle at the door. The child was heard asking some one to put him upright. In the morning there is blood upon the threshold. The child is stiff dead--a corpse, with its arms tied; around it every mark of a last fearful struggle for shelter--food--the common rights of humanity.' Chief Baron Pigot tried the case, and gave a statement of the facts in his charge which Mr. Trench ought to have quoted, as a faithful recorder of 'realities.' 'On the western estate, that of Cahirciveen, there was some difference in the rules. If a son or daughter married, the father was obliged to retire with an allowance of 'a cow's grass' or grazing for his support. 'Only the newly married person will be left on the land, or any portion of it, even though the farm should contain 100 acres, or even though there should be two farms. This arbitrary regulation operates injuriously in point of morality, and keeps the land uncultivated. The people have to go to Nedeen, a distance of forty or fifty miles, to get leave to marry.'[1] [Footnote 1: See the 'North British Review,' No. CI. p.193.] The Kenmare tenantry have recovered from the fearful shock of the famine, after thousands of deaths from hunger, and thousands shipped off to America at 4 l. 10 s. a head. Mr. Trench's son, Mr. Townshend Trench, the pictorial illustrator of his father's book, is the acting agent, and an eloquent propagandist of his father's principles. The young marquis paid a visit to his tenantry in 1868, and he was almost worshipped. It is gratifying to know that in a speech on that occasion he promised to see and judge for himself. 'I feel,' he said, 'that my visit to Kenmare has taught me a valuable lesson. As you all know, I was called to my present position at a very young age, and I felt when I came in for my property that I had much to learn; and that is the reason why I was so anxious to travel through the country, and study the desires and comfort of the people. That will afford me occupation for many a year to come, and it will afford me an occupation not only interesting but pleasing. Nothing will do me a more hearty pleasure than to see the marks of civilisation and progress in Kenmare--and not alone in Kenmare, but in the whole country; and I shall hail every manifestation of improvement with delight.' Lord Lansdowne's system is beautiful, but it is unfinished. Let him 'crown the edifice with _liberty_.' He possesses a giant's power, and he uses it like an angel. When he comes to trouble the waters, the multitude gathers around the fountain to be healed. But his visits are, like angels' visits, few and far between. Many of the sick and impotent folk, after long waiting, are not able to get near till the miracle-worker has departed. An absentee landlord, be he ever so good, must delegate his power to an agent. Agents have good memories, and their servants, the bailiffs, are good lookers-on. There is a hierarchy in the heaven of landlordism--the under-bailiff, the head-bailiff, the chief-clerk in the office, the sub-agent, the head-agent. All these must be submissively approached and anxiously propitiated before the petitioner's prayers can reach the ears of Jove himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be, and for the most part really is--if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities--generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with the absentee divinity, but with his priest--not with the good spirit, but his medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested, or unexacting. To him power may be new--a small portion of it may intoxicate him, like alcohol on an empty stomach. He was not born to an inheritance of sycophancy; it comes like an _afflatus_ upon him, and it turns his head. It creates an appetite, like strong drink, which grows into a disease. This appetite is as capricious as it is insatiable. Hence, the chief characteristic of landlord power, as felt by the tenant, is _arbitrariness_. The agent may make any rule he pleases, and as many exceptions to every rule as he pleases. He may allow rents to run in arrear; he may suddenly come down upon the defaulter with 'a fell swoop;' he may require the rents to be paid up to the day; he may, without reason assigned, call in 'the hanging gale;' he may abate or increase the rents at will; he may inflict fines for delay or give notices to quit for the sole purpose of bringing in fees to his friend or relative, the solicitor. But whatever he may choose to do, the tenant has nothing for it but to submit; and he must submit with a good grace. Woe to him if the agony of his spirit is revealed in the working of his features, or in an audible groan! Most of the poor fellows do submit, till their hearts are broken--till the hot iron has entered their souls and seared their consciences. When the _slave_ is thus finished, the agent and his journeymen are satisfied with their handiwork; their 'honours' can then count on any sort of services they may choose to exact--may bid defiance to the priest and the agitator, and boast of an orderly and deserving tenantry devoted to the best of landlords, who is their natural protector. It would be wicked to interfere with these amicable persons. Why talk about leases? The tenants will not have them; they don't want security or independence by contract. So most of the agents report--but not all. There are noble exceptions which relieve the gloomy picture. There is certainly one disadvantage connected with a settlement of the land question which would abolish the arbitrary power of proprietors and their agents--it would put an end to the romance of Irish landlordism. The Edgeworths, the Morgans, the Banims, the Carletons, and the Levers would then be deprived of the best materials for their fictions. The fine old family, over-reached and ruined by a dishonest agent; the cruelly evicted farmer, with his wife and children fever-stricken, and his bedridden mother cast out on the roadside on Christmas Eve, exposed to the pelting of the hailstorm, while their home was unroofed and its walls levelled by the crowbar brigade; the once comfortable but now homeless father making his way to London, and trying day after day to present a petition in person to his landlord, repulsed from the gate of the great house, and laughed at for his frieze and brogue by pampered flunkeys. Then he travels on foot to his lordship's country-seat, scores or hundreds of miles--is taken up, and brought before the magistrates as 'an Irish rogue and vagabond.' At length he meets his lordship accidentally, and reveals to him the system of iniquity that prevails on his Irish estate at Castle Squander: Next we have the sudden and unexpected appearance of the god of the soil at his agent's office, sternly demanding an account of his stewardship. He gives ready audience to his tenants, and fires with indignation at bitter complaints from the parents of ruined daughters. Investigation is followed by the ignominious eviction of the tyrannical and roguish agent and his accomplices, a disgorging of their ill-gotten wealth, compensation to plundered and outraged tenants, the liberal distribution of poetical justice right and left. Many other agents have followed Mr. Trench's example in forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from hospitality and charity. An ejectment was lately obtained at the quarter sessions in a southern county against a widow who had married without leave, or married a different person from the one the agent selected. But it is supposed that the threat of assassination prevented a recourse to extremities in this and other cases. For the people seem with one consent to have made a desperate stand against this cruel tyranny. A landlord said to me, 'No one in this part of the country would _presume_ to evict a tenant now from fear of assassination. _That_ is the tenant's security.' The wretched outcasts, whom 'improvement' has swept off the estates, are crowded into cities and towns, without employment, without food. Feeling bitterly their degradation and misery, and taught to blame the Government, they become demoralized and desperately disaffected. From these fermenting masses issues the avenging scourge of Fenianism--'the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and slayeth at noonday.' For my part, I cannot understand the meaning of improving a country by disinheriting and banishing its inhabitants. I do not understand men who say the population is too dense, and yet give to one family a tract of land large enough to support ten families, turning out the nine to make room for the one. A great deal has been said about the evils of small farms. But the most disturbed and impoverished parts of Ireland are those in which the farms are largest; while the two most prosperous and best ordered counties--Armagh and Wexford--are the counties in which small farms most abound. I call a reluctant witness, Master Fitzgibbon, to testify that when the Irish tenant, be his holding ever so small, gets common justice and is not subjected to caprice, he gives no trouble. That gentleman informs us that there are 650 estates of all magnitudes, from 100 l. to 20,000 l. a-year, under the control and management of the court of chancery; the total rents of these amount to 494,056 l. a-year payable by 28,581 tenants. These estates are in all parts of Ireland, not only in all the provinces, but in all the counties, without exception; and, according to Master Fitzgibbon, they fairly represent the tenantry of the whole country. He has 452 of the estates under his own jurisdiction, and the rents of these amount to 330,809 l., paid by 18,287 tenants. He has now been ten years in the office, during which 'the rents have been paid without murmuring or complaints worth noticing.' 'The pressure of legal remedies for these rents has been very little used; the number of evictions absolutely trifling; and of between 400 and 500 receivers, who collect these rents, _not one has ever been assailed_, or interfered with, or threatened in the discharge of his duty, as far as I have been able to discover; and I am the person to whom the receiver should apply for redress if anything of the kind occurred. It is very well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant, and yet I am very seldom appealed to, considering the great number of tenants; and whenever a complaint is well-founded, it is promptly and effectually redressed, at scarcely any expense of costs. I believe the other three Masters would make substantially a similar report to this in respect of the estates under their jurisdiction.' Master Fitzgibbon proceeds to state that 'on one estate there are 2,500 tenants, paying 13,000 l.,--being an average of 6 l. a-year. This estate has been sold, and three of the lots fetched over 30 years' purchase of the yearly profit rents. The fourth lot is held by small cottiers, at rents which average only 2 l., and this lot fetched 23 years' purchase. This estate has been under a receiver for three years, and there has never been one complaint from a tenant. What is stated of this estate may be said of every one of them in all the four provinces.' He adds: 'Clamour, agitation, or violence of any kind I have never had to deal with amongst the tenantry of any one of these estates since I came into office.' Another witness of larger views, and free from unhappy prejudices against the majority of his countrymen--Mr. Marcus Keane, agent to the Marquis of Conyngham--in a letter to Colonel Vandeleur, M.P., lately gave the result of his experience for thirty years as agent of several large estates, and as a landlord, on the Irish land question. I submit his suggestions to my readers, as eminently worthy of the consideration of statesmen at the present time:-- 'The outline of measures submitted for your consideration combines the very unusual recommendation of meeting, on the one hand, with the approbation of some good landlords of the higher class (who, like yourself, have long been practically acknowledging the just claims of tenants), and, at the same time, of satisfying the claims of many of the warmest advocates of the tenant class. It is calculated to protect the farmers from selfish landlords, whose conduct has tended much to produce the serious disaffection that now prevails. 'I need not burthen you with a lengthened recital of the facts which render such legislation absolutely necessary to the tranquillity of society. In outline, however, they may be briefly stated-- '_First_--The great mass of Irish tenantry have no better title to their holdings than the will of their landlords. '_Second_--Education is daily rendering the tenant class more impatient of the condition of dependence which their want of title necessitates. '_Third_--Every good tenant must improve his land more or less, in order to live in comparative comfort. '_Fourth_--The rentals of Ireland are steadily following the improvements of the tenants. Some landlords suffer a considerable margin to exist between the actual value and the rent paid; while others lose no opportunity of forcing the rents to the highest amount that circumstances permit. '_Fifth_--Although good tenants must improve in order to live comfortably, their improvements are not one-fourth of what the condition of the country invites, and are far below what they would be if the occupiers were afforded equitable security. '_Sixth_--Trade, manufactures, and industrial occupations require local accumulations of surplus capital in order to their prosperity; and such accumulations are hindered by the general want of security of tenure. Society at large is therefore deeply interested in the protection of the tenant class. '_Seventh_--The increased expense of the governmental establishments, civil and military, which Irish disaffection entails, renders it a matter of imperial importance that the Irish land question should be satisfactorily settled. 'Irish rentals have, in some counties, increased more than tenfold since the beginning of the eighteenth century.' The next witness shall be a landlord, one of the best and noblest of his class. At a tenant-right meeting of the county Longford, the Earl of Granard said:--'The proposition commences by asserting that which has been acknowledged by successive administrations--that the present state of the land laws of Ireland is highly unsatisfactory. The necessity for their reform has been urged upon parliament since the days of O'Connell up to the present time. The want of reform upon the most vital question which affects the prosperity of Ireland has been the fruitful source of agrarian disturbance, of poverty and of misfortune in every county in Ireland. To take an example near home,--what rendered Ballinamuck a by-word for deeds of violence? Why, that system which permitted a landlord to treat the people of that district with high-handed injustice. And why is that district now amongst the most peaceable in the county? Because it is now administered by its proprietor in a spirit of justice and fair play, and because that proprietor recognises the fact that property has its duties as well as its rights. I believe that similar results are to be obtained everywhere that the warm-hearted and kindly people of this country are treated with justice. In his evidence before Mr. Maguire's committee, Mr. Curling, the excellent agent of an equally excellent landlord--Lord Devon--speaking of his property in Limerick, said that the most warm-hearted and grateful people he had ever met with were the Irish. He was asked, "Grateful for what?" and he replied, "Even for fair play." That is to say, they were grateful for that which in every country save this would have been theirs by law. And it is to a people thus described by, mind you, not an Irishman, but an English gentleman--to a people, I believe, the most religious and affectionate in Europe, that the simple act of justice, of repealing unjust statutes, has been refused. I say it advisedly, that to the system of land laws, which we hope to alter--which at least we are here to protest against--are to be attributed those fearful agrarian outrages which disgrace the fair fame of our country. A celebrated minister of police in France, whenever he heard of a conspiracy, used to ask who was the woman, believing that there was always one mixed up with such organisations, and in a similar spirit, whenever I hear of an outrage in Ireland, I am always inclined to enquire, "Who is the landlord?" For I do not hear of such things occurring on estates where justice and fair play are the rule and not the exception. But brighter days are now in store for us. We have at the head of affairs the most earnest, the most conscientious minister that has ever sat on the treasury bench. He has promised to redress your grievances, and having as his able lieutenants Mr. Bright, who has ever a kindly word for Ireland, and Lord Kimberley, whose first act after giving up the lord-lieutenancy was to say to the House of Lords that until the church and land questions were settled there would be neither peace nor contentment in the land--he must be successful. As to what we want there can be no doubt. The five points of the Irish charter are--fixity of tenure at reasonable rents; recognition of right of occupancy as distinct from right of ownership; standard valuation for letting purposes; retrospective compensation for 20 years; and arbitration courts in cases of dispute between owner and occupier.' I cannot better express the conclusion of the whole matter than in the words of a writer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, who thoroughly understands the question. Nothing can be more truthful and accurate than the way in which he puts the tenants' case:-- '"Morally," they say, "we are part-owners. We have a moral right to live here. If a great landlord considered that he could make more of his estate by clearing it of its inhabitants, and accordingly proceeded to do so, he would do a cruel act. What we wish is to see our moral rights converted into legal rights. If you ask us precisely what it is that we wish, we reply that we wish to be able to live in moderate comfort in our native land, and to be able to make our plans upon the assumption that we shall not be interfered with. It is not for us ignorant peasants to draw an Act of Parliament upon this subject, or to say how our views are to be reconciled with your English law, which, on other accounts, we by no means love. You, the English Government, must find out for yourselves how to do that. What we want is to be secure and live in reasonable comfort, and we shall never be at rest, and we will never leave you at peace, till this is arranged in some way or other." We do not say whether this feeling is right or wrong, we do not say how it is to be dealt with, but we do say that it is as intelligible, not to say as natural, a feeling as ever entered into human hearts, and we say, moreover, that it would be very difficult to exaggerate either its generality, its force, its extent, or the degree to which it has been excited by recent events. We are deeply convinced that to persist in regarding the relation between landlord and tenant as one of contract merely, to repeat again and again in every possible form that all that the Irish peasants have a right to say is that they have made a hard bargain with their landlords which they wish the legislature to modify, is to shut our eyes to the feelings of the people, feelings which it will be difficult and also dangerous to disregard. The very gist and point of the whole claim of the tenants is that their moral right (as they regard it) is as sacred, and ought to be as much protected by law, as the landlords' legal right, and that it is a distinct grievance to a man to be prevented from living in Ireland on that particular piece of land on which he was born and bred, and which was occupied by his ancestors before him.' The whole drift of this history bears on this point. The policy of the past must be reversed. The tenants must be rooted in the soil instead of being rooted out. 'Improvement' must include the people as well as the land, and agents must no longer be permitted to arrogate to themselves the functions of Divine Providence. '_Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret._' One of the best pamphlets on the Irish Land Question is by Mr. William M'Combie, of Aberdeen. A practical farmer himself, his sagacity has penetrated the vitals of the subject. His observations, while travelling through the country last year, afford a remarkable corroboration of the conclusions at which I have arrived. Of the new method of 'regenerating Ireland,' he says:-- 'In it the resources of the soil--to get the most possible out of it by the most summary process--is the great object; the people are of little or no account, save as they can be made use of to accomplish this object. But, indeed, it is not alone by the promoters of the grand culture that the people have been disregarded, but by Irish landlords, generally, of both classes. By the improving landlords--who are generally recent purchasers--they are regarded merely as labourers; by the leave-alone landlords as rent-producers. The one class have ejected the occupiers, the other have applied, harder and harder, the screw, until the "good landlord"--the landlord almost worshipped in Ireland at this hour--is the landlord who neither evicts his tenants nor raises their rents. The consequences are inevitable, and, over a large portion of the island, they are patent to every eye--they obtrude themselves everywhere. The people are poor; they are despondent, broken-spirited. In the south of Ireland decay is written on every town. In the poorer parts you may see every fifth or sixth house tenantless, roofless, allowed from year to year to moulder and moulder away, unremoved, unrepaired.... To make room for these large-scale operations, evictions must go on, and as the process proceeds the numbers must be augmented of those who are unfit to work for hire and unable to leave the country. The poor must be made poorer; many now self-supporting made dependent. Pauperism must spread, and the burden of poor rates be vastly increased. If the greatest good of the greatest number be the fundamental principle of good government, this is not the direction in which the state should seek to accomplish the regeneration of Ireland. The development of the resources of the land ought to be made compatible with the improvement of the condition of the people.' CHAPTER XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN. The difficulty of understanding the case of Ireland is proverbial. Its most enlightened friends in England and Scotland are often charged with 'gross ignorance of the country.' They might excuse themselves by answering, that when they seek instruction from Irishmen, one native instructor is sure to contradict the other. Yet there must be some point of view from which all sides of the Irish question can be seen, some light in which the colours are not confused, the picture is not exaggerated, the features are not distorted. Every nation has its idiosyncrasy, proceeding from race, religion, laws, institutions, climate, and other circumstances; and this idiosyncrasy may be the key of its history. In Ireland three or four nationalities are bound together in one body politic; and it is the conflict of their several idiosyncrasies which perplexes statesmen, and constitutes the main difficulty of the Irish problem. The blood of different races is mingled, and no doubt greatly modified by ages of intercourse. But _religion_ is an abiding force. The establishment of religious equality in Ireland is a glorious achievement, enough in itself to immortalise any statesman. It is a far greater revolution than was effected by the Emancipation Act, and more to the credit of the chief actor; because, while Mr. Gladstone did spontaneously what he firmly believed to be right in principle. Sir Robert Peel did, from necessity, what he as firmly believed was wrong in principle. But no reasonable man expected that the disestablishment of the Church would settle all Irish questions; in fact, it but clears the way for the settlement of some of the most important and urgent. It makes it possible for Irishmen of every creed to speak in one voice to the Government. Their respective clergy, hitherto so intent on ecclesiastical claims and pretensions, will no longer pass by on the other side, but turn Samaritans to their bleeding country, fallen among the thieves of Bigotry and Faction. There are many high Protestants--indeed, I may say all, except the aristocracy--who, while firmly believing in the vital importance of the union of the three kingdoms, earnestly wishing that union to be real and perpetual, cannot help expressing their conviction that Ireland has been greatly wronged by England--wronged by the legislature, by the Government, and most of all by the crown. In no country in the world has loyalty existed under greater difficulties, in none has it been so ill requited, in none has so much been done as if of set purpose to starve it to death. In the reign of Elizabeth the capricious will of a despotic sovereign was exerted to crush the national religion, while the greatest military exploits of her ablest viceroys consisted of predatory excursions, in which they slaughtered or carried away the horses and cattle, burned the crops and houses, and laid the country waste and desolate, in order to create famines for the wholesale destruction of the population, thus spoiled and killed as a punishment for the treason of their chiefs, over whom they had no control. In the reigns of James I. and Charles I. there was a disposition among the remnant of the people-- To fly from petty tyrants to the throne. But the Stuarts appealed to Irish loyalty merely for the support of their dynasty, and William III. laid the laurels won on the banks of the Boyne upon the altar of English monopoly. In the reigns of Anne and the three Georges, law was made to do the work of the sword, and the Catholics of Ireland, constituting the mass of the nation, knew their sovereign only as the head of an alien power, cruel and unrelenting in its oppression. They were required to love a German prince whom they had never seen. He called himself the father of his subjects; and he had millions of subjects on the other side of a narrow channel, whom he never knew, and never cared to know. When at length the dominant nation relented, and wished to strike the penal chains from the hands of her sister, the king forbade the act of mercy, pleading his conscience and his oath as a bar to justice and to freedom, but yielding at last to English state necessity, and robbing concession of its grace, of all its power to conciliate. From the battle of the Boyne to Catholic emancipation, the king of Ireland had never set foot on Irish soil, except in the case of George IV., whose visit was little better than a melodramatic exhibition, repaid by copious libations of flattery, which however failed to melt his bigotry, or to persuade him to redeem his solemn promises and pledges, until, nine years later, he was compelled to yield by the fear of impending civil war. Ireland may get from her sister, England, everything but that for which the heart yearns--affection--that which alone 'can minister to a mind diseased, can pluck from the memory its rooted sorrow, and rase out the written troubles from the brain.' That is just what Ireland needs above all things. She wants to be kept from brooding morbidly over the dismal past, and to be induced to apply herself in a cheerful spirit to the business of life. The prescriptions of state physicians cannot fully reach the root of the disease. Say that it is a sentimental malady--a delusion. What is gained by saying _that_, if the sentiment or the delusion makes life wretched, unfits for business, produces suicidal propensities, and renders _keepers_ necessary? In theory, Ireland is one with England; in practice, she is hourly made to feel the reverse. _The Times_, and all the journals which express the instincts of the dominant nation, constantly speak of the Irish people as '_the subjects of England_, whom Englishmen have a right to control. They are the subjects of the Queen only in a secondary sense--_as_ the Queen of England, and reigning over them through England. Every sovereign, from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, was sovereign of Ireland merely in this subordinate sense, even when there was an Irish parliament. The King of _Ireland_ could speak to his Irish parliament only as he was advised by his English ministers; and their advice was invariably prompted by English interests. Her king was not _hers_ in the true sense. His _heart_ and his company were wholly given to another, to whose pride, power, and splendour she was made to minister. That state of things still continues in effect, and while it lasts Ireland can never be contented. Her heart will always be disquieted within her. Something bitter will ever be bubbling up from the bottom of that troubled fountain. Nor let it be supposed that this is due to a peculiar idiosyncrasy in Ireland--to some unhappy congenital malformation, or some original taint in the blood. It has been often asked whether England would have submitted to similar treatment from Ireland if their relations were reversed. Englishmen have not answered that question because they cannot understand it. They find it difficult to apply the Divine maxim, 'Do as you would be done by.' in their dealings with other nations. But they can scarcely conceive its application to their dealings with Ireland, any more than the American planter could have conceived the duty of fraternizing with his negroes. If we draw from this fact the logical inference, we shall be at a loss to discern whether the Celt or the Saxon suffers more from the moral perversity of his nature. The truth is, both are perverted by their unnatural relations, which are a standing outrage on the spirit of Christianity. The Emperor of Austria long laboured to govern one nation through another and for another, in right of conquest, and we know the result in Italy and Hungary. Lombardy, though well cultivated and materially prosperous, could never be reconciled to Austrian rule. Even the nobility could not be tempted to appear at court. Venetia was more passionately and desperately hostile, and was consequently crushed by military repression, till the country was turned into a wilderness, and the capital once so famous for its commerce and splendour, became one of the most melancholy scenes of ruin and desolation to be found in the world. The Austrians, and those who sympathised with Austria as the great conservative power of the Continent, ascribed all this to the perversity of the Italian nature, and to the influence of agitators and conspirators. Austria was bountiful to her Italian subjects, and would be more lenient if she could, but their vices of character and innate propensity to rebellion, rendered necessary a system of coercion. Hence the prisons were full of political offenders; the soldier and the executioner were constantly employed in maintaining law and order. All the Emperor wanted was that his Italian provinces should be so thoroughly amalgamated with Austria, as to form one firmly united empire, and that the inhabitants should be content with their position as _Austrian_ subjects, ruled by Austrian officials. But this was precisely what they could not or would not be. 'They smiled at the drawn dagger and defied its point.' They would sacrifice their lives, but they would not sacrifice their nationality at the bidding of an alien power. This illustrates the force of the national sentiment, and the tremendous magnitude of the calamities to which its persistent violation leads. But the case of Hungary is still more apposite as an illustration of the English policy in Ireland. The Hungarians had an ancient constitution and parliament of their own. The Emperor of Austria was their legitimate king, wearing the crown of Hungary. In this capacity the Hungarians were willing to yield to him the most devoted loyalty. But he wanted to weld his empire into a compact unity, and to centralise all political power at Vienna, so that Austria should be the head and heart of the system, and the other provinces her hands and her feet. Hungary resisted, and revolted. The result was a desolating civil war, in which she was triumphant, till the Czar came to the rescue of his brother despot, and poured his legions in overwhelming numbers into the devoted country. Hungary was now at the feet of her sovereign, and Austria, the dominant state, tried to be conciliatory, in order to bring about the desired amalgamation and consolidation of the empire. She did so, with every apparent prospect of success, and it was generally considered throughout Europe that there was an end of the Hungarian kingdom. But Hungarian nationality survived, and still resisted Austrian centralisation. The Hungarians struggled for its recognition constitutionally, manfully, with admirable self-control, moderation, and wisdom, until at length they achieved a peaceful victory. Their sovereign reigns over them as King of Hungary; he and the empress dwell among them, without Austrian guards. Their children are born among them, and they are proud to call them natives of Hungary. The Hungarians, as subjects of _Austria_, were discontented, miserable, incurably disaffected. As subjects of their own king (though he is also Emperor of Austria) they are intensely loyal. They are prosperous and happy, because they are free. And though they have their distinctions of race and religion, they are united. The Magyars of Hungary correspond very nearly to the Protestants of Ireland. Though a minority, their energy, their education, their natural talent for organisation and government, their love of freedom, their frank recognition of the rights of conscience, enable them to lead without inspiring jealousy, just as the Protestants of Ireland were enabled to lead in 1782, notwithstanding the existence of Protestant Ascendancy. Religious equality is not a cause of tranquillity in itself. It tranquillises simply because it implies the absence of irritation. It takes a festering thorn out of the side of the unestablished community--a thorn which inflames the blood of every one of its members. Let worldly interest, political power, and social precedence cease to be connected with the profession of religion, and religious differences would cease to produce animosity and intolerance. If the Magyars had been the Hungarian party of Protestant ascendancy, and if the Protestant interest had also been the Austrian interest; if the mission of the Magyars had been to act as a garrison, to keep down the Roman Catholic majority, their cause could never have triumphed till Protestant ascendancy should be abolished. But Hungarian Protestantism did not need such support, although the Pope has as much authority in Hungary as in Ireland. Of course the cases of Hungary and Ireland are in many respects dissimilar. But they are alike in this: their respective histories establish the great fact that the most benevolent of sovereigns, and the wisest of legislatures, can never produce contentment or loyalty in a kingdom which is ruled _through_ and _for_ another kingdom. We can easily understand that when the light of royalty shines upon a country _through a conquering nation still dominant_, the medium is of necessity dense, cold, refracting, and discolouring. Of this the best illustration is derived from the relations between Austria and Hungary, now so happily adjusted to the unspeakable advantage of both nations. Austrian rule was unsympathetic, harsh, insolent, domineering, based upon the arrogant assumption that the Hungarians were incapable of managing their own affairs without the guidance of Austrian wisdom and the support of Austrian steadiness. But the Hungarians, united among themselves, putting their trust, not in boastful, vapouring, and self-seeking agitators, but in honest, truthful, high-minded, and capable statesmen, persevered in a course of firm, but temperate and constitutional, national self-assertion, until the Austrians were compelled to put away from them their supercilious airs of natural superiority, and to concede the principle of international equality and the right of self-government. What sickens the reader of Irish history most of all is the anarchy of the old clan system, the everlasting alternation of outrages and avenging reprisals. One faction, when it felt strong and had a favourable opportunity, made a sudden raid upon another faction, taken at a disadvantage, plundering and killing with reckless fury. The outraged party treasured up its anger till it had power to retaliate, and then glutted its vengeance without mercy in the same way. When this fatal propensity to mutual destruction was restrained by law, it broke out from time to time in other ways. What was wanted to cure it effectually was a strong, steady, central government, such as England enjoys herself. But the very system which is most calculated to foster factiousness is the one which has reigned for centuries in Dublin Castle. The British sovereign knows no party, and, whatever other sovereigns have done, Queen Victoria has never forgotten this constitutional principle. But the Irish lord-lieutenant is always a party-man, and is always surrounded by party-men. They were Whigs or Tories, Liberals or Conservatives, often extreme in their views and violent in their temper. The vice of the old clan system was its tendency to unsettle, to undo, to upset, to smash and destroy. Instead of counteracting that vice (which still lingers in the national blood), by a fixed, unchanging system of administration, based on principles of unswerving rectitude, which knows no distinction of party, no favouritism, England ruled by the alternate sway of factions. _The Times_, referring to the debate on the Irish Church, remarked that the viceroyalty was more and more 'a mere ornament.' It is really nothing more. The viceroy has no actual power, and if he has statesmanship, it is felt to be out of place. He can scarcely give public expression to his sentiments on any political questions without offending one party or the other, whereas the estate of the realm which he represents is neutral and ought to keep strictly to neutral ground. As to the effect of the office in degrading the national spirit among the nobility and gentry, we could not have a better illustration than the fact that the amiable Lord Carlisle was accustomed, at the meeting of the Royal Dublin Society, to tell its members that the true aim, interest, glory, and destiny of Ireland was to be a pasture and a dairy for England,--a compliment which seemed to have been gratefully accepted, or was at all events allowed to pass. But even as an 'ornament' the viceregal system is a failure. The Viceroy with his family ought to be the head of society in Ireland, just as the Queen is in England. The royal family are the same to all parties and classes, showing no partiality on the ground of politics, but smiling with equal favour and recognition upon all. In Ireland, however, a liberal lord lieutenant is generally shunned by the Conservative portion of the aristocracy, which forms the great majority of the class. On the other hand the Conservatives flock in large numbers to the court of a Tory Viceroy, while Liberals stand aloof. Instead therefore of being a centre of union to all sections of the best society, and bringing them together, so that they may know one another, and enjoy the advantages due to their rank, the viceregal court operates as a source of jealousy and division. So that, looking at the institution as a mere ornament of society, as a centre of fashionable life and refining influences, facilitating intercourse between ranks and classes, bringing the owners of land and the men of commerce more in harmony, it is not worth preserving. On the other hand it produces some of the worst features of conventionalism. It cultivates flunkeyism and servility, while operating as a restraint upon the manly expression of opinion. It fosters a spirit of spurious aristocracy, which shows itself in contempt for men who prefer honest industry to place-hunting and insolvent gentility. But while I thus speak of the viceregal court as at present constituted, I still maintain that, like Hungary, this country is so peculiarly situated, and is animated by so strong a spirit of nationality, that it ought to have a court of its own, and a sovereign of its own. The case of Hungary shows how easily this great boon might be granted, and how gratifying the results would be to all the parties concerned. The Queen ought to reside in Ireland for some portion of the year. A suitable palace should be provided for the royal family. The Prince of Wales, during her majesty's reign, ought to be the permanent Viceroy, with the necessary addition to his income. The office would afford an excellent training for his duties as king. The attraction of the Princess of Wales would make the Irish court very brilliant. It would afford the opportunity of contact with real royalty, not the shadowy sort of thing we have had--reflected through Viceroys very few of whom were ever _en rapport_ with the Irish nation. Not one of them could so speak to the people as to elicit a spark of enthusiasm. Of course they could not have the true ring of royalty, for royalty was not in them. But they could not play the part well. One simple sentence from the Queen or the Prince of Wales, or even from Prince Arthur, would be worth all the theatrical pomp they could display in a generation. Those noblemen had no natural connection with the kingdom, fitting them to take the first place in it. They were not hereditary chiefs. They were not elected by the people. They were mere 'casual' chief-governors; and they formed no ties with the nation that could not be broken as easily as the spider's thread. The _hereditary principle_ has immense force in Ireland. The landlords are now seeking to weaken it; or rather they are ignoring it altogether, and substituting the commercial principle in dealing with their tenants, preferring not the most devoted adherents of the family, but the man with most money. But I warn them that they are doing so at the peril of their order. A prince who was _heir presumptive to the throne as Viceroy_, and who, when he ascended the throne, should be crowned King of _Ireland_, as well as King of Great Britain, crowned in his own Irish palace, and on the _Lia Fail_ or stone of destiny, preserved at Westminster, would save many a million to the British exchequer, for it would be no longer necessary to support a large army of occupation to keep the country. If the throne of Queen Victoria stood in Dublin, there is not a Fenian in Ireland who would not die in its defence. Standing in Westminster it is doubtful whether its attraction is sufficient to retain the hearts even of Orangemen. There, it is the _English_ throne. So the _Englishman_ regards it with instinctive jealousy. He feels it is his own; but, say what we may, the Irish loyalist, when he approaches it, is made to feel, by a thousand signs, that he is a stranger and an intruder. He returns to his own bereaved country with a sad heart, and a bitter spirit. Can he be _Anglicised_? Put this question to an English philosopher, and he will answer with Mr. Froude--'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?' We can bridge the channel with fast steamers; but who will bridge the gulf, hitherto impassable, which separates the English Dives from the Irish Lazarus? 'We have,' said Canning, 'for many years been erecting a mound--not to assist or improve, but to thwart nature; we have raised it high above the waters, and it has stood there, frowning hostility and effecting separation. In the course of time, however, the necessities of man, and the silent workings of nature, have conspired to break down this mighty structure, till there remains of it only a narrow isthmus, standing Between two kindred seas, Which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, And longed to meet. What then, shall be our conduct? Shall we attempt to repair the breaches, and fortify the ruins? A hopeless and ungracious undertaking! Or shall we leave them to moulder away by time and accident--a sure but distant and thankless consummation; or, shall we not rather cut away at once the isthmus that remains, allow free course to the current which has been artificially impeded, and float upon the mingling waves the ark of our glorious constitution?' Much has been done since Canning's time to remove the narrow isthmus. Emancipation cut deep into it. The disestablishment of the Irish Church submerged an immense portion of it. If Mr. Gladstone's land bill be equally effective, a breach will be made through which the two kindred seas will meet, and, in their commingling flux and reflux, will quickly sweep away all minor obstacles to their perfect union. A just settlement of the land question will reconcile the two races, and close the war of seven centuries. That is the rock against which the two nationalities have rushed in foaming breakers, lashed into fury by the storms of faction and bigotry. Remove the obstruction, and the world would hear no more the roaring of the waters. Then would float peacefully upon the commingling waves the ark of our common constitution, in which there would be neither Saxon nor Celt, neither English nor Irish, neither Protestant nor Catholic, but one united, free, and mighty people. Then might the Emperor of the French mark the epoch with the announcement--'England has done justice to Ireland!' LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
29714	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University.) THE NEGRO FARMER By CARL KELSEY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH. D. Printed and on sale by JENNINGS & PYE CHICAGO 1903 PRICE FIFTY CENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction 5 II. Geographic Location 9 III. Economic Heritage 22 IV. Present Situation 29 Virginia 32 Sea Coast 38 Central District 43 Alluvial Region 52 V. Social Environment 61 VI. The Outlook 67 VII. Agricultural Training 71 Population Maps 80 =OLD-TIME NEGROES.= CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. In the last three hundred years there have been many questions of general interest before the American people. It is doubtful, however, if there is another problem, which is as warmly debated to-day as ever and whose solution is yet so uncertain, as that of the Negro. In the second decade of the seventeenth century protests were being filed against black slavery, but the system was continued for nearly 250 years. The discussion grew more and more bitter, and to participation in it ignorance, then as now, was no bar. The North had less and less direct contact with the Negro. The religious hostility to human bondage was strengthened by the steadily increasing difference in economic development which resulted in the creation of sectional prejudices and jealousies. The North held the negro to be greatly wronged, and accounts of his pitiable condition and of the many individual cases of ill treatment fanned the flames of wrath. The reports of travelers, however, had little influence compared with the religious sentiments which felt outraged by the existence of bond servitude in the land. Through all the years there was little attempt to scientifically study the character of the problem or the nature of the subject. A mistaken economic sentiment in the South and a strong moral sentiment at the North rendered such studies unnecessary, if not impossible. The South, perceiving the benefits of slavery, was blind to its fundamental weaknesses, and the North, unacquainted with Negro character, held to the natural equality of all men. Thus slavery itself became a barrier to the getting of an adequate knowledge of the needs of the slave. The feeling grew that if the shackles of slavery were broken, the Negro would at once be as other men. The economic differences finally led to the war. It is not to be forgotten that slavery itself was not the cause of the war, nor was there any thought on the part of the Union leaders to make the blacks citizens. That this was done later was a glowing tribute to their ignorance of the real demands of the situation. The Republican party of to-day shows no indication of repeating this mistake in the newly acquired islands. I would not be understood as opposing suffrage of the blacks, but any thoughtful observer must agree that as a race they were not prepared for popular government at the time of their liberation. The folly of the measures adopted none can fail to see who will read the history of South Carolina or Mississippi during what is called "Reconstruction." Immediately after the war, new sources of information regarding the Negro were afforded the North. The leaders of the carpet-bag regime, playing political games, circulated glowing reports of the progress of the ex-slaves. A second class of persons, the teachers, went South, and back came rose-colored accounts. It might seem that the teacher could best judge of the capacity of a people. The trouble is that in the schools they saw the best specimens of the race, at the impressionable period of their lives, and under abnormal conditions. There is in the school an atmosphere about the child which stimulates his desire to advance, but a relapse often comes when ordinary home conditions are renewed. Moreover, it is well known that the children of all primitive races are very quick and apt up to a certain period in their lives, excelling often children of civilized peoples, but that this disappears when maturity is reached. Hence, the average teacher, not coming in close contact with the mass of the people under normal surroundings, gives, although sincerely, a very misleading picture of actual conditions. A third class of informants were the tourists, and their ability to get at the heart of the situation is obvious. There remain to be mentioned the Negro teachers and school entrepreneurs. Naturally these have presented such facts as they thought would serve to open the purses of their hearers. Some have been honest, many more unintentionally dishonest, and others deliberately deceitful. The relative size of these classes it is unnecessary to attempt to ascertain. They have talked and sung their way into the hearts of the hearers as does the pitiful beggar on the street. The donor sees that evidently something is needed, and gives with little, if any, careful investigation as to the real needs of the case. The result of it all has been that the testimony of those who knew far more than was possible for any outsider, the southern whites, has gone unheeded, not to say that it has been spurned as hostile and valueless. The blame, of course, is not always on one side, and as will be shown later, there are many southern whites who have as little to do with the Negro, and consequently know as little about him, as the average New Yorker. This situation has been most unfortunate for all concerned. It should not be forgotten that the question of the progress of the Negro has far more direct meaning for the southerner, and that he is far more deeply interested in it than is his northern brother, the popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding. It is unnecessary to seek explanations, but it is a pleasure to recognize that there are many indications that a better day is coming, and indications now point to a hearty co-operation in educational efforts. There are many reasons for the change, and perhaps the greatest of these is summed up in "Industrial Training." The North is slowly learning that the Negro is not a dark-skinned Yankee, and that thousands of generations in Africa have produced a being very different from him whose ancestors lived an equal time in Europe. In a word, we now see that slavery does not account for all the differences between the blacks and whites, and that their origins lie farther back. Our acquaintance with the ancestors of the Negro is meager. We do not even know how many of the numerous African tribes are represented in our midst. A good deal of Semitic blood had already been infused into the more northern tribes. What influence did this have and how many descendants of these tribes are there in America? Tribal distinctions have been hopelessly lost in this country, and the blending has gone on so continuously that perhaps there would be little practical benefit if the stocks could be determined to-day. It is, however, a curious commentary on the turn discussions of the question have taken, that not until 1902 did any one find it advisable to publish a comprehensive study of the African environment and to trace its influence on subsequent development. Yet this is one of the fundamental preliminaries to any real knowledge of the subject. In close connection with the preceding is the question of the mulatto. Besides the blending of African stocks there has been a good deal of intermixture of white blood. We do not even know how many full blooded Africans there are in America, nor does the last census seek to ascertain. Mulattoes have almost entirely been the offspring of white fathers and black mothers, and probably most of the fathers have been boys and young men. Without attempting a discussion of this subject, whose results ethnologists cannot yet tell, it is certain that a half breed is not a full blood, a mulatto is not a Negro, in spite of the social classification to the contrary. The general belief is that the mulatto is superior, either for good or bad, to the pure Negro. The visitor to the South cannot fail to be struck with the fact that with rare exceptions the colored men in places of responsibility, in education or in business, are evidently not pure negroes. Even in slavery times, the mulattoes were preferred for certain positions, such as overseers, the blacks as field hands. Attention is called to this merely to show our ignorance of an important point. Some may claim that it is a matter of no consequence. This I cannot admit. To me it seems of some significance to know whether mulattoes (and other crosses) form more than their relative percentage of the graduates of the higher schools; whether they are succeeding in business better than the blacks; whether town life is proving particularly attractive to them; whether they have greater or less moral and physical stamina, than the blacks. The lack of definite knowledge should at least stop the prevalent practice of taking the progress of a band of mulattoes and attempting to estimate that of the Negroes thereby. It may be that some day the mulatto will entirely supplant the black, but there is no immediate probability of this. Until we know the facts, our prophecies are but wild guesses. It should be remembered that a crossing of white and black may show itself in the yellow negro or the changed head and features, either, or both, as the case may be. A dark skin is, therefore, no sure indication of purity and blood.[1] It is often taken for granted that the Negro has practically equal opportunities in the various parts of the South, and that a fairly uniform rate of progress may be expected. This assumption rests on an ignorance of the geographical location of the mass of blacks. It will be shown that they are living in several distinct agricultural zones in which success must be sought according to local possibilities. Development always depends upon the environment, and we should expect, therefore, unequal progress for the Negroes. Even the highest fruits of civilization fail if the bases of life are suddenly changed. The Congregational Church has not flourished among the Negroes as have some other denominations, in spite of its great activity in educational work. The American mode of government is being greatly modified to make it fit conditions in Porto Rico. The manufacturers of Pennsylvania and the farmers of Iowa do not agree as to the articles on which duties should be levied, and it is a question if the two have the same interpretation of the principle of protection. Different environments produce different types. So it will be in the case of the Negro. If we are to understand the conditions on which his progress depends, we must pay some attention to economic geography. That this will result in a recognition of the need for shaping plans and methods according to local needs is obvious. The present thesis does not pretend to be a completed study, much less an attempt to solve the Negro problem. It is written in the hope of calling attention to some of the results of this geographic location as illustrated in the situation of the Negro farmer in various parts of the South. The attempt is made to describe the situation of the average man. It is fully recognized that there are numbers of exceptions among the Negroes as well as among the white school teachers, referred to above. That there is much in the present situation, both of encouragement and discouragement, is patent. Unfortunately, most of us shut our eyes to one or the other set of facts and are wildly optimistic or pessimistic, accordingly. That there may be no misunderstanding of my position, let me say that I agree with the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry in stating that: "I have very little respect for the intelligence or the patriotism of the man who doubts the capacity of the negro for improvement or usefulness." CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION. The great Appalachian system, running parallel to the Atlantic coast, and ending in northern Alabama, forms the geological axis of the southern states. Bordering the mountains proper is a broad belt of hills known as the Piedmont or Metamorphic region, marked by granite and other crystalline rocks, and having an elevation decreasing from 1,000 to 500 feet. The soil varies according to the underlying rocks, but is thin and washes badly, if carelessly tilled. The oaks, hickories and other hardwoods, form the forests. In Virginia this section meets the lower and flatter country known as Tide-Water Virginia. In the southern part of this state we come to the Pine Hills, which follow the Piedmont and stretch, interrupted only by the alluvial lands of the Mississippi, to central Texas. The Pine Hills seldom touch the Piedmont directly, but are separated by a narrow belt of Sand Hills, which run from North Carolina to Alabama, then swing northward around the coal measures and spread out in Tennessee and Kentucky. This region, in general of poor soils, marks the falls of the rivers and the head of navigation. How important this is may easily be seen by noticing the location of the cities in Georgia, for instance, and remembering that the country was settled before the day of railroads. In Alabama the Black Prairie is interposed between the Pine Hills and the Sand Hills, and this prairie swings northward into Mississippi. The Pine Hills give way to the more level Pine Flats, which slope with a gradient of a few feet a mile to the ocean or the gulf, which usually has a narrow alluvial border. Going west from Alabama we cross the oak and hickory lands of Central Mississippi, which are separated from the alluvial district by the cane hills and yellow loam table lands. Beyond the bottom lands of the Mississippi (and Red river) we come to the oak lands of Missouri, Arkansas and Texas which stretch to the black prairies of Texas, which, bordering the red lands of Arkansas, run southwest finally, merging in the coast prairies near Austin. In the northern part of Arkansas we come to the foothills of the Ozarks. These different regions are shown by the dotted lines on the population maps. The soils of these various regions having never been subjected to a glacial epoch, are very diverse, and it would be a thankless task to attempt any detailed classification on the basis of fertility. The soils of the Atlantic side being largely from the crystalline rocks and containing therefore much silica, are reputed less fertile than the gulf soils. The alluvial lands of the Mississippi and other rivers are beyond question the richest of all. Shaler says: "The delta districts of the Mississippi and its tributaries and similar alluvial lands which occupy broad fields near the lower portion of other streams flowing into the gulf have proved the most enduringly fertile areas of the country." Next to these probably stand the black prairies. In all states there is more or less alluvial land along the streams, and this soil is always the best. It is the first land brought into cultivation when the country is settled, and remains most constantly in use. Each district has its own advantages and its own difficulties. In the metamorphic regions, the trouble comes in the attempt to keep the soil on the hills, while in the flat lands the problem is to get proper drainage. In the present situation of the Negro farmer the adaptability of the soil to cotton is the chief consideration. The first slaves were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The importation was continued in spite of many protests, and the practice soon came into favor. Almost without interruption, in spite of various prohibitions, the slave traffic lasted right up to the very outbreak of the war, most of the later cargoes being landed along the gulf coast. Slavery proved profitable at the South; not so at the North, where it was soon abandoned. It was by no means, however, equally profitable in all parts of the South, and as time went on this fact became more noticeable. Thus at the outbreak of the war, Kentucky and Virginia were largely employed in selling slaves to the large plantations further south. Few new slaves had been imported into Virginia in the last one hundred years. The center of slavery thus moved southwest because of changing economic conditions, not because of any inherent opposition to the system. This gradual weeding out of the slaves in Virginia may very possibly account for the general esteem in which Virginia negroes have been held. To indicate the character of those sold South, Bracket[2] gives a quotation from a Baltimore paper of 1851 which advertised some good Negroes to be "exchanged for servants suitable for the South with bad characters." To trace the development of the slave-holding districts is not germain to the present study, interesting as it is in itself. It may be worth while to trace the progress in one state. In Georgia, in 1800, the blacks outnumbered the whites in the seacoast counties, excepting Camden, and were also in the majority in Richmond. In 1830 they also outnumbered the whites along the Savannah river and were reaching westward as far as Jones county. In 1850, besides the coast and the river, they were in a majority in a narrow belt crossing the state from Lincoln to Harris counties. By 1860 they had swung southward in the western part of the state and were in possession of most of the counties south of Troup, while the map of 1900 shows that they have added to this territory. In other parts of the state they have never been greatly in evidence. The influence of the rivers is again evident when we notice that they moved up to the head of navigation, then swung westward. As slavery developed, it was accompanied by a great extension of cotton growing, or, perhaps, it were truer to say that the gradual rise of cotton planting made possible the increased use of slaves. The center of the cotton industry had reached the middle of Alabama by 1850, was near Jackson, Mississippi, in 1860, and has since moved slowly westward. The most prosperous district of the South in 1860 was probably the alluvial lands of the Mississippi. This gives us the key to the westward trend of slavery. Let it be remembered, too, that the system of slavery demands an abundance of new lands to take the place of those worn out by the short-sighted cultivation adopted. Thus in the South little attention was paid to rotation of crops or to fertilizers. As long as the new land was abundant, it was not considered, and probably was not profitable to keep up the old. The result was that "the wild and reckless system of extensive cultivation practiced prior to the war had impoverished the land of every cotton-producing state east of the Mississippi river." As cotton became less and less profitable in the east the opening up of the newer and richer lands in the west put the eastern planter in a more and more precarious situation. Had cotton fallen to anything like its present price in the years immediately preceding the war, his lot would have been far worse. Another influence should be noted. Slavery tended to drive out of a community those who opposed the system, and also the poor whites, non-slave holders. The planters sought to buy out or expel this latter class, because of the temptation they were under to incite the slaves to steal corn and cotton and sell it to them at a low price. There was also trouble in many other ways. There was thus a tendency to separate the mass of the blacks from the majority of the whites. That this segregation actually arose a map of the proportionate populations for Alabama in 1860 shows. It may be claimed that there were other reasons for this separation, such as climatic conditions, etc. This may be partially true, but it evidently cannot be the principal reason, for we find the whites in the majority in many of the lowest and theoretically most unhealthful regions, as in the pine flats. This is the situation to-day also. The influence of the rivers in determining the settlement of the country has been mentioned. Nowhere was this more the case than in the alluvial lands of the Mississippi, the so-called "Delta." This country was low and flat, subject to overflows of the river. The early settlements were directly on the banks of the navigable streams, because this only was accessible, and because the land immediately bordering the streams is higher than the back land. Levees were at once started to control the rivers, but not until the railroads penetrated the country in 1884 was there any development of the back land. Even to-day most of this is still wild. The war brought numerous changes, but it is only in place here to consider those affecting the location of the people. The mobility of labor is one of the great changes. Instead of a fixed labor force we now have to deal with a body relatively free to go and come. The immediate result is that a stream of emigration sets in from the border states to the cities of the North, where there was great opportunity for servants and all sorts of casual labor. The following table shows the number of negroes in various northern cities in 1860 and also in 1900: 1860. 1900. Washington 10,983 86,702 Baltimore 27,898 79,258 Philadelphia 22,185 62,613 New York 16,785 60,666 St. Louis 3,297 35,516 Chicago 955 30,150 Coincident with the movement to the more distant towns came a development of southern cities. City life has been very attractive to Negroes here also, as the following table indicates: 1860. 1900. New Orleans 24,074 77,714 Atlanta 1,939 35,727 Richmond 14,275 32,230 Charleston 17,146 31,522 Savannah 8,417 28,090 Montgomery 4,502 17,229 Birmingham ... 16,575 Other cities show the same gains. As a rule, the negro has been the common laborer in the cities and in the trades does not seem to hold the same relative position he had in 1860. In recent years there has been quite a development of small tradesmen among them. A comparison of the two tables shows that Washington and Baltimore have more Negroes than New Orleans; that St. Louis has more than Atlanta and Richmond, while New York and Philadelphia contain double the number of Savannah and Charleston. This emigration to the North has had great effect upon many districts of the South. It seems also to be certain that the Negroes have not maintained themselves in the northern cities, and that the population has been kept up by constant immigration. What this has meant we may see when we find that in 1860 the Negroes were in the majority in five counties in Maryland, in two in 1900; in 43 in Virginia in 1860, in 35 in 1900; in North Carolina in 19 in 1860, in 15 in 1900. The map on page 13 shows the movement of the Negro population in Virginia between 1890 and 1900. The shaded counties, 60 in number, have lost in actual population (Negro). The total actual decrease in these counties was over 27,000. Even in the towns there has been a loss, for in 1890 the twelve towns of over 2,500 population contained 32,692 Negroes. In 1900 only 29,575. The only section in which there has been a heavy increase is the seacoast from Norfolk and Newport News to the north and including Richmond. A city like Roanoke also makes its presence felt. When we remember that the Negroes in Virginia number over 600,000, and that the total increase in the decade was only 25,000, a heavy emigration becomes clear. =VIRGINIA, 1890-1900. MOVEMENT OF NEGRO POPULATION. Shaded Counties show decrease. White Counties indicate increase. Figures show extent of change.= As a common laborer also the negro has borne his part in the development of the economical resources of the South. He has built the railroads and levees; has hewn lumber in the forests; has dug phosphate rock on the coast and coal in the interior. Wherever there has been a development of labor industry calling for unskilled labor he has found a place. All these have combined to turn him from the farm, his original American home. The changing agricultural conditions which have had a similar influence will be discussed later. Having thus briefly reviewed the influences which have had part in determining his general habitat we are ready to examine more closely his present location. The maps of the Negro population will show this for the different states. A word regarding these maps. They are drawn on the same scale, and the shading represents the same things for the different states. The density map should always be compared with the proportionate map to get a correct view of the actual situation. If this is not done, confused ideas will result. On the density maps if a county has a much heavier shading than surrounding ones, a city is probably the explanation. The reverse may be true on the proportionate maps where the lighter shading may indicate the presence of numbers of whites in some city, as in Montgomery County, Alabama, or Charleston County, South Carolina. Beginning with Virginia, we find almost no Negroes in the western mountain districts, but their numbers increase as we approach the coast and their center is in the southeast. The heavy district in North Carolina adjoins that in Virginia, diminishing in the southern part of the state. Entering South Carolina we discover a much heavier population, both actually and relatively. Geographical foundations unfortunately (for our purpose) do not follow county lines. It is very likely, however, that could we get at the actual location of the people, we should find that they had their influence. Evidently the Sand 'Hills have some significance, for the density map shows a lighter negro population. So does the Pine Flats district, although in this state the Negroes are in the majority in the region, having been long settled in the race districts. In no other state do the blacks outnumber the whites in the Pine Flats. In Georgia the northern part is in possession of the whites, as are the Pine Flats. The Negroes hold the center and the coast. In Florida the Negroes are in the Pine Hills. In Alabama they center in the Pine Hills and Black Prairie. In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana they are in the alluvial regions, and in Texas they find their heaviest seat near Houston. Outside of the city counties we do not find a population of over 30 negroes to the square mile until South Carolina is reached, and the heaviest settlement is in the black prairie of Alabama and the alluvial region of Mississippi, and part of Louisiana. In Tennessee they are found along the river and in the red lands of the center, while in Kentucky they are chiefly located in the Limestone district. Summarizing their location, we may say that they start in the east-central portion of Virginia and follow the line of the Pine Hills to Alabama, only slightly encroaching upon the Metamorphic district, and except in South Carolina, on the pine flats. They occupy the black prairie of Alabama and Mississippi, and the lands of the river states with a smaller population in the Oak Hills of Texas, the red lands of Tennessee and some of the limestone district of Kentucky. It is worth while to examine one state more in detail and Alabama has been selected as being typical. The Negro proportion in the state in 1860 was 45.4 per cent, and in 1900 was 45.2 per cent. An examination of a proportionate map for 1860 would show that the slave owners found two parts of the state favorable to them. The first is along the Tennessee river in the North, and the second, the black prairie of the center. Of these the latter was by far the seat of the heavier population. It has already been suggested that this was probably the best land in the slave states, save the alluvial bottoms. Both districts were accessible by water. The Tombigbee and Alabama rivers reached all parts of the prairie, the Tennessee forming the natural outlet of the North. By referring now to the map of 1900, it is evident that some changes have taken place. The prairie country, the "Black Belt," is still in the possession of the Negroes, and their percentage is larger, having increased from 71 to 80. The population per square mile is also heavier. Dallas, Sumter and Lowndes counties had a Negro population of 23.6 per square mile in 1860, and 39.2 in 1900. In the northern district an opposite condition exists. In 1860 the region embracing the counties of Lauderdale, Limestone, Franklin, Colbert, Lawrence and Morgan had a colored population forming 44.5 per cent of the total. In 1900 the Negroes were but 33 per cent of the total. The district contains some 4,609 square miles, and had in 1860 a Negro population of 11 to the square mile; in 1900, 13.5. Of this increase of 2.5 per mile, about one-half is found to be in the four towns of the district whose population is over 2,500 each. The smaller villages would probably account for most of the balance, so it seems safe to say that the farming population has scarcely increased in the last forty years. Meantime the whites in the district have increased from 12 per square mile to 25.4. The census shows that between 1890 and 1900 six counties of North Alabama lost in the actual Negro population, and two others were stationary, while in the black belt the whites decreased in four counties and were stationary in two. It will be seen that the Negroes have gained in Jefferson (Birmingham) and Talladega counties. The opportunities for unskilled labor account largely for this, and Talladega is also a good cotton county. In Winston and Cullman counties there are practically no Negroes, the census showing but 28 in the two. In 1860 they formed 3 per cent of the total in Winston and 6 percent in Blount, which at that time included Cullman. The explanation of their disappearance is found in the fact that since the war these counties have been settled by Germans from about Cincinnati, and the Negroes have found it convenient to move. Roughly speaking, the poor land of the Sand Hills separates the white farmers from the colored. From 1890 to 1900 the Negroes lost relatively in the Metamorphic and Sand Hills, were about stationary in the Prairie, from which they have overflowed and gained in the Oak Hills, and more heavily in the Pine Hills. This statement is based on an examination of five or six counties, lying almost wholly within each of the districts, and which, so far as known, were not affected by the development of any special industry. The period is too short to do more than indicate that the separation of the two races seems to be still going on. A similar separation exists in Mississippi, where the Negroes hold the Black Prairie and the Delta, the whites the hill country of the center. It is evident that there is a segregation of the whites and blacks, and that there are forces which tend to perpetuate and increase this. It is interesting to note that whereas in slavery the cabins were grouped in the "quarters," in close proximity to the "big house" of the master, they are now scattered about the plantation so that even here there is less contact. In the cities this separation is evident the blacks occupy definite districts, while the social separation is complete. It seems that in all matters outside of business relations the whites have less and less to do with the blacks. If this division is to continue, we may well ask what is its significance for the future. This geographical segregation evidently had causes which were largely economic. Probably the most potent factor to-day in perpetuating it is social, i. e., race antagonism. The whites do not like to settle in a region where they are to compete with the Negro on the farms as ordinary field hands. Moreover, the Negroes retain their old-time scorn of such whites and despise them. The result is friction. Mr. A. H. Stone cites a case in point. He is speaking of a Negro serving a sentence for attempted rape: "I was anxious to know how, if at all, he accounted for his crime, but he was reluctant to discuss it. Finally he said to me: 'You don't understand--things over here are so different. I hired to an old man over there by the year. He had only about forty acres of land, and he and his old folks did all their own work--cooking, washing and everything. I was the only outside hand he had. His daughter worked right alongside of me in the field every day for three or four months. Finally, one day, when no one else was round, hell got into me, and I tried to rape her. But you folks over there can't understand--things are so different. Over here a nigger is a nigger, and a white man is a white man, and it's the same with the women.' ... Her only crime was a poverty which compelled her to do work which, in the estimation of the Negro, was reserved as the natural portion of his own race, and the doing of which destroyed the relation which otherwise constituted a barrier to his brutality."[3] Mr. Stone has touched upon one of the most delicate questions in the relationship of the races. It would be out of place to discuss it here, but attention must be called to the fact that there is the least of such trouble in the districts where the Negro forms the largest percentage of the population. I would not be so foolish as to say that assaults upon white women _may_ not take place anywhere, but as a matter of fact they seem to occur chiefly in those regions where white and black meet as competitors for ordinary labor. Beaufort County, South Carolina, has a black population forming about 90 per cent of the total, yet I was told last summer that but one case of rape had been known in the county, and that took place on the back edge of the county where there are fewest Negroes, and was committed by a non-resident black upon a non-resident white. Certain it is that in this county, which includes many islands, almost wholly inhabited by blacks, the white women have no fear of such assaults. This is also the case in the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Stone says: "Yet here we hear nothing about an ignorant mass of Negroes dragging the white man down; we hear of no black incubus; we have few midnight assassinations and fewer lynchings. The violation by a Negro of the person of a white woman is with us an unknown crime; nowhere is the line marking the social separation of the races more rigidly drawn, nowhere are the relations between the races more kindly. With us race riots are unknown, and we have but one Negro problem--though that constantly confronts us--how to secure more Negroes." Evidently when we hear reports of states of siege and rumors of race war, we are not to understand that this is the normal, typical condition of the entire South. If this is the real situation, it seems clear that the geographical segregation plays no mean part in determining the relation of the two races. It is safe to say that there is a different feeling between the races in the districts where the white is known only as the leader and those in which he comes into competition with the black. What is the significance of this for the future? The same condition exists in the cities, and of this Professor Dubois has taken note: "Savannah is an old city where the class of masters among the whites and of trained and confidential slaves among the Negroes formed an exceptionally large part of the population. The result has been unusual good feeling between the races, and the entrance of Negroes into all walks of industrial life, with little or no opposition." "Atlanta, on the other hand, is quite opposite in character. Here the poor whites from North Georgia who neither owned slaves nor had any acquaintance with Negro character, have come into contact and severe competition with the blacks. The result has been intense race feeling."[4] In one of the large towns of the Delta last summer, a prosperous Negro merchant said to me, in discussing the comparative opportunities of different sections: "I would not be allowed to have a store on the main street in such a good location in many places." Yet, his store is patronized by whites; and this would be true in many towns in the black belt. Other evidences of the difference in feeling towards the Negroes is afforded by the epithets of "hill-billies" and "red-necks" applied to the whites of the hill country by the lowland planters, and the retaliatory compliments "yellow-bellies" and "nigger-lovers." Does this geographical segregation help to explain the strikingly diverse reports coming from various parts of the South regarding the Negro? Why does Dr. Paul Barringer, of Virginia, find that race antagonism is rapidly growing, while Mr. Stone of Mississippi, says that their problem is to get more Negroes? The influence that this segregation has upon school facilities for both races should not be overlooked. The separation of the two races in the schools is to be viewed as the settled policy of the South. Here, then, is a farming community in which there are only a few Negroes. What sort of a separate school will be maintained for their children? Probably they are unable to support a good school, even should they so desire. The opportunities of their children must necessarily be limited. Will they make greater progress than children in the districts where the blacks are in large numbers and command good schools? If the situation be reversed and there are a few whites in a black community, the whites will be able to command excellent private schools for their children, if necessary. At present among the males over 21, the greatest illiteracy is found in the black counties. This may be accounted for by the presence of the older generation, which had little chance in the schools, and by the fact that perhaps those moving away have been the more progressive. It is a matter of regret that the census does not permit us to ascertain the illiteracy among the children from 10 to 21 years of age, to see if any difference was manifest. It would seem, however, that this segregation, coupled with race antagonism, is bound to affect the educational opportunities for the blacks. A problem which becomes more serious as the states waken to the needs of the case and attempt to educate their children. Yet again, this fact of habitat should lead us to be very chary of making local facts extend over the entire South and of making deductions for the entire country based on observations in a few places. Neglect of this precaution often leads to very erroneous and misleading conceptions of actual conditions. For instance, on page 419, Vol. VI, Census of 1900, in discussing the fact that Negro receives nearly as much per acre for his cotton as does the white, it is stated: "Considering the fact that he emerged from slavery only one-third of a century ago, and considering also his comparative lack of means for procuring the best land or for getting the best results from what he has, this near approach to the standard attained by the white man's experience for more than a century denotes remarkable progress." This may or may not be true, but the reason and proof are open to question. It assumes that the land cultivated by the Negroes is of the same quality as that farmed by the whites. This certainly is not true of Arkansas, of which it is stated that "Arkansas shows a greater production per acre by colored farmers for all three tenures." The three tenures are owners, cash-tenants, share-tenants. Mississippi agrees with Arkansas in showing higher production for both classes of tenants. Are we to infer that the Negroes in Arkansas and Mississippi are better farmers than the whites, and that, therefore, their progress has infinitely surpassed his? By no means. The explanation is that in the two states mentioned the Negroes cultivate the rich bottom land while the white farmers are found in the hills. The alluvial land easily raises twice the cotton, and that of a better quality, commanding about a cent a pound more in the market. There may possibly be similar conditions in other states; certainly in Alabama the black prairie tilled by the Negroes is esteemed better than the other land. Since this was first written I have chanced upon the report of the Geological Survey of Alabama for 1881 and 1882, in which Mr. E. A. Smith sums up this same problem as follows: "(1) That where the blacks are in excess of the whites, there are the originally most fertile lands of the state. The natural advantages of the soils are, however, more than counterbalanced by the bad system prevailing in such sections, viz.; large farms rented out in patches to laborers who are too poor and too much in debt to merchants to have any interest in keeping up the fertility of the soil, or rather the ability to keep it up, with the natural consequence of its rapid exhaustion, and a product per acre on these, the best lands of the state, lower than that which is realized from the very poorest. "(2) Where the two races are in nearly equal proportions, or where the whites are in only a slight excess over the blacks, as is the case in all sections where the soils are of average fertility, there is found the system of small farms, worked generally by the owners, a consequently better cultivation, a more general use of commercial fertilizers, a correspondingly high product per acre and a partial maintenance of the fertility of the soils. "(3) Where the whites are greatly in excess of the blacks (three to one and above) the soils are almost certain to be far below the average in fertility, and the product per acre is low from this cause, notwithstanding the redeeming influences of a comparatively rational system of cultivation. "(4) The exceptions to these general rules are nearly always due to local causes which are not far to seek and which afford generally a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancies." If we are to base our reasoning on the table cited we might argue that land ownership is a bad thing for Negroes, for tenants of both classes among them produced more than did the owners. The white cash tenants also produced more than white owners. In explaining this it is said: "The fact that cash tenants pay a fixed money rental per acre causes them to rent only such area as they can cultivate thoroughly, while many owners who are unable to rent their excess acreage to tenants attempt to cultivate it themselves, thus decreasing the efficiency of cultivation for the entire farm." This may be true of the whites, but it is a lame explanation for the blacks. Negro farmers who own more land than they can cultivate appear to be better known at Washington than they are locally. The trouble with the entire argument is that it assumes that the Negro is an independent cultivator of cotton. This is not quite the case. In all parts of the South the Negro, tenant or owner, usually receives advances from white factors, and these spend a good part of their time riding about to see that the land is cultivated in order to insure repayment of their loans. If their advice and suggestions are not followed, or if the crop is not cultivated, the supplies are shut off. On many plantations even the portion of the land to be put in cotton is stipulated. The great bulk of the cotton crop is thus raised under the immediate oversight of the white man. There is little call for any great skill on the part of the laborer. No wonder the crop of the Negro approximates that of the white man. It is to be further remembered that cotton raising has been the chief occupation of the Negro in America. The Census gives another illustration of the unhappy effects of attempting to cover very diverse conditions in one statement in the map Vol. VI, plate 3. From this one would be justified in believing that the average farm under one management in the alluvial lands of Mississippi and Louisiana was small. As a matter of fact they are among the largest in the country. The map gives a very misleading conception and it results wholly from attempting to combine divergent conditions. The quotation from Mr. Smith touched upon another result of this segregation. Where the whites are the farmers the farms are smaller and better cared for, more fertilizers are used, and better results are obtained. The big plantation system has caused the deterioration of naturally fertile soils. Of course, there must come a day of reckoning wherever careless husbandry prevails. City conditions are more or less uniform in all sections. The geographical location of the farmer, however, is a matter of considerable importance not only as determining in large measure the crop he must raise, but as limiting the advance he may be able to make under given conditions. It is estimated that about 85 per cent of the men (Negroes) and 44 per cent of the women in productive pursuits are farmers. Their general location has been shown. For convenience we may divide the territory into five districts: (1) Virginia and Kentucky, above the limit of profitable cotton culture. (2) The Atlantic Sea Coast. (3) The Central belt running from Virginia to Central Mississippi. This includes several different soils, but general conditions are fairly uniform. (4) The Alluvial Lands, which may be subdivided into the cotton and cane districts. (5) Texas. These different districts will be treated separately, except Texas, which is not included. In summing up this chapter it may be said that the location of the mass of the Negro farmers has been indicated, and also the fact that there is a separation between the whites and the blacks which promises to have important bearing on future progress, while the various agricultural districts offer opportunities by no means uniform. CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC HERITAGE. =IN PLOWING TIME.= Previous to the appearance of the European, West Central Africa for untold hundreds of years had been almost completely separated from the outside world. The climate is hot, humid, enervating. The Negro tribes living in the great forests found little need for exertion to obtain the necessities of savage life. The woods abounded in game, the rivers in fish. By cutting down a few trees and loosening the ground with sharpened sticks the plantains, a species of coarse banana, could be made to yield many hundred fold. The greater part of the little agricultural work done fell on the women, for it was considered degrading by the men. Handicrafts were almost unknown among many tribes and where they existed were of the simplest. Clothing was of little service. Food preparations were naturally crude. Sanitary restrictions, seemingly so necessary in hot climates, were unheard of. The dead were often buried in the floors of the huts. Miss Kingsley says: "All travelers in West Africa find it necessary very soon to accustom themselves to most noisome odors of many kinds and to all sorts of revolting uncleanliness." Morality, as we use the term, did not exist. Chastity was esteemed in the women only as a marketable commodity. Marriage was easily consummated and with even greater ease dissolved. Slavery, inter-tribal, was widespread, and the ravages of the slave hunter were known long before the arrival of the whites. Religion was a mass of grossest superstitions, with belief in the magical power of witches and sorcerers who had power of life and death over their fellows. Might was right and the chiefs enforced obedience. It is not necessary to go more into detail. In the words of a recent writer: "It is clear that any civilization which is based on the fertility of the soil, and not on the energy of man, contains within itself the seed of its own destruction. Where food is easily obtained, where there is little need for clothing or houses, where, in brief, unaided nature furnishes all man's necessities, those elements which produce strength of character and vigor of mind are wanting, and man becomes the slave of his surroundings. He acquires no energy of disposition, he yields himself to superstition and fatalism; the very conditions of life which produced his civilization set the limit of its existence." It is evident from the foregoing that there had been almost nothing in the conditions of Africa to further habits of thrift and industry. The warm climate made great provision for the future unnecessary, not to say impossible, while social conditions did not favor accumulation of property. It is necessary to emphasize these African conditions, for they have an important influence on future development. Under these conditions Negro character was formed, and that character was not like that of the long-headed blonds of the North. The transfer to America marked a sharp break with the past. One needs but to stop to enumerate the changes to realize how great this break was. A simple dialect is exchanged for a complex language. A religion whose basic principle is love gradually supplants the fears and superstitions of heathenhood. The black passes from an enervating, humid climate to one in which activity is pleasurable. From the isolation and self-satisfaction of savagery he emerges into close contact with one of the most ambitious and progressive of peoples. Life at once becomes far more secure and wrongs are revenged by the self-interest of the whites as well as by the feeble means of self-defense in possession of the blacks. That there were cruelties and mistreatment under slavery goes without saying, but the woes and sufferings under it were as nothing compared to those of the life in the African forests. This fact is sometimes overlooked. With greater security of life came an emphasis, from without, to be sure, on better marital relations. In this respect slavery left much to be desired, but conditions on the whole were probably in advance of those in Africa. Marriage began to be something more than a purchase. Sanitation, not the word, but the underlying idea, was taught by precept and example. There came also a dim notion of a new sphere for women. Faint perceptions ofttimes, but ideas never dreamed of in Africa. I would not defend slavery, but in this country its evil results are the inheritance of the whites, not of the blacks, and the burden today of American slavery is upon white shoulders. Many of the changes have been mentioned, but the greatest is reserved for the last. This is embraced in one word--WORK. For the first time the Negro was made to work, not casual work, but steady, constant labor. From the Negro's standpoint this is the redeeming feature of his slavery as perhaps it was for the Israelites in Egypt of old. Booker Washington has written:[5] "American slavery was a great curse to both races, and I would be the last to apologize for it, but, in the providence of God, I believe that slavery laid the foundation for the solution of the problem that is now before us in the South. During slavery the Negro was taught every trade, every industry, that constitutes the foundation for making a living." Dr. H. B. Frissell has borne the same testimony: "The southern plantation was really a great trade school where thousands received instruction in mechanic arts, in agriculture, in cooking, sewing and other domestic occupations. Although it may be said that all this instruction was given from selfish motives, yet the fact remains that the slaves on many plantations had good industrial training, and all honor is due to the conscientious men and still more to the noble women of the South who in slavery times helped to prepare the way for the better days that were to come." Work is the essential condition of human progress. Contrast the training of the Negro under enforced slavery with that of the Indian, although it should not be thought that the characters were the same, for the life in America had made the Indian one who would not submit to the yoke, and all attempts to enslave him came to naught. Dr. Frissell out of a long experience says: "When the children of these two races are placed side by side, as they are in the school rooms and workshops and on the farms at Hampton, it is not difficult to perceive that the training which the blacks had under slavery was far more valuable as a preparation for civilized life than the freedom from training and service enjoyed by the Indian on the Western reservations. For while slavery taught the colored man to work, the reservation pauperized the Indian with free rations; while slavery brought the black into the closest relations with the white race and its ways of life, the reservation shut the Indian away from his white brothers and gave him little knowledge of their civilization, language or religion." The coddled Indian, with all the vices of the white man open to him, has made little, if any, progress, while the Negro, made to work, has held his own in large measure at least. Under slavery three general fields of service were open to the blacks. The first comprised the domestic and body servants, with the seamstresses, etc., whose labors were in the house or in close personal contact with masters and mistresses. This class was made up of the brightest and quickest, mulattoes being preferred because of their greater aptitude. These servants had almost as much to do with the whites as did the other blacks and absorbed no small amount of learning. Yet the results were not always satisfactory. A southern lady after visiting for a time in New York said on leaving:[6] "I cannot tell you how much, after being in your house so long, I dread to go home, and have to take care of our servants again. We have a much smaller family of whites than you, but we have twelve servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more and do their work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your girls are very stupid and that they give much trouble, but it is as nothing. There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to do the simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to be cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I can never be sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself.... And when I reprimand them they only say that they don't mean to do anything wrong, or they won't do it again, all the time laughing as though it were a joke. They don't mind it at all. They are just as playful and careless as any wilful child; and they never will do any work if you don't compel them." The second class comprised the mechanics, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons and the like. These were also a picked lot. They were well trained ofttimes and had a practical monopoly of their trades in many localities. In technical knowledge they naturally soon outstripped their masters and became conscious of their superiority, as the following instance related by President G. T. Winston shows: "I remember one day my father, who was a lawyer, offered some suggestions to one of his slaves, a fairly good carpenter, who was building us a barn. The old Negro heard him with ill-concealed disgust, and replied: 'Look here, master, you'se a first-rate lawyer, no doubt, but you don't know nothin' 'tall 'bout carpentering. You better go back to your law books.'" The training received by these artisans stood them in good stead after the war, when, left to themselves, they were able to hold their ground by virtue of their ability to work alone. The third class was made up of all that were left, and their work was in the fields. The dullest, as well as those not needed elsewhere, were included. Some few became overseers, but the majority worked on the farms. As a rule little work was required of children under 12, and when they began their tasks were about of the adult's. Thence they passed to "half," "three-quarter" and "full" hands. Olmsted said:[7] "Until the Negro is big enough for his labor to be plainly profitable to his master he has no training to application or method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before children arrive at a working age they hardly come under the notice of their owner.... The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to work. They cannot be depended upon a minute out of sight. You will see how difficult it would be if it were attempted to eradicate the indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought and providence, are innumerable." In many places the field hands were given set tasks to do each day, and they were then allowed to take their own time and stop when the task was completed. In Georgia and South Carolina the following is cited by Olmsted as tasks for a day:[7] "In making drains in light clean meadow land each man or woman of the full hands is required to dig one thousand cubic feet; in swamp land that is being prepared for rice culture, where there are not many stumps, the task for a ditcher is five hundred feet; while in a very strong cypress swamp, only two hundred feet is required; in hoeing rice, a certain number of rows equal to one-half or two-thirds of an acre, according to the condition of the land; in sowing rice (strewing in drills), two acres; in reaping rice (if it stands well), three-quarters of an acre, or, sometimes a gang will be required to reap, tie in sheaves, and carry to the stack yard the produce of a certain area commonly equal to one-fourth the number of acres that there are hands working together; hoeing cotton, corn or potatoes, one-half to one acre; threshing, five to six hundred sheaves. In plowing rice land (light, clean, mellow soil), with a yoke of oxen, one acre a day, including the ground lost in and near the drains, the oxen being changed at noon. A cooper also, for instance, is required to make barrels at the rate of eighteen a week; drawing staves, 500 a day; hoop-poles, 120; squaring timber, 100 feet; laying worm fence, 50 panels per day; post and rail fence, posts set two and a half to three feet deep, nine feet apart, nine or ten panels per hand. In getting fuel from the woods (pine to be cut and split), one cord is the task for a day. In 'mauling rails,' the taskman selecting the trees (pine) that he judges will split easiest, 100 a day, ends not sharpened. "In allotting the tasks the drivers are expected to put the weaker hands where, if there is any choice in the appearance of the ground, as where certain rows in hoeing corn would be less weedy than others, they will be favored. "These tasks would certainly not be considered excessively hard by a northern laborer, and, in point of fact, the more industrious and active hands finish them often by two o'clock. I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, several about two, and between three and four I met a dozen women and several men coming to their cabins, having finished their day's work.... If, after a hard day's labor he (the driver) sees that the gang has been overtasked, owing to a miscalculation of the difficulty of the work, he may excuse the completion of the tasks, but he is not allowed to extend them." In other places the work was not laid out in tasks, but it is safe to say that, judging from all reports and all probabilities, the amount of work done did not equal that of the free labor of the North, then or now. If it had the commercial supremacy of the South would have been longer maintained. Some things regarding the agricultural work at once become prominent. All work was done under the immediate eye of the task master. Thus there was little occasion for the development of any sense of individual responsibility for the work. As a rule the methods adopted were crude. Little machinery was used, and that of the simplest. Hoes, heavy and clumsy, were the common tools. Within a year I have seen grass being mowed with hoes preparatory to putting the ground in cultivation. Even today the Negro has to be trained to use the light, sharp hoe of the North. Corn, cotton and, in a few districts, rice or tobacco were the staple crops, although each plantation raised its own fruit and vegetables, and about the cabins in the quarters were little plots for gardens. The land was cultivated for a time, then abandoned for new, while in most places little attention was paid to rotation of crops or to fertilizers. The result was that large sections of the South had been seriously injured before the war. As some one has said: "The destruction of the soils by the methods of cultivation prior to the war was worse than the ravages of the war. The _post bellum_ farmer received as an inheritance large areas of wornout and generally unproductive soils." Yet all things were the master's. A failure of the crop meant little hunger to the black. Refusal to work could but bring bodily punishment, for the master was seldom of the kind who would take life--a live Negro was worth a good deal more than a dead one. Clothing and shelter were provided, and care in sickness. The master must always furnish tools, land and seed, and see to it that the ground was cultivated. There was thus little necessity for the Negro to care for the morrow, and his African training had not taught him to borrow trouble. Thus neither Africa nor America had trained the Negro to independent, continuous labor apart from the eye of the overseer. The requirements as to skill were low. The average man learned little of the mysteries of fruit growing, truck farming and all the economies which make diversified agriculture profitable. Freedom came, a second sharp break with the past. There is now no one who is responsible for food and clothing. For a time all is in confusion. The war had wiped out the capital of the country. The whites were land poor, the Negroes landless. It so happened that at this time the price of cotton was high. The Negro knew more about cotton than any other crop. _Raise cotton_ became the order of the day. The money lenders would lend money on cotton, even in advance, for it had a certain and sure ready sale. Thus developed the crop-lien system which in essence consists in taking a mortgage on crops yet to be raised. The system existed among the white planters for many years before the war. A certain amount of food and clothing was advanced to the Negro family until the crop could be harvested, when the money value of the goods received was returned with interest. Perhaps nothing which concerns the Negro has been the subject of more hostile criticism than this crop-lien system. That it is easily abused when the man on one side is a shrewd and cunning sharpster and the borrower an illiterate and trusting Negro is beyond doubt. That in thousands of cases advantage has been taken of this fact to wrest from the Negro at the end of the year all that he had is not to be questioned. Certainly a system which makes it possible is open to criticism. It should not be forgotten, however, that the system grew out of the needs of the time and served a useful purpose when honestly administered, even as it does today. No money could be gotten with land as security, and even today the land owner often sees his merchant with far less capital get money from the bank which has refused his security. The system has enabled a poor man without tools and work animals without food to get a start and be provided with a modicum of necessities until the crops were harvested. Thousands have become more or less independent who started in this way. The evil influences of the system, for none would consider it ideal, have probably been that it has made unnecessary any saving on the part of the Negro, who feels sure that he can receive his advances and who cares little for the fact that some day he must pay a big interest on what he receives. Secondly, this system has hindered the development of diversified farming, which today is one of the greatest needs of the South. The advances have been conditioned upon the planting and cultivating a given amount of cotton. During recent years no other staple has so fallen in price, and the result has been hard on the farmers. All else has faded into insignificance before the necessity of raising cotton. The result on the fertility of the soil is also evident. Luckily cotton makes light demands on the land, but the thin soil of many districts has been unable to stand even the light demands. Guano came just in time and the later commercial fertilizers have postponed the evil day. The development of the cotton mills has also served to give a local market, which has stimulated the production of cotton. It seems rather evident, however, that the increasing development of western lands will put a heavier burden upon the Atlantic slope. This, of course, will not affect the culture of sea-island cotton, which is grown in only a limited area. To meet this handicap a more diversified agriculture must gradually supplant in some way the present over-attention to cotton. In early days Virginia raised much cotton, now it stands towards the bottom of the cotton states. Perhaps it is safe to say that Virginia land has been as much injured by the more exhaustive crop, tobacco, as the other states by cotton. Large areas have been allowed to go back to the woods and local conditions have greatly changed. How this diversification is to be brought about for the Negro is one of the most important questions. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development of truck farming, but in this the Negro has borne little part. This intensive farming requires a knowledge of soil and of plant life, coupled with much ability in marketing wares, which the average Negro does not possess. Nor has he taken any great part in the fruit industry, which is steadily growing. The question to which all this leads may be stated as follows. To what extent is the Negro taking advantage of the opportunities he now has on the farm? What is his present situation? CHAPTER IV. THE PRESENT SITUATION. The southern states are not densely populated. Alabama has an average of 35 per square mile; Georgia, 37; South Carolina, 44. These may be compared with Iowa, 40; Indiana, 70, taking two of the typical northern farming states, while Connecticut has 187. In the prairie section of Alabama the Negro population ranges from 30 to 50 per square mile, and this is about the densest outside of the city counties. There is thus an abundance of land. As a matter of fact there is not the least difficulty for the Negro farmer to get plenty of land, and he has but to show himself a good tenant to have the whites offering him inducements. =A CABIN INTERIOR.= Negroes on the farms may be divided into four classes: Owners, cash tenants, share tenants, laborers. Share tenants differ from the same class in the North in that work animals and tools are usually provided by the landlord. Among the laborers must also be included the families living on the rice and cane plantations, who work for cash wages but receive houses and such perquisites as do other tenants and whose permanence is more assured than an ordinary day hand. They are paid in cash, usually through a plantation store, that debts for provisions, etc., may be deducted. Both owners and tenants find it generally necessary to arrange for advances of food and clothing until harvest. The advances begin in the early Spring and continue until August or sometimes until the cotton is picked. In the regions east of the alluvial lands advances usually stop by the first of August, and in the interim until the cotton is sold odd jobs or some extra labor, picking blackberries and the like, must furnish the support for the family. The landlord may do the advancing or some merchant. Money is seldom furnished directly, although in recent years banks are beginning to loan on crop-liens. The food supplied is often based on the number of working hands, irrespective of the number of children in the family. This is occasionally a hardship. The customary ration is a peck of corn meal and three pounds of pork per week. Usually a crop-lien together with a bill of sale of any personal property is given as security, but in some states landlords have a first lien upon all crops for rent and advances. In all districts the tenant is allowed to cut wood for his fire, and frequently has free pasture for his stock. There is much complaint that when there are fences about the house they are sometimes burned, being more accessible than the timber, which may be at a distance and which has to be cut. The landlords and the advancers have found it necessary to spend a large part of their time personally, or through agents called "riders," going about the plantations to see that the crops are cultivated. The Negro knows how to raise cotton, but he may forget to plow, chop, or some other such trifle, unless reminded of the necessity. Thus a considerable part of the excessive interest charged the Negro should really be charged as wages of superintendence. If the instructions of the riders are not followed, rations are cut off, and thus the recalcitrant brought to terms. For a long time rations have been dealt out on Saturday. So Saturday has come to be considered a holiday, or half-holiday at least. Early in the morning the roads are covered with blacks on foot, horse back, mule back and in various vehicles, on their way to the store or village, there to spend the day loafing about in friendly discussion with neighbors. The condition of the crops has little preventive influence, and the handicap to successful husbandry formed by the habit is easily perceived. Many efforts are being made to break up the custom, but it is up-hill work. Another habit of the Negro which militates against his progress is his prowling about in all sorts of revels by night, thereby unfitting himself for labor the next day. This trait also shows forth the general thoughtlessness of the Negro. His mule works by day, but is expected to carry his owner any number of miles at night. Sunday is seldom a day of rest for the work animals. It is a curious fact that wherever the Negroes are most numerous there mules usually outnumber horses. There are several reasons for this. It has often been supposed that mules endure the heat better than horses. This is questionable. The mule, however, will do a certain amount and then quit, all inducements to the contrary notwithstanding. The horse will go till he drops; moreover, will not stand the abuse which the mule endures. The Negro does not bear a good reputation for care of his animals. He neglects to feed and provide for them. Their looks justify the criticism. The mule, valuable as he is for many purposes, is necessarily more expensive in the long run than a self-perpetuating animal. In all parts it is the custom for the Negroes to save a little garden patch about the house, which, if properly tended, would supply the family with vegetables throughout the year. This is seldom the case. A recent Tuskegee catalog commenting on this says: "If they have any garden at all, it is apt to be choked with weeds and other noxious growths. With every advantage of soil and climate, and with a steady market if they live near any city or large town, few of the colored farmers get any benefit from this, one of the most profitable of all industries." As a matter of fact they care little for vegetables and seldom know how to prepare them for the table. The garden is regularly started in the Spring, but seldom amounts to much. I have ridden for a day with but a glimpse of a couple of attempts. As a result there will be a few collards, turnips, gourds, sweet potatoes and beans, but the mass of the people buy the little they need from the stores. A dealer in a little country store told me last summer that he would make about $75 an acre on three acres of watermelons, although almost every purchaser could raise them if he would. In many regions wild fruits are abundant, and blackberries during the season are quite a staple, but they are seldom canned. Some cattle are kept, but little butter is made, and milk is seldom on the bill of fare, the stock being sold when fat (?). Many families keep chickens, usually of the variety known as "dunghill fowls," which forage for themselves. But the market supplied with chickens by the small farmers, as it might easily be. Whenever opportunity offers, hunting and fishing become more than diversions, and the fondness for coon and 'possum is proverbial. In a study of dietaries of Negroes made under Tuskegee Institute and reported in Bulletin No. 38, Office of Experimental Stations, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, it is stated: "Comparing these negro dietaries with other dietaries and dietary standards, it will be seen that-- "(1) The quantities of protein are small. Roughly speaking, the food of these negroes furnished one-third to three-fourths as much protein as are called for in the current physiological standards and as are actually found in the dietaries of well fed whites in the United States and well fed people in Europe. They were, indeed, no larger than have been found in the dietaries of the very poor factory operatives and laborers in Germany and the laborers and beggars in Italy. "(2) In fuel value the Negro dietaries compare quite favorably with those of well-to-do people of the laboring classes in Europe and the United States." This indicates the ignorance of the Negro regarding the food he needs, so that in a region of plenty he is underfed as regards the muscle and bone forming elements and overfed so far as fuel value is concerned. One cannot help asking what effect a normal diet would have upon the sexual passions. It is worthy of notice that in the schools maintained by the whites there is relatively little trouble on this account. Possibly the changed life and food are in no small measure responsible for the difference. Under diversified farming there would be steady employment most of the year, with a corresponding increase of production. As it is there are two busy seasons. In the Spring, planting and cultivating cotton, say from March to July, and in the Fall, cotton picking, September to December. The balance of the time the average farmer does little work. The present system entails a great loss of time. The absence of good pastures and of meadows is noticeable. This is also too true of white farmers. Yet the grasses grow luxuriantly and nothing but custom or something else accounts for their absence; the something else is cotton. The adaptability of cotton to the Negro is almost providential. It has a long tap root and is able to stand neglect and yet produce a reasonable crop. The grains, corn and cane, with their surface roots, will not thrive under careless handling. The average farmer knows, or at least utilizes few of the little economies which make agriculture so profitable elsewhere. The Negro is thus under a heavy handicap and does not get the most that he might from present opportunities. I am fully conscious that there are many farmers who take advantage of these things and are correspondingly successful, but they are not the average man of whom I am speaking. With this general statement I pass to a consideration of the situation in the various districts before mentioned. TIDE WATER VIRGINIA. The Virginia sea shore consists of a number of peninsulas separated by narrow rivers (salt water). The country along the shore and the rivers is flat, with low hills in the interior. North of Old Point Comfort the district is scarcely touched by railroads and is accessible only by steamers. Gloucester County, lying between York River and Mob Jack Bay, is an interesting region. The hilly soil of the central part sells at from $5 to $10 per acre, while the flat coast land, which is richer although harder to drain, is worth from $25 to $50. The immediate water front has risen in price in recent years and brings fancy prices for residence purposes. Curiously enough some of the best land of the county is that beneath the waters of the rivers--the oyster beds. Land for this use may be worth from nothing to many hundreds of dollars an acre, according to its nature. The county contains 250 square miles, 6,224 whites and 6,608 blacks, the latter forming 51 per cent of the population. This sea coast region offers peculiar facilities for gaining an easy livelihood. There are few negro families of which some member does not spend part of the year fishing or oystering. There has been a great development of the oyster industry. The season lasts from September 1 to May 1, and good workmen not infrequently make $2 a day or more when they can work on the public beds. This last clause is significant. It is stated that the men expect to work most of September, October and November; one-half of December and January; one-third of February; any time in March is clear gain and all of April. According to a careful study[8] of the oyster industry it was found that the oystermen, _i. e._, those who dig the oysters from the rocks, make about $8 a month, while families occupied in shucking oysters earn up to $400 a year, three-fourths of them gaining less than $250. The public beds yield less than formerly and the business is gradually going into the hands of firms maintaining their own beds, with a corresponding reduction in possible earnings for the oystermen. The effect of this industry is twofold; a considerable sum of money is brought into the county and much of this has been invested in homes and small farms. This is the bright side; but there is a dark side. The boys are drawn out of the schools by the age of 12 to work at shucking oysters, and during the winter months near the rivers the boys will attend only on stormy days. The men are also taken away from the farms too early in the fall to gather crops, and return too late in the spring to get the best results from the farm work. The irregular character of the employment reacts on the men and they tend to drift to the cities during the summer, although many find employment in berry picking about Norfolk. Another result has been to make farm labor very scarce. This naturally causes some complaint. I do not say that the bad results outweigh the good, but believe they must be considered. The population is scattered over the county, there being no towns of any size, and is denser along the rivers than inland. The relations between the two races are most friendly, although less satisfactory between the younger generation. The Negroes make no complaints of ill treatment. In the last ten years there have been only four Negroes sentenced to the state prison, while in the twelve months prior to May 1, 1903, I was told that there was but one trial for misdemeanor. It may be that the absence of many of the young men for several months a year accounts in part for the small amount of crime. The jail stands empty most of the time. The chief offenses are against the fish and oyster laws of the state. Whites and blacks both claim that illegitimate children are much rarer than formerly. I was told of a case in which a young white man was fined for attempting to seduce a colored girl. The races have kept in touch. White ministers still preach in negro churches, address Sunday-schools, etc. In all save a few of the poorer districts the old one-roomed cabin has given place to a comfortable house of several rooms. The houses are often white-washed, although their completion may take a good many years. Stoves have supplanted fireplaces. The fences about the yards are often neat and in good repair. So far as housing conditions are concerned, I have seen no rural district of the South to compare with this. The old cabin is decidedly out of fashion. Turning to the farm proper, there are other evidences of change. There are no women working in the fields, their time being spent about the house and the garden. The system of crop liens is unknown. Each farmer raises his own supplies, smokes his own meat or buys at the store for cash or on credit. Wheat and corn are ground in local mills. The heavy interest charges of other districts are thus avoided. It is stated that a great number of the Negroes are buying little places, and this bears out the census figures, which show that of the Negro farmers 90.9 per cent in this county are owners or managers; the average for the negroes as a whole is 27.1 per cent. Although so many earn money in the oyster business, there are others who have gotten ahead by sticking to the farm. T---- now owns part of the place on which he was a slave, and his slave-time cabin is now used as a shed. He began buying land in 1873, paying from $10 to $11.50 per acre, and by hard work and economy now owns sixty acres which are worth much more than their first cost. With the help of his boys, whom he has managed to keep at home, he derives a comfortable income from his land. His daughter, now his housekeeper, teaches school near by during the winter. What he has done others can do, he says. Y---- is another who has succeeded. His first payments were made from the sale of wood cut in clearing the land. In 1903 his acres were planted as follows: Orchard 2 acres. Woodland 8 acres. Pasture 10 acres. Corn 8 acres. Rye 3/4 acres. Potato patch Garden and yard. His children are being trained at Hampton, and he laughingly says that one boy is already telling him how to get more produce from his land. B---- is an oysterman during the winter. He has purchased a small place of four acres, for which he paid $18 per acre. This ground he cultivates and has a few apple, plum and peach trees in his yard. His case is typical. Wages in the county are not high. House servants get from $3 to $8 per month. Day laborers are paid from 50 to 75 cents a day. Farm hands get about $10 a month and two meals daily (breakfast and dinner). I have already mentioned that farm laborers were getting fewer, and those left are naturally the less reliable. Many white farmers are having considerable difficulty in carrying on their places. The result is that many are only partially cultivating the farms, and many of the younger men are abandoning agriculture. What the final result will be is hard to tell. In summarizing it may be said that agriculture is being somewhat neglected and that the opportunity to earn money in the oyster industry acts as a constant deterrent to agricultural progress, if it is not directly injurious. Here, as elsewhere, there is room for improvement in methods of tilling the soil and in rotation of crops, use of animal manures, etc. The general social and moral improvement has been noted. It is a pleasure to find that one of the strongest factors in this improvement is due to the presence in the county of a number of graduates of Hampton who, in their homes, their schools and daily life, have stood for better things. CENTRAL VIRGINIA. The difficulty of making general statements true in all districts has elsewhere been mentioned. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, to find many things said in the immediately preceding pages inapplicable to conditions in the tobacco districts. The little town of Farmville, Va., is the market for some 12,000,000 pounds of tobacco yearly. The county Prince Edward contained in 1890 9,924 Negroes and in 1900 but 9,769, a decrease of 155. The county does not give one the impression of agricultural prosperity. The surface is very rolling, the soil sandy and thin in many places. Along the bottoms there is good land, of less value than formerly because of freshets. Practically all of the land has been under cultivation at some time, and in heavily wooded fields the corn rows may often be traced. On every side are worn-out fields on which sassafras soon gets a hold, followed by pine and other trees. Labor conditions have been growing worse, according to common report. It is harder to get farm hands than formerly, and this difficulty is most felt by those who exact the most. The day laborer gets from 40 to 50 cents and his meals, while for special work, such as cutting wheat, the wage may rise to $1.50. Women no longer work in the fields, and about the house get 35 cents per day. Formerly women worked in the fields, and wages for both sexes were lower. Hands by the month get $7 to $8 and board. In this county are many small white farmers who work in the fields with the men, and the white housewife not infrequently cooks the food for the Negroes--quite a contrast to typical southern practice. The movement from the farm is not an unmixed evil in that it is compelling the introduction of improved machinery, such as mowing machines, binders. On many a farm only scythes and cradles are known. Another element in the problem is the fact that many negroes have been getting little places of their own and therefore do less work for others. There are many whites who think this development a step forward and believe that the land owners are better citizens. There are others who claim that the net result is a loss, in that they are satisfied merely to eke out some sort of an existence and are not spurred on to increased production. It is quite commonly reported that there were some organizations among the Negroes whose members agreed not to work for the whites, but I cannot vouch for their existence. Although agriculture here is much more diversified than in the cotton belt, the Negro finds it necessary to get advances. These are usually supplied by commission merchants, who furnish the fertilizers and necessary food, taking crop liens as security. Advances begin in the spring and last until the following December, when the tobacco is marketed. The interest charged is 6 per cent, but the goods sold on this plan are much enhanced in price; interest is usually charged for a year, and the merchant receives a commission of 2-1/2 per cent for selling the tobacco, so the business appears fairly profitable. It is difficult to estimate the average value of an acre of tobacco, as it varies so much in quality as well as quantity. It is probably safe to say that the Negroes do not average over $20 per acre, ranging from $15 to $25, and have perhaps three or four acres in tobacco. It is generally expected that the tobacco will about pay for the advances. This would indicate, and the commission men confirm it, that the average advance is between $50 and $75 per year. The rations given out are no longer merely pork and meal, with which it is stated that the Negroes are not now content, but include a more varied diet. The customary rent is one-fourth of all that is produced, the landlord paying one-fourth of the fertilizer (universally called guano in this district). Tobacco makes heavy demands on the soil and at least 400 pounds, a value of about $4.50 per acre, should be used. When the landlord furnishes the horse or mule he pays also one-half of the fertilizer and gets one-half of the produce. The rent on tobacco land is thus large, but the average cash rental is between $2 and $3. The standard rotation of crops is tobacco, wheat, clover, tobacco. The clover is not infrequently skipped, the field lying fallow or uncultivated until exhausted. The average farmer thus has about as many acres in wheat as in tobacco and raises perhaps twelve bushels of wheat per acre. Some corn is also raised, and I have seen fields so exhausted that the stalk at the ground was scarcely larger than my middle finger. The corn crop may possibly average 10 to 15 bushels per acre, or, in Virginia terminology, 2 to 3 barrels. The average farmer under present conditions just about meets his advances with the tobacco raised. He has about enough wheat to supply him with flour; perhaps enough corn and hay for his ox or horse; possibly enough meat for the family. The individual family may fall short on any of these. The hay crop is unsatisfactory, largely through neglect. In May, 1903, on a Saturday, I saw wagon after wagon leaving Farmville carrying bales of western hay. This is scarcely an indication of thrift. The impression one gets from traveling about is that the extensive cultivation of tobacco, in spite of the fact that it is the cash crop and perhaps also the most profitable, is really a drawback in that other possibilities are obscured. It may be that the line of progress will not be to abandon tobacco, but to introduce more intensive cultivation, for the average man, white or black, does not get a proper return from an acre. To-day there is always a likelihood that more tobacco will be planted than can be properly cultivated, for it is a plant which demands constant and careful attention until it is marketed. B---- has a big family of children and lives in a large cabin, one room with a loft. He owns a pair of oxen and manages to raise enough to feed them. He also raises about enough meat for his family. During the season of 1902 he raised $175 worth of tobacco; corn valued at $37.50 and 16 bushels of wheat, a total of about $221. Deducting one-fourth for rent and estimating his expenses for fertilizer at $25, he had about $140 out of which to pay all other expenses. B---- is considered a very good man, who tends carefully and faithfully to his work. It is evident, however, that his margin is small. The farmer has opportunities to supplement his earnings. Cordwood finds ready sale in the towns at $2 per cord, and I have seen many loads of not over one-fourth of a cord hauled to market by a small steer. Butter, eggs and chickens yield some returns and the country produces blackberries in profusion. There are some Negroes who are making a comfortable living on the farms and whose houses and yards are well kept. As has been said, this is not the general impression made by the district. Considerable sums of money are sent in by children working in the northern cities. This is offset, however, by those who come back in the winter to live off their parents, having squandered all their own earnings elsewhere. The situation in a word is: A generation or more of reliance on one crop, neglect of other crops and of stock, resulting in deteriorated land. The labor force attracted to the towns and the North by higher wages. Natural result: Decadence of agricultural conditions, affording at the same time a chance for many Negroes to become land owners. When the process will stop or the way out I know not. Perhaps the German immigrants who are beginning to buy up some of the farms may lead the way to a better husbandry. For an interesting account of conditions in the town of Farmville see "The Negroes of Farmville," by W. E. B. DuBois, Bulletin Department of Labor, January, 1898. THE SEA COAST. =A SEA-ISLAND CABIN.= The low-lying coast of South Carolina and Georgia, with its fringe of islands, has long been the seat of a heavy Negro population. Of the counties perhaps none is more interesting than Beaufort, the southernmost of South Carolina. The eastern half of the county is cut up by many salt rivers into numerous islands. Broad River separates these from the mainland. The Plant System has a line on the western edge of the county, while the Georgia Railroad runs east to Port Royal. According to the census, the county contains 943 square miles of land and a population of 32,137 blacks and 3,349 whites, the Negroes thus forming 90 per cent of the total. There are 37 persons to the square mile. With the exception of Beaufort and Port Royal, the whites are found on the western side of the county. The islands are almost solid black. Just after the war many of the plantations were sold for taxes and fell into the hands of the Negroes, the funds realized being set apart for the education of the blacks, the interest now amounting to some $2,000 a year. In the seventies there was a great development of the phosphate industry, which at its height employed hundreds of Negroes, taken from the farms. Enormous fertilizer plants were erected. Most of this is now a thing of the past and the dredges lie rotting at the wharves. It is the general opinion that the influence of this industry was not entirely beneficial, although it set much money in circulation. It drew the men from the farms, and now they tend to drift to the cities rather than return. A livelihood is easily gained. The creeks abound with fish, crabs and oysters. There is plenty of work on the farms for those who prefer more steady labor. Land valued at about $10 per acre may be rented for $1. More than ten acres to the tenant is not usual, and I was told that it is very common for a family to rent all the land it wants for $10 per year, the presumption being that not over ten acres would be utilized. The staple crop for the small farmer is the sea island cotton. Under the present culture land devoted to this lies fallow every other year. The islands are low and flat, subject to severe storms, that of 1893 having destroyed many lives and much property. The county was originally heavily wooded and there is still an abundance for local purposes, though the supply is low in places. On the islands the blacks have been almost alone for a generation and by many it is claimed that there has been a decided retrogression. By common consent St. Helena Island, which lies near Beaufort, is considered the most prosperous of the Negro districts. On this island are over 8,000 blacks and some 200 whites. The cabins usually have two rooms, many having been partitioned to make the second. They are of rough lumber, sometimes whitewashed, but seldom painted. There are few fences and some damage is done by stock. Outbuildings are few; privies are almost unknown--even at the schools there are no closets of any kind. The wells are shallow, six feet or so in depth with a few driven to 12 or 17 feet. A few have pumps, the rest are open. At present there is no dispensary on the island but there are a number of "blind tigers." The nearest physician is at Beaufort and the cost of a single visit is from five to ten dollars. The distance from the doctors is said not to be an unmixed evil as it saves much foolish expenditure of money in fancied ills. In slavery times there were 61 plantations on the island and their names, as Fripps Corner, Oaks, still survive to designate localities. There was in olden times little contact with the whites as Negro drivers were common. Each plantation still has its "prayer house" at which religious services are held. Meetings occur on different nights on the various plantations to enable the people to get all the religion they need. These meetings are often what are known as "shouts," when with much shouting and wild rhythmic dancing the participants keep on till exhausted. The suggestion of Africa is not vague. The Virginia Negro views these gatherings with as much astonishment as does any white. Many of the blacks speak a strange dialect hard to understand. "Shum," for instance, being the equivalent for "see them." The land is sandy and should have skillful handling to get the best results. Yet the farming is very unscientific. The first plowing is shallow and subsequent cultivation is done almost entirely with hoes. When a Hampton graduate began some new methods last year the people came for miles to see his big plow. It is said that there was more plowing than usual as a result. The daily life of the farmer is about as follows: Rising between four and five he goes directly to the field, eating nothing until eight or nine, when he has some "grits," a sort of fine hominy cooked like oat meal. Many eat nothing until they leave the field at eleven for dinner, which also consists of grits with some crabs in summer and fish in winter. Some have only these two meals a day. Corn bread and molasses are almost unknown and when they have molasses it is eaten with a spoon. Knives and forks are seldom used. One girl of eighteen did not know how to handle a knife. There are numbers of cows on the island, but milk is seldom served, the cattle being sold for beef. The draft animals are usually small oxen or ponies, called "salt marsh tackies," as they are left to pick their living from the marshes. Some chickens and turkeys are raised, but no great dependence is placed on them. There are no geese and few ducks. Little commercial fertilizer is used, the marsh grass, which grows in great abundance, being an excellent substitute of which the more progressive take advantage. The following statement will illustrate the situation of three typical families, an unusual, a good, and an average farmer. The figures are for 1902: No. 1. No. 2. No. 3. Number in family 8 13 4 Number rooms 6 5 2 Number outbuildings 5 3 0 Number horses 4 1 0 Number cows 9 5 1 Number hogs 10 3 0 Number other animals 1 dog 2 goats 1 dog 1 dog Number fowls 90 30 10 Acres of land owned 55 21 0 Acres of land rented 0 0 10-5/8 Acres in cotton 10 3.5 5 Acres in corn 8 5 5 Acres in sweet potatoes 3 3.5 3/8 Acres in white potatoes 1/4 0 0 Acres in peas (cow) 5.5 1.5 1/4 Acres in rice 1.5 0 0 Garden Very small Poor None The rice is grown without flooding and known as "Providence Rice." With the great ease of getting a livelihood the advances necessarily are small. From January 1, 1902, to July 15 (which is near the close of the advancing season) several average families had gotten advances averaging $15.00. The firm which does most of the advancing on the island writes: "We have some that get more. A few get $50.00 or about that amount, but we make it a point not to let the colored people or our customers get too much in debt. We have to determine about what they need and we have always given them what was necessary to help them make a crop according to their conditions and circumstances as they present themselves to us." The firm reports that they collect each year about 90 per cent of their outstanding accounts. Below are given the customary forms of the Bill of Sale and the Crop Lien given to secure advances: THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, COUNTY OF BEAUFORT. Know all men by these presents, that ............ of the said County, in consideration of the sum of ............ dollars, to be advanced in merchandise by ............, of Beaufort County and State, have bargained and sold unto the said ............ the following personal property, ............, now in my possession, and which I promise to deliver on demand of the said ............ (Signed) ..................... $............ On the .... day of 19.., I promise to pay to the order of ............ ..........., at Beaufort, South Carolina, ............ dollars for money and supplies to be advanced and furnished me by the said ............, merchants, Beaufort, South Carolina, for use in the cultivation of crops on the plantation or farm cultivated by me in Beaufort County, South Carolina, known as the ............ plantation, and containing about ............ acres, during the year 190... And in consideration of the said advance made me I hereby give, make and grant to the said ............ a lien to the extent of said advance on all the crops which may be grown on the said plantation or farm during the year 190.., wherever said crops or parts of them are found. This lien hereby given is executed and to be enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of South Carolina. I, the said ............, in consideration of the foregoing, do hereby agree to advance to the said ........... ..... dollars, as above stated. Witness the hands and seals of both parties. In the presence of ............, L. S. ............ ............, L. S. This is then recorded in the County Court as is an ordinary mortgage. On this island considerable money has been saved and is now deposited with a firm of merchants in whom the people have confidence. In July, 1902, there were about 100 individual depositors having some $4,000 to their credit. The money can be withdrawn at any time, all debts to the firm being first settled. Interest at five per cent. is allowed. Some of this money comes from pensions. There are round about Beaufort a considerable number of U. S. pensioners, as the city was headquarters for Union soldiers for a long time. The effect of the pensions is claimed both by whites and blacks to be bad. A great deal of the credit for the good conditions, relatively speaking, which prevail on St. Helena is given to the Penn School which for years has come into close touch with the lives of the people. The Negroes have also been in touch with a good class of whites, who have encouraged all efforts at improvement. Wherever the credit lies, the visitor is struck by the difference between conditions here and on some other islands, for instance, Lady's Island, which lies between St. Helena and Beaufort. Even here it is claimed that the older generation is more industrious. In the trucking industry, which is very profitable along the coast, the Negroes have only been engaged as ordinary laborers. On the main land, wherever fresh water can be obtained, is the seat of a considerable rice industry. In recent years, owing to the cutting of the forests in the hills, the planters are troubled by freshets in the spring and droughts in the summer. The work is done by Negroes under direction of white foremen. The men work harder on contract jobs, but work by the day is better done. Women are in better repute as laborers than the men and it is stated that more women support their husbands than formerly was the case. Wages range from $.35 to $.50 per day, varying somewhat according to the work done. They are paid in cash and the planters have given up the plantation store in many cases. All work must be constantly supervised and it is said to be harder and harder to get work done. A planter found it almost impossible in the winter of 1901 to get fifty cords of wood cut, the work being considered too heavy. When I left the train at Beaufort and found twelve hacks waiting for about three passengers it was evident where some of the labor force had gone. In this county there is a great development of burial and sick benefit societies. The "Morning Star", "Star of Hope", "Star of Bethlehem" are typical names. The dues are from five to ten cents a week. Many of the societies have good sized halls, rivaling ofttimes the churches, on the various islands, which are used for lodge and social purposes. Beaufort and the other towns offer the country people an opportunity to dispose of fish and any garden produce they may raise, while it is not uncommon to see a little ox dragging a two-wheeled cart and perhaps a quarter of a cord of wood to be hawked about town. During part of the summer a good many gather a species of plant which is used in adulterating cigarettes and cigars. This little account indicates that, so far as the farmers are concerned, there are few evidences of any decided progress save in the district which has been under the influence of one school. The ease of getting a livelihood acts as a deterrent to ambition. Yet the old families say that they have the "best niggers of the South" and certain it is that race troubles are unknown. CENTRAL DISTRICT. =THE OLD CABIN.= In the central district life is a little more strenuous than on the sea coast. The cabins are about the same. The average tenant has a "one mule farm," some thirty or thirty-five acres. Occasionally the tenant has more land, but only about this amount is cultivated and no rent is paid for the balance. The area of the land is usually estimated and only rarely is it surveyed. This land ranges in value from $5.00 to $15.00 per acre on the average. The customary rental for a "one mule farm" is about two bales of cotton, whose value in recent years would be in the neighborhood of $75.00, thus making the rental about $3.00 per acre. On this farm from four to six bales of cotton are raised. The soil has been injured by improper tillage and requires an expenditure of $1.75 to $2.00 per acre for fertilizers if the best results are to be obtained. As yet the Negroes do not fully appreciate this. The farmer secures advances based on 1 peck of meal and 3 pounds of "side meat," fat salt pork, per week for each working hand. About six dollars a month is the limit for advances and as these are continued for only seven months or so the average advance received is probably not far from $50.00 per year. An advance of $10.00 per month is allowed for a two horse farm. The advancer obligates himself to furnish only necessities and any incidentals must be supplied from sale of poultry, berries and the like. Clothing may often be reckoned as an incidental. The luxuries are bought with cash or on the installment plan and are seldom indicated by the books of the merchant. The cost of the average weekly advances for a family in 1902 was: 10 pounds meat (salt port sides) @ 13-1/2c $1.35 1 bushel corn meal .90 1 plug tobacco (reckoned a necessity) .10 ------ $2.35 =THE NEW HOUSE.= Conditions throughout this district are believed to be fairly uniform, but the following information was gathered in Lowndes County, Alabama, so has closest connection with the prairie region of that state: Lowndes County lies just southwest of Montgomery and there are 47 persons to the square mile. The Negroes form 86 per cent. of the population. East and West throughout the county runs the Chennenugga Ridge, a narrow belt of hills which separate the prairie from the pine hills to the South. The ridge is quite broken and in places can not be tilled profitably. The county is of average fertility, however. There are not an unusual number of one-room cabins. Out of 74 families, comprising 416 people, the average was 7 to the room, the greatest number living in one room was 11. The families were housed as follows: No. No. Largest No. Average No. Families. Rooms. Persons. Persons. 17 1 11 6 31 2 12 (3 fam.) 6 16 3 9 5 7 4 14 6 3 5 9 5 The cabins are built of both boards and logs as indicated by cuts on pages 43 and 44 while the interior economy is well shown by the photograph on page 29. Field work is from sun to sun with two hours or so rest at noon. The man usually eats breakfast in the field, the wife staying behind to prepare it. It consists of pork and corn bread. The family come from the field about noon and have dinner consisting of pork and corn bread, with collards, turnip greens, roasting ears, etc. At sundown work stops and supper is eaten, the menu being as at breakfast. The pork eaten by the Negroes, it may be said, is almost solid fat, two or three inches thick, lean meat not being liked. The housewife has few dishes, the food being cooked in pots or in small ovens set among the ashes. Stoves are a rarity. Lamps are occasionally used, but if the chimney be broken it is rarely replaced, the remainder being quite good enough for ordinary purposes. The cabins seldom have glass windows, but instead wooden shutters, which swing outward on hinges. These are shut at night and even during the hottest summer weather there is practically no ventilation. How it is endured I know not, but the custom prevails even in Porto Rico I am told. In winter the cabins are cold. To meet this the thrifty housewife makes bed quilts and as many as 25 or 30 of these are not infrequently found in a small cabin. The floors are rough and not always of matched lumber, while the cabins are poorly built. The usual means of heating, and cooking, is the big fireplace. Sometimes the chimney is built of sticks daubed over with mud, the top of the chimney often failing to reach the ridge of the roof. Fires sometimes result. Tables and chairs are rough and rude. Sheets are few, the mattresses are of cotton, corn shucks or pine straw, and the pillows of home grown feathers. The following regarding the cooking of the Alabama Negro is taken from a letter published in Bulletin No. 38, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Experiment Stations: "The daily fare is prepared in very simple ways. Corn meal is mixed with water and baked on the flat surface of a hoe or griddle. The salt pork is sliced thin and fried until very brown and much of the grease tried out. Molasses from cane or sorghum is added to the fat, making what is known as 'sap,' which is eaten with the corn bread. Hot water sweetened with molasses is used as a beverage. This is the hill of fare of most of the cabins on the plantations of the 'black belt' three times a day during the year. It is, however, varied at times; thus collards and turnips are boiled with the bacon, the latter being used with the vegetables to supply fat 'to make it rich.' The corn meal bread is sometimes made into so-called 'cracklin bread,' and is prepared as follows: A piece of fat bacon is fried until it is brittle; it is then crushed and mixed with corn meal, water, soda and salt, and baked in an oven over the fireplace.... One characteristic of the cooking is that all meats are fried or otherwise cooked until they are crisp. Observation among these people reveals the fact that very many of them suffer from indigestion in some form." As elsewhere the advances are supplied by the planter or some merchant. The legal rate of interest is 8 per cent, but no Negro ever borrows money at this rate. Ten per cent. per year is considered cheap, while on short terms the rate is often 10 per cent. per week. The average tenant pays from 12.5 per cent. to 15 per cent. for his advances, which are sold at an average of 25 per cent. higher than cash prices on the average. To avoid any possible trouble it is quite customary to reckon the interest and then figure this into the face of the note so that none can tell either the principal or the rate. Below is an actual copy of such a note, the names being changed: $22.00. Calhoun, Alabama, June 2, 1900. On the first day of October, 1900, I promise to pay to the order of A. B. See Twenty Two Dollars at ............ Value received. And so far as this debt is concerned, and as part of the consideration thereof, I do hereby waive all right which I or either of us have under the Constitution and Laws of this or any other State to claim or hold any personal property exempt to me from levy and sale under execution. And should it become necessary to employ an attorney in the collection of this debt I promise to pay all reasonable attorney's fees charged therefor. ATTEST: C. W. JAMES. his A. T. JONES. JOHN X. SMITH. mark. The possibility of extortion which this method makes possible is evident. It is worth while also to reproduce a copy, actual with the exception of the names, of one of the blanket mortgages often given. The italics are mine. THE STATE OF ALABAMA, LOWNDES COUNTY. On or before the first day of October next I promise to pay Jones and Co., or order, the sum of $77.00 at their office in Fort Deposit, Alabama. And I hereby waive all right of exemption secured to me under and by the Laws and Constitution of the State of Alabama as to the collection of this debt. And I agree to pay all the costs of making, recording, probating or acknowledging this instrument, together with a reasonable attorney's fee, and all other expenses incident to the collection of this debt, whether by suit or otherwise. And to secure the payment of the above note, as well as all other indebtedness I may now owe the said Jones and Co., and all future advances I may purchase from the said Jones and Co. during the year 1900, whether due and payable during the year 1900 or not, and for the further consideration of one Dollar to me in hand paid by Jones and Co., the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge, I do hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto said Jones and Co. the _entire crops_ of corn, cotton, cotton seed, fodder, potatoes, sugar cane and its products and _all other crops of every kind and description_ which may be made and grown during the year 1900 on lands owned, leased, rented or farmed on shares for or by the undersigned in Lowndes County, Alabama, or elsewhere. Also any crops to or in which the undersigned has or may have any interest, right, claim or title in Lowndes County or elsewhere _during and for each succeeding year until the indebtedness secured by this instrument is fully paid_. Also all the corn, cotton, cotton seed, fodder, peas, and all other farm produce now in the possession of the undersigned. Also all the live stock, vehicles and farming implements now owned by or furnished to the undersigned by Jones and Co. during the year 1900. Also one red horse "Lee," one red neck cow "Priest," and her calf, one red bull yearling. Said property is situated in Lowndes County, Alabama. If, after maturity, any part of the unpaid indebtedness remains unpaid, Jones and Co., or their agents or assigns, are authorized and empowered to seize and sell all or any of the above described property, at private sale or public auction, as they may elect, for cash. If at public auction, before their store door or elsewhere, in Fort Deposit, Alabama, after posting for five days written notice of said sale on post office door in said town, and to apply the proceeds of said sale to the payment, first of all costs and expenses provided for in the above note and expense of seizing and selling said property; second, to payment in full of debt or debts secured by said mortgage, and the surplus, if any, pay to the undersigned. And the said mortgagee or assigns is hereby authorized to purchase at his own sale under this mortgage. I agree that no member of my family, nor anyone living with me, nor any person under my control, shall have an extra patch on the above described lands, unless covered by this mortgage; and I also agree that this mortgage shall cover all such patches. It is further agreed and understood that any securities held by Jones and Co. as owner or assignee on any of the above described property executed by me prior to executing this mortgage shall be retained by them, and shall remain in full force and effect until the above note and future advances are paid in full, and shall be additional security for this debt. There is no lien or encumbrance upon any property conveyed by this instrument except that held by Jones and Co. and the above specified rents. If, before the demands hereby secured are payable, any of the property conveyed herein shall be in _danger of (or from) waste, destruction or removal, said demands shall be then payable and all the terms, rights and powers of this instrument operative and enforceable, as if and under a past due mortgage_. Witness my hand and seal this 10th day of January, 1900. ATTEST: B. C. COOK. SAM SMALL. L. S. R. J. BENNETT. It may be granted that experience has shown all this verbiage to be necessary. In the hands of an honest landlord it is as meaningless as that in the ordinary contract we sign in renting a house. In the hands of a dishonest landlord or merchant it practically enables him to make a serf of the Negro. The mortgage is supposed to be filed at once, but it is sometimes held to see if there is any other security which might be included. The rascally creditor watches the crop and if the Negro may have a surplus he easily tempts him to buy more, or more simply still, he charges to his account imaginary purchases, so that at the end of the year the Negro is still in debt. The Negro has no redress. He can not prove that he has not purchased the goods and his word will not stand against the merchant's. Practically he is tied down to the land, for no one else will advance him under these conditions. Sometimes he escapes by getting another merchant to settle his account and by becoming the tenant of the new man. When it is remembered that land is abundant and good labor rare, the temptation to hold a man on the land by fair means or foul is apparent. Moreover, the merchant by specious reasoning often justifies his own conduct. He says that the Negro will spend his money at the first opportunity and that he might just as well have it as some other merchant. I would not be understood as saying that this action is anything but the great exception but there are dishonest men everywhere who are ready to take advantage of their weaker fellows and the Negro suffers as a result, just as the ignorant foreigner does in the cities of the North. The interest may also be reckoned into the face of the mortgage. In any case it begins the day the paper is signed, although the money or its equivalent is only received at intervals and a full year's interest is paid, often on the face of the mortgage, even if only two-thirds of it has actually been advanced to the Negro, no matter when the account is settled. The helplessness of the Negro who finds himself in the hands of a sharper is obvious when that sharper has practical control of the situation. In many and curious ways the landlord seeks to hold his tenants. He is expected to stand by them in time of trouble, to protect them against the aggressions of other blacks and of whites as well. This paternalism is often carried to surprising lengths. The size of a man's family is known and the riders see to it that he keeps all the working hands in the field. If the riders have any trouble with a Negro they are apt to take it out in physical punishment, to "wear him out," as the phrase goes. Thus resentment is seldom harbored against a Negro and there are many who claim that this physical discipline is far better than any prison regime in its effects upon the Negro. In spite of all that is done it is claimed that the Negroes are getting less reliable and that the chief dependence is now in the older men, the women and the children. One remark, made by a planter's wife, which impressed me as having a good deal of significance, was, "the Negroes do not sing as much now as formerly." To get at anything like an accurate statement of the income and expenses of a Negro family is a difficult matter. The following account of three families will give a fair idea of their budget for part of the year at least. Family No. 1 consists of five adults (over 14) and one child. They live in a two-roomed cabin and own one mule, two horses two cows. Their account with the landlord for the years 1900 and 1901 was: 1900. To balance 1899 $ 32.60 Cash ($25.00) for mule 36.00 Clothing 19.68 Feed 15.20 Provisions 23.00 Tools 2.03 Interest and Recording Fee 16.87 ------- $145.38 1901. To balance 1900 $ 15.21 Cash 26.57 Clothing 9.55 Feed and seed 44.19 Provisions 26.29 Tools .55 Interest and Recording Fee 16.34 ------- $138.70 Their credit for 1901 was $10392, thus leaving a deficit for the beginning of the next year. As the advances stop in August or September, and the balance of the purchases are for cash and may be at other stores, there is no way of getting at them. In 1900 the family paid $201 toward the 85 acres they are purchasing, part of this sum probably coming from the crop of 1899, and in 1901 they made a further payment of $34. This family is doing much better than the average. It may be interesting to see a copy of his account for the year 1901 taken from the ledger of the planter. Jan. 1. Balance 1900 $ 15.21 Jan. 12. 10 bu. corn, $5.00; fodder, $1.20; cash, $8.00 14.20 Jan. 19. Cash for tax, $1.43; recording fee, $1.00; cash, $13.25 15.68 Feb. 2. Plowshoes, $1.40; gents' hose, 10c; 20 yds. check, $1.00; 2 straw hats, $1.20 3.70 Feb. 2. 23.5 bu. corn, $14.94; cash, 79c; shoes, $1.50; plow lines, 20c 17.43 Mar. 15. 15 yds. drilling, $1.20; 15 yds. check, 75c; 4.5 lbs. bacon, 48c 2.43 Apr. 6. 10 bu. corn, $7.00; 5 bu. cotton seed, $1.75; 4.5 lbs. bacon, 53c 9.28 Apr. 12. Bu. meal, 65c; spool cotton, 5c; tobacco, 10c; 7 lbs. bacon, 81c; 5 bu. corn. $3.50 5.11 May 1. Cash, $1.00; 30 lbs. bacon, $3.45; work shoes, $1.10; gents' shoes, $1.25; half bu. meal, 35c 7.15 May 1. 30 lbs. bacon, $3.45; (25) 30 lbs. bacon, $3.30; sack meal, $1.35 8.10 June 8. 2-3 bu. oats, 35c; 1-3 bu. corn, 25c; bu. meal, 70c; sack feed, $2.50 3.80 June 14. Sack meal, $1.35; 12 lbs. bacon, $1.32; cash, $1.00; (22) 12 lbs. bacon, $1.38 5.05 June 22. Sack meal, $1.35; sack feed, $2.50; plow sweep, 35c 4.20 July 1. 6 lbs. bacon, 69c; (5) sack feed, $2.60; half bu. meal, 35c; (9) bu. meal, 75c; 10 lbs. bacon, $1.15 5.54 July 18. 8 lbs. bacon, 92c; (19) sack feed, $2.60; (25) bu. meal, 90c 4.42 Aug. 6. Half bu. meal, 50c; 4 lbs. bacon, 46c; cash, 35c 1.31 Aug. 6. Interest 15.34 Oct. 6. Cash, 75c .75 ------- $138.70 The second family consists of three adults and three children. They have three one-roomed cabins, own one mule and two cows, and are leasing fifty acres of land, the effort to buy it having proven too much. Their account for 1900 and 1901 was as follows: 1900. Balance Jan. 1 $ .50 Cash 9.00 Clothing 9.79 Feed 11.50 Provisions 13.48 Tobacco .80 Tools, etc. .40 Interest and recording fee 5.77 ------ $52.24 1901. Balance Jan. 1 $ 4.15 Cash 2.82 Clothing 7.55 Feed 21.22 Provisions 17.69 Tobacco .55 Tools, etc. .70 Interest and fee 7.90 ------ $62.48 The debit for 1900 was all paid by November first and by November first, 1901, $58.40 of the charge for that year had been paid. In 1900 the man paid $94.61 towards his land but has since been leasing. The third family consists of two adults and three children. They live in a board cabin of two rooms, have one mule, one cow and one horse. They are purchasing 50 acres of land. Their accounts for 1900 and 1901 stand between the two already given. 1900. Balance 1899 $17.24 Cash 23.20 Clothing 4.73 Provisions 19.80 Tools 4.40 Interest and fee 8.04 ------ $77.41 1901. Balance 1900 $13.93 Cash 21.28 Clothing 6.30 Feed 26.50 Provisions 21.36 Tools 3.50 Interest and fee 12.40 ------- $109.28 By November 30, 1901, they had paid $79.13 of their account. In 1900 they paid $180 towards their land and $29.60 in 1901. All of these families are a little above the average. The income is supplemented by the sale of chickens, eggs and occasionally butter. In hard years when the crops are poor the men and older boys seek service in the mines of North Alabama or on the railroads during the summer before cotton picking begins, and again during the winter. The outfit of the average farmer is very inexpensive and is somewhat as follows: Harness, $1.50; pony plow, $3.00; extra point, 25c $4.75 Sweepstock (a), 75c; 3 sweeps, 90c; scooter (b), 10c 1.75 2 hoes, 80c; blacksmith (yearly average), 50c 1.30 ----- Total $7.80 (a) A sweep is a form of cultivator used in cleaning grass and weeds from the rows of cotton. (b) A scooter or "bull-tongue" is a strip of iron used in opening the furrow for the cotton seed. A cow costs $25, pigs $2 to $2.50, wagon (seldom owned) $45. A mule now costs from $100 to $150, but may be rented by the year for $20 or $25. Owners claim there is no profit in letting them at this price and the Negroes assert that if one dies the owner often claims that it had been sold and proceeds to collect the value thereof. From either point of view the plan seems to meet with but little favor. The following table will give some idea of the condition and personal property of a number of families in Lowndes County: ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ Family 1 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |[9]0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | " 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 4 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | " 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | " 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | " 7 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 8 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | " 9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | " 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ 10 | 35 | 16 | 11 | 8 | 25 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 14 | 2 | 10 | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ Key to columns: A Adults B Children under 14 C Log Cabins D B'd Cabins E No. Rooms F Sewing Machines G Mules H Horses I Oxen J Cows K Pigs L Dogs It will be seen that the number of oxen is small. I should not be surprised if some of the hogs escaped observation. An account of this district would not be complete without reference to the herb doctors who do a thriving business, charging from twenty-five cents per visit up. They make all sorts of noxious compounds which are retailed as good for various ailments. The medicines are perhaps no more harmful than the patent compounds of other places. There are also witch doctors, of whom the Negroes stand in great awe and many a poor sufferer has died because it was believed that he or she was bewitched by some evil person, hence physicians could have no power. The budgets given indicate, and this is my own belief, that the farmers in this district are just about holding their own. They are not trained to take advantage of their environment to the full so they do not prosper as they might, while occasional designing persons take great advantage of them, thereby rendering them discouraged. The introduction of a more diversified farming, the greater utilization of local resources in fruits and vegetables, thereby giving variety in the diet, the development of pastures and stock raising would enable them to break away from the mortgage system, which retards them in many ways. This view that the farmers here are about able to make a living is supported by the investigations of Professor Du Bois.[10] He gives the following report of 271 families in Georgia: Year, 1898. Price of cotton low. Bankrupt and sold out 3 $100 or over in debt 61 $25 to $100 in debt 54 $1 to $25 in debt 47 Cleared nothing 53 Cleared $1 to $25 27 Cleared $25 to $100 21 Cleared $100 and over 5 ---- 271 Regarding the general situation he says: "A good season with good prices regularly sent a number out of debt and made them peasant proprietors; a bad season, either in weather or prices, still means the ruin of a thousand black homes." Under existing conditions the outlook does not seem to me especially hopeful. ALLUVIAL DISTRICT. =A DOUBLE CABIN IN THE DELTA.= The Mississippi river, deflected westward by the hills of Tennessee, at Memphis sweeps in a long arc to the hills at Natchez. The oval between the river and the hills to the East is known as the "Delta." The land is very flat, being higher on the border of the river so that when the river overflows the entire bottom land is flooded. The waters are not restrained by a good system of levees and the danger of floods is reduced. There are similar areas in Arkansas and Louisiana and along the lower courses of the Red and other rivers, but what is said here will have special reference to Mississippi conditions. The land is extremely fertile, probably there is none better in the world, and is covered with a dense growth of fine woods, oak, ash, gum and cypress. The early settlements, as already stated, were along the navigable streams, but the great development of railroads is opening up the entire district. The country may still be called new and thousands of acres may be purchased at a cost of less than $10 per acre, wild land, of course. Cultivated land brings from $25 up. Considering its possibilities the region is not yet densely populated, but a line of immigration is setting in and the indications are that the Delta will soon be the seat of the heaviest Negro population in the country. Already it rivals the black prairie of Alabama. There have been many influences to retard immigration, the fear of fevers, malaria and typhoid, commonly associated with low countries, and the dread of overflows. Because of the lack of the labor force to develop the country planters have been led to offer higher wages, better houses, etc. There is about the farming district an air of prosperity which is not noticeable to the East. The country is particularly adapted to cotton, the yield is heavier, about a bale to the acre if well cultivated, though the average is a little less, the staple is longer, and the price is about a cent a pound higher, than in the hills. Fertilizers are seldom used and are not carried in the stores. Some of the lands which have been longest in use have been harmed by improper tillage, but the injury may easily be repaired by intelligent management. In the Delta the average size of the plantations is large, but the amount of land under the care of the tenant is smaller than in other sections. About 20 acres is probably the average to one work animal. The soil is heavier, requiring longer and more constant cultivation. For this land a rental of from $6 to $8 per acre is paid, while plantations will rent for a term of years at an acre. A good deal of new land is brought in cultivation by offering it rent free to a Negro for three years, the tenant agreeing to clear off the timber and bring the soil under cultivation. On some plantations no interest is charged on goods advanced by the Negro usually pays 25 per cent. for all money he borrows. The white planter has to pay at least 8 per cent and agree to sell his cotton through the factor of whom the money is obtained and pay him a commission of 2.5 per cent. for handling the cotton. The plantation accounts of three families follow for the year 1901. They live in Washington County, Mississippi, in which the Negroes form 89 per cent. of the total population. The first family consists of three adults and one child under 14. They own two mules, two cows, ten pigs and some chickens. They also have a wagon and the necessary farm implements. Their expenses were enlarged, as were those of the other families, by an epidemic of smallpox. Debit. Credit. Doctor $39.50 Cotton $826.80 Blacksmith 1.85 Cotton seed 147.00 Implements 15.05 ------- Clothes 102.55 $973.80 Provisions 42.10 856.95 Rent 175.07 ------- Extra labor 53.50 Balance $116.85 Seed 31.30 Ginning Cotton 61.30 Cash drawn 334.73 ------- $856.95 Their account at the close of the year showed thus a balance of $116.85. The family raised 2 bales of cotton and had besides 180 bushels of corn from six acres. The second family came to the plantation in 1900 with nothing, not even with decent clothing. Now they have two mules, keep some pigs, own a wagon and farming tools. There are five adults in the family and two children. They live in a three-roomed cabin and till 30 acres of land, four acres being wood land taken for clearing, for which there is no rent. Debit. Credit. Doctor $ 35.35 Cotton $1,091.28 Feed 5.00 Cotton seed 196.00 Mule (balance) 77.00 --------- Rations and clothes 284.10 $1,287.28 Rent 175.50 1,035.82 Extra labor 67.60 --------- Ginning 101.25 Balance $ 251.46 Cash drawn 290.02 --------- $1,035.82 The third family is of different type. They are always behind, although the wife is a good worker and the man is willing and seems to try. They are considered one of the poorest families on the plantation. There are two adults and one child. They own farming implements, one mule and some pigs. They have a two-roomed cabin and farm 18 acres for which they pay a crop rent of 1,800 pounds of cotton. Debit. Credit. Doctor $ 24.45 Cotton $498.57 Mule 33.00 Cotton seed 91.00 Clothing 53.40 ------- Rations 60.00 $589.57 Feed 11.25 576.55 Rent 130.50 ------- Extra labor 179.45 Balance $ 13.02 Seed 11.90 Ginning 43.50 Cash down 53.50 ------- $576.55 An examination of the accounts reveals that there is a charge for extra labor, which for the third family was very heavy. This results from the fact that the average family _could_, but _does not_ pick all the cotton it makes, so when it is seen that enough is on hand to pay all the bills and leave a balance it is very careless about the remainder. Planters have great difficulty in getting all the cotton picked and a considerable portion is often lost. Extra labor must be imported. This is hard to get and forms, when obtained, a serious burden on the income of the tenant. On the plantation from whose books the above records were taken the system of bookkeeping is more than usually careful and the gin account thus forms a separate item so that although all planters charge for the ginning the charge does not always appear on the books. These three families are believed to be average and indicate what it is possible for the typical family to do under ordinary conditions. It is but fair to state that the owners of this plantation make many efforts to get their tenants to improve their condition and will not long keep those whose accounts do not show a credit balance at the end of the year. A copy of the lease in use will be of interest and its stipulations form quite a contrast to the one quoted from Alabama. The cash and share leases are identical save for necessary changes in form. The names are fictitious. "This Contract, made this date and terminating December 31, 1902, between Smith and Brown, and John Doe, hereinafter called tenant, Witnesses: That Smith and Brown have this day rented and set apart to John Doe for the year 1902 certain twenty acres of land on James Plantation, Washington County, Mississippi, at a rental price per acre of seven dollars and fifty cents. Smith and Brown hereby agree to furnish, with said land, a comfortable house and good pump, and to grant to the said tenant the free use of such wood as may be necessary for his domestic purposes and to advance such supplies, in such quantity and manner as may be mutually agreed upon as being necessary to maintain him in the cultivation of said land; it being now mutually understood that by the term "supplies" is meant meat, meal, molasses, tobacco, snuff, medicine and medical attention, good working shoes and clothes, farming implements and corn. It is also hereby mutually agreed and understood that anything other than the articles herein enumerated is to be advanced to the said tenant only as the condition of his crops and account and the manner of his work shall, in the judgment of Smith and Brown, be deemed to entitle him. They also agree to keep said house and pump in good repair and to keep said land well ditched and drained. Being desirous of having said tenant raise sufficient corn to supply his needs during the ensuing year, in consideration of his planting such land in corn as they may designate, they hereby agree to purchase from said tenant all corn over and above such as may be necessary for his needs, and to pay therefor the market price; and to purchase all corn raised by him in the event be wishes to remove from James plantation at the termination of this contract. In consideration of the above undertaking on Smith and Brown's part, the said tenant hereby agrees to sell to them all surplus corn raised by him and in the event of his leaving James' plantation at the termination of this contract to sell to them all corn he may have on hand: in each case at the market price. The said Smith and Brown hereby reserve to themselves all liens for rent and supplies on all cotton, cotton seed, corn and other agricultural products, grown upon said land during the year 1902, granted under Sections 2495 and 2496 of the Code of 1892. They hereby agree to handle and sell for the said tenant all cotton and other crops raised by him for sale, to the best of their ability, and to account to him for the proceeds of the same when sold. They also reserve to themselves the right to at all times exercise such supervision as they may deem necessary over the planting and cultivating of all crops to be raised by him during the year 1902. The said John Doe hereby rents from Smith and Brown the above mentioned land for the year 1902 and promises to pay therefor seven dollars and a half per acre on or before November the first, 1902, and hereby agrees to all the terms and stipulations herein mentioned. He furthermore represents to Smith and Brown that he has sufficient force to properly plant and cultivate same, and agrees that if at any time in their judgment his crops may be in need of cultivation, they may have the necessary work done and charge same to his account. He furthermore agrees to at all times properly control his family and hands, both as to work and conduct, and obligates himself to prevent any one of them from causing any trouble whatsoever, either to his neighbors or to Smith and Brown. He also agrees to plant and cultivate all land allotted to him, including the edges of the roads, turn rows, and ditch banks, and to keep the latter at all times clean and to plant no garden or truck patches in his field. He also agrees to gather and deliver all agricultural products which he may raise for sale to said Smith and Brown, as they may designate to be handled and sold by them, for his account. He also agrees not to abandon, neglect, turn back or leave his crops or any part of them, nor to allow his family or hands to do so, until entirely gathered and delivered. In order that Smith and Brown may be advised of the number of tenants which they may have to secure for the ensuing year, in ample time to enable them to provide for the same, the said tenant hereby agrees to notify them positively by December 10, 1902, whether or not he desires to remain on James' Plantation for the ensuing year. Should he not desire to remain, then he agrees to deliver to Smith and Brown possession of the house now allotted to him by January 1st, 1903. In order that said tenant may have ample time in which to provide for himself a place for the ensuing year, Smith and Brown hereby agree to notify him by December 10, 1902, should they not want him as a tenant during the ensuing year. Witness our signatures, this the 15th day of December, 1901. SMITH AND BROWN. JOHN DOE. Witness: J. W. JAMES. The owners have been unable to carry out their efforts in full, but the result has been very creditable. The lease is much preferable to the one given on page 46. If, as I believe, the families above reported are average and are living under ordinary conditions, it seems evident that a considerable surplus results from their labors each year. I wish I could add that the money were being either wisely spent or saved and invested. This does not seem to be the case and it is generally stated that the amount of money wasted in the fall of the year by the blacks of the Delta is enormous. In the cabins the great catalogs of the mail order houses of Montgomery Ward & Co., and Sears, Roebuck & Co., of Chicago are often found, and the express agents say that large shipments of goods are made to the Negroes. Patent medicines form no inconsiderable proportion of these purchases, while "Stutson" hats, as the Negro says, are required by the young bloods. The general improvidence of the people is well illustrated by the following story related by a friend of the writer. At the close of one season an old Negro woman came to his wife for advice as to the use to be made of her savings, some $125. She was advised to buy some household necessities and to put the remainder in a bank, above all she was cautioned to beware of any who sought to get her to squander the money. The woman left but in about two weeks' time returned to borrow some money. It developed that as she went down the street a Jewess invited her to come in and have a cup of coffee. The invitation was accepted and during the conversation she was advised to spend the money. This she did, and when the transactions were over the woman had one barrel of flour, one hundred pounds of meat, ten dollars or so worth of cheap jewelry, some candy and other incidentals and no money. Foolish expenditures alone, according to the belief of the planters, prevent the Negroes from owning the entire land in a generation. I would not give the impression that there are no Negro land owners in this region. Thousands of acres have been purchased and are held by them, but we are speaking of average families. Some curious customs prevail. The planters generally pay the Negroes in cash for their cotton seed and this money the blacks consider as something peculiarly theirs, not to be used for any debts they may have. Although the prices for goods advanced are higher than cash prices, the Negroes will often, when spring comes, insist that they be advanced, so have the goods charged even at the higher prices, even though they have the cash on hand. This great over-appreciation of present goods is a drawback to their progress. In this district I found little dissatisfaction among the Negro farmers. They felt that their opportunities were good. Those who come from the hills can scarce believe their eyes at the crops produced and constantly ask when the cotton plants are going to turn yellow and droop. That there is little migration back to the hills is good evidence of the relative standing of the two districts in their eyes. Wages for day labor range from 60 to 75 cents, but the extra labor imported for cotton picking makes over double this. THE SUGAR REGION. South of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the alluvial district is largely given over to the growing of sugar cane with occasional fields of rice. The district under cultivation stretches back from the river a couple of miles or so to the edge of the woods beyond which at present there is no tillable ground, though drainage will gradually push back the line of the forest. These sugar lands are valued highly, $100 or so an acre, and the capital invested in the great sugar houses is enormous. Probably nowhere in agricultural pursuits is there a more thorough system of bookkeeping than on these plantations. This land is cultivated by hired hands, who work immediately under the eye of overseers. Nowhere is the land let out in small lots to tenants. Conditions are radically different from those prevailing in the cotton regions. The work season, it is claimed, begins on the first day of January and ends on the 31st of December, and every day between when the weather permits work in the fields there is work to be done. =CABINS ON SUGAR PLANTATION.= These plantations present an attractive appearance. The cabins are not scattered as in the cotton country, but are usually ranged on either side of a broad street, with rows of trees in front. The cabins are often for two families and each has a plot of ground for a garden. The planters say the Negroes will not live in the houses unless the garden plots are provided, even if they make no use of them. To each family is allotted a house so long as they are employed on the place. Wood is free and teams are provided for hauling it from the forest. Free pasture for stock is often provided. From the fact that the men would seldom work more than five and a half days a week arose the custom of paying off every eleven days. Each workman has a time book and as soon as he has completed his eleven days his pay is due. This avoids a general pay day and the demoralization that would likely follow. Work is credited by quarters of a day: Sunrise to breakfast, breakfast to dinner, dinner to about 3:00 p. m., 3:00 p. m. to sunset. Wages vary according to the season, being much larger during autumn when the cane is being ground. For field work men get 70 cents per day, women 55 to 60 cents. During the grinding season the men earn from $1 to $1.25, the women about 85 cents, children from 25 cents up. Wages are usually paid through a store which may or may not be under the direct ownership of the plantation. All accounts against the store are deducted, but the balance must be paid in cash if it is so desired. Nominally the men are free to trade where they will, but it is easy to see that pressure might be brought to bear to make it advantageous to trade at the local store. During the year 1901 two families were able to earn the following amounts. The first family consists of three adults and two children, but the wife did not work in the field. $10.50 7.00 13.80 12.60 10.85 12.60 11.55 10.85 6.65 13.80 12.95 15.40 14.50 11.20 2.62 1.25 2.25 4.35 ------------------------------------------ $23.97 14.90 27.60 25.55 26.25 29.35 27.10 11.55 8.40 9.80 20.60 25.75 28.75 Man 11.20 7.35 9.80 7.95 16.00 10.15 Son 4.35 3.05 1.20 6.40 18.15 15.75 Boy 1.85 10.12 6.75 Boy -------------------------------------------- 27.10 18.80 20.80 36.80 70.02 61.40--$382.54 During the grinding season the men's wages were increased to $1 a day and the boys' to 40 cents and the father had chances to make extra time as nightwatchman, etc. This family own a horse and buggy, keep poultry and have a fair garden. They are rather thrifty and have money stowed away somewhere. The second family consists of the parents and eight children. Their income is fair, but they are always "hard up." They spend their money extravagantly. The man is head teamster on the plantation and makes 80 cents per day, which is increased to $1.30 during the grinding season. The wife in this family also did no work save in the fall. $16.00 14.40 17.60 15.40 18.40 16.80 17.80 7.87 6.85 10.10 9.25 9.65 10.10 11.00 12.60 8.75 12.60 13.30 15.55 14.50 11.90 2.90 1.50 4.50 1.25 1.80 .65 ------------------------------------------ $40.62 33.30 45.45 37.95 43.60 41.40 40.70 17.80 18.00 16.60 23.30 44.95 43.05 Man 11.00 10.25 4.00 6.00 19.30 18.00 Boy 11.90 12.40 11.70 19.25 25.75 23.00 Son 6.75 17.25 14.75 Girl 1.60 Boy 2.10 8.00 5.25 Boy 3.00 15.15 13.50 Woman ---------------------------------------------- 40.70 40.65 32.30 60.40 130.30 119.15--665.82 These families are typical so far as known. In comparing their incomes with those in other districts it must be borne in mind that they have no rent to pay and their only necessary expenses are for food and clothes and incidentals. Certainly both of the families should have money to their credit at the end of the year. The total wages depends not only on the willingness to work, but also on weather conditions. One gets the impression that in some places conditions are pretty bad and even by some white residents of the state it is claimed that a state of servitude almost prevails on many plantations. In any case the Negroes do not seem satisfied. The labor is rather heavy. For this or other reasons there has been quite an exodus to the cotton country in recent years, which has caused the cane planters much trouble and they will make many concessions to keep their tenants. To meet this emigration for some time efforts have been made to import Italian labor but the results have not been wholly satisfactory. The Italians are more reliable and this is a great argument in their favor, but with this exception they are not considered much better workers than the blacks. The storekeepers much prefer the Negroes, who spend their money more freely. The planters claim that the labor is unreliable and say they never know on Saturday how many workers they will have on Monday. They also say it is hard to get extra labor done. In 1900 on one plantation the women were offered ten cents a day extra for some hoeing, but only four held out. Higher wages were offered if some cane were cut by the ton instead of by the day, but after a week the hands asked to return to the gang at the lower wage. In the rice fields along the river about the same wages prevail as for the field hands in the cane plantations. The rice crop, however, is but a six months crop, so other employment must be found for part of the year if nothing but rice is raised. It is usual in this region to raise rice as a side crop. CHAPTER V. SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT. =COUNTRY CHURCH AND SCHOOL.= Hitherto we have had to do chiefly with the economic situation of the Negro farmer. There is, however, another set of forces which may not be ignored if we are to understand the situation which confronts us. These are, of course, the social forces. In discussing these it is more than ever essential to remember that a differentiation has been taking place among the Negroes and that there are large numbers who are not to be grouped with the average men and women whom we seek to describe. It may even be true that there are communities which have gained a higher level. Any statement of the social environment of 8,000,000 people must necessarily be false if applied strictly to each individual. The existence of the higher class must not, however, be allowed to blind us to the condition of the rest. The average Negro boy or girl is allowed to grow. It is difficult to say much more for the training received at home. We must remember that there is an almost total absence of home life as we understand it. The family seldom sits down together at the table or do anything else in common. The domestic duties are easily mastered by the girls and chores do not weigh heavily on the boys. At certain periods of the year the children are compelled to assist in the farm operations, such as picking cotton, but most of the time they are care free. Thus they run almost wild while the parents are at work in the fields, and the stranger who suddenly approaches a cabin and beholds the youngsters scattering for shelter will not soon forget the sight. Obedience, neatness, punctuality do not thrive in such an atmosphere. The introduction to the country school a little later does not greatly improve conditions. The teachers are often incompetent and their election often depends upon other things than fitness to teach; upon things, indeed, which are at times far from complimentary to the school trustees. The school year seldom exceeds four months and this may be divided into two terms, two months in the fall and two in the spring. School opens at an indefinite time in the morning, if scheduled for nine it is just as likely as not that it begins at ten thirty, while the closing hour is equally uncertain. The individual attention received by the average child is necessarily small. The schools are poorly equipped with books or maps. The interior view given on page 61 is by no means exceptional. It may not be out of place to mention the fact that recognition of these evils is leading in many places in the South to the incorporation of private schools, which then offer their facilities to the public in return for partial support at the public expense. Public moneys are being turned over to these schools in considerable amounts. In some counties the public does not own a school building. Without questioning the fact that these schools are an improvement over existing conditions, history will belie itself if this subsidizing of private organizations does not some day prove a great drawback to the proper development of the public school system, unless it may be, that the courts will declare the practice illegal and unconstitutional. The home and the school being from our point of view unsatisfactory, the next social institution to which we turn is the church. Since the war this has come to be the most influential in the opinion of the Negro and it deserves more careful study than has yet been given to it. Only some of the more obvious features can here be considered. The first thing to impress the observer is the fact that time is again no object to the Negro. The service advertised for eleven may get fairly under way by twelve and there is no predicting when it will stop. The people drift in and out, one or two at a time, throughout the service. Families do not enter nor sit together. Outside is always a group talking over matters of general interest. The music, lined out, consists of the regulation church hymns, which are usually screeched all out of time in a high key. The contrast between this music and the singing of the plantation songs at Hampton or some other schools which impresses one as does little music he hears elsewhere is striking. The people have the idea that plantation songs are out of place in the church. The collection is taken with a view to letting others know what each one does. At the proper time a couple of the men take their places at a table before the pulpit and invite the people to come forward with their offerings. The people straggle up the aisle with their gifts, being constantly urged to hasten so as not to delay the service. After half an hour or so the results obtained are remarkable and the social emulation redounds to the benefit of the preacher. It is difficult for the white visitor to get anything but hints of the real possibilities of the preacher, for he is at once introduced to the audience and induced to address them if it is possible. Even when this is not done there is usually an air of restraint which is noticeable. Only occasionally does the speaker forget himself and break loose, as it were. The study then presented is interesting in the extreme. While the minister shouts, the audience are swaying backward and forward in sympathetic rhythm, encouraging the speaker with cries of "Amen", "That's right", "That's the Gospel", "Give it to 'em bud", "Give 'em a little long sweetening". There is no question that they are profoundly moved, but the identity of the spirit which troubles the waters is to me sometimes a question. The forms of the white man's religion have been adopted, but the content of these forms seems strangely different. Seemingly the church, or rather, religion, is not closely identified with morality. I am sorry to say that in the opinion of the best of both races the average country (and city) pastor does not bear a good reputation, the estimates of the immoral running from 50 to 98 per cent. of the total number. It is far from me to discount any class of people, but if the situation is anything as represented by the estimate, the seriousness of it is evident. This idea is supported by the fact that indulgence in immorality is seldom a bar to active church membership, and if a member be dismissed from one communion there are others anxious to receive him or her. There are churches and communities of which these statements are not true. It is interesting to note that the churches are securing their chief support from the women. As an organization the church does not seem to have taken any great interest in the matters which most vitally affect the life of the people, except to be a social center. If these things be considered it is easy to see why the best informed are seeking for the country districts men who can be leaders of the people during the week on the farms as well as good speakers on Sunday. It is a pleasure to note that here and there some busy pastor is also spending a good deal of his time cultivating a garden, or running a small farm, with the distinct purpose of setting a good example. The precise way in which the church may be led to exert a wider and more helpful influence on the people is a matter of great importance, but it must be solved from within. Turning from religious work we find the church bearing an important place in the social life and amusements. Besides its many gatherings and protracted meetings which are social functions, numbers of picnics and excursions are given. These may be on the railroads to rather distant points, and because of the lack of discrimination as to participants, many earnest protests have been filed by the better class of Negroes. The amusements of the blacks are simple. Nearly all drink, but drunkenness is not a great vice. Dances are in high esteem, and are often accompanied by much drinking and not infrequently by cutting scrapes, for the Negro's passions lie on the surface and are easily aroused. In South Carolina the general belief seems to be that the dispensary law has been beneficial. There is also a universal fondness for tobacco in all its forms. Gambling prevails wherever there is ready money and not infrequently leads to serious assaults. Music has great charms while a circus needs not the excuse of children to justify it in the Negro's eyes. Some of the holidays are celebrated, and when on the coast the blacks dubbed the 30th of May "Desecration Day," there were those who thought it well named. Active sports, with the occasional exception of a ball game, are not preferred to the more quiet pleasure of sitting about in the sunshine conversing with friends. America can not show a happier, more contented lot of people than these same blacks. If we turn our attention to other characteristics of the Negro we must notice his different moral standard. To introduce the little I shall say on this point let me quote from a well known anthropologist. "There is nothing more difficult for us to realize, civilized as we are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation, as regards what we call par excellence 'morality.' It is not indecency; it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we can not help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still imperfect conscience of the primitive man." From somewhat this standpoint we must judge of the Negro. Two or three illustrations will suffice. Talking last summer to a porter in a small hotel, I asked him if he had ever lived on a farm. He replied that he had and that he often thought of returning. Asking him why he did not he said that it would be necessary for him to get a wife and a lot of other things. I suggested the possibility of boarding in another family. He shook his head and said: "Niggers is queer folks, boss. 'Pears to me they don' know what they gwine do. Ef I go out and live in a man's house like as not I run away wid dat man's wife." The second illustration is taken from an unpublished manuscript by Rev. J. L. Tucker of Baton Rouge. There is a negro of good character here in Baton Rouge whose name is ---- ----. He is a whitewasher by trade and does mainly odd jobs for the white people who are his patrons, and earns a good living. He is widely known through the city as a good and reliable man. Some time ago he had trouble with his wife's preacher, who came to his house too often. The trouble culminated in his wife leaving him. Soon thereafter he sent or went into the country and brought home a negro woman whom he installed in his house to cook and otherwise serve him. Explaining the circumstances to Mr. ----, he said: "I a'in' got no use for nigga preachers. Dey is de debbil wid de wimmen. I tol' dat ar fellah to keep away fr'm my house or I'd hunt him wid a shotgun, an' I meant it. But he got her'n spite a me. She went off to 'im. Now I's got me a wife from way back in de country, who don' know the ways of nigga preachers. I kin keep her, I reckon, a while, anyway. I pays her wages reg'lar, an' she does her duty by me. I tell yeh, Mr. ----, a hired wife's a heap better's a married wife any time, yeh mark dat. Ef yeh don' line er yer can sen' her off an' get anudder, an' she's nutten to complain 'bout a' longs yeh pay her wages. Yes siree, yeh put dat down; de hired wife's nuff sight better'n de married one. I don' fus no mo' wid marryin' wives, I hires 'em. An I sent word to dat preacher dat if he comes roun' my house now I lays for 'im shore wid buck shot." Commenting, Mr. Tucker says that the man had no idea of moral wrong, the real wife has lost no caste, the preacher stands just as well with his flock and the "new wife" is well received. The third instance occurred on a plantation. A married woman, not satisfied with the shoes she received from the store, wanted a pair of yellow turned shoes. The planter would not supply them. The woman was angry and finally left her husband, went to a neighboring place and "took up" with another man. These cases sufficiently illustrate prevailing conceptions of the sacredness of the marriage tie. Certainly this involves a theory of home life which differs from ours. Many matings are consummated without any regular marriage ceremony and with little reference to legal requirements, and divorces are equally informal. Moral lapses seldom bring the Negro before the courts. All these things but indicate the handicap which has to be overcome. Within the family there is often great abuse on the part of the men. The result of it all is that many Negroes do not know their own fathers and so little are the ties of kinship' regarded that near relatives are often unknown, and if possible less cared for. This may be substantiated by the records of any charity society in the North which has sought to trace friends of its Negro applicants. To attempt a quantitative estimate of the extent of sexual immorality is useless. It is sufficient to realize that a different standard prevails and one result today is a frightful prevalence of venereal diseases to which any practising physician in the South can bear witness. I am glad to say there are sections which have risen above these conditions. The transition from slavery to freedom set in operation the forces of natural selection, which are sure and steadily working among the people and are weeding out those who for any reason can not adapt themselves to the new environment. Insanity, almost unknown in slavery times, has appeared and has been increasing among the Negroes of the South at a rate of about 100 per cent. a decade since 1860. Of course, the number affected is still small, but the end is perhaps not reached. We have witnessed also the development of the pauper and criminal classes. This was to be expected. There is also some evidence of an increase in the use of drugs, cocaine and the like. The point to be noted is that there is taking place a steady division of the Negroes into various social strata and in spite of race traits it is no longer to be considered as on a level. I have sought to represent the situation as it appears to me, neither seeking to overemphasize the virtues or the vices of the race. It is clear to me that in spite of the obvious progress the road ahead is long and hard. While I do not anticipate any such acceleration of speed as will immediately bring about an economic or social millenium I believe that proper measures may be found, indeed, are already in use, which if widely adopted will lead to better things. How many of the race will fall by the way is, in one sense, a matter of indifference. In the long run, for the whites as well as the blacks, they will survive who adapt their social theories and, consequently, their modes of life to their environments. CHAPTER VI. THE OUTLOOK. "One of the things which militates most against the Negro here is his unreliability. * * * His mental processes are past finding out and he can not be counted on to do or not to do a given thing under given circumstances. There is scarcely a planter in all this territory who would not make substantial concessions for an assured tenantry." A Northern man, now resident in the South and employing Negro labor, says: "I am convinced of one thing and that is that there is no dependence to be placed in 90 per cent. of the Negro laborers if left to themselves and out of the overseer's sight." These quotations from men who are seeking to promote the success of the Negroes with whom they come in contact might be multiplied indefinitely from every part of the South. The statements are scarce open to discussion, so well recognized is the fact. If I have rightly apprehended the nature of the training afforded by Africa and slavery there was little in them to develop the habits of forethought, thrift and industry, upon which this reliability must be based. I am not arguing the question as to whether this unreliability marks a decadence of Negro standards or whether it is due to the present higher standards of the white. For argument, at least, I am willing to admit that in quality of workmanship, in steadfastness and self-control there has really been great progress. My interest is in the present and future rather than the past. I have tried to show that, judged by present standards, the Negro is still decidedly lacking. Personally I am not surprised at this. I should be astonished if it were otherwise. The trouble is that we at the North are unable to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the Negro is a dark skinned Yankee and we think, therefore, that if all is not as it should be that something is wrong, that somebody or some social condition is holding him back. We accuse slavery, attribute it to the hostility of the Southern white. Something _is holding him back_, but it is his inheritance of thousands of years in Africa, not slavery nor the Southern whites. It is my observation that the white of the black belt deal with the Negro more patiently and endure far more of shiftless methods than the average Northerner would tolerate for a day. It is interesting to note that Northern white women who go South filled with the idea that the Negro is abused can scarce keep a servant the first year or so of their stay. Of course there are exceptions, few in number, who say as did a lumberman in Alabama last summer: "I never have any trouble with the Negro. Have worked them for twenty years. Why, I haven't had to kill one yet, though I did shoot one once, but I used fine shot and it didn't hurt him much." We have attempted to have the Negro do in a few years what it has taken us thousands to accomplish, and are surprised that he has disappointed us. There is no room for discouragement. Contrast the Negro in Africa and America to see what has been done. Unless this unreliability is overcome it will form even a greater handicap for the future. Southern methods of agriculture have been more wasteful of small economies than have Northern. That a change is imperative, in many districts at least, has been shown. Is the Negro in a position to take advantage of these changes? At present it must be admitted that he does not possess the knowledge to enable him to utilize his environment and make the most out of it. It has been shown that he is bearing little part in the development of the trucking industry, nay more, that he does not even raise enough garden truck for his own support. In a bulletin of the Farmer's Improvement Society of Texas I find the following: Very many, in the first place, do not try to make their supplies at home. Very often much is lost by bad fences. Lots of them don't know where their hoes, plows, single-trees, etc., are at this minute. Lots of them buy butter, peas, beans, lard, meat and hay. * * * Well, really, to sum up, if there's anything like scientific methods among the vast majority of our people I don't know it. * * * I venture to say that not one negro farmer in a hundred ever saw the back of one of these bulletins (agricultural), much less the inside. If some of these primary lessons have not been mastered what chance is there that the Negro will overcome, unaided, the crop lien system and his other handicaps and introduce diversified agriculture, stock raising, etc.? Slavery taught him something about work and he is willing to work, and work hard, under leadership. Herein lies the possibility of his economic salvation. He is not yet ready as a race to stand alone and advance at the pace demanded by America of the twentieth century. He must be taught and the teaching must be by practice as well as by precept. Viewed from this standpoint, though it is equally true from another, one of the great needs of the South is that its white farmers should pay more attention to other things than cotton. So long as land is considered too valuable to use for pasture, for hay, for the various crops on which stock live and fatten, or so long as it is considered profitable to sell cotton seed for $5 a ton and throw away four or five times this amount in the food and manure which the same seed contains, the Negro will not see the advantage of a different system. Nor does the sight of thousands of tons of rice straw dumped into the Mississippi each year, just as a generation ago the oat straw in Iowa was burned, lead him to suspect unused sources of wealth. The possibilities of Southern agriculture are great, but the lead must be taken by the whites. The Negro has a great advantage over the Italian or other European peasant in that the white man prefers him as a helper. He is patient, docile and proud of his work. He is wanted by the native whites, and if the reader doubts this let him go to any Southern community and attempt to bring about any great exodus of the Negroes and he will be surprised to find how soon he is requested to move on. This interest on the part of the whites is a factor which must be considered. It would be a happy day for the Negro if the white woman of the South took her old personal interest in his welfare. This friendly sentiment will not increase with time and each succeeding generation will emphasize, more and more, industrial efficiency, and the Negro will not be preferred. Corresponding to this is the fact that the Negro respects and willingly follows the white man, more willingly and more trustingly than he does another Negro. He is personally loyal, as the care received by the soldiers during war time illustrated. But slavery is gone and the feudalism which followed it is slowly yielding to commercialism, which gives the palm to the more efficient. Hitherto the Negro has tilled much of the best land of the South. Meantime the great prairies have been settled and about all the good cheap land of the northwest taken. A tide of immigration is setting in towards the Southern states. Already the rice industry of Louisiana has been revolutionized by white immigrants. What may this mean for the Negro if these incoming whites defy race prejudice and seek the rich bottom lands of the Mississippi or elsewhere? Will the Negro be in a position of independence or will he only assist the white? Will he till in the future the best lands or will he be forced to the less fertile? With the knowledge of the present regarding yellow fever, malaria and typhoid the dread of the lowlands is disappearing. If the indications point, as many believe, towards the South as the seat of the next great agricultural development these questions become of vital importance to the Negro. Can he become economically secure before he is made to meet a competition which he has never yet faced? Or does the warmer climate give him an advantage, which the whites can not overcome? I must confess that I doubt it. In "The Cotton Plant" (page 242), Mr. Harry Hammond states that in 39 counties of the Black Prairie Region of Texas, in which the whites predominate, the average value of the land is $12.19 per acre, as against $6.40 for similar soil in twelve counties of the Black Prairie of Alabama, in which the Negroes are in the majority. He says further: "The number and variety of implements recently introduced in cotton culture here, especially in the prairies of Texas, is very much greater than elsewhere in the cotton belt." This would indicate that heat alone is no insurmountable obstacle. If these things be true, then as the late Mr. J. L. M. Curry said: "It may be assumed that the industrial problem lies at the heart of the whole situation which confronts us. Into our public and other schools should be incorporated industrial training. If to regularity, punctuality, silence, obedience to authority, there be systematically added instruction in mechanical arts, the results would be astounding." The question of classical education does not now concern us. The absolutely essential thing is that the Negro shall learn to work regularly and intelligently. The lesson begun in slavery must be mastered. As Dr. E. G. Murphy puts it: The industrial training supplied by that school (slavery) is now denied to him. The capacity, the equipment, and the necessity for work which slavery provided are the direct cause of the superiority of the old time darkey. Is freedom to have no substitute for the ancient school? * * * The demand of the situation is not less education, but more education of the right sort. I would not say that I thought all Negroes should be farmers, but I do feel that the farm offers the mass of the race the most favorable opportunity for the development of solid and enduring character. It seems to me that the following words from one of our broadest minded men apply with special force to the Negro: If I had some magic gift to bestow it would be to make our country youth see one truth, namely, that science as applied to the farm, the garden and the forest has as splendid a dignity as astronomy; that it may work just as many marvels and claim just as high an order of talent." CHAPTER VII. AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. There remain to be considered some of the agencies at work to better the lot of the farmer. In this I shall not attempt to give a list of institutions and outline of courses but to indicate various lines of work which seem promising. In discussing the training of the Negro farmer credit must first be given to the white planters under whom he has learned so much of what he knows. Under the changing conditions of agriculture this training, or the training received on the average farm is not sufficient and must be supplemented by special training if the desired results are to be obtained. It probably lay in the situation that the Negro should get the idea that education meant freedom from labor. It is none the less unfortunate for him. To counteract this idea has been a difficult matter and the influence of the average school has not been of any special help. The country school taught by a teacher, usually incompetent from any standpoint, whose interest has been chiefly in the larger salary made possible by his "higher education" has not been an unmixed blessing. The children have learned to read and write and have preserved their notion that if only they could get enough education they might be absolved from manual labor. Even today Hampton and Tuskegee and similar schools have to contend with the opposition of parents who think their children should not be compelled to work, for they are sent to school to enable them to avoid labor. Quite likely it could not be expected that the country school should hold up a higher ideal, for here we have to do with the beginnings of a system of instruction which had to make use of such material as it could find for teachers. The same excuse does not suffice to explain the attitude taken by the bulk of schools maintained by the northern whites for the Negroes. Their inability to comprehend the needs of the case can only be ascribed to the conception of a Negro as a white man with a black skin and a total failure to recognize the essential conditions of race progress. When the Roman monks penetrated the German woods the chief benefits they carried were not embalmed in Latin grammars and the orations of Cicero, but were embodied in the knowledge of agriculture and the arts which, adopted by the people, made possible later the German civilization. The old rescue mission sought to yank the sinner out of the slough of despond, the social settlement seeks to help him who has fallen in the contest of life or him to whom the opportunity has not been offered, to climb, recognizing that morality and religion attend, not recede progress. The old charity gave alms and the country was overrun with hordes of beggars; the new seeks to help a man to help himself. A similar change must come in the efforts for the Negro. It has been sought to give him the fruits of civilization without its bases. It will immediately be argued that this is wrong, that the chief educational work has been but primary and that little so-called "higher education" has been given. This is true, even to the extent that it is possible to find a town of 5,000 inhabitants one-half Negroes, in which the city provides but one teacher for the black children and the balance are trained in a school supported by the gifts of northern people. But, and this is the important thing, the spirit of the education has been clear and definite and that the plan has not been carried out has not been due to lack of faith in it. General Armstrong, thanks to his observations in Hawaii, perceived that a different course was necessary. His mantle fell on H. F. Frissell and Booker T. Washington, so Hampton and Tuskegee have been the chief factors in producing the change which has been noted as coming. Now that industrial training is winning support it is amusing to note the anxiety of other schools to show that they have always believed in it. I can but feel that had the plans of General Armstrong been widely adopted, had the teachers been trained to take the people where they were and lead them to gradual improvement, that the situation today would be radically different. It is, however, not too late to do this yet and the widespread founding of schools modeled after Hampton and Tuskegee indicates a general recognition of the needs of the situation. Yet, even these schools have not turned out as many farmers as is often supposed. On examination of the catalog of Tuskegee for 1901 I find only sixteen graduates who are farming and thirteen of these have other occupations (principally teaching). The combination, I think, desirable rather than otherwise. Three others are introducing cotton raising in Africa under the German Government. From the industrial department nine have received certificates in agriculture and six in dairying, but their present occupations are not given. Asking a prominent man at Tuskegee for the reason, he exclaimed, rather disgustedly, that they disliked work and preferred to teach. This merely indicates the handicap Tuskegee has to overcome, and perhaps the average agricultural college of the North cannot show a higher percentage of farmers. An official of the Department of Agriculture tells me that only 5 per cent of the graduates of the agricultural colleges become farmers. To show how much agricultural training is given at Tuskegee the following statement for the year 1902-3 is of interest: No pupil is counted twice. One hundred and eighty-one students are engaged in the actual operations of the farm, truck garden, orchard, etc. Seventy-nine are taking the dairying, etc., and 207 are taking agriculture as part of their academic work. Yet, more of the graduates become professional men (lawyers, preachers, etc.) than farmers, the proportion being about three to one. In citing Tuskegee I am, of course, not forgetting that other schools, such as Tougaloo and Talladega, have excellent farms and are seeking (though their chief emphasis is elsewhere) to give agricultural training. Reverting to the different lines of work which seem hopeful, the subject may be subdivided into several sections. We have first to do with the efforts to make the young child appreciate Nature and become interested in her processes. Perhaps Hampton has developed this side most extensively, both in the little garden plots cultivated by the children and the nature study leaflets prepared for use in other schools. Personally I can but feel that there is a possibility of vastly extending such instruction by means of the country schools. If they may be consolidated, and this is being done in many sections, I think a way can be found to make the school house the social center of the district in such a way as will greatly help conditions. Actual instruction in practical farming, dairying, horticulture, etc., is given in an increasing number of schools, but the opportunities are still very inadequate to the needs. If it be possible the way must be found to enable the Negro to use more and better machinery. The average planter does not care to introduce expensive machinery lest it be ruined by careless and ignorant tenants. These industrial schools can never hope to reach more than a certain percentage of the people. There must be measures adopted to widen the influence of the school. Tuskegee may be mentioned for its attempts to reach out. For many years an annual Farmers' Conference has been held which bids fair to become the Mecca of the Negro farmer. The influence exerted cannot be measured, but it is believed to be great. One weak spot in many of the schools is that they have little if any direct influence upon the life of the community in which they are situated. There are, however, some exceptions. The Calhoun Colored School has a farmer's association meeting monthly. This is made up chiefly of men who are purchasing land through a company formed by the school. Topics of local interest, methods of farming, etc., are the subjects for discussion. There is also a mother's meeting with subjects of more domestic interest, with a savings department for co-operative buying. Curiously enough the formation of the mother's meeting was at first opposed by the men (and by some whites), as it took the women out of the fields occasionally. Now it is more favored. As Tuskegee and many other places there are similar farmers' associations, of which no special mention need be made. Tuskegee has an outpost some miles from the school which is doing a general neighborhood work. The following papers circulated by the school will give a general idea of their conceptions of the needs as well as of their efforts to influence conditions for the better: MY DAILY WORK. I may take in washing, but every day I promise myself that I will do certain work for my family. I will set the table for every meal. I will wash the dishes after every meal. Monday, I will do my family washing. I will put my bedclothes out to air. I will clean the safe with hot water and soap. Tuesday, I will do my ironing and family patching. Wednesday, I will scrub my kitchen and clean my yard thoroughly. Thursday, I will clean and air the meal and pork boxes. I will scour my pots and pans with soap and ashes. Friday, I will wash my dish cloth, dish towels and hand towels. I will sweep and dust my whole house and clean everything thoroughly. Sunday, I will go to church and Sunday school. I will take my children with me. I will stay at home during the remainder of the day. I will try to read something aloud helpful to all. QUESTIONS THAT I WILL PLEDGE MYSELF TO ANSWER AT THE END OF THE YEAR. 1. How many bushels of potatoes, corn, beans, peas and peanuts have we raised this year? 2. How many hogs and poultry do we keep? 3. How much poultry have we raised? 4. How many bales of cotton have we raised? 5. How much have we saved to buy a home? 6. How much have we done towards planting flowers and making our yard look pretty? 7. How many kinds of vegetables did we raise in our home garden? 8. How many times did we stay away from miscellaneous excursions when we wished to go? What were our reasons for staying at home? 9. How have we helped our boys and girls to stay out of bad company? 10. What paper have we taken, and why have we taken our children to church and had them sit with us? HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. Keep clean, body and soul. Remember that weak minds, diseased bodies, bad acts are often the result of bad food. Remember that you can set a good table by raising fruit, vegetables, grains and your meat. Remember that you intend to train your children to stay at home out of bad company. Remember that if you would have their minds and yours clean, you will be obliged to help them learn something outside the school room. Remember, that you can do this in no better way than by taking a good paper--the New York Weekly Witness or The Sabbath Reading, published in New York, cost very little. Have your children read to you from the Bible and from the papers. YOUR NEEDS. You need chairs in your house. Get boxes. Cover with bright calico, and use them for seats until you can buy chairs. You need plates, knives and forks, spoons and table cloths. Buy them with the tobacco and snuff money. You need more respect for self. Get it by staying away from street corners, depots and, above all, excursions. You need to stay away from these excursions to keep out of bad company, out of court, out of jail, and out of the disgust of every self-respecting person. You need more race pride. Cultivate this as you would your crops. It will mean a step forward. You need a good home. Save all you can. Get your home, and that will bring you nearer citizenship. You can supply all these needs. When will you begin? Every moment of delay is a loss. HOW TO BECOME PROSPEROUS. 1. Keep no more than one dog. 2. Stay away from court. 3. Buy no snuff, tobacco and whisky. 4. Raise your own pork. 5. Raise your vegetables. 6. Put away thirty cents for every dollar you spend. 7. Keep a good supply of poultry. Set your hens. Keep your chickens until they will bring a good price. 8. Go to town on Thursday instead of Saturday. Buy no more than you need. Stay in town no longer than necessary. 9. Starve rather than sell your crops before you raise them. Let your mind be fixed on that the first day of January, and stick to that every day in the year. 10. Buy land and build you a home. The various states are beginning to establish institutions in which agriculture and industrial training may be given. Among these may be mentioned that of Alabama at Normal, and of Mississippi at Westside. Alabama has also established an experiment station in connection with the Tuskegee Institute. In Texas there is an interesting movement among the Negro farmers known as the "Farmers' Improvement Society." The objects are: 1. Abolition of the credit system. 2. Stimulate improvements in farming. 3. Co-operative buying. 4. Sickness and life insurance. 5. Encouragement of purchase of land and home. The Association holds a fair each year which is largely attended. According to the Galveston _News_ of October 12, 1902, the society has about 3,000 members, who own some 50,000 acres of land, more than 8,000 cattle and 7,000 horses and mules. This organization, founded and maintained entirely by Negroes, promises much in many ways. In October, 1902, a fair was held in connection with the school at Calhoun, Ala., with 83 exhibitors and 416 entries, including 48 from the school and a very creditable showing of farm products and live stock. Besides these general lines which seem to be of promise it is in place to mention a couple of attempts to get the Negroes to purchase land. There have been not a few persons who have sold land to them on the installment plan with the expectation that later payments would be forfeited and the land revert. There are some enterprises which are above suspicion. I am not referring now to private persons or railroad companies who have sold large tracts to the Negroes, but to organizations whose objects are to aid the blacks in becoming landholders. The Land Company at Calhoun. Ala., started in 1896, buying 1,040 acres of land, which was accurately surveyed and divided into plots of fifty acres, so arranged that each farm should include different sorts of land. This was sold to the Negroes at cost price, $8 per acre, the purchasers to pay 8 per cent on deferred payments. The sums paid by the purchasers each year have been as follows: 1896--$ 741.03. Found later to be borrowed money in the main. 1897--$1,485.15. Largely borrowed money. 1898--$ 367.34. Men paying back borrowed money. Advances large. 1899--$ 374.77. 1900--$1,649.25. Money not borrowed. Advances small. 1901--$ 871.49. Bad year. Poor crops. Money not borrowed. 1902--$2,280.42. Advances very small. Outlook encouraging. There have been some failures on part of tenants, and it has been necessary to gradually select the better men and allow the others to drop out. The company has paid all expenses and interest on its capital. A second plantation has been purchased and is being sold. There is a manager who is a trained farmer, and by means of the farmers' association already mentioned much pressure is brought to bear on the Negroes to improve their condition. The results are encouraging. In Macon County the Southern Land Company has purchased several thousand acres which it is selling in much the same way, but it is too early to speak of results. Even at Calhoun but few of the men have yet gotten deeds for their land. A word regarding the methods of the Southern Land Company will be of interest. The land was carefully surveyed in forty-acre plots. These are sold at $8 per acre, the payments covering a period of seven years. The interest is figured in advance, and to each plot is charged a yearly fee of $5 for management. In this total is also included the cost of house and well (a three-roomed cabin is furnished for about $100, a well for $10). This sum is then divided into seven equal parts so that the purchaser knows in advance just what he must pay each year. The object of the company is to encourage home ownership. Until the place is paid for control of the planting, etc., remains with the manager of the company. Advances are in cash (except fertilizers), as no store is conducted by the company and interest is charged at 8 per cent for the money advanced and for the time said money is used. On this place in 1902, H. W., a man aged 68, with wife and three children, owning a horse, a mule and two cows, did as follows. He and his son-in-law are buying eighty acres. They made a good showing for the first year under considerable difficulties and on land by no means rich: Debits. Credits. Fertilizer $ 34.88 Cotton $390.32 Whitewashing 3.00 Liming 19.76 Lease contract 180.00 Cash 130.36 Interest 3.12 ------- $371.12 ------- Balance Jan. 1, 1903 $ 19.20 This leads me to mention the question of land ownership on the part of the Negroes. This has not been mentioned hitherto for several reasons. In the first place the data for any detailed knowledge of the subject are not to be had. Few states make separate record of land owned by the blacks as distinct from general ownership. The census has to depend upon the statements of the men themselves, and I have heard tenants solemnly argue that they owned the land. Again a very considerable proportion of the land owned is also heavily mortgaged, and these mortgages are not always for improvements. Nor is it by any means self evident that land ownership necessarily means a more advanced condition than where land is rented. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the _farms_ owned are so small that they do not suffice to support the owners. Conditions vary in different districts. In Virginia it has been possible to buy a few acres at a very low price. In parts of Alabama, or wherever the land has been held in large estates in recent years, it has often been impossible for the Negro to purchase land in small lots. Thus, though I believe heartily in land ownership for the blacks and believe that well conducted land associations will be beneficial, I cannot think that this alone will solve the questions confronting us. Retrogression is possible even with land ownership. Other things are necessary. On the basis of existing data the best article with which I am acquainted on this subject appeared in the _Southern Workman_ for January, 1903, written by Dr. G. S. Dickerman, in which he showed that among the Negro farmers the owners and managers formed 59.8 per cent of the total in Virginia, 57.6 per cent in Maryland, 48.6 per cent in Kentucky, falling as we go South to 15.1 per cent in Alabama, 16.4 per cent in Mississippi, and 16.2 per cent in Louisiana, rising to 30.9 per cent in Texas. Evidently the forces at work are various. Within a few months, at the suggestion of Mr. Horace Plunkett, of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, a new work has been taken up, whose course will be watched with great interest. I quote from a letter of Mr. Plunkett to Dr. Wallace Buttrick, of the General Education Board: From what I have seen of the negro character, my own impression is that the race has those leader-following propensities which characterize the Irish people. It has, too, I suspect, in its mental composition the same vein of idealism which my own countrymen possess, and which makes them susceptible to organization, and especially to those forms of organization which require the display of the social qualities to which I have alluded and which you will have to develop. These characteristics which express themselves largely, the old plantation songs, in the form of religions exercises, and in the maintenance of a staff of preachers out of all proportion I should think, to the spiritual requirements, should, in my opinion, lend themselves to associative action for practical ends if the organizing machinery necessary to initiate such action were provided. What, then, is my practical suggestion? It is that your board, if it generally approves of the idea, should take one, two, or, at the most, three communities, such as that we inquired about, and organize them on the Irish plan. The farmers should at first he advised to confine their efforts to some simple object, such as the joint purchase of their immediate agricultural requirements. * * * I would at first deal solely with the colored people, beginning in a very small way, leaving larger developments for the future to decide. Hampton Institute has taken up the suggestion and is planning to organize a community. Everything will, of course, depend on the management as well as on the people. If the results are as satisfactory as they have been in Ireland the efforts will be well expended. With this brief and incomplete account we must take leave of the Negro farmer. Throughout the thesis I have attempted to keep two or three fundamental propositions constantly in sight. Briefly summarized these are that we have to do with a race whose inherited characteristics are largely of African origin; that these have been somewhat modified under American influences, but are still potent; that the economic environment in America is not a unit and must finally result in the creation of different types among the blacks; that the needs of the different habitats are various; that the segregation from the mass of the whites is fraught with serious consequences; that measures of wider application must be adopted if the Negro is to bear his proper part in the progress of the country; that owing to the great race differences the whites must take an active interest in the blacks; that in spite of the many handicaps under which the Negro struggles the outlook is not hopeless if his willingness to work can so be directed that a surplus will result. To my mind the Negro must work out his salvation, economic and social. It cannot be given without destroying the very thing we seek to strengthen--character. This is the justification for the emphasis now laid upon industrial training. This training and the resulting character are the pre-requisites of all race progress. Industrial education is thus not a fad nor a mere expedient to satisfy the selfish demands of southern whites. It is the foundation without which the superstructure is in vain. If I have fairly stated the difficulties in the way and have shown the possibility of ultimate success, I am content. For the future I am hopeful. MAPS SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES These maps are particularly referred to in Chapter II. The chief geological districts are indicated. The figures are based upon the census of 1900. The maps are here included in the hope that they may prove of value to students of the problems herein discussed. =VIRGINIA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 660,722 Total Whites 1,192,855 Negroes form 35.6% of total= =VIRGINIA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 40,125 Average Negroes per Mile 16.4 Average Whites per Mile 29.7= =NORTH CAROLINA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 624,469 Total Whites 1,263,603 Negroes form 33% of total= =NORTH CAROLINA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 48,580 Average Negroes per Mile 12.8 Average Whites per Mile 26= =SOUTH CAROLINA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 557,807 Total Negroes in State 782,321 --------- 1,340,128 Negroes form 58.4% of total= =SOUTH CAROLINA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 30,170 Average Negroes to Square Mile 25.1 Average Whites to Square Mile 17.9= =GEORGIA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 1,181,294 Total Negroes in State 1,034,813 --------- 2,216,107 Negroes form 46.7% of total= =GEORGIA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 58,980 Average Negroes per Square Mile 17.6 Average Whites per Square Mile 19.9= =FLORIDA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites 297,333 Total Negroes 230,730 ------- 528,063 Negroes form 43.7% of total= =FLORIDA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square miles in State 54,240 Average Negroes per Mile 4.2 Average Whites per Mile 5.4 =ALABAMA Total Whites in State 1,001,152 Total Negroes in State 827,307 --------- 1,828,459 Negroes form 45.2% of total= =ALABAMA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 51,540 Average Negroes per Mile 16 Average Whites per Mile 19.4= =MISSISSIPPI NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Negro Percentage in State 58.5 Total Whites 641,200 Total Negroes 907,630 --------- 1,548,830= =MISSISSIPPI NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Average Negroes per Square Mile 19.58 Average Whites per Square Mile 13.82 Square Miles in State 46,340 =TENNESSEE NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 480,243 Total Whites 1,540,186 Negroes form 23.8% of total= =TENNESSEE NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 41,750 Average Negroes per Mile 11.2 Average Whites per Mile 36.8= =KENTUCKY NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 284,706 Total Whites 1,862,309 Negroes form 13.3% of total= =KENTUCKY NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 40,000 Average Negroes per Mile 7.1 Average Whites per Mile 46.5= =ARKANSAS NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Negro Percentage in State 28 Total Whites in State 944,850 Total Negroes in State 366,856 --------- 1,301,706= =ARKANSAS NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 53,045 Average Negroes per Sq. Mile 6.9 Average Whites per Sq. Mile 17.8= =LOUISIANA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 729,612 Total Negroes in State 650,804 --------- 1,380,416 Negroes form 47.1% of total= =LOUISIANA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 45,420 Average Negroes per Mile 14.3 Average Whites per Mile 16.1= =EASTERN TEXAS Whites in District 1,747,052 Negroes in District 608,301 Negro Percentage in State 20.4 In District Covered 25= =EASTERN TEXAS NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles included 60,453 Average Negro .10 Average White 28.8 Includes all Counties with one Negro per Square Mile= Footnotes: [1] See article by A. H. Stone. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1903. [2] "The Negro in Maryland." [3] The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. [4] Bulletin, Department of Labor, No. 35. [5] The Future of the American Negro. [6] Olmsted, F. L.--The Cotton Kingdom. [7] Olmsted, F. T. The Cotton Kingdom. [8] Negroes of Litwalton, Va.--Bulletin Department of Labor, No. 37. [9] Rents a mule. [10] Bulletin, Department of Labor, No. 35. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Misprints corrected: "entrepeneurs" corrected to "entrepreneurs" (page 6) "optomistic" corrected to "optimistic" (page 8) "from" corrected to "form" (page 9) "Atantic" corrected to "Atlantic" (page 9) "stdy" corrected to "study" (page 10) "Talledega" corrected to "Talladega" (page 16) "inhabitated" corrected to "inhabited" (page 17) "sevaral" corrected to "several" (page 31) "carefuly" corrected to "carefully" (page 37) "Tusgekee" corrected to "Tuskegee" (page 73) "Talledega" corrected to "Talladega" (page 73) "charactertistics" corrected to "characteristics" (page 77) Two footnotes are marked [7]; both refer to the same footnote. The key to the table on page 51 was extracted from the column headings of the original table that were printed vertically. Wide tables have been split in half with one column repeated. 
29915	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) about SUGAR BUYING for Jobbers _How you can lessen business risks by trading in Refined Sugar Futures_ _by_ B. W. DYER A BOOKLET FOR JOBBERS WHO SELL SUGAR _Lamborn & Company_ SUGAR HEADQUARTERS 132 FRONT STREET · NEW YORK Copyright, 1921 LAMBORN & COMPANY About Sugar Buying Jobbers who have had considerable experience in exchange operations will find in this booklet a simplified and non-technical description of activities with which they may be in general familiar. We believe, however, that the inauguration of trading in refined sugar futures on the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc., throws open a new realm of opportunity. We have attempted to outline briefly the chief advantages to be gained by a jobber's use of this new market, assuming that those who have in the past dealt in raw sugar as a protection for their refined sugar needs will welcome suggestions as to the benefits to be derived from trading directly in refined sugar. Time, the Croupier of Business Like a croupier at a vast roulette table, Time presides over the realm of business. Time is the tap-root of most business uncertainties. No one can tell what will happen a year, a month, a day, a minute from now--the future may bring floods and wars, pestilence and drouth; or it may bring great crops and fair weather, happiness and prosperity. As business has become more and more complicated, the time element has become larger and larger. The time element as we know it does not exist in simple barter--a man weaves a piece of cloth and exchanges it for a bushel of corn: time is of no account in the transaction. A small jobber located in the same territory as refiners buys a small amount of sugar today and distributes it to his trade the next--time is negligible. A large jobber, buying perhaps for several branch houses, or located at points which necessitate a delay of two or three weeks in transit, may find it necessary even on a declining market to purchase a considerable amount of sugar, and, as a result, weeks may go by before his sugar arrives and is sold--time is vitally important. Time is an element in costs and prices, because over any extended period of time many things may happen to influence costs and prices. All business planning must deal with Time. To the unenlightened business man, Time is a bugaboo--a gambler whose cards are stacked and against whom there is no defense. Such a man conducts his business from hand to mouth, in constant fear. He is a fatalist, taking his profits and losses as if they were gifts or blows of Fortune. The enlightened man works with Time as an impartial, exacting, inevitable power for his own good or ill. He shapes his actions and enlists the services of Time to prevent catastrophe on the one hand, and to enforce prosperity and happiness on the other. Storms may come, but so far as his mind may control it, he is "the master of his fate." Cost and Selling Prices That the element of TIME is important in the jobber's business no one will deny. He does not base his selling price on cost, but rather on the market price. Regardless of his cost, he must sell to meet competition. It is equally obvious that the larger his business, or the greater his distance from the source of supplies, the more important part TIME plays in both his cost and selling prices. All jobbers, large or small, are obliged to assume greater risks (even proportionately) and exercise greater care, than, for instance, retailers buying in small quantities. A jobber's business may enlarge by a perfectly natural process of expansion, but his purchasing risks increase in greater ratio than his business expands. Similarly, under abnormal conditions, jobbers located at points requiring several weeks in transit prior to delivery, must assume greater risks than those located at the source of supply. In the event of serious delays in deliveries or in shipments, even buyers located at shipping points are confronted with this problem, and the difficulties of those located at a distance are increased immeasurably. These difficulties tend to accentuate the importance of TIME in modern business. As business grows, instead of decreasing--risks increase. Any machinery which might operate to eliminate or reduce this uncertainty or speculative element in a jobber's business, would, we believe, be welcomed. Exchanges provide just such machinery. Other commodities, such as raw sugar, wheat, cotton, pork and coffee have had this machinery for years and it was provided for refined sugar on May 2, 1921, when trading in refined sugar futures was inaugurated on the floor of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. Where Buyers and Sellers of Sugar Meet The Sugar Exchange is a market place, where buyers and sellers of sugar or their representatives meet to trade. The Exchange provides a concentration point, where, under any market conditions, sugar may be bought or sold _at a price_. What that price is, is determined by how much sugar is for sale and how many people want it. If the supply is large and buyers are few, the price will be low. If sugar is scarce and buyers are numerous, the price will be high. Or, to put it in another way, when there are more sellers than buyers, the market declines; when more buyers than sellers, it advances. If the supply and the number of buyers are normally well balanced, the price will be determined largely by the cost of production and transportation. If events or circumstances operate to increase or curtail either the sugar supply or the number of buyers, and such events or circumstances follow one after the other alternately, the price will fluctuate. These are the results of the operation of well-known economic laws. In the case of all commodities which cannot be bought or sold at a common market place (or exchange), price fluctuations are usually wide and frequent, because no large group ever has common knowledge of supply, demand and other factors that govern prices--purchases and sales are made direct between individuals, and knowledge of the amount asked or paid is restricted to a limited few. Through the common market place provided by an exchange, on the other hand, market conditions and prices become common knowledge almost instantly over the entire country. This tends toward stabilization--a fact which, alone, helps to eliminate risks, and enables merchants to buy at lower prices than if forced to deal direct with one another. Sellers do not have to take such long chances and can thus afford to sell on a smaller margin of profit. Competition is stimulated and freed from many of its complications and uncertainties to the advantage of the seller, the buyer and the public. It is now admitted that, had exchange trading in refined sugar existed in 1920, a general use of the exchange by all branches of the trade might have prevented, to a considerable extent, the abnormal advance in sugar prices of that period, with the hardship and misfortune that attended. The fact that an exchange always provides a buyer and a seller, _at a price_, tends toward keeping business fluid. Jobbers are able to protect their future requirements. Producers are sure of a market for their crops. Crop financing is made easier because bankers are more willing to loan on crops sold in advance--an operation made possible by an exchange. Exchanges operate to take the gamble out of business. They help to put and maintain business on a sound basis. That some people who have no real interest in the commodity use the exchange speculatively does not alter this fact. In providing machinery by which speculative risks incident to a jobber's business may be shifted from the jobber to those who make a business of assuming such risks, exchanges help to stabilize his business and to remove a large part of the destructive uncertainty with which he would otherwise have to contend. Exchanges are the creations of modern economic development, designed and operated for the benefit of the commerce, industry and people of the civilized world. Therefore we welcome trading in refined sugar futures and the opportunity to offer you the advantages that may be derived from a conservative, intelligent use of its services. The Exchange provides certain quality standards and other regulations to safeguard your interests. But your real assurance of protection lies in the _character_ and reliability of your broker. If your broker is not strong financially you do not have back of your contract the responsibility that you might otherwise have. If you had a favorable contract with a broker who became insolvent, you would have no means of forcing the fulfillment of the contract, and no way of securing the profit which was due you. The thing to do, of course, is to choose a broker who is so strong financially that you incur no danger in this respect whatsoever. Use the Exchange when the Market is Favorably out of line In considering the illustrative examples in this booklet, it should be borne in mind that the measure of protection afforded is relative and not absolute. The theory of exchange operations is that the exchange market will move relatively the same as the market for the actual commodity. This cannot be strictly true, although the exchange market must of necessity follow very closely the actual market, because all the sugar must, in the final analysis, come from the actual market. If thrown out of parity with the actual market, the exchange market is bound to come back eventually. In the exchange market anyone can buy and anyone can sell. The market is subject to many outside influences, and the fluctuations reflect and accentuate the varying shades of market opinions of many individuals. But in the market for the actual commodity, the quotations are made by comparatively few men, which means that there will be less fluctuation. Therefore, it is obvious that although the exchange market _should_ be on a parity with the actual market, the unequal fluctuations of the two markets will be constantly throwing them out of parity or "out of line." There are times when the market will be so out of line that the _buying_ of futures should result profitably. At other times, with conditions reversed, _selling_ of futures seems obviously advisable. We do not claim that jobbers can protect sugar purchases with absolute and exact precision. On the basis of long exchange experience, we _do_ believe, however, that by a discreet use of the Exchange, and by using the market when quotations are _favorably_ out of line, jobbers can do so to their decided advantage. Selling of Futures--Hedging As the word itself indicates, a "hedge" on the Exchange is a protection. You hedge by buying or owning actual sugar, and "selling short" in the same amount. You sell sugar futures although you do not own any. You actually contract to deliver an amount of sugar during a specified future month at a specified price. Eventually, you must either buy and deliver actual sugar to carry out this contract, or you must buy another contract for futures to cancel your short sale. This is known as a "covering" operation, and the cancelling of one by the other takes place automatically through the channels of the Exchange. From the jobber's point of view, the operation of hedging has three outstanding purposes. He may hedge: 1. To eliminate the probability of speculative profit or loss, due to market fluctuations. 2. To protect a profit on a favorable purchase of actual sugar. 3. To establish and limit a loss on an unfavorable purchase of actual sugar. HEDGING _to protect a normal jobbing profit by eliminating the probability of a speculative loss or gain_. This operation is particularly useful to jobbers with whom conditions are such that they desire to be assured that their cost will be at about the market price at the time they dispose of their sugar, regardless of whether the market be higher or lower. Although there are times when any jobber, no matter where located, will find this a useful transaction, it is obvious that many buyers will not wish to use the market in this way unless they feel it will decline. But it is particularly of advantage to a jobber located in markets necessitating a delay of from one day to several weeks in transit. For instance, on a certain day in April, two jobbers bought their usual quantity of sugar. One was located in Syracuse, the other in New York. Two days following the purchase, the market broke half a cent per pound. In view of the fact that his sugars were still in transit when the market declined, the Syracuse buyer was obliged to sustain this entire loss, in order to meet competition. On the other hand, because he received and distributed the sugar before the market broke, the New York jobber was able not only to avoid a loss, but make his regular profit. CHART 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEDGING to protect a normal jobbing profit by eliminating the probability of a speculative loss or gain ------------+-----------------------------------------+-----------+--------- Initial | | Transactions| Subsequent Transactions | Result ------------+-----------+---------------+-----+-------+-----------+--------- |Liquidating| Condition |Price| Result| Figure | In each | the hedge | of market | you | of | your | case |(covering) | when you |would| hedge | sugar | the | | "cover" | pay | cost | cost | same | | your hedge | in | this | this | | | |cover| way | way | | | |-ing | | | ------------+-----------+---------------+-----+-------+-----------+--------- You buy | When you | | |Profit |Actual cost| actual sugar| sell your |It has declined| | |less profit| at 6.00 | sugar (or |to 4.00 |4.00 |2.00 |6-2=4 | | when it is| | | | | | delivered)| | | | | | you buy | | | | |You get | the same | | | | |your | amount of | | | | |sugar | futures at| | | | |at the | the market| | | | |market | price, | | | | |price | whether | | | | |at the | higher or | | | | |time | lower. | | | | |when you | | | | | |sell it | | | | | |(or when At the same | | | | |Actual cost|your time you | |It has advanced| |Loss |plus loss |delivery hedge by | |to 8.00 |8.00 |2.00 |6+2=8 |is made.) selling the | | | | | | same amount | | | |No | | of futures | |It stands at | |profit,|Actual | at 6.00 | |6.00 |6.00 |no loss|cost | ------------+-----------+---------------+-----+-------+-----------+--------- Naturally the greater the amount of sugar any one concern may have in transit the greater the need for protection. We call this kind of transaction particularly to the attention of buyers having branch houses who find themselves obliged to make relatively large purchases to supply their trade in the face of a market in which they have no confidence. These disadvantages at which out-of-town buyers are sometimes placed might be overcome by using the Exchange. On the other hand, when refiners are badly behind on deliveries, even buyers located at the source of supply will find themselves facing a similar problem the solution of which may be found in a use of the Exchange. It is therefore evident that the selling of futures may be a transaction the _sole_ purpose of which is to eliminate speculation from a jobber's business. Regardless of how careful a buyer may be, there is an element of _speculation in each purchase of actual sugar_. If the price goes up, there is a speculative gain--the sugar is worth more. But if the price goes down, the buyer sustains a speculative loss. The measure of protection afforded by the Exchange will appeal to those jobbers who wish to reduce the speculative element in their business. In the example immediately following, as in all others, we have not taken into consideration the difference between the Exchange quotations and the Seaboard Refiners' quotations, which is explained on page 38. This would simply inject an unnecessary complication, and would be of no particular advantage for purposes of illustration. Suppose you should buy through your broker from a refiner, for prompt shipment, an amount of _actual_ sugar at 6.00, which you plan to sell within a short time after its receipt. Instead of worrying about subsequent sugar price fluctuations, you simultaneously hedge this purchase by _selling_ futures in the same amount on the Exchange. The price at which you buy actual sugar and the price at which you sell futures should be relatively the same, since Exchange prices generally reflect refiners' prices. You should be able to figure the cost of your sugar at about the market price at the time it is received or sold. (See Chart 1.) If the price of sugar should go down to 4.00 at about the time when you sell it, your actual sugar, for which you contracted to pay 6.00, would be worth only 4.00; but you would then buy to cover your futures sale, making 2.00 on this transaction, which, subtracted from the price you paid (6.00), brings the cost down to the market price of 4.00. In other words, you have accomplished your purpose of being able to figure your sugar cost at the market price at the time when you received it (or at the time you sell it). That is, although every pound of actual sugar was sold at a loss, this loss was balanced by the profit from your hedge. If, on the other hand, the market should advance to 8.00 after your original purchase and hedge at 6.00, the value of your actual sugar would be increased by 2.00. You would then buy futures at 8.00 to cover your short sale at 6.00, netting a loss thereby of 2.00. This loss would be added to your original cost of 6.00, making your actual sugar cost 8.00, which is the market price at the time. Had you omitted the hedge, your sugar would have cost you only 6.00, but, in this example we are assuming that you would sell only when you were willing to figure your sugar cost at the market price. This you have accomplished by foregoing the speculative profit you _might_ have made in favor of your normal jobbing profit. If the market should remain relatively stable you would buy to cover your hedge at approximately the same price as you sold for, your gain or loss being practically nothing. In other words, you would obtain sugar at the market price, which is the purpose in this kind of a hedge. HEDGING _to protect a gain on a favorable purchase of actual sugar_. All sugar buyers have had the experience of buying actual sugar, only to see it advance or decline before they have disposed of it. How to protect the gain, or minimize the loss, is described in the two hedging positions which we now discuss. Suppose you have bought sugar, have _not_ hedged against it, and have seen it advance. Finally you have said, "I think sugar is about as high as it is going. I am going to sell against that to protect that profit." On the other hand, the reverse might be the case. You might find the market going down, and say, "The market is going lower. I want to hedge against that, and limit my loss to a definite amount." CHART 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEDGING to protect a gain on a favorable purchase of actual sugar --------------+-----------------------------------------+----------+-------- Initial | | Transactions | Subsequent Transactions | Result --------------+--------+----------+---------+-----------+----------+-------- | Hedge |Condition |Price you| Result of | Figure | In | |of market | pay for | hedge and | actual | each | | when you | futures | covering | sugar | case | | "cover" | to cover| operation | cost | the | |your hedge| hedge | | this way | same --------------+--------+----------+---------+-----------+----------+--------- You buy actual| | | | |Price paid| sugar at 6.00,| | | | |for actual| but before you| |It has | | |sugar less|Your have received | |declined | | |hedging |sugar it (or before | |to | |A profit |profit |cost you sell it) | |6.00 | 6.00 |of 2.00 |6-2=4.00 |is the price | | | | | |2.00 advances to | | | | | |under 8.00 | | | | |Price paid|the | | | | |for actual|market You now have |You sell|It has | | |sugar plus| your sugar at |futures |advanced | | |hedging | 2.00 under the|at |to | |A loss |loss | market |8.00 |10.00 | 10.00 |of 2.00 |6+2=8.00 | | | | | | | You feel that | |It stands | |No profit, | | the market may| |at 8.00 | 8.00 |no loss | 6.00 | recede and | | | | | | eliminate | | | | | | this gain, | | | | | | so-- | | | | | | --------------+--------+----------+---------+-----------+----------+-------- In both of these cases, the operation is relative. If a man has a profit, let us say 2¢ a pound, and he hedges, he maintains his profit of 2¢ a pound as compared with the market at the time of delivery, or at the time when he expects to sell this sugar, regardless of whether the market is higher or lower. In the same way, conversely, if he has a loss on his sugar of 2¢ a pound, by hedging he can limit that loss to 2¢ a pound, even though the market goes still lower. In other words, his sugar cost at the time of delivery, or at the time when he expects to sell the sugar, will be about 2¢ above the market price, whether the market is higher or lower. We shall assume that you have bought from a refiner through your broker a supply of actual sugar at 6.00. While your sugar is in transit or before it has been shipped by refiners, the market advances to 8.00, at which point it apparently is steady. You now have a _theoretical_ gain of 2.00--that is, if you were to sell your sugar at once, you would have an _actual_ profit of 2.00; but you do not sell because your sugar is in transit or you need it for your trade. However, you do want to preserve and protect this favorable position of having your sugar 2.00 below the market at the time you want to sell it. So you sell the same quantity of futures on the Exchange at 8.00. Three things may occur--the market may decline, or it may continue to advance, or it may remain steady. You have accomplished your purpose in any case (see Chart 2). By the time you sell your sugar (or at the time of its delivery) it becomes necessary for you to cover your hedge and if the market has declined from 8.00 (at which point you hedged) and stands at 6.00 again, your hedging operations considered alone would net you an actual profit of 2.00. Your original sugar cost was 6.00. Your profit on your hedge was 2.00, so that you would figure your actual sugar cost at 4.00. You would have accomplished your purpose of getting your sugar 2.00 under the market at the time of selling it (or at the time of its delivery). That is, your delay in selling your sugar has cost you practically nothing, even though the market has declined. If the market has advanced to 10.00, when it becomes necessary for you to cover your hedge (at the time of selling your sugar or when it is delivered) your hedging operations considered alone would net you a _loss_ of 2.00. You would buy in futures at 10.00, which you sold at 8.00. Your original sugar cost was 6.00, your loss on your hedge was 2.00, so that you would figure your actual sugar cost at 8.00. But the market at that time was 10.00, so that you have accomplished your purpose of getting your sugar 2.00 under the market at the time of selling it (or at the time of delivery). In other words, you would make the same profit as though you had re-sold your sugar to second-hands originally, instead of hedging, but had you followed this course, you might not have had sugar in stock for your regular trade. On the other hand, when it becomes necessary for you to cover your hedge, if the market has remained steady and is again at 8.00, the two futures transactions cancel themselves without profit or loss. Your original cost of 6.00, therefore, stands as your actual sugar cost at the time of selling (or at the time of delivery). This is 2.00 under the market and you have accomplished your purpose. HEDGING _to establish and limit a loss on an unfavorable purchase_. This operation is identical in its working with the previous example, except that you have a different end in view. CHART 3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEDGING to establish and limit a loss on an unfavorable purchase ------------+--------+---------------+-------+----------+----------+------- Initial | | Transactions| Subsequent Transactions | Result ------------+--------+---------------+-------+----------+----------+------- | Hedge | Condition of | Price | Result | Figure | In | | market when | you | of | actual | each | | you "cover" | pay | hedge | sugar | case | | your hedge | for | and | cost | the | | |futures| covering | this | same | | | to | operation| way | | | | cover | | | | | | hedge | | | ------------+--------+---------------+-------+----------+----------+------- You buy | | | | |Price paid| actual sugar| | | | |for actual| at 6.00 but | | | | |sugar less| before you | | | | |hedging | have | |It has declined| | A profit |profit | received it | |to 4.00 | 4.00 | of 1.00 |6-1=5.00 | (or before | | | | | | you sell it)| | | | | | the price | | | | | | declines to | | | | | | 5.00 | | | | | | | | | | | | You now have| | | | |Price paid|Your your sugar | | | | |for actual|sugar at 1.00 | | | | |sugar plus|cost is above the |You sell| | | |hedging |1.00 market |futures |It has advanced| |A loss of |loss |above |at 5.00 |to 6.00 | 6.00 |1.00 |6+1=7.00 |the | | | | | |market You feel | |It stands at | |No profit,| | that the | |5.00 | 5.00 |no loss | 6.00 | market may | | | | | | decline | | | | | | still | | | | | | further and | | | | | | increase | | | | | | this loss, | | | | | | so-- | | | | | | ------------+--------+---------------+-------+----------+----------+------- Let us say that you purchase actual sugar at 6.00. If the market declines to 5.00 after your original purchase at 6.00, you have a _loss_ of 1.00, in the value of your sugar. Facing the possibility of a further decline and desiring to _limit_ this loss to 1.00, you hedge by selling futures. In this case you should limit your _loss_ to 1.00 just as effectively as in the previous example you preserved your _gain_ of 2.00, and by the same course of procedure. (See Chart 3.) By the time it is necessary for you to cover your hedge by buying an equivalent amount of futures, the market may have declined still further, say to 4.00. You sold at 5.00, you bought at 4.00, profit on that operation, 1.00. Subtract this profit from your original cost (6.00) and figure your sugar cost at 5.00. In other words, although the market went still lower, you succeeded in limiting your loss to 1.00, as compared with the market price at the time of the delivery of your sugar (or at the time you sell it). Had you omitted the hedge, your actual sugar cost would have been 6.00, which was 2.00 above the market. After your original purchase at 6.00, and market decline to 5.00 (at which point you hedged), the market might advance again to 6.00, or remain steady at 5.00, but the operation is no different from that previously described, and you in each case attain the same result. Buying of Sugar Futures Refiners do not make a practice of taking orders more than thirty days in advance of actual delivery--but there are obviously times when it is advisable to cover one's requirements for a longer period. A jobber may do this on the Exchange where he will always find a seller at _some_ price for the quantity he desires. This privilege is particularly valuable to: 1. Jobbers who believe that the market price of Sugar is going higher and who desire to cover their future requirements beyond the delay period which refiners will extend. 2. Jobbers, who desire to sell to manufacturing customers for future delivery at a fixed price so that these manufacturing customers may determine their selling price, may do so by the use of the Exchange. _1. Buying of sugar futures--Based upon the expectation of higher prices_ No doubt many jobbers will recall occasions when anticipating their requirements seemed obviously advisable, perhaps almost imperative. Such a jobber would be one who believed in the market. His action would be based on his opinion of the market. He might note in January, let us say, that the price of May or July futures is favorable. He would like to get his May or July sugar at about that figure. You yourself probably can recollect many times in the past, when the general market was in such a strong position fundamentally that anticipating your requirements seemed advisable. You decided to buy a considerable quantity only to find that refiners would not sell you to the extent that you wished to purchase. When covering your future requirements on the Exchange, you can buy any quantity desired. Consider also on how many occasions when you wanted and _needed_ a definite future month of shipment, you have been told that "_as soon as possible_" was the only acceptable basis. Or have you had the experience of placing an order and waiting twenty-four or thirty-six hours without knowing if the refiner would accept your order? Meanwhile the market might have advanced, and, if your order had been declined, you would have had to pay an even higher price for your sugar. The facilities of the exchange offer opportunities for protecting requirements _quickly_ and without the uncertainty and delay sometimes encountered from refiners. A jobber must anticipate the market in order to take full advantage of it, and in this connection it should be borne in mind that the Sugar Exchange, as in the case of practically all exchanges, usually anticipates either favorable or unfavorable developments in the market for the actual commodity. Consequently, prompt action is necessary when either a higher or lower market is expected, as the Exchange market will usually be the first to reflect changing conditions. Suppose you feel that the price of sugar is low and probably going higher. You try to anticipate your requirements for some time to come, but find that refiners will not sell for more than thirty days. You can go on the Exchange and buy futures in the quantity and month desired. Assume then, that you pay 6.00 for your futures. Now, whatever happens in the sugar market, you know you can get the quantity of sugar desired at about 6.00 (see Chart 4). The market will advance, decline or hold steady. Say the market advances. When it seems advisable to close out your Exchange contract and buy actual sugar, the price may have gone up to 8.00. You will then sell your futures at about 8.00, go into the market and buy actual sugar at the same price, assuming, of course, that the actual market has advanced in relative proportion--which is likely. Although actual sugar has cost you 2.00 more than you had figured, you have made 2.00 on your futures. Profit and loss cancel each other. Your sugar cost is 6.00. On the other hand, suppose the market declines after you have bought futures at 6.00, and goes down to 4.00, when it seems advisable to close out your Exchange contract. You sell your futures at 4.00, a loss of 2.00. But you will also buy your actual sugar at 4.00, which is 2.00 lower than you had planned. Your actual sugar cost was therefore 6.00, which is the price you had figured was favorable. If the price still is at 6.00 when you desire to liquidate, you would sell your futures and buy your actual sugar at about the same price. Thus you have neither gained nor lost, but you have been sure of getting sugar at 6.00, which is the price you felt was low. The time to buy actual sugar is generally when the market becomes strong and an advance in the price of the actual commodity seems imminent; but the time to buy sugar futures is before the strength develops. The future market invariably discounts declines and anticipates advances. _2. Buying of Sugar Futures to protect profits on advance sales to customers_ While it may not be an established custom, we know numerous instances where jobbers have sold sugars in small quantities for future delivery. The examples to which we refer are small manufacturers buying sugar locally, who, when the market appears in a strong condition desire to be assured of their regular supply of sugar at a specified price. Under such conditions we have known jobbers to sell them sugar for delivery over several months. If at any time you are placed in a similar position, and desire to take care of your customers in this manner, without incurring too great a risk, the Exchange offers exceptional opportunities for protection, as, of course, you would be able to buy sugar for delivery in any month you desire, even as far in advance as one year. It is clear that if you sell at a specified price for delivery at a certain time, your only protection is your belief that you'll be able to buy sugar cheaply enough to make a profit. CHART 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUYING SUGAR FUTURES 1. Based on the expectation of higher prices. 2. To establish costs, pre-determine selling prices and protect profits on advance sales. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Initial | | | Transactions | Subsequent Transactions |Sugar Cost | Result -------------+------+----------+--------+-------+------+------------+------- | |Condition | Price |Result |Price | Figure it | In | |of market | you | of | you | this way |each | | when you | would |selling| pay | |case | |buy actual| obtain | your | for | |the | | sugar |for your|futures|actual| |same | | |futures | |sugar | | -------------+------+----------+--------+-------+------+------------+------- | | | | | |Price paid |Your | | | | | |for actual |sugar | | | |A | |sugar less |cost is You buy Sugar|When |If it has | |profit | |hedging |6.00 Futures at |you |advanced | |of | |profit |as pre- 6.00 to cover|buy |to 8.00 | 8.00 |2.00 | 8.00 |8-2=6 |deter- future |actual| | | | | |mined requirements;|sugar,| | |A | |Price paid | fix your |you |If it has | |loss | |for actual | price and |sell |declined | |of | |sugar plus | take orders |your |to | | | |hedging loss| on the basis |fu- |4.00 | 4.00 |2.00 | 4.00 |4+2=6 | of 6¢ sugar |tures | | | | | | | |If it is | |No | | | | |still at | |profit,| | | | |6.00 | 6.00 |no loss| 6.00 | 6.00 | -------------+------+----------+--------+-------+------+------------+------- It is equally clear that if a manufacturer names a price and takes advance orders without pre-determining his sugar cost, his profit is a matter of guesswork. He is not going to know the cost of his manufactured product until he buys his sugar. Assume that you have contracted to deliver sugar to a manufacturer or to any customer at a definite date and a specified price, without buying sugar to cover your requirements. If the price of sugar is favorable when you deliver it, you are fortunate and net a profit. But sugar may have advanced to a point where you are forced to pay such a price that your profit is lower than it should be. In fact there may not be any profit at all. By conservative, wise use of the Sugar Exchange, most of this risk and uncertainty can be eliminated and both you and your customer can go ahead with your plans with your prices determined through a known sugar cost. Suppose that in March or April, for example, the market appears strong and you find that some of your manufacturing customers are anxious to be assured of an adequate supply of sugar at a definite price. In such a case, if these advance orders called for a sufficient volume, and provided Exchange prices were favorable, you could take care of your trade's future requirements at a fixed price, without yourself taking a speculative position. We also believe that buyers making these arrangements with any of their trade would be justified in requesting the same proportionate marginal protection which it is necessary for jobbers themselves to give the seller on the Exchange. There will no doubt be many occasions when it would be worth while to solicit orders on this basis. With your own sugar cost fixed by the use of the Exchange, you could take proper care of these buyers without worrying about subsequent fluctuations of the market, as you would know that your sugar cost would be about the price paid for your futures which, let us say, is 6.00. (See Chart 4.) The market may advance so that by September, sugar is selling at 8.00. (You are now making deliveries to your trade as contracted). So you sell your futures at 8.00, go into the market and buy actual sugar for about the same figure, assuming, of course, that actual sugar has also advanced in relative proportion, which is likely. You pay 2.00 more for your actual sugar than you had figured but you have profited to the extent of 2.00 on the sale of futures. Profit and loss cancel each other and you have your sugar at 6.00. In other words, although the market is now 8.00 you are delivering 6.00 sugar to your customers, with a profit to yourself. If the market declines after your original purchase at 6.00 so that in September sugar is selling at 4.00, you will sell your futures at 4.00, taking a loss of 2.00. But you will buy your actual sugar at about 4.00, also, which is 2.00 lower than you planned for. This gain of 2.00, while not to be termed an actual profit, may certainly be considered as canceling the loss on the sale of your futures, so that the cost of your sugar is really 6.00, your original price. Another way of looking at this is to add the loss of 2.00 on the sale of your futures to 4.00, the cost of your actual sugar, making 6.00, the price upon which you had based your plans. If you had waited, you would have been able to get your sugar for 4.00, but by buying it ahead you have had the benefits of protection and the elimination of speculation and risk. If the market remains steady after your June purchase, or after various fluctuations, returns to 6.00 by September, you sell your futures at 6.00 and buy spot sugar for about the same amount. Thus you have neither gained nor lost, but you have been protected in your sugar cost. This is essentially a "playing-safe" operation. It results in profit insurance for the jobber who is willing to sacrifice the possibility of a speculative gain on advance sales to customers. It is thoroughly sound business policy and is neither expensive nor difficult to carry out. Point of Delivery Although Chicago is the delivery point in all Exchange contracts for refined sugar, it should be plainly understood that the Exchange is for anyone, anywhere. Whether located in Chicago, or in Rochester, Baltimore, New York or even San Francisco, a jobber can advantageously use the Exchange. Deliveries of Refined Sugar Futures will be made only from the Exchange-licensed warehouses in Chicago. But, regardless of the prospective buyer's location, the delivery point is not of any material importance as it is an established fact that in operations on all exchanges the percentage of actual deliveries taken is exceptionally small. In fact, the examples used in this booklet are all based on the supposition that the buyer may find it more convenient _not_ to take delivery. The usual procedure followed in sugar exchange operations is for the buyer to close out his exchange transaction prior to the period calling for delivery and purchasing actual sugar from the refiners, executing both transactions practically simultaneously. Possibly the most important problem in connection with the organization of any commodity exchange is to reduce the possibility of corners, however remote, to the smallest possible degree. In the case under discussion, the Chicago delivery point, by virtue of its accessibility for producers and consumers from all parts of the country, operates to that end. Practically every refiner of cane sugars in the East and West, as well as the Southern refiners, carries large stocks in Chicago, and its favorable location in connection with the beet sugar industry also makes it highly desirable. Its situation in regard to the offerings of the Louisiana producers is also an additional protection and advantage of considerable importance. The Exchange-licensed warehouses in Chicago are under the direct and constant supervision of Exchange representatives. Facilities are provided for testing and grading sugar so as to maintain Exchange quality standards. When are Refiners' Prices and Exchange Quotations in line? Since exchange quotations for refined sugar futures are net cash ex-exchange-licensed warehouse, Chicago, while refiners' quotations are f.o.b. refinery, less 2% for cash, it is obvious that there must be a difference between refiners' prices and exchange quotations. It is equally obvious that the differential should approximate the freight rate between Chicago and the Seaboard, where the refiners are located, with allowance also for the cash discount. When the markets are in line such is the case. Conversely, when the differential is higher or lower, the markets are out of line. Therefore, in order to tell whether the markets are out of line, or to what extent, it is necessary to determine on a differential to represent the normal difference between the two markets. There is no one figure, however, that will satisfy all conditions at all times, for the reason that there are various freight rates between the Seaboard and Chicago. It is inaccurate, for instance, to use 63¢ as the basis for the normal differential. The 63¢ rate is one rate--the all-rail freight rate from New York to Chicago. Other important routes and rates are as follows: Routing: Freight Rate: New Orleans--Chicago (barge and rail) $0.50[1] New York--Chicago (rail and lake) .58 New Orleans--Chicago (all rail) .60 Philadelphia--Chicago (all rail) .61 New York--Chicago (all rail) .63 Savannah--Chicago (all rail) .63 Boston--Chicago (all rail) .63 [1] The cheapest routing (48¢) takes about two weeks' more time in transit than the New York all-rail routing (63¢). Interest charges on finances involved, etc., for this extra period will bring the expense of this routing to approximately 50¢. After a study of the amounts of sugar shipped over these various routes we have arrived at an arbitrary figure to represent the normal differential between refiners' prices and exchange quotations. We believe that 57¢ will serve as a safe basis for calculation, but 58¢ or 59¢ might be equally--or more--accurate. In fact, anyone is entitled to an opinion. 57¢ is our opinion. It is not an average of freight rates, but is an arbitrary figure. When the markets are in line, using 57¢ as a basis for calculation, 2% should be deducted from refiners' prices, and 57¢ added to determine what Exchange quotation should be. Conversely, 57¢ should be deducted from Exchange quotations and 2% added to determine what refiners' prices should be. If you are willing to accept 57¢ as a safe figure, you may find the following chart useful in determining the condition of the market: ARE REFINERS' PRICES AND EXCHANGE QUOTATIONS IN LINE? Based on a 57¢ differential and 2% cash discount When Exchange Refiners' Quotations Prices Are Should Be 4¢ 4.49 4.05 4.54 4.10 4.59 4.15 4.64 4.20 4.69 4.25 4.73 4.30 4.78 4.35 4.83 4.40 4.88 4.45 4.93 4.50 4.98 4.55 5.03 4.60 5.08 4.65 5.13 4.70 5.18 4.75 5.22 4.80 5.27 4.85 5.32 4.90 5.37 4.95 5.42 5.00 5.47 5.05 5.52 5.10 5.57 5.15 5.62 5.20 5.67 5.25 5.71 5.30 5.76 5.35 5.81 5.40 5.86 5.45 5.91 5.50 5.96 5.55 6.01 5.60 6.06 5.65 6.11 5.70 6.16 5.75 6.20 5.80 6.25 5.85 6.30 5.90 6.35 5.95 6.40 6.00 6.45 6.05 6.50 6.10 6.55 6.15 6.60 6.20 6.65 6.25 6.69 6.30 6.74 6.35 6.79 6.40 6.84 6.45 6.89 6.50 6.94 6.55 6.99 6.60 7.04 6.65 7.09 6.70 7.14 6.75 7.18 6.80 7.23 6.85 7.28 6.90 7.33 6.95 7.38 7.00 7.43 7.05 7.48 7.10 7.53 7.15 7.58 7.20 7.63 7.25 7.67 7.30 7.72 7.35 7.77 7.40 7.82 7.45 7.87 7.50 7.92 7.55 7.97 7.60 8.02 7.65 8.07 7.70 8.12 7.75 8.16 7.80 8.21 7.85 8.26 7.90 8.31 7.95 8.36 8.00 8.41 8.05 8.46 8.10 8.51 8.15 8.56 8.20 8.61 8.25 8.65 8.30 8.70 8.35 8.75 8.40 8.80 8.45 8.85 8.50 8.90 8.55 8.95 8.60 9.00 8.65 9.05 8.70 9.10 8.75 9.14 8.80 9.19 8.85 9.24 8.90 9.29 8.95 9.34 9.00 9.39 9.05 9.44 9.10 9.49 9.15 9.54 9.20 9.59 9.25 9.63 9.30 9.68 9.35 9.73 9.40 9.78 9.45 9.83 9.50 9.88 9.55 9.93 9.60 9.98 9.65 10.03 9.70 10.08 9.75 10.12 9.80 10.17 9.85 10.22 9.90 10.27 9.95 10.32 10.00 10.37 (This chart works both ways. That is, when the exchange quotation is given, if the markets are in line the refiners' prices should be as shown in the first column.) It should be borne in mind that the above calculations are based upon a normal difference in price of 20¢ per hundred pounds between beet and cane sugars, which is the ruling difference as quoted in the Exchange contract. Should beet refiners elect to sell at greater discounts than 20 points under cane refiners' Seaboard prices, the amount in excess of 20 points would have to be subtracted from our arbitrary figure of 57¢. The Function of the Sugar Broker If you should organize your company so that it could attend to all the details of sugar buying economically, you would probably still profit from the assistance of a sugar broker whose specialty is sugar buying, whose horizon is a sugar horizon, whose thoughts are sugar thoughts and who must necessarily know more about sugar than the average buyer would ever consider it desirable to know. The sugar broker's service to you is unaffected by prices--his prices and all other brokers' prices are the Exchange prices; his commissions are based on the same percentages as all other brokers' commissions. His only distinction can come from the actual service he can render. This service may be good or poor, depending upon whether his experience, his organization, his information and his judgment are good or poor. If, added to his knowledge of sugar, he also possesses a broad knowledge of economic fundamentals and a perspective upon and contact with world activities as they affect all phases of the business of sugar, his service will be many times more valuable than if he were limited by a small organization, by a definite locality or by experience in only a few phases of this business. A sugar broker who merely _accepts and transacts orders_ is giving no service worth the name. To give service in accordance with the highest modern standards, he must stand as an adviser, as a constant seeker after opportunities which will benefit his clients, as a partner whose interest in his clients' profits and progress equals his interest in his own. Our experience has convinced us that the client secures the greatest amount of protection in filling his sugar needs when one broker handles all sugar transactions. These exchange operations should be carried out when the market is out of line in your favor. You need the best kind of advice, based on an intimate knowledge of your business. A single brokerage house becomes thoroughly acquainted with the client's business and personnel, with the result that the two organizations work in harmony virtually as partners, confusion and misunderstandings are avoided, quicker and more advantageous transactions are made possible. The choice of that broker should be a matter of great care, for in addition to the willingness to serve, he must have the facilities and the financial stability. For, bear in mind that the broker with whom you deal is the responsible party for the fulfillment of the contract. Your contract is as good only as the reliability of your broker. Lamborn & Company has become known throughout this country and abroad as an institution for the service of all those who have a business interest in sugar. Lamborn Sugar Service is rendered through our head office at 132 Front Street, New York, and through branch offices in Philadelphia, Chicago, Savannah, New Orleans, Kansas City, Mo. and San Francisco. Lamborn Service in all its phases is available to you as a jobber. We shall be very glad to explain either in person or by letter what a brokerage relationship with us involves, how it may be accomplished and how transactions may be carried out. LAMBORN & COMPANY _Sugar Headquarters_ 132 Front Street: New York 7 Wall Street: New York (Securities) Havana and Cienfuegos, Cuba Paris, France THE LAMBORN COMPANY LAMBORN & CIE _Branches in the United States_ Philadelphia Savannah New Orleans Chicago Kansas City San Francisco _Members of_: New York Coffee & Sugar Exchange, Inc. New York Stock Exchange New York Cotton Exchange New York Produce Exchange Chicago Board of Trade London Produce Clearing House, Ltd. Cable Address: Lamborn Contract between Members of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. The Standard Fine Granulated Sugar contract is as follows: Sold for ... to ... 800 bags (of 100 lbs. net each) of Standard Fine Granulated Sugar at ... cents per pound, manufactured in the United States or insular possessions, packed in cotton-lined burlap bags, deliverable from licensed warehouse in Chicago between the first and last days of ... inclusive. Delivery within such time to be at Seller's option, upon seven, eight or nine days' notice to the buyer. If Domestic Beet Standard Fine Granulated Sugar be delivered in fulfillment of this contract, Seller to make an allowance of 20¢ per 100 lbs. The Seller shall have the right to deliver Foreign Cane Standard Fine Granulated Sugar in fulfillment of this contract by making an allowance to the Buyer of 25¢ per 100 lbs., and foreign beet standard fine granulated sugar by making an allowance of 45¢ per 100 lbs., provided such sugars comply with the Types adopted as Standard by the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc., and all duties have been paid thereon. This contract is subject to an adjustment for duty, as provided in the Sugar Trade Rules. Either party to have the right to call for margins as the variations of the market for like deliveries may warrant, which margins shall be kept good. This contract is made in view of and in full accordance with the By-Laws, Rules and Conditions established by the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. (Written across the face is the following) For and in consideration of one dollar to ... in hand paid, receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged ... accept this contract with all its stipulations and conditions. Brokers' Commissions The broker's commission for either buying or selling each contract of 800 bags of sugar depends upon the price at which the transaction is executed. The following table gives a range of prices and the corresponding commissions: For the sale or purchase of each lot of 800 bags: _Contract Price_ _Commission_[2] Up to 9.99¢, per pound $15.00 10¢ to 12.99¢, " " 17.50 13¢ to 17.99¢, " " 20.00 18¢ and above, " " 25.00 [2] These commissions apply to transactions in the United States, Porto Rico and Cuba, from non-members of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. Minimum Trading Basis A "lot" of refined sugar consists of 800 bags of 100 lbs. each, or 80,000 lbs. This is the minimum amount which can be sold on the Exchange. Delivery The date upon which sugar shall be delivered on an Exchange contract is at the option of the seller, provided that date come within the month named in the contract. Notice of the date of delivery must be given to the buyer seven, eight or nine days preceding the day on which delivery will be made. If you are not going to fill your actual sugar needs by accepting delivery from the Exchange warehouses, you should close out your contracts within two weeks, or, at the latest, ten days of the first of the month in which delivery is specified, as after notification of delivery has been given, there is usually not sufficient time to make other plans. Orders Except in nearby localities, orders should be sent by wire, addressed to: SUGAR FUTURES DEPARTMENT, 132 Front Street, New York, N.Y. Inquiries or orders will be given prompt attention at any of our offices, but time will be saved and execution facilitated if they are sent direct to New York. Unless otherwise specified, orders are good only for the day on which they are received. If they cannot be executed at the price named before the closing of the Exchange on that day, or if they should arrive after the Exchange closes, it will be understood that they are automatically cancelled unless specific instructions are given for the execution the following day or unless formally renewed by wire. If you desire to place an order, good until countermanded, you can do so. The general term applied to such orders is "order good till cancelled." The general abbreviation in the trade is G.T.C. Exchange Trading Hours Hours for trading on the Exchange are from 11:00 a.m. to 2:50 p.m., except on Saturdays. Saturday hours are from 10:30 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. Delivery and Warehousing Charges If you make delivery on the exchange, the following are your charges: Storage 3¢ per 100 lb. bag Handling in and out, charged with first month's storage 5¢ per 100 lb. bag Negotiable warehouse receipt 50¢ If you accept delivery on the exchange, your charges are: Carloading 1-1/4¢ per 100 lb. bag Acceptance of your order The form of our acceptance of your order reads as follows: In accordance with your instructions we have this day made the following transactions in STANDARD FINE GRANULATED SUGAR for your account and risk, subject in all respects, and in accordance with, the Rules, By-Laws, Regulations and Customs of THE NEW YORK COFFEE AND SUGAR EXCHANGE, Inc., and the Rules, Regulations and Requirements of its Board of Directors, and all amendments that may be made thereto. All transactions made by us for your account contemplate the actual receipt and delivery of the SUGAR and payment therefor. The right is reserved to close transactions when margins are exhausted or nearly so, without notice. +=================================================+ |Bags of Refined Sugar | Month of Delivery| Price | |----------------------+------------------+-------| | Bought | Sold | | | |----------+-----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |__________|___________|__________________|_______| Raw Sugar Futures Prior to the inauguration of trading in Refined Futures, Raw Sugar Futures were used by many jobbers for hedging and protecting their Refined requirements. The theory of operation is that the raw price will be about equivalent to the refined price after duty and the charge for refining are added. While the Raw Sugar market will at times get out of line with refined, both favorably and unfavorably, this cannot continue for any long period. When the Raw Futures market is favorably out of line, it may be more to your advantage to use this market, rather than the Refined Futures market. At the present time there is the added advantage that the volume of trading is greater in Raw than in Refined. When buying or selling Raw Sugar Futures, you may figure that the variation on a minimum lot of 50 tons would be equivalent to the same variation of 1120 bags or 320 barrels. We give you below herewith details of contract and trading conditions: All contracts for future delivery shall be for 50 tons of 2,240 pounds each and multiples thereof. CONTRACTS: Sold for ... to ..., 50 tons of 2,240 pounds each of sugar in bags, deliverable from licensed warehouse in the port of New York, between the first and last days of ... inclusive. The delivery within such time to be at seller's option, upon 7, 8 or 9 days' notice to the buyer. The sugar to be of any grade or grades of Raw sugars based on Cuban Centrifugal of 96 degrees average polarization outturn at the price of ... cents per pound in bond, net cash with additions or deductions for other grades according to the rates of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc., existing upon the afternoon of the day previous to the date of notice of delivery, and shall embrace all Centrifugals first running. The foreign sugars deliverable other than Cuban Centrifugals, are: Centrifugals from British West Indies, Demerara, Surinam, San Domingo, Brazil, Peru, Java, Mauritius, Venezuela and Haiti, all basis of 96 degrees average polarization outturn at .2512 cents per pound (difference in duty) less; but no lot of 50 tons is to consist of sugar from more than one country of origin. Allowances on Centrifugal sugars to be .03125 cents per pound per degree above 96 degrees, up to 98 degrees and .0625 cents per pound per degree below 96 degrees, down to 94 degrees and .09375 cents per pound per degree below 94 degrees, down to 92 degrees, with fractional degrees pro rata. Exchange Trading Hours Hours for trading in Raw Sugar Futures are from 10:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on week days and from 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on Saturdays. Trading Differences A fluctuation of 1¢ per 100 pounds is equivalent to $11.20 per lot of 50 tons. Margins An original margin in New York funds must accompany all orders, we reserving the right to call for variation margins when contract shows depreciation. We also reserve the right to close transactions when margins are exhausted or nearly so without further notice. The amount of this original margin will of necessity fluctuate with conditions existing at the time orders are placed. At the present time in localities that are in position to make prompt remittance for any variation margins required, the margin is $400. Commissions For either buying or selling each contract of 50 tons Based upon a price Below 4 cents $12.50 4 cents to 9.99 15.00 10 cents to 12.99 17.50 13 cents to 17.99 20.00 18 cents and above 25.00 NOTE: All orders for Raw Sugar Futures shall be in accordance with the By-Laws and Rules of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. and the New York Coffee and Sugar Clearing Association, Inc. 
3038	----	University, Alev Akman, David Widger, and Robert Homa. The Armies of Labor By Samuel P. Orth A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-Earners Volume 40 of the Chronicles of America Series ? Allen Johnson, Editor Assistant Editors Gerhard R. Lomer Charles W. Jefferys Textbook Edition New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press Copyright, 1919 by Yale University Press Printed in the United States of America Contents The Armies of Labor Chapter Chapter Title Page I. The Background 1 II. Formative Years 19 III. Transition Years 40 IV. Amalgamation 65 V. Federation 87 VI. The Trade Union 112 VII. The Railway Brotherhoods 133 VIII. Issues and Warfare 168 IX. The New Terrorism: The I. W. W. 188 X. Labor and Politics 220 Bibliographical Note 261 Index 265 THE ARMIES OF LABOR ? CHAPTER I THE BACKGROUND Three momentous things symbolize the era that begins its cycle with the memorable year of 1776: the Declaration of Independence, the steam engine, and Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations. The Declaration gave birth to a new nation, whose millions of acres of free land were to shift the economic equilibrium of the world; the engine multiplied man's productivity a thousandfold and uprooted in a generation the customs of centuries; the book gave to statesmen a new view of economic affairs and profoundly influenced the course of international trade relations. The American people, as they faced the approaching age with the experiences of the race behind them, fashioned many of their institutions and laws on British models. This is true to such an extent that the subject of this book, the rise of labor in America, cannot be understood without a preliminary survey of the British industrial system nor even without some reference to the feudal system, of which English society for many centuries bore the marks and to which many relics of tenure and of class and governmental responsibility may be traced. Feudalism was a society in which the status of an individual was fixed: he was underman or overman in a rigid social scale according as he considered his relation to his superiors or to his inferiors. Whatever movement there was took place horizontally, in the same class or on the same social level. The movement was not vertical, as it so frequently is today, and men did not ordinarily rise above the social level of their birth, never by design, and only perhaps by rare accident or genius. It was a little world of lords and serfs: of knights who graced court and castle, jousted at tournaments, or fought upon the field of battle; and of serfs who toiled in the fields, served in the castle, or, as the retainers of the knight, formed the crude soldiery of medieval days. For their labor and allegiance they were clothed and housed and fed. Yet though there were feast days gay with the color of pageantry and procession, the worker was always in a servile state, an underman dependent upon his master, and sometimes looking upon his condition as little better than slavery. With the break-up of this rigid system came in England the emancipation of the serf, the rise of the artisan class, and the beginnings of peasant agriculture. That personal gravitation which always draws together men of similar ambitions and tasks now began to work significant changes in the economic order. The peasantry, more or less scattered in the country, found it difficult to unite their powers for redressing their grievances, although there were some peasant revolts of no mean proportions. But the artisans of the towns were soon grouped into powerful organizations, called guilds, so carefully managed and so well disciplined that they dominated every craft and controlled every detail in every trade. The relation of master to journeyman and apprentice, the wages, hours, quantity, and quality of the output, were all minutely regulated. Merchant guilds, similarly constituted, also prospered. The magnificent guild halls that remain in our day are monuments of the power and splendor of these organizations that made the towns of the later Middle Ages flourishing centers of trade, of handicrafts, and of art. As towns developed, they dealt the final blow to an agricultural system based on feudalism: they became cities of refuge for the runaway serfs, and their charters, insuring political and economic freedom, gave them superior advantages for trading. The guild system of manufacture was gradually replaced by the domestic system. The workman's cottage, standing in its garden, housed the loom and the spinning wheel, and the entire family was engaged in labor at home. But the workman, thus apparently independent, was not the owner of either the raw material or the finished product. A middleman or agent brought him the wool, carried away the cloth, and paid him his hire. Daniel Defoe, who made a tour of Britain in 1724-6, left a picture of rural England in this period, often called the golden age of labor. The land, he says, "was divided into small inclosures from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more: every three or four pieces of land had an house belonging to them, . . . hardly an house standing out of a speaking distance from another. . . . We could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon. . . . At every considerable house was a manufactory. . . . Every clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry his manufactures to the market and every one generally keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this means the small pieces of inclosed land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry. . . . The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye vat, some at the looms, others dressing the clothes; the women or children carding or spinning, being all employed, from the youngest to the oldest." But more significant than these changes was the rise of the so-called mercantile system, in which the state took under its care industrial details that were formerly regulated by the town or guild. This system, beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting through the eighteenth, had for its prime object the upbuilding of national trade. The state, in order to insure the homogeneous development of trade and industry, dictated the prices of commodities. It prescribed the laws of apprenticeship and the rules of master and servant. It provided inspectors for passing on the quality of goods offered for sale. It weighed the loaves, measured the cloth, and tested the silverware. It prescribed wages, rural and urban, and bade the local justice act as a sort of guardian over the laborers in his district. To relieve poverty poor laws were passed; to prevent the decline of productivity corn laws were passed fixing arbitrary prices for grain. For a time monopolies creating artificial prosperity were granted to individuals and to corporations for the manufacture, sale, or exploitation of certain articles, such as matches, gunpowder, and playing-cards. This highly artificial and paternalistic state was not content with regulating all these internal matters but spread its protection over foreign commerce. Navigation acts attempted to monopolize the trade of the colonies and especially the trade in the products needed by the mother country. England encouraged shipping and during this period achieved that dominance of the sea which has been the mainstay of her vast empire. She fostered plantations and colonies not for their own sake but that they might be tributaries to the wealth of the nation. An absurd importance was attached to the possession of gold and silver, and the ingenuity of statesmen was exhausted in designing lures to entice these metals to London. Banking and insurance began to assume prime importance. By 1750 England had sent ships into every sea and had planted colonies around the globe. But while the mechanism of trade and of government made surprising progress during the mercantile period, the mechanism of production remained in the slow handicraft stage. This was now to change. In 1738 Kay invented the flying shuttle, multiplying the capacity of the loom. In 1767 Hargreaves completed the spinning-jenny, and in 1771 Arkwright perfected his roller spinning machine. A few years later Crompton combined the roller and the jenny, and after the application of steam to spinning in 1785 the power loom replaced the hand loom. The manufacture of woolen cloth being the principal industry of England, it was natural that machinery should first be invented for the spinning and weaving of wool. New processes in the manufacture of iron and steel and the development of steam transportation soon followed. Within the course of a few decades the whole economic order was changed. Whereas many centuries had been required for the slow development of the medieval system of feudalism, the guild system, and the handicrafts, now, like a series of earthquake shocks, came changes so sudden and profound that even today society has not yet learned to adjust itself to the myriads of needs and possibilities which the union of man's mind with nature's forces has produced. The industrial revolution took the workman from the land and crowded him into the towns. It took the loom from his cottage and placed it in the factory. It took the tool from his hand and harnessed it to a shaft. It robbed him of his personal skill and joined his arm of flesh to an arm of iron. It reduced him from a craftsman to a specialist, from a maker of shoes to a mere stitcher of soles. It took from him, at a single blow, his interest in the workmanship of his task, his ownership of the tools, his garden, his wholesome environment, and even his family. All were swallowed by the black maw of the ugly new mill town. The hardships of the old days were soon forgotten in the horrors of the new. For the transition was rapid enough to make the contrast striking. Indeed it was so rapid that the new class of employers, the capitalists, found little time to think of anything but increasing their profits, and the new class of employees, now merely wage-earners, found that their long hours of monotonous toil gave them little leisure and no interest. The transition from the age of handicrafts to the era of machines presents a picture of greed that tempts one to bitter invective. Its details are dispassionately catalogued by the Royal Commissions that finally towards the middle of the nineteenth century inquired into industrial conditions. From these reports Karl Marx drew inspiration for his social philosophy, and in them his friend Engles found the facts that he retold so vividly, for the purpose of arousing his fellow workmen. And Carlyle and Ruskin, reading this official record of selfishness, and knowing its truth, drew their powerful indictments against a society which would permit its eight-year-old daughters, its mothers, and its grandmothers, to be locked up for fourteen hours a day in dirty, ill-smelling factories, to release them at night only to find more misery in the hovels they pitifully called home. The introduction of machinery into manufacturing wrought vast changes also in the organization of business. The unit of industry greatly increased in size. The economies of organized wholesale production were soon made apparent; and the tendency to increase the size of the factory and to amalgamate the various branches of industry under corporate control has continued to the present. The complexity of business operations also increased with the development of transportation and the expansion of the empire of trade. A world market took the place of the old town market, and the world market necessitated credit on a new and infinitely larger scale. No less important than the revolution in industry was the revolution in economic theory which accompanied it. Unlimited competition replaced the state paternalism of the mercantilists. Adam Smith in 1776 espoused the cause of economic liberty, believing that if business and industry were unhampered by artificial restrictions they would work out their own salvation. His pronouncement was scarcely uttered before it became the shibboleth of statesmen and business men. The revolt of the American colonies hastened the general acceptance of this doctrine, and England soon found herself committed to the practice of every man looking after his own interests. Freedom of contract, freedom of trade, and freedom of thought were vigorous and inspiring but often misleading phrases. The processes of specialization and centralization that were at work portended the growing power of those who possessed the means to build factories and ships and railways but not necessarily the freedom of the many. The doctrine of laissez faire assumed that power would bring with it a sense of responsibility. For centuries, the old-country gentry and governing class of England had shown an appreciation of their duties, as a class, to those dependent upon them. But now another class with no benevolent traditions of responsibility came into power--the capitalist, a parvenu whose ambition was profit, not equity, and whose dealings with other men were not tempered by the amenities of the gentleman but were sharpened by the necessities of gain. It was upon such a class, new in the economic world and endowed with astounding power, that Adam Smith's new formularies of freedom were let loose. During all these changes in the economic order, the interest of the laborer centered in one question: What return would he receive for his toil? With the increasing complexity of society, many other problems presented themselves to the worker, but for the most part they were subsidiary to the main question of wages. As long as man's place was fixed by law or custom, a customary wage left small margin for controversy. But when fixed status gave way to voluntary contract, when payment was made in money, when workmen were free to journey from town to town, labor became both free and fluid, bargaining took the place of custom, and the wage controversy began to assume definite proportions. As early as 1348 the great plague became a landmark in the field of wage disputes. So scarce had laborers become through the ravages of the Black Death, that wages rose rapidly, to the alarm of the employers, who prevailed upon King Edward III to issue the historic proclamation of 1349, directing that no laborer should demand and no employer should pay greater wages than those customary before the plague. This early attempt to outmaneuver an economic law by a legal device was only the prelude to a long series of labor laws which may be said to have culminated in the great Statute of Laborers of 1562, regulating the relations of wage-earner and employer and empowering justices of the peace to fix the wages in their districts. Wages steadily decreased during the two hundred years in which this statute remained in force, and poor laws were passed to bring the succor which artificial wages made necessary. Thus two rules of arbitrary government were meant to neutralize each other. It is the usual verdict of historians that the estate of labor in England declined from a flourishing condition in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to one of great distress by the time of the Industrial Revolution. This unhappy decline was probably due to several causes, among which the most important were the arbitrary and artificial attempts of the Government to keep down wages, the heavy taxation caused by wars of expansion, and the want of coercive power on the part of labor. From the decline of the guild system, which had placed labor and its products so completely in the hands of the master craftsman, the workman had assumed no controlling part in the labor bargain. Such guilds and such journeyman's fraternities as may have survived were practically helpless against parliamentary rigor and state benevolence. In the domestic stage of production, cohesion among workers was not so necessary. But when the factory system was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousness--the realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be journeymen controlling in some measure their activities: they were now merely wage-earners. As the realization of this adverse change came over them, they began to resent the unsanitary and burdensome conditions under which they were compelled to live and to work. So actual grievances were added to fear of what might happen, and in their common cause experience soon taught them unity of action. Parliament was petitioned, agitations were organized, sick-benefits were inaugurated, and when these methods failed, machinery was destroyed, factories were burned, and the strike became a common weapon of self-defense. Though a few labor organizations can be traced as far back as 1700, their growth during the eighteenth century was slow and irregular. There was no unity in their methods, and they were known by many names, such as associations, unions, union societies, trade clubs, and trade societies. These societies had no legal status and their meetings were usually held in secret. And the Webbs in their History of Trade Unionism allude to the traditions of "the midnight meeting of patriots in the corner of the field, the buried box of records, the secret oath, the long terms of imprisonment of the leading officials." Some of these tales were unquestionably apocryphal, others were exaggerated by feverish repetition. But they indicate the aversion with which the authorities looked upon these combinations. There were two legal doctrines long invoked by the English courts against combined action--doctrines that became a heritage of the United States and have had a profound effect upon the labor movements in America. The first of these was the doctrine of conspiracy, a doctrine so ancient that its sources are obscure. It was the natural product of a government and of a time that looked askance at all combined action, fearing sedition, intrigue, and revolution. As far back as 1305 there was enacted a statute defining conspiracy and outlining the offense. It did not aim at any definite social class but embraced all persons who combined for a "malicious enterprise." Such an enterprise was the breaking of a law. So when Parliament passed acts regulating wages, conditions of employment, or prices of commodities, those who combined secretly or openly to circumvent the act, to raise wages or lower them, or to raise prices and curtail markets, at once fell under the ban of conspiracy. The law operated alike on conspiring employers and conniving employees. The new class of employers during the early years of the machine age eagerly embraced the doctrine of conspiracy. They readily brought under the legal definition the secret connivings of the wage-earners. Political conditions now also worked against the laboring class. The unrest in the colonies that culminated in the independence of America and the fury of the French Revolution combined to make kings and aristocracies wary of all organizations and associations of plain folk. And when we add to this the favor which the new employing class, the industrial masters, were able to extort from the governing class, because of their power over foreign trade and domestic finance, we can understand the compulsory laws at length declaring against all combinations of working men. The second legal doctrine which Americans have inherited from England and which has played a leading role in labor controversies is the doctrine that declares unlawful all combinations in restraint of trade. Like its twin doctrine of conspiracy, it is of remote historical origin. One of the earliest uses, perhaps the first use, of the term by Parliament was in the statute of 1436 forbidding guilds and trading companies from adopting by-laws "in restraint of trade," and forbidding practices in price manipulations "for their own profit and to the common hurt of the people." This doctrine thus early invoked, and repeatedly reasserted against combinations of traders and masters, was incorporated in the general statute of 1800 which declared all combinations of journeymen illegal. But in spite of legal doctrines, of innumerable laws and court decisions, strikes and combinations multiplied, and devices were found for evading statutory wages. In 1824 an act of Parliament removed the general prohibition of combinations and accorded to workingmen the right to bargain collectively. Three men were responsible for this noteworthy reform, each one a new type in British politics. The first was Francis Place, a tailor who had taken active part in various strikes. He was secretary of the London Corresponding Society, a powerful labor union, which in 1795 had twenty branches in London. Most of the officers of this organization were at one time or another arrested, and some were kept in prison three years without a trial. Place, schooled in such experience, became a radical politician of great influence, a friend of Bentham, Owen, and the elder Mill. The second type of new reformer was represented by Joseph Hume, a physician who had accumulated wealth in the India Service, who had returned home to enter public life, and who was converted from Toryism to Radicalism by a careful study of financial, political, and industrial problems. A great number of reform laws can be traced directly to his incredible activity during his thirty years in Parliament. The third leader was John R. McCulloch, an orthodox economist, a disciple of Adam Smith, for some years editor of The Scotsman, which was then a violently radical journal coöperating with the newly established Edinburgh Review in advocating sociological and political reforms. Thus Great Britain, the mother country from which Americans have inherited so many institutions, laws, and traditions, passed in turn through the periods of extreme paternalism, glorified competition, and governmental antagonism to labor combinations, into what may be called the age of conciliation. And today the Labour Party in the House of Commons has shown itself strong enough to impose its programme upon the Liberals and, through this radical coalition, has achieved a power for the working man greater than even Francis Place or Thomas Carlyle ever hoped for. CHAPTER II FORMATIVE YEARS America did not become a cisatlantic Britain, as some of the colonial adventurers had hoped. A wider destiny awaited her. Here were economic conditions which upset all notions of the fixity of class distinctions. Here was a continent of free land, luring the disaffected or disappointed artisan and enabling him to achieve economic independence. Hither streamed ceaselessly hordes of immigrants from Europe, constantly shifting the social equilibrium. Here the demand for labor was constant, except during the rare intervals of financial stagnation, and here the door of opportunity swung wide to the energetic and able artisan. The records of American industry are replete with names of prominent leaders who began at the apprentice's bench. The old class distinctions brought from the home country, however, had survived for many years in the primeval forests of Virginia and Maryland and even among the hills of New England. Indeed, until the Revolution and for some time thereafter, a man's clothes were the badge of his calling. The gentleman wore powdered queue and ruffled shirt; the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison--usually an indescribably filthy hole--awaited him the moment he ran into debt. The artisan fared somewhat better. He had spent, as a rule, seven years learning his trade, and his skill and energy demanded and generally received a reasonable return. The account books that have come down to us from colonial days show that his handiwork earned him a fair living. This, however, was before machinery had made inroads upon the product of cabinetmaker, tailor, shoemaker, locksmith, and silversmith, and when the main street of every village was picturesque with the signs of the crafts that maintained the decent independence of the community. Such labor organizations as existed before the Revolution were limited to the skilled trades. In 1648 the coopers and the shoemakers of Boston were granted permission to organize guilds, which embraced both master and journeyman, and there were a few similar organizations in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But these were not unions like those of today. "There are," says Richard T. Ely, "no traces of anything like a modern trades union in the colonial period of American history, and it is evident on reflection that there was little need, if any, of organization on the part of labor, at that time." ¹ ¹ The Labor Movement in America, by Richard T. Ely (1905), p. 36. A new epoch for labor came in with the Revolution. Within a decade wages rose fifty per cent, and John Jay in 1784 writes of the "wages of mechanics and laborers" as "very extravagant." Though the industries were small and depended on a local market within a circumscribed area of communication, they grew rapidly. The period following the Revolution is marked by considerable industrial restiveness and by the formation of many labor organizations, which were, however, benevolent or friendly societies rather than unions and were often incorporated by an act of the legislature. In New York, between 1800 and 1810, twenty-four such societies were incorporated. Only in the larger cities were they composed of artisans of one trade, such as the New York Masons Society (1807) or the New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights (1807). Elsewhere they included artisans of many trades, such as the Albany Mechanical Society (1801). In Philadelphia the cordwainers, printers, and hatters had societies. In Baltimore the tailors were the first to organize, and they conducted in 1795 one of the first strikes in America. Ten years later they struck again, and succeeded in raising their pay from seven shillings sixpence the job to eight shillings ninepence and "extras." At the same time the pay of unskilled labor was rising rapidly, for workers were scarce owing to the call of the merchant marine in those years of the rising splendor of the American sailing ship, and the lure of western lands. The wages of common laborers rose to a dollar and more a day. There occurred in 1805 an important strike of the Philadelphia cordwainers. Theirs was one of the oldest labor organizations in the country, and it had conducted several successful strikes. This particular occasion, however, is significant, because the strikers were tried for conspiracy in the mayor's court, with the result that they were found guilty and fined eight dollars each, with costs. As the court permitted both sides to tell their story in detail, a full report of the proceedings survives to give us, as it were, a photograph of the labor conditions of that time. The trial kindled a great deal of local animosity. A newspaper called the Aurora contained inflammatory accounts of the proceedings, and a pamphlet giving the records of the court was widely circulated. This pamphlet bore the significant legend, "It is better that the law be known and certain, than that it be right," and was dedicated to the Governor and General Assembly "with the hope of attracting their particular attention, at the next meeting of the legislature." Another early instance of a strike occurred in New York City in 1809, when the cordwainers struck for higher wages and were hauled before the mayor's court on the charge of conspiracy. The trial was postponed by Mayor DeWitt Clinton until after the pending municipal elections to avoid the risk of offending either side. When at length the strikers were brought to trial, the court-house was crowded with spectators, showing how keen was the public interest in the case. The jury's verdict of "guilty," and the imposition of a fine of one dollar each and costs upon the defendants served but as a stimulus to the friends of the strikers to gather in a great mass meeting and protest against the verdict and the law that made it possible. In 1821 the New York Typographical Society, which had been organized four years earlier by Peter Force, a labor leader of unusual energy, set a precedent for the vigorous and fearless career of its modern successor by calling a strike in the printing office of Thurlow Weed, the powerful politician, himself a member of the society, because he employed a "rat," as a nonunion worker was called. It should be noted, however, that the organizations of this early period were of a loose structure and scarcely comparable to the labor unions of today. Sidney Smith, the brilliant contributor to the Edinburgh Review, propounded in 1820 certain questions which sum up the general conditions of American industry and art after nearly a half century of independence: "In the four quarters of the globe," he asked, "who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets?" These questions, which were quite pertinent, though conceived in an impertinent spirit, were being answered in America even while the witty Englishman was framing them. The water power of New England was being harnessed to cotton mills, woolen mills, and tanneries. Massachusetts in 1820 reported one hundred and sixty-one factories. New York had begun that marvelous growth which made the city, in the course of a few decades, the financial capital of a hemisphere. So rapidly were people flocking to New York, that houses had tenants long before they had windows and doors, and streets were lined with buildings before they had sewers, sidewalks, or pavements. New Jersey had well under way those manufactories of glassware, porcelains, carpets, and textiles which have since brought her great prosperity. Philadelphia was the country's greatest weaving center, boasting four thousand craftsmen engaged in that industry. Even on the frontier, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were emerging from "settlements" into manufacturing towns of importance. McMaster concludes his graphic summary of these years as follows: "In 1820 it was estimated that 200,000 persons and a capital of $75,000,000 were employed in manufacturing. In 1825 the capital used had been expanded to $160,000,000 and the number of workers to 2,000,000." ¹ ¹ History of the People of the United States (1901), vol. V, p. 230. The Industrial Revolution had set in. These new millions who hastened to answer the call of industry in the new land were largely composed of the poor of other lands. Thousands of them were paupers when they landed in America, their passage having been paid by those at home who wanted to get rid of them. Vast numbers settled down in the cities, in spite of the lure of the land. It was at this period that universal manhood suffrage was written into the constitutions of the older States, and a new electorate assumed the reins of power. Now the first labor representatives were sent to the legislatures and to Congress, and the older parties began eagerly bidding for the votes of the humble. The decision of great questions fell to this new electorate. With the rise of industry came the demand for a protective tariff and for better transportation. State governments vied with each other, in thoughtless haste, in lending their credit to new turnpike and canal construction. And above all political issues loomed the Bank, the monopoly that became the laborer's bugaboo and Andrew Jackson's opportunity to rally to his side the newly enfranchised mechanics. So the old days of semi-colonial composure were succeeded by the thrilling experiences that a new industrial prosperity thrusts upon a really democratic electorate. Little wonder that the labor union movement took the political by-path, seeking salvation in the promise of the politician and in the panacea of fatuous laws. Now there were to be discerned the beginnings of class solidarity among the working people. But the individual's chances to improve his situation were still very great and opportunity was still a golden word. The harsh facts of the hour, however, soon began to call for united action. The cities were expanding with such eager haste that proper housing conditions were overlooked. Workingmen were obliged to live in wretched structures. Moreover, human beings were still levied on for debt and imprisoned for default of payment. Children of less than sixteen years of age were working twelve or more hours a day, and if they received an education at all, it was usually in schools charitably called "ragged schools" or "poor schools," or "pauper schools." There was no adequate redress for the mechanic if his wages were in default, for lien laws had not yet found their way into the statute books. Militia service was oppressive, permitting only the rich to buy exemption. It was still considered an unlawful conspiracy to act in unison for an increase in pay or a lessening of working hours. By 1840 the pay of unskilled labor had dropped to about seventy-five cents a day in the overcrowded cities, and in the winter, in either city or country, many unskilled workers were glad to work for merely their board. The lot of women workers was especially pitiful. A seamstress by hard toil, working fifteen hours a day might stitch enough shirts to earn from seventy-two cents to a dollar and twelve cents a week. Skilled labor, while faring better in wages, shared with the unskilled in the universal working day which lasted from sun to sun. Such in brief were the conditions that brought home to the laboring masses that homogeneous consciousness which alone makes a group powerful in a democracy. The movement can most clearly be discerned in the cities. Philadelphia claims precedence as the home of the first Trades' Union. The master cordwainers had organized a society in 1792, and their journeymen had followed suit two years later. The experiences and vicissitudes of these shoemakers furnished a useful lesson to other tradesmen, many of whom were organized into unions. But they were isolated organizations, each one fighting its own battles. In 1827 the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations was formed. Of its significance John R. Commons says: England is considered the home of trade-unionism, but the distinction belongs to Philadelphia. . . . The first trades' union in England was that of Manchester, organized in 1829, although there seems to have been an attempt to organize one in 1824. But the first one in America was the "Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations," organized in Philadelphia in 1827, two years earlier. The name came from Manchester, but the thing from Philadelphia. Neither union lasted long. The Manchester union lived two years, and the Philadelphia union one year. But the Manchester union died and the Philadelphia union metamorphosed into politics. Here again Philadelphia was the pioneer, for it called into being the first labor party. Not only this, but through the Mechanics' Union Philadelphia started probably the first wage-earners' paper ever published--the Mechanics Free Press--antedating, in January, 1828, the first similar journal in England by two years. ¹ ¹ Labor Organization and Labor Politics, 1827-37; in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1907. The union had its inception in the first general building strike called in America. In the summer of 1827 the carpenters struck for a ten-hour day. They were soon joined by the bricklayers, painters, and glaziers, and members of other trades. But the strike failed of its immediate object. A second effort to combine the various trades into one organization was made in 1833, when the Trades' Union of the City and County of Philadelphia, was formed. Three years later this union embraced some fifty societies with over ten thousand members. In June, 1835, this organization undertook what was probably the first successful general strike in America. It began among the cordwainers, spread to the workers in the building trades, and was presently joined in by cigarmakers, carters, saddlers and harness makers, smiths, plumbers, bakers, printers, and even by the unskilled workers on the docks. The strikers' demand for a ten-hour day received a great deal of support from the influential men in the community. After a mass meeting of citizens had adopted resolutions endorsing the demands of the union, the city council agreed to a ten-hour day for all municipal employees. In 1833 the carpenters of New York City struck for an increase in wages. They were receiving a dollar thirty-seven and a half cents a day; they asked for a dollar and a half. They obtained the support of other workers, notably the tailors, printers, brushmakers, tobacconists, and masons, and succeeded in winning their strike in one month. The printers, who have always been alert and active in New York City, elated by the success of this coördinate effort, sent out a circular calling for a general convention of all the trades societies of the city. After a preliminary meeting in July, a mass meeting was held in December, at which there were present about four thousand persons representing twenty-one societies. The outcome of the meeting was the organization of the General Trades' Union of New York City. It happened in the following year that Ely Moore of the Typographical Association and the first president of the new union, a powerful orator and a sagacious organizer, was elected to Congress on the Jackson ticket. He was backed by Tammany Hall, always on the alert for winners, and was supported by the mechanics, artisans, and workingmen. He was the first man to take his seat in Washington as the avowed representative of labor. The movement for a ten-hour day was now in full swing, and the years 1834-7 were full of strikes. The most spectacular of these struggles was the strike of the tailors of New York in 1836, in the course of which twenty strikers were arrested for conspiracy. After a spirited trial attended by throngs of spectators, the men were found guilty by a jury which took only thirty minutes for deliberation. The strikers were fined $50 each, except the president of the society, who was fined $150. After the trial there was held a mass meeting which was attended, according to the Evening Post, by twenty-seven thousand persons. Resolutions were passed declaring that "to all acts of tyranny and injustice, resistance is just and therefore necessary," and "that the construction given to the law in the case of the journeymen tailors is not only ridiculous and weak in practice but unjust in principle and subversive of the rights and liberties of American citizens." The town was placarded with "coffin" handbills, a practice not uncommon in those days. Enclosed in a device representing a coffin were these words: The Rich Against the Poor! Twenty of your brethren have been found guilty for presuming to resist a reduction in their wages! . . . Judge Edwards has charged . . . the Rich are the only judges of the wants of the poor. On Monday, June 6, 1836, the Freemen are to receive their sentence, to gratify the hellish appetites of aristocracy! . . . Go! Go! Go! Every Freeman, every Workingman, and hear the melancholy sound of the earth on the Coffin of Equality. Let the Court Room, the City-hall--yea, the whole Park, be filled with mourners! But remember, offer no violence to Judge Edwards! Bend meekly and receive the chains wherewith you are to be bound! Keep the peace! Above all things, keep the peace! The Evening Post concludes a long account of the affair by calling attention to the fact that the Trades Union was not composed of "only foreigners." "It is a low calculation when we estimate that two-thirds of the workingmen of the city, numbering several thousand persons, belong to it," and that "it is controlled and supported by the great majority of our native born." The Boston Trades Union was organized in 1834 and started out with a great labor parade on the Fourth of July, followed by a dinner served to a thousand persons in Faneuil Hall. This union was formed primarily to fight for the ten-hour day, and the leading crusaders were the house carpenters, the ship carpenters, and the masons. Similar unions presently sprang up in other cities, including Baltimore, Albany, Troy, Washington, Newark, Schenectady, New Brunswick, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. By 1835 all the larger centers of industry were familiar with the idea, and most of them with the practice, of the trades organizations of a community uniting for action. The local unions were not unmindful of the need for wider action, either through a national union of all the organizations of a single trade, or through a union of all the different trades unions. Both courses of action were attempted. In 1834 the National Trades Union came into being and from that date held annual national conventions of all the trades until the panic of 1837 obliterated the movement. When the first convention was called, it was estimated that there were some 26,250 members of trades unions then in the United States. Of these 11,500 were in New York and its vicinity, 6000 in Philadelphia, 4000 in Boston, and 3500 in Baltimore. Meanwhile a movement was under way to federate the unions of a single trade. In 1835 the cordwainers attending the National Trades Union formed a preliminary organization and called a national cordwainers' convention. This met in New York in March, 1836, and included forty-five delegates from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. In the fall of 1836 the comb-makers, the carpenters, the hand-loom weavers, and the printers likewise organized separate national unions or alliances, and several other trades made tentative efforts by correspondence to organize themselves in the same manner. Before the dire year of 1837, there are, then, to be found the beginnings of most of the elements of modern labor organizations--benevolent societies and militant orders; political activities and trades activities; amalgamations of local societies of the same trades and of all trades; attempts at national organization on the part of both the local trades unions and of the local trade unions; a labor press to keep alive the interest of the workman; mass meetings, circulars, conventions, and appeals to arouse the interest of the public in the issues of the hour. The persistent demand of the workingmen was for a ten-hour day. Harriet Martineau, who traveled extensively through the United States, remarked that all the strikes she heard of were on the question of hours, not wages. But there were nevertheless abundant strikes either to raise wages or to maintain them. There were, also, other fundamental questions in controversy which could not be settled by strikes, such as imprisonment for debt, lien and exemption and homestead laws, convict labor and slave labor, and universal education. Most of these issues have since that time been decided in favor of labor, and a new series of demands takes their place today. Yet as one reads the records of the early conspiracy cases or thumbs through the files of old periodicals, he learns that there is indeed nothing new under the sun and that, while perhaps the particular issues have changed, the general methods and the spirit of the contest remain the same. The laborer believed then, as he does now, that his organization must be all-embracing. In those days also there were "scabs," often called "rats" or "dung." Places under ban were systematically picketed, and warnings like the following were sent out: "We would caution all strangers and others who profess the art of horseshoeing, that if they go to work for any employer under the above prices, they must abide by the consequences." Usually the consequences were a fine imposed by the union, but sometimes they were more severe. Coercion by the union did not cease with the strike. Journeymen who were not members were pursued with assiduity and energy as soon as they entered a town and found work. The boycott was a method early used against prison labor. New York stonecutters agreed that they would not "either collectively or individually purchase any goods manufactured" by convicts and that they would not "countenance" any merchants who dealt in them; and employers who incurred the displeasure of organized labor were "nullified." The use of the militia during strikes presented the same difficulties then as now. During the general strike in Philadelphia in 1835 there was considerable rowdyism, and Michel Chevalier, a keen observer of American life, wrote that "the militia looks on; the sheriff stands with folded hands." Nor was there any difference in the attitude of the laboring man towards unfavorable court decisions. In the tailors' strike in New York in 1836, for instance, twenty-seven thousand sympathizers assembled with bands and banners to protest against the jury's verdict, and after sentence had been imposed upon the defendants, the lusty throng burned the judge in effigy. Sabotage is a new word, but the practice itself is old. In 1835 the striking cabinet-makers in New York smashed thousands of dollars' worth of chairs, tables, and sofas that had been imported from France, and the newspapers observed the significant fact that the destroyers boasted in a foreign language that only American-made furniture should be sold in America. Houses were burned in Philadelphia because the contractors erecting them refused to grant the wages that were demanded. Vengeance was sometimes sought against new machinery that displaced hand labor. In June, 1835, a New York paper remarked that "it is well known that many of the most obstinate turn-outs among workingmen and many of the most violent and lawless proceedings have been excited for the purpose of destroying newly invented machinery." Such acts of wantonness, however, were few, even in those first tumultuous days of the thirties. Striking became in those days a sort of mania, and not a town that had a mill or shop was exempt. Men struck for "grog or death," for "Liberty, Equality, and the Rights of Man," and even for the right to smoke their pipes at work. Strike benefits, too, were known in this early period. Strikers in New York received assistance from Philadelphia, and Boston strikers were similarly aided by both New York and Philadelphia. When the high cost of living threatened to deprive the wage-earner of half his income, bread riots occurred in the cities, and handbills circulated in New York bore the legend: Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel Their Prices Must Come Down CHAPTER III TRANSITION YEARS With the panic of 1837 the mills were closed, thousands of unemployed workers were thrown upon private charity, and, in the long years of depression which followed, trade unionism suffered a temporary eclipse. It was a period of social unrest in which all sorts of philanthropic reforms were suggested and tried out. Measured by later events, it was a period of transition, of social awakening, of aspiration tempered by the bitter experience of failure. In the previous decade Robert Owen, the distinguished English social reformer and philanthropist, had visited America and had begun in 1826 his famous colony at New Harmony, Indiana. His experiments at New Lanark, in England, had already made him known to working people the world over. Whatever may be said of his quaint attempts to reduce society to a common denominator, it is certain that his arrival in America, at a time when people's minds were open to all sorts of economic suggestions, had a stimulating effect upon labor reforms and led, in the course of time, to the founding of some forty communistic colonies, most of them in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform," wrote Emerson to Thomas Carlyle; "not a reading man but has the draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket." One of these experiments, at Red Bank, New Jersey, lasted for thirteen years, and another, in Wisconsin, for six years. But most of them after a year or two gave up the struggle. Of these failures, the best known is Brook Farm, an intellectual community founded in 1841 by George Ripley at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Six years later the project was abandoned and is now remembered as an example of the futility of trying to leaven a world of realism by means of an atom of transcendental idealism. In a sense, however, Brook Farm typifies this period of transition. It was a time of vagaries and longings. People seemed to be conscious of the fact that a new social solidarity was dawning. It is not strange, therefore, that--while the railroads were feeling their way from town to town and across the prairies, while water-power and steam-power were multiplying man's productivity, indicating that the old days were gone forever--many curious dreams of a new order of things should be dreamed, nor that among them some should be ridiculous, some fantastic, and some unworthy, nor that, as the futility of a universal social reform forced itself upon the dreamers, they merged the greater in the lesser, the general in the particular, and sought an outlet in espousing some specific cause or attacking some particular evil. Those movements which had their inspiration in a genuine humanitarianism achieved great good. Now for the first time the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and the insane were made the object of social solicitude and communal care. The criminal, too, and the jail in which he was confined remained no longer utterly neglected. Men of the debtor class were freed from that medieval barbarism which gave the creditor the right to levy on the person of his debtor. Even the public schools were dragged out of their lethargy. When Horace Mann was appointed secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, a new day dawned for American public schools. While these and other substantial improvements were under way, the charlatan and the faddist were not without their opportunities or their votaries. Spirit rappings beguiled or awed the villagers; thousands of religious zealots in 1844 abandoned their vocations and, drawing on white robes, awaited expectantly the second coming of Christ: every cult from free love to celibate austerity found zealous followers; the "new woman" declared her independence in short hair and bloomers; people sought social salvation in new health codes, in vegetarian boarding-houses, and in physical culture clubs; and some pursued the way to perfection through sensual religious exercises. In this seething milieu, this medley of practical humanitarianism and social fantasies, the labor movement was revived. In the forties, Thomas Mooney, an observant Irish traveler who had spent several years in the United States wrote as follows ¹: The average value of a common uneducated labourer is eighty cents a day. Of educated or mechanical labour, one hundred twenty-five and two hundred cents a day; of female labour forty cents a day. Against meat, flour, vegetables, and groceries at one-third less than they rate in Great Britain and Ireland; against clothing, house rent and fuel at about equal; against public taxes at about three-fourths less; and a certainty of employment, and a facility of acquiring homes and lands, and education for children, a hundred to one greater. The further you penetrate into the country, Patrick, the higher in general will you find the value of labour, and the cheaper the price of all kinds of living. . . . The food of the American farmer, mechanic or labourer is the best I believe enjoyed by any similar classes in the whole world. At every meal there is meat or fish or both; indeed I think the women, children, and sedentary classes eat too much meat for their own good health. ¹ Nine Years in America (1850), p. 22. This highly optimistic picture, written by a sanguine observer from the land of greatest agrarian oppression, must be shaded by contrasting details. The truck system of payment, prevalent in mining regions and many factory towns, reduced the actual wage by almost one-half. In the cities, unskilled immigrants had so overcrowded the common labor market that competition had reduced them to a pitiable state. Hours of labor were generally long in the factories. As a rule only the skilled artisan had achieved the ten-hour day, and then only in isolated instances. Woman's labor was the poorest paid, and her condition was the most neglected. A visitor to Lowell in 1846 thus describes the conditions in an average factory of that town: In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are generally daughters of farmers of the different States of New England. Some of them are members of families that were rich the generation before. . . . The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half-past four in the morning the factory bell rings and at five the girls must be in the mills. A clerk, placed as a watch, observes those who are a few minutes behind the time, and effectual means are taken to stimulate punctuality. . . . At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for breakfast, and at noon thirty minutes more for dinner, except during the first quarter of the year, when the time is extended to forty-five minutes. But within this time they must hurry to their boarding-houses and return to the factory. . . . At seven o'clock in the evening the factory bell sounds the close of the day's work. It was under these conditions that the coöperative movement had its brief day of experiment. As early as 1828 the workmen of Philadelphia and Cincinnati had begun coöperative stores. The Philadelphia group were "fully persuaded," according to their constitution, "that nothing short of an entire change in the present regulation of trade and commerce will ever be permanently beneficial to the productive part of the community." But their little shop survived competition for only a few months. The Cincinnati "Coöperative Magazine" was a sort of combination of store and shop, where various trades were taught, but it also soon disappeared. In 1845 the New England Workingmen's Association organized a protective union for the purpose of obtaining for its members "steady and profitable employment" and of saving the retailer's profit for the purchaser. This movement had a high moral flavor. "The dollar was to us of minor importance; humanitary and not mercenary were our motives," reported their committee on organization of industry. "We must proceed from combined stores to combined shops, from combined shops to combined homes, to joint ownership in God's earth, the foundation that our edifice must stand upon." In this ambitious spirit "they commenced business with a box of soap and half a chest of tea." In 1852 they had 167 branches, a capital of $241,712.66, and a business of nearly $2,000,000 a year. In the meantime similar coöperative movements began elsewhere. The tailors of Boston struck for higher wages in 1850 and, after fourteen weeks of futile struggle, decided that their salvation lay in coöperation rather than in trade unionism, which at best afforded only temporary relief. About seventy of them raised $700 as a coöperative nest egg and netted a profit of $510.60 the first year. In the same year the Philadelphia printers, disappointed at their failure to force a higher wage, organized a coöperative printing press. The movement spread to New York, where a strike of the tailors was in progress. The strikers were addressed at a great mass meeting by Albert Brisbane, an ardent disciple of Fourier, the French social economist, and were told that they must do away with servitude to capital. "What we want to know," said Brisbane, "is how to change, peacefully, the system of today. The first great principle is combination." Another meeting was addressed by a German, a follower of Karl Marx, who uttered in his native tongue these words that sound like a modern I. W. W. prophet: "Many of us have fought for liberty in the fatherland. We came here because we were opposed, and what have we gained? Nothing but misery, hunger, and treading down. But we are in a free country and it is our fault if we do not get our rights. . . . Let those who strike eat; the rest starve. Butchers and bakers must withhold supplies. Yes, they must all strike, and then the aristocrat will starve. We must have a revolution. We cannot submit any longer." The cry of "Revolution! Revolution!" was taken up by the throng. In the midst of this agitation a New York branch of the New England Protective Union was organized as an attempt at peaceful revolution by coöperation. The New York Protective Union went a step farther than the New England Union. Its members established their own shops and so became their own employers. And in many other cities striking workmen and eager reformers joined hands in modest endeavors to change the face of things. The revolutionary movements of Europe at this period were having a seismic effect upon American labor. But all these attempts of the workingmen to tourney a rough world with a needle were foredoomed to failure. Lacking the essential business experience and the ability to coöperate, they were soon undone, and after a few years little more was heard of coöperation. In the meantime another economic movement gained momentum under the leadership of George Henry Evans, who was a land reformer and may be called a precursor of Henry George. Evans inaugurated a campaign for free farms to entice to the land the unprosperous toilers of the city. In spite of the vast areas of the public domain still unoccupied, the cities were growing denser and larger and filthier by reason of the multitudes from Ireland and other countries who preferred to cast themselves into the eager maw of factory towns rather than go out as agrarian pioneers. To such Evans and other agrarian reformers made their appeal. For example, a handbill distributed everywhere in 1846 asked: Are you an American citizen? Then you are a joint owner of the public lands. Why not take enough of your property to provide yourself a home? Why not vote yourself a farm? Are you a party follower? Then you have long enough employed your vote to benefit scheming office seekers. Use it for once to benefit yourself: Vote yourself a farm. Are you tired of slavery--of drudging for others--of poverty and its attendant miseries? Then, vote yourself a farm. Would you free your country and the sons of toil everywhere from the heartless, irresponsible mastery of the aristocracy of avarice? . . . Then join with your neighbors to form a true American party . . . whose chief measures will be first to limit the quantity of land that any one may henceforth monopolize or inherit: and second to make the public lands free to actual settlers only, each having the right to sell his improvements to any man not possessed of other lands. "Vote yourself a farm" became a popular shibboleth and a part of the standard programme of organized labor. The donation of public lands to heads of families, on condition of occupancy and cultivation for a term of years, was proposed in bills repeatedly introduced in Congress. But the cry of opposition went up from the older States that they would be bled for the sake of the newer, that giving land to the landless was encouraging idleness and wantonness and spreading demoralization, and that Congress had no more power to give away land than it had to give away money. These arguments had their effect at the Capitol, and it was not until the new Republican party came into power pledged to "a complete and satisfactory homestead measure" that the Homestead Act of 1862 was placed on the statute books. A characteristic manifestation of the humanitarian impulse of the forties was the support given to labor in its renewed demand for a ten-hour day. It has already been indicated how this movement started in the thirties, how its object was achieved by a few highly organized trades, and how it was interrupted in its progress by the panic of 1837. The agitation, however, to make the ten-hour day customary throughout the country was not long in coming back to life. In March, 1840, an executive order of President Van Buren declaring ten hours to be the working day for laborers and mechanics in government employ forced the issue upon private employers. The earliest concerted action, it would seem, arose in New England, where the New England Workingmen's Association, later called the Labor Reform League, carried on the crusade. In 1845 a committee appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature to investigate labor conditions affords the first instance on record of an American legislature concerning itself with the affairs of the labor world to the extent of ordering an official investigation. The committee examined a number of factory operatives, both men and women, visited a few of the mills, gathered some statistics, and made certain neutral and specious suggestions. They believed the remedy for such evils as they discovered lay not in legislation but "in the progressive improvement in art and science, in a higher appreciation of man's destiny, in a less love for money, and a more ardent love for social happiness and intellectual superiority." The first ten-hour law was passed in 1847 by the New Hampshire Legislature. It provided that "ten hours of actual labor shall be taken to be a day's work, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties," and that no minor under fifteen years of age should be employed more than ten hours a day without the consent of parent or guardian. This was the unassuming beginning of a movement to have the hours of toil fixed by society rather than by contract. This law of New Hampshire, which was destined to have a widespread influence, was hailed by the workmen everywhere with delight; mass meetings and processions proclaimed it as a great victory; and only the conservatives prophesied the worthlessness of such legislation. Horace Greeley sympathetically dissected the bill. He had little faith, it is true, in legislative interference with private contracts. "But," he asks, "who can seriously doubt that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to see that the tender frames of its youth are not shattered by excessively protracted toil? . . . Will any one pretend that ten hours per day, especially at confining and monotonous avocations which tax at once the brain and the sinews are not quite enough for any child to labor statedly and steadily?" The consent of guardian or parent he thought a fraud against the child that could be averted only by the positive command of the State specifically limiting the hours of child labor. In the following year Pennsylvania enacted a law declaring ten hours a legal day in certain industries and forbidding children under twelve from working in cotton, woolen, silk, or flax mills. Children over fourteen, however, could, by special arrangement with parents or guardians, be compelled to work more than ten hours a day. "This act is very much of a humbug," commented Greeley, "but it will serve a good end. Those whom it was intended to put asleep will come back again before long, and, like Oliver Twist, 'want some more.'" The ten-hour movement had thus achieved social recognition. It had the staunch support of such men as Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett, Horace Greeley, and other distinguished publicists and philanthropists. Public opinion was becoming so strong that both the Whigs and Democrats in their party platforms declared themselves in favor of the ten-hour day. When, in the summer of 1847, the British Parliament passed a ten-hour law, American unions sent congratulatory messages to the British workmen. Gradually the various States followed the example of New Hampshire and Pennsylvania--New Jersey in 1851, Ohio in 1852, and Rhode Island in 1853--and the "ten-hour system" was legally established. But it was one thing to write a statute and another to enforce it. American laws were, after all, based upon the ancient Anglo-Saxon principle of private contract. A man could agree to work for as many hours as he chose, and each employer could drive his own bargain. The cotton mill owners of Allegheny City, for example, declared that they would be compelled to run their mills twelve hours a day. They would not, of course, employ children under twelve, although they felt deeply concerned for the widows who would thereby lose the wages of their children. But they must run on a twelve-hour schedule to meet competition from other States. So they attempted to make special contracts with each employee. The workmen objected to this and struck. Finally they compromised on a ten-hour day and a sixteen per cent reduction in wages. Such an arrangement became a common occurrence in the industrial world of the middle of the century. In the meantime the factory system was rapidly recruiting women workers, especially in the New England textile mills. Indeed, as early as 1825 "tailoresses" of New York and other cities had formed protective societies. In 1829 the mill girls of Dover, New Hampshire, caused a sensation by striking. Several hundred of them paraded the streets and, according to accounts, "fired off a lot of gunpowder." In 1836 the women workers in the Lowell factories struck for higher wages and later organized a Factory Girls' Association which included more than 2,500 members. It was aimed against the strict regimen of the boarding houses, which were owned and managed by the mills. "As our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the British Ministry," cried the strikers, "so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us." In this vibrant atmosphere was born the powerful woman's labor union, the Female Labor Reform Association, later called the Lowell Female Industrial Reform and Mutual Aid Society. Lowell became the center of a far-reaching propaganda characterized by energy and a definite conception of what was wanted. The women joined in strikes, carried banners, sent delegates to the labor conventions, and were zealous in propaganda. It was the women workers of Massachusetts who first forced the legislature to investigate labor conditions and who aroused public sentiment to a pitch that finally compelled the enactment of laws for the bettering of their conditions. When the mill owners in Massachusetts demanded in 1846 that their weavers tend four looms instead of three, the women promptly resolved that "we will not tend a fourth loom unless we receive the same pay per piece as on three. . . . This we most solemnly pledge ourselves to obtain." In New York, in 1845, the Female Industry Association was organized at a large meeting held in the court house. It included "tailoresses, plain and coarse sewing, shirt makers, book-folders and stickers, capmakers, straw-workers, dressmakers, crimpers, fringe and lacemakers," and other trades open to women "who were like oppressed." The New York Herald reported "about 700 females generally of the most interesting age and appearance" in attendance. The president of the meeting unfolded a pitiable condition of affairs. She mentioned several employers by name who paid only from ten to eighteen cents a day, and she stated that, after acquiring skill in some of the trades and by working twelve to fourteen hours a day, a woman might earn twenty-five cents a day! "How is it possible," she exclaimed, "that at such an income we can support ourselves decently and honestly?" So we come to the fifties, when the rapid rise in the cost of living due to the influx of gold from the newly discovered California mines created new economic conditions. By 1853, the cost of living had risen so high that the length of the working day was quite forgotten because of the utter inadequacy of the wage to meet the new altitude of prices. Hotels issued statements that they were compelled to raise their rates for board from a dollar and a half to two dollars a day. Newspapers raised their advertising rates. Drinks went up from six cents to ten and twelve and a half cents. In Baltimore, the men in the Baltimore and Ohio Railway shops struck. They were followed by all the conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers. Machinists employed in other shops soon joined them, and the city's industries were virtually paralyzed. In New York nearly every industry was stopped by strikes. In Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, in cities large and small, the striking workmen made their demands known. By this time thoughtful laborers had learned the futility of programmes that attempted to reform society. They had watched the birth and death of many experiments. They had participated in short-lived coöperative stores and shops; they had listened to Owen's alluring words and had seen his World Convention meet and adjourn; had witnessed national reform associations, leagues, and industrial congresses issue their high-pitched resolutions; and had united on legislative candidates. And yet the old world wagged on in the old way. Wages and hours and working conditions could be changed, they had learned, only by coercion. This coercion could be applied, in general reforms, only by society, by stress of public opinion. But in concrete cases, in their own personal environment, the coercion had to be first applied by themselves. They had learned the lesson of letting the world in general go its way while they attended to their own business. In the early fifties, then, a new species of union appears. It discards lofty phraseology and the attempt at world-reform and it becomes simply a trade union. It restricts its house-cleaning to its own shop, limits its demands to its trade, asks for a minimum wage and minimum hours, and lays out with considerable detail the conditions under which its members will work. The weapons in its arsenal are not new--the strike and the boycott. Now that he has learned to distinguish essentials, the new trade unionist can bargain with his employer, and as a result trade agreements stipulating hours, wages, and conditions, take the place of the desultory and ineffective settlements which had hitherto issued from labor disputes. But it was not without foreboding that this development was witnessed by the adherents of the status quo. According to a magazine writer of 1853: After prescribing the rate of remuneration many of the Trades' Unions go to enact laws for the government of the respective departments, to all of which the employer must assent. . . . The result even thus far is that there is found no limit to this species of encroachment. If workmen may dictate the hours and mode of service, and the number and description of hands to be employed, they may also regulate other items of the business with which their labor is connected. Thus we find that within a few days, in the city of New York, the longshoremen have taken by force from their several stations the horses and labor-saving gear used for delivering cargoes, it being part of their regulations not to allow of such competition. The gravitation towards common action was felt over a wide area during this period. Some trades met in national convention to lay down rules for their craft. One of the earliest national meetings was that of the carpet-weavers (1846) in New York City, when thirty-four delegates, representing over a thousand operatives, adopted rules and took steps to prevent a reduction in wages. The National Convention of Journeymen Printers met in 1850, and out of this emerged two years later an organization called the National Typographical Union, which ten years later still, on the admission of some Canadian unions, became the International Typographical Union of North America; and as such it flourishes today. In 1855 the Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association of North America was organized and in the following year the National Trade Association of Hat Finishers, the forerunner of the United Hatters of North America. In 1859 the Iron Molders' Union of North America began its aggressive career. The conception of a national trade unity was now well formed; compactly organized national and local trade unions with very definite industrial aims were soon to take the place of ephemeral, loose-jointed associations with vast and vague ambitions. Early in this period a new impetus was given to organized labor by the historic decision of Chief Justice Shaw of Massachusetts in a case ¹ brought against seven bootmakers charged with conspiracy. Their offense consisted in attempting to induce all the workmen of a given shop to join the union and compel the master to employ only union men. The trial court found them guilty; but the Chief Justice decided that he did not "perceive that it is criminal for men to agree together to exercise their own acknowledged rights in such a manner as best to subserve their own interests." In order to show criminal conspiracy, therefore, on the part of a labor union, it was necessary to prove that either the intent or the method was criminal, for it was not a criminal offense to combine for the purpose of raising wages or bettering conditions or seeking to have all laborers join the union. The liberalizing influence of this decision upon labor law can hardly be over-estimated. ¹ Commonwealth vs. Hunt. The period closed amidst general disturbances and forebodings, political and economic. In 1857 occurred a panic which thrust the problem of unemployment, on a vast scale, before the American consciousness. Instead of demanding higher wages, multitudes now cried for work. The marching masses, in New York, carried banners asking for bread, while soldiers from Governor's Island and marines from the Navy Yard guarded the Custom House and the Sub-Treasury. From Philadelphia to New Orleans, from Boston to Chicago, came the same story of banks failing, railroads in bankruptcy, factories closing, idle and hungry throngs moving restlessly through the streets. In New York 40,000, in Lawrence 3500, in Philadelphia 20,000, were estimated to be out of work. Labor learned anew that its prosperity was inalienably identified with the well-being of industry and commerce; and society learned that hunger and idleness are the golden opportunity of the demagogue and agitator. The word "socialism" now appears more and more frequently in the daily press and always a synonym of destruction or of something to be feared. No sooner had business revived than the great shadow of internal strife was cast over the land, and for the duration of the Civil War the peril of the nation absorbed all the energies of the people. CHAPTER IV AMALGAMATION After Appomattox, every one seemed bent on finding a short cut to opulence. To foreign observers, the United States was then simply a scrambling mass of selfish units, for there seemed to be among the American people no disinterested group to balance accounts between the competing elements--no leisure class, living on secured incomes, mellowed by generations of travel, education, and reflection; no bureaucracy arbitrarily guiding the details of governmental routine; no aristocracy, born umpires of the doings of their underlings. All the manifold currents of life seemed swallowed up in the commercial maelstrom. By the standards of what happened in this season of exuberance and intense materialism, the American people were hastily judged by critics who failed to see that the period was but the prelude to a maturer national life. It was a period of a remarkable industrial expansion. Then "plant" became a new word in the phraseology of the market place, denoting the enlarged factory or mill and suggesting the hardy perennial, each succeeding year putting forth new shoots from its side. The products of this seedtime are seen in the colossal industrial growths of today. Then it was that short railway lines began to be welded into "systems," that the railway builders began to strike out into the prairies and mountains of the West, and that partnerships began to be merged into corporations and corporations into trusts, ever reaching out for the greater markets. Meanwhile the inventive genius of America was responding to the call of the time. In 1877 Bell telephoned from Boston to Salem; two years later, Brush lighted by electricity the streets of San Francisco. In 1882 Edison was making incandescent electric lights for New York and operating his first electric car in Menlo Park, New Jersey. All these developments created a new demand for capital. Where formerly a manufacturer had made products to order or for a small number of known customers, now he made on speculation, for a great number of unknown customers, taking his risks in distant markets. Where formerly the banker had lent money on local security, now he gave credit to vast enterprises far away. New inventions or industrial processes brought on new speculations. This new demand for capital made necessary a new system of credits, which was erected at first, as the recurring panics disclosed, on sand, but gradually, through costly experience, on a more stable foundation. The economic and industrial development of the time demanded not only new money and credit but new men. A new type of executive was wanted, and he soon appeared to satisfy the need. Neither a capitalist nor a merchant, he combined in some degree the functions of both, added to them the greater function of industrial manager, and received from great business concerns a high premium for his talent and foresight. This Captain of Industry, as he has been called, is the foremost figure of the period, the hero of the industrial drama. But much of what is admirable in that generation of nation builders is obscured by the industrial anarchy which prevailed. Everybody was for himself--and the devil was busy harvesting the hindmost. There were "rate-wars," "cut-rate sales," secret intrigues, and rebates; and there were subterranean passages--some, indeed, scarcely under the surface--to council chambers, executive mansions, and Congress. There were extreme fluctuations of industry: prosperity was either at a very high level or depression at a very low one. Prosperity would bring on an expansion of credits, a rise in prices, higher cost of living, strikes and boycotts for higher wages; then depression would follow with the shutdown and that most distressing of social diseases, unemployment. During the panic of 1873-74 many thousands of men marched the streets crying earnestly for work. Between the panics, strikes became a part of the economic routine of the country. They were expected, just as pay days and legal holidays are expected. Now for the first time came strikes that can only be characterized as stupendous. They were not mere slight economic disturbances; they were veritable industrial earthquakes. In 1873 the coal miners of Pennsylvania, resenting the truck system and the miserable housing which the mine owners forced upon them, struck by the tens of thousands. In Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, and New York strikes occurred in all sorts of industries. There were the usual parades and banners, some appealing, some insulting, and all the while the militia guarded property. In July, 1877, the men of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad refused to submit to a fourth reduction in wages in seven years and struck. From Baltimore the resentment spread to Pennsylvania and culminated with riots in Pittsburgh. All the anthracite coal miners struck, followed by most of the bituminous miners of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The militia were impotent to subdue the mobs; Federal troops had to be sent by President Hayes into many of the States; and a proclamation by the President commanded all citizens to keep the peace. Thus was Federal authority introduced to bolster up the administrative weakness of the States, and the first step was taken on the road to industrial nationalization. The turmoil had hardly subsided when, in 1880, new strikes broke out. In the long catalogue of the strikers of that year are found the ribbon weavers of Philadelphia, Paterson, and New York, the stablemen of New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco, the cotton yard workers of New Orleans, the cotton weavers of New England and New York, the stockyard employees of Chicago and Omaha, the potters of Green Point, Long Island, the puddlers of Johnstown and Columbia, Pennsylvania, the machinists of Buffalo, the tailors of New York, and the shoemakers of Indiana. The year 1882 was scarcely less restive. But 1886 is marked in labor annals as "the year of the great uprising," when twice as many strikes as in any previous year were reported by the United States Commissioner of Labor, and when these strikes reached a tragic climax in the Chicago Haymarket riots. It was during this feverish epoch that organized labor first entered the arena of national politics. When the policy as to the national currency became an issue, the lure of cheap money drew labor into an alliance in 1880 with the Greenbackers, whose mad cry added to the general unrest. In this, as in other fatuous pursuits, labor was only responding to the forces and the spirit of the hour. These have been called the years of amalgamation, but they were also the years of tumult, for, while amalgamation was achieved, discipline was not. Authority imposed from within was not sufficient to overcome the decentralizing forces, and just as big business had yet to learn by self-imposed discipline how to overcome the extremely individualistic tendencies which resulted in trade anarchy, so labor had yet to learn through discipline the lessons of self-restraint. Moreover, in the sudden expansion and great enterprises of these days, labor even more than capital lost in stability. One great steadying influence, the old personal relation between master and servant, which prevailed during the days of handicraft and even of the small factory, had disappeared almost completely. Now labor was put up on the market--a heartless term descriptive of a condition from which human beings might be expected to react violently--and they did, for human nature refused to be an inert, marketable thing. The labor market must expand with the trader's market. In 1860 there were about one and a third million wage-earners in the United States; in 1870 well over two million; in 1880 nearly two and three-quarters million; and in 1890 over four and a quarter million. The city sucked them in from the country; but by far the larger augmentation came from Europe; and the immigrant, normally optimistic, often untaught, sometimes sullen and filled with a destructive resentment, and always accustomed to low standards of living, added to the armies of labor his vast and complex bulk. There were two paramount issues--wages and the hours of labor--to which all other issues were and always have been secondary. Wages tend constantly to become inadequate when the standard of living is steadily rising, and they consequently require periodical readjustment. Hours of labor, of course, are not subject in the same degree to external conditions. But the tendency has always been toward a shorter day. In a previous chapter, the inception of the ten-hour movement was outlined. Presently there began the eight-hour movement. As early as 1842 the carpenters and caulkers of the Charleston Navy Yard achieved an eight-hour day; but 1863 may more properly be taken as the beginning of the movement. In this year societies were organized in Boston and its vicinity for the precise purpose of winning the eight-hour day, and soon afterwards a national Eight-Hour League was established with local leagues extending from New England to San Francisco and New Orleans. This movement received an intelligible philosophy, and so a new vitality, from Ira Steward, a member of the Boston Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union. Writing as a workingman for workingmen, Steward found in the standard of living the true reason for a shorter workday. With beautiful simplicity he pointed out to the laboring man that the shorter period of labor would not mean smaller pay, and to the employer that it would not mean a diminished output. On the contrary, it would be mutually beneficial, for the unwearied workman could produce as much in the shorter day as the wearied workman in the longer. "As long," Steward wrote, "as tired human hands do most of the world's hard work, the sentimental pretense of honoring and respecting the horny-handed toiler is as false and absurd as the idea that a solid foundation for a house can be made out of soap bubbles." In 1865 Steward's pamphlet, A Reduction of Hours and Increase of Wages, was widely circulated by the Boston Labor Reform Association. It emphasized the value of leisure and its beneficial reflex effect upon both production and consumption. Gradually these well reasoned and conservatively expressed doctrines found champions such as Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Horace Greeley to give them wider publicity and to impress them upon the public consciousness. In 1867 Illinois, Missouri, and New York passed eight-hour laws and Wisconsin declared eight hours a day's work for women and children. In 1868 Congress established an eight-hour day for public work. These were promising signs, though the battle was still far from being won. The eight-hour day has at last received "the sanction of society"--to use the words of President Wilson in his message to Congress in 1916, when he called for action to avert a great railway strike. But to win that sanction required over half a century of popular agitation, discussion, and economic and political evolution. Such, in brief, were the general business conditions of the country and the issues which engaged the energies of labor reformers during the period following the Civil War. Meanwhile great changes were made in labor organizations. Many of the old unions were reorganized, and numerous local amalgamations took place. Most of the organizations now took the form of secret societies whose initiations were marked with naïve formalism and whose routines were directed by a group of officers with royal titles and fortified by signs, passwords, and ritual. Some of these orders decorated the faithful with high-sounding degrees. The societies adopted fantastic names such as "The Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun," "The Knights of St. Crispin," and "The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," of which more presently. Meanwhile, too, there was a growing desire to unify the workers of the country by some sort of national organization. The outcome was a notable Labor Congress held at Baltimore in August, 1866, which included all kinds of labor organizations and was attended by seventy-seven delegates from thirteen States. In the light of subsequent events its resolutions now seem conservative and constructive. This Congress believed that, "all reforms in the labor movement can only be effected by an intelligent, systematic effort of the industrial classes . . . through the trades organizations." Of strikes it declared that "they have been injudicious and ill-advised, the result of impulse rather than principle, . . . and we would therefore discountenance them except as a dernier ressort, and when all means for an amicable and honorable adjustment has been abandoned." It issued a cautious and carefully phrased Address to the Workmen throughout the Country, urging them to organize and assuring them that "the first thing to be accomplished before we can hope for any great results is the thorough organization of all the departments of labor." The National Labor Union which resulted from this convention held seven Annual Congresses, and its proceedings show a statesmanlike conservatism and avoid extreme radicalism. This organization, which at its high tide represented a membership of 640,000, in its brief existence was influential in three important matters: first, it pointed the way to national amalgamation and was thus a forerunner of more lasting efforts in this direction; secondly, it had a powerful influence in the eight-hour movement; and, thirdly, it was largely instrumental in establishing labor bureaus and in gathering statistics for the scientific study of labor questions. But the National Labor Union unfortunately went into politics; and politics proved its undoing. Upon affiliating with the Labor Reform party it dwindled rapidly, and after 1871 it disappeared entirely. One of the typical organizations of the time was the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin, so named after the patron saint of the shoemakers, and accessible only to members of that craft. It was first conceived in 1864 by Newell Daniels, a shoemaker in Milford, Massachusetts, but no organization was effected until 1867, when the founder had moved to Milwaukee. The ritual and constitution he had prepared was accepted then by a group of seven shoemakers, and in four years this insignificant mustard seed had grown into a great tree. The story is told by Frank K. Foster, ¹ who says, speaking of the order in 1868: "It made and unmade politicians; it established a monthly journal; it started coöperative stores; it fought, often successfully, against threatened reductions of wages . . .; it became the undoubted foremost trade organization of the world." But within five years the order was rent by factionalism and in 1878 was acknowledged to be dead. It perished from various causes--partly because it failed to assimilate or imbue with its doctrines the thousands of workmen who subscribed to its rules and ritual, partly because of the jealousy and treachery which is the fruitage of sudden prosperity, partly because of failure to fulfill the fervent hopes of thousands who joined it as a prelude to the industrial millennium; but especially it failed to endure because it was founded on an economic principle which could not be imposed upon society. The rule which embraced this principle reads as follows: "No member of this Order shall teach, or aid in teaching, any fact or facts of boot or shoemaking, unless the lodge shall give permission by a three-fourths vote . . . provided that this article shall not be so construed as to prevent a father from teaching his own son. Provided also, that this article shall not be so construed as to hinder any member of this organization from learning any or all parts of the trade." The medieval craft guild could not so easily be revived in these days of rapid changes, when a new stitching machine replaced in a day a hundred workmen. And so the Knights of St. Crispin fell a victim to their own greed. ¹ The Labor Movement, the Problem of Today, edited by George E. McNeill, Chapter VIII. The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, another of those societies of workingmen, was organized in November, 1869, by Uriah S. Stephens, a Philadelphia garment cutter, with the assistance of six fellow craftsmen. It has been said of Stephens that he was "a man of great force of character, a skilled mechanic, with the love of books which enabled him to pursue his studies during his apprenticeship, and feeling withal a strong affection for secret organizations, having been for many years connected with the Masonic Order." He was to have been educated for the ministry but, owing to financial reverses in his family, was obliged instead to learn a trade. Later he taught school for a few years, traveled extensively in the West Indies, South America, and California, and became an accomplished public speaker and a diligent observer of social conditions. Stephens and his six associates had witnessed the dissolution of the local garment cutters' union. They resolved that the new society should not be limited by the lines of their own trade but should embrace "all branches of honorable toil." Subsequently a rule was adopted stipulating that at least three-fourths of the membership of lodges must be wage-earners eighteen years of age. Moreover, "no one who either sells or makes a living, or any part of it, by the sale of intoxicating drinks either as manufacturer, dealer, or agent, or through any member of his family, can be admitted to membership in this order; and no lawyer, banker, professional gambler, or stock broker can be admitted." They chose their motto from Solon, the wisest of lawgivers: "That is the most perfect government in which an injury to one is the concern of all"; and they took their preamble from Burke, the most philosophical of statesmen: "When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." The order was a secret society and for years kept its name from the public. It was generally known as the "Five Stars," because of the five asterisks that represented its name in all public notices. While mysterious initials and secret ceremonies gratified the members, they aroused a corresponding antagonism, even fear, among the public, especially as the order grew to giant size. What were the potencies of a secret organization that had only to post a few mysterious words and symbols to gather hundreds of workingmen in their halls? And what plottings went on behind those locked and guarded doors? To allay public hostility secrecy was gradually removed and in 1881 was entirely abolished--not, however, without serious opposition from the older members. The atmosphere of high idealism in which the order had been conceived continued to be fostered by Stephens, its founder and its first Grand Master Workman. He extolled justice, discountenanced violence, and pleaded for "the mutual development and moral elevation of mankind." His exhortations were free from that narrow class antagonism which frequently characterizes the utterances of labor. One of his associates, too, invoked the spirit of chivalry, of true knighthood, when he said that the old trade union had failed because "it had failed to recognize the rights of man and looked only to the rights of tradesmen," that the labor movement needed "something that will develop more of charity, less of selfishness, more of generosity, less of stinginess and nearness, than the average society has yet disclosed to its members." Nor were these ideas and principles betrayed by Stephens's successor, Terence V. Powderly, who became Grand Master in 1879 and served during the years when the order attained its greatest power. Powderly, also, was a conservative idealist. His career may be regarded as a good example of the rise of many an American labor leader. He had been a poor boy. At thirteen he began work as a switchtender; at seventeen he was apprenticed as machinist; at nineteen he was active in a machinists' and blacksmiths' union. After working at his trade in various places, he at length settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and became one of the organizers of the Greenback Labor party. He was twice elected mayor of Scranton, and might have been elected for a third term had he not declined to serve, preferring to devote all his time to the society of which he was Grand Master. The obligations laid upon every member of the Knights of Labor were impressive: Labor is noble and holy. To defend it from degradation; to divest it of the evils to body, mind and estate which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish--is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race. In all the multifarious branches of trade capital has its combinations; and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity in the dust. We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital; but men in their haste and greed, blinded by self-interests, overlook the interests of others and sometimes violate the rights of those they deem helpless. We mean to uphold the dignity of labor, to affirm the nobility of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created. We shall, with all our strength, support laws made to harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil. To pause in his toil, to devote himself to his own interests, to gather a knowledge of the world's commerce, to unite, combine and coöperate in the great army of peace and industry, to nourish and cherish, build and develop the temple he lives in is the highest and noblest duty of man to himself, to his fellow men and to his Creator. The phenomenal growth and collapse of the Knights of Labor is one of the outstanding events in American economic history. The membership in 1869 consisted of eleven tailors. This small beginning grew into the famous Assembly No. 1. Soon the ship carpenters wanted to join, and Assembly No. 2 was organized. The shawl-weavers formed another assembly, the carpet-weavers another, and so on, until over twenty assemblies, covering almost every trade, had been organized in Philadelphia alone. By 1875 there were eighty assemblies in the city and its vicinity. As the number of lodges multiplied, it became necessary to establish a common agency or authority, and a Committee on the Good of the Order was constituted to represent all the local units, but this committee was soon superseded by a delegate body known as the District Assembly. As the movement spread from city to city and from State to State, a General Assembly was created in 1878 to hold annual conventions and to be the supreme authority of the order. In 1883 the membership of the order was 52,000; within three years, it had mounted to over 700,000; and at the climax of its career the society boasted over 1,000,000 workmen in the United States and Canada who had vowed fealty to its knighthood. It is not to be imagined that every member of this vast horde so suddenly brought together understood the obligations of the workman's chivalry. The selfish and the lawless rushed in with the prudent and sincere. But a resolution of the executive board to stop the initiation of new members came too late. The undesirable and radical element in many communities gained control of local assemblies, and the conservatism and intelligence of the national leaders became merely a shield for the rowdy and the ignorant who brought the entire order into popular disfavor. The crisis came in 1886. In the early months of this turbulent year there were nearly five hundred labor disputes, most of them involving an advance in wages. An epidemic of strikes then spread over the country, many of them actually conducted by the Knights of Labor and all of them associated in the public mind with that order. One of the most important of these occurred on the Southwestern Railroad. In the preceding year, the Knights had increased their lodges in St. Louis from five to thirty, and these were under the domination of a coarse and ruthless district leader. When in February, 1886, a mechanic, working in the shops of the Texas and Pacific Railroad at Marshall, Texas, was discharged for cause and the road refused to reinstate him, a strike ensued which spread over the entire six thousand miles of the Gould system; and St. Louis became the center of the tumult. After nearly two months of violence, the outbreak ended in the complete collapse of the strikers. This result was doubly damaging to the Knights of Labor, for they had officially taken charge of the strike and were censured on the one hand for their conduct of the struggle and on the other for the defeat which they had sustained. In the same year, against the earnest advice of the national leaders of the Knights of Labor, the employees of the Third Avenue Railway in New York began a strike which lasted many months and which was characterized by such violence that policemen were detailed to guard every car leaving the barns. In Chicago the freight handlers struck, and some 60,000 workmen stopped work in sympathy. On the 3d of May, at the McCormick Harvester Works, several strikers were wounded in a tussle with the police. On the following day a mass meeting held in Haymarket Square, Chicago, was harangued by a number of anarchists. When the police attempted to disperse the mob, guns were fired at the officers of the law and a bomb was hurled into their throng, killing seven and wounding sixty. For this crime seven anarchists were indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. The Knights of Labor passed resolutions asking clemency for these murderers and thereby grossly offended public opinion, and that at a time when public opinion was frightened by these outrages, angered by the disclosures of brazen plotting, and upset by the sudden consciousness that the immunity of the United States from the red terror of Europe was at an end. Powderly and the more conservative national officers who were opposed to these radical machinations were strong enough in the Grand Lodge in the following year to suppress a vote of sympathy for the condemned anarchists. The radicals thereupon seceded from the organization. This outcome, however, did not restore the order to the confidence of the public, and its strength now rapidly declined. A loss of 300,000 members for the year 1888 was reported. Early in the nineties, financial troubles compelled the sale of the Philadelphia headquarters of the Knights of Labor and the removal to more modest quarters in Washington. A remnant of members still retain an organization, but it is barely a shadow of the vast army of Knights who at one time so hopefully carried on a crusade in every center of industry. It was not merely the excesses of the lawless but the multiplicity of strikes which alienated public sympathy. Powderly's repeated warnings that strikes, in and of themselves, were destructive of the stable position of labor were shown to be prophetic. These excesses, however, were forcing upon the public the idea that it too had not only an interest but a right and a duty in labor disputes. Methods of arbitration and conciliation were now discussed in every legislature. In 1883 the House of Representatives established a standing committee on labor. In 1884 a national Bureau of Labor was created to gather statistical information. In 1886 President Cleveland sent to Congress a message which has become historic as the first presidential message devoted to labor. In this he proposed the creation of a board of labor commissioners who should act as official arbiters in labor disputes, but Congress was unwilling at that time to take so advanced a step. In 1888, however, it enacted a law providing for the settlement of railway labor disputes by arbitration, upon agreement of both parties. Arbitration signifies a judicial attitude of mind, a judgment based on facts. These facts are derived from specific conditions and do not grow out of broad generalizations. Arbitral tribunals are created to decide points in dispute, not philosophies of human action. The businesslike organization of the new trade union could as readily adapt itself to arbitration as it had already adapted itself, in isolated instances, to collective bargaining. A new stage had therefore been reached in the labor movement. CHAPTER V FEDERATION Experience and events had now paved the way for that vast centralization of industry which characterizes the business world of the present era. The terms sugar, coffee, steel, tobacco, oil, acquire on the stock exchange a new and precise meaning. Seventy-five per cent of steel, eighty-three per cent of petroleum, ninety per cent of sugar production are brought under the control of industrial combinations. Nearly one-fourth of the wage-earners of America are employed by great corporations. But while financiers are talking only in terms of millions, while super-organization is reaching its eager fingers into every industry, and while the units of business are becoming national in scope, the workingman himself is being taught at last to rely more and more upon group action in his endeavor to obtain better wages and working conditions. He is taught also to widen the area of his organization and to intensify its efforts. So, while the public reads in the daily and periodical press about the oil trust and the coffee trust, it is also being admonished against a labor trust and against two personages, both symbols of colossal economic unrest--the promoter, or the stalking horse of financial enterprise, and the walking delegate, or the labor union representative and only too frequently the advance agent of bitterness and revenge. In response to the call of the hour there appeared the American Federation of Labor, frequently called in these later days the labor trust. The Federation was first suggested at Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 2, 1881, at a convention called by the Knights of Industry and the Amalgamated Labor Union, two secret societies patterned after the model common at that period. The Amalgamated Union was composed largely of disaffected Knights of Labor, and the avowed purpose of the Convention was to organize a new secret society to supplant the Knights. But the trades union element predominated and held up the British Trades Union and its powerful annual congress as a model. At this meeting the needs of intensive local organization, of trades autonomy, and of comprehensive team work were foreseen, and from the discussion there grew a plan for a second convention. With this meeting, which was held at Pittsburgh in November, 1881, the actual work of the new association began under the name, "The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States of America and Canada." When this Federation learned that a convention representing independent trade unions was called to meet in Columbus, Ohio, in December, 1886, it promptly altered its arrangements for its own annual session so that it, too, met at the same time and place. Thereupon the Federation effected a union with this independent body, which represented twenty-five organizations. The new organization was called the American Federation of Labor. Until 1889, this was considered as the first annual meeting of the new organization, but in that year the Federation resolved that its "continuity . . . be recognized and dated from the year 1881." For some years the membership increased slowly; but in 1889 over 70,000 new members were reported, in 1900 over 200,000, and from that time the Federation has given evidence of such growth and prosperity that it easily is the most powerful labor organization America has known, and it takes its place by the side of the British Trades Union Congress as "the sovereign organization in the trade union world." In 1917 its membership reached 2,371,434, with 110 affiliated national unions, representing virtually every element of American industry excepting the railway brotherhoods and a dissenting group of electrical workers. The foundation of this vast organization was the interest of particular trades rather than the interests of labor in general. Its membership is made up "of such Trade and Labor Unions as shall conform to its rules and regulations." The preamble of the Constitution states: "We therefore declare ourselves in favor of the formation of a thorough federation, embracing every trade and labor organization in America under the Trade Union System of organization." The Knights of Labor had endeavored to subordinate the parts to the whole; the American Federation is willing to bend the whole to the needs of the unit. It zealously sends out its organizers to form local unions and has made provision that "any seven wage workers of good character following any trade or calling" can establish a local union with federal affiliations. This vast and potent organization is based upon the principle of trade homogeneity--namely, that each trade is primarily interested in its own particular affairs but that all trades are interested in those general matters which affect all laboring men as a class. To combine effectually these dual interests, the Federation espouses the principle of home rule in purely local matters and of federal supervision in all general matters. It combines, with a great singleness of purpose, so diverse a variety of details that it touches the minutiæ of every trade and places at the disposal of the humblest craftsman or laborer the tremendous powers of its national influence. While highly centralized in organization, it is nevertheless democratic in operation, depending generally upon the referendum for its sanctions. It is flexible in its parts and can mobilize both its heavy artillery and its cavalry with equal readiness. It has from the first been managed with skill, energy, and great adroitness. The supreme authority of the American Federation is its Annual Convention composed of delegates chosen from national and international unions, from state, central, and local trade unions, and from fraternal organizations. Experience has evolved a few simple rules by which the convention is safeguarded against political and factional debate and against the interruptions of "soreheads." Besides attending to the necessary routine, the Convention elects the eleven national officers who form the executive council which guides the administrative details of the organization. The funds of the Federation are derived from a per capita tax on the membership. The official organ is the American Federationist. It is interesting to note in passing that over two hundred and forty labor periodicals together with a continual stream of circulars and pamphlets issue from the trades union press. The Federation is divided into five departments, representing the most important groups of labor: the Building Trades, the Metal Trades, Mining, Railroad Employees, and the Union Label Trades. ¹ Each of these departments has its own autonomous sphere of action, its own set of officers, its own financial arrangements, its own administrative details. Each holds an annual convention, in the same place and week, as the Federation. Each is made up of affiliated unions only and confines itself solely to the interest of its own trades. This suborganization serves as an admirable clearing house and shock-absorber and succeeds in eliminating much of the friction which occurs between the several unions. ¹ There is in the Federation, however, a group of unions not affiliated with any of these departments. There are also forty-three state branches of the Federation, each with its own separate organization. There are annual state conventions whose membership, however, is not always restricted to unions affiliated with the American Federation. Some of these state organizations antedate the Federation. There remain the local unions, into personal touch with which each member comes. There were in 1916 as many as 647 "city centrals," the term used to designate the affiliation of the unions of a city. The city centrals are smaller replicas of the state federations and are made up of delegates elected by the individual unions. They meet at stated intervals and freely discuss questions relating to the welfare of organized labor in general as well as to local labor conditions in every trade. Indeed, vigilance seems to be the watchword of the Central. Organization, wages, trade agreements, and the attitude of public officials and city councils which even remotely might affect labor rarely escape their scrutiny. This oldest of all the groups of labor organizations remains the most vital part of the Federation. The success of the American Federation of Labor is due in large measure to the crafty generalship of its President, Samuel Gompers, one of the most astute labor leaders developed by American economic conditions. He helped organize the Federation, carefully nursed it through its tender years, and boldly and unhesitatingly used its great power in the days of its maturity. In fact, in a very real sense the Federation is Gompers, and Gompers is the Federation. Born in London of Dutch-Jewish lineage, on January 27, 1850, the son of a cigar-maker, Samuel Gompers was early apprenticed to that craft. At the age of thirteen he went to New York City, where in the following year he joined the first cigar-makers' union organized in that city. He enlisted all his boyish ardor in the cause of the trade union and, after he arrived at maturity, was elected successively secretary and president of his union. The local unions were, at that time, gingerly feeling their way towards state and national organization, and in these early attempts young Gompers was active. In 1887, he was one of the delegates to a national meeting which constituted the nucleus of what is now the Cigar-makers' International Union. The local cigar-makers' union in which Gompers received his necessary preliminary training was one of the most enlightened and compactly organized groups of American labor. It was one of the first American Unions to adopt in an efficient manner the British system of benefits in the case of sickness, death, or unemployment. It is one of the few American unions that persistently encourages skill in its craft and intelligence in its membership. It has been a pioneer in collective bargaining and in arbitration. It has been conservatively and yet enthusiastically led and has generally succeeded in enlisting the respect and coöperation of employers. This union has been the kindergarten and preparatory school of Samuel Gompers, who, during all the years of his wide activities as the head of the Federation of Labor, has retained his membership in his old local and has acted as first vice-president of the Cigar-makers' International. These early experiences, precedents, and enthusiasms Gompers carried with him into the Federation of Labor. He was one of the original group of trade union representatives who organized the Federation in 1881. In the following year he was its President. Since 1885 he has, with the exception of a single year, been annually chosen as President. During the first years the Federation was very weak, and it was even doubtful if the organization could survive the bitter hostility of the powerful Knights of Labor. It could pay its President no salary and could barely meet his expense account. ¹ Gompers played a large part in the complete reorganization of the Federation in 1886. He subsequently received a yearly salary of $1000 so that he could devote all of his time to the cause. From this year forward the growth of the Federation was steady and healthy. In the last decade it has been phenomenal. The earlier policy of caution has, however, not been discarded--for caution is the word that most aptly describes the methods of Gompers. From the first, he tested every step carefully, like a wary mountaineer, before he urged his organization to follow. From the beginning Gompers has followed three general lines of policy. First, he has built the imposing structure of his Federation upon the autonomy of the constituent unions. This is the secret of the united enthusiasm of the Federation. It is the Anglo-Saxon instinct for home rule applied to trade union politics. In the tentative years of its early struggles, the Federation could hope for survival only upon the suffrance of the trade union, and today, when the Federation has become powerful, its potencies rest upon the same foundation. ¹ In one of the early years this was $13. Secondly, Gompers has always advocated frugality in money matters. His Federation is powerful but not rich. Its demands upon the resources of the trade unions have always been moderate, and the salaries paid have been modest. ² When the Federation erected a new building for its headquarters in Washington a few years ago, it symbolized in its architecture and equipment this modest yet adequate and substantial financial policy. American labor unions have not yet achieved the opulence, ambitions, and splendors of the guilds of the Middle Ages and do not yet direct their activities from splendid guild halls. ² Before 1899 the annual income of the Federation was less than $25,000; in 1901 it reached the $100,000 mark; and since 1903 it has exceeded $200,000. In the third place, Gompers has always insisted upon the democratic methods of debate and referendum in reaching important decisions. However arbitrary and intolerant his impulses may have been, and however dogmatic and narrow his conclusions in regard to the relation of labor to society and towards the employer (and his Dutch inheritance gives him great obstinacy), he has astutely refrained from too obviously bossing his own organization. With this sagacity of leadership Gompers has combined a fearlessness that sometimes verges on brazenness. He has never hesitated to enter a contest when it seemed prudent to him to do so. He crossed swords with Theodore Roosevelt on more than one occasion and with President Eliot of Harvard in a historic newspaper controversy over trade union exclusiveness. He has not been daunted by conventions, commissions, courts, congresses, or public opinion. During the long term of his Federation presidency, which is unparalleled in labor history and alone is conclusive evidence of his executive skill, scarcely a year has passed without some dramatic incident to cast the searchlight of publicity upon him--a court decision, a congressional inquiry, a grand jury inquisition, a great strike, a nation-wide boycott, a debate with noted public men, a political maneuver, or a foreign pilgrimage. Whenever a constituent union in the Federation has been the object of attack, he has jumped into the fray and has rarely emerged humiliated from the encounter. This is the more surprising when one recalls that he possesses the limitations of the zealot and the dogmatism of the partisan. One of the most important functions of Gompers has been that of national lobbyist for the Federation. He was one of the earliest champions of the eight-hour day and the Saturday half-holiday. He has energetically espoused Federal child labor legislation, the restriction of immigration, alien contract labor laws, and employers' liability laws. He advocated the creation of a Federal Department of Labor which has recently developed into a cabinet secretariat. His legal bête noire, however, was the Sherman Anti-Trust Law as applied to labor unions. For many years he fought vehemently for an amending act exempting the laboring class from the rigors of that famous statute. President Roosevelt with characteristic candor told a delegation of Federation officials who called on him to enlist his sympathy in their attempt, that he would enforce the law impartially against lawbreakers, rich and poor alike. Roosevelt recommended to Congress the passage of an amendment exempting "combinations existing for and engaged in the promotion of innocent and proper purposes." An exempting bill was passed by Congress but was vetoed by President Taft on the ground that it was class legislation. Finally, during President Wilson's administration, the Federation accomplished its purpose, first indirectly by a rider on an appropriation bill, then directly by the Clayton Act, which specifically declared labor combinations, instituted for the "purpose of mutual help and . . . not conducted for profit," not to be in restraint of trade. Both measures were signed by the President. Encouraged by their success, the Federation leaders have moved with a renewed energy against the other legal citadel of their antagonists, the use of the injunction in strike cases. Gompers has thus been the political watchman of the labor interests. Nothing pertaining, even remotely, to labor conditions escapes the vigilance of his Washington office. During President Wilson's administration, Gompers's influence achieved a power second to none in the political field, owing partly to the political power of the labor vote which he ingeniously marshalled, partly to the natural inclination of the dominant political party, and partly to the strategic position of labor in the war industries. The Great War put an unprecedented strain upon the American Federation of Labor. In every center of industry laborers of foreign birth early showed their racial sympathies, and under the stimuli of the intriguing German and Austrian ambassadors sinister plots for crippling munitions plants and the shipping industries were hatched everywhere. Moreover, workingmen became restive under the burden of increasing prices, and strikes for higher wages occurred almost daily. At the beginning of the War, the officers of the Federation maintained a calm and neutral attitude which increased in vigilance as the strain upon American patience and credulity increased. As soon as the United States declared war, the whole energies of the officials of the Federation were cast into the national cause. In 1917, under the leadership of Gompers, and as a practical antidote to the I. W. W. and the foreign labor and pacifist organization known as The People's Council, there was organized The American Alliance for Labor and Democracy in order "to Americanize the labor movement." Its campaign at once became nation wide. Enthusiastic meetings were held in the great manufacturing centers, stimulated to enthusiasm by the incisive eloquence of Gompers. At the annual convention of the Federation held in Buffalo in November, 1917, full endorsement was given to the Alliance by a vote of 21,602 to 402. In its formal statement the Alliance declared: "It is our purpose to try, by educational methods, to bring about a more American spirit in the labor movement, so that what is now the clear expression of the vast majority may become the conviction of all. Where we find ignorance, we shall educate. Where we find something worse, we shall have to deal as the situation demands. But we are going to leave no stone unturned to put a stop to anti-American activities among workers." And in this patriotic effort the Alliance was successful. This was the first great step taken by Gompers and the Federation. The second was equally important. With characteristic energy the organization put forward a programme for the readjustment of labor to war conditions. "This is labor's war" declared the manifesto issued by the Federation. "It must be won by labor, and every stage in the fighting and the final victory must be made to count for humanity." These aims were embodied in constructive suggestions adopted by the Council of National Defense appointed by President Wilson. This programme was in a large measure the work of Gompers, who was a member of the Council. The following outline shows the comprehensive nature of the view which the laborer took of the relation between task and the War. The plan embraced: 1. Means for furnishing an adequate supply of labor to war industries. This included: (a) A system of labor exchanges. (b) The training of workers. (c) Agencies for determining priorities in labor demands. (d) Agencies for the dilution of skilled labor. 2. Machinery for adjusting disputes between capital and labor, without stoppage of work. 3. Machinery for safeguarding conditions of labor, including industrial hygiene, safety appliances, etc. 4. Machinery for safeguarding conditions of living, including housing, etc. 5. Machinery for gathering data necessary for effective executive action. 6. Machinery for developing sound public sentiment and an exchange of information between the various departments of labor administration, the numerous industrial plants, and the public, so as to facilitate the carrying out of a national labor programme. Having thus first laid the foundations of a national labor policy and having, in the second place, developed an effective means of Americanizing, as far as possible, the various labor groups, the Federation took another step. As a third essential element in uniting labor to help to win the war, it turned its attention to the inter-allied solidarity of workingmen. In the late summer and autumn of 1917, Gompers headed an American labor mission to Europe and visited England, Belgium, France, and Italy. His frequent public utterances in numerous cities received particular attention in the leading European newspapers and were eagerly read in the allied countries. The pacifist group of the British Labour Party did not relish his outspokenness on the necessity of completely defeating the Teutons before peace overtures could be made. On the other hand, some of the ultraconservative papers misconstrued his sentiments on the terms which should be exacted from the enemy when victory was assured. This misunderstanding led to an acrid international newspaper controversy, to which Gompers finally replied: "I uttered no sentence or word which by the wildest imagination could be interpreted as advocating the formula 'no annexations, and no indemnities.' On the contrary, I have declared, both in the United States and in conferences and public meetings while abroad, that the German forces must be driven back from the invaded territory before even peace terms could be discussed, that Alsace-Lorraine should be returned to France, that the 'Irredente' should be returned to Italy, and that the imperialistic militarist machine which has so outraged the conscience of the world must be made to feel the indignation and righteous wrath of all liberty and peace loving peoples." This mission had a deep effect in uniting the labor populations of the allied countries and especially in cheering the over-wrought workers of Britain and France, and it succeeded in laying the foundation for a more lasting international labor solidarity. This considerable achievement was recognized when the Peace Conference at Paris formed a Commission on International Labor Legislation. Gompers was selected as one of the American representatives and was chosen chairman. While the Commission was busy with its tasks, an international labor conference was held at Berne. Gompers and his colleagues, however, refused to attend this conference. They gave as their reasons for this aloofness the facts that delegates from the Central powers, with whom the United States was still at war, were in attendance; that the meeting was held "for the purpose of arranging socialist procedure of an international character"; and that the convention was irregularly called, for it had been announced as an inter-allied conference but had been surreptitiously converted into an international pacifist gathering, conniving with German and Austrian socialists. Probably the most far-reaching achievement of Gompers is the by no means inconsiderable contribution he has made to that portion of the treaty of peace with Germany relating to the international organization of labor. This is an entirely new departure in the history of labor, for it attempts to provide international machinery for stabilizing conditions of labor in the various signatory countries. On the ground that "the well-being, physical and moral, of the industrial wage-earners is of supreme international importance," the treaty lays down guiding principles to be followed by the various countries, subject to such changes as variations in climate, customs, and economic conditions dictate. These principles are as follows: labor shall not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce; employers and employees shall have the right of forming associations; a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of living shall be paid; an eight-hour day shall be adopted; a weekly day of rest shall be allowed; child labor shall be abolished and provision shall be made for the education of youth; men and women shall receive equal pay for equal work; equitable treatment shall be accorded to all workers, including aliens resident in foreign lands; and an adequate system of inspection shall be provided in which women should take part. While these international adjustments were taking place, the American Federation began to anticipate the problems of the inevitable national labor readjustment after the war. Through a committee appointed for that purpose, it prepared an ample programme of reconstruction in which the basic features are the greater participation of labor in shaping its environment, both in the factory and in the community, the development of coöperative enterprise, public ownership or regulation of public utilities, strict supervision of corporations, restriction of immigration, and the development of public education. The programme ends by declaring that "the trade union movement is unalterably and emphatically opposed . . . to a large standing army." During the entire period of the war, both at home and abroad, Gompers fought the pacifist and the socialist elements in the labor movement. At the same time he was ever vigilant in pushing forward the claims of trade unionism and was always beforehand in constructive suggestions. His life has spanned the period of great industrial expansion in America. He has had the satisfaction of seeing his Federation grow under his leadership at first into a national and then into an international force. Gompers is an orthodox trade unionist of the British School. Bolshevism is to him a synonym for social ruin. He believes that capital and labor should coöperate but that capital should cease to be the predominant factor in the equation. In order to secure this balance he believes labor must unite and fight, and to this end he has devoted himself to the federation of American trade unions and to their battle. He has steadfastly refused political preferment and has declined many alluring offers to enter private business. In action he is an opportunist--a shrewd, calculating captain, whose knowledge of human frailties stands him in good stead, and whose personal acquaintance with hundreds of leaders of labor, of finance, and of politics, all over the country, has given him an unusual opportunity to use his influence for the advancement of the cause of labor in the turbulent field of economic warfare. The American Federation of Labor has been forced by the increasing complexity of modern industrial life to recede somewhat from its early trade union isolation. This broadening point of view is shown first in the recognition of the man of no trade, the unskilled worker. For years the skilled trades monopolized the Federation and would not condescend to interest themselves in their humble brethren. The whole mechanism of the Federation in the earlier period revolved around the organization of the skilled laborers. In England the great dockers' strike of 1889 and in America the lurid flare of the I. W. W. activities forced the labor aristocrat to abandon his pharisaic attitude and to take an interest in the welfare of the unskilled. The future will test the stability of the Federation, for it is among the unskilled that radical and revolutionary movements find their first recruits. A further change in the internal policy of the Federation is indicated by the present tendency towards amalgamating the various allied trades into one union. For instance, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the Amalgamated Wood Workers' Association, composed largely of furniture makers and machine wood workers, combined a few years ago and then proceeded to absorb the Wooden Box Makers, and the Wood Workers in the shipbuilding industry. The general secretary of the new amalgamation said that the organization looked "forward with pleasurable anticipations to the day when it can truly be said that all men of the wood-working craft on this continent hold allegiance to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America." A similar unification has taken place in the lumbering industry. When the shingle weavers formed an international union some fifteen years ago, they limited the membership "to the men employed in skilled departments of the shingle trade." In 1912 the American Federation of Labor sanctioned a plan for including in one organization all the workers in the lumber industry, both skilled and unskilled. This is a far cry from the minute trade autocracy taught by the orthodox unionist thirty years ago. Today the Federation of Labor is one of the most imposing organizations in the social system of America. It reaches the workers in every trade. Every contributor to the physical necessities of our materialistic civilization has felt the far-reaching influence of confederated power. A sense of its strength pervades the Federation. Like a healthy, self-conscious giant, it stalks apace among our national organizations. Through its cautious yet pronounced policy, through its seeking after definite results and excluding all economic vagaries, it bids fair to overcome the disputes that disturb it from within and the onslaughts of Socialism and of Bolshevism that threaten it from without. CHAPTER VI THE TRADE UNION The trade union ¹ forms the foundation upon which the whole edifice of the American Federation of Labor is built. Like the Federation, each particular trade union has a tripartite structure: there is first the national body called the Union, the International, the General Union, or the Grand Lodge; there is secondly the district division or council, which is merely a convenient general union in miniature; and finally there is the local individual union, usually called "the local." Some unions, such as the United Mine Workers, have a fourth division or subdistrict, but this is not the general practice. ¹ The term "trade union" is used here in its popular sense, embracing labor, trade, and industrial unions, unless otherwise specified. The sovereign authority of a trade union is its general convention, a delegate body meeting at stated times. Some unions meet annually, some biennially, some triennially, and a few determine by referendum when the convention is to meet. Sometimes a long interval elapses: the granite cutters, for instance, held no convention between 1880 and 1912, and the cigar-makers, after a convention in 1896, did not meet for sixteen years. The initiative and referendum are, in some of the more compact unions, taking the place of the general convention, while the small executive council insures promptness of administrative action. The convention elects the general officers. Of these the president is the most conspicuous, for he is the field marshal of the forces and fills a large place in the public eye when a great strike is called. It was in this capacity that John Mitchell rose to sudden eminence during the historic anthracite strike in 1902, and George W. Perkins of the cigar-makers' union achieved his remarkable hold upon the laboring people. As the duties of the president of a union have increased, it has become the custom to elect numerous vice-presidents to relieve him. Each of these has certain specific functions to perform, but all remain the president's aides. One, for instance, may be the financier, another the strike agent, another the organizer, another the agitator. With such a group of virtual specialists around a chieftain, a union has the immense advantage of centralized command and of highly organized leadership. The tendency, especially among the more conservative unions, is to reëlect these officers year after year. The president of the Carpenters' Union held his office for twenty years, and John Mitchell served the miners as president ten years. Under the immediate supervision of the president, an executive board composed of all the officers guides the destinies of the union. When this board is not occupied with the relations of the men to their employers, it gives its judicial consideration to the more delicate and more difficult questions of inter-union comity and of local differences. The local union is the oldest labor organization, and a few existing locals can trace their origin as far back as the decade preceding the Civil War. Many more antedate the organization of the Federation. Not a few of these almost historic local unions have refused to surrender their complete independence by affiliating with those of recent origin, but they have remained merely isolated independent locals with very little general influence. The vast majority of local unions are members of the national trades union and of the Federation. The local union is the place where the laborer comes into direct personal contact with this powerful entity that has become such a factor in his daily life. Here he can satisfy that longing for the recognition of his point of view denied him in the great factory and here he can meet men of similar condition, on terms of equality, to discuss freely and without fear the topics that interest him most. There is an immense psychic potency in this intimate association of fellow workers, especially in some of the older unions which have accumulated a tradition. It is in the local union that the real life of the labor organization must be nourished, and the statesmanship of the national leaders is directed to maintaining the greatest degree of local autonomy consistent with the interests of national homogeneity. The individual laborer thus finds himself a member of a group of his fellows with whom he is personally acquainted, who elect their own officers, to a large measure fix their own dues, transact their own routine business, discipline their own members, and whenever possible make their own terms of employment with their employers. The local unions are obliged to pay their tithe into the greater treasury, to make stated reports, to appoint a certain roster of committees, and in certain small matters to conform to the requirements of the national union. On the whole, however, they are independent little democracies confederated, with others of their kind, by means of district and national organizations. The unions representing the different trades vary in structure and spirit. There is an immense difference between the temper of the tumultuous structural iron workers and the contemplative cigar-makers, who often hire one of their number to read to them while engaged in their work, the favorite authors being in many instances Ruskin and Carlyle. Some unions are more successful than others in collective bargaining. Martin Fox, the able leader of the iron moulders, signed one of the first trade agreements in America and fixed the tradition for his union; and the shoemakers, as well as most of the older unions are fairly well accustomed to collective bargaining. In matters of discipline, too, the unions vary. Printers and certain of the more skilled trades find it easier to enforce their regulations than do the longshoremen and unions composed of casual foreign laborers. In size also the unions of the different trades vary. In 1910 three had a membership of over 100,000 each. Of these the United Mine Workers reached a total of 370,800, probably the largest trades union in the world. The majority of the unions have a membership between 1000 and 10,000, the average for the entire number being 5000; but the membership fluctuates from year to year, according to the conditions of labor, and is usually larger in seasons of contest. Fluctuation in membership is most evident in the newer unions and in the unskilled trades. The various unions differ also in resources. In some, especially those composed largely of foreigners, the treasury is chronically empty; yet at the other extreme the mine workers distributed $1,890,000 in strike benefits in 1902 and had $750,000 left when the board of arbitration sent the workers back into the mines. The efforts of the unions to adjust themselves to the quickly changing conditions of modern industry are not always successful. Old trade lines are instantly shifting, creating the most perplexing problem of inter-union amity. Over two score jurisdictional controversies appear for settlement at each annual convention of the American Federation. The Association of Longshoremen and the Seamen's Union, for example, both claim jurisdiction over employees in marine warehouses. The cigar-makers and the stogie-makers have also long been at swords' points. Who shall have control over the coopers who work in breweries--the Brewery Workers or the Coopers' Union? Who shall adjust the machinery in elevators--the Machinists or Elevator Constructors? Is the operator of a linotype machine a typesetter? So plasterers and carpenters, blacksmiths and structural iron workers, printing pressmen and plate engravers, hod carriers and cement workers, are at loggerheads; the electrification of a railway creates a jurisdictional problem between the electrical railway employees and the locomotive engineers; and the marble workers and the plasterers quarrel as to the setting of imitation marble. These quarrels regarding the claims of rival unions reveal the weakness of the Federation as an arbitral body. There is no centralized authority to impose a standard or principle which could lead to the settlement of such disputes. Trade jealousy has overcome the suggestions of the peacemakers that either the nature of the tools used, or the nature of the operation, or the character of the establishment be taken as the basis of settlement. When the Federation itself fails as a peacemaker, it cannot be expected that locals will escape these controversies. There are many examples, often ludicrous, of petty jealousies and trade rivalries. The man who tried to build a brick house, employing union bricklayers to lay the brick and union painters to paint the brick walls, found to his loss that such painting was considered a bricklayer's job by the bricklayers' union, who charged a higher wage than the painters would have done. It would have relieved him to have the two unions amalgamate. And this in general has become a real way out of the difficulty. For instance, a dispute between the Steam and Hot Water Fitters and the Plumbers was settled by an amalgamation called the United Association of Journeymen Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Steam Fitters, and Steam Fitters' Helpers, which is now affiliated with the Federation. But the International Association of Steam, Hot Water, and Power Pipe Fitters and Helpers is not affiliated, and inter-union war results. The older unions, however, have a stabilizing influence upon the newer, and a genuine conservatism such as characterizes the British unions is becoming more apparent as age solidifies custom and lends respect to by-laws and constitutions. But even time cannot obviate the seismic effects of new inventions, and shifts in jurisdictional matters are always imminent. The dominant policy of the trade union is to keep its feet on the earth, no matter where its head may be, to take one step at a time, and not to trouble about the future of society. This purpose, which has from the first been the prompter of union activity, was clearly enunciated in the testimony of Adolph Strasser, a converted socialist, one of the leading trade unionists, and president of the Cigar-makers' Union, before a Senate Committee in 1883: Chairman: You are seeking to improve home matters first? Witness: Yes sir, I look first to the trade I represent: I look first to cigars, to the interests of men, who employ me to represent their interests. Chairman: I was only asking you in regard to your ultimate ends. Witness: We have no ultimate ends. We are going on from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate objects--objects that can be realized in a few years. Chairman: You want something better to eat and to wear, and better houses to live in? Witness: Yes, we want to dress better and to live better, and become better citizens generally. Chairman: I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought that you are a mere theorizer. I do not look upon you in that light at all. Witness: Well, we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists, and I have to represent the organization here. We are all practical men. This remains substantially the trade union platform today. Trade unionists all aim to be "practical men." The trade union has been the training school for the labor leader, that comparatively new and increasingly important personage who is a product of modern industrial society. Possessed of natural aptitudes, he usually passes by a process of logical evolution, through the important committees and offices of his local into the wider sphere of the national union, where as president or secretary, he assumes the leadership of his group. Circumstances and conditions impose a heavy burden upon him, and his tasks call for a variety of gifts. Because some particular leader lacked tact or a sense of justice or some similar quality, many a labor maneuver has failed, and many a labor organization has suffered in the public esteem. No other class relies so much upon wise leadership as does the laboring class. The average wage-earner is without experience in confronting a new situation or trained and superior minds. From his tasks he has learned only the routine of his craft. When he is faced with the necessity of prompt action, he is therefore obliged to depend upon his chosen captains for results. In America these leaders have risen from the rank and file of labor. Their education is limited. The great majority have only a primary schooling. Many have supplemented this meager stock of learning by rather wide but desultory reading and by keen observation. A few have read law, and some have attended night schools. But all have graduated from the University of Life. Many of them have passed through the bitterest poverty, and all have been raised among toilers and from infancy have learned to sympathize with the toiler's point of view. ¹ They are therefore by training and origin distinctly leaders of a class, with the outlook upon life, the prejudices, the limitations, and the fervent hopes of that class. ¹ A well-known labor leader once said to the writer: "No matter how much you go around among laboring people, you will never really understand us unless you were brought up among us. There is a real gulf between your way of looking on life and ours. You can be only an investigator or an intellectual sympathizer with my people. But you cannot really understand our viewpoint." Whatever of misconception there may be in this attitude, it nevertheless marks the actual temper of the average wage-earner, in spite of the fact that in America many employers have risen from the ranks of labor. In a very real sense the American labor leader is the counterpart of the American business man--intensively trained, averse to vagaries, knowing thoroughly one thing and only one thing, and caring very little for anything else. This comparative restriction of outlook marks a sharp distinction between American and British labor leaders. In Britain such leadership is a distinct career for which a young man prepares himself. He is usually fairly well educated, for not infrequently he started out to study for the law or the ministry and was sidetracked by hard necessity. A few have come into the field from journalism. As a result, the British labor leader has a certain veneer of learning and puts on a more impressive front than the American. For example, Britain has produced Ramsey MacDonald, who writes books and makes speeches with a rare grace: John Burns, who quotes Shakespeare or recites history with wonderful fluency: Keir Hardie, a miner from the ranks, who was possessed of a charming poetic fancy: Philip Snowden, who displays the spiritual qualities of a seer; and John Henderson, who combines philosophical power with skill in dialectics. On the other hand, the rank and file of American labor is more intelligent and alert than that of British labor, and the American labor leader possesses a greater capacity for intensive growth and is perhaps a better specialist at rough and tumble fighting and bargaining than his British colleague. ¹ ¹ The writer recalls spending a day in one of the Midland manufacturing towns with the secretary of a local coöperative society, a man who was steeped in Bergson's philosophy and talked on local botany and geology as fluently as on local labor conditions. It would be difficult to duplicate this experience in America. In a very real sense every trade union is typified by some aggressive personality. The Granite Cutters' National Union was brought into active being in 1877 largely through the instrumentality of James Duncan, a rugged fighter who, having federated the locals, set out to establish an eight-hour day through collective bargaining and to settle disputes by arbitration. He succeeded in forming a well-disciplined force out of the members of his craft, and even the employers did not escape the touch of his rod. The Glassblowers' Union was saved from disruption by Dennis Hayes, who, as president of the national union, reorganized the entire force in the years 1896-99, unionized a dozen of the largest glass producing plants in the United States and succeeded in raising the wages fifteen per cent. He introduced methods of arbitration and collective agreements and established a successful system of insurance. James O'Connell, the president of the International Association of Machinists, led his organization safely through the panic of 1893, reorganized it upon a broader basis, and introduced sick benefits. In 1901 after a long and wearisome dickering with the National Metal Trades Association, a shorter day was agreed upon, but, as the employers would not agree to a ten-hour wage for a nine-hour day, O'Connell led his men out on a general strike and won. Thomas Kidd, secretary of the Wood-Workers' International Union, was largely responsible for the agreement made with the manufacturers in 1897 for the establishment of a minimum wage of fifteen cents an hour for a ten-hour day, a considerable advance over the average wage paid up to that time. Kidd was the object of severe attacks in various localities, and in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where labor riots took place for the enforcement of the Union demands, he was arrested for conspiracy but acquitted by the trial jury. When the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers lost their strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892, the union was thought to be dead. It was quietly regalvanized into activity, however, by Theodore Schaffer, who has displayed adroitness in managing its affairs in the face of tremendous opposition from the great steel manufacturers who refuse to permit their shops to be unionized. The International Typographical Union, composed of an unusually intelligent body of men, owes its singular success in collective contracting largely to James M. Lynch, its national president. The great newspapers did not give in to the demands of the union without a series of struggles in which Lynch manipulated his forces with skill and tact. Today this is one of the most powerful unions in the country. Entirely different was the material out of which D. J. Keefe formed his Union of Longshoremen, Marine and Transport Workers. His was a mass of unskilled workers, composed of many nationalities accustomed to rough conditions, and not easily led. Keefe, as president of their International Union, has had more difficulty in restraining his men and in teaching them the obligations of a contract than any other leader. At least on one occasion he employed non-union men to carry out the agreement which his recalcitrant following had made and broken. The evolution of an American labor leader is shown at its best in the career of John Mitchell, easily the most influential trade unionist of this generation. He was born on February 4, 1870, on an Illinois farm, but at two years of age he lost his mother and at four his father. With other lads of his neighborhood he shared the meager privileges of the school terms that did not interfere with farm work. At thirteen he was in the coal mines in Braidwood, Illinois, and at sixteen he was the outer doorkeeper in the local lodge of the Knights of Labor. Eager to see the world, he now began a period of wandering, working his way from State to State. So he traversed the Far West and the Southwest, alert in observing social conditions and coming in contact with many types of men. These wanderings stood him in lieu of an academic course, and when he returned to the coal fields of Illinois he was ready to settle down. From his Irish parentage he inherited a genial personality and a gift of speech. These traits, combined with his continual reading on economic and sociological subjects, soon lifted him into local leadership. He became president of the village school board and of the local lodge of the Knights of Labor. He joined the United Mine Workers of America upon its organization in 1890. He rose rapidly in its ranks, was a delegate to the district and sub-district conventions, secretary-treasurer of the Illinois district, chairman of the Illinois legislative committee, member of the executive board, and national organizer. In January, 1898, he was elected national vice-president, and in the following autumn, upon the resignation of the president, he became acting president. The national convention in 1899 chose him as president, a position which he held for ten years. He has served as one of the vice-presidents of the American Federation of Labor since 1898, was for some years chairman of the Trade Agreement Department of the National Civic Federation and has held the position of Chairman of the New York State Industrial Commission. When he rose to the leadership of the United Mine Workers, this union had only 43,000 members, confined almost exclusively to the bituminous regions of the West. ¹ Within the decade of his presidency he brought virtually all the miners of the United States under his leadership. Wherever his union went, there followed sooner or later the eight-hour day, raises in wages of from thirteen to twenty-five per cent, periodical joint conventions with the operators for settling wage scales and other points in dispute, and a spirit of prosperity that theretofore was unknown among the miners. ¹ Less than 10,000 out of 140,000 anthracite miners were members of the union. In unionizing the anthracite miners, Mitchell had his historic fight with the group of powerful corporations that owned the mines and the railways which fed them. This great strike, one of the most significant in our history, attracted universal attention because of the issues involved, because a coal shortage threatened many Eastern cities, and because of the direct intervention of President Roosevelt. The central figure of this gigantic struggle was the miners' young leader, barely thirty years old, with the features of a scholar and the demeanor of an ascetic, marshaling his forces with the strategic skill of a veteran general. At the beginning of the strike Mitchell, as president of the Union, announced that the miners were eager to submit all their grievances to an impartial arbitral tribunal and to abide by its decisions. The ruthless and prompt refusal of the mine owners to consider this proposal reacted powerfully in the strikers' favor among the public. As the long weeks of the struggle wore on, increasing daily in bitterness, multiplying the apprehension of the strikers and the restiveness of the coal consumers, Mitchell bore the increasing strain with his customary calmness and self-control. After the parties had been deadlocked for many weeks, President Roosevelt called the mine owners and the union leaders to a conference in the White House. Of Mitchell's bearing, the President afterwards remarked: "There was only one man in the room who behaved like a gentleman, and that man was not I." The Board of Arbitration eventually laid the blame on both sides but gave the miners the bulk of their demands. The public regarded the victory as a Mitchell victory, and the unions adored the leader who had won their first strike in a quarter of a century, and who had won universal confidence by his ability and demeanor in the midst of the most harassing tensions of a class war. ¹ ¹ Mitchell was cross-examined for three days when he was testifying before the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission. Every weapon which craft, prejudice, and skill could marshal against him failed to rule his temper or to lead him into damaging admissions or contradictions. John Mitchell's powerful hold upon public opinion today is not alone due to his superior intelligence, his self-possession, his business skill, nor his Irish gift of human accommodation, but to the greater facts that he was always aware of the grave responsibilities of leadership, that he realized the stern obligation of a business contract, and that he always followed the trade union policy of asking only for that which was attainable. Soon after the Anthracite strike he wrote: I am opposed to strikes as I am opposed to war. As yet, however, the world with all its progress has not made war impossible: neither, I fear, considering the nature of men and their institutions, will the strike entirely disappear for years to come. . . . This strike has taught both capital and labor that they owe certain obligations to society and that their obligations must be discharged in good faith. If both are fair and conciliatory, if both recognize the moral restraint of the state of society by which they are surrounded, there need be few strikes. They can, and it is better that they should, settle their differences between themselves. . . . Since labor organizations are here, and here to stay, the managers of employing corporations must choose what they are to do with them. They may have the union as a present, active, and unrecognized force, possessing influence for good or evil, but without direct responsibility; or they may deal with it, give it responsibility as well as power, define and regulate that power, and make the union an auxiliary in the promotion of stability and discipline and the amicable adjustment of all local disputes. CHAPTER VII THE RAILWAY BROTHERHOODS The solidarity and statesmanship of the trade unions reached perfection in the railway "Brotherhoods." Of these the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers ¹ is the oldest and most powerful. It grew out of the union of several early associations; one of these was the National Protective Association formed after the great Baltimore and Ohio strike in 1854; another was the Brotherhood of the Footboard, organized in Detroit after the bitter strike on the Michigan Central in 1862. Though born thus of industrial strife, this railroad union has nevertheless developed a poise and a conservatism which have been its greatest assets in the numerous controversies engaging its energies. No other union has had a more continuous and hardheaded leadership, and no other has won more universal respect both from the public and from the employer. ¹ Up to this time the Brotherhoods have not affiliated with the Knights of Labor nor with the American Federation of Labor. After the passage of the eight-hour law by Congress in 1916, definite steps were taken towards affiliating the Railway Brotherhoods with the Federation, and at its annual convention in 1919 the Federation voted to grant them a charter. This high position is largely due, no doubt, to the fact that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is composed of a very select and intelligent class of men. Every engineer must first serve an apprenticeship as a fireman, which usually lasts from four to twelve years. Very few are advanced to the rank of engineer in less than four years. The firemen themselves are selected men who must pass several physical examinations and then submit to the test of as arduous an apprenticeship as modern industrialism affords. In the course of an eight- to twelve-hour run firemen must shovel from fifteen to twenty-five tons of coal into the blazing fire box of a locomotive. In winter they are constantly subjected to hot blasts from the furnace and freezing drafts from the wind. Records show that out of every hundred who begin as firemen only seventeen become engineers and of these only six ever become passenger engineers. The mere strain on the eyes caused by looking into the coal blaze eliminates 17 per cent. Those who eventually become engineers are therefore a select group as far as physique is concerned. The constant dangers accompanying their daily work require railroad engineers to be no less dependable from the moral point of view. The history of railroading is as replete with heroism as is the story of any war. A coward cannot long survive at the throttle. The process of natural selection which the daily labor of an engineer involves the Brotherhood has supplemented by most rigid moral tests. The character of every applicant for membership is thoroughly scrutinized and must be vouched for by three members. He must demonstrate his skill and prove his character by a year's probation before his application is finally voted upon. Once within the fold, the rules governing his conduct are inexorable. If he shuns his financial obligations or is guilty of a moral lapse, he is summarily expelled. In 1909, thirty-six members were expelled for "unbecoming conduct." Drunkards are particularly dangerous in railroading. When the order was only five years old and still struggling for its life, it nevertheless expelled 172 members for drunkenness. In proven cases of this sort the railway authorities are notified, the offending engineer is dismissed from the service, and the shame of these culprits is published to the world in the Locomotive Engineers' Journal, which reaches every member of the order. There is probably no other club or professional organization so exacting in its demands that its members be self-respecting, faithful, law-abiding, and capable; and surely no other is so summary and far-reaching in its punishments. Today ninety per cent of all the locomotive engineers in the United States and Canada belong to this union. But the Brotherhood early learned the lesson of exclusion. In 1864 after very annoying experiences with firemen and other railway employees on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, it amended its constitution and excluded firemen and machinists from the order. This exclusive policy, however, is based upon the stern requirements of professional excellence and is not displayed towards engineers who are not members of the Brotherhood. Towards them there is displayed the greatest toleration and none of the narrow spirit of the "closed shop." The nonunion engineer is not only tolerated but is even on occasion made the beneficiary of the activities of the union. He shares, for example, in the rise of wages and readjustment of runs. There are even cases on record where the railroad unions have taken up a specific grievance between a nonunion man and his employer and have attempted a readjustment. From the inception of the Brotherhood, the policy of the order towards the employing railroad company has been one of business and not of sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation between the employer and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on the basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a decade the railways fought stubbornly against this policy, in the end every important railroad of this country and Canada gave way. It is doubtful, indeed, if any of them would today be willing to go back to the old method of individual bargaining, for the brotherhood has insisted upon the inviolability of a contract once entered into. It has consistently held that "a bargain is a bargain, even if it is a poor bargain." Members who violate an agreement are expelled, and any local lodge which is guilty of such an offense has its charter revoked. ¹ ¹ In 1905 in New York City 393 members were expelled and their charter was revoked for violation of their contract of employment by taking part in a sympathetic strike of the subway and elevated roads. Once the practice of collective contract was fixed, it naturally followed that some mechanism for adjusting differences would be devised. The Brotherhood and the various roads now maintain a general board of adjustment for each railway system. The Brotherhood is strict in insisting that the action of this board is binding on all its members. This method of bargaining and of settling disputes has been so successful that since 1888 the Brotherhood has not engaged in an important strike. There have been minor disturbances, it is true, and several nation-wide threats, but no serious strikes inaugurated by the engineers. This great achievement of the Brotherhood could not have been possible without keen ability in the leaders and splendid solidarity among the men. The individual is carefully looked after by the Brotherhood. The Locomotive Engineers' Mutual Life and Accident Insurance Association is an integral part of the Brotherhood, though it maintains a separate legal existence in order to comply with the statutory requirements of many States. ¹ Every member must carry an insurance policy in this Association for not less than $1500, though he cannot take more than $4500. The policy is carried by the order if the engineer becomes sick or is otherwise disabled, but if he fails to pay assessments when he is in full health, he gives grounds for expulsion. There is a pension roll of three hundred disabled engineers, each of whom receives $25 a month; and the four railroad brotherhoods together maintain a Home for Disabled Railroad Men at Highland Park, Illinois. ¹ The following figures show the status of the Insurance Association in 1918. The total amount of life insurance in force was $161,205,500.00. The total amount of claims paid from 1868 to 1918 was $41,085,123.04. The claims paid in 1918 amounted to $3,014,540.22. The total amount of indemnity insurance in force in 1918 was $12,486,397.50. The total claims paid up to 1918 were $1,624,537.61; and during 1918, $241,780.08. The technical side of engine driving is emphasized by the Locomotive Engineers' Journal, which goes to every member, and in discussions in the stated meetings of the Brotherhood. Intellectual and social interests are maintained also by lecture courses, study clubs, and women's auxiliaries. Attendance upon the lodge meetings has been made compulsory with the intention of insuring the order from falling prey to a designing minority--a condition which has proved the cause of the downfall of more than one labor union. The Brotherhood of Engineers is virtually a large and prosperous business concern. Its management has been enterprising and provident; its treasury is full; its insurance policies aggregate many millions; it owns a modern skyscraper in Cleveland which cost $1,250,000 and which yields a substantial revenue besides housing the Brotherhood offices. The engineers have, indeed, succeeded in forming a real Brotherhood--a "feudal" brotherhood an opposing lawyer once called them--reëstablishing the medieval guild-paternalism so that each member is responsible for every other and all are responsible for each. They therefore merge themselves through self-discipline into a powerful unity for enforcing their demands and fulfilling their obligations. The supreme authority of the Brotherhood is the Convention, which is composed of delegates from the local subdivisions. In the interim between conventions, the authorized leader of the organization is the Grand Chief Engineer, whose decrees are final unless reversed by the Convention. This authority places a heavy responsibility upon him, but the Brotherhood has been singularly fortunate in its choice of chiefs. Since 1873 there have been only two. The first of these was P. M. Arthur, a sturdy Scot, born in 1831 and brought to America in boyhood. He learned the blacksmith and machinist trades but soon took to railroading, in which he rose rapidly from the humblest place to the position of engineer on the New York Central lines. He became one of the charter members of the Brotherhood in 1863 and was active in its affairs from the first. In 1873 the union became involved in a bitter dispute with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Arthur, whose prompt and energetic action had already designated him as the natural leader of the Brotherhood, was elected to the chieftainship. For thirty years he maintained his prestige and became a national figure in the labor world. He died suddenly at Winnipeg in 1903 while speaking at the dinner which closed the general convention of the Brotherhood. When P. M. Arthur joined the engineers' union, the condition of locomotive engineers was unsatisfactory. Wages were unstable; working conditions were hard and, in the freight service, intolerable. For the first decade of the existence of the Brotherhood, strike after strike took place in the effort to establish the right of organizing and the principle of the collective contract. Arthur became head of the order at the beginning of the period of great financial depression which followed the first Civil War boom and which for six years threatened wages in all trades. But Arthur succeeded, by shrewd and careful bargaining, in keeping the pay of engineers from slipping down and in some instances he even advanced them. Gradually strikes became more and more infrequent; and the railways learned to rely upon his integrity, and the engineers to respect his skill as a negotiator. He proved to the first that he was not a labor agitator and to the others that he was not a visionary. Year by year, Arthur accumulated prestige and power for his union by practical methods and by being content with a step at a time. This success, however, cost him the enmity of virtually all the other trades unionists. To them the men of his order were aristocrats, and he was lord over the aristocrats. He is said to have "had rare skill in formulating reasonable demands, and by consistently putting moderate demands strongly instead of immoderate demands weakly he kept the good will of railroad managers, while steadily obtaining better terms for his men." In this practice, he could not succeed without the solid good will of the members of the Brotherhood; and this good will was possible only in an order which insisted upon that high standard of personal skill and integrity essential to a first-class engineer. Arthur possessed a genial, fatherly personality. His Scotch shrewdness was seen in his own real estate investments, which formed the foundation of an independent fortune. He lived in an imposing stone mansion in Cleveland; he was a director in a leading bank; and he identified himself with the public affairs of the city. When Chief Arthur died, the Assistant Grand Chief Engineer, A. B. Youngson, who would otherwise have assumed the leadership for the unexpired term, was mortally ill and recommended the advisory board to telegraph Warren S. Stone an offer of the chieftainship. Thus events brought to the fore a man of marked executive talent who had hitherto been unknown but who was to play a tremendous rôle in later labor politics. Stone was little known east of the Mississippi. He had spent most of his life on the Rock Island system, had visited the East only once, and had attended but one meeting of the General Convention. In the West, however, he had a wide reputation for sound sense, and, as chairman of the general committee of adjustment of the Rock Island system, he had made a deep impression on his union and his employers. Born in Ainsworth, Iowa, in 1860, Stone had received a high school education and had begun his railroading career as fireman on the Rock Island when he was nineteen years old. At twenty-four he became an engineer. In this capacity he spent the following nineteen years on the Rock Island road and then accepted the chieftainship of the Brotherhood. Stone followed the general policy of his predecessor, and brought to his tasks the energy of youth and the optimism of the West. When he assumed the leadership, the cost of living was rising rapidly and he addressed himself to the adjustment of wages. He divided the country into three sections in which conditions were similar. He began in the Western section, as he was most familiar with that field, and asked all the general managers of that section to meet the Brotherhood for a wage conference. The roads did not accept his invitation until it was reënforced by the threat of a Western strike. The conference was a memorable one. For nearly three weeks the grand officers of the Brotherhood wrangled and wrought with the managers of the Western roads, who yielded ground slowly, a few pennies' increase at a time, until a satisfactory wage scale was reached. Similarly the Southern section was conquered by the inexorable hard sense and perseverance of this new chieftain. The dispute with the fifty-two leading roads in the so-called Eastern District, east of the Mississippi and north of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, came to a head in 1912. The engineers demanded that their wages should be "standardized" on a basis that one hundred miles or less, or ten hours or less, constitute a day's work; that is, the inequalities among the different roads should be leveled and similar service on the various roads be similarly rewarded. They also asked that their wages be made equal to the wages on the Western roads and presented several minor demands. All the roads concerned flatly refused to grant the demand for a standardized and increased wage, on the ground that it would involve an increased expenditure of $7,000,000 a year. This amount could be made up only by increased rates, which the Interstate Commerce Commission must sanction, or by decreased dividends, which would bring a real hardship to thousands of stockholders. The unions were fully prepared for a strike which would paralyze the essential traffic supplying approximately 38,000,000 people. Through the agency of Judge Knapp of the United States Commerce Court and Dr. Neill of the United States Department of Labor, and under the authority of the Erdman Act, there was appointed a board of arbitration composed of men whose distinction commanded national attention. P. H. Morrissey, a former chief of the Conductors' and Trainmen's Union, was named by the engineers. President Daniel Willard of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, known for his fair treatment of his employees, was chosen by the roads. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the Commissioner of Labor, and the presiding judge of the United States Commerce Court designated the following members of the tribunal: Oscar S. Straus, former Secretary of Commerce and Labor, chairman; Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews; Otto M. Eidlitz, former president of the Building Trades Association; Charles R. Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin; and Frederick N. Judson, of the St. Louis bar. After five months of hearing testimony and deliberation, this distinguished board brought in a report that marked, it was hoped, a new epoch in railway labor disputes, for it recognized the rights of the public, the great third party to such disputes. It granted the principle of standardization and minimum wage asked for by the engineers, but it allowed an increase in pay which was less by one-half than that demanded. In order to prevent similar discord in the future, the board recommended the establishment of Federal and state wage commissions with functions pertaining to wage disputes analogous to those of the public service commissions in regard to rates and capitalization. The report stated that, "while the railway employees feel that they cannot surrender their right to strike, if there were a wage commission which would secure them just wages the necessity would no longer exist for the exercise of their power. It is believed that, in the last analysis, the only solution--unless we are to rely solely upon the restraining power of public opinion--is to qualify the principle of free contract in the railroad service." ¹ ¹ The board recognized the great obstacles in the way of such a solution but went on to say: "The suggestion, however, grows out of a profound conviction that the food and clothing of our people, the industries and the general welfare of our nation, cannot be permitted to depend upon the policies and dictates of any particular group of men, whether employers or employees." And this conviction has grown apace with the years until it stands today as the most potent check to aggression by either trade unions or capital. While yielding to the wage findings of the board, P. H. Morrissey vigorously dissented from the principle of the supremacy of public interest in these matters. He made clear his position in an able minority report: "I wish to emphasize my dissent from that recommendation of the board which in its effect virtually means compulsory arbitration for the railroads and their employees. Regardless of any probable constitutional prohibition which might operate against its being adopted, it is wholly impracticable. The progress towards the settlement of disputes between the railways and their employees without recourse to industrial warfare has been marked. There is nothing under present conditions to prevent its continuance. We will never be perfect, but even so, it will be immeasurably better than it will be under conditions such as the board proposes." The significance of these words was brought out four years later when the united railway brotherhoods made their famous coup in Congress. For the time being, however, the public with its usual self-assurance thought the railway employee question was solved, though the findings were for one year only. ¹ ¹ The award dated back to May 1, 1912, and was valid only one year from that date. Daniel Willard speaking for the railroads, said: "My acceptance of the award as a whole does not signify my approval of all the findings in detail. It is intended, however, to indicate clearly that, although the award is not such as the railroads had hoped for, nor is it such as they felt would be justified by a full consideration of all the facts, yet having decided to submit this case to arbitration and having been given ample opportunity to present the facts and arguments in support of their position, they now accept without question the conclusion which was reached by the board appointed to pass upon the matter at issue." A comparison of these statements shows how the balance of power had shifted, since the days when railway policies reigned supreme, from the corporation to the union. The change was amply demonstrated by the next grand entrance of the railway brotherhoods upon the public stage. After his victory in the Western territory, Chief Stone remarked: "Most labor troubles are the result of one of two things, misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Unfortunately, negotiations are sometimes entrusted to men who were never intended by nature for this mission, since they cannot discuss a question without losing their temper. . . . It may be laid down as a fundamental principle without which no labor organization can hope to exist, that it must carry out its contracts. No employer can be expected to live up to a contract that is not regarded binding by the union." The other railway brotherhoods to a considerable degree follow the model set by the engineers. The Order of Railway Conductors developed rapidly from the Conductors' Union which was organized by the conductors of the Illinois Central Railroad at Amboy, Illinois, in the spring of 1868. In the following July this union was extended to include all the lines in the State. In November of the same year a call to conductors on all the roads in the United States and the British Provinces was issued to meet at Columbus, Ohio, in December, to organize a general brotherhood. Ten years later the union adopted its present name. It has an ample insurance fund ¹ based upon the principle that policies are not matured but members arriving at the age of seventy years are relieved from further payments. About thirty members are thus annually retired. At Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the national headquarters, the order publishes The Railway Conductor, a journal which aims not only at the solidarity of the membership but at increasing their practical efficiency. ¹ In 1919 the total amount of outstanding insurance was somewhat over $90,000,000. The conductors are a conservative and carefully selected group of men. Each must pass through a long term of apprenticeship and must possess ability and personality. The order has been carefully and skillfully led and in recent years has had but few differences with the railways which have not been amicably settled. Edgar E. Clark was chosen president in 1890 and served until 1906, when he became a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He was born in 1856, received a public school education, and studied for some time in an academy at Lima, New York. At the age of seventeen, he began railroading and served as conductor on the Northern Pacific and other Western lines. He held numerous subordinate positions in the Brotherhood and in 1889 became its vice-president. He was appointed by President Roosevelt as a member of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission in 1902 and is generally recognized as one of the most judicial heads in the labor world. He was succeeded as president of the order by Austin B. Garretson, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, in 1856. He began his railroad career at nineteen years of age, became a conductor on the Burlington system, and had a varied experience on several Western lines, including the Mexican National and Mexican Central railways. His rise in the order was rapid and in 1889 he became vice-president. One of his intimate friends wrote that "in his capacity as Vice-President and President of the Order he has written more schedules and successfully negotiated more wage settlements, including the eight-hour day settlement in 1916, under the method of collective bargaining than any other labor leader on the American continent." Garretson has long served as a member of the executive committee of the National Civic Federation and in 1912 was appointed by President Wilson a member of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations. A man of great energy and force of character, he has recently assumed a leading place in labor union activities. In addition to the locomotive engineers and the conductors, the firemen also have their union. Eleven firemen of the Erie Railroad organized a brotherhood at Port Jervis, New York, in December, 1873, but it was a fraternal order rather than a trade union. In 1877, the year of the great railway strike, it was joined by the International Firemen's Union, an organization without any fraternal or insurance features. In spite of this amalgamation, however, the growth of the Brotherhood was very slow. Indeed, so unsatisfactory was the condition of affairs that in 1879 the order took an unusual step. "So bitter was the continued opposition of railroad officials at this time," relates the chronicler of the Brotherhood (in some sections of the country it resulted in the disbandment of the lodges and the depletion of membership) "that it was decided, in order to remove the cause of such opposition, to eliminate the protective feature of the organization. With a view to this end a resolution was adopted ignoring strikes." This is one of the few recorded retreats of militant trade unionism. The treasury of the Brotherhood was so depleted that it was obliged to call upon local lodges for donations. By 1885, however, the order had sufficiently recovered to assume again the functions of a labor union in addition to its fraternal and beneficiary obligations. The days of its greatest hardships were over, although the historic strike on the Burlington lines that lasted virtually throughout the year 1888 and the Pullman strike in 1894 wrought a severe strain upon its staying powers. In 1906 the enginemen were incorporated into the order, and thenceforth the membership grew rapidly. In 1913 a joint agreement was effected with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers whereby the two organizations could work together "on a labor union basis." Today men operating electric engines or motor or gas cars on lines using electricity are eligible for membership, if they are otherwise qualified. This arrangement does not interfere with unions already established on interurban lines. The leadership of this order of firemen has been less continuous, though scarcely less conspicuous, than that of the other brotherhoods. Before 1886 the Grand Secretary and Treasurer was invested with greater authority than the grand master, and in this position Eugene V. Debs, who served from 1881 to 1892, and Frank W. Arnold, who served from 1893 to 1903, were potent in shaping the policies of the Union. There have been seven grand masters and one president (the name now used to designate the chief officer) since 1874. Of these leaders Frank P. Sargent served from 1886 until 1892, when he was appointed Commissioner General of Immigration by President Roosevelt. Since 1909, William S. Carter has been president of the Brotherhood. Born in Texas in 1859, he began railroading at nineteen years of age and served in turn as fireman, baggageman, and engineer. Before his election to the editorship of the Firemen's Magazine, he held various minor offices in local lodges. Since 1894 he has served the order successively as editor, grand secretary and treasurer, and president. To his position he has brought an intimate knowledge of the affairs of the Union as well as a varied experience in practical railroading. Upon the entrance of America into the Great War, President Wilson appointed him Director of the Division of Labor of the United States Railway Administration. Of the government and policy of the firemen's union President Carter remarked: This Brotherhood may be compared to a state in a republic of railway unions, maintaining almost complete autonomy in its own affairs yet uniting with other railway brotherhoods in matters of mutual concern and in common defense. It is true that these railway brotherhoods carry the principle of home rule to great lengths and have acknowledged no common head, and by this have invited the criticism from those who believe . . . that only in one "big" union can railway employees hope for improved working condition. . . . That in union there is strength, no one will deny, but in any confederation of forces there must be an exchange of individual rights for this collective power. There is a point in the combining of working people in labor unions where the loss of individual rights is not compensated by the increased power of the masses of workers. In the cautious working out of this principle, the firemen have prospered after the manner of their colleagues in the other brotherhoods. Their membership embraces the large majority of their craft. From the date of the establishment of their beneficiary fund to 1918 a total of $21,860,103.00 has been paid in death and disability claims and in 1918 the amount so paid was $1,538,207.00. The Firemen's Magazine, established in 1876 and now published from headquarters in Cleveland, is indicative of the ambitions of the membership, for its avowed aim is to "make a specialty of educational matter for locomotive enginemen and other railroad employees." An attempt was even made in 1908 to conduct a correspondence school, under the supervision of the editor and manager of the magazine, but after three years this project was discontinued because it could not be made self-supporting. The youngest of the railway labor organizations is the Brotherhood of Trainmen, organized in September, 1883, at Oneonta, New York. Its early years were lean and filled with bickerings and doubts, and it was not until S. E. Wilkinson was elected grand master in 1885 that it assumed an important rôle in labor organizations. Wilkinson was one of those big, rough and ready men, with a natural aptitude for leadership, who occasionally emerge from the mass. He preferred railroading to schooling and spent more time in the train sheds of his native town of Monroeville, Ohio, than he did at school. At twelve years of age he ran away to join the Union Army, in which he served as an orderly until the end of the war. He then followed his natural bent, became a switchman and later a brakeman, was a charter member of the Brotherhood, and, when its outlook was least encouraging, became its Grand Master. At once under his leadership the organization became aggressive. The conditions under which trainmen worked were far from satisfactory. At that time, in the Eastern field, the pay of a brakeman was between $1.50 and $2 a day in the freight service, $45 a month in the passenger service, and $50 a month for yard service. In the Southern territory, the wages were very much lower and in the Western about $5 per month higher. The runs in the different sections of the country were not equalized; there was no limit to the number of hours called a day's work; overtime and preparatory time were not counted in; and there were many complaints of arbitrary treatment of trainmen by their superiors. Wilkinson set to work to remedy the wage situation first. Almost at once he brought about the adoption of the principle of collective bargaining for trainmen and yardmen. By 1895, when he relinquished his office, the majority of the railways in the United States and Canada had working agreements with their train and yard service men. Wages had been raised, twelve hours or less and one hundred miles or less became recognized as a daily measure of service, and overtime was paid extra. The panic of 1893 hit the railway service very hard. There followed many strikes engineered by the American Railway Union, a radical organization which carried its ideas of violence so far that it wrecked not only itself but brought the newer and conservative Brotherhoods to the verge of ruin. It was during this period of strain that, in 1895, P. H. Morrissey was chosen Grand Master of the Trainmen. With a varied training in railroading, in insurance, and in labor organization work, Morrissey was in many ways the antithesis of his predecessors who had, in a powerful and brusque way, prepared the ground for his analytical and judicial leadership. He was unusually well informed on all matters pertaining to railroad operations, earnings, and conditions of employment, and on general economic conditions. This knowledge, together with his forcefulness, tact, parliamentary ability, and rare good judgment, soon made him the spokesman of all the railway Brotherhoods in their joint conferences and their leader before the public. He was not afraid to take the unpopular side of a cause, cared nothing for mere temporary advantages, and had the gift of inspiring confidence. When Morrissey assumed the leadership of the Trainmen, their order had lost 10,000 members in two years and was about $200,000 in debt. The panic had produced unemployment and distrust, and the violent reprisals of the American Railway Union had reaped a harvest of bitterness and disloyalty. During his fifteen years of service until he retired in 1909, Morrissey saw his order rejuvenated and virtually reconstructed, the work of the men standardized in the greater part of the country, slight increases of pay given to the freight and passenger men, and very substantial increases granted to the yard men. But his greatest service to his order was in thoroughly establishing it in the public confidence. He was succeeded by William G. Lee, who had served in many subordinate offices in local lodges before he had been chosen First Vice-Grand Master in 1895. For fifteen years he was a faithful understudy to Morrissey whose policy he has continued in a characteristically fearless and thoroughgoing manner. When he assumed the presidency of the order, he obtained a ten-hour day in the Eastern territory for all train and yard men, together with a slight increase in pay for all classes fixed on the ten-hour basis. The ten-hour day was now adopted in Western territory where it had not already been put into effect. The Southern territory, however, held out until 1912, when a general advance on all Southern railroads, with one exception, brought the freight and passenger men to a somewhat higher level of wages than existed in other parts of the country. In the following year the East and the West raised their wages so that finally a fairly level rate prevailed throughout the United States. In the movement for the eight-hour day which culminated in the passage of the Adamson Law by Congress, Lee and his order took a prominent part. In 1919 the Trainmen had $253,000,000 insurance in force, and up to that year had paid out $42,500,000 in claims. Of this latter amount $3,604,000 was paid out in 1918, one-half of which was attributed to the influenza epidemic. Much of the success and power of the railroad Brotherhoods is due to the character of their members as well as to able leadership. The editor of a leading newspaper has recently written: "The impelling power behind every one of these organizations is the membership. I say this without detracting from the executive or administrative abilities of the men who have been at the head of these organizations, for their influence has been most potent in carrying out the will of their several organizations. But whatever is done is first decided upon by the men and it is then put up to their chief executive officers for their direction." With a membership of 375,000 uniformly clean and competent, so well captained and so well fortified financially by insurance, benefit, and other funds, it is little wonder that the Brotherhoods have reached a permanent place in the railroad industry. Their progressive power can be discerned in Federal legislation pertaining to arbitration and labor conditions in interstate carriers. In 1888 an act was passed providing that, in cases of railway labor disputes, the President might appoint two investigators who, with the United States Commission of Labor, should form a board to investigate the controversy and recommend "the best means for adjusting it." But as they were empowered to produce only findings and not to render decisions, the law remained a dead letter, without having a single case brought up under it. It was superseded in 1898 by the Erdman Act, which provided that certain Federal officials should act as mediators and that, in case they failed, a Board of Arbitrators was to be appointed whose word should be binding for a certain period of time and from whose decisions appeal could be taken to the Federal courts. Of the hundreds of disputes which occurred during the first eight years of the existence of this statute, only one was brought under the mechanism of the law. Federal arbitration was not popular. In 1905, however, a rather sudden change came over the situation. Over sixty cases were brought under the Erdman Act in about eight years. In 1913 the Newlands Law was passed providing for a permanent Board of Mediation and Conciliation, by which over sixty controversies have been adjusted. The increase of brotherhood influence which such legislation represents was accompanied by a consolidation in power. At first the Brotherhoods operated by railway systems or as individual orders. Later on they united into districts, all the Brotherhoods of a given district coöperating in their demands. Finally the coöperation of all the Brotherhoods in the United States on all the railway systems was effected. This larger organization came clearly to light in 1912, when the Brotherhoods submitted their disputes to the board of arbitration. This step was hailed by the public as going a long way towards the settlement of labor disputes by arbitral boards. The latest victory of the Brotherhoods, however, has shaken public confidence and has ushered in a new era of brotherhood influence and Federal interference in railroad matters. In 1916, the four Brotherhoods threatened to strike. The mode of reckoning pay--whether upon an eight-hour or a longer day--was the subject of contention. The Department of Labor, through the Federal Conciliation Board, tried in vain to bring the opponents together. Even President Wilson's efforts to bring about an agreement proved futile. The roads agreed to arbitrate all the points, allowing the President to name the arbitrators; but the Brotherhoods, probably realizing their temporary strategic advantage, refused point-blank to arbitrate. When the President tried to persuade the roads to yield the eight-hour day, they replied that it was a proper subject for arbitration. Instead of standing firmly on the principle of arbitration, the President chose to go before Congress, on the afternoon of the 29th of August, and ask, first, for a reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission; second, for legal recognition of the eight-hour day for interstate carriers; third, for power to appoint a commission to observe the operation of the eight-hour day for a stated time; fourth, for reopening the question of an increase in freight rates to meet the enlarged cost of operation; fifth, for a law declaring railway strikes and lockouts unlawful until a public investigation could be made; sixth, for authorization to operate the roads in case of military necessity. The strike was planned to fall on the expectant populace, scurrying home from their vacations, on the 4th of September. On the 1st of September an eight-hour bill, providing also for the appointment of a board of observation, was rushed through the House; on the following day it was hastened through the staid Senate; and on the third it received the President's signature. ¹ The other recommendations of the President were made to await the pleasure of Congress and the unions. To the suggestion that railway strikes be made unlawful until their causes are disclosed the Brotherhoods were absolutely opposed. ¹ This was on Sunday. In order to obviate any objection as to the legality of the signature the President signed the bill again on the following Tuesday, the intervening Monday being Labor Day. Many readjustments were involved in launching the eight-hour law, and in March, 1917, the Brotherhoods again threatened to strike. The President sent a committee, including the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Labor, to urge the parties to come to an agreement. On the 19th of March, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the law, and the trouble subsided. But in the following November, after the declaration of war, clouds reappeared on the horizon, and again the unions refused the Government's suggestion of arbitration. Under war pressure, however, the Brotherhoods finally consented to hold their grievance in abeyance. The haste with which the eight-hour law was enacted, and the omission of the vital balance suggested by the President appeared to many citizens to be a holdup of Congress, and the nearness of the presidential election suggested that a political motive was not absent. The fact that in the ensuing presidential election, Ohio, the home of the Brotherhoods, swung from the Republican to the Democratic column, did not dispel this suspicion from the public mind. Throughout this maneuver it was apparent that the unions were very confident, but whether because of a prearranged pact, or because of a full treasury, or because of a feeling that the public was with them, or because of the opposite belief that the public feared them, must be left to individual conjecture. None the less, the public realized that the principle of arbitration had given way to the principle of coercion. Soon after the United States had entered the Great War, the Government, under authority of an act of Congress, took over the management of all the interstate railroads, and the nation was launched upon a vast experiment destined to test the capacities of all the parties concerned. The dispute over wages that had been temporarily quieted by the Adamson Law broke out afresh until settled by the famous Order No. 27, issued by William G. McAdoo, the Director General of Railroads, and providing a substantial readjustment of wages and hours. In the spring of 1919 another large wage increase was granted to the men by Director General Hines, who succeeded McAdoo. Meanwhile the Brotherhoods, through their counsel, laid before the congressional committee a plan for the government ownership and joint operation of the roads, known as the Plumb plan, and the American people are now face to face with an issue which will bring to a head the paramount question of the relation of employees on government works to the Government and to the general public. CHAPTER VIII ISSUES AND WARFARE There has been an enormous expansion in the demands of the unions since the early days of the Philadelphia cordwainers; yet these demands involve the same fundamental issues regarding hours, wages, and the closed shop. Most unions, when all persiflage is set aside, are primarily organized for business--the business of looking after their own interests. Their treasury is a war chest rather than an insurance fund. As a benevolent organization, the American union is far behind the British union with its highly developed Friendly Societies. The establishment of a standard rate of wages is perhaps, as the United States Industrial Commission reported in 1901, "the primary object of trade union policy." The most promising method of adjusting the wage contract is by the collective trade agreement. The mechanism of the union has made possible collective bargaining, and in numerous trades wages and other conditions are now adjusted by this method. One of the earliest of these agreements was effected by the Iron Molders' Union in 1891 and has been annually renewed. The coal operatives, too, for a number of years have signed a wage agreement with their miners, and the many local difficulties and differences have been ingeniously and successfully met. The great railroads have, likewise, for many years made periodical contracts with the railway Brotherhoods. The glove-makers, cigar-makers, and, in many localities, workers in the building trades and on street-railway systems have the advantage of similar collective agreements. In 1900 the American Newspaper Publishers Association and the International Typographical Union, after many years of stubborn fighting merged their numerous differences in a trade contract to be in effect for one year. This experiment proved so successful that the agreement has since then been renewed for five year periods. In 1915 a bitter strike of the garment makers in New York City was ended by a "protocol." The principle of collective agreement has become so prevalent that the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor believes that it "is being accepted with increasing favor by both employers and employees," and John Mitchell, speaking from wide experience and an intimate knowledge of conditions, says that "the hope of future peace in the industrial world lies in the trade agreement." These agreements are growing in complexity, and today they embrace not only questions of wages and hours but also methods for adjusting all the differences which may arise between the parties to the bargain. The very success of collective bargaining hinges upon the solidarity and integrity of the union which makes the bargain. A union capable of enforcing an agreement is a necessary antecedent condition to such a contract. With this fact in mind, one can believe that John Mitchell was not unduly sanguine in stating that "the tendency is toward the growth of compulsory membership . . . and the time will doubtless come when this compulsion will be as general and will be considered as little of a grievance as the compulsory attendance of children at school." There are certain industries so well centralized, however, that their coercive power is greater than that of the labor union, and these have maintained a consistent hostility to the closed shop. The question of the closed shop is, indeed, the most stubborn issue confronting the union. The principle involves the employment of only union men in a shop; it means a monopoly of jobs by members of the union. The issue is as old as the unions themselves and as perplexing as human nature. As early as 1806 it was contended for by the Philadelphia cordwainers and by 1850 it had become an established union policy. While wages and hours are now, in the greater industrial fields, the subject of a collective contract, this question of union monopoly is still open, though there has been some progress towards an adjustment. Wherever the trade agreement provides for a closed shop, the union, through its proper committees and officers, assumes at least part of the responsibility of the discipline. The agreement also includes methods for arbitrating differences. The acid test of the union is its capacity to live up to this trade agreement. For the purpose of forcing its policies upon its employers and society the unions have resorted to the strike and picketing, the boycott, and the union label. When violence occurs, it usually is the concomitant of a strike; but violence unaccompanied by a strike is sometimes used as a union weapon. The strike is the oldest and most spectacular weapon in the hands of labor. For many years it was thought a necessary concomitant of machine industry. The strike, however, antedates machinery and was a practical method of protest long before there were unions. Men in a shop simply agreed not to work further and walked out. The earliest strike in the United States, as disclosed by the United States Department of Labor occurred in 1741 among the journeymen bakers in New York City. In 1792 the cordwainers of Philadelphia struck. By 1834 strikes were so prevalent that the New York Daily Advertiser declared them to be "all the fashion." These demonstrations were all small affairs compared with the strikes that disorganized industry after the Civil War or those that swept the country in successive waves in the late seventies, the eighties, and the nineties. The United States Bureau of Labor has tabulated the strike statistics for the twenty-five year period from 1881 to 1905. This list discloses the fact that 38,303 strikes and lockouts occurred, involving 199,954 establishments and 7,444,279 employees. About 2,000,000 other employees were thrown out of work as an indirect result. In 1894, the year of the great Pullman strike, 610,425 men were out of work at one time; and 659,792 in 1902. How much time and money these ten million wage-earners lost, and their employers lost, and society lost, can never be computed, nor how much nervous energy was wasted, good will thrown to the winds, and mutual suspicion created. The increase of union influence is apparent, for recognition of the union has become more frequently a cause for strikes. ¹ Moreover, while the unions were responsible for about 47 per cent of the strikes in 1881, they had originated, directly or indirectly, 75 per cent in 1905. More significant, indeed, is the fact that striking is a growing habit. In 1903, for instance, there were 3494 strikes, an average of about ten a day. ¹ The cause of the strikes tabulated by the Bureau of Labor is shown in the following table of percentages: 1881 1891 1901 1905 For increase of wages: 61 27 29 32 Against reduction of wages: 10 11 4 5 For reduction in hours: 3 5 7 5 Recognition of Union: 6 14 28 31 Preparedness is the watchword of the Unions in this warfare. They have generals and captains, a war chest and relief committees, as well as publicity agents and sympathy scouts whose duty it is to enlist the interest of the public. Usually the leaders of the unions are conservative and deprecate violence. But a strike by its very nature offers an opportunity to the lawless. The destruction of property and the coercion of workmen have been so prevalent in the past that, in the public mind, violence has become universally associated with strikes. Judge Jenkins, of the United States Circuit Court, declared, in a leading case, that "a strike without violence would equal the representation of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted." Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court said that "the common rule as to strikes" is not only for the workers to quit but to "forcibly prevent others from taking their place." Historic examples involving violence of this sort are the great railway strikes of 1877, when Pittsburgh, Reading, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Buffalo were mob-ridden; the strike of the steel-workers at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892; the Pullman strike of 1894, when President Cleveland sent Federal troops to Chicago; the great anthracite strike of 1902, which the Federal Commission characterized as "stained with a record of riot and bloodshed"; the civil war in the Colorado and Idaho mining regions, where the Western Federation of Miners battled with the militia and Federal troops; the dynamite outrages, perpetrated by the structural iron workers, stretching across the entire country, and reaching a dastardly climax in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, in which some twenty men were killed. The recoil from this outrage was the severest blow which organized labor has received in America. John J. McNamara, Secretary of the Structural Iron Workers' Association, and his brother James were indicted for murder. After the trial was staged and the eyes of the nation were upon it, the public was shocked and the hopes of labor unionists were shattered by the confessions of the principals. In March, 1912, a Federal Grand Jury at Indianapolis returned fifty-four indictments against officers and members of the same union for participation in dynamite outrages that had occurred during the six years in many parts of the country, with a toll of over one hundred lives and the destruction of property valued at many millions of dollars. Among those indicted was the president of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. Most of the defendants were sentenced to various terms in the penitentiary. The records of this industrial warfare are replete with lesser battles where thuggery joined hands with desperation in the struggle for wages. Evidence is not wanting that local leaders have frequently incited their men to commit acts of violence in order to impress the public with their earnestness. It is not an inviting picture, this matching of the sullen violence of the mob against the sullen vigilance of the corporation. Yet such methods have not always been used, for the union has done much to systematize this guerrilla warfare. It has matched the ingenuity and the resolution of the employer, backed by his detectives and professional strike-breakers; it has perfected its organization so that the blow of a whistle or the mere uplifting of a hand can silence a great mill. Some of the notable strikes have been managed with rare skill and diplomacy. Some careful observers, indeed, are inclined to the opinion that the amount of violence that takes place in the average strike has been grossly exaggerated. They maintain that, considering the great number of strikes, the earnestness with which they are fought, the opportunity they offer to the lawless, and the vast range of territory they cover, the amount of damage to property and person is unusually small and that the public, through sensational newspaper reports of one or two acts of violence, is led to an exaggerated opinion of its prevalence. It must be admitted, however, that the wisdom and conservatism of the national labor leaders is neutralized by their lack of authority in their particular organization. A large price is paid for the autonomy that permits the local unions to declare strikes without the sanction of the general officers. There are only a few unions, perhaps half a dozen, in which a local can be expelled for striking contrary to the wish of the national officers. In the United Mine Workers' Union, for example, the local must secure the consent of the district officers and national president, or, if these disagree, of the executive board, before it can declare a strike. The tendency to strike on the spur of the moment is much more marked among the newer unions than among the older ones, which have perfected their strike machinery through much experience and have learned the cost of hasty and unjustified action. A less conspicuous but none the less effective weapon in the hands of labor is the boycott, ¹ which is carried by some of the unions to a terrible perfection. It reached its greatest power in the decade between 1881 and 1891. Though it was aimed at a great variety of industries, it seemed to be peculiarly effective in the theater, hotel, restaurant, and publishing business, and in the clothing and cigar trades. For sheer arbitrary coerciveness, nothing in the armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat. The alert picket is the harbinger of ruin, and the union black list is as fraught with threat as the black hand. ¹ In 1880, Lord Erne, an absentee Irish landlord, sent Captain Boycott to Connemara to subdue his irate tenants. The people of the region refused to have any intercourse whatever with the agent or his family. And social and business ostracism has since been known as the boycott. The New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor has shown that during the period of eight years between 1885 and 1892 there were 1352 boycotts in New York State alone. A sort of terrorism spread among the tradespeople of the cities. But the unions went too far. Instances of gross unfairness aroused public sympathy against the boycotters. In New York City, for instance, a Mrs. Grey operated a small bakery with nonunion help. Upon her refusal to unionize her shop at the command of the walking delegate, her customers were sent the usual boycott notice, and pickets were posted. Her delivery wagons were followed, and her customers were threatened. Grocers selling her bread were systematically boycotted. All this persecution merely aroused public sympathy for Mrs. Grey, and she found her bread becoming immensely popular. The boycotters then demanded $2500 for paying their boycott expenses. When news of this attempt at extortion was made public, it heightened the tide of sympathy, the courts took up the matter, and the boycott failed. The New York Boycotter, a journal devoted to this form of coercion, declared: "In boycotting we believe it to be legitimate to strike a man financially, socially, or politically. We believe in hitting him where it will hurt the most; we believe in remorselessly crowding him to the wall; but when he is down, instead of striking him, we would lift him up and stand him once more on his feet." When the boycott thus enlisted the aid of blackmail, it was doomed in the public esteem. Boycott indictments multiplied, and in one year in New York City alone, over one hundred leaders of such attempts at coercion were sentenced to imprisonment. The boycott, however, was not laid aside as a necessary weapon of organized labor because it had been abused by corrupt or overzealous unionists, nor because it had been declared illegal by the courts. All the resources of the more conservative unions and of the American Federation of Labor have been enlisted to make it effective in extreme instances where the strike has failed. This application of the method can best be illustrated by the two most important cases of boycott in our history, the Buck's Stove and Range case and the Danbury Hatters' case. Both were fought through the Federal courts, with the defendants backed by the American Federation and opposed by the Anti-Boycott Association, a federation of employers. The Buck's Stove and Range Company of St. Louis incurred the displeasure of the Metal Polishers' Union by insisting upon a ten-hour day. On August 27, 1906, at five o'clock in the afternoon, on a prearranged signal, the employees walked out. They returned to work the next morning and all were permitted to take their accustomed places except those who had given the signal. They were discharged. At five o'clock that afternoon the men put aside their work, and the following morning reappeared. Again the men who had given the signal were discharged, and the rest went to work. The union then sent notice to the foreman that the discharged men must be reinstated or that all would quit. A strike ensued which soon led to a boycott of national proportions. It spread from the local to the St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union and to the Metal Polishers' Union. In 1907 the executive council of the American Federation of Labor officially placed the Buck's Stove and Range Company on the unfair list and gave this action wide and conspicuous circulation in The Federationist. This boycott received further impetus from the action of the Mine Workers, who in their Annual Convention resolved that the Buck's Stove and Range Company be put on the unfair list and that "any member of the United Mine Workers of America purchasing a stove of above make be fined $5.00 and failing to pay the same be expelled from the organization." Espionage became so efficient and letters from old customers withdrawing patronage became so numerous and came from so wide a range of territory that the company found itself rapidly nearing ruin. An injunction was secured, enjoining the American Federation from blacklisting the company. The labor journals circumvented this mandate by publishing in display type the statement that "It is unlawful for the American Federation of Labor to boycott Buck's Stoves and Ranges," and then in small type adroitly recited the news of the court's decision in such a way that the reader would see at a glance that the company was under union ban. These evasions of the court's order were interpreted as contempt, and in punishment the officers of the Federation were sentenced to imprisonment--Frank Morrison for six months, John Mitchell for nine months, Samuel Gompers for twelve months. But a technicality intervened between the leaders and the cells awaiting them. The public throughout the country had followed the course of this case with mingled feelings of sympathy and disfavor, and though the boycott had never met with popular approval, on the whole the public was relieved to learn that the jail-sentences were not to be served. The Danbury Hatters' boycott was brought on in 1903 by the attempt of the Hatters' Union to make a closed shop of a manufacturing concern in Danbury, Connecticut. The unions moved upon Danbury, flushed with two recent victories--one in Philadelphia, where an important hat factory had agreed to the closed shop after spending some $40,000 in fighting, and another at Orange, New Jersey, where a manufacturer had spent $25,000. But as the Danbury concern was determined to fight the union, in 1902 a nationwide boycott was declared. The company then brought suit against members of the union in the United States District Court. Injunction proceedings reached the Supreme Court of the United States on a demurrer, and in February, 1908, the court declared that the Sherman Anti-Trust Law forbade interstate boycotts. The case then returned to the original court for trial. Testimony was taken in many States, and after a trial lasting twelve weeks the jury assessed the damages to the plaintiff at $74,000. On account of error, the case was remanded for re-trial in 1911. At the second trial the jury gave the plaintiff a verdict for $80,000, the full amount asked. According to the law, this amount was trebled, leaving the judgment, with costs added, at $252,000. The Supreme Court having sustained the verdict, the puzzling question of how to collect it arose. As such funds as the union had were invulnerable to process, the savings bank accounts of the individual defendants were attached. The union insisted that the defendants were not taxable for accrued interest, and the United States Supreme Court, now appealed to for a third time, sustained the plaintiff's contention. In this manner $60,000 were obtained. Foreclosure proceedings were then begun against one hundred and forty homes belonging to union men in the towns of Danbury, Norwalk, and Bethel. The union boasted that this sale would prove only an incubus to the purchasers, for no one would dare occupy the houses sold under such circumstances. In the meantime the American Federation, which had financed the litigation, undertook to raise the needed sum by voluntary collection and made Gompers's birthday the occasion for a gift to the Danbury local. The Federation insisted that the houses be sold on foreclosure and that the collected money be used not as a prior settlement but as an indemnity to the individuals thus deprived of their homes. Rancor gave way to reason, however, and just before the day fixed for the foreclosure sale the matter was settled. In all, $235,000 was paid in damages by the union to the company. In the fourteen years during which this contest was waged, about forty defendants, one of the plaintiffs, and eight judges who had passed on the controversy, died. The outcome served as a spur to the Federation in hastening through Congress the Clayton bill of 1914, designed to place labor unions beyond the reach of the anti-trust laws. The union label has in more recent years achieved importance as a weapon in union warfare. This is a mark or device denoting a union-made article. It might be termed a sort of labor union trade-mark. Union men are admonished to favor the goods so marked, but it was not until national organizations were highly perfected that the label could become of much practical value. It is a device of American invention and was first used by the cigar makers in 1874. In 1880 their national body adopted the now familiar blue label and, with great skill and perseverance and at a considerable outlay of money, has pushed its union-made ware, in the face of sweat-shop competition, of the introduction of cigar making machinery, and of fraudulent imitation. Gradually other unions making products of common consumption adopted labels. Conspicuous among these were the garment makers, the hat makers, the shoe makers, and the brewery workers. As the value of the label manifestly depends upon the trade it entices, the unions are careful to emphasize the sanitary conditions and good workmanship which a label represents. The application of the label is being rapidly extended. Building materials are now in many large cities under label domination. In Chicago the bricklayers have for over fifteen years been able to force the builders to use only union-label brick, and the carpenters have forced the contractors to use only material from union mills. There is practically no limit to this form of mandatory boycott. The barbers, retail clerks, hotel employees, and butcher workmen hang union cards in their places of employment or wear badges as insignia of union loyalty. As these labels do not come under the protection of the United States trade-mark laws, the unions have not infrequently been forced to bring suits against counterfeiters. Finally, in their efforts to fortify themselves against undue increase in the rate of production or "speeding up," against the inrush of new machinery, and against the debilitating alternation of rush work and no work, the unions have attempted to restrict the output. The United States Industrial Commission reported in 1901 that "there has always been a strong tendency among labor organizations to discourage exertion beyond a certain limit. The tendency does not express itself in formal rules. On the contrary, it appears chiefly in the silent, or at least informal pressure of working class opinion." Some unions have rules, others a distinct understanding, on the subject of a normal day's work, and some discourage piecework. But it is difficult to determine how far this policy has been carried in application. Carroll D. Wright, in a special report as United States Commissioner of Labor in 1904, said that "unions in some cases fix a limit to the amount of work a workman may perform a day. Usually it is a secret understanding, but sometimes, when the union is strong, no concealment is made." His report mentioned several trades, including the building trades, in which this curtailment is prevalent. The course of this industrial warfare between the unions and the employers has been replete with sordid details of selfishness, corruption, hatred, suspicion, and malice. In every community the strike or the boycott has been an ominous visitant, leaving in its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult to efface. In the great cities and the factory towns, the constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of perennial discontent which are sources of never-ending reprisals. In spite of individual injustice, however, one can discern in the larger movements a current setting towards a collective justice and a communal ideal which society in self-defense is imposing upon the combatants. CHAPTER IX THE NEW TERRORISM: THE I. W. W. It was not to be expected that the field of organized labor would be left undisputed to the moderation of the trade union after its triumph over the extreme methods of the Knights of Labor. The public, however, did not anticipate the revolutionary ideal which again sought to inflame industrial unionism. After the decadence of the older type of the industrial union several conditions manifested themselves which now, in retrospect, appear to have encouraged the violent militants who call themselves the Industrial Workers of the World. First of all, there took place in Europe the rise of syndicalism with its adoption of sympathetic strikes as one of its methods. Syndicalism flourished especially in France, where from its inception the alert French mind had shaped for it a philosophy of violence, whose subtlest exponent was Georges Sorel. The Socialist Future of Trade Unions, which he published in 1897, was an early exposition of his views, but his Reflections upon Violence in 1908 is the best known of his contributions to this newer doctrine. With true Gallic fervor, the French workingman had sought to translate his philosophy into action, and in 1906 undertook, with the aid of a revolutionary organization known as the Confédération Général du Travail, a series of strikes which culminated in the railroad and post office strike of 1909. All these uprisings--for they were in reality more than strikes--were characterized by extreme language, by violent action, and by impressive public demonstrations. In Italy, Spain, Norway, and Belgium, the syndicalists were also active. Their partiality to violent methods attracted general attention in Europe and appealed to that small group of American labor leaders whose experience in the Western Federation of Miners had taught them the value of dynamite as a press agent. In the meantime material was being gathered for a new outbreak in the United States. The casual laborers had greatly increased in numbers, especially in the West. These migratory workingmen--the "hobo miners," the "hobo lumberjacks," the "blanket stiffs," of colloquial speech--wander about the country in search of work. They rarely have ties of family and seldom ties of locality. About one-half of these wanderers are American born. They are to be described with precision as "floaters." Their range of operations includes the wheat regions west of the Mississippi, the iron mines of Michigan and Minnesota, the mines and forests of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the fields of California and Arizona. They prefer to winter in the cities, but, as their only refuge is the bunk lodging house, they increase the social problem in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and other centers of the unemployed. Many of these migrants never were skilled workers; but a considerable portion of them have been forced down into the ranks of the unskilled by the inevitable tragedies of prolonged unemployment. Such men lend a willing ear to the labor agitator. The exact number in this wandering class is not known. The railroad companies have estimated that at a given time there have been 500,000 hobos trying to beat their way from place to place. Unquestionably a large percentage of the 23,964 trespassers killed and of the 25,236 injured on railway rights of way from 1901 to 1904 belonged to this class. It is not alone these drifters, however, who because of their irresponsibility and their hostility toward society became easy victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people have a standard of living and conceptions of political and individual freedom which are at variance with American traditions. Though their employment is steadier than that of the migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and other stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to feed their innate restlessness. They are, in quite the literal sense of the word, American proletarians. They are more volatile than any European proletarian, for they have learned the lesson of migration, and they retain the socialistic and anarchistic philosophy of their European fellow-workers. There were several attempts to organize casual labor after the decline of the Knights of Labor. But it is difficult to arouse any sustained interest in industrial organizations among workingmen of this class. They lack the motive of members of a trade union, and the migratory character of such workers deprives their organization of stability. One industrial organization, however, has been of the greatest encouragement to the I. W. W. The Western Federation of Miners, which was organized at Butte, Montana, on May 15, 1893, has enjoyed a more turbulent history than any other American labor union. It was conceived in that spirit of rough resistance which local unions of miners, for some years before the amalgamation of the unions, had opposed to the ruthless and firm determination of the mine owners. In 1897, the president of the miners, after quoting the words of the Constitution of the United States giving citizens the right to bear arms, said: "This you should comply with immediately. Every union should have a rifle club. I strongly advise you to provide every member with the latest improved rifle which can be obtained from the factory at a nominal price. I entreat you to take action on this important question, so that in two years we can hear the inspiring music of the martial tread of 25,000 armed men in the ranks of labor." This militant vision was fortunately never quite fulfilled. But armed strikers there were, by the thousands, and the gruesome details of their fight with mine owners in Colorado are set forth in a special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor in 1905. The use of dynamite became early associated with this warfare in Colorado. In 1903 a fatal explosion occurred in the Vindicator mine in Teller County, and serious disorders broke out in Telluride, the county seat of San Miguel County. In 1904 a cage lifting miners from the shaft in the Independence mine at Victor was dropped and fifteen men were killed. There were many minor outrages, isolated murders, "white cap" raids, infernal machines, deportations, black lists, and so on. In Montana and Idaho similar scenes were enacted and reached a climax in the murder of Governor Steunenberg of Idaho. Yet the union officers indicted for this murder were released by the trial jury. Such was the preparatory school of the new unionism, which had its inception in several informal conferences held in Chicago. The first, attended by only six radical leaders, met in the autumn of 1904. The second, held in January, 1905, issued a manifesto attacking the trade unions, calling for a "new departure" in the labor movement, and inviting those who desired to join in organizing such a movement to "meet in convention in Chicago the 27th day of June, 1905." About two hundred persons responded to this appeal and organized the Industrial Workers of the World, almost unnoticed by the press of the day and scorned by the American Federation of Labor, whose official organ had called those in attendance at the second conference "engaged in the delectable work of trying to divert, pervert, and disrupt the labor movement of the country." An overwhelming influence in this convention was wielded by the Western Federation of Miners and the Socialistic American Labor Union, two radical labor bodies which looked upon the trade unions as "union snobbery" and the "aristocracy of labor," and upon the American Federation as "the consummate flower of craft unionism" and "a combination of job trusts." They believed trade unionism wrong in principle. They discarded the principle of trade autonomy for the principle of laboring class solidarity, for, as one of their spokesmen said, "The industrial union, in contradistinction to the craft union, is that organization through which all its members in one industry, or in all industries if necessary, can act as a unit." While this convention was united in denouncing the trade unions, it was not so unanimous in other matters, for the leaders were all veterans in those factional quarrels which characterize Socialists the world over. Eugene V. Debs, for example, was the hero of the Knights of Labor and had achieved wide notoriety during the Pullman strike by being imprisoned for contempt of court. William D. Haywood, popularly known as "Big Bill," received a rigorous training in the Western Federation of Miners. Daniel DeLeon, whose right name, the American Federationist alleged, was Daniel Loeb, was a university graduate and a vehement revolutionary, the leader of the Socialistic Labor party, and the editor of the Daily People. A. M. Simons, the leader of the Socialist party and the editor of the Coming Nation, was at swords' points with DeLeon. William E. Trautmann was the fluent spokesman of the anti-political faction. These men dominated the convention. After some twelve days of discussion, they agreed upon a constitution which established six departments, ¹ provided for a general executive board with centralized powers, and at the same time left to the local and department organizations complete industrial autonomy. The I. W. W. in "the first constitution, crude and provisional as it was, made room for all the world's workers." ² This was, indeed, the great object of the organization. ¹ 1. Agriculture, Land, Fisheries, and Water Products. 2. Mining. 3. Transportation and Communication. 4. Manufacturing and General Production. 5. Construction. 6. Public Service. ² J. G. Brissenden, The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World, page 41. Whatever visions of world conquest the militants may at first have fostered were soon shattered by internal strife. There were unreconcilable elements in the body: those who regarded the political aspect as paramount and industrial unions as allies of socialism; those who regarded the forming of unions as paramount and politics as secondary; and those who regarded all forms of political activity as mere waste of energy. The first two groups were tucked under the wings of the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor party. The third group was frankly anarchistic and revolutionary. In the fourth annual convention the Socialist factions withdrew, established headquarters at Detroit, organized what is called the Detroit branch, and left the Chicago field to the revolutionists. So socialism "pure and simple," and what amounts to anarchism "pure and simple," fell out, after they had both agreed to disdain trade unionism "pure and simple." This shift proved the great opportunity for Haywood and his disciples. Feeling himself now free of all political encumbrances, he gathered around him a small group of enthusiastic leaders, some of whom had a gift of diabolical intrigue, and with indomitable perseverance and zeal he set himself to seeking out the neglected, unskilled, and casual laborer. Within a few years he so dominated the movement that, in the public mind, the I. W. W. is associated with the Chicago branch and the Detroit faction is well-nigh forgotten. As a preliminary to a survey of some of the battles that made the I. W. W. a symbol of terror in many communities it will be well to glance for a moment at the underlying doctrines of the organization. In a preamble now notorious it declared that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world as a class take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system." This thesis is a declaration of war as well as a declaration of principles. The I. W. W. aims at nothing less than the complete overthrow of modern capitalism and the political structure which accompanies it. Emma Goldman, who prides herself on having received her knowledge of syndicalism "from actual contact" and not from books, says that "syndicalism repudiates and condemns the present industrial arrangement as unjust and criminal." Edward Hamond calls the labor contract "the sacred cow" of industrial idolatry and says that the aim of the I. W. W. is "the abolition of the wage system." And W. E. Trautmann affirms that "the industrial unionist holds that there can be no agreement with the employers of labor which the workers have to consider sacred and inviolable." In place of what they consider an unjust and universal capitalistic order they would establish a new society in which "the unions of the workers will own and manage all industries, regulate consumption, and administer the general social interests." How is this contemplated revolution to be achieved? By the working classes themselves and not through political activity, for "one of the first principles of the I. W. W. is that political power rests on economic power. . . . It must gain control of the shops, ships, railways, mines, mills." And how is it to gain this all-embracing control? By persuading every worker to join the union, the "one great organization" which, according to Haywood, is to be "big enough to take in the black man, the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities--an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries, to obliterate national boundaries. . . . We, the I. W. W., stand on our two feet, the class struggle and industrial unionism, and coolly say we want the whole earth." When the great union has become universal, it will simply take possession of its own, will "lock the employers out for good as owners and parasites, and give them a chance to become useful toilers." The resistance that will assuredly be made to this process of absorption is to be met by direct action, the general strike, and sabotage--a trinity of phrases imported from Europe, each one of special significance. "The general strike means a stoppage of work," says Emma Goldman with naïve brevity. It was thought of long before the I. W. W. existed, but it has become the most valuable weapon in their arsenal. Their pamphlets contain many allusions to the great strikes in Belgium, Russia, Italy, France, Scandinavia, and other European countries, that were so widespread as to merit being called general. If all the workers can be induced to stop work, even for a very brief interval, such action would be regarded as the greatest possible manifestation of the "collective power of the producers." Direct action, a term translated directly from the French, is more difficult to define. This method sets itself in opposition to the methods of the capitalist in retaining control of industry, which is spoken of as indirect action. Laws, machinery, credits, courts, and constabulary are indirect methods whereby the capitalist keeps possession of his property. The industrialist matches this with a direct method. For example, he engages in a passive strike, obeying rules so literally as to destroy both their utility and his work; or in an opportune strike, ceasing work suddenly when he knows his employer has orders that must be immediately filled; or in a temporary strike, quitting work one day and coming back the next. His weapon is organized opportunism, wielding an unexpected blow, and keeping the employer in a frenzy of fearful anticipation. Finally, sabotage is a word that expresses the whole philosophy and practice of revolutionary labor. John Spargo, in his Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism, traces the origin of the word to the dockers' union in London. Attempt after attempt had proved futile to win by strikes the demands of these unskilled workers. The men were quite at the end of their resources, when finally they hit upon the plan of "lying down on the job" or "soldiering." As a catchword they adopted the Scotch phrase ca'canny, to go slow or be careful not to do too much. As an example they pointed to the Chinese coolies who met a refusal of increased wages by cutting off a few inches from their shovels on the principle of "small pay, small work." He then goes on to say that "the idea was very easily extended. From the slowing up of the human worker to the slowing up of the iron worker, the machine, was an easy transition. Judiciously planned 'accidents' might easily create confusion for which no one could be blamed. A few 'mistakes' in handling cargoes might easily cost the employers far more than a small increase in wages would." Some French syndicalists, visiting London, were greatly impressed with this new cunning. But as they had no ready translation for the Scottish ca'canny, they ingeniously abstracted the same idea from the old French saying Travailler à coups de sabots--to work as if one had on wooden shoes--and sabotage thus became a new and expressive phrase in the labor war. Armed with these weapons, Haywood and his henchmen moved forward. Not long after the first convention in 1905, they made their presence known at Goldfield, Nevada. Then they struck simultaneously at Youngstown, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. The first battle, however, to attract general notice was at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909. In this warfare between the recently organized unskilled workers and the efficient state constabulary, the I. W. W. sent notice "that for every striker killed or injured by the cossacks, the life of a cossack will be exacted in return." And they collected their gruesome toll. In 1912 occurred the historic strike in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly managed by the organizers of the Workers that within a few weeks every newspaper of importance in America was publishing long descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine writers, self-appointed reformers, delegations representing various organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the Governor's personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the United States Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional committee devoted their time to numerous investigations, thereby giving immense satisfaction to those obscure agitators who were lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and to the discomfiture of the employers. The legislature of Massachusetts had reduced the hours of work of women and children from fifty-six to fifty-four hours a week. Without making adequate announcement, the employers withheld two hours' pay from the weekly stipend. A large portion of the workers were foreigners, representing eighteen different nationalities, most of them with a wholly inadequate knowledge of English, and all of an inflammable temperament. When they found their pay short, a group marched through the mills, inciting others to join them, and the strike was on. The American Federation of Labor had paid little attention to these workers. There were some trade unions in the mills, but most of the workers were unorganized except for the fact that the I. W. W. had, about eight months before, gathered several hundred into an industrial union. Yet it does not appear that this union started the strike. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. No sooner had it begun, however, than Joseph J. Ettor, an I. W. W. organizer, hastened to take charge, and succeeded so well that within a few weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union. Ettor proved a crafty, resourceful general, quick in action, magnetic in personality, a linguist who could command his polyglot mob. He was also a successful press agent who exploited fully the unpalatable drinking water provided by the companies, the inadequate sewerage, the unpaved streets, and the practical destitution of many of the workers. The strikers made an attempt to send children to other towns so that they might be better cared for. After several groups had thus been taken away, the city of Lawrence interfered, claiming that many children had been sent without their parents' consent. On the 24th of February, when a group of forty children and their mothers gathered at the railway station to take a train for Philadelphia, the police after due warning refused to let them depart. It was then that the Federal Government was called upon to take action. The strike committee telegraphed Congress: "Twenty-five thousand striking textile workers and citizens of Lawrence protest against the hideous brutality with which the police handled the women and children of Lawrence this morning. Carrying out the illegal and original orders of the city marshal to prevent free citizens from sending their children out of the city, striking men were knocked down, women and mothers who were trying to protect their children from the onslaught of the police were attacked and clubbed." So widespread was the opinion that unnecessary brutality had taken place that petitions for an investigation poured in upon Congress from many States and numerous organizations. The whole country was watching the situation. The hearings held by a congressional committee emphasized the stupidity of the employers in arbitrarily curtailing the wage, the inadequacy of the town government in handling the situation, and the cupidity of the I. W. W. leaders in taking advantage of the fears, the ignorance, the inflammability of the workers, and in creating a "terrorism which impregnated the whole city for days." Lawrence became a symbol. It stood for the American factory town; for municipal indifference and social neglect, for heterogeneity in population, for the tinder pile awaiting the incendiary match. At Little Falls, New York, a strike occurred in the textile mills in October, 1912, as a result of a reduction of wages due to a fifty-four hour law. No organization was responsible for the strike, but no sooner had the operatives walked out than here also the I. W. W. appeared. The leaders ordered every striker to do something which would involve arrest in order to choke the local jail and the courts. The state authorities investigating the situation reported that "all of those on strike were foreigners and few, if any, could speak or understand the English language, complete control of the strike being in the hands of the I. W. W." In February, 1913, about 15,000 employees in the rubber works at Akron, Ohio, struck. The introduction of machinery into the manufacture of automobile tires caused a reduction in the piecework rate in certain shops. One of the companies posted a notice on the 10th of February that this reduction would take effect immediately. No time was given for conference, and it was this sudden arbitrary act which precipitated all the discontent lurking for a long time in the background; and the employees walked out. The legislative investigating committee reported "there was practically no organization existing among the rubber employees when the strike began. A small local of the Industrial Workers of the World comprised of between fifteen and fifty members had been formed. . . . Simultaneously with the beginning of the strike, organizers of the I. W. W. appeared on the ground inviting and urging the striking employees to unite with their organization." Many of these testified before the public authorities that they had not joined because they believed in the preachings of the organization but because "they hoped through collective action to increase their wages and improve their conditions of employment." The tactics of the strike leaders soon alienated the public, which had at first been inclined towards the strikers, and acts of violence led to the organization of a vigilance committee of one thousand citizens which warned the leaders to leave town. In February, 1913, some 25,000 workers in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, struck, and here again the I. W. W. repeated its maneuvers. Sympathetic meetings took place in New York and other cities. Daily "experience meetings" were held in Paterson and all sorts of devices were invented to maintain the fervor of the strikers. The leaders threatened to make Paterson a "howling wilderness," an "industrial graveyard," and "to wipe it off the map." This threat naturally arrayed the citizens against the strikers, over one thousand of whom were lodged in jail before the outbreak was over. Among the five ringleaders arrested and held for the grand jury were Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Patrick Quinlan, whose trials attracted wide attention. Elizabeth Flynn, an appealing young widow scarcely over twenty-one, testified that she had begun her work as an organizer at the age of sixteen, that she had not incited strikers to violence but had only advised them to picket and to keep their hands in their pockets, "so that detectives could not put stones in them as they had done in other strikes." The jury disagreed and she was discharged. Quinlan, an unusually attractive young man, also a professional I. W. W. agitator, was found guilty of inciting to violence and was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. After serving nine months he was freed because of a monster petition signed by some 20,000 sympathetic persons all over the United States. Clergymen, philanthropists, and prominent public men, were among the signers, as well as the jurors who convicted and the sheriff who locked up the defendant. These cases served to fix further public attention upon the nature of the new movement and the sort of revivalists its evangel of violence was producing. Employers steadfastly refused to deal with the I. W. W., although they repeatedly asserted they were willing to negotiate with their employees themselves. After three months of strike and turmoil the mayor of Paterson had said: "The fight which Paterson is making is the fight of the nation. Their agitation has no other object in view but to establish a reign of terror throughout the United States." A large number of thoughtful people all over the land were beginning to share this view. In New York City a new sort of agitation was devised in the winter of 1913-14 under the captaincy of a young man who quite suddenly found himself widely advertised. Frank Tannenbaum organized an "army of the unemployed," commandeered Rutgers Square as a rendezvous, Fifth Avenue as a parade ground, and churches and parish houses as forts and commissaries. Several of the churches were voluntarily opened to them, but other churches they attempted to enter by storm. In March, 1914, Tannenbaum led several score into the church of St. Alphonsus while mass was being celebrated. Many arrests followed this bold attempt to emulate the French Revolutionists. Though sympathizers raised $7500 bail for the ringleader, Tannenbaum loyally refused to accept it as long as any of his "army" remained in jail. Squads of his men entered restaurants, ate their fill, refused to pay, and then found their way to the workhouse. So for several months a handful of unemployed, some of them professional unemployed, held the headlines of the metropolitan papers, rallied to their defense sentimental social sympathizers, and succeeded in calling the attention of the public to a serious industrial condition. At Granite City, Illinois, another instance of unrest occurred when several thousand laborers in the steel mills, mostly Roumanians and Bulgarians, demanded an increase in wages. When the whistle blew on the appointed morning, they gathered at the gates, refused to enter, and continued to shout "Two dollars a day!" Though the manager feared violence and posted guards, no violence was offered. Suddenly at the end of two hours the men quietly resumed their work, and the management believed the trouble was over. But for several successive mornings this maneuver was repeated. Strike breakers were then sent for. For a week, however, the work went forward as usual. The order for strike breakers was countermanded. Then came a continued repetition of the early morning strikes until the company gave way. Nor were the subtler methods of sabotage forgotten in these demonstrations. From many places came reports of emery dust in the gearings of expensive machines. Men boasted of powdered soap emptied into water tanks that fed boilers, of kerosene applied to belting, of railroad switches that had been tampered with. With these and many similar examples before them, the public became convinced that the mere arresting of a few leaders was futile. A mass meeting at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1913, declared, as its principle of action, "We have got to meet force with force," and then threatened to run the entire local I. W. W. group out of town. In many towns vigilance committees acted as eyes, ears, and hands for the community. When the community refused to remain neutral, the contest assumed a different aspect and easily became a feud between a small group of militants and the general public. In the West this contest assumed its most aggressive form. At Spokane, in 1910, the jail was soon filled, and sixty prisoners went on a hunger strike which cost several lives. In the lumber mills of Aberdeen, South Dakota, explosions and riots occurred. In Hoquiam, Washington, a twelve-foot stockade surmounted by barbed wire entanglements failed to protect the mills from the assaults of strikers. At Gray's Harbor, Washington, a citizens' committee cut the electric light wires to darken the meeting place of the I. W. W. and then used axe handles and wagon spokes to drive the members out of town. At Everett, Washington, a strike in the shingle mills led to the expulsion of the I. W. W. The leaders then called for volunteers to invade Everett, and several hundred members sailed from Seattle. They were met at the dock, however, by a large committee of citizens and were informed by the sheriff that they would not be allowed to land. After some parley, the invaders opened fire, and in the course of the shooting that followed the sheriff was seriously wounded, five persons were killed, and many were injured. The boat and its small invading army then returned to Seattle without making a landing at Everett. The I. W. W. found an excuse for their riotous action in the refusal of communities to permit them to speak in the streets and public places. This, they claimed, was an invasion of their constitutional right of free speech. The experience of San Diego serves as an example of their "free speech" campaigns. In 1910, I. W. W. agitators began to hold public meetings in the streets, in the course of which their language increased in ferocity until the indignation of the community was aroused. An ordinance was then passed by the city council prohibiting street speaking within the congested portions of the city, but allowing street meetings in other parts of the city if a permit from the police department were first obtained. There was, however, no law requiring the issue of such a permit, and none was granted to the agitators. This restriction of their liberties greatly incensed the agitators, who at once raised the cry of "free speech" and began to hold meetings in defiance of the ordinance. The jail was soon glutted with these apostles of riotous speaking. In order to delay the dispatch of the court's overcrowded calendar, every one demanded a jury trial. The mayor of the town then received a telegram from the general secretary of the organization which disclosed their tactics: "This fight will be continued until free speech is established in San Diego if it takes twenty thousand members and twenty years to do so." The national membership of the I. W. W. had been drafted as an invading army, to be a constant irritation to the city until it surrendered. The police asserted that "there are bodies of men leaving all parts of the country for San Diego" for the purpose of defying the city authorities and overwhelming its municipal machinery. A committee of vigilantes armed with "revolvers, knives, night-sticks, black jacks, and black snakes," supported by the local press and commercial bodies, undertook to run the unwelcome guests out of town. That this was not done gently is clearly disclosed by subsequent official evidence. Culprits were loaded into auto trucks at night, taken to the county line, made to kiss the flag, sing the national anthem, run the gauntlet between rows of vigilantes provided with cudgels and, after thus proving their patriotism under duress, were told never to return. "There is an unwritten law," one of the local papers at this time remarked, "that permits a citizen to avenge his outraged honor. There is an unwritten law that permits a community to defend itself by any means in its power, lawful or unlawful, against any evil which the operation of the written law is inadequate to oppose or must oppose by slow, tedious, and unnecessarily expensive proceeding." So this municipal homeopathy of curing lawlessness with lawlessness received public sanction. With the declaration of war against Germany in April, 1917, hostility to the I. W. W. on the part of the American public was intensified. The members of the organization opposed war. Their leaflet War and the Workers, bore this legend: GENERAL SHERMAN SAID "WAR IS HELL" DON'T GO TO HELL IN ORDER TO GIVE A BUNCH OF PIRATICAL PLUTOCRATIC PARASITES A BIGGER SLICE OF HEAVEN Soon rumors abounded that German money was being used to aid the I. W. W. in their plots. In Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Kansas, and other States, members of the organization were arrested for failure to comply with the draft law. The governors of Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada met to plan laws for suppressing the I. W. W. Similar legislation was urged upon Congress. Senator Thomas, in a report to the Senate, accused the I. W. W. of coöperating with German agents in the copper mines and harvest fields of the West by inciting the laborers to strikes and to the destruction of food and material. Popular opinion in the West inclined to the view of Senator Poindexter of Washington when he said that "most of the I. W. W. leaders are outlaws or ought to be made outlaws because of their official utterances, inflammatory literature and acts of violence." Indeed, scores of communities in 1917 took matters into their own hands. Over a thousand I. W. W. strikers in the copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona, were loaded into freight cars and shipped over the state line. In Billings, Montana, one leader was horsewhipped, and two others were hanged until they were unconscious. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group of seventeen members were taken from policemen, thoroughly flogged, tarred, feathered, and driven out of town by vigilantes. The Federal Government, after an extended inquiry through the secret service, raided the Detroit headquarters of the I. W. W., where a plot to tie up lake traffic was brewing. The Chicago offices were raided some time later; over one hundred and sixty leaders of the organization from all parts of the country were indicted as a result of the examination of the wagon-load of papers and documents seized. As a result, 166 indictments were returned. Of these 99 defendants were found guilty by the trial jury, 16 were dismissed during the trial, and 51 were dismissed before the trial. In Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports similar disclosures were made, and everywhere the organization fell under popular and official suspicion. In many other portions of the country members of the I. W. W. were tried for conspiracy under the Federal espionage act. In January, 1919, a trial jury in Sacramento found 46 defendants guilty. The offense in the majority of these cases consisted in opposing military service rather than in overt acts against the Government. But in May and June, 1919, the country was startled by a series of bomb outrages aimed at the United States Attorney-General, certain Federal district judges, and other leading public personages, which were evidently the result of centralized planning and were executed by members of the I. W. W., aided very considerably by foreign Bolshevists. In spite of its spectacular warfare and its monopoly of newspaper headlines, the I. W. W. has never been numerically strong. The first convention claimed a membership of 60,000. All told, the organization has issued over 200,000 cards since its inception, but this total never constituted its membership at any given time, for no more fluctuating group ever existed. When the I. W. W. fosters a strike of considerable proportions, the membership rapidly swells, only to shrink again when the strike is over. This temporary membership consists mostly of foreign workmen who are recent immigrants. What may be termed the permanent membership is difficult to estimate. In 1913 there were about 14,000 members. In 1917 the membership was estimated at 75,000. Though this is probably a maximum rather than an average, nevertheless the members are mostly young men whose revolutionary ardor counterbalances their want in numbers. It is, moreover, an organization that has a wide penumbra. It readily attracts the discontented, the unemployed, the man without a horizon. In an instant it can lay a fire and put an entire police force on the qui vive. The organization has always been in financial straits. The source of its power is to be sought elsewhere. Financially bankrupt and numerically unstable, the I. W. W. relies upon the brazen cupidity of its stratagems and the habitual timorousness of society for its power. It is this self-seeking disregard of constituted authority that has given a handful of bold and crafty leaders such prominence in the recent literature of fear. And the members of this industrial Ku Klux Klan, these American Bolsheviki, assume to be the "conscious minority" which is to lead the ranks of labor into the Canaan of industrial bliss. CHAPTER X LABOR AND POLITICS In a democracy it is possible for organized labor to extend its influence far beyond the confines of a mere trade policy. It can move the political mechanism directly in proportion to its capacity to enlist public opinion. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that labor is eager to take part in politics or that labor parties were early organized. They were, however, doomed to failure, for no workingman's party can succeed, except in isolated localities, without the coöperation of other social and political forces. Standing alone as a political entity, labor has met only rebuff and defeat at the hands of the American voter. The earlier attempts at direct political action were local. In Philadelphia a workingman's party was organized in 1828 as a result of the disappointment of the Mechanics' Union at its failure to achieve its ambitions by strikes. At a public meeting it was resolved to support only such candidates for the legislature and city council as would pledge themselves to the interests of "the working classes." The city was organized, and a delegate convention was called which nominated a ticket of thirty candidates for city and county offices. But nineteen of these nominees were also on the Jackson ticket, and ten on the Adams ticket; and both of these parties used the legend "Working Man's Ticket," professing to favor a shorter working day. The isolated labor candidates received only from 229 to 539 votes, while the Jackson party vote ranged from 3800 to 7000 and the Adams party vote from 2500 to 3800. So that labor's first excursion into politics revealed the eagerness of the older parties to win the labor vote, and the futility of relying on a separate organization, except for propaganda purposes. Preparatory to their next campaign, the workingmen organized political clubs in all the wards of Philadelphia. In 1829 they nominated thirty-two candidates for local offices, of whom nine received the endorsement of the Federalists and three that of the Democrats. The workingmen fared better in this election, polling nearly 2000 votes in the county and electing sixteen candidates. So encouraged were they by this success that they attempted to nominate a state ticket, but the dominant parties were too strong. In 1831 the workingmen's candidates, who were not endorsed by the older parties, received less than 400 votes in Philadelphia. After this year the party vanished. New York also early had an illuminating experience in labor politics. In 1829 the workingmen of the city launched a political venture under the immediate leadership of an agitator by the name of Thomas Skidmore. Skidmore set forth his social panacea in a book whose elongated title betrays his secret: The Rights of Man to Property! Being a Proposition to Make it Equal among the Adults of the Present Generation; and to Provide for its Equal Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on Arriving at the Age of Maturity. The party manifesto began with the startling declaration that "all human society, our own as well as every other, is constructed radically wrong." The new party proposed to right this defect by an equal distribution of the land and by an elaborate system of public education. Associated with Skidmore were Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright of the Free Enquirer, a paper advocating all sorts of extreme social and economic doctrines. It was not strange, therefore, that the new party was at once connected, in the public mind, with all the erratic vagaries of these Apostles of Change. It was called the "Fanny Wright ticket" and the "Infidel Ticket." Every one forgot that it aimed to be the workingman's ticket. The movement, however, was supported by The Working Man's Advocate, a new journal that soon reached a wide influence. There now appeared an eccentric Quaker, Russell Comstock by name, to center public attention still more upon the new party. As a candidate for the legislature, he professed an alarmingly advanced position, for he believed that the State ought to establish free schools where handicrafts and morals, but not religion, should be taught; that husband and wife should be equals before the law; that a mechanics' lien and bankruptcy law should be passed; and that by wise graduations all laws for the collection of debts should be repealed. At a meeting held at the City Hall, for the further elucidation of his "pure Republicanism," he was greeted by a great throng but was arrested for disturbing the peace. He received less than one hundred and fifty votes, but his words went far to excite, on the one hand, the interest of the laboring classes in reform, and, on the other hand, the determination of the conservative classes to defeat "a ticket got up openly and avowedly," as one newspaper said, "in opposition to all banks, in opposition to social order, in opposition to rights of property." Elections at this time lasted three days. On the first day there was genuine alarm at the large vote cast for "the Infidels." Thoughtful citizens were importuned to go to the polls, and on the second and third days they responded in sufficient numbers to compass the defeat of the entire ticket, excepting only one candidate for the legislature. The Workingman's party contained too many zealots to hold together. After the election of 1829 a meeting was called to revise the party platform. The more conservative element prevailed and omitted the agrarian portions of the platform. Skidmore, who was present, attempted to protest, but his voice was drowned by the clamor of the audience. He then started a party of his own, which he called the Original Workingman's party but which became known as the Agrarian party. The majority endeavored to rectify their position in the community by an address to the people. "We take this opportunity," they said, "to aver, whatever may be said to the contrary by ignorant or designing individuals or biased presses, that we have no desire or intention of disturbing the rights of property in individuals or the public." In the meantime Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright organized a party of their own, endorsing an extreme form of state paternalism over children. This State Guardianship Plan, as it was called, aimed to "regenerate America in a generation" and to "make but one class out of the many that now envy and despise each other." There were, then, three workingmen's parties in New York, none of which, however, succeeded in gaining an influential position in state politics. After 1830 all these parties disappeared, but not without leaving a legacy of valuable experience. The Working Man's Advocate discovered political wisdom when it confessed that "whether these measures are carried by the formation of a new party, by the reform of an old one, or by the abolishment of party altogether, is of comparative unimportance." In New England, the workingmen's political endeavors were joined with those of the farmers under the agency of the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Workingmen. This organization was initiated in 1830 by the workingmen of Woodstock, Vermont, and their journal, the Working Man's Gazette, became a medium of agitation which affected all the New England manufacturing towns as well as many farming communities. "Woodstock meetings," as they were called, were held everywhere and aroused both workingmen and farmers to form a new political party. The Springfield Republican summarized the demands of the new party thus: The avowed objects generally seem to be to abolish imprisonment for debt, the abolishment of litigation, and in lieu thereof the settlement of disputes by reference to neighbors; to establish some more equal and universal system of public education; to diminish the salaries and extravagance of public officers; to support no men for offices of public trust, but farmers, mechanics, and what the party call "working men"; and to elevate the character of this class by mental instruction and mental improvement. . . . Much is said against the wealth and aristocracy of the land, their influence, and the undue influence of lawyers and other professional men. . . . The most of these objects appear very well on paper and we believe they are already sustained by the good sense of the people. . . . What is most ridiculous about this party is, that in many places where the greatest noise is made about it, the most indolent and most worthless persons, men of no trade or useful occupation have taken the lead. We cannot of course answer for the character for industry of many places where this party is agitated: but we believe the great body of our own community, embracing every class and profession, may justly be called workingmen: nor do we believe enough can be found who are not such, to make even a decent party of drones. In the early thirties many towns and cities in Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island elected workingmen's candidates to local offices, usually with the help of small tradespeople. In 1833 and 1834 the workingmen of Massachusetts put a state ticket in the field which polled about 2000 votes, and in Boston a workingman's party was organized, but it did not gather much momentum and soon disappeared. These local and desultory attempts at forming a separate labor party failed as partisan movements. The labor leader proved an inefficient amateur when matched against the shrewd and experienced party manipulator; nor was there a sufficient class homogeneity to keep the labor vote together; and, even if it had so been united, there were not enough labor votes to make a majority. So the labor candidate had to rely on the good will of other classes in order to win his election. And this support was not forthcoming. Americans have, thus far, always looked with suspicion upon a party that represented primarily the interests of only one class. This tendency shows a healthy instinct founded upon the fundamental conception of society as a great unity whose life and progress depend upon the freedom of all its diverse parts. It is not necessary to assume, as some observers have done, that these petty political excursions wrecked the labor movement of that day. It was perfectly natural that the laborer, when he awoke to the possibilities of organization and found himself possessed of unlimited political rights, should seek a speedy salvation in the ballot box. He took, by impulse, the partisan shortcut and soon found himself lost in the slough of party intrigue. On the other hand, it should not be concluded that these intermittent attempts to form labor parties were without political significance. The politician is usually blind to every need except the need of his party; and the one permanent need of his party is votes. A demand backed by reason will usually find him inert; a demand backed by votes galvanizes him into nervous attention. When, therefore, it was apparent that there was a labor vote, even though a small one, the demands of this vote were not to be ignored, especially in States where the parties were well balanced and the scale was tipped by a few hundred votes. Within a few decades after the political movement began, many States had passed lien laws, had taken active measures to establish efficient free schools, had abolished imprisonment for debt, had legislative inquiry into factory conditions, and had recognized the ten-hour day. These had been the leading demands of organized labor, and they had been brought home to the public conscience, in part at least, by the influence of the workingmen's votes. It was not until after the Civil War that labor achieved sufficient national homogeneity to attempt seriously the formation of a national party. In the light of later events it is interesting to sketch briefly the development of the political power of the workingman. The National Labor Union at its congress of 1866 resolved "that, so far as political action is concerned, each locality should be governed by its own policy, whether to run an independent ticket of workingmen, or to use political parties already existing, but at all events to cast no vote except for men pledged to the interests of labor." The issue then seemed clear enough. But six years later the Labor Reform party struck out on an independent course and held its first and only national convention. Seventeen States were represented. ¹ The Labor party, however, had yet to learn how hardly won are independence and unity in any political organization. Rumors of pernicious intermeddling by the Democratic and Republican politicians were afloat, and it was charged that the Pennsylvania delegates had come on passes issued by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Judge David Davis of Illinois, then a member of the United States Supreme Court, was nominated for President and Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey for Vice-President. Both declined, however, and Charles O'Conor of New York, the candidate of "the Straight-Out Democrats," was named for President, but no nomination was made for Vice-President. Considering the subsequent phenomenal growth of the labor vote, it is worth noting in passing that O'Conor received only 29,489 votes and that these embraced both the labor and the so-called "straight" Democratic strength. ¹ It is interesting to note that in this first National Labor Party Convention a motion favoring government ownership and the referendum was voted down. For some years the political labor movement lost its independent character and was absorbed by the Greenback party which offered a meeting-ground for discontented farmers and restless workingmen. In 1876 the party nominated for President the venerable Peter Cooper, who received about eighty thousand votes--most of them probably cast by farmers. During this time the leaders of the labor movement were serving a political apprenticeship and were learning the value of coöperation. On February 22, 1878, a conference held at Toledo, Ohio, including eight hundred delegates from twenty-eight States, perfected an alliance between the Labor Reform and Greenback parties and invited all "patriotic citizens to unite in an effort to secure financial reform and industrial emancipation." Financial reform meant the adoption of the well-known greenback free silver policy. Industrial emancipation involved the enactment of an eight-hour law; the inspection of workshops, factories, and mines; the regulation of interstate commerce; a graduated federal income tax; the prohibition of the importation of alien contract labor; the forfeiture of the unused portion of the princely land grants to railroads; and the direct participation of the people in government. These fundamental issues were included in the demands of subsequent labor and populist parties, and some of them were bequeathed to the Progressive party of a later date. The convention was thus a forerunner of genuine reform, for its demands were based upon industrial needs. For the moment it made a wide popular appeal. In the state elections of 1878 about a million votes were polled by the party candidates. The bulk of these were farmers' votes cast in the Middle and Far West, though in the East, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, and New Jersey cast a considerable vote for the party. With high expectations the new party entered the campaign of 1880. It had over a dozen members in Congress, active organizations in nearly every State, and ten thousand local clubs. General James B. Weaver, the presidential nominee of the party, was the first candidate to make extensive campaign journeys into distant sections of the country. His energetic canvass netted him only 308,578 votes, most of which came from the West. The party was distinctly a farmers' party. In 1884, it nominated the lurid Ben Butler who had been, according to report, "ejected from the Democratic party and booted out of the Republican." His demagogic appeals, however, brought him not much more than half as many votes as the party received at the preceding election, and helped to end the political career of the Greenbackers. With the power of the farmers on the wane, the balance began to shift. There now followed a number of attempts to organize labor in the Union Labor party, the United Labor party, the Progressive Labor party, the American Reform party, and the Tax Reformers. There were still numerous farmers' organizations such as the Farmers' Alliance, the Anti-Monopolists, the Homesteaders, and others, but they were no longer the dominant force. Under the stimulus of the labor unions, delegates representing the Knights of Labor, the Grangers, the Anti-Monopolists, and other farmers' organizations, met in Cincinnati on February 22, 1887, and organized the National Union Labor party. ¹ The following May the party held its only nominating convention. Alson J. Streeter of Illinois was named for President and Samuel Evans of Texas for Vice-President. The platform of the party was based upon the prevalent economic and political discontent. Farmers were overmortgaged, laborers were underpaid, and the poor were growing poorer, while the rich were daily growing richer. "The paramount issues," the new party declared, "are the abolition of usury, monopoly, and trusts, and we denounce the Republican and Democratic parties for creating and perpetuating these monstrous evils." ¹ McKee, National Conventions and Platforms, p. 251. In the meantime Henry George, whose Progress and Poverty had made a profound impression upon public thought, had become in 1886 a candidate for mayor of New York City, and polled the phenomenal total of 68,110 votes, while Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican candidate, received 60,435, and Abram S. Hewitt, the successful Democratic candidate, polled 90,552. The evidence of popular support which attended Henry George's brief political career was the prelude to a national effort which culminated in the formation of the United Labor party. Its platform was similar to that of the Union party, except that the single tax now made its appearance. This method contemplated the "taxation of land according to its value and not according to its area, to devote to common use and benefit those values which arise, not from the exertion of the individual, but from the growth of society," and the abolition of all taxes on industry and its products. But it was apparent from the similarity of their platforms and the geographical distribution of their candidates that the two labor parties were competing for the same vote. At a conference held in Chicago to effect a union, however, the Union Labor party insisted on the complete effacement of the other ticket and the single taxers refused to submit. In the election which followed, the Union Labor party received about 147,000 votes, largely from the South and West and evidently the old Greenback vote, while the United party polled almost no votes outside of Illinois and New York. Neither party survived the result of this election. In December, 1889, committees representing the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis to come to some agreement on political policies. Owing to the single tax predilection of the Knights, the two organizations were unable to enter into a close union, but they nevertheless did agree that "the legislative committees of both organizations [would] act in concert before Congress for the purpose of securing the enactment of laws in harmony with their demands." This coöperation was a forerunner of the People's party or, as it was commonly called, the Populist party, the largest third party that had taken the field since the Civil War. Throughout the West and the South political conditions now were feverish. Old party majorities were overturned, and a new type of Congressman invaded Washington. When the first national convention of the People's party met in Omaha on July 2, 1892, the outlook was bright. General Weaver was nominated for President and James G. Field of Virginia for Vice-President. The platform rehabilitated Greenbackism in cogent phrases, demanded government control of railroads and telegraph and telephone systems, the reclamation of land held by corporations, an income tax, the free coinage of silver and gold "at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one," and postal savings banks. In a series of resolutions which were not a part of the platform but were nevertheless "expressive of the sentiment of this convention," the party declared itself in sympathy "with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor"; it condemned "the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners"; and it opposed the Pinkerton system of capitalistic espionage as "a menace to our liberties." The party formally declared itself to be a "union of the labor forces of the United States," for "the interests of rural and city labor are the same; their enemies identical." These national movements prior to 1896 are not, however, an adequate index of the political strength of labor in partisan endeavor. Organized labor was more of a power in local and state elections, perhaps because in these cases its pressure was more direct, perhaps because it was unable to cope with the great national organization of the older parties. During these years of effort to gain a footing in the Federal Government, there are numerous examples of the success of the labor party in state elections. As early as 1872 the labor reformers nominated state tickets in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1875 they nominated Wendell Phillips for Governor of Massachusetts. In 1878, in coalition with the Greenbackers, they elected many state officers throughout the West. Ten years later, when the Union Labor party was at its height, labor candidates were successful in several municipalities. In 1888 labor tickets were nominated in many Western States, including Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Of these Kansas cast the largest labor vote, with nearly 36,000, and Missouri came next with 15,400. In the East, however, the showing of the party in state elections was far less impressive. In California the political labor movement achieved a singular prominence. In 1877 the labor situation in San Francisco became acute because of the prevalence of unemployment. Grumblings of dissatisfaction soon gave way to parades and informal meetings at which imported Chinese labor and the rich "nobs," the supposed dual cause of all the trouble, were denounced in lurid language. The agitation, however, was formless until the necessary leader appeared in Dennis Kearney, a native of Cork County, Ireland. For fourteen years he had been a sailor, had risen rapidly to first officer of a clipper ship, and then had settled in San Francisco as a drayman. He was temperate and industrious in his personal life, and possessed a clear eye, a penetrating voice, the vocabulary of one versed in the crude socialistic pamphlets of his day, and, in spite of certain domineering habits bred in the sailor, the winning graces of his nationality. Kearney appeared at meetings on the vacant lots known as the "sand lots," in front of the City Hall of San Francisco, and advised the discontented ones to "wrest the government from the hands of the rich and place it in those of the people." On September 12, 1877, he rallied a group of unemployed around him and organized the Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco. On the 5th of October, at a great public meeting, the Workingman's party of California was formed and Kearney was elected president. The platform adopted by the party proposed to place the government in the hands of the people, to get rid of the Chinese, to destroy the money power, to "provide decently for the poor and unfortunate, the weak and the helpless," and "to elect none but competent workingmen and their friends to any office whatever. . . . When we have 10,000 members we shall have the sympathy and support of 20,000 other workingmen. This party," concluded the pronouncement, "will exhaust all peaceable means of attaining its ends, but it will not be denied justice, when it has the power to enforce it. It will encourage no riot or outrage, but it will not volunteer to repress or put down or arrest or prosecute the hungry and impatient, who manifest their hatred of the Chinamen by a crusade against 'John,' or those who employ him. Let those who raise the storm by their selfishness, suppress it themselves. If they dare raise the devil, let them meet him face to face. We will not help them." In advocating these views, Kearney held meeting after meeting, each rhetorically more violent than the last, until on the 3d of November he was arrested. This martyrdom in the cause of labor increased his power, and when he was released he was drawn by his followers in triumph through the streets on one of his own drays. His language became more and more extreme. He bludgeoned the "thieving politicians" and the "bloodsucking capitalists," and he advocated "judicious hanging" and "discretionary shooting." The City Council passed an ordinance intended to gag him; the legislature enacted an extremely harsh riot act; a body of volunteers patrolled the streets of the city; a committee of safety was organized. On January 5, 1878, Kearney and a number of associates were indicted, arrested, and released on bail. When the trial jury acquitted Kearney, what may be called the terrorism of the movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent itself in violent adjectives. The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of San Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a majority of the members of the state constitutional convention which met in Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable triumph for a third party. The framing of a new constitution gave this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity to assail the evils which they declared infested the State. The instrument which they drafted bound the state legislature with numerous restrictions and made lobbying a felony; it reorganized the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon corporations, forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the State to corporations, and placed a state commission in charge of the railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics. Alas for these visions of reform! A few years after the adoption of this new constitution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft wrote: Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to achieve. The effect upon corporations disappointed its authors and supporters. Many of them were strong enough still to defy state power and evade state laws, in protecting their interests, and this they did without scruple. The relation of capital and labor is even more strained than before the constitution was adopted. Capital soon recovered from a temporary intimidation . . . Labor still uneasy was still subject to the inexorable law of supply and demand. Legislatures were still to be approached by agents . . . Chinese were still employed in digging and grading. The state board of railroad Commissioners was a useless expense, . . . being as wax in the hands of the companies it was set to watch. ¹ ¹ Works (vol. XXIV): History of California, vol. VII, p. 404. After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be discerned in labor politics a new departure, due primarily to the attitude of the American Federation of Labor in partisan matters, and secondarily to the rise of political socialism. A socialistic party deriving its support almost wholly from foreign-born workmen had appeared in a few of the large cities in 1877, but it was not until 1892 that a national party was organized, and not until after the collapse of Populism that it assumed some political importance. In August, 1892, a Socialist-Labor convention which was held in New York City nominated candidates for President and Vice-President and adopted a platform that contained, besides the familiar economic demands of socialism, the rather unusual suggestion that the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, and Senate of the United States be abolished and that an executive board be established "whose members are to be elected, and may at any time be recalled, by the House of Representatives, as the only legislative body, the States and municipalities to adopt corresponding amendments to their constitutions and statutes." Under the title of the Socialist-Labor party, this ticket polled 21,532 votes in 1892, and in 1896, 36,373 votes. In 1897 the inevitable split occurred in the Socialist ranks. Eugene V. Debs, the radical labor leader, who, as president of the American Railway Union, had directed the Pullman strike and had become a martyr to the radical cause through his imprisonment for violating the orders of a Federal Court, organized the Social-Democratic party. In 1900 Debs was nominated for President, and Job Harriman, representing the older wing, for Vice-President. The ticket polled 94,864 votes. The Socialist-Labor party nominated a ticket of their own which received only 33,432 votes. Eventually this party shrank to a mere remnant, while the Social Democratic party became generally known as the Socialist party. Debs became their candidate in three successive elections. In 1904 and 1908 his vote hovered around 400,000. In 1910 congressional and local elections spurred the Socialists to hope for a million votes in 1912 but they fell somewhat short of this mark. Debs received 901,873 votes, the largest number which a Socialist candidate has ever yet received. Benson, the presidential candidate in 1916, received 590,579 votes. ¹ ¹ The Socialist vote is stated differently by McKee, National Conventions and Platforms. The above figures, to 1912, are taken from Stanwood's History of the Presidency, and for 1912 and 1916 from the World Almanac. In the meantime, the influence of the Socialist labor vote in particular localities vastly increased. In 1910 Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor by a plurality of seven thousand, sent Victor Berger to Washington as the first Socialist Congressman, and elected labor-union members as five of the twelve Socialist councilmen, thus revealing the sympathy of the working class for the cause. On January 1, 1912, over three hundred towns and cities had one or more Socialist officers. The estimated Socialist vote of these localities was 1,500,000. The 1039 Socialist officers included 56 mayors, 205 aldermen and councilmen, and 148 school officers. This was not a sectional vote but represented New England and the far West, the oldest commonwealths and the newest, the North and the South, and cities filled with foreign workingmen as well as staid towns controlled by retired farmers and shopkeepers. When the United States entered the Great War, the Socialist party became a reservoir for all the unsavory disloyalties loosened by the shock of the great conflict. Pacifists and pro-Germans found a common refuge under its red banner. In the New York mayoralty elections in 1917 these Socialists cast nearly one-fourth of the votes, and in the Wisconsin senatorial election in 1918 Victor Berger, their standard-bearer, swept Milwaukee, carried seven counties, and polled over one hundred thousand votes. On the other hand, a large number of American Socialists, under the leadership of William English Walling and John Spargo, vigorously espoused the national cause and subordinated their economic and political theories to their loyalty. The Socialists have repeatedly attempted to make official inroads upon organized labor. They have the sympathy of the I. W. W., the remnant of the Knights of Labor, and the more radical trades unions, but from the American Federation of Labor they have met only rebuff. A number of state federations, especially in the Middle West, not a few city centrals, and some sixteen national unions, have officially approved of the Socialist programme, but the Federation has consistently refused such an endorsement. The political tactics assumed by the Federation discountenance a distinct labor party movement, as long as the old parties are willing to subserve the ends of the unions. This self-restraint does not mean that the Federation is not "in politics." On the contrary, it is constantly vigilant and aggressive and it engages every year in political maneuvers without, however, having a partisan organization of its own. At its annual conventions it has time and again urged local and state branches to scrutinize the records of legislative candidates and to see that only friends of union labor receive the union laborer's ballot. In 1897 it "firmly and unequivocally" favored "the independent use of the ballot by trade unionists and workmen united regardless of party, that we may elect men from our own ranks to write new laws and administer them along lines laid down in the legislative demands of the American Federation of Labor and at the same time secure an impartial judiciary that will not govern us by arbitrary injunctions of the courts, nor act as the pliant tool of corporate wealth." And in 1906 it determined, first, to defeat all candidates who are either hostile or indifferent to labor's demands; second, if neither party names such candidates, then to make independent labor nominations; third, in every instance to support "the men who have shown themselves to be friendly to labor." With great astuteness, perseverance, and alertness, the Federation has pursued this method to its uttermost possibilities. In Washington it has met with singular success, reaching a high-water mark in the first Wilson Administration, with the passage of the Clayton bill and the eight-hour railroad bill. After this action, a great New York daily lamented that "Congress is a subordinate branch of the American Federation of Labor . . . The unsleeping watchmen of organized labor know how intrepid most Congressmen are when threatened with the 'labor vote.' The American laborites don't have to send men to Congress as their British brethren do to the House of Commons. From the galleries they watch the proceedings. They are mighty in committee rooms. They reason with the recalcitrant. They fight opponents in their Congress districts. There are no abler or more potent politicians than the labor leaders out of Congress. Why should rulers like Mr. Gompers and Mr. Furuseth ¹ go to Congress? They are a Super-Congress." ¹ Andrew Furuseth, the president of the Seamen's Union and reputed author of the Seaman's Act of 1915. Many Congressmen have felt the retaliatory power of the Federation. Even such powerful leaders as Congressman Littlefield of Maine and Speaker Cannon were compelled to exert their utmost to overcome union opposition. The Federation has been active in seating union men in Congress. In 1908 there were six union members in the House; in 1910 there were ten; in 1912 there were seventeen. The Secretary of Labor himself holds a union card. Nor has the Federation shrunk from active participation in the presidential lists. It bitterly opposed President Roosevelt when he espoused the open shop in the Government Printing Office; and in 1908 it openly espoused the Democratic ticket. In thus maintaining a sort of grand partisan neutrality, the Federation not only holds in numerous instances the balance of power but it makes party fealty its slave and avoids the costly luxury of maintaining a separate national organization of its own. The all-seeing lobby which it maintains at Washington is a prototype of what one may discern in most state capitals when the legislature is in session. The legislative programmes adopted by the various state labor bodies are metamorphosed into demands, and well organized committees are present to coöperate with the labor members who sit in the legislature. The unions, through their steering committee, select with caution the members who are to introduce the labor bills and watch paternally over every stage in the progress of a measure. Most of this legislative output has been strictly protective of union interests. Labor, like all other interests that aim to use the power of government, has not been wholly altruistic in its motives, especially since in recent years it has found itself matched against such powerful organizations of employers as the Manufacturers' Association, the National Erectors' Association, and the Metal Trades Association. In fact, in nearly every important industry the employers have organized for defensive and offensive purposes. These organizations match committee with committee, lobby with lobby, add espionage to open warfare, and issue effective literature in behalf of their open shop propaganda. The voluminous labor codes of such great manufacturing communities as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, reflect a new and enlarged conception of the modern State. Labor has generally favored measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting where this extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, mines, factories, and other places of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and safety provisions are enforced. A workman's compensation law removes from the employee's mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the ægis of economic liberty, is no longer free from state vigilance. The time and method of paying wages are ordered by the State, and in certain industries the hours of labor are fixed by law. Women and children are the special protégés of this new State, and great care is taken that they shall be engaged only in employment suitable to their strength and under an environment that will not ruin their health. The growing social control of the individual is significant, for it is not only the immediate conditions of labor that have come under public surveillance. Where and how the workman lives is no longer a matter of indifference to the public, nor what sort of schooling his children get, what games they play, and what motion pictures they see. The city, in coöperation with the State, now provides nurses, dentists, oculists, and surgeons, as well as teachers for the children. This local paternalism increases yearly in its solicitude and receives the eager sanction of the labor members of city councils. The State has also set up elaborate machinery for observing all phases of the labor situation and for gathering statistics and other information that should be helpful in framing labor laws, and has also established state employment agencies and boards of conciliation and arbitration. This machinery of mediation is significant not because of what it has already accomplished but as evidence of the realization on the part of the State that labor disputes are not merely the concern of the two parties to the labor contract. Society has finally come to realize that, in the complex of the modern State, it also is vitally concerned, and, in despair at thousands of strikes every year, with their wastage and their aftermath of bitterness, it has attempted to interpose its good offices as mediator. The modern labor laws cannot be credited, however, to labor activity alone. The new social atmosphere has provided a congenial milieu for this vast extension of state functions. The philanthropist, the statistician, and the sociologist have become potent allies of the labor-legislator; and such non-labor organizations, as the American Association for Labor Legislation, have added their momentum to the movement. New ideals of social coöperation have been established, and new conceptions of the responsibilities of private ownership have been evolved. While labor organizations have succeeded rather readily in bending the legislative power to their wishes, the military arm of the executive and the judiciary which ultimately enforce the command of the State have been beyond their reach. To bend these branches of the government to its will, organized labor has fought a persistent and aggressive warfare. Decisions of the courts which do not sustain union contentions are received with great disfavor. The open shop decisions of the United States Supreme Court are characterized as unfair and partisan and are vigorously opposed in all the labor journals. It is not, however, until the sanction of public opinion eventually backs the attitude of the unions that the laws and their interpretation can conform entirely to the desires of labor. The chief grievance of organized labor against the courts is their use of the injunction to prevent boycotts and strikes. "Government by injunction" is the complaint of the unions and it is based upon the common, even reckless, use of a writ which was in origin and intent a high and rarely used prerogative of the Court of Chancery. What was in early times a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown against riotous assemblies and threatened lawlessness was invoked in 1868 by an English court as a remedy against industrial disturbances. ¹ Since the Civil War the American courts in rapidly increasing numbers have used this weapon, and the Damascus blade of equity has been transformed into a bludgeon in the hands even of magistrates of inferior courts. ¹ Springfield Spinning Company vs. Riley, L. R. 6 Eq. 551. The prime objection which labor urges against this use of the injunction is that it deprives the defendant of a jury trial when his liberty is at stake. The unions have always insisted that the law should be so modified that this right would accompany all injunctions growing out of labor disputes. Such a denatured injunction, however, would defeat the purpose of the writ; but the union leader maintains, on the other hand, that he is placed unfairly at a disadvantage, when an employer can command for his own aid in an industrial dispute the swift and sure arm of a law originally intended for a very different purpose. The imprisonment of Debs during the Pullman strike for disobeying a Federal injunction brought the issue vividly before the public; and the sentencing of Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison to prison terms for violating the Buck's Stove injunction produced new waves of popular protest. Occasional dissenting opinions by judges and the gradual conviction of lawyers and of society that some other tribunal than a court of equity or even a court of law would be more suitable for the settling of labor disputes is indicative of the change ultimately to be wrought in practice. The unions are also violently opposed to the use of military power by the State during strikes. Not only can the militia be called out to enforce the mandates of the State but whenever Federal interference is justified the United States troops may be sent to the scene of turmoil. After the period of great labor troubles culminating in the Pullman strike, many States reorganized their militia into national guards. The armories built for the accommodation of the guard were called by the unions "plutocracy's bastiles," and the mounted State constabulary organized in 1906 by Pennsylvania were at once dubbed "American Cossacks." Several States following the example of Pennsylvania have encountered the bitterest hostility on the part of the labor unions. Already opposition to the militia has proceeded so far that some unions have forbidden their members to perform militia service when called to do strike duty, and the military readjustments involved in the Great War have profoundly affected the relation of the State to organized labor. Following the signing of the armistice, a movement for the organization of an American Labor party patterned after the British Labour party gained rapid momentum, especially in New York and Chicago. A platform of fourteen points was formulated at a general conference of the leaders, and provisional organizations were perfected in a number of cities. What power this latest attempt to enlist labor in partisan politics will assume is problematical. It is obviously inspired by European experiences and promulgated by socialistic propaganda. It has not succeeded in invading the American Federation of Labor, which did not formally endorse the movement at its Annual Convention in 1919. Gompers, in an intimate and moving speech, told a group of labor leaders gathered in New York on December 9, 1918, that "the organization of a political party would simply mean the dividing of the activities and allegiance of the men and women of labor between two bodies, such as would often come in conflict." Under present conditions, it would appear that no Labor party could succeed in the United States without the coöperation of the American Federation of Labor. The relation between the American Federation of Labor and the socialistic and political labor movements, as well as the monopolistic eagerness of the socialists to absorb these activities, is clearly indicated in Gompers's narrative of his experiences as an American labor representative at the London Conference of 1918. The following paragraphs are significant: When the Inter-Allied Labor Conference opened in London, on September 17th, early in the morning, there were sent over to my room at the hotel cards which were intended to be the credential cards for our delegation to sign and hand in as our credentials. The card read something like this: "The undersigned is a duly accredited delegate to the Inter-Allied Socialist Conference to be held at London," etc., and giving the dates. I refused to sign my name, or permit my name to be put upon any card of that character. My associates were as indignant as I was and refused to sign any such credential. We went to the hall where the conference was to be held. There was a young lady at the door. When we made an effort to enter she asked for our cards. We said we had no cards to present. "Well," the answer came, "you cannot be admitted." We replied, "That may be true--we cannot be admitted--but we will not sign any such card. We have our credentials written out, signed, and sealed and will present them to any committee of the conference for scrutiny and recommendation, but we are not going to sign such a card." Mr. Charles Bowerman, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the British Trade Union Congress, at that moment emerged from the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the situation, and he persuaded the young lady to permit us to pass in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr. James Sexton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of Liverpool, arose and called the attention of the Conference to this situation, and declared that the American Federation of Labor delegates refused to sign any such document. He said it was not an Inter-Allied Socialist Conference, but an Inter-Allied Socialist and Labor Conference. Mr. Arthur Henderson, of the Labor Party, made an explanation something to this effect, if my memory serves me: "It is really regrettable that such an error should have been made. It was due to the fact that the old card of credentials which has been used in former conferences was sent to the printer, no one paying any attention to it, thinking it was all right." I want to call your attention to the significance of that explanation, that is, that the trade union movement of Great Britain was represented at these former conferences, but at this conference the importance of Labor was regarded as so insignificant that everybody took it for granted that it was perfectly all right to have the credential card read "Inter-Allied Socialist Conference" and with the omission of this more important term, "Labor." ¹ ¹ American Federationist, January, 1919, pp. 40-41. As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds something impressive, even majestic, in the rise of the fourth estate from a humble place to one of power in this democratic nation. In this rise of fortune the laborer's union has unquestionably been a moving force, perhaps even the leading cause. At least this homogeneous mass of workingmen, guided by self-developed leadership, has aroused society to safeguard more carefully the individual needs of all its parts. Labor has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like other elements of society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive; but it has also shown itself earnest and constructive. The conservative trades union, at the hour of this writing, stands as a bulwark between that amorphous, inefficient, irresponsible Socialism which has made Russia a lurid warning and Prussia a word of scorn, and that rational social ideal which is founded upon the conviction that society is ultimately an organic spiritual unity, the blending of a thousand diverse interests whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents create civilization and develop culture. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE While there is a vast amount of writing on the labor problem, there are very few works on the history of labor organizations in the United States. The main reliance for the earlier period, in the foregoing pages, has been the Documentary History of American Industrial Society, edited by John R. Commons, 10 vols. (1910). The History of Labour in the United States, 2 vols. (1918), which he published with associates, is the most convenient and complete compilation that has yet appeared and contains a large mass of historical material on the labor question. The following works are devoted to discussions of various phases of the history of American labor and industry: T. S. Adams and Helen L. Sumner, Labor Problems (1905). Contains several refreshing chapters on labor organizations. F. T. Carlton, The History and Problem of Organized Labor (1911). A succinct discussion of union problems. R. T. Ely, The Labor Movement in America (1886). Though one of the earliest American works on the subject, it remains indispensable. G. G. Groat, An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in America (1916). A useful and up-to-date compendium. R. F. Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States (1917). A suggestive study of the philosophy of unionism. J. R. Commons (Ed.), Trade Unionism and Labor Problems (1905). J. H. Hollander and G. E. Barnett (Eds.), Studies in American Trade Unionism (1905). These two volumes are collections of contemporary studies of many phases of organized labor by numerous scholars. They are not historical. The Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. XVII (1901) provides the most complete analysis of trade-union policies and also contains valuable historical summaries of many unions. G. E. McNeill (Ed.), The Labor Movement: the Problem of Today (1892). This collection contains historical sketches of the organizations of the greater labor groups and of the development of the more important issues espoused by them. For many years it was the most comprehensive historical work on American unionism, and it remains a necessary source of information to the student of trades union history. J. G. Brissenden, The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World (1913). An account of the origin of the I. W. W. J. G. Brooks, American Syndicalism: the I. W. W. (1913). John Mitchell, Organized Labor (1903). A suggestive exposition of the principles of Unionism by a distinguished labor leader. It contains only a limited amount of historical matter. T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (1889). A history of the Knights of Labor from a personal viewpoint. E. L. Bogart, The Economic History of the United States (rev. ed., 1918). A concise and clear account of our economic development. R. T. Ely, Evolution of Industrial Society (1903). Carroll D. Wright, The Industrial Evolution of the United States (1895). G. S. Callender, Selections from the Economic History of the United States (1909). A collection of readings. The brief introductory essays to each chapter give a succinct account of American industrial development to 1860. INDEX A Aberdeen (S. D.), I. W. W. in, 212. Adamson Law (eight-hour railroad law), 133 (note), 160, 164-166, 247. Agrarian Party, 224. Akron (O.), strike in rubber works, 206-207. Albany, trade unions in, 34. Albany Mechanical Society (1801), 22. Allegheny City, ten-hour controversy in cotton mills, 54. Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 126. Amalgamated Labor Union, 88. Amalgamated Wood Workers' Association, 109. Amboy (Ill.), Conductors' Union organized (1868), 150. American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, 101-102. American Association for Labor Legislation, 251. "American Cossacks", 254. American Federation of Labor, suggested at Terre Haute (1881), 88; established (1886), 89; growth, 89-90, organization, 90-93, 112; Gompers and, 94 et seq.; financial policy, 97; and Great War, 100 et seq.; and labor readjustment, 107; attitude toward socialism, 108, 111, 245, 256; tendency toward amalgamating allied trades, 109-110; and unskilled labor, 109; importance, 110-111; Mitchell and, 128; and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 133 (note); and Buck's Stove and Range Company boycott, 181; and Danbury Hatters' case, 184; and I. W. W., 194; and Lawrence Mill Workers, 203; and politics, 242, 245-246, 256; influences legislation, 246-252; and American Labor Party movement, 255-256. American Federationist, organ of American Federation of Labor, 92, 181, 195. American Labor Party, movement for forming, 255. America Newspaper Publishers Association, 169. American Railway Union, and strikes, 158, 159; Debs president of, 243. Anthracite Coal Strike (1902), 113, 129-130, 174; Commission cross-examines Mitchell, 130 (note). Anti-Boycott Association, 180. Anti-Monopolist Party, 233. Arbitration, 85-86; law providing for settlement of railway disputes (1888), 85; in Anthracite Coal Strike, 129-130; Board to deal with railway problems (1912), 146-150; Erdman Act (1898), 146, 162; Federal legislation (1883), 161-162; Newlands Law (1913), 162; Brotherhoods refuse (1916), 163-164. Arizona, "hobo" labor in, 190. Arkwright, Sir Richard, invents roller spinning machine, 7. Arnold, F. W., 154. Arthur, P. M., 141-143. Association of Longshoremen, 117. Aurora, Philadelphia newspaper, 23. B Baltimore, guilds before Revolution in, 21; tailors' strike (1795), 22; early unions in, 34; Baltimore and Ohio strikes, 57, 67; Labor Congress (1866), 73. Bancroft, H. H., quoted, 241-242. Bank, United States, as political issue, 27. Beecher, H. W., and eight-hour day, 71. Belgium, syndicalism in, 189; general strikes, 200. Bell, A. G., and the telephone, 64. Benson, A. L., presidential candidate (1916), 243-244. Bentham, Jeremy, Place and, 17. Berger, Victor, 244, 245. Berne (Switzerland), labor conference at, 105-106. Billings (Mont.), treatment of I. W. W. leaders in, 216. Bisbee (Ariz.), I. W. W. strikers in, 216. Bolshevists, Gompers's attitude toward, 108; and I. W. W., 218. Boston, early trade unions in, 34; strike benefits in, 39; coöperative movement, 46-47; strikes because of cost of living (1853), 57; eight-hour societies, 70; workingman's party, 227. Boston Labor Reform Association circulates Steward's pamphlet, 71. Boston Trades Union, 33. Bowerman, Charles, 257. Boycott, Captain, 177 (note). Boycott, 177 et seq.; used against convict labor, 37; union label as weapon, 184-186; court injunction to prevent, 252. Braidwood (Ill.), Mitchell at, 127-128. Brewer, Justice D. J., on strike violence, 174. Brewery workers and control of coopers, 118. Brisbane, Albert, 47. Brissenden, J. G., The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World, cited, 196 (note). Brook Farm experiment, 41. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, origin, 133; and American Federation of Labor, 133 (note); character, 134; supervision of members, 135-136; excludes firemen, 136; attitude toward nonmembers, 136-137; business policy, 137-138; activities, 138-140; organization, 140; and Firemen's Brotherhood, 154. Brotherhood of the Footboard, 133. Brotherhood of Trainmen, 156. Brush, C. F., and electric lighting, 64. Buck's Stove and Range Company of St. Louis, boycott case, 180-182, 254. Buffalo, machinists' strike (1880), 67-68; annual convention of Federation of Labor (1917), 101; railway strike (1877), 174; I. W. W. disclosures, 217. Burns, John, 123. Butler, General B. F., 232-233. Butte (Mont.), Western Federation of Miners organized at, 192. C California, effect of discovery of gold on cost of living, 57; "hobo" labor in, 190; political labor movement, 238-242; Workingman's party, 239; new constitution, 241. Cannon, J. G., 248. Carlyle, Thomas, 18; and British industrial conditions, 9; Emerson writes to, 41. Carter, W. S., 154-156. Cedar Rapids (Ia.), headquarters of Order of Railway Conductors, 150. Charleston Navy Yard, eight-hour day in (1842), 70. Chevalier, Michael, quoted, 37. Chicago, stockyards' strike (1880), 67; Haymarket riots, 68, 83-84; Railway strike (1877), 174; "floaters" winter in, 190; conferences organize I. W. W., 193-194; revolutionary branch of I. W. W. in, 196; I. W. W. offices raided, 217; Labor Party conference, 235; movement to form American Labor party, 255. Child labor, 28; in England, 9; Greeley and, 52-53; Paris peace treaty and, 107; State regulation, 250. Chinese denounced in California, 238, 239. Cigar-makers' International Union, Gompers and, 94. Cincinnati, becomes manufacturing town (1820), 26; early Unions in, 34; coöperative movement in, 45, 46; Railway strike (1877), 174; National Union party organized (1887), 233. Civil War, condition of the United States after, 63-64. Clark, E. E., 151. Clayton Act, 100, 184, 247. Cleveland, Grover, Message (1886), 85; and Pullman strike, 174. Cleveland, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers own building in, 140; Firemen's Magazine published in, 156; I. W. W. disclosures, 217. Clinton, De Witt, 23. Collective bargaining, trade unions and, 168-171. Colorado, miners' strikes, 174, 193; "hobo" labor in, 190; labor ticket (1888), 237. Columbia, puddlers' strike (1880), 67. Columbus, American Federation of Labor established (1886), 89; Order of Conductors organized (1868), 150. Combinations in restraint of trade, origin of doctrine, 16; in England, 17. Coming Nation, A. H. Simons editor of, 195. Commerce of Great Britain, 6. Commons, J.R., 29-30. Communistic colonies, Owen's attempts, 40-41; Brook Farm, 41. Comstock, Russell, 223. Confédération Général du Travail, 189. Congress, Homestead Act (1862), 50; establishes eight-hour day for public work, 71; Clayton bill (1914), 100, 184, 247; eight-hour railroad law, 133 (note), 160, 164-165, 166, 247; Wilson and, 164; and I. W. W., 216; American Federation of Labor, 247. Connecticut, delegates to the national cordwainers' convention (1836), 35; labor politics, 227, labor ticket (1872), 237. Conspiracy, legal doctrine in England, 15-16; strikers tried for, 23; trials in New York City, 23-24, 32; acting in unison considered, 28. Convict labor, 36; boycott used against, 37. Cooper, Peter, 231. Coöperative movement, 45-48; 58. Corn laws, 6. Cost of living, bread riots caused by high, 39; Mooney on (1850), 43-44; in 1853, 57; Stone's attempt to adjust wages to meet, 144. Council of National Defense, 102-103. Crompton, Samuel, and spinning machine, 7. D Daily Advertiser, New York, on strikes (1834), 172. Daily People, DeLeon editor of, 195. Danbury Hatters' Boycott, 180, 182-184. Daniels, Newell, 74. Davis, Judge David, 230. Debs, E. V., 154, 195, 243, 253. Debt, imprisonment for, 36. Declaration of Independence, 1. Defoe, Daniel, on domestic system of manufacture, 4-5. Delaware, delegates to national cordwainers' convention (1836), 35. DeLeon, Daniel, 195. Democratic party and ten-hour day, 53. Detroit, headquarters for Socialist factions of I. W. W., 196; I. W. W. offices raided, 217. Direct action, 200-201. Dover, (N. H.), mill girls' strike (1829), 55. Duncan, James, 124. E Edison, T. A., 64. Education, condition before 1840, 28; issue with labor, 36, public school improvement, 42; Paris peace treaty and, 107. Edward III, proclamation of 1349, 12. Eidlitz, O. M., 146. Eight-Hour League, 70; see also Hours of labor. Elevator Constructors' Union, 118 Eliot, C. W., and Gompers, 98. Ely, R. T., quoted, 21. Emerson, R. W., on communistic experiments, 41. Employers' organizations, 249. Erdman Act, 146, 162. Erie Railroad, firemen organize Brotherhood, 152. Erne, Lord, Irish landlord, 177 (note). Ettor, J. J., 204. Evans, G. H., 48-49. Evans, Samuel, 233. Evening Post, account of mass meeting in New York, 32; quoted, 33. Everett, Edward, 53. Everett (Wash.), and I. W. W., 212. F Factory Girls' Association (Lowell), 55. Factory inspection, Paris peace treaty and, 107; as political issue, 231; provided by law, 249-250. Farmers' Alliance, 233; and Knights of Labor at St. Louis, 235. Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, 89. Female Industry Association, 56. Female Labor Reform Association, 55. Field, J. G., 236. Finance, demand for capital after Civil War, 64-65; reform as a political issue, 231; People's party platform, 236; see also Panics, Taxation. Firemen's Magazine, 155, 156. "Five Stars," see Knights of Labor. Flynn, E. G., 208. Force, Peter, 24. Foster, F. K., The Labor Movement, the Problem of Today, quoted, 75-76. Fox, Martin, 116. France, syndicalism in, 188; general strikes, 200. Free Enquirer, 222. Friendly Societies, 168. Furuseth, Andrew, 247. G Garretson, A. B., 151, 152. General Trades' Union of New York City, 31. George, Henry, 234; Evans precursor of, 48. Glassblowers' Union, 124. Goldfield (Nev.), I. W. W. at, 202. Goldman, Emma, on syndicalism, 198; on general strikes, 199. Gompers, Samuel, President of American Federation of Labor, 94 et seq.; early life, 94; national lobbyist for Federation, 99, 247; organizes American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, 101; on Council of Defense, 102; heads American labor mission to Europe (1917), 104-105; and Berne labor conference, 105-106; contribution to Paris treaty of peace, 106-107; and Socialism, 107-108; personal characteristics, 108; sentenced to imprisonment, 182, 254; birthday occasion of gift to Danbury union, 184; on American labor party, 255; experience at London Conference (1918), 256-258. Government control of public utilities, People's party demands, 236. Government operation of railroads, Brotherhoods' plan for (1919), 167. Government ownership, National Labor party on, 230 (note). Government Printing Office, Roosevelt espouses open shop in, 248. Grangers, help organize National Union party, 233; join Workingman's party in California, 240. Granite City (Ill.), early morning strikes in steel mills, 210-211. Granite Cutters' National Union, 124. Gray's Harbor (Wash.), I. W. W. in, 212. Great Britain, American institutions modeled after those of, 1-2; survey of industrial system, 2 et seq.; ten-hour law in, 53; British Trades Union as model for American Federation, 88; labor leaders in, 123; labor compared with that in America, 124. Great War, American Federation of Labor and, 100 et seq.; and railroads, 166-167; I. W. W. and, 215; and Socialist party, 244-245. Greeley, Horace, and ten-hour bill, 52; on child labor law, 53; and eight-hour day, 71. Green Point (L. I.), potters' strike (1880), 67. Greenback party, 68, 231, 237. Guild system, 3-4, 13. H Hamond, Edward, on I. W. W., 198. Hardie, Keir, 123. Hargreaves, James, invents spinning-jenny, 7. Harriman, Job, 243. Hayes, Dennis, 124-125. Hayes, R. B., proclamation, 67. Haywood, W. D., 195, 197, 202; quoted, 199. Henderson, Arthur, 257. Henderson, John, 123. Herald, New York, quoted, 56. Hewitt, A. S., 234. Highland Park (Ill.), Home for Disabled Railroad Men, 139. Hines, W. D., Director-General of Railroads, 167. Homestead Act (1862), 50. Homestead strike (1892), 126, 174. Homesteaders, 233. Hoqiam (Wash.), sabotage in, 212. Hours of labor, long hours, 28, 44; ten-hour day, 30-31, 32, 34, 35, 44, 50-54, 160; first ten-hour law (1847), 52; as issue, 69-70; eight-hour day, 70-72, 74, 129, 152; Paris peace treaty and eight-hour day, 106; eight-hour railroad law, 133 (note), 160, 164-166, 247; eight-hour law as political issue, 231; State regulation, 250. Housing conditions about 1840, 27. Hume, Joseph, 17-18. I I. W. W., see Industrial Workers of the World. Idaho, miners' strike, 174; "hobo" labor in, 190; violence in, 193; and I. W. W., 216. Illinois, strikes, 66, 67; eight-hour law (1867), 71; I. W. W. and draft in, 216; United Labor party in, 235; labor code, 249. Illinois Central Railroad, conductors organize union, 150. Immigration, character of immigrants, 26; adds to armies of labor, 69; I. W. W. and, 191; People's party on, 236. Indiana, strikes, 66, 67; shoemakers' strike (1880), 68; labor ticket (1888), 237. Indianapolis, McNamara trial at, 175. Industrial Commission, United States, 152; report quoted, 168; on union restriction of output, 186. Industrial Revolution, 26. Industrial Workers of the World, American Alliance for Labor and Democracy as an anecdote for, 101; and American Federation of Labor, 109; history of movement, 188 et seq.; factions, 196; and direct action, 200-201; and Socialist party, 245. Industry, centralization of, 87-88. "Infidel" party, 223, 224. Inspection, see Factory inspection. Insurance, Locomotive Engineers' Mutual Life and Accident Insurance Association, 138-139; Order of Railway Conductors, 150; Brotherhood of Trainmen, 160-161. Inter-Allied Labor Conference, London (1918), 256-258. International Association of Machinists, 125. International Association of Steam, Hot Water and Power Pipe Fitters and Helpers, 119. International Firemen's Union, 152-153. International Typographical Union of North America, 60, 126, 169. Interstate commerce, regulation as political issue, 231. Interstate Commerce Commission, and wage increases, 145; Clark on, 151; Wilson asks for reorganization of, 164. Ipswich (Mass.), meeting against I. W. W., 211. Iron Molders' Union of North America, 60, 169. Italy, syndicalism in, 189; general strikes, 200. J Jackson, Andrew, and mechanics, 27. Jay, John, on wages (1784), 21. Jenkins, Judge J. G., of United States Circuit Court, on strike violence, 174. Johnstown, puddlers' strike (1880), 67. Journeymen, Stone Cutters' Association of North America, 60. Judson, F. K., 146. K Kansas, I. W. W. and draft, 216; labor ticket (1888), 237. Kay, John, invents flying shuttle, 7. Kearney, Dennis, 238. Keefe, D. J., 126-127. Kidd, Thomas, 125. Knapp, Judge, of United States Commerce Court, 146. Knights of Industry, 88. Knights of Labor, 72; history of, 76-85; contrasted to American Federation of Labor, 90; Mitchell and, 127, 128; and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 133 (note); help organize National Union party, 233; and Farmers' Alliance at St. Louis, 235; and Socialist party, 245. "Knights of St. Crispin," 72, 74-76. L Labor, organizations in eighteenth century, 14-15; organizations in American before Revolution, 21; and politics, 68, 74, 220 et seq.; relations with capital, 69; number of wage-earners in United States (1860-1890), 69; Congress at Baltimore (1866), 73; Bureau of, established (1884), 85; and corporations, 87; and Paris peace treaty, 106-107; leaders, 121-123; Department of, and Brotherhoods, 163; "floaters," 189-190; special report of United States Commissioners of (1905), 193; contract labor as political issue, 231; legislation, 247-252; see also Hours of labor; and the courts, 252-254; bibliography, 261; see also Child labor, Convict labor, Hours of labor, Strikes, Trade unions, Wages. Labor Reform League, 51. Labor Reform party, 74, 229-230. Labour Party in England, 18. Land, Evans and, 48-50; Homestead Act (1862), 50; forfeiture of grants as political issue, 231. Lawrence (Mass.), unemployment (1857), 62; strike (1912), 202-206. Lee. W. G., 160. Lima (N. Y.), Clark at, 151. Little Falls (N. Y.), strike in textile mills (1912), 206. Littlefield, Congressman from Maine, 247-248. Locomotive Engineers' Journal, 136, 139. Locomotive Engineers' Mutual Life and Accident Insurance Association, 138-139. Loeb, Daniel, alias Daniel DeLeon, 195. London, Inter-Allied Labor Conference (1918), 256-258. London Corresponding Society, 17. Los Angeles, dynamiting of Times building, 175. Lowell (Mass.), condition of women factory workers (1846), 44-45; women strike in (1836), 55. Lowell Female Industrial Reform and Mutual Aid Society, 55. Lynch, J. M., 126. M McAdoo, W. G., 166. McCulloch, J. R., 18. MacDonald, Ramsey, 123. Machinists' Union, 118. McKee, National Conventions and Platforms, cited, 233 (note), 244 (note). McKees Rocks (Penn.), I. W. W. at, 202. McMaster, J. B., quoted, 26. McNamara, James, 175. McNamara, J. J., 175. Maine, labor politics, 227, labor party (1878), 232. Mann, Horace, 42. Manufacturers' Association, 249. Manufacturing, guild system replaced by domestic, 4; introduction of machinery, 7-10; in United States, 24-26. Martineau, Harriet, cited, 35-36. Marx, Karl, 9; follower addresses meeting in New York, 47. Maryland, class distinctions, 20; strikes, 66. Massachusetts, factories in 1820, 25; first labor investigation, 51; women factory workers, 56; Bureau of Labor and collective bargaining, 169-170; labor politics, 227; labor party (1878), 232; labor code, 249. Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations, 29. Menlo Park, (N. J.), electric car in, 64. Mercantile system, 5-6. Metal Polishers' Union and Buck's Stove and Range case, 180. Metal Trades Association, 249. Mexican Central Railway, Garretson on, 152. Michigan, "hobo" labor in, 190; labor ticket (1888), 237. Militia, use during strikes, 37, 244-245. Mill, James, Place and, 17. Milwaukee, Knights of St. Crispin in, 74; and Socialism, 244, 245. Minnesota, "hobo" labor in, 190; labor ticket (1888), 237. Missouri, strikes, 66; eight-hour law (1867), 71; labor ticket (1888), 237. Mitchell, John, president of United Mine workers, 113, 114, 128-129; his life and character, 127-128; and Anthracite Coal Strike, 129-130; quoted, 131-132; on compulsory membership in unions, 170; on collective bargaining, 170; sentenced to imprisonment, 182, 254. Montana, "hobo" labor in, 190; violence in, 193; and I. W. W., 216. Mooney, Thomas, Nine Years in America (1850), quoted, 43-44. Moore, Ely, 31. Morrison, Frank, 182, 254. Morrissey, P. H., 146, 148, 158-160. N National Civic Federation, 152. National Convention of Journeymen Printers (1850), 60. National Erectors' Association, 249. National Labor party, convention, 230 (note); see also Labor Reform party. National Labor Union, 73-74, 229. National Metal Trade Association, 125. National Protective Association, 133. National Trade Association of Hat Finishers, 60. National Trades Union, 34. National Typographical Union, 60. National Union party, 233. Navigation Laws, 6, 10. Nebraska, labor ticket (1888), 237. Nevada, and I. W. W., 216. New Brunswick, union in, 34. New England, class distinctions, 20; manufacture in, 25; women in textile mills, 55; cotton weavers' strike (1880), 67; labor politics, 225-227. New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Workingmen, 225. New England Protective Union, 48. New England Workingmen's Association, 46, 51. New Hampshire, first ten-hour law, 52. New Jersey, manufacturing in, 25; delegates to national cordwainers' convention (1836), 35; ten-hour law (1851), 54; stablemen's strike (1880), 67; labor party, 232. New York (State), delegates to national cordwainers' convention (1836), 35; communistic colonies, 41; cotton weavers' strike (1880), 67; eight-hour law (1867), 71; boycotts, 178; labor party (1878), 232; United Labor party in, 235; labor code, 249. New York Boycotter quoted, 179. New York Bureau of Statistics and Labor, on boycotts, 178. New York Central Railroad, Arthur as engineer on, 141. New York City, early labor organizations, 21, 22; cordwainers' strike (1809), 23-24; growth, 25; strikes (1833), 31; General Trades' Union organized, 31; tailors' strike (1836), 32; union in, 34; boycott of convict labor, 37; sabotage in (1835), 38; strike benefits, 39; coöperative movement, 47-48; women's organizations (1825), 55; Female Industry Association organized (1845), 56; strikes (1853), 57; national meeting of carpet-weavers (1846), 60; demonstration in 1857, 61-62; unemployment, 62; ribbon weaver' strike (1880), 67; stablemen's strike (1880), 67; tailors' strike (1880), 68; Third Avenue Railway strike (1886), 83; Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers expels members (1905), 138 (note); garment makers' strike (1915), 169; bakers strike (1741), 172; Mrs. Grey boycotted, 178-179; "floaters" winter in, 190; "army of the unemployed" (1913-1914), 209; labor politics, 222; election (1886), 234; Socialist-Labor convention (1892), 242; movement to form American Labor party, 255. New York Masons Society (1807), 22. New York Protective Union, 48. New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights (1807), 22. New York Typographical Society, 24. Newark (N. J.), union in, 34. Newlands Law, 162. Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, see Knights of Labor. Northern Pacific Railroad, Clark on, 151. Norway, syndicalism in, 189. O O'Connell, James, 125. O'Conor, Charles, of New York, 230. Ohio, communistic colonies in, 41; ten-hour law (1852), 54; strikes, 66, 67; in election of 1916, 166; labor ticket (1888), 237. Oklahoma, I. W. W. and draft, 216. Omaha, stockyards strike (1880), 67; People's party convention (1892), 236. Oneonta (N. Y.), Brotherhood of the Trainmen organized at (1883), 156. Orange (N. J.), Hatters' Union victory in, 182. Order of Railway Conductors, 150-152. Oregon, "hobo" labor in, 190; and I. W. W., 216. Original Working Man's party, 224. Osceola (Ia.), Garretson born in, 151. Oshkosh (Wis.), Kidd arrested in, 25. Owen, Robert, Place and, 17; in America, 40-41, 58. Owens, R. D., 222, 225. P Panics (1837), 34, 35, 40, 50-51; (1857), 61-62; (1873-1874), 66; (1893), 158. Paris Peace Conference, Commission on International Labor Legislation, 105; Gompers and the treaty, 106-107. Parker, Joel, Governor of New Jersey, 230. Paterson (N. J.), ribbon weavers' strike (1880), 67; silk mills strike (1913), 207-209. Pennsylvania, communistic colonies in, 41; ten-hour law, 53; child labor law, 53; coal miners (1873), 66; strikes, 67; labor party (1878), 232; labor ticket (1872), 237; labor code, 249; mounted constabulary, 254. Pennsylvania Railroad, Brotherhood and, 141. People's Council, 101. People's party, 235, 236; see also Populist party. Philadelphia, early labor organizations, 21, 22; weaving center, 26; first Trades' Union in, 29; Trades' Union of the City and County of, 30; number of union members (1834), 34; strike (1835), 37; sabotage in, 38; strike benefits, 39; coöperative movement, 45-46, 47; strikes, 57; unemployment (1857), 62; ribbon weavers' strike (1880), 67; Knights of Labor in, 81; cordwainers (1806), 171; cordwainers' strike (1792), 172; hatters' union victory, 182; Lawrence strikers start for, 204; Workingman's party, 220-221; workingmen's political clubs, 221-222. Phillips, Wendell, and ten-hour movement, 53; and eight-hour day, 71; nominated Governor of Massachusetts, 237. Pinkerton detectives opposed by People's party, 236. Pittsburgh, becomes manufacturing town, 26; union in, 34; strikes, 57; riots, 67; Federation of Organized Trades established (1881), 89; railway strikes (1877), 174. Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, Brotherhood and, 136; Place, Francis, 17, 18. Plumb plan of railroad operations, see Government operation of Railroads. Poindexter, Miles, Senator, and I. W. W., 216. Politics, Labor and, 68, 74, 220 et seq.. Populist party, 235, 242; see also People's party. Port Jervis (N. Y.), Firemen's Brotherhood organized at, 152. Portland (Ore.), I. W. W. at, 202. Postal savings banks, advocated by People's party, 236. Powderly, T. V., Grand Master of Knights of Labor, 79-80, 84. Prison reform, 42. Progressive party, 232. Progressive Labor party,233. Pullman strike, 172, 174, 195, 243, 253. Q Quinlan, Patrick, 208. R Railway Brotherhoods, 133 et seq. Railway Conductor, The, 150-151. Reading, railway strike (1877), 174. Red Bank (N. J.), communistic experiment at, 41. Referendum, National Labor party on, 230 (note). Revolutionary War, new epoch for labor begins with, 21. Rhode Island, ten-hour law (1853), 54; labor politics, 227. Ripley, George, and Brook Farm experiment, 41. Rock Island Railroad, Stone on, 143-144. Roosevelt, Theodore, and Gompers, 98, 99; intervention in coal miners' strike, 129, 130; and Clark, 151; and Sargent, 154; defeated as mayor of New York City, 234; Federation of Labor opposes, 248. Ruskin, John, and labor conditions, 9. Russia, general strikes, 200. S Sabotage, 38, 201 et seq., 211. Sacramento (Cal.), I. W. W. trials (1919), 217; Workingman's party convention (1878), 240. St. Louis, union in, 34; Knights of Labor in, 82, 83; meeting of Knights of Labor and Farmers' Alliance, 235. St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union, 181. San Diego, I. W. W. in, 213-215. San Francisco, stablemen's strike (1880), 67; "floaters" winter in, 190; labor situation (1877), 238; Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of, 239. Sargent, F. P., 154. Scandinavia, general strikes in, 200. Schaffer, Theodore, 126. Schenectady, union in, 34. Scranton (Penn.), Powderly at, 79. Seaman's Act (1915), 247 (note). Seamen's Union, 117. Sexton, James, 257. Shaw, Albert, 146. Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, opinion in Commonwealth vs. Hunt, 60-61. Sherman Anti-Trust Law, Gompers and, 99; and boycott, 183. Silver, free coinage, 236. Simons, A. M., 195. Skidmore, Thomas, 224; The Rights of Man to Property . . ., 222. Smith, Adam, 10, 18; The Wealth of Nations, 1. Smith, Sidney, quoted, 24-25. Snowden, Phillip, 123. Social Democratic party, 243. Socialism, synonym of destruction, 62; organized labor and, 245, 258. Socialist Labor party, 196, 243. Socialist party, 196; Social Democratic party becomes known as, 243; in Milwaukee, 244; progress (1912), 244; and Great War, 244-245. Socialist American Labor Union, 194. Sorel, Georges, The Socialist Future of the Trade Unions, 188-189; Reflections Upon Violence, 189. Spain, syndicalism in, 189. Spargo, John, 245; Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism, 201. Spokane, I. W. W. in, 212. Springfield Republican, on labor party, 226-227. Stanwood, History of the Presidency, cited, 244 (note). State Guardianship Plan, 225. Statute of Laborers (1562), 12. Stephens, U. S., founder of Knights of Labor, 76-77, 78, 79. Steunenberg, Frank, Governor of Idaho, murdered, 193. Steward, Ira, and eight-hour day, 70-71; A Reduction of Hours and Increase of Wages, 71. Stone, W. S., 143-145, 149-150. Strasser, Adolph, testimony before Senate Committee (1883), 120-121. Strauss, O. S., 146. Streeter, A. J., 233. Strikes, weapon of self-defense, 14; tailors' strike in Baltimore (1795), 22; cordwainers in Philadelphia (1805), 22-23; cordwainers in New York City (1809), 23; first general building strike (1827), 30; first general strike in America (1835), 30-31; (1834-1837), 32; issues not to be settled by, 36; use of militia, 37, 254-255; sabotage, 38, 201 et seq.; benefits, 39; Boston tailors (1850), 46-47; New York tailors, 47-48; Dover mill girls (1829), 55; Lowell womens factory workers (1836), 55; in 1853, 57; Baltimore and Ohio, 57, 67, 133; become part of economic routine, 66; increase in number and importance, 66-68; in 1880, 67-68; of 1886, 68, 82-84; Anthracite Coal Strike, 113, 129-130, 174; O'Connell leads, 125; New York City railway (1905), 138 (note); railroad, 141, 142, 145, 153, 158, 174; Brotherhood threatens (1916), 163, 165; New York City garment makers, 169; history in United States, 171-173; strike statistics of United States Bureau of Labor, 172, 173; violence, 174-176; Lawrence mill strike (1912), 202-206; Little Falls textile strike, 206; Akron rubber works, 206-207; Granite City (Ill.), steel mills, 210-211; court prevention, 252-253. Supreme Court, Danbury Hatters' case, 183; open shop decision, 252. "Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun," 72. Syndicalism, in Europe, 188; I. W. W. and, 198. T Taft, W. H., vetoes exemption bill for Anti-Trust Law, 99. Tammany Hall, 32. Tannenbaum, Frank, 209-210. Tariff, demand for protective, 27. Tax Reformers, 233. Taxation, single tax, 234, 235; income tax, 231, 236. Terre Haute (Ind.), convention (1881), 88-89. Texas, I. W. W. and draft, 216. Thomas, C. S., Senator, report on I. W. W., 216. Times, Los Angeles, dynamiting of building, 175. Toledo, (O.), conference of Labor Reform and Greenback parties, 231. Trade unions, beginnings, 29-39; temporary eclipse, 40; new species in the early fifties, 58-59; organization of special trades, 60; organization, 112; conventions, 112-113; local unions, 114-116; characterization of different trades, 116-117; disputes as to authority, 117-118; adjustment to changing conditions, 117-118; advantages of amalgamation, 119; and labor leaders, 121 et seq.; purpose, 168; and collective bargaining, 168-171; question of monopoly, 170-171; and strikes, 173-177; local autonomy, 177; union label, 184-186; restriction of output, 186-187; oppose use of military, 254; bibliography, 262. Trades' Union of the City and County of Philadelphia, 30. Transportation, demand for better, 27. Trautmann, W. E., 195; quoted, 198. Troy (N. Y.), union in, 34. Tulsa (Okla.), treatment of I. W. W. in, 216. U Unemployment, in 1857, 61-62; in 1873-1874, 66; "floaters," 190; among immigrants, 191; in San Francisco (1877), 238. Union Labor party, 233, 237; see also National Union Labor party. Union of Longshoremen, Marine and Transport Workers, 126. United Association of Journeymen Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Steam Fitters and Steam Fitters' Helpers, 119. United Brotherhood of Carpenters, 109. United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, 110. United Hatters of North America, 60. United Labor party, 233, 234. United Mine Workers, 112, 117, 128-129, 177, 181. V Van Buren, Martin, executive order for ten-hour day, 51. Van Hise, C. R., 146. Vermont, labor politics, 227. Virginia, class distinction in, 20. W Wages, beginning of controversy, 11-12; in 1784, 21; result of tailors' strike, 22; rise of, 22; in 1840, 28; carpenters', 31; strikes to raise, 36; Mooney on (1850), 43; issue, 69-70; Paris peace treaty and, 106; United Mine Workers and, 129; Arthur and engineers', 142; Stone and, 144; Eastern engineers demand standardization of, 145; Garretson and, 152; brakemen's, 157; Wilkins and, 158; Adamson Law and, 166; further increase for railroad employees, 167; Trade unions and, 168-169; State regulation, 250. Walling, W. E., 245. Washington (State), "hobo" labor in, 190, and I. W. W., 216. Washington, (D. C.), union in, 34; Knights of Labor, 84; headquarters of American Federation of Labor in, 97. Weaver, General J. B., 232, 236. Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, History of Trade Unionism, 14. Weed, Thurlow, 24. West Roxbury (Mass.), Brook Farm experiment at, 41. Western Federation of Miners, 174, 189, 192, 194. Whig party and ten-hour day, 53. Wilkinson, S. E., 157. Willard, Daniel, 146, 149. Wilson, Woodrow, quoted, 72; and Clayton Act, 100; and Garretson, 152; and threatened strike of Brotherhoods (1916), 163-164; and eight-hour railroad law, 164-166. Wisconsin, communistic experiment in, 41; eight-hour law for women and children (1867), 71; labor ticket (1888), 237; Socialist party (1918), 245. Women, wages in 1840, 28; "new woman" movement, 43; conditions of labor, 44-45; in factories, 54-55; organizations, 55-56; Paris peace treaty and equal pay for, 107; State regulation of labor, 250. Wood Workers in shipbuilding industry, 110. Wood-Workers International Union, 125. Wooden Box Makers, 110. "Woodstock meetings," 226. Working Man's Advocate, The, 223, 225. Working Man's Gazette, 226. Workingman's party, 220-221. Workingman's party of California, 239, 240. Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco, 239. Workingmen's compensation, 250. Wright, C. D., report quoted, 187. Wright, Frances, 222, 225. Y Youngson, A. B., 143. Youngstown (O.), I. W. W. at, 202. The Chronicles of America Series The Red Man's Continent by Ellsworth Huntington The Spanish Conquerors by Irving Berdine Richman Elizabethan Sea-Dogs by William Charles Henry Wood The Crusaders of New France by William Bennett Munro Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnson The Fathers of New England by Charles McLean Andrews Dutch and English on the Hudson by Maud Wilder Goodwin The Quaker Colonies by Sydney George Fisher Colonial Folkways by Charles McLean Andrews The Conquest of New France by George McKinnon Wrong The Eve of the Revolution by Carl Lotus Becker Washington and His Comrades in Arms by George McKinnon Wrong The Fathers of the Constitution by Max Farrand Washington and His Colleagues by Henry Jones Ford Jefferson and his Colleagues by Allen Johnson John Marshall and the Constitution by Edward Samuel Corwin The Fight for a Free Sea by Ralph Delahaye Paine Pioneers of the Old Southwest by Constance Lindsay Skinner The Old Northwest by Frederic Austin Ogg The Reign of Andrew Jackson by Frederic Austin Ogg The Paths of Inland Commerce by Archer Butler Hulbert Adventurers of Oregon by Constance Lindsay Skinner The Spanish Borderlands by Herbert E. Bolton Texas and the Mexican War by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson The Forty-Niners by Stewart Edward White The Passing of the Frontier by Emerson Hough The Cotton Kingdom by William E. Dodd The Anti-Slavery Crusade by Jesse Macy Abraham Lincoln and the Union by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson The Day of the Confederacy by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Captains of the Civil War by William Charles Henry Wood The Sequel of Appomattox by Walter Lynwood Fleming The American Spirit in Education by Edwin E. Slosson The American Spirit in Literature by Bliss Perry Our Foreigners by Samuel Peter Orth The Old Merchant Marine by Ralph Delahaye Paine The Age of Invention by Holland Thompson The Railroad Builders by John Moody The Age of Big Business by Burton Jesse Hendrick The Armies of Labor by Samuel Peter Orth The Masters of Capital by John Moody The New South by Holland Thompson The Boss and the Machine by Samuel Peter Orth The Cleveland Era by Henry Jones Ford The Agrarian Crusade by Solon Justus Buck The Path of Empire by Carl Russell Fish Theodore Roosevelt and His Times by Harold Howland Woodrow Wilson and the World War by Charles Seymour The Canadian Dominion by Oscar D. Skelton The Hispanic Nations of the New World by William R. Shepherd Transcriber's Note This e-book is a direct transcription of the Textbook Edition of The Armies of Labor by Samuel P. Orth. There were three instances where changes were made to correct an error: one in the bibliography, one in the index, and one on page 231. Also, footnotes were changed in two instances due to the way we transcribe footnotes. There were some inconsistencies in hyphenating words, and these posed dilemmas in deciding how to transcribe a few words in the text. Those decisions appear below with the emendations to the text. Page 94: The phrase, "the son of a cigar-maker" hyphenated cigar-maker for spacing between two lines. We could transcribe the word two ways. There are multiple uses of "cigar-maker" (see Page 113, Page 116, and Page 118 for a few examples). There is one lone usage of "cigarmaker" on Page 30. Since usage in this book tended toward the hyphen, cigar-maker on page 94 was transcribed with the hyphen. Page 136 and Page 137: Non-union is broken into two lines by a hyphen in two places in the same paragraph. We could transcribe the word two ways. The hyphen was employed on Page 127, but nonunion was used on Page 24 and Page 178. By a vote of 2-1, nonunion prevailed. Page 185: Trade-mark was split between two lines and hyphenated for spacing, thus giving the transcriber a choice. Only one other usage of the word was found in the text: trade-mark was hyphenated on Page 186. We therefore used the hyphen on Page 185 and transcribed the word "trade-mark." Page 243: On page 243 the book was inconsistent by using a hyphen in the "Social-Democratic party," only to omit the hyphen a few sentences later, on the same page. The hyphen was also not used in the index. Here, the inconsistency was retained. Page 196: In transcribing a book, we place footnotes after the paragraph where the footnote belongs. The paragraph beginning on page 195 and ending on page 196, contains 2 footnotes. In the book, ¹ appears on page 195 and ² appears on page 196, but both footnotes must be placed after the paragraph on page 196 due to the way that we transcribe the book. Therefore, footnote 1 on page 195 in the paper book is ¹ on page 196 of the e-book; and footnote 1 of page 196 in the paper book is ² on page 196 in the e-book. The same changes were made to the footnotes on Page 96 and Page 97. The paragraph beginning on page 96 and ending on page 97 had a footnote, and a second paragraph on page 97 had a footnote. In the book, ¹ appears on page 96 and ² appears on page 97, but both footnotes must be placed on page 97 due to the way that we transcribe the book. We changed the latter footnote on page 97 to ² to reduce confusion. The paper book abbreviates the Wobblies as I. W. W., which could cause the text formatter to break up the letters over two lines. One solution to overcome the text formatter is to write "I.W.W.", but the cramped phrase reads awkwardly. Modern history books use "IWW". I used the convention adopted by the paper book and hope that the reader is not too inconvenienced by the possible break of I. W. W. across two lines. Page 231: Changed "cooperation" to "coöperation" because every other spelling of that word and derivations had an oomlat. There were thirty-three occurrences of cöperation or coöperate or coöperate and even coördinate. The six occurrences of "coop" were either the name Cooper or the profession. My guess is that the publisher left out the oomlat here by mistake when hyphenating the word into two lines for spacing. Page 262: Every other item in the Bibliography has the date of the book in parenthesis with a period after the right parenthesis when the period is used. I have changed (1889.) after Terence Powderly's book to (1889). Page 270: Insert a comma in the index after "Industrial Workers of the World" and before "American Alliance . . .". 
30731	----	The earth is moving, the universe is working, all the laws of creation are working toward justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher ideal, toward a time when men will be brothers the world over. Industrial Conspiracies By CLARENCE S. DARROW Noted Lawyer, Philosopher, Author and Humanitarian =Price 10c= The earth is moving, the universe is working, all the laws of creation are working toward justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher ideal, toward a time when men will be brothers the world over. Industrial Conspiracies BY CLARENCE S. DARROW Noted Lawyer, Philosopher, Author and Humanitarian Lecture delivered in Heilig Theatre, Portland, Oregon, September 10, 1912. Stenographically reported and published by permission of the author. Published by Turner, Newman and Knispel, Address Box 701 Portland, Ore. Single copies of this lecture may be had by sending 10 cents to publishers, 100 copies $6.00, $50.00 per thousand. Orders must be accompanied by cash or money order. Postage will be prepaid. Make checks payable to Otto Newman, Publisher. Box 701, Portland, Oregon. =ALL RIGHTS RESERVED= Publisher's Note.--This address was delivered shortly after Mr. Darrow's triumphant acquittal on a charge growing out of his defense of the McNamaras at Los Angeles, California. The man, the subject and the occasion makes it one of the greatest speeches of our time. It is the hope of the publishers that this message of Mr. Darrow's may reach the millions of men, women and youth of our country, that they may see the labor problem plainer and that they may receive hope and inspiration in their efforts to make a better and juster world. PAUL TURNER, OTTO NEWMAN, JULIUS KNISPEL. Copyright, October 3, 1912, by Turner, Newman & Knispel. Industrial Conspiracies By CLARENCE S. DARROW Mr. Darrow said: I feel very grateful to you for the warmth and earnestness of your reception. It makes me feel sure that I am amongst friends. If I had to be tried again, I would not mind taking a change of venue to Portland (applause); although I think I can get along where I am without much difficulty. The subject for tonight's talk was not chosen by me but was chosen for me. I don't know who chose it, nor just what they expected me to say, but there is not much in a name, and I suppose what I say tonight would be just about the same under any title that anybody saw fit to give. I am told that I am going to talk about "Industrial Conspiracies." I ought to know something about them. And I won't tell you all I know tonight, but I will tell you some things that I know tonight. The conspiracy laws, you know, are very old. As one prominent laboring man said on the witness stand down in Los Angeles a few weeks ago when they asked him if he was not under indictment and what for, he said he was under indictment for the charge they always made against working men when they hadn't done anything--conspiracy. And that is the charge they always make. It is the one they have always made against everybody when they wanted them, and particularly against working men, because they want them oftener than they do anybody else. (Applause). When they want a working man for anything excepting work they want him for conspiracy. (Laughter). And the greatest conspiracy that is possible for a working man to be guilty of is not to work--a conspiracy the other fellows are always guilty of. (Applause). The conspiracy laws are very old. They were very much in favor in the Star Chamber days in England. If any king or ruler wanted to get rid of someone, and that someone had not done anything, they indicted him for what he was thinking about; that is, for conspiracy; and under it they could prove anything that he ever said or did, and anything that anybody else ever said or did to prove what he was thinking about; and therefore that he was guilty. And, of course, if anybody was thinking, it was a conspiracy against the king; for you can't think without thinking against a king. (Applause). The trouble is most people don't think. (Laughter and applause). And therefore they are not guilty of conspiracy. (Laughter and applause). The conspiracy laws in England were especially used against working men, and in the early days, not much more than a hundred years ago, for one working man to go to another and suggest that he ask for higher wages was a conspiracy, punishable by imprisonment. For a few men to come together and form a labor organization in England was a conspiracy. It is not here. Even the employer is willing to let you form labor organizations, if you don't do anything but pass resolutions. (Laughter and applause). But the formation of unions in the early days in England was a conspiracy, and so they used to meet in the forests and in the rocks and in the caves and waste places and hide their records in the earth where the informers and detectives and Burnes' men of those days could not get hold of them. (Applause). It used to be a crime for a working man to leave the county without the consent of the employer; and they never gave their consent. They were bought and sold with the land. Some of them are now. It reached that pass in England after labor unions were formed, that anything they did was a conspiracy, and to belong to one was practically a criminal offense. These laws were not made by Parliament; of course they were not made by the people. No law was ever made by the people; they are made for the people (applause); and it does not matter whether the people have a right to vote or not, they never make the laws. (Applause). These laws, however, were made by judges, the same officials who make the laws in the United States today. (Applause). We send men to the Legislature to make law, but they don't make them. I don't care who makes a law, if you will let me interpret it. (Laughter). I would be willing to let the Steel Trust make a law if they would let me tell what it meant after they got it made. (Laughter). That has been the job of the judges, and that is the reason the powerful interests of the world always want the courts. They let you have the members of the Legislature, and the Aldermen and the Constable, if they can have the judges. And so in England the judges by their decisions tied the working man hand and foot until he was a criminal if he did anything but work, as many people think he is today. He actually was at that time, until finally Parliament, through the revolution of the people, repealed all these laws that judges had made, wiped them all out of existence, and did, for a time at least, leave the working man free; and then they began to organize, and it has gone on to that extent in England today, that labor organizations are as firmly established as Parliament itself. Much better established there than here. We in this country got our early laws from England. We took pretty much everything that was bad from England and left most that was good. (Applause). At first, when labor organizations were started they had a fair chance; they were left comparatively free; but when they began to grow the American judges got busy. They got busy with injunctions, with conspiracy laws, and there was scarcely anything that a labor organization could do that was not an industrial conspiracy. Congress took a hand, not against labor; but to illustrate what I said about the difference between making a law and telling what the law means, we might refer to the act which was considered a great law at the time of its passage, a law defining conspiracy and combinations in reference to trade, the Sherman anti-trust law. In the meantime, the combinations of capital had grown so large that even respectable people began to be afraid of them, farmers and others who never learn anything until everybody else has forgotten it (laughter); they began to be afraid of them. They found the great industrial organizations of the country controlling everything they used. One powerful organization owned all the oil there was in the United States; another handful of men owned all the anthracite coal there was in the United States; a few men owned all the iron mines in the United States; and the people began to be alarmed about it. And so they passed a law punishing conspiracies against trade. The father of the law was Senator Sherman of Ohio. The law was debated long in Congress and the Senate. Every man spoke of it as a law against the trusts and monopolies, conspiracies in restraint of trade and commerce. Every newspaper in the country discussed it as that; every labor organization so considered it. Congress passed it and the President signed it, and then an indictment was found against a corporation, and it went to the Supreme Court of the United States for the Supreme Court to say what the law meant. Of course Congress can't pass a law that you and I can understand. (Laughter). They may use words that are only found in the primer, but we don't know what they mean. Nobody but the Supreme Court can tell what they mean. Everybody supposed this law was plain and simple and easily understood, but when they indicted a combination of capital for a conspiracy in restraint of trade, the Supreme Court said this law did not apply to them at all; that it was never meant to fit that particular case. So they tried another one, and they indicted another combination engaged in the business of cornering markets, engaged in the business of trade, rich people, good people. It means the same thing. (Laughter). And the Supreme Court decided that this law did not fit their case, and every one began to wonder what the law did mean anyhow. And after awhile there came along the strike of a body of laboring men, the American Railway Union. They didn't have a dollar in the world altogether, because they were laboring men and they were not engaged in trade; they were working; but they hadn't found anything else that the Sherman anti-trust act applied to, so they indicted Debs and his followers for a conspiracy in restraint of trade; and they carried this case to the Supreme Court. I was one of the attorneys who carried it to the Supreme Court. Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. (Applause). A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many. (Laughter). Debs was indicted for a conspiracy in restraint of trade. It is not quite fair to say that I lost that case, because he was indicted and fearing he might get out on the indictment the judge issued an injunction against him. (Laughter). The facts were the same as if a man were suspected of killing somebody and a judge would issue an injunction against him for shooting his neighbor and he would kill his neighbor with a pistol shot and then they would send him to jail for injuring his clothes for violating an injunction. (Laughter). Well, they indicted him and they issued an injunction against him for the same thing. Of course, we tried the indictment before a jury, and that we won. You can generally trust a part of a jury anyhow, and very often all of them. But the court passed on the injunction case, and while the facts were just the same and the law was just the same, the jury found him innocent, but the court found him guilty. (Laughter). And Judge Wood said that he had violated the injunction. Then we carried it to the Supreme Court on the ground that the Sherman anti-trust law, which was a law to punish conspiracies in restraint of trade, was not meant for labor unions but it was meant for people who are trading, just as an ordinary common man would understand the meaning of language, but the Supreme Court said we didn't know anything about the meaning of language and that they had at last found what the Sherman anti-trust law meant and that it was to break up labor unions; and they sent Mr. Debs to jail under that law (laughter and applause), and nobody, excepting someone connected with the union had ever been sent to jail under that law, and probably never will be. So of course, even the employer, the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association and the Steel Trust, even they would be willing to let the Socialists go to the Legislature and make the laws, as long as they can get the judges to tell what the law means. (Loud applause). For the courts are the bulwarks of property, property rights and property interests, and they always have been. I don't know whether they always will be. I suppose they will always be, because before a man can be elected a judge he must be a lawyer. They did patch up the laws against combinations in restraint of trade. Even the fellows who interpreted it, were ashamed of it and they fixed it up so they might catch somebody else, and they brought a case against the Tobacco Trust, and after long argument and years of delay the Supreme Court decided on the Tobacco Trust and they decided that this was a combination in restraint of trade, but they didn't send anybody to jail. They didn't even fine them. They gave them six months--not in jail, but six months in which to remodel their business so it would conform to the law, which they did. (Applause and laughter). But plug tobacco is selling just as high as it ever was, and higher. They brought an action against the Standard Oil Trust--Mr. Roosevelt's enemy. (Laughter and applause). That is what he says. (Laughter and applause). They brought an action against the Standard Oil Trust to dissolve the Trust and they listened patiently for a few years--the Supreme Court is made up of old men, and they have got lots of time (laughter)--and after a few years they found out what the people had known for twenty-five years, that it was a trust, and they so decided that this great corporation had been a conspiracy in restraint of trade for years, had been fleecing the American people. I don't suppose anybody would have brought an action against them, excepting that they had a corner on gasoline and the rich people didn't like to pay so much for gasoline to run their automobiles. (Laughter and applause). They found out that the Standard Oil Company was guilty of a conspiracy under the Sherman anti-trust law, and they gave them six months in which to change the form of their business, and Standard Oil stock today is worth more than it ever was before in the history of the world, and gasoline has not been reduced in price, nor anything else that they have to sell. There never has been an instance since that law was passed where it has ever had the slightest effect upon any combination of capital, but under it working men are promptly sent to jail; and it was passed to protect the working man and the consumer against the trusts of the United States. So, you see, it does not make much difference what kind of a law we make as long as the judges tell us what it means. The Steel Trust has not been hurt. They are allowed to go their way, and they have taken property, which at the most, is worth three hundred million dollars and have capitalized it and bonded it for a billion and a half, or five dollars for every one that it represents, and the interests and dividends which have been promptly paid year by year have come from the toil and the sweat and the life of the American workingman. (Applause). And nobody interferes with the Steel Trust; at least, nobody but the direct action men. (Laughter and applause). The courts are silent, the states' attorneys are silent; the governors are silent; all the officers of the law are silent, while a great monster combination of crooks and criminals are riding rough-shod over the American people. (Applause). But it is the working man who is guilty of the industrial conspiracy. They and their friends are the ones who are sent to jail. It is the powerful and the strong who have the keys to the jails and the penitentiaries, and there is not much danger of their locking themselves in jails and penitentiaries. The working man never did have the keys. Their business has been to build them and to fill them. There have been other industrial conspiracies, however, which are the ones that interest me most, and it is about these and what you can do about them and what you can't do about them that I wish to talk tonight. The real industrial conspiracies are by the other fellow. It is strange that the people who have no property have been guilty of all of the industrial conspiracies, and the people who own all the earth have not been guilty of any industrial conspiracy. It is like our criminal law. Nearly all the laws are made to protect property; nearly all the crimes are crimes against property, and yet only the poor go to jail. That is, all the people in our jail have committed crimes against property, and yet they have not got a cent. The people outside have so much property they don't know what to do with it, and they have committed no crime against property. So with the industrial conspiracies, those who are not in trade or commerce are the ones who have been guilty of a conspiracy to restrict trade and commerce, and those who are in trade and commerce that have all the money have not been guilty of anything. Their business is prosecuting other people so they can keep what they have got and get what little there is left. But there are real industrial conspiracies. They began long ages ago, and they began by direct action, when the first capitalist took his club and knocked the brains out of somebody who wanted a part of it for himself. That is direct action. They got the land by direct action. They went out and took it. If anybody was there, they drove them off or killed them, as the case might be. It is only the other fellow that can't have direct action. They got all their title to the earth by direct action. Of course, they have swapped it more or less, since, but the origin is there. They just went out and took possession of it, and it is theirs. And the strong have always done it; they have reached out and taken possession of the earth. A few men today can control all the industry and do control all of the industry of this country. A dozen men sitting around the table in a big city can bring famine if they wish; they can paralyze the wheels of industry from one end of the United States to the other, and the prosperity of villages, cities and towns, and the wages of its people depends almost entirely upon the wills of a dozen men. They have taken the mines; and all the coal there is in the United States, or practically all, is controlled today by a few railroad companies who can tell us just what we must pay, and if we are not willing to pay it, we can freeze; and we respect private property so much that we will stand around and freeze rather than take the coal that nature placed in the earth for all mankind. (Applause). All the iron ore in the United States that is worth taking is owned and controlled by the Steel Trust, one combination with a very few men managing the business; not more than a half a dozen absolutely controlling it have their will; and nobody can have any iron ore, or mold it or use it, excepting at the will of a few men who have taken possession of what nature placed there for all of us, if we were wise enough to use it and understand it. And the great forests of the United States, what is left of them--and there is not so very much left. We are a wise people. We pass laws now for the protection of timber in the United States, so it won't be destroyed too fast, and at the same time, we put a tariff duty of two dollars a thousand on lumber that comes from somewhere else so that it will be destroyed at a high price. (Laughter and applause). We are the wisest set of people of any land that the sun ever shone upon. And if you don't believe it, ask Roosevelt when he comes here. (Laughter and applause). A few men control what is left of the forests, a few men and a few great corporations have taken the earth, what is good of it. They have left the arid lands, the desert and the mountains which nobody can use,--the desert for sand heaps and the mountains for scenery. They are now taxing the people to build reservoirs so that the desert will blossom; and after it begins to blossom, they will take that. (Applause). And even if they didn't own the land, they own all the ways there are of getting to it, and they are able to take from the farmer just so much of his grain as they see fit to take, and so far as the farmer is concerned, I wish they would take it all (laughter and applause), because he always has been against the interests of every man that toils, including himself. (Applause). And they are able to say to the working man engaged in industry just how much of his product they will take, and from him they take just enough to leave him alive. They have got to leave him alive, or he can't work, and they have got to leave him enough strength and ambition to propagate his species or the rich people can't get their work done in the next generation. And that is all that they are bound to leave him. They own the railroads, the mills, the factories, and all the tools and implements of trade and commerce, and the workingman has only one thing to sell. That is his labor, his life; and he has to sell that to the highest bidder. There are only a few of these men who own the earth and all of its fullness. There are millions and millions of the people who do the work, and if you can keep these millions and millions disorganized and competing with each other, they will keep wages down themselves without any help from the bosses. (Loud applause). On the other hand, there are so few men who own the earth and the tools that they find it perfectly easy to combine with each other and regulate the price of their products, and they have learned better than to compete, and there is no way for the wit of man to make and interpret any law which will ever set them to competing again. They have managed to control the price of their products, and charge what they see fit and all they need is to buy their raw material in the open markets of the world as cheaply as they can, and labor is the principal raw material that they use. So of course they want free trade in labor, and protection in commodities; and they have always had it, and our wise Americans that are the marvel of the day, including the working people, have cheerfully given them protection in the commodities that they sell and free trade in the labor which they buy. (Applause). And they thought by protecting the Steel Trust, so there can't be any foreign competition that it will make the Steel Trust so rich that they can afford to pay high prices to their working men. It is one thing to make a man rich enough so he can afford to pay high wages; it is another thing to make him pay. (Laughter). So the employer and the capitalist have combined in all industry, and they fix the price to suit themselves and insist that the workingman shall come to them individually and unorganized and compete with each other for a day's labor, so they can buy labor at the smallest cost and if, perchance, there are not working men enough here, they want the ports of the world opened so they can draw on China or Japan or any other country on the face of the earth, and get working men there to work for them at the smallest price. The game is simple and easy. It seems as if it were simple enough for an American farmer to understand; but he doesn't. (Laughter). Now, the original conspiracy, industrial conspiracy, has been on the part of the strong to take the earth, and they have got it. They own it, and all they need now is to get enough working men and women at a low enough price to make them as much wealth as they want. It is pretty hard to fill that market, they want so much; but that is all they need. And the conspiracy on the other side of the workingman of the United States is the same conspiracy as the conspiracy of the workingman of the world, and it has only one object. We may temporize; we may be content with a little; we may stop at half measures, but in the end it only has one object, and that is for the workers of the world to take back the earth that has been taken from us. (Cries of hurrah and loud cheering). Take it back, and have all the products of their toil, not part of it, but all of it. Now, it is a long road. It is a universal, world-wide conspiracy by the intelligent working people and by their friends the world over to get back the earth that has been stolen by direct action. (Applause). Now, no one who understands this question wants anything less and the employer is right when he says if workingmen are permitted to organize they won't stop with that; and they won't. (Applause). You may place every lawyer on the bench and you may place a jail in every block and a penitentiary in every ward, and the workingmen won't stop. (Applause). If they will, they deserve to be workingmen forever. (Applause). The employer understands that if workingmen organize something will be doing; and so he does not believe in organization. Sometimes he says he does, but he does not. If workingmen must organize, then the thing is to keep them as quiet as they can, to turn their labor meetings into prayer meetings. (Laughter and applause). They are entirely harmless. They don't help the people who pray, and the Lord has always been so far away from the workingman that it doesn't bother Him either. (Laughter). They are willing even, as I have said, to let them pass resolutions, but that is about the limit. (Laughter). They understand that one thing leads to another, and if they concede higher wages today, next year they will want another raise and so they will. There is no danger of raising it too high for a long while to come. And if they concede shorter hours today, next year they may want them shorter still. Everybody is working for shorter hours, especially the people who don't work. And they are all working for bigger pay; even those who get all there is, they want more. And of course, there will be no stopping, there will be no end to the demand, until we get it all, and that is a long way off. And the question is how? And that is not so easy. It is easier to tell how you can't get it than to tell how you can get it. It is easier to tell how you haven't got it than how you are going to get it. There is another thing that they are fairly well satisfied with: They don't worry much about voting. They have been satisfied to let all the men vote, and they have still kept their property. (Laughter). They will be satisfied to let all the women vote, and they will still keep their property. Voting has not done very much. We have been practicing at it for more than a hundred years, and it is a nice little toy to keep people satisfied, but that is all it has done so far. (Applause). Of course, here and there we have been able to pass a few laws. For instance, we have statutes which forbid women from working in a factory more than ten hours a day. (Laughter). Now, we have done something. (Laughter and applause). We have statutes forbidding men to labor more than a certain number of hours a day. That is, people like to work; they love it so dearly that you have to pass a law to keep a working man from working. (Laughter). When we pass laws to keep men and women from working it ought to show the stupidest mind that there is something terribly wrong with the industrial conditions under which we live. If men had a chance to work and get all the proceeds of their work, you would not have to pass laws to keep them from working. They would stop soon enough. And if every man could employ his own labor and receive the full product of his toil it would make no difference how hard your neighbor worked, it would not hurt you in the least, and you could let him work himself to death if he wanted to. The only difficulty is under the patch work industrial system of today where a few men own all the earth, and all the factories and mills and are compelled to sell their product to the workingman, they give him such a small share of that product that the workingmen haven't anything to buy it with. They can't buy it back, and so there is not work enough to go around. And for that reason we are tinkering up this old system of laws to keep people from working, and we pass a law to limit the number of hours that a man can work and to limit the number of hours that a woman can work, and to limit the age at which a little child can be fed into a factory or a mill. Do you suppose that the fatherhood and the motherhood of the people of the United States is not of a high enough grade so they would not send their children to a factory or a mill if there was any way to avoid it? And do you think under any fair system of industry and life we would ever need a law to keep a child out of a factory or a mill? (Applause). We have managed to pass some laws to require safety appliances in factories and in mills and upon railroads. For instance, to put a guard on a buzz saw so that a workingman won't saw his hand instead of sawing the wood. (Laughter). But if a workingman had any chance to employ his labor and get what he produced he would not be fooling with a buzz saw and there would be no need of it and he would look out for the safety of the machines himself and do it a great deal better than the Government ever did it or can ever possibly do it. (Applause). So we have done everything and tried everything, excepting to strike at the root of any evil and accomplish something of real value. We have even passed laws excluding the Chinaman and the Jap from the United States. That is, we love our own people so dearly that we won't let the Chinaman or the Jap do the work for them. (Laughter). We want our people to have all the work, and if they come here and volunteer to do it we won't let them; for work is a blessing under the present industrial system. We have to work. If we stop we starve. Now, I could imagine a system, and it seems to me that most all of you could imagine a system that was so fair and so just and so equal that if any body of philanthropic heathens would agree to come over here and do our work for us, we would go and play golf or run automobiles whilst they were doing it; but with a condition of life where a few men have it all and the rest can only live if they have the work to do, why no one can do it for us; we have got to do it ourselves. We can't even allow a machine to do it, for every time we get the machine to do the work it takes the place of a man or two, or more, and they go out to beg or tramp or starve, as the case may be. We have got a wonderful system of industry, and industrial life. If anybody ever invented it, which they didn't, he must have been standing on his head and drunken at the time he did it. (Laughter and applause). And now what are we going to do about it? We have the great mass of men living upon the will of a few and taking what they can get, and we have got to get back the earth. A small job. Some people would say, "Well, if you have got to get it back why don't you go and take it?" Well, we don't. Some people say we have got to vote it back, and some say we have got to get it back through labor organizations, and some say we have got to have a good deal more than that. I don't know. But I want to say some things about political action. If we are going to get at it in that way we first had better understand the size of the contract, and there are a great many people who don't. (Applause). We have been voting a long time, and we have a democracy. Everybody can vote--every man past twenty-one. If we are not doing well enough we are going to let the women vote; then if we don't do any better we will let the children vote, and then we will get somewhere. (Applause). If we are going to get out of this muss by voting, why, let's have a little of it. We had better have an election every day, because if we can do it that way it is about the simplest there is. But we have been working at it a long while and we are getting in worse all the time. In the first place, how many of us understand our system of government? We hear people talk about it on the Fourth day of July, and they run for an office in the fall. The most glorious system ever invented by the wit of man! I want to say that it is about the craziest system that was ever conceived in the brain of man. (Applause). Our system of government never was conceived in the brain of man, because no man or combination of men were ever foolish enough and weak enough to conceive them. It is a system of blunders. If you would elect for the next hundred years a president as wise as Roosevelt (laughter and applause) you could not move a peg. Let me just tell you why. Suppose we want to pass a law. As I have said, we pass little fool laws and nobody pays much attention to them. They don't hurt anybody and they let them go. But suppose we want to pass a law of substance, if there is any such thing as a law of substance; suppose we want to do it, something affecting fundamental rights, now how are we going to get at it? One hundred and twenty-five years ago and more a body of men, very wise for their day and generation, met to form the constitution. They had just been indulging in a little direct action against England. (Laughter). They could have sent members to Parliament up to now and we would have still been British subjects. I don't know as we would have been any worse off if we had been. But they got at it simply and directly, and so they won our American independence. I don't know just when it was lost, but they won it. (Applause). And the first thing they did was to have a constitution. You can't do anything without a constitution. You have got to have a good constitution to get anywhere. And so they got together a body of men, John Hancock and some more penmen, and they wrote a constitution. Now, what is a constitution? Why, it is just the same as if a boy, twenty-one years of age, would say, "Well, now, I have become of age, and I am wise, and I am going to write out a constitution to cover the rest of my life, and when I am forty I can't do anything that is unconstitutional." There wasn't a railroad one hundred and twenty-five years ago; there wasn't a steam engine; there wasn't a flying machine, of course, nor an automobile. Nobody knew anything about electricity, except what came down from the clouds and they were busy dodging it. There were few machines; there was just a body of farmers--that's all. (Laughter and applause). And they wrote the constitution, and there it is. It didn't apply to the industrial conditions of today, for they didn't know anything about the industrial conditions of today, but they imagined that they were so wise that lest people one hundred and twenty-five years later should think they knew more they would tie things up so that we could not make a fool of ourselves, to the third or fourth generation after they were dead. (Laughter). And so they wrote down a constitution which meant that whatever the American people wanted to do a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred years afterward, they could not do it unless it agreed with the constitution that had already been written down or unless they changed it. Well now, that was a wise piece of business so far, wasn't it? But that is only the beginning of it. Then they organized this government into separate states. I don't know how many there are now, they are hatching some new ones all the while. But every state was independent in a way, and in a way it was united with all the rest. Nobody knows just how much independence there is and how much union there is. Nobody knows but the judges, and they only know in the particular case. They can say this goes or this does not go; nobody can tell until they get there. (Laughter). What comes within the state province and what comes within the national province nobody knows, nor ever did know. The states are individual and separate to make laws for themselves. Each one of them has a law factory of their own, and they are all busy; and the United States Government has another big law factory, and they have all been grinding out laws for a hundred years and not only that but the courts have been telling us what they mean and what they don't mean; so it has been pretty busy for the lawyer. Then they decided that they should have a congress, which consisted of the senate, where men were selected for six years, not by the people but by state legislatures, and a congress where men were elected for two years by the people. But these congressmen elected for two years didn't take their seat for a year after they were elected, and time to forget all about the issue on which they were elected. (Laughter). And not satisfied with that, they had to have a Supreme Court to tell us what congress or the senate meant, and the Supreme Court was appointed for life and not beholden to anybody; and they are generally about a hundred years old apiece. (Laughter). And then they had a president, who was elected for four years, and who had a right to veto anything that congress and the senate saw fit to pass, and if he vetoed it you could not pass it except by a two-thirds majority of both houses. And there you have got it, so far as the United States Government is concerned. But that is not nearly all. So if you want to pass some important law, let's see what you have to do. Of course, little laws don't count, for you can't keep up a factory unless you do something, pass laws one year and repeal them the next, or some little thing like that, to save the job. But take an important thing, an issue coming up from the people, one ultimately meaning the taking of the earth. Nothing else is important. It may be in one form or another, but it must have that purpose, or it won't be important, because you can't regulate things that belong to other people very successfully; you have got to get it yourselves. (Applause). Now, let's see what you have got to do. In the first place, you must elect a congress, and the congress does not take its seat for a year after they are elected; and then they run up against the United States senate, holding six year terms, and one-third of them passing away each two years, none of them elected upon the issue upon which congress were elected, mostly old men and generally rich men--rich enough to get the job. (Laughter). Now you have got to get the law through congress and through the senate both, which is well nigh impossible, if it is a law of any consequence. And then here comes a president, who is elected by the people for four years, and he must sign it, and if congress and the senate or the president refuses, then you can't do it. Excepting if the president refuses then you have got to get two-thirds of both the houses, which is impossible if the law amounts to anything, and then you have only begun. If you should happen to get all these three at once, which we never did and never will on anything very important because the claws are all cut out of any bill before it ever gets very far,--then you have only begun. Then here is this document, this sacred document which came down from Mount Sinai one hundred and twenty-five years ago, The Constitution, and you lay down the law beside the Constitution and see whether it is unconstitutional or not and of course you could not tell. You would not know anything about it. Congress could not tell; the senate could not tell; the president could not tell. There is only one tribunal that could tell, and that is the Supreme Court. And while the Constitution fills about ten pages, the interpretation of the Constitution will fill a hundred volumes or more. (Laughter). And the Constitution is not what is written in ten pages but it is what is written in the decisions of the judges covering over a hundred years; and they don't always agree, at that, which makes some of them right. If they all agreed probably none of them would be right. (Laughter). So if you should ever succeed in getting a law past congress with its two year term, and the senate with its six, and the president with his four, any one of whom may block it, and will, if it is important, then you have got to pass it to these wise judges who are not elected at all and who have no interests with the people because they are holding their office for life and they have been there so long and got so old that they don't understand any of the new questions anyhow, and could not, and who have the conservatism of age anyway, and they have got to decide whether that law is constitutional or not, and before they have decided it and before it has run the gauntlet of all of them, even if they decided it right you would not need the law. The law would be dead. (Laughter). But you must combine on all these four things before you can accomplish anything. And that is not all. Then you must decide whether the law is within the province of the state or the nation; whether it is state business or whether it is national business; and most of our laws are state laws and when we get back to the state we find the same old story. Wonderful wisdom! Here is first a constitution, which is nothing except as I illustrated, a boy twenty-one years old swears he won't know any more when he is fifty, and that kind of a boy generally does not. (Laughter). And we have a legislative body to make laws, composed of a house and a senate, two bodies, one not being wise enough to make them themselves; and we have a governor with a veto, and a Supreme Court to say whether the law is constitutional or not. The same thing in the state and the same thing in the nation. Then we have got to see whether it is in the province of the nation or the state, and you see it is next to impossible to ever get a constitutional law that amounts to anything, and we have never done it. But, they say, this is a country where people vote, and if you don't like the law, why change it. If you didn't vote there would be some excuse for direct action, but as long as you vote you can change the law. (Applause). The trouble is you can't change it. You haven't got a chance. How can you change one of these laws that are important? How can you appeal to the people, first of all, and change it with the people? And next, how could you possibly elect a congress and a senate and a president and a Supreme Court all at once, that ever would make any substantial change, or ever did? "Well," they say, "if the Constitution fetters you too much, why, change the Constitution. The Constitution provides that it can be changed." And so it does; but how? You can change the Constitution of the United States. You could change Mt. Hood, but it would take a pile of shovels. (Laughter). You could change Mt. Hood a good deal easier. It could be done. The law provides that if you pass a law through congress and the senate and it is signed by the president, to change the Constitution, you may submit it to the people and if three-fourths of all the states in the Union consent to it, why you can change it. What do you think of that? Do you suppose there is any power on earth that ever could get a law through congress and the senate, approved by the senate, and then get three-fourths of the individual states in the Union to approve it? You and your children and your children's children would die while you are doing it. The best proof of that is the fact that we have had a constitution for one hundred and twenty-five years, and the Lord knows it needs patching. It needs something worse: It needs abolishing worse than anything else. (Applause). If anybody does want to tinker with voting the first thing necessary is to get rid of the constitution. We have had one for a hundred and twenty-five years with a provision for changing it. It has needed change. It needs it all the while, and yet it has never been changed but once. They passed several amendments all in a heap. What were those? Those were amendments growing out of the Civil War, and they didn't permit any of the Southern States to vote. They just ran them over their heads, and they were all amendments protecting the negroes after enfranchisement. And those are the only amendments we have had in one hundred and twenty-five years, and it took a war to get those--considerable direct action. Why, if a body of ingenious men had gotten together to make the frame work of a government to absolutely take from the people all the power they possibly could, they could not have contrived anything more mischievous and complete than our American form of government. (Applause). Russia is easy and simple compared with this. If you did happen to get a progressive, kindly, sympathetic, humane Czar, which you probably won't, but if you did you could change all the laws of Russia and you could change them right away and get something. But if you got the wisest and kindest and most sympathetic man on earth at the head of our government he could not do anything; or if you filled congress with them they could not do anything, or the senate they could not, and the Supreme Court could not. You would have to fill them all at once, and then they would have to override all the precedents of a hundred and twenty-five years to accomplish it. The English Government is simplicity itself compared to it. As compared with ours it is as direct as a convention of the I. W. W. (Applause). The English people elect a Parliament and when some demand comes up from the country for different legislation which reaches Parliament and is strong enough to demand a division in Parliament and the old majority fails, Parliament is dissolved at once, and you go right straight back to the people and elect a new Parliament upon that issue and they go at once to Parliament and pass a law, and there is no power on earth that can stop them. The king hasn't any more to say about the laws of England, nor any more power than a floor manager of a charity ball would have to say about it. He is just an ornament, and not much of an ornament at that. (Applause). The House of Lords is comparatively helpless, and they never had any constitution; there never was any power in England to set aside any law that the people made. It was the law, plain and direct and simple, and you might get somewhere with it. But we have built up a machine that destroys every person who undertakes to touch it. I don't know how you are ever going to remedy it. Nothing short of a political revolution, which would be about as complete as the Deluge, could ever change our laws under our present system (applause) in any important particular. But while anybody is voting they had better vote the right way if they can find it out. If they can't it is just as well not to vote. They had better vote for some workingman's candidate and be counted as long as you are doing it. (Applause). Still any benefit that must come anywhere in the near future must come some other way. Workingmen have not raised their wages by it; they haven't shortened their hours of toil by it; they haven't improved the conditions of life by it; it has all been done in some other way. All of this has been accomplished by trades-unionism, by organization. If you can organize workingmen sufficiently so that they may make their demands strong enough you can accomplish something in all of these directions. (Applause). But our political institutions are such that before you could get anything like a political revolution you need an industrial revolution. (Applause). And then we come to face some of the problems of today, and I want to speak a little bit about that. I have talked to you about as long as I ought to tonight, but I want to say something about some matters that perhaps are closer home than those. We find the American workingman bound by the law, as I have said,--everything taken from him. He can't do anything by voting. The courts are almost always against him, for the simple reason that courts are made from lawyers, generally prominent lawyers and well known lawyers. In almost every instance these lawyers have been corporation lawyers. Their instincts are that way. Their beliefs are that way, and their training and heredity are that way; and they are not with the poor. In order to be a lawyer you must spend considerable time, if not studying, at least you must spend it not working. You can't work while you are becoming a lawyer, and you won't work afterwards. (Laughter). It takes eight or ten years' schooling at least. That is one reason why a lawyer says he should have big fees, it takes him so long to learn the trade. That is, the poor people support a lawyer so long while he is preparing that they ought to support him better while he is practicing (laughter); because a fellow studying to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a minister--I don't know what they study to be a minister, but I suppose they do (laughter)--has got to be living while he is studying and somebody must take care of him; to take care of him while he is learning--after he gets it learned he takes care of himself. So the judges are not on your side. They don't look at things the way you do. They are trained differently. If they were picked out of your trade councils they would look at them differently and they could decide cases differently. Everything is in habit, and the environment and the training, and they are all the time fashioning the law against you. Then what? Workingmen find themselves hedged about wherever they turn. They can't employ themselves. Somebody has got the earth. They can't mine ore; somebody owns it. They can't get the steel to do the work with themselves; they have got to buy it off somebody. They can't do the work except for wages; the employer does it and the employer insists upon open competition in labor and workingmen are constantly fighting each other. Everybody admits that the systems must change, that the laws must change. They can't change them by political action, and the injustice goes on, and on, and on. They find children taken from school and put in factories and mills; their children, not the children of the rich but the children of the poor. The rich love their children so much that they don't put them in factories and mills. Only the children of the poor are put in factories and mills, which shows that mother love is not the same with poor people as it is with rich people. Still the poor people have all the children anyway, so there are enough. (Laughter). They are good to the rich and they have the children for them. They find that the life of a poor man is only about two-thirds as long as that of a rich man. A man dies because he is poor. A lawyer, or preacher or a doctor can take care of himself; but the workingman dies because he is poor. Lots of gray-headed lawyers and preachers and bankers and doctors, but there are not so very many gray-haired workingmen. That is lucky for them, too, because they would have to go to the poor house. (Laughter). Maybe they will get old age pensions sometimes. (Applause). It is always safe and economical to give workingmen old age pensions, because they never reach old age. They find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know which way to turn. And which way do they turn? They try voting. They don't accomplish it. They try organization, and that is hard. They try direct action, and that is hard, too. You wonder that they try it. Now, a great many people condemned the McNamaras. A great many working people condemned them. I don't say that the working people ever need to resort to force, or ever should resort to force, but it is not for me to condemn anybody who believes they should. (Applause). I know that the progress of the human race is one long bloody story of force and violence (applause); and from the time man got up on his hind legs and looked the world in the face he has been fighting, and fighting, and fighting for all the liberty and the opportunity that he has had. I think the time will come when he can stop. Perhaps it has come. And no one hates cruelty and force and violence more than I hate it. But don't let them ever tell you that all the force has been on our side. (Loud applause). It never has been; most all of it has been with them. (Applause). They are the ones who have the force, who have the power. Why are these standing armies and navies; and, more than that, the militia building their armories in every great city in the United States? Are they there for a foreign foe or are they there to shoot strikers and workingmen when the time shall come? (Loud applause). Are they there to protect the people from China and Japan and England, or are they there to protect property against the poor? (Loud and prolonged applause). What is a lockout in a factory or mill when they call it famine and want and hunger and cold, to do their work? Is that force, or is it peace and quietness and gentleness, and the Golden Rule? What are the policemen, what are the officers of the law, what is the machinery of government directed against the workingmen, holding all the resources of the earth in the power of a few and compelling the money to go to those few for the means of life? Isn't this force? What is the blacklist? Is it anything but force that drives children into the factories, that drives women into factories, and compels men to work with defective machinery for long hours and poor wages? Is it anything but the force of starvation and want that has always been used by the owners of the earth to make the poor do their bidding and their will? The force is there. It is not with the weak. The weak have never had the strength or the opportunity to use the force. And when here and there some man like the McNamaras and others--I don't need to mention them alone, excepting that I want to live to see the day that justice will be done to them (loud applause)--here and there when they reach out blindly to meet force with force, call it blind if you will, call it wrong if you will; I have never counseled it or advised it, perhaps because I am not brave enough; it is not for me to say; but call it blind, call it mistaken, call it what you will; but the fact will ever remain that men who do it never do it for their own mean personal ends but because they love their fellowmen. (Loud applause). And long ago it was written down that "Greater love hath no man than this, that he who would give his life for his friend." Some day, I say, it will be understood, and some day the world will understand that they and Wood who was indicted from the other side for an attempt to charge something to labor that labor was not guilty of, and all of these other indictments growing out of the same acts, that all of these acts were not individual acts at all, but they were a part of a great industrial tragedy of a great evolution of society; that they are what are called social crimes or social acts for which these men were responsible in no degree. They were a part of a machine; they were risking their lives; a part of a system; and, do what you will, others will be ground out of it forever and forever, until the system shall change and until there will be some equity and justice in the world. (Loud applause). The world is changing, and every person is doing his part in his own way. It is not for you to criticize me or for me to criticize you, but to judge men by their motives and to judge them by the side they are on. Labor must stand for its own men. (Loud applause). It must stand even for its own mistakes, and its own crimes if it is guilty of them. (Applause). There is one question, and only one, to ask concerning a man or concerning an act: "Was he on my side?" (Applause). You may counsel him to do differently; yes. You may teach him moderation, and believe in it; and all of us want to see peace and justice and harmony come out of all of these contending forces, as it one day will come; you may teach it and you may believe it, but the man who lets a thought loose in the universe can never tell what the results of that thought may be. It may bear fruit in a thousand ways of which we never dream; but even though it does and it must the thought must go forth to do its work and to change the face of the earth. The highest and the holiest and the best thought may bring on strife and war. And John Brown, a devoted man who believed in the liberty of the slaves, took his gun in his hand and went to Virginia and raised his hand in rebellion against the country. He was tried and convicted and hanged for murder, and he was guilty of murder under the laws of man, but under the laws of God he was a hero. The laws of justice and righteousness look not to the act but they look at the motive that moved the brain. Were they fighting on our side? Were they fighting for justice and humanity and the weak and the poor and the oppressed, as they saw it? If so, whoever they are and whatever, they demand our sympathy and our support. (Applause). John Brown by his act of heroism plunged the United States into a civil war costing hundreds of thousands of lives, and billions of property. But he was not responsible for the thought. It came in the evolution of time. And so don't think that any one man is responsible for any one great event in this world. The earth is moving, the universe is working, all the laws of creation are working toward justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher ideal, toward a time when men will be brothers the world over. (Applause). The evolution will not all be peaceful. It can't be. There will be conflict and blood shed; there will be prisons, there will be jails, but through it all this same humanity that has come onward and upward from the brute below us, onward and upward to where we are today, this same humanity will be growing in wisdom and strength and righteousness, and the good and the evil, the peace and the charity, the violence and all, will be combined to make man better and make the world juster and fairer than it has ever been before. (Loud applause). (At the conclusion of the address of Mr. Darrow at the suggestion of a member of the audience three lusty cheers were given for the speaker). TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. 2. Other than the misprint corrections listed below, printer's inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been retained: "wont" corrected to "won't" (page 3) Added missing period at the end of "conspiracy" (page 3) "alays" corrected to "always" (page 3) "Laugher" corrected to "Laughter" (page 4) "appause" corrected to "applause" (page 4) "guity" corrected to "guilty" (page 4) "especialy" corrected to "especially" (page 4) "hey" corrected to "they" (page 5) "dolars" corrected to "dollars" (page 10) "penitentaries" corrected to "penitentiaries" (page 10) "rairoad" corrected to "railroad" (page 11) "ony" corrected to "only" (page 13) "Laud" corrected to "Loud" (page 13) Added missing bracket at the start of "Applause)" (page 15) "you" corrected to "your" (page 16) "yon" corrected to "you" (page 19) "can'" corrected to "can't" (page 19) "yaers" corrected to "years" (page 21) "voted" corrected to "vetoed" (page 21) "coud" corrected to "could" (page 22) "whlie" corrected to "while" (page 22) Extra comma removed at the end of "four," (page 22) "qoestions" corrected to "questions" (page 23) "strong strong" corrected to "strong" (page 26) "chidren" corrected to "children" (page 28) "oe" corrected to "on" (page 28) "and and" corrected to "and" (page 28) "strvation" corrected to "starvation" (page 29) "applaune" corrected to "applause" (page 32) 
30850	----	The Government of the Philippine Islands Department of Public Instruction Bureau of Education Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 Philippine Mats Manila Bureau of Printing 1913 FOREWORD. The present bulletin is a reprint from The Philippine Craftsman, Vol. I, Nos. 3, 4, and 5, and is issued in this form for the purpose of placing in the hands of teachers a convenient manual for use in giving instruction in this important branch of industrial work. In it are contained directions for the preparation of materials for mat making, with suggestive color schemes for these materials and details for weaving a number of approved Philippine designs. The use of mats for sleeping and other household purposes is universal through the extreme Orient. Suitable mat materials abound in these Islands, and when proper attention shall have been given to the artistic and decorative side of their manufacture, the mat industry may well become a source of considerable revenue in thousands of Filipino homes. The Bureau of Education has for some years past been endeavoring to improve the designs used as well as the workmanship of Philippine mats, in order that the article produced shall be typical of the country, artistic in design, and of real commercial value. It is expected that this end will be definitely furthered through the study and use of the material contained in this reprint. A considerable part of the subject matter of this publication is the original work of Mr. Hugo H. Miller, Mr. John F. Minier, Mr. U. S. Andes, Mr. Theodore Muller, and Mrs. Alice Brezina. Credit is also due to numerous American and Filipino teachers for the submission of reports and materials used in its preparation. Frank L. Crone, Acting Director. Manila, February 1, 1913. PHILIPPINE MATS. The production of mats in the Philippines is large because of the extensive domestic demand for them. The sleeping mat [1] is used throughout the Christian provinces, and is also found among the Moros. Such mats are of the finer class and are usually more or less highly decorated with colored straws in various designs. For this purpose the buri petates are more widely produced than those made from any other material. Pandan mats are considered stronger and cooler but their use is not so extensive, probably because they are more expensive than the buri mats. In the Visayas, tikug mats are important. Another use of mats is in the baling of two of the staple products of the Philippines, tobacco and abaca. In the Cagayan valley mats of dried banana petioles are employed. A great many of these are made in Batac, Ilocos Norte, from which place they are shipped to Cagayan. In most cases the tobacco of the Visayas is packed in such mats also. At Argao, Cebu, banana petiole mats are woven as a by-product of the sabá cloth industry. In obtaining the fiber, the outer skin of the petiole is pulled off for stripping, and the remaining portion, which is called "upag," is dried and woven into very coarse mats by children. These are called "bastos" [2] or "liplip," and are disposed of to the tobacco balers in the town, or are shipped to Cebu and other towns for baling purposes. While sabá sinamay is produced in several of the districts in the Visayas, notably in Bohol, it is not known that the upag is used for mat weaving there. Coarse buri mats are almost exclusively used in wrapping abaca for the export trade. Since baling is carried on only in large seaports, particularly in Manila and Cebu, the weaving of these mats in certain localities where the buri palm is abundant and their transportation to the hemp-producing towns are important industries. While they are not, strictly speaking, mats, plaited sacks [3] are woven in the same weave and bear the same relation to sugar and rice as do mats to tobacco and abaca. Most of the domestic rice crop entering into commerce is packed in buri sacks and practically all the export sugar is sent away in them. A few bayones are made of pandan. The production of bayones is an important industry in certain districts. Mats are also employed throughout the provinces for drying paddy and copra in the sun, in the same manner in which trays are used for sun-curing fruit in temperate regions. The use of the finer grades of petates for floor mats and for wall decoration is confined to the foreign population in the Philippines. Nevertheless, a considerable number is so utilized. For this trade only mats of the better grades are demanded, and the number sold for the purpose is probably considerably restricted by the fact that few mats are of suitable color combination and of proper design to satisfy foreign taste. As yet there is no known commercial export of Philippine mats. There is a considerable demand for floor mats and mats for wall decoration in Europe and in the United States, but it is improbable that the Philippines can hope to supply any part of it unless designs and color combinations are vastly improved. Floor mats are used as rugs in the same manner as are the strips of Japanese matting which are so popular all over the world. Round floor mats, somewhat larger in diameter than the round table tops, are also in demand. Small mats can be used as doilies on the table or under the stands of flower pots and the like. Sleeping mats and mats intended for floors, walls, stands, and mat doilies are the ones which are suitable for domestic and foreign commerce, and industrial education must interest itself in them. The Philippine materials available for weaving these mats are varied and well distributed. With improvement in color combination and design, there should be a large increase in the industry. BLEACHING AGENTS. Sunshine is used to bleach all mat straws, but more often they are also treated with boiling water to which certain bleaching agents have been added. Only the most important of these are explained. Tamarind.--This tree (Tamarindus indica) is known in Tagalog, Bicol and Pampanga as sampalok, in Visayan as sambag, in Ilocano as salamagui, and in Palawan as kalampisao. It is a large tree with dense foliage. The leaves are employed as a bleaching agent in boiling water. It is said that the young green fruit can be used for this purpose. Pandakaki.--The leaves of the plant (Tabernaemontana pandacaqui) are used as a bleaching agent. This is the name under which it is known, particularly in Pampanga and Cavite. In Palawan it is called alibetbet. It is also known as kampopot in Tagalog and as alibubut and toar in parts of the Visayas. In Ilocano the name is kurribuetbuet. Lemons.--The juice of the various species and varieties of Citrus is employed to some extent for bleaching. It is usually added to boiling water in which the straw is immersed. Vinegar.--Of Philippine vinegars, those made from palm juices are considered about half as strong as lemon juice. Vinegar from sugar cane juice has probably the same strength. That made from cooked rice is considered about one-fourth as strong as lemon juice. Alum.--In some towns alum is added to the boiling water in which straw is treated. It is usually employed in combination with other bleaching agents. DYES USED ON MAT STRAWS. Mordants. A mordant is a substance employed to fix the dye to the material. In general, different ones are needed for different dyes and various materials. In some cases the mordant is added to the dye liquid; in others the material is previously treated with it before being colored. The most important are the mineral mordants, such as the alumina, the iron, the tin, and the chrome. These are not used in the Philippines with local vegetable dyes. Tannin is also important and is employed to some extent in the Philippines, being generally obtained from the mangrove tan barks. Wood ashes are little used but vinegar and lemon juice are important. Kolis.--The leaves of this plant (Memecylon edule) are commonly used in mordanting buri straw before dyeing it with sappan wood. In Tanay, Rizal, it is employed on sabutan straw with all of the vegetable dyes. It is known as guisian (Laguna), duigim (Ilocos, Pangasinan), kulis (Rizal, Nueva Ecija, Bataan), tagobachi (Leyte), kasigay (Ilocos Norte), agam (Negrito, Cagayan), guisoc-guisoc (Sorsogon), macaasin (Tayabas), baian (Zambales), diyatdiyatan (Tayabas), candong (Pangasinan), dioc (Pangasinan). Natural Vegetable Dyes. Numerous natural vegetable dyes are employed in the Philippines. Those used on the mat straws are limited in number. The important ones only are here noted. The whole question of dyes is a most difficult one and hardly warrants the time which has been spent upon investigating the various dye materials, nor the effort which would be necessary to determine definitely the methods by which they can be used on mat straws. The artificial dyes have driven the natural vegetable dyes out of use because they are cheaper and are more easily applied, and because in most cases they produce more pleasing and lasting colors. Sappan.--This plant (Caesalpinia sappan) is known as sapang in Tagalog and Ilocano and as sibucao in Visayan and Bicol. A beautiful dye varying from red to red-orange (see Plate III) is obtained from chips of the wood. This is employed on most Philippine fibers. Lime is sometimes used as a mordant but the straws are usually first treated with kolis leaves. Turmeric.--This plant (Curcuma longa) is known as dilao throughout the Islands. In Ilocano it is called kunig. Kalaoag is its name in Negros and Sorsogon, ange in Pampanga and duao in parts of the Visayas. The yellow dye obtained from the roots is fugitive in the sunlight. Annatto.--This plant (Bixa orellana) is generally known here as achuete. It is sometimes called achiote. The plant bears burs containing many small reddish seeds, from the pulp of which the dye is obtained. It is often employed in combination with turmeric. The result is a yellow orange. The dye fades easily. Deora.--The use of this plant (Peristrophe tinctoria) is confined to the Visayas and Mindanao, where it is known by this name and also as dauda and daura. In Samar the name is dala-uda. It is a small bush and is usually grown in the gardens for its leaves and tender stems. A mordant is not used. The color ranges from yellow orange to a deep red orange. The methods of using these dye materials are explained for each straw. Materials Used with Mud to Obtain Dark Grays. Red or green straws are turned dark gray by burying them in mud to which certain substances (usually containing tannin) are added. Talisay.--This large tree (Terminalia catappa) is common in the Philippines. The leaves are added to the mud in dyeing straw black. From the bark a brown dye may be obtained. It is, however, seldom used. It is universally known as talisay. Spanish speaking people call it almendras. Indigo.--Two species of Indigoferae are grown in the Philippines and are known as tagum. Except with mud they are not used to dye straws. Tiagkot.--The leaves of this plant (Pithecolobium subacutum) are employed on Romblon Island in dyeing buri gray. Other names are tagayong, narandauel, saplit (Cagayan); carisquis, ayamguitan (Zambales); tugurare (Pangasinan); inep (Bulacan); malasaga, malaganip, tekin (Laguna); bahay (Sorsogon); tagomtagom (Samar); tique (Rizal). Kabling.--This plant (Pogostemon cablin) is generally cultivated, though it grows where its cultivation has been abandoned. A volatile oil, used to keep away insects from textiles, is obtained from the leaves. The leaves are used in Tanay, Rizal, in obtaining gray sabutan straw. Mabolo.--The heart wood of this tree (Diospyros discolor) is known as kamagon. The leaves are employed in Tanay, Rizal. Castor.--This plant (Ricinus communis) is seldom cultivated in the Philippines but is found wild in all localities. The "beans" yield the oil. The leaves are added to mud in obtaining gray sabutan straw. Artificial Dyes. It is commonly believed that artificial dyes are less permanent than natural ones. This is seldom the case; as a matter of fact, some of the fastest and most valuable dyes are now made artificially and many are not procurable from vegetable coloring matters. Most of the cheaper dyes made from coal tar are fugitive; that is, they fade in sunlight or water or in both. They are often still further cheapened by being adulterated with salt, dextrine and the like. Such are the colors which are usually sold by the Chinese tienda keepers and which have caused artificial dyes in general to come into such ill-repute in the Philippines. Many of these "Chino dyes" contain 95 per cent salt. It is the belief, however, that artificial dyes of a good class, so packed and marketed that they will come cheaply to the hands of the dyers and weavers, will drive out of use practically all of the vegetable dyes now employed in the Philippines. The disuse of the natural dyes would not be regretted here, for, with the possible exception of those obtained from sabutan straw in Tanay, much finer colors can be produced with artificial dyes, as to both beauty and fastness. If the time of the workers is considered, the vegetable dyes now employed in the Philippines are more expensive than the artificial dyes, even though the latter are now sold in wastefully small packages and bear the burden of several large profits before they come to the hands of the persons using them. [4] DYEING. The process of dyeing is simple. The fluid is prepared in water (usually boiling), and the material is immersed in it. The shade of color obtained depends on the length of time the material is allowed to remain in the fluid or the number of times it is treated, and the strength of the dye. The combination of two different dyes to obtain a third is understood to some extent. In particular, red and yellow are mixed to obtain orange. SUGGESTIONS ON THE USE OF COLORS IN MATS. Standard Colors. The three primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. The three secondary colors are obtained by combination of the three primary colors, and are orange, green, and violet. Orange is made by a combination of yellow and red, green is a combination of blue and yellow, and violet is the combination of red and blue. Most of the dye materials explained in the preceding pages do not produce standard colors and so, when combined, do not result in the expected secondary color. Often those called red are, in point of fact, red-violet (see Plate III). Sometimes, also, dyes called yellow are yellow-orange. A mixture of yellow-orange and red-violet would produce a muddy color. Dye called green may be really blue-green or yellow-green, and combined with red, will make a muddy color. The above remarks on standard complementary colors are only valid for pure colors and it is only by much experimentation that pleasing tones can be obtained by a combination of the dyes used on straws in the Philippines. How to Tone Down Brilliant Colors. Many of the colors used in Philippine mats are very brilliant. A little brilliantly colored straw, properly combined with subdued colors such as gray or one of the natural colors of Philippine straws, is pleasing, but the abundant use of brilliant straws, such as are sometimes seen in mats of solid color, is to be discouraged. All brilliant colors may be subdued by adding to them their complementary color. Thus a brilliant red may be subdued by adding to it a small amount of green and in the same way brilliant green may be toned down by mixing with it a small portion of red. If too much of the complementary color is added the result will be gray. As will be seen, all complementary colors will subdue one another. In Plate III the principal colors have been so arranged that the complementary colors are directly opposite each other and are connected by lines. Any two colors connected by lines on this chart will tone down each other and, if mixed in proper proportions, will result in gray. It is probable that any straw which has been dyed too brilliant, can be closely matched to one of the colors given on Plate III. Consequently its complement can be determined and, by experimentation, the brilliant color toned down. Usually only an exceedingly small amount of its complement is needed to tone down a given color. Color Combination. In general, too many different colors appear in the Philippine mats, and most of these are brilliant. It is often true that a large amount of a given brilliant color is offensive to the eye, and yet the addition of a little of it greatly enhances the beauty of the mat. Often color combinations are not harmonious. Particularly bad effects are obtained with red-violet and yellow or yellow-orange. Red-violet with blue-green is another unfortunate combination. Certain rules have been set down for combination of colors: (1) A given color with its tints and shades [5] may always be safely combined; (2) complementary colors may always be safely combined; (3) the tints and shades of complementary colors may always be safely combined; (4) any three colors occurring in sequence on the color chart may be combined in that sequence. The following notes on the use and combination of the colored straws from Tanay, Rizal, and from Romblon, and those shown on the charts accompanying the dyes of Leopold Cassela & Co., are given. The figures refer to the numbers given the colored straws on these charts. These dyes were evolved for the Bureau of Education especially for Philippine mat straws and will soon be available in the market. The notes have been prepared in accordance with the rules above outlined, and, if they are followed closely, no unfortunate color combination can result. Colors Obtained from the New Dyes. The sample straws on these charts are made with the following dyestuffs: Colors. Numbers Dyestuffs. on chart. Yellow Yellow-Orange No. 1 Paraphosphine G. Violet No. 2 Methylviolett BB 72 No. 1. Brown No. 3 Rush Brown B. Orange Red-Red No. 4 Rush Red S A. Yellow-Green No. 5 Rush Green T B. Blue-Violet No. 6 New Methylene Blue R. Red-Violet No. 7 Magenta Prima. Black No. 8 Rush Black M. Chocolate No. 9 Rush Brown X. Red No. 10 Rush Red J S. Yellow Orange-Yellow No. 11 Auramine II. Blue-Green No. 12 Japan Green. Red Violet-Violet No. 13 Methylviolett R No. 1. Red-Orange No. 14 Chrysoidine A G. Blue Blue-Green No. 15 New Methylene Blue N. Violet Red-Red No. 16 Safranine S 150. Complementary or opposite colors on the color chart are said to be harmonious. Their relation is made more pleasing, however, if one color, usually the more brilliant, is used in very small amount. In many cases in the above combinations colors not exactly opposite have been united. They usually contain a mixture of a primary color common to both. Brown, Black, Chocolate, and Dark Red are complicated mixtures and may be analyzed with a chart which will appear later. Many of these dark colors would harmonize with one another, but would be so dark that they would not be pleasing. In every one of these combinations, the natural straw background figures as another color, and that is why the especially good combinations, as will be noticed, contain browns, yellows and reds, colors which blend particularly well with the background. Red-Violet No. 7 can be used with only a very few colors, and never with Yellow Yellow-Orange No. 1. Yellow Yellow-Orange should be used cautiously. In sabutan straw, No. 1, Yellow, must be used sparingly. When used in combinations in place of No. 1, Yellow Yellow-Orange, the design should be an open one, rather than solid. Violet Red-Red, No. 16, when being used in place of Red, No. 10, must be used in the same way, and only in places where very, very little is called for. No. 11 is a color that clashes with even a natural straw, so is not advisable in any combination or alone. No. 13 is not a necessary color when No. 2 and No. 6 are available. In placing the color upon the space to be decorated, the heavier colors should usually appear on the outside and near the edge of the space, although a border may sometimes be outlined with darker color on both inside and outside edges. The following combinations of these colored straws will prove harmonious. The numbers correspond to those used on the chart and the different kinds of type indicate the proportions of the color to be used--little, Medium Amount, MUCH. The relative positions of the colors must also be observed and the given order followed when more than two colors are combined. Brown (3) Yellow-Yellow Orange (1). Especially good. Black (8) Yellow-Yellow Orange (1). Chocolate (9) Yellow-yellow Orange (1). RED-ORANGE (14) CHOCOLATE (9) Yellow-Yellow Orange(1). In this case, the heavy color, 9, comes in the center of the design, but is necessary to separate Nos. 14 and 1. VIOLET (2) BLUE-GREEN (12) Red-Orange (14). Violet (2) Red-Orange (14) Blue-Blue Green (15). Brown (3) alone on natural background. Brown (3) Yellow-Green (5). Especially good. Brown (3) BLUE-GREEN (12). BROWN (3) RED-ORANGE (14) Red (16). Brown (3) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. Brown (3) BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. Brown (3) RED (16). In sabutan straw, use No. 4 or 10 in place of No. 16. Black (8) Brown (3) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. ORANGE-RED RED (4) Blue-Green (12). Use No. 15 instead of 12 with sabutan. BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) BLUE-GREEN (12) Orange-Red Red (4). Especially good. Black (8) ORANGE-RED RED (4). Especially good. YELLOW-GREEN (5) BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) Red-Orange (14). RED-VIOLET (7) BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) Yellow-Green (5). Especially good. Black (8) Yellow-Green (5). Use this combination with an open design (not solid), and do not use much of each. BLUE-GREEN (12) Yellow-Green (5). BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) Yellow Green (5). Blue-Violet (6). On a natural ground. Blue-Violet (6) Red-Orange (14). Chocolate (9) Blue-Green (12) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. Chocolate (9) BLUE-GREEN (12) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. Blue-Blue Green (15) Red-Orange (14). Especially good. BLUE-BLUE GREEN (15) Red (16). Romblon Buri Vegetable Colors. 1--Black. 2--Gray-green. 3--Natural. 4--Orange. 5--Dark red. In Romblon buri straw the following combinations will be harmonious: Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in accordance with Rule 4. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 in accordance with Rule 4. Exception to Rule 2: No. 5 is inharmonious with No. 4. It will be noticed that these colors depend for their harmony on their order or sequence and their quantity (in this case equal parts of all three). No. 3 being a neutral color, great quantities of it may be used with any other colors. There is danger, however, in getting too much of one of the other two colors. No. 4 is a very strong color and a little will be pleasing while much will be offensive. It is not well to use it alone on a ground of No. 3. No. 5 may be used alone with a ground of No. 3; No. 1 with a ground of No. 3; No. 2 with a ground of No. 3; No. 3 with a ground of No. 2; Nos. 1 and 3 on a ground of No. 2, with a very small quantity of No. 1; equal proportions of Nos. 1 and 4 may be combined on a ground of No. 3; Nos. 2 and 4 on a ground of No. 3, a very small quantity of No. 4 being used. Tanay Sabutan Colors (Mostly Vegetable). 1--Black. 2--Blue-green. 3--Natural. 4--Yellow. 5--Red-orange. 6--Red-orange red. It will be necessary to use No. 3 on a ground work. Mats made entirely of any of the other colors would hardly be harmonious on a floor or wall, if there were any other furnishings. Nos. 1, 2, 5 and 6 may be used separately upon a ground of No. 3; No. 2 in large quantity; No. 1 in small ground of No. 3; No. 2 in equal quantity with No. 5 upon a ground of No. 3; No. 5 in equal quantity with No. 6 upon a ground of No. 3; No. 6 in large quantity, with No. 2 in small quantity, upon a ground of No. 3; No. 5 in large quantity, with No. 1 small, on a ground of No. 3. STRIPPING MAT STRAWS. Philippine mat straws can be divided into three classes--palm straws, pandan straws, and straws obtained from sedges. The first two are obtained by stripping the leaves of the plants into narrow lengths. For this purpose there is used in most localities a small gauge held between the thumb and index fingers. A knife blade fitting in the notches serves as the cutting edge. The leaf is held in one hand and the gauge and knife in the other, the edge of the leaf being drawn through the gauge. This is generally made out of the stiff part of the leaf, though, occasionally, of a piece of rattan, bamboo or leather. At best it serves for only a few hours of use, when it is thrown away and another made. When the notch becomes worn, the blade moves about in the gauge, causing the width of the straws to vary, and when a new gauge is made there is always more or less variance in the position of the new notches. This method is very slow, as but one strip can be cut at a time; and, until the operator becomes expert in the use of the gauge, many of the strips are worthless. When used in the school room, each pupil has to prepare his own material. This causes waste of materials and a constant littering of the floor. For stripping sabutan leaves, the mat weavers of Tanay, Rizal, use a kind of comb which is discussed under the heading "Sabutan." The leaves are pulled over this comb before being dried. As sabutan is parallel veined it is very easy to strip it thus, the teeth of the comb following the leaf fibers. The comb produces several uniform straws with one stroke. The object of contriving the stripping machine illustrated and described here was to furnish a quick means of preparing palm and pandan straws with uniform widths and clean cut edges. Forms of it have been in use for some time and the model noted here has been tried out for a year. By its use one pupil can prepare materials for the whole class, or else the teacher can have all the materials prepared beforehand if it is so desired. This is half the problem of teaching the weaving of hats or mats. This stripper is made wide enough for inserting teeth three widths apart, so that without adjusting these teeth three widths of straw may be cut. By changing the teeth in the adjustable gums, any width desired may be obtained. It is best to make this apparatus of hard wood, especially the piece represented by Fig. A. A is a block of wood 23 cm. by 4 cm. by 4 cm., containing the groove XY. This groove is the size and shape of C, being 2.5 cm. wide at the top, 1.5 cm. at the bottom, and 3 cm. high. C is one of the blocks which slides in the groove XY. These blocks are made of different thicknesses, about 2, 3, and 4 mm., and are of hard wood or metal. The rod B passes through these blocks and tightens on the block D or X by means of a thumb screw. Z is a wooden roller 19 cm. long and 1.5 cm. in diameter. This should extend 2 mm. below the level of the main surface. It is placed in a groove made in a separate piece of wood from the principal block and is fastened into the principal block by means of screws. The teeth (see C) are made of clock springs or other thin sharp metal. They are 3 cm. long and 1 cm. to 1 1/2 cm. wide. The two upright pieces at both ends contain grooves on the inside in which the block-head slides up and down. To operate this device, the block-head containing the teeth is raised by the handle; the leaf is placed under the teeth, and the block-head is dropped. The teeth pass through the leaf into a groove underneath. The leaf is now pulled through by the hand as illustrated in Plate VI. KINDS OF WEAVES. With respect to their weaving, Philippine mats divide themselves into six groups and are here arranged according to their difficulty. They are (1) the over and under weave found in most simple mats, such as those made of buri straws, pandan straws, and sedges; (2) the sawali weaves, which employ the floating straws for making "woven in" designs and panels for figured sabutan and tikug mats; (3) the open work weaves of the Romblon buri mats; (4) the circular mats which employ the hat weaves, either with or without "woven in" designs; (5) the hexagonal weave; and (6) the embroidered mats in which the designs are later added. In difficulty, and in place in a course of instruction, embroidered mats follow the simple over and under weave. Over-and-Under Weave. This weave is the simplest and is the one which beginners should first take up. It is made by weaving over one and under one continuously. Until this is thoroughly mastered children should not be allowed to begin the more difficult weaves. The steps have been diagrammed in figures sufficiently large and clear in Plates VII, VIII, and IX that a detailed explanation is not necessary. Step 1 shows the position of the first four straws as they are placed upon the table or desk; steps 2, 3, 4, and 5, continued additions and weaving; steps 6, 7, and 8, turning the edge a on the end of the mat; step 9, turning the opposite edge c; step 10, the double turn of the corner straw; step 11, the corner turn woven in the mat at corner No. 1, lapping over the straw already woven; step 12, the continuation of the second edge b; step 13, the turning of the second and third corners; and steps 14 and 15, finishing the mat. In weaving large mats, it is customary to begin at one end of the mat, preferably near the left-hand corner as the mat lies before the weaver. The weaving continues along the end until half of the desired width of the mat is reached, when the first corner is turned. Now the weaving continues down the side and in, as far as the middle of the mat. When the desired length is woven, the second corner is turned and the first half of the mat completed. As the straws are not generally long enough without splicing, new straws are now added by lapping them from two to three inches upon the projecting ends of the straws already woven. This makes a narrow strip of double thickness down the center running the length of the mat. The weaving now continues as before until the desired width of the mat is attained, when the third corner is turned. The remainder is woven and finished at the fourth corner as shown by steps 14 and 15. Some weavers begin at the sides, and some few, even at the corners; but this should not be encouraged since it results in making two or more seams, where the straws lap. Care must be taken to weave all parts of the mat equally close and keep the edges perfectly straight; otherwise the mat when finished will be lop-sided, and consequently of no value. In weaving tapering grasses like tikug, which have ends of slightly different sizes, the opposite ends of the straws should be alternated. This prevents one edge of a mat from building faster than the other. Sawali Weaves. Simple Sawali. By sawali weave is meant all "woven in" designs that are not woven by ones as in the over and under weave. They may be woven regularly by twos, threes, etc.; or they may "switch" the floating straws so as to form a variety of artistic figure designs. In fact, there is no limit to the number of designs that may be thus made. Steps 1 and 2 illustrate the beginning of a sawali weave by twos. First 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are laid down; then c is put under 1-2, over 3-4, and under 5; d over 1, under 2-3, and over 4-5; e over 1-2, under 3-4, and over 5. This process is continued, advancing one straw each time until the desired amount is woven. If the weaving is by threes or fours, the same principle is followed; that is, the straw goes over three and under three, advancing one straw each time. Panels. Most "woven in" mat designs are arranged in panels, with a ground between, as this gives a more pleasing effect than a continuous figure weaving. Panels may be woven either length-wise (step 8), crosswise (step 8), diagonally across the mat (step 4), or in zigzags (step 3). They are most easily woven when arranged diagonally, for then the colors may be carried from border to border without mixing with the ground outside of the panel. Checks are made by weaving cross panels at regular intervals. In making parallel panels (panels parallel either to the sides or ends), more than two colors can rarely be used to advantage. Step 3 illustrates the weaving of a zigzag sawali panel. The straws, a, b, k, and l are woven by ones. It takes twelve straws one way and nine the other to make this panel. If a wider panel is desired, the same weaving is repeated as often as necessary. The straws a, b, k, and l are woven by ones. Put l over b and c, under de, over fg, under hi and over j. Put 2 under b, over cd, under ef, over gh, under ij and over k. Put 3 over b, under c, over de, under fg, over hi and under jk. Put 4 under bcd, over ef, under gh and over ijk. Put 5 over bc, under de, over fg, under hi and over j. Put 6 under b, over cd, under ef, over gh, under ij and over k. Put 7 over b, under c, over de, under fg, over hi, under jk. Put 8 under b, over cd, under ef, over gh, under ij and over k. Put 9 over bc, under de, over fg, under hi and over j. Put 10 under bcd, over ef, under gh and over ijk. Put 11 over b, under c, over de, under fg, over hi and under jk. Put 12 under b, over cd, under ef, over gh, under ij and over k. Then the whole operation is again repeated. It will be seen that the manner of weaving 2 and 12, 3 and 11, 4 and 10, and 5 and 9 is the same. Step 4 illustrates the diamond figure design, woven by threes, with 11 straws in width. Put 1 under cd, over efg, under h, over ijk and under lm. Put 2 under c, over def, under ghi, over jkl and under m. Put 3 over cde, under fghij and over klm. Put 4 over cd, under efg, over h, under ijk and over lm. Put 5 over c, under def, over ghi, under jkl and over m. Put 6 under cde, over fghij and under klm. Now the order reverses, 7 being the same as 5, 8 as 4, etc., until the other half of the figure is completed at 11. Now put 12 under cde, over fghij and under klm. Put 13 over c, under def, over ghi, under jkl and over m. Put 14 under cde, over fghij and under klm. Now 1 repeats itself, and the second figure is woven as the first. It is believed that with the aid of the large illustrations here presented the teacher or pupil can now follow for himself the other designs given, without a detailed explanation of each step. "Woven-in" Borders. Woven-in border designs may be made in three different ways; viz., First, by weaving the design around the mat, using the same straws that run through the body. (See Plate XIII, Fig. 1.) In this case the color effect is one of confusion, since the dyed straws used in the designs of the body of the mat have no relation to the design of the border when they enter it. Second, by weaving the border and the body of the mat of different straws, uniting them at the inner edge of the border by a loop as described in the Romblon mat. (See Plate XVI.) Third, by lapping the colored straws desired in the border, upon the projecting ends of the straws of the body of the mat. (See step 8, Plate XII.) These latter two methods are much more artistic, as a uniform color effect appears throughout the border. (See Plate XIII, Fig. 2.) The Romblon Mat. Making Open Work. Simple open work is illustrated in Plate XIV. Weave corner Z, using straws a, b, c, d, e and f, letting f float at both ends. Weave g, turning upward and over f, then making a double corner at y, passing under f, to the left and over f, and let float. Weave h, i, j, k, l and m in solid weave. Turn h under i and over j. Turn j upward and over i, to the left under f, upward over g, double corner at W, passing down under g, over g, and floating. Turn m upward over l to the left, under i, upward over f, to the left under g, upward over j making a double corner at X, passing under j. The straws j and m alternately cross each other to corner V. The other half of this open design is an exact duplicate of this weaving, and the remaining designs have the same turns as the one explained, except that in opposite designs the straws are turned in opposite directions. By following this plate it is easy to finish the weaves. If one straw is woven over another, it folds down before passing over, and, vice versa, if it passes under, it folds upward in turning. As is seen, the holes are made simply by turning the straws in the weave. The different shaped holes in other designs (see plates) are made by turning a different number of straws according to the shape desired. Varied border edges may be made by switching the straws in any direction desired. Introducing Color Panel. Step 1 of Plate XVI shows the first colored panel, straw ab placed between cd, the space between x and y having been already woven, as shown in step 11. Step 2. Folding a to the right. Step 3. Folding a under and down. Step 4. Folding c over a and to left. Step 5. Folding a over c and upward. Step 6. Folding b under d to left. Step 7. Folding b upward, with right twist downward. Step 8. Folding d downward, with right twist to right. Step 9. Folding b under d upward. Step 10. Shows addition of second straw ef woven to the right, where the same process of turning is gone through as illustrated in steps 6 to 9 inclusive. If weaving is to the left, steps 1 to 5 inclusive are repeated. Step 11. Shows continued additions and weaving both to the right and left. Step 12. Shows both edges of panel woven, the inside turnings being the same as those of the outer edge. Circular Mats. The circular mat is woven like the crown of a hat, with either the radiating center or a square center radiating at the four corners. In either case, the weaver must be careful to add the proper number of straws so that the mat will be flat, and not cupped or fluted. The cupping is caused by not adding a sufficient number and the fluting by adding too many. In tightening the weaving, do not pull the added straws (Plate XIX, step 6, straw x-x) or holes will be made at the elbow. Instead, pull the longer straws that run through the center, thus making the entire weaving tight. Radiating Center. Step 1. Begin by laying down, in pairs, ab and cd perpendicular to the body. Put kl under ab and over cd. Put ij over ab and under cd. Step 2. Now put ef under cd and ij, and over ab and kl; then put gh over cd and ij, and under kl and ab. See that the two ends of all the straws are equidistant from the center crossing. In step 3 the straws are changed from pairs to singles as follows: Bring a over i; e over d; i over h; d over l; h over a; and l over e. Step 4. The most convenient way to perform the next process is to take all the bottom straws in the left hand and allow the top straws to float over the closed fist. Then the weaving is done with the right hand. However, for beginners the weaving may also be done on the table. In weaving, place c under b, over a and under k; d over b and under a; g under f, over e and under b; h over f and under e; k under j, over i and under f; l over j and under i; b under c, over d and under a; a over c and under d; f under g, over h and under c; e over g and under h; j under k, over l and under g; i over k and under l; the round is then finished. Step 5. This illustrates the manner of adding straws. Straw x is placed under c, over h, under g and then bent back. The bend should be in the middle of the straw. Step 6. In this the right end of the added straw x is brought down over j and under i. Step 7 shows how to continue the additions by weaving one straw and then adding one. Step 8 shows the mat after the first round of additions has been completed. The weaving is now easy. Weave entirely around again without any additions, turning five straws each time. Then go around again weaving two and adding one, in the same manner as before, turning seven straws each time. As the diameter of the mat increases, the less often is it necessary to add. But be sure to add enough to keep the weaving close and the mat perfectly flat. Step 9 shows how to close the edge of the mat by turning back the straws on each other. It also gives a very pretty "woven in" design for a border, which can easily be followed from the plate. Square Center. Steps for commencing a circular mat with a square beginning are illustrated in Plate XXI. The additions at the corner are made in the same manner as explained in the radiating center, except that each is for a fourth of a circle instead of a complete circle. Decorations for Round Mats. Decorations are often employed in round mats. (See Plates XXII and XXIII.) The most usual are concentric or radiating colored bands of either simple or sawali weaves. Hexagonal Weave. Step 1. In Plate XXIV, place straws 1 and 2 parallel; then put 3 under 2 and over 1; put 4 under 1 and over 2. Step 2. Put 5 over 1 and 4 and under 2 and 3; put 6 under 1 and 4 and over 2 and 3. Step 3. Put a over 5 and 6 and under 1 and 2. Put b over 1, 2 and a, and under 3 and 4. Put c under a, over 4, 3, b, and under 6, 5. Step 4. Put d under b, over 6, 5, c, and under 2, 1, e. Put e under c, over 2, 1, d, under 3, 4, and over a. Put f under d, over 3, 4, e, under 5, 6, a, and over b. Step 5 is made open so as to show the triple over and under weave. Further weaving is merely a repetition of this process, as shown in step 6. Step 7 shows the turning of the straws on finishing the edge of the mat. Step 8. Many designs can be made by inserting colored straws into the natural weave. Step 8 illustrates three of these embroidered designs--the star, the bar, and the diamond. Embroidered Mats. The embroidering of mats is easily done and the method is shown in Plate XXVI. Mats in over and under weave, of solid color (either natural or dyed), are used, and the embroidery is done with colored straws. Plate XXVII illustrates an embroidered color panel. Floral, geometrical, and conventionalized designs are discussed under the headings "Samar mats" and "Special designs." MAT MATERIALS. Many Philippine mat materials have been described in a former publication on hats. [6] Only additional and new information is written here and such data from Bulletin 33 as are necessary to make a connected article. [7] Buri Straw. The Buri Palm. There are about six species of the genus Corypha in tropical Asia, but only one of these is found in the Philippines; this is Corypha elata, the buri palm. [8] It is widely distributed throughout the Philippines but is most abundant in the central part of the Pampanga valley and in southern Tayabas. Mr. C. W. Franks, formerly Division Superintendent of Schools for Mindoro Province, had a careful estimate made by his teaching force of the stands of buri palms on the Island of Mindoro. It was found that 5,000 hectares of land on this island are covered by 2,000,000 buri palms, of which 225,000, or about 12 per cent, are mature trees. The Island of Burias, the Isla Verde, and other small islands are fairly covered with the palm. The Province of Sorsogon, including the Island of Masbate, is also well supplied. In the Visayas there are districts in Panay, Negros, Cebu, and Bohol, where many buri trees are found. The buri is the largest palm that grows in the Philippines, attaining a height of 20 meters. Its trunk is very erect, spirally ridged and up to 0.7 meter in diameter. Its wood is of no commercial value. The full-grown leaves may be three meters long. They are spherical in outline and the lower one-third or one-half is entire, like the palm of the hand. The upper part is divided into from 80 to 100 segments each from 1.5 to 6 cm. wide and appearing like fingers spread apart. The petioles supporting the leaves are about 3 meters long and 20 cm. thick, and are provided with long, stout, curved spines. Both margins and spines are black in color. At flowering time all the leaves are shed. The young leaf grows out from the top of the palm with the segments pressed together in the form of a lance. The buri flowers and fruits but once and then dies. This is said to occur when the plant is from 25 to 40 years old. The individual flowers are greenish-white in color and only from 5 to 6 mm. in diameter. They are nevertheless perfect flowers, with calyx, corolla, and ovary showing plainly a division into threes, and stamens six in number. Thousands of these flowers occur on the large, terminal, much branched, pyramidal inflorescence which may grow to be 7 meters in height. The lower branches of this inflorescence may be as much as 3.5 meters long, the upper shorter, the highest about one meter in length. From 10 to 12 months after flowering the fruits are mature. They are from 2 to 2.5 cm. in diameter and each contains an extremely hard seed 1.5 cm. in diameter. Preparation. Buri straw is prepared from the young, unopened leaf of the buri palm. The coarsest straw is made by separating the leaflets from the midribs and drying them in the sun. A higher grade straw results from boiling them in water. Such straws are suitable only for bayon manufacture and for weaving into coarse mats for baling purposes. Several methods of bleaching buri straw obtain in various localities. Any exact description of the processes is somewhat difficult, since the persons who produce the straw have no very definite idea of the proportions and quantities of various materials which they use, and often do not care to divulge what they consider trade secrets. In several cases, nevertheless, supervising teachers have succeeded in obtaining fairly exact data on the preparation of buri straw. However, the same method carried out in different towns seems to result in different qualities of straw. These differences probably result from slight variations in the method of preparation. It has also been found that the age of the leaf, as determined by the length of the stem (petiole), influences the color of the straw produced. In some districts the unopened leaf is not taken if the stem is over two inches in length. In other places, leaves with stems about one foot high are considered ready to cut. It is probable, too, that the composition of the water in which the straw is boiled influences its color. Mauban, in Tayabas province, has the reputation of producing the whitest buri straw. Mr. John H. Finnigan, supervising teacher, attempted to introduce buri straw into the schools of Gumaca, Tayabas, where the buri palm is very plentiful. The work was in charge of expert weavers from Mauban, but only a poor quality of straw was produced. It was claimed that the water in which the segments were boiled, according to the process which is explained later, did not whiten them. It is a fact that in Mauban the water of the town fountain is used to produce the fine white straw. In the several years of his experience, Mr. Finnigan found no place outside of Mauban which produces straw equal in color to the Mauban straw, but he has noted that the second best straw comes from San Fernando, Gumaca, where there is an especially clear stream of water. In fact, all reports would seem to indicate that clear, pure water is essential to the production of the finest white buri straw, and only such should be used in all processes of the various methods outlined here. The Arayat Process.--Mr. Robert Clauson, supervising teacher, has determined the process of whitening buri straw in Arayat, Pampanga, as follows: The segments are separated from the midrib and rolled rather loosely, so that the water may pass between them, in bundles as large around as a plate. These are placed in a large can or vat containing tamarind leaves and alum (see bleaching agents) in water, and the whole is boiled until about one-half of the water has evaporated. During the boiling the buri must be tightly covered with tamarind leaves and not be allowed to project from the water. After this process the rolls are placed in a jar full of clear water and left to soak for three days. The strips are then washed several times in the river during a period of three days, and they are then laid on the grass or along fences to dry after each washing. The oftener they are alternately washed and dried the whiter and tougher will the material be. After the final drying, which should be thorough, the strips are rolled very tightly into bundles. The San Luis Method.--The method of whitening buri straw followed in San Luis, Pampanga, is described by Mr. James H. Bass, supervising teacher. The unopened leaves are brought down the Chico River in rafts. The segments are torn from the midrib and boiled for four hours in five gallons of water to which one liter of nipa vinegar, a lump of alum the size of an egg, a handful of tamarind leaves, and a handful of pandakaki leaves (see bleaching agents) have been added. Other steps follow as in the previous process. The Mauban Process.--The following description is taken from Circular No. 27, series 1911, of the Division of Tayabas. Let the unopened leaves, cut from the stalk, stand in a cool shady place several days, until the sap has well run. Open the leaves and separate the segments from the midrib with a sharp knife. Put these carefully into a petroleum can or other suitable receptacle filled with a boiling solution of two-thirds water and one-third white nipa or coconut tubá vinegar (see bleaching agents). Keep the solution boiling until the segments are cooked so soft that folding them leaves no crease. Spread the cooked leaves on clean grass in the sun to dry. The drying process may require one or two days. When the segments are quite dry, prepare a jar with clear soft water, and put them in this to soak over night. In the morning remove them from the jar, wash them thoroughly in clear running soft water and place them in the sun. At noon repeat the washing process until the segments open, then dry thoroughly in the sun. It is customary to roll the buri into coils in order to make it more convenient to store. The dry leaflets may be made flexible for this purpose by laying them on the grass in the night air. After a few minutes they will be flexible enough to roll. Care must be taken to have the segments smoothly rolled. When used, they should be smoothed carefully and then split into the widths required. The process can also be followed with rice vinegar (see bleaching agents) substituted for the tuba vinegar. Wash two chupas of rice and cook it in water until it becomes very soft and starchy. Put this in a clean petroleum can and add cold water until the can is two-thirds full, then cover the can and let it stand five or six days. This mixture will become very sour. Strain it through a piece of sinamay or other cloth. Cook the segments in this mixture instead of in the solution described in the first process, and then carry out all the other steps. The Romblon Process.--In Romblon, great care is exercised as to the age of the unopened leaf taken for the production of straw. If it is intended to produce bleached straw, stalks having stems about two inches long are selected. In the following description, which was submitted by Mr. R. L. Barron, head teacher, one unopened leaf is taken as a unit. The midribs are removed and the segments are rolled into round bundles, say by fives. These are boiled in clear water for about three hours. The leaves are then placed in a mixture of half a liter of tuba vinegar (or three liters of vinegar made from cooked rice, or one-fourth liter of lemon juice) to which enough water has been added to cover the rolls of buri, and boiled for about five hours. The material is then spread in the sun for three days to dry, care being taken that it is not exposed to rain or dew. The segments are then placed in cool clear water for twelve hours and again placed out in the sun for two days to dry. The Dyeing of Buri Straw. Buri straw intended for mats is usually colored with the cheap imported coal tar dyes previously noted. It is expected that the new dyes for which the Bureau of Education has arranged will take the place of these. Romblon buri mats, which are the finest in point of workmanship and design made in the Philippines, are colored entirely by local vegetable dyes. The methods used in the island of Romblon in dyeing buri straw have been carefully investigated by Mr. Barron, and are presented herewith. In each case the unit of material is one stalk of buri for each color. The process of whitening Romblon buri straw has already been described. For red, unopened leaves having stems three feet long should be selected. The midribs are removed while green, and the leaves are rolled into bundles of convenient size, say by fives. These are boiled in clear water for about three hours, after which the segments are spread in the sun for three days to dry. Care should be taken that they are not exposed to rain or dew. They are then placed in a fluid made by boiling two gantas of kolis leaves (see mordants) in plain water for one hour. The buri leaves remain in the water and soak thus for three days and three nights. The buri leaflets are then placed in a vessel containing two gantas of sappan wood (see dyes), one-half liter of lime water, and one chupa of tobacco leaves. To this a sufficient quantity of plain water is added to thoroughly submerge the buri, and the whole is boiled for eight hours, being stirred at short intervals to obtain a uniform shade of red. The segments are then removed and hung in the wind for about six hours to dry, after which they are smoothed and rolled. For yellow-orange, unopened leaves having stems about two inches long are selected and the segments are removed from the midribs and rolled into bundles. These are boiled in clear water for about three hours and spread in the sun for three days to dry, care being taken that the buri is not exposed to rain or dew. The material is then placed in a vessel containing one ganta of powdered turmeric (see dyes), one chupa of powdered annatto seeds (see dyes), one liter of lime water, and sufficient clear water to cover the buri, and is boiled in this mixture for five hours, with frequent stirring. It is then removed and hung in the wind for one-half day to dry, and is smoothed and rolled. For green, an unopened leaf having a stem about two inches in length is selected. The segments are removed from the midribs, rolled into bundles and boiled in clear water for about three hours. After this, they are boiled in lye (consisting of ashes) for about two hours, the mixture of ashes and water covering the buri during the process. The bundles are then removed from the vessel, wrapped in a bayon, and put in a dark place for 48 hours. The segments are then taken out and hung in the wind for about three hours to dry, and are smoothed and rolled. The preliminary steps in the production of "black straw" (a cold dark gray) are the same in the making of the green material. The segments taken from the bayon, as described above, are buried three days in black mud, in a rice paddy, for instance. The material is then washed in plain water until clean, and is then boiled for two hours in a mixture of one-half ganta each of the leaves of talisay, indigo, and tiagkot (see dyes), with a sufficient quantity of water to cover the mixture. The whole should be stirred at frequent intervals. After two hours the strips are removed and hung in the wind for five hours to dry. Then they are smoothed and rolled. Types of Buri Mats. The Bontoc Peninsula of Tayabas produces great quantities of baling mats and bayons. Bayons are also produced in large quantities in Capiz province. Other localities are of less importance. Buri sleeping mats are made from the northernmost part of Luzon, in the Bangui Peninsula, to the Sulu Archipelago. For the most part they are woven in small numbers here and there, in the different towns, sometimes for use in the household in which they are made, often for local trade in the barrios or municipalities. In nearly every province there is at least one town in which the production of buri mats reaches provincial commercial importance. A number of municipalities produce them for a fairly extensive trade with neighboring provinces. In most cases these are ordinary products, usually decorated with a few colors in lines or checks of dyed straws, either woven in or embroidered on the mat. In one region, however, buri mats have reached such a degree of perfection in their weaving and decoration as to have become a distinctive product known throughout the Islands. These are the Romblon buri mats, and they are produced throughout the islands of Romblon. Their central market is the town of the same name. They are distinctive because of the fine white and colored materials used, and of the designs which are woven in them. In the designing, not only checks and line borders but also plaids appear, and many of the effects produced by floating straws are employed. The Romblon mat, moreover, is most noticeable because of the fancy weave, making a sort of open work along the border, for which these mats are unique. Romblon exports great quantities of mats varying in price from P0.25, to over P10, and in size from small mats for stands to large decorative mats which cover the sides of rooms. [9] Pandan Straws. Description of Pandans. Pandans or "screw-pines," as they are sometimes called, are readily recognized by their characteristic appearance. [10] The common forms occasionally planted in pots as house plants and in gardens, or more often found growing wild, have long and rather narrow leaves always supplied with more or less sharp spines which run along both their margins to the very tip. Another row of spines is present on the under surface along the midrib. Bearing in mind this middle row of spines it is impossible to mistake the leaf of the pandan for that of the pineapple or maguey, which it resembles more or less in form and shape. Another very prominent feature of pandans is the presence of air or prop roots which grow from the stem above the ground and are helpful to the plant in various ways. The veins of the leaves always run parallel and in a longitudinal direction. The leaves are never borne on a petiole, but are attached directly, in winding corkscrew fashion, in ranks of three, to the stem. Pandans are true tropical shrubs or trees. Although also found in the subtropics of Australia, they never occur in other temperate regions except when raised as ornamental plants in greenhouses. Even their distribution in the tropics is limited, as they are found growing wild only in the tropical regions of the Old World, especially on the islands lying between the mainland of Australia and southeastern Asia. They are hardly ever cultivated, for where they do occur they are found in more than sufficient quantity for the purposes to which they are put. They are essentially seacoast or open swamp forms, generally found at low altitudes and appearing to find a moist, warm climate most congenial to their growth. In the Philippines they occur in all provinces, though not always in sufficient quantity to make them of commercial importance. The structure of the pandans presents many exceedingly interesting characteristics well worth noticing. Some plants are very low with leaves not wider than a blade of grass, while others form large trees with leaves many meters long and several decimeters wide. Spines generally occur along the whole margin of the leaf, though in a few forms, especially in cultivated varieties, they may be present only at the tip or may be wanting entirely. The marginal spines usually curve forward and vary in size from small, hardly perceptible forms, to large sharp conical structures. At times they are set very close together; again they may be several centimeters apart. Those on the midrib most often curve backwards and may vary the same as the marginal spines. Generally the spines are green in color, though in some species they are pale-green, red, black or white. Some forms seem to creep along the ground, while others, low and bushy and standing close together, form, with their numerous supporting prop roots, an almost impenetrable jungle. The high tree forms are very striking because of their peculiarly shaped crowns. The first roots which the pandans develop soon disappear and their place is taken by others. Starting high above the ground, these grow at an angle from the stem and generally reach the soil. They serve the twofold purpose of supporting the stem and of supplying it with sufficient air. If, by accident, the underground roots die off, the plant relies entirely on these air and prop roots for support and food. The strong prop roots are generally of the same diameter throughout, though sometimes they thicken at the ends. Normally they never branch above the ground, but after reaching the soil very often divide. The tip of the roots is protected by a cap, while a layer of cork tissue prevents the drying out of the root body. The pandan has two kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers are arranged in the form of a spike protected by a modified leaf called the bract. They are white in color, crowded together on the spike and consist of stamens which hold the pollen. The flowers do not have the showy colored bracts which forms so prominent a feature in those of many other plants. The female flowers consist only of the necessary parts. As the pollen occurs in enormous quantities and as the plants generally grow in groups, it is very probable that some flowers are pollinated by the wind. The fact that many pandans have very fragrant blossoms makes it almost certain that in the majority of cases insect pollination takes place. In a few forms that have a very disagreeable odor, pollination is effected by night flying insects. The fruit commonly has the general shape of the female inflorescence, but as it matures it increases greatly in size. Pandans have a composite fruit made up of smaller fruits called drupes. The most common forms resemble the pineapple with its leafy fruit apex cut off. As is natural, variations from this type occur. Cylindrical, eggshaped, jackfruit-like forms are quite common. The largest may be 60 cm. long and weigh 25 kilos, the smallest only 7 cm. in length and 60 grams in weight. The fruit may occur solitary at the end of a branch, or in groups. The color is green, though some species change to a bright red before maturity is reached. The fruit may have drupes ranging from 12 mm. to 14 mm. in length and these may contain one seed or a number of seeds. At maturity the drupes separate and the fruit falls apart. If the plant occurs along the water, the seeds, when liberated, float about until they rest in a suitable place for germination. Uses of Pandans. Pandans are valued chiefly for their strong fibrous leaves, which are woven into mats, bags, and hats. Unless specially prepared, the soft plant tissue between the harder leaf fibers becomes dry and dirty and breaks in time; hence the ordinary pandan bag or mat can not be considered a durable article. However, when treated to a boiling process or when rolled, as explained for sabutan and the pandan of Majayjay, the leaves yield straw which is stronger and more durable than most palm or sedge straw used for the same purposes. Pandan mats are important articles of domestic commerce in Malaysia, as it is estimated that four-fifths of the total population use them for sleeping purposes. In all places except where palms, like the buri or sedges occur, they yield the most suitable and most easily prepared mat material. Generally the whole leaf is utilized after removing the marginal and midrib spines. The coarsest mats are used in drying out copra, cacao beans, paddy, and such products. Pandan mats are made and used widely in the Philippines. Formerly, before gunny sacks came into general use, coffee was packed in pandan bags and where pandans did not grow they were introduced and cultivated for that purpose. Even to-day bags from pandan play an important part in transporting sugar, coffee, and other tropical products in and around southern Asia. Few pandan bags are made in the Philippines in comparison with the enormous quantity of bayons woven of buri straw and used to contain domestic rice and export sugar. Pandans are used extensively for making hats in the Philippines as well as in other parts of the world. In several islands of the Pacific very fine ones are woven from straw consisting of the whole leaf cut into strips. In the Loochoo Islands imitation Panama hats of great strength are woven from the skin of a pandan, bleached and rolled into a straw. In the Philippines numerous varieties of pandan hats are produced, varying in grade from the fine and expensive sabutan to the coarse pandan. [11] In some other places, as Burma, pandan leaves are woven or sewed into sails. In southern India they are utilized as umbrella covering. If no stronger material is obtainable, the leaves are placed on roofs as thatching, but they do not seem to lend themselves well to that purpose. In countries where they grow, they are often used instead of twine or made into ropes or hunting nets, or into drag ropes for fishing nets. They are said to be excellent paper-making material. In some islands the fibers are separated from the leaf and used by the inhabitants in the manufacture of belts and aprons. The wood of the tree pandans is too spongy and soft to make a good material for the construction of houses. Still, on small islands, such as the Coral and Marshall Islands, the natives construct their huts from pandan wood. Generally, it is used only for rough, temporary work. In some localities the soft interior part is removed to make water pipes. Again, because of its lightness, the wood is used by the people on the many islands of the Pacific to buoy their fishing nets. Pandan roots are employed for various purposes. If sufficiently thin they are used, after being cleaned, for making baskets. The roots may also be pounded out, cleaned and made into brushes for painting or whitewashing houses. They are sometimes so employed in the Philippines. They are also used for cordage. A medicinal oil is sometimes obtained from them. The flowers of some pandans, especially those of Pandanus tectorius, are extremely fragrant. This plant is the most widely distributed of the pandans and is the most frequent pandan found along the seacoast and in low altitudes. Some botanists claim that the male flowers of this species have the sweetest odor known among plants. So powerful is their fragrance that by it sailors can often tell the presence of land before they actually see it. The natives in some places use the flowers in making an aromatic water, or, by distillation, a volatile oil, known as keura oil, which is used medicinally for rheumatism. Certain pandan fruit is extremely oily and serves at times as a substitute for butter. The sap has the taste of sweet apples and is relished by the inhabitants in many islands. In some places it is even made into fruit jam. The very young leaves, especially those surrounding the flowers, are eaten raw or cooked, and constitute an important article of diet when a famine sweeps India. Kinds of Pandans. The Common Seashore Pandan. In a walk of half a mile or, at most, a mile along the beach of any of the seacoast provinces in the Philippines, one is almost sure to come across Pandanus tectorius. A map showing the distribution of this pandan would therefore be practically an outline map of the Islands. The species does not grow in nipa swamps, though immediately back of them it will be found well established. Neither could one expect to find it in localities where the cliffs come down abruptly to the sea, permitting only the existence of vegetable life of the lowest form. Pandan is its usual name in the Philippines. In Zambales it is called "panglan" or "panglan babai." Another name is "pangdan." The stem is not very strong, and reaches a height of from 3 to 6 meters. It is generally supported by aerial roots. The leaves are of medium thickness, on the average 1.35 m. long and 6 cm. wide. They are provided with strong sharp spines about 5 mm. in length. These are curved forward and are as much as one centimeter, or a little more, apart. The spines on the under surface of the midrib are shorter and farther apart, but bend in the same direction. The male flowers form a spike and these are surrounded by very fragrant leaves called spathes. The fruit is 20 cm. long, 18 cm. wide, and contains from 50 to 80 drupes, each about 5.5 cm. long and 2.5 to 3 cm. wide. The upper half of the drupes are free but close together. There are small furrows on the tops of the drupes, rather deep but not very distinct. When ripe the fruit has a fine red color and the drupes fall from the head. Pandanus tectorius is of considerable importance in nearly all parts of the world where it grows, and it is devoted to most of the uses already noted for pandans in general. In certain places, large industries are founded on it. In India, the leaves are cut every second year and made into large bags. Hats are produced from it in the Pacific Islands, those from the Hawaiian group being especially well known. It is probable that the imitation Panama hats of the Loochoo Islands are also woven from a material (raffia) prepared from the common pandan. In the Marshall Islands it is recorded that forty varieties of this species have been evolved in the course of planting and cultivation for industrial purposes. From the information submitted with the specimens received in the Bureau of Education, it is to be judged that the economic importance of the common pandan in the Philippines is of but little consequence. Though widely used, no large or even local industries are based upon it. A scattering production of hats, mats, and bags is reported in Abra, Union, Zambales, Mindoro, Bulacan, Rizal, Batangas, Sorsogon, Iloilo, Antique, Oriental Negros, Cebu, Leyte, and Sorsogon provinces. Near Badoc, Ilocos Norte, and along the Abra border the Tinguian people make mats from an upland variety for local trade. In Balayan, Batangas, the leaves are used for thatching. In Surigao they are also made into baskets. In most processes the preparation of the straw consists of cutting the leaves into strips and drying them. In Zambales, however, it is reported that the leaves are flattened, pressed, split, and rolled. In Mindoro, they are soaked in water and dried in the sun before being cut into straw. It is probable that much better material could be prepared from this pandan if such processes as are used in the making of sabutan straw and straw from the Majayjay pandan were followed. Judging from the results obtained in other countries, it would seem that if suckers of the common pandan were taken, in the districts in which it grows, planted, and cultivated, varieties would result which would be much better adapted for industrial purposes than the parent stock. Indeed, it is probable that sabutan, the Philippine pandan of greatest economic importance, is a variety which is the result of generations of planting, still closely resembling P. tectorius but differing from it in its leaves, which are thinner, longer, of finer texture and of greater strength. It is possible also that sarakat, the economic pandan of the Bangui Peninsula, Ilocos Norte, is a variety of P. tectorius. Varieties of the Common Pandan. Sabutan. Botanical.--It is a question among botanists whether the pandan known as sabutan is a variety of the common sea-shore pandan (P. tectorius) or whether it has sufficient distinctive characteristics to entitle it to be considered as a separate species (P. sabotan). Botanists have not as yet succeeded in securing a fruit of this pandan, which could settle the question, and it is very doubtful whether the fruit will ever be found. [12] Prof. Ugolino Martelli of Florence, Italy, an authority on pandans, considers sabutan to be Pandanus tectorius var. sinensis. This classification is for the present accepted, as most evidence is in favor of such determination and in this paper sabutan is therefore considered to be a variety of the common pandan, the chief change in which, through generations of planting, has been in the production of a leaf stronger, thinner, and of finer texture than that of the parent stock. The sabutan plant is never found growing wild, though after it has once been started and rooted it will endure neglect and even abandonment. It produces better and finer leaves, however, if it receives some care and attention. In the towns of Tanay and Pililla, Rizal Province, and in Mabitac, Laguna Province, and in all the towns along the lake shore as far as Paete, the suckers of the plant are set out in small plots of ground surrounding the houses of the people. These form patches which in several years (depending mostly on soil conditions) yield pandan leaves large and fine enough to be used in the manufacture of hats and mats. The ideal location for sabutan is along the banks of streams where it can get the benefit of the light shade of bamboo or plants that happen to grow in the vicinity. Ordinarily, good results are obtained by planting the suckers of sabutan in a loose and moist, but well drained, soil. Plants are set out one meter apart in each direction, as they spread considerably. They need some shade, especially when young, but not the heavy shade of an abacá or banana grove. The plant grows to be from 2 to 4 meters high. The leaves are fine in texture, about 2 meters long and as wide as 6 centimeters. Spines occur on the margins and on the under surface of the midrib. The male inflorescence procured from Tanay by the Bureau of Education is similar in appearance to that of Pandanus tectorius and is about 27 centimeters long. At varying distances on the flower stalk are leaves (bracts), thin and fine, from 10 to 24 centimeters long and with fine spines on margins and midrib. The flowers have a pleasant, though not very strong, odor. Status of the sabutan mat industry.--As an industry, the weaving of sabutan mats is confined to the towns of Tanay and Pililla, in the Province of Rizal. The beginnings of this industry go back beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants or even of their parents. It is probable that, as the people state, mat weaving has been carried on ever since the towns were founded. Tanay is the older of the two and it would seem (though reliable historical data of this kind are difficult to obtain) that the town was the first to engage in sabutan mat weaving and is probably the mother of all the sabutan industries carried on around Laguna de Bay. The present condition of the mat-weaving industry of these two towns, however, is precarious; it appears to be gradually dying out. The fabrication of sabutan hats has been introduced from Mabitac, Laguna Province, into Pililla, with the result that the younger generation is entirely engaged in making hats, and the relatively small number of mats produced is being woven by the older women who have not cared to learn the new art. As yet no hats are made in Tanay, but the work is being taught in the schools and from conversation with people of the town it is judged that they are becoming interested also. The disappearance of the sabutan mat industry would be very unfortunate, for the products are the finest samples of the mat weaver's art produced in the Philippines. The mats are of fine straw; the natural gray of sabutan is pleasing; the designs used are good; and the colors are usually well combined. The favorite patterns consist of heavy plaids with some of the stripes containing sub-patterns produced by floating straws; the simplest ones have narrow border designs in straight lines. The most expensive mats are decorated with embroidered designs. The combination of colors in these is sometimes not pleasing and the designs themselves are not of special merit. However, if better ones are substituted, these mats should be excellent for a foreign trade demanding expensive articles of this nature. Unlike most Philippine mat industries, this one has not as yet been affected by coal tar dyes, and only vegetable dyes, found locally in the town or in the forests, are employed. The straw dyes very well and as a consequence the colors produced are even throughout the mat; nor have any of the shades that brilliant effect or "off color" which is so distasteful in certain fibers. The colors obtained are only fairly fast in the light, however, and it is probable that the new coal tar dyes will be faster and cheaper. In point of durability, sabutan mats would be superior to all others produced in the Islands if woven of double straws. In price they now vary from forty centavos to thirty pesos, the ordinary ones bringing from P1.50 to P2.50. If the industry is to be preserved intact, however, something must be done to give it vitality, for the weavers know from experience of neighboring towns that more money can be made from weaving hats than in the fabrication of mats, and they will naturally change to the more remunerative article. Unlike most other weaving industries, the craft has not as yet been organized in Tanay. The production of mats has been more or less haphazard, with but little supervision by any person resembling the broker usually connected with household industries. The weaver on completing a mat sells it in the market or to some storekeeper. Up to the present time, the chief trade in these mats has been at Antipolo in May during the "romeria" or annual pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Antipolo. Certain persons in Tanay have made it a practice to gather up a store of mats and take them to Antipolo for sale there during the fiesta. A few of them are on sale in Manila and in neighboring provinces. Of late, however, persons have appeared who are taking up the industry more thoroughly as brokers and it is to be hoped that the workers will be organized into some better system for production than now exists. There is a large opportunity not only for supervision but also for division of labor. At present the men of the house cut the leaves, and each weaver (all the weavers are women) carries out the rest of the process. There would be a considerable saving of time if certain persons devoted themselves to the preparation of the gray straw, and the dyeing were left entirely to certain other workers. In this way the weavers of the mats would be engaged only in the actual fabrication of the article and much time would be saved to them. [13] Planting, maturing, and yield of sabutan.--The plants from which the straw mats at Tanay are made are set out in plots near the houses of the workers. The suckers are planted in April at the beginning of the rainy season, and, while it is always stated that straw prepared from the leaves grown in the shade is best for weaving, yet the plants are never intentionally set out in the shade but are planted wherever an unoccupied plot of ground is obtainable. As a matter of fact, the patches to be seen in the sabutan towns grow in a semi-shade such as one would expect to find in yards where the usual ornamental and fruit trees and banana plants grow. Much of the sabutan is in the sun from morning to night; some is shaded during all or part of the day. The suckers mature leaves in the third year [14] but these are cut off and thrown away as useless and it is not until the fourth year that the lower leaves can be stripped into straw. Harvest takes place every four months, five or six leaves being obtained from a plant at each cutting. The plants are never irrigated but it is to be noted that the soil around Laguna de Bay is very moist and that the water table is close to the surface with a good seepage from the hills which are near the shore. It is probable that the plants differ in their production of leaves because some have many more branches than others and the climatic and soil conditions affect the yield. Preparation of the straw.--The best straw is prepared during the dry season, because at this time there is sufficient sunshine to produce a good colored material. As a consequence the workers prepare a large quantity at that season and store it in or under their houses, wrapped in mats. The leaves used are about 2 meters in length and 6 cm. in width. The central thorns on the back of the leaves are removed by cutting away the midrib. Two lengths about an inch in width are thus produced from which the outer rows of thorns may or may not be removed, according to custom. The lengths thus obtained are left in the sunshine and wind for about half a day to render them more flexible, after which they are cut into straws. For this purpose there is used an instrument consisting of a narrow wooden handle about 2 1/2 cm. wide at the base, into which narrow sharp teeth, usually of steel, are set. Brass and even hard woods can be used for teeth. The point of the segment being cut off, the base is grasped in one hand, the inside of the segment being turned toward the operator. The comb-like instrument is forced into it about 4 cm. from the end of the base and the teeth are held against the first finger by pressure of the thumb. The leaf length is then drawn up by the other hand and is cut into straws depending in width upon the fineness of the comb used. If the leaves are too young they will break in this process. The stripped segments are then usually tied up into bundles as large around as the fist, and hung in some shaded place exposed to the wind. The length of time occupied by this process varies. In some places it is omitted, though it seems to be always carried out in Tanay. The bundles are then undone and the worker, holding the uncut base of each length in one hand, runs the straw between his fingers and the sharp edged ruler-like piece of bamboo held in the other. This is done several times and results in the removal of considerable moisture, the prevention of wrinkling, and greater pliability of the straw. There are several variations in the processes followed for boiling sabutan. In the Province of Laguna a fistful of the stripped lengths with bases still attached are rolled up into a bundle and placed in fresh water in order to remove the coloring matter--in some places in clear, running river water, in other places in a can of clean, fresh water--for about twenty-four hours; the water is changed several times. In the last method the process is discontinued when the water remains clear. Bundles are then placed in cold vinegar, water or lemon water to which green tamarind fruit has been added to make the color of the straw lighter and to toughen it; the water is brought to a boil. Bamboo is used as fuel, as that fire is not so hot as a wood fire. The length of time required for cooking differs. One good authority states that it should be stopped when the odor of sabutan can no longer be detected in the vapor, which occurs after about fifteen minutes boiling. This authority also states that the straw should be removed when it takes on a reddish hue. Many women put the straw into clear boiling water to which nothing has been added. After this process the straw is allowed to cool, is washed several times in clean, fresh water and is spread in the sun to dry, whereupon it assumes a gray color. If there is no sun the cool straw must be kept in fresh water which is changed every twelve hours until the sun appears. If a greenish shade is obtained the process has not been correctly carried out. Straw from dark green, thick, old leaves, or from those grown in the sun, is often reddish brown in color. The boiling processes noted are those used in the preparation of straw for mats. The process followed in Tanay has been described by Mr. Amado Simpoco, principal of the Tanay Central School. The stripped lengths, after being wilted and drawn over the sharp edged piece of bamboo, are made up into fist bundles, tied at the middle and placed in a large copper pot 61 cm. in diameter and 84 cm. in depth and containing about 25 bundles. The pot is filled with water and the sabutan is boiled for 24 hours, care being taken that the straw is always covered. After boiling, the bundles are removed and untied and the strips are hung in the shade or in the house to cool; afterwards they are placed in the river for a day and are then washed carefully and dried thoroughly in the sun. The gray straw thus obtained is stored in bundles, still attached to the uncut bases, and is left in the air for three or four nights before it is woven into mats. Dyeing sabutan.--Mr. Simpoco has also made a careful study of the methods used in Tanay in dyeing sabutan straw, and the results of his efforts are presented here. Red orange: For the production of red orange straw the gray material, prepared as outlined above, is first treated by steeping in water containing kolis leaves and twigs. The leaves and chopped twigs are pounded in a mortar and are placed together with the sabutan in a large receptacle capable of containing from 25 to 30 bundles, filled with water. The material is allowed to remain in the receptacle for four days. Early in the morning of the fifth day the straw is removed and hung in a shaded place until dry and is made up into bundles tied tightly at the larger end. The dye fluid is carefully prepared. Chips of sappan are boiled in a large copper pot for one day. A quantity of turmeric roots and annatto seeds are pounded separately in mortars until they are reduced to a very fine state. These are then separately treated with water and pressed, the result being a turmeric water and an annatto water. These two are mixed and poured into the boiling sappan. After about 25 minutes the bundles of sabutan are placed in the pot and the whole is allowed to boil until every part of the fiber is uniformly colored. After having been boiled sufficiently, the bundles are removed and placed in a large basket, later to be dried in the shade. They are left in the night air for three or four nights and are then rolled up in coarse mats. The shades procured vary with the proportions of the dye materials used. Some are a decided orange, others are light yellow. Yellow: Yellow straw is produced in the same manner, using turmeric and annatto only. Red: In the production of red straw the bundles are treated with kolis leaves in the same manner as in the preliminary process for red-orange straw. In a pot capable of holding 25 fist bundles of sabutan, four gantas [15] of finely chopped sappan are placed. Over this are placed 15 bundles of the straw, which in turn is covered with one ganta of chopped sappan. The remaining 10 bundles are then added and covered with still another ganta of sappan. The pot is filled with water and set over a fire for from twelve to fifteen hours. Care is taken that the bundles are always kept under the water and that all parts of the material are uniformly colored. The loss by evaporation is counterbalanced by adding water from time to time. When well colored, the straw is removed from the pot and placed in a large basket for a day and is then hung in the sunshine to be dried. It should be allowed to remain in the night air; when thoroughly dried it is rolled in coarse mats. Black: Black straw, a warm dark gray, is prepared from the red material. Buds of bananas, leaves of kabling, talisay, camagon, and the castor plant are pounded in a mortar and are mixed with fine particles of black clay such as can be obtained from rice paddies. Sappan water, made by boiling sappan chips, is then added to the mixture and the entire mass is placed in a large receptacle for a day. Red straw is put into this mixture and allowed to remain for two days. It is removed on the third day and again returned to the mixture on the fourth day. On the fifth day the straw is finally removed and placed in the sun, being kept in the air at night. Coal tar dyes are used in the production of green and purple straws. These are purchased from the Chinese stores. The prepared gray fiber is also employed with these dyes. The usual method of boiling in a tin can until the desired shade is obtained, is followed. The straw is dried in the sun and kept in the night air. Colors produced are not so uniform or so satisfactory as the others described and are seldom used. Weaving the mats.--Before weaving the mat the worker runs the straw over the ruler-like piece of bamboo as already explained, and removes the uncut base to which it has been attached during the various processes of preparation, bleaching, and dyeing. One side of the mat is first woven the entire length, and is finished by having the edges turned in. This edge is then placed in a slit made in a narrow stick of wood and is tied in place with strips of sabutan straw running around the stick and through the mat. The mat is allowed to remain attached to this stick until it has been completely woven. As weaving proceeds, the finished part is rolled up on the stick, thus being out of the way of the weaver. This arrangement also serves to keep the mat in position during weaving and prevents it from getting out of shape. Single straws are used and consequently the mat has a right and a wrong side. [16] The most expensive mats, which are seldom made, are double and of very fine material. The extension and cultivation of sabutan.--For a number of years there has been an increasing interest throughout the Philippines in the propagation of sabutan. Teachers in various places have procured suckers from the towns along the east coast of Laguna de Bay, and have planted them out with the idea of having their own industrial material close at hand. Many of these attempts have been failures, since not enough information had been obtained concerning the soil and moisture conditions necessary for the cultivation of the plant. The Bureau of Education has therefore gathered as much information as possible on the cultivation of sabutan, based upon the experience of various persons who have attempted planting it. It has been found that, in those regions having a dry season, the suckers should be planted early in the rainy season so that they may become well rooted before the rains stop, or else water should be provided through irrigation ditches. In nearly all cases it has been reported that the loss of plants resulted from lack of water at the planting period. It is reported that difficulty is found in making the suckers live if planted in the sun, but that, when well established, those so planted grow and produce suckers better. As has been previously noted, no special attempt is made to set the plants out in either the sun or shade in the towns around Laguna de Bay, but all weavers state that leaves grown in the shade are the best for industrial purposes. Sabutan plants need a moist but well drained soil. They should be set out about a meter apart each way (that is, the rows one meter apart and plants one meter apart in the row), since they spread out considerably when they become older. Where sufficient moisture does not exist, irrigation should be provided. If it is decided to shade the suckers, plants such as the papaya, having long roots rather than surface roots, are best. No sabutan plants should be planted within 6 feet of the papaya. It is probable that with cultivation the plants will yield leaves suitable for straw in from one and one-half to two years, the time to mature depending upon the conditions noted in the preceding paragraphs. [17] Sabutan types.--In several places in the Philippines there are pandans which yield leaves similar to those of sabutan. It is probable that none of these are the true sabutan. The most important one is that growing along the northeastern shore of Tayabas Province. Mats are made at both Casiguran and Baler, and enter to a small extent, the interprovincial trade with neighboring provinces. It is stated, however, that these regions abound in the species of pandan from which the mats are made. Sabutan type mats are also reported made at Palanan in Isabela Province, and a trade is carried on in them with neighboring towns. Other pandans reported under the name of sabutan and resembling it more or less have no commercial importance. Sarakat. Sarakat is a distinctive pandan of the Bangui Peninsula of Ilocos Norte. The climate of this region differs from the rest of Ilocos Norte in that it has rainfall practically throughout the year, receiving as it does the benefit of the northeast monsoon which is cut off from the country to the south. It has not as yet been determined whether sarakat is to be described as a new variety of P. tectorius or is to be designated as an entirely new species. From mats submitted to this office, it is to be judged that sarakat straw is as fine as sabutan. In fact, the material is so thin that even though the mats are woven of double straws they are no thicker, and are a good deal more pliable than all other commercial pandan mats, sabutan excepted, produced in the Philippines. The upper surface of pandan straw is glossy, and the under surface is rough. In making the double straw, the two rough surfaces are placed together so as to expose both glossy ones. Hence, unlike the sabutan, both sides of sarakat mats are similar in appearance. The material, however, is not so strong as sabutan. [18] The mats are not decorated either by weaving in colored straws or by embroidered or border designs. In price they vary from about P1 to P2. Mr. Petronilo Castro, formerly Supervising Teacher of Bangui, has stated that that town supplies most of the mats used by the people of Ilocos Norte. Some buri mats and a few "pandan" mats (probably from the common seashore variety) are made. The sarakat mats exceed those of pandan in numbers and in commercial importance and are more beautiful and stronger. The demand for the mats is great and many people are engaged exclusively in their fabrication. The Pandan of Majayjay. [19] This pandan (P. utilissimus) is known in most places where it grows as "pandan" or "pandan totoo," the true or tame pandan. It is extensively used in Laguna and Tayabas and is remarkable for its very large leaves and its heavy fruit. The tree occurs in groups in dry ground but thrives best in half shade near streams. It attains a height of from 4 to 8 meters. The trunk branches toward the top and is supported by a few short and thick prop roots. The leaves are often 5 meters long and 2 decimeters wide. The lower part of the older leaves stands up straight, while the upper half droops. The younger leaves are erect with only their tips bent down. The leaf spines are short, blunt, and conical. The fruits look like the jackfruit and are very large and heavy, being often 6 decimeters long and 2 decimeters in diameter and weighing at times 25 or more kilograms. The drupes ripen slowly and gradually; they are red in color when fully mature and possess a peculiar faint odor. It takes some time before all the drupes are shed, and in a grove of fruiting trees they can be found in all stages of maturity during the month of May. P. utilissimus is found growing wild throughout the plateau region of Majayjay, Luisiana, and Cavinti in Laguna Province, and extending into Tayabas Province. It is only the leaves from those plants which have been set out in plots, however, that are utilized in the making of mats, hats and telescope baskets. Like sabutan, this pandan grows best in the half-shade near streams, and leaves grown in the sun are considered inferior. Nevertheless, no attempt seems to be made to select a locality for their propagation, and plots are planted wherever land is available. This pandan will not live in stagnant water and is particularly adapted to hill-sides where there is a constant flow. The most satisfactory statistics on the propagation of P. utilissimus are obtained from Cavinti, where the plant has been introduced within recent years and suckers are still being brought in from other towns. It is stated that suckers one-half meter in height mature in about three years, while suckers one meter in height or over will produce suitable leaves in one year or less. The most satisfactory results are obtained by transplanting the mature plants, since leaves are obtainable in a few months and in half a year suckers large enough for transplanting are produced. It is stated that in setting the plants out, the undergrowth is cleared away and the suckers are placed in the ground about 1 1/2 meters apart. Some attention is given to the young plants such as loosening the earth around them; but as soon as they obtain a good foothold no cultivation is attempted. Usually weavers own their patch of pandan from which the leaves are obtained for making the straw. Several workers sometimes have a patch in common and the few weavers who do not own pandans themselves must purchase. The leaves are sold on the tree, the purchaser cutting them off with a bolo. The price is from 20 to 30 centavos per hundred, depending upon their size, softness, thickness, and imperfections. The longest, thinnest, darkest green leaves, with the fewest imperfections, are considered the best and cost the most. In Cavinti, where the leaves are imported from Luisiana and Majayjay, the price of the best leaves is 50 centavos per hundred. The estimates of the number of leaves yielded by a plant in a year differ considerably. By some it is stated that on the average one leaf is produced per month; others report that from three to five leaves are gathered in from three to six weeks. The thorns are removed from the edges, and the midrib is cut away, thus reducing the leaf into two halves, each of which is again divided. These strips are placed in the sun for half a day. The unique process in the preparation of this pandan straw is the rolling which occurs at this point. While it is probable that any roller with sufficient weight could be used, that employed in the pandan districts of Laguna is the primitive "iluhan" by which sugar-cane and copra are also crushed. It consists essentially of three heavy wooden horses, in the grooves of which a log, heavily weighted with stones, rotates. The pandan lengths are placed in one of the grooves underneath the log and so rolled. The object of the process is to make the material thinner and more pliable. Straw is stripped from the lengths thus prepared by the use of the gauge. [20] The straw is then further dried in the sunshine and is ready to be woven. Sometimes the lengths are stripped before being rolled, hence the straw is left in the sunshine for another half day and then placed under the log in the iluhan. Mats are woven in Majayjay and Luisiana only, the weavers of Cavinti devoting their entire time to the fabrication of hats. The mats are woven of single straw, but they are fairly thick and not at all limber. The number produced per week runs probably into the thousands, of which about 75 per cent are made of coarse straw and are intended for use in drying palay, copra, etc. These mats are known as "bangkoan," a word having about the same significance as "bastos;" that is, coarsely or poorly made. The finer and better made mats are intended for use as sleeping mats and for the floor. They are decorated with colored buri straw, usually in some shade of red produced by mordanting with kolis leaves and boiling with sappan wood as explained for buri straw. Occasionally, other colors are used, produced from the imported coal-tar ("Chino") dyes, but in all cases the shades produced are not very pleasing. The decorations are embroidered in, and consist of simple borders in straight lines with an open center design of somewhat the same pattern. When first woven, the mats are usually of a dark green color. Before being sold, they are placed in the sun, which changes them to a grayish color somewhat resembling sabutan. After long use, however, the final shade is yellowish green. There seems to be but little division of labor in the production of these mats. Usually the whole family goes out into the patch and cuts the leaves, removing the thorns before bringing them home. Only women weave the mats. In Majayjay a few workers color their own buri straw used in decorating the mats, but for the most part this material is obtained from dyers, one a Chinese, the other a Filipino, who prepare it for sale. The weavers are independent of advances by brokers and sell their product to Filipinos or to the representatives of Chinese merchants in Pagsanjan and Manila. A few weavers take their mats to Lukban, whence they are distributed over Tayabas Province, but many more are gathered up by these brokers and sold in the market at Pagsanjan. The mat market there usually occupies one whole sidewalk running the length of the market building. The pandan mats of Majayjay and Luisiana are notable for their strength and durability, and are excellent for the floor or bath. In price they range from P0.50 to P5.00. The usual price of the decorated mats is P1.50. The demand continues brisk and prices have recently risen. The weakest point in the mat at the present time is in the colored buri straw used to decorate it, for this tears long before the pandan shows signs of wear. If colored sabutan straw is substituted for the buri, a much stronger and probably more pleasing article will result. [21] Karagumoy. [22] The pandan P. simplex, known as "karagumoy" or "carogumoy," is the economic pandan of the Bicol peninsula in southern Luzon. It is usually found growing in well drained soil under the shade of banana and abaca plants and areca palms. It needs this protection because the leaves are easily broken or ruined by hard winds. The leaves are generally longer than those of sabutan (they are 2 meters to 3 1/2 meters in length) and are but from 6 cm. to 10 cm. wide. They are very thick, being practically as coarse as the leaves of P. utilissimus. They bear stout spines on the midrib and along the margins, from two centimeters to three centimeters apart. A fungus disease often attacks them, causing dry hard patches, and not only spoiling the color but also making the material so brittle that it breaks in the preparation of the straw. The plant is propagated by means of suckers in patches seldom over a half hectare in extent and often consisting of a few plants back of the house. The suckers are set out in rows and are probably one year old when the first leaves are taken, though the workers disagree on this point. At a specified time, from eight to fifteen leaves are cut from the plant each year; at other periods, two or three may be taken from the same plants. Most of the leaves are harvested during the rainy season. Karagumoy leaves have a commercial value in many of the places in which the plant occurs. In Tabaco, Albay, women cut the leaves and carry them in large bundles to the market, where they are sold at prices usually varying from 8 to 12 centavos per hundred. Throughout the Province of Albay mats are made from karagumoy, and in some towns the industry is of considerable importance. For instance, in the barrio of San Lorenzo in Tabaco, mats may be found in the making in nearly every house. In Sorsogon, too, the industry is widespread though not so important commercially. In Balusa the production is large enough to supply the local demand and leave a surplus for export to neighboring towns. In the Bicol provinces karagumoy is considered the best of all straws for the production of mats. In price the mats vary from thirty to ninety centavos, according to fineness. In preparing the material, the spines and midrib are first removed and the leaves are divided into four strips of about equal width. The straw is prepared from these with the knife and gauge; it is dried in the shade for a few hours and drawn several times over a piece of bamboo as explained for sabutan in order to make it more supple and smooth. The mats are woven in the early morning and at night, the straw being more pliable then. Attempts have been made in the schools to dye karagumoy but no success has yet been attained. The mats are plain. Bariu. The stem of this plant, P. copelandii, grows from 4 to 9 meters high. The leaves have an average length of 2.1 meter and a width of 8 cm. [23] Spines occur along the entire margin. Near the base they are comparatively coarse and from 3 to 4 mm. long. Towards the apex of the margins and midveins, the spines are short and close together like the teeth of a fine saw. From 3 to 5 heads generally form on the fruit stalk, each of them from 7 to 12 cm. long and 5 to 7 cm. across, at first pale yellowish in appearance but soon turning red. Their drupes are 14 mm. long and 3 to 4 mm. in diameter. This pandan is found in Cagayan, Benguet, Nueva Ecija, Samar, Bohol, Occidental Negros, Capiz, Surigao, Davao, and other provinces. [24] This pandan is not of economic importance in central and southern Luzon. In the Bicol provinces it is used to some extent but it is considered inferior to other materials. In parts of the Visayas, such as Bohol, Capiz and Samar, it is utilized to a considerable extent, but cannot be considered of commercial importance. It is the economic pandan of Surigao, but even there its commercial importance is local only. Table showing comparative measurements of certain Philippine pandans. P. Sabutan. P. P. P. tectorius. utilissimus. simplex. copelandii. Height of trunk 3 to 6 m 2 to 4 m 4 to 8 m 6 m 4 m. Leaves: Length 1.35 m 2 m 5 m 2 to 3.5 m 2.1 m. Width 6 cm 6 cm 20 cm 6 to 10 cm 8 cm. Thickness Medium Fine Thick Thick Medium. Fruit: Length 20 cm 60 cm 9 cm 7 to 12 cm. Thickness 18 cm 20 cm 9 cm 5 to 7 cm. Drupes-- Length 5.5 cm 7 to 8 cm 3 cm 14 mm. Thickness 2.5 to 3 cm 2 cm 1 cm 3 to 4 mm. Number in head 50 to 80 Many Many Many. Pandans of Minor Utility. The species P. radicans is reported as olango from Leyte, wañgo in Bohol, owañgo in Surigao and uyagño in Sorsogon. It is usually found growing along rivers and in marshes. The trunk reaches a height of 8 m. and its largest leaves may be 6 m. long and 12 cm. wide. There are from 6 to 10 dark brick red fruits in a cluster. The fruit is 14 cm. long and 8 cm. wide and contains 100 or more drupes. Each drupe is 2.5 cm. in length and 12 mm. in diameter. The leaves are made into straw from which coarse mats are woven. Taboan is the name given to Pandanus dubius in Surigao while in Bohol it is known as bacong. It is a rare species. It is said to be a heavy, clumsy appearing tree with stem about 8 m. high, wide spreading branches near the top, and soft, pulpy and stringy wood. The flowers are grouped into an inflorescence. The male inflorescence, about 60 cm. long and partly covered by creamy yellow bracts, is erect and occurs at the end of the branches. The leaves are deep green in color on both sides, with an average length of 2.25 cm. and a width of 20 cm. The drupes of this pandan are from 8 cm. to 13 cm. long and from 5 cm. to 8 cm. wide. The plant is utilized to a small extent in making mats. In the Tagalog speaking provinces of Bulacan, Bataan, and in and around Manila, Pandanus luzonensis is called "alasas." It is also called "pandan" but this name should be reserved for Pandanus tectorius. The former is restricted in its habitat to the provinces around Manila Bay, while the latter is found in most of the seacoast provinces of the Philippines as well as in other tropical parts of the world. Pandanus luzonensis attains a greater height than Pandanus tectorius, but has narrower leaves than the latter. The male flowers are borne in a fleshy, much-branched inflorescence from 20 to 30 cm. long. Each branch is partly surrounded by a broad thin bract, 8 cm. wide. Each individual flower has from 4 to 9 stamens. The whole fruit is about 20 centimeters long and contains from 30 to 60 drupes, yellowish red in color when ripe. Each drupe is from 3 to 4 cm. long, 2 to 2.5 cm. thick, and contains from 6 to 10 seeds. The straw from this pandan is of inferior quality, though it is said to be used in Bulacan for mats. Unidentified Pandans. Besides the pandans, the identity of which has been explained above, there are several unidentified specimens or varieties from which mats are made. It may be that some of these will be found identical with those already discussed when sufficient botanical material has been gathered to determine them. In Isabela Province, a pandan known as "langu" having long, strong, thin leaves, is made into mats in Santa Maria, Delena and Bolasi. Mats are made along the coast of Cagayan Province, in the Ilocano barrios of the towns of Claveria and Sanchez Mira, from a pandan known as "pataga." These are very coarse and thick and have an unusually shiny surface. According to Mr. Otto Harwood, the leaves vary in length from 10 cm. to 35.5 cm. and in width from 7.5 cm. to 15 cm. The straw is made by cutting the leaf into strips and drying them in the sun. Although the industry is yet small, it is developing. A species of pandan is employed in the towns of Camalaniugan, Aparri, Gataran, and Lal-loc in Cagayan Province for making mats. Locally they are valued at from 40 to 50 centavos, but in Isabela Province to which they are exported they sell for as high as a peso and a half. The only municipality in Pangasinan province in which the making of mats has reached provincial and interprovincial importance is Bolinao. The species of pandan employed is not known. The mats are shipped to towns along the seacoast of Ilocos and Zambales Province by sailing vessels, and are sold in the local markets or to local merchants. In Mindoro the town of Subang makes pandan mats which are shipped to Batangas, Cavite, and Manila. Two pandans, called lingo and baring were sent to the General Office of the Bureau of Education from Guindalman, Bohol. It was impossible to identify them as no fruit was included. They probably represent two new species. Lingo has a leaf 2.9 m. in length and of an almost uniform width of 5.5 cm. At 80 cm. from the tip, it is 4.5 cm. wide, then gradually becomes acuminate. The marginal spines are 2 mm. long, curved forward, from 6 to 8 mm. apart near the stem, but closer together at the distal one-third of the leaf. Spines of 1 mm. or less in length and 4 mm. or less apart, curved forward and extending throughout the length of the leaf, occur on the lower surface of the midrib only. The surface of the leaf is smooth and shiny. The leaf of baring is 72 cm. long, 2.8 cm. wide, apparently spineless, smooth and fine in texture. Both of these pandans would probably yield good industrial materials. In Iloilo, the town of Banate has a pandan mat industry of interprovincial importance, whose product is an article of commerce as far as Negros. The mats sell at about 50 centavos each. There is a large export of pandan mats from Dao, Antique, to the province of Iloilo. Pandan mats are exported from Cuyo Island in Palawan. Some are sent to the mainland of Palawan and others to Antique. The Moro pandan mats are the most richly colored of all those produced in the Philippines. At this writing, information is not at hand to determine the method of preparing the straw or the species of pandan from which they are made. Mats which have been exhibited at successive Philippine expositions have undoubtedly been dyed with imported coloring matter. The designs are of the general effect of the mat reproduced on page 84. The colors are often well combined and the effect is very striking. The Cottabato mats are double; the under portion is woven of thick, heavy, uncolored straw, and the upper portion is of finer material; the two parts are spliced together. Sedge Straws. Kinds of Sedges. Botanical. The sedges which form the family of Cyperaceae are grass-like or rush-like herbs, with solid, jointless, usually triangular stems, while the grasses (Gramineae) are mostly herbs, usually with hollow stems closed and enlarged at the nodes. The former play an important part in the manufacture of mats because of their length and freedom from nodes. The family includes several genera of importance; viz., Scirpus, Cyperus, and Fimbristylis. Of these the Fimbristylis is the most important, for two species of Fimbristylis have a fairly large commercial use; they are therefore taken up separately. Of the genus Scirpus, the species S. grossus, known as "balangot" in Ambos Camarines and Capiz, "bagaas" in Occidental Negros, "tiquio" in Rizal, and "bagui-bagui" in Capiz, and S. erectus, are used for mats. S. grossus is not a very suitable material for industrial purposes, its distinctly three-cornered stalk being too coarse in texture and too large to permit of weaving even a fair grade article. S. erectus is much better. The stalk is about as fine as tikug and grows to a height of 60 cm. The flowers sometimes occur in a solitary cluster, but more often from 2 to 5 clusters of spikelets are found on the side of the stalk near its top. The plant is widely distributed in the Philippines and inhabits open grass lands. It bears some flowers throughout the year. As yet only coarse mats are made from it, but its general appearance would warrant experiments along the lines of the processes by which tikug is treated. The only native names noted are "tayoc-tayoc" and "tikug" by which names the plant is known in Occidental Negros. These names, however, are more properly applied to other plants. Scirpus mucronatus is somewhat like S. erectus in general appearance. The stem of S. mucronatus is more robust and coarser in texture and attains a height of 80 cm. Its dried stem has an average width of 4 to 5 mm., while that of S. erectus measures from 2 to 3 mm. The flowers of S. mucronatus appear in a very dense head on the side of the plant from 2 to 9 cm. from the top. Each head is made up of from 5 to 20 spikelets. These spikelets are from 6 to 15 mm. long, while those of S. erectus are never more than 1 cm. in length. The coarser stalk of S. mucronatus makes it a less desirable mat material than S. erectus. In the Ilocos provinces a very coarse round sedge called tiker (Scirpus lacustris) occurs. It may be of value if split and dried in the sun so that it curls up into a round straw. The genus Cyperus includes a number of economic plants, among them the Chinese matting sedge. The species most used in the Philippines is C. malaccensis. This plant has an underground stem which, as it continues its growth, sends out new stalks. The plant lives for a number of years and when fully grown is from 0.5 to 1.5 meters high. The stem is stout and three-sided in shape. It has few or no leaves, and when present the leaves are not more than 3 cm. long. From 2 to 5 leaf-like stems (bracts) not more than 20 cm. long occur under the inflorescence. The spikelets which make up the inflorescence are somewhat crowded together; they are very narrow, from 1 to 2 cm. long. The plant occurs in the Philippines in brackish swamps and along tidal streams. It is also found in tropical Africa, Asia, the islands of Polynesia, and Australia. It is usually in flower from July to December. It was formerly made into mats and hats and is even now utilized in rare instances in weaving them, but it is most important as a material for slippers, and possibly for matting. Of the 125 species of Fimbristylis found only in warm regions, two are of economic importance in the Philippines, while one more might perhaps be tried out as a mat material. All the species of Fimbristylis have tufted, fibrous or woody stems. The leaves occur near the base. The inflorescence consists of a great number of flowers grouped closely together to form one or more spikelets. The spikelets themselves may be either solitary or clustered. The individual flowers are covered by glumes and are arranged spirally on the axis. As the fruit matures, the glumes of the flowers become the "chaff" of the grain. Tikug. This sedge (Fimbristylis utilis) grows usually more than a meter long and has tufted stems which are shiny and smooth in appearance and average about 4 mm. in diameter. The stems may have long leaves at the base or may be entirely leafless, and are usually four- or five-sided immediately under the inflorescence. The general appearance of the stalk is round. The plant has few or no underground root-like stems. The flowers are densely clustered together to form spikelets, dusky brown in color, measuring 6 mm. by 3 mm. In the Visayas it is generally known as tikug. In Agusan and Surigao it is called "anahiwan" and in Bukidnon "sudsud". Sometimes it is called tayoc-tayoc in confusion with the smaller sedge more properly known by that name, which much resembles tikug. A specimen from Pampanga was labeled "muta". Tikug grows in greatest profusion and reaches its highest economic importance in parts of Mindanao, Bohol, Leyte, and Samar. To a less degree, it is found and utilized on Negros and Panay. While it is found in Cebu, it is not used there. As a recognized industrial plant, therefore, its distribution is confined to the Visayas and Mindanao. Its appearance in Pampanga would indicate that it may be found in other regions in which its value in hand-weaving and in the making of matting is not understood. [25] Tikug is utilized in making hats, mats, matting, slippers and various minor articles. Samar Mats. Gathering the Straw. The best known tikug mats are produced on the Island of Samar, where the sedge grows wild. [26] It has never been cultivated there. Different grades are recognized in the height and width of the straw. The finest is 1 1/2 mm. in diameter while the largest straws are fully four times that width. Full grown stalks sometimes reach 3 meters in height, but the average is 1 1/2 meters. In most places in Samar only very coarse tikug is found and this is especially true in the northern half of the island. The best material grows near the towns of Basey and Sulat, a circumstance probably due to the fact that most of these sedges are pulled up for weaving before they become old and coarse, for it is in these two towns that the mat industry of Samar is centered. All grades of tikug can be used in making mats; but as the straw cannot be split into finer pieces, it is only from the narrower material that the fine mats are made. The map on the distribution of tikug shows the regions in Samar in which this sedge occurs. [27] Bleaching. In some parts of Samar rough mats are made from tikug dried in the shade. In Basey and Sulat bleached straw is used. In the bleaching process only the sun is used, the bundles being spread out where there is neither grass nor shade. The straw must be kept perfectly dry at all times, for if it becomes wet or damp it will mildew and turn an unsightly black or brown. In the morning it must not be put out until the ground is dry and in the evening it should be taken in before dew is formed upon it. The best results are obtained by drying the material in a place where there is no grass, as the turf generally holds considerable moisture and retards the process. With proper care clean white straw can be obtained in about one week under the most favorable conditions. Sometimes, but not often, the above process is preceded by boiling the straw for ten or twenty minutes in plain water. Several bleaching experiments have already been made with tikug, but as yet none has been entirely successful. In one experiment straw was boiled in alum, but the resultant material was not so white as that obtained by simply drying it in the sun. Boiling green tikug in water containing acetic acid from the juice of limes and lemons was unsatisfactory. The best straw obtained was that produced by simply boiling the green stalk for a few minutes in water and rinsing it well and then drying in the sunshine for several days. The straws are of different lengths and diameters; after bleaching they must be sorted. The seed clusters are removed and the bunches are tied in a big bundle which is laid on the floor with root toward the worker. The longer straws of small diameter are then pulled out and placed in small bundles, the process continuing until the several different grades are thus separated and nothing remains but a few short thick straws which are kept for embroidering designs. Each bundle is then trimmed by cutting off the roots and ragged tops and the straw is ready for storing, dyeing, or flattening. If tikug remains in a damp place it will mold and become worthless. It is easily kept during the dry season, if frequently exposed to the sun. During the rainy season it should be wrapped in a blanket or cloth. Dyeing. Very few uncolored straws are used in Samar mats. The dyed material is more durable and does not mildew as readily as the uncolored straws. Tikug dyes easily and this is probably one of the reasons why the mats of Samar have so much color. The cost of the dye in a Basey mat is no small part of the total expense of production. Consequently it is necessary to employ a cheap dye. For instance, one of the best commercial dyes known in Manila was used with great success on Samar mats, but the value of the coloring material consumed in making them was greater than their selling price. The dye used in making the cheapest of Samar mats costs the weavers about 10 centavos while the more elaborate products need as much as 65 centavos worth of dye to color them. A common mat containing 15 centavos worth of dyestuff sells for about a peso. [28] The colors obtained by the Basey mat weavers have a greater variety of shades and tints than those produced by any other workers in the Philippines on tikug or any other mat material. The shades and tints depend upon two considerations: (1) The amount of dyestuffs used and (2) the length of time the boiling process is continued. Four dyestuffs are used. Yellows are obtained from turmeric; greens and reds are obtained from coal-tar dyes; and a red-orange from deora. The leaves of the latter plant are crushed and the pulpy mass thus obtained is boiled to yield the dye fluid. By combining these four dye materials in different proportions, by using varying amounts of the material, and by boiling varying lengths of time, different colors, shades and tints are obtained. The method of dyeing is as follows: The bunches of tikug are coiled and placed in a can of hot dye, where they are boiled from two to ten minutes, or until the desired intensity has been secured. The more the straw is boiled, the more nearly permanent will be the color and the greater will be its intensity. Care must be taken to see that the dye fluid is not too strong; otherwise the color will be too intense. In order that the material may be evenly colored, the tikug is submerged in the dye so that it is well covered and is turned over several times during the process. After the coils are removed they should be laid upon the ground or floor, allowed to cool, and then hung in the shade to dry. Flattening. The straws composing the bleached or dyed bundles of material are stiff and uneven; some are bent and others are round. The process of flattening them and making them more pliable is carried on during damp days, in the morning or evening, for if done in the open air on cloudless days, or at any time when the atmosphere is dry, the straw becomes brittle and breaks. However, climatic conditions may be overcome by wrapping the straw in banana leaves or damp cloth for an hour or more and then working it where no breeze can dry it out. No water should be applied. The workers employ the usual blunt-edged, ruler-like piece of wood; between this and the thumb the straw is drawn by the free hand. This process flattens the straw and makes it pliable so that it does not split during weaving. The Weaving of Samar Mats. Up to three years ago tikug was but little used in Samar except for weaving mats. Commercially, mat weaving was confined to Sulat and Basey. Since the American occupation it has been widely done and the work has been introduced into most of the schools. Not only have methods been greatly improved but new uses have been found for the material. To-day the sedge is woven into floor and wall mats, hats, table mats, slippers, book-bags, hand-bags, necktie cases, pencil holders, pencil cases, and pillow and cushion covers. Recently the weaving of matting on looms has been undertaken in the schools and a fine product, similar to the matting of Japan, has been produced on the ordinary loom adjusted to the straw. The chief use of tikug in Samar is in the weaving of mats in the towns of Basey and Sulat. Since time immemorial tikug mats have been woven in Samar. At Palapag, Oras, Dolores, Taft, Balangiga, Santa Rita, Gandara, Oquendo, and Catarman, a few rough ones, the product of unskilled workmen, were made, but they were of no commercial importance, since the people did not weave enough to supply their own demand. As far back as can now be traced, the people of Basey and Sulat have been making mats for the provincial and interprovincial trade. Since 1907 the people of Dolores, Oras, Santa Rita, and Balangiga have improved in weaving and are now producing a few mats for the market. Their work is much inferior to that of Basey and Sulat. In the year 1911 Basey produced about 9,000 mats and Sulat about 300. The latter town could have increased its production greatly, but its remoteness from the market and from the routes of commerce reduces the large demand which might otherwise exist for the mats. Basey is better situated in these respects; moreover, the people have been forced to fall back on mat weaving as their chief means of support, for typhoons have destroyed their coconuts and abaca, and their rice crop is scant. Almost every night mat weavers are found at work in many of the houses. Several years ago, when American soldiers were stationed in the vicinity of the town, there grew up a great demand for mats, and the weavers, taking advantage of their need and their little knowledge of values in the Philippines, demanded exorbitant prices and received them. Most of the Basey people spent their time producing mats, and to a great extent sacrificed quality for quantity. The grade of mat that sold for P18 several years ago can now be bought for about P8; that which sold for P3 two years ago can be bought to-day for P2. Lately there has been a rise in price owing to increased commercial demand. Mats made to order, particularly special mats, cost more than those bought already woven, the price depending upon the size of the article, the character of the design, and the fineness of the straw and the weave. A mat two meters by one meter, made of the finest grade of tikug, would require several months for completion and would probably cost between P30 and P40. There is hardly a limit to the size of the mat which can be woven. Three years ago one having dimensions of 10 meters by 12 meters was made for a church, as many as 30 women working on it at the same time. Basey mats are of two general kinds: those with plaid designs woven in and those on which the designs are embroidered. The former are the more difficult to weave; but as there is no decoration to be added, they are the cheapest mats obtainable, the prices for the ordinary grades ranging from P0.80 to P3 each. Some weavers turn out only blank mats of one color and do neither designing nor decorating. Straw used on these is usually dyed, very few mats of natural colors being made. They are worth from P0.50 to P2 each and are generally sold to girls who are skillful in embroidering designs. These girls decorate the mats and sell them for from P2.50 to P6 each, the price depending upon the original cost of the mat and the amount of decoration put upon it. The ideas for the designs on Basey mats are usually obtained from pictures or textiles. The straws, both bleached and dyed, are split in two for embroidering purposes. This makes them thinner and more pliable. The time necessary for making a plaid mat sold for two pesos was found to be as follows, an eight-hour day being used as the basis of a day's work: Days. Gathering tikug 1.00 Dyeing tikug .25 Flattening tikug .25 Weaving mat 3.50 ---- Total time 5.00 The selling price of the mat was one peso, the cost of the dye 15 centavos, which left the weaver a balance of 85 centavos for five days' labor. The plaids used in Basey mats are simple, but the embroidered designs are extremely intricate. They consist for the most part of foliage, flowers, and animals. Weavers are often given a contract to make a stated number of mats in accordance with a design furnished them. A few are capable of reproducing almost any pattern presented, [29] but if they are not told exactly what colors to use they employ every shade, color and tint they can secure. The Basey mats are distinguished by the multitude of colors used. In general it may be stated that the chief criticism of this product is the gaudy effect produced by the colors used. In some cases the colors are well toned and harmoniously combined, but the majority of the mats produced contain vivid colors which are not all harmonious. Through the schools, efforts have been made to reduce the number of colors and to modify the gaudy and complicated floral designs. An improvement is seen each year. The ordinary mat is usually about 2 meters by 1 1/2 meters, though smaller and larger ones are made. During the past three years the weavers have been encouraged to make mats about the size of an ordinary cot and to use no more than two colors in weaving them. A few mats suitable for placing under dining tables are also made. Sulat weavers produce fewer mats than those of Basey but make them of fine, closely woven straw. Most of the mats with a woven-on border come from Sulat. These people, while able to produce a fine, soft, pliable mat, can not embroider decorations on them nearly so well as do the people of Basey. Samar mats wear well. Wall mats last indefinitely and sleeping mats are used from two to ten years or more. [30] The Marketing of Basey Mats. The port of Tacloban, Leyte, due to its proximity to Basey, is the chief center for the distribution of Samar mats. As soon as the mats are completed the weavers take them across the straits to Tacloban, where they are sold to Chinese brokers, transients and residents, both American and native. Few ships leave Tacloban that do not carry away from 5 to 20 mats; often they take away as many as 50, the amount generally depending upon the number of passengers aboard the boat. Some of the ship's employees are regular customers of the weavers and buy mats at stated prices to sell them again at a reasonable profit at Manila and other ports of call. Besides, there is quite a sale of mats in the towns of Samar, Leyte, and Cebu through vendors, residents of Basey, who secure the mats in their home town at low prices and sell them at a profit. These persons usually deal only in the mats, and sell them for cash, not trading for other articles. Plaid Basey mats are on sale in nearly all the Chinese general merchandise stores of Manila. As yet there is little supervision by brokers in Basey. The mat industry there needs but the introduction of some system of supervision by brokers to regulate the size, quality, design and color scheme of the mats, and a foreign market to become a much more extended industry. The schools have already done much toward improving workmanship and design; it must remain for individual enterprise, however, to get in touch with foreign demand and supervise the weaving of mats to suit it. [31] Bohol Mats. [32] Tikug mats are made in large numbers in Bohol. The straw for the most part is finer than that used in Samar and the patterns are chiefly stripes and checks. Very little embroidering is attempted. Bohol mats are used principally for sleeping purposes. In northern Bohol there is scarcely a family that has not three or more large mats, which are rolled up and laid away during the day time and are unrolled upon the floor at night for a bed. They are durable and last for years. Large sleeping mats may be purchased in quantities as high as 40 to 100 during the Sunday market day in Talibon or on the Saturday market day in Ypil, a barrio of the same town. In price they range from one to three pesos each. The second use of Bohol mats is for decorating walls, tables, and floors. Those so employed are smaller than the sleeping mats, usually square, but sometimes round. More care is exercised in their weaving and only fine young straws are used. The preparation of the straw and the dyeing are done with great care. Mats of the best quality are quite difficult to secure and the schools have recently been encouraging their production. As in other regions, the tikug from which Bohol mats are made, grows wild in the rice fields after the harvest. It is found in abundance in northern Bohol in the municipalities of Getafe, Talibon and Ubay, and sparingly in other towns of the island (see map). The straws are gathered from the field by pulling them, thus breaking them off at the roots, and they are tied into bundles about 3 decimeters in circumference and sold in the market. The largest market for such bundles is found in the barrio of Ypil in the municipality of Talibon. The price is usually about 10 centavos per bundle. From two to four of these bundles are required to make a mat. The tikug is not kept in the original bundles longer than one or two days, for it will turn black. The material is usually separated into two parts, one to be dyed, the other to be bleached. That to be dyed is spread in the sun and thoroughly dried for one or two days, care being taken that rain does not fall upon it and blacken it. The other part is boiled in a solution of acetic acid for twenty minutes, after which it is thoroughly dried in the sun and thus bleached. The natural dyes used in Bohol for coloring tikug are dauda and turmeric. The former produces permanent colors, the latter fugitive ones. The artificial dyes bought at Chinese stores are also used in producing shades and tints of green, violet and ruby which are satisfactory. In general, those in crystal form have proven more satisfactory than the powder dyes. Before dyeing, the sheath-like leaf is pulled from the bottom of each straw and the material is looped into small bundles. Often the straws are dampened with water. Dyeing is usually done in a 5-gallon petroleum can two-thirds full of water, heated to boiling. If the artificial dyes are used the powder is stirred in and dissolved and the bundles of tikug are then pressed down into the liquid so that all the material is well covered. A stone is often laid upon the straws so as to keep them down in the boiling dye. It usually requires about twenty minutes to obtain the desired shade, which is nearly always a deep one. Where fresh dauda leaves are employed, about 2 pounds are placed in the water and boiled a few minutes before the tikug is put in. If dried leaves are used about one pound is soaked in cold water for a few minutes and the whole mass is then added to the boiling water. Turmeric roots are pounded in a mortar and then added to the boiling water, after which the tikug is added. All the dyes noted are combined to produce other colors and varying shades. During the process of dyeing, the straw should be turned and moved about in the boiling water to insure an even color. The straw should never be boiled too long, or it will be cooked and become tender and weak. After the straw has taken on the shade desired, it is removed from the can and thrown on the ground. When the bundles are cool enough to be handled, they are untied and the straws spread out to dry, preferably in the shade. After it is thoroughly dried the material is rebundled and thus kept for weaving. Before weaving, the straws are flattened by drawing each one separately between the edge of the knife and the heel of the weaver's foot or the sole of the chinela. Damp days are best for this process. Weaving is done under the house or under trees. Evenings and nights are most suitable for this work on account of the dampness of the atmosphere. The embroidered mats of Bohol are decorated with split straws. The mats of Bohol are bought by traders who exchange cloth and other goods for them. These men carry them to the towns of Bohol which do not produce mats, and to other islands, where they sell or exchange them at a good profit. When once the supply of mats on hand has been bought up in a mat producing town, several months elapse before the market there is replenished by a new supply. After completing a mat, the weaver has no immediate desire to begin another. It is quite probable that the output of mats could be increased considerably if the market and the price were better. It is estimated that the weavers earn not more than 20 centavos per day at the industry. Other Tikug Mats. Tikug also grows in large quantities in Leyte. Its chief use there is in the weaving of matting on a crude loom, an adaptation of the common textile loom. Tikug is apparently generally used throughout Surigao in making mats. The best mats of this region come from the upper Agusan and the island of Dinagat. They are usually made for local consumption, though the people of Dinagat exchange their mats with Bohol traders. The sedge grows in great abundance in the lake of Talacogon near the town of the same name in Agusan. Tikug is also found in many parts of the Moro Province. It abounds in the swamp lands of the Lanao region, from which mats are exported via Iligan. If it is to be colored, the straws are soaked in water for about two days, after which they are cooked in the boiling dye. Bleached straw is prepared by exposing it to the sun, after which the material is polished and flattened at the same time by rubbing the stalks with ashes, between the fingers. The Cultivation of Tikug. The question of the cultivation of tikug is one of considerable importance. It is a well known fact that the finest Leghorn hat straw is produced in Italy by sewing wheat closely and reaping the straw before the grain ripens. The best mat straws of China and Japan are produced from cultivated sedges. The Bureau of Education is therefore encouraging experiments in the cultivation of tikug, but as yet these have not been extensive enough to determine whether the sedge can be propagated for industrial purposes. There are no data as to cost. A quantity of seed was procured and forwarded to various parts of the Islands in which tikug had not been reported as growing. These were sent out to various persons with the idea of determining (1) soils suitable to the plant, (2) whether it could be cultivated in the rice paddies between harvest and planting, (3) how closely the seeds should be planted, (4) how old the plants should be at harvest. [33] No results have as yet been obtained from the seeds so sent out. Fair results, however, have been realized in Samar, where approximately 5,000 stalks were grown to the square foot in very rich soil fertilized with manure secured from the military stables. The straws obtained were 3 meters long. It was found that the thicker the seeds are planted the finer and longer are the straws obtained. Reports differ as to whether tikug should be considered a pest or not. In Leyte it is stated that it grows in the rice fields along with the rice crop and appreciably diminishes the crop. There it is a weed pest; in Samar it is not so considered. In Bohol one teacher states that the plant is not a pest as it will not grow in dry localities, and hence does not interfere with crops. Where it is found in the rice paddies, a covering of earth will easily destroy it. It does not scatter quickly, for, while the roots will grow if transplanted, the sedge is mostly propagated by seeds and these are distributed principally by water and not by wind. No great chances are taken in planting tikug. On the other hand, some teachers state that the seeds are scattered by the wind and that the roots impede the plowing of the fields. It is probable that where the tikug obtains a good foothold on irrigated rice land it proves a considerable annoyance to farmers; but its growth as a pest can be regulated by plowing. Tayoc-Tayoc. This plant, F. diphylla, one of the most widely distributed of all sedges, is found at all altitudes up to 2,000 meters throughout the warm regions of the world. The stems may be smooth or hairy and the leaves one-third to two-thirds as long as the stem. F. diphylla is generally smaller than F. utilis. Its stem is only 2 mm. in diameter. The flowers, densely clustered into spikelets, are generally of two colors--straw and brown. They reach 1 cm. in length and 4 mm. in diameter. Below the spikelet the stem has from 3 to 5 sides. The roots are fibrous; underground stems may occur, but they are never more than 2.5 cm. long. This plant is known as tayoc-tayoc in Iloilo, Capiz, and Occidental Negros. It is reported from Pampanga and is called "tab-tabin" in Zambales. The straw produced by tayoc-tayoc is much finer but considerably stiffer than that from tikug, and cannot be considered so good an industrial material. Nevertheless, it is used to some extent in the production of hats and mats, especially in the provinces of Iloilo and Capiz. In Dumalag, Capiz Province, hats are of considerable importance. Mats of tayoc-tayoc are reported as made in Banate and Janiuay, Iloilo Province, but this has not yet been verified. As with tikug, seeds of tayoc-tayoc were obtained and distributed among various provinces to determine whether the propagation of the straw was practicable and if the cultivation of the plant would result in a better material. As yet no definite results have been obtained. A Rush Straw. But one rush straw has been brought to the attention of the Bureau of Education; it is the Japanese matting rush, Juncus effusus. This species is distributed over a large part of the globe, being the candle rush of Europe and the common plant of wet ground in the United States. In Japan it is made into beautiful mattings, the handsomest and most costly produced. The pith is also employed for lamp wicks, and probably the "timsim" imported from China and used in oil lamps in the Philippines is obtained from this plant. Juncus effusus has no native name in the Philippines. It is found throughout the Mountain Province and in the Apo region of Mindanao. It attains a height of almost 2 meters where soil and moisture conditions are favorable. The stalk is cylindrical and at the end tapers to a point. It is from 2 to 3 mm. in diameter. The flowers grow in a bunch on the side of the stalk near the top and are light brown in color. At the present time this rush is not utilized in the Philippines, though it is probable that it can be used in the weaving of many articles. If split, a flat straw is obtained by removing the pith. EMBROIDERED MAT DESIGNS. [34] It is better not to decorate a mat at all than to have the design ill fitting. Design is the pleasing arrangement of all spaces unfilled as well as filled. Decoration is for beauty wholly. If all the spaces are not well arranged, the design is not beautiful. If the design is startling or gaudy in color, it is not beautiful. If the arrangement of colors is inharmonious, the design is not beautiful. All mats cannot be in the same proportion and suitable for all designs. Plate LXV, for instance, shows a long design; it requires a long mat, and would not look well on a square one. All mats here considered are about 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch in width of straw. Some of the designs are used exactly as they are, counting a straw for a square which represents a straw in the design; the others are double in size and contain four times as many squares in the weave as in the design. In such cases twice the count of the design will always give the right number for the weave. In circular mats the directions are given in inches. The sizes of the mats should be taken into consideration, but a variance of a few inches will not matter if that variance always makes the mat larger rather than smaller. In these mats more is left to the judgment of the weaver than in rectangular mats. Designs should never be crowded on circular mats. Repeated groups should always be made exactly alike. In the color notes, a series of colors set off by commas indicates that each series may be used alone for the whole design. Often the deep colors, especially No. 1, have been left out, as the effect of a very dark color on a very light mat is often startling. Designs on mats or hangings should not be more conspicuous than the mat itself, but should rather present a complete and harmonious appearance when both mat and design are considered as a whole. Circular Mats. Design A. The straws of a circular mat cannot be counted and then divided equally by numbers, as straws are continually added at irregular intervals as the circumference is being reached. Hence, the only way to place designs on a mat of this kind is by dividing the whole mat with a diameter through its center. Fold the mat and make a crease at the edges or mark a diameter through it with a pencil; at right angles to this diameter draw another through the same center, and the mat will now be divided into equal quadrants. The quadrants may again be divided and subdivided, and marked by pencil or with strings. In Design A the mat is about 57 inches in diameter. In a mat of this size there would be 48 units in the circle with a margin of 1-1/2 inches from the outer edge of the outer border line to the circumference of the mat. Divide the mat into halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, and measure with strings. Each sixteenth contains three units. Divide this space into three equal parts. Now embroider in each third one exact unit. In weaving in the unit, always commence on its outer edge; then if any slight variation of space has occurred, the irregularity will not be noticeable, as it will be in the line work of the unit, and not in its solid part. Each unit made in working as suggested from the outer edge inward will begin the other half of a solid figure already commenced. Notice the part of the design which has been marked off as one unit, and adhere to that arrangement. This design may be placed on a mat 57 inches in diameter, or 114 inches in diameter making each figure with twice as many straws as in the first. In ticug mats of natural straw, this design may be done in the following colors: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, or 16. (12 and 16 should not be used on sabutan.) No. 14, with a solid diamond and outer border line in No. 3. No. 3, 6, 9, or 10, with outer border line extending to edge of mat. Design B. In Design B, the mat should be 56 inches in diameter. In each sixteenth of the mat, as in Design A, three units can be spaced. Note the unit marked off in the design and use only this unit; weave its two outer solid parts first, with the irregularities of space occurring in the open part of the unit. [35] Mats woven for this design should be 56 or 112 inches in diameter. In mats of the latter size the numbers of straws are all doubled. In mats of natural straw, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 10, 15, or 16. (16 should not be used on sabutan.) Circular Fish Design. This design calls for the division of a circular mat into sixths or twelfths, according to the size of the mat. The diameters of mats for this design may be, 244 (about 4 feet); 304 (5 feet); 335 (6 feet); and 366 straws (7 feet). To divide a circle into sixths, mark off the circumference into distances equal to 1/2 of the diameter. In a mat of 244 straws diameter, make the outside border line one inch from the edges of the mat. About 9 inches inside of the outer border line, weave another border line one-half inch wide. Midway between these two border lines, measure and mark the space for the center fish, making it 30 counts long, 20 on the left and 10 on the right of the dividing line. Measure spaces on the other five dividing lines to locate the central fish of each group. After weaving these central fish, go back to the first group, estimate and mark the place for the upper fish and the lower fish, and weave them, making each of the same size and proportion as the central fish, as shown in the design. In mat 304, as noted above, the border lines and all the fish are the same size as in mat 244. In mat 335 all measurements are the same as in the above mats, except that the circle is divided into twelfths instead of sixths, making twice as many groups of fish. In mat 366 the outer border line is 2 inches from the edge of the mat instead of 1 inch and is 1 1/2 inches thick. The other measurements are the same as in mat 335. In mats of natural straw, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 10, 12, or 15. (12 should not be used on sabutan.) Gecko Design. Mats woven for this design should be of the following diameters: 304 (5 feet); 335 (6 feet); 366 straws (7 feet). Divide the circle into sixths, then into twelfths. Weave a border band on the edge of the mat 3/4 inch wide. This band is not in the design but will come outside, and reach to the circumference line in the design. Down one of the twelve dividing lines, inside the border band, measure off 3 1/2 inches and weave a gecko, half on one side and half on the other side of the line, extending the tail about 5 1/2 inches toward the center of the mat. Weave the two on each side of this gecko, and the four above it. Now space and weave the other five groups. Each group contains seven figures. The only difference in the larger mats will be in the spacing between the tails. The groups should be spaced the same as before. In ticug mats of natural straw, the following colors may be used: No. 1 with band of No. 3. No. 1 with band of No. 9. No. 12 with band of No. 15. (No. 3 should not be used on sabutan.) No. (singly) 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, or 15. Geometric Design F. The distance from A (the corner of the mat) to B is 12 straws; from B to C is 2; from C to D is 18; from D to E is 29; from D to H is 16; from H to I is 32; from E to F is 19; and from F to G is 5. Count from A to B. Weave from B to C and on around the entire mat. Count from C to D and weave corner D H J E L. Weave all of the four corner designs exactly like D H J E L. Count from E to F and weave the two inner border lines around the entire mat. Now count from H to I and mark similar points across one side. Weave from H to I. Weave from I to the next point (32 counts distant) the exact design between H and I. Weave at each point marked. Complete all four sides in a similar manner. Mats woven for this design should be made in the following sizes: 310 by 534--from A to B is 34 straws; 266 by 394--from A to B is 22; 512 by 704--from A to B is 12; 320 by 512--from A to B is 12 (double count); 320 by 576--from A to B is 12 (double count). In the last two sizes make the design twice as large as the count; that is, A B should be 24, B C should be 4, C D should be 36, etc. In mats of natural color straw, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, or 16, each alone. (12 and 16 should not be used on sabutan.) Geometric Design V. The distance from the corner of the mat A to B is 22 straws; from B to C is 12; from C to D is 4; from D to F is 2; from D to E is 15; from F to G is 15; from L to M is 14; from C to N is 38; from N to O is 12; from F to P is 20; and from P to Q is 25. Count from A to B. At B weave the corner double square and continue on at FD to GE. Now weave the double square G H J E. Next weave the double squares in all four corners of the mat. Now count from P to Q and mark. In the same way mark all the centers of the squares along the outer border line from corner to corner. Weave these squares, then the lines joining them. Weave down from L to M and continue the design on the inner border line, making double lines like L M as the weaving progresses. Mats woven for this design should be of the following sizes: 228 by 378--from A to B is 22 straws; 253 by 403--from A to B is 22 straws; 311 by 536--from A to B is 30 straws; 536 by 686--from A to B is 30 straws. In straw mats of natural color, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 10, or 15. Geometric Design X. The distance from A (corner of mat) to B is 22 straws (counting the fold at A); from B to C is 8; from C to D is 5; from D to E is 4; from E to F is 20; from F to G is 4; from G to H is 3; from H to I is 6; and from J to L is 52. Count from A to B and weave border line around the entire mat. Count from B to C and weave C D and over to J, back to H, over to K and back to C. Weave inner part of corner design. Weave inner border line at I entirely around the mat. Weave all four corner designs. Mark off J L, and L M, and M N, etc., until the corner is reached, making L M, M N, etc., each equal to J L. Weave all designs on side now spaced off. Space off and mark each side of the mat, before weaving. Weave all sides, completing the mat. Mats woven for this design should be in the following sizes: 269 by 425; 321 by 529; 425 by 685; 165 by 425. In mats of uncolored straw, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 16. (12 and 16 should not be used on sabutan.) Geometric Design Z. The distance from the corner A to B is 12 straws; from B to C is 3; from C to D is 16; from D to E is 8; from E to F is 26; from F to G is 17; from G to H is 4; from D to K is 17; from K to L is 12; from L to M is 17; and from I to J is 29. Count down from A to B and weave the border lines B C around the entire mat. Count from C to D and weave the outer square of the corner figure. Complete the corner figure to I and N. Count from F to G and weave G H around the entire mat. Complete all four corner designs. Count from I to J and mark. From J count a distance equal to I J and mark. Make similar marks until the corner is reached. Weave the design I L M J between all these marks. Space off each side of the mat in the same way and finish the design on all sides. Mats woven for this design should be of the following sizes: 309 by 541--from A to B is 12 straws; 319 by 551--from A to B is 22 straws; 280 by 454--from A to B is 12 straws; 551 by 696--from A to B is 22 straws. On mats of uncolored straw, the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 15, or 16. (16 should not be used on sabutan.) No. 14 for border lines and the four large spots in the side of each square; No. 3 for the remainder of the design. No. 12 with spots and border lines of No. 3. Large Banca Design. [36] Distance from corner A to B is 41 straws; from B to C, 2; from B to G, 31; from G to S, 5; from C to D, 35; from D to E, 2; and from D to F, 10. Begin weaving at letter B and weave the outer border line around the entire mat. Next weave the inside border line beginning at D. After finishing the border lines, weave all four corner designs. Count from C to H, 9 straws; from H to I, 5; from I to J, 27; from J to K, 5; from L to M, 6; and from N to O, 8. Now weave from O to P. From P to Q is 4 straws, and from P to R is 7 straws. Mats woven for this design should be: 239 by 425; 301 by 487; 301 by 549; 555 by 741. In the last mat, 555 by 741, G to S is 8 instead of 5. On ticug mats of natural straw this design may be embroidered in the following colors: No. 2, 3, 6, or 15, solid. No. 14 with border lines of No. 15 (except on sabutan). No. 14 with border lines of No. 9. Chick Design. The distance from A to B is 50 straws (count first fold); from B to C is 21; from C to D is 6; from D to E is 19; from E to F is 7; from F to G is 18; from H to I is 5; and from G to J is 54. Count down from corner A to B and weave the corner design. Now weave all four corner designs. Begin at F and weave the inner border line entirely around the mat. Count from F to G and weave the design above G. Count from H to I and weave the second design. Now count from G to J and weave the figure above J exactly like the figure above G. Mats woven for this design should be 254 by 416, 308 by 524, 416 by 524, or 590 by 806 straws. The last mat has a change in margin, and the distance from A to B is 58 straws. This mat may be embroidered in the following colors: No. 3, 6, 10, or 15. Orchid Design. The distance from the corner A to B is 13 straws; from B to C, 2; from C to D, 19; from D to E, 35; from E to F, 17; from C to F, 71; from F to G, 2; from G to H, 19; from M to N, 6; from F to M, 67; from M to K, 13; and from K to J, 19. Begin weaving at B and weave the outside border line around the entire mat. Next count from C to F and weave the inside border line. Now weave all four corner designs. Count from F to M, then up to K, and weave from K to J. [37] To find the position of the next design count 81 straws beyond L along the inner border line, and then up the same distance as L K. Mats woven for this design should be 301 by 544; 220 by 382; 301 by 463; and 550 by 712 straws. In mat 550 by 712, A B is 17 straws. In mats of natural color straw, the following colors may be used in the designs: No. 2, 3, 6, or 15 solid. No. 3 with flowers of No. 1 and border lines of No. 9 except on sabutan. No. 12 with flowers of No. 7 and border lines of No. 15. Woman Carrying Clothes Design. The distance from A to B is 29 straws; from B to C is 2; from C to D is 36; from I to J is 3; from B to E is 11; from E to K is 9; from E to F is 21; from F to G is 3; and from G to H is 10. Count from A, the corner of the mat, to B. At B begin to weave the border line. Weave first to E, then entirely around the mat. Now count from C to D and weave the inner border line entirely around the mat. Next, weave in the four corner designs. Count from E to F, then down to G. From G to H is 10 straws. Now weave the first two designs on the side and then the next two, and so on. Mats woven for this design should be 300 by 392; 304 by 534; 254 by 346; or 568 by 706. On all of these mats the design will look better if twice the size of the pattern. Therefore all the above distances will be double, or as follows: A to B, 58 straws; B to C, 4; B to E, 22; E to F, 42; C to D, 72 straws; I to J, 6; E to K, 18; F to G, 6. In mat 304 by 534, E to K is 20 and A to B is 51 (already double). In mat 568 by 706, from A (corner of mat) to B is 39, making E to K 14 straws (already doubled). This design in ticug straw will work up well in No. 5 solid; in No. 4 solid; in No. 3 solid; in No. 5 with No. 2 as inner and outer border line, or with No. 1 as inner and outer border line. This design on sabutan straw may be made in No. 1 solid; in No. 2 solid; in No. 5 solid; in No. 6 solid; in No. 2 with No. 1 for border lines; in No. 4 with No. 1 for border lines; or in No. 5 with No. 1 for border lines. This design will work up well in the following colors: No. 2, 3, 6, or 15. Lavandera Design. The distance from A to B is 15 straws; from B to C is 4; from C to D is 40; from D to E is 21; from E to F is 3; from F to G is 4; from G to H is 3; from D to I is 12; from I to J is 13; from I to K is 18; from K to O is 5; from O to L is 2; from L to M is 26; and from M to N is 28. Count down from A to B and mark B and C. Place similar marks at the three other corners of the mat. Weave the border line around the entire mat, touching the marked points. Count from C to G, mark, and do the same in the other three corners. Weave G H around the mat, touching the marked points at the corners. Count from C to D and over to I, and weave I J. Weave the whole figure just started, and the figure facing it, including the ground line beneath. Weave the other corners in a similar manner. At K count to O, back to L, over to M, and weave the figure beneath M. Mark off L M and M N. Now continue marking alternately across the side spaces equal to L M and M N, making the last space equal to L M. Weave the figure between these marks and continue marking and weaving in the same way on the other sides. Mats woven for this design should be made: 237 by 399; 345 by 507; 690 by 1014 (units double size); 453 by 615. In ticug mats of natural straw the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 15, or 16, solid. (16 should not be used on sabutan.) Man with Bow and Arrow Design. The distance from A to B is 20 straws; from B to C is 2; from C to D is 30; from D to E is 17; from E to F is 66; from F to G is 3; from G to H is 11 1/2; from H to I is 9; from J to K is 17; from I to L is 33; and from L to M is 14 1/2. Count from A to B. At B weave the border band around the entire mat. Count from C to F (113) and weave the inner border line around the entire mat. Now weave all four corner designs. Count from G to H and up to I, and weave the two figures. To place the next two figures, which are exactly like the two just woven, count out from J, 17 straws, and repeat from K which is the tip of the arrow of the first figure, just made. Mats woven for this design should be: 345 by 501, 9 straws; 505 by 739, 11; 739 by 1051, 11. In mats 505 by 739, and 739 by 1051, from A to B is 24 straws. This design in tikug may be worked up in the following colors on natural color straw: Solid, No. 2, 3, 6, 10, or 15. Casa Design. The distance from the corner A to B is 22 straws; from B to C is 33; from C to D is 24; and from F to G is 17. Count down from A to B and weave border line around the entire mat. Now count from B to D and from D to E, 3 1/2 straws, and commence weaving the inner border line. When completed, weave in all four corner designs. Count from F to G and weave in the next design, and so on. Let H I, the steps, be on the left of every casa except the corner ones. Mats woven for this design should be 254 by 407 straws; 271 by 424; 304 by 542 (double); 406 by 542 (double); or 576 by 712. In the last three of these, 304 by 542, 406 by 542, and 576 by 712, the counts should all be doubled, the designs being twice the size of those in the first two mats; that is, from A to B will be 44, B to C, 66, and so on. Tikug mats in natural straw may be embroidered in the following colors: No. 14 for casa, No. 12 for tree, No. 15 for border lines except on sabutan; No. 3 for casa, No. 15 for tree, No. 8 for border lines; and Nos. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, or 16, solid; No. 16 should not be used on sabutan. Chicken Vender Design. The distance from the corner A to B is 15 straws, counting the corner fold as 1. All counts in this design are woven double. Therefore from A to B is 30; from B to C is 17 by 2 or 34; from C to D is 44; from E to G is 16; from F to H is 14; from B to D is 78; from G to I is 24; and from J to K is 30. Notice that the space on the right of the corner is one less than the space on the left; this will occur on the right and left of each corner. Count down from corner A to B and weave a line entirely around the mat. Count from B to D and weave the inner border line. Now weave the basket in each corner. Then weave from G to I and J to K, and so on. Mats woven for this design should be: 332 (7) by 512 (12)--from A to B is 30 straws; 260 (5) by 404 (9)--from A to B is 30; 260 (5) by 476 (11)--from A to B is 30; or 512 by 692 (17)--from A to B is 30. On tikug mats of natural color this design may be embroidered in the following colors: No. 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, or 16. (16 should not be used on sabutan). No. 14 with a single straw outline and solid border lines of No. 9, 8, or 3. No. 14 with outlines of No. 3 and baskets and hats of No. 1, except on sabutan. Carabao, Cart, and Driver Design. The distance from A to B is 32 straws, but it must be woven twice that size, making A B equal 64. All the sizes given below are double the count on the drawings: from A to B is 64; from B to C is 40; from C to D is 18; from D to E is 6; from D to F is 8; from A to D is 122; from B to I is 30; and from G to H is 16. Count from the corner A to B and weave B C. Count from A to D and mark off D. Count from C to D and test the count. From each corner of the mat make a count similar to A D and mark. Weave the border line, commencing at D, around the entire mat, touching the marks at the corners. Weave design B C, and a similar design in each remaining corner. Count from B to I and weave design I J. At J count 2 and weave another design like I J facing I J. The space between the backs of the carts, not shown on this diagram, is 6. Mats woven for this design should be in the following sizes: 258 by 396; 258 by 534; 396 by 534; 534 by 672; or 672 by 810. In tikug mats of natural color straw the following colors may be used: Singly, No. 2, 3, 6, 10, or 15; and No. 3 with border line of No. 9. Rooster Design. The distance from the corner A to B is 13 by 2 or 26 (counts in this design are all double); from B to C is 28 by 2 or 56; from C to D is 5 by 2 or 10; from D to E is 26 by 2 or 52; from E to F is 3 by 2 or 6; from E to O is 3; from O to G is 11; from H to J is 11; from G to H is 56 by 2 or 112. Count from A to B in all four corners and mark B in each corner. Join all the B's by a double border line. At the first B, count down to C and over to D and weave D E. Count from E to O and up to G and mark. Mark H, counting from G. Mark J, counting from H. Mark all points similar to H and J on this side of the mat, counting back from the corner a space equal to G B. Now weave all designs on this side of the mat. Mark off spaces on each side of the mat before weaving that side. Mats woven for this design should be 202 by 538; 314 by 538; or 426 by 650. In tikug mats of natural color straw the following colors may be used: No. 2, 3, 6, 10, 15, or 16. (16 should not be used on sabutan.) No. 3, cock; No. 14, comb, (three squares from I to C and two above M); No. 1, legs and feet; No. 15, grass and other border line. (On sabutan use No. 14 instead of No. 1 for legs and feet). Carabao Head Design. The distance from A to B is 25 straws; from B to C is 3; from C to D is 23; from D to E is 3; from E to F is 4; from F to G is 11; from G to H is 31; from F to I is 22; from H to J is 3; from I to K is 37; from L to M is 11; from I to N is 12; from N to O is 12 1/2; and from I to P is 7. Count from the corner A to B and mark. Count the same number in from every corner and mark. At B weave the border line the thickness of B C around the entire mat, intersecting the marks at the other three corners. Count C D and weave the corner design D G. Count from G to H and mark. Count from B to H and see if the mark is correct. Mark off B H in the other three corners and weave the border line H J around the entire mat. Now weave the other three corner designs. Count from F to I and mark. Count from I to K and mark. From K on, mark off distances like I K along this side of the mat until the last point is reached. The remaining space to the point similar to F will equal I F. Now weave the intervening designs, and complete the mat. Mats woven for this design should be of the following sizes: 319 by 541; 257 by 405; 490 by 712; or 393 by 541. In tikug mats of natural color straw the following colors may be used: No. 3, carabao and all border lines; No. 15, grasses. No. 2, 3, 6, 9, or 15. Fishtail Palm Design. This is an "all over" design. The unit counts are as follows: from A to B is 33 straws; from B to C is 11; from C to D is 22; from E to F is 35; from E to G is 5. From the corner of the mat, A, on the long edge, count down to B. At B count in to C. Mark C O D E F and weave the design. From D count 44, and a point similar to C will be reached. Weave the same pattern again. From F count 55, and a point similar to E will be reached. Weave the same pattern again. Measuring as at the first corner A, mark off spaces and weave all three other corner designs. Weave all intervening designs, first between corners on the sides of the mat, then on the interior. Mats woven for this design should be: 374 by 520; 506 by 700; 572 by 790; 638 by 880. In tikug mats of natural straw, the following colors may be used separately, not in combination: No. 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, or 15. NOTES [1] Banig, petate, ikamen, dase. [2] Meaning coarse stuff. [3] Bayones, bayong, canastro, banyot. [4] The Bureau of Education has taken steps to procure a series of dyes suited to each one of the mat straws and other important fibers used in household industries and industrial instruction in the Philippines. [5] A tint is a paler or less intense tone than the standard color. A shade is a darker, more intense tone of the standard color. [6] Bulletin No. 33 of the Bureau of Education, entitled "Philippine Hats." [7] This office is indebted to Mr. E. D. Merrill, Botanist, Bureau of Science, Manila, P. I., for placing at its disposal an unpublished manuscript on the Flora of Manila. Information from the following sources is also acknowledged: Engler and Prantl: Das Pflanzenreich. Hooker's Flora of British India, 1894. Blanco's Flora de Filipinas, 1877. The sugar and alcohol produced by the palms are discussed by Dr. H. D. Gibbs in the Journal of Science, Manila, Vol. VI, Sec. A, No. 3. Hats are also discussed by Mr. C. B. Robinson in the same Journal, Vol. VI, Sec. C, No. 2. [8] Buri (in most localities), buli or búle, silag, ebus. [9] It is probable that some of the double Moro mats which will be described under the heading "Pandan Straws" are woven from buri straw. [10] Due to the efforts of Elmer D. Merrill and A. D. E. Elmer, Botanists of Manila, aided by Prof. Martelli, of Florence, Italy, our knowledge of Philippine pandans has been greatly broadened. It is hoped that interested persons into whose hands this paper may come will help to extend it by sending specimens of pandans for identification to the Bureau of Education, Manila. Such specimens should consist of the ripe fruit and of at least two full-grown leaves from which no spines or tips have been removed, and which have been cut as close as possible to the stem. [11] Bulletin No. 33, Bureau of Education. Journal of Science, Manila, Vol. VI, Sec. C, No. 2. [12] To settle, if possible, the question of whether sabutan flowers and fruits, inquiries and investigations on the ground were made in Tanay and Pililla by a representative of the General Office of the Bureau of Education. The people interviewed in these towns were positive in their statements that they had never seen the fruit of this pandan though they did remember seeing the flower. Every possible effort was made to get accurate, reliable information. An old man was engaged as guide and a male inflorescence of sabutan was found in a patch located on a hillside, under the shade of trees and surrounded by considerable underbrush. The patch, according to the statement of the old man was older than he could remember; the age of the guide was, perhaps, between sixty and seventy years. The flowers were odorous and covered with small brown insects almost hiding the inflorescence. [13] Plain double pandan mats, the material of which resembles sabutan, are imported from Singapore and sold by Chinese storekeepers in Manila in large quantities. They are roughly made and the fact that they are double permits the unfinished edges to be turned under and sewed down with coarse red cotton twine. They sell for a little less than the plain, single, Tanay sabutan mats with finished edges. [14] It is very difficult to obtain definite information with exact figures. These statements were made by a woman expert in weaving mats, and owing to the frank answers to the questions put, her information seems more reliable than that of the usual weaver interviewed. Other persons state that from two to six leaves are taken from a plant every month. [15] Three liters equal 1 ganta. [16] Sabutan lends itself easily to the fabrication of pocketbooks useful as purses, card-cases or cigarette-cases. From it can also be made very pretty, strong, durable and useful handbags. The weaving of both of these articles has been taken up in the schools of Tanay, but it is not as yet commercial in the town. Sets consisting of a handbag and a pocketbook in the same color and design are attractive. [17] Sabutan suckers may be purchased from several firms in Manila at P5 per hundred, freight prepaid. In shipping, the plants are packed in baskets so that they can be easily handled. It is believed by persons who have received shipments from this source that the plants will remain in good condition out of the ground for a week or more during shipment. Hence it is not advisable for places more remote than one week from Manila to order any of these plants. For further information see Circular No. 82, s. 1911, Bureau of Education. It is probable that suckers can be obtained from the cultivated plants in about a year after they are set out. [18] At this writing no data are at hand as to the preparation of sarakat straw, but it is probably made simply by drying. It is possible that much stronger and more pliable straw could be obtained if a process such as is used in the preparation of sabutan were followed. [19] Vol. I, No. 1 of the Philippine Agriculturist and Forester. A description of the plant occurs in Mr. A. D. E. Elmer's leaflets. [20] It is probable that the improved Andes stripper can be utilized in the cutting of pandan straws. [21] Arrangements are now being made through the schools for the introduction of sabutan plants into the towns of Majayjay and Luisiana. [22] Most of the information on "karagumoy" is taken from the report submitted to the Director of Education by Mr. Ralph E. Spencer. [23] The average was obtained by measuring accurately a number of specimens of the species sent in to the Bureau of Education from various provinces [24] Its most common name is bariu, spelled also bario, balio, balewe, baleau. In Occidental Negros it is also called, balean, barog in Surigao, batin in Capiz. [25] Robinson, in Vol. VI, No. 2, Section C of the Journal of Science, states that this sedge also grows on the eastern side of Luzon. [26] F. meliacea is also known as tikug in Samar but it cannot be used in weaving. [27] In pulling up tikug the whole stalk can generally be obtained by grasping it a short distance below the top. It is made into small bundles and tied a short distance below the seed heads. Each bundle contains from forty to sixty straws. In all towns except Basey the weavers gather the stalks they use. At Basey, however, where weaving of mats is a recognized industry, the straw is obtained from country people who make it a business to gather and sell it. These tikug vendors carry the bundles of green straw to the town, where they sell for from forty centavos to one peso per hundred bundles, depending upon the length of the straws. [28] The high cost of these dyes results from the adulteration practiced and the exorbitant profits, usually about 450 per cent. It is expected that the new dyes obtained from Germany through the Bureau of Education will make a saving of about 80 per cent to the workers. [29] The following story is reported as showing the cleverness of the weavers of Basey in embroidering designs on mats. An engineer in charge of road construction refused to buy certain mats from a vendor but stated, jokingly, and in order to be rid of the insistent merchant, that if he were brought mats having designs which were of interest to him, as showing scenes connected with his work, he would buy them. In a few weeks the broker returned, bringing with him a large mat on which were displayed a road roller, wheel barrows, shovels, spades and other implements connected with road building, and part of a road itself. [30] In general it may be stated that the sabutan and tikug mats are the strongest made in the Philippines. Neither the wearing qualities of the straw nor the permanency of the dyes in buri mats are equal to those of tikug. If tikug floor mats become dirty they may be cleaned without injury if the dyeing was well done. They should be shaken to remove dust and dirt, laid flat on the floor and lightly scrubbed with a cloth, sponge or brush, using lukewarm soapsuds, after which cold water should be thrown on them. They are dried by hanging in the sunshine or the breeze. [31] A firm has recently entered the field and is doing a mail order business in these mats with the United States. Their plans include the furnishing of straw and dyes to the weavers and the weaving of standard designs. [32] Most of the information given under this heading was taken from reports by Percy M. Jones and Frank Thomason, formerly supervising teachers of Bohol. [33] Circular No. 82, s. 1911, Bureau of Education. [34] Based on original designs by Mrs. Alice Brezina. [35] Three units will take up about 3 times 17, or 51 straws. In starting, a curved pattern 51 straws across will have to be made and slipped up or down in a sixteenth division of the mat in order that the margin space may be determined. [36] This design, in all cases except where G S is 8 instead of 5, would look well with the outer border line broadened to the edge of the mat. This is a suggestion only; it means a great deal of work. [37] Weave large solid parts of designs first, when possible, and slight mistakes of one or two straws, which may happen, will then occur in open parts where they will show very little. Mistakes of this kind are only allowable in cases of flaws in the mat which is used. BUREAU OF EDUCATION PUBLICATIONS. Annual Reports: First Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1901. (Edition exhausted.) Second Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1902. (Edition exhausted.) Third Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Education, 1903. (Edition exhausted.) Fourth Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Education, 1904. (Edition exhausted.) Fifth Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Education, 1905. (Not issued in printed form.) Sixth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1906. Seventh Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1907. Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1908. (Supply limited.) Ninth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1909. Tenth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1910. (Supply limited.) Eleventh Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1911. Twelfth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 1912. Bulletins: 1. The Philippine Normal School. Catalogue for 1903-4. English and Spanish. April, 1904. (Obsolete.) 2. A Course of Study in Vocal Music for Vacation Normal Institutes. May, 1904. (Edition exhausted.) 8. The Philippine School of Arts and Trades, Prospectus for 1904-5. English and Spanish. June, 1904. (Obsolete.) 4. The Philippine Nautical School, Prospectus for 1904-5. English and Spanish. June, 1904. (Obsolete.) 5. Notes on the Treatment of Smallpox. June, 1904. 6. Reports of Industrial Exhibits of the Philippine Schools at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. June, 1904. 7. Courses of Instruction for the Public Schools of the Philippine Islands. June, 1904. (Obsolete.) 8. Cursos de Enseñanza para las Escuelas Públicas de las Islas Filipinas. (Spanish edition of Bulletin No. 7.) June, 1904. (Edition exhausted.) 9. A List of Philippine Baptismal Names. June, 1904. (Edition exhausted.) 10. Government in the United States. (Prepared for use in the Philippine Public Schools.) June, 1904. 11. Courses in Mechanical Drawing, Woodworking, and Ironworking for Provincial Secondary Schools. June, 1904. (Obsolete.) 12. Advanced and Post-Graduate Studies Offered by the Philippine Normal School for Preparation for Entrance to American Colleges and Universities or to the University of the Philippines. English and Spanish. August, 1904. (Obsolete.) 13. Not issued in printed form. 14. The School Law of the Philippine Islands, as Amended by Acts of the Philippine Commission to and including Act 1530, with Executive Orders and Attorney-General's Opinions Affecting the Bureau of Education. January, 1906. (Obsolete.) 15-20. Not issued in printed form. 21. Philippine Normal School. Catalogue for 1904-5. English and Spanish. May, 1905. (Obsolete.) 22. Lessons on Familiar Philippine Animals. August, 1905. (Edition exhausted.) 23. Standard Course of Study in Vocal Music for the Public Schools of the Philippine Islands. 1906. Revised and re-issued in 1910. (Editions exhausted.) 24. Outline of Year's Course in Botany and Key to the Families of Vascular Plants in the Philippine Islands. August, 1906. Revised and re-issued in 1907. Third edition issued in 1908. Fourth edition issued in 1911. 25. Official Roster of the Bureau of Education, corrected to March 1, 1906. May, 1906. (Obsolete.) 26. High School and Secondary Courses of Instruction. June, 1906. (Obsolete.) 27. Philippine Normal School. Catalogue for 1906-7 and Prospectus for 1907-8. May, 1907. (Obsolete.) 27 (A). Philippine Normal School, Courses of Study, Secondary Course. January, 1908. (Obsolete.) 28. The Milkfish or Bangos. May, 1908. (Supply limited.) 29. Constructive Lessons in English, Designed for Use in Intermediate Grades. August, 1910. Revised and re-issued, 1911. Third Edition, 1912. 80. Philippine Normal School, Catalogue for 1909-10 and Announcement for 1910-11. June, 1910. (Obsolete.) 31. School and Home Gardening July 1910. (Now being revised) 32. Courses in Mechanical and Free-hand Drawing, for Use in Trade and Intermediate Schools. December, 1910. 33. Philippine Hats. December, 1910. (Supply limited.) 34. Lace Making and Embroidery. December, 1910. 35. Housekeeping and Household Arts--A Manual for Work with the Girls in the Elementary Schools of the Philippine Islands. February, 1911. 36. Catalogue and Announcement of the Philippine Normal School. May, 1911. (Edition exhausted.) 37. School Buildings, Part I. 1912. 38. School Buildings, Part II. 1912. 39. A Manual of Free-hand Drawing for Philippine Primary Schools. (In course of preparation.) 40. Athletic Handbook for the Philippine Public Schools. (Now being revised.) 41. Service Manual of the Bureau of Education, 1911. 42. Intermediate English. II--Notes, Directions, and Aids to the Preparation of the Correspondence Study Course, 1911. 43. Catalogue of the Philippine School of Arts and Trades, 1912. 44. Libraries for Philippine Public Schools. 45. The School of Household Industries, 1912. 46. Industrial Museum, Library, and Exhibits of the Bureau of Education. 47. Good Manners and Right Conduct, for Use in Primary Grades. 48. A Course in Civics. (In course of preparation.) 49. Philippine Industrial Fibers. (In course of preparation.) 50. Arbor Day and School Holidays. (In course of preparation.) 51. The Philippine School of Commerce. 1913. 52. The Philippine School of Arts and Trades, Nautical Department. 1913. Civico-Educational Lectures: 1. The Rights and Duties of Citizens of the Philippines. 1910. (Supply limited.) 2. The Prevention of Diseases. 1910. (Supply limited.) 3. Rice. 1910. (Supply limited.) 4. Diseases of Animals. 1910. (Supply limited.) 5. Coconut Beetles. 1910. (Supply limited.) 6. The Housing of the Public Schools. 1910. (Supply limited.) 7. Coconuts. 1911. 8. Corn. 1912. The Teachers' Assembly Herald: Volume I, 1908. (Edition exhausted.) Volume II, 1909. (Edition exhausted.) Volume III, 1910. (Edition exhausted.) Volume IV, 1911. (Supply limited.) Volume V, 1912. (Supply limited.) Volume VI, 1913. (Now current.) The Philippine Craftsman: A monthly school industrial magazine. Now current. Text-Books: Woodworking, A Manual of Elementary Carpentry for Philippine Public Schools, 1908. Selected Short Poems by Representative American Authors. 1911. Commercial Geography: the Materials of Commerce for the Philippines. 1911. Macaulay's Samuel Johnson; Emerson's Self Reliance; Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. 1911. An Introduction to the Study of Colonial History. Economic Conditions in the Philippines. (In course of preparation.) Miscellaneous Problems for Trade Schools and Trades Classes in the Philippine Public Schools. (In course of preparation.) Housekeeping--A Textbook for Girls in the Public Schools of the Philippine Islands. (In course of preparation.) A Primary Sewing Course. (In course of preparation.) Miscellaneous: Suggestions for the Third Annual Observance of Arbor Day in Philippine Schools, 1908. Domestic Science, a Guide to Practical Instruction in Housekeeping, Sewing, Cooking and Laundering in Grades Three and Four of the Philippine Public Schools, 1908. Abraham Lincoln--a Collection of Passages from His Speeches and Letters, with Brief Comments, 1909. (Supply exhausted.) Some Recipes for Preparing Jellies, Preserves, Pickles, and Candies from Philippine Fruits, 1911. (Supply exhausted.) Syllabus of Economic Conditions in the Philippines, 1911. (Supply exhausted.) Second Annual Report on Private Schools and Colleges of the Philippine Islands, 1911. Third Annual Report on Private Schools and Colleges of the Philippine Islands. 1912. A Statement of Organization, Aims and Conditions of Service in the Bureau of Education, Published for General Information. Several editions printed at Manila and Washington. Los Fines y la Organización de las Escuelas Públicas de Filipinas. (In course of preparation.) (Tagalog translation in course of preparation.) A Talk on Health Conditions in the Philippines. Dr. Victor G. Heiser, Director of Health Craftsman Reprints: I. Philippine Mats. 
31118	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 31118-h.htm or 31118-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31118/31118-h/31118-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31118/31118-h.zip) THE LONG DAY The Story of a New York Working Girl * * As Told by Herself [Illustration: Logo] New York The Century Co. 1905 [Illustration] Copyright, 1905, by The Century Co. Published October, 1905 The Devinne Press TO MY THREE "LADY-FRIENDS" Happy, fortunate Minnie; Bessie, of gentle memory; and that other, silent figure in the tragedy of Failure, the long-lost, erring Eunice, with the hope that, if she still lives, her eye may chance to fall upon this page, and reading the message of this book, she may heed. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I IN WHICH I ARRIVE IN NEW YORK 3 II IN WHICH I START OUT IN QUEST OF WORK 16 III I TRY "LIGHT" HOUSEKEEPING IN A FOURTEENTH-STREET LODGING-HOUSE 27 IV WHEREIN FATE BRINGS ME GOOD FORTUNE IN ONE HAND AND DISASTER IN THE OTHER 44 V IN WHICH I AM "LEARNED" BY PHOEBE IN THE ART OF BOX-MAKING 58 VI IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE 75 VII IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A STORY-BOOK NAME AND MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS HENRIETTA MANNERS 92 VIII WHEREIN I WALK THROUGH DARK AND DEVIOUS WAYS WITH HENRIETTA MANNERS 108 IX INTRODUCING HENRIETTA'S "SPECIAL GENTLEMAN-FRIEND" 123 X IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF A HOMELESS WANDERER IN THE NIGHT 142 XI I BECOME AN "INMATE" OF A HOME FOR WORKING GIRLS 151 XII IN WHICH I SPEND A HAPPY FOUR WEEKS MAKING ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS 180 XIII THREE "LADY-FRIENDS," AND THE ADVENTURES THAT BEFALL THEM 197 XIV IN WHICH A TRAGIC FATE OVERTAKES MY "LADY-FRIENDS" 215 XV I BECOME A "SHAKER" IN A STEAM-LAUNDRY 229 XVI IN WHICH IT IS PROVED TO ME THAT THE DARKEST HOUR COMES JUST BEFORE THE DAWN 249 EPILOGUE 266 THE LONG DAY I IN WHICH I ARRIVE IN NEW YORK The rain was falling in great gray blobs upon the skylight of the little room in which I opened my eyes on that February morning whence dates the chronological beginning of this autobiography. The jangle of a bell had awakened me, and its harsh, discordant echoes were still trembling upon the chill gloom of the daybreak. Lying there, I wondered whether I had really heard a bell ringing, or had only dreamed it. Everything about me was so strange, so painfully new. Never before had I waked to find myself in that dreary, windowless little room, and never before had I lain in that narrow, unfriendly bed. Staring hard at the streaming skylight, I tried to think, to recall some one of the circumstances that might possibly account for my having entered that room and for my having laid me down on that cot. When? and how? and why? How inexplicable it all was in those first dazed moments after that rude awakening! And then, as the fantasies of a dream gradually assume a certain vague order in the waking recollection, there came to me a confused consciousness of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours--the long journey and the weariness of it; the interminable frieze of flying landscape, with its dreary, snow-covered stretches blurred with black towns; the shriek of the locomotive as it plunged through the darkness; the tolling of ferry-bells, and then, at last, the slow sailing over a black river toward and into a giant city that hung splendid upon the purple night, turret upon turret, and tower upon tower, their myriad lights burning side by side with the stars, a city such as the prophets saw in visions, a city such as dreamy childhood conjures up in the muster of summer clouds at sunset. Suddenly out of this chaotic recollection of unearthly splendors came the memory, sharp and pinching, of a new-made grave on a wind-swept hill in western Pennsylvania. With equal suddenness, too, the fugue of thundering locomotives, and shrieking whistles, and sad, sweet tollings of ferry-bells massed itself into the clangorous music of a terrifying monody--"WORK OR STARVE, WORK OR STARVE!" And then I remembered! An unskilled, friendless, almost penniless girl of eighteen, utterly alone in the world, I was a stranger in a strange city which I had not yet so much as seen by daylight. I was a waif and a stray in the mighty city of New York. Here I had come to live and to toil--out of the placid monotony of a country town into the storm and stress of the wide, wide, workaday world. Very wide awake now, I jumped out of bed upon the cold oil-cloth and touched a match to the pile of paper and kindling-wood in the small stove. There was a little puddle of water in the middle of the floor under the skylight, and the drip in falling had brushed against the sleeve of my shirt-waist and soaked into the soles of my only pair of shoes. I dressed as quickly as the cold and my sodden garments permitted. On the washstand I found a small tin ewer and a small tin basin to match, and I dabbed myself gingerly in the cold, stale water. Another jangle of the harsh bell, and I went down dark stairs to the basement and to breakfast, wondering if I should be able to recognize Miss Jamison; for I had caught but a glimpse of my new landlady on my arrival the previous midnight. Wrapped in a faded French flannel kimono, her face smeared with cold cream, her hair done up in curling "kids," she had met and arranged terms with me on the landing in front of her bedroom door as the housemaid conducted me aloft. Making due allowance for the youth-and-beauty-destroying effects of the kimono, curling "kids," and cold cream, and substituting in their stead a snug corset, an undulated pompadour, and a powdered countenance, respectively, I knew about what to look for in the daylight Miss Jamison. A short, plump, blonde lady in the middle forties, I predicted to myself. The secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association, to which I had written some weeks before for information as to respectable and cheap boarding-houses, had responded with a number of names and addresses, among them that of Miss Elmira Jamison, "a lady of very high Christian ideals." Miss Jamison was no disappointment. She fulfilled perfectly all my preconceived notions of what she would look like when properly attired. Spying me the moment I got inside the dining-room door, she immediately pounced upon me and hurried me off to a seat, when a girl in a dirty white apron began to unload off a tray a clatter of small dishes under my nose, while another servant tossed a wet, warm napkin upon my plate. My breakfast consisted of heterogeneous little dabs of things in the collection of dishes, and which I ate with not the greatest relish in the world. There were several score of breakfasters in the two big rooms, which seemed to occupy the entire basement floor. They ate at little tables set uncomfortably close together. Gradually my general observations narrowed down to the people at my own table. I noticed a young man opposite who wore eye-glasses and a carefully brushed beard; an old lady, with a cataract in her left eye, who sat at the far end of the table; a little fidgety, stupid-looking, and very ugly woman who sat next the bearded young man; and a young girl, with dancing, roguish black eyes, who sat beside me. The bearded young man talked at a great rate, and judging from the cackling laughter of the fidgety woman and the intensely interested expression of the cataracted lady, the subject was one of absorbing interest. Gradually I discovered that the topic of discourse was none other than our common hostess and landlady; and gradually, too, I found myself listening to the history of Miss Elmira Jamison's career as a purveyor of bed and board to impecunious and homeless mortals. Five years ago Miss Jamison had come into this shabby though eminently respectable neighborhood, and opened a small boarding-house in a neighboring street. She had come from some up-State country town, and her bureaus and bedsteads were barely enough to furnish the small, old-fashioned house which she took for a term of years. Miss Jamison was a genius--a genius of the type peculiar to the age in which we live. She wasn't the "slob" that she looked. The epithet is not mine, but that of the young gentleman to whom I am indebted for this information. No, indeed; Miss Jamison was anything but a "slob," as one soon found out who had occasion to deal with her very long. A shrewd, exacting, penny-for-penny and dollar-for-dollar business woman was concealed under the mask of her good-natured face and air of motherly solicitude. Miss Jamison, at the very start-out of her career, was inspired to call her little "snide" boarding-house after the founder of the particular creed professed by the congregation of the neighboring church. The result was that "The Calvin" immediately became filled with homeless Presbyterians, or the homeless friends and acquaintances of Presbyterians. They not only filled her house, but they overflowed, and to preserve the overflow Miss Jamison rented the adjoining house. Miss Jamison was now a successful boarding-house keeper on a scale large enough to have satisfied the aspirations of a less clever woman. But she longed for other denominations to feed and house. Of the assortment that offered themselves, she chose the Methodists next, and soon had several flourishing houses running under the pious appellation "Wesley," which name, memorialized in large black letters on a brass sign, soon became a veritable magnet to board-seeking Methodism. The third and last venture of the energetic lady, and the one from which she was to derive her largest percentage of revenue, was the establishment of the place of which I had so recently become an inmate. Of all three of Miss Jamison's boarding-houses, this was the largest and withal the cheapest and most democratic: in which characteristics it but partook of the nature of the particular sort of church-going public it wished to attract, which was none other than the heterodox element which flocked in vast numbers to All People's church. The All People's edifice was a big, unsightly brick building. It had been originally designed for a roller-skating rink. All People's, as the church was colloquially named, was one of the most popular places of worship in the city. Every Sunday, both at morning and evening services, the big rink was packed to the doors with people who were attracted quite as much by the good music as they were by the popular preaching of the very popular divine. A large percentage of this great congregation was recruited from the transient element of population which lives in lodgings and boarding-houses. From its democracy and lack of all ceremony, it was a church which appealed particularly to those who were without ties or affiliations. Into this sanctuary the lonely young man (or girl) of a church-going temperament was almost sure to drift sooner or later if his probationary period of strangerhood happened to fall in this section of the city. The clever Miss Jamison put a sign bearing the legend, "All People's," on each of the doors of six houses, opposite the church, which she acquired one by one as her business increased. The homeless and lonely who came to All People's for spiritual refreshment, or to gratify their curiosity, remained to patronize Miss Jamison's "special Sunday" thirty-five-cent table d'hôte, served in the basement of one house; or bought a meal-ticket for four dollars, which entitled them to twenty-one meals served in the basement of another of the houses; or for the sum of five dollars and upward insured themselves the privilege of a week's lodging and three meals a day served in still another of the basements. Such is the history of Miss Jamison as detailed at the breakfast-table that Sunday morning. I went out for a walk late in the afternoon, and wandered about, homesick and lonely. When I returned dinner was over and the dining-room almost deserted, only a few remaining to gossip over their dessert and coffee. At my table all had gone save the young girl with the dark eyes, who, I felt instinctively, was a very nice and agreeable girl. As I approached the table, she raised her eyes from the book she was reading and gave me a diffident little bow, when, seeing I was so glad to respond to it, she immediately smiled in a friendly way. From the glimpse I had caught of her during the morning meal, I had thought her very pretty in a smart, stiffly starched, mannish-looking shirt-waist. That night she looked even prettier, clad in a close-fitting cloth gown of dark wine-color. I noticed, too, as I sat down beside her, that she was an unusually big woman. "How do you like the boarding-house by this time?" she asked, with an encouraging smile, to which I responded as approvingly as I could in the remembrance of the cheerless hall bedroom far above, and in the presence of the unappetizing dinner spread before me. "Well, I think it's rotten, if you'll excuse my French," laughed Miss Plympton, as she cut a square of butter off the common dish and passed it to me. "And I guess you think so, too, only you're too polite to roast the grub like the rest of us do. But you'll get over that in time. I was just the same way when I first begun living in boarding-houses, but I've got bravely over that now. "I've been here just a little over a week myself," she went on in her frank and engaging manner. "I saw you this morning, and I just knew how you felt. I thought I'd die of homesickness when I came. Not a soul spoke to me for four days. Not that anybody would want to particularly get acquainted with these cattle, only I'm one of the sort that has got to have somebody to speak to. So this morning I said to myself, when I saw you, that I'd put on nerve and up and speak to you even if you did turn me down. And that's why I waited for you to-night." I responded that I was glad she had been so informal; absence of formality being the meaning I interpreted from her slang, which was much more up-to-date and much more vigorous than that to which I had been accustomed in the speech of a small country village. As I ate, we talked. We talked a little about a great many things in which we were not at all interested, and a very great deal about ourselves and the hazards of fortune which had brought our lives together and crossed them thus at Miss Jamison's supper-table,--subjects into which we entered with all the zest and happy egotism of youth. Of this egotism I had the greater preponderance, probably because of my three or four years' less experience of life. Before we rose from the table I had told Miss Plympton the story of my life as it had been lived thus far. Of her own story, all I knew was that she was a Westerner, that she had worked a while in Chicago, and had come to New York on a mission similar to my own--to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. Then my new friend spoke. "What does that put you in mind of?" she asked slowly. "You mean the crackle of the kindling-wood and the snap of the coal as the flames begin to lick it?" I asked. "U-m-m, yes; the crackle of the wood and the snap of the coal," said the girl in a dreamy tone. "Home!" I cried, quick as a flash. "It makes me think of home--of the home I used to have," and my eyes blurred. "Here, too! Home!" she replied softly. "Funny, isn't it, that we have so many ideas exactly alike? But I suppose that's because we were both brought up in the country." "In the country!" I exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you were from Chicago." "Oh, no; I'm from the country. I didn't go to Chicago till I was twenty. I lived all my life on a farm in Iowa, till I went up to get a job in Chicago after my father died and I was all alone in the world. We lived in the very wildest part of the State--in the part they call the 'Big Woods.' Oh, I know all about frontier life. And there's hardly any kind of 'roughing it' that I haven't done. I was born to it." She laughed, opening the stove door, for the elbow of the pipe was now red-hot and threatening conflagration to the thin board partition behind, which divided the little room from that of the next lodger. A loud thump upon the board partition startled us. We listened for a few moments,--at first with alarm,--and then realized that the noise was only the protest of a sleepy boarder. Presently, as we continued to talk, the banging of a shoe-heel on the wall grew more insistent. We heard doors opening along the hall, and a high, raucous voice invoked quiet in none too polite phrase. So I said, "Good night," in a whisper and tiptoed to my own door. Thus began my acquaintance with Minnie Plympton--an acquaintance which, ripening later into a warm friendship, was to have an incalculable influence upon my life. II IN WHICH I START OUT IN QUEST OF WORK When I woke up the next morning it was to find a weight of homesickness lying heavy upon my heart--homesickness for something which, alas! no longer existed save in memory. Then I remembered the girl on the floor below, and soon I was dressing with a light heart, eager to hurry down to breakfast. I was somewhat disappointed to find that she had eaten her breakfast and gone. I went out upon the stoop, hailed a newsboy, and sought my skylight bedroom. It was with a hope born of youth and inexperience that I now gave systematic attention to "HELP WANTED--Female." I will confess that at first I was ambitious to do only what I chose to esteem "lady-like" employment. I had taught one winter in the village school back home, and my pride and intelligence naturally prompted me to a desire to do something in which I could use my head, my tongue, my wits--anything, in fact, rather than my hands. The advertisements I answered all held out inducements of genteel or semi-genteel nature--ladies' companions; young women to read aloud to blind gentlemen and to invalids; assistants in doctors' and dentists' offices, and for the reception-room of photograph galleries. All of them requested answers in "own handwriting, by mail only." I replied to scores of such with no success. There was also another kind of illusive advertisement which I answered in prodigal numbers in the greenness of these early days. These were those deceitfully worded requests for "bright, intelligent ladies--no canvassing." And not less prodigal were the returns I got. They came in avalanches by every mail, from patent-medicine concerns, subscription-book publishers, novelty manufacturers--all in search of canvassers to peddle their trash. I might have saved much superfluous effort, and saved myself many postage-stamps, had I been fortunate enough to have had the advice of Miss Plympton throughout this first week. But Miss Plympton had gone away for several days. I had not seen her since we had parted on Sunday night; but Monday evening, when I went to the table, I found a hasty note saying she had gone out of town to see about a job, and would see me later. That was all. I found myself longing for her more and more as the week wore away. Meanwhile, however, I did not allow the sentiment of an interrupted acquaintance to interfere with my quest for a job, nor did I sit idle in Miss Jamison's boarding-house waiting for replies. I had only a few dollars in the world, and on the other side of those few dollars I saw starvation staring me in the face unless I found work very soon. I planned my search for work as systematically as I might have conducted a house-cleaning. As soon as each day's grist of "wants" was sifted and a certain quota disposed of by letter, I set out to make personal applications to such as required it. This I found to be an even more discouraging business than the epistolary process, as it was bitterly cold and the streets were filled with slush and snow. The distances were interminable, and each day found my little hoard dwindling away with frightful rapidity into innumerable car-fares and frequent cups of coffee at wayside lunch-counters. I traveled over miles and miles of territory, by trolley-car, by elevated train and ferry-boat, to Brooklyn, to Harlem, to Jersey City and Newark, only to reach my destination cold and hungry, and to be interviewed by a seedy man with a patent stove-lifter, a shirt-waist belt, a contrivance for holding up a lady's train, or a new-fangled mop--anything, everything that a persistent agent might sell to the spendthrift wife of an American workingman. By the end of the week I was obliged to hunt for another boarding-house as well as continue the search for work. My little bedroom under the skylight, and three meals per day of none too plentiful and wretchedly cooked food, required the deposit of five dollars a week in advance. With but a few dollars left in my purse, and the prospect of work still far off, nothing in the world seemed so desirable as that I might be able to pass the remainder of my days in Miss Jamison's house, and that I might be able to breakfast indefinitely in her dark basement dining-room. Sunday morning came around again. I had been a week in the city, and was apparently no nearer to earning a livelihood than the day I started out. I had gained a little experience, but it had been at the cost of nearly five precious dollars, all spent in street-car fare and postage-stamps; of miles and miles of walking through muddy, slushy streets; and at the sacrifice of my noon lunch, which I could have had done up for me at the boarding-house without extra charge, but which my silly vanity did not allow me to carry around under my arm. Sunday morning again, and still no Miss Plympton. She was under discussion when I reached the breakfast-table. The lady with the cataract and her friend were speaking of how well she always dressed, and one of them wondered how she managed to do it, since she had no visible means of support. Dr. Perkins didn't seem to relish the turn the conversation had taken, and suddenly he fell completely out of it. But the gossips clacked on regardless, until they were brought to a standstill by a peremptory exclamation from the end of the table. "Excuse me," spoke up the doctor, dryly, "but I'll have to ask you to change the subject. You are talking about a young lady of whom you know absolutely nothing!" The scandal-mongers finished breakfast in silence and soon shuffled away in their bedroom slippers. "Old cats!" said the doctor, energetically. "Boarding-house life breeds them. A boarding-house is no place for anybody. It perverts all the natural instincts, mental, moral, and physical. You'd hardly believe it, but I've lived in boarding-houses so long that I can't digest really wholesome food any more." When at last we rose to go, he handed me a card upon which I later read this astonishing inscription in heavy black type: "PAINLESS PERKINS"; and, in smaller type underneath, the information that the extracting or filling of molars; crown and bridge work; or the fitting of artificial teeth, would be done by Painless Perkins in a "Particularly Pleasing Way," and that he was "Predisposed to Popular Prices." With no books to read, and no advertisements to answer, and no friend with whom to gossip, the day stretched before me a weary, dreary waste, when I happened to think of the church across the way, something of the history of which I had heard from Painless Perkins. And so I joined the crowd of strangers who were pouring into the doors of "All People's" to the music of a sweet-toned bell. I was there early, but the auditorium was packed, and I was ushered to a camp-chair in the aisle. The crowd was not suggestive of fashionable New York, though there were present many fine-looking, well-groomed men and women. But nearly everybody was neatly and decently if not well dressed. Many of the faces looked as sad and lonely as I felt. They appeared to be strangers--homeless wanderers who had come here to church not so much for worship as to come in touch with human beings. I was too tired, too discouraged even to hear what the earnest-voiced preacher said. The two girls sitting directly in front of me listened intently, as they passed a little bag of peppermints back and forth, and I envied them the friendship which that furtive bag of peppermints betokened. If I had had any prospect of getting a job the following week, I too could have listened to the preacher. As it was, my ears were attuned only to the terrifying refrain which had haunted me all week: "WORK OR STARVE, WORK OR STARVE!" After a while I tried to rouse myself and to take in the sermon which was holding the great congregation breathless. It was about the Good Samaritan. I heard a few sentences. Then the preacher's voice was lost once more in that insistent refrain. Dinner at noon and supper in the evening in the dark house across the street, and still my friend was absent. The scandal-mongers were as busy as ever, for Painless Perkins was away. Monday morning I made my way eastward on foot, across Union Square. The snow had been falling all night and was still sifting down in big, flowery flakes. The trees under their soft, feathery burdens looked like those that grow only in a child's picture-book. The slat-benches were covered with soft white blankets that were as yet undisturbed, for the habitual bench tramp was not abroad so early in the morning. I was up extraordinarily early, as I started out on a double search. The first item on my list--"Board and room, good neighborhood, $3.00"--took me south across Fourteenth Street, choked and congested with the morning traffic. The pavements were filled with hurrying crowds--factory-hands, mill-girls, mechanics--the vanguard of the great labor army. I hunted for Mrs. McGinniss's residence in a street which pays little attention to the formality of numbers. An interview with a milk-cart driver brought the discouraging news that I might find it somewhere between First and Second avenues, and I hurried on down the street, which stretched away and dipped in the far distance under the framework of the elevated railroad. The stoop-line on either side presented an interminable vista of small, squalid shops, meat-markets, and saloons. Wedged between a paper-box factory and a blacksmith's shop I found Mrs. McGinniss's number. It was a five-story red-brick tenement, like all the others that rise above the stoop-line of this poverty-stricken street. A soiled scrap of paper pasted beneath the button informed possible visitors that Mrs. McGinniss lived on the fifth floor, that her bell was out of order, and that one should "Push Guggenheim's." The Guggenheims responded with a click from above. I ascended a flight of dark stairs, at the top of which there was ranged an ambuscade of numerous small Guggenheims who had gushed out in their underdrawers and petticoats. Their mother, in curl-papers, gave explicit directions for my guidance upward. "Is this where Mrs. McGinniss lives?" I inquired of the dropsical slattern who responded to my rap. "I'm her." Mrs. McGinniss's manner was aggressive. Conscious of her bare, sodden arms and dripping gingham apron, she evidently supposed I had mistaken her for a laundress instead of the lady of her own house, and she showed her resentment by chilly reticence. "I don't run no boarding-house, and I don't take just any trash that come along, either." I agreed that these were excellent qualities in a landlady, and then, somewhat mollified, she led the way through a steamy passage into a stuffy bedroom. It had one window, looking out into an air-shaft filled with lines of fluttering garments and a network of fire-escapes. A slat-bed, a bureau, a washstand with a noseless pitcher, and a much-spotted Brussels carpet completed the furnishings, and out of all exuded ancient odors of boiled cabbage and soap-suds. "There's one thing, though, I won't stand for, and that's cigarettes. I've had the last girl in my house that smokes cigarettes I'm going to have. Look at that nice carpet! Look at it! All burned full of holes where that trollop throwed her matches." I hurried away, with a polite promise to consider the McGinniss accommodations. The abode of Mrs. Cunningham was but a few blocks away. Mrs. Cunningham did not live in a flat, but in the comparative gentility of "up-stairs rooms" over a gaudy undertaking establishment. She proved to be an Irish lady with a gin-laden breath. Her eyes were blue and bleared, and looked in kindly fashion through a pair of large-rimmed and much-mended spectacles, from which one of the glasses had totally disappeared. She was affable, and responded to my questions with almost maudlin tenderness, calling me "dearie" throughout the interview. Her little parlor was hung with chromo reproductions of great religious paintings, and the close atmosphere was redolent of the heavy perfume of lilies and stale tuberoses. Remarking the unusual prodigality of flowers, the good lady explained that the undertaker beneath was in the habit of showing his esteem by the daily tender of such funeral decorations as had served their purpose. Mrs. Cunningham's accommodations at four dollars per week were beyond my purse, however; but, as she was willing to talk all day, my exit was made with difficulty. The remainder of that day and a good part of the days that followed were spent in interviewing all manner of landladies, most of whom, like Mrs. McGinniss's bell, were disordered physically or mentally. Heartsick, I decided by Saturday to take blind chances with the janitress of a Fourteenth-street lodging-house. She had a cleft palate, and all I could understand of her mutilated talk was that the room would be one dollar a week with "light-housekeeping" privileges thrown in. I had either to pay Miss Jamison another five dollars that next morning or take chances here. I took the hazard, paid the necessary one dollar to the more or less inarticulate woman, and went back to Miss Jamison's to get my baggage and to eat the one dinner that was still due me--not forgetting to leave a little note for the still absent Minnie Plympton, giving her my new address. III I TRY "LIGHT" HOUSEKEEPING IN A FOURTEENTH-STREET LODGING-HOUSE Bedtime found me thoroughly settled in my new quarters, and myself in quite an optimistic frame of mind as I drew close to the most fearfully and wonderfully mutilated little cook-stove that ever cheered the heart of a lonely Fourteenth-street "light housekeeper." In the red-hot glow of its presence, and with the inspiring example of courage and fortitude which it presented, how could I have felt otherwise than optimistic? It was such a tiny mite of a stove, and it seemed to have had such a world of misfortune and bad luck! There was something whimsically, almost pathetically, human about it. This, it so pleased my fancy to believe, was because of the sufferings it had borne. Its little body cracked and warped and rust-eaten, the isinglass lights in its door long since punched out by the ruthless poker, the door itself swung to on the broken hinge by a twisted nail--a brave, bright, merry little cripple of a stove, standing on short wooden legs. I made the interesting discovery that it was a stove of the feminine persuasion; "Little Lottie" was the name which I spelled out in the broken letters that it wore across its glowing heart. And straightway Little Lottie became more human than ever--poor Little Lottie, the one solitary bright and cheerful object within these four smoke-grimed walls which I had elected to make my home. Home! The tears started at the mere recollection of the word. The firelight that flickered through the broken door showed an ironical contrast between the home that now was and that which once had been, and to which I looked back with such loving thoughts that night. A narrow wooden bedstead, as battered and crippled as Little Lottie, but without the latter's air of sympathy and companionship; a tremulous kitchen table; a long box set on end and curtained off with a bit of faded calico, a single chair with a mended leg--these rude conveniences comprised my total list of housekeeping effects, not forgetting, of course, the dish-pan, the stubby broom, and the coal-scuttle, along with the scanty assortment of thick, chipped dishes and the pots and pans on the shelf behind the calico curtain. There was no bureau, only a waved bit of looking-glass over the sink in the corner. My wardrobe was strung along the row of nails behind the door, a modest array of petticoats and skirts and shirt-waists, with a winter coat and a felt sailor-hat. Beneath them, set at right angles to the corner, was the little old-fashioned swell-top trunk, which precaution prompted me to drag before the door. It had been my mother's trunk, and this was the first journey it had made since it carried her bridal finery to and from the Philadelphia Centennial. In the quiet, uneventful years that followed it had reposed in a big, roomy old garret, undisturbed save at the annual spring house-cleaning, or when we children played "The Mistletoe Bough" and hid in it the skeleton which had descended to us as a relic of our grandfather's student days. What a change for the little old trunk and what a change for me the last twelve months had brought about! After the door had been further barricaded by piling the chair on top of the trunk, and the coal-scuttle on top of the chair, I blew out the evil-smelling lamp and crept with fear and trembling into a most inhospitable-looking bed. It received my slight weight with a groan, and creaked dismally every time I stirred. Through the thin mattress I could feel the slats, that seemed hard bands of pain across my tired body. From where I was lying I could look straight into Little Lottie's heart, now a steady, glowing mass of coals. Little Lottie invited me to retrospection. How different it all was in reality from what I had imagined it would be! In the story-books it is always so alluring--this coming to a great city to seek one's fortune. A year ago I had been teaching in a little school-house among my Pennsylvania hills, and I recalled now, very vividly, how I used to love, on just such cold winter nights as this, when the wind whistled at every keyhole of the farm-house where I boarded during the school year to pull my rocking-chair into the chimney-corner and read magazine stories about girls who lived in hall bedrooms on little or nothing a week; and of what good times they had, or seemed to have, with never being quite certain where the next meal was to come from, or whether it was to come at all. I was wakened by the rattle of dishes, the clatter of pots and pans, and the rancid odor of frying bacon, bespeaking the fact that somebody's breakfast was under way in the next room to mine. I stepped across the bare, cold floor to the window, and, rolling up the sagging black-muslin blind, looked out upon the world. Bleak and unbeautiful was the prospect that presented itself through the interstices of the spiral fire-escape--a narrow vista strung with clothes-lines and buttressed all about with the rear walls of high, gaunt, tottering tenements, the dirty windows of which were filled with frowzy-headed women and children. Something interesting was going on below, for in a moment every window was thrown up, and a score of heads leaned far out. I followed suit. In the sloppy, slush-filled courtyard below two untidy women were engaged in coarse vituperation that shortly led to blows. The window next to mine was quickly raised, and I drew back to escape being included in the category of curious spectators to this disgraceful scene--but too late. "What's the row?" a voice asked with friendly familiarity. It was the girl who had been frying the bacon, and she still held a greasy knife in her hand. I answered that I did not know. She was very young, hardly more than sixteen. She had a coarse, bold, stupid face, topped by a heavy black pompadour that completely concealed any forehead she might be supposed to possess. She was decidedly an ill-looking girl; but the young fellow in his shirt-sleeves who now stuck his head out of the window alongside of hers was infinitely more so. He had a weak face, covered with pimples, and the bridge of his nose was broken; but, despite these manifest facial defects, and notwithstanding the squalor of his surroundings, a very high collar and a red necktie gave him the unmistakable air of the cheap dandy. Again I gave a civil evasion to the girl's trivial question, and as I did so her companion, looking over her frowzy pompadour, stared at me with insolent familiarity. I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, a cigarette between his teeth. "What do you wish?" I asked, in my most matter-of-fact manner. He puffed some smoke in my face, then took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at me, evidently at a loss for an answer. "The girl in there wants to know if you'll loan her one of your plates," he replied at last. "I am sorry," I said, with freezing politeness--"I am very sorry, but I have only one plate, and I'll need that myself," and I closed the door. After breakfast I walked up to First Avenue to lay in my provisions for the day--a loaf of bread, a quart of potatoes, a quarter of a pound of butter, and two cents' worth of milk. Never in my life before had I bought anything on the Sabbath day, and never before had I seen a place of business open for trade on that day. My people had not been sternly religious people, and, theoretically, I didn't think I was doing anything wicked; yet I felt, as I gave my order to the groceryman, as though I were violating every sacred tradition of birth and breeding. After that I tried to do all necessary marketing the day before, and if I needed anything on Sunday I made myself go without it. Returning with my unholy provisions tucked under my arm and a broken-nosed blue pitcher deftly concealed under my protecting cape, I made my first daylight inventory of that block of Fourteenth Street where I lived. On each corner stood a gaudy saloon, surmounted by a Raines law hotel. It seemed to have been at one time the abode of fashion, for though both ends of the block were supported by business buildings, the entire middle presented a solid front of brownstone, broken at intervals by long flights of steps leading to handsome, though long-neglected black-walnut doors. The basements were given over to trade. On the stairs I was brought face to face again with my sinister-looking young man. I looked straight ahead, so as to avoid his eyes. But I found the way blocked, as he stretched his arms from banister to wall. "What's the matter with you?" he began coaxingly. "Say, I'll take you to the theater, if you want to go. What do you say to 'The Jolly Grass Widows' to-morrow night?" Thoroughly frightened, I responded to the unwarranted invitation by retreating two steps down the stairs, whereupon the young ruffian jumped down and grasped the arm in which I held my packages. I don't know what nerved me up to such a heroic defense, but in the twinkling of an eye he fell sprawling down the stairs, followed by the flying remnants of my landlady's milk-pitcher. Then I ran up the remaining two flights as fast as my feet would carry me, and landed in the midst of an altercation between the inarticulate landlady and my girl neighbor. In passing, I could make out enough of the wrangle to understand that the latter was being ordered out of the house. When quietness had been restored, there was a tap at my door. I demanded the name of my visitor in as brave a voice as I could command. "Mrs. Pringle," returned the broken voice of the landlady. I saw, when I opened the door, that she wanted to talk to me. I also saw, what I had not noticed in my hasty interview the night before, that she was superior to most of the women of her class. She had been grimy and unkempt the night before, after her long week's work of sweeping and cleaning and coal-carrying; but to-day, in her clean wrapper and smooth gray hair, there was a pathetic Sabbath-day air of cleanliness about her spare, bent figure. Somehow, I felt that she would not be so very angry when I explained about the pitcher, and I invited her in with genuine cordiality. She listened in silence to my story, her knotted hands folded upon her starched gingham apron. "That's all right!" she replied, a smile lighting up her tired face. "I'm just glad you broke the pitcher over that vile fellow's head." "You know him, then?" I suggested. She shook her head. "No, I don't know him, but I know the bad lot he belongs to. I've just warned this girl in here to leave as soon as she can pack her things. I gave her back her rent-money. She only come day afore yesterday, and I supposed she was an honest working-girl or I'd never have took her. She pretended to me she was a skirt-hand, and it turns out she's nothin' but a common trollop. And I hated to turn her out, too, even if she did talk back to me something awful. She can't be more 'n sixteen; but, somehow or t' other, when a girl like that goes to be bad, there ain't no use trying to reason 'em out of it. You come from the country, don't you?" There was a kindly curiosity mirrored in the dim, sunken eyes which surveyed me steadily, a lingering accent of repressed tenderness in her voice, and I did not deem it beneath my dignity to tell this decent, motherly soul my little story. She listened attentively. "I knowed you were a well-brought-up young woman the moment I laid eyes on you," she began, the maimed words falling gently from her lips, despite the high, cracked voice in which they were spoken. "And I knowed you was from the country, too; so I did. You don't mind, honey, do you, if I speak sort of plain with you, being as I'm an old woman and you just a slip of a girl? Do you, now?" I replied that she might speak just as plainly as she liked with me and I would take no offense, and then she smiled approvingly upon me and drew her little checked breakfast-shawl closer about her sunken bosom. "I like to hear you say that," she went on, "because so many girls won't listen to a word of advice--least of all when it comes from an old woman that they thinks don't know as much as they does. They don't relish being told how careful they ought to be about the people they get acquainted with. Now I'm talking to you just as if you was one of my own. You may think you are wise, and all that,--and you are a bright sort of girl, I'll give you credit for that, only this is such a wicked city. A young girl like you, with no folks of her own to go to when she's discouraged and blue, 'll find plenty and to spare that'll be willing to lead her off. This is a bad neighborhood you're in, and you got to be mighty careful about yourself. Forewarned is forearmed, as you've heard tell before; and I have saw so many young girls go wrong that I felt could have been saved if somebody had just up and talked straight at them in the beginning, like I'm talking here to you. I had a girl here in this house two years agone. A pretty girl she was, and she was from the country too. Somewheres up in Connecticut she come from. She was a nice, innocent girl too, so she was, when she come here to rent a room. This very room you've got was the one she had. Just as quiet and modest and respectful spoken to her elders as you are, she was. She worked down in St. Mark's Place. She was a cap-maker and got four dollars a week. She started out to live honest, for she'd been brought up decent. Her father, she told me when she come here, was a blacksmith in some of them little country towns up there. She thought she could make lots of money to come down here to work, and that she could have a fine time; and I guess she was terrible disappointed when she found just how things really was. She hankered for fine clothes and to go to theaters, and there wasn't any chanst for neither on four dollars a week. By and by, though, she did get to going out some with a young fellow that worked where she did. He was a nice, decent young fellow, and I'll warrant you she could have married him if she had acted wise and sensible; and he'd like as not have made her a good provider. I don't blame the men out and out, as some folks do; and I say that when a young fellow sees that a girl 'll let him act free with her, he just says to himself she'll let other fellows act free with her, and then he don't want to marry her, no difference how much he might have thought of her to begin with. That's what, I think, started this girl going wrong. At first he'd just bring her to the door when they'd be out to the theater, but by and by she got to taking him up to her room. Now it's none of my business to interfere with people's comings and goings in this house, being as I'm only the janitress. I have my orders from the boss--who's a real nice sort of man--to only rent rooms to respectable people, and to put anybody out where I knows there's bad conduct going on. He's strong on morals, the boss is. He used to be a saloon-keeper, and the Salvation Army converted him; and then he sold out and went into this business. He has this place, and then he has a boarding-house on Second Avenue. These Germans are awful kind men, when they are kind, and Mr. Schneider has did a lot of good. If any of his tenants get sick and can't pay their rent, or if they get out of work, he don't bounce them into the street, but he just tells them to stay on and pay him when they get caught up; and would you believe it that he never loses a cent, either!" Here the woman stopped for breath, which gave me an opportunity to turn the channel of her talk back to the girl from Connecticut. "Well, I didn't have no right to tell the girl that she mustn't take her gentleman friend to her room, because there ain't no law again it in any light-housekeeping rooms. The people who live here are all working-people and earn their livings; and they've got a right to do as they please so they're quiet and respectable. But I took it on myself to kind of let the girl understand that her beau would think more of her if she just dropped him at the front door. A man 'll always pick a spunky, independent girl that sort of keeps him at a stand-off every time, anyway. She looked sort of miffed when I said this, and then I said that she could set up with him any time she wanted in my sitting-room in the basement, what is real comfortable furnished and pretty-looking--and which you too is perfectly welcome to bring any gentleman company to any time you've a mind. "Well, she looked at me sort of scornful, and answered me real peart-like, and said she guessed she could take care of herself. She tossed her head in a pretty taking way she had, and walked down-stairs, as though I had turribly insulted her; so what could I do?" Again she paused, panting for breath in short, wheezy gasps. "And what became of her at last?" I asked. "What became of her!" she echoed. "What becomes of all of 'em?" and she jerked her head significantly in the vague direction of the street. "She left soon after that, though I never said another word to her, but just kept on bidding her the time of day, as if nothing had ever passed between us. I felt turrible about her leaving, too; and I tried to persuade her she was making a mistake by leaving a house that she knowed was decent and where she could manage to live within her means. Oh, you don't know how I felt for days and weeks after she went. I knew how good she was when she come to this house, and I kept thinking how my Annie might have been just as foolish and heedless if she'd been throwed amongst strangers and had the same temptations. I don't know where she went exactly. She didn't give me much satisfaction about it, and I never seen her again, till one morning this winter, when I went out to bring in my ash-cans, I run right into her. It was real early in the morning, just getting daylight. I always get up at five o'clock winter and summer, because I'm used to it; and then I've got to, so's to get the work done, for I can't work fast with my rheumatics. It was hardly light enough yet for me to recognize her right away, and she did look so forlorn and pitiful-like walking there so early in the morning in the snow. It had snowed in the night, and it was the first we'd had this season. She didn't see me at first. She was walking slow,--real slow and lingering-like,--like them poor things do. I was standing at the top of the stairs in the areaway, and her face was turned across the street, as if she was expecting somebody. I tried to speak to her, but sometimes something catches me when I'm strong moved and I can't sound a word for several moments. And that's the way I was struck that morning. I started to run after her; then I thought better of it, and sort of guessed she'd turn around at the corner and come back. So I went to the cans and made believe to be turrible interested in them, and when I looked up, sure enough she had started back again, and I had caught her eye. "Thinking of Annie, I bade her the time of day real friendly-like, just as though everything was all right, and I asked her to come in and have a bite of breakfast. I'd left the coffee on the stove, and had fried myself a nice mess of onions. She looked sort of half shamed and half grateful, and had started to come with me, when all of a sudden she stopped and said she guessed she couldn't that morning. Then she strolled off again. I picked up my ash-cans and started down-stairs, but I wasn't half-way down when I saw her hurrying along the other side of the street with a man I'd seen come round the corner by Skelly's saloon while we was talking together. And I never saw her again." An expression of pathos, infinitely sweet and tender, had crept into the woman's thin, worn face--an expression in strange, almost ludicrous, contrast to the high, cracked voice in which the talc had been delivered. I gazed at the bent old creature with something like reverence for the nobility which I now could read so plainly in every line of her face--the nobility which can attach itself only to decency of life and thought and action. In my brief interview with her in the twilight of the evening before I had heard only the ridiculous jargon of a woman without a palate, and I had seen only an old crone with a soot-smeared face. But now the maimed voice echoed in my ears like the sound of the little old melodeon with the broken strings--which had been my mother's. "I must be going now," she said, rising with an effort. "You'll come down and see me sometimes, won't you, honey? I like young people. They sort of cheer me up when I feel down. Come down this afternoon, if you haven't got any place to go. Come down and I'll lend you some books." I thanked her, and promised I would. IV WHEREIN FATE BRINGS ME GOOD FORTUNE IN ONE HAND AND DISASTER IN THE OTHER Monday morning--a cheerless, bleak Monday morning, with the rain falling upon the slush-filled streets. I ate a hurried breakfast of bread and butter and black coffee, locked my door, and started out with renewed vigor to look for a job. I had learned by this time to use a little discrimination in answering advertisements; and from now on I paid attention to such prospective employers only as stated the nature of their business and gave a street number. I had also learned another important thing, and that was that I could not afford to be too particular about the nature of my job, as I watched my small capital diminish day by day, despite my frugality. I would have been glad, now, to get work at anything that promised the chance of a meager livelihood. Anything to get a foothold. The chief obstacle seemed to be my inexperience. I could obtain plenty of work which in time promised to pay me five dollars a week, but in the two or three months' time necessary to acquire dexterity I should have starved to death, for I had not money to carry me over this critical period. Work was plenty enough. It nearly always is so. The question was not how to get a job, but how to live by such jobs as I could get. The low wages offered to green hands--two and a half to three dollars a week--might do for the girl who lived at home; but I had to pay room-rent and car-fare and to buy food. So, as long as my small capital could be made to hold out I continued my search for something that would pay at least five dollars a week to begin with. On Monday night I was no nearer to being a bread-winner than when I had started out for the first time from Miss Jamison's boarding-house. I climbed the bare stairs at nightfall, and as I fumbled at the keyhole I could hear the click of a typewriter in the room next to mine. My room was quite dark, but there was a patch of dim white on the floor that sent a thrill of gladness all over me. I lighted the lamp and tore open the precious envelop before taking off my gloves or hat. It was a note from Minnie Plympton, saying she had got employment as demonstrator for a cereal-food company, and was making a tour of the small New England cities. The letter was dated at Bangor, Maine, and she asked me to write her at Portland, where she expected to be all week; and which I did, at considerable length, after I had cooked and eaten my supper. Bread and butter and black coffee for breakfast, and potato-soup and bread and butter for supper, with plain bread and butter done up in a piece of paper and carried with me for luncheon--this was my daily menu for the weeks that followed, varied on two occasions by the purchase of a half-pint of New Orleans molasses. The advertisements for cigar and cigarette workers were very numerous; and as that sounded like humble work, I thought I might stand a better chance in that line than any other. Accordingly I applied to the foreman of a factory in Avenue A, who wanted "bunch-makers." He heard my petition in a drafty hallway through which a small army of boys and girls were pouring, each one stopping to insert a key in a time-register. They were just coming to work, for I was very early. The foreman, a young German, cut me off unceremoniously by asking to see my working-card; and when I looked at him blankly, for I hadn't a ghost of an idea what he meant, he strode away in disgust, leaving me to conjecture as to his meaning. Nothing daunted, however, for I meant to be very energetic and brave that morning, I went to the next factory. Here they wanted "labelers," and as this sounded easy, I approached the foreman with something like confidence. He asked what experience I'd had, and I gave him a truthful reply. "Sorry, but we're not running any kindergarten here," he replied curtly and turned away. I was still determined that I'd join the rank of cigar-makers. Somehow, they impressed me as a very prosperous lot of people, and there was something pungent and wholesome in the smell of the big, bright workrooms. The third foreman I besought was an elderly German with a paternal manner. He listened to me kindly, said I looked quick, and offered to put me on as an apprentice, explaining with much pomposity that cigar-making was a very difficult trade, at which I must serve a three years' apprenticeship before I could become a member of the union and entitled to draw union wages. I left him feeling very humble, and likewise disillusioned of my cigar-making ambitions. "Girls wanted to learn binding and folding--paid while learning." The address took me to Brooklyn Bridge and down a strange, dark thoroughfare running toward the East River. Above was the great bridge, unreal, fairy-like in the morning mist. I was looking for Rose Street, which proved to be a zigzag alley that wriggled through one of the great bridge arches into a world of book-binderies. Rose Street was choked with moving carts loaded with yellow-back literature done up in bales. The superintendent proved to be a civil young man. He did not need me before Monday, but he told me to come back that day at half-past seven and to bring a bone paper-cutter with me. He paid only three dollars a week, and I accepted, but with the hope that as this was only Thursday, and not yet nine o'clock, I might find something better in the meantime. A Brooklyn merchant was in need of two "salesladies--experience not necessary." A trolley-car swirled me across the river, now glistering in the spring sunshine. We were hurtled down interminable vistas of small shops, always under the grim iron trestle of the elevated railroad. At the end of an hour I entered the "Majestic," a small store stocked with trash. After much dickering, Mr. Lindbloom and his wife decided I'd do at three and a half dollars per week, working from seven in the morning till nine in the evening, Saturdays till midnight. I departed with the vow that if I must work and starve, I should not do both in Lindbloom's. Five cents got me back to Cortlandt Street in Manhattan, where I called upon a candy-manufacturer who wanted bonbon-makers. The French foreman, in snowy cap and apron, received me in a great room dazzling with white-tile walls and floor, and filled with bright-eyed girls, also in caps and aprons, and working before marble tables. The Frenchman was polite and apologetic, but they never hired any but experienced workers. It was half-past three, and I had two more names on my list. Rose-making sounded attractive, and I walked all the way up to Bond Street. Shabby and prosaic, this street, strangely enough, has been selected as the forcing-ground or nursery of artificial flowers. Its signs on both sides, even unto the top floor, proclaim some specialization of fashionable millinery--flowers, feathers, aigrets, wire hat-frames. On the third floor, rear, of a once fashionable mansion, now fallen into decay, I stumbled into a room, radiantly scarlet with roses. The jangling bell attached to the door aroused no curiosity whatever in the white-faced girls bending over these gay garlands. It was a signal, though, for a thick-set beetle-browed young fellow to bounce in from the next room and curtly demand my business. "We only pay a dollar and a half to learners," he said, smiling unpleasantly over large yellow teeth. I fled in dismay. Down Broadway, along Bleecker, and up squalid Thompson Street I hurried to a paper-box factory. The office of E. Springer & Company was in pleasant contrast to the flower sweat-shop, for all its bright colors. So, too, was there a grateful comparison between the Jew of the ugly smile and the portly young man who sat behind a glass partition and acknowledged my entrance by glancing up from his ledger. The remark he made was evidently witty and not intended for my ears, for it made the assistant bookkeeper--a woman--and the two women typewriters laugh and crane their necks in my direction. The bookkeeper climbed down from his high stool and opened the glass door. He was as kind now as he was formerly merry. Possibly he had seen my chin quiver the least bit, and knew I was almost ready to cry. He did not ask many questions; but presently he sent one typewriter flying up-stairs for the superintendent, and the other was sent to ask of the forewoman if all the jobs were filled. The superintendent proved to be a woman, shrewd, keen-faced, and bespectacled. The forewoman sent down word that No. 105 had not rung up that morning, and that I could have her key. The pay was three dollars a week to learners, but Miss Price, the superintendent, thought I could learn in a week's time, which opinion the portly gentleman heartily indorsed, and so I allowed him to enroll my name. He gave me a key, showed me how to "ring up" in the register at the foot of the stairs, and told me that henceforth I should be known as "105." I thanked him in as steady a voice as I could command, and reached the street door on the stroke of six, just in time to hear my shopmates of the morrow laughing and scrambling down-stairs in their mad effort to get away from that which I had been trying to obtain for so many weeks. The street I stepped into had been transformed. Behind my blurred vision, as I hurried along, I saw no squalor, no wretchedness now. Through tears of thankfulness the houses, the streets, and the hurrying people were all glorified, all transfigured. Everything was right--the whole world and everybody in it. Thus I sped homeward on that eventful evening, eager to tell my good news to Mrs. Pringle, who, I knew, would be glad to hear it. As I drew near the block where I lived, I became half conscious of something strange and unusual in the atmosphere; I felt the strange sensation of being lost, of being in the wrong place. Men and women stood about in silent knots, and through the deep twilight I felt rather than heard the deep throbbing of fire-engines. Pressing through the little knots of men and women, I stood before the red mass of embers and watched the firemen pour their quenching streams upon the ashes of my lodging-house. Dazed, stupefied, I asked questions of the bystanders. But nobody knew anything definite. One man said he guessed a good many lives had been lost; the woman next to him said she'd heard the number was five. The houses on both sides were still standing, the windows smashed in, and the tenants fled. There seemed to be not even a neighbor who might know of the fate of my lodging-house acquaintance or of my good friend Mrs. Pringle. I spoke to a policeman. He listened gently, and then conducted me to a house in Fifteenth Street, where they had offered shelter for the night to any refugees who might desire it. The basement of this house had been turned into a dormitory, one section for the men and the other for the women, who were in greater number and came straggling in one by one. A man-servant in livery passed hot coffee and sandwiches, which we swallowed mechanically, regarding one another and our surroundings with stupid bewilderment. I had never met any of these people before, though they had all been my fellow-lodgers. The girl sitting on the cot next to mine passed her cup up for more coffee, and as she did so turned a quizzical gaze upon me. She was stupid and ugly. Her quizzical look deepened into curiosity, and by and by she asked: "Youse didn't live there too, did youse?" Our common misfortune inspired me to a cordial reply, and we fell into a discussion of the catastrophe. Her English was so sadly perverted and her voice so guttural that I could make out her meaning only with the greatest exercise of the imagination. But it was to the effect that the fire had started in a room on the top floor, whither poor old Mrs. Pringle had gone about three o'clock in the afternoon with a bucket of coal for the fire. Just what happened nobody knew. Every one on the top floor at the time had perished, including Mrs. Pringle. "Didn't youse get nothin' out, neither?" asked my companion. And then it dawned upon me for the first time that I had nothing in all the world now but the clothes on my back and the promise of work on the morrow. "Yes, I have lost everything," I answered. "Youse got anything in the bank?" she pursued. The question seemed to me ironical and not worthy of notice. "I have. I've got 'most five hundred dollars saved up," she went on. "Five hundred dollars!" The girl nodded. "Huh, that's what! I could live tony if I wanted, but I like to save my money. I makes good money, too,--twelve dollars a week,--and I don't spend it, neither." "What do you do?" I asked, regarding the large, rough hands with something like admiration for their earning abilities. "I'm a lady-buffer," she answered, with a touch of pride. "A lady-buffer! What's that?" I cried, looking at the slovenly, dirt-streaked wrapper and the shabby golf-cape that had slipped from her shoulders to the cot. She regarded me with pity for my ignorance, and then delivered herself of an axiom. "A lady-buffer is a lady what buffs." And, to render the definition still more explicit, she rolled up the sleeve of her wrapper, showed me mighty biceps, and then with her arm performed several rapid revolutions in midair. "What do you buff?" I next ventured. "Brass!" This laconic reply squelched me completely, and I subsided without further conversation. Despite my weariness, there was little sleep for me that night. Affairs had come to a crisis; my condition was about as bad as it could possibly be. Whatever was going to become of me? Why, in the name of all common sense, had I ever come to New York? Why was I not content to remain a country school-ma'am, in a place where a country school-ma'am was looked up to as something of a personage? That night, if I had had enough money to buy a ticket back to the town I had come from, my fate would have been settled definitely then and there. Not the least distressing part of my condition was the fact that there was really no help for me save what I should be able to give myself. To be sure, I had certain distant relatives and friends who had warned me against my flight to the city, and to whom I might have written begging for money sufficient to carry me back to my native place, and the money, with many "I-told-you-so's," would have been forthcoming. To return discredited was more than my pride could bear. I had to earn my livelihood anyway, and so, on this night of grim adversity, owing my very bed and supper to charity, I set my teeth, and closed my tired lids over the tears I could not hide, and swore I'd fight it out alone, so long as I had strength to stand and heart to hope; and then there was the prospect of a job at Springer's on the morrow, though the wage would hardly keep body and soul together. The next morning, while her servants were giving us our breakfast, a stately middle-aged woman came down to the basement and passed among us, making inquiries regarding our various conditions, and offering words of well-meant, if patronizing, advice and suggestion wherever she thought them needed, but which somehow did not seem to be relished as her more material kindness had been. When it came my turn to be interviewed I answered her many questions frankly and promptly, and, encouraged by the evident interest which she displayed in my case, I was prompted to ask her if she might know of any place where I could get work. She looked at me a moment out of fine, clear eyes. "You would not go into service, I suppose?" she asked slowly. I had never thought of such an alternative before, but I met it without a moment's hesitation. "No, I would not care to go into service," I replied, and as I did so the lady's face showed mingled disappointment and disgust. "That is too bad," she answered, "for in that case I'm afraid I can do nothing for you." And with that she went out of the room, leaving me, I must confess, not sorry for having thus bluntly declared against wearing the definite badge of servitude. V IN WHICH I AM "LEARNED" BY PHOEBE IN THE ART OF BOX-MAKING The "lady-buffer" and I were the last to leave the house. We went out together and parted company at Third Avenue, she going south to her work, and I continuing along the street westward. The catastrophe of the preceding day seemed to have entirely evaporated from her memory; she seemed also to have forgotten the incident of our meeting and conversation of the night before, for she made no comment, nor even gave me a parting greeting. I was inclined to reproach such heartlessness as I hurried along, when suddenly it was borne in upon my consciousness that it was I, not she, who was open to that charge. Here I was, speeding along to my work with hope in my heart, sometimes almost forgetting that the woman who had been so kind to me was probably lying in the morgue, awaiting burial in the Potter's Field, unless saved from that ignoble end by some friend. And yet I was powerless. I could not even spare time to go to the morgue or to make inquiries. I knew not a soul who could have helped me, and I had only one dollar and a half in all the world, no place to sleep that night, no change of garments, nothing except the promise of work that morning at Springer's. I stopped at the corner, strongly tempted by my innate sense of decency to the memory of the dead. But only for a moment: the law of life--self-preservation--again asserted itself, and for the time being I put the past behind me and hurried on toward Thompson Street. It lacked but a few minutes of eight o'clock when, at last, I turned into the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the sunshine of the mild March morning the façade of the tall buff building looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax--nay, rather to coerce me into entering her awful house. The instant impression was one of repulsion, and the impulse was to run away. But there was fascination, too, in the hag-like visage of those grim brick walls, checkered with innumerable dirty windows and trussed up, like a paralytic old crone, with rusty fire-escapes. It was the fascination of the mysterious and of the evil; and, repulsive and forbidding as was its general aspect, nothing could now have induced me to turn back. Instinct told me that I was about to enter into no commonplace experience. And so, unresisting, I was borne along in the swift current of humanity that was swept down the street, like the water in a mill-race, to turn the wheels of workshop and factory. Before Springer's a great arm of this human mill-stream eddied inward, to be lost in another moment in the vortex of the wide black doors, whence issued muffled sounds of the pandemonium within. At the last moment I hesitated, obsessed once more with the indefinable horror of it all. Again there was the strong impulse to run away--far, far away from Springer's and from Thompson Street, when suddenly the old monody began to ring in my ears, "WORK OR STARVE, WORK OR STARVE!" Another moment, and I too had passed within the wide black doors. The entrance passage was lighted by a sickly gas-jet, and in its flicker a horde of loud-mouthed girls were making frantic efforts to insert their keys in the time-register. I was jostled and tumbled over unceremoniously. I was pushed and punched unmercifully by the crowding elbows, until I found myself squeezed tight against the wall. From the scrambling and confusion it was evident everybody was late, and tones and language attested to racked nerves and querulous tempers. Suddenly there was a scuffle and the sharp scraping of feet on the floor. "Get out, yez dirty Irish!" rang out in the stifling air. "I wuz here fust!" snarled another voice. "Call me dirty Irish ag'in and I'll dirty Irish you." The black-haired girl had accepted the challenge, and the maligned daughter of Erin, cheeks aflame and eyes blazing, rushed at her detractor with clenched fist. "Go for her, Rosie! She's nothin' but a dirty black Ginney, nohow!" "Pitch into her, Celie! Punch her!" yelled a chorus from the stairs who came swooping down from above, attracted by the scrimmage, and just in time to see the combatants rush at each other in a hand-to-hand struggle, punctuated with loud oaths. The noise suddenly subsided at the screeching of a raucous nasal voice. "Well, young ladies! What does this mean?" demanded the superintendent, and Rosie and Celie both began to talk at once. "Never mind about the rest of it," snapped Miss Price, cutting the tale short. "I'll dock you both half a day's pay: and the next time it happens you'll both be fired on the spot." Then Miss Price turned to me, while the now silent wranglers meekly turned their keys in the register and marched up-stairs, whither their respective factions had since disappeared. "I do hope to goodness you ain't high-tempered like some is," she remarked, with an effort toward affability, as we stepped before the time-register, where I inserted my key for the first time. "All I got to say is, don't get into no fights with the girls. When they say things to you, don't talk back. It's them that just takes things as they come, and lets bygones be bygones, that get the good checks at the end of the week. Some of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and the hum of innumerable voices, I was to meet my prospective forewoman. "Miss Kinzer! Here's a lady wants to learn," shrilled the high nasal voice. "Miss Kinzer! Where's Miss Kinzer? Oh, here you are!" as a young woman emerged from behind a pile of pasteboard boxes. "I've a learner for you, Miss Kinzer. She's a green girl, but she looks likely, and I want you to give her a good chance. Better put her on table-work to begin with." And with that injunction the little old maid hopped away, leaving me to the scrutiny and cross-questioning of a rather pretty woman of twenty-eight or thirty. "Ever worked in a factory before?" she began, with lofty indifference, as if it didn't matter whether I had or had not. "No." "Where did you work?" "I never worked any place before." "Oh-h!" There was a world of meaning, as I afterward discovered, in Miss Kinzer's long-drawn-out "Oh-h!" In this instance she looked up quickly, with an obvious display of interest, as if she had just unearthed a remarkable specimen in one who had never worked at anything before. "You're not used to work, then?" she remarked insinuatingly, straightening up from the rude desk where she sat like the judge of a police-court. She was now all attention. "Well, not exactly that," I replied, nettled by her manner and, above all, by her way of putting things. "I have worked before, but never at factory-work." "Then why didn't you say so?" She now opened her book and inscribed my name therein. "Where do you live?" "Over in East Fourteenth Street," I replied mechanically, forgetting for the moment the catastrophe that had rendered me more homeless than ever. "Home?" "No, I room." Then, reading only too quickly an unpleasant interpretation in the uplifted eyebrows, a disagreeable curiosity mirrored in the brown eyes beneath, I added hastily, "I have no home. My folks are all dead." What impression this bit of information made I was unable to determine as I followed her slender, slightly bowed figure across the busy, roaring workroom. "Be careful you don't get hurt," she cried, as we threaded a narrow passage in and out among the stamping, throbbing machinery, where, by the light that filtered through the grimy windows, I got vague, confused glimpses of girl-faces shining like stars out of this dark, fearful chaos of revolving belts and wheels, and above the bedlam noises came girlish laughter and song. "Good morning, Carrie!" one quick-witted toiler sang out as she spied the new girl in tow of the forewoman, and suddenly the whole room had taken up the burden of the song. "Don't mind them," my conductor remarked. "They don't mean nothing by it--watch out there for your head!" Safe through the outlying ramparts of machinery, we entered the domain of the table-workers, and I was turned over to Phoebe, a tall girl in tortoise ear-rings and curl-papers. Phoebe was assigned to "learn" me in the trade of "finishing." Somewhat to my surprise, she assumed the task joyfully, and helped me off with my coat and hat. From the loud-mouthed tirades as to "Annie Kinzer's nerve," it became evident that the assignment of the job of "learner" is one to cause heartburning jealousies, and that Phoebe, either because of some special adaptability or through favoritism, got the lion's share of novices. "That's right, Phoebe; hog every new girl that comes along!" amiably bawled a bright-faced, tidy young woman who answered to the name of Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith worked briskly as she talked, and the burden of her conversation appeared to be the heaping of this sort of good-natured invective upon the head of her chum--or, as she termed it, her "lady-friend," Phoebe. The amiability with which Mrs. Smith dealt out her epithets was only equaled by the perfect good nature of her victim, who replied to each and all of them with a musically intoned, "Hot air!" "Hot A--i--r!" The clear tones of Phoebe's soprano set the echoes ringing all over the great workroom. In and out among the aisles and labyrinthine passages that wind through towering piles of boxes, from the thundering machinery far over on the other side of the "loft" to the dusky recess of the uttermost table, the musical cry reverberated. "Hot a--i--r!" Every few minutes, all through the long, weary day, Phoebe found occasion for sounding that magic call. "The rest of the ladies get up their backs something awful," Phoebe explained as she dragged a big green pasteboard box from beneath the work-table. "They say she gives me more 'n my share of learners because I'm easy to get on with, I guess, and don't play no tricks on them.... You have a right to put your things in here along with my lunch. Them girls is like to do 'most anything to a new girl's duds if you wuz to hang them in the coat-room. Them Ginneys 'll do 'most anything. Wuz you down-stairs when Celie Polatta got into the fight with Rosie?" "I just missed it," she sighed in reply to my affirmative. "I was born unlucky." "Hello, Phoebe! So you've hogged another!" a new voice called across the table, and I put a question. "Why do they all want to teach the new girl? I should think they'd be glad to be rid of the trouble." "You mean _learn_ her? Why, because the girl that learns the green hand gets all her work checked on to her own card while she's learning how. Never worked in a box-factory before?" I shook my head. "I guessed as much. Well, box-making's a good trade. Have you an apron?" As I had not, I was then ordered to "turn my skirt," in order that I might receive the inevitable coat of glue and paste on its inner rather than on its outer surface. I gently demurred against this very slovenly expedient. "All right; call it hot air if you want to. I s'pose you know it all," tossing her curl-papers with scorn. "You know better 'n me, of course. Most learners do think they knows it all. Now looky here, I've been here six years, and I've learned lots of green girls, and I never had one as didn't think she hadn't ought to turn her skirt. The ladies I'm used to working with likes to walk home looking decent and respectable, no difference what they're like other times." With the respectability of my ladyhood thus impeached, and lest I infringe upon the cast-iron code of box-factory etiquette, there was nothing to do but yield. I unhooked my skirt, dropped it to the floor, and stepped out of it in a trice, anxious to do anything to win back the good will of Phoebe. Instantly she brightened, and good humor once more flashed over her grimy features. "H-m! that's the stuff! There's one thing you hadn't ought to forget, and mind, I'm speaking as one lady-friend to another when I tell you these things--and that is, that you have a right to do as the other girls in the factory or you'll never get 'long with them. If you don't they'll get down on you, sure's pussy's a cat; and then they'll make it hot for you with complaining to the forelady. And then she'll get down on you after while too, and won't give you no good orders to work on; and--well, it's just this way: a girl mustn't be odd." Continuing her philosophy of success, Phoebe proceeded to initiate me into the first process of my job, which consisted in pasting slippery, sticky strips of muslin over the corners of the rough brown boxes that were piled high about us in frail, tottering towers reaching to the ceiling, which was trellised over with a network of electric wires and steam-pipes. Two hundred and fifty of these boxes remained to be finished on the particular order upon which Phoebe was working. Each must be given eight muslin strips, four on the box and four on its cover; two tapes, inserted with a hair-pin through awl-holes; two tissue "flies," to tuck over the bonnet soon to nestle underneath; four pieces of gay paper lace to please madame's eye when the lid is lifted; and three labels, one on the bottom, one on the top, and one bearing the name of a Fifth Avenue modiste on an escutcheon of gold and purple. The job, as it progressed, entailed ceaseless shoving and shifting and lifting. In order that we might not be walled in completely by our cumbersome materials, every few minutes we bore tottering piles across the floor to the "strippers." These latter, who were small girls, covered the sides with glazed paper on machines; and as fast as each box was thus covered it was tossed to the "turner-in," a still smaller girl, who turned in the overlapping edge of the strip, after which the box was ready to come back to the table for the next process at our hands. By ten o'clock, with Mrs. Smith's gay violet-boxes and our own bonnet-boxes, we had built a snug bower all round our particular table. Through its pasteboard walls the din and the songs came but faintly. My mates' tongues flew as fast as their fingers. The talk was chiefly devoted to clothes, Phoebe's social activities, and the evident prosperity of Mrs. Smith's husband's folks, among whom it appeared she had only recently appeared as "Jeff's" bride. Having exhausted the Smiths, she again gave Phoebe the floor by asking: "Are you going to-night?" "Well, I should say! Don't I look it?" To determine by Phoebe's appearance where she might be going were an impossibility to the uninitiated, for her dress was an odd combination of the extremes of wretchedness and luxury. A woefully torn and much-soiled shirt-waist; a gorgeous gold watch worn on her breast like a medal; a black taffeta skirt, which, under the glue-smeared apron, emitted an unmistakable frou-frou; three Nethersole bracelets on her wrist; and her feet incased in colossal shoes, broken and stringless. The latter she explained to Mrs. Smith. "I just swiped a pair of paw's and brought them along this morning, or I'd be dished for getting into them high heels to-night. My corns and bunions 'most killed me yesterday--they always do break out bad about Easter. My pleasure club," she explained, turning to me--"my pleasure club, 'The Moonlight Maids,' give a ball to-night." Which fact likewise explained the curl-papers as well as the slattern shirt-waist, donned to save the evening bodice worn to the factory that morning and now tucked away in a big box under the table. A whole side of our pretty violet-sprinkled bower caved in as a little "turner-in" lurched against it in passing with a top-heavy column of boxes. Through the opening daylight is visible once more, and from the region of the machines is heard a chorus of voices singing "The Fatal Wedding." "Hot a--i--r!" Phoebe intones derisively. "It's a wonder Angelina wouldn't get a new song. Them strippers sing that 'Fatal Wedding' week in and week out." We worked steadily, and as the hours dragged on I began to grow dead tired. The awful noise and confusion, the terrific heat, the foul smell of the glue, and the agony of breaking ankles and blistered hands seemed almost unendurable. At last the hour-hand stood at twelve, and suddenly, out of the turmoil, a strange quiet fell over the great mill. The vibrations that had shaken the whole structure to its very foundations now gradually subsided; the wheels stayed their endless revolutions; the flying belts now hung from the ceiling like long black ribbons. Out of the stillness girl-voices and girl-laughter echoed weirdly, like a horn blown in a dream, while sweeter and clearer than ever rang Phoebe's soprano "Hot air!" The girls lunched in groups of ten and twelve. Each clique had its leader. By an unwritten law I was included among those who rallied around Phoebe, most of whom she had "learned" at some time or other, as she was now "learning" me. The luncheons were divested of their newspaper wrappings and spread over the ends of tables, on discarded box-lids held across the knees--in fact, any place convenience or sociability dictated. Then followed a friendly exchange of pickles and cake. A dark, swarthy girl, whom they called "Goldy" Courtleigh, was generous in the distribution of the lukewarm contents of a broken-nosed tea-pot, which was constantly replenished by application to the hot-water faucet. Although we had a half-hour, luncheon was swallowed quickly by most of the girls, eager to steal away to a sequestered bower among the boxes, there to lose themselves in paper-backed romance. A few of less literary taste were content to nibble ice-cream sandwiches and gossip. Dress, the inevitable masquerade ball, murders and fires, were favorite topics of discussion,--the last always with lowered voices and deep-drawn breathing. For fire is the box-maker's terror, the grim specter that always haunts her, and with good reason does she always start at the word. "I'm always afraid," declared Phoebe, "and I always run to the window and get ready to jump the minute I hear the alarm." "I don't," mused Angelina; "I haven't sense enough to jump: I faint dead away. There'd be no chance for me if a fire ever broke out here." Once or twice there was mention of beaux and "steady fellows," but the flesh-and-blood man of every-day life did not receive as much attention in this lunch chat as did the heroes of the story-books. While it was evident, of course, from scattered comments that box-makers are constantly marrying, it was likewise apparent that they have not sufficient imagination to invest their hard-working, sweat-grimed sweethearts with any halo of romance. Promptly at half-past twelve the awakening machinery called us back to the workaday world. Story-books were tucked away, and their entranced readers dragged themselves back to the machines and steaming paste-pots, to dream and to talk as they worked, hot of their own fellows of last night's masquerade, but of bankers and mill-owners who in fiction have wooed and won and honorably wedded just such poor toilers as they themselves. VI IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE "Don't you never read no story-books?" Mrs. Smith asked, stirring the paste-pot preparatory to the afternoon's work. She looked at me curiously out of her shrewd, snapping dark eyes as she awaited my answer. I was conscious that Mrs. Smith didn't like me for some reason or other, and I was anxious to propitiate her. I was pretty certain she thought me a boresome prig, and I determined I'd prove I wasn't. My confession of an omnivorous appetite for all sorts of story-books had the desired effect; and when I confessed further, that I liked best of all a real, tender, sentimental love-story, she asked amiably: "How do you like 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?" "I've never read that," I replied. "Is it good?" "It's fine," interposed Phoebe; "but I like 'Woven on Fate's Loom' better--don't you?" The last addressed to Mrs. Smith. "No, I can't say as that's my impinion," returned our vis-à-vis, with a judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story. But I think 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is more int'resting, besides being better wrote." "And that's just what I don't like about it," retorted Phoebe, her fingers traveling like lightning up and down the corners of the boxes. "You like this hot-air talk, and I don't; and the way them fellows and girls shoot hot-air at each other in that there 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is enough to beat the street-cars!" "What is it about?" I asked with respectful interest, addressing the question to Mrs. Smith, who gave promise of being a more serious reviewer than the flippant Phoebe. Mrs. Smith took a bite of gingerbread and began: "It's about a fair, beautiful young girl by the name of Rosebud Arden. Her pa was a judge, and they lived in a grand mansion in South Car'lina. Little Rosebud--that's what everybody called her--had a stepsister Maud. They was both beauties, only Maud didn't have a lovely disposition like Little Rosebud. A Harvard gradjate by the name of Percy Fielding got stuck on Little Rosebud for the wealth she was to get from her pa, and she was terrible stuck on him. She was stuck on him for fair, though not knowing he was a villain of the deepest dye. That's what the book called him. He talked her into marrying him clandestinely. Maud and her mother put up a job to get rid of Little Rosebud, so Maud could get all the money. So they told lies to her pa, who loved her something awful; and one night, when she came in after walking in the grand garden with her husband, who nobody knew she was married to, she found herself locked out. Then she went to the hotel where he was staying, and told him what had happened; but he turned her down flat when he heard it, for he didn't want nothing to do with her when she wasn't to get her pa's money; and then--" She stopped her cornering to inspect my work, which had not flagged an instant. Mrs. Smith took another bite of gingerbread, and continued with increasing animation: "And then Little Rosebud turned away into the night with a low cry, just as if a dagger had been punched into her heart and turned around slow. She was only sixteen years old, and she had been brought up in luxury and idolized by her father; and all of a sudden she found herself homeless, with nowheres to sleep find no money to get a room at the hotel, and scorned by the man that had sworn to protect her. Her pa had cursed her, too, something awful, so that he burst a blood-vessel a little while afterwards and died before morning. Only Little Rosebud never found this out, for she took the midnight express and came up here to New York, where her aunt lived, only she didn't know the street-number." "Where did she get the money to come to New York with?" interrupted the practical Phoebe. "That's something I don't understand. If she didn't have no money to hire a room at a hotel down in South Carolina for overnight, I'd like to know where she got money for a railroad ticket." "Well, that's just all you know about them swells," retorted Mrs. Smith. "I suppose a rich man's daughter like that can travel around all over the country on a pass. And saying she didn't have a pass, it's only a story and not true anyway. "She met a fellow on the train that night who was a villain for fair!" she went on. "His name was Mr. Paul Howard, and he was a corker. Little Rosebud, who was just as innocent as they make 'em, fell right into his clutches. He was a terrible man; he wouldn't stop at nothing, but he was a very elegant-looking gentleman that you'd take anywheres for a banker or 'Piscopalian preacher. He tipped his hat to Little Rosebud, and then she up and asked if he knew where her aunt, Mrs. Waldron, lived. This was nuts for him, and he said yes, that Mrs. Waldron was a particular lady-friend of his. When they got to New York he offered to take Little Rosebud to her aunt's house. And as Little Rosebud hadn't no money, she said yes, and the villain called a cab and they started for Brooklyn, him laughing to himself all the time, thinking how easily she was going to tumble into the trap he was getting fixed for her." "Hot air!" murmured Phoebe. "But while they were rattling over the Brooklyn Bridge, another man was following them in another cab--a Wall-street broker with barrels of cash. He was Raymond Leslie, and a real good man. He'd seen Rosebud get into the cab with Paul Howard, who he knew for a villain for fair. They had a terrible rumpus, but Raymond Leslie rescued her and took her to her aunt's house. It turned out that he was the gentleman-friend of Little Rosebud's cousin Ida, the very place they were going to. But, riding along in the cab, he fell in love with Little Rosebud, and then he was in a terrible pickle because he was promised to Ida. Little Rosebud's relations lived real grand, and her aunt was real nice to her until she saw she had hooked on to Ida's gentleman-friend; then they put her to work in the kitchen and treated her terrible. Oh, I tell you she had a time of it, for fair. Her aunt was awful proud and wicked, and after while, when she found that Raymond Leslie was going to marry Little Rosebud even if they did make a servant of her, she hired Paul Howard to drug her and carry her off to an insane-asylum that he ran up in Westchester County. It was in a lonesome place, and was full of girls that he had loved only to grow tired of and cast off, and this was the easiest way to get rid of them and keep them from spoiling his sport. Once a girl was in love with Paul Howard, she loved him till death. He just fascinated women like a snake does a bird, and he was hot stuff as long as he lasted, but the minute he got tired of you he was a demon of cruelty. "He did everything he could, when he got Little Rosebud here, to get her under his power. He tried his dirty best to poison her food, but Little Rosebud was foxy and wouldn't touch a bite of anything, but just sat in her cell and watched the broiled chicken and fried oysters, and all the other good things they sent to tempt her, turn to a dark-purplish hue. One night she escaped disguised in the turnkey's daughter's dress. Her name was Dora Gray, and Paul Howard had blasted her life too, but she worshiped him something awful, all the same-ee. Dora Gray gave Little Rosebud a lovely dark-red rose that was soaked with deadly poison, so that if you touched it to the lips of a person, the person would drop dead. She told Little Rosebud to protect herself with it if they chased her. But she didn't get a chance to see whether it would work or not, for when she heard them coming back of her after while with the bloodhounds barking, she dropped with terror down flat on her stummick. She had suffered so much she couldn't stand anything more. The doctors said she was dead when they picked her up, and they buried her and stuck a little white slab on her grave, with 'Rosebud, aged sixteen' on it." "Hot air!" from the irrepressible Phoebe. I felt that courtesy required I should agree upon that point, and I did so, conservatively, venturing to ask the name of the author. Mrs. Smith mentioned the name of a well-known writer of trashy fiction and added, "Didn't you never read none of her books?" My negative surprised her. Then Phoebe asked: "Did you ever read 'Daphne Vernon; or, A Coronet of Shame'?" "No, I haven't read them, either," I replied. "Oh, mama! Carry me out and let me die!" groaned Mrs. Smith, throwing down her paste-brush and falling forward in mock agony upon the smeared table. "Water! Water!" gasped Phoebe, clutching wildly at her throat; "I'm going to faint!" "What's the matter? What did I say that wasn't right?" I cried, the nature of their antics showing only too plainly that I had "put my foot in it" in some unaccountable manner. But they paid no attention. Mortified and utterly at sea, I watched their convulsed shoulders and heard their smothered giggles. Then in a few minutes they straightened up and resumed work with the utmost gravity of countenance and without a word of explanation. "What was it you was asking?" Phoebe inquired presently, with the most innocent air possible. "I said I hadn't read the books you mentioned," I replied, trying to hide the chagrin and mortification I felt at being so ignominiously laughed at. "Eyether of them?" chirped Mrs. Smith, with a vicious wink. "Eyether of them?" warbled Phoebe in her mocking-bird soprano. It was my turn to drop the paste-brush now. Eye-ther! It must have slipped from my tongue unconsciously. I could not remember having ever pronounced the word like that before. I didn't feel equal, then and there, to offering them any explanation or apologies for the offense. So I simply answered: "No; are they very good? are they as good as 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?" "No, it ain't," said Mrs. Smith, decisively and a little contemptuously; "and it ain't two books, eye-ther; it's all in one--'Daphne Vernon; or, A Coronet of Shame.'" "Well, now I think it is," put in Phoebe. "Them stories with two-handled names is nearly always good. I'll buy a book with a two-handled name every time before I'll buy one that ain't. I was reading a good one last night that I borrowed from Gladys Carringford. It had three handles to its name, and they was all corkers." "Why don't you spit 'em out?" suggested Mrs. Smith. "Tell us what it was." "Well, it was 'Doris; or, The Pride of Pemberton Mills; or, Lost in a Fearful Fate's Abyss.' What d' ye think of that?" "It sounds very int'resting. Who wrote it?" "Charles Garvice," replied Phoebe. "Didn't you ever read none of his, e--y--e--ther?" "No, I must say I never did," I answered, ignoring their mischievous raillery with as much grace as I could summon, but taking care to choose my words so as to avoid further pitfalls. "And did you never read none of Charlotte M. Braeme's?" drawled Mrs. Smith, with remorseless cruelty--"none of Charlotte M. Braeme's, eye-ther?" "No." "Nor none by Effie Adelaide Rowlands, e--y--e-ther?" still persisted Mrs. Smith. "No; none by her." "E--y--e--ther!" Both my tormentors now raised their singing-voices into a high, clear, full-blown note of derisive music, held it for a brief moment at a dizzy altitude, and then in soft, long-drawn-out cadences returned to earth and speaking-voices again. "What kind of story-books do you read, then?" they demanded. To which I replied with the names of a dozen or more of the simple, every-day classics that the school-boy and-girl are supposed to have read. They had never heard of "David Copperfield" or of Dickens. Nor had they ever heard of "Gulliver's Travels," nor of "The Vicar of Wakefield." They had heard the name "Robinson Crusoe," but they did not know it was the name of an entrancing romance. "Little Women," "John Halifax, Gentleman," "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Les Misérables," were also unknown, unheard-of literary treasures. They were equally ignorant of the existence of the conventional Sunday-school romance. They stared at me in amazement when I rattled off a heterogeneous assortment from the fecund pens of Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, "Pansy," Amanda M. Douglas, and similar good-goody writers for good-goody girls; their only remarks being that their titles didn't sound interesting. I spoke enthusiastically of "Little Women," telling them how I had read it four times, and that I meant to read it again some day. Their curiosity was aroused over the unheard-of thing of anybody ever wanting to read any book more than once, and they pressed me to reciprocate by repeating the story for them, which I did with great accuracy of statement, and with genuine pleasure to myself at being given an opportunity to introduce anybody to Meg and Jo and all the rest of that delightful March family. When I had finished, Phoebe stopped her cornering and Mrs. Smith looked up from her label-pasting. "Why, that's no story at all," the latter declared. "Why, no," echoed Phoebe; "that's no story--that's just everyday happenings. I don't see what's the use putting things like that in books. I'll bet any money that lady what wrote it knew all them boys and girls. They just sound like real, live people; and when you was telling about them I could just see them as plain as plain could be--couldn't you, Gwendolyn?" "Yep," yawned our vis-à-vis, undisguisedly bored. "But I suppose farmer folks likes them kind of stories," Phoebe generously suggested. "They ain't used to the same styles of anything that us city folks are." While we had been trying to forget our tired limbs in a discussion of literary tastes and standards, our workmates had been relieving the treadmill tedium of the long afternoon by various expedients. The quartet at the table immediately in front of us had been making inane doggerel rhymes upon the names of their workmates, telling riddles, and exchanging nasty stories with great gusto and frequent fits of wild laughter. At another table the forthcoming ball of the "Moonlight Maids" was under hot discussion, and at a very long table in front of the elevator they were talking in subdued voices about dreams and omens, making frequent reference to a greasy volume styled "The Lucky Dream Book." Far over, under the windows, the stripper girls were tuning up their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir of the wheels, the melodious music and maudlin stanzas of "The Fatal Wedding." Phoebe lent her flute-like soprano to the next song, the rather pretty melody of which was not sufficient to redeem the banality of the words: "The scene is a banquet where beauty and wealth Have gathered in splendid array; But silent and sad is a fair woman there, Whose young heart is pining away. "A card is brought to her--she reads there a name Of one that she loved long ago; Then sadly she whispers, 'Just say I'm not here, For my story he never must know.' "That night in the banquet at Misery Hall She reigned like a queen on a throne; But often the tears filled her beautiful eyes As she dreamed of the love she had known. "Her thoughts flowed along through the laughter and song To the days she could never recall, And she longed to find rest on her dear mother's breast At the banquet in Misery Hall. "The time passes quickly, and few in the throng Have noticed the one vacant chair-- Till out of the beautiful garden beyond A pistol-shot rings on the air. "Now see, in the moonlight a handsome youth lays-- Too quickly his life doth depart; While kneeling beside him, the woman he'd loved Finds her picture is close to his heart." "What is the name of that song?" I asked when the last cadence of Phoebe's voice, which was sustained long after every other in the room was hushed, had died away. "That! Why, it's 'The Banquet in Misery Hall,'" answered Mrs. Smith, somewhat impatient of my unfolding ignorance. But I speedily forgot the rebuke in a lively interest in the songs that followed one another without interlude. Phoebe was counting her pile of boxes and ranging them into piles of twelve high; so she couldn't sing, and I, consequently, could not catch all the words of each song. The theme in every case was a more or less ungrammatical, crude, and utterly banal rendition of the claptrap morality exploited in the cheap story-books. Reduced to the last analysis, they had to do with but one subject--the frailty of woman. On the one side was presented Virtue tempted, betrayed, repentant; on the other side, Virtue fighting at bay, persecuted, scourged, but emerging in the end unspotted and victorious, with all good things added unto it. It was to me an entirely new way of looking at life; and though I couldn't in the least explain it to myself, it seemed, to my unsophisticated way of looking at such matters, that the propensity to break the seventh commandment was much exaggerated, and that songs about other subjects would have been much more interesting and not nearly so trying to the feelings. For the sweet voices of the singers could not but make the tears come to my eyes, in spite of the fact that the burden of the song seemed so unworthy. "You all sing so beautifully!" I cried, in honest admiration, at the close of one particularly melodious and extremely silly ditty. "Where did you learn?" Phoebe was pleased at the compliment implied by the tears in my eyes, and even Mrs. Smith forgot to throw out her taunting "eye-ther" as she stood still and regarded my very frank and unconcealed emotion. "I guess we sort of learn from the Ginney girls," explained Phoebe. "Them Ginneys is all nice singers, and everybody in the shop kind of gets into the way of singing good, too, from being with them. You ought to hear them sing Dago songs, oughtn't she, Gwendolyn?" "Yep," answered Gwendolyn; "I could just die hearing Angela and Celie Polatta singing that--what-d'ye-call-it, that always makes a body bu'st out crying?" "You mean 'Punchinello.' Yep, that's a corker; but, Lord! the one what makes me have all kinds of funny cold feelings run up my back is that 'Ave Maria.' Therese Nicora taught them--what she says she learned in the old country. I wouldn't want anything to eat if I could hear songs like that all the time." The clock-hands over Annie Kinzer's desk had now crept close to the hour of six, and Angela had only begun the first stanza of-- "Papa, tell me where is mama," cried a little girl one day; "I'm so lonesome here without her, tell me why she went away. You don't know how much I'm longing for her loving good-night kiss!" Papa placed his arms around her as he softly whispered this: "Down in the City of Sighs and Tears, under the white light's glare, Down in the City of Wasted Years, you'll find your mama there, Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears." The machinery gave a ponderous throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain: "Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears-- In the City of Sighs and Tears." VII IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A STORY-BOOK NAME AND MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS HENRIETTA MANNERS Before entering upon my second day's work at the box-factory, and before detailing any of the strange things which that day brought forth, I feel it incumbent upon me to give some word of explanation as to my whereabouts during the intervening night. It will be remembered that when I left the factory at the end of the first day, I had neither a lodging nor a trunk. I will not dwell upon the state of my feelings when I walked out of Thompson Street in the consciousness that if I had been friendless and homeless before, I was infinitely more so now. I will say nothing of the ache in my heart when my thoughts traveled toward the pile of ruins in Fourteenth Street, with the realization of my helplessness, my sheer inability even to attempt to do a one last humble little act of love and gratitude for the dead woman who had been truly my friend. Briefly stated, the facts are these: I had, all told, one dollar, and I walked from Thompson Street straight to the Jefferson Market police-station, which was not a great distance away. I stated my case to the matron, a kindly Irishwoman. I was afraid to start out so late in the evening to look for a lodging for the night. I would have thought nothing of such a thing a few weeks previous, but the knowledge of life which I had gained in my brief residence in Fourteenth Street and from the advice of Mrs. Pringle had showed me the danger that lurked in such a course. The police matron said my fears were well founded, and she gave me the address of a working-girls' home over on the East Side, which she said was not the pleasantest place in the world for a well-brought-up girl of refinement and intelligence, such as she took me to be, but was cheap, and in which I would be sure of the protection which any young, inexperienced woman without money needs so badly in this wicked city. She wrote down the address for me, and I had started to the door of her little office when her motherly eye noticed how fagged out and lame I was--and indeed I could scarcely stand--and with a wave of her plump arm she brought me back to her desk. "Why don't you stay here with me to-night?" she asked. "You needn't mind; and if I was you I would do it and save my pennies and my tired legs. You can have a bite of supper with me, and then bundle right off to bed. You look clean tuckered out." So to my fast-growing list of startling experiences I added a night in the station-house; but a very quiet, uneventful night it was, because the matron tucked me away in her own little room. That is, it was quiet and uneventful so far as my surroundings were concerned, though I slept little on account of my aching bones. All night I tossed, pain-racked and discouraged; for, after all the long, hard day's work of the day before, Phoebe's card had only checked one dollar and five cents, which represented two persons' work. Such being the case, how could I expect to grow sufficiently skilful and expeditious to earn enough to keep body and soul together in the brief apprenticeship I had looked forward to? Unable to sleep, I was up an hour earlier than usual, and after I had breakfasted--again by the courtesy of the matron--I was off to work long before the working-day began. I had thought to be the first arrival, but I was not. A girl was already bending over her paste-pot, and the revelers of the "Ladies' Moonlight Pleasure Club" came straggling in by twos and threes. Some of the weary dancers had dropped to sleep, still wearing their ball-gowns and slippers and bangles and picture-hats, their faces showing ghastly white and drawn in the mote-ridden sunbeams that fell through the dirty windows. Others were busy doffing Cinderella garments, which rites were performed with astounding frankness in the open spaces of the big loft. "Oh, Henrietta, you had ought to been there," Georgiana gushed, dropping her lace-trimmed petticoats about her feet and struggling to unhook her corsets. "It was grand, but I'm tired to death; and oh, dear! I've another blow-out to-night, and the 'Clover Leaf' to-morrow night!" With a weary yawn, the society queen departed with her finery. "You didn't go to the ball?" I suggested to the girl addressed as Henrietta, and whom I now recalled as one who had worked frantically all the day before. "Me? No. I don't believe in dancing," she replied, without looking up. "Our church's down on it. I came early to get ahead with my order. You can do more work when there's not so many round." Such strict conformity to her religious scruples, combined with such pathetic industry, seemed to augur well for the superior worth of this tall, blonde, blue-eyed girl. I was anxious to make a friend of her, and accordingly proffered my services until Phoebe should come to claim me. She accepted gladly, and for the first time looked up and rewarded me with a smile. I caught a glimpse of an unprepossessing countenance--despite rather good features and fine hair--the most striking characteristics of which were a missing front tooth and lips that hung loose and colorless. As we worked, the conversation became cordial. She inquired my name, and I repeated the plain, homely Scotch-Irish cognomen that had been handed down to me by my forefathers. "Why don't you get a pretty name?" she asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. "All the girls do it when they come to the factory to work. It don't cost no more to have a high-sounding name." Much interested, I protested, half in fun, that I didn't know any name to take, and begged her to suggest one. She was silent for a moment. "Well, last night," she went on--"last night I was reading a story about two girls that was both mashed on the same feller. He was rich and they was poor and worked, and one of them was called 'Rose Fortune.'" "That's a very pretty name," I remarked. "Isn't it, though? Rose Fortune--ever so much prettier than your own. Say, why don't you take it, and I'll begin calling you by it right away." "And what's your name?" I ventured. "Mine? Oh, mine's Henrietta Manners; only," she added hastily--"only that's my real name. I was born with it. Now most of the girls got theirs out of story-books. Georgiana Trevelyan and Goldy Courtleigh and Gladys Carringford and Angelina Lancaster and Phoebe Arlington--them girls all got theirs out of stories. But mine's my own. You see," and she drew near that no other ear might hear the secret of her proud birth--"you see, Manners was my mother's name, and she ran away and married my papa against her rich father's wishes. He was a banker. I mean mama's papa was a banker, but my papa was only a poor young gentleman. So grandfather cut her off without a cent in his will, but left everything to me if I would take the name of Manners." The heroine of this strange romance stopped for breath, and if I had cherished any doubts of the truth of her story in the beginning, at least I was sure now that she believed it all herself; one glance into her steady blue eyes, in which a telltale moisture was already gathering, was proof of that. "No, indeed," continued Miss Manners: "I haven't always been a working-girl. I used to go to boarding-school. I thought I'd be a governess or something, and once I tried to learn bookkeeping, but my eyes give out, and the figures mixed up my brain so, and then I got sick and had to come to this box-factory. But I'm the first Manners that ever worked." I was now thoroughly ashamed of my first unjust suspicions that Henrietta might not be strictly truthful, and I inquired with sincere interest as to the fate of her ill-starred family. "All dead and sleeping in our family vault," she replied wistfully. "But don't let us talk anything more about it. I get so worked up and mad when I talk about the Mannerses and the way they treated me and my poor parents!" The threatened spell with Henrietta's nerves was averted by a sudden turning on of the power, and the day's work began. Phoebe did not appear to claim me, and I worked away as fast as I could to help swell Henrietta's dividends. "I guess you can stay with her the rest of the day," Annie Kinzer said, stopping at the table. "The 'Moonlight Maids' must have been too much for Phoebe. Guess she won't show up to-day." Henrietta was naturally delighted with the arrangement, which would add a few pennies to her earnings. "I only made sixty cents yesterday, and I worked like a dog," she remarked. "It was a bad day for everybody. We ought to make more than a dollar to-day. Phoebe says you're a hustler." Our job was that of finishing five hundred ruching-boxes. Henrietta urged me frequently to hurry, as we were away behind with the order. I soon discovered that for all her Manners blood and alleged gentle breeding, she was a harder taskmaster than the good-natured but plebeian Phoebe. Her obvious greed for every moment of my time, for every possible effort of my strength and energy, I gladly excused, however, when she revealed the fact that all her surplus earnings went toward the support of a certain mission Sunday-school in which she was a teacher. The conversation drifted from church matters to my own personal affairs. "Isn't it awful lonesome living alone in a room?" "How did you know I lived in a room?" I inquired in surprise, with the uncomfortable feeling that I had been the subject of ill-natured gossip. "Oh, Annie Kinzer told me. Say, I wouldn't tell her anything about my affairs. She's an awful clack." We were silent for a moment, while I wondered if Henrietta, if Annie Kinzer, if any girl in all the world could ever guess how lonely I had been every moment since I had come to this great city to work and to live. Then came the unexpected. "Wouldn't you like to come and room with me?" "With you?" I was half pleased, half doubtful. "Yes. I've got plenty of room." "Perhaps I couldn't afford it." "Yes, you can. I don't put on style. It won't cost us more than a dollar and a half a week for each--rent, eating, and everything else. I was thinking, as you're a learner, it will be a long time before you can make much, and you'd be glad to go halvers with somebody. Two can always live cheaper than one." A dollar and a half a week! That was indeed cheaper than I had been living. I had something less than two dollars in my purse, and pay-day, for me, was still a week off. And so I accepted the proposition, and by lunch-time the news was all over the factory that the new girl was to be Henrietta's room-mate. Annie Kinzer--everybody, in fact--approved, except, possibly, Emma. Emma was a homely, plainly dressed girl who had worked ten years here at Springer's. She bore the reputation of being a prudey and a kill-joy. Thus far she had never deigned to look at me, but now she took occasion to pass the time of day when we met at the water-faucet, and asked, in a doubtful tone, how long I had known Henrietta Manners. Meanwhile we "cornered" and "tissued" and "laced" and "labeled." Higher and higher grew our pasteboard castle, which we built as children pile up brightly colored blocks. At eleven Henrietta sent me below for trimmings. "How do you like your job?" asked the young fellow who filled my order. This was strictly conventional, and I responded in kind. While Charlie cut tapes and counted labels, he made the most of his opportunity to chat. Dismissing, with brief comment, the weather and the peculiar advantages and disadvantages of box-making as a trade, he diplomatically steered the talk along personal and social lines by suggesting, with a suppressed sigh, the probability that I should not always be a box-maker. I replied heartily that I hoped not, which precipitated another question: "Is the day set yet?" My amused negative to the query, and intimation that I had no "steady," were gratefully received, and warranted the suggestion that, as a matter of course, I liked to go to balls. "My pleasure club has a blow-out next Sunday night," he remarked significantly, as I gathered up my trimmings and departed. During my five minutes' absence the most exciting event of the day had occurred. Adrienne, one of the strippers, had just been carried away, unconscious, with two bleeding finger-stumps. In an unguarded moment the fingers had been cut off in her machine. Although their work does not allow them to stop a moment, her companions were all loud in sympathy for this misfortune, which is not rare. Little Jennie, the unfortunate girl's turner-in and fellow-worker for two years, wept bitterly as she wiped away the blood from the long, shining knife and prepared to take the place of her old superior, with its increased wage of five dollars and a half a week. The little girl had been making only three dollars and a quarter, and so, as Henrietta remarked, "It's a pretty bad accident that don't bring good to somebody." "Did they take her away in a carriage?" Henrietta asked of Goldy Courtleigh, who had stopped a moment to rest at our table. "Well, I should say! What's the use of getting your fingers whacked off if you can't get a carriage-ride out of it?" "Yes, and that's about the only way you'd ever squeeze a carriage-ride out of this company," commented Henrietta. "Now I've two lady-friends who work in mills where a sick headache and a fainting-spell touch the boss for a carriage-ride every time!" The order on which we worked was, like most of the others on the floor that day, for late-afternoon delivery. Our ruching-boxes had to be finished that day, even though it took every moment till six or even seven o'clock. Saturday being what is termed a "short-day," one had to work with might and main in order to leave at half-past four. This Henrietta was very anxious to do, partly because she had her Easter shopping to do, and partly because this was the night I was to be installed in my new quarters. Lunch-time found us still far behind. Therefore we did not stop to eat, but snatched bites of cake and sandwich as hunger dictated, and convenience permitted, all the while pasting and labeling and taping our boxes. Nor were we the only toilers obliged to forgo the hard-earned half-hour of rest. The awakening thunder of the machinery burst gratefully on our ears. It meant that the last half of the weary day had begun. How my blistered hands ached now! How my swollen feet and ankles throbbed with pain! Every girl limped now as she crossed the floor with her towering burden, and the procession back and forth between machines and tables began all over again. Lifting and carrying and shoving; cornering and taping and lacing--it seemed as though the afternoon would never wear to an end. The whole great mill was now charged with an unaccustomed excitement--an excitement which had in it something of solemnity. There was no sign of the usual mirth and hilarity which constitute the mill's sole attraction. There was no singing--not even Angelina's "Fatal Wedding." No exchange of stories, no sallies. Each girl bent to her task with a fierce energy that was almost maddening in its intensity. Blind and dizzy with fatigue, I peered down the long, dusty aisles of boxes toward the clock above Annie Kinzer's desk. It was only two. Every effort, human and mechanical, all over the great factory, was now strained almost to the breaking-point. How long can this agony last? How long can the roar and the rush and the throbbing pain continue until that nameless and unknown something snaps like an overstrained fiddle-string and brings relief? The remorseless clock informed us that there were two hours more of this torture before the signal to "clean up"--a signal, however, which is not given until the last girl has finished her allotted task. At half-past two it appeared hopeless even to dream of getting out before the regular six o'clock. The head foreman rushed through the aisles and bawled to us to "hustle for all we were worth," as customers were all demanding their goods. "My God! ain't we hustling?" angrily shouted Rosie Sweeny, a pretty girl at the next table, who supplied most of the profanity for our end of the room. "God Almighty! how I hate Easter and Christmas-time! Oh, my legs is 'most breaking," and with that the overwrought girl burst into a passionate tirade against everybody, the foreman included, and all the while she never ceased to work. There were not many girls in the factory like Rosie. Hers were the quickest fingers, the sharpest tongue, the prettiest face. She was scornful, impatient, and passionate--qualities not highly developed in her companions, and which in her case foreboded ill if one believed Annie Kinzer's prophecy: "That Rosie Sweeny 'll go to the bad yet, you mark my words." Three o'clock, a quarter after, half-past! The terrific tension had all but reached the breaking-point. Then there rose a trembling, palpitating sigh that seemed to come from a hundred throats, and blended in a universal expression of relief. In her clear, high treble Angelina began the everlasting "Fatal Wedding." That piece of false sentiment had now a new significance. It became a song of deliverance, and as the workers swelled the chorus, one by one, it meant that the end of the day's toil was in sight. By four o'clock the last box was done. Machines became mute, wheels were stilled, and the long black belts sagged into limp folds. Every girl seized a broom or a scrub-pail, and hilarity reigned supreme while we swept and scrubbed for the next half-hour, Angelina and her chorus singing all the while endless stanzas of the "Fatal Wedding." Henrietta sent me for a fresh pail of water, which I got from the faucet in the toilet-room; and as I filled my bucket I made a mental inventory of my fellow-toilers' wardrobes. Hanging from rows of nails on all sides were their street garments--a collection of covert-cloth jackets, light tan automobile coats, black silk box-coats trimmed in white lace, raglans, and every other style of fashionable wrap that might be cheaply imitated. Sandwiched among the street garments were the trained skirts and evening bodices of the "Moonlight Maids" of the night before, and which were to be again disported at some other pleasure-club festivity that Easter evening, now drawing near. Along the walls were ranged the high-heeled shoes and slippers, a bewildering display of gilt buckles and velvet bows; each pair waiting patiently for the swollen, tired feet of their owner to carry them away to the ball. The hats on the shelf above were in strict accord with the gowns and the cloaks and the foot-gear--a gorgeous assortment of Easter millinery, wherein the beflowered and beplumed picture-hat predominated. I hurried back with my bucket of water, hoping in my heart that the pleasure their wearers got out of this finery might be as great as the day's work which earned it was long and hard. And so indeed it must have been, if Henrietta was any authority on such questions. "I love nice clothes, even if I do have to work hard to get them," she remarked, as we turned into Bleecker Street a few minutes later, four one-dollar bills safely tucked away in her stocking. "But say, you ought to see my new hat. It's elegant," and drawing my arm through hers, my new room-mate hurried me through the Saturday-evening crowd of homeward-bound humanity. VIII WHEREIN I WALK THROUGH DARK AND DEVIOUS WAYS WITH HENRIETTA MANNERS It had been an ideal day for March--a day touched with pale-yellow sunshine in which one felt the thrill and the promise of the springtime, despite the chill east wind. Into the murky, evil-smelling squalor of Thompson Street this shy primrose sunshine had poured in the earlier part of the afternoon; but, being a north-and-south thoroughfare, it had all filtered out by half-past four, only to empty itself with increased warmth and glory into the east-and-west cross-streets, leaving Thompson dim and cold by comparison when Henrietta Manners and I emerged from Springer's. Henrietta wore a dusty picture-hat of black velvet with a straight ostrich feather and streamers of soiled white tulle, and a shabby golf-cape of blue and white check which was not quite long enough to conceal the big brass safety-pins with which her trained skirt was tucked up, and which she had forgotten to remove until we had gone some yards down the street. While we stopped long enough for her to perform this most important sartorial detail, my eye traversed the street before us, which with a gentle descent drops downward and stretches away toward the south--a long, dim, narrow vista, broken at regular intervals by brilliant shafts of gold streaming from the sunlit cross-streets, and giving to the otherwise squalid brick-walled cañon the appearance of a gay checkered ribbon. But if the March sunshine had deserted Thompson Street, the March winds still claimed it as their own. Up and down they had swept all day, until the morning mud on the cobblestones had been long dried up and turned to dust, which now swirled along, caught up in innumerable little whirlwinds that went eddying down the street. Grabbing up her demi-train in her bare hand, Henrietta and I also eddied down the street and were lost to view for a few moments in the whirlwind which struck us at the crowded corner of Bleecker Street. This whirlwind was the result partly of physical and partly of human forces. For it was Saturday night, and life was running at flood-tide all over the great city. Always tempestuous, always disturbed with the passion and pain and strife of its struggle to maintain the ground it had gained, never for one brief moment calm, even at its lowest ebb--now, on this last night of the long, weary week, all the currents and counter-currents of the worker's world were suddenly released. At the stroke of bell, at the clang of deep-mouthed gong, at the scream of siren whistle, the sluice-gates were lifted from the great human reservoirs of factory and shop and office, and their myriad toilers burst forth with the cumulative violence of six days' restraint. It was a shabby carnival of nations that jostled one another at this windy corner--Italian, Spanish, German, Slav, Jew, Greek, with a preponderance of Irish and "free-born" Americans. The general air was one of unwonted happiness and freedom. The atmosphere of holiday liberty was vibrant with the expectation of Saturday-night abandon to fun and frolic or wild carousal. For "the ghost had walked" through the workaday world that day, and everybody had his "envelop" in his pocket. It is a pleasant sensation to feel the stiff-cornered envelop tucked safely away in your vest pocket, or in the depths of your stocking, where Henrietta had hidden hers safe out of the reach of the wily pickpocket, who, she told me, was lurking at every corner and sneaking through every crowd on that Saturday evening, which was also Easter Eve. Easter Eve! I had almost forgotten the fact which accounted for this more than usual activity on the part of the hurrying crowds, and for the unmistakable holiday air which Bleecker Street displayed. As far as we could see, lined up on both sides of the curb were the pushcart peddlers, and at every step a sidewalk fakir, all crying their Easter wares. Henrietta lingered first about one pushcart, then about another, opening her gaudy side-bag, then shutting it resolutely and marching on, determined not to succumb to the temptation to squander her hard-earned pennies. She succeeded admirably until we came upon a picturesque Italian and his wife who were doing a flourishing business from a pushcart piled high with sacred images. Henrietta showed a lively interest in the cut prices at which they were going: ten cents for St. Peter in a scarlet robe and golden sandals; fifteen cents for St. John in purple; and only twenty-five for the Blessed Virgin in flowing blue clasping the Holy Babe. They were "dirt-cheap," Henrietta declared, as we watched the plaster casts pass over the heads of the crowd, out of which by and by emerged our shopmate, little Angela, clasping a Madonna under her arm and counting her change. The three of us resumed our homeward walk together, without any comment until Angela had satisfied herself about the correctness of her change. "What a slop you are!" remarked Henrietta, as her critical eye swept over the undeveloped little figure in the long, greasy black-taffeta coat, which, flapping open in front, disclosed the pasty surface of a drabbled blue skirt. "Why don't you never turn your skirt, Angela?" "Oh, what's the dif?" replied Angela. "There ain't no fellows going to look at me any more now." This reply, commonplace enough, might have passed unnoticed had there not been a note of tragedy in her deep contralto voice. "Why, what's the matter?" I asked. "Don't you know?" she demanded, scowling at Henrietta's silly, vacant "tee-hee." "Know? Know what?" I asked. "That I'm a grass-widow." "A grass-widow!" I echoed in astonishment, and looked upon the childish creature in sheer unbelief--for child I had always considered her. "Why, how old are you, anyway, Angela?" "Fifteen--I mean I'm 'most fifteen." "And you're really married!" I exclaimed again, quite aghast and altogether innocent of the construction which Angela immediately put upon the qualifying adverb. "Well, if you don't believe me look at that!" she cried, and stuck out a tiny, dirty hand, with finger-nails worn to the quick, and decorated with a gold band broad enough and heavy enough to have held a woman ten times Angela's weight and size in the bands of indissoluble matrimony; "I was married for fair, and I was married lawful. A priest did it." "Oh, I didn't mean to question that," I hastened to apologize with some confusion. "Only you seemed so very young, I thought you were just joking me." "Well, it's no joke to be married and have a baby, specially when you've got to s'port it," returned the girl, her lips still pouting. "And you've a baby, too--you!" The bedraggled little prima donna nodded; the pout on the lips blossomed into a smile, and a look of infinite tenderness transformed the tired, dark little face. "It's up to the crèche--that's where I'm going now. The ladies keeps it awful good for me." "And it's such a lovely baby, too!" declared Henrietta, softly. "I seen it once." "She's cute; there's no lie 'bout that," assented the little mother. "Look what I bought her--here, you hold this Peter a minute--Henrietta, just hang on to the Holy Virgin," and thrusting them into our hands, she opened the box under her arm and drew forth a gaily painted hen that clucked and laid a painted egg, to the uproarious delight of Henrietta. Henrietta meanwhile had begun counting the change in her side-bag. "I don't never like to break a bill unless I've got to," she remarked, returning the Holy Virgin to Angela's arms; "but I'm going to have one of them chickens too," and away she went after the fakir. A moment later she emerged from the crowd with a little brown box under her arm, and we three continued our walk westward along Bleecker, dropping little Angela at the corner of the street which was to lead her to the day-nursery where she would pick up her baby and carry it home. "That was a 'fatal wedding' for fair, wasn't it?" I remarked, as my eyes followed the little figure. But my companion paid no attention to my attempt to be facetious, if indeed she heard the remark at all. She seemed to be deep in a brown study, and several times I caught her watching me narrowly from the corner of her eye. I was already beginning to have some misgivings as to the temperamental fitness of my strange "learner" and new-found friend as a steady, day-in-and-day-out person with whom to live and eat and sleep. And this feeling increased with every block we covered, for by and by I found myself studying Henrietta in the same furtive manner as she was evidently studying me. At last, when we had exchanged the holiday gaiety and the sunshine of Bleecker Street for a dark, noisome side-street, she broke out explosively: "Hope to God you ain't going to turn out the way my last room-mate did!" "Why? What did she do?" "Went crazy," came the laconic reply, and she shivered and drew the old golf-cape more closely about her shoulders; for the damp of the dark, silent tenements on either side seemed to strike to the marrow. Something in her manner seemed to say, "Ask no more questions," but nevertheless I pursued the subject. "Went crazy! How?" "I d'know; she just went sudden crazy. She come to Springer's one day just like you, and she said how she was wanting to find a place to board cheap; and she was kind of down in the mouth, and she come home with me; and all of a sudden in the night I woke up with her screamin' and going on something fearful, and I run down and got the Dago lady in the basement to come up, and her man run for the police. They took her away to the lock-up in the hurry-up wagon, and the next day they said she was crazy,--clean crazy,--and she's in the crazy-house over on the Island now." "What island?" I asked, not with any desire to know this minor detail, but because I was too disturbed for the moment to make any other comment. It seemed to Henrietta, however, a most senseless question, for she remarked rather testily: "Why, just the Island, where they send all the crazy folks, and the drunks, and the thieves and murderers, and them that has smallpox." "Mercy! what an awful place it must be!" I cried. "And that's where the poor girl went?" "That's where she went--say, tell me honest now, didn't you run away?" "Run away! Where from?" "Run away from home--now didn't you?" "Mercy, no! What put such an idea as that in your head?" I asked, laughing. "Fanny Harley did." "Who's Fanny Harley?" "She's the girl they took to the crazy-house." "But," I argued, "is that any reason for you to suppose that I ran away from home too?" "Yep, it is. You're ever so much like Fanny Harley. You talk just alike, and you've got just the same notions she had, from what I can make; and she did run away from home. She told me so. She lived up-state somewhere, and was off a farm just like you; and--" "But I'm not a farmer, and never was," I put in. "Why, you told me yourself you was born in the country, didn't you?" and I saw there was no use trying to point out to Henrietta the difference between farmers and those born in the country, both of which were terms of contempt in her vocabulary. We were still threading the maze of strange, squalid streets which was to lead us eventually to the former brief abiding-place of Fanny Harley; and, filled with curiosity regarding my own resemblance to my unfortunate predecessor, I revived the subject by asking carelessly: "How is it I talk and act that makes me like Fanny Harley?" "Well, you 've got a kind of high-toned way of talking," she explained. "I don't mind the way you talk, though,--using big words and all that. That ain't none of our business, I tell the girls; but you do walk so funny and stand so funny, that it is all I can do to keep from bu'stin' out laughing to see you. And the other girls says it's the same with them, but I told them it was because you was just from the country, and that farmers all walk the same way. But really, Rose,--you're getting used to that name, ain't you?--you ought to get yourself over it as quick as you can; you ain't going to have no lady-friends in the factory if you're going to be queer like that." "But I walk as I always did. How else should I walk? How do I walk that makes me so funny?" I asked, mortified at the thought of my having been the butt of secret ridicule. Henrietta was cordial in her reply. "You walk too light," she explained; "you don't seem to touch the ground at all when you go along, and you stand so straight it makes my back ache to watch you." Then my mentor proceeded to correct my use and choice of diction. "And what makes you say 'lid' when you mean a cover? Why, it just about kills us girls to hear you say 'lid.'" "But," I remonstrated, aggravated by her silly "tee-hee" into defense of my English, "why shouldn't I say 'lid' if I want to? It means just the same as cover." "Well, if it mean the same, why don't you say 'cover'?" my "learner" retorted, with ill-disguised anger that I should question her authority; and I dropped the subject, and the remainder of the walk was continued in silence. It was growing more and more apparent that I had not made a wise selection in my room-mate, but it seemed too late to back out now--at least until I had given her a trial of several days. I felt as though I had obtained, as if by magic, a wonderfully illuminating insight into her nature and character during this short walk from the factory. I had thought her at the work-table a kind-hearted, honest toiler, a bit too visionary, perhaps, to accord with perfect veracity, and woefully ignorant, but with an ignorance for which I could feel nothing but sorrow and sympathy, as the inevitable result of the hard conditions of her life and environment. But now I recognized with considerable foreboding, not only all this, but much more besides. Henrietta Manners, that humble, under-fed, miserable box-maker, was the very incarnation of bigotry and intolerance, one by whom any idea, or any act, word, or occurrence out of the ordinary rut set by box-factory canons of taste and judgment, must be condemned with despotic severity. And yet, in the face of all these unpleasant reflections upon poor Henrietta's unbeautiful mental characteristics, I felt a certain shamefaced gratitude toward the kind heart which I knew still beat under that shabby golf-cape. Meanwhile, Henrietta had again lapsed into a silent, sullen mood, as she pitched along in the nervous, jerky, heavy-footed gait which she had urged me to emulate, and which I thought so hideous. I did not know then, but I do know now, that such gait is invariably a characteristic of the constitution in which there is not the proper coördination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue--I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's womb--physically, mentally, and morally doomed. I was, however, on this memorable Easter Eve most happily innocent of my Lombroso and my Mantagazza, else I had not been walking home with Henrietta Manners, in all the confidence of an unsophisticated country-girl. So much confidence did I have in my shop-mate that I did not yet know the name of the street on the West Side where my future home was, nor did I know any of the strange, dark, devious paths by which she led me through a locality that, though for the most part eminently respectable, is dotted here and there, near the river-front, with some of the worst plague-spots of moral and physical foulness to be found in New York. In later and more prosperous years I have several times walked into Thompson Street, and from that as a starting-point tried to retrace our walk of that night, bordering along old Greenwich Village, but as well have tried to unravel the mazes of the Cretan Labyrinth. The last westward street we traversed, dipping under the trellis of an elevated railroad, led straight into a lake of sunset fire out of which the smoking funnels of a giant steamship lying at her dock rose dark and majestic upon the horizon. A little cry of admiration escaped me at sight of the splendid picture, and I hoped secretly that our way might continue to the water's edge; but instead, reaching the line of the elevated, we turned in and followed the old, black street above which the noisy trains ran. The street itself presented the appearance of a long line of darkened warehouses, broken occasionally by a dismal-looking dwelling, through the uncurtained windows of which we could see slattern housewives busy getting supper. It was the most miserable and squalid of all the miserable and squalid streets I had thus far seen, and it had the additional disadvantage of being practically deserted of everything save the noise and smoke overhead. There were no foot-passengers, no human sounds. It was all so hideous and fearsome that after five minutes' walk I was not surprised to see Henrietta select the most wretched of all the wretched houses as the one we should enter. As we climbed the high stoop, I could see, through the interstices of rusted ironwork that had once been handsome balusters, the form of an Italian woman sitting in the basement window beneath, nursing a baby at her breast. "That's the lady what come up to help hold Fanny Harley," my room-mate remarked as we passed inside. IX INTRODUCING HENRIETTA'S "SPECIAL GENTLEMAN-FRIEND" "Say! ain't you got no special gentleman-friend?" Henrietta's voice, breaking a pregnant silence, startled me so that I nearly jumped off the empty soap-box where for some minutes I had sat watching her bend over a smoking skillet of frying fat. An answer was not to be given unadvisedly, such was the moral effect of the question. It hadn't been asked in a casual way, but showed, by its explosive form of utterance, that it was the result not so much of a pent-up curiosity as of a careful speculation as to the manner in which I would receive it. So I tried to look unconscious, and at this critical juncture the thunder of an elevated train came adventitiously to my rescue and gave me a few moments in which to consider what I should reply. And as I considered unconsciously my eye took in an inventory of the room. The heavily carved woodwork hinted of the fact that it had once been a lady's bedchamber in the bygone days when this was a fashionable quarter of New York, and its spaciousness and former elegance now served rather to increase the squalor as well as to accentuate the barrenness of its furnishings. The latter consisted of two wooden boxes, one of which I sat upon; an empty sugar-barrel, with a board laid across the top; a broken-down bed in an uncurtained alcove; a very large, substantial-looking trunk, iron-bound and brass-riveted; and last, but not least, a rusty stove, now red-hot, which might well have been the twin sister of my own "Little Lottie" at the ill-fated Fourteenth-street house. This stove, connected with the flue by a small pipe, fitted into what had once been a beautiful open fireplace, but which was now walled up with broken bricks, and surmounted by a mantel of Italian marble sculptured with the story of Prometheus's boon to mankind, and supported on either end by caryatides in the shape of vestal virgins bearing flaming brands in their hands. Overhead the ceiling showed great patches of bare lath, where the plaster had fallen away, and the uncarpeted floor was strewn with bread-crumbs and marked by a trail of coal-siftings from the stove to a closet-door from which the fire was replenished. The door to the closet was gone, and in its recess a pair of trousers hung limply, while Henrietta's scant wardrobe was ranged along the black-painted wall outside. The long, cobweb-hung windows, bare of blind or curtain, showed a black-mirrored surface against the batten shutters. All these details I could descry but dimly by the light of the smoking oil-lamp that sat on the mantelshelf above the stove, and which cast a ghastly light upon a row of empty bottles--the sole burden of the once spotless, but now sadly soiled, vestal virgins. Henrietta was bending over the smoking skillet, with the lamp-light falling across her pale face. As she boiled the coffee and fried the eggs I studied her profile sketched against the blue, smoky background, and tried in vain to grasp the secret of its fleeting, evanescent beauty. For beautiful Henrietta was--beautiful with a beauty quite her own and all the more potent because of its very indefinableness. I watched her as one horribly fascinated,--that high, wide white forehead, that weak chin, those soft, tremulous lips, on which a faint smile would so often play, and those great, wide eyes of blue that now looked purple in the lamp-light. And then, gradually, I saw, as I watched, an expression I had never seen there before; the wavering suggestion of the smile left the lips and they fell apart, loose and bloodless, with a glimpse of the missing front tooth. It was an expression that lasted but the fraction of a second, but it stamped her whole countenance with something sinister. Then Henrietta lifted the eggs, carried the coffee-pot across to the table, which was none other than the board-capped barrel, and went back for the lamp. All these things she insisted upon doing herself, just as she had stubbornly refused to allow me to help with the cooking of the supper. Setting the lamp down upon the improvised table, she threw open one of the shutters to let in a breath of fresh air, and as she did so the room was filled with the roar and dust of the elevated train which passed so close to our windows, and after it came a cold draft of air caused by the suction of the cars. Henrietta closed the window and returned to the table. Then I answered her question: "Well, that depends upon what you mean by gentleman-friend," I said. "I mean just what I said," replied Henrietta, sliding an egg upon her plate and passing the remaining one to me. "I mean a _special_ gentleman-friend." "Well, no; I guess I haven't. I used to know lots of boys in the country where I lived, but there isn't one of them I could call my special gentleman-friend, and I don't know any men here." I uttered this speech carefully, so as not to imply any criticism of Henrietta's use of the expression "gentleman-friend," nor to call down upon my own head her criticism for using any other than the box-factory vernacular in discussing these delicate amatory affairs. "Oh, go and tell that to your grandmother!" she retorted, with a sly little laugh. "Don't none of the girls there have gentlemen-friends, or is farmers so different that they never stand gentlemen-friends to them?" "Oh, dear me, yes!" I answered hastily, trying to avoid the unpleasant _double entendre_, and choosing to accept it in its strictly explicit phase. "Why, certainly, the girls get married there every day. There are hardly any old maids in my part of the country. They get engaged almost as soon as they are out of short dresses, and the first thing you know, they are married and raising families." Then I added, "but have you got a gentleman-friend yourself?" "Yep," she answered, nodding and pouring out the coffee; "I have a very particular gentleman-friend what's been keeping company with me for nearly a year, off and on." "Oh!" I cried, eager to turn the conversation toward Henrietta's personal affairs instead of my own, which I felt she completely misconstrued. "Do tell me about him; what is his name--and are you engaged to him yet?" "My! ain't you fresh, though?" she said; but there was cordiality in the rebuff. "I met him at the mission where I teach Sundays," she went on. "He's brother Mason, and he's the Sunday-school superintendent. He give me all that perfume on the mantel," and she pointed a dripping knife toward the row of empty bottles. "Why, is he in the perfumery business?" I asked innocently, my eyes ranging over the heterogeneous collection on the mantel. Henrietta took the remark as exceedingly funny, for she immediately fell into a paroxysm of tittering, choking over a mouthful of food before she could attain gravity enough to answer. "Lord! no; you do ask the funniest questions!" Thus checked, I did not press for further information as to brother Mason's vocation, but proceeded to satisfy my hunger, which was not diminished by the unappetizing appearance of the food on the barrel. It was a matter of great surprise to me to see how little Henrietta ate, and I was likewise ashamed of my own voracious appetite. Henrietta noticed this and frowned ominously. "God! but you do eat!" she commented frankly, poising her knife in air. "I'm hungry. I've worked hard to-day," I replied with dignity. "Maybe you won't eat so much, though, after a while," she said hopefully. "Maybe not," I agreed. "But you, Henrietta--you are not eating anything!" "Me? Oh, I'm all right. I'm eating as much as I ever do. The works takes away my hunger. If it didn't, I don't know how I'd get along. If I eat as much as you, I'd be likely to starve to death. I couldn't make enough to feed me. When I first begun to work in the factory I'd eat three or four pieces of bread across the loaf, and potatoes and meat, and be hungry for things besides; but after a while you get used to being hungry for so long, you couldn't eat if you had it to eat." "How long have you been working?" I ventured. Henrietta put her cup on the table and shot a suspicious glance at me before she answered: "Oh, off and on, and for five or six years, ever since my uncle died. He was my guardian--that's his house up there." I looked in the direction of Henrietta's pointed finger to a cheap chromolithograph that was tacked on the wall between the windows and immediately over the barrel where we were eating. I recognized it at once as a reproduction of a familiar scene showing a castle on the Rhine. I had seen the same picture many times, once as a supplement with a Sunday newspaper. That this stately pile of green and yellow variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant to be taken seriously. But one glance now at Henrietta's face showed me my mistake. It was plainly to be seen that she had come to believe every word of what she had told me. My eye had traveled to the row of garments on the pegs behind the door and had rested with curiosity upon a "lassie" bonnet and cloak. Henrietta did not wait for the question on my lips. "Them's my adjutant's uniform," she said, with a touch of pride. "You didn't know I used to be an adjutant in the Salvation Army, did you?" I shook my head. "Well, I was, all right. Adjutant Faith Manners, that's what I was," and rising, she limped across the floor, and burrowing in the depths of the trunk, returned in a moment with an envelop which she handed me with the command to read its contents. The envelop, postmarked "Pittsburg, Pa.," was addressed to Adjutant Faith Manners. "But how does it come you have two names?" I inquired. "Well," the girl replied slowly, "I thought as how it sounded better for a professing Christian to have some name like that, than Henrietta. Henrietta is kind of fancy-sounding, specially when you was an adjutant officer and was supposed to have give yourself to Jesus." I read the letter; it was a curious epistle, written in a beautiful, flowing hand, well worded, and complimenting Adjutant Manners upon her "persistence in the good work for Jesus," and winding up with the offer of a small post, at a salary to be determined later on, in the Pittsburg barracks of the Salvation Army. The name of the writer, which for obvious reasons it is best not to divulge, was that of an officer who, I have since discovered, is well and favorably known in Pittsburg. The whole thing was a bewildering paradox. There was no doubt of its being a bona-fide letter, nor of Adjutant Faith Manners and my room-mate being one and the same person. And yet, how explain the ludicrous inconsistency of such an experience in the life of such a girl? I had opened my mouth to ask some question to this end, when we started as a heavy step resounded in the hallway outside. Then the latch rattled, the door swung open, and a thick-set, burly, bearded man stood upon the threshold. I screamed before I noticed that Henrietta regarded the new-comer quite as a matter of course. The man stood in the doorway, evidently surprised for the moment at seeing me there; then, closing the door behind him, he advanced awkwardly, tiptoeing across the floor, and sat down upon the edge of the bed without so much as a word. "Will you have a cup of coffee, brother Mason?" asked Henrietta, shaking the pot to determine whether its contents would warrant the invitation. "I don't care if I do, sister Manners," returned brother Mason, removing his hat as if it were an afterthought, and drawing forth a large red handkerchief with which he mopped his forehead and thick red neck. "This is my lady-friend, Rose Fortune," said Henrietta as she drained the coffee-pot, and nodding first to the visitor, then to myself; "my gentleman-friend, brother Mason." Brother Mason had risen and tiptoed forward, his hands thrust into the bulging pockets of his overcoat, whence he proceeded gravely to draw forth and deposit upon the barrel-top a heterogeneous love-offering, as follows: two oranges; a box of mustard; a small sack of nutmegs; a box of ground pepper; a package of allspice; a box containing three dozen bouillon capsules; a bottle of the exact size and label as the innumerable empty vessels on the mantel; a package of tea done up in fancy red-and-gold paper; and, last, a large paper sack of pulverized coffee. Henrietta now handed a cup to the donor of these gifts, which he accepted meekly and carried on tiptoe back to his place on the edge of the bed. Brother Mason drank his coffee with a great deal of unnecessary noise, while Henrietta gathered up the dishes, after again rebuffing me almost rudely for presuming to offer my services. Thus there was nothing left for me to do, apparently, but to sit on the soap-box and look at brother Mason, who regarded me in rather sheepish fashion over the top of his cup. I judged him to be a good-natured man on the near side of fifty. His close-cropped hair was an iron-gray, and his stubby beard and mustache a fierce red, the ferocity of which was tempered by the mildness of deep-set, small blue eyes. His general appearance would, I thought, have been more in accord with the driver of a beer-truck than anything so comparatively genteel as driving a grocer's wagon--his occupation, I discovered, which explained the source of his offerings to Henrietta. Despite the burliness of brother Mason, there was that about him which rather encouraged confidence than aroused suspicion, although it was difficult to reconcile him with the superintendence of a mission Sunday-school. The latter incongruity had just popped into my mind when he broke the silence by asking in a deep guttural, and with a vigorous nod in my direction as he put down his empty cup: "Ha! Cat'lic?" "Oh, no," I answered, eager to break the embarrassing silence--"oh, no; I'm a Protestant." "Ha! But you be Irish, ben't you?" I laughed. "No; American!" "Ha! Father and mother Irish, mebbe?" "No, they were American, too; but my great-great-grandfather and-grandmother were Irish." "Aye, that's it! I knowed you was Irish the minute I seen them red cheeks, eh! sister Manners?" chuckled brother Mason in a rich brogue, rubbing his hands and looking across at my room-mate, who had been apparently oblivious to our conversation, as she washed and wiped the dishes out of a tin basin which I recognized as that from which we had washed our hands and faces after we got home from work. She now fixed the visitor with her periwinkle eyes, and replied severely: "I ain't got nothing to say against my lady-friend's looks, as you certainly know, brother Mason." Something in this answer--no doubt, a hint of smothered jealousy--made brother Mason throw his hand to his mouth and duck his head as he darted a sly look toward me. But I met the look with a serious face, and indeed I felt serious enough without getting myself into any imbroglio with this strange pair of lovers. "You're Irish, I suppose, Mr. Mason?" I asked when he had recovered his gravity after this mirth-provoking incident. "Me? I'm from County Wicklow, but I ain't no Cat'lic Irish. I'm a Methody. Cat'lic in the old country, Methody here. Got converted twenty years ago at one of them Moody and Sankey meetings--you've heard tell of Moody and Sankey, mebbe? Eh? Ha!" These latter ejaculations the Catholic apostate repeated alternately and with rhythmic precision as he proceeded to press tobacco into a clay pipe with numerous deft movements of his large red thumb, regarding me fixedly all the while. "Yes, yes," I repeated many times, but not until he had lighted the pipe and drawn a deep whiff of it did brother Mason choose to regard his question as answered. "Well, it was them that brought me to the mourners' bench, for fair. It was Moody and Sankey that did the damage; and I've got to say this much for them gentlemen, I've never seen the day I was sorry they did it. I'm the supe of a mission Sunday-school now, meself; and I've done me dirty best to push the gospel news along." Here he turned to Henrietta. "Be your lady-friend coming over to-morrow afternoon, sister Manners?" "I don't hinder her, nor nobody's, doing what they like!" answered Henrietta, again with that air of severity, not to say iciness, in her manner; and I shifted myself uncomfortably on the box as I met her glance of patient scorn. She had now finished her dish-washing, and seated herself upon the edge of the box, which brother Mason had already appropriated with his large, clumsy bulk. "Come now, you do care, ye know you care!" he said gruffly, as he threw an arm carelessly across the girl's shoulder and patted her kindly; the scowl immediately left her face and her head dropped upon his brawny, red-shirted breast and snugly settled itself there, much to my embarrassment. Then, between long-drawn whiffs of the rank-smelling pipe, brother Mason descanted upon himself and his achievements, religious, social, financial, and political, with no interruption save frequent fits of choking on the part of poor Henrietta, whom even the clouds of rank smoke could not drive from her position of vantage. Brother Mason, so he informed me, was not only an Irishman and a Methodist, but a member of Tammany Hall and a not unimportant personage in the warehouses of the wholesale grocers for whom he drove the delivery wagon, and from whom, I now haven't a doubt in the world, he had stolen for the benefit of his lady-love many such an offering of sweet perfume and savory spice as he had carried her that Easter Eve. I found his talk eminently entertaining, with the charm that often goes with the talk of an unlettered person who knows much of life and of men. He was densely ignorant from the schoolmaster's point of view, and openly confessed to an inability to write his name; but his ignorance was refreshing, as the ignorance of man is always refreshing when compared with the ignorance of woman; which fact, it has often appeared to me, is the strongest argument in favor of the general superiority of the male sex. For hidden somewhere within brother Mason's thick, bullet head there seemed to be that primary germ of intelligence which was apparently lacking in the fair head snuggled on his breast. It was therefore with a mingled feeling of relief and regret that, after a couple of hours of conversation, I saw him gently push Henrietta away and announce his departure,--relief from the embarrassment which this open love-making had caused me, and regret that I was once more to be left alone with Henrietta in that dark, cavernous house. It was then after midnight, and Henrietta suggested, as brother Mason drew on his overcoat, that she accompany him as far as the corner saloon, where she wanted to buy a quarter-pint of gin; and they went off together, leaving me alone. When their resounding footsteps had died away down the stairs, I picked up the lamp and walked about, examining the shadowy corners of the room, peering into the black abyss of the alcove where the unwholesome bed stood, and not neglecting, like the true woman I was, to look underneath and even to poke under it with the handle of a broom. I raised the windows and threw open the batten-shutters, and through the darkness tried to measure the distance to the street below. Not only that, but I also speculated upon being able to climb out upon the railroad tracks, should the worst come to the worst. What worst? What did I fear? I don't know. I did not exactly know then, and I scarcely know now. It may have been the promptings of what is popularly termed "woman's intuition." No more do I know why I then and there resolved that I should sleep with my shoes and stockings on; and further, if possible, I determined to keep awake through the long night before me. I closed the windows and returned to a further inspection of the room, stopping before the open trunk to examine some of the many books it contained. One by one I opened and examined the volumes; a few of them were romances of the Laura Jean Libbey school of fiction, but the majority were hymnals inscribed severally on the fly-leaf with the names "Faith Manners," "Hope Manners," "Patience Manners." Across the room the bottles on the mantel shone vaguely in the shadow. I carried the lamp over, and placing it in the little cleared-out space among them, began to examine the bottles with idle curiosity. "Wild Crab Apple," "Jockey Club," "Parma Violet," "Heliotrope," I read on the dainty labels, lifting out the ground-glass corks and smelling the lingering fragrance which yet attached to each empty vial. Of these there must have been two dozen or more. And there were other bottles, also empty, but not perfume-bottles. Of these others there were more than a dozen. At first I did not quite comprehend the purport of the printing on their labels, and it was not until I had studied some half a dozen of them that the sickening horror of their meaning dawned upon me fully. There was no mistaking them; the language was too unblushingly plain. They were the infamous nostrums of the malpractitioner; and in the light of this loathsome revelation there was but one thing for me to do: I had to get out of that room, and before Henrietta should return; and so, grabbing up my hat and jacket, I rushed in a panic out of the awful place into the midnight blackness of the empty street. X IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF A HOMELESS WANDERER IN THE NIGHT In making my escape I had not counted upon my chances of meeting Henrietta returning from the saloon. I had thought of nothing but to get as far away as possible from the horror of it all. Dashing headlong down the street, I was going I knew not where, when suddenly Henrietta's vacuous "tee-hee" rang out in the darkness and echoed among the iron girders of the elevated trestle; and, looking ahead of me, I saw her in the light of the corner gas-jet coming toward me, a man on either side of her, and all three evidently in the best of spirits. I sank back into the darkness of a doorway that stood open, motionless until they had passed and their voices had died away. In the few minutes of waiting, I had collected my wits sufficiently to determine upon a plan of action. I would find my way back to the Jefferson Market, and stay there until daylight, and then go to the Working Girls' Home recommended by the police matron. But no sooner had I determined on this plan, which was really the only thing I could have done, than I heard women's voices close at hand; and before I could creep out of the doorway, two figures, groping up to it through the darkness, dropped down upon the threshold. They muttered and mumbled to each other for a little while, then their deep breathing told me they had fallen into a doze. Again and again I had crept out of my hiding-place, looked at the two bowed, crouching figures, which I could see only in vague outline, and then withdrew again into the comparative safety of the black hallway. I hesitated to waken them, and I could not creep over them asleep--not until I heard the low, guttural voice of a drunken man in the darkness above, and the uncertain shuffle of feet feeling their way to the head of the staircase. Then, my heart in my mouth, quite as much for the fear of what was before me as for what was fumbling about in the darkness behind, I came boldly out and stood over the huddled figures. Now I saw that they were old women, very old, and both fast asleep, with their arms locked about each other for protection against the cold. Both were bare-headed and scantily dressed, and each wore a little wisp of gray hair drawn into a button at the back of her head, just as Mrs. Pringle had worn hers. I touched the nearest bundle on the shoulder. She awoke with a start, and peered around at me with a pitiful whimper. I explained that I only wanted to pass, and that she would oblige me very much to allow me to do so. "You want to git out, do ye, dearie? Well, you jist shall git out," came the rejoinder in a high, quavering voice, and slowly the old woman lifted herself, with many groans and "ouches" for her stiffened joints. "Dearie! dearie! I thought ye wuz the cop," the old crone went on, as she grasped my arm in a hand whose thinness I could feel through my thin jacket. "A nice arm it is ye have got, and yit ye don't speak as if ye be one of we uns, be you?" The withered hand held me as though in a vise, while I could feel the gin-laden breath of the unfortunate creature as she peered close into my face. "Please--please let me go!" I whispered, for I could hear the stumbling footsteps within near the bottom of the stairs. "Please let me go! I must go to the drug-store to find a doctor; some one is sick." "Sure, dearie, sure!" and the thin fingers relaxed their hold. "Do ye know where the drug-store is? and mightn't I make bold enough to ask to go with ye? It's late for a lady to be out, with the streets full of drunks and lazy longshoremen; and I know you _be_ a lady." I was in a quandary. Naturally I did not want to accept this drunken woman's offer to pilot me, and yet I really had not the heart to offend the old creature, for there was genuine sympathy betrayed in her voice at the mention of sickness. She seemed to take my silence for acceptance, however; and placing her arm on mine, conducted me down the dark street. At the corner we passed under a gas-lamp, when we saw each other distinctly for the first time. She was dark and swarthy, with deep-set black eyes, and her thin, coarse, bristling gray hair, I noticed, was full of wisps of excelsior and grass box-packing. She was about sixty-two or-three, and had a spare, brawny frame with heavy, stooped shoulders. Evidently she had taken just as careful an inventory of my appearance, for we had not gone far before she was giving me all manner of good advice about taking care of myself in a big, wicked city, with repeated asseverations that she always knew a lady when she saw one, and that if I wasn't one of that enviable species, then her name wasn't Mrs. Bridget Reynolds; and the latter being "a proper married woman and the mother of a family all dead now, God rest their souls!" who should know a lady better than she? And why was Mrs. Bridget Reynolds, a proper married and equally proper widowed woman of her reverend years, sitting upon a doorstep at three o'clock of a cold March morning? Och! God bless ye, just a little trouble with the landlord, no work for several weeks, and a recent eviction; a small matter that had often happened before, and was like as not to happen ag'in, God willing! And who was Mrs. Bridget Reynolds's sleeping mate left behind on the doorstep? Divil a bit did Mrs. Bridget Reynolds know about her, only that she had found her that night in the empty warehouse, where she had gone like herself to sleep, among the packing-cases, under the straw and excelsior, which made a bed fit for a queen, and where they might still have been taking their ease had not a heartless cop chased them out, bad luck to him! Such was the gist of Mrs. Reynolds's discourse. I have not the courage to attempt to transcribe her rich brogue and picturesque phraseology; and even were I able to do so, it could give the reader no adequate idea of the wealth of optimism and cheerfulness that throbbed in her quavering voice. Hers could be a violent tongue, too, as the several men who accosted us on our dark way discovered at their first approach to familiarity; and on one occasion, when a drunken sailor leered up to my side, Mrs. Bridget spat at him like an angry tabby-cat. Somehow, I no longer felt afraid under her protection and guidance. At last, after a very long walk, we came in sight of the brightly lighted windows of a drug-store, and Mrs. Reynolds said we were on Bleecker Street. I had now to explain that my asking the way to a drug-store had been merely a bit of subterfuge, which I did in fear and trembling as to how Mrs. Reynolds would accept such deception on my part. But she was all good humor. "Sure, dearie, it's all right! I'm glad to do a good turn for yez, being as you're a poor body like mesilf, even if ye air a lady!" We were now standing in the glare of the big colored-glass carboys in the drug-store window at the corner of Bleecker Street and some one of its intersecting alleys. It was now four in the morning, and the streets were almost deserted. My companion smiled at me with the maudlin tenderness which gin inspires in the breast of an old Irishwoman, and as we stood irresolute on the corner I noticed how thinly clad she was. The sharp wind wrapped her calico skirt about her stiffened limbs, and her only wrap was a little black knitted fascinator which did not meet over the torn calico blouse. "A wee nip of gin would go right to the spot now, wouldn't it, dearie?" the old soul asked wistfully, which reminded me of something I had forgotten: that I still had my precious dollar and a half snugly stowed away in my petticoat pocket. So I suggested that we go to a lunch-room and have a good meal and a cup of hot coffee, and sit there till daylight, which now was not far off. The prospect of something to eat and something hot to drink infused great cheerfulness into my strange chaperon; she grasped my arm with the gaiety of a school-girl, and we walked eastward until we came to a dairy lunch-room upon the great plate-glass windows of which was enameled in white letters a generous bill of fare at startlingly low prices. The place was of the sort where everybody acts as his own waiter, buying checks for whatever he wants from the cashier and presenting them at a long counter piled up with eatables. Mrs. Reynolds was modesty itself in accepting of my bounty. When we had finished it was daylight, and I parted from my duenna at the door, she with innumerable terms of maudlin endearment, and an invocation to all the saints in the calendar that they should keep a kindly eye upon me. As to my own feelings, I felt heartless to be obliged to leave the poor creature with nothing more than a twenty-five-cent piece, and with no proffer of future help--if, indeed, she was not beyond help. But I was powerless; for I was as poor as she was. I had suggested her applying to the authorities for aid, but she had received it scornfully, even indignantly, declaring that Mrs. Bridget Reynolds would die and rot before she'd be beholden to anybody for charity. Anything in the shape of organized authority was her constitutional enemy, and the policeman was her hereditary foe. Hospitals were nefarious places where the doctors poisoned you and the nurses neglected you in order that you should die and furnish one more cadaver to the dissecting-rooms; almshouses were the last resort of the broken in heart and spirit, institutions where unspeakable crimes were perpetrated upon the old and helpless. Therefore, was it any wonder this independent old dame of Erin preferred deserted warehouses and dark doorways as shelter? And so, early in this Easter morning, I left Mrs. Bridget Reynolds at the door of the Bleecker Street lunch-room, she to go her way and I to go mine. I looked back when I had got half a block away, and she was still standing there, apparently undetermined which way to turn. I watched a moment, and presently she ambled across the street and rattled the door of the "ladies'" entrance to the saloon on the corner. Then I turned my face toward the reddening east, against which the shabby housetops and the chimneys and the distant spires and smokestacks stretched out in a broken, black sky-line. I was going to find the home for working girls which the good matron at Jefferson Market had recommended, and the address of which I still had in the bottom of my purse. XI I BECOME AN "INMATE" OF A HOME FOR WORKING GIRLS The spirit of the early Easter Day had breathed everywhere its own ineffable Sabbath peace, and when at last I emerged into Broadway, it was to find that familiar thoroughfare strangely transformed. On the six days preceding choked with traffic and humming with ten thousand noises, it was now silent and deserted as a country lane--silent but for the echo of my own footsteps upon the polished stone flagging, and deserted but for the myriad reflections of my own disheveled self which the great plate-glass windows on either side of the street flashed back at me. My way lay northward, with the spire of Grace Church as a finger-post. Grace Church had become a familiar landmark in the preceding weeks, so often had I walked past it in my hopeless quest, and now I approached it as one does a friend seen suddenly in a crowd of strangers. The fact that I was approaching an acquaintance, albeit a dumb and unseeing one, now made me for the first time conscious of my personal appearance so persistently reflected by the shop windows. Before one of them I stopped and surveyed myself. Truly I was a sorry-looking object. I had not been well washed or combed since the last morning at Mrs. Pringle's house; for two days I had combed my long and rather heavy hair with one of the small side-combs I wore, and on neither morning had I enjoyed the luxury of soap. And two successive mornings without soap and the services of a stout comb are likely to work all sorts of demoralizing transformations in the appearance of even a lady of leisure, to say nothing of a girl who had worked hard all day in a dirty factory. Fortunately the street was deserted. I stepped into the entrance of a big, red-sandstone building, and standing between the show-windows, took off my hat, laid it on the pavement, and proceeded to unroll my hair and slick it up once more with the aid of the side-comb, of which I had now only one left, having lost the other somewhere in my flight from Henrietta's. That I should have thought to put on my hat in preparing for that flight I do not understand, for I forgot my gloves, a brand-new pair too; my handkerchief; and, most needful of all else, my ribbon stock-collar, without which my neck rose horribly long and thin above my dusty jacket-collar. Looking at it ruefully, I began to feel for the first time what was for me at least the very quintessence of poverty--the absolute impossibility of personal cleanliness and of decent raiment. I had known hunger and loneliness since I had come to New York, but never before had I experienced this new, this infinitely greater terror--lack of self-respect. That I had done nothing to lower my self-respect had nothing whatever to do with it, since self-respect is often more a matter of material things than of moral values. It is possible for a hungry woman to walk with pride, and it is possible for the immoral and utterly degraded woman to hold her own with the best of her sisters, when it comes to visible manifestation of self-respect, if only she is able to maintain her usual degree of cleanliness and good grooming. But unacquainted with soap for two days! and without a collar! How could I ever summon courage to present myself to anybody in such a condition? Had I been an old woman, I mightn't have cared. But I was a girl; and, being a girl, I suffered all of a girl's heartache and melancholy wretchedness when I remembered that it was Sunday and that there was no hope of buying either collar or comb for twenty-four hours--if, indeed, I dared to spend any of my few remaining dimes and nickels for these necessities, which had suddenly soared to the heights of unattainable luxuries. In the full consciousness of my disreputable appearance, I hung in the doorway, reluctant to fare forth in the cruel light of the thoroughfare. Hitherto I had had the street all to myself, so it had not mattered so much how I looked. But now an empty car hurtled by, its gong breaking for the first time the silence of the long vista stretching away and dipping southward to the Battery. Then another car came speeding along from the opposite direction, whirled past Grace Church, and northward around the curve at Fourteenth Street; and following in the wake of the car, a hansom-cab with a jaded man and woman locked in each other's arms and fast asleep. As the latter passed close to the curb, I drew into the embrasure of the door as far as possible so as to avoid being seen by the cabman--as if it made the least difference whether he saw me or not; but such is the all-absorbing self-consciousness and vanity of girlhood. It was then that I noticed for the first time the glaring sign that had been staring at me during all these ineffectual attempts to "primp." "Wanted--Girls to learn flower-making. Paid while learning. Apply Monday morning at nine o'clock." I repeated the street-number over and over, so as to make sure of remembering it; and then, screwing up my courage, walked hurriedly up the street, trying to ignore the glances which were cast at me by occasional pedestrians. I happened to think of a large dairy lunch-room on Fourteenth Street where I had several times gone for coffee and rolls, and where the cashier and waitresses knew me by sight, and where I thought, by investing in a cup of coffee, I might tidy up a bit in the toilet-room. If only the place should be open on Sunday morning! And it was. The cashier had just stepped into her cage-like desk, and the waitresses were lined up in their immaculate white aprons and lace head-dresses. I was their first customer, apparently. The cashier, a pretty, amiable girl, suppressed any surprise she may have felt at my appearance, and greeted me with the same dazzling smile with which she greeted every familiar face. I explained to her what I wanted to do, apologizing for my slovenliness. She was all sympathetic attention, her eyes snapped with good-humored interest, and she told me to go back and take all the time I wanted to wash up. In a few minutes she sent me, by one of the waitresses, a fresh piece of soap, a comb, a bit of pumice-stone, a whisk-broom, a nail-file, a pair of curved nail-scissors, a tiny paper parcel containing some face-powder, and, wonder of wonders, a beautifully clean, fresh, shining collar! Before the big, shimmering mirrors I washed and splashed to my heart's content and to the infinite advantage of my visage. How delicious it was to see and hear and feel the clear, hot water as it rushed from the silver faucet into the white porcelain bowl! I washed and I washed, I combed and I combed, until there was absolutely no more excuse for doing either; then I powdered my face, just enough to take the shine off, filed my finger-nails, brushed my clothing, put on my borrowed collar, and stepped out into the eating-room, feeling, if not looking, like the "perfect lady" which the generous-hearted cashier declared I resembled "as large as life." "Never mind about the collar; you can just keep it," she said when I returned her toilet articles. "It's not worth but a few cents, anyway, and I've got plenty more of them.... Don't mention it at all; you're perfectly welcome. I didn't do anything more for you than I'd expect you to do for me if I was in such a pickle. If we working girls don't stand up and help one another, I'd like to know who's going to do it for us.... So long!" "So long!" It was not the first time that I had heard a working girl deliver herself of that laconic form of adieu, and heretofore I had always execrated it as hopelessly vulgar and silly, which no doubt it was and is. But from the lips of that kind-hearted woman it fell upon my ears with a sort of lingering sweetness. It was redolent of hope and good cheer. The home for working girls I found, not very far away from this lunch-room, in one of the streets south of Fourteenth Street and well over on the East Side. It was a shabby, respectable, unfriendly-looking building of red brick, with a narrow, black-painted arched door. On the cross-section of the center panel was screwed a silver plate, with the name of the institution inscribed in black letters, which gave to the door the gruesome suggestion of a coffin set on end. A polite pull at the rusty handle of the bell-cord brought no response, and I rang again, a little louder. A chain was rattled and a bolt drawn back. The lid of the black coffin flew open, disclosing, with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box, a withered old beldam with a large brass key clutched in a hand that trembled violently with palsy. She grumbled inarticulately, and with a jerk of her head motioned me into a small room opening off the hall, while she closed and locked the door with the great brass key. The little reception-room, or office, was no more cheerful than the front door, and, like it, partook somewhat of an ecclesiastical aspect. Arranged in a sort of frieze about the room were a series of framed scriptural texts, all of which served to remind one in no ambiguous terms of the wrath of God toward the froward-hearted and of the eternal punishment that awaits unrepentant sinners. And then, at intervals, the vindictive utterances were broken by pictures--these, too, of a religious or pseudo-religious nature. One of these pictures particularly attracted my attention. It was entitled "Hope leaning upon Faith," and showed an exceedingly sentimental young girl leaning heavily upon an anchor, her eyes lifted heavenward, where the sun was just breaking through black clouds, and all against a perspective of angry sea. I was trying to apply its symbolism to my own case, when a sharp, metallic voice inquired abruptly: "What did you wish?" I turned about quickly. A tall, hard-faced woman of forty or thereabouts stood in the door, and looked at me coldly through spectacles that hooked behind ears the natural prominence of which was enhanced by her grayish hair being drawn up tightly and rolled into a "bun" on the very top of the head. She was the personification of neatness, if such be the word to characterize the prim stiffness of a flat-figured, elderly spinster. She wore large, square-toed, common-sense shoes, with low heels capped with rubber cushions, which, as I was shortly to discover, had earned for the lady the sobriquet of "Old Gum Heels." What her real name was I never found out. Nobody knew. She was the most hated of all our tormentors; and in all of the weeks I was to remain in the house over which she was one of the supervisors, I never heard her referred to by any other than the very disrespectful cognomen already quoted. But I am anticipating. "I would like to get board here," I replied timidly, for the very manner of the woman had in it an acid-like quality which bit and burned the sensibilities like vitriol does the flesh. "Have you any money?" "Not very much." "How much?" she demanded. "About one dollar." "What baggage have you?" "None," I replied, and related as well as my embarrassment would allow me the story of the fire and of my flight from Henrietta, not forgetting the generosity of the cashier in the dairy lunch-room. She listened in silence, and when I had finished I thought I saw the repression of a smile, which may or may not have been of the sardonic order. Then she motioned me to follow her through the long, gloomy hall to the rear of the house, where, turning an angle, we came to a staircase down which a flood of sunlight streamed from the big window on the landing. The sunlight showed walls of shimmering whitewashed purity and unpainted oaken stairs scoured white as a bone. "Old Gum Heels" stopped here, and was beginning to give me directions for finding the matron's room on the floor above, when a door at the back opened and a very little girl appeared with a very large pitcher of hot water, which she held tight in her arms as though it were a doll, jiggling at every step a little of the contents upon the floor. "Julia, take this girl along with you to Mrs. Pitbladder's room, and tell her that she wishes to make arrangements about board and lodging." And then to me: "Mrs. Pitbladder is the matron. You will pay your money to her, and she will tell you the rules and regulations for inmates.--And then, Julia, hurry back to the kitchen; I'll need you right away." "Yes, ma'am," replied the child, timidly, with a shy glance at me as she proceeded laboriously up the stairs. At the landing she stopped to draw breath, putting the pitcher upon the floor and relaxing her thin little arms. She was such a mite of a child, hardly more than eight or nine, if judged from the size of the spindly, undeveloped figure. This was swaddled in the ugly apron of blue-checked gingham, fastened down the back with large bone buttons, and so long in the sleeves that the little hands were all but lost, and so long in the skirt that only the ends of the small copper-toed shoes showed beneath. Judged, however, by the close-cropped head and the little sallow face that surmounted the aproned figure, she might have been a woman of twenty-five, so maturely developed was the one, so shrewd and knowing the other. The child leaned her shoulders upon the whitewashed wall and stared at me in bold, though not unfriendly curiosity, which, undoubtedly, I reciprocated. She was evidently sizing me up. I smiled, and she screwed her full, sensitive mouth into a judicial expression, puckering her forehead; then, in a deep, contralto voice, she spoke. What she said I didn't hear, or rather didn't grasp, in my wonder at the quality and timbre of that great voice, which, issuing from the folds of the checked apron, seemed fairly to fill the big hall below and the stair-well above with a deep, beautiful sound. I apologized and asked her to repeat what she had said. "Your skirt--it's so stylish," she said, and the little hand stole out and began stroking the snugly-fitting serge of that very unpretentious garment. "I'm very glad you like it," I laughed, "for it's the only skirt I have"; and I picked up the heavy pitcher and carried it up the rest of the way, the child following me, holding up her apron skirts with both hands to keep from stumbling, and making a ringing, metallic noise as the copper toes struck the wood at every rise. She took the pitcher at the head of the stairs without comment, but with a look full of diffident gratitude. Stopping before one of the doors, the child rapped timidly--so timidly, in fact, that it could scarcely be heard. No answer coming, she rapped again, this time a little louder, and a woman's shrill voice screamed, "Come in!" "Mis' Pitbladder, the lady down-stairs says as this is a young girl what wants to have a talk with youse about coming here," my little guide announced all in one breath, and almost before the door had entirely swung open upon the group within, consisting of an old lady and two little girls. The old lady was in a comfortable state of dishabille; the little girls each wore big checked gingham aprons like Julia's, and buttoned down the back with the same big, white bone buttons. One of them was waving Mrs. Pitbladder's hair with a crimping-iron which she heated in a gas-jet before the bureau; the other child was laboriously working at one of the pudgy hands with a pair of nail-scissors. "Come in, come in, and don't stand there with the door open," mumbled the bowed figure in the armchair, who held a twisted bit of uncrimped forelock between her teeth to keep it from getting mixed with what was already waved, and which fell over her face so that I could not see her features. "So you want to come here to board with us, my dear?" began the masked one, which was the signal for an exchange of grave winks between the hairdresser, the manicure, and the little slavey, Julia, who was pouring the hot water into the pitcher on the washstand. "If I could arrange it," I replied quickly, taking courage from the woman's kindly manner of putting the question, which was in such startling contrast to that of the dragon down-stairs. "You are a working girl, are you, my dear?" "I want to be. I'm looking for work now, and I hope to get a job in a few days. I understand your rates are very low, and that I can live here cheaper than almost anywhere else." "And who sent you here, my dear?" In answer to this I told her my story almost in totality, leaving out only such details as could not possibly have concerned her. Perfect candor, I was fast learning, was the only way in which one in my desperate situation could hope for any degree of sympathetic treatment, as the time for all silly pride was passed. Then Mrs. Pitbladder explained the system upon which the house was run. I could have a room all to myself for a dollar and a half a week, or I could sleep in the dormitory for ten cents a night, or fifty cents a week; all terms payable in advance. The latter fact she was particular to impress upon me. As to food, she named a price which fairly took away my breath. Six cents each for meals--six cents each for breakfast, dinner, and supper! I said at once I would become a boarder, and that I would take a cot in the dormitory, for which I would pay from night to night. At this juncture the girl who answered to the name of May finished undulating the last strand of gray hair, and as she lifted it off her mistress's face that lady raised her head and we looked at each other for the first time. She was somewhere between sixty-five and seventy, and very fat. Mrs. Pitbladder's face was a surprise to me, for all it was a round, red face--the very sort of face in which one would have expected good nature to repose. Its predominating features were a huge, beaked nose and high cheek-bones which encroached to an alarming degree upon the eye-sockets, wherein little dark, furtive eyes regarded me fixedly. It was a face which even the most unsophisticated observer could scarcely fail to characterize as that of a woman hardened in every sort of petty tyranny, a woman who, having the power to make others uncomfortable, found infinite pleasure in doing so, quite apart from any motive of selfish interest. To be sure, I did not read all this in Mrs. Pitbladder's face by the end of our first meeting. The supreme question to be settled, the only one which had for me a vital interest then, was how long I might still put off utter destitution in the event of my not finding work within the ensuing week. The terms were always in advance, Mrs. Pitbladder again repeated, as she entered my name and age in a long book which May brought from the dark mahogany desk that matched the rest of the well-made furniture in the spacious room. I would now pay her, she said, ten cents for the bed I was to sleep in that night, and my board money would be paid meal by meal to the woman in charge of the dining-room. I gave her a twenty-five-cent piece. I had remaining three other silver quarters. I watched my twenty-five-cent piece drop into Mrs. Pitbladder's purse, and heard the greedy mouth of that receptacle snap shut. "Mintie," Mrs. Pitbladder spoke briskly, "show this girl to the sitting-room, and then go and find Mrs. Lumley and tell her to come to me at once." Mintie, who had now finished lacing the matron's shoes, rose eagerly and, with a shy glance toward me, made for the door. I hesitated, and looked at Mrs. Pitbladder. "You may go now," she said, with a wave of the pudgy hand. "Excuse me," I replied, considerably abashed, quite as much by the curious looks of the little girls as by the annoyance of having to remind the matron about the fifteen cents change still due me--"excuse me, but I gave you twenty-five cents." "And I gave you your change, my dear," the matron returned suavely but decisively. "I beg your pardon for contradicting you," I replied firmly, and without taking my eyes from hers, which blinked unpleasantly. "You did _not_ give me any change." "Look in your purse and see," said Mrs. Pitbladder. "It is quite unnecessary," I replied; "but I will do so to satisfy you"; and I opened the purse again and showed my three remaining silver pieces, which to further satisfy her I took out upon my palm and then turned the purse's lining inside out. But Mrs. Pitbladder did not seem impressed. I for my part resolved to be equally insistent, inspired as I was with the determination that comes to desperate people. There were fifteen cents due me, and nobody should cheat me out of a single one of those precious pennies if I could possibly prevent it. There was a short silence in which we took each other's measure, the children looking on in evident enjoyment of the situation. Finally the old lady opened the purse again and gave me the change due, though she grumblingly maintained that it was I, not she, who was in error. When the door closed at last upon us, my small companion clutched my hand and gave it a jubilant squeeze. "Golly! that did me good," she whispered as we were going down-stairs. "She always lets on to make mistakes about the girls' change, only most of 'em is so scairt of her they just let her beat them out of it." While the child went to find Mrs. Lumley I waited in the sitting-room. It was an empty, ugly place, with bare floors and whitewashed walls, the latter decorated, like those of the office, with framed scriptural texts. Its furniture consisted of several long, slat-bottomed settees and a single large rocking-chair which, crowded with children, was swinging noisily over the bare boards. At our entrance the chair stopped rocking, and one of the children climbed out. It was Julia. She came promptly over to my side, while a half-dozen of the other children jumped off the benches and ran to the rocking-chair to squabble over the question of who should take the vacant place. "Did yez have a row?" she asked eagerly. "Say, did yez?" I evaded the question, thinking it neither advisable nor proper to satisfy the curiosity of the little mite. To divert her attention, I began questioning her about herself and her little companions--who were they, what were they, and how did they come to be here? "Why, don't you know?" the little one asked, looking at me in amazement. "We're waifs!" "Waifs! What sort of waifs?" "Why, just waifs." "But I didn't know this was an orphan-asylum," I said, looking about at the children sitting in rows of two and three upon the scattered settees. "Oh, no, ma'am. We're not orfants," the child hastened to correct me; "we're just waifs." "And where are your fathers and mothers, then?" I cried. "We ain't got none," Julia replied promptly, the little hand again stealing through the long sleeve and stroking my much-admired skirt. She had now snuggled down beside me upon the settee, and instinctively, rather than from any desire to show friendliness, I drew my arm about the small shoulders, which overture was interpreted as an invitation for the cropped head to nestle closer. "But if you haven't father or mothers, then you must be orphans," I reasoned,--an argument which made Julia straighten up suddenly and look at me in puzzled wonderment. "No, we ain't orfants, neither, exceptin' just a few that did onct have fathers and mothers, mebbe; but me and May Wistaria and Mintie Delancy--they was the girls you seen up-stairs in HER room--we never did have no fathers and mothers, we're just waifs, and so's them kids waifs too that's playing in the rocking-chair. They was all foundling-asylum kids." At this moment a thick-set woman in a black dress appeared in the doorway, which was a signal for all the little girls to make an onslaught upon her. They twined their arms about her large waist, they hung three and four upon each of her generous, kindly arms, and the smaller girls held on to her skirts. Thus encumbered, the good Mrs. Lumley introduced herself in an asthmatic voice which was scarcely more than a whisper, and in a manner as kindly as it was humble. Then she shoved the children back to their benches, and led me up-stairs to the dormitory; showing me the cot where I was to sleep, the lavatory where I would make my toilet in the mornings, and the bath-room where I had the privilege of taking a bath once a week. She also told me the rules of the house: first bell at six o'clock, when everybody in the dormitory must rise and dress; second bell at half-past six, when everybody must leave the dormitory, not to return until bedtime. As to that hour, it came at various times: for the waifs it was seven o'clock; for the regular lodgers, ten o'clock; and for the transients, from seven till twelve o'clock, at which hour the house was closed for the night. All this Mrs. Lumley repeated in a dreary monotone which seemed strangely out of keeping with the half-concealed kindliness which was revealed in her homely countenance. She was a working matron, a sort of upper servant, and had been three years in the place, which, I gradually gleaned from her, had been started as a home for destitute children and had eventually assumed the character and discharged the functions of a girls' lodging-house. Under what auspices the house was conducted she didn't know any more than did I, any more than I know to this day. There was a board of managers,--ladies who sometimes came to look at the dormitories and the bath-rooms and then went away again in their carriages; there was the matron, Mrs. Pitbladder, who had been there four or five years, she thought, but wasn't certain; there were several under-matrons, who acted as teachers to the children. What did the children study? Reading and writing and arithmetic and the Bible; and then, as soon as they were old enough, they were turned into the sewing-room, where they were taught dressmaking, or into the laundry, where they learned to do fine laundry-work. All this sounded just and good, and I began to alter my opinion of the place. I even began to think that perhaps Mrs. Pitbladder was merely absent-minded and a little crotchety; that she had not meant to forget my fifteen cents change. I did not know until several days later that the house did a large dressmaking and laundry business, and that their advertisement appeared, and does to this day appear, in all the daily newspapers. It was from the older girls in the dormitory, in whispered talks we had at night after we were in bed, that I learned this and innumerable other things, which my own observation during the weeks that followed served to confirm. To this home for working girls the waifs, the foundlings, came at all sorts of tender years, came from God only knows where--I could never find out exactly--some of them, perhaps, from city asylums, some from the families upon which they had been left as an encumbrance. They came as little children, and they went away as grown women. For them the home was practically a prison. Locked in here from morning till night, week in, week out, year after year, they were prisoners at all save certain stated times when they were taken abroad for a walk under charge of the matrons. In return for a scant education in the rudimentary branches, and a very generous tuition in the drudgery of the kitchen, the laundry, and the sewing-room, they received in all these years only their board and clothes and a certain nominal protection against the vices and corruptions of the street and the gutter from which they had been snatched. "You won't eat here?" Mrs. Lumley inquired as we were going down-stairs again. To which I replied with a "Yes, why not? I have arranged with Mrs. Pitbladder to do so." We were on the landing where the stairs turned into the ground-floor. She glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Pitbladder's door, into which a small blue-aproned figure at this moment was passing with a tray laden with Mrs. Pitbladder's breakfast. When it had closed again, she looked at me hesitatingly, as if fearful of taking me too far into her confidence. Then, perhaps reading a certain unconscious reassurance there, she replied with a brief-- "I wouldn't, if I was you. You can't stand it." "But I'll have to stand it," I returned; "I'm as poor as anybody here." She shook her head. "But you couldn't work on it--you're not used to it. I can see that. Besides, it isn't so cheap as you think it'll be. You'd better go out. I wouldn't even eat here to-day. I wouldn't begin it. There's a little lunch-room over on Third Avenue where you can get enough to eat, and just as cheap as here." The woman's manner was so mysterious, and withal so very earnest, not to say urgent, that I felt instinctively that there was something more in all she said than the mere depreciation of the quality of the victuals she warned me against. So I was not surprised when she said slowly and insinuatingly, as though feeling every step of the way: "You know the misunderstanding you had this morning--about the change?" "Yes," I answered, more mystified than ever. Then, as she looked me full in the eyes, light dawned upon me, and I saw the old woman up-stairs in a character as startling as it was infamous. "Well," Mrs. Lumley said, when she saw that I understood; and with that she again dropped into her habitual expression of bovine stolidness. We parted at the foot of the stairs, she to disappear into the back of the house, and I to join the waifs in the unfriendly sitting-room. The afternoon I spent sitting in Union Square, whence I went at half-past five for a bite of supper in the dairy lunch-room where I had made my toilet in the morning. I had had no luncheon, feeling that I could not afford more than two meals a day now. I sat a long time over my cup of coffee and three hard rolls. I did not want to return to that dreary house until the lamps should be lighted and it was time to go to bed. The very thought of returning to sit with those forlorn waifs, in that cheerless whitewashed sitting-room, was appalling. I returned a few minutes before seven, just in time to hear the children singing the last stanza of "Beulah Land" as I passed up-stairs to the dormitory on the third floor. An old woman sat outside the door, crocheting a shawl in such light as she could get from a blue-shaded night-lamp that hung in the middle of the great whitewashed room within. She looked up from her work long enough to challenge me with a shrewd, impertinent look of inquiry, demanded to know if I had any lead-pencils about my person, and, receiving a polite negative, allowed me to pass. I was not the first arrival. In the dim light I could make out, here and there, a bulging surface in the row of gray-blanketed cots, while in the quiet I could hear the deep breathing of the sleepers. For they all seemed to be asleep, save one who tossed from one side to the other and sighed wearily. The latter was not far away from my own cot, and before I had finished undressing she was sitting up looking at me. "I'd give anything for a drink of water," she said softly. "Why, is there no water?" I whispered. The words were not out of my mouth before there was a thumping upon the floor outside, and the voice of the beldame spoke sharply: "No talking, girls!" The thirsty girl dropped back to her pillow, and I crept under the blanket. Later on I learned that each must have her drink of water before entering the dormitory, because, once there, it was an iron-clad rule that we should not leave until after the rising-bell had rung at six the next morning. I also learned, later on, that had there not been also an iron-clad rule against carrying lead-pencils into the dormitory, the snowy-white walls were like as not to be scrawled with obscenities during the night hours. All sorts of girls seeking a night's refuge drifted into this working-girls' home. Most of them were "ne'er-do-weels"; some of them were girls of lax morality, though very few were essentially "bad." When, however, they did happen to be "bad," they were very bad indeed. And these lead-pencil inscriptions they left behind them were the frightful testimony of their innate depravity. Fortunately for me, I was quite ignorant on this first night of what the character of the girls under the gray blankets might in all possibility have been, and I settled myself to go to sleep with the thought that a working-girls' home was not half bad, after all. A little while later there was a fresh burst of childish voices and the clatter of shoes on the stairs. It was the orphans marching up to bed singing "Happy Day!" The music stopped when they reached the dormitory door, which they entered silently, two by two. Their undressing was but the matter of a few moments, so methodical and precise was every movement. The small aprons and petticoats were folded across the foot of each cot, and, on top, the long black stockings laid neatly. Each pair of copper-toed shoes was placed in exactly the same spot under the foot of each cot, and each little body, after wriggling itself into a gray flannellet nightgown, dropped to its knees and bowed its head upon the blanket in silent prayer. After they had tucked themselves in bed a voice very near me, and which I recognized as Julia's, whispered: "May, are yez asleep?" "No," muttered May. "Say, is to-morrow bean day or molasses day?" "Bean," replied May; and then all was silent in the dormitory, and so remained save for the interruption caused by the tiptoe entrance of some newly arrived "transient," some homeless wanderer driven here to seek a night refuge. In the morning we washed and combed in a large common toilet-room. There were only a dozen face-bowls, and these we had to watch our chance to pounce upon. I waited until the rush was over, and after the orphans had scurried down to their breakfast I performed a more leisurely toilet. Two other girls were there, doing the same thing. I recognized them as transient lodgers, like myself, wanderers that had drifted in. Both were very young, and one, whom I had heard sigh, and who groaned continuously in her sleep, very, very pretty. The latter entered into conversation as we combed before the long, narrow glass. "Do you stay here all the time?" I asked. No, she had been living with her "lady-friend"; and that lady-friend having departed to the country for lack of employment until times would pick up, she was looking about for a boarding-house. The subject of work gave me my opportunity, and I asked her if she knew of a job. She shook her head. She was a skirt-hand; she had worked in a Broadway sweat-shop, and didn't know anything about any other sort of work. As we talked she finished her toilet, putting on as the finishing touch a great picture-hat and a scanty black Eton. Ready for the street, you would have little dreamed that she had slept in a ten-cent lodging-house. After going through a sort of inspection by the old woman at the entrance, during which it was ascertained we had not pilfered anything, we were allowed to depart. XII IN WHICH I SPEND A HAPPY FOUR WEEKS MAKING ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS Bright and early, after a four-cent breakfast, I was on my way to find the place where I had read the sign, "Flower-makers Wanted.--Paid while learning." It was not difficult to find, even had I not had the number so securely tucked away in my memory. "Flowers & Feathers," in giant gilded letters, I read a block away, as I dodged electric cars and motor vehicles, and threaded the maze of delivery wagons and vans. I had a hasty interview with the superintendent, a large and effusively polite man, whose plump white hands sparkled with gems. He put me on the freight-elevator and told the boy to show me to Miss Higgins. At the third floor the iron doors were thrown open, and I stepped into what seemed to be a great, luxuriant garden. The room was long and wide, and golden with April sunshine, and in the April breeze that blew through the half-open windows a million flowers fluttered and danced in the ecstacy of spring. Flowers, flowers, flowers everywhere; piled high on the tables, tossed in mad confusion on the floor, and strung in long garlands to the far end of the big room. "The lady with the black hair, sitting down there by them American Beauties," said the elevator-boy, waving his hand toward the rear. I passed down a narrow path between two rows of tables that looked like blossoming hedges. Through the green of branches and leaves flashed the white of shirt-waists, and among the scarlet and purple and yellow and blue of myriad flowers bobbed the smiling faces of girls as they looked up from their task long enough to inspect the passing stranger. Here were no harsh sounds, no rasping voices, no shrill laughter, no pounding of engines. Everything just as one would expect to find it in a flower-garden--soft voices humming like bees, and gentle merriment that flowed musically as a brook over stones. "The lady with the black hair" sat before a cleared space on a table banked on either side with big red roses. In front of her were three or four glasses, each containing one salmon-colored rose, fresh and fragrant from the hothouse. Leaning forward, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her palm, she was staring intently at these four splendid blooms. Then she picked up a half-finished muslin rose and compared them. All this I saw while I waited timidly for her to look up. But she did not see me. She was absorbed in the study of the living rose. At last I summoned courage to inquire if she was Miss Higgins. She started, looked up quickly, and nodded her head, with a smile that displayed a row of pretty teeth. Her manner was cordial. "Have you ever worked at flowers before?" she asked. "No." "Ever worked at feathers?" "No." "Well, the best I can do is to put you at blossom-making to-day, and see how you take to it. It's too bad, though, you don't know anything about feathers; for the flower season ends in a month, anyway, and then I have to lay off all my girls till September, unless they can make feathers too. Then they get jobs on the next floor. There'll be lots of work here, though, for a month, and we might take you back in September." The tone was so kindly, the interest so genuine, that I was prompted to explain my situation, assuring her I should be glad to get work even for four weeks. As a result, I was put on Rosenfeld's pay-roll for three and a half dollars per week, with half a day's extra pay for night work: the latter had been a necessity three or four nights every week for six months, and was likely to continue for two, maybe three, weeks longer. Besides the assurance of extra pay from this source, Miss Higgins also intimated, as she conducted me to one of the tables, that if I was "able to make good" she would raise me to four dollars at the end of the week. Soon I was "slipping up" poppies under the instruction of Bessie, a dreamy-eyed young Jewess. The process was simple enough, to watch the skilled fingers of the other girls, but it was very tedious to my untried hand. In awkward, self-conscious fashion I began to open out the crimped wads of scarlet muslin which came to us hot from the crimping-machine. "You mustn't smooth the creases out too much," Bessie protested; and with a deft touch, the right pull here, the proper flattening there, the muslin scrap blossomed into a fluttering corolla. "Don't get discouraged. We've all got to learn," one of the girls at the far end of the table called out cheerily. "Yes, and don't be afraid of making a mistake," put in my vis-à-vis, a pretty Italian. "We all make mistakes while we're learning; but you'll find this a nice place to work, and Miss Higgins is so lovely--she's awful nice, too, to the new girls." "Yes, indeed," added Bessie. "It isn't many years since she worked at the table herself. I've often heard her tell about the first day she went to work down at Golderberg's." "That's the worst in town," piped another; "I stayed there just two days. That was enough for me. Whenever the girls disagree down there, they step out into the hall and lick each other. First day I was there, one girl got two ribs broken. Her rival just walked all over her." "What did they do with the girls?" "Oh, nothing. They made it all up, and were as sweet as two turtle-doves, walking around the workroom with their arms around each other." "Well, that's what it is to work in those cheap shops," commented Annie Welshons, of the big blue eyes and yellow hair. "If they ever do get respectable girls, they won't stay long." As we worked the conversation ran easily. The talk was in good, up-to-date English. There was rarely a mispronounced word, or a slip in grammar; and there was just enough well-selected slang to make the dialogue bright and to stamp the chatterers as conversant with the live questions of the day. The topics at all times bespoke clean minds and an intelligent point of view. "Are you American born?" Bessie inquired by and by. The question sounded unusual, almost unnecessary, until I discovered that out of the eight girls in our immediate circle, only half were native Americans. My vis-à-vis, Therese, was a Neapolitan; Mamie, a Genoese; Amelia was born in Bohemia; the girl with the yellow hair was North German; and Nellie declared she was from County Killarney and mighty glad of it. "Well, I'm an American," said Bessie, tossing her head in mock scorn, as she cleared away a quantity of the flowers that had been meanwhile accumulating on the wire lines. Therese laughed. "But only by the skin of your teeth--an eleventh-hour arrival." Then she turned to me and whispered that Bessie was born only two weeks after her mother came to this country. "Better late than never," laughed Bessie, casting a backward and withering glance at the aliens as she moved away with her trayful of scarlet blossoms to the branchers' table, where another relay of workers twisted green leaves among the scarlet and tied them in wreaths and bunches. By eleven o'clock I had made two dozen poppies, which Amelia told me was "just grand for a beginner." I began to feel confident that I should hold the job, and my fingers flew. Into the glue-pot at my right hand I dipped my little finger, picking up at the same moment with my other hand a bit of paper-covered wire. On the end of the wire was a bunch of short yellow threads, which were touched lightly with my glue-smeared finger, the wire being held between the thumb and forefinger. With the free left hand, I caught up a fluttering corolla, touching its perforated center with glue; then I "slipped up" the wire about an inch, took up another corolla in the same way, and then drew the two to the "pipped" or heart end of the wire, where they now became a big red flower with a golden eye. A bit of dark-green rubber tubing drawn over the wire completed the process, the end was bent into a hook, and the full-blown poppy hung on the line. At a quarter past eleven a little girl wearing an immense flower-hat and carrying a large market-basket came and asked us for our lunch orders. She carried a long piece of pasteboard and wrote as the girls dictated. One could buy anything one wanted, Bessie explained; bread and butter, eggs, chops, steak, potatoes, canned goods, for which there was ample provision for cooking on the gas-stoves used by the rose-makers to heat their pincers. When the little girl was gone I learned that she was one of the errand-runners, and that this was her daily task. "How far does she go to market?" "Over to First Avenue." "Isn't that pretty far for a small girl to carry such a heavy load?" "Oh, she doesn't mind it. All the errand-girls are tickled to death to get the job. The grocers pay them ten per cent. commission on all they buy." It lacked but a few minutes of twelve when the child returned, panting under her burden. "How much did you clear to-day?" somebody asked. "Twenty-one cents," the child answered, blushing as red as the poppies. When Miss Higgins slipped her tall, light figure into her stylish jacket and began to pin on her hat it was always a sign that the lunch-hour had come. One hundred and twenty girls popped up from their hiding-places behind the hedges, which had grown to great height since morning. In a trice spaces were cleared on the tables. Cups and saucers and knives and forks appeared as if by magic. In that portion of the room where the crimping-machines stood preparations for cooking commenced. The pincers and tongs of the rose-makers, and the pressing-molds of the leaf-workers, were taken off the fires, and in their place appeared stew-pans and spiders, and pots and kettles. Bacon and chops sputtered, steak sizzled; potatoes, beans, and corn stewed merrily. What had been but lately a flower-garden, by magic had become a mammoth kitchen filled with appetizing sounds and delicious odors. White-aproned cooks scurried madly. It was like a school-girls' picnic. As they moved about I noticed how well dressed and neat were my shop-mates in their white shirt-waists and dark skirts. Indeed, in the country village I had come from any one of them would have appeared as the very embodiment of fashion. Cooked and served at last, we ate our luncheon at leisure, and with the luxury of snowy-white table-cloths and napkins of tissue-paper, which needs of the workroom were supplied in prodigal quantities. During this hour I heard a great deal about the girls and their work. They told me, as they told all new-comers, of the wonderful rise of Miss Higgins, who began as a table-worker at three and a half dollars a week, and was now making fifty dollars. They told me of her rise from the best rose-maker in New York to designer and forewoman. They dwelt on her kindness to everybody, discussed her pretty clothes, and wondered which of her beaux she was going to marry. All afternoon I "slipped up" poppies. At five Miss Higgins came to tell me I was "doing fine," and that I should have four dollars instead of three and a half. This made the work easier than ever, and my fingers flew happily till six o'clock. Then we cooked dinner as we did our luncheon, but we took only half an hour for our evening meal, so as to get off at half-past nine instead of ten. At night the work was harder, as the room became terribly hot from the gas-jets and from the stoves where the rose-makers heated their tools. The faces grew tired and pale, and the girls sang to keep themselves awake. "The Rabbi's Daughter," "The City of Sighs and Tears," and "The Banquet in Misery Hall" were the favorite songs. A rising breeze swept up Broadway, now almost deserted, and rushed through the windows, setting all our blossoms fluttering. Outside a soft, warm spring rain began to fall on the tired, sleepy city. One week, two weeks, passed in these pleasant surroundings. I was still "slipping up" poppies all day long, and every evening till half-past nine. Then I went home to the little cot in the dormitory of the "home." It would seem that all the world's wife and daughters were to wear nothing but poppies that season. But ours was only a small portion of Rosenfeld's output. Violets, geraniums, forget-me-nots, lilies-of-the-valley, apple-blossoms, daisies, and roses of a score of varieties were coming to life in this big garden in greater multitudes even than our common poppies. Forty girls worked on roses alone. The rose-makers are the swells of the trade. They are the best paid, the most independent, and always in competitive demand during the flower season. Any one can learn with patience how to make other kinds of flowers; but the rose-maker is born, and the thoroughly experienced rose-maker is an artist. Her work has a distinction, a touch, a "feel," as she calls it, which none but the artist can give. The star rose-maker of the shop, next to the forewoman (who was reputed the finest in America), was about twenty-five. Her hair was fluffy and brown, and her eyes big and dark blue. She was of Irish birth, and had been in America about fourteen years. One day I stopped at her chair and asked how long it took her to learn. "I'm still learning," she replied, without looking up from the tea-rose in her fingers. "It was seven years before I considered myself first-class; and though I'm at it now thirteen, I don't consider I know it all yet." She worked rapidly, flecking the delicate salmon-colored petals with her glue-finger, and pasting them daintily around the fast-growing rose. I watched her pinch and press and crease each frail petal with her hot iron instruments, and when she had put on a thick rubber stem and hung the finished flower on the line she looked up and smiled. "Want to see a rose-maker's hand?" she remarked, turning her palm up for my inspection. She laughed aloud at my exclamation of horror. Calloused and hard as a piece of tortoise-shell, ridged with innumerable corrugations, and hopelessly discolored, with the thumb and forefinger flattened like miniature spades, her right hand had long ago lost nearly all semblance to the other. "It is the hot irons do that," she said, drawing her pincers from the fire and twirling them in the air until they grew cool enough to proceed with the work. "We use them every minute. We crease the petals with them, and crinkle and vein and curl the outer edges. And we always have to keep them just hot enough not to scorch the thin muslin." "How many can you make a day?" "That depends on the rose. This sort--" picking up a small, cheap June rose--"this sort a fair worker can make a gross of a day. But I have made roses where five single flowers were considered a fine day's job. Each of those roses had one hundred and seventy-five pieces, however; and there were eighteen different shapes and sizes of petals; and besides that, every one of those pieces had to be put in its own place. If one piece had been wrongly applied, the whole rose would have been spoiled. But they don't make many of such complicated roses in this country. They have to import them. They haven't enough skilled workers to fill big orders, and it doesn't pay the manufacturers to bother with small orders." The girl did all the fine work of the place, and had always more waiting to be done than she could have accomplished with four hands instead of two. She had no rival to whom this surplus work could be turned over. The dull season had no terrors for her, nor would it have had for her comrades had they been equally skilled. She made from twenty-two to twenty-five dollars a week, all the year round, and was too busy ever to take a vacation. The other girls averaged nine dollars, and if they got eight months' work a year they considered themselves fortunate. They were clever and industrious, but they had not learned to make the finer grade of roses. The third week came and went all too quickly, and we were now entering on the fourth. Plainly the season was drawing to its close. The orders that had come pouring in from milliners and modistes all over the land for six months were now dwindling daily. The superintendent and the "boss" walked through the department every day, and we heard them talk about overproduction. Friday the atmosphere was tense with anxiety. The girls' faces were grave. Almost without exception, there were people at home upon whom this annual "lay-off" fell with tragic force. I have not talked with one of them who did not have to work, and they have always some one at home to care for. A few were widows with small children at home or in the day nursery. One can tell little, by their appearance, about these secret burdens. Each girl wears a mask. The neat costume, made with her own hands in midnight hours snatched from hard-earned rest, is no evidence of extravagance, or even of comfortable circumstances. It is only that manifestation of proper pride and self-respect which the best type of wage-earning woman is never without. If they sometimes talk happily about theaters and parties and beaux, if occasionally there is a brief spell of innocent hilarity in the workroom, it is only the inevitable and legitimate outcropping of healthy and wholesome animal spirits, of a vigorous hope which not even the hard conditions of life can crush. On Saturday morning many of the girls sat idle. "Don't work too fast, or you'll work yourself out of a job," one cried in jest; but the meaning was one of dead earnest. And as the day passed the prophecy came true to one after another. In the afternoon we made a feint of work by papering wires and opening petals for those who were still busy. The hours passed drearily. Miss Higgins was going over her pay-roll, checking off the names of the girls who could make feathers as well as flowers. All others were to be laid off indefinitely that night. We watched anxiously for the moment, which was not far off. "I hope Miss Higgins won't cry--she did last year. It breaks her up terribly to let us off," somebody remarked. "It's a long time to be idle--till September," I suggested to the girl across the work-table. She looked up in surprise. "Idle!" she exclaimed. "But we are never idle. We daren't. We get other jobs." "What?" "Oh, everything: waitress in a summer boarding-house, novelty goods, binderies, shirt-waists, stores, anything we can get." "She's coming," some one whispered. Everybody tried to look unconcerned. Those who had no work to claim attention looked carefully at their finger-nails, or found sudden necessity to adjust collars and belts. Miss Higgins passed along the tables, bending over the heads and speaking to each in a low voice. The tears were running down her cheeks. Those retained concealed their happiness as best they could, and spoke words of sympathy and encouragement to their less fortunate companions. The warrants were received with a stoicism that was more pathetic than tears. From the far end of the room I heard an unaccustomed sound, and turning, I saw the forewoman, who had dropped into a chair at the forget-me-not table, her face buried in her arms, and sobbing like a child. It was the signal that her cruel duty was done, that the last "lay-off" sentence had been pronounced, that the work for the day and for the "season" was over, that it had come time to say good-by. "Good-by!" The voices echoed as we trooped down-stairs to the street door. "Good-by! Good-by!" The lingering farewells rose faintly above the noises of Broadway, as we scattered at the corner. Good-by to Rosenfeld's--now no longer a reality, but rather a memory of idyllic beauty--the workroom bright with sunshine and flashing with color, with the faces of the workers bent over the fashioning of rose and poppy, and best of all, the kind hearts and the quick sympathy that blossomed there as luxuriantly as the flowers themselves. Good-by to my four happiest weeks in the workaday world. XIII THREE "LADY-FRIENDS," AND THE ADVENTURES THAT BEFALL THEM Into every human experience there must come sooner or later the bitter consciousness that Nature is remorselessly cruel; that she laughs loudest when we are most miserable; that she is never so bright, never so beautiful as in the darkest hour of our need; that she ever makes mock of our agony and ever smiles serenely at our despair. Such, at least, were my feelings in those long, beautiful June days that followed close on the "lay-off" at Rosenfeld's. Dear little Bessie! poor unhappy Eunice! This chapter of my experiences is so dominated by their personalities that I shall devote a few words to recounting the circumstances which brought us together and sent us faring forth on a summer's day to seek new fortunes, three "lady-friends," arm in arm. I make no apology for saying "lady-friends." I know all the prejudices of polite society, which smiles at what is esteemed to be a piece of vulgar vanity characteristic of the working-girl world. And yet I use the term here in all seriousness, in all good faith; not critically, not playfully, but tenderly. Because in the humble world in which our comradeship was formed there is none other to designate the highest type of friendship, no other phrase to define that affection between girl and girl which is as the love of sisters. In the great workaday world where we toiled and hoped and prayed and suffered together for a brief period we were called "the three lady-friends" by our shop-mates, and such we were to each other always, and such we shall be throughout the chapter; and I know, if Bessie and Eunice were here to-night, looking over my shoulder as I write the account of that sordid little tragedy and the part they played in it,--I know they would clasp their rough little hands in mine and nod approval. Bessie had been my "learner" at Rosenfeld's. I still remember her exactly as I saw her that first time, a slender little figure bending over the work-table. Her shirt-waist was snowy-white, and fastened down--oh, so securely!--under the narrow leather belt; she had a wealth of straight blonde hair of that clear, transparent quality which, when heaped high on her head, looked like a mass of spun glass; her cheeks, which were naturally very pale, burned a deep crimson as they reflected the light on the poppies beneath; and after a while, when she raised her head, I saw that her eyes were blue, and that her profile, sharp and clear cut, was that of a young Jewess. I had thought her to be about twenty-two,--for, pretty and fresh as she was, she looked every day of it,--but I found out later that she was not then eighteen. We had not been long getting acquainted--that is, as well acquainted as was possible in a busy shop like Rosenfeld's. Indeed, it would be a strange, sad world--stranger and sadder than it really is--if Bessie and I had not sooner or later established a certain bond of intimacy. Sitting opposite at the same work-table, we made poppies together and exchanged our little stories. She had been working, since she was fifteen, at all sorts of odd jobs: cash-girl in a department store; running errands for a fashionable modiste; cashier in a dairy lunch-room; making picture-frames. This was her second season at flower-making, and she liked it better than anything she had ever tried, if only there was work all the year round; for she couldn't afford to sit idle through the long summer months--well, I should say not!--with eight small brothers and sisters at home, and a rather incompetent father, and sixteen dollars a month rent! The experiences of a score of shops, and the motley crew of people she had worked with in these busy years, Bessie in her careless, simple narrative had the power to invest with lifelike reality. Scarcely less interesting than all this to me was my own story to Bessie, which found ready sympathy in her tender heart, especially that part of it that had to do with the home for working girls where I was now living. For to Bessie, with her inborn racial love of family, nothing was so much to be pitied as the unfortunates who found shelter there. She seemed to take a certain sort of consolation for her own hard life in hearing the sordid details of the wretched waifs and strays that came wandering into the "home" at all hours of the day and night. I told her about the dormitory where we slept side by side in gray-blanketed cots, each girl's clothes folded neatly across the footboard; of the cross old dragon who sat outside in the brightly lighted passageway, and snored all night long, when she should have been attending to her duties,--which duties were to keep an eye on us lest we rob one another of the few pennies we might have under our pillows, or that we might not scrawl obscene verses on the whitewashed walls, in case we had succeeded in smuggling in a forbidden lead-pencil. For such offenses, and they happened only too often, we were all held equally guilty in the eyes of the sour, autocratic matron. As each night brought a fresh relay of girls to the dormitory, it was productive of a new series of episodes, which I related faithfully to Bessie. That is how she became interested in Eunice. The latter had come tiptoeing into the dormitory one night long after the other girls were fast asleep, and without undressing threw herself on the vacant cot next to mine. In the lamplight that shone from the passageway full on her face, I saw, as I peeped above the rough blanket, that the new-comer was no common type of waif and stray. There was an elusive charm in the glimpse of profile and in the delicate aquiline features, a certain suggestion of beauty, were it not for the white, drawn look that enveloped them like a death-mask. As I was gazing furtively at her she turned on her side, moaning as only a girl can moan when peace of mind is gone forever. Such sounds were not uncommon in the dormitory. Several times, waking in the night, I had listened pityingly to the same half-smothered lament. On this night I had fallen asleep as usual, when suddenly a shriek rang out, and I wakened to hear the angry accents of the beldam protesting against "hysterics," and the indistinct muttering of the girlish sleepers whose rest the stranger had so inconsiderately disturbed. In a few moments everything was quiet again, our old woman had renewed her snoring, and then the new-comer, repressing her anguish as best she could, slid kneeling to the floor. It was then, all sleep gone for that night, I reached out my hand and touched the sleeve of her black dress. From that moment we became friends. The information which she vouchsafed about herself was meager and not of a character to throw much light upon her former condition and environment. It was obvious that there had been a tragedy in her life, and I instinctively guessed what that tragedy was, although I respected the reserve she threw around her and asked no indiscreet questions. She was fairly well educated, had been brought up in a small New Jersey village, and had been a stenographer until she went to a telephone office to tend a switchboard. Between that job and her advent in the "home" was an obvious hiatus, which at times she vaguely referred to as a period wherein she "lost her grip on everything." She had no money, and her clothes were even shabbier than my own, and she was too discouraged even to look for work. Her cot and three meager meals a day, consisting of bread and tea for breakfast and supper, and bread and coffee and soup for dinner, she received, as did all the transient boarders, in return for a ten-hour-day's work in the "home" kitchen. After a few nights she ceased moaning, and settled gradually into a hopeless apathy, while over her deep gray eyes there grew a film of silent misery. Stirred by my fragmentary accounts of Eunice's wretchedness, the generous-hearted Bessie one day suggested that we take her with us to look for a job as soon as the anticipated "lay-off" notice came into effect at Rosenfeld's. And so, on the Monday morning following that dreaded event, Bessie met Eunice and me at the lower right-hand corner of Broadway and Grand Street, and together we applied for work at the R---- Underwear Company, which had advertised that morning for twenty operators. "Ever run a power Singer?" queried the foreman. "No, but we can learn. We're all quick," answered Bessie, who had volunteered to act as spokesman. "Yes, I guess you can learn all right, but you won't make very much at first. All come together?... So! Well, then, I guess you'll want to work in the same room," and with that he ushered us into a very inferno of sound, a great, yawning chaos of terrific noise. The girls, who sat in long rows up and down the length of the great room, did not raise their eyes to the new-comers, as is the rule in less strenuous workrooms. Every pair of eyes seemed to be held in fascination upon the flying and endless strip of white that raced through a pair of hands to feed itself into the insatiable maw of the electric sewing-machine. Every face, tense and stony, bespoke a superb effort to concentrate mind and body, and soul itself, literally upon the point of a needle. Every form was crouched in the effort to guide the seam through the presser-foot. And piled between the opposing phalanxes of set faces were billows upon billows of foamy white muslin and lace--the finished garments wrought by the so-many dozen per hour, for the so-many cents per day,--and wrought, too, in this terrific, nerve-racking noise. The foreman led us into the middle of the room, which was lighted by gas-jets that hung directly over the girls' heads, although the ends of the shop had bright sunshine from the windows. He seemed a good-natured, respectable sort of man, of about forty, and was a Jew. Bessie and me he placed at machines side by side, and Eunice a little farther down the line. Then my first lesson began. He showed me how to thread bobbin and needle, how to operate ruffler and tucker, and also how to turn off and on the electric current which operated the machinery. My first attempt to do the latter was productive of a shock to the nerves that could not have been greater if, instead of pressing the harmless little lever under the machine with my knee, I had accidently exploded a bomb. The foreman laughed good-naturedly at my fright. "You'll get used to it by and by," he shouted above the noise; "but like as not for a while you won't sleep very good nights--kind of nervous; but you'll get over that in a week or so," and he ducked his head under the machine to adjust the belt. Suddenly, above all the frenzied crashing of the machines came a sound, half scream, half cackle: "Yi! yi! my pretty one, you'll get used to it by and by; you'll get used to anything in this world." It was an old woman's voice, and looking across the table, I saw a merry-eyed, toothless old crone, who was grinning and nodding at me. "Hello! hello there, Miriam! what's eating you now?" shouted the foreman, emerging and scrambling to his feet as he turned to get Bessie started. But the strange old creature only grinned wider and screeched, "Yi! yi!" louder than ever. But I had not time, either, to look at or listen to her now, as I leaned over the machine and practised at running a straight seam. Ah, the skill of these women and girls, and of the strange creature opposite, who can make a living at this torturing labor! How very different, how infinitely harder it is, as compared with running an ordinary sewing-machine. The goods that my nervous fingers tried to guide ran every wrong way. I had no control whatever over the fearful velocity with which the needle danced along the seam. In utter discouragement, I stopped trying for a moment, and watched the girl at my right. She was a swarthy, thick-lipped Jewess, of the type most common in such places, but I looked at her with awe and admiration. In Rachel Goldberg's case the making of muslin, lace-trimmed corset-covers was an art rather than a craft. She was a remarkable operator even among scores of experts at the R----. Under her stubby, ill-kept hands ruffles and tucks and insertion bands and lace frills were wrought with a beauty and softness of finish, and a speed and precision of workmanship, that made her the wonder and envy of the shop. And with what ease she seemed to do it all, despite the riveted eyes and tense-drawn muscles of her expressionless face! Suddenly her machine stopped, she looked up with a loud yawn, and stretched her arms above her head. She acknowledged the flattery of my look with a patronizing smile and a "How-do-you-think-you're-going-to-like-your-job?" I answered the conventional question in the usual way, and remarked that she sewed as if she had done it for ever and ever, and as if it were no work at all. She shook her head. "Yes, I've worked a long time at it, but my shoulder aches as bad this morning as it did when I was a learner like you," and she pressed the power-lever and again bent over the tucking. At my left Bessie was also practising on running seams, and a little farther down we saw poor Eunice struggling at the same hopeless lesson. The foreman, whose name proved to be Isaacs,--"Abe" Isaacs,--brought us our first "lot" of work. Mine consisted of six dozen coarse muslin corset-covers, which were already seamed together, and which I was shown how to "finish" with an embroidery yoke and ruffled edging about the arm's-eye. There is no basting, no pinning together of pieces; all the work is free-hand, and must be done with infinite exactness. I must hold the embroidery and the finishing strips of beading on the edge of the muslin with an exact nicety that will insure the edges of all three being caught in one seam; a process difficult enough on any sewing-machine, under any circumstances, but doubly so when the lightest touch sends the three-ply fabric under the needle with an incalculable velocity. Result of my first hour's work: I had spoiled a dozen garments. Try as I would, I invariably lost all control of my materials, and the needle plunged right and left--everywhere, in fact, except along the straight and narrow way laid out for it. And, to make matters still worse, I was painfully conscious that my old woman vis-à-vis was laughing at my distress with her irritating "Yi, yi!" As I spoiled each garment I thrust it into the bottom of a green pasteboard box under the table, which held my allotment of work, and from the top of the box grabbed up a fresh piece. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Bessie was doing the same thing, although what we were going to do with them, or how account for such wholesale devastation of goods, we were too perturbed to consider. At last, however, after repeated trials, and by guiding the seam with laborious care, I succeeded in completing one garment without disaster; and I had just started another, when--crash!--flying shuttles and spinning bobbins and swirling wheels came to a standstill. My sewing-machine was silent, as were all the others in the great workroom. Something had happened to the dynamo. There was a howl of disappointment. "Yi, yi!" screamed the old woman, throwing up her hands in a gesture of unutterable disgust; and then, catching my eye, her wrinkled old lips parted in a smile of friendly interest. "How many did ye bungle?" she chuckled, leaning over and looking furtively up and down the room, as if afraid of being caught talking to me. I blushed in confusion that was half fright, and she raised a forefinger menacingly: "Yi! yi! ye thought I didn't see ye sneaking the spoiled truck into the green box; but old Miriam's got sharp eyes, she has, and she likes to watch you young uns when you comes in first. You're not the only one. They all spoil lots before they learn to make a living out of it. There's lots like ye!" and stooping over, she drew a handful of my botched work out of the box and began to rip the stitching. "That's all right; I'm glad to help ye!" she protested. "And sure, if we don't help each other, who's a-going to help us poor devils, I'd like to know?" I, too, busied myself with the task of ripping, which I saw Bessie and Eunice were also doing; in fact, all the new-comers of the morning could be thus singled out. The practised hands availed themselves of the enforced rest by yawning and stretching their arms, and by comparing the earnings of the morning; for we all worked on piece-work. Rachel Goldberg had finished four dozen of extra-fine garments, which meant seventy-five cents, and it was not yet eleven o'clock. She would make at least one dollar and sixty cents before the day was over, provided we did not have any serious breakdowns. She watched the clock impatiently,--every minute she was idle meant a certain fraction of a penny lost,--and crouched sullenly over her machine for the signal. "What are you thinking about, Miriam?" a frowsy-headed girl asked, giving the wink to the crowd. The generous-hearted old lady looked up from the task she was helping me to do, and raising her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the gaslight, peered down the long line of girls until she placed the speaker. "Yi, yi! Ye want to know what I'm thinking about? Well, mebbe, Beckie Frankenstein, I'm thinking what a beautiful world this is, and what a fine time you and me has," and the strange creature broke into a laugh that was more terrible than a sob. "Ah, there you go again, Miriam! What's eatin' you to-day?" cried the foreman, as he came along to inspect the work; and seeing Miriam undoing my blunders, asked, "Who did that?" Before I could put in a half-frightened acknowledgment, my intercessor had spoken up: "And whose 'u'd them be but mine, Abe Isaacs?"--scowling at me to keep silence when I opened my mouth to contradict her. The foreman looked incredulous. "You, Miriam! Do you mean to tell me it was you spoiled all that work? What's the matter with you to-day, anyway? If you don't do better, I'll have to fire you." There was a good-natured tone, a kindly compassion, in Abe Isaacs's voice which was not in accord with the words; and when he turned and asked me what I had done, there was no fear in my heart. I answered by looking significantly at old Miriam. "I thought as much," he muttered under his breath, and passed on to Bessie. "Poor old Miriam, she's teched up here," one of the girls explained, tapping her forehead. "They say it was the old sweat-shops put her out of her mind, and I guess it's so, all right. My mother knows two ladies that was made crazy sewing pants up to Sternberg's. But that was long ago, when they used to treat the girls so bad. Things is ever so much better now, only Miriam can't get used to the improvements. She's a hundred years behind the times." I was still lost in admiring wonder of Rachel Goldberg's skill. I asked her how long it would take me to learn to do it as well. She did not have a chance to answer before a harsh laugh was heard and a new voice asserted itself. "Oh-ho! you'll never learn to work like her, and you'd better find it out now. I seen you running your machine, and I says to myself, 'That girl 'll never make her salt making underclothes.' Pants 'd be more in your line. To make money on muslin you've got to be born to 't." "That's no lie, either," muttered another. "You bet it ain't!" declared the expert Rachel. "My mother was working on shirts for a straight ten months before I was born." In half an hour we had resumed work, and at half-past twelve we stopped for another half-hour and ate luncheon--Bessie, Eunice, and I in a corner by ourselves. We held a conference, and compared notes of the morning's progress, which had been even more discouraging to poor Eunice than to us; for to her it had brought the added misfortune of a row of stitches in her right forefinger. We counted up our profits for the morning, and the aggregate earnings of the three of us did not amount to ten cents. Of course we would learn to do better, but it would take a long, long time, Bessie was firmly convinced, before we could even make enough to buy our lunches. It was decided that one of us should resign the job that night, and the other two keep at it until the delegate found something better for us all and had tested the new job to her satisfaction. Bessie was of course appointed, and the next morning Eunice and I went alone, with plausible excuses for the absent Bessie, for we had a certain delicacy about telling the real facts to so kind a foreman as "Abe." The second day we had no better luck, and the pain between the shoulder-blades was unceasing. All night long I had tossed on my narrow cot, with aching back and nerves wrought up to such a tension that the moment I began to doze off I was wakened by a spasmodic jerk of the right arm as it reached forward to grasp a visionary strip of lace. That evening, as we filed out at six o'clock, Bessie was waiting for us, her gentle face full of radiance and good news. Even the miserable Eunice was affected by her hopefulness. "Oh, girls, I've got something that's really good--three dollars a week while you're learning, and an awful nice shop; and just think, girls!--the hours--I never had anything like it before, and I've knocked around at eighteen different jobs--half-past eight to five, and--" she paused for breath to announce the glorious fact--"Girls, just think of it!--_Saturday afternoons off_, all the year round." XIV IN WHICH A TRAGIC FATE OVERTAKES MY "LADY-FRIENDS" The next morning we met on the corner, as usual, and Bessie led us to our new job--led us through a world that was strange and new to both Eunice and me, though poor Eunice had little heart for the newness and the strangeness of it all. In and out, and criss-cross, we threaded our way through little narrow streets bordered with stately "sky-scrapers," and at last turned into Maiden Lane. We walked arm in arm till we came to an alley which Bessie said was Gold Street. It is more of a zigzag even than Maiden Lane, and is flanked by dark iron-shuttered warehouses and factories. Wolff's, our destination, was at the head of the street, and in a few minutes we were sitting side by side at the work-table, while our new forewoman, a cross-eyed Irish girl, was showing us what to do and how to do it. Making jewel-and silverware-cases was now our work. In the long, whitewashed workroom there were thirty other girls performing the same task, and on each of the five floors beneath there were as many more girls, pasting and pressing and trimming cases that were to hold rings, watches and bracelets, and spoons, knives, and forks--enough to supply all Christendom, it seemed to me. As beginners we were given each a dozen spoon-boxes to cover with white leather and line with satin. It is light, pleasant work, and was such an improvement on the sweat-shop drudgery that even Eunice smiled a little after a while. "Is youse lady-friends?" the forewoman asked when, in the course of ten minutes, she came to inspect our progress; on receiving an affirmative reply, she scowled. "Fiddlesticks! If I'd knowed youse was lady-friends, I'd jist told Izzy he could get some other girls," and she walked off, still scowling. The girls about us giggled. "Why doesn't Miss Gibbs like us to be lady-friends?" asked Bessie. A young Italian answered, "Because they always git to scrappin'." We all laughed--even Eunice--at such an ending to our friendship. "We had a fearful row here yisterday," spoke up another; "and they wuz lady-friends--thicker than sardines, they wuz--till they got on the outs about a feller down on Pearl Street; a diamond-cutter he wuz, and they wuz both mashed on him--a Dutchman, too, he wuz, that wore ear-rings. I couldn't get mashed on a Dutchman, ear-rings or no ear-rings, could you?" "What did they do?" asked Bessie. "Do! They snapped at each other all morning over the work-table, and then one of them called the other a name that wuz something awful, and she up and spit in her face for it." "Well, I don't blame that girl for spitting in her face," interrupted a voice. "I don't blame her; lady-like or not lady-like, I'd have done the same thing. I'd spit in the President's face if I was in the White House and he was to call me such a name!" "And then what happened?" asked Bessie. "Oh, they just up and at each other like two cats, tumbling over a stack of them there white velvet necklace-cases, and bloodying up each other's faces something fierce; and then Miss Gibbs she called Izzy; and Izzy he fired them on the spot." Despite these tales of strenuous conflicts, we were happy in our work at Wolff's. Our shop-mates were quiet, decent-looking girls, and their conversation was conspicuously clean--not always a characteristic of their class. Miss Gibbs, despite her justifiable prejudice against lady-friends, proved not unkind, and we congratulated ourselves as we bent over our work and listened to the cheerful hum of voices. After each case was finished,--after the satin linings and interlinings and the tuftings had been fitted and glued into their proper places, and the bit of leather drawn across the padded cover,--we could raise our eyes for a moment and look out upon a strange, fascinating world. The open windows on one side of the shop looked into the polishing-room of a neighboring goldsmith, and on the other side into a sunshiny workroom filled with swirling black wheels and flying belts among which the workmen kept up a dialogue in a foreign tongue. The latter place was near enough for a good-looking young man to attempt a flirtation with Bessie, in such moments as he was not carefully watching what seemed to be a clumsy mass of wax on the end of a wooden handle. All the long forenoon he kept up his manoeuvers, watching his ugly bludgeon as if it were the very apple of his eye; carrying it to the window one moment and examining it under the microscope; then carrying it back to his wheel and beginning all over again. Late in the afternoon he came to the window for the hundredth time, and brandishing the bludgeon so that the sunshine fell directly upon it, held it aloft for us to admire the great glittering gem that now sparkled deep-bedded in the ugly wax. "I gif you dat if you marry me!" cried the diamond-cutter, striking a dramatic attitude for Bessie's benefit. Thus one, two days passed swiftly, and we had learned to make jewel-cases with tolerable rapidity. We had a half-hour for luncheon, during which Bessie, Eunice, and I went off by ourselves to the rear of the shop, where we ate our sandwiches in silence and gazed out upon the forest of masts that filled the East River lying below. On the fourth day Eunice and I ate luncheon alone. Bessie did not come that morning, nor send any excuse. Her absence gave me an opportunity, in this half-hour's respite from work, to get better acquainted with my silent and mysterious fellow-boarder; anything more than a most meager acquaintance was impossible at the place where we lived. Like the majority of semi-charitable institutions, the "home" was conducted on the theory that the only safety to morals, as well as to pocket-books, was espionage and isolation. "It's awful up there, isn't it?" she remarked suddenly after we had discussed every possible cause for Bessie's absence. "Yes, isn't it?" I replied, somewhat surprised, for this was the first time the girl had ever expressed any opinion about anything, so fearful did she seem of betraying herself. "I suppose you often wonder what brought me there that night?" she went on. "You've told me your story, and you don't know anything at all about mine. You must often wonder, though you are too considerate to ask. But I'm going to tell you now without asking. It was to keep me from going there," pointing through the window down to the river. "I'd had a lot of trouble,--oh, a terrible lot of trouble,--and it seemed as if there wasn't any place for me; and I walked down to the edge of the river up there at the end of East Fourteenth Street, and something stopped me just when I was ready to jump in. Why I didn't, I don't know," and the girl turned a stony face to the window. "Why, it was hope and renewed courage, of course!" I replied quickly. "Everybody gets blue spells--when one is down on one's luck." Eunice shook her head. "No, it wasn't hope. It was because I was afraid--it was because I'm a coward. I'm too much of a coward to live, and I'm too much of a coward to die. You never felt as I do. You couldn't. I've lost my grip on everything. Everything's gone against me, and it's too late now for things to change. You don't know--_you don't know_, you and Bessie. If you did, you'd see how useless all your kindness is, in trying to get me to brace up. I've tried--my God! I have tried to feel that there's a life before me, but I can't--I can't. Sometimes, maybe for a minute, I'll forget what's gone by, and then the next minute the memory of it all comes back with a fearful stab. There is something that won't let me forget." "Hush! Eunice; don't talk so loud," I whispered as her passionate voice rose above the hum of the other girls in a far portion of the room. "I tell you it's no use--it's no use. I've lost my grip on things, and I can never catch hold again. I thought, maybe, when I started out with you and Bessie, and got to working again, there'd be a change. But there isn't any difference now from--from the night I went into that dormitory first. Now with you it would be different. What's happened to me might, maybe, happen to you; but you could fight it down. There's something inside of you that's stronger than anything that can hurt you from the outside. Most girls are that way. They get hurt--and hurt bad, and they cry a lot at the time and are miserable and unhappy; but after a while they succeed in picking themselves up, and are in the end as good, sometimes better, than ever. They forget in a little while all about it, and wind up by marrying some man who is really in love with them, and they are as happy as if nothing had ever happened." I looked at the occupant of cot No. 11 with mingled feelings of pity and amazement--pity for the hopelessness of her case, now more apparent than ever; amazement at her keen and morbid generalizations. "How old are you, Eunice?" "Twenty-four," she replied--"oh, I know what you're going to say: that I have my whole life before me, and all that. But I haven't. My life is all behind me." "'I am the Captain of my Soul, I am the Master of my Fate,'" I quoted. "Yes, you are; but I am not," she replied simply, and turned and looked at me with her hopeless eyes. Poor, unfortunate Eunice! That night, as we walked home together, she revealed a little more about herself by telling me that she had recently been discharged from the hospital on "the Island." I did not need to inquire the nature of the illness that had left her face so white and drawn. Brief as my experience had been among the humble inmates of the "home," I had learned the expediency of not being too solicitous regarding the precise facts of such cases. The next day was Saturday, and still no Bessie. As we worked we speculated as to her absence, and decided to spend the afternoon looking her up. Meanwhile, although I had been managing to do my work a little better each day, Eunice had not been succeeding so well. Her apathy had been increasing daily, until she had lost any interest she might ever have had in trying to do her work well. On this morning the forewoman was obliged to give her repeated and sharp reproofs for soiling her materials and for dawdling over her work. "You seem to like to work," Eunice said once, breaking a long silence. "Not any better than you do, only I've got to, and I try to make the best of it." "Yes, you do. You like to work, and I don't, and that's the difference between us. And it's all the difference in the world, too. If I liked work for its own sake, like you do, there'd be some hope for me living things down." "I wonder," she whispered, again breaking a long silence--"I wonder if Bessie had any man after her." I looked up suddenly, perhaps indignantly, and my reply was not encouraging to any conjectures along this line, as Eunice saw quickly. "I'm sorry I offended you," she added hastily; "but I didn't think anything wrong of Bessie--you know I didn't. Only I've watched the boss following her around with his eyes ever since we came here to work. You didn't see, for you don't know as much about their devilment as I do; but I tell you, if anything was ever to happen that poor little girl through any man, I'd choke him to death with my own hands!" The satin-tufted box she was working on dropped from her fingers and clattered on the floor, bringing the forewoman down upon her with many caustic remarks. When the flurry was over I assured her that I thought Bessie fully capable of taking care of herself, although I had seen more of the manager's advances than Eunice gave me credit for observing. At last noon came, and with it our first half-holiday. With the first shriek of the whistle we jumped up and began folding our aprons, preparatory to rushing out to find Bessie. "Where does she live?" asked Eunice. I looked at her in blank amazement, for I didn't know. I had never even heard the name of the street. I knew it was somewhere on the East Side; that was all. In all our weeks of acquaintanceship no occasion had arisen whereby Bessie should mention where she lived. I thought of Rosenfeld's. Perhaps some one there might know, and we took a Broadway car up-town. But Miss Higgins was away on her vacation, and none of the girls who still remained in the flower-shop knew any more about Bessie's whereabouts than I did. Thus it is in the busy, workaday world. Nobody knows where you come from, and nobody knows where you go. Eunice suggested looking in the directory; but as we found forty of the same name, it seemed hopeless. I did happen to know, however, that her father had once been a cutter or tailor; and so out of the forty we selected all the likeliest names and began a general canvass. After five hours of weary search, and after climbing the stairs of more than a score of tenement-houses, without success, we turned at last into East Broadway, footsore and dusty. In this street, on the fifth floor of a baking tenement, we tapped at the door of Bessie's home. A little blonde woman answered the knock, and when we asked for Bessie she burst into sobs and pointed to a red placard on the door--the quarantine notice of the Board of Health, which we had not seen. And then Bessie's mother told us that four of her brood had been laid low with malignant diphtheria. The three younger ones were home, sick unto death, but they had yielded to the entreaties of the doctor and allowed him to take Bessie to Bellevue. Thither we hurried as fast as the trolley would take us, only to find the gates closed for the day. We were not relatives, we had no permits; and whether Bessie were dead or alive, we must wait until visiting-hours the next day to discover. What we found out the next day, when we filed into the superintendent's office with the ill-dressed horde of anxious Sunday-afternoon visitors, was hardly a surprise. We expected nothing but what Eunice had predicted from the first. Bessie had died the night before--died murmuring about poppies, the young doctor told us. "She's better off where she is than she'd be down at Wolff's," said Eunice, as we passed through the gates on to the street again. I made no comment, and we walked silently away from the big, ugly brick pile that holds such horrors for the poor. When we reached Third Avenue, Eunice stopped before a florist's window, and we looked in at a cluster of great white lilies. Neither spoke, however, and in a moment we passed on down Third Avenue, now brightly lighted and teeming with its usual gay Sunday night crowd. At last we turned into our own street, and were in front of the dark building we both called "home." Here Eunice caught my hand in hers, with a convulsive little motion, as might a child who was afraid of the dark. We climbed the stone steps together, and I pulled the bell, Eunice's grasp on my hand growing tighter and tighter. "Good-by; it's no use," she whispered suddenly, dropping my hand and moving away as we heard the matron fumbling at the lock; and before I could utter a word of protest, before I could reach forward and snatch her from some dread thing, I knew not what, she had disappeared among the shadows of the lamplit street. "Where's the other girl?" asked the matron. "I don't know," I replied,--nor have I since been able to find the faintest clue to her whereabouts, if living, or her fate, if dead. From that moment at the door-step when she said good-by, Eunice stepped out of my life as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. Is she dead or alive? Did the unhappy girl seek self-destruction that June night, or was she swept into that great, black whirlpool, the name of which even a girl of the workaday world mentions always with bated breath? I do not know. I never expect to know the fate of Eunice. It is only in stories that such things are made clear, usually, and this was only an incident in real life. XV I BECOME A "SHAKER" IN A STEAM-LAUNDRY The next day, Monday, they buried Bessie in a big, shabby Jewish cemetery out on Long Island. I did not follow my comrade to the grave. Nor did I go to work. All that long, beautiful June day was spent in fruitless search for poor Eunice. This hopeless quest, begun on Monday, was continued for three days in the few hours that I could snatch between five o'clock, the closing-time at the shop, and ten o'clock, the curfew hour at the "home." On Wednesday the strain grew unbearable. All the associations of Wolff's were tinctured with memories of the dead Bessie and the lost Eunice. Under the counter, in the big pasteboard box, their checked-gingham aprons were still rolled up just as they had left them, with the scissors inside; and on the pine table under my eyes were their names and mine, scrawled in a lead-pencil by Bessie's hand, and framed with heavy lines. Their high stools, which were on either side of mine, had been given over to two new-comers, also "lady-friends," who chewed gum vigorously and discussed beaux and excursions to Coney Island with a happy vivacity that made my secret misery all the harder to bear. That night I went to the desk and drew my money, tucked the two aprons away in a bundle with my own, and said good-by to Wolff's. The sum total of my capital now amounted to five dollars; and with this I felt that I could afford to spend the remainder of the week trying to find Eunice, and trust to luck to get taken back at Wolff's the following Monday morning. After three days' systematic inquiry, I climbed the stairs to the dormitory late on Sunday night, no wiser than I had been a week before. My discouragement gave way to a thrill of joyous surprise when I descried a long, thin form stretched under the gray blanket of Eunice's cot. I sprang forward and laid an eager hand on the thin shoulder. "Gr-r-r! Don't you try gettin' fresh, Susie Jane, er I'll smash yer face!" snarled the angry voice of a new-comer, as she pulled the coverlet up to her eyes and rolled over on the other side. Monday morning I presented myself at the jewel-case factory, and asked Miss Gibbs to take me back. But I was already adjudged a "shiftless lot," not steady, and was accordingly "turned down." Then once more I scanned the advertising columns. "Shakers Wanted.--Apply to Foreman" was the first that caught my eye. I didn't know what a "shaker" was, but that did not deter me from forming a sudden determination to be one. The address took me into a street up-town--above Twenty-third Street--the exact locality I hesitate to give for reasons that shortly will become obvious. Here I found the "Pearl Laundry," a broad brick building, grim as a fortress, and fortified by a breastwork of laundry-wagons backed up to the curb and disgorging their contents of dirty clothes. Making my way as best I could through the jam of horses and drivers and baskets, I reached the narrow, unpainted pine door marked, "Employees' Entrance," and filed up the stairs with a crowd of other girls--all, like myself, seeking work. At the head of the stairs we filed into a mammoth steam-filled room that occupied an entire floor. The foreman made quick work of us. Thirty-two girls I counted as they stepped up to the pale-faced, stoop-shouldered young fellow, who addressed each one as "Sally," in a tone which, despite its good-natured familiarity, was none the less businesslike and respectful. At last it came my turn. "Hello, Sally! Ever shook?" "No." "Ever work in a laundry?" "No; but I'm very handy." "What did you work at last?" "Jewel-cases." "All right, Sally; we'll start you in at three and a half a week, and maybe we'll give you four dollars after you get broke in to the work.--Go over there, where you seen them other ladies go," he called after me as I moved away, and waved his hand toward a pine-board partition. Here, sitting on bundles of soiled linen and on hampers, my thirty-two predecessors were corralled, each awaiting assignment to duty. They were dressed, literally, "some in rags and some in tags and some in velvet gowns." Calico wrappers brushed against greasy satin skirts, and faded kimono dressing-jackets vied in filth and slovenliness with unbelted shirt-waists. A faded rose bobbed in one girl's head, and on another's locks was arranged a gorgeous fillet of pale-blue ribbon of the style advertised at the time in every shop-window in New York as the "Du Barry." The scene was a sorry burlesque on the boudoir and the ball-room, a grim travesty on the sordid realities of the kitchen on wash-day. "Did yez come in the barber's wagon?" asked a stupid Irish girl, looking at me curiously. I looked blank, and she repeated the question. "What does she mean?" I asked a more intelligent girl who was seated on a bundle in the corner. "Didn't yez come in Tony's wagon?" "No; who's Tony?" "Oh, Tony he's a barber--a Ginny barber--that goes out with a wagon when they run short of help, and he picks up any girls he can find and hauls them in. He brought three loads this morning. We thought Tony picked you up. Me and her," pointing to a black-browed girl who was nodding to sleep with her mouth wide open, "we come in the barber's wagon." The girl's face, fat, heavy, dough-colored, had become suffused with amiability, and giving her snoozing comrade a gentle push, she made room for me on the bundle beside her. "Ever worked at this job before?" she asked. "No. Have you?" She replied with a sharp laugh, and flinging back the sleeve of her kimono, thrust out the stump of a wrist. At my exclamation of horror, she grinned. "Why, that's nothing in this here business," she said. "It happens every wunst in a while, when you was running the mangles and was tired. That's the way it was with me: I was clean done out, one Saturday night, and I jist couldn't see no more; and first thing I know--Wo-o-ow! and that hand went right straight clean into the rollers. And I was jist tired, that's all. I didn't have nothing to drink all that day, excepting pop; but the boss he swore I was drunk, and he made the foreman swear the same thing, and so I didn't try to get no damages. They sent me to the horspital, and they offered me my old job back again; but I jist got up my spunk and says if they can't pay me some damages, and goes and swears I was drunk when I didn't have nothing but rotten pop, I says, I can up and go some place else and get my four dollars a week." Before I could ask what the poor creature would be able to do with only one hand, the foreman appeared in the door, and we trooped out at his heels. Down the length of the big room, through a maze of moving hand-trucks and tables and rattling mangles, we followed him to the extreme rear, where he deposited us, in groups of five and six, at the big tables that were ranged from wall to wall and heaped high with wet clothes, still twisted just as they were turned out of the steam-wringer. An old woman with a bent back showed me the very simple process of "shaking." "Jist take the corners like this,"--suiting the action to the word,--"and give a shake like this, and pile them on top o' one another--like this," and with that she turned to her own "shaking" and resumed gossip with her side-partner, another old woman, who was roundly denouncing the "trash" that was being thrust upon her as table-mates, and throwing out palpable insults to the "Ginnies" who stood vis-à-vis, and who either didn't hear or, hearing, didn't understand or care. For the first half-hour I shook napkins bearing the familiar legend--woven in red--of a ubiquitous dairy-lunch place, and the next half-hour was occupied with bed-linen bearing the mark of a famous hostelry. During that time I had become fairly accustomed to my new surroundings, and was now able to distinguish, out of the steamy turmoil, the general features of a place that seethed with life and action. All the workers were women and girls, with the exception of the fifteen big, black, burly negroes who operated the tubs and the wringers which were ranged along the rear wall on a platform that ran parallel with and a little behind the shakers' tables. The negroes were stripped to the waist of all save a thin gauze undershirt. There was something demoniacal in their gestures and shouts as they ran about the vats of boiling soap-suds, from which they transferred the clothes to the swirling wringers, and then dumped them at last upon the big trucks. The latter were pushed away by relays of girls, who strained at the heavy load. The contents of the trucks were dumped first on the shakers' tables, and when each piece was smoothed out we--the shakers--redumped the stacks into the truck, which was pushed on to the manglers, who ironed it all out in the hot rolls. So, after several other dumpings and redumpings, the various lots were tied and labeled. Meanwhile a sharp, incessant pain had grown out of what was in the first ten or fifteen minutes a tired feeling in the arms--that excruciating, nerve-torturing pain which comes as a result of a ceaseless muscular action that knows no variation or relaxation. To forget it, I began to watch the eight others at our particular table. There were four Italians, all stupid, uninteresting-looking girls, of anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years old; there was a thin, narrow-chested girl, with delicate wrists and nicely shaped hands, who seemed far superior to her companions, and who might have been pretty had it not been for the sunken, blue-black cavity where one eye should have been; there was a fat woman of forty, with a stiff neck, and of a religious temperament, who worked in a short under-petticoat and was stolidly indifferent to the conversation round her; the others were the two old dames--she who had initiated me, and her sprightlier though not less ancient crony, Mrs. Mooney. Both fairly bristled with spite and vindictiveness toward everything in general, and us new-comers in particular, and each sustained her flagging energies with frequent pinches of snuff and chunks of coffee-cake which they drew from inexhaustible pockets. My attempts at conversation with these two having been met with chilling silence, and as Mrs. Mooney had given me several painful thrusts with her sharp elbow when I happened to get too close to her, I took care to keep a safe distance, puzzled as to wherein I might have offended, and lapsing into a morbid interest in the gossip flying thick and fast around me. The target of scandal was "the queen," a big, handsome blonde girl of about twenty-five, who in a different environment and properly corseted and gowned would have been set down unquestionably as "a voluptuous beauty." Here in the laundry, in stocking-feet and an unbelted black shirt-waist turned far in at the neck, she was merely "mushy," to use the adjective of her detractors. The queen owed her nickname to the boss, with whom she was said to "stand in," being "awful soft after him." She was a sort of assistant to the foreman, bossing the job when he was not around, and lending a hand in rush hours with true democratic simplicity such as only the consciousness of her prestige could warrant her in doing. Now she was assisting the black men load a truck, now helping a couple of girls push it across the floor, now helping us dump it on the table--laughing and joking all the while, but at the same time goading us on to the very limit of human endurance. She had been in the "Pearl" for seven years, slaved harder than any of us, and she looked as fresh and buoyant as if she never had known what work was. I rather liked the queen, despite the fact that I detected in her immediately a relentless task-master; everybody else seemed to like her, notwithstanding the malicious things they said about her. "Tired?" asked the one-eyed girl. "Yes, it's hard work, but it's steady. You're never out of a job if you're a steady shaker that can be relied on." There was cheerfulness in her tone, and both the old women stopped talking. "Did yez come in the barber's wagon?" Mrs. Mooney asked. On being assured that we had not, she proceeded to establish amicable relations with the one-eyed girl and me by telling us she was glad we "weren't Ginnies, anyway." "Whatever happened to yer eye?" inquired the other crone of my companion. Unresentful of the blunt inquisitiveness, the girl responded cordially with her little story--glad, apparently, to have a listener. "It was something I caught in the hospital when I had appendicitis three years ago. When I was discharged my appendicitis was well, but my eye had took sore. The doctor he says when he seen it, 'That eye's too far gone, and it's got to come out, or the poison 'll spread to the t'other eye, and then you won't have no eyes at all.' My mother she didn't know nothing about it till it was all over. She'd have carried on awful if she'd knowed it. But it didn't hurt a bit. I went under chloroform, and when I come out of it I jist thought I'd been having a long sleep in a big brass bedstead, with hem-stitched sheets and things like that," and she pointed to the hotel linen we were all shaking. "That's the way with them hospitals," said Mrs. Mooney, sympathetically, and proffering the heroine of the story a chunk of spice-cake. "You'd been better to ha' stayed at home. Poor folks don't have no chanst in them high-toned places." "Why don't you take off yer shoes like us, and let yer feet spread out?--it'll rest them," suggested Mrs. Mooney, now passing me a peace-offering of coffee-cake, and tightening her mouth in a grim determination to be civil. Indeed, the one-eyed girl's story had wrought a transformation in these two sullen old women. All that was human in them had been touched by the tale of physical suffering, and we now met on common ground--the common ground of brute sympathy which one animal feels for another in distress. The work was now under full blast, and every one of the hundred and twenty-five girls worked with frenzied energy as the avalanche of clothes kept falling in upon us and were sent with lightning speed through the different processes, from the tubs to the packers' counters. Nor was there any abatement of the snowy landslide--not a moment to stop and rest the aching arms. Just as fast as the sweating negroes could unload the trucks into the tubs, more trucks came rolling in from the elevator, and the foaming tubs swirled perpetually, swallowing up, it would seem, all the towels and pillow-cases and napkins in Greater New York. Above the orchestra of noise I distinguished a faintly familiar voice, which I could not place until I heard: "And it was nothing but pop I had that day--I hadn't had nothing but rotten old pop all day!" From the girl's argument it was hard to determine whether she was more grieved at not having had stronger potations than pop on that fatal occasion, or at the implied aspersions upon her character for sobriety. Looking up, I saw that she was in one of the truck-teams. She had her one hand and arm strained against the rear of the sodden load, which she was urging forward with her hip. The load happened to be for our table, and as we dumped it out I asked her if there wasn't anything easier she could do. She responded cheerily: "No. You've got to have two hands to run the mangles, and you've got to have two hands to shake, and you've got to have two hands to tie up, but you can push a truck with one hand." Which statement of the case, combined with the cripple's optimism, made us laugh--all except the one-eyed girl, espying whom, the maimed girl suddenly changed the tone of levity with which she treated her own misfortune, and asked in a lowered voice: "What's the matter with yer eye?" And the hospital infection tale was repeated. Could a duchess have claimed greater grace than that poor, unlettered, uncouth creature's delicate perception of that subtle principle of courtesy, which allowed her to jest over her own misfortunes, but which prompted a gentle hesitation in speaking to another about hers! In the excruciating agony of the hours that followed, the trucks became a veritable anodyne for the pains that shot through my whole body. Leaning over their deep sides was a welcome relief from the strained, monotonous position at the tables. The one-eyed girl had likewise discovered the anodyne, and remarked upon it once as we dived into the wet freight. "It's so funny how one kind of pain sort of eases up another," she said; "I always feel good every time I see the truck coming, though trucking's far harder work than shaking if you had to do it steady. I wonder why it is. It was the same way with my eye. When it was getting better and just ached a little bit, steady, all the time, I used to wish I could have real hard jumping toothache, just for a change." "God love ye, and it's so," fervently exclaimed Mrs. Mooney. The day was terrifically hot outdoors, and with the fearful heat that came up through the floor from the engine-room directly under us, combined with the humidity of the steam-tilled room, we were all driven to a state of half-dress before the noon hour arrived. The women opened their dresses at the neck and cast off their shoes, and the foreman threw his suspenders off his shoulders, while the colored washers paddled about on the sloppy floor in their bare black feet. "Don't any men work in this place except the foreman?" I asked Mrs. Mooney, who had toiled a long time in the "Pearl" and knew everything. "Love of Mary!" she exclaimed indignantly; "and d' ye think any white man that called hisself a white man would work in sich a place as this, and with naygurs?" "But we work here," I argued. "Well, we be wimmin," she declared, drawing a pinch of snuff into her nostrils in a manner that indicated finality. "But if it isn't good enough for a man, it isn't good enough for us, even if we are women!" I persisted. She looked at me half in astonishment, half in suspicion at my daring to question the time-honored order of things. Economics could make no appeal to her intelligence, and shooting a glance out of her hard old black eyes, she replied with a logic that permitted no gainsaying. "Love of Mary! if yez don't like yer job, ye can git out. Sure and we don't take on no airs around here!" At twelve the noise ceased, and a shrill whistle ushered in the half-hour's respite. The effect of that raucous shriek was as solemn, as awe-inspiring, for the first moment, as the ringing of the Angelus bell in a Catholic country-side. For one moment everybody stood motionless and mute, the women with arms akimbo on aching hips, the black washers with drooping, relaxed shoulders. Each tortured frame seemed to heave with an inaudible "Thank God!" and then we slowly scattered in all directions--some to the cloak-room, where the lunches were stored along with the wraps, some down the stairs into the street. On this day the one-eyed girl and I found a bundle of clothes large enough for two to sit on, and shared our lunch. For half a ham sandwich she gave me a piece of cold sausage, and I gave her a dill pickle for a greasy doughnut. The inevitable bottle of "pop" neither of us was able to open until the foreman came along and lent his assistance. He lingered a moment to talk the usual inanities that pass between a democratic foreman and a couple of new girls. Under his jovial exterior there seemed to be a vein of seriousness, amounting almost to sadness when one looked at his well-modeled face and his steady gray eyes. Tall and pale and prematurely bent, he had a certain distinction, as if he had been cut out for better things. His manner had lost all the easy familiarity of a few hours before, and he asked us in the kindest tone possible how we liked the work, and heartened us with the assurance that it wouldn't be nearly so hard in a few days, telling us to "stand slack-like" and see if it didn't make the pain in our backs better. By slack-like he meant stoop-shouldered, as everybody grows sooner or later in a laundry. The foreman's hygienic lecture was interrupted by the warning rumble of the awakening machinery, and we scurried back to our table to make practical test of his theory. We followed it to the letter, but, like every other palliative of pain, it soon lost its virtue, and the long afternoon was one of unspeakable agony. There were now not only aching backs and arms and legs, but feet parboiled to a blister on the burning floors. The air was rent with lamentations, and before long my side-partner and I had also shed our shoes. By four o'clock everybody had sunk into a state of apathetic quiet, and even the exuberant Queen lost something of her vivaciousness, and attended strictly to the business of goading us on to our tasks. "We're two days behind with them hospital sheets," she screamed to one relay; "S---- Hotel Barber Shop got to go out to-night," which information brought groans from Mrs. Mooney. "Mother of God!" she cried. "Sure and that means nine o'clock to-night." "Aren't we going to get out at six?" asked the one-eyed girl, while I glanced dismally at the never-ending train of trucks that kept rolling out upon the washers' platform, faster now than at any other time of the day. "God love ye! dearie, no," returned Mrs. Mooney. "Ye'll never get outside _this_ shop at six any night, unless ye're carried out dead. We're in luck to get out as early as eight." "Every night?" "Sure, every night exceptin' Saturday, and then it's twelve to half-past one." "Oh, that's not so bad if you have a half-holiday." "Half-holiday!" echoed Mrs. Mooney. "Will ye listen to that! A half-holiday, indeed!" Then the mocking voice grew kinder. "Sure and it's every minute of twelve o'clock or a half-hour into Sunday mornin' afore you ever see the outside of this place of a Saturday in summer-time, with all the washin' and ironin' for the summer hotels and the big bugs as is at the sea-shore." "Youse ain't got no kick coming," said one of the Ginney girls. "Youse gets six cents an hour overtime, and youse 'll be mighty glad to make that exter money!" Mrs. Mooney glared viciously at the interlopers. "Yes, and if it wasn't for the likes of yez Ginnies that 'll work for nothing and live in pig-pens, the likes of us white people wouldn't have to work nights." "Well I made ninety-six cents' overtime last week," spoke up the silent fat woman in the under-petticoat, "and I was thankful to the Lord to get it." Of the two hours or more that followed I have only a hazy recollection of colored men bending over the pungent foam, of straining, sweating women dragging their trucks round and round the great steaming-room. I remembered nothing whatever of the moment when the agony was ended and we were released for the day. Up to a certain dim borderland I remember that my back ached and that my feet dragged heavily over the burning floor, two pieces of boiling flesh. I do remember distinctly, however, suddenly waking up on Third Avenue as I was walking past a delicatessen store, and looking straight into the countenance of a pleasant-faced woman. I must have walked right into her, for she seemed amused, and went on her way laughing at something--probably my look of surprise as the impact brought me suddenly to full consciousness. A clock was hanging in the delicatessen-store window, and the hour-hand stood at nine. A cooling sea-breeze was blowing up from the south, and as I continued my walk home I realized that I had just passed out of a sort of trance,--a trance superinduced by physical misery,--a merciful subconscious condition of apathy, in which my soul as well as my body had taken refuge when torture grew unbearable. XVI IN WHICH IT IS PROVED TO ME THAT THE DARKEST HOUR COMES JUST BEFORE THE DAWN The next morning I asked Mrs. Mooney what time it was when we left the laundry the evening before, and she said half-past eight. Then I recounted the strange experience of the trance, which did not arouse the interest I had expected. "That's nothing. That's the way we all get sometimes," she declared. "If we didn't get into them trance-spells there'd be none of us workin' here at all, at all." "Yes, indeed," said a prayerful voice. "Praise God, it's one of his blessid pervisions to help us bear our crosses." "I don't think the Lord's got much to do with our breaking backs or feet, do you?" asked the one-eyed girl, as we turned to unload a truck. "Now I'm not an unbeliever, and I believe in God and Jesus Christ, all right; but I sometimes think they don't do all these things that the Methodists and Salvation Army says they do. Somehow, I don't believe God knows anything about my eye or that one-armed girl's getting hurt in the roller. I used to believe everything I heard the evangelist say, but I don't think no more that religion is what it's cracked up to be." A few moments later she asked if I was a Protestant, too, and receiving an affirmative, proceeded to express herself on the superior merits of that form of faith as compared with the Catholic, against which she had all the narrow-minded ignorance and superstition which, strange to say, only too often characterize the better element of the class to which she belonged. This girl's unreasonable prejudice against something of which she knew not the first thing presented a paradox universal in her world. The Catholic Church as an institution was her enemy, and the enemy of all Protestants. "If they could kill you, and not be found out by the law, they'd do it just as quick as wink, because the priest would bail them out of hell for a dollar and a quarter." And yet, when it came to the concrete and personal, she had to admit that all the Catholics she had ever known were "just about as good as Protestants." This religious discussion was carried on in a low voice, with many side-glances toward the Catholic side of the table, as if danger threatened were they to hear a word of it. I knew, however, that there was nothing to fear from that quarter. There was only one religious conscience there, and that belonged to the one-eyed girl herself. From innumerable other instances I had met with before I had come to this generalization: that bigotry and bitter prejudices in matters of faith, deplorable as they at first seem to be, mark a distinct step in the social evolution and moral development of the ignorant and degraded. Nobody else at that table was far enough along to worry herself with principles of faith. "I think the Salvation Army's a kind of good religion," she continued; "only they--" but I heard no more; we were interrupted by a flurry of interest in the front, which spread quickly to our region, as a portly man in an automobile coat and Panama hat made his way by the mangle-machines and the tables. The foreman, diffident and uncertain, was walking by his side; and from the peremptory and numerous instructions he was receiving, it became patent that his companion was the "boss." Everybody looked hastily, stealthily, at the Queen, who hid her pleasure under a very transparent veil of dissembling, as she helped us unload a truck. Never before had I heard the queen laugh so merrily, and never before had I realized what a superb, handsome animal she was. There was a certain rhythmic movement as she raised and lowered her body over the truck. The excitement of the moment added a deeper color to her always splendid rose-and-white complexion, upon which the steam-laden atmosphere distilled perpetually that soft dewiness characteristic of the perfect complexion of young children or of goddesses. And like a goddess the queen appeared that moment,--an untidy, earth-chained goddess, mirthful, voluptuous. "She thinks she's mighty fine, don't she?" whispered my one-eyed friend. The boss halted at the truck, and the queen looked up with ill-feigned surprise, as if she hadn't known for five minutes that he was in the room. He seemed the personification of prosperous, ignorant vulgarity, and his manner, as he swept his eye carelessly over his queen's subjects, was one of good-natured insolence. He didn't tarry long, and if guilty of the gentle dalliance of which he was accused, it was plain to be seen that he did not allow it to interfere with the discipline of the "Pearl." At lunch-time the one-eyed girl and I went off to the same corner as before, and no sooner had we begun to divide our pickles and sandwiches than in sauntered the foreman, munching alternately from a cylinder of bologna sausage in one hand and a chunk of dry bread in the other. "Well, how goes it?" he asked pleasantly, dropping his long, lank frame upon a bundle of hotel table-linen. "Did you try my advice about standin' slack-like?" We replied to his question while the one-eyed girl carved a dill pickle and a sweet pickle each into three portions. He related how he had come to the "Pearl" six years ago, and had worked himself up to his present job, which was not to be sneezed at, he said, considering that eighteen dollars a week wasn't to be picked up every day--and steady work, too, no layoffs and no shut-downs. He emphasized the fact, evidently very important in his mind, that he wasn't married, that he had not met any girl yet that would have him, which my companion insisted couldn't possibly be true, or if it was, then none of the girls he had ever asked had any taste at all. He lived at home with his mother, whom he didn't allow to "work out" since he'd been big enough to earn a living for her. There was a sister, too, at home, who had a job in a near-by manufactory; but she was engaged, and going to be married in her "intended's" vacation. Then, the foreman thought, he'd have to get a wife himself, if he could find anybody to have him. And she wouldn't have to work, either--not on your tintype! She would live at home with his mother, and darn his socks and sew on his buttons, and she'd have no washing or ironing to do, as he got his all done for nothing in the "Pearl." That perquisite went along with the eighteen dollars a week. Oh, she'd have things as nice as any hard-working young fellow could give her. "Would she have to be purty?" asked the one-eyed girl, who seemed unusually interested in this hypothetical wife, and who took such a lively interest in the foreman and his plans that I felt my heart sink in pity for the poor maimed creature. Was she hanging breathless on the foreman's reply to this question? If so, there was a certain comfort in the gallant answer. "No, I should say not," he replied, as I thought with gentle consideration of her to whom he was speaking; "I don't think I could ever trust a wife who was a ten-thousand-dollar beaut'. She'd want to gad too much. I don't think looks count for much; and I'd think she was pretty, anyway, if I was terrible stuck on her. Them things don't make much difference only in story-papers. But there's one thing she would have to be, and that is handy at doing things. I wouldn't marry a lazy girl, and I wouldn't marry a girl that wasn't a working girl." The engines began to give out a warning rumble, and the foreman scrambled somewhat reluctantly to his feet, and stretching out his long arms, started off. "Say, that feller's clean, dead gone on you," remarked my companion, closing her hand over mine in a pressure that was full of congratulation and honest delight. I scouted the idea, but nevertheless I became suddenly conscious of a complete change in his manner from the easy familiarity of the morning before. Instead of the generic name of "Sally," or the Christian name which on better acquaintance he applied to the other girls, he had politely prefixed a "Miss" to my surname. There had come, too, a peculiar feeling of trust and confidence in him--a welcome sensation in this horrible, degraded place; and it was with gratefulness that I watched him disappear in the steamy vista, throwing off his suspenders preparatory to plunging into the turmoil of the afternoon's work now under way. "Sure thing he is, I'd bet my life on it," she insisted, as we, too, hurried back to the table and took up our towels and napkins once more. "There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that fellow--he'd be awful silly and soft with his wife." There was gentle solicitude in the voice, and looking up, I was almost startled with the radiance of the girl's face--the face of a good woman who loves, and who takes a generous interest in the love affairs of another. As we leaned over the truck and began to haul out its wet freight, she whispered to me: "I know all about it because I've been there myself. I've got a gentleman-friend, too, and he's awful nice to me. He's been going with me five years, and he didn't shake me when I lost my eye. Lots of fellows I know would have backed out. That's what I like about that foreman. I think he'd do just the same by a girl he loved as Jim did to me. We'd have been married this long time, only Jim's got his hands full with a crazy mother, and he says she'll never go to any asylum s' long's he's able to keep her; and so Jim's aunt she lives with them and tends his mother, and it takes 'most all Jim makes, because his mother's sick all the time, too, and has to have the doctor and be humored. But I like a man that's good to his mother. Jim isn't overly strong, either, and is likely to break down." Late in the afternoon my partner was overcome by an attack of sick-headache, and dropped with nausea and exhaustion. Mrs. Mooney and the Queen helped her to her feet. "It's them pickles and them rotten cold lunches you girls eat," declared Mrs. Mooney, who was fond of talking on the nutritious properties of food. "Now I says, the Lord only give me one stummick, and when that's wore out he'll never give me another, and I can't never buy one with no money, and I never put anything in that stummick at noon but a good cold beer and a good hot plate of soup, and that's what you ought to do. Only cost you five cents for the both of them together, down to Devlin's place. We go there every day," jerking her head in the direction of her crony, "and you can go along if ye have a mind to." In accordance with this invitation, we became patrons of Devlin's the very next day. Promptly at twelve we hurried out, sleeves still rolled up and our damp aprons unremoved. There was no time for making a toilet, Mrs. Mooney insisted, as Devlin's was three blocks away, and we had only a half-hour. Across Lexington, across Third Avenue, and down one block, we came to a corner saloon, and filed in the "ladies' entrance." The room was filled with workmen drinking beer and smoking at the little round tables, and when they saw us each man jumped up, and grabbing his glass, went out into the barroom. Commenting upon this to Mrs. Mooney, she explained as we seated ourselves: "Sure, and what'd ye expect! Sure, and it's a proper hotel ye're in, and it's dacent wurrkin'-men that comes here, and they knows a lady when they see her, and they ups and goes!" In response to Mrs. Mooney's vigorous order, "Six beers with the trimmin's!" a waiter appeared presently with a steaming tray. "Now eat that, and drink that, and see if they don't go to the spot," cried the old woman, gaily, and we all fell to, with table manners more eager than elegant. Whatever the soup was made of, it seemed to me the best soup I had ever eaten in New York, and I instantly determined never again to blame a working man or woman for dining in a saloon in preference to the more godly and respectable dairy-lunch room. We all ate ravenously, and I, who never before could endure the sight or smell of beer, found myself draining my "schooner" as eagerly as Mrs. Mooney herself. "My! but that braces me up," she declared, sighing deeply and licking the froth from her lips; "it's almost as good as whisky." It was a propitious moment to ask questions, and I inquired how long she had worked at the "Pearl." "Eighteen months, off and on. I gets the rheumatism and stay home sometimes. I believe in taking care of yer back. I says, I've only got one back, and when that's wore out the Lord ain't going to give me another. So I stay home; but it's so lonesome I'm always mighty glad to get to work ag'in." The long, long days sped by, their torture relieved by such comfort as we could find in the gossip of the table, and in daily excursions to Devlin's, where I had become a regular patron. The foreman, too, added a little variety to the monotony by coming to our table sometimes, and shaking clothes for a few moments with us, while he gossiped with the one-eyed girl and me, which unusual proceeding filled her romantic soul with all sorts of happy anticipation. On Saturday morning, after he had come and gone, she whispered ecstatically: "That fellow is stuck on you, and I'll bet he'll be askin' you to go to the theayter with him--just see if he don't!" But alas for woman's dreams! The next day we saw the boss coming across the floor, this time alone. He sauntered up to our table, began to fling jokes at us all in a manner of insolent familiarity, and asked the names of the new faces. When he came to me he lingered a moment and uttered some joking remarks of insulting flattery, and in a moment he had grasped my bare arm and given it a rude pinch, walking hurriedly away. In a few moments the foreman came back and motioned me to go with him, and I followed to the front of the room, where the boss stood smoking and joking with the wrappers. The foreman retired a respectful distance, and the boss, after looking me over thoughtfully, informed me that I was to be promoted Monday morning to the wrappers' counter. "And now run away, and be a good girl the rest of the day," he concluded, with a wave of the hand, and I rushed back to the table, more disgusted with the man and his manner than I was thankful to him for my promotion to a job that would pay me five dollars a week. "Didn't I tell you so!" exclaimed my friend, amid the excited comments and questions of the others at the table. "That's some of the foreman's doing, and I'm real glad for you--it's nothing more than what I've been expectin', though." This opinion was not shared, however, by the rest of my companions, who repeated divers terrible tales of moral ruin and betrayal, more or less apocryphal, wherein the boss was inevitably the villain. I now found myself suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, the target of a thousand whispered comments, as I moved about the workroom. The physical agony of aching back and blistered feet was too great, though, for me to feel any mental distress over the fact--for the moment at least. In the awful frenzy of the Saturday-afternoon rush, greater than that of any other day of the week, I did not care much what they thought or said about the boss and me. I was shaking my towels and napkins, and trying to look as indifferent as I believed I felt, when the foreman beckoned me again, and stepping aside, thrust a piece of yellow wrapping-paper into my hand. "Read it when nobody's looking," he said in a low voice; "and don't think wrong of me for meddling in what's not my business"; and he was off again. A few minutes later I read: "You'd better give up this job. It's no place for a girl that wants to do right. Come back Monday and get your money; and I wouldn't stay to-night after six o'clock, if I was you, but go home and rest. If you can't get a job as good as this inside of a day or two, I think my sister can get one for you in her place; but you won't stay here if you take my advice. "Yours truly, "J. P. "P.S. Please don't show this, or I'd lose my job; and be sure to come Monday evening for your money." I made at once for the cloak-room. When I emerged, a moment later, it was to find the narrow passage obstructed by one of the big soiled-linen trucks, over which "J. P." bent industriously, as if he hadn't another thought in the world beyond the sorting of table-cloths and napkins. Suddenly he lifted up his lank frame, and seeing one of his workpeople making her escape, he called out: "It's not six o'clock yet!" "I don't care if it isn't; I am going home," I replied promptly. "What's the matter?" he asked in a loud voice, and then, as he drew near, added in an undertone: "You read my note?" "Yes," I replied. "S'pose you kind of wonder at me doing it?" he went on, moving with me toward the staircase. "No; I guessed right away," I answered. We had now reached the top of the stairs leading to the street door, and were out of ear-shot of the busy workroom. The curious faces and craning necks were lost to us through an interposing veil of steam. The foreman grasped my extended hand in a limp, hasty clasp as I began to move down the steps. "You guessed part, but not all," he whispered, turning away. I dragged myself to the end of the block and turned into Lexington Avenue just as the six-o'clock whistles began to blow. So much I remember very distinctly, but after that all is an indistinct blur of clanging street-cars, of jostling crowds. I do not know whether I had lost my senses from the physical agony I was enduring, though still able to perform the mechanical process of walking, or whether it was a case of somnambulism; but I know that I walked on, all unconscious of where I was going, or of my own identity, until I came in collision with some one, and heard a feminine voice beg my pardon. Then a little cry, and two arms were thrown about me, and I looked up into the smiling face of Minnie Plympton--Minnie Plympton as large as life and unspeakably stunning in a fresh shirt-waist and sailor-hat. She was smiling at me like a princess issuing from her enchantment in a rose-bush; and lest she should vanish as suddenly as she had appeared, I clutched wildly at her arm, trembling and sobbing at this delicious awakening from the horrible nightmare that had been my existence for so many days. We were standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and a cross-town thoroughfare, and ever after must that spot remain in my mind as the actual turning-point of my fortunes--indeed, the very turning-point of my whole life. As I look back upon that beautiful June evening, I again hear the rumble of the elevated trains in the street beyond, and again I hear the clang of the electric cars as they swirl out of the avenue into the street. Probably every man and woman who ever came a stranger to a great city has his or her own particular secret and holy place where angels came and ministered in the hour of need. I do not doubt it, but I do often wonder whether every such person visits his sacred place as often as I visit mine. I go to mine very often, especially in summer-time, about six o'clock, when, amid the roar and the turmoil and the banalities of the real and the actual, I recall the wondrous tale of the Burning Bush. For there God appeared to me that evening--the God who had hidden his face for so long. "Why, you look as weak as a kitten--you look sick!" Minnie declared. "You need a good cup of tea and to be put to bed, and I'm going to be the one to do it for you!" I was half dazed as Minnie Plympton bundled me into a passing electric car; and then, with my head leaning comfortably on Minnie Plympton's plump shoulder, and with Minnie Plympton's strong arm about my aching body, I was jolted away somewhere into a drowsy happiness. EPILOGUE Three years have elapsed since that last day in the "Pearl Laundry" and my providential meeting with Minnie Plympton. The events of those three years may be recounted in almost as few sentences, for prosperous working girls, like happy nations, have no history. And we have been very prosperous, Minnie Plympton and I. We, I say, because from the moment of our unforeseen meeting in the hurly-burly of that street corner, the interests of Minnie Plympton's life and of mine were to become, for the succeeding year, almost inseparable. I said we have both been very prosperous. But Minnie Plympton has been more than that: she has been successful--successful in the only real way a woman can, after all, be successful. Minnie is married. She is the wife of an enterprising young business man, and the mother of a charming baby. She has been married nearly two years, and lives in a pretty cottage in a peaceful suburb. It was what the world would call a good match, and Minnie declares she is perfectly happy. And no doubt she is, else that honest creature would not be so bent upon making matches for everybody else. As for myself, I have been merely prosperous--prosaically and uninterestingly, though none the less agreeably, prosperous. I do not know whether I am happy or not. I am still a working girl, and by all the portents of the dream-book I am foredoomed eternally to remain a wage-earner in spite of all Mrs. Minnie's good offices. For I was born on a Saturday; and "Saturday's child must work for its living." Now, I do not care to be accused of a superstitious faith in dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable Forelady, in coöperation with her plans and along the lines of her least resistance? This I have tried to do. How I have done it, and what the results have been, I shall now try to sketch with not more attention to tedious details than I feel justified in assuming may be of some help and encouragement to other strugglers. I became a stenographer and typewriter, earning twenty dollars a week. I worked hard for my money, and the day was still a long day. I went to work at nine o'clock in the morning, and while I was supposed to get off at five, and sometimes did, I was often obliged to work till six or seven. And this I called prosperity? Yes; for me this was prosperity, when I remembered the circumstances of my beginnings. When I met Minnie Plympton on the street corner, that hot summer night, I was "dead broke," not only in purse, but in body and spirit as well. She took me home with her to the two small rooms where she was doing light housekeeping, and where we continued to live together until her marriage a year later broke up our happy domestic partnership. A few weeks after Minnie took me home with her I got a position in the notion department of one of the large stores. I received only four dollars a week; but, as our rent was small and our living expenses the very minimum, I was able to meet my half of the joint expenditure. I worked four months at selling pins and needles and thread and whalebone and a thousand and one other things to be found in a well-stocked notion department; and then, by a stroke of good luck and Minnie Plympton's assistance, I got a place as demonstrator of a new brand of tea and coffee in the grocery department of the same "emporium." My new work was not only much lighter and pleasanter, but it paid me the munificent salary of eight dollars a week. But I did not want to be a demonstrator of tea and coffee all my life. I had often thought I would like to learn shorthand and typewriting. The demonstrator of breakfast foods at the next counter to mine was taking a night course in bookkeeping; which gave me the idea of taking a similar course in stenography. And then the Long Day began in earnest. I went to night-school five nights out of every week for exactly sixty weeks, running consecutively save for a fortnight's interim at the Christmas holidays, when we worked nights at the store. On Saturday night, which was the off night, I did my washing and ironing, and on Sunday night I made, mended, and darned my clothes--that is, when there was any making, mending, or darning to be done. As my wardrobe was necessarily slender, I had much time to spare. This spare time on Sunday nights I spent in study and reading. I studied English composition and punctuation, both of which I would need later on when I should become a stenographer. I also brushed up on my spelling and grammar, in which, I had been informed--and correctly--the average stenographer is sadly remiss. As for reading, which was the only recreation my life knew, it was of a most desultory, though always mercenary sort. I read every book I could get out of the circulating library which, from its title or general character as summarized in the newspaper reviews, I thought might help me to solve the problem of earning a good livelihood. The title of one book particularly attracted me--a book which was so much in demand that I had to wait a whole six months before I succeeded in getting it through the slow and devious process peculiar to circulating libraries. That book was "Up from Slavery," and it brought home to me as nothing else could have done what was the real trouble with myself and all the rest of the struggling, ill-paid, wretched working women with whom I had come in contact during my apprenticeship. What that trouble was I shall revert to later. When I had thoroughly learned the principles of my trade and had attained a speed of some hundred and odd words a minute, the hardest task was yet before me. This task was not in finding a position, but in filling that position satisfactorily. My first position at ten dollars a week I held only one day. I failed to read my notes. This was more because of fright and of self-consciousness, however, than of inefficiency. My next paid me only six dollars a week, but it was an excellent training-school, and in it I learned self-confidence, perfect accuracy, and rapidity. Although this position paid me two dollars less than what I had been earning brewing tea and coffee and handing it over the counter, and notwithstanding the fact that I knew of places where I could go and earn ten dollars a week, I chose to remain where I was. There was method in my madness, however, let me say. I had a considerate and conscientious employer, and although I had a great deal of work, and although it had to be done most punctiliously, he never allowed me to work a moment overtime. He opened his office at nine in the morning, and I was not expected before quarter after; he closed at four sharp. This gave me an opportunity for further improving myself with a view to eventually taking not a ten-dollar, but a twenty-dollar position. I went back to night-school and took a three months' "speed course," and at the same time continued to add to my general education and stock of knowledge by a systematic reading of popular books of science and economics. I became tremendously interested in myself as an economic factor, and I became tremendously interested in other working girls from a similar point of view. Of science and economics I knew nothing when I started out to earn my living. One day I answered an advertisement calling for the sort of stenographer I now believed myself to be. It brought a response signed with the name of a large religious publishing house. I got the position, beginning with a salary of fifteen dollars a week, which was to be increased to twenty dollars provided I could fill the position. That I should succeed in doing so, there was evident doubt in my employers' minds, and no wonder! For I was the fifth to attempt it. My work consisted for the most part in taking dictation from the editor of the periodical published weekly by the house--letters to contributors, editorials, and special articles. Also, when it was found that I had some intelligent, practical knowledge of grammar and English--and here was where my studies of the preceding year bore fruit--I was intrusted with the revision and correction of the least important of the manuscripts, thus relieving the busy editors of one of their most irksome tasks. One day I had occasion to mention to the editor some of the strenuous experiences I had undergone in my struggle to attain a decent living. He was startled--not to say a little shocked--that a young woman of apparently decent birth and upbringing should have formed such an intimate acquaintance with the dark side of life. Inspired by his sympathetic interest, I boldly interviewed the editor of a well-known monthly magazine, with the result that I immediately prepared two papers on certain of my experiences; and, to my surprise and delight, they were accepted. And, somehow, with the appearance of those two articles--the first fruits of authorship--part of the horror and loathing of that unhappy period of servitude fell away from me; the sordid suffering, the hurt to pride, the ineffaceable scar on heart and soul I felt had not been in vain. I can now look back upon the recent, still vivid past without a shiver; for there is comfort in the thought that what I have undergone is to be held up to others as a possible lesson and warning. And now a word as to the verity of this narrative. Have I actually been through all that I have described? Yes, and more; and in other cities beside New York. Yet for the sake of unity the order of things has been somewhat changed; and no record is given of many weeks, and even months, when life flowed uneventfully, if not smoothly, on. "But," says the thoughtful reader, "do your sordid experiences of some two or three years ago match conditions of to-day?" and I answer: Generally speaking, they do; because lately I reinforced memory by thorough investigation. I went further than that: when it came to me to write this little book--that is so absolutely a transcript from real life--I voluntarily labored, a week here, a week there, at various trades allied to those that previously had been my sole means of livelihood, and all the time living consistently the life of the people with whom I was thus temporarily associated. There were, of course, many little points that when I was a worker in earnest I had not eyes to see, but which my recent conscious study brought out in proper perspective. Yet it was as a working girl that I learned to know most of the characters that people this book, and which give to it any value it may possess. For obvious reasons, I have been obliged to give fictitious names to factories and shops in which I worked; and I have, in most cases, substituted for the names of the streets where the factories were located the names of streets of like character. The physical conditions, the sordid wretchedness of factory and workshop, of boarding-and lodging-house, I have not in any wise overstated. As to moral conditions, I have not been in every instance so scrupulously truthful--that is, I have not told all the truth. For it is a truth which only too often will not bear even the suggestion of telling. Only in two or three instances--for example, in my account of Henrietta Manners--have I ventured to hint definitely at anything pertaining to the shame and iniquity underlying a discouragingly large part of the work-girls' world. In my magazine articles I was obliged to leave out all reference to this tabooed topic. The attitude of the public, especially the American public, toward this subject is a curious mixture of prudery and gallantry. It bridles at anything which impeaches the traditional honor and chastity of the working girl. The chivalry of American men--and my experience in workshop, store, and factory has proved to me how genuine and deep-rooted that chivalry is--combined with our inherent spirit of democracy, is responsible for the placing of the work-girl, as a class, in a light as false and ridiculous as that in which Don Quixote was wont to view the charms of his swineherd lady, Dulcinea. In the main, our notions of the woman who toils do more credit to our sentiments and to the impulses of our hearts than they do credit to our heads or to any serious desires we may cherish for her welfare. She has become, and is becoming more and more, the object of such an amount of sentimentality on the part of philanthropists, sociological investigators, labor agitators, and yellow journals--and a goodly share of journalism that prides itself upon not being yellow--that the real work-girl has been quite lost sight of. Her name suggests, according to their imaginations, a proud, independent, self-reliant, efficient young woman--a young woman who works for her living and is glad of it. One hardly dares criticize her, unless, indeed, it be to lecture her for an ever-increasing independence of her natural male protectors and an alleged aversion to babies. That we should cling so tenaciously to this ideal is to our honor and glory. But fine words butter no parsnips; nor do our fine idealizations serve to reduce the quota which the working-girl ranks contribute to disreputable houses and vicious resorts. The factories, the workshops, and to some extent the stores, of the kind that I have worked in at least, are recruiting-grounds for the Tenderloin and the "red light" districts. The Springers and the "Pearl Laundries" send annually a large consignment of delinquents to their various and logical destinations. It is rare indeed that one finds a female delinquent who has not been in the beginning a working girl. For, sad and terrible though it be, the truth is that the majority of "unfortunates," whether of the specifically criminal or of the prostitute class, are what they are, not because they are inherently vicious, but _because they were failures as workers and as wage-earners_. They were failures as such, primarily, for no other reason than that they did not like to work. And they did not like to work, not because they are lazy--they are anything but lazy, as a rule--but _because they did not know how to work_. Few girls know how to work when they undertake the first job, whether that job be making paper boxes, seaming corset-covers, or taking shorthand dictation. Nor by the term, "knowing how to work," do I mean, necessarily, lack of experience. One may have had no experience whatever in any line of work, yet one may know _how_ to work--may understand the general principles of intelligent labor. These general principles a girl may learn equally well by means of a normal-school training or through familiarity with, and participation in, the domestic labor of a well-organized household. The working girl in a great city like New York does not have the advantage of either form of training. Her education, even at the best, is meager, and of housework she knows less than nothing. If she is city-born, it is safe to assume that she has never been taught how to sweep a room properly, nor how to cook the simplest meal wholesomely, nor how to make a garment that she would be willing to wear. She usually buys all her cheap finery at a cheap store, and such style and taste as she displays is "ready made." Not having learned to work, either at school or at home, she goes to the factory, to the workshop, or to the store, crude, incompetent, and, worst of all, with an instinctive antagonism toward her task. _She cannot work, and she does not work. She is simply "worked."_ And there is all the difference in the world between "working" and "being worked." To work is a privilege and a boon to either man or woman, and, properly regulated, it ought to be a pleasure. To be worked is degrading. To work is dignified and ennobling, for to work means the exercise of the mental quite as much as the physical self. But the average working girl puts neither heart nor mind into her labor; she is merely a machine, though the comparison is a libel upon the functions of first-class machinery. The harsh truth is that, hard as the working girl is "worked," and miserable as her remuneration is, she is usually paid quite as much as she is worth. For her incompetency she is not entirely to blame; rather is it a matter of heredity and environment. Being a girl, it is not natural to her to work systematically. The working woman is a new product; in this country she is hardly three generations old. As yet she is as new to the idea of what it really means to work as is the Afro-American citizen. The comparison may not be flattering to our vanity, but, after a reading of Booker Washington's various expositions of the industrial abilities of the negro, I cannot but be convinced that the white working woman is in a corresponding process of evolution, so far as her specific functions for labor have been developed. Conditions in the "Pearl," from the view-point of mere physical labor, were the most brutal in all my experience; but, from what I can learn, the "Pearl" is no worse than many other similar establishments. Young women will work in such places only as a last resort, for young women cannot work long under conditions so detrimental to bodily health. The regular workers are old women--women like Mrs. Mooney and her cronies. The steady workers at the "Pearl" were, with the exception of the "queen," all old women. Every day saw the arrival of a new force of young hands who were bound to "play out" at the end of three or four days' apprenticeship, if not sooner. I played out completely: I didn't walk a step for a week after I went home with Minnie Plympton that Saturday night. Which was all in accord with Mrs. Mooney's prediction the first day: "You won't last long, mind ye; you young uns never do. If you ain't strong as an ox it gits in your back and off ye go to the 'orspital; and if you're not able to stand the drivin', and thinks you're good-lookin', off you goes to the bad, sooner 'n stay here." I would like to dwell for a moment upon the character and personality of her whom I have more than once referred to as the "queen." The queen had worked, I was told, for seven years in the laundry, and she was, as I saw and knew her in those days, as fresh as the proverbial daisy. She seemed the very embodiment of blithesome happiness. In the chapter dealing with the laundry I had occasion to speak of her voluptuous beauty. Her long years of hard labor--and she labored harder than any one else there--seemed to have wrought no effect upon her handsome, nerveless body. Her lovely eyes, her hair, her dazzling complexion and perfect features, were all worthy the reputation of a stage beauty. She was kind; in her rough, uncouth way, she was kind to everybody--so kind, in fact, that she was generally popular, though envied as enjoying the boss's favor. And, as may be imagined, her influence, during those seven years, upon the underfed, underpaid, ignorant, unskilled green hands who streamed into the "Pearl" every morning must have been endless for evil. On the subject of morality I am constrained to express myself with apparent diffidence, lest I be misinterpreted and charged with vilifying the class to which I once belonged. And yet behind my diffidence of expression I must confess to a very honest and uncompromising belief, founded upon my own knowledge and observation, that the average working girl is even more poorly equipped for right living and right thinking than she is for intelligent industrial effort. One of the worst features of my experience was being obliged to hear the obscene stories which were exchanged at the work-table quite as a matter of course; and, if not a reflection of vicious minds, this is at least indicative of loose living and inherent vulgarity. The lewd joke, the abominable tale, is the rule, I assert positively, and not the exception, among the lower class of working girls with whom I toiled in those early months of my apprenticeship. The flower-manufactory in Broadway was the one glorious exception. I do not attempt to account for this exception to the general rule, unless it be explainable upon the logical theory that the skill necessary for the making of artificial flowers is found only in a vastly superior class of girls. The flower-girls I met at Rosenberg's were, without exception, wholesome-minded and pure-hearted. They knew how to cook, as they had ample opportunity of proving at our luncheons and dinners during those four busy, happy weeks. I never met factory-girls in any other line of employment who knew how to make a cup of tea or coffee that was fit to drink. The flower-girls gave every evidence of having come from homes which, humble though many of them must have been, were nevertheless well-ordered and clean. The girls I met in other places seemed never to have lived in homes at all. In the telling of the obscene story, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, were equally guilty. That the responsibility for these conditions of moral as well as physical wretchedness is fundamentally attributable to our present socio-economic system is a fact that has been stated so often before, and by writers who by right of specialized knowledge and scientific training are so much better equipped to discuss social economics than I may ever hope to be, that I need not repeat the axiom here. Nor would it be any more becoming for me to enter into any discussion of the various theories upon which the economists and the social reformers base their various projects for the reconstruction of the present system. Personally I have a strong prejudice in favor of the trades-union. I believe that working women should awaken as quickly as possible to the advantages to be derived from organization of the industries in which they are employed. But I seem to be alone in my cherished desire. The women and girls I have worked with in New York do not view the trades-union as their more progressive and enlightened sisters of Chicago and the West generally choose to regard it. Chicago alone shows a roster of nearly forty thousand women and girls who are organized into unions of their own, officered by themselves and with their own feminine "walking delegates." I recently spent four weeks among these trades-unions, numbering thirty-five distinct women's organizations, and I found, everywhere I went, the same enthusiasm for, and the same superior degree of intelligence regarding, the aim and object of the organization idea. As for the working women of New York, they have so far refused to countenance the trades-union. New York has no woman's trades-union. A small percentage of women workers belong to labor organizations, it is true; but it is merely as auxiliaries to the men's unions, and where they work at trades that have been thoroughly organized for the benefit of the men workers. They belong to these unions always under protest, not of their own volition; because they are obliged to do so in order to be permitted to work at their trades in competition with men who are organized. For this reason, owing to the blindness of the workwoman to the benefits to be derived from organization,--and because, moreover, it has not yet been proved that the trades-union, carried to its logical conclusion, is likely to be a panacea for the industrial woes of the sex which does favor and support it--it seems to me rather idle to urge its wider adoption under the protest of those most vitally concerned--the women workers themselves. The idea of organized labor will have to grow among the ranks of women workers just as the idea has grown into the consciousness of her father and brother. We have a great and crying need for two things--things which it is entirely within the power of a broad-minded philanthropy to supply. The most urgent of these needs is a very material and unpoetic one. We need a well-regulated system of boarding-and lodging-houses where we can live with decency upon the small wages we receive. We do not want any so-called "working girls' homes"--God forgive the euphemism!--which, while overcharging us for the miserable accommodations, at the same time would put us in the attitude of charity dependants. What the working girl needs is a cheap hotel or a system of hotels--for she needs a great many of them--designed something after the Mills Hotels for working-men. She also needs a system of well-regulated lodging-houses, such as are scattered all over the city for the benefit of men. My experience of the working girls' home in which I lived for many weeks, and from my observation and inquiries regarding a number of similar "homes" which I have since visited, justifies me in making a few suggestions regarding the general plan and conduct of the ideal philanthropic scheme which I have in mind. First and most important, there must be no semblance of charity. Let the working girls' hotel and the working girls' lodging-house be not only self-supporting, but so built and conducted that they will pay a fair rate of interest upon the money invested. Otherwise they would fail of any truly philanthropic object. As to their conduct as institutions there should be no rules, no regulations which are not in full operation in the Waldorf-Astoria or the Hotel St. Regis. The curse of all such attempts in the past has been the insistence upon _coercive morality_. Make them not only non-sectarian, but non-religious. There is no more need of conducting a working girls' hotel or lodging-house in the name of God or under the auspices of religious sentiment than there is necessity for advertising the Martha Washington Hotel or any fashionable bachelor-apartment house as being under divine guidance. A clean room and three wholesomely cooked meals a day _can_ be furnished to working girls at a price such as would make it possible for them to live honestly on the small wage of the factory and store. We do not ask for luxuries or dainties. We do not get them in the miserable, dark warrens where we are now obliged to sleep, and we do not get them at the unappetizing boarding-house tables where countless thousands of us find sustenance. I do not know--I suppose nobody does know--how many working girls in New York City live in lodging-and boarding-houses. But they are legion, and very few of them are contented with that life. The most important necessity of the model working woman's hotel or lodging-house would be, not a luxurious table, not a dainty sleeping-room, but a parlor! The number of young girls who go wrong in a great city like this for want of the various necessities of a parlor must make the angels in heaven weep. The houses where the poorly paid girl lives have no accommodations for the entertainment of her male friends. If the house is conducted with any respect for the conventions, the girl lodger must meet her young man on the "stoop" or on the street corner. As the courtship progresses, they must have recourse either to the benches of the public parks, provided the weather be favorable, or else to the light and warmth of the back room of a saloon. The average cheap lodging-house is usually conducted, however, with but scant regard for the conventions, and the girl usually is forced to adopt the more convenient and, as it would seem to her, really more self-respecting habit of receiving her company in her room. And either one of these methods of courtship, it is evident, cannot but be in the end demoralizing and degrading to thoughtless young people, however innocent they may be of any deliberate wrong-doing. In the model lodging-house there should be perfect liberty of conduct and action on the part of guests--who will not be "inmates" in any sense of the word. Such guests should have perfect liberty to go and come when they please at any hour of the day or night; be permitted to see any person they choose to have come, without question or challenge, so long as the conventions of ordinary social life are complied with. Such an institution, conducted upon such a plan and managed so that it would make fair returns to its promoters, cannot fail to be welcomed; and would be of inestimable benefit as an uplifting and regenerative force with those for whom it is designed. The other need is for a greater interest in the workwoman's welfare on the part of the church, and an effort by that all-powerful institution to bring about some adjustment of her social and economic difficulties. I am old-fashioned enough to believe in the supreme efficacy of organized religion in relation to womanhood, and all that pertains to womanhood. I believe that, in our present state of social development, the church can do more for the working girl than any of the proposed measures based upon economic science or the purely ethical theory. Working women as a class are certainly not ripe for the trades-union, as I have already intimated; and the earnest people of the "settlements" are able to reach but a small part of the great army of women marching hopelessly on, ungeneraled, untrained, and, worst of all, uncaring. Few are they who, like Tolstoi, can gracefully stoop to conquer; and those who shall be ordained to revolutionize conditions will rise from the ranks, even as did Booker T. Washington. This, of course, is the ultimate object of settlement work: to prepare the leaven for the loaf. But a live and progressive church--a church imbued with the Christian spirit in the broadest and most liberal interpretation of the term--can do for us, and do it quickly and at once, more than all the college settlements and all the trades-unions that can be organized within the next ten years could hope to do. And for this reason: the church has all the machinery ready, set up and waiting only for the proper hand to put it in motion to this great end. The Christian church has a vast responsibility in the solution of all problems of the social order, and none of those problems is more grave or urgent than the one affecting the economic condition of the wage-earning woman. It is curious that the church, in this age, should choose to regard its primary function with such evident apathy. The first business of the church in the past was the adjustment of social difficulties. The gospel of Jesus Christ was preëminently a social gospel, and when the church ceases to be a social force it will have outlived its usefulness. There are those who believe that the church _has_ outlived that primal usefulness. I do not believe so. For men, perhaps, it has; but not for women--certainly not for working women. We do not as a sex, we do not as a class, flatter ourselves that we have got along so far in race development that we have no further need of organized religion. In all my experience of meeting and talking, often becoming intimately acquainted, with girls and women of all sorts, I have never known one, however questionable, to whom the church was not, after all, held in respect as the one all-powerful human institution. And yet, unless they were Catholics, mighty few went to church at all, and most of them were resentful, often bitter, toward the church and hostile toward all kinds of organized religion. They accused the church of not doing its duty toward them, and they declared that organized religion was a sham and a hypocrisy. The only activity exerted by the church in the direction indicated partakes too strongly of the eleemosynary nature to make it acceptable to any save the most degraded--the weak-chinned, flabby-natured horde of men and women who rally instinctively to the drum-taps of the street-corner Salvationist, or seek warmth and cheer on cold winter nights, and if possible more substantial benefits, from the missions and "church houses." I have no quarrel to pick with the Salvation Army, nor with the city missions, as institutions. Both have done too much good for that "ninety and nine" which the church forgets. But it is a pity that the work of the Salvation Army and of the city missions is sometimes relegated to the control of such incompetent and unworthy persons as Henrietta Manners and "Brother" Mason. Since my brief acquaintance with those aspiring reformers, I have investigated and found that both were prominent workers and "guides" in the respective religious movements to which they claimed allegiance; I also found that there were other Henrietta Mannerses and not a few "Brother" Masons interested in the same good work. It is the part of charity and justice to assume that their superior officers were totally ignorant of their real characters. But why should these sacred duties be relegated to the Henrietta Mannerses and the "Brother" Masons? Are there not enough intelligent, conscientious Christian men and women among the churches who would consider it not only a duty, but a precious privilege, to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ into the dark places? It is not wise to set a thief to catch a thief, and it is worse than useless to encourage the weak, not to say the depraved, to carry the gospel to their kind. In the days when I could see no silver lining to the clouds I tried going to a Protestant church, but I recognized very shortly the alienation between it and me. Personally, I do not like to attend Salvation meetings or listen to the mission evangelists. So I ceased any pretension of going to church, thus allying myself with that great aggregation of non-church-going Protestant working women who have been forced into a resentful attitude against that which we should love and support. It is encouraging, however, to find that the church itself has, at last, begun to heed our growing disaffection and alienation: "The fact must be admitted that the wage-workers of this country are largely outside the churches. This breach has been steadily widening; conditions are worse now than they were ten years ago. One of the strongest reasons for this is the fact that the churches have not recognized so clearly as they ought the equities of this conflict. It is a grave failure. They ought never to have suffered such an alienation to occur between themselves and the people who constitute the very bone and sinew of our civilization," says a prominent preacher and reformer. "How can the Christian church clear herself of the charge that the very people who heard her Lord gladly turn in multitudes from her threshold? There is need of sober thought and deep humiliation, that this most grave social problem may find a solution which shall bring honor to the church and peace to society."[1] Obviously the fundamental need of the worker of either sex is education. She needs to be educated, this work-girl. She does not need a fancy education; but she does need a good education, so that upon her entrance into the workshop she will be able to read and write and add up a column of figures correctly and with ease. This she seems not to be able to do under present conditions. And there are other things, even more important than the "three R's," which she should be taught. She should be taught how to work--how to work _intelligently_. She should be trained young in the fundamental race activities, in the natural human instinct for making something with the hands, or of doing something with the hands, and of taking an infinite pleasure in making it perfect, in doing it well. I have no technical knowledge of pedagogics; I must admit that. My criticism of the public-school system I base entirely upon the results as I have seen them in the workshops, the factories, and the store in which I worked. During this period I had opportunity for meeting many hundreds of girls and for becoming more or less acquainted with them all. Now, of all these I have not yet discovered one who had not at some time in her earlier childhood or girlhood attended a public school. Usually the girl had had at least five years' continuous schooling, but often it was much more. But, great or small as the period of her tuition had been, I never met one whose knowledge of the simplest rudiments of learning was confident and precise. Spelling, geography, grammar, arithmetic, were never, with them, positive knowledge, but rather matters of chance and guess. Even the brightest girls showed a woeful ignorance of the "three R's." In only one thing did I find them universally well taught, and that was in handwriting. However badly spelled and ungrammatical their written language might be, it was invariably neatly and legibly--often beautifully--executed. But if these girls, these workmates of mine, learned to write clear and beautiful hands, why were they not able also to learn how to spell, why were they not able to learn the principles of grammar and the elementary knowledge of arithmetic as far at least as long division? That they did not have sufficient "apperceiving basis" I cannot believe, for they were generally bright and clever. It is true that the public schools are already teaching manual training, and that kindergartens have enormously increased lately. These facts I know very well. I also know how much ignorance and senseless prejudice the pioneers of these educational reforms have had to overcome in the introduction of the newer and better methods. The point I wish to make carries no slur upon the ideal which the best modern pedagogy is striving for; it is, on the contrary, an appeal for the support and furtherance of that ideal on the part of intelligent citizenship generally, and of conscientious parenthood particularly. I believe firmly in the kindergarten; I believe that the child, whether rich or poor, who goes to kindergarten in his tender years has a better chance in life, all else being equal, than the child who does not. I do not know how long the free kindergarten system has obtained to any degree in New York City, but I do know that I have as yet found only one working girl who has had the benefit of any such training in childhood. She was "Lame Lena" at Springer's box-factory; and in spite of her deformity, which made it difficult for her to walk across the floor, she was the quickest worker and made more money than any other girl in the shop. Tersely put, and quoting her own speech, the secret of her success was in "knowing how to kill two birds with one stone," and, again, "makin' of your cocoanut save your muscle." These formulæ were more or less vague until further inquiry elicited the interesting fact that "lame Lena," had had in childhood the privilege of a kindergarten training in a class maintained by some church society when the free kindergarten was not so general as it is now. It is not unreasonable to suppose that had this lame girl's workmates enjoyed the privilege of the same elementary training, they might have shown an equal facility in the humble task of pasting and labeling and tissuing paper boxes. "Lame Lena" knew how to work; she knew how to husband every modicum of nervous energy in her frail, deformed body; and thus she was able to make up--more than make up--for her physical inferiority. "Lame Lena" brought to her sordid task a certain degree of organizing faculty; she did the various processes rhythmically and systematically, always with the idea in view of making one stroke of the arm or the hand do, if possible, a double or a triple duty. The other girls worked helter-skelter; running hither and thither; taking many needless journeys back and forth across the floor; hurrying when they were fresh to the task, dawdling when they were weary, but at all times working without method and without organization of the task in hand, and without that coördination of muscular and mental effort which the kindergarten might have taught them, just as it had certainly taught "Lame Lena." The free kindergarten movement is not yet old enough to begin to show its effects to any perceptible degree in the factory and workshop. Henrietta Manners and Phoebe Arlington and little Angelina were born too soon: they did not know the joy of the kindergarten; they did not know the delight of sitting in a little red chair in a great circle of other little red chairs filled with other little girls, each and all learning the rudimentary principles of work under the blissful delusion that they were at play. These joys have been reserved for their little sisters, who, sooner or later, will step into their vacant places in the box-factory. What was denied Angelina it is the blessed privilege of Angelina's baby to revel in. Angelina's baby--the little baby that she kept in the day-nursery when we worked together at Springer's--now goes to a free kindergarten. I happen to know this because not long ago I met Angelina. She did not recognize me--indeed, she had difficulty in recalling vaguely that I had worked with her once upon a time; for Angelina's memory, like that of a great majority of her hard-worked class, is very poor,--a fact I mention because it is very much to the point right here. My solicitous inquiry for the baby brought forth a burst of Latin enthusiasm as to the cunningness and sweetness of that incipient box-maker, who, Angelina informed me, goes to kindergarten in a free hack along with a crowd of other babies. But Angelina, bless her soul! is down on the kindergarten. She says, with a pout and a contemptuous shrug, "they don't teach you're kid nothing but nonsense, just cutting up little pieces of paper and singing fool songs and marching to music." Angelina admitted, however, that her _bambino_ was supremely happy there,--so happy, in fact, that she hadn't the heart to take her away, even though she does know that it is all "tomfoolishness" the "kid" is being taught by a mistaken philanthropy. It is fair to suppose that in the factory and workshop of every description the kindergarten is bound to work incalculable results. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the kindergarteners themselves can quite realize how well they are building--can fully comprehend the very great need in the working woman of the identical principles which they are so patiently and faithfully inculcating into the tender minds of these forlorn babies gathered up in the courts and alleys. Another important thing looking to the well-being of the working girl of the future would be the wide dissemination of a better literature than that with which she now regales herself. I have already outlined at some length the literary tastes of my workmates at the box-factory. The example cited is typical of other factories and other workshops, and also of the department-store. A certain downtown section of New York City is monopolized by the publishers and binders of "yellow-backs," which are turned out in bales and cart-loads daily. Girls fed upon such mental trash are bound to have distorted and false views of everything. There is a broad field awaiting some original-minded philanthropist who will try to counteract the maudlin yellow-back by putting in its place something wholesome and sweet and sane. Only, please, Mr. or Mrs. Philanthropist, don't let it be Shakspere, or Ruskin, or Walter Pater. Philanthropists have tried before to reform degraded literary tastes with heroic treatment, and they have failed every time. That is sometimes the trouble with the college-settlement folk. They forget that Shakspere, and Ruskin, and all the rest of the really true and great literary crew, are infinite bores to every-day people. I know personally, and love deeply and sincerely, a certain young woman--a settlement-worker--who for several years conducted an evening class in literature for some girl "pants-makers." She gave them all the classics in allopathic doses, she gave them copies of "A Crown of Wild Olive" and "The Ethics of the Dust," which they read dutifully, not because they liked the books, which were meaningless to their tired heads, but because they loved Miss ---- and enjoyed the evenings spent with her at the settlement. But Miss ---- did not succeed in supplanting their old favorites, which undoubtedly she could have done had she given them all the light, clean present-day romance they could possibly read. It is a curious fact that these girls will not read stories laid in the past, however full of excitement they may be. They like romance of the present day, stories which have to do with scenes and circumstances not too far removed from the real and the actual. All their trashy favorites have to do with the present, with heroes and heroines who live in New York City or Boston or Philadelphia; who go on excursions to Coney Island, to Long Branch, or to Delaware Water Gap; and who, when they die, are buried in Greenwood over in Brooklyn, or in Woodlawn up in Westchester County. In other words, any story, to absorb their interest, must cater to the very primitive feminine liking for identity. This liking, this passion, their own special authors have thoroughly comprehended, and keep it constantly in mind in the development of their plots. This taste for better literature could be helped along immeasurably if still another original-minded philanthropist were to make it his business that no tenement baby should be without its "Mother Goose" and, a little later, its "Little Women," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Robinson Crusoe," and all the other precious childhood favorites. As it is, the majority know nothing about them. But, after all, the greatest factor in the ultimate development of the working girl as a wage-earning unit--the most potent force for the adjustment of all the difficulties besetting her at every turn, and for the righting of all her wrongs, social, economic, or moral--will be the attitude which she herself assumes toward the dispassionate consideration of those difficulties to be adjusted, and of those wrongs to be righted. At the present time there is nobody so little concerned about herself and her condition as the working woman herself. Taking everything into consideration, and in spite of conditions which, to the observer viewing them at a distance great enough to get a perspective, seem irreconcilably harsh and bitter--in the face of all this, one must characterize the working woman as a contented, if not a happy woman. That is the great trouble that will have to be faced in any effort to alleviate her condition. She is too contented, too happy, too patient. But not wholesomely so. Hers is a contentment, a happiness, a patience founded, not in normal good health and the joy of living and working, but in apathy. Her lot is hard, but she has grown used to it; for, being a woman, she is patient and long-suffering. She does not entirely realize the tragedy of it all, and what it means to herself, or to her children perhaps yet to be born. In the happy future, the working girl will no longer be content to be merely "worked." Then she will have learned to work. She will have learned to work intelligently, and, working thus, she will begin to think--to think about herself and all those things which most vitally concern her as a woman and as a wage-earner. And then, you may depend upon it, she will settle the question to please herself, and she will settle it in the right way. FOOTNOTE: [1] "The Church and Social Problems," by Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. ("International Quarterly.") 
31196	----	[Illustration: CONISTON FROM A PHOTOGRAPH] Library Edition THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN CROWN OF WILD OLIVE TIME AND TIDE QUEEN OF THE AIR LECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPE ARATRA PENTELICI NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NEW YORK CHICAGO TIME AND TIDE BY WEARE AND TYNE TWENTY-FIVE LETTERS TO A WORKING MAN OF SUNDERLAND ON THE LAWS OF WORK. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE ix LETTER I. CO-OPERATION 1 The two kinds of Co-operation.--In its highest sense it is not yet thought of. II. CONTENTMENT 4 Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is perhaps not expedient. III. LEGISLATION 7 Of True Legislation.--That every Man may be a Law to himself. IV. EXPENDITURE 11 The Expenses for Art and for War. V. ENTERTAINMENT 13 The Corruption of Modern Pleasure.--(Covent Garden Pantomime.) VI. DEXTERITY 18 The Corruption of Modern Pleasure.--(The Japanese Jugglers.) VII. FESTIVITY 20 Of the Various Expressions of National Festivity. VIII. THINGS WRITTEN 22 The Four Possible Theories respecting the Authority of the Bible. IX. THANKSGIVING 27 The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish Theocracy, compared with their Use by the Modern French. X. WHEAT-SIFTING 32 The Meaning, and Actual Operation, of Satanic or Demoniacal Influence. XI. THE GOLDEN BOUGH 38 The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold: the Power of causing Falsehood and the Power of causing Pain. The Resistance is by Law of Honor and Law of Delight. XII. DICTATORSHIP 41 The Necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity of States. XIII. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM 45 The Proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke; or, "Overseer" and "Leader." XIV. TRADE-WARRANT 51 The First Group of Essential Laws.--Against Theft by False Work, and by Bankruptcy.--Necessary Publicity of Accounts. XV. PER-CENTAGE 54 The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits.--Crime can finally be arrested only by Education. XVI. EDUCATION 59 Of Public Education irrespective of Class distinction. It consists essentially in giving Habits of Mercy, and Habits of Truth. (_Gentleness and Justice._) XVII. DIFFICULTIES 66 The Relations of Education to Position in Life. XVIII. HUMILITY 68 The harmful Effects of Servile Employments. The possible Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by Religious Persons. XIX. BROKEN REEDS 73 The General Pressure of Excessive and Improper Work, in English Life. XX. ROSE-GARDENS 78 Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Classes; and of the advisable Restrictions of it. XXI. GENTILLESSE 83 Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts; and of the Proper System of Retail Trade. XXII. THE MASTER 88 Of the Normal Position and Duties of the Upper Classes. General Statement of the Land Question. XXIII. LANDMARKS 93 Of the Just Tenure of Lands; and the Proper Functions of high Public Officers. XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB 101 The Office of the Soldier. XXV. HYSSOP 108 Of inevitable Distinction of Rank, and necessary Submission to Authority. The Meaning of Pure-Heartedness. Conclusion. APPENDICES. APPENDIX PAGE I. Expenditure on Science and Art 119 II. Legislation of Frederick the Great 120 III. Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth 124 IV. Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime 124 V. Abuse of Food 126 VI. Regulations of Trade 128 VII. Letter to the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ 130 PREFACE. The following Letters were written to Mr. Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, during the agitation for Reform in the spring of the present year. They contain, in the plainest terms I could use, the substance of what I then desired to say to our English workmen, which was briefly this:--"The reform you desire may give you more influence in Parliament; but your influence there will of course be useless to you,--perhaps worse than useless, until you have wisely made up your minds what you wish Parliament to do for you; and when you _have_ made up your minds about that, you will find, not only that you can do it for yourselves, without the intervention of Parliament; but that eventually nobody _but_ yourselves can do it. And to help you, as far as one of your old friends may, in so making up your minds, such and such things are what it seems to me you should ask for, and, moreover, strive for with your heart and might." The letters now published relate only to one division of the laws which I desired to recommend to the consideration of our operatives,--those, namely, bearing upon honesty of work, and honesty of exchange. I hope in the course of next year that I may be able to complete the second part of the series, [I could not; but 'Fors Clavigera' is now (1872) answering the same end:] which will relate to the possible comforts and wholesome laws, of familiar household life, and the share which a laboring nation may attain in the skill, and the treasures, of the higher arts. The letters are republished as they were written, with, here and there, correction of a phrase, and omission of one or two passages of merely personal or temporary interest; the headings only are added, in order to give the reader some clue to the general aim of necessarily desultory discussion; and the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters in reply, referred to in the text, are added in the Appendix, and will be found well deserving of attention. DENMARK HILL, _December 14, 1867._ TIME AND TIDE, BY WEARE AND TYNE. LETTER I. THE TWO KINDS OF CO-OPERATION.--IN ITS HIGHEST SENSE IT IS NOT YET THOUGHT OF. DENMARK HILL, _February 4, 1867._ MY DEAR FRIEND, 1. You have now everything I have yet published on political economy; but there are several points in these books of mine which I intended to add notes to, and it seems little likely I shall get that soon done. So I think the best way of making up for the want of these is to write you a few simple letters, which you can read to other people, or send to be printed, if you like, in any of your journals where you think they may be useful. I especially want you, for one thing, to understand the sense in which the word "co-operation" is used in my books. You will find I am always pleading for it; and yet I don't at all mean the co-operation of partnership (as opposed to the system of wages) which is now so gradually extending itself among our great firms. I am glad to see it doing so, yet not altogether glad: for none of you who are engaged in the immediate struggle between the system of co-operation and the system of mastership know how much the dispute involves; and none of us know the results to which it may finally lead. For the alternative is not, in reality, only between two modes of conducting business--it is between two different states of society. It is not the question whether an amount of wages, no greater in the end than that at present received by the men, may be paid to them in a way which shall give them share in the risks and interest in the prosperity of the business. The question is, really, whether the profits which are at present taken, as his own right, by the person whose capital, or energy, or ingenuity, has made him head of the firm, are not in some proportion to be divided among the subordinates of it. 2. I do not wish, for the moment, to enter into any inquiry as to the just claims of capital, or as to the proportions in which profits ought to be, or are in actually existing firms, divided. I merely take the one assured and essential condition, that a somewhat larger income will be in co-operative firms secured to the subordinates, by the diminution of the income of the chief. And the general tendency of such a system is to increase the facilities of advancement among the subordinates; to stimulate their ambition; to enable them to lay by, if they are provident, more ample and more early provision for declining years; and to form in the end a vast class of persons wholly different from the existing operative:--members of society, possessing each a moderate competence; able to procure, therefore, not indeed many of the luxuries, but all the comforts of life; and to devote some leisure to the attainments of liberal education, and to the other objects of free life. On the other hand, by the exact sum which is divided among them, more than their present wages, the fortune of the man who, under the present system, takes all the profits of the business, will be diminished; and the acquirement of large private fortune by regular means, and all the conditions of life belonging to such fortune, will be rendered impossible in the mercantile community. 3. Now, the magnitude of the social change hereby involved, and the consequent differences in the moral relations between individuals, have not as yet been thought of,--much less estimated,--by any of your writers on commercial subjects; and it is because I do not yet feel able to grapple with them that I have left untouched, in the books I send you, the question of co-operative labor. When I use the word "co-operation," it is not meant to refer to these new constitutions of firms at all. I use the word in a far wider sense, as opposed, not to masterhood, but to _competition_. I do not mean, for instance, by co-operation, that all the master bakers in a town are to give a share of their profits to the men who go out with the bread; but that the masters are not to try to undersell each other, nor seek each to get the other's business, but are all to form one society, selling to the public under a common law of severe penalty for unjust dealing, and at an established price. I do not mean that all bankers' clerks should be partners in the bank; but I do mean that all bankers should be members of a great national body, answerable as a society for all deposits; and that the private business of speculating with other people's money should take another name than that of "banking." And, for final instance, I mean by "co-operation" not only fellowships between trading _firms_, but between trading _nations_; so that it shall no more be thought (as it is now, with ludicrous and vain selfishness) an advantage for one nation to undersell another; and take its occupation away from it; but that the primal and eternal law of vital commerce shall be of all men understood--namely, that every nation is fitted by its character, and the nature of its territories, for some particular employments or manufactures; and that it is the true interest of every other nation to encourage it in such speciality, and by no means to interfere with, but in all ways forward and protect, its efforts, ceasing all rivalship with it, so soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper place. You see, therefore, that the idea of co-operation, in the sense in which I employ it, has hardly yet entered into the minds of political inquirers; and I will not pursue it at present; but return to that system which is beginning to obtain credence and practice among us. This, however, must be in a following letter. LETTER II. CO-OPERATION, AS HITHERTO UNDERSTOOD, IS PERHAPS NOT EXPEDIENT. _February 4, 1867._ 4. Limiting the inquiry, then, for the present, as proposed in the close of my last letter, to the form of co-operation which is now upon its trial in practice, I would beg of you to observe that the points at issue, in the comparison of this system with that of mastership, are by no means hitherto frankly stated; still less can they as yet be fairly brought to test. For all mastership is not alike in principle; there are just and unjust masterships; and while, on the one hand, there can be no question but that co-operation is better than unjust and tyrannous mastership, there is very great room for doubt whether it be better than a just and benignant mastership. 5. At present you--every one of you--speak, and act, as if there were only one alternative; namely, between a system in which profits shall be divided in due proportion among all; and the present one, in which the workman is paid the least wages he will take, under the pressure of competition in the labor-market. But an intermediate method is conceivable; a method which appears to me more prudent, and in its ultimate results more just, than the co-operative one. An arrangement may be supposed, and I have good hope also may one day be effected, by which every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wages, according to his rank; by which due provision shall be made out of the profits of the business for sick and superannuated workers; and by which the master, _being held responsible, as a minor king or governor, for the conduct as well as the comfort of all those under his rule_, shall, on that condition, be permitted to retain to his own use the surplus profits of the business which the fact of his being its master may be assumed to prove that he has organized by superior intellect and energy. And I think this principle of regular wage-paying, whether it be in the abstract more just, or not, is at all events the more prudent; for this reason mainly, that in spite of all the cant which is continually talked by cruel, foolish, or designing persons about "the duty of remaining content in the position in which Providence has placed you," there is a root of the very deepest and holiest truth in the saying, which gives to it such power as it still retains, even uttered by unkind and unwise lips, and received into doubtful and embittered hearts. 6. If, indeed, no effort be made to discover, in the course of their early training, for what services the youths of a nation are individually qualified; nor any care taken to place those who have unquestionably proved their fitness for certain functions, in the offices they could best fulfil,--then, to call the confused wreck of social order and life brought about by malicious collision and competition, an arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most insolent and wicked ways in which it is possible to take the name of God in vain. But if, at the proper time, some earnest effort be made to place youths, according to their capacities, in the occupations for which they are fitted, I think the system of organization will be finally found the best, which gives the least encouragement to thoughts of any great future advance in social life. 7. The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place, or rank, but in gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which circumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the object of a workman's ambition should not be to become a master; but to attain daily more subtle and exemplary skill in his own craft, to save from his wages enough to enrich and complete his home gradually with more delicate and substantial comforts; and to lay by such store as shall be sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old age (rendering him independent of the help provided for the sick and indigent by the arrangement pre-supposed), and sufficient also for the starting of his children in a rank of life equal to his own. If his wages are not enough to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low; if they are once raised to this adequate standard, I do not think that by the possible increase of his gains under contingencies of trade, or by divisions of profits with his master, he should be enticed into feverish hope of an entire change of condition; and as an almost necessary consequence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with immediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily life, for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. And I am the more confident in this belief, because, even supposing a gradual rise in social rank possible for all well-conducted persons, my experience does not lead me to think the elevation itself, when attained, would be conducive to their happiness. 8. The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a future letter; in the present one, I must pass to a more important point--namely, that if this stability of condition be indeed desirable for those in whom existing circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much more must it be good and desirable for those who already possess everything which can be conceived necessary to happiness. It is the merest insolence of selfishness to preach contentment to a laborer who gets thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active and plotting covetousness to be meritorious in a man who has three thousand a year. In this, as in all other points of mental discipline, it is the duty of the upper classes to set an example to the lower; and to recommend and justify the restraint of the ambition of their inferiors, chiefly by severe and timely limitation of their own. And, without at present inquiring into the greater or less convenience of the possible methods of accomplishing such an object, (every detail in suggestions of this kind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dispute,) I will merely state my long-fixed conviction, that one of the most important conditions of a healthful system of social economy, would be the restraint of the properties and incomes of the upper classes within certain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the national mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained the prescribed limits of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly success, and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent moral results, would become possible to the young; while the older men of active intellect, whose sagacity is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own meanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy themselves in the superintendence of public institutions, or furtherance of public advantage. And out of this class it would be found natural and prudent always to choose the members of the legislative body of the Commons; and to attach to the order also some peculiar honors, in the possession of which such complacency would be felt as would more than replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed richer than others, which to many men is the principal charm of their wealth. And although no law of this purport would ever be imposed on themselves by the actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being gradually brought into force from beneath, without any violent or impatient proceedings; and this I will endeavor to show you in my next letter. LETTER III. OF TRUE LEGISLATION. THAT EVERY MAN MAY BE A LAW TO HIMSELF. _February 17, 1867._ 9. No, I have not been much worse in health; but I was asked by a friend to look over some work in which you will all be deeply interested one day, so that I could not write again till now. I was the more sorry, because there were several things I wished to note in your last letter; one especially leads me directly to what I in any case was desirous of urging upon you. You say, "In vol. 6th of 'Frederick the Great' I find a great deal that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of our English workmen would hail with a shout of joy and gladness." I do not remember to what you especially allude, but whatever the rules you speak of may be, unless there be anything in them contrary to the rights of present English property, why should you care whether the Government makes them law or not? Can you not, you thousands of English workmen, simply make them a law to yourselves, by practising them? It is now some five or six years since I first had occasion to speak to the members of the London Working Men's College on the subject of Reform, and the substance of what I said to them was this: "You are all agape, my friends, for this mighty privilege of having your opinions represented in Parliament. The concession might be desirable,--at all events courteous,--if only it were quite certain you had got any opinions to represent. But have you? Are you agreed on any single thing you systematically want? Less work and more wages, of course; but how much lessening of work do you suppose is possible? Do you think the time will ever come for everybody to have _no_ work and _all_ wages? Or have you yet taken the trouble so much as to think out the nature of the true connection between wages and work, and to determine, even approximately, the real quantity of the one, that can, according to the laws of God and nature, be given for the other; for, rely on it, make what laws you like, that quantity only can you at last get. 10. "Do you know how many mouths can be fed on an acre of land, or how fast those mouths multiply? and have you considered what is to be done finally with unfeedable mouths? 'Send them to be fed elsewhere,' do you say? Have you, then, formed any opinion as to the time at which emigration should begin, or the countries to which it should preferably take place, or the kind of population which should be left at home? Have you planned the permanent state which you would wish England to hold, emigrating over her edges, like a full well, constantly? How full would you have her be of people, first? and of what sort of people? Do you want her to be nothing but a large workshop and forge, so that the name of 'Englishman' shall be synonymous with 'ironmonger,' all over the world? or would you like to keep some of your lords and landed gentry still, and a few green fields and trees? 11. "You know well enough that there is not one of these questions, I do not say which you can answer, but which you have ever _thought_ of answering; and yet you want to have voices in Parliament! Your voices are not worth a rat's squeak, either in Parliament or out of it, till you have some ideas to utter with them; and when you have the thoughts, you will not want to utter them, for you will see that your way to the fulfilling of them does not lie through speech. You think such matters need debating about? By all means debate about them; but debate among yourselves, and with such honest helpers of your thoughts as you can find; if by that way you cannot get at the truth, do you suppose you could get at it sooner in the House of Commons, where the only aim of many of the members would be to refute every word uttered in your favor; and where the settlement of any question whatever depends merely on the perturbations of the balance of conflicting interests?" 12. That was, in main particulars, what I then said to the men of the Working Men's College; and in this recurrent agitation about Reform, that is what I would steadfastly say again. Do you think it is only under the lacquered splendors of Westminster,--you working men of England,--that your affairs can be rationally talked over? You have perfect liberty and power to talk over, and establish for yourselves, whatever laws you please; so long as you do not interfere with other people's liberties or properties. Elect a parliament of your own. Choose the best men among you, the best at least you can find, by whatever system of election you think likeliest to secure such desirable result. Invite trustworthy persons of other classes to join your council; appoint time and place for its stated sittings, and let this parliament, chosen after your own hearts, deliberate upon the possible modes of the regulation of industry, and advisablest schemes for helpful discipline of life; and so lay before you the best laws they can devise, which such of you as were wise might submit to, and teach their children to obey. And if any of the laws thus determined appear to be inconsistent with the present circumstances or customs of trade, do not make a noise about them, nor try to enforce them suddenly on others, nor embroider them on flags, nor call meetings in parks about them, in spite of railings and police; but keep them in your thoughts and sight, as objects of patient purpose and future achievement by peaceful strength. 13. For you need not think that even if you obtained a majority of representatives in the existing parliament, you could immediately compel any system of business, broadly contrary to that now established by custom. If you could pass laws to-morrow, wholly favorable to yourselves, as you might think, because unfavorable to your masters, and to the upper classes of society,--the only result would be that the riches of the country would at once leave it, and you would perish in riot and famine. Be assured that no great change for the better can ever be easily accomplished, or quickly; nor by impulsive, ill-regulated effort, nor by bad men; nor even by good men, without much suffering. The suffering must, indeed, come, one way or another, in all greatly critical periods; the only question, for us, is whether we will reach our ends (if we ever reach them) through a chain of involuntary miseries, many of them useless, and all ignoble; or whether we will know the worst at once, and deal with it by the wisely sharp methods of Godsped courage. 14. This, I repeat to you, it is wholly in your own power to do, but it is in your power on one condition only, that of steadfast truth to yourselves, and to all men. If there is not, in the sum of it, honesty enough among you to teach you to frame, and strengthen you to obey, _just_ laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political constitution can ennoble knaves; no privileges can assist them; no possessions enrich them. Their gains are occult curses; comfortless loss their truest blessing; failure and pain Nature's only mercy to them. Look to it, therefore, first that you get some wholesome honesty for the foundation of all things. Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion in them; and to do it whether the issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will ever be possible to you, while, in once forming the resolution that your work is to be well done, life is really won, here and for ever. And to make your children capable of such resolution, is the beginning of all true education, of which I have more to say in a future letter. LETTER IV. THE EXPENSES FOR ART AND FOR WAR. _February 19, 1867._ 15. In the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of yesterday, second column of second page, you will find, close to each other, two sentences which bear closely on matters in hand. The first of these is the statement, that in the debate on the grant for the Blacas collection, "Mr. Bernal Osborne got an assenting cheer, when he said that 'whenever science and art were mentioned it was a sign to look after the national pockets.'" I want you to notice this fact, _i. e._, (the debate in question being on a _total_ grant of 164,000_l._, of which 48,000_l._ only were truly for art's sake, and the rest for shop's sake,) in illustration of a passage in my 'Sesame and Lilies' (pp. 69, 70 of the small edition, and pp. 46, 47 of Vol. I. of the Revised Series of the Entire Works),[A] to which I shall have again to refer you, with some further comments, in the sequel of these letters. The second passage is to the effect that "The Trades' Union Bill was read a second time, after a claim from Mr. Hadfield, Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Samuelson, to admit working men into the commission; to which Mr. Watkin answered 'that the working men's friend was too conspicuous in the body;' and Mr. Roebuck, 'that when a butcher was tried for murder it was not necessary to have butchers on the jury.'" [A] Appendix I. 16. Note this second passage with respect to what I said in my last letter, as to the impossibility of the laws of work being investigated in the House of Commons. What admixture of elements, think you, would avail to obtain so much as decent hearing (how should we then speak of impartial judgment?) of the cause of working men, in an assembly which permits to one of its principal members this insolent discourtesy of language, in dealing with a preliminary question of the highest importance; and permits it as so far expressive of the whole color and tone of its own thoughts, that the sentence is quoted by one of the most temperate and accurate of our daily journals, as representing the total answer of the opposite side in the debate? No! be assured you can do nothing yet at Westminster. You must have your own parliament, and if you cannot detect enough honesty among you to constitute a justly minded one, for the present matters must take their course, and that will be, yet awhile, to the worse. 17. I meant to have continued this subject, but I see two other statements in the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of to-day, with which, and a single remark upon them, I think it will be well to close my present letter. (1) "The total sum asked for in the army estimates, published this morning, is 14,752,200_l._, being an increase of 412,000_l._ over the previous year." (2) "Yesterday the annual account of the navy receipts and expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1866, was issued from the Admiralty. The expenditure was 10,268,115_l._ 7_s._" Omitting the seven shillings, and even the odd hundred-thousands of pounds, the net annual expenditure for army and navy appears to be twenty-four millions. The "grant in science and art," two-thirds of which was not in reality for either, but for amusement and shop interests in the Paris Exhibition--the grant which the House of Commons feels to be indicative of general danger to the national pockets--is, as above stated, 164,000_l._ Now, I believe the three additional ciphers which turn thousands into millions produce on the intelligent English mind usually the effect of--three ciphers. But calculate the proportion of these two sums, and then imagine to yourself the beautiful state of rationality of any private gentleman, who, having regretfully spent 164_l._ on pictures for his walls, paid willingly 24,000_l._ annually to the policeman who looked after his shutters! You practical English!--will you ever unbar the shutters of your brains, and hang a picture or two in those state-chambers? LETTER V. THE CORRUPTION OF MODERN PLEASURE.--(COVENT GARDEN PANTOMIME.) _February 25, 1867._ 18. There is this great advantage in the writing real letters, that the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for saying, in or out of order, everything that the chances of the day bring into one's head, in connection with the matter in hand; and as such things very usually go out of one's head again, after they get tired of their lodging, they would otherwise never get said at all. And thus to-day, quite out of order, but in very close connection with another part of our subject, I am going to tell you what I was thinking on Friday evening last, in Covent Garden Theater, as I was looking, and not laughing, at the pantomime of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' When you begin seriously to consider the question referred to in my second letter, of the essential, and in the outcome inviolable, connection between quantity of wages, and quantity of work, you will see that "wages" in the full sense don't mean "pay" merely, but the reward, whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of various other advantages, which a man is meant by Providence to get during life, for work well done. Even limiting the idea to "pay," the question is not so much what quantity of coin you get, as--what you can get for it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good pay or not, depends wholly on what a "shilling's worth" is; that is to say, what quantity of the things you want may be had for a shilling. And that again depends, and a great deal more than that depends, on what you _do_ want. If only drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay may be enough for you; if you want good meat and good clothes, you must have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, larger still, and so on. You say, perhaps, "every one wants these better things." So far from that, a wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final attainments of humanity. There are now not many European gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love of fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a May morning. 19. But there are better things even than these, which one may want. Grant that one has good food, clothes, lodging, and breathing, is that all the pay one ought to have for one's work? Wholesome means of existence and nothing more? Enough, perhaps, you think, if everybody could get these. It may be so; I will not, at this moment, dispute it; nevertheless, I will boldly say that you should sometimes want more than these; and for one of many things more, you should want occasionally to be amused! You know, the upper classes, most of them, want to be amused all day long. They think "One moment _un_amused a misery Not made for feeble men." Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them for this; and thinking how much worthier and nobler it was to work all day, and care at night only for food and rest, than to do no useful thing all day, eat unearned food, and spend the evening, as the morning, in "change of follies and relays of joy." No, my good friend, that is one of the fatalest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, in sum and issue of it, not to care to be amused. It is indeed a far higher _moral_ state, but is a much lower _creature_ state, than that of the upper classes. 20. Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad siding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again, and slips aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen inches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his changeless duty all day long, content, for eternal reward, with his night's rest, and his champed mouthful of hay;--anything more earnestly moral and beautiful one cannot image--I never see the creature without a kind of worship. And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this world;--who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the words of the 'Zauberflöte' and of 'Don Giovanni'--foolishest and most monstrous of conceivable human words and subjects of thought--for the future "amusement" of his race!--No such spectacle of unconscious (and in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history. But Mozart is nevertheless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding; nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker that he, and all his frivolous audiences, should evade the degradation of the profitless piping, only by living, like horses, in daily physical labor for daily bread. 21. There are three things to which man is born[A]--labor, and sorrow, and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its nobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the things themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three. Labor without joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labor is base. Joy without labor is base. [A] I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this paragraph, on which much of what else I have to say depends. 22. I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to the pantomime; I am not ready to come to it yet in due course, for we ought to go and see the Japanese jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to you what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day; so I shall merely tell you what part of the play set me thinking of all this, and leave you to consider of it yourself, till I can send you another letter. The pantomime was, as I said, 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some way mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene, with a forest, in which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow which was all of girls. 23. Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors--Mr. W. H. Payne and Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was done admirably. There were two subordinate actors, who played, subordinately well, the fore and hind legs of a donkey. And there was a little actress of whom I have chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the little part she had to play. The scene in which she appeared was the only one in the whole pantomime in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few rare exceptions, any dramatic possibility. It was the home scene, in which Ali Baba's wife, on washing day, is called upon by butcher, baker, and milkman, with unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her distress hears her husband's knock at the door, and opens it for him to drive in his donkey, laden with gold. The children who have been beaten instead of getting breakfast, presently share in the raptures of their father and mother; and the little lady I spoke of, eight or nine years old,--dances a _pas-de-deux_ with the donkey. 24. She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, that she had been put to continual torture through half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child well taught, but painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no older person,--attempted no curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently,--she moved decently,--she looked and behaved innocently,--and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast theater, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was not one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine. Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you, were girls; and, there being no thieving to be presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a round of applause. Whereupon I fell a thinking; and saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream. LETTER VI. THE CORRUPTION OF MODERN PLEASURE.--(THE JAPANESE JUGGLERS.) _February 28, 1867._ 25. I have your pleasant letter with references to Frederick. I will look at them carefully.[A] Mr. Carlyle himself will be pleased to hear this letter when he comes home. I heard from him last week at Mentone. He is well, and glad of the light and calm of Italy. I must get back to the evil light and uncalm, of the places I was taking you through. [A] Appendix 2. (Parenthetically, did you see the article in the 'Times' of yesterday on bribery, and the conclusion of the commission--"No one sold any opinions, for no one had any opinions to sell"?) Both on Thursday and Friday last I had been tormented by many things, and wanted to disturb my course of thought any way I could. I have told you what entertainment I got on Friday, first, for it was then that I began meditating over these letters; let me tell you now what entertainment I found on Thursday. 26. You may have heard that a company of Japanese jugglers has come over to exhibit in London. There has long been an increasing interest in Japanese art, which has been very harmful to many of our own painters, and I greatly desired to see what these people were, and what they did. Well, I have seen Blondin, and various English and French circus work, but never yet anything that surprised me so much as one of these men's exercises on a suspended pole. Its special character was a close approximation to the action and power of the monkey; even to the prehensile power in the foot; so that I asked a sculptor-friend who sat in front of me, whether he thought such a grasp could be acquired by practice, or indicated difference in race. He said he thought it might be got by practice. There was also much inconceivably dexterous work in spinning of tops,--making them pass in balanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along a level string, and the like;--the father performing in the presence of his two children, who encouraged him continually with short, sharp cries, like those of animals. Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand juggling of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, first as an animal, and then as a goblin, Now, there was this great difference between the Japanese masks used in this dance and our common pantomime masks for beasts and demons,--that our English masks are only stupidly and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or of defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the frequent monsters of Japanese art) were inventively frightful, like fearful dreams; and whatever power it is that acts on human minds, enabling them to invent such, appears to me not only to deserve the term "demoniacal," as the only word expressive of its character; but to be logically capable of no other definition. 27. The impression, therefore, produced upon me by the whole scene, was that of being in the presence of human creatures of a partially inferior race, but not without great human gentleness, domestic affection, and ingenious intellect; who were, nevertheless, as a nation, afflicted by an evil spirit, and driven by it to recreate themselves in achieving, or beholding the achievement, through years of patience, of a certain correspondence with the nature of the lower animals. 28. These, then, were the two forms of diversion or recreation of my mind possible to me, in two days, when I needed such help, in this metropolis of England. I might, as a rich man, have had better music, if I had so chosen, though, even so, not rational or helpful; but a poor man could only have these, or worse than these, if he cared for any manner of spectacle. (I am not at present, observe, speaking of pure acting, which is a study, and recreative only as a noble book is; but of means of _mere_ amusement.) Now, lastly, in illustration of the effect of these and other such "amusements," and of the desire to obtain them, on the minds of our youth, read the 'Times' correspondent's letter from Paris, in the tenth page of the paper, to-day;[A] and that will be quite enough for you to read, for the present, I believe. [A] Appendix 3. LETTER VII. OF THE VARIOUS EXPRESSIONS OF NATIONAL FESTIVITY. _March 4, 1867._ 29. The subject which I want to bring before you is now branched, and worse than branched, reticulated, in so many directions, that I hardly know which shoot of it to trace, or which knot to lay hold of first. I had intended to return to those Japanese jugglers, after a visit to a theater in Paris; but I had better, perhaps, at once tell you the piece of the performance which, in connection with the scene in the English pantomime, bears most on matters in hand. It was also a dance by a little girl--though one older than Ali Baba's daughter, (I suppose a girl of twelve or fourteen). A dance, so called, which consisted only in a series of short, sharp contractions and jerks of the body and limbs, resulting in attitudes of distorted and quaint ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp twitching of strings at its joints: these movements being made to the sound of two instruments, which between them accomplished only a quick vibratory beating and strumming, in nearly the time of a hearth-cricket's song, but much harsher, and of course louder, and without any sweetness; only in the monotony and unintended aimless construction of it, reminding one of various other insect and reptile cries or warnings: partly of the cicala's hiss; partly of the little melancholy German frog which says "Mu, mu, mu," all summer-day long, with its nose out of the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of the deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the alarm of the rattlesnake. While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeating itself over and over again in my head, whether I would or no:--"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." To which text and some others, I shall ask your attention presently; but I must go to Paris first. 30. Not at once, however, to the theater, but to a bookseller's shop, No. 4, Rue Voltaire, where, in the year 1858, was published the fifth edition of Balzac's 'Contes Drôlatiques,' illustrated by 425 designs by Gustave Doré. Both text and illustrations are as powerful as it is ever in the nature of evil things to be (there is no _final_ strength but in rightness). Nothing more witty, nor more inventively horrible, has yet been produced in the evil literature, or by the evil art, of man: nor can I conceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities of corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, tremendous, hideous in shamelessness, some put into the mouths of priests; the illustrations are, in a word, one continuous revelry in the most loathsome and monstrous aspects of death and sin, enlarged into fantastic ghastliness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion and trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of hell. Take this following for a general type of what they seek in death: one of the most labored designs is of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword--one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half is elaborately drawn in its section--giving the profile of the divided nose and lips; cleft jaw--breast--and entrails; and this is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the circumstances, which I do not choose to describe--still less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of death. But of all the 425, there is not one, which does not violate every instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, written in the human soul. 31. Now, my friend, among the many "Signs of the Times" the production of a book like this is a significant one: but it becomes more significant still when connected with the farther fact, that M. Gustave Doré, the designer of this series of plates, has just been received with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as the fittest and most able person whom they could at present find to illustrate, to their minds, and recommend with grace of sacred art, their hitherto unadorned Bible for them. Of which Bible, and of the use we at present make of it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse which haunted me through the Japanese juggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the public esteem of it to consider at your leisure. LETTER VIII. THE FOUR POSSIBLE THEORIES RESPECTING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. _March 7, 1867._ 32. I have your yesterday's letter, but must not allow myself to be diverted from the business in hand for this once, for it is the most important of which I have to write to you. You must have seen long ago that the essential difference between the political economy I am trying to teach, and the popular science, is, that mine is based on _presumably attainable honesty_ in men, and conceivable respect in them for the interests of others, while the popular science founds itself wholly on their supposed constant regard for their own, and on their honesty only so far as thereby likely to be secured. It becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe anything I say, a great primal question on what this presumably attainable honesty is to be based. 33. "Is it to be based on religion?" you may ask. "Are we to be honest for fear of losing heaven if we are dishonest, or (to put it as generously as we may) for fear of displeasing God? Or, are we to be honest on speculation, because honesty is the best policy; and to invest in virtue as in an undepreciable stock?" And my answer is--not in any hesitating or diffident way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people may say of me, I often do speak diffidently; though, when I am diffident of things, I like to avoid speaking of them, if it may be; but here I say with no shadow of doubt)--your honesty is _not_ to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on _it_. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be honest--you are, in the question itself, dishonored. "Because you are a man," is the only answer; and therefore I said in a former letter that to make your children _capable of honesty_ is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him. 34. It is not, therefore, because I am endeavoring to lay down a foundation of religious concrete, on which to build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting Bible texts in defense of this or that principle or assertion. But the fact that such references are an offense, as I know them to be, to many of the readers of these political essays, is one among many others, which I would desire you to reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended or not), as expressive of the singular position which the mind of the British public has at present taken with respect to its worshiped Book. The positions, honestly tenable, before I use any more of its texts, I must try to define for you. 35. All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only. (1.) The first is that of the illiterate modern religious world, that every word of the book known to them as "The Bible" was dictated by the Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His "Word." This theory is of course tenable by no ordinarily well-educated person. (2.) The second theory is, that, although admitting verbal error, the substance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is absolutely true, and furnished to man by Divine inspiration of the speakers and writers of it; and that every one who honestly and prayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for his salvation, will infallibly find it there. This theory is that held by most of our good and upright clergymen, and the better class of the professedly religious laity. (3.) The third theory is that the group of books which we call the Bible were neither written nor collected under any Divine guidance, securing them from substantial error; and that they contain, like all other human writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they nevertheless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the one God with the first races of man, and His dealings with them in aftertime through Christ: that they record true miracles, and bear true witness to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modern thought. (4.) The fourth, and last possible, theory is that the mass of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the races of men towards the discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are only trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more authoritative claim on our faith than the religious speculations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in common with all these, to be reverently studied, as containing a portion, divinely appointed, of the best wisdom which human intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has hitherto been able to gather between birth and death. This has been, for the last half-century, the theory of the soundest scholars and thinkers of Europe. 36. There is yet indeed one farther condition of incredulity attainable, and sorrowfully attained, by many men of powerful intellect--the incredulity, namely, of inspiration in any sense, or of help given by any Divine power to the thoughts of men. But this form of infidelity merely indicates a natural incapacity for receiving certain emotions; though many honest and good men belong to this insentient class. 37. The educated men, therefore, who may be seriously appealed to, in these days, on questions of moral responsibility, as modified by Scripture, are broadly divisible into three classes, severally holding the last three theories above stated. Now, whatever power a passage from the statedly authoritative portions of the Bible may have over the mind of a person holding the fourth theory, it will have a proportionately greater over that of persons holding the third or the second. I, therefore, always imagine myself speaking to the fourth class of theorists. If I can persuade or influence _them_, I am logically sure of the others. I say "logically," for the actual fact, strange as it may seem, is that no persons are so little likely to submit to a passage of Scripture not to their fancy, as those who are most positive on the subject of its general inspiration. 38. Addressing, then, this fourth class of thinkers, I would say to them, when asking them to enter on any subject of importance to national morals, or conduct, "This book, which has been the accepted guide of the moral intelligence of Europe for some fifteen hundred years, enforces certain simple laws of human conduct which you know have also been agreed upon, in every main point, by all the religious, and by all the greatest profane writers, of every age and country. This book primarily forbids pride, lasciviousness, and covetousness; and you know that all great thinkers, in every nation of mankind, have similarly forbidden these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth, temperance, charity, and equity; and you know that every great Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins these also. You know besides, that through all the mysteries of human fate and history, this one great law of fate is written on the walls of cities, or in their dust; written in letters of light, and letters of blood,--that where truth, temperance, and equity have been preserved, all strength, and peace, and joy have been preserved also;--that where lying, lasciviousness, and covetousness have been practised, there has followed an infallible, and, for centuries, irrecoverable ruin. And you know, lastly, that the observance of this common law of righteousness, commending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly in this venerated Scripture of ours, connected with some distinct hope of better life, and righteousness, to come. 39. "Let it not then offend you if, deducing principles of action first from the laws and facts of nature, I nevertheless fortify them also by appliance of the precepts, or suggestive and probable teachings of this Book, of which the authority is over many around you, more distinctly than over you, and which, confessing to be divine, _they_, at least, can only disobey at their moral peril." On these grounds, and in this temper, I am in the habit of appealing to passages of Scripture in my writings on political economy; and in this temper I will ask you to consider with me some conclusions which appear to me derivable from that text about Miriam, which haunted me through the jugglery; and from certain others. LETTER IX. THE USE OF MUSIC AND DANCING UNDER THE JEWISH THEOCRACY, COMPARED WITH THEIR USE BY THE MODERN FRENCH. _March 10, 1867._ 40. Having, I hope, made you now clearly understand with what feeling I would use the authority of the book which the British public, professing to consider sacred, have lately adorned for themselves with the work of the boldest violator of the instincts of human honor and decency known yet in art-history, I will pursue by the help of that verse about Miriam, and some others, the subject which occupied my mind at both theaters, and to which, though in so apparently desultory manner, I have been nevertheless very earnestly endeavoring to lead you. 41. The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam with timbrels and with dances, was, as you doubtless remember, their expression of passionate triumph and thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of their deliverance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been by the utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by stupendous miracle; no human creatures could in an hour of triumph be surrounded by circumstances more solemn. I am not going to try to excite your feelings about them. Consider only for yourself what that seeing of the Egyptians "dead upon the sea-shore" meant to every soul that saw it. And then reflect that these intense emotions of mingled horror, triumph, and gratitude were expressed, in the visible presence of the Deity, by music and dancing. If you answer that you do not believe the Egyptians so perished, or that God ever appeared in a pillar of cloud, I reply, "Be it so--believe or disbelieve, as you choose;--This is yet assuredly the fact, that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus supposed that, under such circumstances of Divine interposition as he had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish women would have been, and ought to have been, under the direction of a prophetess, expressed by music and dancing." 42. Nor was it possible that he should think otherwise, at whatever period he wrote; both music and dancing being, among all great ancient nations, an appointed and very principal part of the worship of the gods. And that very theatrical entertainment at which I sate thinking over these things for you--that pantomime, which depended throughout for its success on an appeal to the vices of the lower London populace, was, in itself, nothing but a corrupt remnant of the religious ceremonies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek mind, and laid the foundation of their gravest moral and didactic--more forcibly so because at the same time dramatic--literature. 43. Returning to the Jewish history, you find soon afterwards this enthusiastic religious dance and song employed, in their more common and habitual manner, in the idolatries under Sinai; but beautifully again and tenderly, after the triumph of Jephthah, "And behold his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances." Again, still more notably, at the triumph of David with Saul, "the women came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music." And you have this joyful song and dance of the virgins of Israel not only incidentally alluded to in the most solemn passages of Hebrew religious poetry (as in Psalm lxviii. 24, 25, and Psalm cxlix. 2, 3), but approved, and the restoration of it promised as a sign of God's perfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of the Hebrew prophets, and in one of the most beautiful of all his sayings. "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, 'Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.--I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and thou shalt go forth in dances with them that make merry,'" (Jer. xxxi. 3, 4; and compare v. 13). And finally, you have in two of quite the most important passages in the whole series of Scripture (one in the Old Testament, one in the New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and remission of, sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely, in the rapturous dancing of David before the returning ark; and in the joy of the father's household at the repentance of the prodigal son. 44. I could put all this much better, and more convincingly, before you, if I were able to take any pains in writing at present; but I am not, as I told you; being weary and ill; neither do I much care now to use what, in the very truth, are but tricks of literary art, in dealing with this so grave subject. You see I write you my letter straightforward, and let you see all my scratchings out and puttings in; and if the way I say things shocks you, or any other reader of these letters, I cannot help it; this only I know, that what I tell you is true, and written more earnestly than anything I ever wrote with my best literary care; and that you will find it useful to think upon, however it be said. Now, therefore, to draw towards our conclusion. Supposing the Bible inspired, in any of the senses above defined, you have in these passages a positively Divine authority for the use of song and dance, as a means of religious service, and expression of national thanksgiving. Supposing it not inspired, you have (taking the passages for as slightly authoritative as you choose) record in them, nevertheless, of a state of mind in a great nation, producing the most beautiful religious poetry and perfect moral law hitherto known to us, yet only expressible by them, to the fulfilment of their joyful passion, by means of professional dance and choral song. 45. Now I want you to contrast this state of religious rapture with some of our modern phases of mind in parallel circumstances. You see that the promise of Jeremiah's, "Thou shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry," is immediately followed by this, "Thou shalt yet _plant vines_ upon the mountains of Samaria." And again, at the yearly feast to the Lord in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in the midst of the vineyards (Judges xxi. 21), the feast of the vintage being in the south, as our harvest home in the north, a peculiar occasion of joy and thanksgiving. I happened to pass the autumn of 1863 in one of the great vine districts of Switzerland, under the slopes of the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable plain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north of Zurich itself. That city has always been a renowned, stronghold of Swiss Protestantism, next in importance only to Geneva; and its evangelical zeal for the conversion of the Catholics of Uri, and endeavors to bring about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of salt they needed to make their cheeses with, brought on (the Uri men reading their Matt. v. 13, in a different sense) the battle of Keppel, and the death of the reformer Zwinglius. The town itself shows the most gratifying signs of progress in all the modern arts and sciences of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle--has a railroad station larger than the London terminus of the Chatham and Dover--fouls the stream of the Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you might even venture to compare the formerly simple and innocent Swiss river (I remember it thirty years ago--a current of pale green crystal) with the highly educated English streams of Weare or Tyne; and, finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency in its principal shop windows as if they had the privilege of opening on the Parisian Boulevards. 46. I was somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving or exultation would be expressed at _their_ vintage, by the peasantry in the neighborhood of this much enlightened, evangelical, and commercial society. It consisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the servants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, collected in knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse-pistols, from morning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down the hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks, differing only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended and insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased human creatures. 47. I must not do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying that this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A year before, in 1862, I had formed the intention of living some years in the neighborhood of Geneva, and had established myself experimentally on the eastern slope of the Mont Salève; but I was forced to abandon my purpose at last, because I could not endure the rabid howling, on Sunday evenings, of the holiday-makers who came out from Geneva to get drunk in the mountain village. By the way, your last letter, with its extracts about our traffic in gin, is very valuable. I will come to that part of the business in a little while. Meantime, my friend, note this, respecting what I have told you, that in the very center of Europe, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the most refined and thoughtful persons among all Christian nations--a country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have been "illustrated" by Gustave Doré. 48. One word more is needful, though this letter is long already. The peculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of festivity is in its utter failure of joy; the paralysis and helplessness of a vice in which there is neither pleasure, nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe, wholly thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and dance among us, though not indicative, by any means, of joy over repentant sinners. You must come back to Paris with me again. I had an evening to spare there, last summer, for investigation of theaters; and as there was nothing at any of them that I cared much about seeing, I asked a valet-de-place at Meurice's what people were generally going to. He said, "All the English went to see the _Lanterne Magique_." I do not care to tell you what general entertainment I received in following, for once, the lead of my countrymen; but it closed with the representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of the world; and the dance given as characteristic of modern time was the Cancan, which you will see alluded to in the extract given in the note at page 80 of 'Sesame and Lilies' (the small edition; and page 54 of Vol. I. of the Revised Series of the Entire Works). "The ball terminated with a Devilish Chain and a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the morning." It was led by four principal dancers (who have since appeared in London in the _Huguenot Captain_), and it is many years since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and accuracy of art and fulness of animal power and fire are concerned. Nothing could be better done, in its own evil way, the object of the dance throughout being to express, in every gesture, the wildest fury of insolence and vicious passions possible to human creatures. So that you see, though, for the present, we find ourselves utterly incapable of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which is presented as characteristic of modern civilization is still rapturous enough--but it is with rapture of blasphemy. LETTER X. THE MEANING AND ACTUAL OPERATION OF SATANIC OR DEMONIACAL INFLUENCE. _March 16, 1867._ 49. You may gather from the facts given you in my last letter that, as the expression of true and holy gladness was in old time statedly offered up by men for a part of worship to God their Father, so the expression of false and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as much distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be offered to another spirit: "Chain of the Devil," and "Cancan of Hell" being the names assigned to these modern forms of joyous procession. Now, you know that, among the best and wisest of our present religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to disbelieve, and to preach their disbelief, in the commonly received ideas of the Devil, and of his place, and his work. While, among some of our equally well-meaning, but far less wise, religious teachers, there is, in consequence, a panic spreading in anticipation of the moral dangers which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. One of the last appearances in public of the author of the 'Christian Year' was at a conclave of clergymen assembled in defense of faith in damnation.[A] The sense of the meeting generally was, that there _must_ be such a place as hell, because no one would ever behave decently upon earth unless they were kept in wholesome fear of the fires beneath it: and Mr. Keble, especially insisting on this view, related a story of an old woman who had a wicked son, and who, having lately heard with horror of the teaching of Mr. Maurice and others, exclaimed pathetically, "My son is bad enough as it is, and if he were not afraid of hell, what would become of him!" (I write from memory, and cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.) [A] _Physical_ damnation, I should have said. It is strange how seldom pain of heart is spoken of as a possible element of future, or as the worst of present pain. 50. Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the charge of such presumption as may be involved in variance from _both_ these systems of teaching. I do not merely _believe_ there is such a place as hell. I _know_ there is such a place; and I know also that when men have got to the point of believing virtue impossible but through dread of it, they have got _into_ it. I mean, that according to the distinctness with which they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed upon them. In the depth of his heart Mr. Keble could not have entertained the thought for an instant; and I believe it was only as a conspicuous sign to the religious world of the state into which they were sinking, that this creed, possible in its sincerity only to the basest of them, was nevertheless appointed to be uttered by the lips of the most tender, gracious, and beloved of their teachers. 51. "Virtue impossible but for fear of hell"--a lofty creed for your English youth--and a holy one! And yet, my friend, there was something of right in the terrors of this clerical conclave. For, though you should assuredly be able to hold your own in the straight ways of God, without always believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should not _know_ the Devil when you _see_ him there. For the probability is that when you do see him, the way you are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading you quite into other neighborhoods than His. On His way, indeed, you may often, like Albert Dürer's Knight, see the Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops always farther and farther behind; whereas, if he jogs with you at your side, it is probably one of his own bypaths you are got on. And, in any case, it is a highly desirable matter that you should know him when you set eyes on him, which we are very far from doing in these days, having convinced ourselves that the graminivorous form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no longer. But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of Him _is_ here; in the world, with us, and within us, mock as you may; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and widely unprosperous. Do not think I am speaking metaphorically or rhetorically, or with any other than literal and earnest meaning of words. Hear me, I pray you, therefore, for a little while, as earnestly as I speak. 52. Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special form of corruption: and whether within Man, or in the external world, there is a power or condition of temptation which is perpetually endeavoring to reduce every glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such corruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful they are, the more fearful is the death which is attached as a penalty to their degradation. 53. Take, for instance, that which, in its purity, is the source of the highest and purest mortal happiness--Love. Think of it first at its highest--as it may exist in the disciplined spirit of a perfect human creature; as it has so existed again and again, and does always, wherever it truly exists at all, as the _purifying_ passion of the soul. I will not speak of the transcendental and imaginative intensity in which it may reign in noble hearts, as when it inspired the greatest religious poem yet given to men; but take it in its true and quiet purity in any simple lover's heart,--as you have it expressed, for instance, thus, exquisitely, in the 'Angel in the House':-- "And there, with many a blissful tear, I vowed to love and prayed to wed The maiden who had grown so dear;-- Thanked God, who had set her in my path; And promised, as I hoped to win, I never would sully my faith By the least selfishness or sin; Whatever in her sight I'd seem I'd really be; I ne'er would blend, With my delight in her, a dream 'Twould change her cheek to comprehend; And, if she wished it, would prefer Another's to my own success; And always seek the best for her With unofficious tenderness." Take this for the pure type of it in its simplicity; and then think of what corruption this passion is capable. I will give you a type of that also, and at your very doors. I cannot refer you to the time when the crime happened; but it was some four or five years ago, near Newcastle, and it has remained always as a ghastly landmark in my mind, owing to the horror of the external circumstances. The body of the murdered woman was found naked, rolled into a heap of ashes, at the mouth of one of your pits. 54. You have thus two limiting examples, of the Pure Passion, and of its corruption. Now, whatever influence it is, without or within us, which has a tendency to degrade the one towards the other, is literally and accurately "Satanic." And this treacherous or deceiving spirit is perpetually at work, so that all the worst evil among us is a betrayed or corrupted good. Take religion itself: the desire of finding out God, and placing one's self in some true son's or servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving spirit within us, or outside of us, mixes up our own vanity with this desire; makes us think that in our love to God we have established some connection with Him which separates us from our fellow-men, and renders us superior to them. Then it takes but one wave of the Devil's hand; and we are burning them alive for taking the liberty of contradicting us. 55. Take the desire of teaching--the entirely unselfish and noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the truth we know, and guarding them from the errors we see them in danger of;--there is no nobler, no more constant instinct in honorable breasts; but let the Devil formalize it, and mix the pride of a profession with it--get foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, and make their giddy heads giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a submissive crowd--and you have it instantly corrupted into its own reverse; you have an alliance _against_ the light, shrieking at the sun, and the moon, and stars, as profane spectra:--a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But _we_ are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will lead you." 56. Take the desire and faith of mutual help; the virtue of vowed brotherhood for the accomplishment of common purpose, (without which nothing great can be wrought by multitudinous bands of men); let the Devil put pride of caste into it, and you have a military organization applied for a thousand years to maintain that higher caste in idleness by robbing the laboring poor; let the Devil put a few small personal interests into it, and you have all faithful deliberation on national law rendered impossible in the parliaments of Europe, by the antagonism of parties. 57. Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense of indignation against crime; let the Devil color it with personal passion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted men living for centuries in such bloody feud that every note and word of their national songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a gravestone. Take the love of beauty, and power of imagination, which are the source of every true achievement in art; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, and they are stronger than the sword or the flame to blast the cities where they were born, into ruin without hope. Take the instinct of industry and ardor of commerce, which are meant to be the support and mutual maintenance of man; let the Devil touch them with avarice, and you shall see the avenues of the exchange choked with corpses that have died of famine. 58. Now observe--I leave you to call this deceiving spirit what you like--or to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to recognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being fought with. If you take the Bible's account of it, or Dante's, or Milton's, you will receive the image of it as a mighty spiritual creature, commanding others, and resisted by others: if you take �schylus's or Hesiod's account of it, you will hold it for a partly elementary and unconscious adversity of fate, and partly for a group of monstrous spiritual agencies connected with death, and begotten out of the dust; if you take a modern rationalist's, you will accept it for a mere treachery and want of vitality in our own moral nature exposing it to loathsomeness or moral disease, as the body is capable of mortification or leprosy. I do not care what you call it,--whose history you believe of it,--nor what you yourself can imagine about it; the origin, or nature, or name may be as you will, but the deadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring against us, and on our true war with it depends whatever life we can win. Deadly reality, I say. The puff-adder or horned asp is not more real. Unbelievable,--_those_,--unless you had seen them; no fable could have been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent--working its way sidelong in the sand. As real, but with sting of eternal death--this worm that dies not, and fire that is not quenched, within our souls or around them. Eternal death, I say--sure, that, whatever creed you hold;--if the old Scriptural one, Death of perpetual banishment from before God's face; if the modern rationalist one, Death Eternal for _us_, instant and unredeemable ending of lives wasted in misery. This is what this unquestionably present--this, according to his power, _omni_-present--fiend, brings us towards, daily. He is the person to be "voted" against, my working friend; it is worth something, having a vote against _him_, if you can get it! Which you can, indeed; but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers; you must work warily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's blood, before you can record that vote effectually. Of which more in next letter. LETTER XI. THE SATANIC POWER IS MAINLY TWOFOLD: THE POWER OF CAUSING FALSEHOOD AND THE POWER OF CAUSING PAIN. THE RESISTANCE IS BY LAW OF HONOR AND LAW OF DELIGHT. _March 19, 1857._ 59. You may perhaps have thought my last three or four letters mere rhapsodies. They are nothing of the kind; they are accurate accounts of literal facts, which we have to deal with daily. This thing, or power, opposed to God's power, and specifically called "Mammon" in the Sermon on the Mount, is, in deed and in truth, a continually present and active enemy, properly called "_Arch_-enemy," that is to say, "Beginning and Prince of Enemies," and daily we have to record our vote for, or against him. Of the manner of which record we were next to consider. 60. This enemy is always recognizable, briefly in two functions. He is pre-eminently the Lord of _Lies_ and the Lord of _Pain_. Wherever Lies are, he is; wherever Pain is, he has been--so that of the Spirit of Wisdom (who is called God's Helper, as Satan His Adversary) it is written, not only that by her Kings reign, and Princes decree justice, but also that her ways are ways of Pleasantness, and all her paths Peace. Therefore, you will succeed, you working men, in recording your votes against this arch-enemy, precisely in the degree in which you can do away with falsehood and pain in your work and lives; and bring truth into the one, and pleasure into the other; all education being directed to make yourselves and your children _capable of Honesty_ and _capable of Delight_; and to rescue yourselves from iniquity and agony. And this is what I meant by saying in the preface to 'Unto this Last' that the central requirement of education consisted in giving habits of gentleness and justice; "gentleness" (as I will show you presently) being the best single word I could have used to express the capacity for giving and receiving true pleasure; and "justice" being similarly the most comprehensive word for all kind of honest dealing. 61. Now, I began these letters with the purpose of explaining the nature of the requirements of justice first, and then those of gentleness, but I allowed myself to be led into that talk about the theaters, not only because the thoughts could be more easily written as they came, but also because I was able thus to illustrate for you more directly the nature of the enemy we have to deal with. You do not perhaps know, though I say this diffidently (for I often find working men know many things which one would have thought were out of their way), that music was, among the Greeks, quite the first means of education; and that it was so connected with their system of ethics and of intellectual training, that the God of Music is with them also the God of Righteousness;--the God who purges and avenges iniquity, and contends with their Satan as represented under the form of Python, "the corrupter." And the Greeks were incontrovertibly right in this. Music is the nearest at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all bodily pleasures; it is also the only one which is equally helpful to all the ages of man,--helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which so often haunts the deathbed of pure and innocent spirits. And the action of the deceiving or devilish power is in _nothing_ shown quite so distinctly among us at this day,--not even in our commercial dishonesties, nor in our social cruelties,--as in its having been able to take away music, as an instrument of education, altogether; and to enlist it almost wholly in the service of superstition on the one hand, and of sensuality on the other. 62. This power of the Muses, then, and its proper influence over you workmen, I shall eventually have much to insist upon with you; and in doing so I shall take that beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (which I have already referred to), and explain, as far as I know, the significance of it, and then I will take the three means of festivity, or wholesome human joy, therein stated,--fine dress, rich food, and music;--("bring forth the fairest robe for him,"--"bring forth the fatted calf, and kill it;" "as he drew nigh, he heard music and dancing"); and I will show you how all these three things, fine dress, rich food, and music (including ultimately all the other arts) are meant to be sources of life, and means of moral discipline, to all men; and how they have all three been made, by the Devil, the means of guilt, dissoluteness, and death.[A] But first I must return to my original plan of these letters, and endeavor to set down for you some of the laws which, in a true Working Men's Parliament, must be ordained in defense of Honesty. [A] See 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXIV. Of which laws (preliminary to all others, and necessary above all others), having now somewhat got my raveled threads together again, I will begin talk in my next letter. LETTER XII. THE NECESSITY OF IMPERATIVE LAW TO THE PROSPERITY OF STATES. _March 20, 1867._ 63. I have your most interesting letter,[A] which I keep for reference, when I come to the consideration of its subject in its proper place, under the head of the abuse of Food. I do not wonder that your life should be rendered unhappy by the scenes of drunkenness which you are so often compelled to witness; nor that this so gigantic and infectious evil should seem to you the root of the greater part of the misery of our lower orders. I do not wonder that George Cruikshank has warped the entire current of his thoughts and life, at once to my admiration and my sorrow, from their natural field of work, that he might spend them, in struggle with this fiend, for the poor lowest people whom he knows so well. I wholly sympathize with you in indignation at the methods of temptation employed, and at the use of the fortunes made by the vendors of death; and whatever immediately applicable legal means there might be of restricting the causes of drunkenness, I should without hesitation desire to bring into operation. But all such appliance I consider temporary and provisionary; nor, while there is record of the miracle at Cana (not to speak of the sacrament) can I conceive it possible, without (logically) the denial of the entire truth of the New Testament, to reprobate the use of wine as a stimulus to the powers of life. Supposing we did deny the words and deeds of the Founder of Christianity, the authority of the wisest heathens, especially that of Plato in the 'Laws,' is wholly against abstinence from wine; and much as I can believe, and as I have been endeavoring to make you believe also, of the subtlety of the Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have been one of his inventions. Of this, however, more in another place. By the way, was it not curious that in the 'Manchester Examiner,' in which that letter of mine on the abuse of dancing appeared, there chanced to be, in the next column, a paragraph giving an account of a girl stabbing her betrayer in a ball-room; and another paragraph describing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme type I wanted, for example of the abuse of Food?[B] [A] Appendix 4. [B] Appendix 5. 64. I return, however, now to the examination of possible means for the enforcement of justice, in temper and in act, as the first of political requirements. And as, in stating my conviction of the necessity of certain stringent laws on this matter, I shall be in direct opposition to Mr. Stuart Mill; and, more or less, in opposition to other professors of modern political economy, as well as to many honest and active promoters of the privileges of working men (as if privilege only were wanted and never restraint!), I will give you, as briefly as I can, the grounds on which I am prepared to justify such opposition. 65. When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect of making land distant, laws are instantly established and enforced which no one thinks of disobeying. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is acknowledged without dispute; and an equal liability to necessary labor. No man who can row is allowed to refuse his oar; no man, however much money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much as half a biscuit beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who endangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the bottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction, for such violation of the principles of individual liberty; and, on the other hand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was helpless, and exposed to great danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive more than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccompanied with unanimous self-sacrifice on the part of the laboring crew. There is never any question under circumstances like these, of what is right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, wise or foolish. If there _be_ any question, there is little hope for boat or crew. The right man is put at the helm; every available hand is set to the oars; the sick are tended, and the vicious restrained, at once, and decisively; or if not, the end is near. 66. Now, the circumstances of every associated group of human society, contending bravely for national honors and felicity of life, differ only from those thus supposed, in the greater, instead of less, necessity for the establishment of restraining law. There is no point of difference in the difficulties to be met, nor in the rights reciprocally to be exercised. Vice and indolence are not less, but more, injurious in a nation than in a boat's company; the modes in which they affect the interests of worthy persons being far more complex, and more easily concealed. The right of restraint, vested in those who labor, over those who would impede their labor, is as absolute in the large as in the small society; the equal claim to share in whatever is necessary to the common life (or commonwealth) is as indefeasible; the claim of the sick and helpless to be cared for by the strong with earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as imperative; the necessity that the governing authority should be in the hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear and as constant. In none of these conditions is there any difference between a nation and a boat's company. The only difference is in this, that the impossibility of discerning the effects of individual error and crime, or of counteracting them by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society that direction by law should be sternly established. Assume that your boat's crew is disorderly and licentious, and will, by agreement, submit to no order;--the most troublesome of them will yet be easily discerned; and the chance is that the best man among them knocks him down. Common instinct of self-preservation will make the rioters put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, here and there given to visible distress. Not so in the ship of the realm. The most troublesome persons in _it_ are usually the least recognized for such, and the most active in its management; the best men mind their own business patiently, and are never thought of; the good helmsman never touches the tiller but in the last extremity; and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only from every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect is of Cleopatra's galley--under hatches there is a slave hospital; while, finally (and this is the most fatal difference of all), even the few persons who care to interfere energetically, with purpose of doing good, can, in a large society, discern so little of the real state of evil to be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be misdirected, and some may even do more harm than good. Whereas it is the sorrowful law of this universe, that evil, even unconscious and unintended, never fails of _its_ effect; and in a state where the evil and the good, under conditions of individual "liberty," are allowed to contend together, not only every _stroke_ on the Devil's side tells--but every _slip_, (the mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as their successes); while on the side of right, there will be much direct and fatal defeat, and, even of its measure of victory, half will be fruitless. 67. It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the right conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a thousand some day comes up--and somebody lives by it; but most of our great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation of this comfort, not, to my mind, very sufficient, when for the present our fields are full of nothing but darnel instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley; and none of them seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable power and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its effect--but poison never: and while, in summing the observation of past life, not unwatchfully spent, I can truly say that I have a thousand times seen patience disappointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in calamity. 68. There is, however, one important condition in national economy, in which the analogy of that of a ship's company is incomplete: namely, that while labor at oar or sail is necessarily united, and can attain no independent good, or personal profit, the labor properly undertaken by the several members of a political community is necessarily, and justly, within certain limits, independent; and obtains for them independent advantage, of which, if you will glance at the last paragraph of the first chapter of 'Munera Pulveris,' you will see I should be the last person to propose depriving them. This great difference in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in the system and application of general laws; but it in no wise abrogates,--on the contrary, it renders yet more imperative,--the necessity for the firm ordinance of such laws, which, marking the due limits of independent agency, may enable it to exist in full energy, not only without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and perfectly to promote the entire interests of the commonwealth. I will address myself therefore in my next letter to the statement of some of these necessary laws. LETTER XIII. THE PROPER OFFICES OF THE BISHOP AND DUKE; OR, "OVERSEER" AND "LEADER." _March 21, 1867._ 69. I see, by your last letter, for which I heartily thank you, that you would not sympathize with me in my sorrow for the desertion of his own work by George Cruikshank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance ranks. But you do not know what work he has left undone, nor how much richer inheritance you might have received from his hand. It was no more _his_ business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is "the first mild day of March" (high time, I think, that it should be!), and by rights I ought to be out among the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn and clusters of primrose. That is _my_ right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good, for you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and definite one, should both of us be tormented by agony of indignation and compassion, till we are forced to give up our peace, and pleasure, and power; and rush down into the streets and lanes of the city, to do the little that is in the strength of our single hands against their uncleanliness and iniquity. But, as in a sorely besieged town, every man must to the ramparts, whatsoever business he leaves, so neither he nor I have had any choice but to leave our household stuff, and go on crusade, such as we are called to; not that I mean, if Fate may be anywise resisted, to give up the strength of my life, as he has given his; for I think he was wrong in doing so; and that he should only have carried the fiery cross his appointed leagues, and then given it to another hand; and, for my own part, I mean these very letters to close my political work for many a day; and I write them, not in any hope of their being at present listened to, but to disburthen my heart of the witness I have to bear, that I may be free to go back to my garden lawns, and paint birds and flowers there. 70. For these same statutes which we are to consider to-day, have indeed been in my mind now these fourteen years, ever since I wrote the last volume of the 'Stones of Venice,' in which you will find, in the long note on Modern Education, most of what I have been now in detail writing to you, hinted in abstract; and, at the close of it, this sentence, of which I solemnly now avouch (in thankfulness that I was permitted to write it), every word: "Finally, I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a State is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting this the Government must have an authority over the people of which we now do not so much as dream." That authority I did not then endeavor to define, for I knew all such assertions would be useless, and that the necessarily resultant outcry would merely diminish my influence in other directions. But now I do not care about influence any more, it being only my concern to say truly that which I know, and, if it may be, get some quiet life, yet, among the fields in the evening shadow. 71. There is, I suppose, no word which men are prouder of the right to attach to their names, or more envious of others who bear it, when they themselves may not, than the word "noble." Do you know what it originally meant, and always, in the right use of it, means? It means a "known" person; one who has risen far enough above others to draw men's eyes to him, and to be known (honorably) for such and such an one. "Ignoble," on the other hand, is derived from the same root as the word "ignorance." It means an unknown, inglorious person. And no more singular follies have been committed by weak human creatures than those which have been caused by the instinct, pure and simple, of escaping from this obscurity. Instinct, which, corrupted, will hesitate at no means, good or evil, of satisfying itself with notoriety--instinct, nevertheless, which, like all other natural ones, has a true and pure purpose, and ought always in a worthy way to be satisfied. All men ought to be in this sense "noble"; known of each other, and desiring to be known. And the first law which a nation, desiring to conquer all the devices of the Father of Lies, should establish among its people, is that they _shall_ be so known. 72. Will you please now read § 22 of 'Sesame and Lilies'? The reviewers in the ecclesiastical journals laughed at it, as a rhapsody, when the book came out; none having the slightest notion of what I meant: (nor, indeed, do I well see how it could be otherwise!). Nevertheless, I meant precisely and literally what is there said, namely, that a bishop's duty being to watch over the souls of his people, and _give_ account of every one of them, it becomes practically necessary for him first to _get_ some account of their bodies. Which he was wont to do in the early days of Christianity by help of a person called "deacon" or "ministering servant," whose name is still retained among preliminary ecclesiastical dignities, vainly enough! Putting, however, all questions of forms and names aside, the thing actually needing to be done is this--that over every hundred (more or less) of the families composing a Christian State, there should be appointed an overseer, or bishop, to render account, to the State, of the life of every individual in those families; and to have care both of their interest and conduct to such an extent as they may be willing to admit, or as their faults may justify: so that it may be impossible for any person, however humble, to suffer from unknown want, or live in unrecognized crime;--such help and observance being rendered without officiousness either of interference or inquisition (the limits of both being determined by national law), but with the patient and gentle watchfulness which true Christian pastors now exercise over their flocks; only with a higher legal authority presently to be defined, of interference on due occasion. And with this farther function, that such overseers shall be not only the pastors, but the biographers, of their people; a written statement of the principal events in the life of each family being annually required to be rendered by them to a superior State Officer. These records, laid up in public offices, would soon furnish indications of the families whom it would be advantageous to the nation to advance in position, or distinguish with honor, and aid by such reward as it should be the object of every Government to distribute no less punctually, and far more frankly, than it distributes punishment: (compare 'Munera Pulveris,' Essay IV., in paragraph on Critic Law), while the mere fact of permanent record being kept of every event of importance, whether disgraceful or worthy of praise, in each family, would of itself be a deterrent from crime, and a stimulant to well-deserving conduct, far beyond mere punishment or reward. 73. Nor need you think that there would be anything in such a system un-English, or tending to espionage. No uninvited visits should ever be made in any house, unless law had been violated; nothing recorded, against its will, of any family, but what was inevitably known of its publicly visible conduct, and the results of that conduct. What else was written should be only by the desire, and from the communications, of its head. And in a little while it would come to be felt that the true history of a nation was indeed not of its wars, but of its households; and the desire of men would rather be to obtain some conspicuous place in these honorable annals, than to shrink behind closed shutters from public sight. Until at last, George Herbert's grand word of command would hold not only on the conscience, but the actual system and outer economy of life, "Think the King sees thee still, for _his_ King does." 74. Secondly, above these bishops or pastors, who are only to be occupied in offices of familiar supervision and help, should be appointed higher officers of State, having executive authority over as large districts as might be conveniently (according to the number and circumstances of their inhabitants) committed to their care; officers who, according to the reports of the pastors, should enforce or mitigate the operation of too rigid general law, and determine measures exceptionally necessary for public advantage. For instance, the general law being that all children of the operative classes, at a certain age, should be sent to public schools, these superior officers should have power, on the report of the pastors, to dispense with the attendance of children who had sick parents to take charge of, or whose home-life seemed to be one of better advantage for them than that of the common schools; or who, for any other like cause, might justifiably claim remission. And it being the general law that the entire body of the public should contribute to the cost, and divide the profits, of all necessary public works and undertakings, as roads, mines, harbor protections, and the like, and that nothing of this kind should be permitted to be in the hands of private speculators, it should be the duty of the district officer to collect whatever information was accessible respecting such sources of public profit; and to represent the circumstances in Parliament: and then, with Parliamentary authority, but on his own sole personal responsibility, to see that such enterprises were conducted honestly and with due energy and order. The appointment to both these offices should be by election, and for life; by what forms of election shall be matter of inquiry, after we have determined some others of the necessary constitutional laws. 75. I do not doubt but that you are already beginning to think it was with good reason I held my peace these fourteen years,--and that, for any good likely to be done by speaking, I might as well have held it altogether! It may be so: but merely to complete and explain my own work, it is necessary that I should say these things finally; and I believe that the imminent danger to which we are now in England exposed by the gradually accelerated fall of our aristocracy (wholly their own fault), and the substitution of money-power for their martial one; and by the correspondingly imminent prevalence of mob violence here, as in America; together with the continually increasing chances of insane war, founded on popular passion, whether of pride, fear, or acquisitiveness,--all these dangers being further darkened and degraded by the monstrous forms of vice and selfishness which the appliances of recent wealth, and of vulgar mechanical art, make possible to the million,--will soon bring us into a condition in which men will be glad to listen to almost any words but those of a demagogue, and to seek any means of safety rather than those in which they have lately trusted. So, with your good leave, I will say my say to the end, mock at it who may. P.S.--I take due note of the regulations of trade proposed in your letter just received[A]--all excellent. I shall come to them presently, "Cash payment" above all. You may write that on your trade-banners in letters of gold, wherever you would have them raised victoriously. [A] Appendix 6. LETTER XIV. THE FIRST GROUP OF ESSENTIAL LAWS--AGAINST THEFT BY FALSE WORK, AND BY BANKRUPTCY.--NECESSARY PUBLICITY OF ACCOUNTS. _March 26, 1867._ 76. I feel much inclined to pause at this point, to answer the kind of questions and objections which I know must be rising in your mind, respecting the authority supposed to be lodged in the persons of the officers just specified. But I can neither define, nor justify to you, the powers I would desire to see given to them, till I state to you the kind of laws they would have to enforce: of which the first group should be directed to the prevention of all kinds of thieving; but chiefly of the occult and polite methods of it; and, of all occult methods, chiefly, the making and selling of bad goods. No form of theft is so criminal as this--none so deadly to the State. If you break into a man's house and steal a hundred pounds' worth of plate, he knows his loss, and there is an end (besides that you take your risk of punishment for your gain, like a man). And if you do it bravely and openly, and habitually live by such inroad, you may retain nearly every moral and manly virtue, and become a heroic rider and reiver, and hero of song. But if you swindle me out of twenty shillings' worth of quality on each of a hundred bargains, I lose my hundred pounds all the same, and I get a hundred untrustworthy articles besides, which will fail me and injure me in all manner of ways, when I least expect it; and you, having done your thieving basely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to the very heart's core. 77. This is the first thing, therefore, which your general laws must be set to punish, fiercely, immitigably, to the utter prevention and extinction of it, or there is no hope for you. No religion that ever was preached on this earth of God's rounding ever proclaimed any salvation to sellers of bad goods. If the Ghost that is in you, whatever the essence of it, leaves your hand a juggler's, and your heart a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be assured of that. And for the rest, all political economy, as well as all higher virtue, depends _first on sound work_. Let your laws, then, I say, in the beginning, be set to secure this. You cannot make punishment too stern for subtle knavery. Keep no truce with this enemy, whatever pardon you extend to more generous ones. For light weights and false measures, or for proved adulteration or dishonest manufacture of article, the penalty should be simply confiscation of goods and sending out of the country. The kind of person who desires prosperity by such practices could not be made to "emigrate" too speedily. What to do with him in the place you appoint to be blessed by his presence, we will in time consider. 78. Under such penalty, however, and yet more under the pressure of such a right public opinion as could pronounce and enforce such penalty, I imagine that sham articles would become speedily as rare as sound ones are now. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to fix your standard. This would have to be done by the guild of every trade in its own manner, and within certain easily recognizable limits, and this fixing of standard would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties in manufacture would have to be examined and accepted by the trade guild: when so accepted, they would be announced in public reports; and all puffery and self-proclamation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, as much as the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance. 79. But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I suppose to have joined voluntarily in carrying out a better system of commerce. Outside of their guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they chose. All that is necessary is that the said public should clearly know the shops in which they could get warranted articles; and, as clearly, those in which they bought at their own risk. And the above-named penalty of confiscation of goods should of course be enforced only against dishonest members of the trade guild. If people chose to buy of those who had openly refused to join an honest society, they should be permitted to do so, at their pleasure, and peril: and this for two reasons,--the first, that it is always necessary, in enacting strict law, to leave some safety valve for outlet of irrepressible vice (nearly all the stern lawgivers of old time erred by oversight in this; so that the morbid elements of the State, which it should be allowed to get rid of in a cutaneous and openly curable manner, were thrown inwards, and corrupted its constitution, and broke all down);--the second, that operations of trade and manufacture conducted under, and guarded by, severe law, ought always to be subject to the stimulus of such erratic external ingenuity as cannot be tested by law, or would be hindered from its full exercise by the dread of it; not to speak of the farther need of extending all possible indulgence to foreign traders who might wish to exercise their industries here without liability to the surveillance of our trade guilds. 80. Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild (as above supposed) the prices should be annually fixed for the trade throughout the kingdom; and the producing workman's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits within limits admitting only such variation as the nature of the given article of sale rendered inevitable;--yet, in the production of other classes of articles, whether by skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free to make its own independent efforts and arrangements with its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it could be proved to have consistently described, or offered, anything to the public for what it was not: and finally, the state of the affairs of every firm should be annually reported to the guild, and its books laid open to inspection, for guidance in the regulation of prices in the subsequent year; and any firm whose liabilities exceeded its assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared bankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in succeeding letters so far as to tell you that I would have this condition extend to every firm in the country, large or small, and of whatever rank in business. And thus you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to trouble you or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial "panics," nor to propose legislative cures for _them_, by any laxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any other change of pecuniary diet. LETTER XV. THE NATURE OF THEFT BY UNJUST PROFITS.--CRIME CAN FINALLY BE ARRESTED ONLY BY EDUCATION. _29th March._ 81. The first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest manufacture and by debt, of which we have been hitherto speaking, are easily enough to be dealt with and ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But the third method of polite robbery, by dishonest _acquisition_, has many branches, and is involved among honest arts of acquisition, so that it is difficult to repress the one without restraining the other. Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of any _one_ man's hands, or head. If his work benefits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, it may be (I do not say that it _is_) expedient to reward him with great wealth or estate; but fortune of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment for labor. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set it at almost any price they choose; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their part and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must not be sold; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but perfectly true, sense, the guilt both of simony and prostitution. Your labor only may be sold; your soul must not. 82. Now, by fair pay for fair labor, according to the rank of it, a man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he needs it, refined life. But he cannot obtain large fortune. Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways:-- (1.) By obtaining command over the labor of multitudes of other men and taxing it for our own profit. (2.) By treasure-trove,--as of mines, useful vegetable products, and the like,--in circumstances putting them under our own exclusive control. (3.) By speculation, (commercial gambling). The first two of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The third is entirely detrimental to it; for in all cases of profit derived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses; and the net results to the State is zero, (pecuniarily,) with the loss of the time and ingenuity spent in the transaction; besides the disadvantage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, and the corrupted moral natures of both. This is the result of speculation at its best. At its worst, not only B loses what A gains (having taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of gain), but C and D, who never had any chance at all, are drawn in by B's fall, and the final result is that A sets up his carriage on the collected sum which was once the means of living to a dozen families. 83. Nor is this all. For while real commerce is founded on real necessities or uses, and limited by these, speculation, of which the object is merely gain, seeks to excite imaginary necessities and popular desires, in order to gather its temporary profit from the supply of them. So that not only the persons who lend their money to it will be finally robbed, but the work done with their money will be, for the most part, useless, and thus the entire body of the public injured as well as the persons concerned in the transaction. Take, for instance, the architectural decorations of railways throughout the kingdom,--representing many millions of money for which no farthing of dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because the ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by the builders that they may put the percentage upon it into their own pockets; and, the rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon millions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on ornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and blue tiles, cast-iron foliage, and the like; of which millions, as I said, not a penny can ever return into the shareholders' pockets, nor contribute to public speed or safety on the line. It is all sunk forever in ornamental architecture, and (trust me for this!) _all that architecture is bad_. As such, it had incomparably better not have been built. Its only result will be to corrupt what capacity of taste or right pleasure in such work we have yet left to us! And consider a little, what other kind of result than that might have been attained if all those millions had been spent usefully: say, in buying land for the people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had been imperatively required to be spent decoratively) in laying out gardens and parks for them,--or buying noble works of art for their permanent possession,--or, best of all, establishing frequent public schools and libraries. Count what those lost millions would have so accomplished for you! But you left the affair to "supply and demand," and the British public had not brains enough to "demand" land, or lodging, or books. It "demanded" cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is "supplied" with them, to its beatitude for evermore. 84. Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of workmanship or material, is, indeed, so far worse than these thefts by dishonest acquisition, that there is no possible excuse for it on the ground of self-deception; while many speculative thefts are committed by persons who really mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole a fair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. But in the real fact of the crime, when consciously committed, in the numbers reached by its injury, in the degree of suffering it causes to those whom it ruins, in the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit trust, in the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust by misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and in the impossibility that the crime should be at all committed, except by persons of good position and large knowledge of the world--what manner of theft is so wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every law and instinct which binds or animates society? And then consider farther, how many of the carriages that glitter in our streets are driven, and how many of the stately houses that gleam among our English fields are inhabited, by this kind of thief! 85. I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) some portions of the Lent services, and I came to a pause over the familiar words, "And with Him they crucified two thieves." Have you ever considered (I speak to you now as a professing Christian), why, in the accomplishment of the "numbering among transgressors," the transgressors chosen should have been especially thieves--not murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross violence? Do you observe how the sin of theft is again and again indicated as the chiefly antagonistic one to the law of Christ? "This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag" (of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a leader of sedition, and a murderer besides,--(that the popular election might be in all respects perfect)--yet St. John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens again on the theft. "Then cried they all again saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." I believe myself the reason to be that theft is indeed, in its subtle forms, the most complete and excuseless of human crimes. Sins of violence usually are committed under sudden or oppressive temptation: they may be the madness of moments; or they may be apparently the only means of extrication from calamity. In other cases, they are the diseased acts or habits of lower and brutified natures.[A] But theft involving deliberative intellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type of wilful iniquity, in persons capable of doing right. Which being so, it seems to be fast becoming the practice of modern society to crucify its Christ indeed, as willingly as ever, in the persons of His poor; but by no means now to crucify its thieves beside Him! It elevates its thieves after another fashion; sets them upon a hill, that their light may shine before men and that all may see their good works, and glorify their Father, in--the Opposite of Heaven. [A] See the analysis of the moral system of Dante, respecting punishment, given in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXIII. 86. I think your trade parliament will have to put an end to this kind of business somehow! But it cannot be done by laws merely, where the interests and circumstances are so extended and complex. Nay, even as regards lower and more defined crimes, the assigned punishment is not to be thought of as a preventive means; but only as the seal of opinion set by society on the fact. Crime cannot be hindered by punishment; it will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or unclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a criminal--by taking away the _will_ to commit sin; not by mere punishment of its commission. Crime, small and great, can only be truly stayed by education--not the education of the intellect only, which is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischievous; but education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all. So, on this matter, I will try in my next letter to say one or two things of which the silence has kept my own heart heavy this many a day. LETTER XVI. OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IRRESPECTIVE OF CLASS-DISTINCTION. IT CONSISTS ESSENTIALLY IN GIVING HABITS OF MERCY, AND HABITS OF TRUTH. (GENTLENESS[A] AND JUSTICE.) _March 30th, 1867._ 87. Thank you for sending me the pamphlet containing the account of the meeting of clergy and workmen, and of the reasonings which there took place. I cannot promise you that I shall read much of them, for the question to my mind most requiring discussion and explanation is not, why workmen don't go to church, but--why other people do. However, this I know, that if among our many spiritual teachers, there are indeed any who heartily and literally believe that the wisdom they have to teach "is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her," and if, so believing, they will further dare to affront their congregations by the assertion; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for rubies or gold any more, at their peril, till they have gained that which cannot be gotten for gold, nor silver weighed for the price thereof,--such believers, so preaching, and refusing to preach otherwise till they are in that attended to, will never want congregations, both of working men, and every other kind of men. [A] "Mercy," in its full sense, means delight in perceiving nobleness, or in doing kindness. Compare § 50. 88. Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phantom called the "Philosopher's Stone"? A talisman that shall turn base metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any but fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble souls, nature has given us! and that is a "Philosopher's Stone" indeed, but it is a stone which the builders refuse. 89. If there were two valleys in California or Australia, with two different kinds of gravel in the bottom of them; and in the one stream bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would--I wonder in which of the stream beds there would be most diggers? 90. "Time is money"--so say your practised merchants and economists. None of them, however, I fancy, as they draw towards death, find that the reverse is true, and that "money is time"? Perhaps it might be better for them, in the end, if they did not turn so much of their time into money, lest, perchance, they also turn Eternity into it! There are other things, however, which in the same sense are money, or can be changed into it, as well as time. Health is money, wit is money, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge may be changed for gold; and the happy goal so reached, of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous old age; but the gold cannot be changed in its turn back into health and wit. 91. "Time is money;" the words tingle in my ears so that I can't go on writing. Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly understand that time was--_itself_,--would it not be more to the purpose? A thing of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And that it was expedient also to buy health and knowledge with money, if so purchasable; but not to buy money with _them_? And purchasable they are at the beginning of life, though not at its close. Purchasable, always, for others, if not for ourselves. You can buy, and cheaply, life, endless life, according to your Christian's creed--(there's a bargain for you!) but--long years of knowledge, and peace, and power, and happiness of love--these assuredly and irrespectively of any creed or question,--for all those desolate and haggard children about your streets. 92. "That is not political economy, however." Pardon me; the all-comfortable saying, "What he layeth out, it shall be paid him again," is quite literally true in matters of education; no money seed can be sown with so sure and large return at harvest-time as that; only of this money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_." You must forget your money, and every other material interest, and educate for education's sake only! or the very good you try to bestow will become venomous, and that and your money will be lost together. 93. And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts for education hitherto--whether from above or below. There is no honest desire for the thing itself. The cry for it among the lower orders is because they think that, when once they have got it, they must become upper orders. There is a strange notion in the mob's mind now-a-days (including all our popular economists and educators, as we most justly may, under that brief term "mob"), that _everybody_ can be uppermost; or at least, that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in his turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and that, once give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to ride in his carriage (the methods of supply of coachmen and footmen not being contemplated). And very sternly I say to you--and say from sure knowledge--that a man had better not know how to read and write, than receive education on such terms. 94. The first condition under which it can be given usefully is, that it should be clearly understood to be no means of getting on in the world, but a means of staying pleasantly in your place there. And the first elements of State education should be calculated equally for the advantage of every order of person composing the State. From the lowest to the highest class, every child born in this island should be required by law to receive these general elements of human discipline, and to be baptized--not with a drop of water on its forehead--but in the cloud and sea of heavenly wisdom and of earthly power. And the elements of this general State education should be briefly these: 95. First--The body must be made as beautiful and perfect in its youth as it can be, wholly irrespective of ulterior purpose. If you mean afterwards to set the creature to business which will degrade its body and shorten its life, first, I should say, simply,--you had better let such business alone;--but if you must have it done, somehow, yet let the living creature, whom you mean to kill, get the full strength of its body first, and taste the joy, and bear the beauty of youth. After that, poison it, if you will. Economically, the arrangement is a wiser one, for it will take longer in the killing than if you began with it younger; and you will get an excess of work out of it which will more than pay for its training. Therefore, first teach--as I have said in the preface to 'Unto this Last'--"The Laws of Health, and exercises enjoined by them;" and, to this end, your schools must be in fresh country, and amidst fresh air, and have great extents of land attached to them in permanent estate. Riding, running, all the honest, personal exercises of offense and defense, and music, should be the primal heads of this bodily education. 96. Next to these bodily accomplishments, the two great mental graces should be taught, Reverence and Compassion: not that these are in a literal sense to be "taught," for they are innate in every well-born human creature, but they have to be developed exactly as the strength of the body must be, by deliberate and constant exercise. I never understood why Goethe (in the plan of education in 'Wilhelm Meister') says that reverence is not innate, but must be taught from without; it seems to me so fixedly a function of the human spirit, that if men can get nothing else to reverence they will worship a fool, or a stone, or a vegetable.[A] But to teach reverence rightly is to attach it to the right persons and things; first, by setting over your youth masters whom they cannot but love and respect; next, by gathering for them, out of past history, whatever has been most worthy in human deeds and human passion; and leading them continually to dwell upon such instances, making this the principal element of emotional excitement to them; and, lastly, by letting them justly feel, as far as may be, the smallness of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with the attainments of others. [A] By steady preaching against it, one may quench reverence, and bring insolence to its height; but the instinct cannot be wholly uprooted. 97. Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly by making it a point of honor, collaterally with courage, and in the same rank (as indeed the complement and evidence of courage), so that, in the code of unwritten school law, it shall be held as shameful to have done a cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on weaker creatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime; and every possible opportunity taken to exercise the youths in offices of some practical help, and to acquaint them with the realities of the distress which, in the joyfulness of entering into life, it is so difficult, for those who have not seen home suffering, to conceive. 98. Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach primarily, and with these, as the bond and guardian of them, truth of spirit and word, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for like a treasure, and kept like a crown. This teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief work the master has to do; and it will enter into all parts of education. First, you must accustom the children to close accuracy of statement; this both as a principle of honor, and as an accomplishment of language, making them try always who shall speak truest, both as regards the fact he has to relate or express (not concealing or exaggerating), and as regards the precision of the words he expresses it in, thus making truth (which, indeed, it is) the test of perfect language, and giving the intensity of a moral purpose to the study and art of words: then carrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and observation also, so as always to _think_ of things as they truly are, and to see them as they truly are, as far as in us rests. And it does rest much in our power, for all false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our thinking of what we have no business with, and looking for things we want to see, instead of things that ought to be seen. 99. "Do not talk but of what you know; do not think but of what you have materials to think justly upon; and do not look for things only that you like, when there are others to be seen"--this is the lesson to be taught to our youth, and inbred in them; and that mainly by our own example and continence. Never teach a child anything of which you are not yourself sure; and, above all, if you feel anxious to force anything into its mind in tender years, that the virtue of youth and early association may fasten it there, be sure it is no lie which you thus sanctify. There is always more to be taught of absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, open to its capacity, than any child can learn; there is no need to teach it anything doubtful. Better that it should be ignorant of a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its heart a single lie. 100. And for this, as well as for many other reasons, the principal subjects of education, after history, ought to be natural science and mathematics; but with respect to these studies, your schools will require to be divided into three groups: one for children who will probably have to live in cities, one for those who will live in the country, and one for those who will live at sea; the schools for these last, of course, being always placed on the coast. And for children whose life is to be in cities, the subjects of study should be, as far as their disposition will allow of it, mathematics and the arts; for children who are to live in the country, natural history of birds, insects, and plants, together with agriculture taught practically; and for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, and the natural history of sea-fish and sea-birds. 101. This, then, being the general course and material of education for all children, observe farther, that in the preface to 'Unto this Last' I said that every child, besides passing through this course, was at school to learn "the calling by which it was to live." And it may perhaps appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of education such as this above described, there are many callings which, however much called to them, the children might not willingly determine to learn or live by. "Probably," you may say, "after they have learned to ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers, it will be little to their liking to make themselves into tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." And I cannot but agree with you as to the exceeding probability of some such reluctance on their part, which will be a very awkward state of things indeed, (since we can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemaking,) and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next letter. 102. P.S.--Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave Doré; he is wrong, however, in thinking there is any good in those illustrations of 'Elaine.' I had intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my mind quite as significant--almost as awful--a sign of what is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet should have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the lower Evangelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishonored. Those 'Elaine' illustrations are just as impure as anything else that Doré has done; but they are also vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the 'Contes Drôlatiques' are full of power and invention; but those to 'Elaine' are merely and simply stupid; theatrical bêtises, with the taint of the charnel-house on them besides. LETTER XVII. THE RELATIONS OF EDUCATION TO POSITION IN LIFE. _April 3, 1867._ 103. I am not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness of the dilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as much as I do myself. You working men have been crowing and peacocking at such a rate lately; and setting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of society, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will not anticipate any of the difficulties which suggest themselves to a thoroughbred Tory and Conservative, like me. Perhaps you will expect a youth properly educated--a good rider--musician--and well-grounded scholar in natural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he has to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver? If you do, I should very willingly admit that you might be right, and go on to the farther development of my notions without pausing at this stumbling-block, were it not that, unluckily, all the wisest men whose sayings I ever heard or read, agree in expressing (one way or another) just such contempt for those useful occupations, as I dread on the part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakespeare and Chaucer,--Dante and Virgil,--Horace and Pindar,--Homer, �schylus, and Plato,--all the men of any age or country who seem to have had Heaven's music on their lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine that the feeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as well as sensitive Englishwomen, on reading my last letter, would mostly be--"Is the man mad, or laughing at us, to propose educating the working classes this way? He could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better method of making them acutely wretched." 104. It may be so, my sensible and polite friends; and I am heartily willing, as well as curious, to hear you develop your own scheme of operative education, so only that it be universal, orderly, and careful. I do not say that I shall be prepared to advocate my athletics and philosophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or imply, in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You imply that a certain portion of mankind must be employed in degrading work; and that, to fit them for this work, it is necessary to limit their knowledge, their active powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood upwards, so that they may not be able to conceive of any state better than the one they were born in, nor possess any knowledge or acquirements inconsistent with the coarseness, or disturbing the monotony, of their vulgar occupation. And by their labor in this contracted state of mind, we superior beings are to be maintained; and always to be curtseyed to by the properly ignorant little girls, and capped by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by. 105. Mind, I do not say that this is _not_ the right state of things. Only, if it be, you need not be so over-particular about the slave-trade, it seems to me. What is the use of arguing so pertinaciously that a black's skull will hold as much as a white's, when you are declaring in the same breath that a white's skull must not hold as much as it can, or it will be the worse for him? It does not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into doing a piece of low work that I don't like; but it is a very profound state of slavery to be kept, myself, low in the forehead, that I may not dislike low work. 106. You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward one, whichever way you look at it. But, what is still worse, I am not puzzled only, at this part of my scheme, about the boys I shall have to make _workmen_ of; I am just as much puzzled about the boys I shall have to make _nothing_ of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by reason or rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones into some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes made for the rest,--what is the business of "the rest" to be? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentlemanly professions; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers of special skill or pugnacity. _All_ my boys will be soldiers. So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic education fairly established, of what help to them will my respect be? They will all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number of episcopates--one over every hundred families--(and many positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, above them and below), but all these places will involve much hard work, and be anything but covetable; while, of clergymen's usual work, admonition, theological demonstration, and the like, I shall want very little done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously earned his own dinner by more productive work than admonition. Well, I wish, my friend, you would write me a word or two in answer to this, telling me your own ideas as to the proper issue out of these difficulties. I should like to know what you think, and what you suppose others will think, before I tell you my own notions about the matter. LETTER XVIII. THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF SERVILE EMPLOYMENTS. THE POSSIBLE PRACTICE AND EXHIBITION OF SINCERE HUMILITY BY RELIGIOUS PERSONS. _April 7, 1867._ 107. I have been waiting these three days to know what you would say to my last questions; and now you send me two pamphlets of Combe's to read! I never read anything in spring-time (except the Ai, Ai, on the "sanguine flower inscribed with woe"); and, besides, if, as I gather from your letter, Combe thinks that among well-educated boys there would be a percentage constitutionally inclined to be cobblers, or looking forward with unction to establishment in the oil and tallow line, or fretting themselves for a flunkey's uniform, nothing that he could say would make me agree with him. I know, as well as he does, the unconquerable differences in the clay of the human creature: and I know that, in the outset, whatever system of education you adopted, a large number of children could be made nothing of, and would necessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates enough for degradation to common mechanical business: but this enormous difference in bodily and mental capacity has been mainly brought about by difference in occupation, and by direct maltreatment; and in a few generations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages looked after, and sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type of face and form, and a high intelligence, would become all but universal, in a climate like this of England. Even as it is, the marvel is always to me, how the race resists, at least in its childhood, influences of ill-regulated birth, poisoned food, poisoned air, and soul neglect. I often see faces of children, as I walk through the black district of St. Giles's (lying, as it does, just between my own house and the British Museum), which, through all their pale and corrupt misery, recall the old "Non Angli," and recall it, not by their beauty, but by their sweetness of expression, even though signed already with trace and cloud of the coming life,--a life so bitter that it would make the curse of the 137th Psalm true upon our modern Babylon, though we were to read it thus, "Happy shall _thy children_ be, if one taketh and dasheth them against the stones." 108. Yes, very solemnly I repeat to you that in those worst treated children of the English race, I yet see the making of gentlemen and gentlewomen--not the making of dog-stealers and gin-drinkers, such as their parents were; and the child of the average English tradesman or peasant, even at this day, well schooled, will show no innate disposition such as must fetter him forever to the clod or the counter. You say that many a boy runs away, or would run away if he could, from good positions to go to sea. Of course he does. I never said I should have any difficulty in finding sailors, but I shall in finding fishmongers. I am at no loss for gardeners either, but what am I to do for greengrocers? 109. The fact is, a great number of quite necessary employments are, in the accuratest sense, "Servile;" that is, they sink a man to the condition of a serf, or unthinking worker, the proper state of an animal, but more or less unworthy of men; nay, unholy in some sense, so that a day is made "holy" by the fact of its being commanded, "Thou shalt do no _servile_ work therein." And yet, if undertaken in a certain spirit, such work might be the holiest of all. If there were but a thread or two of sound fiber here and there left in our modern religion, so that the stuff of it would bear a real strain, one might address our two opposite groups of evangelicals and ritualists somewhat after this fashion:--"Good friends, these differences of opinion between you cannot but be painful to your Christian charity, and they are unseemly to us, the profane; and prevent us from learning from you what, perhaps, we ought. But, as we read your Book, we, for our part, gather from it that you might, without danger to your own souls, set an undivided example to us, for the benefit of ours. You, both of you, as far as we understand, agree in the necessity of humility to the perfection of your character. We often hear you, of Calvinistic persuasion, speaking of yourselves as 'sinful dust and ashes,'--would it then be inconsistent with your feelings to make yourselves into 'serviceable' dust and ashes? We observe that of late many of our roads have been hardened and mended with cinders; now, if, in a higher sense, you could allow us to mend the roads of the world with _you_ a little, it would be a great proof to us of your sincerity. Suppose, only for a little while, in the present difficulty and distress, you were to make it a test of conversion that a man should regularly give Zaccheus's portion, half his goods, to the poor, and at once adopt some disagreeable and despised, but thoroughly useful, trade? You cannot think that this would finally be to your disadvantage; you doubtless believe the texts, 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' and 'He that would be chief among you, let him be your servant.' The more you parted with, and the lower you stooped, the greater would be your final reward, and final exaltation. You profess to despise human learning and worldly riches; leave both of these to _us_; undertake for us the illiterate and ill-paid employments which must deprive you of the privileges of society and the pleasures of luxury. You cannot possibly preach your faith so forcibly to the world by any quantity of the finest words, as by a few such simple and painful acts; and over your counters, in honest retail business, you might preach a gospel that would sound in more ears than any that was ever proclaimed over pulpit cushions or tabernacle rails. And, whatever may be your gifts of utterance, you cannot but feel (studying St. Paul's Epistles as carefully as you do) that you might more easily and modestly emulate the practical teaching of the silent Apostle of the Gentiles than the speech or writing of his companion. Amidst the present discomforts of your brethren you may surely, with greater prospect of good to them, seek the title of Sons of Consolation, than of Sons of Thunder, and be satisfied with Barnabas's confession of faith, (if you can reach no farther,) who, 'having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet.' 110. "To you, on the other hand, gentlemen of the embroidered robe, who neither despise learning nor the arts, we know that sacrifices such as these would be truly painful, and might at first appear inexpedient. But the doctrine of self-mortification is not a new one to you; and we should be sorry to think--we would not, indeed, for a moment dishonor you by thinking--that these melodious chants, and prismatic brightnesses of vitreous pictures, and floral graces of deep-wrought stone, were in any wise intended for your own poor pleasures, whatever profane attraction they may exercise on more fleshly-minded persons. And as you have certainly received no definite order for the painting, carving, or lighting up of churches, while the temple of the body of so many poor living Christians is so pale, so mis-shapen, and so ill-lighted; but have, on the contrary, received very definite orders for the feeding and clothing of such sad humanity, we may surely ask you, not unreasonably, to humiliate yourselves in the most complete way--not with a voluntary, but a sternly _in_voluntary humility--not with a show of wisdom in will-worship, but with practical wisdom, in all honor, to the satisfying of the flesh; and to associate yourselves in monasteries and convents for the better practice of useful and humble trades. Do not burn any more candles, but mould some; do not paint any more windows, but mend a few where the wind comes in, in winter time, with substantial clear glass and putty. Do not vault any more high roofs, but thatch some low ones; and embroider rather on backs which are turned to the cold, than only on those which are turned to congregations. And you will have your reward afterwards, and attain, with all your flocks thus tended, to a place where you may have as much gold, and painted glass, and singing, as you like." Thus much, it seems to me, one might say with some hope of acceptance, to any very earnest member of either of our two great religious parties, if, as I say, their faith could stand a strain. I have not, however, based any of my imaginary political arrangements on the probability of its doing so; and I trust only to such general good nature and willingness to help each other, as I presume may be found among men of the world; to whom I should have to make quite another sort of speech, which I will endeavor to set down the heads of, for you, in next letter. LETTER XIX. THE GENERAL PRESSURE OF EXCESSIVE AND IMPROPER WORK, IN ENGLISH LIFE. _April 10, 1867._ 111. I cannot go on to-day with the part of my subject I had proposed, for I was disturbed by receiving a letter last night, which I herewith enclose to you, and of which I wish you to print, here following, the parts I have not underlined-- 1, Phene Street, Chelsea, April 8, 1867. MY DEAR R----,-- It is long since you have heard of me, and now I ask your patience with me for a little. I have but just returned from the funeral of my dear, dear friend ----, the first artist friend I made in London--a loved and prized one. For years past he had lived in the very humblest way, fighting his battle of life against mean appreciation of his talents, the wants of a rising family, and frequent attacks of illness, crippling him for months at a time, the wolf at the door meanwhile. But about two years since his prospects brightened * * * and he had but a few weeks since ventured on removal to a larger house. His eldest boy of seventeen years, a very intelligent youth, so strongly desired to be a civil engineer that Mr. ----, not being able to pay the large premium required for his apprenticeship, had been made very glad by the consent of Mr. Penn, of Millwall, to receive him without a premium after the boy should have spent some time at King's College in the study of mechanics. The rest is a sad story. About a fortnight ago Mr. ---- was taken ill, and died last week, the doctors say, of sheer physical exhaustion, not thirty-nine years old, leaving eight young children, and his poor widow expecting her confinement, and so weak and ill as to be incapable of effort. This youth is the eldest, and the other children range downwards to a babe of eighteen months. There is not one who knew him, I believe, that will not give cheerfully, to their ability, for his widow and children; but such aid will go but a little way in this painful case; and it would be a real boon to this poor widow if some of her children could be got into an Orphan Asylum. * * * If you are able to do anything I would send particulars of the age and sex of the children. I remain, dear Sir, ever obediently yours, FRED. J. SHIELDS. P.S.--I ought to say that poor ---- has been quite unable to save, with his large family; and that they would be utterly destitute now, but for the kindness of some with whom he was professionally connected. 112. Now this case, of which you see the entire authenticity, is, out of the many of which I hear continually, a _notably_ sad one only in so far as the artist in question has died of distress while he was catering for the public amusement. Hardly a week now passes without some such misery coming to my knowledge; and the quantity of pain, and anxiety of daily effort, through the best part of life, ending all at last in utter grief, which the lower middle classes in England are now suffering, is so great that I feel constantly as if I were living in one great churchyard, with people all round me clinging feebly to the edges of the open graves, and calling for help, as they fall back into them, out of sight. 113. Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the working of your beautiful modern political economy of "supply and demand." Here is a man who could have "supplied" you with good and entertaining art,--say for fifty good years,--if you had paid him enough for his day's work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. But you like having your prints as cheap as possible--you triumph in the little that your laugh costs--you take all you can get from the man, give the least you can give to him,--and you accordingly kill him at thirty-nine; and thereafter have his children to take care of, or to kill also, whichever you choose; but, now, observe, you must take care of _them_ for nothing, or not at all; and what you might have had good value for, if you had given it when it would have cheered the father's heart, you now can have no return for at all, to yourselves; and what you give to the orphans, if it does not degrade them, at least afflicts, coming, not through their father's hand, its honest earnings, but from strangers. Observe, farther, whatever help the orphans may receive, will not be from the public at all. It will not be from those who profited by their father's labors; it will be chiefly from his fellow-laborers; or from persons whose money would have been beneficially spent in other directions, from whence it is drawn away to this need, which ought never to have occurred,--while those who waste their money without doing any service to the public will never contribute one farthing to this distress. 114. Now it is this double fault in the help--that it comes too late, and that the burden of it falls wholly on those who ought least to be charged with it--which would be corrected by that institution of overseers of which I spoke to you in the twelfth of these letters, saying, you remember, that they were to have farther legal powers, which I did not then specify, but which would belong to them chiefly in the capacity of public almoners, or help-givers, aided by their deacons, the reception of such help, in time of true need, being not held disgraceful, but honorable; since the fact of its reception would be so entirely public that no impostor or idle person could ever obtain it surreptitiously. 115. (11th April.) I was interrupted yesterday, and I am glad of it, for here happens just an instance of the way in which the unjust distribution of the burden of charity is reflected on general interests; I cannot help what taint of ungracefulness you or other readers of these letters may feel that I incur, in speaking, in this instance, of myself. If I could speak with the same accurate knowledge of any one else, most gladly I would; but I also think it right that, whether people accuse me of boasting or not, they should know that I practise what I preach. I had not intended to say what I now shall, but the coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of the decision with me. I enclose it with the other; you see it is one from my bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering me Fischer's work on the _Flora of Java_, and Latour's on _Indian Orchidaceæ_, bound together, for twenty guineas. Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two books very much; but I simply cannot afford to buy them, because I sent my last spare twenty guineas to Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you may think it not the affair of the public that I have not this book on Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that what I write for them should be founded on as broad knowledge as possible; whatever value my own book may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree worth _less_ to them, because of my want of this knowledge. 116. So again--for having begun to speak of myself I will do so yet more frankly--I suppose that when people see my name down for a hundred pounds to the Cruikshank Memorial, and for another hundred to the Eyre Defense Fund, they think only that I have more money than I know what to do with. Well, the giving of those subscriptions simply decides the question whether or no I shall be able to afford a journey to Switzerland this year, in the negative; and I wanted to go, not only for health's sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse sandstones and nagelfluh with the Alpine limestone, in order to complete some notes I meant to publish next spring on the geology of the great northern Swiss valley; notes which must now lie by me at least for another year; and I believe this delay (though I say it) will be really something of a loss to the traveling public, for the little essay was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the real wonderfulness of their favorite mountain, the Righi; and to give them some amusement in trying to find out where the many-colored pebbles of it had come from. But it is more important that I should, with some stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest patriotism of Cruikshank, and my much more than disrespect for the Jamaica Committee, than that I should see the Alps this year, or get my essay finished next spring; but I tell you the fact, because I want you to feel how, in thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or defended only by those who deeply care for them, the public more or less cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just the people who could serve them in other ways; while the speculators and money-seekers, who are only making their profit out of the said public, of course take no part in the help of anybody. And even if the willing bearers could sustain the burden anywise adequately, none of us would complain; but I am certain there is no man, whatever his fortune, who is now engaged in any earnest offices of kindness to these sufferers, especially of the middle class, among his acquaintance, who will not bear me witness that for one we can relieve, we must leave three to perish. I have left three, myself, in the first three months of this year. One was the artist Paul Gray, for whom an appeal was made to me for funds to assist him in going abroad out of the bitter English winter. I had not the means by me, and he died a week afterwards. Another case was that of a widow whose husband had committed suicide, for whom application was made to me at the same time; and the third was a personal friend, to whom I refused a sum which he said would have saved him from bankruptcy. I believe six times as much would not have saved him; however, I refused, and he is ruined. 117. And observe, also, it is not the mere crippling of my means that I regret. It is the crippling of my temper, and waste of my time. The knowledge of all this distress, even when I can assist it,--much more when I cannot,--and the various thoughts of what I can and cannot, or ought and ought not, to do, are a far greater burden to me than the mere loss of the money. It is peremptorily not my business--it is not my gift, bodily or mentally, to look after other people's sorrow. I have enough of my own; and even if I had not, the sight of pain is not good for me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a most literal and sincere sense, "_nolo episcopari_." I don't want to be an almoner, nor a counselor, nor a Member of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of Parliament. (What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he knew that I have never voted for anybody in my life, and never mean to do so!) I am essentially a painter and a leaf dissector; and my powers of thought are all purely mathematical, seizing ultimate principles only--never accidents; a line is always, to me, length without breadth; it is not a cable or a crowbar; and though I can almost infallibly reason out the final law of anything, if within reach of my industry, I neither care for, nor can trace, the minor exigencies of its daily appliance. So, in every way, I like a quiet life; and I don't like seeing people cry, or die; and should rejoice, more than I can tell you, in giving up the full half of my fortune for the poor, provided I knew that the public would make Lord Overstone also give the half of his, and other people who were independent give the half of theirs; and then set men who were really fit for such office to administer the fund, and answer to us for nobody's perishing innocently; and so leave us all to do what we chose with the rest, and with our days, in peace. Thus far of the public's fault in the matter. Next, I have a word or two to say of the sufferers' own fault--for much as I pity them, I conceive that none of them _do_ perish altogether innocently. But this must be for next letter. LETTER XX. OF IMPROVIDENCE IN MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES; AND OF THE ADVISABLE RESTRICTIONS OF IT. _April 12, 1867._ 118. It is quite as well, whatever irregularity it may introduce in the arrangement of the general subject, that yonder sad letter warped me away from the broad inquiry, to this speciality, respecting the present distress of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of that distress, in their own imprudence, of which I have to speak to you to-day, is only to be finally vanquished by strict laws, which, though they have been many a year in my mind, I was glad to have a quiet hour of sunshine for the thinking over again, this morning. Sunshine which happily rose cloudless; and allowed me to meditate my tyrannies before breakfast, under the just opened blossoms of my orchard, and assisted by much melodious advice from the birds; who (my gardener having positive orders never to trouble any of them in anything, or object to their eating even my best peas if they like their flavor) rather now get _into_ my way, than out of it, when they see me about the walks; and take me into most of their counsels in nest-building. 119. The letter from Mr. Shields, which interrupted us, reached me, as you see, on the evening of the 9th instant. On the morning of the 10th, I received another, which I herewith forward to you, for verification. It is--characteristically enough--dateless, so you must take the time of its arrival on my word. And substituting M. N. for the name of the boy referred to, and withholding only the address and name of the writer, you see that it may be printed word for word--as follows:-- SIR,-- May I beg for the favor of your presentation to Christ's Hospital for my youngest son, M. N.? I have nine children, and no means to educate them. I ventured to address you, believing that my husband's name is not unknown to you as an artist. Believe me to remain faithfully yours, * * * 120. Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire class of those which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, I receive, in common with all the other governors, at the rate of about three a day, for a month or six weeks from the date of our names appearing in the printed list of the governors who have presentations for the current year. Having been a governor now some twenty-five years, I have documentary evidence enough to found some general statistics upon; from which there have resulted two impressions on my mind, which I wish here specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all the other governors, if you could ask them, would at once confirm what I say. My first impression is, a heavy and sorrowful sense of the general feebleness of intellect of that portion of the British public which stands in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital. This feebleness of intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total unconsciousness of the writers that anybody else may want a presentation, besides themselves. With the exception here and there of a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of them seems to have perceived the existence of any distress in the world but their own: none know what they are asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote contingency, the possibility of its having been promised at a prior date. The second most distinct impression on my mind, is that the portion of the British public which is in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital considers it a merit to have large families, with or without the means of supporting them! 121. Now it happened also (and remember, all this is strictly true, nor in the slightest particular represented otherwise than as it chanced; though the said chance brought thus together exactly the evidence I wanted for my letter to you)--it happened, I say, that on this same morning of the 10th April, I became accidentally acquainted with a case of quite a different kind: that of a noble girl, who, engaged at sixteen, and having received several advantageous offers since, has remained for ten years faithful to her equally faithful lover; while, their circumstances rendering it, as they rightly considered, unjustifiable in them to think of marriage, each of them simply and happily, aided and cheered by the other's love, discharged the duties of their own separate positions in life. 122. In the nature of things, instances of this kind of noble life remain more or less concealed, (while imprudence and error proclaim themselves by misfortune,) but they are assuredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us next observe the political and national result of these arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by "supply and demand," instead of wholesome law. And thus, among your youths and maidens, the improvident, incontinent, selfish, and foolish ones marry, whether you will or not; and beget families of children necessarily inheritors in a great degree of these parental dispositions; and for whom, supposing they had the best dispositions in the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, the foolishest fathers and mothers you could find; (the only rational sentence in their letters, usually, is the invariable one, in which they declare themselves "incapable of providing for their children's education"). On the other hand, whosoever is wise, patient, unselfish, and pure among your youth, you keep maid or bachelor; wasting their best days of natural life in painful sacrifice, forbidding them their best help and best reward, and carefully excluding their prudence and tenderness from any offices of parental duty. Is not this a beatific and beautifully sagacious system for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British Isles? 123. I will not here enter into any statement of the physical laws which it is the province of our physicians to explain; and which are indeed at last so far beginning to be understood, that there is hope of the nation's giving some of the attention to the conditions affecting the race of man, which it has hitherto bestowed only on those which may better its races of cattle. It is enough, I think, to say here that the beginning of all sanitary and moral law is in the regulation of marriage, and that, ugly and fatal as is every form and agency of license, no licentiousness is so mortal as licentiousness in marriage. 124. Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones to such modifications in detail as local circumstances and characters would render expedient, those following are laws such as a prudent nation would institute respecting its marriages. Permission to marry should be the reward held in sight of its youth during the entire latter part of the course of their education; and it should be granted as the national attestation that the first portion of their lives had been rightly fulfilled. It should not be attainable without earnest and consistent effort, though put within the reach of all who were willing to make such effort; and the granting of it should be a public testimony to the fact, that the youth or maid to whom it was given had lived, within their proper sphere, a modest and virtuous life, and had attained such skill in their proper handicraft, and in arts of household economy, as might give well-founded expectations of their being able honorably to maintain and teach their children. 125. No girl should receive her permission to marry before her seventeenth birthday, nor any youth before his twenty-first; and it should be a point of somewhat distinguished honor with both sexes to gain their permission of marriage in the eighteenth and twenty-second years; and a recognized disgrace not to have gained it at least before the close of their twenty-first and twenty-fourth. I do not mean that they should in any wise hasten actual marriage; but only that they should hold it a point of honor to have the right to marry. In every year there should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which festivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half-year; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old French title of Rosières, and the youths, perhaps by some name rightly derived from one supposed signification of the word "bachelor," "laurel fruit," and so led in joyful procession, with music and singing, through the city street or village lane, and the day ended with feasting of the poor. 126. And every bachelor and rosière should be entitled to claim, if they needed it, according to their position in life, a fixed income from the State, for seven years from the day of their marriage, for the setting up of their homes; and, however rich they might be by inheritance, their income should not be permitted to exceed a given sum, proportioned to their rank, for the seven years following that in which they had obtained their permission to marry, but should accumulate in the trust of the State until that seventh year, in which they should be put (on certain conditions) finally in possession of their property; and the men, thus necessarily not before their twenty-eighth, nor usually later than their thirty-first year, become eligible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should not be sharply separated in the beginning of the war of life; but the one supported against the first stress of it long enough to enable them, by proper forethought and economy, to secure their footing; and the other trained somewhat in the use of moderate means, before they were permitted to have the command of abundant ones. And of the sources from which these State incomes for the married poor should be supplied, or of the treatment of those of our youth whose conduct rendered it advisable to refuse them permission to marry, I defer what I have to say till we come to the general subjects of taxation and criminal discipline; leaving the proposals made in this letter to bear, for the present, whatever aspect of mere romance and unrealizable vision they probably may, and to most readers, such as they assuredly will. Nor shall I make the slightest effort to redeem them from these imputations; for though there is nothing in all their purport which would not be approved, as in the deepest sense "practical"--by the Spirit of Paradise-- "Which gives to all the self-same bent, Whose lives are wise and innocent," and though I know that national justice in conduct, and peace in heart, could by no other laws be so swiftly secured, I confess with much _dis_peace of heart, that both justice and happiness have at this day become, in England, "romantic impossibilities." LETTER XXI. OF THE DIGNITY OF THE FOUR FINE ARTS; AND OF THE PROPER SYSTEM OF RETAIL TRADE. _April 15, 1867._ 127. I return now to the part of the subject at which I was interrupted--the inquiry as to the proper means of finding persons willing to maintain themselves and others by degrading occupations. That, on the whole, simply manual occupations _are_ degrading, I suppose I may assume you to admit; at all events, the fact is so, and I suppose few general readers will have any doubt of it.[A] [A] Many of my working readers have disputed this statement eagerly, feeling the good effect of work in themselves; but observe, I only say, _simply_ or _totally_ manual work; and that, alone, _is_ degrading, though often in measure, refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. So it is highly necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes; but degrading to eat all day, as to labor with the hands all day. But it is not degrading to think all day--if you can. A highly-bred court lady, rightly interested in politics and literature, is a much finer type of the human creature than a servant of all work, however clever and honest. Granting this, it follows as a direct consequence that it is the duty of all persons in higher stations of life, by every means in their power to diminish their demand for work of such kind, _and to live with as little aid from the lower trades_, as they can possibly contrive. 128. I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little at variance with received notions on political economy? It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nation to invent a want. But the fact is, that the true benefit is in extinguishing a want--in living with as few wants as possible. I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common writers on political economy, in their stupefied missing of this first principle of all human economy--individual or political--to live, namely, with as few wants as possible, and to waste nothing of what is given you to supply them. 129. This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's political code. "Sir," his tutor should early say to him, "you are so placed in society,--it may be for your misfortune, it _must_ be for your trial--that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labor of other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some one will have to make a great many for you. You will have to dig ground for nobody, but some one will have to dig through every summer's hot day for you. You will build houses and make clothes for no one, but many a rough hand must knead clay, and many an elbow be crooked to the stitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. Now remember, whatever you and your work may be worth, the less your keep costs, the better. It does not cost money only. It costs degradation. You do not merely employ these people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be helped;--you have your place, and they have theirs; but see that you tread as lightly as possible, and on as few as possible. What food, and clothes, and lodging, you honestly need, for your health and peace, you may righteously take. See that you take the plainest you can serve yourself with--that you waste or wear nothing vainly--and that you employ no man in furnishing you with any useless luxury." 130. That is the first lesson of Christian--or human--economy; and depend upon it, my friend, it is a sound one, and has every voice and vote of the spirits of Heaven and earth to back it, whatever views the Manchester men, or any other manner of men, may take respecting "demand and supply." Demand what you deserve, and you shall be supplied with it, for your good. Demand what you do _not_ deserve, and you shall be supplied with something which you have not demanded, and which Nature perceives that you deserve, quite to the contrary of your good. That is the law of your existence, and if you do not make it the law of your resolved acts, so much, precisely, the worse for you and all connected with you. 131. Yet observe, though it is out of its proper place said here, this law forbids no luxury which men are not degraded in providing. You may have Paul Veronese to paint your ceiling, if you like, or Benvenuto Cellini to make cups for you. But you must not employ a hundred divers to find beads to stitch over your sleeve. (Did you see the account of the sales of the Esterhazy jewels the other day?) And the degree in which you recognize the difference between these two kinds of services, is precisely what makes the difference between your being a civilized person or a barbarian. If you keep slaves to furnish forth your dress--to glut your stomach--sustain your indolence--or deck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep servants, properly cared for, to furnish you with what you verily want, and no more than that--you are a "civil" person--a person capable of the qualities of citizenship.[A] [A] Compare 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' §§ 79, 118, and 122. 132. Now, farther, observe that in a truly civilized and disciplined state, no man would be allowed to meddle with any material who did not know how to make the best of it. In other words, the arts of working in wood, clay, stone, and metal, would all be _fine_ arts (working in iron for machinery becoming an entirely distinct business). There would be no joiner's work, no smith's, no pottery nor stone-cutting, so debased in character as to be entirely unconnected with the finer branches of the same art; and to at least one of these finer branches (generally in metal-work) every painter and sculptor would be necessarily apprenticed during some years of his education. There would be room, in these four trades alone, for nearly every grade of practical intelligence and productive imagination. 133. But it should not be artists alone who are exercised early in these crafts. It would be part of my scheme of physical education that every youth in the state--from the King's son downwards,--should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let him know what _touch_ meant; and what stout craftsmanship meant; and to inform him of many things besides, which no man can learn but by some severely accurate discipline in doing. Let him once learn to take a straight shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without faltering, or lay a brick level in its mortar; and he has learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could ever teach him. He might choose his craft, but whatever it was, he should learn it to some sufficient degree of true dexterity: and the result would be, in after life, that among the middle classes a good deal of their house furniture would be made, and a good deal of rough work, more or less clumsily, but not ineffectively, got through, by the master himself and his sons, with much furtherance of their general health and peace of mind, and increase of innocent domestic pride and pleasure, and to the extinction of a great deal of vulgar upholstery and other mean handicraft. 134. Farther. A great deal of the vulgarity, and nearly all the vice, of retail commerce, involving the degradation of persons occupied in it, depends simply on the fact that their minds are always occupied by the vital (or rather mortal) question of profits. I should at once put an end to this source of baseness by making all retail dealers merely salaried officers in the employ of the trade guilds; the stewards, that is to say, of the salable properties of those guilds, and purveyors of such and such articles to a given number of families. A perfectly well-educated person might, without the least degradation, hold such an office as this, however poorly paid; and it would be precisely the fact of his being well educated which would enable him to fulfil his duties to the public without the stimulus of direct profit. Of course the current objection to such a system would be that no man, for a regularly paid salary, would take pains to please his customers; and the answer to that objection is, that if you can train a man to so much unselfishness as to offer himself fearlessly to the chance of being shot, in the course of his daily duty, you can most assuredly, if you make it also a point of honor with him, train him to the amount of self-denial involved in looking you out with care such a piece of cheese or bacon as you have asked for. 135. You see that I have already much diminished the number of employments involving degradation; and raised the character of many of those that are left. There remain to be considered the necessarily painful or mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like: the unclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures--the various kinds of transport--(by merchant shipping, etc.) and the conditions of menial service. It will facilitate the examination of these if we put them for the moment aside, and pass to the other division of our dilemma, the question, namely, what kind of lives our gentlemen and ladies are to live, for whom all this hard work is to be done. LETTER XXII. OF THE NORMAL POSITION AND DUTIES OF THE UPPER CLASSES. GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION. _April 17, 1867._ 136. In passing now to the statement of conditions affecting the interests of the upper classes, I would rather have addressed these closing letters to one of themselves than to you, for it is with their own faults and needs that each class is primarily concerned. As, however, unless I kept the letters private, this change of their address would be but a matter of courtesy and form, not of any true prudential use; and as besides I am now no more inclined to reticence--prudent or otherwise; but desire only to state the facts of our national economy as clearly and completely as may be, I pursue the subject without respect of persons. 137. Before examining what the occupation and estate of the upper classes ought, as far as may reasonably be conjectured, finally to become, it will be well to set down in brief terms what they actually have been in past ages: for this, in many respects, they must also always be. The upper classes, broadly speaking, are originally composed of the best-bred (in the mere animal sense of the term), the most energetic, and most thoughtful, of the population, who either by strength of arm seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them, or bring desert land into cultivation, over which they have therefore, within certain limits, true personal right; or, by industry, accumulate other property, or by choice devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain an acknowledged superiority of position, shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, or in gifts of art. This is all in the simple course of the law of nature; and the proper offices of the upper classes, thus distinguished from the rest, become, therefore, in the main threefold:-- 138. (A) Those who are strongest of arm have for their proper function the restraint and punishment of vice, and the general maintenance of law and order; releasing only from its original subjection to their power that which truly deserves to be emancipated. (B) Those who are superior by forethought and industry, have for their function to be the providences of the foolish, the weak, and the idle; and to establish such systems of trade and distribution of goods as shall preserve the lower orders from perishing by famine, or any other consequence of their carelessness or folly, and to bring them all, according to each man's capacity, at last into some harmonious industry. (C) The third class, of scholars and artists, of course, have for function the teaching and delighting of the inferior multitude. The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to keep order among their inferiors, and raise them always to the nearest level with themselves of which those inferiors are capable. So far as they are thus occupied, they are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by all beneath them, and reach, themselves, the highest types of human power and beauty. 139. This, then, being the natural ordinance and function of aristocracy, its corruption, like that of all other beautiful things under the Devil's touch, is a very fearful one. Its corruption is, that those who ought to be the rulers and guides of the people, forsake their task of painful honorableness; seek their own pleasure and pre-eminence only; and use their power, subtlety, conceded influence, prestige of ancestry, and mechanical instrumentality of martial power, to make the lower orders toil for them, and feed and clothe them for nothing, and become in various ways their living property, goods, and chattels, even to the point of utter regardlessness of whatever misery these serfs may suffer through such insolent domination, or they themselves, their masters, commit of crime to enforce it. 140. And this is especially likely to be the case when means of various and tempting pleasures are put within the reach of the upper classes by advanced conditions of national commerce and knowledge: and it is _certain_ to be the case as soon as position among those upper classes becomes any way purchasable with money, instead of being the assured measure of some kind of worth, (either strength of hand, or true wisdom of conduct, or imaginative gift). It has been becoming more and more the condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since the fifteenth century; and is gradually bringing about its ruin, and in that ruin, checked only by the power which here and there a good soldier or true statesman achieves over the putrid chaos of its vain policy, the ruin of all beneath it; which can be arrested only, either by the repentance of that old aristocracy, (hardly to be hoped,) or by the stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier than it. 141. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I would at this moment, if I could, fasten every one of its institutions down with bands of iron, and trust for all progress and help against its tyranny simply to the patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old Austria triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to the chance (or rather the distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor born to its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and act, run the most distant risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany and England become like the thoughts of the people of America. My American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge, is the dearest I have in the world, tell me I know nothing about America. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe that I, therefore, usually _say_ nothing about America. But this much I have said, because the Americans, as a nation, set their trust in liberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the possibility of the other; and because, also, as a nation, they are wholly undesirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irreverent of themselves, both in the present and in the future; discontented with what they are, yet having no ideal of anything which they desire to become.[A] [A] Some following passages in this letter, containing personal references which might, in permanence, have given pain or offense, are now omitted--the substance of them being also irrelevant to my main purpose. These few words about the American war, with which they concluded, are, I think, worth retaining:--"All methods of right government are to be communicated to foreign nations by perfectness of example and gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, nor at the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every nation to interfere, at bayonet point, if they have the strength to do so, to save any oppressed multitude, or even individual, from manifest violence, it is wholly unlawful to interfere in such matter, except with sacredly pledged limitation of the objects to be accomplished in the oppressed person's favor, and with absolute refusal of all selfish advantage and _increase of territory or of political power_ which might otherwise accrue from the victory." 142. But, however corrupted, the aristocracy of any nation may thus be always divided into three great classes. First, the landed proprietors and soldiers, essentially one political body (for the possession of land can only be maintained by military power); secondly, the moneyed men and leaders of commerce; thirdly, the professional men and masters in science, art, and literature. And we were to consider the proper duties of all these, and the laws probably expedient respecting them. Whereupon, in the outset, we are at once brought face to face with the great land question. 143. Great as it may be, it is wholly subordinate to those we have hitherto been considering. The laws you make regarding methods of labor, or to secure the genuineness of the things produced by it, affect the entire moral state of the nation, and all possibility of human happiness for them. The mode of distribution of the land only affects their numbers. By this or that law respecting land you decide whether the nation shall consist of fifty or of a hundred millions. But by this or that law respecting work, you decide whether the given number of millions shall be rogues, or honest men;--shall be wretches, or happy men. And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial, compared with that of character; or rather, its own materialness depends on the prior determination of character. Make your nation consist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the case of any other vermin--"the more, the worse." Or, to put the matter in narrower limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent whether he shall have two children, or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to be hanged. The great difficulty in dealing with the land question at all arises from the false, though very natural, notion on the part of many reformers, and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the land among the said poor would be an immediate and everlasting relief to them. An _immediate_ relief it would be to the extent of a small annual sum (you may easily calculate how little, if you choose) to each of them; on the strength of which accession to their finances, they would multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence would sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, exactly as they are now. 144. Any other form of pillage would benefit them only in like manner; and, in reality, the difficult part of the question respecting numbers, is, not where they shall be arrested, but what shall be the method of their arrest. An island of a certain size has standing room only for so many people; feeding ground for a great many fewer than could stand on it. Reach the limits of your feeding ground, and you must cease to multiply, must emigrate or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually brought to bear on the population depend on the justice of your laws; but the pressure itself must come at last, whatever the distribution of the land. And arithmeticians seem to me a little slow to remark the importance of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the horseshoe--when it is populations that are doubling themselves, instead of farthings. 145. The essential land question, then, is to be treated quite separately from that of the methods of restriction of population. The land question is--At what point will you resolve to stop? It is separate matter of discussion how you are to stop at it. And this essential land question--"At what point will you stop?"--is itself two-fold. You have to consider first, by what methods of land distribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy persons; and secondly, whether, if, by any other mode of distribution and relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while you diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should be made, and to what extent? I think it will be better, for clearness' sake, to end this letter with the putting of these two queries in their decisive form, and to reserve suggestions of answer for my next. LETTER XXIII. OF THE JUST TENURE OF LANDS: AND THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF HIGH PUBLIC OFFICERS. _20th April, 1867._ 146. I must repeat to you, once more, before I proceed, that I only enter on this part of our inquiry to complete the sequence of its system, and explain fully the bearing of former conclusions, and not for any immediately practicable good to be got out of the investigation. Whatever I have hitherto urged upon you, it is in the power of all men quietly to promote, and finally to secure, by the patient resolution of personal conduct; but no action could be taken in re-distribution of land or in limitation of the incomes of the upper classes, without grave and prolonged civil disturbance. Such disturbance, however, is only too likely to take place, if the existing theories of political economy are allowed credence much longer. In the writings of the vulgar economists, nothing more excites my indignation than the subterfuges by which they endeavor to accommodate their pseudoscience to the existing abuses of wealth, by disguising the true nature of rent. I will not waste time in exposing their fallacies, but will put the truth for you into as clear a shape as I can. 147. Rent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continuously paid for the loan of the property of another person. It may be too little, or it may be just or exorbitant or altogether unjustifiable, according to circumstances. Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant or necessitous rent-payers: and it is one of the most necessary conditions of state economy that there should be clear laws to prevent such exaction. 148. I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you an instance of what I mean. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen per cent. to the landlord; and I have known an instance of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the necessities of the poor, might not be diminished. And it is a curious thing to me to see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man to have been unjustly hanged, while by his own failure, (I believe, _wilful_ failure)[A] in stating clearly to the public one of the first elementary truths of the science he professes, he is aiding and abetting the commission of the cruelest possible form of murder on many thousands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting money into the pockets of the landlords. I felt this evil so strongly that I bought, in the worst part of London, one freehold and one leasehold property, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor; in order to try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by taking only a just rent, but that firmly. The houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent.; the families that used to have one room in them have now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; and there is a surplus still on the rents they pay after I have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent., with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is merely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such matters. [A] See § 156. 149. Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for things which are not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or exchangeable property. Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the principal of these things. Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though a fearless defender of some forms of slavery, I am no defender of the slave _trade_. It is by a blundering confusion of ideas between _governing_ men, and _trading in_ men, and by consequent interference with the restraint, instead of only with the sale, that most of the great errors in action have been caused among the emancipation men. I am prepared, if the need be clear to my own mind, and if the power is in my hands, to throw men into prison, or any other captivity--to bind them or to beat them--and force them, for such periods as I may judge necessary, to any kind of irksome labor: and on occasion of desperate resistance, to hang or shoot them. But I will not _sell_ them. 150. Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I said before, their souls), must not be bought or sold. Neither must land, nor water, nor air, these being the necessary sustenance of men's bodies and souls. Yet all these may, on certain terms, be bound, or secured in possession, to particular persons under certain conditions. For instance, it may be proper, at a certain time, to give a man permission to possess land, as you give him permission to marry; and farther, if he wishes it and works for it, to secure to him the land needful for his life; as you secure his wife to him; and make both utterly his own, without in the least admitting his right to buy other people's wives, or fields, or to sell his own. 151. And the right action of a State respecting its land is, indeed, to secure it in various portions to those of its citizens who deserve to be trusted with it, according to their respective desires and proved capacities; and after having so secured it to each, to exercise only such vigilance over his treatment of it as the State must give also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the most part leaving him free, but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or abuse of power. And in the case of great old families, which always ought to be, and in some measure, however decadent, still truly are, the noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of state and outward nobleness; _but their income must in no wise be derived from the rents of it_, nor must they be occupied (even in the most distant or subordinately administered methods), in the exaction of rents. That is not noblemen's work. Their income must be fixed, and paid them by the State, as the King's is. 152. So far from their land being to them a source of income, it should be, on the whole, costly to them, great part of it being kept in conditions of natural grace, which return no rent but their loveliness; and the rest made, at whatever cost, exemplary in perfection of such agriculture as develops the happiest peasant life;[A] agriculture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject the aid of all mechanism except that of instruments guided solely by the human hand, or by animal, or directly natural forces; and which, therefore, cannot compete for profitableness with agriculture carried on by aid of machinery. [A] Compare 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXI., page 22. And now for the occupation of this body of men, maintained at fixed perennial cost of the State. 153. You know I said I should want no soldiers of special skill or pugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. But I assuredly want _captains_ of soldiers, of special skill and pugnacity. And also, I said I should strongly object to the appearance of any lawyers in my territory; meaning, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing about law,--not people appointed to administer law; and people who live by eloquently misrepresenting facts--not people appointed to discover and plainly represent them. Therefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy would be trained, in my schools, to these two great callings, not _by_ which, but _in_ which, they are to live. They would be trained, all of them, in perfect science of war, and in perfect science of essential law. And from their body should be chosen the captains and the judges of England, its advocates, and generally its State officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as already our officers of the Church and army are paid), and no function connected with the administration of law ever paid by casual fee. And the head of such family should, in his own right, having passed due (and high) examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be a judge, law-ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in civil and criminal cases, such as our present judges have, after such case shall have been fully represented before, and received verdict from, a jury, composed exclusively of the middle or lower orders, and in which no member of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of these juries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be a final appeal to a tribunal, the highest in the land, held solely in the King's name, and over which, in the capital, the King himself should preside, and therein give judgment on a fixed number of days in each year;--and, in other places and at other times, judges appointed by election (under certain conditions) out of any order of men in the State (the election being national, not provincial): and all causes brought before these judges should be decided, without appeal, by their own authority; not by juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief view, would be the entire scheme of state authorities:-- 154. (1) The King: exercising, as part both of his prerogative and his duty, the office of a supreme judge at stated times in the central court of appeal of his kingdom. (2) Supreme judges appointed by national election; exercising sole authority in courts of final appeal. (3) Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily under conditions; and with power to add to their number (and liable to have it increased if necessary by the King's appointment); the office of such judges being to administer the national laws under the decision of juries. (4) State officers charged with the direction of public agency in matters of public utility. (5) Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, to family by family, and person by person. (6) The officers of war, of various ranks. (7) The officers of public instruction, of various ranks. I have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat prematurely, for I would rather have conducted you to it step by step, and as I brought forward the reasons for the several parts of it; but it is, on other grounds, desirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on. 155. Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet holding it important as a sign and record of the meanings of things, I may tell you further that I should call the elected supreme judges, "Princes"; the hereditary judges, "Lords"; and the officers of public guidance, "Dukes"; and that the social rank of these persons would be very closely correspondent to that implied by such titles under our present constitution; only much more real and useful. And in conclusion of this letter, I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it idle of me to write or dream of such things; as if any of them were in our power, or within possibility of any near realization, and above all, vain to write of them to a workman at Sunderland: you are to remember what I told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part of my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, too large to receive at present any deliberate execution from my failing strength; (being the body of the work to which 'Munera Pulveris' was intended merely as an introduction;) and that I address it to you because I know that the working men of England must, for some time, be the only body to which we can look for resistance to the deadly influence of moneyed power. I intend, however, to write to you at this moment one more letter, partly explanatory of minor details necessarily omitted in this, and chiefly of the proper office of the soldier; and then I must delay the completion of even this poor task until after the days have turned, for I have quite other work to do in the brightness of the full-opened spring. 156. P.S.--As I have used somewhat strong language, both here and elsewhere, of the equivocations of the economists on the subject of rent, I had better refer you to one characteristic example. You will find in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's 'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver. Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land cannot be improved beyond a certain point, and that, at the reaching of that point, farther claim to tenure would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle--take even this admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that "in no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Now, had that conclusion been farther followed, it would have compelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which normally maintained any person in idleness; which is indeed the whole truth of the matter. But Mr. Mill instantly retreats from this perilous admission; and after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate for _its_ part) of the limits of power in management of the land itself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant proprietor as to the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole question at issue in one brief sentence, slipped cunningly into the middle of a long one which appears to be telling all the other way, and in which the fatal assertion (of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been already proved,--thus--I italicize the unproved assertion in which the venom of the entire falsehood is concentrated. "Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think that all is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but himself. _The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are his, and his only_; but with regard to the land, in everything which he abstains from doing, he is morally bound, and should, whenever the case admits, be legally compelled to make his interest and pleasure consistent with the public good." 157. I say, this sentence in italics is slipped _cunningly_ into the long sentence, as if it were of no great consequence; and above I have expressed my belief that Mr. Mill's equivocations on this subject are wilful. It is a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute dulness and bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett. Mr. Mill is capable of immense involuntary error; but his involuntary errors are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the many sides of a thing; not to obscure sight of the side he _does_ see. Thus his 'Essay on Liberty' only takes cognizance of facts that make for liberty, and of none that make for restraint. But in its statement of all that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen, that I have myself quoted it before now as the best authority on that side. And, if arguing in favor of Rent, absolutely, and with clear explanation of what it was, he had then defended it with all his might, I should have attributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of partisanship; but when I find his defining sentences full of subtle entanglement and reserve--and that reserve held throughout his treatment of this particular subject,--I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not, keep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation from remaining in my mind. And if there be indeed ground for this blame, and Mr. Mill, for fear of fostering political agitation,[A] _has_ disguised what he knows to be the facts about rent, I would ask him as one of the leading members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of one man, known to be an agitator, in the immediate outbreak of such agitation, or, by equivocation in a scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of thousands of men in slow misery, for _fear_ of an agitation which has not begun; and if begun, would be carried on by debate, not by the sword? [A] With at last the natural consequences of cowardice,--nitro-glycerine and fire-balls! Let the upper classes speak the truth about themselves boldly, and they will know how to defend themselves fearlessly. It is equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, which melt at last into tears in a mob's presence.--(Dec. 16th, 1867.) LETTER XXIV. THE OFFICE OF THE SOLDIER. _April 22, 1867._ 158. I must once more deprecate your probable supposition that I bring forward this ideal plan of State government, either with any idea of its appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a remote period, or with any positive and obstinate adherence to the particular form suggested. There are no wiser words among the many wise ones of the most rational and keen-sighted of old English men of the world, than these:-- "For forms of government let fools contest; That which is best administered is best." For, indeed, no form of government is of any use among bad men; and any form will work in the hands of the good; but the essence of all government among good men is this, that it is mainly occupied in the _production and recognition of human worth_, and in the detection and extinction of human unworthiness; and every Government which produces and recognizes worth, will also inevitably use the worth it has found to govern with; and therefore fall into some approximation to such a system as I have described. And, as I told you, I do not contend for names, nor particular powers--though I state those which seem to me most advisable; on the contrary, I know that the precise extent of authorities must be different in every nation at different times, and ought to be so, according to their circumstances and character; and all that I assert with confidence is the necessity, within afterwards definable limits, of _some such_ authorities as these; that is to say, 159. I. An _observant_ one:--by which all men shall be looked after and taken note of. II. A _helpful_ one, from which those who need help may get it. III. A _prudential_ one, which shall not let people dig in wrong places for coal, nor make railroads where they are not wanted; and which shall also, with true providence, insist on their digging in right places for coal, in a safe manner, and making railroads where they _are_ wanted. IV. A _martial_ one, which will punish knaves and make idle persons work. V. An _instructive_ one, which shall tell everybody what it is their duty to know, and be ready pleasantly to answer questions if anybody asks them. VI. A _deliberate_ and _decisive_ one, which shall judge by law, and amend or make law; VII. An _exemplary_ one, which shall show what is loveliest in the art of life. You may divide or name those several offices as you will, or they may be divided in practice as expediency may recommend; the plan I have stated merely puts them all into the simplest forms and relations. 160. You see I have just defined the martial power as that "which punishes knaves and makes idle persons work." For that is indeed the ultimate and perennial soldiership; that is the essential warrior's office to the end of time. "There is no discharge in that war." To the compelling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand will have to address itself as long as this wretched little dusty and volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. The soldier's office at present is indeed supposed to be the defense of his country against other countries; but that is an office which--Utopian as you may think the saying--will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, though I say it with wide war threatened, at this moment, in the East and West. For observe what the standing of nations on their defense really means. It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of them would go and rob the other; that is to say, that the majority of active persons in every nation are at present--thieves. I am very sorry that this should still be so; but it will not be so long. National exhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; but national education will, and that is soon coming. I can judge of this by my own mind, for I am myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this world, and am as eagerly-minded to go and steal some things the French have got, as any housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I could by military incursion carry off Paul Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," and the "Venus Victrix," and the "Hours of St. Louis," it would give me the profoundest satisfaction to accomplish the foray successfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they have got; and I know that the French and British public may and will, with many other publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also; and to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not depend on properties and territories, nor on machinery for their defense; but on their getting such territory as they _have_, well filled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of _infinitely_ enlarging one's territory, feasible to every potentate; and dependent no wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached. 161. Not but that, in the present state of things, it may often be soldiers' duty to seize territory, and hold it strongly; but only from banditti, or savage and idle persons. Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been irresistibly occupied long ago. Instead of quarreling with Austria about Venice, the Italians ought to have made a truce with her for ten years, on condition only of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians more than Germans; and then thrown the whole force of their army on Calabria, shot down every bandit in it in a week, and forced the peasantry of it into honest work on every hill-side, with stout and immediate help from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls, and the like; and Italian finance would have been a much pleasanter matter for the King to take account of by this time; and a fleet might have been floating under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and useless remnant of one, about to be put up to auction. And similarly, _we_ ought to have occupied Greece instantly, when they asked us, whether Russia liked it or not; given them an English king, made good roads for them, and stout laws; and kept them, and their hills and seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and righteous ruling of Salaminian wave, until they could have given themselves a Greek king of men again; and obeyed him, like men. _April 24._ 162. It is strange that just before I finish work for this time, there comes the first real and notable sign of the victory of the principles I have been fighting for, these seven years. It is only a newspaper paragraph, but it means much. Look at the second column of the 11th page of yesterday's 'Pall Mall Gazette,' The paper has taken a wonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my friend John Simon has been knighted on his way to Weimar, which would be much too right and good a thing to be a likely one); but its straws of talk mark which way the wind blows perhaps more early than those of any other journal--and look at the question it puts in that page, "Whether political economy be the sordid and materialistic science some account it, or almost the noblest on which thought can be employed?" Might not you as well have determined that question a little while ago, friend Public? and known what political economy _was_, before you talked so much about it? But, hark, again--"Ostentation, parental pride and a host of moral" (immoral?) "qualities must be recognized as among the springs of industry; political economy should not ignore these, but, to discuss them, _it must abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure science_." 163. Well done the 'Pall Mall'! Had it written "Prudence and parental affection," instead of "Ostentation and parental pride," "must be recognized among the springs of industry," it would have been still better; and it would then have achieved the expression of a part of the truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sentence of 'Unto this Last,' in the year 1862--which it has thus taken five years to get half way into the public's head. "Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious--certainly the least creditable--is the modern _soi-disant_ science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined, irrespectively of the influence of social affection." Look also at the definition of skill, p. 87. "Under the term 'skill' I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their operation on manual labor, and under the term 'passion' to include the entire range of the moral feelings." 164. I say half way into the public's head, because you see, a few lines further on, the 'Pall Mall' hopes for a pause "half way between the rigidity of Ricardo and the sentimentality of Ruskin." With one hand on their pocket, and the other on their heart! Be it so for the present; we shall see how long this statuesque attitude can be maintained; meantime, it chances strangely--as several other things have chanced while I was writing these notes to you--that they should have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic Sirens, at the very moment when I was doubting whether I would or would not tell you the significance of the last song of Ariel in 'The Tempest.' I had half determined not, but now I shall. And this was what brought me to think of it:-- 165. Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to see some of the results of an inquiry he has been following all last year, into the nature of the coloring matter of leaves and flowers. You most probably have heard (at all events, may with little trouble hear) of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light. My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying. And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundredth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it cast its measured bars, for ever recognizable now to human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground. 166. But the seeing these flower colors, and the iris of blood together with them, just while I was trying to gather into brief space the right laws of war, brought vividly back to me my dreaming fancy of long ago, that even the trees of the earth were "capable of a kind of sorrow, as they opened their innocent leaves in vain for men; and along the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shades only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery, and on their meadows, day by day, the lilies, which were white at the dawn, were washed with crimson at sunset." And so also now this chance word of the daily journal, about the Sirens, brought to my mind the divine passage in the Cratylus of Plato, about the place of the dead. "And none of those who dwell there desire to depart thence,--no, not even the Sirens; but even they, the seducers, are there themselves beguiled, and they who lulled all men, themselves laid to rest--they, and all others--such sweet songs doth death know how to sing to them." So also the Hebrew. "And desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long home." For you know I told you the Sirens were not pleasures, but desires; being always represented in old Greek art as having human faces, with birds' wings and feet; and sometimes with eyes upon their wings; and there are not two more important passages in all literature, respecting the laws of labor and of life, than those two great descriptions of the Sirens in Homer and Plato,--the Sirens of death, and Sirens of eternal life, representing severally the earthly and heavenly desires of men; the heavenly desires singing to the motion of circles of the spheres, and the earthly on the rocks of fatalest shipwreck. A fact which may indeed be regarded "sentimentally," but it is also a profoundly important politico-economical one. And now for Shakespeare's song. 167. You will find, if you look back to the analysis of it, given in 'Munera Pulveris,' § 134, that the whole play of 'The Tempest' is an allegorical representation of the powers of true, and therefore spiritual, Liberty, as opposed to true, and therefore carnal and brutal Slavery. There is not a sentence nor a rhyme, sung or uttered by Ariel or Caliban, throughout the play, which has not this under-meaning. 168. Now the fulfilment of all human liberty is in the peaceful inheritance of the earth, with its "herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit" after his kind; the pasture, or arable, land, and the blossoming, or wooded and fruited, land uniting the final elements of life and peace, for body and soul. Therefore, we have the two great Hebrew forms of benediction, "His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk," and again, "Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good." And as the work of war and sin has always been the devastation of this blossoming earth, whether by spoil or idleness, so the work of peace and virtue is also that of the first day of Paradise, to "Dress it and to keep it." And that will always be the song of perfectly accomplished Liberty, in her industry, and rest, and shelter from troubled thoughts in the calm of the fields, and gaining, by migration, the long summer's day from the shortening twilight:-- "Where the bee sucks, there lurk I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." And the security of this treasure to all the poor, and not the ravage of it down the valleys of the Shenandoah, is indeed the true warrior's work. But, that they may be able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers must themselves be first in virtue; and that they may be able to compel labor sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and their spears, like Jonathan's at Bethaven, enlighteners of the eyes. LETTER XXV. OF INEVITABLE DISTINCTION OF RANK, AND NECESSARY SUBMISSION TO AUTHORITY. THE MEANING OF PURE-HEARTEDNESS. CONCLUSION. 169. I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,) this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.) There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education, and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps, on the score of his having received a classical education, which the poor man could not get." Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself alive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution--if unwillingly convinced of the fact,--to seal the Better living thing down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the speech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it is perhaps as well. [A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' § 136. 170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters,--that education _was desired by the lower orders because they thought it would make them upper orders_, and be a leveler and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatalest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing, even to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal. 171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undivinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, "hated of David's soul." But there are other divinely-appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. And these, education does _not_ do away with; but measures, manifests, and employs. In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference between the noble and mean stones. But the jeweler's trenchant education of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class the two together no more. The fair veins and colors are all clear now, and so stern is nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is best, but the best will take most polish. You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what there is of it. 172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfulest to vulgar pride, is this--that all its gains are at compound interest; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page ahead,--two pages, ten pages,--and evermore, though each toils equally, the interval enlarges--at birth nothing, at death, infinite. 173. And by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notion about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold of, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital of original sin. I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have begun the next following section of our subject--the point usually unnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son. 174. First, have you ever observed that all Christ's main teachings, by direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emotion, regard the use and misuse of _money_? We might have thought, if we had been asked what a divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he would have left inferior persons to give directions about money; and himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He does not speak parables about them for all men's memory, nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He had formed her. Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and sellers in His house. One should have thought there were people in that house twenty times worse than they;--Caiaphas and his like--false priests, false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people--who needed putting to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge is only against the _traffickers and thieves_. The two most intense of all the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and terror (this of the Prodigal, and of Dives), relate, both of them, to management of riches. The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, of whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him," is briefly about his property. "Sell that thou hast." And the arbitrament of the day of the Last Judgment is made to rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man, nor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only, "I was an hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and ye came unto me." 175. Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the parable of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually _do_ notice in it), is--that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking for his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and wastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are not asked to notice in what kind of riot; he spends it with harlots--but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses him of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, it is not the sensual life which he accuses himself of--or which the manner of his punishment accuses him of. But the _wasteful_ life. It is not said that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased in body, by his vice; but that at last he would fain have filled his belly with husks, and could not. It is not said that he was struck with remorse for the consequences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered there was bread enough and to spare, even for the servants, at home. Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of _real_ passion, are often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or undeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance being understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which he could not pay. Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of the society of this present day are the carelessness with which it regards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which it suffers the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the parallel (and, observe, _mathematically commensurate_ looseness in management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the "mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil. 176. Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes to his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of no unworthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the women who tempted him--nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on husks--nothing of the false friends of whom "no man gave unto him"--above all, nothing of the "corruption of human nature," or the corruption of things in general. He says that _he himself_ is unworthy, as distinguished from honorable persons, and that _he himself_ has sinned, as distinguished from righteous persons. And _that_ is the hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful lessons. All right and fruitful humility, and purging of heart, and seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to decline--or return--the compliment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's sight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the phrase, I have sinned "_against_ heaven," against the great law of that, and _before_ thee, visibly degraded before my human sire and guide, unworthy any more of being esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the place I deserve among his servants. 177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth on edge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering of this "beautiful" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he is, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we want to understand the parable of the sower, we must first think of it as of literal husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of the prodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. And the story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection and in the recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal. He is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his authority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger. And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with you, and all other working men. 178. You are on the eve of a great political crisis; and every rascal with a tongue in his head will try to make his own stock out of you. Now this is the test you must try them with. Those that say to you, "Stand up for your rights--get your division of living--be sure that you are as well off as others, and have what they have!--don't let any man dictate to you--have not you all a right to your opinion?--are you not all as good as everybody else?--let us have no governors, or fathers--let us all be free and alike." Those, I say, who speak thus to you, take Nelson's rough order for--and hate them as you do the Devil, for they _are_ his ambassadors. But those, the few, who have the courage to say to you, "My friends, you and I, and all of us, have somehow got very wrong; we've been hardly treated, certainly; but here we are in a piggery, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for ourselves, anything but respectable: we _must_ get out of this; there are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and there are wiser people than we are in the world, and kindly ones, if we can find our way to them; and an infinitely wise and kind Father, above all of them and us, if we can but find our way to _Him_, and ask Him to take us for servants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may never leave Him more." The people who will say that to you, and (for by _no_ saying, but by their fruits, only, you shall finally know them) who are themselves orderly and kindly, and do their own business well,--take _those_ for your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock alike, tie yourselves well together with them, and with much scrutiny, and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much back as forward, at first), you will verily get off the glacier, and into meadow land, in God's time. 179. I meant to have written much to you respecting the meaning of that word "hired servants," and to have gone on to the duties of soldiers, for you know "Soldier" means a person who is paid to fight with regular pay--literally with "soldi" or "sous"--the "penny a day" of the vineyard laborers; but I can't now: only just this much, that our whole system of work must be based on the nobleness of soldiership--so that we shall all be soldiers of either plowshare or sword; and literally all our actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, when not in actual war; their honor consisting in being set to service of more pain and danger than others; to life-boat service; to redeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea--or mountain ruin; to subduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of colonies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races. And much of our harder home work must be done in a kind of soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from place to place and town to town; doing, with strong and sudden hand, what is needed for help, and setting all things in more prosperous courses for the future. Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place after we know what offices the higher arts of gentleness have among the lower ones of force, and how their prevalence may gradually change spear to pruning-hook, over the face of all the earth. 180. And now--but one word more--either for you, or any other readers who may be startled at what I have been saying, as to the peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with wealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the attributes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for the direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. No one shall enter its stronghold,--no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart;" clean hands that have done no cruel deed,--pure heart, that knows no base desire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that can be given to words, be assured, not respecting the literal temple of stone and gold, but of the living temple of your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two verses have been, for it also, fulfilled:-- "And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the temple." APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. Page 21.--_Expenditure on Science and Art._ The following is the passage referred to. The fact it relates is so curious, and so illustrative of our national interest in science, that I do not apologize for the repetition:-- "Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred: but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor Owen[A] had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British public in the person of its representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other three!--which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the while; only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military apparatus) is at least fifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds is to fifty million pounds, roughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of science; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of sevenpence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, 'Well, I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence yourself till next year.'" [A] I originally stated this fact without Professor Owen's permission; which, of course, he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it; but I considered it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that I did what seemed to me right, though rude. APPENDIX II. Page 33.--_Legislation of Frederick the Great._ The following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to:-- "Well, I am now busy with Frederick the Great; I am not now astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to produce such a clear terse set of utterances; and yet I do not feel the work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after battles, lies after lies, called Diplomacy; it's fearful to read all this, and one wonders how he that set himself to this--He, of all men--could have the rare patience to produce such a labored, heart-rending piece of work. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste of our moneys by our forefathers, to see our National Debt (the curse to our labor now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair chance of competition in our day) thus created, and for what? Even Carlyle cannot tell; then how are we to tell? Now, who will deliver us? that is the question; who will help us in these days of _idle or no work_, while our foreign neighbors have plenty and are actually selling their produce to our men of capital cheaper than we can make it? House-rent getting dearer, taxes getting dearer, rates, clothing, food, etc. Sad times, my master, do seem to have fallen upon us. And the cause of nearly all this lies embedded in that Frederick; and yet, so far as I know of it, no critic has yet given an exposition of such laying there. For our behoof, is there no one that will take this, that there lies so woven in with much other stuff so sad to read, to any man that does not believe man was made to fight alone, to be a butcher of his fellow-man? Who will do this work, or piece of work, so that all who care may know how it is that our debt grew so large, and a great deal more that we ought to know?--that clearly is one great reason why the book was written and was printed. Well, I hope some day all this will be clear to our people, and some man or men will arise and sweep us clear of these hindrances, these sad drawbacks to the vitality of our work in this world." "57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 7, 1867. "DEAR SIR,-- "I beg to acknowledge the receipt of two letters as additions to your books, which I have read with deep interest, and shall take care of them, and read them over again, so that I may thoroughly comprehend them, and be able to think of them for future use. I myself am not fully satisfied with our co-operation, and never have been; it is too much tinged with the very elements that they complain of in our present systems of trade--selfishness. I have for years been trying to direct the attention of the editor of the _Co-operator_ to such evils that I see in it. Now further, I may state that I find you and Carlyle seem to agree quite on the idea of the _Masterhood_ qualification. There again I find you both feel and write as all working men consider just. I can assure you there is not an honest, noble working man that would not by far serve under such _master_-hood, than be the employé or workman of a co-operative store. Working men do not as a rule make good masters; neither do they treat each other with that courtesy as a noble master treats his working man. George Fox shadows forth some such treatment that Friends ought to make law and guidance for their working men and slaves, such as you speak of in your letters. I will look the passage up, as it is quite to the point, so far as I now remember it. In Vol. VI. of _Frederick the Great_, I find a great deal there that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of English working men would hail it with such a shout of joy and gladness as would astonish the Continental world. These changes suggested by Carlyle and placed before the thinkers of England, are the noblest, the truest utterances on real kinghood, that I have ever read; the more I think over them, the more I feel the truth, the justness, and also the fitness of them, to our nation's present dire necessities; yet this is the man, and these are the thoughts of his, that our critics seem never to see, or if seen, don't think worth printing or in any way wisely directing the attention of the public thereto, alas! All this and much more fills me with such sadness that I am driven almost to despair. I see from the newspapers, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and other places are sternly endeavoring to carry out the short time movement until such times as trade revives, and I find the masters and men seem to adopt it with a good grace and friendly spirit. I also beg to inform you I see a Mr. Morley, a large manufacturer at Nottingham, has been giving pensions to all his old workmen. I hope such a noble example will be followed by other wealthy masters. It would do more to make a master loved, honored, and cared for, than thousands of pounds expended in other ways. The Government Savings Banks is one of the wisest acts of late years done by our Government. I, myself, often wish the Government held all our banks instead of private men; that would put an end to false speculations, such as we too often in the provinces suffer so severely by, so I hail with pleasure and delight the shadowing forth by you of these noble plans for the future: I feel glad and uplifted to think of the good that such teaching will do for us all. "Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON." "57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 24, 1867. "DEAR SIR,-- "I now give you the references to _Frederick the Great_. Vol. VI.: Land Question, 365 page, where he increases the number of small farmers to 4,000 (202, 204). English soldiers and T. C.'s remarks on our system of purchase, etc. His law, (620, 623, 624). State of Poland and how he repaired it, (487, 488, 489, 490). I especially value the way he introduced all kinds of industries therein, and so soon changed the chaos into order. Again, the school-masters also are given (not yet in England, says T. C.). Again the use he made of 15,000_l._ surplus in Brandenburg; how it was applied to better his staff of masters. To me, the Vol. VI. is one of the wisest pieces of modern thought in our language. I only wish I had either your power, C. Kingsley, Maurice, or some such able pen-generalship, to illustrate and show forth all the wise teaching on law, government, and social life I see in it, and shining like a star through all its pages.[A] I feel also the truth of all you have written, and will do all I can to make such men or women that care for such thoughts, see it, or read it. I am copying the letters as fast and as well as I can, and will use my utmost endeavor to have them done that justice to they merit. "Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON." [A] I have endeavored to arrange some of the passages to which Mr. Dixon here refers, in a form enabling the reader to see their bearing on each other more distinctly, as a sequel to the essay on War in the 'Crown of Wild Olive.' APPENDIX III. Page 33.--_Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth._ The letter of the _Times'_ correspondent referred to contained an account of one of the most singular cases of depravity ever brought before a criminal court; but it is unnecessary to bring any of its details under the reader's attention, for nearly every other number of our journals has of late contained some instances of atrocities before unthought of, and, it might have seemed, impossible to humanity. The connection of these with the modern love of excitement in the sensational novel and drama may not be generally understood, but it is direct and constant; all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in actual desire of horror and delight in death. I entered into some fuller particulars on this subject in a lecture given in the spring at the Royal Institution. [Any part of the Lecture referred to likely to be of permanent interest will be printed, somewhere, in this series.] APPENDIX IV. Page 76.--_Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime._ The following portions of Mr. Dixon's letter referred to, will be found interesting:-- "DEAR SIR,-- "Your last letter, I think, will arouse the attention of thinkers more than any of the series, it being on topics they in general feel more interested in than the others, especially as in these you do not assail their pockets so much as in the former ones. Since you seem interested with the notes or rough sketches on gin, G * * * of Dublin was the man I alluded to as making his money by drink, and then giving the results of such traffic to repair the Cathedral of Dublin. It was thousands of pounds. I call such charity robbing Peter to pay Paul! Immense fortunes are made in the _Liquor Traffic_, and I will tell you why; it is all paid for in cash, at least such as the poor people buy; they get credit for clothes, butchers' meat, groceries, etc., while they give the gin-palace keeper _cash_; they never begrudge the price of a glass of gin or beer, they never haggle over _its_ price, never once think of doing that; but in the purchase of almost every other article they haggle and begrudge its price. To give you an idea of its profits--there are houses here whose average weekly takings in cash at their bars is 50_l._, 60_l._, 70_l._, 80_l._, 90l_._, to 150_l._, per week. Nearly all the men of intelligence in it, say it is the curse of the working classes. Men whose earnings are, say 20_s._ to 30_s._ per week, spend on the average 3_s._ to 6_s._ per week (some even 10_s._). It's my mode of living to supply these houses with corks that makes me see so much of the drunkenness; and that is the cause why I never really cared for _my trade_, seeing the misery that was entailed on my fellow men and women by the use of this stuff. Again, a house with a license to sell spirits, wine, and ale, to be consumed on the premises, is worth two to three times more money than any other class of property. One house here worth nominally 140_l._ sold the other day for 520_l._; another one worth 200_l._ sold for 800_l._ I know premises with a license that were sold for 1,300_l._, and then sold again two years after for 1,800_l._; another place was rented for 50_l._, now rents at 100_l._--this last is a house used by working men and laborers chiefly! No, I honor men like _Sir W. Trevelyan_, that are teetotalers, or total abstainers, as an example to poor men, and, to prevent his work-people being tempted, will not allow any public-house on his estate. If our land had a few such men it would help the cause. We possess one such a man here, a banker. I feel sorry to say the progress of temperance is not so great as I would like to see it. The only religious body that approaches to your ideas of political economy is Quakerism as taught by George Fox. Carlyle seems deeply tinged with their teachings. _Silence_ to them is as valuable to him. Again, why should people howl and shriek over the law that the Alliance is now trying to carry out in our land called the Permissive Bill? If we had just laws we then would not be so miserable or so much annoyed now and then with cries of Reform and cries of Distress. I send you two pamphlets;--one gives the working man's reasons why he don't go to church; in it you will see a few opinions expressed very much akin to those you have written to me. The other gives an account how it is the poor Indians have died of _Famine_, simply because they have destroyed the very system of Political Economy, or one having some approach to it, that you are now endeavoring to direct the attention of thinkers to in our country. The _Sesame and Lilies_ I have read as you requested. I feel now fully the aim and object you have in view in the Letters, but I cannot help directing your attention to that portion where you mention or rather exclaim against the Florentines pulling down their _Ancient Walls_ to build a _Boulevard_. That passage is one that would gladden the hearts of all true _Italians_, especially men that love _Italy and Dante_!" APPENDIX V. Page 78.--_Abuse of Food._ Paragraphs cut from 'Manchester Examiner' of March 16, 1867:-- "A PARISIAN CHARACTER.--A celebrated character has disappeared from the Palais Royal. René Lartique was a Swiss, and a man of about sixty. He actually spent the last fifteen years in the Palais Royal--that is to say, he spent the third of his life at dinner. Every morning at ten o'clock he was to be seen going into a restaurant (usually Tissat's), and in a few moments was installed in a corner, which he only quitted about three o'clock in the afternoon, after having drunk at least six or seven bottles of different kinds of wine. He then walked up and down the garden till the clock struck five, when he made his appearance again at the same restaurant, and always at the same place. His second meal, at which he drank quite as much as at the first, invariably lasted till half-past nine. Therefore, he devoted nine hours a day to eating and drinking. His dress was most wretched--his shoes broken, his trousers torn, his paletôt without any lining and patched, his waistcoat without buttons, his hat a rusty red from old age, and the whole surmounted by a dirty white beard. One day he went up to the _comptoir_, and asked the presiding divinity there to allow him to run in debt for one day's dinner. He perceived some hesitation in complying with the request, and immediately called one of the waiters, and desired him to follow him. He went into the office, unbuttoned a certain indispensable garment, and, taking off a broad leather belt, somewhat startled the waiter by displaying two hundred gold pieces, each worth one hundred francs. Taking up one of them, he tossed it to the waiter, and desired him to pay whatever he owed. He never again appeared at that restaurant, and died a few days ago of indigestion." "REVENGE IN A BALL-ROOM.--A distressing event lately took place at Castellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near Mentone. All the young people of the place being assembled in a dancing-room, one of the young men was seen to fall suddenly to the ground, whilst a young woman, his partner, brandished a poniard, and was preparing to inflict a second blow on him, having already desperately wounded him in the stomach. The author of the crime was at once arrested. She declared her name to be Marie P----, twenty-one years of age, and added that she had acted from a motive of revenge, the young man having led her astray formerly with a promise of marriage, which he had never fulfilled. In the morning of that day she had summoned him to keep his word, and, upon his refusal, had determined on making the dancing-room the scene of her revenge. She was at first locked up in the prison of Mentone, and afterwards sent on to Nice. The young man continues in an alarming state." APPENDIX VI. Page 94.--_Regulations of Trade._ I print portions of two letters of Mr. Dixon's in this place; one referring to our former discussion respecting the sale of votes:-- "57, Nile Street, Sunderland, March 21, 1867. "I only wish I could write in some tolerable good style, so that I could idealize, or rather realize to folks, the life and love, and marriage of a working man and his wife. It is in my opinion a working man that really does know what a true wife is, for his every want, his every comfort in life depends on her; and his children's home, their daily lives and future lives, are shaped by her. Napoleon wisely said, 'France needs good mothers more than brave men. Good mothers are the makers or shapers of good and brave men.' I cannot say that these are the words, but it is the import of his speech on the topic. We have a saying amongst us: 'The man may spend and money lend, if his wife be _ought_,'--_i. e._ good wife;--'but he may work and try to save, but will have _nought_, if his wife be nought,'--_i. e._ bad or thriftless wife. "Now, since you are intending to treat of the working man's parliament and its duties, I will just throw out a few suggestions of what I consider should be the questions or measures that demand an early inquiry into and debate on. That guilds be established in every town, where masters and men may meet, so as to avoid the temptations of the public-house and _drink_. And then, let it be made law that every lad should serve an apprenticeship of not less than seven years to a trade or art, before he is allowed to be a member of such guild; also, that all wages be based on a rate of so much _per hour_, and not day, as at present; and let every man prove his workmanship before such a guild, and then allow to him such payment per hour as his craft merits. Let there be three grades, and then let there be trials of skill in workmanship every year; and then, if the workman of the third grade prove that he has made progress in his craft, reward him accordingly. Then, before a lad is put to any trade, why not see what he is naturally fitted for? Combe's book, entitled _The Constitution of Man_, throws a good deal of truth on to these matters. Now, here are two branches of the science of life that, so far, have never once been given trial of in this way. We certainly use them after a _crime_ has been committed, but not till then. "Next to that, cash, payment for all and everything needed in life. _Credit is a curse_ to him that gives it, and that takes it. He that lives by credit lives in general carelessly. If there was no credit, people then would have to live on what they earned! Then, after that, the Statute of Limitations of Fortune you propose. By the hour system, not a single man _need be idle_; it would give employment to all, and even two hours per day would realize more to a man than _breaking stones_. Thus you would make every one self-dependent--also no fear of being out of work altogether. Then let there be a Government fund for all the savings of the working man. I am afraid you will think this a wild, discursive sort of a letter. "Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON." "I have read your references to the _Times_ on 'Bribery.' Well, that has long been my own opinion; they simply have a vote to sell, and sell it the same way as they sell potatoes, or a coat, or any other salable article. Voters generally say, 'What does this gentleman want in Parliament? Why, to help himself and his family or friends; he does not spend all the money he spends over his election for pure good of his country! No: it's to benefit his pocket, to be sure. Why should I not make a penny with my vote, as well as he does with his in Parliament?' I think that if the system of canvassing or election agents were done away with, and all personal canvassing for votes entirely abolished, it would help to put down bribery. Let each gentleman send to the electors his political opinions in a circular, and then let papers be sent, or cards, to each elector, and then let them go and record their votes in the same way they do for a councillor in the Corporation. It would save a great deal of expense, and prevent those scenes of drunkenness so common in our towns during elections. _Bewick's opinions_ of these matters are quite to the purpose, I think (_see page 201 of Memoir_). Again, respecting the Paris matter referred to in your last letter, I have read it. Does it not manifest plainly enough that Europeans are also in a measure possessed with that same _demoniacal spirit like the Japanese_?" APPENDIX VII. The following letter did not form part of the series written to Mr. Dixon; but is perhaps worth reprinting. I have not the date of the number of the _Gazette_ in which it appeared, but it was during the tailors' strike in London. "TO THE EDITOR OF THE _Pall Mall Gazette_. "Sir,-- "In your yesterday's article on strikes you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy--to wit, that 'the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined'--and that 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the 'value' of any piece of labor, that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without losing actually any of his flesh or his nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years ago--and under pardon of your politico-economical contributors--it is not a 'sentimental,' but a chemical fact. "Let any half-dozen of recognized London physicians state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without shortening his life, work at such business daily, if so sustained. "And let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an order for that quantity of food and lodging, or such wages as the market may offer for that number of hours' work. "Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further concession--but, in the outset, let but _this_ law of wages be established, and if then we have any more strikes you may denounce them without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility. "I am, Sir, "Your obedient servant, "JOHN RUSKIN." 
32702	----	http://www.archive.org/details/romanceofreaper00cass or Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA), Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University. See http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=chla;idno=2936480 THE ROMANCE OF THE REAPER [Illustration: A CHICAGO MOWER IN SIBERIA] THE ROMANCE OF THE REAPER by HERBERT N. CASSON Author of "The Romance of Steel." Illustrated from Photographs "And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together." --_Dean Swift._ New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1908 Copyright, 1907, 1908, by Everybody's Magazine Copyright, 1908, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, May, 1908 All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian TO THE FARMERS OF THE UNITED STATES WHOSE ENERGY AND PROGRESSIVENESS HAVE MADE THIS WONDER-STORY COME TRUE PREFACE This is the story of our most useful business. It is a medley of mechanics, millionaires, kings, inventors and farmers; and it is intended for the average man and woman, boy and girl. Although I have taken great pains to make this book accurate, I have written it in the fashion of romance, because it tells a story that every American ought to know. The fact is that the United States owes much more to the Reaper than it owes to the factory or the railroad or the Wall Street Stock Exchange. Without the magical grain machinery that gives us cheap bread, the whole new structure of our civilisation, with all its dazzling luxuries and refinements, would be withered by the blight of Famine. This may sound strange and sensational to those who have been bred in the cities, but it is true. The reaper has done more to chase the wolf from the door--to abolish poverty and drudgery and hand-labour, than any other invention of our day. It has done good without any backwash of evil. It has not developed any new species of social parasite, as so many modern improvements have done. It has not added one dollar to the unclean hoard of a stock-gambler, nor turned loose upon the public a single idle millionaire. The reaper is our best guarantee of prosperity. In spite of our periodical panics, which prove, by the way, that the men who provide us with banks are not as efficient as the men who provide us with bread, we are certain to rebound into prosperity and social progress as long as we continue to make three hundred harvesting machines every working day--one every two minutes. The rising flood of wheat is bound to submerge the schemers and the pessimists alike. And it is the reaper, too, which has done most to make possible a nobler human race, by lessening the power of that ancient motive--the Search for Food. Every harvester that clicks its way through the yellow grain means more than bread. It means more comfort, more travel, more art and music, more books and education. In this large fact lies the real Romance of the Reaper. In gathering the material for this book I have been greatly assisted by Messrs. E. J. Baker, of the _Farm Implement News_; B. B. Clarke, of the _American Thresherman_; Ralph Emerson, of Rockford, Ill; C. W. Marsh, of De Kalb, Ill.; Edwin D. Metcalf and T. M. Osborne, of Auburn, N. Y., Henry Wallace, of _Wallace's Farmer_, William N. Whiteley, of Springfield, Ohio; and the officials of the International Harvester Company, who made it possible for me to have free access to all of its works and to familiarise myself with its manner of doing business in this country and abroad. Also, I take pleasure in reproducing the following editorial note from _Everybody's Magazine_, in which four chapters of this book were first printed: "President Roosevelt in his message of December 3rd said: 'Modern industrial conditions are such that combination is not only necessary, but inevitable.... Corporation and labour union alike have come to stay. Each, if properly managed, is a source of good, and not evil.' If capital combinations can be good, there must be some that are good. Would it not be a proper service to the American people to tell them of a trust that, while it had reaped the economical advantages of combination, had yet played fair with the public and with its competitors? Hence this story of the great Harvester combine. Before we began to publish Mr. Casson's articles, we followed up his investigations with a thorough inquiry of our own, and we are bound to say that the business methods of this institution seem to conform to the highest standards of fair play and square dealing. The International Harvester combine is not a tariff trust. Its members surrendered dominance in their own business only when the trend of 'modern industrial conditions' and overstrenuous competition made combination 'not only necessary, but inevitable.' The inside history of the 'Morganising' of this group of fighters, as narrated here, is as humorous as it is fascinating." CONTENTS PAGE Preface vii CHAPTER I. The Story of McCormick 3 II. The Story of Deering 48 III. The International Harvester Company 90 IV. The American Harvester Abroad 126 V. The Harvester and the American Farmer 161 ILLUSTRATIONS A Chicago mower in Siberia _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Cyrus Hall McCormick 12 The Virginian birthplace of the McCormick reaper 22 A model of the first practical reaper 27 William Deering 51 William N. Whiteley 53 C. W. Marsh 53 John F. Appleby 53 E. H. Gammon 53 Asa S. Bushnell 60 Benjamin H. Warder 60 Hon. Thomas Mott Osborne 60 David M. Osborne 60 A self-binder in Scotland, with the Wallace Monument in the background 62 Cyrus Hall McCormick, Jr. 85 Charles Deering 85 Harold McCormick 92 J. J. Glessner 92 W. H. Jones 92 James Deering 92 American self-binders on the estate of President Fallières, in France 135 King Alphonso of Spain driving an American seeder 138 Bismarck having his first view of an American self-binder 147 An American harvester at work in Argentina 151 Gathering in a Finland harvest 154 In the ancient fields of Algiers 158 The Romance of the Reaper The Romance of the Reaper CHAPTER I THE STORY OF MCCORMICK This Romance of the Reaper is a true fairy tale of American life--the story of the magicians who have taught the civilised world to gather in its harvests by machinery. On the old European plan--snip--snip--snipping with a tiny hand-sickle, every bushel of wheat required three hours of a man's lifetime. To-day, on the new American plan--riding on the painted chariot of a self-binding harvester, the price of wheat has been cut down to _ten minutes a bushel_. "When I first went into the harvest field," so an Illinois farmer told me, "it took ten men to cut and bind my grain. Now our hired girl gets on the seat of a self-binder and does the whole business." This magical machinery of the wheat-field solves the mystery of prosperity. It explains the New Farmer and the miracles of scientific agriculture. It accounts for the growth of great cities with their steel mills and factories. And it makes clear how we in the United States have become the best fed nation in the world. Hard as it may be for this twentieth century generation to believe, it is true that until recently the main object of all nations was to get bread. Life was a Search for Food--a desperate postponement of famine. Cut the Kings and their retinues out of history and it is no exaggeration to say that the human race was hungry for ten thousand years. Even of the Black Bread--burnt and dirty and coarse, there was not enough; and the few who were well fed took the food from the mouths of slaves. Even the nations that grew Galileo and Laplace and Newton were haunted by the ghosts of Hunger. Merrie England was famine-swept in 1315, 1321, 1369, 1438, 1482, 1527, 1630, 1661, and 1709. To have enough to eat, was to the masses of all nations a dream--a Millennium of Prosperity. This long Age of Hunger outlived the great nations of antiquity. Why? Because they went at the problem of progress in the wrong way. If Marcus Aurelius had invented the reaper, or if the Gracchi had been inventors instead of politicians, the story of Rome would have had a happier ending. But Rome said: The first thing is empire. Egypt said: The first thing is fame. Greece said: The first thing is genius. Not one of them said: The first thing is _Bread_. In the Egyptian quarter of the British Museum, standing humbly in a glass case between two mummied Pharaohs, is a little group of farm utensils. A fractured wooden plough, a rusted sickle, two sticks tied together with a leathern thong, and several tassels that had hung on the horns of the oxen. A rummaging professor found these in the tomb of Seti I., who had his will on the banks of the Nile three thousand years ago. Egypt had a most elaborate government at that time. She had an army and navy, an art and literature. Yet her bread-tools were no better than those of the barbarians whom she despised. It is one of the most baffling mysteries of history, that agriculture--the first industry to be learned, was the last one to be developed. For thousands of years the wise men of the world absolutely ignored the problems of the farm. A farmer remained either a serf or a tenant. He was a stolid drudge--"brother to the ox." Even the masterful old Pilgrim Fathers had no ploughs at all--nothing but hoes and sharp sticks, for the first twelve years of their pioneering. Fifty-five years of American Independence went by before the first reaper clicked its way clumsily into fame, on a backwoods farm in Virginia. At that time, 1831, the American people were free, but they held in their hands the land-tools of slaves. They had to labour and sweat in the fields, with the crude implements that had been produced by ages of slavery. For two generations they tried to build up a prosperous Republic with sickles, flails, and wooden ploughs, and they failed. There are men and women now alive who can remember the hunger year of 1837, when there were wheat bounties in Maine and bread riots in New York City. Flour mills were closed for lack of wheat. Starving men fell in the streets of Boston and Philadelphia. Mobs of labourers, maddened by the fear of famine, broke into warehouses and carried away sacks of food as though they were human wolves. Even in the Middle West--the prairie paradise of farmers--many a family fought against Death with the serf's weapon of Black Bread. Enterprise was not then an American virtue. The few men who dared to suggest improvements were persecuted as enemies of society. The first iron ploughs were said to poison the soil. The first railroad was torn up. The first telegraph wires were cut. The first sewing-machine was smashed. And the first man who sold coal in Philadelphia was chased from the State as a swindler. Even the railway was a dangerous toy. The telegraph was still a dream in the brain of Morse. John Deere had not invented his steel plough, nor Howe his sewing-machine, nor Hoe his printing-press. There were no stoves nor matches nor oil-lamps. Petroleum was peddled as a medicine at a dollar a bottle. Iron was $75 a ton. Money was about as reliable as mining stocks are to-day; and all the savings in all the banks would not now buy the chickens in Iowa. Our total exports were not more than we paid last year for diamonds and champagne. Chicago was a twelve-family village. There was no West nor Middle West. Not one grain of wheat had been grown in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Oklahoma or Texas. The whole structure of civilisation, as we know it, was unbuilt; and most of its architects and builders were unborn or in the cradle. Spencer was eleven years of age; Virchow was ten; Pasteur nine; Huxley six; Berthelot four; and as for Haeckel, Carnegie, Morgan, Edison and their generation, they had not yet appeared in the land of the living. Then came the Reaper. This unappreciated machine, about which so little has been written, changed the face of the world. It moved the civilised nations up out of the bread line. It made prosperity possible; and elevated the whole struggle for existence to a higher plane. Life is still a race--always will be; but not for bread. The lowest prizes now are gold watches and steam yachts and automobiles. Even the hobo at the back door scorns bread, unless we apologise for it with meat and jam. It is so plentiful--this clean, white bread, that it is scarcely an article of commerce any longer. In our hotels it is thrown in free of charge, as though it were a pinch of salt or a glass of water. There is no "penn'orth of bread" in the bill, as there was in Falstaff's day. Seven bushels of wheat apiece! That is what we eighty-five million people ate in 1906--twelve thousand million loaves of bread. Such a year of feasting was new in the history of the world. And yet we sent a thousand million dollars' worth of food to other nations. Suppose that bread were money, just for one day! What a lesson it would be on the social value of the reaper! Thirty loaves would be the day's pay of a labourer--as much as he could carry on his back. Two loaves for a cigar--three for a shave--five for a bunch of violets--forty for a theatre ticket--a hundred for a bottle of champagne! Is there anything cheaper than bread? The reaper was America's answer to Malthus--who scared England into abolishing the Corn Laws by his proclamation that "the ultimate check to population is the lack of food." What would that well-meaning pessimist think were he now alive, if he were told that the human race is growing wheat at the rate of ten bushels a year per family? Or that Minnesota and the Dakotas (names that the world of his day had never heard) produce enough wheat to feed all the people of England? The reaper was America's answer to the world's demand for democracy. Instead of bread riots and red flags and theories of an earthly paradise in which nobody worked but the Government, the United States invented a machine that gave democracy a chance. Instead of a guillotine to cut off the heads of the privileged people who ate too much, it produced a reaper that gave everybody enough. This was not a complete answer, nor will there ever be one, to the riddle of liberty, equality and fraternity. But it was so much better than theories and riots that it helped to persuade twenty-five million immigrants to cross the ocean and become shareholders in the American Republic. If it were possible to trace back a strand in the twisted thread of cause and effect, we would find that many a factory and steel-mill owes its origin to the flood of wheat-money that came to us from Europe in 1880 and 1881--every dollar of it made by the humble harvester. Without this obedient slave of wood and steel, all our railroads and skyscrapers and automobiles could not save us from famine. If we had to reap our grain in the same way as the Romans did, it would take half the men in the United States to feed us on bread alone, to say nothing of the rest of the menu. Like most great things, the reaper was born among humble people and in a humble way. It was crude at first and dogged by failure. No one man made it. It was the product of a hundred brains. The exact truth about its origin is not known and never will be. What few facts there were have been torn and twisted by the bitter feuds of the Patent Office. Every letter and document that exists is controversial. So I cannot say that the story, as I give it, is entirely true, but only that it is as near as I can get to the truth after six months of investigation. There is evidence to show that Cyrus Hall McCormick completed a practical reaper in 1831, although the first reaper patent was taken out in 1833 by an inventive seaman named Obed Hussey, of Baltimore. The young McCormick did not secure his patent until 1834; but he had given a public exhibition in Virginia three years before. There were nearly a hundred people who saw this exhibition. Not one of them is now alive; and the story as told by their children has many little touches of imagination. But in the main, it is very likely to be true. It was in the fall of 1831 when Cyrus McCormick hitched four horses to his unwieldy machine and clattered out of the barnyard into a field of wheat nearby. Horses shied and pranced at the absurd object, which was unlike anything else on the face of the earth. Dogs barked. Small boys yelled. Farmers, whose backs were bent and whose fingers were scarred from the harvest labour, gazed with contemptuous curiosity at the queer contraption which was expected to cut grain without hands. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK] A little group of Negro slaves had spasms of uncomprehending delight in one corner of the field, not one of them guessing that "Massa" McCormick's comical machine was cutting at the chains that bound their children. And a noisy crowd of white labourers followed the reaper up and down the field with boisterous enmity; for here was an invention which threatened to deprive them of the right to work--the precious right to work sixteen hours a day for three cents an hour. The field was hilly and the reaper worked badly. It slewed and jolted along, cutting the grain very irregularly. Seeing this, the owner of the field--a man who was Ruff by name and rough by nature, rushed up to McCormick and shouted--"Here! This won't do. Stop your horses! Your machine is rattling the heads off my wheat." "It's a humbug," bawled one of the labourers. "Give me the old cradle yet, boys!" exclaimed a round-shouldered farmer. The Negroes turned handsprings with delight; and the whole jeering mob gathered around the discredited machine. Just then a fine-looking man rode up on horseback. The crowd made way as he came near, for they recognised him as the Honourable William Taylor--a conspicuous politician of that day. "Pull down the fence and cross over into my field," he said to young McCormick. "I'll give you a fair chance to try your machine." McCormick quickly accepted the offer, drove into Taylor's field, which was not as hilly, and cut the grain successfully for four or five hours. Although the United States had been established more than fifty years before, this was the first grain that had ever been cut by machinery. The Fathers of the Republic had eaten the bread of hand-labour all their lives, and never dreamed that the human race would ever find a better way. When he arrived home that evening, Cyrus thought that his troubles were over. He had reaped six acres of wheat in less than half a day--as much as six men would have done by the old-fashioned method. He had been praised as well as jeered at. "Your reaper is a success," said his father, "and it makes me feel proud to have a son do what I could not do." Two Big Men had given him their approval--William Taylor and a Professor Bradshaw, of the Female Academy in the town of Lexington, Virginia. The professor, who was a pompous and positive individual, made a solemn investigation of the reaper, and then announced, in slow, loud, and emphatic tones--"That--machine--is--worth--a hundred--thousand--dollars." But if Cyrus McCormick hoped to wake up the following morning and find himself rich and famous, he was roughly disappointed. The local excitement soon died out, and in a few days the men in the village store were discussing Webster's last speech against Nullification and Andrew Jackson's war against the bankers. One old woman expressed the general feeling by saying that young McCormick's reaper was "a right, smart curious sort of thing, but it won't come to much." McCormick was at this time a youth of twenty-two. He had been one of four pink, helpless babies, born in 1809, who became, each in his own world, the greatest leader of his day--Darwin, Gladstone, Lincoln, and McCormick. Like Lincoln, McCormick first learned to breathe in a long cabin--but in Virginia. He was bred from a fighting race. His father had wrenched a living from the rocks of Virginia for his family of nine. His grandfather had fought the English in the Revolution. His great-grandfather had been an Indian fighter in Pennsylvania; and his great-great-grandfather battled with a flint-lock against the soldiers of James II., at the siege of Londonderry. The McCormick family, in 1809, had a good deal of what was then called prosperity. They had enough to eat--a roof that kept out the rain--1,800 acres of land, or near-land--three saw-mills--two flour-mills, and a distillery. They had very little money, because there was little to be had. In the whole United States there was barely as much money as would buy half of the New York Subway. The first American McCormicks had a thousand dollars or more when they resolved to leave Ireland, and they were Scotch enough to invest the whole amount in linen, which they sold at a high profit in Philadelphia. This capital enabled them to acquire a small stock of books, tools, and comforts, which were passed along from father to son. Robert McCormick--the father of Cyrus, was himself a remarkable Virginian. He was quick with his hands in shaping iron and wood. In fact, he was fairly famous in his county as the inventor of a hemp-brake, a clover-sheller, a bellows and threshing machine. His mind was greedy for knowledge; and it was his habit, when the seven children were asleep, to explore into the mysteries of astronomy until his candle had flickered its life out. Twenty or more of his letters, which I have seen, are well written and with a fine use of bookish words. The one persistent ambition of his life was to invent a reaper. It is also true, and a titbit of a fact for those who believe in prenatal influences, that during the year in which Cyrus H. McCormick was born, his father first began the actual construction of a reaping machine. Especially during the harvest months, the topic of conversation in the McCormick home was whether the dream of "reaping grain with horses" could ever come true. "Reaper," was one of the first words that baby Cyrus learned to say; and his favourite play-toy, when he grew older, was the wreck of his father's reaper that wouldn't reap, which lay in rusty disgrace near the barn-door. "Often I have seen Robert McCormick standing over his machine," said one of his neighbours. "He would be studying and thinking, drawing down his under lip, as was his habit when he was puzzling over anything." His friends ridiculed him for wasting so much time on a foolish toy, until he became half ashamed of it himself and quit his experimenting in the daytime. But at night, he and Cyrus hammered away in the little log workshop, as though they were a pair of conspirators. The romantic mystery of these midnight labours made an indelible mark on the brain of the boy Cyrus. He grew up to be serious and self-contained--quite unlike the boys of the neighbourhood. He was not popular and never cared to be. "Cyrus was a natural mechanical genius from a child," said John Cash, who worked on the McCormick farm. "He invented the best hillside plough ever used in this country. He and his father would lock themselves up in the shop and work for hours on a reaping machine. The neighbours thought they were both unbalanced to have the idea of cutting grain with horses." Cyrus was always busy making or mending some piece of machinery. He abhorred the drudgery of the farm; but delighted in any work that had an idea behind it. He surprised his teacher one morning by bringing to school a twenty-inch globe of wood, which turned on its axis as the earth does, and had the seas and continents outlined in ink. "That young fellow is ahead of me," said the amazed teacher. At fifteen Cyrus had invented a new grain cradle. At twenty-one he improved a machine which his father had made to break hemp. And at twenty-two this young country-boy, who had never seen a college, a city, or a railroad, constructed _the first practical American reaper_. It was a clumsy makeshift--as crude as a Red River ox-cart; but it was built on the right lines. It was not at all handsome or well made or satisfactory; but it was a reaper that reaped. But McCormick soon discovered that it was not enough to invent a reaper. What the world needed was a man who was strong and dominating enough to force his reaper upon the unwilling labourers of the harvest fields. Tenacity! Absolute indifference to defeat! The lust for victory that makes a man unconscious of the blows he gives or takes! This was what was needed, and what Cyrus McCormick possessed, to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other man in American history. Tenacity! It was in his blood. Back of him was the hardiest breed that was ever mixed into the American blend--the pick of the Scots who fought their way to the United States by way of Ireland. These Irish Scots, few as they were, led the way across the Alleghanies, founded Pittsburgh, made a trail to Texas, and put five Presidents in the White House. And tenacity was bred, as well as born, into Cyrus McCormick. He went barefooted as a boy, not for lack of shoes, but to make him tough. "I want my boys to know how to endure hardship," said his mother. He sat on a slab bench in the little log school house and learned to read from the Book of Genesis. He sang Psalms with forty verses, on Sundays, and sat as still as a graven image during the three-hour sermons, for his father was a Presbyterian of the old Covenanter brand. So it came to pass that Cyrus McCormick clung to his reaper, as John Knox had to his Bible. "His whole soul was wrapped up in it," said one of his neighbours. He grew as indifferent to the rough jokes of the farmers as Martin Luther was to the sneers of the village priests. The making of reapers became more than a business. It was a creed--a religion--a new eleventh commandment. By the time he was thirty, he had become a nineteenth century Mohammed, ready for a world crusade. His war-cry was--Great is the Reaper, and McCormick is its prophet. Like Mohammed, he had his visions of future glory. On one occasion, while riding on horseback through a wilderness path, the dazzling thought flashed upon his mind--"Perhaps I may make a million dollars from this reaper." This idea remained for years the driving wheel of his brain. "The thought was so enormous," he said afterward, "that it seemed like a dream--like dwelling in the clouds--so remote, so unattainable, so exalted, so visionary." Also, like Mohammed, he had a period of preparatory solitude. Soon after the first exhibition of his reaper, he bought a tract of land and farmed it alone, with two aged Negroes as housekeepers. Here he lived for more than a year with no companion except his reaper. He seemed at this time, too, to have resolved upon a life of celibacy, for I find in one of his letters an allusion to two young ladies of unusual attractiveness. "They are pretty, smart and rich," he writes, "but alas, I have other business to attend to!" [Illustration: THE VIRGINIAN BIRTHPLACE OF THE McCORMICK REAPER.] The two things of which he stood most in need were money and cheaper iron. So, after thinking over the situation in his lonely cabin, he decided to build a furnace and make his own iron. His father and a neighbour joined him in the enterprise. They built the furnace, made the iron, and might have forgotten the reaper, if the financial earthquake of 1839 had not shaken them down into the general wreckage. The neighbour who had been made a partner signed over his property to his mother, and threw the whole burden of the bankruptcy upon the McCormick family, crushing them for a time into an abyss of debt and poverty. Cyrus McCormick gave up everything he owned to the creditors--everything except his reaper, which nobody wanted. So far his vision of wealth was still a dream. Instead of being the possessor of a million, he was eight years older, and penniless. There were four sons and three daughters in the family, and the nine of them slaved for five years to save the homestead from the auctioneer. Once the sheriff rode up with a writ, but was so deeply impressed with their energy and uprightness that he rode away with the dreaded paper still in his pocket. Up to this time Cyrus had not sold one reaper. As Mohammed preached for ten years without converting anyone except his own relatives, so Cyrus McCormick preached the gospel of the reaper for ten years without success. Then, in 1841, he sold two for $100 apiece. The next year seven daring farmers came to the McCormick homestead, each with $100 in his hands. This brilliant success brought the whole family into line behind Cyrus, and the farm was transformed into a reaper factory. Twenty-nine machines, "fearfully and wonderfully made," were sold in 1843, and fifty in 1844. There were troubles, of course. Some buyers failed to pay. A workman who was sent out on horseback to collect $300, ran away with horse, money and all. But none of these things moved Cyrus. At last, after thirteen years of delay, he was selling reapers. Best of all, an order for eight had come from Cincinnati. These were the first reapers that were sold outside of Virginia. They were seen by the more enterprising farmers of Ohio and created a sensation wherever they were used. Cyrus, who was now a powerful, broad-chested man of thirty-six, caught a glimpse of his opportunity and sprang to seize it. He saw that the time had come to leave the backwoods farm--forty miles from a blacksmith--sixty miles from a canal--one hundred miles from a railway. So, with $300 in his belt, he set out on horseback for the West. Here he saw _the prairies_. To a man who had spent his life in a hollow of the Alleghanies, the West was a new world. It was the natural home of the reaper. The farmers of Virginia might continue forever to harvest their small, hilly fields by hand, but here--in this vast land ocean, with few labourers and an infinity of acres, the reaper was as indispensable as the plough. To reap even one of these new States by hand would require the whole working population of the country. Also, in Illinois, McCormick saw what made his Scotch heart turn cold within him--he saw hogs and cattle feeding in the autumn wheat-fields, which could not be reaped for lack of labourers. Five million bushels of wheat had grown and ripened--enough to empty the horn of plenty into every farmer's home. Men and women, children and grandmothers, toiled day and night to gather in the yellow food. But the short harvest-season rushed past so quickly that tons of it lay rotting under the hoofs of cattle. It was a puzzling problem. It was too much prosperity--a new trouble for farmers. In Europe, men had been plenty and acres scarce. Here, acres were plenty and men scarce. Ripe grain--the same in all countries, will not wait. Unless it is gathered quickly--in from four to ten days, it breaks down and decays. So, even to the dullest minds, it was clear that there must be some better way of snatching in the ripened grain. The sight of the trampled wheat goaded McCormick almost into a frenzy of activity. He rode on horseback through Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, and New York, proclaiming his harvest gospel and looking for manufacturers who would build his reapers. From shop to shop he went with the zeal of a Savonarola. [Illustration: A MODEL OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL REAPER] One morning, in the little town of Brockport, New York, he found the first practical men who appreciated his invention--Dayton S. Morgan and William H. Seymour. Morgan was a handy young machinist who had formed a partnership with Seymour--a prosperous store-keeper. They listened to McCormick with great interest and agreed to make a hundred reapers. By this decision they both later became millionaires, and also entered history as the founders of the first reaper factory in the world. Altogether, in the two years after he left Virginia, McCormick sold 240 reapers. This was Big Business; but it was only a morsel in proportion to his appetite. Neither was it satisfactory. He found himself tangled in a snarl of trouble because of bad iron, stupid workmen, and unreliable manufacturers. He cut the Gordian knot by building a factory of his own at Chicago. This was one of the wisest decisions of his life, though at the time it appeared to be a disastrous mistake. Chicago, in 1847, showed no signs of its present greatness. As a city, it was a ten-year-old experiment, built in a swamp, without a railway or a canal. It was ugly and dirty, with a river that ran in the wrong direction; but it was _busy_. It was the link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes--a central market where wheat was traded for lumber and furs for iron. It had no history--no ancient families clogging up the streets with their special privileges. And best of all, it was a place where a big new idea was actually preferred to a small old one. Chicago did not look at McCormick with dead eyes and demand a certified cheque from his ancestors. It sized him up in a few swift glances and saw a thick-set, ruddy man, with the physique of a heavy-weight wrestler, dark hair that waved in glossy furrows, and strong eyes that struck you like a blow. It glanced at his reaper and saw a device to produce more wheat. More wheat meant more business, so Chicago said ---- "Glad to see you. You're the right man and you're in the right place. Come in and get busy." William B. Ogden, the first Mayor of Chicago, listened to his story for two minutes, then asked him how much he wanted for a half interest. McCormick had little money and no prestige. Ogden had a surplus of both. So a partnership was arranged, and the new firm plunged toward prosperity by selling $50,000 worth of reapers for the next harvest. At last there had come a break in the clouds, and McCormick found his path flooded with sunshine. He was no longer a wanderer in the night. He was the Reaper King--the founder of a new dynasty. As soon as possible he bought out Ogden, and thenceforth established a one-man business. By 1851 he was making a thousand reapers a year, and owned one-tenth of the million dollars he had dreamed of in the Virginian wilderness. At this point his life changes. His pioneer troubles are over. There are no more thousand-mile rides on horseback--no more conflicts with jeering crowds--no more smashing of reapers by farm labourers. The repeal of the Corn Laws in England had opened up a new market for our wheat, and the discovery of gold in California was booming the reaper business by making money plentiful and labour scarce. Suddenly, McCormick looked up from his work in the factory, and saw that he was not only rich, but famous. One of his reapers had taken the Grand Prize at a World's Fair in England. Even the London _Times_, which had first ridiculed his reaper as "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying machine," was obliged to admit, several days later, that "the McCormick reaper is worth the whole cost of the Exposition." Seventeen years later, on the imperial farm, near Paris, Napoleon III. descended from his carriage and fastened the Cross of the Legion of Honour upon McCormick's coat. There was a picture that some American-souled artist, when we have one, will delight to put on canvas. How splendid was the contrast, and how significant of the New Age of Democracy, between the suave and feeble Emperor, enjoying the sunset rays of his inherited glory, and the strong-faced, rough-handed Virginian farmer, who had built up a new empire of commerce that will last as long as the human race eats bread! From first to last, the stout-hearted old Reaper King received no favours from Congress or the Patent Office. He built up his stupendous business without a land grant or a protective tariff. By the time that his Chicago factory was ten years old, he had sold 23,000 reapers, and cleared a profit of nearly $1,300,00. The dream of his youth had been realised, and more. All told, in 1859, there were 50,000 reapers in the United States, doing the work of 350,000 men, saving $4,000,000 in wages, and cramming the barns with 50,000,000 bushels of grain. So, on his fiftieth birthday, the battle-scarred McCormick found himself a millionaire. He was also married, having fallen in love with Miss Nettie Fowler, of New York, a young lady of unusual beauty and ability. No history of the reaper can be complete without a reference to this remarkable woman, who has been for fifty years, and is to-day, one of the active factors in our industrial development. No important step has ever been taken either by her husband or her three sons, until it has received her approval. And Mrs. McCormick has been much more than a mere adviser. Her exact memory and keen grasp of the complex details of her husband's business made her practically an unofficial manager. She suggested economies at the factory, stopped the custom of closing the plant in midsummer, studied the abilities of the workmen, and on several occasions superintended the field-trials in Europe. Chicago may not know it, but it is true, that its immense McCormick factory owes its existence to Mrs. McCormick. After the Big Fire of 1871, when his $2,000,000 plant was in ruins, McCormick concluded to retire. He still had a fortune of three or four millions and he was sixty-two years of age. His managers advised him not to rebuild, because of the excessive cost of new machinery. As soon as the fiery cyclone had passed, he and his wife drove to the wrecked factory. Several hundred of the workmen gathered about the carriage, and the chief engineer, acting as spokesman, said: "Well, Mr. McCormick, shall we start the small engine and make repairs, or shall we start the big engine and make machines?" Mr. McCormick turned to his wife and said, "Which shall it be?" It was a breathless moment for the workmen. "Build again at once," said Mrs. McCormick. "I do not want our boy to grow up in idleness; I want him to work, as a useful citizen, and a true American." "_Start The Big Engine_," said McCormick. The men threw their hats in the air and cheered. They sprang at the smoking debris, and began to rebuild before the cinders were cold. Such was the second birth of the vast factory which, in its sixty years, has created fully 5,000,000 harvesters, and which is now so magically automatic that, with 6,000 workmen, it can make one-third of all the grain-gathering machinery of the world. Practically nothing has been written about McCormick from the human nature side. He was one of those Cromwellian men who can only be appreciated at a distance. He was too absorbed in his work to be congenial and too aggressive to be popular. He shouldered his way roughly against the slow-moving crowd; and the people whom he thrust out of his way naturally did not consider the importance of his life-task. Most of the really great men of his day were his friends--Horace Greeley, for instance, and Peter Cooper, Junius Morgan, Abram S. Hewitt, Cyrus W. Field, and Ferdinand De Lesseps. But among the men of his own trade he stood hostile and alone. "McCormick wants to keep the whole reaper business to himself. He will not live and let live," said his competitors. And they had reason to say so. He did want to dominate. He wanted to make all the harvesting machines that were made--not one less. He was not at all a modern "community-of-interest" financier. He was a man of an outgrown school--a consistent individualist, not only in business, but in politics and religion as well. There was no compartment in his brain for mergers and combines--for theories of government ownership--for Higher Criticism and the new theology. He was a Benjamin Franklin commercialist, a Thomas Jefferson Democrat, and a John Knox Presbyterian. He had worked harder to establish the reaper business than any other man. He was making reapers when William Deering was five years old, and before Ralph Emerson and "Bill" Whiteley were born. He had graduated into success through a fifteen-year course in failure. The world into which he was born was as hostile to him as the Kentucky wilderness was to Daniel Boone or the Atlantic Ocean to Columbus. He was hard-fibred, because he had to be. He was the thin end of the wedge that split into fragments the agricultural obstacle to social progress. One careless writer of biographies has said that McCormick began at the foot of the ladder. This is not correct. When he began, there was no ladder. _He had to build it as he climbed._ The first man who gave battle to McCormick was an erratic genius named Obed Hussey, who, as we have seen, secured a reaper patent in 1833. No two men were ever more unlike than Hussey and McCormick. Hussey was born in Nantucket; and he had roamed the frozen North as a whaling seaman. He was inventive, poetic, and as whimsical as the weather. His delight was in working out some mechanical problem. His first invention was a machine to make pins. Soon afterward, while he was living in Cincinnati, constructing a machine to mould candles, a friend said to him: "Hussey, why don't you invent a machine to reap grain?" "Are there no such machines?" he asked in surprise. "No," said his friend, "and whoever can invent one will make a fortune." Hussey forsook his candle machine, set to work upon a reaper, and within a year had one in the fields. Then came a twenty-five-year war with McCormick, which was waged furiously in the Patent Office, the courts, and a hundred wheat-fields. Hussey won the opening battle by arriving first at the Patent Office, although his machine, as claimed by McCormick, was two years younger. By 1841 Hussey had sold reapers in five states, and ten years later he shared the honours with McCormick at the London World's Fair. Both machines were very crude and unsatisfactory. Hussey's had a better cutting apparatus and McCormicks was more complete. In the long run, each adopted the devices of the other, and a better reaper was evolved. Before many years, it became apparent that Hussey was outclassed. By 1858 he was left so far behind that he lost his interest in reapers and invented a steam-plough. His first machine was "really a mower," says Merritt Finley Miller, one of the two professors who have written on harvesting machinery. It lacked the master-wheel, the reel and the divider, without which the grain cannot be rightly handled. When Hussey gave up the contest, his invention was bought for $200,000 by William F. Ketchum and others, who adapted it into a mowing-machine. "Hussey was a very peculiar man," said Ralph Emerson. "His machine was fairly good, but it was a failure in the market, because he would not put on a reel. He refused to do this, saying he did not invent a reel, and it would be a falsehood if he put one on. He said that it was contrary to his principles to sell anything that he had not invented. "On one occasion I went to buy a shop licence from him. 'Have you a thousand dollars in your pocket?' he asked. 'No,' said I. 'Can you get me three thousand dollars by daylight to-morrow morning?' 'No,' I answered, 'but I can get it by noon.' 'Well,' said Hussey, 'I want to be very reasonable with you. If you'll pay me one thousand dollars before you leave the house, or twenty-five hundred dollars before daybreak to-morrow, I'll sell you a licence. Otherwise, it will cost you twelve thousand dollars.' "Several days later I paid him twelve thousand dollars, and as he handed me the licence, he said--'Now, don't say that I never offered you this for a thousand dollars.'" Hussey's adventurous life was snapped short by a tragic death. While he was on a train at Baltimore, a little girl was crying for a drink of water. The kind-hearted old sailor-mechanic got off the train, brought her a glass of water, and on his way to return the glass, he slipped and fell between the moving wheels. Of all the men who fought McCormick in the earlier days, I found only two now alive--Ralph Emerson, of Rockford, and William N. Whiteley, of Springfield, Ohio. Both of these men to-day generously give the old warrior his due. "McCormick was the first man to make the reaper a success in the field," said Whiteley, the battle-worn giant of Ohio, where I found him still at work. "McCormick was a fighter--a bulldog, we called him; but those were rough days. The man who couldn't fight was wiped out." Ralph Emerson, now one of the most venerable figures in Illinois, rose from a sick-bed against his doctors orders, so that he might be magnanimous to his former antagonist. "McCormick's first reapers were a failure," said he, speaking slowly and with great difficulty; "and he owed his preëminence mainly to his great business ability. His enemies have said that he was not an inventor, but I say that he was an inventor of eminence." So, as the gray haze of years enables us to trace the larger outlines of his work, we can see that McCormick was especially fitted for a task which, up to his day, had never been done, and which will never need to be repeated during the lifetime of our earth. He was absolutely mastered by one idea, as wholly as Copernicus or Columbus. His business was his life. It was not accidental, as with Rockefeller, nor incidental, as with Carnegie. On one occasion when a friend was joking him about his poor judgment in outside affairs, he whirled around in his chair and said emphatically: "I have one purpose in life, and only one--the success and widespread use of my machines. All other matters are to me too insignificant to be considered." He made money--ten millions or more. But a hundred millions would not have bribed him to forsake his reaper. It was as much a part of him as his right hand. In several of his business letters he writes as though he had been a Hebrew prophet, charged with a world-message of salvation. "But for the fact that Providence has seemed to assist me in all our business," he writes on one critical occasion, "it has at times seemed that I would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me. I believe the Lord will help us out." Not that he left any detail to Providence to which he could personally attend. He was a Puritan of the "trust-in-God-and-keep-your-powder-dry" species. A little farther down, in this same letter, he writes--"Meet Hussey in Maryland and _put him down_." The fountain-springs of his life were wholly within. He acted from a few basic, unchangeable convictions. If public opinion was with him, he was gratified; if it was against him he thought no more of it than of the rustling of the trees when the wind blew. "When anyone opposed his plans and showed that they were impossible," said one of his superintendents, "I noticed that he never argued; he just went on working." His brain had certain subjects distinctly mapped out. What he knew--he knew. He had no hazy imaginings. He lived in a black and white world and abhorred all half-tints. He was right--always right, and the men who opposed him were Philistines and false prophets, who deserved to be consumed by sudden fire from Heaven. It was this inward spiritual force that made him irresistible. Small men shrivelled up when he spoke to them. "The exhibition of his powerful will was at times actually terrible," said one of his attorneys. "If any other man on this earth ever had such a will, certainly I have not heard of it." Small and easy undertakings had no interest for him whatever. It was the impossibility that enraged and inspired him. At the sight of an obstacle in his path, he rushed forward like a charge of cavalry. When the Civil War was at its height, he and Horace Greeley, who was very similar to him in this respect, actually believed that they could stop it. They had several long conferences in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, and McCormick went so far in 1864 as to prepare a statement of principles which he fully believed would restore peace and harmony between the North and the South. Such was this massive, unbendable American. As we shall see, he was far from being the only strong, picturesque figure in the industry. But it would make many a book to tell in detail the effect of his life work upon the progress of the United States. It was a New World, truly, that had been created, alike for the people of the farms and of the cities, in the year that the victorious old Reaper King was carried to his grave, with a sheaf of wheat on his breast. What if there had been no reapers, and no hunger-insurance, and no cheap bread! What sort of an American nation would we have, if we were still using such food-implements as the sickle and the flail? Could we have swung through four years of Civil War, as we did, without famine or national insolvency? Could the West have risen toward its present greatness if its billion acres had to be harvested by hand? Could the railways alone, which produce nothing, have given us more food for less work--the first necessity of a civilised democracy? Would our manufacturers be creating new wealth at the rate of sixteen billions a year, if the reaper had not enriched the farmers and sent half the farm-hands into the factories? And our towering cities--two of them more populous than the thirteen colonies were, how large would they be and how prosperous if bread were twenty cents a pound? As Seward once said, it was the reaper that "pushed the American frontier westward at the rate of thirty miles a year." Most of the western railways were built to the wheat; and it was wheat money that paid for them. The reaper clicked ahead of the railroad, and civilisation followed the wheat, from Chicago to Puget Sound, just as the self-binder is leading the railroad to-day--three hundred miles in front in Western Canada, and eight hundred miles in Siberia. Even so unyielding a partisan of the railroads as Marvin Hughitt admitted to me that "the reaper has not yet received proper recognition for its development of the West." During the Civil War the reaper was doing the work of a million men in the grain-fields of the North. It enabled a widow, with five sons, to send them all to the front, and yet gather every sheaf into the barn. It kept the wolf from the door, and more--it paid our European debts in wheat. It wiped out all necessity for Negro labour in the wheat States, just as a cotton-picker will, some day, in the South. "The reaper is to the North what the slave is to the South," said Edwin M. Stanton in 1861. "It releases our young men to do battle for the Union, and at the same time keeps up the supply of the nation's bread." Lincoln called out every third man, yet the crops increased. Europeans could not believe it. They heard in 1861 that we were sending three times as much wheat to England as we had ever done before. They shook their heads and said--"Another American story!" when they were told that we were supporting two vast armies and yet selling other nations enough grain to feed thirty-five million people. Naturally, no country that clung to the sickle and flail could be convinced of such a preposterous miracle. After the war, the mighty river of wheat that flowed from the West became so wide and so deep that it poured a yellow stream into every American home. It began to turn the wheels of fourteen thousand flour-mills. Rich cities sprang up, like Aladdin palaces, beside its banks--Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Paul, Omaha, Des Moines. All of these, and a hundred lesser ones, were nourished into prosperity by the rising current of reaper-wheat, as it moved from the Mississippi to the sea. By 1876 we had become the champion food-producers of the world. A Kansas farmer was raising six bushels of wheat with as little labour as an Italian spent to produce one. And there was one doughty Scot--Dalrymple of Dakota, who was guillotining more wheat with four hundred labourers and three hundred harvesters, than five thousand peasants could garner by hand. Inevitably, the American Farmer became a financier. In 1876 he earned twenty-four per cent. He had twenty-seven hundred millions to spend. By 1880 he had begun to buy so much store goods that the United States was able to write a Declaration of Industrial Independence. Steadily he has grown richer and wiser, until now he is the owner of a billion-acre farm, worth thirty dollars an acre, operated with farm machinery that cost him $900,000,000 and producing, in a single year, seven thousand times the value of a millionaire. Such, in one country, is the amazing result which the Reaper has helped to create. And this is not all. It is now more necessary to the human race than the railway. It is fighting back famine in fifty countries. Its click has become the music of an International Anthem. The nations are feeding each other, in spite of their tariffs and armies. The whole world takes dinner at the one long table; and the fear of hunger is dying out of the hearts of men; and the prayer of the Christian centuries is answered--"Give us this day our daily bread." CHAPTER II THE STORY OF DEERING Fifty years ago two young farmers named Marsh were cutting grain near DeKalb, Illinois. They were too intelligent--too American--to be fond of work for work's sake. And of all their drudgery, the everlasting stooping over bundles to bind them into sheaves galled them most. Such back-breaking toil, they thought, might be well enough for kangaroos, but it certainly was not suitable for an erect biped, like man. "If I didn't have to walk from bundle to bundle, and hump myself like a horseshoe, I could do twice as much work," said one of the brothers. "Well," said the other, "why can't we fix a platform on the reaper, and have the grain carried up to us?" It was a brilliant idea and a new one. Neither of the young fellows had ever seen a reaper factory; but they were handy and self-reliant. By the next autumn they were in the field with their new machine, and as they had expected, they bound the grain twice as quickly as they had the year before. So was born the famous Marsh harvester, which proved to be the half-way mark in the evolution of the grain-reaping machine. It was the child of the reaper and the parent of the self-binder. It cut in two the cost of binding grain. But it did more than this--it gave the farmer his first chance to stand erect, and forced him to be quick, for the two men who stood on the harvester were compelled to bind the grain as fast as it was cut. Thus it introduced the factory system, one might say, into the harvest-field. For the first time the Big Minute made its appearance on the farm. The Marsh boys, never dreaming that they had helped to change the destinies of nations, took out a flimsy patent on their invention, and went on with their farm work. Two summers later, as they were at work with it, their home-made harvester broke down. A farmer from Plano, near DeKalb, named Lewis Steward, was riding by. He stopped, and, being a man of unusual abilities and discernment, he at once saw the value of the Marsh machine, even in its disabled state. "Boys, you're on the right track," he said. "If you can run your machine ten rods, it can be made to run ten miles. It is superior to anything now in use." Thus cheered, the Marsh brothers went to Plano, arranged a partnership with a clever mechanic named John F. Hollister, and began to make harvesters for sale. To their surprise the new machine was not welcomed. It was received with an almost unanimous roar of disapproval. It was a "man-killer," said the farmers. Now, the Marsh brothers were quick, nervous men, and they had built a machine to suit themselves. But it was undeniably too fast and nerve-racking for most farmers. The labourers refused to work with it. The Marshes overcame the obstacle in a very ingenious way. They put _girls_ on their harvesters, instead of men. Not ordinary girls, to be sure, but vigorous German maidens, who were swift and skilful binders. Also, they had well-trained men, disguised as hoboes, who mingled in the crowd around the harvester at times of demonstration, and volunteered to get aboard of it. To see a girl or a "Weary Willie" binding grain on the new machine shamed the labourers into a surrender, and in 1864 two dozen of the Marsh harvesters were sold. [Illustration: WILLIAM DEERING] In this year one of the Marshes performed a feat that seemed more appropriate for a circus than for a grain-field. Riding alone on a harvester, he bound a whole acre of wheat in fifty-five minutes. Little was heard of this amazing achievement at the time, as the national mind was distraught over the death grapple of Grant and Lee in Virginia. But there was one quick-eyed man in Chicago named Gammon who heard of the event, and acted upon it so promptly that the goddess of prosperity picked him out as one of her favourites. Several years before, Gammon had been a Methodist preacher in Maine. A weak throat had brought his sermons to an end, and he became a reaper salesman in Chicago. He was shrewd and honest, and in 1864 his profits were very nearly forty thousand dollars. When he heard that W. W. Marsh had bound an acre of grain in fifty-five minutes, on a new-fangled reaper, he caught the next train for DeKalb, and bought a licence to manufacture Marsh harvesters. He took in a partner--J. D. Easter--and the business inched ahead slowly, until in 1870 the sales rose to a thousand. Easter and Gammon were driving their small factory ahead at full speed. If they only could secure enough capital, they would surprise the world. One evening, while Gammon was worrying over this lack, he heard a gentle knock at the door. He opened it to one of his old acquaintances from Maine. "Mr. Gammon," said the visitor, "I have about forty thousand dollars of spare money that I would like to invest in Chicago real estate, and I want your advice as to the best place to buy." "What!" said Gammon, springing to his feet in delight. "Have you money to invest? Give it to me and I'll pay you ten per cent. or make you a partner in the best business in Illinois." The visitor, whose name was William Deering, knew nothing whatever about reapers nor wheat-fields. He had gained a fair-sized fortune in the wholesale dry-goods business. But he was a Methodist and had confidence in the ex-reverend E. H. Gammon; so he passed his $40,000 across the table and the next day went home to Maine. [Illustration: WILLIAM N. WHITELEY Photo by Baumgardner, Springfield, O. C. W. MARSH JOHN F. APPLEBY Photo by Rice, Milwaukee E. H. GAMMON] Two years later Deering came down to see how Gammon and the $40,000 were faring. The books showed a profit of $80,000. So Deering requested that he be made a partner. A year afterward Gammon fell sick and begged Deering to come to Illinois and manage the business. Deering consented to be manager for one year only; but Gammon's sickness continued. "So," said William Deering, who told me this story, "in that way I got into the harvester business and had to stay in. But I did not even know, at that time, the appearance of our own machine." Deering's competitors at first called him a greenhorn. But they forgot that he was the only one among them who had been trained in the art of business. He was already a veteran--a prize winner--in the game of finance. For thirty years, ever since he began to earn $18 a month in his father's woolen mills, he had been a man of affairs. He had, in fact, established the wholesale dry-goods house of Deering, Milliken & Co., which still stands as one of the largest of its kind. This training was all the more valuable an asset because of the conditions that prevailed when Deering entered the harvester trade. For he arrived in that worst of all years in the last century--1873. The Jay Cooke panic was at its height. The proudest corporations were falling like grass before a mower. It was a year of dread and paralysis. But Deering faced these disadvantages with ability, with sheer, dogged persistence, and with business training. In seven years he had become one of the greatest of the harvester kings, and was leading them all up to a higher level. We shall understand more clearly what this means if we consider the state of the trade at the time of his entrance. A man of peaceable and kindly inclinations, Deering was dragged into a business that was as turbulent as a bull-fight. For as the reaper had evolved, it had become a bone of contention, and it remained so from the first patent to the last. The opening battle was fought by McCormick and Hussey, each claiming to have been the Christopher Columbus of the business. After the gold-rush of 1849 new types of reapers sprang up on all sides. The crude machines that merely cut the grain were driven out by others that automatically raked the cut grain into bundles. These were soon followed by a combined reaper and mower, which held the field until the Marsh harvester was invented, as we have seen, at the close of the Civil War. Among these different types of reapers, and the numerous variations of each type, the bitterest rivalries prevailed. There was no pool, no "gentlemen's agreement," no "community of interest." Indeed, the "harvester business" was not business. It was a riotous game of "Farmer, farmer, who gets the farmer?" The excited players cared less for the profits than for the victories. As fast as they made money, they threw it back into the game. Mechanics became millionaires, and millionaires became mechanics. The whole trade was tense with risk and rivalry and excitement, as though it were a search for gold along the high plateaus of the Rand. And this in spite of the fact that, with the exception of McCormick, Osborne, and Whiteley, the men who came to be known as reaper kings were not naturally fighters. No business men were ever gentler than Deering, Glessner, Warder, Adriance, and Huntley. But the making of reapers was a new trade. It was like a vast, unfenced prairie, where every settler owned as much ground as he could defend. Each step ahead meant a struggle for patents. Whoever built a reaper had to defend himself in the courts as well as approve himself in the harvest-fields. Cyrus H. McCormick, especially, as William Deering soon learned, wielded the Big Stick against every man who dared to make reapers. He was the old veteran of the trade, and he gave battle to his competitors as though they were a horde of trespassers. He was their common enemy, and the reaper money that was squandered on lawsuits brought a golden era of prosperity to the lawyers. Some of these patent wars shook the country with the crash of hostile forces. The tide of battle rolled up to the Supreme Court and even into the halls of Congress. Once, in 1855 when McCormick charged full tilt upon John H. Manny, who was making reapers at Rockford, Illinois, a three-year struggle began that was the most noted legal duel of the day. McCormick, to make sure of his victory, went into the fight with a battery of lawyers whom he thought invincible--William H. Seward, E. M. Dickerson, and Senator Reverdy Johnson. Manny made a giant effort at self-defence by hiring Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Stephen A. Douglas, Peter H. Watson, George Harding, and Congressman H. Winter Davis. From first to last it was a lawyers' battle, and McCormick was finally defeated by Stanton, who made an unanswerably eloquent speech. For this speech Stanton received $10,000, and Lincoln, who had made no speech at all, was given $1,000. Yet, in the long run, the man who profited by this lawsuit was Lincoln; for it was this money that enabled him to carry on his famous debate with Douglas, and thus made him the inevitable candidate of the Republican Party. McCormick's most disastrous lawsuit was with D. M. Osborne and the Gordon brothers, of Rochester. In 1875 the Gordons had invented an attachment for a wire self-binder, and in a careless moment McCormick had signed a contract promising to make these self-binders and to pay $10 royalty on every machine. Then a man named Withington appeared with a much better self-binder. McCormick at once began to make the Withington machine and was sued by the Gordons. At this time McCormick was over seventy years of age, and crippled with rheumatism; but he believed that the Gordons had deceived him and he fought them sternly as long as he lived. After his death, his eldest son, Cyrus, consented to a compromise, whereby Osborne, who was owner of a share in the Gordon concern, and the Gordons were to be paid $225,000. But in order to impress upon them the enormity of this amount, he prepared the money for them in small bills. When they called at the McCormick office in Chicago, they were taken to a small room on the top floor and shown a great pyramid of green currency. "There is your money," said McCormick's lawyer. "Kindly count it and see if it is not a quarter of a million dollars." The three men gasped with mingled ecstasy and consternation. "B--b--but," stammered one of them, "how can we take it away? Can't you give us a cheque?" "That is the right amount, in legal money, gentlemen," replied the lawyer. "All I will say is that there are a couple of old valises in the closet--and I wish you good afternoon." For several hours Osborne and the Gordons literally waded in affluence, counting the money and packing it in the valises. By the time they had finished, it was eight o'clock. The building was dark. The elevator was not running. They were hungry and terrified. Step by step they groped their trembling way downstairs, and staggered with their treasure through the perilous streets to the Grand Pacific Hotel. None of them ever forgot the terror of that night. Another warlike Reaper King was "Bill" Whiteley, of Ohio. Whiteley had invented a combined mower and reaper in 1858, which he named the "Champion"; and he pushed this machine with an irresistible enthusiasm. His mode of attack was not the patent suit, but the field test. This was the white-hot climax of the rivalry among the reaper kings; and it was great sport for the farmers. It was a reaper circus--a fierce chariot-race in a wheat-field; and its influence upon the industry was remarkable. It weeded out the low-grade machines. It spurred on the manufacturers to a campaign of improvement. It developed American harvesters to the highest point of perfection. It swung the farmers into the new path of scientific agriculture. And it piled expenses so high that few of the reaper kings escaped disaster. A field test was conducted in this fashion: A committee of judges was appointed, and several acres of ripe grain were selected as the battle-field. After the field was marked off into equal sections, each reaper took its place. There were sometimes two reapers and sometimes forty. The signal was given. "Crack"--the horses leaped; the drivers shouted; and hundreds of farmers surged up and down in excited crowds. [Illustration: ASA S. BUSHNELL BENJAMIN H. WARDER HON. THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE DAVID M. OSBORNE] "All's fair in a field test," said the reaper agents who superintended these contests; though each man said it to himself. They were a hardy and reckless body of men, half cowboy, half mechanic, and no trick was too dangerous or too desperate for them. Often the feud was so bitter that bodyguards of big-fisted "bulldozers" were on the spot to protect the warrior of their tribe who was in danger. "I had four men with me once who together weighed 1,000 pounds," said A. E. Mayer, who is now the general of an army of 40,000 salesmen. In most tests the machines were shamefully abused. Self-binders were made to cut and bind stubble as though it were grain. Mowers were driven full tilt against stumps and hop-poles. Rival reapers were chained back to back and yanked apart by plunging horses. The warrior agents exposed the weak points in each other's machines. They photographed each other's breakdowns, and bragged to the limit of their vocabularies. They raised prices in one town and cut them in the next; for when their fighting blood was aroused--and that was often--they cared no more for profits than a small boy cares for his clothes. To give only one instance out of hundreds, here is a picture of a field test that I found in the diary of B. B. Clarke, of Madison, who is now the editor of the _American Thresherman_, but who was in the eighties a harvester fighter in Indiana. "We drove fourteen miles to the wheat-field, which was also the battle-field," he wrote, "and found a heavy crop of rank grain, wild pea vines, morning glories and other vegetation, which tested both machines to the limit. The bundles were twisted together by the vines into almost a continuous rope. After adjusting the machine, we had to 'open the field.' This is considered the most severe test, as the machine, the horses and all are in the grain. "A---- drove the team, a magnificent pair of big grays. McK---- watched the binder, while Y---- and I created sympathy for our cause among the farmers who had come to see the fight. With a crack of his whip and a shout to his team, A---- opened the ball. The machine was so crowded with grain and weeds that the sickle could not be heard fifty feet away. He cleared the first round without a stop. Then the other machine followed, but the driver, failing to recognise the necessity of fast driving, allowed his machine to clog, and lost the day. We received two hundred dollars in gold on the spot for our victorious binder. [Illustration: A SELF-BINDER IN SCOTLAND, WITH THE WALLACE MONUMENT IN THE BACKGROUND] "On returning to Fort Wayne we found the E---- people, whose headquarters were separated by a partition wall from ours, had coaxed one of our customers to cancel his order, and substitute their machine. For this act, we retaliated and replaced three of their orders the following week, and while loading these into the farmers' wagons a fight took place between the opposing factions. I looked as though I had encountered a flax-hackle. The next day hostilities opened early with three on our side to six of the E---- host, requiring a riot alarm and a wagon-load of police to restore order. "We had swept the enemy before us, using neck-yokes, pitman rods and even six shooters in the grand finale. Our expense account for that week included fifty dollars for lawyers' fees, which was promptly O. K.'d by the manager. After all, I had only obeyed instructions, which were to get the business and hold up prices, 'peaceably if you can, but forcibly if you must.'" An interesting relic of these fierce days of cut-throat competition was given to me by Mr. John F. Steward. It reads as follows:-- TO AGENTS FOR THE SALE OF HARVESTING MACHINERY: The undersigned, manufacturers of harvesting machinery, call the attention of their travelling experts and local agents to a practice which has grown among them for a few years past, and which has become so disreputable and is carried to such an extent that we feel it necessary to bring it to your special notice. _It is the habit of trying to break up sales made by other agents when you have not been successful in securing the sale._ It has become a very common practice, as soon as a sale is made by one agent, for the agents of all other machines to try to break up that sale, by misrepresentations or by lowering the price, or by trying to convince the purchaser that the machine which he has bargained for is not as good as the one which the other agent sells. This practice is disreputable, and should not be tolerated by any manufacturer. We wish it now thoroughly understood that we will not tolerate this practice in any agent, and we will be glad to have reports from you of the agents of any machines who have tried to break up your sales of our machines in this way. There is nothing that tends more to demoralise business than this practice, and we wish it stopped. Machines should be sold upon their merits, and not by disparaging or running down other machines. You will find that your customers will place more reliance upon what you say if you leave all other machines alone, and show the good features of your own and demonstrate them in actual work. An agent never makes any progress by running down or trying to show the defects of others, and you will be better able to sustain your prices and the reputation of your machines by following the course indicated above. Therefore, it is our wish that you should hold to your prices firmly, present your machines in the very best possible light, and use all honourable means for making a fair and honest sale; but if you are unfortunate enough to lose your sale, and some competitor gains it, don't be persuaded to put yours in the field by the side of your competitor, or try in any way to break up the sale; and do not, until the purchaser has discarded another machine, offer to put one of ours in its place. Of course we do not mean by this that you shall stand quietly by and see other agents break up your sales, or if others habitually do this that you shall not retaliate, but you must not be the first to inaugurate this practice. We are always ready to meet fair and honest competition. We want our business conducted in a fair and honourable way, and not descend to ways that are discreditable to us and to you. No one agent can expect to sell all the machines that are wanted in his district, for the poorest machine will have some friends, and, though he may have the very best one, we do not expect he will make every one see it. Let the purchaser take the risk. If he buys an inferior machine he should take the consequences, as if he was deceived or mistaken in his judgment in buying a horse. In such a case you would not think of putting your horse in work the purchaser was doing, to show him yours was the best, with the expectation that he would return the one he had bought because it did not prove quite equal to yours in drawing a load or in driving. If you would not in the case of a horse, why should you, in the case of a mower, reaper, or self-binding harvester? Our advice to you is: 1st. Hold firmly to your prices. 2d. Sell your own machine. Convince your purchaser that you have the best machine made. 3d. Settle for the machine at time of delivery. A machine works much better after being settled for. 4th. If you lose the sale do not try to break up the sale of your competitor. It won't pay. [Illustration: Signatures] The king of the field test was William N. Whiteley. No other reaper king, in any country, received as much renown from his personal exploits. He was the Charlemagne of the harvest-field. He was as tall as a sapling and as strong as a tree. As a professor in the great field school of agriculture, he has never been surpassed. He could out-talk, outwork, and generally outwit the men who were sent against him. He was a whole exhibition in himself. "I've seen Bill Whiteley racin' his horses through the grain and leanin' over with his long arms to pick the mice's nests from just in front of the knife," said an old Ohio settler. The feat that first made Whiteley famous was performed at Jamestown, Ohio, in 1867. His competitor was doing as good work as he was; whereupon he sprang from his seat, unhitched one horse, and finished his course with a single, surprised steed pulling the heavy machine. His competitor followed suit, and succeeded fully as well. This enraged Whiteley, who at that time was as powerful as a young Hercules. "I can pull my reaper myself," he shouted, turning his second horse loose, and yoking his big shoulders into its harness. Such a thing had never been done before, and has never been done since; but it is true that, in the passion of the moment, Whiteley was filled with such strength that he ran the reaper from one side of the field to the other, cutting a full swath--a deed that, had he done it in ancient Greece, would have placed him among the immortals. It was witnessed by five hundred farmers, and fully reported in the press. One of the reporters, as it happened, representing the _Cincinnati Commercial_, was a young Ohioan named Whitelaw Reid, now the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James. That ten minutes in a horse collar made $2,000,000 for Whiteley. His antagonist, Benjamin H. Warder, was filled with admiration for Whiteley's prowess, and at once proposed that they should quit fighting and work in harmony. "Give me the right to make your reaper and I'll pay you $5 apiece for all I can sell," said Warder. "It's a bargain," responded Whiteley. And so there arose the first consolidation in the harvester business. Whiteley and Warder did not merge their companies; but they divided the United States into three parts--one for Whiteley, one for his brother Amos, who also made reapers in Springfield, and one for Warder. They united in building a malleable iron foundry and a knife works, so that they could use better materials at a lower cost. They made the first handsome and shapely machines. For twelve years this triple alliance led the way, and all others, even the mighty McCormick and the sagacious Deering, had to follow. The "Champion" reaper became the leading machine of the United States, and the little town of Springfield, Ohio, was known as the "Reaper City." As many as 160,000 reapers and mowers were sent out as a year's work. In all, 2,000,000 of Whiteley's "Champion" machines have been made in Springfield, and have sold at a gain of $18,000,000. As the millions came pouring in so fast, Whiteley's head was turned and he began to run amuck. He cut loose from Warder and from his own partners, Fassler and Kelly, opened war on the Knights of Labour, built the biggest reaper factory in the world, became a railroad president, helped to corner the Chicago wheat market, backed the "Strasburg Clock"--an absurd self-binder that was as big as a pipe-organ--and came crashing down in a failure that jarred the farming world from end to end. Whiteley lost millions in this crash--and with comparative indifference. It was never the profits that he fought for. At heart he was a sportsman rather than a money-maker. He craved the excitement of the race itself more than the prizes. To win--that was the ambition of his life. And he did not shrink from spectacular methods to accomplish his ambition. For instance, nothing less would satisfy him, when he exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial, than a quarter-sized reaper, made daintily of rosewood and gold. This brought him so sudden a rush of orders from the East that in one day of the following year he sent seventy loaded cars to Baltimore. With flags flying and brass bands playing, these cars rolled off, with orders to travel only by daylight. When they arrived in Harrisburg, running in three sections, they caught the eye of a railroad superintendent named McCrea--who is now, by the way, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. McCrea saw a chance to advertise his railway as well as Whiteley's reapers, so he linked the seventy cars together into one three-quarter-mile train, put his biggest engine at the front, and sent the gaudy caravan on its way. Whiteley never knew how to be commonplace, even in the smallest matters. Wherever he went, his trail was marked by stories of his exploits and his oddities. How he organised the famous "White Plug Hat Brigade" in the Blaine campaign--how he made a twelve-hour speech to help "Mother" Stewart close up the saloons of Springfield--how he found a Springfield farmer using a McCormick reaper, gave him a Whiteley reaper in its place, and flung the rival machine upon the junk-pile, as a sign that he was the monarch of Ohio--how he gathered up a peck of pies after a field test dinner, put them in a sack, and ate nothing but pies for half a week--such is the sort of anecdotes that his life has added to the folklore of the Western farmers. Many a time his vaudeville tactics disgusted and enraged his fellow manufacturers; but he was too big a factor to be ignored. Once, when a number of reaper kings had met together to see if they could rescue their business from its riot of rivalry, the chairman opened the discussion with the question--"What ought we to do to improve the conditions of our trade?" For a moment there was silence, and then John P. Adriance--as mild-natured a man as ever lived--said blandly, "Kill Whiteley." With daring originality Whiteley combined a tremendous physical vitality and a brain that fairly effervesced with inventiveness. He probably holds the record among the reaper-men for inventions, with 125 patents in his name. And he would work twenty-four hours at a stretch, without a yawn. One evening he asked a young machinist to remain in the factory and help him fix a refractory reaper. After working till midnight Whiteley said: "Well, Jim, I suppose you think you are tired. Go home and have a good night's sleep, and come back here in three hours." He dashed with fanatical energy into any undertaking that appealed to his imagination. Once, when he had too much money, he bought control of a new railway that ran through Ohio from Springfield to Jackson,--160 miles. He wanted to know its real value, so, instead of asking the directors a few questions, as other men would have done, Whiteley travelled over the entire length of the railroad, _on foot_. When I saw Whiteley, last June, he was time-worn and whitened. Since the great failure, he has been in the harvester business only intermittently. He has long outlived his Golden Age, but he is as busy as ever, with a new scheme and a new factory. And he still wears the Scotch cap and long boots that have been familiar at field tests for more than half a century. Of the other Springfield men, Warder was unquestionably the ablest. "He was the main wheel," said Whiteley. As a young man of twenty-seven he was running a sawmill in Springfield when he first heard of the reaper. He was so impressed with its possibilities that he offered the inventor $30,000 for a share in it. "Young Warder is crazy," said Springfield people, for at that time $30,000 was a fortune and a reaper was a fad. But thirty-five years later, when Warder had removed to Washington and become noted among its social entertainers, his investment had multiplied itself very nearly two hundredfold. Warder had associated with him two partners, Asa S. Bushnell and J. J. Glessner. Bushnell began earning his living in boyhood as a clerk at $5 a month, and stumbled into a business career as a druggist. Then he became Warder's understudy, and piled up twice as many millions as he could count on his fingers. As a climax he rose higher in public life than any other reaper king, by serving twice as the Governor of Ohio. As for J. J. Glessner, he is still active, and one of the dozen solid pillars upon which the International Harvester Company is built. Such were the strong men whom William Deering faced when he came, without a shred of experience, into the harvester world. He had no ancient patent-rights, like McCormick. He could not outrace thirty competitors in a wheat-field, like Whiteley and Jones and Adriance and Osborne. One way was left open to him. "I'll beat them," he said, "by making a better machine." He set out upon such a search for improvements that, during the rest of his life, inventors fluttered around him like moths around a candle. Until 1879, the best harvester was a self-binder that tied the sheaves with wire. It was the invention of Sylvanus D. Locke, and had been developed to its highest point of perfection by a farm-bred inventor named C. B. Withington, who is still living in Wisconsin. The Withington machine was pushed by McCormick with great energy, and fifty thousand were sold between 1877 and 1885. It was a marvelously simple mechanism, consisting mainly of two steel fingers that moved back and forth, and twisted a wire band around each sheaf of grain. As a machine it was a complete success; but the farmers disliked it. "The wire will mix with the straw," they said, "and our horses and cattle will be killed." So, when Deering met John F. Appleby, a stocky mechanic who claimed to have invented a twine self-binder, he at once set him to work upon fifty of the new machines. When Deering saw his first Appleby binder at work in a field of wheat, he was enthralled. Here, at last, was the perfect harvester. Its strong steel arms could flash a cord around a bundle of grain, tie a knot, cut the cord, and fling off the sheaf, too quickly for the eye to follow. It seemed magical. "What am I to do?" asked the farmer who bought the first of these machines, as he climbed upon the seat and prepared to cut his grain. "Do!" exclaimed John Webster, the Deering mechanic. "Do nothing! DRIVE THE HORSES." The amazed farmer started the horses, drove around the field, and came back swinging his hat and shouting like a lunatic--as well he might. For in the trail of his harvester the sheaves lay bound, as though there were some kindly genie hidden among its wheels. Deering owned, at that time, not much more than a million dollars--the gleanings of thirty-five industrious years. But he resolved to stake it all upon this amazing machine. If he lost--he would be a poor man at fifty-three. If he won--he would be the harvester king of the world. "I'll move the factory to Chicago and make 3,000 of these Appleby twine-binders at once," he said. His partner, E. H. Gammon, held back, so the inflexible Deering bought him out, and from that day he, like his greatest competitor, McCormick, ran a one-man business. "Did you hear the news about Deering?" gossiped his fellow manufacturers. "Clean crazy on a twine-binder!" And, far more discouraging, the magical self-binder itself suddenly became ill-humored and refused to form its sheaves properly. It was no easy exploit, as any one may see, to make the first 3,000 of such complex machines. No other artificial mechanism must so combine strength and delicacy. No piano nor Hoe press, for instance, is expected to operate while it is being jerked over a rough field or along the steep slant of a hill. One day in the early spring of 1880, Deering and his chief lieutenants--Steward and Dixon--were in a field of rye near Alton, trying to coax the new harvester to do its work. All day long it was obstinate and perverse, and the men were at their wits' end. "Well, boys," said Deering, "if we can't do better than this, I'll lose $1,000,000." "Try one more day," said Steward. They went to their hotel, and as it happened to be crowded, the three were placed in a large double room. "Steward and Dixon were mad at me the next morning," said Deering, when he told me of that critical occasion. "They had nothing at stake, yet they had lain awake all night; while I was apparently about to lose my only million, and had slept like a log." That day a slight change was made, and the harvester became good-natured and obedient. The whole 3,000 machines were sold, and created as much excitement as 3,000 miracles. They swept away competitors like chaff. Of a hundred manufacturers seventy-eight were winnowed out. Instead of losing his fortune, Deering cleared at once about four hundred thousand dollars, for profits were large in those experimental days. Better still, he became an acknowledged leader of his class. He had taken the right line of development, as McCormick had in 1831, and all others who could, choked down their rage and followed--quick march! The man who had found the right path was John F. Appleby. He was the scout--the Kit Carson of the harvester business. It was he--the inspired farm labourer of Wisconsin--who had hurled another great impossibility out of the way of the world's farmers. He did not of course originate the whole self-binder. But he put the parts together in the right way and pushed ahead to success through a wilderness of failure. There was a notable group of inventors in Rockford who did much to put him on the right track. One of these, Marquis L. Gorham, was the originator of the self-sizing device that regulates the size of the bound sheaf. Another, named Jacob Behel, invented a knotter, whittling it out of a branch of a cherry tree. Appleby has been, and is yet, a knight-errant of industry. He takes his pay in adventure. He dislikes to travel with the crowd. When I saw him first, in his Chicago workshop, his thoughts were far from twine-binders. He was engaged on the task of perfecting a cotton-picker, which he hopes will do as much for the South as his self-binder did for the West. And it was with some difficulty that I could persuade him to disentangle the story of the twine-binder from the various other romances of his life. In 1855 Appleby was a rugged youngster doing chores on a farm for one dollar a week. Even this rate of pay was too high to the mind of the farmer who employed him; for he was always whittling and making toy machinery, instead of minding his work. One day, when Appleby was seventeen, he was binding grain after a reaper. "How do you like the work, Jack?" asked the farmer. "I don't like it," said Jack, "and what's more, I believe I can invent a machine to tie these bundles." "Ho! ho!" laughed the farmer. "You little fool, you can't invent anything." Twenty-five years later, when Appleby had made half a million by his invention, and was manager of a factory at Minneapolis, he noticed an old man pushing a wheelbarrow in the factory yard. "Haven't I seen you before?" he asked. "Yes, sir," replied the old man. "I was the farmer who gave you your first job." "Well," said Appleby, "you see I wasn't a little fool after all." Appleby actually had set to work to invent a knotting-machine when he was a farm-boy of seventeen, and had made his first model at that age--in 1858. A young school-teacher named Chester W. Houghton was the first man who put money back of the boy's invention. He stood behind it to the extent of fifty dollars, and then became alarmed at such a reckless speculation, and quit. Had he been just a little more adventurous, and a little more patient, every dollar of his investment would have fruited into a thousand. When the school-teacher deserted him, and wanted the fifty dollars back, Appleby was discouraged. The models that had been made at a gun shop in Palmyra, Wisconsin, drifted about. They were sold at auction on one occasion for seventeen cents; and the buyer thought they were not worth even that, for he made a present of them to Appleby. Then came the crash of the Civil War. Appleby enlisted, and for four years forgot knotters and thought only of guns. Yet while he lay in the trenches at Vicksburg, he whittled out a new device for rifles. After the war, a capitalist saw this device, gave him $500 for it, and then, before Appleby's eyes, sold a half interest in it for $7,000. This awakened Appleby to the value of inventions and made him an inventor for life. Once more he set to work on his long-neglected grain-binder, and in 1867 he drove his first completed machine into a field near Mazomanie, Wisconsin. The horses were fractious, and after being jerked along for several rods, the machine broke down, to the great delight of the spectators, most of whom knew Appleby and regarded him as a crank. But the machine had bound a couple of sheaves before it broke. Appleby displayed these, and one man--Dr. E. D. Bishop--pulled a roll of money from his pocket and handed it to the inventor. "Take this," he said, "and make me a partner. Your invention will be a world's wonder some day." All told, Dr. Bishop staked $1,500 on Appleby's genius, for which, twelve years later, he drew out $80,000. This was the first of the many incidental fortunes scattered right and left in the path of the self-binder, which began in 1880, to sweep forward as gloriously as the triumphal car of a Roman emperor. As for William Deering--the modest manufacturer from Maine, who in 1879 joined forces with Appleby, no sooner had he sold the 3,000 self-binders than he found himself floundering neck deep in an unexpected sea of troubles. There was not a flaw in the binders. They were cutting and tying the grain with the skill of 60,000 men. But the twine-bill! Three thousand farmers swore that it was too high. Twine was an item that they had never in their lives bought in large quantities. To pay fifty dollars--the price of a horse--for mere string that was used once and then flung away, seemed outrageous. It was like buying daily papers by the thousand, or shoe-laces by the ton. And so it came about that though Deering had reduced the cost of wheat ten per cent., he got little thanks for his superb machines--nothing but a loud and angry roar for better and cheaper twine. Deering moved against this new array of difficulties with quiet and inexorable persistence. There were only three binder-twine makers in the United States, and all warned him that he was pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp. But Deering pushed on until he met Edwin H. Fitler, afterward a mayor of Philadelphia. From the unassuming way in which Deering stated his needs, Fitler concluded that the order would be a small one. "What you want," he said, "is a single strand twine, which cannot be made without a new line of machinery. I regret to say that I cannot afford to do this for one customer." "Well," said Deering, "I think I may need a good deal in the long run, though I wish to begin with not more than ten car-loads." Ten car-loads! For a moment Fitler was dazed, but only for a moment. It was his chance and he knew it. Years afterward, he was fond of telling how he "made a million-dollar deal with William Deering in two minutes." Thus, whatever Deering touched, he improved. He became the servant of the harvester. He lavished fortunes upon it as sporting millionaires spent fortunes on their horses. It was his one extravagance. In his later endeavours to make the twine cheaper, he spent $15,000 on grass twine, $35,000 on paper, $43,000 on straw, and failed. Then he spent $165,000 on flax and succeeded. He was for thirty years a sort of paymaster to a small mob of inventors who had new ideas or who thought they had. There was one very able inventor--John Stone--who actually drew his salary and expenses every week for twenty years, until he had perfected a corn-picking machine. From first to last, Deering spent "perhaps more than two millions of dollars" on improvements, according to one of his closest friends. The fact is that the Appleby binder had transformed Deering from a man in business simply to make money, into an enthusiast. While he remained as careful of the business as ever, he began to enjoy the work itself more than the profit. He would still fuss if he saw half a dozen nails in the sweepings, or any other waste of pennies. But he poured the golden flood of profits back into his factory with a recklessness that amazed his friends. He pampered his beloved machines with roller bearings and bodies of steel. He sent them to Europe and showed them to kings. Then, as his enthusiasm grew, he looked ahead to the time when even the farm-horse shall be set free from drudgery; and he began to build automobile mowers and gasolene engines. In fact, he ripened, as he worked, into a seer who saw far past the gain or loss of the present into the splendour of the future. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, JR. CHARLES DEERING Photo by Matzene, Chicago] Sagacity--that is, perhaps, the one word that best explains William Deering's success. He had an almost supernatural instinct, so his competitors believed, which kept him in the right line of progress. There seemed to be a business compass in his brain. He was never a master of men, like McCormick, nor a good mixer among men, like Whiteley; but as an organiser of men he was easily superior to them both. He knew how to pit his managers one against another, as Carnegie did; and how to develop a factory into a swift and automatic machine. He was a statesman of commercialism. He piled up a big fortune, and earned it. It was his misfortune not to have been schooled on a farm, as were most of the great reaper kings. McCormick, Whiteley, Lewis Miller, Morgan, Johnson, Osborne, Sieberling, Jones, Esterley, and the Marshes were all farm-bred. But Deering was shrewd enough to gather around him a corps of men who had the experience that he lacked. At the head of this bodyguard stood a farmer's son--John F. Steward. Such were the versatility and the loyalty of Steward that he became Deering's Grand Vizier. He was inventive, combative, literary, mechanical, litigious. It is now forty-two years since Steward began to build harvesters; and he has ten dozen patents to his credit. So, what with the mature business experience of Deering himself, and the skill and faithfulness of his captains, the little factory that he had begun to manage in 1872 expanded in thirty years into one of the two greatest harvester plants in the world, rolling out in every workday minute two complete machines and thirty miles of twine. Largely because of his enterprise the spectres of Famine are now beaten back in fifty countries, yet there is not a word of self-praise in his conversation. "A man told me once that I was nothing more than a promoter," he said; "and perhaps he was right. I wasn't an inventor, that's true. All I did was to get the right men and tell them what I wanted them to do; so I suppose I was just a promoter." The few anecdotes that are told of him relate chiefly to his overmodesty. Once, when he was travelling through Kansas with John Webster, one of his trusty men, a big Westerner loomed up in front of him and said: "Are you the Deering that makes the self-binders?" "Yes," replied Deering, blushing as red as one of his own mowers. "Well," said the Westerner, shaking him by the hand, "I want to say that you're a mighty smart man." Deering looked thoroughly uncomfortable, and when the stranger had gone, he leaned over to Webster and said: "Think of him saying that I made the binders when I pay you fellows for making them. I never felt so foolish in my life." He is now eighty-one--older than our oldest railroad. In his lifetime he has seen his country grow seven times in population and twenty-four times in wealth. He and his fellows have undeniably doubled the food supply of the world. More--they said, "Presto, change!" and the drudges of the harvest-fields stood up and became men. They have made life easier and nobler for untold myriads of people, and have led the way to the brightest era of peace and plenty that the hunger-bitten human race has ever known. Yet less than thirty of the reaper kings became millionaires. Not one can stand beside the great financiers of steel and real estate and railroads. And not one, in his whole lifetime, piled up as much profit as a Carnegie or a Rockefeller has made in a single year. The get-rich-quick brigands of Wall Street meddled with the harvester business once--and never again. That was twenty-one years ago, when the famous "Binder-Twine Trust" set out with the black flag flying. It was a skyrocket enterprise. James R. Keene bulled the stock up to 136. This was the first and only "easy money" that was ever made in the harvester world. Then the farmers and the reaper kings rose up together and smote the Trust in twenty legislatures. Its stock became waste paper; and in the financial hurricane of 1893, it was the first victim. No other business shows so tragic a death roll. For fifty years its trail was marked by wreckage and disaster. Most of the few who succeeded at first, failed later. Out of every ten who plunged into the scrimmage, nine crawled out whipped or terrified. And so the Romance of the Reaper was for fifty years a tragedy of competition. _Out of more than two hundred harvester companies, only fourteen survived in 1902; and these realised that if such waste and warfare continued, their business would be destroyed._ CHAPTER III THE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY For fifty years the Harvester Kings fought one another in the open field of competition. Their armies of agents, drilled in the arts of rivalry, waged a war in which quarter was neither given nor sought. It was a fight almost of extermination. Out of two hundred companies that went to battle with flags waving and drums beating, less than a dozen came home. David M. Osborne backed a new self-binder, lost a million, and died of heartbreak. J. S. Morgan, who had a small factory at Brockport, saw the immense McCormick and Deering plants and quit. Even the great Whiteley fell, and Lewis Miller, the father-in-law of Edison and the founder of Chautauqua, went down "like a great tree upon the hills." Walter A. Wood, after forty years of success, took Governor Merriam and James J. Hill as partners, and set out to win the West for the Wood Company. Their factory was the pride of St. Paul. Their credit was the best, and their fame was over all the prairies. Yet after five years of battling they surrendered; and not one harvester is made to-day west of Illinois. It is a common opinion among harvester men that from first to last there has been more money put into the business than has ever been taken out--so enormously wasteful were these years of competition. By 1902 the harvester business was merely a terrific and destructive war. The agents were tearing the whole industry to shreds and tatters. So far as the Harvester Men could see, they must choose between combination and ruin. Not one of them was personally in favour of combination. They were individualists through and through. The spirit of competition had been bred in the bone. So, when several of them came together to check this warfare, it was not of their own free will. It was because they could do nothing else. They were hurled together by social forces over which they had no control. One by one these battle-worn Westerners came to New York, "on an exploring expedition," as one of them said. Here they met Judge Elbert H. Gary, whom they had known intimately in Chicago. Gary had been William Deering's attorney for twenty-five years. He was a farmer's son, and had risen to be the official head of the Steel Trust; so that he was the one man who had an expert knowledge at once of farms, harvesters, and mergers. And naturally, when the Chicagoans ran to Gary with their tales of woe, he brought them across Broadway into the office of J. P. Morgan, which had become in 1902 a sort of Tribunal of Industrial Peace. There were four of them--Cyrus H. McCormick, Charles Deering, J. J. Glessner, and W. H. Jones--and all of them added to the strong preference for competition a definite opposition to trusts, monopolies, and stock speculation. They were not the Wall Street type of millionaire. In that time of booming optimism, they might have made more money in one year by selling stock than they had made in thirty years by selling harvesters. But no one of them had tried it. The fact is that they cared more for the good-will of the farmers and the prestige of their machines than they did for larger profits. The thing that troubled them most in the proposed consolidation of properties, one of the Morgan partners told me, was the fear that prices would in any case have to be raised, because of the increasing cost of labour and raw materials. [Illustration: HAROLD McCORMICK Photo by Matzene, Chicago, 1905 J. J. GLESSNER W. H. JONES Photo by Smith, Evanston, Ill. JAMES DEERING Photo by Dyer, Chicago] No wonder that the financiers who undertook to organise them were driven almost to distraction by their obstinate independence. They had as many contradictory opinions as a Russian Duma; and it was soon clear that the only possible way to proceed was to keep them apart until all possible preliminaries were arranged. So the four Harvester Men went back home until the details of the new combination should be worked out. Then they were summoned again to New York. As was their custom, they went to different hotels, and each man was handled separately until he was in an organisable frame of mind. This master-stroke of diplomacy was accomplished by George W. Perkins--Morgan's most versatile partner; and it gave Perkins a day and a night that he will never forget. From morning until midnight--from midnight until the first ray of dawn slanted down Broadway, Perkins dashed from hotel to hotel like a human shuttle. Deering conceded one point if McCormick would concede another. Glessner yielded one of his claims, and Jones withdrew something else. Inch by inch these stubborn men were pushed within tying distance of each other; and the fifty-year harvester war was about to come to an end. The next day Perkins renewed the struggle, but he was too tired to continue the cab driving between hotels. He telephoned the four Harvester Men to meet him at Morgan's office. As each man climbed up the rusty iron steps of the Morgan Building he was switched by the big Irish doorkeeper into one of those large inner rooms at the rear, on the ground floor, where many a broken business has been mended. Four men in four rooms, with Perkins flying in and out--such was the way that the great harvester company was finished. It was a unique situation, as much like an incident in comic opera as an affair of business. But the Morgan experts knew that if the four men were allowed to meet, the old hurtful rivalries would break out afresh and the project might snap off like a broken dream. To strengthen the new company with a big surplus of ready money, a one-sixth interest was sold for twenty millions to Morgan and several other New York financiers of the "old reliable" sort. Also, a fifth harvester company, in Milwaukee, was bought from Stephen Bull for about five millions. And when the last rivet had been clinched and the last nail driven home, the four Westerners suddenly found themselves sitting around the same table, in the new International Harvester Company, of Chicago. There were several harvester companies that remained independent, but probably not from choice. I do not know of one that has not, at some stage of its career, tried to get into a trust. Fifteen companies were merged by Colonel Conger in 1892, but they were poorly fastened together and soon fell apart. It is also a fact, though one not before made public, that the Mutual Life Insurance Company tried to form a second Harvester Combine in 1903, with four large manufacturing companies in the merger, and under the presidency of E. D. Metcalf, of Auburn, New York. When this project failed, three independent companies--two in New York and one in Canada, offered themselves for sale to the Harvester Company. It bought one--the Osborne--for six millions, and refused the others. "We are big enough now," said Cyrus H. McCormick. "It is not safe for one company to have a monopoly. What we want to do is to regulate competition, not to destroy it." Besides the big Osborne Company, which is now the third largest in the combine, the Harvester Company has bought five smaller concerns, and built two new plants--one in Canada and one in Sweden. It is like the original United States--a union of thirteen industrial colonies. Its output has risen to 700,000 harvesting machines a year, including all varieties; and its annual revenue is more than seventy-three million dollars. With its 25,000 employees and 42,000 agents, this one company is supporting as many families as there are in Utah or Montana. A square mile of land would be too small to contain its factories. At its hundred warehouses there is trackage for 12,000 cars. Around its workshops are six busy railways of its own, whose engines last year pulled out 65,000 freight-cars, jammed full of machinery for the farmers of the world. Its properties are so widespread that no member of the company has seen them all. To run around their circle would be a trip of 15,000 miles. It owns 20,000 acres of coal lands in Kentucky, 100,000 acres of trees in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri, and 40,000,000 tons of ore in the Wisconsin and Mesaba Ranges. It has staked its money--$120,000,000--upon the belief that for fifty years longer, at least, the scientists will find no substitute for bread. The fact that Elbert H. Gary, the official head of the Steel Trust, is one of its directors, has not prevented this self-sufficient company from owning a complete steel plant, where 2,000 Hungarians make iron from ore, and steel from iron. It saws its trees into lumber in Missouri, and roasts its coal into coke in Kentucky. Its domains are so extensive, in fact, that if they were contiguous, they would make a Harvester City as spacious as Greater Chicago. But the most surprising feature of this unique corporation, to one who sees it for the first time, is the distracting variety of things that pour out of its factories. Its business is by no means to make harvesters and nothing else. Its true character seems to be that of a manufacturing department store for farmers. As a matter of actual count, I found in its factories and warehouses thirty-seven different species of machines, besides all manner of variations of each sort. Here you will see, not only a mower to cut the grass, but a tedder (a kind of steel mule, with an incurably bad temper) to kick and scatter the new-mown hay, so that it will dry in the sun; a rake to gather it together; a loader to swing it on the wagon; and a baler to compress it into bundles. Here are the self-binders, not for the grain only, but for corn and rice as well. For the especial benefit of King Corn, whose tribute to this Republic has lately swollen to twelve hundred millions a year, the company is making machines that pluck the corn from the stalk with iron hands, and others that wrench off the husks, shell the corn, and grind it into several varieties of breakfast food for the four-footed boarders of the farm. Here is a new machine, much less elegant than useful, for flinging manure over a field. Barefooted women did this work in the old brutal days of hand labour. But now, thanks to the brain of a canny Canadian farmer, Joseph S. Kemp, one worker can feed the hungry fields without so much as soiling the tips of the fingers. The farmer's wife--and there are 10,000,000 of her in the United States, has been the last one to be considered, in this outpouring of machinery. But I found at Milwaukee a rebuilt factory belonging to the International, where 2,500 men are making fifty cream separators and 100 gasolene engines a day, both designed to make life easier for Mrs. Farmer, as well as for her husband. Also, it will please her to know that she may soon be honking her way to town in an automobile buggy, which the big corporation is making for farmers in a new factory in Akron. A harvester company must follow the whims of its customers, almost as much as though it had newspapers for sale. It must give 10,000,000 farmers what they want. At the Plano factory I saw 470 different varieties of wheels; and sixty-one kinds of wooden tongues at McCormick's. "Nothing could be simpler than a tongue," said Maurice Kane, the chief mechanical expert of the International. "It is a mere pole. If we suited ourselves, we should only make two kinds--one for horses and one for oxen. But the farmers of the world have sixty-one different ideas as to how a tongue ought to be made, and we must give them what they ask for." The last Minnesota Legislature, in the simplicity of its heart, proposed to establish a complete harvester plant for $200,000. It may surprise the members of that Legislature to know that the International has lately spent twice as much merely to improve one twine factory in St. Paul, and four times as much to build one warehouse in Chicago. Though it began its career with sixty million dollars' worth of equipment, it has been forced by the pressure of its trade to spend sixteen millions more on its factories. And for lack of a weather prophet, it is obliged to carry over from five to six million dollars worth of machines each year, which remain unsold in different countries. By its very nature, this industry cannot be carried on in a small way. It is as essentially mutual and coöperative as life insurance or banking. If a malicious "green bug" devours the wheat in Kansas, the loss must be made up by larger sales somewhere else. This, no doubt, is the main reason why every plant that was ever built to supply a local trade has failed. No other manufacturing business carries so many risks or includes so many factors. It is the most comprehensive industry in the world. It is the link between the city and the farm. It is both wholesale and retail, ready-made and made to order, local and international. It must make what the farmer demands, and yet teach him better methods. It is at once a factory, a bank and a university. Thus, of necessity, the Harvester Company represents in the highest degree the new American way of manufacturing: everything on a large scale, elaborate machinery, unskilled workmen, and a vast surplus to drive it past failures and misfortunes. From its ore mines in the Mesaba Range, where I saw a steam-shovel heap a fifty ton railroad car in ten swings, to the lumber yard of the McCormick Works, where 26,000,000 feet of hardwood are seasoning in the sooty rays of the Chicago sun, it was a panorama of big production. "How many castings did your men make last year?" I asked of the hustling Irish-American who rules over one of the McCormick foundries. "Very nearly 44,000,000, sir," he replied. "And the gray iron foundry over there uses three times as much iron as we do, and it made more than 12,000,000." Fifty-six million castings! Merely to count these would take the whole Minnesota Legislature sixteen days, even though every member worked eight hours a day and counted sixty castings a minute. Far, far behind are the simple, old-fashioned days, when a reaping tool was made of two pieces--the handle and the blade. There are now 300 parts in a horse-rake, 600 in a mower, 3,800 in a binder. When McCormick built his first hundred reapers in 1845, he paid four and a half cents for bolts. That was in the mythical age of hand labour. To-day fifty bolts are made for a cent. So with guard-fingers. McCormick paid twenty-four cents each when James K. Polk was in the White House. Now there is a ferocious machine, which, with the least possible assistance from one man, cuts out 1,300 guard-fingers in ten hours, at a labour-cost of six for a cent. Also, while exploring one of the Chicago factories, I came upon a herd of cud-chewing machines that were crunching out chain-links at the rate of 56,000,000 a year. Nearby were four smaller and more irritable automata, which were biting off pieces of wire and chewing them into linchpins at a speed of 400,000 bites a day. "Take out your watch and time this man," said Superintendent Brooks of the McCormick plant. "See how long he is in boring five holes in that great casting." "Exactly six minutes," I answered. "Well, that's progress," observed Brooks. "Before we bought that machine, it was a matter of four hours to bore those holes." In the immense carpenter shop he pointed to another machine. "There is one of the reasons," he said, "why the small factories have been wiped out. That machine cost us $2,500. Its work is to shape poles, and it saves us a penny a pole; that is profitable to us because we use 300,000 poles a year." In one of its five twine mills--a monstrous Bedlam of noise and fuzz, which is by far the largest of its sort in the world--there is enough twine twisted in a single day to make a girdle around the earth. In the paint shop the man with the brush has been superseded--a case of downright trade suicide. In his place is an unskilled Hungarian with a big tank of paint. Souse! Into the tank goes the whole frame of a binder, and the swarthy descendant of Attilla thinks himself slow if he dips less than four hundred of these in a day. The labour-cost of painting wheels is now one-fifth of a cent each. Ten at once, on a wooden axle, are swung into the paint bath without the touch of a finger. And the few belated brush-men who are left work with frantic haste, knowing that they, too, are being pursued by a machine that will overtake them some day. In the central bookkeeping office of the Harvester Company I found some almost incredible statistics. Here, for instance, are a few of the items in last year's bill of expenses: Two hundred and thirty-five miles of leather belting, 940 miles of cotton duck, 2,000 grindstones, 3,000 shovels, 10,000 brooms, 1,670,000 buckles, 1,185,000 pounds paint, 4,000,000 pounds wire, 15,000,000 pounds nails. Merely to maintain its experimental department costs this imperial company $7,000 a week. Here are more than two hundred inventors and designers, well housed and well salaried, and not tramping from shop to shop, as inventors did in the good old days. They are paid to think; and the company is mightily proud of them. But the truth is that all large corporations which employ an army of unskilled workmen are being compelled to offset so much mere muscle by a special department of brains. There is, besides, a most elaborate system of inspection. In the Deering factory I saw a squad of ten men who were testing the newly made binders with straw. "About three out of a hundred need fixing," said the foreman. The chains are tested by a violent pneumatic machine. Every link, even, is branded with a private mark--[triangle]. And in the Hamilton plant a new scheme is being tried--the whole packing gang has become a staff of inspection. Whenever a man finds a hundred defective pieces, he gets an extra dollar. One sharp-eyed Scot in the packing-room confided to me that he had made "as high as two shillin's a week." Such is the scope of the International Harvester Company, created in 1902. As to the men who control it, I have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating back of the business to their personal characteristics. For they dislike the fierce light that beats upon a rich American. Of its president, Cyrus H. McCormick the Second, the first word to be said is that he is not built on the same lines as his belligerent father. He would fare badly, very likely, if he were in charge of a catch-as-catch-can business, such as the reaper trade was thirty years ago. The making of harvesters is, to him, half a duty--to his father, his workmen, and the machine itself--and half a profession--not a battle nor a game, as it was with the first Reaper Kings. He has no desire to play a lone hand in the business world. And his painstaking purpose, as a man of affairs, is to secure less speculation and more stability, less waste and more organisation, less friction and more community of interest. In all things he is a simple and serious man. I have seen him work from noon until midnight; but in my opinion, if he really had his choice, he would prefer a quiet homestead, in the little town of Princeton, where he could pursue a life devoted to the interests of Princeton University and the Civic Federation. Even now, whenever he can get free from the treadmill of his office, his greatest delight is to escape to a camp in the wild lands of northern Michigan, where he can dress like a fisherman and forget that he is the servitor of a hundred and twenty millions. Harold McCormick, his brother, and a vice-president of the big company, is a boy-hearted man of thirty-five. He has a quick-action brain; but his strong point is his personal magnetism and likableness. He knows the harvester business throughout, having been a shirt-sleeve workman in the factory, an agent at Council Bluffs, and a field expert in several states. Most of the stories told about him illustrate his naïve boyishness. For instance, when he had become an expert in handling the harvester, an agent-in-chief near Chicago telegraphed for a dozen men. Only eleven experts were available, so Harold volunteered to be the twelfth. He had his working-card made out in the usual form, entitling him to $18 a week. On Saturday night, when the twelve men went to the agent-in-chief for their wages, he said, "I want all of you to come in and have a conference with me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock." "Sorry to say, Mr. Blank," said young McCormick, "that I can't be here until Monday." The agent stormed. How could anything be more important to a three-dollar-a-day man than his job? "Well, if you really must know the reason," said the berated mechanic, "I have an appointment to go to church to-morrow morning with the Rockefeller family." The third brother--Stanley McCormick, worked his way up from labourer to superintendent of the whole plant. For years he rose at five o'clock every work-day morning, and walked into the factory at six. All three of the McCormicks show a remarkable sense of obligation, almost of gratitude, to their employees. At the time the International was organised, Stanley said to the others: "What about the men? There are some of them that deserve a share in the new company, as much as we do." So a list of the old employees was made, from Charlie Mulkey, the old watchman, to R. G. Brooks, the superintendent, and $1,500,000 was divided among them. Recently a complete profit-sharing plan, such as Perkins had worked out for the Steel Trust, was put in working order, and about $200,000 of extra money have been scattered through the pay-envelopes. The two Deerings, who are now chairman and vice-president, were disciplined in the same stern, old-fashioned way as the McCormicks. "Put this young man to work at the bottom rung of the ladder," said William Deering, when his younger son, James, was graduated from the university. Being in many respects a chip of the old block, James Deering plunged into business with as much energy as though he had to toil for his millions as well as inherit them. He became a field expert, and followed the harvest from Texas to North Dakota. He asked for no favours, but sweltered along among the Western farmers for several summers. Then he went to the foot of the ladder in the factory and wrestled with big iron castings and steel frames. Step by step he worked up, until even his Spartan father was satisfied and made him the manager of the whole plant. At present there is perhaps no man in the harvester industry who has so great a variety of attainments as James Deering. He is a shrewd commercialist, yet he has found time, no one knows how, to master several languages and to run the whole octave of self-culture. Charles Deering, the older of the two brothers, had less farm experience, as he served for twelve years in Uncle Sam's navy. He was a lieutenant when he came ashore to help his father make harvesters. At that time he did much to solve the binder-twine problem--how to get better twine and plenty of it. Then, when the drama of consolidation was staged by Morgan, he took a leading part. Personally, he is a bluff, forceful, but companionable man, such as one would expect to find on the deck of a war-ship rather than in the telephone-pestered office of a sky-scraper. The two other vice-presidents of the Harvester Company are battle-worn veterans of the competitive period--J. J. Glessner and William H. Jones. Glessner, beginning as a bookkeeper in Ohio, has for many years been regarded as a sort of unofficial peacemaker and balance-wheel of the trade. Everybody confided in Glessner. He did as much as any one else to harmonise the warring Harvester Kings; but it is also true that it was the gentle Glessner who developed competition to the explosive point by originating the system of canvassing. He poured first oil and then water on the fire. As for William H. Jones, he is a sturdy and genial Welshman, who was born and bred in a farmhouse. As a boy he reaped wheat with a sickle in the valleys of Wales. About forty years ago, when he had become an American, he bought a reaper and a tent, and set out to earn his fortune. By working twenty hours a day, he had earned enough money, by 1881, to begin making reapers of his own, at Plano; and he built up a large business. The General Manager of this big anti-famine organisation is a young Illinoisan, named C. S. Funk. "He is the central man," says Perkins. No other Chicagoan of his age--he is only thirty-five--has pushed up so quickly to so high a place, with nothing to help him except his own grit and ability. To-day he manages a 65,000-man-power corporation; yet it is very little more than twenty years since he was trudging six miles on a hot July day, to ask for his first job in a hay-field. Young as he was, he was then the support of a widowed mother, and there were seven children younger than he. His office, in which I was permitted to take notes for several days, is a nerve-centre of the world. Everything that happens to the human race is of interest to this alert young chancellor of the Harvester Company. A drought in Argentina, the green bug in Kansas, a tariff campaign in Australia, a shortage of farm labour in Egypt, a new railway in Southern Russia, such are the bulletins that guide him through his day's work. His wide-flung army is officered mainly by farmers' sons who had a knack for business or for machinery. His assistant, Alex. Legge, is an ex-cowboy from Nebraska. Before the era of peace and unity began, Funk and Legge had fought each other in twenty states. "Legge was one of the best fighters I ever knew," said Funk; "and I think you might put him down as the most popular man in the company." Maurice Kane, the company's Chief Improver, and a fine type of the Irish-American, was born on a small farm near Limerick. He was a farm hand in Wisconsin when he first saw a harvester, and he has pulled himself up every inch of the way by his own abilities. A. E. Mayer, the first of an army of forty thousand salesmen, was born on a farm in New York. He is a sort of human Gatling gun, loaded with the experience of his trade. B. A. Kennedy, the overlord of the thirteen factories, is a seasoned veteran who can remember when he stood by the forge of a country blacksmith shop and hammered out ploughs by hand. Only one of the company's generals, H. F. Perkins, began life with such a luxury as a university education. He is in charge of the raw materials--the coal and iron and lumber and sisal and flax. These are a few of the men who manage this international empire of bread-machinery. They are all practical men, hard workers, close to the farm and the farmer. They are not fashionable idlers, nor promoters, nor Wall Street speculators. And they have no more use for tickers than for telescopes--a fact which is vitally important, now that they are making more than half the harvesters of the world. Such is the International Harvester Company from the inside. But an outside view is equally necessary. It is of tremendous interest to 10,000,000 American farmers to know the habits and the disposition of this powerful organisation. As Theodore Roosevelt has said, there are good combinations and bad ones. Which is the International Harvester Company? In order to get the facts about it at first hand, I interviewed the four chief competitors of the Harvester Company, three Attorneys-General, seven editors of farm papers, four professors of agricultural colleges, seven or eight implement agents, thirty farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, two state governors, and the Federal Bureau of Corporations. Before I had gone far, I learned that the big Harvester Company has been beset by a host of new troubles. It is an evidence of the eternal futility of human ambition, that when a group of warring Harvester Kings had made peace with one another, when they had healed their wounded and buried their dead, and sat down to enjoy a future of prosperous tranquillity, up sprang a host of new enemies, armed and double-armed with weapons from which there seemed to be no sort of defence. Their outposts were shattered by legislative dynamite. Tariff walls were built across their paths. And half a dozen giant ogres, otherwise known as Attorneys-General, crashed into their peaceful business with destructive clubs of law. The bigger the organisation the more trouble to protect and preserve it. This is what Abraham Lincoln learned--what the whole United States learned, half a century ago; and it is the lesson that the harvester-makers are studying to-day. It is a new phase of an old fact; it is the Tragedy of the Trust. Some foreign nations, too, have taken their cue from American Legislatures, and have become almost as hostile to the Chicago company as though it were exporting roulette wheels and burglars' jimmies. France taxed half a million from it last year by a penalising tariff. Australia has made it a political issue. Germany takes a toll of $11 on every self-binder, and Austria takes $25. Roumania raised the duty on harvesters several months ago; and there is a general feeling that the time has come to check the supremacy that the United States has always had in this line. Yet the fact that the Harvester Company has been fined in two states does not mean that it has taken advantage of its size to become a lawbreaker. The "crime" of which it was declared guilty, was the maintenance of the old practice of "exclusive contracts," which has been the almost universal custom for fifty years. Each agent was pledged not to sell any other company's goods. _The International abolished this requirement two years ago, and several of the independent companies still retain it._ Until the merger was organised it was regarded as fair enough. It is one of the most usual habits of agency business. But the American people are now demanding that a big company shall be much more "square" and moral than a small capitalist who is fighting for his life. Many of the old methods of the rough-and-tumble days have survived. It is not possible to say "Presto, change!" to 40,000 battling agents, so that they shall at once begin to play fair and coöperate. But the general opinion is that the Combine has raised the harvester business to a higher level. At one of its branch offices I came accidentally upon a letter written by Cyrus H. McCormick, in which he forbade the taking of rebates from railways. "You must clearly understand," he wrote, "that this company will maintain a policy of absolute obedience to the law." Among the farmers of Iowa and Kansas I found no definite charges against the harvester combine--nothing but that vague dread of bigness which seems natural to the average mind, and which even the great-brained Webster had when he opposed the annexation of Texas and California. Of four farm editors, one was against all "trusts" on general principles; and the other three believed that the evils of harvester competition were much greater than those of consolidation. The bare fact that this one corporation has $120,000,000 of capital alarms the old-timers. Others have become more accustomed to the Big Facts of American business. "Why," said one implement dealer, "after all, $120,000,000 is less than the American farmers earn in a week." He might also have said that it was less than the value of one corn crop in Iowa, or half as much as the Iowa farmers have now on deposit in their savings banks. It is very little more than Russell Sage raked in through the wickets of his little money-lending office, or than Marshall Field accumulated from a single store. In fact, if bread were raised one cent a loaf for one year in the United States alone, the extra pennies would buy out the whole "Harvester Trust," bag and baggage. The bulk of the farmers, so far as I could harmonise their opinions, are now too well accustomed to big enterprises among themselves to be scared by the Chicago merger. They have at the present time more than five thousand coöperative companies of their own. And some of these are of national importance; as, for instance, the powerful Cotton Growers' Trust, and the Farmers' Business Congress, which owns 800 elevators for the storage of grain. "My only objection to the International Harvester Company," said a business man in St. Paul, "is that it sells its machinery cheaper in Europe than it does in the United States." I investigated this charge, and found it wholly incorrect. The greater expense and risk of foreign trade compels the manufacturers to ask almost as high prices as American farmers had to pay twenty years ago. But there is a quite credible reason for this rumour. It is simply this--that for some less progressive countries a crude, old-fashioned reaper is being made, to sell for $45. The modern, self-rake reaper is too complex for the simple mind of many a Russian farmer, so he is supplied with a clumsy machine which is $15 cheaper, but which looked, to my unskilled eye, more than $30 worse. No one accuses the "Trust" of having unreasonably raised prices. On the contrary, it is generally given full credit for holding prices down, in spite of the fact that it is paying from twenty to eighty per cent. more for its labour and raw materials than was paid in 1902. Generally speaking, all farm implements except thrashing-machines are cheaper now than they were in 1880, when the competition was most strenuous. Binders have dropped from $325 to $125; hay-rakes from $25 to $16; and mowers from $80 to $45. "I paid $200 for a self-binding harvester twenty-five years ago," said a Kansas farmer. "Ten years later I bought another for $140 and in 1907 I bought one from the International for $125, which is in my judgment the best of the three machines." The International has competitors, too--very active and able ones. Binders are made by 4 large independent companies, mowers by 17, corn-shredders by 18, twine by 26, wagons by 116, and gasolene engines by 124. Of the thirty-seven different machines made by the International there are only three--hemp-reapers, corn-shockers, and rice-binders--that are made by no other company, and even these machines are not protected by any basic patents. Powerful as the International is, it is still far from the place where business is one long sweet dream of monopoly. The four independent companies that make binders seem to have no fear of the "Trust." "We have no fault to find with it," said President Atwater, of the Johnson Company. "We don't want it smashed. Why? Because our business has doubled since it was organised; and because we would sooner compete with one company than with a dozen." "The 'Trust' was the only thing that saved the whole harvester business from annihilation," said the ex-president of another independent company, when I pressed him for his personal opinion, and promised not to use his name. "The cold fact is really this," he added, "that the International Harvester Company has bettered conditions for the farmer, for the independent companies, and for everybody but itself." "The big combine has never misused its power," said a third of the International's competitors. "Now and then its agents make trouble, just as ours do, no doubt. But the men at the top have always given us a square deal." So it is my duty to state that on the whole the Harvester Combine is a good combination and not a bad one. I have found it radically different from the get-rich-quick trusts that have been described in recent books and magazine articles. It is not a monopoly. It is an advocate of free trade. Its stock is not watered, nor for sale in Wall Street. And the men at the top are very evidently plain, hard-working, simple-living American citizens, who are quite content to do business in a live-and-let-live way. They are not thoroughly reconciled, even yet, to being a merger. They look back with open regret to the wasteful but adventurous days of competition. Of the combination the elder Mrs. Cyrus McCormick finely said: "It was a hurt of the heart. Each of our companies was like a family. Each had a body of loyal agents, who had been comrades through many struggles. But the terrible increase in expenses compelled us to subdue our feelings and to coöperate with one another." "I am not a merger man myself," said William Deering, "although I believe that the International Harvester Company has been a benefit to the farmers." Cyrus H. McCormick goes still further. He is a "trust-buster" himself, so far as the over-capitalised and oppressive leviathans of business are concerned. He said to me frankly: "Some of the hostility to our company is inspired by worthy motives, growing out of the general opposition to the so-called trusts." And when a North Dakota congressman proposed in 1904 that the International Harvester Company should be investigated, Cyrus McCormick at once sent a message that amazed the Bureau of Corporations--"Please come and investigate us," he said. "If we're not right, we want to get right." "Yes," said one of the highest officials of the Roosevelt administration, when I asked him to corroborate this very remarkable story. "It is true that from 1904 it has been the continued desire of the International Harvester Company that we should investigate them. In fact, during the last year (1907) they have urged us with considerable earnestness to make this investigation." So, this big business has evolved from simple to complex in accordance with the same laws that rule plants and empires. It has probably not yet reached its full maturity, for it is greater than any man or any form of organisation, and the tiny ephemeral atoms who control it to-day are no more than its most obedient retinue. They come and go--quarrel and make friends--live and die. What matter? The big business, once alive, grows on through the short centuries, from generation to generation. And what does it all mean--this federation of thirteen factory cities--this coordination of muscle and mind and millions--this arduous development of a new art, whereby a group of mechanics can take a wagon-load of iron ore and a tree, and fashion them into a shapely automaton that has the power of a dozen farmers? _It means bread. It means hunger-insurance for the whole human race. As we shall see in the next chapter, it means that the famine problem has been solved, not only for the United States, but for all the civilised nations of the world._ CHAPTER IV THE AMERICAN HARVESTER ABROAD The first American reapers that went to Europe were given a royal welcome. There were two of them--one made by McCormick and one made by Hussey, and they were exhibited before Albert Edward, the Prince Consort of England, at a World's Fair in London in 1851. There had been reapers invented in England before this date, but none of them would reap. All the inventors were mere theorists. They designed their reapers for ideal grain in ideal fields. One of them was a preacher, the Rev. Patrick Bell; another, Henry Ogle, was a school-teacher. James Dobbs, an actor, invented a machine that cut artificial grain on the stage. And a machinist named Gladstone made a reaper that also worked well until he tried it on real grain in a real field. But the exhibition of the American reaper in London did not result in its immediate adoption. There was little demand for harvesters in England fifty years ago; and in other European countries there was none at all. Farm labour was cheap--forty cents a day in England and five cents a day in Russia; and the rush of labourers into factory cities had not yet begun. In the years following 1851, the American reaper did, however, become popular among the very rich. It became the toy of kings and titled landowners. By 1864 Europe was buying our farm machinery to the extent of $600,000. This was less than she buys to-day in a week; but it was a beginning. Several foreign manufacturers began at this time to make reapers, notably in Toronto, Sheffield, Paris, and Hamburg. This competition spurred on the American reaper agents, who were already taking advantage of the interest shown by royalty in the American reaper. And from the close of the Civil War on, there was an exciting race, generally neck and neck, between Cyrus H. McCormick, Sr., and Walter A. Wood, to see who could vanquish the most of these foreign imitators, and bag the greatest number of kings and nobilities. It was a contest that not only resulted in the triumph of the American reaper, but also brought the Reaper Kings recognition and reputation abroad. In 1867 both McCormick and Wood were decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III.; and later they stood side by side to receive the Imperial Cross from the hand of the Austrian emperor. Hundreds of medals and honours were showered upon these two inventor mechanics; and the French Academy of Science, in a blaze of Gallic enthusiasm, elected McCormick one of its members, because he had "done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." Many and strange were the exploits of the American Reaper Kings at the courts and royal farms of the real kings. Unable to speak any language but their own, unused to pomp and pageantry, breezily independent in the American fashion, the Reaper Kings plunged from adventure to adventure, absolutely indifferent to everything but their reapers and success. "There is to be a trial of reapers at Rome next June," wrote David M. Osborne, a New Yorker who began to export reapers to Europe in 1862. "Think of invading the sacred precincts of that ancient place with Yankee harvesters. We will wake up the dry bones of these old countries, and civilise and Christianise them with our farm machinery." C. W. Marsh, inventor of the Marsh Harvester, made a sensational début in Hungary in 1870. Several grand dukes had arranged for a great contest of the various sorts of reapers on one of the royal farms in Hungary, so that the Minister of Agriculture might take notice. When the day arrived, there were nine reapers at the farm, mostly of European design. Marsh's strange-looking machine seemed to be a combination of reaper and workbench. But ten minutes after the contest began, Marsh had the race won. His machine was a new type, the forerunner of the modern self-binder. It was so made that two men could stand upon it and bind the grain as fast as it was cut. But on this occasion Marsh could hire no farmer to help him and was obliged to do the work alone. The judges were stunned with amazement, therefore, when they found that he had bound three-quarters of an acre in twenty-eight minutes. Here was a man who could do in half an hour what few Hungarian peasants could finish in less than a day! "He is an athlete," said one. "A wizard," said another. Before they could recover from their astonishment, Marsh had stored his harvester, pocketed the prize of forty golden ducats, and hurried away to his hotel, eager for a bath and a chance to pick the thistles out of his hands. But the grand dukes and miscellaneous dignitaries were not to be escaped so easily. An officer in gorgeous uniform was sent to find Marsh and bring him forthwith to the main dining-hall of the city. Here a banquet was prepared, and a throng of high personages sat down, with Marsh at the head of the table, cursing his luck and nursing his sore fingers. At the close of the banquet, amid great applause, a medal was pinned upon his coat, and the whole assemblage hushed to hear his reply. Now Marsh, like two-thirds of the Reaper Kings, could no more make a speech than walk a rope. On only one previous occasion had he faced an audience, and that was at the age of twelve, when he had recited a scrap from the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" at a school entertainment. As he rose to his feet, this poetic fragment came into his mind; and so, half in fun and half in desperation, Marsh assumed the pose of a Demosthenes and addressed the banqueters as follows: "O Caledonia! Stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood, Land of my sires! What mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand!" "That was the first and only speech of my life," said Mr. Marsh, when I saw him in his home as DeKalb, where he has retired from business. "But it certainly established my reputation as an orator in that region of Hungary." At one famous competition near Paris, in 1879, three reapers were set to work in fields of equal size. The French reaper led off and finished in seventy-two minutes. The English reaper followed and lumbered through in sixty-six minutes. Then came the American machine, and when it swept down its stretch of grain in twenty-two minutes, the judges were inclined to doubt either their watches or their eyesight. Another of these tournaments, which also did much to advertise the United States as the only genuine and original reaper country, took place on an English estate in 1880. There was only one American reaper in the race, and in appearance it was the clown of the circus. The ship that carried it had been wrecked on the Irish coast, so that when it arrived the machine was rusted and dingy. Cyrus H. McCormick, Jr., had it in charge. He was then a youth of twenty-one, and equally ready for an adventure or a sale. There was no time to repaint and polish the machine, so he resolved to convert its forlorn appearance into an asset. "Oil her up so she'll run like a watch," he said to his experts. "But don't improve her looks. If you find any paint, scrape it off. And go and hire the smallest, scrubbiest, toughest pair of horses you can find." The next day five or six foreign reapers were on hand, each glittering with newness and drawn by a stately team of big Norman horses. The shabby American reaper arrived last, and met a shout of ridicule as it rolled into its place. But in the race, "Old Rusty," as the spectators called it, swept ahead of the others as though it were an enchanted chariot, winning the gold medal and an enviable prestige among British farmers. In Germany, as in England, the reaper was introduced into general use through royalty. This was in 1871, when a New York Reaper King named Byron E. Huntley gave the German emperor and empress their first view of harvesting on the American plan. The exhibition took place in a grain-field that lay near the royal residence at Potsdam. At first, the empress watched the machine from a window; but soon she became so keenly interested that she went into the field to study it at closer range. "I admire you Americans," she said to the delighted Huntley. "You are so deft--so ingenious, to make a machine like this." The present Emperor of Germany is not merely interested in American harvesters; he is an enthusiast. On several occasions he has held harvester matinées for the benefit of his cabinet ministers, so that they could see with their own eyes the superiority of machinery to hand-labour. The first of these matinées was given on one of the Kaiser's farms, near the ancient city of Bonn, in 1896; and I was told the story by Sam Dennis, the Illinois Irishman who was in charge of the harvester. Dennis arranged a contest between his one machine and forty Polish women who cut the grain with old-fashioned sickles. As soon as the emperor and his retinue had arrived, all on horseback, a signal was given and the strange race began. On one side of the field were the forty women, bent and browned by many a day's toil under the hot sun. On the other side was Sam Dennis, sitting on his showy harvester. "Get ap!" said Dennis to the big German horses, and the grain fell in a wide swath over the clicking knife, swept upward on the canvas elevator into the swift steel arms and fingers, and was flung to the ground in a fusillade of sheaves, each bound tightly with a knotted string. [Illustration: AMERICAN SELF-BINDERS ON THE ESTATE OF PRESIDENT FALLIERES, IN FRANCE] The emperor was radiant with delight. Being somewhat of an expert himself, he rode here and there and showed, with many gestures, the differences between the old way and the new. Some of the grain had been blown down. Nothing but a sickle could cut it, in the belief, at that time, of the average German farmer. On the contrary, as the emperor pointed out to his ministers, the harvester was raising the fallen grain and cutting it without the waste of a handful while the women were trampling much of it under their bare feet, as they jostled one another in the stubbled field. Most wonderful of all, the one machine was soon seen to be doing more work than the whole mob of women drudges. The field had been evenly divided before the race began, and there was some wheat still uncut on the women's side when Sam Dennis said "Whoa!" to his horses, and condescended to enter into a free and easy conversation with the distinguished onlookers. For the forty Polish women, the new harvester meant a better life finally, although at the time they hated the red monster of a machine that was about to take their jobs. In payment for the long, sweating work of the harvest-field they received only twenty-five cents a day. Probably what some of those women did, when they saw themselves displaced, was to buy a steerage ticket to the country where the red harvester was made; at any rate I found two thousand women in the harvester factories of Chicago, earning $9 a week, and most of them, as it happened, were Polish. Even Bismarck, the grim old unifier of Germany, yielded to general opinion a short time before his death, and bought an American self-binder. I was told of the incident by C. H. Haney, who made the sale, and who is to-day the head of the Foreign Department of the Harvester Company. "Bismarck sat in his carriage," said Haney, "but he ordered his driver to follow the harvester as closely as possible. He looked very old and feeble. For quite a while he watched me operating the machine. Then he made a sign to me to stop." "Let me see the thing that ties the knot," he said. "I took off the knotter and brought it to his carriage. With a piece of string I showed him how the mechanism worked, and gave him a bound sheaf, so that he could see a knot that had been tied by the machine. The old man studied it for some time. Then he asked me--'Can these machines be made in Germany?' "'No, your Excellency,' I said. 'They can be made only in America.' "'Well,' said Bismarck, speaking very good English, 'you Yankees are ingenious fellows. This is a wonderful machine.'" When Loubet was President of France, he and Seth Low, of New York, were walking together over the President's estate. Loubet pointed to a reaper which was being driven through a yellow wheat-field. "Do you see that machine?" he remarked. "I bought it from an American company in 1870, and I have used it in every harvest since that time. I have four of those machines now, and I want to say to you that they are the most useful articles that come to us from the United States. I am stating no more than the simple truth when I tell you that without American harvesters, France would starve." In still other countries the American reaper has been popular with kings and potentates. The Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of Persia each bought one during the Chicago World's Fair. And the young King of Spain, who ordered a mower in 1903, narrowly escaped being minced up by its knives. Being an impulsive youth, he gave a cry of joy at sight of the handsome machine, sprang upon the seat, and lashed the horses without first laying hold of the reins. The horses leaped, and the seventeen-year-old Alphonso went sprawling. Twenty workmen ran to his help, and one level-headed American mechanic caught the reins; so the worst penalty that the boy king had to pay for his recklessness was a tumble and a bad scare. In Russia, the Czar and the grand dukes at first bought reapers partly as toys and partly as strike-breakers. If the labourers on their estates demanded more pay than fifty cents a week, the manager would drive them in a body to his barn, then throw open the doors and show them five or six red harvesters. "Do you see these American machines?" he would say. "Unless you go back to work at the same wages, I will reap the grain with these machines, and you will have no work at all, and no money." A look at these machine-devils has usually sent the cowed serfs back to their sickles. But here and there it has set them to wondering whether or not a fifty-cent-a-week job was worth having, and so has given them an A B C lesson in American doctrines. [Illustration: KING ALPHONSO OF SPAIN DRIVING AN AMERICAN SEEDER] Many of the Russian nobility, too, have begun to learn a trifle about democracy from the American harvester agents. There is a certain young baron, for example, whose estate is not far from Riga. Last year, to be in fashion, he bought a Chicago self-binder. When it arrived, there came with it, as usual, an expert mechanic to set it up and start it in the field. In this case, the mechanic was a big German-American named Lutfring, born in Wisconsin, of "Forty Eighter" stock. The baron was evidently impressed by the manly and dignified bearing of Lutfring, who stood erect while the native workmen were bowing and cringing in obeisance. And when Lutfring said to him, "Now, Baron Hahn, we are all barons in my country, but you'll pardon me if I do this work in my shirt-sleeves," the baron was so taken by surprise that he offered to hold Lutfring's coat. Half an hour later he was at work himself, doing physical labour for the first time in his life. And when the harvester had been well launched upon its sea of yellow grain, he took Lutfring--the baron from Wisconsin--to dinner with him in the castle, and spent the greater part of the afternoon showing him the family portraits. From such beginnings the harvester has advanced, to make in Russia the greatest conquests it has achieved anywhere. More business is now being done in the land of the Czar than was done with the whole world in 1885. One recent shipment, so large as to break all records, was carried from Chicago to New York on 3,000 freight-cars, and transferred to a chartered fleet of nine steam-ships, $5,000,000 worth of hunger-insurance. During the Russo-Japanese War a striking incident occurred that showed the respect of the government for American harvesters. Several troop-trains that were on their way to the front were suddenly side-tracked, to make way for a long freight train, loaded with heavy boxes. The war generals and grand dukes in charge of the troops were furious. Why should their trains be pushed to one side and delayed, to expedite a mere consignment of freight? They telegraphed their indignation to St. Petersburg, and received a reply from Count Witte. "The freight train must pass," he said. "It is loaded with American harvesters. _It means bread._" As a result of this attitude, there are now some provinces in southern Russia where not even Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson would find much fault with the farming. I have secured the figures for the Province of Kuban, in the Caucasus. Here there are 3,500 thrashing-machines, 5,000 grain-drills, 37,000 harvesters, 50,000 harrows, 70,000 grain-cleaners, and 65,000 cultivators. This is a region where, one generation ago, were only the wooden plough, the sickle, and the flail. There is, to be sure, still a dense mass of Russians whose yearly habit it is to wait until their wheat is dead ripe, then in a few days of frantic labour to cut down half of it with sickles, leaving the rest to rot in the fields. And in one Caucasian province, richer in its soil than Iowa, it is the custom of the wandering natives to move every three years to a new tract of land, in order to avoid the trouble of fertilising the soil. "I have seen farmers ploughing in Russia with a piece of board," said one agent. "And I have seen their thrashing done by the feet of oxen." But the new idea has been planted and is growing. "Russia is the land of to-morrow," said another expert. "We have been educating the farmers there for seventeen years, yet we have only scratched the surface. We who have lived among the Russian peasants expect great things from them." They have succeeded, then, in their campaign for the supremacy of the American reaper--the Reaper Kings who enlisted the crowned heads and the nobility of Europe in their service. By 1899 Europe was a customer at our farm machinery factories to the extent of twelve millions a year. This figure was doubled in 1906, and is now increasing by leaps and bounds. All told, this one industry has brought us $150,000,000 of foreign money in less than fifty years. Europe has sent us emigrants--twenty-five million in the past seventy-five years. But we have more than replaced them with labour-saving farm machinery. There were in 1907 as many American harvesters in Europe as would do the work of eleven million men. If our foreign trade goes ahead at its present rate of speed, we shall soon have Europe hopelessly in our debt, in this exchange of men for machinery. In the past four years, for instance, Europe has sent us less than four million emigrants, but we have sent to Europe, in that time, enough agricultural automata to equal the labour of five million men. And this means much to Europe. What with her 4,500,000 soldiers and her 4,000,000 public officials, she has to serve more than twenty-five million meals a day to men who are non-producers. She has to clothe and house these governmental millions and their families. How could she do this if it were not for the eleven million man-power of her American harvesters, and the half billion bushels of reaper-wheat that she can buy from other countries? France must have our harvesters because she has been short of men since the wars of Napoleon. She has half a million soldiers and nine-tenths of a million officials. Even now, with harvesters clicking merrily in all their largest grain-fields, she and Germany cannot feed themselves. Spain at one time exported wheat, but at present is buying 10,000,000 bushels a year. England grows less than a quarter as much as will feed her people. And Russia would be famine-swept from end to end, in spite of her 30,000,000 farmers and her illimitable acres, if she had to depend wholly upon the sickle and the scythe. But the story is by no means ended with Europe. To-day the sun never sets and the season never closes for American harvesters. They are reaping the fields of Argentina in January, Upper Egypt in February, East India in March, Mexico in April, China in May, Spain in June, Iowa in July, Canada in August, Sweden in September, Norway in October, South Africa in November, and Burma in December. It is always harvest somewhere. The ripple of the ripened grain goes round the world and the American harvester follows it. Even from this incomplete list one may begin to understand how tremendous is the task that the International Harvester Company has assumed in undertaking to cater to the farmers of fifty countries--to adapt itself to their various customs. In Holland, for instance, where the grass is short and thick, a mower must cut as close as a barber's clippers; and in Denmark, where moss grows under the grass, it must cut so high as to leave the moss untouched. The careful Germans of Wisconsin will buy a light harvester, such as the "Milwaukee"; but in Argentina a light machine would be racked into junk in a season. The Argentinians, having raised cattle for generations, rush to the harvest in cowboy fashion. It is the joy of their lives to hitch six or eight horses to a big "header," crack the long whip, and dash at full gallop over the rough ground. There are small horses in Russia, big ones in France, oxen in India, and camels in Siberia, and the harvesters must be adapted to each. Certain backward countries demand a reaper without a reel. Australia must have a monster machine called a "stripper," which combs off the heads of the grain. California and Argentina, because of their dry climate, can use "headers," a combination of reaper and thrashing-machine. And so the American harvester has become a citizen of the world, adopting the national dress of each country. The men who are dealing hand to hand with these problems are no longer the Reaper Kings, personally introducing their harvesters through royalty and nobility. These have been succeeded by an army of fifteen hundred American harvester experts. They are all salaried, most of them by the "International"; and their work is to put the farmers of the world to school. They are the teachers of a stupendous kindergarten. As an example of the rapidity with which they are sometimes able to teach, take the Philippines. Nine years ago the Filipinos spent nothing whatever for farming machinery; in 1905 they bought $90,000 worth. Even yet, however, they do not raise enough rice to feed themselves; and although half of them are farmers, only one-twentieth of their land is cultivated. [Illustration: BISMARCK HAVING HIS FIRST VIEW OF AN AMERICAN SELF-BINDER] "Many of our agents are now living in Siberia with their families," said C. S. Funk, the General Manager of the International. "They are teaching the mujiks to grow wheat and harvest it. We have similar missionaries in South Africa and South America and most of the countries of the world. Some of them have gone as far as water and rail would carry them, and have then crossed the mountains with their machinery on the backs of mules, so that they might teach the natives how to farm on the American plan. All told, we have more than a thousand such missionaries in foreign countries." In Chicago, I met two of the leaders who are in control of this army of teachers. One was a strong-faced young Illinoisan named Couchman, who handles several nations from Hamburg; and the other was a courteous commercial diplomat named La Porte, who supervises France, Spain, Italy, and Northern Africa from his office in Paris. Each is in charge of several hundred American mechanics, who are exiled from home for the sake of our harvester trade. No renown comes to these men. No medals are pinned upon their coats. They are only one regiment in the great pay-envelope army of American mechanics. But they are on the firing-line of the greatest battle against ignorance and famine that has ever been fought. They are the pioneers of the new farmer. To show the world's peasantry how to work with brains and machinery, to bring them up to the American farmer's level--that is their task. What could be more essentially American, or more profitable to the human race? Many European farmers, of course, are easily up to the Kansas level; but the vast majority have been mistaught that the path of the farmer must forever be watered with sweat. Many of them are so cramped by the shackles of drudgery that they cannot even conceive of the value of leisure. "Why don't you use a scythe? Then you could cut twice as much," said Horace Greeley, who was deeply interested in farm machinery and agriculture, to a French peasant. The peasant scratched his head. This was a new idea. "Because," he answered stodgily, "I haven't got twice as much to cut." The quick, handy ways of American farmers are seldom found in other countries. A Swiss will put a big stone upon a land-roller, to give it weight, and then walk behind it. To ride on the roller himself does not occur to him. A South German will usually take the reel off his reaper, and handle the grain by hand. Operating five levers is too great a tax upon his mind. An Argentinian wastes his pesos by hiring drivers--one on the seat and another astride one of the horses. "A Spanish farmer sent for me on one occasion," an expert told me, "and I found him in great trouble. He had bought a new harvester, and put it together _inside_ his barn, which had only one narrow door. He had to choose between taking the machine to pieces and pulling his barn down." Next to Russia, in the list of countries that this army of experts has won to the harvester, comes Canada. Like the trek of the Boers into the Transvaal, and of the Japanese into Korea, there has been a trek of three hundred thousand American farmers into Western Canada--into the new forty-bushel-to-the-acre wheat-land of Alberta. Most of these emigrants were Minnesotans and Dakotans; therefore they are not poor. They carried two hundred millions across the border. And they are now uprearing a harvester-based civilisation in a vast region that will probably some day have a population of twenty-five million people. That billiard-table country--Argentina--stands third among the foreign patrons of our Harvester Kings. As a wheat nation it is little older than Alberta. It was only about eighteen years ago, after three centuries of revolution, that Argentina settled down to raise wheat and be good. To-day the Argentinians raise more wheat than Germany, and their country has become a land of milk and honey. It is a South American Minnesota, but eleven times larger, made fertile by the slow-moving Platte River--a hundred miles wide when it reaches the sea--which moves through its plains like an irrigating canal. The fourth in rank of our harvester buyers is Australia, which is now sending a yearly tribute of more than a million to the International Company. This profitable reciprocity between Chicago and the island continent was greatly furthered when the International bought the sixty-five-acre Osborne plant, at Auburn, New York, which had been remarkably successful in its Australian, as well as its French, trade. [Illustration: AN AMERICAN HARVESTER AT WORK IN ARGENTINA] Ride along any of the historic roadways of the world and you will see the painted automata from Chicago. "On the road to Mandalay," and along the Appian Way, and the trail of death that marks the flight of Napoleon from Moscow, you will find these indispensable machines. They are cutting grass and wheat on the battle-fields of Austerlitz and Sedan and Waterloo. Scutari, near the Adriatic Sea, bars out foreign machinery by law; but Roumania has been using our reapers and mowers for more than fifteen years. Once in a while a reaper is sent over the Andes on muleback; or into Central China via the wheelbarrow express. And now that there are irrigation pumps at the base of the Sphinx, that ancient female, who has been staring at sand-hills for three thousand years may soon look across yellow fields in which American binders are clicking cheerfully. They are for sale, too, in the holy cities of Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Benares--almost everywhere but Lhasa, the sacred capital of Tibet. So far as I can learn, not one harvesting machine of any kind has entered that land of mystery and superstition. In a few other countries harvesters are not numerous. Very few have been sold or will be in Japan. Here are the smallest farms in the world. A fork and a pair of scissors would seem much more appropriate implements for such tiny plots. Take the whole arable area of Japan, multiply it by three, and you will have only the state of Illinois. In India, where a family "lives" on fifty cents a week, where one acre makes three farms and an entire farm outfit means no more than a ten-dollar bill, a harvester is still almost as great a curiosity as an Indian tiger is to us. One of the harvester agents told me of a rich Hindoo who bought a complete set of American farm machines, and had them set in a row near his house, apparently regarding them only as curios from a foreign land. They have never been used, and a mob of starving labourers reap his grain by hand within sight of his idle machines. There are few harvesters in Asia Minor, where farmers live almost like groundhogs--a whole family in one windowless hut of burnt clay. And there are fewer still in Africa, where five million idle acres of fertile land will some day be made to work for the human race. But since the formation of the big Chicago company, every foreign nation is being reached and taught to throw away its reaping-hooks and to cut its grain in a civilised way. There is now practically no great city anywhere in which a farmer cannot buy one of the handsome red harvesters that have done so much to give a "full dinner-pail" to the civilized nations. "The world is mine oyster," says the International Harvester Company. In the first five years of its career, it has sent to foreign countries 920,000 harvesters of all sorts, for which it has been paid $70,000,000. It has doubled its foreign sales and now makes two-third of the harvesters of the world. What with the profits, and the big orders, and the medals, and the appreciation of monarchs, the Harvester men have found their foreign trade from the first a business _de luxe_. In fact, one of the principal reasons why they quit fighting was that they might handle this world commerce in an organised way. To-day they are not battling with one another on the royal farms of Europe, like gladiators who make sport for emperors. There is more business and less adventure. They have a geography of their own, and have divided the whole world into eight provinces. The "Domestic" Department of the International comprises the United States and Canada and is managed from Chicago. Central Europe, with Russia and Siberia, has its headquarters at Hamburg; Western Europe and Northern Africa are handled from Paris; Great Britain is directed from London; South America from Buenos Ayres; Australia from Melbourne; New Zealand from Christchurch; and Mexico from Mexico City. Such is the commercial empire that has its seat at the foot of Lake Michigan. Other countries can sell us automobiles and bric-a-brac. They may even get over our tariff wall with hay and cotton and steel and lumber. But they have never dared to try to sell us farm machinery. Every harvester in the United States was made at home. [Illustration: GATHERING IN A FINLAND HARVEST] Either one of the two immense harvester plants of Chicago is larger than the combined plants of England, Germany, and France. France, recently, made a brilliant dash toward success in the harvester business. M. Racquet, a journalist, built a great factory at Amiens. He bought the best American machinery. He allied himself with a savings bank and sold stock to the farmers. He was protected by a high tariff. But, alas for his eloquent prospectus! His selling force was too small. His American machinery made more reapers in a month than he could sell in a year. And in 1904 he fell into bankruptcy under a debt of ten million francs. An American harvester is practically above competition in foreign countries, and commands an exceptional price. As for tariffs, there is a wide open door in Great Britain, Holland, Norway, Bulgaria, Brazil, Servia, and South Germany. But there is a toll-gate fee of $25 per harvester in Hungary, and $20 in France; and for lack of a commercial treaty, the tax has lately been increased in part of Germany, in Hungary, Switzerland, and Rumania. The harvester companies feel that they have a substantial grievance against a government that allows them to be not only hazed and harried at home by tariffs on raw material, but driven out of foreign markets as well. "The whole world is doing business on a single street to-day," said one harvester maker; "but the trouble is that there are two hundred tariff toll-gates along that street." In self-defence, against these tariffs, the "International" has been forced to build two foreign factories, one in Canada and one in Sweden. The Swedish plant is a small affair as yet, making rakes and mowers only; but the Canadian enterprise supports one-tenth of the city of Hamilton, and holds about half the Canadian trade. Its worst vexation, so far as I can tell from a hasty visit, is a lack of Canadian raw materials. Its chains, bolts, nuts, and canvas aprons come from Chicago, its steel and coal from Pittsburg, and three-fourths of its lumber from the Southern states. The country that perhaps most disturbs the dreams of our harvester companies, is as far as possible from being one of the great nations. It is scarcely a country at all--only a scrap of coral reef uprisen at the foot of Mexico--Yucatan. Yet this is the land on which the United States depends for binder twine. Manila fibre we can now get from our new co-Americans--the Filipinos; but there is never enough of it to supply the millions of self-binders. Only sisal-hemp yields abundantly enough. And Yucatan is the only spot in the world where sisal can be grown in commercial quantities. Yucatan is smaller than South Carolina, with not quite the population of Milwaukee. It was once the poorest of the Central American states; but since the arrival of the twine-binder it has become the richest. It sells from fifteen to eighteen million dollars' worth of sisal a year, and the United States buys it all. _Three-fourths of this money is clear profit; and it is an almost incredible fact that the forty Sisal Kings of Yucatan have a larger net income than the owners of the immense International Harvester Company._ Roughly speaking, the American farmer pays Yucatan $12,000,000 a year for string--mere string, which is used once and then flung away. It is an extortion and a waste, besides being the only un-American factor in the whole harvester business. How can we save these twelve millions and completely Americanise the trade? This is a problem that William Deering toiled at for twenty years. The Harvester Company has a solution. I saw it at St. Paul--a new factory, which twists twine from flax. A farmer's son named George H. Ellis has found a quick and cheap way to clean the flax fibre; and at the time I visited the factory there were more than three hundred workers at the spindles. Two million pound of the twine were sold in 1906, so that the enterprise is no longer an experiment. This means, probably, that the farmer of the future will grow his own twine. Instead of yielding tribute to the forty Sisal Kings of Yucatan, he will pay no more than the charges of the railroad and the factory. The flax will be his own. Yucatan is the only cheap-labour country that has been enriched by the harvester. Elsewhere it is the rule that the common people of the nation must reach a certain high level before the harvester trade can begin. Where human labour has little value, it is plainly not worth saving. [Illustration: IN THE ANCIENT FIELDS OF ALGIERS] For this reason, the harvester is the best barometer of civilisation. It cannot go where slavery and barbarism exist. It will not enter a land where the luxury of the city is built on the plunder of the men and women who work in the fields. Whoever operates a harvester must not only be intelligent: he must be free. To hundreds of millions of foreigners, the United States is known as "the country where the reapers come from." They realise, too, that farm machinery represents our type of genius, that it springs out of our national life, and comes from us as inevitably as song comes from Italy or silk from France. Why? Read the history of the United States. This was the first country, so far as we can know, where men of high intelligence went to work _en masse_ upon the soil, and under such conditions as compelled them to develop a high degree of mechanical skill. The pioneer American farmer had to be his own carpenter and blacksmith. He had to build his own house and make his own harness. Consequently, before this Farmers' Republic was two generations old, the reaper was born in the little workshop behind the barn. In the Old World every occupation stood alone and aloof. The mechanics knew nothing of the farm and the farmer knew nothing of the workshop. "Every man to his trade," said Europe, Asia, and Africa. But in the New World, where trades and classes and nationalities were flung together in a heterogenous jumble, there sprang up a race of handy, inventive farmers, set free from the habits and prejudices of their fathers. They were the first body of men who were competent to solve the problem of farm machinery. And so, the American harvester is much more than a handy device for cutting grain. It is the machine that makes democracy possible. It reaches the average man, and more--it pushes the ladder of prosperity down so far that even the farm labourer can grasp the lowest rung and climb. _It has become one of our national emblems. It is as truly and as exclusively American as the Stars and Stripes or the Declaration of Independence._ CHAPTER V THE HARVESTER AND THE AMERICAN FARMER If the American Farmer went out of business this year he could clean up thirty thousand million dollars. And he would have to sell his farm on credit; for there is not enough money in the whole world to pay him half his price. Talk of the money-mad Trusts! They might have reason to be mad if they owned the farms, instead of their watered stock. When we remember that the American Farmer earns enough in seventeen days to buy out Standard Oil, and enough in fifty days to wipe Carnegie and the Steel Trust off the industrial map, the story of the trusts seems like the "short and simple annals of the poor." One American harvest would buy the kingdom of Belgium, king and all. Two would buy Italy. Three would buy Austria-Hungary. And five, at a spot cash price, would take Russia from the Czar. Talk of swollen fortunes! With the setting of every sun, the money-box of the American Farmer bulges with the weight of twenty-four new millions. Only the most athletic imagination can conceive of such a torrent of wealth. Place your finger on the pulse of your wrist and count the heart-beats; one--two--three--four. With every four of those quick throbs, day and night, a thousand dollars clatters into the gold-bin of the American Farmer. How incomprehensible it would seem to Pericles, who saw Greece in her Golden Age, if he could know that the yearly revenue of his country is now no more than one day's pay for the men who till the soil of this infant Republic! Or, how it would amaze a resurrected Christopher Columbus, if he were told that the revenues of Spain and Portugal are not nearly as much as the earnings of the American Farmer's Hen! Merely the crumbs that drop from the Farmer's table (otherwise known as agricultural exports), have brought him in enough of foreign money since 1892, so that he could, if he wished, settle the railway problem once for all, by buying every foot of railroad in the United States. Such is our New Farmer--a man for whom there is no name in any language. He is as far above the farmer of the story-books, as a 1908 touring-car is above a jinrikisha. Instead of being an ignorant hoe-man in a barn-yard world, he gets the news by daily paper, daily mail, and telephone; and incidentally publishes seven hundred trade journals of his own. Instead of being a moneyless peasant, he pays the interest on the mortgage with the earnings of four days, and his taxes with the earnings of a week. Even this is less of an expense than it seems, for he borrows the money from himself, out of his own banks, and spends the bulk of the tax money around his own properties. Farming for a business, not for a living--this is the _motif_ of the New Farmer. He is a commercialist--a man of the twentieth century. He works as hard as the Old Farmer did, but in a higher way. He uses the four M's--Mind, Money, Machinery and Muscle; but as little of the latter as possible. Neither is he a Robinson Crusoe of the soil, as the Old Farmer was. His hermit days are over; he is a man among men. The railway, the trolley, the automobile and the top buggy have transformed him into a suburbanite. In fact, his business has become so complex and many-sided, that he touches civilisation at more points and lives a larger life than if he were one of the atoms of a crowded city. All American farmers, of course, are not of the New variety. The country, like the city, has its slums. But after having made allowance for exceptions, it is still true that the United States is the native land of the New Farmer. He is the most typical human product that this country has produced, and the most important; for, in spite of its egotistical cities, the United States is still a farm-based nation. There could be no cloth-mills without the wool and cotton of the farm; no sugar factories without beets; no flour-mills without wheat; no beef-packing industry without cattle. The real business that is now swinging the whole nation ahead is not the ping-pong traffic of the Stock Exchanges, but the steady output of twenty millions a day from the fields and barn-yards. If this farm output were to be cut off, the towering skyscrapers would fall and the gay palace-hotels would be as desolate as the temple of Thebes. The brain-working farmer is the man behind prosperity. That is the Big Fact of recent American history. It is he who pays the bills and holds up the national structure in the whirlwind hour of panic. Last year, for instance, while banks were tumbling, the non-hysterical farmer was quietly gathering in a crop that was worth three times all the bank capital in the United States; and since 1902 he and his soil have produced as much new wealth as would support Uncle Sam, at his present rate of living, for fifty years. What was called "McKinley Prosperity" was really created by the agricultural boom of 1897. There had been a general crop failure in Europe, and the price of wheat had soared above a dollar a bushel. Other nations paid us twelve hundred millions for farm products; and this unparalleled inpouring of foreign money made us the richest and busiest nation in the world. The supreme fact about the American Farmer is that he has always been just as intelligent and important as anyone else in the Republic. He put fourteen of his sons in the White House; and he did his full share of the working and fighting and thinking and inventing, all the way down from George Washington to James Wilson. He climbed up by self-help. He got no rebates, nor franchises, nor subsidies. The free land that was given him was worthless until he took it; and he has all along been more hindered than helped by the meddling of public officials. His best friend has been the maker of farm-machinery. But this is a family matter. Four-fifths of the Harvester Kings were farmers' sons; and the biggest harvester factory is only a development of the small workshop that always stood beside the barn. There are no two men who are more closely linked together by the ties of blood and business than the farmer and the man who makes his labour-saving machines. Neither one can hurt the other without doing injury to himself. The inventor of the modern plough, Jethro Wood, was a wealthy Quaker farmer of New York--a man of such masterful intelligence as to count Clay and Webster among his friends. The late James Oliver, and David Bradley, one of his greatest competitors, were born and bred near the furrowed soil. McCormick built his first reaper in a blacksmith shop on a farm. So did John F. Sieberling, William N. Whiteley, Lewis Miller and C. W. Marsh. And the man who owned the first of the reaper factories, Dayton S. Morgan, grew up amid the stumps of a New York farm. The American Farmer has always grown _ideas_, as well as corn and potatoes. That is the secret of his prosperity. It was out in the wheat-fields where the idea of a self-binder flashed upon the brain of John F. Appleby; where Jacob Miller learned to improve the thresher and George Esterley to build the header and Joseph F. Glidden to invent barb-wire. Before 1850 there was some progress among farmers, but it was as slow as molasses in Alaska. They were free and independent, and little else. They had poor homes, poor farms, poor implements. Then came the gold-rush to California. What this event did for farmers and the world can scarcely be exaggerated. It opened up the prairies, fed the hungry banks with money, lured the farm labourers westward, and compelled the farmers to use machinery. Three years later the Crimean War sent the price of wheat soaring, and the farmers had a jubilee of prosperity. Away went the log-cabin, the ox-cart, the grain-cradle, and the flail. In came the frame house, the spring buggy, the reaper, and the thresher. The farmers began to buy labour-saving devices. Better still, they began to invent them. There is one farm-bred man, named R. C. Haskins, in the Harvester Building in Chicago, who, in his thirty years of salesmanship, has supervised the selling of $275,000,000 worth of harvesters to American farmers. And as for the amount of money represented by our farm machinery of all kinds, now in use, it is very nearly a billion dollars--a total that no other nation can touch. To measure American Farmers by the census is now an outgrown method, for the reason that each farmer works with the power of five men. The farm has become a factory. Four-fifths of its work is done by machinery, which explains how we can produce one-fifth of the wheat of the world, half of the cotton, and three-fourths of the corn, although we are only six per cent. of the human race. The genie who built Aladdin's palace in a night was the champion hustler of the fairy tale countries. But he was not so tremendously superior to the farm labourer who takes a can of gasolene and cuts fifty cords of wood in a day, or to the man who milks a herd of sixty cows in two hours, by machinery. To-day farming is not a drudgery. Rather it is a race--an exciting rivalry between the different States. For years Illinois and Iowa have run neck and neck in the raising of corn and oats. Minnesota carries the blue ribbon for wheat, with Kansas breathless in second place. California has shot to the front in the barley race. Texas and Louisiana are tied in the production of rice. Kentucky is the tobacco champion; and New York holds the record for hay and potatoes. To see the New Farmer at his best, I went to Iowa. No other State has invested so much money--sixty millions--in labour-saving machinery, so it can fairly claim to be the zenith of the farming world. Here there are twenty thousand women and three hundred thousand men who have made farming a profession. They are producing wealth at the rate of five hundred millions a year, nearly sixteen hundred dollars apiece. How? By throwing the burden of drudgery upon machines. Iowa is not so old; she will be sixty-two, this year. She is not so large; little England is larger. Yet, with her hog-money she could pay the salaries of all the monarchs of Europe; and with one year's corn crop she could buy out the "Harvester Trust," or build three New York Subways. When the Indians sold Iowa to Uncle Sam they got about eight cents an acre. To give the price exactly, to a cent, it was $2,877,547.87. When this money was paid, there were statesmen who protested that it was too much. Yet this amount was less than the Iowans got for last year's colts; it was less than one quarter of the value of the eggs in last years nests. Every three months, the Iowa hen pays for Iowa. Through the courtesy of Mr. Harlan, of the Des Moines Historical Society, I obtained the addresses of nine old settlers, who went into Iowa with ox-carts, before 1850, and who are still living. I found that every one of them had remained on the land and was prosperous. The poorest owned $7,000, the richest $96,000; and their average wealth was $36,000. These fortunes are not made, as in France, by sacrificial economies. The Iowan is noted as a high liver and a good spender. Here, for instance, is the menu of a chance supper I enjoyed at the home of an Iowa farmer, nine miles from Des Moines: Mashed potatoes, poached eggs, hot biscuits, white bread, fresh butter, honey, jelly, peaches and cream, gooseberry pie, and good coffee--all served on china, with fine linen tablecloth and napkins. The man of the house was the son of a rack-rented Irish immigrant, who had been reared "on potatoes and salt, mostly." I found one young county, born since the Civil War, in which five thousand farmers now own property worth seventy-five millions. They have fourteen thousand horses, seventeen thousand sheep, sixty thousand cattle, and ninety thousand hogs. In the furnishing of the homes in this county, so its Auditor informs me, more than twenty-five thousand dollars have been spent on the one item of pianos. In a small, out-of-the-way town, called Ames, I came upon a farmers' college--a veritable Harvard of the soil. Here, on a thousand acres which fed the wild deer and buffalo in the days of Andrew Jackson, is a college that equals Princeton and Vassar combined, in the number of its pupils. Its farm machinery building is the largest of its kind. Five professors are in charge, and it is a curious fact, showing how new the New Farmer is, that these professors are obliged to teach without a text-book. As yet, there is no such thing in the world as a text-book on farm machinery. The Iowans pay half a million dollars a year to sustain this college. They pay it cheerfully. They pay it with a hurrah. Why? Because it is the biggest money-maker in the State. One little professor, named Holden--the smallest of the whole hundred and forty, is revered by the Iowans as a King Midas of the cornfield. He has shown them how to grow ten bushels more per acre, by using a better quality of seed. This one _idea_, in a State where every fourth dollar is a corn dollar, meant an extra twenty millions last year. First in corn, first in farm machinery, and first in the number of her banks! That is Iowa. There are a few of her villages that have no banks, but they are conscious of their disgrace. They feel naked and ashamed. In all, there are as many banks as post-offices, very nearly; and they are crammed with enough wealth to build three Panama Canals. "Money is a trifle tight just now," said an Iowa banker. This was last September. "You see, at this time of year, the farm labourers cause a drain on the currency by keeping their wages in their pockets." This surprising fact did not seem surprising to the banker. He was himself bred on the soil--the son of a farm-hand who had become a rich farmer. But to the financiers of Europe, what an incredible thing is this--that the wages of the farm-labourers should sway the money market up and down. The pride of Iowa is Des Moines, a city of farm-bred people. It is so young that some of its old men remember when wolf-hunting was good where its one skyscraper stands to-day. It has no ancient history and no souvenirs. A little while ago a lot of industrious people came here poor, and now they are prosperous and still busy--that is the story of Des Moines in a sentence. In the main hall of the five-domed Capitol at Des Moines is a life-sized painting of a prairie wagon, hauled by oxen. In such a rude conveyance as this most of the early settlers rolled into Iowa, at a gait of two miles an hour. But there are no prairie wagons now, nor oxen. Ten thousand miles of railway criss-cross the State, and make more profit in three months than all the railways of ancient India made last year. Instead of being tax-ridden serfs, these Iowans pay the total self-governing cost of their Commonwealth by handing over the price of the summer's hay. Instead of being the prey of money-lenders, they have made Des Moines the Hartford of the West, in which forty-two insurance companies carry a risk of half a billion. And so, in each one of its details, the story of these Corn Kings is staggering to a mere city-dweller, especially to anyone who has cold storage ideas about farmers. Big Men, too, as well as big corn, are grown in Iowa. Here is a sample group--half educators and half statesmen--John B. Grinnell, Henry Smith Williams, Albert Shaw, Newell Dwight Hillis, Carl Snyder, Emerson Hough, Hamlin Garland, Senators Allison and Dolliver, Leslie M. Shaw, John A. Kasson, Horace Boies, Governor Albert B. Cummins and our Official Farmer--James Wilson. There are now fifteen hundred newspaper men in Iowa. (One of them ships seven carloads of magazines a month.) There are three hundred and fifty architects, two thousand engineers, five thousand doctors, three thousand bankers and brokers, and thirty thousand teachers. These amazing changes have taken place within the memory of men and women who are now alive. "I can remember when the first mowing-machine was made in our county," said Governor Cummins, who is still far from being a man of years. "I walked eight miles through the forest and sold eggs for three cents a dozen and butter for four cents a pound," said John Cownie--a well-known figure at the Des Moines Capitol. One short half-century, and here is the whole paraphernalia of a high civilisation--a fruitage which has usually required the long cultivation of a thousand years. And Iowa is not a freak State. A traveller hears the same story--from ox-cart to automobile, in almost every region of the prairie West. The various States are only patches of one vast grassy plain where "painted harvesters, fleet after fleet, Like yachts, career through seas of waving wheat." "My first experience with the 'New Farmer,' as you call him, was in Texas," said a Kansas City business man. "I had taken an agency for harvesters in a section of Texas that was bigger than several dozen Vermonts, and I made my headquarters in a town called Amarillo. The first morning I went into the bank to get acquainted. While I was there in came a big, roughly dressed man. 'Come here, Bill,' said the banker. 'Maybe you want some farm machinery.' "'Maybe I do,' said the big fellow; so I gave him a catalogue and went on talking with the banker. "Ten minutes later the big fellow looked up from the catalogue and asked--'How much do you want for ten of these binders?' I nearly had a spell of heart failure, but I gasped the price. He said--'all right; send 'em along.' "'Don't you worry about Bill's credit,' said the banker, seeing I looked dazed. 'He has more than $100,000 in this bank right now.' "This was my cue to get busy with the big farmer, and before he left the bank he had bought a thresher, four traction engines and half a dozen ploughs." Harvesting by machinery has actually become cheaper than the ancient method of harvesting by slaves. This surprising fact was first brought to the notice of Europeans during the Chicago World's Fair, when forty-seven foreign Commissioners were taken to the immense Dalrymple farm in North Dakota. Here they saw a wheat-field very nearly a hundred square miles in extent, with three hundred self-binders clicking out the music of the harvest. There were no serfs--no drudges--no barefooted women. And yet they were told that the labour-cost of reaping the wheat was LESS THAN A CENT A BUSHEL. It has now become impossible to reap the world's wheat by hand. As well might we try to carry coal from mines to factories in baskets. Merely to have gathered in our own cereal and hay of last year's growing, would have been a ten days' job for every man and woman in the United States, between the ages of twenty and twenty-six. But even if it had been possible to return to hand-labour, in the production of the world's wheat, the extra cost would have swollen, last year, to a total of $330,000,000--so I am told by a Wisconsin professor who has made a careful study of the costs of harvesting. This amount is more than equal to the entire revenue of the International Harvester Company, in the five years of its existence. Roughly speaking, the time needed to handle an acre of wheat has been reduced from sixty-one hours to three, by the use of machinery. Hay now requires four hours, instead of twenty-one; oats seven hours, instead of sixty-six; and potatoes thirty-eight hours, instead of one hundred and nine. It is machinery that has so vastly increased the size of the average American farm. In India, where a farmer's whole outfit can be bought for ten dollars, the average farm is half an acre or less. In France and Germany it is five acres. In England it is nine. But in the United States--the home of farm machinery, it is one hundred and fifty acres. Very little has been written about this stupendous prosperity of American farmers. Why? Because it is so recent. The Era of Big Profits began barely ten years ago. There was a time when the blue-ribbon New Farmer was the man who grew wheat in the Red River Valley. He was the aristocrat of the West. His year's work was no more than a few weeks of ploughing and sowing, and a few days of harvesting. Even this was done easily, sitting on the seat of a machine and driving a team of splendid horses. After harvest, he cashed in, carried a big cheque to the bank, and settled down for a long loaf or a trip to the old homestead in the East. But it was the bad year of 1893 that first put the farmers, the country over, on the road to affluence. Up to that time it was their usual policy to depend upon a single crop. One farmer planted nothing but wheat; another planted nothing but corn; a third nothing but cotton; and so on. But in 1893 the prices of wheat, corn, and cotton fell so low that the farmers' profits were wiped out. This disaster set the farmers thinking; and in four years they had changed over to the new policy of _Diversified Farming_. Instead of putting all their work upon one crop, they planted from three to a dozen different crops each year. They manufactured their corn into cattle. They gave the soil a square deal in the matter of fertilisation. They learned to plant better seed and to pay attention to the Weather Bureau. They studied the market reports. And, best of all, they swung over from muscle to machinery, until to-day the value of the machinery on American farms is fully a thousand millions. All this amazing progress that I have been describing is by no means the best that the New Farmer will do. It is merely what he has done by the aid of machinery. What he will do by the aid of SCIENCE remains to be seen. Scientific agriculture is young. It has had to wait until machinery prepared the way, by giving the farmers time to think, and money to spend. The first scientist who took notice of farming was the Frenchman, Lavoisier. He found out the composition of water in 1783, and was in the midst of many discoveries, when a Paris mob hustled him to the guillotine. The famous Liebig next appeared and founded the first agricultural experiment station. Then came Berthelot--the father of synthetic chemistry, with his sensational announcement--"The soil is alive." To-day the New Farmer finds himself touched by Science on all sides. He knows that there are more living things in one pinch of rich soil than there are people on the whole globe. He knows that he can take half a dozen handfuls of earth from different parts of his farm, mix them together, send one thimbleful to a chemist, and find out exactly the kind of crop that will give him the best harvest. And more, now that science has given him a peep into Nature's factory, he can even feel a sense of kinship between himself and his acres, because he knows that the same elements that redden his blood are painting the green hues on his fields and forests. There are now fifteen thousand New Farmers who have graduated from agricultural colleges; and since the late Professor W. C. Atwater opened the first American experiment station in 1875, fifty others have sprung into vigorous life. There is also at Washington an Agricultural Department which has become the greatest aggregation of farm-scientists in the world. To maintain this Department Uncle Sam pays grudgingly eleven millions a year. He pays much more than this to give food and blankets to a horde of lazy Indians, or for the building of two or three warships. But it is at least more than is being spent on the New Farmer in any other country. Step by step farming is becoming a sure and scientific profession. The risks and uncertainties that formerly tossed the farmer back and forth, between hope and despair, are being mastered. The Weather Bureau, which sent half a million warnings last year to the farmers, has already become so skilful that six-sevenths of its predictions come true. In Kansas, wheat-growing has become so sure that there has been no failure for thirteen years. And in the vast South-West, the trick of irrigation is changing the man-killing desert into a Farmers' paradise, where there is nothing so punctual as the crops. Already gasolene engines are in use among the New Farmers. The International Harvester Company made twenty-five thousand of them last year at Milwaukee, without supplying the demand. These engines, in the near future, will be operated with alcohol, which the farmers can distil from potatoes at a cost of ten cents a gallon. This is no dream, as there are now six thousand alcohol engines in use on the farms of Germany alone. When this Age of Alcohol arrives, the making of the New Farmer will be very nearly complete. _He will then grow his own power, and know how to harness for his own use the omnipotence of the soil._ * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). On page 31, the figure "$1,300,00" is presented as in the original. On page 106, the image of a triangle has been replaced with [triangle]. The following misprints have been corrected: "Doubelday" corrected to "Doubleday" (title page) "Bejamin" corrected to "Benjamin" (page 67) "consistingly" corrected to "consisting" (page 74) "McCormich" corrected to "McCormick" (page 102) "eet" corrected to "Meet" (page 131) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained. Punctuation has been corrected without note. 
32725	----	WORK FOR WOMEN BY GEORGE J. MANSON NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 1883 COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1883 PREFACE. When a woman, either from choice or through necessity, makes up her mind to work for a living, and has selected the employment that seems most suited to her, she probably asks herself such questions as these: "Is there a good chance to get work? How long will it take me to make myself competent? Are there many in the business? How much do they earn? How hard will I have to work? Are there any objections against entering this employment; if so, what are they?" To answer, as far as it is possible, these and similar questions is the object of this little book. Some of the most important avocations, professions, trades, businesses, in which women are now engaged, have been selected, and the effort made to enlighten the would-be woman-worker as to the practical points of interest connected with each occupation. The information thus given has, in each case, been gained from the most reliable sources. In the winter of 1882-3 I contributed to the columns of the New York _Christian Union_ a series of articles under the title of "Work for Women." They were written with the aim of furnishing to women useful information in regard to various industries in which the gentler sex are successfully seeking employment, and met with considerable favor from the readers of that excellent journal. Through the courtesy of Rev. Lyman Abbott and Hamilton W. Mabie, editors of the _Christian Union_, the publishers of this book are allowed to use the title of that series. It should be stated, however, that the chapters in the present book are made up from new investigations, and that none of them are reproductions of any of the articles in the series alluded to. G. J. M. CONTENTS. PAGE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING 1 SHORT-HAND WRITING 10 TELEGRAPHY 20 FEATHER CURLING 29 PHOTOGRAPHY 37 PROFESSIONAL NURSING 47 PROOF-READERS, COMPOSITORS, AND BOOKBINDERS 60 THE DRAMA.--LECTURERS AND READERS 73 BOOK-AGENTS 97 DRESS-MAKING--MILLINERY 109 TEACHING 116 BRIEF NOTES: Market Gardening, Poultry-raising, Bee-keeping, House-keepers, Cashiers, Button-hole Making, Floriculture, Authorship, Type-writing, and Working in Brass 123 WORK FOR WOMEN. INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING. A great many women have, or think they have, a taste for art. They can make a pretty sketch, or draw a landscape quite fairly, and so they think they will "take up" art as a profession. And nearly all of them fail of success. The trouble seems to be that they lack originality; they are mere copyists, and too often very poor reproducers of the things they copy. One branch of art--that of industrial designing--offers golden opportunities to make an excellent living in a pleasant way, but, before deciding to enter it, a woman should be very sure indeed that she has the necessary qualifications to pursue the study successfully; otherwise her time will be wasted, and probably her heart will be so discouraged that she will be sadly unfitted for any kind of work for a long time to come. It is _industrial_ art of which I am speaking. A few introductory words may be necessary, for the benefit of some persons ignorant in the matter, to show what women are doing, or rather successfully attempting to do, in that line at the present time. Industrial or technical designing means designing for wall-paper, lace, silk, chintz, calico, oil-cloth, linoleum, book-covers, embroidery, wood-carving, silver-ware, jewelry, silks, handkerchiefs, upholstery goods, and carpets of all grades, from ingrains to moquettes. Up to within a very short period all this work has been done by men, principally foreigners; but talented and enterprising women saw that they were able to do the work equally well, and it is only a question of time when women will entirely monopolize this field of industry. It will be seen at once that the woman who is ambitious to become an industrial designer must have, first of all, originality. She must have good taste and an eye for color. Drawing must come natural to her. The mere ability to copy pictures, or make sketches from nature is not enough. She must be full of ideas, and for some of the work mentioned (notably carpet designing) she must have what might be called a combining mind--that is, the ability to get ideas from several designs, and by combining them together, make something new. It must be confessed that this kind of ability is rare. Very few men possess it, and fewer women. Manufacturers of carpets and wall-papers say that they have to import nearly all their help of this kind from Europe; they cannot find in this country the right kind of men to do the work. But because a woman has not this talent for originating largely developed, she should not be discouraged from becoming an industrial designer. If she has even a little talent in that direction she may find, after taking a few lessons, that the study is very congenial to her, and that she has more ability than she imagined. The kind of designing of which I am particularly speaking in this chapter is designing for carpets, oil-cloths, and wall-paper. That seems to be the most popular at the present time, though there is a good chance for skilled workers in the other branches to which allusion was made. It is surprising what a demand there is for new designs in carpets, wall-paper, and oil-cloths. One would suppose that a single design would last for a long time; but such is not the fact. The demand of the public is continually for novelty; the fashion changes in these matters, just the same as it does in bonnets and dresses, and each manufacturer is competing with his neighbor to get something pretty and original. A good design can always be sold at a good price; an ordinary or a poor design has no chance at all. There are two schools in New York where industrial designing is taught to women. They are both carried on by women, and both present their claims to the public under very favorable auspices. Some of the instruction, however, is given by men--practical workers in the various branches of art--who lecture on the special subject with which they are familiar. Here are some of the subjects of these lectures: "Conventionalization in Design," "Practical Design as Applied to Wall-paper," "Principles of Botany" (delivered by a lady), "Historical Ornament in Design," "Harmony in Color in Design," "Design as Applied to Carpets," "Geometry in Design," "The Influence of Color in Design," "Purity of Design," "Oriental Influence in Design," "Plant Forms: their Use and Abuse." This last lecture was delivered by a lady. But the pupil gets most of her learning in the class-room, the lectures being considered simply as adjunct to the regular system of instruction. In one school the first term begins October 2d, and closes December 22d. The second term begins January 4th and closes March 30th. The post-graduate course commences April 2d, and ends May 25th. Those pupils who have no knowledge of drawing are obliged to enter the elementary class. Those who enter the advanced classes are obliged to present specimens of free-hand drawing, such as flowers from nature, ornamental figures or scrolls. During the year each pupil in the elementary class must complete nine certificate sheets, of uniform size (15 x 22 inches), one each of geometrical problems, blackboard and dictation exercise, enlarged copy in outline, conventionalized flowers in a geometrical figure, applied designs, outline drawing from objects, outline drawing from flowers, historical ornament, botanical analysis. In the flower painting class, three outline drawings, and four paintings of flowers from nature. In the carpet class, one each of a two-ply ingrain on the lines, three-ply ingrain on the lines, tapestry sketch, body-Brussels sketch, moquette sketch, optional sketch (for either stair-carpet, rug, chair back and seats, hall carpet, or borders, body-Brussels working design on the lines, tapestry working design on the lines.) The terms of tuition in this school per term are: for the elementary class, $15; the advanced class, $25; the teachers' class, $15. Ten lessons in wood-carving and designing for book-covers cost $12. Six lessons in embroidery cost $5, and for a course of instruction in flower-painting the charge is $15. The materials used in the elementary class cost from $7 to $10, and for the advanced classes from $10 to $12. The elementary class studies an hour and a half a day three times a week; the advanced class the same length of time twice a week. According to the prospectus of this school, it takes three years to become thoroughly proficient. One year is spent in the elementary class, and in obtaining a knowledge of flower-painting and making simple designs for calico, muslin, stained glass, inlaid woods, jewelry, etc. The second year is devoted to making advanced designs for oil-cloth, linoleum, silk, and carpets. The third year is spent in doing practical work under the supervision of the principal and her assistants. It would not seem to be necessary for a pupil to return to the school the third year for this purpose. After her first two years' instruction she ought to be able to put her knowledge to business use, and seek to sell her work among the various manufacturers. In the other school to which I have referred the terms for tuition in drawing are $12 for a term of three months--thirty-six lessons. In the design class the fee is $20. The method of instruction is substantially the same as in the school first mentioned. And now comes the interesting question, How much can a woman make in this profession, after she has become thoroughly qualified? I do not think she can hope to get a permanent salaried position, at least just at present. For this profession, albeit a good one, is a new one for women; it is less than two years since the first school was started. Men still hold the best positions, and they receive large salaries, from $1,000 to $4,000 a year. In the present condition of affairs, hedged in as the female industrial designer is by the masculine doubt of the employer as to her ability, and the masculine jealousy of the employé whose work she seeks to do, it would be the best plan for her to do piece-work at her own home, or office. Her earnings, under this plan, cannot even be stated approximately. The pay for a good carpet design would be $20 to $30, and the design can be made in two and a half days. Wall-paper designs bring $10 to $15; an oil-cloth sketch, $8 or $10--the technicalities to be mastered in this latter branch are not so great as in the others. SHORT-HAND WRITING. The custom of employing women as amanuenses has grown very largely of late years. It is said on good authority that, fifteen years ago, there were but five females in the city of New York who made their living by writing short-hand; at the present time there are, as nearly as can be estimated, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred. "Which is the best system of short-hand?" is generally the first question asked by the person desirous of entering this profession. And that is a very difficult question to answer, and many of the answers that have been given to it have been very far from honest. In the first place, it must be stated that there are about a score of "systems" of short-hand before the public, each of which has its defenders and advocates. Each is highly recommended in commendatory letters from this or that distinguished court or newspaper reporter. Each can show, and does show, first-class notices from prominent daily and weekly papers, and each has a circle of followers who loudly proclaim that the particular system they follow is not only the best in existence, but really the only one worth learning. In the search after short-hand truth, it is but natural that the would-be learner gets bewildered, and asks, "What shall I do?" The system of short-hand practised by the vast majority of writers, both in this country and in England, is phonography, invented by Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, in 1837. That system is based on an alphabet representing the sounds of the language, instead of the ordinary alphabet we use in spelling words. Since 1837 there have been many phonographic text-books written by as many different authors, and each author has added a hook here or a circle there, lengthened this stroke, or made that one heavier; and that accounts for the variety of "systems." The fact is, they are all based on the original phonography of Isaac Pitman, who himself, by the way, was the first to set the example of making changes and "improvements." For all _practical_ purposes phonography is no better now than it was thirty years ago. I dwell upon this point, for I know "the best system" has been a sad stumbling-block to many young people who were naturally anxious to start on the right road. Which system, then, is the best? Answer: any system will answer the purpose of the woman who desires to become simply a phonographic amanuensis. And it is only of that branch of work of which I write, for though there are a few female court reporters in the country, the number is so small and the positions so exceptional in many respects that it is not worth while to speak of woman's employment in that direction. Let not the student, then, waste any time in listening to or reading arguments in favor of the various systems, but go to a bookstore and get some one of the various manuals on the subject, and begin to study. These books cost from fifty cents to a dollar and a quarter each. A teacher is not really necessary, but will prove a help, provided he has a practical knowledge of the art. The trouble is, however, that many of the so-called teachers of phonography have never done any actual reporting in their lives, and their advice and suggestions are not of much value. The best way for the pupil would be to get the assistance of some man engaged in actual reporting. One lesson from such a person would be worth a dozen from some of the teachers who advertise to teach short-hand, or who are connected with the various colleges. The price for such service cannot be accurately stated. Short-hand schools and colleges have "courses" of one hundred and twenty lessons, charging $75 for the same. Students can and do learn at these schools, but the cheaper and more sensible way for the student learner to do would be to get the help of a teacher, as I have suggested, and then only as it was needed. The text-books I have mentioned are very plain, and a teacher really cannot do much to make them plainer. In six months' time, if the pupil is diligent, she should be able to write eighty words a minute, and enter upon actual work, when, with practice, her speed will gradually increase. If she can reach a speed of one hundred and twenty words a minute, she will be as good as the average; if she can reach one hundred and fifty words a minute, she will do what few women ever accomplish. She need have no fear about getting a position, if she has made herself competent. The demand for good workers in this profession is constant and increasing. Out of several large classes taught by a lady teacher in New York not one pupil failed, when qualified, to secure a position. A gentleman connected with a large corporation, who employs two lady amanuenses, and obtains positions for others, says that he could secure situations for two or three a week. It should be added, however, that a knowledge of working on the type-writer should accompany the ability to write phonography. This instrument has come into such general use that no detailed description of it is here required. Briefly, it may be said that it is an instrument to print letters and documents with despatch, and it is worked with keys like a piano. To learn this art of type-writing requires but a very short time, and there are schools or offices in most of the large cities where it is taught. A lady can learn phonography as young as sixteen, or at the mature age of thirty-five; but it is almost needless to say that the art can be mastered much easier at the former than the latter age. At one of the schools in New York where it is taught free to women no pupils are received under the age of eighteen. It is a study that requires considerable application, a good memory, nimble fingers, and quick apprehension. There are some people (and this remark applies to both sexes) who would never be able to learn enough short-hand to be of any practical service. But the study is nothing like as difficult as it has often been represented to be. Every thing depends on the student. If she makes haste slowly, and learns even a little thoroughly every day, she will soon find herself mastering the theoretical part of the art, and if she practises constantly, in season and out of season, what she has properly learned, the secret of short-hand success is hers. The necessity of practice cannot be overrated. Hence it is that a teacher is ordinarily of little use. The exercises in the latest manuals on this subject are very well arranged, and it would seem that the art could not be presented in a plainer way than it is at present. The pay of a lady amanuensis at the start is seldom more than $8 a week. It is not to be supposed that she is fully competent when she starts at that rate; that is to say, she will not be able to write very rapidly, and she will be liable to make mistakes in transcribing her notes. The actual practical experience which she will get in her first situation will very soon serve to correct these faults. It might, at first thought, be supposed that few persons would desire to employ inferior help of this kind; but such is not the fact. Editors, lawyers, occasionally doctors, and some classes of business men who are obliged to make rough drafts of papers which go at once to the printer, are often glad of such help. Their short-hand writer can write fast enough to save some of their time, at a moderate charge, and it is immaterial as to the appearance of the "copy" sent to the printer, so long as it can be plainly read by him. But of course the lady will soar higher than a salary of $8 a week, and just so soon as she has become more expert, she will be able to obtain a position requiring greater speed in taking notes and more accuracy in writing them out. Her salary will then be $10 or $12 a week, and finally $15 a week. It is not likely she will earn more than $18 a week, though mention is made of some ladies who are making $20 or $25 a week, but the situations are exceptional, and, it may be added, the ladies are exceptional ladies. They have some peculiar business ability aside from being able to write short-hand. The employer of one, for instance, can merely indicate by two or three words the kind of letter he wants written to a certain correspondent, and the lady clerk, having simply received the idea, will write a satisfactory letter. If a woman could possess herself of a thorough knowledge of phonography, be able to work rapidly on the type-writer, and have a fair knowledge of bookkeeping, she could be certain of obtaining a good position at an extra large salary, say $1,500 a year; but there is no doubt that she would have to work hard for the money. The hours of work in most all offices are from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon. The employment is not more arduous than any other sedentary occupation. In large offices an amanuensis will receive from thirty to sixty full-page letters in a day and transcribe them on the type-writer. She could not do so much work without the aid of that instrument. It is sometimes the case that a woman can take dictation work for professional people who only occasionally need such assistance, and be paid for it by the "job." In such a case the rate of pay for taking and transcribing the notes will range from six to twenty cents per hundred words, depending partly on the class of work, but more particularly on the liberality of the employer. TELEGRAPHY. There is one thing favorable to young women who want to become telegraph operators: the qualifications required for success in this line of business are very simple. An ordinary common school education, with a special ability to spell well, and to write plainly and more or less rapidly, is all that is required in a pupil before commencing to learn this art. This may account for the large number of young ladies who, of late years, have sought employment in this field of labor. Another thing, it is office work, with just enough bustle and activity about it to keep it from being dull, with the occasional chance, in times of public excitement, of its being exceptionally interesting. In the city of New York there are, at the present time, about two hundred ladies engaged in this occupation. They are nearly all employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company, three fourths of the number being employed at the main office of the company. Here and there a lady may be found employed in a broker's office, a position, by the way, which is considered exceptionally good, the pay being generous, with the sure chance of the employé receiving a present at the Christmas holiday-time. But the great majority of women are employed by the companies, in hotels, in the smaller stations situated throughout the city, and throughout the country in the offices located in various villages and towns. Instruction in telegraphy has become a special feature in about forty colleges in different parts of the Union, and in several special schools, among which the New York Cooper Union School of Telegraphy is preëminent. Instruction in this last institution is free, and the Western Union Telegraph Company is so far interested in the success of the school, that when operators are needed, graduates of the Cooper Union are preferred over anybody else. The school is always crowded; it is difficult to gain admission, and situations are not provided by the company alluded to for all the graduates. Last year (1882) one hundred and sixty applied at the regular examination of the school and passed, but they could not be admitted to the class for want of room. The school admitted sixty pupils during the year. The number receiving certificates was twenty-eight. Some time since the Kansas State Agricultural College added telegraphy as a branch of industrial education, using Pope's "Hand-book of the Telegraph" as a text-book. Women can learn to become telegraph operators at almost any age. Young girls of fifteen have successfully studied the art, and women as old as forty have also learned it. But the age which is recommended by good judges as being the best, is not younger than eighteen, nor older than twenty-five. The time it takes to learn to become an operator depends, of course, on the aptness of the pupil, her general intelligence, and previous education. Some learn very readily, others after months of study never become sufficiently proficient to take positions. The course of instruction, in most of the institutions where telegraphy is taught, covers a period of six months. It is said, on good authority, that practising four or five hours a day for a period of six months, will enable a young woman to master the art. Probably telegraphy is, in this respect, very much like phonography--a person may learn the principles of the latter science in a comparatively short space of time, but to avail himself really of its advantages, a great deal of practice is required. The principles of telegraphy are far simpler than those of phonography, but the necessity for practice is equally important. Young girls learn easier than women over the age of thirty, and yet there are several instances of women past the age of forty, who have quickly qualified themselves to become operators. The salary of lady telegraphers ranges from $25 to $65 per month. In the office of the Western Union Telegraph Company they commence with a salary of $25 per month; the highest wages paid being $60 a month, unless in some special cases, where they take full charge of important offices, when they are given $75 a month. What is called a "good" position may be either in the city or the country. In fact, the term good, used in this connection, is a purely relative term. For instance, the salary may be larger in a city, but the expense of living will be greater, and the work more arduous than it will be in some small country town, where the wages will be lower. But, as a rule, the positions in the city seem to be preferred, probably on the general principle that most young people prefer the excitement and gayety of metropolitan life to the more quiet and healthful enjoyments of country towns. During the summer months positions at the various watering-places are particularly sought after, the pay of the operator being $30 a month and her board. In the large city hotels, where business is quite brisk and important, the salary is from $40 to $50 a month. Operators in the country towns and villages receive from $30 to $40 a month. But, as was stated above, the brokers' offices supply the positions most sought after by telegraph operators. There are very few of these positions. The salary paid an operator in such a situation is from $75 to $90 a month. The hours of work are light, being from 9.30 A.M. to 3 P.M. A woman, however, to hold a position of this kind must be thoroughly competent, and not only rapid, but accurate in her work. She must, too, be a woman in whom the utmost confidence can be placed, and possessed of that rare womanly gift--the ability to keep a secret; for she is, in reality, a sort of confidential clerk. A gentleman occupying a high position in one of the leading telegraph companies in New York says, that telegraphy is a good occupation for a young woman, and, provided she has no talent to do any thing better, it will furnish her a reasonably pleasant, profitable, and sure means of employment. But the opportunities of eventually getting a large salary, or of obtaining an enviable position, do not exist in this field of work. Women, he says, do not make good managers. They do not seem to possess the ability, so common even with many ordinary men, of grasping the varied details of a large business, and conducting it with system and regularity. In the company alluded to, there are ladies who have been employed for the last twenty years, but they are receiving no more pay now than they received ten years ago, and ten years from now their salary will be no higher than it is at the present time, if, indeed, it is as much. It might be thought by some, that from the comparative ease with which this art is acquired, many might take it up as a temporary means of subsistence, and leave it, either for some better employment, or to assume matrimonial relations. But this is not the fact. The occupation seems to be one in which few die, and none resign. It should be added, however, that with the growing use of the telegraph by private individuals, and the starting of new telegraph companies, good operators may be reasonably sure of obtaining positions. Telegraphy is generally learned at some business college, or some school which makes a specialty of teaching it. The lady who desires to become an operator should be very careful in making her selection among institutions of this kind. The Cooper Institute School is not included in this remark, but attention is called to the many firms throughout the country, who advertise largely in the weekly papers, to teach telegraphy in an astonishingly short space of time, and, it may be added, at astonishingly high rates of tuition. Some of these schools are good, but many of them cannot be recommended. Before entering any one of them, the would-be pupil should get the honest advice of some man or woman who is engaged in the business, and who knows something of the character of the institution she proposes to enter. FEATHER CURLING. Fashion has, of late years, made feather curling a good trade for women, and fashion, at almost any moment, may make it a very poor business. For the last thirty years feathers have been used every year, but, until within a very short time, their use has been confined to the fall and winter season. During the past four or five years they have been in great demand during the spring and early summer, taking the place of flowers for ornamental purposes. As a consequence, the occupation of feather curling has offered unusual good opportunities for girls and women to earn a living,--that is to say, as female workers are paid in the trades. There are several processes used in preparing the feathers before they are ready for sale. Some of this work is done by men, but the larger part of it is done by girls and women. When the feathers arrive from abroad, they are of a dull brown color, and the first process consists in washing them thoroughly with a peculiar kind of chemical soap. Then they are wrung through an ordinary clothes-wringer, and tied on to lines and hung out in the hot sun to dry, or put in a drying room if the weather is not favorable. The work of washing and wringing is done by men; the tying on to the lines by little girls. After this men put them in big vats where they are dyed, black, blue, red, yellow, or any other color that may be desired, and again dried. Then comes the work of the women, who first scrape the rib of the feather to make it soft and pliant. This is done with a piece of glass. Then they are curled with a blunt knife. After this they are packed in boxes and are ready to go from the wholesaler to the jobber, from the jobber to the retailer, and from the retailer pass to the purchasers whose hats they are meant to adorn. Except in rare cases, the people employed at this business are paid by the piece, and all ages are represented in the different branches of the industry. There are girls as young as fourteen, and women as old as forty. The little girls tie the feathers on to the lines, and make from $2 to $5 a week. The work of preparing and curling the feathers pays the best, and women who devote themselves to this branch make from $10 to $40 a week. This last sum is large pay; but it must be stated that those who make it do so in the busiest season, and they work hard, not only during the day, but at night, or, may be, they have some one at their homes to whom a portion of the work is sent from the shop, and in that way they are assisted to receive such large pay. Nevertheless, if a woman thoroughly understands the trade, she can always be sure of making good wages. Some exceptionally proficient women will average $30 a week the year round. Take a hundred expert workers, and each of them will average $15 to $20 a week during the twelve months. The little girls never earn very much, because the work they can do is limited to "stringing" the feathers, which is the technical term for tying the feathers on a line. When a girl enters the establishment, she generally works the first two weeks for nothing, then the superintendent is able to see what she can do, and she makes $2, $3, or $4 a week, as the case may be; in six or eight months she ought to be quite expert at the business. To be successful she must have good taste. She should be able to "lay" the feather out nicely, so that it will have a graceful appearance when it is finished. And then she must have good judgment in putting the feathers together, for it may not be known, but it is the fact, that the plume which appears on the hat to be a single feather is made up of a number of small pieces; this good judgment, then, consists, as one manufacturer frankly stated, in not being wasteful in selecting,--in short, in being careful not to pick out too many good pieces. Though there are a great number of girls in this business, there are very few who possess all these qualifications. That class of help is of course a great saving to the employer, and consequently is always sure of employment. One man said that on account of high rent alone he wanted to hire all such women. "We have to economize our room," he remarked, "and one such woman would be worth to us half a dozen poor workers, who would take up just six times as much space and waste a lot of material in the bargain. Such expert workers will make three or four times as much as other women, doing the same kind of work." The trade is a healthy one, or, to speak more accurately, there are no special features about it to make it unhealthy. Probably the worst feature about it is the crowding together of so many girls and women in one large room. They sit on benches, or stools, without backs, working at a long, low table that runs the length of the apartment. On damp days the windows have to be shut, making the atmosphere of the place close and unwholesome. But the rooms are generally large, with high ceilings. Five hundred girls are employed in the largest establishment of the kind in New York. The nominal hours of work are from eight in the morning until six in the evening, though very often, in the busy season, the girls are required to work at night as late as half-past seven or eight o'clock. There are a few women in New York who profess to teach feather curling; I say "profess," for I have it on good authority that some of them have no practical knowledge of the business, and aim only at securing a generous tuition-fee from the pupil. Now and then, however, a teacher can be found who is able to impart the necessary knowledge. It has been charged by women that those who learn privately in this way are not able to secure good positions in any of the feather curling establishments, the allegation being that the proprietors of the same have formed a "ring" to exclude such help. From such investigation as I have made in regard to this matter, I do not believe that this statement is correct. Doubtless many such pupils, after working for a short time in such establishments, have been discharged, but I think the real reason has been that they were not competent to do the work. And it can readily be imagined that the facilities for learning a trade like this would be far better in a large house, where several hundred girls were employed, or even fifty or seventy-five girls, than they would be in a class of half a dozen pupils, who had probably between them about as many feathers upon which to work. It would be much pleasanter to learn the trade from a teacher; but there are many practical objections against the feasibility of so doing. If the girl has not worked herself up from the very foot of the business, and does not have a knowledge of its preparatory stages, she will be likely to find that if a feather has been misplaced, or is out of order in any way, she could not put it in proper shape as well as one who had commenced at the beginning of the business. Rather than have any girl or woman hastily decide to learn this trade, I will, at the risk of repetition, briefly recapitulate: the earnings are good if you are thoroughly competent; and this may be said to be true of the future, although there is a prospect, probably a very strong prospect, that feathers may not be in such demand as they have been, and as they are now. You will have to work hard to make good pay. The work is tolerably cleanly, but your associates, if you are particularly nice in your ideas of companionship, may not always please you. If you are competent you may be able to take work home, but the facilities for doing it, and the want of that spirit of competition which prevails, to a great extent, in a large work-room, may not enable you to do so much work. PHOTOGRAPHY. It is a little singular that in a great city like New York, there should be but one lady photographer, while in the western part of our country there are quite a number. The photographers I speak of do all the work of making a picture,--posing the sitter, preparing the chemicals, and operating the camera. One reason why there are so few ladies in this business is the fact, that up to within a short time it has been a very disagreeable occupation on account of the nature of some of the chemicals that were used--they would soil the hands very easily, and the stains could not be removed. But recent improvements in the art have removed this objection, and prominent male photographers predict that it will not be long before their business will be largely carried on by women. A contributor to a London magazine, writing some years ago, on the subject of the employment of women in photography, said: "I have pleasure in bearing testimony to the fact, that in photography there is room for a larger amount of female labor; that it is a field exactly suited to even the conventional notions of woman's capacity; and further, that it is a field unsurrounded with traditional rules, with apprenticeship, and with vested rights, and it is one in which there is no sexual hostility to their employment." These remarks may, with perfect safety and propriety, be applied to photography in this country. There are several branches of the art in which women and girls have always been engaged, viz., the mounting of photographs, the retouching of negatives, and the coloring of photographs. The mounting of photographs is apparently a very simple kind of work, consisting simply in trimming the photograph and pasting it upon the card-board. But, simple though it seems, it requires great neatness and considerable skill, if the work is to be done fast, and rapidity of execution is a prerequisite to employment in nearly all the large galleries. As an illustration that it is not a very simple accomplishment, it may be mentioned that out of forty young ladies who came to work on trial for a prominent photographer, he could find only nine who were suitable to fill positions. The pay for this work is not very munificent, ranging from $6 to $10 per week. The retouching, or taking out the marks or spots on negatives, is a much more difficult branch of work. The pay, however, does not seem to be as large as it should be, considering the amount of skill required. Young women receive from $8 to $12 a week. A man doing the same kind of work, and working the same number of hours, would be paid $16 a week. There have been cases where ladies have received larger salaries than the sums just mentioned, but such instances are rare. The coloring of photographs is the most important, or rather the highest paid, of the three branches of work that have been mentioned. It is said that to be successful at this calling one must have some taste for drawing, and what is commonly called a good eye for color. Very few photographers employ colorists on a salary, for the reason that they do not have enough work to keep them constantly employed. There are probably but eight or ten galleries in New York where colorists are employed all the year round. The truth is, that it is not alone necessary to be a good colorist--one must be very good; and if very good, she can have her studio and take work from the galleries as well as from private parties. Photograph coloring has come to be considered as important as portraiture. Another qualification for success in the work, therefore, should be the rare ability not only to preserve, but sometimes to make, a likeness. There is one branch of the picture-making business that has grown to large proportions within the past fifteen years; it is what is called the "copying" business. There are many establishments in various cities of the Union that constantly advertise for agents to collect pictures. The agent goes through the rural districts, visiting each dwelling, and inquiring of the inmates if there are any old pictures of living or deceased friends that they would like to have copied, enlarged, and colored. In nearly every farm-house there are such pictures--old daguerreotypes of long-lost aunts, uncles, and grandfathers, "old-fashioned photographs" of mother, together with newer photographs of the living taken by the perambulating picture-taker, and taken so badly with the use of bad chemicals that they are fast fading away. Out of this motley group the family will be pretty sure to select one or two pictures which they will deem it worth their while to have copied and enlarged. When the agent has collected a sufficient number of pictures in this way, he sends them by express to the home office, where the work is done. Some years ago I chanced to know a gentleman who was in this business; in fact, he claimed to have originated it, and, as he was a shrewd, smart Yankee, born and brought up in the State of New Hampshire, I never had the temerity to question his statement. He had a good-sized brick building in a pleasant little New England city, and employed a countless number of agents, who travelled in all parts of the country, and, if I remember right, he had nearly a score of ladies, whose business it was to color the pictures and to touch some of them up into something resembling life, after they had been copied and enlarged. I use these statements with due deliberation, and say that the effort was made to give them the appearance of something resembling life, for often they looked like mere blurs. Here and there a nose would be gone, or an eye would be missing, the lower part of the face would be entirely absent, but would be counterbalanced, or, rather, overbalanced, by a heavy head of straight, black hair. These, of course, were very bad specimens, but they came to the office in the regular course of business, and had, to use the Yankee expression of the proprietor, to be "fixed up." These worst specimens were given to a middle-aged single lady, who really had a genius for making something out of nothing,--at least in the matter of pictures. It should be mentioned, however, that the worst of them were generally accompanied with some written description of the subject. But we may well believe that such crude data were of but little service to the artist. The salaries of these colorists were from $13 to $25 per week. The lady I have just mentioned received the latter sum, and often made a few more dollars weekly by doing extra work. At present, she and another lady from the same establishment, conduct an art school in a city near New York, and are very prosperous. There are now opportunities for doing this same kind of work, but there is not so much of it to do,--thousands of "active" agents having very thoroughly worked in the best districts of the country. Still, there is something to do, and the salaries paid, though not so high as I have mentioned, are fair. As I have written above, few photographers in New York employ a colorist on a regular salary. The largest sum paid to a woman is $25 a week, and that is given by probably the most prominent photographer in the city. Others receive from $20 down to $12 a week. But there are quite a number of ladies who have studios, and who work on their own account, among them a firm of two sisters, who employ a dozen young women as assistants. Without a doubt, this plan, provided the woman is competent in the art, and has good business qualifications, is the best and most lucrative course to pursue. There has been lately introduced a new process of coloring pictures for which very strong claims are made. It is said that the "secret" can be learned in one lesson; the cost of the instruction is but $5. The method consists in the application of water colors to any kind of picture on paper. Some photographers say there is nothing new in the method, and that the pictures will not stand the light of the sun; others claim that it is a good process, and say that the pictures are both brilliant and effective. The teacher of the art asserts that he can, in half a day, paint a picture, and give all the necessary effects. With the usual method, he says, a colorist would require two days and a half. The process has not yet been introduced among photographers, but several ladies are soliciting work at private houses, receiving, it is said, $4 and $5 for painting a panel picture, and making a good living at the work. For obvious reasons I do not enter into the particulars of this method, or even mention the name by which it is known. That, however, can easily be learned from almost any photographer, and the searcher for information can then satisfy herself as to whether the business is worth a trial. PROFESSIONAL NURSING. It may not be known to many that, of late years, nursing has come to be a regular profession. Women are trained to become nurses by going through a regular course of study in what are called training schools, and they receive on their graduation a diploma signed by an Examining Board and a Committee of a Board of Managers. For some women this is an excellent occupation. The work is rather hard, but the pay is exceptionally good. At the present time there are seventeen of these training schools in the United States. There is one in each of the following cities: New Haven (Conn.), Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Syracuse (N. Y.), Washington (D. C.), Burlington (Vt.), and there are three in Boston, two in Brooklyn (N. Y.), three in New York City, and two in Philadelphia. In order to gain admission to any of these institutions certain conditions of admission have to be complied with. First of all, the woman must have good health, she must be unmarried or a widow, she must furnish satisfactory references as to moral character, and have a fair common-school education. All these are essential prerequisites. Her age must not be under twenty or over forty-five. In the Boston schools the rule is between twenty-one and thirty-five; in Brooklyn, twenty-one to forty; in New York City, twenty-five to thirty-five; in Philadelphia, twenty-one to forty-five, and in Washington City, the same as it is in Brooklyn. Aside from these qualifications, the woman who would enter upon this employment must have considerable "nerve," for she will be obliged to witness some very painful sights, and often be called upon to render assistance in some very dangerous surgical operations. And yet, at the same time, while possessing the necessary amount of self-control to go through her duties properly, she must be possessed of that gentleness, forbearance, and good temper, without which the most scientific nursing will be of little avail. She may shudder at the first operation in the hospital, even faint, but that is no sign that she will not be able to overcome her want of self-control. Some of the best surgeons have confessed to the same weakness at the beginning of their professional experience. The nurse will soon get used to seeing such unpleasant sights, and, as it was the case with the grave-digger in Hamlet, custom will make her business "a property of easiness." She, too, will learn that "the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense." The pupil, having made her application to the superintendent of the school, is required to answer, in writing, certain questions; to give her name; to state whether she is single or married; to give her present occupation; her age last birthday, and date and place of birth; her height and weight; to state where educated; to tell whether she is strong and healthy, and has always been so; whether her sight and hearing are good; whether she has any physical defects, or any tendency to pulmonary complaint; if she is a widow, to state if she has any children, their number, ages, and how they are provided for; to tell where she was last employed, and how long she was employed, and to give the names of two persons as references, one of whom must be her last employer, if she has been engaged in any occupation. And then she signs her name to the statement, declaring it to be correct. If the answers are satisfactory, and there is a vacancy in the school, she goes on trial for a month, and if, at the end of that time, she decides that she likes the position, and the superintendent finds she is able to fulfil the duties properly, she is engaged. For this "trial" month she receives no pay, but gets her board and lodging free of expense. Having been accepted as a pupil, she signs articles of agreement to remain two years and obey the rules of the school and hospital. All the schools are connected with some hospital; they are not always in the same building, but in the immediate vicinity. The pupils reside in the Home, or school, and in the large schools--the one connected with Bellevue Hospital, for instance--there are two sets of nurses, one set doing day duty, and the other going on at night. The day nurses are on duty from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M., with an hour off for dinner, and some additional time for exercise or rest. They have one afternoon during the week, half of Sunday, and a two weeks' vacation during the summer. If sick, they are cared for gratuitously. The course of instruction covers two years, when the pupil, after passing a satisfactory examination, graduates and receives a diploma. Then she chooses her own field of labor. In one of the large New York schools the course of instruction includes: 1. The dressing of blisters, burns, sores, and wounds; the application of fomentations, poultices, cups, and leeches. 2. The administration of enemas, and use of catheter. 3. The management of appliances for uterine complaints. 4. The best method of friction to the body and extremities. 5. The management of helpless patients; making beds; moving, changing, giving baths in bed; preventing and dressing bed-sores; and managing positions. 6. Bandaging, making bandages and rollers, lining of splints. 7. The preparing, cooking, and serving of delicacies for the sick. They are also given instruction in the best practical methods of supplying fresh air, warming and ventilating sick-rooms in a proper manner, and are taught to take care of rooms and wards; to keep all utensils perfectly clean and disinfected; to make accurate observations and reports to the physician of the state of the secretions, expectoration, pulse, skin, appetite, temperature of the body, intelligence--as delirium or stupor,--breathing, sleep, condition of wounds, eruptions, formation of matter, effect of diet, or of stimulants, or of medicines; and to learn the management of convalescents. This teaching is given by physicians, some of whom are connected with the hospital, while others, often prominent men, occasionally give lectures. The superintendent, assistant superintendent, and head nurses also give practical directions to the pupils as to the management of the sick. Each school has its favorite text-book on nursing. One of the most popular works is the "New Haven Hand-book of Nursing," which is used in the East and West, and in New York. In the New York schools the "Bellevue Manual" is also used. Among the other text-books studied in the different schools throughout the country are "Anatomy and Physiology," "Domville's Manual," "Woolsey's Hand-book for Hospital Visitors," "Williams and Fisher's Hints to Hospital Nurses," "Lee's Hand-book for Hospital Sisters," "Cutter's Anatomy and Physiology," "Putnam's Manual," "Huxley's Physiology," "Smith on Nursing," "Frankel's Manual," "West on Children," "Notes on Nursing," by Florence Nightingale, "Draper's Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene," "Bartholow's Materia Medica," and "Miss Veitch's Hand-book for Nursing." The Boston and New York schools use the largest number of text-books, averaging six. At one of the schools in Philadelphia, but one book is used; in Connecticut, Chicago, and Washington two text-books are studied. While the nurse is receiving her training she is boarded free of expense, and receives a stated salary per month during the time she is in the school. The amount varies throughout the country. In New Haven it is $170 for the term of eighteen months. In Chicago, $8 a month for the first year, $12 a month for the second year. In Boston, at two of the schools it is $10 a month for the first year, and $14 a month for the second year. At the third school it is $1 a week for the first six months, $2 dollars a week for the second six months, and $3 a week for the last four months. Brooklyn, $9 a month for the first year, $15 a month for the second year. In New York, at the Charity Hospital on Blackwell's Island, it is $10 a month for the first year, and $15 a month for the second year; at Bellevue Hospital, $9 a month for the first year, $15 a month for the second year; at the New York Hospital, it is $10, $13, and $16 a month for the first, second, and third six months, respectively. In Syracuse $10 a month. In Philadelphia, $5 a month for the first six months, $10 a month for the second six months, and $16 a month for the second year. It will be seen at a glance that this is merely nominal pay, but it must also be borne in mind that the nurse is receiving instruction in what is to be to her a profession. Then, again, she is under little or no expense; she is boarded, lodged, has her washing done in the institution, and the dress or uniform which she is obliged to wear costs but a trifle, the material of which it is made being generally what is called "seersucker." After the nurse has received a certain amount of training, she is deemed competent to go out to private service. She receives no extra pay for this, her salary being paid into the institution, which, in that way, is enabled partly to maintain itself. When she goes to a private house, she carries with her a certificate of recommendation signed by the lady superintendent of the school. When she returns to the school, she brings with her a report of her conduct and efficiency, either from one of the family or the medical attendant. While engaged in this service, the people employing her must allow her reasonable time for rest in every twenty-four hours, and when her services are needed for several consecutive nights, she is to have at least six hours in the day out of the sick-room. Except in cases of extreme illness, she is to be allowed opportunity to attend church once every Sunday. Appended to the rules of the Bellevue Hospital Training School, in regard to this subject, are the following remarks: "It is expected that nurses will bear in mind the importance of the situation they have undertaken, and will evince, at all times, the self-denial, forbearance, gentleness, and good temper so essential in their attendance on the sick, and also to their character as Christian nurses. They are to take the whole charge of the sick-room, doing everything that is requisite in it, when called upon to do so. When nursing in families where there are no servants, if their attention be not of necessity wholly devoted to their patient, they are expected to make themselves generally useful. They are to be careful not to increase the expense of the family in any way. They are also most earnestly charged to hold sacred the knowledge which, to a certain extent, they must obtain of the private affairs of such households or individuals as they may attend." The field of employment which has just been described, offers great opportunities for the proper kind of women to make an independent livelihood. The work is hard and confining, but the pay, as women are paid, is very good. A trained nurse never receives less than $20 a week, her board being, of course, included, and more often she will get $25, or even $30, a week; in fact, she can command her own price, and that price will depend upon the wealth and liberality of her patrons, and the ability which she brings to bear on the case in hand. Good nursing is very often more important than good doctoring, and thousands of people are willing to pay liberally for such exceptional help. The demand for trained nurses far exceeds the supply, and, provided a woman has made herself fully competent in this peculiarly appropriate branch of women's work, the extent of her employment will only be limited by her physical strength to render the services required. PROOF-READERS, COMPOSITORS, AND BOOKBINDERS. Men who employ women in trades and businesses where they have to work for some length of time before they become skilled laborers have one very strong objection against female help. "No sooner," they say, "do we really begin to get some benefit from the woman's work, after having borne long and patiently with her sins of omission and commission, than along comes a good-looking young fellow and marries her." For this reason women sometimes find it difficult to obtain entrance into the most desirable establishments where trades can be learned. And yet these same employers are not hostile to female labor; on the contrary, they are strongly in favor of it, but they say that they are not willing to encourage it to the extent of sacrificing the necessary time and trouble in making a woman perfect in a trade, and then seeing her leave them to enter upon the presumably more congenial duties of matrimony. The woman, therefore, who desires to learn a trade may find this difficulty meeting her at the threshold. All employers, however, are not alike, and some establishment can generally be found where a woman can learn the first principles of the occupation she wishes to follow; as soon as she has attained a reasonable degree of proficiency in it, she can get a position in a larger and better establishment, where the pay will probably be higher and the surroundings more agreeable. Of the three employments mentioned at the head of this chapter proof-reading is probably the most pleasant. A woman to be properly qualified must have a good education, and must have graduated from the printer's case. A great many young women who know nothing about the compositor's trade think they can be good proof-readers, but they may have a good collegiate education, and if they are not familiar with the practical details of printing, as they can be learned in a printing establishment, they will never amount to much as proof-readers. This is the class of proof-readers who "get interested" in what they are reading; they are on the look-out for bad sentences which, having found, they promptly proceed to correct, a self-imposed duty for which they receive no thanks from either their employer or the author whose language or style they seek to improve. A good proof-reader reads mechanically. The moment she takes a personal interest in what she is reading, or becomes critical on the matter in hand, she is apt to overlook typographical errors of the most common sort. Of course, she must be a first-class speller and have a good knowledge of punctuation, though how far she will have to apply the latter knowledge will depend very much on what kind of proof she is reading. If she is engaged in an establishment where books are printed exclusively, she will find that authors, as a rule, have their own systems of punctuation, with which (supposing the authors to be men and women of ability) she will not be expected to interfere. But if she is engaged on newspaper or general work, she will have ample opportunity to display her knowledge and exercise her judgment in the matter of punctuation. In all important work female proof-readers seldom read the second or revised proof. That is generally given to a male proof-reader of large experience, who gives the matter a critical reading. The pay of good women proof-readers is from $15 to $20 a week. Those who receive the latter sum are capable of reading "revises." Now and then a woman receives exceptionally good pay for this kind of service. A prominent American historian paid a lady proof-reader $30 a week; but she was unusually well educated, and capable of often making valuable suggestions to the author. No encouragement can be given to the woman desirous of becoming a proof-reader who will not learn the practical details of the calling in a printing establishment. In connection with proof-reading it may be mentioned that young girls or young women find employment as "copy-holders." Their duty is to read aloud to the proof-reader the copy of the author. If they can read rapidly and correctly they can earn about $8 a week. * * * * * Female compositors are now largely employed in job and newspaper offices, but it is only fair to state the objections to their following this trade. In some establishments they are obliged, like the men, to stand at their work. Physicians state, and the experience of the women themselves proves, that this is very detrimental to health. It has been urged by women, also, that in printing-offices they are forced to hear profane and improper language from their male companions, who sometimes, doubtless, in this way, harass the women, sometimes with the purpose of expressing their dissatisfaction at the employment of female labor. But too much weight should not be given to this complaint. In all the large, well-regulated establishments such conduct would not be tolerated, provided the men and women worked in the same room, which, however, is rarely the case; as a rule, the female help are set off in an apartment by themselves. Employers who have employed female compositors say that they cause a great deal of trouble. They have to have a separate room, and require to be waited upon a great deal, especially if they are learning the trade, while men readily get along by themselves. They are sure to lose more or less time through sickness, and that, too, very often in the busiest season, when there is great pressure of work, and their services are in especial demand. Of late, the female compositors in one of the largest establishments in New York demanded to be paid the same rate as the men. The demand was not acceded to, and the proprietors came very near discharging all their female compositors, urging the objections which have just been stated, together with the general objection to the employment of female help stated in the beginning of this chapter. Notwithstanding all these objections, however, which a woman can weigh and take for what they are worth, the trade of a compositor is a very good one. Among men, a type-setter has always been considered the most independent of mortals. If he is thorough master of his trade, he is always sure of work, and with the great development of our country, there is hardly a spot to which he may drift where he will not find a printing-office and an opportunity to earn money. Numerous instances might be related of printers who, being of a roving disposition, have travelled all over the United States, earning their living as they went. The trade is just as good, or nearly as good, for a woman. She is never paid, it is true, the same rate that the men receive, but if she is a quick worker she can make much more money in a week, as a compositor, than she could at many other occupations. She can never hope to perform as much work as a first-class male compositor; that is a physical impossibility. Good compositors in the large New York establishments where books are printed (and it is only in such places that women are employed in the large cities), earn from $14 to $15 a week. The poor ones average $9 and $10 a week. Sometimes good women make more than $15 a week, earning as much as $18 or $20 a week. This kind of work, it must be understood, is paid by the piece, so that how much a woman earns depends entirely on her ability. In many small cities and country towns, especially throughout New England, young women are employed as compositors in newspaper offices. Their rate of pay is never as high as it is in the cities, but their living expenses are proportionately less, so that really they are just as well off. It would seem, indeed, that such situations were to be preferred. There is less noise and hurry in such small establishments, and, therefore, less wear and tear on the human system. The papers are generally afternoon papers, and, therefore, the work is all done in the daytime. The women are allowed to sit at their work. In such situations they will be able to earn from $5 to $12 a week. It is, at present, difficult for a woman entirely ignorant of the trade, to get into any of the large establishments in New York, where such help is engaged, for the purpose of learning to become a type-setter. If her ambition lies in this direction, and she lives outside the large cities, she could do no better than obtain an introductory knowledge of the art in some country newspaper office, or, failing in that, get the necessary practical instruction in some job office, in either city or country. * * * * * Certain parts of the work of bookbinding are monopolized by young girls and young women. They are employed in folding, collating, sewing, pasting, binding, and gold-laying. There is probably no large establishment in the country where men are employed to do this kind of work. The industry seems to be peculiarly adapted to young women who are quick with their hands. Employés in this trade are paid by the piece, with the exception of the collaters, who receive a stated salary of $8 a week. "Collating," it may be mentioned for the benefit of those who are not familiar with the term, means the gathering together of the various folded sheets or sections of the book, and seeing that the pages run right, preparatory to their being handed over to the sewers, who stitch them together. The pay of folders, binders, pasters, and sewers will average, during the year, from $6 to $7 a week. Gold-layers are paid by the hour and make a dollar or two more a week. This average, it must be understood, is for the whole fifty-two weeks. Some weeks the girls make $12 and $15, other weeks not one third as much. Girls as young as fourteen years are employed, and women forty and fifty years of age may be found working beside them. Nine hours and a half constitute a day's work. Some girls will make more than the average named. Those are the steady workers who, to use the expression of one employer, "work just like a man and don't care to hurry home and crimp up to see company in the evening." Such employés will, the year round, average each week two or three dollars more than the ordinary run of help. It is said that there is always work in this trade for competent women. But it is a trade that no woman of ambition would want to enter, unless she was unable to find any thing better to do. There is no chance to rise in the business and get a better paying position, for the rule is to employ male foremen. In only one large establishment in New York is there a woman occupying such a position. It is proper to state, however, that she gives perfect satisfaction, that her employer would not replace her for a man, and that he believes other bookbinders will eventually see the advisability of having a female instead of a male overseer. A man, it is said, is apt, in giving out work, to favor the pretty girls at the expense of the plain-looking damsels, thus creating jealousy among the employés, while a woman is not influenced in that way. The proprietors of the large bookbinderies make every effort to secure a respectable kind of help, but young women of loose principles, and sometimes, it is to be feared, of actual immoral character, get employment at the trade, and, when they do, their influence is any thing but good on their companions. It must, however, be largely a girl's own fault if she allows herself to associate with such company. During working hours, of course, nothing but business is attended to. Lunch is eaten in the establishment, and during the lunch hour the girls gather together in little knots and talk about the last picnic or the coming ball. But the place is so large, that a girl of reserved manners can generally keep by herself, or select such companions as she prefers. The trade is not difficult to learn, the work is neat and clean, the rooms where the girls work--that is, in the large bookbinderies--are commodious, well lighted, and airy. If a young woman, getting her board free at home, wanted to make a little money by working only a few months, or a year, she could probably accomplish this object by entering a bookbindery. THE DRAMA.--LECTURERS AND READERS. A woman need not have the genius of a Rachel, a Modjeska, or a Clara Morris, to be able to make a good living in the theatrical profession. Probably the great majority of young ladies who go upon the stage are inflated with the notion that they are creatures of wonderful genius, and for this reason they fail; they are so taken up with the good opinion they have of themselves that they will not go through the necessary amount of work, in the subordinate positions, to perfect themselves for places up higher. They want to fly before they can walk. It would seem as if common-sense deserted a woman the moment she felt a desire to go upon the stage. An old theatrical agent whose views were sought on this subject did not offer much encouragement to the aspirants for dramatic honors. I will give a paraphrase of his views so that the gentle reader may have the benefit of the pessimistic presentation of the question. The great majority of young ladies, he observed, "who sought positions had been members of some amateur dramatic company, which they had joined from a love of recreation and amusement. The friends of a young woman continually spoiled her by undeserved praise, and, finally, she believed herself capable of taking the highest and most difficult parts, and forthwith rushed to the nearest theatrical manager or dramatic agent and sought a position. In the majority of instances such young ladies had not the slightest amount of ability; besides, experience in an amateur dramatic company was of no benefit. People might come to an agent with the highest recommendations from stage instructors, or actors who had taken upon themselves the task of giving them instruction--who had spoken of them as 'promising pupils'--and yet, when they came to go upon the stage, they did not show the slightest degree of talent for the profession. An amateur experience was no criterion to go by." "When," said the dramatic agent, "I managed the tour of Mr. ---- (mentioning the name of one of our leading tragedians), I had to select the company which was to support him. Yielding to the solicitations of an old friend I engaged a young lady who had been studying with Miss ----, one of the brightest stars on the American stage. Miss ---- told me that she considered her a most promising young woman, and had it not been that her manager had already selected her company, she would have been glad to have had her in her own company. She felt sure if I took her I would be pleased. I engaged her, and was never more mistaken in my ideas in all my life. She thought she could act, but she did not know the first principles of acting. Offended at my plain criticisms on her efforts she went to Mr. ----, the star, and complained that she thought I was prejudiced against her, and had been unjust and unkind. But Mr. ---- repeated, kindly but plainly, the substance of what I had said. She had left a good paying position to seek dramatic fame only to find dramatic failure. At the end of the season she became convinced of the truth of our criticisms, and quit the stage forever." It must be stated here that the stage is largely run on what is called the "combination" plan, and a very poor plan it is. In the old times the theatres had what were called "stock" companies; that is, the company was made up of a certain number of members, each member having a particular line of "business," and keeping to that line year after year, in the same company, which remained in the same theatre. At the present time there are only two "stock" companies in the United States. The great majority of theatrical enterprises are called "combinations." In old times the actor had to suit himself to the play; nowadays the play is written to suit the actor. A comedian can sing and dance, or "make up" good as a Jew, a Negro, or an eccentric German, and forthwith he gets some author to write a play for him in which his "strong" points will be made to plainly appear. Then he selects his company, picking out men and women that he may deem suitable for the characters they are to assume. Then the company is christened "The Great Jones Combination," or "The Great Scott Combination," as the case may be, and off it starts for a more or less successful tour throughout the country. Sterling, old-time actors like John Gilbert, William Warren, Joseph Jefferson, and men of that school, lament the decadence of the "stock" company system. But, in the dramatic as in the real world, we must take things as we find them, and the fact is that there is very little chance for a young lady who would be an actress to get a thorough knowledge of her art--that is, thorough as it is understood by those in the front rank of the profession, who have reached their position by following the old methods. On the other hand, the stage never offered so many opportunities for bright young women with dramatic talent to make a living as it does at the present time. Every city, both large and small, can boast of its theatre or opera-house, and in many of the large towns throughout the country there are town-halls arranged with a view to accommodate some of the minor theatrical combinations. The young lady who would succeed in making a fair living on the stage must, first of all, be attractive. The stage appeals as much to the eye as it does to the ear, and there is scarcely an instance of an ugly actress being successful, or, indeed, even having the opportunity of exhibiting herself on the stage. It seems to be the general opinion among actors and theatrical managers that the instruction received from professors of elocution is of little or no account. As to the experience gained from performing in amateur companies, there is a difference of opinion. The dramatic agent whose views have just been given speaks, it will be seen, very strongly against the amateur actor. Others, however, whose opinions are entitled to great weight, say that experience gained in amateur organizations is always valuable. The manager of one of the principal theatres in New York--a theatre, too, that has had an unusually large number of travelling companies on the road--told the writer that he had employed a large number of amateur actors, and that some of the greatest pecuniary successes had been made by actors and actresses who had come to him from some amateur theatrical company. Of course, the new-comers were not successful at first. They had to serve an apprenticeship on the regular stage; but he meant to say that their previous experience, amateur though it was, had been a benefit to them, and that they had got along quicker than they would if they had been without it. "Utility business" is the kind of work a young woman going upon the stage must first expect to do; or, to speak more accurately, according to the technique of the profession, she will first be allowed to make an "announcement." She will come on the stage and say, "My lady, a letter," or make some other simple speech to the extent of one or two lines. If she does this well, she will be given parts where there is more to say, until, finally, she has reached thirty lines, at which point she is capable of being entrusted with a "responsible" part. The salary of this class of actresses ranges from $15 to $30 per week. If she does not start in this line of business, she may be a "ballet lady,"--not a dancer, but one of the group of ladies that make up the ballroom or party scenes. In this case, she will start on a salary of from $5 to $7 per week. If she is very pretty, she will get $7; if she is an "ancient,"--that is, rather old and decidedly plain,--she will get only $5. The ability to sing commands an extra dollar per week. The manager of the theatre alluded to above said, that in one of their companies they employed a young lady without previous theatrical experience. She was, however, very quick to learn, and commencing on a salary of $20 a week, she quickly made herself valuable. After a while a part was given her in which she made "a hit," and her salary has been increased until now it is $70 a week when she is travelling, and $55 a week when she plays in New York City, the extra $15 given to her when she is away being for hotel expenses. There has been so much said and written on the morals of the stage that it will not be necessary here to warn the young dramatic aspirant that this is a branch of the subject which she should well consider. That there are actresses who are good women, fulfilling nobly all the duties of wives, mothers, and sisters, nobody pretends to deny. But that the stage offers very strong and dangerous temptations to young and pretty women is a fact which every one who knows any thing about the subject will admit. These temptations are not in the theatre itself. The profession of acting is conducted on purely business principles. Life behind the scenes is dull, uninteresting, matter-of-fact. The actors and the actresses are full of their work, and the whole place is decidedly unromantic. But there are great temptations from without the theatre, into the details of which it is not necessary to enter. It is not necessary that she should yield to these temptations, nor are they, probably, all things considered, any greater or stronger than the pretty shop-girl has to meet. But if she values her character she will, when she enters this profession, make up her mind to devote herself thoroughly to work, and she will be particularly careful about the acquaintances she forms with the opposite sex, and above all avoid that large and growing class of silly men, both young and old, who love to boast that they number an "actress" among their female acquaintances. In the _North American Review_ for December, 1882, there was published a symposium on the subject of success on the stage. There are so many young ladies whose ambition lies in the direction of the drama, and the contribution referred to contained such wholesome advice, that I am tempted to quote from it at considerable length. There were six contributors: John McCullough, Joseph Jefferson, Lawrence Barrett, William Warren, Miss Maggie Mitchell, and Madame Helena Modjeska. The views of the lady contributors will be found of especial interest to the readers of this book. The article was addressed more particularly to those whose ambition it is to reach the highest rank in the profession, but the extracts contain many useful hints for those who are simply looking forward to a respectable, well-paying "utility" position on the stage. Miss Mitchell says:-- "To succeed on the stage, the candidate must have a fairly prepossessing appearance, a mind capable of receiving picturesque impressions easily and deeply, a strong, artistic sense of form and color, the faculty of divesting herself of her own mental as well as physical identity, a profound sympathy with her art, utter sincerity in assuming a character, power enough over herself to refrain from analyzing or dissecting her part, a habit of generalization, and at the same time a quick eye and ready invention for detail, a resonant voice, a distinct articulation, natural grace, presence of mind, a sense of humor so well under control that it will never run riot; the gift of being able to transform herself, at will, into any type of character; pride, even conceit, in her work; patience, tenacity of purpose, industry, good-humor, and docility. She must behave, in her earlier years, very much as if she were a careful, self-respecting scholar, taking lessons of people better informed than herself, with her eyes and ears constantly open and ready to receive impressions. "She should begin by getting, if possible, into a stock company, even in the most inferior capacity, keeping within reach of the influence of her home,--or by joining a reputable combination on the road. Managers, no matter what may be said to the contrary, are always eagerly looking for talent in the bud, and if a young girl, with reasonable pretensions to good looks, who is modest and well-behaved, and shows the slightest ability with a common-sense readiness to begin at the bottom of the ladder, should offer herself for an engagement, the chances are that she would get it with much less difficulty than she imagined. There are, no doubt, numerous candidates, even for the smallest positions on the stage, but those who possess even moderate qualifications are extremely rare. Managers have, at present, to take the best they can pick from a host of worse than interlopers. "I do not think that novices reap any practical benefit from private lessons. The neophyte learns not merely of her professional teacher, but of her audience; and to be informed by the one without being influenced by the other is to have very lopsided instruction. The stage itself is the best, in fact, the only school for actresses. It is a profession made up of traditions and precedents and technicalities. Mere oral advice, or training in elocution or gesture, counts for very little. They are, in fact, too often obstacles which have to be eventually and with difficulty surmounted. In some instances I have known 'instruction'--of this sort--to bring about as prejudicial effects as if the victim had tried to learn the art of swimming at a dancing academy, and then put the knowledge thus gained into practice. The modulations of the voice and the language of illustrative gesture ought to be either taught by example or insensibly acquired by experience. To learn them by precept and rule has for a result, usually, that woodenness and jerkiness which one cannot help noticing in the 'youthful prodigies' of the stage. To be an actress one has to learn other things than merely how to act, and that is why nobody ever succeeded in the profession who tried to enter it at the top. * * * "The early bent of her studies and reading should be precisely the same as that of any other woman aspiring to be liberally educated. She should, if possible, speak French, at all events read it. She should be familiar with English literature. She should cultivate an acquaintance, through books and otherwise, with the highest as well as the lowest forms of human society. Refinement and general information ought to be the characteristics of every actress. * * * "It would be bold for me to pretend to descry the chances of success for the actress of the future. It is a lottery, this profession of ours, in which even the prizes are, after all, not very considerable. My own days, spent most of them far from my children and the comforts and delights of my home, are full of exhausting labor. Rehearsals and other business occupy me from early morning to the hour of performance, with brief intervals for rest and food and a little sleep. In the best hotels my time is so invaded that I can scarcely live comfortably, much less luxuriously. At the worst, existence becomes a torment and a burden. I am the eager, yet weary, slave of my profession, and the best it can do for me--who am fortunate enough to be included among its successful members--is to barely palliate the suffering of a forty-weeks' exile from my own house and my family. "For those of our calling who have to make this weary round, year after year, with disappointed ambitions and defeated hopes as their inseparable company, I can feel from the bottom of my heart. Each season makes the life harder and drearier; each year robs it of one more prospect, one more chance, one more opportunity to try and catch the fleeting bubble in another field." Madame Modjeska writes: "* * * It would be a great mistake to choose the profession with the idea that money comes easier and work is less hard in this than in any other. There is little hope for the advancement of such aspirants. "There is no greater mistake than to suppose that mere professional training is the only necessary education. The general cultivation of the mind, the development of all the intellectual faculties, the knowledge how to think, are more essential to the actor than mere professional instruction. In no case should he neglect the other branches of art; all of them being so nearly akin, he cannot attain to a fine artistic taste if he is entirely unacquainted with music, the plastic arts, and poetry. "The best school of acting seems to me to be the stage itself--when one begins by playing small parts, and slowly, step by step, reaches the more important ones. There is a probability that if you play well a minor character, you will play greater ones well by and by; while if you begin with the latter, you may prove deficient in them, and afterward be both unwilling and unable to play small parts. It was my ill-fortune to be put, soon after my entrance on the stage, in the position of a star in a travelling company. I think it was the greatest danger I encountered in my career, and the consequence was that when I afterward entered a regular stock company, I had not only a great deal to learn, but much more to unlearn. "The training by acting, in order to be useful, requires a certain combination of circumstances. It is good in the stock companies of Europe, because with them the play-bill is constantly changed, and the young actor is required to appear in a great variety of characters during a short period. But it may prove the reverse of good in a theatre where the beginner may be compelled for a year or so to play one insignificant part. Such a course would be likely to kill in him all the love of his art, render him a mechanical automaton, and teach him but very little. "Private instruction can be given either by professors of elocution or by experienced actors. I know nothing of the first, as there are no professors of elocution, to my knowledge, outside of America and of England, and I never knew one personally. But speaking of private lessons given by experienced actors, there are certainly a great many arguments and instances in favor of that mode of instruction. Of course, a great deal depends upon the choice of the teacher. But, supposing he is capable, he can devote more time to a private pupil than he can to one in a public school. Some of the greatest actresses that ever lived owed, in great part, their success to the instructions of an experienced actor, of less genius than themselves. Take, for instance, Rachel and Samson. Strange to say, it happens often that very good actors make but poor professors, while the best private teacher I ever met was, like Michonnet, but an indifferent actor himself. The danger is that the pupil in this kind of instruction may become a mere imitator of his model. Imitation is the worst mode of learning, and the worst method in art, as it kills the individual creative power, and in most cases, the imitators only follow the peculiar failings of their model. "There are many objections to dramatic schools, some of which are very forcible. There is in them, as in private teaching, the danger of imitation, and of getting into a purely mechanical habit, which produces conventional, artificial acting. Yet it is not to be denied that a great number of the best French and German actresses and actors have been pupils of dramatic schools, and that two of the schools--those of Paris and Vienna--have justly enjoyed a great celebrity. Of the schools I have known personally I cannot speak very favorably. One point must be borne in mind; a dramatic school ought to have an independent financial basis, and not rely for its support on the number of its pupils, because in such a case the managers might be induced to receive candidates not in the least qualified for the dramatic profession. "Of the three elements that, in my opinion, go to make up a good dramatic artist, the first one, technique, must be acquired by professional training; the second and higher one, which is art itself, originates in a natural genius, but can and ought to be improved by the general cultivation of the mind. But there is yet something beyond these two: it is inspiration. This cannot be acquired or improved, but it can be lost by neglect. Inspiration, which Jefferson calls his demon, and which I would call my angel, does not depend upon us. Happy the moments when it responds to our appeal. It is only at such moments that an artist can feel satisfaction in his work--pride in his creation; and this feeling is the only real and true success which ought to be the object of his ambition." * * * * * There is but very little chance for women to succeed as lecturers at the present time. Some few years ago the country seemed to be overrun with orators, both male and female. Probably the woman-suffrage excitement had a great deal to do with this; at all events, there is not much demand now for female eloquence. Twelve years ago a number of distinguished women were before the public. Anna Dickinson spoke on politics; since then she entered the dramatic profession. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spoke about woman-suffrage, a subject which seems for the time to have died out. Olive Logan talked on social topics; now she is in Europe. Mrs. Livermore is the only female orator of that time who is now before the public, and she is as successful now as she was then. * * * * * As public readers, women who have a talent in that direction have an excellent chance at the present time. "Readings" are getting to be a very popular form of entertainment. The theatres are offering such poor and trashy attractions that many educated people who want to be amused, are forced to seek diversion in this way. The general spread of culture is also, probably, creating a taste in this direction. The lady who would succeed as a public reader must, like the actress, be good-looking. The most successful lady readers now before the public are physically attractive. Some of them are large, fine-looking women, while others are petite; but no matter what the particular style of beauty may be, they are all pleasing in their personal appearance. The woman who wants to make public reading a profession will do all she can to get her name and profession before the public. At first she will give free readings before church societies. In this way she will gradually become known, and, after a while, she will be able to appear before some lyceum in the small outlying towns. If she is favorably received she will be invited to come again, and so, gradually, her name and fame will become known, and if she has the necessary talent she will eventually command very good pay. At first she will give free readings. Her readings for pay will, in the beginning, bring her from $10 to $25 a reading. After that the compensation will increase, according to her reputation as a reader. The very best female readers, or "elocutionists," as they prefer to term themselves, receive as much as $500 for one entertainment. The social position which a lady occupies will have much to do with her success. If she has a large circle of influential friends in good social standing, provided, of course, she is talented, she will find the road to success much easier than it otherwise would be. BOOK-AGENTS. Canvassing for books is a business in which some men have been known to make $10,000 a year, and a large number of other men have earned $2,000 and $3,000 in the same length of time. This is an occupation which, under certain conditions, is admitted to be just as suitable for a woman as a man. The newspapers have poked a great deal of fun at book-agents, and their ridicule has, doubtless, deterred many a person from following the occupation. A young man, a book-agent, once wrote for advice to the editor of a New York paper. He said that he had followed the calling for some time, and that he made, the year round, from $50 to $60 a week. He liked the work of travelling from place to place, but he had doubts as to whether his calling was a respectable one. Would it not be better for him to get some other employment? The editor promptly informed him that the work he was doing was not only respectable but exceedingly useful; that many persons were glad to see him present to their notice the new and useful books he was endeavoring to sell; that his earnings were exceptionally large, and that it would be a long time before he could hope to earn as much in any other business. By all means he should remain a book-agent. It is said by the publishers of books that women make excellent book-agents; they cannot hope to make as much money as the very best male agents, but if they have the necessary qualifications they can do very well. The prerequisites required can be summed up under four heads: First of all, a woman must have pretty good health; if she has not, she will not be able to go through the necessary amount of physical exercise involved in the work. But it is not necessary that she shall be perfectly sound in body. Many a woman enters the business because she has a delicate constitution, and because she believes that the exercise she will be obliged to take will do her good. And if her ailments are not too serious, she is seldom disappointed in this respect. Second, she must have a great deal of what business men call "push," and what some people might term impudence. She cannot afford to be nervous about going into stores, offices, and houses, and offering what she has for sale. Nor will it go well with her if she is bad-natured, and shows temper when she is not greeted cordially by the master or mistress of the house. She must have smiles and pleasant words for those who do not buy as well as for those who do. Third, she must be a good judge of human nature, and on this one commandment, probably, hangs all the law and the prophets of book-canvassing. For, if she has been a student of mankind she will use great judgment in her vocation. She will call at the proper time, at the proper place, upon the kind of people who will most likely want to see her, or rather the book she has to offer. She will, by her demeanor, win the respect of the men, the admiration of the women, and the love of the children. It seems like saying a great deal too much, but it is a fact, that there are some lady book-agents whose calls are remembered as angels' visits, so agreeable were they in their manners, so charming in conversation. It must be admitted, however, that there are not many such women roaming up and down through the country. Last of all, she must have great perseverance, and work continuously. Women get very easily discouraged, no matter what occupation they pursue, if they do not very quickly see some substantial return for their work. The idea that "hope springs eternal in the human breast," was certainly never meant to apply to women; nor, maybe, was it meant to, seeing that it occurs in the "Essay on Man." The female book-agent is very much depressed if she does not make good earnings at the start. Her depression so affects her spirits that she cannot be as industrious as she otherwise would, and so she does more and more poorly until, finally, she gives up the business. Men agents do not, as a rule, become discouraged so easy. They know that provided they have got a good book, published by a good house, it is only a question of time when they will be making good earnings. Women should go to work in the same spirit. If poor success is apt to discourage a woman (and, in what I say now I am only the mouthpiece of several publishers I have seen), a run of very good luck is liable to demoralize her. It is said that some lady agents, after making a considerable sum of money in a short space of time, will at once stop work, and, retiring to their homes, will not think of following the employment until their means are exhausted. Of course that is foolish. While they are spending their time in idleness some new-comer has been assigned to the field they found so profitable. When they return to work it is with a listless spirit, and it will be quite a while before they can summon up that old-time energy, which comes, in any vocation, from long and continuous performance. Women book-agents--and, in defence of this ungallant remark, I must state again that "I say the tale as 'twas said to me"--women book-agents are apt to waste a great deal of time in the spring and fall in getting their wardrobes ready for the coming season. "Who ever knew of a man," remarked a cynical publisher, "stopping work for two or three weeks because he was going to have a suit of clothes made? No one. And yet you will find a female book-agent stop canvassing in the busiest season in order to superintend the making of her dresses." Of course, all lady book-agents do not adopt this practice, but it is well to allude to the custom, because it is very unbusiness-like, and furnishes a hint in the direction of how not to succeed. Two classes of women, publishers find, seek the employment of book-canvassing. A great many young ladies enter the business--it might be said skip into it--with all the gayety and with all the inexperience of youth. These young persons are about eighteen or nineteen years of age; they are buoyant of nature, full of hope, bursting with self-confidence. They work a few days or weeks, then abandon the business, tearfully proclaiming that it wasn't any thing like what they thought it would be. The really successful female book-agent belongs to the second class. She is of middle age, sometimes single, sometimes a widow, or, it may be, she is married, and is bravely assisting a sick or unfortunate husband in the support of the family. Such a woman enters the business with the idea of making it her vocation. If she is a single lady or a widow, she is not on the look-out for a husband, when she should be carefully watching for customers. Having passed the youthful stage of life, she is apt to be a pretty good judge of human nature, and, at all events, she will be quick to learn the ways and weaknesses of men when she is thus forced to daily come in contact with them. The earnings of this latter class of women are sometimes very large. Of course, the reader understands that book-agents almost invariably work upon a commission. That commission varies. On some books it is only ten per cent.; on others it is sixty per cent. The better the book the less the per centage of profit; but, let it be remembered also, the better the book, the more ease in obtaining subscribers. Some women make $50 a week for many weeks running; some earn $30 a week the year round. One lady made enough money in two years' canvassing to send her boy to college, and to purchase a home. In fact, the earnings of book-agents, even the best of them, cannot even be approximately stated. It is sufficient to say that a woman with the proper qualifications, who strictly attends to her business, who is persevering, full of courage, and who works diligently, is sure to succeed. No, there is one thing more needed--a good book. There are a great number of subscription books offered to agents every year, but out of the whole lot very few of them are of real value. And yet, it is not necessary that a book should be, intellectually speaking, first-class, in order to meet with a sale. Some books issued by subscription at the present time cost $20 and $30 apiece. There is a cyclopedia for which the price is over $100. Such books as these, it has been found, must be sold by male agents only. It has also been discovered that women are most successful in the sale of books of a religious or semi-religious character, issued at a reasonable price. The reason for this is apparent. They are brought in contact with the female members of families, and in thus meeting members of their own sex they are at no loss for interesting topics of conversation. For the successful book-agent, it is needless to say, does not, the moment she enters a house, present her wares and cry boldly "Buy"; she "leads up" to the business in hand. In selecting a book a woman should go to a first-class publisher and pick out a work which, according to her judgment (and without much regard to what he may say, because he may very often be wrong), will meet a popular household demand. Let her beware of all the small catch-penny kind of publications; reproductions, from old and worn-out stereotype plates, of books that no one, who really cares for books, will be likely to buy. There are so many good subscription books coming from the press in the present day that there is hardly any excuse for a woman who will waste her time in canvassing for poor ones. Of course, the hasty books outnumber the books of real merit, but there are enough of the latter to furnish employment to all the women who will be likely to engage in this occupation. To give an example of the kind of publisher to be avoided, I may state that in a large Eastern city there is a man who makes it his business, at certain seasons of the year, to advertise for young lady agents. He always wants "_young_ ladies," and he always wants them to be without experience. He publishes but one book, of which he is the putative author. The young ladies receive their board and a trifle for spending money at the end of every week, all living under one roof. Accounts are settled only semi-annually. At the end of the first six months it is very generally found that the young lady agent is in debt to her publisher for board, and, at all events, whatever the statement of affairs may reveal, she is told that her services are no longer required, and a fresh and inexperienced damsel is at once secured to take her place. * * * * * While writing on the subject of agents, it may be well to put down a suggestion made to the author of this little book by a prominent florist. He said that it was surprising to him that ladies were not employed to solicit orders for trees, flowers, and seeds, etc. To his knowledge, no women were engaged in this occupation, and yet it seemed to be one for which they were especially fitted. Agents of this character, it appears, carry with them large books containing highly illuminated drawings of the trees or plants they are endeavoring to sell. A lady could appeal with particular propriety to females who would be likely to be purchasers. The competition in the nursery business has been very great during the past few years, but the profits of agents are said to be good. As this is a new field of female labor, it might be worth while for a woman who has a fancy for such work to endeavor to secure an agency. DRESS-MAKING--MILLINERY. From the modest appearance of the thousands of dwellings throughout the country that bear the legend: "Fashionable Dress- and Cloak-making," no one would suppose it was a very lucrative employment. Indeed, from the dingy and broken-down aspect of some of the establishments referred to, grave doubts might be entertained as to whether the inmates were able to earn the most modest kind of a living. The fact is that the great majority of dress-makers who set up in business for themselves are not very successful, for the reason that, in most cases, they have a very superficial knowledge of the trade, and cannot meet the demand for good work. A really first-class dress-maker is always sure of work, in either city or country. In order to be first-class she must have served an apprenticeship with, or learned the trade of, a woman who is actively engaged in the business. A great many women think they can get a good knowledge of dress-making by the use of charts and patterns. This is not the fact. Undoubtedly charts and patterns are very useful for women who cut and make their own dresses, and they are aids in cutting and fitting generally; but so many changes have to be made, depending on the size and style of the woman to be fitted, and so much judgment is required to be used, that competent critics say that they are of no value to the professional dress-maker. One lady remarked that if all women were perfectly formed, charts and patterns would be a great help; but as the modern Eves come very far short of physical perfection, not much help could be got from them. Some authorities say that dress-making as a trade is not so good a business in New York as it was some ten years ago. The large dress-makers who employ considerable help are obliged to select the best locations in the city for their establishments, where the rent is very high, and to furnish their places in a style very much more expensive than in former years. As a consequence they do not pay as good wages as they once did, on account of having to lay out money in these ways. Another change from the old methods is that the work of dress-making is, at the present time, divided into various departments. One woman will make the skirt, another will finish it, another will work on the sleeves, another will work the button-holes, and the fitting and draping are branches by themselves. The woman who would receive the highest wages to be obtained in this industry should master the whole business, and make herself competent to do all, or nearly all, the kinds of work which have just been mentioned. If she does do that, she need have no fear about obtaining employment. There are thousands of dress-makers in the country, but very few good ones. It is a trade of which it may be emphatically said that there is "room at the top." The dress-making season lasts from October 1st to February 1st; then there is very little to do until March 10th, when business becomes brisk and remains so until about the 1st of August. The hours of work are from 8 A.M. until 6 P.M. In the busy season it is often necessary to work in the evening. The pay ranges from $6 to $8 per week for ordinary hands, while competent women receive $10, $12, and $14 a week. The forelady in a dress-making establishment will receive $15 or $20 a week. It is her duty to superintend the girls, to see that they arrive on time, to give out the work, and to see that it is done promptly and properly. Some women who follow this calling prefer to go out to private families and work by the day. For such service they receive $3 or $3.50 a day. In many respects this is a pleasant method, but it has its disadvantages. A woman is not always sure of how much she will earn unless, after years of work, she has secured the custom of a certain number of families, on whose patronage she can depend. There is so much responsibility and worriment attached to this way of working at the trade that the majority of dress-makers prefer to hire themselves out by the week, and feel sure of receiving each Saturday night a stated amount for their services. The objection that applies to going out to private service is urged against a woman going into the business on her own account. Besides, in large cities it would require considerable capital to pursue such a course. A dingy, insignificant little place could not hope to get much custom, and to compete with the large establishments a woman would have to be prepared to pay a high rent, lay out a large amount in furniture, and then, probably, have to wait a long time before she could be the owner of a good paying business. Still, if she has plenty of capital, thoroughly understands the trade, and is enterprising in her methods of securing business, there is no reason why she should not succeed, provided she has a good location. * * * * * Only the rich and the utterly incompetent patronize the milliner nowadays. It seems that women are very prompt to attend the "openings" in the spring and fall seasons, but the great majority of them do so only to see the styles. They go home and, unless they are very poor hands with the needle, make their bonnets themselves. A hat that would cost $5 in the store, a woman of taste could make for $1.50; and one that would cost $15 she could duplicate for a five-dollar bill. An idea can thus be formed of the profits of the business, and the suggestion will probably occur to the reader that it is a good business to follow. If a woman could secure a good store, at a reasonable rent, in a nice neighborhood, she would have a fair chance of doing well. Of course it is to be supposed that she understands the milliner's trade, and that she has gained her knowledge in a practical way. It is seldom, however, that women are successful as proprietors of such stores. Either they have made a mistake in selecting a location, or their means become exhausted while waiting for custom during the early dull days of their venture. It would take at least $2,000 or $3,000 to start a millinery store. A woman of unusually good taste and sound business judgment might get along with $1,000. The best location in New York City would be between Fourteenth and Thirty-third streets, and Broadway and Sixth Avenue; or on Broadway or Sixth Avenue. TEACHING. The profession of teaching would seem, at a first glance, to be overcrowded. School committees who are charged with the duty of selecting tutors are, it is said, overwhelmed with applicants for the positions that are to be filled. Young women are constantly striving to get places in academies, and the host of females who are seeking situations in the public schools of New York is, indeed, mighty. Notwithstanding this discouraging view, a thoroughly qualified teacher need seldom be without employment. The women who have had a solid systematic training in the English branches, and who, in addition to mere mental qualifications, have the knack, or genius, it might be called, of reaching the minds of the young, are very few. There are plenty of superficially educated young women who "take up" teaching as their profession. They are not thoroughly grounded in the very rudiments of knowledge; they have no knowledge of, or sympathy with, children; they go through their work in a purely mechanical spirit; and they are utterly unfitted, in every way, for the profession they have selected for themselves. The woman who makes teaching her profession must have real ability, and feel herself thoroughly _adapted_ for the calling. No woman, unless she has great "influence," can hope to obtain a position in the public schools of New York. The western part of our country seems to be a good field for well-qualified teachers, who must, however, be endowed with some courage. The country is a good place for a young lady to begin work. Positions are more easily secured, and the qualifications required are not so great as in the city. In the schools throughout the country the salaries of female teachers range from $300 to $1,200 a year. The smaller salary would be given in a country school; the higher salaries would be paid in the academies in the large towns, and in cities. * * * * * Teaching young children by the Kindergarten method has become very popular within the past few years, and there is quite a demand for the establishment of Kindergarten schools. In New York young ladies can learn this method of teaching in two schools; one a free school connected with a society devoted to "ethical culture," and a private school. The instruction given in the former is free, but the young women are expected to devote part of the day to the free scholars. This is an advantage, for it gives them a practical knowledge of the method. During the week there are three theoretical lessons, each lasting about two hours. So many are desirous of entering this institution, that it has been found necessary to have a competitive examination for the admission of candidates. In the private school the price of tuition is $200. In Boston there are twenty kindergartens, all carried on by a lady. The salary of the teachers there is $600. In private families teachers are paid from $400 to $600; there is a good demand for instructors in that quarter. The price obtained from scholars taught in a kindergarten school depends solely on how much they can afford to pay; probably $50 for the school year of nine months would be the average price. * * * * * The educational market is overstocked with teachers of languages. There are so many poor, broken-down foreigners in America who are perfectly competent to teach their respective languages, that there is a very small chance for home talent. A good teacher, in the city of New York, will receive $1 an hour; but there are some who will teach as low as 25 cents an hour, and there are others who, through their good address and social qualifications, will secure an entrance into fashionable society, and receive as high as $5 an hour for doing no better service than their poorer-paid sisters. In academies and schools a lady teaching French and German will receive her board and from $300 to $800 a year. She must have learned these languages abroad, and have the real foreign accent, or she cannot obtain employment at these rates. If she has obtained her knowledge in this country, the salary will be from $300 to $500. * * * * * Music is now so generally taught to children, that there is a good chance for competent female teachers of the art to obtain scholars. There is a wide range in the prices paid for tuition; some teachers receive only 50 cents a lesson, and some as high as $8. Those who receive the latter sum are women of very great ability, who train young ladies to become public performers. The terms depend almost altogether on the wealth of the teacher's patrons; among people in moderate circumstances she will receive moderate pay, while the rich will very often give twice the amount for the same service. The ability and reputation of the teacher will have much to do with her earnings. To become a thoroughly competent music teacher will take three or four years' instruction. It is said that a good musical education can be obtained as well on this as on the other side of the water. Many of the foreign music teachers in this country are as good as can be obtained abroad, and the European instructors, some critics say, do not give as much time and attention to pupils as the American tutors. * * * * * If a woman has a thorough knowledge of short-hand, she can do well, as a teacher of the art, in almost any community. Many persons, even in remote and small places, would learn phonography if the subject were brought to their attention by an instructor. Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, many women of leisure, young women who would study with a view to being amanuenses--all such people could be obtained as pupils. The teacher could give from fifteen to thirty or forty lessons, at a charge of from fifty cents to a dollar a lesson. A great many learners of this art prefer to have a teacher's help, though phonography can be mastered without such aid. * * * * * Teachers of the art of decoration--the ornamentation of China screens, plaques, panels, etc.--and drawing, receive from $400 to $2,000 a year. A course of two or three years' study will fit a properly talented woman to be an art teacher. There is a fair demand for such teachers in the large schools and academies throughout the country. BRIEF NOTES ON MARKET GARDENING, POULTRY-RAISING, BEE-KEEPING, HOUSE-KEEPERS, CASHIERS, BUTTON-HOLE MAKING, FLORICULTURE, AUTHORSHIP, TYPE-WRITING, AND WORKING IN BRASS. It would be impossible, within the limits of this little book, to go into the details of all the employments suitable for women; only the most important and best paying kinds of work have been mentioned in detail. Some brief notes are here given of various occupations in which females are now engaged, and in which they are meeting with more or less success. =Market Gardening.=--Some women make money by raising vegetables for the city markets. The produce is sometimes sent by rail, but, as a rule, it is brought in by trucks. This industry is not, as many might suppose, confined entirely to foreigners. There are thousands of American-born women throughout the country who are engaged in it, and who are doing well. Mention is made of a woman who, starting with a capital of $25, made a good living in this way, cultivating only an acre of ground. Her husband plowed and prepared the ground, and in her part of the work she had the assistance of the younger boys and the older girls. During the past year she made more money than her husband did from his farm. A woman could not expect to be successful in this occupation unless she was unusually strong and healthy, and had the taste for agricultural work very largely developed. Those who are born and brought up in the country do the best. The raising of =poultry= for the large city markets is a lucrative occupation, or rather it can be made so, after a time, if the poultry-raiser gradually increases her stock of fowls. Even if she does not care to do this she can be pretty sure of a fair living. About $300 would be required to start in this business--$100 for the fowls, and the balance for the erection of appropriate buildings for the animals. =Bee-keeping.=--There is always a good market for honey, and those who understand the art of raising bees can be sure of making a fair living. Women can do just as well as men, and many ladies are very successful. It would be necessary to start with not less than thirty swarms of bees, at a cost of from $5 to $15 a swarm, or hive. If the business is properly followed, it will increase in a very short time, as the colonies multiply rapidly. There are excellent books showing how this business can be carried on, but the theoretical knowledge gained from them must be supplemented by practical knowledge gained from experience. =House-keepers.=--The demand for house-keepers is very small; that is to say, there is very little chance for a strange woman to obtain a position of that kind. There are plenty of house-keepers, but when one is wanted she is generally found in the person of a poor relation or struggling friend within the immediate social precinct of the family who desire her services. Such positions, however, when they can be obtained in the large cities, are looked upon as unusually good. House-keepers are employed by widowers to take entire charge of a house and look after the children, if there are any; by husbands with sick and delicate wives; or by couples who are wealthy enough to engage such service. They are paid from $30 to $100 per month, the salary depending on the duties they are expected to perform, and the wealth of the parties who employ them. A house-keeper in a large hotel occupies a responsible position. She must possess that rare feminine virtue--the ability to "get along" with servants. The occupation is very confining, and such workers can very seldom get, at one time, many hours' recess from their work. Their wages run from $20 to $60 a month and their board; the larger the hotel, the more responsible the position and the greater the pay. =Cashiers in Hotels.=--It requires a great deal of "influence" to get the position of cashier in a hotel; it is a situation that is very much coveted. As the cashier is employed in the restaurant, it is only in hotels that are conducted on "the European plan" where such services are required. In such hotels the guests pay so much for their room, and get their meals where they please, paying at the time for what they get. As a rule, they patronize the restaurant connected with the hotel. The cashier has to work long hours. For instance: one day she will be on duty from 8 A.M. until 8 P.M. The next day from 7 A.M. until 10 A.M.; then a recess until 5 P.M., then on duty until 12, midnight. She receives her board and a salary of from $12 to $25 a month. The board is always good. In the best hotels the cashier is allowed to order what she pleases from the regular bill of fare; other hotels have a special bill for the "officers" (as the better class of help are called), and from this the selection of food has to be made. =Button-holes.=--Ladies do not need to be told that the button-holes in fine dresses are made by hand. This kind of work has become a separate business, although there are some seamstresses who combine the making of button-holes with their regular sewing. Dress-makers who employ twenty-five or thirty needlewomen usually keep one button-hole maker, paying her from $9 to $12 a week; very few pay the latter price. Some women who work at this trade prefer to be paid by the piece. In this case they are paid at the rate of two cents and a half per button-hole. A good worker can make fifty button-holes in a day, and earn $1.25. It would be a very smart woman who could make eighty, and earn $2 a day. One trouble about working by the piece is that the woman very often has to wait until the work is got ready for her. As she is obliged to attend on several customers during the day she often suffers from this loss of time, sometimes losing a customer through the failure to keep an appointment, or being obliged to do a part of her work at night. The button-holes in white vests are done by hand. The pay is one cent a button-hole, and a woman can make $1 or $1.25 a day. The work is always done during the winter months, there is plenty of it to do, and never any time lost in waiting. =Florists.=--There are eight or ten ladies in New York and Brooklyn who have charge of floral establishments. Most of them assist their husbands; some are widows who have inherited the business. There is one lady in Brooklyn who has built up a good business solely through her own efforts. This is a very good occupation for women who love flowers, who have good taste, an eye for color and the necessary executive ability to carry on a business by themselves. Most of the florists in New York and Brooklyn get their plants and flowers at wholesale from nurseries on the outskirts, purchasing such stock as they may require from time to time. Land is so valuable in the city that florists have long since been compelled to give up the cultivation of flowers; besides, the streets in the central and business parts are so built up, both in New York and Brooklyn, that the ground cannot be obtained at any price. Now, they have small stores where they make a display of "samples" of the different varieties of flowers. The work is hard at times, the florist being obliged to remain up the best part of the night to fill an order, given at the last moment, for funeral or wedding pieces. The decorating of churches, halls, etc., is tiresome work, especially where palms are used, and where it is necessary to climb up and down ladders. The keeping of plants in pots in the store requires a good deal of labor. Many women call and want to see what the florist has got. She has to raise up the pots of plants many times a day, and this is very tiresome to the wrists. The amount of capital required to start the florist's business is nothing like as much as it was before the large nurseries supplied the florists with what they wanted at wholesale rates. The sum would probably range from $200 to $1000, depending on the location, the style in which the store was fitted up, and the amount of rent that had to be paid. The profits are good, but vary, depending on the class of custom the florist obtains; twenty-five per cent. is considered a fair profit. The lady florist would not, probably, care to devote much time to potted plants. She could keep a few of the more common varieties, which would be sufficient. Most of her business--and the best paying part of her business--would consist in making bouquets, and selling cut flowers. That is more profitable and pleasant than the selling and propagation of plants, and would require much less manual labor. Florists keep informed about their occupation by carefully reading the catalogues issued by the various large wholesale dealers, in this country, and in Europe, and the interesting and valuable books on Floriculture that are issued from time to time. To establish a regular greenhouse, and raise plants and flowers for both the wholesale and retail trade, would require at least $5,000. A woman to carry on the business in that way would have to be possessed of a great deal of executive ability, give her whole personal attention to the work, and be able to manage a considerable number of men. The business is better in the smaller cities than in either New York or Brooklyn. In Schenectady, it may be mentioned by way of illustration that, six years ago, there were no florists; now there are three. =Authorship.=--Authorship has now become, very largely, a matter-of-fact business conducted on business principles. If any woman has any thing to say that is worth listening to she will have no trouble in securing a publisher to reproduce her thoughts in book form. The idea that publishers strive to crush budding genius has long since been exploded. If they were guilty of doing that very often their occupation would be gone. The woman who has a manuscript to offer for publication should first see that it is written plainly on one side of the paper. Then she should select a publisher who issues books of the same general character as the one she has written. Some publishers make a specialty of light summer novels, some of society stories, some of scientific books, and so on. The manuscript is read by a "reader," who passes judgment upon it. If his opinion is favorable the publisher reads the manuscript and decides whether he will undertake to publish it. The book may be bought for a certain sum outright. Or, a certain amount may be paid on publication, and an additional sum after the book has attained a stated circulation; or, a royalty of ten per cent. on what will be the retail price of the book may be given; or, the author may pay for the cost of manufacturing the book, owning the copyright, the plates, and the books printed, and paying the publisher ten per cent. for taking charge of the publication and sale of the book. Contributions for the daily and the weekly literary papers are paid for at the rate of from $6 to $10 per one thousand words. Many young women are ambitious to write for the story papers. There is but little chance of success in this direction. Nearly all of the story papers have a regular corps of contributors, who often write under several different names, and who are paid a salary, or so much for each "instalment" of a continued story. A publisher, however, will always buy a "sensational" continued story if it is very good, and the fact that the author is unknown will not count against its acceptance. A continued story should contain not less than eight, nor more than thirteen, instalments of about four thousand words each. The pay for such a contribution would be from $10 to $20 an instalment. There is a greater demand for short stories for the story papers, stories containing from two to four thousand words. The price paid for such tales would be $5 or $10.[A] [Footnote A: The woman who contemplates authorship, or journalistic work, is advised to consult "Authors and Publishers; a Manual of Suggestions for Beginners in Literature." Price, $1.00. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 and 29 West 23d Street, New York. This is not only the latest but the best book on the subject.] =Type-Writing.=--Young women in the large cities do well working on the type-writer. A girl with a good common-school education, who is naturally bright, and quick with her fingers, can learn in four months' time to work on the type-writer. In eight months she ought to be an expert at the business. Some pupils might be required to practise a year, or a year and a half, before they were thoroughly competent. Forty words a minute is considered a good average rate of speed. Salaries of lady type-writers in law, newspaper, and mercantile offices range from $10 to $20 a week. A woman would have to be a very expert type-writer, or have joined with the knowledge of type-writing some knowledge of short-hand, to earn $20 a week. In railroad offices type-writers are paid $60 a month. Type-writing offices, where type-writing is done for the public by the job, and where this kind of help is employed, pay $10 and $12 a week. Some women open offices and depend on job work. They receive five cents a folio (one hundred words) for furnishing one copy of a manuscript, eight cents a folio for two, and ten cents a folio for three copies. Some charge ten cents per page (three hundred words) for furnishing one copy, twelve cents for furnishing two copies, and fifteen cents for furnishing three copies. Several copies of a page can be taken at one time on the type-writer. This is an excellent industry for women. No special talent is required, except that a woman should be a good speller and have a fair knowledge of the rules of punctuation. A new telegraph company that has just been started is, it is said, going to employ lady type-writers in many of its offices to take down the messages as they are received by the operators. This of itself will create a great demand for lady type-writers. =Wood-Engraving.=--It requires four or five years' study for a woman to become competent in wood-engraving. After three years of hard work she may hope to do some ordinary engraving for which she will receive compensation. In the Cooper Institute (New York), where the art is taught to women, the course of instruction covers four years. The pupils work every day from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. the year round, obtaining theoretical instruction from a teacher twice a week. For engraving a block a trifle larger than this page a woman will receive $50. It will take her from three to five weeks to do the work, depending on the amount of experience she has had in the business. Some women occupy themselves on "catalogue work," _i. e._, engraving the illustrations for mercantile books and agricultural catalogues. At this branch of work they can make from $20 to $25 a week. There are very few female wood-engravers at present. To women who have the necessary talent, and who can afford to give the requisite amount of time to the study of the art, wood-engraving will furnish a sure means of making a living. =Working in Brass.=--This is a new occupation for women that is being taught in one of the technical schools in New York. A few women are successfully doing some work in the business and receiving fair pay. A lady who has a good knowledge of drawing can, it is said, after a course of twelve lessons do marketable work. Pupils who are able to make original designs do the best. A course of twelve lessons in the school alluded to costs $10. The work is by the piece, and is paid for according to the style of the pattern. For small leaves the pay is from 60 to 70 cents each; leaves six inches in length $1 each; a panel 10 × 6 inches, $4 to $5, according to pattern. Tiles are popular and well paid for. The work is very well suited for a woman, and her earnings ought to run from $10 to $25 a week, depending altogether on her talent. After taking lessons and learning the theoretical part of the business it would be well for a woman to go, for a short time, into some establishment where brass-work is done. There she would probably get some practical hints that would be of great service. THE END. Putnam's Handy-Book Series OF BOOKS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD. I.--=The Best Reading.= A Classified Bibliography for easy Reference, with hints on the selection of books, on the formation of libraries, public and private, on courses of reading, etc.; a guide for the librarian, bookbuyer, and bookseller. The classified lists, arranged under about 500 subject-headings, include all the most desirable books now to be obtained either in Great Britain or the United States, with the published prices annexed. New edition, corrected, enlarged, and continued to August, 1876. 12mo, paper, $1.00; cloth $1.50 "We know of no manual that can take its place as a guide to the selector of a library."--_Independent._ =The Library Companion.= Annual Supplement to "The Best Reading." Five volumes, for 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, and 1881, each 50 II.--=Hand-Book of Statistics of the United States.= A Record of the Administrations and Events from the Organization of the United States Government to 1874. Comprising brief biographical data of the presidents, cabinet officers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Continental Congress, statements of finances under each administration, and other valuable material. 12mo, cloth $1 00 "The book is of so comprehensive a character and so compact a form that it is especially valuable to the journalist or student."--_N. Y. World._ III.--=What to Eat.= A Manual for the Housekeeper; giving a bill of fare for every day in the year. 134 pages, boards 50 "It can hardly fail to prove a valuable aid to housekeepers who are brought to their wits' end to know what to get for the day's meals."--_San Francisco Bulletin._ IV.--=Till the Doctor Comes, and How to Help Him.= By GEORGE H. HOPE, M.D. Revised with additions by a New York physician. :: A popular guide in all cases of accident and sudden illness. 12mo, 99 pages, boards 50 "A most admirable treatise; short, concise, and practical."--_Harper's Monthly_ (Editorial). V.--=Stimulants and Narcotics=; MEDICALLY, PHILOSOPHICALLY, AND MORALLY CONSIDERED. By GEORGE M. BEARD, M.D. 12mo, 155 pages, cloth 75 "Dr. Beard has given the question of stimulants the first fair discussion in moderate compass that it has received in this country. * * * The book should be widely read."--_N. Y. Independent._ VI.--=Eating and Drinking.= A Popular Manual of Food and Diet in Health and Disease. By GEORGE M. BEARD, M.D. 12mo, 180 pages, cloth 75 "The best manual upon the subject we have seen."--_N. Y. World._ VII.--=The Student's Own Speaker.= By PAUL REEVES. A Manual of Oratory, comprising new selections, patriotic, pathetic, grave, and humorous, for home use and for schools. 12mo, 215 pages, boards 75 "We have never before seen a collection so admirably adapted for its purpose."--_Cincinnati Chronicle._ VIII.--=How to Educate Yourself.= A Complete Guide to Students; showing how to study, what to study, and how and what to read. It is, in short, a "Pocket School-master." By GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON. 12mo, 151 pages, boards 50 "We write with unqualified enthusiasm about this book, which is untellably good and for good."--_N. Y. Evening Mail._ IX.--=A Manual of Etiquette.= With Hints on Politeness, Good-Breeding, etc. By "DAISY EYEBRIGHT." 12mo, boards 50 "The suggestions and directions are given with taste and judgment, and express the habits of good society."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._ X.--=The Mother's Register.= Current Notes on the Health of Children, Part I., Boys. Part II., Girls. "The Mother records for the Physician to interpret." From the French of Prof. J. B. FONSSAGRIVES, M.D. 12mo, cloth 75 XI.--=Hints on Dress.= By an American woman. 12mo, 124 pages, cloth 75 XII.--=The Home=: WHERE IT SHOULD BE AND WHAT TO PUT IN IT. Containing hints for the selection of a Home, its furniture and internal arrangements, with carefully prepared price-lists of nearly every thing needed by a housekeeper, and numerous valuable suggestions for saving money and gaining comfort. By FRANK R. STOCKTON. 12mo, 182 pages, boards 50 "Young housekeepers will be especially benefited, and all housekeepers may learn much from this book."--_Albany Journal._ XIII.--=The Mother's Work with Sick Children.= By Prof. J. B. FONSSAGRIVES, M.D. Translated and edited by F. P. FOSTER, M.D. A volume full of the most practical advice and suggestions for Mothers and Nurses. 12mo, 244 pages, cloth 1 00 "A volume which should be in the hands of every mother in the land."--_Binghamton Herald._ XIV.--=Manual of Thermometry.= For Mothers, Nurses, Hospitals, etc., and all who have charge of the sick and the young. By EDWARD SEGUIN, M.D. 12mo, cloth 75 XV.--=Infant Diet.= By A. JACOBI, M.D., Clinical Professor of Diseases of Children, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. Revised, enlarged, and adapted to popular use by MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D. 12mo, boards 50 "Dr. Jacobi's rules are admirable in their simplicity and comprehensiveness."--_N. Y. Tribune._ XVI.--=How to Make a Living.= By GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON, author of "How to Educate Yourself." 12mo, boards 50 "Shrewd, sound, and entertaining."--_N. Y. Tribune._ XVII.--=Manual of Nursing.= Prepared under the instructions of the New York Training School for Nurses, by VICTORIA WHITE, M.D., and revised by MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D. Boards 75 "Better adapted to render the nurse a faithful and efficient coöperator with the physician than any work we have seen."--_Home Journal._ XVIII.--=The Blessed Bees.= An account of practical Bee-keeping, and the author's success in the same. By JOHN ALLEN. Boards 75 "I scarcely looked up from the volume before I had scanned all its fascinating pages."--Prof. A. T. COOK, in _American Bee Journal_, 1878, p. 422. XIX.--=The Handy-Book of Quotations.= A Dictionary of Common Poetical Quotations in the English Language. 16mo, boards 75 "Compact and comprehensive. * * * An invaluable little volume."--_Providence Journal._ XX.--=From Attic to Cellar.= A Book for Young Housekeepers. By Mrs. OAKEY. 16mo, cloth 75 "An admirable collection of directions and counsels, written by a lady of large experience, in a style of perfect simplicity and great force. * * * I wish it were in the hands of every housekeeper and every domestic in the land."--H. W. BELLOWS, D.D. XXI.--=Emergencies, and How to Meet Them.= Compiled by BURT G. WILDER, M.D., Prof. of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in Cornell University. 16mo, sewed 15 "Invaluable instructions, prompt attention to which would often save life or serious disaster."--_Providence Journal._ XXII.--=The Maintenance of Health.= By J. MILNER FOTHERGILL, M.D. Third and cheaper edition. Octavo, boards 1 25 "The most important book of its kind that has ever been published in this country."--_Christian Union._ XXIII.--=The Art of Cooking.= A series of practical lessons by MATILDA LEES DODS the South Kensington School of Cookery. Edited by HENRIETTA DE CONDE SHERMAN. 16mo, cloth extra 1 00 "The thoroughness of her preparation for the work which this experience has afforded is seen in the marked success of the experimental lessons that she is now giving. They are so clear and methodical, her manipulation is so deft and easy, and the dishes produced are so excellent, as to win the praise of all who hear her."--_N. Y. Times._ XXIV.--=Hints for Home Reading.= A series of papers by EDWARD EVERETT HALE, F. B. PERKINS, H. W. BEECHER, CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, JOSEPH COOK, LYMAN ABBOTT, M. J. SWEETSER, CYRUS HAMLIN, H. W. MABIE, and others. Edited by LYMAN ABBOTT. Together with a new edition of "Suggestions for Libraries," with first, second, and third lists of 500, 1,000, and 2,000 volumes recommended as the most important and desirable. 8vo, cloth, $1 00; boards 75 "We warmly commend the book for the guidance not only of bookbuyers but readers. Its suggestions are invaluable to both."--_Boston Transcript._ XXV.--=First Aid to the Injured.= Prepared under the authority of the First Aid to the Injured Society. By PETER SHEPHERD, M.D., and BOWDITCH MORTON, M.D. Square 16mo, cloth extra 50 "It is a book which ought to have a place in every family, and its simple rules should be carefully studied and mastered by every one."--_Providence Press._ XXVI.--=How to Succeed=, in Public Life, as a Minister, as a Physician, as a Musician, as an Engineer, as an Artist, in Mercantile Life, as a Farmer, as an Inventor, and in Literature. A series of essays by Senators BAYARD and EDMUNDS; Doctors JOHN HALL, WILLARD PARKER, and LEOPOLD DAMROSCH; Gen. SOOY SMITH, HAMILTON GIBSON, Commissioner GEO. B. LORING, LAWSON VALENTINE, THOMAS EDISON, and E. P. ROE. With an Introduction by LYMAN ABBOTT. 16mo, boards 50 "No book, we fancy, could more directly appeal to the mass of Americans than one with this title. * * * Will find solid help in these remarkable little essays that deal with great expectations."--_N. Y. Herald._ XXVII.--=Work for Women.= Being hints to aid women in the selection of a vocation in life, and describing the several occupations of Short-Hand Writing, Industrial Designing, Photographing, Nursing, Telegraphing, Teaching, Dress-Making, Proof-Reading, Engraving, etc., etc., etc. By George J. Manson. 16mo, boards 60 "Full of useful suggestions."--_Philadelphia American._ XXVIII.--=Health Notes for Students.= By Prof. BURT G. WILDER, of Cornell University. Uniform with "Emergencies." 16mo, paper 20 "The instructions are never extreme, and always sensible."--_Chicago Tribune._ XXIX.--=The Home Physician.= A summary of Practical Medicine and Surgery for the Use of Travellers and of Families at a distance from Physicians. By LUTHER M. GILBERT, M.D., Attending Physician to the Connecticut General Hospital. 16mo, cloth 1 00 "Concise, comprehensive, and practical."--_St. Paul Dispatch._ XXX.--=Bread-Making.= A practical treatise, giving full instructions for the making of bread and biscuits, 16mo, boards 50 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. Other than the corrections listed below, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. Two different versions of spelling for housekeeper and Hand-book occur in this book (advertisements: housekeeper and Hand-Book; main text: house-keeper and Hand-book). The following misprints have been corrected: changed "Abbot" into "Abbott" in Preface changed "they are familliar," into "they are familiar." page 5 changed "or eight o'clock," into "or eight o'clock." page 34 changed "gratuitiously" into "gratuitously" page 51 changed "month" into "months" page 55 changed "treshhold" into "threshold" page 61 added " after "to go by." page 75 changed "negro" into "Negro" page 77 changed "about woman suffrage, a" into "about woman-suffrage, a" page 94 changed "Bee-Keeping.--There is" into "Bee-keeping.--There is" page 125 changed "Type-Writing.--Young women" into "Type-writing.--Young women" page 135 changed "excellant" into "excellent" advertisement changed "and 1881, each," into "and 1881, each" advertisement changed "134 pages, boards," into "134 pages, boards" advertisement changed "215 pages, boards," into "215 pages, boards" advertisement changed "16mo, paper," into "16mo, paper" advertisement 
33170	----	_The Itching Palm_ A STUDY OF THE HABIT OF TIPPING IN AMERICA _By_ WILLIAM R. SCOTT _Author of_ _"The Americans in Panama," "Scientific Circulation Management," Etc._ THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1916 COPYRIGHT 1916 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY The Itching Palm THE AUTHOR WILL BE PLEASED TO CORRESPOND WITH ANY READER WHO APPROVES OF, OR HAS COMMENTS TO MAKE UPON, THE ATTITUDE TAKEN IN THIS BOOK TOWARD THE TIPPING CUSTOM. WILLIAM R. SCOTT. PADUCAH, KENTUCKY. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA 7 II ON PERSONAL LIBERTY 10 III BARBARY PIRATES 15 IV PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION 19 V THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING 26 VI THE ETHICS OF TIPPING 36 VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING 47 VIII THE LITERATURE OF TIPPING 58 IX TIPPING AND THE STAGE 68 X THE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT 73 XI THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT 88 XII ONE STEP FORWARD 97 XIII THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE 105 XIV THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING 113 XV LAWS AGAINST TIPPING 122 XVI SAMUEL GOMPERS ON TIPPING 144 XVII THE WAY OUT 158 INDEX 169 THE ITCHING PALM I FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA "Oliver Cromwell struck a mortal blow at the universal heart of Flunkyism," wrote Carlyle of the execution of Charles I. Yet, Flunkyism is not dead! In the United States alone more than 5,000,000 persons derive their incomes, in whole or in part, from "tips," or gratuities. They have the moral malady denominated The Itching Palm. Tipping is the modern form of Flunkyism. Flunkyism may be defined as a willingness to be servile for a consideration. It is democracy's deadly foe. The two ideas cannot live together except in a false peace. The tendency always is for one to sap the vitality of the other. The full significance of the foregoing figures is realized in the further knowledge that these 5,000,000 persons with itching palms are fully 10 per cent of our entire industrial population; for the number of persons engaged in gainful occupations in this country is less than 50,000,000. Whether this constitutes a problem for moralists, economists and statesmen depends upon the ethical appraisement of tipping. If tipping is moral, the interest is reduced to the economic phase--whether the remuneration thus given is normal or abnormal. If tipping is immoral, the fact that 5,000,000 Americans practice it constitutes a problem of first rate importance. Accurate statistics are not obtainable, but conservative estimates place the amount of money given in one year by the American people in tips, or gratuities, at a figure somewhere between $200,000,000 and $500,000,000! Now we have the full statement of the case against tipping--five million persons receiving in excess of two hundred millions of dollars for--what? It will be interesting to examine the ethics, economics and psychology of tipping to determine whether the American people receive a value for this expenditure. II ON PERSONAL LIBERTY The Itching Palm is a moral disease. It is as old as the passion of greed in the human mind. Milton was thinking of it when he exclaimed: "Help us to save free conscience from the paw, Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw." Although it had only a feeble lodgment in the minds of the Puritans, because their minds were in the travail that gave birth to democracy, enough remained to perpetuate the disease. In Europe, under monarchical ideals, a person could accept a tip without feeling the acute loss of self-respect that attends the practice in America, under democratic ideals. For tipping is essentially an aristocratic custom. TIPPING UN-AMERICAN If it seems astounding that this aristocratic practice should reach such stupendous proportions in a republic, we must remember that the same republic allowed slavery to reach stupendous proportions. IF TIPPING IS UN-AMERICAN, SOME DAY, SOMEHOW, IT WILL BE UPROOTED LIKE AFRICAN SLAVERY Apparently the American conscience is dormant upon this issue. But this is more apparent than real. The people are stirring vaguely and uneasily over the ethics of the custom. Six State Legislatures reflected the dawning of a new conscience by considering in their 1915 sessions bills relating to tipping. They were Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Carolina. The geographical distribution of these States is significant. It is proof that the opposition to the practice is not isolated, not sectional, but national. North, Central, South, the verdict was registered that tipping is wrong. The South, former home of slavery, might be supposed to be favorable to this aristocratic custom. On the contrary the most vigorous opposition to it is found there. Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina simultaneously had laws against tipping--with the usual contests in the courts on their constitutionality. The Negro was servile by law and inheritance. The modern tip-taker voluntarily assumes, in a republic where he is actually and theoretically equal to all other citizens, a servile attitude for a fee. While the form of servitude is different, the slavery is none the less real in the case of the tip-taker. Strangely enough, bills to prohibit tipping often have been vetoed by Governors--notably in Wisconsin--on the ground that they curtailed personal liberty. That is to say, a bill which removed the chains of social slavery from the serving classes was declared to be an abridgment of liberty! "Oh, Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!" The Legislature in Wisconsin almost re-passed the bill over the Governor's veto. In Tennessee and Kentucky bills have been vetoed for the same given reason, though Tennessee in 1916 finally had such a law in force. In Illinois, the law was framed primarily with the object of preventing the leasing of privileges to collect tips in hotels and other public places, and not against the individual giver or taker of tips. SHORT-LIVED LAWS The courts have negatived such laws on much the same grounds, so that anti-tipping laws thus far have been, generally, short-lived. The reason is, of course, that popular sentiment has not been behind the laws in an extent sufficient to give them power. Judges and executives simply have yielded to their own class impulses, and the pressure from organized interests, to suppress the legislation. When the public conscience finds itself and becomes organized and articulate, they will have no difficulty in finding grounds for declaring regulatory laws constitutional. The history of the prohibition of the liquor business is a parallel. PERSONAL LIBERTY Personal liberty is a phrase that is being redefined in America in every decade. In its broadest sense it is interpreted to mean that a man has the right to go to perdition if he so elects without neighbors or the government taking note or interfering. Anti-liquor laws in the early days of the temperance movement fared badly from this interpretation, just as anti-tipping laws fare to-day. But as public sentiment crystallized, and judges and executives began to feel the pressure at the polls, a new conception of personal liberty developed. In its present accepted sense, as regards liquor, it is interpreted to mean that no citizen may act or live in a way that is detrimental to himself, his neighbor or his government, and his privilege to drink liquor is abridged or abolished at will. The right to give tips is not inalienable. It is not grounded on personal liberty. If the public conscience reaches the conviction that tipping is detrimental to democracy, that it destroys that fineness of self-respect requisite in a republic, the right will be abridged or withdrawn. III BARBARY PIRATES The American people became fully aroused on one occasion to the iniquity of tipping--on an international scale. In 1801 President Jefferson decided that the United States could tolerate no longer the system of tribute enforced by the Barbary States along the shores of the Mediterranean. Before our action, no European government had made more than fitful, ineffectual attempts to break up a practice at once humiliating to national honor and disastrous to national commerce. Candor requires the admission that we, too, submitted for years to this system of paying tribute to Barbary pirates for an unmolested passage of our ships, but the significant fact is that American manhood did finally and successfully revolt against the practice. By 1805 our naval forces had brought the pirates to their knees and all Europe breathed grateful sighs of relief. Even the Pope commended the American achievement. The practice was contrary to every dictate of self-respect. TRIBUTE These pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli did not pretend to have any other right behind their demands for tribute than the right they could enforce with cutlass and cannon--a right ferociously employed. It was not robbery in the ordinary sense of the word. They demanded a fee based on the value of the cargo for the privilege of sailing in the Mediterranean, and this being paid, the ship could proceed to its destination. Ship-owners soon began to figure tribute as a fixed expense of navigation, like insurance, and passed the added cost along to the ultimate consumer. This practice of paying tribute was a system of international tipping. The Barbary pirates granted immunity to those who obeyed the custom, but made it decidedly warm and expensive for those who dared to protest against it--just as do our modern pirates in hotels, sleeping cars, restaurants, barber shops and elsewhere. If a ship refused to pay tribute it was sunk, and the sailors went to slavery in the desert, or to death by fearful torture. President Jefferson could not see any basis of right in the position of the Barbary States that the Mediterranean was their private lake through which ships could not pass without paying toll. He sent Decatur to register our protest. With the Pinckney slogan: "MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE--NOT ONE CENT FOR TRIBUTE!" the American naval forces made good our position. The tips that skippers of our nation had been paying to the pirates were saved and the custom soon was abandoned by other nations. * * * * * To-day, the old battle cry is reversed to read: "Millions for tribute--not one cent for defense!" It is certain that a greater tribute is paid in one week in the United States in the form of tips, than our merchantmen paid during the whole period that they knuckled to the Barbary pirates. In New York City alone more than $100,000 a day is paid in gratuities to waiters, hotel employes, chauffeurs, barbers and allied classes. But New York has reached a subserviency to the tipping custom that is amazing in a democratic country. This vast tribute is paid for not more real service than the Barbary pirates rendered to those from whom they exacted tribute. It is given to workers who are paid by their employers to perform the services enjoyed by the public. If the Barbary pirates could see the ease with which a princely tribute is exacted from a docile public by the tip-takers, they would yearn to be reincarnated as waiters in America--the Land of the Fee! IV PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION The Itching Palm is not limited to the serving classes. It is found among public officials, where it is particularized as grafting, and it is found among store buyers, purchasing agents, traveling salesmen and the like, and takes the form of splitting commissions. There are varied manifestations of the disease, but whether the amount of the gratuity is ten cents to a waiter or $10,000 to a captain of police, the practice is the same. This is a partial list of those affected: Baggagemen Barbers Bartenders Bath attendants Bellboys Bootblacks Butlers Cab drivers Chauffeurs Charwomen Coachmen Cooks Door men Elevator men Garbage men Guides Hatboys Housekeepers Janitors Maids Manicurists Messengers Mail carriers Pullman porters Rubbish collectors Steamship stewards Theater attendants Waiters The foregoing list is not offered as a complete roster of those who regularly or occasionally receive tips. Nearly every one can think of additions, and at Christmas the list is extended to include money gifts to policemen, delivery men and numerous others. THE TIP-TAKING CLASSES At the last Census, in 1910, there were 38,167,336 persons in the United States, out of a total population of ninety-odd millions, who were engaged in gainful occupations, that is, who worked for specified wages or salaries. Of this number, 3,772,174 persons were engaged in domestic or personal service, or practically ten per cent. of the industrial population. This means that in round numbers 4,000,000 Americans of both sexes and all ages were engaged in the lines of work specified in the foregoing list, with certain additions as mentioned. These are the citizens who profit by the tipping practice. Since 1910 the growth in population to one hundred millions, and the steadily widening spread of the tipping practice will increase the beneficiaries of tipping to 5,000,000. An idea of the relative distribution of the total may be obtained from the statistics of fifty leading cities. The numbers represent the tip-taking classes in each city. CITY NUMBER Albany 8,000 Atlanta 23,000 Baltimore 48,000 Birmingham 16,000 Boston 61,000 Bridgeport 5,200 Buffalo 25,000 Cambridge 7,500 Chicago 135,000 Cincinnati 30,000 Cleveland 31,000 Columbus 14,000 Dayton 6,500 Denver 17,000 Detroit 26,000 Fall River 4,000 Grand Rapids 5,500 Indianapolis 19,000 Jersey City 14,000 Kansas City 24,000 Los Angeles 26,000 Lowell 5,500 Louisville 23,000 Memphis 19,000 Milwaukee 22,000 Minneapolis 19,000 Nashville 15,000 New Haven 9,000 New Orleans 37,000 New York 400,000 Newark 17,000 Oakland 11,000 Omaha 10,000 Paterson 5,000 Philadelphia 105,000 Pittsburgh 41,000 Portland 17,000 Providence 14,000 Richmond 15,000 Rochester 13,000 St. Louis 56,000 St. Paul 16,000 San Francisco 44,000 Scranton 6,000 Seattle 19,000 Spokane 7,000 Syracuse 9,000 Toledo 9,500 Washington 43,000 Worcester 9,000 In all other cities, towns and hamlets there are proportionate quotas to bring the grand total to 5,000,000. Any estimate of the daily tipping tribute for the whole country necessarily is only an approximation, but $600,000 is a conservative figure. At this rate the annual tribute is around $220,000,000. IN NEW YORK ALONE Taking New York with its 400,000 persons who profit from tipping, the leading classes of beneficiaries are as follows: Barbers 20,000 Bartenders 12,000 Bellboys 2,500 Bootblacks 3,500 Chauffeurs 12,000 Janitors 25,000 Manicurists 4,500 Messengers 1,500 Porters 15,000 Waiters 35,000 The tipping to these and other classes varies both in amount and regularity. Waiters and manicurists in the better-class places receive no pay from their employers and depend entirely upon tips for their compensation. Barbers and chauffeurs are classes which receive wages and supplement them with tips. Sometimes the employer will pay wages and require that all tips be turned in to the house. It is a common feature of the "Help Wanted" columns to state that the job is desirable to the workers because of "good tips." Thus the employers are fully alert to the economic advantage of tipping, and wherever it is practicable they throw upon their patrons the entire cost of servant hire. The extent to which employers are exploiting the public is realized vaguely, if at all. The vein of generosity and the fear of violating a social convention can be worked profitably, and they are in league with their employees to make it assay the maximum amount to the patron. In a restaurant where the employer has thus shifted the cost of waiter hire to the shoulders of the public, the patron who conscientiously objects to tipping has not the slightest chance in the world of a square deal in competition with the patron who pays tribute, although he pays as much for the food. A waiter, knowing that his compensation depends upon what he can work out of his patron, employs every art to stimulate the tipping propensity, from subtle flattery to out-right bull-dozing. He weaves a spell of obligation around a patron as tangible, if invisible, as the web a spider weaves around a fly. He plays as consciously upon the patron's fear of social usage as the musician in the alcove plays upon his violin. This is a particularly bad ethical and economic situation from any viewpoint. The patron, getting only one service, pays two persons for it--the employer and the employee. The payment to the employer is fixed, but to the employee it is dependent upon the whim of the patron. To make this situation normal, the patron should pay only once, and this should cover both the cost of the food and the services of the waiter. Theoretically this is the present idea under the common law, but actually the patron is required, through fear of well-defined penalties, to pay twice. Naturally, if the $200,000,000 or more annually given to those serving the public should be withdrawn suddenly, employers would face the necessity of a radical readjustment of wage systems. In many lines wages would be increased to a normal basis, either at the expense of the employer's profits, or through additional charges to patrons. Before going further into the employer phase of the practice, the economics of tipping in individual instances will be an interesting study. V THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING The basic question is, does tipping represent a sound exchange of wealth? Do the American people receive full value, or any value, for the $200,000,000 or more given in tips? Values, of course, may be sentimental as well as substantial and, so far as tipping is concerned, it can be demonstrated that if any values are received they are sentimental. The satisfaction of giving, the balm to vanity, the indulgence of pride, are the values obtained by the giver of a tip in exchange for his money. It is a stock argument for tipping that the person serving frequently performs extra services, or displays special painstaking, which deserve extra compensation. Only an examination of individual instances can determine whether this is true. The proportion of the tipping tribute which really pays for extraordinary service is negligible. A brief inquiry into a few of the more prominent instances of tipping follows. THE WAITER If food is sold undelivered, then the waiter in bringing it to the patron and assisting him in its consumption does perform an extra service for which payment is due. But this is not the fact, any more than that a shoe clerk should be tipped for assisting a customer in the selection of his employer's footwear. In both instances, the cost of the service is included in the price of the article--food or shoes. The prices on the bill of fare have been figured to include all costs of serving it, such as cook-hire, waiter-hire, rent, music, table ware, raw materials and overhead charges. If a sirloin steak costs seventy-five cents a definite part of that amount represents the wages of the waiter serving it. Thus the waiter has no claim upon the patron for compensation, because the patron, in paying for the food, provides the proprietor with funds from which the waiter's wages will be paid. If the patron, in addition, gives the waiter a tip it is clearly a gift for which no value has been returned. The waiter is paid twice for one service. ECONOMIC WASTE The question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic transaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound which does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five dollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer and the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return--nothing of like substantiality. The patron may justify the gift from sentimental considerations, of pride, generosity or fear of violating a social convention, but no sophistry of reasoning can prove that a substantial value has been received. Of course, a waiter may give a patron more than the proprietor agrees to give in the bill of fare, and this undoubtedly is an extra service--_but it is also a dishonest service_. Every extra service to one patron means a deficiency of service to other patrons. It is a common experience that liberal tipping obtains special attentions which non-tipping patrons miss, but, being dishonest, such a condition is outside the scope of this inquiry. When a patron pays for food he is entitled to adequate and equal service, and no largess by other patrons should interfere with this basic right. On its economic side, then, tipping is wrong. Wealth is exchanged without both parties to the transaction receiving fair values. The psychology and ethics of the transaction will be considered in other chapters. THE BARBER No tipping is so inexcusable as that which is done to a barber. The trade is highly organized and the workers are well-paid under good working conditions. There is not the slightest chance for the barber to serve a patron in a way for which the patron does not pay in the shop tariffs. If a haircut costs thirty-five cents, the patron is entitled to just as good a hair-cut as the barber can give. The patron enters the shop upon the assumption that he is entitled to a satisfactory service. Hence, in tipping a barber a patron is yielding in a peculiarly timid way to the mesmeric influence which the tipping custom exerts over its devotees. It is a wanton waste of wealth, an unsound business transaction, because money is given where charity is unnecessary and where absolutely nothing is given in return. "But my barber takes lots of pains with my hair," the patron exclaims in justification of the tip. As in the instance of the waiter, if he takes more than a normal amount of pains with your hair he is dishonest to his employer and to other patrons whom he must neglect to pay you special attention. Your right is to a satisfactory service, and this you pay for in the regular charge. Any extra compensation is unearned increment to the barber. The unctuous manner he employs to arouse a sense of obligation in a patron, when stripped of disguises, is a plain hold-up game. This will be shown in the consideration of the psychology and ethics of tipping. THE HOTEL The attitude that hotel employees have been allowed to develop toward the public is a blot upon professional hospitality. Every one of them takes the hotel patron for fair game. And the hotel proprietor, with a few notable exceptions, encourages this despicable attitude. The assumption is that the patron pays at the desk only for the privilege of being in the building. Hence, they will not cheerfully move his baggage to his room unless he pays to get it there. He cannot have a pitcher of ice water without being made to feel that he owes for the service. The maid who cares for his room exacts her toll. The head waiter demands payment for showing him to a seat. The individual waiters at each meal (and they are changed each meal by the head-waiter so that the patron has a new tip to give each time he dines) require fees. If he rings a bell, asks any assistance, goes out the door to a cab, in short, whichever way he turns, an itching palm is outstretched! Just think for a moment of the real significance of this state of affairs. Hotel hospitality? Why, the Barbary pirates would have been ashamed to go it that strong! To ignore this grafting spirit means insulting annoyance. The suave hotel manager listens to your complaint and smiles assurance that his guests shall have proper service, but underneath the smile he has a contempt for the "tight-wad," and instructs the cashier always to give the waiters small change so as to make tipping easy for the patrons. In truth, what does a hotel guest pay for when he registers? Certainly for the service of the bell-boy who carries his suit-case to his room; for the keeping of the room in order; for water, clean towels and other necessities for his comfort; for the privilege of finding a seat in the dining room; for the right to use the doors--all without extra charge. But the hotel manager admits this in theory and outrageously violates it in practice. All tipping done to bell-boys, porters, maids, waiters, door men, hat-boys and other servitors in a hotel is sheer economic waste. When the guest pays his bill at the desk he pays for all the service they perform. The hotel manager protests that the money that passes between his guests and his employees is not his affair. But he proves his insincerity by adjusting his wage scale on the estimate that the guests will pass money to his employees! Professional hospitality as "enjoyed" by Americans is a travesty on democracy. That Europe should have such a system and spirit is historically understandable. Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy. THE CHAUFFEUR It would be possible to run through all the classes tipped and prove that the extra compensation is unearned. The chauffeur is a latter-day instance of the itching palm. Like the barber, the chauffeur is paid well for his work. He does nothing for which the patron should give him a tip. The taxi-meter charges the patron roundly for all the service given, yet tipping chauffeurs is as common in the larger cities as tipping barbers or waiters. It simply shows the spread of the practice to workers who have no other claim upon it than their own avaricious impulses--and the extreme docility of the public. Every tip given to a chauffeur is so clearly a bad economic transaction that further argument is unnecessary. So widespread has the practice become that tipping is, individually, a problem, as well as collectively. The traveler has a formidable cost to face in the tipping required. When the total passes $200,000,000 a year, it becomes a problem which the American people will find more difficult of solution the longer it continues unchecked. The whole argument is summed up in this. Tipping is an economic waste because it is double pay for one service--or pay for no service. It causes one person to give wealth to another without a fair return in values, or without any return. The pay that employers give to their employees should be the only compensation they receive. All the money given by the public on the side is unearned increment. The best condition for a fair exchange of wealth is where standards are known and prices are definite. Self-respect and sound economics flourish in such an atmosphere, whereas, if values are hazy and compensation is indirect and irregular, as it is under the custom of tipping, the bickering that follows degrades manhood. From an economic viewpoint, all businesses are on an abnormal basis which figure minimum wages, or no wages, to their employees on the assumption that the public will, through gratuities, pay for this item of service. "One service--one compensation" is the only right relation of seller and buyer, of patron and proprietor. VI THE ETHICS OF TIPPING The moral wrong of tipping is in the grafting spirit it engenders in those who profit by it; in the rigid class distinctions it creates in a republic; in the loss of that fineness of self-respect without which men and women are only so much clay--worthless dregs in the crucible of democracy. In a monarchy it may be sufficient for self-respect to be limited to the governing classes; but the theory of Americanism requires that every citizen shall possess this quality. We grant the suffrage simply upon manhood--upon the assumption that all men are equal in that fundamental respect. THE PRICE OF PRIDE Hence, whatever undermines self-respect, manhood, undermines the republic. Whatever cultivates aristocratic ideals and conventions in a republic strikes at the heart of democracy. Where all men are equal, some cannot become superior unless the others grovel in the dust. Tipping comes into a democracy to produce that relation. Tipping is the price of pride. It is what one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority. It represents the root of aristocracy budding anew in the hearts of those who publicly renounced the system and all its works. The same Americans who profit by this undemocratic practice exert as much influence, proportionably, in the government of the republic, as those who give tips, or those whose sense of rectitude will not allow them to give or accept gratuities. Is a man who will take a tip as good a citizen, is his self-respect as fine, as the one who will not accept a tip, or who will not give a tip? Is the one as well qualified to vote as the other? What is a gentleman? What is a lady? Can a waiter be a gentleman? Can a maid be a lady? Would a gentleman or a lady accept a gratuity? What would happen if a tip should be offered to the average "gentleman" who patronizes restaurants, and taxicabs and barber shops? He would have a brainstorm of self-righteous wrath! THE TEST OF DEMOCRACY And there is the test. If a "gentleman" would not accept a tip, is it gentlemanly to give a tip? If a "gentleman's" self-respect would rebel at the idea of accepting a gratuity, why should not a waiter's self-respect rebel at the idea? "Oh, but there's a difference!" The difference is there indeed. It is the difference between aristocracy and democracy. In an aristocracy a waiter may accept a tip and be servile without violating the ideals of the system. In the American democracy to be servile is incompatible with citizenship. Every tip given in the United States is a blow at our experiment in democracy. The custom announces to the world that at heart we are aristocratic, that we do not believe practically that "all men are created equal"; that the class distinctions forbidden by our organic law are instituted through social conventions and flourish in spite of our lofty professions. Unless a waiter can be a gentleman, democracy is a failure. If any form of service is menial, democracy is a failure. Those Americans who dislike self-respect in servants are undesirable citizens; they belong in an aristocracy. TIPS DISLIKED BY RECIPIENTS Fortunately, conditions are not as rotten as the extent of the tipping practice would indicate. The vast majority of Americans who give tips do so under duress. At heart they loathe the custom. They feel that it is tribute exacted as arbitrarily and unrighteously as the tribute paid to the Barbary pirates. Some day this majority will rise up and deal as summarily with the tipping practice as our forefathers dealt with the Mediterranean tribute custom! A great number of servants and workers in such lines as barber shops, restaurants and other public service positions are equally opposed to the custom. They are caught up, however, in a system where they must conform to the custom or lose their employment. Many a barber or waiter or chauffeur whose self-respect rebels at taking a tip is forced to do so in order not to offend patrons. For nothing so stirs up a "gentleman" as for the person serving to decline a tip. The reason is that he feels the rebuke implied in the refusal and knows in his conscience that the practice is wrong. We always grow more indignant at a just accusation than at an unjust one! CONSCIENCE IS STIRRING The constant re-appearance of laws to regulate tipping, in every section of the country, proves that the conscience of the people is stirring. The daily and periodical press now and then condemn the practice editorially in unmeasured terms and persons prominent in the public eye occasionally flare-up at some particularly flagrant manifestation of the itching palm. Governor Whitman, of New York, in an address to the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, said (as District Attorney then): "It is a brave thing, a womanly thing and a courageous thing for you to band together to combat an evil. And I hope you will stand pat. We are all growing to tolerate a kind of petty grafting that is not right, that is un-American. I object to having a man take my hat and hang it up for me and then accept a coin. I am strong and big enough to hang up my own hat. And I also prefer to carry my own bag to having a boy half my size carry a bag that is half his size and be paid with a coin. If he honestly earns the money he should have it as an earning, not as a gratuity. It is this giving of gratuities that is unlike us, it is a custom copied from a foreign country where conditions are different from ours." Where one person has the courage to speak out against this deep-rooted social convention, unnumbered thousands feel dumbly the same opposition to it. Harry Lauder, the Scotch comedian, a citizen of a monarchy, on one of his tours in America, was reported by the newspapers as being disgusted with the development of so aristocratic a custom as tipping in America, the cradle of democracy. The press will yield many such evidences of condemnation for the practice in high places. They are cited to prove that opposition to tipping is not a mere distaste among persons of limited means who cannot afford to tip generously. The cost of following the custom is an important item; but those who consider it morally wrong gladly would pay any increase in charges that might follow the abolition of the custom. If the Pullman company should agree to abolish tipping if each patron would pay a quarter more for his berth it would be a long step in advance--though the custom should be abolished without additional charges to the public. HUSH MONEY The United States went through a period of muck-raking against graft among politicians and big business men. It was found that the idea of "honest graft" was shockingly prevalent. The especially odious manifestations were dealt with, but the little springs and rivulets that combine to make the main stream were allowed to trickle along, unite, and become a torrent! Tipping is the training school of graft. Will a messenger boy who thinks that the public owes him gratuities develop into a man with sound morals? Will the bell-boy who works for tips grow up to be a policeman who accepts hush-money from the corner saloon-keeper? What is the difference between a tip to a bell-boy for doing what the hotel pays him to do and the hush-money to a policeman for overlooking the offence he is paid to detect? The tipping practice has created an atmosphere of petty graft, the constant breathing of which breeds all other forms of dishonesty. It is small wonder that with so much avarice in low places that we have been shocked by graft in high places. The tipping custom is educating the grafting spirit much faster than the prosecuting arm of the government can destroy it. There is a direct connection between corruption in elections and the custom of tipping. The man who lives upon tips will not see the dishonesty of selling his vote, so readily as if he discerned the immorality of gratuities. Of course, not all tip-takers sell their votes; but the moral laxity in one direction predisposes toward laxity in other directions. SPLITTING COMMISSIONS When a gratuity gets above a small amount, it is known as splitting commissions, or plain graft. Salesmen in their anxiety to sell goods will divide their commissions with the buyers. Frequently buyers or purchasing agents will demand this concession when it has not been offered. One New York department store found that its piano buyer was accepting money for placing all orders with a particular manufacturer. This store discharged its buyer, and yet the proprietor of the store doubtless tipped the waiter at lunch the same day he so acted! He failed to see that a waiter (paid to serve patrons) who accepts tips, is precisely on the same level as a buyer (paid to purchase in the whole market), who concentrates his orders with one house for a fee. A clipping from The New York _Times_ shows the attitude that employers are taking toward split commissions: "Several wholesalers in this market received a letter yesterday from a prominent dry goods retailer in the middle West saying that their buyers would be in this city to-day and that each one had signified her acceptance of a rule against taking petty 'graft.' The retailer asked that the salesmen try not to make this rule difficult to observe. The rule follows: 'You must not accept entertainment of any kind, even luncheon or dinner, from any one in New York. We will make an allowance, sufficient to cover all expenses, including entertainment.'" This retail merchant had discovered that a free theater ticket or dinner could create such a sense of obligation that his buyers would not be able to exercise the freedom of choice that was necessary. The New York salesmen offered the tickets and dinners in the form of gracious hospitality, but knew all the while that their real intent was to bind the buyers to them through a sense of obligation without regard to the merits of the goods. Thus the spirit of "honest graft" is spreading out in America. It grows with what it feeds upon. It is a moral miasma, the fumes of which are permeating all strata of society. THE BIBLE AGAINST TIPS Following are only a few of the many citations in the Bible against tipping, gifts, gratuities, greed and like practices and impulses: Exodus 23:8. And thou shalt take no gift; for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous. Ecclesiastes 7:7. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart. Proverbs 15:27. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live. I Samuel 12:3. Behold here I am: witness against me before the Lord, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it you. Isaiah 33:14-15. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?... He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly ... that shaketh his hands from holding bribes.... He shall dwell on high.... Job 15:34. For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery. Luke 12:15. And he said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING Why the custom of tipping should be followed so generally when it is palpably a bad economic practice and ethically indefensible is a psychological study with the same aspects that the slavery issue presented before the Civil War. The Puritan conscience allowed that institution to grow to formidable proportions before arousing itself decisively, and it has allowed this equally undemocratic custom to attain national ramifications. CASTE AND CLASS In its broadest statement, the psychology of tipping presents the two antipodal qualities of pride and pusillanimity. The caste system is not based upon the superiority of one class over another, but upon the _pride_ that one stage of human development feels over another stage of human development. A democracy cannot do away with different stages of development in the human mind. But it does do away with the belief of one stage of development that it is worthy of homage from another stage of development. Democracy does not concede that one man working with his brain is superior to another man working with his brawn. Democracy looks beyond the accident of occupation, or the stage of human development, and sees every man as originating in the same divine source. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that _all_ men are created equal." In a monarchy, the craving of the human mind for approbation--the quality of pride--is cultivated into the class or caste system. Those citizens who have attained a larger measure of culture than their fellow-men allow the false sense of pride in that culture to creep into their ideals and actions. They seek for some method of visualizing this assumed superiority, of obtaining the acknowledgment of it from their fellow-men. With an unerring instinct of human nature they play upon the cupidity of those whom they desire to place in a servile relation. A gift of money wins the social distinction they covet. Thus the tipping custom has its origin in pride, and it necessarily involves humility as a correlative condition. If all men are created equal, as we aver in our basic political creed, they cannot become unequal except artificially, except by an agreement of one set of citizens to play the rôle of servitors for a consideration from another set of citizens. One set of citizens will become abased--that is, they will surrender their birthright of equality--in order that another set may strut around in a belief of superiority and indulge a sense of pride. NO SUPERIOR CLASS In a democracy, the gradations of culture exist, but it is not permissible for one class of workers to assume a superiority over another class. That they do assume it is evident, and that for all practical social purposes we live and move and have our being on that assumption is evident, but in granting manhood suffrage, in allowing the proud and the humble to have an equal voice in government, we declare the social system a fungus growth. At the moment of the highest power of the institution of slavery it was not less wrong than at the moment the first ship-load of slaves was landed. No mere accumulation of material property can vitiate a principle of right. Hence, the very widespread acceptance of the tipping custom lends no authority to it. If 95,000,000 Americans are engaged in tipping 5,000,000 Americans, and if both the givers and the receivers apparently concur in the rightness of the custom, it does not thereby become right. We must go back to first principles to find the answer. TIPPING AND SLAVERY The American democracy could not live in the face of a lie such as slavery presented, and it cannot live in the face of a lie such as tipping presents. The aim of American statesmanship should be to keep fresh and strong the original concepts of democracy and to beat back the efforts of base human qualities to override these concepts. The relation of a man giving a tip and a man accepting it is as undemocratic as the relation of master and slave. A citizen in a republic ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with every other citizen, with no thought of cringing, without an assumption of superiority or an acknowledgment of inferiority. This is elementary preaching and yet the distance we have strayed from primary principles makes it necessary to prove the case against tipping. The psychology of tipping may be stated more in detail in the following formula: To one-quarter part of generosity add two parts of pride and one part of fear. FIRST INGREDIENT, GENEROSITY This is a subtle element and merges into a sense of obligation on slight provocation. You feel that your position in life is more fortunate, and pity enters your thought. If an extra service is given, in reality or in appearance, the servitor has pitched his appeal upon the ground of obligation. Few persons can rest easily until a sense of obligation is discharged through some form of compensation. The opportunity to balance the account comes when cash is being passed between you and the person serving. You offer a cash consideration proportioned to your sense of obligation. Inasmuch as the whole argument in favor of tipping is based upon the allegation that the servitor actually gives a value in extra service, the element of obligation will be examined closely. The Pullman porter or the waiter who can succeed in making a patron feel a sense of obligation knows that he has assured a tip for himself. The company or the restaurant business is a vague fact, while the man hovering over your berth or table is a most tangible relation. His art is to make the patron feel that he is responsible for the careful attentions. In a subconscious way the patron knows that the price of the ticket or the food includes the service (wages of the porter or waiter) but the obsequious alertness of the attendant overshadows this knowledge. It is present personality versus an abstract entity known as company or restaurant. Hence, though the price of the ticket or the payment of the check pays for the porter's or waiter's service, the patron has been made to feel a second obligation which he discharges with a tip. CLOAKROOM TACTICS Thus tipping involves two payments for one service. Servitors understand clearly the psychology of the sense of obligation from experiment even though they could not read understandingly a book on psychology. A trial in Detroit over the division of the tips in the cloak-room of a restaurant furnished the following proof: "'How do you make people "cough up"?' queried the judge. "'When they are going away I brush them down, and if they don't give me something I take hold of their lapel and say, "Excuse me," and brush them again. I pretend that's the only English I can speak. If they don't give me something then I hold on to their hats until they do give me something. I made $12 the first day I worked at the place.' "'Why did you pretend you could not speak English?' demanded the judge. "'The more English you know the less tips you get.'" This morally obtuse hat-boy knew that the average person does not want something for nothing when dealing with serving persons, and he exploited this trait to the maximum. Pullman porters and high grade waiters are more polished in the use of the same method, but it all gets back to the idea of creating a sense of obligation by actual or pretended service beyond the expected. Undoubtedly, a rigid adherence to the letter of duty would result in service that would be unsatisfactory, but this is to be surmounted rightly by the employer requiring flexibility of service from employees--not by the public paying extra for affability, courtesy and attentiveness. SECOND INGREDIENT, PRIDE Anxiety to cut a good figure before servants or allied classes of personal workers is a rich vein of pride which they do not fail to work for all it is worth. This kind of mind is always agitated from fear that the tipping has not been done handsomely enough. The satisfaction of having a fellow creature servile before your largess is a factor. The gratuity emphasizes your position in the social scale. It stamps the giver as a gentleman or lady. The smirking attentiveness of the servitor is balm to vanity. * * * * * Truly, if it were not for vanity there would be no tipping system. THIRD INGREDIENT, FEAR The power behind the tipping custom is Social Convention and the fear of violating it. The so-called social leaders, actuated by aristocratic ideals, establish the custom and the crowd follow suit in a desire to do the "proper" thing. The "what will people say" mania holds the average person in an iron obedience to a custom which is innately loathed. It makes you conspicuous to be a dissenter. The serving persons understand this psychology perfectly. To drift along with the current of social usage is easiest, whereas, to go against it requires the highest order of courage. The multitude simply rate it as one of the petty vices and let it go at that. THE REMEDY Now what is the method of meeting and mastering this situation? Precisely the same reasoning employed by the Americans in 1801 against the custom of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates. First, establish clearly in your mind that tipping is wrong. The slogan is: ONE COMPENSATION FOR ONE SERVICE. With this premise, you can answer, _seriatim_, every argument which arises in favor of the custom. To the plea of generosity or obligation the reply is, full compensation for all service rendered is included in the bill you pay at the hotel desk, at the ticket window, to the barber-shop cashier, for the taxi-meter reading, and so on. Any extra compensation implied by the person serving is an imposition and has no justification either as charity or obligation. Second, the promptings of pride must be recognized frankly and mastered by democratic ideals. When a tip is given, not only is an individual wrong done, but a blow is struck at republican government and the ideals upon which it is founded. Patriotism, as well as faithfulness to self-respect requires that all customs which promote class distinctions shall be held in check. In entertaining a democratic attitude toward all Americans you are strengthening the government under which you live. You will not become less of a gentleman or lady if the socially submerged classes rise to a normal plane of self-respect. In declining to place a false valuation upon them you are promoting the true mission of Americanism. "To thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man." Third, the fear of violating a social custom is overcome when you understand its pernicious nature. The general observance of it gives the custom neither rightness nor authority. With full assurance that the custom is wrong and with a measure of the courage Decatur showed before Tripoli, an apparently formidable, but really vulnerable, custom can be destroyed. VIII THE LITERATURE OF TIPPING Writers of books on etiquette uniformly accept tipping as the correct social usage. They state just the amount that it is proper to give on various occasions and thus do their utmost to rivet the custom upon the people. A few extracts from such books will be given here to show how the custom is strengthened by the arbiters of etiquette. Those masses of Americans who are aspiring to a broader culture naturally turn to these books, and have their Americanism poisoned at the very start. They are educated to believe that tipping is essential to social grace. The feature departments of newspapers in answering queries about tipping usually confirm this impression, though now and then a side-swipe is delivered at the extortionate attitude of the serving persons. HOTEL FEES Taking up the hotel first, the following advice is from "Everyday Etiquette": "A porter carries a bag and he must be tipped; another carries up a trunk, he must be tipped; one rings for ice water and the boy bringing it expects his ten cents; one wants hot water every morning and in notifying the chambermaid of this fact, must slip a bit of silver into her palm. The waiter at one's table must be frequently remembered, and the head waiter will give one better attention if he finds something in his hand after he shows the new arrival to a table, and, of course, on leaving one will give a fee. "It is usually best for a transient guest to fee the waiter at each meal, since another man will probably be in attendance at the next one. The usual rate is to give 10 per cent. of the sum paid for the lunch or dinner--ten cents being the minimum except at a restaurant of humble pretensions, where five will be gladly accepted by the waitress." If the waiters and other hotel employees had written the foregoing themselves could they have put it more strongly? Note the advice to tip the waiter at each meal because a new one may be on hand at the next meal! This implies that the failure to tip is a grave offense, and that no risk of giving it must be taken. The patron may rest assured that a new one will be on hand at the next meal, for the head waiter shifts them about for exactly that reason--to make the patron tip again. However, in this same book, there is a reluctant note, as shown by the following extract: "We may rebel against the custom and with reason. But as not one of us can alter the state of affairs, it is well to accept it with good grace, or reconcile oneself to indifferent service." Hotel managers will read this with entire approval. And yet, consider what a contradiction it is for a hotel to advertise its service at such and such rates and then subject its guests to "indifferent service" if they do not cross an itching palm at every angle in the building! TIP--OR BE INSULTED Any one who conscientiously objects to tipping knows how true it is that in the "best" places, with one or two notable exceptions, not only "indifferent service" but positively insulting deportment may be expected from the servitors if the tips are omitted. The servitors are aggressive because their remuneration depends upon what they can work out of the patrons. The employer had hired them on the understanding that any compensation they receive must come from the gratuities of patrons. In certain hotels the management carries the exploitation to the point of charging the servitors for the privilege of working the patrons. The tipping privilege in one hotel has been sold as high as $10,000 a year! The economic pressure of tipping upon the patron causes one authority on etiquette, "Good Form For All Occasions," to exclaim: "Women of frugal mind endeavor to call on these functionaries as little as they can because the cents readily mount into dollars. The elevator-boy receives fewer tips than his peripatetic brother and need not be feed after a short stay." Here is proof that those who from economic or ethical reasons do not wish to tip are persecuted. They are advised that the easiest way to avoid the displeasure of servitors is to call on them for service as little as possible! The two dollars or more they pay at the hotel desk for a day's domicile must be exclusively for the privilege of sitting in a chair or sleeping in a bed. The moment they require the service of any of the employees about the building, they are under a second obligation to pay. And yet, hotels prate about their "hospitality." The Barbary pirates were hospitable in the same way--after you paid the tribute! HOW THE BOOKS HELP "The Cyclopædia of Social Usage" states the tipping obligation as follows: "In a large and fashionable hotel generous and widely diffused gratuities are expected by the employees. The experienced traveler usually distributes in gratuities a sum equal to ten per cent. of the amount of the bill. It is customary when a lengthy sojourn is made in an hotel or pension to tip the chambermaid, the various waiters and the porter who does one's boots, once in every week. Once in every fortnight the head waiter's expectations should be satisfied, and where an elevator boy and doorman are on duty, they, too, have claims on the purse of the guest. "In a fashionable European hotel the rule of tipping a franc a week all around may safely be observed during a long stop. But at the hour of departure something extra must be added to the weekly franc, and the head waiter will scarcely smile as blandly as need be if he is not propitiated with gold." Others, the writer says, have claims that it is well to recognize and meet before they urge them. Practically all the books on etiquette have the same note of subserviency to the custom. The point to be remembered is that, without being conscious of it, these writers are in league with the beneficiaries of the custom to perpetuate and extend it. Most of the authors think the custom is right, they have the aristocratic viewpoint that servants should "know their place" and, in a republic, be made to acknowledge it by accepting a gratuity. Others simply take conditions as they find them and write to inform readers how to avoid unpleasant incidents. But regardless of the opinion of the writers on the ethics of the custom, the books are one of the principal supports of the custom. Leaving the hotel, and considering the tipping custom in its relation to private hospitality, we find this advice in "Dame Curtesy's Book of Etiquette": "It is customary to give servants a tip when one remains several days under a friend's roof. The sum cannot be stated but common sense will settle the question." IN PRIVATE HOUSES The theory of tipping to servants in private homes where one may be a guest is based on the assumption that one's presence gives the servants extra work and they should be compensated therefor. The extra work undoubtedly is involved, but in a really true conception of hospitality, should not the servants enter into it as much as the hosts? Or, if the guest entails extra work should not the host's conception of hospitality cause him or her to supply the extra compensation? The guest who tips servants in a private home implies that the host or hostess has not adequately compensated them for their labor. The tips under such circumstances are a reflection upon the hospitality of the home. A host should ascertain if servants consider themselves outside the feeling of hospitality and pay them for the extra work, thus giving the guest _complete_ hospitality. It is bad enough to tip in a hotel, for professional hospitality; to tip in a private home is, or should be, an insult to the host. ON OCEAN VOYAGES The same author advises in regard to the Pullman car that "a porter should receive a tip at the end of the journey, large or small according to the length of the trip and the service rendered," and then considers the custom aboard a ship, as follows: "There is much tipping to be done aboard a ship. Two dollars all around is a tariff fixed for persons of average means, and this is increased to individual servants from whom extra service has been demanded." The traveler boards a ship with a ticket of passage which includes stateroom and meals and all service requisite to the proper enjoyment of these privileges. The stewards and other employees on board are expressly for the purpose of giving the service the ticket promised. Hence, extra compensation to them may be justified only as charity. They cannot possibly render extra service for which they should be paid. If a passenger called upon the engineer to render a service, that employee would be rendering an extra service, but stewards and stewardesses and like employees are aboard to render any service the passenger wants or needs. Moving deck chairs, bringing books, attending to calls to your stateroom, serving you food and the like duties are all within the scope of their regular employment. But read another writer's pronouncement: "At the end of an ocean voyage of at least five days' duration, the fixed tariff of fees exacts a sum of two dollars and a half per passenger to every one of those steamer servants who have ministered daily to the traveler's comfort. "Thus single women would give this sum to the stewardess, the table steward, the stateroom steward, and, if the stewardess has not prepared her bath, she bestows a similar gratuity on her bath steward. If every day she has occupied her deck chair, he also will expect two dollars and fifty cents. "Steamers there are on which the deck boys must be remembered with a dollar each, and where a collection is taken up, by the boy who polishes the shoes and by the musicians. "On huge liners patronized by rich folks exclusively, the tendency is to fix the minimum gratuity at $5, with an advance to seven, ten and twelve where the stewardess, table steward and stateroom steward are concerned." Then follow instructions to tip the smoking-room steward, the barbers and even the ship's doctor! THE "RICH AMERICAN" MYTH It is small wonder, in view of the nature of the literature of tipping, that Europe has found American travelers "rich picking." Before embarking on the first trip abroad the average American informs himself and herself of what is expected in the way of gratuities, and everywhere the tourist turns in a library advice is found which effectually throws the cost of service upon the patron. Railroad and steamship literature usually avoids the subject because these companies do not want to bring this additional expense of travel to the attention of the public. A steamship folder will state that passage to London is ninety dollars, including berth and meals, but gives no hint that the tips will amount to ten dollars more! IX TIPPING AND THE STAGE An almost invariable laugh-producer on the stage or in moving pictures is a scene in which a bell-boy or other servitor executes the customary maneuvers for obtaining a tip. Play producers know that the laugh can be evoked and any hotel scene is certain to include this bit of business. In seeking the explanation of the humor in such a scene, the answer will be found to be cynicism and the peculiar glee that people feel in observing others in disagreeable situations. COMIC WOES The slap-stick variety of comedy is based upon this trait in human nature. If a man is kicked down three flights of stairs, the spectator howls with delight. And, particularly, if a policeman is worsted in an encounter, the merriment is frenzied. Our Sunday comic papers depend almost exclusively upon violence for their humor. It is the final spanking the Katzenjammer Kids receive that brings the laugh. The climax to many other comics--notably Mutt and Jeff--is violence. Hence, a tipping scene on the stage or in moving pictures creates a laugh because the public sees the tip-giver as a victim. He usually exaggerates his rôle by making the giving of the tip a painful act to himself, and the whole scene proves the contention in this discussion, namely, that tipping is wrong. If the spectators did not perceive the bell-boy as a bandit, and the hotel guest as a victim, no laugh would result. They have been in similar situations and know the feelings of the victim. Sometimes stage managers vary the incident so that the laugh is on the bell-boy, by having the guest refrain from tipping. Then the spectators laugh at the bell-boy's disappointment--again finding humor in misfortune. TIPS IN THE MOVIES With the development of moving pictures the utilization of this kind of humor has widened immeasurably. And the point to be considered here is the influence of such visualization of tipping upon the spread of the custom. Undoubtedly tipping is increased by moving pictures and by stage representation. The public is made to feel that, despite the inherent wrong in the custom, it must be followed, or they will experience the unpleasantness at which they have just laughed. Another example of the itching palm which may be depended upon to produce a laugh is a scene in which a policeman is handed a bill for neglecting his duty in some respect. A well-to-do man will cross the law in some manner and in the play he winks an eye, the policeman turns his back with his palm extended, a bill is slipped into it, and he departs to the sound of the spectators' laugh. The effect of these scenes upon the public is dual. It either confirms their impression that all servants or officers are "approachable," or it creates among the unsophisticated the idea that tipping or graft is the customary and proper method of dealing with such classes of citizens. The worldly wise gain the first impression, and the spread of the tipping custom is assured by the second impression. Moving pictures have extended this influence to every nook and corner of the country. The result is that persons who live in the smaller and more democratic communities are educated to the big city development of the itching palm. And the effect upon children and young people is pernicious in the extreme. IMPRESSING THE YOUNG A boy who sees a tipping scene in a moving picture gains the impression that it is smart to exact such tribute. Or he gains the impression that he has been overlooking a rich vein of easy remuneration. The photo-play directors, either consciously or unconsciously, are doing great damage to democratic ideals by featuring such scenes. It will not be surprising if, among the other evils fostered by moving pictures, the next generation displays a marked increase in the grafting propensity. The young people are being educated to think it natural. Thus, aside from the human impulses of pride and avarice, it is apparent that literature and the stage are strengthening the custom of tipping by their representations of it as humorous. People will not combat anything at which they laugh. The itching palm has two doughty champions in the books on etiquette and the theaters. Actors, it would seem, have enough contact with the itching palm among stage hands to make them ardent advocates of reform, to say nothing of their contact with it in hotels. On the vaudeville stage especially the carpenter, the electrician, the property man and their co-workers must be "seen" with regular and generous donations to insure a smooth act. In many theaters the stage hands have a definite scale of tips for regular duties that they perform--and for which the management also pays them. X THE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT From a waiter, or a porter, or a janitor's point of view, tipping is wrong only when it is meager. They regard this form of compensation as not only just but usually too sparingly bestowed. Unquestionably, with any reform in the manner of compensation to persons engaged in domestic or other serving capacities, must go a reform in the attitude of the public toward servitors. The patron who abuses his privileges, who exacts of employees far more than he has the right to ask, who treats them as automatons without sensibilities or self-respect--such a patron must be handled simultaneously with the change in manner of compensation. Employers, particularly in hotels and like public places, will have to give more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the swaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. This type abounds and has been developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely servile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has brought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron. THE SORE SPOT No feeling so rankles in the mind as the sense of uncompensated labor. The thought that patrons have gotten something for nothing leaves a sore spot in the thought of servitors. And if they are employed in places where the only compensation they receive is from the gratuities of patrons, this soreness is incurable. The next time the patron appears he will be made to feel the displeasure of the employee. Thus, in one sense, it is the system that is wrong, a system which does an injustice to both employee and patron. Every employee has a fairly clear idea of his duties. Most employees scrupulously refrain from doing more than the duties for which they are paid expressly. Hence, when an employee over-steps this boundary he has fixed in his own mind, he has the sense of uncompensated labor. He feels a grudge either against the employer or the patron. He looks to one or the other to supply the extra remuneration for the extra service. As a consequence, personal service workers are nursing a grievance much of the time. Their conversation and thoughts are about some patron who has failed to compensate them, or has, in their judgment, inadequately compensated them. They devote little time to thinking of a reform in the system that would give them an adequate compensation from the employer and do away entirely with the patron-to-employee form of compensation. THE MARTYR The tipping system is so established now that the individual who opposes it must be prepared to play the rôle of martyr, whether employee or patron. Employers who profit by the no-wage system dislike employees with a degree of self-respect that makes them rebel at gratuities. Such wages as are paid are so nominal that the employee cannot subsist upon them alone. He either has to quit that line of work or enter it and conform to the conventional methods. In Chapter V the equity of tipping certain employees was considered and the claim of other employees as to their rights will be considered briefly here. BAGGAGEMEN Tipping men who call for and deliver trunks has become a fixed custom in the cities and is expected, though not so often practiced, in the smaller towns. The transfer company theoretically charge for the complete operation of moving the trunk from the home or hotel to the railroad station. But the men on the wagons or trucks exact tips for carrying the baggage up and down stairs or elevators. The question is, are they entitled to this extra compensation? The baggagemen argue that their business, strictly interpreted, is to carry the trunk from the house to the station and that going up stairs and into rooms is an extra service. Hence, they stand around and make it evident that they expect compensation from the patron, in addition to their wages from the company. Their position is not tenable. A patron pays the company to get his trunk from wherever it may be and to deliver it to its destination. Whatever operations are necessary to get the trunk are the natural duties of the company and its employees. The charges of the company are, or should be, based on the complete service. The exaction of extra compensation in the form of tips by the employees, therefore, is an imposition. In calling the company no person, tacitly or openly, agrees to the argument that the trunk is to be moved from curb to curb. The understanding is that your baggage is to be removed from its customary place in the home to the customary place in the station or other destination. It would be as reasonable for baggagemen to dump a trunk outside a station and demand a gratuity from the railroad for bringing it inside, as to demand a gratuity from the patron for taking the trunk up or down stairs. Tipping to baggagemen is unnecessary. If the company pays inadequate wages the remedy lies not from the patron through tips but from the employer through the payment of increased wages. BOOTBLACKS Of late years the custom has grown up to tip bootblacks. This is in addition to the regular charge paid for the service and has no justification except in the false plea of the servitor that if the patron does not tip him he will have no compensation. Here it may be stated that the thought that the tip constitutes the only compensation the employee receives is the chief influence in the mind of the patron. He feels a pity for the employee even though he objects to the bad economic system that enables employers to engage workers on such a basis. The employees exploit this thought in the mind by leading the conversation with the patron into the channel of compensation. At some time during the service he lets the patron know that the tips he receives are his only compensation and this arouses the sense of obligation in the patron who does not like to have his shoes shined for nothing, even though the payment at the desk covers the transaction. Any one who has patronized a restaurant regularly, or a bootblack stand, or a barbershop, or manicurist, or any public place, will recall how invariably the servitors bring up the subject of tipping and always with the suggestion that they would be disabled financially if it were not for the generosity of the public. This is all a carefully and skilfully planned campaign to exploit the patron. BARBER SHOP PORTERS Patrons who do not tip barbers frequently tip the porters who brush them down. On the surface it seems that the porter's attentions in a barber shop are extra and deserve extra compensation. Yet, theoretically, no master barber would admit that a patron of his shop has any other charges to pay than the regular tariffs. The porter is there as an extra measure of service from the shop. Practically, however, the shops all proceed on the assumption of tipping. The porter is a much-aggrieved individual if he is overlooked. In any sound economic system, the porter's compensation should come exclusively from the shop. If his attentions are decided to be extra, there should be a regular scale of compensation, as for a hair cut, which the patron should pay. So long as his services are furnished by the shop without being included in the regular shop tariffs, the patron owes the porter nothing for his attentions. The solution of the whole tipping problem lies in the foregoing postulate--that if any employee is in a position to render an extra service there should be a regular scale of charges for such service. It is the irregular compensation, depending upon the whim of the patron, that makes the practice economically unsound. No hotel, or other employer, should have on the premises any employee whose compensation depends upon chance. If a hotel stations an employee in the washroom he should be there distinctly as part of the service for which a patron pays at the cashier's desk. A porter in a barber shop should be engaged exclusively at the shop's expense as part of the complete service for which a patron pays to the cashier. Employers, however, are much too shrewd to scatter employees around on the formal understanding that the patrons are to compensate them. They pretend that they are engaged as an extra measure of courtesy or service from the employer and then are educated to exact, through tips, their compensation from the patron. DOOR MEN It would seem that if there were any place where the patron might feel free to forget his coin pocket, it would be in the use of doors. But it is customary now to tip door men. That is, you have to pay to enter a hotel, a restaurant or other public place in order to spend money with the employer. The employer will smile blandly and assure you that no patron need tip the door man, but the door man will give unmistakable evidence to the contrary. The tipping of door men shows how the custom grows with what it feeds upon. To the devotee of the custom every underling has an itching palm that must be scratched with a coin and the employer rejoices because it relieves him of wage-payments. Tipping doormen is incomprehensibly weak. Elevator men are in the same class. GUIDES In parks and other public places where the employer or the Government furnishes guides and where patrons pay a regular fee for being shown the sights, the guides carefully cultivate the tipping propensity. Their most common method is to start a conversation about how inadequately they are paid for their work and the high cost of living. They play upon the sympathies of the sight-seers until at the end of the trip the feeling is strong that the guide should be remembered. He pockets the gratuity and looks for other game. The patrons overlook the fact that if he is underpaid the employer or the Government is at fault. He often works in the appearance of extra attentions to create the sense of obligation. It is clearly a case of double compensation for one service. HATBOYS The cloak-room is one of the best devices for throwing the item of wages to the shoulders of patrons. For some one to check and guard your hat and overcoat while you see a show or dine has a speaking likeness to a real extra service. But it is as counterfeit as the other pretenses of extra service. It is every restaurant's or theater's duty to provide for hats and coats of patrons. The meal or the show cannot be enjoyed unless this preliminary function is performed by the proprietor. When two dollars is paid for a theater ticket it also pays for this service, and extra compensation to the attendant in charge may be defended as charity but not as an obligation. A patron who buys a meal in a restaurant owes the cloak-room attendants nothing. He paid for their service in paying for the meal. Tips to hatboys are superfluous. JANITORS The autocrat of the basement is a man with a grievance even when generously tipped. From his viewpoint he is called upon to do a score of things outside his duties. Must he do these for nothing? He must not. The only question is who shall pay him. The janitor should be hired by employers upon the understanding that the renters have the right of way in utilizing his services. Or, apartments should be leased with a clear understanding of the janitor's duties, so that he will have no lee-way to exploit the renters. On the face of it, the idea of defining a janitor's services so that everything outside of the regulations would be extra service for which the renter should compensate him, seems difficult of execution. But the difficulty is less real than apparent. And in the meantime, the janitor regularly is tipped to do things for which he is paid by the employer. He is "out for his" as eagerly as the waiter or the Pullman porter. Hallboys in the apartment houses are equally avaricious. Now and then the metropolitan papers contain letters to the editor complaining of their exactions--pathetic letters from well-to-do persons paying thousands of dollars' rent for apartments! One way out would be to insert in a lease that the renter shall receive full and equal service without extra compensation to employees. MANICURISTS These young women have the best psychological opportunity to exact tribute, particularly where the patrons are men. The personal contact is influential, and the plaintive tale of meager salary and small tips which she purrs into your ears, the meanwhile flashing a languishing smile--it's a great little game which she plays for all it is worth! Some of them receive eight dollars a week in "salary," and the tips amount to enough to make their income thirty-five a week and more. The employer has the fifty, seventy-five cents or a dollar charge for the service as practically clear profit. Many men tip the manicurist as much as they pay for the service. Perhaps many of them feel that they get their money's worth in social enjoyment--not believing that the young woman bestows the same charm upon every other male victim! "I feel sorry for that little Miss Brown. If it wasn't for the tips she couldn't live on her salary," said one sympathetic man. He objected to tipping as a rule, but here was a clear case where it was worthy! No use arguing ethics with him. MESSENGERS The custom of pay to telegraph messenger boys by the recipients of messages is peculiarly reprehensible because it is fixing a standard of graft in his mind that will work out into worse practices in maturity. A boy given a tip has had his self-respect punctured in a dangerous way. He may grow up and out of such a conception of compensation, but it will be a struggle, and much of our police and other public graft had its origin in the cultivation of the belief that "tips" are proper. A messenger boy has absolutely no claim upon a patron for extra compensation. The price of a telegram includes the cost of delivery. STENOGRAPHERS Public typists often expect gratuities. The regular charges are for "the house." They want something for themselves on the side. Sometimes the tips are so large that the employer gets greedy and requires them to be turned in, as proved by the following extract from a want ad in the New York _Times_: "Remuneration half of all you make with weekly guarantee of $20; proceeds net more than guarantee. No smoking; tips must be turned in." It seems self-evident that anything given to stenographers beyond the regular charges for the work is pure waste. They cannot possibly give any service in return, and cannot retain the proper self-respect in accepting something for nothing. Many of them, however, take the tips simply to avoid offending patrons. The list of tip-takers is too extensive for individual consideration. Bath attendants, bartenders, house servants, clerks--and so on through a lamentably long list, have the same moral disease. The contagion is spreading in an alarming way. Of course, the whole system is riding for a fall. The spurious and specious arguments of employees in behalf of the custom and the timorous acquiescence of the public will alike yield before a robust and elemental Americanism. XI THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT "We face a condition, not a theory," assert those employers who defend their adaptation of wages to the tipping custom. "The public seems determined to bestow gratuities, and if we paid full wages in addition, our employees would be the highest paid workers in the world." But two wrongs do not make a right. THREE KINDS OF EMPLOYERS Employers who profit by tipping are classified as follows: 1. Those who pay living wages and positively forbid gratuities. 2. Those who pay average competitive wages and maintain a passive attitude toward gratuities. 3. Those who pay minimum, or no, wages, and aggressively exploit the propensity to give. At present the first class constitutes almost an infinitesimal minority. Here and there in large cities there are barber shops which advertise a "No-Tip" policy, and occasionally a hotel or restaurant. In the second class are most of the moderate-price places catering to the public. The employers and employees welcome gratuities but do not make them the prime object in their relations with patrons. The third class includes the high-grade hotels, sleeping car companies, expensively conducted restaurants and like enterprises. This is the class which sets the pace through the patronage of the socially or financially prominent. A few of the more noteworthy employers who profit by the custom follow: The Pullman Company, The Hotel Company, The Taxicab Company, The Transfer Company, The Steam Ship Company, The Master Barber, The Apartment House Owner, The Restaurant, The Telegraph Company. That an organized conspiracy exists between employers and employees to exploit the public is realized vaguely, if at all, by the average patron. Proof of this allegation may be found at the cashier's desk of almost any restaurant or hotel. The waiter invariably is given change that will make it easy for the patron to tip. He returns with the change arranged in such a way on the tray that the patron must fumble over all of it if he wants the full amount. The employer's and the waiter's theory is that, rather than do this, he will leave a dime or a quarter in one corner. In a barber shop the patron always receives small change so that it will be easy to "remember" the porter. Yet, such a practice is the mildest indictment that may be brought against employers for entering a conspiracy to exploit patrons. SELLING THE TIP PRIVILEGE In New York and Chicago particularly, many employers went so far (and still maintain the practice) as to sell to outside persons and companies the privilege of collecting the tips in their places of business. That is to say, these outside parties were to furnish waiters, cloak room attendants and other employees to the hotel or restaurant and depend upon the tips for their remuneration. So large was the sum realized from tips that the hotels and restaurants actually charged the outside parties thousands of dollars for the concession. In Illinois a law was passed in 1915 aimed directly at this organized phase of the custom. It prohibited hotels and others from selling tipping privileges. The men who owned such privileges promptly went to law to test the constitutionality of the act. To the tip-taker anything is unconstitutional that interferes with his graft! At the time the law went into effect, the situation was reported in the Chicago _Tribune_ as follows: "The state will have a fight on its hands before the Chicago tip trust ... releases its clutch on the pocketbooks of hotel and restaurant patrons. "At midnight last night ... there was no indication the largess was going anywhere else than it has gone before ever since a commercial genius capitalized the well-known generosity of the dining and wining public--straight into the coffers of the trust." The manager of one of the leading hotels said that lawyers for the hotel had served notice on the head of the biggest of Chicago's three tip trusts to withdraw his minions. "Do you contemplate returning part of the money paid for the concession?" he was asked. "That," the manager replied, "is a detail." "Do you think it possible (the head of the tip trust) will resist expulsion?" "Hardly. We'll just put in a crew of our own and that will end it." "Have you heard a report that the tip trusts contemplate standing by their guns and, if necessary, charging a 10 cent fee for checking hats and coats, anticipating the tip?" "That's preposterous." After such evidence, patrons of hotels and other public service places hardly will feel as cheerful in giving tips as they may have felt before being enlightened. Here was a typical instance of a hotel advertising such and such rates for rooms and food with the plain inference that patrons had no other obligation. Then the management goes out and sells the right to exploit the patrons, thereby filling its dining rooms and cloak rooms with employees who must exact tips if they are to be paid at all for their work! ARE YOU A BENEFACTOR? A small part of the public cares nothing about this and will tip regardless of the conditions of employment of the servitors. This element simply enjoys the grandiloquent rôle of Bestower of Largess. But the vast majority of Americans has followed the custom under duress. This majority finds it repugnant to tip on the assumption that the employee alone profits by its generosity; and to discover that the employer as well profits by it--in fact secretly devises methods of encouraging the tipping--will confirm the majority in the thought that the custom is wholly bad. Under which school of economics, or ethics, can such a system be justified? The assertion of employers that tipping is the spontaneous impulse of patrons and that they cannot afford to pay living wages in addition is seen to be without foundation in conspicuous instances. Such spontaneity as exists they stimulate and exploit for their own profit. Conceding that the development of tipping has thrown employment upon an abnormal basis, the question arises, if tipping is abolished should the increase in wages be borne exclusively by the employer? To the extent that employers make extraordinary dividends out of the custom the extra cost of operation through normal wages should be borne by them without increased tariffs to patrons. Competition in the hotel business, for example, has been adjusted to the custom of tipping and the sudden throwing of a bona fide wage system upon such employers, without an increase in revenues, would be disastrous. A REASONABLE SOLUTION The solution in certain instances might be found in a joint obligation of patron and employer. The employer says: "I have been able to give you food at such and such a price because I have not had to charge to it the cost of waiter hire. If the public discontinues gratuities to my employees, I must raise the price of food to cover this deficit." The patron replies: "Upon proof that your food tariffs have not included the item of waiter-hire, I will pay more for my meals if they are served free." The goal of a reform in tipping is to make one payment--and that one to the employer--cover every expense of the patron. Even if the public should have to pay more for food, lodging and other service, if tipping is abolished, an immense advance in sound economics and democratic ethics would be made in eliminating the double-payment system. Where two payments are made--to employer and employee--it is inevitable that the patron will lose. It should be understood, however, that a large part of the $200,000,000 or more given annually by Americans in gratuities is sheer waste because it is given for absolutely nothing in return. Such waste should be eliminated without consideration of employer or employee. So long as employers assume that the public will pay part or all of the wages of employees, so long will the employees be under the necessity of resorting to outrageous tactics--coddling the patron who does tip, insulting and neglecting the one who does not tip--in order to obtain pay for their services. Employers must come to the viewpoint that tipping is morally wrong, and therefore of necessity, economically unsound. The money they make out of tipping is tainted money. Employees should be engaged on wages that are adequate without regard to any gratuities that may be given. XII ONE STEP FORWARD When the Hotel Statler, in Buffalo, announced that a guest need not tip its employees in order to get satisfactory service, a sensation was sprung upon hotel managers and the traveling public. Nothing more emphatically shows the abnormal state of mind toward tipping than that such an elementary right should be affirmed and cause surprise in the affirmation. A SOUND CODE Following is its Code to employes on the practice of tipping: "The patron of a hotel goes there because he expects to receive certain things served with celerity, courtesy and cheerfulness. "The persons who are to fetch and carry him these things will be those whose portion it is to render intimate, personal services to others. Since time immemorial, this class of servitors has been of the rank and file. "Now and then a server is found--a waiter, a bootblack, a barber or a bell boy--who adds a bit of his own personality to his services. Such a one shows a bit more intelligence--initiative--perspicacity--than his fellows. The patron finds his smaller wants anticipated, and is pleased. He feels that the servant has given him something extra and unexpected--and he wants to pay something extra for it. "He tips. "Of course there are abuses of the tip. A rich bounder wants something more than other hotel guests, and he futilely tries to get it by throwing money about. "His tips are insults, and his reward Servility instead of service. "Or-- "An individual wishing to be thought a 'good fellow' ADMINISTERS tips with the advice to 'buy a house and lot,' etc. "Or-- "An infrequent traveler, having the time of his life, tips out of sheer goodheartedness. "These types help to constitute the 'Public.' "It is the business of a good hotel to cater to the Public. It is the avowed business of the Hotel Statler to please the public better than any other hotel in the world. "Statler can run a tipless hotel if he wants to. "But Statler knows that a first-class hotel cannot be maintained on a tip-less basis, for the reason that a small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip, in spite of all rules. "Statler can and does do this: He guarantees to his guests who do not wish to tip, everything--EVERYTHING--in the way of hotel service, courtesy, etc., that the tipper gets. "Let's make that a bit stronger--guests do NOT have to tip at Hotel Statler to get courteous, polite, attentive service. "Or, for final emphasis, we say to Statler guests: Please do NOT tip unless you feel like it; but if you DO tip, let your tipping be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous custom. "Any Statler employee who is wise and discreet enough to merit tips is wise and discreet enough to render a like service whether he is tipped or not. "And he is wise and discreet enough to say 'thank you' when he gets his tip. "In this connection let this be said: "The man who takes a tip and does not thank the tipper does not feel that he has earned the tip any more than a blackmailer feels that he has earned his blood money. "Any Statler employee who fails to give Service, or who fails to thank the guest who gives him something, falls short of the Statler Standard. We always thank any guest who reports such a case to us. Statler does not deal summarily with his helpers, any more than he deals perfunctorily with his guests--but the tip-grafters get short shrift here." FOR THE BENEFIT OF GUESTS To understand the spirit of management which could issue such instructions to its employees in the face of the opportunity to exploit the public, as most hotels do and so throw the whole cost of wages upon the patron, it is necessary to consider other sections of the Code treating of professional hospitality. "Hotel Statler is operated primarily for the benefit and convenience of its guests. Without guests there could be no Hotel Statler. These are simple Facts easily understood. "The Statler is a successful hotel. The Reason is, that every Waiter in this hotel, every Hall-Boy, the Chambermaid, the Clerk, the Chef, the Manager, the Boss Himself, is working all the time to make them FEEL 'at home.' "Hotel service--that is, Hotel Statler service--means the limit of Courteous, Efficient Attention from Each Particular Employee to Each Particular Guest. This is the kind of service a Guest pays for when he pays us his bill--whether it is for $2.00 or $20.00 per day. It is the kind of Service he is entitled to, and he NEED NOT and SHOULD NOT pay ANY MORE." NOT HOSPITALITY Compare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this code with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other first-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel where the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the bell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your suit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same spirit--he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the employer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages. Apparently this hotel reached the conviction that this was not hospitality. Then the conviction was reached that a guest "need not and should not pay any more" for hotel service than the rate paid at the desk. From this it was logical to bring the employees to a new conception of service and to stop the piratical practice toward guests who do not tip. It is particularly significant to note the assertion that the proprietor can run a tipless hotel if he wants to. That is an interesting declaration. It proves that those managers who exploit the tipping propensity deliberately do so for reasons of greed. Then the reason for not running a tipless hotel is stated to be that "a small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip in spite of all rules." Here is evidence that the public has its measure of blame for the custom as well as the avarice of managers. This hotel declares that its conception of hospitality is to leave the guest free in his relation toward employees. But note this! _It does not leave the employees free in their attitude toward guests._ UP TO THE EMPLOYER The foregoing distinction is the crux of the whole tipping problem. If managers will restrain and discipline employees so that they will not run riot in their eagerness to exact toll from patrons the tipping evil will be reduced to a minimum. THE FIRST STEP It is not the idea underlying this discussion to consider that a satisfactory disposal of the tipping custom has been made when managers insure equal treatment for those who do not tip in comparison with those who do tip. Nothing short of the complete abolition of the custom can be the goal in a republic. But as a long stride toward the goal, the Code cited above is noteworthy. It constitutes the first immediate step that any hotel may take. The public would find immense relief in the general adoption of the foregoing idea--that tipping must "be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous custom." Inasmuch as the vast majority of Americans who tip do so only because they are afraid not to conform to an outrageous custom, this plan, honestly enforced upon employees, will reduce the followers of the custom to the small percentage of the public who tip because of pride or moral obtuseness. A way can be found to handle this element when the majority have been freed. Once the proof is at hand that tipping can be handled the conclusion is unescapable that the managers who knuckle to the custom are "corrupt and contented." They are on precisely the same moral level as their employees. THE GUEST'S RIGHTS In the meantime, the individual patron has the right to and should proceed on the theory that he is entitled to EVERYTHING in the way of service for the one payment. This is his common law right even if no special laws regulating tipping are in force. The public is at a great disadvantage in combating the tipping evil when the managers leave the issue to be settled between the patrons and the employees. A bell boy can commit an offense to a patron who does not tip that is perfectly tangible to the patron but difficult to report to the manager. Unless the manager takes a positive hand and instructs his employees in a manner similar to the above Code it is likely that most persons will continue to pay tribute rather than be insulted and neglected. In Chicago, the Young Men's Christian Association operates a nineteen-story hotel where tips are prohibited, and this organization generally discourages the custom in its enterprises. XIII THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE The Pullman company stands in the public mind as the leading exponent of tipping. It certainly is the largest beneficiary of the custom, as a simple calculation will show. The company has about 6,500 porters, who receive $27.50 a month in wages. Suppose the porters received no tips. The company then would have to pay living wages. Assuming that the long hours of work would not attract desirable porters under a straight wage system without at least $60 a month pay, each one of the 6,500 would have an increase of $32.50 a month, or $390 a year. This would mean an increase in the company's annual pay-roll of $2,535,000! In other words, the company saves about two and a half millions a year through the tips given to its porters. What part of the large annual dividend is furnished by this saving is a secret of the company's books. Some of these porters after many years' service receive $42 a month in wages, and this would bring down the foregoing estimate, though not to any radical extent. The tips bring their incomes to $100, $150, $200 and more a month! There are, of course, many runs on which the porters derive smaller amounts in gratuities, and the best runs are given as a reward for long and faithful service. WHAT THE PULLMAN MANAGER SAID The Walsh Commission, appointed to investigate industrial conditions in the United States, in 1915 singled out the Pullman tipping practice for investigation. Some of the testimony given by the general manager of the company follows: "The company simply accepts conditions as it finds them. The company did not invent tipping. It was here when the company began." "What do you say to making tipping unlawful and paying employees a living wage?" Chairman Walsh asked. "If such a condition arises, I presume we would have to pay wages necessary to get the service." * * * * * "Do you get your negroes in the South?" "Yes, we have been looking after them in the South. The South is a bigger field and the men there are more adapted for the work than the Northern negroes." "Well, be plain," Chairman Walsh said, "are the negroes from the South more docile and less independent than those from the North?" "Well, no, but the Southern negro is more pleasing to the traveling public. He is more adapted to wait on people and serve with a smile." * * * * * "Can a man live on $27.50 a month and rear a family?" "Really, I don't know. He might." "Does the Pullman company have in mind the liberality and kindness of the public when it fixes that rate of pay?" "Well, I should say that tips have something to do with it. I didn't make the rates of pay." * * * * * "A porter must call passengers during the night, polish shoes, answer bells, and look after the safety and comfort of the passengers at all hours, must he not?" "Yes. He is reprimanded, suspended or discharged for infractions of the rules." "What is your attitude toward the question of an organization among your employees?" "I felt that the movement to form a federation of our employees was a selfish one on the part of a few." WHAT THE PORTERS SAID The Commission also called several porters to testify. They stated that they could not live without the tips. One porter with twenty-one years' service behind him testified that he receives $42 a month in wages, while the tips averaged about $75 a month, or $117 income from the company and the public. Another porter receiving $27.50 a month testified that his tips averaged about $77 a month. He was described as wearing two diamond rings and being tastefully dressed. The conductors receive from $70 to $90 a month in salary, and it was brought out before the Commission that many do not consider it dishonest to "knock down" on seat sales. This is accomplished partly at the company's expense, and partly at the expense of patrons--especially unsophisticated travelers who buy a whole seat but have other passengers sit beside them, the conductor pocketing the extra payment. This practice is limited to day runs. There is also the opportunity to overcharge. That the Pullman company gives the public good service through its porters is indisputable. The only question is whether the public should pay extra for this service. If a porter with an income of $117, say, receives only $27.50 from the company, the public is paying three-fourths of his wages and the company only one-fourth. Where the porters have incomes of $150 to $200 a month the company pays one-fifth to one-eighth of the amount and the public pays from four-fifths to seven-eighths! SERVICE INCLUDED The price of a ticket on a sleeping car is as much as a patron should pay the Pullman company, and it should carry with it adequate porter service. A passenger enters a car in spick and span condition as a rule. At the end of the journey, through no fault of his own, he may be dusty, and it becomes the obligation of the Pullman company to discharge him in as good condition as when he entered the car. The porter is there for this service. Hence, to give him a tip for a "brush," or for any other service he may have rendered to make the use of the company's property comfortable, is a superfluous payment. The company has a school for training a porter in which he is taught a rigid discipline of attentions to passengers, all of which tend to create in the passenger a sense of obligation toward the porter. Yet not one of these attentions calls for a gratuity if they are examined fairly. The porter is psychologist enough to know that to create the illusion that he has rendered an extra service is as good for producing a tip as actually to do so. Hence he will come around with a pillow, or shine your shoes during the night unsolicited, or execute some other maneuver that arouses a feeling of obligation. The shining of shoes is outside his ordinary duties, but he has no valid claim for compensation unless specifically requested to perform this service. In his mind is the constant reminder that if the passenger does not make a donation his pay envelope from the company will not meet his bills. WHAT THE PRESS SAID Among the many editorial comments that the disclosures of the Walsh Commission evoked is the following from the St. Louis _Republic_: The most captious critic of the Pullman company cannot deny that it merits a unique distinction. Other corporations before now have underpaid their employees ... but it remained for the Pullman company to discover how to work on the sympathies of the public in such a manner as to induce that public to make up, by gratuities, for its failure to pay its employees a living wage. It began this forty years ago, when the "plantation" darky of ante-bellum days was still abroad in the land. It used him, his pathetic history, his peculiar attitude toward the white man, for the accomplishment of its purpose. There at the end of the journey, after the traveler had paid $2, $2.50 or $3 for his berth, stood the porter with his whisk broom and his smile. And back of him was the pathetic fact, industriously circulated, that "the company" did not pay him enough to live on, so that he was dependent on the gratuities of passengers who had already paid full price for accommodations and services. We were expected to pay him simply because the Pullman company didn't. And we paid him. Tens of millions of passengers have paid him millions of dollars. It wasn't really philanthropy to the porter; it was philanthropy extended to the Pullman company, which was glad to have the fact of its meanness in its relations to its colored employees--ill-informed of the rights of workingmen and dependent by instinct--published to the world. It was the Pullman company which fastened the tipping habit on the American people and they used the negro as the instrument to do it with. It may be remarked in closing this phase of the discussion that an act of Congress forbidding tips on inter-state carriers would effectually reach the Pullman situation. XIV THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING It has been asserted in this discussion that tipping is incompatible with a democratic form of government. Yet we find officials of our Government following the custom and allowing tips as a legitimate item of expense of traveling to be paid out of the public treasury. FREE AND EQUAL This state of affairs proves that the work of 1776 and 1787 was limited practically to one phase of democracy, namely, the political. Washington and Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the passionate ideal. This they and their associates achieved in ample measure. They gave the waiter or the barber or the bootblack an equal voice in government with themselves. Let those Americans who think that the abolition of tipping would be too radical a step toward social democracy consider how repulsive the attitude of Washington and Jefferson was to the aristocratic thought of their day. No matter what arguments the aristocrats presented against political democracy, their real objection was just this granting of voting equality to persons whom they rated as socially submerged. But having founded our government upon political democracy, the straight line of development is toward social and industrial democracy, in order to complete the ideal entertained by Washington and Jefferson. That both of these idealists tipped servants and that Washington owned slaves is indisputable, but they left records that prove that they merely "suffered it to be so now." Washington clearly foresaw the trouble in which slavery would involve his country, and would have freed his slaves if he could have done so without precipitating what to him appeared a greater evil in view of all the circumstances of his day. The Revolutionary period did all that can be asked of one generation when political equality was established. It remains for our generation to finish the work of democracy by establishing social and industrial democracy. The prospect of a street cleaner or your valet being your social and industrial equal may seem either utopian or undesirable, but it must be remembered, as stated, that two centuries ago the thought of granting an equal vote to such persons was precisely as distasteful to the aristocratic mind. EQUALITY AND UNIFORMITY Much loose thinking along these lines would be obviated if every one could learn clearly the distinction between "equality" and "uniformity." It is the thought of uniformity that makes most persons belligerent toward democratic impulses in industry or society. They dislike the idea of a dead level of compulsory uniformity. A bootblack and a banker are "equal" in the right to vote, but they are not "uniform" in function or culture. Social democracy will abolish an aristocratic custom like tipping so that every citizen will stand upon an equality of self-respect. It will delete the adjective "menial" from any form of service so that a garbage collector will stand in as honorable a relation to society as a lawyer. But social democracy will not and cannot make naturally uncongenial minds live in a relation of compulsory fellowship. Thus in the United States we have only one-third of a democracy. The other two-thirds--social and industrial democracy--must be attained before we can consider our government as ideal. The tipping custom stands squarely in the path of this attainment. The slavery system is not worse in competition with free labor than is the tipping system of compensation. In neither system are values determined by merit or production. In the list of the 5,000,000 Americans with itching palms were national or city government employees like mail carriers, garbage collectors and policemen. In the larger cities a system of giving gratuities to these and other government employees has grown up that emphasizes the distance we have to travel to attain true democracy. Any one of these three classes of government employees is paid well for the service he renders. Yet there are mail carriers who will lose a courteous, friendly bearing toward those who fail to "remember" them at Christmas, or at more frequent intervals, or who will actually curtail the service they are paid to render. MISGUIDED GENEROSITY There seems to be something about the continual contact of a person serving and a person served that makes the one think the other owes him something on the side. A mail carrier will bring your mail once, twice or several times a day for a period and then enters the feeling that he is entitled to some substantial token of appreciation of his faithful, cheerful service, other than the compensation paid by the government. Often the person being served feels a generous appreciation of good service and bestows a token of it without the person serving having expected or wanted it. The tipping custom is not wholly the outgrowth of greed. It is frequently misguided generosity. Where the error creeps in is in expressing appreciation in terms of money. Self-respect is satisfied with verbal appreciation. As an employer the government, of all employers, should set an example of true democracy, should practice sound economics and ethics in the relations it permits between its employees and the public. There is no justification from any viewpoint for giving gratuities to public servants. If garbage collectors render slipshod service to citizens who fail to tip them--and they do this regularly--a complaint should bring immediate relief. It does not now because the higher officials are under the same illusion about tipping that envelopes the subordinates. An inspector of street cleaning in Philadelphia was investigating a complaint against a street sweeper in a residence district. The sweeper told him that he felt the complaint must be ill-founded and that the people in the neighborhood must be satisfied with his sweeping, because he had recently received from residents in one block twenty-one dollars in Christmas tips. How many public servants in your own neighborhood did you tip last Christmas? It should not be assumed that the indictment here read is against all mail carriers or garbage collectors, or policemen. With tipping, as with many other abuses "there are more than seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." THE GOLDEN RULE At Christmas the spirit of generosity finds many curious and misdirected expressions. Policemen on certain traffic corners are remembered by many gifts of money and cigars from persons who have no other contact with them than a nod from a limousine as they pass the corner daily. Why should the feeling of appreciation run to thought of money as a token of expression? It is because the persons who give entertain the idea that the policeman is in a stratum of society under them and that, being an underling, his self-respect will not be hurt by offering money. The same persons would not think of offering a friend money and would be insulted if any one offered them money. The golden rule is a dead letter to them. Some clubs have handled the tipping custom by forbidding gratuities during the year and then allowing the members to contribute to a fund to be divided among the servitors at Christmas. This is a great improvement over the tipping custom but it is still short of the democratic ideal. A servant who is adequately paid for his work throughout the year has no more call upon the generosity of patrons at Christmas than a clerk in a shoe store from whom you purchase shoes four or six times a year. GOVERNMENT HOTELS The Government operates hotels in the Canal Zone, and tipping is permitted. Guests who fail to tip are treated by the servitors precisely like they are treated in private hotels, but the writer, who boarded three months in one of the Government hotels in the Canal Zone, during which time he did not tip the waiter, found that a complaint to the manager about poor service would result in the prompt discipline of the offending servitor. This is more than can be said of many privately operated hotels. In this connection, it is noteworthy that the only whisper of graft in the building of the $400,000,000 canal was the charge made against the purchasing agent of the Commissary that he split commissions with the houses from which he purchased supplies. Splitting commissions is the itching palm in commerce. It would seem that before passing laws to regulate tipping among citizens, the Government, state and national, should be able to come into court with clean hands. Until the Government rids its service of the spirit of graft the law-makers are beating around the bush. XV LAWS AGAINST TIPPING Efforts to abolish or regulate the custom of tipping have been made in the Legislatures of practically all of the States. Often after passing legislative barriers the laws have fallen before Executive vetoes, so that scarcely half a dozen States now have statutes on the subject. The State of Washington adopted a law prohibiting tipping, but it was so generally ignored that the Legislature of 1913 repealed it. This shows that, at first blush, a social custom of long standing has a stronger influence upon the people than a conscientious conviction registered in a new law. Yet, as abortive as the legal campaign against tipping has been thus far, the constant recurrence of the issue in the Legislatures, and the voluntary attempts at regulation being made by hotels and other public service enterprises, show that the propaganda is making headway and that there are great moral resources in the people ready to be called into action. CUSTOM ABOVE LAW The opposition to tipping is unorganized, undisciplined and inarticulate, while the beneficiaries of the custom, with a munificent tribute to nerve activity, are upon a highly efficient basis of operation. Even with a law at his back to stiffen his moral resolution, the average citizen feels more afraid of violating the custom than of violating the law. It is because of the intangible nature of the custom from his viewpoint. A waiter can do so many things to annoy a non-tipping patron that the patron cannot present in the form of a concrete complaint, yet which are quite real and irritating. The upshot is that the patron swallows his conscientious objection to the custom and pays the tribute for fair service. He knows that a failure to tip means a struggle three times a day in the dining room for his rights and the same struggle at every point of contact with the itching palm. Rather than have his efficiency interfered with by the mental disturbance such rows create, he pays the price. But this type of man will make excellent material in the regular ranks even if he lacks the initiative of a lone hand against big odds. When the movement against tipping reaches the stage where a spokesman and leader is produced, all the latent opposition will spring into effective coöperation. THE IOWA LAW Some of the laws are aimed exclusively at the takers of tips and others at the givers as well. The Iowa law is in the first class, as follows: Sec. 5028-u. Accepting or Soliciting Gratuity or Tip. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant, barber shop, or other public place, and every employee of any person, firm partnership, or corporation, or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers in this state, who shall accept or solicit any gratuity, tip or other thing of value or of valuable consideration, from any guest or patron, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than five dollars, or more than twenty-five dollars, or be imprisoned in the county jail for a period not exceeding thirty days. This law makes the mere acceptance of a tip illegal and it also heads off any attempt to circumvent the law on a technicality by prohibiting the acceptance of "other thing of value or of valuable consideration." THE WISCONSIN BILL The Wisconsin bill, which the Governor vetoed on the ground that it curtailed "personal liberty" was intended to penalize the giving of the tip, and was worded as follows: Sec. 45751. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant or public place and every employee of any person, firm or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers or the furnishing of food, lodging and other accommodations to the public in this state who shall receive or solicit any gratuity or tip from any guest or patron shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Every person who shall give or offer any gratuity or tip to any person or employee prohibited from receiving or soliciting the same by the provisions of this section shall also be guilty of a misdemeanor. "Every hotel, restaurant, firm and public service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers or in furnishing food or lodging or other accommodations to the public shall keep a copy of this law posted in a conspicuous place in such hotel and restaurant and in the dining or sleeping cars of any firm or public service corporation mentioned in this section. Any persons violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than five dollars, nor more than twenty-five dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed thirty days." The demand for this bill was so strong among the members of the Legislature that it almost was passed over the Governor's veto. The provision that a copy of the law must be posted in the places where the public comes into contact with the itching palm is a most essential one. It reassures patrons to see it and gives them a present stimulus for standing upon their right to good service for one payment. THE COURTS AND TIPPING The courts, in declaring such laws unconstitutional have proceeded upon the common law right of one citizen to give away his goods or property in the form of money to any other citizen. A tip, the judges say, represents a gift within the meaning of this common law right. But the instances of such altruism are exceedingly rare. Even the judges who so decide know that the tips they give are not bona fide gifts out of the goodness of a generous heart. Tips are given, by the devotees of the custom, from a sense of obligation. They pretend to feel that the servitor actually has rendered a service for which the tip is payment. The proof of this is found in the fact that such persons never go about giving money gifts indiscriminately. Their gifts are exclusively to the employees of public service enterprises, showing that no thought of charity or generosity enters their minds. The courts some day will come to the conclusion that a gift of money to any serving person is a special relation that is subject to the police power of the State. The special circumstances surrounding the gift will be taken into consideration. Then it will be seen that the gift was made for something the patron did not receive; for something for which he is required to pay twice and that the motives of the gift were pride, or fear or a sense of obligation falsely aroused. While the courts are so scrupulous in preserving the common law right to make gifts, they might give consideration to the equally indubitable right of a patron to receive full value for his money, and to receive such value for one payment. It may be, that to write an anti-tipping law that will stand the test of judges educated in the old school of thought about gratuities, legislators will have to approach the subject from this viewpoint of preserving a patron's common law right to satisfactory service for one payment. For instance, a law specifically defining the right of a patron to have food served, or to use a hotel room or sleeping car facilities, in short to patronize any public service place, with only one charge, and that to be paid exclusively to the proprietor, might strike an effective blow at "the universal heart of Flunkyism." The courts will assert that the foregoing right exists without a special statute, and it does. Still the average citizen does not think of instituting a suit against a hotel, or swearing out a warrant against the manager or an employee to enforce his common law right to service at one price. If there is a specific statute against tipping there is a more tangible inducement to stand up for one's rights and there is more likelihood that redress will be granted. The defense of tipping on the "personal liberty" plea, like the defense of the liquor business on the same plea, will grow feebler and feebler until judges cease to take the aristocratic viewpoint. THE SOUTH CAROLINA LAW The South Carolina law goes a step ahead of either the Iowa law or the Wisconsin bill in the provision that the employer shall not permit the custom of tipping, in addition to provisions prohibiting the giving or receiving of tips by patrons or employees. The law follows: "It shall be unlawful in this State for any hotel, restaurant, café, dining car company, railroad companies, sleeping car company or barber shop to knowingly allow any person in its employ to receive any gratuity commonly known as a tip, from any patron or passenger, and it shall be unlawful for any patron of any hotel, restaurant, café, dining car or for any passenger on any railroad train or sleeping car to give any employee any such gratuity and it shall be unlawful for any employee of any hotel, restaurant, café, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop to receive any such gratuity. "By 'gratuity' or 'tip' as used in this Act, is to mean any extra compensation of any kind, which any hotel, restaurant, café, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop manager, officer or any agent thereof in charge of the same, allows to be given to any employee and is not a part of the regular charge of the hotel, restaurant, café, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop, for any part of service rendered, or a part of the service which by contract it is under duty to render. No company or incorporation shall evade this Act by adding to the regular charge, directly or indirectly, anything intended for or to be used or to be given away as a gratuity or tip to the employee. All charges must be made by the company or proprietor in good faith as a charge for the service it renders, inclusive of the service which it furnishes through employees. "Each hotel shall post a copy of this Act in each room and each restaurant, café and barber shop shall post at least two copies of this Act in two conspicuous places in their places of business, and each railroad company shall post two copies of this Act in their waiting rooms and passenger rooms at passenger stations in cities of three thousand inhabitants or more, and each sleeping car and dining car shall have posted therein at least one copy of this Act. "Any person or corporation failing to post as required shall be fined not less than ten dollars for such failure and each day of failure shall constitute a separate and distinct offense and any person violating any of the other provisions of this Act shall be subject to a fine of not less than ten dollars or more than one hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for not exceeding thirty days." This South Carolina law was an evident effort to cover the custom of tipping in a manner that would permit of no evasions. It defines a "tip" and prohibits surreptitious gratuities and makes employer, employee and patron equally liable to prosecution. Yet, it falls short of an ideal law because its operations are limited to seven places frequented by the public and does not cover private places where the itching palm flourishes, such as apartment houses and boarding houses. To stop tipping in hotels, restaurants, cafés, dining cars, railroad stations and cars, sleeping cars or barber shops will be a long stride in the right direction, but the need of stopping tipping to messenger boys, janitors and other employees of apartment houses, maids and waitresses in boarding houses, garbage collectors, mail carriers and policemen among government employees, trunk transfermen, guides, steamship employees and others too numerous to cite, is fully as urgent. THE IDEAL LAW The ideal act will be evolved through these repeated approximations and through experience. In a broad outline it must include (1) a clear definition of a tip, (2) a statement of a patron's right to service for one payment exclusively to the proprietor, (3) a prohibition against subterfuges in the charges whereby patrons may give tips, (4) the wages paid by an employer to be considered as presumptive evidence of his attitude toward tipping, (5) a requirement that employers shall give patrons a definite understanding of the service to which they are entitled, (6) any actual extra service to be compensated for direct to employer after being appraised and charged for by the employer, (7) the giving of money or gifts to employees to be taken out of the class of "charity" and "personal liberty," (8) the employer, the employee and the patron to be subject to the same penalty for violating the law and the conviction of any one of the three to be followed automatically by the conviction of the other two for the same offense, (9) the law to be applicable to any employer and any employee in any relation with the public or with individuals, in private home or public place, (10) a prohibition against operating any convenience for the public in which the rate of payment shall be left to the whim of the patron, such as cloak rooms, the tariffs to be displayed and exacted impartially of every patron if the employer assumes that patrons must pay extra for the service, (11) an adequate provision for acquainting patrons with the law through posting it or otherwise directing their attention to it, (12) the granting of licenses to operate public service places only upon condition that gratuities are not to be permitted, directly or indirectly, (13) the granting to a patron who has been denied fair service of redress in addition to the punishment of the guilty employee and employer, (14) an adequate scale of penalties, fine or imprisonment for any violation of any part of the law. It is not presumed that if a law were drawn to embody the foregoing provisions that the tipping custom would be strangled. Only actual tests in the courts will produce the ultimate intent. Of course, if employers and employees and patrons were actuated by a desire to maintain their relations upon a basis of self-respect so circumstantial a law would be unnecessary, but many of them are not thus actuated and a minute restraint will be imperative at the outset and until a normal ideal of democracy is cultivated. THE NEBRASKA ACT The bill introduced in the 1915 session of the Nebraska Legislature does not penalize the patron for giving gratuities and seems to be aimed at the practice of "split commissions" as well as at tipping. It has a maximum fine of one hundred dollars, or imprisonment of sixty days and the employers only are specified for conviction. The act follows: "No employee or servant shall accept, obtain or agree to accept, or attempt to obtain, from any person, for himself or for any other person, any gift, gratuity or consideration as an inducement to perform or as a reward for having performed any duty or service for which such employee or servant has been employed or is to be paid by the employer or master, firm or corporation of such employee or servant. "No employer or master, firm or corporation shall permit or allow any of his or their employees or servants to solicit or to accept any gift, gratuity or consideration as an inducement to perform or as a reward for having performed any duty or service for which such employee or servant has been or is to be paid by such employer or master, firm or corporation. "Each and every employer or master, firm or corporation who carries on business as the keeper of a hotel, inn, restaurant, café, place for the sale of alcoholic beverages, barber shop or place for polishing boots and shoes, or who operates a railroad dining, buffet, sleeping or parlor car, shall post up or cause to be posted up in at least two conspicuous places in the premises in which such business is carried on, or in such car, a notice that tipping, or the giving of any gift or gratuity to any servant or employee, is forbidden under penalty of fine or imprisonment. "No employer or master, firm or corporation shall give or agree to give or offer to any employee or servant any gift, gratuity or consideration as an inducement to perform or as a reward for having performed any duty or service for which such employer or servant has been or is to be paid by the employer, master, firm or corporation employing such servants. "Each and every employer, master, firm or corporation who shall violate any of the provisions herein made shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable in each and every case to a fine of not less than ten dollars nor more than one hundred dollars, or to imprisonment in the county jail of the proper county not less than ten nor more than sixty days, or to both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court." THE TENNESSEE LAW The Tennessee law was adopted upon the especial solicitation of the traveling salesmen of the State. These men live constantly in touch with the itching palm and find the tribute not only burdensome to themselves but to their employers. The act is much like the South Carolina law, and a notable feature is Section 6: "That it shall be the duty of the circuit judges and the courts of like jurisdiction to especially call the attention of the grand jury to the provisions of this act at each term of the court." The foregoing provision makes it certain that, even if patrons are timid about obeying the law and if employers and employees disregard it, the fight against the custom will go right on, just as does the fight against bootlegging after saloons have been banished from a city. The Tennessee law also has a more elaborate scale of fines, as the following section shows: "Be it further enacted that any hotel, restaurant, café, barber shop, dining car, railroad or sleeping car company, and the manager, officer or agent of the same in charge, violating this act or wilfully allowing the same to be violated in any way, shall each be subject to a penalty of not less than $10 nor more than $50 for each tip allowed to be given. If any person shall give an employee any gratuity or tip each person shall be subject to a fine of not more than $25 and not less than $5 for each offense. If any of the above employees shall receive a gratuity or tip he or she shall be subject to a fine of not more than $25 nor less than $5 for each offense. Should any hotel, restaurant, café, barber shop, dining car, railroad company or sleeping car company fail, neglect or refuse to post notice of this act as required herein, such hotel, restaurant, café, barber shop, dining car, railroad or sleeping car company shall be subject to a fine not to exceed $100 for each day it shall fail." Naturally if this law is enforced with any fidelity by the grand juries, not to mention such actions as may be instituted by the public, tipping in Tennessee in the specified public service place will become extinct, or assume a guise not covered by the law. But if tipping is restrained only in the seven places enumerated and allowed to be practiced unrestrained everywhere else, only a limited industrial democracy will be attained, and the part of the custom left alive will spread by its own insidious processes to the places preëmpted. THE ILLINOIS COMPROMISE When the public conscience is fully aroused to the need of stifling this custom, the legal mind will be able to draw up a law that will prevent tipping anywhere and under any circumstances. The Illinois law is a particular example of a half-way measure in that it seeks only to prohibit the practice of leasing tipping concessions to employees. "That it shall be unlawful for the owner, proprietor, lessee, superintendent, manager or agent in any hotel, restaurant, eating house, barber shop, theatre, store building, office building, factory, railroad, street railroad, fair ground, baseball or football ground, hall used for public meetings or entertainments, or any other building, office, or space which is a place of public accommodation or public resort, to rent, lease or permit to be used any part, space or portion thereof, for any trade, calling or occupation, or for the exercise of any privilege by any person, company, partnership or corporation for the purpose of accepting, demanding or receiving, directly or indirectly, from the customers, patrons or people who frequent such places of public accommodation or public resort, gratuities or donations, commonly called tips, in addition to the regular, ordinary and published rate of charge for work performed, materials furnished or services rendered, _provided_, that nothing in this section contained shall be construed to prohibit any employee or servant from accepting or receiving gratuities or donations commonly called tips, if such gratuities or donations are not accounted for, paid over, or delivered, directly, or indirectly, in whole or in part, to any person, company, partnership or corporation, but are retained by such employee or servant, as and for his absolute and individual property. "Any lease, contract, agreement or understanding entered into in violation of the provisions of section 1 of this act shall be absolutely void. "Any person, company, partnership or corporation or any officer or agent thereof, violating the provisions of this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined in any sum not exceeding ten thousand dollars for each and every offense, and, in addition thereto such person, officer or agent, in the discretion of the court, be sentenced to the county jail not less than three months and not more than one year." LEGALIZED ROBBERY This Illinois law is an instance of an American Commonwealth specifically and deliberately recognizing tipping as legal and right. It turns loose the tip-pirates upon the public with full governmental sanction, but stipulates that in their piracy they shall not organize into a trust, as they had done in Chicago and in all large cities. The Illinois law can be commended to the extent that it seeks to break up the organized traffic in tips, but its recognition of tipping on an unorganized basis is equivalent to the action of some European governments in paying out of their treasuries tribute to the Barbary pirates for the privilege of sailing the high seas. Thomas Jefferson's democracy rebelled at this and he freed the whole world from the outrageous custom. IN MASSACHUSETTS Massachusetts has a law to prohibit the corrupt influencing of agents, employees or servants, but it is aimed specially at the practice of "splitting commissions" and does not operate to restrain tipping in the State. A salesman sometimes will offer to give a buyer a bonus or part of his commission if an order is placed, and this practice is causing the business world considerable thought, as employers realize that a buyer who will accept favors from salesmen will not exercise unbiased judgment. It is the itching palm a plane above tipping owing to the larger amount involved, and is akin to the graft of public officials. The law follows: "Whoever corruptly gives, offers or promises to an agent, employee or servant any gift or gratuity whatever, with intent to influence his action in relation to his principal's, employer's or master's business; or an agent, employee or servant who corruptly requests or accepts a gift or gratuity or a promise to make a gift or to do an act beneficial to himself under an agreement or with an understanding that he shall act in any particular manner in relation to his principal's, employer's or master's business; or an agent, employee or servant, who, being authorized to procure materials, supplies or other articles either by purchase or contract for his principal, employer or master, or to employ service or labor for his principal, employer or master receives, directly or indirectly, for himself or for another, a commission, discount or bonus from the person who makes such sale or contract, or furnishes such materials, supplies or other articles, or from a person who renders such service or labor; and any person who gives or offers such an agent, employee or servant such commission, discount or bonus, shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, or by such fine and by imprisonment for not more than one year." Although the Arkansas and Mississippi laws against tipping are not mentioned, a comprehensive idea of the extent and nature of the opposition to the custom in the United States is presented in the review of the bills introduced in or enacted by the Legislatures of Iowa, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, Illinois, and Massachusetts. All the other States have no laws against tipping. Considering the fact that no organization has been formed to agitate for this reform, these spontaneous State efforts are significant. XVI SAMUEL GOMPERS ON TIPPING Labor has the strongest interest of any element of citizens for seeing the 5,000,000 men, women and children with itching palms elevated to a normal plane of self-respect. For nothing in America more certainly promotes class distinctions than tipping. It is essentially aristocratic, and labor has attained its widest development in democracy. WAITERS AGAINST THE TIP CUSTOM Occasionally waiters and some other workers in a serving capacity have attempted to organize and place their work upon the wage-system, rather than the combination wage-and-tip system, or the strictly tip system, now existing. In New York in 1913 the waiters struck for higher wages and serious riots occurred before they capitulated to the old system. The hotels preferred the tipping system because it throws the cost of waiter hire upon the public, whereas, an adequate wage system would necessitate a readjustment of their business. Even where the waiters and barbers have organized they have not always shown aggressive efforts to abolish or regulate the tipping custom. The barbers, for instance, are highly organized, and any real desire upon their part to abolish the custom would be followed by immediate reform. But it is evident that the tipping system of compensation is attractive to many persons who serve the public because it yields more pay than a wage system. In the higher strata of workers particularly the tips are so large as to stupefy moral sense, and this minority dominates the majority by setting a standard of "proper" social usage. A LABOR LEADER ON TIPS Mr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, has opposed tipping as an irregular form of compensation, and in response to an inquiry for his opinion he inclosed a letter he had written to the manager of the Hotel Stowell, in Los Angeles, where a non-tipping rule is enforced. "_Hotel Stowell, Los Angeles, Calif._ "Replying to your letter of November 28th I beg to say that I found your hotel and service eminently satisfactory and was particularly pleased with the rule you have enforced as to no tipping. "While, of course, I have followed the usual custom of giving tips, yet I have maintained the principle of tipping to be unwise and that it tends to lessen the self-respect of a man who accepts a tip. "Very truly yours, "(Signed) SAMUEL GOMPERS, "American Federation of Labor." This letter is interesting as revealing the attitude of many prominent Americans, namely, that while they conform to the custom rather than be subjected to insults, annoyance and poor service, they really consider it inimical to self-respect. EUROPEAN TIPS Mr. Gompers in his letter said: "You have my permission to quote my opinion upon this subject in any way that you may desire," and gave permission to have reproduced here the chapter in his book, "Labor In Europe and America," which deals with tipping in Europe, as he encountered it in his investigations of labor conditions. The chapter is entitled "Nuisances of European Travel" and is as follows: "Having in previous letters given my impressions with regard to matters of more serious import, I wish to say something about the almost hourly sufferings of American travelers in Europe from mosquito bites. To the sharp probes from these insects, with the resultant pain, fever and disgust, the traveler is obliged to submit continually--at hotels and restaurants, on the railroad and often elsewhere--as he goes seeing the sights. To illustrate: our party on arriving at The Hague engaged two mosquitoes in the form of station porters to carry our hand-baggage to the bus of the Hotel Blank, waiting at the curb of the station exit. The station porters passed the valises over to the hotel bus porter at a point just within the station door. Nip! nip! by the two station porters. NIP! NIP! "When we arrived at the hotel door both the bus porter and the bus driver asked me for what they regarded as their due drop of blood. Nip! nip! Within the door of the hotel the manager informed us that all his rooms had been engaged by telegraph, but that he could give us good rooms at a clean hotel near by, and we took them. Two hotel porters who had carried our bits of hand-baggage into the hotel lobby asked me, as soon as the hotel manager had turned his back, for their tribute. Nip! nip! Yet another porter, after taking the things a few steps down the street to the other hotel stood by in the hallway and waited to give us his nip. Seven gouges of silver change out of my pocket before we reached our rooms! But the probes of the mosquito swarms of this hotel reached even further. The little hotel charged us Hotel Blank rates for our rooms, about double what would have been asked had we gone there direct and bargained for accommodations. And the dinner at the Hotel Blank cost us half a florin apiece more than the price set down in the guide-book. In this incident the reader sees some, but not all, of the methods of stinging which the hotel mosquitoes practice. "In Berlin, just at the moment of our departure, the porter, the gold-laced and brass-buttoned dignitary who browbeats lamblike guests at European hotel entrances, handed us our laundry bill, every article of which was charged double to treble New York prices. In Vienna, tired of blood-letting to each mosquito separately in the group of servants always assembled about the door upon our departure--'the review' they themselves call this evolution--I drew the manager aside and said: 'I understand that there is a way of giving tips to all hands through the management.' (One bleeding as it were.) 'How much extra shall I give you?' He replied: 'Twenty per cent. of your bill.' "BRIBE AND BE HAPPY" "I was rather tickled than bitten the first time I got a nip in a European railway train. One of our party suggested that as the second-class places were crowded we should go into a first-class compartment and await results. When the conductor, in his jim-dandy uniform, came along, he was handed our second-class tickets and a mark--a silver coin worth a paltry twenty-five cents. And he took our tickets and passed on without seeing for what class they called. The vast possibilities of cheaply purchased privileges on future trips acted as a palliative to this little sting. And the thought of what might happen if the traveler in America should try to overcome the virtue of one of our express-train conductors with a 'quarter' brought all our party to see the circumstance from a humorous point of view. Truth to relate, it marked the beginning of a custom we followed--since we learned that it was general--of buying our way past any obstacle that appeared to interrupt the smoothness or comfort of our daily progress. With a little silver we henceforth obtained concessions from grand-looking policemen, soldiers on guard, vergers in churches, museum custodians. It is a common custom for conductors on street cars in Continental Europe to hold out their hands to receive as a tip any small change due, but first handed over to the passenger. You may have your choice in European travel: Bribe and be otherwise happy and free, or virtuously decline to bribe and be snubbed, ordered about and forbidden to see things. BORDERS ON BLACKMAIL "The tipping system, bad as it is becoming in America, is in Europe universal and accepted by all classes of travelers as an inevitable nuisance. It often borders on blackmail. Tippers go raving mad in recounting their wrongs under the tyrannies of the system, the newspapers by turn rail or make merry over it, the hotel keepers and other employers of the class have their excuse that they pay wages to their servants--but the tipping goes on forever. Why is it? Who is to blame? "These questions I have asked representative waiters--for representatives these men have, many of them being organized into benefit societies and a small proportion in a sort of trade union. But one answer was given. The system is detestable to every man and woman of the serving class possessing the least degree of self-respect. It is demoralizing to all who either give or receive tips. The real beneficiaries of the system are the employers. An end to it, with a fair standard of wages, would be a boon of the first order to employees, a means of compelling hotel proprietors to put their business on a basis of fair dealing, and an incalculable aid to the tranquillity and pleasure of the general public. MORAL PIRATES "I have often talked over the system of tipping with my fellow waiters," said an educated man of the calling, when I brought up the subject to him. (Parenthetically, perhaps, I should say here that since this man speaks fluently and writes correctly four languages, has traveled much and observed well on the great tourist routes of the world, has studied some of the serious works of writers on sociology, and has, withal, acquired agreeable manners, he may be called educated. Without doubt, had he a few thousands of vulgar dollars he might buy himself a title as Baron and marry in our best society; but he is above that; he has a craving for walking in the light of truth.) "All of us would like to see the system abolished," he assured me, "except a small minority who in their moral make-up resemble pirates, and who cruise in places where riches abound. But the whole situation is one in which reform is most difficult. "Among the people who patronize hotels and restaurants there is a considerable element that, either for a week of frolic or during their lifelong holiday, are regardless of the value of their tips, and through their vanity enjoy throwing away a percentage of their ready money. Then, also, are those grateful for the little kindly attentions which a good waiter or porter knows how to bestow. As for the proprietors and managers, their business is based on tips as one of the considerable forms of revenue. For instance, in many German hotels the waiters are obliged to give the cashier five or more marks additional on every hundred marks of checks. In Austria, at the larger restaurants the customers tip three persons after a meal--the head-waiter who collects the payments, the waiter who serves and the piccolo or beer-boy. The hotel management sells to the head-waiter the monopoly privilege of the tips. The head-waiter then provides the newspapers and magazines on file, the city directories, time-tables and other books of reference called for by patrons, and a part of the outfit of the waiters. Of course, it is an old and true story, that in the big restaurants of Paris, and to-day of other cities and fashionable watering-places, the waiters pay so much cash a day for their jobs. The pestering of guests to buy drinks comes, not so much from commissions, as from orders of the management that the custom of drinking at meals must be encouraged. In Germany it is usual at the larger restaurants to add half a mark to the cost of a meal if the guest drinks plain water only. TOO MANY SERVANTS "European hotels generally take on more servants than are necessary. It makes a showing of being prepared for big business. Then the servants must redouble their artful moves to extort tips. Porters not infrequently work without salary at all. Chambermaids, who are paid by the month, receive absurdly low pay. Financing a hotel or restaurant is based on the tips as a margin yielding on the average a fixed amount. To make them reach the required sum all the employees are obliged to maneuver so as to put up a showing of earning the traveler's extra silver pieces. Coppers rarely are expected as tips now. It has become common for railway station porters to demand half a franc for what once brought them a few sous or pfennigs. "One outcome of running a hotel on the tipping system developed to the point of bamboozling or worrying the guests out of petty extras at every turn is that each year there is an emigration of European waiters to America to get places in hotels taken by European managers, who, depending upon their servants to work the system at its worst for the guests, can make a business pay both manager and landlord, where an American manager, paying wages, would fail. While shop-keepers have in the course of time been forced to adopt the one-price system, the drift in the hotel business has been continuously away from the per diem rate. Another point--the big tourist agencies for European travel are certainly in some sort of partnership with the hotels for which they sell coupon tickets. Those on the inside of the hotel business in Europe know that these hotels are patronized largely by Americans, spendthrifts on their trip staying a few days at a time and usually speaking English only, and therefore disinclined to hunt up stopping-places for themselves. Hence at such hotels there is a harvest for everybody--a situation which eventually leads to bad food, bad cooking, bad service, and a hold-up at every turn of the guest." A SORRY BUSINESS In going over the possible method of a change for the better in this sorry business, my waiter friend said that first of all he believed that a big trade union must be formed of hotel help. Tipping must give way to fair wages. The public could give its share of assistance. He recommended that the guests at either hotels or restaurants should follow these rules, notes of which were taken on the spot. "Patronize, whenever possible, the hotels and eating houses where tips are forbidden; there are such places in England and on the continent. Refuse importunities for tips, either through words or 'hanging around,' where there has been no service. Where, for your own comfort you feel constrained to tip give the bare minimum. Whenever possible do not tip at all." He added, and I felt that he had me also in mind, "Some easy-going natured people believe that they tip the nearest itching palm to them because of their sympathy with the poor. Reflection should teach them that there can sometimes be real charity without public demonstration." True, church people might, with this purpose, give through their own congregational agencies. In London, the American traveler wishing to do the best with his withheld tip-appropriation, might send it to the Westminster Children's Aid Society; In Rome, to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; In Berlin, to the semi-public lodging houses. Everywhere, trade-unionists can always give first to the genuine and pressing claims of their own organizations. But, of course, if the tipper, gives, not from motives of good-heartedness, but mere vanity, all advice is thrown away on him. The hotel keeper will continue growing rich on him and despising him. Other folks in Europe may have good reason to tell him, what a plain spoken Swiss citizen told a friend of mine: "You Americans with your dirty dollars are ruining my country." VANITY, ALL IS VANITY! Mr. Gompers in this chapter from his book has shed much light on the ethics, economics and psychology of tipping. The deliberate, shameless exploitation of the public by employers and employees is revealed. No ground to stand upon is left to the tip givers except vanity, and the pernicious influence of the custom, to patron, employee and employer, is so unmistakable that the doom of the custom is as certain as was slavery, when the American conscience once squarely faces the issue. Hotel and restaurant managers in our cities have employed European waiters upon the theory that the native American has too much independence and self-respect. The European waiters have multiplied the tip-giving propensity in America and have established their undemocratic sovereignty over our public hospitality. Inasmuch as a certain element of Americans think that the last word in social propriety originates in Europe, when these European servitors are transplanted, gold lace and all, to America, they hasten to enlarge their tips to the point which they assume these servitors consider "proper." The astonishing feature of the European situation is that the European patrons of hotels do not themselves tip within a tenth of the largess bestowed by American tourists. The American tourist is fair game to the European hotel, which trebles its regular rates the moment he appears. A native of the country, however, can have identically the same accommodations for one-third of the American's bill, and his tips are a bagatelle in comparison. The situation may be changed by an organization of employees, but reform will come most speedily whenever the public, which pays the bill, decides to withhold the tribute. XVII THE WAY OUT Summarizing the case against tipping, the following facts stand out prominently: 1. Flunkyism is rampant in the American democracy and this aristocratic influence is undermining republican ideals and institutions. 2. Flunkyism, in the form of tipping, is kept alive by the courts on the plea of "personal liberty." 3. Tipping nowadays is of precisely the same morality as paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates was in Jefferson's day, which the American conscience finally abolished. 4. On the economic side, tipping is wrong because it is payment for no service, or double payment for one service; thereby causing the exchange of wealth without a mutual gain. 5. Tipping is ethically wrong because one person accepts payment for a service not rendered, or for a service which the employer already has paid to have performed. And because gratuities destroy self-respect. 6. The hold which tipping has upon the public is due to unscrupulous appeals to generosity, pride and fear of violating conventional social usage. 7. The public is exploited deliberately through books on social propriety which emphasize the custom, or which advise conformity thereto for the sake of peace and comfort. 8. The exploitation of the public is aided by the visualization of the custom in moving pictures and on the stage where it is treated humorously. 9. Employees defend tipping upon the ground that it compensates them for extra services not covered in their wages. An examination of individual instances shows this contention to be false in a vast majority of the number examined. 10. Employers defend the custom on the ground that the public insists upon giving gratuities and they must face competition based upon that condition. But it is shown that employers openly profit by the custom and secretly encourage it. 11. One metropolitan hotel has blazed the way to reform by guaranteeing that its guests will not be annoyed or neglected if tips are not given. This partial step toward the abolition of the custom is possible everywhere if employers are sincere in their profession of antipathy for the custom. 12. Our democratic government permits its officers and employees to accept gratuities, thereby stultifying the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 13. The conscience of the people as reflected in the laws adopted or offered against tipping is sound and needs only to be led to an adequate expression. There are abundant indications of a widespread distaste for the custom but the sentiment is unorganized and inarticulate. 14. The head of the labor movement in America declares that tipping is undesirable as a system of compensation for employees and destroys the self-respect of those who give or receive the gratuities. 15. A national organization of those interested in this reform should be brought into being with effective state auxiliaries. BETTER ORGANIZATION NEEDED The last proposition constitutes "the way out" of the present undesirable situation. When it is remembered that the anti-tipping propaganda heretofore has lacked organization and direction it is not surprising that the laws adopted against the custom and the spasmodic public irritation over it have fizzled out. With the same organization behind this movement that has been given to the anti-saloon movement, or the suffrage movement, tipping would be vanquished in an astonishingly short time. There is no doubt there is sufficient latent opposition to tipping to form the basis of an anti-tipping organization. It may be called "The American Anti-Tipping Association," or by any other name, and it should embrace in its membership not only those who are opposed to giving tips, but those servants and workers who are opposed to receiving tips, and also all other persons of any race or creed whose conception of true Americanism does not include approval of this custom. NOT A WAR AGAINST PERSONS The object of such an organization should not be to wage war on persons, but on a custom. There is no need for hostility against waiters, barbers, porters and the like as a class. Many of these heartily oppose the custom and will join in a movement to eradicate it. Hence, the campaign should be to readjust the basis of compensation of those who serve the public so that self-respect may be preserved all around. Nothing less than a fair wage as a substitute for the present tipping system of compensation would be considered. Having made the foregoing point clear at the outset, much resentment among servitors would be eliminated. No one has a desire to deprive a waiter of an adequate compensation, but no one has a desire to give him an excessive compensation through gratuities, or a compensation which depresses his self-respect in the manner of receiving and humiliates the patron in the manner of giving. Employers would need to be informed, too, that the campaign against tipping is not to throw an unjust burden of operating expense upon them. It will indeed deprive them of any revenues which they should not, economically or ethically, receive from the public through gratuities to employees. The substitution of a wage scale will be attended by economic changes which at first may cause some unsettled conditions, but this is inevitable when an unsound practice has been allowed to grow unrestrained in the business world. PUBLIC OPINION One of the first aims of such an organization would be to bring public opinion to bear upon city, state and national governments to inspire them to clean house in regard to tipping. No government employee should be permitted to accept any compensation other than his salary or wages from the government. Mail carriers, policemen, garbage collectors, guides and other government employees are paid adequately and gratuities to them from the public are indefensible, in any country, and supremely so in the American democracy. The public, of course, will need to revise its attitude toward these and all persons who serve them. The feeling that a traffic policeman whom you pass in your automobile every day should be remembered with a gift of money or anything else substantial at Christmas, or upon any other occasion is false sentiment. He is due nothing except courtesy all the time from the public, which, through taxes, already has provided his compensation. The feeling that a mail carrier whom you see daily, or a garbage collector, must be similarly remembered is equally false sentiment. The ideal is a relation in which patron and employee, public and government employee, entertain mutual opinions of self-respect, and regardless of how distasteful this may be to class sense, or aristocratic impulses, it is the American standard and the right standard. PROMOTING LEGISLATION An organization opposed to tipping would have as its further objects the promotion of legislation against the custom and the protection of the public in the enjoyment of its rights at law. If so many States have adopted laws as a spontaneous expression of Americanism, it may be assumed that with organized public sentiment, and educated public sentiment all the States will get in line. There will be abundant financial resources behind such an organization. Those who oppose tipping have been silent but they have felt keenly and will contribute liberally toward the advancement of the cause. And when such an organization actually proves its efficacy in protecting the public, its ranks will be augmented overwhelmingly. The protection hinted at is the kind that would take up specific instances of neglect of patrons who do not give tips. Thus, if a member should be neglected or insulted in a hotel after he had failed to bestow a gratuity, the organization, upon investigation, would assume the task of correcting the situation at law. Even where there is no statute against tipping, the common law guarantees the right of a patron to fair and equal service, and the organization could enforce this right in the courts. Naturally, great care and good judgment would be needed to prevent an injustice to proprietors and employees. Often patrons exact more service than they are entitled to, and in such a situation the organization would be ranged on the side of the employee. Those who desire a condition where they may run rough-shod over servitors have a mistaken idea of the anti-tipping ideal. The employer is required to have employees who will give cheerful, adequate service, but within the limits of reason, and the selfish, domineering, patron is an evil which must be restrained as effectually as the waiter who surreptitiously insults patrons who do not tip. TO PREVENT COMPLAINT Surveying the vast field of tipping one may wonder how any organization could offer protection to the numberless patrons who might complain. The answer is that the organization would be as widespread as the custom. Every town and city would have its local organization with an attorney to prosecute violations. But it is reasonable to presume that when public opinion is once thoroughly aroused and organized, and a few prosecutions have been successful, that employers and employees, who do not voluntarily reform their practices, will see the light. As deep-rooted as the custom seems, it really rests on insecure foundations and will crumble before any real attack. The average American, be he barber, waiter or porter, has enough inherent understanding of democracy to know that the custom is wrong. He "will get his" as long as an easy-going public will stand for the exaction, but will not be a formidable opponent. The imported European waiter will present more obstinate fondness for the custom, having been nurtured in the aristocratic school, but his opposition can be handled. The most difficult type will be the class of patrons who delight in playing the rôle of Lady Bountiful or Gentleman Generous. Their pride will be restrained from buying servility from other Americans. And wealthy proprietors, who cater to this class and the intermediate class which ape the "smart set," will cling to the custom because of their pecuniary interest therein. But the average American and his vigorous sense of democracy will be adequate to the task of controlling all elements adverse to the republic. The campaign against tipping is much more than a purpose to save the money given in gratuities. Its idealism aims to reach the very pinnacle of republican society--the destiny toward which 1776 started us. The mountain peaks of pride will have to be pulled down and the valleys of false humility will have to be lifted up, while the impulses to greed and avarice will have to be rebuked until every American can say: If I must build my pride upon another man's humility, I will not be proud; If I must build my strength upon another man's weakness, I will not be strong; If I must build my success upon another man's failure, I will not succeed! INDEX ARGUMENTS FOR TIPPING, 26, 28 BAGGAGEMEN, 76 BARBARY PIRATES, THE, 15 BARBER, THE, 29 BARBER-SHOP PORTERS, 79 BATH ATTENDANTS, 86 BELL-BOYS, 32, 69, 104 BETTER ORGANIZATION NEEDED, 160 BIBLE, THE, AGAINST TIPPING, 45 BLACKMAIL, 150 BOOTBLACKS, 66, 78 CASTE AND CLASS, 47 CHAMBERMAIDS, 153 CHAUFFEURS, 33 CHRISTMAS TIPS, 116, 119 CLOAKROOM TACTICS, 52 CLUBS, 119 COMMISSIONS, SPLITTING, 43 COURTS, THE, AND TIPPING, 126 CUSTOM ABOVE LAW, 123 DEMOCRACY AND TIPPING, 38, 48, 114, 166 DOOR MEN, 81 ECONOMICS OF TIPPING, 26, 28 ELEVATOR MEN, 61, 81 EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT, THE, 73 EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT, THE, 88 EMPLOYERS, can control, 102 " conspiracy by, 90 " retain tips, 86, 90, 152 " three kinds of, 88 " who profit by tips, 89, 105 EQUALITY AND UNIFORMITY, 115 ETIQUETTE BOOKS foster tipping, 58 EUROPEAN TIPS, 146 train conductors, 149 FEAR, as a reason for tipping, 55 FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA, 7 FREE AND EQUAL, 113 GARBAGE COLLECTORS, 116, 118 GENEROSITY, as a reason for tipping, 51 " misguided, 117 GENTLEMAN, what is a?, 37 " would he accept tips?, 37 GOLDEN RULE, THE, 119 GOMPERS, SAMUEL, on tipping, 144 GOVERNMENT HOTELS, tipping in, 120 " " the, and tipping, 113 GOVERNOR WHITMAN against tips, 40 GRAFT, "honest", 45 " taught by tipping, 42 GUEST'S RIGHT, THE, 104 GUIDES, 81 HARRY LAUDER against tipping, 41 HATBOYS, 82 "HONEST GRAFT", 45 HOSPITALITY, false, 101 HOTEL, The, 30 " fees, 59 " hospitality, 62, 101 " theory and practice, 32 " tipless, 97, 146 HOUSE SERVANTS, 64 HUSH MONEY, 42 IDEAL LAW, The, 132 ILLINOIS LAW, The, 91 " Compromise, The, 138 IOWA LAW, The, 124 ITCHING PALM, The, 8, 10, 19, 31, 70, 72 JANITORS, 83 LADY, What is a?, 37 " would she accept tips, 37 LAWS against Tipping, 122 LEGALIZED ROBBERY, 140 LEGISLATION, Promoting, 164 LITERATURE of Tipping, The, 58 MAIL CARRIERS, 116 MANICURISTS, 84 MASSACHUSETTS, In, 141 MERCHANTS against tips, 44 MESSENGERS, 85 "MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE", 17 MORAL PIRATES, 151 "MOVIES," the, and tipping, 69 MUSICIANS, 66 NEBRASKA ACT, The, 134 NOT A WAR Against Persons, 161 "NO TIP" POLICY, barber shops, 89 " " " hotels, 89, 97, 147 " " " restaurants, 89 OCEAN VOYAGES, tipping on, 65 ONE COMPENSATION, One Service, 35, 55 ORGANIZATION NEEDED, 160 PERSONAL LIBERTY, 10, 13 PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION, 19 POLICEMEN, 116, 119 PORTERS, 147, 153 " Pullman, 108 PRICE OF PRIDE, The, 37 PRIDE, as a reason for tipping, 54 PRIVATE HOUSES, tipping in, 64 PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING, The, 47 PULLMAN COMPANY, The, 105 " " investigated, 106 PUBLIC OPINION, 162 REASONS for tipping, 51, 54, 55 RECIPIENTS opposed to Tipping, 39, 144, 150 REMEDY for Tipping, 55, 94, 95, 103, 158 RICH AMERICAN MYTH, The, 67 SHIP'S DOCTOR, The, 67 SLEEPING-CAR PHASE, The, 105 SOLUTION, a Reasonable, 94 SOUTH CAROLINA LAW, The, 129 SPLITTING COMMISSIONS, 43 STAGE, The, and Tipping, 68, 72 STATISTICS of Tipping money given in tips, 8 number of tip-takers, 7 tips in N. Y. City, 17, 22 tips in other cities, 21 tip-taking classes, 19, 20 STATLER HOTEL, The, 97 STENOGRAPHERS, 86 STEWARDS, Ship, 66 STREET CLEANERS, 118 TENNESSEE LAW, The, 136 TIPPING and Americanism, 11, 87, 150 " and democracy, 7, 38, 48, 113 " and labor, 144, 145 " and morals, 96, 158 " and patriotism, 56 " and personal liberty, 10, 13 " and public opinion, 162 " and slavery, 11, 50 " and the Bible, 45 " and the caste system, 47 " and the courts, 126 " and the wage system, 75, 107 " arguments for, 26, 28 " and a training school for graft, 42 " in private houses, 64 " in "the movies", 69 " Laws Against, 123 " Literature of, The, 58 " Merchants opposed to, 44 " on ocean voyages, 65 " on the stage, 68 " psychology of, the, 47 " real reasons for, 51, 54, 55 " recipients opposed to, 39, 144, 150 " remedy for, 55, 94, 95, 103, 158 "TIP PRIVILEGES" Sold, 90, 152 TIP-TAKERS, Partial List of, 19 " numbers by cities, 21 "TIP TRUST, The", 92 "TRIBUTE, Not One Cent for", 17 WAGES VERSUS TIPS, 75, 107 WAITER, The, 27 " can he be a gentleman?, 37 WAITERS, European, 150, 156 WAITRESSES, 59 WALSH COMMISSION, The, 111 WASHINGTON LAW, The, 122 WAY OUT, The, 158 WISCONSIN BILL, The, 125 Y. M. C. A., The, 104 Transcriber's Note: Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in the original publication. On page 74, "asumed" in "attitude asumed by servitors" has been changed to "assumed". 
34012	----	+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.| | | |The Table of Contents is at the end of the text. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ Labor and Freedom The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs While there is a lower class I am in it; While there is a criminal class I am of it; While there is a soul in prison I am not free. Published by PHIL WAGNER St. Louis 1916 [Illustration: Logo. 115] _Introduction_ _I think if I had been asked to name this work that comes to us from the rare mind and tender heart of 'Gene Debs, I would have called it "The Old Umbrella Mender." It was this tragic, touching tale that I first read in the manuscript; and it is the memory of this that will always return to me when I think of the book. It is the perfect painting from the artist's brush--the sculptured monument from the master's chisel--that makes one lowly, loyal soul to live forever in the hearts of humanity's lovers._ _Not but that every line in the book is a treasure, and every sentiment brought forth an appeal to all that makes for justice, and equality, and freedom; nor will it detract from, but rather add to, the beauty and inestimable value of the entire collection if others, likewise, carry with them the image and memory of the old umbrella mender, as they travel with Debs the struggling, storm-tossed way of Labor and Freedom._ HENRY M. TICHENOR. St. Louis, March 1, 1916. MISCELLANY THE OLD UMBRELLA MENDER. Coming Nation, March 1, 1913. It was on a cold morning late in November last, just after the national election, and I was walking briskly toward my office. A stiff wind was blowing and a drizzling rain was falling. The threads in one of the ribs of my umbrella snapped asunder and the cover flew upward, as it has a way of doing, and I was about to lower my disabled shower-stick when I ran slapdash into an old itinerant umbrella mender with his outfit slung across his back and shuffling along in the opposite direction. He had noticed the ill-behavior of my umbrella. It snapped from its bearing even as he had his eyes upon it. Perhaps it understood. Anyway he had not a cent in his pocket and he had not yet breakfasted that cold and wet November morning. He was about 65. His clothes had evidently weathered many a storm and besides being worn and shabby were too light for that season. Overcoat he had none. Nor gloves, nor overshoes. Mine embarrassed me. His hat had been brushed to a standstill. His shoes were making their last stand and a protruding toe, red with the cold, seemed to have been shoved out as a signal of distress. The outfit of the old fellow, carried on his back, was sorry enough to fit his general makeup, and if he had offered himself for sale just as he stood, including his earthly belongings and his immortal soul, he would have found no bidder nor brought a cent. The face of the old umbrella mender lighted up with a kindly smile as he commented on the strange conduct of my umbrella in slipping a cog just as he happened to come along. I asked him by what evil magic he did the trick and he laughed in a half-hearted way just to be polite, but it was plain that he had long since forgotten how to laugh. As we stepped into the shelter of an adjoining store he sat down on the steps and drawing a threaded needle from beneath the lapel of his thin and faded coat, he began to sew the cover back into its proper place. His fingers were red and numb. A discolored nail partly hid a badly bruised thumb. He had difficulty in doing this bit of sewing, and it plainly distressed him. His eyesight was failing and his fingers were stiff in the joints. Yet he strove eagerly and intently to master their dumb protest. And he hoped, as he remarked, that he would be able to make an extra bit of money to provide himself with a pair of spectacles, now that favorable weather had set in for his trade. Poor human soul, I thought to myself, as I looked down upon the weatherbeaten brother at my feet! A vagabond dog among his kind would fare better than this worn-out old umbrella mender in a civilized human community. The warm clothes I had on made me uncomfortable as I saw him sitting there in rags mending my umbrella. The overcoat I wore made me ashamed of myself. Every time the umbrella mender looked up out of his rags I winced. What crime had he committed that condemned him to go through the world in tatters to be lashed by the merciless blasts of winter and tormented by hunger-pangs, and of what rare virtue was I possessed that entitled me to wear the best of clothes and eat the choicest food! Dared I call him brother? And could I call him brother without insulting him? These were the reflections that agitated my mind and troubled my heart. "Good morning!" was the cheery greeting of a man who passed on the sidewalk, calling me by name. The old umbrella mender fairly started at the mention of my name. He had just completed his bit of sewing and the threaded needle fell from his fingers. "Excuse me!" he said timidly, "is this Mr. Debs?" "Yes," I answered. "Eugene V. Debs?" "Yes, brother." "Thank God," exclaimed the old umbrella mender as he fairly bounded to his feet and seized my extended hand with both of his. There were tears in his eyes and his face was flushed. "Of course I know you now," he went on. "This is your home and I have often seen your picture. But this is the first time I have ever seen you and if it hadn't been for your umbrella snapping just as I came along, I would have passed you by and the chances are that I never would have seen you. God must have tipped off your umbrella to give me a stop-signal." "Say, Gene," he continued, still holding me with both hands, "I am pretty well down, ain't I? About all in and making my last stand before shuffling off." "But say, Gene, I never scabbed. Look at these hands! I'm an old rail and I followed the business for twenty-seven years. I broke and ran a freight train most of that time. Never got a passenger run because I was too active on grievance committees and called a firebrand by the officials. I wouldn't stand for any of their dirty work. If I'd been like some of 'em I'd had a passenger train years ago and been saved lots of grief. But I'd rather be a broken down old umbrella-fixer without a friend than to be a scab and worth a million." A gleam of triumph lighted up his seamed and weatherbeaten countenance. "Did you belong to the A. R. U.?" I asked. "Did I?" he answered with peculiar and assuring emphasis. "I was the first man on our division to sign the list, and my name was first on the charter. Look it up and you'll find me there. My card I lost in Ohio where I was run in as a vag. The deputy that searched me at the jail took my card from my pocket and I never saw it again. It was all I had left. I raised a row about it and they threatened to lock me up again. I was told afterwards that the deputy had scabbed in the A. R. U. strike." "Did I belong to the A. R. U.? Well, I should say I did and I am proud of it even if they did put me on the hummer and pull me down to where I am today. But I never scabbed. And when I cross the big divide I can walk straight up to the bar of judgment and look God in the face without a flicker." "We had the railroads whipped to a standstill," he said, warming up, "but the soldiers, the courts and the army of deputy United States marshals that scabbed our jobs were too much for us. It was the government and not the railroads that put us out, and it was a sorry day for the railroad men of this country. Mark what I tell you, the time will come when they will have to reorganize the A. R. U. It was the only union that all could join and in which all got a square deal, and it was the only union the railroad managers ever feared." And then he told me the melancholy story of his own persecution and suffering after the strike. His job was gone and his name was on the blacklist. Five jobs he secured under assumed names were lost to him as soon as he was found out. Poverty began to harass him. He picked up odd jobs and when he managed to get a dollar ahead he sent it to his family. His aged mother died of privation and worry and his wife soon followed her to the grave. Two boys were left, but whatever became of them and whether they are now alive or dead, he could never learn. The old fellow grew serious and a melancholy sigh escaped him. But he was not bitter. He bore no malice toward any one. He had suffered much, but he had kept the faith, and his regrets were at least free from reproach. He was a broken down old veteran of the industrial army. He had paid the penalties of his protest against privately owned industry and the slavery of his class, and now in his old age he was shuffling along in his rags toward a nameless grave in the pottersfield. Had he been an obedient corporation lackey; had he scabbed on his fellow-workers; had he been mean and selfish and cold-blooded, he would have been promoted instead of blacklisted by the corporation and honored instead of hounded by society. His manhood and self-respect cost him dearly, but he paid the price to the last farthing. His right to work and live, his home, his family and his friends were all swept away because he refused to scab on his fellowmen. The old umbrella mender stood before me proud and erect and looked me straight in the eyes as he finished his pathetic story. The shabby clothes he wore were to him capitalist society's reward of manhood and badge of honor. There was something peculiarly grand about the scarred old veteran of the industrial battlefield. His shabbiness was all on the outside, and he seemed transfigured to me and clad in garments of glory. He loomed before me like a forest-monarch the tempests had riven and denuded of its foliage but could not lay low. _He had kept the faith and had never scabbed!_ THE SECRET OF EFFICIENT EXPRESSION. Coming Nation, July 8, 1911. _The following was written for the Department of Education of the University of Wisconsin, under whose direction there is being conducted an investigation of the subject of "Distinguished Contemporary Orators or Lecturers--With special reference to fertility and efficiency of expression. What is the key to their ability as masters of language? What school subjects, or what kinds of training have entered into their lives that have given them power to express themselves effectively?"_ The secret of efficient expression in oratory--if secret it can properly be called--is in having something efficient to express and being so filled with it that it expresses itself. The choice of words is not important since efficient expression, the result of efficient thinking, chooses its own words, moulds and fashions its own sentences, and creates a diction suited to its own purposes. In my own case the power of expression is not due to education or to training. I had no time for either and have often felt the lack of both. The schools I attended were primitive and when I left them at fourteen to go to work I could hardly write a grammatical sentence; and to be frank I am not quite sure that I can do so now. But I had a retentive memory and was fond of committing and declaiming such orations and poems as appealed to me. Patrick Henry's revolutionary speech had first place. Robert Emmet's immortal oration was a great favorite and moved me deeply. Drake's "American Flag" stirred my blood as did also Schiller's "Burgschaft." Often I felt myself thrilled under the spell of these, recited to myself, inaudibly at times, and at others declaimed boldly and dramatically, when no one else was listening. Everything that was revolutionary appealed to me and it was this that made Patrick Henry one of my first heroes; and my passion for his eloquent and burning defiance of King George inspired the first speech I ever attempted in public, with Patrick himself as the theme. This was before the Occidental Literary Club of Terre Haute, Ind., of which I was then a member, and I still shudder as I recall the crowded little club-room which greeted me, and feel again the big drops of cold sweat standing out all over me as I realized the plight I was in and the utter hopelessness of escape. The spectacle I made of myself that evening will never be effaced from my memory, and the sympathetic assurances of my friends at the close of the exhibition did not relieve the keen sense of humiliation and shame I felt for the disgrace I had brought upon myself and my patron saint. The speech could not possibly have been worse and my mortification was complete. In my heart I hoped most earnestly that my hero's spiritual ears were not attuned to the affairs of this earth, at least that evening. It was then I realized and sorely felt the need of the education and training I had missed and then and there I resolved to make up for it as best I could. I set to work in earnest to learn what I so much needed to know. While firing a switch-engine at night I attended a private school half a day each day, sleeping in the morning and attending school in the afternoon. I bought an encyclopedia on the installment plan, one volume each month, and began to read and study history and literature and to devote myself to grammar and composition. The revolutionary history of the United States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered above them all. A thousand times since then I have found inspiration and strength in the thrilling words, "These are the times that try men's souls." Here I should say, for the purpose of this writing, that from the time I began to read with a serious mind, feeling keenly as I did my lack of knowledge, especially the power of proper expression, both oral and written, I observed the structure and studied the composition of every paragraph and every sentence, and when one appeared striking to me, owing to its perfection of style or phrasing, I read it a second time or perhaps committed it to memory, and this became a fixed habit which I retain to this day, and if I have any unusual command of language it is because I have made it a life-long practice to cultivate the art of expression in a sub-conscious study of the structure and phrasing of every paragraph in my readings. It was while serving an apprenticeship in a railroad shop and in later years as a locomotive fireman and as a wage worker in other capacities that I came to realize the oppressions and sufferings of the working class and to understand something of the labor question. The wrongs existing here I knew from having experienced them, and the irresistible appeal of these wrongs to be righted determined my destiny. I joined a labor union and from that time to this the high ambition, the controlling purpose of my life has been the education, organization and emancipation of the working class. It was this passionate sympathy with my class that gave me all the power I have to serve it. I felt their suffering because I was one of them and I began to speak and write for them for the same reason. In this there was no altruism, no self-sacrifice, only duty. I could not have done otherwise. Had I attempted it I should have failed. Such as I have been and am, I had to be. I abhorred slavery in every form. I yearned to see all men and all women free. I detested the idea of some men being ruled by others, and of women being ruled by men. I believed that women should have all the rights men have, and I looked upon child labor as a crime. And so I became an agitator and this ruling passion of my life found larger expression. In the clash of conflict which followed and the trials incident to it I grew stronger. The notoriety which came in consequence enlarged my hearing with the people and this in turn demanded more efficient means of expression. The cause that was sacred to me was assailed. My very life and honor were on trial. Falsehood and calumny played their part. I was denounced and vilified. Everything was at stake. I simply had to speak and make the people understand, and that is how I got my training in oratory, and all the secret there is in whatever power of expression I may have. In reading the history of slavery I studied the character of John Brown and he became my hero. I read the speeches of Wendell Phillips and was profoundly stirred by his marvelous powers. Once I heard him and was enthralled by his indescribable eloquence. He was far advanced in years, but I could see in his commanding presence and mellow and subdued tones how he must have blazed and flashed in the meridian of his powers. At about the same time I first heard Robert G. Ingersoll. He was in my opinion the perfect master of the art of human speech. He combined all the graces, gifts and powers of expression, and stood upon the highest pinnacle of oratorical achievement. Robert G. Ingersoll and Wendell Phillips were the two greatest orators of their time, and probably of all time. Their power sprang from their passion for freedom, for truth, for justice, for a world filled with light and with happy human beings. But for this divine passion neither would have scaled the sublime heights of immortal achievement. The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence. No man ever made a great speech on a mean subject. Slavery never inspired an immortal thought or utterance. Selfishness is dead to every art. The love of truth and the passion to serve it light every torch of real eloquence. Had Ingersoll and Phillips devoted their lives to the practice of law for pay the divine fire within them would have burned to ashes and they would have died in mediocrity. The highest there is in oratory is the highest there is in truth, in honesty, in morality. All the virtues combine in expressing themselves in beautiful words, poetic phrases, glowing periods, and moving eloquence. The loftiest peaks rise from the lowest depths and their shining summits glorify their hidden foundations. The highest eloquence springs from the lowliest sources and pleads trumpet-tongued for the children of the abyss. Wendell Phillips was inspired by the scarred back, the pleading eyes, and the mute lips of chattel slavery and his tongue, eloquent with the lightning of Jehovah's wrath, became an avenging flame to scourge the horror of slavery from the earth. Denial of one's better self seals the lips or pollutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence. The tongue is tipped with the flame that leaps from the altar-fire of the soul. Ingersoll and Phillips were absolutely true to their convictions. They attacked monstrous evils and were hated and denounced. Had they yielded to the furies which assailed them they would have perished. But the fiercer the attacks upon them the stauncher they stood and the more eloquent and powerful they became. The truth fired their souls, flashed from their eyes, and inspired their lips. There is no inspiration in evil and no power except for its own destruction. He who aspires to master the art of expression must first of all consecrate himself completely to some great cause, and the greatest cause of all is the cause of humanity. He must learn to feel deeply and think clearly to express himself eloquently. He must be absolutely true to the best there is in him, if he has to stand alone. Such natural powers as he may have should be cultivated by the study of history, science and literature. He must not only keep close to the people but remember that he is one of them, and not above the meanest. He must feel the wrongs of others so keenly that he forgets his own, and resolve to combat these wrongs with all the power at his command. The most thrilling and inspiring oratory, the most powerful and impressive eloquence is the voice of the disinherited, the oppressed, the suffering and submerged; it is the voice of poverty and misery, of rags and crusts, of wretchedness and despair; the voice of humanity crying to the infinite; the voice that resounds throughout the earth and reaches heaven; the voice that awakens the conscience of the race and proclaims the truths that fill the world with light and liberty and love. JESUS, THE SUPREME LEADER. Coming Nation (Formerly Progressive Woman), March, 1914. It matters little whether Jesus was born at Nazareth or Bethlehem. The accounts conflict, but the point is of no consequence. It is of consequence, however, that He was born in a stable and cradled in a manger. This fact of itself, about which there is no question, certifies conclusively the proletarian character of Jesus Christ. Had His parents been other than poor working people--money-changers, usurers, merchants, lawyers, scribes, priests or other parasites--He would not have been delivered from His mother's womb on a bed of straw in a stable among asses and other animals. Was Jesus divinely begotten? Yes, the same as every other babe ever born into the world. He was of miraculous origin the same as all the rest of mankind. The scriptural account of his "immaculate conception" is a beautiful myth, but scarcely more of a miracle than the conception of all other babes. Jesus was not divine because he was less human than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason that he was supremely human, and it is this of which his divinity consists, the fullness and perfection of him as an intellectual, moral and spiritual human being. The chronicles of his time and of later days are filled with contradictory and absurd stories about him and he has been disfigured and distorted by cunning priests to serve their knavish ends and by ignorant idolaters to give godly sanction to their blind bigotry and savage superstition, but there is no impenetrable myth surrounding the personality of Jesus Christ. He was not a legendary being or an allegorical figure, but as Bouck White and others have shown us, a flesh and blood Man in the fulness of his matchless powers and the completeness of his transcendent consecration. To me Jesus Christ is as real, as palpitant and pervasive as a historic character as John Brown, Abraham Lincoln or Karl Marx. He has persisted in spite of two thousand years of theological emasculation to destroy his revolutionary personality, and is today the greatest moral force in the world. The vain attempt persisted in through twenty centuries of ruling class interpolation, interpretation and falsification to make Jesus appear the divinely commissioned conservator of the peace and soother of the oppressed, instead of the master proletarian revolutionist and sower of the social whirlwind--the vain attempt to prostitute the name and teachings and example of the martyred Christ to the power of Mammon, the very power which had murdered him in cold blood, vindicates his transcendent genius and proclaims the immortality of his work. Nothing is known of Jesus Christ as a lad except that at twelve his parents took him to Jerusalem, where he confounded the learned doctors by the questions he asked them. We have no knowledge as to what these questions were, but taking his lowly birth, his poverty and suffering into account, in contrast with the riches of Jerusalem which now dazzled his vision, and in the light of his subsequent career we are not left to conjecture as to the nature of the interrogation to which the inquisitive lad subjected the smug doctors in the temple. There are but meagre accounts of the doings of Jesus until at a trifle over thirty he entered upon his public "ministry" and began the campaign of agitation and revolt he had been planning and dreaming through all the years of his yearning and burning adolescence. He was of the working class and loyal to it in every drop of his hot blood to the very hour of his death. He hated and denounced the rich and cruel exploiter as passionately as he loved and sympathized with his poor and suffering victims. "I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen," was his class-conscious announcement to his disciples, all of whom were of the proletariat, not an exploiter or desirable citizen among them. No, not one! It was a working class movement he was organizing and a working class revolution he was preparing the way for. "A new commandment I give unto you: That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." This was the pith and core of all his pleading, all his preaching, and all his teaching--love one another, be brethren, make common cause, stand together, ye who labor to enrich the parasites and are yourselves in chains, and ye shall be free! These words were addressed by Jesus not to the money-changers, the scribes and pharisees, the rich and respectable, but to the ragged undesirables of his own enslaved and suffering class. This appeal was to their class spirit, their class loyalty and their class solidarity. Centuries later Karl Marx embodies the appeal in his famous manifesto and today it blazes forth in letters of fire as the watchword of the world-wide revolution: "_Workers of all countries unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain._" During the brief span of three years, embracing the whole period of his active life, from the time he began to stir up the people until "the scarlet robe and crown of thorns were put on him and he was crucified between two thieves," Jesus devoted all his time and all his matchless ability and energies to the suffering poor, and it would have been passing strange if they had not "heard him gladly." He himself had no fixed abode and like the wretched, motley throng to whom he preached and poured out his great and loving heart, he was a poor wanderer on the face of the earth and "had not where to lay his head." Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ, and every act and utterance which may properly be ascribed to him conclusively affirms it. Private property was to his elevated mind and exalted soul a sacrilege and a horror; an insult to God and a crime against man. The economic basis of his doctrine of brotherhood, and love is clearly demonstrated in the fact that under his leadership and teaching all his disciples "sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, _as every man had need_," and that they "had all things in common." "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." This was the beginning of the mighty movement Jesus had launched for the overthrow of the empire of the Caesars and the emancipation of the crushed and miserable masses from the bestial misrule of the Roman tyrants. It was above all a working class movement and was conceived and brought forth for no other purpose than to destroy class rule and set up the common people as the sole and rightful inheritors of the earth. "Happy are the lowly for they shall inherit the earth." Three short years of agitation by the incomparable Jesus was sufficient to stamp the proletarian movement he had inaugurated as the most formidable and portentous revolution in the annals of time. The ill-fated author could not long survive his stupendous mischief. The aim and inevitable outcome of this madman's teaching and agitation was too clearly manifest to longer admit of doubt. The sodden lords of misrule trembled in their stolen finery, and then the word went forth that they must "get" the vagabond who had stirred up the people against them. The prototypes of Peabody, McPartland, Harry Orchard, et. al., were all ready for their base and treacherous performance and their thirty pieces of blood-stained silver. The priest of the Mammon worshipers gave it out that the Nazarene was spreading a false religion and that his pernicious teachings would corrupt the people, destroy the church, uproot the old faith, disrupt the family, break up the home, and overthrow society. The lineal descendants of Caiaphas and Judas and the pharisees and money-changers of old are still parroting the same miserable falsehood to serve the same miserable ends, the only difference being that the brood of pious perverts now practice their degeneracy in the name of the Christ they betrayed and sold into crucifixion twenty centuries ago. Jesus, after the most farcical trial and the most shocking travesty upon justice, was spiked to the cross at the gates of Jerusalem and his followers subjected to persecution, torture, exile and death. The movement he had inaugurated, fired by his unconquerable revolutionary spirit, persisted, however, through fire and slaughter, for three centuries and until the master class, realizing the futility of their efforts to stamp it out, basely betrayed it by pretending conversion to its teachings and reverence for its murdered founder, and from that time forth Christianity became the religion, so-called, of the pagan ruling class and the dead Christ was metamorphosed from the master revolutionist who was ignominiously slain, a martyr to his class, into the pious abstraction, the harmless theological divinity who died that John Pierpont Morgan could be "washed in the blood of the lamb" and countless generations of betrayed and deluded slaves kept blinded by superstition and content in their poverty and degradation. Jesus was the grandest and loftiest of human souls--sun-crowned and God-inspired; a full-statured man, red-blooded and lion-hearted, yet sweet and gentle as the noble mother who had given him birth. He had the majesty and poise of a god, the prophetic vision of a seer, the great, loving heart of a woman, and the unaffected innocence and simplicity of a child. This was and is the martyred Christ of the working class, the inspired evangel of the downtrodden masses, the world's supreme revolutionary leader, whose love for the poor and the children of the poor hallowed all the days of his consecrated life, lighted up and made forever holy the dark tragedy of his death, and gave to the ages his divine inspiration and his deathless name. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: A REMINISCENCE Socialist Woman, January, 1909. Twice only did I personally meet Susan B. Anthony, although I knew her well. The first time was at Terre Haute, Indiana, my home, in 1880, and the last time shortly before her death at her home at Rochester, New York. I can never forget the first time I met her. She impressed me as being a wonderfully strong character, self-reliant, thoroughly in earnest, and utterly indifferent to criticism. There was never a time in my life when I was opposed to the equal suffrage of the sexes. I could never understand why woman was denied any right or opportunity that man enjoyed. Quite early, therefore, I was attracted to the woman suffrage movement. I had of course read of Susan B. Anthony and from the ridicule and contempt with which she was treated I concluded that she must be a strong advocate of, and doing effective work for, the rights of her sex. It was then that I determined, with the aid of Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, the brilliant writer, who afterward became her biographer, to arrange a series of meetings for Miss Anthony at Terre Haute. In due course of time I received a telegram from Miss Anthony from Lafayette announcing the time of her arrival at Terre Haute and asking me to meet her at the station. I recognized the distinguished lady or, to be more exact, the notorious woman, the instant she stepped from the train. She was accompanied by Lily Devereaux Blake and other woman suffrage agitators and I proceeded to escort them to the hotel where I had arranged for their reception. I can still see the aversion so unfeelingly expressed for this magnificent woman. Even my friends were disgusted with me for piloting such an "undesirable citizen" into the community. It is hard to understand, after all these years, how bitter and implacable the people were, especially the women, toward the leaders of this movement. As we walked along the street I was painfully aware that Miss Anthony was an object of derision and contempt, and in my heart I resented it and later I had often to defend my position, which, of course, I was ever ready to do. The meetings of Miss Anthony and her co-workers were but poorly attended and all but barren of results. Such was the loathing of the community for a woman who dared to talk in public about "woman's rights" that people would not go to see her even to satisfy their curiosity. She was simply not to be tolerated and it would not have required any great amount of egging-on to have excited the people to drive her from the community. To all of this Miss Anthony, to all appearance, was entirely oblivious. She could not have helped noticing it for there were those who thrust their insults upon her but she gave no sign and bore no resentment. I can see her still as she walked along, neatly but carelessly attired, her bonnet somewhat awry, mere trifles which were scarcely noticed, if at all, in the presence of her splendid womanhood. She seemed absorbed completely in her mission. She could scarcely speak of anything else. The rights and wrongs of her sex seemed to completely possess her and to dominate all her thoughts and acts. On the platform she spoke with characteristic earnestness and at times with such intensity as to awe her audience, if not compel conviction. She had an inexhaustible fund of information in regard to current affairs, and dates and data for all things. She spoke with great rapidity and forcefulness; her command of language was remarkable and her periods were all well-rounded and eloquently delivered. No thoughtful person could hear her without being convinced of her honesty and the purity of her motive. Her face fairly glowed with the spirit of her message and her soul was in her speech. But the superb quality, the crowning virtue she possessed, was her moral heroism. Susan B. Anthony had this quality in an eminent degree. She fearlessly faced the ignorant multitude or walked unafraid among those who scorned her. She had the dignity of perfect self-reliance without a shadow of conceit to mar it. She was a stern character, an uncompromising personality, but she had the heart of a woman and none more tender ever throbbed for the weak and the oppressed of earth. No leader of any crusade was ever more fearless, loyal or uncompromising than Susan B. Anthony and not one ever wrought more unselfishly or under greater difficulties for the good of her kind and for the progress of the race. I did not see Miss Anthony again until I shook hands with her at the close of my address in Rochester, but a short time before she passed to other realms. She was the same magnificent woman, but her locks had whitened and her kindly features bore the traces of age and infirmity. Her life-work was done and her sun was setting! How beautiful she seemed in the quiet serenity of her sunset! Twenty-five years before she drank to its dregs the bitter cup of persecution, but now she stood upon the heights, a sad smile lighting her sweet face, amidst the acclaims of her neighbors and the plaudits of the world. Susan B. Anthony freely consecrated herself to the service of humanity; she was a heroine in the highest sense and her name deserves a place among the highest on the scroll of the immortals. LOUIS TIKAS--LUDLOW'S HERO AND MARTYR. Appeal to Reason, September 4, 1915. "And now that the cloud settled upon Saint Antoine which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them; but most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner.... The mill which had worked them down was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and plowed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon the poles and lines; hunger was patched into them with straw and rags and wood and paper; hunger was repeated in every modicum of fire-wood that the man sawed off; hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; hunger was shred into atoms in every farthing of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. "Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offense and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring or inflicting."--_A Tale of Two Cities._ * * * * * In these ghastly colors Charles Dickens painted the picture of poverty and its starving victims in France on the eve of the French revolution, and yet, "every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather took no warning." Then the storm broke and the pent-up furies were unleashed; the day of reckoning had come at last and the crimes of the centuries, inflicted without mercy upon the long-suffering people, were wiped out in the hearts' blood of their aristocratic and profligate oppressors and despoilers. The bloody revolution of a century and a quarter ago in France fills uncounted pages in the world's history, but its terrible warning to the lords of misrule and despoilers of the people has been in vain. Today as ever the greed and avarice of the ruling class blind them to their impending fate and drive them to their inevitable doom. In the state of Colorado in "our own free America" the conditions that make for savage and bloody revolution are ripening with incredible rapidity and the lurid handwriting of fate is already upon the wall, but the Rockefellers and their capitalist cohorts, stricken blind as the penalty of their insatiate greed, are unable to see it. That the monstrous crime of Ludlow, the fiendish destruction of the tented village, the wanton killing of the homeless, hunted, hopeless victims--half-clad, famishing, terror-stricken and defenseless--bludgeoned, bullied, shot down like dogs, and their wives and suckling babes roasted in pits before their eyes--that this appalling massacre, without a parallel in history, did not infuriate the suffering and persecuted victims of capitalism's worse than satanic ferocity, fire their blood with the tiger-thirst for revenge, and drench the despotic and shameless state with blood is one of the miracles of patience and submissiveness of the exploited, downtrodden, suffering masses. The tragic story of Ludlow, the hideous nightmare of the infernal regions of the Rocky(feller) Mountains--written in the violated wombs of shrieking mothers and the spattered life-drops of their murdered babes--has yet to be traced on history's ineffaceable pages. The blood of the twenty-three innocents who perished there will be the holy fount of the writer's inspiration whose fire-tipped pen will give to the world this tragic and thrilling epic of the embattled miners in the mountain ramparts of Rockefellerado. In the story of Ludlow, Louis Tikas, the intrepid leader, the loyal comrade, the noble-hearted Greek who fell the victim of gunmen-brutes in military uniform while pleading that the women and children be spared, takes on the robes of deity and joins the martyrs and heroes of history. The rifle-butt that crushed his noble head and silenced his brave and tender heart gave his soul to the cause he loved and his name to the ages. The lion-hearted Greek is at rest, but the cause he lived and died for goes on forever! Louis Tikas was educated, cultured and refined, a graduate of the University of Athens; yea, he was more than that, he was a MAN! His heart was true as his brain was clear; he followed the truth and he loved justice; he sided with the weak and ministered to the suffering, even as his elder brother had in the days when other pharisees crucified the Son of Man for loving his despoiled and despised fellow-men. _Louis Tikas made Ludlow holy as Jesus Christ made Calvary!_ He was the loyal leader of the persecuted colony; the trusted keeper of the tented village. He was loved by every man, woman and child, and feared only by the fanged wolves and hyenas that threatened to ravage the flock. Strong as a giant yet gentle as a child; utterly fearless yet without bravado, this great and loving soul cast his lot with the exiled slaves of the pits and kept his vigil over the defenseless women and children of the village as a loving mother might over the fledglings of her brood. Is it strange that they loved him, trusted him, and that in the hour of their deadly peril they looked to him to shield them from their brutish ravishers? In this tragic hour Louis Tikas measured up to the supreme stature of his noble manhood. He knew his time had come and with a smile upon his lips and without a tremor in his sinews, he faced his cruel fate. He asked no quarter for himself, but only begged that mothers and babes be spared; and with this touching plea upon his lips and the love of his people in his soul and beaming from his eyes, he was struck down by the hired assassins of the Arch-Pharisee and passed to martyrdom and immortality. THE LITTLE LORDS OF LOVE. Progressive Woman, December, 1910. The children are to me a perpetual source of wonder and delight. How keen they are, how alert, and how comprehending! The sweet children of the Socialist movement--the little lords of light and love--keep my heart warm and my purpose true. The raggedest and dirtiest of them all is to me an angel of light. I have seen them, the proletarian little folks, swarming up out of the sub-cellars and down from the garrets of the tenements and I have watched them with my heart filled with pity and my eyes overflowing with tears. Their very glee seemed tragic beyond words. Born within the roar of the ocean their tiny feet are never kissed by the eager surf, nor their wan cheeks made ruddy by the vitalizing breezes of the sea. Not for them--the flotsam and jetsam upon the social tides--are the rosy hours of babyhood, the sweet, sweet joys of childhood. They are the heirs of the social filth and disease of capitalism and death marks them at what should be the dewy dawn of birth, and they wither and die--without having been born. Their cradle is their coffin and their birth robe their winding sheet. The Socialist movement is the first in all history to come to the rescue of childhood and to set free the millions of little captives. And they realize it and incarnate the very spirit of the movement and shout aloud their joy as it marches on to victory. The little revolutionists in Socialist parades know what they are there for, and in our audiences they are wide awake to the very last word. They know, too, when to applaud, and the speaker who fails to enthuse them is surely lacking in some vital element of his speech. At the close of a recent meeting in a western state the stage was crowded with eager comrades shaking hands and offering congratulations. My hand was suddenly gripped from below. I glanced down and a little comrade just about big enough to stand alone looked straight up into my eyes and said with all the frankness and sincerity of a child: "That was a great speech you made and I love you; keep this to remember me by." And he handed me a little nickle-plated whistle, his sole tangible possession, and with it all the wealth of his pure and unpolluted child-love, which filled my heart and moved me to tears. In just that moment that tiny proletaire filled my measure to overflowing and consecrated me with increased strength and devotion to the great movement that is destined to rescue the countless millions of disinherited babes and give them the earth and all the fulness thereof as their patrimony forever. The sweetest, tenderest, most pregnant words uttered by the proletaire of Galilee were: "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." THE COPPOCK BROTHERS: HEROES OF HARPER'S FERRY. Appeal to Reason, May 23, 1914. "O, patience, felon of the hour! Over thy ghastly gallows-tree Shall climb the vine of Liberty, With ripened fruit and fragrant flower." So wrote William Dean Howells, then a rising young poet and author in Columbus, Ohio, in November, 1859, on the eve of John Brown's execution at Charleston, Va. In the month before, on the night of October 16th, John Brown, at the head of twenty-one men, sixteen of whom were white and five black, marched on Harper's Ferry and delivered the attack that sent his body to the gallows and his soul to immortal glory. The heroic blood of old Brown himself flowed in the veins of all his twenty-one intrepid young followers. There was not a coward among them. Three of them were Brown's own sons and two others were near relatives. Brown was fifty-nine; his adjutant general twenty-four. All his followers were young men, some of them barely of age. When Colonel Richard J. Hinton, who followed John Brown in Kansas, heard of the intended raid on Harper's Ferry, he said to Kagi, the stripling adjutant general: "You'll all be killed." "Yes, I know it, Hinton," was the ready reply, "but the result will be worth the sacrifice." Kagi was said to resemble "a divinity student rather than a warrior," and when taunted by an adversary, he answered, "We will endure the shadow of dishonor, but not the stain of guilt." "These words of John Henry Kagi," wrote Hinton, "expressed the spirit of John Brown's men and, in an especial sense, the character of the young and brilliant man who fell riddled with bullets into the Shenandoah. Thirty miles below, the blood-tinged stream flowed through the lands of his father's family." Spartan souls were these who marched on Harper's Ferry that fateful night, there to strike a blow at the cost of their lives that was destined to make Harper's Ferry more famed than Waterloo--a blow that was to emancipate a race and change abruptly the whole current of American history. "Down the still road, dim white in the moonlight, and amid the chill of the October night, went the little band, silent and sober." The twenty-one young heroes who followed old John Brown on that historic night were of the exalted type that Emerson described: "When souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive without selfishness." It is related that when Garibaldi was organizing his army of liberation in Italy, he was asked what inducements he had to offer to new recruits. Promptly the rebel chieftain answered: "Poverty, hardships, battles, wounds, and--victory!" That was all Captain Brown had to offer his devoted followers, with crushing defeat instead of victory at the end, and yet they enlisted with a zeal that could not have been surpassed if the world's most coveted prizes had been their promised reward. Think of the utter abnegation, unselfishness and loftiness of purpose of that valiant little band who marched deliberately into the jaws of hell that October night to break the fetters of a despised and alien race! How many of their detractors and persecutors were animated by motives so pure and exalted? No wonder that Victor Hugo protested so eloquently, albeit in vain, against John Brown's execution. "Think of a republic," he indignantly exclaimed, "murdering a liberator!" and when the bloody deed was done the illustrious Frenchman flung back the prophetic challenge: "The time will come when your John Brown will be greater than your George Washington." Among Brown's men in the attack on Harper's Ferry there were two Quaker brothers, Edwin and Barclay Coppock, stalwart young abolitionists from Iowa, whose unfaltering devotion to the cause, heroic self-sacrifice and tragic death constitute one of the most thrilling and inspiring chapters in American history. Edwin, the elder brother, was captured with his leader and shared his fate on the gallows. Barclay made good his escape with Owen Brown, to be killed later as a lieutenant, while recruiting a regiment for the war which had then actually begun. Edwin and Barclay Coppock were born of Quaker parents near Salem, Ohio, Edwin on June 30, 1835, and Barclay on January 4, 1839, so that Edwin was 24 and Barclay not quite 21 when the attack was made on Harper's Ferry. Salem was at that time the center of abolitionism in that section. It was settled by Quakers and they were strongly anti-slavery in sentiment. The headquarters of the "Western Anti-Slavery Society" was located here, and here also was published the "Anti-Slavery Bugle," official organ of the movement, of which Benjamin S. Jones, Oliver Johnson and Warren R. Robertson were editors. They waged uncompromising warfare against slavery, attacked the United States constitution as it was then being interpreted, and denounced the churches that would not come out openly in favor of abolition. They were called "Disunion Abolitionists," "Covenanters" and "Infidels." But nothing daunted, they demanded the unconditional surrender of the slave power. During one of the annual conventions held at the Hicksite Friends' church in Salem and in the midst of a violent speech that was being delivered against the encroachments of slavery on Northern soil under the fugitive slave law, an excited man entered with a telegram in his hand and announced breathlessly that the four o'clock train, due in thirty minutes, had aboard of it a southern man and his wife and a colored slave girl as a nurse. It was at once proposed that they proceed to the depot in a body and meet the train on arrival. The meeting was hastily adjourned. Intense enthusiasm prevailed. They marched to the depot cheering as they went and when the train pulled in they boarded it, took the slave girl without protest from her master and mistress and marched back to the hall with her in triumph. The liberated girl was christened Abby Kelly Salem, in honor of Abby Kelly Foster, one of the speakers at the convention, and the city of Salem. The girl grew up to splendid womanhood and was highly esteemed by all who knew her. The old town hall, still standing, is where many an anti-slavery meeting was held in that day. The most stirring and eloquent appeals were made in this old meeting house by such noted abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, Horace Mann, John Pierpont, Gerrit Smith, Fred Douglas, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Owen Lovejoy, Abby Kelly Foster, George Thompson of England, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Collyer, John P. Hale and many others. The walls of the old town hall resounded daily and nightly with the patriotism and love of freedom of Quaker Salem. It was in this atmosphere and under the influence of these impassioned teachings that the Coppock brothers, sons of a nearby Quaker farmer, grew up to young manhood. It had been ingrained into their very nature that all men were created equal and that slavery was a crime against God and man, and with this conviction they resolved to shoulder their muskets and go out and fight to liberate the slaves. The family moved to Iowa in the meantime and it was here that these young Quaker enthusiasts first met John Brown, who was then waging his warfare against slavery in the free soil conflict in that state. From now on their die was cast. They would follow the grim old chief to victory or death. It proved to be death for them both and when it came they met it with a calmness and resignation possible only to the loftiest heroism. Barclay Coppock was barely twenty years of age at the time of the attack on Harper's Ferry. His escape was almost a miracle. A heavy reward was offered for him dead or alive. After weeks of the most intense privation and suffering, lying concealed in the brush during the day and moving chiefly by night, he picked his way back to the family home at Springdale, Iowa. The governor of Virginia issued a requisition for his return, which was not granted. The young men at Springdale and that vicinity organized to protect young Coppock and served notice on the Virginia officers who were on his track that "Springdale is in arms and is prepared at a half hour's notice to give them a reception of 200 shots." In the following spring Barclay returned to Salem and here again the Virginia authorities renewed their efforts to capture him. But Barclay, now among his old neighbors and friends, defied them. He sent word to the officers in pursuit of him as to where he might be found, but they wisely refrained from attempting to take him. It was at this time that Barclay was a guest of the Bonsall family of Salem, the elder Bonsall being one of the leading abolitionists of that day. Charles Bonsall, his son, who still lives at Salem, knew the Coppock brothers well and has a distinct recollection of Barclay's stay at his father's home. "During Barclay's sojourn at our home," writes Charles Bonsall in a personal letter, "a detective of Salem heard of his being in our neighborhood and boasted of his intention to arrest Barclay and secure the reward there was on his head. Barclay heard of the boast and wrote a letter to the detective informing him that he might select five other men and he would meet them all single-handed and alone at any point outside the city that he might name, and they could have the privilege of capturing him and securing the reward. The detective did not undertake the job.... Barclay Coppock never knew what fear was. When a boy in his teens he often went to the woods and slept alone all night on the ground, under the trees, from the sheer love of adventure. He was the best shot with his eight-inch Colt I ever saw. On one occasion, in his uncle's woods south of Salem, with his revolver, he shot a grey squirrel from a big oak tree and put two more balls through its body before it reached the ground. His nerves were as calm and steady in a fight as in his sleep, and while with us his trusted "navy" was always strapped under his coat, while in his coat-pocket he carried a small pistol ready for any emergency at close quarters. It would have been impossible to capture him alive." Barclay Coppock's escape and the execution of his brother but intensified his hatred and horror of slavery. He was now thoroughly aroused and intent upon plunging anew into the fight. Returning to Iowa, and convinced that civil war was now inevitable, he prepared actively for the conflict. "Now comes one of those remarkable facts of super-epochal history," continues Bonsall, "which go to show that when revolutionary periods focalize, revolutions in public sentiment are brought about in almost a twinkling. In the spring of 1861, just about one year from the time the United States Government was offering a reward of one thousand dollars for Barclay Coppock, dead or alive, the same government lifted its hat and humbly bowed to him, and begged him to accept a first lieutenant's commission in Company C, Third Kansas volunteers. He accepted the commission and at once proceeded to organize his company. Captain Allen of Ashtabula of the same company, came to Salem to recruit volunteers and the writer, together with half a score of other abolition boys, enlisted in Coppock's company.... Soon after Lieutenant Coppock was on his way from Springdale to Fort Leavenworth to join his regiment there. The rebels in Missouri, hearing of his coming, burned the railroad bridge across the Little Platte river near St. Joseph, and the train carrying the troops was precipitated into the river in the darkness of night and brave Lieutenant Coppock was killed in the wreck." Thus perished, still in his boyhood, as heroic a heart, as noble a soul, as ever gave up his life in the cause of freedom. Had he been spared he would without doubt have become one of the famed heroes of the war of the rebellion. Edwin Coppock was executed from the same gallows as his old chief, but two weeks later. His trial, like that of Brown, was a farce. Conviction, sentence and execution of all of Brown's men that were captured was a foregone conclusion. While awaiting the execution of his sentence, Edwin wrote to Mrs. Brown, wife of his dead leader: "I was with your sons when they fell. Oliver lived but a very few moments after he was shot. He spoke no word, but yielded calmly to his fate. Watson was shot at ten o'clock Monday morning and died about three o'clock Monday afternoon.... After we were taken prisoners he was placed in the guardhouse with me. He complained of the hardness of the bench on which he was lying. I begged hard for a bed for him, or even a blanket, but could obtain none. I took off my coat and placed it under him and held his head in my lap, in which position he died without a groan or struggle." In a letter to friends in Iowa, under date of November 22d, three weeks before his execution, he wrote: "Eleven of our little band are sleeping now in their bloody garments with the cold earth above them. Braver men never lived; truer men to their plighted word never banded together." Rigidly true to their convictions were all these young heroes. Not one showed the white feather in the last hour. Serenely and without a quiver each of them met his cruel fate. John Brown had trained up his men in the strictest discipline. Not a drop of liquor was allowed in his camp. Tobacco was tabooed. Profane language was forbidden. These men were in deadly earnest and their asceticism attested their single-hearted fidelity to their cause. They were profoundly convinced that slavery was a national crime and that it was their patriotic duty, at whatever cost, to wipe that insufferable stigma from the land. And who shall say that they were not right; or that they forfeited their brave lives in vain? A few days before the gallows claimed him, John Brown wrote to his family, "I feel no consciousness of guilt and I am perfectly certain that very soon no member of the family will feel any possible disposition to blush on my account." The Coppock brothers were typical of all the brave young abolitionists who banded together to strike a blow that rocked this nation as if Jehovah in his wrath had laid hold on it. Quaker lads, "grave, quiet, reserved, even rustic in their ways," they lived bravely up to their convictions and sealed their devotion to the cause of freedom with their precious young life blood. The noble character of Edwin Coppock is revealed in the following pathetic letter written to his uncle on the eve of his execution. There is no bitterness in his heart at the last hour. Like the great Galilean who also perished for sympathizing with the lowly and oppressed, he was calm and resigned in the presence of his fate. Like all such souls he was gifted with prophetic vision, as his letter shows: Charleston, December 13, 1859. Joshua Coppock: My Dear Uncle--I seat myself by the stand to write for the first and last time to thee and thy dear family. Though far from home and overtaken by misfortune, I have not forgotten you. Your generous hospitality towards me, during my short stay with you last spring, is stamped indelibly upon my heart, and also the generosity bestowed upon my brother who now wanders, an outcast from his native land. But thank God, he is free. I am thankful it is I who has to suffer instead of him. The time may come when he will remember me. And the time may come when he may still further remember the cause in which I die. Thank God the principles of the cause in which we were engaged will not die with me and my brave comrades. They will spread wider and wider and gather strength with each hour that passes. The voice of truth will echo through our land, bringing conviction to the erring and adding members to the glorious army who will follow its banner. The cause of everlasting truth and justice will go on conquering and to conquer until our broad and beautiful land shall rest beneath the banner of freedom. I had fondly hoped to live to see the principles of the Declaration of Independence fully realized. I had hoped to see the dark stain of slavery blotted from our land, and the libel of our boasted freedom erased, when we can say in truth that our beloved country is the land of the free and the home of the brave; but that cannot be. I have heard my sentence passed; my doom is sealed. But two more short days remains for me to fulfill my earthly destiny. But two brief days between me and eternity. At the expiration of those two days I shall stand upon the scaffold to take my last look of earthly scenes. But that scaffold has but little dread for me, for I honestly believe I am innocent of any crime justifying such punishment. But by the taking of my life and the lives of my comrades, Virginia is but hastening on that glorious day, when the slave will rejoice in his freedom and say, "I, too, am a man, and am groaning no more under the yoke of oppression." But I must now close. Accept this short scrawl as a remembrance of me. Give my love to all the family. Kiss little Joey for me. Remember me to all my relatives and friends. And now farewell for the last time. From thy nephew, EDWIN COPPOCK. Two days later the slave state of Virginia hung Edwin Coppock by the neck until he was dead. The gallant John E. Cook went to the scaffold with him. The account says: "After the cap had been placed on their heads, Coppock turned toward Cook and stretched forward his hand as far as possible. At the same time Cook said, 'Stop a minute--where is Edwin's hand?' They then shook hands cordially and Cook said, 'God bless you.' The calm and collected manner of both was very marked.... They both exhibited the most unflinching firmness, saying nothing, with the exception of bidding farewell to the ministers and the sheriff." More than half a century has passed since John Brown and his faithful followers gave up their lives to set the black men free, but history has yet to do them justice. Some day the hatred and prejudice will all have died away and then these men, summoned to the bar of enlightened judgment, will be crowned as the greatest heroes in American history. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT. Appeal to Reason. We need to grow out of the selfish, sordid, brutal spirit of individualism which still lurks even in Socialists and is responsible for the strife and contention which prevail where there should be concord and good will. The social spirit and the social conscience must be developed and govern our social relations before we shall have any social revolution. If there are any among whom the social spirit should find its highest expression and who should be bound fast in its comradely embrace and give to the world the example of its elevating and humanizing influence, it is the Socialists. They of all others have come to realize the hardening and brutalizing effect of capitalist individualism in the awful struggle for existence and it is to them a cause of unceasing rejoicing that they live at a time in the world's historic development when the very conditions which resulted from this age-long struggle forbid its continuance and proclaim its approaching termination. The rule of individualism which has governed society since the days of primitive communism has effectually restrained the moral and spiritual development of the race. It has brought out the baser side of men's nature and set them against each other as if the plan of creation had designed them to be mortal enemies. * * * * * Typical capitalists are barren of the social spirit. The very nature of the catch-as-catch-can encounter in which they are engaged makes them wary and suspicious, if not downright hateful of each other, and the latent good that is in them dies for the want of incentive to express itself. The other day I saw two such capitalists shake hands. It was pitiable. Their hearts had no part in the purely perfunctory ceremony. They happened to meet and could not avoid each other. And so they mechanically touched each other's reluctant hands, standing at right angles to each other for a moment--not face to face--and then passing on without either looking the other in the eyes. This cold and heartless ceremony typified the relation begotten of capitalist individualism in which men's interests are competitive and antagonistic and in which each instinctively looks out for himself and is on the alert to take every possible advantage of his fellow-man. The result of this system is inevitably a race of Ishmaelites. How differently two Socialist comrades shake hands! Their hearts are in their palms and the joy of greeting is in their eyes. They have the social spirit. Their interests are mutual and their aspirations kindred. If one happens to be strong and the other weak, the stronger shares the weakness and the weaker shares the strength of his comrade. The base thought of taking a mean advantage, one of the other, does not darken their minds or harden their hearts. They are joined together in the humanizing bonds of fellowship. They multiply each other and they rejoice in their comradely kinship. The best there is in each, and not the worst, as in the contact of individualism, is appealed to and brought forth for the benefit of both. What an elevating, enlarging and satisfying relation! And this is the "dead level" of mediocrity and servitude to which we are to sink when this relation becomes universal among men as it will in the International Socialist Republic! So at least we are told by those who in the present system have acquired the instincts and impulses of animals of prey in the development of their imagined superiority by draining the veins and wrecking the lives of their vanquished competitors, but we are not impressed by the virtues of the system of which they stand as the shining examples. * * * * * Thru all the ages past men, civilized men, so-called, have been at each other's throats in the struggle for existence, and the spirit of individualism this struggle has begotten, the spirit of hard, sordid, brutal selfishness, has filled this world with unutterable anguish and woe. But at last the end of the reign of anarchistic individualism is in sight. The social forces at work are undermining and destroying it and soon its knell will be sounded to the infinite joy of an emancipated world. The largest possible expression of the social spirit should be fostered and encouraged in the Socialist movement and among Socialists themselves. In spite of the hindrances which beset us in our present environments and relations, we may yet cultivate this spirit assiduously to our increasing mutual good and to the good of our great movement. In our propaganda, in the discussion of our tactical and other differences and in all our other activities, the larger faith that true comradeship inspires should prevail between us. We need to be more patient, more kindly, more tolerant, more sympathetic, helpful and encouraging to one another, and less suspicious, less envious, and less contentious, if we are to educate and impress the people by our example, and by the effect of our teachings upon ourselves win them to our movement, and realize our dream of universal freedom and social righteousness. ROOSEVELT AND HIS REGIME. Appeal to Reason, April 20, 1907. The only time in my life I ever saw Theodore Roosevelt was years before he became president of the United States. I was aboard of a train in the far west, where Roosevelt was then said to be following ranch life, and as he and several companions in cowboy costume entered the car at a station stop, he was pointed out to me. I did not like him. The years since have not altered that feeling of aversion except to accentuate it. I have since seen the nation mad with hero worship over this man Roosevelt, but I have not been impressed by it. Very "great" men sometimes shrivel into very small ones and finally vanish in oblivion in the short space of a single generation. The American people are more idolatrous than any "heathen" nation on earth. They worship their popular "heroes," while they last, with passionate frenzy, and with equal madness do they hunt down the sane "fools" who vainly try to teach them sense. Theodore Roosevelt and George Dewey as "heroes" and Wendell Phillips and John Brown as "fools" are notable illustrations. American history is filled with them. But my personal dislike of the cowboy in imitation who has since become president, however justifiable, would scarcely warrant a public attack upon his official character, and this review, being of such a nature, is inspired, as will appear, by entirely different motives. There are those, and they constitute a great majority of the American people, who stand in awe of their president, supposedly their servant, but in fact their master; they speak of him with a kind of reverential adulation as a lordly personage, a superior being to be looked up to and worshiped rather than a fellowman to be respected and loved. There are others who betray equal ignorance in a more vulgar fashion by coarse tirades for which there is often as little excuse as there is for the extreme adulation. Regarding the president of the United States, as I do, simply as a citizen and fellowman, the same as any other, I shall speak of him and his acts free alike from awe and malice, and if I place him in the public pillory, where he has placed so many others, to be seen and despised of men, it will be from a sense that his official acts, so often in flat denial of his profession, merit the execration of honest men. In arraigning President Roosevelt and his administration I have no private spite nor personal grudge to satisfy, but an obligation to redeem and a principle to vindicate. I shall go about it as I would any other moral duty, asking no favors and prepared to accept all consequences. In the first place, I charge President Roosevelt with being a hypocrite, the most consummate that ever occupied the executive seat of the nation. His profession of pure politics is false, his boasted moral courage the bluff of a bully and his "square deal" a delusion and a sham. Theodore Roosevelt is mainly for Theodore Roosevelt and incidentally for such others as are also for the same distinguished gentleman, first, last and all the time. He is a smooth and slippery politician, swollen purple with self-conceit; he is shrewd enough to gauge the stupidity of the masses and unscrupulous enough to turn it into hero worship. This constitutes the demagogue, and he is that in superlative degree. Only a few days ago he appeared in a characteristic role. Rushing into the limelight, as necessary to him as breath, he shrieked that he and "Root" were "horrified" because of certain scandalous and revolting charges made by one of his own former political chums. Of course, he and "Root" of Tweed fame, the foxiest "fixer" of them all, were "horrified" because of the shock to their political virtue, but it so happened that the horror took effect only when they found themselves uncovered. The taking of Harriman's boodle for corruptly electing him president and the use of the stolen insurance funds for the same criminal purpose did not "horrify" the president and "Root," nor would they be "horrified" yet if they had not been caught red-handed in the act with the booty upon their persons. The cry of the exposed malefactor and all his pack of yelpers that he is the victim of a "plot" by his own friends and supporters, the very gentlemen (sic) who furnished him with free special trains, paid his campaign expenses and in fact bought the presidency for him, is so palpably false as to be absolutely ridiculous and only brings into bolder relief the hypocrisy and fraud it was designed to conceal. This much is preliminary to the extraordinary official conduct of the president which has "horrified" not only its victims but millions of others, and now prompts this review and protest. Something over a year ago Charles Moyer, William Haywood and George Pettibone, of Colorado, leading officials of the Western Federation of Miners, were overpowered and kidnaped by a gang of thugs and torn from their families at night by conspiracy of two degenerate governors and another notorious criminal acting for the Mine and Smelter Trust, one of the most stupendous aggregations of force and plunder in all America. Every decent man and woman was "horrified" by this infamy and the whole working class of the nation cried out against it. Was Roosevelt also "horrified"? Yes! Because the Mine and Smelter Trust had kidnaped three citizens of the republic? Oh, no! The three citizens were only working cattle and he never had any other conception of them. He was "horrified" because the Mine and Smelter Trust, unclean birds that feather their nests, especially in Colorado, with legislatures and United States senatorships, had not killed instead of kidnaping their victims. Then and there Theodore Roosevelt disgraced himself and his high office, and his cruel and cowardly act will load his name with odium as long as it is remembered. The Mine and Smelter Trust had put up the funds and used its vast machinery for Roosevelt, and now Roosevelt must serve it even to the extent of upholding criminals, approving kidnaping and murdering its helpless victims. When Roosevelt stepped out of the White House and called Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone _murderers_, men he had never seen and did not know; men who had never been tried, never convicted and whom every law of the land presumed innocent until proven guilty, he fell a million miles beneath where Lincoln stood, and there he grovels today with his political crimes, one after another, finding him out and pointing at him their accusing fingers. No president of the United States has ever descended to such depths as has Roosevelt to serve his law-defying and crime-inciting masters. The act is simply scandalous and without a parallel in American history. What right has Theodore Roosevelt to prejudge American citizens, pronounce their guilt and hand them over to the hangman? In a pettifogging lawyer such an act would be infamous; in the president of the nation it becomes monstrous and staggers belief. All that Roosevelt knows about Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone he knows from his friends, their kidnapers. The millions of working men and women, embracing practically every labor union in America, count for nothing with him. He is not now standing for their votes. He is fulfilling his obligation to the gentlemen (!) who put up the coin that elected him; paying off the mortgage they hold upon his administration. Theodore Roosevelt is swift to brand other men who even venture to disagree with him as liars. He, according to himself, is immaculate and infallible. The greatest liar is he who sees only liars in others. _When Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States, denounced Charles Moyer, William Haywood and George Pettibone as murderers, he uttered a lie as black and damnable, a calumny as foul and atrocious as ever issued from a human throat. The men he thus traduced and vilified, sitting in their prison cells for having dutifully served their fellow-workers and having spurned the bribes of their masters, transcend immeasurably the man in the White House, who, with the cruel malevolence of a barbarian, has pronounced their doom._ A thousand times rather would I be one of those men in Ada county jail than Theodore Roosevelt in the White House at Washington. Had these men accepted, with but a shadow of the eagerness Roosevelt displayed, the debauching funds of the trust pirates, they would not now languish in felons' cells. The same brazen robbers of the people and corrupters of the body politic who put Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone in jail, also put Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. This accounts for his prostituting the high office Lincoln honored and resorting to methods that would shame a Bowery ward-heeler. Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are not murderers; it is a ghastly lie, and I denounce it in the name of law and in the name of justice. I know these men, these sons of toil; I know their hearts, their guileless nature and their rugged honesty. I love and honor them and shall fight for them while there is breath in my body. Here and now I challenge Theodore Roosevelt. He is guilty of high crimes and deserves impeachment. Let him do his worst. I denounce him and defy him. During my recent visit at Washington I learned from those who know him what they think of Roosevelt. Among newspaper men he is literally despised. Their true feeling is not apparent in what they write, for they know that the slightest offense to the president is _lese majeste_ and means instantaneous decapitation. For the second time, Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States, has now publicly convicted Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. He has not pronounced condemnation upon Harry Thaw, or any rich man charged with murder. He has, however, made a postmaster of a man at Chicago charged by the Chicago _Tribune_ with having shot another man in a midnight brawl over disreputable women, and then used his influence to make the same man mayor of that city. Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, the three workingmen kidnaped by the Mine and Smelter Trust, have now been in jail fourteen months; they have not been tried, but twice condemned by President Roosevelt, the last time but a few days ago, in connection with Harriman, his former political pal and financial backer. These men are in prison cells, their bodies in manacles and their lips sealed. They cannot speak for themselves. They are voiceless and at the mercy of calumny. No matter how grossly outraged, they must submit. For a man clothed with the almost absolute power of a president to strike down men gagged and bound, as these men are, he must have an unspeakably brutal and cowardly nature, just such a nature as the governor of an empire state must have to turn a deaf ear to the agonizing entreaties of a shrieking, shuddering woman and see her dragged into the horrors of electrocution. The true character of this man is being gradually revealed to the American people. He has never been anything but an enemy of the working class. He joined a labor organization purely as a demagogue. In all his life he never associated with working people. His writings, before he became a politician, show that he held them in contempt. When he entered political life he soon learned how to shake hands with a fireman for the camera and have his press agent do the rest, and it was this species of demagoguery, the very basest conceivable, that idolized him with the ignorant mass and gave him the votes of the millions he in his heart despised as an inferior race. In his book on "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," page 10, written long before he entered politics, Roosevelt reveals his innate contempt for those who toil. After describing cowboys when "drunk on the villainous whiskey of the frontier towns," he closes with this comparison, which needs no comment: "They are much better fellows and pleasanter companions than small farmers or agricultural laborers; nor are the mechanics and workmen of a great city to be mentioned in the same breath." The pretended friendship for the great body of workingmen who are not to be compared to drunken cowboys has served its demagogical purpose, but the final chapter is not yet written. There will be an awakening, and every official act of Theodore Roosevelt will be subjected to its searching scrutiny. He has always been on the side of capital wholly, while pretending the impossible feat of serving both capital and labor with equal fidelity, and only the deplorable ignorance of his dupes has applauded him in that hypocritical role. The anthracite miners, or their children at least, will some day know that it was President Theodore Roosevelt who handed them over to the coal trust with a gold brick for a souvenir, labeled "Arbitration." Theodore Roosevelt is an aristocrat and an autocrat. His affected democracy is spurious and easily detected. He belongs to the "upper crust" and at the very best he can conceive of the working class only as contented wage-slaves. And no one knows better than he how easily these slaves are duped and how madly they will cheer and follow a cheap and showy "hero." The simple fact is that Theodore Roosevelt was made president by the industrial captains and the robbers in general of the working class. They picked him for a winner and he has not failed them. Elected by the trusts and surrounded by trust attorneys as cabinet advisers, Roosevelt is essentially the monarch of a trust administration. If this be denied, Roosevelt is challenged to answer if it was not the railroad trust that furnished him gratuitously with the special trains that bore him in royal splendor over all the railways of the nation. He is challenged to publish the list of contributors to his political sewer funds, amounting to millions of dollars, and freely used to buy the votes that made him president. Did, or did not, the men known as trust magnates put up this boodle? Boodle drawn from the veins of labor? Will Mr. Roosevelt deny it? Did he not know at the time that his man Cortelyou was holding up the trusts for all they would "cough up" for his election? Will he dare plead ignorance to intelligent persons as to who put up the money that debauched the voters of the nation? It is true that a spasm of virtuous indignation seized him when he found that the trusts had slipped the lucre into his slush funds when he was not looking, but this was only after he saw the people looking behind the curtain. Then he bounded to the foot-lights and denounced Alton B. Parker as a liar for charging that the trusts were furnishing the boodle to make him president, but no man not feeble-minded was deceived as to who was the liar. Read the Washington press dispatch in the Kansas City _Journal_ of April 4th: "It was declared in banking circles that light could be shed on the question of campaign contributions in 1904 if the books of the national Republican committee were thrown open." The books will not be thrown open. Roosevelt will not allow it; he knows they contain the damning evidence of his guilt. The case is clearly stated in the platform of the Democratic state convention of Missouri, adopted in 1906, which reads as follows: "We believe Theodore Roosevelt insincere. Pretending to inveigh against the crimes of trusts and corporations, he openly defended Paul Morton, when, as manager of the Santa Fe railroad, he was compelled to confess enormous rebates to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It was Roosevelt who advanced the pernicious doctrine that you must punish the corporation, not its officials who cause it to commit crime. It was Roosevelt who denounced large campaign contributions, while his secretary of commerce and labor was fleecing the corporations out of _one of the biggest slush funds ever known in the history of American politics_." President Roosevelt may shout "liar" until he turns as black in the face as are the cracksmen at heart who burglarized the safes of the New York insurance companies to land him in the White House, while he was toying with the names of "Jimmy" Hyde and Chauncey Depew as pawns in the corrupt game, but the "damned spot" will not out until the whole truth is known and the whole crime expiated. The publication of the Roosevelt-Harriman correspondence places the president in his true colors before the American people. It explains his hot haste in condemning Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone to the gallows and sending Taft to Idaho to assure the smelter trust and warn the protesting people that the kidnaping of the workingmen was sanctioned by the White House and would have the support of the national administration. A more shameful perversion of public power never blackened the pages of history. This national scandal shows up the president's two-faced character so clearly and convincingly that it leaves not so much as a pin-hole for escape. It is a damning indictment of not only the president, but the whole brood of plutocrats, promoters and grafting politicians who have been looting this nation for years. There is one among these illuminating epistles which I want to burn in the minds of the working class dupes who have been bowing in the dust before this blustering bully of the White House: "Personal. "October 1, 1904.--My Dear Mr. Harriman: A suggestion has come to me in a round-about way that you do not think it wise to come to see me in these closing weeks of the campaign, but that you are reluctant to refuse, inasmuch as I have asked you. Now, my dear sir, you and I are practical men, and you are on the ground and know the conditions better than I do. "If you think there is any danger of your visit to me causing trouble, or if you think there is nothing special I should be informed about, or any matter in which I could give aid, why, of course, give up the visit for the time being, and then, a few weeks hence, before I write my message, I shall get you to come down to discuss certain government matters not connected with the campaign. With great regards, sincerely yours, (Signed) "THEODORE ROOSEVELT." Does not this brand the president with the duplicity of a Tweed and the cunning of a Quay? Would a president who is honest with the people clandestinely consort with the villain he characterizes as a liar and all that is vicious? The disclosures made in the secret correspondence strip the president of the last shred of deception with which to cloak his perfidy. The mask is lifted and the exposure is complete. It is in the president's own handwriting in a letter to Harriman that would never have seen the light had not circumstances forced it upon the attention of a betrayed people. It is adroitly phrased, but its meaning is not in doubt. He knew Harriman then as he knows him now; wanted his boodle and insinuatingly coaxed him to sneak to the White House when no one was looking, and only after he was discovered did he denounce Harriman as a liar and fall into his usual fit of moral epilepsy. From now on there will be a sharp decline in the stock of Theodore Roosevelt. The capitalist papers may continue to boom him as the only savior and his corps of press agents at the White House may continue to grind out three-column stories about the awful conspiracy of his "trusty" friends to ruin him, but his bubble is pricked and the cheap glory in which he reveled is departing forever. The people have been sadly deceived for a time, but the march of events is opening their eyes. Only the very ignorant and foolish believe that a president who has surrounded himself with Wall Street darlings as cabinet ministers has any serious designs on the trusts. The Ryan, Root and Roosevelt combination is ideal. It speaks for itself, and with such shining lights as Taft, Cortelyou, Knox and Paul Morton surrounding it, all lingering doubt is removed, and the fools' paradise is in the full blaze of its glory. Space will not permit a review of the personnel of the president's official family, at least two of whom, had the law been enforced, would now be in penitentiary. The story of President Roosevelt and Paul Morton, if truthfully told, would make a luminous chapter in railroad rascality and political jobbery. It was to this notorious strike-breaker and self-confessed criminal that Roosevelt issued a bill of moral rectitude long as Pope's essay that landed him into the eighty-thousand-dollars-a-year insurance graft he now holds down. There is in this "promotion" the very climax of the irony of boodle. Paul Morton, who began as a strike-breaker on the C. B. & Q., and reared a monument to theft at Hutchinson, Kan., and left his trail of crime all the way from the Mississippi to the Pacific, is fit, indeed, to be the cabinet associate and confidential chum of a president who puts him at the head of the company whose funds were stolen to buy his election. William H. Taft is another of the elect, and it is easy to understand why Roosevelt has decided to make this illustrious son his successor as president of the United States and is now grooming him with the patronage of the national administration. Taft is a man after Roosevelt's own heart. Among his early acts as a judge he fined the bricklayers of Cincinnati two thousand dollars for going on a strike; he was next whirled to Toledo by special train and ordered by the Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan railroad to issue an injunction binding and gagging its striking engineers and firemen and locking their leader up in jail and he complied with alacrity. From that time on it has been smooth sailing for the accommodating judge and there is not a bloated plutocrat in the land who would not hail with joy the election of William Taft as president; he would be almost as acceptable to these vultures as Roosevelt himself. The manner in which President Roosevelt manipulates the supreme court by bestowing lucrative offices upon the sons and other relatives and friends of its dignitaries can only be hinted at here, but will receive due attention later on. The case of ex-Senator Burton is an instance in point. Other senators had taken thousands in similar cases to Burton's paltry few hundred dollars, but Burton was marked by Roosevelt for refusing to crook the knee to the sugar trust and pursued with merciless ferocity until he was lodged behind prison bars. The president did not have a call to "go after" his old friends, Chauncey Depew and Thomas Platt, with the same virtuous passion to see crime punished and criminals jailed. When Roosevelt was making his continental campaign in the palatial special trains furnished free by the railroad trust he stopped at Abilene, Kan., the home of the then Senator Burton, and opened his speech there in these words: "I am glad to be at the home of the senior senator from Kansas and am delighted to meet and greet his neighbors and friends. I want to say that no man in this world has done more, and I had almost said, as much, to place me where I am now, than your distinguished senator." Fine way the president had of showing his gratitude. Burton should have known better and taken warning. Whenever Roosevelt gets that near to a man something is going to happen. "My dear" is then due to be metamorphosed with startling suddenness into an "atrocious liar." Roosevelt can brook no rivalry. He is the self-appointed central luminary in the solar system. All others must be contented with being fire-flies. He must violate all traditions and smash all precedents. He is spectacular beyond the wildest dreams. He must have the center of the stage and hold the undivided attention of the audience. Any stunt will do when the interest lags. A familiar turn with a prize-fighter or a "gun-man" is always good for an encore. Nothing is overlooked. A dash to Panama with a fleet of battle-ships and a battery of cameras and a squad of artists and reporters is good for thousands of columns about the marvelous virility and fertility of the greatest president since Washington. He is followed with minute and eager details as he darts from cellar to roof, inspects every shingle, wears a solemn expression, throws a shovelful of coal into the furnace, snatches a bite from a workingman's pail, shakes hands with a startled section man and is off like a flash to look after some other section of the planet that it may not drop out of its shining orbit. Mighty savior of the human race! Such is Theodore Roosevelt, the president who condemns workingmen as murderers when they are objectionable to the trusts that control his administration. Archbishop Ireland, the plutocratic prelate, will cheerfully certify to Roosevelt as the anointed of the Lord. And this will make another interesting chapter for a later review; a chapter that will deal with Ireland as the political as well as spiritual adviser of "Jim" Hill and the Great Northern, and of court decisions awarding him thousands of acres of land and making of the alleged follower of the Tramp of Galilee a multi-millionaire; a chapter that will tell of a high priest sounding the political keynote to his benighted followers in exchange for a promised voucher for a red hat to be worn in a land of freedom in which the state and church are absolutely divorced. Only a few of the facts about Roosevelt and his regime have been here stated, but enough to satisfy all honest men that _Theodore Roosevelt is the Friend of the Enemies and the Enemy of the Friends of this Republic_. INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. American Socialist, May 27, 1915. First of all, allow me to quote with approval the following paragraph from "An Introduction to Sociology" by Arthur Morrow Lewis: " * * * the greatest single achievement of the science of sociology is the concept of society, not as a collection of institutions, and sociology as an explanatory catalog or inventory--after the fashion of Spencer, but as a process of development, and the science of sociology as the analysis and explanation of the process." Also the following from an essay on Revolution by George D. Herron: "Every revolution or true reform, every new and commanding faith, is in the direction of man's becoming his own evolver and creator. Every uplifting light or law perforces, in the place of the evolution that is blind and chanceful, an evolution that is chosen and humanly directed." There is still room for reform and betterment in the present social system, but this is of minor consequence compared to the world's crying need for industrial and social reorganization. * * * * * The next great change in history will be, must be, the socialization of the means of our common life. Privately owned industry and production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane and civilized ends. With all its marvelous progress through invention and discovery and all its monumental achievements in the arts and sciences, this poor world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. That is the problem of problems now confronting us more and more insistently and until that is solved the world is halted and it will either resume its march toward industrial and social democracy or be shaken to its foundations and into possible chaos by violent explosion. There is no longer the shadow of an excuse for a hungry being. All the laws, all the materials and all the forces are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide food, raiment and shelter for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery, widespread and appalling, which now shock and sicken humanity and impeach our vaunted civilization. But these tools and materials and forces must be released from private ownership and control, socialized, democratized, and set in operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. * * * * * It is well stated, "that civilization is at present rudimentary, and that it is to develop indefinitely." Now, in view of the fact that the crops this year (1914) are the most abundant ever produced, that there is no market for the almost sixteen million bales of cotton lying in the warehouses, while at the same time there are millions of unemployed in the land who are without food and without clothing and who, with their wives and children, are doomed to indescribable suffering; in view of this solemn and indisputable fact it would seem that there could be but one opinion among students and thinkers as to the one great, vital and essential thing to do for the relief of our common humanity and for the promotion of the world's progress and civilization, and that that one thing is the one to be emphasized with all the power at our command. A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand. Such a world is a world of strife and hate and such a society can exist only by means of militarism and physical force. * * * * * The education of the people, not the few alone, but the entire mass in the principles of industrial democracy and along the lines of social development is the task of the people to be emphasized and that task--let it be impressed upon them--can be performed only by themselves. The cultured few can never educate the uncultured many. All history attests the fact that all the few have ever done for the many is to keep them in ignorance and servitude and live out of their labor. To stir the masses, to appeal to their higher, better selves, to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal of mutual kindness and good will, based upon mutual interests, is to render real service to the cause of humanity. To quote Herron once more: "Socialism is a deliberate proposal to lay the will of man upon the unfolding processes and ends of nature and history. It invokes the faith that shall be equal to the acceptance of its proposal--of its supreme challenge to the universe." A MESSAGE TO THE CHILDREN. Campaign Leaflet, National Campaign, 1912. The Socialist party is the only party that has the children at heart; the only party that takes them into its confidence; the only party that has a message for them in a campaign year. In my travels about the country I have met many thousands of little children and their fresh and eager faces have always given me joy and their merry voices have filled me with delight and made me stronger for my work. These children are not yet old enough to join the Socialist party and have an active part in its great work, but they are old enough to understand why their parents belong to it, and why they are proud of their card of membership, and of the red button they wear, to show that they are socialists and that as socialists they are working hand in hand with thousands and thousands of others to change things so that this world may be a better, kinder and sweeter world for us all to live in. Now let me talk directly as I may to the more than thirty millions of children and young folks in our country who are less than eighteen years of age. I fancy I can see them all spread out in all directions, far as the eye can reach, and farther and farther still to the very shores of the seas and lakes and gulf that bound our western continent. What a wonderful audience I am about to address! Not a grown person in it. Only children. Millions of them and all eager to hear the message that socialism has to offer to the child-world. My dear little children, I am sure you will understand me when I say that in speaking to you of socialism I feel very near to all of you and I know you will believe me when I tell you that I would if I could make you all happy and keep you sweet and loving toward each other all your lives. Most of you are the children of the poor, some of the well-to-do, and a few of the rich, but all of you are the children of the same Father and all of you are sisters and brothers in the same great family of humankind. If any of you feel that you are better than others because you wear better clothes or live in better houses or go in what you think is "better society," it is because your young minds and hearts have been tainted by wrong example and wrong education. It is this wicked feeling that corrupts the conscience and hardens the heart and begets the envy and hate of our fellow-beings, instead of their love and good will. When that best friend the children ever had on earth said, "Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me; for such is the kingdom of heaven" he meant all children, poor and rich, but especially the poor. He loved and pitied them because of their poverty and suffering. He himself had been born in a manger and when he was grown up he said sorrowfully that "he had not where to lay his head." He did not despise little children because they were poor and neglected and shabbily dressed but he loved them all the more; and as he looked down upon them his heart melted with compassion and the tears of tenderness filled his eyes; and then he became grave and his fair brow grew dark with wrath as he thought of those who sat in rich church pews and piously thanked the Lord that they were not as other people. He denounced them as hypocrites for pretending to be religious while they robbed the poor and turned the little children into the street to suffer hunger and fall into evil ways. Nearly twenty centuries have passed since the suffering poor heard with gladness the message of the Lowly Nazarene and since he was moved to tears by the sight of the little children of the street, but the world has not yet learned the meaning of his tender and touching words, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." If he were to walk the streets of New York or Chicago, or Lawrence, Massachusetts, or any of the cities where the mills and sweatshops are filled with child slaves--as he once walked the streets of Jerusalem--he would grow sick at heart as he saw the little ones he so loved, pale and wan and worn, harnessed to monstrous machines and slowly put to death to swell the profits of the greedy mill owners who sit in the rich pews of the synagogue, as did the pharisees he scourged without mercy twenty centuries ago. The children of the working people have always been poor because the world has never been just. For ages and ages those who have builded the houses, cultivated the fields, raised the crops, spun the wool, woven the cloth, supplied the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and furnished the homes we live in, have been the poor and despised, while those who profited by their labor and consumed the good things they produced, have been the rich and respectable. Jesus himself was a carpenter's son and suffered the poverty of his class and when he grew up it was not the rich and respectable, but the poor and despised who loved him, and opened their arms to receive him, and heard gladly his tender and comforting ministrations. He was one of them in poverty and suffering and in all his loving and self-denying life he never forgot them. Had he deserted the poor from whom he sprang, had he gone over to the rich as their preacher, or their judge, or their lawyer or teacher or scribe--as so many of his pretended followers have done and are still doing--he never would have been crucified, nor would the world today know that he had ever lived. It was because, and only because, Jesus loved and served the poor and rebuked the rich who robbed them, and threatened to array them against their rich despoilers, that he was condemned to die and that the cruel nails were driven into his hands and feet on the cross at Calvary. Jesus taught that the earth and the air and the sea and sky and all the beauty and fulness thereof were for all the children of men; that they should all equally enjoy the riches of nature and dwell together in peace, bear one another's burdens and love one another, and that is what socialism teaches and why the rich thieves who have laid hold of the earth and its bounties would crucify the socialists as those other robbers of the poor crucified Jesus two thousand years ago. Now let us see what message the Socialist party has for the children and why all children should be socialists and help to speed the day when the brotherhood of socialism shall prevail throughout the earth. But first let me say that the Socialist party has reason to know that the children have great influence when they become interested in a given work and set their hearts on doing that work. The Socialist party knows better than to ignore the children as if they were china dolls or stuffed teddy bears, as all the other parties do, for it knows by what they have already done that when once they get fairly started they will make the air hum like swarms of bees with the glad tidings of socialism. The little boys and girls who have already become socialists are among the busiest workers for our party and they love so well to work for socialism that it is play to them and fills their hearts with joy. They wear the red button and they know why it is red and what its meaning is; they tack up bills and distribute dodgers advertising our meetings; they sell tickets, take up collections, act as ushers, provide the soap-box for the corner speaker, carry chairs for the women so they may sit in comfort after their day's work, go around among the neighbors and remind them of the meeting and not to forget to attend, sell socialist books, papers and pamphlets, and do a score of other things which are just as useful in their way as the speech of the orator that wins the applause of the people. Now the Socialist party is the only party in the world that wants to put an end once and forever to all kinds of child labor and to have it so that all children, white and black, without a single exception, shall be allowed to grow up in the free air, with plenty of time for mirth and play; that they shall all have decent homes to live in, comfortable beds to sleep in, plenty of good food to eat, plenty of good clothes to wear and that when they reach the proper age they shall go to school and college and continue their course until they have obtained a sound and practical education. Then they will have strong, healthy bodies, trained minds and skilled hands, and not only enter cheerfully upon the duties of life, but be certain of making it a success. If you listen to the old fogies who still belong to the parties their grandfathers did and who have not moved an inch from their grandfathers' graves, they will tell you that socialists are foolish people and that what they propose never can be done. That is what the fogies of every age have always said. They are the "wise" people who do things in the same way that their dead grandparents did before them, who never change their minds, never accept a new idea, never grow, and who are always dead long before they are buried and forgotten the day after the funeral. Whatever you may be I beg of you not to be a fogy, nor to follow a fogy's solemn advice. His brain has ceased to work--if it ever did work. He is mentally stagnant and moss-covered and votes the same old ticket with no more idea of what he is voting for than a wooden Indian. The Socialist party says there have got to be some changes and has set about making them, or at least getting ready to make them. It says that the world is big enough for all the people that are in it, with plenty of room to spare for groves and parks and playgrounds; that there is land enough to go around without crowding; that there are farms enough, or can be easily provided, to raise all we can eat, so that no child in all the world need to go hungry; that there is plenty of coal and iron, oil and gas, gold and silver and other minerals and metals, stored in the earth; that there are forests and mountains and water courses galore; that there are mills and mines and factories and ships and railways and telegraphs, and the power supplied free by nature to run them all; that there are millions of men and women ready to do all the work that may be required to build homes, raise crops, bake bread--and cake too--weave cloth, make clothes and everything else that is necessary for everybody, and have time enough besides to build schools and provide playgrounds for every last one of the children, with plenty of toys thrown in to make this earth a children's paradise. Now why should not just these things come to pass and why should not you children help us speed the day when they _shall_ come to pass? Everything you can possibly think of to make this earth sweet and beautiful and to make life a blessed joy for us all is within our reach. The raw materials are at our feet; the forces to fashion them into forms of beauty and use are at our finger tips. We have but to put ourselves in harmony with nature and with one another to spread far and wide the gospel of life and love and once more hear "the sons of God shout for joy." Socialists not only dream of the good day coming when the world shall know that men are brothers and that women are sisters to each other, but they are at work with all their hearts and all their heads and hands to make that dream come true. If you want to know what the plans of the socialists are in detail read their platform, attend their lectures and study their literature. Socialism is the greatest thing in all the world today and the boys and girls of this generation who will be remembered in the next are those who are clear-eyed enough to see that socialism is coming and are at the battle-front fighting bravely to overcome the prejudice against it and to pave the way for it so that it may come soon and in peace and order. Many of us who have been long in service will not be here when the bells peal forth the joyous tidings that socialism has triumphed and that the people are free, but the children that now are will live to see it and in the day of their rejoicing they will not forget those who toiled without recompense that they might live without dread of poverty or fear of want. As we look about us today we see that the world is filled with suffering and despair and when we come to look into the cause of it we find that it is a reproach to us all. As I write the news comes of the fierce battle that is being fought between ten thousand hungry miners in West Virginia and the thugs and ex-convicts and murderers armed by the coal corporations to force the strikers back into their dismal and hopeless pits. The battle has already lasted two days. Many on both sides have been killed, but the capitalist papers are doing all they can to hush it up. Long ago the miners were evicted from the company's wretched hovels. They and their wives and children live in tented fields and the brutal guards have even driven the women and children from there into the wilderness to starve that the strike may be broken and the miners compelled to go back to work at the terms of their greedy and heartless masters. And why is this awful battle raging and human beings murdering each other as if they were wild beasts? Because a few gluttonous slave owners like Henry Gassaway Davis and the Watsons and Elkinses who dwell in gorgeous palaces on vast estates occupying whole mountain ranges, privately own the mines and minerals which were intended for all, and consequently the thousands of miners and their wives and children are at their mercy, and when they meekly asked for five per cent more wages so their families would not suffer for bread the brutal lords of the mines sent out their private army of assassins to hunt them down and kill them as if they were mad dogs. The Socialist party says that those mines should be owned by all the people and that is what will come to pass when the socialists get into power, and then the green hills of West Virginia and other states will no longer echo with the rifle shots of corporation assassins, nor run red with the blood of honest workingmen slain to appease the greed of their soulless masters. In February last, four boys were hanged in Chicago. The oldest was twenty-one, the youngest barely out of his childhood. They had held up and robbed and murdered a poor truck farmer for the little money he had on his person. Not one of these boys ever had a decent home. They were born in poverty, reared in ignorance, and surrounded by vice and filth. This is cultivating crime and reaping the harvest. We socialists weep as we think of the cruel fate of those four poor, friendless boys who died on the gallows while they were still in their childhood, because the world has not yet learned that there is greater profit in raising children than there is in raising hogs. The frightful stories of the little children in the mills of Lawrence and the cruel suffering they endured is still fresh in the public memory. When the poor and despairing mothers, their hearts wrung with agony and their eyes blinded with tears, attempted to save their children from starvation by placing them in the keeping of sympathizing friends, they were beaten, insulted, and with babies at their breasts thrown into jail, bleeding and stunned, by the brutal police acting under orders from the far more brutal mill owners. The world will never know the suffering and terror these poor working people--especially the women and children--had to endure for daring to ask the millionaire mill owners for a pittance more in return for their labor to keep the wolf of hunger from their gloomy hovels. When the Socialist party gets into power those mills at Lawrence and all others like them will be taken over by the people and operated for the good of all, and then the workers will keep the wealth they produce for themselves, instead of turning it over to the greedy mill bosses; they will have decent homes to live in, food in plenty on their tables, and their children will go to school to be properly educated instead of to the mills to be ground into profits to gorge their idle owners. In March last, Mrs. L. F. Jellson of Salem, Oregon, gave poison to each of her four little children, her own offspring, because they were starving and she was poor and had no way to get them bread. She then poisoned herself and all she asked in the note she left was that she and her darling children be buried together. This poor heart-broken soul was driven to destroy herself and her precious babes because the world as it now is would not allow them to live. Think for just a moment of all the food there is in the world and all there might be and then tell me if socialists are wrong and foolish and wicked for saying that the self-murder of this poor woman and the murder of her children is a terrible crime of which society is guilty and for which there is no excuse on earth or in heaven. A recent investigation showed that in the City of St. Louis there are 16,000 young women who receive as wage-earners less than $8 per week and over 3,000 who receive from $3 to $4 per week. It is easy to see from this why so many little girls and younger women are forced to enter upon the path which leads to shame and sorrow and which seldom bears the impress of returning footsteps. When the giant Titanic met her fate, fifty little bellboys went down with her to the bottom of the sea. They were ordered, according to the account, to their regular posts in the main cabin and warned by their captain not to get into the way of the escaping passengers. James Humphries, as quartermaster and eye witness said, "throughout the first hour of confusion and terror these lads sat quietly on their benches. Not one of them attempted to enter a lifeboat. Not one of them was saved." Can you read this without being moved to tears? Brave, noble little lads! I almost feel as if it had been a privilege to go down with these great little souls to their watery grave. The little boys who perished here were poor boys, many of them without fathers, and others obliged to support widowed mothers and little brothers and sisters younger than themselves. What a lesson this touching, deeply pathetic incident teaches and what a world of meaning there is in the sad circumstances of their tragic death! Had they not been poor children, little waifs, they would not have been locked in the cabin to perish like rats. They would not, in fact, have been there at all, and had it not been for the pride and pomp, the greed and luxury that paraded the upper deck, the Titanic never would have gone to the bottom of the sea. And now, my children, I must come to a close. I have taken up much of your time, but I have only been able to trace in barest outline what the Socialist party is organized for, what it aims to do, and will do, and why the children, above all, should vie with each other in helping it to grow and speeding the happy day of its success. When that day comes the rejoicing people will realize that the kingdom of heaven, so long prayed for, has been set up here on earth in the social brotherhood of all mankind. SOCIAL REFORM. While there is a lower class I am in it; While there is a criminal class I am of it; While there is a soul in prison I am not free. DANGER AHEAD. International Socialist Review, January, 1911. The large increase in the Socialist vote in the late national and state elections is quite naturally hailed with elation and rejoicing by party members, but I feel prompted to remark, in the light of some personal observations made during the campaign, that it is not entirely a matter of jubilation. I am not given to pessimism, or captious criticism, and yet I cannot but feel that some of the votes placed to our credit this year were obtained by methods not consistent with the principles of a revolutionary party, and in the long run will do more harm than good. I yield to no one in my desire to see the party grow and the vote increase, but in my zeal I do not lose sight of the fact that healthy growth and a substantial vote depend upon efficient organization, the self-education and self-discipline of the membership, and that where these are lacking, an inflated vote secured by compromising methods, can only be hurtful to the movement. The danger I see ahead is that the Socialist party at this stage, and under existing conditions, is apt to attract elements which it cannot assimilate, and that it may be either weighted down, or torn asunder with internal strife, or that it may become permeated and corrupted with the spirit of bourgeois reform to an extent that will practically destroy its virility and efficiency as a revolutionary organization. To my mind the working class character and the revolutionary integrity of the Socialist party are of first importance. All the votes of the people would do us no good if our party ceased to be a revolutionary party, or came to be only incidentally so, while yielding more and more to the pressure to modify the principles and program of the party for the sake of swelling the vote and hastening the day of its expected triumph. It is precisely this policy and the alluring promise it holds out to new members with more zeal than knowledge of working class economics, that constitutes the danger we should guard against in preparing for the next campaign. The truth is that we have not a few members who regard vote-getting as of supreme importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the Socialist propaganda so attractive--eliminating whatever may give offense to bourgeois sensibilities--that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education, and votes thus secured do not properly belong to us and do injustice to our party as well as to those who cast them. These votes do not express socialism and in the next ensuing election are quite as apt to be turned against us, and it is better that they be not cast for the Socialist party, registering a degree of progress the party is not entitled to and indicating a political position the party is unable to sustain. Socialism is a matter of growth, of evolution, which can be advanced by wise methods, but never by obtaining for it a fictitious vote. We should seek only to register the actual vote of socialism, no more and no less. In our propaganda we should state our principles clearly, speak the truth fearlessly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through an intelligent understanding of its mission. There is also a disposition on the part of some to join hands with reactionary trade-unionists in local emergencies and in certain temporary situations to effect some specific purpose, which may or may not be in harmony with our revolutionary program. No possible good can come from any kind of a political alliance, express or implied, with trade-unions or the leaders of trade unions who are opposed to socialism and only turn to it for use in some extremity, the fruit of their own reactionary policy. Of course we want the support of trade-unionists, but only of those who believe in socialism and are ready to vote and work with us for the overthrow of capitalism. The American Federation of Labor, as an organization, with its Civic federation to determine its attitude and control its course, is deadly hostile to the Socialist party and to any and every revolutionary movement of the working class. To kowtow to this organization and to join hands with its leaders to secure political favors can only result in compromising our principles and bringing disaster to the party. Not for all the vote of the American Federation of Labor and its labor-dividing and corruption breeding craft-unions should we compromise one jot of our revolutionary principles; and if we do we shall be visited with the contempt we deserve by all real Socialists, who will scorn to remain in a party professing to be a revolutionary party of the working class while employing the crooked and disreputable methods of ward-heeling politicians to attain their ends. Of far greater importance than increasing the vote of the Socialist party is the economic organization of the working class. To the extent, and only to the extent, that the workers are organized and disciplined in their respective industries can the Socialist movement advance and the Socialist party hold what is registered by the ballot. The election of legislative and administrative officers, here and there, where the party is still in a crude state and the members economically and politically unfit to assume the responsibilities thrust upon them as the result of popular discontent, will inevitably bring trouble and set the party back, instead of advancing it, and while this is to be expected and is to an extent unavoidable, we should court no more of that kind of experience than is necessary to avoid a repetition of it. The Socialist party has already achieved some victories of this kind which proved to be defeats, crushing and humiliating, and from which the party has not even now, after many years, entirely recovered. We have just so much socialism that is stable and dependable, because securely grounded in economics, in discipline and all else that expresses class-conscious solidarity, and this must be augmented steadily through economic and political organization, but no amount of mere votes can accomplish this in even the slightest degree. A vote for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal. Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped, and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed. Their economic power has got to be developed through efficient organization, or their political power, even if it could be developed, would but react upon them, thwart their plans, blast their hopes, and all but destroy them. Such organization to be effective must be expressed in terms of industrial unionism. Each industry must be organized in its entirety, embracing all the workers, and all working together in the interests of all, in the true spirit of solidarity, thus laying the foundation and developing the superstructure of the new system within the old, from which it is evolving, and systematically fitting the workers, step by step, to assume entire control of the productive forces when the hour strikes for the impending organic change. Without such economic organization and the economic power with which it is clothed, and without the industrial co-operative training, discipline and efficiency which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political victories the workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips. Now that the capitalist system is so palpably breaking down, and in consequence its political parties breaking up, the disintegrating elements with vague reform ideas and radical bourgeois tendencies will head in increasing numbers toward the Socialist party, especially since the greatly enlarged vote of this year has been announced and the party is looming up as a possible dispenser of the spoils of office. There is danger, I believe, that the party may be swamped by such an exodus and the best possible means--and, in fact, the only effectual means--of securing the party against such a fatality is the economic power of the industrially-organized workers. The votes will come rapidly enough from now on without seeking them and we should make it clear that the Socialist party wants the votes only of those who want socialism, and that, above all, as a revolutionary party of the working class, it discountenances vote-seeking for the sake of votes and holds in contempt office-seeking for the sake of office. These belong entirely to capitalist parties with their bosses and their boodle and have no place in a party whose shibboleth is emancipation. With the workers efficiently organized industrially, bound together by the common tie of their enlightened self-interest, they will just as naturally and inevitably express their economic solidarity in political terms and cast a united vote for the party of their class as the forces of nature express obedience to the law of gravitation. PIONEER WOMEN IN AMERICA. Progressive Woman, April, 1912. In looking over some old letters a day or two ago I found a postal card which Susan B. Anthony had written to me over thirty years ago, and, strangely enough, it was held fast by a letter that was written to me about the same time by Wendell Phillips, as if these two epistles had been attracted to each other and held together in the bonds of mutualism as were the great souls who had written them in their heroic struggle for human enfranchisement. The faded and time-worn old card carried me back to the day I met Miss Anthony at the depot on her arrival at Terre Haute, where she was to speak in public for her sex. At that time Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who afterward became Miss Anthony's confidential friend and authorized biographer, and I, and two or three others, were about the only people in Terre Haute who believed that woman was a human being and entitled to the rights of citizenship. We had arranged these meetings for Miss Anthony and her three active coadjutors in woman's cause at that time, and they arrived according to the schedule. I shall never forget how Miss Anthony impressed me. She had all the charm of a real woman and all the strength of a perfect man. Style, personal adornment, she did not know; vanity found no lodgment in her great soul. She was born with a heroic purpose, and she set out in fulfillment of that purpose with a spirit of dauntless valor and determination which knew "no variableness or shadow of turning" to the day that ended her consecrated life and she passed from the scenes of men. The trials, privations, insults borne by this grand old pioneer will never be known by those who are in the ranks today. An event characteristic of the struggle in which she engaged almost single-handed for so many years was her arrest and trial for voting in the presidential election of 1872. A fine of one hundred dollars and costs was imposed upon her, which she vowed she would not pay, even if she were sent to jail. When Miss Anthony said a thing she meant it. That fine was never paid. It was, after all, a stroke of good fortune that Miss Anthony was the victim of this barbarous indignity. It inspired one of the greatest speeches of her life. In opening this dramatic plea and protest she said: "Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny." She then quoted from the preamble of the Federal Constitution: "We, the _people_ of the United States," etc., and proceeded: "It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we the male citizens; but, we the whole people, who formed the union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people--women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government--the ballot. The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4 said: 'The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse between the people of the different States of the Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted) shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizen, of the several States.' "Thus, at the very beginning did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all, in order to produce the desired results--a harmonious union and a homogeneous people." Miss Anthony then quoted the New York State Constitution: "No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of its peers." She then proceeded with her argument, which has never been and never will be answered. It is to be regretted that space forbids more ample quotation in this article. Here is a glowing paragraph from her impassioned plea which is characteristic of the entire address: "To them (women) this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons the oligarch over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household; which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects; carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation." There has never been a more logical unanswerable argument for the political enfranchisement of women than was here made by Miss Anthony. And yet only a very few of the people were fair enough to listen, intelligent enough to understand, or candid enough to give approval, if they did. Susan B. Anthony's whole career was one tempestuous struggle for the rights of her sex. She never wavered and she never wearied in the conflict. She had the moral courage of a martyr, and such she was as certainly as any that ever perished at the stake. On my visit to Johnstown, N. Y., recently, the comrades pointed out the spot where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another pioneer heroine of the movement, was born. Mrs. Stanton has long since been gathered to her fathers, but her work remains an imperishable monument in memory of her achievements. It was at the first Woman's Rights convention ever held in the United States, July 19, 1848, that Mrs. Stanton delivered an oration that will forever have a place in the literature of woman's struggle for freedom. The doctrine she advocated was at that time little less than treason, but she knew it was _true_, and she boldly took her stand and maintained it to the end. In her speech at this first convention she said: "Now is the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy--contempt and ridicule. The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some men and women for the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our work today is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by the prophet. * * * We do not expect our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will be our way, and on our banner will beat dark storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undauntedly we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it: 'Equality of Rights.'" There was thrilling power in the burning eloquence of Mrs. Stanton, but only they who had a part in the struggle at that time could have any conception of what bitter hatred, blind prejudice and malign persecution there were to overcome. In February, 1854, Mrs. Stanton made a notable plea for the political rights of women to the legislature of New York. In mentally invoicing an average legislature today one gets some idea of the self-imposed task of this brave old pioneer, and the indomitable spirit required to undertake it, of arousing a body of sodden bourgeois legislators, ward politicians, to recognize the right of women to breathe the air of civilized citizenship and belong to themselves. In this thoroughly militant and inspiring appeal she said: "The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense. His majesty no longer awes the multitude; his scepter is broken; his crown is trampled in the dust; the sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. * * * "We demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; natives, free-born citizens; property holders, taxpayers, yet we are denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the constitution necessary to the legal voter but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and negroes." These two sturdy pioneers in woman's struggle present a magnificent picture in the perspective. They did not know the meaning of discouragement. They were strangers to weakness and fear. Both were of heroic mould. Both were born and endowed for great service and both made their names synonymous with the struggle of their sex to shake off the fetters of the centuries. Mrs. Stanton was born in 1815, ante-dating Miss Anthony by five years. They were inseparable friends, and they who saw them together say that their love and fealty toward each other was so beautiful and touching that it was an inspiration to all their co-workers and shamed to silence all their bickerings and petty jealousies. They both lived to be over eighty years. After full half a century of unrelaxing fidelity to their principles and unceasing battle for their cause they saw but the beginning of the glorious fruition of their consecrated service. Such has been the fate of all who, like these great souls, loved principle better than popularity and humanity more than themselves. The women who are in the ranks today may well rejoice that these grand women and others who shared in their bitter persecution blazed the way through the dense wilderness of ignorance, prejudice and hatred for what is now a world movement, with millions proudly bearing its banner, inscribed with the conquering shibboleth: Equal Freedom and Equal Opportunities for All Mankind. SPEECHES UNITY AND VICTORY. Speech Before State Convention of American Federation of Labor, Pittsburg, Kansas, August 12, 1908. * * * * * Introduction by Chairman Cable. Gentlemen of the Convention: I assure you it is a great privilege on my part to present to you at this time a gentleman who needs no introduction at my hands; a gentleman who is known to you and who is known to the workingmen throughout the length and breadth of this country as a true and tried trade unionist and the candidate of the Socialist party for President of the United States. I, therefore, take great pleasure in presenting to you Brother Eugene V. Debs. Mr. Chairman, Delegates and Fellow Workers: It is with pleasure, I assure you, that I embrace this opportunity to exchange greetings with you in the councils of labor. I have prepared no formal address, nor is any necessary at this time. You have met here as the representatives of organized labor and if I can do anything to assist you in the work you have been delegated to do I shall render that assistance with great pleasure. To serve the working class is to me always a duty of love. Thirty-three years ago I first became a member of a trade union. I can remember quite well under what difficulties meetings were held and with what contempt organized labor was treated at that time. There has been a decided change. The small and insignificant trade union has expanded to the proportions of a great national organization. The few hundreds now number millions and organized labor has become a recognized factor in the economics and politics of the nation. There has been a great evolution during that time and while the power of the organized workers has increased there has been an industrial development which makes that power more necessary than ever before in all the history of the working class movement. This is an age of organization. The small employer of a quarter of a century ago has practically disappeared. The workingman of today is confronted by the great corporation which has its ironclad rules and regulations, and if they don't suit he can quit. In the presence of this great power, workingmen are compelled to organize or be ground to atoms. They have organized. They have the numbers. They have had some bitter experience. They have suffered beyond the power of language to describe, but they have not yet developed their latent power to a degree that they can cope successfully with the great power that exploits and oppresses them. Upon this question of organization, my brothers, you and I may differ widely, but as we are reasonable men, we can discuss these differences candidly until we find common ground upon which we can stand side by side in the true spirit of solidarity--and work together for the emancipation of our class. Until quite recently the average trade unionist was opposed to having politics even mentioned in the meeting of his union. The reason for this is self-evident. Workingmen have not until now keenly felt the necessity for independent working class political action. They have been divided between the two capitalist parties and the very suggestion that the union was to be used in the interest of the one or the other was in itself sufficient to sow the seed of disruption. So it isn't strange that the average trade unionist guarded carefully against the introduction of political questions in his union. But within the past two or three years there have been such changes that workingmen have been compelled to take notice of the fact that the labor question is essentially a political question, and that if they would protect themselves against the greed and rapacity of the capitalist class they must develop their political power as well as their economic power, and use both in their own interest. Workingmen have developed sufficient intelligence to understand the necessity for unity upon the economic field. All now recognize the need for thorough organization. But organization of numbers of itself is not sufficient. You might have all the workers of the country embraced in some vast organization and yet they would be very weak if they were not organized upon correct principles; if they did not understand, and understand clearly, what they were organized for, and what their organization expected to accomplish. I am of those who believe that an organization of workingmen, to be efficient, to meet the demands of this hour, must be organized upon a revolutionary basis; must have for its definite object not only the betterment of the condition of workingmen in the wage system, but the absolute overthrow of wage slavery that the workingman may be emancipated and stand forth clothed with the dignity and all other attributes of true manhood. Now let me briefly discuss the existing condition. We have been organizing all these years, and there are now approximately three millions of American workingmen who wear union badges, who keep step to union progress. At this very time, and in spite of all that organized labor can do to the contrary, there is a condition that prevails all over this country that is well calculated to challenge the serious consideration of every workingman. To begin with, according to the reports furnished us, twenty per cent of the workingmen of this country are now out of employment. I have here a copy of the New York World containing a report of the labor commissioner of the State of New York who shows that during the quarter ending June 30 there were in that state an army of union men out of employment approximating thirty-five per cent of the entire number; that is to say, in the State of New York today, out of every one hundred union men (these reports are received from the unions themselves, verified by their own officers, so there can be no question in regard to them), out of every 100 union men in New York, 35 are out of employment. The percentage may not be so large in these western states where the industrial development has not reached the same point, but go where you may, east or west, north or south, you will find men, union men, who are begging for the opportunity to work for just enough to keep their suffering souls within their famished bodies. A system in which such a condition as this is possible has fulfilled its mission, stands condemned, and ought to be abolished. According to the Declaration of Independence, man has the inalienable right to life. If that be true it follows that he has also the inalienable right to work. If you have no right to work you have no right to life because you can only live by work. And if you live in a system that deprives you of the right to work, that system denies you the right to live. Now man has a right to life because he is here. That is sufficient proof, and if he has the right to life, it follows that he has the right to all the means that sustain life. But how is it in this outgrown capitalist system? A workingman can only work on condition that he finds somebody who will give him permission to work for just enough of what his labor produces to keep him in working order. No matter whether you have studied this economic question or not, you cannot have failed to observe that during the past half century society has been sharply divided into classes--into a capitalist class upon the one hand, into a working class upon the other hand. I shall not take the time to trace this evolution. I shall simply call your attention to the fact that half a century ago all a man needed was a trade and having this he could supply himself with the simple tools then used, produce what he needed and enjoy the fruit of his labor. But this has been completely changed. The simple tool has disappeared and the great machine has taken its place. The little shop is gone and the great factory has come in its stead. The worker can no longer work by and for himself. He has been recruited into regiments, battalions and armies and work has been subdivided and specialized; and now hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of workingmen work together co-operatively and produce in great abundance, not for themselves, however, for they no longer own the tools they work with. What they produce belongs to the capitalist class who own the tools with which they work. A man fifty years ago who made a shoe owned it. Today it is possible for that same worker, if still alive, to make a hundred times as many shoes, but he doesn't own them now. He works today with modern machinery which is the property of some capitalist who lives perhaps a thousand miles from where the factory is located and who owns all the product because he owns the machinery. I have stated that society has been divided into two warring classes. The capitalist owns the tool in modern industry, but he has nothing to do with its operation. By virtue of such ownership he has the economic power to appropriate to himself the wealth produced by the use of that tool. This accounts for the fact that the capitalist becomes rich. But how about the working class? In the first place they have to compete with each other for the privilege of operating the capitalist's tool of production. The bigger the tool and the more generally it is applied, the more it produces, the sharper competition grows between the workers for the privilege of using it and the more are thrown out of employment. Every few years, no matter what party is in power, no matter what our domestic policy is, how high the tariff or what the money standard, every few years the cry goes up about "over-production" and the working class is discharged by the thousands and thousands, and are idle, just as the miners have been in this field for many weary months. No work, no food, and after a while, no credit, and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created. Don't you agree with me, my brothers, that this condition is an intolerable and indefensible one, and that whatever may be said of the past, this system no longer answers the demands of this time? Why should any workingman need to beg for work? Why forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his labor produces? Now, I ask this question, and it applies to the whole field of industry: If a hundred men work in a mine and produce a hundred tons of coal, how much of that coal are they entitled to? Are they not entitled to all of it? And if not, who is entitled to any part of it? If the man who produces wealth is not entitled to it, who is? You say the capitalist is necessary and I deny it. The capitalist has become a profit-taking parasite. Industry is now concentrated and operated on a very large scale; it is co-operative and therefore self-operative. The capitalists hire superintendents, managers and workingmen to operate their plants and produce wealth. The capitalists are absolutely unnecessary; they have no part in the process of production--not the slightest. Now I insist that it is the workingman's duty to so organize economically and politically as to put an end to this system; as to take possession in his collective capacity of the machinery of production and operate it, not to create millionaires and multi-millionaires, but to produce wealth in plenty for all. That is why the labor question is also a political question. It makes no difference what you do on the economic field to better your condition, so long as the tools of production are privately owned, so long as they are operated for the private profit of the capitalist, the working class will be exploited, they will be in enforced idleness, thousands of them will be reduced to want, some of them to vagabonds and criminals, and this condition will prevail in spite of anything that organized labor can do to the contrary. The most important thing for the workingman to recognize is the class struggle. Every capitalist, every capitalist newspaper, every capitalist attorney and retainer will insist that we have no classes in this country and that there is no class struggle. President Roosevelt himself has declared that class-consciousness is a foul and evil thing. Now, what is class-consciousness? It is simply a recognition of the fact on the part of the workingman that his interest is identical with the interest of every other workingman. Class-consciousness points out the necessity for working-class action, economic and political. What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they suffer? Just one thing; it can be stated in a single word. It is _Ignorance_. The working class have not yet learned how to unite and act together. There are relatively but few capitalists in this country; there are perhaps twenty millions of wage workers, but the capitalists and their retainers have contrived during all these years to keep the working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn--and they are learning daily and by very bitter experience--to unite and to act together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for emancipation. The workingmen you represent, my brothers, are in an overwhelming majority in every township, county and state of this nation. You declare you are in favor of united action, but still you don't unite. You unite under certain conditions within your union, you get together upon the economic field to a limited extent, but you have yet to learn that before you can really accomplish anything you have got to unite in fact as well as in name. The time is coming when workingmen will be forced into one general organization. The time is coming when they will be compelled to organize on the basis of industrial unionism. At this very hour there is a strike on the Canadian Pacific. Eight thousand workingmen who are more or less organized and who have been wronged in many ways, have finally gone out on strike. There are other thousands remaining at their posts and non-union men flowing in there will be hauled to their destination by union men, and union men will continue to work until their eight thousand brothers have lost their jobs and many of them have become tramps. That is called organization, but it is not so in fact. It is at best organization of a very weak and defective character. Now, the right kind of organization on the Canadian Pacific would embrace all the workers. They should all be included within the same organization and then have one general working agreement with the company so that if there was a violation of it, it would concern every man in the service. But how is it at present? The engineers, conductors, trainmen and switchmen are in separate unions and after they have been signed up, the company can treat the rest just as they please, for they know that if they strike and the others remain in their service, as they are bound to do under their agreement, they can very easily supplant them and remain in perfect control of the system. We have had enough of that kind of experience and we ought to profit by it. We ought to realize that there is but one form of organization that answers completely, one in which all subscribe to the same rules and act together in all things, and you will have to organize upon that basis or see your unions become practically worthless. Now let us consider another line briefly for the benefit of those who have opposed political action. We are all aware of the trend of the decisions recently rendered by the United States supreme court. Three decisions have been rendered in rapid succession which strike down the rights of labor and virtually strip organized labor of its power. Under these decisions organized labor has been outlawed, and while upon this question I want to suggest that this body at the proper time in its deliberations put the following questions to the candidates for the United States senate and house of representatives in the State of Kansas and request them to answer: In view of the fact that the United States supreme court has rendered a number of decisions placing the working class at a tremendous disadvantage in its struggle with the employing class for better conditions, we respectfully submit to the candidates for the United States senate and house of representatives the following questions: 1. Are you in favor of issuing injunctions against trade union members because they refuse to patronize a non-union employer and advise their friends to do likewise? 2. Will you introduce and vote for a measure setting aside the decision of the supreme court of the District of Columbia in the case of Buck Stove and Range Company against officers of the A. F. of L., making it a criminal act for a labor union to place an employer on its unfair list? 3. Are you in favor of classifying trade unions as "trusts in restraint of trade," as was done by the supreme court in the case of Lowe vs. Lawler, and will you introduce a measure, should you be elected, providing for the exemption of trade unions from the operation of the anti-trust law under this court decision? 4. Do you endorse the supreme court decision making it lawful for a corporation to discharge a man because of his membership in a labor union? If you do not, will you introduce and vote for a bill setting aside this decision of the supreme court and making it unlawful for a corporation to discharge a man because he is a member of a trade union? Here are these candidates in the State of Kansas for the United States senate and house of representatives and if they are elected they will have the power to control legislation, and it is perfectly proper that you, as the representatives of the workers, should put these questions squarely to these candidates and demand that they answer them. They are very simple questions. The United States court has rendered a decision to the effect that a trade union is a trust and that if it exercises its legitimate powers it is a criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade. That decision of the court congress has the power to set aside, and if a man stands as a candidate for congress, in the upper or lower branch, and appeals to you for your vote--and bear in mind he can only be elected by your vote--it is right and proper that you should know if he is in favor of the decision or opposed to it. And if he is in favor of this decision he is your enemy. Now, these candidates are trying to carry water on both shoulders. They declare they will give both labor and capital a square deal, and I want to say that is impossible. No man can be for labor without being against capital. No man can be for capital without being against labor. Here is the capitalist; here are the workers. Here is the capitalist who owns the mines; here are the miners who work in the mines. There is so much coal produced. There is a quarrel between them over a division of the product. Each wants all he can get. Here we have the class struggle. Now, is it possible to be for the capitalist without being against the worker? Are their interest not diametrically opposite? If you increase the share of the capitalist don't you decrease the share of the workers? Can a door be both open and shut at the same time? Can you increase both the workers' and the capitalist's share at the same time? There is just so much produced, and in the present system it has to be divided between the capitalists and the workers, and both sides are fighting for all they can get, and this is the historic class struggle. We have now no revolutionary organization of the workers along the lines of this class struggle, and that is the demand of this time. The pure and simple trade union will no longer answer. I would not take from it the least credit that belongs to it. I have fought under its banner for thirty years. I have followed it through victory and defeat, generally defeat. I realize today more than ever before in my life the necessity for thorough economic organization. It must be made complete. Organization, like everything else, is subject to the laws of evolution. Everything changes, my brothers. The tool you worked with twenty-five years ago will no longer do. It would do then; it will not do now. The capitalists are combined against you. They are reducing wages. They have control of the courts. They are doing everything they can to destroy your power. You have got to follow their example. You have got to unify your forces. You have got to stand together shoulder to shoulder on the economic and political fields and then you will make substantial progress toward emancipation. I am not here, my brothers, to ask you, as an economic organization, to go into politics. Not at all. If I could have you pass a resolution to go into politics I would not do it. If you were inclined to go into active politics as an organization I would prevent such action if I could. You represent the economic organization of the working class and this organization has its own clearly defined functions. Your economic organization can never become a political machine, but your economic organization must recognize and proclaim the necessity for a united political party. You ought to pass a resolution recognizing the class struggle, declaring your opposition to the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production, and urging upon the working class the necessity for working class political action. That is as far as the economic organization need to go. If you were to use your economic organization for political purposes you would disrupt it, you would wreck it. But I would not have you renounce politics, nor be afraid to discuss anything. Who is it that is so fearful you will discuss politics? It is the ward-heeling politician, and isn't it because he knows very well that if you ever get into politics in the right way he will be out of a job? He is afraid you will get your eyes open. Why should a union man be afraid to discuss politics? He belongs to a certain party; his father belonged to that party and his grandfather belonged to that party, and perhaps his great-grandfather belonged to the same party, and that is probably the only reason he can give for belonging to that party. He don't want anybody to suggest to him the possibility of being lifted out of that party and into some other. Parties change. The party that was good forty years ago is completely outgrown and corrupt and has now no purpose but the promotion of graft and other vicious practices. Workingmen in their organized capacity must recognize the necessity for both economic and political action. I would not have you declare in favor of any particular political party. That would be another mistake which would have disastrous results. If I could have you pass a resolution to support the Socialist party I would not do it. You can't make Socialists by passing resolutions. Men have to become Socialists by study and experience, and they are getting the experience every day. There is one fact, and a very important one, that I would impress upon you, and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political action. No one will attempt to dispute the fact that our interests as workers are identical. If our interests are identical, then we ought to unite. We ought to unite within the same organization, and if there is a strike we should all strike, and if there is a boycott all of us ought to engage in it. If our interests are identical, it follows that we ought to belong to the same party as well as to the same economic organization. What is politics? It is simply the reflex of economics. What is a party? It is the expression politically of certain material class interests. You belong to that party that you believe will promote your material welfare. Is not that a fact? If you find yourself in a party that attacks your pocket do you not quit that party? Now, if you are in a party that opposes your interests it is because you don't have intelligence enough to understand your interests. That is where the capitalists have the better of you. As a rule, they are intelligent, and shrewd. They understand their material interests and how to protect them. You find the capitalists as a rule belonging only to capitalist parties. They don't join a working-class party and they don't vote the Socialist ticket. They know enough to know that Socialism is opposed to their economic interests. Now, both republican and democratic parties are capitalist parties. There is not the slightest doubt about it. It can be proved in a hundred different ways. You know how the republican party treated the demands of labor in its recent national convention. You know, or ought to know, what has taken place under the present administration. You know, or ought to know, something about the democratic party, national, state and municipal. If there are those who say that the democratic party is more favorable to labor than the republican party it is only necessary to point to the southern states where it has ruled for a century. In no other part of the nation are workingmen in so wretched a condition. In no other part are working people so miserably housed, so wretchedly treated as they are in the southern states where the democratic party rules supreme. At this very hour miners in Alabama are on strike under a democratic administration. I know the condition there, for I have been in the mines. I know many of those men personally. I know under what conditions they have had to work. I have been in the shacks in which they live and have seen their unhappy wives and ill-fed children. I know whereof I speak. Only in the last extremity have those men gone out on strike. They bore all these cruel wrongs for years and were finally forced out on strike. And then what happened? The very first thing the democratic governor did was to send the soldiers to scab the mines. It doesn't make any difference to you, if workingmen are starved and shot down, which party is in power. It occurs under both republican and democratic administration. There will be no change as long as you continue to support the prevailing capitalist system, based upon the private ownership of the tools with which workingmen work and without which they are doomed to slavery and starvation. Now, I repeat that this body should declare against this system of private ownership and in favor of the collective ownership by the workers of the tools of production. This will give you a clear aim and definite object. This will make your movement revolutionary in its ultimate purpose, as it ought to be, and as for immediate concessions in the way of legislation by capitalist representatives and more favorable working conditions, you workingmen have only to poll two million Socialist votes this fall, and you will get those concessions freely and you will not get them in any other way. You will not frighten, you will not move the great corporations by dividing your votes between the republican and democratic parties. It doesn't make any difference which of these two parties wins, you lose! They are both capitalist parties and I don't ask you to take my mere word for it. I simply ask, my brothers, that you read and study the platforms for yourself. I beg of you not to have an ignorant, superstitious reverence for any political party. It is your misfortune if you are the blind follower of any political leader, or any other leader. It is your duty as a workingman, your duty to yourself, your family, to quit a party the very instant you find that that party no longer serves you; and if you continue to adhere to a party that antagonizes your interests, if you continue to support a system in which you are degraded, then you have no right to complain. You must submit to what comes, for you yourself are responsible. Let me impress this fact upon your minds: the labor question, which is really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you can stand and are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will remain; but when you unite all over the land, when you present a solid class-conscious phalanx, economically and politically, there is no power on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation. As individuals you are helpless, but united you represent an irresistible power. Is there any doubt in the mind of any thinking workingman that we are in the midst of a class struggle? Is there any doubt that the workingman ought to own the tool he works with? You will never own the tool you work with under the present system. This whole system is based upon the private ownership by the capitalist of the tools and the wage-slavery of the working class, and as long as the tools are privately owned by the capitalists the great mass of workers will be wage-slaves. You may, at times, temporarily better your condition within certain limitations, but you will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves? For just one reason and no other--you have got to work. To work you have got to have tools, and if you have no tools you have to beg for work, and if you have got to beg for work the man who owns the tools you use will determine the conditions under which you shall work. As long as he owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence. You will never be free, you will never stand erect in your own manly self-reliance until you are the master of the tools you work with, and when you are you can freely work without the consent of any master, and when you do work you will get all your labor produces. As it is now the lion's share goes to the capitalist for which he does nothing, while you get a small fraction to feed, clothe and shelter yourself, and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power. That is all you get out of it and all you ever will get in the capitalist system. Oh, my brothers, can you be satisfied with your lot? Will you insist that life shall continue a mere struggle for existence and one prolonged misery to which death comes as a blessed relief? How is it with the average workingman today? I am not referring to the few who have been favored and who have fared better than the great mass, but I am asking how it is with the average workingman in this system? Admit that he has a job. What assurance has he that it is his in twenty-four hours? I have a letter from an expert glass worker saying that the new glass machine which has recently been tested, has proven conclusively that bottles can be made without a glass blower. Five or six boys with these machines can make as many bottles as ten expert blowers could make. Machinery is conquering every department of activity. It is displacing more and more workingmen and making the lot of those who have employment more and more insecure. Admit that a man has a job. What assurance has he that he is going to keep it? A machine may be invented. He may offend the boss. He may engage in a little agitation in the interest of his class. He is marked as an agitator, he is discharged, and then what is his status? The minute he is discharged he has to hunt for a new buyer for his labor power. He owns no tools; the tools are great machines. He can't compete against them with his bare hands. He has got to work. There is only one condition under which he can work and that is when he sells his labor power, his energy, his very life currents, and thus disposes of himself in daily installments. He is not sold from the block, as was the chattel slave. He sells ten hours of himself every day in exchange for just enough to keep himself in that same slavish condition. The machine he works with has to be oiled, and he has to be fed, and the oil sustains the same relation to the machine that food does to him. If he could work without food his wage would be reduced to the vanishing point. That is the status of the workingman today. What can the present economic organization do to improve the condition of the workingman? Very little, if anything. If you have a wife and two or three children, and you take the possibilities into consideration, this question ought to give you grave concern. You know that it is the sons of workingmen who become vagabonds and tramps, and who are sent to jail, and it is the daughters of workingmen who are forced into houses of shame. You are a workingman, you live in capitalism, and you have nothing but your labor power, and you don't know whether you are going to find a buyer or not. But even if you do find a master, if you have a job, can you boast of being a man among men? No man can rightly claim to be a man unless he is free. There is something godlike about manhood. Manhood doesn't admit of ownership. Manhood scorns to be regarded as property. Do you know whether you have a job or not? Do you know how long you are going to have one? And when you are out of a job what can your union do for you? I was down at Coalgate, Oklahoma, on the Fourth of July last, where six hundred miners have been out of work for four long months. They are all organized. There are the mines and machinery, and the miners are eager to work. But not a tap of work is being done, and the miners and their families are suffering, and most of them live in houses that are unfit for habitation. This awful condition is never going to be changed in capitalism. There is one way only and that is to wipe out capitalism, and to do that we have to get together, and when we do that we will find the way to emancipation. You may not agree with me now, but make note of what I am saying. The time is near when you will be forced into economic and political solidarity. The republican and democratic parties are alike capitalist parties. Some of you may think that Mr. Bryan, if elected, will do great things for the workers. Conditions will remain substantially the same. We will still be under capitalism. It will not matter how you may tinker with the tariff or the currency. The tools are still the property of the capitalists and you are still at their mercy. Now let me show you that Mr. Bryan is no more your friend than is Mr. Taft. You remember when the officials of the Western Federation of Miners were kidnaped in Colorado, and when it was said they should never leave Idaho alive. It was the determination of the Mine Owners' Association that these brave and loyal union leaders should be foully murdered. When these brothers of ours were brutally kidnaped by the collusion of the capitalist governors of two states, every true friend of the working class cried out in protest. Did Mr. Bryan utter a word? Mr. Bryan was the recognized champion of the working class. He was in a position to be heard. A protest from him would have tremendous weight with the American people. But his labor friends could not unlock his lips. Not one word would he speak. Not one. Organized labor, however, throughout the length and breadth of the land, took the matter in hand promptly and registered its protest in a way that made the nation quake. The Mine Owners' Association took to the tall timber. Our brother unionists were acquitted, vindicated, and stood forth without a blemish upon their honor, and after they were free once more, Mr. Bryan said, "I felt all the time that they were not guilty." Now if your faithful leaders are kidnaped and threatened to be hanged, and you call upon a man who claims to be your friend, to come to the rescue and he refuses to say a word, to give the least help, do you still think he is your friend? Mr. Bryan had his chance to prove his friendship at a time when labor sorely needed friends, when organized labor cried out in agony and distress. But not a word escaped his lips. Why did not Mr. Byran speak? He did not dare. Mr. Bryan knew very well that the kidnapers of those men were his personal friends, the association of rich mine owners, who had largely furnished his campaign funds. For Mr. Bryan personally I have always had a high regard. I am not attacking him in any personal sense at all. But the extremity to which a man is driven who tries to serve both capital and labor! It can't be done. Mr. Bryan did not dare to speak for labor because if he had he would have turned the mine owning capitalists against him. He is afraid to speak out very loudly for capitalists for fear the workers will get after him. He has compromised all around for the sake of being president. You have heard him denounce Roger Sullivan. Mr. Bryan, four years ago, in denouncing this corruptionist, at the time of the nomination of Alton B. Parker, said he was totally destitute of honor and compared him to a train robber. Notwithstanding this fact, Mr. Bryan recently invited Sullivan to his home in Lincoln, took him by the hand and introduced him to his family. Mr. Bryan also invited Charley Murphy, the inexpressibly rotten Tammany heeler of New York. Mr. Bryan had him come to Lincoln so as to conciliate Tammany, and they were photographed together shaking hands. No man can serve both capital and labor at the same time. You don't admit the capitalists to your union. They organize their union to fight you. You organize your union to fight them. Their union consists wholly of capitalists; your union consists wholly of workingmen. It is along the same line that you have got to organize politically. You don't unite with capitalists on the economic field; why should you politically? You have got to extend your class line. You can declare yourselves in this convention and make your position clear to the world. You can give hope and inspire confidence throughout the state. And now in closing, I wish to thank you, each of you, from my heart, for your kindness. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to address you and whether you agree with me or not, I leave you wishing you success in your deliberations and hoping for the early triumph of the labor movement. * * * * * The convention passed a unanimous rising vote of thanks at the close of the address. POLITICAL APPEAL TO AMERICAN WORKERS. Opening Speech of National Campaign, Riverview Park, Chicago, June 16, 1912. Friends, Comrades and Fellow-Workers: We are today entering upon a national campaign of the profoundest interest to the working class and the country. In this campaign there are but two parties and but one issue. There is no longer even the pretense of difference between the so-called Republican and Democratic parties. They are substantially one in what they stand for. They are opposed to each other on no question of principle but purely in a contest for the spoils of office. To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather, it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery. Both of these old capitalist class machines are going to pieces. Having outlived their time they have become corrupt and worse than useless and now present a spectacle of political degeneracy never before witnessed in this or any other country. Both are torn by dissension and rife with disintegration. The evolution of the forces underlying them is tearing them from their foundations and sweeping them to inevitable destruction. We have before us in this city at this hour an exhibition of capitalist machine politics which lays bare the true inwardness of the situation in the capitalist camp. Nothing that any Socialist has ever charged in the way of corruption is to be compared with what Taft and Roosevelt have charged and proven upon one another. They are both good Republicans, just as Harmon and Bryan are both good Democrats--and they are all agreed that Socialism would be the ruination of the country. _Puppets of the Ruling Class._ Taft and Roosevelt in the exploitation of their boasted individualism and their mad fight for official spoils have been forced to expose the whole game of capitalist class politics and reveal themselves and the whole brood of capitalist politicians in their true role before the American people. They are all the mere puppets of the ruling class. They are literally bought, paid for and owned, body and soul, by the powers that are exploiting this nation and enslaving and robbing its toilers. What difference is there, judged by what they stand for, between Taft, Roosevelt, La Follette, Harmon, Wilson, Clark and Bryan? Do they not all alike stand for the private ownership of industry and the wage-slavery of the working class? What earthly difference can it make to the millions of workers whether the Republican or Democratic political machine of capitalism is in commission? That these two parties differ in name only and are one in fact is demonstrated beyond cavil whenever and wherever the Socialist party constitutes a menace to their misrule. Milwaukee is a case in point and there are many others. Confronted by the Socialists these long pretended foes are forced to drop their masks and fly into each other's arms. _Twin Agencies of Wall Street._ The baseness, hypocrisy and corruption of these twin political agencies of Wall Street and the ruling class cannot be expressed in words. The imagination is taxed in contemplating their crimes. There is no depth of dishonor to which they have not descended--no depth of depravity they have not sounded. To the extent that they control elections the franchise is corrupted and the electorate debauched, and when they succeed in power it is but to execute the will of the Wall Street interests which finance and control them. The police, the militia, the regular army, the courts and all the powers lodged in class government are all freely at the service of the ruling class, especially in suppressing discontent among the slaves of the factories, mills and mines, and keeping them safely in subjugation to their masters. How can any intelligent, self-respecting wage-worker give his support to either of these corrupt capitalist parties? The emblem of a capitalist party on a working man is the badge of his ignorance, his servility and shame. Marshalled in battle array, against these corrupt capitalist parties is the young, virile, revolutionary Socialist party, the party of the awakening working class, whose red banners, inscribed with the inspiring shibboleth of class-conscious solidarity, proclaim the coming triumph of international Socialism and the emancipation of the workers of the world. _The Two Political Forces._ Contrast these two political forces and the parties through which these forces find concrete expression! On the one side are the trusts, the corporations, the banks, the railroads, the plutocrats, the politicians, the bribe-givers, the ballot-box stuffers, the repeaters, the parasites, retainers and job-hunters of all descriptions; the corruption funds, the filth, slime and debauchery of ruling class politics; the press and pulpit and college, all wearing capitalism's collar, and all in concert applauding its "patriotism" and glorifying in its plundering and profligate regime. On the other side are the workers and producers of the nation coming into consciousness of their interests and their power as a class, filled with the spirit of solidarity and thrilled with the new-born power that throbs within them; scorning further affiliation with the parties that so long used them to their own degradation and looking trustfully to themselves and to each other for relief from oppression and for emancipation from the power which has so long enslaved them. Honest toil, useful labor, against industrial robbery and political rottenness! These are the two forces which are arrayed against each other in deadly and uncompromising hostility in the present campaign. _Corrupt Capitalist Politics._ We are not here to play the filthy game of capitalist politics. There is the same relative difference between capitalist class politics and working class politics that there is between capitalism and Socialism. Capitalism, having its foundation in the slavery and exploitation of the masses, can only rule by corrupt means and its politics are essentially the reflex of its low and debasing economic character. The Socialist party as the party of the working class stands squarely upon its principles in making its appeal to the workers of the nation. It is not begging for votes, nor seeking for votes, nor bargaining for votes. It is not in the vote market. It wants votes, but only of those who want it--those who recognize it as their party and come to it of their own free will. If, as the Socialist candidate for president, I were seeking office and the spoils of office I would be a traitor to the Socialist party and a disgrace to the working class. To be sure we want all the votes we can get and all that are coming to us but only as a means of developing the political power of the working class in the struggle for industrial freedom, and not that we may revel in the spoils of office. _Political Power._ The workers have never yet developed or made use of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of the master class--and now many of them, disgusted with their own blind and stupid performance, are renouncing politics and refusing to see any difference between the capitalist parties financed by the ruling class to perpetuate class rule and the Socialist party organized and financed by the workers themselves as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of the nation and the world. The Socialist party enters this campaign under conditions that could scarcely be more favorable to the cause it represents. For the first time every state in the union is now organized and represented in the national party, and every state will have a full ticket in the field; and for the first time the Socialists of the United States have a party which takes its rightful place in the great revolutionary working class movement of the world. Four years ago with a membership of scarcely forty thousand we succeeded in polling nearly half a million votes; this year when the campaign is fairly opened we shall have a hundred and fifty thousand dues-paying members and an organization in all regards incalculably superior to that we had in the last campaign. We are united, militant, aggressive, enthusiastic as never before. From the Eastern coast to the Pacific shore and from the Canadian line to the Mexican gulf the red banner of the proletarian revolution floats unchallenged and the exultant shouts of the advancing hosts of labor are borne on all the breezes. _There Is But One Issue._ There is but one issue that appeals to this conquering army--the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. To be sure this cannot be achieved in a day and in the meantime the party enforces to the extent of its power its immediate demands and presses steadily onward toward the goal. It has its constructive program by means of which it develops its power and its capacity, step by step, seizing upon every bit of vantage to advance and strengthen its position, but never for a moment mistaking reform for revolution and never losing sight of the ultimate goal. Socialist reform must not be confounded with so-called capitalist reform. The latter is shrewdly designed to buttress capitalism; the former to overthrow it. Socialist reform vitalizes and promotes the social revolution. _The National Convention._ The national convention of the Socialist party recently held at Indianapolis was in all respects the greatest gathering of representative Socialists ever held in the United States. The delegates there assembled demonstrated their ability to deal efficiently with all the vital problems which confront the party. The convention was permeated in every fiber with the class-conscious, revolutionary spirit and was thoroughly representative of the working class. Every question that came before that body was considered and disposed of in accordance with the principles and program of the international movement and on the basis of its relation to and effect upon the working class. The platform adopted by the convention is a clear and cogent enunciation of the party's principles and a frank and forceful statement of the party's mission. This platform embodies labor's indictment of the capitalist system and demands the abolition of that system. It proclaims the identity of interests of all workers and appeals to them in clarion tones to unite for their emancipation. It points out the class struggle and emphasizes the need of the economic and political unity of the workers to wage that struggle to a successful issue. It declares relentless war upon the entire capitalist regime in the name of the rising working class and demands in uncompromising terms the overthrow of wage-slavery and the inauguration of industrial democracy. In this platform of the Socialist party the historic development of society is clearly stated and the fact made manifest that the time has come for the workers of the world to shake off their oppressors and exploiters, put an end to their age-long servitude, and make themselves the masters of the world. To this end the Socialist party has been organized; to this end it is bending all its energies and taxing all its resources; to this end it makes its appeal to the workers and their sympathizers throughout the nation. _The Capitalist System Condemned._ In the name of the workers the Socialist party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom it condemns wage-slavery. In the name of modern industry it condemns poverty, idleness and famine. In the name of peace it condemns war. In the name of civilization it condemns the murder of little children. In the name of enlightenment it condemns ignorance and superstition. In the name of the future it arraigns the past at the bar of the present, and in the name of humanity it demands social justice for every man, woman and child. The Socialist party knows neither color, creed, sex, nor race. It knows no aliens among the oppressed and down-trodden. It is first and last the party of the workers, regardless of their nationality, proclaiming their interests, voicing their aspirations, and fighting their battles. It matters not where the slaves of the earth lift their bowed bodies from the dust and seek to shake off their fetters, or lighten the burden that oppresses them, the Socialist party is pledged to encourage and support them to the full extent of its power. It matters not to what union they belong, or if they belong to any union, the Socialist party which sprang from their struggle, their oppression, and their aspiration, is with them through good and evil report, in trial and defeat, until at last victory is inscribed upon their banner. _Fighting Labor's Battles._ Whether it be in the textile mills of Lawrence and other mills of New England where men, women and children are ground into dividends to gorge a heartless, mill-owning plutocracy; or whether it be in the lumber and railroad camps of the far Northwest where men are herded like cattle and insulted, beaten and deported for peaceably asserting the legal right to organize; or in the conflict with the civilized savages of San Diego where men who dare be known as members of the Industrial Workers of the World are kidnaped, tortured and murdered in cold blood in the name of law and order; or in the city of Chicago where that gorgon of capitalism, the newspaper trust, is bent upon crushing and exterminating the pressmen's union; or along the Harriman lines of railroad where the slaves of the shops have been driven to the alternative of striking or sacrificing the last vestige of their manhood and self-respect, in all these battles of the workers against their capitalist oppressors the Socialist party has the most vital concern and is freely pledged to render them all the assistance in its power. These are the battles of the workers in the war of the classes and the battles of the workers, wherever and however fought, are always and everywhere the battles of the Socialist party. When Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were seized by the brutal mine owners of the western states and by their prostitute press consigned to the gallows, the Socialist party lost not an hour in going to the rescue, and but for its prompt and vigorous action and the resolute work of its press another monstrous crime against the working class would have blackened the pages of American history. _Persecution of Loyal Leaders._ In the unceasing struggle of the workers with their exploiters the truly loyal leaders are always marked for persecution. Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti would not now be in jail awaiting trial for murder had they betrayed the slaves of the Lawrence mills. They were staunch and true; their leadership made for industrial unity and victory, and for this reason alone the enraged and defeated mill-owners are now bent upon sending them to the electric chair. These fellow-workers of ours who are now on trial for murder are not one whit more guilty of the crime with which they are charged than I am. The man who committed the murder was a policeman, an officer of the law; the victim of the crime was as usual a striker, a wage-slave, a poor working girl. Ettor and Giovannitti were two miles from the scene at the time and when the news came to them they broke into tears--and these two workingmen who would have protected that poor girl's life with their own are now to be tried for her murder. Was ever anything in all the annals of heartless persecution more monstrous than this? Have the mill-owners gone stark mad? Have they in their brutal rage become stone-blind? Whatever the answer may be, it is certain that the Socialist party and organized labor in general will never see these two innocent workers murdered in cold blood, nor will their agitation and protest cease until they have been given their freedom. _The Campaign Now Opening._ In the great campaign now pending the people, especially the toilers and producers, will be far more receptive to the truths of Socialism than ever before. Since the last national campaign they have had four years more of capitalism, of political corruption, industrial stagnation, low wages and high prices, and many, very many of them have come to realize that these conditions are inherent in the capitalist system and that it is vain and foolish to hope for relief through the political parties of that system. These people have had their eyes opened in spite of themselves. They have been made to see what the present system means to them and to their children, and they have been forced to turn against it by the sheer instinct of self-preservation. They look abroad and they see this fair land being rapidly converted into the private preserves of a plutocracy as brutal and defiant as any privileged class that ever ruled in a foreign despotism; they see machinery and misery go hand in hand; they see thousands idle and poverty-stricken all about them while a few are glutted to degeneracy; they see troops of child-slaves ground into luxuries for the rich while their fathers have become a drug on the labor market; they see parasites in palaces and automobiles and honest workers in hovels or tramping the ties; they see the politics of the ruling corporations dripping with corruption and putridity; they see vice and crime rampant, prostitution eating like a cancer, and insanity and disease sapping the mental and physical powers of the body social, and involuntarily they cry out in horror and protest, THIS IS ENOUGH! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE! And they turn with loathing and disgust from the Republican and Democratic parties under whose joint and several maladministration these appalling conditions have been brought upon the country. The message of Socialism, which a few years ago was spurned by these people, falls today upon eager ears and receptive minds. Their prejudice has melted away. They are now prepared to cast their fortunes with the only political party that proposes a change of system and the only party that has a right to appeal to the intelligence of the people. _First Socialist Congressman._ The political beginning of the Socialist party in this country is now distinctly recognized by its most implacable enemies. A single Socialist congressman has been sufficient to arouse the whole nation to the vital issue of Socialism which confronts it. Victor L. Berger as the first and until now the only representative of labor, has had the power, single-handed and alone, to compel the respectful consideration of the American congress, for the first time in its history, of the rights and interests of the working class. To be sure the capitalists do not relish this and so they have consolidated the Republican and Democratic forces in Berger's district to defeat him, but the rising tide of Socialism will overwhelm them both and not only triumphantly re-elect Berger but a score of others to make the next congress resound with the demands of the working class. Now is the time for the workers of this nation to develop and assert their political as well as their economic power, to demonstrate their unity and solidarity. Back up the economic victory at Lawrence with an overwhelming victory at the ballot box! Sweep the minions of the mill-owners from power and fill every office from the ranks of the workers! Deliver a crushing rebuke to the hireling-officials of San Diego by a united vote of the workers that will rescue the city from the rule of the degenerates and place it forever under a working class administration. _The Only Democratic Party._ The Socialist party is the only party of the people, the only party opposed to the rule of the plutocracy, the only truly democratic party in the world. It is the only party in which women have equal rights with men, the only party which denies membership to a man who refuses to recognize woman as his political equal, the only party that is pledged to strike the fetters of economic and political slavery from womanhood and pave the way for a race of free women. The Socialist party is the only party that stands a living protest against the monstrous crime of child labor. It is the only party whose triumph will sound once and forever the knell of child slavery. There is no hope under the present decaying system. The worker who votes the Republican or Democratic ticket does worse than throw his vote away. He is a deserter of his class and his own worst enemy, though he may be in blissful ignorance of the fact that he is false to himself and his fellow-workers and that sooner or later he must reap what he has sown. _Wages and Cost of Living._ The latest census reports, covering the year 1909, show that the 6,615,046 workers in manufactories in the United States were paid an average wage of $519 for the year, an increase of not quite 9 per cent in five years, and an increase of 21 per cent in ten years, but the average cost of living increased more than 40 per cent during the same time, so that in point of fact the wages of these workers have been and are being steadily reduced in the progressive development of production under the capitalist system, and this in spite of all the resistance that has been or can be brought to bear by the federated craft unions. Here we are brought face to face with the imperative need of the revolutionary industrial union, embracing all the workers and fighting every battle for increased wages, shorter hours and better conditions with a solid and united front, while at the same time pressing steadily forward in harmonious co-operation and under the restraints of self-discipline, developing the latent abilities of the workers, increasing their knowledge, and fitting them for the mastery and control of industry when the victorious hosts of labor conquer the public powers and transfer the title-deeds of the mines and mills and factories from the idle plutocrats to the industrial workers to be operated for the common good. _Industrial Unity._ If the printing trades were organized on the basis of industrial unionism the spectacle of local unions in the same crafts pitted against each other to their mutual destruction would not be presented to us in the City of Chicago, and the capitalist newspaper trust would not now have its heel upon the neck of the union pressmen. For this lamentable state of affairs the craft union and William Randolph Hearst, its chief patron and promoter, are entirely responsible. The Socialist party presents the farm workers as well as the industrial workers with a platform and program which must appeal to their intelligence and command their support. It points out to them clearly why their situation is hopeless under capitalism, how they are robbed and exploited, and why they are bound to make common cause with the industrial workers in the mills and factories of the cities, along the railways and in the mines in the struggle for emancipation. The education, organization and co-operation of the workers, the entire body of them, is the conscious aim and the self-imposed task of the Socialist party. Persistently, unceasingly and enthusiastically this great work is being accomplished. It is the working class coming into consciousness of itself, and no power on earth can prevail against it in the hour of its complete awakening. _Socialism Is Inevitable._ The laws of evolution have decreed the downfall of the capitalist system. The handwriting is upon the wall in letters of fire. The trusts are transforming industry and next will come the transformation of the trusts by the people. Socialism is inevitable. Capitalism is breaking down and the new order evolving from it is clearly the Socialist commonwealth. The present evolution can only culminate in industrial and social democracy, and in alliance therewith and preparing the way for the peaceable reception of the new order, is the Socialist movement, arousing the workers and educating and fitting them to take possession of their own when at last the struggle of the centuries has been crowned with triumph. In the coming social order, based upon the social ownership of the means of life and the production of wealth for the use of all instead of the private profit of the few, for which the Socialist party stands in this and every other campaign, peace will prevail and plenty for all will abound in the land. The brute struggle for existence will have ended, and the millions of exploited poor will be rescued from the skeleton clutches of poverty and famine. Prostitution and the white slave traffic, fostered and protected under the old order, will be a horror of the past. The social conscience and the social spirit will prevail. Society will have a new birth, and the race a new destiny. There will be work for all, leisure for all, and the joys of life for all. Competition there will be, not in the struggle for existence, but to excel in good work and in social service. Every child will then have an equal chance to grow up in health and vigor of body and mind and an equal chance to rise to its full stature and achieve success in life. _Socialist Ideals._ These are the ideals of the Socialist party and to these ideals it has consecrated all its energies and all its powers. The members of the Socialist party _are_ the party and their collective will is the supreme law. The Socialist party is organized and ruled from the bottom up. There is no boss and there never can be unless the party deserts its principles and ceases to be a Socialist party. The party is supported by a dues-paying membership. It is the only political party that is so supported. Each member has not only an equal voice but is urged to take an active part in all the party councils. Each local meeting place is an educational center. The party relies wholly upon the power of education, knowledge, and mutual understanding. It buys no votes and it makes no canvass in the red-light districts. The press of the party is the most vital factor in its educational propaganda and the workers are everywhere being aroused to the necessity of building up a working class press to champion their cause and to discuss current issues from their point of view for the enlightenment of the masses. _This Is Our Year._ Comrades and friends, the campaign before us gives us our supreme opportunity to reach the American people. They have but to know the true meaning of Socialism to accept its philosophy and the true mission of the Socialist party to give it their support. Let us all unite as we never have before to place the issue of Socialism squarely before the masses. For years they have been deceived, misled and betrayed, and they are now hungering for the true gospel of relief and the true message of emancipation. This is our year in the United States! Socialism is in the very air we breathe. It is the grandest shibboleth that ever inspired men and women to action in this world. In the horizon of labor it shines as a new-risen sun and it is the hope of all humanity. Onward, comrades, onward in the struggle, until Triumphant Socialism proclaims an Emancipated Race and a New World! THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. Campaign Speech, Pabst Park, Milwaukee, Wis., July 21, 1912. Friends, Fellow-Socialists and Fellow-Workers: The existing order of things is breaking down. The great forces underlying society are steadily at work. The old order has had its day and all the signs point to an impending change. Society is at once being destroyed and re-created. The struggle in which we are engaged today is a struggle of economic classes. The supremacy is now held by the capitalist class, who are combined in trusts and control the powers of government. The middle class is struggling desperately to hold its ground against the inroads of its trustified and triumphant competitors. This war between the great capitalists who are organized in trusts and fortified by the powers of government and the smaller capitalists who constitute the middle class, is one of extermination. The fittest, that is to say the most powerful, will survive. This war gives rise to a variety of issues of which the tariff is the principal one, and these issues are defined in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties. With this war between capitalists for supremacy in their own class and the issues arising from it, the working class have nothing to do, and if they are foolish enough to allow themselves to be drawn into these battles of their masters, as they have so often done in the past, they must continue to suffer the consequences of their folly. _Parties Express Economic Interests._ Let us clearly recognize the forces that are undermining both of the old capitalist parties, creating a new issue, and driving the working class into a party of their own to do battle with their oppressors in the struggle for existence. Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists. The Republican and Democratic parties are alike threatened with destruction. Their day of usefulness is past and they among them who see the handwriting on the wall and call themselves "Progressives" and "Insurgents," are struggling in vain to adjust these old parties to the new conditions. _Two Economic Classes._ Broadly speaking, there are but two economic classes and the ultimate struggle will narrow down to two political parties. To the extent that the workers unite in their own party, the Socialist party, the capitalists, large and small, are driven into one and the same party. This has happened already in a number of local instances, notably in the City of Milwaukee. Here there is no longer a Republican or Democratic party. These have merged in the same party and it is a capitalist party, by whatever name it may be known. Temporarily this united capitalist party, composed of the two old ones, may stem the tide of Socialist advance, but nothing more clearly reveals the capitalist class character of the Republican and Democratic parties to their own undoing and the undoing of the capitalist system they represent. The great capitalists are all conservatives, "standpatters"; they have a strangle-hold upon the situation with no intention of relaxing their grip. Taft and Roosevelt are their candidates. It may be objected that Roosevelt is a "Progressive." That is sheer buncombe. Roosevelt was president almost eight years and his record is known. When he was in office and had the power, he did none of the things, nor attempted to do any of the things he is now talking about so wildly. On the contrary, a more servile functionary to the trusts than Theodore Roosevelt never sat in the presidential chair. _La Follette vs. Roosevelt._ Senator La Follette now makes substantially this same charge against Roosevelt, but by some strange oversight the senator did not discover that Roosevelt's presidential record was a trust record until after Roosevelt threw him down in the "Progressive" scramble for the Republican nomination. When Senator La Follette supposed he had Roosevelt's backing, he pronounced him "the greatest man in the world," and it was only after he fell victim to Roosevelt's duplicity that he made the discovery that Roosevelt had always been the tool of the trusts and the enemy of the people. _Test of Parties._ There is one infallible test that fixes the status of a political party and its candidates. Who finances them? With this test applied to Theodore Roosevelt we have no trouble in locating him. He is above all "a practical man." He was practical in allowing the steel trust to raid the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; he was practical when he legalized the notorious "Alton Steal"; he was practical when he had Harriman raise $240,000 for his campaign fund, and he is practical now in having the steel trust and the harvester trust, who made an anteroom of the White House when he was president, pour out their slush funds by millions to put him back in the White House and keep him there. _Financed by the Trusts._ Taft and Roosevelt, and the Republican party of which they are the candidates, are all financed by the trusts, and is it necessary to add that the trusts also consist of practical men and that they do not finance a candidate or a party they do not control? Is the man not foolish, to the verge of being feeble-minded, who imagines that great trust magnates, such as Perkins, McCormick and Munsey, are flooding the country with Roosevelt money because he is the champion of progressive principles and the friend of the common people? The truth is that if the Bull Moose candidate dared to permit an itemized publication of his campaign contributions in his present mad and disgraceful pursuit of the presidency, as he has been so often challenged to do by Senator La Follette, it would paralyze him and scandalize the nation. Roosevelt must stand upon the record he made when he was president and had the power, and not upon his empty promises as a ranting demagogue and a vote-seeking politician. For the very reason that the trusts are pouring out their millions to literally buy his nomination and election and force him into the White House for a third term, and if possible for life, the people should rise in their might and repudiate him as they never have repudiated a recreant official who betrayed his trust. So much for the Republican party, led by Lincoln half a century ago as the party of the people in the struggle for the overthrow of chattel slavery, and now being scuttled by Taft and Roosevelt in base servility to the plutocracy. _The Democratic Party._ The Democratic party, like its Republican ally, is a capitalist party, the only difference being that it represents the minor divisions of the capitalist class. It is true that there are some plutocrats and trust magnates in the Democratic party, but as a rule it is composed of the smaller capitalists who have been worsted by the larger ones and are now demanding that the trusts be destroyed and, in effect, that the laws of industrial evolution be suspended. The Democratic party, like the Republican party, is financed by the capitalist class. Belmont, Ryan, Roger Sullivan, Taggart and Hinky Dink are liberal contributors to its fund. The Tammany organization in New York, notorious for its corruption and for its subserviency to the powers that rule in capitalist society, is one of the controlling factors in the Democratic party. Woodrow Wilson is the candidate of the Democratic party for president. He was seized upon as a "progressive"; as a man who would appeal to the common people, but he never could have been nominated without the votes controlled by Tammany and the "predatory interests" so fiercely denounced in the convention by William Jennings Bryan. It is true that Woodrow Wilson was not the first choice of Belmont, Ryan, Murphy and the Tammany corruptionists, but he was nevertheless satisfactory to them or they would not have agreed to his nomination, and since the convention it is quite apparent that Wilson has a working agreement and a perfect understanding with the predatory interests which Bryan sought to scourge from the convention. _Bryan and Wilson._ In his speech before the delegates denouncing Ryan, Belmont and Murphy, Bryan solemnly declared that no candidate receiving their votes and the votes of Murphy's "ninety wax figures" could have his support. Woodrow Wilson received these votes and without these and other votes controlled by "the interests" he could not have been nominated, and if Bryan now supports him he simply stultifies himself before the American people. Mr. Wilson is no more the candidate of the working class than is Mr. Taft or Mr. Roosevelt. Neither one of them has ever been identified with the working class, has ever associated with the working class, except when their votes were wanted, or would dare to avow himself the candidate of the working class. When the recent strikes occurred at Perth Amboy and other industrial centers in New Jersey, Governor Woodrow Wilson ordered the militia out to shoot down the strikers just as Governor Theodore Roosevelt ordered out the soldiers to murder the strikers at Croton Dam, N. Y., for demanding the enforcement of the state laws against the contractors. _They Reek With Corruption._ Both the Republican and Democratic parties reek with corruption in their servility to the capitalist class, and both are torn with strife in their mad scramble for the spoils of office. The Democratic party has had little excuse for existence since the Civil War, and its utter impotency to deal with present conditions was made glaringly manifest during its brief lease of power under the Cleveland administration. Should this party succeed to national power once more, seething as it is with conflicting elements which are held together by the prospect of official spoils, its career as a national party would be brought to an early close by self-destruction. The Republican convention at Chicago and the Democratic convention at Baltimore were composed of professional politicians, office-holders, office-seekers, capitalists, retainers, and swarms of parasites and mercenaries of all descriptions. There were no workingmen in either convention. They were not fit to be there. All they are fit for is to march in the mud, yell themselves hoarse, and ratify the choice of their masters on election day. The working class was not represented in the Republican convention at Chicago or the Democratic convention at Baltimore. Those were the political conventions of the capitalist class and the few flattering platform phrases in reference to labor were incorporated for the sole purpose of catching the votes of the working class. Let the American workers remember that they are not fit to sit as delegates in a Republican or Democratic national convention; that they are not fit to write a Republican or Democratic national platform; that all they are fit for is to elect the candidates of their masters to office so that when they go out on strike against starvation they may be shot dead in their tracks as the reward of their servility to their masters and their treason to themselves. _Vital Issue Ignored._ The vital issue before the country and the world is not touched, nor even mentioned in the Republican or Democratic platforms. Wage-slavery under capitalism, the legalized robbery of the workers of what is produced by their labor, is the fundamental crime against modern humanity, but there is no room for the mention of this vital fact, this living issue in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties. They continue to babble about the tariff and other inconsequential matters to obscure the real issue and wheedle the workers into voting them into power once more. These parties have been in power all these years, why have they not settled the tariff and the currency and such other matters as make up their platform pledges? _Let Them Act Now._ While the Republican convention was in session at Chicago and while the Democratic convention was in session at Baltimore, the Republican and Democratic congress was also in session at Washington. These parties already have the power to make good their promises, then why do they not exercise that power to redeem their pledges and afford relief to the people? In other words, why do not the Republican and Democratic parties perform at Washington instead of promising at Chicago and Baltimore? How many more years of power do they require to demonstrate that they are the parties of the capitalist class and that they never intend to legislate in the interest of the working class, or provide relief for the suffering people. The Republican and Democratic platforms are filled with empty platitudes and meaningless phrases, but they are discreetly silent about the millions of unemployed, about the starvation wages of factory slaves, about the women and children who are crushed, debased and slowly tortured to death by the moloch of capitalism, about the white slave traffic, about the bitter poverty of the masses and their hopeless future, and about every other vital question which is worthy of an instant's consideration by any intelligent human being. _The Socialist Party._ In contrast with these impotent, corrupt and senile capitalist parties, without principles and without ideals, stands the virile young working class party, the international Socialist party of the world. The convention which nominated its candidates and wrote its platform at Indianapolis was a working class convention. The Socialist party is the only party which honestly represents the working class in this campaign and the only party that has a moral right to appeal to the allegiance and support of the workers and producers of the nation. I am not asking you to give your votes to this party but only that you read its platform, study its program, and satisfy yourselves as to what its principles are, what it stands for, and what it expects to accomplish. The Socialist party being the political expression of the rising working class stands for the absolute overthrow of the existing capitalist system and for the reorganization of society into an industrial and social democracy. _Death to Wage-Slavery._ This will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it will mean an end to wage-slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the unemployed; it will mean an end to the poverty of the masses, the prostitution of womanhood, and the murder of childhood. It will mean the beginning of a new era of civilization; the dawn of a happier day for the children of men. It will mean that this earth is for those who inhabit it and wealth for those who produce it. If will mean society organized upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge a privileged few. It will mean that there shall be work for the workers and that all shall be workers, and it will also mean that there shall be leisure for the workers and that all shall enjoy it. It will mean that women shall be the comrades and equals of men, sharing with them on equal terms the opportunities as well as the responsibilities, the benefits as well as the burdens of civilized life. The Socialist party, the first and only international party, is rising grandly to power all around the world. In every land beneath the sun it is the party of the dispossessed, the impoverished and the heavy-laden. It is the twentieth century party of human emancipation. It stands for a world-wide democracy, for the freedom of every man, woman and child, and for the civilization of all mankind. The Socialist party buys no votes. It scorns to traffic in ignorance. It realizes that education, knowledge and the powers these confer are the only means of achieving a decided and permanent victory for the people. _A Clean Campaign._ The campaign of the Socialist party is a clean campaign; it is essentially educational; an appeal to intelligence, to manliness, to womanliness, and to all things of good report. The workers are opening their eyes at last. They are beginning to see the light. They are taking heart of hope because they are becoming conscious of their power. They are rallying to the standard of the Socialist party because they know that this is their party and that here they are master, and here they sit at their own political hearthstone and fireside. No longer can the workers be pitted against each other in capitalist parties by designing politicians to their mutual undoing. They have made the discovery that they have brains as well as hands, that they can think as well as work, and that they do not need politicians to advise them how to vote, nor masters to rob them of the fruits of their labor. Slowly but surely there is being established the economic and political unity and solidarity of the workers of the world. The Socialist party is the political expression of that unity and solidarity. _Unity the Keynote._ I appeal to the workers assembled here today in the name of the Socialist party. I appeal to you as one of you to unite and make common cause in this great struggle. To the extent that you have made progress, to the extent that you have developed power, and to the extent that you have achieved victory, to that extent you are indebted to your own class-conscious efforts and your own industrial and political organization. To the extent that you lack power, to the extent that you are defeated and kept in bondage, to that extent you lack in economic and political solidarity. Rightly organized and soundly disciplined on both the economic and political fields, the working class can prevail against the world. The economic organization and the political party of the working class must both be revolutionary and they must work together hand in hand. Industrial unionism means industrial solidarity, but craft unionism means division and disaster. The printing trades pitted against each other in Chicago in their struggle with the newspaper trust furnish a fatal illustration of the weakness and treachery of craft division in the present industrial conflict. _The Workers of Milwaukee._ The workers of Milwaukee have to an exceptional extent overcome the obstacles to unity and have worked together with signal success on both the economic and political fields. I appeal to them in the name of the future to get closer and closer together in the bonds of economic and political solidarity. If they do this their complete and final victory is assured. The Socialist party of Milwaukee has marched steadily to the front since it first began its career. Its latest defeat was its greatest victory. It forced the Republicans and Democrats to unmask and to fly into each other's arms. There is no Republican or Democratic party in Milwaukee. They are dead, and in the coming election their remains, masquerading as a party of the people, will be buried by the Socialist party. _The First Congressman._ The Socialists of Milwaukee will always have the distinction of having elected the first representative of the working class to the congress of the United States. Victor L. Berger has made good at Washington. For the first time since he is a member the voice of labor has been distinctly heard on the floors of congress, and in every emergency when the working class needed a champion at the seat of power, they found him ready and eager to espouse their cause and defend their interests. It was to defeat Berger's re-election that the Republicans and Democrats in Milwaukee combined, just as they did to defeat Emil Seidel for mayor and drive the Socialist administration from power. But Berger is making a record at Washington and the Socialist administration made a record in Milwaukee that will stand the test of time, and if the workers now rally their forces in support of Berger, he will be triumphantly re-elected against the combined opposition of the old parties, and in the next municipal election the City of Milwaukee will be permanently restored to a Socialist administration. Comrades, you are face to face with the greatest struggle you have ever had since the Socialist party was organized. You are now to be tested in every fiber as to your fitness to hold the ground you have gained and to press on to greater victories. May you be permeated to the core with the spirit of the Socialist movement and enter the fray resolved that victory shall be inscribed upon your banners. _Ettor and Giovannitti._ I must not fail in the presence of all these workers to speak of Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, the leaders of the Lawrence strike, who are in prison and soon to be tried upon the charge of murder, of which they are as innocent as if they had never been born. This infamous charge has been trumped up against them by the defeated mill owners for no other reason than that they stood up bravely and fought successfully against great odds, the battles of the wage-slaves of the mills. Unless the workers unite in support of these two leaders they may be sent to the electric chair. Should we suffer these brave comrades to fall victims to such a monstrous crime, it would be a foul and indelible blot upon the whole labor movement. Let us arouse the workers of the nation in their behalf and prove to them when their trial takes place that we are as true to them as they were to the wage-slaves in the industrial battle at Lawrence. _Comrades, this is our year!_ Let us rise to our full stature, summon our united powers, and strike a blow for freedom that will be felt around the world! CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM. Campaign Speech, Lyceum Theatre, Fergus Falls, Minn., August 27, 1912. Friends and Fellow-Workers: The spirit of our time is revolutionary and growing, more so every day. A new social order is struggling into existence. The old economic foundation of society is breaking up and the social fabric is beginning to totter. The capitalist system is doomed. The signs of change confront us upon every hand. Social changes are preceded by agitation and unrest among the masses. We are today in the transition period between decaying capitalism and growing Socialism. The old system is being shaken to its foundations by the forces underlying it and its passing is but a question of time. The new system that is to succeed the old is developing within the old and its outline is clearly revealed in its spirit of mutualism and its co-operative manifestations. For countless ages the world has been a vast battlefield and the struggle for existence a perpetual conflict. Primitive peoples were compelled to fight nature to extort from her the means of livelihood. Since the forces of nature have been conquered and nations have become civilized the struggle of men is no longer to overcome nature but with one another for existence. In this struggle which has appealed to the basest and not to the best in man the cunning few have triumphed and now have the masses at their mercy. These few are closely allied in, their economic mastery as they are also in their control of the political machinery. Their money and their mercenaries controlled the Republican convention at Chicago, wrote its platform and dictated its nominees, and the same is true of the Democratic convention at Baltimore. As for the so-called Progressive convention, it is sufficient to say that there is no attempt to conceal the fact that it was financed and controlled by three conspicuous representatives of the plutocracy which largely owns and rules the land. Political parties are responsive to the interests of those who finance them. This is the infallible test of their character and applied to the Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties, these parties stand forth as the several political expressions of the several divisions of the capitalist class. The funds of all these parties are furnished by the capitalist class for the reason, and only for the reason, that they represent the interests of that class. Professional politicians of whatever party are very much alike and in one respect at least they are like workingmen, they serve the interests of their masters, and for the same reason. The patriotism of professional politicians is reflected in the material interests of the master class and this fact has become so apparent that their noisy theatricals have lost their magic and now excite but the scorn and derision of intelligent working men and women. The Republican, Democratic and Progressive conventions were composed in the main and controlled entirely by professional politicians in the service of the ruling class. There were no working men and no working women at the Republican convention, the Democratic convention, or the Progressive convention. These were clearly not working class conventions. Ladies and gentlemen of leisure were in evidence at them all. Wage-slaves would not have been tolerated in their company. They represented the wealth and culture and refinement of society and they were there to applaud and smile approval upon the professional politicians and patriots who were doing their work. But there was a fourth convention held this year which did not attract the wealthy and leisure classes. It was a convention great in purpose, though not big in numbers. This convention was held at Indianapolis and represented the working class. The delegates who composed this convention were chosen by the workers and paid by the workers to represent the interest of the workers and to clear the way for the workers in the present campaign. The Socialist convention was the only democratic convention and the only progressive convention held this year; the only convention that represented a dues-paying party membership and whose acts before becoming effective must be ratified by a referendum vote of the party. The Socialist party is the only party in this campaign that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that boldly avows itself the party of the working class and its purpose the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the nation's industries, the toiling masses will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. To tell them that juggling with the tariff will change this beastly and disgraceful condition is to insult their intelligence. The professional politicians who have been harping upon this string since infant industries have become giant monopolies know better. Their stock in trade is the credulity of the masses. The exploited wage-slaves of free trade England and of the highly protected United States are the victims of the same capitalism; in England the politicians tell them they are suffering because they have no protective tariff and in the United States they tell them that the tariff is the cause of their poverty. And this is the kind of a confidence game the professional politicians have been playing with the workers of all nations all these years. To keep them in subjection by playing upon their ignorance is the rule that governs their campaigns for votes among the workers. The "issues" upon which they keep the workers divided into hostile camps are of their own making. Since the foundation of the government one or the other of these capitalist parties has been in power and under their administration the working and producing millions have been reduced to poverty and slavery. Professor Scott Nearing has shown in his work on the wages of American workers that half of the adult males of the United States are earning less than $500; that three-quarters of them are earning less than $600 a year; that nine-tenths of them are receiving less than $900 a year, while 10 per cent only receive more than that figure. Professor Nearing also shows the starvation wages for which women are compelled to work in the present system. One-fifth of the whole number of women workers receive less than $200 per year; three-fifths receive less than $325; nine-tenths receive less than $500. Only one-twentieth of the women employed are paid more than $600 per year. These figures bear out the report of the Chicago vice commission to the effect that the low wages of women and girls go hand in hand with prostitution. Despite all attempts to control the white slave traffic, which is now organized as one of the great profit-extorting trusts, along with the rest of the trusts, prostitution, like a terrible cancer, is eating out the very heart of our civilization. And in the presence of this appalling condition the professional politicians prattle about tariff revision and indulge in silly twaddle about currency reform and regulation of the trusts. The Socialist party is absolutely the only party which faces conditions as they are and declares unhesitatingly that it has a definite and concrete plan and program for dealing with these conditions. The Socialist party as the party of the exploited workers in the mills and mines, on the railways and on the farms, the workers of both sexes and all races and colors, the working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people and in fact THE PEOPLE, demands that the nation's industries shall be taken over by the nation and that the nation's workers shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people. Private ownership and competition have had their day. The Socialist party stands for social ownership and co-operation. The one is Capitalism; the other Socialism. The one industrial despotism, the other industrial democracy. The Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties all stand for private ownership and competition. The Socialist party alone stands for social ownership and co-operation. The Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties believe in regulating the trusts; the Socialist party believes in owning them, so that all the people may get the benefit of them instead of a few being made plutocrats and the masses impoverished. The Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties uphold the wage system; the Socialist party demands its overthrow. It is under the wage system that the 22,000 operatives in the cotton and woolen mills at Lawrence, Massachusetts, have been compelled to work, or slave rather, according to Commissioner Neill, for an average of $8.76 per family. To earn this average wage, according to the commissioner's official report, requires the combined service of father, mother and three children. This is slavery with a vengeance. The mill is a sweat-hole; the hovel a breeding-pen. Home there is none. And there never will be under the wage system. What have the Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties to offer to the wage-slaves of Lawrence, to the wage-slaves of the steel trust, to the wage-slaves of the mines, to the wage-slaves of the lumber and turpentine camps of the South, the wage-slaves of the railroads, the millions of them, male and female, black and white and yellow and brown, who produce all this nation's wealth, support its government and conserve its civilization, and without whom industry would be paralyzed and the nation helpless? What, I ask, has any of these capitalist parties, or all of them combined, for the working and producing class in this campaign? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. These parties are bidding stronger than ever for the labor vote this year. That vote is now not so easily delivered as in the past. The competition for the votes of the wage-workers is the distinguishing feature of the present campaign. Thousands of workers are now doing their own thinking. They have discovered that workers are as much out of place in a capitalist party as capitalists are in a workers' party. They have also found that politics express class interests and that the interests of those who make the wealth and those who take it are not identical. That is where the Socialist party comes in and where the workers come in the Socialist party. The working class is in politics this year. It has always been in politics for its master; this year it is in politics for itself. The most promising fact in the world today is the fact that labor is organizing its power; its economic power and its political power. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of Socialism and is what the Socialist party stands for in this campaign. We demand the machinery of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the complete enfranchisement of women and the equal rights of all the people regardless of race, color, creed or nationality. We demand that child labor shall cease once and forever and that all children born into the world shall have equal opportunity to grow up, to be educated, to have healthy bodies and trained minds, and to develop and freely express the best there is in them in mental, moral and physical achievement. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the earth for all the people. CONTENTS MISCELLANY Page The Old Umbrella Mender 9 The Secret of Efficient Expression 15 Jesus, the Supreme Leader 22 Susan B. Anthony 29 Louis Tikas 33 The Little Lords of Love 37 The Coppock Bros 39 The Social Spirit 51 Roosevelt and His Regime 55 Industrial and Social Democracy 73 A Message to the Children 76 Social Reform 89 Danger Ahead 89 Pioneer Women in America 95 SPEECHES Unity and Victory 107 Political Appeal to American Workers 132 The Fight for Freedom 152 Capitalism and Socialism 167 
31810	----	The Everett Massacre By Walker C. Smith A History of the Class Struggle in the Lumber Industry [Illustration: Decoration] I. W. W. Publishing Bureau Chicago, Ill. This book is dedicated to those loyal soldiers of the great class war who were murdered on the steamer Verona at Everett, Washington, in the struggle for free speech and free assembly and the right to organize: FELIX BARAN, HUGO GERLOT, GUSTAV JOHNSON, JOHN LOONEY, ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ, and those unknown martyrs whose bodies were swept out to unmarked ocean graves on Sunday, November Fifth, 1916. PRINTED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL RECRUITING UNION I. W. W. PREFACE In ten minutes of seething, roaring hell at the Everett dock on the afternoon of Sunday, November 5, 1916, there was more of the age-old superstition regarding the identity of interests between capital and labor torn from the minds of the working people of the Pacific Northwest than could have been cleared away by a thousand lecturers in a year. It is with regret that we view the untimely passing of the seven or more Fellow Workers who were foully murdered on that fateful day, but if the working class of the world can view beyond their mangled forms the hideous brutality that was the cause of their deaths, they will not have died in vain. This book is published with the hope that the tragedy at Everett may serve to set before the working class so clear a view of capitalism in all its ruthless greed that another such affair will be impossible. C. E. PAYNE. With grateful acknowledgments to C. E. Payne for valuable assistance in preparing the subject matter, to Harry Feinberg in consultation, to Marie B. Smith in revising manuscript, and to J. J. Kneisle for photographs. EVERETT, NOVEMBER FIFTH By Charles Ashleigh ["* * * and then the Fellow Worker died, singing 'Hold the Fort' * * *"--From the report of a witness.] Song on his lips, he came; Song on his lips, he went;-- This be the token we bear of him,-- Soldier of Discontent! Out of the dark they came; out of the night Of poverty and injury and woe,-- With flaming hope, their vision thrilled to light,-- Song on their lips, and every heart aglow; They came, that none should trample Labor's right To speak, and voice her centuries of pain. Bare hands against the master's armored might!-- A dream to match the tools of sordid gain! And then the decks went red; and the grey sea Was written crimsonly with ebbing life. The barricade spewed shots and mockery And curses, and the drunken lust of strife. Yet, the mad chorus from that devil's host,-- Yea, all the tumult of that butcher throng,-- Compound of bullets, booze and coward boast,-- Could not out-shriek one dying worker's song! Song on his lips, he came; Song on his lips, he went;-- This be the token we bear of him,-- Soldier of Discontent! [Illustration: Released Free Speech prisoners who visited the graves of their murdered Fellow Workers at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, May 12, 1917.] The Everett Massacre CHAPTER I. THE LUMBER KINGDOM Perhaps the real history of the rise of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest will never be written. It will not be set down in these pages. A fragment--vividly illustrative of the whole, yet only a fragment--is all that is reproduced herein. But if that true history be written, it will tell no tales of "self-made men" who toiled in the woods and mills amid poverty and privation and finally rose to fame and affluence by their own unaided effort. No Abraham Lincoln will be there to brighten its tarnished pages. The story is a more sordid one and it has to do with the theft of public lands; with the bribery and corruption of public officials; with the destruction and "sabotage," if the term may be so misused, of the property of competitors; with base treachery and double-dealing among associated employers; and with extortion and coercion of the actual workers in the lumber industry by any and every means from the "robbersary" company stores to the commission of deliberate murder. No sooner had the larger battles among the lumber barons ended in the birth of the lumber trust than there arose a still greater contest for control of the industry. Lumberjack engaged lumber baron in a struggle for industrial supremacy; on the part of the former a semi-blind groping toward the light of freedom and for the latter a conscious striving to retain a seat of privilege. Nor can the full history of that struggle be written here, for the end is not yet, but no one who has read the past rightly can doubt the ultimate outcome. That history, when finally written, will recite tales of heroism and deeds of daring and unassuming acts of bravery on the part of obscure toilers beside which the vaunted prowess of famous men will seem tawdry by comparison. Today the perspective is lacking. Time alone will vindicate the rebellious workers in their fight for freedom. From all this travail and pain is to be born an Industrial Democracy. The lumber industry dominated the whole life of the Northwest. The lumber trust had absolute sway in entire sections of the country and held the balance of power in many other places. It controlled Governors, Legislatures and Courts; directed Mayors and City Councils; completely owned Sheriffs and Deputies; and thru threats of foreclosure, blackmail, the blacklist and the use of armed force it dominated the press and pulpit and terrorized many other elements in each community. The sworn testimony in the greatest case in labor history bears out these statements. Out of their own mouths were the lumber barons and their tools condemned. For, let it be known, the great trial in Seattle, Wash., in the year 1917, was not a trial of Thomas H. Tracy and his co-defendants. It was a trial of the lumber trust, a trial of so-called "law and order," a trial of the existing method of production and exchange and the social relations that spring from it,--and the verdict was that Capitalism is guilty of Murder in the First Degree. To get even a glimpse into the deeper meaning of the case that developed from the conflict at Everett, Wash., it is necessary to know something of the lives of the migratory workers, something of the vital necessity of free speech to the working class and to all society for that matter, and also something about the basis of the lumber industry and the foundation of the city of Everett. The first two items very completely reveal themselves thru the medium of the testimony given by the witnesses for the defense, while the other matters are covered briefly here. The plundering of public lands was a part of the policy of the lumber trust. Large holdings were gathered together thru colonization schemes, whereby tracts of 160 acres were homesteaded by individuals with money furnished by the lumber operators. Often this meant the mere loaning of the individual's name, and in many instances the building of a home was nothing more than the nailing together of three planks. Other rich timber lands were taken up as mineral claims altho no trace of valuable ore existed within their confines. All this timber fell into the hands of the lumber trust. In addition to this there were large companies who logged for years on forty acre strips. This theft of timber on either side of a small holding is the basis of many a fortune and the possessors of this stolen wealth can be distinguished today by their extra loud cries for "law and order" when their employes in the woods and mills go on strike to add a few more pennies a day to their beggarly pittance. Altho cheaper than outright purchase from actual settlers, these methods of timber theft proved themselves quite costly and the public outcry they occasioned was not to the liking of the lumber barons. To facilitate the work of the lumber trust and at the same time placate the public, nothing better than the Forest Reserve could possibly have been devised. The establishment of the National Forest Reserves was one of the long steps taken in the United States in monopolizing both the land and the timber of the country. The first forest reserves were established February 22, 1898, when 22,000,000 acres were set aside as National Forests. Within the next eight years practically all the public forest lands in the United States that were of any considerable extent had been set off into these reserves, and by 1913 there had been over 291,000 square miles included within their confines.[1] This immense tract of country was withdrawn from the possibility of homestead entry at approximately the time that the Mississippi Valley and the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains had been settled and brought under private ownership. Whether the purpose was to put the small sawmills out of business can not be definitely stated, but the lumber trust has profited largely from the establishment of the forest reserves. So long as there was in the United States a large and open frontier to be had for the taking there could be no very prolonged struggle against an owning class. It has been easier for those having nothing to go but a little further and acquire property for themselves. But on coming to what had been the frontier and finding a forest reserve with range riders and guards on its boundaries to prevent trespassing; on looking back and seeing all land and opportunities taken; on turning again to the forest reserve and finding a foreman of the lumber trust within its borders offering wages in lieu of a home, it was inevitable that a conflict should occur. With the capitalistic system of industry in operation, the conflict between the landless homeseekers and the owners of the vast accumulations of capital would inevitably have taken place, but this clash has come at least a generation earlier because of the establishment of the National Forests than it otherwise would. The land now in reserves would furnish homes and comfortable livings for ten million people, and have absorbed the surplus population for another generation. It is also true that the establishment of the National Forests has been one of the vital factors that made the continued existence of the lumber trust possible. Prior to 1895 the shipments of lumber to the prairie states from west of the Rocky Mountains were very small, and of no effect on the domination of the lumber industry by the trust. Also, prior to that date but a small part of the valuable timber west of the Rocky Mountains had been brought under private ownership. But about this time the pioneer settlers began swarming over the Pacific Slope and taking the free government land as homesteads. As the timber land was taken up, floods of lumber from the Pacific Coast met the lumber of the trust on the great prairies. The lumber trust had looted the government land and the Indian reservations in the middle states of their timber, and had almost full control of the prairie markets until the lumber of the Pacific Slope began to arrive. In 1896 lumber from the Puget Sound was sold in Dakota for $16.00 per thousand feet, and it kept coming in a constantly increasing volume and of a better quality than the trust was shipping from the East. It was but natural that the trust should seek a means to stifle the constantly increasing competition from the homesteads of the West, and the means was found in the establishment of the National Forest Reserves. While the greater portion of North America was yet a wilderness, the giving of vast tracts of valuable land on the remote frontier to private individuals and companies could be accomplished. But at this time such a procedure would have been impossible, tho it was imperative for the life of the trust that the timber of the Pacific Slope should be withdrawn from the possibility of homestead entry. In order to carry out this scheme it was necessary to raise a cry of "Benefit to the Public" and make it appear that this new public policy was in the interest of future generations. The cry was raised that the public domain was being used for private gain, that the timber was being wastefully handled, that unnecessary amounts were being cut, that the future generations would find themselves without timber, that the watersheds were being denuded and that drought and floods would be the certain result, that the nation should receive a return for the timber that was taken, together with many other specious pleas. That the public domain was being used for private gain was in some instances true, but the vast majority of the timber land was being taken as homesteads, and thus taking the timber outside the control of the trust. That the timber was being wastefully handled was to some extent true, but this was inevitable in the development of a new industry in a new country, and so far as the Pacific Slope is concerned there is but little change from the methods of twenty years ago. That unnecessary amounts were being cut was sometimes true, but this served only to keep prices down, and from the standpoint of the trust was unpardonable on that account alone. The market is being supplied now as formerly, and with as much as it will take. The only means that has been used to restrict the amount cut has been to raise the price to about double what it was in 1896. The denuding of the watersheds of the continent goes on today the same as it did twenty-five years ago, the only consideration being whether there is a market for the timber. Some reforesting has been done, and some protection has been established for the prevention of fires, but these things have been much in the nature of an advertisement since the government has taken charge of the forests, and was done automatically by the homesteaders before the Reserves were established. There has never been any restriction in the amount of timber that any company could buy, and the more it wanted, the better chance it had of getting it. The nation is receiving some return from the sale of timber from the government land, but it is in the nature of a division of the spoils from a raid on the homes of the landless. When the Reserve were established, the Secretary of the Interior was empowered to "make rules and regulations for the occupancy and the use of the forests and preserve them from destruction." No attempt was made in the General Land Office to develop a technical forestry service. The purpose of the administration was mainly protection against trespass and fire. The methods of the administration were to see to it first that there were no trespassers. Fire protection came later. When the Reserves were established, people who were at the time living within their boundaries were compelled to submit the titles of their homesteads to the most rigid scrutiny, and many people who had complied with the spirit of the law were dispossessed on mere technicalities, while before the establishment of the Reserve system the spirit of the compliance with the homestead law was mainly considered, and very seldom the technicality. And while the Forestry Service was examining all titles to homesteads within the boundaries of the Reserve with the utmost care, the large lumbering companies were given the best of consideration, and were allowed all the timber they requested and a practically unlimited time to remove it. The system of dealing with the lumber trust has been most liberal on the part of the government. A company wanting several million feet of timber makes a request to the district office to have the timber of a certain amount and on a certain tract offered for sale. The Forestry Service makes an estimate of the minimum value of the timber as it stands in the tree and the amount of timber requested within that tract is then offered for sale at a given time, the bids to be sent in by mail and accompanied by certified checks. The bids must be at least as large as the minimum price set by the Forestry Service, and highest bidder is awarded the timber, on condition that he satisfies the Forestry Service that he is responsible and will conduct the logging according to rules and regulations. The system seems fair, and open to all, until the conditions are known. But among the large lumber companies there has never been any real competition for the possession of any certain tract of timber that was listed for sale by request. When one company has decided on asking for the allotment of any certain tract of timber, other companies operating within that forest seldom make bids on that tract. Any small company that is doing business in opposition to the trust companies, and may desire to bid on an advertised tract, even tho its bid may be greater than the bid of the trust company, will find its offer thrown out as being "not according to the Government specifications," or the company is "not financially responsible," or some other suave explanation for refusing to award the tract to the competing company. On the other hand, when a small company requests that some certain tract shall be listed for sale, it very frequently happens that one of the large companies that is commonly understood to be affiliated with the lumber trust will have a bid in for that tract that is slightly above that of the non-trust company, and the timber is solemnly awarded to "the highest bidder." When a company is awarded a tract of timber, the payment that is required is ten per cent of the purchase price at the time of making the award, and the balance is to be paid when the logs are on the landing, or practically when they can be turned into ready cash, thus requiring but a comparatively small outlay of money to obtain the timber. When the award is made, it is the policy of the Forestry Service to be on friendly terms with the customers, and the men who scale the logs and supervise the cutting are the ones who come into direct contact with the companies, and it is inevitable that to be on good terms with the foreman the supervision and scaling must be "satisfactory." Forestry Service men who have not been congenial with the foremen of the logging companies have been transferred to other places, and it is almost axiomatic that three transfers is the same as a discharge. The little work that is required of the companies in preventing fires is much more than offset by the fact that no homesteaders have small holdings within the area of their operations, either to interfere with logging or to compete with their small mills for the control of the lumber market. That the forest lands of the nation were being denuded, and that this would cause droughts and floods was a fact before the establishment of the Reserves, and the fact is still true. Where a logging company operates, the rule is that it shall take all the timber on the tract where it works, and then the forest guards are to burn the brush and refuse. A cleaner sweep of the timber could not have been made under the old methods. The only difference in methods is that where the forest guards now do the fire protecting for the lumber trust, the homesteaders formerly did it for their own protection. In January, 1914, the Forestry Service issued a statement that the policy of the Service for the Kaniksu Forest in Northern Idaho and Northeastern Washington would be to have all that particular reserve logged off and then have the land thrown open to settlement as homesteads. As the timber in that part of the country will but little more than pay for the work of clearing the land ready for the plow, but is very profitable where no clearing is required, it can be readily seen that the Forestry Service was being used as a means of dividing the fruit--the apples to the lumber trust, the cores to the landless homeseekers. One particular manner in which the Government protects the large lumber companies is in the insurance against fire loss. When a tract has been awarded to a bidder it is understood that he shall have all the timber allotted to him, and that he shall stand no loss by fire. Should a tract of timber be burned before it can be logged, the government allots to the bidder another tract of timber "of equal value and of equal accessibility," or an adjustment is made according to the ease of logging and value of the timber. In this way the company has no expense for insurance to bear, which even now with the fire protection that is given by the Forestry Service is rated by insurance companies at about ten per cent. of the value of the timber for each year. No taxes or interest are required on the timber that is purchased from the government. Another feature that makes this timber cheaper than that of private holdings, is that to buy outright would entail the expense of the first cost of the land and timber, the protection from fire, the taxes and the interest on the investment. In addition to this there is always the possibility that some homesteader would refuse to sell some valuable tract that was in a vital situation, as holding the key to a large tract of timber that had no other outlet than across that tract. There has been as yet no dispute with the government about an outlet for any timber purchased on the Reserves; the contract for the timber always including the proviso that the logging company shall have the right to make and use such roads as are "necessary," and the company is the judge of what is necessary in that line. The counties in which Reserves are situated receive no taxes from the government timber, or from the timber that is cut from the Reserves until it is cut into lumber, but in lieu of this they receive a sop in the form of "aid" in the construction of roads. In the aggregate this aid looks large, but when compared with the amount of road work that the people who could make their homes within what is now the Forest Reserves could do, it is pitifully small and very much in the nature of the "charity" that is handed out to the poor of the cities. It is the inevitable result of a system of government that finds itself compelled to keep watch and ward over its imbecile children. So in devious ways of fraud, graft, coercion, and outright theft, the bulk of the timber of the Northwest has been acquired by the lumber trust at an average cost of less than twelve cents a thousand feet. In the states of Washington and Oregon alone, the Northern Pacific and the Southern Pacific railways, as allies of the Weyerhouser interests of St. Paul, own nearly nine million acres of timber; the Weyerhouser group by itself dominating altogether more than thirty million acres, or an area almost equal to that of the state of Wisconsin. The timber owned by a relatively small group of individuals is sufficient to yield enough lumber to build a six-room house for every one of the twenty million families in the United States. Why then should conservation, or the threat of it, disturb the serenity of the lumber trust? If the government permits the cutting of public timber it increases the value of the trust holdings in multiplied ratio, and if the government withdraws from public entry any portion of the public lands, creating Forest Reserves, it adds marvelously to the value of the trust logs in the water booms. Even forest fires in one portion of these vast holdings serve but to send skyward the values in the remaining parts, and by some strange freak of nature the timber of trust competitors, like the "independent" and co-operative mills, seems to be more inflammable than that of the "law-abiding" lumber trust. And so it happens that the government's forest policy has added fabulous wealth and prestige and power to the rulers of the lumber kingdom. But whether the timber lands were stolen illegally or acquired by methods entirely within the law of the land, the exploitation of labor was, and is, none the less severe. The withholding from Labor of any portion of its product in the form of profits--unpaid wages--and the private ownership by individuals or small groups of persons, of timber lands and other forms of property necessary to society as a whole, are principles utterly indefensible by any argument save that of force. Such legally ordained robbery can be upheld only by armies, navies, militia, sheriffs and deputies, police and detectives, private gunmen, and illegal mobs formed of, or created by, the propertied classes. Alike in the stolen timber, the legally acquired timber, and in the Government Forest Reserves, the propertyless lumberjacks are unmercifully exploited, and any difference in the degree of exploitation does not arise because of the "humanity" of any certain set of employers but simply because the cutting of timber in large quantities brings about a greater productivity from each worker, generally accompanied with a decrease in wages due to the displacement of men. With the development of large scale logging operations there naturally came a development of machinery in the industry. The use of water power, the horse, and sometimes the ox, gave way to the use of the donkey engine. This grew from a crude affair, resembling an over-sized coffee mill, to a machine with a hauling power equal to that of a small sized locomotive. Later on came "high lead" logging and the Flying Machine, besides which the wonderful exploits of "Paul Bunyan's old blue ox" are as nothing. The overhead system was created as a result of the additional cost of hauling when the increased demand for a larger output of logs forced the erection of more and more camps, each new camp being further removed from the cities and towns. Today its use is almost universal as there remains no timber close to the large cities, even the stumps having been removed to make room for farming operations. Roughly the method of operation is to leave a straight tall tree standing near the logging track in felling timber. The machine proper is set right at the base of this tree, and about ninety feet up its trunk a large chain is wrapped to allow the hanging of a block. From this spar tree a cable, two inches in diameter, is stretched to another tree some distance in the woods. On this cable is placed what is known as a bicycle or trolley. Various other lines run back and forth thru this trolley to the engine. At the end of one of these lines an enormous pair of hooks is suspended. These grasp the timber and convey it to the cars. [Illustration: The Flying Machine as now used in Western logging.] Ten to twenty thousand feet of logs a day was the output of the old bull or horse teams. The donkey engine brought it to a point where from seventy-five to one hundred thousand could be turned out, and the steam skidder doubled the output of the donkey. Ordinarily the crew for one donkey engine consists of from thirteen to fifteen men, sometimes even as high as twenty-five, but this number is reduced to nine or even lower with the introduction of the steam skidder. Loggers claim that the high lead system kills and maims more men than the methods formerly in vogue, but be that as it may, the fact stands out quite plainly that as compared with a line horse donkey, operated with a crew of twenty-five men, the flying machine will produce enough lumber to mean the displacement of one hundred men. At the same time the sawmills of the old type have disappeared with their rotary or circular saws, dead rollers, and obsolete methods of handling lumber, and in their place is the modern mill with its band saw, shot-gun feed, steam nigger, live rollers, and resaw. Nor do the mills longer turn out rough lumber to be re-handled by trained specialists and highly skilled carpenters with large and costly kits of intricate hand tools. Relatively unskilled workers send forth the finished products, window sashes, doors, siding, etc., carpenters armed only with square, hammer and saw, and classed with unskilled labor, put these in place, and a complete house can be ordered by parcel post. As is usual with the introduction of new machinery and methods where the workers are not in control, the actual producers find that all these innovations force them to work at a higher rate of speed under more hazardous conditions for a lower rate of pay. It is true of all industry in the main, particularly true of the lumber industry, and the mills of Everett and camps of Snohomish county have no exceptions to test this rule. The story of Everett has no hint of romance. Some time in the late seventies the representatives of John D. Rockefeller gained possession of a tract of land in Western Washington, on Puget Sound, about thirty miles north of Seattle. The land was heavily timbered and water facilities made it a perfect site for mill and shipping purposes. The Everett Land Company was organized, the tract was plotted, and the city of Everett laid out. The leading streets, Rockefeller, Colby, Hoyt, etc., were named for these early promoters. Hewitt Avenue was given the name of a man who is today recognized as the leading capitalist of the state of Washington. Even the building of those streets reflected no credit upon the city. The work was done by what amounted to convict labor. Unemployed workers, even tho they were plentifully supplied with money, were arrested and without being allowed the alternative of a fine were set to work clearing, grading, planking and, later on, paving the streets. Perhaps it is too much to expect freedom of speech to be allowed on slave-built streets. In their articles of incorporation the promoters reserved to themselves all right to the ownership and control of public utilities, such as water, light and power and street railway systems. A mortgage of $1,500,000 was placed upon the property. After a time the company failed, the mortgage was foreclosed and the property purchased by Rucker Brothers. The Everett Improvement Company was then organized with J. T. McChesney as president. It held all rights to dispose of public utility franchises. The firm of Stone & Webster, the construction, light, heat, power and traction trust, secured franchises granting them the right to furnish light and power for the city of Everett and also to operate the street railway system for 99 years. The Everett Improvement Company owns a dock lying to the south of the municipally owned City Dock where the Everett tragedy was staged. Thru its alliances the shipping of Everett is in the hands of the same group of capitalists that control all other public utilities. The waterworks was sold to the city but has remained in the hands of the same officials who were in charge when its title was a private one. Everett operates under the commission form of government. The American National Bank was organized with McChesney as president. The only other bank of importance in Everett was the First National. These two institutions consolidated with Wm. C. Butler as president and McChesney as one of the directors. The Everett Savings and Trust Company was later organized, with the same stockholders and under the same management as the First National Bank. The control of every public service corporation in Everett is directly in the hands of these two banks, and, indirectly, thru loans to industrial corporations, they control both the lumber and the shingle mills of Snohomish County in which Everett is situated. Everett, the "City of Smokestacks," as its promoters have named it, is an industrial community of approximately 35,000 people. Its main activities are the production of lumber and shingles, and shipping. The practically undiversified nature of its economic life binds all those engaged in the employment of labor into a common body. The owners of the lumber and shingle mills, the owners and officials of the banks where the lumber men do business, the lawyers representing the mills and the banks, the employers engaged in shipping lumber and supplies for the lumber industry, their lawyers and their bank connections, the owners of hardware stores that supply equipment for the mills and allied industries, all are united by common ties and common interests and they all support one policy. Not only are they banded together against the wage workers but they also oppose the entrance of any kind of business that will in any way menace their rule. They arose almost as one in opposition to the entrance of the ship building industry into Everett, despite the fact that it would add measurably to the general prosperity of the city, and with a full knowledge that their harbor offered wonderful natural facilities for that line of endeavor. In the face of an action that threatened their autocratic power their alleged "patriotism" vanished. In 1912 the Everett Commercial Club was organized. In the month of December, 1915, following a visit from a San Francisco representative of the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, it was re-organized on the Bureau plan as a stock concern. Stock memberships were issued to employers and business houses and were subsequently distributed among the employers and their employes. Memberships were doled out to persons who would be subservient to the wishes of the small group of capitalists representing the great corporate interests. W. W. Blain, secretary of the Commercial Club, testified, under oath, that the Everett Improvement Company took 25 memberships, the First National Bank took 10, the Weyerhouser Lumber Company 10, the Clough-Hartley Mill Company 5, the Jamison Mill Company 5, and other mills and allied industries also purchased memberships in bulk. Organized labor, however, had no representation at the Commercial Club. There is nothing in the history of Everett to suggest the usual spontaneous outgrowth of the honest endeavors of hardy pioneer settlers. From the first day the Rockefeller interests set foot in the virgin forests of Snohomish County up to the present time, the spirit of democracy has been crushed by the greed and cupidity of this small and powerful group. The struggle at Everett was but one of the inevitable phases of the larger struggle that takes place when a class or group that has no property comes in contact with those who have monopolized the earth and its resources. It was no new, marvelous, isolated case of violence. It was the normal accompaniment of industry based upon the exploitation of wage workers, and was of one piece with the outbreak on the Mesaba Range, in Bayonne, Ludlow, Paint Creek, Paterson, Lawrence, San Diego, Fresno, Spokane, Homestead and in countless other places. All these apparently disconnected and sporadic uprisings of labor and the accompanying capitalist violence are joined together in a whole that spells wage slavery. As one of the manifestations of the class conflict, the Everett tragedy cannot be considered apart from that age-long and world-wide struggle between the takers of profits and the makers of values. FOOTNOTE: [1] Data on Forest Reserve taken from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica articles by Gifford Pinchot. CHAPTER II. CLASS WAR SKIRMISHES "Shingle-weaving is not a trade; it is a battle. For ten hours a day the sawyer faces two teethed steel discs whirling around two hundred times a minute. To the one on the left he feeds heavy blocks of cedar, reaching over with his left hand to remove the rough shingles it rips off. He does not, he cannot stop to see what his left hand is doing. His eyes are too busy examining the shingles for knot holes to be cut out by the second saw whirling in front of him. "The saw on his left sets the pace. If the singing blade rips fifty rough shingles off the block every minute, the sawyer must reach over to its teeth fifty times in sixty seconds; if the automatic carriage feeds the odorous wood sixty times into the hungry teeth, sixty times he must reach over, turn the shingle, trim its edge on the gleaming saw in front of him, cut out the narrow strip containing the knot hole with two quick movements of his right hand and toss the completed board down the chute to the packers, meanwhile keeping eyes and ears open for the sound that asks him to feed a new block into the untiring teeth. Hour after hour the shingle weaver's hands and arms, plain, unarmored flesh and blood, are staked against the screeching steel that cares not what it severs. Hour after hour the steel sings its crescendo note as it bites into the wood, the sawdust cloud thickens, the wet sponge under the sawyer's nose, fills with fine particles. If 'cedar asthma,' the shingle weaver's occupational disease, does not get him, the steel will. Sooner or later he reaches over a little too far, the whirling blade tosses drops of deep red into the air, and a finger, a hand or part of an arm comes sliding down the slick chute."[2] This description of shingle weaving was given by Walter V. Woehlke, managing editor of the Sunset Magazine, in an article which had as its purpose the justification of the murders committed by the Everett mob, and it contains no over-statement. Shingle weavers are set apart from the rest of the workers by their mutilated hands and the dead grey pallor of their cheeks. "The nature of a man's occupation, his daily working environment, marks in a large degree the nature of the man himself, and cannot help but mold the early years, at least, or his economic organization. Men who flirt with death in their daily calling become inured to physical danger, they become contemptuous of the man whose calling fails to bring forth physical prowess. So do they in their organizations become irritated and contemptuous at the long-drawn-out process of bargaining, the duel of wits and brain power engaged in by the more conservative organizations to win working concessions. Their motto becomes 'Strike quick and strike hard,'* * *" So says E. P. Marsh, President of the Washington State Federation of Labor, in speaking of the shingle weavers.[3] Logging, no less than shingle weaving, is a dangerous occupation. The countless articles of wood in every-day use have claimed their toll of human blood. A falling tree or limb, a mis-step on the river, a faulty cable, a weakened trestle; each may mean a still and mangled form. Time and again the loggers have organized to improve their working conditions only to find themselves beaten or betrayed. Playing upon the natural desire of the woodsmen for organization, shrewd swindlers have formed unions which were nothing more than dues collection agencies. Politicians have fathered organizations for their own purposes. Unions built by the men themselves have fallen into the hands of officials who used them for selfish personal gain. Over and over the employers have crushed the embryonic unions only to see them rise again with added strength. Forced by the very necessities of their daily lives, the workers always returned to the fight with a new and better form of unionism. Like the loggers, the shingle weavers were routed time and again, but their spirit never died. The Everett shingle weavers formed their union as a result of a successful strike in 1901. In 1905 they were strong enough to resist a proposed reduction of wages. In 1906 they struck in sympathy with the Ballard weavers, and lost. Within a year the defeated union was back as strong as before. By 1911 the International Shingle Weavers Union had attained a membership of nearly 2,000, the majority of whom were in accord with the Industrial Workers of the World. The question of affiliation with the I. W. W. was widely discussed and was only prevented from going to a referendum vote by the efforts of a few officials. Further discussion of the question was excluded from the columns of their official organ, "The Shingle Weaver," by the Ninth Annual Convention.[4] Following this slap in the face, the progressive members quit the union in large numbers, leaving affairs in the hands of conservative and reactionary elements. Endeavors were made to negotiate contracts with the employers; and in 1913 the officials secured $30,000 from the American Federation of Labor and made a pretense at the organization of all workers in the woods and mills into one body. This was a move aimed at the Forest and Lumber Workers of the I. W. W., which was feared alike by the employers and the craft union officials because of its new strength gained thru the affiliation of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in the southern states. Instead of gaining ground by the move, the shingle weavers union lost in membership and subsequently claimed that industrial unionism was a failure in the lumber industry. The industrial depression of 1914-15 found all unions in bad shape. Employers used the army of unemployed as an axe to cut wages. In the spring of 1915 notice of a wage reduction was posted in the Everett shingle mills. The weavers promptly struck. Scabs, gunmen, injunctions, and violence followed. The strike failed, the wage reduction was made, but the men returned to work relying upon a "gentlemen's agreement" that the employers would voluntarily raise the wages of the shingle weavers when shingles again sold for what they were bringing before the depression. Faith in agreements had gotten in its deadly work; the shingle weavers believed that the employers meant to keep their word. In the spring of 1916 shingles soared to a price higher than had prevailed for years, but the promised raise failed to materialize. With but a skeleton of an organization to back them, a handful of determined delegates met in Seattle in April and decided to demand the restoration of the 1915 scale thruout the entire jurisdiction of the Shingle Weavers' Union, setting May 1st as the date when the raise should take effect. At the time set, or shortly thereafter, most of the mills in the Northwest paid the scale. Everett, where the employers had given their "word of honor," refused the strikers' demand. The fight was on! The Seaside Shingle Company, which held no membership in the Commercial Club, soon granted the raise. Many of the other companies, notably the Jamison Mill, began the importation of scabs within the month. The cry of "outside agitators" was forgotten long enough to go outside in search of notorious gunmen and scab-herders. The slums, the hells of Capitalism, were raked with a fine-toothed comb for degenerates with a record for lawless deviltry. The strikers threw out their picket line and the ever-present class war began to show itself in other than peaceful ways. During May, June and July the picket line had to be maintained in the face of strong opposition by the local authorities who were the pliant tools of the lumber trust. The ranks of the pickets were constantly being thinned by false arrest and imprisonment on every charge and no charge, until on August 19th there were but eighteen men on the picket line. On that particular morning the Everett police searched the little handful of pickets in front of the Jamison Mill to make sure that they were unarmed, and when that fact was determined, they started the men across the narrow trestle bridge that extended over an arm of the bay. When the pickets were well out on the bridge, the imported thugs, some seventy in number, personally directed and urged on by their employer, Neil Jamison, poured in from either side, leaving no means of escape save that of making a thirty foot leap into the deep waters of the bay, and with brass knuckles and blackjacks made an attack upon the defenseless weavers. The pickets were unmercifully beaten. Robert H. Mills, business agent of the Shingle Weavers' Union, was knocked down by one of the open-shop thugs and kicked in the ribs and face as he lay senseless in the roadway. From a vantage point, thoughtfully removed from the danger zone, the police calmly surveyed the scene. When darkness fell that night, the pickets, aided by irate citizens, returned to the attack with clubs and fists. The tables were turned. The "moral heroes" had their heads cracked. Seeing that the scabs were thoroly whipped, the "guardians of the peace" rushed to the rescue with drawn revolvers. In the melee one union picket was shot thru the leg. About ten nights later, Mr. Jamison herded his scabs into military formation and after a short parade thru the main streets led them to the Everett Theater; the party being in appreciation of their "efficiency." This arrogant display incensed the strikers and citizens, and when the scabs emerged from the show a near-riot occurred. Mills was present and altho too weak from his recent injuries to have taken any active part in the fray, he was arrested and thrown in jail in default of bail. The man who had murderously assaulted him at the mill swore out the complaint. Mills was subsequently tried and acquitted on a charge of inciting to riot. Nothing was done to his assailant. And in none of these acts of violence was the I. W. W. in any way a participant. During this period there existed a strike of longshoremen on the entire Pacific Coast, including the port of Everett. The wrath of the employers fell heavily upon the Riggers and Stevedores because that body was not in sympathy with the idea of craft contracts or agreements, and because of the adoption by a large majority of a proposal to "amalgamate all the unions of the Maritime Transportation Industry, between the Warehouse at the Shipping Point and Warehouse at the Receiving Point into one big powerful organization, meeting, thinking, and acting together at all times."[5] The industrially united employers of the Pacific Coast did not relish the idea of the workers grouping themselves together along lines similar to those on which the owners were associated. The longshoremen's strike started on June 1st and was marked by more or less serious disorders at various points, most of the violence being precipitated by detectives placed in the unions by the employers. The tug boat men were also on strike in Everett, particularly against the American Tug Boat Company owned by Captain Harry Ramwell. All of the unions on strike in Everett were affiliated with the A. F. of L. Striking longshoremen from Seattle aided the shingle weavers on their picket line from time to time, and individual members of the I. W. W., holding duplicate cards in the A. F. of L. stood shoulder to shoulder with the strikers, but officially the I. W. W. had no part in any of the strikes. [Illustration: One of the thousands who donate their fingers to the Lumber Trust. The Trust compensated all with poverty and some with bullets on November 5, 1916.] Meanwhile in Seattle the I. W. W. had planned to organize the forest and lumber workers on a scale never before attempted. Calls for organizers had been coming in from the surrounding district and there were demands for a mass convention to discuss conditions in the industry. Yet, strange as it may seem to those who do not know of the ebb and flow of labor unions, there were at that time less than half a hundred paid-up members in the Seattle loggers branch, so great had been the depression from 1914 to 1916. The conference was set for July 4th and five hundred logger delegates responded, representing nearly as many camps in the district. Enthusiasm ran high! The assembled workers suggested the adoption of a plan of district organization along lines more in keeping with the modern trend of the lumber industry. The loggers' union, then known as Local 432, ratified the actions of the conference. As a preliminary move it was decided that an organizer be secured to make a survey of the lumber situation in the surrounding territory. General Headquarters in Chicago was communicated with, James Rowan was found to be available, and on July 31st he was sent to Everett to find out the sentiment for industrial unionism at that point. That night Rowan spoke on Wetmore Avenue fifty feet back from Hewitt Avenue, in compliance with the street regulations. No mention was made of local conditions as Rowan had just come from another part of the country and was unaware that a shingle weavers strike was in progress. His speech consisted mainly of references to the Industrial Relations Commission Report, a pamphlet summarizing that report being the only literature offered for sale at the meeting. Toward the end of his speech Rowan declared: "The A. F. of L. believes in signing agreements with the employers. The craft unions regard these contracts as sacred. When one craft goes on strike the others are forced to remain at work. This makes the craft unions scab on each other." "You are a liar!" cried Jake Michel, an A. F. of L. representative, staunchly defending his organization. From an automobile near the edge of the crowd, Donald McRae, Sheriff of Snohomish County, called to Michel: "Jake, I will run that guy in if you say so." "I don't see any need to run him in;" remonstrated Michel. "He hasn't said anything yet to run him in for." Nevertheless McRae, usurping the powers of the local police department, made Rowan leave the platform and go with him to the county jail. McRae was drunk. Rowan was held for an hour. Immediately upon his release he returned to the corner to resume his speech. Police Officer Fox thereupon arrested him and took him to the city jail. He was thrown into a dark cell for refusing to do jail work, was taken into court next morning and absurdly charged with peddling without a license, was denied a jury trial, refused a postponement, not allowed a chance to secure counsel, and was sentenced to thirty days imprisonment with an alternative of leaving town. No ordinance against street speaking at Wetmore and Hewitt then existed. Rowan chose to leave town. No time was set as to how long he was to remain away. He then left for Bellingham and from there went to Sedro-Woolley. Using an assumed name to avoid the blacklist he worked at the latter place for a short time to familiarize himself with job conditions, subsequently returning to Everett. Levi Remick, a one-armed veteran of the industrial war, was next sent to Everett on August 4th to act as temporary delegate. He interviewed a number of people and sold some literature. Receiving orders to stop selling the pamphlets and papers, he inquired the price of a peddler's license and finding it prohibitive he returned to Seattle to secure funds to open an office. A small hall was found at 1219½ Hewitt Avenue, a month's rent was paid, and on August 9th Remick placed a sign in the window and started to sell literature and transact business for the I. W. W. The little hall remained open until late in August. Migratory workers, strikers, and citizens generally, dropped in from time to time to ask about the organization or to purchase papers. Solidarity and the Industrial Worker were particularly in demand, the latter paper having commenced publication in Seattle on April 1st, 1916. A number of Everett citizens, desiring to hear a lecture by James P. Thompson, who had spoken in Everett without molestation in 1915 and in March and April of 1916, made donations to Remick sufficient to cover all expenses, and it was arranged that Thompson speak on August 22nd. Attempts to secure a hall met with failure; the halls of Everett were closed to the I. W. W. The conspiracy against free speech and free assembly was on in earnest! No other course was left but to hold the proposed meeting on the street, so Hewitt and Wetmore, the spot where the Salvation Army and various religious and political bodies spoke almost nightly, was selected and the meeting advertised. Early in the morning on the day before the scheduled meeting, Sheriff McRae, commanding a body of police officers over whom he had no official control, stormed into the I. W. W. hall and tore from the wall all bills advertising Thompson's meeting, saying with an oath: "That man won't be allowed to speak in Everett!" Turning to Remick and throwing back his coat to display the badge, he yelled: "I order you out of this town! Get out by afternoon or you go to jail!" McRae was drunk. Stalking out as rapidly as his condition would permit he staggered down the street to a near-by pool hall where the order was repeated to the men assembled therein. These, with other workingmen, 25 in all were rounded up, seized, roughly questioned, searched, and all those who had no families or property in Everett were forcibly deported. That night ten more were taken from the shingle weaver's picket line and sent out of town without due process of law. Treatment of this kind became general. "Not a man in overalls is safe!" declared the secretary of the Everett Building Trades Council. "Men just off the job with their pay checks in their pocket have been unceremoniously thrown out of town just because they were workingmen."[6] Remick closed the little hall and left for Seattle the next morning to place the question of the Thompson meeting before the Seattle membership. Shortly before noon Rowan, who had just returned to Everett, went to the hall and finding it closed and locked he proceeded to open it up. Within a few minutes Sheriff McRae, in company with police officer Fox, entered the place and ordered Rowan to leave town by two o'clock. He then tore up the balance of the advertising matter for the Thompson meeting. McRae was drunk. Rowan went to Seattle, where the report of this occurrence made the members more determined than ever to hold the meeting that night. With about twenty other members of the I. W. W., Thompson went to Everett. The Salvation Army was holding services on the corner. Placing his platform even further back from the street intersection Thompson waited until the Army had concluded and then commenced his lecture. Using the Industrial Relations Commission Report as the basis of his talk, he spoke for about twenty minutes without interruption. Then a body of fifteen policemen marched down the street and swung into the crowd. The officer in charge stepped up to Thompson and requested him to go to see the chief of police at the police station. After addressing a few remarks to the crowd Thompson withdrew from the platform. His place was taken at once by Rowan, who was immediately dragged from the stand and turned over to the same officer who had charge of Thompson and his wife. Mrs. Edith Frennette then spoke briefly and called for a song. The audience responded with "The Red Flag," but meanwhile Mrs. Frennette and Mrs. Lorna Mahler had been placed under arrest. In succession several others attempted to speak but were pulled or pushed off the stand. The police then formed a circle by holding hands around those who were close to the platform. One by one the citizens were allowed to slip outside the "ring-around-a-rosy" until only "desperadoes" were left. These made no effort to resist arrest, and were started toward the city jail. The officer entrusted with Thompson was so interested in his captive that Rowan was able to quietly remove himself from the scene, returning to the street corner where he spoke for more than half an hour before being rearrested. Aroused by this invasion of liberty, Mrs. Letelsia Fye, an Everett citizen, arose to recite the Declaration of Independence, but even that proved too revolutionary for the tools of the lumber trust. A threatening move on the part of the police brought back the thought of her two unprotected children and caused her to cease her efforts to declare independence in Everett. "Is there a red-blooded man in the audience who will take the stand?" called out the gallant little woman as she stepped from the platform. Jake Michel promptly accepted the challenge and was as promptly suppressed by the police at the first mention of free speech. In the jail the arrested persons were searched one by one and thrown into the "receiving tank." When Thompson's turn came, Commissioner of Public Safety, as Chief of Police Kelly was known under Everett's form or government, said to him: "Mr. Thompson, I don't want to lock you up." "That's interesting," replied Thompson. "Why have you got me down here?" "We don't want you to speak on the street at this time." "Have you any ordinance against it, that is, have I broken any law?" enquired Thompson. "Oh no, no. That isn't the idea," rejoined Kelly. "We have strikes on, labor troubles here, and we don't want you to speak here at all. You are welcome at any other time, but not now." "Well," said Thompson, "as a representative of labor, when labor is in trouble is the time I would like to speak, but I am not going to advocate anything that I think you could object to." "Now, Thompson," said Kelly, "if you will agree to get right out of town I will let you go. I don't want to lock you up." "Do you believe in free speech?" asked Thompson. "Yes." "And I am not arrested?" "No, you are not arrested." "Come up to the meeting then," Thompson said with a smile, "for I am going back and speak." "Oh no, you are not!"--and Kelly kind of laughed. "No, you are not!" "If you let me go I will go right up to the corner and speak, and if you send me out of town I will come back," said Thompson emphatically. "I don't know what you are going to do, but that's how I stand." "Lock him up with the rest!" was the abrupt reply of the "Commissioner of Public Safety." At this juncture James Rowan was brought in from the patrol wagon, and searched. As the officers were about to put him in the cell with the others, Sheriff McRae called out: "Don't put him in there, he is instigator of the whole damn business. Turn him over to me." He then took Rowan in his automobile to the county jail and threw him in a cell, along with B. E. Peck, who had previously been given a "floater" out of town for having spoken on the street on or about August 15th. McRae was drunk. More than half a thousand indignant citizens followed the twenty-one arrested persons to the jail, loudly condemning the outrage against their constitutional rights. Editor H. W. Watts, of the Northwest Worker, a union and socialist paper published in Everett, forcibly expressed his opinion of the suppression of free speech and was thereupon thrown into jail. Fearing a serious outbreak, Michel secured permission to address the people surrounding the jail. The crowd, upon receiving assurances from Michel that the men would be well treated and could be seen in the morning, quietly dispersed and returned to their homes. The free speech prisoners were charged with vagrancy on the police blotter, but no formal charge was ever made, nor were they brought to trial. Next morning, Thompson and his wife, who had return tickets on the Interurban, were deported by rail, together with Herbert Mahler, secretary of the Seattle I. W. W. Mrs. Mahler, Mrs. Frennette and the balance of the prisoners were taken to the City Dock and deported by boat. At the instigation of McRae, and without a court order, the sum of $13. was seized from the personal funds of James Orr and turned over to the purser of the boat to pay the fares of the deportees to Seattle. Protests against this legalized robbery were of no avail; the amount of the fares was never repaid. Mayor Merrill of Everett, replying to a letter from Mahler, promised that this money would be refunded to Orr. His word proved to be as good as that of the Everett shingle mill owners. Prominent members of the Commercial Club lent civic dignity to the deportation by their profane threats to use physical force in the event that any of the deported prisoners dared to return. Upon their arrival in Seattle the deported men conferred with other members of the union, telling of the beating some of them had received while in jail, and as a result there was organized a free speech committee composed of Sam Dixon, Dan Emmett and A. E. Soper. Telegrams were then sent to General Headquarters, to Solidarity and to various branches of the organization, notifying them of what had happened. At a street meeting that night, Mrs. Frennette, Mrs. Mahler and James P. Thompson, gave the workers the facts and collected over $50.00 for the committee to use in its work. In Everett the Labor Council passed a resolution stating that the unions there were back of the battle for free speech and condemning McRae and the authorities for their illegal actions. The Free Speech Fight was on! Remick, in the meantime, had returned to Everett and found that all the literature had been confiscated from the hall. The day following his return, August 24th, Sheriff McRae blustered into the hall with a police officer in his train. Leering at Remick he exclaimed: "You God damn son of a b----, are you back here again? Get on your coat and get into that auto!" Seizing an I. W. W. stencil that was lying on the table he tore it to shreds. "If anybody asks who tore that up,"--bombastically--"tell them Sheriff McRae tore it!" Shoving Remick into the automobile with the remark that jail was too easy for him and they would therefore take him to the Interurban and deport him, the sheriff drove off to make good his threat. McRae was drunk. On the corner that night, Harry Feinberg spoke to a large audience and was not molested. That this was due to no change of policy on the part of the lumber trust tools was shown when secretary Herbert Mahler went to Everett the following day in reference to the situation. He was met at the depot by Sheriff McRae who asked him what he had come to Everett for. "To see the Mayor," answered Mahler. "Anything you have to say to the Mayor, you can say to me," was McRae's rejoinder. After a brief conversation Mahler was deported to Seattle by the same car on which he had made the trip over. McRae was drunk. F. W. Stead reopened the hall on the 26th and managed to hold it down for a couple of days. Three speakers appeared and spoke that night. J. A. MacDonald, editor of the Industrial Worker, opened the meeting. George Reese spoke next, but upon commencing to advocate the use of violence he was pulled from the platform by Harry Feinberg, who concluded the meeting. No arrests were made. It was during this period that Secretary Herbert Mahler addressed a letter to Governor Ernest Lister, informing him of the state of lawlessness existing in Everett. A second letter was sent to Mayor Merrill and in it was enclosed a copy of the letter to Lister. No reply was received to the communication. For a time following this there was no interference with street meetings. Feinberg spoke without molestation on Monday night and Dan Emmett opened up the hall once more. On Tuesday evening, the same night as the theater riot, Thompson addressed an audience of thousands of Everett citizens, giving them the facts of the arrests made the previous week, and advising the workers against the use of violence in any disputes with employers. After having been held by McRae for eight days without any commitment papers, Rowan was turned over to the city police and released on September 1st. He returned to the street corner and spoke for several succeeding nights including "Labor Day" which fell on the 4th. Incidentally he paid a visit to the home of Jake Michel and, after industrial unionism was more fully explained, Michel agreed that the craft union contract system forced scabbery upon the workers. Rowan left shortly thereafter for Anacortes to find out the sentiment for organization in that section. This period of comparative peace was due to the fact that the lumber barons realized that their actions reflected no credit upon themselves or their city and they wished to create a favorable impression upon Federal Mediator Blackman who was in Everett at the request of U. S. Commissioner of Labor Wilson. It was during this time, too, that the protagonists of the open shop were secretly marshalling their forces for a still more lawless and brutal campaign. Affairs gradually slipped from the hands of the Everett authorities into the grasp of those Snohomish County officials who were more completely dominated by the lumber interests. "Tom," remarked Jake Michel one day to Chief of Police Kelley, "it seems funny that you can't handle the situation." "I can handle it all right," replied Kelley, bitterly, "but McRae has been drunk around here for the last two or three weeks and he has butted into my business." It was on August 30th that the lumber trust definitely stripped the city officials of all power and turned affairs over to the sheriff. On this point a quotation from the Industrial Relations Commission Report is particularly illuminating in showing a common industrial condition: "Free speech in informal and personal intercourse was denied the inhabitants of the coal camps. It was also denied public speakers. Union organizers would not be permitted to address meetings. Periodicals permitted in the camps were censored in the same fashion. The operators were able to use their power of summary discharge to deny free press, free speech, and free assembly, to prevent political activities for the suppression of popular government and the winning of political control. +I find that the head of the political machinery is the sheriff.+" In Everett the sheriff's office was controlled by the Commercial Club and the Commercial Club in turn was dominated, thru an inner circle, by the lumber trust. Acting for the trust a small committee meeting was held on the morning of the 30th with the editor of a trust-controlled newspaper, the secretary of the Commercial Club, two city officials, a banker and a lumber trust magnate in attendance. A larger meeting of those in control met in the afternoon and, pursuant to a call already published in the Everett Herald, several hundred scabs, gunmen, and other open shop advocates were brought together that night at the Commercial Club. Commissioner of Finance, W. H. Clay, suggested that as Federal Mediator Blackman, an authority on labor questions, was in the city it might be well to confer with him regarding a settlement. Banker Moody said he did not think a conference would be advisable as Mr. Blackman might be inclined to lean toward the side of the laboring men, and at a remark by "Governor" Clough, formerly Governor of Minnesota and spokesman for the mill owners, to the effect that there was nothing to be settled the suggestion was not considered further. H. D. Cooley, special counsel for a number of the mills, Governor Clough, a prominent mill owner, and others then addressed the meeting in furtherance of the plans already laid. Clough asked McRae if he could handle the situation. McRae said he did not have enough deputies. "Swear in the members of the Commercial Club, then!" demanded Clough. This was done. Nearly two hundred of the men whose membership had been paid for by the mill owners "volunteered" their services. McRae swore in a few and then, for the first time in his life, found swearing a difficulty, so W. W. Blain, secretary of the Commercial Club, who was neither a city nor a county official, administered the remainder of such oaths as were taken by the deputies. The whole meeting was illegal. From time to time the deputy force was added to until it ran way up in the hundreds. It was divided into sections A, B, C, etc. Each division was assigned to a special duty, one to watch incoming trains for free speech advocates, another to watch the boats for I. W. W. members, and others for various duties such as deporting and beating up workers. This marked the beginning of a reign of terror during which no propertyless worker or union sympathizer was safe from attack. About this same time the Commercial Club made a pretense of investigating the shingle weavers' strike. Not one of the strikers was called to give their side of the controversy, and J. G. Brown, international president of the Shingle Weavers' Union, was refused permission to testify. The committee claimed that the employers could not pay the wages asked. An adverse report was returned and was adopted by the club. Attorneys E. C. Dailey, Robert Fassett, and George Loutitt, along with a number of other fair minded members who did not favor the open shop program, withdrew from membership on account of these various actions. Their names were placed on the bulletin board and a boycott advised. Feeling against the organization responsible for the chaotic conditions in Everett finally became so strong that practically all of the merchants whose places were not mortgaged or who were not otherwise dependent upon the whims of the lumber barons, posted notices in their windows, "WE ARE NOT MEMBERS OF THE COMMERCIAL CLUB." Their names, too, were placed on the bulletin board, and the boycott and other devices used in an endeavor to force them into bankruptcy. Prior to these occurrences and for some time thereafter, the club was addressed by emissaries of the open shop interests. A. L. Veitch, special counsel for the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, on one occasion addressed the deputies on labor troubles in San Francisco and the methods used to handle them. Veitch was later one of the attorneys in the case against Thomas H. Tracy, and he was employed by the state, it being stipulated that he receive no state compensation. H. D. Cooley, lumber mill lawyer and former prosecuting attorney, also spoke at different times on the open shop questions. Cooley was likewise an attorney for the prosecution in the Tracy case and he, like Veitch, was retained by "interested parties." Cooley was one of the anti-union speakers at a meeting of the deputies which was also addressed by F. C. Beach, of San Francisco, president of the M. & M., Robert Moody, president of the First National Bank of Everett, Governor Clough, mill magnate, F. K. Baker, president of the Commercial Club, and Col. Roland H. Hartley, open shop candidate for the nomination as governor of Washington at the pending election. Leigh Irvine, of Seattle, secretary of the Employers' Association, and Murray, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, were also active in directing the destinies of the Commercial Club. A special open shop committee was formed, the nature of its operations being apparent when the following two quotations from its minutes, taken from among others of similar purport, are considered: "Decided to go after advertisements in labor journals and the Northwestern Worker."[7] "Matter of how far to go on open shop propaganda at the deputies meeting this morning was discussed. Also the advisability of submitting pledges. Mr. Moody to take up matter of the legality of pledges with Mr. Coleman. Note: At deputies meeting all speakers touched quite strongly on the open shop, and as far as it was possible to see all in attendance seemed favorable."[8] Just how far they finally did go is a matter of history. At the time, however, there were appropriations made for the purchase of blackjacks, leaded clubs, guns and ammunition, and for the employment of detectives, labor spies, and "agents provocateur."[9] [Illustration: Joe (Red) Doran Capt. Jack Mitten The Launch Wanderer.] FOOTNOTES: [2] Sunset Magazine, February 1917. "The I. W. W. and the Golden Rule." [3] Supplemental report on "Everett's Industrial Warfare," by President Ernest P. Marsh to State Federation of Labor convention held at Everett, Wash., from January 22 to 26, 1917. [4] Vol. 9, No. 2, The Shingle Weaver, Special Convention Number, February, 1911. [5] Proposition No. 5, submitted to referendum of membership of Pacific Coast District I. L. A., Riggers and Stevedores Local 38, at their annual election on Jan. 6, 1916. [6] Dreamland Rink Meeting, Seattle, Nov. 19th, over 5,000 in attendance. [7] Minutes of Open Shop Committee, Sept. 27th. [8] Minutes of Open Shop Committee, October 29. [9] The incidents of the foregoing chapter are corroborated by the sworn testimony of prosecution witnesses Donald McRae, sheriff of Snohomish County; and D. D. Merrill, Mayor of Everett; and by witnesses called by the Defense, W. W. Blain, secretary of the Commercial Club: J. G. Brown, International president of the Shingle Weavers' Union; W. H. Clay, Commissioner of Finance in Everett; Robert Faussett, Everett attorney; Harry Feinberg, one of the defendants; Mrs. Letelsia Fye, Everett citizen; Jake Michel, Secretary Everett Building Trades Council; Herbert Mahler, Secretary Seattle I. W. W. and subsequently secretary of the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee; Robert Mills, business agent Everett Shingle Weavers' Union; James Orr, and Levi Remick, I. W. W. members; James Rowan, I. W. W. organizer; and James P. Thompson, National Organizer for the I. W. W. and a speaker of international reputation. CHAPTER III. A REIGN OF TERROR No sooner had Mediator Blackman left Everett than the "law and order" forces resumed their hostilities with a bitterness and brutality that seems almost incredible. On September 7th Mrs. Frennette, H. Shebeck, Bob Adams, J. Johnson, J. Fred, and Dan Emmett were dragged from the platform at Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues and were literally thrown into their cells. Next morning Mrs. Frenette was released but the men were "kangarood" for 30 days each. Petty abuses were heaped upon them and Johnson was cast into the "black hole" by the sheriff. Some of the men were severely beaten just before their release a few days afterward. When Fred Reed and James Dwyer were arrested the next night for street speaking, the crowd of Everett citizens, in company with the few I. W. W. members present, followed the deputies to the county jail, demanding the release of Reed, Dwyer and Peck, and those who had been arrested the night before. In its surging to and from the crowd pushed over a post-rotted picket fence that had been erected in the early days of Everett. This violence, together with cries of "You've got the wrong bunch in jail! Let those men out and put the 'bulls' in!" was the basis from which the trust-owned press built up a story of a riot and attempted jail delivery. On the same flimsy basis a warrant was issued charging Mrs. Frennette with inciting a riot. The free speech committee sent John Berg to Everett that same day to retain an attorney for the men held without warrants. He secured the services of E. C. Dailey, and, while waiting to learn the result of the lawyer's efforts, he went to the I. W. W. hall only to find it closed. A man was there waiting to get his blankets to go to work and Berg volunteered to get them for him. He then went to the county jail and asked for McRae. When McRae came in and learned that Berg wanted to see the secretary in order to get the keys to the hall, he yelled out: "You are another I. W. W. Throw him in jail, the old son-of-a-b----!" Without having any charges placed against him, Berg was held until the next morning, when McRae and a deputy took him out in a roadster to a lonely spot on the county road. Forcing him to dismount, McRae ordered Berg to walk to Seattle under threats of death if he returned, and then knocked Berg down and kicked him in the groin as he lay prostrate. McRae was drunk. Berg subsequently developed a severe rupture as a result of this treatment. He managed to make his way to Seattle and in spite of his condition returned to Everett that same night. Undaunted by their previous deportations, and determined to circumvent the deputies who were seizing men from the railroad trains and regular boats, a body of free speech fighters, on September 9th, took the train to Mukilteo, a village about four miles from Everett, and there, by pre-arrangement, were taken aboard the launch "Wanderer." The little boat would not hold the entire party and six men were towed behind in a large dory. There were 17 first class life preservers on board, the captain borrowing some to supplement his equipment. When the "Wanderer" reached a point about a mile and a half from the Weyerhouser dock a boat was seen approaching. It was the scab tug "Edison," belonging to the American Tugboat Company. On board was Captain Harry Ramwell, Sheriff McRae and a body of about sixty deputies. When the "Edison" was about 200 feet away the sheriff commenced shooting--but let Captain Jack Mitten tell his own story. "The first shot went over the bow. I don't know whether there was one or two shots fired, then there was a shot struck right over my head onto the big cast iron muffler. The next shot came on thru the boat,--I had my bunk strapped up against the wall,--and thru the blanket,--and the cotton in the blanket turned the bullet,--and it struck flat on the bottom of the bunk. "I shut the engine down and went out to the stern door and just as I stepped out there was a shot went right by my head and at the same time McRae hollered out and says 'You son-of-a-b--, you come over here!' Says I, "If you want me, you come over here." With that they brought their boat and my boat up together. Six shots in all were fired. "McRae commenced to take the people off the boat and when he had them all off he kicked the pilot house open and says, 'Oho, there is a woman here!' Mrs. Frennette was sitting in the pilot house. Anyhow, they took her and he says, 'You'll get a one piece suit on McNeil's island for this,' and then he says to Cap Ramwell--Cap Ramwell was sitting on the side--'This is Oscar Lindstrom, drag him along too.' "Then they were going to make fast the line--they had made fast my stern line--and as I bent over with the line McRae struck me with his revolver on the back of the head, and when I straightened up he struck me in here, a revolver about that long. (Indicating.) I said something to him and then he ran the revolver right in here in my groin and he ruptured me at the same time. I told him 'It's a fine way of using a citizen.' He says, 'You're a hell of a citizen, bringing in a bunch like that,' he says, 'to cause a riot in this town.' I says, 'Well, they are all union men anyway.' He says, 'You shut your damn head or I will knock it clean off!' and I guess he would, because he had whiskey enough in him at the time to do it. "There was a small man, I believe they call him Miller, he saw him standing there and he says, 'You here, too?' and he hauled off and struck him in the temple and the blood flowed way down over his face and shirt. He struck him again and staggered him. If he hadn't struck him so he would have gone inboard, he would have gone over the edge, close to the edge. "Then there was a man by the name of Berg, it seemed he knowed John Berg. He said, 'You ----, I will fix you so you will never come back!' and then he went at Berg, but Berg was foxy and kept ducking his head. He rapped him on the shoulders two or three different times, I wouldn't say how often, but he didn't draw blood on Berg. (An I. W. W. member named Kurgvel was also beaten on the head and shoulders.) "They drove us all in alongside of the boiler between the decks, down on the main deck of the "Edison" and kept us there till they docked and got automobiles and the patrol wagon and filed us off into them and took us to jail." The arrest of Captain Mitten and acting engineer Oscar Lindstrom made twenty-one prisoners in all, and these were jailed without any charge being placed against them. As Berg was taken into the jail, McRae cursed him roundly, ordering two deputies to hold him while a beating was administered over the shoulders and back with a leather strap loaded with lead on the tip. The men were treated with great brutality within the jail. One young fellow was asked by the deputies, "Are you an I. W. W.?" and each time the lad answered "Yes!" he was thrown violently against the steel walls of the cell, until his body was a mass of bruises. Mitten was denied a chance to communicate with his Everett friends in order to get bail. The nights were cold and the prisoners had to sleep on the bare floor without blankets. At the end of nine days all the men were offered their liberty except Mitten. They promptly refused the offer. "All or none!" was their indignant demand, and Peck and Mitten were set at liberty with the rest as a result of this show of solidarity. Upon his release Captain Mitten found that the life preservers had been stolen from his boat, and the flattened bullet removed from his bunk. Scotty Fife, the Port Captain of the American Tugboat Company, told Captain Mitten that he had straightened up the things on the "Wanderer!" Thus to the crimes of unlawful arrest, false imprisonment, theft, deportation, assault and physical injury, the lumber trust added that of piracy on the high seas. And all this was but a taste of what was yet to come! Organizer James Rowan returned to Everett from Anacortes on the afternoon of September 11th and was met at the depot by three deputies who promptly took him to the county jail. There were at that time between thirty and forty other members of the I. W. W. being unlawfully held. Rowan learned that these men had been taken from their cells one at a time and beaten by the deputies, Thorne and Dunn having especially severe cuts on the face and head. Rowan's story of the outrage that followed gives a glimpse of the methods employed by the lumber trust. "As soon as I dropped off the train at Everett I was met by three deputies. One of them told me the sheriff wanted to see me and I asked if he was a deputy. He said, 'Yes,' and showed me a badge. Then I went up with two of the deputies to the county jail. In a minute or two Sheriff McRae came in and he was pretty drunk. He caught hold of me and gave me a yank forward, and he says, 'So you are back, eh?' and I says 'Yes.' And he says 'We are going to fix you so you won't come back any more.' There was some more abusive talk and then I was searched and put in a cell. "Just after dark that night I was taken out of the cell, my stuff was given back, and McRae says, 'We are going to start you on the road to Seattle.' With a deputy he took me out to the automobile and McRae drove the automobile, and we had some conversation. McRae seemed to feel very sore because I told the people on the street that the jail was lousy, and he says 'We wanted you to get out of here and you would not do it, and now,' he says, 'Now instead of dealing with officers you have to deal with a bunch of boob citizens, and there is no telling what these boobs will do.' There was more talk that is not worth repeating and most of it not fit to repeat anyhow. "We went out in the country until we came to where the road crosses the interurban tracks about two miles from Silver Lake and McRae told me to get out. He then pointed down the track and says, 'There is the road to Seattle and you beat it!' so I started down the track. "I hadn't gone far, maybe 50 or 75 yards, when I met a bunch of gunmen. They came at me with guns. They had clubs and they started to beat me up on the head with the butts of their guns and with the clubs. They all had handkerchiefs over their face except one. They threw a cloth over my head and beat me some more on the head with their gun butts and then they dragged me thru the fence at the right-of-way and went a little ways back into the woods. Then they held me down over a log about eighteen inches or two feet in diameter. There were about a dozen of them I would say. Two or three held each arm and two or three each leg and there were four or five of them holding guns around my ribs--they had the guns close around my ribs all the time, several of them--and they tore my clothes off, tore my shirt and coat off. Then one of them beat me on the back, on the bare back with some kind of a sap, I don't know just what kind it was, but I could hear him grunt every time he was going to strike a blow. I was struck fifty times or more. "After he got thru beating me they went back to the fence toward the road and I picked up my scattered belongings and went down to Silver Lake, taking the first car to Seattle." [Illustration: Organizer James Rowan; Showing his back lacerated by Lumber Trust thugs.] Rowan exhibited his badly lacerated and bruised back to several prominent Seattle citizens, and then had a photograph made, which was widely circulated. Contrary to the expectation of the lumber barons this treatment did not deter free speech fighters from carrying on the struggle. Instead, it brought fresh bodies of free speech enthusiasts to the scene within a short period. The personnel of the free speech committee changed continually because of the arrest of its members. On Sunday, September 10th, at a mass meeting in Seattle Harry Feinberg and William Roberts were elected to serve. Roberts had just come down from Port Angeles and desired to investigate conditions at first hand, so in company with Feinberg he went to Everett on the 11th. They met Jake Michel, who telephoned to Chief of Police Kelley for permission to hold a street meeting. "I have no objection to this meeting," replied Kelley, "but wait a minute, you had better call up McRae and find out." Attempts to reach McRae at the Commercial Club and the sheriff's office met with failure. Meanwhile Feinberg had gone ahead with the meeting, the following being his sworn statement of what transpired: "I went to Everett at 7:30 Monday night. I got a box and opened a meeting for the I. W. W. There must have been three thousand people on the corner, against buildings and looking out of the windows. "I spoke about 35 minutes, with the crowd boisterous in their applause. Three companies of deputies and vigilantes, about one hundred and fifty thugs in all, marched down the street and divided up in three companies. One of the deputies came up and told me he wanted me and grabbed me off the box. "They took me up to the jail, took my description, and my money and valuables, which were not returned. By that time Fellow Worker Roberts was brought in. A drunken deputy came in and grabbed me by the coat and dragged me out of the jail, with the evident permission of the officers. The vigilantes proceeded to beat me up on the jail steps. There were anyway fifty deputies waiting outside and all of them crowded to get a chance to hit me. They gave me a chance to get away finally and shot after me, or in the air, I could not tell which, but I was not hit by the bullets." The sworn statement of William Roberts corroborated the foregoing: "I took the box after Fellow Worker Feinberg had been arrested. The crowd were extreme in their hostility to the lawlessness of the officers. I told them to keep cool, that the I. W. W. would handle the situation, in their own time and way. They arrested me, and, right there, they clubbed me on the head. They brought me to the jail, where Feinberg was at the desk. They took me out of the jail and threw me into the bunch of vigilantes with clubs. They started beating me around the body. One of them said: 'Do anything, but don't kill him!' "Finally one of them hit me on the head and I came out of it and as I was getting away they shot in the air. A bunch of them then jumped into an automobile, came after me and again clubbed me. One of them knocked me out for ten minutes, according to one of the women who were watching. "While we were in the jail, two men we did not know were brought into the jail with their heads cut open. The vigilantes were clubbing women right and left, and a young girl, about eight years of age, had her head cut open by one of Sheriff McRae's Commercial Club tools." Roberts ran down the street to the interurban depot, where he hid behind a freight car until just before the car left for Seattle. Feinberg, with his face and clothing covered with blood, got on the same car about a mile and a half from Everett and the two returned to Seattle. John Ovist, a resident of Mukilteo who had joined the I. W. W. in Everett on Labor Day, got on the box and said, "Fellow comrades----" but got no further. He was knocked from the box. Ovist states: "Mr. Henig was standing alongside of me when Sheriff McRae came up and cracked him over the forehead with a club. I don't know what else happened to him for just then Sheriff McRae came in front of me and pushed the fellow off the box. When the two fellows were arrested I started to speak and McRae took me and turned me over to one of them--I don't know what you call them--deputies, or whatever they are. He had a white handkerchief around his neck and he took me toward the county jail. There was a policeman standing in front of the jail. If I am not mistaken his name is Ryan, a short heavy-set fellow. I walked by him. Of course, I never thought he was going to hit me, but I felt something over behind. He hit me with a club behind the ear and cut my head until it was bleeding awful." "When we came to the county jail, Henig, he was in there already. His face was red and he was full of blood. And they took us into the toilet to have us wash the blood off, and when I came back I heard screams and pounding. "Then the sheriff recognized me, he had been down in Mukilteo before, and he says, 'What are you doing up here?' I said, 'Well, I didn't come up here, they brought me up here.' He says, 'You are a member of the I. W. W., too.' So I told him, 'I don't see why I should come and ask you what organization I should belong to!' So he opened the gate and says, 'Here is a fellow from Mukilteo,' he says. 'Beat it!' And I seen, I guess--a hundred and fifty or maybe two hundred, I didn't have time to count them, right out back of the jail lined up in lines on either side. And I had to run between them and come out the other end. They banged me on the head with clubs, and all over. I looked bad and I felt worse. I had blue marks on my shoulders and on my hips and under my knees. "I got thru them and there was a couple ran after me, but I beat it ahead of them. I guess they intended to club me. I ran down to that depot where the electric car goes thru to Seattle and then I turned to look around because the car was at Hewitt and Colby, and as I went down the walk two men stopped me and asked me if I hadn't had enough. They told me to beat it, and as I turned around the same policeman, Ryan, I think his name is, hit me on the forehead and then pulled his gun and said, 'Beat it!' He was drunk and they were all swearing at me. "After I got a block or so, there were two or three shots. I walked two more blocks and then was so dizzy I had to rest. Finally I walked further and an automobile came past me and I tried to holler but they didn't hear me. And then I walked a little further and the stage came along and they picked me up." Eye witnesses declared that officer Daniels was one of those who fired shots at the fleeing men after they had been forced to run the gauntlet. Frank Henig, an Everett citizen, tells what happened in these words: "I will start from the time I left the house. My wife and I, and the little baby were going to the show. When we got on Wetmore there was a big crowd standing there. I had worked the night before in the mill and I had cedar asthma, so I said to my wife, 'I would like to stay out in the fresh air,' And she said, 'All right, I will meet you at nine o'clock at Wetmore and Hewitt.' "There was quite a crowd and I got up pretty close in front so I could hear the speaker. I stood there a little while and finally the sheriff came along with a bunch of deputies, and the speaker said, 'Here they come, but now people, I will tell you, don't start anything, let them start it.' "They took him off the box and arrested a couple of others with him, and then immediately after that the Commercial Club deputies came along in a row. They had white handkerchiefs around their necks. So I looked out there and the crowd commenced to yell and cheer like, and McRae got excited and started toward me, saying, 'We have been looking for you before.' When he said that I stopped--before that I had tried to get farther back--I stopped and he got hold of me. Meanwhile Commissioner Kelley came up and took care of me and McRae walked away a little way. Kelley had hold of my right arm and he pinched me a little bit, and I said 'Let go Kelley and I will go with you.' "We stood there a few minutes longer and McRae came back. Kelley said 'Come along with me,' and just as I said 'All right,' McRae grabbed me by the coat and hit me on the head with a black club fastened to his strap with a leather thong. I was looking right at him and he knocked me unconscious. Then Kelley picked me up and shook me and I came to again, and I fell over the curb of the sidewalk. "Kelley then turned me over to Daniels, a policeman in Everett, and he turned me over to a couple of Commercial Club deputies. Then Fred Luke came along and said, 'I will take care of him.' So we walked a little ways and he said, 'You better go to the doctor and have that dressed.' I said to him, 'Oh, I guess it ain't so bad,' and so he said, 'Come along with me and we will wash up at the jail.' I said, 'All right,' and while I was going up the steps to the jail, why a policeman by the name of Bryan or something like that,--a little short fellow, well anyhow he got canned off the force for being drunk, that is how I heard of him,--when I was kind of slow walking along because I was bleeding pretty bad, he said, 'Hurry up and get in there, you low-down, dirty son-of-a-b----' And I answered, 'I guess I ain't arrested, I don't have to hurry in there.' So he cursed some more. "I went into the jail and washed up and came back into the office of the county jail. The fellows that they had arrested were sitting in the chairs and McRae came in and grabbed one of the I. W. W.'s--I guess they were I. W. W.'s, anyway one of them that was arrested--and he says, 'What in hell are you doing up here, don't you know I told you to keep away from here?' and while he was going in the door into the back office I saw him haul off with his sap, but I don't see him hit him, but the little fellow cried like a baby. "McRae came back and he looked at me and said, 'What in hell are you doing up here?' I didn't know what to say for a little while and then I said, 'I didn't do nothing, Mac, I don't see what you wanted to sap me for.' And he said, 'I didn't sap you,' he said, 'Kelley hit you.' Then I said to him, 'My wife says for me to meet her down at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt at nine o'clock and I would like to go down there and meet her.' So he said, 'All right, you go; you hurry and go.' I was going out the front door and he said, 'No, don't go out there. If you go out there, they will kill you!' He led me to the back door of the jail, I don't know where it was, I never was in jail in my life before, and he said, 'Hurry and beat it, and pull your hat down over your head so they wont know you.' But when I got to town everybody knew, because there was blood still running all over my face after I washed up." Henig endeavored to prosecute McRae for his illegal and unwarranted assault but all attempts to secure a warrant met with failure. Lumber trust law operates only in one direction. In this raid upon the meeting McRae smashed citizens right and left, women as well as men. He was even seen to kick a small boy who happened to get in his path. Deputy Sam Walker beat up Harry Woods, an Everett music teacher; another deputy was seen smashing an elderly gentleman on the head; still another knocked Mrs. Louise McGuire, who was just recovering from a sprained knee, into the gutter; and Ed Morton, G. W. Carr and many other old-time residents of Everett were struck by the drunken Commercial Club thugs. Mrs. Leota Carr called up Chief of Police Kelley next morning, the following being an account of the conversation that ensued: "I said, 'What are you trying to kill my husband for?' and he kind of laughed and said he didn't believe it, and I said, 'Did you know they struck him over the head last night and he could hardly go to work today?' He said, 'My God, they didn't strike him, did they?' and I said, 'They surely did!' And he said 'Why there isn't a better man in town than he is,' and I said, 'I know it.' It surprised me to think that he thought I didn't know it myself. And then I said, 'These here deputies are making more I. W. W.'s in town than the I. W. W.'s would in fifty years.' And he said, 'I know it.' Then I said, 'Why do you allow them to do it? You are the head of the police department.' He replied, 'McRae has taken it out of my hands; the sheriff is ahead of me and it is his men who are doing it, and I am not to blame.'" At the city park four nights after this outrage, only one arrest for street speaking having occurred in the meantime, the aroused citizens of Everett met to hear Attorney E. C. Dailey, T. Webber, and various local speakers deal with the situation, and to view at first hand the wounds of Ovist, Henig and other towns people who had been injured. Thousands attended the meeting, and disapproval of the actions of the Commercial Club and its tools was vehemently expressed. This remonstrance from the people had some effect. The Commercial Club, knowing that all arrests so far had been unlawful, took steps to "legalize" any further seizing of street speakers at Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues. The lumber interests issued an ordinance preventing street speaking on that corner. The Mayor signed it without ever putting it to a reading, thus invalidating the proposed measure. This made no difference; henceforth it was a law of the city of Everett and as such was due to be enforced by the lumber trust. During the whole controversy there had not been an arrest made on the charge of violation of any street speaking ordinance. With the new ordinance assumed to be a law, Mrs. Frennette went to Everett and interviewed Chief Kelley. After telling him that the I. W. W. members were being disturbed and mistreated by men who were not in uniform, she said: "It seems that there is an ordinance here against street speaking and we feel that it is unjust. We feel that we have a right to speak here. We are not blocking traffic and we propose to make a test of the ordinance. Will you have one of your men arrest me or any other speaker who chooses to take the box, personally, and bring me to jail and put a charge against me, and protect me from the vigilantes who are beating the men on the street?" Kelley replied that so far as he was concerned he would do the best he could but McRae had practically taken the authority out of his hands and that he really could not guarantee protection. So a legal test was practically denied. Quiet again reigned in Everett following the brutalities cited. A few citizens were manhandled for too openly expressing their opinion of mob methods and several wearers of overalls were searched and deported, but the effects of bootleg whiskey seemed to have left the vigilantes. On Wednesday, Sept. 20th, a committee of 2000 citizens met at the Labor Temple and arranged for a mass meeting to be held in the public park on the following Friday. The meeting brought forth between ten and fifteen thousand citizens, one-third of the total population at least, who listened to speakers representing the I. W. W., Socialists, trades unions and citizens generally. Testimony was given by some of the citizens who had been clubbed by the vigilantes. Recognizing the hostile public opinion, Sheriff McRae promised that the office of the I. W. W. would not again be molested. As he had lied before he was not believed, but, as a test, Earl Osborne went from Seattle to open up the hall once more. For a period thereafter the energies of the deputies were given to a course of action confined to the outskirts of the city. Migratory workers traveling to and from various jobs were taken from the trains, beaten, robbed and deported. As an example of McRae's methods and as depicting a phase of the life of the migratory worker the story of "Sergeant" John J. Keenan, sixty-five years old, and still actively at work, is of particular interest: "I left Great Falls, Mont., about the 5th of September after I had been working on a machine in the harvest about nine miles from town. The boys gathered together--they were coming from North Dakota--and we all came thru together. We had an organization among ourselves. We carried our cards. There was a delegate with us, a field delegate, and I was spokesman, elected by the rank and file of the twenty-two. There was another division from North Dakota on the same train with us, going to Wenatchee to pick apples. We were going to Seattle. I winter in Seattle every year and work on the snow sheds. "We carried our cooking utensils with us, and when we got off at a station we sent our committee of three and bought our provisions in the store, and two of the cooks cooked the food, and we ate it and took the next train and came on. This happened wherever we stopped. "We arrived in Snohomish, Wash., on Sept. 23rd at about 8:45 in the morning. When the committee came down I sent out and they brought me back the bills--I was the treasurer as well--one man carried the funds, and they brought back $4.90 worth of food down, including two frying pans, and when I was about cooking, a freight train from Everett pulled in and a little boy, who was maybe about ten years old, he says, 'Dad, are you an I. W. W.?' I says, 'I am, son.' 'Well,' he says, 'there are a whole bunch of deputies coming out after you.' I laughed at the boy, I thought he was joshing me. "About half an hour after the boy told me this the deputies appeared. In the first bunch were forty-two, and then Sheriff McRae came with more, making altogether, what I counted, sixty-four. The first bunch came around the bush alongside the railroad track where I was and the sheriff came in about twenty minutes later with his bunch from the opposite way. "In the first bunch was a fat, stout fellow with two guns. He had a chief's badge--a chief of police's badge--on him. He was facing toward the fire and he says, 'If you move a step, I will fill you full of lead!' I laughed at him, says I, 'What does this outrage mean?' There was another old gentleman with a chin beard, fat, middling fat, probably my own age, and he picked up my coat which was lying alongside me and looked at my button. He says, 'Oh, undesirable citizen!' I says, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Are you an I. W. W.?' I says, 'I am, and I am more than proud of it!' 'Well,' he says, 'we don't want you in this county.' I says, 'Sure?' He says, 'Yes.' I says, 'Well, I am not going to stay in this county, I am going to cook breakfast and go to Seattle.' He says, 'Do you understand what this means?' I says, 'No.' He says, 'The sheriff will be here in a few minutes and he will tell you what it means.' I heard afterward that this man was the mayor of Snohomish. "I was sitting right opposite the fire with my coffee and bread and meat in my hand when Sheriff McRae came up and says, 'Who is this bunch?' So a tall, black deputy, a tall, dark complected fellow, says, 'They are a bunch of harvest hands coming from North Dakota.' McRae says, 'Did you search these men?' And he says, 'Yes.' 'Did you find any shooting arms on them?' He says, 'No.' They had searched us and we had no guns or clubs. "McRae then asked, 'Who is their leader?' and this old gentleman that spoke to me first, he says, 'They have no leader, but that old man over there is the spokesman.' So he came over to me and says, 'Where are you going?' I says, 'I am going to Seattle.' Then he used an expression that I don't think is fit for ladies to hear. I says, 'My mother was a lady and she never raised any of us by the name you have mentioned, and,' I says, 'I don't think I have done anything that I will have to walk out of the county.' He says, 'Do you see that track?' I says, 'Yes.' He says, 'Well, you will walk down that track!' I says, 'But for these twenty-one men that are here in my hands I wouldn't walk a foot for you.' He says, 'You get out. I am going to shoot all these things to pieces.' I says, 'You will shoot nothing to pieces, I bought them with my hard-earned money.' He says, 'All right, take them with you.' Then he shot up the cans and things, and he says, 'That is the track to Seattle and you go up it, and if I ever catch you in this county again you will get what you are looking for.' "So we walked up the hill toward Seattle and there is a town, I think they call it Maltby, and we got there between four and five o'clock in the evening. Fellow Worker Thornton, Adams and Love were the committee men and they asked me how I felt. I told them my feet were pretty sore. "I went over to the station agent and found out that there was a freight due at 9:30 but that sometimes it didn't get in until three in the morning. I then asked permission to light a fire and cook some coffee, and after we were thru eating we lay down. "About 9:30 the train came along and I called the men. As the train was backing up I saw some light come, and one auto throwing her searchlight, and I counted four automobiles. That is all I could count but there were a whole lot of them coming. I says, 'Men, we have run up against a stone wall.' "Fellow Worker Love and I--he came off the machine with me in Great Falls--we were first in line and Sheriff McRae and two other men with white handkerchiefs around their necks came forward first and he says, 'You son-of-a-b----, I thought you were going to Seattle?' I says, 'Ain't I going to Seattle? I can't go till the train goes,' I says, 'you've had me walking now till I have no foot under me. What do you mean by this outrage? My father fought for this country and I have a right here. I am on railroad property and have done nothing to anybody.' McRae then hit Fellow Worker Love on the head and I yelled 'Break and run, men, or they will kill you!' He turned around then and he said to me, 'You dirty old Irish bastard, now I will make you so you can't run. I'll show you!' With that he let drive and hit me, leaving this three cornered mark here (indicating place on head). And when the others went up the track he says, 'Get now, God damn your old soul, or I will kill you!' I says, 'Sheriff, look here, you are a perfect gentleman, you are, to hit a fellow old enough to be your father.' He made as if to hit me again and then Fellow Worker Love came back and says, 'Have a heart!' I says 'You run,' and he says 'No, they are not going to kill you while I am here.' And Fellow Worker Paterson came back down the track and I says, 'What is the matter, Paterson, are you crazy? Get the men and tell them to go over the line. Don't stay in this county or they are liable to murder you!' Then Love and I went off the track into the thick bushes and lay down till next morning. "At daylight we got up, went down to the junction and gathered up fifteen of the men. When the train pulled in the trainman asked me where I was going and I said I was going to Seattle. He says, 'Do you carry a card?' 'Yes,' says I. 'Produce!' says he. That is the word the trainmen use. So I put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out. 'You better get back in the caboose, you are hurt,' he said. He saw the blood where Fellow Worker Love had bandaged my head with his handkerchief. 'No,' says I, 'Where the men are riding is good enough for me.' So we went to where the interurban comes in and I was seven men short. I paid two-fifty into Seattle, and we came in, and I made a report to the Seattle locals." Incidents similar to this were of almost daily occurrence, scores of deportations taking place during the month of September. Then on the 26th, despite his promises to refrain from molesting the hall, McRae entered the premises, forcibly seized Earl Osborne, the secretary, took him a long distance out in the country, and at the point of a gun made him start the thirty-mile trip on foot to Seattle. On the 29th of September the Everett authorities arrested J. Johnson and George Bradley in Seattle. Johnson was held on an arson charge but no legal warrant for his arrest was issued until October 17th, or until he had been in jail for nineteen days. Then the charge against him was that he had set fire to a box factory--but this was soon changed when it was learned by the authorities that the box factory had not caught fire until after Johnson was in jail, and for the first charge they substituted the claim that Johnson had burned the garage of one Walter Smith, a scab shingle weaver deputy. George Bradley, who had been deported from Everett after having served one day as secretary, was accused of second degree arson as an alleged accomplice. Each man was told that the other had confessed and the best thing to do was to make a clean breast of matters, but this scheme of McRae's fell thru for two reasons: the men were not guilty, and they had never seen or heard of each other before. Johnson was in jail fifty-eight days without a preliminary hearing. Both men were released on property bonds, and the trials were "indefinitely postponed," that still being their status at this writing. No further attempts were made to open the hall after Osborne's deportation until October 16th when the organization in Seattle again selected a man to act as secretary in Everett. Thomas H. Tracy took charge on that date, remaining in Everett until a few days prior to November 5th, at which time he resigned, his place being taken by Chester Micklin. During the month of October there were between three and four hundred deportations, the vigilantes operating mainly from the Commercial Club. Many of these "slugging parties" were attended by Mayor D. D. Merrill, Governor Clough, Captain Harry Ramwell, T. W. Anguish, W. R. Booth, Edward Hawse, and other "pillars of society" in Everett. Most of the men were deported without any formalities whatever, and the methods used in handling the others may well be judged by frequent entries on the police blotter to the effect that men arrested by Great Northern detective Fox were ordered turned over to Sheriff McRae by Mayor Merrill. The railroad company, acting in conjunction with the lumber trust, put on a private army, and had its men roughly dressed to resemble honest workingmen. Cases of "hi-jacking" became quite numerous about this time, but no redress from this highway robbery could be had. On the question of the hiring of armed forces by the railroads the Industrial Relations Commission Report has this to say: "Under the authority granted by the several states the railroads maintain a force of police, and some, at least, have established large arsenals of arms and ammunition. This armed force, when augmented by recruits from detective agencies and employment agencies, as seems to be the general practice during industrial disputes, constitutes a private army clothed with a degree of authority which should be exercised only by public officials; these armed bodies, usurping the supreme functions of the state and oftentimes encroaching on the rights of citizens, are a distinct menace to public welfare." A number of the men deported during September and October were not members of the I. W. W., some even being opposed at the time to the tenet of the organization, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common," but almost without exception the non-members who suffered deportation made it a point to join the union when the nearest branch or field delegate was reached. In Everett, delegates working quietly among the millmen, longshoremen, and other workers, were also getting numerous recruits as the class struggle stood forth in its naked form. All the efforts of the lumber trust to suppress the I. W. W. were as tho they had tried to quench a forest fire with gasoline. [Illustration: Beverly Park] [Illustration: A close up view of Beverly Park showing cattle guards.] It was on October 30th that forty-one men left Seattle by boat in a determined effort to reach the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues in order to test the validity of the alleged ordinance prohibiting free speech at that point. They were the first contingent of an army of harvesters who were just returning from a hard season's labor in the fields and orchards. The party was double the size of any free speech group that had tried to enter Everett at any previous time. They were met at the dock by a drunken band of deputies, most of whom wore white handkerchiefs around their necks as a means of identification. The deputies were armed with guns and clubs, and they outnumbered the I. W. W. body five to one. Several of the lawless crew were so intoxicated they could scarcely stand, and one in particular had to be forcibly restrained by his less drunken associates from attempts to commit murder in the open. The I. W. W. men were clubbed with gun butts and loaded clubs whenever their movements were not swift enough to suit the fancies of the drunken mob. John Downs' face was an indistinguishable mass of blood where Sheriff McRae had "sapped up" on him and split open his upper lip. Boat passengers who remonstrated were promised the same treatment unless they kept still. In its mad frenzy the posse struck in all directions. So blindly drunk and hysterical was deputy Joseph Irving that he swung his heavy revolver handle with full force onto the head of deputy Joe Schofield. He continued the insane attack, while McRae, awry-eyed and lusting for blood, assisted in the brutal task until warning cried from the other vigilantes showed them their mistake. Schofield was carried to an automobile and hastened to the nearest drug store, where it was found necessary to call a physician to take three stitches to bind together the edges of the most severe wound. The prisoners were loaded into large auto trucks and passenger cars, more than twenty of which were lined up in waiting, and were taken out to a lonely wooded spot near Beverly Park on the road to Seattle. McRae, with deputies Fred Luke, William Pabst and Fred Plymale, took one I. W. W. out in their five-passenger Reo, McRae afterward endeavored unsuccessfully to prove an alibi because his own car was in a garage. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson Beard also took out a prisoner. Upon their arrival at Beverly the prisoners were made to dismount at the point of guns and stand in the cold drizzling rain until their captors had formed two lines reaching from the roadway to the interurban tracks. There in the darkness the men were forced to run stumbling over the uneven ground down a gauntlet that ended only with the cruel sharp blades of a cattle guard, while on their unprotected heads and shoulders the drunken outlaws rained blow after blow with gun-butts, black-jacks, loaded saps and pick-handles. In the confusion one boy escaped from Ed Hawse, but before he could get away into the brush this bully, weighing about 260 pounds, bore down upon him, and with a couple of other deputies proceeded to beat him well-nigh into insensibility. Deputies who lost their clubs in the scramble aimed kicks at the privates of the men as they passed down the line. Deputy Fred Luke swung at one man with such force that the leather wrist thong parted and the club disappeared into the woods. With drunken deliberation Joseph Irving cracked the head of man after man, informing each one that they were getting an extra dose because of his mistake in beating up a brother deputy. In the thick of it all, smashing, kicking, and screaming obscene curses at the helpless men and boys who dared demand free speech within the territory sacred to the lumber trust, was the deputy-sheriff of Snohomish County, Jefferson E. Beard! A few of the men broke the lines and ran into the woods, a bullet past their heads warning others from a like attempt. Across the cattle guard, often sprawling on hands and knees from the force of the last blows received, went the men who had cleared the gauntlet. Legs sank between the blades of the guard and strained ligaments and sprained ankles were the result. One man suffered a dislocated shoulder at the hands of a Doctor Allison, another had the bridge of his nose broken by a blow from McRae, and dangerously severe wounds and bruises were sustained by nearly all of the forty-one. So horrible were the moans and outcries of the stricken men, so bestial were the actions of the infuriated deputies, that one of their own number, W. R. Booth, sickened at the sight and sound, went reeling up the roadway retching as he left the brutal scene. Attracted by the curses of the deputies, the sound of the blows, and the moans and cries of the wounded men, Mrs. Ruby Ketchum came to the door of her house nearly a quarter of a mile away, and remained there listening to the hideous din, while her husband, Roy Ketchum, and his brother, Lew, went down to the scene of the outrage to investigate. The Ketchum brothers reported that the deputies were formed in two lines ending in six men, three on each side of the cattle guard. A man would be taken out of the car and two deputies would join his arms up behind him meanwhile hammering his unprotected face from both sides as hard as they could strike with their fists. Then the man was started down the line, one deputy following to club him on the back to make him hurry, and the other deputies striking with clubs and other weapons and kicking the prisoner as he progressed. Just before reaching the cattle guard he was made to run, and, in crossing the blades, the three men on the east side of the track would swing their clubs upon his back while the men on the west clubbed him across the face and stomach. This was repeated with the men as fast as they were dragged from the autos. They also heard the sound of blows and then cries of "Oh my God! Doc, don't hit me again, doc, you're killing me!" Lew Ketchum took deputy Fred Luke by the coat tails and pulled him back from the cattle guard, asking, "What are you doing, what is going on here?" and Luke replied, "We are beating up forty-one I. W. W.'s." Harry Hubbard tells the story in these words from the time the autos arrived at Beverly: "I got out of the car with another fellow, Rice, and I says, 'We had better stay together, it looks to me like we were going to get tamped up,' and somebody grabbed hold of him, and I stood a minute, and then I ran by one fellow up into the woods. Just as I got out of the radius of the automobile lights I fell over a stump on the edge of the embankment. I was in kind of a peculiar predicament and I had to get hold of the stump to pull myself up, and just as I did that some fellow behind me swung with a blackjack and grazed my temple, knocking me to my knees. I got up and he grabbed hold of me and we both fell down the bank together. Then two or three others grabbed me, and this Hawse had me by the collar, and Sheriff McRae walked up and said 'You are the son-of-a---- that was over here last week,' and I answered, 'I was working here last week.' Then he said, 'Are you an I. W. W.?' I said, 'Yes,' and he hit me an upward swing on the nose. He repeated, 'You are an I. W. W., are you?' and again I said, 'Yes.' He then swore at me and said, 'Say that you ain't!' and I replied, 'No, I won't say that I ain't,' and he hit me three more times on the nose. "Then the man who was holding my left wrist with one hand and my shoulder with the other, said, 'Wait a minute until I get a poke at him,' and McRae said, 'All right, doc,' and then someone else said 'All right Allison, hit him for me!' This fellow they called Doc Allison hit me and blackened my eye. McRae swore at me, he seemed to be intoxicated and he looked and acted like a maniac, he said 'If you fellows ever come back some of you will die, that's all there is to it.' I said, 'I don't think there is any necessity for killing anybody,' and he answered 'I will kill you if you come back,' and he raised his blackjack and said 'Run!' I said 'I wont run,' and he hit me again and I dropped to the ground. He raised his foot over my face, and used some pretty raw language, and as he stood there with his heel over my face I grabbed hold of a fellow's leg and pulled myself along so instead of hitting my face his heel scraped my side. Then I got some kicks, three of them in the small of the back around my kidneys. "When I got up I walked thru the line, there were twenty or thirty different ones hollered for me to run, but I was stubborn and wouldn't do it. And when I got to the cattle guard and stood at the other side kind of wiping the blood off my face I heard some one coming and I said, 'Four Hundred," and he said 'Yes,' and he was crying. It was a young boy and I walked down the track with him afterward. "At the City Hospital in Seattle next day the doctor told me my nose was badly fractured and that I had internal injuries. A few days later my back pained me severely and I passed blood for a time after that." C. H. Rice, whose shoulder was dislocated, gives about the same version. "Two big fellows would hold a man until they were thru beating him and then turn him loose. I was turned loose and ran probably six or eight feet, something like that, and I was hit and knocked down. As I scrambled to my feet and ran a few feet again I was hit on the shoulder with a slingshot. This time I went down and I was dazed, I think I must have been unconscious for a moment because when I came to they were kicking me, and some of them said, 'He is faking,' and others said, 'No, he is knocked out.' I remember seeing some of the boys during that time running by me, and when they got me up I started to run a bit farther and was knocked down again. "Then they called for somebody there, addressing him as Dr. Allison, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me up, and he raised my arm up and said, 'Aw, there is nothing the matter with you,' and jerked it down again. My arm was out of place, it seemed way over to one side, and I couldn't straighten it up. "As I was going over the cattle guard several of them hit me and some one hollered 'Bring him back here, don't let him go over there.' They brought me back and this doctor said 'You touch your shoulder with your hand,' and I couldn't. He says 'There is nothing the matter with you.' "Then the fellow who was on the dock, and who had been drinking pretty heavily, because they would have to shove him back every once in a while, he shouted out 'Let's burn him!' About that time Sheriff McRae came over and got hold of my throat and said, 'Now, damn you, I will tell you I can kill you right here and there never would be nothing known about it, and you know it.' And some one said, 'Let's hang him!' and this other fellow kept hollering 'Burn him! Burn him!' McRae kept hitting me, first on one side and then the other, smacking me that way, and then he turned me loose again and hit me with one of those slingshots, and finally he said 'Oh, let him go,' and he started me along, following behind and hitting me until I got over the cattleguard. "I went down to the interurban track until I caught up with some of the boys. They tried to pull my shoulder back into place and then they took handkerchiefs and neckties, and one thing and another, and made a kind of a sling to hold it up. We then went down to the first station and the boys took up a collection and the eight of us who were hurt the worst got on the train and went to Seattle. The others had to walk the twenty-five miles into Seattle. Most of us had to go to the hospital next day." Sam Rovinson was beaten with a piece of gaspipe, but taking advantage of the fact that the shooting when Archie Collins made his escape had attracted the attention of the deputies he got thru the gauntlet with only minor injuries. Rovinson testifies that McRae said to him: "This time we will let you off with this, but next time you come up here we will pop you full of holes." "I just came up here to exercise my constitutional right of free speech," expostulated Rovinson. "To hell with free speech and the Constitution!" shouted McRae, "You are now in Snohomish county, and we are running the county!" After the deputies had returned to town the two Ketchum brothers took their lanterns and went out to the scene thinking they might find some of the men out there hurt, with a broken leg, or arm or something, and that they could be taken to their house to be cared for. No men were seen, but three covered with blood were found and after examination were returned to where they had been picked up. Early next morning some of the deputies, frightened at their cowardly actions of the previous night, were seen at Beverly Park making an examination of the ground. Two of them approached the Ketchum residence and asked if any I. W. W.'s had been found lying around there. After being assured that they had stopped short of murder, the deputies departed. A little later an investigation committee composed of Rev. Oscar McGill of Seattle, and Rev. Elbert E. Flint, Rev. Jos. P. Marlatt, Jake Michel, Robert Mills, Ernest Marsh, E. C. Dailey, Commissioner W. H. Clay, Messrs. Fawcett, Hedge, Ballou, Houghton and others from Everett, made a close examination of the grounds. In spite of the heavy rain and notwithstanding the fact that deputies had preceded them, the committee found blood-soaked hats and hat bands and big brown spots of blood soaked into the cement roadway. In the cattle guard was the sole of a shoe, evidently torn off as one of the fleeing men escaped his assailants. "Hearing of the occurrence I accompanied several gentlemen, including a prominent minister of the gospel of Everett, next morning to the scene. The tale of that struggle was plainly written. The roadway was stained with blood. The blades of the cattle guard were so stained, and between the blades was a fresh imprint of a shoe where plainly one man in his hurry to escape the shower of blows, missed his footing in the dark and went down between the blades. Early that morning workmen going into the city to work, picked up three hats from the ground, still damp with blood. There can be no excuse for nor extenuation of such an inhuman method of punishment," reported President E. P. Marsh to the State Federation of Labor. J. M. Norland stated that "there were big brown blotches on the pavement which we took to be blood. They were perhaps two feet in diameter, and there were a number of smaller blotches for a distance of twenty-five feet. In the vicinity of the cattle guard the soil was disarranged and there were shoe marks near the cattle guard. You could also notice where, in their hurry to get across, they would go in between, and there would be little parts or shreds of clothing there, and on one there was a little hair." All that day the talk in Everett centered around the crime of the preceding night. Little groups of citizens gathered here and there to discuss the matter. The deputies went about strenuously denying that they had a hand in the infamous affair, and friends of long standing refused to speak to those who were known positively to have been concerned in the outrage. A number of the ministers of the city conferred regarding a course of action, but finding the problem too deep for them to solve they left it to up to the individual. Various Everett citizens, representing a large degree of public sentiment, felt that the thing to do was to hold an immense mass meeting in order to present the facts of the hideous crime to the whole public. This plan met with immediate approval from many quarters, and the I. W. W. in Seattle was notified of this desire by mail, by telephone, and by means of citizens' delegations. Rev. Oscar McGill conferred with secretary Herbert Mahler and was quite insistent upon the necessity for such a meeting, as the Everett papers had carried no real information about the affair in Beverly. He brought out the fact that there had been thousands in attendance at the mass meeting in the Everett city park a month or so previous to this occurrence, and the speakers were then escorted by a large body of citizens from the interurban depot to the meeting place, and the feelings of the people were such that similar or even more adequate protection would be given were another meeting held. He suggested that the meeting be held in broad daylight and on a Sunday. That the plan met with the approval of the I. W. W. membership was shown by its adoption at a meeting the night following the trouble at Beverly Park. And the date selected was Sunday, November 5th. Immediately steps were taken to inform the various I. W. W. branches in the Northwest of the proposed action. Telegrams were sent to Solidarity, and a ringing call for two thousand men to help in the fight for free speech was published in the Industrial Worker. In addition to telegraphing the story and its attendant call for action to the unions of the Pacific Coast there were various members selected from among the forty-one who had been beaten, and these were dispatched to different points to spread the tale of Everett's atrocities, and to gain new recruits for the "invading army" of free speech fighters. Seeking the widest possible publicity the free speech committee had printed and circulated thousands of handbills in Everett to call attention to the proposed meeting. CITIZENS OF EVERETT ATTENTION! A meeting will be held at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Aves., on Sunday, Nov. 5th, 2 p. m. Come and help maintain your and our constitutional right. +Committee.+ The authorities in Everett were notified, the editors of all the Seattle daily papers were requested to have representatives present at the meeting, and reporters were called in and told of the intentions of the organization. During the week frequent meetings were held in the hall in Seattle to arrange for the incoming free speech fighters, and without an exception all these meetings were held with no examination of membership books and were open to the public. With their cards laid upon the table the members of the Industrial Workers of the World were preparing to call the hand of the semi-legalized outlaws of Snohomish county who had cast aside the law, abrogated the Constitution of the United States, and denied the right of free speech and free assembly. Following the Beverly affair the Commercial Club redoubled its activities. Blackjacks and "Robinson-clubs," so called because they were manufactured especially for the deputies by the Robinson Mill, were set aside for revolvers and high power rifles, and the ranks of the deputies were enlarged by the off-scouring and scum of the open shop persuasion. McRae entered the I. W. W. hall on Friday, Nov. 3rd, the day Thomas H. Tracy turned the office over to Chester Micklin, and abruptly said "By God, I will introduce myself. I am Sheriff McRae! I won't have a lot of sons-of-bitches hanging around this place like in Seattle." Micklin looked at the drunken sheriff a moment and replied, "The constitution guarantees us free speech, free assembly, and free----" "To hell with the Constitution," broke in McRae. "We have a constitution here that we will enforce." "You believe in unions, you believe in organized labor, don't you?" asked Micklin. "Yes, I belonged to the shingle weavers at one time," returned McRae, "but when the shingle weavers went out on strike I donated $25.00 to their strike fund and they gave me a rotten deal and sent the check back to me, and to hell with the shingle weavers and the rest of the unions!" Then, as he was leaving the hall, McRae pulled from his pocket a letter; took from it a black cat cut from pasteboard and stuck it in the secretary's face, saying "That's the kind of ----s that is in your organization!" Next morning the sheriff raided the hall and seized the men who were found there, with the exception of the secretary. Turning to Micklin he said boastfully "I'll bet you a hundred dollars you ----s won't hold that meeting tomorrow!" McRae was drunk. The arrested men were searched and deported and, as was the case in every previous arrest and deportation, there was no resistance offered, no physical violence threatened, and no weapons of any character found upon any of the I. W. W. men. That night the deputies were secretly assembled at the Commercial Club where they were given their final instructions by the lumber trust and ordered to report fully armed and ready for action at the blowing of the mill whistles. With these preparations the open shop forces were ready to go to still greater lengths to uphold "law and order!" The answer of the I. W. W. to this damnable act of violence at Beverly Park and to the four months of terrorism that had preceded it was a call for two thousand men to enter Everett, there to gain by sheer force of numbers that right of free speech and peaceable assembly supposed to have been guaranteed them by the Constitution of the United States.[10] [Illustration: The Ketchum Home near Beverly Park] FOOTNOTE: [10] (The incidents in the foregoing chapter are corroborated by the sworn testimony of I. W. W. men who were shot at, beaten, robbed, and abused; by citizens of Everett and Seattle who were also beaten and mistreated or who witnessed the scenes; by physicians, attorneys, public officials, members of craft unions, and by deputies who hoped to make amends by testifying to the truth for the defense.) CHAPTER IV. BLOODY SUNDAY How shall we enter the kingdom of Everett? was the question that confronted the committee in charge of affairs in Seattle on the morning of November 5th. Inquiries at the Interurban office developed the fact that sufficient cars could not be had to accommodate the crowd. The cost of making the trip by auto truck was found to be prohibitive. At the eleventh hour the committee, taking the money pooled by the members, secured the regular passenger steamship Verona, and an orderly and determined body of men filed down the steps leading from the I. W. W. headquarters and marched by fours to the Colman Dock. Their mission was an open and peaceable one. Cheerful, optimistic, enthusiastic, the band of social crusaders felt that the conquest of free speech was assured. Not for a moment did they think that the Everett Klu-Klux-Klan would dare resort to violent and criminal tactics in the broad daylight of that beautiful sunny day and in plain view of a host of conscientious Everett citizens. Assisted by Harry Feinberg and John T. (Red) Doran, Captain Chauncey Wiman checked the number of men who went on board, stopping further entry when the legal limit of two hundred and fifty persons was reached, Feinberg joining the men on board in order to serve as the main speaker at the proposed meeting. Among those who secured passage were several who were not members of the free speech party, but in the work of checking, the tickets of these persons were not collected, their fares being paid in the lump sum that was handed to the captain. Regular passengers of the Verona were informed that their tickets would be good for the steamer Calista, lying at Pier 3. Thirty-eight additional members of the free speech band joined the regular patrons who took passage on the Calista. Laughter and jest were on the lips of the men who crowded the Verona, and songs of the One Big Union rang out over the sparkling waters of Puget Sound. Loyal soldiers were these in the great class war, enlightened workers who were willing to give their all in the battle for bread, happiness and liberty. Men of all callings these--logger, carpenter, laborer, railroad clerk, painter, miner, printer, seaman and farmhand, all united with one common aim--the desire to gain for Labor the right of free expression. Among their number, however, were two individuals of a breed reckoned among the lowest order of the human species; two "stool pigeons," low informers upon whom even a regular detective looks down with contempt. One of these, carrying an I. W. W. card and in the employ of Snohomish county and the Everett Commercial Club under the direction of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, had sneaked out of the I. W. W. headquarters long enough to telephone Lieutenant Hedges of the Seattle Police force that there was a boatload of I. W. W. men leaving for Everett. There was no secret in connection with the trip, but that there exist such class traitors, relatively few as they are, to whom the enemies of the workers can look for information is one of the sad features of the class struggle. The "stool's" message was relayed to the Everett authorities and, after being revised by the advocates of the open shop, it finally reached the deputies in the form of a report that a boatload of I. W. W.'s, armed to the teeth, were about to invade, pillage, and burn the city. At one o'clock the mill whistles blew, the mill deputies armed with their mill clubs, mill revolvers, rifles and shotguns, assembled at the mill headquarters--the Commercial Club--and from there were transported in mill automobiles down the alleys and back streets to the City Dock. Citizens were driven from the dock and a rope, guarded by armed deputies, was stretched across the land end to prevent access by any save men with guns. Part of the equipment of the Naval Militia was stored in readiness at the Commercial Club--a stubborn fact for those who deny that government is a class institution. At the Pacific Hardware Company, deputy Dave Oswald had an auto load of rifles and ammunition prepared for immediate transportation and use. In Captain Ramwell's office, at the point where the rope was stretched, there were stacked a number of high-power rifles, brought there from the same source. It is even rumored that there was a machine gun on the dock. On the scab tugboat Edison, moored at the north side of the dock, men armed with rifles lay in waiting. The Everett Improvement Dock to the south was also prepared for action. Hundreds of deputies were admitted to the City Dock and were lined up under the direction of Sheriff McRae, Deputy-Sheriff Jefferson Beard, and Lieutenant Charles O. Curtis, of the Officers' Reserve Corps of the National Guard of Washington. Boards were removed from the sides of the warehouses so as to command a view of the landing place, and sacks of potatoes and lumber were used as partial barricades. A few of the deputies were in the west warehouse at the extreme end of the dock, but the majority of them were in the larger warehouse to the east of the open docking space. Plentifully supplied with ammunition and "booze," the cowardly deputies lay hidden in this ambush. The scene was set and the tragedy of November Fifth about to be staged. As the Verona cleaved the placid, sunlit waters of the Bay and swung up to the City Dock at Everett, shortly before two o'clock, the men were merrily singing the English Transport Workers' strike song, "HOLD THE FORT!" We meet today in Freedom's cause, And raise our voices high; We'll join our hands in union strong, To battle or to die. CHORUS Hold the fort for we are coming, Union men be strong. Side by side we battle onward, Victory will come! Look, my comrades, see the union, Banners waving high. Reinforcements now appearing, Victory is nigh. See our numbers still increasing; Hear the bugle blow: By our union we shall triumph Over every foe. Fierce and long the battle rages, But we will not fear. Help will come whene'er it's needed, Cheer, my comrades, cheer! From a hillside overlooking the scene thousands upon thousands of Everett citizens sent forth cheer after cheer as a hearty welcome to the "invading army." High up on the flag-pole of the Verona clambered Hugo Gerlot, a youthful free speech enthusiast, to wave a greeting to the throng that lined the shore. Passenger Oscar Carlson and his friend Ernest Nordstrom, from their position on the very bow of the boat, caught the spirit of the party and endeavored to join in the song that resounded louder and clearer as many of the men left the cabins to go out upon the deck. Completely filling the bow of the boat and blocking the passageway on either side, the singers crowded to the rail in the usual joyously impatient manner of holiday excursionists, and then for the first time observed a body of deputies march from the large warehouse and settle into lines across the back and sides of the open landing space on the dock, where Curtis, McRae, and Beard were stationed. Waiting until Captain Ramwell's wharfinger, William Kenneth, had made fast the bowline to prevent the boat from backing out, Sheriff Donald McRae gave his belt holster a hitch to bring his gun directly across his middle and then lurched forward to the face of the dock. Holding up his left hand to check the singing, he yelled to the men on board: "Who is your leader?" Immediate and unmistakable was the answer from practically every member of the Industrial Workers of the World: "We are all leaders!" Angrily jerking his gun from its holster and flourishing it in a threatening manner, McRae cried: "You can't land here!" "The hell we can't!" came the reply as the men stepped toward the partly thrown-off gang plank. A shot rang out from the immediate vicinity of deputy W. A. Bridges, then another, closely followed by a volley that sent them staggering backward. Many fell to the deck. Evidently the waving of McRae's revolver was the prearranged signal for the carnage to commence. The long months of lumber trust lawlessness had culminated in cowardly, deliberate, premeditated and foul murder! Young Gerlot crumpled up and slid part way down the flag pole, then suddenly threw out both arms and crashed lifeless to the deck, his bullet-torn and bleeding body acting as a shield for several who had thrown themselves prostrate. Passenger Oscar Carlson threw himself flat upon the forward deck and while in that position seven bullets found their way into his quivering flesh, life clinging to the shattered form by a strange vagary of fate. With a severe bullet wound in his abdomen, Ed Roth swayed back and forth for a moment and then toppled forward on his face. When a bullet whistled past the head of Captain Chauncey Wiman, and another tore a spoke as thick as a man's wrist from the pilot wheel beneath his hand, he deserted his post to barricade himself behind the safe with a mattress, remaining in that position until the close of the hostilities. At the first shot and during the first volley the unarmed men wildly sought cover from the deadly leaden hail. Those who had not dropped to the deck, wounded or seeking shelter, surged to the starboard side of the boat, causing it to list to an alarming degree, the fastened bowline alone preventing it from capsizing. Several men lost their footing on the blood-slimed decks and were pitched headlong overboard. There, struggling frantically in the water,--by no possible chance combatants--a storm of rifle bullets churning little whirlpools around their heads, one by one they were made the victims of lumber trust greed by the Hessianized deputies stationed at the shore end of the City Dock and upon the dock to the south. The bay was reddened with their blood. Of all who went overboard, James Hadley alone regained the deck, the rest disappearing beneath the silent waters to be dragged by the undertow out to an unknown and nameless ocean grave. Young Joe Ghilezano seized the rail preparatory to jumping overboard, but seeing two men shot dead while they were in the water he lay down on the deck instead. While there a bullet pierced his hip, another went thru his back close to the spine, and a third completely tore off his left knee cap. Harry Parker slipped over the starboard side in order to gain the lower deck, and a rifle bullet from the vicinity of the tug Goldfinch, along the Everett Improvement Company Dock, ranged thru his back from left to right, just as his friend, Walter Mulholland, also wounded, pulled him in thru a hole torn in the canvas wind shield. An abdominal wound laid Felix Baran low. The thud of bullets as they struck the prostrate men added to the ghastly sound caused by the firing of rifles and revolvers, the curses of the deputies and the moans of the wounded men. Following the first volley the deputies who had been out in the open scuttled into the warehouses on either side. Thru their scattering ranks the scabs on the tug Edison poured their rifle fire toward the men on the Verona. Lieutenant C. O. Curtis pitched forward and fell dead upon the dock--the victim of a rifle bullet. One of the fleeing deputies paused behind the corner of the waiting room just long enough to flinchingly reach out his hand and, keeping his head under cover, emptied his revolver without taking aim. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson Beard fell mortally wounded as he turned to run, and was dragged into the warehouse by some of the less panic stricken murderers. Sheriff McRae, with a couple of slight wounds in his left leg and heel, was forced to his knees by the impact of bullets against the steel jacket which he wore, remaining in a supplicating attitude for a few seconds while he sobbed out in a quavering tone, "O-o-oh! I'm hit! I-I'm hit!! I-I-I'm hit!!!" Placed on board the Verona to serve the interests of the lumber trust, what were the two Pinkerton operatives doing while the boat was landing and just before the first heavy firing commenced? Their actions were shrouded in mystery. But, as if anticipating something, one was seen directly after the first shot scurrying into hiding where he lay shivering until long after the firing had ceased. The other, while under cover, was struck on the head by a glancing bullet. He became so enraged at this lack of thoughtfulness on the part of his degenerate brothers that he emptied his revolver at their backs as they broke for cover. From a safe position on the dock, deputy H. D. Cooley, with a pair of field glasses, was tremblingly trying to spy for the approach of the Calista. Inside the waiting room and the warehouses the drink-crazed deputies ran amuck, shooting wildly in all directions, often with some of their own number directly in the line of fire--bullet holes in the floor and a pierced clock case high up on the waiting room wall giving mute evidence of their insane recklessness. One deputy fled from the dock in terror, explaining to all who would listen that a bullet hole in his ear was from the shot of one of his associates on the dock. "They've gone crazy in there!" he cried excitedly. "They're shootin' every which way! They shot me in the ear!" Thru the loopholes already provided, and even thru the sides of the warehouses they blazed away in the general direction of the boat, using revolvers and high powered rifles with steel and copper-jacketed missiles. Dum-dums sang their deadly way to the Verona and tore gaping wounds in the breasts of mere boys--an added reward by the industrial lords for their first season of hard labor in the scorching harvest fields. John Looney was felled by a rifle bullet and even as he fell shuddering to the deck another leaden missile shattered the woodwork and impaled one of his eyeballs upon a spear of wood, gouging it from the socket. At the foot of the dock, protected by the Klatawa slip, (Indian name for runaway) C. R. Schweitzer, owner of a scab plumbing establishment, fired time after time with a magazine shotgun, the buckshot scattering at the long range and raking the forward deck with deadly effect. The pilot house was riddled and the woodwork filled with hundreds of the little leaden messengers that carried a story of "mutual interests of Capital and Labor." Deputy Russell and about ten others assisted in the dastardly work at that point, pouring shot after shot into the convulsive struggling heaps of wounded men piled four and five deep on the deck. One boy in a brown mackinaw suddenly rose upright from a tangled mass of humanity, the blood gushing from his wounds, and with an agonized cry of "My God! I can't stand this any longer!" leaped high in the air over the side of the boat, sinking from sight forever, his watery resting place marked only by a few scarlet ripples. Two bodies, one with the entire throat shot away, were found next morning washed up on the beach, and that fact was reported to the Everett police by Ed. and Rob. Thompson. That night some men fishing in a little sailboat far out in the bay saw five weighted objects about six feet long, and apparently wrapped in canvas, thrown overboard from a launch, but in none of the daily papers was there any mention of bodies having been found. Six uncalled-for membership cards, deposited by men who took passage on the Verona, may represent as many murders by the cowards on the dock. Those cards are made out to Fred Berger, William Colman, Tom Ellis, Edward Raymond, Peter Viberts, and Chas. E. Taylor. Some of the deputies gloatingly declared that the death toll of the workers was twelve men at the lowest count. So wanton was the slaughter of the helpless men and boys that strong men who witnessed the scene turned away vomiting. From the hillside the women--those whom the deputies were pretending to protect from the "incoming horde,"--casting aside all womanly fears, raced to the dock in a vain endeavor to stop the commission of further crime, crying out in their frenzy, "The curs! The curs! The dirty curs! They're nothing but murderers!" They, as well as the men who tried to launch boats to rescue the men in the water, were halted by the same citizen deputies whose names head the list of Red Cross donors. For a short period of time, seemingly endless hours to the unarmed and helpless men on the boat, the rain of lead continued. Tho the boat had righted itself, the men were still unable to extricate themselves from the positions into which they had been thrown. Near the top of one heap lay Abraham Rabinowitz, a young Jewish college graduate, and as he struggled to regain his footing a bullet tore off the whole back part of his head, his blood and brains splashing down over Raymond Lee and Michael Reilly who lay just beneath him. Rabinowitz died in the arms of Leonard Broman, his "pal" in the harvest fields, without ever having regained consciousness. "Hold me up, fellow workers!" suddenly called out Gus Johnson as he was fatally stricken by a bullet. "I want to finish the song." Then, above the din of the gunfire and curses of the deputies, the final verse of "Hold the Fort" rang out in defiance of industrial tyranny, and with the termination of the words "Cheer, my comrades, cheer!" the bright red death-foam flecked the ever-to-be silent lips of the brave Swedish revolutionist. Splintering the stairways, seats and woodwork, and wounding many of the men crouched in hiding, thousands of rounds of ammunition found their way into the boat during the ten long minutes of the onslaught. Finally, with a 41 Colts revolver to enforce his demand, J. F. Billings ordered engineer Ernest Shellgren to back the boat away from the dock. With no pilot at the wheel the propeller churned madly backward for a moment, the bowline drew taut and snapped, and the Verona pulled away from the murderous crew of vigilantes. Not content with the havoc they had wrought at close quarters some of the deputies continued to fire as long as the boat was within range, a bullet from a high powered rifle shattering the left leg of Harry Golden, a youth of twenty-two years, when the boat was far out in the bay. Amputation of the limb was necessary, a cork leg daily reminding young Golden of the majesty of the law. The Verona with its grim cargo of dead and wounded steamed toward Seattle, meeting the steamer Calista about four miles out, stopping just long enough for Captain Wiman to shout thru his megaphone, "For God's sake don't land! They'll kill you! We have dead and wounded on board now." With unaccustomed fingers the uninjured men bathed the wounded, tearing up shirts and underclothing in order to bind up their injuries, and making the men as comfortable as possible during the two and one half hour return trip. A few of the men on board had been armed. These voluntarily threw overboard their revolvers, together with the few empty shells that lay scattered upon the deck, George Reese alone having to be forced to discard the "souvenirs" he had picked up. It was a quiet crowd that pulled into Seattle, not only because they realized that the class struggle is not all jokes and songs, but also in deference to the sufferings of their wounded comrades. This same spirit animated the men when they were met by drawn cordons of police at the Seattle dock, their first thought and first words being, "Get the wounded fellows out and we will be all right." In the city jail, located on the floor above the hospital, the same generous consideration of their wounded fellow workers' condition led them to forego the demonstration usually attending the arrest and jailing of any body of I. W. W. members. The four dead members, their still forms covered with blankets, were first removed from the boat and taken to the morgue. Police and hospital ambulances were soon filled with the thirty-one wounded men, who were taken to the city hospital. The uninjured men were then lined up and slowly marched to the city jail. From the Calista the thirty-eight I. W. W. members were taken and placed in the county jail. At the hospital, Felix Baran, shot in the abdomen, slowly and painfully passed away from internal hemorrhage. Dr. Mary Equi, of Portland, Ore., who examined the body, stated that with surgical attention there would have been more than an even chance of recovery. No one will ever know how many brave workers were swept out to sea and lost, but Sunday, November Fifth, of the year Nineteen-sixteen, wrote in imperishable letters of red on the list of Labor's martyrs who gave up their lives in Freedom's Cause the names of FELIX BARAN; HUGO GERLOT; GUSTAV JOHNSON; JOHN LOONEY; ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ. French, German, Swedish, Irish, and Russian Jew,--these are the true internationalists of the world-wide brotherhood of toil who died for free speech and the right to organize in this "land of liberty." To them Courtenay Lemon's tribute to the I. W. W. applies with full force. "Again and again its foot-free members, burning with an indignation and a militant social idealism which is ever an inscrutable puzzle to local authorities, have hastened to towns where free speech fights were on, defied the police, braved clubbings, and voluntarily filled the jails to overflowing, to the rage and consternation of the police and taxpayers. It has acted as the flying squadron of liberty, the unconquered knight-errantry of all captive freedoms; and the migratory workers who constitute a large part of its membership, ever on the march and pitching their camp wherever the industrial battle is thickest, form a guerilla army which is always eager for a fight with the powers of tyranny. Whether they disagree with its methods and aims, all lovers of liberty everywhere owe a debt to this organization for its defense of free speech. Absolutely irreconcilable, absolutely fearless, and unsuppressibly persistent, it has kept alight the fires of freedom, like some outcast vestal of human liberty. That the defense of traditional rights to which this government is supposed to be dedicated should devolve upon an organization so often denounced as 'unpatriotic' and 'un-American,' is but the usual, the unfailing irony of history."[11] Baran, Gerlot, Johnson, Looney, Rabinowitz,--these names will be a source of inspiration to the workers when their cowardly murderers have long been forgotten. Those who survived their wounds, saving as pocket pieces the buckshot, copper and steel jacketed and dum-dum bullets extracted from their persons, were; mentioning their more serious wounds: Harry Golden, age 22, shot in left leg, making amputation necessary. Joseph Ghilazano, age 20, shot in shoulder and both legs, entire knee-cap shot off and replaced with a silver substitute. Albert Scribner, age 32, severely wounded in hip, probably lamed for life. Mario Marino, age 18, shot thru the lungs. Edward Roth, age 30, severely wounded in abdomen. Walter Mulholland, age 18, shot in buttock. Carl Bjork, age 25, wounded in back. Harry Parker, age 22, shot above abdomen, in back, and in legs. John Ryan, age 21, wounded in right shoulder and left leg. Leland E. Butcher, age 28, shot in the left leg. J. A. Kelly, age 31, shot in right leg. Hans Peterson, age 32, wounded in head. Fred Savery, age 25, wounded in hip. Steve Sabo, age 21, shot in left shoulder. Robert Adams, age 32, shot in left arm. Owen Genty, age 26, wounded in right kidney. C. C. England, age 27, shot in left knee. Nick Canaeff, age 35, shot in left arm. Albert Doninger, age 20, wounded in left arm. Brockman B. Armstrong, age 35, wounds on head. E. J. Shapeero, age 24, wounded in right leg. Carl Burke, age 25, shot in back and shoulder. Ira Luft, age 27, shot in right side of back. George Turnquist, age 26, wounded in left leg. George Brown, age 21, shot in back. D. J. McCarthy, age 37, shot in side of head and in right leg. John Adams, age 28, wounded in right elbow. Edward Truitt, age 28, shot in right elbow. Others on the boat who were wounded were Oscar Carlson, passenger, nine severe bullet wounds in all parts of his body; L. S. Davis, ship steward, wounded in the arm, and Charles Smith, Pinkerton "stool pigeon" with a slight scalp injury. The wounded men were none too well treated at the city hospital, only a part of the neglect being due to the overcrowded condition of the wards. Wounds were hastily dressed and in some cases the injured men were placed in jail at once where they had to care for themselves as best they might. In Everett the deputies left the dock when the Verona had steamed out of the range of their rifle fire, taking with them the corpse of gunman C. O. Curtis, office manager of the Canyon Lumber Company, and deputy-sheriff Jefferson Beard, whose wounds caused his death the following morning. The injured deputies were H. B. Blackburn, James A. Broadbent, R. E. Brown, E. P. Buehrer, Owen Clay, Louis Connor, Jr., Fred Durr, A. J. Ettenborough, Athol Gorrell, Thomas Hedley, Joe Irving, James Meagher; Donald McRae, J. C. Rymer, Edwin Stuchell, and Charles Tucker. Hooted, hissed, and jeered at by the thousands of citizens on the viaduct and hill above the dock, these self-immolated prostitutes to the god of greater profits were taken to the hospitals for treatment. Among the crowd of citizens was Mrs. Edith Frennette, who had been in Everett a couple of days in connection with a lumber trust charge against her, and with her were Mrs. Lorna Mahler and Mrs. Joyce Peters, who had come from Seattle to attend the proposed street meeting. Making the claim that Mrs. Frenette had threatened the life of Sheriff McRae with a gun and had tried to throw red pepper into his eyes as he was being transported from the dock, the Everett authorities caused the arrest of the three women in Seattle as they were returning in an auto to meet the Verona at the Seattle dock. They were held several days before being released, no charges having been placed against Mrs. Mahler or Mrs. Peters, and the case against Mrs. Frenette was eventually dismissed, just as had been all previous charges made by McRae. These three arrests brought the total number of free speech prisoners up to two hundred and ninety-four. What were the feelings of the Everett public directly following the massacre can best be judged from the report of an Everett correspondent to the Seattle Union Record, the official A. F. of L. organ. "Your correspondent was on the street at the time of the battle and at the dock ten minutes afterward. He mingled with the street crowds for hours afterwards. The temper of the people is dangerous. Nothing but curses and execrations for the Commercial Club was heard. Men and women who are ordinarily law abiding, who in normal times mind their own business pretty well, pay their taxes, send their children to church and school, pay their bills, in every way comport themselves as normal citizens, were heard using the most vitriolic language concerning the Commercial Club, loudly sympathizing with the I. W. W.'s. And therein lies the great harm that was done, more menacing to the city than the presence of any number of I. W. W.'s, viz., the transformation of decent, honest citizens into beings mad for vengeance and praying for something dire to happen. I heard gray-haired women, mothers and wives, gentle, kindly, I know, in their home circles, openly hoping that the I. W. W.'s would come back and 'clean up.'" Corroborating this is the report of President E. P. Marsh to the State Federation of Labor. "A dangerous situation existed in Everett after the battle of November 5. Public feeling ran high and anything might have happened. Half a thousand citizens were under arms enraged at the Industrial Workers of the World and deadly determined to stamp out their organization in Everett. It is no exaggeration to say that literally thousands of the working people of Everett were just as enraged toward the members of the Commercial Club who participated in the gun battle. * * * As an instance of how high the feeling ran let me tell you that on the following morning the mayor of the city appeared on the (shingle weavers') picket line with a high power rifle and told the union pickets that he had every reason to believe that an attempt might be made by snipers to pick them off. He asked them to scatter as much as possible, make no demonstration whatever, and declared he would defend them with his life if necessary." Mayor Merrill, equally guilty with the deputies who were on the dock, taking advantage of a means of spreading information that was denied to the workers, directly after the massacre spoke from a soap box on the corner of Wetmore and California Avenues, telling all who would listen that he was not responsible for the trouble as the Commercial Club had taken the power away from him and put it in the hands of McRae. The insincerity of this vacillating lackey of the lumber trust was demonstrated by his brutal treatment of young Louis Skaroff, who with Chester Micklin and Osmond Jacobs, had been arrested and thrown into jail when the three, bravely taking their lives in their hands, attempted to speak on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore two hours after the tragedy. It was on Monday night about ten o'clock that the night jailer took Skaroff into a room where Mayor Merrill and a man posing as an immigration officer were seated. The fake immigration officer tried to frighten the prisoner with threats of deportation, after which the jailer beat Skaroff across the head. Merrill arose and took a hand in the proceedings, buffeting the boy back and forth until he fell to the floor. Then, with the aid of the jailer, Skaroff's fingers were placed, one by one, beneath the legs of an iron bed in the room while the ponderous mayor jumped up and down on the bed, mashing and tearing flesh and knuckles. Upon regaining consciousness the mutilated boy found himself in the jail corridor, crushed beneath Merrill's massive form, the mayor having grasped Skaroff by the hair in order to repeatedly hammer the lad's head against the hard cement floor. Finding that Skaroff's spirit could not be broken the cowards finally desisted. Skaroff was released at the end of eleven days. Chaos reigned in Everett following the tragedy. That night over five hundred deputies patrolled the streets, fearing just retribution for their criminal misdeeds. Those who had been on the dock as parties to the massacre were overheard saying to each other, "We must stick together on this story about the first shot coming from the boat." Certain officials called for the state militia which was mobilized in Seattle but not used. One militiaman, a young lad named Ted Kennedy, refused to serve, claiming that it was the same as strike duty. The fact that the militia was mobilized at once, and that Governor Ernest Lister went to Everett to confer with officials and mill owners there, when he had refused to furnish protection or even to make an investigation at the request of the I. W. W. a short time before showed the governor's bias in favor of the employers. In this lumber district the militia was apparently the property of the mill owners. A hastily gathered coroner's jury in Everett on November 6th brought in a verdict that C. O. Curtis and Jefferson F. Beard met death from "gunshot wounds inflicted by a riotous mob on the Steamer Verona at the city dock." If any of the jury dissented from its false statement they were too spineless to express their opinion. The deliberations were under the direction of Coroner A. R. Maulsby and the members of the jury were Adam Hill, C. E. Anthony, O. H. King, Chris Culmback, C. Sandstein, and Charles F. Manning. The inquest was a farce. Those who were outside the "deadline" and who were willing to swear that the first shots came from the dock were not permitted to testify, only sympathizers with the Commercial Club being called as witnesses. No real attempt to take testimony was made. The Seattle Central Labor Council on November 8th appropriated $100 for a more complete investigation after branding the Everett inquest as fraudulent in the following resolution: "Whereas, It appears to this council that, following a lockout and open-shop campaign by Roland H. Hartley and others of Everett, Wash., the police and business men of that city have attempted to ruthlessly and lawlessly suppress all street speaking and demonstrations by labor organizations, and that unarmed men have been brutally beaten and terrorized, and Whereas, This policy culminated in a bloody battle on Sunday, November 5, resulting in the death of seven or more men and the wounding of many more, and Whereas, A fair inquest should be held to fix responsibility for this crime, and it appears that this has not been done, but that only witnesses favorable to the bosses have been heard; Therefore, we demand another inquest, free from control by the forces opposed to labor, and a change of venue, if that be necessary." Capitalism stood forth in all its hideous nakedness on that day of red madness, and public opinion was such that the striking shingle weavers had but to persistently press their point in order to win. A conference of prominent men, held in Everett on Monday, decided that the situation could be relieved only by a settlement of the strike. The mill men, when called in, abruptly refused to grant a single demand so long as the men were still out, an attitude they could not have maintained for long. Listening to the false advice of "friends of labor" and "labor leaders" the shingle weavers, albeit grudgingly, returned to their slavery, unconditional surrender being the price they were forced to pay for the doubtful privilege of "relieving the social tension." But with the pay envelopes that could not be stretched to cover the increased cost of living, the weavers, discouraged to an extent and lacking their former solidarity, were forced to down tools again within a few weeks by the greatest of all strike agitators--Hunger. [Illustration: MAYOR GILL SAYS I. W. W. DID NOT START RIOT Seattle Executive Places Blame for Sunday Tragedy on Citizens of Everett--Gives Prisoners Tobacco. Providing the I. W. W.'s. whose attempted armed invasion of Everett last Sunday resulted in seven deaths and injuries to forty-nine persons, with every comfort possible. Mayor H. C. Gill yesterday afternoon personally directed the carrying of 300 warm blankets and an assortment of tobacco to the 250 prisoners now held in the city jail. In this manner Gilt replied to criticism in Seattle and Everett for not having stopped the I. W. W's from going to the Snohomish County city. He supplemented this today by assailing Sheriff Donald McRae, of Snohomish County and the posse of special deputies who met the invading I. W. W.'s at the boat. "In the final analysis," the mayor declared, "it will be found these cowards in Everett who, without right or justification, shot into the crowd on the boat were the murderers and not the I. W. W.'s. Calls Them Cowards. "The men who met the I. W. W.'s at the boat were a bunch of cowards. They outnumbered the I. W. W.'s five to one, and in spite of this they stood there on the dock and fired into the boat, I. W. W.'s, innocent passengers and all.] [Illustration: "McRae and his deputies had no legal right to tell the I. W. W.'s or anyone else that they could not land there. When the sheriff put his hand on the butt of his gun and told them they could not land, he fired the first shot, in the eyes of the law, and the I. W. W.'s can claim that they shot in self-defense." Mayor Gill asserted the Everett authorities have no intention of removing the I. W. W.'s now in jail here to Snohomish County. "They are afraid to come down here and get them," he declared, "because Everett is in a state of anarchy and the authorities don't know where they're at." Asked what he would have done at Everett Sunday when the I. W. W.'s appeared at that city, the mayor said he would have permitted them to land. "After they had been allowed to come ashore," he said, "I would have had them watched. Then if they violated the law I would have had them thrown in jail. There would have been no trouble that way." No Fight in Seattle. "Because Everett has been reduced to a state of anarchy by their high-handed methods of dealing with this situation it is no reason they are going to attempt to bring their fight down in Seattle, at least while I am mayor. "If I were one of the party of forty I. W. W.'s who was almost beaten to death by 300 citizens of Everett without being able to defend myself, I probably would have armed myself if I intended to visit Everett again. "If the Everett authorities had an ounce of sense, this tragedy would have never happened. They have handled the situation like a bunch of imbeciles, and they have been trying to unload these men onto Seattle. You don't see any disturbances here, because we don't use nickel methods." The mayor charged that Everett officials were inconsistent in their handling of this situation. He said that they permit candidates for office to violate the city ordinances by speaking on the streets and yet run the I. W. W.'s out of town if they endeavor to mount a soap box.] The prisoners in Seattle were held incommunicado for several days. They were fed upon the poorest grade of prison fare, and were made to sleep on the winter-chilled cement floors without blankets. But Mayor Hiram Gill, realizing that public sentiment was with the imprisoned men, ordered that they be placed upon a proper diet, be given blankets and be allowed to see relatives and friends. On November 8th in the Seattle Times there appeared a statement by Gill that played a very important part in riveting the attention of the people upon the real criminals in the case. As the Times is a notoriously conservative and labor-hating sheet, being largely responsible for the raid on the I. W. W. and Socialist Halls on July 19, 1913, and for the attack by drunken sailors and soldiers on the I. W. W. hall on June 16, 1917, it can hardly be accused of exaggeration in favor of the workers in this interview. Following the publication of this interview the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Seattle's "Commercial Club," endeavored to father a movement looking to the recall of Gill from office. Back of this attempt were Judge Thomas Burke, Louis Lang, Jay Thomas, and four stall-fed ministers, the Reverends W. A. Major, E. V. Shailer, Wood Stewart and Carter Helm Jones. Of these, Thomas represented the liquor interests, Lang was the former police chief who had been discharged in disgrace and was herding scabs on the waterfront, Burke was chief spokesman for the low-wage open-shop interests, and as to the preachers--the less said the better. The lumber and shipping trusts had adequate representation at the "Law and Order" meeting as the attempted recall gathering was styled. But the whole thing fell flat when Gill himself offered to sign the recall for the opportunity it would give him to tell the real facts about the Everett case and the interests lined up behind the prosecution and the recall. On the night of the tragedy a report was circulated in Seattle to the effect that every known I. W. W. would be arrested on sight. The answer to this was a street meeting at which nearly ninety dollars were collected as the first money toward the Everett Prisoners' Defense, and the packing of the hall for weeks thereafter by members and sympathizers who had not attended meetings for a long time. A temporary committee was chosen to handle the work of the defense of the imprisoned men, and this committee acted until November 16th, at which time at a mass meeting of I. W. W. members Herbert Mahler was elected secretary of the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee, Charles Ashleigh, publicity agent, and W. J. Houser, Morris Levine and Thomas Murphy as the committee. Richard Smith was afterward chosen to take the place vacated by Levine. This committee functioned thruout the case and up until the final audit of their account on June 12, 1917. Within the jail a process of selection had gone on. One by one the free speech prisoners were taken from their cells and slowly led past a silent and darkened cell into whose gloomy depths the keenest eye was unable to penetrate. Again and again they were marched past the peephole, first with hats on and then with them off, while two sinister looking fingers were slid out of a narrow opening from time to time to indicate those who should be held. "I'd give two of my fingers," muttered one of the prisoners bitterly, "to know the skunk that belongs to those two fingers." Little did he and his fellow workers realize that they were to learn later, thru the development of the trial, that the principal person engaged in the despicable work was George Reese, a member of the I. W. W. and of the I. L. A. It was on learning this that many of the actions of Reese were made clear; his connection with dock riots during the longshoremen's strike, his establishment of a "flying squadron" to beat up scabs on the waterfront, his open boast on the floor of I. L. A. meetings that his pockets were lined with money gained by robbing the strike-breakers after they had been beaten up and his advice to other strikers to do likewise, his activities just prior to the various dock fires, his seemingly miraculous escape in every instance when strikers were arrested, his election as delegate from the longshoremen to the Seattle Central Labor Council, his requests of prominent I. W. W. members that they purchase various chemicals for him, his giving of phosphorus to members of the I. L. A. and the I. W. W. with instructions as to how and where to use it, his attempts to advocate violence at an Everett street meeting, his gathering of "souvenirs" on the Verona--all actions designed either to aid the employers in their fights against the workers or to furnish an excuse for his further employment as an "informer." Well may the question be asked--What was Reese doing just as the Verona docked in Everett on November 5th? Was Reese merely a "stool pigeon" or was he an "agent provocateur?" Aiding Reese in the selective process was Charles Smith, the other Pinkerton operative who had been on the boat. One of the men first picked out was I. P. McDowell, alias Charles Adams, and this individual was weak enough to fall for the promise of immunity offered by agents of the lumber trust if he would point out the "leaders" and then take the stand to swear that the men on the boat were armed and the first shot came from one of them. McDowell pointed out some of the men, but lacking the nerve to carry out the last part of the program he was held with the rest for trial. The seventy-four men thus picked were formally charged with murder in the first degree. The first charge carried the names of C. O. Curtis as well as that of Jefferson Beard, but later the name of Curtis was dropped from the information. The men so charged were: Charles Auspos, alias Austin, age 38, teamster, born in Wisconsin. James D. Bates, age 29, steam fitter, born in Illinois. E. M. Beck, age 45, laborer, born in New York. Charles Berg, age 22, laborer, born in Germany. J. H. Beyer, age 56, painter, born in Michigan. J. F. Billings, age 35, cook, born in Nebraska. Charles Black, age 23, laborer, born in Pennsylvania. J. J. Black, age 27, longshoreman, born in Massachusetts. John W. Bowdoin, age 35, laborer, born in Sweden. Frank Boyd, age 43, laborer, born in Illinois. Pete Breed, age 26, laborer, born in Holland. W. H. Brown, age 40, laborer, born in Maryland. H. T. Cheetman, age 25, carpenter, born in Florida. Fred Crysler, age 26, laborer, born in Canada. Charles H. Cody, age 46, painter, born in Montana. William Coffin, age 34, motorman, born in California. Clarence Cyphert, age 35, logger, born in Washington. Roy Davis, age 47, laborer, born in California. William Davis, age 35, cook, born in Maryland. Axel Downey, age 17, laborer, born in Iowa. John Downs, age 28, sailor, born in Colorado. Adolph Ersson, age 26, laborer and sailor, born in Sweden. Harry Feinberg, age 25, cleaner and dyer, born in Illinois. Charles Hawkins, age 28, laborer, born in Indiana. Charles Haywood, age 46, miner, born in Minnesota. E. F. Hollingsworth, age 29, fireman, born in North Carolina. J. E. Houlihan, age 36, miner, born in Ireland. Alfred Howard, age 28, coal packer, born in New York. Harvey Hubler, age 21, teamster, born in Illinois. Oscar Johnson, age 24, laborer, born in Sweden. Victor Johnson, age 37, laborer, born in Finland. J. A. Kelly, age 31, logger, born in Ohio. Theodore Lauer, age 29, laborer, born in New York. William Lawson, age 32, laborer, born in Washington. Jack Leonard, age 27, laborer, born in Kentucky. Pat Lyons, age 48, laborer, born in England. Jim Mack, age 31, laborer, born in Ireland. Joseph Manning, age 28, automobile repairer, born in Pennsylvania. Laurence Manning, age 26, laborer, born in New York. Ed Miller, age 48, painter, born in New York. Harold Miller, age 21, gas fitter, born in Kansas. John Mitchell, age 38, miner, born in Illinois. George Murphy, age 28, laborer, born in Kentucky. Louis McCall, age 24, laborer, born in Texas. I. P. McDowell, alias Charles Adams, age 28, printer, born in Illinois. C. D. McLennan, age 48, longshoreman, born in Georgia. Carl Newman, age 30, laborer, born in Sweden. John Nugent, age 38, laborer, born in New York. Malachi O'Neill, age 34, blacksmith, born in Ireland. Earl Osborne, age 33, logger, born in North Carolina. Jack Paterson, age 24, laborer, born in Illinois. Harston Peters, age 32, laborer, born in Virginia. James Powers, age 47, sheet metal worker, born in Massachusetts. John Rawlings, age 26, laborer, born in Wisconsin. Michael J. Reilly, age 23, laborer, born in New York. John Ross, age 36, laborer, born in Massachusetts. Ed. Roth, age 31, longshoreman, born in New York. Thomas Savage, age 50, machinist, born in New York. E. J. Shapeero, age 23, timekeeper, born in Pennsylvania. William Shay, age 28, laborer, born in Massachusetts. H. Shebeck, age 24, laborer, born in Wisconsin. Albert Shreve, age 40, laborer, born in Illinois. H. Sokol, age 26, laborer, born in Russia. D. Stevens, age, 21, longshoreman, born in Canada Robert Struick, age 24, farmer, born in Michigan. Frank Stewart, age 35, logger, born in Canada. Tom Tracy, age 30, crane driver, born in Pennsylvania. Thomas H. Tracy, age 36, teamster, born in Nebraska. Edwart Truitt, age 28, longshoreman, born in Pennsylvania. F. O. Watson, age 35, blacksmith, born in Louisiana. James Whiteford (Kelly), age 36, cook, born in New York. Abraham B. Wimborne, age 22, buss-boy, born in England. William Winn, age 44, miner, born in Maryland. All of these men, with the exception of J. H. Beyer, were heavily handcuffed and secretly transferred to Everett, forty-one being taken in the first contingent and the balance later. Meanwhile the I. W. W. branches in Seattle had communicated with the General Headquarters of the organization and steps had been taken to secure legal aid. Attempts to enlist the services of Frank P. Walsh, former chairman of the Industrial Relations Commission, were unsuccessful. For various reasons other well known attorneys refused to ally themselves with the defense. Attorney Fred H. Moore of Los Angeles, responding to the call from Seattle, reached Seattle just one week after the tragedy, on Sunday, November, 12th. Moore acted as chief counsel for the defense. He had first come into prominence thru his connection with the great free speech fight waged in Spokane, Wash., during the fall of 1909 and the spring of 1910. During that fight he handled the legal end of the cases of many hundreds of free speech fighters whose arrests ran into the thousands. He was also connected with various other cases in connection with the Industrial Workers of the World, notably that of Jack Whyte and others arrested in the contest for free speech in San Diego, Cal. and the famous Ettor-Giovannitti case that developed from the great strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912. His sympathy with the workers and his understanding of the class struggle made him invaluable to the defense. Of equal importance was attorney George F. Vanderveer, who was called into the case a little later than Moore. Vanderveer was formerly the prosecuting attorney for King county, in which position he won a reputation for clever and merciless cross-examination. One of Seattle's most prominent and brilliant lawyers, his wide acquaintance with all classes of people and his comprehensive knowledge of conditions in King and Snohomish counties, coupled with his keen satire and compelling logic, gave a force to the case that cannot be underestimated. Attorney E. C. Dailey of Everett, Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., and Harry Sigmond and J. L. Finch, both of Seattle, completed the list of counsel for the defense. After being held in the Seattle city jail for nine days without any charge having been placed against them, one hundred twenty-eight men who were on the Verona were released, small bodies of them being sent out at different periods in order to avoid demonstrations from the public. Those who were released were: James Agen, Frank Andrews, Brockman Armstrong, W. D. Beachy, J. H. Beyer, John Bolan, J. Bonfield, Elmer Brisbon, Leonard Broman, George Brown, James Burns, Martin Cable, Val Calze, A. L. Cameron, James Carlough, J. H. Carr, Ray Clark, Joseph Cline, Archie Collins, Robert Conning, Nick Conaieff, Joseph Costello, R. F. Dalton, Frank Dante, C. W. Davis, Lawrence Davis, Albert Doninger, John Donohue, William Dott, Joseph Dougherty, Ned Dustard, J. H. Elliott, C. C. England, John Fitzpatrick, A. Fletcher, Russell Free, Alfred Freeman, Ben Freeman, James Freeman, John Gibson, Frank Gillarkey, P. A. Gragler, Charles Gray, James Gray, Paul Grossman, Ed Gruberg, Raymond Gurber, Robert Hansen, Joe Harris, L. W. Harris, Arnold Hensel, Roy Howell, G. H. Isenberg, Carl Jacobson, George Johnson, Ray Johnson, John Karne, Henry Krieg, Fred Laveny, Henry Lea, Raymond Lee, William Ledingham, Charles Leider, Ira Luft, Ed Lynn, George Maguire, William Micklenburg, August Miller, Dennis Miller, Frank C. Miller, John Miller, Frank Millet, Roy Mitchell, William Montgomery, William Moore, James Murray, Leo McCabe, J. McCoy, Bernard Narvis, Al. Nickerson, Ben Noll, Tom Norton, Tom O'Connor, Jack Osborne, E. Peckman, Hans Peterson, A. Pilon, Ira Porter, Max Ramsey, Edward Rays, Herman Rechlenberg, Frank Reiner, Ernest Rich, John J. Riley, C. H. Ross, M. Rountell, Steve Sabo, J. L. Samuel, Joe Sarracco, Ed Schwartz, Carl Schultz, H. Stredwick, Arthur Shumek, Charles Smith, Harry Smith, E. J. Smith, Cecil Snedegar, Frank Sofer, Stanley Stafl, Raymond St. Clair, John Stroka, Mike Stysco, C. Thomas, Richard Tibbs, John Utne, Joseph Vito, John Walker, Benny Warshawsky, F. Westwood, Ben Whitehead, Arley Whiteside, William Wilke, H. Wilson, Frank Wise, and Charles Wolskie. Most of these were mere boys. Mere boys--but undaunted by their recent terrible experience on the Verona where the open shop fiends had fired upon them without warning. Mere boys--and yet they loyally marched straight to the I. W. W. hall as soon as they were released, there to inquire about the condition of their wounded fellow workers and to gain news of those who had been taken to Everett to answer charges of first degree murder. Mere boys--youthful enthusiasm shining on their beardless faces. Scattered among them were a few men of middle years, and here and there a grey head stood out in bold relief--but the majority of them were mere boys, youthful soldiers in the Social Revolution, fine and clean and loyal material called together by the compelling ideal of a New Society. The predominance of young blood in the organization was noted in the report of the 1912 convention, where it was shown that ninety per cent of the membership were under thirty years of age, due of course to the fact that the modern tendency is to displace the older men in industry. As one wit has put it "If a man works as hard as the employers want him to he is worn out at forty-five; if he isn't worn out at forty-five he is not the kind of worker the employers want." Others have noted the percentage of the very young. John Graham Brooks, for instance, in "American Syndicalism--The I. W. W." has this to say: "Of the same nature as a characteristic is the +youth+ of the membership. The groups I saw in the West bore this stamp so unmistakably as to suggest bodies of students at the end of a rather jolly picnic. The word 'bum' usually applied to them in that region does not fit them. There are plenty of older men, as there are men with every appearance of being 'down and out'--with trousers chewed off at the heels, after the manner of tramps, but in face and bearing they are far from 'bums.' In one of the speeches the young were addressed as 'best material;' because they could stand the wear and tear of racking journeys. They were free from family responsibilities, and could at any moment respond to the call of duty." Bearing out this idea, tho along a somewhat different line, is an excerpt from an article by Anna Louise Strong which appeared in the Survey magazine just prior to the trial. This and other articles, together with the personal efforts of Miss Strong, whose official standing as a member of the Seattle School Board and as Executive Secretary of the Seattle Council of Social Agencies gave weight to her opinion, did much toward creating a favorable public sentiment during the trial. Says Miss Strong: "The boys in jail are a cheerful lot. The 'tanks' which contain them are the tanks of the usual county jail, much overcrowded now by the unusual number. Bunks crowded above each other, in full sight thru the bars; a few feet away, all the processes of life open to the casual beholder. But they sit in groups playing cards or dominoes; they listen to tunes played on the mouth-organ; most of all they sing. They sing whenever visitors come, and smile thru the bars in cheerful welcome. Theirs is the spirit of the crusader of all ages, and all causes, won or lost, sane or insane. Theirs is the irresponsibility and audacious valor of youth. When they disliked their food, says a conservative newspaper, they went on strike and 'sang all night.' Sang all night! What sane adults in our drab, business-as-usual world would think of doing that? Who, in fact, could think of doing it but college boys or Industrial Workers of the World, cheerfully defying authority?" Thru an absurd and laughable error J. H. Beyer, one of the seventy-four men charged with first degree murder, was among those who were released. Beyer immediately sought out and told attorney Moore his story. Then this "hardened criminal" walked the street of Seattle after public announcement had been made that he was willing to be taken to Everett to be incarcerated with the rest of his fellow workers, and that he awaited rearrest. The prosecution made no move to apprehend him, so on December 14th Beyer went to Everett and asked the authorities to lock him up. The Snohomish officials shamefacedly granted this unique request but they absolutely refused to refund the money Beyer had paid to deliver himself up to "Justice." Before leaving Seattle Beyer made this statement: "I have waited here nearly a month since my release from the Seattle jail, yet no officer from Everett has come for me. In justice to the other boys accused I feel that I should share their lot as well as the accusation. I do not fear returning to Everett and giving myself up for I am confident that we shall be all exculpated. I am fifty-three years of age and have had many and varied experiences in my career, but I never expected to be accused of crime because I endeavored to assert my constitutional right of Free Speech." The same day that Beyer surrendered himself, bonds of $50 each were secured for thirty-eight men who had been selected from the Verona and Calista and held on charges of unlawful assembly. Bail was given by James Duncan, Secretary of the Central Labor Council, and E. B. Ault, editor of the Union Record, both of Seattle. The released men were Dewey Ashmore, E. Belmat, C. Burke, L. E. Butcher, James Callahan, Harry Chase, Charles Day, A. J. Deach, Charles Ellis, J. Ford, Owen Genty, Hy Gluckstad, Frank Goff, James C. Hadley, Steve Heletour, A. O. Hooper, C. C. Hulbert, H. P. Hunsberger, C. L. Johnson, R. W. Jones, Joe Kelley, F. Lansing, W. O. Lily, E. McBride, William McGregor, R. Nicholson, David O'Hern, Harry Parker, J. Ryan, Sam Scott, Mark Skomo, Thomas Smye, and F. Thorpe. Altho an inquest had been held over the dead gunmen at such an early date after the tragedy and with such haste as to seem suspicious, repeated demands for an inquest over Labor's dead were of no avail. No such inquest was ever held. Only by strong protest were the bodies kept from the potter's field. Thirty-eight charged with unlawful assembly, seventy-four in jail accused of first degree murder, thirty-two severely wounded and at least two of these crippled for life, six unaccounted for and probably shot and drowned, and five known dead in the city morgue,--this was the answer of the tyrannical timber barons to Labor's demand for free speech and the right to organize within the confines of the Lumber Kingdom. FOOTNOTE: [11] Courtenay Lemon, "Free Speech in the United States." Pearson's Magazine, December 1916. CHAPTER V. BEHIND PRISON BARS "One of the greatest sources of social unrest and bitterness has been the attitude of the police toward public speaking. On numerous occasions in every part of the country the police of cities and towns have, either arbitrarily or under the cloak of a traffic ordinance, interfered with or prohibited public speaking, both in the open and in halls, by persons connected with organizations of which the police or those from whom they receive their orders did not approve. In many instances such interference has been carried out with a degree of brutality which would be incredible if it were not vouched for by reliable witnesses. Bloody riots frequently have accompanied such interference, and large numbers of persons have been arrested for acts of which they were innocent or which were committed under the extreme provocation of brutal treatment by police or private citizens. "In some cases this suppression of free speech seems to have been the result of sheer brutality and wanton mischief, but in the majority of cases it undoubtedly is the result of a belief by the police or their superiors that they were 'supporting and defending the Government' by such invasion of personal rights. There could be no greater error. Such action strikes at the very foundation of government. It is axiomatic that a government which can be maintained only by the suppression of criticism should not be maintained. Furthermore, it is the lesson of history that attempts to suppress ideas result only in their more rapid propagation." The foregoing is the view of the Industrial Relations Commission as it appears on page 98 and 99 of Volume One of their official report to the United States Government. [Illustration: Jail at EVERETT] The growth of a public sentiment favorable to the Industrial Workers of the World was clearly shown on November 18th, at which time the bodies of Felix Baran, Hugo Gerlot and John Looney were turned over to the organization for burial. Gustav Johnson had already been claimed by relatives and a private funeral held, and the body of Abraham Rabinowitz sent to New York at the request of his sister. Thousands of workers, each wearing a red rose or carnation, formed in line at the undertaking parlors and then silently marched four abreast behind the three hearses and the automobiles containing the eighteen women pall bearers and the floral tributes to the martyred dead. To the strains of the "Red Flag" and the "Marseillaise" the grim and imposing cortege wended its way thru the crowded city streets, meeting with expressions of sorrow and sympathy from those who lined the sidewalk. Delegations of workers from Everett, Tacoma, and other Washington cities and towns were in line, and a committee from Portland, Ore., brought appropriate floral offerings. The solidarity of labor was shown in this great funeral procession, by all odds the largest ever held in the Northwest. Arriving at the graveside in Mount Pleasant cemetery the rebel women reverently bore the coffins from the hearses to the supporting frame, surrounded by boughs of fragrant pine, above the yawning pit. A special chorus of one hundred voices led the singing of "Workers of the World, Awaken," and as the song died away Charles Ashleigh began the funeral oration. Standing on the great hill that overlooks the whole city of Seattle, the speaker pointed out the various industries with their toiling thousands and referred to the smoke that shadowed large portions of the view as the black fog of oppression and ignorance which it was the duty of the workers to dispel in order to create the Workers' Commonwealth. The entire address was marked by a simple note of resolution to continue the work of education until the workers have come into their own, not a trace of bitterness evincing itself in the remarks. Ashleigh called upon those present never to falter until the enemy had been vanquished. "Today," he said, "we pay tribute to the dead. Tomorrow we turn, with spirit unquellable, to give battle to the foe!" As the notes of "Hold the Fort!" broke a moment of dead silence, a shower of crimson flowers, torn from the coats of the assembled mourners, covered the coffins and there was a tear in every eye as the bodies slowly descended into their final resting place. As tho loath to leave, the crowd lingered to sing the "Red Flag" and "Solidarity Forever." Those present during the simple but stirring service were struck with the thought that the class struggle could never again be looked upon as a mere bookish theory, the example of those who gave their lives in the cause of freedom was too compelling a call to action. But the imperious exactions of the class war left no time for mourning, and ere the last man had left the graveside the first to go was busily spreading the news of an immense mass meeting to be held in Dreamland Rink on the next afternoon. At this meeting five thousand persons from all walks of life gathered to voice their protest against the Everett outrage and to demand a federal investigation. The labor unions, the clergy, public officials and the general citizenry, were represented by the speakers. This was the first of many mass meetings held by the aroused and indignant people of Seattle until the termination of the case. [Illustration: Funeral of GERLOT, LOONEY and BARAN] The "kept" press carried on a very bitter campaign against the I. W. W. for some few days after the dock tragedy, but dropped that line of action when the public let them understand that they were striking a wrong note. Thereafter their policy was to ignore, as far as possible, the entire affair. Practically the only time this rule was broken was in the printing of the song "Christians At War" by John F. Kendrick, taken from the I. W. W. song book. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave a photographic reproduction of the cover page of the book and of the page containing the song. The obvious intent was to have people think that this cutting satire was an urge for the members of the I. W. W. to do in times of peace those inglorious things that are eminently respectable in times of war. Later the Times, and several other papers, reproduced the same cover and song, the only change being that certain words were inked out to make it appear that the song was obscene. And tho the P.--I. had published the song in full the Times placed beneath their garbled version these words, "The portions blotted out are words and phrases such as never appear in The Times or in any other decent newspaper." The simultaneous appearance of this song in a number of papers was merely a coincidence, no doubt; there is no reason to believe that the lumber trust inspired the attack! Allied as usual with the capitalist press and "stool pigeons" and employers' associations in a campaign to discredit the workers involved in the case, was the moribund Socialist Labor Party thru its organ, the Weekly People. The entire I. W. W. press came to the support of the imprisoned men as a matter of course. The Seattle Union Record and many other craft union papers, realizing that an open shop fight lay back of the suppression of free speech, also did great publicity work. But no particular credit is due to those "labor leaders" who, like J. G. Brown, president of the Shingle Weavers' Union, grudgingly gave a modicum of assistance under pressure from radicals in their respective organizations. The Northwest Worker of Everett deserves especial praise for its fearless and uncompromising stand in the face of the bitterest of opposition. This paper had practically to suspend publication because of pressure the lumber trust brought to bear on the firm doing their printing. This, with the action recorded in the minutes of the Commercial Club, "decided to go after advertisements in labor journals and the Northwest Worker," shows that a free press is as obnoxious to the lumber lords as are free speech and free assembly. It scarcely needs noting that the International Socialist Review rendered yeoman service, as that has been its record in all labor cases since the inception of the magazine. Several other Socialist publications, to whom the class struggle does not appear merely as a momentary quadrennial event, also did their bit. Diverse foreign language publications, representing varying shades of radical thought, gave to the trial all the publicity their columns could carry. Just why seventy-four men were picked as prisoners is a matter of conjecture. Probably it was because the stuffy little Snohomish county jail could conveniently, to the authorities, hold just about that number. The men were placed four in a cell with ten cells to each tank, there being two tanks of steel resting one above the other. Even with all the windows thrown open the ventilation was so poor that the men were made ill by the foul air. For almost two full months after being transported to Everett the men were held incommunicado; were not allowed to see papers or magazines or to have reading matter of any description; were subjected to the brutalities of Sheriff McRae and other jail officials who had been prominent in previous outrage and participants in the massacre at the dock; and were fed on the vilest prison fare. Mush was the principal article of diet; mush semi-cooked and cold; mush full of mold and maggots; mush that was mainly husks and lumps that could not be washed down with the pale blue prison milk; mush--until the prisoners fitfully dreamed of mush and gagged at the mere mention of the word. Finding themselves slowly starving the men decided that it were better to complete the job at once rather than to linger in misery. A hunger strike was declared! Meal after meal--or mush after mush--passed and the men refused to eat. Those who were thought to be leaders in the miniature revolt were thrown in the blackhole where there was neither light nor fresh air. Still the men refused to eat, so the authorities were forced to surrender and the men had something to eat besides mush. Great discomfort was experienced by the prisoners from having to sleep on the cold steel floors of the unheated cells during the chill November nights. Deciding to remedy the condition they made a demand for mattresses and blankets from the authorities, not a man of them being willing to have the Defense Committee purchase such supplies. The needed articles were refused and the men resorted to a means of enforcing their demands known as "building a battleship." With buckets and tins, and such strips of metal as could be wrenched loose, the men beat upon the walls, ceilings, and floors of the steel tanks. Those who found no other method either stamped on the steel floors in unison with their fellows, or else removed their shoes to use the heels to beat out a tattoo. To add to the unearthly noise they yelled concertedly with the full power of their lungs. Three score and ten men have a noise-making power that words cannot describe. The townspeople turned out in numbers, thinking that the deputies were murdering the men within the jail. The battleship construction workers redoubled their efforts. Acknowledging defeat, the jail officials furnished the blankets and mattresses that had been demanded. A few days later the men started their morning meal only to find that the mush was strongly "doped" with saltpeter and contained bits of human manure and other refuse--the spite work, no doubt, of the enraged deputies. Another battleship was started. This time the jailers closed all the windows in an effort to suffocate the men, but they broke the glass with mop-handles and continued the din. As before, the deputies were defeated and the men received better food for a time. On November 24th an official of the State Board of Prisoners took the finger prints and photographs of the seventy-four men who were innocent until proven guilty under the "theory" of law in this country, and, marking these Bertillion records with prison serial numbers, sent copies to every prison in the United States. In taking the prints of the first few men brute force was used. Lured from their cells the men were seized, their hands screwed in a vise, and an imprint taken by forcibly covering their hands with lampblack and holding them down on the paper. When the others learned that some had thus been selected they voted that all should submit to having their prints taken so the whole body of prisoners would stand on the same footing. Attorney Moore was denied all access to the prisoners during the consummation of this outrage. After obtaining permission of the jail officials a committee of Everett citizens, with the voluntary assistance of the Cooks' and Waiters' Union, prepared a feast for the free speech prisoners on Thanksgiving Day. When the women arrived at the jail they were met by Sheriff McRae who refused to allow the dinner to be served to the men. McRae was drunk. In place of this dinner the sheriff set forth a meal of moldy mush so strongly doped with chemicals as to be unfit for human consumption. This petty spite work by the moon-struck tool of the lumber trust was in thoro keeping with the cowardly characteristics he displayed on the dock on November 5th. And the extent to which the daily press in Everett was also under the control of the lumber interests was shown by the publication of a faked interview with attorney Fred Moore published in the Everett Herald under date of November 29th, Moore having been credited with the statement that the prison food deserved praise and the prisoners were "given as good food and as much of it as they could wish." During the whole of McRae's term as sheriff there was no time that decent food was given voluntarily to the prisoners as a whole. At times, with low cunning, McRae gave the men in the upper tank better food than those confined below, and also tried to show favoritism to certain prisoners, in order to create distrust and suspicion among the men. All these attempts to break the solidarity of the prisoners failed of their purpose. On one occasion McRae called "Paddy" Cyphert, one of the prisoners whom he had known as a boy, from his cell and offered to place him in another part of the jail in order that he might escape injury in a "clubbing party" the deputies had planned. Cyphert told McRae to put him back with the rest for he wanted the same treatment as the others and would like to be with them in order to resist the assault. In the face of this determination, which was typical of all the prisoners, the contemplated beating was never administered. McRae would oftentimes stand outside the tanks at a safe distance and drunkenly curse the prisoners and refer to them as cowards, to which the men would reply by repeating the words of the sheriff on the dock, "O-oh, I'm hit! I-I'm h-hit!! I-I-I'm h-h-hit!!!" Then they would burst forth with a song written by William Whalen in commemoration of the exploits of the doughty sheriff, a song which since has become a favorite of the migratory workers as they travel from job to job, and which will serve to keep the deeds of McRae fresh in the minds of the workers for many years to come. TO SHERIFF McRAE Call out your Fire Department, go deputize your bums; Gather in your gunmen and stool pigeons from the slums; You may resolute till doomsday, you ill-begotten knave; We'll still be winning Free Speech Fights when you are in your grave! You reprobate, you imp of hate, you're a traitor to the mind That brought you forth in human shape to prey upon mankind. You are lower than the snakes that crawl or the scavengers that fly; You're the living, walking image of a damn black-hearted lie! We'll still be here in Everett when your career is ended, And back among the dregs of life your dirty hide has blended; When you shun the path of honest wrath and fear the days to come, And bow your head to the flag of red, you poor white-livered bum! For the part you played in Everett's raid that fateful Sunday morn, May your kith and kindred live to curse the day that you were born; May the memory of your victims haunt your conscience night and day, Until your feeble, insect mind beneath the strain gives way! Oh, Don McRae, you've had your day; make way for Freedom's host: For Labor's sun is rising, soon 'twill shine from coast to coast! The shot you fired at Everett re-echoes thru the night As a message to the working class to organize and fight! Those graves upon the hillside as monuments will stand To point the way to Freedom's goal to slaves thruout the land; And when at last the working class have made the masters yield, May your portion of the victory be a grave in the Potter's Field! The end of the first week in January brought about the change in the administrative force of Snohomish county that had been voted at the November election. A new set of lumber trust lackeys were placed in office. James McCullogh succeeded Donald McRae as sheriff, and Lloyd Black occupied the office vacated by Prosecuting Attorney O. T. Webb. The advent of a new sheriff made some slight difference in the jail conditions, but this was more than offset by the underhanded methods used from that time on with the idea of breaking the solidarity of the free speech fighters. Liquor was placed in the bathrooms where the men could easily get hold of it, but even among those who had been hard drinkers on the outside there were none who would touch it. Firearms were cunningly left exposed in hopes that the men might take them and attempt a jail break, thus giving the jailers a chance to shoot them down or else causing the whole case to be discredited. The men saw thru the ruse and passed by the firearms without touching them. Working in conjunction with the prosecuting attorney was H. D. Cooley. This gentleman was one of the deputies on the dock, having displayed there his manly qualities by hiding behind a pile of wood at first, and later by telling others to go with rifles to head off the Calista which he had spied approaching from the direction of Mukilteo. Cooley had a practice among the big lumbermen, and in the case against the I. W. W. he was hired by the state with no stipulation as to pay. The general excuse given for his activities in the case, which dated from November 6th, was that he was retained by "friends of Jefferson Beard" and other "interested parties." Attorney A. L. Veitch was also lined up with the prosecution. He was the same gentleman who had lectured to the deputies during the preceding fall as a representative of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, and had told the deputies how to handle "outside agitators." Veitch was also employed by the state as a matter of record, but there was a direct stipulation that he receive no pay from state funds. He also was employed by "friends of Jefferson Beard" and other "interested parties." With Veitch there was imported from Los Angeles one Malcolm McLaren, an M. and M. detective and office partner with Veitch, to act as "fix-it" man for the lumber trust. McLaren was at one time an operative for the infamous Wm. J. Burns, and Burns has well said "Private detectives, ninety per cent of them, as a class, are the worst of crooks, blackmailers and scoundrels." Under McCullogh's regime this open-shop gumshoe artist had free access to the jail with instructions to go as far as he liked. Just what the prisoners thought about jail conditions during the time they were incarcerated is given in the following report which was smuggled out to the Industrial Worker and published on March 3rd: "'Everything is fine and dandy on the outside, don't worry, boys.'" "This is the first thing we heard from visitors ever since we seventy-four have been incarcerated in the Snohomish County Jail at Everett. "While 'everything is fine and dandy on the outside' there are, no doubt, hundreds who would like to hear how things are on the inside. Let us assure everyone on the outside that 'everything is fine and dandy' on the inside. We are not worrying as it is but a short time till the beginning of the trials, the outcome of which we are certain will be one of the greatest victories Labor has ever known, if there exists a shadow of justice in the courts of America. "One hundred days in jail so far--and for nothing! Stop and think what one hundred days in jail means to seventy-four men! It means that in the aggregate the Master Class have deprived us of more than twenty years of liberty. Twenty years! Think of it, and a prospect of twenty more before all are at liberty. "And why? "There can be but one reason, one answer: We are spending this time in jail and will go thru the mockery of a trial because the masters of Everett are trying to shield themselves from the atrocious murders of Bloody November Fifth. "After being held in Seattle, convicted without a trial, except such as was given us by the press carrying the advertising of the boss and dependent on him for support, on November 10th forty-one of us were brought to Everett. A few days later thirty more were brought here. "We found the jail conditions barbarous. There were no mattresses and only one blanket to keep off the chill of a Puget Sound night in the cold, unheated steel cells. There were no towels. We were supplied with laundry soap for toilet purposes, when we could get even that. Workers confined in lower cells were forced to sleep on the floors. There were five of them in each cell and in order to keep any semblance of heat in their bodies they had to sleep all huddled together in all their clothing. "The first few days we were in the jail we spent in cleaning it, as it was reeking with filth and probably had never been cleaned out since it was built. It was alive with vermin. There were armies of bedbugs and body lice. We boiled up everything in the jail and it is safe to say that it is now cleaner than it had ever been before, or ever will be after the Wobblies are gone. "When we first came here the lower floor was covered with barrels, boxes and cases of whiskey and beer. This was moved in a few days, but evidently not so far but McRae and his deputies had access to it, as their breath was always charged with the odor of whiskey. It was an everyday occurrence to have several of the deputies, emboldened by liquid courage and our defenseless condition--walk around the cell blocks and indulge in the pastime of calling us vulgar and profane names. Threats were also very common, but we held our peace and were content with the thought that 'a barking dog seldom bites.' "The worst of these deputies are gone since the advent of sheriff McCullogh, but there are some on the job yet who like their 'tea.' About two weeks ago every deputy that came into the jail was drunk; some of them to the extent of staggering. "When we first entered the jail, true to the principles of the I. W. W., we proceeded to organize ourselves for the betterment of our condition. A 'grub' committee, a sanitary committee and a floor committee were appointed. Certain rules and regulations were adopted. By the end of the week, instead of a growling, fighting crowd of men, such as one would expect to find where seventy-four men were thrown together, there was an orderly bunch of real I. W. W.'s, who got up at a certain hour every morning, and all of whose actions were part of a prearranged routine. Even tho every man of the seventy-four was talking as loudly as he could a few seconds before ten p. m., the instant the town clock struck ten all was hushed. If a sentence was unfinished, it remained unfinished until the following day. "When the jailer came to the door, instead of seventy-four men crowding up and all trying to talk at once, three men stepped forward and conversed with him. Our conduct was astonishing to the jail officials. One of the jailers remarked that he had certainly been given a wrong impression of the I. W. W. by McRae. He said, 'this bunch is sure different from what I heard they were. You fellows are all right.' The answer was simply: 'Organization.' Instead of a cursing, swearing, fighting mob of seventy-four men, such as sheriff McRae would like to have had us, we were entirely the opposite. "Time has not hung heavy on our hands. One scarcely notices the length of the days. Educational meetings are frequent and discussions are constantly in order. Our imprisonment has been a matter of experience. We will all be better able to talk Industrial Unionism than when we entered the jail. "The meals! Did we say 'meals?' A thousand pardons! Next time we meet a meal we will apologize to it. Up to the time we asserted our displeasure at the stinking, indigestible messes thrown up to us by a drunken brute who could not qualify as head waiter in a 'nickel plate' restaurant, we had garbage, pure and simple. Think of it! Mush, bread and coffee at 7:30 a. m., and not another bite until 4 p. m. Then they handed us a mess which some of us called 'slumgullion,' composed of diseased beef. Is it any wonder that four of the boys were taken to the hospital? But we will not dwell on the grub. Suffice it to say we were all more or less sick from the junk dished out to us. We were all hungry from November 10th until January 22nd. One day in November we had beans. Little did we surmise the pains, the agony contained in that dish of innocent looking nutriment, beans. At two in the morning every man in the jail was taken violently ill. We aroused the guards and they sent for a doctor. He came about eight hours later and looked disappointed upon learning that we were not dead. This doctor always had the same remedy in all cases. His prescription was, 'Stop smoking and you will be all right.' This is the same quack who helped beat up the forty-one members of the I. W. W. at Beverly Park on October 30th, 1916. His nerve must have failed him or his pills would have finished what his pickhandle had started. "During the entire time of our confinement under McRae, drunken deputies came into the jail and did everything in their power to make conditions as miserable as possible for us. McRae was usually the leader in villification of the I. W. W. "When on January 8th a change of administration took place, we called a meeting which resulted in an interview with Sheriff McCullogh. Among other things we demanded a cook. For days the sheriff stalled us off. He professed that he wanted to do things for our comfort. We gave him ample time--but there was no change in the conditions. On January 15th the matter came to a climax. For five days prior to this we had been served with what some called 'mulligan.' In reality it was nothing more or less than water slightly colored with the juice of carrots. If there had ever been any meat in it that meat was taken out before the mulligan was served. We called for the sheriff and were informed that he had gone away. We called for one of our attorneys who was in one of the outer offices at the time, but Jailer Bridges refused to let us see him. Having tried peaceful methods without success, we decided to forcibly bring the matter to the attention of the authorities. We poured the contents of the container out thru the bars and onto the floor. The boys in the upper tank did the same thing. For doing this we were given a terrible cursing by Jailer Bridges and the drunken cook, the latter throwing a piece of iron thru the bars, striking one of the boys on the head, and inflicting a long, ugly wound. The cook also threatened to poison us. "That night when we were to be locked in, one of our jailers, decidedly under the influence of liquor, was in such a condition that he was unable to handle the levers properly and in some manner put the locking system out of commission. After probably three quarters of an hour, during which all of us and every I. W. W. in the world were consigned to hell many times, the doors were finally locked. "'By God, you s--s-of-b----s will wish you ate that stew,' was the way in which the jailer said 'good night' to us. The significance of his words was brought back to us next morning when the time came for us to be unlocked. We were left in our cells without food and with the water turned off so we could not even have a drink. We might have remained there for hours without toilet facilities had we not taken matters into our hands. With one accord we decided to get out of the cells. There was only one way to do this--'battleship!' [Illustration: An all-I. W. W. crew raising a spar tree 160 ft. long, 22½ inches at top and 54½ inches at butt, at Index, Wash.] [Illustration: Another view of the same operation.] "Battleship we did! Such a din had never before been heard in Everett. Strong hands and shoulders were placed to the doors which gave up their hold on the locks as if they had been made of pasteboard, and we emerged into the recreation corridors. The lumber trust papers of Everett, which thought the events of November 5th and the murder of five workers but a picnic, next day reported that we had wrecked the jail and attempted to escape. We did do a little wrecking, but as far as trying to escape is concerned that is a huge joke. The jail has not been built that can hold seventy-four I. W. W. members if they want to escape. We had but decided to forcibly bring the jail conditions to the attention of the authorities and the citizens. We were not willing to die of hunger and thirst. We told Sheriff McCullogh we were not attempting to escape; he knew we were not. Yet the papers came out with an alleged interview in which the sheriff was made to say that we were. It was also said that tomato skins had been thrown against the walls of the jail. There were none to throw! "Summing up this matter: we are here, and here we are determined to remain until we are freed. Not a man in this jail would accept his liberty if the doors were opened. This is proven by the fact that one man voluntarily came to the jail here and gave himself up, while still another was allowed his liberty but sent for the Everett authorities to come and get him while he was in Seattle. This last man was taken out of jail illegally while still under the charge of first degree murder, but he preferred to stand trial rather than to be made a party to schemes of framing up to perjure away the liberties of his fellow workers. "Signed by the workers in the Snohomish County Jail." If the authorities hoped to save money by their niggardly feeding policy the battleship of January 19th, mentioned in the foregoing account, convinced them of their error. With blankets tied to the cell doors they first tore them open and then twisted them out of shape. Taking a small piece of gaspipe they disarranged the little doors that controlled the locking system above each cell, and then demolished the entire system of locks. Every bolt, screw and split pin was taken out and made useless. While some were thus engaged others were busy getting the food supplies which were stacked up in a corner just outside the tanks. When Sheriff McCullogh finally arrived at the jail, some three hours later, he found the prisoners calmly seated amid the wreckage eating some three hundred pounds of corned beef they had obtained and cooked with live steam in one of the bath tubs. Shaking his head sadly the sheriff remarked, "You fellows don't go to the same church that I do." The deputy force worked for hours in cleaning up the jail, and it took a gang of ironworkers nine working days, at a cost of over $800.00, to repair the damage done in twenty minutes. Twenty of the "hard-boiled Wobblies" were removed to Seattle shortly after this, but it was no trouble for the men to gain their demands from that time on. They had but to whisper the magic word "battleship" to remind the jailers that the I. W. W. policy, as expressed in a line in Virgil, was about to be invoked: "If I cannot bend the powers above, I will rouse Hell." Lloyd Black, prosecuting attorney only by a political accident, soon dropped his ideals and filled the position of prosecutor as well as his limited abilities allowed, and it was apparent that he felt the hands of the lumber trust tugging on the strings attached to his job and that he had succumbed to the insidious influence of his associates. He called various prisoners from their cells and by pleading, cajoling and threatening in turn, tried to induce them to make statements injurious to their case. Fraudulently using the name of John M. Foss, a former member of the General Executive Board of the I. W. W. and then actively engaged in working for the defense, Black called out Axel Downey, a boy of seventeen and the youngest of the free speech prisoners, and used all the resources of his department to get the lad to make a statement. Downey refused to talk to any of the prosecution lawyers or detectives and demanded that he be returned to his cell. From that time on he refused to answer any calls from the office unless the jail committee was present. Nevertheless the name of Axel Downey was endorsed, with several others, as a witness for the prosecution in order to create distrust and suspicion among the prisoners. About this time the efforts of Detective McLaren and his associates were successful in "influencing" one of the prisoners, and Charles Auspos, alias Charles Austin, agreed to become a state's witness. Contrary to the expectation of the prosecution, the announcement of this "confession" created no sensation and was not taken seriously on the outside, while the prisoners, knowing there was nothing to confess, were concerned only in the fact that there had been a break in their solidarity. "We wanted to come out of this case one hundred per cent clean," was the sorrowful way in which they took the news. Auspos had joined the I. W. W. in Rugby, North Dakota, on August 10th, 1916, and whether he was at that time an agent for the employers is not known, but it is evident that he was not sufficiently interested in industrial unionism to study its rudimentary principles. It may be that the previous record of Auspos had given an opportunity for McLaren to work upon that weak character, for Auspos started his boyhood life in Hudson, Wisconsin, with a term in the reformatory, and his checkered career included two years in a military guard house for carrying side-arms and fighting in a gambling den, a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army, under the assumed name of Ed. Gibson, and various arrests up until he joined the I. W. W. This Auspos was about 33 years of age, five foot eleven inches tall, weight about 175 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, medium complexion but face inclined to be reddish, slight scar on side of face, and was a teamster and general laborer by occupation, his parents living in Elk River, Minn. And while Auspos had by his actions descended to the lowest depths of shame, there were those among the prisoners who had scaled the heights of self-sacrifice. There were some few among them whose record would look none too well in the light of day, but the spirit of class solidarity within them led them to say, "Do with me as you will, I shall never betray the working class." James Whiteford, arrested under the name of James Kelly, deserves the highest praise that can be given for he was taken back to Pennsylvania, which state he had left in violation of a parole; to serve out a long penitentiary sentence which he could have avoided by a few easily told lies implicating his fellow workers in a conspiracy to do murder on November 5th. Shortly after the attempted "frame-up" with Axel Downey there was a strong effort made to bring pressure upon Harvey Hubler. A "lawyer" who called himself Minor Blythe, bearing letters obtained by misrepresentation from Hubler's father and sister, attempted to get Hubler from his cell on an order signed by Malcolm McLaren, the detective. With the experience of Downey fresh in mind, Hubler refused to go out of the tank, even tho the "lawyer" stated that he had been sent by Hubler's father and could surely get him out of jail. The next day twelve armed deputies came into the jail to force Hubler to accompany them to the office. The prisoners as a whole refused to enter their cells, and armed themselves with such rude weapons as they could find in order to repulse the deputies. The concerted resistance had its effect and a committee of three, Feinberg, Peters and Watson, accompanied Hubler to the office. Hubler there refused to read the letter, asking that it be read aloud in the presence of the other men. The detectives refused to do this and the men were put back in the tank. That afternoon, with two other prisoners, Hubler went out of the tank to wash his clothes. The jailers had been awaiting this opportunity and immediately locked the men out. The gunmen then overpowered Hubler and dragged him struggling to the office. The letter was then read to Hubler, who made no comment further than to say that the I. W. W. had engaged attorneys to defend him and he wished to be taken back where the rest of the men were. Meanwhile the men in the tanks had started another battleship. A hose had been installed in the jail since the previous battleship and the deputies turned this upon the men as soon as the protest started. The prisoners retaliated by taking all mattresses, blankets, clothing and supplies belonging to the county and throwing them where they would be ruined by the water, and not knowing what was happening to Hubler they shouted "Murder" at the top of their voices. While the trouble was going on several members of the I. W. W., many Everett citizens, and one attorney tried to gain admittance to the jail office to learn the cause of the disturbance, but this was denied for more than an hour. Hubler was finally brought back and the battleship ceased. The county had to furnish new bedding and clothing for the prisoners. After this occurrence the prisoners were allowed the run of the corridors and were often let out to play ball upon the jail lawn, with only two guards to watch them. There were no disorders in the jail from that time on. A committee of Everett women asked permission to serve a dinner to the imprisoned men and when this was granted they fairly outdid themselves in fixing up what the boys termed a "swell feed." This was served to the men thru the bars but tasted none the less good on that account. [Illustration: Judge J. T. Ronald] The Seattle women, not to be outdone, gave a banquet to the prisoners who had been transported to the Seattle county jail. The banquet was spread on tables set the full length of the jail corridor, and the menu ran from soup to nuts. An after dinner cigar, and a little boutonniere of fragrant flowers furnished by a gray-haired old lady, completed the program. These banquets and the jail visitors, together with numerous books, magazines and papers--and a phonograph that was in almost constant operation--made the latter part of the long jail days endurable. The defense was making strong efforts, during this time, to secure some judge other than Bell or Alston, the two superior court judges of Snohomish County, finally winning a victory in forcing the appointment of an outside judge by the governor of the state. Judge J. T. Ronald, of King County, was selected by Governor Lister, and after the men had pleaded "Not Guilty" on January 26th, a change of venue on account of the prejudice existing in Everett's official circles was asked and granted, Seattle being selected as the place where the trial would take place. Eleven of the prisoners were named on the first information, the men thus arraigned being F. O. Watson, John Black, Frank Stuart, Charles Adams, Harston Peters, Thomas H. Tracy, Harry Feinberg, John Downs, Harold Miller, Ed Roth and Thomas Tracy. The title of the case was "State vs. F. O. Watson et al.," but the first man to come to trial was Thomas H. Tracy. The date of the trial was set for March 5th. On November 5th, when he was taken from the Verona to jail, Thomas H. Tracy gave his name at the booking window as George Martin, in order to spare the feelings of relatives to whom the news of his arrest would have proven a severe shock. When the officers were checking the names later he was surprised to hear them call out "Tracy, Thomas Tracy." Thinking that his identity was known because of his having been secretary in Everett for a time, he stepped forward. An instant later a little fellow half his size also marched to the front. There were two Tom Tracys among the arrested men! Neither of them knew the other! Tracy then gave his correct name and both he and "Little Tom Tracy" were later held among the seventy-four charged with murder in the first degree. During all the time the free speech fighters were awaiting trial the lumber trust exerted its potent influence at the national capital to the end of preventing any congressional investigation of the tragedy of November 5th and the circumstances surrounding it. The petitions of thousands of citizens of the state of Washington were ignored. All too well the employers knew what a putrid state of affairs would be uncovered were the lumber trust methods exposed to the pitiless light of publicity. That the trial itself would force them into the open evidently did not enter into their calculations. In changing the information charging the murder of C. O. Curtis to the charge of murdering Jefferson Beard the prosecution thought to cover one point beyond the possibility of discovery, which change seems to have been made as a result of the exhuming of the body of C. O. Curtis in February. Curtis had been buried in a block of solid concrete and this had to be broken apart in order to remove the body. Just who performed the autopsy cannot be ascertained as the work was covered in the very comprehensive bill of $50.50 for "Exhuming the body of C. O. Curtis, and autopsy thereon," this bill being made out in the name of the superintendent of the graveyard and was allowed and paid by Snohomish County. This, together with the fact that at no time during the trial did the prosecution speak of C. O. Curtis as having met his death at the hands of the men on the Verona, seems to bear out the contention of the defense that Curtis was the victim of the rifle fire of one of his associates. So on March 5th, after holding the free speech prisoners for four months to the day, the lumber trust, in the name of the State of Washington, brought the first of them, Thomas H. Tracy, to trial, on a charge of first degree murder, in the King County Court House at Seattle, Washington. CHAPTER VI. THE PROSECUTION The King County Court House is an imposing, five story, white structure, covering an entire block in the business section of the city of Seattle. Its offices for the conduct of the county and city business are spacious and well appointed. Its corridors are ample, and marble. The elevator service is of the best. But the courtrooms are stuffy little dens, illy ventilated, awkwardly placed, and with the poorest of acoustics. They seem especially designed to add to the depressing effect that invariably attends the administration of "law and order." The court of Judge Ronald, like many other courts in the land, is admirably designed for the bungling inefficiencies of "justice." Yet it was in this theater, thru the medium of the Everett trial, that the class struggle was reproduced, sometimes in tragedy and sometimes in comedy. To reach the greatest trial in the history of labor unionism, perhaps the greatest also in the number of defendants involved and the number of witnesses called, one had to ascend to the fourth floor of the court house and line up in the corridor under the watchful eyes of the I. W. W. "police," C. R. Griffin and J. J. Keenan, appointed by the organization at the request of the court. There, unless one were a lawyer or a newspaper representative, it was necessary to wait in line for hours until the tiny courtroom was opened and the lucky hundred odd persons were admitted to the church-like benches of J. T. Ronald's sanctum, where the case of State versus Tracy was on trial. Directly in front of the benches, at the specially constructed press table, were seats provided for the representatives of daily, weekly and monthly publications whose policies ranged from the ultra conservative to the extreme radical. Here the various reporters were seen writing madly as some important point came up, then subsiding into temporary indifference, passing notes, joking in whispers, drawing personal cartoons of the judge, jury, counsel, court functionaries and out-of-the-ordinary spectators,--the only officially recognized persons in the courtroom showing no signs of reverence for the legal priesthood and their mystic sacerdotalism. Just ahead of the press table were the attorneys for the prosecution: Lloyd Black, a commonplace, uninspired, beardless youth as chief prosecutor; H. D. Cooley, a sleek, pusillanimous recipient of favors from the lumber barons, a fixture at the Commercial Club, and an also-ran deputy at the dock on November 5th, as next counsel in line; and A. L. Veitch, handsome in a gross sort of a way, full faced, sensual lipped, with heavy pouches beneath the eyes, a self-satisfied favorite of the M. & M., and withal the most able of the three who by virtue of polite fiction represented the state of Washington. From time to time in whispered conference with these worthy gentlemen was a tall, lean, grey, furtive-eyed individual who was none other than the redoubtable Californian detective, Malcolm McLaren. At right angles to this array of prosecutors the counsel for the defense were seated, where they remained until the positions were reversed at the close of the prosecution's case. Chief counsel Fred H. Moore, serious, yet with a winning smile occasionally chasing itself across his face and adding many humorous wrinkles to the tired-looking crow-feet at the corners of his eyes; next to him George F. Vanderveer, a strong personality whose lightning flashes of wit and sarcasm, marshalled to the aid of a merciless drive of questions, were augmented by a smile second only to Moore's in its captivating quality; then E. C. Dailey, invaluable because of his knowledge of local conditions in Everett and personages connected with the case; and by his side, at times during the trial, was H. Sigmund, special counsel for Harry Feinberg. Seated a little back, but in the same group, was a man of medium height, stocky built, slightly ruddy complexion, black hair, and twinkling blue eyes. He was to all appearances the most composed man in the courtroom. A slight smile crept over his face, at times almost broadened into a laugh, and then died away. This was Thomas H. Tracy, on trial for murder in the first degree. To the rear of the defendant and forming a deep contrast to the determined, square-jawed prisoner was the guard, a lean, hungry-looking deputy with high cheek bones, unusually sharp and long nose and a pair of moustachios that drooped down upon his chest, a wholly useless and most uncomfortable functionary who could scarce seat himself because of the heavy artillery scattered over his anatomy. The court clerk, an absurdly dignified court bailiff, a special stenographer, and Sheriff McCullogh of Snohomish county, occupied the intervening space to the pulpit from which Judge J. T. Ronald delivered his legal invocations. The judge, a striking figure, over six feet in height and well proportioned, of rather friendly countenance and bearing in street dress, resembled nothing so much as a huge black owl when arrayed in his sacred "Mother Hubbard" gown, with tortoise-shell rimmed smoked glasses resting on his slightly aquiline nose and surmounting the heavy, closely trimmed, dark Vandyke beard. To the right of the judge as he faced the audience was the witness chair, and across the whole of the corner of the room was a plat of the Everett City Dock and the adjacent waterfront, together with a smaller map showing part of the streets of the city. The plat was state's exhibit "A." Below these maps on a tilted platform was a model of the same dock, with the two warehouses, waiting room, Klatawa Slip, and the steamer Verona, all built to scale. This was defendant's exhibit "1." Extending from these exhibits down the side of the railed enclosure, were seats for two extra jurors. The filling of this jury box from a long list of talesmen was the preliminary move to a trial in which the defendant was barely mentioned, and which involved the question of Labor's right to organize, to assemble peaceably, to speak freely, and to advocate a change in existing social arrangements. Capital was lined up in a fight against Labor. There was a direct reflection in the courts of the masters of the age-long, world-wide class struggle. The examination of talesmen occupied considerable time. Each individual was asked whether he had read any of the following papers: The Industrial Worker, The Socialist World, or the Pacific Coast Longshoreman. The prosecution also inquired as to the prospective juror's familiarity with the I. W. W. Song Book and the various works on Sabotage. Union affiliations were closely inquired into, and favorable mention of the right to organize brought a challenge from the state. The testing of the talesmen was no less severe on the part of the defense. Fifty-one talesmen were disqualified, after long and severe legal battles, before a jury was finally secured from among the voters and property owners who alone were qualified to serve. The jury, as selected, was rather more intelligent than was to be expected when consideration is taken of the fact that any person who acknowledged having an impression, an opinion, or a conclusion regarding the merits of the case was automatically excused from service. Those who were chosen to sit on the case were: Mrs. Mattie Fordran, wife of a steamfitter; Robert Harris, a rancher; Fred Corbs, bricklayer, once a member of the union, then working for himself; Mrs. Louise Raynor, wife of a master mariner; A. Peplan, farmer; Mrs. Clara Uhlman, wife of a harnessmaker in business for himself; Mrs. Alice Freeborn, widow of a druggist; F. M. Christian, tent and awning maker; Mrs. Sarah F. Brown, widow, working class family; James R. Williams, machinist's helper, member of union; Mrs. Sarah J. Timmer, wife of a union lineman, and T. J. Byrne, contractor. The two alternate jurors, provided for under the "Extra Juror" law of Washington, passed just prior to this trial, were: J. W. Efaw, furniture manufacturer, president of Seattle Library Board and Henry B. Williams, carpenter and member of a union. Judge Ronald realized the importance of the case as was shown in his admonition to the jury, a portion of which follows: "It is plain, from both sides here, that we are making history. Let us see that the record that we make in this case,--you and I, as a court,--be a landmark based upon nothing in the world but the truth. We may deceive some people and we may, a little, deceive ourselves; but we cannot deceive eternal truth." On the morning of March 9th Judge Ronald, the tail of his black gown firmly in hand, swept into the courtroom from his private chambers, the assembled congregation arose and stood in deep obeisance before His Majesty The Law, the pompous bailiff rapped for order and delivered an incantation, the Judge seated himself on the throne of "Justice," the assemblage subsided into their seats--and the trial was opened in earnest. Prosecuting Attorney Lloyd Black then gave his opening statement, the gist of which is contained in the following quotations: "You are at the outset of a murder trial, murder in the first degree. The defendant, Thomas H. Tracy, alias George Martin, is charged with murder in the first degree, in having assisted, counselled, aided, abetted and encouraged some unknown person to kill Jefferson Beard on the 5th of November, 1916. "* * * As far as the state is concerned, no one knows or can know or could follow the course of the particular bullet that struck and mortally wounded and killed Jefferson Beard. "* * * The evidence further will show that the first, or one of the first, shots fired was from the steamer Verona and was from a revolver held in the hand of Thomas H. Tracy. "* * * As to the killing of Jefferson Beard itself the probabilities are, as the evidence of the state will indicate, that he was killed by someone on the hurricane deck of the Verona because the evidence will show that the revolver shots went thru his overcoat, missing his coat, and thru his vest, and had a downward course, so that it must have come from the upper deck. The evidence will show that Thomas H. Tracy was on the main deck firing thru an open cabin window. "* * * Of the approximately 140 special and regular deputies of Snohomish County about one-half were armed, some with revolvers, some with rifles and some with clubs. "* * * When the fusilade had come from the I. W. W.'s on the Verona, a portion of the deputies ran thru a door into this warehouse, (indicating): a portion of them went into that warehouse, and used some of the knotholes there, and some shot holes thru which they could see, * * *" Black then gave a recital of the lumber trust version of the events leading up to November 5th, bringing in the threats of an alleged committee who were said to have declared "that they would call thousands of their members to the city of Everett, flood the jails, demand separate trials, and tie up and overwhelm the court machinery, and that the mayor should consider that they had beaten Spokane and killed its chief, killed Chief Sullivan of that city, that they had defeated Wenatchee and North Yakima, and now it was Everett's turn." "* * * That in furtherance of their threats that they would burn the city of Everett, that a number of mysterious fires took place, fires connected with some person who was opposed to the I. W. W. * * * And in addition, the I. W. W. members were arrested at different times preceding this trouble on the 5th of November and phosphorus was found upon their person either in cans or wrapped up. "* * * At different times, the evidence will show, Sheriff Donald McRae and other peace officers of the city of Everett, including Mayor Merrill, received anonymous letters, and also received direct statements from the I. W. W. that they would get them; and, as one speaker put it, he says 'Sheriff McRae will wake up some day and say '"Good morning, Jesus!"' Black continued his recital of events, admitting the "Wanderer" incident, but he tried to sidestep the criminal actions at Beverly Park. "Now, there happened at Beverly Park an incident that the State in this action doesn't feel that it has anything to do with this particular cause." Ironical laughter at this juncture caused the removal of several spectators from the courtroom. So disconcerted was Black that he proceeded to give away the real cause of action against the I. W. W. "The I. W. W. organization itself is an unlawful conspiracy, an unlawful conspiracy in that it was designed for the purpose of effecting an absolute revolution in society and in government, effecting it not by the procedure of law thru the ballot, but for effecting it by direct action. The I. W. W. meant to accomplish the change in society, not by organization as the labor unions hope to get higher wages, not to get into effect their theory of society by the ballot, as the Socialists hope, but that they expressly state that the election of a Socialist president will accomplish no good, and that sabotage should be employed against government ownership as well as against private production, so that directly they might put into effect their theories of government and society." The defense reserved the right to make their opening statement at the close of the prosecution's case, thus leaving the state in the dark as to the line of defense, and forcing them to open their case at once. Lester L. Beard and Chester L. Beard, twin sons of the deceased deputy sheriff, testified as to the condition of their father's clothing, Attorney Vanderveer drawing from Lester Beard the admission that his father was an employment agent in Seattle in 1914. Following them, Drs. William O'Keef Cox, H. P. Howard, and William P. West testified to having performed an autopsy on Beard and described the course of the bullet upon entering the body. Dr. West was an armed guard at the land end of the City Dock on November 5th, Dr. Cox was also on the dock as a deputy, and Dr. Howard carried a membership in the Commercial Club. They were the physicians present when the autopsy was performed. The next witness, Harry W. Shaw, a wood and coal dealer of Everett, admitted having joined the citizen deputies because of a call issued by the sheriff thru the Commercial Club. Shaw went to the dock on November 5th, carrying, as he claimed, a revolver with a broken firing pin which he had hoped to have repaired on that Sunday on the way to the dock. He was close to Beard when the latter fell and helped to carry him from the open space on the dock into the warehouse. He afterward accompanied Beard to the hospital in an automobile and returned to the dock with Beard's unfired revolver in his possession. He swore that he had seen McRae sober three times in succession! When asked by Attorney Moore he gave an affirmative answer to this pertinent question: "You knew that the matter of the enforcement of the city ordinances of Everett was peculiarly within the powers of the police department of the city, didn't you?" Owen Clay was then called to the stand. Clay had been made bookkeeper of the Weyerhouser Mill about a year and a half before this, and had been given a membership in the Commercial Club at the time. He was injured in the right arm in the trouble at the dock and then ran around the corner of the ticket office, after which he emptied his revolver with his left hand. Attorney Vanderveer questioned this witness as follows: "Who shot Jeff Beard in the right breast?" "I don't know." "Did you do it?" "I don't know." "Thank you! That's all," said Vanderveer with a smile. The next witness was C. A. Mitchell, employee of the Clark-Nickerson Mill. He testified that he belonged to Company "B" under the command of Carl Clapp. His testimony placed Sheriff McRae in the same position as that given by the preceding witness, about eight to ten feet from the face of the dock in the center of the open space between the two warehouses, but unlike Clay, who testified that McRae had his left hand in the air, he was positive that the sheriff had his right hand in the air at the time the shooting started. W. R. Booth, engaged in real estate and insurance business, a member of the Commercial Club, and a deputy at the dock, was next called. Attorney Cooley asked this witness about the speech made at an unspecified street meeting. Vanderveer immediately objected as follows: "We object to that as immaterial and calling for a conclusion of the witness. He does not know who was speaking, nor whether he was authorized to do it, or brought there by the Industrial Workers of the World, or a hireling of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' society. It has happened time and time again that people are employed by these capitalists themselves to go out and make incendiary speeches and cause trouble, and employed to go out and fire buildings and do anything to put the opposition in wrong." When questioned about McRae's position on the dock, Booth stated that the sheriff had both hands in the air. This witness admitted having been a member of the "Flying Squadron" and being a participant in the outrage at Beverly Park. He named others who went out with him in the same automobile, Will Seivers and Harry Ramwell, and stated that A. P. Bardson, clerk of the Commercial Club, was probably there as he had been out on all the other occasions. He said that he would not participate in the beating up of anyone, and that when the affair started he went up the road for purposes of his own. He was asked by Vanderveer as to the reason for continuing to associate with people who had abused the men at Beverly Park, to which he replied: "Because I believe in at least trying to maintain law and order in our city." During the examination of this witness, and at various times thruout the long case, it was only with evident effort that Attorney Vanderveer kept on the unfamiliar ground of the class struggle, his natural tendencies being to try the case as a defense of a pure and simple murder charge. W. P. Bell, an Everett attorney representing a number of scab mills, a member of the Commercial Club and a deputy on the dock, testified next, contradicting the previous witnesses but throwing no additional light upon the case. He was followed by Charles Tucker, a scab and gunman employed by the Hartley Shingle Company and a deputy on the dock. Tucker lied so outrageously that even the prosecution counsel felt ashamed of him. He was impeached by his own testimony. Editor J. A. MacDonald of the Industrial Worker was called to the stand to show the official relation of the paper to the I. W. W. and to lay a foundation for the introduction of a file of the issues prior to November 5th. A portion of the file was introduced as evidence and at the same time the state put in as exhibits a copy of the I. W. W. Constitution and By-Laws, Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sabotage by Walker C. Smith, The Revolutionary I. W. W. by Grover H. Perry, The I. W. W., Its History, Structure and Methods by Vincent St. John, and the Joe Hill Memorial Edition of the Song Book. Herbert Mahler, former secretary of the Seattle I. W. W. and at the time Secretary-Treasurer of the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee, was next upon the stand. He was asked to name various committees and to identify certain telegrams. The unhesitatingly clear answers of both MacDonald and Mahler were in vivid contrast to the mumbled and contradictory responses of the deputies. William J. Smith, manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company was then called to further corroborate certain telegrams sent and received by the I. W. W. As the next step in the case prosecutor Black read portions of the pamphlet "Sabotage" by Smith, sometimes using half a paragraph and skipping half, sometimes using one paragraph and omitting the next, provoking a remonstrance from Attorney Vanderveer which was upheld by the Court in these words: "You have a right to do what you are doing, Mr. Black, but it don't appeal to my sense of fairness if other omissions are as bad as the one you left out. You are following the practice, but I don't know of an instance where there has been such an awful juggling about, and it is discretionary with the Court, and I want to be fair in this case. I want to let them have a chance to take the sting out of it so as to let the jury have both sides, because it is there. Now, Mr. Vanderveer, I am going to leave it to you not to impose upon the Court's discretion. Any new phases I don't think you have the right to raise, but anything that will modify what he has read I think you have the right to." Thereupon Vanderveer read all the omitted portions bearing upon the case, bringing special emphasis on these two parts: "Note this important point, however. Sabotage does not seek nor desire to take human life." "Sabotage places human life--and especially the life of the only useful class--higher than all else in the universe." With evidences of amusement, if not always approval, the jury then listened to the reading of numerous I. W. W. songs by Attorney Cooley for the prosecution, tho some of the jurymen shared in the bewilderment of the audience as to the connection between the song "Overalls and Snuff" and defendant Tracy charged with a conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. D. D. Merrill, Mayor of Everett, next took the stand. He endeavored to give the impression that the I. W. W. was responsible for a fire loss in Everett of $100,000.00 during the latter part of the year 1916. Vanderveer shot the question: "From whom would you naturally look for information on the subject of fires?" "From the Fire Chief, W. C. Carroll," replied the mayor; "We offer this report in evidence," said Vanderveer crisply. The report of the Fire Chief was admitted and read. It showed that there were less fires in 1916 that in any previous year in the history of Everett, and only four of incendiary origin in the entire list! The prosecution tried to squirm out of this ticklish position by stating that they meant also the fires in the vicinity of Everett, but here also they met with failure for the principal fire in the surrounding district was in the co-operative mill, owned by a number of semi-radical workingmen at Mukilteo. The mayor told of having been present at the arrest of several men taken from a freight train at Lowell, just at the Everett city limits. Some of these men were I. W. W.'s, and on the ground afterward there was said to have been found some broken glass about which there was a smell of phosphorus. The judge ruled out this evidence because there were other than I. W. W. men present, no phosphorus was found on the men, and if only one package were found it would not indicate a conspiracy but might have been brought by an agent of the employers. This was the nearest the prosecution came at any time in the trial in their attempt to connect the I. W. W. with incendiary fires. A tense moment in this sensational trial came during the testimony of Mayor Merrill, when young Louis Skaroff was suddenly produced in court and the question flashed at the cringing witness: "Do you recognize this boy standing here? Do you recognize him, Louis Skaroff?" "I think I have seen him," mumbled the mayor. "Let me ask you if on the 6th day of November at about ten o'clock at night in a room in the City Hall at Everett where there was a bed room having an iron bedstead in it, in the presence of the jailer, didn't you have an interview with this man?" Merrill denied having mutilated Skaroff's fingers beneath the casters of the bed, but even the capitalist press reported that his livid face and thick voice belied his words of denial. And Prosecutor Lloyd Black remarked heatedly, "I don't see the materiality of all this." Merrill left the stand, having presented the sorriest figure among the number of poor witnesses produced by the prosecution. Carl Clapp, superintendent of the Municipal Waterworks at Everett, and commander of one of the squads of deputies, followed with testimony to the effect that sixty rifles from the Naval Militia were stored in the Commercial Club on November 5th. At this juncture the hearing of further evidence was postponed for a half day to allow Attorney Vanderveer to testify on behalf of Mayor H. C. Gill in a case then pending in the Federal Court. On several other occasions Vanderveer was called to testify in this case and there were times when it was thought that he also would be indicted and brought to trial, yet with this extra work and the threat of imprisonment hanging over him, Vanderveer never flagged in his keen attention to the work of the defense. It was commonly thought that the case against Gill and the attempt to involve Vanderveer were moves of the lumber trust and Chamber of Commerce directed toward the I. W. W., for in the background were the same interested parties who had been forced to abandon the recall against Seattle's mayor. Gill's final acquittal in this case was hailed as an I. W. W. victory. Upon the resumption of the trial the prosecution temporarily withdrew Clapp and placed Clyde Gibbons on the stand. This witness was the son of James Gibbons, a deceased member of the I. W. W., well and favorable known in the Northwest. James Gibbons was killed by a speeding automobile about a year prior to the trial, and his widow and son, Clyde, were supported by the I. W. W. and the Boiler Makers' Union for several months thereafter. Clyde Gibbons, altho but seventeen years old, joined the Navy by falsifying his age. Charity demands that the veil be drawn over the early days of Clyde's training, yet his strong imagination and general untruthfulness are matters of record. He was shown in court to have stolen funds left in trust with him by Mrs. Peters, one of the persons against whom his testimony was directed. It is quite probable that the deceit about his age, or some other of his queer actions, were discovered and used to force him to testify as the prosecution desired. The following testimony bears out this idea: "Who was it that you met at the Naval Recruiting Station and took you to McLaren?" "I don't know his name." "Well, how did you get to talking to this total stranger about the Everett matter?" "He told me he wanted to see me in the judge's office." "And they took you down to the judge's office, did they?" "Yes, sir." "And when you got to the judge's office you found you were in Mr. McLaren's and Mr. Veitch's and Mr. Black's office in the Smith Building?" "Yes, sir." Gibbons testified as to certain alleged conversations in an apartment house frequented by members of the I. W. W., stating that a party of members laid plans to go to Everett and to take with them red pepper, olive oil and bandages. Harston Peters, one of the defendants, had a gun that wouldn't shoot and so went unarmed, according to this witness. Gibbons also stated that Mrs. Frenette took part in the conversation in this apartment house on the morning of the tragedy, whereupon Attorney Moore asked him: "On directing your attention to it, don't you remember that you didn't see Mrs. Frenette at all in Seattle, anywhere, at any time subsequent to Saturday night; that she went to Everett on Saturday night?" "Well, I am quite sure I saw her Sunday, but maybe I am mistaken." The judge upheld the defense attorneys in their numerous objections to the leading questions propounded by prosecutor Black during the examination of this witness. Clapp was recalled to the stand and testified further that Scott Rainey, head of the U. S. Naval Militia at Everett, had ordered Ensign McLean to take rifles to the dock, and that the witness and McLean had loaded the guns, placed them in an auto and taken them to the dock, where they were distributed to the deputies just as the Verona started to steam away. Ignorance as to the meaning of simple labor terms that are in the every-day vocabulary of the "blanketstiff" was shown by Clapp in his answers to these queries: "What is direct action?" "Using force instead of lawful means." "What do you mean?" "Well, either physical force, or conspiracy." "You understand conspiracy to be some kind of force, do you?" "It may be force." When asked where he had obtained information about sabotage, this witness said that he had looked up the word in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, a work in which the term is strangely absent. Clapp was the first witness to admit the armed character of the deputy body and also to state that deputies with guns were stationed on all of Everett's docks. After excusing this witness, Cooley brought in copies of two city ordinances covering street speaking in Everett. One of them which allowed the holding of meetings at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues was admitted without question, but the other which purported to have been passed on September 19, 1916, was objected to on the ground that it had not been passed, was never put upon passage and never moved for passage in the Everett City Council. Richard Brennan, chauffeur of the patrol wagon, A. H. Briggs, city dog catcher, and Floyd Wildey, police officer, all of Everett, then testified regarding the arrest of I. W. W. members during August and September. Wildey stated that on the night of August 30 four or five members of the I. W. W. came away from their street meeting carrying sections of gaspipe in their hands. This was thought to be quite a blow against the peaceful character of the meeting until it was discovered on cross-examination that the weapons were the removable legs of the street speaking platform. David Daniels, Arthur S. Johnson, Garland Queen, J. R. Steik, M. J. Fox and, later on, Earl Shaver, all of whom were police officers in Everett, gave testimony along somewhat the same lines as the other witnesses from Everett who owed their jobs to the lumber trust. They stated that the I. W. W. men deported on August 23rd, had made threats against McRae and several police officers. Ed. M. Hawes, proprietor of a scab printing and stationery company, member of the Commercial Club and citizen deputy, gave testimony similar to that of other vigilantes as to the trouble on November 5th. When asked if he had ever known any I. W. W. men offering resistance, Hawes replied that one had tried to start a fight with him at Beverly Park. Having thus established his connection with this infamous outrage, further questioning of this witness developed much of the story of the brutal gauntlet and deportation. Hawes told of one of his prisoners making an endeavor to escape, and when asked whether he blamed the man for trying to get away, answered that he thought the prisoner was a pretty big baby. "You thought he was a pretty big baby?" queried Vanderveer. "Yes, sir." "Or do you think the men were pretty big babies and cowards who were doing the beating?" The witness had no answer to this question. "How much do you weigh?" demanded Vanderveer sharply. "I weigh 260 pounds," replied Hawes. Frank Goff and Henry Krieg, two young lads who were severely beaten at Beverly Park, were suddenly produced in court and the big bully was made to stand alongside of them. He outweighed the two of them. It was plainly evident who the pretty big baby was! Howard Hathaway, law student and assistant to the state secretary of the Democratic Central Committee, was forced to admit his connection with the raid upon the launch "Wanderer" and also upon the men peacefully camping at Maltby. His testimony was mainly for the purpose of making it appear that James P. Thompson had advocated that the shingle weavers set fire to the mills and win their strikes by methods of terrorism. Two newspaper reporters, William E. Jones of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and J. J. Underwood of the Seattle Times, were placed upon the stand in order to lay the foundation for an introduction of an article appearing in the P-I on Sunday morning, November 5th. Jones testified that he was present at the Seattle police station when Philip K. Ahern, manager of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, requested the release of Smith and Reese, two of his operatives who had been on the Verona. Underwood stated that upon hearing of the treatment given the I. W. W. men at Beverly Park he had exclaimed, "I would like to see anybody do that to me and get away with it." "You meant that, did you?" asked Vanderveer. "You bet I meant it!" asserted the witness positively. The two reporters proved to be better witnesses for the defense than for the prosecution. Sanford Asbury, T. N. Henry, Ronald Johnson, John S. Donlan, and J. E. Gleason, then testified regarding the movements of the men who left Seattle on the Verona and Calista on the morning of November 5th. They uniformly agreed that the crowd was in no way disorderly, nor were their actions at all suspicious. The defense admitted that the Verona had been chartered but stated that there were passengers other than I. W. W. members on board. The first witness from the Verona was Ernest Shellgren, the boat's engineer, who testified that he was in the engine pit when the boat landed and heard crackling sounds telegraphed down the smoke stack that he knew an instant later were bullets. He was struck by a spent bullet and ran to various places on the boat seeking shelter from the hail of lead that appeared to come from all directions, finally returning to the boiler as the safest place on the boat. He stated that he saw one man firing a blue steel revolver from the boat, only the hand and revolver being in his line of vision. The only other gun he saw was one in the hands of the man who asked him to back the boat away from the dock during the firing. He also stated that the I. W. W. men on the way over to Everett comported themselves as was usual with any body of passengers. Shellgren was asked if he could identify John Downs or Thomas H. Tracy as being connected with the firing in any way and he stated that he could not do so. The defense objected to the use of Downs' picture, as it did on every occasion where a picture of one of the prisoners was used, on the grounds that the photographs were obtained by force and in defiance of the constitutional rights of the imprisoned free speech fighters. Seattle police detectives, Theodore Montgomery and James O'Brien, who made a search of the Verona upon its return to Seattle, testified to having found a little loose red pepper, two stones the size of a goose egg tied up in a cloth, and a few empty cartridges. These two witnesses also developed the fact that in no case were regular bandages used on the wounded men, thus establishing the fact that no serious trouble was anticipated. James Meagher, occupation "home owner," member of the Commercial Club and citizen deputy, testified that a hundred shots were fired from the Verona before a gun was pulled on the dock, one of the first shots striking him in the leg. This witness was asked: "Did you see a single gun on the boat?" "No sir," was his mumbled response. The prosecution witnesses disagreed as to the number of lines of deputies stretched across the back and sides of the open space on the dock, the statements varying from one to four files. Chad Ballard, Harry Gray, and J. D. Landis, of the Seattle police detective bureau, and J. G. McConnell, Everett Interurban conductor, testified to the return and arrest of Mrs. Frenette, Mrs. Mahler and Mrs. Peters, after the trouble on November 5th. The police officers also told of a further searching of the Verona on its return. The defense admitted that some of the members had red pepper in their possession and stated that they would ask the judge to instruct the jury that red pepper is a weapon of defense and not of offense and that murder cannot be committed with red pepper. Elmer Buehrer, engineer at the Everett High School, and citizen deputy, gave testimony that was halting, confused and relatively unimportant. He was prompted by the prosecution to such an extent that Attorney Vanderveer at the close of one question said, "Look at me and not at counsel." "Look where you please," cried Cooley angrily. "Well, look where you please," rejoined Vanderveer. "He can't help you." It was apparent that the only reason for putting on this witness and former witness Meagher was because of a desire to create sympathy thru the fact that they had been wounded on the dock. Edward Armstrong, master mariner on the Verona, testified that he had thrown out the spring line and lifted out the gate when the firing started. He fell to the deck behind a little jog, against the bulkhead, and while in that position two bullets went thru his cap. Altho this witness stated that he judged from the sound that the first shot came from some place to the rear of him, his testimony as to the attitude of McRae was as follows: "I seen him with his right hand hanging on the butt of the gun." "And that was before there was any shooting?" "Yes sir." As to the condition of the boat after the trouble he gave an affirmative answer to the question: "You know that the whole front of the pilot house and the whole front of this bulkhead front of the forward deck leading to the hurricane deck is full of B. B. shot, don't you?" James Broadbent, manager of the Clark-Nickerson Mill, and a citizen deputy, followed Armstrong with some unimportant testimony. L. S. Davis, steward on the Verona, also stated that McRae committed the first overt act in taking hold of his gun. He was asked: "He had his hand on his gun while he was still facing you?" "Yes sir. I could see it plainly," answered Davis. [Illustration: Pilot house of the "Verona" riddled with rifle bullets at Everett] "That was before he started to turn, before he was hit?" "Yes sir." Davis was wounded in the arm as he was on the pilot house steps. He was asked about the general disposition, manner and appearance of the men on the Verona on the way over to Everett, and answered: "I thought they were pretty nicely behaved for men--for such a crowd as that." "Any rough talk; any rough, ugly looks?" "No sir." "Any guns?" "No." "Any threats?" "I didn't hear any threats." "Jolly, good-natured bunch of boys?" "Yes." "Lots of young boys among them, weren't there?" "Yes, quite a few." Davis stated that three passengers got off at Edmunds on the way up to Everett, thus establishing the fact that there were other than I. W. W. men on board. R. S. "Scott" Rainey, commercial manager of the Puget Sound Telephone Company and a citizen deputy, was called and examined at some length before it was discovered that he was not an endorsed witness. This was the second time that the prosecution had turned this trick. Vanderveer objected, stating that there would be two hundred endorsed witnesses who would not be used. "Oh no!" returned Mr. Veitch. "Well," said Vanderveer, "a hundred then. A hundred we dare you to produce!" "We will take that dare," responded Veitch. But the prosecution failed to keep their word, and deputy Dave Oswald of the Pacific Hardware Company, who during the various deportations tried to have the I. W. W. men stripped, covered with hot tar, rolled in feathers and ridden out of town on a rail, and a number of his equally degenerate brother outlaws were never produced in court. Rainey testified that he had seen a quantity of murderous looking black-jacks in the Commercial Club for distribution to the deputies. He also saw men fall overboard from the Verona and saw none of them rescued. He thought there were twenty-five men with guns on the boat, and he did his firing at the main deck. "And you didn't care whether you hit one of the twenty-five or one of the other two hundred and twenty-five?" scornfully inquired Vanderveer. "No sir," said the miserable witness. The next witness called was William Kenneth, city dock wharfinger in the employ of Captain Ramwell. This witness testified that there were numerous holes in the warehouses that were smooth on the inside and splintered on the outside, thus indicating that they were from shots blindly fired thru the walls from within. On being recalled on the Monday morning session of March 26th the witness said he wished to state that he was unable to testify from which direction the holes in the warehouses had been made. It appeared that he had discovered the bullet marks to have been whittled with a penknife since he had last viewed them. Arthur Blair Gorrell, of Spokane, student at the State University, was on the dock during the trouble and was wounded in the left shoulder blade. He stated that he knew that McRae had his gun drawn before he was shot. Captain K. L. Forbes, of the scab tugboat Edison, next took the witness chair. He didn't like the idea of calling his crew scabs for the engineer carried a union card. When questioned about the actions of the scab cook on the Edison, this witness would not state positively that the man was not firing directly across the open space on the dock at the Verona, and in line with Curtis and other deputies. Thomas E. Headlee, ex-mayor of Everett, bookkeeper at the Clark-Nickerson mill, and a citizen deputy, said he went whenever and wherever he was called to go by the sheriff. "Then it's just like this," said Vanderveer, "when you pull the string, up jumps Headlee?" This witness tried to blame all the fires in Everett onto the I. W. W. and the absurdity of his testimony brought this question from the defense: "Just on general principles you blame it on the I. W. W.?" "Sure!" replied the witness, "I got their reputation over in Wenatchee from my brother-in-law who runs a big orchard there." Lewis Connor, member of the Commercial Club, and his friend, Edwin Stuchell, university student, both of whom were deputies on the dock on November 5th, then testified, but developed nothing of importance. Stuchell's father was part owner of the Eclipse mill and was said to have been on the board of directors of the Commercial Club. These witnesses were followed by Raymond E. Brown, owner of an Everett shoe store, a weak-kneed witness who had been sworn in as a deputy by W. W. Blain, secretary of the Commercial Club. One of the greatest sensations in this sensational trial was when former sheriff Donald McRae took the stand on Tuesday, March 27th. McRae was sober! The sheriff was fifty years of age, of medium height, inclined to stoutness, smooth-shaven, with swinish eyes set closely on either side of a pink-tinted, hawk-like nose that curved just above a hard, cruel and excessively large mouth. The sneering speech and contemptible manner of this witness lent weight to the admissions of his brutality that had been dragged from reluctant state's witnesses thru the clever and cutting cross-examination conducted by Moore and Vanderveer. McRae told of his former union affiliations, having once been International Secretary of the Shingle Weavers' Union, and on another occasion the editor of their paper--but he admitted that he had never in his life read a book on political economy. He detailed the story of the arrests, deportations and other similar actions against the striking shingle weavers and the I. W. W. members, the recital including an account of the "riot" at the jail, the deportation of Feinberg and Roberts, the shooting at the launch "Wanderer" and the jailing of its passengers, and the seizing of forty-one men and their deportation at Beverly Park. McRae's callous admissions of brutality discounted any favorable impression his testimony might otherwise have conveyed to the jury. He admitted having ordered the taking of the funds of James Orr to pay the fares of workers deported on August 23rd, but denied the truth of an account in the Everett Herald of that date in which it was said that I. W. W. men had made some remarks to him "whereupon Sheriff McRae and police officer * * promptly retaliated by cracking the I. W. W.'s on the jaw with husky fists." Regarding the launch "Wanderer" the sheriff was asked: "Did you strike Captain Mitten over the head with the butt of your gun?" "Certainly did!" replied McRae with brutal conciseness. "Did any blood flow?" "A little, not much." "Not enough to arouse any sympathy in you?" "No," said the sheriff unfeelingly. "Did you strike a little Finnish fellow over the head with a gun?" "I certainly did!" "And split his head open and the blood ran out, but not enough to move you to any sympathy?" "No, not a bit!" viciously answered McRae. "Did you hit any others?" inquired Vanderveer. "No, not then." "Why not?" "They probably seen what happened to the captain and the other fellow for getting gay." As to the holding of Mitten in jail for a number of days on a charge of resisting an officer, and his final release, McRae was asked: "Why didn't you try him on that charge?" "Because when we let the I. W. W.'s go they insisted on him going, too, and I said, 'all right, take him along.'" "You did whatever the I. W. W.'s wanted in that?" "Well, I was glad to get rid of them," remarked the sheriff. McRae said that none of the men taken to Beverly Park were beaten on the dock before being placed in automobiles for deportation, but on cross-examination he admitted that one of the deputies got in a mix-up and was beaten by a brother deputy. The sheriff stated that he took one man out to Beverly Park in a roadster, and had then returned to Everett to attend a dance given by the Elks' lodge. In relating the events on November 5th, McRae's story did not differ materially from that of the witnesses who had already testified. He stated that a bullet passed thru his foot, striking the heel of his shoe, and coming out of the side. The shoe was then offered in evidence. He testified that another shot struck the calf of his leg and passed completely thru the limb. Both these wounds were from the rear. His entire suit was offered in evidence. The coat had nine bullet holes in it, yet McRae was not injured at all in the upper portion of his body! The sheriff stated that he fired twenty shots in all, and was then removed to the Sister's Hospital while the shooting was still in progress. McRae then identified Ed Roth, James Kelly and Thomas H. Tracy as three of the I. W. W. men who were most active in firing from the Verona. In his identification of Tracy, McRae stated that the defendant was in the second or third cabin window aft the door, and was hanging out of the window with his breast against the sill and his elbow on the ledge. Vanderveer then placed himself in the position described by the sheriff and requested McRae to assume the same attitude he was in at the time he saw Tracy. Upon doing this it was apparent that the edge of the window sill would have cut off all view of Tracy's face from the sheriff, so McRae endeavored to alter his testimony to make it appear that Tracy's face was a foot or more inside the cabin window. This was the first identification of Tracy or other men on the boat that was attempted by the prosecution. The sheriff stated that there were only twenty or twenty-five armed men on the Verona, and he admitted, before he left the stand, that he had told Attorney Vanderveer it was a pity that the spring line on the Verona did not break when the boat tilted so as to drown all the I. W. W.'s in the Bay. Charles Auspos, alias Charles Austin, followed McRae as the state's witness second in importance only to the ex-sheriff. The testimony of these two was relied upon for a conviction. Just why Auspos joined the I. W. W. will never be known, but his claim was that he could not work in the Dakota harvest fields or ride on the freight trains without an I. W. W. card. He was asked: "When you did line up, you were then willingly a member, were you?" "Yes sir." "And you did not go to Yakima and come back to Seattle to fight for free speech because you were compelled to do so?" asked Moore. "No," replied Auspos, "there was no compulsion." [Illustration: Arrival of the VERONA at SEATTLE] Auspos stated that he was willing to take a chance in the fight for free speech and that the worst he expected was something similar to the happenings at Beverly Park. That he was not so willing in his testimony was shown by the uneasy actions of the prosecution lawyers, who moved from place to place around the court room during the examination of this witness, with the view of having him look one of them in the eyes at all times during his recital. At one time Black nearly climbed into the jury box, while Cooley fidgeted in his chair placed directly in the middle of the aisle, and Veitch stood back of the court clerk on the opposite side of the court room, trying to engage the attention of the hesitating witness. The testimony was to the effect that Auspos had reached Seattle on Saturday, November 4th, and had slept in the I. W. W. hall that night. Next morning at about eleven o'clock he returned from breakfast and was again admitted with examination for a membership card. A meeting was in progress in the gymnasium but was too crowded for him to be able to get in. There was no secrecy, however, just as there was no oath of fealty demanded of a worker upon joining the organization. The witness claimed that he and one of the defendants, J. E. Houlihan, were standing together in the hall when "Red" Doran called Houlihan aside into the gymnasium. Two minutes later Houlihan returned and said, "I made it." "What did you get?" Auspos declared he then asked his partner, receiving the reply, "A thirty-eight." Auspos claimed he saw Earl Osborne cleaning a gun in the gymnasium that same morning, and there was a rifle or shotgun in a canvas case in one corner. He said that men were breaking up chairs to obtain legs as clubs and that he, with others, was furnished with a little package of red pepper. Regarding his actions upon the Verona the witness stated that he and James Hadley came up the steps from the freight deck to the passenger deck just as the boat was nosing against the dock and that he walked across the deck to a point within three feet of the rail. His description of the motion of McRae's hands differed from that given by the deputy witnesses and was such as would indicate the drawing of a gun from a belt holster. He testified that McRae swung around to the right just before being shot, thus contradicting McRae, who had declared that the turn he had made was to the left. The witness in a rather indefinite manner stated that the first shot came from the boat. All the damaging claims in the testimony of Auspos were severely shaken by the cross-examination conducted by Moore, and Auspos finally admitted that the only point on which he wished to have his evidence differ from the statement he had made to Vanderveer prior to the trial was in the matter of the firing of the first shot. Auspos made no attempt to identify anyone on the boat as having a firearm. During the examination some reference was made to "Red" Downs, at which Judge Ronald remarked: "I am a little confused. Did he say 'Red' Downs or 'Red' Doran?" "There are two of them," responded Moore. "Lots of red in this organization," cut in prosecutor Cooley, amid laughter from the spectators. Attorney Moore brought from Auspos the admission that the plea of "Not Guilty" was a true one and he still believed that he and the other prisoners were not guilty of any crime. Yet such are the peculiarities of the legal game that an innocent man can turn state's evidence upon his innocent associates. After uncovering the previous record of Auspos, he was asked about his "confession" as follows: "Mr. McLaren and you had reached an understanding in your talk before Mr. Cooley came?" "Yes sir." "The question of what you are to get in connection with your testimony here has not as yet been definitely decided?" "I am going to get out of the country." "You are not going to get a trip to Honolulu?" asked Moore with a smile as he concluded the cross-examination of Auspos. "No sir," stammered the tool of the prosecution unconvincingly. It was at this point that the prosecution introduced several additional leaflets and pamphlets issued by the I. W. W. Publishing Bureau, the principal reason being to allow them to appeal to the patriotism of the jury by referring to Herve's pamphlet, "Patriotism and the Worker," and Smith's leaflet, "War and the Workers." The next witness after Auspos was Leo Wagner, another poor purchase on the part of the prosecution. He merely testified that a man on the Calista had said that the men were armed and were not going to stand for being beaten up. Objection was made to the manner in which Cooley led the witness with his questions, and when Cooley stated that it was necessary to refresh the memory of the witness, Vanderveer replied that the witness had been endorsed but a few days before and his recollection should not be so very stale. When this witness was asked what he was paid for his testimony he squirmed and hesitated until the court demanded an answer, whereupon he said: "I got enough to live on for a while." William H. Bridge, deputy sheriff and Snohomish county jailer, was the next witness. He stated on his direct examination that the first shot came from the second or third window back from the door on the upper cabin. Black asked Bridge: "How do you know there was a shot from that place?" "Because I saw a man reach out thru the window and shoot with a revolver." "In what position was he when shooting?" "Well, I could see his hand and a part of his arm and a part of his body and face." "Who was the man, if you know?" "Well, to the best of my judgement, it was the defendant, Thomas H. Tracy." Under Vanderveer's cross-examination this witness was made to place the model of the Verona with its stern at the same angle as it had been at the time of the shooting. The witness was then asked to assume the same position he had been in at the time he said he had seen Tracy. The impossibility of having seen the face of a man firing from any of the cabin windows was thus demonstrated to the jury. Then to clinch the idea that the identification was simply so much perjury, Vanderveer introduced into evidence the stenographic report of the coroner's inquest held over Jefferson Beard in which the witness, Bridge, had sworn that the first shot came from an open space just beneath the pilot house and had further testified that he could not recognize the person who was doing the firing. Walter H. Smith, a scab shingle weaver, and deputy on the dock, followed with a claim to have recognized Tracy as one of the men who was shooting from the Verona. He also stated that he could identify another man who was shooting from the forward deck. He was handed a number of photographs and failed to find the man he was looking for. Instead he indicated one of the photographs and said that it was Tracy. Vanderveer immediately seized the picture and offered it in evidence. "I made a mistake there," remarked Smith. "I know you did," responded Vanderveer, "and I want the jury to know it." The witness had picked out a photograph of John Downs and identified it as the defendant. The prosecution then called S. A. Mann, who had been police judge in Spokane, Wash., from 1908 into 1911, and questioned him in regard to the Spokane Free Speech fight and the death of Chief of Police John Sullivan. Here attorney Fred Moore was on familiar ground, having acted for the I. W. W. during the time of that trouble. Moore developed the fact that there had been several thousand arrests with not a single instance of resistance or violence on the part of the I. W. W., not a weapon found on any of their persons, and no incendiary fires during the entire fight. He further confounded the prosecution by having Judge Mann admit that in the Spokane fight a prisoner arrested on a city charge was always lodged in the city jail and one arrested on a county charge was always placed in the county jail--a condition not at all observed in Everett. Moore also brought out the facts of the death of Chief Sullivan so far as they are known. The witness admitted that Sullivan was charged with abuse of an adopted daughter of Mr. Elliott, a G. A. R. veteran; that desk officer N. V. Pitts charged Sullivan with having forced him to turn over certain Chinese bond money and the Chief resigned his position while under these charges; that the Spokane Press bitterly attacked Sullivan and was sued as a consequence, the Scripps-McRae paper being represented by the law firm of Robertson, Miller and Rosenhaupt, of which Judge Frank C. Robertson was the head; that the Chronicle and Spokesman-Review joined in the attack upon the Chief; and that when Sullivan was dying from a shot in the back the following conversation occurred between himself and the dying man: "I said to him 'John, who do you suppose did this?' He says, 'Judge F. C. Robertson and the Press are responsible for this.' I said, 'John, you don't mean that, you can't mean it?' He says, 'That is the way I feel.'" Judge Ronald prevented the attorneys from going very deeply into the Spokane affair, saying: "I am not going to wash Spokane linen here; we have some of our own to wash!" C. R. Schweitzer, owner of a scab plumbing shop, aged 47, yet grey-haired, brazenly admitted having emptied a shotgun into the unarmed boys on the Verona. It was the missiles from the brand-new shotgun--probably furnished by Dave Oswald--that riddled the pilot house and wounded many of the men who fell to the deck when the Verona tilted. Schweitzer fired from a safe position behind the Klatawa slip. Why the prosecution used him as a witness is a mystery. W. A. Taro, Everett Fire Chief, testified regarding the few incendiary fires that had occurred in Everett during the year 1916, but failed to connect them with the I. W. W. in any way. D. Daniels, Everett police officer, testified to a phosphorous fire which did no damage and was in no way connected with the I. W. W. Mrs. Jennie B. Ames, the only woman witness called by the prosecution, testified that Mrs. Frennette was on the inclined walk at the Great Northern Depot, at a point overlooking the dock, and was armed with a revolver at the time the Verona trouble was on. Police officer J. E. Moline also swore to the same thing, but was badly tangled when confronted with his own evidence given at the preliminary hearing of Mrs. Frennette on December 6th, 1916. Never was there a cad but who wished himself proclaimed as a gentleman; never a bedraggled and maudlin harlot but who wanted the world to know that she was a perfect lady. The last witness to be called by the prosecution was John Hogan--"Honest" John Hogan if prosecutor Lloyd Black was to be credited. "Honest" John Hogan was a young red-headed regular deputy sheriff, who was a participant in the outrage on the City Dock on November 5th. "Honest" John Hogan claimed to have seen the defendant, Thomas Tracy, firing a revolver from one of the forward cabin windows. "Honest" John Hogan had the same difficulty as the other "identifying" witnesses when he also was asked to state whether it was possible to see a man firing from a cabin window when the stern of the boat was out and the witness in his specified position on the dock. "Honest" John Hogan was sure it was Tracy that he saw because the man had a week's growth of whiskers on his face. And this ended the case for the prosecution. As had been predicted there were hundreds of witnesses who were endorsed and not called, and almost without an exception those who testified were parties who had a very direct interest in seeing that a conviction was secured. But thru the clever work of the lawyers for the defense what was meant to have been a prosecution of the I. W. W. was turned into an extremely poor defense of the deputies and their program of "law and order." From the state's witnesses the defense had developed nearly the whole outline and many of the details of its side of the case. When the state rested its case, Tracy leaned over to the defense lawyers and, with a smile on his face, said: "I'd be willing to let the case go to the jury right now." CHAPTER VII. THE DEFENSE The case for the defense opened on Monday morning of April 2nd when Vanderveer, directly facing the judge and witness chair from the position vacated by the prosecution counsel, moved for a directed verdict of not guilty on the ground that there had been an absolute failure of evidence upon the question of conspiracy, any conspiracy of which murder was either directly or indirectly an incident, and there was no evidence whatever to charge the defendant directly as a principal in causing the death of Jefferson Beard. The motion was denied and an exception taken to the ruling of the court. Fred Moore made the opening statement for the defense. In his speech he briefly outlined the situation that had existed in Everett up to and including November 5th and explained to the jury the forces lined up against each other in Everett's industrial warfare. Not for an instant did the attention of the jury flag during the recital. Herbert Mahler, secretary of the I. W. W. in Seattle during the series of outrages in Everett, was the first witness placed upon the stand. Mahler told of the lumber workers' convention and the sending of organizer James Rowan to make a survey of the industrial situation in the lumber centers, Everett being the first point because of its proximity to Seattle and not by reason of any strikes that may have existed there. The methods of conducting the free speech fight, the avoidance of secrecy, the ardent desire for publicity of the methods of the lumber trust as well as the tactics of the I. W. W., were clearly explained. Cooley cross-examined Mahler regarding the song book with reference to the advocacy and use of sabotage, asking the witness: "How about throwing a pitchfork into a threshing machine? Would that be all right?" "There are circumstances when it would be, I suppose," replied Mahler. "If there was a farmer deputy who had been at Beverly Park, I think they certainly would have a right to destroy his threshing machine." "You think that would justify it?" inquired Cooley. "Yes," said the witness, "I think that if the man had abused his power as an officer and the person he abused had no other way of getting even with him and that justice was denied him in the courts, I fully believe that he would be. That would not hurt anybody; it would only hurt his pocketbook." "Now what is this Joe Hill Memorial Edition?" "Joe Hillstrom, known as Joe Hill, had written a number of songs in the I. W. W. Song Book and he was murdered in Utah and the song book was gotten out in memory of him," responded Mahler. "He was executed after having been convicted of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to death. And you say he was murdered?" said Cooley. "Yes," said Mahler with emphasis. "Our contention has been that Hillstrom did not have a fair trial and we are quite capable of proving it. I may say that President Wilson interceded in his behalf and was promptly turned down by Governor Spry of Utah. Hillstrom was offered a commutation of sentence and he refused to take it. He wanted a retrial or an acquittal. When the President of the United States had interceded with the Governor of Utah, when various labor organizations asked that he be given a retrial, and a man's life is to be taken from him, and people all over the country ask for a retrial, that certainly should be granted to him." James P. Thompson was placed upon the stand to explain the principles of the I. W. W. The courtroom was turned into a propaganda meeting during the examination of the witness. One of the first features was the reading and explanation of state's exhibit "K," the famous I. W. W. preamble which has been referred to on various occasions as the most brutally scientific exposition of the class struggle ever penned: I. W. W. PREAMBLE The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allow one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. "Men in society represent economic categories," said Thompson. "By that I mean that in the world of shoes there are shoemakers, and in the world of boats there are seamen, and in this society there are economic categories called the employing class and the working class. Now, between them as employing class and working class there is nothing in common. Their interests are diametrically opposed as such. It is not the same thing as saying that human beings have nothing in common. The working class and the employing class have antagonistic interests, and the more one gets the less remains for the other. "Labor produces all wealth," continued Thompson, "and the more the workers have to give up to anyone else the less remains for themselves. The more they get in wages the less remains for the others in the form of profits. As long as labor produces for the other class all the good things of life there will be no peace; we want the products of labor ourselves and let the other class go to work also. "The trades unions are unable to cope with the power of the employers because when one craft strikes the others remain at work and by so doing help the company to fill orders, and that is helping to break the strike. If a group of workers strike and win, other workers are encouraged to do likewise: if they strike and lose, other workers are discouraged and employers are encouraged to do some whipping on their own account. "We believe in an industrial democracy; that the industry shall be owned by the people and operated on a co-operative plan instead of the wage plan; that there is no such thing as a fair day's pay; that we should have the full product of our labor in the co-operative system as distinguished from the wage system. "Furthermore," went on the witness, as the jury leaned forward to catch his every word, "our ideas were suggested to us by conditions in modern industry, and it is the historical mission of the workers to organize, not only for the preliminary struggles, but to carry on production afterward." "We object to this!" shouted Mr. Cooley, and the court sustained the objection. Despite continual protests from the prosecution Thompson gave the ideas of the I. W. W. on many questions. Speaking of free speech the witness said: "Free speech is vital. It is a point that has been threshed out and settled before we were born. If we do not have free speech, the children of the race will die in the dark." The message of industrial unionism delivered thru the sworn testimony of a labor organizer was indeed an amazing spectacle. Judge Ronald never relaxed his attention during the entire examination, the jury was spell-bound, and it was only by an obvious effort that the spectators kept from applauding the various telling points. "There is overwork on one hand," said Thompson, "and out-of-work on the other. The length of the working day should be determined by the amount of work and the number of workers. You have no more right to do eight or ten or twelve hours of labor when others are out of work, despondent, committing suicide, than you have to drink all the water, if that were possible, while others are dying of thirst. "Solidarity is the I. W. W. way to get their demands. We do not advocate that the workers should organize in a military way and use guns and dynamite. The most effective weapon of labor is economic power: the modern wage workers are the living parts of industry and if they fold their arms, they immediately precipitate a crisis, they paralyze the world. No other class has that power. The other class can fold their arms, and they do most of the time, but our class has the economic power. The I. W. W. preaches and teaches all the time that a far more effective weapon than brickbats or dynamite is solidarity. "We have developed from individual production, to social production, yet we still have private ownership of the means of production. One class owns the industries and doesn't operate them, another class operates the industries and does not own them. We are going to have a revolution. No one is more mistaken than those who believe that this system is the final state of society. As the industrial revolution takes place, as the labor process takes on the co-operative form, as the tool of production becomes social, the idea of social ownership is suggested, and so the idea that things that are used collectively should be owned collectively, presents itself with irresistible force to the people of the twentieth century. So there is a struggle for industrial democracy. We are the modern abolitionists fighting against wage slavery as the other abolitionists fought against chattel slavery. The solution for our modern problems is this, that the industries should be owned by the people, operated by the people for the people, and the little busy bees who make the honey of the world should eat that honey, and there should be no drones at all in the hives of industry. "When we have industrial democracy you will know that the mills, the mines, the factories, the earth itself, will be the collective property of the people, and if a little baby should be born that baby would be as much an owner of the earth as any other of the children of men. Then the war, the commercial struggles, the clashes between groups of conflicting interests, will be a night-mare of the past. In the place of capitalism with its one class working and its other class enjoying, in the place of the wages system with its strife and strikes, lockouts and grinding poverty, we will have a co-operative system where the interests of one will be to promote the interests of all--that will be Industrial Democracy." Thompson explained the meaning of the sarcastic song, "Christians at War," to the evident amusement of the jury and spectators. The witness was then asked about Herve's work on anti-patriotism in this question by attorney Moore: "What is the attitude of your organization relative to internationalism and national patriotism?" "We object to that as incompetent and immaterial," cried Veitch of the prosecution. "What did you put this book in for then?" said Judge Ronald in a testy manner as he motioned the witness to proceed with his answer. "In the broader sense," answered Thompson, "there is no such thing as a foreigner. We are all native born members of this planet, and for the members of it to be divided into groups or units and to be taught that each nation is better than the other leads to clashes and the world war. We ought to have in the place of national patriotism--the idea that one people is better than another,--a broader conception, that of international solidarity. The idea that we are better than others is contrary to the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are born free and equal. The I. W. W. believes that in order to do away with wars we should remove the cause of wars; we should establish industrial democracy and the co-operative system instead of commercialism and capitalism and the struggles that come from them. We are trying to make America a better land, a land without child slaves, a land without poverty, and so also with the world, a world without a master and without a slave." When the lengthy direct examination of Thompson had been finished, the prosecution questioned him but five minutes and united in a sigh of relief as he left the stand. The next witness called was Ernest Nordstrom, companion of Oscar Carlson who was severely wounded on the Verona. Nordstrom testified rather out of his logical order in the trial by reason of the fact that he was about to leave on a lengthy fishing trip to Alaska. His testimony was that he purchased a regular ticket at the same time as his friend Carlson, but these tickets were not taken up by the purser. The original ticket of this passenger was then offered in evidence. The witness stated that the first shot came from almost the same place on the dock as did the words "You can't land here." He fell to the deck and saw Carlson fall also. Carlson tried to rise once, but a bullet hit him and he dropped; there were nine bullet holes in him. Nordstrom was asked: "Did you have a gun?" "No sir." "Did Carlson have a gun?" "No sir." "Did you see anybody with a gun on the boat?" "No. I didn't." Organizer James Rowan then gave his experiences in Everett, ending with a vivid recital of the terrible beating he had received at the hands of deputies near Silver Lake. Upon telling of the photograph that was taken of his lacerated back he was asked by Veitch: "What was the reason you had that picture taken?" "Well," said Rowan, in his inimitable manner, "I thought it would be a good thing to get that taken to show up the kind of civilization that they had in Everett." Dr. E. J. Brown, a Seattle dentist, and Thomas Horner, Seattle attorney, corroborated Rowan's testimony as to the condition of his back. They had seen the wounds and bruises shortly after the beating had been administered and were of the opinion that a false light was reflected on the photograph in such a way that the severest marks did not appear as bad as they really were. Otto Nelson, Everett shingle weaver, gave testimony regarding the shingle weavers' strikes of 1915 and 1916 but was stopped from going into detail by the rulings of the court. He told also of the peaceful character of all the I. W. W. meetings in Everett, and stated that on one occasion police officer Daniels had fired two shots down one of the city streets at an I. W. W. man who had been made to run the gauntlet. H. P. Whartenby, owner of a five-ten-fifteen cent store in Everett, said that the I. W. W. meetings were orderly, and further testified that he had been ordered out of the Commercial Club on the evening of November 5th but not until he had seen that the club was a regular arsenal, with guns stacked all over the place. To establish the fact that the sidewalks were kept clear, that there was no advocacy of violence, that no resistance was offered to arrest, and that the I. W. W. meetings were well conducted in every particular, the defense put on in fairly rapid succession a number of Everett citizens: Mrs. Ina M. Salter, Mrs. Elizabeth Maloney, Mrs. Letelsia Fye, Bruce J. Hatch, Mrs. Dollie Gustaffson, Miss Avis Mathison, Mrs. Peter Aiken, Mrs. Annie Pomeroy, Mrs. Rebecca Wade, F. G. Crosby, and Mrs. Hannah Crosby. The fact that these citizens, and a number of other women who were mentioned in the testimony, attended the I. W. W. meetings quite regularly, impressed the jury favorably. Some of these women witnesses had been roughly handled by the deputies. Mrs. Pomeroy stated that the deputies, armed with clubs and distinguished by white handkerchiefs around their necks, invaded one meeting and struck right and left. "And they punched me at that!" said the indignant witness. "Punched you where?" inquired Vanderveer in order to locate the injury. "They punched me on the sidewalk!" answered the witness, and the solemn bailiff had to rap for order in the court room. Cooley caught a Tartar in his cross-examination of Mrs. Crosby. He inquired: "Did you hear the I. W. W.'s say that when they got a majority of the workers into this big union they would take possession of the industries and run them themselves?" "Why certainly!" "You did hear them say they would take possession?" "Why certainly!" flashed back the witness. "That's the way the North did with the slaves, isn't it? They took possession without ever asking them. My people came from the South and they had slaves taken away from them and never got anything for it, and quite right, too!" "Then you do believe it would be all right, yourself?" said Cooley. "I believe that confiscation would be perfectly right in the case of taking things that are publicly used for the public good of the people----." "That's all," hastily cut in Cooley. "That they should be used then by the people and for the people!" finished the witness. "That's all!" cried Cooley loudly and more anxiously. Frank Henig, the next witness, told of having been blackjacked by Sheriff McRae and exhibited the large scar on his forehead that plainly showed where the brutal blow had landed. He stated that he had tried to secure the arrest of McRae for the entirely unwarranted attack but was denied a warrant. Jake Michel, secretary of the Everett Building Trades Council, gave evidence regarding a number of the I. W. W. street meetings. He was questioned at length about what he had inferred from the speeches of Rowan, Thompson and others. Replying to one question he said: "I think the American Federation of Labor uses the most direct action that any organization could use." "In a strike?" "Yes." "And by that you mean a peaceful strike?" said Cooley suggestively. "Well, I haven't seen them carry on very many peaceful ones yet," replied Michel. Cooley asked Michel whether Rowan had said that "the workers should form one great industrial union and declare the final and universal strike; that is, that they should remain within the industrial institutions and lock the employers out for good as owners?" "I never heard him mention anything about locking anyone out; I think he wanted to lock them in and make them do some of the work!" answered Michel. "You haven't any particular interest in this case, have you?" asked Cooley with a sneer. "Yes, I have!" replied Michel with emphasis. When asked what this particular interest was, Michel caused consternation among the ranks of the prosecution by replying: "The reason I have that interest is this; I have two sons and two daughters. I want to see the best form of organization so that the boys can go out and make a decent living; I don't want my girls to become prostitutes upon the streets and my boys vagabonds upon the highways!" Harry Feinberg, one of the free speech prisoners named on the first information with Watson and Tracy, was then placed on the stand and questioned as to the beating he had received at the hands of deputies, as to the condition of Frank Henig after McRae's attack, and upon matters connected with various street meetings at which he had been the speaker. Mention of the name of George Reese brought forth an argument from the prosecution that it had not been shown that Reese was a detective. After an acrimonious discussion Vanderveer suddenly declared: "Just to settle this thing and settle it for now and all the time, I will ask a subpoena forthwith for Philip K. Ahern and show who Reese is working for." The subpoena was issued and a recess taken to allow it to be served. As Vanderveer stepped into the hall, detective Malcolm McLaren said to him, "You can't subpoenae the head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency!" "I have subpoenaed him," responded Vanderveer shortly as he hurried to the witness room. While awaiting the arrival of this witness, Feinberg was questioned further, and was then taken from the stand to allow the examination of two Everett witnesses, Mrs. L. H. Johnson and P. S. Johnson, the latter witness being withdrawn when Ahern put in an appearance. Vanderveer was very brief, but to the point, in the examination of the local head of the Pinkerton Agency. "Mr. Ahern, on the fifth day of November you had in your employ a man named George Reese?" "Yes sir." "For whom was he working, thru you, at that time?" "For Snohomish County." "That's all!" said Vanderveer triumphantly. Cooley did not seem inclined to cross-examine the witness at any length and Vanderveer in another straightforward question brought out the fact that Reese was a Pinkerton employe during the Longshoremen's strike--this being the time that Reese also was seated as a delegate to the Seattle Trades Council of the A. F. of L. A portion of the testimony of Mrs. L. H. Johnson was nearly as important as that concerning Reese. She recited a conversation with Sheriff McRae as follows: "McRae said he would stop the I. W. W. from coming to Everett if he had to call out the soldiers. And I told him the soldiers wouldn't come out on an occasion like this, they were nothing but Industrial Workers of the World and they had a right to speak and get people to join their union if they wanted to. And he said he had the backing of the millmen to keep them out of the city, and he was going to do it if he had to call the soldiers out and shoot them down when they landed there, when they came off the dock." [Illustration: Cutting off top of tree to fit block for flying machine.] This clearly indicated the bloodthirsty designs of the millmen and the sheriff at a time long before November 5th. G. W. Carr, Wilfred Des Pres, and J. M. Norland testified to the breaking up of peaceably conducted I. W. W. meetings, Des Pres also telling of rifles having been transported from the Pacific Hardware Company to the dock on November 5th. All three were Everett citizens. Black asked Norland if he knew what sabotage was, to which Norland replied: "Everybody that follows the labor movement knows what sabotage is." There was a sensation in court at this question for it was the first and only time that any of the prosecution counsel correctly pronounced the word sabotage! W. W. Blain, secretary of the Commercial Club, altho an unwilling witness, gave much information of value to the defense. He was forced to produce the minutes of the "open shop committee" and give up the story of how control of the club was purchased by the big interests, how the boycott was invoked against certain publications, and finally to tell of the employment of Pinkerton detectives prior to November 5th, and to give a list of the deputies furnished by the Commercial Club. During the examination of this witness some telegrams, in connection with the testimony, were handed up to the judge. While reading these Judge Ronald was interrupted by a foolish remark from Black to Vanderveer. Looking over his glasses the judge said: "Every time I start to read anything, you gentlemen get into a quarrel among yourselves. I am inclined to think that the 'cats,' some of them, are here in the courtroom." "I will plead guilty for Mr. Black, Your Honor!" said Vanderveer quickly, laughing at the reference to sabotage. Testimony to further establish the peaceable character of the I. W. W. meetings and the rowdyism of the police and deputies was given by witnesses from Everett: Gustaf Pilz, Mrs. Leota Carr, J. E. McNair, Ed Morton, Michael Maloney, Verne C. Henry and Morial Thornburg. The statements of these disinterested parties regarding the clubbings given to the speakers and to citizens of their acquaintance proved very effective. Attorney H. D. Cooley for the prosecution was placed upon the witness stand and Vanderveer shot the question at him: "By whom were you employed in this case, Mr. Cooley?" "Objected to as immaterial!" cried Veitch, instantly springing to his feet. But the damage had been done! The refusal to allow an answer showed that there were interested parties the prosecution wished to hide from the public. Levi Remick related the story of the deportation from Everett, and was followed on the witness stand by Edward Lavelly, James Dwyer, and Thomas Smye, who testified to different atrocities committed in Everett by McRae and the citizen deputies. Their evidence had mainly to do with the acts of piracy committed against the launch "Wanderer" and the subsequent abuse of the arrested men. A little later in the trial this testimony was fully corroborated by the statements of Captain Jack Mitten. During Mitten's examination by Black the old Captain continually referred to the fact that the life preservers and other equipment of his boat had been stolen while he was in jail. The discomfiture of the youthful prosecutor was quite evident. J. H. Buel impeached the testimony of state's witness Judge Bell who had made the claim that a filer at the Clark-Nickerson mill had been assaulted by a member of the I. W. W. Vanderveer asked this witness: "What was the name of the man assaulted?" "Jimmy Cain." "Who did it?" "I did." "Are you an I. W. W.?" "No sir." "Were you ever?" "No sir." Louis Skaroff followed with a detailed story of the murderous attack made upon him by Mayor Merrill in the Everett jail, his story being unshaken when he was recalled and put thru a grilling cross-examination. William Roberts, who had been beaten and deported with Harry Feinberg, related his experience. The childish questions of Black in regard to the idea of abolishing the wages system nettled this witness and caused him to exclaim, "the trouble is that you don't understand the labor movement." James Orr then told of having his money stolen by the officials so they might pay the fares of twenty-two deported men, and John Ovist followed with the tale of the slugging he had received upon the same occasion that Feinberg, Roberts and Henig were assaulted. Attorneys George W. Loutitt and Robert Faussett, of Everett, stated that the reputation of McRae for sobriety was very bad. Both of these lawyers had resigned from the Commercial Club upon its adoption of an open shop policy. Thomas O'Niel testified regarding street meetings and other matters in connection with the case. Cooley asked the witness how many people usually attended the meetings. "It started in with rather small meetings," said the witness, "and then every time, as fast as they were molested by the police, the crowd kept growing until at last the meetings were between two and three thousand people." The witness said he had read considerable about industrial unionism, and tho he was shocked at first he had come to believe in it. "Until now you are satisfied that their doctrines taken as a whole are proper and should be promulgated and adopted by the working class?" inquired Cooley. "In this way," answered O'Niel, "it was not the I. W. W. literature that convinced me so much as the actions of the side that was fighting them." "That is, you believe they were right because of the actions of the people on the other side?" said Cooley. "Yes," responded the witness, "because I think there are only two people interested in this movement, the people carrying on the propaganda and the people fighting the propaganda, and I saw the people who were fighting the propaganda use direct action, sabotage, and every power, political and industrial, they used it all to whip this organization, and then I asked myself why are they fighting this organization. And the more deeply I became interested, the more clearly I saw why they were doing it, and that made me a believer in the I. W. W." Mrs. Louise McGuire followed this witness with testimony about injuries she had received thru the rough treatment accorded her by citizen deputies engaged in breaking up a street meeting. W. H. Clay, Everett's Commissioner of Finance, was brought on the stand to testify that he was present and active at the conference that resulted in the formation of the citizen deputies. John Berg then related his experiences at the time he was taken to the outskirts of Everett and deported after McRae had kicked him in the groin until a serious injury resulted. Owing to the fact that the jury was a mixed one Berg was not permitted to exhibit the rupture. This witness also told his experience on the "Wanderer" and his treatment in the jail upon his arrest. Oscar Lindstrom then took the stand and corroborated the stories of the witnesses who had testified about the shooting up of the "Wanderer" and the beating and jailing of its passengers. H. Sokol, better known as "Happy," also told of his experience on the "Wanderer" and gave the facts of the deportation that had taken place on August 23rd. Irving W. Ziegaus, secretary to Governor Lister, testified that the letter concerning Everett sent from the Seattle I. W. W. had been received; Steven M. Fowler identified certain telegrams sent from Everett to Seattle officials by David Clough on November 5th; after which Chester Micklin, who had been jailed in Everett following the tragedy, corroborated parts of the story of Louis Skaroff. The evidence of state's witness, Clyde Gibbons, was shattered at this stage of the trial by the placing of Mrs. Lawrence MacArthur on the stand. This witness, the proprietor of the Merchants Hotel in Everett, produced the hotel register for November 4th and showed that Mrs. Frennette had registered at that time and was in the city when Gibbons claimed she was holding a conversation in an apartment house on Yesler Way in Seattle. The defense found it necessary to call witnesses who logically should have been brought forward by the prosecution on their side of the case. Among these was the famous "Governor" Clough, citizen deputy and open shop mill owner. David Clough unwillingly testified to having been present at the deportation of twenty-two I. W. W. members on August 23rd, having gone down to the dock at 8:30 that morning, and also to his interest in Joseph Schofield, the deputy who had been injured by his brother outlaws on the dock just before the Beverly Park deportations. Mahler and Micklin were recalled for some few additional questions, and were followed on the stand by Herman Storm, who gave testimony about the brutal treatment received by himself and his fellow passengers on the launch "Wanderer." John Hainey and Joseph Reaume also gave details of this outrage. "Sergeant" J. J. Keenan, who had become a familiar figure because of his "police" duty in the outer court corridor from the inception of the trial, then took the witness stand and recounted his experiences at Snohomish and Maltby, his every word carrying conviction that the sheriff and his deputies had acted with the utmost brutality in spite of the advanced age of their victim. John Patterson and Tom Thornton corroborated Keenan's testimony. A surprise was sprung upon the prosecution at this juncture by the introduction on the witness stand of George Kannow, a man who had been a deputy sheriff in Everett and who had been present when many of the brutalities were going on. He told of the treatment of Berg after the "Wanderer" arrests. "He was struck and beaten and thrown down and knocked heavily against the steel sides of the tank, his head striking on a large projecting lock. He was kicked by McRae and he hollered 'My God, you are killing me,' and McRae said he didn't give a damn whether he died or not, and kicked him again and then shoved him into the tank." The gauntlet at the county jail was described in detail and the spirit of the free speech fighters was shown by this testimony: "Yes, I heard some of them groan. They all took their medicine well, tho. They didn't holler out but some of them would groan; some of them would go down pretty near to their knees and then get up, then they would get sapped again as they got up. But they never made any real outcries." The witness stated that "Governor" Clough was a regular attendant at the deportation parties and so also were W. R. Booth, Ed Hawes, T. W. Anguish, Bill Pabst, Ed Seivers, and Will Taft. He described McRae's drunken condition and told of drunken midnight revels held in the county jail. His testimony was unshaken on cross-examination. Mrs. Fern Grant, owner of the Western Hotel and Grant's Cafe, testified that Mrs. Frennette was in her place of business in Everett on the morning of the tragedy, thus adding to the evidence that Clyde Gibbons had perjured himself in testifying for the prosecution. A party of Christian Scientists, who had attended a lecture in Everett by Bliss Knapp, told of the frightful condition of the eight men who had taken the interurban train to Seattle following their experience at Beverly Park. Mrs. Lou Vee Siegfried, Christian Science practitioner, Thorwald Siegfried, prominent Seattle lawyer, Mrs. Anna Tenelli and Miss Dorothy Jordan were corroborated in their testimony by Ira Bellows, conductor on the interurban car that took the wounded men to Seattle. Another break in the regular order of the trial was made at this point by the placing on the stand of Nicholas Conaieff, member of the I. W. W., who was to leave on the following day with a party of Russians returning to their birthplace to take part in the revolution then in progress. Conaieff stated that the first shot came from the dock. His realistic story of the conditions on the Verona moved many in the courtroom to tears. In his description Conaieff said: "I was wounded myself. But before I was wounded and as we were lying there three or four deep I saw a wounded man at my feet in a pool of blood. Then I saw a man with his face up, and he was badly wounded, probably he was dead. There were three or four wounded men alongside of me. The conditions were so terrible that it was hard to control one's self, and a young boy who was in one pile could not control himself any longer; he was about twenty years old and had on a brown, short, heavy coat, and he looked terrified and jumped up and went overboard into the water and I didn't see him any more." Mrs. Edith Frennette testified to her movements on the day of the tragedy and denied the alleged threats to Sheriff McRae. Lengthy cross-examination failed to shake her story. Members of the I. W. W. who had been injured at Beverly Park then testified. They were Edward Schwartz, Harry Hubbard, Archie Collins, C. H. Rice, John Downs, one of the defendants, Sam Rovinson and Henry Krieg. Any doubt as to the truth of their story was dispelled by the testimony of Mrs. Ruby Ketchum, her husband Roy Ketchum, and her brother-in-law Lew Ketchum, all three of whom heard the screams of the victims and witnessed part of the slugging near their home at Beverly Park. Some members of the investigation committee who viewed the scene on the morning after the outrage gave their evidence as to the finding of bits of clothing, soles of shoes, bloodstained hats and loose hat-bands, and blotches of blood on the paved roadway and cattle guard. These witnesses were three ministers of the gospel of different denominations, Elbert E. Flint, Joseph P. Marlatt, and Oscar H. McGill. The last named witness also told of having interviewed Herbert Mahler, secretary of the I. W. W. in Seattle, following a conference with Everett citizens, with the object of having a large public demonstration in Everett to expose the Beverly Park affair and to prevent its repetition. It was after this interview that the call went out for the I. W. W. to hold a public meeting in Everett on Sunday, November 5th. Mahler was recalled to the stand to verify McGill's statement in the matter of the interview. This testimony brought the case up to the events of November 5th and the defense, having proven each illegal action of the sheriff, deputies and mill owners, and disproven the accusations against the I. W. W., proceeded to open to the gaze of the public and force to the attention of the jury the actual facts concerning the massacre on the Verona. An important witness was Charles Miller, who viewed the tragedy from a point about four hundred feet from the Verona while on the deck of his fishing boat, the "Scout." He stated that the Verona tilted as soon as the first shots came. Miller placed the model of the boat at the same relative position it had occupied as the firing started on Bloody Sunday and the prosecution could not tangle up this witness on this important point. The "identification" witnesses of the prosecution were of necessity liars if the stern of the Verona was at the angle set by Miller. C. M. Steele, owner of apartment houses and stores in Everett, stated that he had been in a group who saw an automobile load of guns transported to the dock prior to the docking of the Verona, this auto being closely followed by a string of other machines. The witness tried to get upon the dock but was prevented by deputies who had a rope stretched clear across the entrance near the office of the American Tug Boat Company. He saw the boat tilt as the firing started and noticed that the stern swung out at the time. This testimony was demonstrated with the model. Harry Young, chauffeur, corroborated this testimony and told of rifle fire from the dock. Mrs. Mabel Thomas, from a position on Johnson's float quite near the Verona, told of the boat listing until the lower deck was under water, almost immediately after the firing started. Mrs. Thomas testified that "one man who was facing toward the Improvement Dock, raised his hands and fell overboard from the hurricane deck as tho he were dead. His overcoat held him to the top of the water for a moment and then he went down. One jumped from the stern and then there were six or seven in the water. One got up thru the canvas and crawled back in. One man that fell in held up his hands for a moment and sank. There were bullets hitting all around him." Mr. Carroll Thomas, husband of the preceding witness, gave the same testimony about the men in the water and stated that he saw armed men on the Improvement Dock. The testimony of Ayrold D. Skinner, a barber in Everett at the time of the tragedy and who had been brought from California to testify, was bitterly attacked by Veitch but to no avail. When the Verona landed Skinner was so situated as to command a view of the whole proceedings. He told of the boat listing, the men falling in the water and being shot, and his testimony about a man on board the tug "Edison" firing a rifle directly across the open space on the dock in the direction of the Verona was unshakeable. This witness also testified that about ten deputies with rifles were running back and forth in a frightened manner and were firing from behind the Klatawa slip. The witness saw Dick Hembridge, superintendent of the Canyon Lumber Company, Carl Tyre, timekeeper, Percy Ames, the boom man, and a Dr. Hedges. The last two came up to where the witness was, each bearing a rifle. Skinner stated that he said to Ames, "Percy, what is the world coming to?" and Ames broke down as tho he felt something were wrong. Then Dr. Hedges came running up from where the boat was, he was white in the face, and he cried "Don't go down there, boys; they are shooting wild, you don't know where in hell the shots are coming from." Carl Ryan, night watchman of the Everett Shingle Company, N. C. Roberts, an Everett potter, Robert Thompson and Edward Thompson testified about the angle of the boat, as to rifles on the dock, the shooting from the tug "Edison" and from the Improvement Dock, in support of witnesses who had previously testified. Alfred Freeman, I. W. W. member who was on the Verona, testified about the movements of those who made the trip to Everett and told of the conditions on the boat. His testimony, and that of numerous other I. W. W. witnesses, disproved the charges of conspiracy. I. W. McDonald, barber, John Josephson, lumber piler, and T. M. Johnson, hod carrier, all of Everett, stated that the shots from the boat did not come until after there had been considerable firing from the dock. These witnesses were among the thousands of citizens who overlooked the scene from the hillside by the Great Northern depot. [Illustration: VERONA AT EVERETT DOCK. under same tide condition as at time of Massacre.] On Wednesday, April 18th, the jury, accompanied by Judge Ronald, the attorneys for both sides, the defendant, Thomas Tracy, and the court stenographer, went in automobiles to Everett to inspect the various places mentioned in the court proceedings. The party stopped on the way to Everett to look over the scene of the Beverly Park outrages of October 30th. No one spoke to the jury but Judge Ronald, who pointed out the various features at the request of the attorneys in the background. After visiting the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues, the party went to the city dock. Both warehouses were carefully examined, the bulletholes, tho badly whittled, being still in evidence. Bulletholes in the floor, clock-case, and in the walls still showed quite plainly that the firing from within the warehouse and waiting room had been wild. Bullets imbedded in the Klatawa slip on the side toward the Bay also gave evidence of blind firing on the part of the deputies. In the floor of the dock, between the ship and the open space near the waiting room, were several grooves made by bullets fired from the shore end of the dock. These marks indicated that the bullets had taken a course directly in line with the deputies who were in the front ranks as the Verona landed. The party boarded the Verona and subjected the boat to a searching examination, discovering that the stairways, sides, and furnishings were riddled with shot holes. The pilot house, in particular, was found to have marks of revolver and high power rifle bullets, in addition to being closely marked with small shot holes, some of the buck-shot still being visible. The captain swung the boat out to the same angle as it had been on November 5th, this being done at a time when it was computed that the tide would be relatively the same as on the date of the tragedy. Someone assumed the precise position at the cabin window that Tracy was alleged to have been in while firing. The jury members then took up the positions which the "identification witnesses" had marked on a diagram during their testimony. The man in the window was absolutely invisible! A photograph was then taken from the point where "Honest" John Hogan claimed to have been when he saw Tracy firing and another view made by a second camera to show that the first photograph had been taken from the correct position. These were later introduced as evidence. No testimony was taken in Everett but on the re-opening of court in Seattle next morning Frank A. Brown, life insurance solicitor, testified that McRae dropped his hand just before the first shot was fired from somewhere to the right of the sheriff. He also identified a Mr. Thompson, engineer of the Clark-Nickerson mill, and a Mr. Scott, as being armed with guns having stocks. Mike Luney, shingle weaver, told of a fear-crazed deputy running from the dock with a bullethole in his ear and crying out that one of the deputies had shot him. Fred Bissinger, a boy of 17, told of the deputies breaking for cover as soon as they had fired a volley at the men on the boat. It was only after the heavy firing that he saw a man on the boat pull a revolver from his pocket and commence to shoot. He saw but two revolvers in action on the Verona. One of the most dramatic and clinching blows for the defense was struck when there was introduced as a witness Fred Luke, who was a regular deputy sheriff and McRae's right-hand man. Luke's evidence of the various brutalities, given in a cold, matter-of-fact manner, was most convincing. He stated that the deputies wore white handkerchiefs around their necks so they would not be hammering each other. He contradicted McRae's testimony about Beverly Park by stating positively that the sheriff had gone out in a five passenger car, and not in a roadster as was claimed, and that they had both remained there during the entire affair. He told how he had swung at the I. W. W. men with such force that his club had broken from its leather wrist thong and disappeared into the woods. When questioned about the use of clubs in dispersing street crowds at the I. W. W. meetings he said: "I used my sap as a club and struck them and drove them away with it." "Why didn't you use your hands and push them out?" asked Cooley. "I didn't think we had a right to use our hands," said the big ex-deputy. "What do you mean by that?" said the surprised lawyer. "Well," replied the witness, "what did they give us the saps for?" Cooley also asked this witness why he had struck the men at Beverly Park. "Well," replied the ex-deputy, "if you want to know, that was the idea of the Commercial Club. That was what they recommended." Luke, who was a guard at the approach to the dock on November 5th, told of having explained the workings of a rifle to a deputy while the shooting was in progress. The state at first had contended that there were no rifles on the dock and later had made the half-hearted plea that none of the rifles which were proven to have been there were fired. Following this important witness the defense introduced Fird Winkley, A. E. Amiott, Dr. Guy N. Ford, Charles Leo, Ed Armstrong, mate of the Verona and a witness for the state, and B. R. Watson, to corroborate the already convincing evidence that the stern of the Verona was swung quite a distance from the dock. Robert Mills, business agent of the Everett Shingle Weavers, who had been called to the stand on several occasions to testify to minor matters, was then recalled. He testified that it was his hand which protruded from the Verona cabin window in the photographs, and that his head was resting against the window jamb on the left hand side as far out as it would be possible to get without crawling out of the window. As Mills was a familiar figure to the entire jury and was also possessed of a peculiarly unforgettable type of countenance, the state's identification of Tracy was shown to have been false. The Chief of Police of Seattle, Charles Beckingham, corroborated previous testimony by stating that the identification and selection of I. W. W. men had been made from a dark cell by two Pinkerton men, Smith and Reese, aided by one of the defendants, I. P. McDowell, alias Charles Adams. Malcolm McLaren was then placed upon the stand and the admission secured that he was a detective and had formerly been connected with the Burns Agency. Objection was made to a question about the employment of McLaren in the case, to which Vanderveer replied that it was the purpose of the defense to prove that the case was not being prosecuted by the State of Washington at all. In the absence of the jury Vanderveer then offered to prove that McLaren had been brought from Los Angeles and retained in the employ of certain mill owners, among them being "Governor" Clough and Mr. Moody of the First National Bank, and that McLaren had charge of the work of procuring the evidence introduced by the state. He offered to prove that Veitch and Cooley were employed by the same people. The court sustained the objection of the state to the three offers. Testimony on various phases of the case was then given by Mrs. Fannie Jordan, proprietor of an apartment house in Seattle, Nick Shugar, Henry Luce, Paul Blakenship, Charles W. Dean, and later on by Oliver Burnett. Captain Chauncey Wiman was called to the stand, but it happened that he had gone into hiding so soon after the boat landed that he could testify to nothing of particular importance. From his appearance on the witness stand it seemed that he was still nearly scared to death. Another surprise for the prosecution was then sprung by placing Joseph Schofield on the witness stand. Schofield told of having been beaten up at the city dock by Joseph Irving, during the time they were lining up the forty-one I. W. W. men for deportation. The witness displayed the scar on his head that had resulted from the wound made by the gun butt, and described the drunken condition of McRae and other deputies on the occasion of his injury. And then he told that "Governor" Clough had gone to his wife just a couple of days before he took the witness stand and had given her $75.00. This deputy witness was on the dock November 5th, and he described the affair. He swore that McRae had his gun drawn before any shooting started, that there were rifles in use on the dock, that a man was firing a Winchester rifle from the tug Edison. He was handed a bolt action army rifle to use but made no use of it. Schofield voluntarily came from Oregon to testify for the defense. Chief Beckingham resumed the stand and was asked further about McDowell, alias Adams. He said: "We sent a man in with this man Adams, who was in constant fear that somebody might see him, and he would stand way back that he might tip this man with him and this man's fingers came out to identify the I. W. W. men who were supposed to have guns." "What inducements were made to this man Adams?" asked Vanderveer. "In the presence of Mr. Cooley and Mr. Webb and Captain Tennant and myself he was told that he could help the state and there would be no punishment given him. He was taken to Everett with the impression that he would be let out and taken care of." Another ex-deputy, Fred Plymale, confirmed the statements of Fred Luke in regard to McRae's use of a five passenger car at Beverly Park and showed that it was impossible for the sheriff to have attended a dance at the hour he had claimed. The efforts of the prosecution to shake the testimony that had been given by Fred Luke was shown by this witness who testified that he had been approached by Mr. Clifford Newton, as agent for Mr. Cooley, and that at an arranged conversation McRae had tried to have him state that the runabout had been used to go to the slugging party. Walter Mulholland, an 18 year old boy, and Henry Krieg, both of whom were members of the I. W. W. and passengers on the Verona, then testified in detail about the shattering gun fire and the wounding of men on board the boat. Mulholland told of wounds received, one bullet still being in his person at that time. Krieg, not being familiar with military terms, stated that there were many shells on the deck of the Verona after the trouble, and the prosecution thought they had scored quite a point until re-direct examination brought out the fact that Henry meant the lead bullets that had been fired from the dock. E. Carl Pearson, Snohomish County Treasurer, rather unwillingly corroborated the testimony of ex-deputies Luke and Plymale in regard to the actions of McRae at Beverly Park. The witness chair seemed almost to swallow the next nine witnesses who were boys averaging about twelve years in age. These lads had picked up shells on and beneath the dock to keep as mementos of the "Battle." Handfuls of shells of various sizes and description, from revolver, rifle and shotgun, intermingled with rifle clips and unfired copper-jacketed rifle cartridges, were piled upon the clerk's desk as exhibits by these youthful witnesses. After the various shells had been classified by L. B. Knowlton, an expert in charge of ammunition sales for the Whiton Hardware Company of Seattle for six years, the boys were recalled to the stand to testify to the splintered condition of the warehouses, their evidence proving that a large number of shots had been fired from the interior of the warehouses directly thru the walls. The boys who testified were Jack Warren, Palmer Strand, Rollie Jackson, William Layton, Eugene Meives, Guy Warner, Tom Wolf, Harvey Peterson, and Roy Jensen. Veitch, by this time thoroly disgusted with the turn taken by the case, excused these witnesses without even a pretense of cross-examination. Completely clinching this link in the evidence against the citizen deputies was the testimony of Miss Lillian Goldthorpe and her mother, Hannah Goldthorpe. Miss Goldthorpe, waitress in the Commercial Club dining room, picked up some rifle shells that had fallen from the rifles stacked in the office, and also from the pocket of one of the hunting coats lying on the floor. She took these home to her mother who afterward turned them over to Attorney Moore. She also identified certain murderous looking blackjacks as being the same as those stored in the Club. It is hardly necessary to state that the open-shop advocates who continually prate about the "right of a person to work when and where they please" were not slow about taking away Lillian's right to work at the Commercial Club after she had given this truthful testimony! James Hadley, I. W. W. member on the Verona, told how he had dived overboard to escape the murderous fire and had been the only man in the water to regain a place on the boat. "I saw two go overboard and I didn't see them any more," said Hadley. "Then I saw another man four feet from me and he seemed to be swimming all right, and all of a sudden he went down and I never saw him any more. I was looking right at him and he just closed his eyes and sank." Mario Marino, an 18 year old member of the I. W. W., then told of the serious wounds he had received on the boat. He was followed by Brockman B. Armstrong, another member of the union, who was close to the rail on the port side of the boat. He saw a puff of smoke slightly to the rear of McRae directly after the sound of the first shot. A rifle bullet cut a piece out of his forehead and a second went thru his cap and creased his scalp, felling him to his knees. Owen Genty was shot thru the kidney on the one side of him, and Gust Turnquist was hit in the knee on the other. As he lay in the heap of wounded men a buckshot buried itself in the side of his head near the temple. As the Verona was pulling out he tried to crawl to shelter and was just missed by a rifle bullet from the dock situated to the south. Archie Collins, who had previously testified about Beverly Park, was then called to the stand to tell of the trip to Everett and the trouble that resulted. Prosecutor Black displayed his usual asininity by asking in regard to preparations made by Verona passengers: "What were they taking or not taking?" "There might be two or three million things they were not taking," cut in Judge Ronald chidingly. Black's examination of the various witnesses was aptly described by Publicity Agent Charles Ashleigh in the Industrial Worker, as follows: "His examinations usually act as a soporific; heads are observed nodding dully thruout the courtroom and one is led to wonder whether, if he were allowed to continue, there would not be a sort of fairy-tale scene in which the surprised visitor to the court would see audience, jury, lawyers, judge, prisoner and functionaries buried in deep slumber accompanied only by a species of hypnotic twittering which could be traced eventually to a dignified youth who was lulled to sleep by his own narcotic burblings but continued, mechanically, to utter the same question over and over again." During this dreamy questioning Black asked about the men who were cleaning up the boat on its return trip, with a view to having the witness state that there were empty shells all over the deck. His question was: "Did you pick anything up from the floor?" Instantly the courtroom was galvanized into life by Collin's startling answer: "I picked up an eye, a man's eye." The witness had lifted from the blood-stained deck a long splinter of wood on which was impaled a human eye! The story of Fred Savery was typical of the unrecognized empire builders who make up the migratory class. Fred was born in Russia, his folks moving to Austria and then migrating to Canada when the lad was but two years old. At the age of nine he started at farm work and at twelve he was big enough to handle logs and work in the woods. Savery took the stand in his uniform of slavery, red mackinaw shirt, stagged-off pants, caulked shoes, and a battered slouch hat in his hand. The honest simplicity of his halting French-Canadian speech carried more weight than the too smooth flowing tales told by the well drilled citizen deputies on whom the prosecution depended for conviction. Cooley dwelt at great length on the constant travel of this witness, a feature incidental to the life of every migratory worker. Even the judge tired of these tactics and told the prosecution that there was no way to stop them from asking the interminable questions but it was merely a waste of time. But all of Cooley's dilatory tactics could not erase from the minds of the listeners the simple, earnest, sincere story Fred Savery told of the death of his fellow worker, Hugo Gerlot. Charles Ashleigh was then placed upon the witness stand to testify to having been selected as one of the speakers to go to Everett on November 5th. He stated that he had gone over on the Interurban and had returned that afternoon at four o'clock. After the prosecution had interrogated him about certain articles published subsequent to the tragedy Ashleigh was excused. To impeach the testimony of William Kenneth, wharfinger at the City Dock, the defense then introduced Peter Aikken of Everett. Following this witness Owen Genty, one of the I. W. W. men wounded on the Verona, gave an account of the affair and stated that the first shot came from a point just to the rear of the sheriff. Raymond Lee, a youth of 19 years, told of having gone to Everett on the day of the Beverly Park affair in order to mail free speech pamphlets directly to a number of Everett citizens. He went to the dock at the time of the deportation, getting past the deputies on a plea of wanting to see his uncle, his youth and neat appearance not being at all in accord with the current idea of what an I. W. W. member looked like. Lee was cross-questioned at great length by Veitch. This witness told the story of the death of Abraham Rabinowitz on the Verona in these few, simple words: [Illustration: View of Beverly Park, showing County Road.] "Rabinowitz was lying on top of me with his head on my leg. I felt my leg getting wet and I reached back to see what it was, and when I pulled my hand away it was covered with blood. He was shot in the back of the brain." James McRoden, I. W. W. member who was on the Verona, gave corroborative testimony about the first shot having been from the dock. James Francis Billings, one of the free speech prisoners, testified that he was armed with a Colts 41 revolver on the Verona, and shortly after the shooting started he went to the engineer of the boat and ordered him to get the Verona away from the dock. He threw the gun overboard on the return trip to Seattle. Black tried to make light of the serious injuries this witness had received at Beverly Park by asking him if all that he received was not a little brush on the shin. The witness answered: "No sir. I had a black eye. I was beaten over both eyes as far as that is concerned. My arms were held out by one big man on either side and I was beaten on both sides. As Sheriff McRae went past me he said 'Give it to him good,' and when I saw what was coming I dropped in order to save my face, and the man on the left hand side kicked me from the middle of my back clear down to my heels, and he kept kicking me until the fellow on the right told him to kick me no more as I was all in. My back and my hip have bothered me ever since." Black tried to interrupt the witness and also endeavored to have his answer stricken from the testimony but the judge answered his objection by saying: "I told you to withdraw the question and you didn't do it." Vanderveer asked Billings the question: "Why did you carry a gun on the fifth of November?" "I took it for my own personal benefit," replied Billings. "I didn't intend to let anybody beat me up like I was beaten on October 30th in the condition I was in. I was in bad condition at the time." Harvey E. Wood, an employe of the Jamison Mill Company, took the stand and told of a visit made by Jefferson Beard to the bunkhouse of the mill company on the night of November 4th and stated that at the time there were six automatic shot guns and three pump guns in the place. These were for the use of James B. Reed, Neal Jamison, Joe Hosh, Roy Hosh, Walter S. Downs, and a man named McCortell. This witness had acted as a strikebreaker up until the time he was subpoenaed. Two of the defendants, Benjamin F. Legg and Jack Leonard, fully verified the story told by Billings. Leland Butcher, an I. W. W. member who was on the Verona, told of how he had been shot in the leg. When asked why he had joined the I. W. W. he answered: "I joined the I. W. W. to better my own condition and to make the conditions my father was laboring under for the last 25 years, with barely enough to keep himself and family, a thing of the past." Another of the defendants, Ed Roth, who had been seriously wounded on the Verona, gave an unshaken story of the outrage. Roth testified that he had been shot in the abdomen at the very beginning of the trouble and because of his wounded condition and the fact that there were wounded men piled on top of him he had been unable to move until some time after the Verona had left the dock. This testimony showed the absurdity of McRae's pretended identification of the witness. Roth was a member of the International Longshoremen's Association and had joined the I. W. W. on the day before the tragedy. John Stroka, a lad of 18, victim of the deputies at Beverly Park and a passenger on the Verona, gave testimony regarding the men wounded on the boat. The next witness was Ernest P. Marsh, president of the State Federation of Labor, who was called for the purpose of impeaching the testimony of Mayor Merrill and also to prove that Mrs. Frennette was a visitor at the Everett Labor Temple on the morning of November 5th, this last being added confirmation of the fact that Clyde Gibbons had committed perjury on the stand. To the ordinary mind--and certainly the minds of the prosecution lawyers were not above the ordinary--the social idealist is an inexplicable mystery. Small wonder then that they could not understand the causes that impelled the next witness, Abraham Bonnet Wimborne, one of the defendants, to answer the call for fighters to defend free speech. Wimborne, the son of a Jewish Rabbi, told from the witness stand how he had first joined the Socialist Party, afterward coming in contact with the I. W. W., and upon hearing of the cruel beating given to James Rowan, had decided to leave Portland for Everett to fight for free speech. Arriving in Seattle on November 4th, he took passage on the steamer Verona the next day. Prosecutor Black asked the witness what were the preparations made by the men on the boat. "Don't misunderstand my words, Mr. Black," responded Wimborne, "when I say prepared, I mean they were armed with the spirit of determination. Determined to uphold the right of free speech with their feeble strength; that is, I never really believed it would be possible for the outrages and brutalities to come under the stars and stripes, and I didn't think it was necessary for anything else." "Then when these men left they were determined?" inquired Black. "Yes, determined that they would uphold the spirit of the Constitution; if not, go to jail. There were men in Everett who would refuse the right of workingmen to come and tell the workers that they had a way whereby the little children could get sufficient clothing, sufficient food, and the right of education, and other things which they can only gain--how? By organizing into industrial unions, sir, that is what I meant. We do not believe in bloodshed. Thuggery is not our method. What can a handful of workers do against the mighty forces of Maxim guns and the artillery of the capitalist class?" "Did you consider yourself a fighting member?" questioned Black. "If you mean am I a moral fighter? yes; but physically--why, look at me! Do I look like a fighter?" said the slightly built witness. "Did you or did you not expect to go to jail when you left Portland?" asked the prosecutor. "My dear Mr. Black, I didn't know and I didn't care!" responded Wimborne with a shrug of his shoulders. Wimborne joined the I. W. W. while in the Everett County Jail. Michael J. Reilley, another of the defendants, testified as to the firing of the first shot from the dock and also gave the story of the death of Abraham Rabinowitz. Vanderveer asked him the question: "Do you know why you are a defendant?" "Yes, sir," replied Reilley, "because I didn't talk to them in the city jail in Seattle. I was never picked out." Attorney H. D. Cooley was recalled to the stand and was made to admit that he was a member of the Commercial Club and a citizen deputy on the dock November 5th. He was asked by Vanderveer: "Did you see any guns on the dock?" "Yes sir." "Did you see any guns fired on the dock?" "Yes sir." "Did you see any guns fired on the boat?" "No sir." "Did you see a gun on the boat?" "I did not." "You were in full view of the boat?" "I was." Yet the ethics of the legal profession are such that this attorney could justify his actions in laboring for months in an endeavor to secure, by any and all means, the conviction of the men on the boat! Defendant Charles Black testified that McRae dropped his hand to his gun and pulled it just as one of the deputies fired from a point just behind the sheriff. Black ran down the deck and into the cabin, passing in front of the windows from which the deputies had sworn that heavy firing was going on. Leonard Broman, working partner with Abraham Rabinowitz, then took the stand and told his story. When asked what were the benefits he received from having joined the I. W. W., the witness replied: "They raised the wages and shortened the hours. Before I joined the I. W. W. the wages I received in Ellis, Kansas, was $3.00 for twelve hours and last fall the I. W. W. got $3.50 for nine hours on the same work." Ex-deputy Charles Lawry told of various brutalities at the jail and also impeached McRae's testimony in many other particulars. Dr. Grant Calhoun, who had attended the more seriously injured men who were taken from the Verona on its return to Seattle, told of the number and nature of the wounds that had been inflicted. On eight of the men examined he had found twenty-one serious wounds, counting the entrance and exit of the same bullet as only one wound. Veitch conducted no cross-examination of the witness. Joe Manning, J. H. Beyers, and Harvey Hubler, all three of them defendants, gave their testimony. Manning told of having been seated in the cabin with Tracy when the firing commenced, after which he sought cover behind the smokestack and was joined by Tracy a moment later. Beyers identified Deputy Bridge as having stood just behind McRae with his revolver drawn as tho firing when the first shot was heard. This witness also corroborated the story of Billings in regard to demanding that the engineer take the boat away from the dock. Hubler verified the statements about conditions on the Verona and also told of being taken from his jail cell by force on an order signed by detective McLaren in an attempt to have him discharge the defense attorneys and accept an alleged lawyer from Los Angeles. [Illustration: THOMAS H. TRACY] Harry Parker and C. C. England told of injuries sustained on the Verona, and John Riely stated there was absolutely no shooting from the cabin windows, that being impossible because the men on the boat had crowded the entire rail at that side. Jerry L. Finch, former deputy prosecuting attorney of King County, gave impeaching testimony against Wm. Kenneth and Charles Tucker. Cooley asked this witness about his interviews with the different state's witnesses: "If you talked with all of them, you would probably have something on all of them?" The judge would not let Finch answer the question, but there is no doubt that Cooley had the correct idea about the character of the witnesses on his side of the case. In detailing certain arrests Sheriff McRae had claimed that men taken from the shingleweavers' picket line were members of the I. W. W. B. Said was one of the men so mentioned. Said took the witness stand and testified that he was a member of the longshoremen's union and was not and had not been a member of the I. W. W. J. G. Brown, president of the International Shingleweavers' Union, testified that the various men arrested on the picket line in Everett were either members of the shingle weavers' union or else were longshoremen from Seattle, none of the men named by McRae being members of the I. W. W. The testimony of Brown was also of such a nature as to be impeaching of the statements of Mayor Merrill on the witness stand. Charles Gray, Robert Adams, and Joe Ghilezano, I. W. W. men on the Verona, then testified, Adams telling of having been shot thru the elbow, and Ghilezano giving the details of the way in which his kneecap had been shot off and other injuries received. The murderous intentions of the deputies were further shown by the testimony of Nels Bruseth, who ran down to the shore to launch a boat and rescue the men in the water. He was stopped in this errand of mercy by the deputies. Civil Engineer F. Whitwith, Jr., of the firm of Rutherford and Whitwith, surveyed the dock and the steamer Verona and made a report in court of his findings. His evidence clearly showed that there was rifle, shotgun and revolver fire of a wild character from the interior of the warehouses and from many points on the dock. He stated that there were one hundred and seventy-three rifle or revolver bullet marks, exclusive of the B-B and buckshot markings which were too numerous to count, on the Verona, these having come from the dock, the shore, and the Improvement Dock to the south. There were sixteen marks on the boat that appeared as tho they might have been from revolver fire proceeding from the boat itself. There were also small triangular shaped gouges in the planking of the dock, the apex of the triangles indicating that bullets had struck there and proceeded onward from the Klatawa slip to the open space on the dock where deputies had been stationed. The physical facts thus introduced were incontrovertible. Defendant J. D. Houlihan gave positive testimony to the effect that he had not spoken privately with "Red" Doran in the I. W. W. hall on the morning of November 5th, that he had received no gun from Doran or anyone else, that he did not have the conversation which Auspos imputed to him, that he had no talk with Auspos on the return trip. All efforts to confuse this witness failed of their purpose. In verification of the testimony about deputies firing on the Verona from the Improvement Company Dock the defense brought Percy Walker upon the stand. Walker had been cruising around the bay in a little gasoline launch and saw men armed with long guns, probably rifles or shotguns, leaning over a breastwork of steel pipes and firing in the direction of the Verona. Lawrence Manning, Harston Peters, and Ed. J. Shapeero, defendants, told their simple straightforward stories of the "battle." Peters stated that as he lay under cover and heard the shots coming from the dock he "wished to Christ that he did have a gun." Shapeero told of the wounds he had received and of the way the uninjured men cared for the wounded persons on the boat. Mrs. Joyce Peters testified that she had gone to Everett on the morning of November 5th in company with Mrs. Lorna Mahler. The reason she did not go on the Verona was because the trip by water had made Mrs. Mahler ill on previous occasions. She saw Mrs. Frennette in Everett only when they were on the same interurban car leaving for Seattle after the tragedy. Albert Doninger, W. B. Montgomery and Japheth Banfield, I. W. W. men who were on the Verona, all placed the first shot as having come from the dock immediately after the sheriff had cried out "You can't land here." N. Inscho, Chief of Police of Wenatchee, testified that during the time the I. W. W. carried on their successful fight for free speech in his city there were no incendiary fires, no property destroyed, no assaults or acts of violence committed, and no resistance to arrest. H. W. Mullinger, lodging house proprietor, John M. Hogan, road construction contractor, Edward Case, railroad grading contractor, William Kincaid, alfalfa farmer, and John Egan, teamster, all of North Yakima and vicinity, were called as character witnesses for Tracy, the defendant having worked with or for them for a number of years. The defense followed these witnesses with Oscar Carlson, the passenger on the Verona who had been fairly riddled with bullets. Carlson testified that he was not and never had been a member of the I. W. W., that he had gone to Everett with his working partner, Nordstrom, as a sort of an excursion trip, that he had purchased a one way ticket which was taken up by the captain after the boat had left Seattle, that he intended returning by way of the Interurban, and that the men on the boat were orderly and well behaved. He told of having gone to the very front of the boat as it pulled into Everett from which point he heard the first shot, which was fired from the dock. He fell immediately and while prostrate was struck with bullet after bullet. He then told of having entered suit against the Vashon Navigation Company for $50,000.00 on account of injuries received. Robert C. Saunders, of the law firm of Saunders and Nelson, then testified that he was handling the case for Carlson and had made out the affidavit of complaint himself and was responsible for the portion that alleged that a lawless mob were on the boat, Carlson having made no such statement to him at any time. Charles Ashleigh was recalled to the stand to testify to having telephoned to the Seattle newspapers on November 4th, requesting them to send reporters to Everett the next day. He was followed on the stand by John T. Doran, familiarly known as "Red" on account of the color of his hair. Doran stated that he was the author of the handbill distributed in Everett prior to the attempted meeting of November 5th. He positively denied having given a gun to Houlihan or anyone else on November 5th. Upon cross-examination he said that he was in charge of the work of checking the number of men who went on the Verona to Everett, and had paid the transportation of the men in a lump sum. As the next to the last witness on its side of the long-drawn out case the defense placed on the stand the defendant, Thomas H. Tracy. The witness told of having been one of a working class family, too large to be properly cared for and having to leave home and make his own way in the world before he was eleven years old. From that time on he had followed farming, teaming and construction work in all parts of the west, his bronzed appearance above the prison pallor giving evidence of his outdoor life. Tracy told of having been secretary of the I. W. W. in Everett for a short time, that being the only official position he had ever held in the organization. He explained his position on the boat at the time it docked, stating that the first shot apparently came from the dock and struck close to where he was sitting. Immediately the boat listed and threw him away from the window, after which he sought a place of safety behind the smokestack. He denied having been in any way a party to a conspiracy to commit an act of violence, or to kill anyone. "You are charged here, Mr. Tracy," said Vanderveer, "with having aided and abetted an unknown man in killing Jefferson Beard. Are you guilty or not guilty?" "I am not guilty," replied Tracy without a trace of emotion. The cross-questioning of the defendant in this momentous case was conducted by citizen-deputy Cooley. His questions to the man whom he and his fellow conspirators on the dock had not succeeded in murdering were of the most trivial nature, clearly proving that arch-sleuth McLaren had been unable to discover or to manufacture anything that would make Tracy's record other than that of a plain, unassuming, migratory worker. "Where did you vote last?" asked Cooley. "I never voted," responded Tracy. "Never voted in your life?" queried Cooley. "No!" replied the defendant who for the time represented the entire migratory class. "I was never in one place long enough!" Then, acting on the class theory that it is an honor to be a "globe-trotter" but a disgrace to be a "blanket-stiff," the prosecutor brought out Tracy's travels in minute detail. This examination of the railroad construction worker brought home to the listeners the truth of the little verse: "He built the road; With others of his class he built the road; Now o'er its weary length he packs his load, Chasing a Job, spurred on by Hunger's goad, He walks and walks and walks and walks, And wonders why in Hell he built the road!" Then there hobbled into the court room on crutches a stripling with an empty trouser leg, his face drawn with suffering, and who was able to get into the witness chair only by obviously painful efforts with the assistance of Vanderveer and Judge Ronald. This was Harry Golden, whose entire left leg had been amputated after having been shattered by a high-power rifle bullet fired by a "law and order" deputy. Golden stated that he had been born in Poland twenty-two years before, and had come to the United States at the age of sixteen. He was asked: "Why did you come to this country?" "I came to the United States," said the witness, "because it is supposed to be a free country." "We object to that as immaterial!" cried prosecutor Veitch. The witness described the firing of the first shot and told of his attempts to find a place of safety. He said he was wounded in the hand as he attempted to climb into a life boat. He remained on the starboard side of the starboard life boat until the Verona had backed out into the bay. Then just as he was starting to raise up a rifle bullet struck his leg, taking a course thru the limb and emerging at the knee. "That is on your left--?" "On my left, yes, which I ain't got; I lost it!" said the witness. "Did I understand you to say you stood up to see something before you were shot?" asked Veitch. "Why, sure!" replied Golden contemptuously. "I had my two legs then." Veitch wished to learn the exact location of the witness at the time he was shot and to that end referred to the model with the remark: "Look here. Here is the boat as it was at the dock." "I don't like to look at it!" said Golden heatedly. "I lost my leg on that boat!" [Illustration: EVERETT from the water. To the left G. N. Depot from where bystanders viewed battle.] The witness was in evident pain during the examination, having just had a hospital treatment applied to his raw stump, and was rather irritable as a consequence. He answered several questions rather sharply and proceeded to explain his answers. At one of these interruptions Judge Ronald exclaimed to the witness angrily: "When he asks you a question answer yes or no! If you want to live in this country try and live like an American!" "I take an exception to Your Honor's remarks!" said Moore emphatically. The judge grudgingly allowed an exception to his uncalled for statement. In concluding his examination Veitch asked the witness: "What is your name in Polish?" "I am not Polish; I am a Jew," replied Golden. "Well, what is your family name in Poland?" asked the prosecutor. "Goldenhaul, or something like that. Now I call myself Golden. When we come to this country--." "Never mind," interposed Veitch hurriedly. "When we come to this country for good luck we always change the name, you know," finished Golden, and added bitterly, "I sure did have good luck!" This ended the case in chief for the defense, the marshalling of such a mass of testimony from a host of disinterested witnesses, men, women and children, putting it on an entirely different footing from the prejudiced testimony brought forward by the prosecution. In rebuttal of testimony produced by the defense the prosecution introduced a series of witnesses. As in their case in chief every one of the parties who testified were in some way concerned in the case as deputies, jailers, police officers, dance hall habitues, detectives, and the like. The witnesses were W. P. Bell, Dr. F. R. Hedges, E. E. Murphy, Charles Hall, Rudolph Weidaur, W. J. Britt, Percy Ames, Harry Blackburn, Reuben Westover, Harry Groger, W. M. Maloney, Albert Burke, W. R. Conner, A. E. Andrews, David D. Young, Howard Hathaway, George Leonard Mickel, Paul Hill, E. C. Mony, B. H. Bryan, all of whom were deputies, D. C. Pearson, W. H. Bridge, and "Honest" John Hogan, all three jailers and deputies, Robert C. Hickey, city jailer, David Daniels and Adolph Miller, police officers, Charles Manning and J. T. Rogers, personal friends of McRae, Oscar Moline, dance hall musician, Albert McKay, of the Ocean Food Products Company located on the Everett Improvement Dock, T. J. McKinnon, employe of McKay, R. B. Williams, contractor, John Flynn, agent Everett Improvement Dock, W. W. Blain and F. S. Ruble, secretary and bookkeeper respectively of the Commercial Club and also deputies, A. E. Ballew, Great Northern depot agent, H. G. Keith, Great Northern detective, Charles Auspos, who was shown to be in receipt of favors as state's witness, and George Reese, Pinkerton informer and "stool pigeon." One deputy, H. S. Groger, stated on cross-examination that he continuously fired at a man on the boat who appeared to be trying to untie the spring line. Outside of this evidence of a desire for wholesale slaughter nothing developed of sufficient importance to warrant the production of sur-rebuttal witnesses, except in the testimony of Auspos and Reese. Auspos testified that defendant Billings in the presence of John Rawlings had stated in the Everett County jail that he had a gun that made a noise like a cannon. This was intended to controvert the testimony of Billings. Reese related a conversation that Tracy was alleged to have carried on in his presence on the Verona as it was bound for Everett. He stated that a launch was seen approaching and someone remarked that it was probably coming to head them off, to which Tracy replied "Let them come; they will find we are ready for them, and we will give them something they are not looking for." This was intended as impeachment of Tracy. Cross-examination of this informer brought out the fact that he was a Pinkerton agent at the time he was holding the office of delegate to the Central Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor. Reese stated that he was employed on the waterfront during the longshoremen's strike with instructions to "look for everybody who was pulling the rough stuff, such as threatening to burn or attempting to burn warehouses, and shooting up non-union workers, and beating them up and so forth." He had been in the employ of the Pinkerton Agency for six weeks this last time before he was ordered to go down and join the I. W. W. He stated in answer to a question by Vanderveer: "I was instructed to go down there and find out who these fellows were that was handling this phosphorus and pulling off this sabotage and the only way I could find out was to get a card and get in and get acquainted with them." Attorney Moore in the absence of the jury offered to prove that Reese had practically manufactured this job for himself by promoting the very things he was supposed to discover. Moore stated some of the things he would prove if permitted by the court: "That on or about August 1st Reese went to one J. M. Wilson, an official of the longshoremen's union, and endeavored to get $10.00 with which to buy dynamite to blow up a certain city dock; that on September 20th the witness gave Percy May, a member of the longshoremen's union, a bottle of phosphorus with instructions to start a fire at Pier 5; that in the month of July the witness opposed a settlement of the longshoremen's strike and when members of the union argued that they could remain out no longer as they had no money, Reese clapped his pockets and said, 'you fellows wouldn't be starving if you had the nerve that I have got. Why don't you go out and get it, take it off the scabs the way I do;' that in September Feinberg had to make Reese leave the speaker's stand in Everett because he was talking on matters harmful to industrial union propaganda; that on November 4th the witness went to the place where Feinberg was employed and left a suit of clothes to be pressed, saying to Feinberg, after he had ascertained that Feinberg was thinking of going to Everett on the following day, "mark the bill 'paid' so I will have a receipt if you don't come back;" that on August 16th, the day before the big dock fire in Seattle, Reese went to the down-town office of the same dye works in which Walker C. Smith was manager and in charge of the purchase of chemicals and tried to get Smith to purchase for him some carbon disulphide to be used in connection with phosphorus; that in the month of November in the Labor Temple, in the presence of Sam Sadler, Reese had said to Albert Brilliant that if the longshoremen had any guts they would go out with guns and clean up the scabs on the waterfront; and that Reese tried to get other men to co-operate with him in a scheme to capture a Government boat lying in the Sound during the progress of the longshoremen's strike." The court refused to allow the defense to go into these matters so the only showing of the true character of Reese was confined to examination as to the perjury he had committed in his initial sworn statement to the defense. The sur-rebuttal of the defense occupied but a few minutes. It was admitted that Mr. Garver, the court reporter, would swear that Reese had made an initial statement to the defense counsel and that the same had been taken down stenographically and sworn to. Charles Tennant, captain of the detective force of the Seattle police department, testified to having telephoned to the sheriff's office in Everett on November 5th to give the information that a boatload of I. W. W. men had left for Everett. He did not describe the body of men in any way and had not said that they were armed. This was for the purpose of showing that somewhere between the time that Jefferson Beard received the message and the time it was transmitted to the deputies some one had inserted the statement that the men on the boat were heavily armed. John Rawlings, defendant, testified that no such conversation as that related by Auspos had occurred in the presence of defendant Billings. Thomas H. Tracy denied making the threats ascribed to him by Reese, and this closed the hearing of evidence in the case. Outside the courtroom on the day the last of the evidence was introduced there was in progress one of the largest demonstrations of Labor ever held in the Pacific Northwest. The date was May first, and International Labor Day was celebrated by the united radicals of the entire city and surrounding district. Meeting at the I. W. W. hall at 10:30 in the morning, thousands of men and women fell into a marching line of fours, a committee pinning a red rose or carnation on each marcher. Fifteen solid blocks of these marchers, headed by Wagner's Band, then wended their way thru the streets to Mount Pleasant Cemetery and grouped themselves around the graves of Baran, Gerlot and Looney--Labor's martyred dead. There, upon the hillside, in accordance with his final wishes, the ashes of Joe Hill were scattered to the breeze, and with them were cast upon the air and on the graves beneath, the ashes of Jessie Lloyd and Patrick Brennan, two loyal fighters in the class struggle who had died during the year just passed. A fitting song service, with a few simple words by speakers in English, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian and Italian, in commemoration of those who had passed away, completed the tribute to the dead. Nor were the living forgotten! The great crowd drifted from the graveside, but hundreds of them reassembled almost automatically and marched to the King County jail. Standing there, just outside of the very heart of the great city, the crowd, led by the I. W. W. choir, sang song after song from the revolutionary hymnal--the little red song book, each song being answered by one from the free speech prisoners confined in the jail. The service lasted until late in the day and, to complete the one labor day that is as broad as the world itself, a meeting was held in one of the largest halls of the city. At this meeting the final collection for the Everett Prisoners' Defense was taken and at the request of the imprisoned men one half of the proceeds was sent to aid in the liberation of Tom Mooney and his fellow victims of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association in San Francisco. There remained but the reading of the instructions of the court and the addresses by the counsel for either side to complete this epoch making case and place it in the hands of the jury for their final verdict. CHAPTER VIII. PLEADINGS AND THE VERDICT The instructions of the court, carefully prepared by Judge J. T. Ronald, required sixty-five minutes in the reading. These instructions were divided into twenty-three sections, each section representing a different phase of the case. Herewith is presented the first section in its entirety and a summary of the remaining portion: "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: "My responsibility is to decide all questions of law in this case; yours to decide one question of fact. With these instructions my responsibility practically ends, your commences. You have taken a solemn oath that 'you will well and truly try and true delivery make between the State of Washington and the prisoner at the bar, whom you have in charge, according to the evidence.' "There is no escape from the responsibility which has come to you, save in the faithful effort to render a true verdict. Any verdict other than one based upon pure conscience will be an injustice. An honest juror yields to no friendship, nor bears any enmity. He is moved by no sympathy, nor influenced by any prejudice. He seeks the approval of no one, nor fears the condemnation of anyone--save that one unerring, silent monitor, his own conscience. Disregard this whispering voice in yourself and you may fool the public, you may fool the defendant, you may, hereafter, with some effort, even close your own soul to her whispering reproaches and enjoy the ill-earned plaudits of the selfish or biased friend or interest whom you sought to please, but be assured you will not change the truth, you will not deceive justice which, at some time, and in some way, will collect from you the penalty which is always sooner or later exacted from those who betray the truth. "So let me urge that in deciding the issue of facts which is now your responsibility you be guided by these instructions which you have sworn to follow, and by their conscientious application to the evidence in this case. "Do not permit yourselves to be swayed by sympathy, influenced by prejudice, or moved in the least by a consideration of what might or might not meet the approval or the condemnation of any person or class of persons, or of interest whatever. To do so will be an act alike dishonest, violative of your oath, substituting for a fair and impartial trial an unfair and a partial one. This is an epoch in your lives to which you will ever look back. Be sure that when you do you may face the smiling approval of your conscience rather than its stinging reproach. "The guilt or innocence of this defendant is a single question of fact to be determined by the evidence alone. If this evidence shows defendant to be guilty, then no sympathy, no desire for approval, no fear of condemnation, can make him innocent; if the evidence fails to show him guilty, then no prejudice, no desire for approval, no fear of condemnation, can make him guilty. The issue is a momentous one, not only to the defendant, who, if innocent, deserves the deepest sympathy, for the accusation made against him is a serious one; but likewise to the public and to society at large, and the tranquility and security of our different communities. "A false verdict against the defendant conflicts with the purpose and the laws of the State as effectively as a false verdict in his favor. The State has no higher duty or interest than to preserve all its citizens from suffering under unfounded accusations. If, on the other hand, the guilt of the defendant has been shown, a false verdict of acquittal would not only be a breach of your oaths, but it would inflict a grievous wrong upon the State. If a true verdict calls for conviction, the misfortune to the defendant is not in the verdict, nor in the penalty, but in the fact it was his conduct which makes the verdict true. You alone of all the world, and who now possess all the facts, are therefore responsible for the verdict in this case. The law is not concerned about conviction merely--but it is concerned, deeply concerned, that juries shall conscientiously and fearlessly declare the truth. Whether it be conviction, or whether it be acquittal, a true verdict is justice--a false is injustice." Judge Ronald followed this lecture on civic righteousness and personal duty with more specific instructions to the jury, of which the following are excerpts. "In this case you must answer the question--Is this defendant guilty or innocent? * * * Keep constantly in mind this issue and do not go astray to discuss any other of the many issues that may be suggested by or may lay hidden among the great mass of evidence in this case. Whether the Industrial Workers of the World shall or shall not speak at a certain place in the City of Everett is not an issue here. * * * Whether the open or the closed shop shall prevail is not a subject for your consideration. "Every defendant in a criminal case is presumed to be innocent. * * * You must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the facts necessary to show guilt before you can convict. * * * You should give the phrase 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt' its full meaning and weight as explained and defined to you in these instructions. On the other hand, you should not magnify nor exaggerate its force and fail to return a verdict of guilty simply because the evidence does not satisfy you of guilt to an absolute certainty. No crime can be proved to an absolute certainty. "It does not follow because every one of the facts which are disputed between the parties may not be established beyond a reasonable doubt, that there cannot be a conviction. At the same time you will bear carefully in mind that all facts which are necessary to establish the conclusion of guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. "There are two facts necessary to convict this defendant: (1) That some person on the boat unlawfully killed Jefferson Beard. (2) That this defendant aided, incited or encouraged such shooting. "If you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of these two facts, then you must convict, no matter what may be your belief concerning any other question in dispute in this case; if you have a reasonable doubt as to either of these two facts, then you must acquit." The instructions then went into detail as to the rights of the workers to organize, to bargain in regard to compensation, hours of labor and conditions of work generally, to go on strike, to persuade or entice their fellow workers by peaceful means from taking the positions which they have left, to assemble at public places where such meetings are not prohibited by law and ordinance, and "no person, either private citizen or public official, has any right to deny, abridge or in any manner interfere with the full and free enjoyment of those privileges and any person who attempts to do so is himself guilty of an unlawful act." After reciting such acts attributed to the workers in this case as were in violation of law, the instructions went on to state that "a sheriff has no authority to arrest any person without a warrant except upon probable cause for believing such person has violated a law of the state; nor has he authority after making such arrest to hold his prisoner in custody for a longer time than is reasonably necessary to cause proper complaint to be filed, and an opportunity given for bail. * * * A sheriff has no right or authority to interfere with or prevent any person from violating a city ordinance, nor has he the right or authority to arrest for violations of city ordinances" unless "the act threatened, or the act done, in violation of such ordinance be at the same time violation of a state law." The instructions then outlined the scope of criminal conspiracy, stating that it was unnecessary for one conspirator to know all of the other conspirators but that common design is the essence of the charge of conspiracy. The acts of one conspirator become the acts of any and all conspirators. In the eyes of the law the sheriff and the deputies also constituted in this case but one personality, the sheriff being bound by the acts of his deputies and the deputies being authorized by the powers of the sheriff. Also the ordinance dated September 21st, 1916, was held to be a valid one. "Now whether any of the Industrial Workers of the World have been, prior to November 5, 1916, guilty of encouraging disrespect for law, or of unlawful assemblage, or of riot, is not the question on trial here. They could all be guilty of all the acts or offenses heretofore mentioned, and still this defendant be innocent of this particular crime charged on November 5th, or they could all be innocent of all the acts mentioned, and defendant still be guilty of the main charge here. "Again, whether the sheriff or any of his assistants have been guilty of any of the acts charged against them is not on trial here. They could all be guilty of all the acts charged and still be the victims of unjustifiable shooting from that boat, or they could all be innocent of any offense, and still be the aggressors and cause of that shooting on the dock wherein Jefferson Beard lost his life. "One of the questions in this case is the question--Which side was the aggressor on that occasion? "In determining who was the aggressor it is your duty to consider all the facts and circumstances surrounding the situation, the relations of the parties to each other, their intentions toward each other, and all the things they did. You will also consider the past conduct of all the parties, any acts of violence or other assaults that may have been committed, and any threats that may have been made, and the character as known and understood by each other. [Illustration: Victims at Morgue. John Looney Hugo Gerlot, Felix Baran Abe Rabinowitz] "Therefore, simplify your deliberations and determine first the question: Did somebody on the boat unlawfully kill Jefferson Beard? If somebody on the boat did not kill Beard, then of course Tracy could not be guilty of aiding John Doe to do something which John Doe did not do. But if the State has satisfied you beyond a reasonable doubt that Beard was killed by a shot fired by somebody on the boat, then such killing is either unlawful, in which case John Doe would be guilty of one of three degrees of unlawful or felonious homicide, viz., murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, or manslaughter; or it is justifiable in which case John Doe would not be guilty. Hence you will render one of four verdicts in this case-- 1. Guilty of murder in the first degree, or 2. Guilty of murder in the second degree, or 3. Guilty of manslaughter, or 4. Not guilty. "It is very desirable that you reach a verdict in this case. The law requires that your conclusion shall be unanimous. It is not required that any one of you should surrender his individual freedom of judgement, but it is well that each of you should have in mind that your true verdict cannot ordinarily be reached except by mutual consideration and discussion of all the different views that may suggest themselves to any of your number. The jury room is no place for pride of opinion. A verdict which is the result of real harmony, or that growing out of open-minded discussion between jurors, and a willingness to be convinced, with a proper regard for the opinions of others, and with a reasonable distrust of individual views not shared by their fellows, is a fair yielding of one reason to a stronger one; such, having in mind the great desirability of unanimity, is not open to criticism. The law contemplates that jurors shall, by their discussions, harmonize their views if possible, but not that they shall compromise and yield for the mere purpose of agreement. One should not surrender his conscientious convictions. "And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I commit the case to your hands. Listen to the arguments. Regardless of what may be counsel's recollection of testimony, you must take and follow your own recollection. You are not required to adopt any view which counsel may suggest in argument, but you should give close attention to all they say. Take up your task fearlessly, with but one single aim--to discharge the obligations of your oaths. You have no class to satisfy--simply the dictates of your own conscience." Taken as a whole the instructions were distinctly unfavorable to the defendant, not because of any particular bias of the judge whose political ambitions might have made him desirous of establishing a record for fairness, but by reason of the fact that the law itself on the question of criminal conspiracy is archaic and absurd, being based upon precedents established when the use of electricity and steam power were unknown, when the stage coach was the fastest means of locomotion and the tallow dip the principal form of illumination. This law, like all other statute law, was created thru the desire of the ruling class to protect property, therefore it contained no element of justice when applied to the modern proletariat, the twentieth century worker stripped of everything but his power to labor. Following the reading of the court's instructions prosecutor Black made his argument, Vanderveer and Moore for the defense addressing the jury in turn, and Cooley making the concluding plea for the state. This arrangement gave Veitch no chance to turn loose his oratorical fireworks, much to the chagrin of the gentleman who had been so kindly loaned to the prosecution by the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. Black's lengthy address was a whine for pity because of his youth and a prayer for relief from the dire straits and legal bankruptcy into which Snohomish County had fallen. It is summarized in the following: "We are at the close of a great trial. A great deal of evidence has been introduced; practically two million five hundred words. From the standpoint of the attorneys who have tried this case the evidence has been very complicated because it had in it a great mass of evidence that was only remotely connected with the real issue at bar. You as jurors have a very simple question to decide in this case. "Thomas H. Tracy is charged with the crime of murder in the first degree, not that he himself killed Jefferson Beard, but that he, Thomas H. Tracy, aided, incited and encouraged some unknown one to kill Jefferson Beard of Everett, on last November 5th. "I repeat first that some person on the boat unlawfully killed Jefferson Beard; secondly that this defendant, aided, incited and encouraged such shooting. "I come before you as the prosecuting attorney of Snohomish County. Owing to the exigencies of politics I was elected to office a few days after November 5th, the time of this catastrophe. Two months and a few days after, I took office and found a man charged with a crime that I did not have the power of prosecution over up to that time. Mr. Webb, then prosecuting attorney, who had started the action and initiated and seen fit to collect some of the evidence, was not able to complete the prosecution on account of the size of the trial. "I am a young man without the experience that any man ought to have in the prosecuting of a case like this, a case the size of which has never been experienced in the State of Washington, and in many ways an absolutely pioneer case in criminal trials the world over. "So the State has been hampered in that at the outset a young man, a new prosecuting attorney, has come into office and to him there has come a case that no man could read up concerning, and a large piece of battle--it is the State's contention, a battle between hundreds of men on the boat and a large number of deputies on the dock, a battle absolutely and surely initiated by firing from the boat, but still a battle;--a case without parallel in the criminal history of this State or of the United States. "It happens that fortunately the State has had assistance in this case. The State of Washington, thru its county commissioners, requested the assistance in this case of Mr. Cooley, whom you have all grown to know, a man who formerly for four years was prosecuting attorney of Snohomish County, and who since that time has been associated as assistant counsel in practically all the criminal prosecutions of Snohomish County that have required assistance. "And in addition to this the State has been fortunate in having, at the request of the county commissioners, the assistance of Mr. Veitch, a young man it is true, but one who thru years of service in the district attorney's office in Los Angeles County had experience in criminal trials, and especially because of his connection with what are known as the conspiracy murder trials in Los Angeles County, and also in assisting the federal prosecution at Indianapolis. It has been necessary in this kind of a case for the State to have assistance. "Now I told you my friends that I came here as prosecuting attorney of Snohomish County. I am also a deputy prosecuting attorney of King County under Mr. Lundin. After I was appointed I was very unpleasantly surprised by one statement. A little phrase, 'without pay,' so that I don't know whether really I am a deputy prosecuting attorney or not, because I found that in public office a man always likes to see the warrant come at the end of the month! "You are a jury in this case from King County because the defendant and the other defendants filed an affidavit to the effect that they didn't expect that a jury selected in Snohomish County would give the defendant a fair trial. The State is happy in your selection and knows that you will follow the dictates of your conscience and is likewise confident that you cannot help but believe that Jefferson Beard was killed by someone shooting from the Verona, and that Thomas H. Tracy, alias George Martin, incited, aided and encouraged in that shooting. "Now, the witnesses on the dock are men of Everett, men of family, men who are laborers, but with families; men who are clerks, with interests in Snohomish County; men who hold some important positions, as lawyers; people with families, people who by residence have established reputation for truth and veracity; men who have established themselves, have made themselves successful, sometimes in merely that they have established a small home, or who have lived in Everett and have made friends and acquaintances. That is the class of men that were on the dock. "There are only two classes of people who know anything about the shooting. The people on the dock are one set, and the people on the boat are the other. "The people on the boat, with but one or two exceptions, are men who have established no reputation for truth and veracity, have been successful in the world in no way, even from the standpoint of stable friends, living here and there, unfortunately; perchance, with some of them it is due to unfortunate circumstances and environments, and they have been unlucky, but still they haven't established stable friends in any community. "Then there are the three boatmen on the boat--and those three men, unprejudiced, unbiased, not deputies and not Commercial Club members, but merely laborers, they know where the first shot came from, and they tell, and their testimony absolutely and entirely contradicts the testimony of the defense in this case from start to finish. "And when you look at that red face and red hair and that honest expression of big Jack Hogan John Hogan here, and his honest blue eyes, it doesn't seem to me that you can have any more doubt than I have that Jack Hogan saw Tracy. "Now, these men that come on the stand all confess they had a common design. Their common design they say, was that about two o'clock in Everett they were going to speak at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt Avenues, that is their common design. "The court tells you that the purpose that they admit was unlawful, so Tracy, by the testimony adduced in his favor, was one of the men having a common design for an unlawful purpose. Tracy, regardless of his location, regardless of whether he fired or not, is guilty. "The sheriff and his deputies could have been guilty of everything claimed against them previous to this and the defendant still be guilty of helping and encouraging someone else to unjustifiably kill Jefferson Beard. "Under the Court's instructions there were acts done at Beverly Park that were unlawful. There is no question about that. Instead of this being a weakness on the State's part, it seems to me that it is an added strength. Because the I. W. W. used Beverly Park for what purpose? They jumped on it with desire, deeming it a fortunate circumstance because they wanted to inflame men to invade Everett. They jumped on this, the men at the head of the conspiracy, they jumped on Beverly Park because they could use it to inflame their members. How do we know? Their own statements! Their telegrams! 'Advertise conditions and send volunteers.' Volunteers for what? Volunteers for what? When a man represents things and so helps to make men mad he wants these men up there as volunteers for retaliation. And the Court has instructed you that if these men went up there with the purpose of retaliating, they are guilty. Tracy having been one of a common design makes it central, vital, in good conscience as citizens, that you return your verdict asked by the state. "Any time a murder is committed it is important that prosecution be had and conviction secured. That is always vital from the standpoint of protection to society. The police, the sheriff's office, and the officials of all cities and states of the United States sometimes forget themselves, I take it, sometimes do things they shouldn't do, sometimes do things they should be censured for, but the fact that they had is no reason that murder is to be excused or justified, because if you did, we would have no society. That is true in an ordinary murder case. That is overwhelmingly true in this case. "The I. W. W. is an organization that realizes the great truth in combating government. They have stumbled upon an overwhelmingly successful instrument in fighting society. What is that? To commit a violation of the law in numbers, to violate the law by so many people that only a few can be prosecuted and even if they are convicted, the great majority go scott free. They built better than they knew when they stumbled upon the great secret that the violation of a law in great numbers would protect practically all of the violators. And this trial itself is proof of that. "Snohomish County can ill afford the expense of this one trial; can ill afford the expense of two or three trials after this; would be overwhelmed with debt to convict all the men who are in this conspiracy, if there were a conspiracy it can't do it; most of them are safe from prosecution and they know it; and the only protection that Snohomish County has, and King County has, and the State of Washington has, and the United States has, is that when something happens like this a conviction be secured against a man who is guilty, not because you are convicting all, because you can't, you are helpless--but because that at least is the voice of warning to the men that if you lead an attempt you may be the one of the great number that will be caught. It is important from the standpoint of citizens of the State of Washington to establish the principle that crimes cannot be committed by numbers with impunity, that while it is fairly safe, it won't be absolutely safe. We have no protection. That is the vital part of this case. We have no protection. [Illustration: JOHN LOONEY] "If this case were just that of murder committed by one man acting alone, the importance of your verdict would be of small significance, compared with the importance of your verdict in a criminal case where the members are part of an organization. True, the society has no doubt a great many aims that are desirable to improve the welfare of the workingman. But it has one aim, one vital aim, in its platform to bring upon it the condemnation of thinking, sober men and women residing permanently in the State of Washington, and that is sabotage. "We are not claiming that the killing of Jefferson Beard was in the exercise of sabotage. We are saying that sabotage along with the conscious withdrawal of efficiency, sabotage along with the destruction of property, may also mean crime. "The I. W. W. members did not come to Everett for the purpose of employment; they were men who were wanderers upon the face of the earth, who desired to establish themselves nowhere, and none of them, as far as this witness stand is concerned, expected to work in Everett or to put sabotage in effect in Everett by working slow. The only way they could use sabotage in Everett was by the destruction of property. The mayor became alarmed, and the sheriff, after their repeated threats in their papers. But whether you believe sabotage to be good, bad, or indifferent, really is not vital in this case except as a circumstance. "Now, the Wanderer. The Wanderer did not happen the way they said it happened. The sheriff did shoot after they refused to stop. The sheriff did hit some of them with the butt of his gun. The sheriff brought them into Everett because they constituted an unlawful assemblage. The sheriff did the only thing he could do. He filed charges against them and they were arraigned in court. Twenty-three men cannot be tried quickly when each one demands a separate trial by jury. Twenty-three trials would stop the judicial machinery for three months. They could not be tried and so the sheriff turned them loose. Maybe he did hit them harder than he should have. Policemen do that! Sheriff do that! Lots of time they hit men when it is not necessary. Hit them too hard, sometimes. They don't always understand exactly what they are supposed to do. But the I. W. W. exaggerated the matter and used it to incite retaliation on the fifth. So the Beverly Park incident, and all other incidents, if true to the last syllable of the defense testimony, merely in this case extenuated the motive on November 5th. "Now then, why did the State select Tracy? The State's evidence was to the effect that Tracy was not only a member of the conspiracy, but was firing. Several State's witnesses recognized Tracy. There was another reason. What was that? Some of these men, some of these boys, flitting here and there from job to job, with never more than a dollar or two in their pockets, were inflamed intentionally by people who misrepresented conditions. They did not have any right to be inflamed; they did not have any right to go to Everett and they are guilty of murder if they went up there to retaliate for any wrong, actual or conceived. But the State has preferred to put on first a man who was in the forefront of the conspiracy; the man that appeared to be an important cog of that conspiracy, and that man is Tracy. "Tracy knew that a great many people of Everett were alarmed and disturbed. Tracy knew that the I. W. W. did not want anything in Everett, had no interests there, no friends there except as they were disturbing conditions. Tracy knew the purposes and Tracy went back to Seattle so he could lead this excursion to Everett. Tracy is a man of determination. He knew the situation and he was prominent enough to be selected by the organization as a stationary delegate. And if any man knew what they intended to do in Everett, it undoubtedly was Tracy. So, regardless of whether he fired or not, Tracy was one of the men who were on the inside. Tracy is a part of the conspiracy that happened. But no man, my friends, on that boat, that went up there with a common design to break the ordinance has been sinned against because he is in jail. "Now, my friends, you want in good faith to follow the instructions of the court. It seems to me that the only question you have to decide is the one the court told you to decide--Was Beard killed unlawfully by a shot from the boat, and did Tracy aid, encourage or incite that killing? "The murder of Jefferson Beard was a premeditated murder. Following the instructions of the court, separating the wheat from the chaff, and deciding that one question, we of the State are confident that you as jurors and good citizens, as honest, sincere and conscientious citizens, will protect Snohomish County--we believe that your verdict will say 'We are convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Tracy is guilty, and, being so convinced, we are going to protect Snohomish County as we would our own.' I thank you!" Vanderveer handled the case from two different viewpoints--that of a first degree murder trial and also as a section of the class struggle. His address was a masterly array of invincible logic and satire. Omitting his readings from the transcript of evidence, his speech was substantially as follows: "This cause is, as the counsel for the state has told you, one of momentous importance not only to the defendant but to a class--a large class of people of whom today he stands merely as an unfortunate single member, fighting their battle. "We do not ask in this case for mercy, we do not ask for sympathy, but it is essential, absolutely essential that we should have cold, stern justice; justice for the defendant, justice for those who have oppressed him, those who have denied him his rights. We hope this case is the beginning of a line of prosecution which will see that justice is done in the Everett situation. "It is not the defense who outlined the issues in this case, it was the State who determined that. They have chosen their fighting ground, and we had to meet them on that battle. In the beginning of this case the State, thru Mr. Black, told you that it would prove a conspiracy of very formidable proportions, a conspiracy in the first place to commit acts of violence and to incite acts of violence, a conspiracy to commit arson, a conspiracy to overrun all law and order in Everett and bring on a condition of chaos. The claim was a very formidable one. The evidence has been very silly. The State ought to apologize, in common decency, for ever having suggested these things. "What is the evidence about the fires? The fire marshall's report, made by a man who would naturally try to enlarge the performance of his duties and impress upon the public the manner in which he discharged them, reports only four fires of incendiary origin for the entire year. Every one of these were discovered before they did five cents worth of damage. Who had notice of them? Was it the I. W. W. who set them or was it Reese or some paid employe of the Pinkerton Agency? Can you conceive that an organization embracing as many members as this does, bent upon the destruction of Everett, could not set one fire at least that would do some damage. It is nothing but a hoax! "As to force and violence, who did they put on to prove it? Young Howard Hathaway, a mere boy, whose father represents some mill companies in Everett. Then Sheriff McRae, and McRae couldn't tell you one thing that he heard at the street meetings. Then they put on Ed Hawes, the big brute that out at Beverly called the little boy a coward, a baby, because he wouldn't stand there and be slugged with guns and clubs. And what did Hawes say? That he looked up sabotage in the International Dictionary! And you can search that book until you are black in the face and you won't find a word in there about sabotage. Why, if sabotage is such a terrible thing, did Hawes, having heard all about it at the street meeting, have to go home to look it up at all? "At these meetings there was not one thing said that could invite criticism, there was not one thing said that could justify or invite censure or abuse; there was not one disorderly thing done but was done by the officers of the law themselves, and they went in recklessly, without excuse, without right, they clubbed Henig, they clubbed Carr, a former member of the council, and they roughed women around and knocked them down. Why? Because these people were mill owners, their hirelings and their representatives, who had been instructed in the propaganda of the open shop by employes, aides and emissaries of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. "A lot of people went to the jail one night, a thousand, maybe. They hooted, they cat-called, and they hissed. Is it any wonder they did? Ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you there is no surer verdict on earth than the verdict of a crowd; and the verdict of that crowd condemned what the deputies had done. "Finally they say there was a conspiracy on the 5th of November to go to Everett and to hold their meeting at all hazard, to brook no opposition, to ride rough-shod over it, to oppose everyone and anything that stood in the way of accomplishing their purpose. I ask you to think just for a moment how foreign that is to everything you know about the I. W. W. and their operations and behavior in Everett. Not one witness for the state could tell you an incident where one of them resisted arrest, could tell you an occasion where one of them had advocated violence, could tell you one occasion where any one of them had committed any acts of violence. "These people wrote to Governor Lister calling his attention to the violations of the law on the part of the officers of Everett; they wrote to Mayor Merrill, enclosing a copy of that letter and calling on him to restore the order that had been violated by the officers of the law; they scattered handbills all over Everett, among its best homes and in its business streets, calling upon the good citizens to come to their meeting on November 5th at Wetmore and Hewitt, to come and help maintain your own and our constitutional privileges; they mailed to the citizens of Everett on October 30th, seven or eight hundred copies of a little pamphlet calling upon them to intervene and stop the brutality of officers of the law; they questioned Governor Lister at a public meeting and again called his attention to the conditions in Everett; they called in the reporters, called the newspapers and notified the editors that they were going to Everett and asked them to have representatives present: Are these the acts of conspirators? "You know how that meeting was called and why it was called. You know it from ministers of the gospel, you know it from the lips of those whom you cannot help but believe. And it was called for Sunday, the day when people ordinarily resent disorders of the kind that had occurred there. It was called for the daytime, when ordinarily abuse and violence are not attempted. And this big crowd went up there on this fine Sunday afternoon because in number there is strength and in numbers there is protection against brutality. "At first the deputies had taken out one or two and abused and beaten them; then they had taken five or six; they had taken eighteen; finally they had taken forty-one. But I ask you, would you believe it possible that they could take two hundred or three hundred people in broad daylight and do to them what had been done to the others? Yet the evidence in this case shows convincingly and conclusively they intended to do substantially that thing. They intended to run those men into a warehouse; they didn't intend to let one of them get away. And had they gotten them into that warehouse you don't know, I don't know, nobody knows what would have happened! "That is the evidence of conspiracy in this case. They have claimed no other conspiracy; they have offered no other evidence of conspiracy, either to set fires or to incite violence, or to override all opposition on November 5th. Their evidence doesn't stand even if unanswered--and no evidence could be more successfully answered. "What evidence is there that Tom Tracy had anything to do with such a conspiracy, if there were one? Their most willing tools, Auspos and Reese, don't say a word about Tracy. "What does the identification by McRae amount to? He identifies Tracy as the man who leaned out of the window and shot at him. Now at the time this shot was fired McRae had his back turned to the man who shot it. He says himself he did, and he was shot thru the heel, which seems to prove it. That, by the way, suggests to me that it was not an I. W. W. who shot McRae. The man who shot him must have thought McRae a hero, like the gentleman of mythological fame who was killed by an arrow thru the heel which no I. W. W. does, I assure you. Or else he thought that McRae wore his brains there. "But I am not going to discuss McRae at great length either now or at any other stage of this case, because the greatest kindness I can do him is to forget him. The man is a perjurer! He lied! He was not mistaken. He deliberately, cold-bloodedly lied about almost everything in this case wherein his conduct as an officer was questioned. He lied about 'Sergeant' Keenan! He lied about shooting at the "Wanderer," and you saw the bullet holes. He lied about Berg and about Mitten, and finally, and last of all lied, and we have proven it conclusively, about being out to Beverly Park. "Bridge's identification of Tracy does not agree with that of Smith, and Bridge does not even agree with his own testimony given at the coroner's inquest. Smith picked out a photograph and said it was Tracy and that picture resembles Tracy about as much as I do some of you jurors. Bridge and Smith say that Tracy fired three shots, and Hogan says he fired only one. And you know, ladies and gentlemen, that Hogan did not see this man at all. You know that he did not even see the window at which he pretends this man was sitting when the shot was fired. You know it because you went there to the dock and you saw the boat lined up to a mathematical certainty by the shot marks, and you saw a photograph taken with the camera placed by John Hogan exactly where he said he was standing himself. And there wasn't a one of you who could identify Bob Mills, with his long nose and angular features, with everything that makes identification easy, when he was in the position attributed to Tracy. And when you came around from there to where you could look directly at the place, the reflected glare of the sunshine left nothing but a blank background. "There were one hundred and forty deputies looking toward the place where the first shot was supposed to have been fired. They have produced on the witness stand only about one in ten. We challenged them to bring them all on, we dared them to do it, and Mr. Cooley said 'I accept that dare!'--look it up Mr. Cooley on page 1802 of the transcript--but he did not dare accept that dare. Mr. Cooley knows what those nine-tenths would testify to. Twelve out of their sixteen witnesses who testified about the first shots said that their brother deputies were mistaken as to even the place on the boat where the first three shots came from. "I venture, ladies and gentlemen, that with a bit of the kind of work the State has employed in this case, a little bit of the same zeal that was employed on Auspos, a little bit of the same zeal that was employed with Reese, a little bit of the help of McLaren of Los Angeles, I can take these one hundred and forty-five men and pick out four men who will honestly and truthfully testify that they saw anything, and I say that with no reflection on their honesty either, because the power of suggestion is enormous. It is not surprising that four people have come here to say they saw Tracy. It is not surprising that three out of the four should have been proven, conclusively, convincingly and absolutely, not to know what they were talking about. [Illustration: FELIX BARAN Dark lines on body caused by internal hemorrhage; Portland doctor said life might have been saved by operation.] "The court has told you that in this case it is not a question of who shot first, not a question of which side shot first, it is a question of who was the aggressor, who made the first aggressive movement, who did the first hostile thing. The man who did a thing to excite fear was the aggressor, and that man was McRae when he pulled his gun. McRae clearly did that before there was any shooting. "In determining who the aggressor was, you are entitled--not only entitled but must take into account the past behavior of all parties. And what does that show you? Was it the I. W. W.'s who had never offered violence, who had never done an act of violence, who had decried and deplored violence, as members of their audiences told you, and advised caution against it? Or was it McRae and his deputies? "It is only formally correct to refer to these as deputies. They had commissions, but in nothing else in the world did they bear the remotest resemblance to officers of the law, not in their conduct, not in their training, not in their purposes, not in anything. They were the hirelings of either the mill owners of Everett or the Commercial Club. Did you ever in your life before hear of officials taking their instructions from representatives of an industrial movement? Did you ever before hear of deputy sheriffs being instructed in the propaganda of the open shop, being instructed in the methods employed at Minot unlawfully to prevent street speaking? That is where the first mistake in this case was made. First in the selection of that kind of men; second in the deliberate attempts which were made to color their actions, to pervert them, to make them the tools of the employers. "That is the reason Henig and Carr were beaten, that is the reason Feinberg and Roberts were beaten, that is the reason men and women were knocked down in the crowds, that is the reason that this boy, Schwartz, was taken out by McRae and chased zigzag down the road in mortal terror of being run down by the sheriff's automobile, that is the reason 'Sergeant' Keenan was hit over the head with a gun, that is the reason James Rowan was taken out and beaten black and blue. How do you suppose Rowan got those marks on his back? Did he put them there for fun, or were they put there by somebody else's rotten, dirty brutality? If you didn't know a thing about him except what you know about Beverly and these other incidents, and it was deep darkness where this happened, I venture you would all say off-hand, 'It must have happened at Everett, anyway. There is no place else that I know of where they do such things.' "Black says the "Wanderer" has been greatly misrepresented to you, that the things we claim happened did not happen there at all. Well, there is a lot of evidence that they did happen. There are a lot of people who could have denied it. There are a whole crew of deputies who could have come up here and denied it. Why didn't they? Because they were ashamed of it and they knew they could not stand the grilling that was awaiting them in the court room. It is true, certainly! And I say here that nothing but providential intervention prevented McRae on that day from being a cold-blooded murderer! That is the manner of man you are considering. You are considering whether he was the aggressor, he or the people he shot at. "Counsel says that Louis Skaroff lied. Now I am very frank to confess that when we produced that story on the witness stand I feared you would not believe it, not because I doubted the truthfulness of his statement but because the story itself is so brutal and inhuman that I questioned whether there could be found anywhere in the county twelve persons who would think such things could possibly happen just thirty miles away. But when one of their own witnesses went on the stand here, in rebuttal, and told you that Louis Skaroff came out of that room with his arms above his head, crying, with the blood running from his finger tips, I knew that you knew that Louis Skaroff had told the truth. "The state has been very reluctant in this case to admit that there were rifles on the dock, because if the deputies went there with rifles there was a reason for it. You could not find a rifle on that dock until we proved--what? That rifle shells were around the dock in great numbers; we proved it by innocent, clean little boys who picked up the shells; until we proved by witnesses that the rifles were there and were being shot; until we proved by a rifle bullet with human blood and a man's hair on it that the use made of the rifles was a deadly one. "Who was the aggressor? Even now the State doesn't like to admit, because the State knows it is fatal to their case to admit, and notwithstanding hopeless to deny, that there were helpless men in the water being shot at. They do not like to admit that a man was so impressed with the inhumanity of the thing that he ran from the depot to the boat house hoping to effect a rescue of the men and was stopped by the armed deputies. The State does not like to admit the evidence of their own deputy witness, Groger,--whose actions I want the counsel for the state to explain and justify if he can--who repeatedly fired at a man who was trying to untie the boat so the unarmed men could escape. "Counsel said that if there was any intention to start trouble men would not have lined up as they were on the dock in an exposed position. And I ask you, if there was not an intention to start trouble why were they kept in the warehouse until the boat had almost tied up? If that was not an ambuscade, what on earth was it? If they did not intend to start trouble why was it McRae waited until the line was out and made fast. Why was it, then, he did not say to the captain, 'Take your boat out?' He said he was afraid they would go somewhere else. Well, when he told those boys they could not land he expected them to go away. Or did he expect them to go away? Which was it? "The manner in which McRae handled this thing indicates nothing so much as that he intended to get them there and administer to them another of the things that he calls a lesson, another of the things that other people call infamous, damnable brutality. "Counsel says there have been mistakes made. He doesn't want to apologize for them, but clearly he doesn't want to be held responsible for them. There were mistakes made. Beverly was one! The "Wanderer" was one! From the beginning to the end of all their operations in Everett everything has been a mistake--a mistake because the ordinary processes of law and the rights of other people were ignored. There was no ordinance prohibiting speaking. The boys were yielding implicit, careful obedience to such law as there was. McRae unblushingly tells you that the reason he made arrests was because there were labor troubles in Everett and the shingle mill owners didn't want things embarrassed by the truth, by the disclosures contained in this little report of the Industrial Relations Commission. "They were not afraid of the I. W. W.'s going up there to incite violence, to advise disorder, to invoke a reign of terror. Reigns of terror are the employers' specialty! They were afraid of cold fact. Never a man went up there to speak on the street and used that little Industrial Relations report but was thrown in jail for it--Thompson, Rowan, Feinberg, Roberts, all. "It's nice to enjoy the powers, the position and authority of a dictator who can repeal, amend and modify, ignore, disregard laws when it suits his fancy, but it's kind of tough on other people. That's what McRae did! "On the 5th of March, nearly nine weeks ago, His Honor called this case from his bench 'State versus Thomas H. Tracy,' and my friend Mr. Cooley rose from his chair and said 'Your Honor, the State is ready.' I say to you, Mr. Cooley, you slandered the fair name of your state! What has the State of Washington to do with this thing? The name of the State of Washington in such a case as this should stand for law and order and decency. The State is supposed to protect the innocent against abuse and injustice and you who are now running this case do not now maintain these things, or if you do, you protect them only when convenience requires it. "It is not the State of Washington versus Thomas H. Tracy at all, and if the decent people of Everett who know the facts could decide what course this action should take it would never be here. Even the title of the case is a mistake. It is the case of the Commercial Club of Everett, the mill owners of Everett, against Labor. This is an attempt, just as all the actions for months have been an attempt, to keep Labor out of its rights in Everett. The same people who took possession of the machinery of law in Everett, who took possession of the sheriff and furnished him with guns and clubs and murderous things like that and instructed him how to act, the same people who employed detectives to set fires in order that they might manufacture evidence and public sentiment against these boys, those same people are today prosecuting this case. "I don't know where Governor Clough was on November 5th. I suspect he was not anywhere where there was any danger, but I know the smoke had not left the decks of the Verona before he was hot-footing it to the telegraph office,--Governor Clough, not the prosecuting attorney, not the sheriff, nobody but Clough and Joe Irving, the man who was so drunk that he beat up Schofield,--to send a telegram to Judge Burke of the Chamber of Commerce of Seattle, to the Mayor of this City and to the Chief of Police of this City to arrest the whole bunch of them. "Then right away they got their other emissaries at work, Reese and Smith, down here with two fingers out of the door of a darkened cell, deciding for the State of Washington who should be prosecuted in this case, and H. D. Cooley, who surely then was not a prosecuting attorney, giving them legal counsel and directing their energy, taking out the men, preparing statements, and getting ready for the work he was going to do in this case, because his employers wanted it. "There is a conspiracy in this case, a conspiracy supported by evidence, a conspiracy of men in the Commercial Club to take over the machinery of government, and by it club these fellows out of their rights, club them out of Everett, club them out of all contact with the workers in order that they might not bring to them the gospel of their organization. "But I say to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that this struggle, the struggle of Capital against Labor, the struggle of the Commercial Club against the I. W. W., which is just one phase of the bigger one, this struggle is going on in spite of Cooley, this struggle is going on in spite of McLaren, this struggle is going on in spite of Arthur L. Veitch of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, this struggle is going on in spite of McRae, this struggle is going on in spite of the Commercial Club, because it is founded on a principle so big, so wholesome, and so decent, so righteous, that it must live. And it will go on until in this country we have industrially that which we have struggled so long and hard for and finally won politically; until we have democracy. "There is nothing in revolution, gentlemen, that is wrong. We came to the condition in which we now find ourselves by revolution; first the grand American revolution and then the revolution against chattel slavery. It was nothing more nor less than revolution, because slavery was then entrenched under the highest law of the land, the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. We took it out of the courts and slavery was wiped out. Slavery again will be wiped out! "The thing about this case which makes it of most serious importance, the thing about this case which makes it of public interest, the thing about this case which has so enlisted the sympathy of every one connected with it, which makes us feel the importance of a just verdict, is that it is not merely the liberty of a man that is at stake, but in a larger measure than you know there is at stake in your verdict in this case the rights of the working people, their right to organize, their right to protect themselves, their right to receive and enjoy the fruits of their labor. "There is involved the question of whether or not the working people shall receive justice or forever must be victimized by organized capitalists. There is involved the question of whether or not such things as have gone on in Everett for the last six months may continue forever with the endorsement of the jury or whether the working people on the other hand may go and discuss their wrongs and grievances and strive for their rights. "As I have confidence in the righteousness of this cause and the integrity of this purpose, so I have confidence that your verdict will be not guilty." Attorney Fred Moore closed the case for the defense with one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in a court room, a speech that seered its way to the minds and hearts of the jurors. Far more than a defense of Thomas H. Tracy it was an explanation of the industrial problems underlying society, the class warfare rooted in industry and manifesting itself on November 5th. It was a sustained and definite statement of the aims and objects of the I. W. W. and Moore showed, not only a great knowledge of the problems of the working class, but a wonderful command of satire and irony. Following is an abridgement of Moore's speech to the jury: "May it please the court, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury; For a period of something like five hundred years the Anglo-Saxon has seen fit to place the final adjustment of the question of justice in the hands of twelve men. In the evolution of the law, that number has been increased until now in this state we have fourteen. Likewise, in the evolution of the law and in the face of the vast amount of public protest, and in the face of the most reluctant world, we have enlarged the term jurors to include women jurors. This is the first time that I personally have ever tried a lawsuit in which ladies sat in the jury. [Illustration: HUGO GERLOT] "The state has told you why this case is one of grave responsibility for them. Allow me to tell you why this is one of grave responsibility for you. One hundred and ninety-six witnesses have appeared for the defendant in this case. Yesterday, counsel brought home the fact that many of these witnesses were not residents of this community, were without homes, without any permanent places of abode. All true. The responsibility that you have in this case is commensurate with the fact that the case reveals to you, as it were, a cross-section of our lives. You who are property-qualified have a responsibility to pass upon the liberties and the lives of a body of men who are propertyless. If there is any change in men's thoughts and views as they acquire a home, as they settle down, as they marry, as they bring into the world children, then I ask you in all fairness to attempt to put yourselves in the places of this defendant and of this defendant's witnesses who have taken the stand, and to realize that your responsibility here is commensurate with the fact that the testimony reveals, as it were, a most deplorable condition of modern life. In other words, your responsibility here is that of measuring out absolute and complete justice between warring elements in our modern life, not for one moment allowing your judgment to be swerved by the fact that one class of witnesses here are witnesses of social position, are witnesses of property qualifications, are witnesses with homes, while, on the other hand, the witnesses called by the defense were witnesses from the four parts of the earth, witnesses whose only claim to your consideration is that they have built the railroads, that they have laid the ties, that they have dug the tunnels, that they have harvested the crops, that they have worked from one end of the country to the other, in season and out, floating from job to job. "In most jurisdictions, the defendant has the opportunity of either a grand jury investigation or of a preliminary; in other words, he is in some degree advised of what evidence he is going to be called upon to meet. In this case, we came in here on the 5th day of March with no information whatsoever relative to the State's case other than that given us from the four corners of the instrument on file here, known as the information, together with the fact that on that information there were the names of some three hundred or more witnesses. That was all we had. We were further handicapped in view of the fact that we did not have behind us all the resources of the State of Washington and the county of Snohomish, neither did we have behind us all of the resources of various business interests, neither did we have behind us all the resources of allied business on this west coast, as represented by Mr. Veitch." Mr. Veitch: To which I take an exception, if the court please. The Court: Exception allowed. Mr. Veitch: On a matter of personal privilege, I have a right to characterize that statement as a deliberate misstatement of the fact. Mr. Moore: Mr. Veitch has not seen fit to explain why he was here. Mr. Veitch: I am employed by friends of Mr. Jefferson Beard. If that is not enough-- Mr. Moore: That is outside of the record. The Court: Both of you are outside of the record. Proceed Mr. Moore. "Suffice it to say that we are here as the frank and honest representatives of the defendant and of the defendant's organization. We do not have behind us the power of the State, or the power of any interest other than the defendant himself and of his organization. "Mr. Black complained that the State had been hampered in this cause. Is it fair to say that the state has been hampered when on the fatal November the 5th. Judge Bell and Mr. Cooley were both on the dock? Judge Bell would have us believe that he was unarmed, and so far as we know Mr. Cooley was unarmed. Then why were they on the dock? Judge Bell was there as the representative, as he himself has testified, of a number of lumber mills, and Mr. Cooley was there likewise; both citizen deputies; both there; both unarmed if their testimony is to be believed. Again Mr. Cooley was, in the matter of a few hours, down here at the Seattle jail. Certainly he was not there to represent the defendant Tracy. Who was he there to represent? He was either there in a private capacity, representing private clients, or he was there in a public capacity representing a public client, namely, Snohomish County. Wherein do you find the evidence of the State being hampered, sir? From the beginning to the end the State has moved majestically, exercising all the power that it had. Mr. Black has had able assistance in this cause, the able assistance of Mr. Cooley, the able assistance of Mr. Veitch, the able assistance of the man behind Mr. Cooley and Mr. Veitch, Mr. McLaren. Yet, all the resources of the State have failed to produce one scintilla of evidence against the defendant Tracy here so far as tending to indicate that he did counsel, aid, incite, abet, or encourage anyone to fire any shot, except the testimony of George Reese produced at the eleventh hour on rebuttal. I intend to treat of our friend Mr. Reese later. "It is significant that out of all that mass of testimony that has been introduced in this case up to this time not one single bit of testimony has been introduced or any argument had upon that testimony dealing with the object and principles and purpose of the Industrial Workers of the World. Mr. Black did not refer to it. Mr. Cooley has the final say. I anticipate his argument for the State. They have that old reliance, that old faith, if you will, in the trial of a case of this character, namely conspiracy; hallowed by age. "Way back in the sixteenth century the tub women on the banks of the river Thames were indicted for conspiracy in attempting to raise wages. The chandlers in London were likewise later indicted. The stonebreakers in New York, the carpenters in Boston. From time immemorial the charge of conspiracy has been leveled against the ranks of labor. Indeed, it was only in the reign of Queen Victoria that labor unions became other than simple conspiracies. Up to that time labor unions were within a classification themselves of criminal conspiracy. "Knowing that under the charge contained in the information we might be called upon to meet evidence of conspiracy, we then commenced a careful survey of all the facts in connection with the Everett tragedy. And what did we find? We found not a hint of conspiracy! [Illustration: Dead body of Abraham Rabinowitz.] "James Rowan had come into Everett without knowledge at the time that there was any trouble there. He had not been advised that there was any possibility of trouble. From all the prior history of Everett he had no reason to anticipate trouble. Thompson had spoken there and many others had spoken there. Rowan was charged with a violation of the peddling ordinance. He had been given an arbitrary floater out of town and had exercised his right to come back, was seized again and taken to the city jail; the sheriff goes there and arbitrarily demands Rowan from the Chief of Police. These things happened prior to any acts that by any remote possibility could be charged to us. There was no literature in the town at that time other than the Industrial Relations report. What at that time did we have to conspire about? We had no object. "And as with Rowan so it was with Thompson, Remick and others. If there was a conspiracy to violate a city ordinance why did not the city officials make arrests and charge the men with such violations? The record is silent. Why wait until Tom Tracy is on trial for murder, and then at the eleventh hour spring this delightfully specious argument? "I can almost hear ringing in my ears the impassioned plea of Mr. Cooley in closing this case. He is going to read this, 'The question of 'right' and 'wrong' does not concern us.' He is going to say that is the I. W. W. philosophy. My God, did it ever concern the sheriff of Snohomish County? Does it seem very much to concern others who are attempting this prosecution? "We were told in connection with the argument of counsel that Hickey was not on trial. They might have said that sheriff McRae was not on trial; they might have said that Bill Pabst was not on trial; they might have said that Joe Irving was not on trial; they might have said that the Commercial Club was not on trial; they might have said that all the men that have been guilty of all the brutality in that County during the months of August, September and October were not on trial. We know it! Why are they not on trail? "Deprivation of due process of law and confiscation of property! And yet Mr. Cooley is going to urge that the I. W. W. does not believe in government; he is going to urge that the I. W. W. does not respect the law. That kind of law never gets the respect of anyone. I hang my head in shame before such a history of usurpation and seizure of public authority as has been shown in this case. "Are you going to give the stamp of your approval to this sort of thing? When you bring in a verdict in this case for the State you give your approval to Donald McRae. I beg of you to not put the seal of your approval upon lawlessness, official lawlessness, the kind of lawlessness that is worse, tenfold worse, than any private lawlessness. "You are asked to stamp with your endorsement, to give your approval, to a man; a public official, the chief executive officer of a municipality, Mayor Merrill, who admits on the witness stand that he allowed a little group of members of the Commercial Club to take the power of the police department out of his office and turn it over to the sheriff of the county. "Had the State put on Governor Clough and others on their side of the case we might have wrung from their reluctant lips the evidence of what occurred at the meeting on August 30th at the Commercial Club. But the State was careful not to put him on. Indeed, the most significant and outstanding thing in all this case is not who they put on, but who they did not put on. Neil Jamison did not testify in this case for the State; Governor Clough did not testify in this case for the State; Joe Irving did not testify in this case; Colonel Hartley did not testify in this case; Captain Ramwell did not testify. Why didn't Kelly, Chief of Police, take the stand? You might go down the line and you will find that the assets of all the witnesses for the State combined would total but a few thousand dollars, while you could take the remaining witnesses for the State who did not testify and you could build up an enormous fortune, running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We didn't call them because we cannot cross-examine our own witnesses. "Is the administration of the law to be made a farce? Shall the State be allowed to blow hot and cold; one minute hot on the enforcement of the law, the next minute cold when the shoe pinches, and then hot again when they can use the law for the advancement of the interests of their prosecution? They say McRae and Hickey are not on trial; there is no promise that they shall ever be on trial! "Let me say to you that no one violates the law, I care not who it is, just for the fun of violating the law. Jails are not pleasant places to abide in. People who violate the law and go to jail do so either because they are deliberately criminal or because they want to focus attention on some public issue. However, Mr. Black is too kind and considerate when he gives all this credit to the I. W. W. "The facts are, if you go back into the history of the Revolutionary Days, that our forefathers urged and banded together and combined and federated, and if you will, conspired to violate the Stamp Act of the British Government, and were willing to go to jail if necessary. They went even further! They threw the British tea into Boston Harbor. Violation of the law? Yes, if you want to call it such, but the indignant protest of a people as against the enforcement of an unjust law. "I might urge upon you that the State at that time wanted to absolutely suppress any speech whatsoever, because they had constituted the chief of police, the sheriff, the arresting officer, as the executive, the legislative and the judicial department of our government. The sheriff executed the law in person, the sheriff declared the question of guilt himself, the sheriff ordered deportations, and the sheriff took physical charge of the deportations. Isn't it impossible to avoid a fight when someone usurps unlawfully and illegally the legislative and judicial functions of government? Isn't it time to fight? If it isn't then we may as well cease any attempt to administrate the law! "In the phraseology of these boys 'Fight' means a moral adherence to principle, a firm determination to face the authorities in the administration of the law, and if necessary to be arrested. But the State would have you put into it now a more sinister meaning, entirely new and foreign to its former use. "The State brought in the death of Sullivan of Spokane in their opening and abandoned it in their close. One of the exploded hopes of the State! They counted on North Yakima and Wenatchee to show violence and arson, and they failed most miserably. They have failed in their identification of the defendant. Now, their forlorn and bankrupt plea here is the charge of conspiracy. "The court has told you that this is a murder case. Why then has the State cumbered the record with the I. W. W. preamble and constitution? Why with two pamphlets on sabotage? Why with an I. W. W. song book and such matters? Why? "Because out of some of the phraseology here, phraseology far removed from you and me, they may build up a condition of prejudice which may result in your returning a conviction on a smaller degree of evidence than you would otherwise require. Mr. Cooley is going to stand here and read little, short, listed extracts from the context of the whole. The pamphlets he has introduced on the question of patriotism and the worker is the foundation from which Mr. Cooley will appeal to your prejudices and passions. "We are not afraid of the evidence. We are afraid of this deep-grained interest that goes down into men's conscience and that reached back a thousand years. "Remember that behind this case are many women and children whose cause these boys represent; whose cause these boys are attempting to fight for. They fight because they must! They fight because to do anything else is suicide. You could not have stopped the American Revolution with all the powers of the British government. Since this jury was empaneled you have had the collapse of one of the greatest powers of modern times. I refer to Russia. It has passed from an absolute monarchy to a stage of a republic. "The trial of this cause is the presentation of a great social issue, the greatest issue of modern times, namely, what are we going to do today with the migratory and occasional workers? These migratories, they are the boys who have told their story on the stand. "If there is one principle that is ground into Anglo-Saxon thought it is that of liberty of the press and freedom of speech. Those two things stand as the bulwark of our liberty. They are the things for which the Anglo-Saxon has fought from time immemorial. Away back in the eighteenth century Charles Erskine, a member of the British bar, defended Thomas Paine for having written the 'Rights of Man'. Case after case was fought out during that period when English thought was budding into fruition; when English thought was being tremendously influenced by the French Revolution and when those thoughts were bearing fruit in England. Time and time again the British crown attempted to throttle freedom of speech and liberty of the press. Time and time again Charles Erskine's voice was raised in the House of Lords in protest. Time and time again the British courts and finally the British jurors, gave voice to the doctrine that freedom of speech and liberty of the press may not be invaded except insofar as that subject, that document, is accompanied with acts; that you may not convict men for what they think; you may convict men only for what they do. Freedom of discussion thru the press and thru the public forum are the mainstay and the backbone of social development and social evolution. Only in that way, thru freedom of thought and freedom of discussion, may you fan the wheat from the chaff. "Why, if this I. W. W. literature is all the State claims it is, why doesn't the State act in the way the law says they should act, prefer charges, arrest someone, bring the literature before a duly qualified body, a court with jurisdiction, and try the matter out? The State has not done that; the State will not do that; and we are in the position of a man fighting in the dark, without knowledge of what character of argument the State proposes to make. "I do know that the name of Joe Hill is going to be paraded in front of this jury. The I. W. W. song book dedicated to Joe Hill, with the inscription 'Murdered by the authorities of the State of Utah, November 19th, 1915.' I cannot go into the conditions that surround that tragedy, but I can call your attention to one or two things that bear upon the question of the type of the man. Before he died, written in his cell on the eve of the execution, was Joe Hill's last will: My will is easy to decide, For there is nothing to divide. My kin don't need to fuss and moan-- Moss does not cling to a rolling stone. My body? Ah, if I could choose, I would to ashes it reduce, And let the merry breezes blow My dust to where some flowers grow. Perhaps some fading flower then Would come to life and bloom again. This is my last and final will. Good luck to all of you, JOE HILL. "This is the type of man you are asked, because he was honored, because some odd hundred thousand workers who suffer and who wander and who live in the jungles of labor as he did, and because he wrote songs that they understood, songs that because their songs, to judge as the author of the songs and bring in a verdict against Tom Tracy. Mr. Cooley will parade the songs one by one. Remember that behind any words he voices, any thought he expresses, behind it all was a human soul, a human soul passed, a human soul that lived as you and I, a human soul that had rights that had been trampled upon, and who attempted to voice those things. "With all the oratory he can display Mr. Cooley will read the song, 'Christians at War.' A song that Mr. Thompson designated as a satire. You recollect that when the European war broke out both parties in that conflict called to their aid and said they were acting under divine guidance; that the Kaiser was fighting under the name of God, and that the British and French governments were allied with the Almighty. It is not for me to attempt a settlement of that dispute. History will say that of all the tragedies of the Twentieth Century, the most tragic thing of our modern life is that we of different nationalities, but bound together by all other ties, should be engaged in a death grapple. But that is not the issue here. But I cannot at this time anticipate wherein and how this literature presented by the State helps you to decide the question of who was the aggressor on November 5th. "Who was the aggressor on July 31st when James Rowan was arrested and brought into the city court? McRae comes in and tells him to get out of town. An intervening series of events and Levi Remick is run out of town. Who was the aggressor? Sheriff McRae! On August 22nd Rowan and Remick were both in the union hall. McRae comes in and orders them out of town. Who was the aggressor? That night Thompson and others came up to Everett--who was the aggressor then? Next morning, with Kelly treating them half way white, along comes McRae and takes away one of the boy's money. Who was the aggressor? We come now to the deputies meeting at the Commercial Club on August 30th. Who was the aggressor? Had any of their members been beaten up? Had anything happened to their members whatsoever? Not at all! Yet murderous blackjacks were put into the hands of the membership of the club. Was James Rowan the aggressor when he was railroaded out of town and beaten? Who was the aggressor at the time of the 'Wanderer' outrage? Old Capt. Mitten, old John Berg, Edith Frenette? Who was the aggressor with Henig? With Feinberg? With Roberts? You have the testimony of Cannow, you have the testimony of Schofield, you have testimony showing the instructions given to the deputies. No one denies it. Here is a series of acts leading up to October 30th, in which on each and every occasion McRae and his deputies, either regular or citizen deputies, were the aggressors. I said, who were the aggressors? Is there any question in your mind who was the aggressor up to Beverly Park? Any question in God's world who had done the dirty work up to that time? The State would have you believe that the I. W. W., with its membership coming from the four corners of the country, changed complexion practically over night, changed their whole ideas and their methods. I do not believe it and you do not believe it. [Illustration: Part of 78 prisoners of County Everett Wn. Released May 8, 1917.] "The excuse the State gives for the actions of the deputies is that in the case of large numbers they could not give due process of law. Gentlemen, I refuse to believe that the Government is bankrupt in its capacity to protect itself thru legal and lawful measures of law enforcement. I have yet to sit in a court room and hear a plea on social and governmental bankruptcy such as is the plea of counsel for the State. "The machinery of the government was there but it was not the kind of machinery that McRae wanted to use. It was not the kind Clough wanted to use. It was not the kind of machinery the executive committee, whoever they were, sitting behind the closed doors of the Commercial Club, wanted to use. "And these members and leaders of the Commercial Club passed resolutions stigmatizing their own citizens, member of their own community, property owners in their own town, as well as the I. W. W., when they declared for an open shop. How do they stigmatize them? 'Professional agitators!' Yes. Lloyd Garrison was a professional agitator. Wendell Phillips was a professional agitator. The men who fought the battle that lay the ground work that made Abraham Lincoln possible, the men who are at work to better American politics, those men have all been professional agitators. "Now on the boat they were ninety-nine percent I. W. W.'s, just a few passengers had bought their passage before. On the dock they were all citizen deputies, persons interested therein, and persons satisfactory to the men who had been stationed there to see that nobody but the right ones got on the dock. That means that as far as the first shot was concerned the two classes of witnesses are in some degree interested parties. The State put on a total of twenty-two witnesses, one of them not a deputy, all of whom testified that the shot came, or they thought it came from the dock, and of that number thirty-seven were I. W. W.'s, and twenty-four were not members at all but were Everett people from all walks of life. "Now counsel is going to discount the value of the testimony of these citizens. Well, Mr. Cooley, we used the only kind of witnesses that you, in all of your care exercised in advance on November 5th, left for us. In the exercise of the highest degree of judicial advance knowledge they saw to it that nobody got any closer to the end of the dock than the landing. We could not help that. You barred us from the dock; you barred us from access to the facts. We did all we could to get the facts, and if we couldn't get any closer it was not our fault. And the man who barred us from access to the facts is the man who is least qualified to come into court now and urge that our witnesses are disqualified in the face of the evidence that they disqualified them. But those witnesses could testify, and they did testify, to the very definite and specific facts--the first tipping of the boat, the rushing of the men, the volley firing, all of those matters. "At the eleventh hour there came into this case a man by the name of Reese, a member, if you will, of the I. W. W. Back in the Chicago stockyards they have a large pen where they keep the cattle which are to be driven to slaughter. In that place they have had for years a steer that has performed the function of going into the big pen where all the cattle are, and, after mingling with them, then walking out thru a gate. He is trained to do it, he is skilled at it, this steer--and after walking around with the poor peaceful cattle that don't know they are about to be killed, this steer then goes up an incline, the gate is opened and the other cattle follow, and when he gets to the top of the incline there is a door and he turns to the right thru this door to safety and his followers turn to the left to death. That's George Reese! Proud of him? George Reese, the man who reported day by day with his confederates! To whom? During one period to the Pinkerton agency in regard to the longshoremen's union; during another period on behalf of the Pinkerton Agency to the Commercial Club in Everett. George Reese! A man who doesn't even come under the approximately dignified title of a detective; a man whom Ahern, of his own agency says, 'Well, he wasn't a detective, we used him as an informer.' Informer! A human being that has lost its human color. "In connection with the testimony of Reese let me call your attention to the Industrial Relations Commission Report, a report that our friends of the Commercial Club had read and knew all about: "'Spies in the Union: If the secret agents of employers, working as members of labor unions, do not always instigate acts of violence, they frequently encourage them. If they did not they would not be performing the duties for which they are paid. If they find that labor unions never discuss acts of violence they have nothing to report to those employing them. If they do not report matters which the detective agencies employing them can use to frighten the corporation to cause their employment, they cannot continue long as spies. Either they must make reports that are false, in which case discovery would be inevitable, or they must create a basis on which to make a truthful report. The union spy is not in business to protect the community. He has little respect for the law, civil or moral. Men of character do not engage in such work, and it follows that the men who do are, as a rule, devoid of principle and ready to go to almost any extreme to please those who employ them.' "That is the descriptive adjective, definition and analysis of the character of union informants made by the National Industrial Commission, appointed by President Wilson, and composed of nine men, all men of national standing, three representatives of labor, three representatives of capital and three representatives of the general public. That is their definition, description and classification of that character of testimony. "Mr. Vanderveer closed yesterday by saying that this struggle, whatever your verdict is, will win. If yours is a verdict of 'not guilty,' Tom Tracy must take up again the job of finding a job, the endless tragedy of marching from job to job, without home, wife or kindred. His offense consists of being a migratory worker. I beg of you to render a verdict that has due regard and consideration for the tragedy of our twentieth century civilization that does not as yet measure out economic justice. "Your verdict means much. The wires tonight will carry the word all over this land, into Australia, New Zealand and thruout the world. Your verdict means much to the workers, their mothers, their children, who are interested in this great struggle. We are not in this courtroom as the representatives of one person, two persons or three persons; our clients run into five or six hundred thousand. We are here as the mouthpiece of the workers of America, organized and unorganized, and they are all behind our voices. "Tom Tracy stands here in your control. You are the ones to determine whether or not he shall walk out free, whether or not he shall be branded for all times with the most serious felony known to the law, namely, that of a murderer. Can you find it in the evidence to bring in a verdict of guilty in this case? [Illustration: Singing to the Prisoners.] "In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, we want no compromise here. When you retire to your jury room I beg of you not to compromise with any verdict other than not guilty. We don't want manslaughter in this case, we don't want second degree murder in this case; it is either first degree murder or an acquittal, one or the other. Allow none of those arguments that we, as lawyers, know are made in the juryroom to influence your honest verdict in this case. We ask at your hands, and we believe with all the sincerity of our souls, that the evidence warrants it, we ask a verdict of not guilty for the defendant, Thomas H. Tracy!" If the speech of prosecutor Black was a whine, that of prosecutor Cooley was a yelp and a snarl. Apologies, stale jokes, and sneers at the propertyless workers followed one another in close succession. The gist of his harangue was as follows: "In this case I am going to try simply in the closing argument to select a few of the monuments that it seems to me stand out in this case and that point a way to a proper verdict. "Now, in the first place, a whole lot has been said here as to the nature of the controversy that existed for a number of months before November the 5th, 1916, between two classes of individuals there at Everett. Upon the one side were the people who were living in the city of Everett, who had made their homes there, who had come there for the purpose of carrying out their future destiny in that city. It was their home. Their interests were there. Their families were there. And upon the other side were a class of people who did not claim Everett as their home, who did not come there for the purpose of amalgamating with the citizenship of the city of Everett. They were not coming there because they had work there, nor because they were seeking work there; they were not citizens of Everett, nor were they seeking to become citizens of Everett, and there arose a controversy between the citizens of Everett on the one hand and these people from the four corners of the earth upon the other. The first thing we want to inquire into to find out if we can from the testimony in this case exactly what was the nature of that trouble that existed between them. Why was it that upon the one hand there was a band of people congregated down here in the city of Seattle from all over the land and making one excursion after another, attempting to break into the city of Everett? Why was it that there were citizens of Everett up there seeking to do only one thing, asking only one thing, that these people keep away from Everett? "Was it a fight to win the right of free speech on the one hand? Was it a fight on the other hand of a group of individuals who were simply seeking to force the open shop? Or was it a fight of a more serious nature on either hand? "I grant you that the origin of the trouble arose because a man was seeking to speak upon the streets of Everett and he was stopped. But long before November 5th that original incident was lost sight of and forgotten. The controversy had grown to a magnitude that overshadowed the original incident. It was necessary in order that you might understand the situation with which the people of Everett were confronted that you should be apprised of the nature of the organization to which those people belong, that you should be apprised of the nature of the place in the world that they had attained, and that you should be apprised of the nature of their propaganda that they were seeking to inject into the city of Everett and that locality. "I want to say right here and now that I have the highest regard for organized labor. Labor has the right to organize. There is not any question about it; there is not any dispute about it. Labor has organized and it has made a manful fight, and all down the pages of history you will find that labor, thru its organization and thru its lawful methods pursued under its organization, has gradually bettered its condition. "It is not a question, and never has been in this case, as to the right of the labor men to organize; the right of the laboring man to use all of the lawful methods for the purpose of bettering his condition. The question in this case is as to whether any organization, whether it be a labor organization or any other, has the right to use unlawful methods; whether it has the right, because it may have the power, to use unlawful methods. "Now there were coming into the city of Everett people representing this organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World. What was the propaganda that they were seeking to introduce there? They put upon the stand their chief exponent in this part of the country, to tell you what their purpose was in coming to the city of Everett, and what the doctrines were that they were teaching to the people that congregated there in the city of Everett. Mr. Thompson was upon the stand for about two days, and he delivered to this jury a lecture, which he says was a resume of three lectures that he gave up there in the city of Everett. He was asked whether or not he talked on sabotage and he told you what he had to say about it. He said sabotage was 'a conscious withdrawal of efficiency, a folding of the arms.' But Thompson says it is never the destruction of property, and yet the organization that sends him out to talk on sabotage puts out right along with him the literature that has been adopted by the I. W. W. as a part of their propaganda, defining what sabotage really is and it gives the lie to Mr. Thompson. It may mean working slow; it may mean poor work; it may mean folding of arms; it may mean conscious withdrawal of efficiency. So far sabotage is legal and anyone has a right to use it. But it may mean the spoiling of a finished product, it may mean the destruction of parts of machinery, it is the destruction of property. 'Sabotage is a direct application of the idea that property has no rights that its creators are bound to respect.' It does not say that certain kinds of property has no rights, but that there is no property that has any rights that are bound to be respected. But Thompson says that is not sabotage. "Sabotage is what? Where is that old song book? Let us see whether it means simply the folding of the arms. (Cooley dived into a mass of pamphlets, but being unable to locate the song book he came up with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's pamphlet on Sabotage, reading from it as follows:) 'Sabotage itself is not clearly defined. Sabotage is as broad and changing as industry, as flexible as the imagination and passions of humanity.' Why, if it consisted simply of a folding of the arms, if it consisted simply of the withdrawal of efficiency, there would not be much flexibility to it, would there, and the passions of humanity would have nothing to do with it? That language means that sabotage means anything that the imagination can devise and the passions of men adopt, if they had the power to use it and get away with it. Oh, it is not wrong! No matter what form it takes it is not wrong, because they say so in their official publication. 'The tactics used are determined solely by the power of the organization to make good in their use. The question of 'right' and 'wrong' does not concern us.' Put the two together. Legality and illegality, those terms have no meaning to a man of the Industrial Workers of the World. Why? Because there is no law that they are bound to respect except the law that is made by them in their own union hall. It is in the song book, 'Make your laws in the union hall, the rest can go to hell.' That is the class of people that we had to deal with, who were coming there to Everett. "In Spokane there were twelve hundred convictions upon a valid ordinance, and yet, after they had convicted a hundred of them they didn't stop coming, and two hundred, and two hundred and fifty, and five hundred, and they continued coming there until the city jail of the city of Spokane was filled, until the county jail of Spokane county was filled, until an old deserted school house was filled, and then until an army post jail was filled. A species of sabotage! They weren't willing to accept the verdict of one jury, or ten juries, or of a hundred juries, that they were violating the law. They had made their laws in their union halls and they were going to speak at a certain place, upon a certain street of Spokane; and they were going to compel the citizens of Spokane to let them speak when they pleased, where they pleased, and say what they pleased; and they kept it up until after Spokane had the expense of a thousand trials and had upon its hands a thousand defendants it began to think it had better yield and let them speak when they pleased, where they pleased and say what they pleased. And Spokane was licked! [Illustration: Charles Ashleigh speaking at the funeral, of Looney, Baran and Gerlot.] "Is it any wonder that the citizens of Everett said 'If you have no regard for law we will meet you on your own ground; we are not going to be bankrupted; we are not going to be hammered into defeat as they were in Spokane; we are not going to have you sabotage us in that manner by your numbers; we are not going to have your people coming from the Dakotas, from Montana, from Oregon, and from all over the various parts of the state of Washington, and camping down on us until we surrender to you. We are going to keep you out of here.' Now, that may not have been strictly legal, but it was human nature. "There is not hint anywhere in the argument of either counsel for the defense in this case as to what was ever done in the city of Everett by the I. W. W. that would constitute new methods and new tactics. Do you remember the testimony over a period of time there before Labor Day that they allowed them to speak without interference and a meeting was held there and every time they went up with a chip on their shoulder and were not satisfied when no one interfered with them. When they were there speaking on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore somebody was going around the city of Everett distributing a nasty stinking chemical in the theater building, into the store buildings, into the business houses, into the automobiles. And the paper in the next issue gloats over it and intimates that the reason the officers did not arrest Feinberg was because they were evidently too busy chasing a cat of malodorous tendencies. When Thompson was upon the stand and was being questioned about sabotage and about cats; he could tell you what a cat was, he got a bit halting in his speech when he was asked what it meant when they said that the claws of the cat had been sharpened, when he was asked what a 'sabcat' meant, but when he was asked as to what a cat of 'malodorous tendencies' was he said he didn't know unless it was a skunk. But by that was meant that the skunk accomplishes sabotage. You never heard of a skunk that did sabotage by simply a withdrawal of efficiency, never! "Now as to incendiary and phosphorous fires. Fire Chief Terrell tells you that up to the date of September 28th, the date of the first known phosphorous fire in Everett, that up to that time, in all of his experience upon the fire force of the city of Everett, it never had come to his knowledge or observation in any way that a phosphorous fire had ever occurred in the city. It occurred there, known to be a phosphorous fire, and within a period of two months at least two other fires occurred, mysterious, the origin unknown because the fire had progressed to such an extent that no one could tell how it did start." Mr. Vanderveer: Didn't your detective go to work September 21st? Mr. Cooley: Yes sir, he did. "And they would have you believe that the detective was up there setting those fires. That, I know, is an insinuation not supported by any evidence in this case, and the detective wasn't working up there, he was operating down here in the city of Seattle. He was sending his reports to Blain before the Wanderer started out, before the men started out on October 30th, and that goes a good way to explain how it happened how these people were met on these different excursions and were not permitted to come within the city of Everett. They were trying to get into the city of Everett, to use their own judgment, to act on their own initiative, according to instructions that had gone out. And the officers stopped the thing before it started. "What were they coming to Everett for, these forty-one men who were met? Were they coming to hold a street meeting? Forty-one men, enthused with the enthusiasm of the belief in their grand and glorious doctrine that they are teaching, forty-one men starting out as crusaders to carry the gospel of their organization to the benighted of Everett, forty-one going up there to be martyrs, to be beaten for the cause, and nothing else! "I have told of the tactics and methods advocated, used and encouraged, by this peculiar, particular organization, so you can judge the character, purpose and intentions of the individuals that were seeking from time to time to force themselves into the city of Everett, in order that you may judge the two hundred and sixty that left on the Verona on November the 5th. "But there is another matter you should likewise take into consideration in determining the character of the individuals of that crowd. Regardless of all environment, regardless of the effect of all legislation, regardless of all social conditions, men are born--not all with the same propensities, not all with the same natural ambitions, not all with the same qualifications, and out of the entire mass of humanity there is a certain percentage that were born without any ambition, born without any incentive; they go thru life without any incentive, constantly tired. Now I am not here to say that all the I. W. W.'s are that kind of people. I am not here to say that because a man is a member of the I. W. W. he is a tramp or a hobo. But there is a class that has been recognized in this country ever since the country existed, a class that don't want to work, that would not work if you gave them an opportunity. These are a percentage, I don't know how large, and I say that every one of these people are members of the I. W. W. organization or should be. Why? Well, in the first place, you don't have to show any qualification for any line of work. You don't have to make proof of anything whatever to become a member of that organization. And is there any inducement for a man who has been drifting here and there, walking the ties, counting the mile posts as he walks from one place to another, to join that organization? It gives him a pass upon every freight train that travels the length and breadth of the land. One of the best inducements in the world. "There is another class of people in this country that are born with criminal instincts implanted in their very natures; they are scattered all over this land and we have them with us and we will always have them with us. There are men who are driven to crime thru misfortune; there are men who commit crime under the influence of environment; but there is a percentage of men who are habitual, natural and instinctive criminals. Now I don't say that because a man is a member of the I. W. W. he is necessarily and instinctively a criminal, but I do say that every habitual, instinctive criminal, who knows that he intends to violate the law upon every opportunity to satisfy his own criminal desire, has every inducement to become a member of that organization. "There are a few uncontested and undisputed facts in connection with the occurrence at the dock. Jefferson Beard was killed on that dock. No doubt about that! The defendant was on the boat. No question about that! There is no question that the conversation between McRae and the people on the boat occurred substantially in the language that you have heard repeated here by witnesses for the State and for the defense, all agreeing that the conversation preceded the shooting. There is no dispute that McRae turned partially away from the boat and that one of the first three shots fired hit McRae while he was turning. The burden of the whole argument of the defense was that when somebody on the boat saw McRae put his hand on his gun he was justified in shooting. It is not material whether Tracy shot Jefferson Beard or somebody else. It is not material whether Tracy fired a gun or not, provided the evidence in this case satisfies you beyond a reasonable doubt that Tracy was a party to the conspiracy to go up to the city of Everett to violate an ordinance of the city of Everett. "But have you any doubt that Tracy was seen on the boat? Hogan saw the window and he saw a man with his face at the window shooting in his direction. Hogan wasn't thinking of the exact angle at which the boat was standing to the dock, but he knows he was standing at such an angle to the boat that he could see a man in a certain place on the boat. And he testified he did see him. "It wasn't Thomas Tracy that was looking out of that window, it was Martin. It wasn't Thomas Tracy dressed for the occasion, it wasn't Thomas Tracy shaven for a picnic, it wasn't Thomas Tracy wearing a Sunday countenance, it wasn't Thomas Tracy gazing placidly out of a mild blue eye! It was Thomas Tracy, alias Martin, with his face drawn down into a scowl of hatred, with his eyebrows lowering over his eyes, gazing at John Hogan, not only gazing at him thru a window, but gazing at him over a gun! And if there is anything that would impress itself into the memory and recollection of a man it is the remembrance of a face filled with venomous hatred, the eyes shooting daggers at you while he is gazing at you over the muzzle of a gun--and you are not going to forget that! "Counsel for the defense says this is an important trial, that important questions are involved, that the verdict in this case will have a great deal to do with the ultimate future of the working man and organized labor. I don't think that matters of that kind should enter the minds of the jurors in arriving at a verdict, but if it does, I want to supplement what counsel for the defense has said. I want to say that in my mind a verdict in this case will have much to do with the future success and the future advancement of honest labor in every line and in all organizations. It will have much to do with clarifying the situation insofar as this one organization is concerned. Every organization don't preach the doctrines that are preached by this organization, and if this jury by its verdict does not support that kind of method and that kind of procedure it will aid in purifying an organization that otherwise might do a world of good, but as it stands today, uttering the propaganda that it does, pursuing the tactics that it does it, is a menace not only to society, but is a menace to the welfare of the other labor organizations that believe in pursuing lawful methods, in a lawful manner. This is an important case in that regard. "I believe that it is a fortunate thing that a jury of King County and a jury from the city of Seattle should have been called to try this case. The seed was not planted in Snohomish County! The plot was not hatched in Snohomish County! It was hatched down here in Seattle. The expedition started out from Seattle, not this one alone but many of them. Seattle was the base, the enemy's base, and it was from here that they started. Just down here almost in sight of this court house is the place where we claim the plot was formed, and it has come back here, and we come into court and lay it at your feet. They returned here, they have brought the case here for trial, and we are satisfied. Now we lay it before you and say,--'As citizens of Seattle do justice to the city of Everett and Snohomish County.'" With these words ringing in their ears the twelve jurors retired for their deliberations, the court having entered an order discharging from further service the two alternate jurors, Efaw and Williams. Retiring shortly before noon, the jury consulted for nearly twenty-two hours, taking ballot after ballot only to find that there were some who steadfastly refused to agree to any compromise verdict. Then, shortly after nine o'clock on May 5th, two full calendar months after the start of the trial and just six months to the day from the time of the tragedy of the Verona, Foreman James R. Williams announced the result of their deliberations, and the word sped out to the many hundred thousands who had spent an anxious and sleepless night; "We, the jury, find the defendant, Thomas H. Tracy, NOT GUILTY!" CHAPTER IX. SOLIDARITY SCORES A SUCCESS "I. W. W. Not Guilty!" In this headline the daily papers of Seattle, Washington, gave the findings of the jury. With an unbroken series of successful prosecutions of Labor to the credit of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association this, the first great victory for the working class on the Pacific Coast, was a bitter pill for the allied employers and open shop interests to swallow. With Tracy freed and the I. W. W. exonerated, there was nothing for the Snohomish County officials to do but to release the rest of the free speech prisoners. Yet the same contemptible spirit that had marked their actions from the very start of the trouble led them to hold the prisoners for several days and to try to make a few of the men think that there would be a trial of a second prisoner. Part of the men were released in Seattle and part in Everett. All went at once to the I. W. W. hall upon gaining their freedom, and from there nearly the whole body of released men went to Mount Pleasant cemetery to visit the graves of their dead fellow workers. Returning to the hall, those who had previously been delegates, or who had fitted themselves for the work while in jail, immediately took out credentials and started on an organizing campaign of the Northwest, with the uniting of the workers in the lumber industry as their main object. [Illustration: Gus Johnson Felix Baran John Looney] [Illustration: Hugo Gerlot Abraham Rabinowitz] The dearth of workers due to the war, the tremendous advertisement the I. W. W. had received because of the tragedy and the trial, and the spirit of mingled determination and resentment that had grown up in the jail, made the work easy for these volunteer organizers. Members joined by the dozen, then by the score, and finally by the hundreds. Seattle had but two officials under pay on November 5th--Herbert Mahler, secretary of the I. W. W., and J. A. MacDonald, editor of the Industrial Worker. By July 4th, 1917, one year from the time of the loggers' convention at which there were only half a hundred paid up members, the I. W. W. in Seattle had thirty people under pay, working at top speed to take care of the constantly increasing membership, and preparations were under way to launch the greatest lumber strike ever pulled in the history of the industry with the eight hour day as the main demand. That strike in which thousands of men stood out for week after week in the face of persecution of every character, in the face of raids upon their halls and the illegal detention of hundreds of members by city, county, state and federal agents, and in the face of deportations by mobs of lumber trust hirelings, deserves a volume to itself. This activity in the lumber industry reflected itself in all other lines, particularly so in construction projects all over the Northwest. Demands for literature, for speakers, for organizers, flooded the offices of the organization and many opportunities to organize had to be passed by simply because there were not enough men capable of taking up the work. Part of this growth was of those who had interested themselves in the trial. Many of those who had gone on the witness stand for the defense afterwards took out membership cards in the I. W. W. The women of Everett,--considerably more inclined toward revolutionary ideas than the men there, by the way,--were among the first to ask for a "red card." Too great praise cannot be given to those who voluntarily gave their services to the defense and thus helped to bring about a verdict of acquittal. Thru the work of Mr. A. L. Carpenter a great deal of valuable information was secured and it was thru his efforts that Deputy Joseph Schofield was brought from Oregon to testify for the defense. For his activity on behalf of organized labor Mr. Carpenter received the rebel's reward--he was discharged from his position as district manager of a large corporation. Scores of Everett citizens gave splendid assistance to the defense, asking only that their names be withheld on account of the Commercial Club blacklist. All persons directly in the employ of the defense proved their worth. Deserving special mention in their work of investigation were Rev. T. T. Edmunds, W. A. Loomis and John M. Foss. The Reverend Edmunds, being no follower of a "cold statistical Christ" and having more of humanitarianism than theology or current religion in his makeup, was able to gain information where many another investigator might have failed. The expert services of Loomis were of no less value, while the particular merit of the work of John Foss was that he went to Everett immediately after the catastrophe, at a time when chaos still reigned and when the blood-lust of the deputies had not yet completely given way to craven fear, and worked there night and day until a verdict of acquittal for his fellow workers was practically assured. Both as an investigator and as correspondent to the I. W. W. press, C. E. Payne, familiarly known as "Stumpy," proved himself invaluable. Charles Ashleigh handled the publicity for the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee in an able and efficient manner, while to Herbert Mahler credit is due for the careful and painstaking handling of the large fund raised to fight the case thru the courts. "Justice" is an expensive luxury in the lumber kingdom. Independent of the large amount of money spent directly by individuals and by branches of the I. W. W. the cost of the verdict of acquittal was $37,835.84. Nearly thirty-eight thousand dollars! Thirty-eight thousand dollars to free innocent workers from the clutches of the law! The victims in jail and the murderers at liberty! But then, the last thing expected of "Justice" is that it be just. Whence came the fund that, as a token of solidarity, set the free speech prisoners at liberty? In the financial statement of the Everett Prisoners Defense Committee it is set forth in full. Summarized, this report shows that Labor united in the defense of the prisoners, that, while this case was more largely financed directly thru the I. W. W. than any other trial of the organization, there were many and generous contributions from local unions of the American Federation of Labor, from the Workers' Sick and Death Benefit Fund, from various other working class societies and from sources so numerous as to make special mention impossible. But these receipts varied from a dollar bill sent by "A poor Working Stiff" from North Bend, Oregon, to a donation of $3.75 from the Benevolent Society for the Propagating of Cremation at Yonkers, New York. Hundreds of dollars were raised in Seattle by the I. W. W. thru smokers, dances, theatrical benefits, entertainments and collections by speakers who told the story of Bloody Sunday before societies of every kind and character. The Dreamland Rink meetings, attended in every instance by thousands of people, were the means of bringing hundreds of dollars to the defense. A considerable fund was raised directly within the organization by the sale of embossed leatherette membership card cases issued in memoriam to the martyred dead. In Seattle notable service was rendered by the International Workers' Defense League. [Illustration: May First at Graveside of Gerlot, Baran and Looney.] The nature of the case demanded heavy expenditures unlike those required in any of the previous trials in which I. W. W. members were involved. Many of the witnesses were men who had beaten their way from long distances thru storms and snow to be in readiness to testify in behalf of their imprisoned fellow workers, and most of these had to be maintained at a relief station until called upon the stand. The care of the wounded was an added item, and there were many necessary expenditures for the big body of prisoners held as defendants. To each of the men who was released at the end of the six months imprisonment there was given a sum of $10. Owing to the sweeping nature of the conspiracy charges and because of the large number of witnesses endorsed by the State, all of whom required investigation, there was a large sum required for use in taking these necessary legal precautions. Heavy charges were also made for the work of the stenographers who recorded the evidence, this being an item borne by the State in most parts of the country. The totals of these expenditures were as follows: Counsel fees in full $8,470.00 Legal investigation 8,955.36 Court stenographers 3,354.30 Miscellaneous legal expense 1,304.20 Office expense 1,942.53 Publicity work 4,830.44 Miscellaneous accounts 8,457.37 ---------- Total expenditures $37,314.20 A balance of $521.64 was sent to the General Headquarters of the I. W. W. and this, with $581.36 which remained in the General Office from the sale of voluntary assessment stamps, was set aside as a fund to be used for the maintenance of Harry Golden, Joseph Ghilezano and Albert Scribner, three of the boys who were seriously injured on the Verona. The financial report was audited by E. G. Shorrock and Co., certified accountants, and by a committee composed of Harry Feinberg and J. H. Beyer, representing the prisoners, C. H. Rice, representing the Seattle unions of the I. W. W., and General Executive Board member, Richard Brazier, representing the General Headquarters of the I. W. W. The statement made to contributors to the fund concluded with these expressive words: "On behalf of the defendants, and the Industrial Workers of the World, we take this opportunity to express our grateful appreciation to all contributors, and to all the brave men and women who assisted us so nobly in this great struggle to save seventy-three workingmen from a living death at the hands of the Lumber Trust and the allied commercial bodies of the Pacific Coast. "It was the solidarity of the working class, and that alone, which brought about this great victory for labor, so let us turn fresh from victory, with determined hearts and unquellable spirit to unflinchingly continue the struggle for the liberation of all prisoners of the class war, remembering always that greatest expression of solidarity, 'An injury to one, is an injury to all.' "THE EVERETT PRISONERS DEFENSE COMMITTEE. THOMAS MURPHY, CHARLES ASHLEIGH, WM. J. HOUSER, RICHARD SMITH, HERBERT MAHLER, Sec'y-Treas." Seattle, Wash., June 12th, 1917. CHAPTER X. THE BANKRUPTCY OF "LAW AND ORDER" The facts in this case speak pretty well for themselves. To draw conclusions at length would be an impertinence. He who runs may read the signs of decay of Capitalism, the crumbling of a social system based upon the slavery and degradation of the vast majority of mankind. And from the lips of the prosecution counsel--the Voice of the State--we have the open and frank acknowledgement of the bankruptcy of law and order, the failure of government as it is now administered. It is no part of this work to attack The Law. The Law is august, majestic in its impartial findings and the equality of its judgements, always however with due allowance for those subtle distinctions so incomprehensible to the masses which exist between high finance, kleptomania and theft. The Law strips no one of his possessions; under its beneficent reign the rich retain their wealth and the poor keep their poverty. Founded on dogma and moulded by tradition, The Law stands as a mighty monument to Justice. It is ever in this way that we show our respect and reverence for the dead. Being an outgrowth of precedent it gains added sanctity with each fresh proof of antiquity, differing in this regard from automobiles, eggs, women, hats, the six best sellers, and the commoner things of life. Surrounded by mysticism, surcharged with the language of the dead, and sustained by force, who is there would have the temerity to question the sanctity of The Law? It remained for Attorneys Black and Cooley--and not for the outcast industrial unionists, socialists or anarchists--to charge that The Law is a bankrupt institution, and it was for the citizen-deputies--and not for the despised workers--to prove the truth of the indictment. Truly Society moves in a mysterious way its blunders to reform! With the true logic of the counting-house Cooley admitted that the mill owners had formed a mob to protect themselves from the rabble, they had pursued illegal methods to prevent the breaking of The Law, they had jailed men in order to preserve Liberty, they had even blacklisted union men in order to give to every man the right to work where, when and for whom he pleased. There is no escaping such logic if one owns property. Of course those who possess no property are the natural enemies of property, and law being based upon property, they are defiers of The Law, and Society being upheld only by observance of The Law, they are the foes of Society. It is not best to kill them in too large numbers for they are useful in doing the work of the world, but they must be kept in fear and trembling of The Law and made to respect it as sacred and inviolable, even if we do not. So argued Black and Cooley. But the whine of Black, the snarl of Cooley, the moody silence of Veitch, alike served as a confession that "law and order" was a failure. The plea of the State was that all law is the creature of property and when the power of the law proves inadequate in its function of protecting the accumulations of wealth the possessors of property are justified in supplementing The Law with such additional physical or brute force as they can muster, or in casting aside The Law altogether, as it suits their convenience. To the workers The Law must remain sacred while to the leisure class Property is the thing to worship, for however much robbery is to be condemned, the proceeds of robbery are always to be respected. Their further contention was that the streets are for traffic, for maintaining commerce, in other words to aid in the gathering of property and to enhance the property values already cleared. Out of the graciousness of their hearts the business men and employers allow the pedestrians to use the streets incidental to the purchase of goods or to journey to and from their tasks in the factories, mines, mills and workshops. That the streets might be used for social, religious, political or educational purposes does not enter their calculations, their ledgers carry no place for such entries on the profit side. Free speech is tolerated at times provided nothing of importance is said. Two trials were going on in the court room at the same time; that of Thomas H. Tracy and the I. W. W. before a property-qualified jury, and that of the existing system of law enforcement before the great jury of the working class. And just as surely as was the verdict that of acquittal for Tracy and his union, was there a most decided judgment of Guilty upon "law and order." For Tracy was not freed by the law but by the common sense of the jury who refused to consider him guilty and viewed him as a class rather than as an individual. Under the existing conspiracy laws he might well have been considered technically guilty. But "law and order" technically and otherwise was proven guilty, and the charge that Capitalism is guilty of first degree murder, and a host of other crimes, was clearly proven. Why? Why all the brutality depicted herein? Why? The answer is that we are living in an insane social system in which money ranks higher than manhood. To be more specific the outrages at Everett had their roots in the belief that the men who labor, and especially the migratory and the unskilled element, form an inferior caste or class to those who exploit them. The dominant class viewed any attempt to claim even the same civil rights as an assault upon their supremacy and integrity,--this to them being synonymous with social order and civilization. This is always more evident where a single industry dominates, as evidenced by the occurrences at Ludlow, in the coal district, Mesaba in the iron ore section, and Bisbee where copper is the main product. Everett controlled by the lumber interests clinches the argument. A community dominated by an industry, impelled by a desire for high profits; or under the spell of fear or passion, whether justified or not, cannot be restrained by law from a summary satisfaction of its desires or a quieting of its apprehensions. Before such a condition the fabric of local government crumbles and lynch law is substituted for the more orderly processes designed to attain the same end. The Everett outrages were no example of the rough and ready justice of primitive communities. The outlaws were in full possession of local government, legislative, judicial, and executive, yet they fell back upon brute force and personal violence and attempted to protect the lumber trust profits by tactics of terrorism. Insofar as the law can be wielded for their immediate purpose a capitalistic mob, such as these at Everett, will clothe their violence in the form of ostensible legal process, yet often the letter and the spirit of their own class-influenced laws will be ruthlessly thrust aside. They want law and order, efficacious, impartial, august, in the eyes of the general citizenry, but they want exemption of their class from the rule of the law on certain occasions. Strongly would they deny that all law is class law, made, interpreted and administered in behalf of a privileged property-owning class, yet the facts bear out this contention. The conception of impersonal and impartial legalism has been generally accepted along with traditional moral opinion and the naive belief in the excellence of competitive, individualistic, and unrestrained business. But this historical case has proven, as nothing else could prove, that these bonds are relaxing and the faith and formulas underlying the whole legal establishment are the subject of attack by an increasingly large and uncompromising army of dissenters. From the developments of the Everett situation one can sense the rising tide of industrial solidarity. It was the unity of the workers that won the great case. It will be the unity of Labor that will win the world for the workers, just as the embryonic democracy of the toilers in its blind groupings has already cracked the shell of the industrial autocracy of the present day. At present we are at the parting of the ways. There is not sufficient faith in the Law to hold the dying wage system together and there is not a sufficiently clear conception of the solidaric ideal of a new society to bind the rebellious elements to a definite program. So chaos reigns in society and events like those at Everett may be expected to arise until the struggle of the exploited takes on a more constructive form and develops the necessary power to overthrow capitalism and all its attendant institutions. Industrial unionism is the only hope of the disinherited and dispossessed proletariat. It is the voice of the future. It spells at once Evolution and Revolution. Its assured success means an end to classes and class rule and the rearing of a race of free individuals. The strength of the workers is in industry. Every worker, man, woman or child, has economic power. The control of industry means the control of the world. He who strives to bring the workers closer together so that their allied forces in an industrial organization may overthrow the wage system and rear in its place an Industrial Republic in which slavery will be unknown and where joy will form the mainspring of human activity, pays the highest homage to those who, in order that the spirit of Liberty might not perish from the land, gave their lives at Everett, Washington, on Sunday, November 5th, 1917: FELIX BARAN, HUGO GERLOT, GUSTAV JOHNSON, JOHN LOONEY, ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ. FINISH * * * * * SONGS Of The Workers The Latest I. W. W. SONG BOOK General Defense Edition Contains sixty-four pages of satirical, humorous and inspiring songs of labor. Parodies on the well known popular airs. Wherever the English language is spoken, there will be found countless numbers of workers singing these real rebel songs. [Illustration] PRICES Single Copies Ten Cents $5.00 a Hundred Address I. W. W. Publishing Bureau 1001 W. Madison St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * I. W. W. LITERATURE I. W. W. Publishing Bureau 1001 W. Madison St., Chicago Pamphlets at 10c Each, or 3.50 Per Hundred I. W. W. History, Structure & Methods (St. John), revised Industrial Unionism, the Road to Freedom (Ettor) The Evolution of Industrial Democracy (Woodruff) One Big Union, The Greatest Thing on Earth Advancing Proletariat (Woodruff) Patriotism and the Worker (Hervé) Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (Hanson) Red Down (Harrison George) Is Freedom Dead? Pamphlets at 10c Each, or $5.00 Per Hundred The I. W. W. Song Book. The General Strike (Haywood); also containing "The Last War." Proletarian and Petit Bourgeois (Lewis) The General Secretary's Report of the Tenth Convention Hotel, Restaurant and Domestic Workers (L. S. Chumley) Revolutionary Writings (Kelly Cole) Books at Various Prices The New Unionism (Tridon), 35c per copy 100 $25.00 Opening Statement of G. F. Vanderveer, 25c 100 20.00 Cloath Bound, 50c per copy 100 35.00 Testimony of William D. Haywood Before the Industrial Relations Commission, 15c 100 10.00 Trial of New Society (Ebert), 50c per copy 100 35.00 Proceedings 10th Convention, 50c per copy 100 35.00 The Everett Massacre, Cloath Bound, $1.00 100 75.00 Indictment, 25c per copy 100 20.00 I. W. W. Leaflets I. W. W. Industrial Unionism (St. John), 5c per copy 100 $1.00 High Cost of Living (Dougherty), 5c per copy 100 1.00 Metal and Machinery Workers (leaflet) 100 .25 To Colored Working Men and Women 100 .30 Songs and Music by Joe Hill 25c copy; 5 for $1.00; 10 or more, 15c each. Workers of the World, Awaken! The Rebel Girl. Don't Take My Papa Away from Me. 
34060	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) PRISONERS OF POVERTY WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS, THEIR TRADES AND THEIR LIVES. By HELEN CAMPBELL AUTHOR OF "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," ETC. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900 _Copyright, 1887_, BY HELEN CAMPBELL University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE PRISONERS OF POVERTY. "_Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once. We ask To put forth just our strength, our human strength. All starting fairly, all equipped alike, Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted,-- See if we cannot beat Thy angels yet._" "_Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind; There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder, Nor are the links not malleable that wind Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder; The hands are mighty were the head not blind. Priest is the staff of king, And chains and clouds one thing, And fettered flesh with devastated mind. Open thy soul to see, Slave, and thy feet are free. Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind, And of thy fears thine irons wrought, Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought._" PREFACE. The chapters making up the present volume were prepared originally as a series of papers for the Sunday edition of "The New York Tribune," and were based upon minutest personal research into the conditions described. Sketchy as the record may seem at points, it is a photograph from life; and the various characters, whether employers or employed, were all registered in case corroboration were needed. While research was limited to New York, the facts given are much the same for any large city, and thus have a value beyond their immediate application. No attempt at an understanding of the labor question as it faces us to-day can be successful till knowledge of its underlying conditions is assured. It is such knowledge that the writer has aimed to present; and it takes more permanent form, not only for the many readers whose steady interest has been an added demand for faithful work, but, it is hoped, for a circle yet unreached, who, whether agreeing or disagreeing with the conclusions, still know that to learn the struggle and sorrow of the workers is the first step toward any genuine help. ORANGE, NEW JERSEY, _March_, 1887. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER FIRST. WORKER AND TRADE 7 CHAPTER SECOND. THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY 18 CHAPTER THIRD. SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM 30 CHAPTER FOURTH. THE BARGAIN COUNTER 43 CHAPTER FIFTH. A FASHIONABLE DRESSMAKER 55 CHAPTER SIXTH. MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS 66 CHAPTER SEVENTH. NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL 76 CHAPTER EIGHTH. THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER 88 CHAPTER NINTH. THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET 100 CHAPTER TENTH. BETWEEN THE RIVERS 113 CHAPTER ELEVENTH. UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND 126 CHAPTER TWELFTH. ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS 139 CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO EXPERIMENTED 150 CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. THE WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS 160 CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS 173 CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. TWO HOSPITAL BEDS 186 CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK 199 CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK 210 CHAPTER NINETEENTH. DOMESTIC SERVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS 221 CHAPTER TWENTIETH. MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE 233 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. END AND BEGINNING 244 PRISONERS OF POVERTY. CHAPTER FIRST. WORKER AND TRADE. In that antiquity which we who only are the real ancients look back upon as the elder world, counting those days as old which were but the beginning of the time we reckon, there were certain methods with workers that centuries ago ceased to have visible form. The Roman matron, whose susceptibilities from long wear and tear in the observation of fighting gladiators and the other mild amusements of the period, were a trifle blunted, felt no compunction in ordering a disobedient or otherwise objectionable slave into chains, and thereafter claiming the same portion of work as had been given untrammelled. The routine of the day demanded certain offices; but how these offices should be most easily fulfilled was no concern of master or mistress, who required simply fulfilment, and wasted no time on consideration of methods. In the homes of Pompeii, once more open to the sun, are the underground rooms where wretched men and women bowed under the weight of fetters, whose corrosion was not only in weary flesh, but in the no less weary soul; and Rome itself can still show the same remnants of long-forgotten wrong and oppression. That day is over, and well over, we say. Only for a few barbarians still unreached by the march of civilization is any hint of such conditions possible, and even for them the days of darkness are numbered. And so the century moves on; and the few who question if indeed the bonds are quite broken, if civilization has civilized, and if men and women may claim in full their birthright of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are set down as hopeless carpers,--unpleasant, pragmatic, generally disagreeable objectors to things as they are. Or if it is admitted that there are defects here and there, and that much remains to be remedied, we are pointed with pride to the magnificent institutions of modern charity, where every possible want of all sorts and conditions of men is met and fulfilled. "What more would you have?" cries the believer in things as they are. "What is higher or finer than the beautiful spirit that has taken permanent form in brick and mortar? Never since time began has charity been on so magnificent a scale; never has it been so intelligent, so far-seeing. No saints of the past were ever more vowed to good works than these uncanonized saints of to-day who give their lives to the poor and count them well lost. Shame on man or woman who questions the beautiful work or dares hint that under this fair surface rottenness and all foulness still seethe and simmer!" It is not easy in the face of such feeling to affirm that, perfect as the modern system may be, beautiful as is much of the work accomplished, it still is wanting in one element, the lack of which has power to vitiate the whole. No good-will, no charity, however splendid, fills or can fill the place owned by that need which is forever first and most vital between man and man,--justice. No love, no labor, no self-sacrifice even, can balance that scale in which justice has no place. No knowledge nor wisdom nor any understanding that can come to man counts as force in the universe of God till that one word heads the list of all that must be known and loved and lived before ever the kingdom of heaven can begin upon earth. It is because this is felt and believed by a few as a compelling power, by many as a dimly comprehended need, so far in the shadow that its form is still unknown, that I begin to-day the search for the real presence. What I write will be no fanciful picture of the hedged-in lives the conditions of which I began, many years ago, to study. If names are withheld, and localities not always indicated, it is not because they are not recorded in full, ready for reference or any required corroboration. Where the facts make against the worker, they are given with as minute detail as where they make against the employer. The one aim in the investigation has been and is to tell the truth simply, directly, and in full, leaving it for the reader to determine what share is his or hers in the evil or in the good that the methods of to-day may hold. That our system of charities and corrections is unsurpassable does not touch the case of the worker who wants no charity and needs no correction. It is something beyond either that must be understood. Till the methods of the day are analyzed, till one has defined justice, asked what claim it makes upon the personal life of man and woman, and mastered every detail that render definition more possible, the questions that perplex even the most conservative can have no solution for this generation or for any generation to come. To help toward such solution is the one purpose of all that will follow. In the admirable report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1885, made under the direction of Mr. Charles Peck, whose name is already the synonyme for careful and intelligent work, the number of working-women in New York is given as very nearly two hundred thousand. Investigations of the same nature have been made at other points, notably Boston, in the work of Mr. Carroll D. Wright, one of the most widely known of our statisticians. But neither Boston nor any other city of the United States offers the same facilities or gives as varied a range of employment as is to be found in New York, where grinding poverty and fabulous wealth walk side by side, and where the "life limit" in wages was established long before modern political economy had made the phrase current. This number does not include domestic servants, but is limited to actual handicrafts. Ninety-two trades are given as standing open to women to-day, and several have been added since the report was made. A lifetime would hardly be sufficient for a detailed examination of every industry in the great city, but it is quite possible to form a just judgment of the quality and character of all those which give employment to women. The city which affords the largest percentage of habitual drunkards, as well as the largest number of liquor saloons to the mile, is naturally that in which most women are forced to seek such means of subsistence may be had. The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined. That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is the one most overcrowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in some of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence; and the woman with drunken or otherwise vicious husband, more helpless often than the widow who turns in the same direction, seeks the same sources of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some reference, employment is often found by her in factory or some large establishments where regular workers have place. But if, as is often the case, the need for work arises from the death or the evil habits of the natural head of the family, fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that often the only clothing left is on the back of the worker, in the last stages of demoralization; and the sole method of securing work is through the middle-men or "sweaters," who ask no questions and require no reference, but make as large a profit for themselves as can be wrung from the helplessness and the bitter need of those with whom they reckon. The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support is limited to the needle, whether in machine or hand work, fourfold. (1) Her own incompetency must very often head the list and prevent her from securing first-class work; (2) middle-men or sweaters lower the price to starvation point; (3) contract work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and (4) she is underbid from still another quarter, that of the country woman who takes the work at any price offered. These conditions govern the character and quality of the work obtained, even the best firms being somewhat affected by the last two clauses. And in every trade there may always be found three distinct classes of employers: the west-side firms, which in many cases care for their workmen, in degree at least, and where the work is done under conditions that must be called favorable; the east-side firms, representing generally cheaper material and lower rates; and last, the slop-work, which may be either east or west, most often the former, and includes every form of outrage and oppression that workers can know. Clothing in all its multiplied forms takes the first place in the ninety-two trades, and the workers on what is known as "white wear" form the large majority of the always increasing army. For many reasons, the shirt-makers naturally head the list,--the shirt-makers about whom has hung a certain sentimental interest since the day when poor Tom Hood's impassioned plea in their behalf first saw the light. Yet to-day, in spite of popular belief that they are the class most grossly wronged, the shirt-maker fares far better than the majority of the workers on any other form of clothing. This always, however, if she is fortunate enough to have direct relation with some large factory, or with an establishment which gives out the work directly into the hands of the women themselves. Given these conditions, it is possible for a first-class operator to make from seven to twelve dollars per week, the latter sum being certain only in the factories where steam is the motive power and where experience has given the utmost facility in handling the work. In one factory on the west side, employing some one hundred and fifty girls, and where everything had been brought to almost mathematical accuracy, the price paid per dozen for shirts was $2.40. But one of the operatives was able to make a dozen a day, her usual average being about nine, or five dozen per week of sixty hours. Here every condition was exceptionally favorable. The building occupied the centre of a small square, and thus had light on all sides; ventilation was good; and the forewoman, on whose intelligence and good disposition much of the comfort of the operatives depends, was far beyond the average woman in this position. The working day was ten hours, with half an hour for dinner, and the sanitary conditions more favorable than in any other establishment of the same size. Many of the operatives had been there for years, and the dull season, common to all phases of the clothing trade, was never marked enough here to produce discharges or materially lessen production. The wages averaged seven dollars per week, though the laundry women and finishers seldom exceeded five. No middle-men were employed, and none of the customary exactions in the way of fines and other impositions were practised. Piece-work was regarded as the only secure method for both employer and employed, as in such case it rested with the girl herself to make the highest or the lowest rate at pleasure. There were no holidays beyond the legal ones, but all the freedom possible to constant labor was given, the place representing the best conditions of this special industry. Another firm quite as well known and employing equal number of workers had found it more expedient to give up the factory system, and simply retained rooms for cutting and general handling of the completed work, giving it out in packages to workers at home. One woman employed by them for seven years had never made anything but the button-holes in the small piece attached to the bosom, and such fine lettering as was ordered for custom shirts, her wages in the busy season being often twelve dollars a week, the year's average, however, bringing them to seven. She worked exclusively at home, and represented the best paid and most comfortable phase of the industry. Descending a step, and turning to establishments on the east side, one found every phase of sanitary condition, including under this head bad ventilation, offensive odors, facilities for washing, quality of drinking water, position of water-closets, length of time allowed for lunch, length of working day, etc. Here the quality of the work was lower, material, thread, and sewing being all of an order to be expected from the price of the completed garment, ranging from forty to sixty cents. The wages, however, did not fall so far below the average as might be expected, the operator earning from five to eight dollars a week during the busy season. But the greater number of manufacturers on both east and west sides of the city turn over the work to middle-men, or send it to the country, many factories being run in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where rents are merely nominal. This proved to be the case with several firms whose names represent a large business, but who find less trouble and more profit in the contract system. Still another method has gone far toward reducing the rates of payment to the city worker, and this is the giving out the work in packages to the wives and daughters of farmers in the outlying country. These women, having homes, and thus no rent or general expenses to meet, take the work at rates which for the city operators mean simply starvation, and thus prices are kept down, and one more stumbling-block put in the way of the unprotected worker. Careful examination of this phase shows that the applicants, many of whom give assumed names, work simply for the sake of pin-money, which is expended in dress. Now and then it is a case of want, and often that of a woman who, failing to make her husband see that she has any right to an actual cash share in what the work of her own hands has helped to earn, turns to this as the only method of securing some slight personal income. But for the most part, it is only for pin-money; and no argument could convince these earners that their work is in any degree illegitimate or fraught with saddest consequences to those who, because of it, receive just so much the less. Nor would it be possible to bring such argument to bear. To earn seems the inalienable right of any who are willing to work, and the result of methods will never be questioned by employer or employed, unless they are forced to it by more powerful considerations than any at present brought forward. I have chosen to give these details minutely because they are, practically, the summing up, not only for shirt-making, but for every trade which can be said to come under the head of clothing, whether for men, women, or children,--this including every form of trimming or other adornment used in dress from artificial flowers to gimps, fringes, and buttons. And now, having given this general outline, we may pass to the stories of the units that make up this army,--stories chosen from quarters where doubt is impossible, and confirmed often by the unwilling testimony of those from whom the work has come, giving with them also the necessary details of the trades they may represent, and seeking first, last, and always, only the actual facts that make up the life of the worker. CHAPTER SECOND. THE CASE OF ROSE HAGGERTY. "The case of Rose Haggerty." So it stands on the little record-book in which long ago certain facts began to have place, each one a count in the indictment of the civilization of to-day, and each one the story not only of Rose but of many another in like case. For the student of conditions among working-women soon discovers that workers divide themselves naturally into four classes: (1) those who have made deliberate choice of a trade, fitted themselves carefully for it, and in time become experts, certain of employment and often of becoming themselves employers; (2) those who by death of relatives or other accident of fortune have been thrown upon their own resources and accept blindly the first means of support that offers, sometimes developing unexpected power and meeting with the same success as the first class; (3) those who have known no other life but that of work, and who accept that to which they most incline with neither energy nor ability enough to rise beyond a certain level; and (4) those who would not work at all save for the pressure of poverty, and who make no effort to gain more knowledge or to improve conditions. But the ebb and flow in this great sea of toiling humanity wipes out all dividing lines, and each class so shades into the next that formal division becomes impossible, but is rather a series of interchanges with no confinement to fixed limits. Often in passing from one trade to another, chance brings about much the same result for each class, and no energy or patience of effort is sufficient to check the inevitable descent into the valley of the shadow, where despair walks forever hand in hand with endeavor. This time had by no means come for Rose, with just enough of her happy-go-lucky father's nature to make her essentially optimistic. Born in a Cherry Street tenement-house, she had refused to be killed by semi-starvation or foul smells, or dirt of any nature whatsoever. Dennis Haggerty, longshoreman professionally, and doer of all odd jobs in the intervals of his discharges and re-engagements, explained the situation to his own satisfaction, if not to that of Rose and the five other small Haggertys remaining from the brood of twelve. "If a man wants his dhrink that bad that no matter what he's said overnight he'd sell his soul by the time mornin' comes for even a thimbleful, he's got jist to go to destruction, an' there's no sthoppin' him. An' I've small call to be blamin' Norah whin she comforts herself a bit in the same manner of way, nor will I so long's me name's Dennis Haggerty. But you, Rose, you look out an' get any money you'll find in me pockets, an' keep the children straight, an' all the saints'll see you through the job." Rose listened, the laugh in her blue eyes shadowed by the sense of responsibility that by seven was fully developed. She did not wonder that her mother drank. Why not, when there was no fire in the stove, and nothing to cook if there had been, and the children counted it a day when they had a scraping of butter on the bread? But, as often happens in these cases, the disgust at smell and taste of liquor grew with every month of her life, and two at least of the children shared it. They were never beaten; for Haggerty at his worst remained good-natured, and when sober wept maudlin tears over his flock and swore that no drop should ever pass his lips again; and Norah echoed every word, and for days perhaps washed and scrubbed and scoured, earning fair wages, and gradually redeeming the clothes or furniture pledged round the corner. Rose went to school when she had anything to wear, and learned in time, when she saw the first symptoms of another debauch, to bundle every wearable thing together and take them and all small properties to the old shoemaker on the first floor, where they remained in hiding till it was safe to produce them again. She had learned this and many another method before the fever which suddenly appeared in early spring took not only her father and mother, but the small Dennis whose career as newsboy had been her pride and delight, and who had been relied upon as half at least of their future dependence. There remained, then, Norah, hopelessly incurable of spinal disease and helpless to move save as Rose lifted her, and the three little ones, as to whose special gifts there was as yet no definite knowledge. In the mean time they were simply three very clamorous mouths to be stopped with such food as might be; and Rose entered a bag-factory a block away, leaving bread and knife and molasses-pitcher by Norah's bed, and trusting the saints to avert disaster from the three experimenting babies. She earned the first month ten dollars, or two and a half a week, but being exceptionally quick, was promoted in the second to four dollars weekly. The rent was six dollars a month; and during the first one the old shoemaker came to the rescue, had an occasional eye to the children, and himself paid the rent, telling Rose to return it when she could. When the ten hours' labor ended, the child, barely fourteen, rushed home to cook something warm for supper, and when the children were comforted and tucked away in the wretched old bed, that still was clean and decent, washed and mended their rags of clothes, and brought such order as she could into the forlorn room. It was the old shoemaker, a patient, sad-eyed old Scotchman, who also had his story, who settled for her at last that a machine must be had in order that she might work at home. The woman in the room back of his took in shirts from a manufacturer on Division Street, and made often seven and eight dollars a week. She was ready to teach, and in two or three evenings Rose had practically mastered details, and settled that, as she was so young, she would not apply for work in person, but take it through Mrs. Moloney, who would be supposed to have gone into business on her own account as a "sweater." Whatever temptations Mrs. Moloney may have had to make a little profit as "middle-man," she resisted and herself saw that the machine selected was a good one; that no advantage was taken of Rose's inexperience; and that the agent had no opportunity to follow out what had now and then been his method, and hint to the girl that her pretty face entitled her to concessions that would be best made in a private interview. Shame in every possible form and phase had been part of the girl's knowledge since babyhood, but it had slipped away from her, as a foul garment might fall from the fair statue over which it had chanced to be thrown. It was not the innocence of ignorance,--a poor possession at best. It was an ingrained repulsion, born Heaven knows how, and growing as mysteriously with her growth, an invisible yet most potent armor, recognized by every dweller in the swarming tenement. She had her father's quick tongue and laughing eyes, but they could flash as well, and the few who tried a coarse jest shrunk back from both look and scorching word. Thus far all went well with the poor little fortunes. She worked always ten and twelve, sometimes fourteen, hours a day, yet her strength did not fail, and there was no dearth of work. It was in 1880, and prices were nearly double the present rates. To-day work from the same establishment means not over $4.50 per week, and has even fallen as low as $3.50. In 1880 the shirts were given out by the dozen as at present, going back to the factory to pass through the hands of the finisher and buttonhole maker. The machine operator could make nine of the best class of shirts in a day of ten hours, being paid for them at the rate of $1.75 per dozen. Four spools of cotton, two hundred yards each, were required for a dozen, the price of which must be deducted from the receipts; but the firm preferred to supply twenty-four-hundred-yard spools, at fifty cents for six-cord cotton used for the upper thread, and thirty cents for the three-cord cotton used as under thread, the present prices for same quality and size being respectively forty-five and twenty-five cents. Making nine a day, the week's wages would be for the four dozen and a half $7.87, or $7.50 deducting thread; but Rose averaged five dozen weekly, and for nearly two years counted herself as certain of not less than thirty dollars per month and often thirty-five. The machine had been paid for. The room took on as comfortable a look as its dingy walls and narrow windows would allow; and Bridget, age five, had developed distinct genius for housekeeping, and washed dishes and faces with equal energy and enthusiasm. She did all errands also, and could not be cheated in the matter of change. She knew where the largest loaves were to be had, and sniffed suspiciously at the packets of tea. "By the time she's seven, she'll do all but the washing," Rose said with pride, and Bridget reverted to childhood for an instant, and spun round on one foot as she made answer:-- "Shure, I could now, if you'd only be lettin' me." "There's women on the west side that'll earn $2.50 a dozen, for work no better than you're doing now," some one who had come from that quarter said to her one day, but Rose shook her head. There is a curious conservatism among these workers, who cling to familiar haunts and regard unknown regions with suspicion and even terror. "I've no time for change," Rose said. "It might not be as certain when I'd got it. I'll run no risks;" and she tugged her great bundle of work up the stairs, rejoicing that living so near saved just so much on expressage, a charge paid by the workers themselves. There were signs well known to the old hands of a probable reduction of prices, weeks before the first cut came. More fault was found. A slipped stitch or a break in the thread was pounced upon with even more promptness than had been their usual portion. Some hands were discharged, and at last came the general cut, resented by some, wailed over by all, but accepted as inevitable. Another, and another, and another followed. Too much production; too many Jew firms competing and under-bidding; more and more foreigners coming in ready to take the work at half price. These reasons and a dozen others of the same order were given glibly, and at first with a certain show of kindliness and attempt to soften harsh facts as much as possible. But the patience of diplomacy soon failed, and questioners of all orders were told that if they did not like it they had nothing to do but to leave and allow a crowd of waiting substitutes to take their places at half rates. The shirt that had sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar had gone down to forty-five and sixty cents respectively, and as cottons and linens had fallen in the same proportion, there was still profit for all but the worker. Here and there were places on Grand or Division Streets where they might even be bought for thirty and forty cents, the price per dozen to the worker being at last from fifty to sixty cents. In the factories it was still possible to earn some approximation to the old rate, but employers had found that it was far cheaper to give out the work; some choosing to give the entire shirt at so much per dozen; others preferring to send out what is known as "team work," flaps being done by one, bosoms by another, and so on. For a time Rose hemmed shirt-flaps at four cents a dozen, then took first one form and then another of underclothing, the rates on which had fallen in the same proportion, to find each as sure a means of starvation as the last. She had no knowledge of ordinary family sewing, and no means of obtaining such work, had any training fitted her for it; domestic service was equally impossible for the same reason, and the added one that the children must not be left, and she struggled on, growing a little more haggard and worn with every week, but the pretty eyes still holding a gleam of the old merriment. Even that went at last. It was a hard winter. The steadiest work could not give them food enough or warmth enough. The children cried with hunger and shivered with cold. There was no refuge save in Norah's bed, under the ragged quilts; and they cowered there till late in the day, watching Rose as she sat silent at the sewing-machine. There was small help for them in the house. The workers were all in like case, and for the most part drowned their troubles in stale beer from the bucket-shop below. "Put the children in an asylum, and then you can marry Mike Rooney and be comfortable enough," they said to her, but Rose shook her head. "I've mothered 'em so far, and I'll see 'em through," she said, "but the saints only knows how. If I can't do it by honest work, there's one way left that's sure, an' I'll try that." There came a Saturday night when she took her bundle of work, shirts again, and now eighty-five cents a dozen. There were five dozen, and when the $1.50 was laid aside for rent it was easy to see what remained for food, coal, and light. Clothing had ceased to be part of the question. The children were barefoot. They had a bit of meat on Sundays, but for the rest, bread, potatoes, and tea were the diet, with a cabbage and bit of pork now and then for luxuries. Norah had been failing, and to-night Rose planned to buy her "something with a taste to it," and looked at the sausages hanging in long links with a sudden reckless determination to get enough for all. She was faint with hunger, and staggered as she passed a basement restaurant, from which came savory smells, snuffed longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was long in coming, and as she laid her bundle on the counter she saw suddenly that her needle had "jumped," and that half an inch or so of a band required resewing. As she looked the foreman's knife slipped under the place, and in a moment half the band had been ripped. "That's no good," he said. "You're getting botchier all the time." "Give it to me," Rose pleaded. "I'll do it over." "Take it if you like," he said indifferently, "but there's no pay for that kind o' work." He had counted her money as he spoke, and Rose cried out as she saw the sum. "Do you mean you'll cheat me of the whole dozen because half an inch on one is gone wrong?" "Call it what you like," he said. "R. & Co. ain't going to send out anything but first-class work. Stand out of the way and let the next have a chance. There's your three dollars and forty cents." Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost her work altogether, but as she left the dark stairs and felt again the cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals. She turned toward it as the thought came, but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly and tried to wrench away. "Easy now," a voice said. "You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, an' that's more 'n it'll be in the mornin' if you don't take me in tow." It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked with him toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty years, and it had been a vain struggle. She took his money when morning came, and went home with the look that is on her face to-day. "I'll marry you out of hand," the sailor said to her; but Rose answered, "No man alive'll ever marry me after this night," and she has kept her word. She has her trade, and it is a prosperous one, in which wages never fail. The children are warm and have no need to cry for hunger any more. "It's not a long life we live," Rose says quietly. "My kind die early, but the children will be well along, an' all the better when the time comes that they've full sense for not having to know what way the living comes. But let God Almighty judge who's to blame most--I that was driven, or them that drove me to the pass I'm in." CHAPTER THIRD. SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM. "The emancipation of women is certainly well under way, when all underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more difficult for a woman to clothe herself without thought or worry, than it has long been for a man." This was the word heard at a woman's club not long ago, and reinforced within the week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of women at large. The editorial page of one held a fervid appeal for greater simplicity of dress and living in general, followed by half a column of entreaty to women to buy ready-made clothing, and thus save time for higher pursuits and the attainment of broader views. With feebler pipe, but in the same key, sounded the second advocate of simplification, adding:-- "Never was there a time when women could dress with as much real elegance on as small an expenditure of money. Bargains abound, and there is small excuse for dowdiness. The American woman is fast taking her place as the best-dressed woman in the civilized world." Believing very ardently that the right of every woman born includes not only "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but beauty also, it being one chief end of woman to include in her own personality all beauty attainable by reasonable means, I am in heartiest agreement with one side of the views quoted. But in this quest we have undertaken, and from which, once begun, there is no retreat, strange questions arise; and in this new dawn of larger liberty and wider outlook is seen the little cloud which, if no larger than a man's hand, holds the seed of as wild a storm as has ever swept over humanity. For emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of ordinary home sewing, marvelling a little that a few dollars can give such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life-blood is on these garments. Through burning, scorching days of summer; through marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags, with white-faced children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil on, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done. The slice of baker's bread and the bowl of rank black tea, boiled to extract every possibility of strength, are taken, still at the machine. It is easier to sit there than in rising and movement to find what weariness is in every limb. There is always a child old enough to boil the kettle and run for a loaf of bread; and all share the tea, which gives a fictitious strength, laying thus the foundation for the fragile, anæmic faces and figures to be found among the workers in the bag-factories, paper-box manufactories, etc. "Why don't they go into the country?" is often asked. "Why do they starve in the city when good homes and ample pay are waiting for them?" It is not with the class to whom this question is applicable that we deal to-day. Of the army of two hundred thousand who battle for bread, nearly a third have no resource but the needle, and of this third many thousands are widows with children, to whom they cling with a devotion as strong as wiser mothers feel, and who labor night and day to prevent the scattering into asylums, and consequent destruction of the family as a family. They are widows through many causes that can hardly be said to come under the head of "natural." Drunkenness leads, and the thousand accidents that are born of drunkenness, but there are other methods arising from the same greed that underlies most modern civilization. The enormous proportion of accidents, which, if not killing instantly, imply long disability and often death as the final result, come nine tenths of the time from criminal disregard of any ordinary means of protecting machinery. One great corporation, owning thousands of miles of railroad, saw eight hundred men disabled in greater or less degree in one year, and still refused to adopt a method of coupling cars which would have saved the lives of the sixty-eight brakemen who were sacrificed to the instinct of economy dominating the superintendent. The same man refused to roof over a spot where a number of freight-handlers were employed during a stormy season, rheumatism and asthma being the consequences for many, and his reason had at least the merit of frankness,--a merit often lacking in explanations that, even when most plausible, cover as essential a brutality of nature. "Men are cheaper than shingles," he said. "There's a dozen waiting to fill the place of one that drops out." In another case, in a great saw-mill, the owner had been urged to protect a lath-saw, swearing at the persistent request, even after the day when one of his best men was led out to the ambulance, his right hand hanging by a bit of skin, his death from lockjaw presently leaving one more widow to swell the number. It is of such men that a sturdy thinker wrote last year, "Man is a self-damnable animal," and it is on such men that the curse of the worker lies heaviest. That they exist at all is hardly credited by the multitude who believe that, for this country at least, oppression and outrage are only names. That they exist in numbers will be instantly denied; yet to one who has heard the testimony given by weeping women, and confirmed by the reluctant admissions of employers themselves, there comes belief that no words can fully tell what wrong is still possible from man to man in this America, the hope of nations. Is this a digression hardly to be pardoned in a paper on the trades and lives of women,--a deliberate turning toward an issue which has neither place nor right in such limits? On the contrary, it is all part of the same wretched story. The chain that binds humanity in one has not one set of links for men and another for women; and the blow aimed at one is felt also not only by those nearest, but by successive ranks to whom the shock, though only by indirect transmission, is none the less deadly in effect. And thus the wrong done on the huge scale appropriate to a great corporation finds its counterpart in a lesser but quite as well organized a wrong, born also of the spirit of greed, and working its will as pitilessly. "If you employed on a large scale you would soon find that you ceased to look at your men as men," said an impatient iron-worker not long ago. "They are simply so much producing power. I don't propose to abuse them, but I've no time even to remember their faces, much less their names." Precisely on this principle reasons the employer of women, who are even less to be regarded as personalities than men. For the latter, once a year at least the employer becomes conscious of the fact that these masses of "so much producing power" are resolvable into votes, and on election day, if on no other, worthy of analysis. There is no such necessity in the case of women. The swarming crowd of applicants are absolutely at the mercy of the manager or foreman, who, unless there is a sudden pressure of work, makes the selections according to fancy, youth and any gleam of prettiness being unfailing recommendations. There are many firms of which this could not be said with any justice. There are many more in which it is the law, tacitly laid down, but none the less a fact. With such methods of selection go other methods supposed to be confined to the lowest grade of work and the lowest type of employer, both being referred to regions like Baxter or Division Streets. But they are to be found east or west indifferently, the illustration at present in mind being on Canal Street, within sound of Broadway. It is a prosperous firm, one whose trade-mark can be trusted; and here are a few of the methods by which this prosperity has been attained, and goes on in always-increasing ratio. In the early years of their existence as a firm they manufactured on the premises, but, like many other firms, found that it was a very unnecessary expense. A roof over the heads of a hundred or more women, with space for their machines, meant not less than twenty-five hundred dollars a year to be deducted from the profits. Even floors in some cheaper quarter were still an expense to be avoided if possible. The easy way out of the difficulty was to make the women themselves pay the rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the less certainly in fact. Nothing could be simpler. Manufacturing on the premises had only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the women that they were allowed to work at home. The rule established itself at once, and the firm, smiling serenely at the stoppage of this most damaging and most unnecessary leak, proceeded to make fresh discoveries of equally satisfactory possibilities. To each woman who applied for work it was stated:-- "We send all packages from the cutting-room by express, the charges to be paid by you. It's a small charge, only fifteen cents, to be paid when the bundle comes in." "We can come for ours. We live close by. We don't want to lose the fifteen cents," a few objected, but the answer was invariable:-- "It suits us best to make up the packages in the cutting-room, and if you don't like the arrangement there are plenty waiting that it will suit well enough." Plenty waiting! How well they knew it, and always more and more as the ships came in, and the great tide of "producing power" flowed through Castle Garden, and stood, always at high-water mark, in the wards where cheap labor may be found. Plenty waiting; and these women who could not wait went home and turned over their small store of pennies for the fifteen cents, the payment of which meant either a little less bread or an hour or two longer at the sewing-machine, defined as the emancipator of women. In the mean time the enterprising firm had made arrangements with a small express company to deliver the packages at twelve cents each, and could thus add to the weekly receipts a clear gain of three cents per head. It is unnecessary to add that they played into each other's hands, and that the wagon-drivers had no knowledge of anything beyond the fact that they were to collect the fifteen cents and turn it over to their superiors. But in some manner it leaked out; and a driver whose feelings had been stirred by the sad face of a little widow on Sixth Street told her that the fifteen cents was "a gouge," and they had all better put their heads together and refuse to pay more than twelve cents. "If we had any heads, it might do to talk about putting them together," the little widow said bitterly. "For my part, I begin to believe women are born fools, but I'll see what I can do." This "seeing" involved earning a dollar or two less for the week, but the cheat seemed so despicable a one that indignation made her reckless, and she went to the woman who had first directed her to the firm and had been in its employ almost from the beginning. "It's like 'em; oh, yes, it's like 'em!" she said, "but we've no time to spend in stirring up things, and you know well enough what would be the end of it if we did,--discharged, and somebody else getting our wages. You'd better not talk too much if you want to keep your place." "That isn't any worse than the thread dodge," another woman said. "I know from a clerk in the house where they buy their thread, that they charge us five cents a dozen more than it costs them, though they make a great point of giving it to us at cost and cheaper than we could buy it ourselves." "Why don't you club together and buy, then?" the little widow asked, to hear again the formula, "And get your walking-ticket next day? We know a little better than that." A few weeks later a new system of payment forced each worker to sacrifice from half an hour to an hour of precious time, her only capital. Hitherto payments had been made at the desk when work was brought in, but now checks were given on a Bowery bank, and the women must walk over in heat and storm alike, and wait their turn in the long line on the benches. If paid by the week this would make little difference, as any loss of time would be the employers', but this form of payment is practically abolished, piece-work done at home meaning the utmost amount of profit to the employer, every loss in time being paid by the workers themselves. When questioned as to why the check system of payment had been adopted by this and various other firms, the reply was simply:-- "It saves trouble. The bank has more time to count out money than we have." "But the women? Does it seem quite fair that they should be the losers?" "Fair? Anything's fair in business. You'd find that out if you undertook to do it." As the case then at present stands, for this firm, and for many which have adopted the same methods, the working-woman not only pays the rent that would be required for a factory, but gives them a profit on expressage, thread, time lost in going to bank, and often the price on a dozen of garments, payment for the dozen being deducted by many foremen if there is a flaw in one. This foreman becomes the scapegoat if unpleasant questions are asked by any whose investigation might bring discredit on the firm. In some cases they refuse positively to give any information, but in most, questions are answered with suspicious glibness, and if reference is made to any difficulties encountered by the women in their employ, they take instant refuge in the statement:-- "Oh, that was before the last foreman left. We discharged him as soon as we found out how he had served the women." "Do you see those goods?" another asked, pointing to a counter filled with piles of chemises. "How do you suppose we make a cent when you can buy a chemise like that for fifty cents? We don't. The competition is ruining us, and we're talking of giving up the business." "That's so. It's really more in charity to the women than anything else that we go on," his partner remarked, with a look toward him which seemed to hold a million condensed winks. "That price is just ruin; that's what it is." Undoubtedly, but not for the firm, as the following figures will show,--figures given by a competent forewoman in a large establishment where she had had eleven years' experience: twenty-seven yards and three-quarters are required for one dozen chemises, the price paid for such cotton as is used in one selling at fifty cents being five cents per yard, or $1.40 for the whole amount; thirty yards of edging at 4-1/2 cents a yard furnishes trimming for the dozen, at $1.35; and four two-hundred-yard spools of cotton are required, at twenty-five cents per dozen, or eight cents per dozen garments. The seamer who sews up and hems the bodies of the garments receives thirty cents a dozen, and the "maker"--this being the technical term for the more experienced worker who puts on band and sleeves--receives from ninety cents to one dollar a dozen, though at present the rates run from seventy-five to ninety cents. Our table, then, stands as follows:-- Cloth for one dozen chemises $1.40 Edging " " 1.35 Thread " " .08 Seamer " " .30 Maker " " .90 ----- Total cost of dozen $4.03 Wholesale price per dozen 5.25 Profit per dozen 1.22 The chemise which sells at seven dollars per dozen has the additional value in quality of cloth and edging, the same price being paid the work-women, this price varying only in very slight degree till the excessively elaborate work demanded by special orders. One class of women in New York, whose trade has been a prosperous one since ever time began, pay often one hundred dollars a dozen for the garments, which are simply a mass of lace and cobweb cambric, tucked and puffed, and demanding the highest skill of the machine operator, who even in such case counts herself happy if she can make eight or nine dollars a week. And if any youth and comeliness remain to her, why need there be wonder if the question frame itself: "Why am I the maker of this thing, earning barest living, when, if I choose, I, too, can be buyer and wearer and live at ease?" Wonder rather that one remains honest when the only thing that pays is vice. For the garments of lowest grade to be found in the cheapest quarters of the city the price ranges from twenty-five to thirty cents, the maker receiving only thirty cents a dozen, and cloth, trimming, and thread being of the lowest quality. The profit in such case is wellnigh imperceptible; but for the class of employer who secures it, content to grovel in foul streets, and know no joy of living save the one delight of seeing the sordid gains roll up into hundreds of thousands, it is still profit, and he is content. As I write, an evening paper containing the advertisement of a leading dry-goods firm is placed before me, and I read: "Chemises, from 12-1/2 cents up." Here imagination stops. No list of cost prices within my reach tells me how this is practicable. But one thing is certain. Even here it is not the employer who loses; and if it is a question of but a third of a cent profit, be sure that that profit is on his side, never on the side of the worker. CHAPTER FOURTH. THE BARGAIN COUNTER. The problem of the last chapter is, if not plain, at least far plainer than when it left the pen, and it has become possible to understand how the garment sold at twelve and a half cents may still afford its margin of profit. It has also been made plain that that profit is, as there stated, "never on the side of the worker," but that it is wrung from her by the sharpest and most pitiless of all the methods known to unscrupulous men and the women who have chosen to emulate them. For it has been my evil fortune in this quest to find women not only as filled with greed and as tricky and uncertain in their methods as the worst class of male employers, but even more ingenious in specific modes of imposition. Without exception, so far as I can discover, they have been workers themselves, released for a time it may be by marriage, but taking up the trade again, either from choice or necessity. They have learned every possibility of cheating. They know also far better than men every possibility of nagging, and as they usually own a few machines they employ women on their own premises and keep a watchful eye lest the smallest advantage be gained. The majority prefer to act as "sweaters," this releasing them from the uncertainties attending the wholesale manufacturer, and as the work is given to them at prices at or even below the "life limit," it is not surprising that those to whom they in turn pass it on find their percentage to mean something much nearer death than life. "Only blind eyes could have failed to see all this before," some reader is certain to say. "How is it possible that any one dealing directly with the question could doubt for a moment the existence of this and a thousand-fold worse fraud?" Only possible from the same fact that makes these papers a necessity. They hold only new phases of the old story. The grain has had not one threshing alone, but many, and yet for the most patient and persistent of searchers after truth is ever fresh surprise at its nature and extent. Given one or a dozen exposures of a fraud, and we settle instinctively into the conviction that its power has ended. It is barely conceivable to the honest mind that cheating has wonderful staying power, and that not one nor a thousand exposures will turn into straight paths feet used to crooked ones. And when a business man, born to all good things and owning a name known as the synonyme of the best the Republic offers to-day, states calmly, "There is no such thing as business without lying," what room remains for honor or justice or humanity among men whose theory is the same, and who can gild it with no advantage of birth or training? It is a wonderful century, and we are civilizing with a speed that takes away the breath and dims the vision, but there are dark corners still, and in the shadow Greed and Corruption and Shame hold high carnival, with nameless shapes, before which even civilization cowers. Their trace is found at every turn, but we deal with only one to-day, helpless, even when face to face, to say what method will most surely mean destruction. We settle so easily into the certainty that nothing can be as bad as it seems, that moments of despair come to all who would rouse men to action. Not one generation nor many can answer the call sounding forever in the ears of every son of man; but he who has heeded has at least made heeding more possible for those that follow; and the time comes at last when the way must be plain for all. To make it plainer many a popular conviction must be laid aside, and among them the one that follows. It is a deeply rooted belief that the poor understand and feel for the poor beyond any possibility in those who have never known cold and hunger and rags save as uncomfortable terms used too freely by injudicious agitators. Like many another popular belief the groundwork is in the believer's own mind, and has its most tangible existence in story-books. There are isolated cases always of self-sacrifice and compassion and all gentle virtues, but long experience goes to show that if too great comfort is deadening, too little is brutalizing, and that pity dies in the soul of man or woman to whom no pity has been shown. It is easy to see, then, how the woman who has found injustice and oppression the law of life, deals in the same fashion when her own time comes, and tyrannizes with the comfortable conviction that she is by this means getting even with the world. She knows every sore spot, and how best to make the galled jade wince, and lightens her own task by the methods practised in the past upon herself. This is one species to be dealt with, and a far less dangerous one than the craftier and less outspokenly brutal order, just above her in grade. It is by these last that some of the chief frauds on women are perpetrated, and here we find one source of the supplies that furnish the bargain counters. We read periodically of firms detected in imposing upon women, and are likely to feel that such exposure has ended their career as firms once for all. In every trade will be found one or more of these, whose methods of obtaining hands are fraudulent, and who advertise for "girls to learn the trade," with no intention of retaining them beyond the time in which they remain content to work without pay. There are a thousand methods of evasion, even when the law faces them and the victim has made formal complaint. As a rule she is too ignorant and too timid for complaint or anything but abject submission, and this fact is relied upon as certain foundation for success. But, if determined enough, the woman has some redress in her power. Within a few years, after long and often defeated attempts, the Woman's Protective Union has brought about legislation against such fraud, and any employer deliberately withholding wages is liable to fifteen days' imprisonment and the costs of the suit brought against him, a fact of which most of them seem to be still quite unaware. This law, so far as imprisonment is concerned, has no application to women, and they have learned how to evade the points which might be made to bear upon them, by hiring rooms, machines, etc., and swearing that they have no personal property that can be levied upon. Or, if they have any, they transfer it to some friend or relative, as in the case of Madame M----, a fashionable dressmaker notorious for escaping from payment seven times out of ten. She has accumulated money enough to become the owner of a large farm on Long Island, but so ingeniously have all her arrangements been made that it is impossible to make her responsible, and her case is used at the Union as a standing illustration of the difficulty of circumventing a woman bent upon cheating. A firm, a large proportion of whose goods are manufactured in this manner, can well afford to stock the bargain counters of popular stores. They can afford also to lose slightly by work imperfectly done, though, even with learners, this is in smaller proportion than might be supposed. The girl who comes in answer to their advertisement is anxious to learn the trade at once, and gives her best intelligence to mastering every detail. Her first week is likely to hold an energy of effort that could hardly last, and she can often be beguiled by small payments and large promises to continue weeks and even months, always expecting the always delayed payment. Firms dealing in such fashion change their quarters often, unless in league with police captains who have been given sufficient reasons for obliviousness of their methods, and who have also been known to silence timid complaints with the threat of a charge of theft. But there is always a multitude ready to be duped, and no exposure seems sufficient to prevent this, and women who have once established a business on this system seem absolutely reckless as to any possible consequences. There is at present on Third Avenue a Mrs. F----, who for eleven years has conducted a successful business built upon continuous fraud. She is a manufacturer of underwear, and the singular fact is that she has certain regular employees who have been with her from the beginning, and who, while apparently unconscious of her methods, are practically partners in the fraud. She is a woman of good presence and address, and one to whom girls submit unquestioningly, contending, even in court, that she never meant to cheat them; and it is still an open question with those who know her best how far she herself recognizes the fraud in her system. The old hands deny that it is her custom to cheat, and though innumerable complaints stand against her, she has usually paid on compulsion, and insisted that she always meant to. Her machines never lack operators, and the grade of work turned out is of the best quality. Her advertisement appears at irregular intervals, is answered by swarms of applicants, and there are always numbers waiting their turn. On a side street a few blocks distant is a deep basement, crowded with machines and presided over by a woman with many of her personal characteristics. It is the lowest order of slop work that is done here, but it helps to fill the bargain counters of the poorer stores, and the workers are an always shifting quantity. It is certain that both places are practically the property of Mrs. F----, but no man has yet been cunning enough to determine once for all her responsibility, and no law yet framed covers any ground that she has chosen as her own. Her prototypes are to be found in every trade open to women, and their numbers grow with the growth of the great city and strengthen in like proportion. The story of one is practically the story of all. Popularly supposed to be a method of trickery confined chiefly to Jews, investigation shows that Americans must share the odium in almost as great degree, and that the long list includes every nationality known to trade. We have dealt thus far with fraud as the first and chief procurer for bargain counters. Another method results from a fact that thus far must sum up as mainly Jewish. Till within very little more than a year, a large dry-goods firm on the west side employed many women in its underwear department. The work was piece-work, and done by the class of women who own their own machines and work at home. Prices were never high, but the work was steady and the pay prompt. The firm for a time made a specialty of "Mother Hubbard" night-gowns, for which they paid one dollar a dozen for "making," this word covering the making and putting in of yoke and sleeves, the "seamer" having in some cases made the bodies at thirty cents a dozen. Many of the women, however, made the entire garment at $1.30 per dozen, ten being the utmost number practicable in a day of fourteen hours. Suddenly the women were informed that their services would not be required longer. An east-side firm bearing a Jewish name had contracted to do the same work at eighty cents a dozen, and all other underwear in the same proportions. Steam had taken the place of foot-power, and the women must find employment with firms who were willing to keep to slower methods. Necessarily these are an always lessening minority. Competition in this race for wealth crushes out every possibility of thought for the worker save as so much producing power, and what hand and foot cannot do steam must. In several cases in this special manufacture the factories have been transferred to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where rent is a mere song, and where girls flock in from the adjacent country, eager for the work that represents something higher than either ordinary mill work or the household service they despise. "What can we do?" said one manufacturer lately, when asked how he thought the thing would end. "If there were any power quicker than steam, or any way of managing so that women could feed five or six machines, that would have to come next, else every one of us would go to the wall together, the pressure is so tremendous. Of course there's no chance for the women, but then you must remember there's precious little chance for the employer either. This competition is a sort of insanity. It gluts the market with cheap goods, and gives a sense of prosperity, but it is the death of all legitimate, reasonable business. It won't surprise me if this whole trade of manufacturing underwear becomes a monopoly, and one man--like O'H----, for instance--swallows up the whole thing. Lord help the women then, for there'll be no help in man!" "Suppose co-operation were tried? What would be the effect?" "No effect, because there isn't confidence enough anywhere to make men dare a co-operative scheme. Even the workers would distrust it, and a sharp business man laughs in your face if you mention the word. It doesn't suit American notions. It might be a good thing if there were any old-fashioned business men left,--men content with slow profits and honest dealing,--as my father was, for instance. But he wouldn't have a ghost of a chance to-day. The whole system of business is rotten, and there will have to be a reconstruction clean from the bottom, though it's the men that need it first. We're the maddest nation for money on the face of the earth, and the race is a more killing one every year. I'm half inclined to think sometimes that mankind will soon be pretty much a superfluity, the machines are getting so intelligent; and it may be these conditions that seem to upset you so are simply means of killing off those that are not wanted, and giving place to a less sensitive order of beings. Lord help them, I say again, for there's no help in man." The speaker nodded, as if this rather unexpected flight of imagination was an inspiration in which might lie the real solution of all difficulties, and hurried away to his waiting niche in the great competitive system. And as he went, there came to me words spoken by one of the workers, in whose life hope was dead, and who also had her theory of any future under to-day's conditions:-- "I've worked eleven years. I've tried five trades with my needle and machine. My shortest day has been fourteen hours, for I had the children and they had to be fed. There's not one of these trades that I don't know well. It isn't work that I've any trouble in getting. It's wages. Five years ago I could earn $1.50 a day, and we were comfortable. Then it began to go down,--$1.25, then $1.00. There it stopped awhile, and I got used to that, and could even get some remains of comfort out of it. I had to plan to the last half cent. We went cold often, but we were never hungry. But then it fell again,--to ninety cents, to eighty-five. For a year the best that I can do I have earned not over eighty cents a day,--sometimes only seventy-five. I'm sixty-two years old. I can't learn new ways. I am strong. I always was strong. I run the machine fourteen hours a day, with just the stoppings that have to be to get the work ready. I've never asked a man alive for a penny beyond what my own hands can earn, and I don't want it. I suppose the Lord knows what it all means. It's His world and His children in it, and I've kept myself from going crazy many a time by saying it was His world and that somehow it must all come right in the end. But I don't believe it any more. He's forgotten. There's nothing left but men that live to grind the face of the poor; that chuckle when they find a new way of making a cent or two more a week out of starving women and children. I never thought I should feel so; I don't know myself; but I tell you I'm ready for murder when I think of these men. If there's no justice above, it isn't quite dead below; and if men with money will not heed, the men and the women without money will rise some day. How? I don't know. We've no time to plan, and we're too tired to think, but it's coming somehow, and I'm not ashamed to say I'll join in if I live to see it come. It's seas of tears that these men sail on. It's our life-blood they drink and our flesh that they eat. God help them if the storm comes, for there'll be no help in man." Employer and employed had ended in wellnigh the same words; but the gulf between no words have spanned, and it widens day by day. CHAPTER FIFTH. A FASHIONABLE DRESSMAKER. "Come now, be reasonable, won't you? You've got to move on, you know, and why don't you do it?" "I'm that reasonable that a bench of judges couldn't be more so; and I'll not move on for anything less than dynamite, and I ain't sure I would for that. It's only a choice between starvation and going into the next world in little bits, and I don't suppose it makes much difference which way it's done." The small, pale, dogged-looking little woman who announced this conviction did not even rise from the steps where she sat looking up to the big policeman, who faced her uneasily, half turning as if he would escape the consequences of rash action if he knew how. Nothing could be more mysterious. For it was within sight of Broadway, on one of the best-known side streets near Union Square, where business signs were few and of the most decorous order, and where before one door, bearing the name of one of the best-known fashionable dressmakers, a line of carriages stood each day during the busy season. A name hardly less known was on the door-plate of the great house before which she sat, and which still bore every mark of prosperous ownership, while from one of the windows looked the elaborately dressed head of Madame herself, the anxiety in her eyes contradicting the scornful smile on her thin lips. The door just beyond No. -- opened, and a stout gentleman descended one step and stood eying the policeman belligerently. That official looked up the street as if wishing for cry of "murder" or "stop thief" around the corner, but hearing neither, concentrated again on the antagonist whose irregular methods defied precedent and gave him a painful sense of insecurity. If two could listen, why not three?--and I paused near the steps, eyed considerately by the stout gentleman, who was evidently on the outlook for allies. A look of intelligence passed between Madame and the policeman, and her head disappeared from the window, a blind on the second story moving slightly and announcing a moment later that she had taken a less conspicuous post of observation. "Move on now, I tell you!" began the policeman again, but paused, for as he spoke a slender, bright-eyed girl came swiftly toward them, and paused on the first step with a glance of curiosity at the little group. "Have you come to answer Madame M----'s advertisement?" the little woman said, as she rose from the steps and laid her hand detainingly on the hurrying figure. "Yes," the girl answered hesitatingly, pulling away from the hand that held. "Then, unless you've got anything else to do and like to give your time and strength for naught, keep away. You'll get no wages, no matter what's promised. I've been there six months, kept on by fair promises, and I know. I'll let no girl go in there without warning." "It's a good-looking place," the girl said doubtfully. "It's a den of thieves all the same. If you don't believe me, come down to the Woman's Protective Union on Clinton Place, and you'll see my case on the book there, and judgment against this woman, that's no more mercy than a Hottentot and lies that smoothly that she'd humbug an angel of light. Ah! that's good!" she added, for the girl had shaken off her hand and sped away as swiftly as she had come. "That's seven since yesterday, and I wish it were seven hundred. It's time somebody turned watchdog." "That ain't your business. That's a matter for the law," said the big policeman, who had glanced anxiously up to the second-story window and then looked reassured and serene, as the stout gentleman made a significant movement, which indicated that bribery was as possible for one sex as for the other. "The law'll straighten out anything that you've a mind to have it." "The law! Lord help them that think the law is going to see them through," the small woman said, with a fierceness that made the big policeman start and lay his hand on his club. "What's the law worth when it can't give to you one dollar of two hundred and eight that's owed; and she that earned them gasping her life out with consumption? If it was my account alone do you suppose I'd care? Mine's eighty-five, and I went to law for it, to find she'd as long a head as she has smooth tongue, and had fixed things so that there wasn't a stick of furniture nor a dollar of property that could be levied on. If she'd been a man the new law that gives a cheating employer fifteen days' imprisonment might have worked with her as it's worked with many a rascal that never knew he could be brought up with a round turn. But she's a woman and she slides through, and a judgment against her isn't worth the paper it's written on. So as I can't take it out in money I take it out in being even with her. There are the papers that show I don't lie, and here I sit the time I've fixed to sit, and if she gets the three new hands she's after, it won't be because I haven't done what came to me to do to hinder it." The policeman had moved away before the words ended, the stout gentleman having descended the steps for a moment, and stood in a position which rendered his little transaction feasible and almost invisible. He beckoned to me as the small woman sat down again on the steps, and I followed him into the vestibule. "You're interested, my dear madam," he said. "You're interested, and you ought to be. I've stayed home from business to make sure she wasn't interfered with, and I'd do it again with the greatest pleasure. I'd like to post one like her before every establishment in New York where cheating goes on, and I'm going to see this thing through!" There was no time for questions. My appointment must be kept, and with one pause to take the name and number of the small Nemesis I went my way. Three days later she sat there still, and on the following one, as the warm spring rain fell steadily, she kept her post, sheathed in a rubber cloak, and protected by an umbrella which, from its size and quality, I felt must be the stout gentleman's. With Saturday night her self-imposed siege ended, and she marched away, leaving the enemy badly discomfited and much more disposed to consider the rights of the individual, if not of the worker in general. As Madame's prices were never less than fifty dollars for the making of a suit, ranging from this to a hundred or more, and as her three children were still small and her husband an undiscoverable factor, it became an interesting question to know where she placed the profits which, even when lessened by non-paying customers, could never be anything but great. Madame, however, had been too keen even for the sharp-witted lawyer of the Protective Union, whose utmost efforts only disclosed the fact that she was the probable backer of a manufacturer whose factory and farm were on Long Island, and whose business capacity had till within a few years never insured him more than a bare living. It is an old story, yet an always new one, and in this case Madame had quieted her conscience by providing a comfortable lunch for the workers and allowing them more space than is generally the portion in a busy establishment. Well housed and well fed through the day and paid at intervals enough to meet the demands of rent or board bill, it was easy to satisfy her hands by the promise of full and speedy settlement, and when this failed, to tell a pitiful tale of unpaid bills and conscienceless customers, who could not be forced. When these resources were exhausted discharge solved any further difficulties, and a new set came in, to undergo the same experience. In an establishment where honesty has any place, the wages are rather beyond the average, skirt-hands receiving from seven to nine dollars a week and waist-hands from ten to fifteen. In the case of stores this latter class make from eighteen to forty dollars per week, and often accumulate enough capital to start in business for themselves. But a skirt-hand like Mary M---- seldom passes on to anything higher, and counts herself well paid if her week of sixty hours brings her nine dollars, not daring to grumble seriously if it falls to seven or even six. On the east side the same work must be done for from four to six dollars a week, the latter sum being considered high pay. But the work is an advance upon factory work and has a better sound, the dressmaker's assistant looking down upon the factory hand or even the seamstress as of an inferior order. In time I learned the full story of the little woman, ordinarily reticent and shrinking, but brought by trouble and indignation to the fiercest protest against oppression. Born in a New-England village she had learned a milliner's trade, to which she presently added dressmaking, and succeeded in making a fair living, till bitten by the desire to see larger life and share all the good that the city seems to offer the shut-in country life, she came to New York with her small savings, expecting to find work easily, and did so, going at once into a store where a friend was at work. Sanitary conditions were all bad. Her hall bedroom on a fourth floor and the close confinement all did their work, and a long illness wasted strength and savings. When recovery came her place had been filled; and she wandered from store to store seeking employment, doing such odd jobs as were found at intervals, and powerless to recover the lost ground. "It was like heaven to me," she said, "when my friend came back to the city and got me that place as skirt-hand at Madame M----'s. I was so far gone I had even thought of the river, and said to myself it might be the easiest way out. You can't help but like Madame, for she's smooth-tongued and easy, and praises your work, and she made me think I'd soon be advanced and get the place I ought to have. She paid regularly at first, and I began to pick up courage. It was over-hours always. Madame would come in smiling and say: 'Ah, dear girls! What trouble! It is an order that must be finished so soon. Who will be kind and stay so leetle longer?' Then we all stayed, and she'd have tea made and send it in, and sandwiches or something good, and they all said, 'She's an angel. You won't find anybody like Madame.' She was so plausible, too, that even when there was longer and longer time between the payments the girls didn't blame her, but borrowed of one another and put off their landladies and managed all ways to save her feelings. Jenny G---- had been here longer than any of them, and she worshipped Madame and wouldn't hear a word even when one or another complained. But Jenny's feet were on the ground and she hadn't a stitch of warm underclothes, and she took a cold in December, and by January it had tight hold of her. I went to Madame myself then, and begged her to pay Jenny if it wasn't but a little, and she cried and said if she could only raise the money she would. She didn't; and by and by I went again, and then she turned ugly. I looked at her dumfounded when she spoke her real mind and said if we didn't like it we could leave; there were plenty of others. I wouldn't believe my ears even, and said to myself she was worn out with trouble and couldn't mean a word of it. I wanted money for myself, but I wouldn't ask even for anybody but Jenny. "Next day Madame brought her ten dollars of the two hundred and twenty she owed her, and Jenny got shoes; but it was too late. I knew it well, for I'd seen my sister go the same way. Quick consumption ain't to be stopped with new shoes or anything but new lungs, and there's no patent for them yet that ever I've heard of. She was going last night when I went round, and sure as you live I'm going to put her death in the paper myself. I've been saving my money off lunches to do it, and I'll write it: 'Murdered by a fashionable dressmaker on ---- Street, in January, 1886, Jenny G----, age nineteen years and six months.' Maybe they won't put it in, but here it is, ready for any paper that's got feeling enough to care whether sewing-girls are cheated and starved and killed, or whether they get what they've earned. I've got work at home now. It don't matter so much to me; but I'm a committee to attend to this thing, and I'll find out every fraud in New York that I can. I've got nine names now,--three of 'em regular fashionables on the west side, and six of 'em following their example hard as they can on the east; and a friend of mine has printed, in large letters, 'Beware of' at the head of a slip, and I add names as fast as I get them, and every girl that comes in my way I warn against them. Do much good? No. They'll get all the girls they want, and more; but it's some satisfaction to be able to say they are cheats, making a living out of the flesh and blood of their dupes, and I'll say it till I die." Here stands the experience of one woman with fearlessness enough to protest and energy enough to have at last secured a tolerable living. The report, for such it may be considered, might be made of many more names than those upon her black list, or found on the books of the Union. Happily for the worker, they form but a small proportion of the long list of dressmakers who deal fairly. But the life of the ordinary hand who has not ability enough to rise is, like that of the great majority who depend on the needle, whether machine or hand, filled with hardship, uncertainty, overwork, under-pay. The large establishments have next to no dull season, but we deal in the present chapter only with private workers; and often, on the east side especially, where prices and wages are always at the lowest ebb, the girls who have used all their strength in overwork during the busy season of spring and fall must seek employment in cigar factories or in anything that offers in the intermediate time, the wages giving no margin for savings which might aid in tiding over such periods. The dressmaker herself is often a sufferer, conscienceless customers abounding, who pay for the work of one season only when anxious for that of the next. Often it is mere carelessness,--the recklessness which seems to make up the method of many women where money obligations are concerned; but often also they pass deliberately from one dressmaker to another, knowing that New York holds enough to provide for the lifetime of the most exacting customer. There is small redress for these cases, and the dressmaker probably argues the matter for herself and decides that she has every right, being cheated, to balance the scale by a little of the same order on her own account. A final form of rascality referred to in a previous chapter is found here, as in every phase of the clothing trade, whether on small or large scale. Girls are advertised for "to learn the trade," and the usual army of applicants appear, those who are selected being told that the first week or two will be without wages, and only the best workers will be kept. Each girl is thus on her mettle, and works beyond her strength and beyond any fair average, to find herself discharged at the end of the time and replaced by an equally eager and equally credulous substitute. There are other methods of fraud that will find place in a consideration of phases of the same work in the great establishments, some difficulties of the employer being reserved for the same occasion. CHAPTER SIXTH. MORE METHODS OF PROSPEROUS FIRMS. To do justice to employer as well as employed is the avowed object of our search, yet as it goes on, and the methods made necessary by competition become more and more clear, it is evident that back of every individual case of wrong and oppression lies a deeper wrong and a more systematized oppression. Master and servant alike are in the same bonds, and the employer is driven as mercilessly as he drives. He may deny it. He may even be quite unconscious of his own subjection, or, if he thinks at all of its extent, may look enviously at the man or the corporation that has had power to enslave him. The monopolist governs not only the market but the bodies and souls of all who provide wares for that market; yet the fascination of such power is so tremendous that to stand side by side with him is the dream of every young merchant,--the goal on which his eyes are set from the beginning. Only in like power is any satisfaction to be found. Any result below this high-water mark can be counted little else than failure. To this end, then, toils the employer of every grade, bringing every faculty to bear on the lessening of waste, whether in material or time; the conservation of every force working in line with his purpose. Naturally, the same effect is produced as that mentioned in a previous paper. The employees come to represent "so much producing power," and are driven at full speed or shut off suddenly like the machines of which they are the necessary but still more or less accidental associates. Certain formulas are used, evolved apparently from experience, and carrying with them an assurance of so much grieved but inevitable conviction that it is difficult to penetrate below the surface and realize that, while in degree true, they are in greater degree false. In various establishments, large and small, beginning with one the pay-roll of which carries 1,462 employees, and ending with one having hardly a third this number, the business manager made invariably the same statement: "We make our money from incidentals rather than from any given department. You are asking particularly about suits. I suppose you'll think it incredible, but in suits we work at a dead loss. It is only an accommodation to our customers that makes us keep that department open. The work should be put out to mean any profit, but we can't do that with the choicest materials, and so we make it up in other directions. You would have to go into business yourself to understand just how we are driven." "Suppose you refused to be driven? A firm of your standing must have matters a good deal in its own hands. Suppose--" "Suppose!" The manager threw out his hands in a gesture more full of disclaimer than any words. "There is no room for supposes in business, madam. We do what we must. How are we to compete with a factory turning out suits by steam power? Not that we would compete. There is really no occasion," he added hastily. "But their methods certainly have an unpleasant influence, and we are obliged to take them into account slightly." "Then your statement would be, that no matter how expensive the suit made up, you can make no profit on it?" "Absolutely none. It is a concession to a customer's whims. We could buy the same thing and sell to her at half the price, but she prefers to select materials and have them put together in our work-room, and we must humor her. But rents are so enormous that the space for every woman employed by us in these departments may be said to represent simply so many cubic feet in good coin, bringing us no return. Our profits are dwindling with every year." "Might not co-operation--" Again the manager threw out his hands. "Simply another form of robbery. We have investigated the history of co-operation, and it does not appear to affiliate with our institutions. The lamentable failure of the Co-operative Dress Association ought to be the answer to that suggestion. No, madam. There is no profit in suits, or in any form of made-up clothing for ladies' wear, if it is done on the premises. You have to turn it over to the wholesale manufacturer if you want profit." Having heard this statement in many forms, and recognizing the fact that increase in rents as well as in systematized competition might well have reduced profits, it still appeared incredible that the rates charged held no surplus for the firm. Little by little it has become possible to supplement each statement by others of a different order. Nothing is more difficult than to obtain trustworthy information regarding the methods of a firm whose standing is such that to have served it is always a passport to other employment; whose payments are regular, and where every detail of work-room is beyond criticism. It is no question of bare-faced robbery as in that of many cited, yet even here the old story tells itself in different form, and with an element which, in many a less pretentious establishment, has not yet been found to exist. The work done here is piece-work. French cutters and fitters, receiving from thirty to fifty dollars a week, give that guarantee of style and elegance which is inherent in everything bearing the stamp of the firm. Experts run the machines in the sewing-machine room, being paid by the day at the rate of from six to eight dollars per week in the busy season. The buttonholes are made by women who do nothing else, and who are paid by the dozen, earning from five to seven dollars weekly. All stitched seams are done in the machine-room, and the dress passes from there to the sewing-room, into the hands of the sewing-girls, who receive from three to four dollars and a half for each garment. The latter price is seldom reached; four dollars and a half or five dollars paying for a dress loaded with trimming, puffs, flounces, etc. At this rate there would seem to be a chance for wages a good deal beyond the average, but it is one of the unwritten laws that no sewing-girl shall exceed five dollars per week; whether formulated by superintendent or by firm remains yet to be discovered. The one unquestionable fact is that if the superintendent of the work-room finds that any girl is expert enough to make over this amount the price per garment is docked, to bring her down to the level. They are never driven. On the contrary, they must wait often, two or three hours at times, for the arrival of "Madame," who must inspect the work, drape a skirt, or give some suggestion as to trimming. No entreaty can induce the superintendent to give out another piece of work which might fill this vacant time, and the girls dare not state their case to the employer. No member of the firm enters the work-rooms. Reports are made by the superintendent of the department, and the firm remains content with knowing that it has provided every comfort for its employees. Complaint would insure discharge, and if a girl hints that she cannot live on five dollars a week the answer has been for the years during which the present superintendent has held the place, always the same:-- "If you haven't a home so that you have no expense of board, it is your own fault, and I can't be expected to do anything about it." There appears to be no question as to the entire "respectability" of the woman, who would undoubtedly deny the implication contained in her own words. But there is rivalry between the superintendents as to which department shall make largest returns in profits, and wages are kept down to secure that end. There is also no question that a proportion of those employed are "supported," and merely add this work as a means of securing a little more pin-money. It is true of but a very few, but of those few an undeniable fact. It is equally a fact that, in spite of the managers' assertions, profit can be made and is made from this department, and that a large percentage of such profit comes directly from the pocket of the sewing-girl, who, even when she adds buttonhole-making in the simpler dresses, can never pass beyond a fixed wage. In other large establishments on both sides of the city methods are much the same, with merely slight variations as to comfort of quarters, time for lunch, sanitary conditions, etc. But in all alike, the indispensable, but always very helpless, sewing-girl appears to be one of the chief sources of profit, and to have small capacity and no opportunity for improving her condition. Even where the work comes from the manufactory, and steam has taken the place of foot-power, no machine has yet been run so automatically that the human hand can be entirely dispensed with. The "finisher" remains a necessity, and as finisher sometimes passes slightly beyond the rate obtained when merely sewing-girl. Only slightly, however. It is a deeply rooted conviction among these workers that a tacit or even, it may be, formal understanding has been settled upon by employers in general. "I don't know how it is," said one of the most intelligent among the many I have talked with; "there's never any trouble about getting work. I've even had them send after me when I had gone somewhere else in hopes of doing better. I used to earn ten and twelve dollars a week on suits, children's or ladies', but now if I earn five or sometimes six I do well. The work goes on with a rush. It's a whole building except the first floor,--five stories, and suits of every kind. The rooms are all crowded, and they give out piece-work, but they've managed it so that we all earn about alike. When the rush of the fall and spring season is over they do white work and flannel skirts and such things, and a great many are discharged in the lull. But go where you will, up-town or down, it doesn't seem to matter how well you can turn off the work or how long you have been at it. They all say, if we ask for better pay, 'It can't be had as long as there is such competition. We're losing straight ahead.' I don't understand. We don't any of us understand, because here is the great rush of work and it must be done. They can't do without us, and yet they are grinding us down so that I get half distracted sometimes, wondering where it will end and if things will ever be better." "Would not private sewing be better? There is always a demand for good seamstresses." "I don't know anything about private sewing. You have to cut and plan, and I never learned that. I like to work on things that are cut by a cutter and just so, and I can make up my dozen after dozen with not an eighth of an inch difference in my measurements. I'm an expert, you know." "But if you learned to do private sewing perfectly you could earn a dollar and a quarter a day and board and have your evening quite free." The girl shook her head. "I've had that said to me before, but you know it's more independent as I am. Maybe things will be better by and by." There is no obstinacy like the obstinacy of deep-seated prejudice, and this exists to a bewildering degree among these workers, who, for some inscrutable reason, seem filled with the conviction that private employ of any nature whatever is inevitably a despotism filled with unknown horrors. There appears to be also a certain _esprit du corps_ that holds sustaining power. The girl likes to speak of herself as one of such and such a firm's hands, and to regard this distinction as compensation for over-hours and under-pay and all known wretchedness encompassing her trade. The speaker I have quoted was an American girl of twenty-six, had had three years in public schools, and regarded the city as the only place in which life could be considered endurable. "I shouldn't know what to do in the country if I were there," she said. "I don't seem to like it somehow. It isn't the company, for mother and me keep to ourselves a good deal, but somehow we know how to get along in the city, and the country scares me. I like my work if only I could get more pay for it." "Do you ever think that if all who work in your line joined together and made common cause you might even things a little; that it might be easier for all of you?" "We wouldn't dare," she answered, aghast. "Why, do you know, there'd be ten for each one of us that was turned off. Women come there by the hundred. That's what they say to me in our firm: 'What's the use of fussing when here are dozens waiting to take your place?' There isn't any use. They say now that it is the dull season, and they've put our room on flannel skirts; two tucks and a hem, and a muslin yoke that has to be gone round four times with the stitching. One day I made ten, but nine is all one can do without nearly killing themselves, and they pay us one dollar a dozen for making them. It used to be a dollar and a half, and that was fair enough. It's the kind of work I like. I shouldn't be content to do any other; but it's bringing us all down to starvation point, and I think something ought to be done." In a case like this, and it is the type of many hundreds of skilled workers, who regard their calling with a certain pride, and could by no possibility be induced to seek other lines of work or other methods of living, there seems little to be accomplished. They are, however, but a small portion of the army who wait for some deliverance, and who, if they had been born to a trifle more common sense, would turn in the one sole direction from which relief is certain, this relief and the reasons for and against it having no place at this stage of the investigation. CHAPTER SEVENTH. NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE GOSPEL. From the fig-leaf down, it would seem as if a portion of the original curse accompanying it had passed on to each variation or amplification of first methods, its heaviest weight falling always on the weak shoulders that, if endurance could make strong, should belong to-day to a race of giants. Of the ninety and more trades now open to women, thirty-eight involve some phase of this question of clothing, about which centre some of the worst wrongs of modern civilization. It is work that has legitimate place. It must be done by some one, since the exigencies of this same civilization have abolished old methods and made home manufactures seem a poor and most unsatisfactory substitute for the dainty stitching and ornamentation of the cheaper shop-work. It is work that many women love, and, if living wages could be had, would do contentedly from year to year. Of their ignorance and blindness, and the mysterious possession they call pride, and the many stupidities on which their small lives are founded, there is much to be said, when these papers have done their first and most essential work of showing conditions as they are;--as they are, and not as the disciples of _laissez faire_ would have us to believe they are. "It is the business of these philanthropists to raise a hue and cry; to exaggerate every evil and underrate every good. They are not to be trusted. Look at our institutions and see what we are doing for the poor. Study statistics and see how comfortable they are!" This is the word of a recent correspondent of a Podsnapian turn of mind, who proceeded to present facts and figures bearing out his theory. And on a Sunday shortly after, he was confirmed in his faith and greatly strengthened and comforted by words from a popular preacher, long owner of a popular pulpit, who, standing there as the representative of a master whose message was to the poor, and who turned to them from the beginning, as the hearers who alone could know most truly what meaning the message bore, spoke these words:-- "Moreover, all this hue and cry about so much destitution and misery and the unscrupulous greed of employers is groundless. I am convinced that more than one half--yes, fully three quarters--of the pauperism of which you heard so much in the late campaign exists only in the minds of the Georgeites. The picture drawn of New York's misery is over-colored, and its inspiration is in the distorted imaginations of the George fanatics.... The rum-holes are the cause of all the misery.... I have been watching for thirty-five years, and in all my investigations among the poor I never yet found a family borne down by poverty that did not owe its fall to rum." This most extraordinary statement, from a man who in one year alone could not have listened to even half the appeals for help likely to have come to him in his position, without discovering that death and disaster in many forms played, if not the chief part, certainly that next in order to rum, can be accounted for only on the ground that a hobby ridden too hard has been known to bear off at the same time both the common-sense and power of judgment of the rider. Prohibition appears to him, as to many another, the only solution; the gospel of negation the only gospel for rich or poor. Since the Church first began to misinterpret the words of its Founder, since men who built hospitals first made the poor to fill them, the "thou shalt not" of the priest has stood in the way of a human development that, if allowed free play, had long ago made its own code, and found in natural spiritual law the key to the overcoming of that formulated by men to whom the divine in man was forever unrecognized and unrecognizable. This is no place for the discussion of what, to many good men and women, seems the only safety for human kind; but to one who studies the question somewhat at least with the eyes of the physician, it becomes certain that no "thou shalt not" will ever give birth to either conscience or love of goodness and purity and decent living, or any other good that man must know; and that till the Church learns this, her hold on men and women will lessen, year by year. Every fresh institution in the miles of asylums and hospitals that cover the islands of the East River, and stretch on farther and farther with every year, is an added disgrace, an added count in the indictment against modern civilization. There are moments when the student of social conditions abhors Philanthropy; when a disaster that would wipe out at one stroke every institution the city treasures would seem a gift straight from God, if only thereby the scales might fall from men's eyes, and they might learn that hiding foulness in an asylum is not extirpation; that something deeper and stronger than Philanthropy must work, before men can be saved. It is as student, not as professional philanthropist, that I write; and the years that have brought experience have brought also a conviction, sharpened by every fresh series of facts, that no words, no matter what fire of fervor may lie behind, can make plain the sorrow of the poor. To ears that will hear, to souls that seek forever some way that may help in truth and not in name, even to them it loses power at moments. To souls that sit at ease and leave to "the power that works for righteousness" the evolution of humanity from its prison of poverty and ignorance and pain, it is quite useless to speak. They have their theory, and the present civilization contents them. But for the men and women who are neither Georgeites merely, nor philanthropists merely, nor certain that any sect or creed or ism will help, but who know that the foulest man is still brother, and the wretchedest, weakest woman still sister, whose shame and sorrow not only bear a poison that taints all civilization, but are forever our shame and our sorrow till the world is made clean,--for these men and women I write, not what I fancy, but what I see and know. Most happily for humanity, they are stronger, more numerous, with every year; but the hardest fact for them remains ever that their battle is a double one, and that, exhausted as they may be with long conflict against lowest forms of evil, they must rally to a sharper one against the army of the Philistines. Strong soul and high endeavor: never since time began has man more needed them; never was there harder work to do. The story of the working-woman in one great city is, with slight variations in conditions, the story of the working-woman in all; and when we have once settled conclusively what monopoly or competition has done and is doing for New York, we know sufficiently well what Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago and all the host of lesser cities could easily tell us in detail. With the mass of poor who work chiefly to obtain money for drink, and who, with their progeny, are filling the institutions in which we delight, we have absolutely nothing to do. It is seldom from their ranks that workers are recruited. A small proportion, rescued by societies or mission schools, may be numbered among them, but the greater part are a grade above, and while perhaps wellnigh as ignorant, have an inheritance of better instincts, and could under any reasonable conditions of living find their fate by no means intolerable. I have chosen to-day, instead of passing on to another form of the clothing trade, to return to that of underwear, and this because it is the record most crowded with cases in which the subjects could not enter household service and have not been reduced to poverty by intemperance. Nor is the selection made with a view to working up as startling a case as possible. On the contrary, it has been made almost at random from the many recorded, any separate mention of which would be impossible in the space at command. First on the long list comes Catherine E----, an "expert" in underwear, and living on the top floor of a large, old-fashioned house in Clinton Place; the lower part stores and offices, the upper a tenement. She earned three years ago $1.50 a day; at times, $1.75. The same work now brings her eighty-five cents, and now and then but seventy-five. The husband was a "boss painter," and they were comfortable, even prosperous, till the fate of his calling came upon him, and first the "drop hand," and later blood-poisoning and heart-disease followed. He is just enough alive to care a little for the children and to oversee the pitiful household affairs; the oldest girl, a child of seven, doing the marketing, boiling the kettle, etc., and this season going to school. They are fair-faced, gentle children, and this is their mother's story:-- "I can run the machine, and I did with every one of them when they were two weeks old, for I've always been strong. Nothing that happens is bad enough to kill me, and it's lucky it's so, for it's two years and over since William there could earn a dollar. He helps me; but you see for yourself he's half dead and no getting well, because we've nothing to buy food with, or medicine, or anything that could help him. We were both brought up here in the city. We don't know anything about the country, but sometimes I wish we did, and that I could take the children and live somehow. But I don't know how people live there. I'm certain of work here, and I'd be afraid to go anywhere else. I'm making babies' slips now; three tucks and a hem and find your own cotton, and it takes eighteen hours to make a dozen, and these are seventy-five cents a dozen. I can buy cotton at eighteen cents a dozen, but we have to take it from the manufacturer at twenty cents--sometimes twenty-five cents. Last week I was on corset-covers; I take whatever they send up, for I'm an old hand, and always sure of work. They were plain corset-covers, and I got forty cents a dozen without the buttonholes. If I did them it would be five cents on every dozen, and sometimes I do. That pile in the corner is extra-size chemises. I get $1.50 a dozen for making them, and if I cord the bands, fifty cents a dozen for them. I can do seven or eight a day; but there are no more just now, they say. I work fourteen hours a day; yes, I've often worked sixteen, for you see there are six of us, and we must be clothed and fed. William is handy, but, poor soul! he's only a man, and he's sick past cure, and nobody but me for us all. God help us! I wouldn't mind if wages were steady, but they cut and cut, and always some excuse for making them lower, and here am I, that can do anything, private orders and all, down to eighty-five cents a day. I could earn more by family sewing, but I can't leave William or the children, for he's likely to go any minute, the doctors say, if he over-exerts himself; and suppose it came, and I not here, and the baby and Willie and all! I've turned all ways. I think and think as I sit here, and there's no help in God or man. It's all wrong somehow, but we don't know why nor how, and the only way I can see is just to die. There's no place for honesty or hard work. You must lie and cheat if you want standing room. God help us!--if there is a God; but I've my doubts. Why don't he help, if there is one?" Here the average earnings were twenty-five dollars a month, the rent of the room they occupied seven dollars, leaving eighteen dollars for food, fire, light, and clothing. Another disabled husband, recovering, but for many months unable to work, was found in a tenement-house in East Eleventh Street. In this case work and earnings were almost identical with the last, but there were but two children, and thus less demand for food, etc. For a year and a half the wife, though also an "expert," had never exceeded eighty-five cents a day and had sometimes fallen as low as seventy. She had sometimes gone to the factory instead of working at home, and the last firm employing her in this way had charged ten cents on the dollar for the steam used in running the machine which she operated. "It didn't pay," the little woman said, with a laugh that ended as a sob, checked instantly. "I could earn eight dollars a week, but there was the steam, ten cents on the dollar, and my car fares, for there was no time to walk,--sixty cents for them,--$1.40, you see, altogether. I might as well work at home and have the comfort of seeing that the children were all right. There's plenty of work, it seems. It's wages that's the trouble, and do you know how they cut them? If I could work any other way I would, but I like to sew, and I don't know any other trade. I'm not strong, but somehow I can run the machines, and there's nothing else. But we're clean discouraged. It isn't living, and we don't know what way to turn." In East Sixth Street, near the Bowery, Mrs. W., a widow still young and with a nervously energetic face and manner, gave her experience. She had been forewoman in a factory before her husband's death, having supported him through his last year of life, working all day and nursing him at night. In this way her own health broke down, and she was at last taken to the hospital, where she remained nearly six months, coming out to find her place filled, but a subordinate one open to her. "I had to wait for that," she said, "and I had to learn. I knew a sewing-machine place where often you could get ruffling for skirts to do, and I went up there one morning. It was the three tucks and a hem ruffling, and I did one hundred and forty-two yards from eight in the morning till half-past four, and they paid me twenty-three cents. 'We could get it done for that by steam power,' they said, 'so we can't give more. It's a favor anyway to give it out at all.' That was my first day's work. The next I went down to my place on Canal Street. They think a good deal of me there, and they put me on drawers right away; thirty-five cents a dozen for making them. I can make two dozen a day sometimes, but fine ones not over a dozen, though they pay fifty cents. You wonder how they make anything. I've been forewoman, and I know the prices. Why, even at forty cents a pair they make on them. Twenty-one yards of cloth at five cents makes a dozen; that's $1.05; and eighteen yards of edge at four and a half cents, that's eighty-one cents; and the making thirty-five cents; that's $2.21. Thread and all, they won't cost over $2.25, and they sell at wholesale at three dollars a dozen and retail at $4.80. There's profit even when you think a cent couldn't be made. Take skirts, three yards of cloth in each at six cents. They pay thirty cents a dozen for tucking, twenty-five cents a dozen for ruffling, and thirty cents for seaming,--eighty-five cents a dozen for the entire skirt; and the cloth makes it, at eighteen cents apiece, $3.01 for the dozen. Those skirts retail at sixty cents apiece, and wholesale at fifty cents. There's profit on them all, no matter what they say, for I've figured every penny over and over, down to the tape and thread. But they swear to you they are ruined by competition, and so the wages go down and down and down. Leave the city? I don't know how to live anywhere else. I've never learned. It's something to be sure of your work, even if it is starvation wages. But there's distress all around me. I don't see what it means. There's a girl in the room next to me, with an invalid mother. She does flannel shirts, but before she got them she nearly starved on underwear. Now she earns a dollar a day, but she works fourteen hours for it, seven cents an hour. That's nice pay in a Christian land. Christian! Bah! I used to believe there was Christianity, but I've given it up, like many another. There's just one religion left, and that is the worship of money. The Golden Calf is God, and every man sells his soul for a chance to bow to it. I don't know but what I would myself. So far I've kept decent; I came of decent folks; but it's no fault of many a man that I've worked for that I can say so still. I've had to leave three places because they wouldn't let me alone, and I stay where I am now because they're quiet, respectable people, and no outrageousness. But if you know what it all means I wish you'd tell me, for I'm dazed, and I can't make out the reason of anything any more." In the same house a widow with three children,--the father killed by falling from a scaffolding,--earns sixty cents a day by making buttonholes, and above her is another well past sixty, whose trade and wages are the same. How they live, what they can wear, how they are fed, on this amount is yet to be told, but every detail waits; and having gathered them from these and other women in like case, I am not yet prepared to believe that they live at ease, or that the "hue and cry about so much destitution and misery, and the unscrupulous greed of employers, is groundless." CHAPTER EIGHTH. THE TRUE STORY OF LOTTE BAUER. It was the Prussian War that seemed to settle the question. So far as Grossvater Bauer himself was concerned, he would still have toiled on contentedly. To be alive at all on German soil was more than honor or wealth or any good thing that the emigrant might report as part of his possession in that America to which all discontented eyes looked longingly. The reports might all be true; yet why should one for the sake of better food or more money be banished from the Vaterland and have only a President, a man of the people, in place of the old Kaiser, whose very name thrilled the heart, and for whose glory Grossvater Bauer would have given many sons? He had given them. Peace had come, and France was paying tribute; and, one by one, the few who had escaped French bullets came home to the little Prussian village and told their tales of the siege and of the three who had fallen at Sedan. Grossvater Bauer sat silent. He had been as silent when they brought the news to him in the beginning. It was the fortune of war. He had served his own time, and having served it, accepted as part of his birthright the same necessity for his sons. They had worked side by side with him on the great farm where he had been for most of his life head laborer and almost master; worked contentedly until Annchen, the oldest daughter, had married a tailor, dissatisfied like all tailors, and set sail for the strange country where fortune had always open hands for all the world. He had prospered, and in Annchen's letters, coming at rare intervals, was always an appeal to them to come over. The boys listened; doubtfully at first, for the father's faith was strong in them that no land could ever hold the same good as this land through which the Rhine flowed to the sea. But as the time came when they must enter the army there was rebellion. Here and there, in the air it seemed, for no one could say from whence the new feeling had come, were questions the sound of which was not to be tolerated by any true Prussian. Why should this great army live on the toil of the peasant? Why should the maintenance of these conscripts swallow up every possible saving in the wages and be the largest item save one in the year's expenses? Why should there be a standing army at all? Hans, when his time came, had learned to ask, but he had not learned to answer. The splendor of his uniform appeared to be in some sort a reply, and its tightness may also have had its effect in restricting his mental operations. For three years the carefully kept accounts of Grossvater Bauer held the item: "Maintenance of son in army, $121.37." Then Hans came home and married Lieschen, the little dairy-maid, and in due time Lotte's blue eyes opened on the world whose mysteries were still not quite explicable to the heavy father. Wilhelm and Franz had taken their turn, and in spite of questions settled passively at last into the farm life. Then came the war,--the war that called for every man with strength to carry a gun,--and when it was over Lotte was fatherless, and there were no more sons to bear the name, or to trouble Grossvater Bauer's mind with further questions. Very glorious, but what use if there were no boys left to whom the story could be told? If he had yielded, if even one had crossed the sea, there would be something still to live for. But Lieschen had given them no boys. He thought of it day after day, till the familiar fields grew hateful and he wished only to escape from the land to which he had paid a tax too heavy for mortal endurance. There was no one but Lieschen and her little ones, Lotte first of all and best beloved, and in another month they had set sail and the old life was over. "Work for all, homes for all, plenty for all," Annchen had written how many times. Yet now, when the Grossvater appeared, and the round-eyed Lieschen and her tribe of five, Peter shook his head. He had prospered, it is true. From journeyman tailor he had become master on a small scale, and packed himself and his men into a shop so tiny that it was miraculous how elbow-room remained to use the goose. But work for the Grossvater was quite another thing. He had no trade, and while his capacity as farmer on scientific methods ought to give him paying employment in the country, the city held nothing for him. Work for Lieschen and Lotte was easy. A week or two of apprenticeship would teach them all that need be known to do the work on cheap coats or pantaloons, but even for them it was certain that the country would be better. It was here that Grossvater Bauer developed unexpected obstinacy. He had a little money. He was still strong and in good case. Here was this great city which must have work of some nature, and which, so far from weighing upon him as Lotte had feared, seemed to have for him a curious fascination. He haunted the wharves. The smell of the sea and the tarred ropes of the ships bewitched him, and on the wharves he soon found work, and loaded and unloaded all day contentedly, with a feeling that this was after all more like living than anything could have been in the home fields where only the ghosts of his own remained to have place at his side. It is now only that the story of Lotte begins,--Lotte, who pined for the great farm and the fields across which the wind swept, and the cows she had named and cared for. Her mother forgot, or did not care. She had never loved her work, and liked better to chatter with the other women in the house, or even to run the machine hour after hour, than to milk, or feed the cattle, or churn. Lotte hated the machine. Her back ached, her eyes burned, and her head throbbed after only an hour or two of it. "Let me take a place," she begged, but the Grossvater shook his head angrily. This was a free country. There was no need that she should serve. Let her learn to be contented and thankful that she could earn so much. For with their simple habits the wages paid in 1881 seemed wealth. Forty-five cents a pair, three of which she could make in a day, brought the week's earnings to eight dollars, sometimes to nine dollars, and Peter prophesied that it might even be ten or twelve dollars. Lieschen had as much. Down on the wharves the Grossvater earned sometimes eighteen dollars a week. It was a fortune. At home, in the best of times, with sons and daughters all at work, his books, which he kept always with the accuracy of a merchant, showed something under $1,000 a year as receipts, the expenses hardly varying from the $736.28 which represented the maintenance of the family during Hans's first year as soldier. Their food ration at home had been nine and a half cents daily. Wheat bread had stood for festivals and high days. Black bread, cabbage soup, beer, cheese, and sausage, with meat on Sundays, had been their only ambition as to food, and here Grossvater Bauer insisted upon the same regimen, and frowned as one by one the fashions of the new country crept in. Peter had been right after all. One must work, it is true, but no harder and no longer, and the return was double. The little iron chest which had held the savings at home held them here, and at rare intervals the Grossvater allowed Lotte to look, and said as he turned over the shining coins, "Thou wilt have most, my Lottchen. It is for thee that I put them away." "There is enough for a little farm," Lotte said one day. "We could go on this Long Island and have land, and not be shut all day in these dark rooms." "That is slower," the Grossvater said. "We will go back with much money when it is earned, and I shall be owner, and thou, Lotte, the mistress, and Franz maybe will go also." Lotte shook her head, though her cheeks were pink. "Franz cares only for America," she said. "Come with us some day, Grossvater, and let us look at the little house he knows. There is land, two acres, and a barn and a cow, and all for so little. I could be stronger then." "That is folly," the old man said angrily. "It would be but shillings there, where here it is dollars. Wait and you will see." Lotte looked after him wonderingly as he turned away. To save was becoming his passion. He grudged her even her shoes and the dress she must have, though no one had so little. Peter revolted openly and came less and less. Lieschen cried, but still looked at the week's wages as compensation for many evils, and Lotte worked on, the pink spot fixing itself on her cheeks, and her blue eyes growing sadder with every week. Franz, the son of their old neighbor at home, hated this crowded city as she did, and urged her to take her chances and marry him, even if, as yet, he was only laborer in the market gardens out on the Island. There were minutes when Lotte nearly yielded, but the Grossvater seemed to hold her as with chains. She loved him, and she had always submitted. Perhaps in time he would yield and learn again to care for the old life of the country. At last a change came, but there was in it no release, only closer imprisonment. Peter and Annchen had followed a brother to Chicago and opened a shop double the size of the old one, and they were hardly settled when Lieschen sickened suddenly and after long illness died. For many weeks there was no earning. Even the angry Grossvater saw that it was impossible, and doled out reluctantly the money they had helped him to save. Lieschen had always fretted him. Lotte was the best gift she had ever made the Bauer name, and when the funeral was over, he went home, secretly relieved that the long watch was over; went home to find that the precious chest, hidden always under piles of bedding in the closet where he locked his own possessions, had disappeared. There had been a moving from the story above. Men had gone up and down for an hour, and no one had noticed specially what was carried. There was no clew, even after days of searching; and Grossvater Bauer, who had rushed madly to the police station, haunted it now, with imploring questions, till told they could do nothing and that he must keep away. He sank then into the sort of apathy that had held him when the news came from Sedan. He went to his work, but there was no heart in it, and sat by the fire when night came, with only an impatient shake of the head when Lotte tried to comfort him. Till then no one had realized his age, but now his hair whitened and his broad shoulders bowed. He was an old man; and Lotte said to herself that his earning days were nearly over, and worked an hour or two later that the week's gain might be a little larger and so comfort him. She came home one afternoon with her bundle of work. Gretchen, who was nearly thirteen, had helped her carry it, and had shrunk back frightened as the foreman put a finger under her chin, and nodded smilingly at the peach-like face and the great blue eyes. Lotte struck down his hand passionately. She knew better than Gretchen what the smile meant. The child should never know if she could help it, and she did not mind the evil glance that followed her toward the door. There were people standing at their doors as she went slowly up the stairs, her breath coming quickly, as now it always did when she climbed them. "Poor soul!" one of them said. "She little knows what she's coming to." "Was ist los?" Lotte cried as the door opened, and then shrieked aloud, for the Grossvater lay there on the bed, crushed and disfigured and almost speechless, but lifting one hand feebly as she flew toward him. "A sugar hogshead," somebody said. "It rolled over him when he thought it was firm, and brought down some barrels with it. He's past helping. May the saints have a heart for the poor children! He would be brought here, but what will you do with him?" "There'll be naught to do by morning," said another. "Can't you see he's going?" But by morning no change had come, nor for many mornings. The wounds and bruises slowly healed, but save for the one hand that moved toward her, there were no signs of life. The strong body held by paralysis might linger for years, and Lotte must earn for him and for all. Even then a living might have been possible, for Gretchen had a place as cash-girl and earned two dollars a week, and Lisa was promised one after New Year's. But it was a hard winter. They ate only what they must, and Lotte's blue eyes looked out from hollow sockets, and she shivered with cold. Wages had fallen, and they fell faster and faster till by January her ten and twelve hours' work brought her but six dollars instead of the eight or nine she had always earned. The foreman she hated made everything as difficult as possible. Though the bundle came ready from the cutting room, he had managed more than once to slip out some essential piece, and thus lessened her week's wages, no price being paid where a garment was returned unfinished. He had often done this where girls had refused his advances, yet it was impossible to make complaint. The great house on Canal Street left these matters entirely with him, and regarded complaint as mere blackmailing. Lotte tried others, but wages were even less. She was sure of work here, and pay was prompt. With the spring things must be better. But long before the spring Lisa had sickened and died, and Lotte buried her in the Potter's Field, and hurried home to make up the lost time, and hush the crying little ones as she could. It did not occur to her that she could write to Annchen and ask for help, and Franz had quarrelled with her because she did not put the Grossvater in a hospital and send the children to some asylum. "I will even marry you with the children," he said, "but never with the Grossvater who hindered and spoiled everything." "He has cared for me always, even when he was hard," said Lotte. "I shall care for him now;" and Franz rushed away and had come no more. For a year Lotte's struggle went on. She knew only the one form of work; and she dared not take time to learn another. "If it were not for the Grossvater," she said, "and the children, I should have a place and work in the country and grow strong, but I cannot. If I die before them what can they do?" There was other trouble. Gretchen's light little head could never guard her pretty face. She was fourteen now, and tall and fair, fretting against the narrow life and refusing to stay indoors when evening came. One day she did not come home; and when Lotte sought her she saw only the evil smile and triumphant eyes of the foreman who had followed her a year ago and who laughed in her face as he shut the door. "You'd better come in yourself," he called. "You'd fare better if you did." Lotte went home dumb, and sat down at her machine. There was no money in the house, nor would be till she had taken home this work; but as she bent over it the blood poured in a stream from her mouth. She tried to rise, but fell back; and when the screaming children had brought in neighbors, Lotte's struggle was quite over. When they had buried her in the Potter's Field by Lisa, they took the bundle of work stained with her life-blood and carried it back to its owners. "She'll need no more," said the old neighbor from the floor above as she laid it on the counter. "You've cut her down and cut her down, till there wasn't life left to stand it longer. There's not one of you to blame, you say, but I that know, know you've fastened her coffin-lid with nails o' your own makin', an' that sooner or later you'll come face to face, an' find that red-hot is cowld to the hate that's makin' ready for you. An' as for him that stands there smilin', if it weren't for the laws that spare the guilty and send the innocent to their deaths, God knows it would be the best thing these hands ever did to tear him to bits. But there's no one to blame. Ye're sure o' that. Wait a while. The day's comin' when you'll maybe think different; an' may God speed it!" CHAPTER NINTH. THE EVOLUTION OF A JACKET. "If underwear, whether for men or women, has proven itself a most excellent medium for starvation; if suits and dresses in general rank but a grade above; if shirts, whether of cotton or woollen, are a despair; and in each and all competition has cheapened material and manufacture and brought labor to the 'life limit' and below, at least it cannot be so bad with cloaks and jackets. Here are single garments, often of the most expensive material and put together in the most finished and perfect manner. Skilled labor is demanded, careful handling, spotless neatness. Here is one industry which must give not only a living wage, but a surplus. These women must be on the way to at least semi-prosperity." This was the thought in the days in which one phase after another of the underwear problem presented itself, each one more bewildering, more heart-sickening, than the last. Here and there had been the encounter with one who had always been sure of work and who had never failed to receive a fair return. But the summary had been inevitably as it stands recorded,--overwork, under-pay; a fruitless struggle against overwhelming odds. With this thought the quest began anew. The manufacturers of cloaks and jackets reported "piece-work" as the rule. The great dry-goods establishments had the same word. Here and there was one where work was done on the premises, and where skilled hands held the same places year after year, the wages ranging from six to ten dollars, hardly varying. But for most of them the same causes stated in the third chapter, "The Methods of a Prosperous Firm," have operated, and it has been found expedient to settle upon "piece-work" and let rent be paid and space be furnished by the workers themselves. "They like it better," said the business manager of the great firm against whom there have never been charges of dishonesty or unkindness in their treatment of employees. "It would be impossible to do all our work on the premises. We should want the entire block if we even half did it. But we know some of the women, and we pay as high as anybody; perhaps higher. It saves them car fares and going out in all weathers, and a great many other inconveniences, when they work at home, and I don't see why there should be any objections made. The amount of it is, there are too many women. The best thing to be done is to ship them West. They say they're wanted there, and there is certainly not room enough for them here. Machinery will soon take their place, anyway. I have one in mind now that ought to do the work of ten women perfectly, and require simply a tender and finisher. We shall get the thing down to a fine point very soon. Hard on the women? Why, no. We always hold on to first-class workers, and there's nothing much to be done with second and third class except to use them through the busy season, and let them go in the dull." "Go where?" The manager paused and looked reflectively at his well-kept finger-nails. "My dear madam, that's a question I have no time to consider. I dare say they earn a living somehow. Indeed, I'm told they go into cigar factories. There's always plenty of work." "Plenty of work,"--a form of words so familiar that I looked for it now from both employer and employed. But for the last was an addition finding no place on the lips of the first: "Plenty of work? Oh, yes! I can always get plenty of work. The trouble is to get the wages for it." A block or so below, and further west, one great window of a cheaper establishment held jackets and wraps large and small, marked down for the holidays, their advertisement in a morning paper having read, "Jackets from $4 up." Still further over, another window displayed numbers as great, and a placard at one side announced: "These elegant jackets from $2.87 up." The cloth might be shoddy, but here was a garment, fashionably cut, well finished to all appearance, and unexceptionable in pattern and color. All along the crowded avenue the story was the same, and as east took the place of west, and Grand Street and the Bowery and Third Avenue gave in their returns, "These elegant jackets from $2.35 up" gave the final depth to which cheapness could descend. If this was retail, what could be the wholesale price, and what was likely to be the story of the worker from whose hands they had come? It is worth while to follow these jackets as they emerge from the cutting-room, and in packages holding such number of dozens as has been agreed upon, pass to the express wagon which distributes them among the workers, the firm in mind at present, like many others, preferring this arrangement to any which involves dealing directly with the women. First on the list stands the name of a woman a little over fifty years old, whose husband is a painter and who left Germany eight years ago, urged to come over by a daughter more adventurous than the rest, who had married and emigrated at once. Work was plentiful when they arrived, and the husband found immediate employment at his trade, with wages so high that the wife had no occasion for any employment outside her own rooms. The youngest child, a girl of nine, went to school. They lived in comfortable rooms on a decent street, put money in a savings bank, and felt that America held more good even than the name had always seemed to promise. Then came the financial troubles of 1879 and 1881, the gradual fall of wages, the long seasons when there was no work, and last, the fate that overtakes the worker in lead, whether painter or in any other branch,--first painter's colic, and the long train of symptoms preceding the paralysis which came at last, the stroke a light one, but leaving the patient with the "drop hand" and all the other complications, testifying that the working days were over. Strength enough returned for an odd job now and then, and the little man accepted his fate cheerily, and congratulated himself that the bank held a little fund and that thus the lowering wages could be pieced out. The bank settled this question by almost immediate failure; a long and expensive illness for the wife followed; and when it ended furniture and small valuables of every sort had been pawned, and they left the empty rooms for narrower quarters and sought for work in which all could share. To add to the complication, the daughter, who had had good sense enough to take a place as child's nurse, broke her leg, and became, even when able to walk again, too disabled to return to this work. She could run the machine, and her mother was an expert buttonhole-maker and had already learned various forms of work on cloth, both in cheap coats and pantaloons, and in jackets and cloaks. The jackets seemed to promise most, for in 1884 each one brought to the maker sixty cents, buttonholes being $1.50 per hundred, the presser receiving ten cents each and the finisher six cents, these amounts being deducted from the price paid on each. To save this amount the husband learned how to press, and though his crippled hands can barely grasp the iron, and often his wife must help him place the cramped fingers in position, he stands there smiling and well content to add this mite to the fund. For a year their home has been in a deep basement, where, save at noonday, it is impossible to run the machines without artificial light. A dark room opens from the one in which they work, itself dark, unventilated save from the hall, and chosen as abiding place because it represents but four dollars a month in rent. Two machines run by mother and daughter stand as near the window as possible, and close by is the press-board and the pale but optimistic little man, who looks proudly at each seam as he lays it open. Jackets are everywhere,--piled on chairs and scattered over the floor,--waiting the various operations necessary before they can at last be bundled on the ex-painter's back, who smiles to himself as he toils down to the firm's headquarters, reflecting that he has saved the expressage another week. What are the returns? Lisa will give them,--the wife whose English is still uncertain, and whose gentle, anxious eyes grow eager and bright as she talks, the husband nodding confirmation, or shaking his head as he sees the tears come suddenly, with a "Not so, not so, Lisa." "I know not if we shall live at all," she says. "For see. We two, my Gretchen and I, we make but ten for a day. Tree dollar? Yes, but you must take from it de buttonhole an' finish and much else, and it is so short--so short that we can work on them. The season, that is it--six weeks--two months, maybe, and then pantaloon till spring jacket come. See. It is early that we begin,--seven, maybe,--and all day we shall sew and sew. We eat no warm essen. On table dere is bread and beer in pitcher and cheese to-day. We sit not down, for time goes away so. No, we stand and eat as we must, and sew more and more. Ten jackets to one day--so Gretchen and me can make ten jackets to one day, but we sit always--we go not out. It is fourteen hours efery day--yes, many time sixteen--we work and work. Then we fall on bed and sleep, and when we wake again it is work always. And I must stop a leetle; not much, but a leetle, for my back have such pain that I fall on the bed to say, 'Ach Gott! is it living to work so in this rich, free America?' But he is sick always, my man, even if he will laugh. He say he must laugh alway for two because I cannot. For when this work is past it is only pantaloons, and sew so hard as we may it is five, six pair maybe, for Gretchen and me all day, and that not always. Many day we do nothing because they say work is dull, and then goes away all we save before. But we need not to ask help. So much is good that we work and earn, but I think I die soon of my pain, and who then helps his fingers so stiff to press or thinks how he will ache even when he will laugh? It is because America is best that we come, but how is it best to die because it is always work and no joy, no hope, never one so small stop?" "Never one so small stop." The attic had the same story, and the white-faced, hollow-eyed woman who tried to smile as she spoke turned also from the waiting pile of jackets and drew one or two back to the sheet spread for them on the floor to which they had slipped. A table and two chairs, a small stove in which burned bare handful of coals, the two machines, at one of which a girl of twenty still sewed on, and in the corner a bed, on which lay another girl of the same age, but with the crimson spot on her cheeks and the shining eyes of advanced consumption. It had been one of the faces so often seen behind the counters of the great stores, delicate in features and coloring, with soft dark eyes and fair masses of hair loose on the pillow. "I try to keep her tidy," the mother said, "but she can't bear her hair up a minute, it's so heavy on her head, an' I've no time to 'tend to it but the minute I take in the morning. It's jackets now that I'm on. I thought maybe there'd be less risk in them than cloaks. Cloaks seem to give 'em so much chance to cheat. I wouldn't work at all at home, I'd be out doing by the day, for I had a good run of work, but there's Maggie, and I can't leave her, though God knows she gets little good of me but the knowing I'm here. I'll tell you what they did to me on cloaks. I work for S---- & Co., far down on Broadway, and they give out the most expensive kind of cloaks, and nine dollars a dozen for the making; other kinds, too, but I'd been on them a good while and knew just how. The pay was regular, but before I'd had work from them a month I saw they were bound to make complaints and dock pay whether there was any fault in the work or not. One and another took their turn, and no help for it; for if they complained the foreman just said: 'You needn't take any work unless you like. There are plenty waiting to fill your place.' Poor souls! What could they do but go on? "At last came my turn. He tossed them all over. 'It's poor work,' he said. 'They're not finished properly. You can't be paid for botching. There's three dollars, and that's too much.' 'The work is the same it's always been. There's no botching,' I said; but he held out the three dollars. 'No,' I said, 'If you won't pay fair I'll go to the Woman's Protective Union and see what they'll do.' His face was black as thunder. 'Take your money,' he says, holding out the rest, 'but you may sing for more work from this establishment,' and he flung the money on the floor. That didn't trouble me, because I knew I could get work just below, and I did that same day; twenty cloaks, ten to be made at sixty cents apiece, and ten at fifty-five cents. I had Angie here to help, and when they were done I carried them down. This man was a Jew, but there's small difference. If the Jew knew best how to cheat in the beginning, the Christian caught up with him long ago. 'The buttons are all on wrong,' he said. 'I told you to set them an inch further back. We'll have to alter them every one and charge you for the time.' 'I can take oath they are on as I was told to put them on,' I said, 'but if they must be changed I'll change them myself and save the money.' "It took long talking to make him agree, but at last he said I could come next morning but one, and he'd let me alter them as a great favor. I did come down, but he said they couldn't wait and had made the change, and he charged me six dollars for what he said was my mistake. It was no use to complain. He could swear I had done the job wrong, and so I went home with $5.50 instead of eleven dollars for nearly a fortnight's work. I changed the place, and so far nobody has docked me; but doing my best, and Angie working as steady as I do, we can't make more than twenty cents on a jacket, and it's a short season. When it's over I do coats, but it's less pay than jackets, and there's living and Maggie's medicine and the doctor, though he won't take anything. I'd feel better if he did, but he won't. Angie used to be in a factory, but there's the baby now, and she doesn't know what way to turn but this. See, he's here by Maggie." The sick girl lifted a corner of the quilt, and something stirred,--a baby of seven or eight months whose great eyes looked out from a face weazened and sharpened, deep experience seeming graven in every line. "He's a wise one," the sick girl said. "He's found it's no use to cry, and he likes to be by me because it's warm. But he frightens me sometimes, for he just lies and looks at me as if he knew a million things and could tell them every one. He's always hungry, and maybe that makes him wiser. I'm sure I could tell some things that people don't know." The words came with gasps between. It was plain that what she had to tell must find speedy listener if it were to be heard at all, but for that day at least the story must wait. Here, as in other places, the cloakmaker was earning from sixty to seventy cents a day, but even this was comfort and profusion compared with the facts that waited in a Fourth Ward street, and in a rookery not yet reached by any sanitary laws the city may count as in operation. Here and there still remains one of the old wooden houses with dormer windows, a remnant of the city's early days and given over to the lowest uses,--a saloon below and tenements above. In one of these, in a room ten feet square, low-ceiled, and lighted by but one window whose panes were crusted with the dirt of a generation, seven women sat at work. Three machines were the principal furniture. A small stove burned fiercely, the close smell of red-hot iron hardly dominating the fouler one of sinks and reeking sewer-gas. Piles of cloaks were on the floor, and the women, white and wan, with cavernous eyes and hands more akin to a skeleton's than to flesh and blood, bent over the garments that would pass from this loathsome place saturated with the invisible filth furnished as air. They were handsome cloaks, lined with quilted silk or satin, trimmed with fur or sealskin, and retailing at prices from thirty to seventy-five dollars. A teapot stood at the back of the stove; some cups and a loaf of bread, with a lump of streaky butter, were on a small table absorbing their portion also of filth. An inner room, a mere closet, dark and even fouler than the outer one, held the bed; a mattress, black with age, lying on the floor. Here such as might be had was taken when the sixteen hours of work ended,--sixteen hours of toil unrelieved by one gleam of hope or cheer; the net result of this accumulated and ever-accumulating misery being $3.50 a week. Two women, using their utmost diligence, could finish one cloak per day, receiving from the "sweater," through whose hands all must come, fifty cents each for a toil unequalled by any form of labor under the sun, unless it be that of the haggard wretches dressed in men's clothes, but counted as female laborers, in Belgian mines. They cannot stop, they dare not stop, to think of other methods of earning. They have no clothing in which they could obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They have no knowledge that could make them servants of even the meanest order. They are what is left of untrained, hopelessly ignorant lives, clinging to these lives with a tenacity hardly higher in intelligence than that of the limpet on the rock, but turning to one with lustreless eyes and blank faces, holding only the one question,--"Lord, how long?" They are one product of nineteenth-century civilization, and these seven are but types, hundreds of their kind confronting the searcher, who looks on aghast and who, as the list lengthens and case after case gives in its unutterably miserable details, turns away in a despair only matched by that of the worker. Yet they are here, this army of incompetents, marching through torture to their graves; and till we have found some method by which torture may lessen, these lives as they vanish pass on to the army of avengers, and will face us by and by when excuses fall away and Justice comes face to face with the weak souls that failed in the flesh to know its nature or its demand. CHAPTER TENTH. BETWEEN THE RIVERS. "The nearer the river the nearer to hell." It was a strong word, and the big chest from which it issued held more of the same sort,--a tall worker, carpenter apparently, hurrying on with his box of tools and talking, as he went, with a companion half his size, but with quite his power of expression, interjecting strange German oaths as he listened to the story poured out to him. With that story we have at present nothing to do. But the first words lingered, and they linger still as the summary of such life as is lived by many workers on east and west sides alike. Were the laws governing a volume of this nature rigidly observed, the present phase of this investigation could hardly be the point at which to stop for any detail of how these workers live from day to day. But as the search has gone on through these hours when Christmas joy is in the air, when the smallest shop hangs out its Christmas token, and the great stores are thronged with buyers far into the evening, I think of the lives in which Christmas has no place, of the women for whom all days are alike, each one the synonyme of relentless, unending toil; of the children who have never known a childhood and for whom Christmas is but a name. For even when mission and refuge have done their utmost, there is still the army unreached by any effort and in great part unreachable, no method recorded in any system of the day having power to drag them to the light and thus make known to us what manner of creature it is that cowers in shadowy places and has no foothold in the path we call progress. That their own ignorance holds them in these shadows, bound as with chains; that even a little more knowledge would break the bonds, in part at least, has no present bearing on the fact that thousands are alive among us to whom existence has brought only pain, and that fresh thousands join this dumb throng of martyrs with every added year. If they had learned in any degree how to use to the best advantage the pittance earned, there would be less need of these chapters; yet as I read the assurances of our political economists, that a wage of four dollars per week is sufficient, if intelligently used, to supply all the actual necessities of the worker, the question pushes itself between the lines: "Why should they be forced to know only necessities; and is this statement made of any save those too ignorant to define their wants and needs, too helpless to dare any protestation, even if more knowledge had come?" The professional political economist of the old school, the school to which all but a handful belong, takes refuge in the census returns as the one reply to any arraignment of the present. Blind as a bat to any figures save his own, he answers all complaint with the formula: "In 1860 the property of this country, equally divided, would have given every man, woman, and child $514 each. In 1870 the share would have been $624; in 1880, $814. In 1886 returns are not in, but $900 and more would be the division per capita. What madness to talk of suffering when this flood of wealth pours through the land. Admitting that the lowest class suffer, it is chiefly crime, drunkenness, etc., that bring suffering. The majority are perfectly comfortable." Having read this statement in many letters and heard it in interviews as well, it seems plain that the conviction embodied in both has fastened itself upon that portion of the public whose thinking is done for them, and who range themselves by choice with that order who would not be convinced "even though one rose from the dead." "The majority are perfectly comfortable." Let us see how comfortable. I turn first to the pair, a mother and daughter, a portion of whose experience found place in the chapter on "More Methods of Prosperous Firms." Here, as in so many cases, there had been better days, and when these suddenly ended a period of bewildered helplessness, in which the widow felt that respectability like hers must know no compromise, and that any step that would involve her "being talked about" was a step toward destruction. She must live on a decent street, in a house where she need not be ashamed to have the relations come, and she did till brought face to face with the fact that there were no more dollars to spend upon respectability, and that her quarters must hereafter conform to her earnings. She had been a dweller in that curious triangle, the remnant of "Greenwich village," the stronghold still of old New York, and she went at once to a region as unfamiliar to her conservative feet as Baxter or Hester, or any other street given over to evil. Far over toward the North River, in the first floor of a great tenement-house inhabited by the better class of Irish chiefly, she took two rooms, one a mere closet where the bed could stand; bestowed in them such furniture as remained, and at fifty, with no clew left that any friend could trace, began the fight for bread. "It might have been better to go to the country," she said. "But you see I wasn't used to the country, and then any work I could get to do was right here. I'd always liked to sew, and so had Emeline, and we found we could get regular work on children's suits, with skirts and such things in the dull seasons. It was good pay, and we were comfortable till prices began to fall. We made fifteen dollars a week sometimes, and could have got ahead if it hadn't been for a little debt of my husband's that I wanted to pay, for we'd never owed anybody a penny and I couldn't let even that debt stand against his name. But when it was paid, somehow I came down with rheumatic fever, and I've never got back my full strength yet. And the prices kept going down. Emmy is an expert. I never knew her make a mistake, but working twelve and fourteen hours a day,--and it's 'most often fourteen,--the most she has made for more than a year and a half is eighty-five cents a day, and on that we've managed. I suppose we couldn't if I ever went out, but I've had no shoes in two years. I patch the ones I got then with one of my husband's old coats, and keep along, but we never get ahead enough for me to have shoes, and Emmy too, and she's the one that has to go out. How we live? It's all in this little book. It's foolish to put it down, and yet I always somehow liked to see how the money went, even when I had plenty, and it's second nature to put down every cent. Take last month. It had twenty-seven working days: $22.95. Out of that we took first the ten dollars for rent. I've been here eleven years, and they've raised a dollar on me twice. That leaves $12.95 for provisions and coal and light and clothes. 'Tisn't much for two people, is it? You wouldn't think it could be done, would you? Well, it is, and here's the expense for one week for what we eat:-- Sugar, 23; Tomatoes, 7; Potatoes, 5 $0.35 Tea, 15; Butter, 30; Bread, 12 0.57 Coal, 12; Milk, 15; Clams, 10 0.37 Oil, 15; Paper, 1; Clams, 10; Potatoes, 5 0.31 Cabbage, 5; Bread, 7; Flour, 15; Rolls, 3 0.30 ---- Total $1.90 "This week was an expensive one, for I got a pound of butter at once, but it will last into next week. And we had to have the scissors sharpened; that was five cents. There would have been five cents for wood, but you see they're building down the street, and one of the boys upstairs brought me a basketful of bits. You see there's no meat. We like it, but we only get a bit for Sundays sometimes. Emmy never wants much. Running a machine all day seems to take your appetite. But she likes clams; you see we had them twice, and I happened to read in the paper a good while ago that you could make soup of the water the cabbage was boiled in; a quart of the water and a cup of milk and a bit of butter and some flour to thicken. You wouldn't think it could be good, but it is, and it goes a good way. The coal ought not to be in with the food, ought it, unless it stays because I have to use it cooking? We oughtn't to spend so much on food, but I can't seem to make it less. Really, when you take out the coal and oil and the paper,--and we do want to see a paper sometimes,--it's only 1.62 for us both; eighty-one cents apiece; almost twelve cents a day, but I can't well seem to make it less. I call it twelve cents a day apiece. For the month that makes $7.44, and so you see there's $5.51 left. Then there are Emmy's car-fares when she goes out, for sometimes she works down-town and only evenings at home. Last month it was sixty cents a week, $2.70 for the month, and so there was just $2.81 left, and $1.50 of that went for shoes for Emmy. The month before, my hands weren't so stiff and I helped her a good deal, so we earned $26.70, and she got two remnants for $1.80 at Ehrich's and I made her a dress that looks very well. But she's nothing but patchwork underneath, and I'm the same, only worse. The coal is the trouble. By the scuttle it costs so much, and I try to get ahead and have a quarter of a ton at once, for there are places here to keep coal, but I never can. If it weren't for Emmy's missing me, it would be better for me to die, for I'm no use, you see, and times get no better, but worse. But I can't, and we must get along somehow. Lord help us all!" "How could twelve cents' worth of coal do a week's cooking?" "It couldn't. It didn't. I've a little oil stove that just boils the kettle, and tea and bread and butter what we have mostly. A gallon of oil goes a long way, and I can cook small things over it, too. The washing takes coal, and you see I must have soap and all that. I don't see how we could spend less. I've learned to manage even with what we get now, but there's a woman next door that I know better than anybody in this house,--for here it always seemed to me best to keep quite to myself for many reasons, but the chief that I'm always hoping for a change and a chance for Emmy. But this woman is a nice German woman that fell on the ice and sprained her ankle last winter, and we saw to her well as we could till she got better. She won't mind telling how she manages, but she's in the top of the house. She's a widow, and everybody dead belonging to her." This house was a grade below the last in cleanliness, and children swarmed on stairs and in hall. Up to the fourth floor back; a ten-feet-square room, with one window, where, in spite of a defective sink in the hall, the odor from which seemed to penetrate and saturate everything, spotless cleanliness was the expression of every inch of space. "Vy not?" the old woman said, when she understood my desire. "I tells you mine an' more, too, for down de stairs I buy every day for the girl that is sick and goes out no more. If I quick were as girl I could save much, but I have sixty-five year. How shall I be quick? I earn forty-five, fifty cents sometime, but forty-five for day's work when I go as I can. An' so for week dat is $2.70; I can ten dollars a month, sometimes twelve dollars, and I pays three dollars for this room. To eat I will buy tea and our bread,--rye, for dat is stronger as your fine wheat. Tea is American, but I will not beer any more, since I see how women drinks it and de kinder, and it not like our beer but more tipsy. So I makes tea, and de cheese and de wurst is all not so much. It is de coal that is most. Vat I vill eat, he cost not so more as fifty cent; sometimes sixty, but I eat not ever all I could, for I must be warm a little, and dere is light, and to wash, and some shoe. It is bad to be big as I, for shoe not last. But a loaf of bread, five cents, do all day and some in next; and cheese a pound is ten, if I have him; and wurst is fifteen, for sometime he is best, and a pound stay a week if I not greedy. Tea will be thirty cents, but he is good a month, and sugar a pound, two pound sometime, but butter no, and milk a cent for Sunday. So I live, and I beg not. Can I more? I thank the good God only that there is no more Hans or Lisa or any to be hungry with me. It is good they go." "And you buy for some one else?" "Oh ja, but she will die soon and care not. It is de kinder that care. Two, and one six and one eight and cannot earn. She sew all day on machine. It is babies' cloaks, so vite and nice. In two days she will make dree, for see, dere is two linings and cape and cuff is all scallop, and she must stitch first and then bind and hem. All is hem, all over inside, so nice, and she make dem so nice. But eight dollars a dozen is all, and it is a week for nine, and so she get not more as five dollars because she is sick and must stop. And there is the grandvater that is old, and de kinder and she and all must live. Rent is $5.50, dat I know, and I pay for her dis week $1.60 for bread and tea and potatoes and some milk, and molasses for de kinder on bread, and butter a little, and milk, but not meat. It is de grandvater eat too much, but how shall one help it? De rest is clothes for all, but dere is no shoe for de kinder, and I see not if dere will be shoe. How shall it be?" One after another the cases on the west side gave in their testimony. Save in the first one there were no formal accounts. But a little thinking brought out the items,--for many baker's bread, tea, sugar, a little milk, and butter and a bit of meat once or twice a week, the average cost of food per head for the majority of cases being ninety cents per week. All coal was bought by the scuttle, a scuttle of medium size counting as twelve cents' worth, thus much more than doubling the cost per ton. In the same way, wood by the bundle and oil by the quart gave the utmost margin of profit to the seller, and the same fact applied to all provisions sold. In no case save the one first mentioned, where the mother had learned that cabbage-water can form the basis for a nourishing and very palatable soup, was there the faintest gleam of understanding that the same amount of money could furnish a more varied, more savory, and more nourishing regimen. "Beans!" said one indignant soul. "What time have I to think of beans, or what money to buy coal to cook 'em? What you'd want if you sat over a machine fourteen hours a day would be tea like lye to put a back-bone in you. That's why we have tea always in the pot, and it don't make much odds what's with it. A slice of bread is about all. Once in a while you get ragin', tearin' hungry. Seems as if you'd swallow teapot or anything handy to fill up like, but that ain't often--lucky for us!" "If you all clubbed together, couldn't one cook for you,--make good soup and oatmeal and things that are nourishing? You would be stronger then." "Stronger for what? More hours at the machine? More grinding your own flesh and bones into flour for them that's over us? Ma'am, it's easy to see you mean well, an' I won't say but what you know more than some that comes around what you're talkin' about. Club we might. I'm not denying it could be done, if there was time; but who of us has the time even if she'd the will? I was never much hand for cookin'. We'd our tea an' bread an' a good bit of fried beef or pork, maybe, when my husband was alive an' at work. He cared naught for fancy things like beans an' such. It's the tea that keeps you up, an' as long as I can get that I'll not bother about beans." In the same house an old Swiss woman, who had fallen from her first estate as lady's maid through one grade and another of service, was ending her days on a wage of two dollars per week, earned in a suspender factory, where she sewed on buckles. In her case marriage with a drinking husband had eaten up both her savings and her earnings, and age now prevented her taking up household service, which she ranked as most comfortable and most profitable. But she had been taught while almost a child to cook, and though her expenditure for food was a little below a dollar per week, the savory smell from a saucepan on her tiny stove showed that she had something more nearly like nourishment than her neighbors. "I try sometimes to teach," she said. "I give some of my soup, and they eat it and say it is good, but they not stop to do so much dat is fuss. All this in the saucepan is seven cents,--three cents for bones and some bits the kind butcher trow in, and the rest vegetable and barley. But it makes me two days. I have lentils, too, yes, and beans, and plenty things to flavor, and I buy rye bread and coffee to Sunday. Never tea, oh, no! Tea is so vicket. It make hand shake and head fly all round. Good soup is best, and more when one can. Vegetable is many and salad, and when I make more dollar I buy some egg. But not tea; not big loaf of white bread dot swell and swell inside and ven it is gone leave one all so empty. I would teach many but they like it not. They want only de tea; always de tea." "De tea" and the sewing-machine are naturally inseparable allies, and so long as the sewing-women must work fourteen hours daily they will remain so; the rank fluid retarding digestion and thus proving as friendly an aid as the "bone" which the half-fed Irish peasant demands in his potato. For the west side the story was quite plain, but for such returns as the east side has to offer there is still room for further detail. CHAPTER ELEVENTH. UNDER THE BRIDGE AND BEYOND. Between east and west side poverty and its surroundings exists always this difference, that the west is newer and thus escapes the inherited miseries that hedge about life in such regions as the Fourth Ward. There, where old New York once centred, and where Dutch gables and dormer windows may still be seen, is not only the foulness of the present, each nationality in the swarming tenements representing a distinct type of dirt and a distinct method of dealing with it and in it, but the foulness also of the past, in decay and mould and crumbling wall and all silent forces of destruction at work here for a generation and more. Those of us who have watched the evolution of the Fourth Ward into some show of decency recognize many causes as having worked toward the same end; yet even when one notes to-day the changes wrought, first by business, the march of which has wiped out many former landmarks, setting in their place great warehouses and factories, and then of philanthropy, which, as in the case of Miss Collins's tenements, has transformed dens into some semblance of homes, there remains the conviction that dens are uppermost still. The business man hurrying down Fulton or Beekman Street, the myriads who pass up and down in the various east-side car lines, with those other myriads who cross the great Bridge, have small conception what thousands are packed away in the great tenements, and the rookeries even more crowded, or what depth of vileness flaunts itself openly when day is done and the creatures of shadow come out to the light that for many quarters is the only sunshine. This ward has had minute and faithful description from one of the most energetic of workers for better sanitary conditions among the poor,--Mr. Charles Wingate, whose admirable papers on "Tenement House Life," published by the "Tribune" in 1884-1885, must be regarded as authority for the sanitary phases of the question. Little by little these have bettered, till the death rate has come within normal limits and the percentage of crime ceased to represent the largest portion of the inhabitants. Yet here, on this familiar battle-ground, civilization and something worse than mere barbarism still struggle. For which is the victory? Under the great Bridge, whose piers have taken the place of much that was foulest in the Fourth Ward, stands a tenement-house so shadowed by the structure that, save at midday, natural light barely penetrates it. The inhabitants are of all grades and all nationalities. The men are chiefly 'longshoremen, working intermittently on the wharves, varying this occupation by long seasons of drinking, during which every pawnable article vanishes, to be gradually redeemed or altogether lost, according to the energy with which work is resumed. The women scrub offices, peddle fruit or small office necessities, take in washing, share, many of them, in the drinking bouts, and are, as a whole, content with brutishness, only vaguely conscious of a wretchedness that, so long as it is intermittent, is no spur to reform of methods. The same roof covers many who yield to none of these temptations, but are working patiently; some of them widows with children that must be fed; a few solitary, but banding with neighbors in cloak or pantaloon making, or the many forms of slop-work in the hands of sweaters. Sunshine has no place in these rooms which no enforced laws have made decent, and where occasional individual effort has power against the unspeakable filth ruling in tangible and intangible forms, sink and sewer and closet uniting in a common and all-pervading stench. The chance visitor has sometimes to rush to the outer air, deadly sick and faint at even a breath of this noisomeness. The most determined one feels inclined to burn every garment worn during such quest, and wonders if Abana or Pharpar or even Jordan itself could carry healing and cleansing in their floods. The dark halls have other uses than as receptacles for refuse or filth. Hiding behind doors or in corners, or, grown bolder, seeking no concealment, children hardly more than babies teach one another such new facts of foulness as may so far have chanced to escape them,--baby voices reciting a ritual of oaths and obscenity learned in this Inferno, which, could it have place by Dante's, might be better known to a cultured generation. Only a Zola could describe deliberately what any eye may see, but any minute detail of which would excite an outburst of popular indignation. Yet I am by no means certain that such detail has not far more right to space than much that fills our morning papers, and that the plain bald statement of facts, shorn of all flights of fancy or play of facetiousness, might not rouse the public to some sense of what lies below the surface of this fair-seeming civilization of to-day. Not alone in the shadow of the great pier, but wherever men and women must herd like brutes, these things exist and shape the little lives that missions do not, and as yet cannot, reach, and that we prefer to deal with later, when actual violation of laws has placed them in the hands of the State. Work as she may, the woman who must find home for herself and children in such surroundings is powerless to protect them from the all-pervading foulness. They may escape a portion of the actual degradation. They can never escape a knowledge the possibility of which is unknown to what we call barbarism, but part and parcel of the daily life of civilization. Granted instantly that only the lowest order of worker must submit to such conditions, yet we have seen that this lowest order is legion; that its numbers increase with every day; and that no Board of Health or of Sanitary Inspectors has yet been able to alter, save here and there, the facts that are a portion of the tenement-house system. It is chiefly with the house under the Bridge that we deal at present. Its upper rooms hold many workers whose testimony has helped to make plain how the east side lives. Little by little, as the blocks of granite swung into place and the pier grew, the sunshine vanished, its warmth and light replaced by the electric glow, cold and hard and blinding. The day's work has ceased to be the day's work, and the women who cannot afford the gas or oil that must burn if they work in the daytime, sleep while day lasts, and when night comes and the electric light penetrates every corner of the shadowy rooms, turn to the toil by which their bread is won. Never was deeper satire upon the civilization of which we boast. Natural law, natural living, abolished once for all, and this light that blinds but holds no cheer shining upon the mass of weary humanity who have forgotten what sunshine may mean and who know no joy that life was meant to hold! In one of these rooms, clean, if cleanliness were possible where walls and ceiling and every plank and beam reek with the foulness from sewer and closet, three women were at work on overalls. Two machines were placed directly under the windows to obtain every ray of light. The room, ten by twelve feet, with a small one half the size opening from it, held a small stove, the inevitable teapot steaming at the back; a table with cups and saucers and a loaf of bread still uncut; and a small dresser in one corner, in which a few dishes were ranged. A sickly geranium grew in an old tomato-can, but save for this the room held no faintest attempt at adornment of any sort. In many of them the cheapest colored prints are pinned up, and in one, one side had been decorated with all the trademarks peeled from the goods on which the family worked. Here there was no time for even such attempts at betterment. The machines rushed on as we talked, with only a momentary pause as interest deepened, and one woman nodded confirmation to the statement of another. "We've clubbed, so's to get ahead a little," said the finisher, whose fingers flew as she made buttonholes in the waistband and flap of the overalls. "We were each in a room by ourselves, but after the fever, when the children died and I hadn't but two left, it seemed as if we'd be more sensible to all go in together and see if we couldn't be more comfortable. We'd have left anyway, and tried for a better place, but for one thing,--we hadn't time to move; and for another, queer as it seems, you get used to even the worst places and feel as if you couldn't change. We'll have to, if the landlord doesn't do something about the closets. It's no good telling the agent, and I don't know as anybody in the house knows just who the landlord is. Anyway, the smell's enough to kill you sometimes, and it's a burning disgrace that human beings have to live in such a pig-pen. It's cheap rent. We pay five dollars a month for this place. When I came here it was from a neck-tie place over on Allen Street, that's moved now, and my husband was mate on a tug and earned well. But he took to drink and sold off everything I'd brought with me, and at last he was hurt in a fight round the corner, and died in hospital of gangrene. Mary's husband there was a bricklayer and had big wages, but he drank them fast as he made them, and he was ugly when the drink was in, which mine wasn't. But there's hardly one in this house, man or woman, that don't take a drop to keep off the fever; and even I, that hate the sight or smell of it, I wake up in the morning with an awful kind o' goneness that seems as if a taste might help it. The tea stops that, though. Tea's the best friend we've got. We'd never stand it if it wasn't for tea." "Are overalls steady pay through the year?" "There's nothing that's steady, so far as I can find out, but want and misery. Just now overalls are up; the Lord only knows why, for you never can tell what'll be up and what down. They're up, and we're making a dollar a dozen on these. I have done a dozen a day, but it's generally ten. There's the long seams, and the two pockets, and the buckle strap and the waistband and three buttonholes, and the stays and the finishing. They're heavy machines too, and take the backbone right out of you before night comes. But you sleep like the dead, that's one comfort. It would be more if you didn't have to wake more than they do. When the overall rush is over, it'll be back to pants again. That's my trade. I learned it regular after I was married, when I saw Tim wasn't going to be any dependence. There were the children then, and I thought I'd send 'em to school and keep things decent maybe. I know all about pants, the best and the worst, but it's mostly worse these days. First the German women piled in ready to do your work for half your rates, and when they'd got well started, in comes the Italians and cuts under, till it's a wonder anybody keeps soul and body together." "We don't," one of the women said, turning suddenly. "I got rid o' my soul long ago, such as 'twas. Who's got time to think about souls, grinding away here fourteen hours a day to turn out contract goods? 'Tain't souls that count. It's bodies that can be driven, an' half starved an' driven still, till they drop in their tracks. I'm driving now to pay a doctor's bill for my three that went with the fever. Before that I was driving to put food into their mouths. I never owed a cent to no man. I've been honest and paid as I went and done a good turn when I could. If I'd chosen the other thing while I'd a pretty face of my own I'd a had ease and comfort and a quick death. Such life as this isn't living." The machine whirled on as she ended, to make up the time lost in her outburst. The finisher shook her head as she looked at her, then poured a cup of tea and put it silently on the edge of the table where it could be reached. "She's right enough," she said, "but there's no use thinking about it. I try to sometimes, just to see if there's any way out, but there isn't. I've even said I'd take a place; but I don't know anything about housework, and who'd take one looking as I do, and not a rag that's fit to be put on? I cover up in an old waterproof when I go for work. They wouldn't give it to me if they saw my dress in rags below, and me with no time to mend it. But we're doing better than some. We've had meat twice this week, and we've kept warm. It's the coal that eats up your money,--twelve cents a scuttle, and no place to keep more if ever we got ahead enough to get more at a time. It's lucky that tea's so staying. Give me plenty of tea, and the most I want generally besides is bread and a scrape of butter. It's all figured out. It's long since I've spent more than seventy-five cents a week for what I must eat. I've no time to cook even if I had anything, so it's lucky I haven't. I suppose there'd be plenty to eat if you once made up your mind to take a place." It was the second machine that stopped now, and the haggard woman running it faced about suddenly. "Do you know what come to my girl," she said,--"my girl that I brought up decent and that was a good girl? I said to myself a trade was no good, for it was more an' more starvation wages, and I'd put her with folks that would be good to her, even if the other girls did look down on her for going into service. She was fifteen, and a still little thing with soft eyes and a pretty, soft way, if she did come of a drinking father. I put her with a lady that wanted a waitress and said she'd train her well. She'd three boarders in the house, and all gentlemen to look at, and one that's in a bank to-day he did his best to turn her head on the sly, and when he found he couldn't, one Sunday when she was alone in the house and none to hear or help, he had his will. The mistress turned her off the hour she heard it, for Nettie went to her when she come home. 'Such things don't happen unless the girl is to blame,' she said. 'Never show your shameless face here again.' Nettie came home to me kind of dazed, and she stayed dazed till she went to a hospital and a baby was born dead, and she dead herself a week after. An' it isn't one time alone or my girl alone. It's over an' over an' over that that thing happens. There's plenty that go to the bad of their own free will, but I know plenty more with the same chance that doesn't, an' there's many a mother that's been in service herself that says, 'Whatever the mistress may know about it she can't tell, but the devil's let loose when the master or a son maybe is around, an' they'll not have their girls standing what they had to stand and then turned off without a character because they were found with the master talkin' to 'em.' It's women that keeps women down an' is hard on 'em. I'll take my chances with any Jew you'll bring along before I'll put myself in the power of women that calls themselves ladies an' hasn't as much heart as a broomstick; an' I'll warn every girl to keep to herself an' learn a trade, an' not run the risk she'll run if she goes out to service, letting alone the way you're looked down on." There was no time for discussion. The machines must go on; but, as usual, much more than the fact of which I was in search had come to me, and, strangely enough, in this house and in others of its kind inspected one after another, much the same story was told. In the "improved tenements" close at hand, where comparative comfort reigned, more than one woman gave willingly the detail of the weekly expenditure for food, and added, as if the underlying question had made itself felt, "It's betther to be a little short even an' your own misthress," with other words that have their place elsewhere. On the upper floor of one of these houses a pantaloon-maker sat in a fireless room, finishing the last of a dozen which when taken back would give her money for coal and food. She had been ill for three days, and on the bed,--an old mattress on a dry-goods box in the corner. "Even that's more than I had for a good while," she said. "I'd pawned everything before my husband died, except the machine. I couldn't make but twenty-two cents a pair on the pants, an' as long as he could hold up he did the pressing. With him to help a little I made three a day. That seems little, but there was so many pieces to each pair,--side and watch and pistol pockets, buckle strap, waistband, and bottom facings and lap; six buttonholes and nine buttons. We lived--I don't just know how we lived. He was going in consumption an' very set about it. 'I'll have no medicine an' no doctor to make me hang an' drag along,' he says. 'I've got to go, an' I know it, an' I'll do it as fast as I can.' He was Scotch, an' took his porridge to the last, but I came to loathe the sight of it. He could live on six cents a day. I couldn't. 'I'm the kind for your contractors,' he'd say. 'It's a glorious country, and the rich'll be richer yet when there's more like me.' He didn't mind what he said, an' when a Bible-reader put her head in one day, 'Come in,' he says. 'My wife's working for a Christian contractor at sixty-six cents a day, an' I'm what's left of another Christian's dealings with me, keeping me as a packer in a damp basement and no fire. Come in and let's see what more Christianity has to say about it.' He scared her, his eyes was so shiny an' he most gone then. But there's many a one that doesn't go over fifty cents a week for what she'll eat. God help them that's starving us all by bits, if there is a God, but I'm doubting it, else why don't things get better, an' not always worse an' worse?" For east and west, however conditions might differ, the final word was the same, and it stands as the summary of the life that is lived from day to day by these workers,--"never better, always worse and worse." CHAPTER TWELFTH. ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS. "I suppose if you'd been born on the top of a hill in New Hampshire with the stones so thick ten miles of stone wall couldn't have used 'em up, an' the steeple of the Methodist meetin'-house the only thing in sight, maybe you'd have wanted to get where you could see folks too. It was just Elkins luck to have another hill between us an' the village so't I couldn't see beyond the woods between. If there was a contrary side to anything it always fell to father, an' I'm some like him, though I've got mother's way of never knowing when I'm knocked flat, though I've had times enough to find out. But I said straight through, 'If ever there's a chance of getting to New York I'll take it. Boston won't do. I want the biggest an' the stirringest thing there is in the United States,' an' Leander felt just as I did. "Leander lived down the valley a way, an' such cobble-stones as hadn't come to our share had come to his. He'd laid wall from the time he was ten years old, and he'd sat on the hay an' cried for pure lonesomeness. His folks weren't any hands to talk, an' he couldn't even have the satisfaction of meetin' Sundays, because they was Seventh Day Baptists, an' so set a minister couldn't get near 'em. An' Leander was conscientious an' thought he ought to stay by. I didn't. I told him from the time we went to school together that I was bound to get to New York, an' that sort of fired him up, an' we've talked hours to time about what it was like, an' what we'd do if we ever got there. My folks were set against the notion, an' so were his, but he went after a while, with some man that was up in the summer an' that gave him a place in a store. I couldn't go on account of father's dying sudden an' mother's holdin' on harder'n ever to me, but she was took within the year, an' there I was, free enough, an' not a soul in the world but Leander's folks that seemed to think much one way or another how I was likely to come out. "There was a mortgage on the farm, an' Dr. Grayson foreclosed an' had most of the money for his bill; an' when things were all settled I had forty dollars in cash an' the old furniture. Leander's folks was dreadful short for things, for they'd been burned out once, an' so I just turned everything over to them but some small things I could pack in my trunk, mother's teaspoons an' such, an' walked down to the village an' took the stage for Portsmouth. I wasn't scared. I didn't care nor think how I looked. It was heaven to think I was on the way to folks an' the things folks do. I ain't given to crying, but that day I sat back in the stage an' cried just for joy to think I was going to have something different. "All this time I hadn't thought much what I'd do. Forty dollars seemed a big lot, enough for weeks ahead. I'd done most everything about a house, an' I could make everything I wore. I had only to look at a pattern an' I could go home an cut out one like it. The dress I had on was cheap stuff, but when I looked at other folks's I saw it wasn't so much out o' the way. So I said, most likely some dressmaker would take me, an' I'd try my luck that way. This was before I got to Boston, an' I went round there all the afternoon before it was time to take the train, for the conductor told me just what to do, an' I hadn't a mite of trouble. I never do going to a strange place. I was half a mind to stay in Boston when I saw the Common an' the crowds of folks. I sat still there an' just looked at 'em, an' cried again for joy to think I'd got where there were so many. 'But there'll be more in New York,' I said, 'an' there'll be sure to be plenty ready to do a good turn.' I could have hugged 'em all. I didn't think then the time would ever come that I'd hate the sight of faces an' wish myself on top of the hill in the cobble-stones, but it did, an' it does now sometimes. "I went on board the boat that night sort of crazy. I'd gone an' got some sandwiches an' things at a place the conductor told me, an' I sat on the deck in the moonlight an' ate my supper. I'd been too happy to eat before, an' I was so happy then I could hardly keep still. There was a girl not far off, a kind of nice-looking girl, an' she watched me, an' at last she began to talk. In half an hour I knew all about her an' she about me. She was a Rhode Island girl an' had worked in a mill near Providence, an' gone to New York at last an' learned fur-sewing. She said it was a good trade, an' she made ten an' twelve dollars a week while the season lasted an' never less than five. This seemed a mint of money, an' when she said one of their old hands had died, an' she could take me right in as her friend an' teach me herself, I felt as if my fortune was made. "Well, I went with her next day. She had a room in Spring Street, near Hudson,--an old-fashioned house that belonged to two maiden sisters, an' I went in with her the first night, an' afterward for a while had the hall bedroom. It didn't take me long to learn. It was a Jew place an' there were thirty girls, but he treated us well. For my part I've fared just as well with Jews as ever I did with Christians, an' sometimes better. I'd taken to Hattie so that I couldn't bear to think of leaving her, an' so I let my dressmaking plan go. But I'll tell you what I found out in time. These skins are all dressed with arsenic. The dealers say there's nothing poisonous about them, but of course they lie. Every pelt has more or less in it, an' the girls show it just as the artificial-flower girls show it. Your eyelids get red an' the lids all puffy, an' you're white as chalk. The dealers say the red eyes come from the flying hairs. Perhaps they do, but the lids don't, an' every fur-sewer is poisoned a little with every prick of her needle. What the flying hair does is just to get into your throat an' nose and everywhere, an' tickle till you cough all the time, an' a girl with weak lungs hasn't a chance. The air is full of fur, an' then the work-room is kept tight shut for fear of moths getting in. The work is easy enough. It's just an everlasting patchwork, for you're always sewing together little bits, hundreds of them, that you have to match. You sew over an' over with linen thread, an' you're always piecing out an' altering shapes. It's nothing to sew up a thing when you've once got it pieced together. If it's beaver, all the long hairs must be picked out, an' it's the same with sealskin. We made up everything; sable an' Siberian squirrel, bear, fox, marten, mink, otter, an' all the rest. There were some girls very slow in learning that only got a dollar a week, an' in the end four, but most of them can average about five. I was seventeen when I began, an' in a year I had caught all the knack there is to it, an' was an expert, certain of ten dollars in the season an' about six in between. It's generally piece-work, with five or six months when you can earn ten or twelve dollars even, an' the rest of the time five or six dollars. In the busiest times there'd be fifty girls perhaps, but this was only for two or three months, an' then they discharged them. 'Tisn't a trade I'd ever let a girl take up if I could help it; I suppose somebody's got to do it, but there ought to be higher wages for those that do. "This went on five years. I won't take time telling about Leander, but he'd got to be a clerk at Ridley's an' had eight hundred dollars a year, an' we'd been engaged for two years, an' just waiting to see if he wouldn't get another rise. I knew we could manage on that. Leander was more ambitious than me. He said we ought to live in a showy boarding-house an' make our money tell that way, but I told him I was used to the Spring Street house, an' we could have a whole floor an' be snug as could be an' Hattie board with us. He gave in, an' it's well he did; for we hadn't been married six months before he had a hemorrhage an' just went into quick consumption. I'd kept right on with my trade, but I was pulled down myself an' my eyelids so swollen sometimes I could hardly see out of 'em. But I got a sewing-machine from money I'd saved, an' I took in work from a place on Canal Street,--a good one, too, that always paid fair. The trouble was my eyes. I'd used 'em up, an' they got so I couldn't see the needle nor sew straight, an' had to give up the sewing, an' then I didn't know which way to turn, for there was Leander. The old folks were up there still, wrastling with the stones, but poorer every year, an' I couldn't get him up there. Leander was patient as a saint, but he fretted over me an' how I was to get along. "'You're not to worry,' says I. 'There's more ways than one of earning, an' if my eyes is bad, I've got two hands an' know how to use 'em. I'll take a place an' do housework if I can't do nothing else.' "You'd never believe how the thought o' that weighed on him. He'd wake me up in the night to say, 'Now, Almiry, jest give up that thought an' promise me you'll try something else. I think I'd turn in my grave if I had to know you was slavin' in anybody's kitchen.' "'What's the odds?' I said. 'You have to be under orders whatever you do. I think it won't be a bad change from the shop.' "He took on so, though, that to quiet him I promised him I wouldn't do it unless I had to, an' 'twasn't long after that that he died. Between the doctor's bill--an' he was a kind man, I will say, an' didn't charge a tenth of what he had ought to--an' the funeral an' all, I was cleaned out of everything. I'd had to pawn a month before he died, an' was just stripped. Sewing was no good. My eyes went back on me like everything else, an' in a fortnight I knew there wasn't anything for it but getting a place. I left such things as I had in charge of the old ladies an' answered an advertisement for 'a capable girl willing to work.' "Well, it was a handsome house an' elegant things in the parlors an' bedrooms, but my heart sunk when she took me into the kitchen. The last girl had gone off in a rage an' left everything, an' there was grease and dirt from floor to ceiling. It was a deep basement, with one window an' a door opening right into the area with glass set in it, an' iron bars to both; but dirty to that degree you couldn't see three feet beyond; cockroaches walking round at their ease an' water-bugs so thick you didn't know where to lay anything. "'You'll have things quite your own way,' the lady said, 'for I never come into the kitchen. Bridget attends to upstairs, but you attend to fires and the meals and washing and ironing, and I expect punctuality and everything well done.' "'At least it sounds independent,' I thought, and I made up my mind to try it, for the wages were fifteen dollars a month, an' that with board seemed doing well. Bridget came down presently. She was seventeen an' a pretty girl rather, but she looked fit to drop, an' fell down in a chair. "'It's the bell,' she said. 'The comin' an' goin' here niver ceases, an' whin 'tisn't the front door it's her own bell, an' she'll jingle it or holler up the tube in the middle o' the night if she takes a notion.' "I wouldn't ask questions, for I thought I should find out soon enough, so I said I'd like to go up to my room a minute. "'It's our room you'll mane,' she said. 'There's but the one, an' it's hard enough for two to be slapin' on a bed that's barely the width o' one.' "My heart sank then, for I'd always had a place that was comfortable all my life, but it sunk deeper when I went up there. A hall bedroom, with a single bed an' a small table, with a washbowl an' small pitcher, one chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things; that was all except a torn shade at the window. I looked at the bed. The two ragged comfortables were foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an' all, an' I began to cry. "'You don't look as if you was used to the likes of it,' Bridget said. 'There's another room the same as this but betther. Why not ax for it?' "I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs. Melrose, who smiled as if she thought I had been enjoying myself. "'I'm perfectly willing to try an' do your work as well as I know how,' I said, 'but I must have a place to myself an' clean things in it.' "'Highty-tighty!' says she. 'What impudence is this? You'll take what I give you and be thankful to get it. Plenty as good as you have slept in that room and never complained.' "'Then it's time some one did,' I said. 'I don't ask anything but decency, an' if you can't give it I must try elsewhere.' "'Then you'd better set about it at once,' she says, an' with that I bid her good-afternoon an' walked out. I had another number in my pocket, an' I went straight there; an' this time I had sense enough to ask to see my room. It was bare enough, but clean. There were only three in the family, an' it was a little house on Perry Street. There I stayed two years. They were strange years. The folks were set in their ways an' they had some money. But every day of that time the lady cut off herself from the meat what she thought I ought to have, an' ordered me to put away the rest. She allowed no dessert except on Sunday, an' she kept cake and preserves locked in an upstairs closet. I wouldn't have minded that. What I did mind was that from the time I entered the house till I left it there was never a word for me beyond an order, any more than if I hadn't been a human being. She couldn't find fault. I was born clean, an' that house shone from top to bottom; but a dog would have got far more kindness than they gave me. At last I said I'd try a place where there were children an' maybe they'd like me. Mrs. Smith was dumb with surprise when I told her I must leave. 'Leave!' she says. 'We're perfectly satisfied. You're a very good girl, Almira.' 'It's the first time you've ever told me so,' I says, 'an' I think a change is best all round.' She urged, but I was set, an' I went from there when the month was up. "Well, my eyes stayed bad for sewing, an' I must keep on at housework. I've been in seven places in six years. I could have stayed in every one, an' about every one I could tell you things that make it plain enough why a self-respecting girl would rather try something else. I don't talk or think nonsense about wanting to be one of the family. I don't. I'd much rather keep to myself. But out of these seven places there was just one in which the mistress seemed to think I was a human being with something in me the same as in her. I've been underfed an' worked half to death in two of the houses. The mistress expected just so much, an' if it failed she stormed an' went on an' said I was a shirk an' good for nothing an' all that. There was only one of them that had a decently comfortable room or that thought to give me a chance at a book or paper now an' then. As long as I had a trade I was certain of my evenings an' my Sundays. Now I'm never certain of anything. I'm not a shirk. I'm quick an' smart, an' I know I turn off work. In ten hours I earn more than I ever get. But I begin my day at six an' in summer at five, an' it's never done before ten an' sometimes later. This place I'm in now seems to have some kind of fairness about it, an' Mrs. Henshaw said yesterday, 'You can't tell the comfort it is to me, Almira, to have some one in the house I can trust. I hope you will be comfortable an' happy enough to stay with us.' 'I'll stay till you tell me to go,' I says, an' I meant it. My little room looks like home an' is warm and comfortable. My kitchen is bright an' light, an' she's told me always to use the dining-room in the evenings for myself an' for friends. She tries to give me fair hours. If there were more like her there'd be more willing for such work, but she's the first one I've heard of that tries to be just. That's something that women don't know much about. When they do there'll be better times all round." Here stands the record of a woman who has become invaluable to the family she serves, but whose experiences before this harbor was reached include every form of oppression and even privation. Many more of the same nature are recorded and are arranging themselves under heads, the whole forming an unexpected and formidable arraignment of household service in its present phases. This arraignment bides its time, but while it waits it might be well for the enthusiastic prescribers of household service as the easy and delightful solution of the working-woman's problem to ask how far it would be their own choice if reduced to want, and what justice for both sides is included in their personal theory of the matter. CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO EXPERIMENTED. The business face in the great cities is assimilating to such degree that all men are brothers in a sense and to an extent unrealized by themselves. Competition has deepened lines, till one type of the employer in his first estate, while the struggle is still active and success uncertain, loses not only youth and freshness, but with them, too often, any token of owning a soul capable of looking beyond the muckrake by which money is drawn in. If he acquires calm and graciousness, it is the calmness of subtlety and the graciousness of the determined schemer, who, finding every man's hand practically against him, arranges his own life on the same basis, and wages war against the small dealer or manufacturer below and the monopolist above, his one passionate desire being to escape from the ranks of the first and find his name enrolled among the last. He retains a number of negative virtues. He is, as a rule, "an excellent provider" where his own family is concerned, and he is kind beyond those limits if he has time for it. He would not deliberately harm man or woman who serves him; but to keep even with his competitors--if possible, to get beyond them--demands and exhausts every energy, leaving none to spare for other purposes. Such knowledge as comes from perpetual contact with the grasping, scheming side of humanity is his in full. As the fortune grows and ease becomes certain, a well-fed, well-groomed look replaces the eager sharpness of the early days. He may at this stage turn to horses as the most positive source of happiness. He is likely also, with or without this tendency, to acquire a taste for art, measuring its value by what it costs, and to plan for himself a house representing the utmost that money can buy. But the house and its treasures is, after all, but a mausoleum, and the grave it covers holds the man that might have been. Life in its larger meanings has remained a sealed book, and the gold counted as chief good becomes at last an impenetrable barrier between him and any knowledge of what might have been his portion. He is content, and remains content till the end, and that new beginning in which the starved soul comes to the first consciousness of its own most desperate and pitiful poverty. This for one type, and a type more and more common with every year of the system in which competition is king. But here and there one finds another,--that of the man whose conscience remains sensitive, no matter what familiarity with legalized knavery may come, and who ponders the question of what he owes to those by whose aid his fortune is made. Nor is he the employer who evades the real issue by a series of what he calls benefactions, and who organizes colonies for his work-people, in which may be found all the charm of the feudal system, and an underlying despotism no less feudal. He would gladly make his workers copartners with him were intelligence enough developed among them to admit such action, and he experiments faithfully and patiently. It is such an employer whose own words best give the story he has to tell. It is not an American that speaks but a German Jew,--a title often the synonyme for depths of trickery, but more often than is known meaning its opposite in all points. Keen sagacity rules, it is true, but there is also a large and tender nature, sorrowing with the sorrow of humanity and seeking anxiously some means by which that sorrow may lessen. A small manufacturer, fighting his way against monopoly, he is determinately honest in every thread put into his goods, in every method of his trade; his face shrewd yet gentle and wise,--a face that child or woman would trust, and the business man be certain he could impose upon until some sudden turn brought out the shrewdness and the calm assurance of absolute knowledge in his own lines. For thirty years and more his work has held its own, and he has made for himself a place in the trade that no crisis can affect. His own view of the situation is distinctly serious, but even for him there was a flickering smile as he recalled some passages of the experience given here in part. His English limps slightly at moments of excitement, but his mastery of its shades of meaning never, and this is his version of the present relation between employer and employed:-- "In me always are two peoples,--one that loves work well, that must work ever to be happy, and one that will think and think ever how hard is life even with work that is good and with much to love. In village or in city, for I begin with one and go on to the other, in both alike it is work always that is too much; long hours when strength is gone and there should be rest, but when always man and woman, yes, and child, must go on for the little more that more hours will earn. For myself, I want not what is called pleasure when the day is done. A book that is good contents me, and is friend and amusement in one. But as I love a book more and more, and desire more time to be with them, I begin first to think, why should so many hours be given to work that there are none in which men have strength or time or desire left for something that is better? These things I think much of before I come to America. I have my trade from my father and his father. We are silk-weavers from the time silk is known, but for myself I have chosen ribbons, and it is ribbons I make all my life and that my son will make after me. "At first when I come here to this country that for years I hope for and must not reach, because I am held to my father who is old--at first I have little money and can only be with another who manufactures. But already some dishonesties have come in. The colors are not firm; the silk has weight given it, so that more body than is belongs to the ribbon; there is an inch, maybe, cut short in the lengths. There is every way to make the most and give the least. And there is something that from the days I begin to think at all, seems ever injustice and wrong. Side by side it may be, men and women work together at the looms; but for the women it is half, sometimes two thirds, what the man can earn, yet the work the same. This is something to alter when time is ripe, and at last it is come. I have saved as I earned and added to what I bring with me, and I buy for myself the plant of a man who retires, and get me a place, this place where I am, and that changes little. His workers come with me,--a few, for I begin with four looms only, but soon have seven, and so go on. At first I think only of how I may shorten hours and make time for them to rest and learn what they will, but a good friend of mine from the beginning is doctor, and as I go on he speaks to me much of things I should do for health. And then I think of them and study, and I see that there is much I have never learned and that they must learn also with me. "There is one thing that Americans will, more than all peoples of the earth. They will have a place so hot that breath is nowhere, and women more even than men. I begin to think how I shall keep them warm yet give them to breathe. The place is old, as you see. No builder thought ever of air in such time as this was built, and if they think to-day, it is chiefly wrong, for in all places I go one breathes the breath of all others, never true air of heaven. At first I open windows from top and before they come; but when they see it they cry out and say, 'O Mr. B----! You want to freeze us!' 'Not so,' I say; 'I would make you healthy.' And they say, 'We're healthy enough. We don't want draughts.' It is true. There were draughts, and I begin to think how this shall be changed, and try many things, and all of them they pull down or push out or stop up tight, whichever way will most surely abolish air. At last I bring up my doctor who is wise and can explain better than I, and I say that work may stop and all listen and learn. They listen but they laugh, all but one, and say, 'How funny! What is use of so much fuss?' "While I do these things which I keep on and will not stop, finding best at last a shaft and a hole above, that they cannot pull out or reach to fill, I think of other things. They eat at noon what they bring,--pie that is dear to Americans, and small cakes, many of them; but good bread that has nourishment, or good drink like soup or coffee, no. They stand many hours and: faint and weak. So I say there must be good coffee for them, and I tell them, 'Girls, I will buy a big urn and there shall be coffee and milk, and for two cents you have a big cup so sweet as you will, or if you like better it shall be hot soup.' Above in a room was a a Swiss that knew good soup, and that would, if I pay her a little, buy all that is wanted and a make a big pot, so that each could have a bowl. This also I would have them pay for, three cents a bowl, and they like this best, and it is done for three weeks. They go up there and have full bowls, and I have a long table made before a bench where sometimes they rest, with oil-cloth, and here they eat and are comfortable. Three days soup, three days hot coffee; and I have place where the men can heat what is in their pails. "But they do such things! They pick out vegetable from soup and throw on the floor. They pour away coffee. They make the place like a home of animals, and when I say, 'Girls, I want much that all should be clean and nice, and that you never waste,' they laugh again. I find that difficult, for what answer can be made to laugh? I go on, but they break bowls and insult the Swiss that make the soup, and tell her I buy dog-meat and such, and she say she will no more of it. Then I call the doctor again and say to them, 'Listen while he tells you what is good to eat.' They were not all so fools, but the fool ones rule, and they listen, but they laugh always. That is American,--to laugh and think everything joke and not see what earnest must be for any good living. I give the coffee-urn to the best girl and tell her to have care of it, but do what we will they think somehow I am silly, and like best to eat their pie and then talk. A small pie at the corner is three cents, and they buy one, sometimes two, and it is sweet and fills and they are content. It is only men that think that will change a habit. I find for the worker always till thought begins they are conservative, and an experiment, a change, is distress to them. So I say, 'Let them do they will. Air is here and that they cannot stop, but for food I will do no more.' "These all were small things, and as I went on I said, as in the beginning, that for those who did the same work must be the same wage. My men had always ten dollars, and sometimes twelve or fifteen dollars a week; but the best woman had ten dollars, and she had worked five years and knew all. It is a law--unwritten, but still a law--that women shall not have what men earn; and when I say one is good as another, the brother of the woman I make equal with him said first this should never be; and when I said 'It must,' he talk to all the men at noon, and before the looms begin again they come and tell me that if I do so they will work no more. I talk to them all: 'This is a country where men boast always that woman has much honor, but I see not that she has more justice than where there is less honor. Shame on men that will let women work all the hours and as well as they,--yes, many times better,--and then threaten strike if they are paid the same!' But it was all no good. For that time I must yield, because I had much work that was promised; but I said: 'For now I do as you will. With January, that is but a month away, it shall be as I will.' "Well, I have tried. Many changes have been made, much time lost, much money. I call them to my house in the evening. I talk with them and try to teach them justice, and some are willing, but most not. New men spoil my work, and I lose much profit and take the old ones again. But this, too, is a small thing. My own mind goes on and I see that they should share with me. I read of co-operation, and to me it is truer than profit-sharing. I have seventy men and girls at work. I say they must understand this business. I will try to teach them. Two evenings a week I meet them all and talk and listen to them. One or two feel it plain. For most they say, 'Old B---- wants to get a rise out of us somehow.' At last I see that they are too foolish to understand co-operation, but it may be they will let profit-sharing be a step. Over and over, many times over and over, I tell it all, and in the end some agree, and for a year it does well. But the next year was bad. Silk was high, and my ribbons honest ribbons and profit small; and when they saw how small, they cried that they were cheated and that I kept all for myself. I read them the books. I said, 'Here, you may see with your eyes. This year I make not enough to live if there were not other years in which I saved. I am almost failed. The business might stop, but I will go on for our names' sake.' 'All a dodge,' they said. No words were plain enough to make them know. They even called me cheat and liar, there in the place where I had tried to work for them. "And so I share profits no more. I give large wage. I never cut down, do the market what it will. But some things are plain. It is not alone oppression and greed from above that do what you call grind the worker. No, I am not alone. There are men like me with a wish for humanity and wiser than I, and alike they are not heard when they speak; alike their wish is naught and their effort vain. It is ignorance that rules. There is no knowledge, no understanding. In my trade and in all trades I know it is the same. A man will not believe a fact, and he will believe that to cheat is all one over him can wish. Even my workers that care for me, a few of them, they laugh no more to my face, but they say: 'Oh, he has notions, that man! He will never get very rich, he has so many notions.' They listen and they think a little. One man said yesterday: 'If this had been put in my head when I was a growing lad it would have straightened many a thing. Why ain't we taught?' And I said to him: 'Jacob, teachers are not taught. There is only one here, one there, that thinks what only it is well to learn,--justice for all the world. I who would do justice am made to wait, but the sin is with you, not with me.' "So to-day I wait for such time as wisdom may come. My son is one with me in this. He has a plan and soon he will try, and where I failed his more knowledge may do better. But for me, I think that this generation must suffer much, and in pain and want learn, it may be, what is life. To-day it knows not and cares not, save a few. How shall the many be made to know?" CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. THE WIDOW MALONEY'S BOARDERS. To the old New-Yorker taking his pensive way through streets where only imagination can supply the old landmarks, long ago vanished, there is a conviction that he knows the city foot by foot as it has crept northward; and he repudiates the thought that its growth has ended such possibility, and that many a dark corner is as remote from his or any knowledge save that of its occupants as if in Caffre-land. The newest New-Yorker has small interest in anything but the west side and the space down-town occupied by his store or office. And so it chances that in spite of occasional series of descriptive articles, in spite of an elaborately written local history and unnumbered novels whose background is the city life and thought, there is little real knowledge, and, save among charitable workers, the police, and adventurous newspaper men, no thought of what life may be lived not a stone's-throw from the great artery of New York, Broadway. On one point there can be no doubt. Not Africa in its most pestilential and savage form holds surer disease or more determined barbarians than nest together under many a roof within hearing of the rush and roar of the busy streets where men come and go, eager for no knowledge or wisdom under the sun save the knowledge that will make them better bargainers. There comes even a certain impatient distrust of those who persist in unsavory researches and more unsavory details of the results. If there is not distrust; if the easy-going kindliness that is a portion of the American temperament is stirred, it is but for the moment; and when the hand that sought the pocket or the check-book instinctively has presented its gift, interest is over. A fresh sensation wipes out all trace of the transient feeling, and though it may again be roused by judicious effort, how rarely is it that more than the automatic movement toward the pocket results! What might come if for even one hour the impatient giver walked through the dark passages, stood in the foul, dimly lighted rooms and saw what manner of creature New York nourishes in her slums, giving to every child in freest measure that training in all foulness that eye or ear or mind can take in that will fit it in time for the habitation in prison or reformatory on which money is never spared,--who shall say? They are filled by free choice, these nests of all evil. The men and women who herd in them know nothing better; indeed, may have known something even worse. They are Polish Jews, Bohemians, the lowest order of Italians, content with unending work, the smallest wage, and an order of food that the American, no matter how low he may be brought, can never stomach. Yet they assimilate in one point, being as bent upon getting on as the most determined American, and accepting to this end conditions that seem more those of an Inferno than anything the upper world has known. It is among these people, chiefly Polish Jews and Bohemians, with the inevitable commixture of Irish, that one finds the worst forms of child-labor; children that in happy homes are still counted babies here in these dens beginning at four or five to sew on buttons or pick out threads. It is not of child-labor and the outrages involved in it that I speak to-day, save indirectly, as it forms part of the mass of evil making up the present industrial system and to be encountered at every turn by the most superficial investigation. It is rather of certain specific conditions, found at many points in tenement-house life, but never in such accumulated degree of vileness at any point save one outside the Fourth Ward. And if the reader, like various recent correspondents, is disposed to believe that I am merely "making up a case," using a little experience and a great deal of imagination, I refer him or her to the forty-third annual report of the New York Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. There, in detail to a degree impossible here, will be found the official report of the inspector appointed to examine the conditions of life in the building known as "The Big Flat," in Mulberry Street. There are smaller houses that are worse in construction and condition, but there is none controlled by one management where so many are gathered under one roof. The first floor has rooms for fourteen families, the remaining five for sixteen each; and the census of 1880 gave the number of inhabitants as 478, a sufficient number to make up the population of the average village. The formal inspection and the report upon it were made in September, 1886, and the report is now accessible to all who desire information on these phases of city life. It is Mrs. Maloney herself whose methods best give us the heart of the matter, and who, having several callings, is the owner of an experience which appears to hold as much surprise for herself as for the hearer. "Shure I foind things that interestin' that I'm in no haste to be through wid 'em, an' on for me taste o' purgatory, not hintin' that there mightn't be more 'n a taste," Mrs. Maloney said, on a day in which she unfolded to me her views of life in general, her small gray eyes twinkling, her arms akimbo on her mighty hips, and her cap-border flapping about a face weather-beaten and high-colored to a degree not warranted even by her present profession as apple-woman. Whether whiskey or stale beer is more responsible is unknown. It is only certain that, having submitted with the utmost cheerfulness to the perennial beatings of a husband only half her size, she found consolation in a glass now and then with a sympathizing neighbor and at last in a daily resort to the same friend. There had been a gradual descent from prosperity. Dennis, if small, was wiry and phenomenally strong, and earned steady wages as porter during their first years in the country. But the children, as they grew, went to the bad entirely, living on the earnings of the mother, who washed and scrubbed and slaved, with a heart always full of excuses for the hulking brutes, who came naturally at last to the ends that might have been foretold. Their education had been in the Fourth Ward; they were champion bullies and ruffians of whom the ward still boasts, Mrs. Maloney herself acquiring a certain distinction as the mother of the hardest cases yet sent up from Cherry Street. But if she had no power to save her own, life became easier for whomsoever she elected to guard. Wretched children crept under her wing to escape the beating awaiting them when they had failed to bring home the amount demanded of them. Women, beaten and turned out into the night, fled to her for comfort, and the girl who had lost her place, or to whom worse misfortune had come, told her story to the big-hearted sinner, who nodded and cried and said, "It's the Widdy Maloney that'll see you're not put upon more. Hold on an' be aisy, honey, an' all'll come out the way you'd be havin' it, an' why not?" It was at this stage of experience that Mrs. Maloney decided to remove to the Big Flat. The last raid of Dennis, the youngest and only boy not housed at the expense of the State, had reduced her belongings to their lowest terms, and she took possession of her new quarters, accompanied only by a rickety table, three chairs, a bed with two old straw mattresses, and some quilts too ragged to give any token of their original characteristics, a stove which owned but one leg,--the rest being supplied by bricks,--and such dishes and other small furniture as could be carried in a basket. But there went with her a girl kicked out by the last man who had temporarily called her his mistress,--a mere child still, who at ten had begun work in a bag-factory passing through various grades of slightly higher employment, till seduced by the floor-walker of the store that it had been her highest ambition to reach. Almost as much her fault as his undoubtedly, her silly head holding but one desire, that for fine clothes and never to work any more, but a woman's heart waking in her when the baby came, and prompting her to harder work and better life than she had ever known. There was no chance of either with the baby, and when at last she farmed out the encumbrance to an old couple in a back building who made this their business, and took a place again in the store, it was relief as well as sorrow that came when the wretched little life was over. But the descent had been a swift one. When what she had called life was quite over, and she sat dumb and despairing in the doorway to which she had been thrust, thinking of the river as the last refuge left, the widow had pushed her before her up the stairs and said,-- "Poor sowl, if there's none to look out for ye, then who but me should do it?" This was the companion who lay by her side under the ragged quilts, life still refusing to give place to death, though every paroxysm of coughing shortened the conflict. "She's that patient that the saints themselves--all glory to their blessed names!--couldn't be more so; but I'd not know how to manage if it wasn't for the foot-warmer I call her; that's Angela there, wid eyes that go through you an' the life beaten out of her by the man that called himself her father, an' wasn't at all, at all. It's she that does the kaping of the house, an' sleeps across the foot, an' it's mine they think the two av 'em, else they'd never a let me in, the rules bein', 'no lodgers.' It's not lodgers they are. It's me boarders, full fledged, an' who's a better right than me, though I'd not be sayin' so to the housekeeper that'd need forty pair o' eyes to her two to see what's goin' on under her nose." The "foot-warmer's" office had ceased for one of them before the month ended, and when the Potter's Field had received the pine coffin followed only by the two watchers, the widow made haste to bring in another candidate for the same position; one upon whom she had kept her eye for a month, certain that worse trouble was on the way than loss of work. "There was the look on her that manes but the one thing," she said afterward. "There's thim that sthand everything an' niver a word, an' there's thim that turns disperate. She was a disperate wan." Never had a "disperate wan" better reason. A factory girl almost from babyhood, her apprenticeship having begun at seven, she had left the mill at fourteen, a tall girl older than her years in look and experience. New York was her Mecca, and to New York she came, with a week's wages in her pocket on which to live till work should be found, and neither relative nor friend save a girl who had preceded her by a few months and was now at work in a fringe and gimp factory, earning seven dollars a week and promising the same to the child after a few weeks' training. But seven years in a cotton-mill, if they had given quickness in one direction, had blunted all power in others. The fingers were unskilful and clumsy and her mind too wandering and inattentive to master details, and the place was quickly lost. She entered her name as candidate for the first vacancy in a Grand Street store, and in the mean time went into a coffee and spice mill and became coffee-picker at three dollars a week. This lasted a month or two, but even here there was dissatisfaction with lack of thoroughness, and she was presently discharged. The vacancy had come, and she went at once into the store, her delicate face and pretty eyes commending her to the manager, who lost no time in telling her what impression she could produce if she were better dressed. Weak, irresponsible, hopelessly careless, and past any power to undo these conditions, there was some instinct in the untaught life that put her instantly on the defensive. "I'm not good for much," she said, "but I'm too good for that. There's nothing you could promise would get you your will and there won't be." Naturally, as the siege declared itself a hopeless one, the manager found it necessary to fill her place by some more competent hand. There was an interval of waiting in which she pawned almost the last article of clothing remaining that could be dispensed with, and then went into a bakery, where the hours were from seven A. M. to ten P. M., sometimes later. She was awkward at making change, but her gentle manners attracted customers, and the baker himself soon cast a favorable eye upon her, and speedily made the same proposition that had driven her from her last employment. The baker's wife knew the symptoms, and on the same day discharged the girl. "I don't say it's your fault," she said, "but he's started about you, and it's for your own good I tell you to go. The best thing for you is to go back to your mother, or else take a place with some nice woman that'll keep an eye to you. You'll always be run after. I know your kind, that no man looks at without wanting to fool with 'em. You take my advice and go into a place." The chance came that night. The mistress of a cheap boarding-house in East Broadway, her patrons chiefly young clerks from Grand and Division Street stores, offered her home and eight dollars a month, and Lizzie, who by this time was frightened and discouraged, accepted on the instant. She was well accustomed to long hours, and she had never minded standing as many of the girls did, her apprenticeship in the mill having made it comparatively easy. But the drudgery undergone here was beyond anything her life had ever known. Her day began at five and it never ended before eleven. She slept on an old mattress on the kitchen floor, and as her strength failed from the incessant labor, lost all power of protest and accepted each new demand as something against which there could be no revolt. There was abundance of coarse food and thus much advantage, but she had no knowledge that taught her how to make work easier, nor had her mistress any thought of training her. She was a dish-washing machine chiefly, and broke and chipped even the rough ware that formed the table furniture, till the exasperated mistress threatened to turn her off if another piece were destroyed. It was a case of hopeless inaptitude; and when in early spring she sickened, and the physician grudgingly called in declared it a case of typhus brought on by the conditions in which she had lived, she was sent at once to the hospital and left to such fate as might come. A clean bed, rest, and attendance seemed a heaven to the girl when consciousness came back, and she shrank from any thought of going out again to the fight for existence. "I don't know what the matter is," she said to the doctor as she mended, "but somehow I ain't fit to make a living. I shall have to go back to the mill, but I said I never would do that." "You shall go to some training-school and be taught," said the doctor, who had stood looking at her speculatively yet pitifully. "Ah, but I couldn't learn. Somehow things don't stick to me. I'm not fit to earn a living." "You're of the same stuff as a good many thousand of your kind," the doctor said under his breath, and turned away with a sigh. Lizzie went out convalescent, but still weak and uncertain, and took refuge with one of the bakery girls who had half of a dark bedroom in a tenement house near the Big Flat. She looked for work. She answered advertisements, and at last began upon the simplest form of necktie, and in her slow, bungling fashion began to earn again. But she had no strength. She sat at the window and looked over to the Big Flat and watched the swarm that came and went; five hundred people in it, they told her, and half of them drunk at once. It was certain that there were always men lying drunk in the hallways in the midst of ashes and filth that accumulated there almost unchecked. The saloon below was always full; the stale beer dives all along the street full also, above all, at night, when the flaunting street-walkers came out, and fiddles squeaked, and cheap pianos rattled, and songs and shouts were over-topped at moments by the shrieks of beaten women or the oaths and cries of a sudden fight. Slowly it was coming to the girl that this was all the life New York had for her; that if she failed to meet the demand employer after employer had made upon her, she would die in this hole, where neither joy nor hope had any place. Her clothes were in rags. She went hungry and cold, and had grown too stupefied with trouble to plan anything better. At last it was plain to her that death must be best. She said to herself that the river could never tell, and that there would be rest and no more cold or hunger, and it was to the river that she went at night as the Widow Maloney rose before her and said,-- "You'll come home wid me, me dear, an' no wurruds about it." Lizzie looked at her stupidly. "You'd better not stop me," she said. "I'm no good. I can't earn my living anywhere any more. I don't know how. I'd better be out of the way." "Shure you'll be enough out o' the way whin you're in the top o' the Big Flat," said Mrs. Maloney. "An' once there we'll see." Lizzie followed her without a word, but when the stairs were climbed and she sunk panting and ghastly on one of the three chairs, it was quite plain to the widow that more work had begun. That it will very soon end is also quite plain to whoever dares the terrors of the Big Flat, and climbs to the wretched room, which in spite of dirt and foulness within and without is a truer sanctuary than many a better place. The army of incompetents will very shortly be the less by one, but more recruits are in training and New York guarantees an unending supply. "Shure if there's naught they know how to do," says the widow, "why should one be lookin' to have thim do what they can't. It's one thing I've come to, what with seein' the goings on all me life, but chiefly in the Big Flat, that if childers be not made to learn, whither they like it or not, somethin' that'll keep hands an' head from mischief, there's shmall use in laws an' less in muddlin' about 'em when they're most done with livin' at all, at all. But that's a thing that's beyond me or the likes o' me, an' I'm only wonderin' a thrifle like an' puttin' the question to meself a bit, 'What would you be doin', Widdy Maloney, if the doin' risted on you an' no other?'" CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS. Why this army of women, many thousand strong, is standing behind counters, over-worked and underpaid, the average duration of life among them as a class lessening every year, is a question with which we can at present deal only indirectly. It is sufficient to state that the retail stores of wellnigh every order, though chiefly the dry-goods retail trade, have found their quickness and aptness to learn, the honesty and general faithfulness of women, and their cheapness essentials in their work; and that this combination of qualities--cheapness dominating all--has given them permanent place in the modern system of trade. A tour among many of the larger establishments confirmed the statement made by employers in smaller ones, the summary being given in the words of a manager of one of the largest retail houses to be found in the United States. "We don't want men," he said. "We wouldn't have them even if they came at the same price. Of course cheapness has something to do with it, and will have, but for my part give me a woman to deal with every time. Now there's an illustration over at that hat-counter. We were short of hands to-day, and I had to send for three girls that had applied for places, but were green--didn't know the business. It didn't take them ten minutes to get the hang of doing things, and there they are, and you'd never know which was old and which was new hand. Of course they don't know all about qualities and so on, but the head of the department looks out for that. No, give me women every time. I've been a manager thirteen years, and we never had but four dishonest girls, and we've had to discharge over forty boys in the same time. Boys smoke and lose at cards, and do a hundred things that women don't, and they get worse instead of better. I go in for women." "How good is their chance of promotion?" "We never lose sight of a woman that shows any business capacity, but of course that's only as a rule in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets about the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here are public-school girls and live at home. You see that makes things pretty easy, for the family pool their earnings and they dress well and live well. We don't take from the poorer class at all. These girls earn from four and a half to eight dollars a week. A few get ten dollars, and they're not likely to do better than that. Forty dollars a month is a fortune to a woman. A man must have his little fling, you know. Women manage better." "If they are really worth so much to you, why can't you give better pay? What chance has a girl to save anything, unless she lives at home?" "We give as high pay as anybody, and we don't give more because for every girl here there are a dozen waiting to take her place. As to saving, she doesn't want to save. There isn't a girl here that doesn't expect to marry before long, and she puts what she makes on her back, because a fellow naturally goes for the best-looking and the best-dressed girl. That's the woman question as I've figured it out, and you'll find it the same everywhere." Practically he was right, for the report, though varying slightly, summed up as substantially the same. Descending a grade, it was found that even in the second and third rate stores the system of fines for any damage soon taught the girls carefulness, and that while a few were discharged for hopeless incompetency, the majority served faithfully and well. "I dare say they're put upon," said the manager of one of the cheaper establishments. "They're sassy enough, a good many of them, and some of the better ones suffer for their goings-on. But they ain't a bad set--not half; and these women that come in complaining that they ain't well-treated, nine times out of ten it's their own airs that brought it on. It's a shop-girl's interest to behave herself and satisfy customers, and she's more apt to do it than not, according to my experience." "They'd drive a man clean out of his mind," said another. "The tricks of girls are beyond telling. If it wasn't for fines there wouldn't one in twenty be here on time, and the same way with a dozen other things. But they learn quick, and they turn in anywhere where they're wanted. They make the best kind of clerks, after all." "Do you give them extra pay for over-hours during the busy season?" "Not much! We keep them on, most of them, right through the dull one. Why shouldn't they balance things for us when the busy time comes? Turn about's fair play." A girl who had been sent into the office for some purpose shook her head slightly as she heard the words, and it was this girl who, a day or two later, gave her view of the situation. The talk went on in the pretty, home-like parlors of a small "Home" on the west side, where rules are few and the atmosphere of the place so cheery that while it is intended only for those out of work, it is constantly besieged with requests to enlarge its borders and make room for more. Half a dozen other girls were near: three from other stores, one from a shirt factory, one an artificial-flower-maker who had been a shop-girl. "When I began," said the first, "father was alive, and I used what I earned just for dressing myself. We were up at Morrisania, and I came down every day. I was in the worsted and fancy department at D----'s, and I had such a good eye for matching and choosing that they seemed to think everything of me. But then father fell sick. He was a painter, and had painter's colic awfully and at last paralysis. Then he died finally and left mother and me, and she's in slow consumption and can't do much. I earned seven dollars a week because I'd learned fancy work and did some things evenings for the store, and we should have got along very well. We'd had to move out a little farther, to the place mother was born in, because rent was cheaper and she could never stand the city. But this is the way it worked. I have to be at the store at eight o'clock. The train that leaves home at seven gets me to the store two minutes after eight, but though I've explained this to the manager he says I've got to be at the store at eight, and so, summer and winter, I have to take the train at half-past six and wait till doors are open. It's the same way at night. The store closes at six, and if I could leave then I could catch an express train that would get me home at seven. The rules are that I must stop five minutes to help the girls cover up the goods, and that just hinders my getting the train till after seven, so that I am not home till eight." I looked at the girl more attentively. She was colorless and emaciated, and, when not excited by speaking, languid and heavy. "Are you sure that you have explained the thing clearly so that the manager understands?" I asked. "More than once," the girl answered, "but he said I should be fined if I were not there at eight. Then I told him that the girls at my counter would be glad to cover up my goods, and if he would only let me go at six it would give me a little more time for mother. I sit up late anyway to do things she can't, for we live in two rooms and I sew and do a good many things after I go home." Inquiry a day or two later showed that her story was true in every detail and also that she was a valuable assistant, one of the best among a hundred or so employed. The firm gives largely to charitable objects, and pays promptly, and at rates which, if low, are no lower than usual; but they continue to exact this seven minutes' service from one whose faithfulness might seem to have earned exemption from a purely arbitrary rule--in such a case mere tyranny. The girl had offered to give up her lunch hour, but the manager refused; and she dared not speak again for fear of losing her place. "After all, she's better off than I am or lots of others," said one who sat near her. "I'm down in the basement at M----'s, and forty others like me, and about forty little girls. There's gas and electric light both, but there isn't a breath of air, and it's so hot that after an hour or two your head feels baked and your eyes as if they would fall out. The dull season--that's from spring to fall--lasts six months, and then we work nine and a half hours and Saturdays thirteen. The other six months we work eleven hours, and holiday time till ten and eleven. I'm strong. I'm an old hand and somehow stand things, but I've a cousin at the ribbon counter, the very best girl in the world, I do believe. She always makes the best of things, but this year it did seem as if the whole town was at that counter. They stood four and five deep. She was penned in with the other girls, a dozen or two, with drawers and cases behind and counter in front, and there she stood from eight in the morning till ten at night, with half an hour off for dinner and for supper. She could have got through even that, but you see there has to be steady passing in that narrow space, and she was knocked and pushed, first by one and then by another, till she was sore all over; and at last down she dropped right there, not fainting, but sort of gone, and the doctor says she's most dead and can't go back, he doesn't know when. Down there in the basement the girls have to put on blue glasses, the glare is so dreadful, but they don't like to have us. The only comfort is you're with a lot and don't feel lonesome. I can't bear to do anything alone, no matter what it is." A girl with clear dark eyes and a face that might have been almost beautiful but for its haggard, worn-out expression, turned from the table where she had been writing and smiled as she looked at the last speaker. "That is because you happen to be made that way," she said. "I am always happier when I can be alone a good deal, but of course that's never possible, or almost never. I shall want the first thousand years of my heaven quite to myself, just for pure rest and a chance to think." "I don't know anything about heaven," the last speaker said hastily, "but I'm sure I hope there's purgatory at least for some of the people I've had to submit to. I think a woman manager is worse than a man. I've never had trouble anywhere and always stay right on, but I've wanted to knock some of the managers down, and it ought to have been done. Just take the new superintendent. We loved the old one, but this one came in when she died, and one of the first things she did was to discharge one of the old girls because she didn't smile enough. Good reason why. She'd lost her mother the week before and wasn't likely to feel much like smiling. And then she went inside the counters and pitched out all the old shoes the girls had there to make it easier to stand. It 'most kills you to stand all day in new shoes, but Miss T---- pitched them all out and said she wasn't going to have the store turned into an old-clothes shop." "Well, it's better than lots of them, no matter what she does," said another. "I was at H----'s for six months, and there you have to ask a man for leave every time it is necessary to go upstairs, and half the time he would look and laugh with the other clerks. I'd rather be where there are all women. They're hard on you sometimes, but they don't use foul language and insult you when you can't help yourself." This last complaint has proved for many stores a perfectly well-founded one. Wash-rooms and other conveniences have been for common use, and many sensitive and shrinking girls have brought on severe illnesses arising solely from dread of running this gantlet. Here and there the conditions of this form of labor are of the best, but as a whole the saleswoman suffers not only from long-continued standing, but from bad air, ventilation having no place in the construction of the ordinary store. Separate dressing-rooms are a necessity, yet are only occasionally found, the system demanding that no outlay shall be made when it is possible to avoid it. Overheating and overcrowding, hastily eaten and improper food, are all causes of the weakness and anæmic condition so perceptible among shop and factory workers, these being divided into many classes. For a large proportion it can be said that they are tolerably educated, so far as our public-school system can be said to educate, and are hard-working, self-sacrificing, patient girls who have the American knack of dressing well on small outlay, and who have tastes and aspirations far beyond any means of gratifying them. For such girls the working-women's guilds and the Friendly societies--these last of English origin--have proved of inestimable service, giving them the opportunities long denied. In such guilds many of them receive the first real training of eye and hand and mind, learn what they can best do, and often develop a practical ability for larger and better work. Even in the lowest order filling the cheaper stores there is always a proportion eager to learn. But here, as in all ordinary methods of learning, the market is overstocked, and even the best-trained girl may sometimes fail of employment. Now and then one turns toward household service, but the mass prefer any cut in wages and any form of privation to what they regard as almost a final degradation. A multitude of their views on this point are recorded and will in time find place. In the mean time a minute examination of the causes that determine their choice and of the conditions surrounding it as a whole go to prove the justice of the conviction that penetrates the student of social problems. Again, the shop-girl as a class demonstrates the fact that not with her but with the class above her, through accident of birth or fortune, lies the real responsibility for the follies over which we make moan. The cheaper daily papers record in fullest detail the doings of that fashionable world toward which many a weak girl or woman looks with unspeakable longing; and the weekly "story papers" feed the flame with unending details of the rich marriage that lifted the poor girl into the luxury which stands to her empty mind as the sole thing to be desired in earth or heaven. She knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor. From her post behind the counter the shop-girl examines every detail of costume, every air and grace of these women whom she despises, even when longing most to be one of them. She imitates where she can, and her cheap shoe has its French heel, her neck its tin dog-collar. Gilt rings and bracelets and bangles, frizzes and bangs and cheap trimmings of every order, swallow up her earnings. The imitation is often more effective than the real, and the girl knows it. She aspires to a "manicure" set, to an opera-glass, to anything that will simulate the life daily more passionately desired; and it is small wonder that when sudden temptation comes and the door opens into that land where luxury is at least nearer, she falls an easy victim. The class in which she finally takes rank is seldom recruited from sources that would seem most fruitful. The sewing-woman, the average factory worker, is devitalized to such an extent that even ambition dies and the brain barely responds to even the allurements of the weekly story paper. It is the class but a grade removed, to whom no training has come from which strength or simplicity or any virtue of honest living could grow, that makes the army of women who have chosen degradation. A woman, herself a worker, but large-brained and large-hearted beyond the common endowment, wrote recently of the dangers put in the way of the average shop or factory girl, imploring happy women living at ease to adopt simpler forms, or at least to ask what form of living went on below them. She wrote:-- "It may be urged that ignorant and inexperienced as these workers are, they see only the bubbles and the froth, the superficial glitter and exuberant overflow of passing styles and social pleasures, and miss much, if not all, of the earnestness, the virtue, the charity, and the refinement which may belong to those they imitate, but with whom they seldom come in contact. This is the very point and purpose of this paper, to remonstrate against the injustice done to the women of wealth and leisure by their own carelessness and indifference, and to urge them to come down to those who cannot come up to them, to study them with as keen an interest as they themselves are studied,--to know how that other half lives." "To know how that other half lives." That is the demand made upon woman and man alike. Once at least put yourselves in the worker's place, if it be but for half an hour, and think her thought and live her starved and dreary life. Then ask what work must be done to alter conditions, to kill false ideals, and vow that no day on earth shall pass that has not held some effort, in word or deed, to make true living more possible for every child of man. No mission, no guild, no sermon, has or can have power alone. Only in the determined effort of the individual, in individual understanding and renunciation forever of what has been selfish and mean and base, can humanity know redemption and walk at last side by side in that path where he who journeys alone finds no entrance, nor can win it till self has dropped away, and knowledge come that forever we are our brothers' keepers. CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. TWO HOSPITAL BEDS. Why and how the money-getting spirit has become the ruler of American life and thought no analyzer of social conditions has yet made plain. That New York might be monopolist in this respect could well be conceived, for the Dutch were traders by birthright and New Amsterdam arose to this one end. But why the Puritan colony, whose first act before even the tree stumps were brown in their corn-fields was the founding of a college, and whose corner-stone rested on a book,--why these people should have come to represent a spirit of bargaining and an aptitude for getting on unmatched by the keenest-witted Dutchman hath no man yet told us. The sharpest business men of the present are chiefly "Yankees;" and if "Jew" and "a hard bargain" are counted synonymes, "New-Englander" has equal claim to the place. The birthplace and home of all reform, New England is the home also of a greed born of hard conditions and developing a keenness unequalled by that of any other bargainer on earth. The Italian, the Greek, the Turk, find a certain æsthetic satisfaction in bargaining and do it methodically, but always picturesquely and with a relish unaffected by defeat; but with the Yankee it is a passionate, absorbing desire, sharpening every line of the face and felt even in the turn of the head or shoulders, and in every line of the eager, restless figure. Success assured softens and modifies these tendencies. Defeat aggravates them. One meets many a man for whom it is plain that the beginning of life held unlimited faith that the great city meant a fortune, the sanguine conviction passing gradually into the interrogative form. The fortune is still there. Thus far the conviction holds good, but his share in it has become more and more problematical. The flying and elusive shadow still holds for him the only real substance, but his hands have had no power to grasp or detain, and the most dogged determination gives way at last to the sense of hopeless failure. For this type may be the ending as cheap clerk or bookkeeper, with furtive attempts at speculation when a few dollars have been saved, or a retreat toward that remote West which has hidden effectually so many baffled and defeated lives. There may also come another ending, and the feverish, scheming soul lose its hold on the body, which has meant to it merely a means of getting and increasing money. It is this latter fate that came to a man who would have no place in this record save for the fact that his last querulous and still-questioning days were lived side by side with a man who had also sought money, and having found it had chosen for it certain experimental uses by means of which siphon he was presently drained dry. For him also had been many defeats. A hospital ward held them both, and the two beds were side by side, the one representing a patience that never failed, yet something more than patience. For the face of this man bore no token of defeat. It was rather triumph that looked at moments from the clear eyes that had also an almost divine pity as they turned toward the neighbor who poured out his story between paroxysms of coughing, and having told it once, proceeded to tell it again, his sole and final satisfaction in life being the arraignment of all living. The visitor who came into the ward was pinned on the instant, the fiery eyes demanding the hearing which was the last gift time held for him. It was a common story often told, this slow, inevitable descent into poverty. Its force lay in the condensed fury of the speaker, who looked on the men he had known as sworn conspirators against him, and cursed them in their going out and coming in with a relish that no argument could affect. What his neighbor might have to tell was a matter of the purest indifference. It was impossible even to ask his story; and it remained impossible until a day when arraignment was cut short and the disappointed, bitter soul passed on to such conditions as it had made for itself. "You've got the best of me. They all do," he said in dying, with a last turn of the sombre eyes toward his neighbor. "You ought to have gone first by a week, and there you are. But this time I guess it's just as well. I don't seem to want to fight any longer, and I'm glad I'm done. It's your turn next. Good--" The words had come with gasps between and long pauses. Here they stopped once for all. Good had found him; the only good for the child of earth, who, having failed to learn his lesson here, must try a larger school with a different system of training. The empty bed was not filled at once. A screen shut it off. There was time now to hear other words than the passionate railings that had monopolized all time. The sick man mended a little, and in one of the days in which speech was easier gave this record of his forty years:-- "It's a fact, I believe, that the sons of reformers seldom walk in the same track. My father was one of the old Abolitionists, and an honest one, ready to give money when he could and any kind of work when he couldn't. It was a great cause. I cried over the negroes down South and went without sugar a year or so, and learned to knit so that I could knit some stockings for the small slaves my own size. But by the time I was eight years old it was plain enough to me that there were other kinds of slavery quite as bad, and that my own mother wore as heavy bonds as any of them. She was a farmer's wife, and from year's end to year's end she toiled and worked. She never had a cent of her own, for the butter money was consecrated to the cause, and she gave it gladly. My father had no particular intention to be unkind. He was simply like a good two-thirds of the farmers I have known,--much more careful of his animals than of his wife. A woman was so much cooking and cleaning and butter-making force, and child-bearing an incident demanding as little notice as possible. It is because of that theory that I am five inches shorter than any of our tribe. My mother was a tall, slender woman, with a springy step and eyes as clear as a brook. I see them sometimes as I lie here at night. "I said to myself when I was ten that I'd have things easier for her before she died. I said it straight ahead while I was working my way up in the village store, for I would not farm, and when she died I said it to her in the last hour I ever heard her voice: 'What I couldn't do for you, mother, I'll do for all women as long as I am on the earth.' "I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned some woman was having a hard time, and some brute was making it for her. I knew it was partly their own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and decent, but custom and tradition, the law and the prophets, were all against them. I watched it all I could, but I was deep in trying to get ahead and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams and my fancies, there was a money-making streak in me. It's a lost vein. You may search as you will and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good returns. I left the village at twenty-one and went to Philadelphia, and the small savings I took with me from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change, but the old Quaker who owned it knew my father and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and settled for life if I liked. "Well, here it was again. This man was honest and clean. He meant to do fairly by all mankind, and he tried to. He had some secrets in his methods that made his soap the best in the market. The chief secret was honest ingredients, but it was famous. If you've ever been in a soap-factory you know what it is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in paper as fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room was filled with girls who did the work. They were not the best order of girls. The wages a week were from three to five dollars, and they were at it from seven A. M. to six P. M. There was a good woman in the office,--a woman with a head as well as a heart,--and she did the directing and disciplining. It was no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and the creatures began squabbling together, but she managed it, and by night they were always meek enough. You're likely to be meek when you've carried soap ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery as glass or glare ice. They picked it up as it cooled, wrapped it in paper, and had it in boxes, five pounds to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color and then it ate off their finger tips till they bled. They could not wear gloves, for that would have interfered with the packing. "Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They were big, hearty girls. They had to be to do that work, but my heart ached for them as they filed out at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but to get home and into bed. Very few stayed on. The smart ones graduated into something better. The stupid ones fell back and tried something easier. But as I watched them and it came over me how untrained and helpless they were, and how every chance of learning was cut off by the long labor and the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed them something: shorter hours; better wages; some sort of share in the money we were making. Friend Peter shook his head when I began to hint these things. 'They fare well enough,' he said. 'Thee must not get socialistic notions in thy head.' 'I know nothing about socialism,' I said. 'All I want is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out for it for the black brother and sister; why not for the white?' "'Thee is talking folly,' he said and would make no other answer. "It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to me. We did make it in a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at twenty-five, and better off every month; and I said to myself, the money would have a curse on it if those who helped to earn it had no share. I talked to the men in the boiling department. It takes brains to be a good soap-maker. We kept to the old ways, simply because what they call improvement in soap-making, like many another improvement, has been the cheapening the product by the addition of various articles that lower the quality. Experience has to teach. Theoretical knowledge isn't much use save as foundation. A man must use eyes and tongue, and watch for the critical moment in the finishing like a lynx. "Well, I beat my head against that wall of obstinacy till head and heart were sore. It was enough to the old Quaker that he paid promptly and did honest work; and when I told him at last that his gains were as fraudulent as if he cheated deliberately, he said, 'Then thee need share them no longer. Go thy way for a hot-headed fool.' "I went. There was an opening in New York, and I had every detail at my fingers' ends. I went in with a man a little older, who seemed to think as I did, and who did, till I made practical application of my theories. I had studied everything to be had on the subject. I had mastered a language or two in my evenings, for I lived like a hermit; but now I began to talk with every business man, and try to understand why competition was inevitable. I was in no haste. I admitted that men must be trained to co-operate, but I said, 'We shall never learn by waiting. We must learn by trying.' I tried to bring in other soap-makers, and one or two listened; but most of them were using the cheap methods,--increasing the quantity and lowering the quality. Some of the men had come on to me from Philadelphia, and were bound to stay, but it was hard on them. They had to go into tenement-houses, for there were no homes for them such as building associations in Philadelphia make possible for every workman. But I took a house and divided it up and made it comfortable, and I lived on the lower floor myself, so that kept them contented. I fitted up a room for a reading-room, and twice a week had talks; not lectures, but talks where every man had a chance to speak five minutes if he would, and to ask questions. I coaxed the women to come. I wanted them to understand, and two or three took hold. I made a decent place for them to eat their dinners, and put these women in charge. I put in an oil-stove and a table and seats, and gave them coffee and tea at two cents a cup, and tried to have them care for the place. That has been done over and over by many an employer who pities his workers; and nine times out of ten the same result follows. The animal crops out. They were rough girls at any time, yet, taken one by one, behaved well enough. But I've seen boys and girls at a donation party throw cheese and what not on the carpet and rub it in deliberately, and I don't know that one need wonder that lunch-rooms in store or factory turn into pig-pens, and the few decent ones can make no headway. "I spoke out to them all, but it was no more than the wind blowing, and at last even I gave it up. There was no conscience in them to touch. They wanted shorter hours and more money, when they had got to the point of seeing that I was trying to help, but they had no notion of helping back. With my men it worked, and they talked down the women sometimes. But when a bad year came,--for soap has its ups and downs like everything else,--most of them struck, and the wise ones could make no headway. 'It's a losing game,' my partner said; 'if you want to go on you must go on alone.' "I did go on alone. He left and took his capital with him. The best men stayed with me and swore to take their chances. The soap was good, and I made a hit in one or two fancy kinds, but I could not compete with men who used mean material and turned out something that looked as well at half the price. My money melted away, and a fire--set, they told me, by a man I had discharged for long-continued dishonesty--finished me. I had the name of stirring up strife for the manufacturers, because I tried to teach my workers the principle of co-operation, and begged for it where I could. It hurt my business standing. Men felt that I must be a fool. I had worked for it with such absorption that I had had little time for any joy of life. I had neither wife nor child, though I longed for both. I would not have ease and happiness alone. I wanted it for my fellows. To-day it might be. Ten years ago it only the thought of a dreamer, and I made no headway. "The fire left me stranded. I went in as superintendent of some new works, but went out in a month, for I could not consent to cheat, and fraud was in every pound sent out. I tried one place and another with the same result. Competition makes honesty impossible. A man would admit it to me without hesitation, but would end: 'There's no other way. Don't be a fool. You can't stand out against a system.' "'I will stand out if it starves me,' I said. 'I will not sell my soul for any man's hire. The time is coming when this rottenness must end. Make one more to fight it now.' "Men looked at me pitifully. 'I was throwing away chances,' they said. 'Why wouldn't I hear reason? We were in the world, not in Utopia.' "'We are in the hell we have made for all mankind,' I said. 'The only real world is the world which is founded on truth and justice. Everything else falls away.' "Everything else has fallen away. I was never strong, and a year ago I was knocked down in a scrimmage. Some bullies from one of the factories set on my men--mine no longer, but still preaching my doctrine. Somehow I was kicked in the chest and a rib broken, and this saved me probably from being sent up as a disturber of the peace. The right lung was wounded, and consumption came naturally. They nursed me--Tom's wife and sister, good souls--till I refused to burden them any longer and came here in spite of them. It has been a sharp fight. I seem to have failed; yet the way is easier for the next. Co-operation will come. It must come. It is the law of life. It is the only path out of this jungle in which we wander and struggle and die. But there must be training. There must be better understanding. I would give a thousand lives joyfully if only I could make men and women who sit at ease know the sorrow of the poor. It is their ignorance that is their curse. Teach them; study them. Care as much for the outcast at home as for the heathen abroad. And, oh, if you can make anybody listen, beg them for Christ's sake, for their own sake, to hearken and to help! Beg them to study; not to say with no knowledge that help is impossible, but to study, to think, and then to work with their might. It is my last word,--a poor word that can reach none, it may be, any more, and yet, who knows what wind of the Lord may bear it on, what ground may be waiting for the seed? I shall see it, but not now. I shall behold it, and it will be nigh, in that place to which I go. Work for it; die for it if need be; for man's hope, man's life, if ever he knows true life, has no other foundation." CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK. Political economists in general, with the additional number of those who for one purpose and another turn over statistics of labor, nodded approvingly as they gazed upon the figures of the last general census for the State of New York, which showed that among the myriad of workers in factory and other occupations, but twenty-four thousand children were included. "Fifty-six million and more inhabitants, and all faring so well that only one fortieth part of one of these millions is employed too early in this Empire State. Civilization could hardly do more. See how America leads among all civilized countries as the protector of the feeble, the guarantee of strength for the weakest. No other country guards its children so well. There have been errors, of course; such enlightenment is not reached at a bound; but the last Legislature made further ones impossible, for it fixed the minimum limit at which a child may be employed in factories at thirteen years of age. By thirteen a child isn't likely to be stunted or hurt by overwork. We protect all classes and the weakest most." Thus the political economist who stops at figures and considers any further dealing with the question unnecessary. And if the law were of stringent application; if parents told the truth as to age, and if the two inspectors who are supposed to suffice for the thousands of factories in the State of New York were multiplied by fifty, there might be some chance of carrying out the provisions of this law. As it is, it is a mere form of words, evaded daily; a bit of legislation which, like much else bearing with it apparent benefit, proves when analyzed to be not much more than sham. The law applies to factories only. It does not touch mercantile establishments or trades that are carried on in tenement-houses, and it is with these two latter forms of labor that we deal to-day. In factory labor in the city of New York nine thousand children under twelve years of age are doing their part toward swelling the accumulation of wealth, each adding their tiny contribution to the great stream of what we call the prosperity of the nineteenth century. Thus far their share in the trades we have considered has been ignored. Let us see in what fashion they make part of the system. For a large proportion of the women visited, among whom all forms of the clothing industry were the occupation, children under ten, and more often from four to eight, were valuable assistants. In a small room on Hester Street, a woman on work on overalls--for the making of which she received one dollar a dozen--said:-- "I couldn't do as well if it wasn't for Jinny and Mame there. Mame has learned to sew on buttons first-rate, and Jinny is doing almost as well. I'm alone to-day, but most days three of us sew together here, and Jinny keeps right along. We'll do better yet when Mame gets a bit older." As she spoke the door opened and a woman with an enormous bundle of overalls entered and sat down on the nearest chair with a gasp. "Them stairs is killin'," she said. "It's lucky I've not to climb 'em often." Something crept forward as the bundle slid to the floor, and busied itself with the string that bound it. "Here you, Jinny," said the woman, "don't you be foolin'. What do you want anyhow?" The something shook back a mat of thick hair and rose to its feet,--a tiny child who in size seemed no more than three, but whose countenance indicated the experience of three hundred. "It's the string I want," the small voice said. "Me an' Mame was goin' to play with it." "There's small time for play," said the mother; "there'll be two pair more in a minute or two, an' you're to see how Mame does one an' do it good too, or I'll find out why not." Mame had come forward and stood holding to the one thin garment which but partly covered Jinny's little bones. She too looked out from a wild thatch of black hair, and with the same expression of deep experience, the pallid, hungry little faces lighting suddenly as some cheap cakes were produced. Both of them sat down on the floor and ate their portion silently. "Mame's seven and Jinny's going on six," said the mother, "but Jinny's the smartest. She could sew on buttons when she wasn't but much over four. I had five then, but the Lord's took 'em all but these two. I couldn't get on if it wasn't for Mame." Mame looked up but said no word, and as I left the room settled herself with her back against the wall, Jinny at her side, laying the coveted string near at hand for use if any minute for play arrived. In the next room, half-lighted like the last, and if possible even dirtier, a Jewish tailor sat at work on a coat, and by him on the floor a child of five picking threads from another. "Netta is good help," he said after a word or two. "So fast as I finish, she pick all the threads. She care not to go away--she stay by me always to help." "Is she the only one?" "But one that sells papers. Last year is five, but mother and dree are gone with fever. It is many that die. What will you? It is the will of God." On the floor below two children of seven and eight were found also sewing on buttons--in this case for four women who had their machines in one room and were making the cheapest order of corset-cover, for which they received fifty cents a dozen, each one having five buttons. It could not be called oppressive work, yet the children were held there to be ready for each one completed, and sat as such children most often do, silent and half asleep waiting for the next demand. "It's hard on 'em," one of the women said. "We work till ten and sometimes later, but then they sleep between and we can't; and they get the change of running out for a loaf of bread or whatever's wanted, and we don't stir from the machine from morning till night. I've got two o' me own, but they're out peddling matches." On the lower floor back of the small grocery in which the people of the house bought their food supply,--wilted or half-decayed vegetables, meat of the cheapest order, broken eggs and stale fish,--a tailor and two helpers were at work. A girl of nine or ten sat among them and picked threads or sewed on buttons as needed; a haggard, wretched-looking child who did not look up as the door opened. A woman who had come down the stairs behind me stopped a moment, and as I passed out said:-- "If there was a law for him I'd have him up. It's his own sister's child, and he workin' her ten hours a day an' many a day into the night, an' she with an open sore on her neck, an' crying out many's the time when she draws out a long needleful an' so gives it a jerk. She's sewed on millions of buttons, that child has, an' she but a little past ten. May there be a hot place waitin' for him!" A block or two beyond, the house entered proved to be given over chiefly to cigar-making. It is to this trade that women and girls turn during the dull season, and one finds in it representatives from every trade in which women are engaged. The sewing-women employed in suit and clothing manufactories during the busy season have no resource save this, and thus prices are kept down and the regular cigar-makers constantly reinforced by the irregular. In the present case it was chiefly with regular makers that the house was filled, one room a little less than twelve by fourteen feet holding a family of seven persons, three of them children under ten, all girls. Tobacco lay in piles on the floor and under the long table at one end where the cigars were rolled, its rank smell dominating that from the sinks and from the general filth, not only of this room but of the house as a whole. Two of the children sat on the floor stripping the leaves, and another on a small stool. A girl of twenty sat near them, and all alike had sores on lips and cheeks and on the hands. Children from five or six years up can be taught to strip and thus add to the week's income, which is far less for the tenement-house manufacture than for regular factory work, the latter averaging from eight to twelve dollars a week. But the work if done at home can be made to include the entire family, and some four thousand women are engaged in it, an almost equal but unregistered number of young children sharing it with them. As in sewing, a number of women often club together, using one room, and in such case their babies crawl about in the filth on the wet floors, playing with the damp tobacco and breathing the poison with which the room is saturated. Here, as in tobacco factories, women and girls of every age become speedily the victims of nervous and hysterical complaints, the direct result of nicotine poisoning; while succeeding these come consumption and throat diseases resulting from the dust. Canker is one of the most frequent difficulties, and sores of many orders, the trade involving more dangers than any that can be chosen. Yet because an entire family can find occupation in it, with no necessity for leaving home, it is often preferred to easier employment. It is the children who suffer most, growth being stunted, nervous disease developed and ending often in St. Vitus's dance, and skin diseases of every order being the rule, the causes being not only tobacco, but the filth in which they live. It is doubtful if the most inveterate smoker would feel much relish for the cigar manufactured under such conditions; yet hundreds of thousands go out yearly from these houses, bearing in every leaf the poison of their preparation. In this one house nearly thirty children of all ages and sizes, babies predominating, rolled in the tobacco which covered the floor and was piled in every direction; and of these children under ten thirteen were strippers and did their day's work of ten hours and more. Physical degeneration in its worst forms becomes inevitable. Even the factory child-worker fares better, for in the factory there is exercise and the going to and from work, while in the tenement-house cigar-making the worn-out little creatures crawl to the bed, often only a pile of rags in the corner, or lie down on a heap of the tobacco itself, breathing this poison day and night uninterruptedly. Vices of every order flourish in such air, and morality in this trade is at lowest ebb. Nervous excitement is so intense that necessarily nothing but immorality can result, and the child of eight or ten is as gross and confirmed an offender as the full-grown man or woman. Diligent search discovers few exceptions to this rule, and the whole matter has reached a stage where legislative interference is absolutely indispensable. Only in forbidding tenement-house manufacture absolutely can there be any safety for either consumer or producer. Following in the same line of inquiry I take here the facts furnished to Professor Adler by a lady physician whose work has long lain among the poor. During the eighteen months prior to February 1, 1886, she found among the people with whom she came in contact five hundred and thirty-five children under twelve years old,--most of them between ten and twelve,--who either worked in shops or stores or helped their mothers in some kind of work at home. Of these five hundred and thirty-five children but sixty were healthy. In one family a child at three years old had infantile paralysis, easily curable. The mother had no time to attend to it. At five years old the child was taught to sew buttons on trousers. She is now at thirteen a hopeless cripple; but she finishes a dozen pair of trousers a day, and her family are thus twenty cents the richer. In another family she found twin girls four and a half years old sewing on buttons from six in the morning till ten at night; and near them was a family of three,--a woman who did the same work and whose old father of eighty and little girl of six were her co-workers. There is a compulsory education law, but it demands only fourteen weeks of the year, and the poorer class work from early morning till eight A. M. and after school hours from four till late in the night. With such energy as is left they take their fourteen weeks of education, but even in these many methods of evasion are practised. It is easy to swear that the child is over fourteen, but small of its age, and this is constantly done. It is sometimes done deliberately by thinking workmen, who deny that the common school as it at present exists can give any training that they desire for their children, or that it will ever do so till manual training forms part of the course. But for most it is not intelligent dissatisfaction, but the absorbing press of getting a living that compels the employment of child-labor, and thus brings physical and moral degeneration, not only for this generation but for many to come. It is not alone the nine thousand in factories that we must deal with, but many hundred thousands uncounted and unrecognized, the same spirit dominating all. In one of the better class of tenement-houses a woman, a polisher in a jewelry manufactory, said the other day:-- "I'm willing to work hard, I don't care how hard; but it's awful to me to see my little boy and the way he goes on. He's a cash-boy at D----'s, and they don't pay by the week, they pay by checks, so every cash-boy is on the keen jump after a call. They're so worried and anxious and afraid they won't get enough; and Johnny cries and says, 'O mamma, I do try, but there's one boy that always gets ahead of me.' I think it's an awful system, even if it does make them smart." An awful system, yet in its ranks march more and more thousands every year. It would seem as if every force in modern civilization bent toward this one end of money-getting, and the child of days and the old man of years alike shared the passion and ran the same mad race. It is the passion itself that has outgrown all bounds and that faces us to-day,--the modern Medusa on which he who looks has no more heart of flesh and blood but forever heart of stone, insensible to any sorrow, unmoved by any cry of child or woman. It is with this shape that the battle must be, and no man has yet told us its issue. Nay, save here and there one, who counts that battle is needed, or sees the shadow of the terror walking not only in darkness but before all men's eyes, who is there that has not chosen blindness and will not hear the voice that pleads: "Let my people go free"? CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK. "I used to think there were steady trades; but somehow now everything gets mixed, and you can't tell what's steady and what isn't." "What makes the mix?" "The Lord only knows! I've studied over it till I'm dazed, and sometimes I've wondered if my mind was weakening." The speaker, a middle-aged Scotchwoman, whose tongue still held a little of the burr that thirty years of American life had not been able to extract, put her hand to her head as if the fault must concentrate there. "If it was my trade alone," she said, "I might think I was to blame for not learning new ways, but it's the same in all. Now, take mattress-making. I learned that because I could help my father best that way. He was an upholsterer in Aberdeen, and came over to better himself, and he did if he hadn't signed notes for a friend and ruined himself. He upholstered in the big families for thirty years, and everybody knew his little place on Hudson Street. People then bought furniture to last, and had it covered with the best of stuff, and so with curtains and hangings. Damask was damask, I can tell you, and velvet lambrequins meant money. No cotton-back stuff. They got shaken and brushed and done up from moths. People had some respect for good material. Nobody respects anything now. I saw a rich woman the other day let her boy six years old empty a box of candy on a pale-blue satin couch, and then sit down on it and rub his shoes up and down on the edge. I say that when there's no respect left for anything it's no wonder decent work comes to an end. I make a mattress and there isn't an inch of it that isn't sewed to last and that isn't an honest piece of work, but you can go into any house-furnishing department and buy one that looks just as well for a third less money. Everything's so cheap that people don't care whether anything lasts or not, and so there's no decent work done; and people pretend to have learned trades when really they just botch things together. I just go round in houses and make over,--places that I've had for years; and I've been forewoman in a big factory, but somehow a factory mattress never seems to me as springy and good as the old kind. Upholsterers make pretty good wages, but it can't be called steady any more, though it used to be. I've thought many a time of going into business for myself, but competition's awful, and I'm afraid to try. I won't cheat, and there's no getting ahead unless you do." "What are the wages?" "A picker gets about three dollars a week. She just picks over the hair, and most any kind of girl seems to do now that everything is steamed or done by machinery. The highest wages now are nine dollars a week, though I used to earn fifteen and eighteen sometimes, and the dull season makes the average about six dollars. I earn nine or ten because I do a good deal of private work, but a woman that can make forty dollars a month straight ahead is lucky." Several women of much the same order of intelligence, two of them forewomen for years in prosperous establishments, added their testimony as to the shifting character of wages and of employments. One had watched the course of neckties for seventeen years,--a keen-eyed little widow who had fought hard to educate her two children and preserve some portion of the respectability she loved. "You'd never dream how many kinds there have been, or, for that matter, how many kinds there are. We even make stocks for a few old-fashioned gentlemen that will have them. It's a business that a lady turns to first thing almost if she wants to earn, and we give out hundreds on hundreds to such, besides sending loads into the country. I often think our house turns out enough for the whole United States, but we're only a beginning. We pay well,--well as any, and better. Twenty-five cents a dozen is good pay now, and we see that our cutter leaves margin enough to keep the women from being cheated. That's a great trick with some. Sometimes the cutter is paid by the number he can get out of a piece of goods; sometimes he screws just because he's made so. But they cut by measure, and they allow so little to turn in that the thing frays in your hand, and no mortal could help it, and if one is frayed the foreman just throws out the dozen. Then lots of them advertise for girls to learn, and say they must give the first week or fortnight free; and when that is over they say work is slack or some other excuse, and take in a lot more that have been waiting. We've taken many a girl that came crying and told how she'd been kept on and cheated. There's one man on Third Avenue that runs his place on this plan, and has got rich. But I say to every girl: 'You'd better have something more than the last shape in neckties between you and starvation. You'll never get beyond five or six dollars a week at most, and generally not that.' It don't make any difference. There are dozens waiting for the chance to starve genteelly. It's a genteel trade and a pretty steady one, but if a dull time comes the girls go into cigar-making and manage along somehow. I've coaxed a good many into service, but it isn't one in a hundred will try that." The third woman represented a hat-pressing factory in which she had been eleven years, and in which the wages had fallen year by year, till at present women, even when most expert, can earn not over six dollars per week as against from eight to twelve in previous years. The trade is regarded as a steady one, for spring and summer straws give place to felt, and a certain number of hands are sure of employment. In direct association with this trade must be considered that of artificial flowers and feathers, in which there is perpetual see-saw. If feathers are in vogue flowers are down, and _vice versa_. Five thousand women are employed on feathers, and the establishments, which in 1871 numbered but twelve, now number over fifty; but those for flowers far exceed them. Learners work for three dollars or less per week, the highest wages attainable in either being fifteen dollars, the average being about nine. The demand for one or the other is continuous, but when fashion in 1886 called for scarfs and flowers, four thousand feather-workers were thrown out and lived as they could till another turn in the wheel restored their occupation. "One or the other of 'em is always steady" said a woman who had learned both trades, and thus stood prepared to circumvent fate. "The trouble is, you never know a week ahead which will be up and which down. Lots of us have learned both, and when I see the firm putting their heads together I know what it means and just go across the way to Pillsbury's, and the same with them. It's good pay and one or the other steady, but the Lord only knows which." "If you want steadiness you've got to take to jute," said a girl who with her sister lived in one of the upper rooms. "There ain't many jute-mills in the country, and you go straight ahead. We two began in a cotton-mill, but there's this queer thing about it. Breathe cotton-fluff all day and you're just sure to have consumption; but breathe a peck of jute-fluff a day and it didn't seem to make any difference. That isn't my notion. Our doctor said he'd noticed it, and he took home some of the fibre to examine it. For my part we're called a rough lot, but I'd rather take that discredit and keep on in the mill. You can stir round and don't have to double up over sewing or that kind of thing. I can earn seven dollars a week, and I'd rather earn it that way than any other." An hour or two in the mill, which included every form of manufacture that jute has yet taken, from seamless bags of all sizes and grades up to carpets, convinced one that if nerves were hardened to the incessant noise of machinery, there were distinct advantages associated with it. The few Scotch in the mill, men and women who had been brought over from Dundee, the headquarters of the jute industry abroad, insisted that jute was healthy, and long life for all who handled it a forgone conclusion. A tour among the workers seemed to confirm this impression, though here and there one found the factory face, with its dead paleness and dark-ringed eyes. Children as small as can be held to be consistent with the assumption of their thirteen years are preferred, their work as "doffers" or spool-changers requiring small quick hands. So, too, in fixing the pattern for carpets, where the threads must be manipulated with speed and light touch. It is preferred that children should grow up in the mill, passing from one room to another as they master processes, and the employees thus stay on and regard themselves as portions of the business. Some three or four thousand women and girls find occupation here. The waste from the carding-rooms is sent to the paper-mills and enters into manila paper and pasteboard, and this brings one to the paper-box makers, of whom there are several thousand at work. This trade, while nominally one of the steadiest, has its short periods of depression. Competition is also as severe here as in every other present form of industry, and thus prices are kept down, the highest rate of wages earned being nine dollars, while seven dollars is considered fair. There must be a certain apprenticeship, not less than six months being required to master details and understand each stage of the work. In one of the best of these establishments, where space was plenty and ventilation and other conditions all good, one woman had been in the firm's employ for eighteen years and was practically forewoman, though no such office is recognized. Beginners were placed in her hands and did not leave her till a perfect box could be turned off. Cutting is all done by special machines, and the paper for covering is prepared in the same way, glue or paste being used according to the degree of strength desired in the box. The work is all piece-work, from fifty to seventy cents a hundred being paid; a fair worker making two hundred a day and an expert nearly or quite three hundred. But competition governs the price and cuts are often made. A firm will underbid and an order be transferred to it, unless the girls will consent to do the work five or, it may be, ten cents less on the hundred, and thus wages can seldom pass beyond nine dollars a week, dull seasons and cuts reducing the average to seven and a half. Many even good workers fall far below this, as they prefer to come late and go early, piece-work admitting of this arrangement. The woman who takes up this trade may be confident of earning from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month, but she never exceeds this amount; nor is there promotion beyond a certain point. In paper hangings wages do not rise above twenty-five dollars at most, and in paper collars and cuffs, as in everything connected with clothing, the rate is much less. Rags are the foundation industry in all these forms of paper manufacture, but the two thousand women who work at sorting these seldom pass beyond five dollars, and more often receive but two and a half or three dollars per week. Under much the same head must come the preparation of sample cards, playing cards, and various forms of stationers' work. The latter has short dull seasons when girls may, for two or three weeks, have no work; but it is otherwise a steady trade, the wages running from three and a half to seven dollars per week. They stamp initials and crests with large hand presses, and stamp also the cheaper order of lithographs; they run envelope machines, color mourning paper, apply mucilage to envelopes, and pack small boxes of paper and envelopes. In all of the last mentioned trades hours are from eight A. M. to half-past five P. M., with half an hour for lunch, and a girl of fifteen can earn the same wages as the woman of fifty, a light, quick touch and care being the only essentials. The trades mentioned here and in preceding papers form but a portion of the ninety and more open to women. Thirty-eight of these are directly connected with clothing, and include every phase of ornament or use in braid, gimp, button, clasp, lining, or other article employed in its manufacture. In every one of these competition keeps wages at the lowest possible figure. Outside of the army here employed come the washers and ironers who laundry shirts and underwear, whose work is of the most exhausting order, who "lean hard" on the iron, and in time become the victims of diseases resulting from ten hours a day of this "leaning hard," and who complain bitterly that prisons and reformatories underbid them and keep wages down. It is quite true. Convict labor here as elsewhere is the foe of the honest worker, and complicates a problem already sufficiently complicated. These ironers can make from ten to twelve dollars per week, but soon fail in health and turn to lighter work, many of them taking up cigar-making, which soon finishes the work of demoralization. Fringes, gimps, plush, and bonnet ornaments are overcrowded with workers, for here, as in flowers and feathers, fashion determines the season's work, and the fringe-maker has for a year or so had small call for her knowledge save in some forms of upholstery. One and all are so hedged in by competition that to pass beyond a certain limit is impossible, and all wages are kept at the lowest point, not only by this fact, but by the fact that many women who had learned the trade continue it after marriage as a means of adding a trifle to the family income. An expert in any one of them is tolerably certain of steady employment, but wages have reached the lowest point and it does not appear that any rise is probable. Sharp competition rules and will rule till the working class themselves recognize the necessity of an education that will make them something more than adjuncts to machinery, and of an organization in which co-operation will take the place of competition. That both must come is as certain as that evolution is upward and not downward, but it is still a distant day, and neither employer nor employed have yet learned the possibilities of either. CHAPTER NINETEENTH. DOMESTIC SERVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS. At last we have come to the problem to which there has necessarily been incidental reference here and there, but which has otherwise bided its time. That these pages or any pages written by mortal hand in this generation can solve it, the writer doubts, its solution being inextricably involved with that of other social problems for which time is the chief key. State the question as we may, there is always a fresh presentation to be made, and replies are as various as the minds of the staters. It is the mistress with whom such presentation has thus far rested,--a mistress thorned beyond endurance by incompetence, dirt, waste, insubordination,--all the evils known to ignorant and presumptuous service. For such mistress, smarting from a sense of wrong, and hopeless and faithless as to remedies, the outlook is necessarily bounded by her own horizon. She listens with indignant contempt to the story of the thousands who choose their garrets and semi-starvation with independence, to the shelter and abundance of the homes in which they might be made welcome. She may even aver that any statement of their suffering is stupid sentimentality; the gush and maudlin melancholy of "humanitarian clergymen and newspaper reformers." For her, as for most of her order, in whom as yet no faculty for seeing both sides of a question has developed, there can be no reply save in words already spoken. "These women, working for wages that keep them always just above starvation point, have no power left to think beyond the need of the hour. They cannot stop, they dare not stop, to think of other methods of earning. They have no clothing in which they could obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They have no knowledge that could make them servants even of the meanest order. They are what is left of untrained and hopelessly ignorant lives," given over to suffering born in part from their ignorance; and for a large proportion of such cases there can be merely alleviation, and such slight bettering of conditions as would come from a system into which justice entered more fully. With this army of incompetents we have at present nothing to do. Our interest lies in discovering what is at the bottom of the objection to domestic service; how far these objections are rational and to be treated with respect, and how they may be obviated. The mistress's point of view we all know. We know, too, her presentation of objections as she fancies she has discovered them. What we do not know is the ground taken by sensible, self-respecting girls, who have chosen trades in preference, and from whom full detail has been obtained as to the reasons for such choice. In listening to the countless stories of experiment in earning a living, the passage from one industry to another, and the uncertainties and despairs before the right thing had shown itself, the question has always been asked, "How did it happen that you did not try to get a place in some good family?" The answers were as various as the characters of those who replied; some with indignation that they should be supposed capable of this degradation, but most of them thoughtfully and reasonably. In time they arranged themselves under heads, the occupations represented by the various respondents being over seventy. They were chiefly above the ordinary domestic in intelligence and education, their employments being of every order, from paper-box making to type-writing and stenography; but the trades predominated,--American being the nationality most largely represented, Irish born in this country ranking next, and German and a sprinkling of other nationalities following. These replies are precisely of the same nature as those given some time ago in Philadelphia during an investigation made by the head of one of the first guilds for working-women established in this country, objections being practically the same at whatever point they may be given. They were arranged under different heads and numbered in order. In the present case it seems well to take the individual testimony, each girl whose verdict is chosen representing a class, and being really its mouthpiece. First on the list stands Margaret M----, an American, twenty-three years old, and for five years in a paper-box factory. Seven others nodded their assent, or added a word here and there as she gave her view, two of them Irish-Americans who had had some years in the public schools. "It's freedom that we want when the day's work is done. I know some nice girls, Bridget's cousins, that make more money and dress better and everything for being in service. They're waitresses, and have Thursday afternoon out and part of every other Sunday. But they're never sure of one minute that's their own when they're in the house. Our day is ten hours long, but when it's done it's done, and we can do what we like with the evenings. That's what I've heard from every nice girl that ever tried service. You're never sure that your soul's your own except when you are out of the house, and I couldn't stand that a day. Women care just as much for freedom as men do. Of course they don't get so much, but I know I'd fight for mine." "Women are always harder on women than men are," said a fur-sewer, an intelligent American about thirty. "I got tired of always sitting, and took a place as chambermaid. The work was all right and the wages good, but I'll tell you what I couldn't stand. The cook and the waitress were just common, uneducated Irish, and I had to room with one and stand the personal habits of both, and the way they did at table took all my appetite. I couldn't eat, and began to run down; and at last I gave notice, and told the truth when I was asked why. The lady just looked at me astonished: 'If you take a servant's place, you can't expect to be one of the family,' she said. 'I never asked it,' I said; 'all I ask is a chance at common decency.' 'It will be difficult to find an easier place than this,' she said, and I knew it; but ease one way was hardness another, and she couldn't see that I had any right to complain. That's one trouble in the way. It's the mixing up of things, and mistresses don't think how they would feel in the same place." Third came an Irish-American whose mother had been cook for years in one family, but who had, after a few months of service, gone into a jute-mill, followed gradually by five sisters. "I hate the very words 'service' and 'servant,'" she said. "We came to this country to better ourselves, and it's not bettering to have anybody ordering you round." "But you are ordered in the mill." "That's different. A man knows what he wants, and doesn't go beyond it; but a woman never knows what she wants, and sort of bosses you everlastingly. If there was such a thing as fixed hours it might be different, but I tell every girl I know, 'Whatever you do, don't go into service. You'll always be prisoners and always looked down on.' You can do things at home for them as belongs to you that somehow it seems different to do for strangers. Anyway, I hate it, and there's plenty like me." "What I minded," said a gentle, quiet girl, who worked at a stationer's, and who had tried household service for a year,--"what I minded was the awful lonesomeness. I went for general housework, because I knew all about it, and there were only three in the family. I never minded being alone evenings in my own room, for I'm always reading or something, and I don't go out hardly at all, but then I always know I can, and that there is somebody to talk to if I like. But there, except to give orders, they had nothing to do with me. It got to feel sort of crushing at last. I cried myself sick, and at last I gave it up, though I don't mind the work at all. I know there are good places, but the two I tried happened to be about alike, and I sha'n't try again. There are a good many would feel just the same." "Oh, nobody need to tell me about poor servants," said an energetic woman of forty, Irish-American, and for years in a shirt factory. "Don't I know the way the hussies'll do, comin' out of a bog maybe, an' not knowing the names even, let alone the use, of half the things in the kitchen, and asking their twelve and fourteen dollars a month? Don't I know it well, an' the shame it is to 'em! but I know plenty o' decent, hard-workin' girls too, that give good satisfaction, an' this is what they say. They say the main trouble is, the mistresses don't know, no more than babies, what a day's work really is. A smart girl keeps on her feet all the time to prove she isn't lazy, for if the mistress finds her sitting down, she thinks there can't be much to do and that she doesn't earn her wages. Then if a girl tries to save herself or is deliberate, they call her slow. They want girls on tap from six in the morning till ten and eleven at night. 'Tisn't fair. And then, if there's a let-up in the work, maybe they give you the baby to see to. I like a nice baby, but I don't like having one turned over to me when I'm fit to drop scrabbling to get through and sit down a bit. I've naught to say for the girls that's breaking things and half doing the work. They're a shameful set, and ought to be put down somehow; but it's a fact that the most I've known in service have been another sort that stayed long in places and hated change. There's many a good place too, but the bad ones outnumber 'em. Women make hard mistresses, and I say again, I'd rather be under a man, that knows what he wants. That's the way with most." "I don't see why people are surprised that we don't rush into places," said a shop-girl. "Our world may be a very narrow world, and I know it is; but for all that, it's the only one we've got, and right or wrong, we're out of it if we go into service. A teacher or cashier or anybody in a store, no matter if they have got common-sense, doesn't want to associate with servants. Somehow you get a sort of smooch. Young men think and say, for I have heard lots of them, 'Oh, she can't amount to much if she hasn't brains enough to make a living outside of a kitchen!' You're just down once for all if you go into one." "I don't agree with you at all," said a young teacher who had come with her. "The people that hire you go into kitchens and are not disgraced. What I felt was, for you see I tried it, that they oughtn't to make me go into livery. I was worn out with teaching, and so I concluded to try being a nurse for a while. I found two hard things: one, that I was never free for an hour from the children, for I took meals and all with them, and any mother knows what a rest it is to go quite away from them, even for an hour; and the other was that she wanted me to wear the nurse's cap and apron. She was real good and kind; but when I said, 'Would you like your sister, Miss Louise, to put on cap and apron when she goes out with them?' she got very red, and straightened up. 'It's a very different matter,' she said; 'you must not forget that in accepting a servant's place you accept a servant's limitations.' That finished me. I loved the children, but I said, 'If you have no other thought of what I am to the children than that, I had better go.' I went, and she put a common, uneducated Irish girl in my place. I know a good many who would take nurse's places, and who are sensible enough not to want to push into the family life. But the trouble is that almost every one wants to make a show, and it is more stylish to have the nurse in a cap and apron, and so she is ordered into them." "I've tried it," said one who had been a dressmaker and found her health going from long sitting. "My trouble was, no conscience as to hours; and I believe you'll find that is, at the bottom, one of the chief objections. My first employer was a smart, energetic woman, who had done her own work when she was first married and knew what it meant, or you'd think she might have known. But she had no more thought for me than if I had been a machine. She'd sit in her sitting-room on the second floor and ring for me twenty times a day to do little things, and she wanted me up till eleven to answer the bell, for she had a great deal of company. I had a good room and everything nice, and she gave me a great many things, but I'd have spared them all if only I could have had a little time to myself. I was all worn out, and at last I had to go. There was another reason. I had no place but the kitchen to see my friends. I was thirty years old and as well born and well educated as she, and it didn't seem right. The mistresses think it's all the girls' fault, but I've seen enough to know that women haven't found out what justice means, and that a girl knows it, many a time, better than her employer. Anyway, you couldn't make me try it again." "My trouble was," said another, who had been in a cotton-mill and gone into the home of one of the mill-owners as chambermaid, "I hadn't any place that I could be alone a minute. We were poor at home, and four of us worked in the mill, but I had a little room all my own, even if it didn't hold much. In that splendid big house the servants' room was over the kitchen,--hot and close in summer, and cold in winter, and four beds in it. We five had to live there together, with only two bureaus and a bit of a closet, and one washstand for all. There was no chance to keep clean or your things in nice order, or anything by yourself, and I gave up. Then I went into a little family and tried general housework, and the mistress taught me a great deal, and was good and kind, only there the kitchen was a dark little place and my room like it, and I hadn't an hour in anything that was pleasant and warm. A mistress might see, you'd think, when a girl was quiet and fond of her home, and treat her different from the kind that destroy everything; but I suppose the truth is, they're worn out with that kind and don't make any difference. It's hard to give up your whole life to somebody else's orders, and always feel as if you was looked at over a wall like; but so it is, and you won't get girls to try it, till somehow or other things are different." Last on the record came a young woman born in Pennsylvania in a fairly well-to-do farmer's house. "I like house-work," she said. "There's nothing suits me so well. We girls never had any money, nor mother either, and so I went into a water-cure near the Gap and stayed awhile. Now the man that run it believed in all being one family. He called the girls helpers, and he fixed things so't each one had some time to herself every day, and he tried to teach 'em all sorts of things. The patients were cranky to wait on, but you felt as if you was a human being, anyhow, and had a chance. Well, I watched things, and I said it was discouraging, sure enough. I tried to do a square day's work, but two-thirds of 'em there shirked whenever they could; half did things and then lied to cover their tracks. I was there nine months, and I learned better'n ever I knew before how folks ought to live on this earth. And I said to myself the fault wasn't so much in the girls that hadn't ever been taught; it was in them that didn't know enough to teach 'em. A girl thought it was rather pretty and independent, and showed she was somebody, to sling dishes on the table, and never say 'ma'am' nor 'sir,' and dress up afternoons and make believe they hadn't a responsibility on earth. They hadn't sense enough to do anything first-rate, for nobody had ever put any decent ambition into 'em. It isn't to do work well; it's to get somehow to a place where there won't be any more work. So I say that it's the way of living and thinking that's all wrong; and that as soon as you get it ciphered out and plain before you that any woman, high or low, is a mean sneak that doesn't do everything in the best way she can possibly learn, and that doesn't try to help everybody to feel just so, why, things would stop being crooked and folks would get along well enough. Don't you think so?" How far the energetic speaker had solved the problem must be left to the reader, for whom there still certain unconsidered phases, all making part of the arraignment, scouted by those who are served, but more and more distinct and formidable in the mind of the server. CHAPTER TWENTIETH. MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE. Though the testimony given in the preceding chapter on this topic includes the chief objection to be made by the class of workers who would seem to be most benefited by accepting household service, there remain still one or two phases seldom mentioned, but forming an essential portion of the argument against it. They belong, not to the order we have had under consideration, but to that below it from which the mass of domestic servants is recruited, and with which the housekeeper must most often deal. The phases encountered here are born of the conditions of life in the cities and large towns; and denied as they may be by quiet householders whose knowledge of life is bounded by their own walls, or walls enclosing neighbors of like mind, they exist and face at once all who look below the surface. The testimony of the class itself might be open to doubt. The testimony of the physicians whose work lies among them, or in the infirmaries to which they come, cannot be impugned. Shirk or deny facts as we may, it is certain that in the great cities, save for the comparatively small proportion of quiet homes where old methods still prevail, household service has become synonymous with the worst degradation that comes to woman. Women who have been in service, and remained in it contentedly until marriage, unite in saying that things have so changed that only here and there is a young girl safe, and that domestic service is the cover for more licentiousness than can be found in any other trade in which women are at work. Incredible as this statement at first appears, the statistics of hospitals and in infirmaries confirm it, and the causes are not far to seek. Household service has passed from the hands of Americans into those of the Irish first, and then a proportion of every European nation. So long as the supply came to us entirely from abroad we were comparatively safe. If the experience of the new arrival had been solely under thatched roof and on clay floors, at least sun could visit them and great chimneys gave currents of pure air, while simple food kept blood pure and gave small chance for unruly impulses to govern. But once with us demoralization began, and the tenement-house guaranteed sure corruption for every tenant. Even for the most decent there was small escape. To the children born in these quarters every inmost fact of human life was from the beginning a familiar story. Overcrowding, the impossibility of slightest privacy, the constant contact with the grossest side of life, soon deaden any susceptibility and destroy every gleam of modesty or decency. In the lowest order of all rules an absolute shamelessness which conceals itself in the grade above, yet has no less firm hold of those who have come up in such conditions. There are many exceptions, many well-fought battles against their power, but our concern at present is not with these but with facts as they stand recorded. Physician after physician has given in her testimony and one and all agree in the statement that open prostitution is for many merely the final step,--a mere setting the seal to the story of ruin and licentiousness that has always existed. The women who adopt this mode of life because of want of work or low wages are the smallest of minorities. The illegitimate children for whom the city must care are not from this source. Often the mother is a mere child who has been deceived and outraged, but far more often she has entered a family prepared to meet any advances, and often directly the tempter. It is this state of things which makes many mothers say: "My girl shall never run such risks. I'll keep her from them as long as I can;" and unsavory as the details will seem, their knowledge is an essential factor in the problem. The tenement-house stands to-day not only as the breeder of disease and physical degeneration for every inmate, but as equally potent in social demoralization for the class who ignore its existence. Out of these houses come hundreds upon hundreds of our domestic servants, whose influence is upon our children at the most impressible age, and who bring inherited and acquired foulness into our homes and lives. And if such make but the smallest proportion of those who serve, they are none the less powerful and most formidable agents in that blunting of moral perception which is a more and more apparent fact in the life of the day. The records from which such knowledge is gleaned are not accessible to the general public. They are formulated only by the physician, whose business is silence, and who gives only an occasional summary of what may be found in the sewer underlying the social life of great cities. Decorously hidden from view the foul stream flows on, rising here and there to the surface, but instantly covered by popular opinion, which pronounces such revelations disgusting and considers suppression synonymous with extermination. Naturally this phase of things is confined chiefly to the great cities, but the virus is portable and its taint may be discovered even in the remote country. It is one of the many causes that have worked toward the degradation of this form of service, but it is so interwoven and integral a part of the present social structure that temporary destruction would seem the inevitable result of change. Yet change must come before the only class who have legitimate place in our homes will or can take such place. If different ideals had ruled among us; if ease and freedom from obligation and "a good time" had not come to be the chief end of man to-day; if our schools gave any training from which boy or girl could go out into life with the best in them developed and ready for actual practical use,--this mass of undisciplined, conscienceless, reckless force would have been reduced to its lowest terms, and to dispose of the residuum would be an easy problem. As it is, we are at the mercy of the spirits we have raised, and no one word holds power to lay them. No axioms or theories of the past have any present application. It is because we cling to the old theories while diligently practising methods in absolute opposition to them, that the question has so complicated itself. We cannot go backward, but we can stop short and discover in what direction our path is tending and whether we are not wandering blindly in by-ways, when the public road is clear to see. It is certain that many among the most intelligent working-women look longingly toward domestic service as something that might offer much more individual possibility of comfort and contentment than the trades afford. But save for one here and there who has chanced to find an employer who knows the meaning of justice as well as of human sympathy, the mass turn away hopeless of any change in methods. Yet reform among intelligent employers could easily be brought about were the question treated from the standpoint of justice, and the demand made an equally imperative and binding one for each side. The mistresses who command the best service are those who make rigorous demands, but keep their own side of the bargain as rigorously. They are few, for the American temperament is one of submission, varied by sudden bursts of revolt, and despairing return to a worse state than the first. A training-school school for mistresses is as much an essential as one for the servants. The conditions of modern life come more complicated with every year; and as simplification becomes for the many less and less possible, it is all the more vitally necessary to study the subject from the new standpoint, settle once for all how and why we have failed, and begin again on the new foundation. Here then stands the arraignment of domestic service under its present conditions, given point by point as it has formulated itself to those who urged to turn to it. The mistresses' side defines itself as sharply; but when all is said the two are one, the demand one and the same for both. Men who work for wages work a specified number of hours, and if they shirk or half fulfil their contract, find work taken from them. Were the same arrangement understood as equally binding in domestic service, thousands of self-respecting women would not hesitate to enter it. Family life cannot always move in fixed lines, and hours must often vary; but conscientious tally could be kept, and over-hours receive the pay they have earned. A conscience on both sides would be the first necessity; and it is quite certain that the master of the house would require education as decidedly as the mistress, woman's work within home walls being regarded as something continuous, indefinable, and not worth formal estimate. In spite of the enormous increase of wealth, the mass are happily what, for want of a better word, must be called middle class. But one servant or helper can usually be kept, and most often she is one who has used our kitchens as kindergartens, adding fragments of training as she passed from one to the other, ending often as fairly serviceable and competent. Sure of her place she becomes tyrant, and nothing can alter this relation but the appearance upon the scene of organized trained labor, making a demand for absolute fairness of treatment and giving it in return. Once certain that the reign of incompetence was over, the present order of servers would make haste to seek training-schools, or accept the low wages which would include personal training from the mistress, promotion being conditioned upon faithful obedience to the new order. What are the stipulations which every self-respecting girl or woman has the right to make? They are short and simple. They are absolutely reasonable, and their adoption would be an education to every household which accepted them:-- 1. A definition of what a day's work means, and payment for all over-time required, or certain hours of absolute freedom guaranteed, especially where the position is that of child's nurse. 2. A comfortably warmed and decently furnished room, with separate beds if two occupy it, and both decent place and appointments for meals. 3. The heaviest work, such as carrying coal, scrubbing pavements, washing, etc., to be arranged for if this is asked, with a consequent deduction in the wages. 4. No livery if there is feeling against it. 5. The privilege of seeing friends in a better part of the house than the kitchen, and security from any espionage during such time, whether the visitors are male or female. This to be accompanied by reasonable restrictions as to hours, and with the condition that work is not to be neglected. 6. Such a manner of speaking to and of the server as shall show that there is no contempt for housework, and that it is actually as respectable as other occupations. Were such a schedule as this printed, framed, and hung in every kitchen in the land, and its provisions honestly met, household revolution and anarchy would cease, and the whole question settle itself quietly and once for all. And this in spite of a thousand inherent difficulties known to every housekeeper, but which would prove self-adjusting so soon as it was learned that service had found a rational basis. At present, with the majority of mistresses, it is simply unending struggle to get the most out of the unwilling and grudging server, hopelessly unreasonable and giving warning on faintest provocation. Yet these very women, turning to factory life, where fixed and inexorable law rules with no appeal, submit at once and become often skilled and capable workers. It is certain that domestic service must learn organization as every other form of industry has learned it, and that mistresses must submit to something of the same training that is needed by the maid. Nor need it be feared that putting such service on a strictly business basis will destroy such kindliness as now helps to make the relation less intolerable. On the contrary, with justice the foundation and a rigorous fulfilment of duty on both sides will come a far closer tie than exists save in rarest instances, and homes will regain a quality long ago vanished from our midst. Such training will be the first step toward the co-operation which must be the ultimate solution of many social problems. It has failed in many earlier attempts because personal justice was lacking; but even one generation of sustained effort to simplify conditions would insure not only a different ideal for those who think at all, but the birth of something better for every child of the Republic. For the individual standing alone, hampered by many cares and distracted over the whole household problem, action may seem impossible. But if the most rational members of a community would band together, send prejudice and tradition to the winds, and make a new declaration of independence for the worker, it is certain that the tide would turn and a new order begin. Till such united, concerted action can be brought about there is small hope of reform, and it can come only through women. Dismiss sentiment. Learn to look at the thing as a trade in which each seeks her own advantage, and in which each gains the more clearly these advantages are defined. It is a hard relation. It demands every power that woman can bring to bear upon it. It is an education of the highest faculties she owns. It means a double battle, for it is with ourselves that the fight begins. Liberty can only come through personal struggle. It is easy to die for it, but to live for it, to deserve it, to defend it forever is another and a harder matter. Still harder is it to know its full meaning and what it is that makes the battle worth fighting. Union to such ends will be slow, but it must come:-- "Freedom is growth and not creation: One man suffers, one man is free. One brain forges a constitution, But how shall the million souls be won? Freedom is more than a revolution-- He is not free who is free alone." Is this the word of a dreamer whose imagination holds the only work of reconstruction, and whose hands are powerless to make the dream reality? On the contrary, many years of experience in which few of the usual troubles were encountered, added to that of others who had thought out the problem for themselves, have demonstrated that reform is possible. Precisely such conditions as are here specified have been in practical operation for many years. The homes in which they have ruled have had the unfailing devotion of those who served, and the experiment has ceased to come under that head, and demonstrated that order and peace and quiet mastery of the day's work may still be American possessions. Count this imperfect presentation then as established fact for a few, and ask why it is not possible to make it so for the many. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. END AND BEGINNING. The long quest is over. It ends; and I turn at last from those women, whose eyes still follow me, filled with mute question of what good may come. Of all ages and nations and creeds, all degrees of ignorance and prejudice and stupidity; hampered by every condition of birth and training; powerless to rise beyond them till obstacles are removed,--the great city holds them all, and in pain and want and sorrow they are one. The best things of life are impossible to them. What is worse, they are unknown as well as unattainable. If the real good of life must be measured by the final worth of the thing we make or get by it, what worth is there for or in them? The city holds them all,--"the great foul city,--rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,--a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore." The prosperous have no such definition, nor do they admit that it can be true. For the poor, it is the only one that can have place. We pack them away in tenements crowded and foul beyond anything known even to London, whose "Bitter Cry" had less reason than ours; and we have taken excellent care that no foot of ground shall remain that might mean breathing-space, or free sport of child, or any green growing thing. Grass pushes its way here and there, but for this army it is only something that at last they may lie under, never upon. There is no pause in the march, where as one and another drops out the gap fills instantly, every alley and by-way holding unending substitutes. It is not labor that profiteth, for body and soul are alike starved. It is labor in its basest, most degrading form; labor that is curse and never blessing, as true work may be and is. It blinds the eyes. It steals away joy. It blunts all power whether of hope or faith. It wrecks the body and it starves the soul. It is waste and only waste; nor can it, below ground or above, hold fructifying power for any human soul. Here then we face them,--ignorant, blind, stupid, incompetent in every fibre,--and yet no count of such indictment alters our responsibility toward them. Rather it multiplies it in always increasing ratio. For it is our own system that has made these lives worthless, and sooner or later we must answer how it came, that living in a civilized land they had less chance than the heathen to whom we send our missionaries, and upon whose occasional conversions we plume ourselves as if thus the Kingdom of Heaven were made wider. If it is true that for many only a little alleviation is possible, a little more justice, a little better apportionment of such good as they can comprehend, it is also true that something better is within the reach of all. How then shall we define it, and what possibility of alteration for either lives or conditions lies before us? Nothing that can be of instant growth; and here lies the chief discouragement, since as a people we demand instantaneousness, and would have seed, flower, and fruit at the same moment. Admit patience, capacity to wait, and to work while waiting, as the first term of the equation, and the rest arrange themselves. For the greater part of social reformers, co-operation has stood as the initial and most essential step, as the fruit that could be plucked full-grown; and experience in England would seem to have demonstrated the belief as true. It is the American inability to wait that has proved it untrue for us, and until very lately made failure our only record; but there is a deeper reason than a merely temperamental one. The abolition of the apprentice system, brought about by the greed of master and men alike, has abolished training and slow, steady preparation for any trade. An American has been regarded as quick enough and keen enough to take in the essential features of a calling, as it were, at a glance, and apprenticeship has been taken as practically an insult to national intelligence. Law has kept pace with such conviction, and thus the door has been shut in the face of all learners, and foreigners have supplied our skilled workmen and work-women. The groundwork of any better order lies, if not in a return to the apprentice system, then in a training from the beginning, which will give to eye and hand the utmost power of which they are capable. Industrial education is the foundation, and until it has in its broadest and deepest sense become the portion of every child born on American soil, that child has missed its birthright. With the many who accept it, it stands merely as an added capacity to make money, and if taken in its narrowest application this is all that it can do. Were this all, it would be simply an added injustice toward the degeneration that money-making for the mere sake of money inevitably brings. But at its best, perfected as it has been by patient effort on the part of a few believers, it is far more than this. Added power to earn comes with it, but there comes also a love of the work itself, such as has had no place since the days when the great guilds gave joyfully their few hours daily to the cathedrals, whose stones were laid and cemented in love and hope, and a knowledge of the beauty to come, that long ago died out of any work the present knows. The builders had small book knowledge. They could be talked down by any public-school child in its second or third year. But they knew the meaning of beauty and order and law; and this trinity stands to-day, and will stand for many a generation to come, as an ideal to which we must return till like causes work again to like ends. The child who could barely read saw beauty on every side, and took in the store of ballad and tradition that gave life to labor. We have parted with all this wilfully. To the Puritan all beauty that hand of man could create was of the devil, and thus we represent a consecrated ugliness, any departure from which is even now, by some conscientious souls, regarded with suspicion. The child, then, who can be made to understand that beauty and order and law are one, has a new sense born in him. Life takes on a new aspect, and work a new meaning. But the fourteen weeks per year of education, at present required by our law as it stands in its application to children who must work, has no power to bring such result. It begins in the kindergarten, from which the poorest child takes home, even to the tenement-house, something strong enough, when growth has come, to abolish the tenement-house forever. No man who works to these ends has gauged possibilities more wisely than Felix Adler, whose school shows us something not yet attained by the many who, partially accepting his methods, pronounce his theories dangerous and destructive to what must be held sacred. However this may be, he and his band of co-workers have proved, in seven years of unceasing struggle against heavy odds, that a development is possible even for the tenement-house child, that reconstructs the entire view of life and makes possible the end for which all industrial training is but the preparation. It is in such training that children, rich or poor, best learn the demand bound up in living and working together, and find in the end that co-operation is its natural out-growth. There is no renunciation of the home or destruction of the truest home life. There is simply the abolition of competition as any necessary factor in human progress, and the placing of the worker beyond its power to harm. Thus far we have left the bettering of social conditions chiefly to the individual, and any hint of State interference carries with it the opprobrium of socialism. Yet more and more for those who are unterrified by names, the best in socialism offers itself as the sole way of escape from monopolies and the stupidities and outrages of the present system. No one panacea of any reformer fits the case or can alter existing conditions. Only what man's own soul sees as good, and wills to possess, is of faintest value to him. No attempt at co-operation can help till the worker sees its power and use, and is willing to sacrifice where sacrifice is necessary, to work and to wait in patience. Such power is born in the industrial school in its largest sense,--the school that trains heart and mind as well eye and hand, and makes the child ready for the best work its measure of power can know. This we can give by State or by individual aid, as the case may be, and every ward in the city should own a sufficient number to include every child within it. A check upon emigration would seem an imperative demand,--not prevention, but some clause which might act to lessen the garbage-heaps dumped upon our shores. Pauperism and disease have no rights as emigrants, and eliminating these would make dealing with mere poverty a much more manageable matter. The schools exist, and, while painfully inadequate in number, demonstrate what may be done in the future. Co-operation even for this hasty people is almost equally demonstrated, as will be plain to those who read two recent publications of the American Economic Association: "Co-operation in a Western City," by Albert Shaw, and "Co-operation in New England," by Edward W. Bemis. Minneapolis is the centre of the facts given in the first-mentioned pamphlet, which is also the more valuable of the two, not in execution but merely because it records a movement which has ceased to be experimental; as the little history includes every failure as well as the final success, and thus stands as the best argument yet made for the cause. Industrial education for the child of to-day; co-operation as the end to be attained by the worker into which the child will grow,--in these two factors is bound up much of the problem. They will not touch many whose miserable lives are recorded in these pages, but they will forever end any chance of another generation in like case. There are workers who think, who are being educated by sharp conflict with circumstances, and who look beyond their own present need to the future. These men and women, crowded to the wall by the present system, are searching eagerly, not as mere anarchists and destroyers, but as those who believe that something better than destruction is possible. It is these workers for whom the path must be made plain, and to whom we are most heavily responsible. And this brings me to the final point bound up indissolubly with the two already defined,--a change in our own ideals. Such change must come before any school can accomplish its best work, and till it has at least begun neither school nor system has lasting power. In these months of search in which women of all ages and grades have given in their testimony,--from the girl of fourteen earning her two or three dollars a week in the bag-factory or as cash-girl, to the woman stitching her remnant of life into the garments that by and by her more fortunate sisters will find on the bargain counter,--I discover not alone their ignorance and stupidity and grossness and wilful blindness, but behind it an ignorance and stupidity no less dense upon which theirs is founded,--our own. The visible wretchedness is so appalling, the need for instant relief so pressing, that it is small wonder that no power remains to look beyond the moment, or to disentangle one's self from the myriad conflicting claims, and ask the real meaning of the demand. Mile after mile of the fair islands once the charm of the East River and the great Sound beyond are covered by lazar-houses,--the visible signs in this great equation that fills the page of to-day; the problem of human crime and disease and wretchedness complicating itself with every addition, and no nearer solution than when the city was but a handful of houses and poverty yet unknown. We have made attempts here and there to limit the breeding ground; to offer less fruitful soil to the spawn increasing with such frightful rapidity, and demanding with every year fresh reformatories, larger asylums and hospitals, more and more machinery of alleviation. Yet the conviction strengthens that even when the tenement-house of to-day is swept aside, and improved homes with decent sanitary conditions have taken their place, that the root of the evil is even then untouched, and that it lies not alone in their lives, but in our own. And so, as final word, I say to-day to all women who give their lives to beneficence, and plan ceaselessly and untiringly for better days, that no beneficence can alter, no work of our hands or desire of our hearts bring the better day we desire, till the foundations have been laid in something less shifting than the sands on which we build. The mission of alleviation, of protection, of care for the foulest and lowest of lives, has had its day. It is time that this mass of effort stirred against its perpetual reproduction, its existence, its ever more and more shameless demands. An improved home goes far toward making these tendencies less strong; it may even diminish the number of actual transgressors; but what home, no matter how well kept, has or will have power to alter the fact that in them thousands of women must still slave for a pittance that borders always on that life limit fixed by the political economists as the vanishing point in the picture of modern life? Sunlight and air may take the place of the foulness now reigning in the dens that many of them know as homes; but will either sun or air shorten hours or raise wages, or alter the fact that not one in a thousand of these women but has grounded her whole pitiful life on a delusion,--a delusion for which we are responsible? Year by year in the story of the Republic, labor has taken lower and lower place. The passion for getting on, latent in every drop of American blood, has made money the sole symbol of success, and freedom from hand-labor the synonyme of happiness. The mass of illiterate, unenlightened emigrants pouring in a steady stream through Castle Garden have become our hands, and, as hands dependent on the heads of others, have fallen into the same category as the slaves, whose possession brought infinitely more degradation to owners than to owned. It is the story of every civilized nation before its fall,--this exploitation of labor, this degradation of the worker; and the story of hopeless decay and collapse must be ours also, if different ideals do not rise to fill the place of this Golden Calf to which all have bent the knee. There is not a girl old enough to work at all who does not dream of a possible future in which work will cease and ease and luxury take its place. The boy content with a trade, the man or woman accepting simple living and its limitations contentedly, is counted fool. To get money, and always more and more money, is the one ambition; and in this mad rush toward the golden fountain, gentle virtues are trampled under foot, and men count no armor of honest thought worth wearing unless it be fringed with bullion. The shop-girl must have her cotton velvet and her glass substitutes for diamonds. The lines of caste are drawn as sharply with her as in the ascending grades through which she hopes to pass. Labor is curse; never the blessing that it may bear when accepted man's chief good, and used as developing, not as destroying power. Never till men see and believe that the fortune made by mere sharpness and unscrupulousness, the fruit not of honest labor but of pure speculation, is a burning disgrace to its owner, a plague-spot in civilization, shall we be able to convince girl or woman that labor is honorable, and better gains possible than any involved in merely getting on. Never till this furious fight for success, this system of competition which kills all regard for the individual, demanding only a machine capable of so much net product,--never till these and all methods of like nature have ceased to have place, or right to existence, can we count ourselves civilized or hope to better the conditions that now baffle us. No church, no mission, no improved home, no guild or any other form of mitigation means anything till the whole system of thought is reconstructed, and we come to some sense of what the eternal verities really are. It is easy for a woman to be kind and long-suffering, but the women who can be just to themselves, as well as to others, we can count on our fingers. Yet justice is the one demand in this life of to-day, and not one of us who shrinks and shudders at the thought of what women-workers are enduring but has it in her power to lessen the great sum of wretchedness; to begin for some one the work of education into just thinking and just living. Sweeping changes may not be possible. But beginning is always possible; and not a woman capable of thinking but has power by the simple force of example to lay the corner-stone of the new temple, fairer than any yet known to mortal eyes. If there is doubt for this generation of working-women toiling in blindest ignorance, it rests with us to lessen the doubt for the next, and to make it impossible in that better day for which we labor. Not one of us but can ask, "What is the source of the income which gives me ease? Is it possible for me to reconstruct my own life in such fashion that it shall mean more direct and personal relation to the worker? How can I bring more simplicity, less conventionality, more truth and right living into home and every relation of life?" I write these final words with all deference to the noble women whose lives have been given to good work, and many of whom long ago settled these questions practically for themselves. But for many of us there has been simply passive acceptance of all present conditions, without a question as to how or why they have come. It is because I believe that with us is the power to remedy every one if we will, that I appeal to women to-day. I write not as anarchist; not as declaimer against the rights of property, but as believer in the full right to ownership of all legitimately acquired property. I believe it the order of life, of any life that would hold good work of whatever nature, that enough should be acquired to make sharp want or eating care and perplexity impossible. But it is certain that even for the most unselfish of us there is an exaggerated estimate of the value of money,--an involuntary and inevitable truckling to the one who has most,--and that, no matter what our teaching may be, the force of every act and tendency makes against it. And there can be no retracing of steps that have for generations turned in the wrong direction. The very breath we draw on this American soil is poisoned by the foulness about us, and about us by our own act and choice. We have degraded labor till there is no lower depth, and not one but many generations must pass before these masses over whose condition we puzzle can find their feet in the path that means any real progress. Ask first, then, not what shall we do for these women, but what shall we do for ourselves? How shall we learn to know what are the real things? How shall we come to love them and cleave to them, and hold no life worth living that admits sham or compromise, or believes the mad luxury of this generation anything but blighting curse and surest destruction? Till we know this we have learned nothing, and are forever not helpers, but hinderers, in the great march that our blunders and stupidities only check for the time. For the word is forever onward, and even the blindest soul must one day see that if he will not walk by free choice in the path of God, he will be driven into it with whips of scorpions, made thus to know what part was given him to fill, and what judgment waits him who has chosen blindness. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. MRS. CAMPBELL'S BOOKS. THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB. A Story for Girls. 16mo. $1.50. MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME. A Novel. 16mo. $1.50. MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY. A Story for Girls. 16mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.) PRISONERS OF POVERTY. Women Wage-workers, their Trades and their Lives. 12mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.) PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. 16mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.) ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION. A Story. 12mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.) WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. Their Past, their Present, and their Future. 16mo. $1.00. THE EASIEST WAY IN HOUSEKEEPING AND COOKING. Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes. A new revised edition. 16mo. $1.00. IN FOREIGN KITCHENS. With Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North. 50 cents. SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE OF DR. MARTHA SCARBOROUGH. 16mo. $1.00. _These books will be mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price by the Publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, 254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. _Terms for quantities, or for class use, will be sent on application._ MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME. A NOVEL. BY HELEN CAMPBELL. AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB." One volume. 16mo. Cloth. $1.50. "Confirmed novel-readers who have regarded fiction as created for amusement and luxury alone, lay down this book with a new and serious purpose in life. The social scientist reads it, and finds the solution of many a tangled problem; the philanthropist finds in it direction and counsel. A novel written with a purpose, of which never for an instant does the author lose sight, it is yet absorbing in its interest. It reveals the narrow motives and the intrinsic selfishness of certain grades of social life; the corruption of business methods; the 'false, fairy gold,' of fashionable charities, and 'advanced' thought. Margaret Wentworth is a typical New England girl, reflective, absorbed, full of passionate and repressed intensity under a quiet and apparently cold exterior. The events that group themselves about her life are the natural result of such a character brought into contact with real life. The book cannot be too widely read."--_Boston Traveller._ "If the 'What-to-do Club' was clever, this is decidedly more so. It is a powerful story, and is evidently written in some degree, we cannot quite say how great a degree, from fact. The personages of the story are very well drawn,--indeed, 'Amanda Briggs' is as good as anything American fiction has produced. We fancy we could pencil on the margin the real names of at least half the characters. It is a book for the wealthy to read that they may know something that is required of them, because it does not ignore the difficulties in their way, and especially does not overlook the differences which social standing puts between class and class. It is a deeply interesting story considered as mere fiction, one of the best which has lately appeared. We hope the authoress will go on in a path where she has shown herself so capable."--_The Churchman._ "In Mrs. Campbell's novel we have a work that is not to be judged by ordinary standards. The story holds the reader's interest by its realistic pictures of the local life around us, by its constant and progressive action, and by the striking dramatic quality of scenes and incidents, described in a style clear, connected, and harmonious. The novel-reader who is not taken up and made to share the author's enthusiasm before getting half-way through the book must possess a taste satiated and depraved by indulgence in exciting and sensational fiction. The earnestness of the author's presentation of essentially great purposes lends intensity to her narrative. Succeeding as she does in impressing us strongly with her convictions, there is nothing of dogmatism in their preaching. But the suggestiveness of every chapter is backed by pictures of real life."--_New York World._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY. A STORY. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "PRISONERS OF POVERTY." 16mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper covers, 50 cents. "Mrs. Helen Campbell has written 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity' with a definite purpose in view, and this purpose will reveal itself to the eyes of all of its philanthropic readers. The true aim of the story is to make life more real and pleasant to the young girls who spend the greater part of the day toiling in the busy stores of New York. Just as in the 'What-to-do Club' the social level of village life was lifted several grades higher, so are the little friendly circles of shop-girls made to enlarge and form clubs in 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity.'"--_Boston Herald._ "'Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author; but it is none the less interesting and none the less realistic. The plot is unpretentious, and deals with the simplest and most conventional of themes: but the character-drawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and highly finished to the slightest details. There is much quiet humor in the book, and it is handled with skill and reserve. Those who have been attracted to Mrs. Campbell's other works will welcome the latest of them with pleasure and satisfaction."--_Saturday Gazette._ "The best book that Helen Campbell has yet produced is her latest story, 'Miss Melinda's Opportunity,' which is especially strong in character-drawing, and its life sketches are realistic and full of vigor, with a rich vein of humor running through them. Miss Melinda is a dear lady of middle life, who has finally found her opportunity to do a great amount of good with her ample pecuniary means by helping those who have the disposition to help themselves. The story of how some bright and energetic girls who had gone to New York to earn their living put a portion of their earnings into a common treasury, and provided themselves with a comfortable home and good fare for a very small sum per week, is not only of lively interest, but furnishes hints for other girls in similar circumstances that may prove of great value. An unpretentious but well-sustained plot runs through the book, with a happy ending, in which Miss Melinda figures as the angel that she is."--_Home Journal._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB. A STORY FOR GIRLS. BY HELEN CAMPBELL. 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. "'The What-to-do Club' is an unpretending story. It introduces us to a dozen or more village girls of varying ranks. One has had superior opportunities; another exceptional training; two or three have been 'away to school;' some are farmers' daughters; there is a teacher, two or three poor self-supporters,--in fact, about such an assemblage as any town between New York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them.... Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in our country."--_The Chautauquan._ "'The What-to-do Club' is a delightful story for girls, especially for New England girls, by Helen Campbell. The heroine of the story is Sybil Waite, the beautiful, resolute, and devoted daughter of a broken-down but highly educated Vermont lawyer. The story shows how much it is possible for a well-trained and determined young woman to accomplish when she sets out to earn her own living, or help others. Sybil begins with odd jobs of carpentering, and becomes an artist in woodwork. She is first jeered at, then admired, and finally loved by a worthy man. The book closes pleasantly with John claiming Sybil as his own. The labors of Sybil and her friends and of the New Jersey 'Busy Bodies,' which are said to be actual facts, ought to encourage many young women to more successful competition in the battles of life."--_Golden Rule._ "In the form of a story, this book suggests ways in which young women may make money at home, with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawn, and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural story-teller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested with a certain ideal glamour, and we are thrilled and absorbed by an array of figures of receipts and expenditures, equally with the changeful incidents of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony. Fun and pathos, sense and sentiment, are mingled throughout, and the combination has resulted in one of the brightest stories of the season."--_Woman's Journal._ _Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE OF DR. MARTHA SCARBOROUGH. BY HELEN CAMPBELL. _16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00._ Besides being equal to Mrs. Campbell's best work in the past, it is strikingly original in presenting the ethics of the body as imperiously claiming recognition in the radical cure of inebriety. It forces attention to the physical and spiritual value of foods, and weaves precedent and precept into one of the most beguiling stories of recent date. It is the gospel of good food, with the added influence of fresh air, sunlight, cleanliness, and physical exercise that occupy profitably the attention of Helen Campbell. Martha is a baby when the story begins, and a child not yet in her teens when the narrative comes to an end, but she has a salutary power over many lives. Her father is a wise country physician, who makes his chaise, in his daily progress about the hills, serve as his little daughter's cradle and kindergarten. When she gets old enough to understand her expounds to her his views of the sins committed against hygiene, and his lessons sink into an appreciative mind. When he encounters particularly hard cases she applies his principles with unfailing logic, and is able to suggest helpful means of cure. The old doctor is delightfully sagacious in demonstrating how the confirmed pie-eater marries the tea inebriate, with the result in doughnut-devouring, dyspeptic, and consumptive offspring. "What did they die of?" asked little Martha, in the village graveyard; and her father answers solemnly, "Intemperance." So Martha declares that she will be a "food doctor," and later on she helps her father in saving several victims of strong drink. The book is one that should find hosts of earnest readers, for its admonitions are sadly needed, not in the country alone, but in the city, where, if better ideas of diet prevail, people have yet as a rule a long way to go before they attain the path of wisdom. Meanwhile it remains true, as Mrs. Campbell makes Dr. Scarborough declare, that the cabbage soup and black bread of the poorest French peasants are really better suited to the sustenance of healthy life than the "messes" that pass for food in many parts of rural New England.--_The Beacon._ _Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION. A Story. BY HELEN CAMPBELL, _Author of "Prisoners of Poverty," "Mrs. Herndon's Income," "Miss Melinda's Opportunity," "The What-to-do Club," etc._ 16mo, cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. This story is on the scale of a cabinet picture. It presents interesting figures, natural situations, and warm colors. Written in a quiet key, it is yet moving, and the letter from Bolton describing the fortunate sale of Roger's painting of "The Factory Bell" sends a tear of sympathetic joy to the reader's eye. Roger Berkeley was a young American art student in Paris, called home by the mortal sickness of his mother, and detained at home by the spendthriftness of his father and the embarrassment that had overtaken the family affairs through the latter cause. A concealed mortgage on the old homestead, the mysterious disappearance of a package of bonds intended for Roger's student use, and the paralytic incapacity of the father to give the information which his conscience prompted him to give, have a share in the development of the story. Roger is obliged for the time to abandon his art work, and takes a situation in a mill; and this trying diversion from his purpose is his "probation." How he profits by this loss is shown in the result. The mill-life gives Mrs. Campbell opportunity to express herself characteristically in behalf of down-trodden "labor." The whole story is simple, natural, sweet, and tender; and the figures of Connie, poor little cripple, and Miss Medora Flint, angular and snappish domestic, lend picturesqueness to its group of characters.--_Literary World._ _Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD By HELEN CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WHAT-TO-DO-CLUB," "PRISONERS OF POVERTY," "ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION," ETC. _16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents._ Mrs. Helen Campbell, an occasional and valued contributor to this journal, and the author of "Prisoners of Poverty," and other studies of social questions in this country, has offered in this book conclusions drawn from investigations on the same themes made abroad, principally in England or France. She has devoted personal attention and labor to the work, and, although much of what she describes has been depicted before by others, she tells her story with a freshness and an earnestness which give it exceptional interest and value. Her volume is one of testimony. She does not often attempt to philosophize, but to state facts as they are, so that they may plead their own cause. She puts before the reader a series of pictures, vividly drawn, but carefully guarded from exaggeration or distortion, that he may form his own opinions.--_Congregationalist._ Can life be worth living to the hordes of miserable women who have to work from fifteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage of from twenty-five to thirty-five or forty cents? And what have all the study of political economy, all the writing of treatises about labor, all the Parliamentary debates, all the blue books, all the philanthropic organizations, all the appeals to a common humanity, done, in half a century, for these victims of what is called modern civilization? Mrs. Campbell is by no means a sentimentalist. We know of no one who examines facts more coolly and practically, or who labors more earnestly to find the real causes for the continued depression of the labor market, as this horrible state of things is euphemistically termed. The conclusions she reaches are therefore sober and trustworthy.--_New York Tribune._ No work of fiction, however imaginative, could present more startling pictures than does this little book, which is sympathetic, but not sentimental, the result of personal investigation, and a most valuable contribution to the literature of the labor question.--_Philadelphia Record._ Mrs. Helen Campbell's "Prisoners of Poverty," a study of the condition of some of the lower strata of the laboring classes, particularly the working-women in the great cities of the United States, is supplemented with another volume, "Prisoners of Poverty Abroad," in which the life of working-women of European cities, chiefly London and Paris, is depicted with equally graphic and terrible truthfulness. They are the result of fifteen months of travel and study, and are examples of Mrs. Campbell's well-known methods of examination and description. They paint a horrible picture, but a truthful one, and no person of even ordinary sensibilities can read these books without experiencing a strong desire to do something to abate the monstrous injustice which they describe.--_Good Housekeeping._ _Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. _In Foreign Kitchens._ WITH CHOICE RECIPES FROM ENGLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY, AND THE NORTH. By HELEN CAMPBELL, _Author of "The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking," "Prisoners of Poverty," "The What-To-Do Club," etc._ 16MO. CLOTH. PRICE, 50 CENTS. While foreign cookbooks are accessible to all readers of foreign languages, and American ones have borrowed from them for what we know as "French cookery," it is difficult often to judge the real value of a dish, or decide if experiment in new directions is worth while. The recipes in the following chapters, prepared originally for _The Epicure_, of Boston, were gathered slowly, as the author found them in use, and are most of them taken from family recipe-books, as valued abroad as at home. So many requests have come for them in some more convenient form than that offered in the magazine, that the present shape has been determined upon; and it is hoped they may be a welcome addition to the housekeeper's private store of rules for varying the monotony of the ordinary menu. _Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the price by the Publishers_, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, BOSTON. Women Wage-Earners. Their Past, their Present, and their Future. By HELEN CAMPBELL. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. The writer describes employments in the factory and home, compares the condition of women workers here and abroad, dwells upon the evils and abuses in factory life and in general trades, and points out remedies and gives suggestions. The book is an expansion of a prize monograph for the American Economic Association, for which a reward was given in 1891, expanded to nearly double its original size. An introduction to it is contributed by Prof. Richard T. Ely. Nowhere else could one get so much information on this subject in so small a space as in this book.--_The School Journal._ It includes such topics as factory labor, rise and growth of trades, labor bureaus, wage rates, and general conditions for women workers in England, on the Continent, and in the United States. The importance of this subject with which Mrs. Campbell deals is not easily overestimated. The present age is the era of woman, since whatever affects her receives a consideration never before given. For a long time the agitation in favor of woman was to remove barriers and open the way for her. The way has been opened and woman has entered scores of fields previously closed to her. The questions which now arise are as to her remuneration for her work in these fields, and the influence of women wage-earning on the family, the home, and society. These are questions not yet settled. Mrs. Campbell approaches their discussion in a spirit of fairness, and what she says is suggestive and helpful, if not conclusive. Her volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of social science.--_Boston Advertiser._ Such a work could never have been compiled for women except by a woman. It is itself a demonstration of the fact that women can handle the woman question as men alone cannot do, and that women can be raised and elevated from their present depressed condition only by organizations and trades unions of their own. Every woman should read this book carefully. She will gain from its perusal a breadth and depth of knowledge which will be of lasting value to her, and it will show her how great a work exists for women to do, in order to "make the world better."--_Woman's Journal._ It is a sober statement of facts by a thoughtful woman who has made a life-study of economic questions, both through the medium of books, and by personal investigation into the modern conditions of labor. The book covers the history of the wage question as affecting women, its present status, and its prospect for the future.--_Worcester Spy._ Her style is robust, orderly, precise, every page carrying the evidence of trained thought and of careful, conscientious research.--_Public Opinion._ LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, 254 Washington Street, Boston. _No Woman can give herself to a more noble occupation than the making of the ideal home.--The Beacon._ The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking. Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes. By HELEN CAMPBELL. A new revised edition. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. The work grew out of Mrs. Campbell's experiences as a teacher of cookery, more especially at the South, but its principles are applicable anywhere, and as a manual for inexperienced housewives or as a class-room text-book it will be found of decided value.... No woman can give herself to a more noble occupation than the making of the ideal home, and Mrs. Campbell, by showing women how to do this, accomplished a great and important task. The book she has written tells about the requirements of a healthful home, explains how the routine of daily housekeeping may be most economically and effectually conducted, sets forth the chemistry of food and the relations of food to health, and in the second part gives special instructions on the preparation of different sorts of food, with many carefully tested recipes.--_The Beacon._ It is not a cook-book pure and simple. It is more. It covers a large range, such as the situation and arrangement of the house, drainage and water supply, the day's work and how to plan it, fires, lights, and things to work with, washing-day and cleaning in general, the body and its composition, food and its laws, the relations of food to health, the chemistry of animal food, the chemistry of vegetable food, condiments, and beverages. The book is interestingly written, as is everything that comes from Mrs. Campbell's pen. It certainly will prove a great benefit to housewives and would-be housewives who read it; besides, the ample recipes it contains make it a book of reference of constant value.--_Cleveland World._ In the midst of always increasing cookery books, it has had a firm constituency of friends, especially in the South, where its necessity was first made plain. There is something here for the tyro and the adept, and whether used at home with growing girls, in cooking clubs, in schools, or in private classes, the system outlined has proven itself admirable, and the theory and practice of Miss Campbell's book are almost beyond criticism.--_Oregonian._ It is not merely a cook-book, but is a text-book of about everything that is of special interest to the housekeeper, and is adapted either for domestic use or study in classes. It is in fact a housekeeper's most valuable encyclopædia, written by a lady who by education and thoroughly practical knowledge was rendered singularly competent for the important work here undertaken and so successfully carried out.... It is a book that intelligent young housekeepers especially will come to regard as an indispensable companion.--_Boston Home Journal._ It really is one of the most admirable of manuals for the usual young housekeeper.--_Providence Journal._ LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, 254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 
34379	----	OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. "'The Principles of State Interference' is another of Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein's Series of Handbooks on Scientific Social Subjects. It would be fitting to close our remarks on this little work with a word of commendation of the publishers of so many useful volumes by eminent writers on questions of pressing interest to a large number of the community. We have now received and read a good number of the handbooks which Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein have published in this series, and can speak in the highest terms of them. They are written by men of considerable knowledge of the subjects they have undertaken to discuss; they are concise; they give a fair estimate of the progress which recent discussion has added towards the solution of the pressing social questions of to-day, are well up to date, and are published at a price within the resources of the public to which they are likely to be of the most use."--_Westminster Review_, July, 1891. "The excellent 'Social Science Series,' which is published at as low a price as to place it within everybody's reach."--_Review of Reviews._ "A most useful series.... This impartial series welcomes both just writers and unjust."--_Manchester Guardian._ "Concise in treatment, lucid in style and moderate in price, these books can hardly fail to do much towards spreading sound views on economic and social questions."--_Review of the Churches._ "Convenient, well-printed, and moderately-priced volumes."--_Reynold's Newspaper._ "There is a certain impartiality about the attractive and well-printed volumes which form the series to which the works noticed in this article belong. There is no editor and no common design beyond a desire to redress those errors and irregularities of society which all the writers, though they may agree in little else, concur in acknowledging and deploring. The system adopted appears to be to select men known to have a claim to speak with more or less authority upon the shortcomings of civilisation, and to allow each to propound the views which commend themselves most strongly to his mind, without reference to the possible flat contradiction which may be forthcoming at the hands of the next contributor."--_Literary World._ "'The Social Science Series' aims at the illustration of all sides of social and economic truth and error."--_Scotsman._ SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LONDON. * * * * * SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. _SCARLET CLOTH, EACH 2s. 6d._ +1. Work and Wages.+ Prof. J. E. THOROLD ROGERS. "Nothing that Professor Rogers writes can fail to be of interest to thoughtful people."--_Athenæum._ +2. Civilisation: its Cause and Cure.+ EDWARD CARPENTER. "No passing piece of polemics, but a permanent possession."--_Scottish Review._ +3. Quintessence of Socialism.+ Dr. SCHÄFFLE. "Precisely the manual needed. 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"By far the most comprehensive, luminous, and penetrating work on this question that I have yet met with."--_Extract from_ Mr. Gladstone's _Preface._ +60. The Eight Hours' Question.+ JOHN M. ROBERTSON. DOUBLE VOLUMES, Each 3s. 6d. +1. Life of Robert Owen.+ LLOYD JONES. +2. The Impossibility of Social Democracy: a Second Part of "The Quintessence of Socialism".+ Dr. A. SCHÄFFLE. +3. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.+ FREDERICK ENGELS. +4. The Principles of Social Economy.+ YVES GUYOT. * * * * * THE THEORY AND POLICY OF LABOUR PROTECTION. BY DR. A. SCHÄFFLE EDITED BY A. C. MORANT _Translator of Schäffle's_ IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, _Leroy-Beaulieu's_ THE MODERN STATE, _Laveleye's_ LUXURY, _etc._ [Illustration] London SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1893 BUTLER & TANNER, THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS, FROME, AND LONDON. PREFACE. In this book Dr. Schäffle seeks to carry out still further the idea which he developed in his last book (_The Impossibility of Social Democracy_) of the essential difference between a socialistic policy and what he calls a Positive Social Policy, proceeding constructively upon the basis of the existing social order. He emphatically vindicates the Emperor William's policy, as shown in the convening of the Berlin Labour Conference, from the charge of being revolutionary, or of playing into the hands of the Socialists. The first part contains an attempt to settle and render more precise the use of terms in labour-legislation, as well as to classify the different aims and purposes with which it sets out, and then passes on to what will probably be to English readers the most interesting part of the book--a discussion of the Maximum Working Day in general, and the Eight Hours Day in particular. Here the author commits himself in favour of a legal ten or eleven hours day for industrial work, with special provisions for specially dangerous or exhausting trades, and with freedom of contract below that limit, and brings evidence to show that such a step has already been justified by experience. But after a careful discussion of what it involves, and after disentangling with some care the difficulties with which it is surrounded, he pronounces emphatically against the universal compulsory Eight Hours Day, which he regards as not practicable for, at any rate, a very long time to come. On the vexed question of the labour of married women, Dr. Schäffle is less explicit, and seems somewhat to halt between two opinions. He will not commit himself to the desirability of an absolute prohibition of it, but it seems clear that his sympathies lean that way. The discussion of the Social Democratic proposals in the German Reichstag, known as the Auer Motion, is very careful and appreciative, but Dr. Schäffle takes care to disentangle the really Socialistic element in them, and will only support the introduction of Labour Boards and Labour Chambers as consultative bodies, not as holding any power of control over the Inspectorate. He is willing to allow to the working classes full vent for their grievances, but dreads to see them entrusted with the actual power of remedying them. His plea for more international exchange of opinions and international uniformity of practice is one which must be echoed by all who have the cause of Labour at heart. To that larger sense of brotherhood which extends beyond the bounds of country we must look for the accomplishment of the Social Revolution which is surely on the way. On a task so large, and involving such far-reaching issues to the progress of the world, the nations must take hands and step together if the results are to be of permanent value. The paralyzing dread of war, the competition of foreign workmen, the familiar Capitalist weapon that "trade will leave the country" if the workers' claims are conceded--all these dangers in the way can only be met by the drawing closer of international bonds, by the intercommunication of those in all countries who are fired by the new ideals, and are making towards an ordered Social peace out of the chaos of conflicting and competing energies and interests in which we live. It cannot but be well to be reminded, as Dr. Schäffle reminds us, of the strong expression of opinion uttered by the Berlin International Labour Conference as to the beneficial results which might be looked for from a series of such gatherings, or to ask ourselves, why should not England be the next to convene a Labour Conference to gather up the experiences of the last few years, which have been so full of movement and agitation in the Labour world, as well as to give to other nations the benefit of the earnest and strenuous investigations, now nearly drawing to a close, of our own Royal Commission on Labour? At the request of Dr. Schäffle, the von Berlepsch Bill, which has been brought in by the German Government in order to carry out the recommendations of the Berlin Conference, has been inserted as an Appendix at the end of the English edition. A. C. MORANT. CONTENTS. BOOK I. PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF LABOUR PROTECTION 7 II. CLASSIFICATION OF INDUSTRIAL WAGE-LABOUR FOR PURPOSES OF PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION.--DEFINITION OF FACTORY LABOUR 23 III. SURVEY OF THE EXISTING CONDITIONS OF LABOUR PROTECTION 45 IV. MAXIMUM WORKING-DAY 53 BOOK II. V. PROTECTION OF INTERVALS OF WORK.--DAILY INTERVALS.--NIGHT REST AND HOLIDAYS 114 VI. ENACTMENTS PROHIBITING CERTAIN KINDS OF WORK 126 VII. EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION 140 VIII. PROTECTION IN OCCUPATION.--PROTECTION OF TRUCK AND CONTRACT 146 IX. RELATION OF THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF LABOUR PROTECTION TO EACH OTHER 161 X. TRANSACTIONS OF THE BERLIN LABOUR CONFERENCE, DEALING WITH MATTERS BEYOND THE RANGE OF LABOUR PROTECTION.--DALE'S DEPOSITIONS ON COURTS OF ARBITRATION, AND THE SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES IN MINING 164 XI. THE "LABOUR BOARDS" AND "LABOUR CHAMBERS" OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 171 XII. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PROTECTIVE ORGANISATION 187 XIII. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR PROTECTION 196 XIV. THE AIM AND JUSTIFICATION OF LABOUR PROTECTION 205 APPENDIX-- I. INDUSTRIAL CODE AMENDMENT BILL (GERMANY) 211 THEORY AND POLICY OF LABOUR PROTECTION. BOOK I. INTRODUCTORY. In past years German Social Policy was directed chiefly to _Labour Insurance_, in which much entirely new work had to be done, and has already been done on a large scale; but in the year 1890 it entered upon the work of _Labour Protection_, which was begun long ago in the Industrial Code, and this work must still be carried on further and more generally on the same lines. This result is due to the fact that the Emperor William II. has inscribed upon his banner this hitherto neglected portion of social legislation (which, however, has long been favoured by the Reichstag and especially by the Centre), has placed it on the orders of the day among national and international questions, and has launched it into the stream of European progress with new force and a higher aim. The subject is one of the greatest interest in more than one respect. It was to all appearance the cause of the retirement of Prince Bismark into private life. Some day, perhaps, the historian, in seeking an explanation of this important event in the world's history, will inquire of the political economist and social politician, whether Labour Protection, as conceived by the Emperor--especially as compared to Labour Insurance--were after all so bold a venture, so new a path, so daring a leap in the dark as to necessitate the retirement of that great statesman. I am inclined to answer in the negative, and to assume that the conversion of Social Policy to Labour Protection was the outward pretext rather than the real motive of the unexpected abdication of Prince Bismark of his leading position in the State. The collective result of my inquiry must speak for itself on this point. The turn which Social Policy has thus taken in the direction of Labour Protection, raises the question among scientific observers whether it is true that the science of statecraft has thus launched forth upon a path of dangerous adventure and rash experimentation, and grappled with a problem, compared with which Prince Bismark's scheme of Labour Insurance sinks into insignificance. Party-spirit, which loves to belittle real excellence, at present lends itself to the view which would minimise the significance of Labour Insurance as compared with Labour Protection. But this is in my opinion a mistake. Though it is impossible to overestimate the importance for Germany of this task of advancing over the ground already occupied by other nations, and of working towards the introduction of a general scheme of international Labour Protection calculated to ensure international equilibrium of competition, yet in this task Labour Protection is, in fact, only the necessary supplement to Labour Insurance. Both are of the highest importance. But neither the one nor the other gives any ground for the charge that we are playing with the fires of social revolution. The end which the Emperor William sought to attain at the Berlin Conference, in March, 1890, and by the Industrial Code Amendment Bill of the Minister of Commerce, _von Berlepsch_, is one that has already been separately attained more or less completely in England, Austria and Switzerland. It is in the main merely a question of extending the scope of results already attained in such countries, while what there is of new in his scheme does not by any means constitute the beginning of a social revolution from above. The policy of the Imperial Decree of February 4th, 1890, and of the Bill of _von Berlepsch_, in no wise pledges its authors to the Radicals. A calm consideration of facts will prove incontestably the correctness of this view. However, it is not any politico-economic reasons there may have been for the retirement of Prince Bismark, nor the very common habit of depreciating the value of Labour Insurance, nor yet the popular theory, false as I believe it to be, that the Emperor's policy of Labour Protection is of a revolutionary character, which leads me to take up once again this well-worn theme. If the "Theory and Policy of Labour Protection" were by this time full and complete, I would willingly lay it aside in order to take into consideration the significance of Bismark's retirement from the point of view of social science, or to attempt to reassure public opinion as to the conservative character of the impending measures of Labour Protection. But this is not the case. It is true we have before us an almost overwhelming mass of material in the way of protocols, reports of commissions, judicial decisions, resolutions and counter-resolutions, proposals, petitions and motions, speeches and writings, pamphlets and books. But we are still far from having, as the result of a clear and comprehensive survey of the whole of this material, a complete theory of Labour Protection; for the political problems of Labour Protection, especially those touching the so-called Maximum Working Day and the organisation of protection, are more hotly disputed than ever. In spite of the valuable and careful articles on Labour Protection, in the _Encyclopædia_, of von Schönberg and of Conrad, with their wealth of literary illustration, in spite of the latest writings of Hitze,[1] which, for moderation and clearness, vigour of thought, and wealth of material, cannot be too highly commended, there still remains much scientific work to be done. I myself have actually undertaken a thorough examination of all this literary and legislative material, in view of the national and international efforts of to-day towards the progressive development of Labour Protection, with the result that I am firmly convinced that both Theory and Policy of Labour Protection are still deficient at several points, and in fact that we are far from having placed on a scientific footing the dogmatic basis of the whole matter. We have not yet a sufficiently exact definition of the meaning of Labour Protection, nor a clear distinction between Labour Protection and the other forms of State-aids to Labour, as well as of other aids outside the action of the State. We have not a satisfactory classification of the different forms of Labour Protection itself with reference to its aim and scope, organisation and methods. We still lack--and it was seriously lacking at the Labour Conference at Berlin--a fundamental agreement as to the grounds on which Labour Protection is justified, its relation to freedom of contract, and the advisability of extending it to adults. The discussion is far from being complete, not only with reference to the real problems of Labour Protection, but also and especially with reference to the organs, methods and course of its administration. Many proposals lie before us, some of which are open to objection and some even highly questionable. But we find scarcely any who advocate the simplification and cheapening of this organisation in connection with the systematised collective organisation of all matters pertaining to labour, together with the separation, as far as possible, of such organisation from the regular administrative organs. The proposals of Social Democracy with respect to "Labour-boards" and "Labour-chambers," are hardly known in wider circles, and have nowhere received the attention to which in my opinion they are entitled. The proposed legislation for the protection of labour offers therefore a wide field for careful and scientific investigation. I have prepared the following pages as a contribution to this task. FOOTNOTE: [1] _Protection for the Labourer!_ Cologne, 1890. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF LABOUR PROTECTION. The meaning of the term Labour Protection admits of an extension far beyond the narrow and precise limits which prevailing usage has assigned to it, and beyond the sphere of analogous questions actually dealt with by protective legislation. In its most general meaning the term comprises all conceivable protection of every kind of labour: protection of all labour--even for the self-supporting, independent worker; protection in service-relations, and beyond this, protection against all dangers and disadvantages arising from the economic weakness of the position of the wage-labourer; protection of all, not merely of industrial wage-labourers; protection not by the State alone, but also by non-political organs; the ancient common protection exercised through the ordinary course of justice and towards all citizens, and thus towards labourers among the rest. All this so far as the actual word is concerned may be included in the term Labour Protection. But to use it in this sense would be to incur the risk of falling into a hopeless confusion as to the questions which lie within the scope of actual Labour Protection, and of running an endless tilt against fanciful exaggerations of Labour Protection. The term Labour Protection, according to prevailing usage and according to the aim of the practical efforts now being made to realise it, has a much narrower meaning, and this it is which we must strictly define and adhere to if we wish to avoid error and misconception. Our first task shall be to determine this stricter definition; and here we find ourselves confronted by a series of limitations. (1) Labour Protection signifies only protection against the special dangers arising out of service-relations, out of the personal and economic dependence of the wage-labourer on the employer. Labour Protection does not apply therefore to independent workers: to farmers or masters of handicrafts, to independent workers in the fine arts and liberal professions. Labour Protection applies merely to wage-labourers. For this reason Labour Protection has no connection with any aids to labour, beyond the limits of protection against the employer in service-relations; it has nothing to do with any attempts to ward off and remedy distress of all kinds, and otherwise to provide for the general welfare of the working classes; its scope does not extend to provisions for meeting distress caused by incapacity for work, or want of work, _i.e._ Labour Insurance, nor to the prevention and settlement of strikes, nor to improved methods of labour-intelligence, nor to precautions against disturbances of production or protection against the consequences of poverty by various methods of public and private charity, savings-banks, public health-regulations, inspection of food, and suppression of usury by common law. Although these are mainly or principally concerned with labourers, and are attempts to protect them from want, yet they are not to be included in Labour Protection in its strict sense. For this, as we have seen, includes only those measures and regulations designed to protect the wage-labourer in his special relations of dependence on his employer. And indeed we must draw the limit still closer, and apply the word only to the relations between certain defined wage-earners and certain defined employers. Measures which are designed to protect the entire labouring class or the whole of industry, do not, strictly speaking, belong to the category of Labour Protection. Neither can we apply the term to that protection which workmen and employers alike should find against the recent abnormal development of prison competition, although by recommending this measure in their latest Industrial Rescript (the Auer Motion[2]) the Social Democrats by a skilful move have won the applause of small employers especially. For the same reason we do not include protection by criminal law against the coercion of non-strikers by strikers, exercised through personal violence, intimidation or abuse; these are measures to preserve freedom of contract, but they have no connection with the relations of certain defined wage-earners to certain defined employers. Furthermore, Labour Protection does not include preservation of the rights of unions, and of freedom to combine for the purpose of raising wages, except or only in so far as particular employers, singly or in concert, by means of moral pressure or otherwise, seek to endanger the rights of particular wage-earners in this respect. It is almost unnecessary to add that Labour Protection does not include the "protection of national labour" against foreign labourers and employers, by means of protective duties, for this is obviously not protection against dangers arising from the service relations between certain defined wage-earners and employers. But although none of these measures of security that we have enumerated are to be included in Labour Protection, we must on the other hand guard against mistaken limitations of the term. It would be a mistaken limitation to include only security against material economic dangers in and arising from the relations of dependence, and to exclude moral and personal safeguards in these relations--protection of learning and instruction, of education, morality and religion, in a word the complete protection of family life. Labour Protection does not indeed include the whole moral and personal security of the wage-earner, but it does include it, and includes it fully and entirely, in so far as the dangers which threaten this security arise out of the _condition of dependence of the worker_ either within or beyond the limits of his business. The whole scope of Labour Protection embraces all claims for security against inhumane treatment in service-relations, treatment of the labourer "as a common tool," in the words of Pope Leo XIII. (2) Labour Protection does not include the free self-help of the worker, nor free mutual help, but only a part (cf. 3) of the protection afforded to wage-earners by the State, if necessary in co-operation with voluntary effort. Labour Protection in its modern form is only the outcome of a very old and on the whole far more important kind of Labour Protection, in the widest sense of the term, which far from abolishing the old forms of self-help and mutual help, actually presupposes them, strengthens, ensures and supplements them wherever the more recent developments of national industry render this necessary. Labour Protection, properly so called, only steps in when self-help and mutual help, supplemented by ordinary State protection, fail to meet the exigencies of the situation, whether momentarily and on account of special circumstances, or by the necessities of the case. This second far-reaching limitation of the meaning needs a little further explanation. Labour Protection in its more extended sense always meant and must still mean, first and foremost, self-help of the workers themselves; in part, individual self-help to guard against the dangers of service, in part, united self-help by means of the class organisation of trades-unions. Side by side with this self-help there has long existed a comprehensive system of free mutual help. This assumes the form of family protection exercised by relations and guardians against harsh employers, and by the father, brother, etc., in their relation of employers in family industries; also the somewhat similar form of patriarchal protection extended by the employer to his workpeople. Furthermore it includes that protection afforded by the pressure of religion, the common conscience or public opinion upon the consciences of employers, acting partly through the organs of the press, clubs, and other vehicles of expression, as well as through non-political public institutions, and corporate bodies of various kinds, especially and more directly through the Church, and also indirectly through the schools. Without family and patriarchal protection, without the protection afforded by civil morality and religious sentiment, Labour Protection, in its strict sense, working through the State alone, would be able to effect little. Family and patriarchal protection outweigh therefore in importance all more modern forms of Labour Protection, and will always continue to be the most efficacious. The protection of the Church has always been powerful from the earliest times. Self-help and mutual help, moral and religious, effect much that State-protection could not in general effect, and therefore it is not to be supposed that they could be dispensed with. But they must not be included in Labour Protection, strictly so called, for this only includes protection of labour by the State, and indeed only a part even of this (cf. 3). (3) For instance, Labour Protection does not include all judicial and administrative protection extended by the State to the wage-labourer, but only such special or extraordinary protection as is directed against the dangers arising from service relations, and is administered through special, extraordinary organs, judicial, legislative and representative. This special protection has become necessary through the development of the factory system with its merciless exploitation of wage-labour, and through the weakening of the patriarchal relations in workshops and in handicrafts. In this respect Labour Protection is the special modern development of the protection of labour by the State. Labourers and employers alike are guaranteed an extensive protection of life, health, morality, freedom, education, culture, and so on, by the ordinary protective agencies of justice and of police, exercised impartially towards all citizens, and claimed by all as their right. Long before there was any talk of Labour Protection, in the modern sense of the term, this kind of protection existed for wage-labour as against employers. But in the strict sense of the term Labour Protection includes only the special protection which extends beyond this ordinary sphere, the special exercise of State activity on behalf of labourers. Even where this extraordinary or special Labour Protection is exercised by the regular administrative and judicial authorities, it still takes the form of special regulations of private law, punitive and administrative, directed exclusively or mainly to the protection of labourers in their service-relations. To this extent, at any rate, it has a special and extraordinary character. Very frequently, as for instance in the German Industrial Code, such protection is placed in the hands of the ordinary administrative and judicial authorities, and a portion of it will continue to be so placed for some time to come. But the administration of Labour Protection, properly so called, is tending steadily to shift its centre of gravity more and more towards special extraordinary organs. These organs are partly executive (hitherto State-regulated factory inspection and industrial courts of arbitration), but they are also partly representative; the latter may be appointed exclusively for this purpose, or they may also be utilized for other branches of work in the interests of the labourer and for the encouragement of national industry, and they bear in their organisation, or at least to some extent in their action, the character of public institutions. (4) Labour Protection is essentially protection of industrial wage-labour, and excludes on the one hand the protection of agricultural workers and those engaged in forestry, as well as of domestic servants, and on the other hand, the protection of State officials and public servants. It may no doubt be that special protection is also needed for non-industrial wage-labour and for domestic servants, but the material legal basis, the organisation and methods of procedure, of these further branches of Labour Protection, will demand a special constitution of their own. The regulations of domestic service and the Acts relating to State-service in Germany constitute indeed a kind of Labour Protection, certainly very incomplete, and quite distinct from the rest of Labour Protection, properly so-called. Even if the progress of the Social Democratic movement in this country were to bring on to the platform of practical politics the measure already demanded by the Social Democrats for the protection of agricultural industry[3] on a large scale, even then protection of those engaged in agriculture and forestry would need to receive a special constitution, as regards the courts through which it would be administered, the dangers against which it would be directed, and its methods and course of administration. Whilst therefore we readily recognise that both protection of domestic servants and a far-reaching measure of agricultural Labour Protection, in the strict sense of the term, may eventually supervene, we yet maintain that this must be sharply distinguished for purposes of scientific, legislative, and administrative treatment from what we at present understand by Labour Protection. Moreover, even now agricultural labour is not entirely lacking in special protection. The regulations for domestic service contain fragments of protection of contract and truck protection. Russia has passed a law for the protection of agricultural labour (June 12, 1886) in Finland and the so-called western provinces, which regulates the peculiar system of individual and plural[4] agreements between small holders and their dependents, and is also designed to afford protection of contract to the employer. (5) The industrial wage-labour dealt with by the Industrial Code, and the industrial wage-labour dealt with by State Protection, are not entirely identical, though nearly so. For on the one hand there are wage-labourers employed in occupations not included in industrial labour in the sense of the Code, who yet stand in need of special protection from the State; while on the other hand there are bodies of industrial labourers dealt with in the Code, who do not need or who practically cannot have this extraordinary protective intervention of the State, being already supplied with the various agencies of free self-help, family insurance, and mutual aid. When we are concerned with Labour Protection therefore, both in theory and practice, it is evident that we have to deal with industrial wage-labour in a limited sense, not in the general sense in which the term occurs in the Industrial Code, while at the same time we must not fail to recognise that even the older Industrial Acts, in so far as they referred to wage-labour, were already Labour-protective Acts of a kind. The limits of wage-labour as affected by the Industrial Code, and of wage-labour as affected by State protection, have this in common, that both extend far beyond wage-service in manufacturing business (industry, in its strict sense). For this reason we must examine into this point a little more closely in order to determine the exact scope of Labour Protection. In our present Industrial Code the terms "industrial labour" and "industrial establishments" are almost uniformly used in the sense given to them by the German Industrial Code of 1869. Industrial labour is wage-labour in all those occupations within the jurisdiction of the Code. But the Code gives no positive legal definition of the word "industry." Both in administrative and judicial reference the word is used loosely as in common parlance, and the Code only particularises certain industries out of those with which it deals as requiring special regulations and special organs for the administration of these special regulations. According to administrative and judicial usage in Germany, corresponding to customary usage, the word "industry" is now applied to all such branches of legitimate private activity as are directed regularly and continuously towards the acquirement of gain, with the following exceptions: agriculture and forestry (market-gardening excepted), cattle-breeding, vine-growing, and the manufacturing of home-raised products of the soil (except in cases where the manufacturing is the main point and the production of the material only a means towards manufacturing, as in the case of sugar refineries and brandy distilleries). In spite of this last limitation the meaning of the term "industrial labour," as used in the Code, extends far beyond the limits of wage-labour in the manufacturing of materials. For the provisions of the Imperial Industrial Code for the protection of labour expressly include, either wholly or partially, mining industries, commerce, distribution, and all carrying industries other than by rail and sea. But the need of Labour Protection is also felt in certain occupations which are indeed counted as industries in common parlance, but which are expressly excluded from the jurisdiction of the Industrial Code; amongst these are the fisheries, pharmacy, the professions of surgery and medicine, paid teaching in the education of children, the bar and the whole legal profession, agents and conductors of emigration, insurance offices, railroad traffic and traffic by sea, _i.e._ as affecting the seamen. Clearly no exception ought to be taken to the extension of Labour Protection to any single one of these branches of industry, in so far as they are carried on by wage-labourers in need of protection. This ought especially to apply to private commercial industries with reference to Sunday rest, and to public means of traffic, in the widest sense of the term, and to navigation. A fairly comprehensive measure of protection for this last branch of work has already been provided in Germany by the Regulations for Seamen of December 27, 1872. Furthermore, the need of protection also exists in callings which do not fall under the head of industries even in the customary use of the term. Taking our definition of industry as an exercise of private activity for purposes of gain, we clearly cannot include in it the employments carried on under the various communal, provincial and imperial corporate bodies, at least such of them as are not of a purely fiscal nature, but are directed towards the fulfilment of public or communal services, not even such as are worked at a profit. There is clearly, however, a necessity for protection in government work, and this has already been recognised (cf. the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, art. 6, § 155, 2, Appendix). The legislative machinery of Labour Protection is not confined to the Industrial Code. There are two ways of enacting such protection: extra protection going beyond the ordinary Industrial Regulations may be enacted by way of amendments or codicils to their ordinary protective clauses, or on the other hand it may be lodged in special laws and enactments, to be worked by specially constituted organs. The latter method has to be followed in the case of municipal or State-controlled means of traffic. In Germany, Labour Protection in mining industries is supplied by the Industrial Code, with special additions however in the form of Mining Acts to designate the scope of the protection and the means through which it works. There are, moreover, also special Acts, such as those which apply to the manufacture of matches. All wage-earners, not only those protected by the Industrial Code, but also those protected by special acts and special organs, are included in that industrial wage-labour which comes within the scope of protective legislation. By industrial wage-earners we mean therefore all such wage-earners as need protection in the dependent relations of service, whether such be enumerated in the Industrial Code or by definition expressly excluded from it. This is the conclusion at which the Berlin Conference also finally arrived. The report of the third commission (pp. 77 and seq.) states: "Before concluding its task, the third commission has deemed it advisable to define the strict meaning of certain terms used in the Resolutions adopted, especially the phrase 'industrial establishments'" (_établissements industriels_). Several definitions were proposed. First the delegate from the Netherlands proposed the following definition: "An industrial establishment is every space, enclosed or otherwise, in which by means of a machine or at least ten workmen, an industry is carried on, having for its object the manufacture, manipulation, decoration, sale or any kind of use or distribution of goods, with the exception of food and drink consumed on the premises." The proposal of the Italian delegates ran as follows: "Any place shall be called an industrial establishment in which manual work is carried on with the help of one or more machines, whatever be the number of workmen employed. Where no engine of any kind is used, an industrial establishment shall be taken to mean any place where at least ten workmen work permanently together." A French delegate, M. Delahaye, read out the following suggestion, which he proposed in his own name: "An industrial establishment denotes any house, cellar, open, closed, covered or uncovered place in which materials for production are manufactured into articles of merchandise. Moreover, a certain number (to be agreed on) of workmen must be engaged there, who shall work for a certain number (to be agreed on) of days in the year, or a machine must be used." The Spanish delegate stated that he would refrain from voting on the question, because he was of opinion that instead of using the term "industrial establishment," it would be better to say "the work of any industries and handicrafts which demand the application of a strength greater than is compatible with the age and physical development of children and young workers." According to his opinion no weight ought to be attached to the consideration whether the work is carried on within or outside of an establishment. After a discussion between the delegates from France, Belgium and Holland, and after receiving from the Luxembourg delegate a short analysis of foreign enactments on this point, the Committee unanimously adopted a proposal made by the delegates from Great Britain, and supported by Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, and Italy. The proposal was as follows: "By 'industrial establishments' shall be understood those which the Law regulating work in the various countries shall designate as such whether by means of definition or enumeration." A consideration of the discussions raised in paragraphs 1 to 5 results in the following definition of Labour Protection: _the extraordinary protection extended to those branches of industrial wage-labour which claim, and are recognized as requiring, protection against the dangers arising out of service relations with certain employers, such protection being exercised by special applications of common law, punitive and administrative, either through the regular channels or by specially appointed administrative, judicial, and representative organs._ The Resolutions of the Berlin Conference, and the protective measures submitted to the German Reichstag early in the year 1890, have, as we shall find, strictly confined themselves to this essentially limited definition of Labour Protection. It appears as though hitherto no clear theoretical definition of the idea of Labour Protection has been forthcoming. But the necessity for drawing a sharp distinction at least between Labour Protection and all other kinds of care for labour is often felt. Von Bojanowski speaks very strongly against vague extensions of the meaning: "The matter would become endlessly involved," he says, "if, as has already happened in some cases, we were to extend the idea of protective legislation to include all such enactments (arising out of other possibilities based upon other considerations) as grant aid to workers in any kind of work or in certain branches of work, or such as are based on the rights of labour as such, and are therefore general in their application, or such as seek to further all those united efforts which are being made in response to the aspirations of the working population or from humanitarian considerations. This would result either in confounding it with an idea which we ought always carefully to distinguish from it, an idea unknown in England, that of the so-called 'committee of public safety,' or it would lead to more or less arbitrary experiments." FOOTNOTES: [2] A motion brought forward in the German Reichstag in July, 1885, and again in 1890 in the form of an amendment to the Industrial Code, by all the Social Democratic members sitting there; called after Auer, whose name stands alphabetically first on the list of backers.--ED. [3] For regulating the use of machinery in agriculture. (See the Auer Motion.) [4] The _artell_ system, under which groups of labourers with a chosen leader contract themselves to the various employers in turn, for the performance of special agricultural and other operations. CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF INDUSTRIAL WAGE-LABOUR FOR PURPOSES OF PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION.--DEFINITION OF FACTORY-LABOUR. Those forms of industrial wage-labour which are dealt with by protective legislation do not all receive the same measure of protection, nor are they all dealt with according to the same method. This is only to be expected from the constitution of Labour Protection, which is an extraordinary exercise of State interference in cases where it is specially necessary. All over the world we find that industrial wage-labour requires protection of various kinds, differing, that is, not only in its nature but in the course and method of its application. On account of these very differences, before we can go a step further in the elucidation of the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection, we must divide industrial wage-labour into classes, according to the kind of protection which is needed, and the manner in which such protection is applied by protective legislation. It will now be our task, therefore, to classify them, and to be sure that we arrive at a clear idea of the various classes into which they fall for the purposes of protective legislation, some of which may not perhaps be readily apparent at first sight. The varieties of protection needed by industrial wage-labour arise, partly out of dangers peculiar to the particular occupation in which the wage-labourer is employed, and partly out of the personal characteristics and position of the labourer to be protected; _i.e._ they are partly exterior and partly personal. When the protection is against exterior dangers we have to consider sometimes the great diversity of conditions in the different occupations and industries, and sometimes the special manner in which workmen may be affected within the limits of a single occupation peculiar to some special branch of industry. When the protection is of the kind which I have called personal, the need for it arises partly out of the special dangers to which the protected individual is liable _outside_ the actual limits of his business, partly out of the special dangers attached to his position _in_ that business. Hence results the following classification of industrial wage-labour, according to the kind of protection required:-- I. Labourers requiring protection against _exterior_ dangers: _a._ According to the kinds of occupation: 1. Having reference to the different branches of industry: Wage-labour in mining, manufacture, trade, traffic and transport, and in service of all kinds. 2. Having reference to the special dangers of employment within any particular branch of industry: dangerous--non-dangerous work. _b._ According to type of business: 1. Having reference to the position or personality of the employer: Wage-labour under private employers--wage-labour under government. 2. Having reference to the choice of the labourers by the employer, and the nature of their mutual relations. Factory-labour, Quasi-factory labour (especially labour in workshops of a similar nature to factories), other kinds of workshop labour, Household industries (home-labour), Family labour. II. Labourers requiring protection against _personal_ dangers: _a._ Having reference to the common need of protection as men and citizens. 1. Adult--juvenile workers; 2. Male--female workers; 3. Married--unmarried female workers; 4. Apprentices--qualified wage-workers; 5. Wage-workers subject to school duties--exempt from school duties, _b._ Having reference to the need of protection arising out of differences in the position occupied by the wage workers in the business: Skilled labourers (such as professional wage-workers, business managers, overseers and foremen; or technical wage-workers, mechanics, chemists, draughtsmen, modellers); unskilled labourers. I. PROTECTION AGAINST EXTERIOR DANGERS. A glance at existing legislation on Labour Protection, or even only at the various paragraphs of the _von Berlepsch_ Industrial Code Amendment Bill, clearly shows the definite significance of all these foregoing classes in the codification of protective right. Each one of these classes is treated both generally and specifically in the Labour Acts. Mining industries, industrial (manufacturing) work, and wage service in trade, traffic, and transport, do not all receive an equal measure of Labour Protection. Differences in the danger of the occupation play a great part in the labour-protective legislation of every country. Labour Protection has therefore hitherto been, and will probably for some time continue to be in effect, protection of factory and quasi-factory labour (I.B. 2, _supra_), but in all probability it will gradually include protection of household industry also. Even the English Factory and Workshop Acts do not, however, extend protection to wage-labour in family industry. Business managers have hitherto received no protection, or a much smaller measure than that extended to common wage-labourers. Furthermore, Labour Protection has hitherto been administered through different channels, according as it is applied to professions of a public nature, in which discipline is necessary, especially the military profession, or to professions of a non-public nature. Lastly, with regard to individual differences of need for labour protection, adult labour has hitherto received only a restricted measure of protection, whereas the labour of women and children has long been fairly adequately dealt with; the prohibition of employment of married women in factory-labour still remains an unsolved problem in the domain of Labour Protection question, but it is a measure that has already received powerful support. It must of course be understood that Labour Protection is still in process of development. But according to all present appearances, there is no prospect, at any rate for some time to come, of its general extension to all classes of industrial wage-labour, for instance that the prohibition of night work will be extended to all adult male labourers, or that Sunday work will be absolutely prohibited in carrying industries and in public houses. We must even do justice to the Auer Motion in the Reichstag, by acknowledging that it does not go the length of demanding the universal application of such protection. In the existing positive laws, and in the further demands for protection put forward at the present day, mining industries hold the first place, then all kinds of work dangerous to life and health, household industry, the labour of women and young persons, and the labour of married women. The reader will easily understand the reasons for this; he only requires to establish clearly in his own mind, for each of these classes of industrial wage-labour, the grounds on which the claim to such objective and subjective protection is based, and wherein they differ from the cases where free self-help and mutual help suffice, or even the ordinary protection afforded by the State. However, this special inquiry is not necessary here; the explanation desired will be found in the study of the several applications and modes of operation of Labour Protection dealt with in the following pages. But on the other hand it is important that we should now endeavour to form a clear idea of those larger divisions of industrial wage-labour with which a protective code has to deal, in order that we may be sure of our ground in proceeding with our investigations. _Factory-Labour._ No small difficulty arises from the question: "What is factory-labour?" And yet it is precisely this kind of wage-labour which has received the most comprehensive measure of protection, and become the standard by which protection is meted out to all similar kinds of employment. The labour-protective laws of various governments have met the difficulty in various ways; but nowhere is a positive legal definition given of the Factory. In the case of Germany, especially, it is not easy to form a clear idea of the meaning attached to factory labour by the hitherto existing protective laws, and by the _von Berlepsch_ Industrial Bill. We may arrive at a clearer conception of what a factory really is in the protective sense of the word, by examining first the essential characteristics of such kinds of employment as are placed by the protective laws on the _same_ (or nearly the same) footing as factory labour, and then observing the peculiarities of such kinds of employments as are legally _excluded_ from factory-labour protection. The same characteristics in all those points in which it is affected by protection, will be found in the Factory, but the peculiarities of the other contrasted class will be absent from the Factory. In the Imperial Industrial Code, especially in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, the following four categories of employment are placed on the same footing as the Factory; in the case of the first three the inclusion is obligatory, in the case of the last it is optional and depends on the pleasure of the Bundesrath (local authority): 1. Mines, salt-pits (salines), preparatory work above ground, and underground work, in mines and quarries (other than those referred to in the Factory Regulations). 2. Smelting-houses, carpenter's yards, and other building-yards, wharves, and such brick-kilns, mines, and quarries as are worked above ground and are not merely temporary and on a small scale. 3. Those work-shops in which power machinery is employed (straw, wind, water, gas, electricity, etc.) not merely temporarily. 4. "Other" workshops to which factory protection (except as regards working rules) can be extended under the Imperial decree, at the discretion of the Bundesrath.[5] A common designation is needed which will include all these four categories. We might use the word "workshops" were it not that the employments enumerated in classes 1 and 2 cannot precisely be included in "workshops," and were it not that class 4 as it appears in protective legislation denotes "another kind" of workshop distinct from that of class 3. In default of a more accurate expression we will use therefore the term "quasi-factory business" as a general designation for those classes of business which are placed by the protective laws on the same, or approximately the same, footing as the Factory. Factory protection is not extended to those "workshops in which the workers belong exclusively to the family of the employer," therefore not to family-industry in workshops, and still less to family-industry not carried on in workshops, nor to work in the dwelling-houses of the employer, or (as is usually the case in household industry) of the worker (orders of all kinds executed at home, household industry). At least the new § 154 of the Bill does not bring such work into any closer relationship than before with the Factory. By contrast and comparison the following characteristics (_a_ to _i_) will help us towards a fuller conception of the sense of the Factory from the point of view of protective legislation, as understood by the latest German enactments: _a._ The Factory employs exclusively or mainly those who do not belong to the family of the employer, and in any case _not merely those who do_. _b._ The work of a Factory is entirely carried on outside the dwelling of the employer and of the wage-worker. _c._ The work of a Factory is the preparation and manufacture of commodities (industrial work, including all kinds of printing), not production or first handling of raw material, as in mining industries. _d._ The work of a Factory is work in which the wage-workers are constantly shut up together in buildings or in enclosures, and is not work in open spaces, or which moves from place to place, as in the case of work on wharves, in building yards, etc. _e._ The work of a Factory is carried on by power machinery, hence (if this inference _a contrario_ be admissible) not only hand-manufacture, and thus it appears to include what I have called quasi-factory business and have mentioned in class 3 (_supra_). _f._ The work of a Factory is continuous, and _g._ Is carried on on a large scale, and with a large number of workpeople, hence (_f_ and _g_) it may be compared to the quasi-factory business of class 2 (_supra_) for the purposes of a protective Code. _h._ The work of a Factory is carried on in workplaces provided by the employer, not in the rooms of the workers or of a middleman. _i._ The work of a Factory results in the immediate sale of the commodities produced, and does not consign them to the wholesale dealer to be prepared and dressed, or distributed by wholesale or retail, _i.e._ the Factory has absolute control of the sale of the commodities produced, in contradistinction to household industry. Thus the Factory as understood by the German labour-protective laws is commercially independent (characteristic _i_), industrial (_c_), carried on on a large scale (_g_), and continuously (_f_), in enclosed (_d_), specially appointed (_b_) work-rooms provided by the employer (_h_), with the help of power machinery (_e_), and by wage-workers not belonging to the family of the employer (_a_). Purely hand-manufacturing wholesale business should also be counted as factory-labour; for the fact that workshop business carried on with the help of power machinery is declared to be on the same footing as factory-labour means only this: that it presupposes the same need of protection felt in factories where the business is carried on with the help of power machinery, as is the case in most factories; it does not mean that certain kinds of manufacturing wholesale business carried on without power machinery (of which there are very few) should not be counted as factories. We are therefore justified in dropping characteristic _e_ of the theoretical conception of the Factory, as understood in Germany. Let us now look at the Swiss Factory Regulations. The Confederate Factory Act of March 23, 1877, has given no legal definition of the word "Factory," but only of "protected labour." It extends protection to "any industrial institution in which a number of workmen are employed simultaneously and regularly in enclosed rooms outside their own dwellings." According to the interpretation of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) "workers outside their dwellings" are those "whose work is carried on in special workrooms, and not in the dwelling rooms of the family itself, nor exclusively by members of one family." Furthermore, all parts of the Factory in which preparatory work is carried on are subject to the Factory Act, as well as all kinds of printing establishments in which more than five workmen are employed. The Swiss Factory Act requires that a Factory shall possess all those characteristics assigned to it by German protective law, with the exception, however, of power machinery, and hence it doubtless covers all manufacturing business in which a number of workmen are employed. According to Bütcher,[6] in the practical application of factory-protection in the Confederate States, any industrial establishment is treated as a factory which employs more than twenty-five workers or more than five power-engines, in which poisonous ingredients or dangerous tools are used, in which women and young persons (under eighteen years) are employed (with the exception of mills employing more than two workers not belonging to the family), and sewing business carried on with the help of three or four machines not exclusively worked by members of the family. In Great Britain the Factory and Workshop Acts of March 27, 1878, cover all factory labour, and the bulk of workshop business, _i.e._ all workshops which employ such persons as are protected by the Act--children, young persons, and women. This English Act again furnishes no legal definition of the term. "According to the meaning of the term, implied in this Act," says von Bojanowski, "we must understand by a factory any place in which steam, water, or other mechanical power is used to effect an industrial process, or as an aid thereto; by 'workshop,' on the other hand, we must understand any place in which a like purpose is effected without the help of such power; in neither group is any distinction to be drawn between work in open and in enclosed places." Under this Act _factories_ are divided into textile and non-textile factories. "_Workshops_ are divided into workshops generally, _i.e._ those in which protected persons of all kinds are employed (children, young persons, and women), with the further subdivisions of specified and non-specified establishments; into workshops in which only women, but no children or young persons are employed; and lastly, domestic workrooms in which a dwelling-room serves as the place of work, in which no motive power is required, and in which members of the family exclusively are employed." Domestic work-rooms in which only women are employed do not come under the Act, nor yet factories, such as those for the breaking of flax, which employ only female labour. Bakeries are included among regulated workshops, _i.e._ workshops inspected under the Factory Acts, even when no women or young persons are employed. The Factory, as understood by the English law, is distinguished by most of the characteristics of the German acceptation of the term, without however admitting of the distinction of class _d_ (business carried on in an enclosed space), whereby protection is also afforded to what we have termed quasi-factory labour (see p. 36); but on the other hand a special point is made of the distinction of class _e_, viz. use of power machinery. Thus the English idea in defining the factory is to insist, not upon the number of persons employed, but upon the proviso that they are persons within the scope of the protective laws. _Workshop Labour._ In the _von Berlepsch_ Bill this is dealt with side by side with factory labour. It is sometimes placed on the same footing under the various categories of quasi-factory labour (classes 3 and 4), sometimes it lies outside the limits of factory protection, in cases where the Bundesrath does not exercise his privilege of granting extension of protection, and in cases where the workshop in question is worked entirely by members of one family. It would be tautology to include in the definition of the workshop all the characteristics of the factory named in classes _a_ to _i_. There may be cases in which the workshop practically includes most of the characteristics of the factory, but it is only necessary that it should include the following: business carried on outside the dwelling-rooms (_b_); preparation and manufacture of commodities (_c_); carried on in enclosed places (_d_). With the other classes it is not concerned. According to the English Factory Acts protected workshop labour is not necessarily carried on in enclosed places. In treating of German workshop labour for the purposes of the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, and for future legislation of the same kind, we have to classify it as follows: Workshop labour carried on with the help of power-machinery, but not otherwise answering to the conditions of the factory. Workshop labour carried on without power-machinery, by hand or by hand-worked machines. Labour in workshops where all three kinds are required, _i.e._ power-machinery, hand-work, and hand-worked machines (_e.g._ modern costume-making in which power sewing-machines are employed.) The old handicraft labour carried on in special workrooms, either within or outside the dwelling of the worker. The characteristic peculiar to the three first divisions of workshops, and that which distinguishes them from the factory, although they in some respects resemble it, is that they give employment to but a very small number of workmen outside the limits of the family which maintains them. The British Factory Acts include under the head of workshops those businesses in which no motive power is used, but in which protected persons (women, children, and young persons) are employed. Workshops of this kind are treated with varying degrees of stringency, according to whether they employ protected persons of all kinds, or only women (no children or young persons), and according to whether they are carried on in domestic workshops (dwelling-rooms) or otherwise. _Household (home) Industry and Family Industry._ Household industry, called also "home industry" in the Auer Motion is the industrial preparation and manufacture of commodities, not the production of material, nor trading, carrying, or service industry. It has therefore characteristic _c_ (viz. that it excludes the production of raw material and the initial processes in connection therewith) in common with the factory and all workshops, as well as with that part of family industry which is not included in household industry properly so called; the very term Household _Industry_, in fact, indicates this. The peculiarity of household industry (in the technical sense of the term) is that it is carried out merely at the orders and not under the supervision of the contractor. The Imperial Industrial Code, more especially the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, in extending truck protection to household industry, understands this term to include all industrial workers engaged in the preparation of commodities under the direction of some firm or employer, but not working on the premises of their employers; and these workers may or may not be required to furnish the raw materials and accessories for their work. The home-workers carrying on this kind of preparation of commodities do so as a rule not in special work-rooms, but in their own dwelling-rooms or houses, or in little courtyards, sometimes in sheds and outhouses, sometimes even in the open air. For the rest, they may be either a few workers out of a family working on their own account, or a whole family working under the superintendence of one of its members. The most important characteristic of household industry is that it is work undertaken at the orders of a third party, therefore that it has no commercial independence, and takes no part in the sale of its products (characteristic _i_ of factory labour); and therefore obviously we have no occasion to consider the other characteristics _d_, _e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, in defining household industry. A distinction must be drawn between household industry carried on with or without the intervention of middlemen; for it takes a very different form, according to whether the arrangements between the industrial home-worker on the one side, and the giver of orders and provider of materials on the other, are made with or without the intervention of special agencies for ordering, supervising, collecting, and paying (commission agents, contractors, sweaters). The possible removal--or at least control and regulation--of the middleman forms one fundamental problem--hitherto unsolved--of labour protection in the sphere of household industry, and the protection of industrial home-workers against their parents and against each other forms another. _Family Industry._ Family industry to a great extent practically coincides with household industry, but not necessarily or entirely so; for family industry--meaning of course the work of preparing and manufacturing commodities--may be the preparation of goods for independent sale, not for sale by a third party in a shop or warehouse, and as a matter of fact this is very largely the case. Family industry sometimes even falls under the head of workshop labour (cf. § 154 of the _von Berlepsch_ Bill). Its distinguishing characteristic is that it employs only workers belonging to the same family, hence the exact reverse of the Factory (see characteristic _a_). It includes all those industrial pursuits "in which the employer is served only by members of his own family" (Bill, § 154, par. 3). II.--PERSONAL PROTECTION. We come now to consider the meaning of the various headings under which _personal_ protection falls. _Juvenile Workers._ Juvenile workers of both sexes have long been subject to protection, and this kind of protection is gradually spreading all over Europe, and in more and more extended proportions. We must first ascertain what is the exact meaning of the term juvenile workers as used in the labour-protective laws. In contrast to juvenile labour stands adult labour, or more accurately adult male labour, since adult women--not of course as adults but as women--are placed more or less on the same footing as juvenile workers in the matter of protective legislation. The distinction between adult wage-labour and juvenile wage-labour, and the subdivision of the latter into infant-labour, child-labour, and the labour of "young persons," is not of importance in all departments of labour protection, but it is of the utmost importance in _protection of employment_, especially in prohibition of employment on the one hand, and restriction of employment on the other. This prohibition and restriction of juvenile employment does not apply to all industries, but only to certain branches of industry and kinds of work, and to specially dangerous occupations. In order to determine exactly what is meant by infant-labour, child-labour, and the labour of "young persons," we must consider the inferior limit of age below which there is a partial prohibition of employment, and the superior limit of age beyond which labour is treated as adult labour as regards protection, receiving none, or only a very limited measure of it. The inferior limit does not as yet coincide with the beginning of school duties, nor does the superior limit coincide with the attainment of majority as recognised by common law. "Juvenile labour"--permitted but restricted--stands midway between infant-labour, altogether prohibited in some branches of industry, and adult labour, permitted and unrestricted, or only slightly restricted; and within the inferior and superior limits of age it is divided into child-labour and labour of "young persons." The industrial laws of northern and southern countries differ in the inferior limit of age which they assign to prohibited infant-labour, as distinguished from child-labour permitted but restricted. In Italy this limit has hitherto been fixed at the completion of the ninth year; in England and France (in textile, paper, and glass industries), in Denmark, Spain, Russia, and in most of the industrial States of the North American Union, at the completion of the tenth year; in Germany hitherto, and in France (in general factory-labour, in workshops, smelting-houses, and building-yards), in Austria, Sweden, Holland and Belgium (Act of 1889), at the completion of the twelfth year; in Germany it is fixed for the future at the completion of the thirteenth year, as it soon will be in France also, in all probability--and in Switzerland at the completion of the fourteenth year. The proposal of Switzerland at the Berlin Conference to fix the general inferior limit of age at 14 years was not carried. It has hitherto been prevented in Germany by the fact that in Saxony and elsewhere school duties are not exacted to the full extent as late as the age of 14. The Berlin Conference voted for fixing the limit at the completion of the twelfth year, while agreeing that the limit of 10 years might be fixed in southern countries in view of the early attainment of maturity in hot climates. The limit is fixed higher with regard to protection in certain specified dangerous or injurious occupations: for boys engaged in coal mines the limit of 14 years was laid down by the resolutions of the Berlin Conference.[7] The superior limit of age of juvenile labour in factories is fixed at 14 years in southern countries (in those represented at the Berlin Conference); at 16 years in Germany, Austria, and France (in connection with the fixing of the maximum duration of labour); and at 18 in Great Britain, Switzerland, and Denmark, and probably soon in France. With respect to night work and dangerous work, the superior limit (especially for women) is placed still higher (21 years), wherever such work is not entirely prohibited. All wage-workers between the inferior and superior limits of age at which employment is permitted, are called, as already stated, "juvenile workers." In many countries a further division of juvenile labour is made, into children and "young persons." In Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark--and in future probably in all those countries represented at the Berlin Conference--this division falls at the age of 14, and in southern countries at the age of 12 years. "Children," in the meaning attached to the word by labour-protective legislation, are children of 12 to 14 years (in Germany in future 13 to 14, in Great Britain hitherto 10 to 14); "young persons" are juvenile workers from 14 to 16 years, in England of 14 to 18 years. In Switzerland juvenile workers are "young persons" of 14 to 18 years, as none under the age of 14 are employed at all. _Male labour and female labour._ Women for the purposes of Labour Protection include all female workers enjoying special or extended protection, not only on account of youth, but also from considerations arising out of their sex and family duties. It is important that we should be clear on this point, in view of the demand now made for careful restriction of the employment of married women in factories,--either for the entire duration of married life or until the youngest child has reached the age of 14,--for the entire prohibition of night labour for women, and of the employment of women in certain trades during the periods of lying-in and of pregnancy. Just as female labour for our purpose does not mean the labour of all female persons, so male labour does not include all labour of male persons, but only of such male persons as have protection on grounds other than that of youth. Hitherto, male labour has only had practically a negative meaning in protective law, it has been used in the sense of the unprotected labour of adult men. The demand for a maximum working day for all male labourers--at least in factories--and the concession of this demand have given a positive signification to the term male labour, as affected by protective legislation. In considering the careful determination of the meaning of factory labour, workshop labour, household industry and family labour on the one hand, and child labour and female labour on the other hand, we cannot be too careful in guarding against undue limitations of the idea of Labour Protection. There are many who still take it to mean merely factory-protection, and indeed only factory-protection of "young persons." Labour Protection means something more than protection of industrial labour, in that it also deals with labour in mining and trading industry, and it must be extended still further to meet existing needs for protection. Neither is industrial Labour Protection factory protection alone, nor even factory and quasi-factory protection alone, but beyond that it is also workshop protection, and, especially in its latest developments, protection of household industry, and perhaps even more or less of family industry; industrial home-work especially, from the Erz-Gebirge in Saxony, to the London sweating dens, admits of and actually suffers, from an amount of oppression which calls for special Labour Protection. We call attention to these facts in order to clear away certain still widespread misconceptions before we enter upon the classification of labour with respect to protective legislation. Particulars will be given in Chapters IV. to VIII. FOOTNOTES: [5] Bill, Art. 6 (new § 154). [6] Cf. Conrad's _Encyclopædia_, vol. i. p. 154. [7] _I_, _Ia_ and 6, Resolutions of the Berlin Conference: "It is desirable that the inferior limit of age, at which children may be admitted to work underground in mines, be gradually raised to 14 years, as experience may prove the possibility of such a course; that for southern countries the limit may be 12 years, and that the employment underground of persons of the female sex be forbidden." CHAPTER III. SURVEY OF THE EXISTING CONDITIONS OF LABOUR PROTECTION. In the first chapter we learnt to recognise the special character of Labour Protection in the strict sense of the term. We must further learn what is its actual aim and scope. Labour Protection strictly so called, represents presumably the sum total of all those special measures of protection, which exist side by side with free self-help and mutual help, and with the ordinary state protection extended to all citizens, and to labourers among the rest. And such it really proves to be on examination of the present conditions and already observable tendencies of Labour Protection. We shall only arrive at a clear and exhaustive theory and policy of Labour Protection both as a whole and in detail by examining separately and collectively all the phenomena of Labour Protection. This will necessitate in the first place a comprehensive survey of the existing conditions of Labour Protection, and to this end a regular arrangement of the different forms which it takes. In sketching such a survey we have to make a threefold division of the subject; first, the _scope_ of Labour Protection, in the strict sense of the term; secondly, the various _legislative methods_ of Labour Protection; and thirdly, the _organisation_ of Labour Protection (as regards courts of administration, and their methods and course of procedure). In considering the scope of Labour Protection we have to examine the special measures adopted to meet the several dangers to which industrial wage-labour is exposed. The following survey shows the actual field of labour protective legislation, as well as the wider extension which it is sought to give thereto. I. SCOPE OF LABOUR PROTECTION. _A._ Protection against material dangers. 1. Protection of employment; and this of two kinds, viz.:-- (i.) Restriction of employment; (ii.) Prohibition of employment. _a._ Protection of working-time with regard to the maximum duration of labour: General maximum working-day. Factory maximum working-day (unrestricted in the case of adults--restricted in the case of "juvenile workers" and women). _b._ Protection of intervals of rest: Protection of daily intervals--of night-work--of holidays--Sundays and festivals. 2. Protection during work: Against dangers to life, health, and morals, and against neglect of teaching and instruction, incurred in course of work. 3. Protection in personal intercourse:-- In the personal and industrial relations existing between the dependent worker and the employer and his people (truck-protection). _B._ Protection of the status of the workman (protection in the making and fulfilment of agreements) which may also be called: Protection of agreement, or contract-protection. 1. Protection on entering into agreements of service, and throughout the duration of the contract: Protection in terms of agreement and dismissal, Protection against loss of character. 2. Regulation of admissible conditions of contract, and of legal extensions of contract. 3. Protection in the fulfilment of conditions after the completion of service agreements. II. VARIOUS LEGISLATIVE METHODS OF LABOUR PROTECTION. Compulsory legal protection--protection by the optional adoption of regulations. Regulation under the code--regulation by special enactment. III. ORGANISATION OF LABOUR PROTECTION. 1. Courts by which it is administered: _A._ Protection by the ordinary administrative bodies-- Police, Magistrates, Church and School authorities, Military and Naval authorities. _B._ Protection by specially constituted bodies, 1. Governmental: _a._ Administrative: Industrial Inspectorates (including mining experts), "Labour-Boards," Special organs: local, district, provincial, and imperial; _b._ Judicial: Judicial Courts, Courts of Arbitration. 2. Representative: (trade-organisations): "Labour-Chambers," "Labour Councillors," Councils composed of the oldest representatives of the trade, Labour-councils: local, district, provincial, and imperial. II. METHODS OF ADMINISTRATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS. _a._ Methods: Hearing of Special Appeals, Granting periods of exemption, Fixing of times, Regulating of fines, Application of money collected in fines, etc. _b._ Records: Factory-regulations, Certificates of health, Factory-list of children employed, Official overtime list, Labour log-book, Inspector's report (with compulsory-publication and international exchange), International collection of statistics and information relating to protective legislation and industrial regulations. The foregoing survey may be held to contain all that is included under Labour Protection, actual or proposed. But of the measures included within these limits not all are as yet in operation; and the actual conditions are different in the various countries. With regard to the scope of protection, those measures affecting married women, home-industrial work, work in trade and carrying industries, are still specially incomplete. With regard to the organs of administration of Labour Protection, one kind, viz. the representative, has at present no existence except in the many proposals and suggestions made as to them; this however does not preclude the possibility that in the course of a generation or so a rich crop of such organs may spring up. It is not improbable that special representative bodies ("labour-councils")--after the pattern of chambers of commerce and railway-boards, etc.--and "labour-boards" may develop and form a complete network over the country. Perhaps the separate representative and executive organs may be able to amalgamate the various branches of aids to labour, forming separate sections for Labour Protection, Labour Insurance, industrial hygiene and statistics, with equal representation of the administrative, judicial, technical and statistical elements; and thus the ordinary administration service may be freed from the burden of the special services which a constructive social policy demands. Again, the organisation of protection is not by any means the same everywhere. According to the foregoing classification (III. 1), the duties of carrying out Labour Protection are divided between the ordinary and extraordinary judicial and administrative authorities. The arrangements, however, are very different in different countries. Such countries as have not a complete system of authorised administrative boards and petty courts of justice, will avail themselves more freely of the special organs, particularly of the industrial inspectors, than will those countries with administrative systems like those of Germany and Austria; in comparing the spheres of operation of inspectors in various countries, one must not overlook the differences in the action of the ordinary administrative organs. Moreover, all civilized countries already possess special organs of protection, and it follows in the natural course of development of all administrative organisation, that the special administrative and judicial legislation which is springing up and increasing should possess special judicial and administrative courts, so soon as need for such may arise from the necessity for a wider application of special law in the life of the citizen. Finally, we must guard against a further misconception. Neither labour-boards nor labour-chambers must be confounded with those voluntary representative class organisations, and joint committees in which both classes meet together for Labour Protection, and for objects quite outside the sphere of Labour Protection. The labour-boards indicated would be special organs of a public nature, regulated by the State; labour-chambers would also be organs recognised and regulated by the State, working in consultation with the labour-boards, and exercising control over the labour-boards. The voluntary organs of association, on the other hand, with their secretaries and joint committees, are free representative, executive, and arbitrative organs of both classes. A distinction must be drawn between the public and voluntary organs. It is of course not impossible in all cases that the free "labour-chambers," in their ordinary and special meetings might exercise extraordinary powers, besides acting as regular and general organs of conciliation and arbitration. The Unions and other trade organisations of to-day can in their present form hardly be regarded as the last word in the history of labour organisation. In the second chapter we had to guard against the error of looking on Labour Protection merely as factory protection, and protection of women and juvenile workers; we must with equal insistence draw attention to the fact that Labour Protection is not confined in its scope to protection of employment, or in its organisation to the machinery of industrial inspection. This will be shown in Chapters IV. to VIII. The foregoing survey of the existing conditions and tendencies of Labour Protection makes it clear that Labour Protection in scope, legislative methods, and organisation, is only a means of supplementing and supporting in a special manner the already long established forms of State protection of labour (in the widest sense), and the still older forms of non-governmental Labour Protection (in its widest sense) the necessity for which arises from the special modern developments of industry. Labour Protection equally with compulsory insurance, from which it is however quite distinct, does not preclude the voluntary efforts which are made in addition to legal measures, nor the help rendered by savings-banks, by private liberality and benevolence, by family help, and by various municipal and state charitable institutions; and it does not render unnecessary the exercise of the ordinary administration, and the co-operation of the latter in the work of establishing security of labour. The general impression derived from a study of this survey will be confirmed if we further examine into the scope, legislative methods, and organisation of the separate measures of Labour Protection, in addition to the classification of industrial wage-labour, as dealt with by protective legislation, which I attempted in Chapter II., and if we bear in mind the great differences in the degree of protection extended to the separate classes of protected workers. CHAPTER IV. MAXIMUM WORKING-DAY. In considering the question of protection of employment, we must first touch upon the restrictions of employment. These restrictions are directed to granting short periods of intermission of work, _i.e._ to the regulation of hours of rest, of holidays, night-rest and meal-times; also to the regulation of the maximum duration of the daily working-time, inclusive of intervals of rest, _i.e._ to protection of hours of labour. Protection of times of rest, and protection of working-time, are both based on the same grounds. It is to the interest of the employer to make uninterrupted use of his business establishment and capital, and therefore to force the wage-worker to work for as long a time and with as little intermission as possible. The excessive hours of labour first became an industrial evil through the increasing use of fixed capital, especially with the immense growth of machinery; partly this took the form of all-day and all-night labour, even in cases where this was not technically necessary, and partly of shortening the holiday rest and limiting the daily intervals of rest; but more than all it came through the undue extension of the day's work by the curtailment of leisure hours. Moral influence and custom no longer sufficed to check the treatment of the labourer as a mere part of the machinery, or to prevent the destruction of his family life. A special measure of State protection for the regulation of hours of labour was therefore indispensable. Protection of the hours of labour is enforced indirectly by regulating the periods of intermission of labour: meal-times, night work, and holidays. But it may be also completed and enforced directly by fixing the limits of the maximum legal duration of working-hours within the astronomical day. This is what we mean by the maximum working-day. The maximum working-day is computed sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Directly, when the same maximum total number of hours is fixed for each day (with the exception it may be of Saturday); indirectly, when the maximum total of working-hours is determined, _i.e._ when a weekly average working-day is appointed. The latter regulation is in force in England, where 56½ hours are fixed for textile factories (less half an hour for cleaning purposes), and sixty hours (or in some cases fifty-nine hours) for other factories. In Germany and elsewhere the direct appointment of the maximum working-day is more usual: except in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill (§ 139_a_, 3) where provision is made for the indirect regulation of the maximum working-day, by the following clause: "exceptions to the maximum working-day for children and young persons may be permitted in spinning houses and factories in which fires must be kept up without intermission, or in which for other reasons connected with the nature of the business day and night work is necessary, and in those factories and workshops the business of which does not admit of the regular division of labour into stated periods, or in which, from the nature of the employment, business is confined to a certain season of the year; but in such cases the work-time shall not exceed 36 hours in the week for children, and 60 hours for young persons (in spinning houses 64, in brick-kilns 69 hours)." 1. _Meaning of maximum working-day in the customary use of the term._ In the existing labour protective legislation, and in the impending demands for Labour Protection, the maximum working-day is variously enforced, regulated and applied. In order to arrive at a clear understanding of the matter it will be necessary to examine the various meanings attached by common use to the term working-day. Let us take first the different methods of enforcement. It is enforced either by contract and custom, or by enactment and regulation. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the maximum working-day of contract and the legal (regulated) working-day. Now-a-days when we speak of the maximum working-day we practically have in mind the legal working-day. But it must not be forgotten that the maximum duration of labour has long been regulated by custom and contract in whole branches of industry, and that the maximum working-day of contract has paved the way for the progressive shortening of the legal maximum working-day. Even the party who are now demanding a general eight hours maximum working-day desire to preserve the right of a still further shortening of hours by contract, generally, or with regard to certain specified branches of industry; the Auer Motion (§ 106) runs thus: "The possibility of fixing a still shorter labour-day shall be left to the voluntary agreement of the contracting parties." Certainly no objection can be raised to making provision for the maintenance of freedom of contract with regard to shortening the duration of daily labour. The right to demand such freedom in contracting, is, in my opinion, incontrovertible. Next we come to the various modes of regulating the maximum working-day. It may either be fixed uniformly for all nations as the regular working-day for all protected labour, or it may be specially regulated for each industry in which wage-labour is protected; or else a regular maximum working-day may be appointed for general application, with special arrangements for certain industries or kinds of occupation. This would give us either a regular national working-day, or a system of special maximum working-days, or a regular general working-day with exceptions for special working days. The system of special working-days has long since come into operation, although to a more or less limited degree, by the action of custom and contract. The penultimate paragraph of § 120 of the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, admits the same system--of course only for hygienic purposes--in the following provision: "The duration of daily work permissible, and the intervals to be granted, shall be prescribed by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) in those industries in which the health of the worker would be endangered by a prolonged working-day." The mixed system would no doubt still obtain even were the regular working-day more generally applied, since there will always be certain industries in which a specially short working-day will be necessary (in smelting houses and the like). The labour parties of the present day demand the regular legal working-day together with the working-day of voluntary contract. By maximum working-day we must, as a rule, understand the national and international, uniform, legal, maximum working-day. Thirdly, we come to the various aspects which the maximum working-day assumes according to whether it is given a general or only a limited sphere of application. In considering its application we have to decide whether or not its protection shall be extended to all branches and all kinds of business, and degrees of danger in protected industry, and further, whether, however widely extended, it shall apply within each industrial division so protected to the whole body of labourers, or only to the women and juvenile workers. The maximum working-day is thus the "general working-day" when applied to all industries without exception. When this is not the case, it is the restricted working-day, which may also be called the factory maximum working-day, as it really obtains only in factory and quasi-factory labour. The term factory working-day is further limited in its application in cases where its protection extends, not to all the labourers in the factory, but to the women and juvenile workers only, or to only one of these classes. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the factory working-day for women and children, and the maximum factory working-day extended also to men. We shall therefore not be wrong in speaking of this as the working-day of women and juvenile workers, nor shall we be putting any force on the customary usage, if by factory working-day we understand the working day prescribed to all labourers in a factory. We shall find a further limitation of the meaning in considering the aim of the protection afforded, for in certain cases the maximum working-day, even when extended to all labourers employed in a factory, is restricted to such occupations in the factory as are dangerous to health. In such cases, it might be designated perhaps the hygienic working-day. The maximum working-day, in the sense of the furthest reaching and therefore most hotly contested demands for regulation of time, means the uniform maximum working-day, fixed by legislation nationally, or even internationally, and not the maximum working-day of factory labour merely, or of female and child-labour in factories, nor the hygienic working day. This working-day is authoritatively fixed--provisionally at 10 hours, then at 9 hours, and finally at 8 hours--as the daily maximum duration of working-time, in the Auer Motion (§ 106 and 106_a_, cf. § 130). Section 106 (paragraphs 1 to 3) runs thus: "In all business enterprises which come within this Act (Imperial Industrial Code), the working-time of all wage-labourers above the age of 16 years shall be fixed at 10 hours at the most on working-days, at 8 hours at the most on Saturday, and on the eve of great festivals, exclusive of intervals of rest. From January 1st, 1894, the highest permissible limit of working time shall be fixed at 9 hours daily, and from January 1st, 1898, at 8 hours daily." According to the same section, the 8 hours day shall be at once enforced for labourers underground, and the time of going in to work and coming out from work shall be included in the working-day. "Daily work shall begin in summer not earlier than 6 o'clock, in winter not earlier than 7 o'clock, and at the latest shall end at 7 o'clock in the evening." We have still two important points to consider before we arrive at the exact meaning of the general maximum working-day. The first point touches the difference between those employments in which severe and continuous labour for the whole working-time is required, and those in which a greater or less proportion of the time is spent by the workman in waiting for the moment to come when his intervention is required. The second point touches the inclusion or non-inclusion, in the working day, of other outside occupation, of home-work, or of non-industrial work of any kind, besides work undertaken in some one particular industrial establishment. With regard to the first point, the question may fairly be raised whether in industries in which a large proportion of time is spent in waiting unoccupied, the maximum working-day is to be fixed as low as in those industries in which the work proceeds without intermission. And it is a question of material importance in the practical application of the maximum working day whether or not work at home, or in another business, or in sales-rooms, or employment in non-industrial occupations, should or should not be allowed in the normal working-day. The labour-protective legislation hitherto in force has been able to disregard both these points, for with the exception of the English Shop Regulations Act (1886) it hardly affected other occupations than those in which work is carried on without intermission. But there are points that cannot be neglected when the question arises of a general maximum working-day for all industrial labour, or all industrial wage-service alike--as in the Labour agitation now rife in the country. The Auer Motion, for instance, ought to have dealt with both these questions in a definite manner; but it did not do this. With regard to those occupations in which a large proportion of the time is spent in merely waiting, _e.g._ in small shops, public-houses, and in carrying industries, there is no proposal to fix a special maximum working-day, except perhaps in the English Shop Regulations Act (12 instead of 10 hours for young persons). With regard to outside work, the Auer Motion does not determine what may be strictly included within the eight hours day. The question is this: is the maximum working-day to be imposed on the employer alone, to prevent him from exacting more than eight or ten hours work, or on the employed also, to prevent him from carrying on any outside work, even if it is his own wish to work longer; the more we cut down the general working-day, the more important it will become to have a limit of time which will affect not only the employer but also the employed, as otherwise the latter might, by his outside work, be only intensifying the evils of competition for his fellow-workers. The Auer Motion (§ 106) only demands the eight hours day for separate business enterprises; therefore, according to the strict wording, there is nothing to hinder the workman from working unrestrainedly beyond the eight hours in a second business enterprise of the same kind, or in any industry of another kind, in which he is skilled, or in non-industrial labour, and thus being able to compete with other workmen. Does this agree in principle with the maximum working-day of Social Democracy? Is this an oversight, or a practically very important "departure from principle"? We are not in a position to fully clear up or further elucidate these two points. For the present we may assume that the action of the Labour parties was well calculated in both these respects, viz. in neglecting to draw a distinction between continuous and intermittent labour, and in excluding outside labour from the operation of the eight hours working-day. Lastly, in accurately defining the meaning of the term we must not overlook the fact that neither in respect to aim nor to operation the maximum working-day is confined to the question of mere Labour Protection. It has no exclusively protective significance. It is true that the hygienic factory day, the factory day for women and juvenile workers, and the factory day for men, are wholly or mainly maximum working-days appointed for purposes of State protection, but the maximum working-day may also serve to other ends apart from or in addition to this. In the general eight hours day, for instance, the economic aspect is of equal importance with the protective aspect of the question. Under the socialistic system of national industry, where there would no longer be any question of protection in service-relations, the maximum working-day, together with the possibly more important minimum working-day, directed against the idle, would serve to other important ends; it would, for instance, give more leisure for the so-called general mental cultivation of the people and would prevent new inequalities. We will consider in the first place the purely protective aspect of the maximum working-day of the present, then the mixed protective and economic aspect of the general maximum working-day. 2. _The maximum working-days of protective legislation: the hygienic working-day, the working-day of women and children, the extended factory working-day._ And first the _hygienic working-day_. This is imposed on certain occupations and businesses on account of the dangers to health arising out of the work, and on account of the strength required in the work. It is no longer opposed by any party. It is fully dealt with in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill in the above-mentioned provision of the penultimate paragraph of § 120_a_. By the insertion of this provision in Section I. of Chapter VII. of the Imperial Industrial Code, the hygienic maximum working-day may be extended by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) over the whole sphere of industrial labour, not merely of factory and quasi-factory labour. The Berlin Conference (resolutions 1, 2) demands the hygienic maximum working-day for mining industries. It is hardly necessary to prove that the hygienic maximum working-day cannot be obtained merely by the efforts of the workers in self-protection or by the general good-will of the united employers, without general enforcement by enactment or regulation. Some employers are unwilling even to maintain the shortening of the normal working-day necessary to health, others who would be willing are prevented by competition so long as the hygienic working-day is not enforced generally and uniformly by enactment or regulation throughout that particular branch of industry. The extension of the hygienic maximum working-day to all occupations dangerous to health throughout the whole sphere of industrial labour, is justified as a necessary measure of Labour Protection. No nation will suffer in the long run from the full extension of the hygienic working-day. It is probable that the governments will advance side by side in this direction. _The factory working-day for women and juvenile workers._ This has long been enforced. The distress which brought it under the notice of the English legislature has justified it for all time. It is now scarcely contested. Without special intervention of the State, the considerate employer is not able to grant the ten hours limit, even to women and juvenile workers, on account of his unscrupulous competitors. Its enforcement with the help of a factory list offers no difficulties. The grounds for demanding a maximum working-day for juvenile workers are so evident that they need not here be indicated. We may, however, remark in passing that this working-day is economically of no great importance in view of the small number of juvenile workers. In the year 1888, Germany employed in factory and quasi-factory labour 22,913 children (14,730 boys, 8,175 girls) 169,252 young persons (109,788 males, 59,464 females); children and young persons together making a total of 192,165 (124,526 males, 67,639 females). The textile industries alone engaged 17.8 per cent. of the male, and 47 per cent. of the female child-labour, that being the industry which also employs the largest number of female workers. The maximum working-day for female labour is necessary for all women workers and not merely for married women, and in England it has long been enforced. In the case of girls, work for eleven or twelve hours is highly undesirable from the point of view of family life. "Experience proves," says a Prussian inspector, "that girls so employed never become good housewives, and that women so employed can never fulfil their maternal duties, and on this account many well-meaning employers will not employ married women after the birth of the first child. The evil result of this appears more plainly the greater the number of women workers; and its bad influence on married life and on the education of children in workmen's families is very evident and makes itself felt in other spheres of life. Isolated schools of housewifery and working-women's homes are insufficient to meet the evil, especially as the extension of textile industries and therewith the increase in the number of women employed has by no means reached its highest point." The more impossible it is to dispense entirely with female labour, the more imperative does it appear to secure to all women workers, at least, the maximum working-day, at best the 10 hours working-day (with 6 hours on Saturday) long enforced in England. The factory day of 6 hours for children and 10 hours for young persons has already been enforced by the Industrial Regulations in Germany. Its extension to all female workers is one of the most important steps proposed by the _von Berlepsch_ Bill. At present the proposal is for an 11 hours day, but the Reichstag Commission ought to succeed in placing the limit at 10 hours.[8] The Resolutions of the Berlin Conference fix the time at 6 to 10 hours for juvenile workers, and 11 hours for all female workers (III. 6, IV. 2, and V. 2). They further demand that the "protection of a maximum working-day shall be granted to all young men between the ages of 16 and 18." The working-day for women and juvenile workers has hitherto been essentially a factory and quasi-factory maximum working day (cf. Bill, § 154). England has, however, in the Shop Hours Regulation Act of June 25, 1886, extended protection to sale-rooms, of course only in favour of juvenile workers, but with strict directions as to outside work. This working-day in commercial business, amounts on an average to 12 hours in the day (74 in the week, inclusive of meal-times). If the protected person has already in the same day performed 10 hours of factory or workshop labour, only 12 hours less 10 of shopwork are permitted; when the time occupied in outside work amounts to the full workshop and factory maximum working-day, additional occupation in the shop is prohibited. The Act does not apply to those shops in which the only persons employed are members of the family dwelling in the house or are family connexions of the employer. Such intervention in respect of household industry has already been begun but has not yet gone very far. The general extension of the maximum working-day for women and juvenile workers to all industries, including family industries, has been demanded,[9] but is as yet nowhere enforced. The specially short working-day for children necessitates alternating shifts, as child labour, as a rule, is inseparably connected with other work. English protective legislation directs in this case that children (from 10 to 14 years) may be employed in one and the same place only for half a day, either for the morning or the afternoon, or else on every alternate day, for the full day; and the order of working-days must be changed every week; in daily (half-day) employment, the actual working time (without intervals of rest) amounts to 6 hours daily, and 30 to 36 hours weekly, in other cases 10 hours daily and 30 hours weekly. _The factory working-day (in the strict sense): factory working-day for adult males._ The extension of protection of hours of labour to adults in factory and quasi-factory labour, by the so-called factory working-day (in the strict sense) has already begun to make way in some countries. In France it was enforced as long ago as by the Act of Sept. 9, 1848 (Art. I.), in which the limit was still fixed at 12 hours; in Switzerland the limit was fixed at 11 hours by Art. II. of the Confederate Factory Act of 1877; and in Austria by the Act of Mar. 8, 1885. Other countries have not hitherto adopted it. Great Britain and other countries still hesitate to interfere in this way with the freedom of contract for adults. Switzerland, on the other hand, is ready to reduce the hours from 11 to 10, but whether Austria is prepared to do so much is doubtful. Germany also in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill has entered a protest against the extreme length of the factory working-day. Here the course has been strongly urged, sometimes of adopting an 11 hours, sometimes a 10 hours day, meaning always the time of actual work, without reckoning intervals of rest. In the discussion on the Imperial Industrial Regulations of 1869, Brauchitsch demanded a 12 hours factory day from the Conservative benches, and Schweitzer for all large industries a 10 hours day (_i.e._ a 12 hours day, with intervals of rest amounting to not less than 2 hours). The necessity for the limitation of the working-day of male adult labourers to 11 or 10 hours, rests partly upon the same grounds as that of the working-day for women and young persons. Hours of leisure, besides the hours of night rest, are a necessity for men also, in order that they may be able to live really human lives. Above all they ought to be able to devote a few hours every day to their family, to social intercourse, self-culture, and their duties as citizens. The economic expediency of the restriction of working hours has been proved by experience. The amount of work executed in the factories has been in no way lessened by the adoption of the 10 hours day for women and children, and moreover in England, wherever the 10 and 11 hours day for men has been adopted without legal enactment, it has proved to be a beneficial measure; this has also been the case in the Alsatian cotton factories.[10] The factory inspectors in Switzerland unanimously report the favourable effect of the 11 hours day on the amount of work executed; and the same thing on the whole may be asserted of Austria. In Switzerland the proposal that permission for overtime work should be obtainable from the magistrates was several times rejected, "because the employers soon perceived that the increased production scarcely covered the increased expense of light and heating, and that the work was carried on with less energy on the days following overtime work than when the 11 hours day was adhered to." It is evident that there the 11 hours day is not considered too short. In general the employers in Switzerland very soon declared themselves satisfied with the 11 hours day; the workmen consider it a great benefit, and it has not led to the greater frequenting of public-houses. The adoption of a maximum working-day in Switzerland has put a stop to the practice on the part of manufacturers of taking away their competitor's orders and executing them by means of overtime work, so that amongst industrial managers also, the tide is beginning to turn against too frequent indulgence in overtime work. In Saxony even, an examination into the advantages of the maximum working-day shows "that the manufacturers themselves" (see General Report for 1888 of the district inspector at Zwickau), "are opposed to the long protraction of hours of labour; but every employer hesitates to be the first to shorten the hours, fearing lest he should find too few imitators, and be thereby thrown out of competition." The legal factory working-day removes this fear. Of course we have no experience to show that the further shortening of the day to less than 10 hours would allow of the execution of as much or more work than has hitherto been executed in more than 10 or 11 hours. There is a limit to the possible increase of efficiency in machines and in hand-labour, and in the two together. Labour Protection has neither the intention nor the right to prohibit any labour that is not too long to be physically and morally permissible. At present there seems no necessity from the protective point of view for more than an 11 or 12 hours day as a rule, with special hygienic working-days of less than 10 hours, together with unrestricted freedom of contract in regulating the hours of work below this limit. Above the limit of 10 or 11 hours the lengthening of labour time seems to diminish rather than to increase its aggregate productivity, and this explains why the 11 and 10 hours day, without any intervention from the State, has been so generally and successfully adopted by custom and contract. It is the general experience, as the Düsseldorf inspector notes in his report, that "those works in which the smallest amount of labour is performed, have as a rule the longest hours of labour; all attempts to increase the amount of labour at favourable periods of the market, by offering higher wages, whilst at the same time maintaining the long hours, have only attained a short-lived success, or have altogether failed; the same result is produced when in certain occupations the usually short hours of labour are prolonged in order to profit by the opportunity of a good market; it is only for the first few days that the increase in the amount of work executed corresponds to the increase in the hours of work, and the old level is quickly resumed; on the other hand, it is frequently affirmed by the managers that the capacity for work of our labourers is in no wise inferior to that of the English."[11] The legal 11 or 10 hours day would not be justified if custom and freedom of contract were sufficient to adjust the true proportions of working time. This however is not the case, and the legal working-day is therefore necessary in order to supplement the work of free self-protection. With regard to the voluntary adjustment of the duration of the working-day, we find that the 10 and 11 hours day already prevails in a large proportion of the German industries: as in Bremen, whence according to the factory report, only 33.8 per cent. of the adult labourers work beyond 10 hours, and only 3.8 per cent. beyond 11 hours, and in Berlin, where in 3,070 firms, 71,465 male labourers work for 10 hours and less; and the same is reported by other district inspectors. But side by side with this we find a longer and frequently a decidedly too long working-day, and nowhere does every firm adhere to the 10 or 11 hours day. Even in the Lower Rhine Provinces the 12 hours working-day is in force in the smelting houses (Hitze). In Saxony the same number of hours obtains, as a rule, in textile industries, although many manufacturers would prefer the 10 hours day, if all competitors would adopt it. In Bavaria and Baden the 11 to 12 hours working-day prevails widely. In certain separate kinds of work, as in mills and brick kilns, the working hours are even longer. The advisability of fixing the legal factory day at 10 or 11 hours is not to be disputed. It is just where the 10 or 11 hours day has not been secured by custom that, as a rule, the workmen and such managers as are willing are least in a position to extort it by way of self-help from other competing employers. And where custom has already led to the general adoption of the 10 to 11 hours working-day, it seems quite permissible to enforce it on such firms as have not adopted it. It is no sufficient argument against the introduction of the extended compulsory factory working-day, to say that the adoption of the working-day for women and young persons would necessarily entail the adoption of the working-day for men without recourse to legal enforcement, since men could not be employed beyond the specified number of hours, while this was forbidden in the case of women and young persons employed in the same business. As a matter of fact, the larger proportion of trades are carried on entirely, or mainly, by male workers, though there may be a certain amount of purely accessory work performed by women and young persons. Hence the adoption of the limited factory working-day (_i.e._ for women and children) by no means necessarily or uniformly entails its general adoption. Even in England this has not been the case generally, and although we find that the maximum working-day for men very largely obtains without legal enactment, this has not been the result of the adoption of the legal working-day for women and juvenile workers, but has been won by the healthy struggle of the trades' unions for the maximum working-day fixed by contract. Now the question arises whether the 11 or the 12 hours day is to be chosen, and whether the adoption of the factory working-day should be proceeded with in Germany without its being adopted at the same time by England and Belgium. Several of the German States have recently introduced the 10 hours working-day in their government works. This would point to a preference for the 10 hours day. The proposal made by Switzerland at the Conference for the adoption of this lower limit rests partly on the ground of its agreement with the duration of the 10 hours day for women and juvenile workers. But here some caution is necessary. Private enterprise is not so free from the dangers of competition as government enterprise; whilst Germany might very well do with the 11 hours day since Switzerland and Austria have been able to introduce it without harmful results. The adoption of the compulsory 10 hours day might be ventured on without hesitation, if once we had accurate international statistics as to whether the different countries have already adopted the 10 hours day; and, if so, for which branches of industry. We should then be able to see the extent of the risk as a whole and in detail. Was not this very matter, the ascertainment of the customary maximum duration of working hours in separate branches of industry, pointed to as of immediate importance in the resolutions agreed to at the Berlin Conference on the drawing up of international statistics on Labour Protection? The general adoption of the 10 hours day would certainly be hastened by these means. Each country would then be sure of its ground in taking separate proceedings. German labour protective policy cannot be reproached with want of caution, seeing that it has made no demand in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill for the extended factory day, but only for an 11 hours working-day for women. Lastly, the question arises whether the maximum working-day under consideration can, or shall, be extended beyond factory and quasi-factory labour. Such extension has not as yet taken place. Should such extension ensue, the limits of duration could hardly be fixed so low for intermittent work, and for less laborious work (both are found in trading industry and in traffic and transport business), as for factory labour and the business of workshops where power machinery is used. England, which is apparently the only country which regulates the hours of young persons even in trade, has adopted for them a 12 hours working-day. Further examination plainly shows that a simple uniform regulation would be impossible in view of the extraordinary variety of non-continuous and non-industrial occupations and handicrafts. But in general it cannot be disputed that the need for regulation may also exist in trading and in handicrafts, _e.g._ in bakeries (not machine-worked) no less than in household industry. Here we often find that the working hours are of longer duration than in factories and workshops. In Berlin, figures have been obtained showing the percentage of firms in which the working-day is more than 11 hours; and the percentage of female and of male workers employed for more than 11 hours. Number of Of Male Of Female Firms. Workers. Workers. In wholesale business 4.31 3.51 4.46 In handicraft 18.85 15.52 6.09 In trade 64.77 54.94 -- The necessity for extending protection beyond the factories cannot be lightly set aside; in trade, excessive hours of labour are exacted from workers not belonging to the family, and in continuous and intermittent employments, and in household industry they are probably exacted from the relatives. The same thing occurs in handicrafts. It is not impossible for the matter to be taken in hand; but at present it meets with many difficulties and much opposition. Only the factory and quasi-factory maximum working-day for adults belong to the immediate present. 3. _The maximum working-day of protective policy and of wage policy; general maximum working-day; eight hours movement._ The general maximum working-day of 8 hours, as demanded since May 1st, 1890, rests admittedly on grounds, not merely of protective policy, but also of wage-policy. In so far as it is demanded on grounds of protective policy, it would call for little remark. The only question would be, whether on grounds of protective policy the maximum working-day is an equal necessity for all industrial work, and whether this necessity must really be met by fixing 8 hours, and not 11 or 10 hours, as the limits of daily work, a question which, in my opinion, can only be answered in the negative. The new and special feature which comes to the fore in the demand for the general eight hours day, is the impress which (its advocates claim) will be made by it on the wages question, and this in the interests of the wage-labourer. The universality and the shortness of the maximum working-day would lead, they say, to an artificial diminution of the product of labour. This second side of the question of the eight hours day, which touches on wages, does not properly speaking come within the scope of a treatise on the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection. We must not, however, omit it here, for the demand for such a working-day is very seriously confused in the public mind with the purely protective maximum working-day, whereas the two must be clearly distinguished from each other. By discussing and examining the general eight hours day, it must be shown how important an advance it is upon the factory 10 hours day; and it must be shown that the favour with which the factory 10 hours day is to be regarded on grounds of protective policy, need not extend necessarily to the general eight hours day; the one may be supported, the other rejected; protective policy is pledged to the one, but not to the other. From this standpoint we enter upon a consideration of the eight hours day. The demand is formulated in the most comprehensive manner in the Auer Motion. What is it, according to this demand, that strictly speaking constitutes the general eight hours day, implying two other "eights," eight hours sleep and eight hours recreation? If we are not mistaken in the interpretation of the wording of the demand already given, the "general working-day" means eight hours work for the whole body of industrial wage-labour, admitting of specially regulated extension to agricultural industry and forestry. The Motion demands the eight hours time uniformly for all civilised nations; without regard to the degrees of severity of different occupations, and the degrees of working energy shown by different nationalities; and without permission of overtime in the case of extraordinary--either regular (seasonal) or irregular--pressure of work. The Motion demands the eight hours maximum duration without regard to the question whether the performance of labour is continuous or not, hence without exclusion of the intermittent employments which are specially difficult of control. Moreover, in all probability, the mere preparatory work, which plays so important a part in industrial service, in trade, and in the business of traffic and transport, will be dealt with in the same manner as continuous effective labour. At least we find no indication of the manner in which preparatory work is to be dealt with as distinguished from effective labour. It does not appear in the text, but it is probably the intention of the Auer Motion to apply the limitation of eight hours not only to work in the same business, but to industrial work in different coordinated businesses, to the principal industry and to the subsidiary industries. Yet, as we have already noticed, we find no definite information on this point, nor on the manner of enforcing the eight hours day; nor as to whether it is to be an international measure enforced by international enactment; nor yet as to whether it is to be adopted only by the countries of old civilization, or also by the young nations of the new world, and the countries of cheap labour in the South, and in Eastern Asia. On the other hand, the _object_ of the general working-day is fully and clearly explained. It aims not only at fixing the time of rest for at least eight hours daily, nor merely fixing the time of recreation (pleasure, social intercourse, instruction, culture) for other eight hours; but it also aims at an increase of wage per hour, or at any rate at providing a larger number of workmen with full daily work by diminishing the product of labour. In judging of the merits of the eight hours day, one must lay aside all prejudices and misconceptions. Hence we repeat that the hygienic working-day may be admissible, even though fixed below eight hours. We repeat, moreover, that the maximum working-day fixed by contract is not to be opposed, even though it fall to eight hours, or below eight hours, at first in isolated cases, but by degrees generally. We also say that it is not impossible that certain nationalities, or all nationalities, should some day attain to such a degree of energy and zeal for work, as would justify the eight hours limit almost universally, and render it economically admissible, as is already the case in certain kinds of work. We are only concerned here with the general legal eight hours day (not with the merely hygienic working-day of eight hours) to be legally enforced on January 1st, 1898, or within some reasonable limit of time. A few objections are advanced against the eight hours day, the importance of which cannot be overlooked. The maximum working-day applied only to industrial labour lacks completeness, it is said; all work, even in agriculture and in public business, should be limited to eight hours, if the general maximum working-day is to become a reality. The Social Democrats would, perhaps, meet this objection by further motions. The general eight hours day is not quashed by the assertion that the united nationalities, or the bodies of labourers of different nationalities would never agree upon the matter. This is, indeed, possible, even very probable; but it remains to be proved what may be effected by international labour-agitation in an age of universal suffrages and of world congresses, and especially in England, which has already become so really democratic; an advance made by this country towards a reasonable experiment would be decisive. The possibility of attaining a sufficiently uniform, shortened, international working-day will always be conceivable. Moreover, the imposition of protective duties on the nations that hold back is held in reserve as a means towards the equalisation of social policy. More important are those objections which are raised on grounds of protective policy against the eight hours day, not on account of its shortness, but of its universality. It is affirmed that it is unnecessary and could not be carried out without intolerable chicanery. I am also inclined to think that the necessity for a maximum working-day, on grounds of protective policy, does not extend much beyond factory and quasi-factory labour (cf. Chaps. V. to VIII.), many wage-workers finding sufficient protection in the force of public opinion, in moral influence and custom. The universalisation of the measure, it must be admitted, greatly increases the difficulties of carrying it out successfully, especially in non-continuous employments, in subsidiary and combined industries. It would be difficult to carry it out without an amount of espionage and control, intolerable, perhaps, to the sense of individual liberty in the most diligent workers. The supporters of the eight hours day cannot meet this objection by replying that under a real "government by the people," the whole measure would be practicable, and the demand for it intelligible; for this is an attempt to thrust forward a proof having no application to the policy of the present, which has to deal with existing conditions of society; and it unwarrantably assumes that the practicability of a "government by the people" has already been proved. The supporter of the general legal eight hours day will be more successful in meeting the above objection if he maintains that the importance of so complete a universalization and so great a shortening of the maximum working-day, from the point of view of the wages question, more than outweighs any doubt as to the necessity of the measure on grounds of protective policy, or as to the practicability of carrying it out. The decision for or against the general legal eight hours day lies therefore in the answer to these two questions: whether the cherished hope as to its effect on wages rests on a sure foundation, and whether the State is justified in so wide an exercise of power in the interests of one class in the present generation. With regard to the first question, no very strong probability of success has been shown, to say nothing of certainty. We need only look at the practical aspect of the matter. By the legal enforcement of a sudden and general shortening of the industrial national working-time, by 20 to 30 per cent. of the working-time of hitherto, higher wages are to be obtained for less work, or at least room is to be given for the actual employment of the whole working force at the present rate of wage! How would an increase of wage, or even the maintenance (and that a continuous one) of the present rate be conceivable in view of a sudden general reduction of working-time by 20 to 30 per cent.? Only, indeed, either by reduction of profits and interest on the part of the capitalists, corresponding to the increase of wage, or by an increase in the productivity of national industry, resulting from an improvement in technique, and progress in skill and assiduity, or from both together. Now no one can say exactly what proportion the profits and interest of industrial capitalists bear to the wages of the workmen; if one were to deduct what the mass of small and middle-class employers derive from the work of their assistants (as distinct from what they draw from their capital) the industrial rent--in spite of numbers of enormous incomes--would probably not represent the large sum it is supposed to be. Hence it is very doubtful whether it would be possible to obtain the necessary sum out of profits. Even if this were possible, it is by no means certain that the wage war between Labour and Capital would succeed in obtaining so great a reduction of industrial profits and interest, still less within any short or even definitely calculated limit of time. Some amount of capital might lie idle, or might pass out of Europe; or again, Capital might conquer to a great extent by means of combination; or it might turn away from its breast the pistol of the maximum working-day by limiting production, _i.e._ by employing fewer labourers than before. It might induce a rise in the price of commodities, which would diminish "real" wages instead of raising them or of leaving them undiminished. But even if Capital found it necessary in consequence of the legal enforcement of the eight hours day to employ a larger number of workers, it might draw supplies to meet this expense partly out of the countries which had not adopted the eight hours day, partly out of agricultural industry and forestry, and after half a generation, out of the increase in the working population. Capital would also make every effort to accomplish in a shorter time more than hitherto by exacting closer work and stricter control, and by introducing more and more perfect machinery. With all these possibilities the eight hours day will not necessarily, suddenly, and in the long run, increase the demand for labour to such a degree that the employer will need to draw upon his interest, profits, and ground rents for a large and general rise of wages, or for the maintenance of the former rate of wage. At least, the contrary is equally possible, and perhaps even highly probable. Such an increased demand for labour would indeed ensue if the growth of population were to be permanently retarded. But that it should be so retarded is the very last thing to be expected under the conditions supposed, viz. a general increase of "real" wages, which would obviously render it more easy to bring up a family. Hence the assumption that the eight hours day would lead to an increase of wage, or the maintenance of the present rate of wage at the cost of profits and interest, is not proven; so far from being certain, it is not even probable. Therefore, it cannot serve to justify so violent an interference on the part of the State, as the enforcement of the general legal eight hours' day on January 1st, 1898. Such an interference would be calculated to bring a terrible disappointment of hopes to the very labourers whom it is intended to benefit. Just as little can it be justified by the assumption that as much would be produced (hence as high a wage be given) in a shorter working-day, through the improvement of technique, and increased energy in work, as in a working-day of 10 or 12 hours. The increase in productivity could not be expected with any certainty to be general, uniform, and sudden. The success of the experiment which has been made with the 11 hours day, which prevents such excessive work as is not really productive, cannot be advanced to justify the further assumption that the productivity of labour increases in inverse ratio to the duration of time. The increase of productivity through limiting the duration of work does justify the 10 or 11 hours day of protective policy precisely because the latter evidently stops short at that point beyond which labour begins to be less efficient; we have no grounds for assuming that the same justification exists for the eight hours day demanded in the supposed interests of a wage policy. The increase of productivity through the operation of the eight hours day would be more than ever unlikely if the abolition of "efficiency" wage in favour of exclusive time wage, which is one measure proposed, were to destroy the inducement to compensate for loss of time by more assiduous work, and if a fall in the profits were to curtail industrial activity. But even supposing it certain, which it clearly is not, that an increase of productivity would take place sufficient to compensate for the shortening of time, it would still be doubtful whether the effect would be felt in a rise or maintenance of the rate of wage, and not rather in a rise in profit and interest. For the steadily increasing use of machinery, which is assigned as one of the reasons why productivity would remain unimpaired in spite of the shortening of hours, and more especially if this should coincide with a rapid increase of population, would actually lessen the demand for labour, and thus would improve the position of Capital in the Labour market. On this second ground also, we are precluded from supposing that the eight hours day would result in an increase of wages. But if it be granted that the balance would not be restored, either by pressure upon profits and interest or by increased productivity, it then follows that the wages of labour must necessarily _fall_ 20 to 30 per cent. through such a shortening of the working-day. And this, as we have seen, is not at all an unlikely issue. The absorption of all the unemployed labour force, the industrial "reserve army," in consequence of the adoption of the eight hours day, is an assumption quite as unproven as the one with which we have been dealing. This result would not necessarily ensue even in the first generation, since production might be limited, and even if the hopes of increased productivity are not quite vain, it is quite possible that more machinery might be employed without necessarily increasing the number of workmen. It is still more difficult to determine what in all these respects will be the ultimate effect of the eight hours day. The further increase of the working population--and, _ceteris paribus_, this would be the most probable result of the expected increase in the rate of wage per hour--may produce fresh supplies of superfluous labour; but the eventual fall of wages consequent on a decrease in the productivity of national work would necessarily increase the industrial "reserve army," through the diminished consumption and the consequent restriction of production to more or less necessary commodities. If a diminution of national production were really to result from the adoption of the eight hours day, it would affect precisely the least capable bodies of workers, and those engaged in furnishing luxuries, for the demand for luxuries is the first to fall off; and the less capable workers finally become the worst paid because they are able to accomplish less in eight hours. Hence it follows that the uniform, universal, and national eight hours day would have very different results on the labouring bodies of each nation, and on the competing bodies of labourers in separate industrial districts in the same nation. Hence the very uniformity of the national and international maximum working-day of wage policy is a matter which calls up very grave considerations, which, however, we are not in a position to pursue any further in this book. Even the complete prohibition of overtime work for the sake of meeting the accumulation of business, neither ensures a higher rate of wage per hour, nor a lasting removal and reduction of the superfluous supplies of labour. The very opposite result may ensue, at least, in all such branches of industry as undergo periodical oscillations of activity and depression, through the fluctuation of the particular demand on which they depend. If the effect on wages of the legal eight hours day is extremely doubtful, and the advisability of the measure more than questionable, we come in conclusion to ask very seriously whether the State is justified in enforcing more than the mere working-day of protective policy. Without doubt the State ought to direct its social policy towards securing at least a minimum rate of wage compatible with a really human existence, as it does by Labour Insurance, for instance. It is a possible, though an extremely unlikely, case to suppose that it might take practical steps to realize the "proportional" or "fair" wage of _Rodbertus_ (although since the writings of _von Thünen_, theorists have sought in vain a method of determining this ideal measure), but even so, the practicability of such a course would have first to be demonstrated, and in my opinion this would probably be found to be not demonstrable. But surely it has now been fully shown that it ought not to permit the sudden and general shortening of the working day by 20 to 30 per cent., an experiment the effects of which cannot be foreseen. The State does not possess this right, either over property or labour. It might affect injuriously the rate of wages of the whole labouring class, or, at least, of such bodies of wage labourers as are employed in the production of such articles as are not actual necessaries of life. The labourer might even have to bear the whole burden, since the rate of wages would suffer by this measure if a fall in national production were brought about without being counterbalanced by a lowering of the rate of profit and interest. The State has to take into consideration those considerable bodies of wage-labourers who (while keeping within the limits of the maximum working-day of protective policy) would rather work longer than earn less, and it will find it hard to justify to them the experiment of the eight hours day of a wage policy; for this would constitute a very serious restriction of individual liberty for many workers, and those not by any means the least industrious or skilful. Still we need not undertake here to work out the matter decisively from this point of view. Will, however, the experiment be forced upon us? Who can deny this positively, in face of the irresistibly advancing democratic tendencies of constitutional right in all countries? If it be forced upon us, it may, and most probably will, end in a great disappointment of the hopes of the Labour world. It is perfectly clear that the decision of the matter rests with England. If this country does not lead the way, if she hesitates to enforce it in the face of the competition of American, Asiatic, and soon, perhaps, of African labour, the experiment of a general eight hours day for the rest of Western Europe is not to be thought of. But in England it is precisely the aristocratic portion of the labouring classes--the "old trades' unionists," the skilled labour--that has not not yet been won over to the side of the legal eight hours day, and it is doubtful whether it will yield to the leaders of unskilled labour: Burns, Tillett, and the rest. At the September Congress at Liverpool, in 1890, the Trade Unionist party brought forward in opposition to the general legal eight hours day, the eight hours optional day fixed by contract, in the motion of Patterson, if I have rightly understood the proposal. The motion was defeated by a majority of only eight (181 to 173).[12] If the legal eight hours day is rejected, does that preclude for all time the possibility of shortening the time of labour to less than the 10 or 11 hours factory day at present in force? By no means. The fundamental error in the general legal working-day as it now stands, lies not in the assumption that it will gradually lead to a further shortening of the working-day, but in the assumption that the legal maximum working-day will bring about suddenly, generally, and uniformly results which in the natural course of economic and social development only the maximum working-day of free contract is calculated to bring about, and this gradually, step by step, tentatively, and by irregular stages; that is to say, that so material a shortening of the maximum working-day cannot possibly be attained to generally by any other means than by the shortening by free contract, here a little and there a little, of the maximum working-day within each industry and each country, and this equally outside as well as within the limits of factory and quasi-factory business. We may at all events be assured that the substitution of the legal eight hours day for the factory working-day of 10 or 11 hours is _not the next step to be taken_, but rather the further development of the maximum working-day of free contract by means of the continuous wage struggle between the organised forces of Capital and Labour to suit the unequal and varying conditions of place, time, and employment, in the various classes of industry. There is no objection to be offered to this manner of bringing about the shortening of the working-day. No one has any right or even any fair pretext for opposing it. No one need fear anything from the results of a general working-day introduced by this method, even if it should ultimately develop into the legalised maximum working-day of less than 10 hours. There is the less reason for fear, as the working classes themselves have the greatest interest in avoiding any step forward which would afterwards have to be retraced; the majority will prefer, within the limits of overwork, additional and more laborious working time with more wages, to additional recreation time and less wages. Least of all does _Capital_ need to look forward with jealousy and suspicion to this visionary eight hours day which may lie in the lap of the future, but which will have come about, only gradually through a series of reductions _by contract_ of the working-day, each successive rise of wage and each successive shortening of the working-day having been occasioned by a steady improvement in technique, and a healthy increase of population. The sooner some such movement as this of the eight hours day, fixed by contract, ultimately perhaps by legislation, takes a firm hold, the more striking will be the improvement of technique, the more normal will become the growth of population, and the more peaceful and law-abiding will be the social life of the immediate future. Hence, I think we may contemplate the eight hours movement without agitation, and discuss it impartially, provided of course that the Labour Democracy is not permitted to tear down all constitutional limitations upon its sole and undisputed sway. The most important contribution that this chapter offers to the Theory and Policy of Labour Protection is then to show that the eight hours day of wage policy may be rejected, and may still be rejected, even if the 10 hours day, demanded on purely State protective grounds, is adopted. The foregoing discussion will show conclusively that there is no question of the State pledging itself to Socialism by the purely protective regulation of the working-day. Even from the standpoint of Social Democracy, the eight hours day as now demanded is not properly speaking a Socialistic demand at all. It may be that some of the leaders of the movement may seek by its means to weaken and undermine the capitalist system of production, but the demand does not in principle deny the right of private property in the means of production. The general eight hours day is an effort to favourably affect wages on the basis of the existing capitalist order. Not only the 11 hours or 10 hours day, but even the eight hours day would be no index of the triumph of Socialism. It may rather be supposed that the leaders of the movement thrust forward the eight hours day in order to be able to conceal their hand a little longer in the promised fundamental alteration of the "system of production." Therefore, we again repeat, even in face of the proclamation of a general eight hours day made at the "World's Labour Holiday," of May 1st, 1890, "There is no occasion to give the alarm!" 4. _The maximum working-day and the "normal working-day."_ What we understand by the maximum working-day--limitation (whether on grounds of protective policy or of wage policy) of the maximum amount of labour allowed to be performed within the astronomical day, by confining it within a certain specified number of hours--might also be called, and indeed used more frequently to be called, the "normal working-day." It is better, however, not to employ this alternative designation. When the word "normal working-day" is used in a special sense, it means something quite different from the maximum working-day; for it is a unit of social measurement by means of which it is supposed that we can estimate all labour performance however varying, both in personal differences and in differences of kind of work, so that we may arrive at a socially normal valuation of labour, and a socially normal scale of valuation of products. It is an artificial common denominator for the regulation of wages and prices which perhaps may be attained under the capitalist system, but which ultimately points to a socialistic commonwealth. The maximum working-day of protective right might exist side by side with the regulation of a "normal working-day," but it has no essential connection with it. Hence we might pass by this normal working-day which is wholly unconnected with State protection, but we think it necessary to touch upon it. There still exists a confusion of ideas as to the maximum and "normal" working-days. The meaning of the latter is not formulated and fixed in a generally recognised manner. It is quite conceivable, nay even probable, if the Socialist fermentation among the labouring masses should increase rapidly, that the proposal of a maximum working-day, will take the form of the "normal working-day," and that in the very worst and wildest development of the idea of normal working-time. This alone affords sufficient reason for our drawing a sharp distinction between the maximum working-day of protective legislation and the "normal working-day," and above all for clearly defining the meaning of the latter. This is no easy task for several reasons. The determination of the meaning of "normal working-day" includes two points: what we mean by fixing a normal, and what we should regard as "socially normal," _i.e._ just, fair, proportionate, and so on. The normal working-day would be a State normalised working-day (as opposed to a restricted working-day) adopted for the purpose of preventing abnormal social and industrial conditions, and as far as possible restoring normal relations. This would be the widest meaning of normal working-day. The maximum working-days of protective policy, and of wage policy, are, or aim at being, normal working-days in this widest sense. Both are working-days legally normalised for the purpose of obtaining by a development of protective policy, or of protective and wage policy combined, more normal conditions of work. But this does not make it advisable to adopt the alternative designation of normal working-day rather than of maximum working-day. There are several kinds of normal working-days in this wide sense, or at least we can conceive of several; even minimum working-days might be looked upon as normally regulated days. The term might designate the _normal_ working-day demanded on political, social, or educational grounds, perhaps even the maximum working-day which would secure to the worker every day leisure for the non-industrial occupations above mentioned; moreover it might designate a minimum normal working-day--almost indispensable under a communistic government--which would compulsorily fix a daily minimum of labour, and thereby ensure production adequate to the normal requirements of the whole community; another normal working-day, in the widest sense of the term, would be such a maximum working-day under a communistic government, as should aim at preventing the diligent from working more and earning more than others, and thereby destroying equality. None of these normal working-days (in the widest sense) concern us now; the existing social order does not require for its just and fair regulation the introduction of such normal working-days, and the _cura posterior_ of a socialism or communism which as yet possesses no practical programme is not a theoretically fruitful or practically important matter for discussion, at least not within the limits of this book. The normal working-day with which we need to concern ourselves here--and the term is still frequently used in this narrower sense, though not universally--is, as already indicated, that normal day which should serve as a general standard of a socially equitable--normal or more normal (compared to the old capitalist regulations)--valuation of the performances of labour, and of the products of labour, as a means of reducing the various individual performances of labour to proportional parts of a "socially normal" aggregate of the labour of the nation, and as a social measure of the cost of labour products, thereby serving as a means to a "socially normal" regulation of prices. _Rodbertus_ is the writer who has most clearly sketched for us the idea of such a normal working-day. We shall best understand what is meant by it, by listening to this great economic thinker. _Rodbertus_ sought for a more normal regulation of wages, within the sphere of the existing social order, by the co-operation of capital and wage labour, giving to the wage labourer as to the employer his proportional share in the aggregate result of national production. As a solution of this problem, he lays down a special normal _time_ labour-day and normal _work_ (amount of work) labour-day, by considering which two factors he proposes to arrive at a unit of normal labour which shall serve as a common basis of measurement. In order to bring about the participation of all workers in the nett result of national production in proportion to their contribution to it--hence without keeping down the better workers to the level of the worst, and without endangering productivity--it is necessary, Rodbertus holds, to reduce to a common denominator the amounts of work performed by individual workers, which vary very considerably both in quantity and quality. By this means he thinks we shall be enabled to establish a fair relation between work and wages. The normal _time_ labour-day is to furnish us with a simple measurement of the product of labour in different occupations or branches of industry; and the normal _work_ labour-day is to give us a common measure of all the varying amounts of work performed in equal labour time by the individual workers. He points out that astronomically equal working time does not mean, in different industries, an equal out-put of strength during an equal number of hours, nor an equal contribution to society. Therefore the different industrial working-times must be reduced to a mean social working time: the normal _time_ labour-day. If this amounts to 10 hours, 6 hours work underground might equal 12 hours spinning or weaving work. Or, which would be the same, the normal _time_ labour-day would be 6 hours in mining, and 12 hours in textile industries; the hour of mining work would be equal to 1-2/3 hours of normal time, the hour of textile work would be equal to 5/6 hour of normal time. The normal _time_ labour-day would serve to determine periodically the proportionate relations which exist between the degrees of arduousness in labour of different kinds, with a view to bringing about a just distribution of the whole products of labour according to the normal proportional value of its out-put in each kind of employment, in each department of industry, such proportional value being determined by means of the normal time measure. Also it would lead to the fair award of individual wage, for if any one were to work only 3 instead of 6 hours in coal mining, or only 5 hours in weaving or spinning, he would only be credited with and paid for half a day of normal working time. The normal time day is not however sufficient to establish a just balance between performance of work and payment; for in an hour of the same industrial time value, one individual will work less, another more, one better, another worse. The combined interests of the whole community and the equitable wage relations of the different workers to each other, demand therefore the fixing of the normal performance of labour within a defined working time, in short the fixing of a unit of normal work. Having normalised industry on a _time_ basis, we must now normalise it on a _work_ basis. And this is how _Rodbertus_ proposes to do it: According as the normal _time_ labour-day has been fixed in any trade at 6, 8, 10, or 12 hours (in proportion to the arduousness of the work, etc.), the normal amount of work of such a day must also be fixed for that trade, _i.e._ the amount of work must be determined which an average workman, with average skill and industry, would be able to accomplish in his trade during such a normal time labour-day. This amount of work shall represent in any trade the normal amount of work of a normal _time_ labour-day, and therewith shall constitute in any trade the normal _work_ labour-day, which would be equal to what any workman must accomplish within the normal _time_ labour-day of his trade, before he can be credited with and paid for a full day, that is, a normal _work_ labour-day. Hence if a workman had accomplished in a full normal _time_ labour-day, either one and a half times the amount, or only half the amount of normal work, he would _e.g._ in the six hours mining day, for six hours work, be credited with a day and a half, or half a day respectively of normal work time; whilst in spinning and weaving, on the other hand, he would in the same way, for 12 hours work, be credited with one and a half or a half-day respectively of normal work time. In this way _Rodbertus_ claims to be able to establish a fair measure and standard of comparison for labour times, not merely between the various kinds of trades and departments of industry, but also between the various degrees of individual efficiency. Each wage labourer would be able to participate proportionately in that portion of the national product which should be assigned to wage-labour as a whole. If therefore this portion were to be increased in a manner to which we shall presently refer, there would also be a rise in the share of the individual workers, in proportion to the rise in the nett result of national production. This scheme would form the groundwork of an individually just social wage system, a system by which the better workman would also be better paid, which would therefore balance the rights and interests of the workers among themselves, which moreover would ensure the productivity of national labour by variously rewarding the good and bad workers, thus recognising the rights and interests of the whole community, and lastly, which would continuously raise the labour-wage in proportion to the increase in national productivity (and also to the increasing returns of capital, whether fixed or moveable, applied to production). I may here point out, however, that with all this we should not have arrived at an absolutely just system of remuneration of wage labour, unless we introduced a more complete social valuation of products in the form of normal labour pay instead of metal coinage. But _Rodbertus_ wishes to see his "normal _work_ labour-day"--equal to 10 normal work hours--established as a universal measure of product value as well as of the value of labour: "Beyond and above what we have yet laid down the most important point of all remains to be established; the normal _work_ labour-day must be taken as the unit of _work time_ or _normal time_, and according to such work time or normal time (according to labour so computed) we must not only normalise the _value of the product_ in each industry, but must also determine the wages in each kind of work." He claims that the one is as practicable as the other. First, with regard to regulating the value of product according to work time or normal work. In order to do this the "normal work labour-day"--which in any trade equals one day (in the various trades it may consist of a varying number of normal time hours), and which represents a quantity of product equal to a normal day's work--this normal work day must be looked upon as the unit of work time or normal work, and in all trades it must be divided into an equal number (10) of work hours. The product in all trades will then be measured according to such work time. A quantity of product which should equal a full normal day's work, whether it be the product of half a normal time labour-day, or of two normal time labour-days, would represent or be worth one work day (10 work hours); a quantity of product which should equal half a normal day's work, whether it be the product of a normal work time or not, would represent or be worth half a day's work or five work hours. The product of a work hour in any trade would therefore, according to this measure, equal the product of a work hour in all other trades; or generally expressed: Products of equal work times are equal in value. Such is approximately the scheme of _Rodbertus_. A really normal labour-day--normal _time_ and normal _work_ labour-day--would be necessary in any regulated social system that sought on the one hand, in the matter of distribution of wages, to balance equally "the rights and interests of the workers amongst themselves"; and on the other hand, in the matter of productivity, to balance equally the "rights and interests of the workers with those of the whole community," by means of State intervention. It would therefore be necessary not merely in a State regulated capitalist society, with private property in the means of production, as _Rodbertus_ proposed to carry it out under a strongly monarchical system, but also and specially would it be necessary under a democratic Socialism, if, true to its principles as opposed to Communism, it aimed at rewarding each man proportionately to his performance, instead of allowing each man to work no more than he likes, and enjoy as much as he can, which is the communistic method. The only difference would be this: that any socialistic system must divide the nett result of production--after deducting what is required for the public purposes of the whole community--in proportion to the amount of normal time contributed, and must make the distribution in products valued according to the cost of their production computed in normal time; whilst _Rodbertus_, who wishes to preserve private property, finds it necessary to add one more point to those mentioned: the periodical normalisation of wage conditions in all trades. He is very clear upon this point. "The State must require the rate of wage for the normal working-day in any trade to be regulated and agreed upon by the employers and employed among themselves, and must also ensure the periodical readjustment of these regulations and the increase in the rate of wages in proportion to the increase in the productivity of work." But _Rodbertus_ clearly perceived the difference between a normalised capitalist system and a normalised socialism, neither communistic nor anarchist. Were the workers alone, he continues, entitled to a share in the national product value, every worker would have to be credited with and paid for the whole normal time during which he had worked, and the whole national product value would be divided amongst the workers alone. For instance, if a workman had accomplished one and a half normal day's work in his normal time working-day, he would be credited with 15 work hours, and paid accordingly; if he had only accomplished half a normal day's work in the whole of his normal time working-day, he would be credited with only five work hours. The whole national profit, which would be worth x normal work, would then go in labour wage, which would amount to x normal work. But such a state of things, which may exist in the imaginations of many leaders of labour is, according to Rodbertus, the purest chimera: "In no condition of society can the worker receive the whole product of his normal work, he can never be credited in his wage with the whole amount of normal work accomplished by him; under all circumstances there must be deducted from it what now appears as ground rent and interest on capital." Ground rent and interest on capital are, according to Rodbertus, remuneration for "indirect work" for the industrial function of directing or superintending production. "If therefore the worker has accomplished, in his normal time working-day, 10 hours of normal work, in his wages he will perhaps be only credited with _three_ work hours, in other words the product value of three work hours will be assigned to him"; for the product value of one work hour would represent perhaps his contribution to the necessities of the State (taxes), and three work hours would have to go towards what is now called ground rent, and another three to interest on capital. It is impossible here to enter upon a complete critical discussion of the practicability of the capitalist normal working-day, as conceived by Rodbertus; but I may be allowed in passing to indicate one or two points of criticism. I maintain my opinion expressed above, that the cost of production in terms of normal labour is not the only factor to be considered in the valuation of products and the regulation of wages; hence, I still claim that the social measure of value in terms of the cost of production cannot be applied to labour products or to labour contributions without reference to the rise and fall of their value in use. Should, however, the State eventually interfere in the regulation of wages and prices, then I allow that the normal working-day of Rodbertus would become of importance to us for that purpose. For the rest, I hold that it has by no means been proved that such an exercise of interference could succeed even under a monarchical government based on private property, far less under a democratic government with a socialistic system of ownership. Neither do I regard it as proved that this method of State normalisation would actually achieve the establishment of a more normal state of affairs than can be arrived at in a social system where freely organised self-help is the rule, _i.e._ where both classes, Capital and Labour, can combine freely among themselves within the limits of a positive code safeguarding the rights of the workers. The direction taken by modern industrial life towards the harmonious conciliation of both classes, by means of the wage-list, the wage-tariff, and the sliding scale with a fixed minimum wage for entire branches of industry, and so forth, promises an important advance towards the establishment of a more normal wage-system. In considering the question of the working-day as an instrument for affecting wages, it will be found that on the whole perhaps as much, or even more, may be achieved (and with fewer countervailing disadvantages) by the maximum working-day of free contract, varying according to trade, than by the normal working-day in the narrow meaning which Rodbertus has given to the term. The complete elimination of the capitalist individualistic method of determining wages and prices, in favour of the measurement by "normal time" and "normal work" alone, would be open to grave objections both in theory and practice. Above all there is the practical danger of overburdening the State with the task of regulating and normalising, a task which only the most confirmed optimism would dare to regard lightly. It appears to me exceedingly doubtful at the present whether any State, even the most absolute monarchy with the best administration, would be competent to undertake such a task. I can see no likelihood of satisfaction on this point for some time to come, and must therefore range myself on the side of those who claim a better chance of success for the simpler method of improved organisation for the free settlements of wage-disputes by united representatives of both classes. But these and similar investigations are beyond the range of the main subject under discussion in this book. My task is to prove that the maximum working-day of protective policy, or of protective and wage-policy, has nothing to do with the normal working-day in its strict sense--whether it be the normal working-day of Rodbertus separately adjusted in separate branches of industry, or the all-round normal working-day of non-communistic socialism. The normal working-day in the precise sense of Rodbertus, or even in the sense of the more rational socialists, affords an artificially fixed unit of value for the equitable determination of wages and prices; but it is neither a regulation by protective legislation of the longest permissible duration of the work within the astronomical day, nor a method of influencing the capitalistic settlement of wages by the legal enforcement of a much shorter maximum working-day. A normal working-hour would serve as well as a normal working-day for a common denominator for the uniform reduction of the various kinds of work to one normal measure of time and labour, with a view to the valuation of the products and contributions of labour. It may be said that the normal working-day, in the sense of Rodbertus, by virtue of its being a matter periodically fixed and prescribed, is a normal working-day also in that wider sense in which the term may equally be applied to the maximum working-day of protective policy. But it cannot claim the title of normal working-day from the fact of this _fixity_ or this _artificial regulation_, but only from the essential fact that it serves the purpose of a valuation of labour products and labour contributions on a scale which is really normal, _i.e. socially just and equitable_. The importance from a theoretic point of view of a distinction between the maximum working-day and the normal working-day would of itself have justified our dwelling on the foregoing details. But these details are also of practical importance in considering the policy of the ten hours day of Labour Protection, as against the legal eight hours day. One word more on this point: _the eight hours day threatens to ultimately develope, should Socialism as an experiment ever be tried, into a normal working-day of the worst possible kind_. Democratic Socialism has, hitherto at least, adopted on its party programme no formulary of the normal working-day required by it. It will scarcely find a better formulary than that of _Rodbertus_ (omitting the periodical re-adjustment of the whole share of Labour as against Capital, see pp. 123, 124). The normal measure of _Rodbertus_ would be an incomparably superior method to that of regarding as equal all astronomic labour time without respect to differences in the arduousness of the labour in the various trades, no attempt being made to determine the unit of normal work per normal time-day or normal time-hour. But would Democratic Socialism have really any other course open to it than to treat all labour time as equal, and so to bring about the adoption of a socialistic normal time of the most disastrous type, viz. the submergence of the _socially normal working-day_ in the _general maximum working-day_? To the enormous difficulties, technical and administrative, inherent in the normal labour time of Rodbertus, would inevitably be added the special and aggravated difficulties arising from the overpowering influence of the masses under a democratic "Social State," on the regulation of normal time. Social Democracy, as a democracy, would almost necessarily be forced to concede the most extreme demands for equality, _i.e._ the claim that the labour hour of every workman should be treated as equal to that of every other workman, without regard to degrees of severity, without regard to differences of kind, and without regard to degrees of individual capacity and the fluctuations of value in use. In any case the Social State would probably not dare to emphasize in the face of the masses the extraordinary differences of normal labour in astronomically equal labour time, _i.e._ it might not venture to assign different rewards to equal labour times on account of differences in the labour. And yet if it failed to recognise those differences Social Democracy would be doomed from the outset. It can thus be easily understood why Social Democracy has hitherto evaded her own peculiar task of precisely determining a practicable, socialistic, normal working-day. There were two ways in which it was possible to do this: either by merely agitating for an exaggeration of the maximum working-day of capitalist Labour Protection, or by adhering to the communistic view which altogether denies the necessity for any reduction to normal time. And we find in fact among Social Democrats, if we look closely, traces of both these views. According to the strict requirements of the Socialists, not only a maximum working-day, but also and especially a minimum working-day ought properly speaking to be demanded in order to meet the dire and recognised needs of the large masses of the people. Instead of this, Social Democracy holds out the flattering prospect of a coming time in which the working-day for all will be reduced to two or three hours, so that after the need for sleep is satisfied, at least twelve hours daily may be devoted to social intercourse, art and culture, and to the hearing or delivering of lectures and speeches. No attention whatever is paid to the trifling consideration, that either there might be a continual increase in the population and a growing difficulty in obtaining raw material for the purposes of production; or on the other hand that the population might remain stationary or decrease, and therewith progress in technique and industrial skill might come to an end. While more and more the hopes of the people are being excited by promises of great results from the progressive shortening of the maximum working-day--through the increased productivity of labour--still we hear nothing with reference to the normal working time, or the regulation by it of values of products and labour. The party has not yet, to my knowledge, committed itself at all on this point; it is probable therefore that it has not arrived at possessing a clearly worked out conception of this, the very foundation question of the socialistic, non-communistic "Social State"; still less has it any programme approved by the majority of the party. To represent equal measures of working time of different individuals in different trades by unequal lengths of normal time, or, in other words, to assign unequal rewards to astronomically equal measures of working time, is an idea that goes assuredly against the grain with the masses of the democracy. It is found better to be silent on this point. Hitze, who has taken part in all transactions of protective legislation in the German Reichstag, states from his own experience that the parliamentary wing of the Social Democrats has always had in view the _maximum_ working-day, and never the _normal_ working-day. He says: "None of those who have moved labour resolutions in the German Reichstag (not even such of them as were Social Democrats) have ever contemplated the introduction of the normal working-day, either as intended by the socialistic government of the future, or as conceived by Rodbertus--but they have always had in their minds the maximum working-day only--the fixing of an upward limit to the working time permissible daily, even though they may frequently have made use of the rather ambiguous expression 'a normal working-day.'" It will, however, be impossible for the movement to continue to evade this main point. In spite of all danger of division, in one way or another the party must come to a decision, must formulate on its programme some socialistic normal working-day as a common denominator for the valuation of commodities, and the apportionment of remuneration to all. The result of this would be to destroy all the present illusions concerning the possibility of providing employment for the industrial "reserve army," and securing a general rise of wage per hour by means of the adoption of an eight hours day. There are then only three courses open to them; either to develope the normal working-day logically into a socialistic form, perhaps by making use of the proposals of Rodbertus; or secondly, to treat the maximum working-day as the normal working-day, _i.e._ to regard the hours of astronomical working time of all workers as equal in value (without attempting any reduction to a _socially normal_ time), and to make this the basis of all valuation of goods and apportionment of remuneration; or, thirdly, the communistic plan of dispensing with all normal working-time on the principle that each shall work as little as he chooses, and enjoy as much as he likes. The first of these possible courses--the adoption of the views of Rodbertus--is rendered unlikely by the democratic aversion to reckoning equal astronomical times of work as unequal amounts of normal work, to say nothing of the practical difficulties and deficiencies which I have already pointed out in Rodbertus' formulary. The second course is the one that would more probably be followed by the Social Democrats; viz. the completion of their programme by identifying the standard of normal working-time with the astronomical individual working-time, _i.e._ by assigning a uniform value to all hours of astronomical time. But in this event Social Democracy would alienate the very pick of its present following; for this identification would involve that the more industrious would have to work for the less industrious, and the latter would gain the advantage. It can hardly in any case come to a practical attempt to enforce this view; but even theoretically the strongest optimism will not be able, I believe, to explain away the probability, approaching to a certainty, that such an attempt, implying the grossest injustice to the more diligent and skilful workers, would literally kill the labour of the most capable, and would therefore lead to an incalculable fall in the product of national work, and consequently also in wages. But it would be extremely difficult to convince the masses, among whom the Socialist agitation is mostly carried on, of the truth of this contention. They would undoubtedly demand in the name of equality that the astronomical hour should be treated as the normal working-hour, and this has already shown itself in the demand for a general minimum wage per hour. It would be no great step from this to the third and most extreme alternative. This would be that there is, forsooth, no need for any normalisation, or for any normal working-day! It should no longer be: "to each according to his work, through the intervention of the State!" but rather, "to each one as much work as he can do, and as much enjoyment as he pleases!" Even that craze for equality, which would make a normal time-measure of the astronomical hour of the maximum working-day, would be superseded, and the identification of the maximum and normal working-days would be set aside by such a view as this. Practically, we need not fear that matters will go to this extreme. But it is interesting to note (and since the expiration of the German Socialist Laws in 1890), it is no longer treading on forbidden ground to point out that this cheap and easy agitation in the direction of pure communism which went on for years even under the Socialist Laws and before the very eyes of the police, has to-day already taken a very wide hold by means of fugitive literature and pamphlets. It is not my intention to assert that the present leaders of Social Democracy are scheming to treat the astronomical working-hour as the unit of normal time in the event of the introduction of a socialist government. They are not guilty of such madness. As I have shown, the present leaders of the Social Democrats are aiming at the eight hours day only as a protective measure and a means of affecting wages, and they aim at realising it purely on the present capitalist basis. They do not give the slightest indication of desiring that the eight hours day should give to all workers the same wage for every hour of normal or astronomical working-time. Social Democracy still confines its activity entirely within the limits of the capitalist order of society, however much isolated individuals might wish to step forward at once, and without disguise. But would the present leaders be able to hold their own if the masses expressed a desire to have each astronomical labour-hour in their maximum working-day (at present of eight hours, but no doubt before long of six hours) recognised as the normal time-hour? I trust that in the foregoing pages I have at least succeeded in making this one point clear; that the Policy of Labour Protection has nothing to do with any normal working-day. And for this reason: that it rejects the _"universal" maximum working-day_; and rejects it not merely as a measure of protective policy, but also as a measure affecting wages. FOOTNOTES: [8] This has so far not yet been done. [9] Auer Motion, § 130. [10] Cf. The Commentary on Dollfuss in Brassey's _Work and Wages_. [11] Official records for 1885. [12] The motion of Patterson runs thus: "That, in the opinion of this Congress, it is of the utmost importance that an eight hours day should be secured at once by such trades as may desire it, or for whom it may be made to apply, without injury to the workmen employed in such trades; further, it considers that to relegate this important question to the Imperial Parliament, which is necessarily, from its position, antagonistic to the rights of labour, will only indefinitely delay this much-needed reform." BOOK II. CHAPTER V. PROTECTION OF INTERVALS OF WORK: DAILY INTERVALS, NIGHT REST, AND HOLIDAYS. 1. _Daily intervals of work._ The uninterrupted performance of the whole work of the day is not possible without intervals for rest, recreation, and meals. Even in the crush and hurry of modern industry, certain daily intervals have been secured by force of habit and common humanity. Yet the necessity for ensuring such intervals by protective legislation is not to be disputed, at least in the case of young workers and women workers in factory and quasi-factory business. From an economic point of view there is nothing to be urged against it. In addition to the protection of women and young workers with regard to duration of daily work, England has also enjoined intervals of rest for all protected persons. In textile industries the work must not continue longer than 4½ hours at a time without an interval of at least half an hour for meals; within the working day a total of not less than 2 hours for meals must be allowed. In other than textile industries, women and young persons have a total of 1½ hours, of which one hour at least must be before 3 o'clock in the afternoon; the longest duration of uninterrupted work amounts to 5 hours. In workshops where children or young persons are also employed, the free time for women amounts to 1½ hours; in non-domestic workshops where women alone are employed (between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.), 4½ hours is the total. The same time is allowed to young persons. In domestic workshops no free time is legally enforced for women; for young persons it amounts to the same time as that for women alone in non-domestic workshops. I do not wish to deal with the regulations of all countries; I am only concerned to point out that, as compared with the labour protective legislation of England, the foremost industrial nation, German legislation on the protection of intervals appears to be rather cautious, as even in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill it merely secures regular intervals for children within the 6 hours work, and for young persons (from 14 to 16 years) an interval of half an hour at mid-day, besides half an hour in the forenoon and afternoon, and for women workers an interval of an hour at midday (§ 135_f_). The English law requires simultaneous intervals for meals for all protected persons working together in the same place of business; and such intervals may not be spent in the work-rooms where work is afterwards to be resumed. The _von Berlepsch_ Bill (§ 136, 2) requires only the young workers to leave the work-rooms for meals, and even this with reservation: "During the intervals the young workers shall only be permitted to remain in the work-rooms on condition that work is entirely suspended throughout the interval, in that part of the business in which the young workers are employed, or where it is found impracticable for them to remain in the open air, or where other rooms cannot be procured without disproportionate difficulty." The lengthening of the mid-day interval for married women or heads of households, to enable them to fulfil their domestic duties, is recommended by the German Reichstag and provided for in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, in the fourth paragraph of § 137, as follows: "Women workers above the age of 16 years, having the care of a household, shall be set free half an hour before the mid-day interval unless this interval amounts to at least 1½ hours. Married women and widows with children shall be accounted as persons having the care of a household, unless the contrary is certified in writing by the local police magistrate, such certificate to be granted free of stamp and duty." This measure indicates a fragmentary attempt from the outside to protect the woman in her family vocation, and as such belongs to the question of protection of married women. The opponents of the measure--and they are many--make the objection that the result will be that women with families will be unable to obtain employment. Whatever may be said for or against the measure, there is no doubt that an interval of an hour and a half at mid-day ought to be granted to every workwoman, to place and keep her in a position in which she can discharge the duties of preparing the family meals and looking after her children. Therefore the injunction of a mid-day interval of 1½ hours in all factory business in which women over 16 years of age are employed would perhaps be a juster, more effectual, and more expedient measure, and would not prejudice the employment of women. But will it be possible to bring about the international uniform extension of the present interval of two hours to two hours and a half (inclusive of the forenoon and afternoon intervals)? The problem is surrounded by undeniable practical difficulties. The Auer Motion (§ 106_a_, 2. cf. § 130) demands the extension of protection of intervals of work to all industries. Hitherto it has only been extended to women and young workers, and only to such as are employed in factory and quasi-factory business. We need not here go into the question whether it can be proved to be to some extent necessary in the more irksome and laborious trades and in household industry. 2. _Protection of night rest ("Prohibition of night work.")_ Night rest has long been subjected by force of custom and necessity to very comprehensive measures of protection. Nevertheless it has become more or less of a necessity, even for men, to supplement such protection by extraordinary intervention of the State in factory and quasi-factory industrial trades, in some cases also in handicraft business (_e.g._ in bakeries, in public-house business, and in traffic and transport business). The self-help of the workmen and the moral influence of the civil and religious conscience are no longer a sufficient power of protection. The entire general prohibition of all industrial night work would go beyond the limits of practical necessity, and the State would have no means of enforcing such a general prohibition. Exceptions to the prohibition of night work are unavoidable, even in factory and quasi-factory business (cf. Chap. VII.). The number of women and children employed in night work is not great. It might, however, become greater through the introduction of electric lighting in Germany. Protection of night rest for women and children is, therefore, as practically necessary as ever. The actual condition of Labour Protection in regard to night work, and the efforts and tendencies to be discerned in reference to it at the present time, are as follows. The resolutions of the Berlin Conference demand the cessation of night work (and Sunday work) for children under 14, also for young persons, of 14 to 16 years and for women workers under 21 years of age. The _von Berlepsch_ Bill (§ 137_i_) altogether excludes night work for women in factory (§ 154) and quasi-factory business. Of course exceptions may be permitted by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council). The power of the Bundesrath to grant exceptions is very general and unrestricted (§ 139_a_, 2). "The employment of women over 16 years of age in night work in certain branches of manufacturing industry in which such employment has hitherto been customary, shall be permitted subject to certain conditions demanded by health and morality." The Auer Motion demands the exclusion of all women and young persons from "regular" night work. 3. _Protection of holidays._ Protection of daily intervals secures the necessary intermission of work during the day. Protection of night rest guarantees the necessary and natural chief interval within every astronomical day. Protection of holidays makes provision for the no less needed ordinary and extraordinary intermission of work during entire days, Sundays, and festivals. Strictly speaking, protection of holidays has long existed. The Church exercised a powerful influence in this respect over legislation and popular custom. Labour protection only seeks to restore this protection in its entirety (and as far as possible in its former extent--hence not merely in factory and quasi-factory business) in the State of to-day, which is practically severed from the controlling influence of the Church. Holidays are a general necessity; not merely a necessity for young persons, not merely in factory and quasi-factory industries, but in all industries. But England, the greater number of the North American States, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France and hitherto Germany (with its highly unpractical article § 105, 2, of the Imp. Ind. Code), grant protection of Sunday rest only to their "protected persons," and only in factory and quasi-factory business; but we must not here forget that there exists also protection of opportunities for religious observances extending over nearly the whole area of national industry, which is enforced partly by law and partly by tradition. Austria prohibits Sunday employment in _all_ industrial work. An important extension and equalising of protection of holidays in Europe is projected in the resolutions of the Berlin Conference. The resolutions read as follows: "1. It is desirable, with provision for certain necessary exceptions and delays in any State: (_a_) that one day of rest weekly be ensured to protected persons; (_b_) that one day of rest be ensured to all industrial workers; (_c_) that this day of rest be fixed on the Sunday for all protected persons; (_d_) that this day of rest be fixed on the Sunday for all industrial workers. 2. Exceptions are permissible (_a_) in the case of any business which on technical grounds requires that production shall be carried on without intermission, or which supplies the public with such indispensable necessaries of life as require to be produced daily; (_b_) in the case of any business which from its nature can only be carried on at definite seasons of the year, or which is dependent on the irregular activity of elemental forces. It is desirable that even in such cases as are enumerated in this category, every workman be granted one out of every two Sundays free. 3. To the end that exceptions everywhere be dealt with on the same general method, it is desirable that the determination of such exceptions result from an understanding between the different States." The _von Berlepsch_ Bill ensures a very extensive measure of protection of holidays by the following means: it extends the application of provisions § 105_a_ to 105_h_ in paragraph 1 of Chapter VII. of the Imp. Ind. Code to all workshop labour, it strictly limits Sunday work in trade and defines the permissible exceptions: moreover, it allows of unlimited extension of this kind of protection to all industry by means of an imperial rescript (§ 105_g_), and finally it foreshadows further protective action in the sphere of common law (105_h_). The Auer Motion contains a general extension and simplification of protection of holidays (§ 107, 1): "Industrial work shall be forbidden on Sundays and festivals" (with certain specified and strictly defined exceptions). Protection of holidays serves to four great ends: religious instruction, physical and mental recreation, family life and social intercourse. Protection of holidays has to take special measures to meet these four special ends. In the first place holidays must be general, for the whole population, in order to allow of instruction in common, and general social intercourse. For this reason even the most "free-thinking" friend of holiday rest will be willing to grant it in the form of Sunday rest and festival days, and will allow it to be so called; in France and Belgium only, as appears from the reports of the Berlin Conference, do difficulties lie in the way of allowing protection of holidays to take the form of protection of Sundays and festival days. The second end subserved by protection of holidays will be to ensure that only the absolutely necessary amount of work shall be performed on Sundays in those industries in which there is only a conditional possibility of devoting the Sunday to recreation, family life, and social intercourse, especially in carrying trades, employment in places of amusement and in public houses, in professional business, personal service, and the like, also in all labours which are socially indispensable. We shall return to this question in Chapter VII. (exceptions to protective legislation). The question now arises whether the religious protection of holidays does not already indirectly serve all the purposes of the necessary weekly rest for labour. This question must be answered in the negative. It is true that this does effect something which Labour Protection as such cannot effect, in that it extends beyond the workers and enforces rest on the employers also and their families. But it does not ensure to the workers themselves the complete protection necessary, and it does not fulfil all the purposes of protection of holidays. The actual condition of affairs in Germany is as follows, according to the "systematic survey of existing legal and police regulations of employment on Sundays and festivals" (Imperial Act of 1885-6). In one part of Germany the police protection of the Sunday rest is in effect only protection of religious worship. In another group of districts, the suspension during the entire Sunday of all noisy work carried on in public places is enforced, but within industrial establishments noisy work is not forbidden. A third group of rules lays down the principle that Sundays and festivals shall be devoted not only to religious worship and sacred gatherings, but also to rest from labour and business. The rules contained in this group apply especially to factory labour, but in many cases also to handicraft and various kinds of trading business, without regard to the question whether the work carried on in such business is noisy or disturbing to the public, exceptions being granted in certain defined cases. This third group of rules is in force in the provinces of Posen, Silesia, Saxony, the Rhine Provinces, Westphalia, the former Duchy of Nassau, and in the governmental district of Stettin, but in all these only with respect to factory work; also in the former Electorate of Hesse, the Bishopric of Fulda, the province of Hesse-Homburg, and in the town of Cassel; in Saxony, Wurtemburg, Mecklenburg Schwerin, Mecklenburg Strelitz, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Anhalt, Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, the old and the new Duchy of Reuss and Alsace-Lorraine. A supplementary statistical inquiry into the extent of Sunday work in Prussia (not including districts whose official records could not be consulted) shows that Sunday work is carried on:-- _In wholesale industries_: in 16 governmental districts, by 49.4% of the works, and by 29.8% of the workers. _In handicraft business_: in 15 governmental districts, by 47.1% of the works, and by 41.8% of the workers. _In trading and carrying industries_: in 29 governmental districts, by 77.6% of the employers or companies, and by 57.8% of the workers. Hence there can be no doubt as to the necessity in Germany for extraordinary State protection of the Sunday holiday, by means of protective legislation, applying also to handicraft business and to a part of trading and carrying industry. About two-thirds of the employers and three-fourths of the workmen have declared themselves for the practicability of the prohibition of Sunday work, nearly all with the proviso that exceptions shall be permitted. The duration of holiday rest practically can in most cases be fixed from Saturday evening till early on Monday morning. The _von Berlepsch_ Bill proposes to enforce legally only 24 hours; the Auer Motion demands 36 hours, and when Sundays and festivals fall on consecutive days, 60 hours. The shortening of work hours on Saturday evening in factory industries and in industries carried on in workshops of a like nature to factories is a very necessary addition to Sunday rest; provision must also be made to prevent the work from beginning too early on Monday morning if Sunday protection is to attain its object. The shortening of work hours on Saturday evening is especially necessary to women workers to enable them to fulfil their household duties, and it is necessary to all workers to enable them to make their purchases. England and Switzerland grant protection of the Saturday evening holiday. Legislation will not have completed its work of extending protection of holidays, even when the limits have been widened to admit trading business. Further special regulations must be made for the business of transport and traffic. Switzerland has already set to work in this direction. In Germany, in consequence of the nationalisation of all important means of traffic, much can be done if the authorities are willing, merely by way of administration. We cannot lay too much stress on this question of the regulation and preservation of holiday time by means both of legislative and administrative action. For its actual enforcement it is true the co-operation of the local police magistrates is necessary, but the regulation of this protection ought not to be left in their hands. It must be carried on in a uniform system and with the sanction of the higher administrative bodies. We shall return to this question also in Chapter VII. CHAPTER VI. ENACTMENTS PROHIBITING CERTAIN KINDS OF WORK. Besides the mere protective limitations of working time and of the intervals of work, we have also the actual prohibition of certain kinds of work. Freedom in the pursuit of work being the right of all, and work being a moral and social necessity to the whole population, prohibition of work must evidently be restricted to certain extreme cases. Such prohibition is however indispensable, for there are certain ways of employing labour which involve actual injury to the whole working force of the nation, and actual neglect of the cares necessary to the rearing and bringing up of its citizens, and there are certain kinds of necessary social tasks, other than industrial, the performance of which, in the special circumstances of industrial employment, require to be watched over and ensured by special means in a manner which would be wholly unnecessary among other sections of the community. And thus we find a series of prohibitions of work, partly in force already, and partly in course of development. 1. _Prohibition of child-labour._ This is prohibition of the employment of children under 12 years of age (13 in the south), of children under 10 years of age, in factory work (see Book I.). Prohibition of child-labour must not be confused with restriction of child-labour (see Book I.), viz. restriction of the labour of children of 12 to 14 years of age, in the south of 10 to 12 years of age. It does not involve prohibition of _all_ employment of children under 12 years of age, such as help in the household or in the fields. The prohibition of child-labour within certain limits is necessary in the interests of the whole nation, for the physical and intellectual preservation of the rising generation, hence it is to the interest also of the employers of industrial labour themselves. Special Labour Protection with regard to child-labour is indeed necessary. Ordinary administrative and judicial protection evidently are insufficient to ensure complete security to childhood. Equally insufficient are any of the existing not governmental agencies, such as family protection; the child of half-civilised factory hands and impoverished workers in household industries needs protection against his own parents, whose moral sense is often completely blunted. Prohibition of child-labour in factory and quasi-factory industries rests on very good grounds. It is not impossible, not even very improbable, that prohibition of child-labour may sooner or later be extended to household industry; the abuse of child-labour is even more possible here than in factory work; the possibility is by no means excluded by enforcement of school attendance. But all family industry is not counted as household industry. The extension of Labour Protection in general, and of prohibition of child-labour in particular, to household industry, raises difficulties of a very serious kind when it comes to a question of how it is to be enforced. In the main, prohibition of child-labour will have to be made binding by legislation. In its eventual extension to household industry, the Government will however have to be allowed facilities for gradually extending its methods of administration. The task of superintending the enforcement of prohibition will in the main be assigned to the Industrial Inspectorate. The oldest hands in any business, the "Labour Chambers," and voluntary labour-unions, will moreover be able to lend effectual assistance to the industrial inspector or to a general labour-board. The factory list of young workers may be used as an instrument of administration. In Germany childhood is protected until the age of 12 years. The extension of prohibition of child-labour to the age of 14 years in factory and quasi-factory business, is, however, in Germany probably only a question of time. The Auer Motion in regard to this represents the views of many others besides the Social Democrats. Switzerland, as I have shown, has already conceded this demand, claimed on grounds of national health. The impending Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill places the limit at 13. An internationally uniform advance towards this end by the equalisation of laws affecting the age of compulsory school attendance, would certainly be desirable. The widest measure of protection of children is contained in the Austrian legislation, which decrees in the Act of 1885, that until the age of 12 years children shall be excluded from all regular industrial work, and until the age of 14 years, from factory work: "Before the completion of the 14th year, no children shall be employed for regular industrial work in industrial undertakings of the nature of factory business; young wage-workers between the completion of the 14th and the completion of the 16th year shall only be employed in light work, such as shall not be injurious to the health of such workers, and shall not prevent their physical development." The resolutions of the Berlin Conference recommended the prohibition of employment in factories of children below the age of compulsory school attendance. Resolution III. 4 requires: "That children shall previously have satisfied the requirements of the regulations on elementary education." Exclusion of child-labour extends beyond the general inferior limit of age, in individual cases where the employment of children is made conditional on evidence of their health, as in England. And here the medical certificate of health comes in as a special instrument of administration in Labour Protection. In certain kinds of business, prohibition of child-labour extends beyond the general inferior limit of age. England has led the way in such prohibition, excluding by law the employment of children below the age of 11 years in the workrooms of certain branches of industry, _e.g._ wherever the polishing of metal is carried on; of children below the age of 14 years, in places where dipping of matches and dry polishing of metal is carried on; of girls below the age of 16 years, in brick and tile-kilns, and salt works (salt-pits, etc.); of children below the age of 14 years, and girls below the age of 18 years, in the melting and cooling rooms in glass factories; of persons below the age of 18 years in places where mirrors are coated with quicksilver, or where white-lead is used. 2. _Prohibition of employment in occupations dangerous to health and morality._ Such prohibition seems necessary in all industrial trades. It is however difficult to enforce it so generally, and hitherto this has not been accomplished. The Imperial Industrial Code in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill (cf. resolutions of the Berlin Conference, Chap. IV. 4, and V. 4) admits an absolute prohibition of all female and juvenile labour, under sanction of the local authorities (§ 139_a_ 1.): "The _Bundesrath_ shall be empowered to entirely prohibit or to allow only under certain conditions, the employment of women and young workers in certain branches of factory work, in which special dangers to health and to morality are involved." The same Bill (§ 154, 2, 3, 4) extends such prohibition over the greater part of the sphere of quasi-factory business. The last aim of protection of health--the exclusion of such injurious methods of working as may be replaced by non-injurious methods in all industrial work, and for male workers as well as for women and children--must be attained by progressive extension of that administrative protection to which the _von Berlepsch_ Bill opens the way for quasi-factory labour (§ 154). It would be difficult to carry out in any other way the Auer Motion, for the "prohibition of all injurious methods of working, wherever non-injurious methods are possible." The general principle of prohibition might be laid down by law, and the enforcement of such prohibition, by order of a Supreme Central Bureau of Labour Protection, might be left to the control of popular representative bodies and to public opinion. Special legal prohibition, with regard to certain defined industries and methods of work injurious to health, would not be superfluous in addition to general prohibition; such special prohibition is already in force to a greater or less degree. The success of the prohibition in question depends on the good organisation of Labour Protection in matters of technique and health; on the efficiency of local government organs, as well as of the Imperial Central Bureau, and on the impulse given by the more important representative organs of the labouring classes. All these organs need perfecting. Special prohibition needs the assistance of police trade-regulations in regard to instruments and materials dangerous to health. The work that has already been done in the way of protection of morality by prohibition is not to be under-valued, although much still remains to be done. No sufficient steps have as yet been taken to meet that very hateful and insidious evil so deeply harmful to the preservation of national morality, viz. the public sale and advertisement of preventives in sexual intercourse, such as unfortunately so frequently appear in the advertising columns of newspapers, and in shop windows. This is not merely a question of protecting the morality of those engaged in the production and sale of such articles, but also of protecting the morality of the whole nation, maintaining its virile strength, and to some degree also preserving it from the dangers to the growth of population, incidental to an advanced civilisation. The powers at present vested in the police and magistrates to deal with offences against morals would probably be sufficient to stamp out this moral canker that is eating its way even into Labour Protection, without the scandal of legislation. But it is not by ignoring it that this can be accomplished. The intervention of the State as regards Labour Protection in such factory and quasi-factory work as is dangerous to health and decency, is doubtless justified in its extension to household industry and trading industry of the same kind; for neither is the moral character of the generality of employers and heads of commercial undertakings sufficiently perfect, nor are the discretion and self-protection of the workers sufficiently strong and widespread to render State protection unnecessary and voluntary protection sufficient. 3. _Prohibition of factory work for married women, or at least mothers of families._ This is a specially useful measure of protection. Modern industrial work has done a great injury to the family vocation of the woman, and thereby to family life; non-governmental agencies of Labour Protection, in its widest sense, have not been able to prevent this evil. But the exclusion of wives and mothers from all industrial work, or from earning money in any kind of domestic occupation, would be far too extreme a measure. Certain industrial work has always fallen to the share of the female sex, and the absolute prohibition of female employment in any kind of industrial work would render large numbers of persons destitute, especially in the towns, and would thereby expose them to moral dangers and temptation. The organs and instruments of administration for the protection of married women in factory and quasi-factory work, would be the same as for all other branches of protection of employment of women and young workers. Prohibition of factory work for married women is advocated in the most decisive manner by _Jules Simon_, _von Ketteler_, and _Hitze_. Even the chief objection to such protection--the danger of the diminution of worker's earnings, tempting them to seek immoral means of livelihood--is combated in the most remarkable and convincing manner by Hitze. This worthy Catholic writer meets the consideration of the loss of the factory earnings of women, with the counter-considerations of the depression of wage caused by the competition of female labour, and of the waste of money at public houses and on luxuries that takes place in such families as are left without a housewife or mother. We must be ready to make great sacrifices in the attainment of so great an object, for no less important a matter is at stake than the restoration of the family life of the whole body of factory labourers. Only we must be under no delusion as to the difficulties of the immediate and complete enforcement of the prohibition. The adaptation of motor-machinery to use in the house, enabling the wage-earner to remain at home, might perhaps render it practically possible to carry out the prohibition in question. It would also be necessary that the measures taken should be internationally uniform, so that separate national branches of industry might not suffer. A practical solution of the problem can only be arrived at after a careful collection of international statistics as to the married women and mothers employed in factory and quasi-factory work. Here especially, if in any department of Labour Protection, does the State require the support of the influence of the Churches, and of the organised, simultaneous, international agitation of the Churches in furtherance of this object. Whoever reads the above-mentioned writings--_Hitze's_ pamphlet gives extracts from the powerful writings of Jules Simon and von Ketteler--will derive therefrom some hope of the final success of Labour Protection in one of its most important future tasks. In the present situation of affairs I know of nothing which can shake the validity of _Hitze's_ conclusions. In the meantime, restriction of employment of all female factory labour to 10 hours, as proposed by the commission appointed by the German Reichstag (see below), must be welcomed as an important step in advance. _Hitze_ remarks: "The first condition of all social reform is the establishment of family life on a sound and secure basis. But how is this possible, so long as thousands of married women are working daily in factories for 11 and 12 hours, and are absent from their homes for still longer? Can domestic happiness and contentment flourish under such circumstances? And is the danger any less because concentrated in defined districts? For example, in the inspectoral district of Bautzen, in 1884, nearly 5,000 women were drawn away from their family life by factory work. No extended mid-day interval is granted to married women, so far as information on this point is to be obtained. Is it merely accidental that wherever employment of children is customary, there also the work of the mothers is more frequent? And must not the man's earnings be lessened if the wife and child are allowed to compete with him? And is it merely accidental that Saxony, which is precisely the place where female and child labour is most largely employed, should also be the special haunt and stronghold of Social Democracy? Have we any right to reproach the Social Democrats with causing the destruction of family life, if we show ourselves indifferent to the actual loosening of family ties through the regular and excessive work in factories of housewives and mothers? Ought we to delay any longer in appealing to legislation, when the dangers are so pressing? What will become of the youth and future of our people if such conditions become normal? And in fact, unless legislation interferes, the number of factory women and of factory children will increase, not decrease. What a prospect!" Separation of the sexes in the workrooms wherever possible, special rooms for meals and dressing, and provision for education in housewifery, are measures which are all the more urgent, if we grant the impossibility of altogether excluding women from factory work. This further protection is above all necessary for girls. 4. _Prohibition of the employment of women during the period immediately succeeding child-birth._ Whilst prohibition of factory work for wives and mothers is of the first importance for the protection of family life, exemption from work during the period immediately succeeding child-birth of all women engaged in factory and quasi-factory employments, is a measure that is necessary for the health of the mother and the nurture of the newly-born. The exclusion of pregnant women from certain occupations is another important question; the Confederate Factory Act leaves this in the power of the _Bundesrath_. Prohibition of the employment of nursing mothers in factories is a measure that has long received recognition in some countries, and lately it has become general. The resolutions of the Berlin Conference demand that the protection should cover a period of 4 weeks; Switzerland already grants protection for 8 weeks, a period which is recommended in Germany by the Auer Motion; the _von Berlepsch_ Bill proposes 4 weeks (instead of 3 weeks as hitherto appointed by the Imp. Ind. Code); the Reichstag Commission proposed 6 weeks, and this will probably be the period adopted. If it were necessary to enforce exemption from work after childbirth for _all_ women engaged in industrial wage-labour, even this would scarcely be found to be attended with insuperable difficulties. The Auer Motion on this point receives no notice in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill. It would be preferable in itself for such exemption to become general even for factory women, without special protective intervention from the State. But under the existing moral and social conditions legal prohibition of employment can hardly be dispensed with. The measure may be carried out by the help of the official birth-list, or of a special factory list of nursing mothers. The industrial inspector will not be able to do without the help of the workers themselves. The economic difficulties of the question are partly met in Germany by the existing agency of Insurance against sickness for all factory workers, which grants assistance during the period of lying-in, as during sickness. The means of help provided by the family and the club have to supply the additional assistance necessary for the nursing period. The granting of state assistance to women during the lying-in period, without which exemption from work would be a questionable benefit, is vigorously opposed by some on grounds of morality as likely to promote the increase of illegitimate births, and by others from the point of view of the population question. The question was brought before the German Reichstag, on the representation of Saxony, in 1886. Petitions from twenty-one district sick clubs in the chief district of Zwickau demanded the withdrawal of the legal three weeks assistance of unmarried women after childbirth, on the ground that this was calculated to promote an increase in the number of illegitimate births. The petitions were accompanied by statistics of each club showing that the funds were actually called in to assist more unmarried than married women. No information however was given as to the proportion between married and unmarried women members of the club, an omission which rendered the statistics worthless. Moreover the conditions existing in Zwickau are hardly typical of German industry as a whole. A general collection and examination of statistics of sick funds must be made, and possibly the necessary information may be obtained by comparison of the numbers of births during the periods before and since the introduction of Insurance against sickness, and especially in such districts as had no free clubs, before the introduction of Insurance, for the assistance of women after child-birth. Probably it will be found that the increase in the number of illegitimate births is not due to the assistance granted after child-birth by the official sick fund, if we take into consideration that in the district mentioned the assistance granted during the three weeks only amounted to from 7 to 12 marks, generally to less than 10 marks. "If," says _Hitze_, "the meagre sum of the assistance granted could lead to an increase of illegitimate births, this fact would be more shocking than the number itself." I take it that the root of the evil lies, not in the lying-in-fund, but in the destruction of family life and sexual morality by the employment of women in factories. 5. _Prohibition of employment of women and children in work underground._ This prohibition is claimed in the interests of family life, of morality, and of the care of the weaker portion of the working class. The enforcement of this prohibition comes within the province of the police in the mining districts, and of the industrial inspectorate. But it is probably best that it should be legally formulated. The extension of the prohibition to all women is recommended generally in the resolutions of the Berlin Conference, and the work has already been commenced in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill. The enforcement of the measure will meet with some difficulties in the mines of Upper Silesia, but it will also remedy serious evils. The force of public opinion is insufficient to prevent the employment of women in work underground. The very necessary demand for prohibition of employment of women in work on high buildings, follows on the prohibition of their employment underground. Such employment is almost completely excluded by custom. CHAPTER VII. EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION. All prohibition of employment and limitations of employment are apparently opposed to the interests of the employers. As long as they are kept within just limits, however, this will not be true generally or in the long run. The just claims of Capital may be protected by admitting carefully regulated exceptions; but wherever and in so far as employment is opposed to the higher personal interests of the whole population, Capital must submit to the restrictions. As regards the exceptions, these are in part regular or ordinary, in part irregular or extraordinary. We find examples of both kinds alike in the legislation for restricting the time of working and in legislation for protecting intervals of rest. _Ordinary_ exceptions to prohibition of employment consist mainly of permission by legal enactment in certain specified kinds of industrial work, of a class of labour which is elsewhere prohibited, _e.g._ night work for women and young workers. The greater number of cases of prohibition of employment appear in the inverse form of exceptions to permission of employment. _Ordinary_ exceptions to restriction of employment are provided for partly by legislation, partly by administration, _i.e._ partly by the Government, partly by the district or local officials. Wherever in the interests of industry it is impossible to enforce the ordinary protection of times of labour and hours of rest, this is made good to the labourer by the introduction of several (two, three, or four) shifts taking night and day by turns, so that an uninterrupted continuance of work may be possible without any prolonged resting time either in the day or in the night; moreover, the loss of Sunday rest can be compensated by a holiday during the week. _Extraordinary_ exceptions occur chiefly in the following cases: (_a_) where work is necessary in consequence of an interruption to the regular course of business by some natural event or misfortune; (_b_) where work is necessary in order to guard against accidents and dangers; (_c_) where work is necessary in order to meet exceptional pressure of business. _Exceptions to protection of holidays._ These exceptions are so regulated that in certain industries holiday work is indeed permitted but compensation is supplied by granting rest on working days. The exceptions provided for by the Berlin Conference have already been given. The _von Berlepsch_ Bill admits, if anything, too many exceptions. The Auer Motion permits holiday work in traffic business, in hotels and beer houses, in public places of refreshment and amusement, and in such industries as demand uninterrupted labour; an unbroken period of rest for 36 hours in the week is granted in compensation to such workers as are employed on Sunday. Switzerland wishes to give compensation in protection of holidays in railway, steamship and postal service, by granting free time alternately on week days and Sundays, so that each man shall have 52 free days yearly, of which 17 shall be Sundays. _Exceptions to prohibition of night work._ The Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill (§ 139_a_, 2, 3) admits ordinary and extraordinary exceptions. The Auer Motion does not entirely exclude such exceptions, as it provides exceptions in traffic business and such industries as "from their nature require night work." We cannot here enter into details as to the rules on the limitations of exceptions, and as to the enforcement of those rules. _Exceptions to the maximum working-day._ Overtime: _Extraordinary_ exceptions to an enforced maximum working-day consist in permission of overtime; _ordinary_ exceptions consist in the employment of children, women and men, in certain kinds of business, for a longer time than is usual (see Chapter V.). The _von Berlepsch_ Bill assumes a very cautious attitude in the matter of overtime. _Extraordinary_ exceptions in the case of pressure of business are provided for as follows: "In cases of unusual pressure of work the lower courts of administration may, on appeal of the employers, permit, during a period of 14 days, the employment of women above the age of 16 years until 10 o'clock in the evening on every week-day, except Saturday, provided that the daily time of work does not exceed 13 hours. Permission to do this may not be granted to any employer for more than 40 days in the calendar year. The appeal shall be made in writing, and shall set forth the grounds on which the permission is demanded, the number of female workers to be employed, the amount of work to be done, and the space of time required. The decision on the appeal shall be given in writing. On refusal of permission the grievance may be brought before a superior court. In cases in which permission is granted, the lower court of administration shall draw up a specification in which the name of the employer and a copy of the statements contained in the written appeal shall be entered." The Auer Motion sets the narrowest limits to admission of overtime, permitting it only in case of interruption of work through natural (elemental) accidents, and then only permitting it for 2 hours at the most for 3 weeks, and only with consent of the "labour-board." Both in regulation and administration all these exceptions to protective legislation should be dealt with in a very guarded manner. Moreover they must be enforced on a uniform and widely diffused system, and they ought to afford a real protection to the fair and just employer against his more unscrupulous competitors. Both these considerations--the strict limitation and uniform administration required for these exceptions--render it imperative that the regulation by law should be, so far as practicable, very careful and minute. Moreover it is requisite that the principle on which the administration has to act in dealing with exceptions shall be laid down as definitely as possible, and further that protective enactments shall be interpreted in a uniform manner by the organs of local government (_Bundesrath_), and finally that there should be general uniformity of method, both in the instructions given and in the supervision exercised by the intermediate courts of Labour Protection to the local authorities. Much may be done in the way of effectual limitation of exceptions by dealing individually with the separate kinds of employment, in the matter of Sunday rest and alternating shifts. In the Düsseldorf district it has been proved by experience that by specialising the exceptions, Sunday rest may be granted to a large percentage of the workmen even in the excepted industries themselves (gas works, brick and tile kilns, etc.). The special instruments of administration for the regulation of exceptions to this kind of protection are the certificate of permission, the entry in the register of exceptions, and the public factory rules. The industrial inspector is entrusted with the supervision of the exceptions; but the assistance of the employer is very desirable, and is frequently offered, as it is to his interest that the application shall be just and uniform. The central union of embroiderers in East Switzerland and the Vorarlberg district, _e.g._ which was formed in 1855, and which now includes nearly all the houses of business, supervises the strict adhesion to the 11 hours rule, by sending special inspectors into the most remote mountain districts, and imposing fines for non-observance to the amount of from 200 to 300 francs (_Hitze_). CHAPTER VIII. PROTECTION IN OCCUPATION, PROTECTION OF TRUCK AND CONTRACT. (A) _Protection in occupation._ Protection in occupation is directed towards the personal, bodily and moral preservation of wage-earners against special risks incurred during the performance of their work. Protection in occupation is already afforded to a certain degree by Labour Insurance, in the form of Insurance against accidents and sickness. The bodily and moral preservation of those engaged in business forms no new department of Labour Protection. It has long been more or less completely provided for by the Industrial Regulations and by special labour protective legislation in almost all civilised countries. Protection in occupation is afforded by the enactments dealing with dangerous occupations, with the regulations of business, with the management of business, with the workrooms and eating and dressing rooms, and with the provision of lavatories. In the Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill the task of protection in occupation is formulated thus: "§ 120_a_, Employers of industry shall be bound so to arrange and keep in order their workrooms, business plant, machinery and tools, and so to regulate their business, that the workers may be protected from danger to life and health, in so far as the nature of the business may permit. Special attention shall be paid to the provision of a sufficient supply of light, a sufficient cubic space of air and ventilation, the removal of all dust arising from the work and of all smoke and gases developed thereby; and care must be taken in case of accidents arising from these causes. Such arrangements shall be made as may be necessary for the protection of the workmen against dangerous contact with the machines or parts of the machinery, or against other dangers arising from the nature of the place of business, or of the business itself, and especially against all dangers of fire in the factory. Lastly, all such rules shall be issued for the regulation of business and the conduct of the workers, as may be necessary to render the business free from danger. "§ 120_b_. Employers of industry shall be bound to make and to maintain such arrangements and to issue such rules for the conduct of the workers as may be necessary to ensure the maintenance of good morals and decency. And, especially, separation of the sexes in their work shall be enforced, in so far as the nature of the business may permit. In establishments where the nature of the business renders it necessary for the workers to change their clothes and wash after their work, separate rooms for dressing and washing shall be provided for the two sexes. Such lavatories shall be provided as shall suffice for the number of workers, and shall fulfil all requirements of health, and they shall be so arranged that they may be used without offence to decency and convenience. "§ 120_c_. Employers of industry who engage workers under 18 years of age shall be bound, in the arrangement of their places of business and in the regulation of their business, to take such special precautions for the maintenance of health and good morals as may be demanded by the age of the workers. "§ 120_d_. The police magistrates are empowered to enforce by order the carrying out in separate establishments of such measures as may appear to be necessary for the maintenance of the principles laid down in § 120 to § 120_c_, and such as may be compatible with the nature of the establishment. They may order that suitable rooms, heated in the cold season, shall be provided free of cost, in which the workers may take their meals outside the workrooms. A reasonable delay must be allowed for the execution of such orders, unless they be directed to the removal of a pressing danger threatening life or health. In establishments already existing before the passing of this Act only such orders shall be issued as may be necessary for the removals of grave evils dangerous to the life, health or morals of the workers, and only such as can be carried out without disproportionate expense: but this shall not apply to extensions or outbuildings hereafter added to the establishment. Appeal to a higher court of administration may be made within 3 weeks by the employer. "§ 120_e_. By order of the _Bundesrath_ directions may be issued showing what requirements may be necessary in certain kinds of establishments, for the maintenance of the principles laid down in §§ 120_a_ to 120_e_. Where no such directions are issued by order of the _Bundesrath_, they may be issued by order of the Central Provincial Courts, or by police regulations of the courts empowered with such authority, under § 81 of the Accident Insurance Act of July 6th, 1884." This formulary may be considered specially successful and almost conclusive. The insertion of the foregoing clauses in the general portion of chap. vii. of the Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill ensures such protection in occupation as is adequate to all necessities of life, to the whole body of industrial work included within the sphere of the Industrial Code. One item of Labour Protection in occupation might be supposed to consist in guarding against over-exertion, by means of the abolition of piece-work and "efficiency wage." But this claim, in so far as we find it prevailing in the Labour world, is made more on grounds of wage policy than as a necessary measure of protection. The economic advantages to the workers themselves of these methods of payment are so great that the abolition of "efficiency wage" is not, I think, required either on grounds of wage policy or of protective policy. We must, however, pass over the consideration of this question, whilst admitting that there is still a great deal to be done in this direction by means of free self-help and mutual help. (B) _Protection of intercourse in service, Truck Protection in particular._ To protection in occupation must be added--as a last measure of the protection of labour against material dangers--protection of the wage-worker in his personal and social intercourse outside the limits of his business with the employer and his family, and with the managers and foremen. In default of a better term, we have called this protection of intercourse in service. Outside the actual performance of his work, the wage-worker is threatened by special dangers which can only be averted by extraordinary intervention of the State. These dangers affect the person and domestic life of the wage-worker. Apprentices especially, and all wage-earners living in the same house as the employer, are liable from their position as the weaker party, to intimidation, ill-treatment, and neglect. Provision is made against such dangers by the ruling of the Industrial Regulations on the relations of journeymen and apprentices to business managers and employers. Special protection has long been afforded in the social relations between the servant on the one side, and the employer and his family on the other. This takes the form of protection against usury, against exploitation of dependents, especially if they are ignorant and inexperienced. This protection in social relations may also be called--involving as it does, in by far the largest proportion of cases, protection against undue advantage derived from payment in kind--"Truck Protection." The usury in question may take the form of a profit in the way of service, or exploitation of the workman, by forcing him to perform work outside the agreement as well as the work of the business, or instead of it; or again, it may be profit on payment, derived from payment of wages in coin or kind; or it may be profit on credit, loan, hire and sale, derived by compelling the workman to enter into disadvantageous transactions in borrowing, contracting, and hiring, and by requiring him to purchase the necessaries of life at certain places of sale where exorbitant prices are demanded for inferior goods. To prevent the employer from gaining such unfair advantage over the "members of his family, his assistants, agents, managers, overseers, and foremen," the German Industrial Code has long since interfered by ordering payment in coin of the realm, by prohibiting credit for goods, and by limiting to cost price the charges for necessaries of life, and of work supplied (including tools and materials). Any agreements for the appropriation of a part of the earnings of the wage-worker for any other purpose than the improvement of the condition of the worker or his family shall be declared null and void. The Auer Motion demands also that "compulsory contributions to so-called 'benefit clubs' (savings banks attached to the business) shall be prohibited." This form of protection, which I have called protection of intercourse, is extended to all kinds of industrial work, as is also the case with protection in occupation, though not with protection by limitations of employment. In Germany this extension is effected by incorporating in the general portion of chap. vii. of the Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill the rules for protection in occupation and protection against usury, and also by including non-manufacturing (§ 134) as well as manufacturing work in the rules of the Industrial Regulations against personal ill-treatment and neglect. Hitherto no special courts have been appointed for the administration of protection of intercourse, which has been left generally to the ordinary administration and especially to the judicial courts. In other cases it is left to the industrial courts of arbitration of the first and second instance rather than to the industrial inspectors. But extraordinary protection is afforded by special rulings of common law on illegal agreements, on nullity of agreement, on escheat of contributions to savings banks made in defiance of prohibition, on failures to complete contracts of apprenticeship and service, etc., etc. The Imp. Ind. Code provides protection of intercourse in the business of household industry also, in the ruling of the second clause of § 119. The usefulness of this ruling depends indeed on the improvement of the organisation of Labour Protection which is still imperfect and insufficient in its application to household industry. The compulsory and voluntary assistance of the employers and their commercial agents, with or without control by the industrial inspector, is the aim towards which attention must be directed for the further development of protection of intercourse in household industry. The above-mentioned central union of workers in the embroidery industry in East Switzerland, which is for the most part household industry, shows what may be done by voluntary unions in the way of protection within the sphere of household industry. One inspector says: "The computation of the amount of embroidery done, _i.e._ the basis for the calculation of wages, is determined; the relations between the "middleman," the employer and the workers are regulated; and a place of sale is provided for all work rejected by the employer on account of alleged imperfections. The classification of patterns--_i.e._ the fair graduation of wages according to the ease and rapidity, the greater or less trouble and expense with which the pattern is executed--has for a long time been one of the main objects of the union." (C) _Protection of the status of the workman (protection of agreement, protection of contract)._ The term protection of contract must here be understood in a wider sense than in that of a mere guarantee of freedom of contract, and judicial protection of labour contracts; hence I have called it protection of the status of the workman. This protection of the status of labour includes a multifarious collection of existing measures of protection, and impending claims for protection which we may regard as falling under three heads: protection of engagement and dismissal, protection against abuse of contract, and protection in fulfilment of contract. 1. _Protection of engagement and dismissal._ By protection of engagement we mean protection of the worker against hindrances placed in the way of admittance into service; it is protection in the making and carrying out of agreements, partly protecting the workman against unjust loss of character, and partly giving him the right to claim a character. Protection against loss of character might further be divided into protection against defamation by individuals--foremen or employers--and protection against defamation by combinations of employers. The Labour world claims protection against loss of character in the demand for the abolition of the labour log, and in Germany where the general log is not used, in the demand for the abolition of the young workers' log which, however, is still recommended by many from considerations that have no connection with depreciation of work. Wherever the labour log is still used, protection, against loss of character has long been afforded by prohibition of entries and marks which would be prejudicial to success in obtaining fresh employment. Protection is demanded, but as yet nowhere granted, against defamation by combination of employers, of workmen who have made themselves disliked, against black lists, circulars, etc. The penalties of such defamation by combination in the Auer Motion are directed against employers and employers only, although in point of fact there are not infrequent cases of combinations among workmen for the defamation of employers. The Motion runs thus: "(§ 153) Whoever shall unite with others against any worker because he has entered into agreements or has joined unions, and shall endeavour to prevent him from obtaining work, or shall refuse to employ him, or shall dismiss him from work, shall be punished by imprisonment for three months." Another fragment of protection of engagement has long existed in the penalties attached to certain infringements of the right of combination, with reciprocity of course for the employers (cf. § 153 Imp. Ind. Code.) The guarantee of testimonials has long been afforded--and has met with no opposition--as a means of protection against defamation by individual employers. Side by side with protection of engagement we have protection in quitting service. Special protection in quitting service--beyond the ordinary administrative and judicial protection of labour contract against unjust dismissal--consists partly of: protection in dismissal from service, _i.e._ against expulsion by the employer, and partly, of protection in voluntarily quitting service, _i.e._ quitting service for special reasons. Both these measures are applied to the whole of industrial wage labour, and have hitherto generally been enforced by the regular courts of justice and administration, by application, however, of special rulings of industrial legislation on written agreements, on the right of special dismissal from service, and the right of quitting service, and on the length of notice required, etc. The further development of protection in quitting service will probably more and more require the extraordinary jurisdiction of the industrial courts of arbitration. Protection against compulsory dismissal into which one employer may be forced by another employer by intimidation, libel, and defamation, is afforded by special penal Acts, and, like protection against breach of contract, is more particularly protection of the employer and is only indirectly protection of the worker. 2. _Protection of contract, in the strict sense; protection by limitation of the right of contract, by completion of contract, and by enforcing fulfilment of contract._ Beyond the ordinary judicial protection afforded by the obligations attached to service contract, special guarantees of protection are in part already granted, in part demanded, against abuse of contract, incomplete fulfilment and non-fulfilment of service contract to the disadvantage, as a rule, but of course not in all cases, of wage-labour. This protection is afforded partly by formal regulations, partly by judicial rulings on special cases. The latter form of protection in contract is closely allied to protection in intercourse (see above); the two overlap each other. The protection afforded by contract regulations consists in the enforcement of certain formal requirements, and the granting of certain remissions, such as _e.g._ the requirement of written agreements and the remission of duty on written agreements, etc. First and foremost stands the obligation to post up the working rules. _A parte potiori_[13] all protection of contract might be called protection of working rules. The working rules serve in reality to give the workman himself the control over his own rights, but they also are to the interest of the employer. The _von Berlepsch_ Bill further extends this sort of method to factory and quasi-factory labour (§ 134_a_-134_g_), permitting the workmen in any business to exert a considerable influence upon the drawing up of the working rules. Sections 134_b_ and 134_c_ read thus: "§ 134_b_. Working rules shall contain directions: (1) as to the time of beginning and ending the daily work, and as to the intervals provided for adult workers; (2) as to the time and manner of settling accounts and paying wages; (3) as to the grounds on which dismissal from service or quitting service may be allowable without notice, wherever such are not determined by law; (4) as to the kind of severity of punishments, where such are permitted; as to the way in which punishments shall be imposed, and, if they take the form of fines, as to the manner of collecting them and the purpose to which they shall be devoted. No punishments offensive to self-respect and decency shall be admitted in the working rules. Fines shall not exceed twice the amount of the customary day's wage (§ 8. Insurance against Sickness Act, June 15th, 1883), and they shall be devoted to the benefit of the workers in the factory. The right of the employer to demand compensation for damage is not affected by this rule. It is left in the hands of the owner of the factory to add to rules I to 4 further rules for the regulation of the business and the conduct of the workmen in the business. The conduct of young workers outside the business shall also be regulated. The working rules may direct that wages earned by minors shall be paid to the parents and guardians, and only by their written consent to the minors directly; also that a minor shall not give notice to quit without the expressed consent of his father or guardian." § 134_d_ reads as follows: "Before the issue of the working rules or of an addition to the rules, opportunity shall be given to the workers in the factory to express their opinion on the contents. In those factories in which there is a standing committee of the workmen it will be sufficient to receive the opinions of the committee on the contents of the working rules." It is further recommended that the factory rules shall include the publication of legal enactments regarding _protection by limitations of employment, protection in occupation_ and in _intercourse_, the necessary conditions and limitations of these, the possibilities of appeal, and methods of payment of overtime wage, also of instructions for precaution against accidents, and lastly of the name and address of the club doctor and dispenser, of the company and their representatives, the name of the factory inspector and his office address and office hours. But we have seen that contract protection is not only afforded by these formal regulations but also by judicial rulings on special cases. These latter have a threefold task: to prevent the drawing up of unfair contracts, to supply deficiencies in the contract, by adding subsidiary rulings suited to the nature of the industrial service relations, and lastly, to secure the fulfilment of service contract; _i.e._ they have to provide protection by limitation and completion of contract and to secure fulfilment of contract. This kind of protection of contract is of special importance in dealing with contract fines, proportional output ("efficiency work"), the supply of tools and materials of work, and lastly with payment of wage. Labour Protection seeks to guard against abuse of contract fines, by fixing the highest permissible amount of fines, and by handing over the proceeds of the fines to the workmen's provident fund. This is a matter of the highest moment, and must find a place in the drawing up and in the enforcement of the working rules (see above). Hitherto it has only been extended to factory labour. A second task of protection of contract lies in the protection of "efficiency work," _i.e._ protection of the wage-worker against an undue deduction from his "efficiency wage" on account of the alleged inferior quality of the output, and against neglect to reckon in the full amount of the output in the calculation of wage. This measure of protection has been placed on the orders of the day of the present labour protective movement, by the adoption _e.g._ of the system of checking the weight of the output in mining. In the third place we come to protection of the workman against loss sustained in buying his tools and materials of work from the employer. This measure of protection in purchase of materials is applied to the whole of industrial labour by means of its insertion in the general rules for truck protection contained in the Imp. Ind. Code. A fourth point, very closely allied to protection of intercourse, but which has to be dealt with protectively by those judicial rulings on protection of contract, concerns the permanence of rate of wage, the day, place, and period of payment, and by whom, and to whom, payments are to be made. Protection of payment may be more completely secured by the inclusion in the working rules of directions on these points. It must be applied to the whole of industrial wage-labour according to circumstances. The prohibition of payment of wages in public-houses and on Saturdays, the fixing of the wage by the employer himself, not by a subordinate official; the obligation to make the agreement as to "efficiency wage" at the time of undertaking the work, in order that the bargain may not be broken off should it prove specially favourable for the workers; also payment of wage at least weekly or fortnightly; and lastly, the payment of minors' wages into the hands of parents or guardians, which constitutes a measure of educational protection of the minors against themselves--such are the principal requirements of protection of payment of wages, requirements which are already more or less fulfilled. FOOTNOTE: [13] That is, _after the largest portion of it_. CHAPTER IX. THE RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF LABOUR PROTECTION TO EACH OTHER. If the various chief branches of Labour Protection are compared with each other after they have all been examined separately, they appear to be indispensable and inseparable members of one system, for no one branch can be spared. But they are very different in nature, and by no means equal in importance. Protection of truck and contract have long ago reached their full development. Both are almost universal in their extension, and are exercised by the regular administrative courts and petty courts of justice. They are characterised on the whole by legal precision, which affords little room for interpretation and extension at the will of the administration. Protection of contract and protection of intercourse are required less in the immediate interest of the whole State than in that of individuals. But when we come to protection in occupation, it is altogether another matter. _Protection by limitations of employment_, which forms the central point of the latest protective movement, is in all its aims more or less in contrast to protection of contract and intercourse. It is not a matter of universal application. It requires special administrative organs, special methods of procedure with many technical differences of detail adapted to the peculiarities of different trades. Its full development requires general legal enactments, a central authority, and a uniform exercise of administration; it has to deal with the entire working class, nay more, with the whole body of citizens, and with the spiritual as well as the material life of the workers and of the nation, because it constantly affects and influences the lives of larger masses of labourers. It must not be supposed that any one branch of protection by limitation of employment is more important in itself than all the rest. It is not protection of holidays alone, nor the maximum working-day alone that will restore the workman to himself, to his place in the human family, to civic life, to his family, to the performances of his spiritual duties; but all measures of protection by prohibiting and limiting employment must work together to effect this. Protection by limitation of employment, as a whole, seeks to ensure those moral benefits so finely emphasised in the preamble of the Confederate Factory Act: "The benefits which may accrue to the country from the factory system depend almost entirely upon its being ensured that the worker shall not be deprived of time or inclination to be the educator of his children, and the head and prop of his family." The maximum working-day effects this by securing the evening free to all--to fathers, mothers, children, and young people. Protection of holidays works towards the same end by securing to everyone the seventh day free for his own life, the life of his family, and intercourse with his fellow citizens, and for the performance of his spiritual duties. Prohibition of night work also contributes its quota towards the same result. Without all this protection by limitation of employment, the father of the family would lose his family, the child would lose its training and care, the mother and wife would lose her children and husband; and all of them would lose their joint life as citizens, as members of society, and of a religious community. It is from these considerations that we must justify the immense importance which it is the growing tendency of Labour Protection in the present day to attach to the whole question of protection by limitation of employment. CHAPTER X. TRANSACTIONS OF THE BERLIN LABOUR CONFERENCE, DEALING WITH MATTERS BEYOND THE RANGE OF LABOUR PROTECTION; DALE'S DEPOSITIONS ON COURTS OF ARBITRATION, AND THE SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES IN MINING. The demand for a legal minimum wage, for wage tariffs, and the sliding scale of wages, form no part of Labour Protection. The State cannot, as we have seen, regulate wages directly, but only indirectly, by favouring an adjustment of wages that shall be fair to each side. But even in measures of that kind it does not interfere for the purpose of protecting the persons of the wage earners in their _relations of dependence_ on the employer. Politico-social proposals for indirectly influencing the movement of wages, do not for this very reason, belong to Labour Protection, in the sense which I have assigned to the term in this book. Therefore, I shall content myself, on the one hand, with clearing up a misunderstanding concerning the minimum wage and the wage tariff; and on the other hand, with supplementing my former contribution to the subject (_Jahrg., 1889, Die Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft_) from the reports of the Berlin Conference, having special reference to the regulation of wage in the English mining industries. These proposals, dealing with minimum wage and the wage tariff, which I shall now introduce into my treatise on Labour Protection, do not aim at enforcing a minimum rate of wage from above, regardless of the individual value of the labour, they merely aim at providing as far as possible a stable adjustment and classification of efforts and rewards between the whole body of employers and the whole body of workers in any branch of industry or industrial district, _i.e._ at substituting _general_ for _individual_ control, for the protection not of the worker alone, but also of the employer, _i.e._ against exploiting competitors. In Germany the printers have led the way; the number of their followers in other industries is increasing. But this is a matter that must be settled by the two classes, not by the State. Questions of wage policy, however, even when unconnected with protective policy, are often drawn into discussions on protective policy; and even the Berlin Conference, which was officially designated[14] "an international conference on the regulation of labour in industrial establishments, and in mining industries," frequently overstepped the limits of questions of purely protective policy. I feel myself fully justified, therefore, in touching upon a few of the further questions dealt with by the Conference. In an earlier treatise, written before the proclamation of the Imperial Decree of February 4th, 1890, I pointed out the need for the special cultivation of Labour Protection in mining industry, particularly in coal mining, and I expressed an opinion as to the advisability of establishing government mines as a kind of politico-social model to the rest; while, on the other hand, I declared against the necessity for the nationalisation of coal mines. Pamphlets of an opposing tendency, which circulated freely in the wake of the great coal strike of 1889, have, it is true, brought to light more and more reliable evidence; but hitherto I have found in them nothing to shake my confidence in the correctness of my fundamental contention: as far as I am concerned, I await without anxiety the issue of the latest Coal Trust. As I pointed out in the same treatise, the special danger of the strike agitation, attacking as it does the very centres of activity and channels of healthy movement in the social body, has unfortunately been only too fully exemplified. The coal strike, and the railway and dock strikes, have become samples, and are triumphantly quoted as typical instances of the success of the method. In the same treatise I raised the question whether the branches of industry under consideration should be constituted a department of the public service, involving special obligations and special safeguards against breach of contract, but also ensuring special security of work and a good standard of pay. This question has also risen to a high level of importance since that time; it does not, however, belong to the sphere of Labour Protection, and in this treatise I must therefore leave it on one side. But I consider myself bound to supplement the information given as to the means of avoiding strikes in the mining industry by bringing forward the communications made by the best informed English expert, who sat in the Berlin Conference (session of March 4). The reports read as follows: "Mr. Dale reminded the Conference that about twenty-five years ago numerous and protracted strikes took place in the north of England (in mining). In consequence of this, the employers met together to discuss means of regulating the wage question. At first they refused to treat with the workmen _in corpore_, but they finally decided on the advice of a few of their number more far-seeing than the rest, to recognise the union of miners belonging to one and the same mining district. This principle once admitted formed the groundwork of the prevailing system of the day for the settlement of all disputes. This method has obtained for twenty years. At first the representatives of the employers and workmen were only summoned to negotiate on special questions. The principle of settlement by arbitration was admitted in all questions, and was applied in the following manner: each party nominates an equal number of arbitrators, usually two, and these elect an umpire; this last office is willingly accepted by persons of the highest standing. Since the questions laid before the board of arbitration mostly concern the relation of wages to the market price of coal, this relation has to be first ascertained from examination of the employers' books by a legally qualified auditor, before a decision can be given. The most important experimental method, which has so far been adopted for regulating the relations between the rate of wage and the market price, has been the sliding scale. The sliding scale aims at the establishment of a numerical ratio between the rate of wage and the price of coal. At first this was sometimes determined by the following method: five consecutive years are taken, in the course of which considerable fluctuations have taken place in the market prices and the price of coal (the latter brought about by strikes, agreements, and arbitration). These five years are divided into twenty quarters; the average price of coal and the average rate of wage for each quarter is ascertained, and by this means the numerical ratio of the two amounts to each other is determined. The average of these numerical ratios is taken to express the normal relation which must exist between the rate of wage and and the market price of coal. Upon the scale thus determined the average market price for all coal produced in the district for the last preceding quarter is reckoned. The required numerical normal proportion between prices and wages is now computed on this basis, and the rate of wage for the current quarter thus determined. This calculation takes place for every ensuing quarter. These calculations are made by two qualified auditors, who are appointed by the labourers' union and the employers' union. The books of all the works are submitted to these experts, who are bound to the strictest secrecy as to the information thus obtained. They confine themselves to the task of attesting: (1) that during the latest preceding quarter, the average price of coal in the district is such and such; (2) that such and such a rate of wage results therefrom. In this way the workmen obtain, without the necessity of negotiation, of strikes, or arbitration, the same wages which they could not otherwise have obtained except by repeated efforts. The numerical ratio between wages and market prices is generally fixed for two years. After that time each party may give a half year's notice; but during six years, the first sliding scale introduced has only been subjected to very slight alterations. Notice will shortly be given by the employers in Northumberland and the miners in Durham. Mr. Dale believes that this double notice does not aim at the abolition of the system, but only at revision of the existing scale. In the districts where for the moment the sliding scale has been abolished, an attempt is being made to take the nearest conjectural price of the current quarter as the basis, instead of the price of the previous quarter. In this way the workmen would receive official information as to the market prices, which would be a great advantage, for strikes are most frequently caused by the ignorance of the workmen as to the real position of the coal trade. As to local questions which do not affect the whole district, they are settled by so-called 'joint committees,' or mixed commissions formed by an equal number of workmen and employers; either the President of the county court, or some other person of high position, is chosen as chairman. These commissions meet generally once a fortnight; their decisions operate from the date of the complaint. Mr. Dale asserts that the heads of the labour unions are, for the most part, intelligent men, and when this is the case, the relations between workmen and employers are easily arranged; in Durham, _e.g._, the miners union has four secretaries, who devote their whole time to the affairs of the association. In this district more than 500 disputes yearly are settled by the joint committee." At the request of the President, Mr. Dale gave some information as to the strike of the past year; it did not affect the northern district where good relations existed, although notice had previously been given on the sliding scale. He further pointed out that former strikes had often been caused by the fault of the foremen, who treated the workmen with undue harshness. "The introduction of joint committees, on which the workmen are equally represented, has had the effect of establishing better relations between the foremen and the miners. Mr. Dale considers this the best system for the avoidance of crises. The decisions pronounced by the board of arbitration, and by the joint committees, are generally accepted; thus the principle of decision by arbitration takes the place of that of decision by strikes." FOOTNOTE: [14] Concluding speech of the Prussian Minister of Commerce. CHAPTER XI. THE "LABOUR BOARDS" AND "LABOUR CHAMBERS" OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Of all the problems with which the science of government is confronted in the present and the near future, there are few in the domain of Social Policy of greater importance, or more fraught with serious possibilities in their results, than the establishment on a democratic basis, both in constitution and in administration, of the organs of Labour Protection. This tendency appears already in the demand for equal representation of both classes in the organisation of Labour Protection. The establishment by local governing authorities of industrial courts of arbitration has been a step in this direction, a step which has not entirely been retraced by recent legislation in Germany, dealing with such courts. The form which Social Democracy has given to this idea by the proposal of "Labour Boards" and "Labour Chambers," brought forward in the Auer Motion, is a matter of the highest interest. So far as I know, this form has received very little, or at any rate insufficient, attention in the Reichstag or the Press. This is the more surprising for two reasons, viz., the justice of its attempt at a better protective organisation, and the serious import of its evident tendency to evolve out of the Capitalist System a Social Democratic order of society. I think, therefore, that just because of this extreme step in organisation which the Auer Motion takes in proposing Labour Boards and Labour Chambers, as instruments of Labour Protection, it behoves me not to pass it by with indifference, but on the contrary to dwell upon it at some length. In the first place let us construct in our own minds a picture of the new form of organisation proposed in the Auer Motion. In the place of Art. IX. in the existing Imp. Ind. Code, a new Chap. IX. would have to be inserted, dealing with "an Imperial Labour Board, District Labour Boards, Labour Chambers, and Labour Courts of Administration" (§§ 131-143). 1. _The Imperial Labour Board and the Imperial Labour Parliament._ _The Imperial Labour Board._ Its organisation would be determined by special Imperial legislation. Probably equal representation of classes is intended in this Central Bureau, which would act together with the hitherto essentially bureaucratic Imperial Insurance Board. Its duties would consist: first, in supervising so far as possible, the whole system of Labour Protection as demanded in the Auer Bill (§§ 105-125); further, in affording protection against the competition of penal labour; finally, "in enforcing such measures and conducting such enquiries as may be necessary to the well-being of the whole body of wage-earners, including apprentices, in any kind of industry." Its duties would therefore extend far beyond the limits of Labour Protection in the strict sense, and it would be a general Central Bureau of aids to Labour, in which the Imperial Insurance Board would soon become incorporated. _The Labour Parliament_ (Diet of Labour Chambers). I take leave thus to designate the representative central organ proposed (although of course it is not brought forward in these terms in the heading of the new Chap. IX. of the Auer Bill) since it is clear that the Imperial Labour Board is practically only intended to be the executive organ of this democratic industrial Council of the nation. Sections 140-142 of the Auer Motion require that: § 140 "It shall be the duty of the Imperial Labour Board to summon once a year representatives from the collective Labour Chambers to a general deliberation on industrial interests. To this General Council each Labour Chamber shall send one delegate to represent the employers, and one the body of wage-earners. The choice of the representatives shall be made by each class separately. The chair shall be taken at the Council by a member of the Imperial Labour Board, but he and his colleagues shall have no right to vote. The Council shall determine its own standing orders and the orders of the day; the sittings to be public. § 141. The members of the Labour Chambers shall receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. § 142. The Imperial Government shall pay the costs of the arrangements enumerated in §§ 131-140; they shall be entered yearly in the imperial accounts." Thus we should have a national Labour Parliament--formed from the district Labour Chambers--with equal representation of both classes, receiving grants from the Imperial exchequer, undertaking the general supervision of industrial interests and acting as a check on the Imperial Labour Board. By the simple process of throwing overboard the nominees of the employers, this Labour Parliament might at any time become a pure parliament of labourers, or "People's Parliament," and the Imperial Labour Board might resolve itself into the central ministry of a purely "People's State." Such a state of things would obviously be the realisation of the extreme Social Democratic order of State. It must be admitted that no secret is made of this fact, nor yet of the _basis_ on which the whole edifice is raised. (2) _Labour Boards and Labour Courts of Arbitration, Labour Chambers._ The basis of the edifice is formed by Labour Boards and Courts of Arbitration, on the one hand (_i.e._ for executive purposes), and Labour Chambers on the other (_i.e._, for purposes of regulation). We shall, as far as possible, give the explanation of the matter in the words of the motion. _Labour Boards._ On this head the Auer Motion reads as follows: "§ 132_a_. Below the Imperial Labour Board come the Labour Boards which shall be appointed throughout the German Empire, in districts of not less than 200,000, nor more than 400,000 inhabitants, at the latest by Oct. 1, 1891. § 133. The Labour Board shall consist of a Labour Councillor and at least two paid officers; it must pass its rulings and decisions in full sitting. The Imperial Labour Board shall select the labour councillor from two candidates nominated by the Labour Chamber. The permanent paid officers, whose duty it is to assist the labour councillor in his task of supervision, shall be elected by the Labour Chamber, half from the employers, and half from the employed. In districts in which there are a considerable number of works employing chiefly female labour, some of the officials appointed shall be women. The same rules with regard to invalid and superannuation pensions shall apply to the officers of the Labour Boards, as apply to all other imperial officials. § 133_a_. The officers of the Imperial Labour Board, and the labour councillors or their paid assistants, shall have the right at any time to inspect all places of business (whether of State, municipal, or private enterprise) and to make such regulations as may appear necessary for the life and health of the workers employed. In the exercise of such supervision they shall be empowered with all the official authority of the local police magistrates. In so far as the rules laid down are within the official authority of the supervising officers, the employers and their staff shall be bound to render unhesitating obedience. The employer or his representatives shall have a right of appeal to the District Labour Board, to be lodged within a week, against the orders and rulings of individual officials, and a right of appeal against the District Labour Board's decision, also within a week, to the Imperial Labour Board. The Labour Board shall be bound to inspect all the works within a district at least once a year. The employers shall permit the official inspection to take place at any time when the work is being carried on, especially also at night. The inspecting officers shall be bound, except in cases of infringement of the law, to observe secrecy as to all information on the concerns of a business obtained by them in pursuit of their official duties. § 133_b_. The local police magistrates shall uphold the Labour Board in the exercise of its authority, and shall enforce obedience to its directions. § 133_c_. The Labour Board shall organize all free labour intelligence within its district, and serve in fact as a central bureau for this purpose. It shall also be empowered to appoint branch bureaux with this object, in such places as may seem suitable, and if there is no industrial union to undertake the duties the local police magistrates shall undertake them. § 133_d_. Every Labour Board shall publish a yearly report of its proceedings, copies of which shall be distributed gratuitously to the members of the Labour Chambers by the Imperial Labour Board and the Central District Courts. The report shall be submitted to the approval of the Labour Chamber before publication. The Imperial Labour Board shall draw up yearly, from the annual reports of the Labour Boards, a general report to be submitted to the _Bundesrath_ and the Reichstag. The reports of the District Labour Boards and the Imperial Labour Board shall be accessible to the public at cost price." The Labour Board of a district of from 200,000 to 400,000 inhabitants would be in the first place a modern kind of industrial inspectorate with offices filled from both classes--employers and employed--with a democratic system of election, and to which women would also be eligible. Even the presidency of this inspectorate would not be freely appointed by the government, which would have only the power of electing one out of two nominees of the Labour Chambers. The primary task of the board would take the form of Labour Protection, of centralization of labour intelligence, and of drawing up reports on matters concerning labour. The Labour Board is intended as the executive organ of the Labour Chambers, the parliamentary administration would therefore be general; even in reporting on industry the Labour Board would be subject to the approval of the Labour Chamber. It is evident that this Democratic organisation of courts, which would be powerless to act so long as both classes obstructed each other, might easily at one stroke, by turning out the nominees of the employers, be changed and developed into purely democratic district courts for the general protection of labour and the control of production. _Courts of Arbitration._ The Court of Arbitration as proposed by the Auer Motion, is, so to speak, the judicial twin brother of the Labour Board. According to § 137-137_e_, the Court of Arbitration would be a court of the first instance, for the settlement of disputes between employers and workmen. It would be formed by each Labour Chamber out of its numbers, and would consist of equal numbers of employers and of workmen. The chair would be taken by the labour councillor or one of his paid assistants. Equal representation of both classes would be required when pronouncing decisions. None but relations, employés, and partners in the business, would be permitted to be present during the deliberations in support of the disagreeing parties. There would be right of appeal to the Labour Chamber. The members of this Court of Arbitration would (like those of the Labour Chamber) (§ 130_a_) receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. Such would evidently be the working out of this system of combined class representation, of which, indeed, we already have an instance in the industrial courts of arbitration. _Labour Chambers._ These would form the foundation stone of the edifice, and they deserve the special attention of all who wish to know how Social Democracy means to attain her ends. I give verbatim the clauses dealing with this: "§ 134. For the representation of the interests of employers and their workmen, as well as for the support of the Labour Boards in the exercise of their authority, there shall be appointed from Oct. 1, 1891, in every Labour Board district, a Labour Chamber, to consist of not less than 24, and not more than 36 members, according to the number of different firms established in the district. The number of members for the separate districts shall be determined by the Imperial Labour Board. The members of the Labour Chambers shall be elected, the one half by employers of full age from amongst their numbers, the other half by workers of full age from amongst their numbers. The election shall be made on the principle of direct, individual, ballot voting by both sexes, a simple majority only to decide. Each class shall elect its own representatives. The mandate of the members of the Labour Chamber shall last for two years, opening and closing in each case with the calendar year. Simultaneously with the election of the members of the Labour Chamber proxies to the number of one-half shall be appointed. The proxies shall be those candidates who receive the greatest number of votes next after the elected members. In the case of equal votes lots shall be drawn. The selection of the polling day, which must be either a Sunday or festival, shall rest with the Imperial Labour Board, which shall also lay down the rules of procedure for the election. Employers and workmen shall be equally represented on the election committees. The time appointed for taking the votes shall be fixed in such a manner that both day and night shifts may be able to go to the poll. § 135. Besides fulfilling the functions assigned to them in §§ 106_a_, 110 and 121, the Labour Chambers shall support the Labour Boards by advice and active help in all questions touching the industrial life of their district. It shall be their special duty to make enquiry into the carrying out of commercial and shipping contracts; into customs, taxes, duties, and into the rate of wage, price of provisions, rent, competitive relations, educational and industrial establishments, collections of models and patterns, condition of dwellings, and into the health and mortality of the working population. They shall bring before the courts all complaints as to the conditions of industrial life, and they shall give opinion on all measures and legal proposals affecting industrial life in their district. Finally, they shall be courts of appeal against the decisions of the Courts of Arbitration. § 136. The president of the Labour Chamber shall be the labour councillor, or failing him, one of his paid officials. The president shall have no vote, except in cases in which the Labour Chamber is giving decision as a court of appeal against the decision of the Court of Arbitration. Equality of voting shall be counted as a negative. The president shall be bound to summon the Labour Chamber at least once a month, and also when required on the motion of at least one-third of the members of the Chamber. The Labour Chambers shall lay down their own working rules; their sittings shall be public." According to § 139 of the motion, the members of the Labour Chambers shall also be entitled to claim daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. Such are the Labour Chambers according to the proposals of the Social Democrats in 1885 and 1890. It is not without some astonishment that I note the tactical ingenuity displayed by the party even here. Everything that has anywhere appeared in literature, in popular representation, in judicial and administrative organisation, in the way of proposals for the centralisation and extension of labour intelligence, or of proposals for the representation of labour in Labour Protection, and in all agencies for the care of labour,--every scheme that has ever been put forward under different forms, either purely theoretic or practical, as, _e.g._, "Popular Industrial Councils," and "Industrial Courts of Arbitration"--is here used to make a part of a broad bridge, leading across to a "People's State." Nothing is lacking but the lowest planks, which could not, however, be dispensed with, a Local Labour Board and a Local Labour Chamber, as the sub-structure of the District Labour Boards and District Labour Chambers. The leaders of Social Democracy in the German Reichstag maintain that they are willing to join hands with the representatives of the existing order in their schemes of organisation. We have, therefore, no right to treat their scheme as consciously revolutionary. But this hardly affects the question. The question is whether--setting aside altogether the originators of the plan--such an organisation as that described above might not in fact readily lend itself as a battering-ram to overthrow the existing order and realise the aim of Socialism, whether, in fact, it would not of necessity be so used. This question may well be answered in the affirmative without casting the slightest reproach at the present leaders of the party. The regulating representative organs would have full and comprehensive authority in all questions of industry, social policy, and health, and in inspection of dwellings; and the executive organs, even up to the Imperial Labour Board, might be empowered by the mere alteration of a few sections of the Bill to exercise the same authority, subject to the consent of the majority in the National and District Chambers, and eventually in the Local Chambers. If these representative and administrative bodies ever came into existence, they would slowly but surely oust, not only the whole existing organisation of Chambers of Commerce and Industrial Councils, but also the Reichstag itself, and the Imperial Government, as well as the local corporate bodies; they would tear down every part of the existing social edifice. By the combined action of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag with the increasingly democratic tendencies of the local bodies, all this might come to pass in a very short space of time. I do not forget that the organisation is to be based in the first instance on equal representation of classes. On the first two, and eventually on the third, step of the judicial and representative edifice, as many representatives are given to capital as to labour. In so far the organisation is a hybrid of Capitalism and Social Democracy. For the moment, and in the present stage, it is, for this very reason, of special value to the Social Democrats, as it supplies a method of completely crippling the forces opposed to them in the existing order. For it will be sufficient in the day of fulfilment, _i.e._ when all is ripe for the intended change, to give one shake, so to speak, in order to burst open the half capitalistic chrysalis, and let the butterfly of a Social Democratic "People's State" fly out. The half capitalistic organisation would, I repeat, be of the greatest value at present, in the early preparatory work of the Social Democrats. First, because the working class would become practically and thoroughly accustomed to co-operation instead of to subordination as hitherto; this is the transition step which cannot be avoided, to the supremacy of the working class over the employers' class. Then, too, the proposed organisation would offer an excellent opportunity for passing through the transition step by step, by the continued weakening of the capitalist order of society in all its joints. The struggle with capital would have the sanction and the organised force of legislation. It would receive legal organisation, and would even be legally enjoined. This legalised battle would proceed over the whole circuit of industrial activity, including trade and transport, and including also the state regulated portion of it. In addition to this the organisation would be peculiarly fitted to cripple even the least objectionable bulwarks of capital, even the altogether unbiassed and nonpartisan operation of the local and district, and probably even ultimately of the imperial courts. The apparently equal coupling of the influence of both classes would lead to the result that the class which had the more energetic representatives and the slighter interest in the maintenance of the "working rules" would be able at any moment and at any point in the national industrial life, to bring everything to a deadlock. The labour councillor would be dependent on the Labour Chambers, and they in turn would be entirely dependent on the leaders of labour. By the provision that the president shall have no vote, and a tie in voting shall therefore count as a defeat, the workmen's electorate hold in their hands the power to obstruct at will any resolution, and especially to obstruct the issue of the working rules in any business, since the rules must be submitted to the approval of the Labour Chambers. The function of "supporting the Labour Boards by advice and active help in all questions touching the industrial life of their district," might very easily, by virtue of the above provision, be so abused by the Labour Chambers as to deprive individual industrial inspectors of all possibility of just and independent action, and hence by degrees to entirely cripple and destroy the value of the inspectorate as a whole; there can, I think be no doubt that before very long these powers would intentionally be used for this purpose. The action of a positive Social policy would be hopelessly crippled by an equally balanced class representation, while at the same time the existing order of industrial life would be disturbed and shaken down to the very last and smallest branches of industry. Nor would this be all, for such an organisation would secure fixed salaries for the staff of agitators in the Labour party, since the representatives would receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses from the Imperial exchequer. Debates and discussions might be carried on without intermission, the pay continuing all the time, for each Labour Chamber would be convened, not only once a month, but also at any time at the request of one-third of the members of the Labour Chamber, therefore of two-thirds of the labour representatives in the chamber. By virtue of the provision which gives them unlimited right of intervention, pretexts for convening frequent meetings would never be wanting. Hence it is evident that no more effectual machinery could be devised for the legal preparation for leading up the existing social order directly to the threshold of the "People's State." The attempt to convert the hybrid Capitalist-Socialist state to a pure Socialist state would be a perfectly simple matter, both in the Empire, the provinces, and the local districts, as soon as we had allowed Social Democracy one or two decades in which to turn the two-fold class representation to their own ends. By a single successful revolutionary "_coup_" in the chief city of the Empire, or in the chief cities of several countries simultaneously, representation of capital in the Labour Courts might be thrown overboard, and the "People's State" would be ready; the parliament of a purely popular government would hold the field, and the present representation of the nation which includes all classes and watches over the spiritual and material interests of the whole nation, might without difficulty be swept away from Empire, province, district and municipality. The construction of a complete system of "collective" production would be easy, for it would find the framework ready to its hand, complete from base to summit, fully mapped out on the plan. Perhaps the leaders themselves are not fully conscious of the lengths to which their proposed organisation may carry them. One can quite understand how from their standpoint they fail to see the end. They have pursued the path that seemed the most likely to lead to their goal of a radical change of the existing social order. The whole responsibility will rest with the parties in power, if they do more than hold out their little finger, which they have already done, to help Social Democracy along this path of organisation. CHAPTER XII. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PROTECTIVE ORGANISATION. In spite of all that can be urged against them, however, we may gather much, not merely negative, but also positive, knowledge from the proposals of Social Democracy. An organisation which shall be equipped with full authority, which shall be independent, complete in all its parts, which shall prevail uniformly and equally over the whole nation; an organisation which shall avoid the disintegration of collective aids to labour, which shall encourage industrial representation and prevent the division of authority amongst many different courts: such is the root idea of the proposal, and this idea is just, however unacceptable may appear to us the form in which it is clothed in the Auer Motion. Nothing is omitted in the Auer Motion except the assignment of their various duties to the various branches of the territorial representative bodies, and the working out of an elementary local organisation. I shall therefore try to work out the idea into a legitimate and possible form of development. In order to do this I must distinguish between the organisation required for executive and for representative bodies. As regards the executive organs, neither in Germany nor elsewhere is the industrial inspectorate at present furnished with a sufficient number of paid head-inspectors and sub-inspectors. Scarcely any of the sub-inspectors are drawn from the labouring class except in the case of England. Industrial inspection in Germany has not yet attained uniform extension over the whole Empire. The inspectors of the different provinces, and the chief provincial inspectors of the whole Empire require to be brought into regular communication with each other and with a Central Bureau adapted for all forms of aid to labour, including Labour Protection--an organ which of course must not interfere with the imperial, constitutional, and administrative independence of the States of the _Bund_. If the individual inspectors were everywhere carefully chosen, the assembling of all inspectors for deliberation with the Provincial and Imperial Central Bureaux of Labour Protection would in nowise retard, but on the contrary would serve to promote the complete and equitable administration of Labour Protection and all forms of aid to labour. This is the really fruitful germ contained in the idea of an "Imperial Labour Board." A Provincial Labour Board might effect much in the same direction. We are not without the beginnings of a uniform constitution of this kind: England has an Inspector-General, Austria a Central Inspector; in Switzerland the inspectors hold regular conferences; in France a comprehensive scheme of inspectoral combination is projected. The choice of persons as head and sub-inspectors, which is a matter of such great importance, might be subject to nomination by the united provincial inspectorate, coupled with instructions to direct particular attention to the selection of persons of practical experience, without social bias, well versed in knowledge of technical and hygienic matters, and suited to the special needs of the several posts. But the mere development of the inspectorate would not be the only step in the progress of the organisation of Labour Protection. We must go much further than this. The combined interests of economy, simplicity, efficiency, and permanence of service, point to the necessity of relieving as far as possible the regular governmental courts of the Empire, of the province, and of the municipality, of the extra burden of judicial and police administration involved in special branches of Labour Protection, and in all other special forms of aid to labour. The same considerations involve the necessity of gradually developing a better organisation of associated labour boards, an imperial board, and provincial, district, and municipal boards. We should thus get rid of the present confusion of divided authority without entirely depriving Labour Protection, both individual and general, of the assistance of the ordinary administrative courts. This is the task that I have repeatedly insisted upon as imperatively requiring to be taken in hand in connexion with Labour Insurance. The Auer Motion attempts to meet this necessity. Much also that is very just and very practical is contained in the idea of extending the sphere of operations of the Imperial Labour Board and of the District Boards so as to embrace not only Labour Protection but every form of aid to labour. Complaint is made that the organisation of Labour Insurance, in spite of all caution, has frequently proved a unpractical and costly piece of patchwork administration. Would it not then be more to the point, and would it not more easily fulfil the object of Labour Insurance and Labour Protection, and later on also of dwelling reform, inspection of work, etc., to create municipal district and provincial boards, with a great Imperial Central Bureau at the head? In order that each special branch of protection might receive proper attention, care would have to be taken in appointing to the offices of the collective organ, to insure the inclusion of the technical, juristic, police, hygienic, and statistic elements, and it would be necessary to group these elements into sections without destroying the unity of the service. There would be no lack of material, and it would not be difficult to secure a good, efficient, and economical working staff. No less reasonable is the idea of a "guild" of the eldest in the trade, or of a factory committee for the several large works with representation of both classes to appoint the district, provincial, and imperial labour councils. So far from being extreme in this respect, the Auer Motion is rather to be reproached with incompleteness, and a lack of provision for local Labour Councils and Labour Chambers, a point which we have already mentioned. But the representative bodies would have a significance extending far beyond the limits of Labour Protection--following the example of Switzerland the _von Berlepsch_ Bill admits factory labour-committees for dealing with matters concerning the factory working rules--they would be agencies for the care of labour, for the insurance of social peace, the protection of morality, the settlement of disputes and the maintenance of order in the factory, for the instruction and discipline of apprentices, for the control of the administration of protective legislation, for dealing with the wage question, in a word for softening the severe autocracy of the employers and their managers by the co-operation and advice of the workers. And in this case I have nothing further to add to what I have already said on the matter in a former article. But the supporter of even the most comprehensive scheme of labour representation does not stand committed to any such system of parliamentary management of industry by democratic majority as is proposed in the Auer Motion. The appointment and the working of the Labour Councils and Labour Chambers seems to me to introduce quite another element into the scheme. The regular, not merely the accidental and occasional, meeting of the inspectors with the body of employers and workers is a recognised practical necessity; a less bureaucratic system of industrial management is demanded on all sides. Regularly appointed ordinary and special meetings with the Labour Chambers would no doubt accomplish much. The inspector ought to be accessible to the expression of all wishes, advice, and complaints; but, on the other hand, he should not yield blind obedience to the rulings and representations of such organs. The industrial inspector must be, and must remain, an officer of the State, capable of acting independently of either class, appointed by government; only under these circumstances can he perform the duties of his office with firmness and impartial justice; in his appointment, in his salary, and in the exercise of his official duties he should be furnished with every guarantee to insure the independence of his judgment. It is nowise incompatible with this that he should be open to receive representations, whether in the way of advice, information, or complaint. The more he lays himself open to such in the natural course of work, the more important will his duties and position become, both on his circuits and in his office. The right of appeal to higher courts can always be secured to the Labour Chambers in cases of complaint. But how should representative bodies of this kind be formed? In answering this question care must be taken above all not to confound such public Labour Chambers as are suggested in the Auer proposals with voluntary joint committees of both classes. Each of these representative organs requires its own special constitution. The voluntary unions appoint committees for the security of class interests, and especially for the purpose of making agreements as to conditions of work. The election of these representative bodies ought to be made by both classes with unrestricted equal eligibility of all, including the female, members of any union, and without predominance of one class over the other, or of any section of one class. I have already in a former article (see also above, Chap. V.) laid great stress upon the development of this voluntary or conciliatory representation of both classes as a means of union which can never be replaced by the other or legal form of representation. The need for a representative system in the organs of the different forms of state-aid to labour is quite another matter. Their tasks require special, public, legalised representation, with essentially only the right of deliberation; but they may also decide by a majority of votes questions which lie within the sphere of their competence. As regards this public representation, it seems to me that joint appointment by direct choice of all the individuals in both classes, and out of either class, tends to the preservation of class enmity rather than to the mutual conciliation of the two classes and to the promotion of their wholesome joint influence on the boards. This kind of appointment might be dispensed with by limiting direct election as far as possible to the appointment of the elementary organs of representation; but for the rest by drawing the already existing authorities of a corporate kind into the formation of the system of general representation. Herein I refer to such already existing organs as those of labour insurance, Chambers of Commerce and Industrial guilds, railway boards, local and parliamentary representatives; and other elementary forms of corporate action might also be pressed into the service. A thoroughly serviceable, fully accredited _personnel_ would thus be secured for all Labour Boards. This system might even be applied to the election or appointment by lot of the Industrial Court of Arbitration. If the Labour Chambers were corporate bodies really representative of the trade, then the Industrial Courts of Arbitration, both provincial and local, might be constituted as thoroughly trustworthy public organs--without great expense, free from judicial interference, competent as courts of the first and second instance, and not in any way dependent on the communal authorities--either freely elected by the managers of the workmen's clubs and the employers' boards or companies, or chosen by lot from the _personnel_ of the already existing corporate institutions above referred to. The system of direct election by the votes of all the individual workers and employers would thus be avoided, and, more important still, this method would meet the difficulty which proved the crux of the whole question when the organisation of Industrial Courts of Arbitration was discussed in the last Reichstag: the distinction between young persons and adults would not enter into consideration, either in the case of Labour Chambers or of the Courts of Arbitration proceeding therefrom. There would be no need, under this system, that electors of either class should be required to limit their choice of representatives to members of their own class. Each body of electors would be free to fix their choice on the men who possessed their confidence, wherever such might be found. This would further help to stamp out the antagonisms which are excited by the separate corporate representation of both classes. Men would be appointed who would need no special protection against dismissal. But the representatives of the workers when chosen out of the midst of the working electorate might still receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. If this were entered to the account of the unions which direct the election through members of the managing committee, and if charged _pro rata_ of the electors appointed, a sufficient safeguard would be provided against the temptation to protract the sessions or to bribe professional electors. The foregoing sketch of the executive and representative development of the organisation of Labour Protection in the direction of united, simple, uniform, specialized organisation of the whole aggregate of aids to labour, ought at least to deserve some attention. Provided that the upward progress of our civilisation continues generally, this quite modern, hitherto unheard of, development of boards and representative bodies, even if only brought about piecemeal, will eventually be brought to completion, and will effect appreciable results in the State and in society. Some of the best forms of special boards, _i.e._ special representative bodies are already making their appearance, _e.g._ the "Labour Secrétariats" in Switzerland, the American "Boards of Labour," and the Russian "Factory Courts" under the governments of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Vladimir (Act of June 23, 1868). CHAPTER XIII. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR PROTECTION. Years and years elapsed before the first supporters of international protection received any recognition. Then immediately before the assembling of the Berlin Conference, the idea began to take an enormous hold on the public mind. Switzerland demanded a conference on the subject. Prince Bismark refused it. The Emperor William II. made an attempt towards it by summoning an international convention to discuss questions of Labour Protection. The inner springs of the movement for international Labour Protection are not, and have not been, the same everywhere. With some it is motived by the desire to secure for wage labour in all "Christian" States conditions compatible with human dignity and self-respect. This was the basis of the Pope's negotiations with the labour parties and with certain of the more high-minded sovereigns and princes. Others demand it in the combined interests of international equilibrium of competition and of Labour Protection, believing that these two may be brought into harmony by the international process, since if industry were equally weighted everywhere, and the costs of production, therefore, approximately the same everywhere, protected nations would not suffer in the world's markets. The first, the more "idealist" motive prevails most strongly among Catholics, and contains no doubt a deeper motive--namely, the preservation of the social influence of the Church. At the International Catholic Economic Congress at Suttich, in September, 1890, this view prevailed, with the support of the English and Germans, against the opposition of the Belgians and French. The light in which international Labour Protection is viewed depends upon whether the one or the other motive prevails, or whether both are working together. Two results are possible. Either limits will be set to the right of restricting protection of employment and protection in occupation by means of universal international legislation, or the interchange of moral influence between the various governments will be brought about by means of periodical Labour Protection Conferences and through the Press, which on the one hand would promote this interchange of influence, and on the other hand would, uniformly for all nations, demand and encourage the popular support of all protective efforts outside the limits of the State. Before the Berlin Conference it was by no means clear what was expected of international Labour Protection. Since the Conference it has been perfectly clear, and this alone is an important result. The international settlement which Prince Bismark had opposed ten years before did not meet with even timid support at the Berlin Conference. England and France were the strongest opponents of the idea of the control of international protective legislation. This can be proved from the reports of the Berlin Conference. The representative of Switzerland, H. Blumer, in the session of March 26, 1890, made a proposal, which was drawn up as follows:-- "Measures should be taken in view of carrying out the provisions adopted by the Conference. "It may be foreseen on this point that the States which have arrived at an agreement on certain measures, will conclude an obligatory arrangement; that the carrying out of such arrangement will take place by national legislation, and that if this legislation is not sufficient it will have to receive the necessary additions. "It is also safe to predict the creation of a special organ for centralizing the information furnished, for the regular publication of statistical returns, and the execution of preparatory measures for the conferences anticipated in paragraph 2 of the programme. "Periodical conferences of delegates of the different governments may be anticipated. The principal task of these conferences will be to develop the arrangements agreed on and to solve the questions giving rise to difficulty or opposition." Immediately upon the opening of the discussion on this motion, the delegates from Great Britain moved the rejection of the proposal of Switzerland, "since, in their opinion, an International Convention on this matter could not supply the place of special legislation in any one country. The United Kingdom had only consented to take part in the Conference on the understanding that no such idea should be entertained. Even if English statesmen had the wish to contract international obligations with respect to the regulation of factory labour, they would have no power to do so. It is not within their competence to make the industrial laws of their country in any way dependent on a foreign power." The Austrian delegate suggested that it be made quite clear "that the superintendence of the carrying out of the measures taken to realise the proposals of the Conference is exclusively reserved to the Governments of the States, and that no interference of a foreign power is permitted." The Belgian delegate "considers it advisable, in order that the deliberations of the Conference may keep their true character, not to employ the word 'proposals,' but to substitute for it 'wishes,' or 'labours.'" M. Jules Simon, the French delegate, states that he and his colleagues have received instructions which "forbid them to endorse any resolution which either directly or indirectly would appear to give immediate executive force to the other resolutions formulated by the Conference." And M. Tolain adds that "it is true that the French Government had always considered the meeting of the Conference exclusively as a means of enquiring into the condition of labour in the States concerned, and into the state of opinion in respect to it, but that they by no means intended to make it, at any rate for the present, the point of departure for international engagements." The idea of an international code of Labour Protection could not have been more flatly rejected. Hence the opposition to the idea manifested by Prince Bismark was fully borne out by the Conference. This opposition has everything in its favour, for it is clear that a uniform international code of Labour Protection would supply boundless opportunities for friction and for stirring up international commercial quarrels. If it were desired to establish Labour Protection guaranteed by international agreement, it would be found that there would be as many disturbances of international peace as there are different kinds of industry, nay, I will even say, as there are workmen. The countries whose administration was best and most complete would be the very ones that would be most handicapped: seeing that they could expect only a very minimum of real reciprocity from those other contracting powers whose administration was faulty, and where a strong national sentiment was lacking in the workers, owing to their miserable and penurious condition in the absence of effective protection for labour. Accurately to supervise the observance of such an international agreement we should require an amount of organisation which it is quite beyond our power to supply. But even on paper, international labour legislation has no significance beyond that of creating international discontent and agitation, and of supplying political animosity with inexhaustible materials for arousing international jealousy. The Berlin Conference has negatively produced a favourable effect by the protest of England and France, if one reflects how fiercely the scepticism of Bismark's policy was attacked before the meeting of the Conference. Repeated readings of the reports of the Conference have confirmed me in the impression that Prince Bismark was fully upheld by the Conference in his opposition to the establishment of Labour Protection by international agreement. But I have felt it necessary to clearly establish the grounds on which the opposition to this form of protection is based. The moral influence of the international Conference, however, has been on the other hand something more than "vain beating the air." This is already shown in the increased impetus given to the improvement of national labour-protective legislation. The conclusions arrived at by the Conference as to the international furtherance of Labour Protection are, it is true, of the nature of recommendations merely, and are in nowise binding on the governmental codes of each country. But even as recommendations they are practically of the greatest value. None of the nations represented will venture, I think, to disregard the force of their moral influence. All the means recommended by the Conference have promise of more or less success. Some of the proposals, for instance, are: the repetition of international Labour Protection Conferences, the appointment of a general, adequate, and fully qualified industrial inspectorate, the international interchange of inspectors reports, the uniform preparation of statistics on all matters of protection, the international interchange of such statistics, and of all protective enactments issued either legislatively or administratively.[15] But what of the proposal for the appointment of an international commission for the collection and compilation of statistics and legislative materials, for the publication of these materials, and for summoning Labour Protection Conferences, and the like? And what would this proposal involve? None of the objections which can be urged against the enforcement of an international code of Labour Protection would apply to this. The commission would be well fitted to help forward the international development, on _uniform lines_, of labour protective legislation, without in any way fettering national independence. Its moral influence would be of great international value. What it would involve is also easy to determine. Such a commission would be an international administrative organ for the spread and development of Labour Protection on uniform lines in all countries; a provision by International Law for the enforcement of the international moral obligations arising out of protective right. That is really what the Labour Protection Conferences would be if they met periodically as suggested At the Berlin Conference this at least was felt when it was said that the Conference was indeed less than a treaty-making Congress, but more than a scientific Congress. "International Conferences may be divided into two categories. In the first the Plenipotentiaries of different States have to conclude Treaties, either political or economic, the execution of which is guaranteed by the principles of international law; to the second category belong those Conferences whose members have no actual powers, and give their attention to the scientific study of the questions submitted to them, rather than to their practical and immediate solution. Our Conference, from the nature of its programme, and the attitude of some of the States good enough to take part in it, has a character of its own, for it cannot pass Resolutions binding on the Governments, nor may it restrict itself to studying the scientific sides of the problems submitted to its examination. It could not aspire to the first of these parts; it could not rest content with the second. The considerations which have been admitted in the Commissions relative to all the questions contained in the programme have been inspired by the desire of showing the working population that their lot occupies a high place in the attention of the different Governments; but these considerations have had necessarily to bend to others which we cannot put aside. In the first place, there was the wish to unite all the States represented at the Conference in the same sentiment of devotion to the most numerous and the most interesting portion of society. It would have been grievous not to arrive at the promulgation of general principles, by means of which the solution of the most important half of the social problem should be attempted. It was evidently not possible to arrive at once at an agreement on all its details. But it was necessary to show the world that all the States taking part in the Conference were met in the same motives of humanity." The proposal of a commission for summoning repeated conferences, international, uniform gatherings of representatives of all non-governmental agencies of Labour Protection, for the purpose of dealing uniformly with the requirements of a progressive policy in national labour-protective legislation, was a summing up of the demands urged by the Conference for a strong, international, administrative organisation for the furtherance of Labour Protection by the international exchange of moral persuasion, but without the enforcement of a code of international application. From a scientific point of view it is of the highest interest to observe how international right, and even to some extent an international administrative right, is here breaking out in an entirely new direction. Treaties between two or more, or all, civilized States have hitherto mainly been treaties for combined action in certain eventualities (treaties of alliance), or territorial treaties for defining spheres of influence. Or else they have been treaties for the reciprocal treatment of persons or of goods passing between or remaining in the territories of the respective contracting States: migration treaties, commercial treaties, treaties concerning pauper aliens, tariff treaties and other treaties. Or they have been treaties for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases. The exercise of international activity in the creation, development, and regulation of an international uniform Social Policy would be quite a new departure. Probably the idea of Switzerland has not been thrown out altogether in vain. FOOTNOTE: [15] Proposals VI., I_a-d_, and II. I_c_ is as follows: "All the respective States, following certain rules, for which an understanding will have to be arrived at, will proceed periodically to publish statistical reports with respect to the questions included in the proposals of the Conference." CHAPTER XIV. THE AIM AND JUSTIFICATION OF LABOUR PROTECTION. The aim and justification of Labour Protection have I think become sufficiently clear in the course of our inquiry. It is now only necessary to recapitulate. Labour Protection, especially protection by limitation of employment, and protection in occupation, is first and foremost the social care of the present and of all future generations, security against neglect of their spiritual, physical, and family life through the unscrupulous exploitation of wage-labour. Hence Labour Protection is indirectly protection also of the capitalist classes of the future, and therefore far from being unjust, it even acts in the highest interests of that part of the nation which by virtue of the fact of property or ownership is not in need of any special Labour Protection. In fulfilling its purpose, Labour Protection even goes beyond the work of upholding and strengthening national labour, when it takes the form of internationally uniform Labour Protection such as was lately projected at the Berlin Conference, and such as is becoming more and more the goal of our efforts. This international Labour Protection is a universal demand of humanity, morality and religion, especially from the standpoint of the Church, like that of international protection of all nations against slavery, but it is also no doubt demanded in the interests of international equilibrium of competition. The aim of Labour Protection for the worker individually lies far beyond mere industrial protection. Protection of labour extends to the person of individual labourers and their freedom as regards religious education, instruction, learning, and teaching, social intercourse, morality and health, and especially does it afford to every man security of family life. In this social and individual aim lies its justification, subject to certain conditions. These conditions we have already examined. The first condition is, that special protection shall only be used to guard against distinct dangers arising out of employment in service. Next, Labour Protection is only justified in dealing with such dangers as cannot or can no longer be adequately guarded against by any or all of the old forms of protection, viz., self-help, family protection, private agencies and non-governmental corporate agencies, or the protection of the regular administrative and judicial authorities, and even with such dangers only so far as is absolutely necessary. And lastly, the extraordinary State protection contained in the several labour-protective enactments must be adapted to the suppression of such dangers altogether. Bearing in mind these conditions, it will be found on examination of the several measures of Labour Protection, as they appear in the resolutions of the Berlin Conference and in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, that not one of them oversteps these limits. The labour protective code as already existing, and as projected by government, nowhere stretches its authority beyond the specified point, either in its scope, extension or organisation; at present it rather errs on the side of caution, and in many respects it does not go nearly so far as it might. This also I claim to have shown in the foregoing pages. This fact alone fully justifies the policy of Labour Protection as at present projected by the German government. It is in nowise intended (as shown in Chaps. IV. to X.) by this protective policy to supplant and replace free self-protection and mutual protection, or the ordinary State protection of common law. No addition to Labour Protection will be permitted except where special need exists. In no case shall a larger measure of protection be afforded than necessary. There is no question of treating all and everywhere alike the various classes of industrial wage-labour needing protection. But rather that complete elasticity of treatment is accorded, which is required in view of the variety of needs for protection and of the different degrees of difficulty of applying it; it is this variety which necessitates extraordinary State intervention, extraordinary alike in scope, basis and organisation. Labour Protection has not, it is true, by any means reached its full development either in aim and scope or in organisation. None of those further demands, however, from various quarters, which I have treated in this book as within the range of discussion overstep in any essential degree the limits imposed on Labour Protection, regarded as special and supplementary intervention of the State. Even the Auer Motion when carefully examined--if we set aside the general eight hours day and certain special features of organisation, in particular its claim to include in its scope the whole of industry--is not really as extravagant as it appears at first sight; for although indeed it demands complete Labour Protection for all kinds of industrial work, it requires only the application of the same special measures as are also demanded in other quarters, and as I have shown to be justified, except in a few special cases where it calls for more drastic measures. We have seen also that the policy of Labour Protection does not involve a kind of State intervention hitherto unknown. The State has long afforded regular administrative and judicial protection to the work of industrial wage-service, and has even interfered in a special manner in the case of children, young men, young women and adult women; and for still longer in the case of adult men, by affording protection in the way of limitation of employment, truck protection and protection in occupation, and by affording protection of contract through the Industrial Regulations, applied to non-factory as well as to factory labour. The application of protection by limitation of employment is thus far from being the first exercise of State interference with the hitherto unrestricted freedom of contract. Nothing will be found in the developments of protection here dealt with, that has not long ago been demanded and granted elsewhere, chiefly in England, Austria and Switzerland. The economic burden imposed upon the nation by Labour Protection, when compared with that of Labour Insurance, which we have already, will be found to be comparatively small. Those measures which call for the greater sacrifices--protection of married women, and regulation of the factory ten hours working-day--are recommended on all sides by way of international uniform regulations. Freedom of contract will not be impaired, since such adults as are included under Labour Protection stand in special need of protection, and are as incapable of self-defence as minors in common law; we have discussed and proved this contention point by point. This will certainly soon be recognised generally, even by England and Belgium, whose representatives at the Berlin Conference laid such stress on freedom of contract for adults. An international and internationally administered code for the whole of Labour Protection is strictly to be avoided. The wider measures of Labour Protection demanded by the Berlin Conference, and the _von Berlepsch_ Bill,[16] I conclude therefore to be nothing more than a fully justifiable and harmless corollary and supplement to the Social Policy of the Emperor William II. and of Prince Bismark. By following in the paths already trodden without ill results by separate countries, long ago by some, only lately by others, in paths therefore which have to a certain degree been explored, this policy will need to be subjected to fewer alterations than that great and noble policy of Labour Insurance which has struck out in entirely new paths, and too often worked in consequence by somewhat unpractical methods. FOOTNOTE: [16] See Appendix. APPENDIX. INDUSTRIAL CODE AMENDMENT BILL (GERMANY). [_June 1st, 1891_]. We, William, by the grace of God Emperor of Germany, etc., decree in the name of the Empire, by and with the consent of the Federal Council and Reichstag, as follows:-- _Article I._ After § 41 of the Industrial Code shall be inserted: § 41_a_. Where, in accordance with the provisions of §§ 105_b_ to 105_h_, employment of assistants, apprentices and workmen is prohibited in any trading industry on Sundays and holidays, no industrial business shall be carried on on those days in public sale-rooms. This provision shall not preclude further restrictions by common law of industrial business on Sundays and holidays. _Article II._ After § 55 of the Industrial Code shall be inserted. § 55_a_. On Sundays and holidays (§ 105_a_, 2) all itinerant industrial business, so far as it is included in § 55 (1) 1-3, shall be prohibited, as well as the industrial business of the persons specified in § 42_b_. Exceptions may be allowed by the lower administrative authorities. The Federal Council is empowered to issue directions as to the terms and conditions on which exceptions may be allowed. _Article III._ Chapter VII. of the Industrial Code shall be amended as follows:-- CHAPTER VII. Industrial workers (journeymen, assistants, apprentices, managers, foremen, mechanics, factory workers). I. GENERAL RELATIONS. § 105. The settlement of relations between independent industrial employers and workers shall be left to voluntary agreement, subject to the restrictions laid down by imperial legislation. § 105_a_. Employers cannot oblige their work people to work on Sundays or holidays. This, however, does not apply to certain kinds of work mentioned further on. Holidays are determined by the State Governments in accordance with local customs and religious belief. § 105_b_. There shall be no work on Sundays and holidays in mines, salines, smelting works, quarries, foundries, factories, workshops, carpenters' yards, masons' and shipbuilders' yards, brick-fields, and buildings of any kind. For every Sunday and holiday the workpeople of such establishments must be allowed a rest of at least 24 hours, for two consecutive holdings of 36 hours; and for Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide of 48 hours. The period of rest must be counted from midnight, and in the case of two consecutive holidays must last till 6 p.m. of the second day. In establishments where regular day and night gangs are employed, the period of rest may commence at any time between 6 p.m. of the preceding week-day and 6 a.m. of the Sunday or holiday, provided that the work is completely suspended for 24 hours from such commencement. The assistants, apprentices and workpeople in small trades and handicrafts must not be employed on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday; on other Sundays and holidays they must not be employed for more than five hours. By statutory regulation of the parish or municipal authorities, such Sunday work can be further restricted or entirely prohibited for particular branches of trade. For the last four weeks before Christmas, and for particular Sundays and holidays, which, owing to local conditions call for greater activity in trades, the police authorities may order an extension of the hours of work up to ten. The hours of work must be so fixed as to admit of attendance at Divine worship. The hours may be variously fixed for the different branches of trading industry. § 105_c_. The provisions of 105_b_ do not apply: 1. To work which must be carried on without delay in cases of necessity and in the public interest; 2. To the work of keeping the legally prescribed register of Sunday labour; 3. To the work of watching, cleaning and repairing the workshops, required for the regular continuance of the main business or of some other business, nor to any work on which depends the resumption of the full daily working of the business, wherever such work cannot be carried on during working days; 4. To such work as may be necessary in order to protect from damage raw materials or the produce of work, wherever such cannot be carried on during working days; 5. To the supervision of such work as is carried on on Sundays and holidays, in accordance with the provisions of clauses 1 to 4. Employers must keep an accurate register of the workmen so employed on each Sunday and holiday, stating their number, and the hours and nature of the work. The register must be produced for examination at any time at the request of the local police authorities or of the official specified in § 139_b_. If the Sunday employment exceeds three hours, or prevents the workpeople from attending Divine worship, a rest of 36 hours must be given to such workpeople every third Sunday, or they must be free every second Sunday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Exceptions to the above may be allowed by the lower administrative authorities, provided that the workpeople are not prevented from attending Divine worship on Sundays, and that a rest of 24 hours is granted to then on a week-day in lieu of Sunday. § 105_d_. The Federal Council may make further exceptions to the provisions of § 105_b_, 1 in certain defined industries, especially in the case of operations which do not admit of delay or interruption, or which are limited by natural causes to certain times and seasons, or the nature of which necessitates increased activity at certain times of the year. The regulation of the work permitted in such business on Sundays and holidays, and the regulation of the conditions on which such work shall be permitted, shall be uniform for all business of the same kind, and shall be in accordance with the provision of § 105_c_, 3. The regulations laid down by the Federal Council shall be published in the _Imperial Law Gazette_, and shall be laid before the Reichstag at the next session. § 105_e_. Exceptions to the restrictions of work on Sundays and holidays may also be made by the higher administrative authorities in trades which supply the daily necessaries of life to the public, and in those that require increased activity on those days; also in establishments the working of which depends upon the wind or upon the irregular action of water power. The regulation of these exceptions shall be subject to the provision of § 105_c_, 3. The procedure on application for permission of exceptions in the case of establishments employing machinery worked wholly or mainly by wind or by the irregular action of water power, shall be subject to the enactments of §§ 20 and 21. § 105_f_. In order to prevent a disproportionate loss or to meet an unforeseen necessity, the lower administrative authorities may also allow exceptions for a specified time to the provision of § 105_b_, 1. The orders of the lower administrative authorities shall be issued in writing, and must be produced by the employer for examination in the office of the business at the request of the official appointed for the revision. A copy of the orders shall be hung up inside the place of business in some spot easily accessible to the workers. The lower administrative authorities shall draw up a register of the exceptions granted by them, in which shall be entered the name of the firm, the kind of work permitted, the number of workers employed in the business, and the number required for such Sunday or holiday labour, also the duration of such employment and the grounds on which it is permitted. § 105_g_. The prohibition of Sunday work may be extended by Imperial Ordinance, with consent of the Federal Council, to other trades besides those mentioned in the Act. These ordinances shall be laid before the Reichstag at the next session. The provisions of §§ 105_c_ to 105_f_ shall apply to the exceptions to be permitted to such prohibition. § 105_h_. The provisions of §§ 135_a_ to 105_g_ do not preclude further restrictions by common law of work on Sundays and holidays. The Central Provincial Court shall be empowered to permit departures from the provisions of § 105_b_, 1, for special holidays which do not fall upon a Sunday. The provision does not apply to Christmas, Easter, Ascension Day or Whitsuntide. § 105_i_. The provisions of §§ 105_a_, 1, 105_b_ to 105_g_ do not apply to public houses and beerhouses, concerts, spectacles, theatrical representations, or any kind of entertainment, nor to carrying industries. Industrial employers may only exact from their workpeople on Sundays and holidays such work as admits of no delay or interruption. § 106. Industrial employers who have been deprived of civil rights shall not, so long as they remain deprived of these rights, undertake the instruction of workers below 18 years of age. The police authorities may enforce the dismissal of workers employed in contravention of the foregoing prohibitions. § 107. Unless special exceptions are made by Imperial Ordinance, persons under age shall only be employed as workers on condition that they are furnished with a work register. At the time of engaging such workers, the employer shall call for the work register. He shall be bound to keep the same, produce it upon official demand, and return it at the legal expiration of service relations. It shall be returned to the father or guardian if demanded by them, or if the worker has not yet completed his sixteenth year, in other cases it shall be returned to the worker himself. With consent of the local authorities of the district specified in § 108, the work register may also be handed over to the mother or other relation, or directly to the worker himself. The forgoing provisions do not apply to children who are under compulsion to attend the national schools. § 108. The work register shall be supplied to the worker by the police authorities of that district in which he has last made a protracted stay; but if this was not within the limits of the German Empire, then it shall be free of costs and stamp duty in any German district chosen by him. It shall be supplied at the request or with the consent of the father or guardian; and if the opinion of the father cannot be obtained, or if the father refuses consent on insufficient grounds, and to the disadvantage of the worker, the local authorities shall themselves grant consent. Before the register is supplied it must be certified that the worker is no longer under compulsion to attend school, and an affadavit must be made that no work register has previously been supplied to him. § 109. If the work register is completely filled up, or can no longer be used, or if it has been lost or destroyed, another work register shall be supplied in its place by the local authorities of the district in which the holder of the register has last made a protracted stay. The register which has been filled up, or which can no longer be used, shall be closed by an official mark. If the new register is issued in the place of one which can no longer be used, or which has been lost or destroyed, the same shall be notified therein. In such case a fee of fifty pfennig may be charged. § 110. The work register (§ 108) must contain the name of the worker, the place, year and day of his birth, the name and last residence of his father or guardian, and the signature of the worker. The register shall be supplied under seal and signature of the magistrate. The latter shall draw up a schedule of the work registers supplied by him. The kind of work registers to be used shall be determined by the Imperial Chancellor. § 111. On admission of the worker into service relation, the employer shall enter, in the place provided for that purpose in the register, the date of admission, and the nature of the employment, and at the end of the term of service, the date of leaving, and if any change has been made in the employment, the nature of the last employment. The entries shall be made in ink, and shall be signed by the employer or by the business manager authorised thereto by him. The entries shall contain no mark intended to attribute a favourable or unfavourable character to the holder of the register. The entry of a judgment upon the conduct or manner of work of the worker, and other entries or marks in or on the register for which no provision is made in this Act, shall not be permitted. § 112. If the work register has been rendered unfit for use by the employer, or has been lost or destroyed by him, or if signs, entries, and marks have been made in or on the register, or if the employer refuses without legal grounds to deliver up the register, the issue of a new register may be demanded at the cost of the employer. Any employer who in defiance of his legal obligation has not delivered up the register in due time, or who has neglected to make the requisite entries, or who has made illegal signs, entries or marks, may be forced to compensate the worker. The claim for compensation expires if no complaint nor remonstrance is made within four weeks. § 113. On quitting service workers may demand a testimonial setting forth the nature and duration of their employment. This testimonial may, at request of the workers, bear evidence as to their conduct and manner of working. Employers are forbidden to add irrelevant remarks concerning the workmen other than those required for the purpose of the testimonial. If the worker is under age, the testimonial may be demanded by the parent or guardian. They may demand that the testimonial shall be handed to them and not to the worker. With consent of the local authorities of the district, specified in § 108, the testimonial may be handed directly to the worker himself, even against the will of the father or guardian. § 114. At the request of the worker the local police magistrate shall confirm the entries in the register and in the testimonial handed to the worker, free of costs and stamp duty. § 115. Industrial employers shall be bound to reckon and pay the wages of the worker in coin of the realm. They shall not credit the workers with goods. But they may be permitted to supply the workers under their care with provisions at cost price, with dwellings and land at the customary local rate of rent and hire, with firing, lighting, board, medicines and medical assistance, also with tools and materials for work, at the average cost price, and to charge such to their account in payment of wage. Materials and tools may be supplied for contract work at a higher price, provided the agreement be made beforehand, and the price do not exceed the customary local prices. § 115_a_. Wage payment and payments on account shall not be made in public-houses or beer-houses or sale-rooms, without the consent of the lower administrative authorities; they shall not be made to a third party on pretext of legal claims thereto, or on production of documents showing legal claims, such being legally void under § 2 of the Appropriation of Work Wage or Service Wage Act of June 21st, 1869 (_Federal Law Gazette_, p. 242). § 116. Workers whose claims have been dealt with in a manner contrary to § 115 may at any time demand payment in accordance with § 115, and no objection shall be urged against such claim on the ground that they have already received something in lieu of payment. The first payment, if it still remains in the hands of the recipient, or if he is still deriving advantage therefrom, shall be handed over to the workers' provident fund, or, in default of such, to such other fund existing in the locality for the benefit of the workers, as shall be determined by the local authorities, or, in default of such, to the local poor fund. § 117. Agreements made in contravention of § 115 shall be void. The same shall apply also to agreements between industrial employers and their workpeople as to the supply of goods to the latter from certain shops, and to agreements as to the appropriation of the earnings of the latter to any other purpose than to contributing to schemes for the improvement of the condition of the workers or their families. § 118. Claims for goods supplied on credit in contravention of § 115, can neither be sued for by the creditor, nor charged to account, nor otherwise made good, whether the transaction was made directly between the parties, or indirectly. Such claims shall be appropriated to the funds specified in § 116. § 119. The expression "industrial employers," as used in §§ 115 to 118, includes members of their families, their assistants, agents, managers, overseers and foremen, and other directors of industry in whose business any one of the persons here mentioned directly or indirectly takes part. § 119_a_. Retentions of wage reserved by the employer of industry as security for compensation for loss arising from illegal dissolution of service relations, or as a stipulated fine imposed in such a case, shall not exceed a quarter of the usual wage in single wage payments, and the nett amount shall not exceed the amount of the average weekly wage. By statutory provision of a parish or any larger corporate union it may be determined for all industrial trades, or for certain kinds of the same: 1. That wage payments and payments on account shall be made at certain fixed intervals, which shall not be longer than one month, and not shorter than one week; 2. That the wage earned by workers under age shall be paid to the parents or guardians, and only with their written consent or voucher for the receipt of the last wage payment directly to the young workers themselves; 3. That industrial employers shall give information within certain fixed periods, to the parents or guardians as to the amount of wage paid to workers under age. § 119_b_. The workers specified in §§ 115 to 119_a_ include also such persons as are employed by certain specified industrial employers, outside the work places of the latter, in the preparation of industrial products, even if the raw materials and accessories are furnished by the workers themselves. § 120. Employers of industry shall be bound in the case of workers under eighteen years of age who attend a place of instruction recognised by the local authorities or by the State, to grant them for such purpose the requisite time, to be fixed by the appointed authority. Instruction shall only take place on Sundays, provided that the hours of instruction are so fixed that the scholars may not be prevented from attending Divine Service or any special services appointed by the spiritual authorities of their respective denominations. Exceptions to this provision may be granted by the Central Court until October 1, 1894, in the case of existing educational schools, attendance at which is not compulsory. Educational schools, as understood by this provision, include establishments in which instruction is given in female handiwork and domestic work. By statutory provision of a parish or any larger corporate union (§ 142) obligation may be imposed on male workers under eighteen years of age to attend an educational school, where such obligation is not imposed by common law. In the same way necessary provisions may be made for the enforcement of such obligation. In particular, statutory provisions may be made to ensure the regular attendance at school of such children as are under the age of compulsion, and to determine the obligations of the parents, guardians and employers in this respect, and directions shall be issued for the insurance of order in the school and of the proper behaviour of the scholars. Such persons as attend a guild school or other educational or technical school, shall be released from obligation imposed by statutory provisions to attend an educational school, where such guild or other educational or technical schools are recognised by the higher administrative authorities as fitting substitutes for the instruction of the general educational schools. § 120_a_. Employers of industry shall be bound so to arrange and maintain their workrooms, business plant, machines and tools, and so to regulate their business, that the workers may be protected against dangers to life and health, so far as the nature of the business may allow. In particular, attention shall be paid to the supply of sufficient light, a sufficient cubic space of air and ventilation, to the removal of all dust and dirt arising from the work, and of all smoke and gases developed thereby, as well as to any risks inherent in it. Also such arrangements shall be made as are necessary to protect the workers against dangerous contact with the machines or parts of the machinery, or against other dangers proceeding from the nature of the place of business or of the business itself, especially against danger arising from fire in the factory. Lastly, such orders shall be issued for the regulation of business and the conduct of the workers, as may be necessary to ensure freedom from danger in work. § 120_b_. Employers of industry shall be bound to make such arrangements and to issue such orders for the conduct of the workers as may be necessary to ensure the maintenance of decency and good morals. In particular, separation of the sexes in their work shall be enforced so far as the nature of the business may permit, where the maintenance of good morals and decency cannot be otherwise ensured in the arrangement of the business. In establishments where the nature of the business renders it necessary for the workers to change their clothes and wash themselves after their work, sufficient separate rooms for dressing and washing shall be provided for each sex. Sufficient lavatories shall be provided for the number of the workers, and they shall be so arranged as to meet all requirements of health, and to allow of their being used without offence to decency and morality. § 120_c_. Employers of industry employing workers under eighteen years of age shall be bound in the arrangement of their places of business, and in the regulation of their business, to take such precautions for the security of health and morals as may be required by the age of the workers. § 120_d_. The appointed police authorities shall be empowered to issue orders for separate establishments for the carrying out of such measures as may seem necessary for the maintenance of the principles laid down in §§ 120_a_ to 120_c_, and such as may seem practicable according to the nature of the establishment. They may order that suitable rooms, heated during the cold season, be placed free of charge at the disposal of the workers, in which the meal times may be spent outside the workrooms. A sufficient delay must be granted for the carrying out of the measures ordered, unless they be directed to the removal of some pressing danger, threatening life or health. In the case of establishments already existing at the time of the proclamation of this Act (not including extensions and outbuildings since added), only such requirements shall be demanded as may seem necessary for the removal of grave evils endangering the life, health or morals of the workers, and only such as may seem practicable without disproportionate expense. The employer shall have right of appeal within two weeks to the higher administrative authorities against the order of the police magistrate; and within four weeks to the Central Court against the decision of the higher administrative authorities. The decision of the Central Court shall be final. If the order is contrary to the directions issued by the authorised trade guild for precautions against accidents, the president of the trade guild shall be empowered to use the afore-named remedies within the period granted to the employer. § 120_e_. By decision of the Federal Council, directions may be issued, showing what requirements shall be sufficient in certain kinds of establishments for the maintenance of the principles laid down in §§ 120_a_ to 120_c_. Where such directions are not issued by decision of the Federal Council, they may be issued by order of the Central Provincial Court or by police regulations of such courts as are empowered to issue the same. Before the issue of such orders and police regulations, opportunity shall be given to the presidents of trade guilds or of sections of trade guilds, to express their opinion thereon. The provisions of § 79, I. of the Insurance against Accidents Act of July 6, 1884, do not apply to this. In the case of those industries in which the health of the workers would be endangered by the excessive duration of daily work, orders may be issued by decision of the Federal Council as to the duration, beginning and ending of the time permitted for daily work, and as to the intervals to be granted; and the necessary orders may be issued for the enforcement of these directions. Directions issued by decision of the Federal Council shall be published in the _Imperial Law Gazette_, and shall be laid before the Reichstag for discussion at the next session. II. RELATIONS OF JOURNEYMEN AND ASSISTANTS. § 121. Journeymen and assistants shall be bound to obey the orders of the employer with respect to the work entrusted to them, and to comply with domestic arrangements; they shall not be obliged to perform domestic work. § 122. Working relations between journeymen or assistants and their employers may be dissolved by notice given fourteen days previously by either party, unless agreement to the contrary has been made. If other periods of notice have been agreed on, they must be equal for both parties. Agreements made in contravention of this provision shall be void. § 123. Journeymen and assistants may be dismissed before the expiration of the contract time, and without notice: 1. If, in concluding the contract of work they have deceived the employer by producing a false or falsified work register or testimonial, or if they have deceived him as to the existence of some other working relation in which they already stand; 2. If they are guilty of theft, appropriation, embezzlement, deceit or immoral living; 3. If they have quitted work without permission, or have otherwise persistently refused to fulfil the obligations imposed upon them by the contract; 4. If, in spite of warnings, they carelessly carry about fire and light; 5. If they are guilty of violence or abuse towards the employer or his representatives or towards the relatives of the employer or of his representatives; 6. If they are guilty of wilful and illegal damage to the injury of the employer or of a fellow-worker; 7. If they lead or seek to lead relatives of the employer or of his representatives or of their fellow-workers into illegal or immoral courses, or if they unite with relatives of the employer or of his representatives in committing illegal or immoral acts; 8. If they are incapable of continuing work or are afflicted with serious illness. In the cases mentioned under Nos. 1 to 7, dismissal shall no longer be permissible if the grounds thereof have been known to the employer for longer than one week. In the case mentioned under No. 8, it shall be determined in accordance with the contract and with general legal enactments, how far claims for compensation may be preferred by the party dismissed. § 124. Journeymen and assistants may quit work without notice before the expiration of the contract time: 1. If they become incapable of continuing work; 2. If the employer or his representatives are guilty of violence or abuse towards the workers or their relatives; 3. If the employer or his representatives or their relatives lead or seek to lead the workers or their relatives into illegal or immoral courses, or if they unite with relatives of the workers in committing illegal or immoral acts; 4. If the employer does not pay the wage due to the workers in the manner prescribed, if, under the piece-work system, he does not provide them with sufficient employment, or if he is guilty of illegally over-reaching them; 5. If, by continuing the work, the life or health of the workers would be exposed to a demonstrable risk which was not apparent at the time of entering into the contract. In the cases mentioned under No. 2, quitting service without notice is no longer permissible if the grounds thereof have been known to the workers for longer than one week. § 124_a_. Besides the cases specified in §§ 123 and 124, each party may, in cases where urgent reasons exist, demand to be released from working relations before the expiration of the contract time and without observing the due period of notice, if the contract is for longer than four weeks, or if a longer period of notice than fourteen days has been agreed upon. § 124_b_. If a journeyman or assistant has quitted work illegally, the employer may claim compensation for the day of the breach of contract and for each following day of the contract time or legal working time, during one week at most, to the amount of the local customary daily wage (§ 8 of the Insurance against Sickness Act of June 15, 1883; _Imperial Law Gazette_, p. 73). This claim need not rest upon proof of loss. When thus made good, claim for fulfilment of contract and further compensation for loss is precluded. The journeyman or assistant shall enjoy the same right against the employer, if he has been dismissed before the legal ending of the working relations. § 125. Any employer inducing a journeyman or assistant to quit work before the legal ending of working relations, shall himself be liable to the former employer for loss arising, or for the legal compensation claim under § 124_b_. In the same manner an employer shall be answerable if he takes into his employ a journeyman or assistant who to his knowledge is still contracted to any employer. Any employer shall also be liable under the foregoing sub-section if he employs a journeyman or assistant, who to his knowledge is still contracted to another employer, throughout the duration of such term; the claim expires after fourteen days from the date of the illegal dissolution of working relations. The persons specified in § 119_b_ shall be accounted as journeymen and assistants as understood by the foregoing provisions. III. APPRENTICE RELATIONS. § 126. The master shall be bound to instruct the apprentice in all branches of the work of the trade forming part of his business, in due succession and to the extent necessary for the complete mastery of the trade or handicraft. He must conduct the instruction of the apprentice himself or through a fit representative expressly appointed thereto. He shall not deprive the apprentice of the necessary time and opportunity on Sundays and holidays for his education and for attendance at Divine Service, by employing him in other kinds of service. He shall train his apprentice in habits of diligence and in good morals, and shall keep him from evil courses. § 127. The apprentice shall be placed under the parental discipline of the master. He shall be bound to render obedience to the one who conducts his instruction in the place of the master. § 128. Apprentice relations may be dissolved by the withdrawal of one party during the first four weeks after the beginning of the apprenticeship, unless a longer time has been agreed upon. Any agreement to fix this time of probation at longer than three months shall be void. After the expiration of the time of probation the apprentice may be dismissed before the ending of the apprenticeship agreed upon, if any one of the cases provided for in § 123 applies to him. On the part of the apprentice, relations may be dissolved at the expiration of the time of probation: 1. If any one of the cases provided for in § 124 under nos. 1, 3 to 5 occurs; 2. If the master neglects his legal obligations towards the apprentice in a manner endangering the health, morals or education of the apprentice, or if he abuses his right of parental discipline, or becomes incapable of fulfilling the obligations imposed upon him by the contract. The contract of apprenticeship shall be dissolved by the death of the apprentice. The contract of apprenticeship shall be dissolved by the death of the master if the claim is made within four weeks. Written contracts of apprenticeship shall be free of stamp duty. § 129. At the termination of apprentice relations, the master shall deliver to the apprentice a testimonial stating the trade in which the apprentice has been instructed, the duration of the apprenticeship, the knowledge and skill acquired during that time, and also the conduct of the apprentice. This testimonial shall be certified by the borough magistrate free of costs and stamp duty. In cases where there are guilds or other industrial representative bodies, letters or certificates from these may supply the place of such testimonials. § 130. If the apprentice quits his instruction under circumstances not provided for in this Act, without consent of his master, the latter can only make good his claim for the return of the apprentice, if the contract of apprenticeship has been drawn up in writing. In such case the police magistrate may, on application of the master, oblige the apprentice to remain under instruction so long as apprentice relations are declared by judicial ruling to be still undissolved. Application is only admissible if made within one week after the departure of the apprentice. In case of refusal, the police magistrate may cause the apprentice to be taken back by force, or he may compel him to return under pain of a fine, to the amount of fifty marks, or detention for five days. § 131. If the parent or guardian acting for the apprentice, or if the apprentice himself, being of age, shall deliver a written declaration to the master, that the apprentice wishes to enter into some other industry or some other calling, apprentice relations shall cease after the expiration of four weeks, if the apprentice is not allowed to leave earlier. The grounds of the dissolution must be notified in the work register by the master. The apprentice shall not be employed in the same trade by another employer, without consent of the former master, within nine months after such dissolution of apprentice relations. § 132. If apprentice relations are severed by either party, before the appointed time, the other party can claim compensation only if the contract has been made in writing. In the cases referred to in § 128, 1, 4, the claim will only hold if the kind and degree of compensation has been specified beforehand, in the contract. The claim is void unless made within four weeks of the dissolution of apprentice relations. § 133. If apprentice relations are dissolved by the master, because the apprentice has quitted his work without permission, the compensation claimed by the master shall, unless some other agreement have been made in the contract, be fixed at a sum amounting for every day succeeding the day of breach of contract, up to a limit of six months, to the half of the customary local wage paid to journeymen and assistants in the trade of the master. The father of the apprentice shall be liable for the payment of compensation, also any employer who has induced the apprentice to quit his apprenticeship, or who has received him into his employ, although knowing him to be still under obligation to continue in apprentice relations to another employer. If the one who is entitled to compensation has not received information till after the dissolution of apprentice relations, as to the employer who has induced the apprentice to quit his work, or who has taken him into his employ, claim for compensation against the latter shall expire if not preferred within four weeks after such information has been received. IIIA. RELATIONS OF BUSINESS MANAGERS, FOREMEN, SKILLED TECHNICAL WORKERS. § 133_a_. The service relations of such persons, as are employed by directors of industry for certain defined purposes, and are charged, not merely temporarily, with the conduct and supervision of the business, or of a department of the business (business managers, foremen, etc.), or are entrusted with the higher kinds of technical service work (experts in machinery, mechanical engineers, chemists, draughtsmen, and the like), may, if not otherwise agreed, be broken off by either party at the expiration of any quarter of the calendar year, after notice has been given six weeks previously. § 133_b_. Either party may, before the expiration of the contract time, demand dissolution of service relations without observing the due period of notice, provided sufficiently important reasons exist to justify the dissolution under the circumstances. § 133_c_. Dissolution of service relations may be demanded, in particular, of the persons specified in § 133_a_. 1. If at the time of concluding the contract, they have deceived the employer by presenting false or falsified testimonials, or if they have deceived him as to the existence of another service relation, to which they were simultaneously bound; 2. If they are unfaithful in service or if they abuse confidence; 3. If they quit service without permission, or persistently refuse to fulfil the obligations imposed upon them by the service contract; 4. If they are hindered in the performance of service by protracted illness, or by long detention or absence; 5. If they are guilty of violence or insult towards the employer or his representatives; 6. If they pursue an immoral course of life. In the case of No. 4, the worker's claim for the fulfilment of contract, by the employer, shall remain in force for six weeks, if the performance of service has been hindered by some unavoidable misfortune; but in such cases the claim shall be limited to the amount that is legally due to the claimant as insurance against sickness or accident. § 133_d_. The persons specified in § 133_a_ may demand dissolution of service relations, in particular: 1. If the employer or his representatives are guilty of violence or insult towards them; 2. If the employer does not provide the work agreed upon in the contract; 3. If, by the continuance of service relations, their life or health would be exposed to demonstrable danger, which was not apparent at the time of entering into service-relations. § 133_e_. The provisions of §§ 124_b_ and 125 shall apply to the persons specified in § 133_a_, but not the provisions of § 119_a_. IV. RELATIONS OF FACTORY WORKERS. § 134. The provisions of §§ 121 to 125 shall apply to factory workers; if the factory workers are apprentices, the provisions of §§ 126 to 133 shall apply to them. Owners of factories in which, as a rule, at least twenty workers are employed, shall be prohibited, in the case of illegal dissolution of working relations by the worker, from exacting forfeiture or withholding wage beyond the amount of the average weekly wage. The provisions of § 124_b_ shall not apply to employers and workers in such factories. § 134_a_. In every factory in which, as a rule, at least twenty workers are employed, _working rules_ shall be issued within four weeks after this Act comes into force, or after the opening of the business. Special working rules may be issued for separate departments of the business, or separate groups of workers. The rules must be posted up (§ 134_e_ [2]). In the working rules must be set forth the time at which they are to come into operation and the date of issue. They must bear the signature of the person by whom they are issued. Alterations in the contents can only be made by the issue of supplements, or by the issue of new working rules in the place of the existing rules. Working rules, and supplement to the same, shall come into operation at the earliest, two weeks after issue. § 134_b_. Working rules shall contain directions: 1. As to the beginning and end of the time of daily work, also as to the intervals provided for adult workers; 2. As to the time and manner of computing and paying wage; 3. Where legal provisions are insufficient, as to the period of notice due, also as to the grounds on which dismissal from work and quitting work is permissible without notice; 4. Where fines are enforced, as to the kind and amount thereof, the method of determining them, and, if they consist in money, as to the manner of collecting them, and the purpose to which they shall be appropriated. 5. Where forfeiture of wage is exacted in accordance with the provisions of § 134 (2), by the working rules or by the working contract, as to the appropriation of the proceeds. Punishments destructive of self-respect, or dangerous to morals, shall not be admitted in the working rules. Money fines shall not exceed the half of the average daily wage, except in cases of violence towards fellow-workers, grave offences against morality, and contempt of directions issued for the maintenance of order in the business, for security against dangers incidental to it, or for carrying out the provisions of the Industrial Code, where money fines to the full amount of the average daily wage may be imposed. All fines shall be devoted to the benefit of the workers in the factory. The right of the employer to claim compensation for damage is not affected by this provision. It shall be left to the owner of the factory to insert in the working rules, together with the provisions of sub-section (1) from 1 to 5, further provisions for the regulation of the business and the conduct of the workers employed in it. With the consent of the standing committee of workers, directions may be inserted in the working rules, as to the conduct of the workers in the use of arrangements, provided for their benefit in the factory, also directions as to the conduct of workers under age, outside the factory. § 134_c_. The contents of the working rules shall be, unless contrary to law, legally binding on employers and workers. No grounds shall be agreed upon in the contract of work, for dismissal from work, other than those laid down in the working rules or in §§ 123 or 124. No fines shall be imposed on the workers other than those laid down in the working rules. Fines must be fixed without delay, and information thereof must be given to the worker. The money fines imposed shall be entered in a register which shall set forth the name of the offender, the day of imposition, the grounds, and the amount of the fine, and this register shall be produced for inspection at any time, at the request of the officer specified in § 139_b_. § 134_d_. Before the issue of working rules, or of supplements to the same, opportunity shall be given to the workers of full age, employed in the factory or in the departments of the business, to which the rules in question apply, to express their opinion on the contents of the same. In factories in which there is a standing committee of workers the requirements of this provision shall be satisfied by granting a hearing to the committee, on the contents of the working rules. § 134_e_. The working rules and any supplement to the same shall, on communication of opinions expressed by the workers, provided such expression be given in writing or in the form of protocols, be laid before the lower court of administration in duplicate, within three days after the issue, accompanied by a declaration showing that, and in what manner the requirements of the enactment of § 134_d_ have been satisfied. The working rules shall be posted up in a specially appointed place, accessible to all the workers to whom they apply. The placard must always be kept in a legible condition. A copy of the working rules shall be handed to every worker upon his entrance into employment. § 134_f_. Working rules or supplements to the same, which are not issued in accordance with these enactments, or the contents of which are contrary to legal provisions, shall be replaced by legal working rules, or shall be altered in accordance with legal enactment, by order of the lower court of administration. Appeal against this order may be lodged within two weeks, with the higher court of administration. § 134_g_. Working rules issued before this Act comes into force, shall be subject to the provisions of §§ 134_a_ to 134_c_, 134_e_ (2), 134_f_, and shall be laid before the lower court of administration in duplicate, within four weeks. Sections 134_d_ and 134_e_ (1) shall not apply to later alterations of such working rules, or to working rules issued for the first time, since January 1st, 1891. § 134_h_. The expression "standing committees of workers," as understood by §§ 134_b_ (3), and 134_d_, includes only: 1. The managing committee of the sick-clubs of the business (factory), or of other clubs existing in the factory, for the benefit of the workers, the majority of the members of which are elected by the workers out of their midst--where such exist as standing committees of workers; 2. The eldest journeymen of such journeymen's unions as include the business of any employers not subject to the provisions of the Mining Acts--where such exist as standing committees of workers; 3. Standing committees of workers, formed before Jan. 1st, 1891, the majority of the members of which are elected by the workers out of their midst; 4. Representative bodies, the majority of the members of which are elected out of their midst by direct ballot voting of the workers of full age in the factory, or in the departments of the business concerned. The choice of representatives may be made according to classes of workers or special departments of the business. § 135. Children under 13 years of age cannot be employed in factories. Children above 13 years of age can only be employed in factories if they are no longer required to attend the elementary schools. The employment of children under 14 years of age must not exceed 6 hours a day. Young persons between 14 and 16 years of age must not be employed in factories for more than 10 hours a day. § 136. Young workers (§ 135) shall not begin work before 5.30 in the morning, or end it later than 8.30 in the evening. On every working day regular intervals must be granted, between the hours of work. For children who are only employed for six hours daily, the interval must amount to half an hour at least. An interval of at least half an hour at mid-day, and half an hour in the forenoon and afternoon must be given to other young workers. During the intervals, employment of young workers in the business of the factory shall be entirely prohibited, and their retention in the work rooms shall only be permitted, if the part of the business in which the young workers are employed is completely suspended in the work rooms during the time of the interval, or if their stay in the open air is not practicable, and if other special rooms cannot be procured without disproportionate difficulties. Young workers shall not be employed on Sundays and festivals, nor during the hours appointed for regular spiritual duties, instruction in the catechism, preparation for confession and communion, by the authorized priest or pastor of the community. § 137. Girls and women cannot be employed in factories during the night, between the hours of 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m., and must be free on Saturdays and on the eves of festivals by 5.30 p.m. The employment of women workers over 16 years of age must not exceed 11 hours a day, and on Saturdays and the eve of festivals must not exceed 10 hours. An interval between the hours of work of at least one hour at mid-day must be allowed to women workers. Women workers over 16 years of age, who manage a household, shall at their request be set free half an hour before the mid-day interval, except in cases where this amounts to at least one and a half hours. Women after childbirth can in no case be admitted to work until fully four weeks after delivery, and in the following two weeks only if they are declared to be fit for work by a duly authorized physician. § 138. The owners of factories, in which it is intended to employ women or young persons, must make a written announcement of the fact to the local police authorities before such employment commences. The notice shall set forth the name of the factory, the days of the week on which employment is to take place, the beginning and end of the time of work, and the intervals granted, also the kind of employment. No alteration can be made except such delays as are temporarily necessitated by the replacement of absent workers in separate shifts of work, before notice thereof has been given to the magistrate. In every factory the employer shall, in the workrooms in which young workers are employed, provide a register of young workers to be posted up in some conspicuous place; the same shall contain information as to days of work, beginning and end of time of work, and intervals allowed. He shall likewise provide in such workrooms a notice board, on which shall be posted up, in plain writing, an extract, to be determined by the Central Court, from the provisions for the employment of women and young workers. § 138_a_. In case of unusual pressure of work, the lower court of administration shall be empowered, on application of the employer, to permit for a fortnight at a time, the employment of women workers over 16 years of age up to 10 o'clock in the evening (except on Saturdays), provided that their daily working time does not exceed 13 hours. Such extension cannot be allowed to the employer during more than 40 days in any one year. Further extension beyond the two weeks, or for more than forty days in the year, can only be granted by the higher court of administration, and by it, only on condition that in the business or in the department of business in question, the total average number of hours per day, calculated over the whole year does not exceed the legal limit. Application shall be made in writing, and must set forth the grounds on which such extension is requested, the number of women workers affected, the amount of employment, and the length of time required. The decision of the lower court of administration on the application shall be given in writing within three days. Appeal against refusal of permission may be lodged with the superior court. In cases where the extension is granted the lower court of administration shall draw up a schedule, in which shall be entered the name of the employer, and a copy of the statements contained in the written application. The lower court of administration may permit the employment of such women workers being over 16 years of age, as have not the care of a household, and do not attend an educational school, in the kinds of work specified in § 105 (1), 2 and 3, on Saturdays and the eve of festivals, after 5.30 p.m., but not after 8.30 p.m. The permit shall be in writing, and shall be kept by the employer. § 139. If natural causes or accidents shall have interrupted the business of a factory, exceptions to the restrictions laid down in §§ 135 (2), (3), 136, 137 (1) to (3), may be granted by the higher court of administration, for a period of four weeks, and for a longer time by the Imperial Chancellor. In urgent cases of such a kind, and also where necessary, in order to guard against accidents, exceptions may be granted by the lower court of administration, but only for a period of fourteen days. If the nature of the business, or special considerations attaching to workers in particular factories, seem to render it desirable that the working time of women and young workers should be regulated otherwise than as laid down by §§ 136 and 137 (1), (3), special regulations may be permitted on application, by the higher court of administration, in the matter of intervals, in other matters by the Imperial Chancellor. But in such cases young workers shall not be employed for longer than six hours, unless intervals are granted between the hours of work, of an aggregate duration of at least one hour. Orders issued in accordance with the foregoing provisions shall be in writing. § 139_a_. The Bundesrath (Federal Council) shall be empowered: 1. To entirely prohibit or to attach certain conditions to the employment of women and of young workers in certain branches of manufacture which involve special dangers to health or morality; 2. To grant exceptions to the provisions of §§ 135 (2) and (3), 136, 137 (1) to (3), in the case of factories requiring uninterrupted use of fire, or in which for other reasons, the nature of the business necessitates regular day and night work, also in the case of factories, a part of the business of which does not admit of regular shifts of equal duration, or is from its nature restricted to certain seasons; 3. To prevent the shortening or the omission of the intervals prescribed for young workers, in certain branches of manufacture, where the nature of the business, or consideration for the workers may seem to render it desirable; 4. To grant exceptions to the provisions of § 134 (1) and (2), in certain branches of manufacture in which pressure of business occurs regularly at certain times of the year, on condition that the daily working time does not exceed 13 hours, and on Saturday 10 hours. In the cases under No. 2, the duration of weekly working time shall not exceed 36 hours for children, 60 hours for young persons, 65 hours for women workers, and 70 hours for young persons and women in brick and tile kilns. Night work shall not exceed in duration 10 hours in 24, and in every shift one or more intervals, of an aggregate duration of at least one hour, shall be granted. In the cases under No. 4, permission for overtime work for more than 40 days in the year may only be granted, on condition that the working time is so regulated that the average daily duration of working days does not exceed the regular legal working time. The provisions laid down by decision of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) shall be limited as to time, and shall also be issued for certain specified districts. They shall be published in the _Imperial Law Gazette_, and shall be laid before the Reichstag at its next session. V. SUPERVISION. § 139_b_. The supervision and enforcement of the provisions of §§ 105_b_ (1), 105_c_ to 105_h_, 120_a_ to 120_e_, 134 to 139_a_, shall be entrusted exclusively to the ordinary police magistrates, or, together with them, to officials specially appointed thereto by the provincial governments. In the exercise of such supervision the local police magistrates shall be empowered with all official authority, especially with the right of inspection of establishments at any time. They shall be bound to observe secrecy (except in exposing illegalities) as to their official knowledge of the business affairs of the establishments submitted to their inspection. The settlement of relations of competence between these officials and the ordinary police magistrates, shall be subject to the constitutional regulation of the separate States of the Bund. The officials mentioned shall publish annual reports of their official acts. These annual reports or extracts from the same, shall be laid before the Bundesrath and the Reichstag. Employers must at any time during the hours of business, especially at night, permit official inspection to be carried out in accordance with the provisions of §§ 105_a_ to 105_h_, 120_a_ to 120_e_, 134 to 139_a_. Employers shall further be bound to impart to the officials appointed or to the police magistrate, such statistical information as to the relations of their workers, as may be prescribed by the Bundesrath or the Central Provincial Court, with due observance of the terms and forms prescribed. _Article IV._ Chapter IX. of the Industrial Code shall contain the following clauses: CHAPTER IX. STATUTORY PROVISIONS. § 142. Statutory provisions of a borough or wider communal union shall be binding in regard to all those industrial matters with which the law empowers them to deal. After they have been considered by the directors of industry and the workers concerned, the statutory provisions must receive the assent of the higher court of administration, and shall then be published in some form prescribed by the parish or wider communal union, or in the usual form. The Central Court shall be empowered to annul statutory provisions which are contrary to law or to the statutory provisions of a wider communal union. _Article V._ Sub-section 2 of § 93_a_ (2_b_) shall contain the following clause: _b._ The supervision by the union of the observation of the provisions laid down in §§ 41_a_, 105_a_ to 105_g_, 120 to 120_e_, 126, 127. _Article VI._ The penal provisions of Chapter X. of the Industrial Code shall be altered as follows: 1. Section 146, (1) 1, 2, and 3, shall contain the following clauses: 1. Directors of industry, acting in contravention of § 115; 2. Directors of industry, acting in contravention of §§ 135, 136, 137, or of orders issued on the grounds of §§ 139 to 139_a_; 3. Directors of industry, acting in contravention of §§ 111 (3) and 113 (3); 2. The following sub-section shall be added to § 146: Section 75 of the Constitution of Justice Act shall apply here. 3. After § 146 shall be inserted: § 146_a_. Any person who gives employment to workers on Sundays and festivals, in contravention of §§ 105_b_ to 105_g_, or of the orders issued on the grounds thereof, or any person who acts in contravention of §§ 41_a_ and 55_a_, or of the statutory provisions laid down on the grounds of § 105 (2) shall be punished with a money fine to the amount of 600 marks, or in default of the same, with imprisonment. 4. Section 147 (1) 4 shall contain the following clause: 4. Any person who acts in contravention of the final orders issued on the grounds of § 120_d_, or of enactments issued on the grounds of § 120_e_; 5. After § 147 (1) 4, shall be inserted: 5. Any person who conducts a factory, in which there are no working rules, or who neglects to obey the final order of the court as to the substitution or alteration of the working rules. 6. Section 147 shall contain at the close the following new sub-section. In the case of No. 4, the police magistrate may, pending the settlement of affairs by order or enactment, order suspension of the business, in case the continuance of the same would be likely to entail serious disadvantages or dangers. 7. Section 148 shall contain the following extensions: 11. Any person who, contrary to the provision of § 134_c_ (2), imposes such fines on the workers as are not prescribed in the working rules, or such as exceed the legally permissible amount, or any person who appropriates the proceeds of fines or the sums specified in § 134_b_ 5, in a manner not prescribed in the working rules; 12. Any person who neglects to fulfil the obligations imposed upon him by §§ 134_e_ (1), and 134_g_; 13. Any person who acts in contravention of § 115_a_, or of the statutory provisions laid down on the grounds of § 119_a_. 8. Section 149 (1) 7 shall contain the following clause: 7. Any person who neglects to fulfil the obligations imposed upon him by §§ 105_c_ (2), 134_e_ (2), 138, 138_a_ (5), 139_b_; 9. Section 150(2) shall contain the following clause: 2. Any person who, except in the case prescribed in § 146 (3), acts in contravention of the provisions of this Act with respect to the work register; 10. Section 150 shall contain the following extensions: 4. Any person who acts in contravention of the provisions of § 120 (1), or of the statutory provisions laid down in accordance with § 120 (3); 5. Any person who neglects to fulfil the obligations imposed upon him by § 134_c_ (3). Common law enactments against neglect of school duties, on which a higher fine is imposed, shall not be affected by the provision of No. 4. 11. Section 151 (1) shall contain the following clause: If in the exercise of a trade, police orders are infringed by persons appointed by the director of the industrial enterprise, to conduct the business or a department of the same, or to superintend the same, the fine shall be imposed upon the latter. The director of the industrial enterprise shall likewise be liable to a fine if the infringement has taken place with his knowledge, or if he has neglected to take the necessary care in providing for suitable inspection of the business, or in choosing and supervising the manager or overseers. _Article VII._ The following provisions shall be substituted for § 154 of the Industrial Code: § 154. The provisions of §§ 105 to 133_c_ shall not apply to assistants and apprentices in the business of apothecaries; the provisions of §§ 105, 106 to 119_b_, 120_a_ to 133_e_, shall not apply to assistants and apprentices in trading business. --The provisions of §§ 105 to 133_e_ shall apply to employers and workers in smelting-houses, timber-yards, and other building yards, in dockyards, and in such brick and tile kilns, and such mines and quarries worked above ground, as are not merely temporary, or on a small scale. The final decision as to whether the establishment is to be accounted as temporary, or on a small scale, shall rest with the higher court of administration. --The provisions of §§ 135 to 139_b_ shall apply to employers and workers in workshops, in which power machinery (worked by steam, wind, water, gas, air, electricity, etc.), is employed, not merely temporarily, with the provision that in certain kinds of businesses the Bundesrath may remit exceptions to the provisions laid down in §§ 135 (2), (3), 136, 137 (1) to (3), and 138. --The provisions of §§ 135 to 139_b_ may be extended by Imperial decree, with consent of the Bundesrath, to other workshops and building work. Workshops in which the employers are exclusively members of the family of the employer, do not come under these provisions. Imperial decrees and provisions for exceptions issued by the Bundesrath, may be issued for certain specified districts. They shall be published in the _Imperial Law Gazette_, and laid before the Reichstag at the next ensuing session. § 154_a_. The provisions of §§ 115 to 119_a_, 135 to 139_b_, 152 and 153 shall apply to owners and workers in mines, salt pits, the preparatory work of mining, and underground mines and quarries. --Women workers shall not be employed underground in establishments of the aforementioned kind. Infringements of this enactment shall be dealt with under the penal provisions of § 146. _Article VIII._ Section 155 of the Industrial Code shall contain the following clauses. --Where reference is made in this Act to common law, constitutional or legislative enactments are to be understood. The Central Court of the State of the Bund shall make known what courts in each State of the Bund are to be understood by the expressions: higher court of administration, lower court of administration, borough court, local court, lower court, police court, local police court, and what unions are to be understood by the expression, wider communal unions. --For such businesses as are subject to Imperial and State administration, the powers and obligations conferred upon the police courts, and higher and lower courts of administration, by §§ 105_b_ (2), 105_c_ (2), 105_e_, 105_f_, 115_a_, 120_d_, 134_e_, 134_f_, 134_g_, 138 (1), 138_a_, 139, 139_b_, may be transferred to special courts appointed for the administration of such businesses. _Article IX._ The date on which the provisions of §§ 41_a_, 55_a_, 105_a_ to 105_f_, 105_h_, 105_i_ and 154 (3) shall come into force, shall be determined by Imperial decree with consent of the Bundesrath. Until such time the legal provisions hitherto obtaining shall remain in force. The provisions of §§ 120 and 150, 4 shall come into force on Oct. 1, 1891. --The rest of this Act shall come into force on April 1, 1892. --The legal provisions hitherto obtaining shall remain in force until April 1, 1894, in the case of such children from 12 to 14 years of age, and young persons between 14 and 16 years of age, as were employed, previous to the proclamation of this Act, in factories or in the Industrial establishments specified in §§ 154 (2) to (4), and 154_a_. --In the case of businesses in which, previous to the proclamation of this Act, women workers over 16 years of age, were employed in night work, the Central Provincial Court may empower the further employment in night work of such women workers, in the same numbers as hitherto, until April 1, 1894, at the latest, if in consequence of suspension of night work, the continuation of the business to its former extent would involve an alteration which could not be made sooner without disproportionate expense. Night work shall not exceed in duration 10 hours in the 24, and in every shift intervals must be granted of an aggregate duration of at least one hour. Day and night shifts must alternate weekly. Delivered under our Imperial hand and seal. Given at Kiel, on board my yacht _Meteor_, June 1, 1891. WILLIAM. VON CAPRIVI. Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 
35275	----	30,000 LOCKED OUT. THE GREAT STRIKE OF THE BUILDING TRADES IN CHICAGO. BY JAMES C. BEEKS. CHICAGO: PRESS OF THE FRANZ GINDELE PRINTING CO. 1887. INTRODUCTION. The attention of the world has been called to the great strike and lockout in the building trades in Chicago because it rested upon the question of individual liberty--a question which is not only vital alike to the employer and the employe, but which affects every industry, every class of people, every city, state and country. It is a principle which antagonizes no motive which has been honestly conceived, but upon which rests--or should rest--the entire social, political and industrial fabric of a nation. It underlies the very foundation of free institutions. To antagonize it is to thrust at the beginning point of that freedom for which brave men have laid down their lives in every land since the formation of society. With this question prominently in the fight, and considering the magnitude of the interests affected, it is not at all surprising that the public has manifested interest in the agitation of questions which have affected the pockets of thirty thousand artisans and laborers, hundreds of employers, scores of manufacturers and dealers in building materials, stopped the erection of thousands of structures of all classes, and driven into the vaults of a great city capital amounting to not less than $20,000,000. The labor problem is not new. Neither is it without its perplexities and its grievances. Its entanglements have puzzled the brightest intellects, and its grievances have, on many occasions, called loudly for changes which have been made for the purpose of removing fetters that have bound men in a system of oppression that resembled the worst form of slavery. These changes have come none too soon. And, no doubt, there yet remain cases in which the oppressed should be speedily relieved of burdens which have been put upon working men and women in every country under the sun. But, because these conditions exist with one class of people, it is no justification for an unreasonable, or exacting demand by another class; or, that they should be permitted to reverse the order of things and inaugurate a system of oppression that partakes of a spirit of revenge, and that one burden after another should be piled up until the exactions of an element of labor become so oppressive that they are unbearable. When this is the case, the individual who has been advocating the cause of freedom--and who has been striving for the release and the elevation of the laboring classes--becomes, in turn, an oppressor of the worst kind. He stamps upon the very foundation on which he first rested his cause. He tramples upon the great cause of individual liberty and becomes a tyrant whose remorseless system of oppression would crush out of existence not only the grand superstructure of freedom, but would bury beneath his iron heel the very germ of his free existence. The laborer is a necessity. If this is true the converse of the proposition is equally true--the employer is a necessity. Without the employer the laborer would be deprived of an opportunity to engage in the avocation to which his faculties may have been directed. Without the laborer the employer would be in no position to carry forward any enterprise of greater or less magnitude. All cannot be employers. All cannot be employes. There must be a directing hand as well as a hand to be directed. In exercising the prerogative of a director the employer would be powerless to carry to a successful termination any enterprise if liberty of action should be entirely cut off, or his directing hand should be so fettered that it could not exercise the necessary freedom of action to direct. At the same time, if the employe should be so burdened that he could not exercise his talents in a manner to compass the line of work directed to be done, it would be unreasonable to expect from him the accomplishment of the task to which he had been assigned. There is a relation between the two around which such safeguards should be thrown as will insure that free action on the part of both that will remove the possibility of oppression, and at the same time retain, in its fullest sense, the relation of employer and employe. The necessity of the one to the other should not be forgotten. That the employer should have the right to direct his business in a manner that will make it successful, and for his interest, none should have the right to question. The successful direction of an enterprise by an employer results, necessarily, in the security of employment by the employe. A business which is unsuccessfully prosecuted, or which is fettered by the employe in a manner which prevents its successful prosecution, must, of necessity, result in displacing the most trusted servant, or the most skilled artisan. An employer, in the direction of his business, should not be denied the right to decide for himself whom he shall employ, or to select those who may be best fitted to accomplish his work. An employe should expect employment according to his ability to perform the work to be done. A skillful artisan should not be expected to accept the reward of one unskilled in the same trade. An unskilled workman should not receive the same wages paid to a skilled workman. Had these rules been recognized by the bricklayers in Chicago there would have been no strike, no lockout. The fight was against the right of the employer to direct his own business. It was originated by a class of men who claimed the right to demand that all bricklayers should be paid the same rate per hour, regardless of their ability; that none should be employed except those who were members of The United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago; and that every edict issued by this union should be obeyed by the Master Masons, including the last one made viz: That the pay day should be changed from Monday, or Tuesday, to Saturday. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION. The National Association of Builders convened in Chicago March 29th, 1887, and continued in session three days. This convention was composed of representatives of the building trades from almost every section of the country. They came together for the purpose of perfecting the organization of a National Association in pursuance of a call which had been made by a committee which met in Boston the previous January. Delegates were present from twenty-seven cities, as follows: Cleveland, Ohio: Thos. Simmons, H. Kickheim, John T. Watterson, S. W. Watterson. Milwaukee, Wis.: Thos. Mason, Garrett Dunck, John Laugenberger, Richard Smith. Charleston, S. C.: D. A. J. Sullivan, Henry Oliver. Nashville, Tenn.: Daniel S. Wright. Detroit, Mich.: Thos. Fairbairn, W. E. Avery, W. J. Stapleton, Jas. Roche, W. G. Vinton. Minneapolis, Minn.: Thos. Downs, F. B. Long, H. N. Leighton, Geo. W. Libby, Herbert Chalker, F. S. Morton. Baltimore Md.: John Trainor, John J. Purcell, Geo. W. Hetzell, Wm. H. Anderson, Wm. Ferguson, Philip Walsh, Geo. Mann. Chicago, Ill.: Geo. Tapper, P. B. Wight, Geo. C. Prussing, W. E. Frost, F. V. Gindele, A. W. Murray, J. B. Sullivan. St. Paul, Minn.: Edward E. Scribner, J. B. Chapman, E. F. Osborne, G. J. Grant, J. H. Donahue, J. S. Burris, J. W. Gregg. Buffalo, N. Y.: Chas. Berrick, John Feist, Chas. A. Rupp. Cincinnati, Ohio: J. Milton Blair, L. H. McCammon, I. Graveson, Jas. Allison, H. L. Thornton, J. C. Harwood, Wm. Schuberth, Jr. Philadelphia, Pa.: John S. Stevens, Chas. H. Reeves, D. A. Woelpper, Geo. Watson, Wm. Harkness, Jr., Geo. W. Roydhouse, Wm. Gray. Columbus, Ohio: Geo. B. Parmelee. St. Louis Mo.: Andrew Kerr, H. C. Lindsley, John R. Ahrens, John H. Dunlap, Anton Wind, Richard Walsh, Wm. Gahl. Indianapolis, Ind.: John Martin, J. C. Adams, Fred Mack, G. Weaver, C. Bender, Wm. P. Jungclaus, Peter Rautier. New Orleans, La.: A. J. Muir, H. Hofield, F. H. West. Boston, Mass.: Leander Greely, Ira G. Hersey, John A. Emery, Wm. Lumb, J. Arthur Jacobs, Francis Hayden, Wm. H. Sayward. New York City: A. J. Campbell, A. G. Bogert, John Byrns, John McGlensey, Marc Eidlitz, John J. Tucker. Troy, N. Y.: C. A. Meeker. Albany, N. Y.: David M. Alexander Worcester, Mass.: E. B. Crane, O. W. Norcross, Henry Mellen, O. S. Kendall, Robt. S. Griffin, Geo. H. Cutting. Grand Rapids, Mich.: John Rawson, James Curtis, H. E. Doren, J. D. Boland, C. H. Pelton, W. C. Weatherly, C. A. Sathren. Sioux City, Iowa.: Fred F. Beck. Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, Pa.: Geo. A. Cochran, Saml. Francis, Alex. Hall, R. C. Miller, Geo. S. Fulmer. Providence, R. I.: Geo. R. Phillips, Richard Hayward. Geo. S. Ross. Rochester, N. Y.: Chas. W. Voshell. Washington, D. C.: Thos. J. King. George C. Prussing, of Chicago, presided, and William H. Sayward, of Boston, was secretary of the convention. Mr. Sayward appointed as his assistants J. Arthur Jacobs, of Boston, and W. Harkness, Jr., of Philadelphia. In adopting a constitution the objects of the organization were set forth in the following article: Article II. The fundamental objects of this association shall be to foster and protect the interests of contractors, manual workmen, and all others concerned in the erection and construction of buildings; to promote mechanical and industrial interests; to acquire, preserve and disseminate valuable information connected with the building trades; to devise and suggest plans for the preservation of mechanical skill through a more complete and practical apprenticeship system, and to establish uniformity and harmony of action among builders throughout the country. The better to accomplish these objects, this association shall encourage the establishment of builders' exchanges in every city or town of importance throughout the country, and shall aid them to organize upon some general system that will not conflict with local customs and interests, in order that through these filial associations the resolutions and recommendations of this National Association may be promulgated and adopted in all localities. Not content with setting out the objects of the association in a short section of a constitution, the convention deemed it advisable that its objects should be defined in a manner that could not be misunderstood. The members were aware of the fact that the convention was being watched by builders everywhere, and that the eye of the public was upon every movement made. But they more fully understood that the artisans and laborers connected with the building trades throughout the country would criticise their every act, and unless their position was definitely and clearly set out they might be misunderstood. To avoid this, and to place the objects fairly before the public, the convention unanimously adopted the following: DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES. 1. This association affirms that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. While upholding this principle as an essential safeguard for all concerned, this association would appeal to employers in the building trades to recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and while condemning and opposing improper action upon their part, they should aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conferences and arbitrations are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented. When such conferences are entered into, care should be taken to state clearly in advance that this fundamental principle must be maintained, and that such conferences should only be competent to report results in the form of resolutions of recommendation to the individuals composing the various organizations participating, avoiding all forms of dictatorial authority. 2. That a uniform system of apprenticeship should be adopted by the various mechanical trades; that manual training schools should be established as a part of the public school system; and, that trade night schools should be organized by the various local trade organizations for the benefit and improvement of apprentices. 3. This association earnestly recommends all its affiliated associations to secure, as soon as possible, the adoption of a system of payment "by the hour" for all labor performed, other than "piece work" or "salary work," and to obtain the co-operation of associations of workmen in this just and equitable arrangement. 4. That all blank forms of contracts for buildings should be uniform throughout the United States. That such forms of contract, with the conditions thereof, should be such as will give the builder, as well as the owner, the protection of his rights, such as justice demands. That whenever a proper form has been approved by this association, after consultation with the American Institute of Architects, and the Western Association of Architects, we recommend its use by every builder and contractor. 5. The legislatures of the various states should be petitioned to formulate and adopt uniform lien laws and every organization represented in this association is recommended to use its best endeavors to secure the passage of the same. 6. Architects and builders should be required to adopt more effectual safeguards in buildings in process of construction, so as to lessen the danger of injury to workmen and others. 7. We recommend the adoption of a system of insurance against injuries by accident to workmen in the employ of builders, wherein the employer may participate in the payment of premiums for the benefit of his employes. Also in securing the payment of annuities to workmen who may become permanently disabled, through injuries received by accident or the infirmities of old age. When this declaration was sent out it set the laborer to thinking, and the public generally to reflecting upon the relation between the employer and the employe, especially in the building trades. The first paragraph affirming "that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed," was regarded as a declaration of right, justice and liberty that ought to be universally accepted. And yet it has not been so accepted. It is utterly rejected in practice, if not in so many words, in almost every case of strike. In one way or another the strikers prevent others from exercising that right to work and to employ, or attempt to do so, thus assuming for themselves superior rights and despotic powers. While the builders emphatically affirmed the fundamental principle of right and liberty, they did not condemn associations of workmen. On the contrary, they recognized the fact that there were "many opportunities for good" in such associations, and appealed to employers in the building trades to assist them in all just and honorable purposes. This was certainly liberal, in view of the fact that labor organizations are continually used as agencies for interfering with men in the exercise of their rights. The convention declared that upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer, or arbitrate. The members did not even stoop to notice the nonsensical notion of compulsory arbitration, or arbitration under the forms of law, which has found expression in one or two state laws and in one or two bills that have been introduced in congress, and which is not arbitration at all. But, while upon fundamental principles they perceived the uselessness of arbitration, yet they declared that there were many points upon which conferences and arbitration were perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it was a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together, to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances might be prevented. They did not, however, lose sight of the fundamental principle first affirmed, but held that the results of conferences should take the form of resolutions of recommendation, and that all forms of dictatorial authority should be avoided. They are evidently willing to meet the men half way when there is really anything to confer about. As a whole, the platform of principles upon which the convention planted itself is unassailable by the most critical objector among the disturbing element of labor. It was to be hoped that they would be fully accepted and thoughtfully regarded by the workmen in the building trades. But, such was not, generally, the case. The leading element in the labor organizations has cultivated an antagonistic spirit that rebels against every proposition or suggestion from any association that is not in strict accord with their own distorted views. This element watched the National Association of Builders very closely, and to them the fact that the constitution and the declaration of principles were eminently just and fair to the workingman, was the greater reason why they should exercise toward the whole a spirit of bitter antagonism. Otherwise, that element of labor which permits others to do their thinking, could not be moulded in the hand of the leader whose leadership depends upon the ability to make every act of the employer to appear in a hideous light. The fairness of the convention, and the justness of the principles enunciated, stimulated the leaders to renewed efforts to widen the breach between the employes and the employers in the building trades. They saw that unless the rebellious, revengeful spirit was nurtured, the thinking better, more reasonable element, might break away and follow the "master." New demands were made upon the employer with a full knowledge that they would not be acceded to, for the purpose of precipitating a general strike, and it came. THE CAUSE OF THE LOCK-OUT. The immediate cause of the great lockout dated to a proposition for Saturday as a pay-day, which was made April 11th, 1887, by the passage of a resolution by the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago, declaring that from and after that date the contracting masons should pay their employes on Saturday. The contractors were not asked to change the time of payment--from Monday or Tuesday, as had been the custom for many years--the union simply resolved that they should do so. No official notice of the passage of the resolution was sent to the Master Masons' association. They were not conferred with to see if it would be convenient, nor were they _requested_ to change the time. The resolution itself proposed to do the work for the employer without consulting him in reference to the change. The first intimation the Master Masons had of the passage of the resolution came in the shape of a demand of the foreman on each job to know if they were to be paid on Saturday. This demand was coupled with a statement that they would not work if they were not paid on that day, _as the union had changed the pay-day_. With some employers such a demand would have been a great surprise. It was not so with the Master Masons of Chicago. They had endured so much of an arbitrary character from the Bricklayers' union that they were not surprised at anything, unless it might have been the absence of a demand upon them for a change of some kind. This demand--had it come in the form of a request, or had a conference been invited to consider the proposition for a change of the pay-day--might have been conceded. But the manner in which it was presented gave notice to the Master Masons that the time had arrived for them to assert a little manhood, and to show to the great public that they had some "rights" which should be recognized. This--apparently minor--proposition dates back to "a long and distinguished line of ancestors," whose exactions have been of a character bordering upon oppression. They had their beginning with the strike of the bricklayers in the spring of 1883, when there was a stoppage of building for nine weeks on account of what were believed to be unreasonable demands of the Bricklayers' union. Jan. 1, 1883, the Union passed a resolution fixing the rate of wages at $4 a day, and another that they would not work with "Scabs." Previous to this the wages had been $3 and $3.50 per day. An attempt was made to put these resolutions in force the first week in April. The contractors had not been considered in arranging these questions, and for this reason they rebelled against what they regarded as arbitrary action. After a struggle which lasted nine weeks, three prominent architects, Messrs. D. Alder, W. W. Boyington and Julius Bauer, addressed communications to the Master Masons and the Union, requesting them to appoint committees to arbitrate their differences. The request was promptly acceded to by both sides, and on the 29th of May, 1883, the joint committee made the following award: In order to end the strike of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago (hereinafter designated as the union), who quit their work on March 31, 1883, and in the belief that, by the establishment of a standing committee of arbitration, all differences may be settled satisfactorily, and strikes and lockouts prevented in the future, and that this will lay the foundation for a better understanding and amicable relations such as should exist between employer and employe; now, therefore, We, the undersigned, Joseph J. Rince, William Ray and Peter Nelson, being a committee appointed for this purpose in special meeting of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons, held on Monday evening, May 28, at Greenebaum's hall, and empowered to act for and in behalf of said organization, and to bind its members by our action, on the one part, and Messrs. George Tapper, George C. Prussing and E. F. Gobel, being the executive committee of the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' Association, and who are fully authorized to act for the said organization in the premises, on the other part, have, and do agree that from and after this 29th day of May, 1883: 1. Foremen shall not be members of the journeymen's union, and when a member is made foreman he shall be suspended from active membership while employed in that capacity. Foremen may work on the wall. 2. Competent journeymen bricklayers and stonemasons working in the city may join the union in the regular way, should they so desire, by paying $10 as an initiation fee, but they shall not be compelled or forced to join in any way until July 1, 1883, and then only as provided in section 3 of article 4 of the by-laws of the union. 3. Former members of the union who returned to their work on or before May 26, 1883, and are for that act expelled, shall be regarded and treated in all respects like other outsiders. The members who returned to their work on and after May 28, 1883, are hereby declared in good standing. 4. The wages of competent journeymen are hereby declared to be 40 cents per hour. To such of the members of the union who can not earn the wages hereby established, their employer shall certify, upon application, this fact and the rate paid them, and the presentation of such certificate at the union shall entitle them to an "instruction card," and they shall be enrolled as "working under instructions" until they produce proof of being full and competent journeymen. 5. In January of each year a joint committee of conference and arbitration, consisting of five members of each--the Union and the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' Association--shall be appointed and serve for one year. To this joint committee shall be referred all questions of wages and any other subject in which both bodies are interested, and all grievances existing between members of one body and members of the other, or between a member of one body and a member of the other. This committee, properly constituted and assembled, shall have full power to decide all questions referred to them, and such decision shall be final and binding on all members of either organization. A majority vote shall decide. In case of a tie vote on any question, which consequently can not be decided by the committee as constituted, a judge of a United States court, or any disinterested person on whom the members thereof may agree, shall be elected umpire, who shall preside at a subsequent meeting of the committee and have the casting vote on the question at issue. All members of the union shall remain at their work continuously while said committee of arbitration is in session, subject to the decision of said committee. 6. Journeymen shall be paid by the hour for work actually rendered, with this exception: From April 1 to Nov. 1 work will be suspended at 5 o'clock on Saturdays, and all employes who have worked up to this hour on that day will receive pay for an extra hour. And we also agree and declare that the article of the constitution and by-laws of the union which refers to apprentices is wrong, and shall be referred to the joint committee of arbitration hereby provided in January next, for amendment, revision, or repeal. In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands and seals this 29th day of May, 1883. JOSEPH J. RINCE, WILLIAM RAY, PETER NELSON, Committee of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago. GEORGE TAPPER, GEORGE C. PRUSSING, E. F. GOBEL, Committee of the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' Association. The bricklayers met May 31, and repudiated the action of the joint committee. William Ray made the remarkable announcement to the Union that section four--relating to journeymen under "instructions"--was not in the original draft, and that he never would have signed the agreement if it had been. He charged Mr. Prussing with slipping that section in after the agreement had been signed. On motion of Mr. Mulrany the agreement, or award, was referred back to the joint committee. In view of the fact that it was the award of a committee which the Union had created, its repudiation was a startling act. But, under threats of violence to the union members of the committee, this action had to be taken as a precaution of safety. The Master Masons met the same day and unanimously approved the action of the joint committee. While they were in session information was received of the charge made against Mr. Prussing. The charge was not only denied by Mr. Prussing, but he at once procured affidavits from William E. Mortimer and two others, who had heard the original draft of the agreement read, all of whom swore that the document had not been tampered with, but contained section 4 when the committee signed it. Even this did not satisfy the Union. They met again June 1, and again repudiated the action of the joint committee by adopting the following, which they addressed to George Tapper, president of the Master Masons' and Builders' association: In view of the present difficulties which have arisen from the action of a committee appointed May 28 from this Union in acting contrary to their instructions, we offer the following for your consideration: 1. On April 1, this year, we asked $4 per day from April 1, 1883, to Nov. 1, 1883, and 40 cents per hour from Nov. 1, 1883, to April 1, 1884, as the minimum wages for all members of this Union, and this we strictly adhere to. 2. We accept the situation as it is, take back all deserters from our Union, and deal with all strangers according to article 4, section 3, contained in our constitution and by-laws. 3. We believe in arbitration, and will agree to appoint a committee of five for one year to meet a like committee from your association, to which joint committee will be referred all grievances which may hereafter arise, and for the purpose of preventing strikes in the future. Instead of showing a disposition to confer and adjust differences, the Union passed upon all question and notified the employers that the ultimatum must be accepted, as the Union would "strictly adhere to" the action of April 1, notwithstanding the fact that all differences had been adjusted by arbitration. In the face of the act of repudiation the Union made this amendment: "We believe in arbitration" ... "for the purpose of preventing strikes in the future." Two days later, June 3, the Union held another meeting which was enlivened by charging the arbitration committee with treason, and threatening to lynch them. William Ray, one of the committee, made the announcement that he had done right in signing the award, and if it was to do over he would do the same thing again. This statement inflamed the crowd to such an extent that Ray was attacked and severely beaten. The other members of the committee escaped without injury. On June 5, at another meeting of the bricklayers, President Rince was deposed, the open charge being made that he had "sold them out." A resolution was then passed directing the men to go to work at $4 a day wherever they pleased, provided they did not work under a non-union foreman. This section had the effect of settling the strike. It was a drawn battle. The men were only too glad to go to work, and took advantage of the first order made on the subject. They worked by the side of non-union men for a time, but gradually drove them out of the city or took them into the Union for the purpose of increasing their strength. They then cut loose from the International association, made the initiation fee $25, and shut out every bricklayer who would not join their Union. As has been frequently remarked, "they built a wall around the city," and then demanded everything and got it, because the "bosses" were powerless to refuse their demands. While the result of the strike of 1883 was referred to as a drawn battle, it was a defeat for the Master Masons, because they then laid the groundwork for other demands and strikes, the fruits of which they have been forced to eat when they were bitter as gall. The battle should have been won then, and the troubles which have since come might have been unknown. During the strike the International union had assisted the Chicago bricklayers to the extent of $13,000, which had enabled them to hold out longer than they otherwise could have done. After they recovered from the effects of the strike they were assessed $4,600 to aid the Pittsburgh strikers, which sum they repudiated, and then withdrew from the Internationals, claiming that they were independent of any other organization, and would pay tribute to no other trade. Their base ingratitude made them objects of scorn among the honest laborers. Their assessment to aid Pittsburgh was never adjusted. Following the strike of 1883 demands were made from time to time by the union, as follows: That the hours of labor be reduced while the pay remained unchanged. That the wages be increased. Cutting down the number of apprentices. An apprentice over eighteen years of age must be the son of a journeyman. Foremen must be members of the Union, "but shall not work on a wall." No non-union bricklayer shall be employed in Chicago. An acknowledgment of the potency of the "Walking Delegate." Payment of uniform wages to all, irrespective of their qualifications. Full pay for all delays, however unavoidable. Pay for a discharged employe on a job, or for his time while waiting for his pay to be taken to him. Time and a half for all work in excess of eight hours. Double pay for work on Sunday. Establishment of the "Walking Delegate." These are a few of the more important exactions which have been made, and to avoid strikes had been granted. There were many others, and they presented themselves from time to time when least expected. It was supposed that the entire vocabulary of demands had been exhausted, and that the season of 1887 would pass without a strike, when the Saturday pay-day bobbed up as a warning to the contractor that the striker was not without resources, and that there were more to come. The demands of the bricklayers had been met from time to time by the Master Masons, and they were generally met in a weak way. Some were conceded without question, and others were agreed to, after a mild protest, in order to prevent the stoppage of some important work. The striker had always been possessed of the knowledge _when to strike_, and this had been one of the secrets of his success. The rule has been to make a demand at a time when it was believed the employer would make the concession, because he could not afford to do otherwise--that the interest of the pocket of the employer would move him when his sympathy could not be enlisted. In the last strike the strikers were disappointed. They inaugurated their movement upon the contractors at the opening of the building season and went at it in the old way, assuming that the bosses, who had so generally conceded everything, would not dare to refuse a simple proposition like that which contemplated changing the pay-day. But they struck a snag which grew to immense proportions, especially when the manufacturers of and dealers in building material stepped up and said they would quit manufacturing, and would stop selling material until there was a settlement of the trouble and the principle of "individual liberty" was recognized. They became an important and strengthening root to the old snag. They held the key to the situation, and asserted the right to handle it. They turned it and thirty thousand employes were locked out. THE CARPENTERS. The strikes of 1887 originated with the carpenters. In January steps were taken which contemplated getting every carpenter in Chicago into a union. Notice was given by publication that on and after April 4th, 1887, eight hours should constitute a day, and 35 cents an hour should be the minimum wages for a carpenter. When the time came for the new order of things to go into effect the Master Carpenters were expected to meet the demands without objection. They had not been requested to grant the concessions, and no official notice was sent to the Master Carpenters' association of the fact that the carpenters had decided to change the working hours and the rate of pay per hour. On Saturday, April 2d, 1887, the carpenters made individual demands upon their several employers for eight hours a day instead of ten hours, and 35 cents an hour instead of 25 and 30 cents an hour, which had been the rule. Not receiving favorable answers to their demands a meeting was called for Sunday, April 3d, at Battery D. At this meeting four thousand carpenters assembled. Reports were made from one hundred and twenty "bosses," of whom but twenty favored the proposed changes. Seventy-nine had positively refused to grant any concession. After a lengthy discussion of the situation in secret session the question of ordering a general strike was submitted to a vote, and it was carried by what was said to have been an overwhelming majority. This was the manner in which the strike was ordered. After the meeting adjourned the cool announcement was made that if the Master Carpenters had any propositions to submit, or desired to communicate with the striking carpenters, they "would be received" at room 8, No. 76 Fifth avenue. An order was issued to the effect that no carpenter should be allowed to work for any contractor, no matter what wages might be offered, until permission was obtained from the executive board of the Carpenters' Council, or the strike had been declared off. On Monday morning there were six thousand idle carpenters in the city, and the threat was made by the strikers that if the "bosses" did not accede to their demands all workmen engaged in the building trades would be called out, and there would be a general strike. Before 6 o'clock Monday morning, the following notice was sent out to every carpenter in the city, it being the intention to officially notify each one of the action taken before they could reach their work: DEAR SIR: The decision of the executive board of the United Carpenters' Council, ratified by mass-meeting held April 3d, is that no union carpenter be allowed to work on any job whatever until the demand is acceded to by the bosses as a body. The committee is open to conference with the bosses as a body at their earliest convenience. J. M. STERLING, J. BRENNOCK, Committee. There were hundreds who were willing to work, but they were forced to obey the mandate of the union. They were receiving good wages, and were satisfied; but, because every "wood-butcher" would not be paid the wages which a good carpenter could command, they were forced to leave their work and suffer the consequences of idleness. If they attempted to work their lives were in danger. There were three hundred contracting carpenters in the city who employed from fifteen to two hundred men each. The number of carpenters in the city working on buildings was about 7,500, and 5,800 of these belonged to the union. The wages paid ranged from $2.50 to $3.50 a day. Those who were receiving the smaller amounts were not satisfied, and the strike was originated for the ostensible purpose of bringing the so-called "wood-butcher" up to the standard of a carpenter on the question of wages. On Monday, April 7th, the Carpenters' Union met and adopted the following as their ultimatum: These are the conditions upon which we will settle this strike: That contractors conduct their work under the eight-hour system and pay the regular scale of wages--35 cents per hour, subject to discharge for incompetency, said conditions to remain in force until April 1, 1888, subject, however, to arbitration in case of grievances of any kind on either side. EXECUTIVE BOARD, UNITED CARPENTERS' COUNCIL. On the same day the Carpenters and Builders held a mass-meeting at the Builders' and Traders' exchange. The first action taken was to agree to stand together on the questions of wages and hours. A resolution was adopted that eight hours should constitute a day's work, fixing 30 cents an hour as the minimum price, and to grade the wages from that price up, according to the worth of the employe. The executive board of the United Carpenters' Council made the following announcement: In view of the fact that no communication has been received from the bosses, it is ordered that no union carpenter be allowed to go to work until further notified. The board will be in session at 8 A. M., April 7, at room 8, Nos. 76 and 78 Fifth avenue. All carpenters not on committees are requested to report at 10 A. M. The strike of the carpenters had begun to affect labor of all kinds on buildings. Many walls were advanced as far as they could be without the intervention of the carpenter. No man, other than a union carpenter, would be allowed to even set a joist. Any attempt to infringe a union rule was sure to precipitate a strike in another trade. A nervous feeling pervaded the building interests generally. Every other trade was in a state of apprehension. The Master Masons were among these. In order to guard against complications with the bricklayers and stonemasons the Master Masons' association had a meeting April 7th and adopted the following resolution: _Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed with full power to represent this body in all matters relating to the Bricklayers' union, and with instructions to pave the way for the appointment of a standing committee of arbitration, to which all questions and controversies shall be referred for settlement, in order to prevent pecuniary losses to both sides in the future and foster a friendly feeling among the members of both bodies. There had been a few slight differences between employers and employes which were not readily adjusted, because there seemed to be nobody with whom an adjustment could be made. A copy of this resolution was sent to the Bricklayers' union. April 8th a few boss carpenters called on President Campbell, of the carpenters' union, and asked for men in order to finish a little pressing work. They were refused, the president of the union saying: "Not a man will be allowed to go to work until the bosses recognize the union and the demands that have been made." The announcement was made that two hundred and sixty non-association bosses had signified their willingness to accede to all the union had asked, and that they would meet at 3 o'clock in Greenebaum's hall to organize a new association. None of them arrived until long after the hour, and at 4 o'clock nineteen of the two hundred and sixty got into the large hall and were comparatively lost. They adjourned to a small room where they remained but a few minutes and then dispersed. They acknowledged they had been misled by the strikers, some of whom had arranged the meeting for the purpose of ascertaining how much disaffection there was in the ranks of the employers. The small attendance was a great disappointment to those in charge of the strike. But they determined to secure an organization among the "outside bosses," believing it would weaken the effort of the "bosses" who were standing out against the demands which had been made. The United Carpenters' Council held a meeting and adopted a resolution that no terms should be accepted looking toward a settlement of the difficulty other than a full recognition of the union and every demand that had been made. The Bricklayers met and decided to take a hand in the strike of the carpenters. They adopted a resolution providing that members of their union should set no window frames, handle no joists, nor do similar work on buildings in course of construction until the pending trouble was adjusted. The carpenters were delighted when they were officially notified of this action, and once more reaffirmed their determination to stand out. Similar action was taken by the Hodcarriers' union. Eight union carpenters were arrested for intimidating non-union men employed on a building on Canal street. They became so violent that the patrol wagon was called and they were taken to the Desplaines street station. They were heavily fined. Prominent Knights of Labor were of the opinion that the offer of the Master Carpenters of eight hours and 30 cents an hour should have been accepted. Believing this, they called a meeting of the Knights of Labor at Uhlich's hall for the purpose of ordering the carpenters to return to work. This meeting was held April 10th. The hall was packed by a crowd that was opposed to conceding anything. Those who called the meeting soon discovered that they would be mobbed if they presented any proposition to order the carpenters to go to work. A. Beaudry, who was one of those who called the meeting, and who strongly favored accepting the offer of the bosses, presided at the meeting, but he dared not present such a proposition. Instead of the meeting accomplishing the object for which it had been called, it reversed the expected order and advocated unity of action, expressing its sentiments by adopting the following resolution: _Resolved_, That this meeting sustains the action of the United Carpenters Council and pledges our individual support in their future efforts during the struggle. The result of this attempt to restore harmony was enough to satisfy fair-minded men that the demands were not those of reason, but were backed by an element which was composed of the rule-or-ruin class, and they were satisfied that it was uncontrollable. A feeble attempt was made to hold a meeting of the "consulting" bosses at No. 106 Randolph street for the purpose of settling the strike, but less than a half-dozen appeared on the scene, and the meeting was not held. In the evening the Carpenters' and Builders' association met at the Builders' and Traders' exchange. Vice-President William Hearson presided. A delegation of sixty representatives of the Carpenters council invaded the corridors of the exchange. A committee composed of Messrs. Frost and Woodard, was sent out to see what they wanted, and returned with the statement that the carpenters were very pleasant, but full of fight and disposed to stand out all summer. William Mavor read a communication from the United Carpenters' Council, stating that it would stand by its original proposition for 35 cents an hour, and that the union must be recognized. Mr. Mavor stated that the latter proposition was the sticker, and a great many voices said that they would never consent. They were willing to treat with the men as individuals. The report of the committee was received and laid on the table by a unanimous vote. S. H. Dempsey presented the following resolution, which was adopted by a unanimous vote, followed by loud applause: _Resolved_, That the secretary of this association be instructed to notify through the newspapers all carpenters who are willing to go to work on Monday morning at the rate of wages offered by this association to appear at their respective places of work, and that they will be protected. Otherwise the Master Carpenters will advertise for outside workmen. The following committee was appointed to look after the general interests of the association: Francisco Blair, S. H. Dempsey, J. W. Woodard, Jonathan Clark and John Ramcke. Monday, April 10th. The executive committee met and organized by electing officers as follows: J. W. Woodard, chairman; Jonathan Clark, secretary; John Ramcke, treasurer. The committee issued the following notice to the public: As a notice has been circulated to-day among the master carpenters of this city, calling a meeting of the master carpenters for this afternoon, we would respectfully ask you to publish the fact that this meeting is in no way authorized by the Master Carpenters' association, and we will not in any way voice its sentiments or recognize its action. Also, that this association will hold no meetings, except those authorized by the president or secretary of the executive committee. We would also like to make public the fact that there are now 175 members in this association, and they represent about seven eights of the carpenters in the city. Because incorrect reports are apt to be published, and the public interests will suffer if this occurs, we would be glad to receive reporters at all meetings and place all information in our possession at their disposal. An erroneous idea of the present situation, or cause of disagreement exists, not through the fault of the press, but rather through an inaccuracy in presenting the matter. What we would lay down as our statement of principles is the following, which were formulated as a part of those adopted by the National Association of Builders: This association affirms that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen are equally interested in its defense and preservation. While upholding this principle as an essential safeguard for all concerned, this association would appeal to all employers in the building trades to recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and, while condemning and opposing improper action upon their part, they should aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer and arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conferences and arbitrations are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together, to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented. When such conferences are entered into, care should be taken to state clearly in advance that this fundamental principle must be maintained, and that such conferences should only be competent to report results in the form of resolutions of recommendation to the individuals composing the various organizations participating, avoiding all forms of dictatorial authority. The present question is not one of wages or hours, but is solely upon our recognition of the union and our acceptance of the conditions proposed by the letter received from the Carpenters' Union at the meeting of this association Saturday night and printed last week. As our code of principles state, we do not oppose unions, as we affirm the right of all individuals to form associations. This body has received but one communication--that referred to--and that a week after all the carpenters in the union had struck work. This communication purported to be from the executive committee of the Carpenters' Union, but there was neither seal nor letter press on the stationery, and there were no names representing the executive committee. This association means to treat the present disagreement with all fairness, recognizing the entire rights of the journeymen, but claiming that we, as contractors, have rights as well. Very respectfully, JONATHAN CLARK, Secretary Executive Committee Carpenters' and Builders' Association. About thirty carpenters met at No. 106 Randolph street and organized an independent Master Carpenters' Association. Among them were several members of the union who were bosses in a small way. The new association at once agreed to the terms demanded by the carpenters, and a list of the members was sent to the United Carpenters' Council, after which an order was issued by the council, permitting the employes of the members of the new association to return to work. This action, it was claimed, would compel the members of the Carpenters' and Builders' Association to yield every point demanded, but it had no such effect. The agitation was kept up, and a mass-meeting was held by the strikers at No. 311 Larrabee street, at which they were urged to stand out. They were also told they never could win if the bricklayers did not support them. The council expected its action would meet the wishes of the men, but it did not. They saw that only a very few would be given work, and demanded that all remain out until the success of the strike was assured. A mass-meeting was held April 13th, at Twelfth street Turner Hall, at which the action of the council was severely criticised, and a resolution was adopted that all should remain out until their demands were recognized by every master carpenter in Chicago. The members of the new association of bosses were disappointed at the reflex action of the carpenters. They regarded it as a breach of faith, and were on the eve of breaking up their organization, but concluded to obey the mandates of the union and held together a few days longer. In the meantime a number of the carpenters had gone to work. These were immediately taken off by walking delegates, and the little bosses became satisfied that the fight was all on one side. But, as many of their members belonged to the union as well, they were forced to remain in the association and be laughed at. Many of the workmen were incensed at the breaking of the agreement and threatened to leave the union and return to their old employers. Some of them did so, and they took others with them afterwards. They lost confidence in the council and in the leaders of the strike. On Thursday, April 14th, the executive committee of the Carpenters' Council thought to heal all defection by the issuance of the following form of agreement, which, they said, they would require all master carpenters to sign before they would settle the strike: We, the undersigned contracting carpenters, agree to the following terms of settlement, and pledge ourselves to the following propositions, which shall be in force and binding upon us from this date until the 1st day of April, 1888, with the understanding that the carpenters' council pledges that there shall not be another demand for increase of wages or reduction of hours before said date--April 1, 1888. 1. We agree to pay as the minimum rate of wages to carpenters 35 cents per hour. 2. We agree that eight hours shall constitute a day's work. 3. We reserve the right to employ men of our own selection and to discharge anyone for reasons of incompetency, intemperance, or disorderly conduct, and we will co-operate with the carpenters' council in all their efforts to elevate the mechanical and moral standard of the craft. 4. We indorse the principle of arbitration as preferable to strikes, and will co-operate with the carpenters' council for the establishment of a board of arbitration. 5. The probable number of men each of us will require, at once on resumption of work is set opposite our respective names. Two hundred members of the Carpenters' and Builders' association met April 14th. William Hearson presided. Seventy new members were admitted. The executive committee submitted a basis upon which it was proposed to settle the strike. It was unanimously adopted, as follows: _Resolved_, That the Master Carpenters will, as a preliminary to any negotiations with the carpenters now on strike, require that the men now on strike without notice to their employers agree to resume work at the following scale of wages, to be agreed to by employer and employes--viz.: eight hours to constitute a day's labor, the wages to be 30 cents an hour and upward. _Resolved_, That the Master Carpenters lay down the following rules as a declaration of principles as the unquestionable rights of employers and employes, upon which there can be no arbitration or question. These rights to be conceded by both parties before any further action is taken looking toward a final settlement of differences for the future: Rule 1. The right of the employer to employ and discharge employes whether belonging to carpenters' unions or not. Rule 2. The right of the employe to work or not to work with non-union men. Rule 3. The right of the employer to hire unskilled labor that will best suit his purpose at any price at which he can get it. Rule 4: The right of the employe to get the wages he demands or not to work. Rule 5. The right of individuals to associate for all honorable purposes. After the meeting adjourned, the executive committee delivered a copy of the report to the Executive Council of the carpenters. The document was respectfully received, Mr. Parks remarking that the Master Carpenters would have to "come again," but the communication would be carefully considered. The resolutions and rules were also sent to the new carpenters' association. A motion was made to fully endorse them, especially in view of the recent action of the union in repudiating their agreement. The proposition was unanimously voted down. On Friday, April 15th, the Executive Council prepared a lengthy reply to the action of the Carpenters and Builders. It contained an extended statement of the situation, concluding as follows: In conclusion, we will agree with rule No. 1 in your document if the words "the right to discharge rests in and is confined to the individual employer and not the associated employers," were added. And you understand that under your own rule, No. 2, union men would have a right to refuse to work with non-union men, and to quit any job where such were employed, unless they were discharged when the request was made. Rule No. 3 must have the words: "But no unskilled man shall be allowed to do work which properly belongs to the trade of carpentering, or which necessitates the use of carpenter's tools," before we can accept it. The other rules in your document are immaterial and do not need review. Now, for a few words. We will state the terms upon which the journeyman carpenters of this city will return at once to work. There must be an agreement made and signed by the contractors, individually or collectively, through an authorized committee, and signed by the executive committee of the United Carpenters council on the part of the journeymen, and in addition to the two rules given as amended the following: The minimum rate of wages paid to journeymen carpenters shall be 35 cents per hour. Eight hours shall constitute a working day; overtime shall be paid as time and a half and double time for Sunday work. There shall be an arbitration board for the settling of grievances. The agreement shall be in force until the 1st day of April, 1888, and notices of desired changes at that time must be given by the party so desiring to the other party to the agreement on or before March 15, 1888. Hoping you will look at this communication from a business as well as humanitarian standpoint, and that you will keep in mind the fact that we are as desirous as you can possibly be of ending the strike, and that nothing is here set down in malice, every word being uttered in the spirit of harmony and justice. The statement was signed by J. B. Parks, Ed. Bates, Alfred A. Campbell, M. S. Moss, William Kliver, John H. McCune and William Ward, Executive Committee of the United Carpenters' council. The Executive Committee of the Carpenters' and Builders' association carefully considered the document and at once formulated and transmitted to the headquarters of the striking carpenters the following reply: TO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE CARPENTERS NOW ON STRIKE-- _Gentlemen_: Your communication has been respectfully received and carefully considered by the executive committee of the Master Carpenters' association. We respectfully inform you that we can not in any manner deviate from the action of the association of Thursday night, which was embraced in the report delivered to you, and there is nothing in your communication which in the opinion of this committee justifies the calling of a meeting of the Master Carpenters' association. Very respectfully yours, J. W. WOODARD, JONATHAN CLARK, FRANCISCO BLAIR, JOHN RAMCKE, S. H. DEMPSEY, Executive Committee Carpenters' and Builders' Association of Chicago. The new association of bosses became exasperated at the action of the Carpenters' Council with regard to their agreement, and sent the council notice that unless the proposition for a settlement of the strike was agreed to by noon of April 16th, the association would not consider itself bound to pay 35 cents an hour, recognize the union, or make eight hours a day's work. They demanded that their employes be directed to return to work on Monday, April 18th. Early Saturday morning, April 16th, the executive committee of the Carpenters' and Builders' Association issued an address, as follows: Believing that the great majority of you are fair and honorable, the executive committee of the master carpenters take this means to address an appeal to you, as we believe you can not be reached in any other way, plainly, calmly, and without a coating of socialistic ideas being spread over by your so-called leaders, whose business it is to be agitators and disturbers of our mutual interests, and whose occupation would be gone if they could not find a constituency gullible enough to listen to and support them. It is impossible to say how much farther we would be advanced in material prosperity in this free country if we were free from the antagonistic feeling caused by this class of agitators, who are really out of their element here, and should be confined to the source of the oppression of labor, on the ground and among the institutions which support class distinction. Now we are all workers with you, our business is not speaking or writing, and we venture to say that nineteen-twentieths of the men who employ you started in from your body, and did not get where they are by listening to or following these imported ideas, but did the work they found to do, made the most of their opportunities, and we hope the same course will be left open to yourselves, and that the same spring will furnish more of the same stock, and that notwithstanding the foothold these perverted maxims (each for all and all for each) have gained among us, in the long run our plain judgment will lead us away from them and each will make his own endeavor to rise as high as his opportunities will allow him, and by doing so will stimulate his brother to follow in his footsteps. Is not this better than "each for all and all for each," which will load you down heavier than you can bear, so that none can rise, and a class will have to be furnished from some source to employ you who will surely not have your interests more at heart, and, in that event, we would be back again to whence we sprung from, or some other, where we can not tell. You surely will not be improved in your condition by wasting your time in contending with your employer for more than there is in existence to give you, for he can not give you what he has not got, nor can he give you wasted time nor the advance he has offered without risking a present loss in the hope of being able in the future to gradually increase the cost of production to cover his outlay. Men, go to work; form associations if you will; better your condition by that means if you can, but do not risk the driving away from this fair city that which supports you, nor listen, except to learn, to those born contenders who have no other gifts than "gab." Think of the $20,000 at least you are losing every day in wages, besides what you are spending, and think of those who are likely to suffer most by it. The wife and children, who have no voice in the matter, and also believe that your employers are not doing any better. Boys, this advice is from a committee of five who got every penny they possess from hard knocks and the work of their own hands and brains. J. W. WOODARD, JONATHAN CLARK, FRANCISCO BLAIR, JOHN RAMCKE, S. H. DEMPSEY, Executive Committee Carpenters' and Builders' Association of Chicago. The firmness of the employers and the disaffection among the carpenters, after two weeks of fruitless agitation, had produced no good results. No agreement was reached between the bosses and the strikers. The strike was simply declared off by what was regarded by the carpenters as competent authority. The edict which settled the strike was as follows: TO ALL ORGANIZED CARPENTERS--_Brothers_: You are ordered to report to your various jobs Monday at 8 A. M., and if your employer accedes to your demands for eight hours a day and 35 cents an hour, go to work, but on no account are you to work if your demands are not granted, neither will you work with scabs. You will make it your duty to see that every man has the working card issued by the United Carpenters' council for the months of April, May and June, and consider as a scab anyone who is not in possession of one. If your employer objects to the conditions do not stop to argue the question, but immediately report to headquarters. Some of you may not work the first nor the second day, but we will without fail win this battle if you follow instructions. Every brother in distress shall be assisted, and we pledge ourselves that not one of you shall want if only brought to our notice. Carefully take note of all jobs working more than eight hours, or employing scabs, and report to your headquarters. Also, any boss who defrauds brothers of their pay, with evidence necessary for prosecution. It shall be the duty of every man, especially foremen, to bring all influence they can to bear on their employers to induce them to join the new Builders' association. Now, brothers, with joy we say to you, go to work. You will get your demands. And we beseech you not to work for less. If you do, you will be found out. There are enough to watch those who will not do their duty, and you must be subject to a call when it is necessary. EXECUTIVE BOARD UNITED CARPENTERS' COUNCIL. When the news of the collapse of the strike reached the executive committee of the contracting carpenters at the Builders' and Traders' exchange it was at first discredited. When it was confirmed Chairman Woodard said he was glad such action had been taken, and that he knew the bosses would put the men to work Monday. "But," said he, "the members of the Carpenters' and Builders' association will not deviate from the action of Saturday night. We recognize eight hours as a day, but reserve the right to employ union or non-union men, and will pay from 30 cents an hour upward. We shall not hesitate to pay 35 cents, or more, to carpenters who are sufficiently skilled to earn such sums, but we must not be expected to employ men who are not able to earn more than 25 or 30 cents an hour. Our association has a membership that employs fully seven-eighths of the working carpenters, and we shall claim the right to employ competent men at fair wages and to discharge incompetent men at any time. I think it will be but a short time until nearly all of the carpenters will be at work, but not at 35 cents an hour." Francisco Blair said it would be unjust to require the bosses to discharge competent non-union men who had stood by them during the strike. He was satisfied that no member of the association would do so. There were plenty of bosses who would pay skilled workmen 35 cents an hour--a few men would receive 40 cents, as they had before the strike. Many of the assemblies of the carpenters met Saturday afternoon and evening and heartily endorsed the order directing them to return to work. They were tired of enforced idleness which had lasted sixteen days, and were ready to go to work on almost any terms. The following Monday--April 18th--four thousand of the striking carpenters returned to work, many of them secretly accepting the terms of the Carpenters and Builders, working for 30 cents an hour and upward, and pushing a plane or a saw by the side of a non-union carpenter who had not seen an idle day. AMALGAMATION. Trade organizations of almost every character had experienced difficulty in securing all they demanded from time to time, because of a want of co-operation--in their semi-tyrannical efforts--from kindred organizations. If the carpenters made a demand which was refused by the bosses, and non-union men should thereafter be employed on a building, they wanted the union employes in all other trades, working on the same job, to lay down their tools and walk out--a boycott must at once be established. If an employer assumed the right to carry on his own business in a manner which was distasteful to one or more employes in one trade, he must be forced to quit business until he was ready to obey the mandate of the trade affected. If he interposed an objection to such interference, he should be taught a severe lesson under the tyrannical, barbarous rule of the boycott. In order to lay the foundation for joint action in the direction indicated, a meeting was held April 10th, at which a plan of organization of the building trades was discussed. It was then deemed advisable to secure the consent of the various trade organizations in the city to the creation of a council for what was called "mutual protection." The proposition met with most hearty approval by ten trade organizations, the members of which saw at once how much more tightly the rein of tyranny could be drawn over a contractor who might be able to successfully vanquish one trade, but would have to accede to anything when employes in ten building trades were arrayed against him. Delegates were appointed to what it was proposed to call "The Amalgamated Council of the Building Trades of Chicago," from the following trade and labor organizations: Carpenters, Painters, Derrickmen, Hod-carriers, Steam-fitters, Lathers, Gas-fitters, Galvanized-iron and Cornice workers, Slaters and Stair-builders. A meeting was held at Greenebaum's hall on Sunday, April 17th. A constitution and by-laws were adopted and officers were elected as follows: President, J. H. Glenn; Vice-President, P. A. Hogan; Secretary, Ed. Bates; Financial Secretary, J. Burns; Treasurer, V. Carroll; Sergeant-at-Arms, J. Woodman. As soon as the organization was perfected it affected dictatorial powers, assuming the right to regulate nearly everything of any consequence for the unions which were represented. The objects of the Council were declared to be "to centralize the efforts and experience of the various organizations engaged in the erection and alteration of buildings, and, with common interest, prevent that which may be injurious, and also to properly perfect and carry into effect that which they deem advantageous to themselves. When any organization represented in the Council is desirous of making a demand for either an advance in wages or an abridgement of the hours of labor, it is required to make a report thereon to the Council, through its delegates, prior to the demand being made, when, if the action is concurred in by a two-thirds vote, it is to be declared binding." In effect, the Council became an offensive and defensive body, the principal business of which was to take advantage of every employer in the building trades. If one should refuse to yield a point demanded by one trade, however unjust the demand might be, it was the business of this boycott Council to "carry into effect that which they deemed advantageous to themselves," which, on ordinary occasions, would result in a stoppage of work of every kind upon a building until the employer should yield. They also expected to be in a position to compel all non-union men to obey the mandates of the organization. At a meeting of the Council, April 23d, the constitution was amended by adding the following section: It shall be the special duty of this Council to use the united strength of the organizations represented therein to compel all non-union men to conform to and obey the laws of the organizations to which they should properly belong. This stroke at personal liberty was strictly in furtherance of the "advantage" sought to be taken of the employer. The same power was to be brought to bear upon the workmen, who assumed the right to be independent, by seeking to "compel" them to "obey laws of the organizations to which they should properly belong." Not content with boycotting the employer, they must arrange a boycott upon a fellow-workman, because he might decline to join one of their unions. As if to "compel" a free man to do that against which his manhood revolts! HODCARRIERS AND LABORERS. There was comparative quiet for a week, during which time the carpenters were pushing their work rapidly. But the smooth order was soon broken. The first week in April the Hodcarriers' union had passed a resolution changing their pay from 25 to 30 cents an hour, and that of laborers from 22 to 25 cents an hour, and demanding recognition of their union. This order--for it was nothing less--was directed to take effect the first Monday in May. On Saturday, April 30th, the Hodcarriers and Laborers were instructed to make their demands, and report to a meeting to be held on Sunday, in order that the union might determine whether a strike should be ordered and the men called off on Monday. The bosses decided that under no circumstances would they recognize the Hodcarriers' union, maintaining that they were fully justified in so doing because the Bricklayers' union had refused to aid any proposition on the part of the Hodcarriers and Laborers to strike. The employers expected nothing less than a strike, as they universally refused the demands, claiming they could at once fill the places made vacant from the ranks of idle men in the city. In order to make their cause appear stronger the laborers claimed that numbers of bosses had acceded to their demands, but this was not true. Laborers in the stone yards took up the cause, concluding it was an opportune time to make some demands. They insisted upon eight hours a day, and two gangs of men when required to work overtime. The Stone-Cutters association met at once and put an end to the proposition for a strike by adopting the eight-hour day, resolving to work overtime and pay one-fourth extra for it--but not work two gangs of men--and at the same time refused to obey the dictation of the union by resolving that they would "employ men whether they belong to a union or not." This prompt action ended the strike of the laborers so far as the Stone-Cutters were concerned. The Bricklayers union met Friday night, April 29th, and discussed the proposed strike of the Hodcarriers and Laborers, and in a very peculiar manner lent assistance to their weak brethren. They passed a magnanimous resolution that "in the event of a strike no bricklayer should consent to do a hodcarrier's work." But further than this no action was taken. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 1st, four thousand hodcarriers and laborers assembled in the vicinity of Taylor street hall, near Canal street. At 3 o'clock the proposed meeting was held, but not more than one-half of those present could gain admission to the hall. The men inside and outside of the hall were discussing their grievances and "rushing the can" in a manner that promised a famine in beer on the following day. Patrick Sharkey presided at the meeting, at which there was a decided sentiment in favor of a strike. Speeches in English, German, Polish, and Bohemian were made to this effect, and a resolution was passed for a committee to wait on the contractors to see what they would do in answer to the demands that had been made. It was decided to allow men to work where the bosses acceded to the union demands, but no union man should work where there was one man employed who was not receiving the full scale of wages. It was decided that no man who could get the union wages should be asked to leave his work, but he would be asked to aid in supporting those who were compelled to take part in the strike. It was claimed, before the close of the meeting, that four thousand of the seven thousand Hodcarriers and Laborers in the city would remain at work, while the other three thousand would "be forced to strike." On Monday morning, May 2d, the promised strike of the Hodcarriers and Laborers began. More than four thousand quit work because their demands for 25 and 30 cents an hour, and recognition of their union, were not met. The men had reported at their respective jobs where they made their demands. When they were refused they were grievously disappointed, and sat and stood around waiting for the arrival of the "Walking Delegate," or for orders from the bosses to go to work at the increased rate of wages. In many instances they had to stand aside and see their places taken by non-union men. This was galling, but they remained, almost universally, quite orderly. What irritated them more than anything else was the fact that union Bricklayers offered no objection to working with non-union laborers. They had confidently expected that one union would support another, but the Bricklayers refused to recognize them as members of a union. They appeared to be too common for an aristocratic Bricklayer. Eight Walking Delegates paraded the city and endeavored to persuade non-union men to quit work and join the union. They were successful in but few instances. Non-union Laborers who had secured a good job were disposed to stick to it, and it seemed to require more than persuasion to draw them away from their work. In the treasury of the Hodcarriers' union there was the sum of $12,000, but that amount would not reach very far in a general lockout of five thousand members, each of whom was entitled to receive $5 a week while unemployed. They could expect no assistance from the Bricklayers, who had snubbed them; or the Carpenters, who had exhausted their treasury while on a strike lasting sixteen days; or the plasterers, who were not strong in numbers or finances, and had business of their own to look after. Their cause was helpless from the start, especially in view of the fact that there were thousands of idle laborers who were only too glad to step into the places made vacant without asking any questions about wages. On Tuesday the places of the four thousand strikers had been so nearly filled that but three hundred vacancies were reported. This was a hard blow to the union, but they stubbornly refused to yield a single point. A special meeting of the Master Masons' and Builders' association was held Tuesday night, May 3d, at the Builders' and Traders' exchange, at which a resolution was unanimously adopted to not accede to the demands of the Hodcarriers' and Laborers' Union for an increase in wages. There were eighty-seven of the members present, only thirty being absent. Expressions were taken from those present in regard to the course that should be pursued in reference to the strike, and there was not a dissenting voice on the proposition to refuse the demands made. The absentees were all heard from, and the president of the association said they were all of the same opinion. It was a quiet, earnest meeting, at which the members exhibited their determination to stand together, no matter what the result might be. On inquiry as to the number of Master Masons who needed laborers it was ascertained that there were but six members of the association who were without laborers, while less than a dozen others needed a few men. It was agreed that the members who had laborers to spare should lend some of them to those who most needed them until they could secure as many as they required. An executive committee was appointed, composed of Joseph Downey, Thomas E. Courtney, and Herman Mueller. This committee was instructed to hold daily sessions at the Builders' and Traders' exchange for the purpose of hearing complaints from members and supplying them with laborers, and to have a general supervision of the labor question pending a final settlement of the strike. They had no difficulty in securing all the men they wanted, the laborers being perfectly satisfied with the wages paid. On Thursday, May 5th, the Master Masons' association learned that a number of cases of intimidation had been attempted with their non-union laborers, but they passed them over because the battle had already been won. A STRIKE CLAUSE. On Friday, May 6th, Joseph Downey, President of the Master Masons' Association, sent the following communication to D. Adler, President of the Illinois Association of Architects. It was sent for the purpose of endeavoring to secure the co-operation of the Architects of the city--in view of a general strike in the building trades, which it was plain to be seen was impending: TO THE ARCHITECTS OF CHICAGO--_Gentlemen_: Owing to incessant and unreasonable demands being made upon us from time to time by our employes, causing incalculable delays, which mean disaster to those signing time contracts, the members of this association have, therefore, unanimously agreed to sign no contracts after May 1, unless the words "except in case of strikes or epidemics" are inserted in the time clause. Very respectfully, JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. PAY ON SATURDAY. The Master Masons' Association unofficially received information that the Bricklayers' union had passed a resolution fixing Saturday as pay-day, instead of Monday, or Tuesday, which had been the rule for many years. This action was not taken by the union because it was believed greater good could be accomplished, or because it was a necessary change; but was for the purpose of further testing the temper of the employers and notifying them that they were subject to the dictation of the union. On Friday Mr. Downey sent the following unofficial communication to A. E. Vorkeller, President of the Bricklayers' union, hoping to secure a rescinding of the Saturday pay-day resolution, and avoid a strike: TO THE UNITED ORDER OF AMERICAN BRICKLAYERS AND STONEMASONS-- _Gentlemen_: It has come to the knowledge of the Master Masons' and Builders' association that at your last meeting you passed a resolution that the members of your union should hereafter be paid on Saturday, instead of Monday and Tuesday, as is now and has been the custom. There has been no official action by the Master Masons' and Builders' association, but I have conferred with a number of them, and am impelled to write this letter to notify you of the fact that while we might prefer to comply with your request, we find it will be impossible to make up our pay-rolls in time to pay on Saturday, especially in the busy season, when some of us have from two hundred to three hundred men employed. We trust, gentlemen, that you will reconsider the action taken which resulted in the adoption of the resolution mentioned, as we are particularly anxious that the good feeling which has prevailed between your union and our association shall be continued without interruption. Very respectfully yours, JOSEPH DOWNEY. A DECLARATION. The evening of the same day a meeting of the Hodcarriers was held at West Twelfth street Turner Hall, at which a resolution was passed declaring it to be the duty of all employes in the building trades to go out in a body in order to support the strike which they had inaugurated, and in which they had been unsuccessful. GOING SLOW. A result of the strikes and unsettled state of affairs was to be seen in the disposition of contractors to go slow in bidding for new work, fearing they might be stopped by a strike and prevented from completing a building after the work had gotten well under way. Similar experience in past years had made them wary. THE BRICKLAYERS' STRIKE. Saturday, May 7th, was the first pay-day after the passage of the resolution by the Bricklayers' union fixing that day for payment. When the hour arrived for quitting work demand was made of the foreman on each job for payment in accordance with the resolution. It was refused, the Master Masons having determined that if the men were to strike because their demand was not conceded, they should be given an opportunity to do so at once. This general demand was taken as official notification that the resolution had passed. There was a universal expression of opinion among the Master Masons that they would refuse the demand--because of the spirit and manner in which it was made--and that they would stand firmly together upon the question. On Monday, May 9th, about two hundred bricklayers quit work because they had not been paid on the previous Saturday, but they were returned to work by President Vorkeller, of the union, because, he said, the rule for Saturday pay-day did not take effect until May 14th. Mr. Vorkeller called on President Downey and asked that a conference be held on the question of Saturday pay-day. In view of the action of the union in first resolving that the pay-day should be changed, this request was looked upon as very strange. But Mr. Downey notified him that he would present the question to the Master Masons' association. In referring to the situation Mr. Thomas Courtney voiced the sentiments of the builders when he said the only way to settle the prevailing uneasiness would be to stop all building at once and let it remain stopped until the strikers were tired of it. This seemed like a harsh measure, but it was the only sure way to success. All were tired of this labor agitation, and as the building of residence property especially was overdone, it was the best time he ever saw for a lockout. The workmen were not only fixing their own hours for work and their own pay, but now they wanted to fix their own pay-day. With so much labor disturbance it was a marvel to him that there was any disposition to erect a building in Chicago. A committee from the Amalgamated Trades Council called at the Builders' and Traders' exchange to see the executive committee of the Master Masons' association for the purpose of talking about the strike of the Hodcarriers. The committee was composed of Messrs. Brennock of the Carpenters, Carroll of the Stonecutters, and McBrearty of the Hodcarriers. They found President Downey, to whom they stated that they had called to see if the differences could be adjusted. Mr. Downey stated that the members of the executive committee were out paying their employes, and that another time would have to be fixed for the conference. He hoped the result of the conference would be satisfactory to all, and that at its conclusion they could say the strike was ended. The committee said that was what they wanted. Mr. Downey wanted to know what authority the committee had in the matter, and was told that they represented twelve of the building trades, and had the power to order every union man in those trades off a building where the union scale of wages was not paid or where non-union men were employed. But, they did not desire to exercise that power, as it was more the business of the Council to arbitrate and effect settlements than to encourage strikes. It was agreed that a conference should be had Tuesday morning, at which time the entire situation with reference to the Hodcarriers would be discussed. In order to exhibit the venomous spirit of some of the strikers an effort was made by the union Hodcarriers and Laborers to make the life of non-union Laborers a burden. A scheme was started for dropping mortar and pouring water on them in order to drive them away from any job where union men were at work. On Tuesday evening, May 10th, the Master Masons' association met. President Downey read a letter from the Bricklayers' Union which contained an unqualified statement that the union would not rescind the resolution making Saturday the pay-day. Mr. George C. Prussing submitted the draft of a communication to be sent to the Bricklayers' Union, and stated that he thought it was highly proper to send it, in the hope that by courteous treatment the differences would be settled with less difficulty. The proposition to send the communication was unanimously adopted. The communication was as follows: TO THE UNITED ORDER OF AMERICAN BRICKLAYERS AND STONEMASONS-- _Gentlemen_: Notice of your resolution fixing pay-day every Saturday two weeks has been laid before this association. We submit to your consideration that a subject of this kind can hardly be "fixed" by a resolution in a meeting of employes, but should be referred to and properly discussed by a joint committee of both employers and employes before action is taken. Thus far the rule has been to pay up to and including Saturday on the following Tuesday among the members of this association, and as far as heard from no complaint of any irregularity in paying workmen has been made. In a city as large as this, covering such immense area, and where it is not infrequent for the same firm to be engaged upon work on the North, South, and West sides at the same time, two days at least are necessary to make up pay-rolls and envelope money properly. If, therefore, the change of pay-day from Tuesday to Saturday should be adopted, it would necessitate the closing of pay-day on Thursday night preceding. This, we submit, would not serve either you or us as well as to pay to the end of the previous week. You have not given us any reasons for your arbitrary demand for a change, and we have failed to find any in our judgment good and sufficient. If any such reasons exist we shall be pleased to know them. Until then we shall continue to pay as before, regularly every second Tuesday, up to the preceding Saturday night. By order of the CHICAGO MASTER MASONS' ASSOCIATION. The communication was at once taken to the Bricklayers' Union by C. P. Wakeman, it having been stated that the union was in session and would receive any communication that should be sent. In about thirty minutes Mr. Wakeman returned from his visit to the Bricklayers, and reported that he had been received in grand shape. The hall was packed full, and when he took his place on the platform to read the communication he was loudly cheered. He asked the Bricklayers to lay the question of pay-day over and appoint a committee to see if the matter could not be settled. He was satisfied that two-thirds of those present were in favor of a compromise. They agreed to telephone the Builders' and Traders' exchange as soon as a conclusion was reached. The telephone was not used, but a committee from the Bricklayers' union called at 10:30 o'clock and notified Mr. Wakeman that the union had unanimously passed a resolution making Saturday the pay-day, and that it would not recede from it, but was willing to allow two days in which to make up the pay-roll, closing it on Thursday night. The report was received, after which a motion was made to lay the report on the table, but it was withdrawn. William O'Brien said the demand for pay on Saturday, if acceded to, would result in another demand for pay at noon on Saturday and give the men the afternoon, and then the contractors would have "blue Monday" in fact. He was in favor of acting like men and standing firmly by their principles, and they would command the respect of everybody. [Applause.] Mr. Charles W. Gindele said if the bricklayers had done the fair thing they would have conferred with the contractors before passing the resolutions, but they had made the demand arbitrarily. The community and the material men were watching the action of the association, and were ready to stand by it if it stood by its members. It was only a matter of time until the strike would have to burst, and he was in favor of bursting it then. If it was not done the community could not be expected to stand by them. If all building was stopped there were enough vacant buildings in the city to house everybody. [Applause.] A motion to not concur in the report of the committee was unanimously adopted, which was equivalent to a refusal to accede to the demands of the bricklayers in regard to making Saturday the pay-day. A resolution was then adopted refusing to comply with the demands of the bricklayers in regard to Saturday as a pay-day, fixing Monday or Tuesday of every other week as the day of payment, and agreeing to shut down all work if the bricklayers should strike on account of this action. There was but one opposing vote. President Downey submitted an agreement which had already been signed by a large majority of the members of the association. It embraced a proposition to stand together upon the question of pay-day, and to all stop work, if it should be necessary, in order to maintain their rights against unjust exactions of the laboring men. After the agreement was read an opportunity was given for members to sign it who had not done so, and twenty names were added to the list. The association then voted to approve the sentiments expressed in the agreement, the vote being unanimous. The Executive Committee submitted a report of the doings of its members in regard to the labor troubles. It was as follows: TO THE CHICAGO MASTER MASONS' ASSOCIATION--_Gentlemen_: Your executive committee does respectfully report that a committee of three, claiming to be appointed by and to represent the Amalgamated Trades council, and to be clothed by it with power to settle the existing laborers' strike, did call by appointment this morning at the exchange and met us, together with a number of members of this association whom we asked to join us for this particular purpose. After quite a lengthy and exhaustive discussion of the situation said committee of three insisted: Firstly, on the establishment of a minimum rate of wages for all masons' laborers at 23½ cents per hour. Secondly, one time and one-half to be granted for all work done over and above eight hours per day, no matter during which hours such work may be performed. Thirdly, for double pay for Sunday work, and, Lastly, on the recognition of their union. The first three propositions are debatable and might have been acceded to by your committee and this body, and if the fourth had been understood to mean an acknowledgement of the fact that a union of masons' laborers more or less numerous has been formed, and is now in existence, your committee would have been ready to go to that length. But the gentlemen wanted more--far more. They informed us that a recognition of their union means that the members of this association pledge themselves to employ henceforth none but laborers belonging to their union, to grant to it the practical control of the labor market, and to drive every laborer now employed from our buildings, and in reality out of the city all who have not now, or do not in near future, join the ranks of their union. In other words, to make ourselves the whippers-in of said union. It means that we sanction and support the aim and object of said union, which is that none shall work in Chicago at their calling except upon surrender of his manhood into its keeping and at its beck and call. It means that we sanction the employment of brute force to coerce men into their ranks. It means that we sanction and approve of the outrages committed daily against men now at work upon terms mutually satisfactory to themselves and their employers. We, the members of this association, must plead guilty, in common with the entire community, to suffering the fundamental principles underlying the very fabric of our government, and guaranteed by our constitution--principles called inalienable rights of man--to be overridden and practically abrogated by lawless bodies throughout the land. Thus far are we equally guilty with all other citizens in neglecting our duty as such. To uphold this government and constitution is the duty of all citizens. We are part of this community, and comparatively a small fraction. This community will awake from its lethargy and to its duty when that time comes, and God speed the coming. The voice of this association will give no uncertain sound. In the meantime, let us never voluntary do or sanction wrong. We may suffer, but we can not cope against it without the active support of the community. But never let it be said that we approved of the methods employed recently by trades-unions. Your committee would not make you liable to such charge by its act, and reports the whole matter to you for final action. Respectfully. JOSEPH DOWNEY, H. MUELLER, Executive Committee. We, the undersigned members, who were present at the committee meeting this morning do join in the report. G. C. PRUSSING, GEORGE TAPPER, C. P. WAKEMAN. The report was adopted by a rising vote, followed by prolonged applause. President Downey stated that he had recently seen a great many of the brick manufacturers and the officers of the stone pool in regard to selling materials in case of a lockout, and they had assured him that they would stand by the contractors in case of a general strike, and not sell a dollars' worth of building material while the strike lasted. The pulse of the manufacturers of and dealers in building materials was felt, and it was ascertained that they fully realized they were standing on a volcano that was likely to burst at any time and stop them. One of them covered the case fully when he said they were practically dependent upon the contractors, and if it became necessary for the Master Masons to shut down, the brick manufacturers and stone men would support them by shutting down their yards and stopping the manufacture of brick and the production of building stone. They were on the eve of a strike among their own employes, instances of discontent cropping out almost every day, and if the producers of building materials should elect to stand by the contractors he was satisfied the strike questions would not only be settled for the season, but for all time. The committee from the Amalgamated Building Trades Council, composed of Messrs. Brennock, Carroll and McBrearty again met the executive committee of the Master Masons' association and made its demand for the Hodcarriers. The Master Masons were asked to recognize the union, pay 25 cents an hour and agree to employ none but union hodcarriers and laborers. The executive committee of the Master Masons, composed of Messrs. Downey, Courtney and Mueller, with Mr. Prussing added, told the council committee that they would not accede to the demand. They insisted that they could not pay 25 cents an hour to laborers, and under no circumstances would they discharge the army of non-union laborers, as it would be an injustice to poor men who were dependent upon their labor for support. Mr. Courtney told them these men were not able, if inclined, to join the union, and it would be almost inhuman to throw them out of employment when they were faithful employes. Mr. Carroll admitted that the Council was not ready to order the union laborers to stop work, as there were too many non-union hodcarriers and laborers in the city, and until these were brought into the union a general strike would not accomplish what was wanted. He also remarked that the Council had decided to call off all union men on jobs where non-union men were employed, but he could not say whether it would carry out the declaration. The hodcarriers had inaugurated the strike, and might conclude to drop it until they were in better shape by having more non-union men in their assemblies. TWO THOUSAND BRICKLAYERS QUIT. On Monday, May 11th, the strike of the Bricklayers materialized. Two thousand members of the union dropped their trowels because the employers refused to recognize their edict in regard to Saturday pay-day. This act threw out of employment an equal number of Hodcarriers and Laborers, many of whom were not in sympathy with the movement of the Bricklayers. President Vorkeller of the Bricklayers' union, insisted that no strike had been ordered, but the men would not work unless the Saturday pay-day was granted. No "strike had been ordered," but the men were striking as fast as they could. Upon being informed that the pay-day would not be changed they stopped at once, all understanding that they must quit. Yet, according to the president of the union, "there was no strike ordered." They were simply "standing by the resolution." Some of the men quit work very reluctantly, remarking that it was the height of nonsense to strike on such a frivolous proposition. But they had to obey orders, and did so with military precision. The Walking Delegate was promptly on hand to see that every man obeyed orders, and the snap of his finger did its work on a great many jobs where the men were in no hurry to quit work. The president of the union claimed that they could endure a long lockout, as they had real estate and cash representing $75,000, and could make it $100,000 by assessments. But the Bricklayers were not Knights of Labor, and were not amalgamated with any other labor organization, and consequently were not in a position to give to or receive assistance from any other labor union. At the Builders' and Traders' exchange there was considerable bustle among the contractors. They realized that the strike for which they had been looking had commenced, and they put their heads together as if they were preparing for a long and hard fight. There was not a dissenting voice to be heard in regard to the question. Everyone who entered the exchange wore an earnest look, and expressed determination to not yield on the question of pay-day if the building business of the city was to stop a whole year. They had wrestled with the strike problem in almost every aspect in which it could be placed, until it had become a burden too heavy to bear. A period had been reached when the trouble could be settled for all time, and they were determined to settle it in a manner that would be effective. They realized that they might lose thousands of dollars while engaged in the effort, but with the co-operation of the material men they could reach a conclusion that would be lasting. It was not a question of hours or wages, as those had been conceded with many other exactions. It had become a question whether the contractor was to allow his employes to domineer over him and dictate everything, or whether he should have a little to do with the management of his own affairs. The building interests had been hampered for years by demand after demand, nearly all of which had been of an arbitrary character. It was more convenient for the contractors, and better for the men, that they should be paid on Monday or Tuesday. A majority of the Bricklayers did not object to the pay-day, but the leaders demanded the change, and they were forced to submit. Labor unions are generally managed by the leaders for their own interests. The Bricklayers were the best organized body in the city. They had no affiliations with other unions. If a Bricklayer entered Chicago with a card from another union in his hand he would not be permitted to work until he paid the Chicago Union $25. The result was that Bricklayers were driven from the city and the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons dictated for years rules, not only for their own government, but for the control of every Master Mason that attempted to fill a contract. Among the contractors the fight had become one for principle, and every element that was in sympathy with the maintenance of the right was invited to unite with the contracting Masons in their effort put forth to attain that object. In furtherance of the movement a committee was appointed by the Master Masons' association to confer with dealers in building materials and procure their signature to an agreement that they would not sell and deliver building material to any one pending a settlement of the labor troubles, except upon the authority of Joseph Downey, president of the Master Masons' associations. The agreement was as follows: _Whereas_, We believe the position taken by the Chicago Master Masons' association in the present building trade strike to be correct; and, _Whereas_, We believe that the more complete the cessation of all building work during the strike can be made, the shorter will be the interference with business. _Now_, _therefore_, Do we, the undersigned, hereby agree with and among one another not to sell or deliver materials to any building in Chicago or suburbs during the continuance of this strike, except as may be allowed or requested by the executive committee appointed by the Chicago Master Masons' association in charge of the strike. The committee was composed of Joseph Downey, president; Thomas Courtney, treasurer, (who went to Europe June 1st, and his place was filled by E. Earnshaw); Herman Mueller, secretary. A sub-committee was appointed, composed of C. W. Gindele, Daniel Freeman and E. S. Moss. The three divisions of the city were created "districts," and were put in charge of the following members: South side, William O'Brien; North side, John Mountain; West side, William Iliff. Visitors were then appointed and the city was thoroughly canvassed and patrolled in order to secure full co-operation of the material dealers, and to protect the interests of the members generally. Dealers in stone, brick, lime, cement, sand, architectural iron, tile, and every other class of building material, flocked to the exchange and appended their signatures to the agreement. They were only too glad to lend their assistance to break the backbone of a species of tyranny under which they had been oppressed for years. The committee reported that nearly every important dealer had signed the agreement. Backed by this element the contractors were relieved. They felt assured of success. There was joy in the camp of the Hodcarriers when it was announced that the Bricklayers had gone out. Their joy was not on account of the strike, but because it would result in throwing out of employment the non-union Hodcarriers and Laborers who had stepped into their places when they struck for an advance in pay, and were locked out. The idle men who were needy drew on the treasury of the Hodcarriers' union and took out of it nearly every dollar it contained. The Amalgamated Building Trades' Council met and attempted to order a general strike of all building trades, but discovered that they were powerless to do so, because the delegates had not been given "power to act" by their respective unions. The desire to order the general strike was present, but the authority was absent. There was no lack of willingness on the part of the leaders. They are always ready and willing to keep their positions at the sacrifice of anything and anybody. The leaders of the striking bricklayers were quietly, but actively engaged in laying plans for the future. They claimed to be ready to meet any emergency that might come. At the same time the contractors claimed to hold the key to the situation, and said they would never give up until they could have a little to say in the management of their own business. The executive committee of the Master Masons' association decided that there should be a general shutting down of all work on which bricklayers and stonemasons were engaged, and in pursuance of this decision the following notice was issued May 10th. Notice.--The members of the Master Masons' association now working men are hereby requested to stop work Friday night, May 13th, and to report to the executive committee. JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. On Friday, May 13th, the idle army was largely increased. Of bricklayers, stonemasons, hodcarriers, laborers, teamsters, helpers, carpenters, and a few in other trades, there were fifteen thousand out of employment. Many of these were willing to work, but they were forced to be idle because of the strike of the bricklayers. The strikers threatened to bring into the city building material from Michigan, thinking by such a proceeding they could force the bosses to give in. The proposition was laughed at. In support of the Master Masons the North and Northwest Brick Manufacturers' association met and resolved that from May 14th no brick should be delivered from any of the yards in the association until the strike was ended, and that the yards would stop manufacturing brick May 18th. The association yards had a capacity of 1,250,000 brick per day, and employed 1,300 men. The bricklayers attempted to hold a meeting at Greenebaum's hall Friday night to discuss what they termed "the bosses' lockout." Every member of the union was on hand, and at least half of them were prepared to express their views on the subject. Over five hundred men were unable to gain entrance to the hall owing to its crowded condition, and finding themselves thus cut off from debate proceeded to interrupt those who were inside, so that it was impossible for anyone to hear what was said. A good many who were on the floor were determined to express disapprobation at the trivial demand that had precipitated the trouble, and to request that something be done to settle the dispute, but finding that the malcontents outside were bent on stopping all discussion it was determined to close the meeting. Upon a motion to this effect another noisy faction began to oppose it, and the shouting and stamping of feet became deafening. The floor quivered under the tumultuous mob, and many left the hall for fear it would give way. President Vorkeller could not control the men, and after two hours' labor to bring order out of chaos he made a proposition that battery D, or the cavalry armory, be secured, and thus obtain room for all. This met with favor, and the meeting adjourned with the understanding that the men assemble at battery D at 10 o'clock Saturday morning, May 14th. REVOLUTIONARY TALK. In order to inflame the strikers and keep them together they were frequently regaled by such poisonous talk as the following: "In a week the men will begin to get uneasy. They will assemble on the streets. The Internationalists [red-flag bandits] will be among them, notwithstanding the fact that they are alleged to have disbanded. Do you suppose that 50,000 or 100,000 men are going to starve and allow their families to die before their eyes without lifting a hand? It is against human nature. I am going to leave Chicago. It is not safe for men of my views to be around in times like these. If the lockout is continued, the people will arise and overthrow a system which permits a few men to starve the vast majority into slavery." It was of little use to point out to angry and ignorant men the absurdity of these revolutionary predictions of their worst enemies. It availed nothing to tell them that Capital had not refused to give them employment; that Capital was ready and more than willing to employ them, and was suffering loss every day and hour of their idleness; that Capital was the best friend they have in the world, a friend that respected their rights and required of them only that they should have equal respect for its rights; and that to maintain its rights against their annoying and persistent attacks was its sole aim in meeting them on their own ground and fighting them in their own fashion. Their blatant demagogues asserted the contrary, and they continued to listen to their blatant demagogues. PECULIAR METHODS. The Bricklayers' union was such a close corporation that it not only failed and refused to affiliate with bricklayers who were members of the International union, but proposed to debar every other mechanic from earning a living and force them to assist in securing a benefit for its own members. It was attempting to oust from employment all other building trades in order to carry a trivial point for its own benefit. A meeting of the Amalgamated Trades' Council was held May 14th, at which the action of the Bricklayers was discussed. Expressions of sympathy were made for the Hodcarriers--who were represented in the Council--and condemnation of the Bricklayers,--who were not represented,--and the following resolution was unanimously adopted: _Resolved_, That the Bricklayers' union be requested to send a delegation to this Council and take part in its work, and failing so to do that this Council consider itself purposely ignored, and at liberty to support such members of the International Union of Bricklayers as may seek work in Chicago, and that the hodcarriers may supply said International men. A committee was appointed to convey the resolution to the president of the Bricklayers' union. When asked if he had received the resolution President Vorkeller at first emphatically denied it. But when James Brennock, Secretary of the Council, exhibited a reply to it from Vorkeller, he changed his manner of expression, and admitted that he had decided to send a committee to meet the members of the Council, but the union would not send delegates. He said he would have nothing to do with amalgamation, as the union was independent, and able to take care of itself. He afterwards changed his mind, however, and the Bricklayers' union, which was so independent, so powerful, so well organized--under a threat by the Hodcarriers to bring International bricklayers to Chicago--sent delegates to the Council and amalgamated. WALLING THE STRIKERS IN. The executive committee of the Master Masons' association busied itself in securing signatures to the agreement to not sell or deliver any building material pending the strike, and they were eminently successful. It divided the city into districts and appointed sub-committees to visit each job to see who were working and if any disposition was shown to violate the agreement. They daily added signatures to the document, fully realizing that by procuring a hearty co-operation from the material men they could build a wall so high that there would be no question of success in combatting the tyrannical acts of the union. The question of individual liberty was brought home to them in such a manner that they could not ignore it. A NEW PROPOSITION. Saturday, May 14th, a large meeting of representatives of the building trades met at the Builders' and Traders' exchange. The spacious rooms were crowded to their full capacity. George Tapper presided. The sentiments of the meeting were fully expressed in the following statement and resolutions, which were unanimously adopted: The members of the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago, in special meeting assembled, in their capacity as citizens and as employers of labor, believe the time ripe to protest against the arrogant interference of labor organizations with business and the rights of man as guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. From year to year this evil of foreign importation has grown worse and worse, because the people, whose duty as citizens it is to uphold and enforce the laws, have not taken the time to oppose actively the aggressions and outrages committed in the name and by the instigation of the various labor organizations. We have seen this evil brought to and planted in our soil; we have allowed it to sprout and grow, and put forth new and stronger shoots every year, until now it is plain that it must either be stamped out by the active co-operation of all law-abiding citizens or it will overwhelm and destroy our very form of government. The dividing line between the permissible and objectionable, between right and wrong, should be clearly and unmistakably drawn, and the voice of the community should be heard with proper earnestness and determination, saying to the ignorant as well as the vicious, "thus far shall you go, but go no farther." We believe that the large majority sin from ignorance. Others have seen the wrong exist and tolerated, and wrong-doers prosper, until their moral perceptions are dulled and blunted. Those who know better, whose opportunity and education is superior, have neglected their duty to their misled fellow-citizens full long enough. A crusade must be inaugurated, and should be participated in by each and all who love and desire the perpetuation of this government, founded, in the words of the immortal Lincoln, "of the people, for the people, by the people." Let all unite and stand shoulder to shoulder in solid phalanx for the right and frown down the spirit of anarchy now rampant, and ere long the rights of the individual shall again be respected, and this country shall again and in fact become the "home of the free." _Whereas_, We recognize that the Master Masons' and Builders' association has taken a proper stand in its opposition to the arbitrary dictates of organized labor, and that its battle is our battle, and in the belief that the more complete the cessation of all building work during the present strike the shorter will be the interference with business; now, therefore, be it _Resolved_, That we indorse the action of said Master Masons' association and make its position our own, and will actively aid and assist it in and during this strike. _Resolved_, That while we condemn and oppose improper actions by trades unions, we still recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and shall aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conference and arbitration are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented. _Resolved_, That this exchange do, and it does hereby, call upon all contractors and builders, be they members of this exchange or not, for co-operation and active assistance; it calls upon all architects; upon the owners of buildings in course of construction or about to be started; upon the press and pulpit; upon each and every citizen, and particularly upon all mechanics and laborers who believe that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employer and workman should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. Each association in the building trades, and the Illinois State Association of Architects, and the Chicago Real Estate board were requested to appoint three delegates to be present at a conference of building trades on Monday, May 19th. Mr. Prussing was asked to state the position of the Master Masons. In doing so he said: "It is no more walking delegate! [Cheers.] No more interference with the boy who wishes to learn a trade that he may earn an honest living. [Cheers.] But why ask for particulars? We ask that the wrongs and outrages perpetrated by the trades unions be wiped out, and we ask every minister in his pulpit and every editor in his chair to aid us. If we present a solid and united front the victory will soon be won. * * * * The spirit of anarchy is rampant and must be put down, or it will put you down." [Applause.] Just as the meeting adjourned a telegram was received from Boston, signed by William H. Sayward, secretary of the National Association of Builders. The assembly waited to hear it. It read as follows: We are watching your course with great sympathy and interest. Individual liberty must be preserved at any cost. It was received with a burst of applause, followed by three cheers and a "tiger." PRACTICAL WORK. A meeting of the directors of the Chicago stone pool was held, at which there was a full attendance. The building situation was carefully and thoroughly discussed, and without a dissenting voice it was agreed to sustain the Master Masons in the action taken relative to the strike. A resolution was adopted not to sell or deliver stone to anybody pending a settlement of the labor troubles. It was also agreed to stop work at the twenty-two quarries controlled by the pool if it should become necessary. The key to the situation was held by the stone pool, and when this action was taken the cause of the Master Masons was strengthened in a manner that caused a feeling of relief. Without stone building could not go on for any great length of time. PERMITS--ARCHITECTS. There was some work under contract which had to be done in order to protect it, or to avoid violating an agreement, and in such cases President Downey arranged for the issuance of permits for the sale of such material as was needed to complete the work. The Architects met and expressed approval of the course of the Master Masons, and the following resolution, presented by W. L. B. Jenney, was unanimously adopted: _Resolved_, That the secretary be and he is hereby instructed to send to the Builders' and Traders' exchange, through its president, the announcement of our sincere co-operation. WHIPPING THE GERMANS INTO LINE. A mass meeting of the Bricklayers was held on the same day at Battery D, ostensibly for the purpose of discussing the strike, but really for the purpose of anathematizing the employers and forcing into line the dissatisfied and discontented Germans who had been forced to strike against their will. There was a majority of the Germans present, and if they had not been frightened into following the leaders, they could have rescinded the resolution making Saturday the pay-day. But they were timid and unorganized. Mr. Richter spoke in favor of rescinding the resolution, but his own German friends were not brave enough to accord him a cheer, while the opposition howled him down. When the orators thought they had the meeting in proper temper the following resolution was presented by George Childs: _Resolved._ That we strictly abide by the resolution that was passed by our Union as to a Saturday pay-day every two weeks, and refuse to work on any other terms. It was read in six different languages that it might be understood by the "congress of nations." President Vorkeller then requested those who favored its adoption to take a position on the right of the hall. A rush was made and but one man voted against the resolution. The objecting Germans had been intimidated to such an extent on that and previous occasions that they feared to vote against the edict of the leaders. A viva voce vote was then taken and the resolution was adopted without a dissenting voice. When the result of the meeting at Battery D was announced in the committee-room of the Master Masons there was a significant smile on the faces of those present. President Downey stated that a rescinding of the Saturday pay-day resolution by the bricklayers was not expected, and if it had been done it would not have restored the building interests to their normal condition. The contractors had been forced into a fight which they had staved off for years by making concessions, but now that they were in it they would not stop short of a permanent settlement of every grievance which had been borne until they were no longer to be endured. On Monday, May 16th, there were 18,000 mechanics locked out, and 1,100 laborers were being supported by the Hodcarriers' union. Four hundred bricklayers left the city to look for work. A PLATFORM OF PRINCIPLES. Tuesday evening, May 17th, the Master Masons' association met and unanimously adopted the following platform of principles: Your committee does respectfully report in favor of the reaffirmation of the following planks from the platform of the National Association of Builders as fundamental principles upon which must be based any and all efforts at settlement of the now existing lockout in building trades: We affirm that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. We recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and, while condemning and opposing improper action upon their part, we will aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points on which conference and arbitrations are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented; or, in other language, that "the walking delegate must go;" that the laws of the state shall prevail in regard to apprentices and not the dictates of labor organizations; that "stewards" in control of the men employed at buildings will not be recognized, and that "foremen," as the agents of employers, shall not be under the control of the union while serving in that capacity. We report in favor of the above, and believe that no time should be wasted now in the discussion of details which can readily be adjusted by arbitration when an association of workmen shall be in existence which acknowledges the justice of the above principles. With such association, questions of detail or policy, such as minimum rate of wages to be paid, the hours of work per day, or any complaints or grievances now existing or hereafter arising, can readily be settled by a joint committee of arbitration, and we hold ourselves ready and willing to do so. The need of the day is a firm stand upon the question at issue--namely, the constitution-guaranteed rights of the individual. In our efforts to maintain these we have received the unanimous and hearty co-operation of the community, and we are sure of its continued support. All other questions are trivial in comparison, and the consideration thereof may well be postponed. And in this connection we take pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of sympathy and co-operation of the architects of this city, the active support of the manufacturers of and dealers in building materials, the uniform and readily-granted assistance of the building public and the many letters of sympathy with the cause received from people entirely disconnected with building interests, who feel with us that it is the duty of the American people to oppose this form of tyranny and crush it out now and forever. It is time, indeed, that the men in charge of unions should learn that they are not fighting this association, but run counter to the sentiments of the entire people and the institutions of this free country. They must learn to distinguish between liberty and license, between right and wrong. All who aid in this work deserve well by their country. In conclusion, we recommend the appointment of a committee of three by the president to represent this association at a conference to be held by representatives of all building trades at the Builders' Exchange to-morrow, and until the present lockout is finally settled. GEORGE C. PRUSSING, GEORGE TAPPER, GEORGE H. FOX, Committee. When that portion was read stating that the "walking delegate must go" there was loud applause, and every section of the platform was cheered. THE REAL ESTATE BOARD. A special meeting of the Real Estate board was held at which the labor question was fully discussed by Messrs. W. D. Kerfoot, H. L. Turner, M. R. Barnard, E. S. Dreyer, Bryan Lathrop, W. L. Pierce and others. The following resolution was presented by M. R. Barnard and adopted by the board: _Resolved_, That the Chicago Real Estate Board is in full sympathy with the Builders' and Traders' exchange, the contractors, architects, and owners in their efforts to check the evils of the labor troubles, and that the Real Estate Board expresses a willingness to co-operate with them in their efforts to devise such means as will result in an equitable and final settlement of the question. SOMEBODY WAS HURT. The Amalgamated Trades' Council held a meeting--which was attended by delegates from the Bricklayers' union--at which threats were made to prosecute Messrs. Downey, Prussing and other builders for "conspiracy" because they had been prominent in securing the co-operation of the dealers in building material, and a refusal to sell and deliver pending the strike. This movement had struck its mark. It hurt. In the meantime the poor Hodcarriers and Laborers were lost sight of. They had exhausted their treasury and were assessing members at work $1 a week to partially defray expenses of those who were idle. Very few were engaged in building, but were shoving lumber, working in ditches and sewers, and performing labor of any kind they could find to do. Their cause was lost. AN IMPORTANT MOVEMENT. The conference of Building Trades, which had been called by the Builders' and Traders' exchange, met Wednesday, May 18th. The various organizations were represented as follows: Architectural Iron-Work--Robert Vierling, A. Vanderkloof, M. Benner. Plumbers--Robert Griffith, William Sims, J. J. Wade. Steam-Fitters--H. G. Savage, L. H. Prentice, P. S. Hudson. Stone-Cutters--F. V. Gindele, T. C. Diener, John Rawle. Plasterers--J. N. Glover, A. Zander, John Sutton. Roofers--M. W. Powell. Master Masons--George C. Prussing, George Tapper, George H. Fox. Painters--J. B. Sullivan, H. J. Milligan, J. G. McCarthy. Galvanized-Iron-Work--Edward Kirk, Jr., F. A. E. Wolcott, W. B. Maypole. Carpenters--William Hearson, William Mavor, W. T. Waddell. North Side Brick Manufacturers--A. J. Weckler, F. Zapell, A. Hahne. Non-Union Stone-Cutters--C. B. Kimbell. Real Estate Board--Henry L. Turner, W. L. Pierce, E. S. Dreyer. Builders' and Traders' Exchange--F. E. Spooner, H. C. Hoyt, B. J. Moore. Architects--F. Bauman, J. W. Root, M. Pierce. Hollow-Tile Manufacturers--P. B. Wight. George Tapper was made president and F. C. Schoenthaler secretary. The members discussed the situation, all agreeing that it was necessary to stand together, and that prompt action should be taken to settle the strike. On motion of F. E. Spooner the two sections of the platform of the Master Masons, which were taken from the declaration of principles of the National Association of Builders, were read and adopted without a dissenting voice. The following committee was appointed to submit a plan for future action: George C. Prussing, Henry L. Turner, William Hearson, J. B. Sullivan and Edward Kirk, Jr. BRICK YARDS SHUT DOWN. Wednesday, May 18th, nearly all of the brick manufacturers in and adjacent to the city shut down their yards to not resume the manufacture of brick until there was a settlement of the labor troubles. Their action threw out of employment six thousand brickmakers, helpers, yardmen, and teamsters. This action was precipitated by the fact that there was a supply of brick on hand which could not be delivered until building operations were resumed, and the manufacturers saw nothing in the situation that made it necessary for them to make brick when their product could not find a market. They did not desire to invest large sums of money in making brick to store at a large expense, and few of them had an outside demand for their product. In nearly every yard in the vicinity of Chicago there had been strikes, and others were threatened. The feeling of uncertainty and insecurity was so prevalent that the brick manufacturers were more ready than ever to co-operate with the movement of the Master Masons in order to be placed in a position to begin anew on whatever basis might be adopted for a settlement of the labor question. They wanted to run full time when they did run, and not be regulated by the "gang" rule as to what should constitute a day's work for a machine and the attendant man. When a machine was guaranteed to make 50,000 brick in a day they objected to shutting it off at 35,000, and calling that number a day's work. Such rules were regarded as too arbitrary, and as the brickmaking season was limited to from 120 to 150 days it necessarily shortened the crop and prevented a fair income on the capital invested in machinery and grounds. A PLATFORM APPROVED. Thursday, May 19th, the conference of the Building Trades held a second meeting, and the committee on platform submitted a report which was discussed by the members and slightly amended. As adopted it was as follows: In order to carry into effect the platform adopted by us, your committee recommend: 1. That from this time forth the signature to the following code of principles by the employe be made a universal condition of employment by all building interests of Chicago, viz: I recognize the right of every man to decide for himself, without dictation or interference, when he shall work or cease to work, where he shall work, for whom he shall work, how many hours he shall work, and for what wages he shall work. I recognize the absolute right of the employer to decide for himself, without interference from any source, whom he shall employ or cease to employ; to regulate and manage his business with perfect independence and freedom, provided, only, that he deal lawfully, justly and honorable with all men. I recognize the right of every father to have his son taught, and of every son to learn, any lawful trade as on a plane with his right to a knowledge of reading, writing, or any other branch of learning, and should be subject to regulation only by the laws of the land. I hereby pledge myself, in all my relations and intercourse with my employers and fellow-workmen, to maintain and live up to these principles. Your committee recommend, second, that the same code of principles be presented for signature to every employer with the pledge therein changed as follows: I hereby pledge myself to maintain and live up to these principles in the prosecution of my business, and to lend my aid to the full extent of my influence and power for their maintenance and protection among my fellow employers. I further pledge myself not to employ any workmen except upon his signature of this code of principles. Your committee recommend, third, that this conference recommend to our respective organizations to request of each of its members to employ such workmen only who recognize the inalienable rights as above set forth, and evidence their position by subscribing their names thereto. Your committee recommend, fourth, that public announcement be made at once that business will be resumed on or before June 1, with this code of principles as a basis. Your committee recommend, fifth, that a standing committee of one member from each of the building trades, Real-Estate Board, and the Illinois State Association of Architects, to be known as the central council of the building interests of Chicago be appointed, whose duty it shall be to see to the carrying out of these principles; that it shall have a sub-committee of safety, whose province it shall be to see that ample protection to all is afforded; with sub-committees on grievances, strikes, arbitrations, and such as may be found necessary, but that it work always and solely for the maintenance and protection of the principles herein laid down. Your committee recommend, sixth, that an address to the workingmen of the building trades and to the general public be prepared, setting forth your action and your reasons therefor; that fifty thousand copies be printed and immediately distributed. Your committee recommend, seventh, that the declaration of principles be printed at once and circulated for signatures. Your committee recommend, eighth, that a fund be created to defray the expenses of this central council, and that we request each association here represented to transmit to the order of George Tapper, chairman, the sum of 25 cents for each of their members, and that individual contributions of people interested in this work be accepted. The committee was instructed to have the report printed in six different languages for general distribution. A meeting of the Master Masons' association was held the same day at which objections were made to that portion of the platform which require the employe to _sign_ an agreement to abide by what had been laid down as the principles of the employers. It was regarded as impracticable and the association refused to approve it, deferring action until there was a full meeting. The Carpenters' and Builders' association met in the evening and unanimously approved the platform presented by the Conference of Builders, although some objection was offered to the clause requiring the employe to sign his name. SOME OBJECTIONS. At the rooms of the Builders' and Traders' exchange the members congregated in large number and earnestly discussed the situation and platform of principles adopted by the conference committee of the building trades. Everyone seemed to be loaded with an opinion which he wanted to shoot off at everybody else. The burden of the discussion was upon the proposition to require employers and employes to append their signatures to the declaration of principles. There was no disagreement as to the correctness of the principles, but a great many questioned the ability of the employers to put the first section into practice-- requiring the employe to sign before going to work. It was generally stated that this proposition was impracticable with the building trades, because many of the men were constantly moving about from one job to another, and unless they were known to have previously signed a new signature would be required on each job, to which the men would object. Masons generally favored a proposition to require the employes to assent to the principles enunciated, and if they did not want to work then they could remain idle. Some of the bosses, however, insisted that they would not only vote against the signing clause, but would refuse to put it into execution if it should be indorsed by a full meeting. It was suggested that an arrangement could be made for opening the doors and inviting the men to go to work. Each applicant for a job could be asked if he knew the principles which had been adopted, and under which work was to be resumed. If not, he could have a copy delivered to him to read, or have them read to him, and if he was then willing to resume work, all right. If not, he could reconsign himself to idleness. It was thought this would not antagonize the unions, and that a large majority of the men would return to work within a week. AN OFFICIAL VISIT. Notice having been received by the president of the Builders' and Traders' exchange that the officers of the National Association of Builders were to be in Chicago, the board of directors of the exchange met and appointed the following committee to receive them: George Tapper, Joseph Downey, George II. Fox, James John, M. Benner, Charles A. Moses, William E. Frost, F. C. Schoenthaler, and James C. Beeks. The officials were met and were fully informed by the committee of what had occurred in Chicago from the inception of the labor trouble which had paralyzed the building trades, and were furnished with a copy of the platform of principles adopted by the Conference committee of the building trades. The situation was informally discussed by the officers of the National Association and the reception committee, in order to put the visitors in a position to fully understand the ground upon which action had been taken. They were apprised of the demands which had been made from time to time for years, and of the fact that these demands had been generally acceded to until they had become almost unbearable, and that the builders of Chicago thought the time had arrived when decisive action should be taken in order to insure a permanent settlement of the troubles which had disrupted the employers and the employes. Referring to the situation William H. Sayward said it was not alone Chicago builders who were affected by the movement, but the whole country was interested in it. The builders of Chicago and those of other cities could see the benefits which were expected to be derived from a national association. Before that, when there had been a strike of any magnitude in any city, the builders engaged in the complications received not even a word of sympathy from their associates in other parts of the country. In their troubles the Chicago builders had received messages of sympathy and approval from almost every part of the country, because all felt and had a common interest in the questions at issue. A LITTLE SYMPATHY. The Central Labor union men met Sunday, May 22d, and compassed the situation by the passage of the following sympathetic resolution: _Resolved_, That the present lockout of the bosses is in every way unjustified; that the Central Labor union declares that it is a conspiracy against the rights of the working people, and extends to the locked out workmen hearty sympathy and financial as well as moral aid. ANOTHER THREAT. The Trade and Labor assembly met the same day and threatened to prosecute the Master Masons for "conspiracy" and agreed that they should be boycotted. The proposition to prosecute the bosses did not materialize, as wiser counsel prevailed, and showed that there was no foundation upon which to build the charge. OVER THE WIRE. Telegrams were received as follows: BOSTON, Mass., May 19, 1887. GEORGE TAPPER, President Builders' and Traders' exchange--The executive board of the National Association of Builders to Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago, Greeting: We have carefully examined the position you have taken, and the conditions which have led to your action, and hereby extend to you our most hearty approval and indorsement. Your position is entirely in accord with the principles of the National association. Opportunity should always be given for amicable settlement of differences that come within the rightful province of associations on either side. But when the line of right and justice is crossed, the prerogative of employers disregarded, and attempts made to coerce and force them from the exercise of their rights in the conduct of their business, then all lovers of law and order, all believers in individual liberty, will stand together with unbroken ranks until the recognition of this fundamental principle is thoroughly acknowledged. J. MILTON BLAIR, President. WILLIAM H. SAYWARD, Secretary. BOSTON, Mass., May 19, 1887. GEORGE TAPPER, President of the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago: The Master Builders' association of Boston, in convention assembled, have unanimously adopted the following resolutions, and have ordered them sent to the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago, as follows: While we acknowledge that in Boston the situation is fortunately harmonious between the employers and employes in the building trades, owing to the fact that reason has prevailed, the proper rights of the workmen having been recognized and the distinctive rights of the employers recognized by the workmen, and as a result thereof no organized attempt has been made in this city to overstep the bounds of proper jurisdiction by either party, we can not ignore the fact that our brother builders in Chicago have had forced upon them a problem which can only be solved by a firm denial of the assumed right of voluntary associations to disregard the rights of others, trample upon individual liberty, and blockade the progress of business thereby. We therefore hereby approve of the course taken by the Builders' and Traders' exchange, and assure them of our constant support upon that line. Let the principles for which we are all fighting be clearly defined, then stand. We are with you in behalf of right and justice for all and for the untrammeled liberty of every American citizen. WILLIAM H. SAYWARD, Secretary. CINCINNATI, May 19, 1887. GEORGE TAPPER, President Builders' and Traders' exchange: The Cincinnati Builders' exchange has just passed strong resolutions heartily commending your action and guaranteeing practical support. Stand by your colors. JAMES H. FINNEGAN, President. CINCINNATI, O., May 20. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: The Builders' exchange of Cincinnati again indorse you, and if necessary will follow suit. Stand by your colors. Your cause is right. J. H. FINNEGAN, President. PHILADELPHIA, May 20. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: At a special meeting of the corporation held this day at noon the preamble and resolution adopted by the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago, together with the code of principles, was unanimously approved. WILLIAM HARKINS, JR., GEORGE WATSON, F. M. HARRIS, Committee. NEW YORK, May 20. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: At a special meeting of the Mechanics' and Traders' exchange it was resolved that we tender you our sympathy in your present difficulties and assure you of our cordial support in the position assumed. D. C. WEEKS, President. E. A. VAUGHAN, Secretary. WORCESTER, Mass., May 20. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: We heartily indorse your efforts to crush out unwarrantable dictation and exalt labor to that position of dignity to which it belongs and which is truly expressed only in individual and personal liberty. E. B. CRANE, President Worcester Mechanics' Exchange. PROVIDENCE, R. I., May 20. TO BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: The Mechanics' exchange heartily approve your action, and are in full sympathy with you. WILLIAM F. CADY, Secretary. ST. PAUL, Minn., May 20. MR. F. C. SCHOENTHALER, Secretary Builders' and Traders' Exchange, Chicago: At a meeting of the board, held yesterday, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: _Resolved_, That the Contractors' and Builders' Board of Trade of St. Paul, Minn., heartily and unreservedly approve of the stand taken by the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago in determining to transact their business in their own way and time. Respectfully, J. H. HANSON, Secretary. ALBANY, N. Y., May 21, 1887.--BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: The Master Builders' exchange, of Albany, N. Y., in meeting assembled, heartily endorse the action taken by you and trust you will manfully stand together. EDWARD A. WALSH, DAVID M. ALEXANDER, MORTON HAVENS, Committee. BALTIMORE, Md., May 21, 1887.--GEORGE C. PRUSSING: Maryland Trades exchange express their formal approval of your position in present labor troubles, and wish you success. WILLIAM F. BEVAN, Secretary. INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., May 21. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE, Chicago: The Builders' exchange of Indianapolis at its meeting to-night endorses and approves of the action of the Chicago Builders' and Traders' exchange in their existing difficulty. WILLIAM JUNGCLAUS, Secretary. CINCINNATI, Ohio, May 21. GEORGE TAPPER, President Builders' and Traders' exchange, Chicago: Every true American will indorse the sentiments promulgated in your code of principles. JAMES ALLISON, President National Association Master Plumbers. MILWAUKEE, Wis., May 23. GEORGE C. PRUSSING: The Milwaukee association wishes to convey to the Chicago exchange the fact of its full concurrent sympathy in the position it has assumed, as it believes the battle must be fought just on this line. O. H. ULBRICHT, Secretary. These telegrams were read in the exchange and were received with rounds of applause. THE PLATFORM MODIFIED. On Monday, May 23d, the Conference of the Building Trades met and modified the platform of principles which had been adopted May 19th. The principle change was in eliminating the clause requiring employes to _sign_ the code of principles, and making it necessary only for them to "_assent to_" them. The platform as amended was as follows: 1. From this time forth the assent to the following code of principles by the employe be made a universal condition of employment by all building interests of Chicago--viz.: I recognize the right of every man to decide for himself, when he shall work or cease to work, where he shall work, for whom he shall work, how many hours he shall work, and for what wages he shall work. I recognize the right of every employer to decide for himself, whom he shall employ or cease to employ; to regulate and manage his business with perfect independence, provided only that he deal lawfully, justly and honorably with all men. I recognize the right of every father to have his son taught, and of every son to learn, any lawful trade, to be the same as his right to a knowledge of reading, writing, or any other branch of learning, which should be subject to regulation only by the laws of the land. By accepting of employment I agree in all my relations and intercourse with my employers and fellow workmen, to maintain and live up to these principles. 2. That this conference recommend to our respective organizations to request each of its members to employ such workmen only who recognize the inalienable rights as above set forth. 3. That public announcement be made at once that business will be resumed on or before June 1, 1887, with this code of principles as a basis. 4. That a standing committee of one member from each of the building trades, the Chicago Real Estate board, and the Illinois State Association of Architects, to be known as the Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago, be appointed, whose duty it shall be to see to the carrying out of these principles; that it shall have a sub-committee of safety, whose province it shall be to see that ample protection to all is afforded; with sub-committees on grievances, strikes, arbitrations and such as may be found necessary, but that it work always and solely for the maintenance and protection of the principles herein laid down. 5. That an address to the working men of the building trades and to the general public be prepared, setting forth your action and your reasons therefor; that fifty thousand copies be printed and immediately distributed. 6. That a fund be created to defray the expenses of this Central Council, and that we request each association here represented to transmit to the order of George Tapper, chairman, the sum of 25 cents for each of their members, and that individual contributions of people interested in this work be accepted. The officers of the National Association of Builders were present, and through Mr. Sayward congratulated the builders of Chicago for the noble stand that had been taken in the cause of individual liberty, adding that the whole country was looking to Chicago for a solution of the question of labor. NINE HOURS FOR BRICKLAYERS. In the evening the Master Masons met and by a rising vote unanimously adopted the amended code of principles. Working rules were adopted as follows: The following shall be the working rules for workmen employed by members of this association: Nine hours to constitute a day's work, except on Saturdays, when all work shall be suspended at 12 o'clock noon. Work to start at 7 o'clock A. M. Minimum wages for bricklayers and stonemasons to be 45 cents per hour. Pay-day to be regularly every two weeks on either Monday or Tuesday. OFFICIAL ACTION. The officers of the National Association of Builders invited the Bricklayers to meet them and to state their grievances. The invitation was accepted, and on Monday, May 23d, A. E. Vorkeller, president, and William Householder, C. J. Lindgren, James Sedlak and John Pierson, called upon the officials. After a session of three hours, during which the committee ventilated its opinions on almost every subject of grievance known to mortar-spreading humanity, the issue was finally reduced to the vexed question of a Saturday pay-day. Interrogated upon all subjects, the protesting committee acknowledged itself perfectly satisfied with every existing condition except that of being paid on Monday or Tuesday, instead of Saturday. This the committee claimed was an encroachment upon their Sabbatarian rights which no honest and industrious bricklayer would submit to with obedience or patient humility. Bankers, merchants, architects, builders, and all classes of citizens responded to an invitation to confer with the officers of the National Association, and offered suggestions in regard to the troubles which were prostrating business and unnecessarily causing losses to employer and employe which could never be recovered. After carefully considering the situation the Executive Board of the National Association made a comprehensive report, which is as follows: CHICAGO, May 24th, 1887. _To the Builders' and Traders' Exchange of Chicago and all filial bodies of the National Association of Builders, and to the general public_:-- In view of the serious disturbance to building interests in the City of Chicago, and the widespread influence likely to flow from it to other localities, affecting not only the building trades, but all branches of industry in the United States, it has been thought wise to call the Executive Board of the National Association of Builders to this city, to carefully examine the situation, investigate the causes which have produced the existing conditions, and report thereon to all filial bodies for their information, together with such suggestions for their future action as may seem wise and best. All interested parties (and every business has interests more or less directly involved in this question) should thoroughly understand that the National Association of Builders assumes no powers of a dictatorial character; it simply acts as an advisory body, and communicates its conclusions only in the form of recommendations, which its affiliated associations may or may not adopt or follow, as the circumstances by which they are surrounded demand. But it should also be borne in mind that the National Association endeavors to confine its expressions of advice and recommendation to the general principles that underlie and affect conditions in all localities, and in this especial issue and crisis which has arrived in one of the most important business centers in this country, the Executive Board intends to be particularly careful, while considering the facts that exist in this city, to avoid as much as possible in its advice or recommendations, all local or superficial issues, and deal largely with the problem that is rapidly demanding solution in every city and town in the land. It is one of the purposes of the National Association to keep watchful guard over the interests of builders everywhere throughout the country, giving its advice and assistance to all its members when difficulties arise, using its influence with them to secure and maintain just relations either in their contact with each other or in their relations to owners, architects or workmen, and prevent the encroachment of other interests upon ground that belongs to them. The exact circumstances that have brought about the present blockade of business in Chicago may not be absolutely identical with the issues that have caused similar disturbances in other cities, and they may not be exactly reproduced in the future in any other locality; but the root from which they spring has been planted everywhere, and while the plant may be good and worthy, it is a matter of the greatest concern to all that the growth from it be carefully watched and held in check, lest it assume such rank and oppressive proportions that other interests, equally valuable and necessary, be overgrown and choked. It is sometimes necessary to prune a vine of rank and unhealthy growth, in order that it may bear good fruit. We apprehend that the experience of the builders of Chicago in this crisis will be of great importance to builders in other cities, and we hope to utilize their experience in such a way that general business interests will be better protected and preserved in the future, the proper purposes, opportunities and interests of organizations of workmen maintained and encouraged, and that the individual workman himself, whether he be connected with organizations or independent of them, may be placed in a position where he may exercise unquestioned his rights as an American citizen. In this endeavor we ask the co-operation of all business men, particularly those whose affairs bring them into direct contact with the difficult and perplexing questions incident to the employment of labor, and the community generally, for the public as a whole has an immense stake in this question of individual liberty. We have endeavored to make our inquiries in a disinterested spirit, and, in pursuance of this purpose, have given hearings to the employing builders, the Bricklayers' Union, non-union workmen, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, architects and business men generally, believing that we could only consider the question fairly by listening to all sides and opinions. The result of our investigation leads us to report as follows: The demand for pay-day on Saturday by the Bricklayers' Union, which precipitated the present blockade of business in the building trades in Chicago, was in itself inconsequent and trivial, and a concession or denial of it, on its merits, would have been immaterial; but it was presented in such a manner, at a time when the hodcarriers' strike, in progress, had been supported by the Amalgamated Building Trades, and had been preceded by such concessions on the part of the employers, that they felt this to be the "last straw," and that their duty to themselves and others compelled them to make a stand and demand a surrender of the rights which had been previously abrogated. In this course, and in the manner in which the builders have presented their convictions and method of future action, we believe that nothing has been done beyond what the situation imperatively demanded, and the safe and proper conduct of business required; we are only astonished that the crisis has not been sooner reached. It seems to us that this strike or lockout was not caused by a demand that it was impossible to grant, but was the direct result of the assumption by organizations of workmen, for a number of years, of rights not properly within their jurisdiction, and the demand coming, as it did, under such aggravating circumstances, occasion was properly taken, in our opinion, for a complete cessation of business, in order that it might finally be decided and settled whether the employer should for the future be free from further encroachments, and that he might recover those rights and prerogatives which properly belong to him. It is worthy of note that this issue or demand was not made in the dull season, when it might have been more easily arranged, or at least considered, but after the busy season was reached, and in addition to and in support of existing strikes. The Union making it did not seek to consult the employers in regard to its feasibility, although after it was promulgated (the employers requesting a re-consideration), a slight alteration was made in one of the details. It appears, according to the testimony of the Bricklayers' Union, that there has been no general strike in their trade for the last four years, but they admit that during that period they have been successful in enforcing certain rules and regulations in regard to control of journeyman and apprentices (which are set forth in their printed Constitution and By-laws), and that the enforcement of these rules has caused strikes or stoppages of work in many cases, upon certain jobs. It is in the rules or regulations referred to that conditions are imposed which the builders claim are an encroachment on their peculiar rights as well as the rights of independent workmen, and that in submitting to them they have made concessions which they can no longer endure. In this opinion we entirely and heartily concur. We will cite a few of these rules, calling attention to the fact that although the employers have at least an equal interest in the matters treated, they have never been even consulted in their formulation, but have been expected to comply with them as presented, and have so complied, for the reason, as they claim, that they could not help themselves. The first rule, or regulation, or custom, which demands notice is that which prevents workmen, not members of the Union, from obtaining work. This is excused by the declaration of the Union that they do not claim that the non-union man shall not work--they simply will not work with him; but this explanation is purely a clever evasion of the point at issue, for the workman is by force of circumstances deprived of opportunity to labor, and the position taken by the Union is manifestly a conspiracy against the rights of the individual. It may truly be considered the first step towards setting up an oligarchy in the midst of a free people. This assumed right is most tenaciously held and is one of the most dangerous expedients ever adopted by a voluntary association. We believe it to be a direct attack upon individual liberty, and an evil that will re-act upon those who attempt to establish it. We also believe it to be entirely unnecessary for the welfare of Unions--that all the ends they wish to gain can be secured by legitimate measures, and that not until they cut out this cancer will harmony be restored and reforms established. This custom should be constantly and absolutely denied. The next rule which we wish to consider is that establishing a "walking delegate." Some of the functions of this officer (if he may be so designated), as explained by members of the Union, are perfectly harmless, and possibly quite a convenience; but if proper relations were permitted to exist between employer and workman these functions could be equally well sustained by the foreman on the job. There are other powers, however, with which he is invested, which are so arbitrary in their character, which deprive the employer so completely of that control of workmen necessary to the prosecution of his work, that it is simply ridiculous to submit to it. For instance, "He shall be empowered to use his personal judgment on all points of disagreement between employer and employe, between regular meetings."--ARTICLE V., SEC 4. The simplest mind can readily see how little control the employer has left him, when a man not in his employ is permitted to come upon his work and "use his personal judgment" in questions of disagreement, the workman being obliged to then obey his orders. The employer seems to be a mere cipher under this arrangement, and can only fold his hands and wait till the "regular meeting" (at which he has no opportunity to be heard) settles whether the "personal judgment" exercised be just and fair. The result can be imagined. In the hands of an exceptionally honest and discreet person such a power would be dangerous enough, but in the control of a man who may not possess these qualities, or possess one of them without the other, the chances of stoppage of work under his orders, the constant annoyances to which employers, architects and owners may be subjected, makes this infliction too grievous to be borne. The thousands of unnecessary strikes, stoppages and obstructions to work for every conceivable cause, or no cause, which have occurred in all parts of the country in the name of justice and the walking delegate, are evidence enough that to owner, architect, employer and workman, he is an abomination not to be tolerated. As an adjunct to the walking delegate comes the "steward," who, like him, has some functions perfectly unobjectionable, but who in other ways is empowered to assume certain direction and control which surely is not consistent with the duties of a workman, that is, if the workman is considered to have any duty to his employer. It is noticeable that in the description of the duties of these two gentlemen, it is the "interests of the Union" only that they are directed to observe; it is true that the walking delegate is not an employe, but he is to have free access to the work, can interfere and obstruct as he pleases, but the interest of the employer seems to have been omitted in the recital of his duties. When it is considered how much is taken off the hands of the employer by these two persons, it is somewhat a matter of surprise that owner and architect burden themselves with the useless middle man, the nominal employer, when they can have the whole matter handled by the Union and its agents. The rules in relation to apprentices are peculiarly restrictive and leave nothing whatever that is worth possessing in the hands of the employer. We cannot imagine why any contractor would care to have apprentices at all, if their direction and control is to be so completely out of his hands. These rules declare that "no contractor shall be allowed to have more than two apprentices at a time;" "he will not be allowed to have any more until their time is completed;" "he may then replace them." The contractor must sign such indentures as are prepared by the Union without consultation with him. "No contractor will be allowed to have an apprentice over eighteen years of age unless he be the son of a journeyman who is a member of the Union." Apprentices must also be members. The contractor is thus debarred from putting his own son at apprenticeship if he happens to be eighteen years of age. This appears to be most emphatic special legislation. In fact the whole management and control of apprentices is virtually in the hands of the Union, and we submit again that such action as this is most indefensive and pernicious. It has already caused a tremendous reduction in the number of young men learning the trade, and, if practiced in other branches of business, would create a state of revolt among the people, and would be denounced throughout the length and breadth of the land as a violation of rights heretofore supposed to be secured when this country became a Republic. Foremen upon the work must be members of the Union. Inspectors upon public buildings must be practical bricklayers in the opinion of the Union, and members of it; in fact there are so many points that demonstrate the development of this one-sided power of the Union, and showing abuse of their place and mission that we cannot take time or space to enlarge upon them. To our mind the Constitution of this Union, and many others, is framed upon the assumption that all employers are dishonest and bad men, so all are to suffer alike. The Union seem to have come to the conclusion that the laws of the land are not sufficient, and they propose to be not only a law unto themselves but a law unto all others who come in contact with them. This assumption, if permitted to stand and grow, will tend to disintegrate the whole social and political fabric upon which citizens of this country depend for protection; and we believe it to be our duty to call upon all good citizens to deny it in unequivocal terms. We submit that these "rules" which we have quoted, and other customs which have naturally grown from such development of power (which are neither written or admitted by the Union, but which nevertheless exist), are distinctly an encroachment upon the province of the employer; that under them he is robbed of that control and authority absolutely essential to the proper conduct of his business. Submission to such dictation as this simply opens the door wider for interference, and the employer is not secure from day to day from new and harassing demands, so that eventually he will have practically nothing left to him but the "privilege" of paying the bills. The crisis here in Chicago is of tremendous importance and significance to every builder and every business man, not alone in this great and rapidly growing city, but in every city of the country, for here is seen a demonstration of the tyranny which becomes possible when improper methods are submitted to; a tyranny which holds the workman in its grasp quite as surely as the employer, and this experience and demonstration should be a timely warning to all. Labor Unions have gone too far. They have mistaken their functions and over-stepped their boundaries. The time has come to "call a halt," and to demand a surrender of that which has been improperly obtained. To do this will require some patience and some sacrifice, but the end to be gained is but justice and right, and worth all that it may cost. Better that not another brick be laid or another nail be driven in Chicago for a year than this opportunity be lost to regain the rights and prerogatives which make it possible for employer and workman to be independent and successful. Let nothing be done to injure the Union in the prosecution of their rightful purposes; they have a most important mission and a great field for usefulness. Aid and assist them in these things by every means in your power, but for their own good, as well as your own safety, stand constantly and steadfastly opposed to any and every attempt to take away that which makes you an employer, or from the workman himself the right to work. Trade Unionism in theory, and as it may be consistently and intelligently carried out, can be a most useful aid to all concerned; but, as at present managed, clinging fast as it does to the cardinal principle of the right to prevent any and every man from working who does not happen to belong to the order, it is a bane to society and a curse to its members. We approve of the position taken by the builders of Chicago in this emergency, and we congratulate them that other branches of business, whose interests are so closely interwoven with theirs, have had the courage and willingness to make common cause with them, recognizing, as they evidently do, that if this sort of dictation is permitted to grow, that their own position will become undermined and security vanish. We congratulate them also that general business interests have given them such hearty co-operation and support, and we feel assured that will continue until the victory is won. We recommend all filial associations of this body to assume the same attitude in the event of an issue being forced upon them by further encroachments, and we suggest to them, as well as to the Builders' and Traders' exchange of Chicago, that, in order to encourage all workmen who wish to have an opportunity to freely work, untrammelled by the improper requirements and rules of voluntary associations (membership in which, as far as most workmen are concerned, have become involuntary), and be protected in their work, it will be wise to create and establish at once a Bureau of Record in connection with their associations, where any and all workmen may put themselves on record as assenting to the principles of individual liberty, announced here in Chicago, and by and through which the workmen so assenting will be kept at work, and protected in it, in preference to those who deny these principles. Let steps be taken, after a certain time given to develop the honest purpose, good character, skill and ability of the workmen, to make them members of your own associations, and so institute, for the first time, a union wherein employer and employe shall be joined, and their interests considered in common, as they properly should be. We believe this would be a step in the right direction, and the dawn of the day when the two branches of workmen--the directing workman and the manual workman--will not be arrayed against each other, but will consider and act in concert for their mutual benefit. Closing now our report to filial associations, we wish to address a few words to the public at large, whose servants we are. We believe that the builders of this country stand to-day in a position which commands the attention of all kinds and classes of business men everywhere. We wish to do only that which is right and in accordance with the principles upon which this Republic was founded. Individual liberty is the dearest possession of the American people; we intend to stand by it and protect it in every emergency, and, to our mind, there has never been before presented an occasion more significant and decisive than the present, and in doing all we can to sustain it we feel that we are fighting not for our selfish ends alone, but for the welfare and protection of every individual in the land. Individual liberty is not incompatible with associations, and associations are not incompatible with individual liberty; on the contrary, they should go hand in hand. We call upon all to sustain us in maintaining all that is good and in defeating all that is bad in this difficult problem of labor. Liberty is our watchword, and this struggle is but a continuation of that endeavor which began a hundred years ago, when a little band of patriots, at Concord Bridge, "fired that shot heard round the world," which was the first blow in establishing American independence. Signed, J. M. BLAIR, JOHN S. STEVENS, EDWARD E. SCRIBNER, WM. H. SAYWARD, JOHN J. TUCKER, Executive Board of the National Association of Builders. PERMISSION TO RESUME. It having been decided by the conference of building trades that work might be resumed by any contractor on or before June 1st, and the Master Masons' association having approved of the platform of principles and adopted rules for the government of its members, the executive committee of the Master Masons' association adopted the following form of notification for its members of their readiness to resume work and their willingness to adhere to the principles approved by the association at its last meeting: JOSEPH DOWNEY, President Master Masons' Association --_Sir:_ We are ready to start work, and hereby agree on our honor to abide by the rules and platform adopted by the Master Masons' association. ____________________________ In pursuance of this action a number of contracting masons notified President Downey of their readiness to resume work, and they were given permits for the purchase of building material, the following form being used: PERMIT, No. ______ | PERMIT. | | EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, _Granted_ ______________ | | Master Masons' and Builders' Association, _to deliver_ ___________ |______________________ | _to_ ___________________ | _You are hereby requested_ | _to deliver to_ ____________________ _at No._ _______________ | ____________________________________ | _Purpose_ ______________ | _No_ ________________ | _________________________| _for the purpose of_ _______________ | ______________________ This form of permit was continued in use to contractors who were not members of the Master Masons' association. A different course was pursued with members, who were required to sign a request for a general permit, the form of the request being as follows: Chicago, May 24th, 1887. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MASTER MASONS' ASSOCIATION. _Gents_:--I hereby make application for permit to resume work, and I agree on my honor to adopt the rules and platform as passed by the Master Masons' and Builders' Association, May 23d, 1887. HERMANN MUELLER. Upon the presentation of such an application to the executive committee a general permit was issued, which was in form as follows: MASTER MASONS' AND BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION. Chicago, May 24th, 1887. HERMANN MUELLER.--In consideration of your signing an agreement to adhere to the Platform and Code of Working Principles adopted by the Master Masons' and Builders' Association May 23d, 1887, you are hereby granted a permit to resume work. JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. In attempting to resume work the mason contractors were disposed to give preference to such bricklayers and stonemasons as had been working in Chicago, and who evinced a willingness to return to work under the code of principles and the rules of the association which had been adopted. A few workmen took advantage of the proposition at once, and went to work, but fear of fines by the union and assaults from the members of the union, deterred a great many from going to work who were perfectly willing to subscribe to the principles enunciated. The leaders of the strikers announced that under no conditions would the union accept the offer of 45 cents an hour and nine hours a day. By May 25th more than one thousand of the union bricklayers had left the city and were working in outside towns ten hours a day for $2.50 to $3 pay, rather than accept the offer of the Master Masons. Not being able to secure a large number of the home workmen the Master Masons' caused to be published in important towns in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, a notice that there were wanted in Chicago one thousand bricklayers who would be given steady work at 45 cents an hour and would be guaranteed protection. They did not expect that the whole number would be secured, as it was the busy season for building everywhere, but they looked for a sufficient number of responses to meet the immediate demand. In this they were disappointed. The experience of outside bricklayers in Chicago had been of an unsavory character, and they respectfully declined to advance upon the city in a body. A few bold fellows made their appearance, but they numbered less than one hundred. Many of those who went to work were put under police protection in order to keep the strikers from committing depredations. DISCONTENTED LABORERS. The Hodcarriers became disgusted. Their feeling against the Bricklayers was very strong, and they said if the Bricklayers were possessed of more sense all the employes in the building trades would be at work at good wages and the Hodcarriers would be getting all they asked for. They were out of work and out of means, and the funds of the union were so low that little or no relief could be obtained from that source. The union funds had been exhausted for some time, and the weekly assessments upon men employed did not average over $200, while there was a demand for more than $10,000 per week to pay the $5 weekly, which was guaranteed to every member of the Hodcarriers' union who was on strike and in need. The outcome to the most of the men looked bad, and serious trouble was expected. Men with starving families and no prospect of getting work were not likely to long keep quiet. Only a few men showed themselves at headquarters, but there was an undercurrent of discontent that could not be kept down. Fears were entertained that it might lead to riot, and efforts were put forth to keep the rougher element out of the way. There were good grounds for apprehension, and it required careful manipulation to keep the dangerous element subdued. LISTING THE JOBS. On Friday, May 27th, the executive committee of the Master Masons' association appointed a sub-committee to make a list of jobs in the city giving the names of all the contractors, the location of the work, the number of bricklayers, stonemasons and laborers required, and the number at work, and this sub-committee rapidly got its work in shape. It also kept a memoranda of the character of material needed, and the quantity supplied from time to time, with the names of the dealers from whom it was procured. It was empowered to designate members of the association to visit jobs as often as necessary for the purpose of rendering any service that would facilitate the work, and contractors who were resuming business were requested to report to the committee what progress was being made. The executive committee realized that it would take no little time to get the business in good running order, and the organization was put in such shape as to make it effective in a long or short campaign. FALSE STATEMENTS. In order to create a break in the ranks of the material dealers, who were bravely supporting the Master Masons, the strikers circulated a report that permits for the purchase of building materials would only be issued to members of the Master Masons' association. When the attention of President Downey was called to the fact he said with considerable earnestness: "It is not so. I can not understand how such an impression got out, as there has been no thought of making or enforcing such a rule. There is no disposition on the part of the executive committee to take such action and there never has been. The fact is that more permits for material have been issued to builders who are not members of the Master Masons' association than have been issued to members. All that is required of an applicant for a permit is that he will agree to abide by the code of principles and the rules adopted and sign the card which has been prepared setting forth these facts." The only discrimination made by the executive committee was in its positive refusal to issue permits to small contractors or jobbers who were members of the Bricklayers' and Stonemasons' union. They were told that when they resigned from the union and brought evidence of the fact, and agreed to the code of principles and the rules, they could have all the material they wanted. ANOTHER TELEGRAM. The following telegram was received at the Builders' and Traders' exchange: ROCHESTER, N. Y., May 27. JOSEPH DOWNEY, President Master Masons' Association, Chicago: On behalf of the New York State Masons' association I wish you Godspeed in your code of principles. H. GORSLINE, President. BLACKMAIL. On Saturday, May 29th, the Master Masons' association met and talked over the situation, congratulating each other on the promised success of their movement for freedom. At the request of Mr. Tapper Mr. Victor Falkenau made a statement to show the corrupt methods of the walking delegate. He said that in October, 1886, he was erecting a building on Astor street for Mr. Post, when Walking Delegate Healy appeared on the scene and objected to some pressed brick being put into arches that had been cut at the manufactory, insisting that they should be cut on the job. Healy insisted on calling the men off the job, but in consideration of $5, which was then paid to him, he let the work proceed. A committee from the Bricklayers' union had called on him to ascertain what had been done, and he had put it in possession of the facts in the case. The money was paid to Healy Oct. 21st. In the face of this statement, which was backed by ample proof, the walking delegate was not removed from his high position. Other members referred to similar cases in which walking delegates had shown themselves to be walking blackmailers. When Delegate Healy heard of the statement of Mr. Falkenau he threatened to bring suit against him for $10,000 damages. Mr. Falkenau remarked that he was glad he was to be sued as a hearing of the cause in a court would bring out the facts under oath in a manner that would satisfy anyone as to the truth or falsity of the charge. A contractor who was familiar with the facts in the case said the statement of Mr. Falkenau would be supported by other testimony when the time came, but he was satisfied there would be no libel suit. And there was none. METAL WORKERS. The Association of Manufacturers in Metals met Saturday, May 28th, and unanimously adopted the following resolutions: _Whereas_, We know there are organizations existing which deny the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the constitution of the United States; and _Whereas_, We believe it our duty as citizens to range ourselves with others in the assertion and defense of the rights of man, be he employer or workman; now, therefore, We affirm that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. We recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and we will aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conferences and arbitrations are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to avail ourselves of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented. We recognize that permanent harmony between employer and workman can only exist when both agree on the justice and right of the principles set forth. Now, therefore, be it _Resolved_, That all members of the Association of Manufacturers in Metals be, and they are hereby requested to display in office and workshop, the above declaration and the following code of principles: "I recognize the right of every man to decide for himself, with employers, without dictation or interference, when he shall work or cease to work, where he shall work, how many hours he shall work, and for what wages he shall work. "I recognize the right of the employer to decide for himself whom he shall employ or cease to employ, and regulate and manage his business with perfect independence, provided only that he deal lawfully, justly and honorably with all men. "I recognize the right of every father to have his son taught, and of every son to learn any lawful trade, to be the same as his right to a knowledge of reading and writing, or any other branch of learning, which should be subject to regulations only by the laws of the land. "By accepting employment I agree in all my relations and intercourse with my employers and fellow-workmen to maintain and live up to these principles." _Resolved_, That full powers be and they are hereby granted to the executive committee to take all steps by them deemed necessary to carry into effect the principles heretofore set forth and to express the concurrence of this association with the position taken by the Master Masons' and Builders' Association. This action, it was stated during the discussion of the resolutions, was not the outgrowth of sympathy only, but caused by the fact that Metal men were suffering just as much as anybody under the then existing trouble in the building trades. There were not cast seventy-five tons of building ironwork a day in the city when there ought to have been three hundred tons at least. The depression of trade was so marked that two foundries shut down, throwing 250 men out of work, and all the establishments were glad to have a pretext for closing. DARK WAYS. At the headquarters of the Bricklayers the statement was made that there had been an important meeting of the dealers in Building material, May 30th, at the Builders' and Traders' exchange, at which it was agreed that the material men would not wait longer than June 1st for the Master Masons to get to work, as their agreement to not sell and deliver building material only extended to that date. When asked about the meeting, Mr. Mulrany, of the Union, could not say how many attended, or give the names of any who were present. He insisted that the Bricklayers would break the backs of the Master Masons, and would make them give up for good. He was sure the lockout would not last long, because there was so much disaffection among the bosses. Diligent inquiry was made at the Exchange to learn if such a meeting had been held as the one mentioned by Mr. Mulrany, but assurance was given that none had been. A dozen dealers in building material protested that such a meeting had not been held and would not be. The agreement to not sell or deliver material was limited only by the duration of the strike. The statement was on a par with many that emanated from the strikers. A LOST CAUSE. The Hodcarriers' Union, as a body, seemed to have entirely collapsed. The funds of the Union having entirely run out, the men found no attraction to the headquarters on West Taylor street. A great portion of the men found work in other quarters, and those still out were ready to go to work at the first opportunity which might offer, regardless of the demands which were made when the men struck six weeks previously. THE PLUMBERS. May 31st the Chicago Master Plumbers' association met and adopted the following resolution, which was sent to the Council of Building Interests: _Resolved_, That we, the Chicago Master Plumbers' association of Chicago, recognizing the right of employers heretofore jeopardized by the arbitrary interference of trades unions, do hereby tender our hearty sympathy and support to the Master Masons in their present struggle for the individual rights of employers. ROBERT GRIFFITH, President. J. R. ALCOCK, Secretary. THE BRICK YARDS. The Chicago Brickmakers' association, which represents all brick yards in the South and West Divisions of the city, met May 31st and adopted the following rules: We the brick manufacturers of the South and West divisions, believe the adoption of the following rules will tend to establish a system that strikes may be avoided in the manufacturing of brick in our divisions of the city: 1. By the appointment of a committee of three members from the Brick Manufacturers' association and three from the Brick Laborers' union, with full power to act in all matters pertaining to the interests of those they represent. 2. To hold regular meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month for the transaction of any business that may come before them. 3. No member of the organization represented shall strike or cease operation of their work for any individual grievance pending a meeting of any committee. 4. Any question said committee fails to agree upon they shall call in outside assistance and use all honorable means for a settlement before ordering a strike or lockout. 5. When said committee, after due care, fails to agree, they shall, before ordering a strike or lockout, give one week's notice. 6. All brick manufactured up to date of said strike or lockout shall be cared for by the men before abandoning their work. 7. The committee shall in no way interfere in any difficulty arising between the brick manufacturers and any other organization other than the one from which they were appointed. AN ADDRESS. June 1st. The executive committee of the Master Masons' association issued an address to their former employes, as follows: TO THE BRICKLAYERS AND STONEMASONS OF CHICAGO--_Gentlemen_: To those of you who have families to support; who, by frugal saving, have laid by a store for rainy days; who, perhaps, have invested surplus earnings in a house and lot or made partial payments on a piece of land for a future homestead, and thereby have acquired an interest in Chicago--to you we speak. To those of you who have joined the now existing union under compulsion, and are to-day afraid of personal injury, should you in any way assert your independence; to those of you who feel the abuses practiced, who are not in accord with the ruling clique, who have informed us time and again that you are not granted a hearing when your opinion is not in harmony with that of "the gang," and that you consequently do not attend the meeting of said "union"--to you we appeal. To those of you who believe in arbitration as a better mode of redressing grievances or adjusting differences than the strike or lockout; to those of you who are old enough to remember that the members of our organization have all been journeymen bricklayers and stonemasons, that there are none among us who may not be compelled to take up tools again, nor any among you who may not at any time become employers, and that, consequently, there are no questions concerning one branch which are not of interest to the other--to you we address ourselves. This association, together with other associations of builders, has issued a platform affirming our adherence to the fundamental principle of individual liberty. Read it, discuss it, digest it. It is right. It is guaranteed by the constitution of the United States, and he who denies the rights of man is not an American citizen, and by his denial affirms that he does not intend to become such, although he may have gone through the form of acquiring citizenship. We are not opposed to all unions. In the second paragraph of our platform we recognize the right of organization among workmen for all just and honorable purposes. But we are opposed to the methods employed by the present union. Brute force is used in all directions to compel fellow-workmen to join and keep them in line in support of any action taken, no matter how unreasonable; to enforce the assumed control of the business of employers; to arbitrarily keep boys from learning the trade; to deny the right of mechanics to support their families by working at their trade in this city, etc. In all directions brute force is the foundation of the present union. This is wrong. Brute force can only be opposed by brute force, the strike on the one hand opposed by the lockout on the other, resulting in loss and suffering to both, and without any permanent results, for no matter which side is successful, the only thing proven is that it had the strongest organization, not that its position is right. Strikes and lockouts, with all the train of resulting evils, can only be prevented by organizations among both workmen and employers, both recognizing the same fundamental principles and agreeing to refer any question of temporary policy, such as the amount of wages to be paid, number of hours to be worked, pay-day, and others, or any grievances or differences arising in the future, to a joint committee of arbitration--work to continue without interruption, and questions at issue to be decided definitely by the committee. The "walking delegate" has proved himself an unmitigated nuisance. To give into the hands of one man power so absolute will always be dangerous and sure to be abused. Nor will the necessity exist for a "walking delegate." His place will be filled by the arbitration committee. That the laws of the state shall prevail in regard to apprentices, as well as on other subjects by them covered, needs no argument. All must recognize that foremen are hired to be the agents and representatives of the employer for the faithful and economic performance of the work, and, as such, should be under his exclusive control. Of "stewards" we not treat here. Acting for an organization which acknowledges as right and just the principles contained in our platform, their duties can not interfere with the proper prosecution of the work. To sum up, form a union on the same platform we uphold and men will join it because of the benefits to be derived--brute force will not be necessary in any direction,--and whenever one hundred, yes, fifty, members shall have enrolled themselves we will gladly recognize it and appoint members to serve on a joint committee of arbitration to have charge of all matters of mutual interests. We mean what we say. Fault has been found with the "working rules" adopted. These will be subject to joint discussion and adjustment when a joint committee of arbitration shall be in existence. Until then we have agreed to nine hours as a working day, because that is the rule adopted by other large cities, and Chicago should not be at a disadvantage as a point for investment in comparison with them. We believe the Saturday half-holiday has come to stay with us as one of the recognized institutions of the country, and we have adopted it freely and voluntarily. By agreeing to 45 cents per hour as a minimum rate of wages we trust to have proved that we do not desire to lower rates. A regular fortnightly pay-day has been guaranteed. These are our conditions. Discuss them as to their fairness, and if you find them just come to work, and we shall be glad to employ you as far as still in our power, for it is true that each day of continued strike does lessen the chance for a busy season. The situation in brief is as follows: The general public recognizes the present necessity of coming to a fair understanding between employer and workman--and thereby laying the foundation for future harmonious action--by refusing to build under present circumstances. Some work must be done, no matter what the conditions. But there is not one-fourth of the work on hand now there was last year at this time. For its future growth and prosperity Chicago needs manufacturing enterprises. In the selection of a site for such people with money to invest look for security from violent and arbitrary interruption to their business. Abolish the "walking delegates;" show that you have profited by the lessons of the past, and establish arbitration; lay the foundation for peace and harmony between employer and workmen, and Chicago will be the place selected; business, now dull and dragging, will revive, and steady employment will reward both you and us for sense and moderation shown. Fraternally yours, THE CHICAGO MASTER MASONS' ASSOCIATION. By Executive Committee. THE CONFERENCE ADJOURNED. A final meeting of the Conference Committee of the Building Trades was held June 1st. Reports were made showing that every organization represented had unqualifiedly endorsed the platform of principles which had been enunciated. The cut-stone contractors, through Mr. T. C. Diener, made the following report, premising it by saying that the members of the association were in accord with the principles which had been enunciated by the conference committee: TO THE CONFERENCE OF THE BUILDING TRADES: The Cut-Stone Contractors' association has carefully considered the code of principles adopted by your committee, and, although approving of the principles laid down, we could not adopt them as a whole, and therefore deem it not advisable to ask the assent of our employes as a condition of further employment after June 1st for the reasons hereafter mentioned: Fully endorsing the right of an employe to work for whom he chooses, we do not concede that individually he can regulate the number of hours he desires to work, but in that respect must comply with the established rule of number of hours per day. In our trade eight hours per day for stone-cutters has been the system for the last twenty years. It has been a success in every respect, for to-day, with improved machinery, cut-stone is fully 50 to 100 per cent cheaper than during the ten hour time. Conceding the right to each man for what wages he will work--we maintain that it is to the interest of the building trade generally that a rate of wages be adopted at the opening of the season, thus making it a standard basis for contractors to estimate by. In the matter of apprenticeship we also maintain that it is to the interest of the boy and the employer of the same. For by employing too many boys in our trade a foreman would not have the opportunity to train the boy, and he would turn out a poor mechanic. It is a rule and regulation similar to educational institutions. To make these rules has been the motive which has prompted employes and employers to organize. In the cut-stone trade we have an association of stone-cutters and an association of cut-stone contractors. These two bodies recognize each other, and at the beginning of the season, as has been done heretofore for years, they have agreed on a rate of wages, number of hours per day, and number of apprentices to a yard (which is about one to six men), and, therefore, we are in duty bound to abide by the same. We have, furthermore, a written agreement between our two organizations, of which article 1 is as follows: "All disputes or misunderstandings of any kind that may arise shall be submitted to committees, who shall report to their respective associations before final action shall be taken." And article 6 is as follows: "These rules not to be changed or altered except by the consent of each association, and in that case a thirty days' notice to be given by the party desiring to terminate said agreement." In our discussions and conclusions we have also been guided to a certain extent by the press, to avoid, if possible, a general lockout, and by that part of the platform of the National Association of Builders, "that good may be derived from proper organizations," and it is our aim that our associations shall not only be a benefit to themselves, but to the general public. Respectfully submitted. T. C. DIENER, Secretary. The conference then adjourned sine die. CENTRAL COUNCIL OF BUILDERS. Immediately after the adjournment of the Conference Committee the Central Council of Builders--which had been recommended by the Conference Committee--met, the various interests being represented as follows: Metal-Workers, Robert Vierling. Steam-Fitters, H. G. Savage. Cut-Stone Contractors, T. C. Diener. Master Plasterers, John Sutton. Gravel Roofers, M. W. Powell. Master Masons, George Tapper. Master Painters, J. B. Sullivan. Galvanized-Iron Cornice, Edward Kirk, Jr. Carpenters and Builders, William Hearson. North-Side Brick Manufacturers, A. J. Weckler. Fire-Proofers, P. B. Wight. Non-Union Stone-Cutters, C. B. Kimbell. Builders' and Traders' Exchange, F. C. Schoenthaler. Real Estate Board, Henry L. Turner. A delegate from the Master Plumbers was not present, because none had yet been appointed. On motion of William Hearson, George Tapper was elected chairman and F. C. Schoenthaler secretary. At the suggestion of Mr. Vierling a committee of three was appointed to prepare a plan of organization, with instructions to report at the next meeting. The committee was as follows: H. G. Savage, Edward Kirk, Jr., William Hearson. A DOLLAR A BRICK. A union bricklayer appeared in the corridor of the exchange and was boasting that he could buy all the brick he wanted of A. J. Weckler, a north-side manufacturer. The statement was denied by a contractor. About that time Mr. Weckler appeared on the scene and was informed of the statement that had been made. His reply was: "The only price I have had brick at my yard since the strike began was $1 a brick, and I think Mr. Downey would give a permit for me to sell every brick in the yard at that price. But, if a man thinks he can get any brick from me at the regular price, or for less than $1 a brick at present, he is very much mistaken." The bricklayer subsided and had no more statements to make. "WE'LL NEVER GIVE IN." Groups of idle bricklayers gathered in and around their headquarters, at Greenebaum's Hall, discussing the situation, and sometimes branching off into earnest conversation on the natural outcome of the labor movement. They claimed that they were a conservative body, seeking all reforms through the ballot, and all demands by legal and peaceful organization; yet it was plain that socialistic ideas were not uncommon to many of the talkers. All of them were determined to hold to their position to the end, and seemed confident that the bosses would have to give way, and that their combination was weakening and disintegrating. When it became known among them that the union had been called in to complete a large building at the corner of Chicago and Milwaukee avenues, and a four-story structure near the corner of Madison and Union streets, they became very jubilant and pointed them out as evidences that contractors were powerless. "They must come to our terms," was the general comment, "for they can not get men from abroad to fill our places." The opinion prevailed among them that they were the only bricklayers in the country that could work on a Chicago building. NINE HOURS FOR CARPENTERS. The Carpenters' and Builders' association met June 2d and adopted the following working rules: We agree to begin on the 13th day of June to work nine hours in each working day, beginning at 7 o'clock A. M. and ending at 5 o'clock P. M., with the usual hour at noon for dinner; under payment by the hour. All work done before 7 o'clock A. M. and after 5 o'clock P. M. to be paid for as overtime at such price as may be agreed upon by the workman and employer. The above number of working hours per day applies only to workmen engaged at buildings in course of construction or repair. THE DIFFERENCE. The consistency of the union bricklayers was exhibited in a case where a building was taken from a contractor and given to bricklayers to complete. The moment they became "bosses" they showed their regard for union principles by employing non-union hodcarriers and laborers. This action incensed the hodcarriers, and they forced the "union" bosses to discharge their non-union helpers and employ members of the laborers' union. STUBBORN BRICKLAYERS. June 3d the Bricklayers' union met at Berry's hall. An attempt was made to read a proposition to return to work, leaving the question of pay-day and hours to arbitration; but the proposition was howled down, and not even permitted to be read. The following resolutions were adopted: _Whereas_, The Bricklayers' and Stonemasons' union of Chicago, on May 11th, in special meeting assembled, adopted Saturday as their regular pay-day, and _Whereas_, The so-called Master Masons' union of this city have refused to grant our reasonable request, and have entered into a conspiracy with the Builders' and Traders' exchange, the object of which is to disrupt our organization; therefore, be it _Resolved_, That we, United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons, in regular meeting assembled, pledge our honor to stand firmly by the resolutions adopted May 11th. _Resolved_, That we condemn the Builders' and Traders' exchange for their cowardly action in locking up the building materials and forcing a lockout, thereby paralyzing the business interests of this city, and causing loss and suffering among thousands of our citizens who are in no way responsible for the differences existing between our organization and the master masons, so-called. THE CENTRAL COUNCIL ORGANIZED. The Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago met Friday, June 3d, for the purpose of hearing a report from the committee appointed to prepare a working plan for the Council. Mr. H. G. Savage, of the committee, submitted the report, which was considered by sections and adopted as follows: 1. This body shall be known as the Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago. 2. The object of this Council shall be to promote the building interests of Chicago, harmonize the different branches, and adopt such measures as from time to time may be found beneficial, carrying out the following platform of principles, which has been adopted by the various associations herein represented: We affirm that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. We recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and, while condemning and opposing improper action on their part, we will aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conferences and arbitrations are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together, to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances may be prevented. 3. All associations of building-trade employers, the Real Estate board, the Illinois Association of Architects, and the Builders' and Traders' exchange shall be entitled to one representative each. 4. The officers shall be elected at the annual meeting, and shall consist of a president, vice-president, and financial secretary, to hold office for one year, or until their successors are duly qualified. 5. Regular meetings shall be held the first Friday of each month at 2 o'clock P. M. The first regular meeting in June shall be the annual meeting. Special meetings may be called by the president or any three members of the Council. 6. The following standing committees, consisting of three members each, shall be appointed by the president at the annual meeting, to hold office for one year, or until their successors are appointed: Credentials--To whom shall be referred all applications for membership. Safety--Whose duty it shall be to see that ample protection to all is afforded against unlawful interference. Strikes and Grievances--Whose duty it shall be to investigate all strikes and grievances and to report to the Council fully in regard to the same, with such recommendations as they may deem necessary. Arbitration--To whom shall be referred all questions of differences between employers and employes. 7. Annual dues shall be 25 cents for each member of the various associations belonging to the Council, and assessments may be made upon the same basis of representation. Officers were elected as follows: President, George Tapper; Vice President, H. G. Savage; Financial Secretary, F. C. Schoenthaler. Standing committees were appointed by the president as follows: Credentials--J. B. Sullivan, T. C. Diener, A. J. Weckler. Safety--H. L. Turner, C. B. Kimbell, Robert Vierling. Strikes and Grievances--P. B. Wight, H. G. Savage, M. W. Powell. Arbitration--Edward Kirk, Jr., William Hearson, John Sutton. AID FROM THE ARCHITECTS. Saturday, June 4th, the Illinois State Association of Architects met. In calling the meeting to order President D. Adler read a letter from the executive committee of the Builders' and Traders' exchange thanking the Association for the stand it had taken upon the labor troubles. He said that those present knew the demoralized condition of the building trades and the low character that they were drifting to in regard to the workmanship of mechanics engaged therein. It was becoming almost impossible to replace good men, because the trades-unions arbitrarily prevented the education of a sufficient number of apprentices to replace the good and competent mechanics, who appeared to be rapidly dying out. The difficulty was staring them in the face that soon they would not be able to secure competent mechanical skill at all. It was the architects' duty to assert the right of every American citizen to work at any trade he pleased, without interference from the walking delegate. It was the architects' duty to assist every young man who desired to learn a trade. There was more at stake in the contest than their own immediate interest as architects--more than the mere stoppage of work. The architects should strengthen the hands of those who were battling for the freedom of American citizens. Mr. John W. Root offered the following resolution, which was adopted: _Resolved_, That the Illinois State Association of Architects heartily indorse the general principles set forth in the recently published "platform and code of principles" adopted by the Builders' association and the Real Estate board of Chicago, and that we will use our utmost endeavors to see that these principles prevail in all building operations in Chicago. PROTECTION GUARANTEED. The committee of safety of the Central Council of Building Interests met June 4th and issued the following document: The Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago having appointed, among other committees, a committee of safety, whose duty it is to "see that ample protection to all is afforded against unlawful interference," the committee desires to announce to all concerned in the building interests of the city that they are prepared to follow up and prosecute all offenders unlawfully interfering with or intimidating any workman or employer in the legitimate performance of his business. This announcement is hastened by the publication in the morning papers of an unlawful and unprovoked attack upon peaceable workmen at a job at the corner of Harrison street and Western avenue on Friday, June 3d. The committee will promptly investigate any such case when reported to Secretary Schoenthaler at the Builders' and Traders' exchange, where the committee will be in daily session at 2 o'clock P. M. MASS MEETING OF CARPENTERS. Monday, June 6th, a mass meeting of carpenters was held to receive P. J. McGuire, of Philadelphia, grand secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Mr. McGuire made an inflammatory speech, in which he said he came to Chicago to throw down the gauntlet to the master builders and was ready to make Chicago the battle ground for the fight on the nine-hour question. He came to stand by the carpenters. J. Milton Blair, of Cincinnati; William H. Sayward, of Boston; George C. Prussing, of Chicago, and other leaders in the Carpenters' and Builders' association were attempting to stamp out the carpenters' organizations, but they would find they had a bigger job on hand than any contractor in this country ever undertook. The master builders combined for mutual protection, and yet they denied the carpenters the same right. The speaker then took occasion to abuse the master builders for assuming the title of "masters." The contractors, he asserted, had not brains enough to carry out their work without the assistance of the foreman, who did the actual work, and yet the master builders assumed to dictate to their employes in such a manner as to place them on the same level with the slaves who were freed by Abraham Lincoln. Workingmen in 1887 ought to receive some of the benefits which machinery had brought. They did not believe in socialistic theories, or that the property of railroad companies, for instance, should be divided up and each man given a tie; but workingmen wanted to be given some of the benefits which they produced but which were appropriated entirely by the employers. Every carpenter who applied for work in Chicago after Monday, June 13th, should ask for 35 cents an hour and an eight-hour day, and if that was refused he ought not to go to work. STRIKES DEFINED. Tuesday, June 7th, the Central Council of the Building Interests met, and the committee on strikes and grievances, through P. B. Wight, its chairman, submitted a lengthy report. It defined strikes of two kinds--general and special. The general strike, which was more frequent, was a demand by a number of employes, acting in concert, for an increase in wages, or a change in working rules, or methods of conducting business, followed by a united refusal to work. A special strike was concerted refusal to work on a particular job, or for a particular employer, based on the assumption of a contract between employer and employe which never existed, and a pretense of a violation of a contract. A general strike was legitimate, in a business sense. A special was based on false premises, and was practically an attempt to regulate an employer's way of doing business by visiting upon him embarrassment in a temporary stoppage of his business. It was often settled by the employers paying a "fine" to the offended "union" as a condition of the men returning to work in a body. This was nothing less than blackmail, and a receipt of the fine was a criminal act. It was in the nature of conspiracy. It might be an attempt on the part of the strikers to obtain some advantage, which might occasion great annoyance or damage to the employers. Such was the demand of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons on the 29th of April last for a Saturday pay-day, which was resisted and refused by many employers. The report then gave a detailed account of the immediate and consequent results of the strike, with a statement of action taken by all building organizations to date, showing the manner in which the question affected all building trades, and resulting in locking out thousands of well-trained and well-behaved artisans, who obeyed the dictates of the handful of officials, committeemen, and a small army of walking delegates, who were to be seen daily at the union headquarters and who were paid by contributions from men whose dues were really filched from their wives and children. The report concluded as follows: We believe that the Master Masons' association has acted with the purest motives toward their employes, and in the spirit of self-sacrifice with regard to their own interest. They have gone so far as to encourage their men to form a union devoted to higher principles than the rule-or-ruin policy which actuates the present organization. This may all be well in the future, but it does not help to do away with the objection of the men to taking up their tools. A contract for labor differs from a contract for anything else only in that the confidence of him who disposes of his labor must be unqualified to the last degree. If the employer appeals to the man as an individual he must inspire him with confidence in his representations. If the Master Masons' association intends never again to recognize the union rules, let it say so in terms so unqualified that no one can misunderstand it. If the individual workman fully believes it, he will be only too glad to come out like a man, and there will be a scramble to see who gets there first. If the master mason intends to live up to his profession, let him guarantee his employe work for a stated time--long enough to convince him that it is more to his interest to go to work than to cling to his union and stand still. If no one mason feels confident that he can guarantee steady work, say, for six months, let the master masons agree among themselves to provide work, so that, if a man is laid off on one job he can be sure of work on another where he will not meet with any interference. If the employer expects his men to work he must guarantee them full protection in case of interference. But more than all things he must guarantee his employe that he will never be displaced in consequence of any future compromise with any labor organization. If the master masons have faith in the stand they have taken, and mean to maintain it at all hazards, they will get all the help they want. If they have any idea that a strike is on their hands to be settled by compromise with any body of men, they may as well surrender to the union at once. We do not believe that this weakness exists among them, but the public and their unemployed mechanics must be convinced by their acts that they are thoroughly in earnest--as we believe they are--and that guarantees, such as have been suggested, will be carried out in good faith to the very letter, and at all hazards. The public, which must sustain us or we fall, will then be convinced that there is no strike, except a strike for right and justice. And if needs be that the employers must be responsible for it, let them glory in it as our forefathers did. There was a strike, as we admit. A strike did we say, for a Saturday pay-day? It was so called. It was resisted, and the men who were expected to pay on Saturday have not done so. It was a strike aimed at the Master Masons' association. It was not for any great benefit that Saturday pay-day should confer. It was a strike to show the power of the striker. It was an exhibition of strength from those whose strength has not been resisted or questioned for four years; a power which knew no resistance, but which must be periodically exhibited to make its presence felt. It is that same power which is still so strong that it makes your mechanics blind to all your heaven-born principles and deaf to all your promises. You, gentlemen of the Master Masons' association, and all you who have nailed our banner of liberty upon your walls, have strength also. In a battle of endurance you can win, but if you do win by extermination, then your sin will be greater than the fruit of your victory. But remember that those who live by the sword, if they die so living, shall also die by the sword. Your weapon is the olive branch. Your principles are just. Let your faith be strong, and in the end you will find your best friends in the camp of your enemy. The report was signed by P. B. Wight, H. G. Savage and M. W. Powell, who composed the committee. It was unanimously approved, and a copy was directed to be sent to the Master Masons' association. A NATIONAL CONVENTION CALLED. The Amalgamated Building Trades Council decided to call a national convention to form a federation of journeymen builders in the United States. An "Important Call" was issued which recited the fact that there was a national organization of employers in the building industry which proposed to regulate all matters relative to that interest, and that to successfully defend their rights the wage-workers in the building industry must be thoroughly organized and ever on the alert. The following two reasons were given why a national federation of the building trades should be at once perfected: 1. It has been proved beyond all doubt that the interests of a craft can be best protected by the complete unification of those engaged therein; and so we have formed our unions and trades-assemblies of Knights of Labor. It is also an undeviating fact that the closer those whose interests are identical are drawn together the easier and more satisfactory is the management of those interests. And realizing the identity of the interests of the building trades we, therefore, necessarily believe in their thorough federation upon such basis as will not interfere with the complete autonomy of each distinctive trade. [There are scores of reasons why such a move would be beneficial, which are apparent to all men of experience in labor organizations, and they need not be enumerated here.] 2. Because it being a recognized idea that all large industries shall be regulated by organizations of the employers on the one hand and the employes upon the other hand, and there already being in existence a national organization of the employers, or contractors, under the name of the National Builders' association, we believe that further delay in perfecting a national organization upon our side would be suicidal to the best interests of the men of the building trades, and fraught with danger to our separate trade organizations. We believe that steps should at once be taken to bring about this greatly-desired amalgamation, and that a convention looking to that end should be called together in this city as soon as practicable. The date for the convention was fixed upon Tuesday, June 28th. A CARPENTERS' COMMITTEE. June 9th the Carpenters' and Builders' association appointed a committee to take charge of all matters of the association, to furnish men, protect them, and look after the interests of the members. The chairman appointed the following on the committee: North side, Messrs. J. L. Diez, John Ramcke and M. Bender; South side, Messrs. Wm. Goldie, Wm. Jackson and S. H. Dempsey; West side, Messrs. M. Campbell, J. F. Tregay and Peter Kauff. The committee retired and elected Mr. Goldie chairman, and agreed to meet daily at the Builders' and Traders' exchange. A SCHEME THAT FAILED. June 9th a special meeting of the Bricklayers union, was held, at which an attempt was again made to have the code of principles of the Master Masons approved, but it was unsuccessful. The most that could be done was to secure the appointment of a committee to take steps looking to a settlement of the strike. This committee was composed of A. E. Vorkeller, John Pierson, C. J. Lindgren, P. J. Miniter and Fred Rebush. On Friday, June 10th, this committee met, after which Mr. Vorkeller, president of the union, called upon Mr. Downey, president of the Master Masons' association, and asked him when he would have a committee ready to meet his committee. Mr. Downey notified him that if he had any communication to make it should be presented in writing, in order that he might be able to submit it to his association. Mr. Vorkeller returned to his office and prepared a letter, which he delivered in person to Mr. Downey in the afternoon. Shortly after the delivery of the letter the Master Masons' association met in special session, with George Tapper in the chair. Five new members were admitted, which occasioned a remark from a member that it did not look like the association was falling to pieces, or that the members were weakening. The report of the committee on strikes and grievances of the Central Council of the Building Interests, adopted on Tuesday, June 7th, was read. It was received with applause. Mr. Downey then announced that he had received a letter from the president of the Bricklayers' Union, but before it was read he desired to make a statement in order that his position and the letter might be better understood. He said that on Monday evening, June 6th, Mr. A. E. Vorkeller, president of the Union, had called at his house, where they had a friendly chat. Mr. Vorkeller had then asked him how the strike could be settled, and he had informed Mr. Vorkeller that when the Union indorsed the platform of principles adopted by the builders they could arbitrate all questions of difference that were subjects of arbitration. On the following morning Mr. Vorkeller had called on him and suggested that he would bring with him four Union men to meet a like number of the Master Masons at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, to have an unofficial talk on the subject, it being agreed that no members of either executive committee should be present. Finding that he could not have one person present at that hour he had sent Mr. Vorkeller the following note: FRIEND VORKELLER: It will be impossible for me to meet you before 3:30, owing to one of the men I appointed not being able to meet before that time. I trust this will not inconvenience you in any way. Yours, respectfully, JOSEPH DOWNEY. They met at 3:30 o'clock Tuesday afternoon, there being present the following representatives: Master Masons--Joseph Downey, George Tapper, George H. Fox, C. W. Hellman, William O'Brien and Charles W. Gindele. Bricklayers--A. E. Vorkeller and Messrs. Taylor, Charles, Householder and Kraus. At the conference it was distinctly understood that the code of principles was to be first adopted and then they would arbitrate other questions. The whole talk was agreed and understood to be unofficial. Mr. Vorkeller then stated that he would call a special meeting of the union and see what could be done. Mr. Downey then read the following letter, which he had received from President Vorkeller: CHICAGO, June 10, 1887. MR. JOSEPH DOWNEY, President Master Masons' Association--_Dear Sir_: In accordance with interview with you on the 7th inst. in relation to appointing a committee with power to act, for the purpose of arbitration, and, if possible, end the differences which exist between our associations, and which are causing increased uneasiness, not only to those on both sides who are immediately concerned, but also to the public at large, who have been patient witnesses to this uncalled for and unnecessary lockout, so far as we are concerned we court the fullest investigation from the public of our side of the case without having the least fear of the result; but we are willing, and have agreed in special meeting, to send a committee to settle this difficulty honorably to ourselves as well as to you, according to the aforesaid interview. If this suits your convenience you will please notify us immediately, if possible, and oblige yours respectfully, A. E. VORKELLER, President. Mr. Charles W. Gindele remarked that when he entered the room where the meeting was held he made the announcement that the talk should be unofficial, which all acceded to. After a long conference they were led to conclude that the bricklayers would concede nearly everything but nine hours a day. The bricklayers were informed that they must adopt the platform of principles before there could be any arbitration. Mr. George H. Fox said Mr. Gindele's statement was correct, and it was distinctly understood that the representatives of the bricklayers should go before their own people and adopt the platform of principles. Mr. George Tapper, who was also at the meeting, said his impression of the conference was decidedly unfavorable. He had then called the attention of Mr. Vorkeller to the clause in the constitution of the Union in regard to apprentices, and told him that if he (Tapper) had a son who did not get his schooling before he was 18 years of age he would be debarred from learning the trade of a bricklayer. In reply to this Vorkeller had made the astounding statement that there was no trouble in such a case. All the boy had to do was to say he was 18 years old and he was all right, as they had boys come to them with long mustaches and had fixed them all right. Mr. Tapper said he replied by saying that was teaching boys to lie, and gave them the first steps toward the penitentiary, and if that was their way of doing business he wanted nothing more to do with them. He also said that Vorkeller had agreed that the section of the platform of principles providing for the free right to employ or to work was right, but when asked if his men would work alongside a non-union man he had said: "No; they would quit and carry off their tools." Mr. Tapper said he was disgusted with the whole business. Mr. C. P. Wakeman thought it would be no harm to appoint a committee to confer with the Union committee. He thought also that the appointment of the committee by the Union was an acknowledgment of the code of principles. If the Master Masons demanded more than partial justice they would lose. Mr. A. J. Hageman said if the Bricklayers' Union had not acknowledged the principles of the Master Masons there was nothing yet to arbitrate. Mr. C. W. Gindele said he understood the Bricklayers were to submit what they wanted to arbitrate, but they had not done so. Mr. E. Earnshaw said from the reading of the letter the Union had nothing to concede. It was endeavoring to lead the Masons into a trap in order to make capital out of it. By saying they "court the fullest investigation" the unionists emphatically claimed that they were right and the Master Masons were all wrong. Mr. Downey stated that Mr. Vorkeller had frequently stated to him that he was in favor of the code of principles, but would have to "shin around" to induce the union to recognize them, fearing he would not be successful. Mr. George C. Prussing said the arbitration movement had been instituted to keep the Union men together, as many of them were leaving, and an effort was being made to make these men understand that if a settlement should be reached they would be shut out. No arbitration should be had which meant only partial justice. There were principles that could not be arbitrated. When the Union amended its constitution so as to conform to their principles the Builders would be ready to join hands with them. Or, if a new Union should be organized on such a basis, it would be met with open hands. Compromise they would not. It would be stultification. The vote on the motion to appoint the committee was lost, only eight voting in favor of it. A motion was made to lay the communication on the table, which prevailed, only ten voting against it. Mr. G. C. Prussing submitted the following, which was adopted as the sense of the meeting, with but one dissenting vote: The position of this Association can hardly be misunderstood at this late day. It has been laid down in our platform in unmistakable language, and is further contained in an address to the Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago and published by the public press. We have addressed them as individuals, and shall continue to treat them as individuals, not an organization. Principles can never be subject to arbitration. And such matters as can properly be arbitrated--such as hours of work, wages, or other working rules--can not be discussed with any committee until an organization is in existence which has adopted the principle of individual liberty freely and fully, and is governed by constitution and by-laws based thereon. This community has suffered too often and too long, and the sacrifices brought have been too great to listen to any hint of a possible arbitration or compromise. We owe it to ourselves; to the other building trades who have taken the position held by us, we owe it to the entire community to settle the present troubles right. That is, on a basis that promises security against future arbitrary interruptions of business. To individuals we are ready to give work; we guarantee them steady employment as far as in our power, and will protect them in every way, and if the men who now take up their tools should choose to form an organization for mutual protection and any other honorable and lawful purposes, based on the principles we acknowledge, we will aid and assist them in perfecting such organization, and will treat with them, and arbitrate any and all questions properly subject to arbitration. After the meeting adjourned Mr. Downey sent a communication to Mr. Vorkeller in reply to his letter, of which the following is a copy: A. E. VORKELLER, President, etc.--_Dear Sir_: Your letter of this day contained more than a surprise for me. Any and all interviews held with you by me and other members of our Association were at your seeking and request, and with the distinct understanding that we were acting in our own individual capacity, without any authority from any organized body, and that I, as president of the Master Masons' association, have no authority to appoint any committee for purposes set forth in your communication. Nor is your letter written in the spirit you proposed, or your position as given by yourself in interviews with me. You certainly must have understood, for it was repeated over and over again, that I would not consent to any effort at arbitration until your body shall have adopted, plainly and fairly, the principles held by us as an Association. I refer to principles as stated in our platform. Nor can such agreement be expressed by a simple vote, but must be shown by eliminating all sections of your constitution and by-laws in conflict therewith. Your letter has been placed before our Association, and by it was laid on the table. Our position is again outlined by resolution adopted, and will be found in the daily papers. Very respectfully yours, JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. IT WORKED WELL. Monday, June 13th, the rule of the Carpenter bosses for a nine-hour day was put into effect. It occasioned no such break with the men as had been promised. Nearly all acceded to the rule, and those who quit had their places filled at once by non-union men who were only too anxious to get a job. OUT OF FUNDS. Tuesday evening, June 14th, a special meeting of the Bricklayers' Union was held, at which the depleted condition of the treasury was made known. The men working were asked to divide their earnings with the idle men, which they flatly refused to do. A resolution was passed requiring the men to work alternate weeks. This occasioned trouble, the men refusing to obey the order. They were willing to pay the regular assessment of $1 a week, but no more. The executive committee was authorized to sell a lot owned by the Union at the corner of Monroe and Peoria streets, to raise funds to meet the demands of the idlers. In order to keep up a show with the men the officers continued to claim that money was plenty, and more could be had; yet their demands for a few dollars were not met in cash--only promises. INFLUENCE. The following invitation was sent to fifty prominent citizens of Chicago: UNION LEAGUE CLUB, CHICAGO, June 11th, 1887. _Dear Sir_:--You are requested to meet a number of gentlemen in the parlors of the Union League club, next Monday evening, June 13th, at 8 o'clock, P. M., sharp, to consider the present labor troubles, in our city and elsewhere, and to discuss the propriety of inaugurating a movement, the object and aim of which will be to harmonize existing and imaginary differences between employers and employes, and to restore and re-establish every and all rights of citizenship guaranteed by the constitution of the United States, and to maintain the supremacy of the law throughout the length and breadth of the land. The vital questions of the day must be met, calmly considered and settled. You are earnestly invited to respond to this call. By order of COMMITTEE ON POLITICAL ACTION. The guests assembled in the parlors of the club and were escorted to the library, where Mr. G. F. Bissell presided during a lengthy discussion of the labor question. At the close of the meeting resolutions were adopted for the appointment of a committee of seven whose duty it was to procure signatures of citizens to a paper endorsing the action of the Master Masons and Builders in the stand they had taken against the tyranny of the unions, and to request the press to keep the subject before the public. On Tuesday the committee met and prepared a heading for signatures, which contained extracts from the code of principles of the builders, in regard to the right of every man to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, and the right of every boy to learn a trade. To these extracts were appended the following: We, the undersigned, endorse the action of the Master Masons and other organizations of Builders and agree to use our best endeavors to bring about a resumption of building operations based on the Code of Principles at the head of this paper. Signatures were procured to these papers in large numbers and were presented to the Master Masons' association. They had a good effect, as some of the weaker members needed just such endorsement to make them strong. ANGRY BRICKLAYERS. Applications for the small stipend promised by the Union to men out of employment grew to be more frequent. The demands were not met with the promptitude which the idle men thought should characterize the occasion, and some of them became loud and emphatic in their protestations against what they said was unfair treatment. They became so earnest in their expressions that they were called to one side and cautioned to not be so bold as to give the Union away. Many of them heeded the caution for the time being, but as they filed out of the office they were very angry because they got no money, claiming that they were needy and had as much right to assistance as anybody. One of them boldly and rather roughly asserted that "the whole thing was bursted," and the managers were "making a play to keep the men together," but he thought it would play out in a few days. One of them who was well posted on some historical facts, made the following statement: "In 1883, at the time of the strike, the Bricklayers of Chicago got $13,000 from the International union in aid of the strikers. During the same year the Chicago union was assessed $4,600 to assist the strikers in Pittsburgh, but the assessment was never paid. The union then withdrew from the International union and became an independent organization. The cash in the treasury of the union has been exhausted, and if the lot is sold there will not be enough money to pay up the claims for relief to date. The International union has refused financial aid to the Chicago union until the Pittsburgh assessment is paid, and all other assessments made since then, amounting to about $17,000. President Darrow, of the International union, has written a letter to the Chicago union notifying the officers that if they will join the International union again and agree to make good all back assessments, he will send the Chicago union $5,000. If they do not accept this proposition and join now he will establish a branch of the International union in Chicago as soon as the present strike is over, if not sooner. The Chicago union will not accept the offer, and where is it to get assistance from? If it kept faith with the idle men it would require $10,000 a week to sustain itself. Under such pressure the union can not be expected to hold out very long." A BID FOR SYMPATHY. A mass meeting was called at Battery D by the Bricklayers' union for the purpose of eliciting sympathy from the public. It was held Thursday evening, June 16th, there being three thousand workingmen present. Revs. Lorimer and Goss and Gen. Beem were invited to be present, but they were not there. Persons who favored the builders' side of the question were conspicuous by their absence. One builder who was bold enough to get as far as the door was knocked down and driven away. Edward Mulrany, of the Bricklayers' union, presided, and the exercises were conducted by members of the union. The following lengthy preamble and resolutions were read and adopted unanimously, followed by great applause and loud cheers: The United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of the city of Chicago, in mass-meeting assembled at the armory of battery D, June 16, 1887, do adopt and declare the following preamble and resolutions: _Whereas_, Certain questions and matters of difference have arisen between us and the Master Masons' and Builders' association of Chicago, and the controversy over the same has resulted in a widespread suspension of building operations in this city, to the immense injury of both the employers and the employed, and to the great damage of the community at large; and _Whereas_, There is no adequate remedy for any such case under any existing law; and _Whereas_, The working people have often been admonished through the public press and otherwise that they should not resort to a strike or boycott to obtain their rights, but should appeal to the law for protection and relief, and in case the existing laws are insufficient to the lawmaking power for new and better enactments; and _Whereas_, In pursuance of such admonitions they earnestly appealed to the legislature at the last session to provide an adequate remedy for conflicts of employers and the employed; and _Whereas_, The legislature nevertheless wholly neglected and refused to provide any such remedy, or even to consider and discuss the subject in any open and public manner; and _Whereas_, There is now no other mode in which relief can be sought than retaliation by strike or boycott on the one hand, or by voluntary arbitration on the other; and _Whereas_, The same legislature that refused to provide any remedy for such cases, has sought to make every participant in any strike or boycott punishable as a criminal, without extending the same penalties to the corresponding offense of a lockout, so far as we are yet informed; and _Whereas_, We have heretofore offered and proposed, and do now again and openly and publicly offer and propose, to submit to the full and final decision of arbitrators, to be chosen in the usual manner, every question and matter of difference or controversy pending between us and said Master Masons' and Builders' association, and to abide by and perform such decision, and would be willing to have one of the judges of Cook county chosen to act as umpire in case of disagreement of the arbitrators; and _Whereas_, The power of public opinion is the only force by which we can compel such submission to arbitration; and _Whereas_, The public at large are deeply interested in the matter, and would be greatly benefited by an early resumption of the suspended building operations; and _Whereas_, We are willing and desire that a decision by arbitration should extend over and include the entire residue of the building season of the present year, that any future difficulty may be avoided; now, therefore, be it _Resolved_, As follows: 1. That we condemn in strong terms the neglect of the legislature to provide any adequate legal remedy by a state board of labor and capital, or otherwise, for conflicts between employers and the employed, and that we will continue the agitation of this subject till proper laws have been enacted providing such a remedy. 2. That we condemn in equally strong terms the refusal of said Master Masons' and Builders' association to submit to arbitration whatever claims, charges, questions, controversies, or differences they may have with or against us; and we appeal to the mighty power of public opinion to uphold our cause, and to compel the submission to the arbitration we desire. 3. That we purposely abstain from attempting to argue in the present preamble and resolutions the justice of the points for which we contend with the Master Masons' and Builders' association, because that is the matter which should be discussed before and determined by the arbitrators whose appointment we desire. 4. That we appeal to the two great organs of public opinion, the pulpit and the public press, to advocate the righteousness of our demands, or to point out to us if they can wherein the same are contrary to justice or offensive to law and order; and in that case to show us some other lawful way, if any exists, by which justice may be secured. When Drs. Lorimer and Goss and Gen. Beem could not be found in the assembly, the venerable Judge Booth, who has attended nearly every public meeting in Chicago for half a century, delivered a brief address in which he expressed himself in favor of arbitration. Other speeches of the evening were made by M. L. Crawford, of the typographical union; George Lang, a bricklayer; William Kliver, president of the trades assembly; John Pierson, ex-president, and A. E. Vorkeller, president of the Bricklayers' union; William Davidson and C. R. Temple. TO MAKE BRICK. Friday, June 17th, the Chicago brick manufacturers met and agreed to resume work in their yards Monday, June 20th, and to continue to work until they made enough brick to fill their sheds. If by that time the strike was not settled they were to close their yards for the season. AN ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC. June 18th the Central Council of the Building Interests issued the following address to the public: The Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago, which now addresses you, was organized June 1st, 1887, under the following circumstances: When, on the 29th of April last, the United Order of Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago decided, without consultation with their employers, that they would only receive their pay every two weeks on Saturdays, the Master Masons' association refused to comply with the demand, and the union men struck on their work wherever it was refused. The Master Masons' association then resolved to suspend all work on and after the 13th of May, and did so unanimously. The fire-proofing companies which employed men of the same union took the same action. The strike was made inoperative for the time being by the lockout of the employers. The Builders' and Traders' exchange met on the following day, resolved to sustain the Master Masons, and called upon each trade represented to send three representatives to a general conference to consider the situation. The conference was organized with a full representation, and on the 25th of May adopted the following platform and code of principles to be submitted and be ratified by all the building organizations: We affirm that absolute personal independence of the individual to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, is a fundamental principle which should never be questioned or assailed; that upon it depends the security of our whole social fabric and business prosperity, and that employers and workmen should be equally interested in its defense and preservation. We recognize that there are many opportunities for good in associations of workmen, and while condemning and opposing improper action upon their part, we will aid and assist them in all just and honorable purposes; that while upon fundamental principles it would be useless to confer or arbitrate, there are still many points upon which conference and arbitration are perfectly right and proper, and that upon such points it is a manifest duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by associations to confer together to the end that strikes, lockouts, and other disturbances maybe prevented. Code of principles by the employe to be made a universal condition of employment by all building interests of Chicago, viz: I recognize the right of every man to decide for himself, without dictation or interference, when he shall work or cease to work, where he shall work, how many hours he shall work, and for what wages he shall work. I recognize the right of the employer to decide for himself whom he shall employ or cease to employ, and to regulate and manage his business with perfect independence, provided, only, that he deal lawfully, justly and honorably with all men. I recognize the right of every father to have his son taught, and of every son to learn any lawful trade, to be the same as his right to a knowledge of reading and writing, or any other branch of learning, which should be subject to regulation only by the laws of the land. By accepting employment I agree in all my relations and intercourse with my employers and fellow-workmen to maintain and live up to these principles. The conference also asked each organization to nominate one member to a Central Council of the Building Interests. The platform was adopted by the several organizations, and representatives were appointed to this body, which is now recognized by the trades as the representative of all the building interests collectively, and is permanently organized. At the same time the Master Masons' association resolved to resume business on or before June 1, and adopted a uniform set of working rules, defining the hours of labor and other conditions necessary to the prosecution of their business, etc., in accordance with the platform that had been adopted. The fire-proofing companies did the same thing. The action of these bodies broke the lockout, which was of but brief existence. It is naturally asked, therefore: Why this continued stoppage and stagnation in the building business? It may be briefly said, in reply, that the men have in large numbers refused the work offered to them in accordance with the dictates of the United Order of Bricklayers and Stonemasons, and upon that body rests the responsibility entirely. Whatever dispute the Master Masons have had with their employes' union, has been taken up by the whole body of trades here represented, while the employers of the associations of master masons, fire-proofers, and carpenters have officially decided to treat no more with unions as unions, but with men as reasoning beings. With these facts before us it behooves us to look the question squarely in the face and see how we stand to-day. Some of the masons have small forces of bricklayers and stonemasons at work and all the laborers they want, for there is practically no strike among the laborers. The fire-proofers are well supplied and have practically resumed business. There are a few buildings in progress, on which we are informed that the owners have employed foremen and journeymen appointed by the union. There are others again, the contractors for which are "union bosses," or members of the union, who have become employers without severing their membership, and hence are strictly bound to all union rules. But we still see many deserted buildings where the sound of the trowel is not heard. Thousands of well-trained and to their credit, be it said, well-behaved artisans may be seen in the streets and about their homes. Many are Bricklayers, obeying the dictates of the handful of officials and committeemen and small army of walking delegates who may be seen daily at the union headquarters, placed there by their votes, or, at least, allowed to be there by their indifference, and certainly well paid by their contributions. The time of these officials is partly devoted to receiving contributions from men whose dues are now really filched from their wives and children, partly to having their vanity flattered by the obsequious prayers of so-called capitalists for help to satisfy their greed and avarice in getting their own buildings finished before their neighbors, and partly to giving out fulsome accounts of their victories over the bosses, in a supposed contest that really does not exist. In consequence of this we see the public misled by the daily press into a belief that nothing is going on but a strike between the boss Masons and the Bricklayers' union on the senseless question of a Saturday pay-day, characterized by nothing but the obstinacy on both sides, while in reality the united employers in all the building trades are contending simply for the natural rights of a man whether he be employer or employe, against a score of professional agitators who temporarily control the skilled mechanics of this country. Now, last of all, what do we see at the Master Masons' headquarters? A united body of men with large interests at stake, and great responsibilities, who have not attempted to enforce a long and exhausting lockout for bringing their misguided employes to terms through poverty and distress, but calmly and deliberately leaving to us, the representatives of the sister building trades, the arbitrament of their own interests. The principles that they have adopted are those which we formulated, and they have agreed to the broad doctrine of freedom and justice. They did not seek to prolong the contest with their employes which had arisen from such a slight pretext. But as soon as the conference advised they acted (and so have the Carpenters). They have offered immediate employment on a fair basis. Is it their fault that their employes do not all come back to them? They have used every means that they can with due regards to their own dignity and self-respect to bring their men back. If they do not come it is simply because of the authority which the Union holds over its members. They are more devoted to their Union, which says "no," restraining their individual acts, than to their employers, who say "come"--more even than to their wives and families. In other words, while individually they believe in the principles which we have enunciated, they hope for a reconciliation between the union and the bosses. From all past experience many of them believe that there will be a reconciliation or compromise, and they think their own safety is in waiting. We should remember that these men stand in a dilemma. Each one of them is in a state of mental perplexity trying to decide in his own mind which course to take for his own interest. Heretofore he has not exercised his own mind on these subjects. He has left all the details of the contract for his labor to the officials of his Union. It has become a second nature to him to look to his Union for protection in all things. He has voluntarily ceased to be a free agent. There has been much talk of late on the subject of arbitration. A proper understanding of the situation will show how impossible such a course is at present. The responsibility for the prevention of the men from working has been fixed where it belongs. It is useless to talk now of a settlement. There will be no solution until the idle men take up their tools and renounce their allegiance to the present Union. There will be no yielding until that is the case. The sister trades have and will continue to sustain the Masons and other trades affected by the encroachments of labor organizations until then. In the following resolutions, passed at the regular meeting held June 10, the Central Council thus expressed its views upon the importance of uniform working hours: _Whereas_, In the opening of this Council it is of the greatest interest to all of the trades here represented that the hours of work on buildings in course of erection should be uniform in all the trades. _Resolved_, That while we recognize the right of every trade to establish its own working hours, we think those established by a large majority, not only in Chicago but in other cities, should be considered as a precedent for others to follow. At the same meeting the stand taken by the Master Masons was thus indorsed: _Resolved_, That the Association of Master Masons and Builders has the heartiest support of the building trades here represented in its battle against exactions of an unscrupulous and tyrannical trade union, which is the enemy alike to the building trades and the interests of its own members. The position they have taken under the principles adopted by the conference is a just one, they have held out the olive branch to their former employes, and it only remains to inspire them with confidence in its representations to the end that work may speedily be resumed. GEORGE TAPPER, President. F. C. SCHOENTHALER, Secretary. THE BRICKLAYERS' UNION DESPISED. Organized labor in Chicago had no sympathy for the Bricklayers' union. Members of other unions entertained for it a feeling of bitterness which was constantly being manifested. This was fully illustrated at a meeting of the Amalgamated Building Trades Council held Saturday evening, June 18th, at which delegates stated that the Bricklayers' union had taken contracts from Master Masons for the erection of buildings, and had then hired non-union hod-carriers, carpenters, cornice-makers, lathers and laborers of all classes. The Bricklayers' union was characterized as "the meanest organization on God's green footstool," and it was remarked that it would be a good thing for Chicago if it was wiped out of existence. The union was bitterly denounced for its selfish, mercenary, unjust, tyrannical conduct toward other labor organizations. On Sunday, June 19th, at a meeting of the Trade and Labor Assembly, Edward Mulrany, of the Bricklayers' union, made a vicious attack upon James Brennock, of the Building Trades council, on account of the action of the previous evening. Mr. Brennock, an old man, attempted to explain the true situation, but his voice was drowned by Mulrany, who fairly yelled: "Lies! lies! you're a liar!" and heaped abuse upon the old man to such an extent that he was forced to subside. The Bricklayers' union had for so long had everything its own way that the leaders assumed the right to not only dictate to the bosses and other unions, but they usurped the prerogative of trampling upon anything and everything that attempted to question a single act of the union. They had made servile tools of the members of every other organization until all had grievances of such a character that they were in a position to sympathize with even an employer, in a fight against the oppression of the Bricklayers' union. The Hodcarriers went so far as to threaten to take up trowels and lay brick for members of the Master Masons' association in order to aid in breaking up the Union that had been so abusive to all other labor organizations. Under these circumstances it was but reasonable to expect that the tide of the strike would turn in favor of the Master Masons. A NEW UNION. A proposition was made for the organization of a new Union of the Bricklayers' and Stonemasons' which should recognize the principles of right and justice laid down in the platform of the National Association of Builders, and approved by every organization of builders in Chicago. Blanks were printed and placed in the hands of the members of the Master Masons' association upon which to procure the signatures of their respective employes. The blanks were in the following form: We believe in the right of workmen to organize for mutual protection and all just and honorable purposes, and assert our right. We recognize the right of every man to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ. We recognize the right of every boy to learn any lawful trade. We recognize that strikes and lockouts are baneful and may be prevented by arbitration. We believe that all matters of joint interest to employers and workmen should be discussed and acted on by joint committees, representing organizations of both employers and workmen. We believe that by organizing upon the principles set forth the foundation to future harmony is laid and the best interests of all conserved. Now, therefore, do we, the undersigned, agree to attend a meeting to be called at an early day, to form ourselves into the "Chicago Union of Bricklayers and Stonemasons." This paper was circulated among the bricklayers and stonemasons who were working under the rules of the Master Masons' association, and in three days the signatures of two hundred and fifty men were procured. On Tuesday, June 21st, a committee issued a call for a meeting for the organization of a new union, which was as follows: MR. ............................ _Dear Sir_: Wednesday evening has been set for forming the Chicago Bricklayers' and Stonemasons' Union. Meeting will be held at the Builders' and Traders' Exchange at 7:30 P. M. Your presence is desired, with all the bricklayers and stonemasons in your employ, and if your men have any friends who wish to join said Union, bring them with you, for the purpose of taking your first step for liberty. THE COMMITTEE. The call had been signed by 284 bricklayers and stonemasons, 225 of which met and took the first steps necessary to an organization. All but 30 of those present were ex-members of the old union. A committee was appointed to draft a constitution and by-laws. Another meeting was held on Friday evening, at which a number of new members were received. On Wednesday, June 30th, the new union met and adopted a constitution which embraced as its basis the code of principles of the Master Masons' association and declared the objects to be as follows: The object of this Union is to carry into living effect the principles set forth; to do away with labor disturbances, such as strikes, lockouts, and boycotts; and to institute a practical mode of arbitration; to give all moral and material aid in its power to its members and those dependent upon them; to educate and elevate its members socially, morally, and intellectually; to establish and administer a fund for the relief of sick and distressed members, and for mortuary benefit. Other provisions were as follows: "Members shall consist of active, passive, and honorary members. Any bricklayer or stonemason who has worked in Chicago one week at the minimum rate of wages for competent journeymen may become an active member, or any journeyman who presents evidence of membership in any other union in the United States or Canada, which is founded on the same principles, may be enrolled as a member." "Members employed as foremen shall not be subject to the union during such employment." The initiation fee was fixed at $5 and the annual dues at the same amount. Provision was made for committees on arbitration, house and finance. The powers of the committee on arbitration were defined as follows: The arbitration committee shall have full power to adjust all grievances and make a written award after a joint meeting with the arbitration committee of the Master Masons' association. This committee shall have power to determine for the year all working rules, including the minimum rate of wages per hour for all competent mechanics, and for all overtime and Sunday work. The constitution also provided for rules for running the union, and for benefits for injuries received, and for the payment of funeral expenses of deceased members. Officers were elected as follows: President, Lewis Meyer; secretary, T. D. Price; treasurer, T. J. Fellows; sentinel, Henry Annes. The officers were directed to procure a charter. NATIONAL BUILDING TRADES COUNCIL. On Tuesday, June 28th, the first national convention of the Amalgamated Building Trades was held in Chicago. There were sixty-eight delegates present, of whom fifty were from Chicago. The others were from Detroit, 3; Washington, 1; Cincinnati, 2; New York, 3; Pennsylvania, 1; Bay City, 1; Brooklyn, 1; Denver, 1; Milwaukee, 1; Philadelphia, 2; Sioux City, 1; Pittsburgh, 1. P. W. Birk, of Brooklyn, presided during the session which lasted three days. The objects of the council were defined as follows: The objects of the Council are to assist in the organization of the journeymen workers of the building trades, and the federation of such trade organizations into building trade councils and central bodies in each locality of the United States; to create a bond of unity between the wage-working builders, and to aid by counsel and support all legitimate efforts made for the betterment of the condition of members of the building trades. The following appeal to the building trade organizations was adopted and directed to be sent all over the country: TO ALL COUNCILS, FEDERATIONS, AND ORGANIZATIONS OF THE BUILDING TRADES IN THE UNITED STATES--_Greeting_: The time has come in the wisdom of the soundest thinkers and most experienced workers in the ranks of labor when it is not only proper, but necessary, that the journeymen workers of the building industry in the United States should be thoroughly organized and federated under a national council. Such an organization, by the conservative exercise of the control delegated to it by a constitution upon which all local organizations can unite, could do a great work in looking after the interests of the various crafts and callings engaged in the building industry; and, by a timely and wise supervision in cases of wage or other difficulties, exercise an incalculable influence in directing the course of events to a solution favorable to the workers, by keeping the craftsmen of the whole country fully informed of the situation and the necessities of the case. The contractors, or "Master Builders," have formed and are endeavoring to perfect a National Association with the declared purpose of opposing the efforts of the labor organizations to regulate wages and the hours of labor. Pursuant to a call issued by the Amalgamated Building Trades' Council of Chicago, a convention of delegates from building trades organizations of the country met in this city on Tuesday June 28, and in a three days' convention perfected a national organization with the objects as set forth in the preceding paragraph. Notwithstanding the short notice given, there were in the convention delegates from fourteen of the principal cities of the union, representing one-half million journeymen builders. The result is that the National Building Trades' Council of the United States is now an established fact, working under a temporary constitution, copies of which accompany this circular. We submit the action of the convention and the constitution to the building trades organizations of the United States, and ask their prompt and active support of the movement. The convention, after due deliberation, decided, as it was hardly more than preliminary, that the first regular session of the national council should be held as soon as possible; that the delay in bringing all the building organizations under one head should not be greater than the time necessary to disseminate the work of the convention and to allow sufficient time for the many organizations to act; it was therefore decided to name the third Tuesday in September, 1887, as the date for holding such session. The place selected for the next convention is Chicago. All organizations receiving a copy of this circular are urged to take action in accordance with the constitution, and at once to open correspondence with the general secretary of the council, who will furnish information to those desiring it. Brothers, in conclusion, we urge you to give your support at once to this movement and to aid in perfecting an organization which may be made a power second to nothing of its character in the world, as its field is as broad as this great land, and its opportunities as limitless as humanity. On the last day the following resolutions were adopted: _Resolved_, That, in the event that the committee of the Chicago bricklayers do not succeed in making a satisfactory settlement with the Master Builders' association, the council declare the Chicago difficulty a national cause and appoint a committee on arbitration to meet the bosses, the power to appoint such committee resting in the hands of the president, in session or after adjournment. _Resolved_, That, in the event of failure of such committee to settle satisfactorily the trouble, the president, with the concurrence of the executive board, make an appeal to the building trades organizations of the United States, asking support--financial and moral--for the building-trades organizations of Chicago. Officers were elected as follows: President, J. S. Robinson, Cincinnati; Vice Presidents, George Keithly, Washington; William F. Abrams, Detroit; Louis Hartman, Milwaukee; Secretary, Peter A. Hogan, Chicago; Treasurer, L. C. Hutchinson, Detroit; Executive Board, W. H. Thomas, Philadelphia; Edward Farrell, New York; George E. Gray, Denver. ARBITRATION. On Tuesday, June 21st, three members of the old union met three Master Masons and told them they were ready to concede anything to preserve their union. They were advised to adopt the code of principles of the Master Masons, and agreed to have the union do so. A special meeting of the Bricklayers' union was called and held Thursday night for the purpose of endeavoring to induce the members to take a sensible view of the situation by adopting the code of principles. When the subject was proposed it met with howls of disgust, and had to be withdrawn. The members were not in proper temper to overturn their Union, even at the request of one who had been a leader. Being unable to keep their agreement in full with the contractors, the committee finally concluded to accomplish something. They introduced the following resolution: _Resolved_, That we withdraw our demand for Saturday pay-day, and declare the strike off. Even this ingenious little paper caused a bitter fight, the claim being made that there was trickery in it, and that it meant a complete "backdown" of the Union. But, with many assurances that the resolution was a "square deal" it was finally adopted by a bare majority. After the meeting it was stated that the stone pool--which held the key to the lockout--would have no excuse for refusing to deliver building material, as the strike was "declared off"; and that owners could compel them to "come to time." The action of the Bricklayers' union in rescinding the resolution in regard to Saturday pay-day, and "declaring the strike off," did not result in settling the differences between the two elements which had been at variance for nearly two months. Among the contractors this action was looked upon as a step taken toward a final settlement of the existing differences, and it inspired them with a belief that more would be done as soon as the arbitrary leaders of the union could be gotten in a proper temper. More was intended to be done, but the conservative, reasonable men in the union were not permitted to accomplish their whole purpose at once, and were forced to accept that which the union was willing at the time to concede. It was intended to fully recognize the code of principles of the Master Masons and accept the situation for the purpose of maintaining their union intact, but the temper of the men who made the most noise prevented any such action being taken. The feeling among the contractors generally was one of confidence in their ultimate success, and they expressed themselves in a manner that showed that they were as united as they had been at any time on the questions at issue. They said there had been no union bricklayers applying for work in consequence of the action rescinding the resolution in regard to Saturday pay-day, and that the adoption of such a resolution meant nothing unless the Bricklayers followed it up by going to work under the scale which had been adopted by the Master Masons' association. The executive committee of the Master Masons' association met Friday, June 24th, and decided to issue the following document, which, they said, might lead to an adjustment of the differences which had occasioned and prolonged the strike and lockout in the building trades: TO THE PUBLIC: In order to permanently settle the differences existing between employers and employes in the building trades and to show to the public that the Master Masons' association is willing to go on record as ready to do what is fair and reasonable in the present difficulty, we, the executive committee of the Master Masons' association, hereby offer to submit the platform and code of principles adopted by our association--the Bricklayers' and Stonemasons' union to submit their constitution and by-laws--to four business men and a judge of the United States court, said judge to select the four business men, who shall have full power to act as a board of arbitration as between the Master Masons' association and the bricklayers and stonemasons, and we hereby agree to abide by the decision of a majority of said board of arbitration. JOSEPH DOWNEY, HERMANN MUELLER, E. EARNSHAW, Executive Committee Master Masons' Association. When a copy of this paper was shown to some members of the executive committee of the Bricklayers' union, they grasped it eagerly, but suggested that they were afraid the four business men might not do them justice. One of them suggested that they might go so far as to agree to let the Master Masons select two and the Union two, and have a judge of the United States court for the fifth member, and then submit their constitution and by-laws and the code of principles of the Masons to them as proposed, and authorize the arbitrators to decide just what should be done by each party to settle the whole trouble. Saturday, June 25th, a committee from the Bricklayers' union, composed of A. E. Vorkeller, C. C. Scouller and C. J. Lindgren, met a committee of Master Masons, composed of C. A. Moses, Thomas Nicholson and E. S. Moss. The Union committee asked for and received an official copy of the proposition to allow a judge of the United States court to select four business men to arbitrate the case. They objected to the manner of selecting the arbitrators, and suggested that they be permitted to select their representatives, and the Master Masons do the same, and then select a judge as umpire. This action of the two committees was entirely unofficial, but the Union committeemen said they would officially present a proposition to the Master Masons on the subject. Monday, June 27th, the executive committee of the Bricklayers' union replied to the communication of President Downey, as follows: JOSEPH DOWNEY, President--_Dear Sir_: In reply to your communication of the 25th inst., submitting a proposition to settle permanently the differences existing between our union and your association, we beg leave to say that said proposition does not meet with our approval for the following reasons, viz: There is a want of confidence on the part of workingmen in such high officials as United States judges from the fact that they are not brought in close contact with workingmen in the settlement of their difficulties. Further, we believe a board of arbitration selected in the manner suggested by your committee would not be satisfactory to either side. Neither do we believe they would be as competent as a board selected from the employers and employes directly interested. We, therefore, take this opportunity to remind your association that we, on the 9th inst., appointed a committee of five from our organization to meet a like committee from your association (the joint committee to select an umpire) with full power to permanently settle the differences existing between our union and your association. By order of the executive committee of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons. A. E. VORKELLER, CHARLES J. LINDGREN, [Seal.] FRED RECKLING, JAMES SIDLAK, JOHN PEARSON. The objection to the United States judge was amusing to those who fully understood the situation. If he had been a judge whom they had helped to elect, or was a politician, there might have been no objection on the part of the executive committee of the union. But they would not submit to a United States judge because, they said, he did not come in "contact" with the laboring men. They wanted some one who did or had come in "contact" with them, because they believed such a judge or person would be afraid, for political reasons, to decide against the power of the union. The union was also afraid to submit to fair-minded men its constitution and by-laws in comparison with the code of principles of the Master Masons, because its rulers well knew that a decision would be against them, and their union would fall. It was well known that if President Vorkeller could have had his way, or could have controlled the union, a settlement would have been reached that would have been satisfactory to every builder in the city. But he was powerless, because every proposition he had made to adopt the code of principles of the builders had been howled down, and he had been threatened with violence if he persisted in his efforts to reach a settlement in that way. On one occasion, when Mr. Vorkeller insisted upon such a course, he was assaulted by an enthusiastic striker and was "struck like a dog." Wednesday, June 29th, the Master Masons' association held a meeting, and by a vote of 41 to 30 decided to appoint a committee of arbitration, and named George C. Prussing, Joseph Downey, George Tapper, William O'Brien and Charles W. Gindele. After the committee was created it was instructed to stand firmly by the code of principles of the Association and to require their recognition by the Bricklayers before proceeding to a settlement of differences. The action of the meeting did not meet the views of all the members of the Association, some of whom were fully determined that it was impolitic to appoint an arbitration committee, even when its powers were abridged by a demand for full recognition of the code of principles upon which they had been standing for weeks. The committee did not suit the Bricklayers. A dozen of them were standing outside the Exchange to hear the decision of the meeting. When they were informed that Mr. Prussing was on the committee they swore they would never arbitrate anything with a committee of which he was a member. What objection they had to Mr. Prussing they would not explain, but insisted that "it was of no use to talk of such a thing as arbitration with George C. Prussing." Some cooler heads among the party finally concluded that it would be time enough to object to the composition of the committee after they had received a communication from President Downey, and knew what they were expected to arbitrate. When it was suggested to them that they would be expected to subscribe to the code of principles of the Master Masons' Association, one of them said it made little difference who was on the committee, as that would never be done by the Union Bricklayers. Other members of the Union said this would make no difference, as the code of principles was just, but it would be very difficult to get the Union to adopt them. The conservative element on both sides of the question were encouraged by the action of the Master Masons, and said a settlement would be reached that would be satisfactory to everybody. President Downey prepared and caused to be sent to President Vorkeller official notification of the action of the association, as follows: A. E. VORKELLER, President United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons. _Sir_:--Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' Association has this day appointed a standing committee of arbitration of five of its members with full power to act for and in behalf of this organization in settlement of any and all differences existing. You have been informed of the platform and code of principles adopted by this body. On these it stands. All other questions may properly be arbitrated. Please inform this body whether your committee has been appointed with full power to bind your organization by joint action with us. If so, our committee is ready and shall be pleased to meet your committee at the earliest time convenient for the selection of an umpire and arrangement of preliminaries. The arbitration committee appointed by this association consists of Messrs. George C. Prussing, George Tapper, William O'Brien, Charles W. Gindele and Joseph Downey. Respectfully, JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. H. MUELLER, Secretary. In reply to this communication President Vorkeller sent to President Downey an acceptance of the proposition, as follows: JOSEPH DOWNEY, President--_Dear Sir_: Your communication notifying me that your Association has appointed a committee of five to meet a like committee from our organization for the purpose of settling, if possible, the present lockout, is at hand. In reply will say that we await your convenience and will hold ourselves in readiness to meet your committee at any time and place you may appoint. Yours respectfully, A. E. VORKELLER, President. The time and place of meeting was fixed by President Downey in a note to President Vorkeller, as follows: A. E. VORKELLER, President.--_Sir_: Your communication received, and would say in reply that our committee will meet your committee at 10 o'clock to-morrow morning at the Grand Pacific hotel. Respectfully, JOSEPH DOWNEY, President. Friday morning, July 1st, the joint arbitration met. The members were on hand in full force, the opposing elements being represented as follows: Master Masons' association--Joseph Downey, George Tapper, George C. Prussing, Charles W. Gindele, William O'Brien. Bricklayers' union--Albert E. Vorkeller, P. J. Miniter, John Pearson, C. J. Lindgren, Fred Rebush. They pretended to be very glad to see each other, and smiles were exchanged freely. When they entered the committee room, President Downey introduced Mr. Prussing to President Vorkeller, and requested him to introduce him to the other members of the committee from the Union. This appeared to be an assumption that Mr. Prussing was a comparative stranger to the members of the committee, but he had been so well known that the bricklayers had repeatedly asserted that they would not arbitrate if he was on the committee. It was amusing to witness the cordiality with which John Pearson grasped Mr. Prussing's hand, and to hear him say he was glad to see him, when the bitter words of denunciation of the previous day had hardly got cold on Mr. Pearson's lips. Mr. Prussing was introduced all around, after which he suggested that they at once proceed to select a chairman and get down to the business of adjusting their differences in a manner that would insure a permanent settlement of their troubles and an assurance that for all time the friendliest relations might be maintained between employer and employe. "The first thing to do," said Mr. Prussing, "is to select a chairman." Mr. Vorkeller, president of the Union, half elevated his wiry form, and, looking toward four reporters in the room, said: "The first thing to do is to put these outsiders on the outside." The reporters retired. They had previously been advised that the Master Masons were in favor of an open meeting, but a secret session having been demanded by the bricklayers it was conceded by the masons. It was apparent that the bricklayers had determined that the public should know nothing of their deliberations, and as little as possible of the result. At the morning session George Tapper was selected chairman. An effort was then made to agree upon the eleventh member of the committee. The bricklayers insisted upon the appointment of Richard Prendergast, Judge of the County court of Cook county, and the master masons urged that Walter Q. Gresham, Judge of the U. S. circuit court, should be the man. The bricklayers strenuously opposed any United States officer, and the names of both judges were dropped. An umpire was parleyed over for an hour, and a general discussion of the situation occupied the remainder of the morning session without reaching a conclusion upon anything except a chairman. The afternoon session lasted three hours. When the committee adjourned it was announced that the members had done nothing for the public, and had agreed to not make known their work until it was completed. However, the deliberations of the afternoon were of a progressive character. Many questions were discussed and some rules were agreed to, which meant that there was a strong probability that the contending elements would get close enough together to agree upon an award. During the afternoon the names of many prominent citizens were suggested for the position of umpire, but no selection was made. It seemed to be the desire of both factions to secure someone who would not be prejudiced in favor of "the other fellow." The sessions of the day were "perfectly harmonious," and as the members of the committee became "better acquainted" with each other, they gave stronger assurances of a permanent friendship, if nothing else. The members of the committee slept over the list of names of prominent citizens, who had been suggested for the position of umpire, and on Saturday when they got together Judge Tuley, of the Superior court of Cook county, was unanimously chosen umpire. The judge was officially notified of the action taken, advised of the questions at issue between the contestants, and asked if he would accept the responsibility which was sought to be put upon him. A reply was received stating that from a sense of duty he would accept. A short session of the committee was held in the afternoon to receive the reply, and an adjournment was then taken until 9 o'clock Monday morning. The Fourth of July was celebrated by the joint committee sticking right to business. They believed the questions at issue were more momentous than a remembrance of the anniversary of the birth of the nation by a display of fireworks. According to agreement the joint committee met at 9 o'clock, and Judge Tuley assumed the chair as umpire. The work began by acquainting the umpire with the situation as it was viewed from both sides, the differences and grievances being rehearsed in such a graphic manner that the judge was profoundly impressed with the importance of the questions which he had been called upon to settle, and he announced his readiness to proceed to such a conclusion as would forever put at rest all contention over the labor problem in Chicago, as far as it related to the building interests. The entire morning session was taken up in debates and the umpire discovered that he would be required to call into requisition not only his knowledge of the law, but all the parliamentary tactics with which he was familiar, with a possibility that he would have to occasionally invent a ruling to suit the special occasion. The code of principles of the Master Masons was submitted and discussed at length. The code was not adopted as a whole, but was held in abeyance in order that other questions should be submitted to ascertain what bearing the code might have upon them. It was decided that the real issue should be narrowed down to facts which directly bore upon the foundation for differences between the contestants. At the afternoon session the order of business was first defined and then the struggle began over the items of difference, which were taken up in the order agreed upon and discussed. These points embraced the many hard questions which had occasioned strikes and lockouts for five years. They included the various demands of the bricklayers, which had been objected to or conceded from time to time, from the demand for an increase of wages in 1883 to the unsatisfied insistence upon a Saturday pay-day. A sub-committee, composed of Messrs. Prussing, of the Master Masons, and Miniter, of the Bricklayers, prepared a statement showing all points upon which the contestants agreed and disagreed. Every disputed point was then so thoroughly argued by both sides that Judge Tuley was fairly saturated with facts and eloquence. The umpire was very cautious, and asked a great many leading questions of both sides. He evinced a disposition to become fully advised and enlightened, not only as to the points of difference, but as to their effect upon the contestants. He wanted to know it all, but he expressed few opinions, and made very few decisions. His idea seemed to be to endeavor to lead the contestants up to points at which they might possibly be able to agree without the necessity for his casting a vote upon a disputed question, and in this course he was upheld by both sides, because it had a strong tendency to promote and preserve harmony between the two. In fact, the umpire endeavored to show them how they could reach a conclusion without the use of an umpire. As the time for making the award drew near, the members of both organizations, and in fact, of all trades, became very anxious to know the result. They used every means within their power to obtain some information from the committeemen in regard to the manner in which points of difference had been or would be adjusted, but the mouths of the arbitrators remained sealed. They simply said: "Wait for the verdict, and you will be satisfied." On Friday, July 8th, at 6 o'clock in the evening, the joint committee concluded its labors and adjourned, after having adjusted the differences between the Master Masons and the Bricklayers which had caused a strike and lockout in the building trades lasting nine weeks. The award was made and signed by the ten arbitrators and the umpire. After the committee adjourned both factions acknowledged themselves perfectly satisfied with the award, and congratulated each other upon a result which, they said, they hoped and believed would forever settle their differences, and in the future prevent strikes and lockouts in the building trades represented by the Master Masons on the one part and he Bricklayers and Stonemasons on the other part. The members of the committee parted as friends, and seemed to understand each other so well that if they could control the destinies of the two factions there would never be an occasion for an arbitration committee between the two to settle a strike. It was agreed that the award should be submitted to the Bricklayers' union and the Master Masons' association for ratification, and that building should be resumed on Monday, July 11th. The award of the committee was as follows: TO THE UNION OF THE UNITED ORDER OF AMERICAN BRICKLAYERS AND STONEMASONS AND TO THE MASTER MASONS' AND BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO: The joint committee of arbitration, composed of an arbitration committee of five from each of your organizations, with Judge M. F. Tuley unanimously selected as umpire, have concluded their labors and respectfully report: That, recognizing the fact that organizations of employes and employers, like these from which this committee originated, do exist and have become important factors in our industrial society, and that they will, in all probability, continue to exist, we do not attempt to determine whether the motive or basis of either organization was right or wrong. They appear to be a necessity arising out of the present conditions of society, and while such combinations keep "from violence or show of violence" no great danger need be apprehended. Nor did we attempt to determine which organization was to blame for the present paralyzed condition of the building industry of this great city. We recognized the fact that the two organizations between which there should be many "bonds of sympathy and good feeling" were carrying on a bitter war with each other, by which many thousands of men were deprived of work, much suffering and privation brought upon innocent parties, and immense pecuniary losses daily sustained; and we determined, if possible, to reconcile the differences and place the relations of the two organizations upon a basis by which strikes, lookouts, and other like disturbances might in future be avoided. We discussed the relations of the contractor and the workmen, and found much in which they had a common or joint interest, and were mutually concerned. We endeavored to discuss and settle each trouble and grievance in a conciliatory spirit, not in way of compromise, to give and take, but in a spirit of fair play and upon just and equitable principles. We found that the main cause of trouble was in the separate organizations endeavoring to lay down arbitrary rules for the regulation of matters which were of joint interest and concern, and which should be regulated only by both organizations by some species of joint action. We, therefore, determined upon and submit herewith a project for the institution of a joint standing committee for that purpose. The article herewith submitted, providing for such a joint standing committee, to be elected annually in the month of January, defining its powers and duties, we request shall be incorporated into the constitution of each association. This joint committee will be constructed of an arbitration committee of five members from each organization (the president of each being one of the five) and an umpire who is neither a working mechanic nor an employer of mechanics, to be chosen by the two committees. This joint committee is given power to hear and determine all grievances of the members of one organization against members of the other, and of one organization against the other. To determine and fix all working rules governing employer and employes, such as: 1 The minimum rate of wages per hour. 2 The number of hours of work per day. 3. Uniform pay-day. 4. The time of starting and quitting work. 5. The rate to be paid for night and Sunday work, and questions of like nature. And it is also given power to determine what number of apprentices should be enrolled so as to afford all boys desiring to learn the trade an opportunity to do so without overcrowding, so as not to cause the coming workmen to be unskilled in his art or the supply of labor to grossly exceed the demand therefor. It is also given exclusive power to determine all subjects in which both organizations may be interested, and which may be brought before it by the action of either organization or the president thereof. It becomes necessary, in order that all questions and grievances which the committee has settled, and to make the constitution and by-laws of the organizations conform thereto, and to the powers given to future joint arbitration committees, that some changes should be made in such constitution and by-laws. The adoption by the Master Masons' and Builders' association of the article for the joint committee, as recommended, together with some slight changes in their constitution, will be sufficient. The United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons will be necessitated to make changes in its constitution and by-laws to make the same consistent with and to conform to the spirit and intent of the powers and duties conferred on the joint committee; and among other things the officer heretofore known as the walking delegate is to be known hereafter as the collector, and all the objectionable duties and powers of the office have been done away with. The steward will remain guardian of the men's interests and mediator for them; his arbitrary powers are taken away. The interests of the members of the union are protected by the foreman being required to be a member of the union, but he is restored to his position as the employe of the contractor, and, while so employed, is not subject to the rules of the union. The eight-hour day has been conceded to the workmen. It is in accordance with the state and, we believe, in accord with the spirit and progress of the age. The question of pay-day, whether on Saturday or on Tuesday, was not considered a question of vital importance, but, it being one of the questions left to the umpire, he decided that inasmuch as Tuesday has been the pay-day with the principal contractors in the trade of this city for more than twenty years last past, and, as experience in other trades and occupations has demonstrated that the pay-day of Monday or Tuesday has worked more beneficially to the workmen and their families than the Saturday pay-day, and, inasmuch as contractors ought not to be required to change the pay-day in the midst of the working season, having presumably made their pecuniary arrangements to meet the Tuesday pay-day, he would name Tuesday as the regular pay-day until the same should, if desired hereafter, be changed by the joint committee on arbitration. We have settled the differences between the two organizations. While every inch of the ground has been fought over, yet, having the task assigned us, we in good faith determined to do everything that was fair, just and honorable to accomplish our object. We feel we have succeeded without compromising the honor, the rights, or the dignity of either organisation, and hope that we have succeeded in establishing a basis upon which all future troubles may be settled and probably be prevented. We respectfully ask your adoption of this report and the article as to the joint arbitration committee, by immediate action, to the end that work may be commenced on Monday, July 11th, it being agreed that neither organization shall be bound by its action if the other should refuse to take similar action. A. E. VORKELLER, P. J MINNITER, JOHN PEARSON, THEODORE REBUSH, CHARLES J. LINDGREN, Arbitration Committee for the U. O. A. B. and S. M. Association. GEORGE C. PRUSSING, JOSEPH DOWNEY, GEORGE TAPPER, WILLIAM O'BRIEN, CHARLES W. GINDELE, Arbitration Committee for the Master Masons' and Builders' Association. M. F. TULEY, Umpire. One of the troublesome questions which was considered by the arbitrators was the one in relation to apprentices. On this question there was no agreement by the joint committee, but Judge Tuley made the following statement and recommendations, all of which met the approval of both organizations: A limitation upon the number of apprentices in a craft has always existed either by legislative action or by custom of the craft, and the number that should be taken must be affected to a large extent by the general principles of the demand and supply of labor. In France, in the seventeenth century, masters were limited to one apprentice. In England, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, apprentices became so numerous, and because of their numbers--when they became workmen--were so unskilled, that some crafts were for a time utterly ruined. Laws were passed from time to time limiting the number of apprentices in the trades and crafts; some to two apprentices, some to sons of master workmen and employes, and some to the sons of persons who had a £3 annual rental. It is a law of self-preservation to the craft, and also of equal interest to the responsible Master Mason, that there should be some limitation on the number of apprentices. If the number is unlimited, unscrupulous contractors may secure a large number of apprentices, and, with the help of a few journeymen, underbid all contractors who employ journeymen skilled in their craft, and also necessarily throw upon the journeymen large additions of unskilled workmen, thereby making the supply of labor largely in excess of the demand, and destroying the standard of the craft for good work. It is not a question whether everybody shall have the right to learn a trade, but whether the craft will teach every boy a trade, to its own destruction. It is a matter, however, that neither the journeymen nor the Master Masons' organizations should arbitrarily undertake to decide. It is a matter of joint interest, and should be decided from time to time by the joint arbitration committee in such a manner that the number of apprentices shall be sufficient to furnish the requisite number of journeymen to supply the demand, and also so as to prevent an abuse of the apprentice system and an injury to both employer and employe by a too large number of apprentices being secured to do work that should be done by the skilled journeymen. Three years, by common consent, is the period fixed for apprenticeship in these trades, and the Master Masons should be allowed, and if necessary required, to take one new apprentice each year. The number of apprentices can be increased from time to time as the interests of the crafts and their obligations to the youth of the country should demand. The apprentice should be allowed to join any organization of his craft, but in all respects be subject to the laws of the state and the contracts made in pursuance thereof. The joint committee also agreed upon working rules, which were established by being adopted by both organizations interested. They are as follows: SECTION 1. The minimum rate of wages shall be 40 cents per hour. SEC. 2. Eight hours shall constitute a day's work throughout the year, work to begin at 8 A. M. and end at 5 P. M., but the noon hour may be curtailed by special agreement between the foreman and the majority of the workmen, but not in such a way as to permit more than eight hours' work between the hours named. No member will be allowed to work overtime except in case of actual necessity. For such overtime time and one-half shall be allowed. SEC. 3. Eight hours shall constitute a night's work. Night work shall not commence until 7 P. M., and shall be paid for at time and a half. Sunday work shall be paid for at double time. SEC 4. Any member of this Union working for a Mason Contractor shall be paid every two weeks on Tuesday before 5 P. M. _Resolved_, That all members of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons who have, from actual necessity, taken up their work during the present strike, or lockout, and have thereby violated any rule of said organization, shall be reinstated within two weeks of the execution of the award of this arbitration committee, and shall not be fined or suffer any penalty for said violation of rules; and further _Resolved_, That all members of the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' association who have, from actual necessity, started to work with union men, and in opposition to a resolution of such organization, shall not be fined or suffer any penalty for infraction of the rules, and shall be considered in good standing. The working rules were signed by the joint committee and the umpire. The following amendments to the constitution of the two organizations were adopted, fixing a permanent board of arbitration: SECTION 1. This organization shall elect, at its annual meeting in January, a standing committee of arbitration, consisting of five members, to serve one year. The present standing committee shall continue in office until the election of its successor, in January, 1888. SEC. 2. The president shall be, ex-officio, one of said five members. He shall be chairman of committee, and in his absence the committee may designate one of its members to act in his place. SEC. 3. Within one week after the election the president of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons shall certify to the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' association, and the president of the Chicago Master Masons' and Builders' association shall certify to the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons, the fact that said committee has been regularly elected, and give the names of members thereof. SEC. 4. When notice of the selection of a committee of arbitration by the other association shall be received, or as soon thereafter as practicable, and within the month of January, the two committees shall meet and proceed to organize themselves in a joint committee of arbitration by electing an umpire, who is neither a working mechanic nor an employer of mechanics. The umpire, when present, shall preside at meetings of the joint committee, and have the casting vote on all questions. SEC. 5. Seven members, exclusive of the umpire, shall constitute a quorum of the joint arbitration committee, and in case of the absence of any member, the chairman of his committee shall cast the vote for such absent members. A majority vote shall decide all questions. SEC. 6. The joint committee of arbitration shall have all evidence in complaints and grievances of a member or members of one body against a member or members of the other, or of one organization against the other, referred to it by the president of either association, and shall finally decide all questions submitted, and shall certify by the umpire such decisions to the respective organizations. Work shall go on continuously, and all parties interested shall be governed by award made, or decisions rendered, provided, however, that work may be stopped by the joint order of the presidents of the respective associations until the decision of the joint committee is had. SEC. 7. The joint committee shall have exclusive power to determine and fix definitely from year to year all working rules. It shall also have all exclusive authority to discuss and determine all other subjects in which both organizations, or members of both organizations, may be jointly interested and concerned, which may be brought before the committee by either organization or the president thereof. SEC. 8. Working rules are rules governing employers and workmen at work, such as the establishment of a minimum rate of wages to be paid practical bricklayers and stonemasons per hour, and of a uniform pay-day, to determine the number of hours to be worked per day, the time of starting and quitting work, the remuneration to be paid for work done overtime and Sundays, and other questions of like nature. SEC. 9. The subject of apprentices being a matter of joint interest, and concern to both the union and the Master Masons' and Builders' association, the joint committee shall have power to decide from time to time the number of apprentices which master masons may take in service. Until further action by said committee all master masons shall be allowed a new apprentice each year, and the term of apprenticeship shall be three years, but any minor taken as apprentice shall be under 19 years of age. All apprentices shall be allowed to join any organization of their craft, but to be subject to the laws of this state and the contract of apprenticeship made in pursuance of such laws. SEC 10. This article having been agreed upon by the union of the United Order of American Bricklayers and Stonemasons, and the Master Masons' and Builders' association shall not be repealed or amended by either organization except upon six months' previous notice given to the other organization, and such notice shall not be given until after all honest efforts to settle the grievance or difficulty shall have been made. In addition to the provisions for changing the constitutions of the two organizations it was necessary for the Bricklayers' union to make a number of changes in its constitution in relation to the walking delegate, stewards, foremen, etc., but these could not be made at once, as there was a provision in the constitution of the union by which it could not be amended, except after two weeks' notice. This notice was given, and the amendments were made at the proper time. In the meantime the proposed changes were recognized and put into practice. The Bricklayers' union and the Master Masons' association met and ratified the action of the joint arbitration committee by unanimously indorsing the award and all accompanying recommendations. This ended the great strike and lockout. In the settlement which was made the greatest accomplishment was the securing of a standing committee on arbitration to adjust all grievances before the employes are permitted to strike, or be locked out by the employers. This is a hard blow to the agitators, whose thrift largely depended upon their ability to create strife and contention between capital and labor. The establishment of a joint council of employers and workmen secures and protects free labor. Instead of the pernicious strike, it was agreed that arbitration should be recognized as the first move in the settlement of differences, and that it was the only true solution of all misunderstandings. As nations never take up arms against each other until they have exhausted the experiments of diplomacy, so the workmen, or their leaders, were made to understand that arbitration was the true course in the adjustment of differences between employer and employe. Associations of employers, as well as associations of employes, may well profit by the experience of the building trades in Chicago. It was a hot struggle, which, after all, was brought to an end by arbitration--an experiment which, however unsatisfactory to the hot-heads, might as easily have been resorted to at the beginning. The employer, and not the Walking Delegate of the union, was given control over the employment of his own workmen. The declaration made at the first meeting of the Master Masons' association, that "the Walking Delegate must go," was put into force and effect by the award made. He has walked his last walk, and his finger has snapped its last snap in calling men off a job in Chicago. The tyrant's power was taken away. The foreman was made the servant of the contractor, who pays his wages, and is no longer the servant of the union, to which he pays taxes. The rights of the employer were recognized and harmony was secured. OUT OF POCKET. The losses to thirty thousand employes and seven hundred contractors during the lockout aggregated more than $4,000,000. They are fairly shown by the following statement: 4,000 Carpenters, 16 days, @ $2.50 $160,000 2,000 Carpenters, 30 days, @ $2.50 150,000 4,000 Hodcarriers and Laborers, 60 days, @ $2.00 480,000 3,000 Bricklayers, 54 days, @ $3.60 583,200 1,000 Brick Makers, 54 days, @ $5.00 270,000 8,000 Brick Laborers, 54 days, @ $1.75 756,000 1,000 Brick Teamsters, 54 days, @ $4.00 216,000 1,000 Stonecutters, 30 days, @ $4.00 120,000 500 Cornice men, 30 days, @ $3.00 45,000 500 Gravel Roofers, 30 days, @ $2.50 37,500 700 Plasterers, 30 days, @ $4.00 84,000 250 Lathers, 30 days, @ $2.50 18,750 600 Painters, 30 days, @ $2.50 45,000 1,000 Mill men, 30 days, @ $2.50 75,000 Iron men 10,000 Slate Roofers 5,000 Stair Builders 5,000 Lumber Yard Employes 5,000 Teamsters 5,000 Boatmen 5,000 _________ Total $3,075,450 The actual loss of the seven hundred contractors would average not less than $25 per day for sixty days, which would make their loss--exclusive of percentage on work delayed--$1,050,000. This sum, added to the loss of the idle man, makes a total loss in the building trades alone of $4,125,450. And this resulted from a demand for Saturday pay-day. This calculation does not include the percentage of losses to the builders upon work which was in hand, and which could have been pushed to completion during the pendency of the strike. They would have amounted at least to $1,000,000. These figures should be a warning to projectors of strikes in the future, but when a strike is determined upon, the results, in a financial way, are never considered. Nothing is looked to but the present imaginary wrong, which reckless leaders insist must be righted without reference to the effect upon their own pockets or those of the employer upon whom their demands are made. It is about time for the strike and boycott days to end, in order that prosperity may be assured to both the employer and the employe--at least in the building trades of this country. CONCLUSION. From the beginning to the close of the strike there were many difficulties to contend with, one of the most prominent of which was the timidity of some contractors, who were constantly exhibiting their weakness, and on the slightest pretext would have given up the battle and sacrificed principle for the sake of making a few dollars. These men were a constant care to the more earnest workers, who were compelled to put forth efforts at all times to strengthen the weak brethren and keep them in line. They believed in the correctness of the principles involved, but were ever ready to say they could not be enforced against the striking element, the strength of which at all times was made to appear in the unanimity with which the workmen seemed to stand together. If the strikers were weak they were so well drilled that they would not admit it, or show it to the contractors, while the few weak members of the Master Masons' association and material dealers who were disposed to give up, were constantly parading their cowardice to not only their associates, but to the strikers and to the public. But they were few in number. Another source of annoyance was the exhibition of selfishness by a few owners of buildings which had been projected. They would not consider the principle involved; but, looking at the dollar in sight, took their contracts from members of the Association and gave them into the hands of the strikers, thus furnishing aid and comfort to the enemy of liberty, and creating a feeling of discouragement in the ranks of the builders. All honor to the brave men who stood firm in the fight from the beginning to the end; who sacrificed everything but principle to sustain the proposition of individual liberty; who were early and late in the front to do battle alike for the strong and weak; who shirked no duty, no responsibility, but floated the banner of freedom on all occasions. Their names are enrolled on the books of the haters of free labor for a boycott in the future, but they are also enrolled in the deepest recesses of the memory of every good and true citizen, and their manly efforts for the establishment of the principle of individual liberty will never be forgotten. THE CARPENTERS AGAIN. When the Master Masons adopted the nine-hour day the Carpenters' and Builders' Association promptly backed them up by receding from the eight-hour rule and making their hours of work correspond with those of the Master Masons. The award of the arbitrators having restored to the masons the eight-hour day, the carpenters considered themselves absolved from any obligations to back up the masons, and said they would fix the hours to suit themselves. The satisfactory settlement of the strike of the bricklayers caused the working carpenters to move in the direction of arbitration. An uneasy feeling prevailed for some time among the employers and the workmen. On several occasions agitators tried to induce the men to order a strike for eight hours and 35 cents an hour as the minimum rate of wages, and the conservative element had great difficulty in preventing it. They succeeded in securing the appointment of an arbitration committee by the workmen, which was composed of Messrs. W. White, H. T. Castle, R. L. Hassell, Roscoe Palmer and A. S. F. Ballantine. This committee made several attempts to secure recognition at the hands of the Carpenters' and Builders' Association, but without success. The association met Saturday evening, July 23rd, and laid on the table three communications from the carpenters, all of which were in the direction of arbitration. The association then passed a resolution authorizing its members to work as they pleased during the remainder of the year, without reference to any rule in regard to the number of hours which should constitute a day's work, and almost universally work proceeded on the eight-hour basis. NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BUILDERS. J. Milton Blair, President, Cincinnati, O. John S. Stevens, First Vice President, Philadelphia, Pa. E. E. Scribner, Second Vice President, St. Paul, Minn. Wm. H. Sayward, Secretary, Boston, Mass. John J. Tucker, Treasurer, New York, N. Y. DIRECTORS. David M. Alexander, Albany, N. Y. Wm. Ferguson, Baltimore, Md. Leander Greely, Boston, Mass. Charles Berrick, Buffalo, N. Y. Henry Oliver, Charleston, S. C. George C. Prussing, Chicago, Ills. James Allison, Cincinnati, O. Thomas Simmons, Cleveland, O. Thomas Kanauss, Columbus, O. W. G. Vinton, Detroit, Mich. W. C. Weatherly, Grand Rapids, Mich. W. P. Jungclaus, Indianapolis, Ind. Thomas Mason, Milwaukee, Wis. H. N. Leighton, Minneapolis, Minn. J. N. Phillips, Nashville, Tenn. F. H. West, New Orleans, La. Mark Eidlitz, New York, N. Y. Wm. Harkness, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa. Samuel Francis, Pittsburgh, Pa. George R. Phillips, Providence, R. I. Charles W. Voshall, Rochester, N. Y. E. F. Osborne, St. Paul, Minn. F. F. Beck, Sioux City, Iowa. C. A. Meeker, Troy, N. Y. E. B. Crane, Worcester, Mass. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MASTER PLUMBERS. John Byrns, President, New York, N. Y. John Trainor, First Vice President, Baltimore, Md. H. G. Gabay, Recording Secretary, New York, N. Y. Walter T. Hudson, Corresponding Secretary, Brooklyn, N. Y. Enoch Remick, Financial Secretary, Philadelphia, Pa. M. J. Lyons, Treasurer, Brooklyn, N. Y. D. J. Collins, Sergeant at Arms, St. Louis, Mo. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. George D. Scott, New York, N. Y. E. J. Hannon, Washington, D. C. J. J. Sheehan, St. Louis, Mo. Wm. Harkness, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa. Rupert Coleman, Chicago, Ills. STATE VICE PRESIDENTS. Alex. W. Murray, Chicago, Ills. D. G. Finerty, Boston, Mass. D. O. McEwan, Omaha, Neb. Joseph C. Mitchell, Baltimore, Md. Richard Murphy, Cincinnati, O. T. J. White, Denver, Col. John Cameron, Detroit, Mich. John Madden, Fort Wayne, Ind. Michael J. Moran, Jersey City, N. J. Henry Goss, Kansas City, Mo. John E. Ford, Newton, Kas. Simon Shulbafer, Louisville, Ky. Wm. E. Goodwin, Milwaukee, Wis. John Shea, St. Paul, Minn. Robert Morgan, New Haven, Conn. W. E. Foster, Norfolk, Va. James E. Weldon, Pittsburgh, Pa. J. L. Park, Nashville, Tenn. Wm. Whipple, Providence, R. I. R. G. Campbell, Washington, D. C. J. L. Furman, San Francisco, Cal. Wm. Young, New York, N. Y. MASTER PAINTERS ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES. Titus Berger, President, Pittsburgh, Pa. Jesse Cornelius, Vice-President, St. Louis, Mo. J. G. McCarthy, Secretary, Chicago, Ills. Maurice Joy, Treasurer, Philadelphia, Pa. EXECUTIVE BOARD. Titus Berger, Chairman, Pittsburgh, Pa. J. B. Sullivan, Chicago, Ills. George B. Elmore, Brooklyn, N. Y. John Patterson, Philadelphia, Pa. J. B. Atkinson, Louisville, Ky. M. H. Godfrey, Detroit, Mich. George Howlett, Cleveland, Ohio. Charles H. Sefton, Boston, Mass. E. M. Gallagher, San Francisco, Cal. B. T. Collingbourne, Milwaukee, Wis. J. F. Van Brandt, Dubuque, Iowa. R. L. Hutchins, Wilmington, N. C. James S. Dowling, St. Louis, Mo. B. C. Bushell, Martinsburg, W. Va. James Marks, Bayonne, N. J. F. P. Martin, Atchinson, Kas. P. Coughlin, Bridgeport, Conn. Thomas A. Brown, Washington, D. C. A. T. Davis, Memphis, Tenn. E. W. Pyle, Wilmington, Del. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MASTER COMPOSITION ROOFERS. J. Wilkes Ford, President, Chicago, Ill. Samuel D. Warren, First Vice President, St. Louis, Mo. H. M. Reynolds, Second Vice President, Grand Rapids, Mich. William K. Thomas, Secretary, Chicago, Ills. H. R. Shaffer, Treasurer, Chicago, Ills. DIRECTORS. M. W. Powell, Chicago, Ills. John M. Sellers, St. Louis, Mo. E. S. Bortel, Philadelphia, Pa. J. L. Jones, Chicago, Ills. G. W. Getchell, Chicago, Ills. WESTERN ASSOCIATION OF ARCHITECTS. John W. Root, President, Chicago, Ills. J. F. Alexander, Secretary, LaFayette, Ind. Samuel A. Treat, Treasurer, Chicago, Ills. W. L. B. Jenney, Secretary Foreign Correspondence, Chicago, Ills. VICE PRESIDENTS. D. W. Millard, St. Paul, Minn. H. S. Josseyline, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. D. Adler, Chicago, Ills. J. J. McGrath, St. Louis, Mo. J. G. Haskel, Topeka, Kan. J. F. Alexander, LaFayette, Ind. George W. Rapp, Cincinnati, O. J. J. Kane, Fort Worth, Texas. BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Dankmar Adler, Chairman, Chicago, Ills. G. W. Rapp, Cincinnati, O. Charles Crapsey, Cincinnati, O. C. A. Curtin, Louisville, Ky. G. M. Goodwin, St. Paul, Minn. ILLINOIS STATE ASSOCIATION OF ARCHITECTS. D. Adler, President. S. A. Treat, } Vice-Presidents. M. S. Patton, } S. M. Randolph, Treasurer. C. L. Stiles, Secretary. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. L. D. Cleveland, C. M. Palmer, John W. Root, Wm. Halabird. CHICAGO ORGANIZATIONS. BUILDERS' AND TRADERS' EXCHANGE. George Tapper, President. Mat. Benner, First Vice-President. Alex. W. Murray, Second Vice-President. F. C. Schoenthaler, Secretary. Joseph Downey, Treasurer. DIRECTORS. Oliver Sollitt, D. V. Purington, Murdock Campbell, E. A. Thomas, F. W. H. Sundmacher, Ph. Henne, James John, S. S. Kimbell, Wm. Kinsella, George H. Fox. CENTRAL COUNCIL OF BUILDERS. George Tapper, President H. G. Savage, Vice-President. F. C. Schoenthaler, Secretary. STANDING COMMITTEES. Credentials--J. B. Sullivan, T. C. Diener, A. J. Weckler. Safety--H. L. Turner, C. B. Kimbell, Robert Vierling. Strikes and Grievances--P. B. Wight, H. G. Savage, M. W. Powell. Arbitration--Edward Kirk, Jr., William Hearson, John Sutton. CHICAGO MASTER MASONS' AND BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION. Joseph Downey, President. Thomas E. Courtney, Treasurer. Hermann Mueller, Secretary. THE CARPENTERS' AND BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO. William Grace, President. William Hearson, Vice-President. F. C. Schoenthaler, Secretary. Peter Kauff, Treasurer. DIRECTORS. C. G. Dixon, William Mavor, J. W. Woodard, W. E. Frost, John Ramcke, J. W. Cassell. THE CHICAGO BUILDING STONE COMPANY. B. J. Moore, President. H. A. Sanger, Vice-President. D. E. Corneau, Secretary. E. F. Singer, Treasurer. J. A. Pettigrew, Manager. DIRECTORS. D. E. Corneau, J. G. Bodenschatz, B. J. Moore, H. A. Sanger, E. T. Singer, H. L. Holland, G. H. Monroe. QUARRY OWNERS' ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO. Gen. John McArthur, President. John Rawle, Vice-President. E. E. Worthington, Secretary. C. B. McGenness, Treasurer. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. E. T. Singer, John Worthy, M. B. Madden, P. G. Hale, W. Johnson. CUT-STONE CONTRACTORS' ASSOCIATION. F. V. Gindele, President. T. C. Diener, Secretary and Treasurer. TRUSTEES. John Tomlinson, John Tait, Henry Fürst. THE ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS IN METALS. R. T. Crane, President. J. McGregor Adams, First Vice-President. John T. Raffen, Second Vice President. W. J. Chalmers, Third Vice President. Robert Vierling, Secretary and Treasurer. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. R. T. Crane, W. J. Chalmers, M. C. Bullock, George Mason, J. McGregor Adams, Frank I. Pearce, Louis Wolff, John T. Raffen, A. Plamondon. CHICAGO MASTER PLUMBERS' ASSOCIATION. H. Griffith, President. J. J. Wade, First Vice President. Wm. Sims, Second Vice President. M. H. Reilly, Third Vice President. Frank E. Rush, Fourth Vice President. Wm. Wilson, Fifth Vice President. J. R. Alcock, Recording Secretary. Charles S. Wallace, Corresponding Secretary. William Sims, Finance Secretary. J. J. Hamblin, Treasurer. P. L. O'Hara, Sergeant-at-Arms. MASTER PAINTERS' ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO. President, J. G. McCarthy. Vice-President, H. J. Milligan. Secretary, B. S. Mills. Treasurer, N. S. Lepperr. TRUSTEES. Henry G. Emmel, Wm. H. Emerson, James C. Burns. THE GRAVEL ROOFERS' EXCHANGE. H. R. Shaffer, President. D. W. C. Gooding, Vice-President. John L. Jones, Secretary. S. E. Barrett, Treasurer. DIRECTORS. M. W. Powell, G. W. Getchell, W. K. Thomas. THE GRAVEL ROOFERS' PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. M. W. Powell, President. A. L. Barsley, Vice-President. J. J. Wheeler, Secretary. S. E. Barrett, Treasurer. DIRECTORS. C. W. Randolph, J. W. Ford, D. W. C. Gooding, A. Burke, L. Daley. NORTH AND NORTHWEST BRICK MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION. A. J. Weckler, President. August Wehrheim, Vice-President. F. W. Sundmacher, Secretary. George Lill, Treasurer. TRUSTEES. Thomas Moulding, Fred. Zapell, A. J. Weckler, August Wehrheim, John Labahn. CHICAGO BRICK MAKERS' ASSOCIATION. P. Lichtenstadt, President. John McKenna, Secretary. L. H. Harland, Treasurer. CONTRACTING PLASTERERS' ASSOCIATION. William Piggott, President. A. Zander, Vice President. James John, Treasurer. Andrew Corcoran, Secretary. GALVANIZED IRON CORNICE MANUFACTURERS. Edward Kirk, Jr., President. James A. Miller, Secretary and Treasurer. CHICAGO REAL ESTATE BOARD. William D. Kerfoot, President. M. R. Barnard, Vice President. George P. Bay, Treasurer. Edward F. Getchell, Secretary. W. J. Gallup, Assistant Secretary. 
35511	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 35511-h.htm or 35511-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35511/35511-h/35511-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35511/35511-h.zip) WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN * * * * * * [Illustration: LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN PROGRESS] _Volumes Issued_ The Church a Community Force. _By Worth M. Tippy_ The Church at the Center. _By Warren H. Wilson_ The Making of a Country Parish. _By Harlow S. Mills_ Working Women of Japan. _By Sidney L. Gulick_ Social Evangelism. _By Harry F. Ward_ _Cloth, 50 Cents, Prepaid_ ADDITIONAL VOLUMES TO BE ISSUED * * * * * * [Illustration: A FARMER'S HOME] WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN by SIDNEY L. GULICK Twenty-five years a missionary in Japan, Professor in Doshisha University, Late Lecturer in the Imperial University of Kyoto Author of _Growth of the Kingdom of God; Evolution of the Japanese; The White Peril in the Far East; The American Japanese Problem; The Fight for Peace_ 1915 Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada New York Copyright, 1915, by Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada Dedicated to SHINJIRO OMOTO in appreciation of more than a decade of untiring service for the Working Women of Japan CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE ix I SOCIAL CLASSES IN JAPAN, OLD AND NEW 1 II FARMERS' WIVES AND DAUGHTERS 8 III DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN FARMING FAMILIES 24 IV SILK WORKERS 32 V WIVES AND DAUGHTERS OF ARTIZANS AND MERCHANTS 36 VI _KOMORI_ (BABY-TENDERS) 42 VII HOUSEHOLD DOMESTICS 48 VIII HOTEL AND TEA-HOUSE GIRLS 52 IX FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN 61 X GEISHA (_HETÆRÆ_) 87 XI _SHOGI_ (LICENSED PROSTITUTES) 104 XII AMELIORATIVE EFFORTS 118 XIII THE MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME 137 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE A FARMER'S HOME _Frontispiece_ SEPARATING THE WHEAT HEADS FROM THE STRAW 16 AT THE LOOM 16 A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD 28 TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS 28 SPINNING COTTON THREAD FOR WEAVING 32 AT WORK IN A KITCHEN 32 CARRYING FAGOTS 44 BABY-TENDERS 44 AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY 82 O HAMAYU (GEISHA) 92 MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME 156 GIRLS IN THE MATSUYAMA HOME 156 PREFACE Japan is rapidly swinging into the current of an industrial civilization imported from the West. How is this movement modifying her ancient civilization? And, especially, what effect is it having on her homes and on the character of her manhood and womanhood? These are questions of profound interest to students of national and social evolution. While many works on Japan consider these questions more or less fully, they do so almost exclusively from the standpoint of the effect on men. So far as is known, no work studies the problem from the standpoint of the effect on women, who, it may be incidentally remarked, constitute one half of the population. One book, indeed, that by Miss Alice M. Bacon, on _Japanese Girls and Women_, describes the homes, lives, and characteristics of Japanese women. This important work should not be overlooked by any who wish to know Japan thoroughly. Yet Miss Bacon's study is largely confined to the higher and upper middle classes, who, though important, constitute but one section of the women of Japan. To understand Japan it is also needful to know the lives and characteristics of the working classes. Especially important in the eyes of those who study social development is the transformation that is taking place in the Japanese home because of the influx of Occidental industrialism. The purpose of this book is to give some information as to conditions prevailing among working women, which conditions have called for the establishment of institutions whose specific aim is the amelioration of the industrial and moral situation. Two classes of workers have not been considered--school-teachers and nurses. The reader will naturally ask what the native religions have done to help women meet the modern situation. The answer is short; practically nothing. They are seriously belated in every respect. For ages the native religions have served by doctrine and practise to hold women down rather than to elevate them. The doctrine of the "triple obedience" to father, to husband, and when old to son, has had wide-reaching and disastrous consequences. It has even been utilized for the support of the brothel system. Popular Buddhism, especially during the feudal era, has emphasized the inherent sinfulness of woman; some have even taught that her lightest sins are worse than the heaviest sins of man. The brothel system flourishes in certain districts where Buddhism is most strongly entrenched. Brothels abound in the immediate vicinity of famous and popular temples. I have yet to hear of a Buddhist anti-brothel movement or a Buddhist rescue home for prostitutes. Japanese philanthropy, under the impulse of Buddhism, did indeed start early and attain striking development at the hands of Imperial and princely personages. Men and women of lowly origin also attained high rank in the annals of Buddhist philanthropy. With the decay of Buddhism in recent centuries, however, little philanthropic activity has survived. With the revival of Buddhism Buddhists have again undertaken philanthropic work; they have established orphan asylums, schools, ex-convict homes, and various benevolent enterprises for the poor, the old, and invalids; but not yet do they seem to appreciate the moral and industrial situation, or undertake anything commensurate with their numbers and resources. The conception of private enterprise for the amelioration of industrial difficulties and moral need is still the almost exclusive possession of Christians. The closing chapter describes one institution in which the Christian ideal is applied to the moral and industrial situation in one small town. It serves as an illustration of what is being done by Christians in other places and along many other lines as well. Christianity is being accepted in Japan, not so much because of its doctrine, as because of its practical methods of inspiring and uplifting manhood and womanhood. While the purpose of this book is, as stated, to describe the industrial condition and the characteristics of Japanese working women, back of this purpose is the desire to show how the Christian gospel, when concretely expressed, takes hold of Japanese working women in exactly these conditions and becomes to them "the power of God unto salvation." The problems of life are substantially the same the world around, for human nature is one; and the heart with its needs, desires, temptations, defeats, and victories is essentially the same, East or West. The problems created by industrialism do not differ, whether in Germany, England, and America or in Japan and China. And their fundamental solution likewise is the same. Let not the reader assume that the discussions of this volume give adequate acquaintance with the working women of Japan. It deals with only a few specific classes and inadequately even with them. A more comprehensive treatment would doubtless be enlightening. Limitations, however, of time and space forbid a more adequate discussion. And let the reader be wary of generalizing certain criticisms herein made and applying them universally to all classes of women. Many years of life in Japan have led the writer to a high estimation of the character as well as the culture of Japanese women. Especial thanks are due to Colonel Yamamuro for valued criticisms and suggestions in the preparation of this work. The responsibility, however, for its statements rests upon the writer. The limitations of this book none can feel more than he. CHAPTER I SOCIAL CLASSES IN JAPAN, OLD AND NEW In old Japan, next to the Imperial family and court nobles, came the feudal lords (_Daimio_), upheld by the warrior class (_Samurai_), below whom in turn were ranked the three chief working classes,--farmers, artizans, and tradesmen. These three classes produced and distributed the nation's wealth and paid taxes to their respective feudal lords by whom the warriors were supported. Below all were day laborers and palanquin bearers,--in those days a large and important though a despised class, for they lived entirely by bare, brute strength, lacking all special skill. Still lower were the _eta_ or pariah class, excluded from towns and villages, except when they entered to do the foulest work, such as digging the graves of criminals and the slaughtering of animals, and curing their skins. And lowest of all were _hi-nin_, literally translated "non-humans." These were beggars and criminals, who would not or could not work. The name, popularly given, well indicates how they were regarded. With the fall of the feudal system, in the early seventies, society was reorganized. Those above the Samurai were divided in 1886 into five grades, not counting the Imperial princes, namely: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron. These constitute to-day the hereditary peers of Japan, and possess considerable wealth and, of course, overwhelming prestige. They numbered, in 1903, 1,784 families. Besides the 1,784 heads of these families, there were 1,786 male and 2,485 female members of these families of rank. The number of these peers is constantly being increased by Imperial favor, the conferring of rank being the customary method of rewarding distinguished service. According to the _Japan Year Book_ for 1914, the number of peers in 1911 was 919, there being 17 princes, 37 marquises, 101 counts, 378 viscounts, and 386 barons. Promotion from one rank to another causes constant change in the numbers of the various ranks. The _Samurai_, deprived of their swords and military privileges, were given the name _shizoku_ (Samurai families) and were paid off in lump sums, thereafter being thrown on their own resources. There are 439,154 shizoku families, numbering altogether 2,169,018 individuals. The remaining classes were designated as _heimin_ (common people). Statistics show that they number 8,471,610 families, totaling 44,558,025 individuals. The eta were elevated, hence popularly called _shin-heimin_ (new common people) and allowed to live anywhere and take up any desirable calling. The hi-nin also were classed along with the rest of humankind. As a matter of fact, the eta and hi-nin were but a small fringe of the whole population, the descendants of the former being now estimated at something less than one million, and those of the latter amounting to about 35,000. With the national reorganization it was inevitable that the new executive offices from the highest to the lowest should be given to men of experience. At first, therefore, the reorganization amounted to little more than a great shuffle of names and titles. Peers took the highest governmental positions, while Samurai and their sons as a rule filled the lower posts. Many Samurai, however, received no appointments and had to go to work. In time, as education has progressed, sons of farmers and merchants have become qualified and have been appointed to government offices. The new departments, such as the educational, the postal and telegraph offices, the railroads, and especially the army and navy, call for large numbers of efficient men. These posts are filled almost entirely on the basis of fitness. While ancestry is not entirely ignored in the making of appointments, nevertheless old class distinctions are gradually being obliterated. The fortunes of the women have naturally followed those of the men. All families that lost their hereditary income had to go to work; this was true chiefly of the Samurai. Where the men were fortunate, the women could maintain the old customs, limiting themselves to their familiar domestic work, with a servant or two to help, but tens of thousands of Samurai families found themselves reduced to the direst poverty; women having generations of genteel ancestry were forced to enter the ranks of the workers. Let us define what we mean by a working woman. Women whose husbands or parents provide the support of the family are not to be included in this term. These women may, and indeed doubtless do, labor abundantly and fruitfully in the home; their time is fully occupied. Probably no working women toil more diligently or for longer hours than do these wives and mothers in hundreds of thousands of homes, in most of which there are no servants. All the cooking, sewing, and housecleaning is done by them, so that they are indeed workers. But they are not "working women." They are the true gentlewomen of Japan, whose culture, graces, and charms are not easily described. By "working women" we mean only those women who, in addition to the regular duties of the home, must share in the labor of earning the daily bread. In Japan the number of such is exceptionally large, if compared with that of some countries of the West. They may be divided into eleven classes, according to the nature of their occupations, namely: school-teachers, nurses, clerks and office girls, farmers, home industrial workers, factory hands, domestics, baby-tenders, hotel and tea-house girls, geisha, and prostitutes. Omitting the teachers and nurses, these are the classes whose conditions, numbers, education, and character we are now to study. Taken as a whole we do not hesitate to say that the working women of Japan, while probably lower in point of moral and physical energy and personal initiative than corresponding classes of the West, are not inferior to them in point of personal culture. And if civilization is defined, as it should be, in terms of personal culture rather than in those of mechanical contrivances and improvements, then Japan will surely take her place among the highly civilized nations of the world. CHAPTER II FARMERS' WIVES AND DAUGHTERS Japan has three leading wealth-earning occupations: agriculture, sericulture, and factory work. In each of these women take an important part. In the cultivation of the soil farmers' wives and daughters share equally with men the toil of planting and reaping the crops. For instance, in the cultivation of rice, the most important and the hardest work of the farmer, it is often the women who plant it spear by spear in regular rows, and it is they who "puddle" the paddy-fields with their hands four or five times in the course of the season. In some districts, however, men and women do this work together. The toil and the weariness involved cannot be appreciated by one who has not actually shared it. Fancy, if you can, the fatigue of standing more than ankle deep in mud, stooping all day long as you set out the tiny rice plants in regular lines! And at short intervals of a few days each you must repeatedly puddle the whole paddy-field: that is, stir up the mud with your hands in order to destroy the sprouting weeds and prevent the soil from caking and hardening around the tender rice roots, preventing their best growth. And remember that you must do all this regardless of the broiling summer sun, or the pelting rain, for the planting must be done at exactly the right time, and the successive puddlings must follow in due order. So severe is the strain that, after the planting and each puddling, the whole village takes a rest. My gardener, an ex-farmer, speaking of those summer days of toil in the rice-fields, expatiates on the extreme fatigue and the joy of the rest days, and as women take the brunt of the stooping-work, theirs is the lion's share of the weariness. He says that, during the rice-planting season, the women are so important that those days are called the "women's daimio days," and adds that we must not forget how during that time the regular work of the women must also go on, for they must cook the food and care for the children. For this, indeed, young girls and grandmothers are pressed into service as far as possible, but the responsibility and care rest nevertheless on the wives and mothers. [Illustration: SEPARATING THE WHEAT HEADS FROM THE STRAW AT THE LOOM] Also in the harvesting and threshing of the rice, barley, wheat, and millet, women take an important part. But it is needless to enter into details. Enough to say that, in general farming, women share with husbands and brothers the heavy toil and fatigue of agriculture. It should be added that this is not because men shirk heavy work, but only because Japanese agriculture is so largely done by hand that every possible worker is pressed into service. As a fact, men do the heaviest part of the work, preparing the soil for the successive crops and carrying the heavy loads. So varied are the modes of agriculture in different parts of Japan that general statements are dangerous, but I know that in some districts the weariness and drudgery of rice-planting and puddling are relieved by the singing or chanting of old folk-songs. The chorus leader intones a descriptive phrase, oftentimes improvising his own story, and is answered with a refrain from a dozen or a score of women. A story slowly evolves as the hours pass, and thus the work is lightened and the time beguiled. In spite of fatigue, rice-planting has its charm for those who have been reared in farmers' homes. It is a time of hope, of social intercourse, of rest days and festivals, so that even the drudgery of the farmer has its compensations. Miss Denton, of the Doshisha Girls' School, says it is interesting to note how country girls get restless at rice-planting time, and for one reason or another usually succeed in getting excused from school work, to be off to the homes and share in the toils and joys of the season. Tea-picking is probably the pleasantest form of toil undertaken by farmers' wives and daughters. The labor comes in the spring and early summer, when the temperature is delightful. It gives opportunity for social intercourse that is highly appreciated. Rice-planting and tea-picking constitute the two extremes of laborious and delightful toil engaged in by Japan's agricultural women. How many are the women engaged in agriculture? The _Japan Year Book_ for 1914 says that in 1912 there were 5,438,051 farming families, constituting about 58 per cent. of the entire nation. According to the _Résumé Statistique_ for 1914 the total number of females in Japan proper, in 1908, was 24,542,383. Omitting those under fifteen years of age, 8,364,000, and those over sixty years of age, 2,216,000, we have 13,962,000 as the number of able-bodied women, of whom 58 per cent., or 8,077,000, are the farmers' wives and daughters. In regard to their education it may be said that until the most recent times they have had practically none. In recent decades, however, farmers' children have begun to go to school. Until 1908 the elementary course (compulsory) covered four years, but the results were so poor that the period has now been extended to six. Four years' schooling does not give ability to read easily even a simple daily paper, much less an ordinary book. Our cook, an intelligent and able farming woman, when she came to us twelve years ago, could not read even the simplest Japanese characters, and thinks that at present relatively few farmers' wives have enough education to read papers or write letters. Whether or not six years' schooling will give this ability remains to be seen. It is safe to say that to-day Japanese adult farming women, as a whole, lack book education and have received little, if any, systematic training. They are accordingly largely controlled by tradition, and it goes without saying that their level of mental, moral, and spiritual life is low. The Shinto and Buddhist religions, as they exist among the farmers, are largely lacking in ethical content; they are rituals rather for burying the dead and through the use of charms and magic rites they promise future happiness and present, temporal blessings. Priests, as a rule, do not seek to cultivate the minds of the people, to strengthen their wills for moral life, or to elevate their personalities. Yet it must not be inferred that farming women are without mental ability or common sense. They are indeed not inferior to the men with whom they share the burdens and toil of life. As a rule they are a sturdy, intelligent, self-respecting folk, having ideals of conduct which include cleanliness, gentleness, and politeness, and in comparison with the peasant classes of Europe are much to be commended. The women not seldom appear to better advantage than their husbands in point of intelligence and common sense, which I have thought might be due to the greater variety of their daily occupation. In her excellent work on _Japanese Girls and Women_ Miss Bacon writing of this class says: "There seems no doubt at all that among the peasantry of Japan one finds the women who have the most freedom and independence. Among this class, all through the country, the women, though hard-worked and possessing few comforts, lead lives of intelligent, independent labor, and have in the family positions as respected and honored as those held by women in America. Their lives are fuller and happier than those of the women of the higher classes, for they are themselves breadwinners, contributing an important part of the family revenue, and are obeyed and respected accordingly. The Japanese lady, at her marriage, lays aside her independent existence to become the subordinate and servant of her husband and parents-in-law, and her face, as the years go by, shows how much she has given up, how completely she has sacrificed herself to those about her. The Japanese peasant woman, when she marries, works side by side with her husband, finds life full of interest outside of the simple household work, and, as the years go by, her face shows more individuality, more pleasure in life, less suffering and disappointment than that of her wealthier and less hard-working sister."[1] [1] Pp. 260, 261. The home of the average tenant farmer is a small, single-storied, thatch-roofed building, having usually two or three small rooms separated by sliding paper screens, and a kitchen with earthen floor. The smoke escapes as it can, passing through the roof or pervading the whole house. No privacy of any kind is possible, nor is any need of it felt. The house is free of furniture, save for one or two chests of drawers. A closet or two affords a place for the _futon_ (bedding) by day, and for the little extra clothing. Of course no books are found in such homes. The main room often has a board floor, with a fire box in the center, over which is a kettle suspended from the roof. Here the family eat, and friends gather to chat after the day's work is over. The food is of the poorest grade in the empire, though usually adequate in amount. Of course there are well-to-do farmers, not a few, who own their farms, employ fellow farmers, and cultivate large areas. Their homes are larger and better, but still in arrangement and structure they are practically the same. Their sons attend the middle schools and books and the daily paper are familiar objects. The economic condition of the farming class may be judged from the fact that the land cultivated by each family averages three and one-third acres, which must provide food and clothing for five or six persons. The great majority of farmers live in little, compact villages, having populations ranging from 500 to 5,000. There are 12,706 villages under 5,000, and only 1,311 villages, towns, and cities over 5,000. These facts suggest the nature of the social conditions of the farming population. They live under the severest limitations of every kind, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Yet during the recent era of Meiji (enlightened rule), from 1868 to 1912, the economic condition of the agricultural classes made great improvement. My gardener, a man of sixty, who remembers Japan before the reformation, 1868, says that farmers now live in luxury. The taxes they pay to-day are slight compared with what was required of them in former times, when, in his section, farmers had to give to their Daimio about five twelfth of the rice crop, while taxes to-day require but one fifth or less. He adds that families owning three and one third acres of land are well-to-do, seeing many families have to make their entire living from only one acre! Of course, farmers, without education or social demands, require little beyond the simplest food and shelter. The clothing needed by their families is the cheapest cotton, with cotton wadding added in the winter for warmth. The heat of the summer renders much clothing a burden. A farmer is adequately dressed for the field or his own home if he has on his loin-cloth. His wife or grown-up daughter, when in the house with only the immediate members of the family or most intimate acquaintances present, is satisfied with the _koshimaki_--a strip of cloth some two feet wide tied around the waist and covering the lower part of the body. But on the street both men and women conform to the national customs and wear the kimono. The Japanese household and bathing customs have served to prevent the development of that particular type of modesty characteristic of Western lands. It is difficult for Occidentals to understand this feature of Japanese civilization, but such an understanding is essential if one would do justice to the moral life of this people. We may not apply to them Occidental standards in matters of modesty or dress. They have standards of their own, to understand and appreciate which requires no little study. At this point, I venture a second quotation from Miss Bacon, for she has studied carefully this subject, which all foreigners seeking to estimate the nature of Japanese civilization and moral character should not fail to master. "As one travels," she writes, "through rural Japan in summer, and sees the half-naked men, women, and children that pour out from every village on one's route, surrounding the _kuruma_ (wheeled vehicle) at every stopping place, one sometimes wonders whether there is in the country any real civilization, whether these half-naked people are not more savage than civilized. But when one finds everywhere good hotels, scrupulous cleanliness in all the appointments of toilet and table, polite and careful servants, honest and willing performance of labor bargained for, together with the gentlest and pleasantest of manners, one is forced to reconsider the judgment formed only upon one peculiarity of the national life, and to conclude that there is certainly a high type of civilization in Japan, though differing in many particulars from our own. A careful study of Japanese ideas of decency, and frequent conversation with refined and intelligent Japanese ladies upon this subject, has led me to the following conclusion. According to the Japanese standard, any exposure of the person that is merely incidental to health, cleanliness, or convenience in doing necessary work is perfectly modest and allowable; but an exposure, no matter how slight, that is simply for show, is in the highest degree indelicate. In illustration of the first part of this conclusion, I would refer to the open bath-houses, the naked laborers, the exposure of the lower limbs in wet weather by the turning up of the kimono, the entirely nude condition of the country children in summer, and the very slight clothing that some adults regard as necessary about the house or in the country during the hot season. In illustration of the last point, I would mention the horror with which many Japanese ladies regard that style of foreign dress which, while covering the figure completely, reveals every detail of the form above the waist, and, as we say, shows off to advantage a pretty figure. To the Japanese mind, it is immodest to want to show off a pretty figure. As for the ballroom costumes, where neck and arms are frequently exposed to the gaze of multitudes, the Japanese woman who would with entire composure take her bath in the presence of others, would be in an agony of shame at the thought of appearing in public in a costume so indecent as that worn by many respectable American and European women."[2] [2] _Japanese Girls and Women_, 257-260. This completes our study of the homes and characteristics of five eighths of Japan. Here the brawn of the nation is reared. Hence come the sturdy, docile, patient, and courageous soldiers. Here are raised boys and girls by the hundreds of thousands who must at an early age begin to earn a living. This is the hunting-ground of those who seek for builders of railroads, factory hands, domestics, hotel girls, baby-tenders, and occasionally geishas, concubines, and prostitutes. Considering the severe economic conditions under which Japan's agricultural classes live, who can fail to admire their courage and grit, their personal culture, their even temper and cheerful faces, their innate habits of courtesy and good breeding, their mutual patience and forbearance, and their simple artistic tastes and pleasures! Do they not compare well with the peasant classes of any other nation? CHAPTER III DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN FARMING FAMILIES Before passing on to study the various classes of workers constantly recruited in no small numbers from the homes of farmers, we should first consider the high development of industrial occupations within these homes themselves. To appreciate both the opportunity and the need for this, we turn to the official statistics of marriage and education. Until 1908 compulsory education, as has been already stated, covered four years from the age of six to ten. According to governmental statistics (1912) 98.8 per cent. of the boys and 97.5 per cent. of the girls were actually fulfilling the requirement. This percentage seems high to American statistical students, but investigations show that, while Japanese rules for the attendance of pupils and methods of counting the same differ in some respects from those that prevail in the United States and Canada, yet, as a matter of fact, in school attendance Japan compares well with other lands. It should be remembered, however, that the nature of the Japanese written language is such that even six years of elementary education is probably not equal to four years of similar schooling in Western lands. American children, at the close of their elementary education, possess a mastery of the tools of civilization and a degree of general intelligence considerably in advance of Japanese children who have enjoyed the same number of years of school life. As we have already seen, this amount of compulsory education is insufficient to give children ability to read and write with freedom. The question for us however is as to the number of girls above school age and still unmarried who, because of family poverty, must find some form of wage-earning occupation. Turning to the vital statistics provided by the government (1914), we find that in 1908 there were 2,496,142 girls between ten and fifteen years of age, and 2,180,408 young women between fifteen and twenty years of age. But how many of these are married? Again relying on government statistics for the same year, we learn that only 199 girls under fifteen had been married, whereas 193,978 had married under twenty years of age. In view of the fact that 709,021 marriages took place between twenty and twenty-five years of age, it is altogether probable that, of those married under twenty, a large majority were married in their nineteenth year. Remembering that many do not marry until the twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, we can confidently assert that there are over 4,000,000 unmarried girls and young women between the ages of ten and twenty-five; and, as 58 per cent. belong to the farming class, we have in the vicinity of 3,000,000 girls who belong to families of such economic state that they, no less than the boys, must contrive in some way to earn a share at least of their own living. Girls of fifteen and upwards in farmers' families help their fathers in the lighter forms of agriculture, planting the rice, as we have seen, and reaping and threshing the crops. But the small acreage to each family barely provides work enough for the man, much less for the half-grown boys and girls, hence the need of finding something besides the agricultural work for the growing family. The younger children (under fifteen) are pressed into lighter farming, and such household duties as are within their strength and ability, as cooking and caring for the still younger children; while the older children and the mother help the father, or take up some domestic industry, such as the rearing of silkworms, reeling of silk, spinning of thread, and weaving of silk and cotton fabrics, or similar work which can be easily and profitably done in the house in spare hours. Hence has come the widespread practise of household industries, by which the female members supplement the family income. There were, in 1907, 1,628,000 members of farming families who were earning a part of their living in this way. This condition has prevailed for many generations, and is the secret of the wonderful development of the arts and home industries in Japan. [Illustration: A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS] From of old Japan's industrial system, like that of other lands, has been domestic--carried on in the house. There have been families and gilds which have made their entire livelihood by these manual industries. There have also been hundreds of thousands of farming families which have supplemented their meager income from their farms by taking up some of these domestic industries, and those who have displayed or developed special aptitude for such work have naturally drifted into this wholly industrial life. This has doubtless been the origin of industrial families and gilds. But the point to be especially noted is that this wide development of domestic industries is due to the skill and diligence of Japan's working _women_. Japanese men have produced the food by which the nation has been fed; her women have produced industries by which the nation has been clothed, as indeed is the case of all great civilized nations. Their long-continued drill, from generation to generation, in home industrial occupations, has produced a high degree of manual dexterity; the eye and hand instinctively move accurately and rapidly in the work, and the result is that Japan's leading industries to this day are dependent on female labor. "Sericulture, silk-reeling, cotton spinning, _habutae_ (a particular variety of silk fabric), and other woven goods, tea-picking, straw and chip braids, etc., are practically dependent on female labor," says the _Japanese Year Book_ for 1910. "But an industry depending on female labor has this peculiarity, namely: it is not compatible with the factory system, but thrives best on the domestic plan. Generally speaking it is in industries which admit of being carried on independently at separate homes by housewives and mothers that skilled female labor is seen to the best advantage. As operatives of family industries Japanese women show an efficiency rarely reached by their foreign sisters." But in this connection we may remind ourselves of the great skill and industry of our grandmothers and preceding generations of women, who lived before the great factory system made their home industrial occupations unnecessary. Japan is merely several decades behind Western lands in her industrial development. [Illustration: SPINNING COTTON THREAD FOR WEAVING AT WORK IN A KITCHEN] We are to understand, then, that a large portion of these 3,000,000 unmarried Japanese women and girls are engaged more or less continuously in some sort of industrial work, either in their own homes or in small groups in their immediate vicinity. The introduction into Japan of Occidental mechanical civilization, with its great machinery run by steam power, and the great factory system, taking girls and young women away from their home industries, home restraints, and home training, is producing mighty changes in Japan's traditional civilization. The real consequences of these new modes of life and labor are still little appreciated. There is taking place a rapid readjustment of population, which indeed is easily seen, but the disastrous results to the mental, moral, and religious life of the people, even to the maintenance of the ideals and standards that controlled the older arts and industries, are yet little realized, for the great changes have only begun within the past two decades. A generation or two must pass before we can see clearly what it all really means. Meanwhile it is for those who foresee coming evils to sound aloud the call, and, as prophets, to do that which in them lies to meet the threatened disasters, and turn new conditions into blessings. Japan has the advantage of a century of European experience from which to learn wisdom. It is to be hoped that she will avoid many of the perils and evils into which the West has fallen, but the signs of the times are not altogether reassuring. There are, as we shall see later on, ominous clouds on Japan's industrial horizon. CHAPTER IV SILK WORKERS The chief wealth-earning domestic industry carried on by farmers' wives and daughters is the rearing of silkworms and the reeling, spinning, and weaving of the silk. Japan supplies about 28 per cent. of the total silk of the world and 60 per cent. of that used in the United States. The value of the silk exported in 1913 was $63,000,000. Women are the chief workers, contributing 90 per cent. of the labor. Here again the toil is taxing beyond belief. The brunt of the work consists first in filling the mouths of the worms, which must be fed at regular intervals night and day for about three weeks, during the last few days of which they eat continuously and voraciously. It has been found that the rearing of worms can best be done only on a small scale, where minute attention can be given to each tray, almost to each worm. This means that worms are reared in the homes of the people, rather than in large establishments. During the silkworm season everything else must give way; the house is filled with trays of ravenous worms; rest, recreation, and sleep, for old and young alike, are neglected in order that the precious worms may get their fill. Men and boys bring in the mulberry leaves from the hills and fields, while women and girls strip the branches, chop the leaves and feed them to the magic creatures that transform worthless green leaves into costly silk. The leaves must not be damp, nor old, and every condition of weather and temperature must be watched with the closest care. Otherwise there is loss. This heavy work comes twice each year, in some places three times. That is to say, there are two or three crops of silkworms. Then, after the cocoons have been formed, comes the reeling off of the silk, as much as possible before the sleeping grub wakens and eats its way out, destroying the silk it has spun for its nest. So again there is pressure, and again women do the work--I never heard of a man reeling silk. It takes the deft hand and quick eye of a girl to catch the thread in the boiling water, connect it with the wheel, and unroll without breaking the almost invisible thread so wonderfully wound up by the worm. This work is often done in the homes, but increasingly now, because more profitably, in factories where the girls can be closely watched by inspectors and paid according to the skill and the amount of their work. The number of families engaged exclusively in raising silk in the nine principal districts is reported (1911) at 370,332. In addition however there are many tens of thousands of families which make this only a secondary business. Many merely raise the worms, selling the cocoons to the factories, and in such cases the work and strain are over in a few weeks. The value of the cocoons raised in 1911 was estimated at $89,001,988, which gives some idea of the great importance of this industry to the families engaged in it. But it must be remembered that the industry demands heavy expense and the most taxing of toil while it lasts. As this industry is carried on chiefly in the homes, the personal conditions of the workers are relatively favorable, as favorable as those of the homes. This requires therefore no special consideration. CHAPTER V WIVES AND DAUGHTERS OF ARTIZANS AND MERCHANTS In old Japan, among the workers the highest rank was held by farmers, next by artizans, and last came the merchants, for they were regarded as resorting to means somewhat degrading for making their living. In fact they were not producers of positive wealth, but lived by cunning wit on what others had made. Artizans, such as carpenters, masons, and professional weavers, as well as merchants, naturally live in towns and cities. The first work of the wife is of course in the home, but when the husband's work is of such a nature that it is possible the wife naturally helps him. Merchants' wives and daughters, for instance, keep the shops while the husbands peddle the goods or secure fresh supplies. Weavers' wives and daughters aid directly, the whole family sharing in the work and acquiring skill. Carpentry and masonry however are trades in which women take no part, so women of these classes also seek some suitable domestic industry. In the smaller towns especially, in recent years, rearing of silkworms is a common occupation for all classes of moderate means, but in the cities it is impossible to secure the necessary mulberry leaves, so straw braiding, the making of fans, embroidery, and similar occupations are here sought; and there are produced the thousand and one articles used by the middle and wealthy classes and for export. As a means of increasing the income the wives of artizans often open their front rooms as shops and carry on a small retail business. In times of prosperity these classes flourish and grow luxurious, but hard times occasionally come, when they are reduced to dire poverty and even to the verge of starvation; for, living away from the land, they are more dependent than farmers on the continuous success of their labors and secondary industries. The school education of the women of these classes is in general the same as that of the farming class. But inasmuch as they live, for the most part, in the larger villages, towns, and cities, they enjoy many advantages over their farming sisters. Along with their husbands they have more need of ability to read and write, and, becoming quick-witted through the stimulus of city life, they learn more easily. In recent decades, especially the last, many of their children, naturally those of the more successful families, are pressing up into the higher schools of learning. As a body, therefore, from the standpoint of mere intellect and wit, this class surpasses the farming class. From the standpoint however of moral character, of conjugal fidelity, of industry, and of trustworthiness in all relations the farming class, along with the shizoku, surpasses all others, and probably even the peers themselves. But in these higher classes we must distinguish between the men and the women; for while the wives are, as a rule, beyond praise in the matter of conjugal fidelity, the same may not be said of the husbands. Among the many classes of working women named on a previous page are the "clerks." This is a new feature of Japanese life worthy of note, although the class is still small. Under this name we include ticket sellers in railway stations, assistant barbers, and saleswomen and shopgirls. Members of this class have of course enjoyed a relatively large amount of education, and are therefore above the average in general intelligence and ability. These girls are recruited from the families of city artizans and merchants. The descendants of palanquin bearers, day laborers, eta, and hi-nin form to-day the lowest stratum of society, dwelling on the outskirts of large cities, in wretchedness, filth, and poverty, getting their living from day to day and breeding criminals, geisha, and prostitutes. The stone-breakers, gravel gatherers, coolies, and most irregular of city day laborers come from this class. Many of these men have illustrious pedigrees. Some fell to this estate through wanton lust and reckless expenditure of inherited wealth; some are descendants of disinherited sons; the ancestors of some have met political reverses and found refuge and safety only among the "non-humans," where they could live unrecognized and unknown. Thus all grades of blood course through the veins of this, the lowest class in Japan. The wives and daughters of these men share their fate and fortune, living from hand to mouth. Their life is so low and uncertain that it is absurd to speak of secondary occupations--they lack even a primary occupation; and their homes, which constitute the slums of the cities, are no places in which to carry on any domestic industry. With the coming to Japan however of modern industrialism and the building of large factories in or near the cities, the wives and daughters of this class have opportunity for regular work, earning enough and more than enough to support themselves while actually at work. But when attacked by laziness, fickleness, or disease, they easily slump back into the same economic pit. From this lowest class comes one of the serious dangers threatening the better life of modern Japan. The insufficiency of these laborers, their unreliable character, and the inferior quality of their work, have forced the factories to search elsewhere for hands. These they have found in the relatively workless, but industrious and comparatively moral farming class. These farmers' girls have been brought to the cities and thrown into intimate relations with the lowest, most dissolute, despised, and really despicable classes, and the results have naturally been disastrous in many ways, as we shall see in a later chapter. CHAPTER VI _KOMORI_ (BABY-TENDERS) The great poverty of the majority of the people renders necessary, as already noted, not only the utmost economy in the home, but also a high degree of industry, and the beginning of productive labor at an early age. As soon as the child has completed the elementary education, and, in cases of exceptional poverty, even before that, he or she must begin to do something of value and earn a living, at least in part. In the case of farming families, younger children care for the youngest and share in the household duties, thus relieving the mother and elder children, enabling them to aid the husband and father in the field. But the positive agricultural or industrial work which girls of from ten to fifteen can do is insignificant, yet they eat as much as a grown person, and hence comes the search for suitable openings for such workers. This is found for many of the younger girls in the homes of the middle and upper classes, where they go as _komori_ (baby-tenders). Girls even as young as ten leave their homes and go out to service. They receive food and lodging, in some cases a garment in summer and one in winter, and sometimes in addition a small cash stipend. A komori thus is usually the daughter of a poor family who goes into a well-to-do family to aid the mother in the care of her infant. Her chief duty is to carry the infant, sleeping or waking, on her back for many consecutive hours during the day. In addition to this she aids a little in the household work, washing dishes and cleaning the house, her hours of service being unlimited. In some families she may be called on at any hour of the night to carry the baby, if it is restless or fretful and needs to be "jiggled" to sleep! A komori is employed by the year, but usually without specific contract, her parents sometimes receiving a few yen[3] when she enters upon service. Her time is entirely at the disposal of her mistress and she goes to no school, receives no regular instruction, and no training other than that which comes incidentally from association with members of the family. Long hours each day are spent on the street with an infant on her back, playing hop-scotch and other games with other komori. [3] A yen has the value of forty-nine cents. In a few places efforts are being made, I am told, to provide these baby-tenders with educational advantages, but the movement is as yet small. Buddhists are said to be particularly active in this matter. [Illustration: CARRYING FAGOTS BABY-TENDERS] A blind man in Matsuyama, a Christian of my acquaintance, put out one of his daughters to service as a komori. After two years of such life, poverty-stricken though the family was, he brought her home again, for the child of fourteen, so far from learning anything good, was learning many things bad on the street, and was being dwarfed in mind by the long hours when she was wholly without mental stimulus. The life of a komori will of course vary much with the nature of the family by which she is employed, but at best the service cannot fail to stunt the growth of both body and mind. I heard not long since of a boy who became a komori. His father had died a drunkard, leaving the family ruined financially. The mother and children were accordingly distributed among the creditors to work off his debts. The little boy of eight went with his mother, and, so long as she lived--some three years--life was endurable for him, but after her death he was made increasingly miserable. Long hours by day and many interrupted nights, unkind words, and unutterable loneliness vexed his orphaned spirit, until he could endure it no longer, and planned to run away. The stern master however discovered him doing up his bundle, and, to prevent his escape, ordered his few possessions, even his clothing, to be taken away. In spite of this he slipped out one night in the darkness and hid in a barn in a neighboring village until morning, when he was taken pity on by some children who shared a kimono or two with him, and so he got away. With increasing years he led a wild, roving life; at eighteen he became a murderer and was imprisoned for life, escaping the death penalty on account of being a minor. In prison he first heard the Christian gospel of God's forgiving love, of peace and hope and joy. This "good news" he accepted, and learned to read, that he might read the New Testament, which he committed to memory. Upon the death of the Empress Dowager, in 1896, his penalty, with that of many other prisoners, was remitted, and now for fourteen years he has been living a life remarkably fruitful in Christian service. But, to return to our subject, we note that not all komori are children. Superannuated old women who have neither strength nor brains for anything else also act in this capacity, their conditions of service and wages being the same as those of girls. I have tried to get some idea as to the number of komori in Japan, but have been able to find no statistics. One gentleman assures me that at least one family in five of the middle and upper classes employs a komori. As the number of families in Japan, exclusive of farmers, is 3,981,940 (1912), this would make about 796,000 komori; but many well-to-do farming families also employ komori, so the total number in Japan would be not far from 1,000,000. A lady however assures me that this estimate is altogether too high, and thinks that not more than one family in twenty has the means to employ a komori. If this is true, then the number is in the vicinity of 250,000. In either case, the system and its nature are clear, and the numbers of children sent out to service at a tender age is not inconsiderable. The attention of educators and parents is being directed to the dangers to infants of this komori system, to say nothing of the harm it does to the girls themselves. CHAPTER VII HOUSEHOLD DOMESTICS By the time a girl is fifteen or sixteen she is regarded as sufficiently large, strong, and mature to enter on more responsible work. Among the several fields open to her is that of _gejo_, or domestic service, of which we may distinguish two varieties: those who serve in private families and those who become maids in hotels and tea-houses. A komori may gradually work into the position of a domestic; indeed, in the majority of homes a komori not only tends the baby but aids the mother in her household work. It is only in the homes of the well-to-do that both gejo and komori are to be found. The work of a gejo consists in taking the brunt of the cooking, housecleaning, and washing, serving from daybreak, that is, from five or six in the morning, till ten or eleven at night. Her status is somewhat better than that of the komori. Her hours of service however are long and taxing. Her time for rest is after the family has retired for the night and before they rise in the morning. Frequently her private room is the front hall, or entrance room; she accordingly is the last person to retire and the first to rise. It is to be noted however that in the houses of the middle classes in the large cities there is usually now a small room for the servant-girl. The gejo draws the water from the well, washes the rice, lights the fires, cooks and lives in the dingy and usually smoky kitchen, washes the clothes, aids in the sewing, and has no relaxation but an occasional festival. Her lot is truly pitiful. Besides her living (eating what is left from the family meal), she usually receives some two to three yen per month. Recently however some have been receiving even as much as five yen. The drudgery and monotony of the life are usually such that the opportunity to become a factory hand is quickly taken, especially as the cash earnings are relatively large. I am told by Japanese ladies that the problem of securing domestics in the cities or in the vicinities of factories is becoming serious. Of course the average domestic has no opportunity nor desire for mental improvement. Having enjoyed no education to speak of, she can read neither papers nor books, nor may she attend meetings fitted to cultivate the mind or promote her higher life. Thus she is controlled by the culture and mental and moral traditions of the home in which she was reared. Household domestics are recruited from farming and industrial families. They earn their living for from four to six years, until their parents or guardians find them husbands; for in Japan the girl has practically nothing to say as to whom she marries. Marriage is based, not on mutual acquaintance, much less on mutual attraction, but wholly on the judgment of parents or go-betweens, and is from first to last--if it is proper--a utilitarian affair. It thus comes to pass that in Japan domestics are, as a rule, young unmarried women. A domestic in her thirties, or over, is rare, and is almost certain to be a widow or a divorced woman. CHAPTER VIII HOTEL AND TEA-HOUSE GIRLS A distinct class of domestics is that which serves in hotels, tea-houses, and restaurants. Here the hours of labor are longer,--from four or five in the morning till midnight, or later. My attention was early called to their hard lot by observing that the poor girl who was serving rice for my meal, sitting before me as I ate, often fell into a sleep, from which I had to awaken her to get my rice. Inquiry would show that she had risen at four o'clock that morning, and further questioning would bring the information that she had retired the previous night at midnight or later, sometimes even not till two o'clock! Rarely do these girls get five hours of rest; frequently there are not more than three. They must open all the _amado_ (sliding wooden shutters which protect the paper "windows"), and get the general cleaning done before the first guest rises, and must continue their service until late into the night, answering the calls of the guests, till the last one has retired. In addition to the usual cleaning of the rooms, which is really not much of an undertaking, these girls carry all the meals of all the guests from the kitchen on the ground floor to their rooms on the second or third floors, serve them while they eat, and carry away the trays when the meal is completed. In preparation for the night the girls bring out the heavy _futon_ (quilts) and make the "beds" on the floor; and in the morning remove, fold, and lay them all away in closets. The work of a Japanese hotel is relatively heavy for the number of guests, but that which is most taxing is the long hours of service and the insufficient time for rest. As in the poorer homes, so in the poorer and smaller hotels, the girls have no private rooms, but sleep in entryways and reception-rooms. Of course they have neither time nor opportunity for personal culture, nor even for recreation; and from the nature of their occupation, is it strange if they sometimes yield to the solicitations of guests? These girls are of course neither professional prostitutes nor geisha. Yet I was assured by a provincial chief of police, some years ago when making investigations, that, in the eyes of the police, three fourths or four fifths of the girls in hotels and tea-houses are virtually prostitutes, though of course they have no licenses and are subject to no medical inspection. Occasionally they are arrested for illegal prostitution, at the instance however of brothel keepers. Hotels and tea-houses take pains to secure pretty girls for servants, in order to make their service attractive. It is a dreadful statement to make, but, if I am justified in judging from such facts as have come to my knowledge, it would appear that few traveling men in Japan feel any special hesitation in taking advantage--with financial compensation of course--of such opportunities as are afforded them. Hotels give the girls their food, perhaps two gowns yearly, and generally a small payment in cash, but their principal earnings come from tips. This makes them attentive to the wants of the guests. There are many first-class hotels throughout the country, but chiefly in the principal cities, to which geisha are not admitted, but in those hotels to which they are admitted the green country girls soon learn from them the brazen ways and licentious talk that are evidently pleasing to many of the guests. All in all the life and lot of the hotel and tea-house girl are deplorable indeed. She does differ from the geisha and licensed prostitute, however, in that she can leave her place and retire to her country home at any time, being held by no contract or debt. Hotel and tea-house girls are recruited largely from the families of artizans and small tradespeople, living in interior towns and villages; they do not often come from farming families, since they would lack the regular features and light complexion desired by hotels. Their family pedigree explains in part this easy virtue. They are saved from more disaster than they actually meet, because geisha and prostitutes abound and are more attractive. I remember, one summer at a little country hotel, a girl rushed into my room from a neighbor's in order to escape from the urgency of a guest. She told me the following day quite freely of her troubles, of the horrid men that came to the hotel, and of the fact that most of the girls did not mind what she found unendurable. She had been there but a few weeks and was resolved to go home as soon as possible, claiming it was better to starve than to lead such a hard and especially such a disgusting life. Realizing that I had an exceptional opportunity for sociological study, I improved the occasion and asked many questions. When asked for her reasons for not responding to the solicitations of the men, she replied that it was the fear of being laughed at should she have a child. I could not learn that she had ever been taught to regard loose sexual relations before marriage as immoral or as intrinsically wrong. In her mind the question had no connection with religion, so far as I could discover. Her refusal was based wholly on utilitarian grounds. At another hotel where I often stopped I noticed on one of my tours that an especially attractive girl of eighteen or nineteen, who usually waited on me, was no longer there. On asking her substitute what had become of her, I was told she had become a regular prostitute, having found she could earn much more money that way than at the hotel. I asked if the parents had not opposed. "O no!" replied the girl, "the parents were the ones who proposed it and arranged for it." I asked the substitute if she herself did not regard the business as shameful and immoral. She looked at me with apparent surprise, hardly understanding what I meant, evidently regarding the matter entirely as a financial one. Here is another case. A number of Young Men's Christian Association secretaries, tramping in the Japanese Alps, were convinced by the noises one night at the hot springs that the five or six guides and porters were indulging in licentiousness. The next night it came out around the camp-fire that these guides and porters had paid the hotel girls five sen[4] (two and one-half cents) each. [4] A sen has the value of one-hundredth of a yen, or almost half a cent. Of course one may not generalize from three cases. But three such cases, together with the statement of the chief of police, and the experience, closely corresponding with my own, of many missionaries who have traveled in all parts of Japan, are strong evidence. I myself do not think that guests often solicit the girls, nor that hotel girls commonly yield to the requests of guests, but there can be no doubt that it occasionally happens, and is not regarded in any such way by either the men or the women as an Occidental would expect. As said above, there are many hotels in the cities from which geisha are rigidly excluded, and where without doubt the relations of guests with hotel girls are above criticism. It is an impressive fact of Japanese civilization that the "greenest" country girls can in but a few short weeks of hotel service become so graceful and attractive. That in their lives which to the Occidental is so deep a sin is nothing to them. Their calm, innocent eyes, winning ways, and gentle conversation can hardly fail to impress the foreigner. But compared with the girls in their homes they have lost that air of modesty and reserve which is so important an element in the charm of Japanese womanhood. The hotel and tea-house girl belongs rather to the geisha class, whose loud, harsh voices and artificial, coarse laughter are distinguishing characteristics. Girls of both these classes however have an advantage enjoyed by no other women in Japan, namely: that of meeting large numbers of men of various occupations and interests. They hear varied conversation and thus become somewhat acquainted with the affairs of the outside world, which makes them more intelligent than the average Japanese woman, so that it is possible to carry on some sort of a conversation with them--a thing practically impossible with the average young woman of Japan. In regard to the numbers of hotel domestics, I have found no statistics, but have no hesitation in venturing an estimate of many tens of thousands. CHAPTER IX FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN As already stated, many girls prefer factory work to that of domestic service, either in private families or in hotels. From ancient times there have been small industrial enterprises, employing each a few hands in various lines of work, such as the reeling and spinning of silk and cotton thread and the weaving of cloth; but since the war with China there have arisen enormous factories, after the fashion of Western lands, which have introduced great changes in the industrial situation and in the condition of the working classes. The government report for 1912 shows that there were 863,447 individuals employed in 15,119 factories having ten or more hands each. Of these, 348,230 were men and 515,217 were girls and women. In addition it reports 427,636 weaving houses, having 733,039 looms and employing 697,698 operators. No statement is made as to the proportion of the sexes. Remembering that the government statistics take no account of industrial enterprises employing less than ten hands, it is probably safe to estimate the number of women employed in exclusively non-domestic occupations at not less than a million. We are not concerned however with the industries themselves, but rather with the conditions under which the operatives work and the effect of the work on their lives and characters. To begin with the more pleasant side of the question, there are factories which come well up toward the ideal. The terms of employment, the wages paid, the provisions for ill health, for accident, for long service and old age; the rooms for sleeping, eating, and recreation; the bathing establishments; the education given to those who need it; the public lectures and religious and ethical instruction given at fixed times in the public halls of the factories, Buddhist and Christian teachers being impartially invited; the provisions for marriage of employees and arrangements that each couple have a separate suite of rooms, and that the infants are cared for while the mother is in the mill; these and other provisions show that the best in Japan is up to a high level of excellence. Such is the policy of the Kanegafuchi Company, which owns a score of mills in different parts of Japan, and whose success moreover is so great that it is now buying up less successful competitors. For several years this company has set aside annually 20,000 yen ($10,000) for its relief and pension fund for operatives. In June, 1913, in addition to its regular appropriation, it voted an extra $50,000 for a "welfare promotion fund." The president of the Fuji Cotton Spinning Company was given in 1913 a retiring grant of $50,000, inasmuch as the great success of this company had been due to his skill and energy. He however presented the entire amount to the "employers' relief fund, and it was decided to make this gift the nucleus of a permanent endowment fund." [Illustration: AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY] There is a silk factory in Ayabe, the Gunze Seishi Kwaisha, whose record is the most wonderful of all. It is managed by a Christian, who runs it entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members of the working force they are regularly instructed, both in general education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn enough besides to set themselves up in married life, and are now beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the factories in Japan is able to export its product direct to the purchasing firm in the United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about $500,000, and without intermediate inspection at Yokohama. Here we have a splendid illustration of the way in which Christian character is solving the problem arising from the low moral and economic ideals of the masses of Japan's working classes. As a rule the modern industrial worker does not put moral character into his work; and a wide complaint of Occidental importers of Japanese products is that goods are not made according to contract or sample. This is one of the greatest obstacles to the continuous prosperity of any Japanese industry; for as soon as a large demand has arisen in foreign lands for any given article, its quality, as a rule, has rapidly deteriorated. It is this unreliability of Japanese workmen that makes so difficult direct exportation to foreign lands without the supervision of Occidental middlemen. The Christian Gunze Seishi Kwaisha is one of the splendid exceptions which shows what Japanese workmen and manufacturers can do, when controlled by high ideals and motives. Unfortunately however not all factories and their managers have the same spirit, aim, or skill. Many factories are the exact opposite in every respect to those owned by the Kanegafuchi and Gunze Seishi companies. My personal attention was first called to the heartrending condition of servitude imposed on vast numbers of girls by reading, a score of years ago, of a fire in the dormitory of an Osaka factory. The dormitory was in a closed compound, whose doors and gates were carefully locked to keep the girls from running away. The result was the death, if I remember correctly, of every inmate, of whom there were several score. My personal knowledge in regard to the conditions of life and work of factory operatives was secured in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a small inland city of some forty thousand inhabitants, having but a single cotton thread spinning factory. It had no dormitories of its own, but sent its operatives to certain specified boarding-houses in the town. Through a Mr. Omoto, who was at that time working in the factory, and whose life story is given in the final chapter, I became intimately acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Matsuyama. In 1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns in work along with the older girls by day and by night. Large numbers ranged from seven to twelve years old, the majority, however, being from fifteen to twenty. They worked in two shifts of twelve hours each, but as they were required to clean up daily they did not get out till six-thirty or seven, morning and night. The only holidays for these poor little workers came two or three times a month, when the shifts changed; but even then there was special cleaning, and the girls who had worked all night were kept till nine and even ten in the morning. He was also deeply impressed with their wretched condition and immoral life. The majority of them could neither read nor write; their popular songs were indecent, and they were crowded together in disease-spreading and vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately tempted. Some of the landlords were also brothel keepers. Mr. Omoto, having opportunity as official "visitor" to become accurately acquainted with their life, told me in detail the conditions which have been briefly summarized above. The boarding-houses were only for girls from out of town. They had to be "recognized" by the factory, and the girls had to live in the houses to which they were assigned. Of course the purpose of these houses was to make money. The financial, hygienic, intellectual, and moral interests of the girls were wholly ignored. They were crowded into ill-ventilated, sunless rooms, the two shifts occupying the same rooms alternately. Personal extravagance was purposely stimulated, for girls in debt to the keepers were compelled to stay to work off their debts. Drinking and immoral carousings were their only recreation. As might be expected, sickness was common and epidemics frequent. Many girls returned to their homes after a few months in the "city" ruined not only in health but in character,--premature mothers of illegitimate children. The conditions of the factory girls in Matsuyama were not unique. Miss J. M. Holland, a Church of England missionary in Osaka, recently told me some of her observations and experiences. She has devoted the larger part of her time for fifteen years to work among factory girls, and on the whole can report improvement. When she began her visits to the factories, the conditions were often appalling. It was not uncommon for girls working on the night shift to be kept, on one pretext or another, till noon the next day, making eighteen hours of work. The conditions of work and life were such that the girls frequently ran away, to prevent which the dormitories were virtually prisons within the factory compounds. The girls were not allowed to go out on the streets, were given no opportunity for recreation, and of course no education. They were underfed, overworked, and punished in various ways by their overseers, cuffed and sometimes whipped, for disobedience or blunders. The daily papers of those days had frequent items reporting oppression and ill treatment; to be deprived of wages as punishment was a common experience; police occasionally discovered girls working in cellars and vaults as punishment for misdeeds; girls sometimes escaped in their night clothes, and on a few occasions the girls rebelled and did personal violence to the overseers. But, as already stated, the general conditions are now much better, for it was gradually found that such ill-treated labor was not profitable. "Most of the superintendents in Osaka are now splendid men, who on the whole take good care of the girls and wish to treat them honorably." The crying evils of the past have been largely done away. Rest, recreation, education, wages, and health are receiving careful consideration at all the leading factories. Still, no true parent would send a daughter to work in such a place, unless under the stress of dire poverty. There are still many small children under ten years of age, whose parents make false statements in regard to their ages. The work is from six in the morning to six in the evening. This means rising at four-thirty every morning for work on the day shift. Some factories have abolished the night shift. Fifteen minutes are allowed for rest in the middle of the forenoon, thirty minutes for lunch, and fifteen minutes again in the afternoon, giving thus eleven hours of steady work per day and the same per night. On pay days the girls, after standing eleven hours, have to stand in file from one to three hours more, according to their luck, and Miss Holland says that such long hours of standing result in serious organic difficulties. One half of the girls fail to work out their three years' contract, returning to their homes before time for marriage, seriously injured, if not completely ruined, physically. So long as this system continues, she adds, skilled labor is impossible. While some factories take great care that girls are carefully guarded from evil, others exercise no control whatever over their goings and doings. One factory she named as allowing its girls to be out on the streets till two o'clock in the morning. It insists on only two and a half hours of sleep! The difficulties connected with private boarding-houses for factory girls have proved so great that most of them have been closed. One of the tragic aspects of factory life in Japan is the large number of what would seem to us avoidable accidents, due to the fact that the girls know nothing whatever about machinery. Large factories accordingly keep surgeons on hand to care for the wounded. Miss Holland says that in one Osaka factory where there are a thousand operatives, the kind-hearted surgeon told her they had an average of fifty accidents daily which needed his attention. The little children especially suffer, often losing fingers. Not long since five fingers were clipped off in a single day! Miss Holland added that, improved though the conditions are, factory life for children is a "murder of the innocents." As a rule the food provided in factory dormitories is still inadequate. When asked whether corporal punishment is still inflicted, she expressed a doubt, having heard of none for a long time. In her conversation Miss Holland expressly limited her report to the factories she knows in Osaka. The question arises whether the conditions there may not be peculiar. May not factory conditions in Yokohama and Tokyo, where government inspection and control would theoretically be most complete, be better than elsewhere? The facts do not seem to justify such a surmise. The Kanegafuchi Company and some others have good factories everywhere, but there would seem also to be bad ones everywhere. A Japanese book on _Industrial Education_ has recently been published by a Mr. R. Uno, who, for fifteen years, has been a devoted student of Japan's industrial problems. A summary of the statistics there given appeared in May, 1914, in the _Tokyo Advertiser_, from which I cull the following facts and figures. In the cotton thread and spinning factories of Japan, there are 81 girls to 19 men. Out of 1,000 girls, 386 are over 20 years of age, 317 are from 17 to 20, 191 are from 15 to 16, 73 are from 12 to 14, while 7 girls out of a thousand are under 12 years of age. The vast majority of factory girls live in the factory dormitories, which are of enormous size. In the region of Osaka there are more than 30,000 girls working in 30 factories; in these same factories there are less than 7,000 men. Three of these factories employ over 3,000 girls each, while three more employ 2,000 and upward. These girls are herded together in enormous dormitories, disastrous both to health and morals. Statistics covering a number of years show that out of every 1,000 girls, 270 work less than six months at the same place; 200 less than one year, 179 less than two years; 121 less than three years; 141 less than five years, and only 89 pass the five-year period. The usual reason for this extraordinary fluctuation of workers is that the girls break down in health. Government statistics declare that out of every 100 girls to enter upon factory work 23 die within one year of their return to their homes, and of these 50 per cent. die of tuberculosis. But it is also asserted that 60 per cent. of the girls who leave home for factory work never return. Of the criminal girls arrested in Osaka for a certain period, 49 per cent. had been factory hands. As to the education of factory girls it is stated that, out of 1,000, the number that had completed the required number of years of schooling (six) was 450, while 385 were entirely without education. Out of 1,000 girls, 453 were orphans. Of 1,000 girls, 611 came from farmers' homes, 166 from those of fishermen, and 55 from merchant homes, the remaining 168 being scattering. Factory girls earn and can save more than almost any other class. The average earnings per month are stated to be $4.67. The girl pays $1.20 per month for food, which is less than the actual cost, the factory providing the balance, namely, $1.30. The average girl sends home fifty cents per month. Three out of ten girls spend the balance entirely on clothes, five out of ten on cakes and theaters, while two out of ten save it. Such are some of the statements made by Mr. Uno in his enlightening book. In the September, 1910, number of the _Shin Koron_, a monthly magazine published in Tokyo, is an article by Professor Kuwada (of the Tokyo Imperial University) entitled "The Pitiful Environment of Factory Girls." He gives a detailed statement of the conditions of factory workers, in which he estimates the number of female laborers in factories containing ten or more hands at 700,000, of whom ten per cent. are under fourteen years of age. In tobacco factories ten per cent., in match factories twenty per cent, and in glass factories thirty per cent. of the girls are under ten years of age. He vigorously condemns the situation as threatening the future of the working class, whose prospective mothers are thus being destroyed. The efforts of the government during recent years to enact factory laws have been successfully thwarted thus far, says Professor Kuwada, by shortsighted, selfish capitalists. The girls are brought in from their country homes by false promises. They are told of the beautiful sights to be seen, theaters to be visited, the regular Sunday rest, and even of the splendid care and education they will receive from the factory. There is also stealing of expert workers from one factory by the artful stratagems of another. There are factories which resort to devices for defrauding helpless operatives. In one town where there are many factories, it is customary to work overtime by setting back the hands of the clock. To conceal this from the operatives, no factory blows its whistles! Some factories do not give time for the girls to rest even while they eat, but require them to work with the right hand while they eat with the left. Night work in which both male and female operatives are engaged together is most demoralizing. Punishment of various kinds is administered. In addition to fines, in some places the girls are imprisoned in dark rooms, rations are reduced, their arms are bound and the lash applied freely, and in extreme cases they are stripped to the waist and marched through the factory among young men and girls, bearing a red flag tied to the back! Superintendents are invariably men. So appalling was the statement made by Professor Kuwada that I could scarcely believe him in all the details, particularly in regard to the use of the lash and the stripping to the waist. I accordingly wrote both to him and to Professor Abe of Waseda University, who has made special study of the social problems and conditions of industry. Professor Kuwada, I learned, has been a careful student of social and industrial conditions for nearly twenty years, and is one of the leaders in the Society for the Study of Social Politics, composed of one hundred and fifty university professors and high government officials. This society was organized to aid the government in its efforts to secure social and industrial reforms. In reply to my inquiries Professor Kuwada says that most of the facts given concerning silk factories he has himself observed. Those concerning cotton spinning factories he has derived from reliable sources, chiefly from the officers of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, who are especially engaged in making investigations in regard to industrial conditions. Much of the testimony rests on the statements of the girls themselves. Some of the facts come from local police and some from the published reports of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. "The article in the _Shin Koron_ may therefore be regarded as semi-official," says Professor Abe. Since the appearance of the article referred to above, no reply has been made to it by factory owners or managers. As to the stripping of a girl to the waist and marching her through the factory filled with operatives, male and female, Professor Kuwada was told this by the girl herself. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to doubt the testimony. Nor is it probable that the cases cited are absolutely unique, although I think it highly probable that such extreme indignities and punishments are rare,--they are so out of keeping with the whole trend of Japanese civilization and culture. Mrs. Binford, a missionary in Mito, assures me, however, that altering the hands of the clock is a practise known to her. Testimony is widespread that girls are secured for factories by all kinds of false statements. In view of the frightful conditions of industrial labor thus indicated by Mr. Uno and Professor Kuwada, it is amazing that the Diet has refused on several successive occasions to enact suitable laws. The government began to realize in 1898 the need for legislation on these matters. A bill which was drafted and presented in 1902 was rejected, as were also three subsequent bills. The chief feature of the bill presented during the winter of 1910-11 was the provision that no factory may employ girls under twelve, and that girls of any age and youth under sixteen may not be kept at work for more than twelve hours per day, nor be made to do night work without "special reason." While some provisions of this bill were enacted and others amended, those considered most important by social reformers and by the government were virtually rejected. The bill was indeed passed, but with the added provision that the important clauses, relative to ages and night work, be inoperative for a period of fifteen years (!) in order to give time to the factories involved to adjust themselves to the new conditions. Since that time no further factory legislation has been enacted. Is it not astounding that in a land on the whole so progressive as Japan the difficulty of securing reform should be found in the Diet? The administration at this point is ahead of the representatives of the people, as it is indeed in many other respects. The fact is, as Professor Kuwada points out, that the "representatives" in both the lower and upper houses represent the financial interests of capitalists, rather than the human interests of the masses. But the reader, in his indignation over the situation of factory workers in Japan, should remember that Japan is no exceptional sinner among the nations. Christian England and America have had conditions equally bad, and possibly worse. Dr. Washington Gladden, in his article on "The Reason for the Unions," in the New York _Outlook_ for March, 1911, makes the following statements in regard to the condition of labor in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. Men and women stood daily at their tasks, from twelve to fourteen and fifteen hours; a working day of sixteen hours was not an unheard-of thing. Government reports of this period show that children of five and six years of age were frequently employed in factories. "Nor was this unmeasured abuse of child labor confined to the cotton, silk, and wool industries.... The report of 1842 is crammed with statements as to the fearful overwork of girls and boys in iron and coal mines, which doubtless had been going on from the end of the eighteenth century;... Children could get about where horses and mules could not. Little girls were forced to carry heavy buckets of coal up high ladders, and little girls and boys instead of animals dragged the coal bunkers. Women were constantly employed underground at the filthiest tasks. Through all this period the wages gravitated downward and family income was steadily lowered, while the cost of food increased. The homes of the workers were ruined. In a certain congested district there lived 26,830 persons in 5,366 families, three fourths of which possessed but one room each. The rooms were without furniture, without everything; two married couples often shared the same room. In some cases there was not even a heap of straw on which to sleep. In one cellar the pastor found two families and a donkey; two of the children had died and the third was dying." And these conditions existed, not in days of industrial depression, but in flush times; business was booming and wealth accumulating in the hands of factory owners and employers. Many of the conditions of industrial workers even in the United States to-day are heartrending in the extreme. Who could read of the strike of the shirt-waist makers of New York in the winter of 1909-10 without deep indignation over the conditions under which those brave girls worked, and against which they rebelled? The National Committee on Child Labor reported in the spring of 1911 that there were over 60,000 children in the factories of the United States, mostly in the South. Before condemning Japan unduly, Occidentals should remember that their own record is none too bright. If comparison is to be made however between Japan and the West, it may be made along other lines. The West fell into its industrial difficulties with no example from which to learn. But this is not true of Japan. She can easily learn the lesson of a century of Western experience; but she seems slow to do it. Then again in Japan it is the government that is feebly leading, and the official popular representatives who are both blind and resisting, whereas in the West the great movements for industrial reform are movements of the people themselves, backed up and oftentimes led by enlightened humanitarian and Christian popular opinion. In the West, the churches are fairly in line with forward social movements, whereas in Japan, Shintoism, Confucianism, and even Buddhism are apparently wholly indifferent to the economic and even ethical condition of the nation's toilers. Furthermore, we are seeing to-day in Japan the strange phenomenon of one section of the government seeking to ameliorate social and economic conditions, and at the same time another, seemingly mortally afraid of allowing the people either to discuss these matters or to attempt reform movements themselves. Labor unions are strictly forbidden, and any person advocating socialism is under strict police surveillance. Strikes are illegal and their promoters are liable to criminal punishment. Anomalous as it may be, the government seems to be seeking to destroy that enlightened popular opinion on which it must rely for the efficient enforcement of its own plans for social betterment of the working classes. I have dwelt at considerable length on the conditions of factory workers, for later on I shall describe a sociological experiment among this class. CHAPTER X GEISHA (HETÆRÆ) The word _geisha_ means an "accomplished person." A geisha is invariably a young woman who has had years of training fitting her to provide social entertainment for men. The _gei_ acquired are skill in playing the samisen (a three-stringed guitar), singing catching ditties, taking part in conversation and repartee, and in "dancing," which is to the Western mind rather a highly conventional posturing, with deft manipulations of the inevitable fan. Years of exacting and diligent work are required for proficiency in these "gei,"--the Geisha School in Kyoto provides a course of six or seven years. [Illustration: O HAMAYU (GEISHA) Most celebrated in Tokyo] According to the Japanese ideal, geisha singing must be shrill, and to secure this quality the voice is purposely strained till it is "cracked." Girls eight to ten years old are sometimes given their "singing lessons" in the frosty air of winter mornings before sunrise, or late at night, in order that they may take cold in the throat and then, by persistent, vigorous use, the voice is "broken" for life. Training in dancing and samisen playing is also prolonged and severe, for no pains are spared in efforts to excel. These efforts however are due, not to the will or desire of the _maiko_, the poor little girl who is being trained, but to the persistence of her owner. Only daughters of the very poor are secured for this outwardly beautiful and attractive, but inwardly repulsive, soul-destroying life. Practically speaking, geisha are the property of the old women who support and educate them through the years of their childhood, and who rent them out by the hour for the entertainment of men at social functions. Such functions would, indeed, be inane without geisha to serve the meals in their dainty ways, to fill the sake[5] cups for guests, to share in conversation by adding the spice, to provoke laughter, themselves laughing loudly and often, and at the proper time, to present their music, their singing, and their dancing. Dressed in faultless style, in richest silks and brilliant colors, geisha are moving pictures which have charmed generations of Japanese men and, in recent decades, many foreigners. Japanese political party dinners and consultations are often held in restaurants, where geisha make the fun and pour the wine. If foreign guests are to be entertained by wealthy individuals, by companies, or even by cities, the inevitable geisha is there, and is presented as a characteristic product of Japan--which she truly is. But while there is about her a certain charm of manner and dress, to one who watches her face, looking for traces of a soul, the story is all too plain--behind the harsh laugh and stoical face it is impossible not to recognize that there is an empty and often a bleeding heart. [5] Sake (pronounced sah'-ke) is the fermented liquor of Japan, made from rice. The lives of these girls are pitiful in the extreme. Chosen from among the families of the poor on the basis of their prospective good looks and ability to learn, they leave their homes at an early age and are subjected to the severe drill already outlined. They go through their lessons with rigid, mechanical accuracy. In public they appear in gorgeous robes, their faces painted and powdered, artificiality dominating everything about them,--clothing, manners, and smiles. As a rule nothing is done to develop their minds, and of course the cultivation of personal character is not even thought of. They are instructed in flippant conversation and pungent retort, that they may converse interestingly with the men, for whose entertainment they are alone designed. The songs learned, some of the dances performed, and the conversational repertoire acquired are commonly reported to be highly licentious, but these are the gei that best please the men, to whom they are open for private engagements from the time they are eighteen years of age. If, however, a geisha is exceptionally beautiful, her owner does not allow her to enter on such duties, for experience has shown that her beauty is soon lost in this way, and with it her highest earning capacity. Many geisha undoubtedly develop considerable personal ability. The severe drill undergone could hardly fail to call forth their powers of mind, and intimate association with educated and quasi-cultured men serves further to stimulate their mental faculties. In native ability too they are not lacking, though drawn from the lowest classes of society, for, as will soon be more fully explained, they sometimes possess strains of high lineage. The national custom, which represses the normal intellectual development and social instincts of cultured, respectable women, is removed from this one class, which is favored by many circumstances. They are not subjected to the debauching excesses usual with the ordinary prostitute, nor to humiliating medical inspection. They are not conscious of popular disapproval, but on the contrary are the beauties of the town, their photographs for sale on every street. Indeed one well-informed gentleman told me that probably ten per cent. of the geisha enter the calling by their own choice. No wonder that from time to time the tale is told of some Japanese man of social position falling under the spell of an accomplished geisha, whom he prefers to any of the silent, passive, timid, incompetent girls selected for him, who in all probability have never talked with any man except immediate relatives or tradesmen. The national custom which predetermines the social incompetence of the majority of cultured women compensates for the loss by providing this geisha class. Not until Japanese ladies can hold their own in social life will the vocation of the geisha be ended. Among the surprises one meets in studying the geisha question is the fact that not a few of the girls have features which indicate distinguished ancestry. My explanation for this fact is the further fact that for ages the standards of moral life in Japan have allowed large freedom of sexual relations. The result is that in the lowest classes, from which geisha are recruited, there run strains of gentle blood. It thus comes to pass that now in the midst of coarse surroundings and in deep poverty there are born of parents manifestly belonging to the lowest class, children of exceptional beauty, fitted, so far as individual appearance indicates, to belong to the highest ranks of society. Whether or not this suggested explanation is correct as a matter of historic fact I am not able to say, but I offer it as the most plausible that has occurred to me. Parents in this class of society much prefer daughters to sons, for they are likely to become valuable sources of income. At eight or nine, those destined for the "accomplished" calling are put into the care of some experienced geisha and a mutual contract is given for a specific period (five or six years), during which the child is termed a _maiko_ (dancing girl). As a rule the parents receive a small sum at the beginning of this first period. The owner undertakes to support and train the girl, and expects to profit by her earnings. By the time the girl is fifteen or sixteen she has finished her apprenticeship, when, if she has exceptional graces and charms likely to win her a place in the highest social gatherings, she will secure quite a competency (many hundreds of yen, and in some cases even a few thousand) for the keeper and parents. On the expiration of the first contract a new one is made, and so on, until the girl has passed her prime and is no longer sought for entertainments. If in the interval she has not become the concubine of some rich man, she then either returns to her poor home or, what is more usual, becomes a servant in a hotel or tea-house. If her ability is exceptional, she may set up as geisha keeper, train other maiko, employ younger geisha, and so make her living. The great ambition of a geisha is to "catch" some wealthy man of rank with her charms and become his concubine. My informant estimates that this is what happens to perhaps one half of the geisha. In such cases the man pays down a handsome sum to the owner, who sends part of it to the parents. Thus he buys his concubine, whom he usually keeps in a villa, not his home. I have asked if geisha ever become true, legal wives and am told "only very rarely." But, if they do, are they cordially received by the man's kindred? "Oh, no! that is not possible," is the repeated answer. The effects of her training can never be obliterated, and the new relatives cannot forget the despicable class from which she comes, and the calling by which she has gained her husband. She may become indeed refined and altogether correct in manner, but the taint of her origin as a rule adheres to her. Then too the years of immoral life before she won her husband make it a rare thing for a geisha to have children, and childless wives in Japan are not at a premium, for the prime purpose of marriage is the maintenance of the family line. Foreigners commonly say that geisha are not prostitutes. It is true they are not licensed, that is to say, professional, prostitutes in the eye of the law, nor are they procurable, as are regular prostitutes, by the average man, for the expense is too great. But the chief of police already referred to, and many Japanese of whom I have inquired, insist that a large proportion of geisha are corrupt--two geisha keepers have estimated the proportion as high as ninety per cent. Geisha who decline engagements leading to immorality are rare indeed, and for that very reason are unpopular. But better than generalized statements is the story of an actual life. There lives to-day in Hyogo a paralytic whose influence through her words, newspaper articles, and books is widely felt throughout central Japan. She is one of the few girls who, though trained as a geisha, refused to follow the calling. The story of her life is worthy of more than passing mention. Her father died in her infancy, and shortly after the death of her mother, who had married, her stepfather likewise married again. These stepparents, deciding to have her become a geisha, expended much time and money on her training. When she was prepared at sixteen years of age, she was entrusted to a woman whose business it was to find employment for geisha in hotels and tea-houses. This woman took her to a house in Osaka, where there were already many geisha and regular prostitutes. Learning the nature of the duties expected of her, she positively refused to comply. In spite of the fact that it was twenty miles to her home and that there were but two sen in her pocket, she escaped from the hotel, spent one sen on bridge toll, one sen on a lunch, and succeeded in walking all that distance alone, reaching home after midnight, the home from which she had been sent out with hopes that she should win for her stepparents an ample support. The reception accorded her can be fancied. She held firmly however to her resolve, preferring poverty and hard toil to luxury and fine clothing along with that service on which these were conditioned. Work was found for her in a factory, then as a family servant, and finally at a small tea-house, where during the winter she was especially exposed to the cold. An attack of rheumatism developed into paralysis. With no hope of recovery she longed for death, for her stepparents, considering the case hopeless, neglected to care for her properly, although she was so helpless. She could not feed herself, nor even crawl to the well in which she wished to drown herself,--the final resource of many a despairing Japanese woman. But, by a strange series of circumstances, or should we not say by a merciful Providence? a Christian man discovered and befriended her, told the story of Jesus, and revealed the Savior. Her faith soon became so strong and her words proved so thoughtful and helpful to those Christian friends who came to see her, that her influence began to spread. She found she could manage to write with her crippled hand, and as what she wrote was like her spoken words, simple and strong, it soon found its way into print. She was finally led to write the story of her life, and this book, with other articles written by her, has afforded a small income, which with additional help from friends has secured a comfortable home for herself and the family of which she is now the center. Her name is Zako Aiko, and she lives in Hyogo. A few geisha, coming under Christian influences, have been converted, and so far as I know, such persons leave the calling altogether, as incompatible with Christian principles. But condemnation of the whole geisha system is not confined to Christians. Many Japanese, entirely outside our Christian circles, regard it as a disgrace to the country, and wish the whole business, along with licensed prostitution, concealed from public view. For instance, a man of high official rank, president of a large institution, tells me he regrets that there is no first-class Japanese hotel in Kyoto at which he may entertain foreign guests in Japanese style, except where geisha serve the meals. Rather than countenance the geisha system, he prefers to take his guests to a hotel where the service is not so perfect but where the women employed are above suspicion. He deplored the fact one day that all foreigners coming to Kyoto in the spring visit the _Miyako odori_, commonly known in English as the "Cherry Dance." I myself have seen this performance more than once, and found nothing objectionable in either the so-called dancing, its setting, or its accompaniments. It nevertheless affords opportunity for the display of something like eighty or ninety geisha, and helps to maintain the business and the system. As indicating the status of geisha in the best Japanese society, it is significant that all geisha are rigidly excluded from every entertainment where any member of the Imperial household is present. It is often said by foreigners that geisha and prostitutes not infrequently make happy matches, and by legal marriage escape from their unhappy lives of shame. This is one of those pretty fables one would like to believe, but the facts do not seem to support the theory. There are, no doubt, rare instances where such has been the case. I have known two women who had been geisha and who married men of some position. In one case the man was a physician. When I knew the family the ex-geisha had been in the home a number of years and was a lovely, modest, capable woman, a regular member of my wife's cooking class. But it was noticeable that she always took a "back seat" among the ladies; she was tolerated by them and treated not unkindly, but it was clear that they looked down on her. The man's kindred never favored the match, and would not let him marry the woman legally, so she lived in his house, took excellent care of his first wife's children, and was to them all that a stepmother could be, yet, so far as I know, she has never gained her full position in the home of her husband nor among his relatives. The other case I knew but slightly, as she died but a few weeks after I made her acquaintance, but she must have been a woman of exceptional character. She was a Christian and highly respected in the church. Such cases, however, are rare. A geisha may be in high favor during the decade or more when at the height of her physical charms, though even then her inner life is empty and loveless; but when no longer attractive she is cast aside as a faded flower, to spend the rest of her life forlorn, unloved, and uncared for. Truly, the way of the geisha is hard! Geisha naru mi to; Michi tobu tori wa Doko no idzuko de Hateru yara, is a popular ditty regarding the final disappearance of geisha from sight. It may be roughly translated: "What becomes of geisha, do you ask? I ask in turn, where end their lives the birds that fly along the road?" In regard to the number of geisha, Mr. Murphy's statistics show that from 1887 to 1897 they increased throughout Japan from 10,326 to 26,536, and since then the increase has been relatively small, the number being now in the vicinity of 30,000. So far as is known to me, no regular Christian or philanthropic work is done for this class. CHAPTER XI _SHOGI_ (LICENSED PROSTITUTES) It may seem strange to class prostitutes among working women, but the facts require such classification, for, not only so far as the parents and brothel keepers are concerned, but also so far as the girls themselves are concerned, it is entirely a matter of money. If the business did not pay splendidly, the keepers would not erect their handsome buildings, pay the heavy license fees, nor buy the girls from the parents at considerable cost. And on the other hand, if the parents did not receive what they regard as large sums for their daughters, the latter would not be sold to such lives of shame and disease. And so far as the poor victims are concerned, there is abundant evidence that they often go into the wretched business solely at the command of their parents, for among the lowest class the noble doctrine of obedience to parents is shamefully perverted to this vile end. Children are taught that obedience is a child's first duty, regardless of the question whether the thing required by parents is right or wrong. The girl goes to the brothel in obedience to her parents, who send her there to earn a living for herself and to help them out of special financial difficulties. Thus from first to last, so far as the girls, the parents, and the keepers are concerned, the question is economic. Among the working women of Japan prostitutes surely are the most pitiful of all. They give the most and get the least. They receive no training, like the geisha; have no liberty; to prevent their running away, are imprisoned in brothels, or if diseased or ill, in hospitals; and have no friends except possibly other prostitutes. Most of them soon loathe the business, but are helpless, hopeless prisoners,--for the keepers who paid their parents a few score or hundreds of yen and loaded them with beautiful clothes, charge all these items to their account, so that they are under a heavy debt which must be paid before they can leave. This debt the laws of the land theoretically ignore but practically recognize, for the "keeper" keeps the books as well as the brothel, and the police and officials are often on his side. In this way licentiously inclined officials, merchants, and travelers provide for the easy, economical, and legal satisfaction of their desires. I do not propose here to give a detailed account of this distressful and disgusting "business." Those who desire more information should procure _The Social Evil in Japan_, by the Rev. U. G. Murphy. Some years ago Mr. Murphy, by grit and pluck, carried certain test cases through the courts and secured legal opportunity for girls to quit the business if they wished. The Salvation Army and some of the daily papers took pains to let the brothel girls know their legal rights, and in a short period over twelve thousand, at that time over one third of the whole number, left the brothels, so that for a while the business was prostrated in many quarters. This single fact shows the spirit and attitude of a large number of the girls. Since then the wily keepers and all interested in maintaining this lucrative trade have succeeded in modifying the administration of the regulations, so that the girls are again closely controlled. There is however a rising public conscience and an abolition movement is gathering strength. The virtual slavery of the girls; the fact that they are openly bought and sold, and that, too, under governmental supervision and sanction; the cruelty inflicted on many girls by their keepers; the fraud practised in connection with their accounts, whereby a girl is kept hopelessly in debt, so that, however faithful she may be, release is impossible, and indeed the more faithful the more profitable she is to her keeper--all these facts are becoming widely known and are beginning to arouse public indignation. The government is openly charged with protecting slavery, and that of the worst kind. High government officials are being condemned for licentiousness. As signs of the times, I give a few facts. In the summer of 1909 the wealthiest and most centrally located prostitute quarter in Osaka was completely wiped out by a great fire. Before the flames were fully out, the anti-brothel forces realized their opportunity and under the leadership of the Young Men's Christian Association and Young Women's Christian Union began to agitate for refusal to allow the rebuilding of the business in that region of the city. A petition was prepared and signed by one hundred thousand people. Large numbers of Osaka's best citizens allied themselves with the movement. The result was that the authorities in charge saw fit to yield to the pressure and arranged that the new buildings for prostitution should be erected on the outskirts of the city. In the winter of 1911, the city of Tokyo suffered from a great conflagration which completely destroyed the section of the city known as "Yoshiwara,"[6] which for three hundred years has been assigned to prostitution. This center of the social evil had become enormously wealthy, and such magnificent buildings had been erected for the business that it had become one of the famous sights of Tokyo. Before the fire was fairly over, the anti-brothel forces began to organize their campaign, which continued for months. A magazine called _Purity_ (_Kaku Sei_) was started. In this case, however, success did not crown their efforts. [6] Foreigners commonly, but mistakenly, suppose that "Yoshiwara" means "Prostitute Quarter." Not long since an army division was located in the vicinity of Wakayama, a city of considerable importance, not far from Osaka, in which there have never been any prostitute houses. This led to the suggestion that it would be well to open there a regular prostitute quarter. The matter was keenly discussed and the proposition carried through the city council and authorized by all the lower officials, but when it came finally before the prefectural governor for signature, it was vetoed, and the veto message is worthy of preservation and careful consideration by those who are interested in these matters. The governor says in his message: "I was early convinced that the establishment of licensed quarters in the city was harmful to the public interest. It has been a subject of discussion in Wakayama now for many years, and I have investigated the question thoroughly from the standpoint of public morals, health, and economics, at places with and without licensed quarters, and find that the existence of such institutions is distinctly harmful. The standard of morals is lowered, the public health impaired, disease made rampant, the young are sent into wrong channels, homes are broken up, and extravagance is encouraged. The state of affairs in Shingu, in this prefecture of Wakayama, where licensed houses have been established, clearly shows that the existence of such places is extremely harmful to public interest. The majority representation to the authorities urged the establishment of licensed quarters on the ground that the quarters would promote the prosperity of that section of the city in which they were situated. It is true they may benefit a section of the city in one way, but the benefit so obtained would be offset by many other evils. The military authorities are strongly opposed to the establishment of licensed quarters, and their views are very reasonable. For these reasons I have decided to refuse permission for the establishment of licensed quarters in Wakayama city."[7] [7] As translated by the _Japan Chronicle_, May 13, 1911. In passing, it is worthy of record that the prefecture of Joshu has for over thirty years, by ceaseless vigilance, prevented government sanction of prostitution. Repeatedly has the battle been fought and repeatedly have the anti-brothel forces won. In this respect Joshu stands alone among the forty-eight prefectures of the Japanese empire. As illustrating the low moral ideals prevailing among a certain class of men, Professor Abe of Waseda University, in a recent brothel-abolition speech, told of a certain politician who, though a fast liver, was praised because he never debauched the wives and daughters of his friends, but always confined himself to those women whose services he fully paid for in hard cash! Colonel Yamamuro, the highest Japanese officer in the Salvation Army, on the same evening, speaking of the low moral ideals of the classes from which prostitutes are drawn, said that in connection with the Salvation Army he had had opportunity to know of twelve hundred girls who had been aided in the two rescue homes of the Army. Of these twelve hundred about one half had been prostitutes. The reasons given by them for leaving were various, such as ill health, cruelty, lovers, but not one said she left the business because it was wrong. The evidence is full and convincing that a considerable section of the Japanese people do not regard loose sexual relations as particularly immoral. In regard to the statistics of prostitutes, the figures given by Mr. Murphy are probably the most accurate available, and are substantially official. Between 1887 and 1897 the number of prostitutes increased from 27,559 to 47,055, reaching their maximum in 1899, when there were 52,410. Then, following up the work of Mr. Murphy and the Salvation Army, came the "cessation movement," reducing the number to 40,195 in 1901, and the following year to 38,676. Since that date the number has grown. In two years four thousand fresh girls were bought up, and a thousand more the following year. The latest statistics are those for 1906, when the number of prostitutes was reported as 44,542. It is safe to say that at the present time the number is near, if it has not passed, the fifty thousand mark. It would be natural to suppose that recruits for the geisha and shogi occupations would be found largely among the poorest farmers, but both my outdoor man and also my cook assert that such is not the fact. "Farmers would never sell their daughters for such vile purposes, however poor they might become. Parents who do such things are only the degenerate creatures who live in cities," is the scornful remark of my gardener. My cook asserts the same thing, and adds that farmers' daughters have not the genteel features and figures nor the light complexion essential to girls seeking such occupations. Other investigations confirm these assertions. The great cities of Nagoya and Niigata, and indeed the whole of Echigo, are famous for the supply of girls they send to the brothels of Tokyo. A poor man with several daughters has a pretty good investment, and rejoices more at the birth of a girl than of a boy, because it means an early and definite income. I found at one time in Matsuyama that all the girls of sixteen to eighteen years of age in a certain poor quarter had, in the course of one year, been sold off to the brothels. About that time a man came to me with a pitiful story of poverty; he had five children, but unfortunately they were all boys; had they been girls, he said, he might have sold some of them and so not have needed to ask my aid! The word used in connection with both geisha and prostitutes is perfectly frank; no effort is made to conceal by terms the nature of the transaction. The girls are "bought" and "sold." They employ the same words as those used in buying and selling animals, food, clothing--anything. Their purchase and sale is a regular business in which men and women openly engage, traveling the country over in search of girls, and conducting them in small groups to the keepers of brothels, who pay so much a head. And this takes place in civilized Japan! Moreover, in spite of the fact that girls may thus be bought, it is true that they are also occasionally stolen. I have known of a pitiful instance where the girl, a member of a respectable family, was boxed and shipped on a steamer as freight, to elude the police, and taken to Siam. In five years she has succeeded in getting one letter to her home, but the parents dare not put the matter into the hands of Japanese officials, as that would make the situation hopeless. But Occidentals may not forget how terrible a scourge is commercialized vice in civilized and so-called "Christian" Europe, and who has not heard of the "white slavery" of America, with its stealing of girls and young women for purposes of prostitution? The institution of comparisons between nations and individuals is alike odious,--but unavoidable. A fair comparison would seem to be that, whereas in the West the moral sense of a large proportion of the people is very strongly against the social evil and seeks to abolish it, in Japan the moral sense of the mass of the population acquiesces in the situation, so that the government and a vast majority of the influential people of the land unite to make the business safe, legal, and remunerative; and that, while in Occidental Christian lands no girl can voluntarily enter this sphere of life without being conscious of its shame and immorality, many of the girls of Japan may have no adequate knowledge of these inevitable consequences until their fate has been sealed. CHAPTER XII AMELIORATIVE EFFORTS The reader will desire to know what, if any, have been the efforts to ameliorate the evils described in preceding pages. They are of two kinds: first, governmental in origin, general in scope, legal and educative in method; and second, private in origin, both general and specific in scope, personal, educative, ethical, and religious in method. The general educational policy of the government is not to be regarded as a philanthropic or ameliorative effort to meet the conditions already described. This policy however does have a powerful elevating influence on the lives and character of the entire people. As we have seen, over ninety-seven per cent. of the girls of school age are in attendance, according to the reports. Though we allow a discount on these figures (and some may perhaps be necessary), we can still say that, if the present policy of six years of compulsory education is carried out, the rising generation of boys and girls will be able to read fairly well the daily paper and simple books. To millions of women this means the opening of doors of knowledge and opportunity which in ages past have been closed to them. The government has also been the chief initiative force in all recent movements to improve the economic and industrial conditions of the people. Railroads in Japan owe their existence to the government, as also do many forms of modern industry. Agriculture and fruit and stock raising owe much to the government, which has imported Western seed, Western fruit trees, and new breeds of horses and cattle. All these efforts have done much to improve the economic conditions, thus elevating the scale of living. People eat better food and more of it, live in better houses, and wear better clothes than they did fifty or more years ago, and--an important item--they pay less taxes in proportion to their income. A general uplifting process is modifying their life and thought, and this is profoundly affecting Japan's working classes, and, of course, her women. In regard to the specific evils introduced by Western industrialism, we have already seen how the government has sought to remedy the difficulties, so far as laws can go, but hitherto its efforts have largely been thwarted by capitalists. Among the notable efforts of the government to promote wise social reform movements have been the large gatherings, at considerable government expense, of leaders of philanthropic and benevolent institutions for instruction in the most recent and approved sociological principles. Competent specialists from all over the country have been employed to instruct these leaders, and thus the whole country is given the benefit of the special knowledge of the few. The government has also, during the past four years, distributed some forty thousand yen annually among those eleemosynary institutions which it regards as models of efficiency. Furthermore, opportunity for the higher education of women, first given on a wide scale during the past decade, while not yet affecting working women to any appreciable extent, cannot fail to do so as time passes, for it proclaims the intrinsic ability of woman and gives her a standing of intellectual equality with man, in sharp contrast to the humiliating position assigned to her by popular Buddhism, which has taught that women must be reborn as men before they can be saved. Indeed, they are born women because of their sins. A Japanese proverb has it that one must never trust a woman, even if she has borne you seven children! This long-believed doctrine as to the inherent incapacity and essential depravity of woman has no doubt been a powerful cause of her social degradation. Under the present system of general education, however, these doctrines and beliefs will soon be completely overthrown, thus making room for and producing great changes in the social and industrial conditions of all women. But the government is not the sole worker for the social amelioration of industrial conditions. Through private effort forces are being introduced which are more potent than any the government knows or can control. I refer to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This has already introduced such a leaven into Japanese society that nothing can now prevent its transforming the whole mass in time. Should the entire foreign body of 624 Protestant and 371 Roman Catholic missionaries be withdrawn from Japan, there would still remain (January, 1914) 728 ordained and 713 unordained Japanese Protestant pastors and trained evangelists, and 331 Bible women. Among the 815 organized churches, 182 are wholly self-supporting. In addition to the 90,000 Protestant communicants, 67,000 Roman Catholic people, and 32,000 Greek Christians among the Japanese, it is estimated by Christian pastors that there are many hundreds of thousands of the people who are conducting their lives according to the principles and with the spirit of Jesus. Furthermore, a careful study of modern Japanese civilization shows that the Christian conception of man as having intrinsic and inherent worth has been embodied in the constitution and laws of the land and is being put into wide practise. The rights of children, women, and inferiors and the duties of parents, husbands, and superiors are new notes in Japan, and are sounding forth a richer music than has ever before been heard in the Orient. Of course there are still discordant notes, as we have seen when considering the subject of the buying and selling of geisha and prostitutes; but so there are even in so-called Christian lands. Nevertheless, the conception of the value of the individual and of his rights is inspiring a hope among the lowly and hitherto downtrodden and oppressed sections of the nation which cannot be extinguished, and will in due time powerfully transform the traditional civilization, giving to woman a place of equality along with man in the estimation of all. The general education of girls, and especially their higher education, is signal proof of a wide acceptance of Christian conceptions. According to the _Résumé Statistique_ (1914), there were, in 1911-12, 250 girls' high schools, public and private, whose pupils numbered 64,809. In addition, the number of women in normal schools preparing to become elementary school-teachers was 8,271, and in the higher normal schools, 570. The number of female teachers is reported at 42,739. These girls' high and normal schools, through the ability they give their graduates to converse with men on a basis of intellectual equality in regard to topics of current interest while retaining their modesty and personal character, are so transforming the reticent habits and unsocial customs of Japanese ladies that ere long scant room will be left for the old-time geisha. The change Christianity is silently bringing to the home life of Japan, adding to its sweetness, purity, and conscious unity, and contributing a mighty uplift to both head and heart, few as yet have either eyes to see or ears to hear. The influence already exerted by Christian ideas and ideals on the traditional conceptions of Japan in regard to home life, marriage, childhood, the poor and lowly, the orphan, the blind, the leper, and the diseased generally,--in a word on the value of the individual and his inalienable, God-given rights,--is so widespread and so beneficent that it receives little specific comment and no opposition. There were no doubt in old Japan certain influences predisposing many to the new ideals and practises introduced from the West. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, at this stage in Japan's development to reckon accurately how much of Japan's new life is due to new factors introduced from Christendom, and how much to ideals already operative in the feudal system. No one can doubt, however, that Christian ideals have been the most important factors in the West to give woman her present status. Nor can we doubt that Christian ideals and practises are playing an important rôle in the modern emancipation of women in Japan. Those who criticize missionaries as forcing the Christian religion upon unwilling peoples know not whereof they speak. The Christian faith would make no progress whatever in Japan were it not found by Japanese themselves to be ennobling and satisfying. It is welcomed because it brings hope and peace and power to those who were hopeless and restless and powerless. But he is very shortsighted who thinks that the main forces Christianizing Japan are wielded by the foreign missionary. The missionary doubtless is an essential agent, but of far more importance is the work of Japanese Christians themselves; and in addition to these is the general though vague influence exerted by Western civilization as a whole, and particularly by the English language and literature. In that important work, _Fifty Years of New Japan_, are many remarkable chapters, but especially noteworthy are those entitled "Social Changes of New Japan," and "Influence of the West upon Japan," from the pens of competent, wide-awake Japanese scholars. Consider what Professor Nitobe says: "The greatest influence of the West is, after all, the spiritual.... Christianity has influenced the thought and lives of many individuals in Japan, and will influence many more, eventually affecting the nation through the altered view-point and personnel of the citizen and the administrator. The character-changing power of the religion of Jesus I believe to be only just now making itself appreciably evident in our midst." Somewhat further on, referring to the English language, he writes: "The effect of the acquisition of the English tongue on the mental habits--I had almost said on the unconscious cerebrations of our people--is incalculable.... The moral influence of some of its simple text-books used in our schools cannot be overrated.... They have been instrumental in opening new vistas of thought and vast domains of enterprise and interest to young minds." No student of Japan's new life, resulting from the influence of Western and Christian ideas and ideals, should fail to familiarize himself with the eighth issue (1910) of _The Christian Movement in Japan_, which gives a series of remarkable addresses delivered by Japanese and foreigners at the semicentennial celebration of the beginning of Protestant missions in Japan. Especial attention should be paid to the section treating of the "Influence of Christianity on Japanese Thought and Life." It will be obvious to any thoughtful person that changes so wide and deep, affecting all the fundamental conceptions of life, of manhood and womanhood, of the state, of law and justice, of right and duty, are not confined to those whose privilege it is to study Western books and acquire the higher education. In ten thousand ways the whole national life is being transformed, slowly it may be and silently, yet surely and steadily. And the benefits are accruing to the most lowly and least educated no less than to those at the top. All the working women of Japan have already received in some degree, and in the future will more and more receive, the blessings and the uplift which are coming to the nation through its contact with the Christian conceptions and standards embedded in Western civilization and literature. A volume--nay, many volumes--would be needed to tell in detail the story of how the Christian message has been and is being conveyed to the people of Japan. We should make known the story of Joseph Hardy Neesima, of the Kumamoto Band, of Dr. Clark and Dr. Hepburn, of Young Men's Christian Association teachers of English in government schools, of faithful, self-sacrificing pastors, evangelists, Bible women, and missionaries. We should recount the deeds of heroic lay Christians in all the walks of life, and above all in their homes, too often hostile, commending their new-found faith by their new spirit and life. We should tell of the work of Christian teachers of ethics in the prisons, and the remarkable results secured. We should relate the experiences of those who have struggled for the rights of prostitutes, of Salvation Army officers, of matrons of reform homes, of managers of ex-convicts' homes, of founders of orphan asylums, of supporters of private charity hospitals. We should tell the story of the scores of Christian institutions the central aim of which is to express in concrete life the Christian's faith and hope and love. But in addition to the narrative of direct Christian work, full heed should be given to the evidences of the wide acceptance by the nation of the best Christian ideals in matters of philanthropy. To meet the needs of the famine sufferers in north Japan during the winter and spring of 1914, and of those who were deprived of their all by the terrific volcanic explosion of the island of Sakurajima in January, 1914, more than a million yen ($500,000) of private gifts flowed into the hands of the relieving committees. For the earthquake sufferers the Diet voted 622,883 yen ($311,441). The late Emperor, shortly before his death, was so moved by the medical needs of the poor that he contributed a fund of a million yen for the systematic undertaking of medical work in all parts of Japan. This started a movement among the wealthy which has resulted in the establishment of a Medical Relief Association (Saiseikwai), having a fund of $5,000,000 already paid in and pledges for $8,000,000 more. Men of wealth in Japan are following the example set by the best Christian life in the West. In recent years several large gifts have been made for education. At the close of 1913 one of the most wealthy and always generous families of Japan, Sumitomo of Osaka, announced their decision to establish an industrial school for the poor, at an expense of $200,000. And in the same year Mr. O'Hara, one of the wealthiest and most philanthropic men of Okayama, announced his plan of opening a high-grade agricultural school for poor boys of that prefecture. The amount of the gift is not stated, but in addition to the large sum needed for buildings and equipment, he donates as permanent endowment some 250 acres of rice land whose value, roughly estimated, may be about $50,000. There are in Japan of all denominations and religions the following institutions for the uplift and regeneration of the downtrodden and for the help of the poor: Orphan asylums.......................... 100 Rescue work............................. 92 Dispensaries............................ 45 Reformatories........................... 47 Homes for ex-prisoners.................. 37 Homes for old people.................... 22 Poor farms.............................. 11 ____ 354 Of these institutions, the compiler of the statistics states that for one Shinto and three Buddhist, there are five Christian institutions. The leaders and inspirers in all the forms of philanthropic work are Christians, as from the nature of the case might be expected. "In the matter of Christian Social Service," writes A. D. Hail, in the _Japan Evangelist_,[8] "the Federated Missions have been represented by two Committees whose fields of endeavor are quite distinct. The one is the excellent Eleemosynary Committee. It deals with the delinquents, defectives, and dependents of society.... [8] January, 1915. "The Industrial Welfare Committee seeks to Christianize the industrial classes, and to encourage the development of dealing upon Christian principles with the complicated questions growing out of the relations of capital and labor. By the industrial classes we mean the non-capitalistic laborers and bread-winners. It includes men, women, and many thousands of children. They do not own the machinery they handle, and have no voice in the control of the industries with which they are connected. Being without any say in the control of factories, machines, and raw material, they can be discharged at any moment by employers for reasons satisfactory alone to themselves. Their bodies, their minds, and oftentime their morals, become subservient to foremen and managers. The unskilled laborers in particular have no margin of either wages or time for wholesome recreations, for accidents, old age, widowhood, and unemployment. Besides these there is another large class in Japan, of small traders who rent their shops and eke out earnings by the sweating process, or by renting rooms for doubtful purposes. To these are to be added fishermen who do not own tackle, tenant farmers and their employees, and the main body of school-teachers; also an army engaged in transportation, together with postal clerks, postmen, and others. Incidental to this are the districts of large cities and mining camps, where there are congested populations of unskilled laborers subjected to diseases occasioned by bad drainage, inadequate housing, and all the consequent evils. As these do not earn sufficient wages to entitle them to vote, they have no voice whatever in the betterment of their surroundings.... "There is a growing tendency toward the fixedness of a gulf between laborers and their employers, so much so that Japan's great danger in this direction is that she may fail to realize that she has a labor problem on hand, and one that can be solved here, as elsewhere, only on the basis of Christian principles of common fair dealing." In spite, however, of abundant evidence that Christian ethical and philanthropic ideals are receiving wide acceptance in Japan, far wider than would be suggested by the statistics of membership in the Christian churches, it is also true that the evils of Occidental industrialism and materialism are sweeping in like a flood. Turning now from general statements as to the ethico-industrial conditions of the working women of Japan, in the next chapter I give the story of a single institution. CHAPTER XIII THE MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME The origin and history of the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home cannot be told apart from the story of the man who has been its heart and life, Mr. Shinjiro Omoto. Born in 1872 and graduating from the common school at fourteen, he at once went into business, first as an apprentice and later with his father. At nineteen he opened a sugar store, which flourished and before long overshadowed the father's business. Money came in so easily that he soon entered on a life of licentiousness, and for several years he was as famous for his drunken carousals as he had been for his phenomenal business success. His parents cut him off, refused him admittance to the house, and for years he did not even speak to his father. [Illustration: MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME GIRLS IN THE MATSUYAMA HOME] In 1899, we held a preaching service in a theater. Mr. Omoto happened to be drinking in the saloon opposite. Hearing of our gathering, with some rowdy comrades, he thought he would break it up, with the result that we experienced persistent opposition throughout the meeting. But the sermons on Pessimism and the New Life, and my statement of the reasons that had brought me to Japan attracted his attention, and the next day I received an anonymous letter asking for tracts. These seem to have produced a profound impression, particularly the tract entitled "Two Young Men." It told of two hardened prisoners who had been transformed by the gospel and became highly useful and well-known members of society. Mr. Omoto thereupon set himself definitely to learn about Christianity, but privately, unwilling to make public his new hope. He bought and read through, quite by himself, the entire New Testament. Though he gained some idea of the gospel, he soon found he had lost none of his passion for drink. After a while he went to Kobe and joined a temperance society; but soon finding that the society had members who broke their pledges, he began to break his. In despair he went to Okayama and tried to join himself to Mr. Ishii, head of the well-known Christian orphanage, asking to be made a Christian, but he was told to return to Matsuyama and join the church there in his old home; only so could he be saved. Greatly disappointed, he returned and called on me early in June, 1901, but without telling fully about himself. He also called on Mr. Nishimura, an earnest Christian worker, who prayed with him, telling him that to be saved he must receive the Holy Spirit. That summer, quite exceptionally, I returned in the middle of the vacation. Mr. Omoto appeared at the prayer-meeting for the first time and was evidently in a state of great excitement, so much so that only with difficulty could we understand his remarks and his prayer. The gist was that he had that day received the Holy Spirit, that he was now saved, and that his joy was too great for utterance. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he talked and prayed. After the meeting I had a few words with him, and urged him to ally himself with our experienced workers. He was so excited that I feared for him, and wondered whether this might not be a tornado of emotion due to drink and to the nervous condition incident to his riotous life, an emotion which he mistook for the gift of the Holy Spirit. I urged him to begin at once to live the Christian life, cutting loose from all bad companions and bad habits. To gain an honest living he entered the Matsuyama Cotton Thread Spinning Factory. This required twelve hours of work daily, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, a hard pull for one who had done no steady work for years. He attended Christian services faithfully, so far as his hours of work allowed, and became quite intimate with two or three of our best Christians. Before long he began to talk about the wretched conditions and immoral life of the factory girls, telling us of the situation already described in Chapter IX.[9] His first thought was to give these tired children wholesome recreation. He secured the use of our preaching place in the vicinity of the factory and invited the girls to attend what he called the Dojokwai (Sympathy Society). He soon persuaded the girls to add a little reading and writing to their play, and later also, sewing. These meetings had of course to be held after the twelve or more hours of work in the factory had been completed. Care had also to be taken that the studies and the fun should not absorb time needed for sleep. Membership in the Sympathy Society rose rapidly and soon numbered seventy girls. [9] See pages 67-69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "In 1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns in work along with the older girls by day and by night.") At first meetings were held only in the evening three times a week, and lasted but an hour. But as the educational element of the society developed, others were induced to help and every evening save Sunday was occupied. In order that girls on the night shift might continue their studies similar classes were also held from seven to nine o'clock in the morning. Before six months had passed the play aspect of the society was largely superseded by the educational. But opposition of Buddhists now began to show itself. A few parents refused to let their girls attend. The most determined opposition however came from the manager in the factory who had charge of one of the shifts. Members of that shift were so treated that gradually they dropped out of the Dojokwai, and new members from that shift could not be secured. The hostile manager was however himself dropped some months later, and all opposition to the work from within the factory ceased. In a previous chapter we have noted the facts discovered by Mr. Omoto as he went the rounds of the boarding-houses in which the girls were required to live.[10] As these conditions became clearer and more appallingly impressive, he began to say with increasing frequency and insistence that the Sympathy Society, however successful, could not do what was needed. Only a Christian home would answer. Not only do the girls need to learn to read and write and sew, but even more than these do they need a home free from temptation, clean and pure and helpful, and elevating morally and religiously. The difficulties however in the way of such an enterprise seemed insuperable. To say nothing of the financial problem, a still greater obstacle, it was felt, was the securing of "recognition" from the factory, for Buddhist influence in the factory was at that time still dominant. During these months the Sympathy Society was winning its way among the girls and their parents, and Mr. Omoto himself was learning valuable lessons. [10] See pages 68, 69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "they were crowded together in disease-spreading and vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately tempted.") One was that the girls were not all eager to be in a Christian home. We of course forbade all drinking, irregular hours, and more irregular "friendships." Attendance on prayers, night and morning, and at the school, was required. It looked for a time as if we should fail, for lack of girls to meet the expenses. But in spite of discouragements we kept on. The earnings of the girls who lived in the home, for the first year, were 1,361 yen. Of this sum they paid for board 905 yen, and sent to their parents 456, whereas girls in the other boarding-houses were able to save nothing, although the amount paid for board was the same in all the houses, being fixed by the factory at 3.60 yen per month, or twelve sen (six cents) per day. In February, 1903, a representative of the government who came from Tokyo to inspect the conditions of labor in western Japan, heard of the Dojokwai (Sympathy Home), and was so much interested in the story of its work that he took time to visit it with several local officials. He was greatly pleased, for he knew of nothing just like this, in any other part of Japan, particularly in its hygienic, educational, and moral advantages, and he expressed the wish that there might be many such. This was our first notice from government officials. As time went on, Mr. Omoto was found by the factory officials to be exceptionally faithful to its interests; he was rapidly promoted from one position to another, and in December of the same year was made "visitor" and "employing agent." This required him to visit neighboring towns and villages and collect new girls when needed. He tried to decline this work, saying that he could make no false promises to the girls or to their parents, nor in any way delude them as to the nature of their work, the amount of their wages, the conditions of the boarding-houses; being strictly a temperance man, also, he could not treat with sake (sah'-ke) and so get into friendly relations, all of which things employing agents constantly do; he had no expectations of gaining any recruits; the factory would better send some one else. They told him at least to try. To the surprise of all, and of himself the most, from his first trip he brought back with him fifteen girls. For three years he continued in this work and was always successful in securing girls for the factory. Because of his refusal to touch liquor in any form, his traveling expenses were much less than those of other employing agents, much to the satisfaction of the management; and the girls he secured on the whole remained longer and more contentedly at work, because he had always told them the truth. This made his position in the factory more secure and influential. After about two years' employment by the day he was promoted to the rank of a regular employee and paid by the month. His hours of official service were also largely reduced in order that he might have time for his educational and Christian work in the Home--a striking testimony of appreciation on the part of the factory officials. As the months passed by it gradually became clear that the effectiveness as well as the permanence of the work demanded suitable quarters. The heavy rental paid for the house made self-support impossible. Results already attained seemed to warrant appeal to friends for gifts, for the purpose of buying land and the erection of a building. Responses to our appeals provided the needed funds, land was purchased and a contract made with a carpenter on exceptionally favorable terms, just two days before the opening of the Russo-Japanese war (February, 1904). Immediately prices went up by leaps and bounds; but our contract was so well made and the carpenter had already made such full subcontracts for the lumber, etc., that we were not troubled because of war prices. As we entered our new quarters in June, 1904, however, the factory shut down the main part of its work and discharged the majority of its workers. This was a severe blow to the Home. The occupants were reduced to seven girls. Although the factory opened again after a few months, the conditions during and after the war made it difficult for the factory to secure girls, and the Home, together with the other boarding-houses, suffered from lack of boarders. Beginning with March, 1907, however, special circumstances combined to fill the Home to its utmost capacity; during the three months of April, May, and June thirty applicants were refused admittance and as many more who desired to enter the school were declined. Increasing acquaintance with the disastrous effects of factory labor,--the lint-filled air so often producing consumption, and the excessive heat of summer sometimes resulting even in sunstroke,--made Mr. Omoto unwilling to persuade girls to enter upon such a life. The needs of the Home also pressed upon his time. These considerations led him, in 1906, to give up his work in the factory altogether, in order to devote his entire time and strength to the Home and to the upbuilding of the moral and religious life of the girls. In July, 1906, Mr. Omoto attended in Osaka the first convention of factory officials convened to study the problem of the proper care of operatives. Representatives were present from sixteen factories having night schools, and specimens of the work of the girls were compared. Mr. Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work sent in from our Home and many newspapers made special mention of him and his work. In September, 1908, there was held in Tokyo under the auspices of the Home Department of the Imperial government an eight weeks' school of applied sociology. Mr. Omoto was among the 376 persons who attended. Again he received exceptional attention and was asked to tell his story. At this school no less than thirty-six learned specialists gave lectures on every conceivable topic suitable for such a school. Among the speakers so many were professed Christians, and of the rest so many advocated such markedly Christian ideals, that some Buddhists are said to have taken offense, regarding the whole affair as a part of the Christian propaganda. In the spring of 1909 there occurred an event of considerable significance. Without a preliminary hint of what was happening, Mr. Omoto saw in the paper one day the amazing statement that the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home, along with seventy-nine other selected institutions throughout the country, was the recipient of a specified sum (200 yen) as a mark of government approval! A total of 40,000 yen were thus distributed in varying amounts, Christian institutions being recognized to an unexpected degree. Later, word came from the Prefectural Office summoning him to receive the gift. In the entire prefecture six institutions had been thus honored, and of these, two were Christian. This gift from the Department of the Interior has been repeated each year since. Again in May, 1910, a Conference of Social Service Workers (Chu-o Jizen Kyokwai) was held at Nagoya at the time of the Exposition, and Mr. Omoto was among those invited to attend. His address and statistical report received much attention. Mr. Tomeoka, representative of the government and chairman of the conference, spoke in unstinted praise of the work of the Home, which he characterized as "Kokka Jigyo" (a national enterprise), and recommended the adoption by others of several of its special features. In the spring of 1911, the Home Department of the central government published a small volume describing one hundred and thirteen model philanthropic institutions of the country, in which we were of course pleased to see that the Home was included, being the only one from the prefecture. As opportunity offered and means were available, following the advice of friends, four small adjacent lots were purchased, one of which we were almost forced to secure for self-protection, because of the evil character of the buildings upon it. We now own altogether about two acres of land on the north side of the beautiful Castle Hill, around which Matsuyama is built. Here have been erected at different times six buildings (three of them two-storied), for residential, dormitory, chapel, night school, weaving, hospital, bath, and other purposes. We have space for a playground, of which the girls joyously avail themselves, after returning from twelve hours of confinement in the dust and clatter of machinery. The garden, too, provides fresh vegetables of an assured character at a minimum of expense, adding much to the variety and the wholesomeness of the diet. The present value of the property is more than its original cost, for land and buildings are constantly rising in price, as is the case in other parts of the country. The city educational authorities in 1906 asked Mr. Omoto to open his night school to the poor of the district. For this he had to have a regular school license from the National Bureau of Education at Tokyo. This was to be a Christian school--the only license of exactly that kind in the empire, he was told. Industrial newspapers have been noticing the Home and its work for some time.[11] During the past five years the favorable attitude of local and national government officials has been particularly pronounced. Government inspectors have repeatedly been sent from the Prefectural Office and occasionally even from Tokyo to visit the Home. One such expressed himself as amazed at the excellent mental work done by the girls, in view of the fact that all their study takes place after twelve hours of toil. Nothing but good food, sufficient sleep, and a wholesome and happy home life could account for their splendid health and superior school work. One man remarked that the girls in the Home do better work than pupils in the same grade in public schools. [11] See page 149. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "Mr. Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work sent in from our Home") Even so early as the autumn of 1906 the Home Department of the central government sent down special instructions to the prefectural office in Matsuyama to investigate our work, with the result that of nine benevolent institutions throughout Japan selected for commendation, ours was the one most carefully described and unqualifiedly praised. A recent government pamphlet concerning industrial problems makes special reference, covering two pages, to the work of the Home. Thus has a small institution begun to serve as a model for the country. The good health of the girls in our Home has been in strong contrast with the health of those in other boarding-houses, even in the best dormitories of the best factories in other cities. Statistics recently compiled by the government show that the average death-rate among factory operatives throughout the country is extraordinarily high. The highest, fifty per cent. on account of an epidemic, was reported from a certain factory owned and managed boarding-house in Niigata prefecture. Not one girl has ever died in our Home. Of the 301 girls who had lived in our Home by 1911, only eight, all told, died. In 1912 the Home passed through a crisis that threatened to destroy it. Late in 1911 the one factory in Matsuyama, where all the girls worked, was sold out to parties living in Osaka. A new manager was sent down who introduced many drastic changes. The change most affecting us was the stopping of the night work and the lengthening of day work to fourteen hours: namely, from 6 A.M. till 8 P.M. The girls in the Home soon became dissatisfied, and not many months passed before all had left the factory. Mr. Omoto was urged by the manager to find and bring in new girls. He refused however on the ground that he could not ask anybody to work such brutally long hours. Had it not been for a little weaving department with which we had already been experimenting, the Home would have been compelled to close. More looms were secured and those girls who wished to remain with us were given opportunity for work. Mr. Omoto's attention was at that time directed to the condition of the weaving girls in the scores and even hundreds of little establishments in the city and its suburbs. He soon found that an educational, economic, moral, and religious condition existed among them not unlike that which he had found among the factory girls of Matsuyama a dozen years before. The weaving establishments are, as a rule, small private affairs, usually having less than ten girls each, and are therefore wholly outside of the supervision of the government. The treatment of workers and the hours of labor are entirely settled by the individual owners. As a rule the girls are apprenticed for from two to three years immediately on leaving the primary school, at an age therefore of twelve or thirteen. They barely earn their living, although they work from daybreak to ten or eleven at night, and in some establishments even till midnight--from fifteen to eighteen hours a day! There are no night shifts and rare holidays on occasional festivals. The hygienic and moral conditions are about as bad as can be. It is estimated that one half of the girls are ruined before the close of their apprenticeship. Our Home is now deliberately attacking the new problem, which in many respects is more difficult than was the old one. We have put up two small buildings on our own grounds, enabling us to have thirty looms to give opportunity for work to thirty girls. The uniform quality of the cloth produced by our girls, the central portions of each piece equaling the ends in quality, shows unflagging moral attention, without effort to rush the work and stint the material; this has already won such approval from merchants that the "Sympathy Home" brand can be sold for a little more than other brands, and Mr. Omoto is assured that there is no limit to the amount which could be marketed. An owner of several weaving establishments has become so impressed with the quality of the work and the character developed in our girls that he asked Mr. Omoto if he would not take charge of a hundred of his weaving girls. This new departure is especially promising, for we have complete supervision of the girls throughout the entire twenty-four hours. The girls, moreover, are already remaining in our Home as a rule much longer than they used to when getting work in the spinning factory. As successive chapters of this book have shown, no more urgent problem faces New Japan than that of the moral development of her workers. This is particularly true of the hundreds of thousands of girls in the larger and smaller factories and industrial establishments. The wretched physical, economic, social, and moral conditions under which the majority of these girls lived and worked at the time when our Home was started are not easily described. Many of the factory authorities[12] are neither ignorant nor unmindful of the situation, and are striving to remedy it. The government also has enacted laws not a few. But laws and official actions alone provide no adequate solution of the serious problems raised by the extraordinary industrial and social transformations sweeping over Japan. A new spirit must be evoked, both on the part of capital and labor, and new moral ideals and relations established. This cannot be done by laws alone. Only love and contagious personal example are sufficient for the needs. [12] It is not to be inferred from the statements in this book that the political leaders and the organizers of industrial Japan have been dependent on our Home for ideas and ideals in regard to the problems raised by modern industry. Many of those leaders are men of cosmopolitan education and are well versed in the best and most recent of literature of the West on these matters. It is true, however, that our Home has been an important concrete experiment affording in Japan valuable suggestions and stimulus. Our Home was designed to meet just such a situation and has to a remarkable degree, we think, succeeded. It has provided not only sufficient fresh air, nourishing food, adequate bedding, clean rooms, and wholesome recreation, but also moral and religious instruction, and some education. The girls in our Home have enjoyed conspicuously better health and have done better work and earned and sent to their parents more money than those of the other boarding-houses of Matsuyama. But better than these have been the educational, moral, and religious results. Their womanhood has been raised. They have been better fitted for life's duties and for motherhood than they would have been without the training which has been given them. Moreover, the results of the Home have been such as to break down opposition. The good-will and cooperation of the factory officials were won. Factories in other parts of the country also have recognized our Home as presenting a splendid ideal which, in a measure, many of them are already following. The local and the central governments, as already shown, have repeatedly sent officials to inspect us, and in their reports have not only praised us, but have described our Home in detail, saying that we have solved the difficult problem of how to care for factory hands. Through the Home we are reaching the lowest strata of the working classes of Japan, and are providing them with ideals, motives, and education, and in a way, too, which does not tend to pauperize them, for each girl pays as board a sum sufficient to cover actual living expenses. It is also exerting an influence on the townsfolk. The attitude of the people toward Christianity has undergone a marked change. Villages in the interior likewise have altered their attitude on seeing how their daughters, graduates of our Home, have improved both in intelligence and character, in marked contrast to those who have been in other boarding-houses. All in all, Mr. Omoto has attained remarkable success. He is absorbed, heart and soul, in his work of bettering the moral and religious conditions of the working girls of Japan, and is a man continuously growing in spiritual life, Christian character, and knowledge of men. I have never known a man more thoroughly converted or more enthusiastic in his chosen field of work. The Omoto of to-day is a different person from the reformed debauchee of thirteen years ago, who began this service for factory girls as the outcome of his sincere question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" His family have become possessed with the idea of social service, and his five children are being brought up in this atmosphere and in the fear of the Lord. Thus has the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home survived many threatening vicissitudes, attained conspicuous successes, and is now embarked on a new line of endeavor. May it exceed in the future its successes of the past and make still more substantial contributions to the uplift of the working women of Japan! * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). Text in small capitals was replaced with ALL UPPER CASE. The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations. Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected except for the following: On page 111, the book mentions "among the forty-eight prefectures of the Japanese empire", but there were forty-seven prefectures since 1888. 
36004	----	The Pullman Boycott A Complete History of The Great R. R. Strike. BY W. F. BURNS. 1894: THE McGILL PRINTING CO. ST. PAUL. COPYRIGHTED 1894 by W. F. BURNS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. I--The American Railway Union, 7 II--The Boycott, 15 III--First Day of the Strike, 26 IV--An Appeal from Debs, 32 V--The Federal Government Sides with the Managers, 40 VI--Troops at Blue Island, 51 VII--A Protest from Gov. Altgeld, 55 VIII--Incendiarism and Bloodshed, 66 IX--Slaughter of Citizens, 81 X--Business Men's Protest, 92 XI--Indictment of President Debs, 100 XII--A Protest by the Peoples Party, 108 XIII--An Offer of Settlement, 115 XIV--Debs in Jail, 124 XV--Blacklisting Begins, 139 XVI--Trial of Debs, 147 XVII--A Convention of the American Railway Union Called to Take Action on the Strike, 159 XVIII--The Strike Lost, 167 XIX--The Commission, 176 XX--Altgeld Investigates Pullman, 288 XXI--Conclusion, 310 INTRODUCTORY. In presenting this work to the public, I beg leave to say that I lay no claim whatever to literary ability, and will ask the reader to kindly overlook the crudeness of this my first effort. My line of work since boyhood has been confined principally to railway service; in short I am a switchman, and in that branch of the service, have been frequently confronted with the differences that arise between the management of the various railroad corporations and their employees. While I disclaim any credit for ability as a writer, by years of experience and careful study of the condition of affairs as they have in the past and do in the present exist, I profess to be able to fairly present the facts of the Pullman strike. This strike was a matter of unusual interest to me, not alone because my individual interests were involved, but because the independence of every man in America who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, was in the balance. The right to organize for mutual protection was questioned, nay more, the right to be heard, a right granted to the greatest criminal in any part of the civilized world, was refused by the power representing the capital of this country. This power fortified by the Federal troops, by the mandate of the Federal courts, instigated by the chief executive, the president of the United States, the account of this strike as presented to the public by the Associated Press, was George M. Pullman's and the General Managers' side of the question, distorted and colored to suit their purposes. My aim in presenting this book, is to disabuse the minds of the people as far as possible, from the misleading statements given out by the General Managers' Association through their mouth piece, the Associated Press. To this end I have carefully collected facts from the best and most reliable sources, aside from what personal knowledge I had of this strike. I obtained information from telegrams received in our Central Committee rooms, from all parts of the country, also from committees appointed to investigate the authenticity of reports received from different parts of the country where the strike extended. The general accounts I quote largely from the "Chicago Times," a paper whose honorable and manly stand throughout that great struggle, gained for it a world wide reputation for honesty and fairness. The accounts herein contained are truths pure and simple, and upon these truths I base the merits of this book. Very respectfully, W. F. BURNS. CHAPTER I. THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION. In order to give a clear conception of the greatest strike in the history of railroad organizations, it will be necessary to go back to the birth of the American Railway Union. This organization was instituted on the 17th day of August, 1893, in the city of Chicago, and owes its existence to its present leader Eugene V. Debs. Mr. Debs' connection with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen dates back to the early seventies, and be the credit due to that organization for introducing to the laboring people of America, a leader who stands absolutely without a peer in the labor world to-day, possessed of the collective traits of some of the greatest men of the past. I know no better description of Debs than that of Wm. C. Pomeroy in the Eight Hour Herald, as follows: "I am sitting on the stage of a great meeting of people, my eyes are closed in dreamy reverie, I hear a voice whose resonant tones are familiar to my ears, the voice, the words bear me in imagination back to the days of Rome, and Caius Gracchus is proclaiming the coming liberty of the people. The words of flaming eloquence suddenly change into the rugged tones of Cola di Rienzi, crying: 'Arouse, ye Romans; arouse, ye slaves.' The words are sweet to the ears, and stir my soul to extacy. Soft, I am no longer in the Eternal City, but wander among the hills and dales of Judea, and the voice has changed again. This time 'tis the compassionate tones of Him of Galilee, beseeching to 'love ye one another,' now swift changing in its mellifluous harmony, I hear Pandora whisper 'the dawn approaches, take heart of hope,' and Prometheus answers with the echoed groans of the suffering, sighing souls. The air is now filled with stirring martial music, and above its changing cadences pours forth in passionate appeal the stentor voice of Peter, the Hermit, raising in the bosom of men, the lethargic love of duty. Aye; on the German hilltops, pulpited he speaks, and Hermanic in deep-toned thunder hurdles back, 'I come.' Now there is a silence for a space, and the changing draperies of imagination disclose a newer scene. I am in the meeting of the Virginian Burgesses, and the voice has taken on the tones of Patrick Henry. It says: 'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,' and, 'he who would be free himself must strike the blow.' Now 'tis Thomas Jefferson giving utterance to, 'we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are born free and equal.' And lo! even as the soft tones of the 'chosen son' die into the distance, the voice of Andrew Jackson hurls forth the edict 'each man and every man in this country, by the eternal, must and shall be free.' "The echoing ages take up the dictum and it becomes mingled with the tones of him who at Gettysburg spoke the immortal flaming words: 'This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and the government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.' Scarce had the utterance of the martyr ceased to fill the air when Lowell softly says: "'He's true to God, who's true to men, whenever wrong is done. To the humblest and the weakest of all the beholding sun; That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.' "My brain is puzzled. How comes it, I ask myself, that these heroes dead and gone are near me here to-day? "What power permits them to quit their abiding places within the crusty bosom of mother earth, and visiting again the haunts of mortal man, pour forth their immortal utterances? My rummaging mind takes on a newer consciousness. Reverie lifts her leaden hand from off my brow, my eyes open and gaze upon a vast multitude of people--men, women and children. Men are standing on the seats and hurling their hats in the air; women are weeping in joy and waving handkerchiefs, all, all shout in clamorous accord. Their eyes are riveted upon the stage, and upon a man who is gracefully bowing acknowledgement to the thunders of applause. I am near him, I gaze in his face. 'Tis the face of Eugene V. Debs." To my mind the above beautiful comparisons are not overdrawn. In 1874 he was admitted to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and in 1877 his brother members of the local lodge, recognizing his superior ability, sent him to the Indianapolis convention to represent them. The next year he was a delegate to the Buffalo convention. Here he was chosen associate editor of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine, and three years later he was elected editor, and assumed full control. In September, 1880, he was elected Grand Secretary and Treasurer in Chicago, and to prove the confidence placed in him by this organization, he was unanimously elected to that office for thirteen consecutive years without a dissenting vote, and at the last convention, held in San Francisco, he was again nominated after making a speech, courteously but firmly declining, and was finally forced to refuse the nomination before his declinature would be accepted. When Mr. Debs assumed control of this office, the Brotherhood was on the verge of disruption. From this condition he, by his untiring devotion and wonderful executive abilities, elevated the Brotherhood to one of the most powerful organizations of the age, and thus it was through the instrumentality of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen he was brought before the laboring people. Some few years ago he saw that class organization would not be successful, owing to the petty jealousy existing between the different orders, and that in every instance where one organization had a grievance with a railroad corporation, the management would use one or all the others to crush the one having the grievance. In order to remedy this, he promulgated a plan of federation whereby all the different organizations, engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen and switchmen would stand as a unit in case of a grievance. This federation was accomplished, but owing to the treachery of some of the chiefs, proved unsatisfactory and was finally dissolved. But this did not discourage Mr. Debs, on the contrary, it made him more determined than ever to save the employes from the grinding power of railroad corporations, and to that end he instituted the American Railway Union, embracing all classes in the railway service from the trackmen to the engineers. This infant organization that so recently became such a power, was by no means the offspring of a premature conception. President Debs deliberated long and well, carefully considering all the points, and conscientiously weighing the advantages and disadvantages that would arise from the formation of such a union, before taking active steps to organize. He finally decided that in the American Railway Union were the only true principles of organization, and in conjunction with a few of his associates, men true as steel, such men as Howard, Rodgers, Burns and, Kelliher, this union was founded. The first strike that was authorized by the American Railway Union was that on the Great Northern Railway Line, against a sweeping reduction in wages in all departments on that system. This strike commenced on April 13, and after a stubborn fight of eighteen days (where one of the shrewdest and ablest railroad presidents in the United States was met in his every stronghold and defeated by the grandest labor leader in the world, the matchless Debs) the strike was settled, and victory perched on the banner of the American Railway Union. Then it was that the true principles of this organization were recognized by railroad employes, and applications for charters came pouring in from all parts of the country. CHAPTER II. THE BOYCOTT. The American Railway Union is in every sense an American Institution, whose aims and objects as previously stated are to protect and shield its members from the grinding power of railroad corporations. Its motto is unity: "One for all and all for one." The Pullman employes were admitted to this organization and consequently entitled to the protection guaranteed to all members, therefore when they walked out, after every honorable means to avert a strike was exhausted, the American Railway Union was in duty bound to sustain them. The strike was ordered on the 11th day of May, after an all night session by a committee of forty-six members representing every department in the Pullman works. When the word was given four thousand employes responded to the call, and this proved to be the beginning of the most gigantic strike in the history of organized labor. The wrongs of the Pullman people were not generally known to the public, the cruel and inhuman treatment they were subjected to, was kept strictly from the public ears. They were reduced to a condition of slavery beneath that of the black slave of the South prior to the civil war, for while the black slave was clothed, housed and fed, the white slave of Pullman was forced to work for wages entirely inadequate to furnish a sufficient amount of food to keep body and soul together. In this condition, on the verge of starvation, with all hope of justice from the hands of George M. Pullman gone, they revolted. Whether the grievance of these men was a just one, or their resistance to further encroachments on their rights was right or wrong, after reading the report of the committee appointed to investigate and report to the American Railway Union Annual Convention, at that time in session in the city of Chicago, it will be for the reader to decide. The report, as condensed, in one of the Chicago daily papers, copied and commented on by the St. Paul Branch of the American Railway Union, was as follows: After showing by way of contrast, that $30,000,000 worth of Pullman stock paid its holders 9-1/2 per cent in dividends last year, the report goes statistically into a comparison of wages in the past year, with the wages received by the Pullman employees when the strike was inaugurated. A fair example of the general reduction is given in a comparison in the price of labor involved in the construction of a freight car in 1888 and 1893. Lot 1526. Oct. 1888. Nov. 1893. Car carpenter $13.00 $7.00 Truck builder .90 .60 Truck labor .31 .09 Hanging brakes 1.20 .65 Delivering, forging and casting 1.05 .35 Delivering lumber .88 .21 Framing .40 .12 ------ ----- Total $17.74 $9.02 Other comparisons in the same department show that the wages of men employed in building freight cars, have been reduced 49, 57-1/2 and 47 per cent on contract work since 1888 and 89, and a long list of figures from the account of men in the upholstering department, show that cuts have been made in the prices paid for piece work during the last twelve months ranging from 33-1/3 to 50 per cent. The painters, according to the figures given, have been cut 20 per cent since 1893 and were receiving, when the strike went into effect, only 23 cents per hour, while the union men employed by the boss painters in Chicago were all busy under the scale, whereby they are paid 35 cents per hour until June 15th, and 32-1/2 cents during the summer months. The machinists, sheet iron and tin workers, foundrymen and blacksmiths had all been reduced from 30 to 50 per cent during the last year, and even heavier reductions, according to the report, have been made in other departments. Although wages had been previously reduced, the greatest cut went into effect last fall in the higher grades of labor. The reduction then made was from 80 to 20 per cent and in the lower grades 30 per cent. For example, the price paid for the decorating finish on the outside of a Pullman sleeper before the reduction, was $40.00, and now it is $18.00. By working hard for ten hours a decorator may earn $1.90. This sweeping reduction included all classes, and the laborers were compelled to work for from 70 cents to $1.00 per day, all this in the face of the fact that when a reduction was made three years ago, the men were told that as long as the shops stood there would never be another cut in the wages of those who worked upon the Pullman sleepers. A committee of girls, from those who were barely keeping body and soul together by working piece work for $2.50 and $3.00 per week, asked the foreman for an increase to enable them to live, and his answer was: If you cannot live upon the pay you are getting, go out and hustle for more. Why should we wonder that houses of prostitution find no difficulty in procuring inmates? Think of young women having to board and clothe themselves, and in many instances supporting an invalid mother or young brothers and sisters on such meager wages. The cold blooded avarice of the Pullman company is not even satisfied in requiring its employes to work for starvation wages, for in what he exacts from his tenant employes he is even more grasping. That model town of Pullman is owned by the Pullman company and everything about it is made to pay toll to this grasping monopoly. All employes must rent their houses from this slave driving corporation. There is now in the city of St. Paul a gentleman who formerly worked in Pullman, and growing tired of paying so much rent for such poor accommodations, moved to the adjoining hamlet, and rented a better house for $8.00 per month. He was at once informed that if he wished to retain his situation he would have to move back, and he did so. The house was of the average kind and was called a cottage, consisting of two rooms down stairs, each 10 � 14 feet, and three rooms up stairs, one of which, the front room, was 10 � 12 and the two rear rooms each 8 � 10 feet, lighted front and back, with no bath room or other convenience, and the whole, a part of a solid row or block. For this abode there was exacted a monthly rental of $17.00 although the cost would not exceed $1,000. A four room flat rents for $14.50 per month, and if you should want one of these cheap cottages with inside blinds for the front window, you must pay 50 cents per month for that much style. Some tenants have paid 50 cents per month for this luxury for more than thirteen years, which is pretty good interest on the cost of those blinds. About 100 acres of land is covered with dwellings and the rent derived is about $500,000 annually, which is over 8 per cent per annum on the investment. In many of these houses families are crowded into attics in order to reduce expenses to enable them to procure the necessaries of life. Recently a new church was erected in Pullman, known as the Green church and parsonage, for which is demanded a monthly rental of $60.00 and for a good sized audience room, and two smaller ones attached Mr. Pullman charges the Methodist Episcopal society $500 per year. These rents must be paid in advance and are deducted from the wages of the men, and notwithstanding that the wages have been reduced no reductions have as yet been made in the rent. The manner in which these men have been bled in the matter of rent, is fully equaled in the manner in which money for water and gas has been extorted from them. When the town was built a contract was made with the Village of Hyde Park, to furnish water at the rate of four cents per thousand gallons, and incredible as it may appear, this water was furnished to the Pullman tenants at ten cents per thousand gallons. In other words he charged $3,000 per month for the water which cost him but $1,200. This represents an annual profit on this one item of $21,000. Could cold blooded heartless avarice go further? Yes; in the matter of gas which was manufactured and furnished to the people by the Pullman company itself, and although the cost is but 33 cents per thousand cubic feet, the tenants pay $2.25 per thousand while the same gas is furnished the residents of Hyde Park for 75 cents per thousand. This adds from three to four dollars per month to living expenses in the average house at Pullman. Another source of income which is wrung from the unfortunate victim is for heat, for which the company charges for six months in the year $10.80 per month. It might be well to state also, that no person is allowed to keep a horse, unless the animal is kept at the company stables for which $3.00 per week is charged. Such were the conditions of affairs discovered by the investigating committee in this model town, nor was this all. Miss Curtis, a delegate to the convention representing a ladies' lodge of the American Railway Union at Pullman, and whose father died in September, '93, was obliged to work fourteen hours per day in order to earn fifty cents at the same work for which she received prior to the first reduction $2.25 per day, and not satisfied with reducing her wages to this starvation point, the company insisted on the payment of a debt of $60.00 contracted during her father's illness. This is but a sample of the devilish cruelties perpetrated on the employes by the Pullman Company to satisfy their hellish greed for gold. This corporation cannot plead poverty for thus treating its employes, as its capital stock is $30,000,000 and carries an enormous surplus of $18,000,000 which is termed a reserve fund. Mr. Pullman's personal wealth is estimated at about $25,000,000. Quarterly dividends of not less than two per cent have been paid regularly on the capital stock, and the stockholders receive every three months $600,000 as their share of the earnings. It is to enable them to pay this immense sum every three months, that the wages of its employes have been reduced. Can it be wondered that the American Railway Union took the matter in hand and declared a boycott on Pullman cars. When the report was received every brother present was deeply moved, and it was the unanimous sentiment of the convention to declare a boycott, but before taking action, apprised the various local unions of the state of affairs then existing, and received the sanction of the local bodies. They then decided that if the Pullman Company would not submit the difficulty to arbitration on or before the 26th day of June, to cut off the Pullman cars and refuse to handle them until the matter was settled. This action was taken June 22, and decided action held off until June 26, in hope that committees appointed to wait on Mr. Pullman would be successful in gaining some concessions whereby a peaceable settlement could be arrived at before resorting to the boycott, and, although several committees were sent to the management and every honorable means resorted to in order to bring about an amicable settlement, it was of no avail and there was nothing for the American Railway Union to do but enforce the boycott. CHAPTER III. FIRST DAY OF THE STRIKE. The 26th day of June was awaited with more than ordinary interest by the people of Chicago on account of the proposed boycott. The first train to leave Chicago handling Pullman cars was the Chicago and Erie Buffalo Express, and hundreds of men gathered to witness the departure at 2:55 P. M. It started out on time with several Pullmans attached and several Pinkerton detectives on board. This was owing to the fact that it had been made up before the time set for the boycott to go into effect, but drawbars had been chained together and fastened with padlocks as a safeguard against cutting out the Pullman cars. Everyone was anxious to see if the engineer would pull it out. All doubt was soon set at rest however, as the engine backed onto the train and started out on time as usual. The crowd then waited to see if the next train, the Limited Express, on the Grand Trunk, due to leave at 3:10 P. M., would meet with the same success, and after seeing this train also pull out on time, the crowd dispersed. The trains on the Monon Route, Santa Fe, and Eastern Illinois also departed with their accustomed regularity and without interference, and at 6.00 o'clock, as every train was running on time, Mr. Pullman and the railway officials were quite jubilant at what they considered a complete failure of the American Railway Union to perform the task it had undertaken. But inside of three hours they were doomed to disappointment, for at that time not a wheel was turning on the Illinois Central with the exception of express trains that had been started before the strike was ordered. The strikers might have stopped the Diamond Special which leaves at 9:00 P. M., but through consideration for the passengers who had already purchased berth tickets, and adhering strictly to the instructions of their leaders to do nothing to discommode the travelers who in all probability were not acquainted with the existing state of affairs, this train was allowed to proceed. The strike that paralyzed the traffic of the entire country was started in this manner. Early in the afternoon a committee of five switchmen, employed on the Illinois Central, made their appearance at the headquarters of the American Railway Union in the Ashland block, to learn authoritatively the nature and purpose of the order issued requiring them to refuse to switch the cars of the Pullman Company, as the instructions received by them through Organizer Meyers of the union, were not sufficiently definite, so they claimed, to warrant their resisting the railroad company, and forfeiting their positions by such action. The switchmen, they said were willing to help the Pullman strikers, but they wished to know to a certainty what was expected of them. The directors of the union immediately held a conference with the delegates the result of which was an order to strike if the company insisted on them switching the Pullman cars. Those who were not members of the American Railway Union were guaranteed equal protection if they joined the strike, and the result was a complete tie up of the Illinois Central R. R. The Chicago Times, in an article next morning, said that for rapidity of conception and execution this strike which probably involves five thousand men, beats anything of the kind on record, and in the same article says: the efforts to sidetrack the cars of the Pullman company yesterday was carried on with strict conformity to law and order. With the exception of a crowd attracted out of a curiosity to see what might happen, there was nothing unusual about the depot, there was no boisterous talking, no threats were made, and the few squads of police officers sent there to preserve order, had nothing to do. Train No. 7, due to leave at 9 o'clock, hauling two Pullman coaches filled with passengers, did not leave on time there being a delay of 30 minutes before it finally pulled out of the depot. After running within one hundred yards of Grand Crossing it stopped, there being a crowd of about five thousand people at this point of whom there was not to exceed one hundred and twenty-five railroad men. The engineer refused to start, and although Supt. Collins expostulated with him it was of no avail, and any further attempt to move the train was abandoned for the time being. At 11:30 P. M. tower man Cable, who controls the switches at Forty-third street, left his post, and two south-bound suburban trains were whistling for the switches. They were soon joined by three north-bound trains, a freight train, Michigan Central Fast Mail, and Illinois Central Limited, and all were tied up until one o'clock in the morning when the superintendent of terminals threw the switches. The Chicago Great Western, Baltimore & Ohio, Chicago and Northern Pacific and Wisconsin Central were next to fall in line and refuse to handle Pullman cars. President Debs, after reviewing the situation, asked the men as individuals to consider the problem involved, saying, that if the Pullman Company was right, then the strikers must be wrong, but if you feel assured that those men are only striking to gain that which is every man's right--living wages, then we ask your moral support. There is but one hope for the laborer. Labor must stand by labor. The corporations have now forced a fight upon us by combining to help the Pullman company; they have forced us to combine and use the only weapon which the workingman possesses, the strike and the boycott. The railroads have never done anything for labor that the latter should hesitate to use these weapons. It is a battle between allied monopoly against the rights of working people, it is a matter of broad humanity. I want to see the switchmen, the car inspectors and other employes wait upon the officials in a manly way, and refuse to handle these boycotted cars. I want to appeal only to your reason, and not to influence your passion, but I ask you to take a manly stand in the aid of men, women and children who have been ground down by the iron heel of the oppressor. I would rather be a manly pauper than an unmanly millionaire. I ask every man, as an individual to think for himself and to do what he thinks to be right. President Debs appealed to the men to commit no acts of violence but act in strict accordance with the law. The strike had now reached St. Paul, Omaha, Denver, Trinidad, Cal.; Raton, N. M.; Cincinnati, St. Louis and Duluth, and no intimidation, no threats, no violence of any kind whatever was resorted to. When the men were asked to handle the Pullman cars, they simply stepped down and out. CHAPTER IV. AN APPEAL FROM DEBS. As the light of dawn proclaimed the birth of a new day so the events that this day would bring forth was the all absorbing thought and theme of a great number of the American people. All were anxious to learn the situation, whether interested in the boycott or otherwise, as by this time the whole western part of the United States had begun to feel the heavy hand of the American Railway Union boycott, and every railroad from the Missouri to the Pacific coast, from Manitoba to Mexico, and all centers of importance in the West, Southwest and Northwest were tied up, because the American Railway Union men, in the cause of humanity and right, would not operate them with Pullman sleepers attached, and the railroad managers, in the cause of oppression, would not allow them to run otherwise. Thirteen roads centering in Chicago were now completely tied up, the Santa Fe, Chicago & Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Chicago & Western Indiana, Pan Handle, Monon Route, Chicago & Grand Trunk, Chicago & Erie, Illinois Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Chicago & Great Western, Wisconsin Central and Cincinnati Southern, and the General Managers had begun to realize the futility of carrying on the fight, and if they had not received encouragement and aid from outside sources, would have in all probability ended the strike at once by dropping the Pullman cars. As a prominent railroad man said when asked about the strike situation: "It is my opinion that the railroads will drop the fight just as soon as the American Railway Union can demonstrate the fact that Pullman cars can not be hauled without a long and expensive fight with their own employes. I know that this view of the case was taken by some of the managers at a meeting to-day, and Mr. Pullman will be notified that he must make a settlement with his men at once, otherwise the effected roads will drop his cars and resume business." The Union now felt confident of success. President Debs said: "We are sure to win as our cause is just, there will be no disturbances as the men have orders that there must be no rioting and no interference whatever with the roads, other than to refuse to assist to operate them. "Whatever the officials can do for themselves with the few men at their command let them do; we propose to be fair and square in this fight, and if within my power to prevent, not one spike belonging to any road will be damaged." And thus the second day of the great strike came to an end. June 28th added nine more roads to those already tied up. The Chicago & Northwestern; Chicago & Alton; Union Pacific; Denver & Rio Grande; Chicago & Eastern Illinois; Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Stock Yard Terminals, making in all twenty-two roads out and twenty thousand men on strike in the city of Chicago, and not one act of violence committed that could be charged to a striker. The Mobile & Ohio at this time succumbed to the boycott and sidetracked its Pullman cars promising not to haul them again until the strike was settled. This rail road is a large corporation, and its surrender to the American Railway Union was considered a great victory, and the directors at once ordered the boycott raised as far as this line was concerned. Minneapolis and St. Paul was now beginning to feel the effect of the boycott. The Northern Pacific was the first in the fight, and the same plan of action outlined at Chicago was followed at these points when the time came to make up passenger trains. The switchmen refused to couple on the Pullman's and were discharged. The mediation committee at once took up the matter with the manager, asking him to re-instate the discharged men, which he refused to do, and as a result the entire system from the Pacific coast to Minneapolis and St. Paul was called out. This plan was adopted and carried out on all the rail roads entering the Twin cities. The boycott was no longer a fight in the interest of the Pullman employes alone but had resolved itself into a gigantic contest between organized labor on the one side, and organized capital on the other, and although up to this time there had been no violence, no loud demonstrations, no threats of any kind, the Illinois Central demanded troops to protect their property, and the militia was ordered out. On the Pan Handle the Cincinnati Express had the cars of Mr. Pullman detached, and the officials cried "riot" and asked from Sheriff Gilbert of Chicago a posse to protect the U. S. mail. This was furnished, and although the mail cars were not molested in any way, the officials refused to allow the mail to go forward without the Pullman sleepers attached. Seven more railroads had now come under the ban of the boycott making in all twenty-nine at the close of the fourth day. On June 29th President Debs issued the following appeal to railway employes of the country. "The struggle with the Pullman company has developed into a contest between the producing classes and the money power of the country. "This is what Lincoln predicted at the close of the civil war, and it was this reflection that gave the great emancipator his gloomiest forebodings. We stand upon the ground that the workingmen are entitled to a just proportion of the proceeds of their labor. This the Pullman company denied them. Reductions have been made from time to time until the employes earned barely sufficient wages to live, not enough to prevent them from sinking deeper and deeper into Pullman's debt, thereby mortgaging their bodies and souls, as well as their children's, to that heartless corporation. "Up to this point the fight was between the American Railway Union and the Pullman company. The American Railway Union resolved that its members would refuse to handle Pullman cars and equipment. Then the railway corporations through the General Manager's association, came to the rescue, and in a series of whereases declared to the world that they would go into partnership with Pullman, so to speak, and stand by him in his devilish work of starving his employes to death. The American Railway Union accepted his gauge of war, and thus the contest is now on between the railway corporations arrayed solidly on the one hand, and the labor forces upon the other. Every railroad employe of the country should take his stand against the corporations in this fight, for if it should be lost corporations will have despotic sway and all employes will be reduced to a condition scarcely removed above chattel slavery; but the fight will not be lost. The great principle of American manhood and independence is involved. Corporate power, drunk with its own excesses, has presumed too far upon the forbearance of the American people, and, notwithstanding a subsidized press (to which there are many notable and noble exceptions), public sympathy is with the striking employes, who are merely contending for the right of their fellow toilers to receive living wages for their work. "I appeal to strikers everywhere to refrain from any act of violence. Let there be no interference with the affairs of the companies involved and above all let there be no act of depredation. A man who will destroy property or violate law is an enemy, not a friend to the cause of labor. The great public is with us and we need only to maintain a dignified, honest, straight forward policy to achieve victory. Let it be understood that this strike is not ordered by myself nor by any other individual; nor is the strike inaugurated anywhere except by consent and authority from a majority of the employes themselves. "Neither is this a fight simply of the American Railway Union. The question of organization ought not be raised, but every man who believes in organized railroad labor should take his stand on the side of labor, and its battles for his rights and those of his fellowmen. I have faith in the great body of railroad employes of the country and am confident they will maintain an unbroken front in spite of any opposition that may be brought to bear against them. "I am perfectly confident of success. We cannot fail. E. V. DEBS." CHAPTER V. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SIDES WITH THE MANAGERS. The fifth day of the great strike showed no cessation of hostilities, the entire Northwestern and Southwestern portion of the United States was practically at a standstill. Every road entering Chicago was partially, if not completely tied up, and the General Managers Association, under the leadership of John M. Egan was at sea. They now realized that they had taken a contract that it would be difficult to fulfill, and without the co-operation of some greater power they would be defeated. A lack of confidence in their ability to subdue the strikers and compel them to work, was well illustrated in a meeting between Sir George Pullman and Vice-President Harahan of the Illinois Central. W. M. Daley, of New Orleans, was the only witness to the meeting and his presence undoubtedly saved Sir George from a masterly drubbing at the hands of Mr. Harahan. Mr. Pullman entered the office of Vice-President Harahan, and in the course of time his conversation turned to the strike and its effect on the Illinois Central. This was the opening round. It aroused all the ire in the portly form of Mr. Harahan, and with blazing eyes he turned on Sir George. "You are not fit to govern men," he said; "instead of visiting your own works, you have a number of superintendents who furnish you with reports, and when they are colored to suit you take them as facts, and a result is business is embargoed, poverty stalks all over your grounds, you are alone responsible for the present condition of affairs on the railroads. Why don't you go among your employes and see things for yourself? If you did there would be no such trouble." Then followed a number of epithets such as thick head, incompetent, over-rated, and the official shook his fist under the stubby nose of Sir George in a very threatening manner. Mr. Pullman tried to speak, but the Vice-President broke in on him again. "You think you have a contract with this road that you can rub it in on us, but you can't, never will we submit to it, the railroads are losing $250,000 a day owing to your obstinacy. You are unfit to act as president of any company, and if you were to visit your much boasted town to-day, the chances are that you would be dealt with severely. Why, you are nothing but a figure head, you are not the actual president of the company, for if you were you would know something about it. You know nothing in regard to the actual state of affairs." It did not take long for the story to reach the different railroad centers about the city. It came to the knowledge of the American Railway Union that J. M. Egan and Manager St. John of the Rock Island road had employed two thousand men in Canada to fill the places of the strikers, and steps were taken immediately to stop their importation, but with what success it was impossible to determine. All this time the strike was spreading and the membership of the American Railway Union was increasing rapidly. The sensational reports of rioting and bloodshed in various yards proved upon investigation to be false, and beyond doubt circulated by the General Managers and eagerly seized by the subsidized press to win the sympathy of the public in the interest of the corporations. The police when questioned positively denied the stories saying there were no grounds for the reports. Marching orders were received at the headquarters of the Missouri U. S. troops, for the 15th infantry and though it was not known at the time the orders were received from Washington, it was soon learned that they were to go to Chicago and assist the General Managers to run their trains. At this time occurred the tie-up at Minnesota Transfer, which was the most complete and effectual blockade of any in the strike district. The Minnesota Transfer represents nine different roads. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha; Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Minneapolis & St. Louis; Chicago Great Western; Wisconsin Central; Chicago, Burlington & Northern and Belt Line Ry. All freight through the Twin Cities handled by these roads, is interchanged at this point. It is situated midway between St. Paul and Minneapolis and employes from three hundred to five hundred men according to the volume of business. This is a freight yard exclusively, and therefore had nothing to do with the handling of Pullman equipment. But this little technicality did not prevent this body of men from coming to the assistance of their brothers, and as each road was brought under the ban of the boycott they refused to handle cars or in any way assist them to operate their line. On the night of the 1st day of July, the Milwaukee road now under boycott brought in five cars of beer for delivery to the Great Northern. The men including the yardmaster refused to deliver the cars, and were sent home. A meeting was called for the night of July 2nd, and a committee appointed to wait upon the superintendent, Mr. D. M. Sullivan, and ascertain if the men were discharged. Mr. Sullivan answered in the affirmative, and an unanimous vote to strike was then taken, over three hundred men, the entire force with three exceptions quit work, and not a wheel was turned except by the superintendent himself, for ten days. The general Managers now got in their fine work by utilizing the government. A Washington special to the Chicago Times says: Our wretched administration is in the hands of the railroads, there is no doubt about it, Cleveland, Lamont, Olney and Bissel are at the beck and call of the corporations, from the White House down it has been determined to put forth every effort even to Gatling guns, to employ every arm of the government even to its Supreme Judges to destroy this strike and the laboring people concerned in it. The case is decided against the strikers in advance, the wired words of the General Managers are accepted as settled facts; what they ask for they will get, what they suggest will be adopted. The workingmen are to be ground beneath the heel of the military, and if necessary, to force them into submission they are to be sabered, bayoneted, shot down or taken prisoners or whatever is deemed sternly necessary to compel them to submit to such terms as their moneycrat owner sees fit to impose. This is a railway administration. So promptly loyal has Cleveland proven himself to be that it is to be believed that should the companies desire it, they could have the Executive Mansion for a round house and the White House grounds for switching purposes. The managers wired Olney to name Edwin Walker, who is attorney for the Milwaukee road as special solicitor for the government, to take measures against the strikers as they had no confidence in Milchrist. He seemed weak, his term was soon to expire and he seemed inclined to avoid harsh measures ablest with the men. They wanted Walker, he was the corporation attorney in the country; he had been cradled by, and grown up at the knee of corporations; he was their body and soul in the life and death struggle with their employes. They urged Olney to clothe Walker with the special United States authority to better protect them and overthrow the strike. By thus making the railway attorney Walker solicitor for the United States, the control of government power could be placed in the hands of the corporations to wield against the men. Walker was appointed by Olney and placed in control over Milchrist in the affairs of the strike. Mr. Walker was known personally by Olney, and Olney is at the present time one of the counsels of the Santa Fe and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, and said to be a director of the latter road. He has been for years intimate with Mr. Walker, who, by the way, is a hot favorite of Fuller of the supreme bench. There was, therefore a dozen good reasons for this selection, which addressed themselves to Mr. Olney, who is in this not as a cabinet officer, but as a friend and director of railway corporations, and he therefore precipitately granted the request of the general managers. Bissel, also a railroad director, shows Olney's anxiety to come to the back of the roads. (The truth of the above correspondence could not be denied.) In this way the entire available force of troops at Ft. Sheridan, including infantry, cavalry and artillery was ordered out by the President of the United States to assist the railroad managers against the people. Such was the attitude of this government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" against the people. The railway managers having now secured the federal troops, proceeds to issue injunctions restraining the strikers from using the power of persuasion on those men still in the service, to induce them to quit. This order drawn up by Judges Wood and Grosscup was a lengthy one, and peculiarly in harmony with the corporation interest. The Chicago Times, in an editorial says: In this Federal injunction, which is in the main eminently just and equally unnecessary, appears a claim in which certain persons named, and all other persons whatsoever are ordered to refrain from compelling or inducing, or attempting to compel or induce, by threats, intimidation, force or violence any of the employes of any of the said railroads, to refuse or fail to perform any of their duties, as employes of said railroads, in connection with the interstate business or commerce of such railroads, or the transportation of passenger or property between or among the states; or from compelling or inducing or attempting to compel or induce by threats, intimidation, persuasion, force or violence, any of the employes of any of said railroads, who are employed by said railroads and engaged in its service, in the conduct of interstate business or in the operation of any of its trains carrying mail of the United States or doing interstate business or transportation of passengers or freight, between and among the states, to leave the service of such railroad. The Times emphatically does not believe that any court whatever has a right to order men to refrain from attempting by persuasion to induce others to leave the employment they are engaged in. There is a natural law that in the end will prevail over the formal law built up by lawyers and courts. If as Judge Gary says, the law is common sense, this injunction will not stand, for common sense will certainly pronounce an orderly and respectful request to a railroad employee to give up his position and join the organized strikers, no crime. It is idle to plead that a discreet and just court will only enforce this injunction against actual law breakers, for there is in it an opportunity for injustice and oppression which makes it wholly bad. The injunction is becoming a menace to liberty, it is a weapon ever ready for the capitalist, and there should be more careful federal legislation limiting its use. Certainly if the restraining order of Judges Wood and Grosscup be good law there is no sense in maintaining organized labor. Childlike trust in the benevolence and fairness of the employer must be the workingman's future policy if this injunction be made a precedent. In the meantime the General Manager's association and the subsidized press were endeavoring to impress the public with the belief that the strikers were a lot of disorderly and riotous law breakers of the worst description. To show how much truth there was in these tales, I will give the statement of Capt. J. Hartnett as made after dispersing a mob. He said: There wasn't a railroad man in the whole outfit, but a lot of bums who thought they would have a lot of sport at the expense of the railroads. But we soon gave them a hustling, and I want to say this for the strikers, and by that I mean the real railroad men, they are orderly here and as quiet as possible, I have had no disturbance in any district that can be traced to railroad men. It is well known that on occasions like these every loafer turns loose and takes advantage of the strike to start a row, but the genuine railroad men are too sensible to cause any disturbance. This was true also of all other cities engaged in the strike. CHAPTER VI. TROOPS AT BLUE ISLAND. The Fourth of July dawned upon a scene that would start the blood of the signers of the Declaration of Independence leaping in flames of fire through their veins, if they could but reappear upon this land in the vigorous manhood of their youth; those heroes whose blood baptized the battlefields of Yorktown and Bunker Hill for the glorious cause of liberty and equal rights; and behold the spectacle of this day, they would think that they had fought, bled and died in vain, that victory after all was but defeat. Military despotism reigned supreme. The great masses of the liberty loving people who were wont to celebrate this National holiday of Independence in a manner befitting the occasion, began to think. Their thoughts took them back to the days of English tyranny, and they ask themselves, must this fight be fought again? The thoughts were contagious, and when the American people began to think, their thoughts are dangerous. The battle must and will be fought again, but not with the weapons of '76, but with the weapon the old man can wield as well as the young; the ballot. Wholesale arrests followed the arrival of the federal troops at Blue Island, free speech was eliminated, any man who passed along, who had the appearance of striker or sympathizer was promptly arrested, and that too without a warrant. The remark "that fellow is a scab," was sufficient to send a man to the guard house. A fireman was asked by his landlord, "where have you been lately?" That was enough, he was placed with other shackled prisoners in the guard house, but was released later on. In the morning there was a parade, but the old time patriotism was noticeably wanting, a fireman arrested for refusing to go to work, having a depressing effect. Patriotic speeches were prominent by their absence, and people began to wonder what day was being celebrated. The bloodcurdling lawlessness and rioting by the strikers at Blue Island, as depicted by the corporation press; when simmered down to facts proved to be as false as other similar reports sent out by the plutocratic press. The so-called rioting amounted to nothing more or less than expression of thought, and I believe if the General Managers, corporation courts, Cleveland & Co., could conceive and put into execution some plan whereby they could put a restraining order on the minds of the striker and deny him the right to think, it would be done. The gist of the rioting as I said before was simply expression of thought. A man as he watched a train pass by remarked: "There are d----d few Pullmans anyway." He was promptly arrested. Another remarked that some fellow was a scab, and was also taken in. This and other like remarks were samples of the Blue Island rioting at Chicago. Upon the arrival of the federal troops, the General Managers Association shifted the responsibility from their own shoulders to those of Uncle Sam, and the eager willingness that the representatives of the people exhibited to assist Sir Duke Pullman and the railroad corporation to subjugate and reduce the working people to a condition of serfdom, was sufficient evidence that the managers knew what they were about. They felt secure in the knowledge that their interest would be well taken care of by the administration, and sought the much needed rest that these weary sessions of plotting and scheming had earned for them. CHAPTER VII. A PROTEST FROM GOV. ALTGELD. It was plain to be seen that the presence of U. S. troops in Chicago had a bad effect. The people felt disposed to resent this uncalled for interference of the President. His unwarranted and illegal action in sending federal troops into the state of Illinois uncalled for by the civil authorities (waiving all question of courtesy), was a reflection on the efficiency of the civil authorities to maintain order, and a direct insult to the intelligence and loyalty to the citizens of the state. The governor protested against this high-handed proceeding, and in no mild terms insisted that he was amply able and willing to preserve order if called upon to do so. He assured the President that it was not troops the railroads needed but men to run their trains, and this was the exact truth, as the strikers were not interfering with the running of trains but refused to run them, and the companies could not operate their roads without the aid of the men who left the service. But they needed a shield to hide their helplessness, and this they found in the federal troops, therefore it requires but little reasoning to understand the bad effect on the people, made by the presence of United States troops, equipped for war in time of peace. This ill feeling, mingled with curiosity produced excitement. Excitement invited the presence of the tough and lawless element, which was exactly what the railroad magnates were striving for, as the strikers had no intention of interfering with their trains, and they knew that it was necessary to incite rioting in order to have an excuse for not operating their roads. Their devilish schemes succeeded only too well. A mob composed of the tough and hoodlum element congregated at the Rock Island yards and from Nineteenth to Fortieth Street, overturned box cars and destroyed everything that came in their way. The mob increased until not less than ten thousand people participated in the work of destruction, but be it said to the credit of the _impartial_ press of that city, they announced that no strikers had taken part in the lawlessness. Mayor Hopkins, who went in person to the scene, said that from what he had heard, and what he could see for himself, that no railroad men were implicated in the depredations, and business men whose veracity could not be questioned corroborated his statement. This occurrence was much to be feared by the strikers, as it was not the first time that such means had been employed to turn public sentiment from the side of the workingmen. Realizing this the men did their utmost to prevent it, and by threats and entreaties tried to persuade the mob to desist from the work of destruction, but were successful only for a short time. One of the strikers remarked to an officer at the time: "By Heavens! this won't do, there is not a striker in that crowd; this is done to injure us, and those fellows are not trying to stop it," meaning the troops. The strike had now reached Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo, and was rapidly spreading east, the entire country was in a whirlpool of excitement, and the strikers were jubilant. The general managers with the combined forces of the federal troops, state militia, and Cleveland and his cabinet could not operate the roads. One simple word from the general managers to Pullman would have been more effective in starting the trains than all the armies and courts in the United States or all the scabs from Canada, but rather than speak that one word, "arbitration," they would bankrupt every system of railroads in the country. On July 5, President Cleveland received by wire the following protest from Gov. Altgeld of Illinois: "Dear Sir:--I am advised that you have ordered federal troops to go into service in the state of Illinois. Surely the facts have not been correctly presented to you in this case or you would not have taken this step, for it is entirely unnecessary and as it seems to me unjustifiable. Waiving all question of courtesy I will say that the state of Illinois is not only able to take care of itself, but it stands ready to-day to furnish the federal government any assistance it may need elsewhere. "Our military force is ample and consists of as good soldiers as can be found in the country. They have been ordered promptly, whenever and wherever they were needed. We have stationed in Chicago alone three regiments of infantry, one battery and one troop of cavalry, and no better soldiers can be found. They have been ready every moment to go on duty and have been and are now eager to go into service. "But they have not been ordered out because nobody in Cook county, whether official or private citizen, asked to have their assistance or even intimated in any way that their assistance was desired or necessary. "So far as I have been advised the local officials have been able to handle the situation, but if any assistance were needed the state stood ready to furnish 100 men for every one man required, and stood ready to do so at a moment's notice. Notwithstanding these facts the federal government has been applied to by men who had political and selfish motives for wanting to ignore the state government. "We have just gone through a long coal strike more extensive here than in any other state because our soft coal fields are larger than that of any other state. We have now had ten days of the railroad strike, and we have promptly furnished military aid wherever the local officials needed it. In two instances the United States marshall for the southern district of Illinois applied for assistance to enable him to enforce the processes of the United States court and troops were promptly furnished him, and he was assisted in every way he desired. The law has been thoroughly executed and every man guilty of violating it during the strike has been brought to justice. "If the marshall of the northern district of Illinois or the authorities of Cook county needed military assistance they had but to ask for it in order to get it from the state. "At present some of our railroads are paralyzed, not by reason of obstruction but because they cannot get men to operate their trains. For some reason they are anxious to keep this fact from the public and for this purpose are making an outcry about obstructions in order to avert attention. Now, I will cite to you two examples which illustrate the situation: Some days ago I was advised that the business of one of our railroads was obstructed at two railroad centers, that there was a condition bordering on anarchy there--and I was asked to furnish protection so as to enable the employees of the road to operate the trains. Troops were promptly ordered to both points. Then it transpired that the company had not sufficient men on its line to operate one train. All the old hands were orderly but refused to go. The company had large shops in which worked a number of men who did not belong to the railway union and who could run an engine. They were appealed to to run the train but flatly refused to do so. We were obliged to hunt up soldiers who could run an engine and operate a train. "Again two days ago appeals which were almost frantic came from officials of another road stating that at an important point on their line trains were forcibly obstructed and that there was a reign of anarchy at that place and they asked for protection so that they could move their trains. Troops were put on the ground in a few hours' time, when the officer in command telegraphed me that there was no trouble and had been none at that point, but the road seemed to have no men to run the trains and the sheriff wired that he did not need troops, but would himself move every train if the company would only furnish an engineer. The result was that the troops were there over twelve hours before a single train was moved although there was no attempt at interference by anyone. It is true that in several instances a road made an effort to work a few green men and a crowd standing around insulted them and tried to drive them away, and in a few other instances they cut off Pullman sleepers from trains. But all these troubles were local in character and could easily be handled by the state authorities. Illinois has more railroad men than any state in the Union, but as a rule they are orderly and well behaved. This is shown by the fact that so very little actual violence has been committed. Only a very small per cent of these men have been guilty of any infractions of the law. The newspaper accounts have in many cases been pure fabrications and in others wild exaggerations. "I have gone thus into details to show that it is not soldiers that the railroads need so much as it is men to operate trains, and that the conditions do not exist here which bring the cause within the federal statutes, a statute that was passed in 1881, and was in reality a war measure. This statute authorizes the use of federal troops in a state where ever it is impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States within such states by the ordinary judicial proceedings. Such a condition does not exist in the state of Illinois. There have been a few local disturbances but nothing that seriously interfered with the administration of justice or that could not easily be controlled by the local or state authorities for the federal troops can do nothing that the state troops cannot do. "I repeat that you have been imposed upon in this matter, but even if by a forced construction it were held that the condition here came within the letter of the statute, then I submit that local self government is a fundamental principle of our constitution. Each community shall govern itself so long as it can and is ready and able to enforce the law, and it is in harmony with this fundamental principle that the statute authorizing the president to send troops into states must be construed. Especially is this so in matters relating to the exercise of the police power and the preservation of law and order. To absolutely ignore a local government in matters of this kind, when the local government is ready to furnish assistance needed and is amply able to enforce the law, not only insults the people of this state by imputing to them an inability to govern themselves or an unwillingness to enforce the law, but is in violation of a basic principle of our institutions. "The question of federal supremacy is in no way involved; no one disputes it for a moment but under our constitution federal supremacy and local self government must go hand in hand and to ignore the latter is to do violence to the constitution. "As governor of the state of Illinois I protest against this and ask the immediate withdrawal of the federal troops from active duty in this state. "Should the situation at any time get so serious that we cannot control it with the state troops we will promptly and freely ask for federal assistance, but until such time I protest with all due deference against this uncalled for reflection upon our people and again ask the immediate withdrawal of the troops. I have the honor to be, Yours respectfully JOHN P. ALTGELD, Governor of Illinois." To the above communication President Cleveland answered as follows: "To the Hon. John P. Altgeld, governor of Illinois. Federal troops were sent to Chicago in strict accordance with the constitutions and laws of the United States upon the demand of the post office department that obstructions of the mails should be removed, and upon the representations of the judicial officers of the United States that process of law federal courts could not be executed through the ordinary means, and upon abundant proof that conspiracies existed against commerce between the states. To meet these conditions, which are clearly within the province of federal authority, the presence of federal troops in Chicago was deemed not only proper but necessary, and there has been no intention of thereby interfering with the plain duty of the local authorities to preserve the peace of the city. GROVER CLEVELAND." CHAPTER VIII. INCENDIARISM AND BLOODSHED. The 6th day of July was one long to be remembered, as the first act of incendiarism was committed. A conflagration was started along the tracks of the Pan Handle, Baltimore & Ohio; Chicago & Northern Pacific, and Belt Line R. R., which terminated in the burning of whole trains of cars, switch houses and tool-houses belonging to these companies. A splendid tower house belonging to the Pan Handle was saved through the supreme efforts of the strikers, who tore away the burning sidewalks which connected the tool-house with the tower-house. This fine structure was recently built and cost the company $40,000. Upon the authority of the city police and firemen, I can state that the fires were started by a crowd of young hoodlums and toughs living in the vicinity, and the strikers were in no way responsible for them. There was only a small crowd of these young toughs around the yards, they scattered in different directions and simultaneously fire broke out in different places. One boy was seen to set fire to a bunch of waste, and throw it into the empty cars as he ran, and the dry woodwork was soon a mass of flames. Between eight hundred and sixteen hundred cars were destroyed by this conflagration and the loss aggregated over $200,000, besides three men killed outright and seven wounded. The peaceable and law abiding city of Chicago was feeling the effects of a reign of terror. Innocent men, women and children were being shot down or bayoneted by the tools of railroad corporations in a most cold blooded and heartless manner. According to the statements of eye witnesses some young fellows under the age of sixteen years, and therefore not strikers, threw stones at the soldiers who at once began to shoot indiscriminately into a crowd composed of men, women and children who had no connection whatever with the affair, then with fixed bayonets charged upon the people, and those who were unfortunate enough to be caught were severely dealt with. One old man, a Pole, who was standing in his own door yard, and seeing the people run took fright and started into his house, was pursued by a soldier who saw him run and stabbed in the back. The old man fell shrieking to the ground, begging for mercy, when the brutal fiend plunged the bayonet twice more into the helpless form and left him in a dying condition. One young lady was shot while standing on the roof of her own house, and fell a corpse in her brother's arm. Still another victim was a man who was shot while standing in the doorway of his home and a rioter by the name of Burke was shot and killed in the charge. In an editorial the Chicago Times says: "Let us examine the net results of the activity of the troops on Saturday; results of which the amateur soldier Brigadier General Wheeler remarked: "I am glad that the troops made a stand and that blood was shed." There is some conflict in the reports of the day's carnage, but the salient facts seem to be these: "Three persons in all were shot dead, one of these, an eighteen year old girl, was standing on a distant house top watching the fray, when a bullet pierced her heart. Of course she was not a striker nor was her continued life a menace to American institutions. "John Burke, identified by the police as a professional crook, was another victim and his presence in the mob adds evidence to the claim of the Times that the rioting was the work of chronic toughs and criminals and not of workingmen. Joseph Warzouski, the third to fall before a military bullet, was sitting smoking before his house door when wantonly shot down by a regular. He was not a striker, and not within one hundred yards of railroad property when murdered. "Of the wounded five were women, one of whom looses an arm and another a leg. Six were boys under nineteen years of age, and one was a baby. "The points which these facts demonstrate, is that the rioting is not the work of members of the American Railway Union, or in fact of workingmen of any organization, but the acts of toughs and pluguglies and boisterous boys, with whom this city like other large cities, abound. Though the crowd looks large and dangerous, the actual number of combatants is comparatively small, and the clubs of the police instead of the bullets and bayonets of the soldiers, would have been the proper weapons to use. Then Chicago would not have been disgraced by shedding the blood of women and children and taking innocent lives." On July 6, Mr. Debs issued the following clear and succinct statement of the causes and status of the present condition of affairs: "To the public:--So many misleading reports have been given currency in reference to the great railroad strike now in progress that I am prompted, in the interest of justice and fair play, to give the public an honest, impartial statement of the issues involved and the facts as they actually exist. My purpose in this is to have the great American public--the plain people--in every avenue of life conversant with the situation as it really is, that they who constitute the highest tribunal we know, may pass judgment upon our acts, condemn us if we are wrong, and uphold us if we are right. "First of all let it be said that the Pullman employes who struck May 6th, last, did so entirely of their own accord." "Their action in so doing was spontaneous and unanimous. They simply revolted against a series of deep-seated wrongs of long standing, and no power could stay them. It has been charged, and the charge has been widely accepted, that they were induced to strike by their "leaders" and labor agitators; that if left alone they would have remained at work. The charge is wholly untrue. "The fact is that the officers of the American Railway Union used all their influence to pacify the employes and advised them repeatedly not to strike, but to bear patiently their grievances until a peaceable settlement could be effected. To the truth of this statement the employes themselves will bear willing testimony. "But the grievances of the employes, men and women, had become so aggravated, so galling, that patience deserted them, and they abandoned their employment rather than to submit longer to conditions against which their very souls revolted. Whether they were right or not, let only those judge who comprehend the conditions under which these faithful employes toiled and groaned. Let us avoid sentiment. The bare facts will suffice, and they are haggard enough to excite the sympathy of every good citizen, rich or poor, employer or employed. "The Pullman company, be it understood owns the town of Pullman, owns the houses, the homes of employes, controls the light and water, and other necessaries of life, and wages are so adjusted to living expenses that in a large majority of cases the employes are barely able to support their families. Proof overwhelming can be furnished. One instance will suffice. At the time they struck the employes were in arrears to the Pullman company $70,000 for rent alone. Wages had been repeatedly reduced but rent and other expenses had remained the same. "At this rate it would be a question of a short time only until the employes would have been hopelessly involved in debt, mortgaged soul and body to the Pullman company. "The employes from the beginning, have been willing to arbitrate their differences with the company. That is their position to-day. The company arrogantly declares that there is nothing to arbitrate. If this be true why not allow a board of fair and impartial arbitrators to determine the fact? "At this point we appeal to the public as to whether the position of the employes is entitled to the sanction of the public conscience. If the employes were to assume the position of the Pullman company and defiantly declare they had nothing to arbitrate, and arbitrarily demand unconditional surrender as the only basis of settlement they would merit the condemnation of the public and it would certainly and swiftly fall upon them with crushing severity. Committee after committee waited upon the officials of the Pullman company with the vain hope of effecting a settlement. They were willing to make concessions, to compromise in the interest of peace. All their advances were repelled. "The company was, and is, unyielding as adamant. Finally, June 12th, the delegates of the American Railway Union, representing 425 local unions of railway employes located on the principal lines of American railways, met in convention at Chicago. The Pullman trouble had been discussed at their local meetings. Many of the delegates came instructed. The grievances of the Pullman employes were taken under consideration, and two separate committees were sent to the officials. "Not the slightest satisfaction could be obtained. As a last resort the delegates by a unanimous vote determined that unless the Pullman company would agree to do justice to their employes within five days, the members of the order would refuse to haul Pullman cars. This action be it remembered, was not taken until the strike had been on six weeks, and every conceivable effort to obtain redress had failed because of the obstinacy of the company. "Up to this time the trouble had been confined to the Pullman company and its employes. How, then, did the strike extend to the railways? Let the answer be given in accordance with the facts. The day before the order of the delegates declining to haul Pullman cars, went into effect, the General Managers' association, representing the principal Western railways, met and passed a series of resolutions, declaring in substance that they would uphold the Pullman company in its fight upon the employes, that they would haul Pullman cars and that they would stand together in crushing out the American Railway Union. The resolutions in question were published in the city papers and can be referred to in substantiation of this averment. It will thus be seen that the railway companies virtually joined forces with the Pullman company, went into partnership with them so to speak, to reduce and defeat their half starved employes. In this way the trouble was extended from line to line, and from system to system until a crisis has been reached. The business of the country is demoralized to an extent that defies exaggeration. "To say that the situation is alarming is entirely within the bounds of prudent statement. Every good citizen must view the outlook with grave concern. "Something should, something must be done. The American people are a peace-loving people--they want neither anarchy or revolution. They have faith in their institutions, they believe in law and order, they believe in good government, but they also believe in fair play. Once aroused they will not tolerate arbitrary and dictatorial defiance, even on the part of an alliance of rich and powerful corporations. "What can be done to dispel the apprehension that now prevails, and restore peace and confidence? The American Railway Union on whose authority and in whose behalf this statement is made, stands ready, has from the beginning stood ready, to do anything in its power, provided it is honorable to end this trouble. "This, briefly stated, is the position the organization occupies. It simply insists that the Pullman Company shall meet its employes and do them justice. We guarantee that the latter will accept any reasonable proposition. "The company may act through its officials or otherwise, and the employes through their chosen representatives. Let them agree as far as they can, and where they fail to agree, let the points in dispute be subjected to arbitration. The question of the recognition of the American Railway Union or any other organization is waived. We do not ask, nor have we ever asked for a recognition as an organization. We care nothing about that, and so far as we are concerned it has no part in the controversy. Let the officials deal with the employes without reference to organizations. Let the spirit of conciliation, mutual concession, and compromise animate and govern both sides, and there will be no trouble in reaching a settlement that will be satisfactory to all concerned. "This done let the railway companies agree to restore all their employes to their situations without prejudice and the trouble will be ended. The crisis will thus be averted, traffic will resume and peace will reign. The railways are not required to recognize the American Railway Union. This has never been asked nor is it asked now. "If there are those who discover in this statement a 'weakening' on the part of the employes, as has been so often charged when an exposition of the true attitude of our order was attempted, we have only to say that they are welcome to such solace as such a perverted conclusion affords them. We have been deliberately and maliciously misrepresented, but we have borne it all with an unwavering faith that the truth will finally and powerfully prevail. We firmly believe our cause is just, and while we hold that belief, we will not recede. If we are wrong we are ready to be convinced. We are open to reason and to conviction, but we will not be cowed or intimidated. Were we to sacrifice the multiplied thousands of wageworkers who have committed their interests to our hands and yield to the pressure of corporate power, we would be totally unworthy of American citizenship. "It may be asked what sense is there in sympathetic strikes. Let the corporations answer. "When one is assailed all go to the rescue. They stand together; they support each other with men, money and equipments. Labor, in unifying its forces, simply follows their example. The corporations established a precedent. If the proceeding is vicious and indefensible let them first abolish it. "In this contest labor will stand by labor. Other organizations of workingmen have themselves felt the oppressive hand of corporate capital. They will not be called out, but will go out. And the spectacle of Mr. Pullman, fanned by the breezes of the seashore while his employes are starving, is not calculated to prevent their fellow wageworkers from going to their rescue by their only means at their command. "A few words in reference to myself, although ordinarily I pay no attention to misrepresentation or vituperation, may not be out of place, not because of myself personally, but on account of the cause I have the honor to in part represent, which may suffer if silence is maintained while it is assailed with falsehood and malignant detraction. I shirk no responsibility, neither do I want credit to which I am not entitled. This strike was not 'ordered' by myself nor by any other individual. I have never 'ordered' nor 'called' anybody out. Under the rules of the American Railway Union members can only strike when a majority of the members so decide. "The votes of the delegates in this instance was unanimous, and where ever men have struck they did so of their own accord. I have simply served the notice after the men themselves had determined to go out. "This is the extent of my authority and I have never exceeded it. My alleged authority to 'call' or 'order' out has been made the pretext on which to assail me with every slander that malignity could conceive. So far as I am personally concerned, detraction cannot harm me, nor does it matter if it could. I do not amount to more than the humblest member of our order--perhaps not as much. Fate or fortune has assigned me a duty, and, no matter how trying the ordeal or severe the penalties I propose to perform it. The reflection that an honest man has nothing to fear sustains and comforts me in every hour of trial. "In closing let me repeat that we stand ready to do our part toward averting the impending crisis. We have no false pride to stand in the way of a statement. We do not want official recognition. All we ask is fair play for the men who have chosen us to represent them. "If the corporations refuse to yield and stubbornly maintain that there is 'nothing to arbitrate,' the responsibility of what may ensue will be upon their heads, and they cannot escape its penalties. EUGENE V. DEBS." CHAPTER IX. SLAUGHTER OF CITIZENS. The situation at Hammond, Ind., would compare favorably with Chicago in so far as the wanton shooting of innocent citizens was concerned. The town had become infested with a gang of toughs from Chicago, who overturned a number of box cars and blocked the passage of trains. About noon of July 8th, the U. S. troops arrived, and their appearance attracted large crowds of citizens on the streets, in the vicinity of the railroad tracks. The troops who were ensconced in passenger cars were being hauled up and down the track, when a gang of toughs attempted to overturn a Pullman coach. The soldiers, who could easily have left the coaches and placed the lawbreakers under arrest opened fire, but strange to say these sharpshooters, under instructions to shoot to kill, did not wound even one of the lawless rioters. Not so, however, with the citizens who were walking along the street and had no connection whatever with the mob. Charles Fleischer, who lived near with his wife and five children, walked down the street in search of his little son, when without a moment's warning he fell to the ground a corpse pierced with a law and order bullet. This man had no connection whatever with the riot nor even with the strike. Miss Flemming, of Chicago, who was visiting friends in Hammond was on the street when the shooting occurred and was seriously injured by a shot in the knee. Wm. Campbell, Victor Dizuttner and an unknown man were also shot and seriously injured by the regulars without the slightest provocation. These people had no connection with the rioters, were citizens of Hammond, and not on railroad property. Bullets crashed through frame walls, and I was told by a man whose head was grazed by a bullet while in his room, that nothing short of a miracle saved many persons from being shot down in their own dwellings. Mayor Reily whose anger knew no bounds, after the killing rushed to the telegraph office and wired Governor Matthews, asking if martial law had been proclaimed. I should like to know, he said, by what authority the U. S. troops come to our city and shoot down our citizens without the slightest warning. Immediately after the fatal occurrence, A. Shields and Dr. F. E. Bell, representing the citizens of Hammond, wired Governor Matthews the following message: "Federal troops shooting down citizens promiscuously and without provocation. Cannot something be done to protect citizens? Act quickly." The governor replied that he had sent troops to restore order, enforce law, and protect lives of law abiding citizens. Lawlessness and rioting must be suppressed. Citizens obeying law had nothing to fear. Was ever military despotism more thoroughly demonstrated? What further proof was necessary than the reply of the chief executive of the state, to the citizens, that they were at the mercy of, and subject to the arrogant brutality of military despotism? The governor in his reply said: "Citizens obeying law have nothing to fear, that lawlessness must be suppressed." According to that we can only arrive at one conclusion; that the persons overturning cars and destroying property were obeying the law, as they were not shot down nor were they arrested, but on the other hand peaceable citizens who were in no way connected with the rioting, were shot and maimed by the troops. The people were beginning to regard the law with suspicion, they no longer felt that sense of security, the implicit confidence, they were wont to place in the constitution. The law of to-day, if the interests of the railroad corporations so required, would be reversed to-morrow. Under those circumstances could it be wondered that the people were beginning to lose the respect that had been accorded the law, and to which it was entitled? Could it be wondered that they became restless and exhibited signs of revolting against such damnable brutality, and the indignities to which they were subjected under the guise of the law? Cleveland was now beginning to fear, that in his eagerness to assist the railroads in crushing the strikers he had overreached himself and the wanton murder of citizens, he feared, might have a damaging effect on his future political plans. His uneasiness was quite apparent, while on the other hand his co-conspirator, Olney, was in a happy state of mind. He claimed to be able with the anti-trust bill, to break up every labor union in America. The general managers, finding out that the city would not be held responsible for the loss of and damage to railroad property, were now in favor of removing the troops from the city of Chicago--but knowing the effect of such action after making an appeal for their assistance--did not ask for their removal. The situation throughout the country had not materially changed, and the prospects for a final victory for the strikers looked very favorably. General Miles circulated a story that ninety per cent of the citizens of Chicago were in sympathy with the Pullman company and the railroads. The railway managers took advantage of this report and spread and distorted it in order to discourage the strikers. Now for facts: The trades unions of Chicago alone represent 750,000 people, adding to this the membership of the railway unions you have a total of 900,000 or ninety per cent of the citizens, who were in direct sympathy with the strikers. And it was not confined to members of Unions alone; such men as Bishop Fallaws, Rev. Dr. Henson, Prof. E. W. Bennis, Rev. G. P. Brushingham, Rev. W. H. Carvardine, Mayor Hopkins and hosts of other men prominent in the affairs of the city endorsed the men and denounced the railroad corporations. Resolutions by the score were passed by business men, by the Typographical Unions and other organizations endorsing the American Railway Union, and denouncing Pullman and the railroads, also condemning the action of Grover Cleveland in upholding the corporations against the workingmen. Resolutions were passed requesting all sympathizers to wear a white ribbon, the badge adopted by the American Railway Union, and the sea of white ribbons to be seen in Chicago would not bear out the statement of Gen. Miles. The labor unions now signified their willingness to strike in support of the movement if called upon by the American Railway Union. Grover Cleveland at this time issued a proclamation which--to all intents and purposes--declared martial law in the city of Chicago. This was what Gen. Miles desired, as it virtually gave him full power to rule with despotic sway over the citizens and civil authorities. The following protest was wired the President of the United States by President Debs, of the American Railway Union and Grand Master Sovereign of the Knights of Labor. "To the Hon. Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C. "Dear Sir:--Through a long period of depression, enforced idleness and low wages, resulting in wide spread poverty, and in many cases actual starvation, the working people have been patient, patriotic and law abiding, and not until the iron heel of corporate tyranny was applied with the intention to subjugate the working people to the will of arrogant monopolies, did they make any effort to stay their oppressors. "The Pullman strike was not declared until the employes of the Pullman company were driven to the verge of starvation, their entreaties spurned with contempt, and their grievances denied a hearing. No refusal to handle Pullman cars was declared by any railway employe until all propositions looking towards arbitration and conciliation were rejected by the Pullman company. Notwithstanding the truths set forth above were known to the public and the national authorities, you have seen fit under guise of protecting the mails and federal property to invoke the services of the United States army, whose very presence is used to coerce and intimidate peaceable working people into a humiliating obedience to the will of their oppressors. "By your acts, insofar as you have supplanted civil and state authorities with the federal military power, the spirit of unrest and distrust has so far been augmented that a deep seated conviction is fast becoming prevalent that this government is soon to become a military despotism. The transmission of the United States mails is not interrupted by the striking employes of any railway company, but by the railway companies themselves, who refused to haul the mail on trains to which Pullman cars were not attached. If it is a criminal interference with the United States mails for the employes of a railway company to detach from a mail train a Pullman palace car, contrary to the will of the company then it holds true that it is the same criminal interference whenever a Pullman palace car is detached from a mail train in accordance with the will of a railroad company while said mail train is in transit. The line of criminality in such a case should not be drawn at the willingness or unwillingness of railway employes, but at the act itself, and inasmuch as it has been the common practice of railway corporations to attach and detach from mail trains Pullman palace cars at will while said trains are in transit and carrying the mails of the United States, it would seem an act of discrimination against the employes of the railway corporations to declare such acts unlawful interference with the transmission of the mails when done by employes with or without the consent of their employers. "In view of these facts we look upon the far-fetched decision of Attorney General Olney, the sweeping un-American injunctions against railway employes, and the movements of the regular army as employing the powers of the general government for the support and protection of the railway corporations in their determination to degrade and oppress their employes. "The present railway strike was precipitated by the uneasy desire of the railway corporations to destroy the organizations of their employes and make the working people more subservient to the will of their employers; and as all students of government agree that free institutions depend for their perpetuity upon the freedom and prosperity of the common people, it would seem more in consonance with the spirit of democratic government if federal authority was exercised in deference of the rights of the toiling masses to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But on the contrary there is not an instance on record where in any conflict between corporations and the people the strong arm of the military power has been employed to protect the working people and the industrial masses from the ravage and persecution of corporate greed. But the measure of character has been in the line of declaring the corporations always good and in the right, and the working people always bad and in the wrong. "Now, sir, we pledge to you the power of our respective organizations, individually and collectively, for the maintenance of peace and good order and the preservation of life and property, and will aid in the arrest and punishment of all violators of the civil and criminal laws of the state or nation. In the present contest between labor and railway corporations we shall use every peaceable and honorable means at our command consistent with the law and our constitutional rights, to secure for the working people just compensation for labor done and respectable consideration in accordance with the inherent rights of all men and the spirit of republican government. In doing so we appeal to all the liberty loving people of the nation to aid and support us in this most just and righteous cause. By EUGENE V. DEBS, President. "Order of Knights of Labor, By J. R. SOVEREIGN, Grand Master Workman." CHAPTER X. BUSINESS MEN'S PROTEST. The town of Danville, Ill., was now visited by martial law with the result that two women were killed and two men fatally wounded. A non-union brakeman fired three shots into a crowd that was jeering him, whereupon some one in the crowd returned the fire hitting him in the neck. The militia then opened fire, killing a Mrs. Glennon who was standing in her own yard and Miss James seated at the organ in her own house. This was the effect of federal troops in Danville, and so it was in every town and city where Grover's minions were stationed. The damnable outrages perpetrated on the people of the commonweal by the federal troops under the guise of law and order was goading the citizens to a state of open rebellion. The business men of Chicago fearing a general outbreak determined on sending a committee to the Pullman company with a view to reaching a settlement whereby this dire calamity would be averted. A committee was formed composed of representative business men, members of the city council, and members of the various trades of the city. The committee met with no success. Mr. Wickes, who represented the Pullman company, informed them that the company had nothing to arbitrate and wished to see no committee. The proposition they wished to submit to Mr. Wickes as the representative of the Pullman company was this: That Mr. Pullman had said there was nothing to arbitrate while the men contended that there was. Let the Pullman company appoint two men and the circuit court two men. Let these four select a fifth, if necessary, to determine if there was anything to arbitrate and in case there was, that would take care of itself later. If not, the strike would end just as soon as the decision was reached. Surely this proposition was fair and manly but speaking for the Pullman company Mr. Wickes flatly refused to entertain it for an instant. Alderman McGillen, who acted as spokesman, then made an eloquent plea for the Pullman company to take steps, which he considered would go far toward settling the strike. He said: "Mr. Wickes we received a request from the trades-unions--their representatives who are now here you have already met--to see if some means to settle this strike peaceably could not be found. "It has been demonstrated that your company had no subject for arbitration, that the request of the employes for arbitration could not be acceded to?" Mr. Wickes: "Yes, sir." Ald. McGillen: "We are here to suggest that it might be possible to obviate all differences between the company and the men--strikers, ex-employes, or whatever you wish to call them. We would suggest a committee to ascertain whether there is any matter needing arbitration as you are a quasi public." Mr. Wickes, interrupting: "Do you come as representatives of the city instructed by the mayor? We have nothing to arbitrate, the Pullman company cannot recede from its position." Ald. O'Brien: "There must be some trouble?" Mr. Wickes: "Our men made complaint, we promised to investigate, but before we had time to do so they struck." Ald. O'Brien: "But that will not settle the matter." Mr. Wickes: "Unfortunately not." Ald. McGillen: "We suggest that this committee be made up of representative men, the best men in Chicago, men who occupy positions of honor." Here attorney John S. Runnell appeared and was closeted with Mr. Wickes for a quarter of an hour. On his return to the room Mr. Wickes said that neither the Pullman company or the railway manager's association created the situation of to-day. When our men went out we told them that we could not do the work at the scale of wages we were paying. We had contracts to fill then, some of them we let out and some we retained. No men can arbitrate this, you, as business men would let no man say how that business should be conducted. Ald. McGillen then said: "You require protection from us. You call on the police, on the county, on the state, and on the nation for protection. Your only valued assets are the patents which the nation gives you in recognition of the genius which built the Pullman car. Remove that asset and you are ruined. You utterly ignore our request. It is not dishonorable men we ask to investigate your affairs. Think of the sickness, starvation, want, disaster and bloodshed which is coming if the strike assumes larger proportions. The climax is fast approaching and who will be to blame. I am here for the common weal, and I hope and beg of you not to refuse." Mr. Wickes: "There is a principle involved. Every business should have the right to dictate to its own labor, we will brook no interference, national, state, county or municipal." Ald. McGillen: "Compulsory arbitration is not a law but it will be if this strike does not stop." Mr. Wickes: "We have nothing to arbitrate." Ald. Warreinner: "We are not asking for arbitration, we want a committee appointed to see if there is need of it. Will you consent to that?" Mr. Wickes: "No." Ald. McGillen: "In the name of humanity let me beseech you to reconsider your negation." Mr. Wickes: "Gentlemen, the Pullman company has nothing to arbitrate, we want to see no committee, the Pullman company cannot recede from its position. This is final." When the committee met again at 4:30 to make its final report, it was completely discouraged. Mr. Elderkin stated the proposition that had been made to the Pullman company and its direct refusal. The alderman begged the labor representatives not to strike and cause widespread suffering. The general manager's and Pullman's position was so clearly defined that it would be impossible for the public to fail to see it in any but its true light. The companies were losing millions of dollars but the general managers had determined if necessary to bankrupt every system in the United States in order to crush labor organizations out of existence. The Pullman matter was something of the past, with them they were after the labor organizations, and they were after them with a vengeance. The government was backing them. The attorney general of the United states,--a corporation attorney as well,--had pledged himself to disrupt every labor organization in the country. President Cleveland, another railroad attorney, had encouraged and abetted them to the same end. With the subsidized press, the bankers unions, the moneycrat manufacturers and the federal courts arrayed against them, what in the name of justice could they expect? Surely the martyred president and savior of mankind, the immortal Lincoln, must have anticipated the present deplorable condition when in his message to the second session of the thirty-seventh congress,--to be found in the appendix to the Congressional Globe of the thirty-seventh congress, second section, page 4--when he said: "Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point with its connections not so hackneyed as most others to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital, that nobody labors unless somebody else owning capital somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. * * * Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. * * * No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost." CHAPTER XI. INDICTMENT OF PRESIDENT DEBS. The railroad managers and federal courts were leaving no stone unturned to secure the indictment and incarceration of Eugene V. Debs. If successful, it was their intention to dispose of all the officers and directors of the American Railway Union in the same manner. Attorney General Olney, acting for the railroads, was hatching a scheme to incarcerate the officers of the union and refuse them bail. Attorneys Walker and Milchrist were ready to prove that Debs ordered the boycott, that he conspired against the lives and liberty of the people, that he conspired to overthrow the government, in short, they were ready to prove anything that would further the ends of the corporations which they represented. These diabolical plotters never doubted for one instant that the officers of the American Railway Union were innocent of the charges preferred against them. They knew very well that they (the officers) had no authority to order a boycott or strike, and that it was ordered by a majority vote of the men employed on each system. They also knew that from the inauguration of the strike, not one word or act of Eugene V. Debs could be construed into an offense and make him amenable to the law. That he counseled moderation and appealed to the men to refrain from acts of violence from the start, was a well known fact. This was very clear to them, but the powerful magnetism of his presence in restraining the men from acts of violence would also have a tendency to keep their ranks firm and intact. This was also known to them and they must devise some scheme to shackle him or get him out of the way. With consummate skill they proceeded with the avowed effort to accomplish this end. At 3:00 P. M., July 10, the special grand jury summoned by Judges Wood and Grosscup set the machinery of federal law in motion, and after one hour and seven minutes--most of which time was occupied in waiting for advice from the Western Union Telegraph Co., in New York, to its manager in Chicago--returned indictments against E. V. Debs, G. W. Howard, L. W. Rogers and Sylvester Kelliher. No sooner were the four officers of the American Railway Union indicted than they were arrested and the private papers as well as the documents of the union were seized. The four men were admitted to bail and the joint bond of $10,000 was signed by J. W. Fitzgerald and Wm. Skakel. The special grand jurors selected by the court for the express purpose of indicting the officers of the American Railway Union were well chosen. An elaborate charge from his honor, the judge, a pretense of examining a lone witness, just a farcical formality, and Debs, Howard, Rogers and Kelliher were indicted. These men were virtually indicted before the grand jury went into session. This is a fact that defies contradiction, Z. E. Holbrook, one of the jurors, was a man who two years ago went to Homestead, Pa., at the request of H. C. Frick, manager of the Carnegie Company, and after obtaining a supply of alleged facts from Mr. Frick, returned to Chicago and made a speech before the Sunset Club, in which he charged the Homestead strikers with being conspirators, anarchists and murderers, and he denounced and abused in no measured terms all labor unions and sympathizers. So bitterly did he attack labor that he was roundly hissed by members of his own club. The city directory sets him down as a capitalist, and he is known throughout the city as a bitter enemy to labor unions. Such is the character of one of the men who was chosen to indict Eugene V. Debs. Was ever court of justice so utterly debauched? What has become of our boasted liberty? Are we freemen? No! in the burning words of Rienzi, the Roman, we are slaves, the bright sun rises to its course and sets on a race of slaves. Slaves, not such as conqueror led to crimson glory and undying fame, but base, ignoble slaves, slaves to a horde of petty tyrants, feudal despots. The same conditions that emanated these immortal utterances from the ancient Roman is absolutely the condition of the working people of America to-day. The federal courts had now accomplished a master stroke; they had indicted the president of the American Railway Union for conspiracy. When the wires flashed the news to the various local unions throughout the country, the excitement was intense. The illegal proceeding was condemned by every good citizen, regardless of vocation or station in life. Millions of men in every branch of labor threatened to strike, but were held in check by the assurance of their leaders that all would be well in the end. Mr. Debs, fearing the bad effect his arrest would have on the working people, sent out the following appeal for order: "To all striking employes and sympathizers: "In view of the serious phases which the strike has assumed, I deem it my duty to again admonish you to not only refrain from acts of violence but to aid in every way in your power to maintain law and order. We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by participating, even by our presence in demonstrative gatherings. Almost universal unrest prevails. Men are excitable and inflammable. The distance from anger to vengeance is not great. Every precaution against still further aggravating conditions should be taken. In this supreme hour let workingmen show themselves to be orderly and law abiding by freely co-operating with the authorities in suppressing turbulence and preserving the peace. Our position is secure and the people are with us. We have made every effort that reason and justice could suggest to obtain redress for our grievances. "Our advances have been repelled. The responsibility for the grave situation that confronts the country is not with us. The indications now are that the stoppage of work will become general. This in itself will be a calamity, but if order be maintained it may yet prove to be a blessing to the country. I appeal to every workingman to entirely keep away from places where trouble would be likely to occur. What, under normal conditions, would probably be a peaceable gathering may now become a demonstrative mob. All good citizens deprecate the loss of life and the destruction of property. Grave as these complications are, our civilization is far enough advanced to find and apply a remedy without resort to violence. We are merely contending for justice for our fellow workingmen, who have been reduced to want by a power that now defies public opinion. Strong in the faith that our position is correct, that our grievances are just, we can afford to await the final verdict, with patience. The great public may be slow to act, but in the fullness of time it will act. Then the wrong, wherever found will be rebuked and cloven down, and the right will be enthroned. However serious the situation may become, let it not be intensified by lawlessness or violence. Eugene V. Debs." If there is anything tending to conspiracy, any anarchistic sentiment in the above appeal then it is certain that Debs was guilty as indicted, but if there is not, then the railroad managers and federal court were guilty of a greater conspiracy and should be dealt with accordingly. In all the appeals, instructions or advice given verbally or otherwise by E. V. Debs, not a solitary one was of a more inflammatory nature than this, and yet this man was accused of this serious crime. The Chicago Times in an editorial on the indictment of Debs says in part: "We can perhaps leave to the lawyers who are so eager to indict Mr. Debs, determination of the legal position of this rebel Wickes, declaring that his tottering corporation will brook no interference national, state, county, or municipal. The times has learned many things of late showing the power of corporations over the national government but we still cling to the belief that Uncle Sam is bigger than Duke George, and if either the national, state, county or municipal government determines to interfere with the affairs of the Pullman corporation, Mr. Wickes will have to brook it or take refuge in Canada with his titled chiefs, embezzlers, boodlers, forgers and other harpies of society, who from time to time have fled thither." CHAPTER XII. A PROTEST BY THE PEOPLES PARTY. The newsboys of Chicago now decided to join the boycott by dropping the papers unfavorable to the American Railway Union, and after a noisy session in which parliamentary rules were freely discussed, and several amusing antics were indulged in, they voted to boycott the Tribune, Herald, Mail, Inter-Ocean, Post and Journal. When the Times was mentioned, they yelled themselves hoarse, and declared that it was the only paper they would sell. Hill, the circulator of the Post, caused the arrest of five of the little fellows and they were locked up. L. W. Rogers, editor of the Railway Times, the official organ of the American Railway Union finally succeeded in getting the attention of the boys and informed them that the union could not accept any sacrifice from the newsboys of Chicago. He assured them that the men were strong enough to do their own boycotting and requested them to continue the sale of the papers. He said: "We do not want to take one red cent out of your earnings, if things were as they should be, you lads would be at school in the day time and in comfortable homes at night instead of selling papers on the street." At the conclusion of Mr. Rogers' remarks they all sped away to the Times office, where cheer after cheer was given for the peoples paper. Notwithstanding the remarks of Mr. Rogers, the Times, Record, Dispatch and News were the only papers to be had on the streets. The Knights of Labor and Trades Unions as well as business men's unions were holding meetings all over the country, denouncing the action of Cleveland and the courts and endorsing the American Railway Union in its manly fight for rights. The strike situation had not changed to any great extent with the exception of passenger service. Passenger trains were beginning to run with more regularity, but the freight business was to all practical purposes dead. The men whom the companies had succeeded in getting so far to fill the places of strikers were green men, entirely unused to that kind of work, and incompetent men who had previously been discharged for drunkenness and other causes. The yard service was a failure, and as an illustration--to show the kind of men the different roads had secured to make up trains--I was passing a certain yard and stopped to watch a switching crew, and carefully noted how they performed their work. An engine with one car backed up to couple unto some cars on a lumber track. Two of the would-be switchmen with a long stick were holding up the link, one men on either side of the coupling, but just as the link was about to enter the drawbar one of them jumped away, at the same time stumbling over a pile of lumber, and the way that fellow scrambled about in his frantic endeavor to get out of the way, would lead a person to believe he had fallen upon a hornet's nest. After several such attempts they finally succeeded in making the coupling. This is the kind of men with which the company proposed to fill the places of the strikers. The Grand Trunk engineers, who up to this time had refused to work with other than brotherhood firemen decided to work with scabs, and their decision was hailed with delight by the officials. They said that the strike was now settled and they could run their trains without difficulty. The engineers and firemen on the Chicago & Alton road also decided to stand by the company. The firemen, switchmen and other employes of the Grand Trunk called a meeting, and after denouncing the action of the engineers, voted to stand by the American Railway Union to the end. One amusing incident that occurred about this time, was the refusal of the Washington National Guards to ride on a train that was run by scabs. The entire company of sixty men refused to ride on a Northern Pacific train for this reason, and they were promptly placed under arrest, put into box cars and taken to Sprague. General Master Workman Sovereign had at this time an order drawn up for a general walk out of members of the Knights of Labor, but it was withdrawn after a consultation with other labor leaders. Many comments were made by newspapers throughout the country on this order, of which a copy was furnished the papers under the impression that it would go into effect at once. People who had remained passive up to this time were now aroused to the gravity of the situation. The pending crisis was near at hand, and a general uprising of the laboring people to assert their rights was imminent. The tyrannical and dogged persistency of plutocratic capital to dominate over the laboring classes with utter disregard for their constitutional rights, was nothing more or less than an open declaration of despotic supremacy, and the outcome was looked forward to with the gravest apprehension. The following communication addressed to the chairman of the National Committee of the Peoples Party was sent to Washington, D. C. "To the Hon. H. E. Taubeneck, chairman National Committee, Peoples Party: "Through the gloom of civil war the enemies of human liberty laid the foundation upon which the giant monopolies of to-day have been built. On public lands, with public funds they built the railroads which they now use to plunder the producers of this nation, and with the wealth and power thus obtained they now usurp the power and functions of government to reduce the people of this country to a condition of serfdom. The workmen in the cities, the miners in their isolated communities, and the railroad men throughout the land have risen in manful protest against a threatened military government of the railroads and their associate monopolies. "In this hour of need the duty of the Peoples Party is clear and plain. "Quick as the lightning's flash will bear the message, must go forth that the Peoples Party recognize the gravity of the situation, and by common impulse aligns itself to the side of the toiler in the shop and mine, and on the railroads; their battle is our battle, because it is a struggle for liberty and the right to exist--a peaceable contest on the part of toil against the combined armies of greed and force. "The farmer knows the means best calculated to help his brother in this conflict. The railroads intend to run their trains under military guard and expect American citizen to patronize public means of traffic, operated under military despotism. The Peoples Party of Cook county, in common with organized labor demand immediate arbitration, and urges immediate action on the part of our national committee to the end that all organizations in sympathy with labor be united in common cause against a common enemy. "Signed: T. O'Brien, Chairman, I. H. Hawley, Sec'y. H. S. Taylor, Henry Vincent, John Bagley, D. M. Fielwiler, John Schwartz, C. G. Dixon, J. P. Grimes, Committee." CHAPTER XIII. AN OFFER OF SETTLEMENT. Senator Pfeffer, of Kansas, arraigned congress for its defence of monopolies, and its stand against the people. Senator Kyle, of Dakota, also charged congress with being in collusion with the railroads, but Senator Davis, of Minnesota, on the other hand, denounced Debs and the strikers. He said the strike grew from a strike to a boycott, from boycott to riot, from riot to insurrection, that the acts, if committed on the high seas, would be piracy and punishable by death. He spoke of the injustice being done the farmers of the United States, and how they were effected by the strike in Chicago. He urged that it was time some action should be taken to put down the rising tide of anarchy. He held that a nuisance should be abated and that Debs was a nuisance. Senator Gordon, of Georgia, and Senator Daniels, of Virginia, followed in the same kind of demagoguery as Davis. A great meeting was held in Dubuque, and prominent among the speakers was County Attorney Mathews who insisted on obedience to law, but denounced Judge Grosscup for issuing an injunction which denied the constitutional right of free speech and trial by Jury. Mayor Hopkins, of Chicago, Mayor Pingree, of Detroit, Michigan, and Erskine M. Phelps conferred with Mr. Wickes, and Mrs. Brown and Runnell of the Pullman Company at the request of some fifty mayors, representing about one-third of the population of the United States--and urged arbitration as a means of settling the strike. The efforts of these gentlemen were in vain. The imperious Pullman company through its representative, though not saying so in as many words, intimated that the company would not establish a precedent whereby workmen could interfere in its business. Mayor Pingree, of Detroit, corresponded with almost every mayor of the larger cities of the United States, and received answers favorable to arbitration from all with one exception, that of Mayor Gilroy, of New York City, whose answer to the telegram of Mayor Pingree was an emphatic no. The wildest excitement now prevailed at Sacramento. The United States troops commanded by Col. Graham and consisting of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and gatling and Hotchkiss guns, presented a most war like aspect. The strikers on learning of this movement on the part of the government armed themselves, and it was feared that a desperate conflict would take place. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in this district called upon Supt. Filmore of the Southern Pacific and stated that they were ready to resume work at once. This weakened the cause of the strikers to some extent and caused a smile of satisfaction on the faces of the railroad managers. After much persuasion due to the untiring efforts of Congressman McGann, President Cleveland consented to appoint a committee of three to investigate the strike, under section 6 of the arbitration act, prepared some years ago under the eyes of Powderly, McGuire and Hays of the Knights of Labor, offered by Representative Quail, of St. Louis, and made a law on Oct. 1, 1888. This determination on the part of Cleveland was received with satisfaction throughout the country. This was just what the American Railway Union wanted. This was what the Trades and Labor Unions of the United States had appealed for, and what the business men and city representatives had so long demanded, begged and entreated of the Pullman company, but without avail. It looked at this time as if an investigation would be forced on Duke Pullman, and the people were looking forward to a speedy settlement of the trouble. The American Railway Union, having no fear of the final decision of the investigating committee, and viewing the vast amount of destruction of property, loss of life and extreme hardship to which the people were subjected on account of the strike--decided to take the necessary steps to call off the strike, they drew up the following proposition which was given to Mr. Hopkins, mayor of Chicago, to present to the general managers. "To the Railway Managers: "Gentlemen:--The existing trouble growing out of the Pullman strike having assumed continental proportions, and there being no indications of relief from the wide spread business demoralization and distress, incident thereto, the railway employes, through the board of directors of the American Railway Union respectfully make the following proposition as a basis of settlement: "They agree to return to work in a body at once, provided they shall be restored to their former positions without prejudice, except in cases, if any there be, where they have been convicted of crime. This proposition looking to an immediate settlement of the existing strike on all lines of railway is inspired by a purpose to subserve public good. The strike, small and comparatively unimportant in its inception, has extended in every direction until now it involves or threatens not only every public interest, but the peace, security and prosperity of our common country. The contest has waged fiercely, it has extended far beyond the limits of interest originally involved, and has laid hold of a vast number of industries and enterprises in nowise responsible for the difference and disagreements that led to the trouble. "Factory, mill, mine and shop have been silenced. Widespread demoralization has sway. The interests of multiplied thousands of people are suffering, and the common welfare is seriously menaced, The public peace and tranquility are imperiled, and grave apprehension for the future prevails. This being true, and the statement will not be controverted, we conceive it to be our duty as citizens and as men, to make extraordinary efforts to end the existing strife and approaching calamities whose shadows are even now upon us. If ended now, the contest, however serious in some respects, will not have been in vain. "Sacrifices have been made, but they will have their compensations. Indeed, if lessons shall be taught by experience, the troubles now so widely deplored will prove a blessing of inestimable value in the years to come. The difference that led up to the present complications need not now be discussed, every consideration of duty and patriotism demands that a remedy for existing troubles be found and applied. The employes purpose to do their part by meeting their employers half way. Let it be stated that they do not impose any condition of settlement except that they be returned to their former positions; they do not ask recognition of their organization or any organization. "Believing this proposition to be fair, reasonable and just it is respectfully submitted with the belief that its acceptance will result in the prompt resumption of traffic, the revival of industry, and the restoration of peace and order. "Respectfully, E. V. DEBS, Pres. G. W. HOWARD, V. Pres. S. KELLIHER, Secy. American Railway Union." The proposition was rejected and spurned by the General Managers Association. Is there a man so utterly lost to the sense of justice, that would conscientiously dispute the manly fairness of this communication? The object of the general managers was too apparent, their position was clearly defined. Their determination to wipe out of existence all railroad organizations was as fixed and unmovable as the Rock of Gibraltar and why should they recede from their position? The federal courts and federal government (owned and controlled by the corporations) decided that the constitutional rights of free speech and trial by jury, equal rights to all and special privileges to none, was a farce. In their narrow money-loving minds there could be no rights for honest labor, and determined there should be no rights for a workingman. After this decision of the general managers the American Railway Union could do nothing but fight out the battle to the bitter end. Eugene V. Debs,--representing a body of honest toilers with no other motive than to obtain for them living wages, his heart overflowing with generous impulses and humane kindness, his noble nature revolting against the tyrannical oppression of his fellow man by the soulless corporations, a man who loves his country with patriotic devotion,--for these reasons and no other, was indicted and arrested on the charge of criminal conspiracy, while John M. Egan--representing the General Managers Association, a giant monopoly and powerful money grasping trust, built on the people's land and with the people's money, a combination foreign to American institutions, usurping the functions of the government with avowed intent and purpose to take away the rights of organization from the working man and reduce him to a condition of absolute slavery,--was allowed to continue his nefarious work without interruption. Surely this partial, one-sided distribution of justice, openly and defiantly administered, deserves the severest condemnation of every loyal American citizen. The Pullman boycott had now ceased to be the point at issue in the strike. It was now the life or death of railroad organizations. CHAPTER XIV. DEBS IN JAIL. The strike situation still looked very bright for the men. At St. Paul and Minneapolis the business of the railroads, with the exception of the Soo Line, St. Paul & Duluth and the Great Northern, was practically at a standstill. On the St. Paul & Duluth the men as a whole refused to strike, a few firemen and switchmen left their positions at the call but did not seriously affect the operation of trains. This was also true of the Soo Line. The Great Northern so far was not implicated as they used no Pullman cars and positively refused boycotted freight, that is, freight offered by railroads whose employes were on a strike. The Minnesota Transfer, which was the key to the coast lines, was completely blocked, and this condition was duplicated in almost every railroad center throughout the country. Encouraging telegrams were being received from all points contradicting the reports circulated by a subsidized press that everything was running as usual. So far the men in the Twin Cities were conducting themselves in such an orderly manner that even the press could not rake up one charge against them. They strictly adhered to the advice of President Debs to keep out of saloons and away from railroad property. The only action taken by the strikers was to induce other men by moral persuasion not to take their places and assist the managers to operate the roads. For this Charles J. Luth was foully murdered by one Leonard, chief clerk in the office of James McCabe, superintendent of the C., St. P., M. & O. Ry. On the evening of July 14, Leonard, in company with Bert Nash, also an employe of the same railroad, brought a lot of non-union men to a boarding place in St. Paul, known as the Minnesota Home. Luth followed them into the house and requested the proprietress of the Home not to board them as they were in the city to take the place of strikers, and while explaining the situation, became involved in an altercation with Nash. Leonard interfered and was told by Luth that he was little better than a scab, whereupon Leonard drew a revolver and fired five times, all of the shots taking effect in the body of Luth. Two of the shots were fired after Luth had fallen to the floor. These facts were given by an eye witness who afterwards took the revolver from Leonard. This dastardly, cold blooded murder worked the strikers into a frenzy of excitement, and had it not been for a herculean effort on the part of older and cooler heads, a lynching would surely have occurred. This foul deed was absolutely unwarranted as Luth was unarmed and alone, and if he had harmed or threatened to harm any one, an officer could have been called and he would have been promptly arrested. Luth left a wife and two small children to mourn his loss and grieve over his tragic end. The funeral procession that followed the remains to the grave headed by the Knights of Pythias and Foresters, was the largest ever seen in St. Paul. President Debs felt confident of victory. Addressing a meeting at Ulrich Hall, he said: "We have just finished reading 160 telegrams in not one of which there is any sign of weakening." He dwelled on the action of the general managers refusing to entertain the proposition made to them, and the necessity of the men remaining loyal to one another. "The law seems to be against us as it is read by some, but if the law makes it a crime to advise you men against the encroachments of capital, by all the Gods united I will rot in jail." Referring to the attitude of other railroad organizations, he said: "Men in such positions as myself and Mr. Howard cannot afford to be on good terms with general managers. If we are we cannot be your friends. It is true, however, that certain officers of certain other organizations ride on annual passes and spend months on fishing excursions at the expense of the railroad managers, but it comes out of your wages in the end." Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers present, informed the officers of the American Railway Union that Chief Arthur had issued orders for men to work with scabs, and that he was supplying scabs to take the places of men on strike. In other words, he was running an employment agency for the benefit of the railroads. The general managers' defeat on the fifth day of the strike was beyond all question of a doubt. They had summoned to their support the federal government with the result previously mentioned, but the government aid was not sufficient to operate their roads. They must have a number of the old men to educate and aid the scabs in the performance of their duties. At this critical time the services of their faithful allies were badly wanted. In this, their time of need they knew that those men who had feted, dined and wined at their expense would prove faithful to them and traitors to the orders they represented. The damnable spirit of treachery that evoked Benedict Arnold to betray his country predominated in the hearts of these double-dyed scoundrels. They were not only ready and willing but feverishly anxious to assist the corporations to enslave the men that they were oath-bound as well as duty bound to protect. Grand Chief Arthur, representing the engineers, who had grown old in the service of the corporations, and whose wealth was estimated at half a million dollars, in direct violation of the constitution of his order, ordered his men to work with scab firemen. Not only this, he ordered all those who were on strike to return at once to their engines and in case of their refusal he would supply men to take their places. This was also true of Grand Chief Sargent of the Firemen and Wilkinson of the Trainmen. Clark of the Conductors, and Barrett of the Switchmen advised their men to return to work as they had no grievance. But only a part of these men would be taken back by the companies, and what under the sun did these chiefs intend to do with the others? Positively nothing. But the result was exactly what they intended it should be, and the men were applying to the companies--in lots of ten and twenty in the different cities--for their positions. The dark deeds of treachery were now rife in many places especially in the Twin Cities. At this point the blockade, which was on since the strike began, and which was the key to the situation in the Northwest was raised. The Great Northern was the only line in operation to the coast, and under instructions from J. J. Hill, the president, refused to accept any freight from roads included in the boycott. The men were instructed to decline even to throw a switch or assist in any manner any road on strike, as the Great Northern company did not wish to be drawn into the difficulty. In fact the men on this line were, almost to a man, members of the American Railway Union, and could not even if asked to do any act that might prove a detriment to their brothers. At this time there happened to be sixty car loads of twine in St. Paul, a greater portion of which was at Minnesota Transfer. This freight was consigned to points on the Great Northern Line and a committee headed by Harry Gray, chairman of the general board of mediation of the American Railway Union on that system, appeared at the rooms of the central strike committee and asked permission to switch out the twine, giving as an excuse that the farmers were in need of it. This permission the committee was loth to grant as any move toward raising this blockade in the Twin Cities might prove detrimental to their cause, and further action on the matter was deferred until it would be submitted to the different unions interested. That night at a meeting held at Plummer Post Hall in Minneapolis, the American Railway Union headquarters, a committee of farmers, from the peoples' party convention in session there at that time, were admitted. When appraised of the nature of the trouble they stated that they had contracts with the twine companies to deliver their twine and on failure to do so the farmers would suffer no loss. They further stated that the farmers would bind their grain by hand before they would ask the men to do anything detrimental to the success of the strike. This settled it as far as the twine was concerned. However, the next day, the officials of the Great Northern took an engine and switched the twine out themselves without any objection being made by the men who stood by while the work was being done. This was the beginning only. The next move was a positive assurance of treachery. The Burlington road had about thirty cars of water pipe for the Great Northern, and this same man Gray again waited on the central committee for permission to move the freight, saying, that he had the assurance of the company that no more concessions would be asked. His request was promptly refused. Later a committee of switchmen called on the central committee for instructions and were told not to move the freight under any conditions. They left apparently satisfied, but nevertheless the cars were moved; no one seemed to know how but it became apparent to the strikers that a traitor was in their ranks, and took immediate steps to ferret him out, and have the embargo once more placed on business at this point. Gray of St. Paul, and Foster of St. Cloud, were openly accused of being the traitors to the cause, although others were thought to be implicated. Charges were preferred against Gray in the Union, but nothing ever came of it. Every conceivable means was used to again cause a blockade at this point but to no avail. The switchmen promised to refuse to handle boycotted freight if the road would support them in case of discharge, which they well knew was inevitable. It would be simply a sacrifice to strike in the yards of St. Paul and Minneapolis without the support of the whole system, although after a canvas of the road, when it was found that the majority of the men voted against a strike, the switchmen of these cities sent word that they were ready to ask for their time and quit the service of the company if the Union so desired. This proposition the strikers would not accept, not caring to sacrifice a few loyal switchmen whose places could be easily filled if the rest of the employes remained at work. This result was wired to Chicago, and Director Goodwin was sent out to see what could be done. His efforts were fruitless. The road was again canvassed with the same result, and Goodwin returning to Chicago, Mr. Burns, another director of the Union, was sent to take his place, but with no better success. They positively refused to strike. The traitors with the price of their treachery in their pockets had been there first and accomplished their purpose. The damnable traitors responsible for the raising of the blockade were also responsible for the suffering and untold misery of the noble men whose sympathetic hearts went out to their brothers in Pullman, and who without money were obliged to leave their homes (in many cases only partly paid for) and seek employment elsewhere in order to provide for their families. The switchmen in the employ of the Milwaukee road at Minneapolis, now--fearing that the treachery of the men on the Great Northern Line would lose the strike in the Northwest--applied for their positions, and all who were wanted were taken back. The men who were employed by the Omaha Railway at East St. Paul, took the same course, but all others declared their intention of standing out until the American Railway Union called off the strike. Disasters seemed to follow one another in rapid succession at this time. In many places the weak-kneed men were applying for work and circulating false stories to induce others to do the same. The news went flashing over the wires that Debs, Howard, Rogers and Kelliher were in jail. But this news did not have the depressing effect on the men that was expected, in fact it only caused a feeling of indignation and the strikers were now more determined than ever to stand up for their rights and fight out the battle with renewed energy. In making this statement I do not refer to the poltroons who were continually raising the cry: We are lost, but I refer to the noble men who spoke from their manly hearts, and with words of no uncertain sound declared their intention to go down to defeat if need be with those grand, noble, generous hearted men, who signified their willingness to rot in jail, or even mount the scaffold in defence of the just and righteous cause they had wrapped their lives in. Could it be charged that they were actuated by selfish motives in the cause in which they had enlisted? No! A thousand times no! If Eugene V. Debs could be induced to turn his magnificent executive abilities over to the railroads instead of the poor enslaved workingmen, these corporations would place him upon the highest pinnacle of plutocratic fame, and no one can dispute George W. Howard's title to being a workingman's friend, for by his actions on more than one occasion he has proven himself to be a friend indeed, and actions speak louder than words. Yes; the four officers of the American Railway Union were in jail. United States Attorney Milchrist appeared before Judge Seaman in the United States district court on the morning of July 17, and on behalf of the government filed information presented by George R. Peck, who represented the general managers and receivers of the Santa Fe system. In response to the prayer of the district attorney, Judge Seaman issued writs of attachment for the appearance of Debs, Howard, Rogers and Kelliher, directing them to be present at the afternoon session of the court and show causes why they should not be punished for contempt in continuing to disregard the injunction of the court. W. W. Erwin, of St. Paul, W. A. Shoemaker and S. S. Gregory, of Chicago, were retained to defend the men on behalf of the American Railway Union. The voluminous information made up of telegrams, copies of injunctions, etc., was read by Attorney Milchrist, after which the court ruled that two separate attachments be issued and separate records be kept. Mr. Gregory stated that he failed to see why the government should interfere to protect property rights of railroads, and this called forth a retort from Mr. Walker that Uncle Sam was seeking to protect only the interstate commerce and the mails and not the railroad property. The information embodied almost everything pertaining to the strike, and over an hour was consumed in its reading. Telegrams sent out to strike leaders by President Debs were submitted but contained no startling facts. One of these addressed to H. E. Sarion, Garrett, Ind., read as follows: "Have all classes of employes withdrawn from service at once." Another to Charles Fink, Oakland, Cal., says: "Commit no violence." Mr. Debs' communication to the railway managers suggesting a settlement of the strike was incorporated in the information as was also the question of Chicago public health in the matter of removing dead animals from the city. Several newspaper interviews and a copy of the original injunction issued by Judges Wood and Grosscup was also contained therein, and after Peck of the Santa Fe had sought to bolster up the information with an argument, Mr. Gregory urged that the defendants had not been charged with violence, and declared that it was his belief that the testimony should be taken by a master. Mr. Walker opposed this in favor of a hearing in open court and was sustained. This led up to a long legal wrangle participated in by both sides, and a fiery speech by Mr. Irwin of the defence, in which he denied the jurisdiction of the court, and hinted at monarchy and dictatorial methods. Mr. Walker pressed his motion that the defendants be placed under bonds to appear before the court and Judge Seaman fixed the bail in each case at $3,000. Mr. Debs, declining a score of offers from prominent men to furnish the necessary security, decided to go to jail. In reply to a question Mr. Debs said: "This is the first time in my life that I have been incarcerated in a jail, but with us it is a matter of principle. We have had many offers of bail but have refused them all. The poor striker if arrested would be thrown into jail and we are certainly no better than he, we will eat regularly, prison fare, and expect to be treated as any other prisoners would be." Their trial was set for the following Monday. CHAPTER XV. BLACKLISTING BEGINS. The strike situation was now in the balance. The managers and their faithful allies the press, had given it out that the strike was off. One fact that could not be denied, was that P. M. Arthur, of the General Managers Association,--though still representing the engineers--was doing great work for the companies, as the engineers were returning to work pretty generally throughout the country. Sargent of the firemen was also playing his cards well, but not meeting with the same success as the "grand old chief." Wilkinson of the trainmen was sending out his orders and ultimatums, thick and fast and his men were now fast returning to their old positions. It was now a question of whether the men would prove loyal to themselves and their best interests, or loyal to the companies who were putting forth their best efforts to trample them to earth, and it is a painful fact that many of them were so blinded to their own interests,--through their craven cowardice--that they returned to work, and, to what will be in the near future beyond a question of a doubt, longer hours, less wages, and the complete annihilation of all semblance of rights. The strike was fast resolving itself into a switchmen's fight against the railroads. The yards were in the worst imaginable shape, and the engines were sadly in need of repairs. Shopmen, freight handlers, trackmen, and car-repairers were still out. Office men were now back at work with the exception of a few. The majority of the strikers were still loyal to the cause and the American Railway Union was sure of winning. The Knights of Labor did not respond to the call of Grand Master Workman Sovereign as generally as was expected, and the Federation of Labor had decided not to strike at present, perhaps this may be accounted for by the reports given out by the general managers that the strike was off and trains running as usual. The United States troops in the pay of the government were still doing service for the railroad corporations. Authenticated reports--given out by the striking committees--from different parts of the country would not seem to bear out the statements of the general managers. These committees had reports in regards to the operation of the roads, as complete as the officials of the roads themselves. They were thoroughly posted on the number of cars moved each day by each company, the number and character of switch crews at work and the number of strikers who had gone back to work. In short, everything that had a bearing on the result. This was part of the duties imposed upon them and they were faithfully carried out. Thirteen Pan Handle switchmen brought to Chicago from Pittsburg through misrepresentation, when informed of the true state of affairs, refused to go to work, and demanded transportation back to Pittsburg. They were given orders for the necessary transportation, but on presentation the companies refused to honor them. This was also true in the case of half a dozen men brought in by the Ft. Wayne road. The scabs on the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, through ignorance and incompetency burned up five engines and wrecked as many more. One splendid new engine was blown up twenty miles from Terre Haute, while en route to Chicago. Yard service was of the worst possible kind. The Illinois Central was doing no freight business to speak of, in fact the condition of this road was still worse than the Chicago & Eastern Illinois. The Northwestern shops at Fortieth street, employing over 2300 men, were idle, only about twelve men signifying their willingness to work. The Galena division of this road, while making quite a bluff at handling freight, was not accomplishing very much, as it took them two days to unload a stock train. The Milwaukee road was doing better, having at work fifteen engines days and fourteen nights, but being manned mostly by green and incompetent men, were not making great headway. In all some 350 cars were gotten out and about 300 received in one day which is very small business for this line. The Wabash had only one engine at work nights, and this was guarded by a company of troops and about twenty deputy police. They succeeded in breaking down two posts, one at Polk street and another at Taylor street station, causing a damage of some $300 which was all accomplished in one night. The Chicago and Blue Island were now working two engines (this company generally worked ten), manned by scabs, one of whom was a nigger. A committee man from the Grand Trunk reported that only three men had returned to work. He said a personal friend of mine, a business man from Valparaiso, and whom I know, is in touch with the Grand Trunk, informed me that a Grand Trunk official had said in his presence that his company could not do business unless they made some kind of a settlement with the switchmen. Through John Downey and Miles Barrett, of the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association, a meeting of switchmen was called in a hall at Eden to induce the switchmen to return to work. This meeting was "packed" in order to secure a majority vote in favor of returning but the scheme did not work. All the officials on the Pan Handle admitted that they could do nothing without the assistance of the old men. They had a few "stake" men whom they were paying $5.00 per day, but not enough to do any business. At Union Stock Yards all switchmen and assistant yard masters were out, and at the yard of the Street Stable Car Co. out of 300 men only three were at work. All men at the Burton Stock Car Co., the Canada Cattle Car Co. and the American Life Stock Co.'s yards were out, and refused to work under police protection. At Armour's car shops only nine men returned out of sixty who went on strike, and at Swifts only five out of forty-two. The yard trackmen were all out, as were also the Illinois Central switchmen and the Rock Island machinists and boiler makers. This was the condition of the strike in Chicago and the same existed in all parts of the strike district. Messages were received from many points saying that only those men who were subservient to the orders of their chiefs had returned to work, and from some points came the news that the strike had gained strength owing to the arrest of President Debs. The enemies of the American Railway Union had now began a systematic course--as dark and devilish as it was designing--of poisoning the public mind against Debs, who was, so to speak, a gagged prisoner and unable to defend himself. Such reports as: Mrs. Highenbotham was dying in Montana and Mr. Highenbotham appealed to Mr. Debs to allow her to be brought home by special train and see her friends, and Mr. Debs' brutal answer that not a wheel would turn. Whole columns of such falsehoods were published and circulated broadcast throughout the land, but not one word was written of the generous acts of this noble hearted man. When he was seen to pause in the most trying moment of his life to listen to the tale of distress and suffering related by a poor widow woman, and going down into his pocket, hand her a five dollar bill, all he had with him, this great and just public press was silent. Then the blacklisting of ex-employes began, the Missouri Pacific taking the initiatory step. The following certificate given to a yard clerk will speak for itself. "This is to certify that ---- has been employed in the capacity of yard clerk of the Missouri Pacific system from April, 1893 to June, 1894, at which time it was necessary to lay him off on account of a strike in the yards. He applied for work on July 18th, but in the meantime it was learned that he was a member of the American Railway Union and was in sympathy with the strike movement, so we could not re-employ him. His work and conduct up to the time of the strike was perfectly satisfactory. J. S. JONES, Terminal Supt." CHAPTER XVI. TRIAL OF DEBS. On the 23d day of July, the day set for the trial of the officers of the American Railway Union,--Debs, Howard, Rodgers and Kelliher were on hand to answer to the charge of contempt. The court room was densely packed, when Judges Wood of Indianapolis and Grosscup of Chicago entered and Judge Wood raised a serious objection to the crowded condition, saying that only those finding seats should be allowed to remain,--lawyers, and possibly reporters. After signing and swearing to the answers, the defendants filed in at 11:40 and Judge Wood asked if the Santa Fe road was represented. Attorney Miller stepped forward and was asked if both proceedings could not be heard at the same time. Judge Wood favored this to save time, and it was finally agreed that if the Santa Fe cases be heard later the government testimony on this bearing be admitted. Attorney Gregory thereupon submitted the answers to the information filed before Judge Seaman in the contempt proceedings, and suggested that the trial for which the defendants had given bail be immediate and have precedence over the contempt proceedings. Judge Woods said that the court could decide upon a motion for delay, much more intelligently could they have the government information and the answers filed by the defendants. Attorney Milchrist then read the court the information. As Attorney Gregory had previously moved that the information be dismissed and the defendants discharged on their sworn answers, Attorney Erwin followed by reading the answers. At the conclusion of the reading he said that the defendants had made and filed a motion to quash, holding that the information was not sufficient. They now asked that the defendants be discharged, and also that the district attorney and government counsel to elect whether they should proceed under the indictment or under the contempt cases. No man could be tried twice for the same offense. Judge Wood said that the counsel for the government could proceed with either case. Attorney Walker elected to go ahead with the contempt proceedings. Attorney Gregory in the opening made an eloquent appeal for a trial by jury instead of a criminal proceeding in a contempt case, as he held the present proceeding to be. He cited a number of authorities in support of his position. He argued that it was the rule that there could be no appeal from the decision of a federal court in a contempt case, and that consequently, where the question of a crime was involved, a sentence from the court would practically be a conviction on the original criminal charge without a trial by jury which is guaranteed by the constitution. Mr. Gregory then took up the question of the motion to dismiss the bill on the grounds that the information did not set out in specific forms any violation of the specifications in the injunction granted by the United States court. He held that the men had a right to combine, choose leaders to advise, and quit work if they wished to do so and persuade others to quit work, that the injunctions did not prohibit them from doing so. Judge Wood asked if he considered that the defendants had a right to ask men to tumble goods out of cars that were ready for transportation. Mr. Gregory replied that he did not consider that they had any such right, and claimed that there was nowhere in the information a distinct allegation that the defendants had counseled violence or infractions of the orders in the injunction. While he was willing to admit that violence had been done during the present strike, nothing was charged in the information that the violence was due to the acts of the defendants. Attorney Walker for the government followed. He held that the defendants had no right to go into other states and persuade men to quit work for the purpose of paralyzing railroads, and that the issuance of these orders was a willful and vicious violation of the order of the court. Mr. Walker said the telegrams were the strongest evidence in the hands of the state to show that this had been done. He spoke for three quarters of an hour and directed his remarks more to the general charge against the defendants for violation of the injunction, than to the legal points raised by Mr. Gregory. It will be remembered that the answers filed by the attorneys for the defense, was a complete denial of the charges. After hearing all the arguments, Judges Wood and Grosscup decided that the contempt proceedings against Mr. Debs and the others, were in the nature of proceedings in equity, and therefore the defendants could not be discharged on their denial of the charges under oath. Mr. Walker gave as an excuse for wanting the case heard at once, that the defendants were liable to continue calling out the men unless they were restrained from so doing by the court. "Then," said Mr. Gregory, "you wish the court to practically call the strike off." Mr. Walker smiled and said that such an order would suit him all right. Judge Wood then added that it was within the bounds of the injunction called, for him to insist that the strike be declared off. Attorney Greeting, reviewing the information, raised the insufficiency of the allegations, he also raised the question of the bearing of the statutes under which the defendants were enjoined. The following are the sections of acts under which the United States courts issued injunctions restraining the American Railway Union, its officers or agents, from interfering in any way with the interstate traffic on railroads. "SECTION 1. Every contract combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both; said punishments at the discretion of the court. "SECTION 2. Any person who shall monopolize or attempt to monopolize or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize, any part of the trade or commerce among the several states or foreign powers shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished etc. "SECTION 3. Every contract combination in form of trust or otherwise or conspiracy in restraint of commerce or trade in any territory of the United States or of the District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce between any such territory and another, or between any such territory or territories and any state or states or the District of Columbia or with foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any other state or states or foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy shall be declared guilty of a misdemeanor and punished as in the case of Sections 1 and 2. "SECTION 8. The word person or persons wherever used shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under, or authorized by, the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the territories, the laws of any state or the laws of any foreign country." "This law was never intended to cover the case of these defendants," said Mr. Greeting. "It is clearly directed at the trusts and combinations which conspire to rob such people as the defendants. It seems to me that the district attorney would have been acting more within the spirit of the law if he had charged the railroads and the Pullman Palace Car Co., with conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce, as it is a well known fact that the railroads have contracted with Pullman to haul none but his cars." A sickly smile spread over the features of the railroad attorneys present. It was evident that the words of Mr. Greeting sunk deeper than some of them would care to acknowledge. District Attorney Milchrist argued that the court had perfect jurisdiction in these cases, he held that the government derived revenue from postal service and interstate commerce. It had suffered in a pecuniary way hence the bill of information filed had a proper place in court. In regard to the information and answers, Mr. Milchrist said: "Either the counsel for the government deserved to be disbarred for willful misconduct for filing it, or the defendants in their sworn answer embodying a sweeping denial of the charge in the information had been guilty of rank perjury." Attorney Erwin then proceeded, prefacing his remarks with the statement that this was a court of equity. When these defendants denied under oath before the court, the allegations made in the bill, equity shut its doors. There was a remedy at law. The men could be punished for perjury in swearing falsely in their answers. No court of equity could hear such a case. Mr. Erwin held that the information was filed in equity and that the answer filed by the defendants was final and the remedy then was at law in a charge of perjury. "Is it any indication of the power of a court," interrupted Judge Wood, "to hold a man convicted on a charge of perjury?" Attorney Erwin said that the perjury charge could purge the defendants in the case of contempt. "You say in your answer," said Judge Wood, "that the defendants deny ordering strikes because it was not in their power to do so. Is it not enough to deny that you ordered the men out without going further and denying that you advised them in this matter." "We say," answered Mr. Erwin "that every strike was voted on by a majority of the American Railway Union men upon each road upon which there had been a strike. The defendants deny the power to order or coerce the members of the American Railway Union." When questioned as to the answers denying the telegrams Mr. Erwin said the denials were sweeping. They had covered every point and purged themselves of any desire to disregard the orders of the court and the proceedings should be dismissed. He said: "Had Special Counsel Walker who set before the grand jury made his charges more specific, and not sought to prejudice the minds of the court by holding his averments for the attachment proceedings, and making them in vague and declamatory charges." Judge Wood said if the defendants had asked for more specific charges he thought the court would have granted it. Attorney Erwin here remarked that they would prefer to make a motion to quash, which Judge Wood announced could not be done in this case unless the bill was wholly defective. Mr. Erwin said that Attorney Walker had drawn the bill up hastily, and it was signed only by himself and the district attorney, who verified it merely by belief. He urged that the court should not add the information by continuing the consideration of the imperfectly drawn and inadequate bill. The court should not be a detective to ferret out the alleged truths of certain charges the evidence of which should have been collected by the government officers before a rule against the defendants was issued. Mr. Bancroft for the Santa Fe followed Mr. Erwin. He vigorously defended the information filed, and proceeded to color the telegrams admitted by the defendants, to suit the purposes of the government. After a legal tilt between the counsel on both sides, Judge Wood overruled the motion of defendant's counsel to quash the information, and postponed the case until September 5. In conclusion he said that from what he had heard, he thought it necessary for the court to have its hand on the matter. It was evident, he said, that the defense intended to attempt to put forward a quantity of irrelevant matter as to the allegations regarding a combination on the part of the railroads. He said that while it was irrelevant he would hear it as a matter of curiosity and for public disclosure. The above synopsis of the proceedings of the trial, will give a fair idea of the course the government--on behalf of the railroads--pursued in conducting the prosecution of the officers of the American Railway Union. After a conference with their counsel--although opposed to it on principle--the officers of the American Railway Union decided to give bail. This decision was due to the fact that matters of an important nature demanded their immediate attention. They were placed under $7,000 bonds each, signed by Wm. Skakel and Wm. Fitzgerald, these gentlemen qualifying to the extent of $50,000 and $250,000 respectively. For the time being the officers of the American Railway Union were free men. CHAPTER XVII. A CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION CALLED TO TAKE ACTION ON THE STRIKE. In an editorial on the trial, headed: The Press against Justice, the Chicago Times had this to say: "When it became evident that the rights and actions of E. V. Debs and his associates in the American Railway Union strike were to be reviewed in court this paper said editorially: "The Times appeals to its contemporaries and to the people to join with it in avoiding all clamor which may in the least degree influence the findings of the court or bring its proceedings into contempt." It appears that the appeal fell upon deaf ears. "Such papers as the Tribune and the Evening Journal seized upon the very first utterance of Mr. Debs' counsel as an opportunity for insidious effort to prejudice the court and the people against the cause of the labor leaders. "Two of the editorials and two of what it calls editorialettes were necessary to the Tribune yesterday in order to give its advice to the prosecuting lawyers and the court proper expression. The other organs of plutocracy though less lavish of editorial space, employed their news columns to the same end. The first strike of the allied newspapers is to pronounce the opening plea of the counsel for the defense, Mr. Erwin, in effect an assertion of the gospel of anarchy. "Overworked as it is by the bigoted press the word anarchy still serves as a more or less effective bogyman to frighten timid and ill-informed people, but no one who will read the reports of Mr. Erwin's address will find any anarchistic doctrines lurking therein. "He charged that Pullman and the railroad managers had conspired together against the interest of workingmen, that the manner of the conspiracy made resort to the law hopeless, that lawmakers could not or would not act, and under these conditions the men were justified in combining, resisting and refusing to work longer for Mr. Pullman or the roads allied with him. "The Times is unable to discern the savour of anarchy in that. It is in effect only a declaration that when employes combine to resist them, neither by direct statement or by innuendoes did the attorney suggest or excuse violence or the destruction of property. He erred, the Times thinks, in describing Pullman's course of procedure as illegal, for unhappily, law as it stands, protects Pullman in his most despotic and oppressive acts. If Pullman's course had been illegal, action at law instead of a strike and boycott would have been the remedy for it, but with the exception of this over-statement which may have been due to inadvertence, Mr. Erwin said nothing that men of fair and judicial minds can denounce as false, and nothing at all incendiary. The clamor of the conspiracy is raised to defeat justice." After the release of the officers a meeting was called at the Revere House, of the directors of the American Railway Union. They concluded to call a convention of the delegates from the different local unions, to meet in Chicago, August 2d, and take some action on the strike. Each local union was notified of this action and instructed to send a delegate with full power to act. After this meeting of the officers, they at once repaired to Ulrich Hall, where an enormous crowd greeted Mr. Debs with the greatest enthusiasm. Mr. Debs,--after being introduced by the chairman of the meeting, Mr. Adams,--was given three cheers with such a vim that the building fairly shook. He then advanced to the platform and said: "I see you have changed your quarters since I saw you before, and I am glad to say we have changed ours also. "When Judge Wood delivered his ruling yesterday he declared it to be illegal for men to combine and strike. "If that is the law, labor organizations had better disband at once. If we have no right to strike, no right to combine, no right to exercise the functions which are delegated to us, then we might as well give up and acknowledge that we are slaves. "If that is the law we have no right to resist or defend ourselves against the injustice of employers. "No matter how much has been said about the stars and stripes and the freedom of the workingman, if that is the final tribunal, corporate capital has the right to suck the life blood from the toiler who must make no sign. But I am not prepared to believe that this is in harmony with the constitution. If this is the constitution, then our liberty is gone. Mr. Erwin sounded the slogan yesterday when he declared that there is a higher power than the courts, a power greater than the aggregated combinations of capital and railroads. That is the inherent rights of workingmen to strike at the polls. "What we want then is to rid ourselves of the old party shackles. "We want to change the constitution so that even federal judges will be elected by the people. Then no judge will render a decision defying all law and justice. It is wonderful how sensitive the machinery of justice is to any complaint directed against the workingman. "But how is it when corporations combine? Is it of record that any officials of any one of them has ever been in prison for violating the law? "It is a notorious fact that the Santa Fe has robbed the people of $7,000,000 in the face of the interstate commerce law. Why not bring these colossal scoundrels to justice too? They say we must obey the law. I say we are law-abiding, and I defy any man to show a single instance where the heads of the labor organization have advocated violence. If the authorities want the law respected let them enforce it against the rich and poor alike. "In July, 1892, when the switchmen struck, the soldiers were called out to suppress them. Deputy marshalls set fire to a lot of box cars in Buffalo, N. Y., and this furnished the railroads an excuse to call on the government for soldiers. The railroads are still violating the eight hour law for which the men struck. They arrested the switchmen while the corporations are still allowed to trample the law under foot. "Is not that enough to bring disrespect of the law? As it is now, the whole thing is a roaring farce. Has anybody ever heard of soldiers being called out to guard the rights of workingmen? Whatever else I have suffered myself, I have not lost the right of free speech. If Judge Wood expounds the law I would rather rot in jail than be an alleged freeman. There is no man in the country who can directly charge me with violating the law of this country. Did any one of you ever hear me advocate violence? (A mighty no went up in response.) On the other hand did anyone here ever hear me counsel the men to be frank and straight forward, and honest and law-abiding in all they did?" The audience shouted yes to this and President Debs continued: "Before we get through with this trial it will be shown that the real conspirators are the railroad managers. Then if I go to the penitentiary Mr. Egan will have the distinction of accompanying me. We will produce the proof that the real purpose of the General Managers Association was to reduce wages, and that until we stopped them on the Great Northern, they were going around the circle with that end in view. "When it comes to striking at the polls we know the people will be with us, it will be a contest against the money power by which this country has been absolutely ruled for so many years. Havemeyer goes into the United States Senate and dictates what the duty on sugar shall be, and all the people combined can't stop him. Let a poor man go to Washington to protest and he is arrested for treading on the grass. "I am a populist and favor wiping out both old parties, so they will never come into power again. I have been a democrat all my life and I am ashamed to admit it. I want every one of you to go to the polls and vote the peoples' ticket." At the conclusion of his address, Mr. Debs announced his intention of going to his home for a few days. On hearing this, the members of the American Railway Union determined to escort him to the depot, and, although they had but two hours to make arrangements, a procession a couple of miles in length was formed. On arrival at his home in Terre Haute, President Debs was tendered a great reception. Thousands of his fellow citizens in all stations of life welcomed him with outstretched arms. Early in the evening the Naylor Opera House was packed to completion, and hundreds of people were denied admission owing to the dense throng of people who wished to do honor to this great leader. When President Debs appeared upon the stage he was greeted by a roar of applause that shook the building to its very foundation. His eloquent address on the strike situation and the causes that led up to it was received with thunders of applause. This was the man whom the corporate courts had indicted for criminal conspiracy. CHAPTER XVIII. THE STRIKE LOST. Through the machination of the general managers, the courts and the press and the Benedict Arnolds of labor, the cause of the railroad corporations was beginning to triumph. Discouraged and disheartened by the treachery in their own ranks, a great many strikers had lost confidence in the success of their undertaking and were now silently awaiting the result of the convention called at Chicago. This was made known on the return of the delegates. The action taken was to decide by a majority vote of each system whether the strike would continue in force or be declared off. After thoroughly discussing the matter, it was decided to call off the strike owing to the fact that they were forced to fight against overwhelming odds and rank treachery, and the men were instructed to make application for their positions at once, in view of getting as many as possible re-instated. This action was taken on all roads with the exception of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois, the Santa Fe and the Northern Pacific. Very few of the men were successful in securing positions, for instance at Minnesota Transfer the switchmen waited on the superintendent in a body (all who were still in the city) and made applications to be reinstated. Mr. Dudgeon the superintendent, who, by the way, was appointed during the strike to fill the vacancy made by the resignation of Mr. Sullivan, informed the men that he had more applications already than would fill all vacancies for the next two years. He said: "I will not mislead you boys for one minute, not one of you will be taken back." I was not present at this interview, but being informed that Mr. Hastings, president of the company, had signified his willingness to hear us, we consulted together and decided to call on him at his office. John F. Keenan and myself were appointed as a committee to confer with him, and, after introducing ourselves, stated our mission. He received us in a gentlemanly manner, said that he was always ready to listen to the switchmen, as he had been a switchmen himself at one time, and while he assured us that he knew we had not interfered with the company property during the strike and conducted ourselves in a creditable manner, he could do nothing for us. He also said that he had more respect for us than he had for those who were hanging on the fence, but he had nothing to do with the employes of the Minnesota Transfer, as he had left that matter entirely in the hands of the superintendent. We told him that we were informed that Mr. Dudgeon would take some of the men back if the president of the company was satisfied. "Whatever arrangements you boys make with Mr. Dudgeon will be satisfactory to me," answered Mr. Hastings. He then referred us to Mr. Dudgeon who was present and who then said that he had already given us our answer which was final. He said that he had promised steady work to the men he had already employed if they proved themselves competent, and as they were doing the work satisfactorily, he would not consider any more applications. This statement regarding the work we knew to be a bluff, as it would take an old switchman, if unacquainted with this yard, at least three months under the most favorable circumstances to learn, if unaided, enough to enable him to give efficient service, as the yard is very complicated. And again in contradiction of this statement it is known that freight was refused from different roads for four days at a time to enable them to get the yard in shape, and after the freight of twenty-four hours was received, the same operation would be necessary, although they had the services of competent switchmen from the Omaha and other railroads. So speaking for the Minnesota Transfer the general managers were winners so to speak, in the game of freeze out waged against the switchmen. The men in all other departments were taken back with but few exceptions, but it was now a settled fact that the switchmen must look elsewhere for employment. The officials were credited with saying that they would permanently close the transfer, rather than reinstate a single switchman. It would be nothing more than justice at this time to say that the former superintendent, Mr. D. M. Sullivan, had resigned his position during the strike for the reason that the management would not allow him to take back the old men. Mr. Sullivan contended that it would be impossible to operate the yard without the assistance of a goodly portion of the old employes. In a newspaper article he denied that his resignation was handed in on that account, but it is nevertheless credited by those who know him well, and by the employes themselves. We then applied at all the yards in the Twin Cities but with like result, and although not told in so many words, we were given to understand that we were blacklisted, and this was the case not only with us, but with men all over the country. The Soo Line had now put in force an ironclad agreement that all employes were obliged to sign if they wished to remain in the service of the company. This debarred the men from belonging to any labor organization for five years. Another rule put in force at this time was that engineers would hire their own firemen. This would appear to be a blow at the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. The railroad corporations exulting in their victory, determined to boycott every striker and sympathizer throughout the country, as far as it was in their power. The weapon, that it was made a criminal offense for a striker to use, and for which the officers of the American Railway Union were sent to jail, was now in the hands of the railroad corporations to use at will. What was decided by the courts unlawful in the hands of the American Railway Union was legal in the hands of the General Managers Association. This the federal judges made no effort to investigate. Judge Wood said regarding the charge of a combination on the part of the railroads, that while it was irrelevant he would hear it as a matter of curiosity. Expressions like this emanating from a judge of the United States court, immediately following his ruling against the strikers, are too plain to be misunderstood. While he might condescend to hear the charges against the general managers, it is very evident that a motion to quash any proceeding against the corporation would be granted. The greatest pressure of evidence brought to bear by the American Railway Union against this illegal combination would have no weight with the judge, therefore it could not be wondered that when the General Managers Association started a systematic course of boycotting the American Railway Union by blacklisting its members, there was no action taken to prosecute them. The Union Pacific, now in the hands of the government, not only discharged every striker and sympathizer but blacklisted them also. This is a sample of justice. Some of the men had worked for the company for twenty years, and the only charge against them was that of being members of the American Railway Union and struck in sympathy with the starving Pullman employes. Their system of blacklisting is so perfect that every avenue of escape is closed against an employe. They have what is known as the blacklist book. The names of the strikers are entered in the book of which a copy is held by all railroads. When a man makes application his name is taken and the book is then consulted. If his name is registered he is told that no more men are wanted, if not, he is told to call the next day, by which time, if he is a striker, it is known, and he will have to travel. An assumed name will do no good, as he will be asked to give reference signed by his last employer, so you will see very plainly that the strikers lot is not a bed of roses. President Debs has been accused of being responsible for this condition of affairs. There is absolutely no truth in that accusation, as in the first place it was directly against his wishes and advice that the Pullman employes struck, and only after a personal investigation of the case--and realizing that the causes which led to it would admit of no denial that the men were justified in their action--did he approve of it. The boycott that followed the Pullman strike, as has been previously stated, was not ordered by Mr. Debs. He did not have the power to order it, therefore he could not be held responsible for the result. The men who were the victims of this unfortunate boycott, were themselves responsible for its beginning, as by an almost unanimous vote they ordered it. Perhaps they may have acted hastily, it has been stated many times that this was the case, but when the brutal inhuman treatment of the Pullman employes came to light through the investigation of the delegates to the convention, they would be less than human if they had refused to come to the assistance of these men who were being ground down by a merciless corporation. After reading the facts brought to light by the witnesses before the strike commission appointed by President Cleveland, and also Gov. Altgeld's personal investigation I do not believe that any one with a spark of humanity in his heart will condemn them for their actions. CHAPTER XIX. THE COMMISSION. The commission appointed by President Cleveland to investigate the strike began its work Aug. 15, at 10 o'clock in Judge Grosscup's court room. Most of those present were members of the American Railway Union. Prof. Bemis, of the Chicago University, was in attendance. Neither the Pullman Company or the railroad companies were represented. The witnesses examined were Geo. W. Howard, vice-president of the American Railway Union, and James R. Sovereign, grand master workman of the Knights of Labor. Acting with the commission were B. J. Hastings, of Utica, N. Y., and Deputy United States Marshall Bartlett. Chairman Wright announced that they were in session pursuant to the President's call which the clerk read. This document directed an inquiry into the causes and the conditions of the controversy between the Illinois Central and the Rock Island roads and their employes. After the reading chairman Wright made the following statement: "By the act recited in the commission of the President that has just been read, this commission is directed to examine into the causes, controversies and difficulties existing between the roads named and their employes at the time the commission of the President was issued. The board is constituted as a temporary body for this purpose and not for the purpose of arbitrating the difficulties that existed. It is practically a court of inquiry and its proceedings will be in accordance with the usages of such courts. It will proceed first to hear all witnesses in behalf of the employes and then those of the corporations named. All such witnesses are requested to hand their names to the clerk. Under the law parties may be represented by counsel or appear in person as they see fit, and examine and cross-examine the witnesses. After all the witnesses have given their testimony the commission will then consider arguments or suggestions to be made upon the questions before it. All suggestions and arguments presented in writing will be filed and considered by the commission, but the question as to how far the commission will listen to parties who desire to be heard orally will depend upon the time left to the disposal of the commission and will be determined after the testimony is concluded. By the act creating it this commission possesses all the power and authority of the United States Commissioners appointed by the Circuit Courts of the United States. The hours of sitting will be from 10:00 A. M. to 4:00 P. M. Parties and their counsel and witnesses attending will find seats within the rail." Vice President Howard was the first witness sworn. In answer to questions as to his age, residence and occupation, Mr. Howard replied that he was 46 years old, resided in Chicago, and was vice president of the American Railway Union. For nearly 30 years he had been identified with the railroad service filling positions from trackman to general superintendent. He had been a member of the Yard Masters' Association, the B. of L. E. and O. R. C. By request of Mr. Wright he gave the following connection of the American Railway Union with the strike. "We began organizing the Pullman employes in March of this year. Early in May they struck. The strike was voted by themselves not by the American Railway Union, indeed we advised against the strike. "Immediately after the strike was called I accompanied a committee of forty-three representing every branch of the Pullman service to a conference with Mr. Wickes at Pullman. Mr. Pullman refused to arbitrate but promised to give their grievances immediate attention if they would return to work. I inquired of Mr. Wickes if there would be any prejudice against the members of the committee and was assured by him that there would not be. After receiving this assurance from Mr. Wickes, I advised the men to go back to their work, which they did. Next day three of the committee were discharged, not on order or with the knowledge of Mr. Wickes or Mr. Pullman, but by some under boss in the shops. This so incensed the rest of the employes who considered it a breach of promise that they unanimously struck again. "June 12, the convention of the American Railway Union met in Chicago. The Pullman strikers were represented by seven or eight delegates. The situation at Pullman received consideration. A joint committee representing the convention and the Pullman strikers was appointed to wait on the Pullman company. The committee was informed that the Pullman company would confer with only its employes, consequently this body was discharged and a committee consisting of Pullman employes appointed. The action of the Pullman company was reported to the American Railway Union convention whereupon each delegate wired his local union for instructions. The result of this was that the members of the American Railway Union all over the country voted to discontinue handling Pullman cars if at the end of five days from that date the Pullman company refused to arbitrate with its employes. "In this connection I wish to say that Mr. Pullman stated to the committee of forty-three, in my hearing, that his employes at that time owed him $70,000 for rent and that he had not pushed them for payment which fact clearly shows that his men were not making enough to pay rent." Mr. Wright: "That was the boycott order, was it?" Mr. Howard: "I do not use the word boycott. The action taken was simply that members of the American Railway Union would not handle Pullman cars. "Two days before the limit of five days--the dates I do not now recall--but I will furnish them--the General Managers' Association took action declaring that they would share the expense of whipping the American Railway Union. "Pullman would not arbitrate and first the men on one road then on another refused to handle Pullman cars. They did not decline to handle other cars, but switchmen, you understand, would not attach Pullmans to trains. Engineers, conductors, firemen and trainmen would not take out trains which Pullman cars were attached to. There was no attempt to interfere with the mails but on the contrary every effort in our power was made to help the roads carry them. The companies held the mails in their determination to attach Pullman cars to trains. "Of my personal knowledge I know of a road that abandoned a mail train to take out an excursion train, not having crews to take out both. In another instance I know of a mail train going out on the order of the railway officials after the Pullmans had been cut off by the employes. Things went on in this way for several days. No violence was committed by the employes and the police were in full control of the situation to prevent violence from outsiders. "The first pistol was drawn by one Miller, an employe of the Tribune at Blue Island, wholly without cause, and after the troops were on the ground. The violence that was afterward committed was not as was believed by members of the American Railway Union but by outsiders--some acting in passion, because they saw in the presence of the soldiers an instrument of tyranny. Others in a spirit of mischief and love of destruction and others still--hired by the General Managers in order to create public sentiment against us. Yesterday I gave the mayor of Chicago the name of a man who claimed, while under the influence of liquor to have received $400 for burning cars. The Committee of safety, at Springfield, sent us the names of three men who quarreled about the division of $500 received for burning cars. $200 of which was paid in advance by John M. Eagan, of the General Managers' Association." Regarding the motives actuating the organization of the American Railway Union Mr. Howard denied that it was to destroy the old organizations but because they no longer fulfilled the necessities of the situation. If the old brotherhoods could get together amicably there would be no need of the American Railway Union, but they never can. There are two many causes for jealousy, for instance: There are 10,000 locomotive engineers who are not in the B. of L. E. but are members of the B. of L. F. In case of a grievance the engineers are divided and are represented by two organizations. The Brotherhood of Trainmen contains men who have been promoted to conductors causing a friction between these two orders. Mr. Wright: "Then the sole purpose of the American Railway Union in taking the action it did was to oppose the Pullman company and it was not actuated by any desire to injure the other railway organizations?" Mr. Howard: "That is it exactly. After the action taken by the General Managers' Association we had to act as we did or lie down." Mr. Wright: "Did the officers of the American Railway Union advise the men on roads other than those using Pullmans to go on strike?" Mr. Howard: "The men on all roads represented by the General Managers' Association were advised to go out on strike." Mr. Kernan: "Was this order extended to roads not using Pullman cars or which were not represented in the General Managers' Association?" Mr. Howard: "No, sir." Mr. Kernan: "Were there any such road?" Mr. Howard: "Yes. General Manager Clark, of the Mobile & Ohio, sent us word that his road would drop the Pullman service if the men would continue at work. We advised the men to return to work under those conditions, but the men at St. Louis argued that such action would weaken their cause and refused to take our advice in the matter." Mr. Worthingford: "How did you advise all other organizations to go on a sympathetic strike?" Mr. Howard: "We did not advise nor even request other organizations to declare a strike. We invited the heads of all labor organizations to come here and aid us by their advice or in any way they saw fit to help us. I think Mr. Debs sent the invitation. When the representatives of the other labor organizations met here, we went before the body and explained the entire situation. They asked Mr. Debs what he wished them to do. He replied that he did not ask anything of them but left it to their best judgment and conscience to take such measures as would help bring the trouble to an end. Mr. Debs read a communication which he had prepared to present to the general managers, and asked the representatives at the conference if they would act as a board of arbitration or assume the role of peace-makers. President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, seemed afraid that such action would involve the other organizations in some way and hesitated to accept our request to take the communication to the general managers. We then concluded to ask Mayor Hopkins to present our communication. The mayor willingly granted our request." Mr. Kernan: "Was any written record kept of that conference of the heads of the labor organizations which was held at the Briggs House?" Mr. Howard: "I do not know." Commissioner Kernan: "What records have you of the proceedings of your convention as to who invited the heads of other labor organizations to meet here in conference, and what they were expected to do?" Mr. Howard: "I think it was decided at the convention of the American Railway Union, which met here June 12, to extend such an invitation. I know it was talked over then." Commissioner Wright: "Then the American Railway Union did not advise a sympathetic strike of all organizations." Mr. Howard: "No, sir. Mr. Debs left that question to the judgment and conscience of the men themselves." Commissioner Wright: "Was the action of the convention of June 12 a strike?" Mr. Howard: "Well, it was called a strike." Commissioner Worthington: "Was the communication you referred to presented to the general managers?" Mr. Howard: "Yes, sir, and returned without an answer further than a statement that the General Managers' Association had no business to transact with the American Railway Union or its representatives." Mr. Kernan: "It is charged that your organization, like others, encouraged its members to persistently interfere with and prevent unorganized labor from taking positions given up by their striking members. Is that charge true?" Mr. Howard: "It cannot be shown in one instance that anything of the kind has been done." Commissioner Kernan: "You won't go so far as to say that no interference of the sort alluded to has ever been engaged in?" Mr. Howard: "Certainly not. I mean that such interference was not authorized or countenanced by the union." Commissioner Kernan: "Did you take any steps to prevent such interference?" Mr. Howard: "We have taken the ground that when we go out on strike not to interfere with any of the new men the companies may employ." Commissioner Kernan: "You do countenance advice to such men not to take the places of strikers?" Mr. Howard: "Oh, yes. We claim the right to ask new men not to take our places." Mr. Kernan: "Is it not a fact that such interviews usually result in violence?" Mr. Howard: "No. I think the rule is to the contrary. We go no further than to request the men to quit work and to commit no violence." Commissioner Kernan: "Is there any punishment for violation of that rule?" Mr. Howard: "No. No organization has any power to punish a member for violation of such rule except by expulsion. We leave the punishment of such cases to the civil authorities." Commissioner Kernan: "Don't you think some steps should be taken by labor unions to punish their members who violate the rules in that respect?" Mr. Howard: "Yes, sir, I do, and we started out to do so here during the strike but the trouble assumed such vast proportions that it was impossible to do anything in that direction. In the case of the Great Northern strike we appointed committees to guard the company's property, and the men were instructed to shoot anyone found in the act of destroying same." Commissioner Kernan: "What, as a rule has been your experience in strikes where violence was restored to?" Mr. Howard: "The men have always been defeated." Commissioner Kernan: "Then a resort to violence is rather detrimental to the cause of the strikers?" Mr. Howard: "Decidedly so. We want public opinion with us in a strike." Commissioner Kernan: "Do you know of any organization that disciplines its members for resorting to violence?" Mr. Howard: "None, excepting the American Railway Union. Our argument is that the only weapons labor has to fight its battles with are the strike and the boycott. There is some talk about the ballot but some questions cannot be settled by the ballot. Only the array of labor in one solid phalanx will give it the power that will make strikes unnecessary." Commissioner Kernan: "Does not history show that on account of jealousies in your own ranks a complete organization of labor cannot be effected?" Mr. Howard: "Yes. That is history up to the present, but the workingman is doing more thinking to-day than ever before." Commissioner Kernan: "You regard such a strike as would be possible under the conditions you outline as a desirable thing for organized labor?" Mr. Howard: "No, sir. If employers would be a little more considerate of their men there would soon be no labor organizations in existence." Commissioner Kernan: "You do not say that all grievances are just, do you?" Mr. Howard: "No. Many of them are frivolous." Commissioner Kernan: "It is charged that there is a minority in all labor organizations who are practically enslaved by the will of the majority and that a man for that reason loses his independence when he joins a union?" Mr. Howard: "Well, I think the reverse is the rule. The hot heads and agitators in the labor movement are in the minority; the quiet, thinking men are always in the majority. It often happens that the man who is really most anxious to strike assumes an air of indifference or positive objection to such a move. He is merely waiting for a good excuse to stop and let the blame lie with some one else. He wants some one to order him to quit work so he can say to the superintendent that he is afraid to remain at work for fear of personal violence." Commissioner Kernan: "Was any other motive behind the strike other than to force a settlement with Mr. Pullman?" Mr. Howard: "No." Commissioner Kernan; "Was there any object in breaking the older unions so that the American Railway Union might profit thereby?" Mr. Howard: "While the increase in membership in the American Railway Union meant a decrease in the strength of the older organizations it was not the object of the strike to break down the older unions." In answer to a question by Commissioner Kernan as to what he would suggest to prevent railroad strikes in the future, Mr. Howard replied that the government ownership and control of railroads was the only practical solution of the question. He argued that about one third of the railroads of the country are practically under control of the government, and thought the balance could easily be taken. He claimed the Santa Fe was from two to four months behind in payment of wages; that it would seem only fair that the government should see that the men were paid. The government had gone to the extent of forcing the employes of that and other roads to work whether they wished to or not and he thought the other step might as well be taken at once. Mr. Sovereign, grand master workman of the Knights of Labor, was the next witness. He testified that he was a member of the American Railway Union. Said the only official connection the Knights of Labor had with the strike was the adoption of a resolution that they would not ride in Pullman cars. He also stated that a general tie-up of all the industries in the country to force public sentiment on Pullman and bring to bear on the Pullman company the greatest possible pressure was contemplated, but it was found the tie-up could not be made sufficiently general to bring about the desired results, so it was not attempted. Commissioner Kernan: "Then you do not consider the American Railway Union responsible for the rioting that occurred?" Mr. Sovereign: "No, sir. In fact I do not think there was any rioting." Commissioner Kernan: "Do you consider burning cars a species of rioting?" Mr. Sovereign: "Not when it was done by U. S. marshalls." Commissioner Kernan: "Was it so done?" Mr. Sovereign: "I read reports in Mayor Hopkins' office to-day to that effect--reports that seem conclusive on that point. Moreover I don't think there was as much rioting as is generally believed. I came from Des Moines on what was supposed to be the last train to Chicago. We arrived without incident at Blue Island on July 6. There the train was side tracked and we were told by the officials that it could go no further because of the mobs between there and the city. I saw a west bound mail train on another track and was told it had been there for twenty-six hours and could not proceed on account of the mob and violence beyond, though it would go on the very same track on which we had just arrived. I bought a ticket from Blue Island to Chicago on the Wisconsin Central. After coming a short distance the train stopped and the conductor told us we could go no further on account of mobs ahead of us. I picked up my grip with the intention of walking to the city, but the conductor cautioned me against risking my life. However I walked in, was not molested, saw no disorder and did not see more then ten men at any one place." Mr. Kernan inquired what views the Knights of Labor held about letting non-union men take the places of strikers. Mr. Sovereign: "That depends on circumstances. In the case of mine owners, for instance, who have sold houses to their employes who have partly paid for same, the unjust discharge of these men means a forfeiture to the mine owners of all money paid on the property. We hold that we must by all honorable means prevent others from taking their places." Commissioner Kernan: "But suppose honorable means are not effective?" Mr. Sovereign: "Well, if it's necessary to prevent them from passing a given line we clasp hands and keep them out." Commissioner Kernan: "You do not assault them?" Mr. Sovereign: "No. If they break through they assault us." Mr. Sovereign did not think that strikes or compulsory arbitration was the remedy for labor troubles. He believed that the government ownership of railroads would settle the trouble for employes. He also believed the employes of corporations had an equity in their positions and for unjust discharge should have a remedy in a court of equity. Mr. Kernan: "Why cannot the contract between employer and employe provide for all you want the law to cover?" Mr. Sovereign: "Because labor is always dependent, always has been at least and is forced by the duress of circumstances to accept employment without insisting on protecting conditions." George W. Lovejoy was the next witness to take the stand. In answer to a question by Commissioner Wright, he said: "I am familiar with the history of the strike on the Rock Island road. Beside the order passed by the convention to refuse to handle Pullman cars, the men at La Salle had a special grievance that consisted of unjust treatment of the members of the American Railway Union which had a local lodge at that point. I for one was dismissed without any cause being assigned. Complaint was made to Supt. Dunlap and an explanation asked as to why the men were discharged. He refused to consider the grievance submitted to him so the men concluded to strike." Commissioner Wright: "Was the grievance submitted in writing?" Mr. Lovejoy: "It was. I have not a copy, but think I can get one from the local union." Commissioner Wright: "What part did your local union take in the Pullman strike?" Mr. Lovejoy: "It decided to sustain it." Mr. Worthington: "Was there any violence at La Salle?" Mr. Lovejoy: "No, sir. None whatever." Commissioner Kernan: "Have any of the old men been taken back?" Mr. Lovejoy: "No, sir. And never will." Mr. Worthington: "Is it on account of the strike that they cannot get back?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I suppose it is." Commissioner Kernan: "How general was the strike at La Salle?" Mr. Lovejoy: "It extended to every branch of the service. Switchmen, firemen, engineers, conductors, brakemen, telegraph operators, clerks, round-housemen and trackmen." Commissioner Kernan: "Now tell us about the cause that led to your discharge as you understand it?" Mr. Lovejoy: "Six months previous to the convention of the American Railway Union which met in Chicago, June 12, I had an understanding with the superintendent that I would get a leave of absence and was to put a man in my place while absent. When I got ready to come to Chicago, I sent a note asking for such leave of absence and transportation. The transportation was sent me, but no answer to my note was given. When I came to Chicago I called at the office of the superintendent to have an understanding about my leave and he told me that a written notice was not necessary. Whenever I wanted to go anywhere all I had to do was to put a good man in my place and go. The Tuesday following the opening of the convention the assistant superintendent went to La Salle and put another man in my place permanently. No reason has ever been given me why such action was taken." Commissioner Wright: "Mr. Lovejoy, I suppose you have given the subjects of labor troubles and strikes some study. I wish to ask if you can suggest any solution of these troubles." Mr. Lovejoy: "Yes, sir, I have and I consider the only way to solve the question is for the government to own the railroads." Commissioner Kernan: "What is your reason?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I think the employes would receive better treatment and be better satisfied. I think they would get the same kind of treatment as the postal employes and there would be no strikes under these conditions." Commissioner Kernan: "What do you think of arbitration as a remedy?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I have never seen arbitration tried to any great extent and while I believe in the principle I am not prepared to say that I am in favor of compulsory arbitration." Commissioner Wright: "If the government owned the railroads how would you avoid the changes incident to a change in administration?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I consider that railroad employes would be in practically the same position as postal clerks. They would be under civil service rules to the extent of being pensioned after a term of years of faithful service." Commissioner Kernan: "Would it not cause jealousy among other branches of workingmen if such a system should be adopted toward railroad men?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I do not think so. I am not jealous of postal clerks." Commissioner Wright: "What would you suggest as the next best thing if government ownership proved impracticable?" Mr. Lovejoy: "That the government keep hands off altogether; let the roads and their men fight out their troubles free from outside interference. It is the knowledge that the government can be called to their aid that makes many of the railroad officials so arbitrary with their men." Commissioner Kernan: "Don't you think that disputes ought to be settled by some other method than open warfare?" Mr. Lovejoy: "There would be none if the authorities would keep away. The employes would settle their grievances by arbitration." Mr. Worthington: "What would you think of a law providing that upon application of a certain number of employes the railroads should be compelled to come before a board of arbitration and make answer to the grievances of the men or vice versa before a strike could be declared? I mean by that a law which would compel a hearing of disputes by a constituted tribunal even though that tribunal had not the power to force a decision in the matter?" Mr. Lovejoy: "I would be in favor of such a court and believe that the railroad men would abide by its decision voluntarily if they had some choice in the selection of the arbitrators." Commissioner Kernan: "Is it not one of the greatest troubles the railroad men have to contend with that they cannot get a hearing of their grievances?" Mr. Lovejoy: "Yes, sir. It is. And if the men could always be sure of getting a fair and impartial hearing I do not believe there would be any strikes. As a rule the men are opposed to strikes and resort to them only when every means of settling grievances has failed." Commissioner Kernan: "Is it not true that strikes usually end disastrously to the men?" Mr. Lovejoy: "Strikes often fail to accomplish the particular end in view, but I believe on the whole their tendency is toward a betterment of the conditions of the men. The strike we have just passed through has demonstrated to the working people of this country that they must get together as one solid body before they can win. They have found out that when they undertake to assert their rights they have no friends but themselves. The press, the judiciary, the ministers and office holders are all against them." Secretary Kelliher of the American Railway Union was next to testify. He promised to furnish the commissioners with certified copies of any of the proceedings of the convention, and the correspondence which occurred during the strike. In answer to questions by the commissioners he considered government ownership of railways the only solution to strikes. While he favored arbitration, he did not think compulsory arbitration would be satisfactory to the men. Thomas J. Heathcoat, a resident of Pullman, and one of the strikers, was the next witness examined. He testified to the condition of Pullman prior to and at the time of the strike and gave a full account of the strike and the causes that brought it about. He gave in detail the scale of wages paid prior to June, '93, and the constant reductions since. Mr. Heathcoat, in answer to Commissioner Kernan asking him to explain the mode adopted by the Pullman Company in cutting wages for piece work, said: "Take, for instance, that desk behind which you sit. Suppose it were given to me to make. I figured that I could do the work for $20.00, and took it at that price. As a good mechanic I could make $4.00 per day at it. For the next one the foreman would allow me $18.00. Being anxious to make good wages, and being a good mechanic, I would use extra effort and still make $4.00 per day. The next one the foreman would allow me only $16.00 for. Yet, by extraordinary effort I could still make $4.00 daily. The next one the foreman would allow me $12.00 for, and with my utmost endeavors I could make only $3.00 per day. As a good mechanic I would refuse to take any more at that price and the work would be given to an inferior workman who could make only $1.25 per day. This is the way the Pullman Company has worked its piece work system." Commissioner Wright: "Did the cuts in other departments average as much as in yours?" Mr. Heathcoat: "They averaged the same though they were not alike. The new men in the freight car department suffered more than we did and there were others in some of the departments that were making pretty good wages at the time of the strike." Commissioner Wright: "You have spoken of asking the company for a reduction in rent. What rent do you pay, and what did you get for it?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Up to the beginning of the strike I paid $17 a month rent and 71 cents per month for water. Gas I did not use. Could not afford it. The company charged $2.25 per 1,000 feet. My house had five rooms, cellar and back yard." Commissioner Wright: "What would similar houses rent for elsewhere?" Mr. Heathcoat: "I know of eight and nine room cottages with front and back yards, in every way more desirable than the house I live in, that can be rented for $8.00 and $9.00 per month." Commissioner Worthington: "What, in your opinion, would it cost to build houses such as you live in?" Mr. Heathcoat: "I should like to take the contract for building them at $600 apiece." Commissioner Kernan: "What other accommodations do you get for the rent you pay, say in the way of paved streets?" Mr. Heathcoat: "There are cheap wooden sidewalks in front of the house and the company keeps a force of men on the street picking up paper and hauling away garbage. That's all I know." Commissioner Wright: "Have you applied to the Pullman company for work since the strike?" Mr. Heathcoat: "No, sir. I understand that I am blacklisted. They have a blacklist, you know. I have one in my pocket now." Commissioner Wright: "Will you let me see it?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. Here it is." Commissioner Wright: "Have you any objection to telling us where you got this?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. I got it from a friend of one of the clerks in the Pullman office and I would not like to tell the name of either, as it would cost the clerk his position." Commissioner Wright: "Have you any other evidence of the existence of a blacklist?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. One of the men who applied to Mr. Childs at the Rock Island shops for work. He was asked his name and the same being found on one of their lists he was told that he was a Pullman striker, consequently could not get work. I understand the Pullman company's blacklist was sent to all the railroads so that others besides myself can never get work in the railroad shop again." Commissioner Wright: "Do labor unions ever blacklist non-union men?" Mr. Heathcoat: "The American Railway Union does not. That is the only labor union I ever belonged to." Commissioner Wright: "What was the feeling of the employes toward Mr. Pullman previous to the strike?" Mr. Heathcoat: "As a rule I think the employes had a high regard for Mr. Pullman until Harry Middleton took charge two and a half years ago. He is not a practical car builder. He wastes material for which we are charged. He displaces men who have earned their positions by good work and promotes his favorites. He makes arbitrary and tyrannical shop rules which deprive us of part of our pay. For instance, suppose a car carpenter be given a lot of cars, the work to be finished in a certain time. Within a day of the time limit it is seen that there is still six days work for one man. He will put on five extra men, regardless whether that many can work to advantage, and pay them by the hour charging the same to the man who took the job as piece work." Commissioner Kernan: "Is not time enough allowed to finish the work so that such instances would be due to the neglect of the man who took the job?" Mr. Heathcoat: "No, sir. It is not, except in rare cases. It is misjudgment on the part of the manager, Mr. Middleton, as I said before, who is not a practical car builder. As an instance of a waste of material--There was a set of car sashes, made of mahogany. Care was not taken to see that the mahogany picked out was all of the same color. Instead of picking out those of the set that were alike in color and completing the set with new ones and using the off color ones in another set with wood picked out to match, Middleton had the whole set smashed and charged the men with the cost of the material and refused to pay them for their time when it was not their fault at all." Mr. Wright: "Referring now to the committee appointed to wait on Mr. Pullman--tell us what you said and what was said to you." Mr. Heathcoat: "We asked Mr. Wickes and Mr. Pullman to adjust our wages so that we could support our families. We wanted either the wages of June, 1893, or a reduction in rent and some increase in wages. Mr. Pullman said he could not reduce rents as he was making only 3-1/2 or 2-1/2 per cent., I don't know which now, on his investment. He said he could not increase wages because he was losing money on his contract work. But he did not say what was a fact that nine tenths of the work that had been done since the cut began was Pullman and not contract work." Commissioner Kernan: "What do you mean by Pullman work?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Work on cars owned and operated by the Pullman Company and not work on cars sold to railroads. One result of this was that the company was getting work from us for $1.90 for which it paid the railroads when they did this work $2.50 and $2.70. Two days after he told us the company was losing money on its contract work, a quarterly dividend of 2 per cent. was declared." Commissioner Kernan: "That might have been paid from accumulations and not from earnings." Mr. Heathcoat: "Mr. Pullman did not make any such explanation to us when we spoke to him afterward. If he had, perhaps we would not have felt so badly about it. But it did seem hard that when men were working and not getting enough from the company to buy enough to eat that it should pay out $600,000.00 in dividends." Commissioner Wright: "Were there those not getting enough to eat?" Mr. Heathcoat: "I have seen men faint by the side of cars on which they were working because they had not had enough to eat. After the cuts, while working as hard as I could to earn enough to support my family, I have been obliged to sit down in the middle of the forenoon to rest because I had not had enough food to enable me to do such hard work and there were hundreds worse off than I. If rents had been reduced I believe there would have been no strike. We wanted to submit the question of rent and wages to a board of arbitration, we to choose one, the Pullman company one, and the two a third. We would have abided by any decision the arbitrators made." Commissioner Wright: "Did not Mr. Pullman offer to let you look over the company's books to convince you that what he said was true?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes. But what would we know about them? Besides, we did not believe that the books would show the real facts. I have been told that there is only one accountant in the city who understands the company's books and we did not have money enough to buy bread let alone to hire an accountant. I have seen men crying at the paymaster's window when their pay checks for two weeks would be eight cents or 35 cents, or one dollar or two dollars over their rent and the company expected them to support their families on that 'till next pay day. You see the men got two pay checks, one for just the amount of rent owed and the other for the balance of their two weeks pay. The rent checks they are expected to indorse and turn over at once to the town agent in payment of rent. The law will not allow the company to deduct the rent from the pay and retain it, but the check must be turned over just the same for you cannot cash it unless you can persuade the agent that you cannot possibly live unless you are allowed to retain it. Then perhaps you will be allowed to retain a part or all of it. I have been insulted by the clerks in the agent's office because I told them I could not get along without the money for my rent check. Yet such was the case for there was one time when my pay after the rent was deducted left only eight cents a day for each member of my family to live on until the next pay day." Mr. Worthington: "Are the Pullman employes required to live in Pullman?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. As long as there are any houses in Pullman vacant the men must live there, unless they own houses somewhere else or are favorites of the shop bosses. In fact during last winter I knew of people who owned houses in Roseland leaving them unrented and moving to Pullman so they could get work. When you apply for work you are required to make application if you are a man of family." Mr. Worthington: "Are there any lots in Pullman bought and sold so that you could form an idea of the value, for instance, of the lot on which the house you live in stands?" Mr. Heathcoat: "No, sir. No lots are sold but I know of a house and lot over in Roseland on the boulevard near One hundred and eleventh street which were bought two years ago for $2,500 and can be rented for $12 a month. The house is better than the one I live in, is bigger and in a good location while mine is on a back street and I would not pay more than $1,000 for the house and lot." Mr. Worthington: "If your house could be built for $600 and only yields 3-1/2 per cent the lot must be worth more than $5,000. Is it?" Mr. Heathcoat: "No, sir. It is not, but there are some frame houses in Pullman which the company charges eight dollars a month for that could be built for $100." Mr. Wright: "It was said at the beginning of this strike that the Pullman people owed $70,000 for rent. How far back did that accumulation begin?" Mr. Heathcoat: "I should say about Nov. 1, 1893." Mr. Wright: "Tell us if you know what the cuts in wages were in departments other than your own." Mr. Heathcoat: "The freight car builders suffered more than others, but the commission can find out best by having some one from each department come before it." Commissioner Kernan: "Don't the people of Pullman know that we want to hear from every one that can throw any light on this subject?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. They understand it but there are lots of them who have not money to get down here." Mr. Wright: "Tell us if you can what was the average pay of the employes, say in April last?" Mr. Heathcoat: "On a lot of elevated cars on which I worked I made 16 cents per hour, on one car and 15 cents per hour on another, but there were men working alongside of me who made only four and five cents per hour. I would say that in January, February and March the mechanic's pay averaged $1.50 and the laborers' pay $1.30 per day. Some times the laborers' checks were bigger than the mechanics'." Commissioner Wright: "Have you any suggestion of a remedy for labor troubles?" Mr. Heathcoat: "Yes, sir. The ownership of railroads and banks by the government would do it. I never heard of a strike in the post-office department or the navy yard." Miss Curtis next took the stand. She was an employe of Pullman and president of the Girls Union of the American Railway Union at Pullman. Beginning her testimony she said: "In June, 1893, the wages in my department were 22-1/2 cents per hour, $2.25 a day. In April, 1894, they were 70 to 80 cents a day. There were two cuts in one week in November and another in January. In April the best wages any of us could make was eighty cents a day, while some could not make more than from 40 to 50 cents a day. Last June they could make at least $1.50 per day." Commissioner Wright: "Do you pay rent?" Miss Curtis: "Not now. My father worked for the Pullman company thirteen years, during which time he paid rent. He died last September and as there was some expense connected with his sickness he owed $60 back rent. Then I went to work in the repair shop and boarded out. The company made me pay $3 per week on account of the back rent. I still owed $15 on the day of the strike and owe it yet. Some weeks I did not earn enough to pay my board and rent too and then I paid only part of the $3." Commissioner Wright: "Were you on any of the committees that waited on Mr. Pullman and Mr. Wickes?" Miss Curtis: "Yes, sir. I represented the girls on that committee. We wanted our wages raised as the men did theirs. Mr. Wickes said it was impossible to raise wages as they were losing money on their contracts and it was utterly impossible to reduce rents. An appointment was made to meet Mr. Pullman on another day. When we saw him he said the same that Mr. Wickes told us." Commissioner Kernan: "What work was done in your department?" Miss Curtis: "We made the silk, satin and velvet drapings; the carpets, tapestries and mattresses for the sleeping coaches, the linen for the dining cars, sewed the fringe on cushions and all that sort of thing." Theodore Rhode was the next to testify. He said: "Four years ago I had a good job. Then they wanted me to do a kind of work that no one else could make a living at. Four or five of us were to work together. I was to have charge of the work and we were to divide whatever we made. I said I would try it, but if I didn't like it wanted my old job back. This was agreed to. When I became satisfied that I could make nothing at the new work I asked for my old place, but they would not give it to me and told me that if I didn't like what I was doing I could quit working for the company. After a while we got so we could make from $2.60 to $2.85 for 10-3/4 hours work. Then the cuts came, and work for which we had received $9.00 paid only $4.25. It was impossible to make $1.25 per day, and we were told by the foreman to quit if not satisfied. I paid $15.00 a month for rent and 71 cents for water. I could rent as good a house in Kensington or Roseland for $7.00 a month. On the day of the strike I owed $2.50 for rent. Have not paid it since, although the collector has been around two or three times lately. Low wages and high rents are not all the trouble. It is the abuse. They talk to men as they would to dogs. They are constantly experimenting with new materials. If it don't prove satisfactory we get no pay for our work. Take English varnish, for instance. The atmosphere must be just right or it won't work. Oftentimes, owing to a dampness in the air, we were obliged to do our work over two or three times for which we get no extra pay. In April my wages every two weeks were from $12.00 to $15.00. I understand they pay the men who took our places from $2.50 to $3.00 and $3.00 to $5.00 per day. I have not applied for work again." R. W. Combes. For 30 years a car carpenter and for 10 years employed at Pullman, was next called before the commission. "A year ago," he said, "wages in his department was $2.25 at piece work, and 17-1/2 cents per hour. In March, piece work was cut so that they could not make more than 68 cents a day." Commissioner Kernan: "How much would you have gotten at the rate of wages in force in March or April?" Mr. Combes: "We did not built the same kind of cars in 1894, but had we, we would not have received anything for them. In February I had $3.50 to support my wife and two children after paying rent. Had the men received fair treatment there would have been no strike. John Pearson, superintendent of the freight car department, is the whole cause of the strike. He is abusive and tyrannical. I was inspector in April and Pearson told me if the men did not do what I told them to take a club and knock their damned heads off. That's the kind of a man he is. I have not applied for work. Middleton told me I never could work there again." H. F. Griswold, a switchman, testified that he had last been employed by the C. M. & St. P. Ry.--that he lost his position through the strike--had tried to get work within the last few weeks on the Penn. R. R., at Pittsburg, Altona and Columbus and at each of these places had been shown a blacklist with his name on it as a member of the American Railway Union. Several other witnesses testified as to being blacklisted on account of being in the strike. Charles Naylor, a fireman on the Ft. Wayne road up to the time of the strike, was next examined. In answer to questions as to what he thought of arbitration he said: "From my knowledge of railroad men I do not believe they would have much confidence in arbitrators elected in the same way public officials are. My idea is that they should be appointed when their services are required and a new set of arbitrators selected for each case. The board should be composed of one man selected by the employes, one by the roads, and a third by these two." Commissioner Wright: "That is the law now." Mr. Naylor: "Yes, but it is not enforced. It seems to me that if Mr. Cleveland had followed in the line of action pursued by Mr. Gladstone, during the coal miners' strike in England, there would have been no trouble here. If he had told the railroads when they called on him for troops that they must submit to arbitration or they would get no support from the government, the men would have thought a good deal more of his honesty and fairness, but when they see the whole power of the government thrown on the side of the railroads they lose confidence in the justice of the government." Commissioner Wright: "There was no law under which the president could have told the roads to arbitrate the trouble with their men." Mr. Naylor: "From all that I can learn there was as much law for him to do so as for him to send troops here without the request of the governor of the state." Mr. Worthington: "In your suggestion of a board of arbitrators there would be but one of them unprejudiced?" Mr. Naylor: "I think such a board would always be able to effect a compromise between the parties. I have acted in the capacity of arbitrator between the company and the men in adjusting grievances and have always found that a spirit of compromise was met in a like spirit and that is the principle, after all, upon which such questions must be settled." Vice President Howard of the American Railway Union, was recalled to make an explanation regarding some testimony which Mr. Heathcoat had given the day before. He said: "Mr. Heathcoat told you that Mr. Pullman had promised to allow a committee to examine his books, to prove the correctness of his statements to the effect that his company was losing money on its contracts. The next day, Wallace Rice, a reporter on the Herald, called on Mr. Pullman and asked him if he would allow an expert to examine his books on behalf of the union. Mr. Pullman replied that what he meant by allowing an examination of his books was that he would have his own book-keeper prepare a statement to be submitted to the committee. He said he never had any idea of allowing the committee to actually examine his books. Mr. Howard then asked if he might make a statement of a couple of matters of importance to the employes. The commissioners looked doubtful about this, but finally Mr. Wright said he might go ahead if the matter had anything to do with the subject under consideration. Mr. Howard then said: "The United States government is blacklisting 3,000 employes of the Union Pacific Railroad now." Mr. Wright: "We have no authority to go into that question." Mr. Howard: "And the other matter is that all the other roads are making a threat against the M. K. & T. to boycott its business if the road persists in making a certain rate to Washington." Mr. Wright: "Has that anything to do with the American Railway Union?" Mr. Howard: "Yes, sir. If the government allows the railroads to violate the laws it ought to keep hands off in disputes between the roads and the men." Rev. Mr. Cawardine was called and related what he knew about the matter. Mr. Cawardine is pastor of the M. E. church in Pullman. His testimony was directed chiefly to the exorbitant rents. In answer to Mr. Wright, saying that he had been charged with being an anarchist, and a socialist, Mr. Cawardine said: "I have considered the charge so contemptible in the bitterness and prejudice of its origin as to be beneath answer. That I, an American born citizen and the son of a soldier who died for his country, should be charged with being anarchist, seems to me incomprehensible. It is simply an evidence of what has been made very apparent that a good many people are violently prejudiced against working men and will not listen to what may be said on their side or read what may be written. I find this feeling even among many of my brethren in the ministry. I regret it too, because the labor problem can only be solved by a consideration of it from all sides." Andrew W. Pearson, a real estate agent who formerly worked in Pullman, was called on the stand and in answer to a question put by Mr. Wright, said: "Houses which rent for $17.00 in Pullman can be rented in Kensington and Roseland for $10.00. Pullman houses which rent for $25.00 can be rented elsewhere for $15.00, and $10.00 Pullman houses for $5.00. In Grand Crossing, a manufacturing town, $8.00 a month will rent a five-room brick cottage. The rents I am giving now are the present rents. There has been a decline since two years ago everywhere but in Pullman." Commissioner Kernan: "How much higher are rents in Pullman than elsewhere?" Mr. Pearson: "I should say fully one-third." Frank P. McDonald, a locomotive engineer and author of the Great scab route circular, testified that he was a member of the American Railway Union and a delegate to their convention. He said he was opposed to the strike, but voted for it as it was the unanimous sentiment of his local union. His reason for opposing it was because he did not think the union was strong enough to win. President Debs, of the American Railway Union, was the next important witness to testify. Mr. Debs outlined the trouble from its inception down to the special convention in Chicago on Aug. 2. In answer to questions by Commissioner Wright, Mr. Debs said he was 38 years old, a resident of Terre Haute, Ind., and had been president of the American Railway Union since June 20, 1893. He was a practical railroad man, had been employed four and a half years in the capacity of locomotive fireman and was at present editor of the Fireman's Magazine. Mr. Wright told him to go ahead and give a history of the late strike so far as he knew from his own experience. Mr. Debs said: "In the early part of May, while at home in Indiana, I received a telegram from Mr. Howard notifying me of the probability of a strike at the Pullman shops, the employes of which were members of our union. I authorized Mr. Howard to take full charge of the matter, but to do all in his power to prevent a strike. My reason for this was that the American Railway Union had just been involved in a strike on the Great Northern railway. At a meeting of the general officers of the union we had discussed the possibility of other strikes arising on account of the victory the union had won on the Great Northern railway, and we decided that it would be good policy to be very cautious in encouraging the men to go into strikes whenever there was a possibility of avoiding them. May 11th, I heard that the Pullman employes had struck. A few days after, I came here and made a personal investigation of the trouble. After a trip to St. Paul I again went down there and the result of my investigation was that the conditions at Pullman justified the men in the course they had taken. I found that wages and expenses were so adjusted that every dollar the men made found its way back to Pullman coffers. The men were not only not getting enough wages to live on but were getting deeper and deeper in debt every day. They had not money enough as a rule to get away. There seemed to be no escape for them. Wages had been reduced, but expenses remained the same. After I had satisfied myself of the truth of the men's statements regarding their conditions, I made up my mind to do everything possible in law and justice to right the wrongs of our members who had gone out on strike. We first tried to get the company to arbitrate. We were confident that any fair and impartial board would decide in favor of the employes. The company, however, refused every proposition of that sort saying that it had nothing to arbitrate. I then suggested that the Pullman company select two men to act with two judges of the circuit court and a fifth person whom they should select to act as a board to investigate the question whether there was anything to arbitrate. This proposition was refused. "June 12, delegates representing 425 local unions of the American Railway Union met here in the first quadrennial convention of the organization. The Pullman question came up for consideration before the convention sitting as a committee of the whole to hear reports etc. I wish to say in this connection that all of our deliberations were held with open doors, except one executive session at which the question of finances was considered, in which we felt the general public had no interest, but at all the other meetings the entire press of the city was represented. I mention this in refutation of the statements which have been made as to the American Railway Union forming a conspiracy against the railroads and committing offenses against the United States. If a conspiracy were intended it seems improbable that we should have sat with open doors. The first steps taken toward securing a settlement of the trouble, was the appointment of a committee composed partly of Pullman employes and in part of other delegates present, with authority to call on Mr. Wickes to find out if anything could be done toward effecting a settlement of the strike." Here Mr. Debs related how Mr. Wickes refused to confer with a committee composed of any but his former employes, and finally refused to confer with them, stating that he had nothing to arbitrate. He then continued: "The matter was then referred to a special committee with authority to act in the matter. This committee reported that if the Pullman Company refused to concede anything after five days time to consider the question, it was the sense of the convention that the members of the union would refuse to handle Pullman cars. Under the constitution of the American Railway Union the majority rules in all questions under consideration. No strike can be declared except by a majority of the men involved. In order to conform to this rule, the delegates were instructed to communicate by wire with their respective unions to ascertain the sentiment of the members on the question before the convention. After reports had been received from all the local unions, the convention by a unanimous vote decided to adopt the report of the special committee. "Since the railroad employes have been criticised for engaging in a sympathetic strike, I wish to make some statement regarding the general situation. In many instances they had local grievances themselves, and besides, there was this general condition which aggravated the whole situation. "In the spring of 1893, just before the opening of the World's Fair, the general managers of the various roads centering in Chicago, were very apprehensive lest there should be a general strike among all classes of railroad employes for an increase of wages. The officers of the organizations appealed to the men not to strike, arguing that it was their patriotic duty to bear with patience their grievances until the fair was over. The result was there was no strike anywhere. The men all worked in harmony throughout the country. Some of the managers promised, by implication at least, that there would be an increase of wages to reward the patriotic action of their men. Instead of doing as they promised, the general managers during this time equipped their organization to protect their mutual interests." Mr. Debs then read an article from a Chicago paper which told how the general managers had formed an air tight association which would be able to deal with any strikes that might arise in the future, and suggested that the association rather courted than feared trouble with employes of the railroads. Continuing, Mr. Debs said: "Shortly after the new association had completed its organization it became apparent what course it intended to pursue. About Sept. 1, the Louisville & Nashville road made a sweeping reduction of 10 per cent in the pay of all its employes--the section men getting 67-1/2 cents a day under this reduction. Then in succession followed the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia, the Richmond & Danville, the Mobile & Ohio, Nashville & Chattanooga, Big Four, New York & New England, New York, New Haven & Hartford, Wabash, Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, Monon, Great Northern and the Great Western was just on the point of declaring a reduction when the strike was declared. "It was significant that no two roads declared a reduction at the same time, and in most instances the reductions began with the unorganized and poorest paid men in the service. The men viewed these reductions with apprehension and unrest. This was particularly the case after Judge Caldwell had declared upon investigation that the cut on the Union Pacific was unwarrantable. In two cases the reductions annulled and the original pay of the men restored. On the Union Pacific--on the order of Judge Caldwell and on the Great Northern through the efforts of the American Railway Union. In the later case the matter was decided by a board of arbitration, composed of leading capitalists and business men of St. Paul and Minneapolis. "These conditions confronted the American Railway Union, when its delegates met here in convention. The employes felt that other systems in sound financial conditions had taken advantage of the unfortunate condition of the country to reduce wages. The men had lost confidence in their old unions which had failed utterly to protect them against these reductions and they came in the hope that the American Railway Union would take some steps to resist them and protect its members against the rapacity of the railroad companies. This was the reason they were ripe to take up the cause of the Pullman strikers. They were wrought up to a point where they were willing to jeopardize their positions to protect both themselves and the Pullman employes. The primary purpose was to cut off Pullman's revenues by cutting off his cars and thereby force him to a settlement." Mr. Wright: "I understand you to say you advised against the Pullman strike. Why did you do so?" Mr. Debs: "We had just gone through a strike on the Great Northern and I did not think it advisable to go into another at that time." Mr. Wright: "What would have been the action of the convention if there had been no strike at Pullman? Did not that strike force the issue?" Mr. Debs: "There would have been no trouble with the railroads, I think, but for the Pullman strike. That and the depressed condition of the country aggravated the situation so as to bring about a general strike." Mr. Wright: "Was the general strike precipitated by the Pullman troubles?" Mr. Debs: "Yes sir, it was." Mr. Wright: "Was a notice of the action of the convention served on the different companies?" Mr. Debs: "Not by the convention. That matter was left to the men on the various systems. From the action of the managers toward the American Railway Union generally, the matter of serving a formal notice of our action on them was not looked upon as necessary, as we were very sure it would be ignored." Mr. Wright: "Was notice served on the Illinois Central and Rock Island roads?" Mr. Debs: "I think so, but am not sure." Mr. Worthington: "Did they have notice through the press?" Mr. Debs: "Yes, sir." Mr. Wright: "Do you know the date on which the general managers adopted their resolution to resist the strike?" Mr. Debs: "I think it was June 24, four days after our action. It was currently reported at that time, though I have no written or other evidence of the fact that the general managers resolved among themselves to exterminate the union." Mr. Wright: "If the American Railway Union had had its own way in regard to its policy would a general strike have been postponed?" Mr. Debs: "Yes, sir. The conditions were not altogether propitious and we were fully aware of the fact." Mr. Wright: "What was the number of your membership at that time?" Mr. Debs: "About 150,000." Mr. Wright: "Did you consider that strong enough for a general strike?" Mr. Debs: "Yes, sir. But it was not a question of membership altogether. There were other reasons." Mr. Debs said there was one other point to which he wished to call the attention of the commission. One great reason the men had in resisting a reduction of wages was the fact that the companies never restored them voluntarily. The tendency had therefore been for the employes to get closer together to resist the combined efforts of the managers. That was the principle, he said, which had inspired the idea of the American Railway Union. Then resuming the history of the strike Mr. Debs said: "Pursuant to the order of the convention, which was practically the order of 150,000 men composing the American Railway Union, the members refused to handle Pullman cars. It has been claimed that the president of the union was a self appointed leader who had ordered the strike, etc. In this connection I wish to say that while such is not the case, when the report came in I gave it my approval as president. I do not wish to avoid any of the responsibility. If I had had the authority I would have ordered it under the same circumstances. June 26, the men began to refuse to haul Pullman cars. They had been advised not to handle the cars on any system where they could not get the sanction of a sufficient number of men to make such a refusal effective. The officers of the union opened headquarters at Uhlics Hall and as committees came in from various roads and made their reports they were advised how to act, and above all else to avoid trouble and violence and to maintain order. We advised them of their right to quit in a body and told them their rights ended there, and that the railroad companies had a right to hire new men and their right began there." Commissioner Kernan: "What steps if any did you take to prevent violence?" Mr. Debs: "When we saw there was to be trouble we issued an appeal to the men not to commit any acts of violence. Fourteen years of experience taught me that violence was the worst thing that could happen for any strike." Commissioner Kernan: "How about the telegrams sent by you?" Mr. Debs: "None of them were inflammatory." Commissioner Kernan: "How about that 'save your money and buy a gun' telegram?" Mr. Debs: "I can explain that telegram very easily. Among those who were employed at headquarters to take charge of our correspondence and telegraphing was a young man named Benedict. He had authority to sign my name to telegrams in answer to questions, etc. The telegram was sent to a man whom Mr. Benedict had worked under as a telegraph operator in Montana. The allusion to the gun was a playful expression which they had been accustomed to use in joking each other, and was understood in that way by the man who received the telegram. I have his letter in explanation of the matter which I will be glad to turn over to the commissioners. I never saw many of the telegrams sent out and did not see the one you refer to. The employes, obedient to the order of the convention, began as I have said, to refuse to handle cars. The refusal usually came from the switchmen who refused to make up trains with the Pullman equipment. As they refused they were discharged--when the others would quit. "July 1st. After five days of strike the general managers were completely defeated and their immediate resources exhausted. Up to that time there had been no signs of violence anywhere. Our men were intact and confident. Then the intervention of the courts was called into play. "July 2d. I was served with a sweeping injunction restraining me from sending out telegrams or issuing orders having the effect of persuading the men to quit work. This injunction was issued wherever the trouble existed. The result was to reduce our influence to nothing. This was the point from which the strike was conducted by telegrams and otherwise. Then a special grand jury was called to inquire into my conduct with the result that I was indicted with other officials of the union and warrants issued for our arrest. We were held under a joint bond of $10,000. Then followed an attachment issued for contempt of the injunction of July 2d, and our incarceration in the county jail. As soon as our men found we were under arrest they quit. The U. S. courts ended the strike, not the soldiers." Mr. Debs told of the seizure of his mail and personal effects. He said he merely cited the fact to show to what extent the U. S. authorities were willing to go to defeat the strikers. He also commented on Gen. Miles who was reported to have gone directly to the General Managers headquarters on his arrival with the U. S. troops. He said Gen. Miles was quoted next day as having said he had broken the back bone of the strike. Mr. Debs thought Gen. Miles had mistaken his mission which was to preserve order and not to help the railroads run their trains. He said: "I think Gen. Miles was vulgarly out of place, both when he went to the General Managers and when he made the remark credited to him." He said he thought if the General Managers were compelled to bring into court copies of their telegrams sent to the attorney general as the American Railway Union had done he could substantiate the charge that it was the object to annihilate the American Railway Union. Mr. Worthington: "Did I understand you this morning to charge the General Managers Association with the responsibility of the strike?" Mr. Debs: "Not in that broad and general way. The American Railway Union ordered the strike and is responsible for it, but there were aggravating circumstances which ought to go in mitigation under any view of the situation. But the attitude taken by the General Managers' Association, their expressed determination to crush the American Railway Union, in that respect and in refusing to arbitrate they were responsible. We felt if they could combine we could and each was culpable." Mr. Worthington: "You believe in enforcing the law, do you not, and in the proper authorities using sufficient force to do it, do you not?" Mr. Debs: "Most certainly I do." Mr. Worthington: "You have doubtless given considerable thought to the matter. How do you think strikes can be avoided?" Mr. Debs: "There are two ways. First. By submitting to reduction in wages and other grievances as the old organizations have done for years. When the general manager determines to reduce wages he proposes a cut of 20 per cent when he only intends to make a 10 per cent reduction. Then there is a conference when they finally agree on 10 per cent. This avoids strikes but it reduces wages. The second way is a unification of all, or practically all the railroad men of the country in a prudently managed organization. That would prevent strikes on railroads, for even if the railroads could unite to beat such an organization, it would be expensive." Mr. Worthington: "Do you believe that such an organization would be so strong as to compel the adoption of all reasonable demands?" Mr. Debs: "We did believe it, or the American Railway Union would never have been organized. We see now that it cannot because all the organized forces of society and of the government are arrayed against it. When a strike inconveniences no one, no one is particularly interested in it and it gradually dwindles down to the little end of nothing. But when a strike does inconvenience the public, as railroad strikes must of necessity do, the organized forces of society and the government, a practically impregnable force, and properly so, is arrayed against it. Take, for instance, the Ann Arbor strike. It inconvenienced the public and immediately the roads applied to the courts, and Judge Taft issued an injunction against the men. The first of the injunctions that have been so much questioned both by lawyers and laborers." Mr. Worthington: "Is it justifiable to incommode the public as such strikes do?" Mr. Debs: "It depends on circumstances. I believe with Admiral Porter, that a pin is worth fighting for if a principle is involved. To resist degradation is justifiable no matter what the result. If there were no resistance, things would be, if possible, worse than they are and without resistance degradation is inevitable. If the railroads treated their men fairly there would be no labor organizations. Every organization of railroad men is traceable to oppression. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was born of the tyranny of the Michigan Central road. I have that from the lips of Mr. Robinson, the founder of that organization. The first meetings were held in secret because the men would have been discharged if the management knew they were organizing. Everywhere organization originated from similar causes. No legislation can reconcile railroad employers and employes while human nature is in it. Confidence has been destroyed. The men have been so treated that they have grown suspicious, and when general managers, who are themselves employes, order a reduction of wages on instructions from those above them, that it is necessary because of hard times or slack business, the men are not at all assured that such are the reasons. They may accept the reduction, but they are not satisfied. In many instances the general managers obey orders to reduce wages with regret for they are humane men, many of them. Soon after the Great Northern strike, the president of a railroad told me that I now had the opportunity to make myself a most enviable reputation, both among railroad employers and employes by advising the men themselves to propose a reduction of say 10 per cent in their wages during these dull times, thus putting the road under obligation to increase wages when business improved. I said to him, only a few months ago your road was doing a phenomenally heavy business. Did you propose an increase of even 5 per cent in your employes wages because you were making money? Every time a decrease in wages has been prevented or an increase secured, it has been the result of weeks of labor and pleading and the expenditures of thousands of dollars by the men. Every schedule ever adopted is evidence of that. Now that the strike is practically over the usual persecutions will be indulged in against those who took part in it. Some people are felicitating themselves that the strike has been suppressed, but the safety valve has been screwed down, that's all. The men are no more satisfied than they were. Some of them will get back their old positions; others will get work on other roads; still others will find work elsewhere, while some will be forced to remain idle for a long time. None of them are satisfied with the conditions and sooner or later strikes will break out again, I fear. You might as well try to stop Niagara with a feather as crush the spirit of organization." Commissioner Kernan: "If it should be shown that government ownership of railroads resulted in poorer service and more expensive management, do you think it would be a good thing?" Mr. Debs: "Government ownership of railroads is decidedly better than railroad ownership of government. The time is coming when there must be government ownership of railroads. Strikes cannot be averted otherwise." Commissioner Worthington: "Will government supervision answer the purpose?" Mr. Debs: "I don't think so." Mr. Worthington: "Will arbitration answer?" Mr. Debs: "I fear not. No good can come from compulsory arbitration, that is a contradiction of terms, even if some means of enforcing the decree could be devised. Those against whom the decree was rendered would not be satisfied. The basis must be friendship and confidence." Commissioner Worthington: "Admitting that there is some contradiction in the term compulsory arbitration, it expresses what we mean though compulsory attempts at conciliation would express it better. Would it be of no avail in any case?" Mr. Debs: "It would undoubtedly in many cases where trouble is local and the conditions homogeneous, so that all of them could be considered as for instance in the Pullman troubles. It could be put in force if there was a trial by jury or something of that sort, as other courts are constituted, but in interstate matters on railroads extending over thousands of miles where conditions vary, no decree could be made to fit the case. It is easy to compass local matters but not widespread matters because the conditions are not homogeneous. It would be impossible to force the decree." "MR. DEBS' TESTIMONY." An extract from the Chicago Times. "People who read an Editorial from the Chicago Times of Eugene V. Debs before the strike commission, as printed in the Times yesterday, cannot, if they be fair-minded, fail to be convinced of the justice of the cause in which he is working and of the sincerity and ability of the man himself. "In a struggle for the rights of humanity individuals are nothing. He will be but a poor champion of the cause of the people who will pause to eulogize certain champions when he should be fighting for principles. But when a leader like Debs is attacked, as he has been attacked, and all the agencies and all the influence of capitalism are set in motion to 'make an example of him'--i. e., to so persecute him that no other man will be willing to encounter like danger in the wageworkers' cause--then must every spokesman of the working classes speak out in defense of the leader so attacked. "The slanders that have been directed against Debs during this struggle simply baffled recountal because of their number. He has been called crazy, drunken, revolutionary, criminal, incompetent. Newspapers have at once declared his conduct of the strike impotent and denounced him for having made it so effective. Labor has been entreated to throw him over as a puerile leader and capital has been warned that he is a dangerous man because of his surpassing ability. 'Anything to beat Debs' has been the one policy which has animated the organs of capital for the last four months. "Well, Debs is beaten--in a certain sense. His effort in behalf of the Pullman strikers has failed and the very journals which most strenuously opposed his work are now printing the story of the dreadful destitution bred of the Pullman despotism which Debs did his best to break down. "It is too late now to fight over again the issues of the American Railway Union strike and boycott. Debs and his associates now stand in the shadow of the penitentiary for trying to avert by entirely proper and lawful means the conditions which now engage the attention of the governor of the state, and which must awaken the sympathy of all humane people. The privileged corporations flocked to the aid of the Pullman concern--no one conversant with the facts in the case can gainsay that. The railroads stood by Pullman; every morning newspaper in Chicago except the Times stood by the railroads; the government joined in with the combination. Mr. Debs' testimony is to the effect that governmental action, by hastily issued injunctions, killed the strike--a statement which everybody cognizant of the course of that movement will indorse. "There has been much evidence adduced before the investigation commission, but none so exact or none more clear than that of Mr. Debs. His explanation of the causes of the strike and boycott is perspicuous and logical, his outline of the causes of its failure coherent and convincing, his suggestion of means for avoiding its recurrence absolutely right. He sees, as all clear-sighted and fair-minded men must see, that under the private ownership of railroads there is no possibility of justice for railroad employes. The public interest in the smooth and uninterrupted course of traffic over the roads enables the managers to call upon public opinion and even upon state forces to aid them against the employes in any serious controversy. The government ownership of railroads is indeed, as Mr. Debs has said, the one effective remedy for strikes among railroad hands. Asked for a solution of the general railroad problem, he suggested the co-operative commonwealth--a solution, doubtless, but one so difficult of accomplishment as to seem almost, if not quite, Utopian. Mr. Debs might have proceeded logically from his declaration for government ownership of railroads to government ownership and management of all other industries which tend naturally and inevitably to become monopolies. This accomplished, the repeal of all laws giving private persons the benefit of artificial law-created monopolies would follow. Then the abolition of all taxes upon industry. Finally, the throwing open to all men on equal conditions of all natural opportunities so that every man starting in life should have, so far as human power could accomplish it, an equal chance with every other man. Under such an organization and with such laws the co-operative commonwealth which Mr. Debs suggests would probably prove unnecessary. Competition, which is essential to the progress of civilization, would still continue, but it would be free competition, not the calm triumph of man plus monopoly over the man without it." Following President Debs' testimony the matter of rioting was taken up by the commissioners. Chief Deputy U. S. Marshall John C. Donnelly, testified that there were between 1,400 and 1,500 deputies sworn in, armed and paid by the government, concerning whose character and fitness practically no inquiries were made, and that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 men sworn in as deputies at the request of the railroads, armed and paid by them, and that no inquiries concerning their characters were made at all. That this army of 3,000 or 4,000 armed men clothed with the authority of the United States was not at all under the control of the U. S. marshall and was not responsible and reported to no one unless to the chiefs of detectives of the several roads. Most of the reports of drunkenness and violence of deputies were from among those hired by the railroads. Malcolm McDonald, a reporter for the Record, was next to testify. In answer to questions by the commissioners he said, he thought as a rule the turbulent element was not composed of railroad men. He spoke to some of the American Railway Union men about upsetting cars and they denied having had any hand in it. He also said that the conduct of the U. S. marshalls had not been such as to prevent trouble and they seemed to be hunting opportunities to get into conflict with the men. M. L. Wickman, pastor of the Swedish Methodist Church, testified that many members of his church who worked for the Pullman Company, had to be taken care of during the fall and winter of 1893 and 1894. He told of one man who had his hand injured by a piece of flying steel. After a great deal of expense at the hospital he finally recovered the partial use of his hand and was taken back to work at reduced pay. Mr. Wickman took the case before Manager Brown, and that officer confronted him with a written statement by the injured man to the effect that the accident was one for which the company was in no way responsible. It was subsequently proved that the man's signature to the paper was forged. Ray Baker, a reporter for the Record, said he was at Hammond during the rioting there and thought the rioters were not railroad men. H. J. Cleveland, a reporter for the Herald, testified that he was to work along the Rock Island and Lake Shore tracks where considerable rioting occurred between July 4 and 15. From an extensive acquaintance among railroad men, he felt sure that there were few, if any railroad men among the rioters. Criticising the deputy marshals, Mr. Cleveland said that he saw many acts on their part which were calculated to cause trouble unnecessary, and thought, as a rule, they were men not fit to be in authority. He characterized the whole lot as a contemptible set of men. The men who were doing the rioting, had the appearance of those who had never done an honest day's work in their lives. N. D. Hutton, reporter for the Tribune, was the next witness called. He said that he was at Blue Island and about the stock yards district. Thought some of the rioting was done by railroad men, but could not say so from personal knowledge of the fact. Mr. Miller, a reporter for the Tribune was next examined. He testified that he was sworn in as a deputy marshall and detailed to go to Blue Island. After relating his experience as to rioting, Commissioner Kernan asked him if he had an extensive acquaintance among railroad men. Mr. Miller: "In the course of my work I have learned to know a great many of them by sight at least." Commissioner Kernan: "Did you see anyone whom you know to be a railroad man engaged in violence or encouraging others who were so engaged?" Mr. Miller: "Never, except once. That was when a meat train had been cut in two and switches were being turned. He was not doing any of it but the general tenor of his talk was in the nature of advice to what was being done. Most of the trouble was caused by hoodlums and toughs. In my reports I characterized them as hoodlums. Many were boys." Commissioner Kernan: "What was your observation as to the sobriety or otherwise of the strikers at the meetings?" Mr. Miller: "I scarcely remember of seeing one under the influence of liquor. Sobriety was the rule and drunkenness the exception." Commissioner Kernan: "Did the speakers at the meetings advice against violence or did they encourage it?" Mr. Miller: "They advised against it." Commissioner Kernan: "Did you think them sincere in this advice or was it simply a cloak?" Mr. Miller: "I believed them sincere particularly the brainier men." Victor M. Harding, a reporter for the Times, was the next witness, he testified to being present during the rioting on the Rock Island road, and saw boys throwing burning waste into cars within a hundred yards of a cavalry camp." Commissioner Kernan: "Did you ever see anyone you knew to be a railroad man engaged in any violence?" Mr. Harding: "I never did. The stock yards furnish the most glaring examples of the false and exaggerated reports of riot and disorder made by the newspapers. This district has been for years made to bear the burden of the crimes committed in this part of the city. There was comparatively little disorder at the stock yards during the strike, but the newspaper reports contained accounts of fights, shooting affrays and riots almost every night. Capt. O'Neil, of the stock yards police told me that the reporters and the militia were both responsible for this. Volleys of shot fired by the soldiers or militia were to be heard every day and night, which on investigation proved to have no cause other than a desire to create excitement. The militia men, he said, were in the habit of firing merely for the sake of making a sensation. A crowd would naturally gather, reporters would flock around and then there would be something to tell and brag about. I know this is so from talk with the men themselves. They intimated that they were getting tired of doing nothing and were desirous of creating some excitement. One night Capt. O'Neil said he heard a volley of shots, went to the spot and found that the shooting had been done by a lot of sentries. They said they had fired at a Polak--the common name for a Pole--who was seen crawling under a car. The soldiers claimed it was dark, the man was at a distance and was not hit. Yet they knew he was a Polak. Equally absurd stories in explanation of shooting were given the police captain on other occasions." Assistant Fire Marshall John Fitzgerald testified that he had been on duty at all fires of any importance and had witnessed many acts of incendiarism. In all instances he stated that these acts had been committed by boys or youths belonging to the hoodlum element. He said the eldest could not have been over nineteen years old. The fire department had never been obstructed in any way in reaching fires. On one occasion railroad men, whom he knew to be strikers, aided in placing an engine in position, though he had never solicited aid of any kind during the period when the fires were most numerous. The Pullman side was now taken up by the commissioners. Frank W. Glover was the first witness. He described himself as a real estate dealer who owned a sub-division in Kensington, besides acre property there, owned and sold houses and lots, and had tenants. In reply to Commissioner Worthington as to what he knew of the rents in Pullman, Kensington, Roseland and other similar suburbs, how they would compare, Mr. Glover said: "I should say a six-room house in Pullman for $17.00 is better than one of my six-room houses in Kensington which rents for $10.00 to $12.00. The Pullman houses are connected with sewers. The land on which they stand is better drained and from what I should judge from outside appearances they have more of what are called modern conveniences. My houses have no sewer connections, the land is low, and in spring and fall is liable to have water on it; besides I understand the Pullman Company keeps their houses in repair, while I do not." Paul E. Hearns, stationer and newsdealer at Pullman, was the next witness. In his opinion there would have been less suffering if some of the men had let beer and whiskey alone. L. H. Johnson, a hardware and furniture dealer, testified next. He expressed the belief that the Pullman employes were as thrifty, economical and temperate a class of people as others of a similar class. Wm. R. McKay, a reporter for the Mail, was next heard. He said that he had been detailed to look after the American Railway Union headquarters and the meetings at Uhlics Hall. The speeches at all these meetings were against violence and in favor of observing the law as the only means of winning the strike. B. H. Atwell, a reporter for the Daily News, was the next witness. He testified that he was at Blue Island during the trouble. He said the deputy marshalls had drawn revolvers without any reason. Most of the men who made trouble there were not railroad men. Railroad officials had said to him that the strikers were not making the trouble. At the stock yards also, such violence as was done was not by railroad strikers but by toughs. The next witness called was Alex Lungren, a wood-carver. In answer to Commissioner Kernan's question if foremen had absolute power over the men in their departments, Mr. Lungren replied that he did not know. Commissioner Kernan: "Are the workingmen compelled to obey the orders given by the foremen?" Mr. Lungren: "Yes. They must obey orders." Commissioner Kernan: "Is there any appeal from these orders?" Mr. Lungren: "No." Commissioner Kernan: "Then there is no way of getting the matter to the officials or superintendent?" Mr. Lungren: "No." Commissioner Kernan: "Then there is no system of obtaining a hearing from the officials concerning any grievance?" Mr. Lungren: "No there is no system and it is very difficult to see any of the officials to obtain redress." Commissioner Kernan: "What were the conditions of your re-employment with the company?" Mr. Lungren: "I had to leave the American Railway Union." Commissioner Kernan: "Were you obliged to sign any contract relating to your membership in any labor organization?" Mr. Lungren: "Yes. There was a written contract which I signed. It stated that I would have nothing to do with the American Railway Union." Mr. Lungren also testified that he did not vote to strike. He did not attend the meetings; said he quit work in accordance with the notice posted by the company that the works would be closed down. Dr. John W. McLean was the next witness. He said he had been a practicing physician since 1863, and had been in the employ of the Pullman company since 1894. He thought the strike had been brought about by the general depression in business throughout the country. Did not think the rents exorbitant in Pullman. Said he attended the Pullman employes who were injured, free of charge. When asked by Commissioner Kernan if he thought intemperance one cause of the Pullman strike, he said: "Yes, I think all labor troubles are directly due to this cause." General Manager E. St. John of the Rock Island road was the next witness examined. His testimony, which would fill several pages, was in brief a general contradiction of all evidence offered by the reporters, and American Railway Union witnesses. He charged the rioting to the strikers. He was opposed to the government ownership of railroads and also thought arbitration impracticable. He admitted that a greater reduction of wages was liable to follow unless the present depressed condition of business was soon remedied. Regarding the losses incurred by his road on account of the strike he said it was his impression that they would be somewhere between $800,000 and $1,000,000. When the question of communications from the officers of the American Railway Union came up Commissioner Kernan asked why the General Managers Association declined to receive it. Mr. St. John: "Because we considered such an organization unworthy of consideration." Commissioner Kernan: "Were you determined not to recognize any union?" Mr. St. John: "Not exactly, but the American Railway Union least of all." Commissioner Kernan: "Were not the roads united sympathetically? Now what had the Lake Shore road to do with the Rock Island road?" Mr. St. John: "What had the Rock Island to do with the Lake Shore?" Commissioner Kernan: "Is it not true that the roads were united sympathetically?" Mr. St. John: "Let me ask you a question." Commissioner Kernan: "No, I am not on the stand. I may be some day and then you can question me." Mr. St. John: "When a neighbor's house burns we all unite to fight the blaze. When an assault is made on all the roads, they unite to resist it." When General Manager St. John resumed the witness stand, he had with him one of the twenty-six sets of books mentioned by Mr. Howard, containing the scale of wages and rules of employment of all classes of railway employes on the roads represented in the General Managers' Association. When questioned by Commissioner Kernan he admitted that a committee had been appointed to formulate from these a schedule of what was a fair rate of wages for all classes of employes and uniform rules of employment. That committee reported, but the report was never acted on. This committee was appointed under a resolution passed February 15, 1894. Its report was made in March, and if adopted would have affected 125,000 men at least. One or two roads, he admitted, might have reduced wages about this time, but there was no agreement with the other roads concerning it. It became known that Mr. Wright, chairman of the commission, had an annual Pullman pass. He said concerning it that he and Mr. Pullman had been personal friends for several years, and it was to him as a personal friend that the pass was given several years ago and had been renewed annually since. He deemed that it was for the glowing reports of Pullman, made by Mr. Wright and others in 1884, for he did not know Mr. Pullman then. He said that he had not used it since the appointment of the commission. Following Mr. St. John, John M. Eagan took the stand. Mr. Eagan admitted that as the manager of the General Managers' Association he was authorized to incur any expense to secure force to crush the strike, but was not authorized to do anything to settle it peaceably. Of his connection with the General Managers' Association he said that he was requested to take charge of the association during the strike. Commissioner Worthington: "Did you have anything done in relation to the appointment of deputy marshals?" Mr. Eagan: "Each road appointed an official to select the men they wanted to act as deputy marshalls and turned 'em over to me. I sent them to Arnold to be sworn." Commissioner Worthington: "Did those men serve as employes of the road while acting as marshals?" Mr. Eagan: "My judgment is that they were to take care of the interests of the roads." Commissioner Worthington: "Did they act in the double capacity as marshals and as railroad employes? That is, would an engineer, for instance, while wearing a star showing his authority, run an engine for the road?" Mr. Eagan: "I believe they did that. They were sworn in as deputy marshals to give them a chance to protect themselves." Commissioner Worthington: "By whom were the deputy marshals to be paid or by whom will they be paid?" Mr. Eagan: "Each road is supposed to pay its own men." Commissioner Worthington: "What do you know of any efforts made by the officers of the American Railway Union or the city officials to settle the strike amicably?" Mr. Egan: "A party named McGillen, Alderman McGillen, I think, told me that Howard and Debs wanted a conference with me about settling the strike. I told him I had no authority to confer with them." Commissioner Worthington: "Did you not have authority to talk with them and find out what they wanted or could do, without making any agreement with them?" Mr. Eagan: "Not with those parties--I did not think I had. A few days later I found the mayor and Mr. McGillen in the office of the General Managers' Association. They said they had come with a letter from Debs, Howard and Kelliher. I told the mayor he ought not to make a messenger boy of himself for these parties of the American Railway Union. Later I was given the document to give to the mayor. He was at Kensington, so I left it with the chief of police, and wrote a letter telling him I could not receive the letter he had brought." Commissioner Worthington: "Were any other overtures of settlement made to you?" Mr. Eagan: "That's all I know of any overtures." Commissioner Worthington: "Was there anything insulting or offensive in the language of the letter the mayor brought you that made you refuse to receive it?" Mr. Eagan: "The letter was published that evening and next morning and speaks for itself." Commissioner Worthington: "I am asking you how you regarded it. Did you consider that there was anything insulting or offensive in the letter?" Mr. Eagan: "I considered that any parties that had fought railroads as they had and been beaten as I believe they have been had lots of cheek to dictate the terms of their surrender." Commissioner Worthington: "You do not answer my question. Were there not soldiers, U. S. marshals, deputy sheriffs and policemen engaged in guarding the railroads, and were you not hindered in the operation of the roads?" Mr. Eagan: "Yes." Commissioner Worthington: "Now was not the letter courteously composed and looking to a settlement of the difficulty?" Mr. Eagan: "We didn't need a settlement--we had 'em already." Commissioner Worthington: "The soldiers, marshals, sheriffs and police remained on duty sometime after that--didn't they?" Mr. Eagan: "Yes, we needed the soldiers to protect our property." Commissioner Worthington: "If a settlement could have been reached at that time between the railroads and the strikers, couldn't the soldiers and marshals have been dismissed. They wouldn't have been needed after an amicable settlement had been reached, would they?" Mr. Eagan: "It was their intention not to recognize the American Railway Union." Commissioner Worthington: "Then it is true is it that the reason this communication was not received was not because it was not courteously worded or because it was discourteous or insulting but because the General Managers would not recognize the American Railway Union?" Mr. Eagan: "Well, that's as I understood it." Commissioner Worthington: "What would have been out of the way in your talking with Debs and Howard when they asked a conference with you?" Mr. Eagan: "I didn't have any authority to talk to them." Commissioner Worthington: "Then your authority extended to this. You had authority to contract at the expense of the railroad for all the force necessary to crush the strike but had no authority to settle it by peaceful means?" Mr. Eagan, "Well, yes. I suppose so." Commissioner Worthington: "When you rebuked the mayor did you think it derogatory to bear a respectful message looking to a peaceful settlement of the difficulty?" Mr. Eagan: "I believed the American Railway Union was whipped at that time." Commissioner Worthington: "It was then the condition and not the character of the men that signed the document that made you refuse to receive it?" Mr. Eagan: "We believed we had the strike won." Commissioner Worthington: "Did you ever try to use anything but force to settle the difficulty?" Mr. Eagan: "None, except to the different parties that came to see me, men that I knew personally had quit work. I told them to go back to work." In regard to violence Mr. Eagan knew nothing about it personally, but assumed that the strikers did it. Superintendent Dunlap, of the Rock Island, was asked if he recognized any of the ex-employes among the rioters, and said that he did not know many of the men but was sure that they were present. He was also asked by Mr. Wright if he knew one John T. Norton to which he answered no. Superintendent of Police, Michael Brennan, was next examined. He testified that but a small per cent of the rioting was done by strikers. John T. Norton, a locomotive engineer, was next called to the stand and testified that he was employed on the Illinois Central road prior to the strike, and had since obtained a position on the Calumet & Blue Island. This line uses the Rock Island track to Joliet. He said that he passed an examination on the C. & B. I. and also on the Rock Island. He had made one trip when informed that the Rock Island road had barred him and would not allow him to run over any part of their line. He consulted a lawyer and was told to see Superintendent Dunlap. He called on him in company with a friend named Fraser. He asked Mr. Dunlap if he was barred off the Rock Island, who said yes, and he then saw that he was blacklisted. Mr. Kernan: "Do you call that evidence of a blacklist?" Mr. Norton: "I do. After getting a letter from Superintendent Conlin I was barred out by Superintendent Dunlap who has just sworn he did not know me." Mr. Kernan: "Can you produce Mr. Fraser. We would like to hear his testimony?" Mr. Norton: "I will." Mr. Kernan: "Were you concerned in any violence during the strike?" Mr. Norton: "No." Mr. Kernan: "Are you an officer of the American Railway Union?" Mr. Norton: "Yes. I am president of local union No. 193." Mr. Gompers of the American Federation of Labor was next examined but refused to be sworn. Mr. Gompers went into the labor question in a general way. In reference to strikes, he said that so long as the present industrial and commercial systems last, so long will strikes continue. George M. Pullman, president of the Pullman company, was now before the commissioners. He submitted a lengthy statement in relation to the town of Pullman, and under examination he told of the increase of the Palace Car company from $1,000,000 to $36,000,000 and the accumulation of a cash surplus of $25,000,000. When questioned concerning the grievance of the employes, he was not so well posted. When asked by Mr. Wright if it was the practice of the company to reduce wages from time to time, he said: "I am not familiar with the details of the manufacturing department and must refer you to the second vice-president." Mr. Worthington: "Did you ever express any unwillingness to arbitrate?" Mr. Pullman: "I did express unwillingness and refer you to my published statements. I was aware of the losses of the company in paying the wages it did when contract prices were so low, and I knew it was impossible for the company to pay a higher scale. It was a question whether the shops should be closed, or secure work at a low figure. It was the principle involved in letting a third party determine how the company should transact its business." Mr. Worthington: "But you paid the usual dividend of eight per cent last year?" Mr. Pullman: "Yes. But the profit during the World's Fair helped out the amount." Mr. Worthington: "Now don't you think that the Pullman corporation which paid a dividend of $2,800,000 for the year just ended should have borne with the employes and shared its profits to some extent?" Mr. Pullman: "I don't see why we should take the money from the stockholders to pay a set of men higher wages because the manufacturing business paid well, to pay this money to men working at Pullman when the employes at Ludlow, Wilmington and St. Louis had no complaint to make. The efforts of the American Railway Union to call a strike there was a failure." Mr. Worthington: "Has the Pullman Company ever voluntarily raised wages?" Mr. Pullman: "No; but it always has paid fair wages." Mr. Worthington: "Now, Mr. Pullman, when you see the present unrest of labor, and the possible consequences, what objection had you to distributing a portion of the profits or increasing wages a little?" Mr. Pullman: "The reason is embodied in my statement, it is a matter of opinion, and then there is the principle involved. It is impossible under the circumstances." Mr. Worthington: "Impossible, what is impossible? Could not arbitration determine the principle involved?" Mr. Pullman: "As president of the company I do not care to give any other." Mr. Worthington then introduced a lease used between the company and its tenants. This provided that the tenants should make all repairs to plumbing, water pipes, gas, etc., and to surrender premises in good repair. When such repairs were made by the company, the amount was deducted from their salaries. Mr. Worthington: "Now, the company does not make any repairs, does it?" Mr. Pullman: "The company repairs the roofs or outside of the houses, I am not familiar with the details." Mr. Worthington: "But by the lease the tenants are bound to make all the repairs, it is stipulated that the tenant shall repay the company for all repairs made." Mr. Pullman: "I will have to refer you to some official of the company." (Laughter.) Mr. Worthington: "The rent is deducted monthly, is it not?" Mr. Pullman: "I am unable myself to identify that lease you handed me." Mr. Pullman concluded with the statement that the company declined to employ any member of the American Railway Union. Mr. Worthington again asked if the company could not afford to pay an increased scale of wages and this Mr. Pullman refused. Mr. Kernan: "When the general cut in salaries was made, was your salary reduced?" Mr. Pullman: "No." (Laughter.) Mr. Kernan: "That of officials, superintendents or foremen?" Mr. Pullman: "No." Mr. Wickes then took the stand. His evidence--which in main was documentary--embraced every detail of the strike. He admitted having promised members of the grievance committee that they would not be discharged, and said the agreement had not been broken by him. From statistics presented by Mr. Wickes, he claimed that the average rate of wages paid for the year ending in April, 1893, was $2.63 per day and for the same succeeding period $2.03, which fact, he said, disproved of statements made by strikers. In the case of Miss Jennie Curtis the books showed that her father had owed but $17.00 at the time of his death, which sum had never been repaid the company. Blacklisting, he said, had never been practiced by the Pullman Company, although the foreman kept a list of discharged men. He also said that the company had been losing $500 per month by furnishing water. He said that the men were advised by Mr. Howard not to strike. Referring to rent and wages, he did not consider that there was any connection between them. He said: "We paid the market price for labor and we asked the market price for houses." He contended that wages were regulated by the law of supply and demand. We go into the market to buy labor, as we go into the market to buy other things. If a manufacturer by reason of improved machinery, of special facilities, or greater ability in securing supplies or disposing of products, or by more effective handling of men, should be making larger profits than his competitors and should increase wages, he would deprive himself of all the benefits of these advantages which are his and to which his employes do not contribute, and would make no more than the manufacturer who conducted his business in a shiftless manner or without ability, energy or enterprise. Mr. Wickes concluded his testimony, and Inspector Nicholas Hunt was called. He testified that from June 27th, or the time his force was first called to protect railroad property at various points, up to July 3d, there had been no serious difficulty. When asked by Mr. Worthington if he had seen railroad men take part in the destruction of property. He replied: "I have not seen one railroad man interfere in any way." A. J. Sullivan, general manager of the Illinois Central, was next to testify. He went into details concerning the trouble on his road. He was certain that the acts of violence were committed by the strikers although he did not witness it personally. H. R. Saunders, general yardmaster for the Rock Island, testified for the company in relation to the way the strike was ordered on the Rock Island. He charged that Mr. Howard, vice-president of the American Railway Union, with using abusive and violent language. Epithets applied to Pullman and the expression, "if scabs take your places kill them with a coupling pin," was declared to have been used. W. D. Fuller, agent for the Rock Island road at Blue Island, testified that he was present, and thought Mr. Howard's speech was very violent, he applied epithets to Pullman, thought he ought to be hanged, and that he (Howard) would like to head a crowd to do it. L. A. Camp, a yardmaster for the Rock Island, was also at the meeting and heard no violent language used. G. D. Cruelly also a yardmaster for the same road, thought the strike at Blue Island was due to Mr. Howard and Mr. Debs. Mr. Howard in particular and Mr. Debs incidentally. Mr. Howard was violent and abusive in his language. The witness is a member of the Order of Railway conductors but not of the American Railway Union. Fred Baumbach testified to hearing both Debs and Howard speak, but did not remember of hearing either one of them using violent language. Otto Moriling, a tailor, testified to being present. He did not hear any violent language used except that Mr. Howard applied an epithet to Pullman. James Simmons also heard Howard speak, but did not hear him counsel violence. Alexander Quasso said he was present when Howard spoke but heard no violence counseled except some reference by Mr. Howard to the justice of hanging Pullman. Vice President Howard now took the stand and testified regarding his speech at Blue Island. He said: "I want to begin by saying that among railroad men particularly trainmen, it has been a constant habit and practice and has been for years, to use a certain class of expressions which literally are very offensive in the lightest and most ordinary way, and without meaning anything in particular about them. Every old railroad man can bear me out in this. A railroad man will address his best friend with a most offensive epithet uttered in a most cordial way and intended to express cordiality, so that the term I applied to Pullman, has among railroad men a technical meaning, very broad it is true and expressing according to the circumstances very different sentiments. But its use is so common and I may say usual, that it has altogether lost the meaning it has, among others than railroad men. "I was telling them the condition of things at Pullman. I told them of incidents that have been testified to before this commission. I was trying to array them against Pullman. I used the language of railroad men and I applied to Mr. Pullman the epithet I am charged with using. But I used it in the railroad sense. I said he ought to be hung, that is another railroad expression. "I did not say that I would like to take part in the hanging or lead a party to hang him. As to the coupling pin expression, what I said at Blue Island, I have said at hundreds of other places, it was this I told them, it was often said that capital would always defeat labor. I denied this. I said that capital could only whip labor when it could divide it, and make labor defeat itself. That in the last few years a wave of religious intolerance had swept over this country, and the representatives of the railroads had taken advantage of it as a means of dividing labor. I gave instances where some emissary of the railroads would come in, and going to the protestant members, instill distrust in their minds of the Roman Catholic members, and then going to the Roman Catholics and creating distrust of the Protestants. I urged them not to allow themselves to be divided in the labor movement by questions of religious differences, and I said that if any of those sleuths, and I may have said sleuths of hell, come into this movement to array you against each other in a question of religion, I hope some one will have the nerve to hit him on the head with a round end coupling pin and send him to his last long sleep. "I said nothing about injuring men who came to take their places. I told them if they struck, to put on their good clothes and keep away from the railroad property. If the railroads could get men to run their roads, let them, but if the men stood together, were united, the roads couldn't get men and would have to yield. "Far from advising violence, I have always advised against it. I have some questions I would like the commission to put to the general managers, either here, or in Washington. They are these: "1st. Were not the general managers whipped on July 5, before there had been any violence to array public opinion against the strikers, and before the troops were here and by their presence provoked violence? "2d. Did your company have a contract with the government to carry the mails? "3d. Was the contract dependent upon your ability to carry Pullmans? "4th. Did your contract with the Pullman Company require you to refuse to transport mail if you left the Pullmans off? "5th. Did the strikers interfere to prevent carrying of the mails if you left the Pullmans off? "6th. Could you not have carried mails, if you did not insist in hauling Pullmans? "7th. Was your contract with the government less binding on you than your contract with the Pullman Company, or was either dependent on the other?" Mr. Kernan had no objection to the questions being put to the general managers, but did not think, under the circumstances, the commission could prolong its sitting in order to ask them. Mayor John P. Hopkins was then called and cordially shook hands with the commissioners before taking the witness chair. His examination was conducted by Judge Worthington as follows: Mr. Worthington: "As mayor of the city and the actual head of the police department, please state the general conduct of the police force during the strike and the conditions attending the strike." Mr. Hopkins: "The evening of June 25, Mr. Ellsworth, who claimed to represent the different railroads, called on me and said he understood a boycott was to be enforced on all roads hauling Pullman cars. He said he understood I was going to Springfield that night and wished me to give instructions to the chief of police and arrange for the protection of the roads. So far as I know, the police did all the work required of them, and I have ample assurance of that fact from railway officials. "This condition existed until July 5. That morning Mr. Wright of the Rock Island called at my office and claimed that riotous mobs were interfering with the operation of trains, overturning cars, etc. I went with him to the office of Mr. Cable of the Rock Island road, where we discussed the matter. Mr. Cable said he thought the police were not doing their duty, but from the information I had received, I was confident that such was not the case. I then suggested that Mr. Cable go with me to the scene of the alleged trouble, but he said that he did not think it safe to do so. I proposed the same plan to Mr. Wright, but he made the same objection. I then saw the corporation counsel and suggested the same plan, which he accepted. A switch engine was secured and we went. A crowd of probably 3,000 or 3,500 persons, mostly women and children, had assembled at that point. On the tracks at Thirty-seventh street four trains were standing, and just north of them an empty freight car was lying across the tracks. Half an hour after we arrived, a wrecking crew, accompanied by young Newell, Attorney Wright, and other officials came up, and they started to take the car off the track. On going down we had found the tracks entirely unobstructed, but on going back found ten or fifteen overturned cars. I thought the police did all they could to prevent such an occurrence. I stayed about two hours, when I came back and issued the proclamation to the people which was published. I also instructed the chief of police to suspend all officers who had been stationed at the crossings where the cars were overturned. "That night I wired the governor at Springfield, that the militia, which had been preparing to go into camp there, had better be retained in the city, as it might be advisable to call out the troops within twenty-four hours. The same night about 10:30, I was at the Hyde Park police station when I heard that the "Diamond Special" had been stopped at Kensington and that large crowds had congregated there. Inspector Hunt sent re-inforcements to that point, and when I retired everything seemed quiet. Friday morning, July 6, which was the first time the railroads had intimated that the protection afforded them was inadequate, I heard from Kensington that there was trouble in the Rock Island and Chicago & Eastern Illinois roads. I then called on the governor for five regiments of the state militia. Saturday, at 3:30 P. M., some trouble occurred at Forty-seventh and Loomis streets, where a mob had collected. The state troops fired and killed one man, two others dying afterward. There was no trouble after that, so far as I know." Mayor Hopkins then read a number of communications from railway officials expressing satisfaction in regard to the perfect protection afforded by the police during the strike. Among these were letters from President Marvin Hughitt of the Northwestern, General Superintendent Sullivan of the Illinois Central, President Thomas of the Chicago & Western Indiana, and others. Several officers who were deemed worthy of promotion for their good services at critical times were mentioned in a letter from a Santa Fe official. The mayor then continued his testimony as follows: "So far as the management of the police was concerned I think it was excellent. I wish to state that the Blue Island police are governed by the officials of that town. The word police has been referred to indiscriminately in the testimony, leaving the impression that Blue Island was under the jurisdiction of the city. "There was very little resistance to the police. The strikers treated me all right, and the crowds seemed good-natured. There was some resistance to the police, I believe, on the night of July 7, at Ashland avenue and the Northwestern tracks. The police fired and killed a woman on the roof of a house in the neighborhood." Mr. Worthington: "How many were killed in all or who have since died in consequence of injuries received?" Mr. Hopkins: "About seven, I think in Chicago. Three at Forty-seventh and Loomis streets, one at Kensington, the woman just mentioned, and I think two others." Mr. Worthington: "Please state about the militia engaged during the strike." Mr. Hopkins: "I will read my copy of the telegram to the governor to which I referred. The next day I again telegraphed the governor suggesting that five regiments be placed at the disposal of the city. In one half hour I received an answer stating that the militia had been ordered to report. There was virtually the entire militia of the state in service, probably 2,000 men. The last detachment went home August 6." Mr. Worthington: "You have stated that you gave orders to suspend officers at certain crossings. Why was that?" Mr. Hopkins: "The officers complained that people jumped over the fences and that they could not prevent them. The Rock Island road is protected on each side of the right-of-way by low fences, and empty freight cars were standing for many blocks on the side track next the fence. The people who lived near the tracks could easily jump the fence unseen and tip the cars over. I ordered the men suspended for the general effect it would have on the force." Mr. Worthington: "I would like to ask a general question. As mayor of the city, do you think the police, or a portion of them, either directly or indirectly, took a part in promoting the strike in any way?" Mr. Hopkins: "I would not deny that some of the men had sympathy with the strikers. I am in sympathy myself with the Pullman strikers." Mr. Worthington: "But do you think the police did their duty?" Mr. Hopkins: "Yes, sir. Several times Mr. Eagan telephoned that trouble was occurring at some point. When officers would investigate they would find no trouble at all. There are 2,100 miles of railway in the city limits; there are 1,360 trains daily, 160 railroad crossings, and 3,000 surface railroad crossings. The police force for this year is scheduled at 1,928 patrolmen. There are 186 square miles of territory in the city and you can readily see that every point could not be covered at once. The amount of violence was not very great. In Pullman not one pane of glass was broken in the three months of the strike. I live in Pullman myself." Mr. Worthington: "You may state whether at any time you advised the American Railway Union or its members to strike?" Mr. Hopkins: "No, sir." Mr. Worthington: "Did the General Manager's Association either during or since the strike request the city to arrest any individual strikers or suggest such arrest?" Mr. Hopkins: "No, sir; I think that President Newell swore out a warrant for a man named Hall, but the information was furnished by the city." Mr. Worthington: "Has the American Railway Union brought in any information of this character?" Mr. Hopkins: "Yes, sir; in the case of Hall, who was charged with turning over cars; also in other cases, which upon investigation we concluded not to take up." Mr. Worthington: "Then the disposition of the American Railway Union appears to have been to assist the city?" Mr. Hopkins: "Yes, sir." Mr. Worthington: "During or before the strike were there any overtures made in regard to arbitration?" Mr. Hopkins: "I met Mr. Pullman at lunch in the Chicago club one day and he told me of a meeting his employes had held. Then July 3, there was a further talk about protecting the works on the following day when trouble might be expected. There was some talk about a settlement, but the company seemed to regard the strikers as law breakers. Then a committee of the council was appointed, and word sent to Mr. Eagan, but he said he couldn't come. Then the committee called at Mr. Pullman's office to discuss the question of arbitration--or if there was anything to arbitrate. The answer received there was that the company refused to arbitrate. July 11, I received a telegram from Mayor Pingree of Detroit, asking if I would act with him in endeavoring to settle the strike. He had communications from fifty other mayors giving their views on the question. We saw Mr. Wickes, Mr. Runnels and Mr. Brown, and had a long interview. Mayor Pingree took the point that arbitration should be tested, and made a strong argument. He is a member of a shoe manufacturing firm and related his own experience in a strike of nine months' duration. Mr. Wickes, Mr. Runnels and Mr. Brown withdrew and prepared a statement giving the position of the company and declining the proposition. On July 13, Mr. Debs, Mr. Howard, and Mr. Kelliher prepared a communication to the railway managers offering to settle the strike if the railroads would re-instate the men as individuals or such men as had committed no overt acts. With Mr. McGillen I went over with the document to Mr. St. John. What occurred there has been published. Now, while I think of it, I want to say that the statement published in some papers that Mr. St. John told me I should not act as a messenger boy for the American Railway Union is false. I deny most emphatically that Mr. St. John used those words. I should not have allowed it. This was the last action on my part to bring about a settlement. "It has been said that I protested against the presence of the federal troops in the city. I do say that the railways had never complained that the civil authorities were unable to protect the roads. I have never protested against the federal troops and think they did some good." Mr. Worthington: "It has been stated in the press that you applied to Mr. Debs to move trains." Mr. Hopkins: "That is not true. A man named Brenock has a contract with the city to remove dead animals, the place where they are rendered being over the Indiana state line. He called upon me and said that there was a train load of dead animals at the stock yards which could not be pulled out; the men had quit work. I said I thought a volunteer crew of trainmen could be procured which would do the work. I sent my secretary to the American Railway Union with that request. A crew went down to the yards and manned the train. When it proceeded some distance it was discovered that a train load of dressed beef had been substituted and the train crew abandoned the cars. The dead animals then remained where they were for several days." Mr. Kernan: "Then this action was simply a plan to guard the public health?" Mr. Hopkins: "Yes, sir; simply to remove the dead animals from the city limits." At the conclusion of Mayor Hopkins' testimony, President Carroll D. Wright arose and declared the commission formally adjourned until Wednesday, Sept. 26, at Washington, D. C. CHAPTER XX. ALTGELD INVESTIGATES PULLMAN. In response to a piteous appeal for help from a committee of Pullman strikers, John P. Altgeld, governor of Illinois, came in person to the town of Pullman and made an investigation of the condition of the people in order to satisfy himself regarding their complaints of suffering and destitution. After only a partial investigation the governor returned to his hotel satisfied with the correctness of the reports. He said the starvation at Pullman was as bad if not worse than had been reported by the Times that 1,600 families in Pullman and vicinity were starving. "Not only starving," said the governor, "but they are without fuel and in rags. They must not starve and I will remain in Pullman until some means can be devised for their relief. "I went to Pullman in response to an invitation by the strikers' committee, and found matters even worse than represented. I visited their homes and went through every room in some of their houses. Two representatives of the Pullman company who accompanied me, admitted that the houses visited were a fair representation of every house occupied by the strikers' families. Their condition is pitiful, there are families numbering from two to eight members and I tell you they are slowly starving to death. The little ones are crying with hunger and there is nothing in the house to eat. Something for their relief must be done immediately. I have thought of several measures, but as yet have arrived at no conclusion. For several months the people may have to be cared for, and it is well to go slow when one is treading in deep water. I suppose I will be abused no matter what steps I take, but I don't care a blank, as these people will not starve if I can prevent it, and I shall see that I do prevent it." The governor declined to say anything in relation to the cause which created the present condition at Pullman. He said it was enough to know that women and children were crying with hunger, it was time enough to talk about the causes later. Upon the governor's arrival at Pullman, a big man with gray whiskers and a lordly air rushed forward and presented his card to his excellency. He was August Rapp, chief designer of the company and formerly superintendent of the works. With him was Chief Wilde, Pullman's head accountant, whom he presented. It was evident that the governor did not wish to see the Pullman official. "Where are the members of the committee that sent for me?" he demanded. "I want to see the men." Somewhat abashed Messrs. Wilde and Rapp stepped backward and three or four mechanics came forward. There was Thos. W. Heathcoat, G. A. Kreamer, Theo. Rhode and two or three members of the relief committee. "I want to see what you men have to show me," said the governor. They repaired at once to the tenements on Fulton street, where the first stop was made at No. 124, occupied by Mrs. O'Halleron. A blind widow was found occupying four small rooms on the first floor. She told the governor that she had two sons aged nineteen and fourteen respectively and a daughter aged twenty. All three had worked for Pullman but were now idle. They had applied for work but were told there was no work for them. One of the boys had been a brass polisher and the younger son and the daughter had worked in the laundry. They had lived in the town seven years. There was no coal in the house, they had a little food, given them by the relief committee, but they could not support themselves and said there was no one to look after their condition. "Have the Pullman people sent any one to see you?" "They have not," replied the blind woman. She said they paid $12.60 for the four rooms. One of her sons had drawn $1.60 and the other 96 cents per day. "Good luck to you, sir," she said as the governor walked away with his teeth set firmly together. F. H. Taylor, superintendent of the Pullman company, had now joined the party taking the place of Accountant Wilde. Mr. Rapp pressed his way in everywhere though paying no attention to the audible slurs of the people about him. Block B, across the way on Fulton street was next visited. The manner of Gov. Altgeld was kindly and he introduced himself in a pleasant way, asking questions in a manner calculated to inspire confidence. There were six families in Block B, some of the tenants had gone back to work. A poor woman in No. 3 said her husband was not working, he had been in Pullman for six years and had asked to return to work, but was told there was nothing for him to do, the shop was full. She had three little children but little to eat, only a bit of flour, coffee and tea from the relief store left. In Block S, room 7, was John Carlson, a cabinet maker who had worked in Pullman for seven years and could not get his position back He had nothing in the house to eat. "Have you eaten to-day?" asked the governor. "I had some bread and coffee from a neighbor," said the man. "My wife is sick and I divided with her, we haven't a thing in the house now." Theo. Ericson, of 301 Fulton street, had six in family. He said he could not get work and the money he had saved before the strike was all gone. The relief committee had given a little food. "How many in Pullman," said the governor, "are in the same fix, whom you know of?" "Lots of men, sir, I know of half a dozen in my neighborhood," answered the man. Olaf Olson had worked in the street car shops and was now idle. He had six children and his wife to care for, they have nothing to eat, and he could get nothing from the relief committee as their supplies were exhausted. Otto Wullf, of room 22, Block F, also had a wife and six children. He said that all he had in the house to eat was two pounds of oat meal from the relief store. As he told his story tears rolled down the cheeks of the big bearded fellow and the governor was visibly affected. His wife was sick abed he said and a newspaper reporter dropped a quarter into his hand while he used a handkerchief to remove the moisture from his eyes. The man stated that his wages had been $1.30 per day, and his rent $9.60 per month for four small rooms. Peter Anderson, of Kensington, said he had worked in the repair shop but could not get work now as the shop was filled, or at least so he was told when he applied. He had five children and not enough to eat. He had borrowed a dollar with which to buy a sack of flour. This was all he had. Mr. Vanderwein had a wife and four children and could not get a position. He had no money and only two pounds of oat meal, two pounds of corn meal and a little flour left. Here someone whispered to the governor and the latter turned to Mr. Rapp and said: "They tell me you are taking the names of those who complain, with a view of keeping them out of work?" "That is not so, sir," said Rapp, coloring deeply. "And," said the governor, "they tell me you are largely responsible for the reduction of the wages?" "That is not so, sir," persisted Mr. Rapp. "Well, men," said the governor, "let him come with us, this must not be a star chamber affair." A boy named Koopka spoke for his father who did not understand English. He was one of three children he said, and they hadn't enough to eat. No relief could be obtained now and every thing was gone but a few potatoes. Mrs. Nathan Booth stepped forward. She said she had six children, all barefooted, the oldest eleven years, and the youngest six months. They had been two years in Pullman and her husband had earned $1.30 per day. He had no work now, and the only food was that given them by the wife of the Methodist minister. Andrew Schelly said he had worked for the Pullman company twelve years but could get no work now, and his family had nothing to eat. He had borrowed a pair of shoes in which he could seek work. A. Bergstrom for seven years in Pullman said he could not get his old position. He had five children, the eldest ten years, and they had no money, no food, no trust. Frank Mass had been three years in Pullman, had three children and nothing to eat. The wife of Pat Mullen, of Block E, room 1, appeared with a child in her arms and a toddler at her skirts. They had been in Pullman twelve years and had four other children. Her husband could not get back to work because he was on the strike committee. She did not know where the next meal was to come from. Though wretchedly poor these people were clean and neat. They are all of the better class of laboring people. John Cedarland sat at a table and stared stolidly at the visitors, while his wife with a baby at her breast and two at her heels stood by. A neighbor who had given them of her scanty store, said the man was sick and the family destitute. On Sunday she had given them a piece of meat, and wood with which to cook it. A reporter slipped a quarter into her hand and received a look worth $8.00. Two of John Smith's collectors, out with furniture bills as a matter of form, told the governor that two-thirds of the old men were still idle, and that the condition of these men was deplorable. They had called at one place where one of the children was celebrating its birthday and all there was for the feast was bread and onions. The collectors chipped in for a few luxuries. Mrs. Peter Camp appeared with two children and reported five more, and there were scores of similar cases, all destitute and absolutely without food. On his way back to the city the governor would say but little. Mr. Wickes, vice president of the Pullman company called and was presented to his excellency in due form. The object of his visit was to tender his services as guide and escort. This was declined. Mr. Wickes expressed his regret that the governor saw fit not to accept the offer. As a result of Gov. Altgeld's investigation he issued the following proclamation: "TO THE PEOPLE OF ILLINOIS, AND ESPECIALLY THOSE OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO: There is great distress growing out of the want of food in and around the town of Pullman. More than a thousand families in the neighborhood of 6,000 people, are utterly destitute. Nearly four-fifths of them are women and children. The men have endeavored to get work but were unable to do so. I have made a personal examination of the case and learn from the officials of the Pullman company that prior to the strike they had 3,260 names on the pay roll; yesterday they had 2,220 people at work, but over 600 of these were new men, so that they have only about 1,600 of their old employes at work, leaving about 1,660 that have not been taken back. Several hundreds of these have left, but the remainder are unable to go away and have nothing to eat. I find that immediately after the beginning of the strike a relief association was formed to provide for the needy, and the books of this association show that 2,463 applications were made by the Pullman employes, mostly heads of families, to this association for aid. In fact, nearly all of the employes, except the few hundred who left, have been supported by charity for nearly three months. "As a rule they are a superior class of laboring people, industrious, capable, and steady and some of them have worked for the Pullman company for more than ten years. Those who have been given work can get food, but are still in such an impoverished condition that they cannot help their neighbors if they would. The relief society is unable to get more supplies. Last Saturday it gave to each family two pounds of oat meal and two pounds of corn meal, and having nothing left it suspended operations, leaving the people in an absolutely helpless condition. The county commissioners of Cook county, as overseers of the poor, have rendered some assistance, but owing to limited appropriation they can furnish relief but for a short time. "We cannot now stop to inquire into the cause of this distress. The good people of this state cannot allow women and children by the hundred to perish of hunger. I therefore call upon all humane and charitably disposed citizens to contribute what they can toward giving relief to these people. I am satisfied that any contribution sent to the Pullman relief committee at Kensington, Ill., will be judiciously distributed. I find their treasurer has given a bond to properly account for all moneys received. "JOHN P. ALTGELD. "Governor. "Aug. 21, 1894. "TO THE HONORABLE, THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF COOK COUNTY-- _Gentlemen_: Your attention has already been called to the great destitution that exists in and around the town of Pullman and you have furnished some relief there. I have made a personal investigation of the conditions there and find the suffering is very great for want of food. I respectfully appeal to you as the officers upon whom devolves the duty of providing for cases of this kind, that you do the uttermost in your power to furnish immediate assistance to those people. Very respectfully, "JOHN P. ALTGELD. "Governor. "Aug. 21, 1894." Before leaving Springfield to investigate the condition at Pullman, Gov. Altgeld sent the following telegram to Mr. Pullman: "Aug. 19, 1894. "George M. Pullman, President of the Pullman's Palace Car Company, Chicago, Ill.: "I have received numerous reports to the effect that there is great distress at Pullman. To-day I received a formal appeal as governor from a committee of the Pullman people for aid. They state that 1,600 families, including women and children, are starving; that they cannot get work and have not the means to go elsewhere; that your company has brought men from all over the United States to fill their places. Now, these people live in your town and were your employes. Some of them worked for your company for many years. They must be people of industry and character or you would not have kept them. Many of them have practically given their lives to you. It is claimed that they struck because after years of toil their wages were so reduced that their children went hungry. Assuming that they were wrong and foolish, they had yet served you long and well and you must feel some interest in them. They do not stand on the same footing with you, so that much must be overlooked. The state of Illinois has not the least desire to meddle in the affairs of your company, but it cannot allow a whole community within its borders to perish of hunger. The local overseer of the poor has been appealed to, but there is a limit to what he can do. I cannot help them very much at present, so unless relief comes from some other source I shall either have to call an extra session of the legislature to make special appropriation or else issue an appeal to the humane people of the state to give bread to your recent employes. It seems to me that you would prefer to relieve the situation yourself, especially as it has just cost the state upward of $50,000 to protect your property and as both the state and the public have suffered enormous loss and expense on account of disturbances that grew out of the trouble between your company and its workmen. I am going to Chicago to-night to make a personal investigation before taking any official action. I will be in my office in the Unity block at 10 A. M. to-morrow and shall be glad to hear from you if you care to make any reply. "JOHN P. ALTGELD." The following letter was addressed to Mr. Pullman by Gov. Altgeld. "CHICAGO, Ill., Aug. 21. "George M. Pullman, President of the Pullman's Palace Car Company, Chicago. "SIR: I examined the conditions at Pullman yesterday, visited even the kitchens and bedrooms of many of the people. Two representatives of your company were with me and we found the distress as great as it was represented. The men are hungry and the women and children are actually suffering. They have been living on charity for a number of months and it is exhausted. Men who have worked for your company for more than ten years had to apply to the relief society in two weeks after the work stopped. I learn from your manager that last spring there were 3,260 people on the pay roll; yesterday there were 2,220 at work, but over 600 of these are new men, so that only about 1,600 of the old employes have been taken back, thus leaving over 1,000 of the old employes who have not been taken back. A few hundred have left. The remainder have nearly all applied for work, but were told that they were not needed. These are utterly destitute. The relief committee last Saturday gave out two pounds of oatmeal and two pounds of cornmeal to each family, but even the relief committee has exhausted its resources. Something must be done at once. The case differs from instances of destitution found elsewhere, for generally there is somebody in the neighborhood able to give relief. This is not the case at Pullman. Even those who have gone to work are so exhausted that they cannot help their neighbors if they would. I repeat now that it seems to me your company cannot afford to have me appeal to the charity and humanity of the state to save the lives of your old employes. Four-fifths of those people are women and children. No matter what caused this distress it must be met. "If you will allow me I will make this suggestion: If you had shut down your works last fall when you say business was poor you would not have expected to get any rent from your tenants. Now, while a dollar is a large sum to each of these people all the rent now due you is a comparatively small matter to you. If you will cancel all rent to Oct. 1, you will be as well off as if you had shut down. This would enable those at work to meet their most pressing wants. Then if you cannot give work to all, work some half time so that all can at least get something to eat for their families. This will give immediate relief to the whole situation and then by degrees assist as many to go elsewhere as desire to do so and all to whom you cannot give work. In this way something like a normal condition could be re-established at Pullman before winter and you would not be out any more than you would have been had you shut down a year ago. I will be at the Unity block for several hours and will be glad to see you if you care to make any reply. "Yours respectfully, "JOHN P. ALTGELD." Mr. Pullman replied as follows: "THE PULLMAN'S PALACE CAR COMPANY, "OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT "CHICAGO, ILL., Aug. 21, 1894. "SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of this date, giving your impressions derived from your visit to the town of Pullman yesterday. In pursuance of the invitation contained in your telegram of the 19th inst. I caused Mr. Wickes, a vice president of this company, who is thoroughly acquainted with its affairs at Pullman, to call upon you and offer you every assistance in his power or which could be offered by any officer of the company in making your proposed personal investigation. Mr. Wickes offered to accompany you to Pullman for this purpose, and I regret that you did not appear to consider that he could be of service to you. As an indication of the importance of the aid of local knowledge in making essential discriminations I may say to you that I have the best reason for believing that the husband of a wife who is published as representing her family to you yesterday as in need of help, drew more than $1,300 of his savings from a bank July 2 last for the purpose as he said of buying lots. "While it has not been represented to the officers of this company by any persons concerned that there was any such extended distress at Pullman, as was represented for the first time by the extraordinary method of a published telegram to you in your official capacity, I do not doubt that there are many cases of need caused by the refusal of the employes for more than two and one-half months to earn offered wages of more than $300,000; and that such cases have been increased and made more severe by the persistence of more than 650 of our employes, of whom about 350 live in Pullman, in refusing to apply for their old places after the strike was practically over and after they were publicly invited, July 16, to resume their work, until by the gradual coming in of new men during the whole month their places have been filled and the full force engaged for all work in hand. In addition to this there is, no doubt, need among the old employes living in Pullman, a considerable number of whom have persistently refused to apply for work at all, many of them it is understood, considering themselves to be still engaged in a strike. "I mention these things so that the responsibility for the existing situation, whatever it is may not be improperly placed. The situation, however, is one which must be dealt with without regard to what has caused it, and I shall give it the consideration which is due from the company. I do not, however, anticipate, as you appear to do, that those employes who have resumed their work will be limited to the satisfaction of their most pressing wants, and as to those who are not at work the cancelling of their rents is not, I venture to suggest, a question to which attention should first be given at the present juncture if their pressing needs are as you suppose them to be. The company will continue in its efforts to secure work in order to employ as many men as possible, and in that way relieve the situation as far as practicable. "Your suggestion that the work should be divided so that a sufficient number of our present employes should be put on half time in order to give at least half time work for all was tried last winter. The result has been that the gross earnings of various individual employes were last winter so small as to give an erroneous impression with reference to the sufficiency of the rate of wages. The policy of the company is now to employ only as many men as it is possible to furnish work for on full time. "Very respectfully yours, "GEORGE M. PULLMAN, "President. "The Hon. John P. Altgeld, Governor." "CHICAGO, Aug. 21. "George M. Pullman, Esq., President the Pullman's Palace Car Company, City. "SIR: I have your answer to my communication this morning. I see by it that your company refuses to do anything toward relieving the situation at Pullman. It is true that Mr. Wickes offered to take me to Pullman and show me around. I told him that I had no objection to his going, but that I doubted the wisdom of my going under anybody's wing. I was, however, met by two of your representatives, both able men, who accompanied me everywhere. I took pains to have them present in each case. I also called at your office and got what information they could give there, so that your company was represented and heard, and no man there questioned either the condition or the extent of their suffering. If you will make the round I made, go into the houses of these people, meet them face to face, and talk with them you will be convinced that none of them had $1,300 or any other sum of money a few weeks ago. "I cannot enter into a discussion with you as to the merits of the controversy between you and your former workmen. It is not my business to fix the moral responsibility in this case. There are nearly 6,000 people suffering for the want of food--they were your employes--four-fifths of them are women and children--some of these people have worked for you more than twelve years. I assume that even if they were wrong and had been foolish you would not be willing to see them perish. I also assume that as the state has just been to a large expense to protect your property you would not want to have the public shoulder the burden of relieving distress in your town. "As you refuse to do anything to relieve the suffering in this case I am compelled to appeal to the humanity of the people of Illinois to do so. Respectfully yours, "JOHN P. ALTGELD." CHAPTER XXI. CONCLUSION. The condition of the Pullman strikers elicited by the commission appointed by President Cleveland for that purpose as shown by the preceding extracts from the investigation, was known to the delegates to the convention of the American Railway Union held in Chicago in June. In turn they made known to the various local unions these deplorable conditions. Hence the boycott, or as it has been designated by the general managers, a sympathetic strike. They have been charged with striking without a cause other than a fanciful grievance of the Pullman employe, and roundly censured for their actions. That too by men of kind hearts and liberal views who were not aware of the true situation. Had this commission been appointed previous to the boycott, it is my honest conviction, there would have been no trouble. The broad inherent spirit of humanity in American hearts would assert itself and the powerful voice of public sentiment would terrorize this inhuman corporation into doing justice to their employes. The defeat of the strikers was attributed to a great many causes, but the real cause can be laid to the federal government or the administration thereof. President Cleveland, it is said, was and is a partner in a law firm who are employed by four of the largest railroad systems in the United States. The cabinet, with a few exceptions, are also connected with railroad corporations either directly or indirectly. The federal courts are absolutely owned by the railroads, and consequently the whole federal government was arrayed against the strikers. The federal judges prostituted the courts to the use of the railroads in granting injunctions to restrain the officers of the American Railway Union from acting in any form for or with that organization. From the time that Mr. Debs was successfully shackled by the courts, the strikers were like some great beheaded mastodon, staggering about, vainly endeavoring to retain the dying spark of life. In order to be more explicit, just as soon as the officers of the American Railway Union were incarcerated, reports were circulated by the general managers at one point, that men at some distant point had returned to work. The men, where these reports would be received, would at once wire to the officers at Chicago, asking if it be true. The officers of the union were prohibited from sending telegrams, and on receiving no reply they would take it for granted that these reports were authentic, and apply for work. In short, when they lost the guidance of Debs, their ranks became demoralized. This was the real cause of the defeat of the American Railway Union. Its first defeat after twelve decisive victories, eleven of which were accomplished without a strike. The prostitution of the government--founded on the blood of our forefathers--by the organized capital of this country, of which the greater part is foreign gold, is something of the most vital importance to every workingman in America to-day. This is a matter that demands the gravest thought of every American citizen who is loyal to himself, to his family and to his country. The flagrant abuse of the constitution by the plutocratic money power, if not checked by the people, will reduce them to a condition beneath that of any nation in the known world. This strike has clearly demonstrated the truth of this assertion. In not one instance during the whole course of the trouble, have the representatives of the corporations and the representatives of the government failed to unite in destroying the constitutional rights of the American workingman. The devilish ingenuity of this corporate power goes still further to retain the power they hold over the government. They have conceived a plan to disfranchise in a manner all members of the American Railway Union and deprive them of the right to vote. In this they have actually accomplished their purpose by forcing its members out of employment, and driving them from their homes to seek employment in foreign parts of the country on the eve of election, where they would not be eligible to vote. The inherent cunning of this blood sucking money power would pale to insignificance the most diabolical deeds of the prince of darkness. Blinded by their victory over the American Railway Union--through the assistance of the federal courts--they will stop at nothing to complete the work of subjugation and annihilation. They have tested their power over the courts and find them so completely subservient to their will that they know they would be secure in carrying out any high-handed proceeding which they may deem necessary to complete their work of demoralization and hounding to death, if need be, the members of this order. This was the very condition of affairs that President Debs anticipated, and tried to guard against. This was the impending danger against which he warned the men, and for this he filled a felon's cell in Cook county jail. Against these conditions the people must unite and co-operate. We must no longer close our eyes to the glaring fact that we are being made parties to our own destruction by the corporations and trusts of this country, and their allies the Democratic and Republican parties. These two great political parties are so completely controlled by the corporations, that anything asked of them is immediately granted, the only difference between the two being their views as to the best method by which they can serve these corporations. The railroads combine and trusts of all kinds furnish the funds for campaign purposes, and also incidentally furnish the votes to elect their friends. They have in every precinct, ward, town, city, county and state, their hirelings who beguile the people into voting as they dictate. The child like confidence of the people could not be shaken in the old parties. They were ever ready to place implicit faith in these designing politicians, believing that the laws made by them were just what was wanted for the people's salvation. This delusion cannot last, the time is now ripe for action. The masses must protect their interests if they would be free to enjoy the rights awarded them by the constitution. The American Railway Union has proven the greatest blessing to the working people of this country. It has torn the mask of hypocrisy from these plutocratic professional politicians and revealed them in their true character. The working people can no longer afford to be deluded by these old parties. They must unite and arise in one grand body and assert their independence as freemen and intelligent American citizens, and by their ballot take possession of this government of the capitalist, by the capitalist, and for the capitalist, and again make it a government of the people, by the people and for the people. President Debs struck the keynote when he said that it was better for the government to own the railroads than for the railroads to own the government. Our only chance to succeed in obtaining our constitutional rights is by legislation and this we must create ourselves. We never can obtain it through either of the old parties and therefore must ally ourselves to a new party. It is time that every intelligent workingman would think and act for himself. All semblance to aristocracy in labor must be eliminated, the skillful artisan has no more guarantee of just treatment than has the common laborer. Every workingman should endorse the Peoples party. They must unite as one, in one common cause and strike for their rights with the only effective weapon left to them, "the ballot." This strike has proven beyond doubt that the protective features in railroad organizations, and other organizations as well, is a dead letter as long as the federal courts are controlled by capital. Unless this is remedied, all labor organizations might just as well send in their charters and cease to exist. I cannot believe that the American people will allow this state of affairs to continue. There are many men in public life to-day whose motives are pure and unselfish. Such men as Governors Altgeld, Waite, Penoyer; Congressmen Kyle, Pfeffer, McGann, Pence, Goldgier; Mayor Hopkins of Chicago, Sydney M. Owens, Clarence S. Darrow, Judge Tully, Gen. Weaver, W. W. Erwin and hosts of others, who publicly espoused the cause of the strikers. The subsidized press, the most dangerous enemy of labor, and next to the courts, the most effective weapon in the hands of the railroad corporations in destroying the rights of labor and defeating the strikers, has again fallen in line as the champions of the laboring classes. With hypocritical pretensions to sympathy for the workingman, the organs of the two great political parties have begun to knife each other, and unite in denouncing the People's party, all for the benefit of the poor farmer, railroader, mechanic and laborer. They are loud in their denunciation of trusts, combines and corporations of all kinds that have a tendency to crush the poor working people. Their great and generous hearts are overflowing with sympathy for the poor oppressed toiler. The question is, can the American workingman be again deluded by these organs of organized capital? The laboring people do not want sympathy, neither do they want charity, all they want is simple justice, and this they must and will have. There are exceptions among the press and these should be remembered by the people. Papers that were champions of right and justice and whom the general managers could not buy. And now, kind reader, in conclusion I will quote the words of him, whose noble life is devoted to the cause of humanity: "The strike was not a failure. It will pass into history as a noble struggle for a righteous cause, and those who participated in it, whatever their immediate sacrifices may be, will in the end feel amply compensated for all their losses." THE END. +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 8 Crachus changed to Gracchus | | Page 8 Pometheus changed to Prometheus | | Page 8 lethergic changed to lethargic | | Page 10 rumaging changed to rummaging | | Page 10 consciousnes changed to consciousness | | Page 13 Kelleher changed to Kelliher | | Page 14 Kelleher changed to Kelliher | | Page 16 resistence changed to resistance | | Page 18 grestest changed to greatest | | Page 18 120 changed to 20 | | Page 19 averice changed to avarice | | Page 20 accomodations changed to accommodations | | Page 22 averice changed to avarice | | Page 28 authoritively changed to authoritatively | | Page 29 Fourty changed to Forty | | Page 38 to changed to too | | Page 38 chattle changed to chattel | | Page 41 epethets changed to epithets | | Page 43 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changed to Epithets | | Page 272 epethets changed to epithets | | Page 273 taylor changed to tailor | | Page 275 intolerence changed to intolerance | | Page 277 attenting changed to attending | | Page 278 Sprinfield changed to Springfield | | Page 281 resistence changed to resistance | | Page 285 committe changed to committee | | Page 287 voltneeer changed to volunteer | | Page 290 superintendant changed to superintendent | | Page 292 havn't changed to haven't | | Page 303 so changed to to | | Page 310 preceeding changed to preceding | | Page 313 elligible changed to eligible | | Page 314 immediatedly changed to immediately | | Page 315 hypocracy changed to hypocrisy | | Page 316 artesan changed to artisan | | Page 317 pretentions changed to pretensions | | Page 317 Peffer changed to Pfeffer | +-------------------------------------------------------+ 
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36432	----	Transcriber's Notes: The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and formatting have been maintained. A list of all corrections applied to the text has been added at the end of the text. Formatting: Text in italics is marked with underscores (_text_), spaced text with equal signs (=text=) and bold text using the Dollar sign ($text$). [Illustration: COAL FIELDS OF THE WORLD] THE COMING OF COAL BY ROBERT W. BRUÈRE OF THE BUREAU OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH Prepared for The Educational Committee of the Commission on the Church and Social Service of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America =ASSOCIATION PRESS= NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ROBERT W. BRUÈRE PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOREWORD This book, important in subject and scientific in method, appears under religious auspices for a very definite reason. The Educational Committee of the Federal Council of Churches has sought to find concrete expression for those Christian principles which are too often confined to abstract statement. Christian ethics are well understood in theory. There is need now for a science of Christian conduct through which we may realize ethical ideals in our working life. Because of its basic character and its present importance in the public mind the coal industry offers a field for this endeavor. Hence the Educational Committee presents through the medium of the Press of the Young Men's Christian Association, this book, addressed particularly to the people of the churches of America. THE EDUCATIONAL COMMITTEE. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Challenge of Power 1 II. Coming of Coal 4 III. Drama of Civilization 10 IV. Coal in America 22 V. Awakening of the Miners 34 VI. Struggle for Organization 50 VII. Rise of Democracy 66 VIII. Rivals of Coal 78 IX. The Technical Revolution 90 X. The Strait Gate 102 Bibliography 114 Index 120 CHAPTER I THE CHALLENGE OF POWER Scientists tell us that the energy poured by the sun on the Desert of Sahara in a single day exceeds by fourfold the energy stored in the annual production of all the coal fields in the world. They dream of a time when the radiant energy of the sun will be captured and turned to the uses of man. Then the wheels of our myriad machines will spin with the sun and the stars. In the soft whirr of their motors men will hear the music of the spheres. When that time comes, will it signal the triumph of man's will over nature, the end of the brute struggle with hunger? Will it find our ideals of cooperation, service, and brotherhood ripe for practical application? Or will it mark a new intensification of the exploitation of man by men, of the clash of groups for power, of international wars for possession? Shall we have the spiritual capacity to match our technical achievement? Shall we know what we mean when we pray Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as IT IS in Heaven? That prayer was old on the lips of men when a comparable gift was discovered. During ages without number the shifting seas and the slow-moving mountains had pressed down the sun's vintage in the coal beds of the earth. Less than two centuries ago the steam engine harnessed coal to the looms of England. With coal came iron and steel, and with steel and steam came the industrial revolution, its factories massed in cities, its railroads weaving manufacturing centers together, its steel ships and cables and telegraph wires unfolding and integrating the economic life of the world. In western Europe especially it converted an age-long economic deficit into an economic surplus. For the first time in human history it brought the possibility of the good life to every man's door. But it found men spiritually unprepared. The ancient bread hunger was still upon them. As in the tribal days men warred upon one another for food, so now they warred upon one another for coal and the incredible spawn of coal. For coal means food, clothing, houses, ships, railroads, newspapers, chemicals, and guns. With the coming of coal and coal-driven machinery the earth and the fullness thereof was unlocked for the service of man. There was not only the possibility of the good life for each but also of a noble, well-ordered civilization for all. But instead of establishing civilization on foundations of mutual aid, service, and brotherhood, men turned their cities into shambles of childhood, poverty was embittered, civil strife in mine, mill, and factory became endemic, wars on an unprecedented scale engaged nations and groups of nations. The World War and the famine and widespread desolation that followed gave tragic evidence of our spiritual unpreparedness. Yet it would be as falsely sentimental to set up a golden age as a heightening background for the evils that came with coal as it would be to ignore or gloze over those evils. Economic insecurity, poverty, disease, wars, and blighted childhood are as old as human existence. The world is a better, richer, more vibrant, and thrilling abode since coal came than it was before. The indictment of our coal age can be justly based, not upon what it has destroyed, but rather upon what it has missed,--upon its spiritually blind, its bungling and inadequate use of a gift more magnificent than any allotted to man since grain was first sown to the harvest and ground at a mill. An indictment that involves all mankind is hardly an indictment at all. It is rather a confession of our common human limitations, a recognition of the tragic circumstances of our spiritual growth. It will be answered when we as individuals and nations and groups of nations, set ourselves to turn the wisdom of experience to account in building a civilization worthy of a world that moves through infinite space with the sun and the marching stars. CHAPTER II THE COMING OF COAL The making of all the coal in the earth began when the sun hurled the earth into its orbit. Before there were vertebrates in the sea, or animals, or plants of any kind on land--fully one hundred and fifty million years ago--low foldings and depressions appeared on the earth where the Appalachian Mountains now are. Following the lines of what has become the Atlantic, vast ridges appeared. Ages later swamp forests grew in the intervening valleys, bearing and shedding the spores and thick, somber leaves still traceable in the lower carboniferous strata. In that time, a shallow sea covered what is now the Mississippi Valley in whose sludgy shoals more swamp forests grew. Along the inland seas and ocean beaches of Europe and Asia, the tides, the winds, and rains slowly spread the clay for still other swamp forests. When the lush plant life of the carboniferous age came out of the marshy ooze, it spread along the edges of the land, crept up the long estuaries between the rising and sinking hills and on into the landlocked seas. The rocks beneath and about these carboniferous forests rose and sank age through age, cycle through cycle. When they sank slowly, tangled morasses formed; when they sank rapidly, the inrushing water killed the plants and buried them under a covering of silt. When the rocky strata rose again, the swamp forests crept back to their old places, and again bore and shed their fernlike leaves, their spores and great scarred trunks upon the oozy bottom now scores or hundreds of feet above the level on which their ancestors had stood ages before. Then, some seventy million years ago, a geographical revolution convulsed what is now northeastern America. The great trough running parallel to the Atlantic, where swamp forests had grown and died and grown again, gave way under the ever-increasing load. The ridges at its sides pressed in upon it, crumpled it into giant folds, broke it, pushed its shattered edges out in mighty over-thrusts, released molten rock to flow up and over its torn surface. The whole titanic mass was racked and twisted with pressure and heat until what had been a slowly subsiding sea-bottom, covered with decaying swamp vegetation, rose on the shoulders of the newborn Appalachian Mountains, then a lofty range of clean, stark peaks stretching from Newfoundland to Arkansas,--two thousand miles. And with this great geographical revolution, the work of making coal in eastern North America was finished. From the softest bituminous to the hardest anthracite, that work was done. But in other parts of the world, the dense carboniferous forests continued to grow for another fifty or more million years. In the shallows of the Mississippi Valley, on the shores of the island that is now Colorado, the coal plants grew and died with the seasonal march of the sun. In parts of Europe, Russia, and China, coal continued to form. And then came another geographical revolution, some twenty million years ago, that raised up the Rockies and the Andes along the western border of the Americas, tore and twisted and upturned the rocks of Europe and Asia, until with the exception of a few odd pockets where small swamp forests lived on for a time, the coal making of the whole earth was ended. Twenty million years ago, all the coal we have or shall have had been packed away beneath the ribs of the earth, in seams varying in height from sixty feet to the thickness of a blade of grass. In many places the flat layers in which it was first deposited had been thrown into overlapping folds. Some of it had been subjected to comparatively little heat and to the pressure only of the rocky strata above it; this is the bituminous, which is still rich in oils, gas, tar--unreleased volatile matter. Some had been crushed by the weight of uplifted mountains, roasted, fused, and burned by molten lava and volcanic flame; this is anthracite, which is almost pure carbon and ash. Some had been exposed to greater pressure still, to intenser heat; this is graphite, which can no longer be burned at all. The distribution of coal in the world by quality and quantity has been, next to climate and the fertility of the soil, the physical fact of most decisive importance in the history of modern civilization. For countless ages coal lay practically unused in the earth. Then, sometime between 1750 and 1760, an intricate interlocking of circumstances set coal to rule the world, not through new discoveries of coal itself but rather through improvements in spinning and weaving machinery which made possible the massing of large numbers of spinners and weavers for large-scale production if power could be found to drive the new machines for them. The steam engine had already been invented, but it was still a tentative thing, a primitive type, wondered at and experimented with. Coal had been used, but only in a few favored spots where it cropped out on the earth's surface, or was washed ashore by the sea, and then only as a domestic fuel. It was at the call of the master weavers and spinners of England that the steam engine was set to run the machines; then to furnish a blast so that coal might be used to cheapen the smelting of iron and steel so that more machines might be made; then to pump out the deepening mines so that more and more power to keep the machines running might be won. Steam raising was coal's first great play for power and it is the work through which it still holds its industrial supremacy. Between 1800 and 1900 coal-driven engines multiplied until by the end of the century they were producing energy equivalent to seventy million horse-power; during the first twenty years of the twentieth century, their power-producing capacity more than doubled. So coal wrought the industrial revolution, the greatest revolution in all human history, which transformed social and economic life as radically as the geographical revolution transformed the earth's surface. "It introduced a new race of men," writes H. de B. Gibbins, "men who work with machinery instead of with their hands, who cluster together in cities instead of spreading over the land, men who trade with those of other nations as readily as with those of their own town, men whose workshops are moved by the great forces of nature and whose market is no longer the city or country but the world itself." Measured by the crude standards of gross wealth and numbers, the people of the earth have flourished mightily since the dominion of coal began. The aggregate wealth of the world has increased to fabulous proportions. The average expectation of life among Western peoples has doubled. Between 1800 and 1910 the world's population rose from approximately 640,000,000 to 1,616,000,000. The population of England, which had increased only fifteen per cent from 1651 to 1751, increased two hundred per cent during the next century. Between 1816 and 1910, the population of France increased fifty per cent, of Germany three hundred per cent, of the United States seventeen hundred per cent. Moreover the drive of coal's energy immensely stimulated men's inventive faculties. It transformed Kay's "flying shuttle" and Hargreaves' "spinning jenny" from clever toys into instruments of large-scale production, the crude steam engines of Newcomen and Watt into the great modern locomotive and the turbine engine; it made possible the large-scale production of telegraph wires and ocean cables, the cylinder press and typesetting machines, the electrical dynamo, the internal-combustion engine, the aeroplane, and even the space-ranging modern telescope. It lifted the veil from the seven seas, broke down the physical barriers between the peoples of the earth, forged the steel framework of national and international government. The commercial and political primacy which England held for more than one hundred and fifty years rested upon her abundant fields of easily accessible coal. The cosmic energy flowing out from her mines spread her trade and her surplus population to the four corners of the earth and made her triumphant over Spain and Holland--nations poor in coal. The coal of Westphalia, associated with the iron ores of Lorraine, welded the States of Germany into the empire of the latter nineteenth century and hurled her green-grey armies across her frontiers in the mad adventure of 1914. The vast, rich coal fields of North America have transformed the United States from an agricultural appanage of Europe into the foremost manufacturing and commercial nation in the world. The future of Russia lies largely in the coal fields of the Donetz basin. The imperfectly surveyed coal and ore fields of China and Siberia are probably the strongest of the magnets drawing the Powers into the problem of the Pacific. Coal and the continuing industrial revolution are still shaping the destiny of mankind. But in the history of the human race the fact of transcending significance is the presence in man of instincts, emotions, mind, reason, will, conscious hunger, and conscious love of one's neighbor,--all the constituents of that personality of supreme worth whose ceaseless struggle for mastery over the forces of nature, for escape from hunger, want, and war into a world of plenty, beauty, mutual aid, and service is the epic of civilization. The value of coal, as of all material things, finds its true measure not in numbers or horse-power units, but in its effect upon the soul of man, the fullness of opportunity enjoyed by each individual for self-realization and service, the progress of the race toward brotherhood. The ultimate appraisal of the coal age will be determined by the issue of the struggle between bread hunger and love in the soul of man--the struggle between his acquisitive instinct and his growing consciousness of kind. CHAPTER III THE DRAMA OF CIVILIZATION Coal embodies our chance of a world civilization. It is the material form in which the possibility of peace and ease, beauty and learning, cooperation and brotherhood, have come to the human race. Before coal was harnessed to the looms of England, before the stored energy of the sun replaced hand labor at the wheels and gears of her newly invented machines, there was no such thing as a world civilization. There was indeed nothing to base a world civilization upon, for civilization implies leisure consciously to cooperate with other people, to make life not merely endurable but beautiful and pleasant as well, leisure to subordinate the instinct to acquire to the instinct to enjoy, the acquisitive instinct to the consciousness of kind--and the race as a whole had its entire attention focussed on the effort to get enough food and clothing and shelter so that it would live and not die. For only as the acquisitive instinct was dominant and successful could men survive either singly or in groups, before the coming of coal. The limits of civilization were primarily the mechanical limitations of man's ability to produce. So long as his only ways to drive machinery were by wind and water, the strength of domesticated animals, and his own brawn, it was almost impossible for him to accumulate sufficient reserves of food and clothing so that instead of thinking what he should eat and what he should put on, he could think a little of how to make life good. And whenever by some fortunate chance a group of men did get together a small hoard, parallel with the growth of each tiny surplus grew the hatred of the outside groups who wished to possess it, and the need to defend it by force. So that when here and there through the centuries pocketed civilizations did arise, they were civilizations perpetually armed for defence and with the sword in their hands. And though the spirit of man in such places as India and Egypt, in China, Persia, Palestine, Greece, Carthage, Rome, and the free Italian cities, as soon as the pressure was removed ever so little, did flower into religion and art and science, these favored oases were surrounded by crowding, hungry multitudes who pressed in and in till at last every one of these was overwhelmed. Before the coming of coal man had to satisfy his longing for peace and knowledge and companionship through his dreams. These have come down to us in the legends of India and Israel, China, Greece, and our own Nordic ancestors which perpetually play about the fabulous treasure--the Golden Fleece, the land of milk and honey, the Volsung's miraculous hoard--pathetic symbols of plenty, liberation, and the possibility of brotherhood. But until coal came there was no way to make these dreams come true. For survival was only to the strong, or to the cunning, or to those who were willing to grow fat on the leanness of others, and every respite from the basic business of keeping alive was extravagantly paid for either by oneself or another--before coal came. But with the coming of coal there rose the possibility of producing more than enough to keep everybody alive. A tireless bond servant had been given to the race whose power grew as it was called on, until now in the United States where coal is used most indefatigably, each family has the equivalent of thirty human servants, whose use does not need to involve the exploitation of man by man. For the first time there is the possibility of all having enough,--of a world surplus on which to base civilization. It was too much to expect that this possibility should be understood by a race which had never before got further than to see that if their family, their town, their nation, was to have ease and plenty, it must be quick to get as much of the world's store of food and goods as it could,--and to acquire them in spite of the fact that the other groups, who were hot after them also, might perish if they did not get their share. They did not see that with the coming of coal the supply was practically unlimited, and so it was not man's sense of brotherhood but his acquisitive instinct, checked and balked for ages, that first found channels of release when coal came. After the coming of coal this acquisitive instinct expanded with cosmic force. For the first time in history, men and nations thrilled with the manifest possibility of their escape from the ancient menace of hunger into a world of measureless plenty. In their greedy rush for possession, men within nations trampled one another under foot, and nations girded themselves for world dominion. And as wealth flowed into the village, the town, and the nation, all men exulted, those who themselves had nothing as well as those who grew rich. For famine still hovered beyond the horizon, and the very presence in the community of an economic surplus, by whomever owned, gave all men a sense of security as though at last they had won the miraculous hoard of their dreams, through the coming of coal. It was inevitable that in this cumulative drive of the acquisitive instinct with the long-sought surplus almost in sight, the attitude of mind established and glorified during the ages when war was the common alternative to hunger, should carry over into factories and mines. The methods of war,--the ruthless sacrifice of part of the community for the benefit of the rest,--were the only methods men understood. The new possibility had arrived but the old habit of mind remained. With the coming of coal and the beginning of the industrial revolution, no one dreamed that the time for the cessation of human sacrifice had arrived. When the mines were first opened, the slave trade still flourished with almost universal sanction. "It is a slight fact," wrote Lecky, "but full of ghastly significance as illustrating the state of feeling at the time, that the ship in which Hawkins sailed on his second expedition to open the English slave trade was called _The Jesus_." This voyage was made a hundred years before the harnessing of coal, but in the middle of the eighteenth century and far into the nineteenth much the same state of feeling widely prevailed. The first miners in Scotland were serfs; the first miners in northern England were bondsmen who sold themselves by the year and were forbidden by law to leave the mine to which they were bound. "At that time," write J. L. and Barbara Hammond, basing their account on the report of the Parliamentary Committee on the Employment of Children and Young Persons (1842), "boys were employed everywhere, girls in certain districts, Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding, and South Wales, besides Scotland. Children were employed as trappers, that is to open and shut the doors that guided the draught of air through the mine; as fillers, that is to fill the skips and carriages when the men have hewn the coal; and as pushers, or hurriers, that is, to push the trucks along from the workers to the foot of the shaft. But in some mines these trucks were drawn instead of being pushed. 'A girdle is put round the naked waist, to which a chain from the carriage is hooked and passed between the legs, and the boys crawl on their hands and knees, drawing the carriage after them.' In the early days of the century this arrangement was very common, and women and girls were so employed. By 1842 it was more usual to have small iron railways, and the carriages were pushed along them. The trapping was done everywhere by children, generally from five to eight years of age. A girl of eight years old described her day: 'I'm a trapper in the Gamber Pit. I have to trap without a light, and I'm scared. I go at four and sometimes half-past three in the morning and come out at five and half-past. I never go to sleep. Sometimes I sing when I've light, but not in the dark; I dare not sing then....' In the West Riding the work of hurrying or pushing the corves was often done by girls at the time of the report: 'Chained, belted, harnessed like dogs in a go-cart, black, saturated with wet, and more than half naked--crawling upon their hands and feet, and dragging their heavy loads behind them--they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural.' ... The children who suffered most were the apprentices from the workhouse; 'these lads are made to go where other men will not let their own children go. If they will not do it, they take them to the magistrates who commit them to prison.' ... In mines with thick seams it was usual to make good roads, but in less profitable mines the roads were just large enough to enable small children to get the corves along them.... It was reported that there was much more cruelty in the Halifax pits than in those of Leeds and Braseford. A sub-commissioner met a boy crying and bleeding from a wound in the cheek, and his master explained 'that the child is one of the slow ones, who would only move when he saw blood, and that by throwing a piece of coal at him for that purpose he had accomplished his object, and that he often adopted the like means.'" The entire community sanctioned these practices, not the employers only; for generations even the miners themselves acquiesced in them. Those who were sacrificed in the mines and factories were victims of the entire consuming community's war against hunger; the furious drive of the acquisitive instinct on the one hand, and also of the passionate longing of all men to escape from economic bondage into security, plenty, economic and spiritual freedom. It was war of a disastrous sort but the world of that day saw no alternative,--could see no alternative from the experience of the race. Until as individuals, and nations and associations of nations, we have won a stable economic surplus and the spiritual maturity to use and distribute that surplus for the benefit of the whole community, we shall not in our hearts condemn war as immoral, whether it be a military or an industrial war. Always we shall contrive to believe that what is necessary for us is necessarily good. People in general deplored the horrors of mining just as before the coming of coal they had deplored the horrors of the wars they had waged in order to survive, but the fact remained that if the golden promise of the industrial revolution was to be realized they must have coal, and what other way was there to get it? At least part of the world was living in comfort and security. As a matter of fact a fair share of the community attained reasonable comfort after the coming of coal. The acquisitive instinct succeeded in piling up a vast permanent capital which was enjoyed by a large proportion of the human race. It had not come through increased production alone. Raiding and exploitation, both commercial and military, had helped mightily, for the old method of feeding yourself from your neighbor's hoard was tremendously accelerated for those peoples whose manufactures and transportation were driven by the power of coal. That the exploited peoples suffered in proportion as the raiding peoples prospered is, of course, true, but among the dominant peoples themselves the acquisitive instinct had begotten a mutual consciousness. Throughout those parts of the world where coal had induced the industrial revolution, a common civilization had sprung up. Parallel with the triumphant acquisitive instinct had developed the spirit of brotherhood and mutual aid which limited and controlled it. The feeling of fellowship which breeds civilization was practically coextensive with the augmented surplus produced through the coming of coal. Coal-driven transportation was good enough so that a famine in one land could be met by the heavy crops from another place: the fighting of disease, the utilization of patents, the exchange of ideas, of luxuries, of scientific knowledge, of passports, of fashions, and of food, became international throughout a large part of the world. Mankind began to approach a world civilization because since the coming of coal to kill or starve was no longer the inevitable choice. That this alternative has even a chance of operating is due to the play and interplay of the two great fundamental instincts in the soul of man--the acquisitive instinct through which he learned to use coal to pile up the material surplus that made civilization possible; and that other impulse, an offspring of the acquisitive instinct, which has swung into opposition to its parent but without whose help that parent could never have achieved a surplus on a large scale, the instinct of brotherhood, of mutual aid, of cooperation. For without cooperation among men there would have been lacking the tremendous advantage of division of labor and mass production, and no surplus, however large and secure it might have been, could have resulted in civilization except through mutual aid. Men learned to work together in order to survive; they learned to enjoy the results of their labor together in order to become civilized. These two impulses are woven together in man's history from the start and it is according as one or the other predominates that we develop a civilization on the basis of our economic surplus, or merely continue to exist and fight. This instinct of mutual aid is as truly a cosmic force as the acquisitive instinct. "The original and elementary subjective fact in society is the consciousness of kind," writes Professor Giddings, "... It is the basis of class distinction, of innumerable forms of alliance, of rules of intercourse, and of peculiarities of policy.... It is about the consciousness of kind as a determining principle, that all other motives organize themselves in the evolution of social choice, social volition, or social policy." In any attempt to understand the function of coal in the development of human society, it is necessary to remember the universal democratic tendency of men similarly circumstanced, to organize into defensive and offensive groups. They organize into bar associations, medical societies, religious denominations, manufacturers' associations, and trade unions in obedience to a principle as pervasive in the animate as the force of gravitation is in the material world. While the primary driving force behind each group as it organizes is the acquisitive instinct, the natural reaching out for the means of subsistence, for wages, fees, profits; for food, clothing, shelter, then for more food, more clothing, better shelter, still the actual attainment of the surplus makes possible the widening operation of the consciousness of kind, and turns men's minds toward all those attributes that are characteristic of the good life in which both the individual personality and also the spiritual being of the group, the nation, and the race find fruition. For an economic surplus is merely the condition of the good life, and the end to which the human spirit forever strives to direct the use of the surplus, is the good life itself--a worthy civilization. If the consciousness of kind had spread evenly like a rising tide drawn by the swelling surplus of the age of coal, a world civilization might have quickly come. But it worked unevenly and erratically. Sometimes it spread thinly over whole nations in the form of political beliefs and produced theoretical democracies functioning through the franchise. Sometimes it left the forms of government severely monarchical and produced a spotty economic growth in the form of cooperative societies that functioned in response to the everyday bread and butter needs. Sometimes it brought those having similar occupations together in guilds and trade unions, that tended to ignore mere political boundaries and make men internationally conscious of each other through the way they got their living. But everywhere the rising consciousness of kind came upon obstructions and divisions. Waves hurrying up innocent-looking estuaries would come upon other streams from the same great source, and meet in spluttering, frothing conflict: a long even swell of brotherly feeling would break over some rock of ancestral race prejudice in disaster and bloodshed; mutual aid rose in a murky troubled sea, wave against wave, one current trying to beat another current back. People united into a political nation opposed themselves violently to those united into some economic class within it. Men were driven apart when the interests of their group conflicted with the interests of other groups almost as strongly as they were drawn together by common interest within their own organization. And always the rise of any new group within a fairly comfortable community met opposition from some already established group whose privileges, powers, and possessions the new group tended to infringe. They inevitably appeared like an invading tribe bent on pillage, and the community gathered shoulder to shoulder to resist them, every thought and muscle set to repel what they saw as an attack on the common surplus and in defence of those whose guardianship of the common hoard had afforded them a new measure of comfort. This has been particularly true of all organizations, due to the spread of consciousness of kind among the workers and their efforts to get for themselves a larger share of the benefits of the common surplus. Very rarely has the community been able to see that what was distributed in the form of advanced wages and better conditions was not necessarily taken away from the community as a whole. When the coal miners, actuated by the consciousness of kind, began to organize for mutual aid and defence, the community at large as well as the mine owners condemned them as subversive conspirators, not only against their lawful masters, but also against the general peace and well-being of the nation, which was quite obviously flourishing,--piling up a surplus with national security as a by-product,--by reason of the thousands of tons of coal which the newly organized group might conceivably curtail. It was the community as a whole, not the employers only, that sanctioned the use of the courts and the military against the miners' union, as they would have countenanced their use against soldiers who mutinied. Only slowly is our community, to which the coming of coal has given the chance to develop a world civilization, beginning to see that neither the acquisitive instinct through which men pile up a surplus, nor the consciousness of kind through which they organize to build up a civilization, is the result of individual perversity or caprice. Unions and employers' associations arise in obedience to a fundamental law of human conduct, they are the means by which society wins its way out of chaos and anarchy into peace and orderly government. Through such group organizations men develop the understanding of one another and of the community at large, which is the foundation of brotherhood and civilized life. It is through them that the community develops standards of living; it is through them that the ideals of cooperation acquire reality. It is by the acquisitive instinct that men live; it is by the consciousness of kind, the instinct of mutual aid and cooperation, that men are transformed into human beings. The interplay of these forces makes the history of civilization--of nations and the great basic industries within the nations. They are the flying shuttles with which man at Time's loom weaves "the living garment of God." CHAPTER IV COAL IN AMERICA The human significance of coal lies in the effect which the release of its energy has exercised upon the struggle between the acquisitive instinct and the consciousness of kind for ascendancy over the soul of man. Through its creature, the industrial revolution, it has given man command of an economic surplus and set him free to win the good life for each individual and to substitute mutual aid for war in international relations if he will. But the first effect of coal was not to usher in the good life but to intensify the ancient struggle, widening its stage from pocketed civilizations to the world. For more than a hundred and fifty years, the abundant and readily accessible coal of Great Britain made her the protagonist in the world drama. Her acquisitive instinct, charged with cosmic energy, shot lines of imperial expansion out across the seas to America, India, Australia, China, and Africa. Her coal-created wealth enabled her to maintain the mastery of the ocean highways which she had won from Spain and Holland and to hold it against Napoleonic France and later against imperial Germany. It gave her an economic surplus upon the basis of which the consciousness of kind welded her people into one nation and ended the civil wars which from the time of the Danish invasion and the landing of William the Conqueror had kept each little group within the island armed against every other little group. And it transformed her with jarring rapidity into a country that lived by manufacture and by trade and supported a far larger population than could have lived upon the island if it had been merely an agricultural country raising its own food. In order that this swelling population might go on getting coal out of the mines and turning out products from the factories it must be adequately and cheaply fed. The place where its food came from was chiefly America. During the hundred and fifty years of England's primacy, America was not only her granary but increasingly the granary of other nations, and the great reservoir for all their overflowing populations. For the industrial revolution in England was followed by the harnessing of coal in France, then in Germany, then later in Japan, and this set in motion among them the processes of imperial expansion, whose friction and clash culminated in the World War. It was as necessary to the success of the industrial revolution, particularly in specialized little England, that the surplus populations which were poured by the million into America should send back food to Europe, as it was that their factory machines should have coal to drive them. This interdependence was not conscious, not a deliberate effort on either side, but it was an extremely practical fact nevertheless. In order that England might live by trade, some other land must live by agriculture, and during the first hundred and fifty years of the industrial revolution that land was America. To live by agriculture was an easy thing in the New World, easier than it had ever been anywhere before,--to live and to feed a continent besides. For America is the only great modern nation whose history is written not against a background of famine but against a background of economic abundance. After the first thin stream of colonial adventurers and exiles for conscience' sake had established themselves upon the Atlantic coast, her seemingly boundless domain opened up before the hungry millions of Europe like the promised land of milk and honey. Unlike the peoples of the great Asiatic and European folk-wanderings, they found no comparably developed peoples to bar their way. As they spread from the Atlantic to the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies, then along the Great Lakes and down the Ohio; on across the Mississippi, the Kansas prairies, the Great Desert, the Sierras and Rockies to California and the Golden Gate, they found only hunting tribes or the fading remnants of cliff-dwelling and primitive agricultural clans. These they could meet not only with effective weapons of defence but also with a highly developed agricultural technique. At first America's planless prosperity had little to do with coal and nothing at all with manufacture. It was a prosperity made up of the sum of her food products, and men skimmed the soil and the forests with only one thought, to make that sum immediately great. Exploitation got into their blood. It was the method by which they grew rich, and when the wealth of the coal deposits was added to the wealth of the fields and forests, they carried the same methods of planless exploitation over into the coal mines. England must still depend on them for food, but they did not have to depend so abjectly on her for manufactures after the industrial revolution crossed the Atlantic at the call of the Pennsylvania coal fields. After the industrial revolution harnessed their unique reservoirs of coal, the people of the United States enjoyed a degree of economic security such as no other people ever enjoyed. Had they been spiritually prepared, they might have used this economic abundance to establish brotherhood among men. But after all, they themselves were Europeans who had fled from the ancient tyranny of hunger. To them America was naturally more an escape from that haunting menace than a challenge to the good life. Here and there, as in the Puritan theocracy, they heard and tried to obey the challenge. But they were not prepared. The hungry immigrant millions swarmed across the continent, laying waste the forests, skimming the fresh fertile soil, growing prosperous by destruction rather than by thrift and planful use. They caroused and swaggered like prodigals. They glorified mere acquisition, measuring a man's worth by the money he owned. As they filled the continent, the old world fever of imperial expansion entered their blood. They seized Cuba and the Philippines, Haiti and Santo Domingo. They set about building the greatest navy in the world. After a few faltering efforts to lead the warring nations to peace through conference and conciliation, they threw the weight of their wealth and numbers into the balance and with fire and sword imposed a victorious peace. And they were able to do this in the last analysis because of the enormous power of their coal supply, for coal in a modern industrial civilization means guns and munitions of war, transportation systems to set armies in the field, and the ability to supply them after they get there. America's coal-wrought wealth made her decisive in battle. Even so today her unique reserves of coal make her the arbiter between peace and war. Possessed of the richest coal fields in the world, she holds the destiny of the nations in her hands. For coal has grown to mean food and clothing and shelter, transportation and communication, and the economic surplus and the leisure without which science, invention, art, representative government, democratic education, and enlightened organized religion would atrophy and perish. Since coal means all these things, and since America owns the world's greatest available reserves of coal, it is obvious that the manner in which her people develop and govern their coal fields is of crucial importance, not only to themselves, but also to the rest of the world. Before the United States entered the World War, her people were hardly aware of this fact; even the momentous experience of the war has but dimly impressed its meaning upon the national mind. Our coal measures underlie an area of more than four hundred and sixty thousand square miles. They contain almost four thousand billion tons of lignite, bituminous, semibituminous, anthracite, and semianthracite coals. About two-fifths of the world's annual output is mined in the United States. The very abundance of the supply has made us enormously wasteful in its exploitation, as we have been wasteful in the exploitation of our forests. Unlike the forests, coal once destroyed does not grow again. The most valuable of our coals are in the Appalachian bituminous fields that stretch from northern Pennsylvania to Alabama, and in which some of the best sections have already been gutted and abandoned. In our greedy grasp for wealth, we have left one ton of coal to waste underground for every ton we have brought to the surface. More than one hundred and fifty thousand miners have been drawn into the mines in excess of efficient requirements. Planless overexpansion of the industry has resulted in such irregular operation of plant and equipment that for more than a generation the miners have lost an average of ninety-three days in the working year of three hundred and eight days, and a needless overhead charge has been imposed upon the consumer which Mr. F. G. Tryon of the U. S. Geological Survey calculates at a million dollars for each working day. Planless exploitation has made the most basic of our basic industries the prey of technical inefficiency and social unrest, the extent of which we as a people ignored until they threatened national and international disaster at the crisis of the war. This trouble might have gone on some time longer undiagnosed if we had not met our first modern national emergency in 1917. Of necessity the weight of the military structure was added to the weight of the industrial civil structure and the combined load was more than the coal industry could bear. It bent and broke under it, and in order to prosecute the war, the government was forced to take hold of the formless inchoate thing and reshape it into a stable prop for the national need. As a first step it was necessary to find out what this great unwieldy coal industry was. Coal mines are systems of tunnels driven into the veins where they crop out along the slopes of hills, or from the foot of shafts sunk through the overlying strata. These tunnels run for miles underground. Secondary tunnels run from the main tunnel or heading into the rooms where the miners work. The surveyor's diagram of a mine looks like a crushed centipede. The getting of coal out of the mines, after it has been picked or blasted down by the miner, like its distribution after it is brought to the surface, is almost entirely a problem of transportation. Even in times of peace our railroad transportation was an intricate and complicated thing. It had been repeatedly regulated and re-regulated to bring it more in line with community needs. Among other regulations was a law, designed to give the public the benefit of as much competition between operators as possible, which required the railroads to furnish sidings and cars to all coal mines in proportion to their production, with a preferential provision for new operations. The double demand for coal sent up prices and the rise in prices led to the opening of new coal mines and the re-working of old abandoned ones. All the eleven thousand mines, scattered more or less at random over thousands of square miles of territory, clamored for their legal quota of cars and transportation to market. This competitive din aggravated the confusion upon our already overtaxed railroads. At the critical moment when the essential movement of troops and munitions was straining the resources of the railroads, the sprawling coal industry made their task impossible. In peace times one-third of our ordinary bituminous production is used to generate steam for transportation, and more than one-third of all the tonnage carried by the railroads is coal. The weight of the coal which the railroads normally carry is double the weight of iron ore, steel, lumber, wheat, corn, oats, and hay combined. The problem of hauling this huge load is needlessly complicated by competitive cross-shipments of coal from one mining state into or across another. The producers of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Indiana sell their coal in from eighteen to twenty states, many of them coal-mining states. A part of this cross-shipment is necessary, because certain mining states like Illinois, for example, do not produce the grade of coking coal which their steel plants need and which must, therefore, be brought from West Virginia or southern Pennsylvania. But most of it is due to blind competitive planlessness and waste. Upon this tangled mesh the critical demands of the war placed a crushing burden. The nation's safety made it imperative not only that coal should be produced, but that it should be delivered where it was needed. The miners were digging more coal than had ever been produced before, yet cries of coal shortage went up from domestic consumers and manufacturers all over the land. The railroads themselves resorted to the confiscation of coal in transit to keep their engines running. To avert impending catastrophe to the nation and the world, the national consciousness of kind asserted itself over the acquisitive instinct of individuals and groups, and through the federal government created the Fuel Administration which brought the mines under unified public control and converted the coal industry, for the period of the war, into a unified public service. From the high central tower of the Fuel Administration, the people of the United States for the first time caught a fleeting glimpse of the coal industry as a whole and of the relation it bears to the national and international industrial life. They discovered that coal bears much the same relation to our modern industrial structure that the water supply bears to the life of a great municipality. When America entered the war, she resembled with respect to her primary source of mechanical energy a municipality dependent for its water supply upon eleven thousand separate wells, owned and operated primarily in their individual interests by thousands of enterprising individuals, with hundreds of separate delivery systems jostling in the highways that needed to be kept clear for soldiers and guns, its people bidding against one another, offering fabulous prices for water, yet parched with thirst. "Basic industries and transportation," writes Dr. Garfield, in describing what he saw as head of the Fuel Administration, "were caught in a vicious circle. Steel could not be manufactured without coke, coke could not be made without coal; coal could not be commercially produced without transportation; transportation was dependent upon coal.... Industrially we were in a wild scramble of manufacture, production, and shipment.... It was no longer a question of withholding coal from non-war industries but rather a question whether any coal could much longer get through to any consumer." With eleven thousand coal mines in operation, the engines of the nation were running cold for lack of coal. Created to avert impending catastrophe, the Fuel Administration went about the service of the nation much as an engineer would tackle the job of converting eleven thousand wells into a modern system of water supply. It dealt with the coal fields as a single great reservoir of fuel and power. It worked out a budget covering the needs of the essential industries, the railroads, steel plants, munition factories, gas and electric utilities, as well as the domestic consumers. It made maps charting the coal-producing and coal-consuming territories, divided the nation into regional zones, established these zones as fuel reservoirs, created a distributing organization by zones and states like a great system of water mains. It called the experienced operators and technical managers into public service and entrusted to them the technical problems of production and distribution. It fixed prices limiting profits to an estimated fair return. It converted the miners' union and the operators' organizations into administrative arms of the government for the industry, with committees for conference and conciliation at the mines, and in the various producing districts, heading up in a Bureau of Labor at Washington as a final court of appeal for the adjustment of disputes over wages and working conditions. For the period of the war, the coal industry functioned as a cooperative public service. The coal budget, based upon a detailed analysis of the country's resources and needs, set a definite standard of performance both for the industry and the railroads, and made it possible for them to cooperate intelligently. The zones served as tools for the control and direction of the flow of coal called for by the budget. Mr. C. E. Lesher, Director of the Bureau of Statistics of the Distribution Division, writes: "In the short period of a few months after the work of the Fuel Administration was begun, it was determined that the requirements of the United States for bituminous coal in the coal year ended March, 1919, were 624,000,000 net tons, compared with a production in 1917 of 552,000,000 tons of bituminous coal, and for anthracite 100,000,000 net tons, but slightly more than in 1917.... To provide coal was the problem of the Distribution Division of the Fuel Administration; to provide transportation was the problem of the Railroad Administration.... The adoption of the zoning system represented the supreme effort of the Railroad Administration to overcome the transportation tangle in connection with coal.... So closely did the officials of the two administrations work, and so effective were the measures employed, that the results surprised all.... The Director of Operations of the Railroad Administration in May, when production of bituminous coal was averaging 11,500,000 tons a week, believed that 11,800,000 was the highest that could be expected in 1918, as the railroads were believed to have reached their maximum capacity. Within a month records of 12,500,000 tons a week were reached, and in July, and again in September, the 13,000,000 ton mark was passed.... When the armistice was declared, New England, farthest from the mines, with an average of 20 weeks' supply, was literally gorged with soft coal, and eastern New York and Pennsylvania, with from 6 to 9 weeks' stock, had abundant supplies.... From April 1 to July 6, 1918, rail shipments to New England were 3,058,000 net tons, or 98 per cent of the schedule of 3,150,000 tons; on September 28, shipments were 6,164,000 tons, or 105 per cent of the schedule for that date. The schedule for shipments to tidewater from April 1 to July 1 called for 11,916,000 net tons. By December 21 shipments were 9 per cent ahead of the program. The Lake program called for 28,000,000 tons of cargo coal; a total of 28,153,000 tons was supplied. With similar precision and certainty munition factories, arsenals, powder works, and by-product plants were kept running, while stocks were accumulated, insuring uninterrupted operations throughout the winter. In the same manner retail dealers were given supplies for their domestic trade. Such results were possible only because of complete control of shipments and the full information on which to proceed." This was an amazing and illuminating demonstration of the fact that our greatest national resource could be administered for the benefit of the whole nation. It was no longer a mere possibility, the thing had been done. It has been said that this achievement was possible because during the war the people had a common object which so challenged their higher ideals that they were able to subordinate their individual and special group interests to the service of the nation, to make their consciousness of kind as a people triumphant over the acquisitive instinct. Again it is said that human nature being what it is, similar unselfish consecration is not to be expected in the sluggish days of peace. But if the historical record teaches us anything it is the essential falseness of this assertion. That record shows us the gradual irresistible spread of the consciousness of kind from one realm of human activity to another as the acquisition of a surplus makes this possible. It shows human understanding reaching out to give all men religious freedom, to assure them equal political rights; shows it asserting human brotherhood in the right to education, health, happiness--and these things not under the stress of war, but in the conditions of peace. The possibility hangs not on any technical inability, but on the better preparedness of the minds of men, on their clearer vision, their ability to see the spiritual implications of their technical triumphs. CHAPTER V THE AWAKENING OF THE MINERS With the declaration of the armistice and the removal of the incentive to cooperation in public service which the war gave, the Fuel Administration and its elaborate system of statistical control of production and distribution was broken up as rapidly as it had been organized. During the war, there had been gross examples of profiteering just as there had been occasional local strikes, but by and large the operators like the miners had conducted themselves conscientiously as servants of the republic. To a remarkable degree they subordinated their acquisitive instinct to their consciousness of kind as citizens of the nation whose life was threatened from without. But within a year after the armistice, speculative profiteering was rampant and the coal industry was paralyzed by a general strike. Mr. Herbert Hoover, addressing the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, described the situation as a "national emergency," due to the fact that "this industry, considered as a whole, is one of the worst functioning industries in the United States." How shall we account for this wide, swift swing of the pendulum? Operators and owners who had offered their skill to the government during the national crisis, rebelled against all further "interference with their private business." They rebelled not only against price fixing and the regulation of distribution, but even against all attempts on the part of governmental agencies to keep congress and the public informed of the elementary facts of ownership, costs, wages, prices, and profits, without which public opinion is helplessly blind. They sued out an injunction against the Federal Trade Commission to block its efforts to search out and publish these essential facts. The unions also chafed under governmental restraint upon their freedom of action, especially when the government lifted its limitation on prices and left the consumer at the mercy of an open market. As prices and profits mounted, they felt entitled to commensurate wage increases. The war, they said, was over though peace had not been formally declared, and they demanded release from the restraints of wartime legislation so that they might freely exercise their economic pressure to secure wage increases as the operators were taking increased profits. For the first time in almost a generation they laid down their tools, and finally submitted to the arbitration of federal commissions only under threat of an injunction and the imprisonment of their leaders. Economic war and group rivalry took the place of cooperation in public service. The main reason for this violent reaction is probably to be found in the fact that our modern democracies, the United States in particular, were born in rebellion against the autocratic authority of the feudal state, the fear and hatred of which still attaches even to our representative government. The memory of the Stuarts and Bourbons and Hohenzollerns is still fresh in the modern democratic consciousness, and accounts for the maxim that the government is best which governs least. Through the revolutions of the eighteenth century the merchants, manufacturers, and business men wrested from the monarch his autocratic power, and it is against this same power as exercised by the owners of property that the organized labor movement is today in rebellion. But as against the state when it exercises such autocratic authority as during the war it exercised through the Fuel Administration, both groups, owners and workers, unite. They assert the right of self-government within their industry. Like the economists and business men of the nineteenth century, they contend that the conflict and balance of their selfish interests will by some mysterious provision of nature neutralize and resolve these selfishnesses to the advantage of the community. The essence of this acquisitive philosophy is expressed in the quaint nineteenth-century maxim that "greed is held in check by greed, and the desire for gain sets limits to itself." But this leaves the service of the community at the mercy of a blind conflict of forces within the industry, as formerly it was at the mercy of force exercised by the monarch who was the state, and the public is increasingly dissatisfied with the result. The public service conception of industry, and especially of such basic industries as coal, is rapidly taking possession of the public mind. People are coming to see that the uncontrolled conflict of forces, like autocratic force itself, is incompatible with the principle of service. Neither will force exercised by the state through the courts solve the difficulty. Compulsion is contrary to the spirit and genius of democracy. The great problem of our generation is to discover how industrial freedom can be reconciled with the service of the public. For an answer we shall have to look into the spirit and structure of such government as our industries have themselves evolved. For democracy is not, as its earlier critics declared, synonymous with anarchy. Democracy is a government of laws, not of men; and laws in a democracy are not emanations of superior minds, but the codified experience of the people. As we approach the problem of government in our basic industries as in the nation, we discover two seemingly conflicting tendencies, two great elements in our population apparently pulling in opposite directions. In the question of national security and defence, the one instinctively follows the ancient tradition of European nations, piling up armies and navies, and striving to make America the most formidable military power in the world; the second leans to a policy of reconciliation, striving by conference and understandings with other nations to prevent disagreements and to avert wars. The first makes it a matter of national honor to emphasize individual American rights on land and sea, the property rights of Americans, our financial and economic interests in backward countries, and the military force necessary to enforce those interests; the second aims to establish international relations in which such rights and interests shall be secure to all nations without the constant threat of force. To the one, the world is an arena in which to fight or starve is the eternal choice; to the second, the world is a communion table at which all men are brothers. These same tendencies, these same manifestations of the acquisitive instinct and the consciousness of kind, appear in the record of our basic coal industry. As the industrial revolution got into full swing in America, during and immediately following the Civil War, there was a rush for the possession of the coal mines comparable to the rush for land. Among the men who won possession, there were some who were keenly aware of the public obligations of ownership, who in friendly cooperation with their employes strove to develop their properties in the interest of the public as well as of their employes and themselves. But owners and miners alike took their spiritual color from their social environment and in the soul of the people the acquisitive instinct remained in the ascendant. Men did not go into business or swing their tools for their health. Their first duty, as they saw it, was to make all the money they could as fast as they could, and to put themselves and those dependent upon them on easy street. "God helps them," they said, "who help themselves." They gutted the richest veins for quick profit, as our forests and new lands had been gutted. More mines were opened than the nation could possibly use. There was a gluttonous overdevelopment of the industry which swung up and down in high peaks and low plunges of prosperity and depression, high prices and "no market," feverish employment and long stretches of intermittent work, which for hundreds of thousands of miners meant no work at all, and for many operators meant bankruptcy. The level of government in the industry was in all essential respects the level of hunting tribes. During the early days of the industry, the miners, like American manual workers in general, were under the popular illusion that democracy meant the passing of a permanent working class. With the Declaration of Independence the old social stratification of feudal Europe had been wiped out forever. There was plenty of room at the top. Everybody might with perseverance and thrift get to the top. This illusion took on considerable substance from the fact that when the industrial revolution first invaded the coal fields America still offered great tracts of unoccupied lands to satisfy the universal land hunger, whereas in England, for example, the policy of enclosure barred poor men from such untilled land as there was. This circumstance accounts for the slow and erratic development of group organization among American miners as compared with the English. There were many cases like that of the bituminous miners in Maryland, who went into the mines; took wages and working conditions as they found them; organized; fought for better wages and working conditions; accumulated a little money; and then, instead of using it to build a permanent organization, broke away for the free lands of the West. "Their ambition in life," writes Andrew Roy, himself at the time a miner, "was to save enough money to buy a farm in Iowa or Wisconsin. They would go back to the mines in the autumn after harvesting, work all winter, and return with their fresh stake in the spring. None of them ever returned permanently to the mines." But as the fertile lands were preempted and America became increasingly a manufacturing nation, the coal industry acquired a measure of stability and drew into the mining communities an increasing body of men for whom mining was to be a life's work. The condition of life for these permanent miners was largely determined by the camps or villages which the companies built at the mines. These were generally mean, cheap, temporary affairs. For the faster the miner works, the faster he skims the cream, leaving the more inaccessible coal to waste where it lies, the greater the profit, the better the wages, and the sooner the mine is worked out and abandoned. This, and the caprice of the market in its effect upon the overexpanded industry, meant that the miner must live in his knapsack always prepared to move; and it meant cheap homes and a mean domestic equipment, houses or shacks that might be abandoned without serious loss. To this day the great majority of mining villages have the worst characteristics of city slums intensified by the isolation and loneliness of the country, once beautiful, but now stripped of its forests, its streams running black with the sulphurous waste of the mines. Such moderately attractive cities as Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton in the anthracite region are exceptional. The mining towns that sprawl between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, or that follow the Panther Creek Valley, are incredibly hideous things. And what is true of the compact and peculiarly prosperous anthracite region is even more true of the sprawling bituminous fields. The isolation and transitory character of the mining towns made the miners almost completely dependent upon the owners of the mines not only for homes but also for tools and powder; all their mining, as well as their household, supplies. To this day in the non-union fields of West Virginia the operators finance and control, not only the stores, but the schools, the hospitals, the doctors, the churches, and the police. Independent merchants were slow to invest their fortunes in such difficult ground, and since the company store was a convenient means of supplementing the profit from the mines, independent merchants were not encouraged to compete. These conditions tended on the one hand to breed arbitrary management,--autocracy sometimes benevolent, sometimes tyrannical,--and on the other, restlessness, discontent, and the spirit of individual and organized revolt. It set the consciousness of kind in action among the miners especially, and resulted in innumerable local lockouts and strikes. A sequence of such local struggles occurred in the Blossburg district of Pennsylvania in the '60's and '70's. The Civil War created an abnormal demand for coal, and sent up the price as well as the cost of living generally. In 1863 the miners of the district organized and succeeded in raising their wage rate from thirty-five cents to a dollar and ten cents a ton. At the end of the war, the market broke and the coal fields were flooded with returning soldiers. To protect the standard of living to which during the war they had attained, the miners decided upon a defensive offensive and demanded a further increase of fifteen cents a ton. The operators insisted upon the liquidation of labor. A strike followed. The owners ordered the miners to vacate their company houses. They refused. The local courts issued writs of eviction. To avoid a clash with the sheriff and his deputies, the miners made a holiday in the hills, leaving their hearthstones to their wives. By passive resistance and otherwise, the women held their castles. Then the operators appealed to the governor who sent in the famous Bucktail regiment just victoriously back from the war. They put the miners, their families, and their household goods on the street. The strike was broken. Such miners as were not deported or blacklisted were compelled to accept the terms that were offered, including a pledge to abandon and keep out of their union. So the pendulum swung in 1865. In 1873 the swing was reversed. Most of the mine owners of Blossburg were also either bankers or retail merchants through their company stores. They were hard hit by the panic of 1873. Without consultation or warning they announced an arbitrary reduction in wages and deferred payment of wages already due. In November they posted notices that the miners might get such goods as they absolutely needed at the company stores, but that no wages would be paid until the following April. Then the miners again drew together in a union. The operators organized in opposition. A lockout strike followed. Strike breakers were brought in, principally a group of recent Swedish immigrants, and marched to a barracks especially prepared for them. "The strikers gathered on the public highway in front of the barracks," says Andrew Roy, "and insisted on the right to talk with the strikebreakers through one of their interpreters. The managers declined to allow this to be done. But finally a Swedish miner got in among them, and within an hour, the whole of the imported men marched out upon the highway and joined the strikers. The strangers were formed into line, with a Scotch piper at their head, who marched them out of town to the stirring tune of the McGregors' Gathering." Prevailing public opinion in the '70's, like the prevailing judicial interpretation of the law, frowned upon concerted action by the workers as having the nature of a conspiracy much as the concerted action of the commoners in monarchical days was frowned upon as conspiracy. But curious sorts of circumstances have occasionally arisen to modify opinion in one case as in the other. The Boston Tea Party is our historical example in the political realm. In Blossburg, before this strike of 1873, the miners had been compelled to take their pay in company scrip. Except at the company store, this scrip was worth only from seventy to ninety cents on the dollar. "When farmers came into mining towns," writes Andrew Roy out of his own experience, "prospective purchasers of their produce would ask them, 'Will you take scrip?' And if the answer was in the affirmative, a dicker would immediately be entered into as to the amount of discount to be allowed." Independent merchants had gradually ventured into Blossburg. To them the scrip was a competitive injury. When the operators limited the miners to credit at the company stores, the independent merchants protested to the Treasury Department of the United States that the compulsory circulation of company scrip was an illegal infringement of a governmental function. The governor of Pennsylvania took alarm at this appeal over his head and sent the State Secretary of Internal Affairs to investigate. He made a report condemning the operators' practice. The attendant publicity scandalized public opinion and turned it to the miners' side. This time the strike was won. So by ebb and flow of the consciousness of kind, the elements of a governing structure, the balance of forces between the operators and the miners, gradually formed within the industry. But in the main the balance was determined by public opinion; and public opinion, like the law, was by inherited tradition upon the side of the owners, the accepted custodians of property and the national wealth. Episodes like the use of company scrip tended to even the balance. And more important still in their effect upon the traditional hostility of public opinion toward the unions in their infringement upon the vested rights and privileges of the owners were the great mine disasters. Some of our coal crops out at the surface in places where through the ages wind and weather have worn away the overlying clay, stone, and slate. This can be gathered like wood in the forest without danger. The amount of such coal is commercially unimportant. Some lies only a few feet underground so that it is possible to take it by stripping away the thin overlying material and blast and scoop it out with a steam shovel. There are some stripping mines in the anthracite field and a considerable number in the alluvial plains of the West. But the great bulk of our coal is reached by driving drifts or headings into the veins through the sides of hills or by sinking shafts scores, or hundreds, or thousands of feet down through the earth to where the coal lies. From the mouth of the drift or the foot of the shaft, a tunnel or main heading or gangway is driven on and on into the coal usually for miles, with secondary tunnels giving off the main heading into the pitch-black rooms where the miners work. In the cryptlike terminal rooms, the miner with his buddy undercuts the "face" of the coal with his pick or with an undercutting machine, drills shot-holes into the face, sets his charge of powder and tamps it in, and then shoots the coal down. Sometimes, for the sake of speed, he shoots it down without undercutting, and in the anthracite mines where the coal is too hard for undercutting, direct shooting from the face is the general practice. This blasting of a friable and inflammable substance fills the cellared air with minute particles of highly explosive dust. As the mines go deeper and further away from the opening they accumulate gas and underground water. The greatest number of injuries and deaths in the mines, and coal mining is among the most hazardous of all occupations, result from the falling of overhanging rock and coal; but the catastrophies which have shocked public opinion into a sympathetic attitude toward the commoners of the mines do not come from this steady death toll but have resulted from explosions or fires that have trapped and suffocated or burned their scores and hundreds. It seems incredible, in view of the known hazards of underground work, that there should ever have been opposition to the installation of all available safeguards. But it must be remembered that we are still very close to primitive man, that the consciousness of kind and the instinct of brotherhood are still hard pressed by the primal acquisitive instinct. In America in spite of potential plenty the community's first preoccupation was escape from hunger, the winning of individual and national economic security. The prevailing attitude toward death and injury in the mines was, and to a great extent still is, much the same as the prevailing attitude toward death and injury in battle. In ordinary days of peace we do not glorify the soldier. Similarly, it is only at time of disaster that our sympathetic understanding goes out to the shock troops in our war against nature, the men who with pick and powder win coal underground. "So numerous and heartrending," says Roy, "had these accidents become (in the anthracite field) that the miners of Schuylkill county in the year 1858 appealed to the legislature for the passage of a law to provide for official supervision of the mines, and a bill for the purpose was introduced the same year; but it found no countenance, and never came to a vote. In 1866 it was again introduced, and passed the lower house, but it was defeated in the Senate. In 1869 it was reintroduced, passed both houses and received the approval of the governor of the state. It provided for _one_ mine inspector for Schuylkill county, _the other counties being left out_. The law had been in operation only a few months when the Avondale shaft in the adjoining county of Luzerne took fire and suffocated every soul in the mine including two daring miners who went down the mine after the fire, in the hope of rescuing some of the entombed men. The shaft had but one opening.... The whole underground force of the mine, 109 souls, were suffocated to death by the gases emanating from the burning woodwork in the shaft and the breakers on top of it.... No catastrophe ever occurred in this country which created a greater sensation than this mining horror. The public press united in demanding the passage of all laws necessary for the protection of the health and lives of the miners.... When the legislature met in the following January a committee of representative miners was sent to Harrisburg to have a mining bill enacted into law for the proper security of the lives, health, and safety of the anthracite miners of Pennsylvania, which was promptly done." Stirred by the Avondale disaster, the miners of the Mahoning Valley in Ohio had a bill introduced into the Ohio legislature calling for two separate openings in all mines employing more than ten men underground, for the forced circulation to the face of the coal of at least one hundred cubic feet of air per minute for each underground worker, the daily inspection of all gaseous mines by a fireviewer before the miners were allowed to enter, the appointment of four state mine inspectors, and the right of the miners to appoint a check-weighman at their own expense to see that their coal was fairly weighed at the tipple. As soon as the bill was printed, a committee of thirteen operators representing every mining district in the state, supported by legal counsel and the state geologist, appeared in opposition. Their contention was that the miners of the state did not want the law, that the bill was the invention of professional demagogues and labor agitators who sponged a fat living off the ignorance and cupidity of their misguided followers, that there was neither gas nor bad air in Ohio mines, that the lives and fortunes of the miners were safe in the hands of their employers, that the bill was special legislation and unconstitutional and that if enacted by the General Assembly of Ohio it would be set aside by the Supreme Court. The bill was defeated, but a commission of inquiry was appointed. At the next session of the General Assembly the miners' bill was reintroduced and passed by a unanimous vote. But before it was sent to the governor, the operators again sent a committee to defeat it. It was amended and all provision for state inspection of the mines stricken out. In the following June a disaster occurred in a mine in Portage county owned by the member of the legislature who had emasculated the bill. This mine, too, had but one opening which an accidental fire converted into a furnace. There were twenty-one men in the mine. Ten were burned to death and the eleven who managed to escape through the smoke and flame were terribly injured. The miners' bill was reintroduced and again opposed. Judge Hoadly, afterwards governor of Ohio, speaking in opposition very accurately expressed the prevailing state of mind. "We have tried to make men sober and moral by law," he said, "and now we are going to try to surround them with protection against carelessness and danger, and enable them to shut their eyes and walk in darkness, satisfied with the care and protection of the state. I admit that there is a line to which the right of the legislature--the duty of the legislature--may go without infringing on the natural right of the citizen; but what I want to suggest as the safe side, is to leave the people free, and to allow mishap and disaster to have its natural effect as the penalty for and the cure of the evils which result from negligence which causes mishap and disaster." But in spite of this persuasive reasoning, the miners' bill, after years of effort, was finally enacted into law. Thus slowly the consciousness of kind worked through the public to the miners, under the influence of such understanding as mining catastrophies shocked into the public mind. But the main force that made for the improvement of their conditions of work, for the development of standards of living among them and of orderly processes of government within the industry as a whole was the operation of the consciousness of kind within their own group. The processes of civilization like all cosmic processes are slow. The period of recorded history is but a minute in the unnumbered years of man's life upon earth. It was by slow stages that the blind herd instinct which sends wolves hunting in packs and leads birds to migrate in flocks merged into the consciousness of kind and the spirit of service among men. So in the coal industry, the miners organized slowly, first in local groups, then by districts, then on a national scale with the beginnings of international affiliations. They drew together into unions, broke apart, drew together again. As they acquired strength, their interests came into conflict with the interests of the coal owners. There were strikes and lockouts, local joint agreements, then strikes and lockouts again, then other agreements for arbitration and conciliation, then more strikes and lockouts. That process still goes on as in the bitter civil war in West Virginia. But in the main it reached a culmination so far as the coal industry is concerned when in 1902 President Roosevelt intervened in the interests of the consumers, asserted a balance of power between and over the two groups, and established the foundations of orderly government within the industry. The processes by which representative government has grown up within the industry run closely parallel with the processes by which the parliamentary government arose in the European political states, with property owners performing the very important function of technical organization and development which in the early stages of national life the monarch and his executives performed, and the miners playing the rôle of the commoners. It is upon this historical structure that the future of the industry as a public service depends. CHAPTER VI THE STRUGGLE FOR ORGANIZATION In their volume on The Church and Industrial Reconstruction, the Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, an interdenominational group appointed by the joint action of the Federal Council of Churches and the General Wartime Commission of the Churches, declare that "Democracy is the attempt to realize this fundamental right of every personality to self-expression through cooperation with others in a common task. In the political sphere it has already found large recognition.... It applies, or should apply, in the sphere of organized religion, which is the Church. It applies in the sphere of industry. Indeed, it may be of relatively small significance for men to have the right of political self-expression, unless they have similar opportunity for self-expression in their daily work. For the conditions which affect them in industry touch them more closely than the concerns of the state." It is for this reason that the study of the growth of democratic organization and government in industry inevitably stresses the growth of organization and orderly processes among the workers, the commoners of industry. The political revolution of the eighteenth century emancipated the owners of property from the autocratic control of the monarchical state. But, as Sidney and Beatrice Webb have pointed out, "the framers of the United States Constitution, like the various parties in the French Revolution of 1789, saw no resemblance or analogy between the personal power which they drove from the castle, the altar, and the throne, and that which they left unchecked in the farm, the factory, and the mine. Even at the present day, after a century of revolution, the great mass of middle-and upper-class 'Liberals' all over the world see no more inconsistency between democracy and unrestrained capitalist enterprise, than Washington and Jefferson did between democracy and slave-owning. The 'dim, inarticulate' multitude of manual-working wage-earners have, from the outset, felt their way to a different view. To them, the uncontrolled power wielded by the owners of the means of production, able to withhold from the manual worker all chance of subsistence unless he accepted their terms, meant a far more genuine loss of liberty, and a far keener sense of personal subjection, than the official jurisdiction of the magistrate, or the far-off, impalpable rule of the king. The captains of industry, like the kings of yore, are honestly unable to understand why their personal power should be interfered with.... The agitation for freedom of combination and factory legislation has been, in reality, a demand for a 'constitution' in the industrial realm." What the Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook and the Webbs state in slightly different language explains why the history of constitutional government in industry is fundamentally the history of the rise of the workers through their unions and collective bargaining toward a democratic equality of status with their employers. As soon as the mining communities became sufficiently stable to allow the consciousness of kind to operate, the miners began to organize into small local groups for mutual aid, to care for one another in sickness, to bury one another at death, and to improve their wages and working conditions. But it was not until after the industrial revolution got under full headway during and immediately after the Civil War that they became actively conscious of a community of interest over wide areas. For the structure of modern democratic government in industry as in nations and among nations, depends upon railroads, the postal and telegraph service, and other means of communication. A strong impetus and a definite direction was given to the existing tendency toward organization by the steady infiltration of miners from Great Britain where constitutional government in the coal industry had already made considerable progress and where the miners were firmly organized. The miners held their first national convention in St. Louis, Missouri, in January, 1861. The call had been issued by Daniel Weaver, an English trade-unionist, who after the failure of the Chartist movement had settled in the coal fields of Illinois. "The necessity of an association of miners and of those branches of industry immediately connected with mining operations, having for its object the physical, mental, and social elevation of the miner, has long been felt by the thinking portion of the miners generally," said Weaver in his call. "Union is the great fundamental principle by which every object of importance is to be accomplished. Man is a social being and if left to himself in an isolated condition is one of the weakest of creatures, but when associated with his kind he works wonders.... There is an electric sympathy kindled, the attractive forces inherent in human nature are called into action and a stream of generous emotion binds together and animates the whole.... Our unity is essential to the attainment of our rights and the amelioration of our present condition.... Our safety, our remedy, our protection, our dearest interests, and the social well-being of our families, present and future, depend upon our unity, our duty, and our regard for each other." The convention formed the American Miners' Association, elected Weaver secretary and Thomas Lloyd, another English immigrant, president. A considerable number of miners in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland joined the union, which exerted a mild influence upon the legislatures of the several states. But the Association was a national organization in name only. The miners had not yet learned to work together under the direction of their own leaders. The organization was not strong enough to withstand the break in the labor market and the anti-union drive that attended the flood of returning soldiers at the end of the Civil War. Moreover, the American public regarded the trade union as an alien institution, the evil creation of "foreigners" and alien "agitators." It was held to be contrary to the genius of American life that workers should combine to interfere with the sanctity of property and the prerogatives that inhered in that sanctity just as it had been so held in England a century before. Even by the great majority of wage workers as by the public at large the accepted theory, carried over from the feudal tradition of Europe, was that the rights and interests of both would be best protected and cared for "by the Christian men to whom God has given control of the property interests of the country." Under stress of the panic of 1873, and after a series of unsuccessful strikes to maintain wages, the American Miners' Association went to pieces. But local unions, generally known as "Miners' and Laborers' Benevolent Associations," kept up a struggling existence. The strongest of these was the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, a consolidation of all the local unions in the anthracite field. It was largely the creation of John Siney, an Englishbred Irishman, among the keenest minds the labor movement has produced. One of the first acts of this Benevolent Association was to declare a suspension of work in order to relieve the mines of the glut of coal which had resulted from the slack industrial period following the Civil War. This maneuver met with condemnation of the press and from the operators, who did not, nevertheless, regard it with entire disfavor, since it had a considerable effect in maintaining prices as well as wages. As soon as the suspension had accomplished its purpose the miners returned to work, and immediately thereafter John Siney succeeded in persuading the anthracite owners to enter a conference with representatives of the union. The first joint meeting of operators and miners was held in Scranton in 1869, and as a result of this conference the first joint agreement ever made between American miners and operators for the establishment of a wage scale was signed on July 29, 1870, by five members of the Anthracite Board of Trade and five representatives of the Workingmen's Benevolent Association. This unique achievement made Siney a national figure. Local leaders in all parts of the country appealed to him to call another national convention. On his initiative, the Miners' National Association was constituted by the convention held in Youngstown, Ohio, in October, 1873. The convention elected Siney president. National headquarters were opened in Cleveland. Wearied with endless strikes the convention had made arbitration, conciliation, and cooperation the basic principles of their constitution. Fortified with these principles, Siney and an associate visited the offices of all the coal companies in Cleveland. All except one of the operators turned them down. They would have nothing to do with a union. The exception was Marcus A. Hanna. When Siney assured Hanna that no strike would be called without previous resort to arbitration and that the officers of the union would order the men to keep at work even if an award went against them, Hanna accepted their proposition and undertook to bring the other operators into line. In spite of the widespread depression in the coal trade the National Association grew rapidly. Twenty-one thousand members were represented at the second convention held in Cleveland in October, 1874. But notwithstanding Hanna's great influence, many of the operators remained hostile to the union. Toward the close of 1874, the operators of the Tuscarawas Valley in Ohio announced a wage cut from ninety to seventy cents a ton. The miners determined to strike. Siney induced them to resort to arbitration. The umpire admitted a reduction to seventy-one cents. The miners were bitter against the decision which had gone almost completely against them. Only the great influence of Siney restrained them from striking at once. Then one of the operators, the Crawford Coal Company, took advantage of the discontent. This company had refused to join Hanna and his associates in dealing with the union. During the arbitration proceedings, the Crawford Company locked out their men for demanding a check-weighman, and appealed to the operators' association for support. The associated operators refused. The Crawford Company then offered their locked-out men an advance of nine cents a ton above the rate fixed for the union miners by the arbitration award. The acquisitive instinct was stronger than the consciousness of kind among the non-union miners. They accepted and went back to work. This turn of the wheel broke Siney's control over the organization. His followers threatened to desert unless he repudiated the arbitration award. He refused. But his executive board, in a desperate effort to save the union, overruled him and yielded. Strikes and lockouts followed in quick succession. Hanna was as helpless as Siney. Strike breakers were imported, under cover men and troops were brought in. Arbitration, constitutional government, and the union went on the rocks. Similar misfortune attended Siney's pioneer efforts to establish the union and constitutional government in his home district at Clearfield, Pennsylvania. No sooner had the miners joined the National Association than they expected Siney and his fellow executives to achieve quick redress of their grievances and to force an advance in wages. They grew impatient with the slow processes of negotiation. They struck against the advice of Siney. Immediately the operators in the Clearfield district followed the precedent of Tuscarawas. They brought in strike breakers and troops. A brief civil war followed. Some heads were broken. The strike was lost. In spite of his heroic efforts to keep the peace and to establish orderly processes of government, Siney was arrested for conspiracy and thrown into jail. The morale of the Miners' National Association was broken, and like its predecessors it went by the board. Like the tides of the sea, the consciousness of kind ebbed and flowed among the miners. They drew together into local, state, and national organizations, held for brief periods, and then scattered again under the impact of the operators supported by prevailing public opinion. They had not become fully group conscious; neither had the public come to recognize their unions as essential arms of constitutional government within the industry. In the bounteous days of national expansion, in the exuberant '70's and '80's, a vague belief was abroad that America would never develop a permanent working class. Every man was "as good as" another, and the hustling, self-made business man was the American ideal. In accord with this theory was one of the significant actions of the Miners' National Association, an attempt to buy coal lands to be operated by the miners, not as a workers' cooperative association, but as a corporation of business men. During the '70's and the '80's also the Knights of Labor built up a great following among the wage-workers, largely on the philosophy that if they kept free of "class-conscious" trade unions and went in for a mass movement of all workers, they could by some strange alchemy of the American spirit rise to the status of independent business men. The Knights of Labor played much the same rôle among the wage-workers that the various "populist" movements played among the farmers before the development of such group-conscious tendencies as those which in our day have developed the farmers' cooperative societies and the agricultural bloc. The labor movement as we know it today in America began when in 1886 Samuel Gompers became first president of the American Federation of Labor, an office which with the interruption of a single year he has held ever since. Mr. Gompers led the wage-workers to a frank acceptance of the prevailing business and acquisitive ideals as the basis, not of individual escape from the working class, but of their consolidation into trade unions for the businesslike control and sale of their craft skill through collective bargaining. It is significant that the immediate precursor of the American Federation of Labor--the Organized Trades Unions of the United States of America and Canada, over whose councils Mr. Gompers exercised great influence--demanded the legal incorporation of trade unions and a protective tariff for American labor, as well as the prohibition of child labor under fourteen, the eight-hour day, the abolition of conspiracy laws, and the other reforms which constitute the present program of organized labor. By the frank recognition of the basic force of the acquisitive instinct in human nature, the realistic leaders of the new labor movement were able to release and consolidate the consciousness of kind for effective operation within the wage-working group. The influence of this new philosophy made itself felt throughout all the skilled trades and notably among the miners. After the break-up of the Miners' National Association, the miners maintained state organizations in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and in several other states. They steadily took the initiative in seeking conferences and negotiations with the operators of their districts. In spite of the failure of arbitration under the pioneering leadership of Siney, they supported the agitation which resulted in the Trade Tribunal Act of Pennsylvania (1883), and the similar arbitration act of Ohio (1885). But the process of overdevelopment which has always characterized the American coal industry created sharp fluctuations of prosperity and market depression and afforded an unstable basis for the establishment of the machinery of orderly government. Both miners and operators showed a tendency to run wild. Conferences were held, arbitration agreements occasionally entered into, but now one side, now the other, repudiated the awards as the fluctuating market sent prices erratically up and down. The needs of the community have always called for the integration of the industry, but the happy-go-lucky American spirit persistently shied away from public regulation as long as the acquisitive instinct could be satisfied at however great a cost in profligate use and waste. But this very overdevelopment, with its destructive effect upon wages and regularity of employment, continually brought the miners back to a consciousness of the need for national organization. In 1885, John McBride, president of the Ohio Miners' State Union, and later, for a single term, president of the American Federation of Labor, issued a call to the miners of the United States to meet in convention on the ninth of September in Indianapolis. Seven states sent delegates. The National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers was formed and its Executive Board issued a call _to the mine operators of the United States and territories_ inviting them to a joint meeting for the purpose of adjusting market and mining prices in such a way as to avoid strikes and lockouts, and to give to each party an increased profit from the sale of coal. Only one operator, Mr. W. P. Rend of Chicago, paid any attention to this call. He inspired the miners to persevere. They sent out a second invitation. A dozen or so operators met with the executive board in Chicago and agreed upon a joint call for a national joint convention to be held in Pittsburgh in December. "The undersigned committee," the invitation said, "consisting of three mine owners, and three delegates representing the miners' organization, were appointed to make a general public presentation of the objects and purposes of this convention, and to extend an invitation to all those engaged in coal mining in America, to lend their active cooperation toward the establishment of harmony and friendship between capital and labor in this large and important industry.... Apart and in conflict capital and labor become agents of evil, while united they create blessings of plenty and prosperity.... Capital represents the accumulation, or savings, of past labor, while labor is the most sacred part of capital.... It is evident that the general standard of reward for labor has sunk too low.... It is equally true that the widespread depression of business, the overproduction of coal, and the consequent severe competition have caused the capital invested in mines to yield little or no profitable returns. The constant reductions of wages that have lately taken place have afforded no relief to capital, and, indeed, have tended to increase its embarrassments.... This is the first movement of a national character in America, taken with the intention of the establishment of labor conciliation...." In response to this call a small joint meeting was held in Pittsburgh in December. It adjourned for a second conference in Columbus, Ohio, in February, 1886. Here the operators were represented by seventy-seven delegates, principally from Ohio, but also from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, and West Virginia. They adopted a national wage scale, established a national board of arbitration, and provided for the creation of similar state boards to maintain industrial peace and to develop the structure and processes of constitutional government. The agreement held and worked in spite of the opposition of groups of operators, notably in the West Virginia field and the steel district of Pittsburgh, and the individualistic lethargy of many of the miners. The new philosophy of business trade unionism gripped the miners, made the trade union policy triumphant over the vaguely utopian policy of the Knights of Labor, and resulted in the consolidation of the miners' organizations into the United Mine Workers of America in 1890. But the process of overdevelopment continued in the industry. The workings of the joint machinery creaked and faltered under the impact of strikes and lockouts due in the main to market fluctuations, and for a decade the United Mine Workers, in spite of periods of prosperity and rapid growth, was perpetually threatened with the fate of its predecessors. This fate was averted by the economic developments which had converted the compact anthracite field into a virtual monopoly under the combined control of the anthracite railroads and the great banking houses of the East that owned the railroads. While the bituminous industry sprawled and overdeveloped, the anthracite combination gradually restricted the production of anthracite to the calculable demand of the market. This made for stability in the anthracite field, which is reflected in the fact that while even today the average working year in the bituminous fields is approximately two hundred and fifteen days,--an average working day when spread over the year, of less than four hours,--the working year in the anthracite field gradually rose until today it holds steady at something more than two hundred and sixty days a year. This stability enabled the anthracite miners to accumulate an economic surplus above their immediate needs and set the consciousness of kind in vigorous operation among them. By 1900 they had developed the nucleus of a strong organization. Their wages, however, had lagged behind the wages of the miners in the better-organized bituminous fields. On their demand, the national officers of the United Mine Workers called a convention of anthracite representatives in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, "to devise means by which a joint convention of operators and miners can be held" to consider the upward readjustment of the anthracite wage scale and "methods to abolish the pernicious system now in vogue in the anthracite region by which a part of the earnings of the mine workers is taken from them by the infamous system of dockage, and by the practice of compelling mine workers to load more than 2240 pounds for a ton." The operators disregarded the convention's invitation to a joint conference. The men struck. The operators made concessions but refused to deal with the union. The men accepted the concessions and returned to work. During the next two years they fortified their treasury and prepared to strike again. John Mitchell had become president of the United Mine Workers. In February, 1902, he addressed a circular letter to the presidents of the anthracite railroads inviting them to a joint conference. The railroad presidents refused to have anything to do with the union. The anthracite miners then made a public proposal that the issues should be submitted to the arbitration of the Industrial Branch of the National Civic Federation, of which Senator Hanna was chairman, or of Archbishop Ireland, Bishop Potter, and one other person to be selected by these two. But all such tentatives were also rejected by the operators. It was about this time that Mr. George F. Baer, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal Company and of the Reading Railway System, made his interesting declaration that "the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God has given the control of the property interests of the country." Efforts at conference and arbitration having failed, the anthracite miners called a strike. Only a minority of the men had previously joined the union, but ninety men in a hundred obeyed the strike call. The bituminous miners were eager to declare a sympathetic strike, but they had collective agreements in the more important fields and their president, John Mitchell, and their secretary, William B. Wilson, afterwards Secretary of Labor in President Wilson's cabinet, insisted upon honoring these contracts. Trade union discipline had grown stronger since the days of Siney and Mitchell's counsel prevailed. The anthracite strike dragged on throughout the summer. Winter was approaching. President Roosevelt decided to intervene. There was no precedent for such intervention in the coal industry, which though basic to the industrial life of the nation, was held sacred to the traditional rights of private ownership and business initiative. In his address to the miners and operators, President Roosevelt expressed his sense of the unprecedented character of his action. "As long," he said, "as there seemed to be a reasonable hope that these matters could be adjusted between the parties it did not seem proper for me to interfere in any way. I disclaim any right or duty to interfere in any way, upon legal grounds or upon any official relation that I bear to the situation. But the urgency and the terrible nature of the catastrophe impending, where a large portion of our people, in the shape of a winter fuel famine, are concerned, impel me after anxious thought to believe that my duty requires me to use whatever influence I personally can bring to bear to end a situation which has become literally impossible." In spite of his disavowal of legal authority or official responsibility, President Roosevelt's action was publicly regarded as the official action of the nation's chief executive. It gave the public its first intimation of the status of coal as that of a public utility. It stamped upon the coal industry the character of an essential public service which has attached to it ever since. Backed by public opinion, which would have sustained him if he had declared the existence of a public emergency and had taken over the anthracite industry as the government did the entire coal industry during the war, he was able to force the submission of the dispute to a commission of arbitration by whose decision both sides pledged themselves to abide. The strike was settled. A machinery of government was established and put into operation. As the result of President Roosevelt's action, collective bargaining was for the first time given public sanction not only in the anthracite field but throughout the coal industry. For seventeen years, and indeed, with the exception of a brief interval in 1919, for twenty years, peace and constitutional government prevailed not only in the anthracite field, but, with the exception of a few districts, notably certain counties in West Virginia and the coking fields subsidiary to the steel industry in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Alabama, throughout the bituminous fields also. The structure of this government and its basic laws are written into collective contracts, which, together with the policies formulated by the two parties through their national organizations, must be our guides in the quest for an answer to the question as to how, short of the autocratic control of the Fuel Administration, the coal industry is to be developed into an integrated, dependably governed, public service. CHAPTER VII THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY The historians of the growth of democratic government in the coal industry generally date the establishment of collective bargaining as a permanent institution from 1898, when the operators of the Central Competitive Field--Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois--in a joint conference with the representatives of the United Mine Workers of America entered into an agreement which with minor modifications was periodically renewed from that time onward. From that year to 1922 operators and miners alike recognized the agreement in the Central Competitive Field as basic to the agreements in all other fields and the central competitive conference as the necessary prelude to all other conferences. But it was President Roosevelt and the Anthracite Strike Commission which he appointed that lifted human relationships within the industry out of the limbo of frontier strife and periodic guerrilla warfare and stamped them with the quasi-public character of a self-governing constitutional democracy. From the beginning, certain of the coal owners, notably those in sections of West Virginia and Alabama, whose coking coals make them economically subsidiary to the steel industry, have held strongly to the autocratic powers and privileges which the conception of property carried over from the pre-revolutionary monarchical days when the king was generally recognized, _Dei gratia_, as the custodian of the national hoard. But the Roosevelt Commission took the stand which has increasingly won public acceptance, that autocracy in industry is incompatible with democracy in the political state, and that they must both rise or fall together. Forms may change, but it may be taken as axiomatic that if democracy is the law determining the evolution of political civilization,--if it is the condition of the full development of the individual personality and the attainment of the good life and human brotherhood,--it will survive and grow in industry as well as in the political realm. It is from this principle of democratic evolution, and not from the strikes and lock-outs and barterings over wages, hours, and profits incidental to its development, that collective bargaining and industrial democracy derive their fundamental significance. In appointing the Commission "at the request both of the operators and of the miners," President Roosevelt asked them not only to pass upon the questions in controversy, but also "to establish the relations between the employers and the wage workers in the anthracite fields on a just and permanent basis." In arbitrating the immediate questions in dispute,--questions of wages, hours, and working conditions,--the Commission, even after months of hearings at which hundreds of witnesses appeared, found themselves in the usual predicament of arbitrators and the lay public in such circumstances. The facts about the industry,--its capital investment, its financial organization, its earnings and profits, the cost of living in the district, the organization of work in the mines, the character of the work, the skill which it required, and its attendant hazards,--had never been scientifically determined. Then as now these essential facts were held to lie within the sacred province of private business enterprise and not within the legitimate scope of public inquiry and revelation. In instance after instance, they found that statistics of the kind presented were "rather too inexact for a satisfactory basis on which to make precise calculations." On the demands of the miners and the counter-demands of the operators, they were reluctantly constrained to adopt the usual refuge of arbitration tribunals set up in an emergency; they "split the difference." The miners, for example, asked for a twenty per cent increase in their rate of wages; the Commission granted them ten per cent. Other issues were not susceptible of such definite arbitrament, but in general the Commission, striving to hold the scales of justice even, followed the rule of fifty-fifty. In presenting their award, the Commission, keenly aware of the almost impossible burden which the absence of scientific knowledge with respect to this basic industry placed upon them, declared that "all through their investigations and deliberations the conviction had grown upon them that if they could evoke and confirm a more genuine spirit of good will, a more conciliatory disposition in the operators and their employes in their relations toward one another, they would do a better and more lasting work than any which mere rulings, however wise and just, may accomplish." It was with this end in view that they set up a scheme of constitutional democratic government within the industry. Quotation is often dull, but nothing can take the place of direct quotation in the case of a document of epoch-making importance. By way of justifying their action the Commission declared that "in the days when the employer had but a few employes, personal acquaintance and direct contact of the employer and employe resulted in mutual knowledge of the surrounding conditions and the desires of each. The development of the employers into large corporations has rendered such personal contact and acquaintance between the responsible employer and the individual employe no longer possible in the old sense. The tendency toward peace and good-fellowship which flows out of personal acquaintance or direct contact should not, however, be lost through this evolution of great combinations. There seems to be no medium through which to preserve it, so natural and efficient as that of an organization of employes governed by rules which represent the will of a properly constituted majority of its members, and officered by members selected for that purpose, and in whom authority to administer the rules and affairs of the union and its members is vested." The anthracite operators had conditioned their submission to the award of the Commission by refusing to be drawn into a collective agreement with the miners' national organization, the United Mine Workers of America. The Commission got around this technicality by constituting the anthracite district divisions of the union and the organized anthracite operators the two houses of the anthracite parliament. The democratic government which they set up is typical of the scheme of government which now prevails through eighty per cent of the coal industry, and which, while it is subject to the fluctuations characteristic of all democratic institutions, may be taken as permanent in principle. Again, because of its historical importance, the language of the Commission calls for direct quotation. The Commission decreed: "That any difficulty or disagreement arising under this award, either as to interpretation or application, or in any way growing out of the relations of the employers and employed, which can not be settled or adjusted by consultation between the superintendent or manager of the mine or mines and the miner or miners directly interested, or is of a scope too large to be so settled or adjusted, shall be referred to a permanent joint committee, to be called a board of conciliation, to consist of six persons, appointed as hereinafter provided. That is to say, if there shall be a division of the whole region into three districts, in each of which there shall exist an organization representing a majority of the mine workers of such district, one of said board of conciliation shall be appointed by each of said organizations, and three persons shall be appointed by the operators, the operators in each of said districts appointing one person. "The board of conciliation thus constituted shall take up and consider any question referred to it as aforesaid, hearing both parties to the controversy, and such evidence as may be laid before it by either party; and any award made by a majority of such board of conciliation shall be final and binding on all parties. If, however, the said board is unable to decide any question submitted, or point related thereto, that question or point shall be referred to an umpire, to be appointed, at the request of said board, by one of the circuit judges of the third judicial circuit of the United States, whose decision shall be final and binding in the premises. "The membership of said board shall at all times be kept complete, either the operators or the miners' organizations having the right, at any time when a controversy is not pending, to change their representation thereon. "At all hearings before said board the parties may be represented by such person or persons as they may respectively select. "No suspension of work shall take place, by lock-out or strike, pending the adjudication of any matter so taken up for adjustment." From the date of the Commission's award to 1919, when President Wilson created a similar commission to avert a threatened break, the anthracite operators and miners, who were invariably represented by the presidents of the three district organizations of the United Mine Workers of America, lived at peace under this constitution. The machinery of constitutional government thus given public sanction in the anthracite field is in its general outline and provisions typical of the machinery which through joint conference and negotiation the organized miners and operators have worked out throughout the greater part of the bituminous fields. The miners act under the authority of their national convention when it is in session and under the general direction of their national president and executive board, acting under laws devised by the national convention in the interval between the national convention's biennial sessions. Within the limitations set by the national laws of the organization, the four thousand local unions and the twenty-seven district unions exercise a degree of local autonomy analogous to the local autonomy of our cities, towns, counties, and states. In fact the entire national organization is built up from the mine committees at the individual mines, which, conjointly with the representative of the management at the mine, are the courts of original jurisdiction. As in the case of our states in relation to the federal government, these local bodies reserve all authority that is not specifically delegated to the national organization through its constitution and the action of the national convention, the representative national congress of the union. Unlike the President of the United States, the president of the United Mine Workers has no power to appoint and remove his cabinet--the National Executive Board--but through his power over the national organizers and the other agents of the national office, he is in a position to control the political machinery of the organization. By virtue of its form of organization, the miners' union has the virtues as well as the defects of our American political organization, defects which are the price of self-government and the educative processes of self-government. Because of the compact nature of the anthracite field and its domination by a small group of railroads, the operators of this field have acted in concert for many decades. But until 1917, the coal owners of the country had no national organization. In that year, for the purposes of negotiation with the federal government relative to the controlled production and price of bituminous coal, they organized the National Coal Association. Unlike the miners' national organization, this Association is not by its certificate of incorporation explicitly concerned with the wage contract or industrial relations as such. Its primary object is the "encouragement and fostering of the general welfare of the coal-mining industry" as a business enterprise. It is, however, acquiring many of the functions of the miners' union. In recent controversies it has actively assisted the local operators' associations in their dealings with their organized employes. And like the miners' national organization it actively concerns itself with the protection and advancement of the interests of its members in Congress and the state legislatures. But the immense extent of the bituminous coal fields and the highly competitive character of the industry, which has been artificially maintained by the Sherman law, has prevented the compact organization of the bituminous operators and has limited concerted action, especially in matters affecting the labor contract, almost entirely to local, state, and district associations. It is upon the miners' organization that the operators largely rely to equalize competitive conditions. For wages constitute the largest single item of cost in coal production and it is only through the ability of the miners' union to negotiate on a nation-wide basis that this burden can be equalized for the thousands of competing operators. The inability of the operators to achieve a national organization has not only contributed to the overdevelopment of the industry with consequences that became critically manifest during the war, but has also greatly complicated the struggle of the miners to establish collective negotiation and agreement on a national scale. In Illinois, for example, there are three operators' associations which have been organized to deal with labor. The oldest of these is the Illinois Coal Operators' Association formed in 1897. During a wage controversy in 1910 the operators of the fifth and ninth Illinois districts broke away from the parent body and formed an association of their own. In 1914, the operators of the Springfield district organized the independent Central Illinois Coal Operators' Association. Diversity of mining conditions in the various sections of the Illinois coal field and the inability of the operators to equalize competitive costs without the help of the miners were responsible for these secessions. One of the objects enumerated in the constitution of the Central Illinois Coal Operators' Association is "to protect the interest of the members of this association in the making of district, state, and interstate contracts with the United Mine Workers, to the end that such members shall obtain scales, rates, prices, conditions, and _such differentials_ from the basic rates as the relative physical and other working conditions of the mines owned by them entitle them to." An identical clause appears in the constitution of the Coal Operators' Association of the fifth and ninth districts of Illinois. In 1910 the operators in these two districts were paying seven cents a ton more than other members of the parent association. They seceded and entered into a separate agreement with the union in the hope that the union would be able to abolish this unfavorable differential. The union succeeded only in reducing the differential to four cents. While these three associations compete with one another for terms with the miners' union within their own state, they cooperate in their common effort to secure from the miners terms that will place them at a competitive advantage as against operators in other states. This rivalry among the operators makes the diplomatic problem of the union's national officers a very difficult one and when groups of operators, like those in certain counties of West Virginia and Alabama, refuse to deal with the union at all and impose cut-rate wage scales upon their unorganized employes as a basis for cutting the price of coal in the limited market, the industry is thrown into confusion bordering upon anarchy. The operators in the organized fields hold the union responsible for its failure to organize the anti-union fields and so to equalize competitive conditions. Many of them decide that their only remedy is to break with the union and through individual bargaining with their employes when the labor market is overstocked force down wages and working conditions to the level of the anti-union fields. The organized miners are thus compelled to fight for their organization and the maintenance of their dearly won standard of living. Strikes and lockouts temporarily take the place of the orderly processes of joint negotiation, conciliation, and collective agreement as in the spring of 1922. The processes of conflict and cooperation through which government in industry, as in the state, evolves, are as truly cosmic processes as those through which the coal measures themselves were created, with the humanly significant difference that the processes of social evolution are, within certain limits, controllable by the will of man. The policy of democratic peoples and therefore of their governments is to allow the maximum freedom of development to government within industry compatible with the comfort and economic security of the community as a whole. Where the security of the community is threatened, the government tends to intervene as President Roosevelt did in the case of the anthracite controversy. And while the traditional bias of government and the law,--the bias which they inherited from the feudal society which existed when the industrial revolution began,--favors the owners of property to which a special sanctity still adheres, public opinion among peoples devoted to democracy in the political state increasingly tends to assert itself in favor of democracy in industry, and more especially such basic industries as the railroads and coal. It is for this reason that it is logical to assume that the point of view toward collective bargaining, expressed by President Roosevelt's Commission and incorporated into the social creeds of most of the Christian denominations, will ultimately prevail. And since collective bargaining and the orderly processes of government initiated by the joint labor contracts are the historical foundations of democracy in industry, it is also reasonable to infer that collective bargaining will increasingly become the rule in industrial relations. But there are large issues of momentous public concern which do not come within the scope of collective bargaining. Rule 15 in the standard agreement between the operators and the miners in the bituminous fields of central Pennsylvania specifically forbids the miners to concern themselves in any way with the problems of management and the technical equipment and organization of the mines. Because of the great abundance of coal, the industry had been developed by overexpansion and wasteful skimming rather than by the application of scientific methods to the mining of the best coal and its efficient utilization. Not only is one ton of coal left irrecoverably underground for every ton brought to the surface, but less than one-half of the economic value of coal is utilized by our primitive methods of consumption. In a time when it is possible to transform coal into gas and electricity at the mine and transport its fuel and power cheaply by pipe and wire, thirty per cent of our entire coal production is used for transportation by steam engines that harness up only from nine to twelve per cent of the energy in a ton of coal in a way that will actually pull a train--and a third of all the freight tonnage carried by the railroads is coal. Moreover our modern chemical industries, such as the dye industry, are based upon the substances contained in bituminous coal, most of which are wasted in our customary methods of consumption. These facts impose an immense burden of needless cost upon the consumer, and draw into the overexpanded coal industry tens of thousands of miners in excess of efficient requirements. The owners are therefore subject to wide fluctuations in the price of their product, the miners are the victims of intermittent and irregular employment with consequent uncertainty of earnings, and the public ultimately foots the bill, which, as has already been pointed out, Mr. F. G. Tryon of the U. S. Geological Survey calculates at one million dollars for each working day paid in unofficial and needless taxation, and the miners, by the terms of the collective agreement are explicitly debarred from all participation in the solution of these problems of management. As a remedy, bituminous operators have proposed that they shall be relieved of the restrictions of the Sherman law, so that they may combine to limit production and regulate distribution and prices as the anthracite owners have succeeded in doing. The miners, by resolution of their national convention, have proposed a policy of public ownership and democratic administration, the entrusting of the technical regulation and development of the mines to engineers appointed by the government and the administration of labor relations by a democratic tribunal composed of representatives of the technical management, the public, and the miners. The effectiveness of either policy would be contingent upon the application to the mines and their product of the scientific knowledge which has been rapidly accumulating during the last decade and very little of which is now applied to the industry. The character of the political reconstruction of the industry, which public necessity must sooner or later compel, will be largely determined by the outcome of the impending technical revolution in the production and utilization of coal. CHAPTER VIII RIVALS OF COAL Until recently it has been taken for granted that there was plenty of coal. The industrial revolution rose and triumphed on the theory of an inexhaustible supply. Mines were opened casually here and there and such coal as was easy to get was taken from the reserves which were supposed to be bottomless. And men were poured into the mines, thousands in excess of the need. They were as plentiful as the coal. Because of these two things--the vast amount of coal and the cheap and abundant man power--the coal industry came through the industrial revolution which it created, without being itself revolutionized. Now the coal supply is large, but it is not by any means unlimited. No one can increase it. There is no way of manufacturing coal. The limitations of the supply were fixed by the geographical revolution. Twenty million years ago all the coal we have or shall have was packed away in the ribs of the earth in seams varying from sixty feet to the thickness of a blade of grass. It is estimated that we still have in the world more than seven thousand billion tons distributed as follows: North America 5,073,431,000,000 Asia 1,279,586,000,000 Europe 784,190,000,000 Australasia 170,410,000,000 Africa 57,839,000,000 South America 32,097,000,000 ----------------- Total 7,397,553,000,000 This seems like a vast amount which even wasteful production could hardly exhaust in thousands of years. But much of the supply is of such low grade as to be inefficient as a steam producer, much of it occurs at such deep levels or so remote from the centers of population as to be commercially unprofitable to mine. Mr. Floyd W. Parsons, formerly editor of the _Coal Age_, has warned us that "each year now witnesses the exhaustion of a number of high-grade coal areas. Far more mines producing better grades of coal are being worked out than there are new mines commencing to produce.... Operating companies are now going over their acreage, taking out pillars and working low-grade thin seams." And Mr. D. B. Rushmore, chief engineer in the power and mining department of the General Electric Company, calculates that if our coal consumption were to continue to increase at the apparently normal rate of seven per cent each year, the life of our known reserves would be as follows: Eastern District, which includes the most accessible and best quality of our fuel 59 years Eastern, Central, and Southern Districts 65 years Entire U. S. and Alaska, two-thirds of this being low-grade coals and lignites 84 years These figures are based upon the appraisals of the U. S. Geological Survey. They include coal in veins as shallow as fourteen inches, all coal whose ash content does not exceed thirty per cent, and all known deposits within six thousand feet of the surface. They are based on the optimistic assumption that two-thirds of the coal in the mines will be brought to the surface, a considerably higher recovery than has hitherto been achieved. Mr. Rushmore concludes that the evidence points unmistakably to an approaching scarcity of high-grade coal and increasingly higher prices. One of the greatest single causes of waste and increased prices is our antiquated system of distributing the energy contained in coal. It is estimated that every hundred tons of coal shipped involves the burning of ten tons in railroad locomotives. There is no longer any technical justification for transporting power in the enormously bulky form of coal when it could be much more efficiently distributed by pipe and wire in the form of gas and electricity. Even were it not enormously inefficient, there are definite physical limits beyond which the steam haulage of coal in bulk cannot be increased--certain bottle necks like that through which the Lehigh River flows, narrow edges like that along the Susquehanna, where no more slow puffing trains can go toiling up and down the slippery grades, because there is no more room for them on the tracks. Already the load upon the antiquated steam railroads is too heavy for them to bear, so that the system of transportation breaks down under every peak load and in every crisis such as that induced by the war. Moreover our methods of consumption are incredibly wasteful. Mr. George Otis Smith, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, has prepared a chart showing that of every two thousand pounds of coal, six hundred pounds are lost in mining, one hundred and twenty-six pounds are consumed at the mine and en route to the boiler room, four hundred and forty-six pounds are lost in gases going up the stack, fifty-one pounds are lost by radiation and fifty-one in the ash pit, six hundred and fifty pounds are lost in converting heat energy into mechanical energy, and only seventy-six pounds out of the two thousand are actually converted into productive mechanical energy. After two hundred years of mechanical invention, we are still stupidly content to dissipate ninety-six per cent of the labor-saving value of coal. But even if the coal supply were unlimited, if every year a new crop grew to take the place of the one consumed, even if it were physically possible for the railroads to carry an ever-increasing load, the miners are not willing to get it out on the same old basis of low wages, high hazards, and demoralizing irregularity of employment. Man power has changed its own status. In 1919 the wages of common labor at the mines were fixed at seven and a half dollars a day. As wages go, this would have meant a reasonably fair standard of living if work in the mines had been steady. But during the last thirty years the mines have been idle an average of ninety-three days in every three hundred and eight working days in the year, and during 1921 the miner was fortunate who got as much as two days of work in the week, that is, fifteen dollars a week and seven hundred and eighty dollars a year. The hazards of mining have increased. The U. S. Bureau of Mines tells us that while in 1890 the death rate of coal miners was 2.15 for every thousand men employed, in 1914 the rate had increased to 3.19. In 1890 between three and four miners were killed for every million tons mined; in 1914 between four and five miners were killed for every million tons. Labor is no longer content to be sacrificed in order to put an increasing stream of cheap coal into the fire boxes of engines that waste nine-tenths and more of their labor and so deprive them of the possibility of the good life according to American standards. They are taking stock and evaluating themselves. Some of their demands, like the six-hour day, five days a week, are socially unwise, but they represent a just protest against the demoralizing intermittency of employment. The demand is simply an effort to spread the actual hours of work evenly throughout the year. Already the conditions imposed by the unions in the interest of a reasonable standard of living act as a strong differential against the mining of difficult seams and poor grades of coal. They are rapidly getting into a position where they can dictate the conditions under which they will hazard their lives underground. And these are not conditions which the coal industry with its competitive overdevelopment, its load of parasite railroads, sales companies, company-owned houses and stores, its inefficient operating methods, and particularly its antiquated energy-producing equipment on which it must pay heavy interest, is prepared to meet. Because the supply of coal cannot much longer meet the cumulatively wasteful demands upon it; because the railroad system is breaking down under the increased bulk of coal to be transported; because the miners are increasingly insisting that the reward of their hazardous labor must give them a fair chance of the good life according to American standards of living; and because the community which must be served cannot indefinitely pay the price of inefficiency and waste, the present order in the coal industry is drawing to a close. The technicians have seen this impending change for a long time. Through their help the industrial revolution might have reorganized the coal industry decades ago under the pressure of an increasing demand for power, if it had not been held off by new discoveries of petroleum and natural gas. Petroleum, which had been used in a small way in many countries for centuries, first became an international commodity when Roumania began to ship it in 1857. It took on great industrial importance when the first American well, the famous Drake well in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, was sunk in 1859. But in 1860 the world's total recorded production was less than five hundred and ten thousand barrels, of which five hundred thousand barrels are credited to the United States. By 1917 the world output had risen to nearly four hundred and fifty million barrels, of which the United States furnished nearly four hundred million. The coal and petroleum industries are closely interrelated. Coal and petroleum are largely interchangeable as sources of energy. Both can be used for fuel under boilers in their crude state, although crude oil is the more efficient; both provide an illuminating oil for use in lamps, although kerosene is so much better than coal oil as to have driven it out of the market; both furnish a satisfactory fuel for the internal-combustion engine, although benzol, a coal derivative, has not yet been recovered in sufficient quantities to make it a competitor of gasoline; both provide a fuel gas, although that derived from petroleum has the greater heat value. Ton for ton, petroleum has every advantage over coal, and there is every reason why it should drive coal out of its preeminent position in industry, except one--the limitations of the supply. For petroleum is far cheaper to produce, not only in terms of money, but in terms of human effort and life. Compare with the labor and hazard of opening and working a coal mine Pogue and Gilbert's description of the opening of an oil well. "Drilling an oil well is commonly done by means of a heavy string of tools, suspended at the end of a cable and given a churning motion by a walking beam rocked by a steam engine.... The steel tools, falling under their own weight, literally punch their way to the depth desired." The usual custom is for four men working two twelve-hour shifts to sink a well. Their work is to keep the engine that operates the drill running, to watch the operation, and to stoke the engine. The only danger is when the time has come to "shoot" the well. This is done only if the oil does not flow naturally when the oil-bearing strata are reached. The "shooting" consists in dropping a "go devil" upon canisters of nitroglycerine to blow out a cavity at the bottom in which oil may collect. If the charge explodes before it reaches the bottom of the well, it may blow back and wreck the derrick, and the timbers and "bull-wheel" may fall upon the men. This danger, which can be obviated by the simple process of the men going away until after the charge has exploded, is practically the only one connected with drilling for petroleum, except for the incidental danger which all handling of high explosives necessarily involves. A well costs only about one-tenth as much per foot of descent as a mine shaft; and it can be put down in much quicker time. When it is once in contact with the oil, operating expenses are trifling, for in many cases the oil reaches the surface under natural gas pressure, and in others it has merely to be pumped. There are not the expenses for breaking rock, timbering, or haulage, which are common in coal mining. So that in addition to being a better fuel than coal to burn under a steam boiler, petroleum mining is as healthful and safe an occupation as can be well found in contrast with the extremely dangerous work of the coal miner, and it can be far more quickly and more cheaply got out of the ground. It has other advantages. Coal, bituminous coal especially, is so bulky and so liable to spontaneous combustion that it is difficult to store. Petroleum, on the contrary, can be easily and satisfactorily stored in iron tanks which, standing about like great cheese boxes, are characteristic of the oil-producing country. Added to the advantage of easy storage is the much greater one of easy transportation. Unlike coal, the crude petroleum supply of the country makes no demand upon the railroads. Only under exceptional circumstances and for short distances is it hauled about in tank cars. It has its own independent system of pipe lines, after the manner of a great water supply. These systems connect the oil wells with the refineries, the markets, and the seaports. The pipe lines are ample to distribute the current production of oil. It is these pipe lines that have not only made the petroleum industry absolutely independent of the railroads, but through the low cost of their operation have lowered the cost of petroleum products. They have also made it possible to establish oil refineries near the points of consumption and have united widely separated fields. For all these reasons--because it is a more efficient fuel under steam boilers; because it can be produced more cheaply; because the work of mining it is easy and the danger is slight; and because having an independent transportation system of its own it makes no demand on the already overburdened railroads--petroleum might have superseded coal as the power that rules industry if there had been enough of it. Even as it is, petroleum has been able to meet a large part of the demand for fuel and so stand between the coal industry and the reorganization hanging over it. But we have been, if possible, more prodigal in our exploitation of our petroleum resources than of coal. There was an immediate market for all the petroleum that could be produced. The well-owner's chief anxiety was lest his neighbor, whose well tapped the same underground reservoir, should get the oil out before he did. So the exploiters of petroleum rushed on their quarry with an avidity never equalled by the exploiters of coal. While approximately one-half of the coal has been left in the ground through the eagerness of the owners to beat each other to market, from seventy to ninety per cent of the petroleum in the various fields has been lost from the same cause. And industry has seemed to take it for granted that because petroleum was being produced so rapidly, there was an unlimited supply. In 1916, many plants shifted from coal to fuel oil, because of the inability of the railroads to deliver coal. We have developed an oil-burning navy and are rapidly developing an oil-burning merchant marine. Ships and factory furnaces are competing with the internal-combustion engines of millions of automobiles and the hungry lamps of the countryside for the diminishing reserves of petroleum. Already the supply of crude petroleum is hard pressed by the demand for fuel oil. Already approximately one-half of the original petroleum supply of the United States is gone. In 1918, 460,721,000 barrels were taken, while it was estimated that 6,730,000,000 barrels remained in the ground, and the production during the two subsequent years was approximately 400,000,000 barrels annually. The petroleum reserve, converting barrels into tons, amounts to only 2/1000 of our reserves of coal. If we stopped mining coal tomorrow and let American petroleum take its place, all our petroleum resources would be exhausted in about fifteen months. And even if the supply of petroleum were far less limited than the experts estimate it to be, even if there were enough of it to last for many decades to come, the fact that it is practically the one lubricant of the industrial world makes it a social crime to burn it as a substitute for coal. Without it, every railroad wheel would run hot and stop; the great turbines in our ships and modern power plants move on bearings that are smothered in petroleum oil. And for petroleum as a lubricant there is no commercially available substitute. Closely associated with petroleum and originally derived from it, is natural gas. There is no way of telling how great the supply of this has been in the past, how much there is in reserve, or what the present outflow is, because the waste of natural gas has been and is notorious. We do know, however, that the per capita consumption in 1915, according to the U. S. Geological Survey, was approximately four times the consumption of artificial gas, and seven times that of the by-product coke-oven gas, and that its average price to the consumer was sixteen cents a thousand cubic feet as against ninety-one cents for artificial gas and ten cents for coke-oven gas. About one-third of the natural gas is used for domestic purposes, about two-thirds is used for manufacture. It is conservatively estimated that 100,000,000 gallons of gasoline can be recovered from it annually and it is the primary source of the lamp black from which all the printers' ink in present use is made. The supply of natural gas in reserve is not calculable, but since most of the wells show a diminished flow, it is believed to be on the way to exhaustion. Although the supplies of oil and gas have supplemented coal for half a century and protected the coal industry from the same sort of economic pressure which has forced reorganization upon most other enterprises, the time is at hand when they can no longer do so. The imaginative appeal of hydroelectric power has led many people to hope that water-power electricity would come to the aid of coal and possibly replace it. But Mr. Charles P. Steinmetz, of the General Electric Company, tells us that the total available water power of the United States has been variously estimated at from fifty to one hundred million horse-power, that is, from one-sixth to one-third of the horse-power equivalent of our present annual coal production. He has gone further and calculated the maximum possible value of all water power beyond which the ultimate skill of invention could never possibly go. If every raindrop which falls anywhere in the United States, allowing only for the amount of water needed by agriculture and the loss due to seepage and evaporation, were collected and all the power which it could develop in its journey to the sea were efficiently utilized, the resultant energy would amount to just about the same as the total which we get out of our present coal consumption for all purposes. Water power--hydroelectric energy--can never replace coal. The waste of both petroleum and gas has been largely due to the unrestrained acquisitive instinct seeking quick wealth in response to the cry of the steam engine for more and more fuel. They were drafted into service because they could do the work of coal and do it more efficiently. But their diminishing supply makes it impossible for them longer to stave off the impending technical revolution in the coal industry. The miners are growing restive under the evils of intermittent employment, uncertain income, and demoralizing conditions of living. The public begins to rebel against irregularity of supply and ruinously high prices. The antiquated transportation system creaks and staggers under a load which the advance of technical science makes it unnecessary for it longer to carry. All these, taken together with the still-increasing demand for power to drive on production and pile up a surplus on which to base an advancing civilization, are forcing a new technical revolution upon the coal industry. CHAPTER IX THE TECHNICAL REVOLUTION The economic surplus which the industrial revolution of the latter eighteenth century created was the product of a crude, extensive exploitation of our natural resources. With the aid of the steam engine men skimmed the cream of the mines, the forests, and the new soil of the American continent. The wasteful use of our coal, paralleling as it did our increasing need for power, was hampering the industries of the country even before the war. After the breaking out of the conflict the overwhelming pressure for increased production could not be met. In a panic we pushed our old methods of coal exploitation further than ever before, drew on our oil and gas supplies to the utmost, and then in final desperation integrated the administrative side of the coal industry through the Fuel Administration. The relief this brought was immediate, although the chief work of the Fuel Administration was merely to systematize and coordinate the distribution of coal so that those who must have it would get it. For during wartime the factories must run, and the autocratic integration which the Fuel Administration accomplished created a seeming abundance by keeping the factory wheels of at least the essential industries turning. But the relief was only apparent--not actual. When the tumult of the war was over and we were back in still water, Secretary Lane announced that the enormous development of war industries had created an almost insatiable demand for power--a demand that was overreaching the available supply with such rapidity that had hostilities continued, it is certain that by 1920 we should have been facing an extreme power shortage. Integrated administration had done all it could but the problem of power to advance civilization--to build up a surplus through production--to give all men the chance of the good life, was still unsolved. Just as the integration by the Fuel Administration had deferred the acute power shortage during the war, so the business depression that followed the signing of the armistice is still holding it in check. And yet if civilization is to go on, our multitudinous factory wheels must turn again more swiftly and in increasing number, our looms must weave more and more cloth, and new cars and new ships must carry new millions of people to and fro. As yet we know no other material means through which to build up the good life than these whirling wheels. The technical experts have agreed that the problem must be solved through the integration of all our sources of fuel and power which they, like the Fuel Administration during the war, regard as a common reservoir like the water supply of a modern community, and through the reduction of both coal and water power to terms of their common denominator, electricity. As the result of Secretary Lane's prevision of the impending power shortage, Congress in 1921 made an appropriation for a preliminary survey by the technical experts of the power resources along the Atlantic seaboard from Washington to Boston and for one hundred and fifty miles inland. This territory has been called the "finishing shop" of America. It is of irregular coast line, giving good harbors for the shipping to carry its products overseas; its swift streams turned the first factory wheels in America; its mountain ranges are full of metals and easily accessible coal; and to this region the industrially trained peoples of Europe most naturally come. Obviously its factory wheels must turn. As a result of the survey of this region, engineers have worked out what is called the Superpower Plan. According to this, a giant network of wire will be woven over the territory between the Alleghenies and the Atlantic seaboard and charged with the very essence of power. Great steel towers, like those that now carry the currents generated at Niagara Falls, the Keokuk Dam on the Mississippi, and the Roosevelt Dam at the head of Salt River in the Arizona Desert, will stride through the valleys and across the mountains along a two-hundred-foot right of way. Instead of steel rails and puffing engines to convey industrial power, there will be only towers and copper wires. Instead of millions of tons of raw coal moving slowly along through bottle necks in the mountains and through congested freight yards, there will be the silent rush of uncounted electrons hurrying to the centers of production to do the work of man. Instead of spreading dirt and noise and ugliness, these new carriers of cosmic energy will be high harps for the wind. According to this plan of the Superpower Commission the main line of this new power system begins at Washington and follows the coast through the great centers of population--Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, New Haven, Providence, Boston, and on up to Newburyport. Stretching away from this main line two principal inland lines are projected, one swinging off at Baltimore out to Harrisburg and up the anthracite valley to Scranton; another leaving the main line just before it reaches New York and stretching up the Hudson Valley to Poughkeepsie, Port Jervis, and Utica, tapping the hydroelectric generating stations in the Adirondacks, and connecting again through Pittsfield, Northampton, and Worcester with the main line in Boston. North and south cross lines mesh these secondary lines with the main line along the coast--one through Hartford and Waterbury to New Haven, and another from Worcester to Providence, with a short branch line to New Bedford. Back and forth across this network of high-tension wires will run the power to turn the factory wheels. About nine-tenths of this power will be the developed energy of coal. The Superpower Commission's plan calls for the establishment of great steam-generating plants near the mines where the coal will be used to fire steam engines which will turn dynamos and so convert the energy of coal into electricity and feed it to that great harp in the wind. Steam-generating plants to supply more distant consumers are projected at tidewater--that is at places to which coal can be delivered by coastwise steamers. Incidentally these tidewater plants involve a considerable amount of coal haulage from the mines to the seaports, and from the ports nearest the mines to the other ports along the coast; from the lower West Virginia fields, across the mountains, to the southern end of Chesapeake Bay and thence by boat northward along the coast to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. En route this coal will be joined by other coal from the upper West Virginia and the lower Pennsylvania bituminous fields and also by coal from the middle Pennsylvania field which will have to be freighted through New Jersey to the Hudson ports, then again up Long Island Sound by steamdrawn barges. While great economies would be effected by the transformation of coal into electric energy at the superpower stations, both at the mines and at the tidewater ports, the plan of the Superpower Commission still involves the necessity of hauling millions of tons of raw coal from the mines to seaboard. This limitation the Commission held to be necessary, not only for the purpose of utilizing the comparatively small plants which existing public utility companies have already built, but because at the time their report was made the electrical engineers had not yet perfected means of transporting electricity for long distances without great leakage on the way. Since the Commission's survey was published, however, an invention has been announced which greatly increases the distance over which the high-voltage currents can be efficiently sent, so that it is now feasible to transmute a much larger proportion of coal into electricity at the mine. The plan for practically all the tidewater generating plants can be given up, together with the long, slow, costly process of carrying coal to them, and that ninety per cent of the electricity for the superpower system which is derived from coal can be generated directly at the mine. The other ten per cent according to the Commission's plan will be hydroelectric power. Generating stations are to be established at the rapids of the Potomac just above Washington; along the lower reaches of the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania and Maryland; along the upper courses of the Delaware and the Hudson; in the Adirondacks; and at intervals along the whole length of the Connecticut River. But the main dependence of the projected superpower system is still the bituminous coal supply which it is planned to keep at its old job of raising steam to drive the turbine engines which will in turn drive the electric dynamos. Besides the Commission's superpower plan for the Atlantic seaboard, other power systems have been sketched out, one centering around Helena in southern Illinois and designed to serve most of the Mississippi Valley, one near the northwest coast, another in California. The integration of water and coal is a long step toward the solution of the power problem, in that it not only brings a new force to supplement the coal supply but also saves the coal now used by steam locomotives to haul raw fuel to its millions of consumers. Moreover, it contemplates the electrification of all the railroads within the zone whose traffic is heavy enough to warrant it, and as it is estimated that two pounds of coal applied to an electric locomotive will do as much work as seven and one-half to eight and one-half pounds when applied to a steam locomotive, the amount of coal now used for transportation will be still further reduced. Through such beginnings as these projected superpower systems must come the comprehensive integration of the industry. But the Federal Commission's superpower plan as published is only a beginning. It is not enough merely to save the energy of coal, to relieve the congestion on the freight railroads, and to provide a common-carrier system for high-voltage electricity. There is needed also the more intensive utilization of the fuel supply. The plan of the Superpower Commission regards coal--bituminous coal especially--as nothing more than fuel. The industrial revolution was built upon the power of coal to fire the boilers in steam engines. But the use of coal for the generation of steam only is almost the least efficient way in which it can be utilized. From the point of view of national economy the better utilization of what are known as the by-product values of bituminous coal is quite as important as the establishment of an integrated power system. For coal is much more than potential power. Bituminous coal is the source of many of our most valuable mineral products and yet today, of the more than 500,000,000 tons annually produced, almost all is used exclusively for the production of power and all of its ingredients except the heat-producing elements are wasted. About one-twelfth of the bituminous coal--that which is now used for the production of coke in ovens that recover its by-product--must be excepted from this statement. Moreover, the 90,000,000 tons of anthracite mined every year are economically used because anthracite contains practically nothing but carbon and ash and its direct burning is the most efficient way in which it can be used if its energy content is thoroughly conserved. Omitting, then, the whole of the anthracite supply, and that bituminous which is already properly utilized, we still have more than 400,000,000 tons wastefully used every year--so wastefully that not only are all its commodity values destroyed, but its primary purpose of creating heat and industrial power is imperfectly served. In the effective integration of fuel and power it will become necessary to separate the energy-producing elements in bituminous coal--and also of the sub-bituminous coal, of lignite and peat, of which we have reserves amounting to the billions of tons--from those which have only a commodity value. In their report made for the Smithsonian Institution, Gilbert and Pogue point out that "there are in one ton of good bituminous coal, fifteen hundred pounds of smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite, ten thousand cubic feet of gas, twenty-two pounds of ammonium sulphate, two and one-half gallons of benzol, and nine gallons of tar" and that lignite gives almost as much of these commodities. Apart from the fuel values represented by the "smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite" the gas and benzol, the ammonium sulphate, and tar have unique values as fertilizers, and the source of those mineral elements from which our dyes and a large part of our modern medicines are made. The process used to extract these commodity values is similar to that which nature used in making anthracite, except that the volatile matter which the geological revolution drove off into the air is collected and utilized. The gas created by the process can be delivered by pipe lines over practically any distance to the centers of consumption, or, with the help of the internal-combustion engine, converted into electrical energy at the mine. Gas as a fuel has the great advantage that it eliminates both storage and haulage, and produces the same amount of heat from about one-half the amount of coal, and since it can be produced as needed all the year round it will go far to eliminate the seasonal character of coal mining. Moreover, wherever heat rather than light or power is desired, gas, in the present state of technical development, is even more economical than electricity. Under the by-product system the present annual coal output can be made to more than double its service in driving machinery and in addition it can be made to contribute heavily to our supply of fertilizers, motor fuel, and chemical products. It is estimated that the aggregate loss resulting from the present wasteful utilization of coal is over ten dollars a year for each inhabitant of the United States. The by-products of coal can play an important part in the fuel industry. Where it is thoroughly integrated they can help in financing the development of hydroelectricity to supplement the electricity produced from coal. For while the running expenses of a hydroelectric plant are little more than the interest on the capital invested, the amount of that capital is large. Also the establishment of gas plants at the mines is a costly thing. The temptation is to revamp and repair and reorganize the present outworn and wasteful system rather than make large new investments and scrap the old equipment. But in the commercial value of the by-products from bituminous coal lies the possibility of paying for the new power to turn our factory wheels by the sale of dyes and fertilizer and medicines and tar and explosives and perfumes and a hundred other things. So it is to the chemical laboratories that we look for the new values which may make a superpower system financially possible just as it is to the electrical workshop that we look for the inventions which will integrate it into one thing. But even the recovery and sale of the by-products of coal are not all that is involved in the new way of supplying the world with power. While gas can yield the full fuel value of coal in a more efficient form than solid fuel, as well as all the commodity values, if it is converted into power through the steam engine, at least one-half of its energy value is lost. To conserve its full value, gas must be burned in the internal-combustion engine, the most familiar type of which is the one we know under the hood of the automobile and the most efficient type is the Diesel engine which has made the by-product system industrially practical. The internal-combustion engine is a relatively simple device for transforming the energy in fuel into power directly instead of indirectly as the steam engine does, of turning wheels at first hand, of cutting out steam as a middleman. It greatly enlarges the range of fuel utilization because it can burn not only fuel gas and the lighter oils--gasoline, benzol, and their close kin--but also fuel alcohol, the supply of which though hitherto only slightly developed will last as long as the sun and rain make vegetation grow in the soil. Our future success in winning and holding an economic surplus upon which the opportunity for the good life and a world civilization depends, rests almost as largely upon the internal-combustion engine as the industrial revolution depended upon the steam engine of Newcomen and Watt. When the internal-combustion engine has been adequately developed, and that time is near at hand, it will be economically possible to establish the great superpower stations at the mines, to integrate the electricity flowing from their gas-driven dynamos with the flow from the hydroelectric stations on the great rivers and mountain streams, and to use the surplus gas and smokeless coal to supply the domestic consumer during the period of transition from our present wasteful fuel and power system to the new system which will give us heat and power with the turn of a button on an electric switch. In our solution of the fuel problem there must be an extension of such work as that of the Fuel Administration which integrated the administrative side of the industry as by a man in a high tower with all the resources and needs of the country spread beneath him. He must see all the sources of power as in a common reservoir--all the coal and oil and gas and water power--all the fuel alcohol and those subtle forces within the material atoms themselves which scientists dream of forcing to do the work of man. He must sort and deliver power to fill the need, this in the form of oil or gas sent through its own pipe line; this still in the bulky form of coal or coke by rail or water to those few industries which can take no substitute; and more and more of it transmuted into electricity and poured along the singing wires, or later perhaps through the pathways of the air itself, to turn the wheels of industry. And in addition to the actual pooling of the power resources of the country, there must come their intensive and economical use--economical by more standards than that of money alone--so that the miner who blasts the coal from the face, the man who sinks the oil well or runs the internal-combustion engine or strings the electric wires, will get in return for the thousands of tons of coal he has mined or the kilowatt hours he has generated from his dynamo, the material basis of the good life. This integrated industry of which the mining of coal, the projected superpower systems, the pumping of oil, the development of water power, and the organization and training of those who produce or consume power are essential parts, is the inevitable result of the development that has gone before. Just as the industrial revolution had its beginnings in the coordination of the steam engine, the coal mines, and the factory machinery, and its incentive in the drive of the acquisitive instinct to make existence possible; so this new industrial advance, the integration of the power that drives industry, is the logical result of the development of long-distance electric transmission, the intense utilization of the fuel supply, and the invention of the internal-combustion engine, and it may result not only in making existence possible but in making life good. CHAPTER X THE STRAIT GATE Since the days when the cosmic energy of coal was first harnessed to the looms of England, mechanical contrivances of almost miraculous ingenuity have followed one another in such rapid succession that men have come to place undue reliance upon machinery for the solution of the difficult human problems that impede progress toward the good life and a worthy civilization. Just as the earlier generations failed in the spiritual preparedness necessary to the conversion of the technical triumphs of Newcomen and Watt, Fulton and Stephenson, and a host of others to the higher ends of civilization, so our generation shows a similar disposition to rely upon the wonder workers of mechanical science to save us from the disastrous consequences of muddling along in the field of human relations whether in industry, in the nation, or among the nations. But the good life is not to be won by mechanical invention alone. One of the outstanding lessons of the World War was that great inventions in the realm of the physical and chemical sciences may be destructive of the very civilization which it is their higher mission to serve. Unless we have the spiritual capacity to make the technique of science obedient to the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, superpower systems, high-voltage transmission, the internal-combustion engine, may again intensify the exploitation of man by man, the clash of groups for power, the brutality of international wars for possession. We men and women of the twentieth century have developed a complacent habit of priding ourselves upon our scientific open-mindedness, our respect for facts, our eagerness to accept the revelations of authentic scientific investigation and experiment. As we mount into the clouds on the wings of the aeroplane or catch the voice of the radio operator out of ethereal space, we have a tremendous sense of intellectual emancipation, a thrill of escape from ancient bigotries and superstitions. There is some warrant for this self-congratulatory attitude in so far as it relates to the physical sciences. We have reason to be proud that we have banished the primitive fears that led an earlier age to persecute men like Galileo for telling the truth with respect to the place of the earth in the stellar universe. We are sufficiently emancipated to know that the inventors of the dynamo, the turbine engine, the spectroscope, wireless telegraphy, and high-voltage electrical transmission are not guilty of heresy. When Steinmetz forges a thunderbolt and sends it crashing across his laboratory, we do not burn him for witchcraft. The inquirers into the nature of the atom, the structure of the cerebral ganglia, or the chemical composition of the nebulae in the Milky Way are free from medieval taboos. But unfortunately we have not developed an equally enlightened attitude toward the inquirers into the nature of human relations in politics or industry, or toward those who would apply the experimental method to the development and scientific reconstruction of industrial or political government. Terms like _trusts_, _the money power_, _trade unions_, _industrial autocracy_, _collective bargaining_, _socialism_, _bolshevism_, _private monopoly_, _public ownership_, stir all our ancient fears, resentments, and hates. Men may be unorthodox in the physical sciences; we are growing tolerant of unorthodoxy in religious opinion. But unorthodoxy in the realm of politics is still frowned upon. We still imprison men for their political and economic opinions when they challenge the finality of accepted institutions and especially when they advocate the fundamental reconstruction of accepted forms of political and economic government. Yet it is quite as true in the realm of human relations, as in that of the physical sciences, that the truth and the truth only can make us free. Human brotherhood can be achieved only through human understanding. It is a commonplace to say that the vigorous growth of democracy depends upon education. But much repetition has dulled the vital implications of the assertion. We tend to forget that a democracy that permits essential knowledge to be withheld from general circulation digs its own grave; that while men talk of emancipation and freedom, ignorance may forge chains for their enslavement. When any group within the community is permitted to treat facts essential to the development of right human relations as "trade secrets," education itself becomes stereotyped and sterile. Text-books and "lessons" become spiritually and intellectually empty, like the prayers which certain Eastern cults pin to wheels that spin idly in the wind. The authentic prophets of democracy have constantly striven to keep the channels of popular education free from the clogging muck of selfishness, superstition, and prejudice. They have had faith in the essential justice and ultimate wisdom of informed public opinion. Such men have appeared in government, among the coal owners, among the miners, who are the commoners of the coal industry. In 1914 the coal operators of Illinois and Indiana issued a _Statement of Facts_ for the enlightenment of the Government and the people. The normal state of the coal industry, they declared, was such as to "endanger the lives of the miners, waste the coal reserves, and deprive the operators of any hope of profit." They therefore appealed for "appropriate and definite governmental control" to the extent "at least of permitting all their activities to be known to the public." They thus approved of the action of Congress in creating the Federal Trade Commission "to gather and compile information concerning, and to investigate from time to time the organization, business, conduct, practices, and management of any corporation engaged in commerce ... and to make public from time to time such portions of the information obtained by it, except trade secrets and names of customers, as it shall deem expedient in the public interest." The coal operators went further than Congress since they made no reservations with respect to trade secrets. But after the armistice, the organized operators of the nation, through one of their members, secured an injunction restraining the Federal Trade Commission from prosecuting its work of investigation and publicity, the effect of which was to render the Federal Trade Commission Act null and void so far as the education of the public with respect to the coal industry was concerned. In the language of a senator, this action "tied the Government's hands and poked out its eyes." With a view to remedying certain of the major evils that interfered with the service of the coal industry to the nation, Senators Calder, Frelinghuysen, and Kenyon introduced bills and conducted public hearings. They had concluded that what Congress and the public needed to know if they were to legislate fairly and intelligently was the full truth about "ownership, production, distribution, stocks, investments, costs, sales, margins, and profits in the coal industry and trade." But in 1921, the organized operators of the country, feeling that they could conduct the industry most successfully without governmental supervision or the scrutiny of informed public opinion, opposed all attempts at legislation designed to accomplish the precise ends which in 1914 the operators of Illinois and Indiana regarded as essential to the best interests of all concerned. In reviewing the history of the efforts which he and his colleagues had made to get at and publish the facts, Senator Frelinghuysen reported to Congress that "though we made every concession that we felt justified in making, we find, after two years of conference and the price of coal still high, that practically all of these operators, organized and unorganized, are bitterly opposing the principle of these two bills--first, the season freight rate bill, and second the bill 'to aid in stabilizing the coal industry'--and have organized an elaborate propaganda with a view to bringing about their defeat.... The National Coal Association has been the chief defender of the coal trade since I became interested in the subject.... For a time I looked upon the men of this organization as fair and reasonable and I sympathized with their demand that the coal trade be permitted to work out its own salvation without Government interference, provided full statistics were obtainable regarding cost of production, transportation, and delivery to the humblest consumer. For a time they seemed willing to concede this. But I am finally and reluctantly convinced that my hope in that direction has always been a delusion." After devoting two years to a vain attempt to get at "full statistics," Senator Frelinghuysen lost patience with the operators. But he forgot that many of their leaders still sincerely adhere to Mr. Baer's faith that God has entrusted the interests of the community to the owners of property and that congressional interference, even when limited to the ascertainment of statistics, is subversive not only of the status of the owners as trustees of the nation's fuel resources, but also of the public interest itself. This conviction of the operators is a fact that must be weighed without impatience like any fact in chemistry or physics. The position of many labor leaders is fundamentally the same as that of the operators. They have the traditional fear of the autocratic power which they believe to be inherent in the state. Like the operators, they are convinced that the public interest is best served when each and all of the groups within industry are left free to pursue their special interests with utmost aggressiveness, on the theory that the clash of many selfishnesses results, as by a law of nature, in the neutralization of selfishness and its conversion into public advantage. It is utopian folly, they say, to attempt to change "human nature," the dominant characteristic of which they hold to be the acquisitive instinct, and equally vain to attempt to modify the natural operation of the "law of supply and demand," which, in their judgment, transcends the "idealistic" law of service. They agree that it is unfortunate that this should be so, but since it is so, does it not behoove practical men to act accordingly? There are many men of this mind among the leaders and rank and file of the miners, as well as among the operators. But the creative impulse back of the organized labor movement is by virtue of necessity the democratic impulse, and where the democratic impulse is vigorous it feeds upon the consciousness of kind whose principal channel of growth is knowledge. In their national convention, held in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1919, the miners adopted a resolution calling upon the Government, "through Act of Congress, to acquire title to the coal properties within the United States now owned by private interests; by purchasing said properties at a figure representing the actual valuation of said properties, as determined upon investigation by accredited agents of the federal Government." They asked that "the coal mining industry be operated by the federal Government and that the miners be given equal representation upon such councils or commissions as may be delegated the authority to administer the affairs of the coal mining industry...." The stated object of the resolution was to secure the operation of the industry "in the interest of, and for the use and comfort of all of the people of the commonwealth ..." and "to prevent the profligate waste that is taking place under private ownership of these resources by having the Government take such steps as may be necessary providing for the nationalization of the coal mining industry of the United States." As to the relative merits of the policy of national ownership as advocated by the United Mine Workers of America, and the policy of free competition and unrestrained private initiative advocated by the organized operators, it is for the informed public ultimately to judge. For two years, the miners' nationalization resolution stood as the expression of a more or less vague aspiration, a more or less vague faith that public ownership would check overdevelopment and so eliminate the humanly demoralizing effects of intermittent production and irregularity of employment. Nationalization, the miners believed, would go far to correct the disastrous moral and physical effects of a situation which on an average of ninety-three days in each working year, deprives them of the opportunity to work. At their next national convention, held in Indianapolis in 1921, they themselves recognized the controversial nature of their nationalization policy. So they moved to less debatable ground. They created a Nationalization Research Committee to get at and secure the publication of facts. In his first public address as chairman of this Nationalization Research Committee, Mr. John Brophy, president of the organized miners in district No. 2, Central Pennsylvania, instead of dogmatizing about the miners' policy of public ownership and democratic administration as the infallible remedy for the evils of the coal industry, appealed to the public, the operators, and the miners "to stop theoretical squabbling and cooperate with us in making all facts about the industry available to the public. We believe in intelligently planned industry. We believe that the only method for the intelligent organization of the industry is nationalization. The employers disagree. In order to arrive at a decision we ask them to submit the facts to the American people, the only jury that has a right to pass judgment on the case.... We ask immediate legislation for centralized, continuous, and compulsory fact-finding in the coal industry." A democracy that acquiesces in its own ignorance of the elementary facts respecting an industry upon which, not only its own economic life, but also the economic life and civilized progress of the entire world so largely depends, betrays the high privilege and responsibility of a self-governing citizenship. Today neither the public nor the Government knows whether the coal industry is fairly capitalized, what the extent and value of the coal reserves are, whether depreciation and depletion charges are reasonable, or what are the profits and losses of the industry. Nobody knows whether the prices which the consumer is required to pay are fair and reasonable. Nobody knows precisely what the preventable wastes of the industry are. The annual wages of the miners are not subject to precise statistical statement, nor does anyone know the number of hours the miners work when the mines are in operation or the number of hours they are given opportunity to work. The statements we have are for the most part large averages based upon inductions from small cross-sections of the industry. The working conditions of the miners, the technical state of the organization of work underground, the cost of living at the more than eleven thousand mines, remain in the foggy realm of guesswork, estimate, and speculation. In the face of conditions which, as the operators of Illinois and Indiana stated in 1914, "endanger the lives of the miners, waste the coal reserves, and deprive the operators of any hope of profit," the people, like the people's government, are ignorantly helpless. In the absence of essential information, the public especially at times of controversy within the industry is left to the mercy of prejudiced and partisan propaganda. "I think it is plain folly," Dr. Garfield, formerly head of the Fuel Administration, testified before the Senate Committee on Manufactures, "not to provide for a continuous finding of the facts as to the cost of production, as to the stocks of coal on hand, as to the working conditions in the mines, and as to the cost of living.... We cannot get along as a Government or as an industry, whether you think of it from the standpoint of the operators or mine workers, without knowing the facts, and the public is also vitally interested in these facts." The U. S. Geological Survey has in the past issued: 1. Annual report on the production of coal by counties and by producing fields. 2. Annual report on the movement of coal, showing the state or locality to which coal produced in each district is shipped; and the origin, by producing fields, of the coal consumed in each state or locality. 3. Current reports at frequent intervals, showing production of coal, operating conditions at the mines, and the movement of coal by rail and by water to various consuming districts. 4. Occasional reports on stocks of coal in the hands of representative consumers. 5. Annual reports on consumption by the larger users. 6. Special reports. But while the methods to be used in these reports have been worked out, not all of them are being carried on permanently, the reason being lack of funds. The latest detailed annual report on the movement of coal is for 1918, and it is uncertain when another can be prepared. The current reports are inadequate and the reports on stocks and consumption are issued only at irregular intervals. Even the annual reports of production leave untouched many subjects of vital importance. We have no quantitative information, on a national scale, as to the amount of coal cleaned; the amount of mine-run, slack, and prepared sizes produced; the mechanical equipment of the mines; the depth of the coal workings; the distance the miner must traverse from mine mouth to working face; the dip of the coal seam; the tonnage produced by long-wall or room-and-pillar methods; the quantity of coal in the ground lost to the nation each year, in the roof, in pillars, because of squeezes; or the quantity lost in thin seams not now minable which are broken and fractured by the mining of lower seams. We do not know accurately how fast electrical haulage is replacing animal haulage underground, what progress the loading machine is making in relieving human backs of the labor of shoveling coal into cars. Of course, any operator and any miner knows of these things in a general way in his own locality, but such scattered, hazy, local knowledge will not suffice. We must have accurate information, national in scope. In the realm of the financing of coal companies the ignorance of the public is almost complete. We do not know the capital value of the coal deposits, nor the degree of concentration and control of ownership of mines or mineral. We do not even know who owns the coal beds. There is no list of the landholding companies who as landlords absorb in many districts the economic rent paid by the mines working favorable seams. We do not know the prevailing royalty rates, we do not know whether or not there is a soft-coal trust. The most basic of our American industries moves in fog by day and blackness by night. The social creeds of the Christian churches will remain the expressions of vague aspirations until they are supplemented by the knowledge essential to their concrete definition. Men and women who profess allegiance to the Great Commandments of Jesus have come to realize that the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Brotherhood of Man, cannot be built by fiat or verbal proclamation. The building of a worthy civilization is as definitely an engineering enterprise as the building of the Panama Canal. It demands a scientific procedure and a patient devotion as thoroughgoing as that which during the past two hundred years has gone into the development of the steam engine, the aeroplane, or high-tension electric transmission. The theory of nationalization, like the theory of collective bargaining and the traditional theory of progress by free competition, must each be tested, as the existing social and industrial order must be tested, in the light of painfully ascertained facts, and in terms of their effect upon the individual personality. For it is only in the light of the truth that we shall be able to build a civilization in which the individual personality may find full fruition. It is only by the aid of knowledge and human understanding that we shall be able to resolve the drama of civilization into a victory of the consciousness of kind over the warfaring acquisitive instinct. It is only by making the technique of science obedient to the Great Commandments of Jesus that we shall be able to build a civilization worthy of a world that moves through infinite space with the sun and the marching stars. WHAT TO READ A SELECT LIST _American Economic Review_. New Haven, Conn. Supplement. March, 1921. ARCHBALD, HUGH $Four-Hour Day in Coal.$ N. Y. H. W. Wilson Co. 1922. 148 pp. BLOCH, LOUIS $Coal Miners' Insecurity;$ Facts about Irregularity of Employment in the Bituminous Coal Industry in the United States. N. Y. Russell Sage Foundation. 1922. 50 pp. BROPHY, JOHN See United Mine Workers of America, District No. 2, and United Mine Workers of America, Nationalization Research Committee. CAMPBELL, M. R. $Coal Fields of the United States.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1917. 33 pp. (U. S. Geological Survey. Prof. paper. 100-4.) Map, tables, diagrams. COMMONS, J. R., ed. $Trade Unionism and Labor Problems,$ 2d series. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1921. 838 pp. Contains: Edgar Sydenstricker. Settlement of Disputes under Agreement in the Anthracite Industry. pp. 495-524. Ethelbert Stewart. Equalizing Competitive Conditions. pp. 525-533. COMMONS, J. R., and others $History of Labour in the United States.$ N. Y. Macmillan Co. 1918. 2 vols. ECKEL, E. C. $Coal, Iron and War;$ A Study in Industrialism, Past and Future. N. Y. Henry Holt & Co. 1920. 375 pp. EVANS, CHRIS. $History of the United Mine Workers of America from the Year 1860 to 1900.$ Indianapolis. United Mine Workers of America. 1920. 2 vols. GIBBINS, H. DE B. $Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century.$ Phila. Bradley-Garretson Co., Ltd. 1903. 524 pp. GIDDINGS, F. H. $Principles of Sociology.$ N. Y. Macmillan Co. GILBERT, C. G., and POGUE, J. E. $America's Power Resources;$ the Economic Significance of Coal, Oil and Water Power. N. Y. Century Co. 1921. 326 pp. GREAT BRITAIN. Coal Industry Commission $Reports and Minutes of Evidence.$ London. H. M. Stationery Office. 1919. 3 vols. (Cmd. 359-361.) HAMMOND, J. L., and BARBARA $Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832.$ N. Y. Longmans, Green & Co. 1919. 397 pp. $Town Labourer, 1760-1832.$ N. Y. Longmans, Green & Co. 1918. 346 pp. $Village Labourer, 1760-1832;$ A New Civilization. N. Y. Longmans, Green & Co. 1921. 342 pp. HAPGOOD, POWERS $In Non-Union Mines;$ the Diary of a Coal Digger. N. Y. Bureau of Industrial Research. 1922. 48 pp. HODGES, FRANK $Nationalization of the Mines.$ N. Y. Thomas Seltzer. Prof. d. 1920. LANE, W. D. $Civil War in West Virginia;$ A Story of the Industrial Conflict in the Coal Mines. N. Y. B. W. Huebsch. 1921. 128 pp. LAUCK, W. J. $Summary, Analysis and Statement Before the United States Anthracite Coal Commission.$ Wash. United Mine Workers of America. 1920. 44 pp. $The Trade Union as the Basis for Collective Bargaining,$ a Compilation of Sanctions and Experiences. Wash. United Mine Workers of America. 1920. 171 pp. $What a Living Wage Should Be as Determined by Authoritative Budget Studies.$ Wash. United Mine Workers of America. 1920. 7 pp. MITCHELL, JOHN $Organized Labor, Its Problems, Purposes and Ideals and the Present and Future of American Wage Earners.$ Phila. American Book and Bible House. 1903. 436 pp. MOORE, E. S. $Coal;$ its Properties, Analysis, Classification, Geology, Extraction, Uses and Distribution. N. Y. John Wiley & Sons. 1922. 462 pp. MURRAY, W. S., and others $Superpower System for the Region between Boston and Washington.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1921. 261 pp. (U. S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper. 123.) ROY, ANDREW $History of the Coal Miners of the United States, from the Development of the Mines to the Close of the Anthracite Strike of 1902.$ Columbus, O. J. L. Trauger Printing Co. 1907. SAWARD, FREDERICK W. $Saward's Annual;$ a standard statistical review of the coal trade, by Frederick W. Saward. N. Y. 1922. 254 pp. SHALER, N. S. $Man and the Earth.$ N. Y. Chautauqua Press. 1907. 240 pp. SPUR, J. E., ed. $Political and Commercial Geology and the World's Mineral Resources$;$ A Series of Studies by Specialists, 1st ed. N. Y. McGraw Book Co. 1920. $Coal.$ By G. S. Rice and F. F. Grout. pp. 22-54. SUFFERN, A. E. $Conciliation and Arbitration in the Coal Industry of America.$ Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1915. 376 pp. _Survey Graphic_. New York $Coal Number.$ April, 1922. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, DISTRICT NO. 2 $Facts!$ Clearfield, Pa. 1921. 16 pp. $Government of Coal.$ Clearfield, Pa. 1921. 24 pp. $Miners' Program.$ Clearfield, Pa. 1921. 6 pp. $Why the Miners' Program?$ Clearfield, Pa. 1921. 10 pp. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA. Nationalization Research Committee $Compulsory Information in Coal;$ a Fact-Finding Agency. Clearfield, Pa. John Brophy, President, U. M. W. of A., District No. 2. 1922. 28 pp. U. S. BITUMINOUS COAL COMMISSION $Majority and Minority Reports.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1920. 120 pp. U. S. CONGRESS. HOUSE. COMMITTEE ON LABOR $Investigation of Wages and Working Conditions in the Coal-Mining Industry.$ Hearings on H. R. 11022. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1922. Vol. 1. 443 pp. Nolan Committee on Bland Bill. U. S. CONGRESS. SENATE. COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR $West Virginia Coal Fields.$ Hearings pursuant to S. Res. 80. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1921. 2 vols. (67th Cong., 1st Sess.) $West Virginia Coal Fields.$ Personal views of Senator Kenyon and views of Senators Sterling, Phipps, and Warren. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1922. 30 pp. (67th Cong., 2d Sess. S. Report No. 457.) U. S. CONGRESS. SENATE. COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE $Increased Price of Coal.$ Hearings Before a Subcommittee Pursuant to S. Res. 126. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1919. 4 vols. (66th Cong., 1st Sess.) Frelinghuysen Committee. U. S. CONGRESS. SENATE. COMMITTEE ON MANUFACTURES $Publication of Production and Profits in Coal.$ Hearings on S. 4828. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1921. 3 vols. (66th Cong., 3d Sess.) La Follette Committee. U. S. CONGRESS. SELECT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION AND PRODUCTION $Reconstruction and Production.$ Hearings pursuant to S. Res. 350. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1921. 3 vols. (66th Cong., 3d Sess.) U. S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION $Cost Reports. Coal.$ June 30, 1919. Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1919-1921. $Report ... on Anthracite and Bituminous Coal.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1917. 420 pp. U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY $Mineral Resources of the United States.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1881-date. $Weekly Report of Production.$ Wash. Geological Survey. 1917-date. U. S. IMMIGRATION COMMISSION $Reports; Immigrants in Industries.$ Wash. Govt. Printing Office. 1911. Vols. 6, 7, 16. WARNE, F. J. $Coal-Mine Workers;$ a Study in Labor Organization. N. Y. Longmans, Green & Co. 1905. 252 pp. WEBB, SIDNEY and BEATRICE $History of Trade Unionism.$ Rev. ed. extended to 1920. N. Y. Longmans, Green & Co. 1920. 784 pp. WEBB, SIDNEY $Story of the Durham Miners (1662-1921).$ London. Fabian Society. 1921. 145 pp. COAL INDUSTRY--PERIODICALS _Coal Age_. (Weekly.) McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. N. Y. 10th Ave. and 36th St. C. E. Lesher, editor. _Coal Review_. (Weekly.) Official organ of National Coal Association. Wash., D. C., Commercial National Bank Bldg., 14th and G Sts. John B. Pratt, editor. _United Mine Workers' Journal_. (Bi-monthly.) United Mine Workers of America. Merchants Bank Bldg. Indianapolis. Ellis Searles, editor. INDEX PAGES Accidents 44-47, 81 Acquisitive instinct 9-12, 16, 18, 38 Agriculture 23-24 America 23-33 American Federation of Labor 57-58 American miners' association 53 Anthracite industry 54 Anthracite strike, 1902 48, 62-64, 66-71 Arbitration and conciliation 48-49, 54-56, 58-59, 63-65 Associations 18-19 (See also Miners' unions; Operators' associations.) Avondale disaster 45-46 Baer, George F. (quoted) 63, 107 Blossburg, Pa. 41-42 Brophy, John 109 By-products of coal 96-99 Calder, William M. 106 Central competitive field 66 Child labor 13-15 Church and industry 50, 113 Civil War (U. S.) 37, 41, 53 Civilization 11-21 Clearfield, Pa. 56 Coal resources of U. S. 26, 79 Coal resources of world 8-9, 78-79 Collective bargaining 54, 59-77 Committee on war and the religious outlook 50 Company stores 40-43 Consciousness of kind 9-12, 16-21 Consumption of coal 80-81 Economic surplus 2, 10-12, 15 England 22, 23 Exploitation of coal 24, 27, 38 Fact finding 35, 68, 105-107, 110-113 Federal trade commission 35, 105 Finance 112 Frelinghuysen, Joseph S. 106-107 Fuel administration 29-36, 90-91 Garfield, G. A. (quoted) 30, 111 Geological survey 79, 111 Geology of coal 4-6 Giddings, F. H. (quoted) 17 Gilbert, Chester G. (quoted) 83-84, 97 Gompers, Samuel 57-58 Government investigations 106-107 Government regulation 27-36 (See also Fuel administration; Nationalization.) Hammond, J. L. and Barbara (quoted) 13-15 Hanna, Mark 55, 63 Hawkins, Sir John 13 Hazards 44-47, 81 Hoover, Herbert (quoted) 34 Immigrant miners 42 Imperialism 25 Industrial democracy 50-53 Industrial revolution 2, 6-9, 22-23 Inventions 8, 102 Isolation 40 Kenyon, William S. 106 Knights of labor 57, 61 Lane, Franklin K. 91 Leeky, W. E. H. (quoted) 13 Lesher, C. E. (quoted) 31-32 Lloyd, Thomas 53 Management 76 McBride, John 59 Mine inspection 44-48 Miners 13-15 Miners' job 43-44 Miners' national association 54-58 Miners' unions 20, 38-49, 52-65 Mining law 44-48 Mining towns 40 Mitchell, John 61-65 National civic federation 63 National coal association 72, 107 National federation of miners and mine laborers 59 Nationalization 77, 108-110 Natural gas 87-88 Operators 46-47, 105 Operators' associations 72-75, 106-107 Overdevelopment 27-28, 59 Parsons, Floyd W. (quoted) 79 Pennsylvania, Secretary of internal affairs 43 Petroleum 83-87 Pogue, Joseph E. (quoted) 83-84, 97 Population and coal 7-8 Power 80, 88, 90-101 Power distribution 80 Public opinion 42, 44 Public utility, coal as a 31-32, 64 Railroad administration 31-32 Railroads 28, 31-32, 80 Rend, W. P. 59 Roosevelt, Theodore 48, 63-64, 66-67 Roy, Andrew (quoted) 39, 42, 44-45 Rushmore, D. B. (quoted) 79 Scrip 42 Sherman law 73, 77 Shortage of coal 29 Siney, John 54-56, 58 Smith, G. O. (quoted) 80 Solar power 1 "Statement of facts" 105 Steel industry 65-66 Steinmetz, Charles P. (quoted) 88 Strikes 40-41, 48, 62-64, 66-71, 75 Superpower plan 92-96, 100-101 Transportation of coal 28, 31-32, 80 Tryon, F. G. (quoted) 27, 77 Unemployment 81 United mine workers of America 61-77, 108-109 War 2, 26 Wastes 26, 38, 59, 76, 80-82, 96 Water power 88 Weaver, Daniel 52-53 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney (quoted) 50-51 West Virginia 40, 48, 61, 65-66, 74 Wilson, William B. 63 Wilson, Woodrow 71 Workingmen's benevolent association 54 * * * * * The table below lists all corrections applied to the original text. p 42: But curious sports -> sorts p 60: that the wide-spread -> widespread p 115: HAMMOND, J. L., -> [comma added] p 115: Town Labourer, -> [semicolon changed to comma] p 121: Naturalization -> Nationalization p 121: McBride, John -> shift after Management p 122: Parsons, Floyd W. -> shift after Overdevelopment 
36032	----	THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS by WILLIAM Z. FOSTER THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS [Illustration: PENNSYLVANIA LAW AND ORDER State Police driving peaceful citizens out of business places, Clairton, Pa. _Photo by International_] THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS BY WILLIAM Z. FOSTER INTRODUCTION BY JOHN A. FITCH NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. MCMXX COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. PRINTED IN U. S. A. INTRODUCTION Half a million men are employed in the steel industry of the United States. At a period in which eight hours is rapidly coming to be accepted as the standard length of the working day, the principal mills in this industry are operating on a 12-hour work schedule, and many of their workmen are employed seven days in every week. These half million men have, for the most part, no opportunity to discuss with their employers the conditions of their work. Not only are they denied the right of bargaining collectively over the terms of the labor contract, but if grievances arise in the course of their employment they have no right in any effective manner to take up the matter with their employer and secure an equitable adjustment.[1] The right even of petition has been at times denied and, because of the organized strength of the steel companies and the disorganized weakness of the employees, could be denied at any time. The right of workers in this country to organize and to bargain collectively is unquestioned. On every hand the workers are exercising this right in order to protect and advance their interests. In the steel mills not only is the right generally denied but the attempt to exercise it is punished by expulsion from the industry. Through a system of espionage that is thoroughgoing and effective the steel companies know which of their employees are attending union meetings, which of them are talking with organizers. It is their practice to discharge such men and thus they nip in the bud any ordinary movement toward organization. Their power to prevent their employees from acting independently and in their own interest, extends even to the communities in which they live. In towns where the mayor's chair is occupied by company officials or their relatives--as was the case during the 1919 strike in Bethlehem, Duquesne, Clairton and elsewhere--orders may be issued denying to the workers the right to hold meetings for organizing purposes, or the police may be instructed to break them up. Elsewhere--as in Homestead, McKeesport, Monessen, Rankin and in Pittsburgh itself--the economic strength of the companies is so great as to secure the willing cooperation of officials or to compel owners of halls and vacant lots to refuse the use of their property for the holding of union meetings. One who has not seen with his own eyes the evidences of steel company control in the towns where their plants are located will have difficulty in comprehending its scope and power. Social and religious organizations are profoundly affected by it. In many a church during the recent strike, ministers and priests denounced the "agitators" and urged the workmen in their congregations to go back to the mills. Small business men accepted deputy sheriffs' commissions, put revolvers in their belts and talked loudly about the merits of a firing squad as a remedy for industrial unrest. For twenty or more years in the mill towns along the Monongahela--since 1892 in Homestead--the working men have lived in an atmosphere of espionage and repression. The deadening influence of an overwhelming power, capable of crushing whatever does not bend to its will, has in these towns stifled individual initiative and robbed citizenship of its virility. The story of the most extensive and most courageous fight yet made to break this power and to set free the half million men of the steel mills is told within the pages of this book by one who was himself a leader in the fight. It is a story that is worth the telling, for it has been told before only in fragmentary bits and without the authority that comes from the pen of one of the chief actors in the struggle. Mr. Foster has performed a public service in setting down as he has the essential facts attendant upon the calling of the strike. The record of correspondence with Judge Gary and with President Wilson indicates clearly enough where responsibility for its occurrence lies. It answers the question also of who it was that flouted the President--the strike committee that refused to enter into a one sided truce, or Judge Gary, who would not accept Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he confer with a union committee, but who was willing to take advantage of the proposed truce to undermine and destroy the union. This thoughtful history, remarkably dispassionate upon the whole, considering the fact that the author was not only an actor in the events he describes but the storm center of a countrywide campaign of slanderous falsehood, is an effective answer to those whose method of opposing the strike was to shout "Bolshevism" and "Revolution." Not thus are fomenters of revolution accustomed to write. It is this very quality which will make the book of great value both to the student and to the labor organizer. Never before has a leader in a great organizing campaign like the one preceding the steel strike sat down afterward to appraise so calmly the causes of defeat. Explanations of failure are common, usually in the form of "alibis." Mr. Foster has been willing to look the facts steadily in the face and his analysis of the causes of the loss of the strike--laying the responsibility for it at the doors of the unions themselves--cannot fail to be helpful to every union leader, no matter what industry his union may represent. On the other hand his account of such a feat as the maintenance of a commissary adequate to meet the needs of the strikers at a cost of $1.40 per man is suggestive and encouraging to the highest degree. This achievement must stand as a monument to the integrity and practical ability of the men who conducted the strike. It is with no purpose of underwriting every statement of fact or of making his own every theory advanced in the book that the writer expresses his confidence in it. It is because the book as a whole is so well done and because the essential message that it conveys is so true, that it is a pleasure to write these words of introduction. Other books have been written about the steel industry. Some have concerned themselves with metallurgy, others with the commercial aspects of steel manufacture, and still others with certain phases of the labor problem. This book is different from all the others. It sets forth as no other book has, and as no other writer could, the need of the workers in this great basic industry for organization, and the extreme difficulty of achieving this essential right. It shows also in the sanity, good temper, and straightforward speech of the author what sort of leadership it is that the steel companies have decreed their workers shall not have! JOHN A. FITCH. _New York, June 4, 1920._ FOOTNOTE: [1] See for example Judge Gary's testimony before the Senate Committee investigating the steel strike--October 1, 1919, pp. 161-162, of committee hearings. He told of a strike which occurred because a grievance remained unadjusted after a committee of the workers had tried to take it up with the management. The president of the company involved was for crushing the strike without knowing what the grievance was or even of the existence of the committee. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION v CHAPTER I. THE PRESENT SITUATION 1 The strike--"Victory" of the employers--Industrial democracy abroad, industrial serfdom at home--What the workers won--The outlook. II. A GENERATION OF DEFEAT 8 The urge for mastery--Democratic resistance--The Homestead strike--The strikes of 1901 and 1909-- The Steel Trust victorious. III. THE GIANT LABOR AWAKES 16 A bleak prospect--Hope springs eternal--A golden chance--Disastrous delay--The new plan--A lost opportunity--The campaign begins--Gary fights back. IV. FLANK ATTACKS 28 A sea of troubles--The policy of encirclement--Taking the outposts--Organizing methods--Financial systems-- The question of morale--Johnstown. V. BREAKING INTO PITTSBURGH 50 The flying squadron--Monessen--Donora--McKeesport-- Rankin--Braddock--Clairton--Homestead--Duquesne--The results. VI. STORM CLOUDS GATHER 68 Relief demanded--The Amalgamated Association moves--A general movement--The conference committee--Gompers' letter unanswered--The strike vote--Gary defends steel autocracy--President Wilson acts in vain--The strike call. VII. THE STORM BREAKS 96 The Steel Trust Army--Corrupt officialdom--Clairton-- McKeesport--The strike--showing by districts--A treasonable act--Gary gets his answer. VIII. GARYISM RAMPANT 110 The White Terror--Constitutional Rights denied-- Unbreakable solidarity--Father Kazincy--The Cossacks --Scientific barbarity--Prostituted courts--Servants rewarded. IX. EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT 140 The National Industrial Conference--The Senate committee--The red book--The Margolis case--The Interchurch World Movement. X. THE COURSE OF THE STRIKE 162 Pittsburgh district--The railroad men--Corrupt newspapers--Chicago district--Federal troops at Gary --Youngstown district--The Amalgamated Association-- Cleveland--The Rod and Wire Mill strike--The Bethlehem plants--Buffalo and Lackawanna--Wheeling and Steubenville --Pueblo--Johnstown--Mob rule--The end of the strike. XI. NATIONAL AND RACIAL ELEMENTS 194 A modern Babel--Americans as skilled workers--Foreigners as unskilled workers--Language difficulties--The Negro in the strike--The race problem. XII. THE COMMISSARIAT--THE STRIKE COST 213 The Relief organization--Rations--System of distribution --Cost of Commissariat--Steel Strike Relief Fund--Cost of the strike to the workers, the employers, the public, the Labor movement. XIII. PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS 234 Labor's lack of confidence--Inadequate efforts--Need of alliance with miners and railroaders--Radical leadership as a strike issue--Railroad shopmen, Boston police, miners, railroad brotherhood strikes--Defection of Amalgamated Association. XIV. IN CONCLUSION 255 The point of view--Are trade unions revolutionary?--Camouflage in social wars--Ruinous dual unionism--Radicals should strengthen trade unions--The English renaissance--Tom Mann's work. ILLUSTRATIONS Pennsylvania Law and Order _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE National Committee Delegates 38 Strike Ballot 78 Cossacks in Action 122 Mrs. Fannie Sellins, Trade Union Organizer 148 Steel Trust Newspaper Propaganda 188 John Fitzpatrick 216 A Group of Organizers 244 THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS I THE PRESENT SITUATION THE STRIKE--"VICTORY" OF THE EMPLOYERS--INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY ABROAD, INDUSTRIAL SERFDOM AT HOME--WHAT THE WORKERS WON--THE OUTLOOK The great steel strike lasted three months and a half. Begun on September 22, 1919, by 365,600 men quitting their places in the iron and steel mills and blast furnaces in fifty cities of ten states, it ended on January 8, 1920, when the organizations affiliated in the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers voted to permit the 100,000 or more men still on strike to return to work upon the best terms they could secure. The steel manufacturers "won" the strike. By forcing an unconditional surrender, they drove their men back to the old slavery. This they accomplished in their wonted and time-honored way by carrying on a reign of terror that outraged every just conception of civil and human rights. In this unholy task they were aided by a crawling, subservient and lying press, which spewed forth its poison propaganda in their behalf; by selfish and indifferent local church movements, which had long since lost their Christian principles in an ignominious scramble for company favors; and by hordes of unscrupulous municipal, county, state and federal officials, whose eagerness to wear the steel collar was equalled only by their forgetfulness of their oaths of office. No suppression of free speech and free assembly, no wholesale clubbing, shooting and jailing of strikers and their families was too revolting for these Steel Trust[2] hangers-on to carry out with relish. With the notable exception of a few honorable and courageous individuals here and there among these hostile elements, it was an alignment of the steel companies, the state, the courts, the local churches and the press against the steel workers. Upon the ending of the strike the steel workers got no direct concessions from their employers. Those who were able to evade the bitter blacklist were compelled to surrender their union cards and to return to work under conditions that are a shame and a disgrace. They were driven back to the infamous peonage system with its twelve hour day, a system which American steel workers, of all those in the world, alone have to endure. In England, France, Italy and Germany, the steel workers enjoy the right of a voice in the control of their industry; they regularly barter and bargain with their employers over the questions of hours, wages and working conditions; they also have the eight hour day. One must come to America, the land of freedom, to find steel workers still economically disfranchised and compelled to work twelve hours a day. In this country alone the human rights of the steel workers are crushed under foot by the triumphant property rights of their employers. Who can uphold this indefensible position? Are not our deposits of coal and iron immeasurably greater, our mills more highly developed, our labor force more numerous and more skilled than those of any other country? Who then will venture to assert that American workingmen are not entitled to exercise all the rights and privileges enjoyed by European workingmen? If the steel workers of England, or France, or Italy, or Germany can practice collective bargaining, why not the steel workers of America? And why should the steel workers here have to work twelve hours daily when the eight hour day obtains abroad? There are a hundred good reasons why the principles of collective bargaining and the shorter workday should prevail in the steel industry of America, and only one why they should not. This one reason is that the industry is hard and fast in the grip of absentee capitalists who take no part in production and whose sole function is to seize by hook or crook the product of the industry and consume it. These parasites, in their voracious quest of profits, know neither pity nor responsibility. Their reckless motto is "After us the deluge." They care less than naught for the rights and sufferings of the workers. Ignoring the inevitable weakening of patriotism of people living under miserable industrial conditions, they go their way, prostituting, strangling and dismembering our most cherished institutions. And the worst of it is that in the big strike an ignorant public, miseducated by employers' propaganda sheets masquerading under the guise of newspapers, applauded them in their ruthless course. Blindly this public, setting itself up as the great arbiter of what is democratic and American, condemned as bolshevistic and ruinous the demands of almost 400,000 steel workers for simple, fundamental reforms, without which hardly a pretense of freedom is possible, and lauded as sturdy Americanism the desperate autocracy of the Steel Trust. All its guns were turned against the strikers. In this great struggle the mill owners may well claim the material victory; but with just as much right the workers can claim the moral victory. For the strike left in every aspiring breast a spark of hope which must burn on till it finally bursts into a flame of freedom-bringing revolt. For a generation steel workers had been hopeless. Their slavery had overwhelmed them. The trade-union movement seemed weak, distant and incapable. The rottenness of steel districts precluded all thought of relief through political channels. The employers seemed omnipotent. But the strike has changed all this. Like a flash the unions appeared upon the scene. They flourished and expanded in spite of all opposition. Then boldly they went to a death grapple with the erstwhile unchallenged employers. It is true they did not win, but they put up a fight which has won the steel workers' hearts. Their earnest struggle and the loyal support, by money and food, which they gave the strikers, have forever laid at rest the employers' arguments that the unions are cowardly, grafting bodies organized merely to rob and betray the workers. Even the densest of the strikers could see that the loss of the strike was due to insufficient preparation; that only a fraction of the power of unionism had been developed and that with better organization better results would be secured. And the outcome is that the steel workers have won a precious belief in the power of concerted action through the unions. They have discovered the Achilles' heel of their would-be masters. They now see the way out of their slavery. This is their tremendous victory. No less than the steel workers themselves, the whole trade-union movement won a great moral victory in the steel strike and the campaign that preceded it. This more than offsets the failure of the strike itself. The gain consists of a badly needed addition to the unions' thin store of self-confidence. To trade-union organizers the steel industry had long symbolized the impossible. Wave after wave of organizing effort they had sent against it; but their work had been as ineffectual as a summer sea lapping the base of Gibraltar. Pessimism regarding its conquest for trade unionism was abysmal. But now all this is changed. The impossible has been accomplished. The steel workers were organized in the face of all that the steel companies could do to prevent it. Thus a whole new vista of possibilities unfolds before the unions. Not only does the reorganization of the steel industry seem strictly feasible, but the whole conception that many of the basic industries are immune to trade unionism turns out to be an illusion. If the steel industry could be organized, so can any other in the country; for the worst of them presents hardly a fraction of the difficulties squarely vanquished in the steel industry. The mouth has been shut forever of that insufferable pest of the labor movement, the large body of ignorant, incompetent, short-sighted, visionless union men whose eternal song, when some important organizing project is afoot, is "It can't be done." After this experience in the steel industry the problem of unionizing any industry resolves itself simply into selecting a capable organizer and giving him sufficient money and men to do the job. The ending of the strike by no means indicates the abandonment of the steel workers' battle for their rights. For a while, perhaps, their advance may be checked, while they are recovering from the effects of their great struggle. But it will not be long before they have another big movement under way. They feel but little defeated by the loss of the strike, and the trade unions as a whole feel even less so. Both have gained wonderful confidence in themselves and in each other during the fight. The unions will not desert the field and leave the workers a prey to the demoralizing propaganda of the employers, customary after lost strikes. On the contrary they are keeping a large crew of organizers at work in an educational campaign, devised to maintain and develop the confidence the steel workers have in themselves and the unions. Then, when the opportune time comes, which will be but shortly, the next big drive will be on. Mr. Gary and his associates may attempt to forestall the inevitable by the granting of fake eight hour days, paper increases in wages and hand-picked company unions, but it is safe to say that the steel workers will go on building up stronger and more aggressive combinations among themselves and with allied trades until they finally achieve industrial freedom. So long as any men undertake to oppress the steel workers and to squeeze returns from the industry without rendering adequate service therefor, just that long must these men expect to be confronted by a progressively more militant and rebellious working force. The great steel strike of 1919 will seem only a preliminary skirmish when compared with the tremendous battles that are bound to come unless the enslaved steel workers are set free. FOOTNOTE: [2] Throughout this book the term "Steel Trust" is used to indicate the collectivity of the great steel companies. It is true that this is in contradiction to the common usage, which generally applies the term to the United States Steel Corporation alone, but it is in harmony with the facts. All the big steel companies act together upon all important matters confronting their industry. Beyond question they are organized more or less secretly into a trust. This book recognizes this situation, hence the broad use of the term "Steel Trust." It is important to remember this explanation. Where the writer has in mind any one company that company is named. II A GENERATION OF DEFEAT[3] THE URGE FOR MASTERY--DEMOCRATIC RESISTANCE--THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE--THE STRIKES OF 1901 AND 1909--THE STEEL TRUST VICTORIOUS The recent upheaval in the steel industry was but one link in a long chain of struggles, the latest battle in an industrial war for freedom which has raged almost since the inception of the industry. The steel manufacturers have always aggressively applied the ordinary, although unacknowledged, American business principles that our industries exist primarily to create huge profits for the fortunate few who own them, and that if they have any other utility it is a matter of secondary importance. The interests of society in the steel business they scoff at. And as for their own employees, they have never considered them better than so much necessary human machinery, to be bought in the market at the lowest possible price and otherwise handled in a thoroughly irresponsible manner. They clearly understand that if they are to carry out their policy of raw exploitation, the prime essential is that they keep their employees unorganized. Then, without let or hindrance, wages may be kept low, the work day made longer, speeding systems introduced, safety devices neglected, and the human side of the industry generally robbed and repressed in favor of its profit side; whereas, if the unions were allowed to come in, it would mean that every policy in the industry would first have to be considered and judged with regard to its effects upon the men actually making steel and iron. It would mean that humanity must be emphasized at the expense of misearned dividends. But this would never do. The mill owners are interested in profits, not in humanity. Hence, if they can prevent it, they will have no unions. Since the pioneer days of steel making their policy has tended powerfully on the one hand towards elevating the employers into a small group of enormously wealthy, idle, industrial autocrats, and on the other towards depressing the workers into a huge army of ignorant, poverty-stricken, industrial serfs. The calamity of it is that this policy has worked out so well. Against this will-to-power of their employers the steel workers have fought long and valiantly. In the early days of the industry, when the combinations of capital were weak, the working force skilled, English-speaking and independent, the latter easily defended themselves and made substantial progress toward their own inevitable, even if unrecognized goal of industrial freedom; but in later years, with the growth of the gigantic United States Steel Corporation, the displacement of skilled labor by automatic machinery and the introduction of multitudes of illiterate immigrants into the industry, their fight for their rights became a desperate and almost hopeless struggle. For the past thirty years they have suffered an unbroken series of defeats. Their one-time growing freedom has been crushed. At first the fight was easy, and by the later '80's, grace to the activities of many unions, notable among which were the old Sons of Vulcan, the Knights of Labor and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, considerable organization existed among the men employed in the iron and steel mills throughout the country. The Amalgamated Association, the dominating body, enjoyed great prestige in the labor movement generally. It consisted almost entirely of highly skilled men and paid little or no attention to the unskilled workers. In the heyday of its strength, in 1891, it numbered about 24,000 members. Its stronghold was in the Pittsburgh district. Its citadel was Homestead. During the period of its greatest activity some measure of democracy prevailed in the industry, and prospects seemed bright for its extension. But about that time Andrew Carnegie, grown rich and powerful, began to chafe uneasily under the restrictions placed upon his rapacity by his organized employees. He wanted a free hand and determined to get it. As the first step towards enshackling his workers he brought into his company that inveterate enemy of democracy in all its forms, Henry C. Frick. Then the two, Carnegie and Frick, neither of whom gave his workers as much consideration as the Southern slave holder gave his bondmen--for chattel slaves were at least assured sufficient food, warm clothes, a habitable home and medical attendance--began to war upon the union. They started the trouble in Homestead, where the big mills of the Carnegie Company are located. In 1889 they insisted that the men accept heavy reductions in wages, write their agreements to expire in the unfavorable winter season instead of in summer, and give up their union. The men refused, and after a short strike, got a favorable settlement. But Carnegie and Frick were not to be lightly turned from their purpose. When the contract in force expired, they renewed their old demands, and thus precipitated the great Homestead strike. This famous strike attracted world-wide attention, and well it might, for it marked a turning point in the industrial history of America. It began on June 23, 1892, and lasted until November 20 of the same year. Characterized by extreme bitterness and violence, it resulted in complete defeat for the men, not only in Homestead, but also in several other big mills in Pittsburgh and adjoining towns where the steel workers had struck in support of their besieged brothers in Homestead. This unsuccessful strike eliminated organized labor from the mills of the big Carnegie Company. It also dealt the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers a blow from which it has not yet recovered. It ended the period of trade-union expansion in the steel industry and began an era of unrestricted labor control by the employers. At Homestead Carnegie and Frick stuck a knife deep into the vitals of the young democracy of the steel workers. Recuperating somewhat from the staggering defeat at Homestead, the Amalgamated Association managed to retain a firm hold in the industry for a few years longer. Its next big setback, in 1901, was caused by the organization of the United States Steel Corporation. Foreseeing war from this monster combination dominated by the hostile Carnegie interests, the union, presided over at that time by Theodore J. Shaffer, decided to take time by the forelock and negotiate an agreement that would extend its scope and give it a chance to live. But the plan failed; the anti-union tendencies of the employers were too strong, and a strike resulted. At first the only companies affected were the American Tin Plate Company, the American Sheet Steel Company and the American Steel Hoop Company. Finally, however, all the organized men in all the mills of the United States Steel Corporation were called out, but to no avail; after a few weeks' struggle the strike was utterly lost. The failure of the 1901 strike broke the backbone of the Amalgamated Association. Still, with characteristic trade-union tenacity, it lingered along in a few of the Trust plants in the sheet and tin section of the industry. Its business relations with the companies at this stage of its decline, according to the testimony of its present President, M. F. Tighe, before the Senate Committee investigating the 1919 strike, consisted of "giving way to every request that was made by the companies when they insisted upon it." But even this humble and pliant attitude of the once powerful Amalgamated Association was intolerable to the haughty steel kings. They could not brook even the most shadowy opposition to their industrial absolutism. Accordingly, early in the summer of 1909, they served notice upon the union men to accept a reduction in wages and give up their union. It was practically the same ultimatum delivered by Carnegie and Frick to the Homestead men twenty years before. With a last desperate rally the union met this latest attack upon its life. The ensuing strike lasted fourteen months. It was bitterly fought, but it went the way of all strikes in the steel industry since 1892. It was lost; and in consequence every trace of unionism was wiped out of the mills not only of the United States Steel Corporation, but of the big independent companies as well. Although the union was not finally crushed in the mills until the strike of 1909, the steel mill owners were for many years previous to that time in almost undisputed control of the situation. During a generation, practically, they have worked their will unhampered; and the results of their policy of unlimited exploitation are all too apparent. For themselves they have taken untold millions of wealth from the industry; for the workers they have left barely enough to eke out an existence in the miserable, degraded steel towns. At the outbreak of the World war the steel workers generally, with the exception of the laborers, who had secured a cent or two advance per hour, were making less wages than before the Homestead strike. The constant increase in the cost of living in the intervening years had still further depressed their standards of life. Not a shred of benefit had they received from the tremendously increased output of the industry. While the employers lived in gorgeous palaces, the workers found themselves, for the most part, crowded like cattle into the filthy hovels that ordinarily constitute the greater part of the steel towns. Tuberculosis ran riot among them; infant mortality was far above normal. Though several increases in wages were granted after the war began, these have been offset by the terrific rise in the cost of living. If the war has brought any betterment in the living conditions of the steel workers, it cannot be seen with the naked eye. The twelve hour day prevails for half of the men. One-fourth work seven days a week, with a twenty-four hour shift every two weeks. Their lives are one constant round of toil. They have no family life, no opportunity for education or even for recreation; for their few hours of liberty are spoiled by the ever-present fatigue. Furthermore, working conditions in the mills are bad. The men are speeded up to such a degree that only the youngest and strongest can stand it. At forty the average steel worker is played out. The work, in itself extremely dangerous, is made still more so by the employers' failure to adopt the necessary safety devices. Many a man has gone to his death through the wanton neglect of the companies to provide safeguarding appliances that they would have been compelled to install were the unions still in the plants.[4] Not a trace of industrial justice remains. The treatment of the men depends altogether upon the arbitrary wills of the foremen and superintendents. A man may give faithful service in a plant for thirty years and then be discharged offhand, as many are, for some insignificant cause. He has no one to appeal to. His fellow workers, living in constant terror of discharge and the blacklist, dare not even listen to him, much less defend his cause. He must bow to the inevitable, even though it means industrial ruin for him and his family. Such deplorable conditions result naturally from a lack of unionism. It is expecting too much of human nature at this stage of its development to count on employers treating their employees fairly without some form of compulsion. Even in highly organized industries the unions have to be constantly on guard to resist the never-ending encroachments of their employers, manifested at every conceivable point of attack. For the workers, indeed, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Hence nothing but degradation for them and autocracy for their employers may be looked for in industries where they are systematically kept unorganized and thus incapable of defending their rights, as is the case in the steel industry. This system of industrial serfdom has served the steel barons well for a generation. But it is one the steel workers will never accept. Regardless of the cost they will rebel against it at every opportunity till they finally destroy it. FOOTNOTES: [3] Students desiring a full account of the early struggles of the steel unions are advised to read Mr. John A. Fitch's splendid book, "The Steel Workers." [4] The practice of the different steel companies varies with respect to safety devices. Some of them are still in the dark ages that all were in a few years ago, with reckless disregard of human life. Others have made some progress. Of these the U. S. Steel Corporation is undoubtedly in the lead, for it has installed many safety appliances and has safety committees actively at work. At best, however, steel making is an exceedingly dangerous industry and the risk is intensified by the great heat of the mills and the long hours of work--the twelve hour day and the seven day week--which lead inevitably to exhaustion. III THE GIANT LABOR AWAKES A BLEAK PROSPECT--HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL--A GOLDEN CHANCE --DISASTROUS DELAY--THE NEW PLAN--A LOST OPPORTUNITY--THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS--GARY FIGHTS BACK From just previous to, until some time after the beginning of the world war the situation in the steel industry, from a trade-union point of view, was truly discouraging. It seemed impossible for the workers to accomplish anything by organized effort. The big steel companies, by driving the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers from the mills, had built up a terrific reputation as union crushers. This was greatly enhanced by their complete defeat of Labor in the memorable strikes of the structural iron workers, the lake sailors, the iron miners, and the steel workers at McKees Rocks in 1909, Bethlehem in 1910 and Youngstown in 1915-16. It was still further enhanced by their blocking every attempt of the individual trades to re-establish themselves, and by the failure of the A. F. of L. steel campaign, inaugurated by the convention of 1909, to achieve even the slightest tangible results. The endless round of defeat had reduced almost to zero the trade unions' confidence in their ability to cope with the militant and rapacious steel manufacturers. But as the war wore on and the United States joined the general slaughter, the situation changed rapidly in favor of the unions. The demand for soldiers and munitions had made labor scarce; the Federal administration was friendly; the right to organize was freely conceded by the government and even insisted upon; the steel industry was the master-clock of the whole war program and had to be kept in operation at all costs; the workers were taking new heart and making demands--already they had engaged in big strike movements in the mills in Pittsburgh (Jones and Laughlin Company), Bethlehem and Birmingham (U. S. Steel). The gods were indeed fighting on the side of Labor. It was an opportunity to organize the industry such as might never again occur. That the trade union movement did not embrace it sooner was a calamity. The writer was one of those who perceived the unparalleled opportunity. But being at that time Secretary-Treasurer of the committee organizing the packing industry I was unable to do anything substantial in the steel situation until the handing down of Judge Alschuler's decision giving the packing house workers the eight hour day and other vital concessions enabled me to slacken my efforts in that important movement. Immediately thereafter, on April 7, 1918, I presented a resolution to the Chicago Federation of Labor requesting the executive officers of the American Federation of Labor to call a general labor conference and to inaugurate thereat a national campaign to organize the steel workers. The resolution was endorsed by twelve local unions in the steel industry. It was adopted unanimously and forwarded to the A. F. of L. The latter took the matter up with the rapidly reviving Amalgamated Association, and the affair was slowly winding along to an eventual conference, with a loss of much precious time, when the resolution was resubmitted to the Chicago Federation of Labor, re-adopted and sent to the St. Paul convention of the A. F. of L., June 10-20, 1918. It follows: RESOLUTION #29 WHEREAS, the organization of the vast armies of wage-earners employed in the steel industries is vitally necessary to the further spread of industrial democracy in America, and WHEREAS, Organized Labor can accomplish this great task only by putting forth a tremendous effort; therefore, be it RESOLVED, that the executive officers of the A. F. of L. stand instructed to call a conference during this convention of delegates of all international unions whose interests are involved in the steel industries, and of all the State Federations and City Central bodies in the steel districts, for the purpose of uniting all these organizations into one mighty drive to organize the steel plants of America. The resolution was adopted by unanimous vote. Accordingly, a number of conferences were held during the convention, at which the proposed campaign was discussed and endorsed. The outcome was that provisions were made to have President Gompers call another conference, in Chicago thirty days later, of responsible union officials who would come prepared to act in the name of their international unions. This involved further waste of probably the most precious time for organizing work that Labor will ever have. From past events in the steel industry it was evident that in the proposed campaign radical departures would have to be made from the ordinary organizing tactics. Without question the steel workers' unions have always lacked efficiency in their organizing departments. This was a cardinal failing of the Amalgamated Association and it contributed as much, if not more than anything else to its downfall. If, when in its prime, this organization had shown sufficient organizing activity in the non-union mills, and especially by taking in the unskilled, it would have so intrenched itself that Carnegie and his henchman, Frick, never could have dislodged it. But, unfortunately, it undertook too much of its organization work at the conference table and not enough at the mill gates. Consequently, more than once it found itself in deadly quarrels with the employers over the unionization of certain mills, when a live organizer working among the non-union men involved would have solved the problem in a few weeks. Nor had the other unions claiming jurisdiction over men employed in the steel industry developed an organizing policy equal to the occasion. Their system of nibbling away, one craft at a time in individual mills, was entirely out of place. Possibly effective in some industries, it was worse than useless in the steel mills. Its unvarying failure served only to strengthen the mill owners and to further discourage the mill workers and Organized Labor. It is pure folly to organize one trade in one mill, or all trades in one mill, or even all trades in all the mills in one locality, when, at any time it sees fit to do so, the Steel Trust can defeat the movement by merely shutting down its mills in the affected district and transferring its work elsewhere, as it has done time and again. It was plain, therefore, that the proposed campaign would have to affect all the steel mills simultaneously. It would have to be national in scope and encompass every worker in every mill, in every steel district in the United States. The intention was to use the system so strikingly successful in the organization of the packing industry. The committee charged with organizing that industry, when it assembled, a year before, to begin the work, found three possible methods of procedure confronting it, each with its advocates present. It could go along on the old, discredited craft policy of each trade for itself and the devil take the hindmost; it might attempt to form an industrial union; or it could apply the principle of federating the trades, then making great headway on the railroads. The latter system was the one chosen as the best fitted to get results at this stage in the development of the unions and the packing industry. And the outcome proved the wisdom of the decision. In the steel campaign the unions were to be similarly linked together in an offensive and defensive alliance. But all this relates merely to the shell of the plan behind Resolution No. 29. Its breath of life was in its strategy; in the way the organization work was to be prosecuted. The best plans are worthless unless properly executed. The idea was to make a hurricane drive simultaneously in all the steel centers that would catch the workers' imagination and sweep them into the unions _en masse_ despite all opposition, and thus to put Mr. Gary and his associates into such a predicament that they would have to grant the just demands of their men. It was intended that after the Chicago conference a dozen or more general organizers should be dispatched immediately to the most important steel centers, to bring to the steel workers the first word of the big drive being made in their behalf, and to organize local committees to handle the detail work of organization. In the meantime the co-operating international unions were to recruit numbers of organizers and to send them to join the forces already being developed everywhere by the general organizers. They should also assemble and pay in as quickly as possible their respective portions of the fund of at least $250,000 to be provided for the work. The essence of the plan was quick, energetic action. At the end of three or four weeks, when the organizing forces were in good shape and the workers in the mills acquainted with what was afoot, the campaign would be opened with a rush. Great mass meetings, built up by extensive advertising, would be held everywhere at the same time throughout the steel industry. These were calculated to arouse hope and enthusiasm among the workers and to bring thousands of them into the unions, regardless of any steps the mill owners might take to prevent it. After two or three meetings in each place, the heavy stream of men pouring into the unions would be turned into a decisive flood by the election of committees to formulate the grievances of the men and present these to the employers. The war was on; the continued operation of the steel industry was imperative; a strike was therefore out of the question; the steel manufacturers would have been compelled to yield to their workers, either directly or through the instrumentality of the Government. The trade unions would have been re-established in the steel industry, and along with them fair dealing and the beginnings of industrial democracy. The plan was not only a bold one, but also under the circumstances the logical and practical one. The course of events proved its feasibility. The contention that it involved taking unfair advantage of the steel manufacturers may be dismissed as inconsequential. These gentlemen in their dealings with those who stand in their way do not even know the meaning of the word fairness. Their workers they shoot and starve into submission; their competitors they industrially strangle without ceremony; the public and the Government they exploit without stint or limit. The year before the campaign began, 1917, when the country was straining every nerve to develop and conserve its resources, the United States Steel Corporation alone, not to mention the many independents, after paying federal taxes and leaving out of account the vast sums that disappeared in the obscure and mysterious company funds, unblushingly pocketed the fabulous profit of $253,608,200. It now remained to be seen how far the unions would sustain such a general and energetic campaign. The fateful conference met in the New Morrison Hotel, Chicago, August 1-2, 1918. Samuel Gompers presided over its sessions. Representatives of fifteen international unions were present. These men showed their progressive spirit by meeting many difficult issues squarely with the proper solutions. They realized fully the need of co-operation along industrial lines, from the men who dig the coal and iron ore to those who switch the finished products onto the main lines of the railroads. Plainly no trade felt able to cope single-handed with the Steel Trust; and joint action was decided upon almost without discussion. Likewise the conference saw the folly of trying to organize the steel industry with each of the score of unions demanding a different initiation fee. Therefore, after much stretching of constitutions, the international unions, with the exception of the Bricklayers, Molders and Patternmakers (who charged respectively $7.25, $5.00 and $5.00), agreed to a uniform initiation fee of three dollars, one dollar of which was to be used for defraying expenses of the national organization work. At the same meeting the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers was formed. It was made to consist of one representative from each of the co-operating international unions. Its given function was to superintend the work of organization. Its chairman had to be a representative of the A. F. of L. Mr. Gompers volunteered to fill this position; the writer was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Including later additions, the constituent unions were as follows: International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop-Forgers and Helpers Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America United Brick and Clay Workers Bricklayers', Masons' and Plasterers' International Union of America International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers Coopers' International Union of North America International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Brotherhood of Foundry Employees International Hod Carriers', Building, and Common Laborers' Union of America Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers International Association of Machinists International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers United Mine Workers of America International Molders' Union of North America Patternmakers' League of North America United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters Quarry Workers' International Union of North America Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America International Seamen's Union of America Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen and Oilers International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers International Brotherhood of Steamshovel and Dredgemen Switchmen's Union of North America. This group of unions, lined up to do battle with the Steel Trust, represents the largest body of workers ever engaged in a joint movement in any country. Their members number approximately 2,000,000, and comprise about one-half of the entire American Federation of Labor. So far, so good. The conference had removed the barriers in the way of the campaign. But when it came to providing the large sums of money and the numerous crews of organizers that were immediately and imperatively needed to insure success, it failed dismally. The internationals assessed themselves only $100 apiece; they furnished only a corporal's guard of organizers to go ahead with the work; and future reinforcements looked remote. This was a facer. The original plan of a dashing offensive went to smash instanter, and with it, likewise, the opportunity to organize the steel industry. The slender resources in hand at once made necessary a complete change of strategy. To undertake a national movement was out of the question. The work had to be confined to the Chicago district. This was admittedly going according to wrong principles. The steel industry is national in scope and should be handled as such. To operate in one district alone would expose that district to attacks, waste invaluable time and give the employers a chance to adopt counter measures against the whole campaign. It meant playing squarely into Mr. Gary's hands. But there was no other way out of the difficulty. The writer had hoped that the favorable industrial situation and the organization of the packing industry, which had long been considered hopeless, would have heartened the trade-union movement sufficiently for it to attack the steel problem with the required vigor and confidence. But such was not the case. The tradition of defeat in the steel industry was too strong,--thirty years of failure were not so easily forgotten. Lack of faith in themselves prevented the unions from pouring their resources into the campaign in its early, critical days. The work in the Chicago district was undertaken, nevertheless, with a determination to win the hearty support of Labor by giving an actual demonstration of the organizability of the steel workers. During the first week of September the drive for members was opened in the Chicago district. Monster meetings were held in South Chicago, Gary, Indiana Harbor and Joliet--all the points that the few organizers could cover. The inevitable happened; eager for a chance to right their wrongs, the steel workers stormed into the unions. In Gary 749 joined at the first meeting, Joliet enrolled 500, and other places did almost as well. It was a stampede--exactly what was counted upon by the movers of Resolution #29. And it could just as well have been on a national scale, had the international unions possessed sufficient self-confidence and given enough men and money to put the original plan into execution. In a few weeks the unions would have been everywhere firmly intrenched; and in a few more the entire steel industry would have been captured for trade unionism and justice. But now the folly of a one-district movement made itself evident. Up to this time the steel barons, like many union leaders, apparently had viewed the campaign with a skeptical, "It can't be done" air. But events in Gary and elsewhere quickly dissipated their optimism. The movement was clearly dangerous and required heroic treatment. The employers, therefore, applying Mr. Gary's famous "Give them an extra cup of rice" policy, ordered the basic eight hour day to go into effect on the first of October. This meant that the steel workers were to get thereafter time and one half after eight hours, instead of straight time. It amounted to an increase of two hours pay per day but the actual working hours were not changed. It was a counter stroke which the national movement had been designed to forestall. Although this concession really spelled a great moral victory for the unions its practical effect was bad. Just a few months before the United States Steel Corporation had publicly announced that, come what might, there would be no basic eight hour day in the steel industry. Its sudden adoption, almost over night, therefore, was a testimonial to the power of the unions. But this the steel workers as a whole could not realize. In the Chicago district, where the campaign was on, they understood and gave the unions credit for the winning; but in other districts, where nothing had been done, naturally they believed it a gift from the companies. Had the work been going on everywhere when Mr. Gary attempted this move, the workers would have understood his motives and joined the unions _en masse_,--the unions would have won hands down. But with operations confined to one district he was able to steal the credit from the unions, partially satisfy his men, and strip the campaign of one of its principal issues. No doubt he thought he had dealt it a mortal blow. IV. FLANK ATTACKS A SEA OF TROUBLES--THE POLICY OF ENCIRCLEMENT--TAKING THE OUTPOSTS--ORGANIZING METHODS--FINANCIAL SYSTEMS--THE QUESTION OF MORALE--JOHNSTOWN Pittsburgh is the heart of America's steel industry. Its pre-eminence derives from its splendid location for steel making. It is situated at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join their murky waters to form the Ohio, this providing excellent water transportation. Immense deposits of coal surround it; the Great Lakes, the gateway to Minnesota's iron ore, are in easy reach; highly developed railway facilities make the best markets convenient. In the city itself there are only a few of the larger steel mills; but at short distances along the banks of its three rivers, are many big steel producing centers, including Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, McKees Rocks, Duquesne, Clairton, Woodlawn, Donora, Midland, Vandergrift, Brackenridge, New Kensington, etc. Within a radius of seventy-five miles lie Johnstown, Youngstown, Butler, Farrell, Sharon, New Castle, Wheeling, Mingo, Steubenville, Bellaire, Wierton and various other important steel towns. The district contains from seventy to eighty per cent. of the country's steel industry. The whole territory is an amazing and bewildering network of gigantic steel mills, blast furnaces and fabricating shops. It was into this industrial labyrinth, the den of the Steel Trust, that the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers moved its office on October 1, 1918, preparatory to beginning its work. Success in the Chicago district had made it imperative to overcome the original tactical blunder by extending the campaign, just as quickly as possible, to a national scope. The outlook was most unpromising. Even under the best of circumstances the task of getting the enormous army of steel workers to thinking and acting together in terms of trade unionism would be tremendous. But the disastrous mistake of not starting the campaign soon enough and with the proper vigor multiplied the difficulties. Unfavorable winter weather was approaching. This was complicated by the influenza epidemic, which for several weeks suspended all public gatherings. Then came the end of the war. The workers had also just been given the basic eight hour day. All these things tended to still them somewhat and to weaken their interest in organization. What was left of this interest was almost entirely wiped out when the mills, dependent as they were on war work, began to slacken production. The workers became obsessed with a fear of hard times, a timidity which was intensified by the steel companies' discharging every one suspected of union affiliations or sympathies. And to cap the climax, the resources of the National Committee were still pitifully inadequate to the great task confronting it. But worst of all, the steel companies were now on the _qui vive_. The original plan had been conceived to take them by surprise, on the supposition that their supreme contempt for Labor and their conceit in their own power would blind them to the real force and extent of the movement until it was too late to take effective counteraction. And it would surely have worked out this way, had the program been followed. But now the advantage of surprise, vital in all wars, industrial or military, was lost to the unions. Wide awake and alarmed, the Steel Trust was prepared to fight to the last ditch. Things looked desperate. But there was no other course than to go ahead regardless of obstacles. The word failure was eliminated from the vocabulary of the National Committee. Preparations were made to begin operations in the towns close to Pittsburgh. But the Steel Trust was vigilant. It no longer placed any reliance upon its usual methods--its welfare, old age pension, employees' stockholding, wholesale discharge, or "extra cup of rice" policies--to hold its men in line, when a good fighting chance to win their rights presented itself to them. It had gained a wholesome respect for the movement and was taking no chances. It would cut off all communication between the organizers and the men. Consequently, its lackey-like mayors and burgesses in the threatened towns immediately held a meeting and decided that there would be no assemblages of steel workers in the Monongahela valley. In some places these officials, who for the most part are steel company employees, had the pliable local councils hurriedly adopt ordinances making it unlawful to hold public meetings without securing sanction; in other places they adopted the equally effective method of simply notifying the landlords that if they dared rent their halls to the American Federation of Labor they would have their "Sunday Club" privileges stopped. In both cases the effect was the same--no meetings could be held. In the immediate Pittsburgh district there had been little enough free speech and free assembly for the trade unions before. Now it was abolished altogether. At this time the world war was still on; our soldiers were fighting in Europe to "make the world safe for democracy"; President Wilson was idealistically declaiming about "the new freedom"; while right here in our own country the trade unions, with 500,000 men in the service, were not even allowed to hold public meetings. It was a worse condition than kaiserism itself had ever set up. This is said advisedly, for the German workers were at least permitted to meet when and where they pleased. The worst they had to contend with was a policeman on their platform, who would jot down "seditious" remarks and require the offenders to report next day to the police. I remember with what scorn I watched this system in Germany years ago, and how proud I felt to be an American. I was so sure that freedom of speech and assembly were fundamental institutions with us and that we would never tolerate such imposition. But now I have changed my mind. In Pennsylvania, not to speak of other states, the workers enjoy few or no more rights than prevailed under the czars. They cannot hold meetings at all. So far are they below the status of pre-war Germans in this respect that the comparative freedom of the latter seems almost like an unattainable ideal. And this deprival of rights is done in the name of law and patriotism. In the face of such suppression of constitutional rights and in the face of all the other staggering difficulties it was clearly impossible for our scanty forces to capture Pittsburgh for unionism by a frontal attack. Therefore a system of flank attacks was decided upon. This resolved itself into a plan literally to surround the immediate Pittsburgh district with organized posts before attacking it. The outlying steel districts that dot the counties and states around Pittsburgh like minor forts about a great stronghold, were first to be won. Then the unions, with the added strength, were to make a big drive on the citadel. It was a far-fetched program when compared with the original; but circumstances compelled it. An important consideration in its execution was that it must not seem that the unions were abandoning Pittsburgh. That was the center of the battle line; the unions had attacked there, and now they must at least pretend to hold their ground until they were able to begin the real attack. The morale of the organizing force and the steel workers demanded this. So, all winter long mass meetings were held in the Pittsburgh Labor Temple and hundreds of thousands of leaflets were distributed in the neighboring mills to prepare the ground for unionization in the spring. Besides, a lot of noise was made over the suppression of free speech and free assemblage. Protest meetings were held, committees appointed, investigations set afoot, politicians visited, and much other more or less useless, although spectacular, running around engaged in. These activities did not cost much, and they camouflaged well the union program. But the actual fight was elsewhere. During the next several months the National Committee, with gradually increasing resources, set up substantial organizations in steel towns all over the country except close in to Pittsburgh, including Youngstown, East Youngstown, Warren, Niles, Canton, Struthers, Hubbard, Massillon, Alliance, New Philadelphia, Sharon, Farrell, New Castle, Butler, Ellwood City, New Kensington, Leechburg, Apollo, Vandergrift, Brackenridge, Johnstown, Coatesville, Wheeling, Benwood, Bellaire, Steubenville, Mingo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Lackawanna, Pueblo, Birmingham, etc. Operations in the Chicago district were intensified and extended to take in Milwaukee, Kenosha, Waukegan, De Kalb, Peoria, Pullman, Hammond, East Chicago, etc., while in Bethlehem the National Committee amplified the work started a year before by the Machinists and Electrical Workers. Much of the success in these localities was due to the thoroughly systematic way in which the organizing work was carried on. This merits a brief description. There were two classes of organizers in the campaign, the floating and the stationary. Outside of a few traveling foreign speakers, the floating organizers were those sent in by the various international unions. They usually went about from point to point attending to their respective sections of the newly formed local unions, and giving such assistance to the general campaign as their other duties permitted. The stationary organizers consisted of A. F. of L. men, representatives of the United Mine Workers, and men hired directly by the National Committee. They acted as local organizing secretaries, and were the backbone of the working force. The floating organizers were controlled mostly by their international unions; the stationary organizers worked wholly under the direction of the National Committee. Everywhere the organizing system used was the same. The local secretary was in full charge. He had an office, which served as general headquarters. He circulated the National Committee's weekly bulletin, consisting of a short, trenchant trade-union argument in four languages. He built up the mass meetings, and controlled all applications for membership. At these mass meetings and in the offices all trades were signed up indiscriminately upon a uniform blank. But there was no "one big union" formed. The signed applications were merely stacked away until there was a considerable number. Then the representatives of all the trades were assembled and the applications distributed among them. Later these men set up their respective unions. Finally, the new unions were drawn up locally into informal central bodies, known as Iron and Steel Workers' councils. These were invaluable as they knit the movement together and strengthened the weaker unions. They also inculcated the indispensable conception of solidarity along industrial lines and prevented irresponsible strike action by over-zealous single trades. A highly important feature was the financial system. The handling of the funds is always a danger point in all working class movements. More than one strike and organizing campaign has been wrecked by loose money methods. The National Committee spared no pains to avoid this menace. The problem was an immense one, for there were from 100 to 125 organizers (which was what the crew finally amounted to) signing up steel workers by the thousands all over the country; but it was solved by the strict application of a few business principles. In the first place the local secretaries were definitely recognized as the men in charge and placed under heavy bonds. All the application blanks used by them were numbered serially. They alone were authorized to sign receipts[5] for initiation fees received. Should other organizers wish to enroll members, as often happened at the monster mass meetings, they were given and charged with so many receipts duly signed by the secretaries. Later on they were required to return these receipts or three dollars apiece for them. The effect of all this was to make one man, and him bonded, responsible in each locality for all paper outstanding against the National Committee. This was absolutely essential. No system was possible without this foundation. The next step was definitely to fasten responsibility in the transfer of initiation fees from the local secretaries to the representatives of the various trade unions. To do so was most important. It was accomplished by requiring the local secretaries to exact from these men detailed receipts, specifying not only the amounts paid and the number of applications turned over, but also the serial number of each application. Bulk transfer of applications was prohibited, there being no way to identify the paper so handled. The general effect of these regulations was to enable the National Committee almost instantly to trace any one of the thousands of applications continually passing through the hands of its agents. For instance, a steel worker who had joined at an office or a mass meeting, hearing later of the formation of his local union, would go to its meeting, present his receipt and ask for his union card. The secretary of the union would look up the applications which had been turned over to him. If he could not find one to correspond with the man's receipt he would take the matter up with the National Committee's local secretary. The latter could not deny his own signature on the receipt; he would have to tell what became of the application and the fee. On looking up the matter he would find that he had turned them over to a certain representative. Nor could the latter deny his signature on the detailed receipt. He would have to make good. To facilitate the work, district offices were established in Chicago and Youngstown. Organizers and secretaries held district meetings weekly. Local secretaries at points contiguous to these centers reported to their respective district secretaries. All others dealt directly with the general office of the National Committee. It will be recalled that the co-operating unions, at the August 1-2 conference, agreed that the sum of one dollar should be deducted from each initiation fee for organization purposes. The collection of this money devolved upon the National Committee and presented considerable difficulty. It was solved by a system. The local secretaries, in turning over to the trades the applications signed up in their offices or at the mass meetings, held out one dollar apiece on them. For the applications secured at the meetings of the local unions they collected the dollars due with the assistance of blank forms sent to the unions. Each week the local secretaries sent reports to the general office of the National Committee, specifying in detail the number of members enrolled and turned over to the various trades, and enclosing checks to cover the amounts on hand after local expenses were met. These reports were duly certified by the representatives of the organizations involved, who signed their names on them at the points where the reports referred to the number of members turned over to their respective bodies. The whole system worked well. Practical labor officials who have handled mass movements understand the great difficulties attendant upon the organization of large bodies of workingmen. In the steel campaign these were more serious than ever before. The tremendous number of men involved; their unfamiliarity with the English language and total lack of union experience; the wide scope of the operations; the complications created by a score of international unions, each with its own corps of organizers, directly mainly from far-distant headquarters; the chronic lack of resources; and the need for quick action in the face of incessant attacks from the Steel Trust--all together produced technical difficulties without precedent. But the foregoing systems went far to solve them. And into these systems the organizers and secretaries entered whole-heartedly. They realized that modern labor organizations cannot depend wholly upon idealism. They bore in mind that they were dealing with human beings and had to adopt sound principles of responsibility, standardization and general efficiency. But another factor in the success of the campaign possibly even more important than the systems employed was the splendid morale of the organizers. A better, more loyal body of men was never gathered together upon this continent. They knew no such word as defeat. They pressed on with an irresistible assurance of victory born of their faith in the practicability of the theory upon which the campaign was worked out. [Illustration: NATIONAL COMMITTEE DELEGATES YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO MEETING, Aug. 20, 1919.--Standing, left to right: F. P. Hanaway, _Miners_; D. Hickey, _Miners_; C. Claherty, _Blacksmiths_; R. J. Barr, _Machinists_; H. F. Liley, _Railway Carmen_; R. L. Hall, _Machinists_; R. T. McCoy, _Molders_; R. W. Beattie, _Firemen_; J. W. Morton. _Firemen_; P. A. Trant, _Amalgamated Association_. Seated, left to right: E. Crough, J. D. Cannon, _Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers_; F. J. Hardison, _Blacksmiths_; J. Manley, _Iron Workers_; Wm. Hannon, _Machinists_; John Fitzpatrick, _Chairman_; Wm. Z. Foster, _Sec.-Treasurer_; C. N. Glover, _Blacksmiths_; T. C. Cashen, _Switchmen_; D. J. Davis, _Amalgamated Association_.] The organization of workingmen into trade unions is a comparatively simple matter when it is properly handled. It depends almost entirely upon the honesty, intelligence, power and persistence of the organizing forces. If these factors are strongly present, employers can do little to stop the movement of their employees. This is because the hard industrial conditions powerfully predispose the workers to take up any movement offering reasonable prospects of bettering their miserable lot. All that union organizers have to do is to place before these psychologically ripe workers, with sufficient clarity and persistence, the splendid achievements of the trade-union movement, and be prepared with a comprehensive organization plan to take care of the members when they come. If this presentation of trade unionism is made in even half-decent fashion the workers can hardly fail to respond. It is largely a mechanical proposition. In view of its great wealth and latent power, it may be truthfully said that there isn't an industry in the country which the trade-union movement cannot organize any time it sees fit. The problem in any case is merely to develop the proper organizing crews and systems, and the freedom-hungry workers, skilled or unskilled, men or women, black or white, will react almost as naturally and inevitably as water runs down hill. This does not mean that there should be rosy-hued hopes held out to the workers and promises made to them of what the unions will get from the employers once they are established. On the contrary, one of the first principles of an efficient organizer is never, under any circumstances, to make promises to his men. From experience he has learned the extreme difficulty of making good such promises and also the destructive kick-back felt in case they are not fulfilled. The most he can do is to tell his men what has been done in other cases by organized workingmen and assure them that if they will stand together the union will do its utmost to help them. Beyond this he will not venture. And this position will enable him to develop the legitimate hope, idealism and enthusiasm which translates itself into substantial trade-union structure. The wild stories of extravagant promises made to the steel workers during their organization are pure tommyrot, as every experienced union man knows. The practical effect of this theory is to throw on the union men the burden of responsibility for the unorganized condition of the industries. This is as it should be. In consequence, they tend to blame themselves rather than the unorganized men. Instead of indulging in the customary futile lamentations about the scab-like nature of the non-union man, "unorganizable industries," the irresistible power of the employers, and similar illusions to which unionists are too prone, they seek the solution of the problem in improvements of their own primitive organization methods. This conception worked admirably in the steel campaign. It filled the organizers with unlimited confidence in their own power. They felt that they were the decisive factor in the situation. If they could but present their case strongly enough, and clearly enough to the steel workers, the latter would have to respond, and the steel barons would be unable to prevent it. A check or a failure was but the signal for an overhauling of the tactics used, and a resumption of the attack with renewed vigor. At times it was almost laughable. With hardly an exception, when the organizers went into a steel town to begin work, they would be met by the local union men and solemnly assured that it was utterly impossible to organize the steel mills in their town. "But," the organizers would say, "we succeeded in organizing Gary and South Chicago and many other tough places." "Yes, we know that," would be the reply, "but conditions are altogether different here. These mills are absolutely impossible. We have worked on them for years and cannot make the slightest impression. They are full of scabs from all over the country. You will only waste your time by monkeying with them." This happened not in one place alone, but practically everywhere--illustrating the villainous reputation the steel companies had built up as union smashers. Side-stepping these pessimistic croakers, the organizers would go on to their task with undiminished self-confidence and energy. The result was success everywhere. The National Committee can boast the proud record of never having set up its organizing machinery in a steel town without ultimately putting substantial unions among the employees. It made little difference what the obstacles were; the chronic lack of funds; suppression of free speech and free assembly; raises in wages; multiplicity of races; mass picketing by bosses; wholesale discharge of union men; company unions; discouraging traditions of lost local strikes; or what not--in every case, whether the employers were indifferent or bitterly hostile, the result was the same, a healthy and rapid growth of the unions. The National Committee proved beyond peradventure of a doubt that the steel industry could be organized in spite of all the Steel Trust could do to prevent it. Each town produced its own particular crop of problems. A chapter apiece would hardly suffice to describe the discouraging obstacles overcome in organizing the many districts. But that would far outrun the limits of this volume. A few details about the work in Johnstown will suffice to indicate the tactics of the employers and the nature of the campaign generally. Johnstown is situated on the main line of the Pennsylvania railroad, seventy-five miles east of Pittsburgh. It is the home of the Cambria Steel Company, which employs normally from 15,000 to 17,000 men in its enormous mills and mines. It is one of the most important steel centers in America. For sixty-six years the Cambria Company had reared its black stacks in the Conemaugh valley and ruled as autocratically as any mediæval baron. It practically owned the district and the dwellers therein. It paid its workers less than almost any other steel company in Pennsylvania and was noted as one of the country's worst union-hating concerns. According to old residents, the only record of unionism in its plants, prior to the National Committee campaign, was a strike in 1874 of the Sons of Vulcan, and a small movement a number of years later, in 1885, when a few men joined the Knights of Labor and were summarily discharged. The Amalgamated Association, even in its most militant days, was unable to get a grip in Johnstown. That town, for years, bore the evil reputation of being one where union organizers were met at the depot and given the alternative of leaving town or going to the lockup. Into this industrial jail of a city the National Committee went in the early winter of 1918-19, at the invitation of local steel workers who had heard of the campaign. A. F. of L. organizer Thomas J. Conboy was placed in charge of the work. Immediately a strong organization spirit manifested itself--the wrongs of two-thirds of a century would out. It was interesting to watch the counter-moves of the company. They were typical. At first the officials contented themselves by stationing numbers of bosses and company detectives in front of the office and meeting halls to jot down the names of the men attending. But when this availed nothing, they took the next step by calling the live union spirits to the office and threatening them with dismissal. This likewise failed to stem the tide of unionism, and then the company officials applied their most dreaded weapon, the power of discharge. This was a dangerous course; the reason they did not adopt it before was for fear of its producing exactly the revolt they were aiming to prevent. But, all else unavailing, they went to this extreme. Never was a policy of industrial frightfulness more diabolically conceived or more rigorously executed than that of the Cambria Steel Company. The men sacrificed were the Company's oldest and best employees. Men who had worked faithfully for ten, twenty or thirty years were discharged at a moment's notice. The plan was to pick out the men economically most helpless; men who were old and crippled, or who had large families dependent upon them, or homes half paid for, and make examples of them to frighten the rest. The case of Wm. H. Seibert was typical; this man, a highly skilled mechanic, had worked for the Cambria Company thirty years. He was deaf and dumb, and could neither read nor write. He was practically cut off from all communication with his fellow workers. Yet the company, with fiendish humor, discharged him for being a union agitator. For every worker, discharge by the Cambria Company meant leaving Johnstown, if he would again work at his trade; for most of them it brought the severest hardships, but for such as Seibert it spelled ruin. With their handicaps of age and infirmities, they could never hope to work in steel mills again. For months the Company continued these tactics.[6] Hundreds of union men were thus victimized. The object was to strike terror to the hearts of all and make them bow again to the mastery of the Cambria Steel Company. But the terrorists overshot the mark. Human nature could not endure it. They goaded their workers to desperation and forced them to fight back, however unfavorable the circumstances. The National Committee met in Johnstown and ordered a ballot among the men. They voted overwhelmingly to strike. A committee went to see Mr. Slick, the head of the Company, who refused to meet it, stating that if the men had any grievances they could take them up through the company union. This company union played a large part in the drama of Johnstown. It was organized late in 1918 to forestall the trade unions. Such company unions are invariably mere auxiliaries to the companies' labor-crushing systems. They serve to delude the workers into believing they have some semblance of industrial democracy, and thus deter them from seeking the real thing. They consist merely of committees, made up for the most part of hand-picked bosses and "company suckers." There is no real organization of the workers. The men have no meetings off the property of the companies; they lack the advice of skilled trade unionists; they have no funds or means to strike effectively; they are out of touch with the workers in other sections of the industry. Consequently they have neither opportunity to formulate their grievances, nor power to enforce their adjustment. And little good would it do them if they had, for the lickspittle committees are always careful to see that they handle no business unless it relates to "welfare" work or other comparatively insignificant matters. Company unions are invariably contemptible. All of them are cursed with company dictation, and all of them lack the vivifying principles of democratic control; but it is doubtful if a more degraded specimen can be found anywhere than that of the Cambria Steel Company. Without a murmur of protest it watched the company abolish the basic eight hour day late in 1918. Nor did it raise a finger to help the multitude of unfairly discharged union men. It habitually pigeonholed all real grievances submitted to it. But what else could be expected of a committee from which the company boldly discharged every man who dared say a word for the workers? By referring the men's grievances to the despised company union, Mr. Slick only added fuel to the fire. A strike loomed threateningly, but just as it was about to break, Mr. Slick lost his job, presumably because of his unsuccessful labor policy. He was supplanted by A. A. Corey, Jr., formerly general superintendent of the Homestead Steel Works. Thinking perhaps the change in personnel might involve a change in policy, the committee approached Mr. Corey. He, too, refused to meet with it, stating publicly that the management would not deal with the representatives of outside organizations, but would take up the men's grievances, either through the company union, or "through any other accredited committee selected by the men in any way that is agreeable to them from among their own number." The last proposition was acceptable, and with joy the men held big open mass meetings of union and non-union men, and elected their committee. But their joy was short-lived. Mr. Corey, unashamed, wrote the committee that he had acted hastily before, and said, "I have had no previous experience with arrangements in the nature of collective bargaining, but a careful survey of this plan (company union), which I have since had time to make, convinces me that it makes full and complete provision for every contingency which can arise between the company and its employees." And then to make the men like this bitter medicine, the Company discharged an active member of the committee. All these events consumed many weeks and wore away the late winter and early spring months. Mr. Corey's double-dealing provoked a fresh strike crisis; but by heroic measures the organizers repressed it. At all times a strike in Johnstown alone against the united steel companies was considered a move of desperation, a last resort to be undertaken only because nothing else could be done. But now relief was in sight. Spring was at hand and the national movement fast coming to a head. Its committees were knocking at the doors of the steel companies. The exposed and invaluable Johnstown position had to be held until this main army could come up and relieve it. So the Johnstown workers were told that they must refrain from counter-attacking, that they had to take all the blows heaped upon them and hold their ground at all costs. And right nobly they did it. In spite of the bitterest hardships they built up and developed their organizations. In this they were unwittingly but powerfully aided by the company union. Several weeks before the big strike the officials took the hated general committee to Atlantic City, wined them and dined them and flattered them, as usual, and then had them adopt a set of resolutions condemning the national movement of the steel workers and endorsing long hours, low wages and heavier production as the remedy for prevailing bad conditions. This betrayal was the last straw. It provoked intense resentment among the men. Whole battalions of them, the most skilled and difficult in the plant to organize, walked down and joined the unions in protest. Almost 3000 enrolled the week after the resolutions were adopted. But it was always thus. Every move that the Cambria made the unions turned to their advantage. They outgeneraled the Company at every turn. It was almost pitiful to watch the later antics of the haughty and hitherto unchallenged Cambria Company, humbled in its own town by its own workers. A few weeks before Labor day the unions, innocently presuming the mills would be closed as usual on that day, decided to have a parade. Then the strategical experts of the Company became active. A warning was issued that every man marching in the parade would be summarily discharged. The unions would not brook this unwarranted and cold-blooded attack. They promptly sent word to the Company that if a single man was discharged the whole plant would be stopped the next day. It was a clear-cut issue, and Johnstown held its breath. When Labor day came the city saw the biggest demonstration in its history. Fifteen thousand organized workers defied their would-be masters and marched. The Company swiftly backed water. And the next day not a man was discharged. It was a victory well worth the heroic efforts and suffering of the previous eight months. When the great strike broke on September 22 the Johnstown workers went into the fight almost one hundred per cent. organized, and with about the same percentage of grievances. So few men were left in the plant that the Company had to ask the unions to give them help to shut down their furnaces, and to keep the fire protection in operation. All the power of the great corporation, which had made $30,000,000 the year before, could not forestall the unions. It had no arrow in its quiver that could strike fear to the hearts of its workers; no trick in its brain pan that could be substituted for industrial democracy. And Johnstown was only one point in the long battle line. Its experiences were but typical. Each steel town had its own bitter story of obstacles encountered and overcome. Youngstown, Chicago, Bethlehem, Cleveland, Wheeling, Pueblo, Buffalo and many other districts, each put up a hard fight. But one by one, despite all barriers, steel towns all over the country were captured for unionism. FOOTNOTES: [5] As a side light on organizing methods, it may be noted that the temporary receipts were red, white and blue cards. The patriotic foreigners were proud to carry these emblematic cards pending the time they got their regular cards. More than one man joined merely on that account. [6] In its war against unionism the Cambria Steel Company held nothing sacred, not even the church. During the campaign the Reverend George Dono Brooks, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Johnstown, took an active part, speaking at many meetings and generally lending encouragement to the workers. For this crime the company punished him by disrupting his congregation and eventually driving him from the city, penniless. V BREAKING INTO PITTSBURGH THE FLYING SQUADRON--MONESSEN--DONORA--McKEESPORT--RANKIN --BRADDOCK--CLAIRTON--HOMESTEAD--DUQUESNE--THE RESULTS The time was now ripe for a great drive on Pittsburgh, a district which had been the despair of unionism for a generation. The new strategy of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers was succeeding. Pittsburgh had been surrounded by organized posts, established during the winter. The Chicago district had also been held. The committee's finances were improving. The crew of organizers was larger and more enthusiastic than ever. The mills were operating stronger and stronger. And spring was here. The movement was now ready for a tremendous effort to capture Pittsburgh, and thus overcome, as far as might be, the original mistake of not starting the campaign soon enough and everywhere at the same time. This done, it would put the work squarely upon the essential national basis. So the assault was ordered on the stronghold of the Steel Trust. First free speech and free assembly had to be established; for the towns about Pittsburgh were still closed tight against the unions. During the winter incessant attempts had been made to break the embargo by political methods, but without avail. In vain a special convention of all the unions in Western Pennsylvania had appealed to the Governor for assistance. For a moment the federal Department of Labor displayed a languid interest and sent a dozen men to investigate conditions. But until this day their report has never appeared. In answer to inquiries, the Secretary of Labor is reported to have said that "its publication at this time would be inadvisable." That may be one reason, and another may be that the Department, in its eager cooperation with Attorney General Palmer, in deporting hundreds of workingmen without trials, is so busy that it hasn't time to attend to such trifles as the wholesale suppression of constitutional rights in Pennsylvania. But in seeking relief no appeal was made to the courts to set up the rights of the unions. This was for two reasons. First, it would involve such a loss of time that the chance to organize the steel workers would have passed long before any decision could be secured. Then, again, there was no faith that the courts of Pennsylvania would be just, and the National Committee had no money to carry the fight higher. The unions conceived their rights to speak and assemble freely too well established to necessitate court sanction at this late date. Hence, they determined to exercise them, peacefully and lawfully, and to take the consequences. At Atlantic City, where the A. F. of L. was in convention, a dozen presidents of international unions in the steel campaign expressed their willingness to enter the steel districts, to speak on the streets, and to go to jail if necessary. To carry on the difficult and dangerous free speech fight, and to oversee generally the organization of the immediate Pittsburgh district, a special crew of organizers was formed. This was known as "The Flying Squadron," and was headed by J. L. Beaghen, A. F. of L. organizer and President of the Pittsburgh Bricklayers' Union. The following brief references to the fights in the various towns will illustrate the forces at play and the methods employed. Monessen, forty miles from Pittsburgh on the Monongahela river, the home of the Pittsburgh Steel Company and several other large concerns, and notorious as the place where organizer Jeff. Pierce got his death blow in a previous campaign, was the first point of attack. Wm. Feeney, United Mine Workers' organizer and local secretary in charge of the district for the National Committee, superintended operations. Several months previously the Burgess of Monessen had flatly refused to allow him to hold any meetings in that town. So he was compelled to operate from Charleroi, several miles away. But as soon as spring peeped the question was opened again. He called a meeting to take place square in the streets of Monessen on April 1st. The Burgess forbade it with flaming pronunciamentos and threatened dire consequences if it were held. But Feeney went ahead, and on the date set marched 10,000 union miners from the surrounding country into Monessen to protest the suppression of free speech and free assembly. Mother Jones,[7] James Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, Philip Murray, President of District No. 5, U. M. W. A., Mr. Feeney, the writer and others spoke. The demonstration was a huge success. Public opinion was clearly on the side of the steel workers, and the Burgess had to recede from his dictatorial attitude and allow them to exercise their constitutional rights. This they hastened to do with gusto. The affair established the unions in the big mills of Monessen. In Donora, an important steel town a few miles down the river from Monessen, and part of organizer Feeney's district, the fight was not so easily won. The United States Constitution provides that not even Congress may pass laws abridging the rights of free speech and free assembly; but in Pennsylvania the Constitution is considered a sort of humorous essay; hence the lickspittle Donora council, right in the face of the steel campaign, passed an ordinance forbidding public meetings without the sanction of the Burgess, which sanction, of course, the unions could not get. But nothing deterred, the indomitable Feeney hired a couple of lots on the edge of the town and held meetings there. The company officials left nothing undone to break up these gatherings. They held band concerts and ball games at the same hour, and set dozens of their bosses and police to picket the meetings. But it was no use; the workers attended and joined the unions in droves. This lasted a couple of months. And all the while a local paper was villainously assailing Feeney. Finally, the steel company agents got the business men to sign an ultimatum to Feeney, demanding that he leave the district at once. Feeney took this matter up with his miners, and they decided that not he, but they, would quit Donora. Organized solidly, they easily put a strict boycott on the town, and it was not long before the same business men, with their trade almost ruined, made a public apology to Feeney, and ousted their own officials who had been responsible for the attack. Naturally these events heartened the steel workers. They organized very rapidly, and soon had a majority of the men in the mills--a large plant of the American Steel and Wire Company. They also became a big factor in the local fraternal associations, which controlled all the halls; and suddenly the Lithuanian Society deposed its President, who was friendly to the steel company, and voted to give its hall to the unions, permits or no permits. In the face of this situation the Burgess reluctantly granted sanction for union meetings. And thus free speech and free assembly were established in the benighted town of Donora, and with them, almost complete organization of the steel workers. But the heart of the conspiracy against free speech and free assembly was in McKeesport, twenty miles from Pittsburgh. When the organizers tried to hold meetings in that city they could hire no halls without the Mayor's permission, and this the latter, George H. Lysle, stubbornly refused to give. He feared a revolution if the staid A. F. of L. unions were permitted to meet; but the Socialist party and other radical organizations went ahead with their gatherings without opposition. The truth was that he knew the unions would organize the workers if they could but get their ear, and this he determined to prevent. Nor would he shift from his autocratic position. Appeals by the organizers to the Federal government, the Governor and the local city council were alike fruitless. No meetings could be held in McKeesport. And the officials of all the steel towns along the Monongahela river, drawing inspiration from the little despot, Lysle, took the same stand. Free speech and free assembly were stifled in the whole district. The Federal authorities being so active setting the outside world aright that they could find no time or occasion to correct the most glaring abuses at home, the unions resolved to attend to the free speech and free assembly matter themselves. Knowing that Lysle could knife the workers' rights only so long as he was allowed to work in the dark, they determined to drag him into the daylight and let the public judge of his deeds. They would hold meetings on the streets of McKeesport in spite of him; give him a few hundred test court cases to handle, and finally find out whether the A. F. of L. is entitled to the same rights as other organizations. The fight opened as soon as the weather permitted. May 18 was the date set for the first meeting. The Mayor stormed and threatened all concerned with instant arrest; but the preparations went on just the same. When the fated day arrived thousands turned out to hear the speakers. But the Mayor, failing to defend his course, dared not molest the meeting. After this, meetings were held on the streets each Sunday afternoon, always in the face of the Mayor's threats, until eventually the latter, seeing that he was the laughing stock of the city and that the street meetings were organizing hundreds of the workers, shame-facedly granted the following niggardly permit for meetings: CITY OF McKEESPORT. Department of Police. McKeesport, Pa., July 7, 1919. Mr. Reddington, Chief of Police, McKeesport, Pa., Dear Sir: This is to certify that the McKeesport Council of Labor has permission to hold a mass meeting in Slavish Hall on White Street on July 8, 1919. Permission is granted subject to the following conditions, and also subject to police regulation. (1st) That no speaker shall talk in any other languages, except the English language. (2nd) That a list of the speakers be submitted to the Mayor before the meeting is held. Very truly yours, (Signed) Geo. H. Lysle Mayor Disregarding the three provisions of this contemptible document, the unions held their meetings under the auspices of the A. F. of L. (not of the McKeesport Council of Labor), had their speakers talk in whatever languages their hearers best understood, and submitted no list to Lysle. Then the big steel companies rushed to the aid of the hard-pressed Mayor. All the while they had discharged every man they could locate who had either joined the unions or expressed sympathy with them, but now they became more active. As each meeting was held they stationed about the hall doors (under the captaincy of Mr. William A. Cornelius, Manager of the National Tube Company's works) at least five hundred of their bosses, detectives, office help, and "loyal" workers to intimidate the men who were entering. About three hundred more would be sent into the hall to disrupt the meetings. And woe to the man they recognized, for he was discharged the next morning. The organizers, running the gauntlet of these Steel Trust gunmen, carried their very lives in their hands. Under these hard circumstances few steel workers dared to go to the meetings or to the union headquarters. But the organizations grew rapidly nevertheless. Every discharged man became a volunteer organizer and busied himself getting his friends to enroll. A favorite trick to escape the espionage was to get a group of men, from a dozen to fifty, to meet quietly in one of the homes, fill out their applications, and send them by a sister or wife to the union headquarters--the detectives stationed outside naturally not knowing the women. Conditions in the local mills were so bad that not even the most desperate employers' tactics could stop the progress of the unions. McKeesport quickly became one of the strong organization points on the river. Sweeping onward through the Pittsburgh district, the unions gained great headway by the collapse of the petty Czar of McKeesport, for all the little nabobs in the adjoining steel towns felt the effects of his defeat. Rankin fell without a blow. A few months before the hall had been closed there by the local board of health, when the Burgess refused to act against the unions. But now no objections were made to the meetings. Braddock also capitulated easily. At a street meeting held in the middle of town against the Burgess' orders, organizers J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, J. C. Boyle, J. B. Gent and the writer were arrested. The Burgess, however, not wishing to meet the issue, found it convenient to leave town, and the Acting Burgess, declaring in open court that he would not "do the dirty work of the Burgess," postponed the hearings indefinitely. That settled Braddock. Burgess Williams of North Clairton, chief of the Carnegie mill police at that point, swore dire vengeance against the free speech fighters should they come to his town. But the National Committee, choosing a lot owned by its local secretary on the main street of North Clairton, called a meeting there one bright Sunday afternoon. But hardly had it started when, with a great flourish of clubs, the police broke up the gathering and arrested organizers J. G. Brown, J. Manley, A. A. Lassich, P. H. Brogan, J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, and the writer. Later all were fined for holding a meeting on their own property. But the Burgess, learning that the speaker for the following Sunday was Mother Jones of the Miners' Union, and that public sentiment was overwhelmingly against him, decided not to fight. Instead he provided a place on the public commons for open air meetings. The contest resulted in almost all of the local steel workers joining the unions immediately. In Homestead, however, that sacred shrine of Labor, the unions had to put up a harder fight. The Burgess there, one P. H. McGuire, is a veteran of the great Homestead strike, and for many years afterwards led the local fight against the Carnegie Steel Company. But he has now fully recovered from his unionism. He has made peace with the enemy. It was in the early winter of 1918 that the unions first tried to hold meetings in his town. But they were careful to make tentative arrangements for a hall before asking a permit from McGuire. The latter stated flatly that there would be no union meetings in Homestead, saying no halls could be secured. "But," said the organizers, "we have already engaged a hall." The next day the rent money was returned with the explanation that a mistake had been made. Later the unions managed to sneak by the guard of the ex-union man Burgess and hold a meeting or two--said to be the first since the Homestead strike, twenty-six years before--but nothing substantial could be done, and the fight was called off for the winter. During the big spring drive on Pittsburgh the Flying Squadron turned its attention to Homestead as soon as the McKeesport and many other pressing situations permitted. Mass meetings were held on the main streets. At first the Burgess, with a weather eye on McKeesport, did not molest these; but when he saw the tremendous interest the steel workers showed and the rapidity with which they were joining the unions, he attempted to break up the meetings by arresting two of the organizers, J. L. Beaghen and myself. At the trial McGuire, as magistrate, was shown that his ordinance did not cover street meetings. "But," said he, "it's the best we've got, and it will have to do." He fined the defendants, and a day or two later had an ordinance adopted to his liking. Such trifles don't worry the executives in steel towns. But such an enormous crowd assembled to witness the next street meeting that McGuire had to agree to permit hall meetings. No sooner were they attempted however, than he broke his agreement. He would allow no languages other than English to be spoken--the object being to prevent the foreign workers from understanding what was going on. Of course all other organizations in Homestead could use what tongues they pleased. The unions balked, with the result that more street meetings were held and Mother Jones, J. G. Brown, R. W. Reilly and J. L. Beaghen were arrested. Public indignation was intense; thousands marched the streets in protest; the unions grew like beanstalks. And so the affair went on till the great strike broke on September 22. That curse of the campaign since its inception, the lack of resources, bore down heavily on the work in the crucial summer months just before the strike. At least one hundred more men should have been put in the field to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity. But the National Committee could not beg, borrow or steal them. The organizers in the various localities fairly shrieked for help, but in vain. Especially was the need keenly felt in the big drive on Pittsburgh. Instead of eight or ten men, which was all that the Flying Squadron could muster, there ought to have been at least fifty men delegated to the huge task of capturing the score of hard-baked steel towns on Pittsburgh's three rivers. The consequence was that the work everywhere had to be skimped, with disastrous effects later on in the strike. In those towns where the unions did get started lack of help prevented their taking full advantage of the situation. And then some towns had to be passed up altogether, although the men were infected with the general fever for organization and were calling for organizers. It was impossible to send any one to either Woodlawn or Midland, both very important steel towns. Even the strategic city of Duquesne, with its enormous mills and blast furnaces, could not be started until three weeks before the strike. Duquesne is just across the river from McKeesport and only four miles from Homestead. It gave the organizers a hot reception. Its Mayor, James S. Crawford, is President of the First National Bank. His brother is President of the Port Vue Tinplate Company. Besides being Mayor, Mr. Crawford is city Commissioner, President of the city council, Director of Public Safety, and Magistrate. He makes the laws, executes them and punishes the violators. He is a true type of Pennsylvania steel town petty Kaiser and exercises his manifold powers accordingly. So eager was the Mayor, popularly known as "Toad" Crawford, to give the world a demonstration of Steel Trust Americanism that he challenged the organizers to come to his town. He even offered to meet in personal combat one of the men in charge of the campaign. Of course he insultingly refused to grant permits for meetings. The organizers, who could not hire an office in the place, so completely were the property owners dominated by the steel companies, managed to lease a couple of lots in an obscure part of town. But when they attempted to hold a meeting there Mr. Crawford jailed three of them, J. L. Beaghen, J. McCaig, and J. G. Sause. The next day he fined them each $100 and costs. Rabbi Wise of New York was the speaker billed for the following Sunday. But the Steel Trust Mayor forbade his meeting. And when it was proposed to have Frank Morrison, with whom Crawford boasted a slight acquaintance, confer with him about the situation, he declared, "It won't do you any good. Jesus Christ himself could not speak in Duquesne for the A. F. of L!" It so happened that Rabbi Wise was unable to come to Pennsylvania for his scheduled lectures on behalf of the steel workers, and the organizers held the Duquesne meeting themselves. Crawford had his whole police force on hand and immediately arrested the speakers, Mother Jones, J. L. Beaghen and the writer. Forty-four steel workers, all the jail would hold, were arrested also, for no other reason than attending the meeting. Organizer J. M. Patterson, who had nothing to do with the gathering, was thrown into jail merely for trying to find out what bail we were held for. The next day the organizers were each fined $100 and costs, and the rest from $25 to $50 apiece.[8] In sentencing Mr. Beaghen, Mayor Crawford declared that nothing would be more pleasurable than to give him 99 years, and then be on hand when he got out to give him 99 more. The Mayor was going it strong; but he was riding fast to a hard fall. The unions were planning to bring to Duquesne some of the most prominent men in the United States and to give Crawford the fight of his life, when the outbreak of the great strike swamped them with work and compelled them to turn their attention elsewhere.[9] Whatever its general disadvantages, in some respects, at least, the free speech fight was very good for the unions. For one thing, it served wonderfully well to infuse the necessary hope and confidence into the steel workers. So tremendous had been the manifestations of the Steel Trust--its long record of victory over the trade unions, its vast wealth and undisputed political supremacy, its enormous mills and furnaces--so tremendous had been all these influences that they had overcome the individual workers with a profound sense of insignificance and helplessness, and practically destroyed all capacity for spontaneous action. What the steel men needed to rouse them from their lethargy was a demonstration of power from outside, a tangible sign that there was some institution through which they could help themselves. Throughout the campaign this consideration was borne in mind, and bands and other spectacular methods of advertising were used to develop among the steel workers a feeling of the greatness and power of the unions. Nor were these methods unsuccessful. Most effective of all, however, was the free speech fight in Pennsylvania. That gave the unions a golden opportunity to defeat the Steel Trust so easily and spectacularly that the steel workers couldn't help but be encouraged thereby. They simply had to cast in their lot with a movement able to defeat so handily their autocratic masters. And once they came in they felt the utmost confidence in their leaders, the men they had seen jailed time and again for fighting their battle. In consequence of The Flying Squadron's heroic battles in the immediate Pittsburgh district the whole campaign was put practically upon a national basis, where it should have been at the start. Almost every steel centre in America was being organized simultaneously. Members were streaming into the co-operating unions by thousands. The entire steel industry was on the move. Perhaps it may be fitting to introduce at this point an official digest of the general report of the number of men organized by the National Committee during the whole campaign. The report covers the period up to January 31, 1920, but almost all of the men were enrolled before the strike started on September 22. GENERAL REPORT on 250,000 members enrolled by the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers during the American Federation of Labor Organizing Campaign in the Steel Industry, from August 1, 1918, until January 31, 1920. _By Localities_ _By Trades_ South Chicago 6,616 Blacksmiths 5,699 Chicago Heights 569 Boilermakers 2,097 Misc. Chicago Dist 3,871 Brick & Clay Workers 187 Pittsburgh 8,970 Bricklayers 581 Johnstown 11,846 Coopers 138 Butler 2,519 Electrical Workers 8,481 Monessen & Donora 8,665 Foundry Employees 2,406 New Castle 2,710 Hod Carriers 2,335 Homestead 3,571 Iron, Steel & Tin Wkrs. 70,026 Braddock & Rankin 4,044 Iron Workers 5,829 Clairton 2,970 Machinists 12,406 McKeesport 3,963 Metal Polishers 349 Gary 7,092 M. M. & Smelter Wkrs. 15,223 Indiana Harbor 4,654 Mine Workers 1,538 Joliet 3,497 Moulders 1,382 Milwaukee 681 Pattern Makers - Waukegan 1,212 Plumbers 1,369 DeKalb 332 Quarry Workers 725 Aurora 242 Railway Carmen 5,045 Pullman 4,073 Seamen - Kenosha 585 Sheet Metal Workers 377 Hammond 1,102 Stationary Engineers 2,194 Wheeling Dist. 5,028 Stationary Firemen 5,321 Farrell & Sharon 3,794 Steam Shovelmen 2 Cleveland 17,305 Switchmen 440 Sparrows Point 93 Unclassified 12,552 Brackenridge & Natrona 2,110 East Pittsburgh 146 East Liverpool 50 Warren & Niles 474 Minnesota Dist. 185 Pueblo 3,113 Coatesville 828 Steubenville Dist. 4,108 Birmingham Dist. 1,470 Canton & Massillon 5,705 Vandergrift 1,986 Buffalo & Lackawanna 6,179 Youngstown 19,040 Peoria 984 Decatur 320 ------- ------- _Total by Localities_ 156,702 _Total by Trades_ 156,702 This report includes only those members actually signed up by the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, and from whose initiation fees $1.00 apiece was deducted and forwarded to the general office of the National Committee. It represents approximately 50 to 60 per cent. of the total number of steel workers organized during the campaign, and is minimum in every respect. The report does not include any of the many thousands of men signed up at Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Apollo, New Kensington, Leechburg and many minor points which felt the force of the drive but where the National Committee made no deductions upon initiation fees. In Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago and other Chicago District points the National Committee ceased collecting on initiation fees early in 1919, hence this report makes no showing of the thousands of men signed up in that territory during the last few months of the campaign. Likewise, at Coatesville and Sparrows' Point, during only a short space of the campaign were deductions made for the National Committee. Many thousands more men were signed up directly by the multitude of local unions in the steel industry, that were not reported to the National Committee. These do not show in this calculation. Nor do the great number of ex-soldiers who were taken into the unions free of initiation fees--in Johnstown alone 1300 ex-soldier steel workers joined the unions under this arrangement. Of course no accounting is here included for the army of workers in outside industries who became organized as a result of the tremendous impulse given by the steel campaign. In view of these exceptions it may be conservatively estimated that well over 250,000 steel workers joined the unions notwithstanding the opposition of the Steel Trust, which discharged thousands of its workers, completely suppressed free speech and free assembly in Pennsylvania and used every known tactic to prevent the organization of its employees. WM. Z. FOSTER, Secretary-Treasurer National Committee for Organizing Iron & Steel Workers. Certified by Enoch Martin Auditor, District No. 12 United Mine Workers of America. FOOTNOTES: [7] Throughout the latter part of the organizing campaign and the first two months of the strike, Mother Jones lent great assistance to the steel workers. This veteran organizer (she testified in court to being 89 years old) of the United Mine Workers labored dauntlessly, going to jail and meeting the hardships and dangers of the work in a manner that would do credit to one half her age. [8] Relative to this meeting there occurs the following dialogue on page 508 of the report on the Senate Committee's Hearings on the Steel Strike: Senator Sterling. "Was Mr. Foster here prior to the strike?" Mr. Diehl (Gen. Manager Duquesne Works, Carnegie Steel Co.). "Yes; he was here trying to hold a meeting, but the meeting was not held." The Chairman. "What happened to the meeting?" Mr. Diehl. "Well, we simply prohibited it." And naturally so. Mr. Diehl and other company officials shut off meetings in the halls and on the lots of their towns just as readily as they would have done had attempts been made to hold them in the mill yards. [9] Now that the strike is over and spring is again at hand, the unions have resumed the battle for free speech and assembly in Duquesne and promise to fight it to a conclusion. VI STORM CLOUDS GATHER RELIEF DEMANDED--THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION MOVES--A GENERAL MOVEMENT--THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE--GOMPERS' LETTER UNANSWERED--THE STRIKE VOTE--GARY DEFENDS STEEL AUTOCRACY --PRESIDENT WILSON ACTS IN VAIN--THE STRIKE CALL Surging forward to the accomplishment of the "impossible," the organization of the steel industry, the twenty-four co-operating international unions found themselves in grips with the employers long before they were strong enough to sustain such a contest. It is almost always so with new unions. In their infancy, when their members are weak, undisciplined and inexperienced, and the employers are bitterly hostile and aggressive, is exactly the time when they must establish principles and adjust grievances that would test the strength of the most powerful unions. Inability to do so means dissolution, either through a lost strike or by disintegration. Following in the wake of the newly formed steel workers' unions came a mass of such difficulties requiring immediate settlement. The demand for relief from the evils of long hours, low wages and miserable working conditions was bad enough; but infinitely more serious was the need to take care of the army of men discharged for union membership. Thousands of these walked the streets in the various steel towns clamoring for protection. And the men on the job demanded it for them. Nor could these appeals be ignored. Whether they deemed the occasion propitious or not, the steel workers' unions, on pain of extinction, had to act in defence of their harassed membership. So bad was the situation by early spring that, lacking other means of relief, local strikes were threatening all over the country. To allow these forlorn-hope walkouts to occur would have meant disintegration and disaster to the whole campaign. They had to be checked at all costs and the movement kept upon a national basis. Therefore, the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers called a general conference of delegates of steelworkers' unions of all trades through the entire industry, to take place in Pittsburgh, May 25, 1919. The object was to demonstrate to the rank and file how fast the national movement was developing, to turn their attention to it strongly, and thus hearten them to bear their hardships until it could come to their assistance. Right in the face of this general movement of all the trades the Amalgamated Association made a bid for separate consideration by the steel companies. By instruction of its convention, President Tighe wrote the following letter to Mr. Gary: Convention Hall, Louisville, Ky., May 15, 1919 Honorable Elbert H. Gary, Chairman, Executive Officers, United States Steel Corporation, Hoboken, N. J. _Dear Sir_: The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers of North America, in National Convention assembled, have by resolution, instructed the undersigned to address you as Chairman of the Executive Officers of the United States Steel Corporation on a matter which in the opinion of the representatives of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, is of vital importance to the Corporation you have the honor to represent and to the Amalgamated Association. As you no doubt are aware, there is a serious disturbing element in the industrial world at the present time, a great spirit of unrest has spread over our common country. It is becoming more and more acute, and there is no telling when or where the storm clouds will break. It is the judgment of the representatives of the Amalgamated Association that it is the patriotic duty of all good citizens to use their every effort to stem the tide of unrest, if possible. The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers have admitted many thousands of the employees of the United States Steel Corporation into their organization; these members are asking that they be given consideration by the Corporation you are the Honorable Chairman of, in their respective crafts and callings, and also that as law-abiding citizens who desire the privilege of having their representatives meet with the chosen representatives of the Corporation you represent, to jointly confer on questions that mutually concern both. Sincerely believing that the granting of their request on your part will not only be the means of allaying that unrest, but will also promote and insure that harmony and co-operation that should at all times exist between employer and employee to the end that all will share in the glorious triumphs so lately achieved in the war and thereby add still more to the lustre and glory of our common country. Trusting that you will give this request on the part of the aforesaid employees of your Corporation your most earnest consideration, I await your pleasure. M. F. TIGHE, International President Hotel Tyler, Louisville, Ky. To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows: UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION Chairman's Office, New York, May 20th, 1919 Mr. M. F. Tighe, International President, Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, Pittsburgh, Pa. _Dear Sir_: I have read with interest your letter of May 15th inst. I agree that it is the patriotic duty of all good citizens to use their efforts in stemming the tide of unrest in the industrial world whenever and wherever it exists. As you know, we do not confer, negotiate with, or combat labor unions as such. We stand for the open shop, which permits a man to engage in the different lines of employment, whether he belongs to a labor union or not. We think this attitude secures the best results to the employees generally and to the employers. In our own way, and in accordance with our best judgment, we are rendering efficient patriotic service in the direction indicated by you. With kind regards, I am, Yours respectfully, E. H. GARY, Chairman The Amalgamated Association's action threatened the existence of the general movement, but Mr. Gary's refusal to deal with its officials kept them in the fold. Where the principle of solidarity was lacking outside pressure served the same end. It would be interesting to hear the Amalgamated Association officials explain this attempt at desertion. At the conference of May 25 there assembled 583 delegates, representing twenty-eight international unions in eighty steel centers, the largest gathering of steel worker delegates in the history of the industry. The reports of the men present made it clearly evident that action had to be taken to defend the interests of their constituents. Consequently, disregarding the rebuff given the Amalgamated Association by Mr. Gary, the conference, which was only advisory in character, adopted the following resolution: RESOLUTION WHEREAS, We have now arrived at a point in our nation-wide campaign where our organizations control great numbers of the workers in many of the most important steel plants in America, and WHEREAS, Various officials of the iron and steel industry, including Judge Gary, Charles Schwab, and other heads of these gigantic corporations have expressed their solicitude for the welfare of the workers in this industry, and WHEREAS, They have been continuously quoted as defenders of the rights of the workers in industry, and WHEREAS, The corporations, to block our progress, are organizing company unions, discharging union men wholesale and otherwise trying to break up our organization, thus compelling us to take action to escape destruction, therefore be it RESOLVED, That it be the will of this conference that a joint effort be made by all unions affiliated with the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers to enter into negotiations with the various steel companies to the end that better wages, shorter hours, improved working conditions and the trade-union system of collective bargaining be established in the steel industry; and be it further RESOLVED, That this resolution be submitted for action to the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers at its next meeting in Washington, D. C., May 27. Two days later the National Committee met in Washington and adopted this resolution. The following were appointed as a conference committee to have charge of the preliminary negotiations with the steel companies: Samuel Gompers, Chairman of the National Committee; John Fitzpatrick, Acting Chairman; D. J. Davis, Amalgamated Association; Edw. J. Evans, Electrical Workers; Wm. Hannon, Machinists; Wm. Z. Foster, Railway Carmen. As the first approach, Mr. Gompers addressed the following letter to Mr. Gary, requesting a conference: AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR The Alamac Hotel, Atlantic City, N. J., June 20, 1919 Mr. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman, Board of Directors, U. S. Steel Corporation, New York, N. Y. _Dear Sir_: Of course you are aware that upon the request of a number of men in the employ of the United States Steel Corporation, and realizing the need of it, the convention of the American Federation of Labor decided to respond and give such assistance as is possible in order to bring about more thorough organization of the workers in the iron and steel industry, particularly those employed by your Corporation. A campaign of organization was begun in June, 1918, and within that period we have secured the organization of more than 100,000 of the employees in the iron and steel industry. The prospects for the complete organization are, I am informed, exceedingly bright. Of course, knowing the policy of the Organized Labor movement I have the honor in part to represent, we aim to accomplish the purposes of our labor movement; that is, better conditions for the toilers, by American methods, and American understandings, not by revolutionary methods or the inauguration of a cataclysm. We believe in the effort of employer and employees to sit down around a table and, meeting thus, face to face, and having a better understanding of each other's position in regard to conditions of labor, to hours, standards, etc., and after reaching an amicable understanding to enter into an agreement for collective bargaining that is to cover wages, hours of labor, conditions of employment, etc. At the Atlantic City convention of the American Federation of Labor just closed, the committee reported upon the progress made, and I am instructed and authorized to suggest to you whether you will consent to hold a conference with a committee representing not only the iron and steel workers who are organized, but representing the best interests of the unorganized men in the employ of your Corporation. The names of the committee I am asking you to meet are: Assistant President Davis, Amalgamated Iron and Steel and Tin Workers. William Hannon, member executive board, International Association of Machinists. Edward Evans, representing International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Wm. Z. Foster, secretary of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers and representing the Brotherhood of Carmen of America. John Fitzpatrick, president Chicago Federation of Labor. If you can advise me at your early convenience that the request contained in this letter meets with your approval and that a conference can be held, I am sure I shall be additionally appreciative. Kindly address your reply, which I trust may be favorable, to the American Federation of Labor Building, Washington, D. C. Respectfully yours, SAMUEL GOMPERS, President American Federation of Labor This letter was sent during the A. F. of L. convention at Atlantic City. About the same time Mr. Gompers resigned the chairmanship of the National Committee and appointed in his stead John Fitzpatrick, hitherto Acting Chairman. Mr. Fitzpatrick has been President of the Chicago Federation of Labor for many years. He is a horseshoer by trade and one of America's sterling union men. Possessed of a broad idealism, unquestioned integrity, a magnetic personality and a wide knowledge of trade-union practice, his services were beyond value as Chairman of the committees that carried on the organization work in the steel and packing industries. He is now taking an active part in the launching of the new Labor party. To Mr. Gompers' courteous letter Czar Gary did not deign to reply. This was bad. It looked like war. But the unions had no alternative; they had to go ahead. Conditions in the steel industry were so unbearable that they had to exert their utmost power to right them, come what might. Therefore, after waiting several weeks for word from Mr. Gary, the National Committee met, gave the situation profound consideration, and adopted the following resolution: RESOLUTION WHEREAS, Working conditions in the steel industry are so intolerable and the unrest arising therefrom so intense that they can only be remedied by the application of the principles of collective bargaining; and, WHEREAS, All efforts have failed to bring about a conference between the heads of the great steel corporations and the trade unions, representing many thousands of organized steel workers, for the purpose of establishing trade union conditions in the steel industry; therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers recommends to its 24 affiliated unions that they take a strike vote of their local unions throughout the steel industry; and, be it further RESOLVED, That a special meeting be held in the Pittsburgh Labor Temple, July 20th, at 10 A. M., of representatives of all the co-operating international unions for the purpose of taking action on this matter. The National Committee meeting of July 20th, called in accordance with the above resolution, approached the situation from every possible angle and with the keenest sense of responsibility. But it had to recognize that the matter was wholly in the hands of Mr. Gary and his associates. The resolution to take a strike vote of the men was re-adopted. Also the following general demands, based on accurate surveys of the situation, and subject to revision over the conference table, were formulated: 1. Right of collective bargaining 2. Reinstatement of all men discharged for union activities with pay for time lost 3. Eight hour day 4. One day's rest in seven 5. Abolition of 24-hour shift 6. Increases in wages sufficient to guarantee American standard of living 7. Standard scales of wages in all trades and classifications of workers 8. Double rates of pay for all overtime after 8 hours, holiday and Sunday work 9. Check-off system of collecting union dues and assessments 10. Principles of seniority to apply in the maintenance, reduction and increase of working forces 11. Abolition of company unions 12. Abolition of physical examination of applicants for employment So plain, fair and equitable are these demands that to reasonable people they require no defence. The only explanation they might need relates to #9 and #12. The check-off was to apply only to the mining end of the steel industry, and the abolition of the physical examination was to put a stop to the rank discrimination practiced by the companies through their medical departments. A month was allowed in which to take the vote. Each trade looked after its own members, with the National Committee voting those men who were enrolled but not yet turned over to their respective unions, and in some cases the unorganized also. Enthusiasm was intense. The steel workers saw a glimmer of hope and welcomed with open arms the opportunity to right their crying wrongs. When the vote was tabulated in Youngstown, Ohio, on August 20, it was found that every trade had voted overwhelmingly for a strike in case no settlement could be reached. Whole districts voted to a man in the affirmative. Of all the thousands of ballots cast in Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, Vandergrift, Pittsburgh and Monessen not one was in the negative. Donora produced one "no" vote, with the great Youngstown, Chicago and Cleveland districts about the same. Everywhere the sentiment was practically unanimous to make a stand. The vote was calculated conservatively at 98 per cent. for a strike. The Conference Committee was accordingly instructed to request a conference with the heads of the United States Steel Corporation and the big independent companies, and if at the end of ten days no such meeting had been arranged, to set the strike date. [Illustration: STRIKE BALLOT] Taking no further chances on unanswered letters, the Committee bearded Mr. Gary in his lair at 71 Broadway. He was in but refused to meet the Committee, requesting that its proposition be submitted in writing. The Committee thereupon sent him the following request for a conference: New York, August 26, 1919 Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman Finance Committee, United States Steel Corporation, 71 Broadway, New York City _Dear Sir:_ During a general campaign of organization and education conducted under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor, many thousands of men employed in the iron and steel industry made application and were enrolled as members of the various organizations to which they were assigned. This work has been carried on to a point where we feel justified in stating to you that we represent the sentiment of the vast majority of the employees in this industry, and, acting in behalf of them, we solicit of you that a hearing be given to the undersigned Committee, who have been selected by the duly accredited representatives of the employees, to place before you matters that are of vital concern to them, and concerning hours of labor, wages, working conditions and the right of collective bargaining. The committee called at your office at 3 P. M., Tuesday, August 26, and requested a conference. We were advised by your messenger that you wished to be excused from a personal interview at this time and requested us to have our business in writing and whatever matters we wished to submit would be taken up by yourself and your colleagues and given consideration. Therefore we are submitting in brief the principal subjects that we desired to have a conference on. The committee has an important meeting in another city on Thursday next and will leave New York at 5 o'clock on August 27, 1919. May we respectfully request that your answer be sent before that time to Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Continental Hotel, Broadway and Forty-first Street, New York City. Very truly yours, John Fitzpatrick D. J. Davis Wm. Hannon Edw. J. Evans Wm. Z. Foster Committee To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows: UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION Office of the Chairman, New York, August 27, 1919 Messrs. John Fitzpatrick, David J. Davis, William Hannon, Wm. Z. Foster, Edw. J. Evans, Committee _Gentlemen_: Receipt of your communication of August 26 instant is acknowledged. We do not think you are authorized to represent the sentiment of a majority of the employees of the United States Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries. We express no opinion concerning any other members of the iron and steel industry. As heretofore publicly stated and repeated, our Corporation and subsidiaries, although they do not combat labor unions as such, decline to discuss business with them. The Corporation and subsidiaries are opposed to the "closed shop." They stand for the "open shop," which permits one to engage in any line of employment whether one does or does not belong to a labor union. This best promotes the welfare of both employees and employers. In view of the well-known attitude as above expressed, the officers of the Corporation respectfully decline to discuss with you, as representatives of a labor union, any matter relating to employees. In doing so no personal discourtesy is intended. In all decisions and acts of the Corporation and subsidiaries pertaining to employees and employment their interests are of highest importance. In wage rates, living and working conditions, conservation of life and health, care and comfort in times of sickness or old age, and providing facilities for the general welfare and happiness of employees and their families, the Corporation and subsidiaries have endeavored to occupy a leading and advanced position among employers. It will be the object of the Corporation and subsidiaries to give such consideration to employees as to show them their loyal and efficient service in the past is appreciated, and that they may expect in the future fair treatment. Respectfully yours, E. H. GARY, Chairman In a last effort to prevail upon Mr. Gary to yield his tyrannical position, the committee addressed him this further communication: New York City, Aug. 27, 1919. Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman Finance Committee, United States Steel Corporation, 71 Broadway, New York, N. Y. _Dear Sir_: We have received your answer to our request for a conference on behalf of the employees of your Corporation, and we understand the first paragraph of your answer to be an absolute refusal on the part of your corporation to concede to your employees the right of collective bargaining. You question the authority of our committee to represent the majority of your employees. The only way by which we can prove our authority is to put the strike vote into effect and we sincerely hope that you will not force a strike to prove this point. We asked for a conference for the purpose of arranging a meeting where the questions of wages, hours, conditions of employment, and collective bargaining might be discussed. Your answer is a flat refusal for such conference, which raises the question, if the accredited representatives of your employees and the international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the Federation itself are denied a conference, what chance have the employees as such to secure any consideration of the views they entertain or the complaints they are justified in making. We noted particularly your definition of the attitude of your Corporation on the question of the open and closed shop, and the positive declaration in refusing to meet representatives of union labor. These subjects are matters that might well be discussed in conference. There has not anything arisen between your Corporation and the employees whom we represent in which the question of "the closed shop" has been even mooted. We read with great care your statement as to the interest the Corporation takes in the lives and welfare of the employees and their families, and if that were true even in a minor degree, we would not be pressing consideration, through a conference, of the terrible conditions that exist. The conditions of employment, the home life, the misery in the hovels of the steel workers is beyond description. You may not be aware that the standard of life of the average steel worker is below the pauper line, which means that charitable institutions furnish to the pauper a better home, more food, clothing, light and heat than many steel workers can bring into their lives upon the compensation received for putting forth their very best efforts in the steel industry. Surely this is a matter which might well be discussed in conference. You also made reference to the attitude of your Corporation in not opposing or preventing your employees from joining labor organizations. It is a matter of common knowledge that the tactics employed by your Corporation and subsidiaries have for years most effectively prevented any attempt at organization by your employees. We feel that a conference would be valuable to your Corporation for the purpose of getting facts of which, judging from your letter, you seem to be misinformed. Some few days are still at the disposal of our committee before the time limit will have expired when there will be no discretion left to the committee but to enforce the decree of your employees whom we have the honor to represent. We submit that reason and fairness should obtain rather than that the alternative shall be compulsory upon us. Surely reasonable men can find a common ground upon which we can all stand and prosper. If you will communicate with us further upon this entire matter, please address your communication to the National Hotel, Washington, D. C. where we will be Thursday and Friday, August 28 and 29. Very truly yours, JOHN FITZPATRICK D. J. DAVIS WM. HANNON EDW. J. EVANS WM. Z. FOSTER Committee No reply came to the last letter. Mr. Gary, behind the smoke screen of his hypocrisies about the "open shop," was determined to have the strike go on. But the committee, fully conscious of the tremendous responsibility resting upon it, was equally decided to exhaust every possible means of adjustment before things came to a rupture. The committeemen went to Washington, appeared before the Executive Council of the A. F. of L., and received its endorsement and praise for the manner in which the campaign had been conducted. Mr. Gompers was delegated by the Council to go with the committee to present the matter to President Wilson, and to request him to arrange a conference with the steel people. When President Wilson was informed of the true situation in the steel industry, that all the men were asking for was a conference at which to present their grievances--absolutely no other demand having been made upon Mr. Gary--he immediately admitted the justice of the committee's position. He stated frankly that he was entirely out of sympathy with employers who refused to meet with representatives of their workers for the purpose of bargaining collectively on labor conditions, and he definitely agreed to use all his influence privately to have Mr. Gary alter his decision and to arrange the conference. In order to give him a chance to work the unions withheld the setting of the strike date. A week passed, with no word from the President. Conditions in the steel industry were frightful. The companies, realizing the importance of striking the first blow, were discharging men by the thousands. The unions could wait no longer. They had to move or be annihilated. On September 4, the National Committee met and sent to President Wilson, who was on his ill-starred trip through the West advocating the League of Nations, the following telegram, in the meantime calling a meeting of the Presidents of all the international unions co-operating in the steel campaign to consider the critical situation: Washington, September 4, 1919 Honorable Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Indianapolis, Ind., _en route_ The Executive Committee representing the various international unions in the iron and steel industry met today to consider the awful situation which exists in many of the iron and steel industry centres. The coercion, the brutality employed to prevent men and unions from meeting in halls engaged, upon private property, in the open air, the thuggery of the Corporations' emissaries, the wholesale discharge of numbers of men for no other reason than the one assigned, that they have become members of the unions, have brought about a situation such that it is exceedingly difficult to withhold or restrain the indignation of the men and the resistance they declare it is their purpose to present. The Executive Committee, relying upon the case as presented to you last week and your earnest declaration to endeavor to bring about a conference for the honorable and peaceful adjustment of the matters in controversy, have thus far been enabled to prevail upon the men not to engage in a general strike. We cannot now affirm how much longer we will be able to exert that influence; but we urge you, in the great work in which you are engaged, to give prompt attention to this most vital of issues; for if the men can no longer be restrained it is impossible to foretell what the future may hold in store for an industrial crisis which may ensue and frustrate the project which you have worked at for a peaceful and honorable adjustment of industrial affairs in our country. A meeting of all the Presidents of the twenty-four international unions in the steel industry has been called to take place on Tuesday, September 9th in Washington, D. C. to take such action as they deem necessary. May we not have your reply on or before that time as to whether or not a conference with the Steel Corporation is possible. SAMUEL GOMPERS JOHN FITZPATRICK D. J. DAVIS WM. HANNON EDW. J. EVANS WM. Z. FOSTER The international presidents met on September 9. A telegram from Secretary Tumulty was laid before them, to the effect that President Wilson had not yet been successful in arranging the requested conference; that he was somewhat discouraged, but was continuing his efforts. The general opinion took this to be final, that Mr. Gary had definitely refused the President's request. But in order to make assurance doubly sure and to convince all involved that everything possible had been done to avert a break, the following further telegram was sent to Mr. Wilson, over the objections of some who felt it was practically asking him to declare the strike: Washington, September 9, 1919 Honorable Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, St. Paul Hotel, St. Paul, Minnesota Secretary Tumulty's telegram of September fifth to Samuel Gompers was read today at the meeting of the presidents of the twenty-four international unions in the steel industry, and given the most careful consideration. After a long and earnest discussion of it the undersigned were instructed to wire you requesting a more definite statement as to the possibility of an early conference being arranged by your efforts between the heads of the United States Steel Corporation and of the unions involved. Large numbers of men are being discharged and otherwise discriminated against and abused, and it will be impossible to hold our men much longer from defending themselves by striking unless some genuine relief is vouchsafed them. Our meeting will remain in session here for forty-eight hours awaiting your reply before taking final action. Please send answer to John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of National Committee, American Federation of Labor Building, Washington, D. C. JOHN FITZPATRICK M. F. TIGHE WM. HANNON WM. Z. FOSTER On the day following Secretary Tumulty's answer was laid on the table before the meeting, practically repeating what his first telegram had said. It held out no definite hope for a conference, neither did it suggest any alternative.[10] Clearly the unions had to act. President Gompers and others had warned of the great power of the Steel Trust and the eagerness with which the employing class would unite to give Organized Labor a heavy blow in the steel industry. The union representatives keenly realized the gravity of the situation and their heavy responsibilities. It was in this frame of mind that they could see no honorable way out of the difficulty except to strike. Accordingly President Tighe of the Amalgamated Association moved that the strike be set for September 22. His motion was unanimously adopted. The die was cast. After telegraphing the strike order broadcast, the union men scattered to their respective posts to organize the walkout. Then came a bolt from the blue. Next morning the newspapers carried a telegram from Secretary Tumulty to President Gompers requesting that the strike be held off until after the Industrial conference, beginning October 6. The committeemen could hardly believe their eyes, because the telegram they had received from Mr. Tumulty had said absolutely nothing about postponing the strike. Besides, since the President had asked Mr. Gary privately to grant his workers the conference they were seeking, and so gave him an opportunity to decline without publicity, it was incredible that he would publicly make a request upon the unions which involved their destruction, and which they would have openly to refuse, thus putting them in a bad light and giving their opponents a powerful weapon. But all doubts were set at rest by this communication from Mr. Gompers: AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR Washington, D. C., Sept. 11, 1919 Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Chairman, National Committee For Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, Washington, D. C. _Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick_: This morning I received a telegram as follows: Dickinson, N. Dak., Sept. 10, 1919 Hon. Samuel Gompers, President American Federation of Labor, Washington, D. C. In view of the difficulty of arranging any present satisfactory mediation with regard to the steel situation, the President desires to urge upon the steel men, through you, the wisdom and desirability of postponing action of any kind until after the forthcoming Industrial conference at Washington. J. P. TUMULTY. You are aware of the reason which prevented my participating further, the past few days, in the conferences with the representatives of the various national and international unions involved in this question. In transmitting the above to you (which I am doing by long distance telephone from New York) I want to express the hope that something can be done without injury to the workers and their cause to endeavor to conform to the wish expressed by the President; that even though the corporations may endeavor to provoke the men to action, that they may hold themselves in leash and under self-control, consciously demonstrating their stamina and willingness to abide by the justice of their cause and that their rights will be finally protected. Fraternally yours, SAMUEL GOMPERS, President American Federation of Labor Upon the receipt of this letter a meeting of the National Committee was at once called to consider the situation. And a serious one it was indeed. Before the Committee lay two requests to postpone the strike; one from President Wilson, clear and categoric; the other from Mr. Gompers, qualified by the hope that it could be done "without injury to the workers and their cause." To deny these powerful requests meant to be accused, in the first instance, of hasty and disloyal action, and in the second, of practical revolt against the officials of the A. F. of L. It would be to start the strike under the handicap of an unduly hostile public opinion. Yet to grant them meant ruin complete. Conditions in the steel industry were desperate. Everywhere the employers were making vigorous attacks on the unions. From Chicago, Youngstown, Newcastle, Steubenville, Wheeling, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and many other points large numbers of men were being thrown out of work because of their union membership. Johnstown was a bleeding wound. In the towns along the Monongahela river thousands of discharged men walked the streets, and their number was daily being heavily increased. In the face of this situation it would have been folly to have the steel workers abandon their strike preparations, even if it could have been done. It was like asking one belligerent to ground arms in the face of its onrushing antagonist. The employers gave not the slightest sign of a truce. Long before anything could be hoped for from the Industrial conference, they would have cut the unions to pieces, had the workers been foolish enough to give them the opportunity. This the steel workers were determined not to do. Immediately after the story got abroad that the strike might be postponed, they met in their unions and notified the National Committee that they were going to strike on September 22, regardless of anything that body might do short of getting them definite concessions and protection. Many long weary months they had waited patiently, under the urgings of the organizers, for a chance to redress their grievances. And now when they had built their organizations; taken their strike vote; received their strike call and were ready to deliver a blow at their oppressors, the opportunity of a generation was at hand, and they were not going to see it lost. They would not postpone indefinitely, and in all likelihood break up altogether, the movement they had suffered so much to build, in the vague hope that the Industrial conference, which they had no guarantee would even consider their case, and which was dominated by their arch enemies, Gary and Rockefeller, would in some distant day do something for them. Their determination to have the strike go on was intensified by the constant ding-donging of the Steel Trust propaganda in the mills to the effect that the A. F. of L. unions were cowardly and corrupt; that they would make no fight for the steel workers, and that a postponement of the strike would be proof positive that they had sold out. Under such circumstances the workers could not consent to the withholding of the strike. Practically all the steel districts in the country solemnly warned the National Committee that they would strike on September 22, in spite of any postponement that was not based on positive assurances that justice would be done. The control of the situation was in the hands of the rank and file. The field secretaries and organizers present at the National Committee meeting, men intimately acquainted with actual conditions, emphasized the impossibility of postponement. Many of them, among whom were some of the best and most conservative men in the whole campaign, declared that an attempt to delay the strike, merely upon the strength of possible action by the Industrial conference, would result in the swift destruction of the movement under the worst of circumstances. The workers would be bound to consider it a gigantic sell-out and to act accordingly. As for themselves, they declared they would have nothing to do with it, and would be compelled to present their resignations the minute a motion to postpone prevailed. Dozens of them took this stand. To the National Committee two courses were open: (1) It could postpone the strike with the absolute certainty that it would break the steel movement by so doing, because the strike would have gone ahead anyway in a series of wild, uncontrolled, leaderless revolts, waged in an atmosphere fatally charged with accusations of cowardice and graft. In all probability the A. F. of L. would suffer one of the worst defeats in its history, and gain such an evil reputation among the steel workers that it could not approach them for many years, if ever, with an organization project. Or (2) it could go ahead with the strike, with a fighting chance to win. In any event, even if the strike were lost, it would be through a clean fight and the honor of the movement would be preserved. The steel workers would be convinced that everything possible had been done for them. Thus the unions would retain their confidence and be enabled to re-organize them at an early date. Between certain, ignominious defeat and possible victory, or at the worst honorable failure, the National Committee had only one choice. Practically all the delegates present were of the opinion that the strike had to go on. But some had to wire their international offices to cancel their instructions to vote for postponement. On September 18, D. J. Davis, Assistant President of the Amalgamated Association moved that September 22 be reaffirmed as the strike date. This was carried.[11] Then the Conference Committee addressed a long letter to President Wilson, explaining in detail the situation as the union men saw it and outlining the reasons for not postponing the strike. The letter closed as follows: Mr. President, delay is no longer possible. We have tried to find a way but cannot. We regret that for the first time your call upon Organized Labor cannot meet with favorable response. Believe us the fault is not ours. If delay were no more than delay, even at the cost of loss of membership in our organizations, we would urge the same to the fullest of our ability, notwithstanding the men are set for an immediate strike. But delay here means the surrender of all hope. This strike is not at the call of the leaders, but that of the men involved. Win or lose, the strike is inevitable and will continue until industrial despotism will recede from the untenable position now occupied by Mr. Gary. We have faith in your desire to bring about a conference and hope you will succeed therein. We fully understand the hardships that meanwhile will follow and the reign of terror that unfair employers will institute. The burden falls upon the men, but the great responsibility therefor rests upon the other side. After agreeing that all settlements made with the employers should cover all trades, and sending a letter to the independent steel companies inviting conferences with them, the meeting adjourned and the organizers and delegates left to make good the following strike call, of which 200,000 copies, in seven languages, had been scattered broadcast throughout the entire steel industry: STRIKE SEPTEMBER 22, 1919 The workers in the iron and steel mills and blast furnaces, not working under union agreements, are requested not to go to work on September 22, and to refuse to resume their employment until such time as the demands of the organizations have been conceded by the steel corporations. The union committees have tried to arrange conferences with the heads of the steel companies in order that they might present our legitimate demands for the right of collective bargaining, higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. But the employers have steadfastly refused to meet them. It therefore becomes our duty to support the committees' claims, in accordance with the practically unanimous strike vote, by refusing to work in the mills on or after September 22, until such time as our just demands have been granted. And in our stoppage of work let there be no violence. The American Federation of Labor has won all its great progress by peaceful and legal methods. IRON AND STEEL WORKERS! A historic decision confronts us. If we will but stand together now like men our demands will soon be granted and a golden era of prosperity will open for us in the steel industry. But if we falter and fail to act this great effort will be lost, and we will sink back into a miserable and hopeless serfdom. The welfare of our wives and children is at stake. Now is the time to insist upon our rights as human beings. STOP WORK SEPTEMBER 22 NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ORGANIZING IRON AND STEEL WORKERS. FOOTNOTES: [10] Out of courtesy to the President the National Committee has never made public these telegrams. [11] After he had been made fully acquainted with the situation Mr. Gompers said before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, investigating the steel strike: (Hearings, page 109) "Notwithstanding what any of the officials of the trade unions would have done, regardless of what the Committee would have done, the strike would have occurred anyway, a haphazard, loose, disjointed, unorganized strike, without leadership, without consultation, without advice. It was simply a choice whether the strike would take place under the guidance and leadership of men who have proven their worth, or under the leadership of some one who might spring up for the moment." VII THE STORM BREAKS THE STEEL TRUST ARMY--CORRUPT OFFICIALDOM--CLAIRTON--McKEESPORT --THE STRIKE--SHOWING BY DISTRICTS--A TREASONABLE ACT--GARY GETS HIS ANSWER As the memorable twenty-second of September approached a lurid and dramatic setting developed for the beginning of the great steel strike. Everywhere the steel companies made gigantic preparations to crush their aspiring workers back to slavery. The newspapers shrieked revolution. The whole country was a-tremble with anxiety and apprehension. Pittsburgh was the storm center. There, in its stronghold, the Steel Trust went ahead with strike-breaking measures unprecedented in industrial history. It provisioned and fortified its great mills and furnaces, surrounding them with stockades topped off with heavily charged electric wires, and bristling with machine guns. It assembled whole armies of gunmen. Brute force was to be used in breaking the solidarity of the workers. Said the New York _World_ editorially September 22: "In anticipation of the steel strike, what do we see? In the Pittsburgh district thousands of deputy sheriffs have been recruited at several of the larger plants. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary has been concentrated at commanding points. At other places the authorities have organized bodies of war veterans as special officers. At McKeesport alone 3,000 citizens have been sworn in as special police deputies subject to instant call. It is as though preparations were made for actual war." Along the Monongahela river from Pittsburgh to Clairton, a distance of twenty miles, there were not less than 25,000 armed men in the service of the Steel Trust. In the entire Pittsburgh district, practically all the petty parasites who prey upon the steel workers--the professional and small business men--had been sworn in as deputies and furnished firearms to defend their great overlord, to whom they all do unquestioning service no matter how dirty the job. During the strike Sheriff Haddock of Allegheny county stated to the Senate Committee investigating the strike that there were 5,000 deputy sheriffs and 5,000 strikers in his jurisdiction, or one deputy for each striker. His totals should have been multiplied by at least ten in each case; 50,000 deputies and 50,000 strikers would have been well below the mark. It is noteworthy that although the danger of an uprising in the Pittsburgh district was widely advertised no appeal was made for troops, nor was there even any talk of an appeal. The reason was that the Steel Trust had a vast army of its own, officered by its own officials, and it needed no outside help. Western Pennsylvania is controlled body and soul by the Steel Trust. The whole district has the psychology of a company-owned town. All authority centers in the steel industry. From there practically every institution takes its orders. Local governmental agencies are hardly more than public service departments of the Steel Trust. Their officials, city, county, state and federal, obey the mandates of the steel magnates just about as readily and naturally as do the superintendents and mill bosses. No less than the latter they felt it to be their duty to break the strike by whatever means their masters told them to use. With the approach of the strike these lackey officials hastened _en masse_ to the aid of the Steel Trust. Sheriff Haddock, besides swearing in an army of guards and turning them over to the steel companies to carry out their plan of terrorism, issued a flaming proclamation practically setting up martial law and making it a riotous assembly for three steel workers to meet together. Next day, September 21, the organizers tried to hold a meeting in North Clairton--with the Burgess' permission, and at a place on the public commons especially set aside by the authorities for union meetings. About 3,000 steel workers gathered to hear the speakers. Everything was going as peacefully as a Sunday school picnic, when suddenly a troop of State Constabulary appeared upon the scene, and without a word of warning, rode full tilt into the crowd, clubbing and trampling men and women indiscriminately. They tore down and threw in the mud the American flag floating above the speakers' stand. Scores were arrested (including organizers J. B. Etchison and P. H. Brogan) and held for heavy bonds on charges of rioting.[12] Many were seriously injured, but fearing to report their cases to the doctors and thus court arrest, as the latter were nearly all deputies, they cured themselves as best they could. This crying outrage was perpetrated under the authority of the Sheriff's proclamation. It was endorsed and lauded by Governor Sproul, than whom the Steel Trust has no more willing champion. At the same hour as the Clairton outrage a similar attack was made on the workers at Glassport, adjoining McKeesport. Not being allowed to meet at the latter city the organizers had leased a plot of ground in Glassport and had been holding regular meetings there, with the full sanction of the local authorities. For the meeting in question they had an official permit. But just as it was about to begin the State Constabulary broke it up in true Cossack fashion, almost riding down the Burgess in so doing. They arrested all they could seize. These were held as rioters under bail of from $1,000 to $3,000 each. The venal Pittsburgh papers screamed about the outbreaks that had been crushed by the gallant State police, and praised them for their bravery in facing the "rioting mobs." Despite all these terroristic methods the Steel Trust could not break the will of its workers. On September 22 they struck throughout the entire industry with a discipline and universality that will be remembered so long as steel is made in America. On Tuesday, the twenty-third, 304,000 had quit their posts in the mills and furnaces. All week their ranks were augmented until by September 30, there were 365,600 on strike. It was a magnificent effort for freedom, and twice as big a strike as this country had ever known. By cities and districts, the numbers of strikers were as follows: Pittsburgh 25,000 Homestead 9,000 Braddock 10,000 Rankin 5,000 Clairton 4,000 Duquesne & McKeesport 12,000 Vandergrift 4,000 Brackenridge 5,000 New Kensington 1,100 Apollo 1,500 Leechburg 3,000 Donora & Monessen 12,000 Johnstown 18,000 Coatesville 4,000 Youngstown district, including Youngstown, E. Youngstown, Struthers, Hubbard, Niles, Canton, Alliance, Massillon, Warren, Farrell, Newcastle, Sharon, Butler, etc. 70,000 Wheeling district 15,000 Cleveland 25,000 Steubenville district 12,000 Chicago district, including Gary, Joliet, DeKalb, South Chicago, Indiana Harbor, East Chicago, Hammond, Evanston, Sterling, Peoria, Milwaukee, etc. 90,000 Buffalo district 12,000 Pueblo 6,000 Birmingham 2,000 5 Bethlehem Plants 20,000 ------- Total 365,600 The shut-down was almost complete. Throughout the country the industry was stricken with paralysis. On an average the strike was at least 90 per cent. effective. In the great Chicago district practically all the men struck, hamstringing the big plants in the various steel towns of that section, Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago, etc. The holding of the organizations in this district for a year, in the face of Steel Trust opposition, by the organizers under Secretary Evans, and later, De Young, was one of the most notable achievements of the whole campaign. When the pent-up force was finally released it swept the district like a flood, leaving hardly a wheel turning anywhere. Youngstown is another place where great difficulties had been encountered in the organizing work, the workers being deeply discouraged by recently lost local strikes, and the authorities at some points so hostile that it was impossible to hold meetings in the strategic places. But so widespread was the discontent at the miserable working conditions, and so well had the district crew of organizers under Secretaries McCadden and Hammersmark done their work that when the strike clarion sounded, the masses of steel workers responded almost to a man. Trust plants and "independents" alike had to shut down. The steel working population of the entire Mahoning Valley went on holiday. It was a clean walkout. In the outer Youngstown district, as established by the National Committee system, the companies, by the use of desperate tactics, succeeded in keeping some of their men at work; in Sharon, Farrell and Newcastle probably twenty per cent refused to obey the strike call. But in Canton and Massillon, John Olchon and the other organizers brought all the important mills to a dead stop. Without exception, the enormous Cleveland mills and furnaces shut down tight. In Johnstown the Cambria Company was so hard hit that, swallowing its pride, it had to ask the hated unions for a detachment of workers to protect its plants. The Buffalo district men struck almost 100 per cent., after a bitter organizing campaign and an eight months' free speech fight. The Wheeling and Steubenville districts' steel mills and blast furnaces were abandoned altogether by their crews. In Coatesville and Birmingham, the response was poor, in the first locality because of insufficient organization; and in the second because of discouragement due to a lost local strike the year before. But in far away Colorado, the steel workers, hearkening to the voice of freedom abroad in the land, expressed their contempt for the company-union slavery of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., by tieing up every department in his big Pueblo mills. In the immediate Pittsburgh district, though here more strenuously opposed by the Steel Trust, the strike ranged from 75 to 85 per cent. effective. That it did not go as strong as other districts was purely because of the denial, by the companies and the authorities, of the workers' rights to meet and to organize. In the "Black Valley" section of the district, comprising the towns lying along the Allegheny river, Apollo, Vandergrift, Leechburg, Brackenridge, Natrona and New Kensington, and notorious as the scene of the brutal murder of organizer Mrs. Fannie Sellins, the strike went 90 per cent. or better; but in the Monongahela river section it was not so good. Of the steel towns in that district, Donora and Monessen took the lead with a 100 per cent. strike. Due to the terrorism prevailing exact figures were almost impossible to get for the other towns, but according to the best information procurable they averaged about as follows; Clairton 95, Braddock 90, Homestead 80, Rankin 85, McKeesport 70, and Duquesne 50 per cent. In Pittsburgh itself all the larger mills and furnaces, except those of the Jones and Laughlin Company, either suspended operations altogether or lost heavily of their employees during the first two days of the strike. The Jones and Laughlin men had been profoundly discouraged by a lost strike two years previously, and had responded poorly to the organizers' efforts. But when they saw the magnitude of the strike they took heart somewhat, and by strenuous efforts in a rapid fire campaign, the organizers had at least 60 per cent. of them on strike by the end of the first week. In the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Company the strike did not become effective until September 29. The cause was to be found in local conditions. In the early spring of 1918, before the National Committee began its campaign, ruthless exploitation by the company had resulted in a strike of machine shop employees. The National War Labor Board settled the strike, erecting a shop organization to handle grievances. In the meantime the National Committee came into the field and began active operations. Up till this time the organized movement, led by David Williams and Patrick Duffy, had been confined principally to the Machinists, Electrical workers and a few other skilled trades; but now it spread to the main body of the employees. To head it off the company proposed to the National Committee that a Rockefeller union be set up in the plants. Naturally this was unacceptable. Then they offered to sign an agreement covering all their shipyard employees if the organization of their steel plants was given up, feeling no doubt that the shipyard boom was only temporary. For the National Committee, John Fitzpatrick spurned this shameful trade, and the organization campaign went on--with the shipyard men getting their agreement later on just the same. Technically the employees of the Bethlehem Company should have struck under the first strike call, as they had no union agreement; but being tied up with futile negotiations under their "collective bargaining" arrangement, they did not get out until the twenty-ninth. When they did strike the response was not so good. A fair average for the plants in South Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Lebanon and Sparrows' Point would be a 50 per cent. strike. On the whole the strike affected practically the entire industry, seventy important steel centres being involved. About the only mills of consequence to escape it were those located at Midland, Woodlawn, Lorain and Duluth. And the only reason for this was lack of sufficient organizers to cover them. It is noteworthy that the strike followed strictly the lines of organization. In hardly a single instance did the unorganized go out spontaneously, even though they had previously been clamoring for the unions to help them. This tends to show how completely the steel companies dominated their unorganized workers and how hard it was for the latter to act in concert. For the most part the great walkout was concentrated on the smelting and rolling branches of the steel industry. It had been the original intention to make the movement thoroughly industrial, taking in all the workers from those who mine the coal and iron to those who transfer the finished products to the railroad lines. But insufficient resources compelled the modification of this program, and forced the unions to confine their work principally to the blast furnaces and rolling mills. However, where the company mines or fabricating works lay close to the general plants, or were part of them, the essentially industrial character of the campaign manifested itself and these departments were organized along with the rest. In various places, including Gary, Chicago, Homestead, etc., bridge, car, and other fabricating shops were an integral part of the drive. The iron miners working close in to Birmingham responded to some extent, but a big defeat of the local metal trades in the mills a couple of years previously held them back from making a strong demonstration. The coal miners struck in several places. In Johnstown, 2,000 of them working in the Cambria Steel Company's mines organized during the campaign, became affiliated with the local mill workers' council, and walked out 100 per cent. on the historic twenty-second of September. Although the United States Steel Corporation was recognized as the arch enemy of the unions, the strike was not directed against it alone. Every iron and steel mill and furnace in the country not working under union agreements was included. This meant at least 95 per cent. of the industry, because the only agreements of any consequence were between some of the smaller companies and the Amalgamated Association. A number of these concerns were affected also, their agreements relating only to skilled workers, and the plants having to close when the laborers struck. This occurred quite extensively in the Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh districts. Considering the large number of them involved and their traditions of isolated action, the unions displayed reasonably good solidarity in going "over the top" against the Steel Trust. The battle line was far from perfect, however. Much harm was done the morale of the strikers by local unions here and there that were under the sway of ignorant blockheads or designing tools of the bosses, refusing to recognize the National Committee's strike call and insisting upon getting instructions from their own headquarters, meanwhile scabbing it in the mills. And the worst of it was that sometimes it was difficult, or even impossible to have the necessary instructions issued. Far more serious than this, however, was the action of the executive officers of the International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers. Just as the strike was about to begin President Snellings and Secretary Comerford sharply condemned it by letter and through the press, urging their men to stay at work upon the flimsy pretext that the President's industrial conference would attend to their interests. Roused to indignation by this cold-blooded course, the local unions of engineers, almost without exception, repudiated their international misleaders and stuck with the rest of the steel workers. After President Gompers had been quoted in the newspapers as pledging the support of the A. F. of L. to the strike (two days after it started) and Labor generally had shown its determination to stick by the steel workers, the officers of the Engineers' international were compelled to publicly endorse the strike. But throughout its duration they nevertheless privately encouraged their strategically situated tradesmen to return to work, thus doing incalculable harm when the strikers had begun to weaken a little. This plain case of official scabbery was inspired by a jurisdictional dispute between the engineers and the electrical workers over the disposition to be made of electrical crane-men signed up in the campaign. Because they could not have their unreasonable way in the matter, the officials of the engineers deliberately knifed the strike and lent aid and comfort to the bitterest opponents of Organized Labor on this planet. To such extremes will union men go in internecine wars over trade demarcations. But in spite of opposition, blundering and treachery, the steel workers had spoken. Mr. Gary was answered. Previous to the strike, he declared that the unions represented only an insignificant minority of his men, the great bulk of his working force being satisfied. He compelled the Committee to show its credentials. Result: 365,600 steel workers laid down their tools. This estimated total has never been disputed by the steel companies. Here and there, in some individual town or district, they pointed out a figure occasionally as being excessive; but although importuned by newspaper men to do so, they never ventured to issue a statement of the number on strike at all points. The reason was that they feared to print the grand total which even their lying press bureau would have to admit. Word came to the Committee from reliable sources that the steel manufacturers considered the union figure well within the real total. While not accurately ascertainable, the number of Mr. Gary's employees actually taking part in the strike may be closely approximated. Mr. Gary stated to the Senate Committee that the total number employed by the United States Steel Corporation in the departments affected by the strike was 201,065. Against this number should be checked off about half of the total number of strikers, or 182,500. This is based upon the theory that the official U. S. Steel Corporation plants form approximately 50 per cent. of the industry, and that the strike was just as effective against them as against those of any other company. It is not asserted that these figures are absolutely accurate; but they will serve to indicate that the claim of a 90 per cent. strike in the plants of the Steel Corporation is a fair one. It is exceedingly doubtful if as many as 10 per cent. of Mr. Gary's employees remained at their posts and failed to heed the strike call. Fully 125,000 of them were members of the unions before the strike started, and most of the rest would have been also, had they dared brave the anger of their bosses. The great steel strike thoroughly exposed the hypocrisies of Mr. Gary and his ilk that in some mysterious way labor policies and conditions in the steel industry depend upon the wishes of the body of the workers. It made plain that in the autocratic system now prevailing the democratic principles of majority and minority do not enter. It is a case pure and simple of the absolute sway of property rights over human rights. A handful of social parasites hidden away in Wall street, with no other interest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle arbitrarily the vital questions of wages, hours and working conditions, while the enormous mass of the workers, actual producers whose very lives are involved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how bitter their grievances, when they raise their voice to ask redress, they are discharged, blacklisted, starved, beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the knee again and yield to the will of their industrial masters. FOOTNOTES: [12] In this connection occurred one of the finest incidents in the strike: Wm. J. Brennan, an able, conscientious attorney of Pittsburgh, and one of the counsel who defended the Homestead strikers in 1892, went to Clairton to get the "rioters" released on bonds. But such a state of terror existed that no one dared to go their bail. Thereupon, Mr. Brennan himself, without knowing a single one of the defendants, but smarting under the injustice of it all, pledged his entire property holdings, amounting to $88,000, to get them set free. VIII GARYISM RAMPANT THE WHITE TERROR--CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DENIED--UNBREAKABLE SOLIDARITY--FATHER KAZINCY--THE COSSACKS--SCIENTIFIC BARBARITY--PROSTITUTED COURTS--SERVANTS REWARDED It was the misfortune of the steel strike to occur in the midst of the post-war reaction, which still persists unabated, and which constitutes the most shameful page in American history. Ours are days when the organized employers, inspired by a horrible fear of the onward sweep of revolution in Europe and the irresistible advance of the labor movement in this country, are robbing the people overnight of their most precious rights, the fruits of a thousand years of struggle. And the people, not yet recovered from war hysteria and misled by a corrupt press, cannot perceive the outrage. They even glory in their degradation. Free speech, free press, free assembly, as we once knew these rights, are now things of the past. What poor rudiments of them remain depend upon the whims of a Burleson, or the rowdy element of the American Legion. Hundreds of idealists, guilty of nothing more than a temperate expression of their honest views, languish in prison serving sentences so atrocious as to shock the world--although Europe has long since released its war and political prisoners. Working class newspapers are raided, denied the use of the mails and suppressed. Meetings are broken up by Chamber of Commerce mobs or thugs in public office. The right of asylum is gone--the infamous Palmer is deporting hundreds who dare to hold views different from his. The right of the workers to organize is being systematically curtailed; and crowning shame of all, workingmen can no longer have legislative representatives of their own choosing. In a word, America, from being the most forward-looking, liberty-loving country in the world, has in two short years become one of the most reactionary. We in this country are patiently enduring tyranny that would not be tolerated in England, France, Italy, Russia or Germany. Our great war leaders promised us the New Freedom; they have given us the White Terror. Realizing full well the reactionary spirit of the times, the steel companies proceeded safely to extremes to crush the steel strike, dubbed by them an attempt at violent revolution. To accomplish their end they stuck at nothing. One of their most persistent and determined efforts was to deprive the steel workers of their supposedly inalienable right to meet and talk together. Throughout the strike, whenever and wherever they could find municipal or court officials willing to do their bidding, the steel barons abolished the rights of free speech and free assembly, so precious to strikers. Few districts escaped this evil, but as usual, Pennsylvania felt the blow earliest and heaviest. Hardly had the strike started when the oily Schwab prohibited meetings in Bethlehem; the Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies did the same at Natrona, jailing organizer J. McCaig for "inciting to riot"; in the Sharon-Farrell district the steel workers, denied their constitutional rights in their home towns, had to march several miles over into Ohio (America they called it) in order to hold their meetings. Along the Monongahela river the shut-down was complete. Following Sheriff Haddock's proclamation and the "riots" at Clairton and Glassport, it was only a few days until the city and borough officials had completely banned strike meetings in all the territory from Charleroi to Pittsburgh. The unions' free-speech, free-assembly victory of the past summer was instantly cancelled. For forty-one miles through the heart of America's steel industry, including the important centers of Monessen, Donora, Clairton, Wilson, Glassport, McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, etc., not a meeting of the steel workers could be held. Even in Pittsburgh itself meetings were prohibited everywhere except in Labor Temple. The steel-collared city officials never could quite muster the gall to close Labor's own building--or perhaps because it is so far from the mills and so poorly situated for meetings they felt it to be of no use to the strikers. Thus the Steel Trust gave its workers a practical demonstration of what is meant by the phrase, "making the world safe for democracy." Not only were mass meetings forbidden, but so also were regular business meetings under the charters of the local unions. To test out this particular usurpation, Attorney W. H. Rubin, then in charge of the strike's legal department and possessed of a keener faith in Pennsylvania justice than the Strike committee had, keener probably than he himself now has, prayed the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas to enjoin Mayor Babcock and other city officials from interfering with a local union of the Amalgamated Association holding its business meetings on the south side of the city where its members lived and where several large mills are located. At the hearing the Mayor and Chief of Police freely admitted that there had been no violence in the strike, and even complimented the men on their behavior, but they feared there might be trouble and so forbade the meetings. The honorable Judges Ford and Shafer agreed with them and denied the writ, saying among other things: It is the duty of the Mayor and Police Department to preserve the peace, and it must be sometimes necessary for that purpose to prevent the congregating in one place of large numbers of people such as might get beyond the control of the Police Department, and it must be left to the reasonable discretion of the officers charged with keeping the peace when such intervention is made. In other words, the sacred right of the workers to meet together depends upon the arbitrary will of any politician who may get into the office controlling the permits. Shortly before Judges Ford and Shafer handed down this noble conception of free assembly, Judge Kennedy of the Allegheny County Court, ruling on the appeal of Mother Jones, J. L. Beaghen, J. M. Patterson and Wm. Z. Foster in the Duquesne free speech cases of several weeks prior to the strike, had this to say: It cannot be questioned that the object of these meetings--increasing the membership in the American Federation of Labor--is a perfectly lawful one, but the location of the meetings in the Monongahela valley, built up as it is for mile after mile of an unbroken succession of iron and steel mills, and thickly populated with iron workers, many of whom obviously are not members of this association, and among whom, on both sides, there are, in all probability, some who upon the occasion of meetings such as these purported to be, might through excitement precipitate serious actions of which the consequences could not be foreseen and might be disastrous, presents questions which are sufficient to cause the court to hesitate before interfering with the exercise of discretion on the part of the Mayor in refusing to permit such meetings at this time. The Court is still hesitating to interfere with Mayor Crawford's tyranny, and the defendants had to pay $100 and costs each for trying to hold a meeting on ground they had leased. One would think that the remedy in the case conjured out of thin air by the learned judge (for in the thousands of meetings held in the steel campaign he cannot point to one incident of violence) would be for the local authorities to provide ample police protection to insure order. But no, in Pennsylvania the thing to do is to set aside the constitutional rights of the workers. Would such action be taken in the case of members of a Chamber of commerce? Wouldn't the governor, rather, order out the state troops, if necessary, to uphold their right of assembly? In the hope of getting some relief, or at the least some publicity about the unbearable situation, a committee of 18 local labor men, representing the largest trade unions in Western Pennsylvania, went to Washington and presented to the Allegheny County congressional delegation a petition expressing contempt for the judges and other officials in their part of the State and asking Congress to give them the justice these men refused to mete out. Surely, the Allegheny County congressmen were exactly the ones to bring the Steel Trust to time. With a grand flourish they introduced a resolution into the House calling for an investigation--then they forgot all about it. The official tyranny and outlawry along the Monongahela was so bad that the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor had to voice its protest. On November 1-2 it held a special convention in Pittsburgh, attended by several hundred delegates. A resolution was adopted demanding that protection be given the rights of the workers, and that if the authorities failed to extend this protection, "the Executive Council of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor shall issue a call for a State-wide strike, when in its judgment it is necessary to compel respect for law and the restoration of liberty as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Pennsylvania." For this action President Jas. H. Maurer of the Federation was hotly assailed and even menaced with lynching by the lawless business interests. By some inexplicable mental twist the ex-union man Burgess of Homestead eventually allowed the unions to hold one mass meeting each week--to this day the only ones permitted in the forty-one miles of Monongahela steel towns. They were under the supervision of the State police. At each meeting a half dozen of these Cossacks, in full uniform, would sit upon the platform as censors. Only English could be spoken. As the saying was, all the organizers were permitted to talk about was the weather. When one touched on a vital strike phase a Cossack would yell at him, "Hey, cut that out! You're through, you--! Don't ever come back here any more." And he never could speak there again. Judging from past experiences the strike in the Pittsburgh district should have been impossible under such hard circumstances. With little or no opportunity to meet for mutual encouragement and enlightenment, the strikers, theoretically, should have been soon discouraged and driven back to work. But they were saved by their matchless solidarity, bred of a deep faith in the justice of their cause. In the black, Cossack-ridden Monongahela towns there were thousands of strikers who were virtually isolated, who never attended a meeting during the entire strike and seldom if ever saw an organizer or read a strike bulletin, yet they fought on doggedly for three and one-half months, buoyed up by a boundless belief in the ultimate success of their supreme effort. Each felt himself bound to stay away from the mills, come weal or come woe, regardless of what the rest did. These were mainly the despised foreigners, of course, but their splendid fighting qualities were a never-ending revelation and inspiration to all connected with the strike. Through the dark night of oppression a bright beacon of liberty gleamed from Braddock. There the heroic Slavish priest, Reverend Adelbert Kazincy, pastor of St. Michel's Roman Catholic church, bade defiance to the Steel Trust and all its minions. He threw open his church to the strikers, turned his services into strike meetings, and left nothing undone to make the men hold fast. The striking steel workers came to his church from miles around, Protestants as well as Catholics. The neighboring clergymen who ventured to oppose the strike lost their congregations,--men, women and children flocked to Father Kazincy's, and all of them stood together, as solid as a brick wall. Reverend Kazincy's attitude aroused the bitterest hostility of the steel companies. They did not dare to do him bodily violence, nor to close his church by their customary "legal" methods; but they tried everything else. Unable to get the local bishop to silence him, they threatened finally to strangle his church. To this the doughty priest replied that if they succeeded he would put a monster sign high up on his steeple: "This church destroyed by the Steel Trust," and he would see that it stayed there. When they tried to foreclose on the church mortgage, he promptly laid the matter before his heterogeneous congregation of strikers, who raised the necessary $1200 before leaving the building and next day brought in several hundred dollars more. Then the companies informed him that after the strike no more Slovaks could get work in the mills. He told them that if they tried this, he would do his level best to pull all the Slovaks out of the district (they are the bulk of the mill forces) and colonize them in the West. The promised blacklist has not yet materialized. Father Kazincy and the clergymen who worked with him, notable among whom was the Reverend Molnar, a local Slavish Lutheran minister, constituted one of the great mainstays of the strike in their district. They are men who have caught the true spirit of the lowly Nazarene. The memory of their loyal co-operation will long live green in the hearts of the Pittsburgh district steel strikers. A description of the repressive measures taken by the Steel Trust against its workers during the early period of the strikes necessarily relates almost entirely to Western Pennsylvania. With few exceptions, the other districts were in a deadlock. So tightly were the mills shut down that the companies could hardly stir. It took them several weeks to get their stricken fighting machinery in motion again. But it was different in Western Pennsylvania, in what we call the greater Pittsburgh district; that has always been the key to the whole industry, and there, from the very first, the steel companies made a bitter fight to control the situation and to break the strike. The tactics used there are typical in that they came to be universally applied as the strike grew older, the degree of their application depending upon the amount of control exercised by the Steel Trust in the several localities. To carry on the terror so well begun by the suppression of free speech and free assembly, the Steel Trust turned loose upon the devoted strikers in Western Pennsylvania the great masses of armed thugs it had been recruiting since long before the strike. These consisted of every imaginable type of armed guard, official and unofficial, except uniformed troops. There were State Constabulary, deputy sheriffs, city police, city detectives, company police, company detectives, private detectives, coal and iron police, ordinary gunmen, armed strike-breakers, vigilantes, and God knows how many others. These legions of reaction, all tarred with the same brush--a servile, mercenary allegiance to the ruthless program of the Steel Trust--vied with each other in working hardships upon the steel workers. In this shameful competition the State Constabulary stood first; for downright villainy and disregard of civil and human rights, these so-called upholders of law and order easily outdistanced all the other plug-uglies assembled by the Steel Trust. They merit our special attention. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary dates from 1905, when a law was enacted creating the Department of State Police. The force is modelled somewhat along the lines of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. The men are uniformed, mounted, heavily armed and regularly enlisted. For the most part they consist of ex-United States army men. At present they number somewhat less than the amount set by law, 415 officers and men. Their ostensible duty is to patrol the poorly policed rural sections of the state, and this they do when they have nothing else to take up their time. But their real function is to break strikes. They were organized as a result of the failure of the militia to crush the anthracite strike of 1902. Since their inception they have taken an active part in all important industrial disturbances within their jurisdiction. They are the heart's darlings of Pennsylvania's great corporations. Labor regards them with an abiding hatred. Says Mr. Jas. H. Maurer (_The Cossack_, page 3): The "English Square" is the only open-field military formation of human beings that has ever been known to repulse cavalry. All other formations go down before the resistless rush of plunging beasts mounted by armed men, mad in the fierce excitement induced by the thundering gallop of charging horses. A charge by cavalry is a storm from hell--for men on foot. A cavalry-man's power, courage and daring are strangely multiplied by the knowledge that he sits astride a swift, strong beast, willing and able to knock down a dozen men in one leap of this terrible rush. Hence, the Cossacks, the mounted militiamen--for crushing unarmed, unmounted groups of men on strike. But the State Police do not confine themselves merely to the crude business of breaking up so-called strike riots. Their forte is prevention, rather than cure. They aim to so terrorize the people that they will cower in their homes, afraid to go upon the streets to transact necessary business, much less to congregate in crowds. They play unmercifully upon every fear and human weakness. They are skilled, scientific terrorists, such as Czarist Russia never had. On a thousand occasions they beat, shot, jailed or trampled steel workers under their horses' hoofs in the manner and under the circumstances best calculated to strike terror to their hearts. In Braddock, for instance, a striker having died of natural causes, about two hundred of his fellows assembled to accompany the body to the cemetery. To stop this harmless demonstration all the State Police needed to do was to send a word to the union. But such orderly, reasonable methods do not serve their studied policy of frightfulness. Therefore, without previously informing the strikers in any way that their funeral party was obnoxious, the Cossacks laid in wait for the procession, and when it reached the heart of town, where all Braddock could get the benefit of the lesson in "Americanism," they swooped down upon it at full gallop, clubbing the participants and scattering them to the four winds. Similar outrageous attacks occurred not once, but dozens of times. Let Father Kazincy speak of his experiences: Braddock, Pa., Sept. 27, 1919 W. Z. Foster, Pittsburgh, Pa., _Dear Sir_: The pyramidal impudence of the State Constabulary in denying charges of brutal assaults perpetrated by them upon the peaceful citizens of the borough of Braddock prompts me to send a telegram to the Governor of Pennsylvania, in which I have offered to bring forth two specific cases of bestial transgression of their "calling." On Monday last at 10 A. M. my congregation, leaving church, was suddenly, without any cause whatever, attacked on the very steps of the Temple of God, by the Constables, and dispersed by the iron-hoofed Huns. Whilst dispersing indignation and a blood frenzy swayed them, a frenzy augmented by that invisible magnetic force, the murmuring, raging force of 3,000 strong men. One could feel that helpless feeling of being lifted up by some invisible force, forced, thrown against the flux of raging, elemental passion of resentment, against the Kozaks of this State. Nevertheless, it was the most magnificent display of self-control manifested by the attacked ever shown anywhere. They moved on, with heads lowered and jaws firmly set, to submit. Oh, it was great; it was magnificent. They, these husky, muscle-bound Titans of raw force walked home ... only thinking, thinking hard. Oh, only for one wink from some one, would there be a puddle of red horseblood mixed with the human kind. But no. We want to win the strike. We want to win the confidence of the public. Tuesday afternoon the little babies of No. 1 were going to the school. They loitered for the school bell to summon them. And here come Kozaks. They see the little innocents standing on the steps of the school-house, their parents on the opposite side of the street. What a splendid occasion to start the "Hunkey's" ire. Let us charge their babies--that will fetch them to an attack upon us. They did. But the "Hunkey" even at the supreme test of his cool-headedness, refused to flash his knife to save his babies from the onrush of the cruel horses' hoofs. I am relating to you, Mr. Foster, things as they happened. You may use my name in connection with your charges against the Constabulary. Sincerely yours, REV. A. KAZINCY, 416 Frazier St., Braddock, Pa. [Illustration: COSSACKS IN ACTION Brutal and unprovoked assault upon Rudolph Dressel, Homestead, Pa., Sept. 23, 1919. _Photo by International_] Governor Sproul paid no attention to Father Kazincy's protest, nor did he to a long letter from Jas. H. Maurer, reciting shocking brutalities fully authenticated by affidavits--unless it was to multiply his public endorsements and praises of the State Police. A favorite method of the Constables was to go tearing through the streets (foreign quarter), forcing pedestrians into whatever houses they happened to be passing, regardless of whether or not they lived there. Read these two typical affidavits, portraying a double outrage: STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA } COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY } SS. Before me, the undersigned authority, personally appeared John Bodnar, who being duly sworn according to law deposes and says that he lives at 542 Gold Way, Homestead, Pa., that on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1919, at about 2 P. M. he went to visit his cousin on Fifth Avenue, Homestead, Pa.: that he did in fact visit his cousin and after leaving the house of his cousin was accosted on the street by a member of the State Police who commanded him, the deponent, to enter a certain house, which house was not known to the deponent; that deponent informed said State Policeman that he, deponent, did not live in the house indicated by the State Policeman; nevertheless, the said State Policeman said, "It makes no difference whether you live in there or not, you go in there anyhow"; thereupon in fear of violence deponent did enter the said house, which house was two doors away from the house of the cousin of deponent; that after a time deponent came out of the house into which he had been ordered, thereupon the same State Policeman returned and ordered deponent to re-enter the house aforesaid and upon again being informed by deponent that he, the deponent, did not live in said house, the said State Policeman forthwith arrested the deponent and brought him to Homestead police station, and at a hearing at said station before the burgess was fined the sum of nine dollars and sixty-five cents, which amount was paid by deponent. JOHN BODNAR Sworn to and subscribed before me this first day of October, 1919. A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public. Here is what happened in the house into which Bodnar was driven: STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA } COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY } SS. Before me, the undersigned authority, personally appeared Steve Dudash, who being duly sworn according to law deposes and says that he resides at 541 E. 5th Ave., Homestead, Pa.; that on Tuesday September 23, 1919, in the afternoon of said day, his wife, Mary Dudash, was severely scalded, burned, and injured by reason of a sudden fright sustained when a State Policeman forced John Bodnar into the home of the deponent and his wife, Mary Dudash; that said Mary Dudash, the wife of the deponent, was in a very delicate condition at the time of the fright and injury complained of, caused by the State Police and that on Sunday, Sept. 28, 1919, following the date in question, namely the 23rd, the said Mary Dudash, wife of deponent, gave birth to a child; that on account of the action of the State Police in forcing John Bodnar with terror into the home of deponent and his wife, Mary Dudash, she, the said Mary Dudash, wife of the deponent, has been rendered very sick and has suffered a nervous collapse and is still suffering from the nervous shock sustained, on account of the action of the State Police, above referred to. STEVE DUDASH Sworn to and subscribed before me this first day of October, 1919 A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public. When on a mission of terrorism the first thing the State Troopers do is to get their horses onto the sidewalks, the better to ride down the pedestrians. Unbelievable though it may seem, they actually ride into stores and inner rooms. Picture the horror a foreign worker and his family, already badly frightened, at seeing a mounted policeman crashing into their kitchen. The horses are highly trained. Said an N. E. A. news dispatch, Sept. 26th, 1919: Horses of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary are trained not to turn aside, as a horse naturally will do, when a person stands in its way, but to ride straight over any one against whom they are directed. Lizzie, a splendid black mare ridden by Trooper John A. Thorp, on duty at Homestead, uses her teeth as well as her heels when in action. Her master will sometimes dismount, leaving Lizzie to hold a striker with her strong jaws, while he takes up the pursuit of others on foot. If this is thought to be an overdrawn statement, read the following affidavit: Butler, Pa., October 3, 1919 I, Jacob Sazuta, 21 Bessemer Ave., Lyndora, Pa. Commenced work for the Standard Steel Car Company in September, 1913, as laborer. About October 1916 was promoted to car fitter in the erection department; in February, 1919, was then taken and placed as a wheel roller, and I worked in this capacity until August 6th, 1919 [the date the steel strike began there]. On August 25, after receiving my pay, I was standing looking in a store window, when State Trooper No. 52 rode his horse upon me, THE HORSE STEPPING ON MY LEFT FOOT. Trooper No. 52 ordered me to move on, BUT AS THE HORSE WAS STANDING ON MY FOOT I COULD NOT MOVE. He then struck me across the head with his club, cutting a gash in the left side of my head that took the doctor three stitches to close up the wound. After hitting me with his club, he kept chasing me with his horse. JACOB SAZUTA Sworn and subscribed before me this third day of October, 1919. E. L. Cefferi, Notary Public. A few affidavits, and extracts from affidavits, taken at random from among the hundreds in possession of the National Committee, will indicate the general conditions prevailing in the several districts: Clairton, Pa. John Doban, Andy Niski and Mike Hudak were walking home along the street when the State Police came and arrested the three, making ten holes in Mike Hudak's head. Were under arrest three days. Union bailed them out, $1,000.00 each. * * * * * Butler, Pa., Oct. 3, 1919. I, James Torok, Storekeeper, 103 Standard Ave., Lyndora, Pa., On about August 15, 1919, I saw State Troopers chase a crippled man who could not run as fast as his horse, and run him down, the horse bumping him in the back with his head, knocked him down. Later three men were coming to my store to buy some things; the State Troopers ran their horses right on them and chased them home. One of the men stopped and said: "I have to go to the store," and the Trooper said: "Get to hell out of here, you sons -- ----, or I will kill you," and started after them again, and the people ran home and stayed away from the store. JAMES TOROK Sworn to and subscribed before me this 3rd day of October, 1919. E. L. Peffer, Notary Public. * * * * * Homestead, Pa. ... two State Policemen made a forcible entry into the home of deponent, Trachn Yenchenke, at 327 Third Ave, Homestead, Pa., and came to the place where deponent was asleep, kicked him and punched him, and handled him with extreme violence and took deponent without any explanation, without permitting deponent to dress, dragged him half naked from his home to waiting automobile and conveyed him against his will to the Homestead Police Station.... Fined $15.10. TRACHN YENCHENKE. * * * * * Monessen, Pa. ... Concetta Cocchiara, 8 months advanced in a state of pregnancy, was out shopping with her sister. Two State Policemen brusquely ordered them home and when they did not move fast enough to suit, followed them home, forced himself into the house and struck affiant with a stick on the head and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her from the kitchen and forced her into a patrol wagon and took her to the borough jail.... Sworn to before Henry Fusarini, Notary Public, October 11, 1919. * * * * * Newcastle, Pa. John Simpel, 1711 Morris Ave., Newcastle. On Sept. 22, about 5.30 P. M. he was walking along towards his home on Moravia Street. Hearing shots fired he stopped in the middle of the street and was instantly struck by bullets three times, one bullet going through his leg, one through his finger, while the third entered his back and went through his body, coming out through his abdomen. The shots were fired from inside the gates of the Carnegie Steel Company's plant. Mr. Simpel believes the shots were fired from a machine gun, because of their rapid succession. He fell on the ground and lay there for about ten minutes, until he was picked up by a young boy.... He is now totally disabled. He has a wife and a child and is 48 years of age.... JAS. A. NORRINGTON, Secretary. * * * * * Farrell, Pa. ... There were four men killed here, one in a quarrel in a boarding house and three by the Cossacks. Half a dozen were wounded, one of them a woman. She was shot in the back by a Cossack, while on her way to the butcher shop.... S. COATES, Secretary. Many hundreds of similar cases could be cited. In the steel strike a score were killed, almost all on the workers' side; hundreds were seriously injured, and thousands unjustly jailed. To the State Constabulary attaches the blame for a large share of this tyranny. The effect of their activities was to create a condition in Western Pennsylvania, bordering on a reign of terror. Yet it is extremely difficult to definitely fasten their crimes upon them. No matter how dastardly the outrage, when the Steel Trust cracks its whip the local authorities and leading citizens come forth with a mass of affidavits, "white-washing" the thuggery in question, and usually sufficing to cast serious doubts on the statements of the few worker witnesses courageous enough to raise their voices. What is to be thought of the following incident? Testifying before the Senate Committee investigating the strike, Mr. Gompers related how, in an organizing campaign in Monessen, Pa. several years ago, A. F. of L. organizer Jefferson D. Pierce was bludgeoned by Steel Trust thugs, receiving injuries that resulted in his death. Mr. Gompers had his facts straight. Yet the very next day, Mr. Gary, testifying before the same Committee, produced a sworn statement from the son of Mr. Pierce containing the following assertions: I was with my father the night he received his injuries in Monessen, Pa., and wish to state very emphatically that his injury was not caused by any one connected with the United States Steel Corporation. On the contrary, it was caused by a member of the I. W. W. organization from out of town, who was sent there at the time to create trouble, as the I. W. W. organization was then trying to gain control of the organizing situation. I wish again most emphatically to refute Mr. Gompers' statement that this injury was caused by some one connected with the United States Steel Corporation. Upon being questioned, Mr. Gary "thought" that Mr. Pierce is employed at Worcester, Mass. by the American Steel and Wire Company, a subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Fortunately, however, in the steel strike the photographer secured a proof of State Police brutality which the most skilled Steel Trust apologists cannot explain away--a picture of the typically vicious assault upon Mr. R. Dressel, a hotel keeper of 532 Dickson St. (foreign quarter), Homestead, Pa. I quote from the latter's statement in connection therewith: I, Rudolph Dressel, of the aforesaid address, do hereby make this statement of my own volition and without solicitation from any one. That on the 23rd day of September I was standing in front of my place of business at the aforesaid address and a friend of mine, namely, Adolph Kuehnemund, came to visit and consult me regarding personal matters. As I stood as shown in the picture above mentioned with my friend, the State Constabulary on duty in Homestead came down Dickson St. They had occasion to ride up and down the street several times and finally stopped directly in front of me and demanded that I move on. Before I had time to comply I was struck by the State Policeman. (The attitude of said Policeman is plainly shown in the aforesaid picture, and his threatening club is plainly seen descending towards me.) My friend and I then entered my place of business and my friend a few minutes afterwards looked out on the street over the summer doors. The policeman immediately charged him and being unable to enter my place of business on horseback, dismounted and entered into my place of business on foot. My friend being frightened at what had happened to me retired to a room in the rear of my place of business. The Policeman entered this room, accompanied by another State Police, and without cause, reason or excuse, struck my friend and immediately thereafter arrested him. I was personally present at his hearing before Burgess P. H. McGuire of the above city, at which none of the aforesaid policemen were heard or even present. Burgess asked my friend what he was arrested for, and my friend referred to me inasmuch as he himself did not know. The Burgess immediately replied, "We have no time to hear your witnesses," and thereupon levied a fine of $10.00 and costs upon him. My friend having posted a forfeit of $25.00, the sum of $15.45 was deducted therefrom. The State Constabulary were sent, unasked for, into the quiet steel towns for the sole purpose of intimidating the strikers. The following took place at the meeting of the Braddock Borough Council, October 6: Mr. Verosky: (County detective and council member) "Mr. Chairman, the citizens of the borough wish to know by whose authority the State Constabulary was called into Braddock to take up their quarters here and to practically relieve the police of their duties, by patrolling the streets on foot, mounted, and always under arms." Mr. Holtzman: (President of Council) "I surely do not know who called them into town, but were I the Burgess, I would make it my business to find out, in view of the fact that the Constabulary is neither wanted nor needed here." Mr. Verosky: "Well, in that case, the Burgess may throw some light on the subject." Mr. Callahan: (Burgess) "The question comes to me as a surprise and I am sure that I don't know by whose authority the Constabulary was called in." Everything was calm in Braddock until the State Police came in. Then the trouble began. It was the same nearly everywhere. The arrival of these men was always the signal for so-called riots, and wholesale clubbing, shooting and jailing of strikers. Great praise has been poured upon the State Constabulary for their supposedly wonderful bravery and efficiency, because a few hundred of them, scattered thinly through a score of towns, have been able apparently to overawe many thousands of strikers. But the credit is undeserved. In strikes they always form, in point of actual weight, an insignificant part of the armed forces arrayed against the strikers. For instance, in a steel town, during the strike, there would usually be a dozen or so State Police and from 3,000 to 4,000 deputy sheriffs, company police, etc. The latter classes of gunmen make up the body of the real repressive force; the State Police are merely raiders. It is their particularly dirty job to harass the enemy; to break the strike by scientifically bulldozing the strikers in their homes and on the streets. Thus they are thrown into the limelight, while the company thugs remain in comparative obscurity. The State Police feel reasonably sure of their skins when carrying on their calculated campaigns of terrorism, for behind them are large numbers of armed guards of various sorts ready to spring to their support at an instant's notice, should the workers dare to resist them. Besides, they know they have _carte blanche_ to commit the greatest excesses, since the highest state officials, not to speak of local courts and other authorities, give them undivided support. They are above the law, when the rights of the workers are concerned. Moreover, they realize fully that they can depend upon trade-union leaders to hold the strikers in check from adopting measures of retaliation. Few of them are hurt during their depredations. Once in a while, however, they drive their victims to desperation and get themselves into trouble. For example, a few days after a fight in Farrell, Pa., that cost the strikers two dead and a dozen seriously wounded, the local secretary there, S. Coates, was on his way to Ohio to hold a meeting, when the delivery truck upon which he was riding overturned, rendering him unconscious. He woke up in a Sharon hospital. The six beds adjoining his were occupied by Cossacks, injured in the riot started by themselves in Farrell. The public knew nothing of their injuries, it being the regular thing to suppress such facts, in order to surround the dreaded Cossacks with a reputation for invulnerability. The way the latter "get even" for their casualties is to victimize and outrage as many workers as they think necessary to balance the score. But such methods cannot go on indefinitely. It will be marvellous, indeed, if some day the State Constabulary, with their policy of deliberate intimidation, are not the means of causing riots such as this country has not yet experienced in labor disputes. Not always will the unions be able to hold their men as steady in the face of brutal provocation as they did in the recent steel strike. Hand in glove with the Cossacks in their work of terrorizing Pennsylvania's steel towns went the less skilful but equally vicious company police, gunmen, deputy sheriffs, etc., many of whom, ex-service men, disgraced their uniforms by wearing them on strike duty. Nor were the city police, save for a few honorable exceptions here and there, appreciably better. As for the police magistrates, almost to a man they seconded unquestioningly the work of the sluggers. In fact, all the forces of "law and order" in Western Pennsylvania, official and unofficial, worked together like so many machines--in the interest of their powerful master, the Steel Trust. Many of the armed guards were murderous criminals; penitentiary birds scraped together from the slums of the great cities to uphold Garyism by crushing real Americanism. They took advantage of the strike situation and the authority vested in them to indulge in an orgy of robbery and thievery. Dressed in United States army uniforms and wearing deputies' badges, they even robbed strikers in broad daylight on the main streets. And if the latter dared to protest they were lucky not to be beaten up, jailed and fined for disorderly conduct. The strike committees have records of many such cases. And worse yet, more than one striker was robbed while he was in jail. Liberty bonds and cash disappeared frequently. To lose watches, knives, etc., was a common occurrence. Picketing was out of the question, although, like many other liberties denied the steel strikers, it is theoretically permitted under the laws and court rulings of Pennsylvania. Strikers foolhardy enough to attempt it were usually slugged and arrested. Even the right to strike was virtually overthrown. The practice was for several company and city police, without warrants, to seek a man in his home, crowd in and demand his return to work. Upon refusal he would be arrested and fined from $25 to $100 for disorderly conduct. Then he would be offered his money back, if he would agree to be a scab. This happened not once, but scores, if not hundreds of times. Like practices were engaged in almost everywhere. In Monessen State Police and other "peace officers" would regularly round up batches of strikers before the mill gates. Those that agreed to go to work were set free; the rest were jailed. Many were kept overnight in an old, unlighted building and threatened from time to time with hanging in the morning, if they would not become scabs. This was particularly terrifying, as the strikers, mainly foreigners knowing little of their supposed legal rights, had very good reason to think that State Police, as well as armed thugs, would go to any extreme against them. In Pittsburgh itself, the decisive question asked petty prisoners in the police courts was, "Are you working?" Those who could show that they were strike-breakers were released forthwith; while those who admitted being on strike were usually found guilty without further questioning. Throughout the whole district, to be a scab was to be a peaceable, law abiding citizen; to be a striker was criminal. The courts put every obstacle in the way of the strikers getting justice. In those towns where it was possible to get lawyers at all no courtesies were extended the representatives of the men. They were denied the right of cross-examination; could not get the necessary papers for appeals, and in some cases were actually ordered out of court. Attorney Roe was arrested in McKeesport for attempting to confer with a dozen of his clients in a private hall. The strikers were held under excessive bail and fined shamefully for trivial charges, to disprove which they were often denied the right to produce witnesses. The following quotations from a report by J. G. Brown, formerly president of the International Union of Timber Workers, who was a general organizer in the Pittsburgh district and later director of the legal department of the National Committee, will give an indication of the situation and some of the reasons therefor: ... The next day came the strike. The jails swarmed with arrested strikers. This was especially true in the Soho district of Pittsburgh, where are located the main entrances of the National Tube Works, and the Jones and Laughlin Company's plants. In the afternoon two organizers who were walking down the street in this section were taken to jail, held without bail on charges of being "suspicious persons." Information was given to us that only the Supt. of Police had authority to fix bail. He could not be located. Indeed, that these men were arrested at all was learned only through the newspapers. They were not allowed to communicate with their friends or attorneys. Attorney Brennan eventually found the Chief of Police and went bail for the men. Deciding to utilize the right of picketing, which the laws of the state permit, a group of men were chosen for this work, captains assigned and stationed at the entrances of the mills in Soho. No sooner had they arrived there than they were hustled right on to jail, which was already filled to overflowing. Many were convicted on disorderly conduct charges; others were warned of dire things in store for them, and all were advised to return to their work in the mills. Many women and young girls were among the victims of police brutalities in the Soho district. Located in this section were only city policemen; the State Constabulary did not "work" much within the city limits. Much wonder was created by the undiminishing brutality of the Soho police. The Central Labor Council of Pittsburgh tried to have the City Council inaugurate an investigation of the shameful state of affairs, but nothing could be done. Shortly after the strike was called off the Pittsburgh papers carried a story to the effect that the city policemen working in the Soho district had been "paid" $150 each by the National Tube Co. It was stated also that the same men were paid a like amount by the Jones and Laughlin Company. This explains, perhaps, why justice was so blind in this section. On the opposite side of the Monongahela river, where the Jones and Laughlin Company has other immense works the police were equally bad, the police magistrate even worse. The Police Commissioner was boss of the situation. And now come the Pittsburgh papers with the story that this very Commissioner, Peter P. Walsh, has made application to be retired from the Pittsburgh police force on half pay in order that he might accept the appointment as chief of the mill police of the Jones and Laughlin Company. The half pay allowance gives, according to reports, $1800 per year. The new position Mr. Walsh is to fill is popularly understood to carry with it a salary of $5000 per year.... The Central Labor Council is making an effort to have this matter investigated, but without serious hope of success. When a labor committee demanded that Mayor Babcock of Pittsburgh investigate the situation, the honorable gentleman refused. He admitted that the action of the steel companies was ill-advised; the money should have been given to the pension fund, instead of to a few men; however, the matter was now past history, and there was nothing to be added to the fair name of Pittsburgh by airing it in public. The Mayor admitted, though, that he would object to having labor unions raise funds to pay policemen to favor them during strikes. So reason public officials in the steel districts. * * * * * Suppression of the rights of free speech and free assembly; gigantic organized campaigns of outlawry by the State Police and armies of selected plug-uglies; subornation and intimidation of city, county, state and federal officials and police; prostitution of the courts--these are some of the means used to crush the strike of the steel workers, and to force these over-worked, under-paid toilers still deeper into the mire of slavery. And the whole monstrous crime was hypocritically committed in the name of a militant, 100 per cent. Americanism. IX EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE--THE SENATE COMMITTEE --THE RED BOOK--THE MARGOLIS CASE--THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT Upon October 6 the National Industrial Conference opened its sessions in Washington, D. C. This body was called together by President Wilson to make an effort to solve the pressing labor difficulties confronting the country, and was the one, pending whose deliberations the steel workers had been asked to postpone their strike. It was a three-party arrangement, Capital, Labor and the Public being represented. Naturally it was only advisory in character; and under the rules adopted all action taken, not relating merely to methods of procedure, had to have the endorsement of all three sections, each of which voted as a unit in accordance with the majority sentiment of its members. The Conference met in the midst of a tense situation. The steel industry was almost completely paralysed; the miners were just about to launch their national general strike; the railroaders were in a foment of discontent, and many other large and important sections of workers were demanding better conditions. Capital and Labor were arrayed against each other as never before. Both appeared determined to fight; Capital in a bitter, revengeful spirit to oust Labor from the favorable position won during the war, and Labor in a decided effort to hold what it had and to make more winnings to offset the rapidly mounting cost of living. The United States seemed upon the brink of an industrial war. From the beginning the touchstone of the Conference, the measure by which all its activities were gauged, was the steel strike. It was clear that its attitude towards this great issue would settle its general policy. This was felt by all parties to the Conference, even though some hated the thought. The labor delegation, headed by Samuel Gompers, precipitated matters by introducing, by previous arrangement with the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, the following resolution: WHEREAS, The Nation-wide strike now in progress in the steel industry of America affects not only the men and women directly concerned, but tends to disturb the relations between employers and workers throughout our industrial life; and WHEREAS, This conference is called for the purpose of stabilizing industries and bringing into being a better relation between employers and employees; and WHEREAS, Organized Labor wishes to manifest its sincere and fair desire to prove helpful in immediately adjusting this pending grave industrial conflict; therefore, be it, RESOLVED, That each group comprising this conference select two of its number and these six so selected to constitute a committee to which shall be referred existing differences between the workers and employers in the steel industry for adjudication and settlement. Pending the findings of this committee, this conference requests the workers involved to return to work and the employers to re-instate them in their former positions. This resolution provoked a storm of opposition from the reactionary employers, who, headed by Mr. Gary (ironically seated with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as a representative of the Public) insisted that the Conference ignore the steel strike situation altogether, its purpose being, according to them, not the settlement of existing disputes, but the formulation of principles and plans which would provide for the prevention of such disputes in the future. Finally, seeing that if they insisted upon their resolution it would wreck the Conference, the workers held it in abeyance temporarily and submitted the following: The right of wage earners to organize without discrimination, to bargain collectively, to be represented by representatives of their own choosing in negotiations and adjustments with employers in respect to wages, hours of labor and relations and conditions of employment, is recognized. Such a mild proposition as this would hardly meet with serious opposition in a similar conference in any other important country than ours. All over Europe it would be far too conservative to fit the situation. In England, for example, the British Industrial Conference recently adopted the following: The basis of negotiation between employers and work people should, as is presently the case in the chief industries of the country, be the full, frank acceptance of the employers' organizations on the one hand, and trade unions on the other as the recognized organizations to speak and act on behalf of their members. And just across our border, in Canada, this advanced conception was formulated but a few months before: On the whole we believe the day has passed when any employer should deny his employees the right to organize. Employers claim that right for themselves and it is not denied by the workers. There seems to be no reason why the employer should deny like rights to those who are employed by him. Not only should employees be accorded the right of organizing, but the prudent employer will recognize such organization and will deal with the duly accredited representatives thereof in all matters relating to the interests of the employees when it is fairly established to be representative of them all. But Mr. Gary and his associates care nothing about the reputation of America as a progressive, liberty-loving country. They have their prerogatives, and they intend to exercise them, cost what it may. They organize as they see fit and pick out such representatives as they will; but by virtue of their economic strength they deny to their workers these same rights. So they voted down Labor's collective bargaining resolution, and at the same time the one providing for a settlement of the steel strike. The employers insisted upon absolute rule by themselves. This action discredited the Conference, and sentenced it to dissolution. By its refusal to meet the great steel strike issue the Conference showed that it had neither the will nor the power to settle industrial disputes. Labor, openly denied the fundamental right of organization, could no longer sit with it. The workers' representatives, therefore, took the only honorable course left to them; they withdrew, allowing the whole worthless structure to collapse. Said Mr. Gompers in his final speech: Gentlemen, I have sung my swan song in this conference. You have, by your action--the action of the employers' group--legislated us out of this conference. We have nothing further to submit; and with a feeling of regret we have not been enabled with a clear conscience to remain here longer. We have responsibilities to employees and workers and those dependent upon them. We must fulfill these obligations. Thus ingloriously ended the Conference upon which the steel workers had been asked to hang all their hopes. Even with powerful organizations intact and with their industry almost entirely at a standstill, the latter could get no consideration from it. What, then, would have been their fate if they had postponed the strike? With their forces shattered, half of their men being on strike and the rest at work thoroughly disgusted, they would have been helpless and unable to strike in any event. They would have been absolutely at the mercy of the employers. And any one who may imagine that the latter would have done anything short of giving the steel workers their _coup de grace_ at the Conference is an optimist indeed. The steel strike was a clean fight and an honorable defeat for Labor. Its bad effects will soon wear off. But it would have been a ruinous calamity, with ineradicable harm, had the strike been postponed for the sake of the ill-fated Industrial Conference. * * * * * Pursuant to a resolution adopted by the Senate on September 23, in the white heat of the strike excitement, the Committee on Education and Labor was instructed to investigate the steel strike and to report back to the Senate as soon as possible. Accordingly this Committee held sittings in Washington and Pittsburgh, hearing about one hundred witnesses all told. Its active members were Senators Kenyon (Chairman), McKellar, Walsh (Mass.), Sterling and Phipps. For the workers Samuel Gompers, John Fitzpatrick, M. F. Tighe and many organizers and strikers testified, setting forth in detail the grievances and demands of the men. For the steel companies came the usual crop of strike-breakers and company officials, pliable city authorities and business men from the steel towns. The star witness was Judge Gary, who presented practically the entire case for the whole steel industry. It is noteworthy that with the exception of one minor hothead, the so-called "independents" made no defense before the committee. They left it all to their master, the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. Gary was a good witness. Not for him were the antiquated blusterings of a "divine-right" Baer or a "public-be-damned" Vanderbilt. He used the modern method,--a mass of silky hypocrisies and misrepresentations for the public, to cover up the mailed fist he has for his workers. He was suave, oily, humble, obliging, persuasive, patriotic. He pictured the steel industry as a sort of industrial heaven and the U. S. Steel Corporation as a beneficent institution, leading even the trade-union movement in reform work. Inasmuch as Mr. Gary's peculiar notions of the "open shop," minority rule by the unions, etc., set forth afresh by him at the strike hearings, are discussed quite generally throughout this book, there is no need to review them again here. We will note his testimony no more than to give the facts of the death of Mrs. Fannie Sellins, of whose murder he was so anxious to clear the Steel Trust. Mrs. Fannie Sellins was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, stationed in the notorious, anti-union Black Valley district along the Allegheny river. An able speaker, and possessed of boundless courage, energy, enthusiasm and idealism, she was a most effective worker. Due largely to her efforts many thousands of miners and miscellaneous workers in this hard district were organized. She was the very heart of the local labor movement, which ranked second to none in Pennsylvania for spirit and progress. When the steel campaign began, Mrs. Sellins threw herself whole-heartedly into it. She worked indefatigably. More than any other individual she was responsible for the unionization of the big United States Steel Corporation mills at Vandergrift, Leechburg and New Kensington, as well as those of the so-called independent Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies at Brackenridge. The results secured by her will compare favorably with those of any other organizer in the whole campaign. By her splendid work in behalf of the toilers Mrs. Sellins gained the undying hatred of the untamed employers in the benighted Black Valley district. Open threats were made to "get" her. The opportunity came on August 26, 1919, when she was deliberately murdered under the most brutal circumstances. The miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company were on strike at West Natrona. The mine is situated in the mill yard of the Allegheny Steel Company and furnishes fuel for that concern. All was going peacefully when a dozen drunken deputy sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph Strzelecki fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, standing close by, rushed first to get some children out of danger. Then she came back to plead with the deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strzelecki, not to kill him. What happened then is told in the _New Majority_ (Chicago) of September 20: ---- ----, the mine official, snatched a club and felled the woman to the ground. This was not on company ground, but just outside the fence of a friend of Mrs. Sellins. She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate. ---- shouted: "Kill that -- -- -- -- -- --!" Three shots were fired, each taking effect. She fell to the ground, and ---- cried: "Give her another!" One of the deputies, standing over the motionless and silent body, held his gun down and, without averting his face, fired into the body that did not move. An auto truck, in waiting, was hurried to the scene and the body of the old miner thrown in; then Mrs. Sellins was dragged by the heels to the back of the car. Before she was placed in the truck, a deputy took a cudgel and crushed in her skull before the eyes of the throng of men, women and children, who stood in powerless silence before the armed men. Deputy ---- picked up the woman's hat, placed it on his head, danced a step, and said to the crowd: "I'm Mrs. Sellins now." Thus perished noble Fannie Sellins: shot in the back by so-called peace officers. And she 49 years old, a grandmother, and mother of a boy killed in France, fighting to make the world safe for democracy. Many people witnessed this horrible murder. The guilty men were named openly in the newspapers and from a hundred platforms. Yet no one was ever punished for the crime. Witnesses were spirited away or intimidated, and the whole matter hushed up in true Steel Trust fashion. A couple of deputies were arrested; but they were speedily released on smaller bonds than those often set for strikers arrested for picketing. Eventually they were freed altogether. The killing of Mrs. Sellins, right in the teeth of the strike as it was, lent much bitterness to the general situation. Rightly or wrongly, the steel workers, almost to a man, felt that this devoted woman was a martyr to their cause. [Illustration: MRS. FANNIE SELLINS, TRADE UNION ORGANIZER Killed by Steel Trust gunmen, West Natrona, Pa., Aug. 26, 1919.] Upon November 8, the Senate Committee, having completed its hearings, made public its report. This document is a strange mixture of progressive and reactionary principles. In some respects, especially where it grants, however confusedly, the right of collective bargaining and the eight hour day, it is just and meets the situation; but in other respects it is so unfair to the workers' cause as to be grotesque. For one thing it shoulders upon the unions the entire responsibility for the failure to postpone the strike, choosing to disregard completely the clearly established fact that the steel companies were discharging men so fast that for the unions it was a case of strike or perish. In fact, the report ignores altogether the bitter grievance of men being discharged for union membership. Mr. Gary had said that this practice was not engaged in, and that apparently settled it so far as the Committee was concerned,--the testimony of dozens of victimized workers (with thousands more available) to the contrary notwithstanding. Other sins of the Steel Trust, the suppression of free speech and free assembly, etc., were passed over lightly; but the alleged virtues of its housing and welfare plans were very highly lauded. Nowhere are the workers more ruthlessly robbed and exploited by their employers than in the steel industry. Speaking recently in Brooklyn on the subject of profiteering, Mr. Basil Manly, formerly Joint Chairman of the National War Labor Board, cited Page 367 of the Treasury report as showing one steel company "earning" $14,549,952 in 1917 on a capital of $5,000, or a profit of 290,999 per cent. As the department conveniently suppresses all details, it is impossible to learn the name of this company or how it made such fabulous profits. On the same page appeared another steel company with a profit rate of 20,180 per cent. Speaking of the United States Steel Corporation's returns, which of course were garbled so that no outsider could understand them, Mr. Manly said: For this reason I am unable to tell you, on the basis of the Treasury Department's figures, what the net income of the Steel Corporation is, but on the basis of its own published report I can tell you that in two years, 1916 and 1917, the net profits of the Steel Corporation, after payment of interest on bonds and after making allowance for all charges growing out of the installation of special war facilities, amounted to $888,931,511. This is more by $20,000,000 than the total capital stock of the Steel Corporation (which is $868,583,600). In other words, in 1916 and 1917 every dollar of the capital stock of the Steel Corporation was paid for in net profits. In this connection it should be remembered that when the Steel Corporation was formed its entire $500,000,000 worth of common stock represented nothing but water. The other steel companies did as well or better, proportionately. W. Jett Lauck, acting on behalf of the railroad workers, submitted figures to the United States Railroad Labor Board (A. P. dispatches May 19, 1920) showing that during the years 1916-18 the Bethlehem Steel Corporation "earned" average annual profits of $29,000,000, or six times its pre-war average. In 1916 its profits amounted to 146 per cent. on its capital stock. Our Johnstown friend, the Cambria Steel Company, in 1916-17 cleaned up $50,000,000 on $45,000,000 capital stock; while the Lackawanna, Republic, Colorado Fuel and Iron, Jones and Laughlin, Crucible, etc., companies made similar killings. As against useless, non-producing drones getting these millions, the great mass of workers actually operating the industry were receiving the beggarly wages of from 42 to 48 cents per hour. They had received no increase for a year before the strike, notwithstanding the skyrocketing cost of living. Yet the Senate Committee could discover no discontent at this condition nor see any injustice in it. Upon page 10 of its report appears the startling statement that "The question of wages is not involved in this controversy." Forty-two cents per hour would hardly buy cigars for these smug, well-fed gentlemen; still they would have us conclude that it is enough for a steel worker to raise a family upon. The fact is, of course, that an increase in wages was a cardinal demand of the strikers, even though the Senate Committee did not get to learn of it.[13] And so great was the steel workers' need for more money that the strike had scarcely ended when the United States Steel Corporation, followed soon after by the "independents," granted its lesser skilled help 10 per cent. increase in wages, and promised "an equitable adjustment" to the widely advertised small minority of highly paid men. Part of the strike-breaking strategy of the Steel Trust was to alienate public sympathy from the strike by denouncing it as an incipient revolution which had to be put down at all costs. Public opinion was already violently inflamed against everything savoring no matter how slightly of radicalism, and it was not difficult for the reactionary newspapers to make the steel strike unpopular, even as they had, under various pretexts, the movements of the miners and railroad men of the period. One weapon they used extensively against the steel strike was an almost forgotten pamphlet, "Syndicalism," written by Earl C. Ford and myself eight years ago. Throughout the hearings the investigating senators went along with this Steel Trust propaganda, which was not so surprising considering the fact that of the five active committee men, one was a steel magnate, and three others typical Bourbons. By playing up the "little red book" they systematically fed the newspapers with the sensationalism they wanted and which the steel companies desired them to get. I was called before the Committee and gruffly ordered to express my opinion on the doctrines in the booklet. In reply, I stated that the steel movement had been carried on according to the strictest trade-union principles. It was overseen by the National Committee, consisting of twenty-four presidents of large international unions. As secretary of this committee I had necessarily worked under the close scrutiny of these men and dozens of their organizers--not to speak of the highest officials in the American Federation of Labor. Yet none of these trade unionists, keen though they be to detect and condemn unusual practices and heresy in the ranks, had found fault with the character of my work. Nor could the crew of detectives and stool pigeons of the steel companies and Department of Justice, who had dogged my footsteps for a year past, cite a single word said, a thing done, or a line written by me in the entire campaign which would not measure up to most rigid trade-union standards. I contended that my private opinions were immaterial as they did not and could not enter into the organizing work or the strike. But the nation-wide head hunt of the radicals was on in full cry, and the Senators had a good blood scent. They would follow it to the end. They insisted that I express my opinion upon the wage system, the state, morality, patriotism, marriage, etc. Finally, in a last effort to protect the interests of the 2,000,000 men, women and children affected by the strike, I stated that if the vulture press, which was bound to misrepresent what I said, was removed from the room, I would be glad to oblige the Senators with a frank expression of my views upon any subject. But this simple fairness to the steel workers and their families they denied. The newspapers were clamoring for red meat, and the Senators seemed determined they should have it. Having made my protest and my prediction, I was compelled to yield; but the first newspapers on the streets proved the soundness of my fears. My answers were garbled and twisted against both the steel movement and me. Then there was the Margolis case. I charge that to be a deliberate frame-up against the steel strike. To prove the Steel Trust's contention that the strike was a desperate revolutionary _coup_, engineered by men seeking to destroy our civilization generally, somewhat more was required than merely an eight year old booklet. The thing had to be brought down to date and a far-reaching plot constructed. Hence the Senate Committee dragged in Mr. Margolis and made him a scapegoat. Mr. Margolis is a well known Anarchist attorney of Pittsburgh. He has the reputation of having served ably as counsel for several trade-union organizations, and has a wide circle of acquaintances among labor men. The Senate Committee selected him as the man who had organized, with my hearty support and co-operation, the real force behind the strike, the I. W. W.'s, Anarchists and Bolshevists. Now the fact is that Mr. Margolis had nothing whatever to do, officially or unofficially, with the policies or management of either the organizing campaign or the strike. He had no connection with the Strike committee; nor did he ever even speak at a union meeting of steel workers during the whole movement in question. If he wrote an article in some radical paper, or spoke to a meeting of Russian workmen in Youngstown, endorsing the strike, as is said, he did it purely as an individual sympathizer acting upon his own initiative. Mr. Margolis freely stated this on the stand, and every union official in Pittsburgh knew it to be the case. So did the investigating Senators; but it the better served their purpose to enlarge upon Mr. Margolis' activities, in the hope that his radical reputation would lend color to the plot theory which they were laboring so hard to establish, and which was so advantageous to the Steel Trust. In their final report the Senators continued their plot "evidence" and insinuations, so persistently worked up all through their hearings. They ignored highly important testimony tending to put the movement in its right light as a strictly trade-union affair, and gave prominence to everything to the contrary. They elevated unheard-of I. W. W.'s into powerful strike leaders and surrounded the most ordinary comings and goings with revolutionary mystery. Where they lacked facts they cast suspicion, leaving a vicious daily press to draw its own conclusions. Although they expressed great concern for the sufferings of the public in strikes, and advocated the establishment of an industrial tribunal to prevent them in the future, the worthy Senators, nevertheless, recommended no means to end the steel strike. So far as they were concerned, apparently they were willing to have the steel strike fought to a conclusion. At one of the Senate Committee hearings, John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the National Committee, agreed to arbitration. But later Mr. Gary gave an emphatic "No" to this proposition. Mr. Gary's wishes usually had decisive weight with the Senators, so the matter was settled. On October 1-3, 1919, a national conference called by the Industrial Relations Department of the Interchurch World Movement met at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York and adopted a resolution providing for a full investigation of the steel strike, then a burning public question. Under the terms of this resolution the Industrial Relations Department set up an independent Commission of Inquiry, composed of representative churchmen from all over the country who should be responsible for carrying out the investigation. This Commission consisted of Bishop Francis J. McConnell (Methodist), Chairman, Dr. Daniel A. Poling (Evangelical), vice-Chairman, Dr. John McDowell (Presbyterian), Mrs. Fred Bennett (Board of Foreign Missions), Dr. Nicholas Van Der Pyl (Congregational), Dr. Alva W. Taylor (Disciples), and Mr. Geo. W. Coleman (Baptist). In order to commit the investigation of technical data to the hands of trained men, the Industrial Relations Department obtained the services of the Bureau of Industrial Research, New York, which, besides its own researches, obtained the co-operation of various other scientific agencies and organized a staff of field workers whose principal members were: Mr. George Soule, Mr. David J. Saposs, Miss Marian D. Savage, Mr. Marion K. Wisehart and Mr. Robert Littell. A member of the Bureau of Industrial Research, Mr. Heber Blankenhorn, had charge of the field work and later acted as Secretary to the Commission of Inquiry, which held hearings in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other steel centres. The Interchurch World Movement, representing as it does the organized Protestant millions of America, is a conservative and respectable body, if there is such in this country. Yet when it stepped upon the toes of the Steel Trust by starting the investigation it found itself soon classed among the revolutionaries. Persistent rumors were sent broadcast, and even newspaper stories, to the effect that the Commission's investigators were "Bolsheviks" and that the Interchurch World Movement was permeated with "anarchists." This hampered the work greatly, especially among employers. Finally a threat of legal action was necessary against a large commercial organization which had circulated the rumors officially. It eventually retracted in full. As for the workers, they gave the fullest co-operation to the investigation. Impressed by the scientific methods and apparent desire to get at the truth of the strike situation manifested in the Interchurch investigation--which stood in striking contrast to the slipshod, haphazard system, "red" mania, and violent partiality towards the steel companies shown by the Senate Committee,--the strike leaders decided to ask the Commission to undertake a settlement of the strike by mediation, which the Commission had the power to do under the resolution creating it. The workers' representatives felt that no stone should be left unturned to get a settlement, and that if the powerful Interchurch movement stirred in their behalf possibly Mr. Gary would be dislodged from his position. Consequently, John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the National Committee, put before Mr. Blankenhorn a plan for the settlement of the strike by mediation. Mr. Blankenhorn felt, however, that it might be better to recommend that the Commission move independently, rather than as merely representing the strikers, and submitted the following plan, which was adopted by the Commission: 1. To mediate in behalf of all the steel workers, both those on strike and those who had gone back to work. 2. That the purpose of the mediation should be to establish a new deal in the steel industry rather than merely to end the strike. 3. That the ending of the strike should be arranged solely with a view to giving the new deal the best possible chance. On December 1, the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers met and formally accepted this proposition of mediation. What happened next is told in an official statement to the writer of this book: On December 5 a committee from the Commission, consisting of Bishop McConnell, Dr. Poling and Dr. McDowell, called on Mr. Gary with the purpose of, first, ascertaining if he would accept their office as mediators; next, of proposing their plan of mediation and pressing the acceptance of it by the employers; and, finally, of ordering the men back to work, the strike leaders to step out of the situation, and the Commission to set up a permanent mediation body to bring about a conference between employers and employees in the steel industry. There was the feeling in the Commission that extraordinary concessions had been made by the leaders of the strike and that any reasons advocated by the employers for not accepting the mediation plan would have to be weighty. Mr. Gary received the Commission courteously and after minutely cross-examining them concerning the "anonymous" report of the presence of "Bolsheviks" among them, he heard the Commission to the extent of learning the first step in their proposal. He made his reply immediately, an absolute refusal of arbitration or mediation. The Commission therefore never had any opportunity to present the authorized acceptance of the mediation plan by the other side and in no sense conveyed to Mr. Gary the extent of the concessions which the strikers were then willing to make. Mr. Gary, however, clearly understood that acceptance of the mediation plan would mean that the men would all return to work at once. Mr. Gary based his refusal on the grounds that any dealings which in any way involved representatives of the men then on strike would be an acceptance of the closed shop, sovietism, and the forcible distribution of property. Mr. Gary said that if the Commission represented the men who had gone back to work, those men were content; if the Commission represented the men who had not gone back to work, those men are nothing but red radicals whom the plants did not want anyway. He said that there was absolutely no issue for discussion with the U. S. Steel Corporation. The Commission presented its viewpoint on the advisability of mediation at great length and with insistence. Mr. Gary did not in any respect modify his immediate decision. The Commission felt it necessary therefore to drop the plan and transmitted the following to the National Committee: December 6, 1919 Memorandum for Mr. Fitzpatrick: The independent Commission of Inquiry, instituted by the Interchurch World Movement to investigate the steel strike, received on December 2 a communication marked "confidential," dealing with an official action taken by the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, signed by Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Foster. On December 5, members of the Commission informally conversed with Mr. Gary for two hours, proposing to plan a new basis of relations in the steel industry, with an ending of the strike best calculated to further better relations. They offered to act as mediators both on behalf of the men still on strike, whose leaders were to order them back and then step out of the situation, and on behalf of still dissatisfied men who had nevertheless returned to work. Mr. Gary refused to confer with these representatives of the churches as mediators in behalf of any interests represented by you in the strike, on the ground that the men still out were Bolshevist radicals who were not wanted in the mills and who would not be taken back. And as to mediating in behalf of any other interests, Mr. Gary said that the men were contented and that "there is no issue." I am requested to communicate the above information to you by the Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry. Very truly yours, H. BLANKENHORN. At the time this book goes to press the findings and recommendations of the Commission have not yet been made public. This made the sixth attempt of the National Committee to settle the steel controversy--not to mention the individual effort of the Amalgamated Association. They were: (1) The letter from Mr. Gompers to Mr. Gary requesting a conference; (2) the visit to his office of the National Committee conference committee, equipped with the power to set a strike date; (3) the appeal to President Wilson to arrange a conference; (4) Organized Labor's resolution in the National Industrial Conference to have that body select an arbitration board; (5) The offer of arbitration by John Fitzpatrick while testifying before the Senate Committee; and, (6) the Interchurch mediation incident. But they were all futile. Mr. Gary's policy is the time-honored one of all tyrants, rule or ruin. The unions had no option but to fight, and this they did to the best of their ability. FOOTNOTE: [13] There seemed to be many important things of which this committee had never heard. For instance, when in my testimony I referred to Lester F. Ward, Senator Sterling innocently inquired who he was. He had apparently never even heard of this eminent American sociologist, who was perhaps the greatest scholar ever born in the western hemisphere, and whose name is honored by scientific minds the world over. And what makes Senator Sterling's ignorance the more inexcusable is that he was actually holding office in Washington at the same time that Professor Ward was carrying on his brilliant studies in that very city. For one who stresses so much his 100 per cent. Americanism as does the Senator it is indeed a sad showing not to be familiar with this great native product. X THE COURSE OF THE STRIKE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT--THE RAILROAD MEN--CORRUPT NEWSPAPERS --CHICAGO DISTRICT--FEDERAL TROOPS AT GARY--YOUNGSTOWN DISTRICT--THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION--CLEVELAND--THE ROD AND WIRE MILL STRIKE--THE BETHLEHEM PLANTS--BUFFALO AND LACKAWANNA--WHEELING AND STEUBENVILLE--PUEBLO--JOHNSTOWN --MOB RULE--THE END OF THE STRIKE. Although the Steel strike was national in scope and manifested the same general, basic tendencies everywhere, nevertheless it differed enough from place to place to render necessary some indication of particular events in the various districts in order to convey a clear conception of the movement as a whole. It is the purpose of this chapter to point out a few of these salient features in the several localities and to draw some lessons therefrom. In the immediate Pittsburgh district, due to the extreme difficulties under which the organizing work was carried on and the strike inaugurated, the shut-down was not so thorough as elsewhere. Considerable numbers of men, notably in the skilled trades, remained at work, and the mills limped along, at least pretending to operate. This was exceedingly bad, Pittsburgh being the strategic centre of the strike, as it is of the industry, and the companies were making tremendous capital of the fact that the mills there were still producing steel. Accordingly, the National Committee left no stone unturned to complete the tie-up, already 75 per cent. effective. But under the circumstances, with meetings banned and picketing prohibited, it was out of the question to reach directly the men who had stayed at work. The key to the situation was in the hands of the railroad men. Operating between the various steel plants and connecting them up with the main lines, there are several switching roads, such as the Union Railroad and the McKeesport and Monongahela Connecting Lines. They are the nerve centers of the local steel industry. If they could be struck the mills would have to come to a standstill. The National Committee immediately delegated organizers to investigate the situation. These reported that the body of the men in the operating departments were organized; that they had no contracts with the steel companies, and that they were ready for action, but awaiting co-operation from their respective national headquarters. Consequently, the National Committee arranged a conference in Washington with responsible representatives of the Brotherhoods and laid the situation before them. In reply they stated that their policy was strictly to observe their contracts wherever they had such, and that their men would be forbidden to do work around the mills not done by them prior to the strike. It was up to the men on the non-contract roads and yards to decide for themselves about joining the strike. We informed them then that the situation was such, with the men scattered through many locals, that merely leaving it up to them was insufficient; it would be impossible for them to act together without direct aid and encouragement from their higher officials. We made the specific request that each of the organizations send a man into Pittsburgh to take a strike vote of the men in question, who are all employees of the steel companies. They took the matter under advisement; but nothing came of it, although long afterwards, when the opportune moment had passed, organizer J. M. Patterson of the Railway Carmen (also of the Trainmen) was authorized to take a strike vote. Thus was lost the chance to close down these strategic switching lines and with them, in all likelihood, several big mills in the most vital district in the entire steel industry. Throughout the strike zone general disappointment was expressed by the steel workers at the apparent lack of sympathy with their cause shown by the officials of the Brotherhoods. The steel workers, bitterly oppressed for a generation and fighting desperately towards the light in the face of unheard-of opposition, turned instinctively for aid to their closely related, powerfully organized fellow workers, the railroad men. And the latter could easily have lent them effective, if not decisive assistance without violating a contract or in any way endangering their standing. It was not to be expected that the trunk line men, working as they were under government agreements, would refuse to haul the scab steel; but there were many other ways, perfectly legitimate under current trade-union practice and ethics, in which help could have been given; yet it was not. From Youngstown and elsewhere the railroad men who did go on strike in the mill yards complained with bitterness that they were neglected and denied strike benefits, and that the rule that no road man should do work around the mills not customary before the strike was flagrantly violated. Usually the rank and file were strongly disposed to assist the hard-pressed steel workers, and they could have everywhere wonderfully stiffened the strike, but the necessary encouragement and cooperation from the several headquarters was lacking. Truth demands that these unpleasant things be set down. Labor can learn and progress only through a frank acknowledgment and discussion of its weaknesses, mistakes and failures. In addition to all their other handicaps the Pittsburgh district strikers had to contend with a particularly treacherous local press. Everywhere our daily papers are newspapers only by courtesy of a misapplied term. They are sailing under false colors. Pretending to be purveyors of unbiased accounts of current happenings, they are in reality merely propaganda organs, twisting, garbling and suppressing facts and information in the manner best calculated to further the interests of the employing class. The whole newsgathering and distributing system is a gigantic mental prostitution. Consequently, considering the issues involved, it was not surprising to see the big daily papers take such a decided stand against the steel workers. Everywhere in steel districts the papers were bad enough, but those in the Pittsburgh district outstripped all the rest. They gave themselves over body and soul to the service of the Steel Trust. From the first these Pittsburgh papers were violently antagonistic to the steel workers. Every sophistry uttered by Mr. Gary to the effect that the strike was an effort to establish the "closed shop," a bid for power, or an attempt at revolution, the papers echoed and re-echoed _ad nauseum_. They played up the race issue, virtually advising the Americans to stand together against the foreigners who were about to overwhelm them. They painted the interests of the country as being synonymous with those of the steel companies and tried to make Americanism identical with scabbery. For them no further proof of one's patriotism was needed than to go back to the mills. Every clubbing of strikers was the heroic work of the law-abiding against reckless mobs. Strike "riots" were manufactured out of whole cloth. For instance, when the senators investigating the strike were visiting the Homestead mills, a couple of strike-breakers quarreling with each other, several blocks away, fired a shot. An hour later screaming headlines told the startled populace of Pittsburgh that "STRIKERS SHOOT AT SENATORS" and "MOB ATTACKS SENATE COMMITTEE." Even the stand-pat senators had to protest that this was going it too strong. In revenge for an alleged dynamiting in Donora, Pa., the authorities swooped down upon the union headquarters, arrested 101 strikers present, including organizer Walter Hodges, and charged them with the crime. Since there was not a shred of evidence against the accused, they were all eventually discharged. Then the Donora _Herald_, which forever yelped that the organizers advocated violence, had this to say: One of the reasons we have sedition preached in America is because we have grand juries like that at Washington (Pa.) this week which ignored the dynamiting cases. Possibly the biggest mistake of all was made in not using rifles at the time instead of turning the guilty parties over to the very sensitive mercies of the grand jury. But the journalistic strike-breaking master-stroke was an organized effort to stampede the men back to work by minimizing the strike's effectiveness. First the papers declared that only a few thousands of Pittsburgh's steel workers went out. Then they followed this for weeks with stories of thousands of men flocking back to the mills. Full page advertisements begged the men to go back; while flaming headlines told us that "MEN GO BACK TO MILLS," "STEEL STRIKE WANING," "MILLS OPERATING STRONGER," "MORE MEN GO BACK TO WORK," etc. It became a joke, but the patient Pittsburgh people couldn't see it. Said Wm. Hard in the _Metropolitan_ for February, 1920: "Mr. Foster," I said, "I am going to be perfectly frank with you. I know your strike's a fizzle of course, but I know more. I not only take pains to read the telegraphic dispatches of the news from the managers of the steel mills, but I keep the clippings. I have the history of your strike in cold print. Hardly anybody struck anyhow, in most places, except some foreigners; and then they began at once to go back in thousands and thousands and new thousands every day for months. If you claim there were 300,000 strikers, I don't care. I've counted up the fellows that went back to work, and I've totalled them up day by day. They're a little over 4,800,000. So you're pretty far behind." But despite everything--the suppression of free speech and free assembly, Cossack terrorism, official tyranny, prostitution of the courts, attacks from the lying press, and all the rest of it--the steel workers in the immediate Pittsburgh district (comprising the towns along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers from Apollo to Monessen) made a splendid fight. The very pressure seemed to hold them the better together. Their ranks were never really broken, the strike being weakened only by a long, costly wearing-away process. The stampede back to work, so eagerly striven for by the employers, did not materialize. In the beginning of the strike the Pittsburgh district was the weakest point in the battle line; at the end it was one of the very strongest. * * * * * The Chicago district struck very well, but it weakened earlier than others. This was because the employers scored a break-through at Indiana Harbor and Gary, particularly the latter place, which shattered the whole line. Gary, the great western stronghold of the United States Steel Corporation, was the storm center of the Chicago district at all times. Hardly had the organization campaign begun in 1918, when the Gary _Tribune_ bitterly assailed the unions, accusing them of advocating evasion of the draft, discouragement of liberty bond sales, and general opposition to the war program. These lies were run in a full page editorial in English, and repeated in a special eight page supplement containing sixteen languages, a half page to each. Many thousands of copies were scattered broadcast. Other attacks in a similar vein followed. It was a foul blast straight from the maw of the Steel Trust. Incidentally it created a situation which shows how the steel men control public opinion. The new unions immediately boycotted the _Tribune_. Result: the Gary _Post_, somewhat friendly inclined, doubled its circulation at once. The _Post_ then became more friendly; whereupon, it is alleged, a leading banker called the editor to his office and told him that if he did not take a stand against the unions his credit would be stopped, which would have meant suspension within the week. That very day the _Post_ joined the _Tribune's_ campaign of abuse. Apparently the _Post's_ youthful editor had learned a new wrinkle in journalism. The Steel Trust did all it could to hold Gary from unionizing; but when the strike came the walkout was estimated to be 97 per cent. At first everything went peacefully, but the Steel Corporation was watching for an opportunity to get its strategic Gary mills into operation. The occasion presented itself on October 4, when strikers coming from a meeting fell foul of some homeward bound scabs. Local labor men declare the resultant scrimmage "did not make as much disturbance as ordinarily would occur in a saloon when two or three men were fighting." It was a trivial incident--a matter for the police. Only one man was injured, and he very slightly. But the inspired press yelled red murder and pictured the hospitals as full of wounded. The militia were ordered in. The unions offered to furnish 700 ex-service men to enforce law and order; but this was rejected. Later the militia were transferred to Indiana Harbor; on October 6, a provisional regiment of regular troops, under command of General Leonard Wood, came to Gary from nearby Fort Sheridan, and martial law was at once proclaimed. The Steel Corporation now had the situation in hand; and the Gary strike was doomed. Grave charges were voiced against the misuse made of the Federal troops in Gary. John Fitzpatrick writes me as follows, basing his statements upon reliable witnesses: Now we have military control, the city of Gary being placed under martial law. The strike leaders and pickets were arrested by the soldiers and put to work splitting wood and sweeping the streets. This was most humiliating, because the camp was across the street from the city hall and in the most frequented part of the city. When street-sweeping here did not break their spirits, these men were taken to the back streets, where they had their homes and where their own and the neighbor's children watched them through the windows. The so-called foreigners have great respect for law and authority, especially military authority, which plays such a big part in their native environments. The U. S. Steel Corporation did not fail to take advantage of this. In the first place they gave out the impression that the letters "U. S." in the corporation's name indicated that it was owned by the U. S. Government, and that the Government soldiers being in town meant that any one interfering with the steel company's affairs would be deported or sent to Fort Leavenworth. Then a mill superintendent would take a squad of soldiers and go to the home of a striker. The soldiers would be lined up in front of the house; the superintendent would go in. He would tell John that he came to give him his last chance to return to work, saying that if he refused he would either go to jail or be deported. Then he would take John to the window and show him the row of soldiers. John would look at the wife and kids and make up his mind that his first duty was to them; that was what the strike was for anyway. So he would put on his coat and go back to the mills. Then the superintendent would go to the next house and repeat the performance. Such tactics, coupled with spectacular midnight raids to "unearth" the widely advertised "red" plotters,--conveniently ignored until the strike,--the suppression of meetings, limitations on picketing, and the hundred forms of studied intimidation practiced by the soldiery, in a few weeks broke the backbone of the strike. And while the regular troops operated so successfully and systematically against the workers in Gary, the militia did almost as well in Indiana Harbor, where the strike also cracked. The great reactionary interests which backed General Wood for the Republican presidential nomination, including the Steel Trust, are giving him boundless credit for breaking the steel strike in Gary. Consequently there are many workers who believe the whole affair was staged to further his political fortunes. If not, how did it happen that the militia, who could have handled the situation easily, were sent out of Gary to make room for his regulars? And why was it that before there was a sign of trouble General Wood had formed his provisional regiment, shipped it from Fort Dodge to Fort Sheridan, and made other active preparations to invade Gary? And then, how did it come that he took charge of the situation in person, when at best it was only a colonel's job? In fact, how about the whole wretched business? Was it merely a political stunt to give General Wood the publicity that came to him for it? The collapse at Gary and Indiana Harbor affected adversely South Chicago and almost the whole Chicago district. Worse still, it weakened the morale everywhere; and thus undermined, the strike rapidly disintegrated. By the middle of November, district secretary De Young reported that all the mills in the district, except those in Joliet and Waukegan, were working crews from 50 to 85 per cent. of normal, although, due to green hands and demoralized working forces, production averaged considerably lower. And the situation gradually grew worse. Joliet and Waukegan, however, held fast to the end, making a fight comparable with that of the men in Peoria and Hammond, who had gone out several weeks before September 22. It was at the latter place that police and company guards brutally shot down and killed four strikers on September 9. * * * * * In the immediate Youngstown district the strike was highly effective, hardly a ton of steel being produced anywhere for several weeks. This was due largely to the walkout of the railroad men employed in the mill yards, who acted on their own volition. Many of these belonged to the Brotherhoods, and others to the Switchmen's Union, while some were unorganized; but all struck together. Then they held joint mass meetings, got an agreement from the A. F. of L. unions that they would be protected and represented in any settlement made, and stuck loyally to the finish. They were a strong mainstay of the strike. The weakening of the strike began about November 15. In a number of plants, notably those of the Trumbull Steel Company and the Sharon Steel Hoop Company, the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers had agreements covering the skilled steel making trades, but when the laborers struck these skilled men had to quit also. The break in the district came when the Amalgamated Association virtually forced the laborers back to work in these shops in order to get them in operation. This action its officials justified by the following clause in their agreements: It was agreed that when a scale or scales are signed in general or local conferences, said scales or contracts shall be considered inviolate for that scale year, and should the employees of any departments (who do not come under the above named scales or contracts) become members of the Amalgamated Association during the said scale year, the Amalgamated Association may present a scale of wages covering said employees, but in case men and management cannot come to an agreement on said scale, same shall be held over until the next general or local conference, and all men shall continue work until the expiration of the scale year. Relying upon their rights under this clause, the companies naturally refused to give the laborers any consideration whatever until the end of the scale year. This meant that the latter were told to work and wait until the following June, when their grievances would be taken up. The result was disastrous; the laborers generally lost faith in the Amalgamated Association, feeling that they had been sacrificed for the skilled workers. They began to flock back to work in all the plants. Then men in other trades took the position that it was foolish for them to fight on, seeing that the Amalgamated Association was forcing its men back into the mills. A general movement millward set in. By December 10 the strike was in bad shape. In passing it may be noted that in Pittsburgh and other places where it had contracts, the Amalgamated Association took the same action, with the same general results, although not so extensive and harmful as in the Youngstown district. In Cleveland the charters were taken from local unions that refused to abide by this clause. The other trades affiliated with the National Committee protested against the enforcement of the clause. They declared it to be invalid, because it violated trade-union principles and fundamental human rights. Seeing that no consideration was given the laborers under the agreement, their right to strike should have been preserved inviolate. It verged upon peonage to tie them up with an agreement that gave them no protection yet deprived them of the right to defend themselves. These trades freely predicted that to enforce the clause would break the strike in the Youngstown district, as it was altogether out of the question to ask men who had been on strike two months (especially men inexperienced in unionism) to resume work upon such conditions. But all arguments were vain; the Amalgamated Association officials were as adamant. They held their agreements with the employers to be sacred and to rank above any covenants they had entered into with the co-operating trades. They would enforce them to the letter--the interests of the laborers, the mechanical trades, and even the strike itself, to the contrary notwithstanding. Being a federated body, the National Committee had to bow to this decision and stand by, helpless, while its effects worked havoc with the strike. Into Youngstown, in common with all the other districts, armies of scabs were poured. It was the policy of the United States Steel Corporation to operate, or at least to pretend to operate its mills, regardless of cost. So all the "independents" had to do likewise. Word came to the National Committee of several companies which, rather than try to run with the high-priced, worthless strike-breakers, would have been glad either to settle with the unions or to close their plants. But they were afraid to do either; Gary had said "Operate," and it was a case of do that or risk going out of business. The demand for scabs was tremendous. Probably half the strike-breaking agencies in the country were engaged in recruiting them. Thousands of negroes were brought from the South, and thousands of guttersnipe whites from the big northern cities. But worst of all were the skilled steel workers from outlying sections. There were many of such men who went on strike in their own home towns, sneaked away to other steel centres and worked there until the strike was over. Then they would return to their old jobs with cock-and-bull stories (for the workers only) of having worked in other industries, thus seeking to escape the dreaded odium of being known as scabs. These contemptible cowards, being competent workers, wrought incalculable injury to the strike everywhere, especially in the Youngstown district. The Youngstown authorities, to begin with, were reasonably fair towards the strikers; but as the strike wore on and the steel companies and business men became desperate at the determined resistance of the workers, they began to apply "Pennsylvania tactics." In Youngstown and East Youngstown, Mayors Craver and McVey prohibited meetings, "the object of which is discussion of matters pertaining to prolonging the strike."[14] On November 22, district secretary McCadden, and organizers John Klinsky and Frank Kurowsky were arrested in East Youngstown, charged with criminal syndicalism and held for $3,000 bonds each. Later a whole local union, No. 104 Amalgamated Association, was arrested in the same town for holding a business meeting. "Citizens' committees" were formed, and open threats made to tar and feather all the organizers and drive them out of town. But the steel companies were unable to inflame public opinion sufficiently for them to venture this outrage. Afterward the organizers were discharged; and in releasing the men arrested for holding a business meeting, Judge David G. Jenkins said: I regard the ordinance (E. Youngstown anti-free assembly) as a form of hysteria which has been sweeping the country, whereby well-meaning people, in the guise of patriots, have sought to preserve America even though going to the extent of denying the fundamental principles upon which Americanism is based, and free assemblage is one of those fundamentals. In the principal outlying towns of the Youngstown district, namely Butler, Farrell, Sharon, Newcastle and Canton, the strikers were given the worst of it. The first four being Pennsylvania towns, no specific description of them is necessary. Suffice it to say that typical Cossack conditions prevailed. In Canton it was not much better. The companies turned loose many vicious gunmen on the strikers. The mayor was removed from office and his place given to a company man; and a sweeping injunction was issued against the strikers, denying them many fundamental rights.[15] The district, nevertheless, held remarkably well. Cleveland from the first to the last was one of the strong points in the battle line. On September 22 the men struck almost 100 per cent. in all the big plants, and until the very end preserved a wonderful solidarity. Under the excellent control of the organizers working with Secretary Raisse there was at no time a serious break in the ranks, and when the strike was called off on January 8, at least 50 per cent. of the men were still out, with production not over 30 per cent. of normal. Thousands of the men refused to go back to the mills at all, leaving them badly crippled. The backbone of the Cleveland strike was the enormous mills of the American Steel and Wire Co. This calls attention to the fact that, as a whole, the employees of this subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation made incomparably a better fight than did the workers in any other considerable branch of the steel industry. Long after the strike had been cracked in all other sections of the industry, the rod and wire mill men of Cleveland, Donora, Braddock, Rankin, Joliet and Waukegan stood practically solid. Even as late as December 27, only twelve days before the end, the companies were forced to the expedient of assembling a rump meeting in Cleveland of delegates from many centres, for the purpose of calling off the strike. But the men voted unanimously for continuation under the leadership of the National Committee. When the strike was finally ended, however, they accepted the decision with good grace, because they were penetrated with the general strike idea and realized the folly of trying alone to whip the united steel companies. The remarkable fight of the rod and wire mill men was due in large measure to the peculiar circumstances surrounding their organization. These are highly important and require explanation: The regular system used by the National Committee resulted usually in organization from the bottom upward; that is, in response to the general appeals made to the men in the great mass meetings, ordinarily the first to join the unions were the unskilled, who are the workers with the least to lose, the most to gain, and consequently those most likely to take a chance. Gradually, as the confidence of the men developed, the movement would extend on up through the plants until it included the highest skilled men. Given time and a reasonable opportunity, it was an infallible system. It was far superior to the old trade-union plan of working solely from the top down, because the latter always stopped before it got to the main body of the men, the unskilled workers. The "bottom upward" system was used with the rod and wire mills, the same as with all others. But while it was operating the skilled men who had been attracted to the movement in Joliet, Donora and Cleveland started a "top downward" movement of their own. They sent committees to all the large rod and wire mills in the country, appealing to the skilled men to organize. These committeemen, actual workers and acquainted with all the old timers in the business, could do more real organizing in a day with their tradesmen than regular organizers could in a month. Hardly would they go into a locality, no matter how difficult, than they would at once inspire that confidence in the movement which is so indispensable, and which takes organizers so long to develop. The result was a "top downward" movement working simultaneously with the "bottom upward" drive, which produced a high degree of organization for the rod and wire mill men. A great weakness of the strike was the failure of many skilled workers to participate therein. This tended directly to aid the employers, and also to discourage the unskilled workers, who looked for their more expert brothers to take the lead in the strike as well as in the regular shop experiences. The explanation has been offered that this aloofness was because the skilled men are "unorganizable." But this is a dream. In the mills controlled by it, the Amalgamated Association (which is really a skilled workers' union) has thousands of them in its ranks, most of whom earn higher wages than employees of similar classes in the Trust mills. If the proper means to organize them could have been applied, the skilled workers would have been the leaders in the late strike, instead of generally the scabs. The same thing done in the rod and wire mills should have been done in all the important sections of the industry, blast furnaces, open hearths, sheet, tin, rail, plate, tube mills, etc. Committees of well-known skilled workers in these departments should have been sent forth everywhere to start movements from the top to meet the great surge coming up from the bottom. Had this been done, then Gary with all his millions could not have broken the strike. The tie-up would have been so complete and enduring that a settlement would have been compulsory. But it was impossible; the chronic lack of resources prevented it. With the pitifully inadequate funds and men at its disposal, all the National Committee could do was to go ahead with its general campaign, leaving the detail and special work undone. It is certainly to be hoped that in the next big drive this committee system will be extensively followed. It is the solution of the skilled worker problem, and when applied intelligently in connection with the fundamental "bottom upward" movement, it must result in the organization of the industry. * * * * * In the Bethlehem Steel Company's plants the strike was not very effective. This was due principally to the failure of previous strikes and to general lack of organization. In Reading and in Lebanon there had been strikes on for many weeks before the big walkout. The workers' ranks there were already broken. In Sparrows' Point likewise several departments had been on strike since May 3. Not more than 500 men, principally laborers and tin mill workers, responded to the general strike call; but they made a hard fight of it. In Steelton the men had been very strongly organized during the war; but the error was made of putting all the trades into one federal union. Then when the craft unions insisted later that their men be turned over to them, the resultant resistance of the members, and especially of the paid officers, virtually destroyed the organization. When the strike came only a small percentage struck, nor did they stick long. Speaking of the strike in the main plant at Bethlehem, Secretary Hendricks says: The strike was called September 29, and about 75 per cent. of the men responded. These were largely American workers. The Machinists, which comprise about 40 per cent. of the total workers, were the craft most involved. In the mill and blast furnace departments, the response was among the rollers, heaters, and highly skilled men generally, which led to the complete shut-down of these departments. The molders practically shut the foundries down. Electrical workers, steamfitters, millwrights, and general repairmen responded well. The patternmakers did not go out. The first break came a week later. It was charged largely to the steam engineers, who heeded the strike-breaking advice of their international officials and returned to work. Another factor was the failure of support from the railroad men on the inter-plant system. Had these two bodies of men been held in line by their officers, the Bethlehem strike would have been a success. In the Bethlehem situation too much reliance was placed in the skilled trades; more attention should have been given to the organization of the real fighting force, the unskilled workers. Another mistake was to have allowed the strikes to take place in Reading, Lebanon and Sparrows' Point. Even a tyro could see that they had no hope of success. Those men could easily have been held in line until the big strike, to the enormous strengthening of the latter. The National Committee had little to do with the Bethlehem situation before the strike, the movement developing to a great extent independently. Nowhere in the strike zone was there a more bitter fight than in the Buffalo district, which was directed by organizers Thompson and Streifler. All the important plants were affected, but the storm centered around the Lackawanna Steel Company. This concern left nothing undone to defeat its workers. For eight months it had prevented any meetings from being held in Lackawanna, and then, when the workers broke through this obstruction and crowded into the unions, it discharged hundreds of them. This put the iron into the workers' hearts, and they made an heroic struggle. So firm were their ranks that when the general strike was called off on January 8, they voted to continue the fight in Lackawanna. But this was soon seen to be hopeless. Much company violence was used in the Lackawanna strike. The New York State Constabulary and the company guards, of a cut with their odious Pennsylvania brethren, slugged, shot and jailed men and women in real Steel Trust style. Many strikers were injured, and two killed outright. One of these, Joseph Mazurek, a native-born American, was freshly back from the fighting in France. Lackawanna was just a little bit of an industrial hell.[16] As a strike measure the Lackawanna Steel Company evicted many strikers from the company houses. In Braddock, Rankin, Homestead, Butler, Wierton, Natrona, Bethlehem and many other places, the companies put similar pressure upon their men, either evicting them or foreclosing the mortgages on their half-paid-for houses. Threats of such action drove thousands back to work, it being peculiarly terrifying to workers to find themselves deprived of their homes in winter time. Where evictions actually occurred the victims usually had to leave town or find crowded quarters with other strikers. The much-lauded housing schemes of the steel companies are merely one of a whole arsenal of weapons to crush the independence of their workers. No employer should be permitted to own or control the houses in which his men live. * * * * * The Wheeling district is noted as strong union country. The "independent" mills therein had provided the main strength of the Amalgamated Association for several years prior to this movement; but the Trust mills were still unorganized. Under the guidance of National Committee local secretary J. M. Peters, however, these men, in the mills of Wheeling, Bellaire, Benwood and Martin's Ferry, were brought into the unions. On September 22 they struck 100 per cent., completely closing all the plants. They held practically solid until the first week in December, when they broke heavily. The immediate cause of this break merits explanation. The National Committee, at the outset of the strike, organized a publicity department, headed by Mr. Edwin Newdick, formerly of the National War Labor Board. In addition to getting out strike stories for the press, many of which were written by the well-known novelist, Mary Heaton Vorse, this department assembled and issued in printed bulletin form statistical information relative to the progress and effectiveness of the strike. The steel companies, through spies in the unions, newspapers, etc., disputed this information, telling the strikers that they were being victimized as the mills in all districts except their own were in full operation, and advising them to send out committees to investigate the situation. It was a seductive argument and many were deceived by it. Consequently, quite generally, such committees (usually financed and chaperoned by the local Chambers of Commerce) went forth from various localities. Of course, they returned the sort of reports the companies wished. Much harm was done thereby. The Steubenville district suffered from the lying statement of such a committee, the strikers having made a winning fight up till the time it was made public, the middle of November. But nowhere was the effect so serious as in the Wheeling district. The Wheeling committee was headed by one Robert Edwards, widely known for years as an extreme radical. It visited many points in the steel industry, taking its figures on steel production and strike conditions from employers' sources, and completely ignoring national and local strike officials everywhere. The ensuing report pictured the steel industry as virtually normal. Although he had been recently expelled from the Amalgamated Association Edwards still had great influence with the men, and his report broke their ranks. In future general strikes drastic disciplinary measures should be taken to forestall the activities of such committees. * * * * * Of the 6500 men employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. in its Pueblo mills, 95 per cent. walked out on September 22. When the strike was called off three and one-half months later not over 1500 of these had returned to their jobs. Production was below 20 per cent. of normal. Locally the tie-up was so effective that on January 9, at the biggest labor meeting in Pueblo's history, National Committee local secretary W. H. Young and the other organizers had to beg the men for hours to go back to work. These officials knew that the great struggle had been decided in the enormous steel centers of the East (Pueblo being credited with producing only two per cent. of the nation's steel) and that it would be madness for them to try to win the fight alone. The heart of the Pueblo strike was opposition to the Rockefeller Industrial Plan, in force in the mills. This worthless, tyrannical arrangement the men could not tolerate and were determined to contest to the end. Realizing the minor importance of the Pueblo mills in the national strike, the men offered at the outset to waive all their demands pending its settlement, provided the company would agree to meet with their representatives later to take up these matters. But this was flatly refused; it was either accept the Rockefeller Plan or fight, even though 98 per cent. of the men had voted to abolish it. Shortly after this incident John D. Rockefeller, Jr., gained much favorable comment and pleasing publicity by his glowing speech about industrial democracy and the right of collective bargaining, delivered at the National Industrial Conference at Washington, D. C. He was hailed as one of the country's progressive employers. But when the striking Pueblo workers wired him, requesting that he grant them these rights, he referred them to Mr. Welborn, President of the C. F. and I. Company, well knowing that this gentleman would deny their plea. The strike was markedly peaceful throughout, no one being hurt and hardly any one arrested. But on December 28, the state militia were suddenly brought in, ostensibly because of an attack supposed to have been made two days previously upon Mr. F. E. Parks, manager of the Minnequa works. The public never learned the details of this mysterious affair which served so well to bring in the troops. Nor was the "culprit" ever located, although large rewards were offered for his capture. * * * * * The Johnstown strike was so complete that for eight weeks the great Cambria Steel Co., despite strenuous efforts, could not put a single department of its enormous mills into operation. Every trick was used to break the strike. The Back-To-Work organization[17] labored ceaselessly, holding meetings and writing and telephoning the workers to coax or intimidate them back to their jobs. Droves of scabs were brought in from outside points. But to no effect; the workers held fast. Then the company embarked upon the usual Pennsylvania policy of terrorism. I, personally, was the first to feel its weight. I was billed to speak in Johnstown on November 7. Upon alighting from the train I was met by two newspaper men who advised me to quit the town at once, stating that the business men and company officials had held a meeting the night before and organized a "Citizens' Committee," which was to break the strike by applying "Duquesne tactics." Beginning with myself, all the organizers were to be driven from the city. Disregarding this warning, I started for the Labor Temple; but was again warned by the newspapermen, and finally stopped on the street by city detectives, who told me that it would be at the risk of my life to take a step nearer the meeting place. I demanded protection, but it was not forthcoming. I was told to leave. [Illustration: STEEL TRUST NEWSPAPER PROPAGANDA Pittsburgh _Chronicle Telegraph_, October 6, 1919.] In the meantime, Secretary Conboy arriving upon the scene, the two of us started to the Mayor's office to protest, when suddenly, in broad daylight, at a main street corner in the heart of the city, a mob of about forty men rushed us. Shouldering me away from Mr. Conboy, they stuck guns against my ribs and took me to the depot. While there they made a cowardly attempt to force me to sign a Back-To-Work card, which meant to write myself down a scab. Later I was put aboard an eastbound train. Several of the mob accompanied me to Conemaugh, a few miles out. The same night this "Citizens' Committee," with several hundred more, surrounded the organizers in their hotel and gave them twenty-four hours time to leave town. The city authorities refused to stir to defend them, and the following day organizers T. J. Conboy, Frank Hall, Frank Butterworth, and Frank Kurowsky were compelled to go. Domenick Gelotte, a local organizer of the miners, refused to depart and was promptly arrested. Up to this time the strike had been perfectly peaceful. The shut-down was so thorough that not even a picket line was necessary. The mob perpetrating these outrages (duly praised by the newspapers as examples of 100 per cent. Americanism) was led by W. R. Lunk, secretary of the Y. M. C. A., and H. L. Tredennick, president of the chamber of commerce. This pair freely stated that the strike could never be broken by peaceful means, and that they were prepared to apply the necessary violence, which they did. Of course, they were never arrested. Had they been workers and engaged in a similar escapade against business men, they would have been lucky to get off with twenty years imprisonment apiece. After a couple of weeks the organizers returned to Johnstown. Their efforts at holding the men together were so fruitful that the Cambria Company, in its own offices, organized a new mob to drive them out again. But this time, better prepared, they stood firm. On November 29, when the fresh deportation was to take place, Secretary Conboy demanded that Mayor Francke give him and the others protection. He offered to furnish the city a force of 1000 union ex-service men to preserve law and order. This offer was refused, and the Mayor and Sheriff reluctantly agreed to see that peace was kept. They informed the business men's mob that there was nothing doing. It was a tense situation. Had the threatened deportation been attempted, most serious trouble would surely have resulted. In the meantime numbers of the State Constabulary had been sent into town (the city and county authorities denying responsibility for their presence) and they terrorized the workers in their customary, brutal way. Eventually the result sought by all this outlawry developed; a break occurred in the ranks of the highly-paid, skilled steel workers. Although small at first, the defection gradually spread as the weeks rolled on, until, by January 8, about two-thirds of the men had returned to work. * * * * * Considered nationally, strike sentiment continued strong until about the middle of the third month, when a feeling of pessimism regarding the outcome began to manifest itself among the various international organizations. Consequently, a meeting of the National Committee was held in Washington on December 13 and 14, to take stock of the situation. At this meeting I submitted the following figures: _Men on Strike_ _Men on Strike_ _District_ _Sept. 29_ _Dec. 10_ Pittsburgh 25,000 8,000 Homestead 9,000 5,500 Braddock-Rankin 15,000 8,000 Clairton 4,000 1,500 Duquesne-McKeesport 12,000 1,000 Vandergrift 4,000 1,800 Natrona-Brackenridge 5,000 1,500 New Kensington 1,100 200 Apollo 1,500 200 Leechburg 3,000 300 Donora-Monessen 12,000 10,000 Johnstown 18,000 7,000 Coatesville 4,000 500 Youngstown district 70,000 12,800 Wheeling district 15,000 3,000 Cleveland 25,000 15,000 Steubenville district 12,000 2,000 Chicago district 90,000 18,000 Buffalo 12,000 5,000 Pueblo 6,000 5,000 Birmingham 2,000 500 Bethlehem Plants (5) 20,000 2,500 ------- ------- 365,600 109,300 Estimated production of steel, 50 to 60 per cent. of normal capacity. Owing to the chaotic conditions in many steel districts, it was exceedingly difficult at all times to get accurate statistics upon the actual state of affairs. Those above represented the very best that the National Committee's whole organizing force could assemble. The officials of the Amalgamated Association strongly favored calling off the strike, but agreed that the figures cited on the number of men still out were conservative and within the mark. The opinion prevailed that the strike was still effective and that it should be vigorously continued. On January 3 and 4, the National Committee met in Pittsburgh. At this gathering it soon became evident that the strike was deemed hopeless, so, according to its custom when important decisions had to be made, the National Committee called a special meeting for January 8, all the international organizations being notified. The situation was bad. Reliable reports on January 8 showed the steel companies generally to have working forces of from 70 to 80 per cent., and steel production of from 60 to 70 per cent. of normal. Possibly 100,000 men still held out; but it seemed merely punishing these game fighters to continue the strike. They were being injured by it far more than was the Steel Trust. There was no hope of a settlement, the steel companies being plainly determined now to fight on indefinitely. Therefore, in justice to the loyal strikers and to enable them to go back to the mills with clear records, the meeting adopted, by a vote of ten unions to five, a sub-committee's report providing that the strike be called off; that the commissaries be closed as fast as conditions in the various localities would permit, and that the campaign of education and organization of the steel workers be continued with undiminished vigor. At this point, wishing to have the new phase of the work go ahead with a clean slate, I resigned my office as Secretary-Treasurer of the National Committee. Mr. J. G. Brown was elected to fill the vacancy. The following telegram was sent to all the strike centers, and given to the press: The Steel Corporations, with the active assistance of the press, the courts, the federal troops, state police, and many public officials, have denied steel workers their rights of free speech, free assembly and the right to organize, and by this arbitrary and ruthless misuse of power have brought about a condition which has compelled the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers to vote today that the active strike phase of the steel campaign is now at an end. A vigorous campaign of education and reorganization will be immediately begun and will not cease until industrial justice has been achieved in the steel industry. All steel strikers are now at liberty to return to work pending preparations for the next big organization movement. John Fitzpatrick D. J. Davis, Edw. J. Evans, Wm. Hannon, Wm. Z. Foster. The great steel strike was ended. FOOTNOTES: [14] Youngstown _Vindicator_, November 24, 1919. [15] No history of the movement in the Youngstown district could be complete without some mention of the assistance rendered the workers by Bishop John Podea of the Roumanian Greek Catholic church, Youngstown, and Rev. E. A. Kirby, pastor of St. Rose Roman Catholic church of Girard, Ohio. Usually the churchmen (of all faiths) in the various steel towns were careful not to jeopardize the fat company contributions by helping the unions. But not these men. They realized that all true followers of the Carpenter of Nazareth had to be on the side of the oppressed steel workers; and throughout the entire campaign they distinguished themselves by unstinted co-operation with the unions. The service was never too great nor the call too often for them to respond willingly. [16] In connection with this matter it is interesting to note that after the strike had ended the union men entered suits against the steel companies for heavy damages. Up to the present writing the Lackawanna Steel Company, realizing the indefensibility of the outrages, has made out-of-court settlements to the extent of $22,500. [17] These Back-To-Work organizations were formed in many steel towns; their purpose was to recruit scabs. They were composed of company officials, business men and "loyal" workers. The companies furnished the wherewithal to finance them. XI NATIONAL AND RACIAL ELEMENTS A MODERN BABEL--AMERICANS AS SKILLED WORKERS--FOREIGNERS AS UNSKILLED WORKERS--LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES--THE NEGRO IN THE STRIKE--THE RACE PROBLEM In order to prove its charge that the purpose of the steel strike was contrary to the spirit of our institutions, the Steel Trust's great propaganda organization never ceased asserting, (1) that the strike was a movement of foreigners, (2) that the Americans in the mills were opposed to it for patriotic reasons and were taking no part therein. The vicious press made much capital of these allegations, using them heavily against the strike. Now let us see how much truth there was in them: 1. Unquestionably the foreign-born were in the majority among the strikers; but how could it be otherwise in view of the fact that they make up the bulk of the working force in the industry? The following table, submitted to the Senate Committee by Mr. A. F. Diehl, General Manager of the Duquesne Works of the Carnegie Steel Co., illustrates this fact:[18] RECAPITULATION OF NATIONALITIES, AS OF AUG. 1ST, 1919, FOR TOTAL PLANT, DUQUESNE WORKS _Nationality_ _Total_ _Per cent._ American 2,097 34.6 American (colored) 344 5.7 English 147 2.4 Scotch 41 .7 Welsh 28 .5 Irish 58 .9 Canadian 4 .1 German 104 1.8 French 6 .1 Swedish 79 1.3 Italian 128 2.1 Greek 23 .4 Swiss 5 .1 Norwegian 4 .1 Danish 1 .0 Hollander 1 .0 Russian 185 3.0 Lithuanian 201 3.3 Lattis 3 .0 Bohemian 3 .0 Croatian 222 3.7 Magyar 742 12.2 Slovak 930 15.3 Roumanian 7 .1 Ruthenian 82 1.3 Bulgarian 25 .4 Servian 219 3.6 Polish 246 4.0 Armenian 34 .5 Dalmatian 6 .1 Macedonian 10 .2 Hebrew 10 .2 Turkish 80 1.3 ----- ----- Totals 6,075 100.0 This condition is typical of steel mills generally in the greater Pittsburgh and Middle West districts, where the body of the industry is located. In Clairton, of 4,600 employees, divided into 39 nationalities, 35 per cent. are Americans. On page 480 of the report of the Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, appears a table covering the employees of the Homestead Steel Works, Howard Axle Works, and Carrie Furnaces (an industrial unit), submitted by General Manager J. S. Oursler. It shows a total of 14,687 employees, of 54 nationality divisions. Of these employees, 5,799, or 39.45 per cent. are stated to be American whites. But as Mr. Oursler re-iterated in his testimony that he had classed as Americans all those who had their citizenship papers, both these figures should therefore be considerably reduced. Besides, it must be borne in mind that these several tables include the office forces, bosses, etc., which are almost entirely American, and which were not involved in the strike. In the steel districts in question it is exceedingly doubtful if over 25 per cent. of the actual workers are American-born whites. How, then, can a general strike of steel workers be anything else than largely a strike of foreigners? 2. Regarding the alleged non-participation of Americans in the movement: Although in many districts where the strike was practically 100 per cent. effective, the Americans struck almost to a man with the other workers and fought gamely to the finish, nevertheless it must be admitted that in the main, when compared with the foreigners,[19] they made a poor showing. To begin with they organized slowly; then they struck reluctantly and scatteringly; and finally, they showed little tenacity as strikers. But this general sluggishness originated, however, not in patriotic objections to the movement or lack of sympathy with its aims; but chiefly because the Americans, as skilled workers, were naturally slower and less determined in action than the foreigners, or unskilled workers. In the steel industry the most skilled men are to be found in those trades actually engaged in the making and rolling of iron and steel--the melters, puddlers, shearmen, rollers, roughers, heaters, Bessemer blowers, etc. These men are paid upon a tonnage basis and generally receive considerably higher wages than the mechanical tradesmen--bricklayers, machinists, boilermakers, riggers, firemen, engineers, electrical workers, blacksmiths, etc., who build, maintain and generally operate the plants. It is among the favored tonnage trades that the Americans are especially intrenched. In the old days these highly skilled workers took the initiative in the struggle for human rights in the steel industry--the mechanical trades and unskilled workers playing a very minor part. Homestead was one of their great battles, only 752 of the 3800 men employed being union members in good-standing. They were then bold, militant and tenacious as bull dogs. But since those times they have been defeated so often, due to a weakening of their proportional strength and strategical position, that they have lost much of the independent spirit which once characterized them. They now fear the power of the Steel Trust; they dread its pitiless blacklist; they hesitate to put in jeopardy their comparatively good jobs, which they secured only after long years of service in minor positions, and which, once lost, are so hard to regain. They want better conditions now as much as they ever did, but they lack the self-confidence to fight for them. All through the campaign their attitude, barring the exceptions here and there, was to wait until the lesser skilled men had so far perfected the organization as to make it seem safe for them to join it. When the strike came the unskilled workers led the way; then came the mechanical trades; with the aristocratic steel workers bringing up the rear. But in scurrying back to scab in the mills, the order was just the reverse. This was the experience in virtually every section of the industry. It would be wrong, however, to say that the failure of American workers to participate more heartily in the movement was due solely to their favored position in the industry. To some extent race prejudice also came into play, especially in those districts where the organization had not yet reached far enough up into the plants to include the skilled workers. Everywhere American-born workingmen, unfortunately, are prone to look with some suspicion, if not contempt and hatred, upon foreigners, whom they have been taught to believe are injuring their standard of living. The companies made the most of this. Dubbing the walkout a "hunky" strike, they told the Americans that if it succeeded the latter would have to give over to the despised foreigners all the good jobs and shop privileges they enjoyed. Their slogan was "Don't let the 'hunkies' rule the mills." They openly circulated handbills inciting to race war. The following, from Elwood, Pa., where a National Tube Company plant is located, is typical: WAKE UP AMERICANS!! ITALIAN LABORERS, organized under the American Federation of Labor are going to strike Monday and are threatening workmen who want to continue working. These foreigners have been told by labor agitators that if they would join the union they would get Americans' jobs. They are being encouraged by ITALIAN MERCHANTS, who are in sympathy with them. ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP AND LET MOB RULE THREATEN THE PEACE OF OUR TOWN? In towns where often the foreign population is three-fourths of the whole, such propaganda was most inflammatory. The newspapers did all they could to make it more so. They solemnly warned of the danger of a foreign uprising and advised a campaign of militant, 100 per cent. Americanism; which meant, on the one hand for the local authorities, gunmen, and business men to set up a reign of terror, and on the other, for the workers all to go back to work at once. The courts and so-called peace officers did their part. They jailed, clubbed and shot the foreigners and left the Americans, even if they were strikers, in comparative immunity. Nothing was left undone to create a race issue, and it is not surprising that many American workers, unorganized and ignorant, were mislead by this and inveigled back to the mills. It has been charged that the unions neglected the American steel workers and concentrated upon the organization of the foreigners. If anything, the reverse is true; for by far the weight of the appeal made was to the English speaking elements. Every piece of literature put out stressed heavily the English language. Of twenty-five National Committee district and local secretaries, only three were born in Europe; of a dozen Amalgamated Association organizers, not one spoke anything but English, and of the crew as a whole, over 80 per cent. were American born. By its very nature such an organizing force had to make strong appeal to the American workers. In fact, the foreigners constantly insisted upon this, because, strangers in a strange land, they always crave and seek American co-operation in their union movements. That this co-operation was not more in evidence in the steel campaign was the cause of much bitter complaint among them. * * * * * But if the Americans and skilled workers generally proved indifferent union men in the steel campaign, the foreign, unskilled workers covered themselves with glory. Throughout the whole affair they showed an understanding discipline, courage and tenacity of purpose that compared favorably with that shown in any organized effort ever put forth by workingmen on this continent. Beyond question they displayed trade-union qualities of the very highest type. Their solidarity was unbreakable; their fighting spirit invincible. They nobly struggled onward in the face of difficulties that would try the stoutest hearts. They proved themselves altogether worthy of the best American labor traditions. Thousands of them were intending to return to Europe shortly and apparently had slight reason to establish good conditions here; but they fought on, many spending their little savings during the strike, and thus postponing indefinitely the long-looked-for trip to the homelands. This attitude of the foreign workers is a bitter pill for the Steel Trust. For many years it had scoured the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and packed its mills with poor, dispirited, ignorant immigrants of three score nationalities, in the hope that it was finally supplanting its original crew of independent American and Western European workmen by a race of submissive, unorganizable slaves. And for a long time this shameful policy worked well. Wages sank to nowhere; conditions became unspeakably wretched; every strike of the old-time, organized workers was smothered by an avalanche of job-hungry immigrants.[20] But now these foreigners are waking up; in consequence of hard economic conditions, a better acquaintance with our language and institutions, an inherent class solidarity, the example of union men in other industries, and the social upheavals in Europe, these men are opening their eyes; and they are fast taking their place in the very front rank of the working class fighters for industrial liberty. And now the Steel Trust, discovering that its hoped-for-scabs are in truth highly rebellious workingmen, is making the welkin ring with inconsistent denunciation of the "revolutionary foreigners," with whom just a short while ago it was so anxious to crowd its plants. The biter has been very badly bitten. For the unions the nationality problem was serious throughout the entire campaign--the employers had worked for years to make it an insoluble one. Something of the situation may be gleaned when it is recalled that the steel industry comprises hundreds of mills, scattered through a dozen states, and employing half a million workers. These speak dozens of widely differing languages, worship through many mutually antagonistic religions, and are moved by numberless racial and national animosities. Yet the National Committee, with the skimped resources it had in hand, had to and did weld together this vast polyglot, heterogeneous mass into a voluntary organization, kept it thinking alike, and held it in strong discipline for months in the face of the bitter opposition of the Steel Trust, which sought in every conceivable way to divide the workers by playing upon their multiplicity of fears and prejudices. In accomplishing this huge task the first requisite was to overcome the language difficulty sufficiently to permit the message of trade unionism to be brought forcefully to the many diverse elements. Because doing so would have rendered the meetings ruinously cumbersome and unwieldy, it was out of the question to utilize all the languages or any considerable number of them; so the plan was followed of using only the predominant ones; the theory being that if the large bodies of workers speaking them could be reached, they in turn would find means to influence the minorities speaking other languages. As the various foreign groups tend strongly to colonize in certain districts, the basic languages spoken in a given plant, regardless of how many nationalities work therein, ordinarily number not more than four or five, including always English, usually a couple of the Slavic tongues (Slavish, Polish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Serbian, etc.), often Hungarian, and occasionally Italian, Roumanian or Greek. For example, among the fifty-four nationalities in the big Homestead plants, the principal languages spoken are, in the order of their numerical importance, English, Slavish, Russian, Hungarian and Polish. Move these predominate language groups and you move the whole working force; that was the system in the steel campaign. Seldom was a piece of literature issued, even for national circulation, with as many as six languages upon it; the vitally important strike call had but seven, while four was the customary number. About twenty-five organizers who spoke these predominating languages were put in the field. Great care was taken by the A. F. of L., National Committee and co-operating unions to select reliable, level-headed men of influence and standing among their respective peoples, men who could be depended upon to go along with the general program, and not to work upon some destructive side-issue of their own. Besides, efforts were made to take every possible advantage of the fact that practically all the foreign workers have some slight smattering of English. Accordingly, the English-speaking organizers were coached to get rid of all trade-union technical expressions and to confine their talks to fundamentals; to speak slowly, distinctly, and in the simplest, even "pidjinized" terms, to illustrate the whole with sign language, and to follow out a system of repetition and restatement that was bound to make their meaning plain to the most unknowing. Such talks, while not calculated to stir the emotions, made clear the situation and were greatly appreciated by the foreigners, thousands of whom, during the steel campaign, for the first time felt the pleasure and encouragement of understanding the despairingly difficult English spoken from a platform. The steel workers' meetings were schools in practical Americanization.[21] With the language problem solved in even this imperfect way, the persistent advocacy of labor union principles, backed up by a few thoroughgoing, common-sense systems of organization, did the rest. Gradually the great armies of linguistically, religiously, racially divided steel workers were united into the mighty force which threw itself against the Steel Trust. In the main the foreign workers were simple, sincere, earnest minded folk, naturally disposed to co-operative effort. While the individualistic, sophisticated American workers all too often attended the ball games and filled the pool rooms, the foreigners packed the union meeting halls. Their worst fault was a woeful unacquaintance with trade-union methods. This the organizers diligently labored to overcome by patient instruction and a faithful attendance to their duties. The general result was that the foreign workers developed a confidence in the organizers and a loyalty to the unions, which not even the heavy shock of the loss of the strike has been able to destroy. * * * * * The indifference, verging often into open hostility, with which negroes generally regard Organized Labor's activities, manifested itself strongly in the steel campaign. Those employed in the industry were extremely resistant to the trade-union program; those on the outside allowed themselves to be used freely as strike-breakers. According to the Immigration Commission's Report, which furnished the latest official figures (period 1907-08), 4.7 per cent. of the total number of steel industry employees at that time were negroes, most of whom were located in the Alabama and Maryland districts. Since then, however, considerable additions to their numbers have been made, and in many northern mills will be found groups of them, ranging in strength from 1 to 20 per cent. of the whole working force. They work mostly at hard, rough, unskilled labor, especially in the blast furnace department. Generally speaking, these bodies of negroes took small part in the movement. In certain districts, notably Cleveland and Wheeling, it is true that they organized 100 per cent. and struck very creditably; but in most places, and exactly those where their support was needed the worst, they made a wretched showing. Consider the situation, for instance, in the Homestead Steel Works. In these plants (including the Carrie Furnaces at Rankin), of the 14,687 employees, 1,737 are negroes. Making deductions for office forces, bosses, etc., this would make them from 12 to 14 per cent. of the actual workers, a most important factor indeed. During the organizing campaign, of all these men, only eight joined the unions. And of these but one struck. He, however, stayed loyally to the finish. The degree of this abstention from the movement may be gauged when it is recalled that of the white unskilled workers in the same plants at least 75 per cent. joined the unions, and 90 per cent. struck. Throughout the immediate Pittsburgh district, where the unions operated under such great handicaps and had to rely so much on the initiative of the individual workers, the same condition prevailed. In Duquesne, of 344 negroes employed, not one struck; in Clairton, of 300, six joined the unions and struck for two weeks. Of the several hundred working in the Braddock plants, not one joined a union or went on strike; and a dozen would cover those from the large number employed in the mills in Pittsburgh proper who walked out with the 25,000 whites on September 22. Similar tendencies were shown in the Chicago, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pueblo, Sparrows' Point and other districts. In the entire steel industry, the negroes, beyond compare, gave the movement less co-operation than any other element, skilled or unskilled, foreign or native. Those on the outside of the industry seemed equally unsympathetic. National Committee secretaries' reports indicate that the Steel Trust recruited and shipped from 30,000 to 40,000 negroes into the mills as strike-breakers. Many of these were picked up in Northern cities, but the most of them came from the South. They were used in all the large districts and were a big factor in breaking the strike. The following statement illustrates some of the methods used in securing and handling them: Monessen, November 23, 1919 Eugene Steward--Age 19--Baltimore, Md. My native place is Charleston, South Carolina. I arrived in Monessen on Wednesday, November 19. There were about 200 of us loaded in the cars at Baltimore; some were white; and when we were loaded in the cars were told that we were being taken to Philadelphia. We were not told that a strike was in progress. We were promised $4.00 a day, with the understanding that we should be boarded at $1.00 a day. When we took the train a guard locked the doors so that we were unable to get out, and no meals were given us on the way, although we were promised board. We were unloaded at Lock 4 and had a guard placed over us, and were then marched into the grounds of the Pittsburgh Steel Products Co. We were then told to go to work, and when I found out that there was a strike on I got out. They refused to let me out at the gate when I protested about working, and I climbed over the fence, and they caught me and compelled me to go back and sign a paper and told me that I would have to go to work. I told them that I would not go to work if they kept me there two years. I was placed on a boat. There were about 200 other people there. The guards informed me that if I made any attempt to again run away that they would shoot me. I got a rope and escaped, as I will not work to break the strike. his Eugene X Steward mark Witness Jacob S. McGinley Few, however, of the imported negro strike-breakers showed the splendid spirit of this unlettered boy. Most of them seemed to take a keen delight in stealing the white men's jobs and crushing their strike. They clashed badly with the pickets, where picketing was allowed. And between them and the white strike-breakers many murderous encounters occurred in the mills, although the companies were very careful to suppress news of these outbreaks. So serious was the race situation in the steel strike that the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers requested President Gompers to arrange a conference between prominent negro leaders and trade-union officials, to the end that the proper remedies may be indicated. The need for action looking towards better relations between whites and blacks in the industrial field should be instantly patent; for there can be no doubt but that the employing class, taking advantage of the bitter animosities of the two groups, are deliberately attempting to turn the negroes into a race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance of the Russian people. Should they succeed to any degree it would make our industrial disputes take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that would be highly injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks. For the tense situation existing the unions are themselves in no small part to blame. Many of them sharply draw the color line, thus feeding the flames of race hatred. This discriminatory practice is in direct conflict with the fundamental which demands that all the workers be organized, without regard to sex, race, creed, politics or nationality. It injures Labor's cause greatly. Company agents harp upon it continually, to prevent negroes from joining even the organizations willing to take them in. This was the case in the steel campaign. Moreover these same company agents cited this discriminatory practice most effectively to induce thousands of outside colored workers to come into the industry as strike-breakers. Such a condition cannot be allowed to persist. But to relieve it the unions will have to meet the issue honestly and broad-mindedly. They must open their ranks to negroes, make an earnest effort to organize them, and then give them a square deal when they do join. Nothing short of this will accomplish the desired result.[22] This action by the unions will be a step in the right direction, but it alone will not solve the vexed problem. The best negro leaders must join heartily in destroying the pernicious anti-union policies so deeply rooted among their people. It is a lamentable fact, well known to all organizers who have worked in industries employing considerable numbers of negroes, that there is a large and influential black leadership, including ministers, politicians, editors, doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc., who as a matter of race tactics are violently opposed to their people going into the trade unions. They look upon strike-breaking as a legitimate and effective means of negro advancement. Time and again, they have seen their people, by use of it, readily work their way into trades and industries previously firmly sealed against them by the white workers' and white employers' prejudices. Nor can they see any wrong in thus taking advantage of the white man, who has so brutally oppressed them for centuries. On the contrary, they consider it a justified retaliation. They are in a race war. Inasmuch as the steel strike resulted in more negroes being in the industry than was the case before, they look upon the outcome as a victory. For these elements, and they are numerous and powerful among negroes, the color line clauses in the union constitutions are meat and drink; such leaders don't want them abolished,--they make too strong an argument against the unions. Consider the situation faced by the unions in the campaign to organize the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18. The negroes in this industry are a strong factor (numbering 14,000 of a total of some 65,000 employees), and the unions were determined to organize them. But no sooner had organizers begun the work than they met the firm opposition of the negro intelligencia above-noted. These warned their people to have nothing to do with the movement, as their interest lay in working with the packers to defeat the unions. They said that was how the negroes came into the packing industry, and that was how they would progress in it. Naturally, they repeated the accusations about white men not taking negroes in their unions, a charge which was not true in the packing industry. The organizers replied by launching a vigorous campaign to get them into the unions. Then the propaganda was sent forth that the only reason the whites were willing to take the blacks into their locals was because the latter, being in a minority, could exert no control; that the whites would not dare to give them a local of their own, etc. This was met by the establishment of a negro local of miscellaneous workers in a convenient neighborhood. Then the Jim Crow cry was raised that the whites wanted the blacks to herd by themselves. This the organizers answered by insisting that a free transfer system be kept up between the white and black locals. These were affiliated with the basic organization of the industry, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. But even this did not satisfy; the anti-union propaganda went on undiminished and with tremendous effect. It is true that some far-sighted negro intellectuals defended the unions; but they were as men crying in the wilderness; the others prevailed. And although the unions kept a crew of negro organizers in the field, and won many concessions for the packing house workers, including the eight hour day, right of collective bargaining, large increases in wages, 40 hour weekly guarantee, retroactive pay, seniority rights, etc., they have never succeeded in organizing the negroes. They know little of the race problem in industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will require the best thought that conscientious whites and blacks can give it. The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of him. But I am confident that he will win out and will take his place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the white worker. FOOTNOTES: [18] Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, page 532. [19] In steel industry usage (followed in this book unless otherwise noted) the term "foreigners" applies chiefly to the nationalities of the later immigrations, including the Slavic races, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians and others from Eastern and Southern Europe. These are the so-called "hunkies." The peoples of the earlier immigrations--the English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Germans and Scandinavians--who speak our language, hold good jobs, and are generally well established, are not exactly considered Americans, but they are rarely called foreigners. [20] The brazen frankness with which this policy was carried out is illustrated by the following advertisement, which appeared in the Pittsburgh _Gazette-Times_, July 15, 1909, during the big steel strike of that time: MEN WANTED--Tinners, catchers and helpers to work in open shops. Syrians, Poles and Roumanians preferred. Steady employment and good wages to men willing to work. Fare paid and no fees charged. [21] During the great organization drive in the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18, this method was used for several months in the large local union of car builders and repairmen, fully 90 per cent. of whom, born in Eastern Europe, were supposedly non-English-speaking. As a result they acquired such confidence in their ability to use the language that they dropped the customary practice of translating all their business into several languages and took to using English only. [22] The Miners, Building Laborers and several other unions are taking the lead in this direction and are getting good results. Negroes are joining their ranks in considerable numbers and are proving themselves to be excellent union men. XII THE COMMISSARIAT--THE STRIKE COST THE RELIEF ORGANIZATION--RATIONS--SYSTEM OF DISTRIBUTION --COST OF COMMISSARIAT--STEEL STRIKE RELIEF FUND--COST OF THE STRIKE TO THE WORKERS, THE EMPLOYERS, THE PUBLIC, THE LABOR MOVEMENT In all strikes the problem of keeping the wolf from the door is a pressing one. Usually it is met by the unions involved paying regular benefits of from $5.00 to $15.00 per week to each striker. But in the steel strike this was out of the question.[23] The tremendous number of men on strike and the scanty funds available utterly forbade it. To have paid such benefits would have required the impossible sum of at least $2,000,000 per week. Therefore, the best that could be done was to assist those families on the brink of destitution by furnishing them free that most basic of human necessities, food. Ordinarily in strikes the main body of men are able to take care of themselves over an extended period. The danger point is in the poverty-stricken minority. From them come the hunger-driven scabs who so demoralize and discourage the men still out. Hence, to take care of this weaker element was scientifically to strengthen the steel strike, and to make the best use of the resources available. The great mass of strikers and their incomplete organization making it manifestly impossible for each union to segregate and take care of its own members, the internationals affiliated with the National Committee (with the two exceptions noted) pooled their strike funds and formed a joint commissariat.[24] They then proceeded to extend relief to all needy strikers, regardless of their trades or callings, or even membership or non-membership in the unions. To get relief all that was necessary was to be a steel striker and in want. This splendid solidarity and rapid modification of trade-union tactics and institutions to meet an emergency is probably without a parallel in American labor annals. The commissariat was entirely under the supervision and direction of the National Committee. Its national headquarters was in Pittsburgh, with a sub-district in Chicago. Goods were shipped from these two points. In Pittsburgh they were bought and handled through the Tri-State Co-operative Association, with National Committee employees making up the shipments. In Chicago the same was done through the National Co-operative Association. As Bethlehem, Birmingham, Pueblo and a few other strike-bound towns lay beyond convenient shipping distance from the two distributing points, the men in charge there were sent checks and they bought their supplies locally. The General Director of the commissariat was Robert McKechan, business manager of the Central States Wholesale Co-operative Association. He was paid by the Illinois Miners, District No. 2. He was ably assisted by A. V. Craig (Ass't. Director), Enoch Martin (Auditor--also paid by Illinois miners), Wm. Orr (Warehouse Manager), and E. G. Craig. Secretary De Young was in charge of the Chicago sub-district. The local distributing centres were operated altogether by National Committee local secretaries and volunteer strike committees, with an occasional paid assistant. All told, 45 local commissaries were set up throughout the strike zone. This elaborate organization was created and put in motion almost over night. Within a week after Mr. McKechan arrived in Pittsburgh, he and officials of the National Committee had devised the commissary system--with hardly a precedent to go by,--organized its nation-wide machinery, and started the first shipment _en route_ to the many strike centres. To break in this machinery, a small pro rata of provisions, based upon the number of men on strike, was sent to each place. The following week this was doubled, and each succeeding week it was increased to keep pace with the growing need. It finally developed into a huge affair. Few strikers had to be turned away for lack of food, and these only for a short while until the necessary additional stuff could be secured from the shipping points. Throughout the fourteen weeks it was in operation the commissariat, despite the tremendous difficulties it had to contend with, worked with remarkable smoothness. It was one of the greatest achievements of the entire steel campaign. [Illustration: JOHN FITZPATRICK _Chairman, National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers._] The wide extent of the relief work made it necessary to develop the most rigid simplicity and standardization in the apportionment of food to the strikers. Hence, only two sizes of rations could be used; one for families of five or less, and the other for families of six or more. These were varied from time to time, always bearing in mind the cooking facilities of the strikers and the many food likes and dislikes of the various nationalities. To facilitate the carrying away of the food and to make it last the better, two commissary days were held each week, in each locality. The rations were listed on large posters (white for families of five or less, and green for families of six or more) which were prominently displayed in the local commissaries in order that the strikers could see exactly how much provisions they were entitled to. The following are typical rations: FAMILIES OF FIVE OR LESS First Half Week Second Half Week Potatoes 15 lbs. Bread 4 loaves Bread 4 loaves Tomatoes 1 can Tomatoes 1 can Corn 1 can Peas 1 can Peas 1 can Navy beans 4 lbs. Red beans 4 lbs. Oatmeal 1 box Kraut 2 cans Bacon 1 lb. Dry salt meat 1 lb. Coffee 1 lb. Syrup 1 can Milk 1 can FAMILIES OF SIX OR MORE First Half Week Second Half Week Potatoes 10 lbs. Potatoes 10 lbs. Bread 5 loaves Bread 5 loaves Tomatoes 1 can Tomatoes 1 can Corn 1 can Corn 1 can Peas 1 can Peas 1 can Navy beans 5 lbs. Kraut 2 cans Oatmeal 2 boxes Red beans 5 lbs. Bacon 1 lb. Dry salt meat 1 lb. Coffee 1 lb. Milk 1 can Milk 1 can Syrup 1 can It was not contended that these rations were enough to sustain completely the recipients' families; but they helped mightily. Few, if any, went hungry. Single men in need received a half week's rations to last the week. The greatest care was taken to have the supplies of the best quality and in good condition. Whatever the unions gave they wanted the strikers to understand was in the best spirit of brotherly solidarity.[25] The provisions were distributed strictly according to the following card system: 1. Identification card: An applicant requesting relief would be referred to a credentialed volunteer relief committee. If this committee deemed the case a needy one, it would issue the striker an identification card. This he was required to show when dealing at the commissary. 2. Record card: In addition, the relief committee would write out the data of the case upon a record card and turn it over to the local secretary in charge of the commissary, who would keep it on file. 3. Commissary card: When the applicant presented his identification card at the commissary, the local secretary, referring to the record card on file, would make him out a commissary card, white or green, accordingly as his family was of five or less, or six or more members. This commissary card entitled him to draw supplies. The commissary card had a stub attached. When a striker got his first half week's supplies, this stub would be detached and retained by the commissary clerk. Upon his next visit the body of the card would be taken up. Two important purposes were served by this collection of the commissary cards--rather than having permanent cards and merely punching them. First, the canceled cards being sent to the commissariat national headquarters, it proved conclusively that the strikers had actually received the provisions shipped to the district; and second, by compelling the strikers to get new commissary cards each week, it enabled the local secretaries to keep in close touch with those on the relief roll. To lighten the load upon the many inexperienced men working in the various commissaries, a special effort was made to do as much of the technical work as possible in the main offices of the National Committee. Otherwise the commissariat could not possibly have succeeded. This consideration was a prime factor in restricting the buying of provisions to Pittsburgh, Chicago and the fewest practical number of outlying points. It also caused the adoption of the package system, all bulk goods, except potatoes, being prepared for delivery before leaving the warehouses. Likewise, the local bookkeeping was simplified to the last degree. In fact, for the most part the secretaries in charge of the commissaries hardly needed books at all. The whole system checked itself from the central points. As an example of its working, let us suppose that the allotment of a certain town was 1000 rations. Accordingly, there would be shipped to that place exactly enough of each article to precisely cover the allotted number of rations. Then, if the secretary simply saw to it that he got what he was charged with and issued his supplies carefully in the right proportions, the whole transaction would balance to a pound, with hardly a scratch of a pen from him. The bookkeeping was all done at the general offices. The latter's assurances that each striker had received his proper ration and that the right number of rations had been issued were, in the first place, the ration posters hanging on the walls of the commissary; and in the second, the returned canceled commissary cards. Barring an occasional slight disruption from delayed shipments, spoiled goods, shortages, and a little carelessness here and there, the system worked very well. The commissariat was in operation from October 26 until January 31, three weeks after the strike had ended. It was continued through this extra period in order to help to their feet the destitute strikers who had fought so nobly. Probably nothing done by the unions in the entire campaign won them so much good will with the steel workers as this one act. The total cost of operating the commissariat was $348,509.42. The significance of this figure stands out when it is reduced to a per man basis. At the strike's start there were 365,600 men out, and at its finish about 100,000. Considering that few serious breaks occurred until the eighth to tenth weeks, a fair average for the whole period would be about 250,000. Accordingly, this would give (disregarding the three weeks after January 8) a total relief cost of a fraction less than $1.40 per man for the entire fifteen weeks of the strike, or about one day's strike benefits of an ordinary union. Reduced to a weekly basis, it amounts to but 9-1/3 cents for each striker. Just how unusually small this sum is may be judged from the fact that the International Molders' Union paid the few men it had on strike regular benefits of $9.00 per week after the first week. The fact is that, except for a small, impoverished minority, the steel workers made their long, hard fight virtually upon their own resources.[26] To help finance the commissariat the American Federation of Labor was requested to issue a general appeal for funds, which it did. Then, to add force to this call, the National Committee recruited and put in the field a corps of solicitors, including among others, Anton Johannson, J. D. Cannon, J. W. Brown, J. G. Sause, Jennie Matyas and G. A. Gerber. At a meeting in Madison Square Garden on November 8 a collection of $150,000 was taken up. Many local unions, notably those of Altoona, Pa., gave half their local treasuries and assessed their members one day's pay each. The Marine Engineers, local 33 of New York, contributed $10,000; the International Fur Workers' Union $20,000; the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, $60,000; and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, $100,000. All these donations were highly praiseworthy, but especially the last one mentioned, because the organization making it is not affiliated to, nor even in good grace with, the A. F. of L. The total amount collected and turned over to the National Committee was $418,141.14. This more than covered the entire cost of the commissariat, leaving $69,631.42 to be applied to other expenses. Thus, taking them as a whole, the co-operating international unions in the National Committee were not required to pay a penny to the feeding of the strikers and their families. The commissariat was a monument to the solidarity of Labor generally with the embattled steel workers. Naturally, the employers bitterly hated the commissaries. They sneered at the quantity and quality of the food given out by them, and in many places printed handbills in several languages advising the strikers to go at once to union headquarters and demand strike benefits in cash. And by the same token, the strikers held the commissaries in high esteem. The foreign-born among them especially, would stand around watching with never-ceasing wonder and enthusiasm the stream of men and women coming forth laden with supplies. To them there was something sacred about the food. Many of them in desperate circumstances had to be practically compelled to accept it; not because they felt themselves objects of charity, but because they thought others needed help worse than they. They conceived the whole thing as a living demonstration of the solidarity of labor. The giving of the food produced an effect upon their morale far better than could have come from the distribution of ten times its value in money. The commissariat enormously strengthened the strikers. Without it the strike would have collapsed many weeks before it did. Unions in future great walkouts will do well to study the steel strike commissary plan. * * * * * Strikes, even the smallest, affect so many people in so many ways that it is difficult under the best of circumstances to compile accurate data upon their cost. In the case of the steel strike it is next to impossible to do so. The great number of steel companies and the armies of men involved; the wide scope of the strike; the condition of outlawry in many steel districts; the fact that the strike was lost; the workers' numerous nationalities and imperfection of organization--all these and various other factors make it exceedingly difficult, at least at this early date, to give more than a hint of the strike's cost. In the steel strike, as in all others, the burden of suffering fell to the workers' lot. To win their cause they gave freely of their lives, liberty, blood and treasure. A poll of the National Committee local secretaries yields the following list of strike dead: Buffalo 2 Chicago 1 Cleveland 1 Farrell 4 Hammond 4 Newcastle 2 Pittsburgh 1 West Natrona 2 Wheeling 1 Youngstown 2 -- Total 20 The killed were all on the strikers' side, except two. The above list properly includes Mrs. Fannie Sellins. But it does not include the scores of scabs who, because of their own or other incompetent workers' ineptness, were roasted, crushed to death, or torn to pieces in the dangerous steel-making processes during the strike. Although the steel companies were exceedingly alert in suppressing the names of these ignoble victims to their greed, it is a well-known fact that there were many of them. There was hardly a big mill anywhere that did not have several to its account. How many hundreds of strikers were seriously injured by being clubbed and shot will never be known, because most of them, especially in Pennsylvania, healed themselves as best they might. With good grounds they feared that disclosing their injuries to doctors would lead to their arrest upon charges of rioting. The number of arrested strikers ran into the thousands. But so orderly were the strikers that few serious charges could be brought against them. They were jailed in droves and fined heavily mostly for minor "offenses." Except in Butler, Pa., where a score of strikers were arrested for stopping a car of scabs on the way to work (framed-up by the State Police) and sent to the penitentiary, no strikers anywhere in the whole strike zone received heavy jail sentences. Considering the terrific provocations offered the men and the extreme eagerness with which the courts punished them, this remarkable record is an eloquent testimonial to their orderliness.[27] Of course, the companies did not neglect to avail themselves of the heartless blacklist. Just now hundreds of their former employees, denied work and forced to break up their homes and leave town, are criss-crossing the country looking for opportunities to make new starts in life. As for the cost to the strikers in wages, the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ of January 10, two days after the strike was called off, carried a special telegram from Pittsburgh, stating (authority not quoted) that the wage loss in that district was $48,005,060.35, specified as follows: Clarksburg, W. Va. $310,000.00 Wheeling District 6,100,000.00 Donora 1,200,000.00 Steubenville dist. 2,260,000.00 Youngstown 15,500,000.00 Monessen 2,660,000.00 Brackenridge 450,000.00 New Kensington 375,000.00 McKeesport 597,869.00 Port Vue 900,000.00 Sharon-Farrell 1,250,000.00 New Castle 705,000.00 Homestead 737,840.00 Duquesne 55,030.00 Johnstown 5,712,321.35 Ellwood City 35,000.00 Butler 1,450,000.00 Aliquippa 10,000.00 Pittsburgh 5,715,000.00 Sharpsburg, �tna 435,000.00 Vandergrift 357,000.00 Clairton 165,000.00 Rankin 375,000.00 Braddock 650,000.00 To the above, the New York _Herald_ of January 12 editorially adds an estimate of $39,000,000 for steel districts other than Pittsburgh, making a grand total of $87,000,000 as the strikers' wage loss. But these figures, bearing the earmarks of Steel Trust origin, are too low. On the basis of the minimum figures of an average of 250,000 strikers for 90 working days (actual strike length 108 days) at $5.00 per day per man, we arrive at a total of $112,500,000.00, or $450.00 per average striker. Doubtless these figures are also too low, but they will serve to indicate the tremendous sums of money the already poverty-stricken steel workers were willing to sacrifice in order to change the conditions which Mr. Gary so glowingly paints as ideal. The loss to the steel companies must have been enormous. Without doubt it runs into several hundred millions of dollars. The items going to make up this huge bill are many and at this time impossible of accurate estimate. There must have been not only a complete cessation of profits during the strike period, but also a vast outlay of money to finance the strike-breaking measures, such as maintaining scores of thousands of gunmen to guard the plants; paying rich graft to employment offices and detective agencies for recruiting armies of scabs, who, receiving high strike wages, idled for weeks around the plants, shooting craps, playing cards, pitching quoits, and absolutely refusing to work; keeping on the payroll great staffs of office workers with nothing to do, and high paid skilled workers doing the work of common laborers; corrupting police and court officials to give the strikers the worst of it, etc., etc. Besides, there should be added the cost of repairing the great injuries done the furnaces by their sudden shutting down, this item alone amounting to many millions of dollars. But a more important factor than all, perhaps, in counting the cost of the strike to the companies was the serious injury done to their wonderful producing organization by the permanent loss of thousands of competent men who have quitted the industry; the dislocation of many thousands more from jobs for which they were well fitted and the substitution in their places of green men; the lowering of the men's morale generally, due to disappointment and bitterness at the loss of the strike, etc. We may depend upon it that the companies, following out their policy of minimizing the strike's effects, will so juggle their financial and tonnage statements as to make it impossible for years to figure out what it really cost them, if it can ever be done. The cost to the people at large is indicated by the New York Sun, quoted by the _Literary Digest_, January 31, 1920, as follows: There was the loss to the railroads not only in freights from the steel plants, but in freights from general mills and factories which, failing to get their steel supplies, could not maintain their production and fulfill their own deliveries. There was the loss in wages in such mills and factories due to that failure to get their material on which their wage-earners could work. There was the loss in such communities to trade folk whose customers thus had their spending power reduced by the steel strike.--Hence this loss of steel tonnage begins at once to widen until the loss eventually could be figured in the billions. For the privilege of having an autocracy in the steel industry the American people pay not only huge costs in unearned dividends each year, but also, occasionally, such monster special charges as the above. Garyism is an expensive luxury. The foregoing figures and statements merely serve to point out the immensity of the steel strike by indicating its approximate cost to the strikers, the steel companies, and the public. Admittedly they are but loose estimates, based upon scanty data. Absolute accuracy is not claimed for them. The expenditures of the labor movement in the campaign can be more closely calculated, although they, too, are far from definite. They fall into three general classes: (1) those by the general office of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers; (2) those by the A. F. of L. and co-operating international steel trades unions not through the office of the National Committee; (3) those by local steel workers' councils and unions from their own treasuries. Of these the latter may be eliminated as impossible of estimation, there being so many local organizations involved and the after-strike conditions so unfavorable to statistics gathering. They were a minor element of expense compared to the other two, which we will try to approximate as closely as may be. 1. From the beginning of the steel campaign, August 1, 1918, until January 31, 1920, the total net disbursements of the National Committee for all purposes, after making deductions for refunds, transfers, etc., amounted to $525,702.72. This stretch of time may be divided into two parts: (a), Organizing period, from August 1, 1918, until September 22, 1919--during which time virtually all the 250,000 men enrolled in the campaign (see end of Chapter VII) had joined the unions; (b), Strike period, from September 22, 1919, until January 31, 1920--during which time the heavy special strike expenses were incurred. This period is extended three weeks past the date of the strike's close, because the commissariat was still in operation and other important strike expenses were going on. The total net disbursements made by the National Committee during the organizing period were $73,139.66, which amounts to a small fraction over 29 cents for each of the 250,000 men organized. The total net disbursements of the National Committee during the strike period were $452,563.06, or $1.81 for each of the 250,000 average strikers. Adding these two figures together gives $2.10 as the cost to the National Committee of organizing each steel worker and taking care of him during the whole strike. 2. The disbursements of the National Committee covered general organizing and strike expenses, such as commissary, legal, rent, printing, salaries, etc. The A. F. of L. and the co-operating international unions also incurred heavy expenses upon their own account, whose chief items were for keeping organizers in the field, paying strike benefits, and making lump donations to strike-bound local unions. At this date these expenditures may be only approximated. For the above bodies almost the sole expense during the organizing period was for maintaining organizers. Forty would be a fair average of the number of these men actually kept at the steel industry work. In the earlier part of the campaign the number was far less; in the later part, considerably more. The cost of maintaining them per month may be set at not more than $400.00 each, for salaries and general expenses. Thus, for the 13-3/4 months of the organizing period the expense to the A. F. of L. and co-operating unions for this item would be about $220,000, or 88 cents per man organized. This is a top figure. During the strike period, on an average, 75 organizers were kept in the field by these bodies. Due to increases in wages, etc., their upkeep should be calculated at about $500.00 per month each. For 4-1/4 months, September 22 to January 31, our strike period, this would amount to $159,375. To this should be added $100,000, which according to reports received approximates what the organizations paid in strike benefits and donations direct to their strikers and not through the office of the National Committee. This would make their total expenditures for the strike period $259,375, or slightly less than $1.04 per striker. Adding together the amounts for the organizing period and the strike period, we arrive at a grand total of $479,375, or $1.92 per man, spent during the entire campaign by the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals. The figures for the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals are estimates,--the constant shifting of organizers during the campaign, their widely varying rates of pay, etc., making accuracy impossible. But from my knowledge of what went on I will venture that the figures cited are close enough to the reality to give a fair conception of this class of expenditures. Combining the National Committee expenditures with those of the A. F. of L. and co-operating unions, we arrive at the following totals: ORGANIZING PERIOD: _Expenditures_ _Per Man_ By Nat. Com. $ 73,139.66 $.29 By A. F. L. & Unions 220,000.00 .88 ------------------------- ------------- Total cost of organizing work $293,139.66 $1.17 STRIKE PERIOD: By Nat. Com. $452,563.06 $1.81 By A. F. L. & Unions 259,375.00 1.04 ------------------------- ------------ Total cost of strike $711,938.06 $2.85 WHOLE CAMPAIGN: Total cost to Nat. Com., ------------------------- ------------ A. F. L. & Unions $1,005,007.72 $4.02 In order to approximate more closely the actual cost of the campaign to the A. F. of L. and the twenty-four co-operating internationals forming the National Committee, the total of $479,375, figured in a previous paragraph as their independent expenditures, must be increased by $101,047.52, the amount they contributed directly to the National Committee for organizing and for strike expenses during the course of the campaign;[28] making a grand total outlay for them of $580,422.52. This in turn should be reduced by $118,451.23, the amount in the National Committee treasury on January 31, 1920. Against the remaining $461,971.29 must be checked off what the steel workers paid into these organizations in initiation fees and dues. Inasmuch as the co-operating internationals received directly $1.00 to $2.00 (mostly the latter) from the initiation fees of the approximately 250,000 steel workers signed up during the campaign, not to speak of thousands of dollars in per capita tax from armies of dues payers over a period of many months, it is safe to say that their net outlay of $461,971.29 would be nearly if not altogether offset by their income. It is true that some of the organizations, like the Miners and the A. F. of L. itself made large expenditures, with little return; and that others, like the Structural Iron Workers, broke about even; while the Amalgamated Association put a huge sum in its treasury. All things considered, taking the twenty-four organizations as a whole, one is not much wrong in saying that so far as their national treasuries were concerned, the great movement of the steel workers, including the organizing campaign and the strike, was, financially speaking, just about self-sustaining. Was the steel strike, then, worth the great suffering and expenditure of effort that it cost the steel workers? I say yes; even though it failed to accomplish the immediate objects it had in view. No strike is ever wholly lost. Even the least effective of them serve the most useful purpose of checking the employers' exploitation. They are a protection to the workers' standards of life. Better by far a losing fight than none at all. An unresisting working class would soon find itself on a rice diet. But the steel strike has done more than serve merely as a warning that the limit of exploitation has been reached; it has given the steel workers a confidence in their ability to organize and to fight effectively, which will eventually inspire them on to victory. This precious result alone is well worth all the hardships the strike cost them. FOOTNOTES: [23] Exceptions to this were the cases of the Molders' and Coopers' Unions. These organizations were compelled by constitutional requirements to pay regular strike benefits. But they included only a very small percentage of the total number of strikers. [24] The commissariat was suggested by John Fitzpatrick, as a result of his experiences in the Chicago Garment Workers' strike of a decade ago. [25] In addition to the regular commissaries, the local organizations, grace to their own funds or occasional donations from their international unions, had relief enterprises of various sorts, such as soup kitchens, milk, clothes, rent and sickness funds. In Monessen and Donora the strikers actually served a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day. Strikers paid five cents a plate for all they wished to eat. Sympathizers donated liberally according to their means. But the commissary system was the main source of strike relief. [26] It is true, as noted above, that several other unions besides the Molders and Coopers made occasional contributions to their strike-bound locals, but when measured against the vast armies of strikers, these funds dwindled almost into insignificance. [27] This was largely because the men were sober. In fact, prohibition helped the steel campaign in several important respects; (1) because having no saloons to drown their troubles in, the workers, clear-headed, attended the union meetings and organized more readily; (2) when the strike came they did not waste their few pennies on liquor and then run back to work in the old way; they bought food with them and stayed on strike; (3) being sober, they were the better able to avoid useless violence and to conduct their strike effectively. [28] This sum represents the actual cash given by these affiliated organizations directly to the National Committee throughout the entire movement. It divides itself as follows: Blacksmiths $ 6,273.28 Boilermakers 10,448.92 Bricklayers 4,199.05 P. & S. Iron Workers 7,335.78 Coopers 907.76 Electrical Workers 6,138.80 Engineers 100.00 Firemen 2,395.53 Foundry Employees 1,030.51 Hod Carriers 1,350.00 Iron, Steel and Tin Workers 11,881.81 Machinists 16,622.33 Mine, Mill, Smelter Workers 3,583.53 Mine Workers 2,600.00 Molders 4,199.05 Pattern Makers 615.52 Plumbers 2,581.04 Quarry Workers 412.50 Railway Carmen 10,448.30 Seamen 3,081.04 Switchmen 4,115.52 Sheet Metal Workers 100.00 Steam Shovelmen 627.25 ----------- Total $101,047.52 XIII PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS LABOR'S LACK OF CONFIDENCE--INADEQUATE EFFORTS--NEED OF ALLIANCE WITH MINERS AND RAILROADERS--RADICAL LEADERSHIP AS A STRIKE ISSUE--MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONS--STRIKES: RAILROAD SHOPMEN, BOSTON POLICE, MINERS, RAILROAD YARD AND ROAD MEN--DEFECTION OF AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION In preceding chapters I have said much about the injustices visited upon the steel workers by the steel companies and their minions; the mayors, burgesses, police magistrates, gunmen, State Police, Senate Committees, etc. But let there be no mistake. I do not blame the failure of the strike upon these factors. I put the responsibility upon the shoulders of Organized Labor. Had it but stirred a little the steel workers would have won their battle, despite all the Steel Trust could do to prevent it. By this I mean no harsh criticism. On the contrary, I am the first to assert that the effort put forth in the steel campaign was wonderful, far surpassing anything ever done in the industry before, and marking a tremendous advance in trade-union tactics. Yet it was not enough, and it represented only a fraction of the power the unions should and could have thrown into the fight. The organization of the steel industry should have been a special order of business for the whole labor movement. But unfortunately it was not. The big men of Labor could not be sufficiently awakened to its supreme importance to induce them to sit determinedly into the National Committee meetings and to give the movement the abundant moral and financial backing so essential to its success. Official pessimism, bred of thirty years of trade-union failure in the steel industry, hung like a mill-stone about the neck of the movement in all its stages. At the very outset this pessimism and lack of faith dealt the movement a fatal blow. When the unions failed to follow the original plan of the campaign (outlined in Chapter III) to throw a large crew of organizers into the field at the beginning and thus force a settlement with the steel companies during war time, as they could easily have done, they made a monumental blunder, one for which Organized Labor will pay dearly. Notwithstanding all their best efforts in the long, bitter organizing campaign and the great strike, the organizers could not overcome its effects. It was a lost opportunity that unquestionably cost the unionization of the steel industry. And the same pessimism which caused this original deadly mistake made itself felt all through the steel campaign, by so restricting the resources furnished the National Committee as to practically kill all chance of success. Probably no big modern trade-union organizing campaign and strike has been conducted upon such slender means. Considering the great number of men involved, the viciousness of the opposition and the long duration of the movement (18 months), the figure cited in the previous chapter as covering the general expenses, $1,005,007.72, is unusually low. It amounts to but $4.02 per man, or hardly a half week's strike benefits for each. Compared to the sums spent in other industrial struggles, it is proportionally insignificant. For example, in the great coal miners' strike in Colorado, begun September 23, 1913, and ended December 10, 1914, the United Mine Workers are authoritatively stated to have spent about $5,000,000.00 As there were on an average about 12,000 strikers, this would make the cost somewhere about $400.00 per man involved. And in those days a dollar was worth twice as much as during the steel strike. Had a fraction of such amounts been available to the steel workers they would have made incomparably a better fight. The unions affiliated with the National Committee have at least two million members. Even if they had spent outright the total sum required to carry on the organizing campaign and strike it would not have strained them appreciably. But they did not spend it, nor any considerable part of it. In the previous chapter we have seen that with donations from the labor movement at large, and initiation fees and dues paid in by the steel workers, the movement was virtually self-sustaining as far as the co-operating unions were concerned--taking them as a whole. Now, in the next campaign, all that must be different. The unions will have to put some real money in the fight. Then they may win it. When I say that there was a shortage of resources in the steel campaign I include particularly organizers from the respective international unions. Of these there were not half enough. Often the National Committee had to beg for weeks to have a man sent in to organize a local union, the members for which it had already enrolled. Hundreds of local unions suffered and many a one perished outright for want of attention. Whole districts had to be neglected, with serious consequences when the strike came. Moreover, the system used by many internationals in handling their organizers was wrong. They controlled them from their several general headquarters, shifting them around or pulling them out of the work without regard to the needs of the campaign as a whole. This tended to create a loose, disjointed, undisciplined, inefficient organizing force. It was indefensible. Now, in the next drive there are two systems which might be used. (1) The international unions could definitely delegate a certain number of organizers to the campaign and put them entirely under the direction of the National Committee. This was the plan followed by the A. F. of L., the Miners, and the Railway Carmen. It worked well and tended to produce a homogeneous, well-knit, controllable, efficient organizing force. (2) The organizers definitely assigned to the steel campaign by the internationals could be formed into crews, each crew to be controlled by one man and charged with looking after the needs of its particular trade. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Machinists, and Electrical Workers used this system to some extent. A series of such crews, working vertically along craft lines while the National Committee men worked horizontally along industrial lines, would greatly strengthen the general movement. When the strike came it would not only be an industrial strike but twenty-four intensified craft strikes as well. Of the two systems, the first is probably the better, and the second, because of the individualism of the unions, the more practical. Either of them is miles superior to the plan of controlling the field organizers from a score of headquarters knowing very little of the real needs of the situation. But more than men and money, the steel workers in their great fight lacked practical solidarity from closely related trades. In their semi-organized condition they were unable to withstand alone the terrific power of the Steel Trust, backed by the mighty capitalistic organizations which rushed to its aid. They needed from their organized fellow workers help in the same liberal measure as Mr. Gary received from those on his side. And help adequate to the task could have come only by extending the strike beyond the confines of the steel industry proper. When the steel unions end their present educational campaign and launch the next big drive to organize the steel workers (which should be in a year or two) they ought to be prepared to meet the formidable employer combinations sure to be arrayed against them by opposing to them still more formidable labor combinations. The twenty-four unions should by then be so allied with the miners' and railroad men's organizations that should it come to a strike these two powerful groups of unions would rally to their aid and paralyse the steel industry completely by depriving it of those essentials without which it cannot operate, fuel and rail transportation. How effective such assistance would be was well indicated by the speedy and wholesale shutting down of steel mills, first during the general strike of bituminous miners in November and December of 1919, and then during the "outlaw" railroad strike in April, 1920. With such a combination of allied steel, mine and railroad workers confronting them, there is small likelihood that the steel companies (or the public at large) would consider the question of the steel workers' right to organize of sufficient importance to fight about. Mr. Gary might then be brought to a realization that this is not Czarist Russia, and that the men in his mills must be granted their human rights. That the miners and railroaders have sufficient interests at stake to justify their entrance into such a combination no union man of heart will attempt to deny. Not to speak of the general duty of all unionists to extend help to brothers in trouble, the above-mentioned groups have the most powerful reasons of their own to work for the organization of the steel industry. The United States Steel Corporation and so-called "independent" steel mills are the stronghold of industrial autocracy in America. Every union in the labor movement directly suffers their evil effects in lower wages, longer hours and more difficult struggles for the right to organize than they otherwise would have. No union will be safe until these mills are under the banner of Organized Labor. Beyond question the organization of the steel workers would tremendously benefit the miners and railroaders. The latter cannot possibly do too much to assist in bringing it about. It is their own fight. For the miners and railroad men to join forces with the steel workers would mean no new departure in trade-unionism. It would be merely proceeding in harmony with the natural evolution constantly taking place in the labor movement. For instance, to go no further than the two industries in question, it is only a few years since the miners negotiated agreements and struck, district by district. Even though one section walked out, the rest would remain at work. And as for the railroaders, they followed a similar plan upon the basis of one craft or one system. Each unit of the two industries felt itself to be virtually a thing apart from all the others when it came to common action against the employers. It was the heyday of particularism, of craft unionism complete. And anyone who did not think the system represented the acme of trade-union methods was considered a crank. But both groups of organizations are fast getting away from such infantile practices. We now find the miners striking all over the country simultaneously, and the railroad men rigging up such wide-spreading combinations among themselves that soon a grievance of a section hand in San Diego, California will be the grievance of an engineer in Bangor, Maine. The man who would advocate a return to the old method of each for himself and the devil take the hindmost would be looked upon today, to say the least, with grave suspicion. During the recent steel strike the National Committee tried to arrange a joint meeting with the officials of the miners and railroad brotherhoods to see if some assistance, moral if nothing else, could be secured for the steel workers. But nothing came of it. In the next big drive, however, these powerful organizations should be allied with the steel workers and prepared to give them active assistance if necessary. And in the tuning and timing of movements to permit of such a condition, so that no lots, legal or contractual, need be cut across, there are involved no technical problems which a little initiative and far-sightedness on the part of the labor men in control could not readily overcome. In order to cover up their own inveterate opposition to Organized Labor in all its forms and activities, and to blind the workers to the real cause of the defeat, namely lack of sufficient power on the employees' side, great employing interests caused to be spread over the whole country the statement that the steel strike failed because of radical leadership, and that if such "dangerous" men as John Fitzpatrick and myself had not been connected with it everything would have been lovely. They were especially severe against me for my "evil" influence on the strike. But somehow their propaganda did not seem to strike root among labor men, especially those who were backing the steel campaign. The workers are getting too keen these days to let the enemy tell them who shall or shall not be their officials; and when they see one of these officials made the target of bitter attack from such notorious interests as the Steel Trust they are much inclined to feel that he is probably giving them a square deal. As for myself, and I know John Fitzpatrick took the same position regarding himself, I was willing to resign my position on the National Committee the very instant it was indicated by those associated with me that my presence was injuring the movement. I felt that to be my duty. But to the last, that indication never came. When I finally resigned as Secretary-Treasurer on January 31, it was entirely of my own volition. The avalanche of vituperation and personal abuse was started several months before the strike, when a traitor labor paper in Pittsburgh (one of the stripe which lives by knifing strikes and active unionists for the employers) published articles containing quotations from the "red book," and the other stuff later bruited about in the daily press. To hear this sheet tell it, the revolution was at hand. Immediately after the articles appeared I sent copies to the presidents of all the twenty-four co-operating unions, with the result that almost all of these officials wrote me, advising that I pay no attention to these attacks, but continue with my work. They seemed to consider it something of a compliment to be so bitterly assailed from such a quarter. Again, at the very moment when President Gompers was dictating his letter to Judge Gary asking for a conference (long after the above-mentioned attacks) I stated that possibly too much prominence for me in the movement might attract needless opposition to it and I offered to resign from the conference committee which handled all negotiations concerning the steel strike. But my objections were over-ruled and I was continued on the committee. Moreover, at any time in the campaign a word from the executive officers of the A. F. of L. would have brought about my resignation. This they were aware of for months before the strike. All of which indicates that the men responsible for the organizations in the movement were satisfied that it was being carried on according to trade-union principles, and also that in consideration of the Steel Trust's murderous tactics in the past it was a certainty that if the opposition had not taken the specific form it did, it would have manifested itself in some other way as bad or worse. It was to be depended upon that some means would have been found to thoroughly discredit the movement. This conviction was intensified by the unexampled fury with which each important move of Labor during the past year has been opposed, not only by employers but by governmental officials as well. All through the war the moneyed interests watched with undisguised alarm and hatred the rapid advance of the unions; but they were powerless to stop it. Now, however, they are getting their revenge. The usual method of defeating such movements during this period of white terrorism is to attach some stigma to them; to question the legitimacy of their aims, and then, when the highly organized and corrupted press has turned public sentiment against them, to crush them by the most unscrupulous means. It makes no difference how mild or ordinary the movement is, some issue is always found to poison public opinion against it. The first important body of workers to feel the weight of this opposition was the railroad shopmen. The Railroad Administration having dilly-dallied along with their demands for several months, these under-paid workers, goaded on by the mounting cost of living, finally broke into an unauthorized strike in the early summer of 1919. This almost destroyed the organizations. Officials who ought to know declared that at one time over 200,000 men were out. Naturally the press roundly denounced them as Bolsheviki. Upon a promise of fair treatment they returned to work. When the matter finally came to President Wilson for settlement, he declared that to raise wages would be contrary to the Government's policy of reducing the cost of living, and requested that the demands be held in abeyance. This statement was a Godsend to all the reactionary elements, who used it to break up wage movements everywhere. Thus came to grief the effort of the shopmen. Up to May, 1920, they have secured no relief whatsoever. Next came the affair of the Boston police in September, 1919. This developed from an effort of typically conservative policemen to organize. The strike was deliberately forced by the action of State politicians, inspired by big business, in cold-bloodedly discharging a number of the officers of the new union and stubbornly refusing to re-instate them. When the inevitable strike occurred they labelled it not merely an attempted revolution, but a blow at the very foundations of civilization. The press did the rest. The strike was buried beneath a deluge of abuse, misrepresentation and vilification. [Illustration: A GROUP OF ORGANIZERS Standing, left to right: W. Searl, F. Wilson, A. V. Craig, M. Mestrovich, E. Martin, J. M. Peters, R. W. Beattie, J. Moskus, S. Coates, J. Manley, _Striker_, T. A. Harris, E. O. Gunther, B. J. Damich, _Striker_, C. Foley, M. Bellam, T. A. Daley, _Striker_, W. Z. Foster. Seated, left to right: J. Lenahan, F. J. Sweek, J. Klinsky, F. Wiernicki, I. Liberti, A. DeVerneuil, C. Claherty, J. N. Aten, J. W. Hendricks, S. Rokosz, R. W. Reilly, J. A. Norrington, F. Kurowsky, J. G. Brown, G. W. Troutman, J. E. McCadden, W. Murphy, S. T. Hammersmark.] Then came the coal miners in November, 1919. During the war this body of men sent fully 60,000 members to the front in France. They bought untold amounts of liberty bonds and worked faithfully to keep the industries in operation. But no sooner did they make demand for some of the freedom which they thought they had won in the war than they found themselves crowded into a strike, and their conservative, old-line, trade-union leaders harshly assailed as revolutionists. For instance, said Senator Pomerene:[29] Years ago the American spirit was startled because a Vanderbilt had said, "The public be damned." But Vanderbilt seems to have no patent on the phrase, or if he had it is being infringed today by men who have as little regard for the public welfare as he himself had. There is no difference in kind between him and a Foster, who, aided by the extreme Socialist and I. W. W. classes of the country, aims to enlist under his leadership all the iron and steel workers of a nation and to paralyze industry, or a Lewis (President of the United Mine Workers of America), who, to further his own ambitions, aided as he was by the same elements, calls 400,000 men out of the mines and says to the public, "Freeze or starve." The Government condemned the strike as "unjustifiable and unlawful" and invoked against it the so-called Lever law. This law, a war measure against food and fuel profiteers, was, when up for adoption, distinctly stated by its author, Representative Lever, and by Attorney General Gregory, as not applying to workers striking for better conditions.[30] Moreover, since the armistice it had fallen into disuse,--as far as employers were concerned; but upon the strength of it the miners' strike was outlawed, Federal Judge Anderson issuing an injunction which commanded the union officials to rescind the strike order and to refuse all moral and financial assistance to the strikers. Rarely has a labor union found itself in so difficult a situation. The only thing that saved the miners from a crushing defeat was their splendid organization and strategic position in industry. On November 11, after the union officials had agreed to rescind the strike order, the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ expressed an opinion widely held when it said: The truth of the matter is that we all "got it wrong" on this coal situation. This is the time to say in entire frankness that _the Government handled the situation with the tact, timeliness and conciliatory spirit of a German war governor jack-booting a Belgium town into docility_. And now we have the unauthorized strike of the Railroad yard and road men; this is clearly an outbreak of workers exasperated on the one hand by a constantly increasing cost of living, and on the other by dilatory methods of affording relief. The orthodox tactics are being employed to break it. The Lever law, disinterred from the legislative graveyard to beat the miners, has been galvanized into life again and is being used to jail the strike leaders. This is not all, however. Probably there never was a big strike in this country more spontaneous and unplanned than the one in question. But that does not worry our Department of Justice; it has just announced to a credulous world that the whole affair is a highly organized plot to overthrow the Government. Within the hour I write this (on April 15) I read in the papers that I have been singled out by Attorney-General Palmer as one of the strike leaders. Eight-column headlines flare out the charge, "PALMER BLAMES FOSTER FOR RAIL STRIKE," etc.[31] To Mr. Palmer's "penny dreadful" plot, the local newspapers add lying details of their own. The Pittsburgh _Leader_, for instance, recites _in extenso_ how I returned from the West in disguise to Pittsburgh several days ago--presumably after a trip plotting with Mr. Palmer's wonderful revolutionaries, who not only can bring whole industries to a standstill by a wave of the hand, but can do it in such a manner that although many thousands of workers are "in the know" the Department of Justice never gets to hear about it until the strikes have occurred. Now the fact is that I have been so busy writing this book that I have hardly stirred from the house for weeks. Since the steel strike ended I have not been beyond the environs of Pittsburgh. Moreover, I do not know a solitary one of the men advertised as strike leaders, nor has there been any communication whatsoever between us. I have not attended any strike meetings, nor have I even seen a man whom I knew to be a striker. But of course such details are irrelevant to the Department of Justice and the newspapers. The latter boldly announce that it is officially hoped that Mr. Palmer's charges will stampede the men back to work.[32] In fact that is their aim. These charges are a strike-breaking measure, pure and simple, and have no necessary relation to truth.[33] Similar instances might be multiplied to illustrate the extreme virulence of the attacks on Labor in late struggles--how the press manufactured the general strikes in Seattle and Winnipeg into young revolutions; and how even when Mr. Gompers announced some time back that the American Federation of Labor would continue its customary political policy of "rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies," the scheme was denounced in influential quarters as an attempt to capture the Government and set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. But enough. The steel strike was a drive straight at the heart of industrial autocracy in America; it could expect to meet with nothing less than the most desperate and unscrupulous resistance. If the issue used against the strike had not been the charge of radical leadership, we may rest assured there would have been another "just as good." The next movement will have to win by its own strength, rather than by the vagaries of a newspaper-created public opinion. But a far more pressing problem even than any of those touched upon in the foregoing paragraphs is the one involved in the attitude of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers toward the steel campaign. This organization withdrew from the National Committee immediately after the strike was called off, and it has apparently abandoned trying, at least for the time being, to organize the big steel mills. Thus the whole campaign is brought to the brink of ruin, because the Amalgamated Association has jurisdiction over about 50 per cent. of the workers in the mills, including all the strategic steel-making trades, without whose support the remainder cannot possibly win. Unless it can be brought back to the fold, the joint movement of the trades in the steel industry will almost certainly be broken up, to the great glee of Mr. Gary and his associates. This action was in logical sequence to the position taken through the campaign by several of the Amalgamated Association's general officers. From the beginning, they considered the movement with pessimism, often with hostility. It received scant co-operation from them. As related in Chapter VI, they tried to get a settlement with the U. S. Steel Corporation right in the teeth of the general movement; and their financial support was meager, to say the least.[34] For a few weeks during the strike movement, when victory seemed near, they displayed some slight enthusiasm; but this soon wore off and they adopted a policy of "saving what they could." They were exceedingly anxious to call off the strike many weeks before its close, and went about the country discouraging the men and advising them to return to work. And even worse, they attempted to make separate settlements with the steel companies. The following proposed agreement, presented to (and refused by) the Bethlehem Steel Corporation at Sparrows' Point when the strike was not yet two months old, tells its own story: November 19th, 1919. Agreement entered into between the Bethlehem Steel Company of Sparrows' Point, Maryland, and its employees, governing wages and conditions in the Sheet and Tin mills, and Tin House Department. 1. It is agreed that the wages and conditions agreed upon between the Western Sheet and Tin Plate Manufacturers' Association and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, as agreed upon in the Atlantic City Conference, June, 1919, will be the prices and conditions paid to the employees in the above-mentioned departments. 2. That the company will also agree to the re-instatement of all their former employees, such as seek employment without any discrimination. 3. The above Agreement to expire June 30th, 1920. During the strike the general officers of the Amalgamated Association never tired of telling how sacred they considered their contracts with the employers, and did not hesitate to jeopardize the strike by living up to them most strictly. But when it came to their obligations to the other trades it was a different story. They well knew, when they tried to make separate settlements with the U. S. Steel and Bethlehem Companies, that they were violating solemn agreements which they had entered into with the other trades in the industry, not to speak of fundamental principles of labor solidarity. The national officials in question looked with undisguised jealousy upon the growth to importance of other unions in the industry where their own organization had operated alone so long. They lost no love on the National Committee. In fact more than one of their number seemed to take particular delight in placing obstructions in its way. If they wanted to see the steel industry organized they certainly showed it in a peculiar manner. A goodly share of my time--not to speak of that of others--was spent plugging the holes which they punched through the dike. And apparently they always had the hearty support of their fellow officers. It is only fair to say, however, that the lesser officials and the rank and file of the Amalgamated Association strongly favored the National Committee movement and gave it their loyal cooperation. As a justification for the Amalgamated Association officials' action in quitting the joint campaign, word is being sent through the steel industry that henceforth that organization will insist upon its broad jurisdictional claims and become an industrial union in fact, taking into its ranks and protecting workers of all classes in the steel industry. But no one familiar with the Amalgamated Association will take this seriously. It is a dyed-in-the-wool skilled workers' union, and has been such ever since its foundation forty-five years ago. Its specialty is the "tonnage men," or skilled iron and steel making and rolling trades proper. All its customs, policies and instincts are inspired by the interests of this industrial group. It has never looked after the welfare of the mechanical trades and the common laborers, even though for the past few years it has claimed jurisdiction over them. In its union mills it is the regular thing to find only the tonnage men covered by the agreements, no efforts whatever being made to take care of the other workers. It is true that during the recent campaign, due to the stimulus of the National Committee, laborers were taken in; but of the way they were handled, probably the less said the better. The incidents related in Chapter X are typical. That the men now at the head of the Amalgamated Association will upset these craft practices and revolutionize their organization into a bona fide, vigorous industrial union is incredible to those who have seen them in action. But even if the miracle happened, even if they got rid of their mid-nineteenth century ideas and methods, adopted modern principles and systems, and put on the sweeping campaign necessary to organize the industry, it would not solve the problem. The other unions in the steel industry are not prepared to yield their trade claims to the Amalgamated Association, and any serious attempt by that organization to infringe upon them would result in a jurisdictional quarrel, so destructive as to wreck all hope of organizing the industry for an indefinite period. The unions would be so busy fighting among themselves that they would have no time, energy or ambition to fight the Steel Trust. Progress and organization in the steel industry are to be achieved not by splitting the ranks and dividing the forces, but by consolidating and extending them. The only rational hope in the situation lies in a firm federation of all the trades in the industry, allied with the miners and railroad men in such fashion that they will extend help in case of trouble. The steel workers are fast recovering from their defeat. The educational campaign is getting results, and the work should be made a permanent institution until the industry is organized. For the Amalgamated Association to desert the field now is suicidal. It is worse; it is a crime against the labor movement. It will break up the campaign and throw the steel workers, helpless, upon the mercy of Gary and his fellow exploiters. Organized Labor should not permit it. The time is past when a few short-sighted union officials can block the organization of a great industry. FOOTNOTES: [29] Quoted from _The Coopers' Journal_ for February, 1920. [30] For important details, see article entitled "The Broken Pledge," by Samuel Gompers, in the _American Federationist_, January, 1920. [31] Pittsburgh _Post_, April 15, 1920. [32] Pittsburgh _Chronicle-Telegraph_, April 15, 1920. [33] In connection with this matter I promptly called Mr. Palmer a liar, a statement which was widely carried by the press. Our would-be tyrant swallowed it. In the situation two courses were open to him: If his accusations against me were true, under his own interpretation of the Lever law he was duty-bound to arrest me; and if they were not true, common justice demanded that he admit the incorrectness of the statements he had sent flying through the press, attacking me. But he has done neither. And in the meantime I have been subjected to a storm of journalistic abuse. For example, says the Donora, Pa. _Herald_ of April 16: "Wm. Z. Foster seems determined to have that little revolution if he has to get out and start one himself. About the best remedy for that bird would be one of those old-fashioned hangings." One can readily imagine how quickly the wheels of justice would have whirled and how speedily the editor would have been clapped into jail were such an incitement to murder printed in a labor journal. But When the case in point was called to the attention of the Pittsburgh officials of the Department of Justice they could do nothing about it. Nor could those of the Post Office Department, although the Donora _Herald_ circulates through the mails. Similarly the county and state officials could see no cause for action. Finally the opportunities for relief sifted down to a libel suit. And what chance has a workingman in such a suit against a henchman of the Steel Trust in the heart of Pennsylvania's black steel district? [34] In the report included at the end of Chapter VI, the Amalgamated Association is shown to have enrolled 70,026 members during the campaign. But, for the reasons cited, the figure is far too low. President Tighe gave a better idea of the number when, testifying before the Senate Committee, he said (Hearings, page 353) that the secretary had told him "that he had already issued in the neighborhood of 150,000 dues cards," and could not get them printed fast enough. For each man of this army of members, the national headquarters of the Amalgamated Association received two dollars. Yet in return the officials in charge, throughout the entire movement, gave the National Committee directly only $11,881.81 to work with. Of this, $3,881.81 was for organizing expenses, and $8,000.00 was to feed and furnish legal help to the great multitudes of strikers, half of whom were members of the Amalgamated Association. What strike help was extended in other directions was correspondingly scanty. The balance of the funds taken in is still in its treasury. XIV IN CONCLUSION THE POINT OF VIEW--ARE THE TRADE UNIONS REVOLUTIONARY --CAMOUFLAGE IN SOCIAL WARS--RUINOUS DUAL UNIONISM--RADICALS SHOULD STRENGTHEN TRADE UNIONS--THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE--TOM MANN'S WORK For those progressives who will look upon the steel campaign from an evolutionary standpoint--that is by a comparison with past experiences--it will stand out in its true light as marking a great advance in trade-union methods and practices. It is true that the unions in the campaign made many mistakes, quarreled seriously among themselves, and put forth only a fraction of their real strength; but when one considers that they substituted a group of twenty-four unions for individual action in other campaigns; established a standard initiation fee instead of the multitude that existed before; adopted modern methods of organizing in place of the antiquated system previously prevailing; organized a joint commissariat, carried on a successful organizing campaign and waged a great strike together, one must admit that a tremendous stride forward has been made. The conclusion is bound to be optimistic and full of enthusiasm for the future. But unfortunately there are large bodies of progressives who do not judge from the evolutionary viewpoint when it comes to trade unionism. These range all the way from the mildest liberals and friends of Labor to the most extreme I. W. W.'s. They form an influential group. Theirs is the idealistic method; more or less clearly, these elements hold in their mind's eye a smooth-running, intelligent, imaginary "one big union." This they use as an inelastic criterion by which to judge the trade unions. And the natural result is that, even in such cases as the steel campaign, the unions cut a sorry figure. Their weaknesses are unduly emphasized; their progressive innovations lose their import and seem but make-shift imitations of the real thing. The conclusions are necessarily pessimistic. The true significance of the epoch-making movement is lost. This viewpoint is so general and its consequences so far-reaching and detrimental, not only to the steel unions but to the whole labor movement, that perhaps a discussion of it may not be amiss at this point. For many years radicals in this country have almost universally maintained that the trade unions are fundamentally non-revolutionary; that they have no real quarrel with capitalism, but are seeking merely to modify its harshness through a policy of mild reform. They have been pictured as lacking both the intelligence to want industrial freedom and the courage to demand it. And so often have these ideas been repeated, so slight has been the inquiry into their soundness, that they have come to be accepted in a large degree by virtually the entire left wing of the labor movement. To these ideas, more than anything else, is due the current idealistic labor pessimism, the unsympathetic attitude toward, and general lack of understanding of, the trade unions. Yet their falsity is readily apparent when one takes into consideration the real situation. It is an indisputable fact that the trade unions always act upon the policy of taking all they can get from their exploiters. They even overreach themselves sometimes, as a thousand lost strikes eloquently testify. Their program is directly anti-capitalistic. But let me quote from a booklet, written by myself several years ago, entitled, "Trade Unionism; The Road To Freedom," page 18: It is idle to say that the trade unions will rest content with anything short of actual emancipation. For they are as insatiable as the veriest so-called revolutionary unions. In the measure that their strength increases, so do their demands. They have sent wages up: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 dollars per day, and hours down: 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, per day with all kinds of other concessions sandwiched in between. And now they are more radical in their demands than ever before in their history. Permanently satisfied trade unions under capitalism would be the eighth wonder of the world, outrivalling in interest the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. They would be impossible. With its growing power, Organized Labor will go on winning greater and greater concessions, regardless of how profound they may be. It is purest assumption to state that the trade unions would balk at ending the wages system. So far as the tendency of their demands is concerned, there can be no question about that to anyone who will look at them squarely; the trade unions may be depended upon always to check exploitation through the wages system as far as their power enables them. The big question is whether or not they will be able to develop enough power to stop this exploitation altogether. As for me, I am confident that they will. In every country they are constantly adding to and solidifying their ranks; building ever more gigantic and militant combinations and throwing them athwart the exploiter's path. It is safe to say that if they cannot finally stop him it will be because it does not lie within the realms of possibility for the working class to produce a sufficiently powerful organization. Why, then, have these strongly anti-capitalistic qualities been so long and generally ignored and the trade unions considered merely as palliative bodies? In my opinion it is because they, like various other aggressive social movements, have more or less instinctively surrounded themselves with a sort of camouflage or protective coloring, designed to disguise the movement and thus to pacify and disarm the opposition. This is the function of such expressions as, "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work," "The interests of Capital and Labor are identical," etc. In actual practice little or no attention is paid to them. They are for foreign consumption. The fact that those who utter them may actually believe what they say does not change the situation a particle. Most movements are blind to their own goals anyway. The important thing is the real trend of the movement, which is indisputably as I have stated above, on the one hand constantly expanding organization, and on the other constantly increasing demands. The trade unions will not _become_ anti-capitalistic through the conversion of their members to a certain point of view or by the adoption of certain preambles; they _are_ that by their very makeup and methods. The most that can be done is to clarify their aims and intensify their efforts towards freedom. If the trade unions instinctively throw dust in the eyes of their enemies, they do it for an altogether worthy purpose, the elevation of the standard of well-being for the mass of the people. In the case of the capitalist class we see the same principle applied to an utterly vicious end. The whole trend of the great employing interests is to set up an oligarchy of wealthy parasites, neither toiling nor spinning, yet for whom the whole body of workers would be compelled to labor in degradation and poverty. And if unopposed, they would not only bring about this condition, but in so doing would rob the people of every right they have--free speech, free press, free assemblage, legislative representation, trial by jury, and all the rest. But do they openly avow their purpose? Most assuredly not, for they know that powerful though they are they would be swept away by a wave of popular opposition. Therefore, through their newspapers and innumerable other propaganda agencies, they proceed to cover up their nefarious schemes of exploitation and oppression with hypocritical cloaks of patriotism, religion, benevolence, and the like. Their practice is one thing, their preaching something entirely different. Thus we have Garys and Rockefellers actually enslaving their workers by the most brutal methods and at the same time seeking to convince the public that what they are trying to do is to protect these workers from union domination, to preserve to them their sacred right to work for whomever they please, etc. Men such as these are knifing America and doing it in the name of 100 per cent. Americanism. They are social camouflagers par excellence. The question may be pertinently asked, why, if camouflage is such a potent weapon in social as well as military warfare, should the true nature and tendency of the trade unions be pointed out, thus stripping the movement of its philosophic protection and leaving it bare before its enemies? The answer is that the camouflage works both ways; it deceives friends as well as enemies. It has thus to a great extent cost the unions the support of the whole left wing of the labor movement. Its advantages are outweighed by its disadvantages. In what I have called the left wing of the movement there are large and ever-increasing numbers of workers and sympathizers who refuse to face the prospect of a society forever based upon the wage system. They demand an organization that is making for its abolition and the substitution therefor of a system of industrial justice. If they were to look sharply, they would see that the trade-union movement is traveling faster than any other body toward the end they wish to reach. But unfortunately, looking sharply is not their method. They habitually attach too much importance to surface indications and not enough to real results. They go almost entirely by preambles and manifestoes. Consequently, taking the trade-union slogans at their face value and finding them altogether unsatisfactory, they turn their backs upon the trade-union movement and give support to the organizations which have the sort they want, the I. W. W., the W. I. I. U., etc. This belief, that the trade unions are inherently conservative bodies, is the basis of the strong conviction that they are hopeless and that they must be supplanted by a new organization, aiming to abolish the wage system. The conception is found in some degree or other among virtually all radicals. And it has done incalculable harm to the unions. It has cost them the support of thousands of militants, of the best and most intelligent that the working class produces. These might have done a wonderful work; but their time and energies have been worse than wasted in trying to build up organizations such as the I. W. W. When one considers that the life of nearly every labor union depends upon the activities of a very small fraction of its membership, it is clear that this constant drain upon its best blood must have seriously hindered the advance of the trade-union movement. Many have complained at the slow progress it has made; but the marvel is rather that it has been able to progress at all. This devitalizing drain must be stopped, and the great body of progressives and radicals won over to a whole-hearted support of the trade unions. I consider this one of the most important tasks confronting the labor movement. But it can be accomplished only by driving home to these elements the patent facts that the trade unions are making straight for the abolition of capitalism and that they are going incomparably faster towards this goal than any of the much advertised, so-called revolutionary unions, in spite of the latter's glittering preambles. They must be taught that the weaknesses of the trade unions are but the weaknesses of the working class, and that as the latter gradually improves in education and experience, the unions will correspondingly take on higher forms and clearer aims. You cannot have perfect organizations with imperfect workers to build upon. In a word, the progressives must be won over from the idealistic and utopian to the evolutionary point of view. Indeed, it must be granted that insistence upon the real goal and tendency of trade unionism will provoke the capitalist class into greater opposition against the movement. But this will be trebly offset by the added support which the unions will get from the large numbers of militants who now stand apart from them because of lack of understanding. The power of even a few such men, proceeding intelligently along practical lines, is one of the marvels of the labor movement. It may be confidently expected, therefore, that when the many thousands of these, now indifferent or hostile, begin to work together, setting up their own press and systematically furthering amalgamation and federation projects to bring the unions into closer cooperation, initiating and prosecuting organizing campaigns, retiring to private life such officials as now find themselves at the head of the Amalgamated Association, etc., vast changes for the better are bound to occur in the labor movement. The trade unions have cost the workers untold efforts to build, and in the main they seem loath to give them up, despite the blandishments of utopian dual unions. Apparently, it is through the old unions that the workers will eventually achieve their industrial freedom, save, perhaps, in such cases as the United Garment Workers, where conditions in the organization were so utterly hopeless that there was nothing to do but form a new body, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. But this was an exceptional case. Most of the unions are moving steadily onward and upward, and they have an unshakable grip upon the workers in their respective spheres. This being so, the logical thing to do is systematically to set about improving and strengthening them. If this is done, then, instead of the wild, desperate, dualistic outbreaks and strikes, which have characterized the American labor movement for years, and done it incalculable harm, the discontented rank and file will find relief through an orderly and rapid progress within the folds of the organizations they already have. The sooner these facts are recognized the better for American Labor. During the past few years much has been said about the wonderful progress being made by the English trade-union movement. This, I venture to assert, is due largely, if not altogether, to the absence among the radicals of England of the idealistic, dualistic attitude towards the unions which exists so widely here, and which has produced the I. W. W. and its great body of sympathizers. The English radicals have a better conception than ours of the trade unions; for, flesh and blood of the labor movement, they pit their policies and energies against the conservatives, and win. They are the ones who are writing the highly-praised programs, and driving onward the great wage movements. They are practical and constructive. Unlike so many of our radicals they do not waste their time and strength in empty, pessimistic criticism of the trade unions, and in vain, foolhardy attempts to tear the whole labor structure to pieces and to reconstruct it according to the dream of Daniel De Leon. In England the turning point came ten years ago when she felt the great wave of sentiment for revolutionary unionism then sweeping the world. The question was whether this movement should realize its aims through the old unions or by starting new ones. The existing unions were notoriously conservative. Several of our leading radicals had said they were even more hopeless than our own organizations and strongly urged the formation of an English I. W. W. But fortunately, Tom Mann and his colleagues, with a deeper knowledge of trade unionism, were able to forestall this movement and to direct the strong stream of progressive thought and energy into the old unions. The result was magical. Within two years the great and successful strikes of the transport workers, railroaders and miners had occurred, and the renaissance of the English labor movement was assured. British workingmen will never realize the invaluable service which Tom Mann rendered them in saving England from an I. W. W. dual movement, with its tremendous waste of power and its weakening effect upon the trade unions. How long are American progressives going to continue deceiving themselves with the words of high-sounding preambles? When are they going to quit chasing rainbows and settle down to real work? These are important considerations indeed. The hour when our militants generally adopt English methods, and turn their whole-hearted attention to building up and developing the trade-union movement,--that hour will be the dawn of a new day for American Labor. THE END +--------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 55 Monogahela changed to Monongahela | | Page 86 convine changed to convince | | Page 92 acordingly changed to accordingly | | Page 101 Joilet changed to Joliet | | Page 103 Brackenbridge changed to Brackenridge | | Page 107 struck changed to stuck | | Page 125 depondent changed to deponent | | Page 137 Brennon changed to Brennan | | Page 146 Leechburgh changed to Leechburg | | Page 153 childen changed to children | | Page 205 resistent changed to resistant | | Page 209 compaign changed to campaign | | Page 233 affiiliated changed to affiliated | | Page 246 in changed to it | | Page 255 tweny changed to twenty | | Page 260 tre changed to the | | Page 262 advertized changed to advertised | +--------------------------------------------------+ 
36870	----	COTTON, ITS PROGRESS FROM THE FIELD TO THE NEEDLE: BEING A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE CULTURE OF THE PLANT, ITS PICKING, CLEANING, PACKING, SHIPMENT, AND MANUFACTURE. [Illustration] NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT LOGAN & CO., 51 DEY-STREET. 1855. OLIVER & BROTHER, STEAM PRINTERS, No. 32 Beckman-Street, New-York. PREFACE. Among the utilitarian gifts of nature and art we know of none in more general use, or of greater practical value, than sewing-cotton. The taste which turns into graceful shapes the products of the loom, the executive skill which converts them into convenient and elegant apparel, would be powerless without this simple accessory. It is the food of the needle, and might almost be called the thread of life to thousands of the gentler sex. Yet as it passes through the delicate fingers of mothers, wives, and daughters, ministering to so many wants, and creating so many beautiful superfluities, little thought is bestowed upon the labor, the care, the dexterity, and the scientific ability required in producing the article. The cultivation of the raw material, the processes of picking, ginning, packing, shipping, combing, spinning, and twisting, are among the most interesting operations in the whole range of agriculture and manufactures; and we think the ladies, for whose especial convenience such a vast amount of industry, skill, and talent is employed, will not be unwilling to trace with us in a familiar way the progress of this great domestic staple from the field to the needle. We therefore claim their attention to the following short treatise, from which, without being fatigued by dry details, they may derive a tolerably accurate idea of what capital, labor, and science have done to bring to its present perfection the simple article of sewing-cotton. CULTIVATION OF THE COTTON PLANT. The cotton-planting season in all the Southern States commences in April. The seed is sown in drills, a negro girl following the light plough which makes the furrow, and throwing the seed into the shallow trench as she moves along. A harrow follows to cover up the deposits, and the work of "planting" is completed. About two and a half bushels of seed are required for an acre of ground. [Illustration] In a week or ten days the cotton is "up," when a small plough is run along the drills, throwing the earth _from_ the tender plants. The next process is "scraping;" in other words, thinning out and earthing up the plants, so as to leave each in the centre of a little hill, some two feet distant from its nearest neighbors. The dexterity and accuracy with which this feat is accomplished are wonderful; and there are few spectacles more animated and picturesque than that of a hundred active field-hands flourishing their bright hoes among the young vegetation, each striving to outstrip the others in "hoeing out his row." Several ploughings and hoeings intervene between the first of May and the last of June. In July the cotton fields burst into bloom, _creaming_ the landscape with a sea of blossoms, the flower being very nearly of the same tint as the ultimate product in its unbleached state. The new beauty thus imparted to the scenery is, however, ephemeral. The blossoms unfold in the night, are in their full glory in the morning, and by noon have begun to fade. On the following day their cream-color has changed to a dull red, and before sunset the petals have fallen, leaving inclosed in the calyx the germ or "form" of the filamental fruit. The cotton plant, in its progress towards maturity, is liable to the assaults of as many enemies as the young crocodile on the banks of the Nile; but among them all, the "army-worm" is the most destructive. This worm is produced from the eggs of a chocolate-colored moth of particularly harmless and demure appearance; but its name is legion, its ravages terrific. No one who has beheld an invasion of these caterpillars can ever forget it. Deep trenches are dug to arrest their progress, but these are soon filled up by the accumulating myriads; and onward move the living destroyers over the bodies of the buried masses. Huge logs are drawn through the trenches by yokes of oxen, and the multitudinous swarms crushed to a paste, of which the effluvium taints the air for miles; but still the incursion, if checked, is not arrested. When the planter sees the army-worm in his fields, he is ready to give up his crop in despair. By the middle of July the "bolls" or "forms" begin to open; and the cotton fields, when viewed from a short distance, present the appearance of being covered with ridges of white surf. Toward the close of the month the _picking_ season commences, and is continued without intermission until the Christmas holidays. Each field-hand is supplied with a basket and a bag. The basket is placed at the end of the cotton row, and the bag, as fast as filled, is emptied into it. It is a pleasant sight, on "the old plantation," to see the pickers returning at nightfall from their work, with their well-filled baskets picturesquely poised upon their woolly heads. Falling into line with the stoutest in the van, they move along through the twilight, too tired to talk or sing, anxious only to deposit their store in the packing-house, and retire to their "quarters" to rest. A first-rate hand will pick from three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds of cotton per day. [Illustration] The next process is the "ginning," or separation of the cotton from the seeds. The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, a New England youth, in 1793, marked a new epoch in the cotton trade, and at once more than quadrupled the value of the article as a national staple. Arkwright had already introduced the spinning-frame, and through the genial influence of these two great inventions, a pound of cotton, formerly spun tediously by hand into a thread of five hundred feet, was lengthened into a filament of _one hundred and fifty miles_; and the value of our cotton exports was increased in sixty years from fifty thousand to one hundred and twelve millions of dollars! [Illustration: PACKING PRESS.] After the "ginning" comes the "baling" of the cotton, which ends the labor bestowed upon it on the plantation. In this process powerful screw-presses are employed. The cotton is inclosed in Kentucky bagging, and the contents of each bale are compressed by the screw almost to the solidity of stone. The cotton is now ready for market. [Illustration] Toward the close of the packing season there are jolly times on the plantation. Fox-hunting and racing are the order of the day. The Southern planter, like the "fine old English gentleman," opens house to all, and all goes "merry as a marriage bell." Sambo rubs up his old musket, and is out after the ducks, while Dinah's shining face wears an extra gloss in anticipation of the holidays. Throughout the holidays there is high festival in the negro quarters. "The shovel and the hoe" are laid down, and the fiddle is continually going. So ends the cotton season. Shipment on the Mississippi. The cotton, being packed, is to be sent to market. For this purpose it is "hauled," generally by oxen, to the nearest landing on the river, where the bales are rolled down the banks and stowed on board freight boats bound to New Orleans or Mobile. This process is technically called "bumping." There are certain plantations famous for the tenacious and beautiful quality of their cotton, from which the supplies for DICK & SONS' celebrated sewing-cotton mills at Glasgow are principally derived. [Illustration] Delivery and Re-shipment at New Orleans. [Illustration] It would be difficult to describe the scene of bustle and seeming confusion presented by the levee at New Orleans when the bulk of the new crop begins to come in. The songs and clamor of the negro stevedores, at work in the holds and on the decks of the vessels; the sharp authoritative expletives of the overseers and masters; the eager conversations of the merchants, and the preternatural activity into which the occasion seems to have spurred all the energies of Southern life, are to Northern ears and eyes at once amusing and confounding. But order reigns amidst this seeming chaos. The Mississippi boats are rapidly relieved of their bulky cargoes, and the cotton is warehoused or re-shipped, as the case may be, with marvellous celerity. Generally the shipments for the Clyde Mills, Glasgow, are among the first of the season; and the primest article in the market is always selected for DICK & SONS by the New Orleans agents of the firm. [Illustration: DICK & SONS' CLYDE THREAD-MILLS.] Arrival at Glasgow. The view of the CLYDE THREAD-MILLS, furnished by our engraver from accurate drawings taken on the spot, affords a very good idea of the extensive manufactory of DICK & SONS, from which this country is now supplied with the most perfect, even, and tenacious sewing-cotton made in the world. The cotton for the mills, after having been unloaded and inspected by the revenue officers, is conveyed at once to the mills, where there is an immense amount of warehouse room for the raw material, independent of the space devoted to machinery and the storage of the manufactured article. Of the latter, however, there is never a large accumulation, the active and ever-increasing demand taxing to the utmost the facilities of production, great as they are. The Manufacturing, &c. A full description of the processes of scutching, carding, spinning, twisting, bleaching, and spooling, through all of which the cotton passes before it is packed for exportation in the form of thread, would require more space than we can devote to them in this treatise, and, moreover, would be rather dry reading for the ladies, for whose information and amusement this little publication is intended. It is sufficient to say, that all the latest improvements in machinery, in each of the above branches, have been introduced at the Clyde Works; and that as regards the perfection of their mechanical facilities, as well as in point of capacity, they have no rivals in the United Kingdom. Manufactured Article in New York. The consignments of DICK & SONS' spool-cotton to this city are on a scale of magnitude which those who have never reflected upon the immense and universal consumption of the article would scarcely believe. The bulk of the importations is received by the Collins' line of steamers, and delivered at the Collins' wharf, whence it is conveyed to the New York agency of the firm, 51 DEY-STREET. To the trade it is unnecessary to say, that DICK & SONS' _six-cord spool-cotton_ is the best in the market; and ladies generally are aware that in strength, uniformity of thickness, and closeness of fibre, it is superior to any other sewing-thread in use. [Illustration] Mr. Dick, senior, has probably had more experience as a manufacturer of the article than any other man living. Prior to commencing business on his own account he had been for nearly thirty years the manager of a factory celebrated for producing a superior description of sewing-cotton, also well known in the United States. Hence the cotton of DICK & SONS came into the market with a ready-made popularity. The name of Mr. DICK was a guarantee of its excellence, and a large demand for it spontaneously sprang up in the United States, Canada, the West Indies, and the British possessions in India, and throughout the world. [Illustration] Infinite pains are taken to retain for the article the celebrity it has acquired. Every spool is inspected before it leaves the factory at Glasgow, so that no defective specimens can possibly reach the hands of consumers. CONCLUSION. The history of the culture of cotton, and of its application to the uses of man, forms an almost romantic episode in the annals of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures. We have already mentioned the extraordinary impetus given to its production, sale, and use by the introduction of Whitney's saw-gin, for separating the seeds from the wool, in the years 1793 and 1794. Since that time the progress of the demand and consumption has been no less wonderful. In 1794 the export rose from 187,000 lbs., the sum total for the previous year, to 1,601,760 lbs. The next year it was over 6,000,000 lbs. In 1800 it had advanced to about 18,000,000 lbs., and in 1810 to upwards of 93,000,000 lbs. The last returns before us are for 1852, when the export of the short staple variety alone exceeded one thousand one hundred millions of pounds! To this aggregate we suppose about one hundred millions of pounds may be added for the sea-island and other long-fibred cottons. It may well be doubted whether among all the fabrics into which this enormous amount of raw material is converted there is one more valuable than sewing-cotton. We think if the question were put to the ladies to-morrow, whether the textile fabrics produced from cotton, or cotton sewing-thread, were the most indispensable to their comfort and convenience, every thimbled hand would be held up in favor of the latter. Sewing-silk is too expensive for ordinary exigencies, and linen thread cannot be spun of the same smooth and even fibre as cotton thread; and besides, being liable to knot and twist, is apt to cut the lighter and more fragile products of the loom. Abolish sewing-cotton, and you abolish muslin embroidery and innumerable delicate and fairy-like embellishments of female loveliness, which taste and fashion have endorsed. Every lady is by habit a connoisseur in the article. She examines the spools with a critical eye; she tries the strength of the thread; she passes it through her fingers to test its evenness and compactness, and when seated at her work, detects in a moment any defects which may have been overlooked by the manufacturer. To this ordeal the six-cord cotton-thread of DICK & SONS is cheerfully submitted. It challenges inspection and comparison. There is little necessity, however, for an appeal to the ladies in relation to its good qualities, for they have them already at their fingers' ends. 
37666	----	+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Text in Gaelic Script marked +like so+. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ _FOR OFFICIAL USE._ RIALTAS SEALADACH NA HÉIREANN. MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS. REPORT ON THE COST OF LIVING IN IRELAND JUNE, 1922. DUBLIN: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATIONERY OFFICE. To be purchased through any Bookseller or directly from EASON & SON, LTD., 40 AND 41 LOWER SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN. 1922. _Price One Shilling._ PREFACE. It having been represented to the Provisional Government that it was desirable to calculate an official figure indicating in respect of Ireland the change in the cost of living at the present time as compared with the cost of living in 1914, the Provisional Government appointed for the purpose on 10th June, 1922, a Committee comprising representatives of the Ministries of Agriculture, Finance, Economic Affairs and Labour. The Committee reported on the 4th August, 1922, and the result of its enquiries, together with the Committee's detailed explanation of the procedure adopted, are appended hereto. The conclusions set out in the report represent the closest approximation which is practicable to the average increases in the cost of maintaining, in particular months of the current year as compared with July, 1914, the same standard of living for a family dependent on wage earnings in places with 500 or more inhabitants. The inquiry applied to the whole of Ireland, and its basis is therefore broad enough to be reasonably dependable for any practical purpose to which a calculation as to changes in the cost of living can usefully be applied. It is proposed to arrange for the calculation at intervals of three months of a cost of living figure on the same basis as that adopted by the Committee for the purpose of this report. September will be the next month for which a figure will be determined. It is to be observed that the information collected in the course of this inquiry has incidentally revealed relations between the wholesale and the retail prices of several important commodities and between the prices of the same commodity in similar localities which require explanation. This matter is being further examined with a view to determining whether any undue advantage is being taken of the general body of consumers, and, if that be the case, to the adoption of appropriate remedies. MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, _23rd August, 1922_. THE COST OF LIVING IN IRELAND. REPORT _To the Chairman, Provisional Government, Ireland._ By minute dated the 10th June last we were appointed by the Government to determine the cost of living in Ireland for the months of March and June, 1922, as compared with the cost of living in July, 1914, on such a basis as would show the average increase in the cost of maintaining the same standard of living for a family dependent on wage earnings. We were asked to complete our calculations not later than July 15th, if possible, but owing to the fact that a considerable proportion of our staff were unable to reach our offices during the recent troubles in Dublin we were given until the 25th to complete our work. The following letter was sent to the Head of the Government on the 26th July:-- "A Chara,--The Report of the Cost of Living Committee is not yet finally drafted, but the main lines of it have been agreed upon. We think, therefore, that we ought to acquaint you at once that our investigations show that the percentage increase in the Cost of Living of Wage Earning Classes in Ireland between July, 1914, and June, 1922, is 85.2 per cent. and the increase between July, 1914 and March, 1922, is 91.4 per cent. "Sinne, le meas mor," The following Report, while bringing out the points essential to a purely Irish cost of living inquiry, can hardly be regarded as exhaustive, in view of the mass of figures collected which could be examined from many different points of view. Had we been able to spend a longer time in digesting these figures we should not have arrived at any different final result as regards the Irish cost of living figure; but we think that many interesting and important facts might be brought out by a further analysis of the figures which we have not had time to undertake, and we suggest, therefore, that the Government should request the Ministry of Economic Affairs to investigate more thoroughly, from the point of view of their general economic significance, the figures collected and compiled. Method of Compiling Cost of Living Figures. In every country in which cost of living figures have been obtained the same method, as far as broad lines are concerned, has been followed. The method adopted is to ascertain the average retail prices for a number of representative commodities for the dates to be compared and then to combine these retail prices in a single figure representing the change in retail prices as a whole. This combination is not effected by a plain average, but the individual price changes are "weighted" according to a comparison of the amounts spent on each of the commodities concerned (_e.g._, a change in the price of a commodity such as bread, must obviously be given more "weight" than a change in the price of such commodities as cheese or soap) and in order to determine the proper "weight" to attach to the retail price changes, representative family budgets are obtained showing the details of the actual expenditure of a large number of households. By combining these budgets it is possible to discover the relationship between the consumption of the various items; for instance, 12s. may be spent on meat for every 5s. 6d. spent on butter, and so on. The retail price changes can then be "weighted" according to the results given by the budgets and the final figure arrived at by combining them on these lines. Stages of our Inquiry. Our inquiry can, therefore, be divided into four main stages: =(A)= The collection of retail prices for July, 1914, and March and June, 1922. =(B)= The collection and analysis of representative family budgets by means of which to determine the "weighting" of the retail price changes. =(C)= The combination of the retail price changes by means of the "weights" so obtained into one final figure. =(D)= The results of applying different methods of "weighting." (A) Collection of Retail Prices. We found that as regards articles of food much of the information we required had already been collected by the Ministry of Economic Affairs who had obtained returns for July, 1914, and March, 1922, from 420 sources in towns of 500 persons and upwards; and also that retail prices of a certain number of articles of food had been collected in 1914, in Ireland by the Labour Statistics Branch of the Board of Trade. Our first task was, therefore, to collect returns of the retail prices in June, 1922, of all the commodities selected, and of the corresponding prices in July, 1914, and March, 1922, where these were not already at our disposal. Forms were accordingly drawn up on which this information could be collected and specimens of these forms are shown in the Appendix to the Report. (1) _Food, Clothing, Fuel and Light, and Sundries._ These forms for food, clothing, fuel and light and sundries, were sent out for completion through the channels used by the Ministry for Economic Affairs in its inquiry (viz.:--officials of the Post Office, of the Ministry of Labour, and of the Local Government Board, and in the Six-County area through other sources), and to the same towns as in that inquiry (viz.:--towns with populations of 500 and over). In the case of the larger towns more than one report was asked for, graduating from two returns to twenty returns according to their population as shown in the Census of 1911. The following table summarises essential particulars regarding the forms:-- ---------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------------- | | Number | | Number | of | Returns Form. | of Forms | Towns | collected |dealt with.|from which| by | | received.| ---------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------------- Prices (Food) A | 450 | 250 } | Prices (Food, Fuel and | | } |Post Office, Ministry Light and Sundries) B 2| 436 | 220 } | of Labour, and Prices (Meat) B 3| 434 | 227 } | Local Government Prices (Clothing) B 4| 436 | 216 } | Board Officials. Rents B 5| 91 | 71 |Rate Collectors and | | | Town Clerks. ---------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------------- (2) _Rents._--The forms for rents were issued through the Local Government Board, and in the Six-County area through other sources, and filled in for the most part by Rate Collectors in the several districts and towns in Ireland. They were asked to state the rents in July, 1914, and in March, and June, 1922, of about 20 houses in their districts showing the number of rooms and the Poor Law Valuation, the latter figures enabling us to ensure that the same classes of houses of wage earners were being compared. Enquiry was also made in connection with the rents of tenements, and due allowance was made for this in the final figures. The rent figures include rates in every case. (3) _Compilation of prices for individual commodities._--The next step was to calculate from these returns the average retail prices of the individual commodities selected, and this was done as follows:-- * * * * * One set of average retail prices was compiled from the returns of the Post Office officials, and another from those of the other officials, and a division of the forms was made on this basis. The retail prices of food, etc. (on Forms A, B2 and B3), and of clothing (Form B4) were then separately summarised in the two groups, viz.--those received from the Post Office officials and those received from the officials of the other Departments for July, 1914, and March and June, 1922. (4) _Compilation of Rent Returns._ The rent returns were treated in precisely the same manner, except that there was no division, since the returns were received through the Local Government Board only. On pages 7 and 8 is the list of average retail prices so compiled:-- (5) LIST OF PRICES. THE FOLLOWING TABLE SHEWS RETAIL PRICES IN IRISH TOWNS OF 500 INHABITANTS AND UPWARDS; AS AVERAGED FROM RETURNS COLLECTED BY OFFICERS OF THE POST OFFICE, MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. -----------------------------------+-----------+-------------+------------- | Mid July, | Mid March, | Mid June, | 1914. | 1922. | 1922. -----------------------------------+-----------+-------------+------------- | | M.L.| | M.L.| | M.L. | P.O.| and | P.O.| and | P.O. | and | | L.G.| | L.G.| | L.G. -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ FOOD. per| d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. Beef lb.| 8·0| 7·8| 13·5| 13·4| 13·4| 13·2 Mutton lb.| 8·6| 8·3| 16·0| 15·5| 16·0| 15·5 Pork Chops lb.| 8·9| 9·2| 17·5| 17·7| 20·1| 20·0 Pork Sausages lb.| 8·7| 8·6| 16·8| 16·4| 16·3| 16·1 Bacon lb.| 9·2| 9·5| 19·7| 17·9| 20·7| 19·0 Butter, Irish Creamery lb.| 13·9| 12·8| 23·9| 22·3| 23·2| 22·6 Butter, Irish Farmers lb.| 12·6| 10·6| 24·4| 20·0| 19·9| 18·9 Cheese lb.| 9·8| 9·8| 17·8| 17·0| 17·4| 16·8 Margarine, 1st grade lb.| 7·6| 7·7| 11·7| 12·1| 11·8| 11·2 Margarine, 2nd grade lb.| 6·2| 6·1| 9·1| 9·6| 8·8| 8·4 Lard lb.| 7·1| 7·3| 13·6| 11·5| 12·0| 11·6 Milk, Fresh quart| 2·5| 2·6| 6·8| 6·4| 5·4| 4·9 Condensed Milk, Irish lb. tin| 6·8| 5·6| 13·1| 12·8| 11·9| 11·6 Condensed Milk, | | | | | | Imported lb. tin| 7·2| 6·2| 13·8| 13·4| 12·8| 11·8 Eggs, 1st Grade dozen| 9·6| 11·2| 19·5| 19·2| 19·0| 17·3 Bread 2 lb. loaf| 3·2| 3·0| 5·8| 5·6| 5·6| 5·6 Flour, household 14 lb.| 19·8| 22·1| 36·6| 33·3| 35·7| 35·8 Oatmeal 14 lb.| 21·1| 23·7| 38·1| 41·6| 41·1| 41·3 Rice lb.| 2·8| 2·7| 5·8| 5·6| 5·5| 5·4 Potatoes, old 14 lb.| 5·5| 7·3| 12·8| 13·7| 16·6| 16·5 Tea, Best lb.| 30·3| 30·5| 44·2| 45·4| 42·6| 42·7 Tea, Cheapest lb.| 18·1| 18·3| 31·4| 29·1| 27·1| 26·4 Sugar, white | | | | | | granulated lb.| 2·2| 2·1| 5·9| 5·8| 5·9| 6·0 Jam lb.| 6·6| 6·7| 16·2| 16·3| 15·4| 15·5 -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ | | | | | | CLOTHING. | | | | | | | | | | | | WOMEN'S. | s.d.| s.d.| s.d.| s.d.| s.d.| s.d. | | | | | | Light Coats | 8 10|25 7| 53 0| 47 0| 51 8| 46 0 Heavy Coats |30 10|31 7| 58 2| 57 11| 56 5| 56 4 Costumes |44 2|41 7| 79 9| 77 11| 77 7| 76 4 Blouses | 5 3| 4 8| 10 3| 9 5| 9 9| 9 1 Skirts | 8 1| 5 10| 14 7| 11 2| 13 7| 10 10 Stockings | 1 4| 1 5| 3 0| 2 9| 2 9| 2 8 Combinations | 5 8| 5 0| 11 1| 10 0| 10 8| 9 9 Corsets | 4 2| 3 8| 8 2| 6 10| 7 10| 6 8 Underskirts | 4 1| 3 2| 7 8| 5 10| 7 4| 5 9 Chemises | 2 5| 2 5| 4 10| 4 6| 4 9| 4 4 Boots |11 2| 8 7| 22 9| 16 0| 21 11| 15 9 -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ | | | | | | GIRLS (OVER 6). | | | | | | | | | | | | Coats |14 1|11 8| 25 9| 21 0| 25 1| 20 9 Dresses |13 11| 9 7| 27 3| 17 7| 26 3| 17 3 Stockings | 1 4| 1 2| 2 8| 2 2| 2 5| 2 1 Combinations | 4 5| 3 10| 8 0| 6 9| 7 9| 6 8 Stays | 2 9| 2 5| 5 10| 4 9| 5 6| 4 8 Petticoats | 2 7| 2 2| 4 11| 4 1| 4 8| 4 0 Chemises | 2 1| 1 11| 3 9| 3 3| 3 7| 3 2 Boots | 8 4| 7 9| 16 6| 14 2| 15 10| 14 0 | | | | | | -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ | | | | | | MEN'S. | | | | | | | | | | | | Overcoats (Readymade) |34 3|33 7| 69 1| 64 3| 66 5| 63 4 Overcoats (Tailormade) |53 6|48 10|100 11| 93 3| 98 7| 91 8 Suits (Readymade) |31 5|35 0| 67 9| 70 0| 66 2| 68 6 Suits (Tailormade) |58 10|54 5|119 6|113 10|116 4|112 7 Trousers (Readymade) | 8 6| 8 1| 17 0| 15 5| 16 6| 15 0 Trousers (Tailormade) |15 7|13 9| 32 2| 29 8| 31 7| 29 0 Singlets | 3 6| 2 8| 7 5| 5 2| 7 0| 5 0 Drawers | 3 9| 2 10| 7 7| 5 3| 7 2| 5 2 Shirts | 3 8| 3 1| 7 2| 6 5| 6 11| 6 4 Socks | 1 2| 1 2| 2 5| 2 3| 2 3| 2 2 Boots |12 5|11 11| 24 6| 23 3| 23 9| 22 9 | | | | | | -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ | | | | | | BOYS (OVER 6). | | | | | | | | | | | | Overcoats |16 8|14 11| 33 1| 29 0| 32 1| 27 9 Suits |15 9|15 7| 31 7| 31 1| 30 5| 30 0 Shirts | 2 1| 2 0| 4 2| 3 9| 3 11| 3 8 Stockings | 1 3| 1 4| 2 6| 2 7| 2 3| 2 6 Boots | 8 9| 7 8| 16 9| 13 11| 16 0| 13 6 | | | | | | -----------------------------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+------ | | | | | | OTHER COMMODITIES. | | | | | | | d.| d.| d.| d.| d.| d. Coal 112 lb.| 17·4| 17·1| 38·9| 37·0| 37·2| 35·0 Turf 112 lb.| 13·7| 11·1| 29·9| 26·2| 30·1| 25·1 Gas for Lighting 1,000 c. ft| 50·6| 51·5| 101·9 98·9| 101·0| 98·2 Gas for Cooking 1,000 c. ft| 49·1| 48·7| 101·7| 97·1| 101·1| 96·6 Electricity for unit| 5·3| 5·3| 10·4| 9·7| 10·3| 9·4 Lighting | | | | | | Electricity for unit| 3·0| 2·4| 5·7| 5·0| 5·7| 5·0 Cooking | | | | | | Candles lb.| 3·5| 3·8| 7·1| 6·8| 6·5| 6·3 Paraffin Oil gallon| 8·3| 8·9| 20·4| 19·9| 19·8| 19·9 Soap (Household) lb.| 3·6| 3·6| 7·8| 7·3| 7·4| 6·9 Pipe Tobacco 2 ozs.| 7·0| 7·0| 17·0| 17·0| 17·0| 17·0 Cigarettes pkt. of 10| 3·0| 3·0| 6·0| 6·0| 6·0| 6·0 THE FOLLOWING TABLE shows Retail Prices in March and June, 1922, in respect of certain Commodities for which corresponding prices in 1914 were not collected. ------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------- | Mid-March, 1922.| Mid-June, 1922 |--------+--------+--------+------ | | M.L. | | M.L. | P.O. | and | P.O. | and | | L.G. | | L.G. ------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+------ | d. | d. | d. | d. Butter (Irish Factory) per lb. | 21·9 | 21·1 | 22·0 | 20·6 Rice (Rangoon) per lb. | 4·1 | 4·0 | 3·9 | 3·8 Rice (Java) per lb. | 6·1 | 5·9 | 5·9 | 5·6 Jam (Strawberry) per lb. | 15·7 | 15·9 | 15·2 | 15·2 Fresh Pork (Shoulders) per lb. | 16·8 | 17·2 | 17·4 | 17·4 Fresh Herrings per lb. | 26·1 | 25·3 | 25·6 | 23·7 Cod Steak per lb. | 14·4 | 14·7 | 13·8 | 13·8 Tea (Quality most used by | | | | working classes) per lb. | 36·1 | 35·0 | 33·4 | 32·1 Cabbage per head | 3·6 | 3·7 | 3·4 | 3·1 ------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+------ The above prices, which were used as far as possible in conjunction with other figures to arrive at the correct increases between July, 1914, and March and June, 1922, in respect of commodities, less specifically described in the returns for 1914 (_e.g._, Butter, Rice, Jam), will also be of value in the future as an additional basis from which to calculate the change in the cost of living. NOTES ON RETAIL PRICES. (_a_) _Collection of Figures for 1914._ There are obvious difficulties in the collection of figures for 1914 after so long a lapse of time, and the accuracy of these figures may possibly be questioned. Despite the eight years' interval, however, we believe these prices to be reasonably accurate. The compilers of the returns were asked to get figures in every case from the actual books kept by the shopkeepers; and the food prices collected by us are in substantial agreement with those collected by the Board of Trade in 1914. The latter are, as a matter of fact, slightly higher than those collected by us, so that if they were to be used in preference to our figures the resultant percentage increase would be slightly lower than on the figures which we have accepted. (_b_) _Comparison Restricted to Strictly Comparable Articles._ A point to be noted is that in comparing prices at different dates it is essential that articles of different quality should not be compared; milk, for instance, is a simple commodity and is always comparable with milk, but beef is a variable commodity inasmuch as sirloin beef is not strictly comparable with shin beef; consequently special figures showing the relative consumption and average prices of the different parts of beef, mutton and bacon were obtained on Form B3 (see Appendix), and in these cases the prices as returned for each description of meat are separately weighted by the average quantities purchased in order to arrive at the ultimate average prices for "beef," "mutton," etc. As regards all other articles, it will be seen from the instructions on the forms that pains were taken to explain that prices must only be returned for strictly comparable articles. (_c_) _Accuracy of Rent Figures._ A point likely to give rise to criticism is the low percentage increase shown for rent. This figure is, however, the result of comparing the actual returns sent us by the Town Clerks and Rate Collectors, who gave the actual name of the street and the actual number of each house, and on the closest investigation we have no reason to doubt the accuracy of their figures. The average weekly rents (including rates) appearing from those returns are:-- Average Weekly Rent (including Rates). July, 1914 4s. 0d. March, 1922 5s. 2d. June, 1922 5s. 2d. (_d_) _Comparison of Figures received from Post Office and other Sources._ It will have been noted from the Table of Retail Prices given above that on the whole there is comparatively little difference between the sets of figures compiled by the Post Office officials and those compiled by the Ministry of Labour and Local Government Board officials, though the Post Office figures tend to give a somewhat higher average increase of prices. This is brought out by the following table of the ratios of retail prices for the main groups of commodities for the three dates:-- ---------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------- | Mid-July, 1914. | Mid-March, 1922. | Mid-June, 1922. ---------------+--------+--------+---------+--------+--------+-------- | A | B | A | B | A | B Food | 52·4 | 54·6 | 104·8 | 102·8 | 100 | 100 Clothing | 52·7 | 52·9 | 103·9 | 101·7 | 100 | 100 Rent (C) | 78·9 | 78·9 | 100·4 | 100·4 | 100 | 100 Fuel and Light | 46·6 | 48·1 | 104·8 | 104·4 | 100 | 100 Sundries | 50·5 | 51·9 | 103·2 | 103·1 | 100 | 100 ---------------+--------+--------+---------+--------+--------+-------- The figures A result from the returns from the Post Office. The figures B result from the returns from other Departments. The figures C were obtained from only one Department--the Local Government Board. (In case the meaning of this table is not at once clear, it may be explained that the first line, for instance, means that for 100s. expended on food by the wage-earning households in June, 1922, exactly the same quantities and exactly the same foods could, according to the Post Office officials' returns, be purchased in March, 1922, for 104.8s., and in July, 1914, for 52.4s. and according to the other returns for 102.8s. and 54.6s. respectively; and so on with the other items). The near agreement of these figures is a strong proof of their essential accuracy. We ultimately decided to take the average between the two sets of figures as representing the nearest approach to the truth at which we could arrive. (B) The Collection of Household Budgets. (1) _Representative Budgets._ The second stage of our enquiry was to obtain representative household budgets, from which to compile the "weights" by which the individual price changes might be combined into a single final figure. For this purpose a special Form was drafted (Form B6, a copy of which appears in the Appendix) and some 5,000 of these forms were despatched to National School teachers in every school in the country, accompanied by detailed instructions (of which there is a copy in the Appendix) of the method in which they were to be completed. Notwithstanding the difficulties of the time when these budgets were called for, and the fact that a number of forms were held up and perhaps lost in the post, we were able to use 308 completed budgets of wage-earning households, received from 112 towns. This number was quite sufficient for our purpose. These budgets were excellently filled in, and, apart from the fact that such a number is in itself a fair guarantee of the statistical results obtained, we are satisfied for reasons given below of the substantial accuracy of the budgets. (2) _Wide Scope of Budgets._ The budgets received were from a very varied class of households, and as will be seen from the following list, embraced the principal industrial occupations. Labourers, Fishermen, Messengers, Servants, Pilots, Barmen, Carpenters, Boatmen, Building Contractors, Motor Boat Drivers, Plasterers, Ship Inspector, Stone Masons, Marine Engineer, Bricklayer, Mill-hands, Yachtman, Caretakers, Tailors, Post Office Workers, Housekeepers, Tailoresses, Gardeners, Herds, Dress-makers, Shop Assistants, Farm Stewards, Shoemakers, Charwomen, Dairyman, Cottage Industries, Laundresses, Egg Packer, Milliners, Washerwomen, Fowl Plucker, Shirtmaker, Hairdresser, Wool Sorter, Spinners, Smiths, Woodcutters, Embroidery Workers, Fitters, Sawyers, Hosiers, Boiler-makers, Wood-turners, Stitchers, Engineers, Body-makers, Knitters, Plumbers, Golf Caddies, Lace-makers, Machinists, Pointers, Road Engine Drivers, Crane-driver, Paper Maker, Motor Mechanics, Collier, Sextons, Car Drivers, Brass-finisher, Butchers, Carters, Bakers, Dealer, Chauffeur, Millers, Electrician, Tram Driver, Confectioner, Watchmaker, Railway Workers, Painters and Saddlers, etc. (3) _Compilation of Budgets._ Two methods of compiling the budgets were followed:--A simple addition was made of the particulars of the expenditure on each item separately recorded on each of the budgets. These particulars consisted of the expenditure on food, sundries, and rent for one week in June, 1922; the particulars of yearly expenditure on items of clothing, fuel and light were reduced to a weekly average by dividing by 52, before adding. The resulting totals gave the present average weekly expenditure on each article, and consequently the _proportion_ which the expenditure on each article bears to the total expenditure of the average wage-earning household. A more complex method of compilation was also adopted which should lead to an even more accurate result. It was found by analysis of the Census figures that the proportion of children under 14 to adults (persons over 14) is approximately as 2 to 5, and an adjustment was made to bring the budgets into conformity with this proportion in order that they might truly represent the actual proportions of the population of the country, the assumption being that the percentage rise in the price of articles mainly consumed by children might be higher or lower than the rise in the prices of articles mainly consumed by persons over 14. The budgets were accordingly classified into three groups, viz.:--"S" or simple households, consisting of not more than two persons over 14 years, and with one or more children under 14 years; "C" or complex households, consisting of more than two persons over 14 years, and with one or more children under 14 years; and "A" or adult households, in which there were not any persons under 14 years. It was necessary to multiply the "A" group by 3, in order to bring the proportionate number of adults and children in the budgets with which we were dealing into conformity with the national proportion (5 to 2). The figures for the three groups having been totalled separately, those obtained for the "A" group were weighted accordingly. It was found, however, that the difference between the "weights" obtained by the first and by the second methods were so small as to be quite negligible, as is shown by the following tables:-- PERCENTAGE INCREASES FROM JULY, 1914, TO MARCH, 1922, AS SHOWN BY THE APPLICATION OF POST OFFICE PRICES.[A] ----------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+--------- | | | | Fuel | | Total Budget | Food. | Clothing. | Rent. | and | Sundries. | for all Grouping. | | | | Light. | | Items. ----------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+--------- S+C+A | 99.8 | 97.1 | 27.3 | 120.6 | 104.2 | 95.5 S+C+3A | 99.9 | 97.3 | 27.3 | 124.9 | 104.1 | 95.7 ----------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+--------- PERCENTAGE INCREASES FROM JULY, 1914, TO MARCH, 1922, AS SHOWN BY THE APPLICATION OF MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND MINISTRY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT PRICES. ----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+-----------+--------- | | | | Fuel | | Total Budget | Food. | Clothing. | Rent.[A] | and | Sundries. | for all Grouping. | | | | Light. | | Items. ----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+-----------+--------- S+C+A | 88.2 | 91.4 | 27.3 | 116.8 | 97.0 | 86.9 S+C+3A | 88.3 | 92.0 | 27.3 | 117.2 | 96.9 | 87.0 ----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+-----------+--------- [A: Figures obtained for Local Government Board only.] It may be mentioned here that if weights are obtained for the "S" group of households only, _i.e._, for an average of two adults, and 3.5 children, the final increase in the cost of living figures would be 91.2 for March, 1922, and 84.6 for June, 1922, _i.e._, practically identical with the figures obtained by "weighting" in accordance with all the budgets. (4) _Table of Weights._ The following Table shows the actual Irish "weights," representing the proportionate expenditure by the average wage-earning household on the various commodities, as compiled from the budgets received. The actual Irish weights or proportions of expenditure on each item are as follow:-- -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Total expenditure 100 | Food 57.05 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Beef 5.18 | Flour 3.70 Mutton 2.94 | Oatmeal, etc .97 Fresh Pork .63 | Rice, Sago, etc. .45 Sausages, Black Puddings, etc. .82 | Potatoes 3.16 Bacon, Pigs' Heads, etc. 5.23 | Other Vegetables 1.33 Fresh Fish .61 | Tea 3.80 Cured or Tinned Fish .16 | Sugar 3.24 Butter 6.91 | Jam 1.12 Cheese .26 | Other Food .95 Margarine .18 | Meals eaten at Shops, Lard .25 | Hotels, etc. .70 Fresh Milk 4.56 | Condensed Milk .09 | Eggs 3.44 | Total Food 57.05 Bread 6.37 | -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ CLOTHING 17.48 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ _Women's_:-- _Girl's_ (over 6):-- Coats .69 | Hats .37 | Coats .50 Costumes 1.09 | Hats .23 Blouses, etc. .39 | Dresses .69 Skirts .21 | Stockings .20 Stockings .24 | Combinations .13 Combinations .15 | Stays .11 Corsets .19 | Petticoats .15 Underskirts .18 | Chemises .13 Chemises .19 | Boots and Shoes .71 Boots and Shoes .92 | Other Clothing .19 Other Clothing .27 | -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ _Men's_:-- _Boy's_ (over 6):-- Overcoats .83 | Overcoats .27 Suits 2.60 | Suits .83 Hats .38 | Caps .07 Singlets .30 | Shirts .17 Drawers .30 | Stockings .12 Shirts .55 | Boots and Shoes .56 Socks .32 | Other Clothing .13 Boots and Shoes 1.33 | Other Clothing .34 | _Children_ (under 6):-- | Clothes, Boots, etc. .45 | | Total Clothing 17.48 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Rent 5.41 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Fuel and Light 7.04 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Coal 3.14 | Electricity for Cooking -- Turf 1.79 | Candles .33 Firewood .34 | Paraffin Oil .67 Gas for Lighting .40 | Other Fuel and Light .05 Gas for Cooking, etc. .29 | Electricity for lighting .03 | Total Fuel and Light 7.04 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Sundries 13.02 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Soap 1.12 | Other Sundries 8.41 Pipe Tobacco 2.11 | Cigarettes 1.38 | Total Sundries 13.02 -------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Total Expenditure 100.0 NOTES ON THE BUDGETS. (a) _Reliability of Budgets. Tests._ As a test of the reliability of the budget returns several sets were taken at random and were arranged in two groups having a common factor of approximately equal numbers of persons and equal total income. It was found on addition that the proportion of total expenditure spent on each description of food, clothing, etc., was approximately the same in each family and income group. Thus we treated the first 30 budgets from households with small and large incomes in this manner, dividing them so that each lot of 15 would have about the same number of persons and the same income. The selection was made without any reference whatever to expenditure, and the following were the results:-- PERCENTAGE EXPENDITURE. 1st Lot 2nd Lot of 15. of 15. Food 54.3 53.2 Clothing 20.9 20.3 Rent 6.6 6.7 Fuel and Light 6.7 6.7 Sundries 11.5 13.1 NUMBERS IN THE HOUSEHOLD. Under 4 8 3 4 to 13 30 31 14 and over 57 59 -- -- Total, 95 93 Total Weekly Incomes 1597s. 1543s. _The Household Budgets in the "S" Group were separately tested and the following results were obtained:--_ ------------------------------+------------------------------------- | INCOME OF HOUSEHOLD. |-------+------+------+------+-------- Proportion of Expenditure | Under | £3 | £4 | £5 | £6 under each of the following | £3 | | | | upwards sub-divisions:-- | | | | | |-------+------+------+------+-------- Food | 61·1 | 60·4 | 56·3 | 48·0 | 41·4 Clothing | 15·7 | 13·7 | 19·3 | 19·4 | 17·7 Rent | 5·3 | 6·6 | 5·0 | 8·8 | 12·4 Fuel and Light | 8·7 | 7·6 | 7·3 | 8·1 | 9·0 Sundries | 9·2 | 11·7 | 12·1 | 15·7 | 19·5 |-------+------+------+------+-------- Total | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | | | | | ------------------------------+-------+------+------+------+-------- This test showed that the budgets we used conformed with common experience, and is, therefore, evidence of their reliability. (_b_) _Comparison of English and Irish Weights._ The weights used in England in compiling the British index figure were compiled from budgets collected as long ago as 1904. These show a pre-war standard of living and the final index figure shows the percentage increase in expenditure necessary to maintain that precise standard of living absolutely unchanged at the present day. We were not in possession of any Irish figures by which the pre-war standard of living could be accurately measured, and it was accordingly necessary for us to obtain budgets showing the present standard of living. Our final index figure therefore shows the percentage increase in expenditure which would have been necessary to maintain the present standard of living absolutely unchanged from July, 1914, to the present day. It has been seen that according to the figures compiled by us, 57.1s. out of every 100s. is spent on food in Irish wage-earning class households; 17.5s. on clothing, and so on, and it is of interest to compare these "weights" with the corresponding figures calculated by the English Ministry of Labour from the "United Kingdom" Budgets of 1904, which relate to the pre-war "United Kingdom" Standard of Living and which are still in use in England. The following table shows the proportion of each 100s. spent by Wage-Earning Class Households which is spent on (1) Food, (2) Clothing, (3) Rent, (4) Fuel and Light, and (5) Sundries:-- ----------------------------------------------+----------------------- | IN IRELAND. | IN "UNITED KINGDOM." +--------------------------+----------------------- | In June, |In July, 1914| |In July, Class of | 1922, as |as calculated| In July, |1922, as Commodity. | calculated |from the | 1914, as |calculated | from the |previous |calculated |from 1904 | Committee's|column by | from 1904 |Budgets by | Budgets. |price | Budgets. |price | |changes. | |changes. -------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+----------- | A. | B. | C. | D. (1) Food | 57·1 | 56·2 | 60 | 58·6 (2) Clothing | 17·5 | 17·0 | 12 | 15·6 (3) Rent | 5·4 | 7·9 | 16 | 13·3 (4) Fuel and | | | | Light | 7·0 | 6·6 | 8 | 8·3 (5) Sundries | 13·0 | 12·3 | 4 | 4·2 +------------+-------------+-----------+----------- Total | 100·0 | 100·0 | 100 | 100·0 -------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+----------- It should be explained that the method of arriving at Columns B and D is as follows:-- The amounts of the various commodities consumed, as shown in the table compiled from the budgets, are left unchanged, but the prices are altered according to the prices ruling at the date under consideration, _i.e._, Column B shows the proportion of expenditure in 1914 on the various classes of commodities had the 1914 standard been precisely the same as the present day standard. (C) Compilation of the Final Figure. We were now in possession of the retail prices of the individual commodities at the different dates, and of the weights obtained from the summarisation of the household budgets, and these prices and weights for the main groups of articles are set out in the subjoined table:-- --------------+---------------+-----------------+-------------+--------- | | | | Irish |Mid-July, 1914.| Mid-March, 1922.| Mid-June, | Weights | | | 1922. |(see last | | | | par.). --------------+-------+-------+--------+--------+------+------+--------- | A. | B. | A. | B. | A. | B. | Food | 52·4 | 54·6 | 104·8 | 102·8 | 100 | 100 | 57·1 Clothing | 52·7 | 52·9 | 103·9 | 101·7 | 100 | 100 | 17·5 Rent (C) | 78·9 | 78·9 | 100·4 | 100·4 | 100 | 100 | 5·4 Fuel and Light| 46·6 | 48·1 | 104·8 | 104·4 | 100 | 100 | 7·0 Sundries | 50·5 | 51·9 | 103·2 | 103·1 | 100 | 100 | 13·0 --------------+-------+----------------+--------+------+------+--------- The figures A result from the returns from the Post Office. The figures B result from the returns from other Departments. The figures C were obtained from only one Department--the Local Government Board. It now only remained for us to compile the final figure. This was ascertained by multiplying the ratio prices of the various commodities by the "weights" appropriate to those commodities (_i.e._, by multiplying the figures in the first six columns of the table above by the figures in the final column). The following table gives the result so obtained:-- ---------------+--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+-------- | Mid-July, 1914. | Mid-March, 1922. | Mid-June, 1922. ---------------+--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+-------- | A. | B. | A. | B. | A. | B. Food | 2992·0 | 3117·7 | 5984·1 | 5869·9 | 5710·0 | 5710·0 Clothing | 922·3 | 925·7 | 1818·2 | 1779·7 | 1750·0 | 1750·0 Rent (C) | 426·1 | 426·1 | 542·2 | 542·2 | 540·0 | 540·0 Fuel and Light | 326·2 | 336·7 | 730·8 | 730·8 | 700·0 | 700·0 Sundries | 657·0 | 674·7 | 1341·6 | 1327·3 | 1300·0 | 1300·0 ---------------+--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+-------- Total | 5323·6 | 5480·9 | 10416·9 | 10249·9 | 10000·0 | 10000·0 ---------------+--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+-------- Then, taking the prices in July, 1914, as the standard and representing them by the figure of 100 we get the final percentage table. ----------------+-----------+---------------+-------------- | Mid. | Mid. | Mid. | July, 1914| March, 1922. | June, 1922. ----------------+-----+-----+-------+-------+-------+------ As Per Cent. of | | | | | | | A | B | A | B | A | B July, 1914. | 100 | 100 | 195·7 | 187·0 | 187·8 | 182·5 ----------------+-----+-----+-------+-------+-------+------ The following table shows the percentage changes so obtained for the main groups of commodities:-- ----------------+-------------------+----------------- | March 1922 over | June 1922 over | July 1914. | July 1914. ----------------+---------+---------+---------+------- | A | B | A | B ----------------+---------+---------+---------+------- Food | 99·9 | 88·3 | 90·8 | 83·2 Clothing | 97·3 | 92·0 | 89·9 | 88·7 Rent (C) | 27·3 | 27·3 | 26·8 | 26·8 Fuel and Light | 124·9 | 117·2 | 114·6 | 108·0 Sundries | 104·1 | 96·9 | 97·8 | 92·8 +---------+---------+---------+------- ALL ITEMS | 95·7 | 87·0 | 87·8 | 82·5 ----------------+---------+---------+---------+------- The figures in column marked "A" as before were obtained from the prices collected by Post Office officials, and those marked "B" from prices collected by officials of the Ministry of Labour and Local Government Board. By taking the mean of "A" and "B" for March and for June, 1922, the final figures showing the increases in the Cost of Living are obtained:-- Mid-March, 1922, Mid-June, 1922, over July, 1914. over July, 1914. =91.4= per cent. =85.2= per cent. =and these are the final figures which we recommend the Government to adopt.= NOTES ON THE COMPILATION. (_a_) _Comparison of Post Office, Ministry of Labour and Local Government Board Figures._ The close similarity between the figures supplied by the various Departments can perhaps be most clearly seen in a different tabular form. For every 100 shillings spent by wage-earning classes in July, 1914, the following would be the corresponding amounts (as shown by the different returns) which would have to be spent in order to maintain the same standard of living in March and June, 1922. -------+-------+-------------+---------+--------------+-------------- | | Ministry of | Mean of | Deviation | Deviation | Post | Labour and | columns | of (_a_) and | as a |Office.| Ministry of |(_a_) and| (_b_) from | percentage of | | Local Govt. | (_b_). | the mean. | column (_c_). | (_a_) | (_b_) | (_c_) | | -------+-------+-------------+---------+--------------+-------------- March, | | | | | 1922 | 195.7 | 187.0 | 191.35 | 4.35 | 2.3 June, | | | | | 1922 | 187.8 | 182.5 | 185.15 | 2.65 | 1.4 -------+-------+-------------+---------+--------------+-------------- The last column shows that in general the difference between Post Office, Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Local Government was 2.3 per cent. of the mean for prices returned for March, 1922, and 1.4 per cent. of the mean for prices returned for June, 1922--surely a small difference considering the instability of prices. (_b_) _Sundries._ A point of some importance is the following:-- In the British budgets only items of which the price changes could be accurately measured are understood to have been included. In our Summary all "Sundries" shown in the budgets are included. But as the price change of only about one-third of them could be directly measured it was assumed that the change in the level of the prices of the remaining sundries varied in the same proportion as the change in the other four groups combined. (D) Results of Different Weighting. Calculations were also made whereby a final figure could be arrived at by different methods, and the following table shows results obtained:-- PERCENTAGE INCREASES ARISING BY USING BRITISH WEIGHTS. ------------------------------------------------+------------------- |Percentage Increase | in Cost of Living | in Ireland. DIFFERENT METHODS. |----------+--------- | July 1914|July 1914 | to | to |March 1922|June 1922 ------------------------------------------------+----------+--------- _a_ By applying British Weights in 1914 | | to the Committee's Irish Prices of all | | commodities in 1914 and 1922 the percentage | | increase in the Cost of Living | | would be | 84.8 | 80.2 | | _b_ Taking Irish Prices for Food in 1914 as | | collected by the British Board of Trade, | | but the Committee's Prices for all other | | commodities in 1914 and all commodities | | in 1922 the increase would be | 76.6 | 71.0 | | _c_ Taking British Prices for food in the | | "United Kingdom" in 1914, but the Committee's | | Prices for all other commodities in 1914 | | and all commodities in 1922 the increase | | would be | 72.1 | 67.3 ------------------------------------------------+----------+--------- Prices obtained entirely on Irish weights | | and prices, and recommended for adoption | | are | 91.4 | 85.2 ------------------------------------------------+----------+--------- As regards this table it should, however, be pointed out that the commodities selected by us are not in all respects identical with those selected by the British authorities and that the application of the weights, although broadly speaking correct, could not be accurate in every detail. It only remains for us to express our gratitude for all the assistance given to us by the officials of the Departments already mentioned and by the staff assisting in the actual compilation. Our thanks are especially due to Mr. C. J. Barry, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction and to the National School teachers who furnished such excellent budgets. (Signed) JOHN HOOPER, _Chairman_. T. K. BEWLEY. +T. Mac Giolla Padraig.+ STANLEY LYON. _4th August, 1922._ APPENDIX. Form A. DIRECTIONS. 1. All prices should be quoted in pence, and should be cash prices at the shop (not delivered). 2. Please note the quantity mentioned in the first column in each case, and let your figures correspond. 3. If actual prices paid for any item are not available--leave space blank. _Do not estimate._ 4. The figures quoted for the month of March, 1922, should be those prevailing on the date on which you fill up the form. 5. In the column headed "Observations," please furnish any particulars concerning the retail prices of food in your district, which, in your opinion are worthy of observation. 6. Fill in on the back page of the form particulars of the sources from which information as to the prices of the commodity has been obtained, for example:-- ------------+-----------------------------+---------------------- COMMODITY. | SOURCE. | NATURE. ------------+-----------------------------+---------------------- Butter | John Macken, Main Street | Large Shop--Day Book Eggs | Personal knowledge | Direct Country supply Eggs | Mrs. O'Kane, Dublin Road | Household Pass Book ------------+-----------------------------+---------------------- 7. The figures representing the majority of the sales are the figures required. Exceptional prices are of no value. 8. In every case you should check your information, whether given of your knowledge or after investigation by enquiry from more than one source. RETAIL PRICES OF CERTAIN FOOD COMMODITIES IN __________________________ AT UNDERMENTIONED DATES. (City, Town, or District). -----------------------+--------------------+---------+---------+--------- | 1913 | 1914 | 1922 | +----+-----+----+----+---------+---------+ Observa- Commodity |Jan.|April|July|Oct.|Feb.|July|Feb.|Mar.| tions -----------------------+----+-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--------- Beef (Irish). | | | | | | | | | Best cuts per lb.| | | | | | | | | Second parts lb.| | | | | | | | | Rough meat lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mutton (Irish). | | | | | | | | | Best cuts lb.| | | | | | | | | Second parts lb.| | | | | | | | | Rough meat lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Bacon. | | | | | | | | | Smoked (piece) lb.| | | | | | | | | Smoked (rashers) lb.| | | | | | | | | Unsmoked (piece) lb.| | | | | | | | | Unsmoked (rashers) lb.| | | | | | | | | Shoulder (piece) lb.| | | | | | | | | Shoulder (rashers) lb.| | | | | | | | | American (piece) lb.| | | | | | | | | American (rashers) lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Fresh Pork. | | | | | | | | | Chops lb.| | | | | | | | | Steaks lb.| | | | | | | | | Puddings lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sausages. | | | | | | | | | Beef lb.| | | | | | | | | Pork lb.| | | | | | | | | "Limerick" lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Lard lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dripping lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Butter. | | | | | | | | | Irish Creamery lb.| | | | | | | | | Irish farmer's lb.| | | | | | | | | New Zealand lb.| | | | | | | | | Danish lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Margarine. | | | | | | | | | First Grade lb.| | | | | | | | | Second Grade lb.| | | | | | | | | Third Grade lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cheese (give brand | | | | | | | | | or other description).| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eggs. | | | | | | | | | First Grade doz.| | | | | | | | | Second Grade doz.| | | | | | | | | Third Grade doz.| | | | | | | | | Third Grade doz.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Milk. | | | | | | | | | Fresh quart| | | | | | | | | Buttermilk quart| | | | | | | | | Skim Milk quart| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tinned Milk. | | | | | | | | | Irish (give size | | | | | | | | | of tin) | | | | | | | | | Imported (give | | | | | | | | | size of tin) | | | | | | | | | Bread (per 2-lb. Loaf) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Flour. | | | | | | | | | Household per stone | | | | | | | | | Household per sack | | | | | | | | | of ___ stones. | | | | | | | | | Best American per | | | | | | | | | sack of ___ stones. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Meal. | | | | | | | | | Oaten stone| | | | | | | | | Wheaten stone| | | | | | | | | Indian stone| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rice lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Potatoes stone| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sugar, White | | | | | | | | | granulated lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tea. | | | | | | | | | Best quality lb.| | | | | | | | | Cheapest quality lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Coffee, Ground lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cocoa. | | | | | | | | | Shell lb.| | | | | | | | | Tinned lb.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jam, Irish (give name | | | | | | | | | of kind in most | | | | | | | | | demand). | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -----------------------+----+-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--------- Please add any | | | | | | | | | information available | | | | | | | | | as to prices of the | | | | | | | | | following commodities,| | | | | | | | | giving description of | | | | | | | | | each item:-- | | | | | | | | | Fish | | | | | | | | | Vegetables lb.| | | | | | | | | Poultry lb.| | | | | | | | | Fruit lb.| | | | | | | | | -----------------------+----+-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--------- Signature________________________ Date_________________ PARTICULARS OF SOURCES from which information has been obtained:-- -------------+---------------------+--------------------------- COMMODITY. | SOURCE. | NATURE. -------------+---------------------+--------------------------- Beef | | Mutton | | Bacon | | Fresh Pork | | Sausages | | Lard | | Dripping | | Butter | | Margarine | | Cheese | | Eggs | | Milk | | Tinned Milk | | Bread | | Flour | | Meal | | Rice | | Potatoes | | Sugar | | Tea | | Coffee | | Cocoa | | Jam | | Fish | | Vegetables | | Poultry | | Fruit | | -------------+---------------------+--------------------------- Form B 1. INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING IN SPECIAL FORMS FOR RETAIL PRICES. (1) The necessary inquiries for filling up these forms should be made immediately. (2) The returns duly completed should be posted so as to reach this Office _not later than Thursday, 22nd June_. Please do your utmost to post them as early as possible. (3) Get the information from the shops most frequented by the wage-earning classes. Prices representing the kind, quality, etc., on which these classes spend most money are the prices required. (4) Please note the quantity for which the prices of each commodity are to be quoted. (5) All prices on Forms B 2 and B 3 should be quoted in pence (but correct to farthings)--thus Sugar 5-¾d. per lb. (6) Give actual prices. If you cannot get them leave blanks; do not give estimates or averages. For prices for the dates prior to June, 1922, get the Shopkeepers to look up their books. (7) All prices should be cash prices at the shop (_not delivered_) they should represent the majority of sales and they should be checked by inquiry from more than one source. (8) (_a_) Get prices in all cases from Shopkeepers, giving on each Form the names and full postal addresses of those who supplied the information for that Form. (_b_) Give exact descriptions of beef, mutton, etc., where you are asked to do this on the Form. (9) Give on the space provided on each Form any explanations or observations which you think would be helpful. =Form B 2.= RETAIL PRICES OF CERTAIN COMMODITIES in ________________ of __________________________________ (_Parish_) (_City, Town or District_). [_Prices to be correct to the nearest farthing._] -----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------+-------+----- | |Mid | | | | | |Mid- |Mid- | | |Mid- | |Mar.,|June,| | |June, Commodity. |Per |1922.|1922.| Commodity.[B] |Per |1922. -----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------+-------+----- | |_d._ |_d._ | | |_d._ Butter, Irish Factory |lb. | | |Pork Chops |lb. | Cheese, Golden Spray[A]|lb. | | |Pork Sausages |lb. | Condensed Milk, Irish |1 lb.| | |Lard |lb. | full Cream. | tin| | | | | Condensed Milk, |1 lb.| | | | | Nestle's | tin| | |Butter, Irish Creamery |lb. | Rice, Rangoon |lb. | | |Butter, Irish Farmer's |lb. | Rice, Java |lb. | | |Margarine, First Grade |lb. | Jam, Strawberry |lb. | | |Margarine, Second |lb. | | | | | Grade. | | Fresh Pork, Shoulders |lb. | | |Eggs, First Grade |doz. | Fish--Red Herrings |doz. | | |Milk, Fresh |Quart | Fish--Fresh Herrings |doz. | | |Bread |2 lb. | | | | | | loaf | Fish--Cod Steak |lb. | | |Flour, Household |14 lbs.| Tea (quality most used |lb. | | |Oatmeal |14 lbs.| by working classes). | | | | | | Cabbage |head | | |Potatoes, Old |14 lbs.| =============================| | | | | |July,| | | | | |1914.| | | | | Soap, Household (bar) | | | |Sugar, white granulated|lb. | per lb.| | | | | | | | | |Tea, Best Quality |lb. | Candles per lb.| | | | | | | | | |Tea, Cheapest Quality |lb. | Paraffin Oil per gal.| | | |================================ | | | | OBSERVATIONS. Coal per 112 lbs.| | | | | | | | Turf[A] per 112 lbs.| | | | | | | | Gas for lighting[A] per| | | | | | | | Gas for cooking, per| | | | &c.[A] | | | | Electricity for per| | | | lighting[A] | | | | Electricity for per| | | | cooking, &c.[A] | | | | ========================================================================== [A: SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS.--(_a_) _Cheese_, _Golden Spray._--If this kind of Cheese is not sold, strike out last two words, insert kind most usually sold to working classes, and give prices. (_b_) _Turf._--Note, price is asked for per 112 lbs. State on back of this form how it is sold in your Parish, and give number of sods, creels, etc., to the 112 lbs. (_c_) _Gas and Electricity._--Insert the quantity which you are pricing, and state any "observations" (on the front or back of this form) which will help in compiling uniform quotations for the different parts of Ireland.] [B: NOTE.--Prices for Mid-June, 1922, only are required for these particular commodities.] _Date_ ______________ (_Signature_) ____________________________ =Form B 2=--CONTINUED. -------------------+----------------------------+------------------------ |Name and full postal address| COMMODITY. | of Shopkeeper or Firm from| OBSERVATIONS. | whom the information was | | obtained. | -------------------+----------------------------+------------------------ (1) Butter | | (2) Cheese | | (3) Condensed Milk| | (4) Margarine | | (5) Lard | | (6) Sausages | | (7) Fresh Pork | | (8) Tea | | (9) Sugar | | (10) Jam | | (11) Rice | | (12) Oatmeal | | (13) Flour | | (14) Bread | | (15) Eggs | | (16) Milk, fresh | | (17) Potatoes | | (18) Cabbage | | (19) Fish | | (20) Soap | | (21) Candles | | (22) Oil | | (23) Coal | | (24) Turf | | (25) Gas | | (26) Electricity | | -------------------+----------------------------+------------------ Form B 3. RETAIL PRICES OF CERTAIN COMMODITIES in _________________________ of ________________________ (Parish). (City, Town or District). ------------------------------------+----------------------------------- PRICES. | ESTIMATED WEIGHTS. | Insert under _Beef_ the exact |On each blank line below insert the description (e.g., "round steak," |same description as you have "stewing beef," "rib steak," "corned|already inserted on the same line brisket," "shoulder," "liver," etc.,|in the lefthand column, then insert or whatever is the exact |below the best estimates of description) of each of the six |comparative weights which you can parts, kinds, etc., on which the |get from the shopkeeper. _working classes_ at present spend | most _money_, naming the parts in |That is to say, for every 10 _lbs._ the order of their importance from |of that part, kind, cut, etc., on this point of view. Please insert |which the working classes spend prices opposite each description. |most _money_, insert below the Similarly, in the case of _Mutton_ |approximate _weight_ of each of the insert the exact description of the |other descriptions (2), (3), etc., four parts, kinds, etc., in the |purchased by the working classes. order of their money importance to | the working classes, entering the | exact price opposite each. Again, | under _Bacon, etc._, insert the | exact description (e.g., "Irish | shoulder rashers," "Irish bacon, | back piece," "American bacon, | shoulder piece," "Pigs' heads," | "American Gams," etc., or whatever | is the exact description) of each of| the six parts, kinds, cuts, etc., of| cured pigs on which the _working | classes_ at present spend most | _money_, naming the parts in order | of their importance from this point | of view. Enter the exact prices | opposite each description. | | Do not estimate prices. As regards | Mid-March, shopkeeper's books should| be referred to in each case. | ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | Mid- | Mid- | | | March, | June, | | BEEF, per lb. | 1922. | 1922. | BEEF. | Weights. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (1) | | |(1) | 10 lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (2) | | |(2) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (3) | | |(3) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (4) | | |(4) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (5) | | |(5) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (6) | | |(6) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | MUTTON, per lb. | | | MUTTON. | | | | | (1) | | |(1) | 10 lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (2) | | |(2) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (3) | | |(3) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (4) | | |(4) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- BACON, &c., | | | | per lb. | | | BACON, etc. | | | | | (1) | | |(1) | 10 lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (2) | | |(2) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (3) | | |(3) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (4) | | |(4) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (5) | | |(5) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- | | | | (6) | | |(6) | lb. ------------------+----------+----------+--------------------+---------- The working-class families in this district spend about _____ shillings on Mutton for every 10 shillings spent on Beef. For every 10s. which the working classes spend on butchers' meat (beef and mutton) how much do they spend on bacon and other pig-meat (including sausages)? ____________ Signature ____________________________ Date ____ June, 1922. _Source of Information_ _Observations_ Form B 4. CLOTHING OF WAGE-EARNING CLASSES. RETAIL PRICES IN ___________________________ The prices for 1914 must refer to exactly the same type and quality of articles as for 1922, which must be of a description in general demand amongst wage-earning classes in 1922. In all cases of clothing it is the ready-made article that should be priced, except as regards men's suits, men's trousers and men's overcoats, for which two sets of prices, (1) ready-made, (2) tailor-made, should be given. -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- | State Material and | | July,| Mar.,|June, Articles. | exact Description. | -- | 1914.| 1922.|1922. -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- | | | s. d.| s. d.|s. d. (A). Men's. | | | | | Suits (1) | | each | | | Suits (2) | | each | | | Trousers (1) | | pair | | | Trousers (2) | | pair | | | Overcoats (1) | | each | | | Overcoats (2) | | each | | | Singlets | | each | | | Drawers | | pair | | | Shirts | | each | | | Socks | | pair | | | Boots | | pair | | | -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- (B). Boys aged | | | | | about 12. | | | | | Suits | | each | | | Overcoats | | each | | | Shirts | | each | | | Stockings | | pair | | | Boots | | pair | | | -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- (C). Women's. | | | | | Light Coats | | each | | | Heavy Coats | | each | | | Costumes | | each | | | Blouses | | each | | | Skirts | | each | | | Stockings | | pair | | | Combinations | | pair | | | Corsets | | each | | | Underskirts | | each | | | Chemises | | each | | | Boots | | pair | | | -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- (D). Girls aged | | | | | about 12. | | | | | Coats | | each | | | Dresses | | each | | | Stockings | | pair | | | Combinations | | pair | | | Stays | | each | | | Petticoats | | each | | | Chemises | | each | | | Boots | | pair | | | -------------------+------------------------+------+------+------+----- (E).--MATERIALS purchased by Wage-earning Classes (same kind and quality at each date). -------------+-------------------------------+-----+------+------+------ | | | July,| Mar.,| June, Materials. | Exact Description, Width, &c. | Per | 1914.| 1922.| 1922. -------------+-------------------------------+-----+------+------+------ | | | s. d.| s. d.| s. d. Woollen Yarn | | lb. | | | Calico | | yard| | | Cotton | | yard| | | Flannel | | yard| | | Flannelette | | yard| | | Serge | | yard| | | Tweed | | yard| | | Print | | yard| | | -------------+-------------------------------+-----+------+------+------ (F).--Names and full postal addresses of shopkeepers, firms, &c., from whom information on this Form B. 4 was obtained. (G).--Observations. _Signature_ _______________________________ _Date_ ______________________ _This Form should be returned by the day of June_, 1922. Form B 5. REPRESENTATIVE RENTS PAID BY WAGE-EARNING CLASSES IN I.--WHOLE HOUSE OCCUPIED BY ONE FAMILY. I.--The houses referred to below should be representative of wage-earning class dwellings in as many different districts as possible. Houses owned by the Local Authority should be indicated by an asterisk placed after the postal number; such houses should only form their due proportion of the number mentioned below since the Return is required to show the true average change in rents in all wage-earning class houses. _Rents of actual houses should be given: different rents are not to be averaged_. ---------------+---------+------+-----------------------+ | |No. | Annual Rent[B] | | |of | (including rates) | |Postal[A]|rooms | of each house. | Name of Street.| No. or |in |-------+-------+-------+ | Nos. of |each | July, | Mar., | June, | | houses. |house.| 1914. | 1922. | 1922. | ---------------+---------+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | | | £ | s.| £ | s.| £ | s.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ---------------+---------+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ Continuation of above table --------------+---------+-----------------+-------------------------------- | | | | | Annual Rates | P.L. Valuation |Postal[A]| on each house. | of each house. Name of Street| No. or |--------+--------+--------+-------+-------+------- | Nos. of | July, | Mar., | June, | July, | Mar., | June, | houses. | 1914. | 1922. | 1922. | 1914. | 1922. | 1922. --------------+---------+--+--+--+--+--|--+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+--- | | £|s.|£ |s.| £|s.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | --------------+---------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+--- [A. Owned by the Local Authority.] [B. It is the ANNUAL rent that should be entered; accordingly weekly, monthly or quarterly rents at the above dates should be multiplied by 52, 12, or 4 respectively, and the result entered.] Form B 5--continued. II.--PART ONLY OF HOUSE OCCUPIED BY FAMILY. II.--The houses or tenements should be in as many different districts as possible and the particulars should be representative of wage-earning class accommodation in those districts. _Actual rents are to be given: different rents are not to be averaged._ ------+------+--------------+------------------------------------ | | Number[A] of| Amount of Rent paid per week Name |Postal|rooms occupied| for the rooms of |No. of|by each family|-----------+------------+----------- Street|house.|selected. |July, 1914.|March, 1922.|June, 1922. ------+------+--------------+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+----- | | | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ------+------+--------------+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+----- [A: The numbers required are to represent different types of wage-earning class accommodation and, therefore, families should be selected occupying different numbers of rooms so as to properly represent local conditions.] _Date_ __________ 1922. _Signature_ ______________________ =Form B 6.=--Page 1. HOUSEHOLD BUDGET. PARTICULARS for all persons in a household at _________ Co __________ during the seven days ended ___ June, 1922. (NOTE.--Particulars for _each_ person should be given, one line being devoted to _each_). -----------------------+----------+----+-----------+--------- Description | | | |Earnings (_e.g._, husband, wife,| Sex | | | for father, son, niece, | (M) Male |Age.|Occupation.|the seven servant, lodger, &c.).|(F) Female| | [1] | days.[2] -----------------------+----------+----+-----------+--------- | | | | s. d. (1) | | | | (2) | | | | (3) | | | | (4) | | | | (5) | | | | (6) | | | | (7) | | | | (8) | | | | (9) | | | | (10) | | | | -----------------------+----------+----+-----------+--------- [1. _e.g._, "Carpenter," "Dock |Total earnings(A)| labourer," "domestic duties," "at| | school," &c.] |Other receipts[E]| [2. If there is a servant, her |-----------------|--------- wages should not be included here]Total income (B) | (E) Receipts of old age or other |-----------------+--------- pensions should be included here and not in the column for "earnings" above. Please state on the following lines particulars of pensions or other receipts:-- ---------------------------+---------------------------------- Observations with regard to| SUMMARY. particulars on this page. |---------------------------------- | Number of Persons | No. |Who earned cash (A) ________ |Who did not earn cash (A) ________ |Total number of persons | in the household ________ |---------------------------------- | s. d. |Total _income_ (B) | for the seven days ________ |---------------------------------- | Number of Persons | No. |Under 4 years ________ |4 years to 13 (inclusive) ________ |14 years and over ________ | -------- |Total number of persons | in the household ________ =Form B 6.=--Page 2. QUANTITIES AND COSTS OF ARTICLES CONSUMED DURING THE SEVEN DAYS ___ JUNE, TO ___ JUNE, 1922. --------------------------+------+----+--------------------------+----+---- | Qty. |s.d.| |Qty.|s.d. FOOD. | | | FUEL AND LIGHT. | | (1) Beef | lb. | |(29) Coal |cwt.| (2) Mutton | lb. | |(30) Turf |cwt.| (3) Fresh pork | lb. | |(31) Firewood | | (4) Sausages, black | lb. | |(32) Gas | | puddings, &c. | | |(33) Electricity | | (5) Bacon, pigs' heads, | lb. | |(34) Candles |lb. | &c. | | |(35) Paraffin Oil |pts.| --------------------------+------+----|(36) Other Fuel and Light |[3] | | | |--------------------------+----+---- (6) Total Meat[4] | [3] |[4] |(37) Total Fuel & Light(E)|[3] | (7) Fresh Fish | [3] | |--------------------------+----+---- (8) Cured or Tinned Fish | [3] | | | | (9) Butter | lb. | | HOUSEHOLD REQUISITES. | | (10) Cheese | lb. | |(38) Soap | | (11) Margarine | lb. | |(39) Starch, blue, |[3] | (12) Lard | lb. | | polishes, &c. | | (13) Fresh Milk | pts. | |(40) Crockery, hardware, |[3] | (14) Condensed Milk | lb. | | &c. | | (15) Eggs | doz. | |(41) Other household |[3] | (16) Bread | 2 lb.| | requisites. | | |loaves| |(42) Total Household |[3] | (17) Flour | lb. | | Requisites (F). | | (18) Oatmeal, &c. | lb. | |--------------------------+----+---- (19) Rice, Sago, &c. | lb. | | | | (20) Potatoes | lb. | | SUNDRIES. | | (21) Other Vegetables | [3] | |(43) Pipe tobacco |oz. | (22) Tea | lb. | |(44) Cigarettes |oz. | (23) Sugar | lb. | |(45) Medicines, Ointments,|[3] | (24) Jam | lb. | | Ointments, &c. | | (25) Other food | [3] | |(46) Newspapers, &c. |[3] | (26) Meals eaten at shops,| [3] | |(47) Train and tram fares,|[3] | &c. | | | &c. | | --------------------------+------+----|(48) Insurances |[3] | (27) Total Food (C) | [3] |[4] |(49) | | --------------------------+------+----|(50) | | |(51) | | (28) Clothes boots and | [3] | |--------------------------+----+ shoes (D) | | |(52) Total Sundries (G) |[3] | --------------------------+------+----+--------------------------+----+ [3: Cost only is required.] [4: When totting be careful not to add in Meat twice over.] NOTE.--Food purchased for poultry, pigs, &c.; materials for making up garments for _sale_; implements for producing goods _for sale_, &c., should not be included above. _(H) RENTS (Including rates)._--What is the weekly rent (including rates) of the house or rooms occupied by the household? ___ shillings and ___ pence. Does the family own the house? ________ (yes or no). If the answer is "yes," insert the equivalent rent and rates. Observations on Weekly Costs and on rent:-- =Form B 6.=--Page 3. COST OF CLOTHING (INCLUDING BOOTS AND SHOES) FOR THE TWELVE MONTHS, JULY, 1921, TO JUNE, 1922, INCLUSIVE. As it is exceptionally difficult to obtain representative costs of clothing, you are earnestly requested to help the Government by going to the greatest pains to give below the most accurate figures you possibly can for the cost of the clothing (including boots and shoes) used up by the household during the twelve months, July, 1921, to June, 1922, inclusive. Costs of materials purchased for clothing (_e.g._, cotton for children's dresses) should be included, any costs of making-up should be added. Material purchased for making up articles for _sale_ should not be entered. COSTS FOR REPAIRS AND ALTERATIONS OF CLOTHING (including boots and shoes) should be included. FOR ARTICLES WHICH USUALLY LAST MORE THAN TWELVE MONTHS include below only the proportionate cost for the twelve months. For instance, if an overcoat is usually bought only once in _three_ years, enter below only _one-third_ of the price; even if the overcoat was purchased eighteen months ago, one-third of the cost should still be stated below. If the exact amount of money spent during the twelve months on, for instance, boys' stockings, cannot be remembered, but if it is known that a pair lasts about _four months_, then include below _three times_ the price of the last pair. The lists below are intended for your convenience; some of the articles may not have been used, others more important than some mentioned may have to be included with minor expenditure under "Other Clothing." -----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------ For Women. |For Girls over 6.| For Men. | For Boys over 6. ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- | | | | | | | |£ s.| |£ s.| |£ s.| |£ s. | | | | | | | Coats | |Coats | |Overcoats | |Overcoats | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Hats | |Hats | |Suits | |Suits | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Costumes | |Dresses | |Hats | |Caps | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Blouses, &c.| |Stockings | |Singlets | |Shirts | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Skirts | |Combinations | |Drawers | |Stockings | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Stockings | |Stays | |Shirts | |Boots & Shoes| ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Combinations| |Petticoats | |Socks | |Other | | | | | | |Clothing | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Corsets | |Chemises | |Boots & Shoes| | Total | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Underskirts | |Boots & Shoes| |Other | | Per Boy | | | | |Clothing | | | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Chemises | |Other | | | |For children | | |Clothing | | | | under 6. | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Boots & | | | | | | |£ s. Shoes | | | | | |Total | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----|childen's | Other | | | | | |clothes, | clothing | | | | | |boots, &c. | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Total of | |Total of | |Total of | |Per Child | above | |above | |above | | | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- Per Woman | |Per Girl | |Per Man | | | ------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+----+-------------+---- (I.) Total cost of Clothing, Boots and Shoes, for the whole household for 12 months, £ : : OBSERVATIONS on costs of clothing (including Boots and Shoes):-- Form B 6.--Page 4. COST OF FUEL AND LIGHT FOR THE TWELVE MONTHS, JULY, 1921, TO JUNE, 1922, inclusive. As the cost of fuel and light is so different in winter and summer, will you please state below, as accurately as possible, the expenditure on fuel and light by the household during the past twelve months, and the corresponding quantities of the items consumed. --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- |Quantity.|£ s.| |Quantity.|£ s. --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- Coal | tons. | |Electricity for | | | | | lighting | | --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- Turf | tons. | |Electricity for | | | | | cooking, &c. | | --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- Firewood | | |Candles | lb.| --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- Gas for lighting | | |Paraffin Oil | galls.| --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- Gas for cooking, &c.| | |Other fuel and light| | --------------------+---------+-----+--------------------+---------+----- (J). Total expenditure on Fuel and Light for the twelve months ___£ Observations on fuel and light:-- General Observations:-- The figures and observations inserted on these four pages are reliable to the best of my knowledge and belief. Signature of Teacher or Assistant______________Rank_____________ Address of School_______________________________________________ Date_____________1922. Form B 7. INSTRUCTIONS FOR DEALING WITH HOUSEHOLD BUDGET FORM B 6. 1. Select the household with one or more wage-earners for which you can give the most reliable particulars. You can choose any type of household you think fit, it does not matter whether it be a household even of twenty or even of one, whether comfortably off or poorly off, with many children or with few or no children, with several wage-earners or with only one, with no men, with no women, with a visitor, with a servant, etc., provided the household chosen is one of the wage-earning class. This will ensure that taking the country as a whole the budgets will represent every day conditions and avoid anything exceptional. 2. If you select a household with a plot or garden in which food is produced, or one with fowl or pigs, etc., a note to this effect should be made under "Observations." 3. Make no statement which would identify the household for which you send an account; as a further precaution the individual returns will be treated as strictly confidential--your figures will be used only in totting them with figures in a large number of other budgets in order to arrive at averages, etc. 4. If you live with a wage earner and give the budget of your own house, do not state that the household is your own, but you will of course place the word "teacher" on one line in the occupation column of the first table (a teacher is not necessarily a national school teacher; in any case the budget will be treated as strictly confidential). 5. If you can get accurate particulars for the days of the current week, do so. If not, would you ask the householder to keep an account for the seven days immediately following the receipt of this communication. Post your budget so as to reach here by the 30th June, at latest. Spend all the time you can spare to get the particulars as accurate as possible. 6. Under "Observations" on each page give any remarks that may be helpful, especially explanations of unusually large or small figures. The budgets will be closely scrutinised. 7. Do not stamp the envelope; it will come post free. PAGE 1. 8. Give a line to each individual in the household from the oldest to the youngest. In the summary table include as earners any who earn even a few shillings. In case short time or only a few hours were worked this should be stated under "Observations." PAGE 2. 9. Get the quantity and cost of the items _consumed_ in the week. In most cases it will be accurate enough to state _purchases_ during the week, but where there has been an unusually large purchase of food, etc., to last more than one week (or an unusually small purchase owing to a large quantity being in hand at the beginning of the week) give the quantity and cost of the week's consumption. You are, however, definitely instructed to state the _purchases_ during the week of such articles as "clothing, boots and shoes," "crockery, hardware," etc., and of all such goods which are intended to last more than one week. If any article (e.g., a suit of clothes, etc.) is purchased on an easy payment system give the total cost--not the amount of the instalment. It is anticipated that a small number of budgets will contain abnormally large figures for "clothing, boots and shoes," etc., and in such cases particulars should be given under the "Observations." Loads, creels, etc., of turf should be converted to the equivalent weight. RENT.--The figure required is to include rates. If the household owns the house, this should be stated and the equivalent rent (including rates) should be given. If the household do not occupy a whole house, this should be stated. 10. You will observe that the week's expenditure will not necessarily be the same as the week's income. PAGES 3 AND 4 11. The difficulty of giving as accurate figures on pages 3 and 4 as on pages 1 and 2 is recognised, but you are earnestly requested to do the very best you can to give reliable figures. Under "Observations" on the last page give an indication of the degree of accuracy of your figures. 12. Do not send a budget at all unless you are satisfied that the figures are reliable on the whole. PRINTED BY A. THOM & CO., LTD., DUBLIN. 16459. 750. 9. 1922. 
37784	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) THE RISE OF COTTON MILLS IN THE SOUTH A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Board of University Studies of The Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Broadus Mitchell Baltimore, Maryland 1918 CONTENTS Page Foreword _Chapter I_: The Background 1-45 _Chapter II_: The Background, continued 45-94 _Chapter III_: Conditions Precedent to the Erection of the Mills 95-131 _Chapter IV_: Capital 132-181 _Chapter V_: Financing the Mills 181-225 _Chapter VI_: Financing the Mills, continued 226-271 Vita 272 FOREWORD These pages represent a partial exploitation of materials gathered with a view to their ultimate use in more extended form. Many phases of the problem have been left entirely untreated, but the research upon these subjects has not been without indirect service in the present study. In the case of two chapters written midway of the investigation, in revision care has been taken to bring them into consonance with the indications which developed from subsequent discoveries. It is hoped, therefore, that their lack is rather as to completeness than as to fidelity of temper. Unless this presentation is entirely inadequate, in addition to the more objective economic forces, in the rise of cotton mills in the South, there will appear the human elements that lie at the core of the development. For assistance, my first thanks are due to Professor Jacob H. Hollander and Professor George E. Barnett, of The Johns Hopkins University, who have contributed in a hundred ways over the whole period of study, and to Dr. Nathaniel R. Whitney, formerly of The Johns Hopkins University and now of the Iowa State University, who helped form my original conception of the problem. In the wider aspects of my study I have drawn upon the experience and judgment of my father continuously. Acknowledgment is due Miss Ellen Rothe and Miss Ethel Hubbard, of the library staff of The Johns Hopkins University; to the authorities of the library of the Peabody Institute of Baltimore, and to the officers of the reading room of the Library of Congress. In two field investigations in the South, many gentlemen connected directly or indirectly with the cotton manufacturing industry have been instituting in extending their time and counsel and courtesy. From lack of space, it is not possible to make individual mention of all of these in this place; foot-note references to the interviews must be understood each one as expression of appreciation. For extraordinary assistance, however, it gives me pleasure here to return thanks to Hon. John Skelton Williams, Comptroller of the Currency; Mr. George A. Nölting, Jr., of Richmond, Virginia; Mr. O. D. Davis, of Salisbury; Mr. J. L. Hartsell, of Concord; Messrs. J. Lee Robinson and S. N. Boyce, of Gastonia; and Miss Anna L. Twelvetrees, Mr. Sterling Graydon and Mr. Hudson Millar, of Charlotte, North Carolina; Mr. W. J. Thackston, of Greenville; Mr. August Kohn, Professor Yates Snowden and Mr. William W. Ball, of Columbia, South Carolina, and Mr. T. S. Raworth, of Augusta, Ga. Of more intimate sort is my obligation to Professor K. Roberts Greenfield, of Delaware College, who by his constructive criticism has helped shape my opinion in a large way and has at many points improved the text as such. I cannot fail to acknowledge, finally, my gratitude to Mrs. Charles Reuter and the members of her family, under whose roof most of these pages were written. Broadus Mitchell Baltimore, February 6, 1918. THE RISE OF COTTON MILLS IN THE SOUTH CHAPTER I _THE BACKGROUND_ This opening chapter undertakes a broad survey in brief compass of the historical and economic background out of which the cotton manufacturing industry of the South, as a distinct development, emerged. Thus to begin the story of the rise of the mills with discussion of a period which commences a century in advance, is not unlike the production of a play hopeful in conception, robust in theme and rapid in action, but in which the curtain first rises on a stage which remains empty throughout an entire act. In viewing the period lying back of the concerted erection of cotton mills in the South, some observers have said they caught satisfying glimpses of men and facts not only presaging but causally related to the main action later. In spite of the present writer's usual disbelieve in the sufficiency of the evidence in these findings, it is a primary purpose of this discussion to give their statements, together with the supporting testimony that they deliberately and others incidentally have brought forward. The total of this study will show that the development, as such, not only first substantially showed itself, but had its complete genesis, about the year 1880. It is plain that in order to present, however, the conclusions of students who have believed they discerned signs of it in earlier years, it is necessary to include in these preliminary pages much that will not appear as fact exhibit, but rather as opinion. And not simply this, but in seeking to make clear the opposite theory, free recourse is taken to the findings and statements of others than the writer. No apology is made for the incorporation of secondary material. On the contrary, this is intentioned. Lying, after all, outside of the central facts to come under view in this essay, exclusively original research in so extended a period has not seemed justified. In the second place, it has not appeared necessary for the reason that there has been usually less dispute as to the facts and the completeness of the data that much study has uncovered, than as to the right interpretation of material evidences agreed upon. Besides these considerations, it should be understood that much which might carelessly be taken as second-hand information, is really entirely and valuably first-hand. Peculiarly in the case of the economic history of the South, the statements of those who spoke from intimate elbow-touch with and active participation in the events of the various periods are sources in the finest sense. This is particularly true with respect to the work of the late Mr. D. A. Tompkins, which is repeatedly made use of. No document giving a photograph of conditions at one point of time could replace an utterance which sprang from his rich association with the whole fabric of the South's economic life, and which voiced the result of his long and sensitive responsiveness to stimuli external and internal. He absorbed influences as a sponge does water, and when pressed his books and speeches yield observations quick, living, liquid. There is considerable reason for belief, too, that Mr. Tompkins' concepts, however correctly or incorrectly interpretative of the past, stood in a causal relation to the cotton manufacturing development in his active period and continuing to a less extent even to the present. While there has perhaps been no previous effort to bring the several beliefs into parallel presentation, concerning the rise of cotton mills in the South a little body of theory has grown up. Many of the statements are not well-informed, and in other cases they are almost too studied. Aside from a preparatory instance, designed to show the limits of divergence between the various views, the method here chosen is that of relating the different assertions to all of the periods to which they apply, rather than attempting to give at once expositions of each in continuity. It is hoped that in trying to examine the views in detail, the relative weighing of periods as intended by the writers will not be lost. One who made his study with empirical purpose, and may believed to have been not deeply interested in the historical setting of the cotton mills, has made the following observation for South Carolina, taken by him as typical of the Southern States: "The story of the development of the cotton manufacturing industry in South Carolina is not wanting in impressive elements. From the beginning in 1790 till 1900 it was a struggle of gradually increasing intensity and extension."[1] This is a very positive statement of what may be called the continuity theory. Mr. Goldsmith's view is in marked contrast with a representative expression of Mr. Tompkins, like himself a Southerner for considerable time a resident of the North: "The settlement of mountainous and middle North Carolina was practically by the same elements,--Scotch-Irish, Germans, Moravians, and Quakers,--as came to Pennsylvania. Many emigrants landing at Philadelphia and New Castle, Delaware, settled first in Pennsylvania and moved southward through the Valley and Piedmont of Virginia to the Carolinas. Others landed at Charleston and moved northwestward. In South Carolina even the names of several of the northern counties are identical with those of Pennsylvania, as Lancaster, Chester, and York counties. "These settlers brought with them a large degree of knowledge and skill in manufacturing. All along the Piedmont and even in the mountains from Pennsylvania to Georgia, they not only followed agriculture, but developed varied household manufactures in the period between 1750 and 1800.... In 1800 many charcoal blast furnaces making pig iron and many catlin forges and rolling mills making wrought iron bars, and other products of iron, indicate that a manufacturing development throughout the Piedmont region of the South might have continued parallel with that which has taken place in Pennsylvania, except for the circumstances of the combined influence of the invention of the cotton gin, the institution of slavery, and the checking of this immigration. As late as 1810 the manufactured products of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia exceeded in variety and value those of the entire New England States. By Whitney's invention, and its improvement by Holmes, cotton planting became so profitable, that for a period of forty years the price remained above twenty-five cents a pound. Factories were abandoned, the owners going into the production of cotton with slave labor. Some of the factory workers ... went into a precarious agriculture. The factory workers and small farmers were largely ... located on the mountain sides, and the development of cotton production with slave labor tended further to separate this democracy from the white race aristocracy of the low country. As cotton and slavery advanced, the population of free white work people were driven farther and farther into the mountain country, and thus many of the white industrial workers of 1800 became the poor mountain farmers of 1850.... the owners of factories who operated with free white labor in 1800 had become in 1850 the cotton planters operating with black slave labor.... when the abolition of slavery removed one great difficulty of industries and the white people who had formerly deserted manufacturers for agriculture went back to the pursuits of their fathers, these mountaineers formed the labor supply.... it was found that the descendants of the industrial workers of 1800 could, with a little training, do as good work as their forbears did."[2] This opinion is not so categorical as that of a close observer of the South who believes that "from 1810 to 1880 the section was industrially a desert of Sahara", but it makes clear the view that from a point early in the century until a date subsequent to the Civil War absorption in cotton culture threw manufacturing of all sorts into the discard. This conception may be held to be so generally accepted as to be commonplace and not requiring of proof; to examine in detail, however, the varying statements that would cast doubt upon this, so far from being a tilting at windmills, will serve to fix with some conclusiveness the date most nearly according with the commencement of the industry, and so accomplish the chief object of this introductory discussion. And now to begin. In declaring in 1908 that Spartanburg was regaining the position of a central point in one of the most forward manufacturing developments in America, such as the place had been a century earlier, Mr. Tompkins said: "When I left South Carolina to go North to learn the trade of machinist and to study engineering I thought I was leaving a country which had never had any important manufactures. Later, when I was in the middle of industrial life in the North, I conceived the idea of writing an industrial history of the United States. To my amazement I found that the agricultural South, from which I had come in a spirit of industrial despair, was the cradle of manufactures in the United States."[3] Mr. Thompson has developed carefully the industrial character of what may roughly be called the Revolutionary period, particularly with reference to North Carolina: "The domestic industries ... flourished. Though there were no towns of any size, the number and the skill of the artisans was such that, in 1800, it seemed probable that the logical development would be into a frugal manufacturing community, rather than into an agricultural state."[4] Records in the office of the Secretary of State of South Carolina show the early encouragement given to the manufacture of cotton specifically. In a list of inventions, copyrights and patents, it appears that March 13, 1789, Hugh Templeton deposited in the office two plans, "a complete draft of a carding machine that will card eighty pounds of cotton per day", and "a complete draft of a spinning machine, with eighty-four spindles, that will spin with one man's attendance ten pounds of good cotton yarn per day."[5] In 1795 the legislature of this State passed an act authorizing commissioners to project a lottery for the benefit of William McClure in his effort to establish a cotton manufactory to make "Manchester wares."[6] The purchase by Southern States of the patent rights of Whitney's cotton gin is to be interpreted not as a design to leave off cotton manufacturing, but rather as an evidence of a prevalent spirit for mechanical improvement. A South Carolina appropriation bill for 1809 has a paragraph advancing to Ephraim McBride $1000. "to enable him to construct a spinning machine on the principles mentioned in a patent he holds from the United States."[7] Much of this may be believed to have been directly in consequence of the necessity for economic self-sufficiency during the Revolution when the colonial commerce with England was stopped. Proceedings of the Safety Committee in Chowan county, North Carolina, for March 4, 1775, show that "the committee met at the house of Captain James Sumner and the gentlemen appointed at a former meeting of directors to promote subscriptions for the encouragement of manufactures, informed the committee that the sum of eighty pounds sterling was subscribed by the inhabitants of this county for that laudable purpose." Prizes were offered to encourage the manufacture of woolen and cotton cards and of steel, and proclamation money to the amount of ten pounds would be given by the chairman of the committee to the first producer in a certain time of fulled woolen cloth. The provincial congress the same year took steps to stimulate, by bounties, the manufacture of gunpowder, rolling and slitting mill products, cotton cards of wire, merchantable steel, paper, woolen cloth and pig iron.[8] Although it is said that their objects were possibly political as well as industrial, mechanics' societies existed at Charleston and Augusta before and about the year 1810; in Augusta were made some of the earliest attempts in this country to improve the steam engine.[9] As early as 1770 there was formed in South Carolina a committee to establish and promote manufactures, with Henry Laurens as chairman.[10] Before making an estimate of the character of the textile industry in the South in this Revolutionary period, it is well to take a glimpse at some of the individual establishments. The facts brought out by Mr. Kohn's painstaking research as to South Carolina serve well. Governor Glen's "Answers to the Lords of Trade", believed to have been written in 1748, in attributing some manufacture of stuffs like Irish linen to the inhabitants of the Irish township of Williamsburgh, can have no point except to indicate domestic industry.[11] Remarking the considerable manufacture of cloth in the province prior to and during the Revolutionary period, it is pointed out that "In those days it does not appear to have been popular to organize corporations and the manufacturing was done by individuals--most of the planters being amply able to conduct such operations."[12] Daniel Heyward, a planter, in a letter in 1777, declared with reference to his "manufactory" that if cards were to be had "there is not the least doubt but that we could make six thousand yards of good cloth in the year from the time we began." And Mr. Kohn comments, "This certainly shows that the Heywards conducted a considerable plant for the manufacture of cotton goods", and allows that "no doubt other individual planters made their own cotton clothes in the same way."[13] Domestic production is clearly seen in a statement in the same year that a planter to the northward in three months trained thirty negroes to make one hundred and twenty yards of cotton and woolen cloth per week, employing a white woman to instruct in spinning and a white man in weaving. "He expects to have it in his power not only to cloathe his own negroes, but soon to supply his neighbors."[14] This student has satisfied himself, in spite of the admitted fact that no traces of the plant survive, that "in 1778 Mrs. Ramage, a widow, living on James Island, Charleston District, established a regular cotton mill, which was operated by mule power."[15] Another plant which would seem to have approached a commercial character is seen in the assertion in 1790 that "A gentleman of great mechanical knowledge and instructed in most of the branches of cotton manufactures in Europe, has already fixed, completed and now at work on the high hills of the Santee, near Stateburg, and which go by water, ginning (?) carding and slubbing machines; also spinning machines, with 84 spindles each, and several other useful implements for manufacturing every necessary article in cotton."[16] Detail description shows, however, that while some long staple cotton for this establishment was imported from the West Indies, and while a variety of goods were made, it was conducted as an adjunct to a plantation, parts of the equipment were later removed to and set up on another plantation, and much yarn was spun for persons in the vicinity. It is, however, notable that the machinery was made in North Carolina.[17] It has been said probably very justly that "It was not until far in the nineteenth century that manufactured cloth could be bought because of its scarcity and because of its price, and a vast majority of our grand-mothers were thus forced to make their own cloth, and many of them preferred the domestic article to the manufactured,"[18] and Mr. Clark says that "prior to the war of 1812 the advance of Southern manufactures was principally in what were then household arts--those that produced for the subsistence of the family rather than for an outside market. These manufactures continued generalized and dispersed rather than specialized and integrated."[19] This author is to be accepted in his general dictum that "The official return of cotton manufactures in 1810 is too inaccurate either to measure the extent of the industry or to describe its location. Probably many census agents did not know what a textile mill was; and they classed as factories, plantation loom houses and the cottages or shops of village jenny-spinners. This explains the large number of establishments reported from the South and West. Advertising then to the mills just noticed and to water-driven spindles near Fayetteville, he continues: "Less study had been given to the industrial records of the South than to those of the North, and during the subsequent period of indifference or hostility to manufacturing in that section some annals of the earlier interest in those pursuits were doubtless lost. Small mills may have been started in the Carolinas and Georgia, and after a brief infancy have vanished and left no name; but, if so, the fact is curious rather than significant for it had no relation to the subsequent history of the industry."[20] While it is thus seen that the textile industry in the South in the latter part of the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries was stamped with every hall-mark of domestic production, and while they were ephemeral in their operation, it is to be remembered that a century and a half ago the industry in England as well as in America bore more or less of the domestic character;[21] and Southern States showed instances of power-driven machinery before Samuel Slater built the first Arkwright mill in Rhode Island. The South had planter-manufacturers it is true, but this striking link with agriculture as contrasted with New England is easily explained in the more general fertility of the soil and the effect this of course had upon the occupation of the people. Furthermore, the very fact of this coupling indicates the inclination towards economic balance and the promise in these years of a rational development.[22] Bearing these things in mind and viewing the wastage which he conceived to have been wrought by slavery, Helper was probably within justified bounds when he declared: "Had the Southern States, in accordance with the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, abolished slavery at the same time the Northern States abolished it, there would have been, long since, and most assuredly at this moment, a larger, wealthier, wiser, and more powerful population, south of Mason and Dixon's line, than there now is north of it."[23] Sentiment as to the right description of the mills of the Revolutionary years is clear. Coming now to those of the period later than 1810, a subject is entered in which some controversy is involved. These plants may be denominated in general the "old mills". While the two ideas are closely related, a distinction must be held in mind between the influence of these factories upon the later great development and the proper character which is to be ascribed to them as of themselves. Only the latter object is primary in the present chapter. A North Carolinian, who, while of post-bellum experience only, has been closely identified with one of the foremost industrial communities of the South, told the writer that in his opinion it had been "a clear case of arrested development; it would have all come sooner, but for the war. It might be said that had slavery continued, manufacturing would never have come in the South; but it is also true that slavery was doomed. There is no use in talking about what might not have happened had slavery continued."[24] To uphold this view that the Civil War interrupted a course which was clearly laid down in the years previous, it ought to be capable of demonstration that the old mills had essentially the same character as those of the great period, with only those lacks which were inherent in the industry of the formative stage. A manufacture which is forerunner in time is not necessarily antecedent in effect.[25] The South had small cotton farmers of a prevalent sort before ever Knapp taught efficient production. If the old mills were of a substantially different stripe from those of the period of fifteen years after the war, the genesis of the industry, economically speaking, vests in the later date. Another North Carolinian asserted that "In the older mills before the war, the seed had been planted, and cultivation was renewed after the war. The ante-bellum mills were pretty well known throughout the country. The woolen mills at Salem, and the cotton mills in Alamance and a few in Gastonia were known. The fact that such goods as 'Alamance' had a name already was an advantage."[26] But the mere fact that the old mills were known is not enough; it is further interesting that he continued to speak of them in close conjunction with the names of the families and manufacturers who owned them--the personal factor stood out in his mind. It is easy to find a number of undescriminating statements, as that the mills of Concord were the natural outgrowth of the old McDonald Mill, that there was a manufacturing tradition in the place.[27] Not a few plants in the South have been in continuous operation since an early date. Mr. Kohn believes that the one with the longest record is that founded at Autun, near Pendleton, South Carolina, in 1838, by F. B. Sloan, Thomas Sloan and Berry Benson.[28] But this does not mean that many of these, so far from inspiring the later development, were not themselves by its stimulus so greatly changed as to be radically different from their former character. In addition to the general neglect accorded the old mills by public estimation, there is evidence that positive local dislike fell to one long-established enterprise at a date even as late as the seventies.[29] It seems hardly necessary to controvert, in the light of the spirit with which mills were built about 1880 and the demonstrated total newness of the hands to the processes and even the idea of textile manufacture, an opinion that not only did the ante-bellum mills serve as a starting point for the later great development, but domestic weaving had accustomed the people of the industry.[30] A clear distinction, and one too often lacking, was made by Carroll D. Wright between first establishments and genuine factory development in reference to the industry of Philadelphia and New England. Using English spinning inventions, "During the war (Revolution) the manufacturers of Philadelphia extended their enterprises, and even built and run (ran) mills which writers often call factories, but they can hardly be classed under that term. Similar efforts, all preliminary to the establishment of the factory system, were made in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1780."[31] While it is not pretended that the Southern mills of a later period were of quite as limited a character as is here meant, it is wholesome to bear this point in mind. The history of the Southern cotton mills of the period embracing the thirty years following 1810 is rather hazy.[32] Facts important to this discussion, however, stand out. In the first place, there seems to have been a good deal of moving about from this water-power to that, the machinery being hauled from place to place with apparent convenience.[33] A founder would sell an enterprise, build another and sell it and build a third.[34] It was difficult to convey machinery to the factory when purchased at a distance. That for the Mount Hecla Mills about 1830 was shipped from Philadelphia to Wilmington, North Carolina, up the Cape Fear river to Fayetteville, and then across country by wagon to Greensboro. Machinery for the Hill factory in Spartanburg county, consisting in 1816 or 1817 of seven hundred spindles, had to be brought by wagon from Charleston.[35] Some of the machinery for the Michael Schenck mill, built near Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1813, was bought in Providence and hauled by wagon from Philadelphia.[36] For this mill a portion of the machinery was built by a brother-in-law of Schenck, and when the dam broke and it became necessary to rebuild further down the creek, a contract was made with Michael Blom, a local workman, for additional machinery.[37] Other mills had locally manufactured equipment. Spindles for the original Bivingsville mill are said to have been made in a blacksmith shop.[38] "Much machinery for the early cotton mills was made by the local blacksmiths. They were important men in the community and often grew prosperous."[39] In those days the blacksmith was a more skillful mechanic than in these, but the machinery they produced must have been crude even for that period. While elaboration of the point falls elsewhere in this study, it is worth notice here that there is a difference between the old and the later mills in the character of their promoters and managers. In the earlier period men came to cotton manufacturing, it would seem, by more normal channels than at the outset of the subsequent development. Like Michael Schenck they had foreign industrial habits and traditions back of them, and they set up mills in communities populated by Swiss, Scotch-Irish and Germans. Or like William Bates and probably the Hills, Shenden, Clark, Henry and the Weavers they came from the industrial atmosphere of New England, then particularly stimulated by the encouragements lent to textile manufacturing by the embargo laid on English goods in the War of 1812.[40] Or through collateral business collections or marriage they were drawn into the business. Simply private investment enlisted participation of men in various callings. A manufacturer would be such as incidental to other and perhaps diverse interests. It is of course true that these same forces operated afterwards, but in the earlier time there was no response to a public enthusiasm or a social demand creating a magnet that drew into the industry men who otherwise would never have entered it, certainly not as entrepreneurs. In connection with the Schenck mill there was operated a plant turning out iron products.[41] Cotton factories conjoined with gins and saw mills are not unknown in the South even today, but in whatever instance this occurs there is indicated a lack of specialization. The marketing and consumption of the output of the old mills is a matter of broad interest. The statement which serves, perhaps, to indicate most nearly a genuinely commercial character in this regard, is that of Mr. Clark growing out of his reference to the establishment of General David R. Williams, near Society Hill, Darlington County, South Carolina. It was on his plantation, and was water-driven. "... in 1828 he was turning his cotton crop, of 200 bales annually, into what was said to be the best yarn in the United States. He marketed part of his output in New York and wove part of it into negro cloth for home use.... Twenty years later the factory was still shipping yarn to New York, and also making cotton bagging for the neighboring plantations.... By the middle of the century their (small Southern mills such as this) product is said to have controlled the Northern yarn market. This market they were able to enter because they had been supported through infancy by the local demand for yarn for homespun weaving--a support they did not entirely dispense with until after the war. Yarn was traded by the mills for homespun linen warp, and woven with that warp into strong cloth for country use. The family weavers who did this work were paid for their labor in cotton yarn."[42] Other evidence hardly supports a belief that the Southern mills of this period took so large a part in supplying the yarn market of the country; on the other hand, local consumption and the link with domestic industry, which even in the quotation above goes side by side with the wider sales, was prevalent. How closely these old mills were joined with the countryside is seen in the fact that into their coarse, homely fabrics went hand-spun linen warp. The domestic character was ingrained. Of the Rocky Mount Mill in North Carolina it is said that "For some years prior to and during the Civil War, the mill was a general supply station for warps which the women of the South wove into cloth on the old hand looms. A few of the braver women who were left at home with only the feminine portion of their families or the sons too young to fight, sometimes made trips alone many miles through the country to get warps for themselves and neighboring families." So beneficial did this old habit prove during the war that a cavalry troop of six hundred federals was sent up from New Bern in 1863 and burned the mill.[43] Mr. Thompson says of this same mill that until 1851 slaves and a few free negroes were worked in it. This distinguishing difference of the old mills from those of the great period, when the labor of negroes was far from the thoughts of the builders and managers, will be dwelt upon in another place. Here again is noted the fact that the mill supplied coarse yarns for neighborhood consumption, and it is said moreover that making only twelve to fifteen hundred pounds of 4s to 12s daily, the mill could not get a steady market for its wares.[44] It is reported of the first independent venture of Francis Fries, at Salem, North Carolina, in woolen manufacture, that it "was but a small one, consisting of a set of cards for making rolls from the wool raised by neighboring farmers. This mill also contained a small dyeing and fulling plant for coloring and finishing the cloth woven by the farmers' wives and daughters."[45] A large cotton manufacturer says that he recalls only three mills operating in Spartanburg county before the war; there were Bivingsville and two very small plants, one of them on the Tyger River spinning yarns on half a dozen frames, people driving from twenty to twenty-five miles to the door of the mill to get the product, although it was sold too in the stores.[46] The Batesville factory was built with about 1000 spindles. Before the Columbia and Greenville railroad came to Greenville about 1852, the product of the mill was 8s to 12s in ten-pound "bunches" covered with blue paper. The yarn in this form passed current almost like money. The mill marketed it over the mountains in North Carolina and in Tennessee, as far as Russellville, "mountain schooners" with six-mile teams being used for the purpose. The wagons used to bring back whatever they could to constitute a return load; usually it was meat, all of that article consumed about Greenville coming, it is said, from North Carolina. Sometimes rags were brought back. In this way yarns were sometimes taken as far as a hundred and fifty miles.[47] A banker who is intimately connected with the textile industry in one of the oldest industrial communities in the South and who is a member of a family to which many writers are quick to point as founders of cotton manufacture in the South through agency of conspicuous participation in the business since the early thirties, said: "The mills built after the war were not the result of pre-bellum mills. This is trying to ascribe one cause for a condition which probably had many causes. The industrial awakening in the South was a natural reaction from the war and reconstruction. Before the war there was first the domestic industry proper. Then came such small mills about Winston-Salem as Cedar Falls and Franklinsville. These little mills were themselves, however, hardly more than domestic manufactures. When, after the war, competition came from the North and from the larger Southern mills, the little mills which had operated before and had survived the war lost their advantage, which consisted in the possession of the local field. They had been able to barter for the small quantities of local raw cotton which they used. The standard of exchange, the par, was one yard of three-yard sheeting for a pound of raw cotton, which was a third of a pound, made into cloth, for a pound in the raw state. But this was a retail and not strictly a manufacturing profit.... The old Winston mill, established in 1840, finished the wool product spun by the country housewives. This mill also supplied carded wool for domestic manufacture. The ante-bellum domestic-factory system did not produce the post-bellum mills."[48] So strongly was he impressed with the essentially local character of the old mills, that he was inclined to look with pessimism upon the prospect of success for the present plants which have transcended the small sphere that in its very restriction protected them in privileged enjoyments. It must be obvious from the foregoing considerations that a census enumeration of mills of the period cannot show internal characteristics which are all-important. But even the census returns, counting one plant like another, display the Southern industry at this stage in a feeble light. Some primary descriptive factors are lacking in the earliest reports of the census which are at all useful, but taking the four Southern States which were farthest advanced in the years 1840 and 1850--Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia--the showing may be summed up thus: In 1840 Virginia had 22 establishments, $1,299,020 invested, 1816 operatives, 42,262 spindles and the plants consumed 17,785 bales of cotton. In 1850 the same State had twenty-seven mills, with a capital of $1,908,900 and 2,963 operatives. In 1840 North Carolina had 25 establishments, $995,300 invested in these, 1219 operatives and 47,934 spindles.[49] Ten years later this State showed three more establishments, an investment of $1,058,800, 1619 operatives employed, 531,903 spindles and the number of bales consumed was 13,617. South Carolina in 1840 had 15 plants, representing an investment of $617,450; there were 570 operatives and 16,353 spindles. By the next decade there were 18 establishments, the investment in them was $857,200, the operatives numbered 1,119 and the bales of cotton consumed 9,929. Georgia at the earlier date contained 19 mills with an invested capital of $573,835,779 operatives and 42,589 spindles. In 1850 the number of plants had increased by sixteen, making 35; the investment had risen to $1,736,156; the operatives totalled 2,272; unfortunately the number of spindles is not contained in the census returns, but the consumption was 20,230 bales. The Southern States as a whole in 1840 were able to report 248 establishments with a capital of $4,331,078; operatives were 6,642; spindles (an obviously incomplete summary) were 180,927. The same year the New England States as a whole showed 674 mills, with investment of $34,931,399, operatives numbering 46,834, and 1,497,394 spindles. The Southern States again, in 1850 had 166 plants, $1,256,056 invested, 10,043 operatives; the consumption was reported at 78,140 bales. At the same date the New England development was measured by 564 plants, capital of $53,832,430, 61,893 and a consumption of 430,603 bales.[50] Many single mills in the South today represent more than the extent of the whole industry in the most forward Southern State in 1850.[51] Comparison of facts for all the Southern mills with those for the industry of New England perhaps serves to reflect back some light upon the status of the former plants specifically, which has been dwelt upon. Of the plants in the South in this period it has been well observed that "The number of small carding and fulling mills and of little water-driven yarn factories, in this section before 1850, may have approached the number of textile factories in the same region today; ... but few of these establishments became commercial producers."[52] Some evidences of industrial activity in the period to 1840, partly conscious and partly not so, which may be held to presage the later development are to be noticed. A localizing tendency of the textile industry in the decade from 1830 to 1840, held to have been guided by the conjunction of raw cotton, waterwheel and steamboat along the fall line of rivers--at such points as Richmond, Petersburg, Augusta, Columbus, Huntsville, Florence and the vicinity of Montgomery, Mr. Clark holds to be a "slow and unconscious development", during which William Gregg, "a single pioneer of large industry", made a systematic effort to "awaken the South to the peculiar advantages it enjoyed for cotton manufacturing."[53] George Tucker, in his "Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years", published in 1843, was the first to show that at 1840 in the older South slavery was displaying signs of decay from economic causes and that as a system it would finally lapse of its own accord.[54] Niles' Register, May 2, 1840, declared: "The South is rapidly becoming independent in almost every branch of manufacture. There are in North Carolina alone, at this day, a greater number of different kinds than ten years ago there were in the whole of the Southern States", and two weeks later the same paper took from the Raleigh, N.C., Register the assertion that "The enterprise of the citizens of this state is rapidly enabling it to become independent of the North in almost every branch of manufacture."[55] Mr. Pleasants believes that agitation by press and public for a charge in industrial activities resulted in awakening North Carolina in the early thirties from the lethargy that had prevailed since 1810, so that "The people of the state became interested and soon a class of small manufacturers such as makers of carriages, wagons, and farm implements, coopers, wheelwrights, distillers, tanners, hatters and makers of boots and shoes, cabinets and chairs came into prominence and continued to thrive down to 1860. In addition to this class were the cotton, wool, and iron manufacturers who now began to appear and who became quite prominent after the building of railroads began."[56] It is, however, questionable whether it may be said truly that "the people of the state became interested"; certainly there was nothing like the sweep of public sentiment that appeared in 1880. Several years earlier the Tarboro, N.C. Free Press had carried this item: "A few days since twenty bales of cotton yarn were shipped from this place to the New York markets. They were from a manufactory of Joel Battle at the falls of Tar River.... Should the tariff bill meet with equal success with that of internal improvements, necessity will compel the people of the South and of North Carolina to join in the scuffle for the benefits anticipated from this new American system, and they will have to bear a portion of its burdens and buffet the Northern manufacturer with his own weapons."[57] Influenced by the pre-emption of land into large estates with the consequent need of the people to find other means of livelihood than small farming, by the discovery of gold and establishment of the mint, by the agitation for and construction of railroads and by the improvements in cotton manufacturing machinery, the people of Mecklenburg county, N.C., "Many years before the war", said Mr. Tompkins, "were beginning to realize the importance of diversified industries.... An industrial crisis was imminent, and the problem would have solved itself by natural agencies within a few more years, had not section differences brought on the war."[58] In connection with this statement, which approaches as nearly to the ascription of an industrial impulse to the ante-bellum South as any other by this writer, it is to be noticed that the fact that the war did come to render it impossible of effects shows the relative weakness of the spirit at this time. The pre-occupation with intersectional differences was of greater potency than the intra-sectional change of mind, if such there were. A South Carolina newspaper in 1847 reckoned up with pride eleven cotton factories in the State, with others building on the water powers of the back-country.[59] The foregoing paragraphs have been designed to lead up to a very interesting view expressed by an author often quoted in these pages. Speaking of the years 1840-1860, Mr. Clark has said: "In the South the most striking feature of this period was the gradual breaking down of a traditional antipathy of manufactures. This hostility was opposed to the obvious interests of a region where idle white labor, abundant raw materials, and ever-present water-power seemed to unite conditions so favorable to textile industries. Cotton planting engaged the labor of the negro and the thought and capital of a directing white class, but the natural operatives of the South remained unemployed, and the capital of the North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow to the point of maximum profit without regard to sectional or national lines, were such a profit known to be assured by Southern factories. Slavery as a system probably had less direct influence upon manufactures than is commonly supposed, but the presence of the negro through slavery was important." It is noticed that white immigration from Europe, which at this time supplied the most considerable mechanical skill, avoided districts heavily populated with negroes; that plantation self-sufficiency meant isolation with small need for good communicating roads; that the market for middle-grade goods was restricted by the servile character of the colored population; that the credit system, by which factors controlled the directioning of productive capital, rested upon cotton culture by negro labor; that while the corn laws held in England, reciprocity between the Southern States and the mother country tended to discourage manufactures in this section while the conditions of commerce favored manufacture in the North. "These business interests, supported by social traditions and political sectionalism, were strengthened in their opposition to new industries by a wide-spread popular prejudice against organized manufactures.... Nevertheless the South chafed continually under the discomfort of an ill-balanced system of production...." He speaks of the canal at Augusta and of cotton mills at Charleston, Mobile, Columbus, New Orleans and Memphis directly following the writings and object lesson of William Gregg in his Graniteville factory and declares: "Though some large undertakings were wrecked by the financial crisis of 1857, more from weak banking support than from faults of operation, modern cotton manufacturing in the South dates from the founding of Graniteville rather than from the post-bellum period.... However, viewed in comparison with the cotton manufactures of the North, those of the South were still insignificant.... Nevertheless, the present attainment of the industry assured its definite future growth, and ultimate national importance."[60] And Mr. Kohn has said that "The real and the lasting development of cotton mills in South Carolina might be started with the Graniteville Cotton Mill...."[61] It is difficult for the present writer to see the distinction which Mr. Clark desires to draw between the effect of the presence of the negro and the presence of slavery. Well enough to assert that the capital of the North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow across the Atlantic and across Mason and Dixon's line were a profit in manufacture in the South known to be assured, but the fact is that capital did not flow in for industrial purposes because bright manufacturing prospects had not been proved out, and this largely because home enterprise was a laggard while slavery claimed the section's capital resources for cotton cultivation. The absence of immigration was as certainly the effect of slavery.[62] While it is true that for long years after emancipation, and continuing to this day, the influence of the presence of the negro in restraining inflow of immigrants, particularly of artizans, it is evident the lessening of this deterrent and the removal of other nearly equal drawbacks could not proceed or commence while slavery existed. It should be clear to anyone that from the point of view of the independent white workman the presence of the negro in slavery held as a far more forcible objection than the presence of the negro in freedom. His killing economic competition and his radiated social poison were beyond any dispute and beyond prospect of remedy until he was made at least a free producer. There could not, in the second place, be development of schools and roads, and there could not be fraternization of work-people, while slavery continued. And the prospect for immigration for the South has taken its rise from the Civil War. It was slavery that made plantation self-sufficiency in primitive needs universal, that made isolation and physical barriers to intercourse. The credit system in its hey-day rested in large degree upon supply by the factor of all industrial products, which needs must be sustained so long as every local energy was foredoomed for absorption into cotton growing. It can not rightly be said that the traditional antipathy to manufactures in the South was "opposed to the obvious interests of a region where idle white labor, abundant raw materials, and ever-present water-power seemed to unite conditions so favorable to textile industries", if Southern consciousness and purpose is meant. This applies particularly to the labor factor. It will be shown later in this study that in the period before the war the mills often employed slaves as the exclusive operatives in the factory, either when belonging to the management or hired from their owners; in some cases slaves or free negroes were employed as operatives in the same mills with whites; and finally, and more importantly, through the reconstruction years and at the very outset of the cotton mill era the thought of the establishers of mills nor infrequently groped out in the inclination again to engage negro hands and to induce white operatives to come from the North and even from England and the Continent--overlooking the native Anglo-Saxon population as a useful supply of workers as though it had not been there. Before the war the presence of raw cotton was certainly looked upon more usually rather as a guarantee of economic independence than as a stimulus to produce within the section those products of manufacturing which the staple was potent to purchase. It is not implied that conspicuous promulgators and exemplars of the need for a change in economic activity, such as William Gregg and others, and more still of lesser consequence of whom we have fewer evidences, were not products of a reaction that showed itself from the long continuance of slavery, but they stand out, impotent as they are striking, against a dull and motionless background of prevalent system. Materials and viewpoint are both too well understood to require here demonstration of the preventive influence which slavery and cotton had upon industry in the South. And yet some observations may be brought out for the special purposes of this study, looking especially through the eyes of Southern men. Henry Watterson has said: "The South! The South! It is no problem at all. The story of the South may be summed up in a sentence; she was rich, she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery."[63] Probably not over-induced by bitter animus is Helper's direct charge: "And now to the point. In our opinion, an opinion which has been formed from data obtained by assiduous researches, and comparisons, from laborious investigation, logical reasoning, and earnest reflection, the causes which have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce, and other similar pursuits, into the most contemptible insignificance; sunk a large majority of our people in galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes; entailed upon us a humiliating dependence on the Free States; disgraced us in the recess of our own souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized and enlightened nations--may all be traced to one common source, and there find solution in the most hateful and horrible word, that was ever incorporated into the vocabulary of human economy--Slavery!"[64] Tompkins saw clearly, and in effect said again and again, that "the result of the introduction and growth of the system of slavery was revolutionary; it turned the energies of the people almost wholly to the cultivation of cotton; it practically destroyed all other industries...."[65] And again, "By the influence of the negro the South lost its manufactures and largely its commerce, and became practically a purely agricultural section of the nation."[66] Speaking of the effect of the cotton gin and the cultivation of the staple by slave labor, he said: "The shops which had been productive of trading were closed to the public, and were utilized only for what was needed on the plantation.... There were no industries requiring skill or thought, and there was no necessity for scientific farming or anything else scientific.... Slavery not only demonstrated that people will not think unless it is necessary, but also that they will not work unless it is necessary.... Within three decades after the invention of the cotton gin, slavery had accomplished its revolution. The people whose minds had been occupied with diversified industries and industrial expansion, were narrowed down to the development and growth of cotton.... The mills and shops lay idle, the abundant natural resources were ignored, and everything staked upon one occupation...."[67] This writer was fond of linking the economic trend of the South in 1800 with that which emerged after Reconstruction, as thus, "In the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth there was a well-developed and extensive manufacturing interest in the South. White mechanics were numerous, and lived well. The growth of the institution of slavery had nearly destroyed all manufactures ... by the middle of the nineteenth century.... After the abolition of slavery, and after a period of disastrous experiment in trying to legislate on social and political conditions 'without regard to race, color or previous condition of servitude,' education, intelligence or moral character ... manufactures were quickly re-established in the South, and the descendants of the mechanics of former days ceased at once to be 'poor white trash' and became with marvelous quickness as good carpenters, machinists, carders, weavers, etc., as their ancestors were."[68] Something of Tompkins' newspaper published and publicist habit comes out in this conclusion of his advice against the usefulness of negroes in cotton mills: "Dependence upon the negro as a laborer has done infinite injury to the South. In the past it brought about a condition which drove the white laborer from the South or into enforced idleness. It is important to re-establish as quickly as possible respectability for white labor."[69] Not only is it to be said that "the growth of slavery stifled manufactures",[70] but it is noteworthy that while this baleful influence lasted no improvements were made in the methods or appliances for the preparation of raw cotton for the market. Except in size and superficial appearance there was no change in the ante-bellum gin, gin-house and screw from 1820 to 1860. "The cotton was packed by hand, carried into the gin-house in baskets by laborers, carried to the gin by laborers, pushed into the lint-rooms, carried to the screw, packed in the box of the screw and bound with ropes, all by hand." But after the war came a feeder, a condenser, a hand-press to be used in the lint room, and cotton elevators. "... the spirit of enterprise, invention and improvement in the people of the South has not only revived, but the entire method and all the machinery and appliances for preparing cotton for the market have been revolutionized."[71] A propagandist of the early eighties desiring to organize a development of small cotton mills in the South quoted with approval a correspondent of the Morning News of Savannah, setting forth that before the war the planters saw the advantage for little establishments and were only deterred from manufacturing because "slavery and the factory were declared to be incompatible institutions. They could not exist together."[72] CHAPTER II _THE BACKGROUND (Continued)_ So far from proclaiming cotton as king, there is evidence that some of the wisest Southerners saw that it was in many respects a curse. Said William Gregg in 1845: "Since the discovery that cotton would mature in South Carolina, she has reaped a golden harvest; but it is feared it has proved a curse rather than a blessing, and I believe that she would at this day be in a far better condition, had the discovery never been made. Cotton has been to South Carolina what the mines of Mexico were to Spain...." The "day is not far distant, yea, is close at hand, when we shall find that we can no longer _live_ by that, which has heretofore yielded us ... a bountiful and sumptuous living.... Let us begin at once, before it is too late, to bring about a change in our industrial pursuits ...--let croakers against enterprise be silenced--let the working men of our State who have, by their industry, accumulated capital, turn out and give a practical lesson to our political leaders, that are opposed to this scheme. Even Mr. Calhoun, our great oracle ... is against us in this matter; he will tell you, that no mechanical enterprise can succeed in South Carolina--that good mechanics will go where their talents are better rewarded--that to thrive in cotton spinning, one should go to Rhode Island--that to undertake it here, would not only lead to loss of capital, but disappointment and ruin to those who engage in it."[73] "The invention of the cotton gin", said Tompkins, "... Before 1860 ... was nearer anything else than a blessing. It was primarily responsible for the system of slavery.... Cotton ... in its manufacture ... is the life of the South, but we could probably have done as well without it until we began to manufacture it."[74] Not too dogmatic is the opinion expressed that "It seems as clear as day that ... cotton made the South a free trade section and the North protective; cotton lured the South back to slavery;[75] cotton drove the South to an extreme States-rights position ... and cotton at last drove the South to translate extreme States-rights into the terms of Secession...."[76] And with regard to internal policy, "Perhaps the most striking economic change that the new industry (cotton culture) effected in the South after the reintroduction of slavery was the speedy abandonment of manufactures ... what was the use of nerve-racking investment in elaborate and costly machinery when a land-owner could reap ten per cent net profit from a few negroes and mules and a bushel or two of the magical cotton seed? and yet the South had unusual manufacturing facilities ... manufacture soon fell into decay; the Piedmont region being still dotted with the moldering ruins of iron works and other mills that bear witness to the overwhelming power of the new agricultural absorption."[77] It has been observed that the social difference between North and South before the war, so often looked upon as something existing as of itself apart, as a matter of fact may be fully accounted for simply by the institution of slavery, which arrested development on Southern soil of the industrial type of American civilization.[78] Very convincing in his fact findings and often strikingly happy in his interpretations is Olmsted; his work benefited by being saved from the passion of Helper and the venom of Sidney Andrews. In accounting in 1856 for the reason for the stagnation in Virginia as compared with the industrial activity of New England and old England, he wrote, "It is the old, fettered, barbarian labor-system, in connection with which they (Virginians) have been brought up, against which all their enterprise must struggle, and with the chains of which all their ambition must be bound. This conviction I find to be universal in the minds of strangers, and it is forced upon one more strongly than it is possible to make you comprehend by a mere statement of isolated facts. You could as well convey an idea of the effect of mist on a landscape by enumerating the number of particles of vapor that obscure it. Give Virginia blood fair play, remove it from the atmosphere of slavery, and it shows no lack of energy and good sense."[79] He took to be an average expression of the views "Not of the majority of the people (of Virginia)--they are not quite so demented as yet--but of the majority of those whose monopoly of wealth and knowledge has a governing influence on a majority of the people", the statement of a paper of the State that it was glad to find its contemporaries willing to discuss "the true and great question of the day--_The Existence of slavery as a permanent issue in the South_. Every moment's reflection but convinces us of the absolute impregnability of the Southern position on this subject. Facts, which can not be questioned, come thronging in support of the true doctrine--that slavery is the best condition of the black race in this country ..."; and from another newspaper in the year previous (1854): "African slavery ... is a thing that we can not do without, that is _righteous_, _profitable_, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern Society as inherently, intricately, as durably as the white race itself."[80] Olmsted was at pains to show how the people were duped by Charlatan guidance of their political leaders; this comes out particularly in his quotation of and comments upon the famous election speech in Virginia in the fifties, in which the aspirant declared to his audience that "Commerce has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away from you ... you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of the gods in your iron foundries; you have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have had no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture--and such agriculture! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun.... Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stum-tailed steers through the sedge-patches to procure a tough beef-steak. (Laughter and applause.) ... The landlord has skinned the tenant, and the tenant has skinned the land, until all have grown poor together," "and how," asks Olmsted, "does the fiddling Nero propose, it will be wondered, to remedy this so very amusing stupidity, poverty, and debility? Very simply and pleasantly. By building railroads and canals, ships and mills; by establishing manufactories, opening mines, and setting up smelting-works and foundries. And, 'Hurrah!' shout the tickled electors; 'that's exactly what we want.'" And then he showed that it was much like the quack telling the confirmed paralytic to live generously, take vigorous exercise and grow well; that with the disease of slavery in its vitals the South could not do else than languish; that in holding out promise of wholesome measures which contemplated everything but the attacking of slavery,[81] the politicians were just laughing at the people.[82] A reflection just as sorrowful as the confirmed bias of the people, however, is one that Olmsted did not see in this and myriad other episodes, namely, the blindness of the leaders that, with no doubt strong elements of quackery, showed even stronger signs of being themselves duped by a situation. Not that the crowd was believing, but that the leaders were so largely sincere, was most melancholy. As to both considerations, however, a passage of Sir Horace Plunkett in comment upon Irish politics, is much to the point: "Deeply as I have felt for the past sufferings of the Irish people and their heritage of disability and distress, I could not bring myself to believe that, where mis-government had continued so long, and in such an immense variety of circumstances and conditions, the governors could have been alone to blame. I envied those leaders of popular thought whose confidence in themselves and in their followers was shaken by no such reflections. But the more I listened to them, the more the conviction was borne in upon me that they were seeking to build an impossible future upon an imaginary past."[83] As opposed to the brightening signs which some have seen in the years just preceding the Civil War, it has been said, "yet with the line around slavery being drawn more closely ... the cotton South lagged in the industrial race, and the border States were hampered by the institution that they felt to be a burden, but which they could see no safe way to abolish. Compassed as it was by political compromises, slavery must ultimately have topped through its own overweight; but in 1860 it was so valuable for the plantation that it was not only not readily converted into the factory, but was an obstacle in the way of the employment of capital and of other labor in that direction."[84] The deterrent effect of slavery upon immigration of white laborers has been noticed above. In 1860 only 6 per cent of the white population of the South was foreign-born, but immigrants made up nearly 20 per cent of that in the North. In the decade from 1850 to 1860 the South's quota of foreign-born in the whole country dropped from 14 to 13 per cent.[85] The South was deprived of her share of foreign mechanics, so largely responsible for the industries in this country in the first half of the nineteenth century, not only by the fact that independent artizans avoided competition with slave labor, but because few of them had the means of acquiring slaves, and disapproved of the institution besides.[86] The increase in population in North Carolina in the single decade of 1870 to 1880 about equalled that of the four decades preceding. The comprehensive influence here upon immigration by the abolition of slavery is not greatly modified by the fact that in the period before 1870 fell the losses from the Civil War.[87] The tide of immigration to Mecklenburg County in this State dwindled from the introduction of slavery as a system until 1825, and thereafter set in the emigration of persons from the county, an even severer influence and stronger indication of the baleful labor system.[88] In the fifties it was declared that the most prosperous community in South Carolina was a settlement of Germans in the western part of the State. Here had been founded an educational institution, varied manufactures, farming was conducted with successful enterprise and capital was found to be invested in a railroad venture. Slavery was not relied upon.[89] Sidney Andrews in 1865 found the northwestern counties of Georgia, which were held to be strongly opposed to secession in 1860-61, and which furnished a good many soldiers to the federal armies, probably better disposed to the national government than any other part of the State. Slaves had constituted less than a fourth of the total population, the people were industrious and hardy; though cruder than those from the lower parts of the State, the delegates from this section to the constitutional convention of 1865 were said to have a well-informed outlook for the Commonwealth. After the war the industry displayed by the white people of this region was taken as attesting their better traditions of ante-bellum years.[90] At a time when the average wages of female operatives in the cotton mills of Georgia was half that of the same workers in the mills of Massachusetts, factory girls from New England were induced by high pay to go to the Southern States to enter newly-established plants, but soon returned North because their position was unpleasant in the midst of "the general degradation of the laboring class."[91] It was observed very truly that competition of the slave was not distantly matched in hurtfulness by the example of the more prosperous white men, with whom acquisition of the comforts and dignities of life did not proceed from daily toil.[92] The dependence of the ante-bellum South upon the North and upon Europe for the most substantial and the most trivial appurtenances of civilization, is perhaps less in dispute than any topic here treated. The extent of this dependence, with the accompanying neglect of provision for production of the commodities at home, is evidenced by its continuance for years after the war. It might be said, not only in justification of this practice, but in apology for the total one-sidedness of the old South, that the section was animated by a natural and universal law, in responding to and acting upon the principle of comparative economic advantage. And certainly the most absolute conception of the territorial division of labor could not require a more exclusive devotion to the making of cotton and a more complete reliance upon other less peculiarly favored districts for supply not only of manufactured goods but of food stuffs and other raw materials, than the South displayed. But, however, strictly in conformity with the superficial dictates of this policy from an international and even national point of view, the program was ruinous to the section, the country and, in a broad sense, to the deeper economic welfare of the world. Easy yielding to the principle did not suggest to the great bulk of the South's statesmanship the reflection that the section after all was in only partial compliance; that even for the most efficient production of cotton as such, there needed to be a wholesome admixture of manufacturing and of other agricultural interests. Accompanying and directly by agency of the post-bellum activities in industry is seen not a less but a more economical and larger output of the staple. Some of the most humorous passages in the literature of the economic history of the South were called forth by the need of the section to go to the North for a thousand and one essentials of daily existence, and in their very humor they serve to show the seriousness of the situation. William Gregg, too lonely in his advocacy of home industry to treat the subject in other than its fundamental considerations, declared in 1845 to his own community, than which there was no greater sinner: "It ought to make every citizen who feels an interest in his country, ashamed to visit the clothing stores of Charleston, and see the vast exhibition of ready-made clothing, manufactured mostly by the women of Philadelphia, New York, Boston and other Northern cities, to the detriment and starvation of our own countrywomen, hundreds of who may be found in our own good city in wretched poverty, unable to procure work by which they would be glad to earn a decent living."[93] And again: "A change in our habits and industrial pursuits is a far greater desideratum than any change in the laws of our Government...."[94] His point of view comes out well in this passage: "if we continue in our present habits, it would not be unreasonable to predict, that when the Raleigh Rail-Road is extended to Columbia, our members of the Legislature will be fed on Yankee baker's bread. Pardon me for repeating the call on South Carolina to go to work. God speed the day when her politicians will be exhorting the people to domestic industry, instead of State resistance; when our Clay Clubs and Democratic Associations will be turned into societies for the advancement of scientific agriculture and the promotion of mechanic art; when our capitalists will be found following the example of Boston and other Northern cities, in making such investments of their capital as will give employment to the poor, and make them producers, instead of burthensome consumers; when our City Council may become so enlightened as to see the propriety of following the example of every other city in the civilized world, in removing the restrictions on the use of the Steam Engine, now indispensable in every department of Manufacturing...."[95] A decade later Helper reproached a South that had not given heed to Gregg: "It is a fact well known to every intelligent Southerner that we are compelled to go to the North for almost every article of utility and adornment, from matches, shoe-pegs and paintings up to cotton-mills, steamships and statuary ... this unmanly and unnational dependence, ... is so glaring that it can not fail to be apparent to even the most careless and superficial observer. All the world sees, or ought to see, that in a commercial, mechanical, manufactural, financial, and literary point of view, we are as helpless as babes...."[96] Gregg remarked the supply by the North not only of the articles of major manufacture, but of articles of those makes which should naturally be the adjuncts of agriculture--axe, hoe and broom handles, pitch-forks, rakes, and hand-spikes for rolling logs, shingles and pine boards; and even that "the Charleston market is supplied with fish and wild game by Northern men, who come out here, as regularly as the winter comes, for this purpose, and from our own waters and forests often realize, in the course of one winter, a sufficiency to purchase a small farm in New England."[97] An orator at the Southern Commercial Convention, New Orleans, 1855, adapted for the occasion, thought Olmsted, a speech made in the British Parliament on taxes, familiarized in "Child's First Speaker", and beginning, in the Southern version, "It is time that we should look about us, and see in what relation we stand to the North. From the rattle with which the nurse tickles the ear of the child born in the South, to the shroud that covers the cold form of the dead, everything comes to us from the North. We rise from between sheets made in Northern looms, and pillows of Northern feathers, to wash in basins made in the North ..." and continuing in the strain that was a favorite one with platform and pen, and many examples of the employment of which may be found.[98] A Virginia land-owner wrote to a farm paper regretting the widespread and intimate dependence upon the North, and stated quite as clearly as was observed thirty years later that goods which could be bought in the North, paying a profit to the manufacturer there, then transported to the South at heavy cost and sold at a profit to the tradesman, might surely be manufactured in the South in the first place, saving maker's profit to home industry and obviating charges of carriage altogether.[99] A newspaper in Richmond chronicled the sale to Northern interests of a large coal field in the State, and in unconscious irony placed in juxtaposition to the notice this confident exhortation: "It is plain that a new and glorious destiny awaits the South, and beckons us onward to a career of independence. Shall we train and discipline our energies for the coming crisis, or _shall we continue the tributary and dependent vassals of Northern brokers and money-changers_? Now is the time for the South to begin in earnest the work of self-development! Now is the time to break asunder the fetters of commercial subjection, and to prepare for that more complete independence that awaits us."[100] But another and wiser paper in the same State, urging manufacturing development for Virginia towns and cities, and particularly the textile industry for Richmond, anticipated with a different mind the event invited in the excerpt above quoted, and foretold with prophecy all too good, what later was patent to everybody: "It must be plain to the South that if our relations with the North should ever be severed--and how soon they may be, none can know (may God avert it long!)--we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our forests, plow our fields, nor mow our meadows. In fact, we would be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at, even prospectively. And yet, with all these things staring us in the face, we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold."[101] It is thought well, in summary of the decidedly non-industrial character of the ante-bellum South, to set forth some material and some observations of a general character. In spite of its length, it is useful to give in its setting an episode related by Tompkins. It shows more aptly than almost in anything in spite of its incidental happening, just the point of preoccupation with politics to which the Southern mind came, the degree of trifling with which the most sober proposals were met, the hopelessness of change from this state of affairs by anything short of a fundamental moral awakening. "I heard of an incident, that occurred in a political contest between Mr. Gregg and Chancellor Carroll, for the place of State Senator from Edgefield District. It was the habit for candidates to appear together and speak to the people from the same platform.... On one of these occasions, Mr. Gregg spoke first. He stated that he solicited votes on the ground that he had built a factory, which gave work to poor white people. It enhanced the value of cotton by manufacturing it. He had planted peach orchards to develop new avenues of profit and advantage to the people, &c., &c. Whereas, Chancellor Carroll had never made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. "Mr. Carroll flowed Mr. Gregg. He was an accomplished orator, and praised in eloquent terms, Mr. Gregg's enterprise in building a factory. He eulogized his plans for fruit culture. He admitted, with humility, all the delinquencies Mr. Gregg charged against him excepting only one: 'He says I never made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. Having faith in Mr. Gregg's plans and advice about orchards, I planted one, and if anybody is disposed to believe I never made grass grow, I simply invite them to go look at that orchard. It is literally run away with grass.' The crowd laughed, voted for Mr. Carroll and the cause of slavery went forward while Mr. Gregg staid at home and the cause of civilization languished."[102] But Gregg preached his doctrine undaunted; his works are to be taken less as an indication of anything like general ante-bellum awakening to suicidal policies than as the bright exception that proves the melancholy rule. He showed that even cotton, the great god, drove enterprise from South Carolina, for, with the returns from its culture under ordinary management amounting to 3 or 4 and in some instances only 2 per cent., the inclination for planters to remove with their slave capital to the richer south-west was strong, thus keeping the population of the State at a standstill.[103] Mr. Ingle has stated the case broadly: "The economic history of the South from the Revolution to the Civil War is a record of the development of one natural advantage to the neglect of several others. Fitted by nature to support a large population engaged in a variety of pursuits based upon agriculture, it had a small population occupied in the production of raw material that contributed to the maintenance of a dense population in regions where artifice contended against harsh climate and a stubborn soil."[104] An "address to the Farmers of Virginia" read at a convention for the formation of the Virginia State Agricultural Society in 1852, adopted, reconsidered and readopted with amendments, and finally reconsidered again and rejected on the ground that it contained admissions, however true, which would be useful to abolitionists, contained the words: "... thus we, who once swayed the councils of the Union, find our power gone, and our influence on the wane, at a time when both are of vital importance to our prosperity, if not to our safety. As other states accumulate the means of material greatness, and glide past us on the road to wealth and empire, we slight the warnings of dull statistics, and drive lazily along the field of ancient customs, or stop the _plow_ to speed the _politician_--should we not, in too many cases, say with more propriety, the _demagogue_!... With a widespread domain, with a kindly soil, with a climate whose sun radiates fertility, and whose very dews distill abundance, we find our inheritance so wasted that the eye aches to behold the prospect."[105] In addition to the barrier to manufactures formed by cotton cultivation under slave labor, and the silent opposition which the prevalent system engendered, were not infrequent outspoken declarations against industry. William Gregg was one of the few in South Carolina or the whole South, for that matter, to rise superior to Calhoun's sway, and asserting that there were some who were better able to speak of the propriety of factories than even that statesman, faced him squarely but tactfully. "The known zeal with which this distinguished gentleman has always engaged in every thing relating to the interest of South Carolina, forbids the idea that he is not a friend to domestic manufactures, fairly brought about, and, knowing, as he must know, the influence which he exerts, he should be more guarded in expressing opinions adverse to so good a cause."[106] And again, speaking of manufactures, he was regretful of the fact that "our great men are not to be found in the ranks of those, who are willing to lend their aid, in promoting this good case. Are we to commence another ten years' crusade, to prepare the minds of the people of this State for revolution; thus unhinging every department of industry, and paralyzing the best efforts to promote the welfare of our country." His footnote to this passage shows how calmly, in his comprehensive grasp of the whole situation, Gregg could estimate the bias of his opponents and point out to them how even their selfish ambitions could only be served by attention to such reasoning as his: "Those who are disposed to agitate the State and prepare the minds of the people for resisting the laws of Congress, and particularly those who look for so direful a calamity as the dissolution of our Union, should, above all others, be most anxious so to diversify the industrial pursuits of South Carolina, as to render her independent of all other countries; for as sure as this greatest of calamities befalls us, we shall find the same causes that produced it, making enemies of the nations which are at present, the best customers for our agricultural productions."[107] Gregg felt keenly the opposition to cotton manufactures, which took point, moreover, from the failure of mills in the South, particularly in his own State. This he combatted by showing that not lack of natural advantages but gross mismanagement had been responsible for the fate of these enterprises.[108] He tried to take heart for the South in the reflection that those who commenced the textile industry in Rhode Island had the whole country against them and the experience of England closed to them, whereas his section had the encouragement of New England and access to the machinery and mechanical skill of the world, and he added, "It will be remembered, that the wise men of the day predicted the failure of _steam navigation_, and also of our own railroad; it was said we were deficient in mechanical skill, and that we could not manage the complicated machinery of a steam engine, yet these works have succeeded--we have found men competent to manage them--they grow up amongst us...."[109] Because of the striking reversal of front of the city at a later date, which will be of central importance in subsequent chapters of this study, the estimate which Gregg gave in 1856 of Charleston's attitude toward home industry is interesting. As a delegate from Edgefield District in the South Carolina house of representatives he spoke against the grant of aid by the State to the South Carolina Railroad, stoutly declaring, although he was a stockholder in the venture and the men in control were his personal friends, that he believed every dollar the State might put into the scheme would be lost; he observed that the railroad was purely for the commercial aggrandizement of Charleston, and that, perhaps, not honestly, its spokesmen being unwilling themselves to take stock. Instead of commercial policies selfishly followed by "wealthy gentlemen, some of whom have ships floating in every sea", he declared "That her (Charleston's) destiny was fixed and indissoluble with the State of South Carolina, and that mainly her great investment in Internal Improvements should be made with a view to developing the resources of the immediate country around her. That certain and cheap modes of transportation from all quarters of the State could not fail to re-act on the general prosperity of the city. That the dormant wealth of Charleston might be so directed as to be felt in the remotest parts of the State, in stimulating agriculture, draining our great swamps and putting into renewed culture our worn-out and waste lands; diversified industry, stimulating the mechanic arts and increasing the population and wealth of the State."[110] Instead of this just ideal for leadership and helpfulness, he found it to be the unfortunate fact that, "There is no city in the Union which has accumulated more wealth, to its size, than Charleston--none that has shown so little inclination to put forth her wealth in such a way as to develop the resources of the State. Her millionaires die in New York. There is scarcely a day that passes that does not send forth Charleston capital to add to the growth and wealth of that great city. There is a silent and an imperceptible drain in that direction; the aggregate of which for twenty years would more than build a railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati."[111] The economic thinking of the old South, with its inertia and its inconsistency, is well illustrated in a statement of Robert N. Gourdin, a cotton factor of Charleston and representative of the aristocratic type of its citizenship, made to the correspondent of the New York Herald in connection with the Atlanta Cotton exposition in 1881. After going over the old matter of the war, and the South's vanquishment by superior numbers only, he said: "We (in the South) did not manufacture because there was no necessity for our doing so. With our wonderfully productive soil, our marvellous climate, and with plenty of labor to cultivate our farms, we would accumulate wealth, live comfortably and even luxuriously without troubling ourselves with diggings for minerals or manufacturing cloth. We did not object to the inventions and manufactures of the North, but we did protest against being obliged to pay for them."[112] The prohibition by city ordinance of the use of the steam engine in Charleston is an extreme evidence of a frame of mind that was general in the South. In order to appreciate how completely deflected from industry the Southern thought and habit had become, it is interesting to observe the seriousness with which in 1845 Gregg was forced to argue against this regulation which now seems so absurd that it could not have existed since the Middle Ages. Its opponent showed that he was linked in his sympathies with other sections and with later years, not only by his antagonism but by the humor which he could not fail to find in the situation.[113] The characteristic inclination toward the individual rather than corporate form of enterprise which was noticed as showing itself in the textile and other industries in the South of the Revolutionary period, was still strong up to the Civil War. In 1845 Gregg inveighed against it, particularly as crystallized in legislative refusal to grant charters of incorporation, and, as in others of his pamphlets and speeches, he made analysis of the conditions that would seem to have been plain enough to convince the most stolid; he was quick to hold up New England as a business model to the South; in marked contrast to most men of affairs of the time, he saw economic institutions in their social perspective.[114] Those who have sought to magnify to the largest proportions the industrial activities of the old South have frequently failed to take account of the differences in organization which distinguished the ventures from those of post-bellum years. The textile industry could not be a movement in economic society so long as investment participation sprang from and ended with individual initiative. Until the widespread emergence of the joint-stock form, the mills could not embrace the generality of the community's resources. And in a period when this device was not largely turned to, it is plain that industrial stirrings were comparatively feeble. Not only was there self-satisfaction coupled with dependence upon the North for manufactured commodities in the low-country of the ante-bellum South, but the up-country, that frugal population of which was better disposed for manufacturing development, was so segregated as to be kept in mean state, or actually dependent itself upon the coastal districts. Between the Piedmont and the sea was the barrier of plantations; between the Piedmont and the industrial North were no transportation facilities.[115] Olmsted was struck with finding at Fayetteville, "the point of transfer from wagon to boat, being at the head of navigation",[116] the long wagon trains of highland farmers. He counted sixty wagons in the main street of the town; this was the method of bringing produce to market. "Several of the wagons had come from a hundred miles distant; and one of them from beyond the Blue Ridge, nearly two hundred miles." The teams made less than a score of miles a day through the bad roads.[117] This isolation of one district in the South from another brought lack of concert in political and economic life. "Small landowners in the highlands could not always sympathize with men of princely domain in the low country; and misapprehensions were magnified by separation.... Diffusion of population ... was revealed in the scantiness of common-school facilities; in the division of capital among several small factories or mills, instead of its concentration in a few; in literary, religious, and social life. In 1860, for instance, the South had proportionately more church buildings than the North; but its 22,655 buildings had an average seating-capacity of 307, and an average value of $1,777, while the 31,344 of the North would accommodate 388 persons each, and were $4,183 on an average.... Isolation gave birth to individualism, as marked upon the mountain-clearing as upon the plantation; and beginnings of the co-operative spirit were dwarfed by nature and by human inclination...."[118] Strong as is the proof of the non-industrial character of the old South as revealed by scrutiny of internal economic facts, evidence afforded by the reflection of this condition in aspects which may be called external, is quite as striking. So much is this the case, that it is believed that an examination of the social, political, educational and moral institutions, constituting the shell of the South, is satisfying as to the character of the egg without looking at the vital cell at the center. The fruits of the tree are conclusive of the sap. Of these external phenomena, the political is that which will most readily occur to everyone. Pervasive economic conditions are shown crystallized in political pretensions; economic transitions are registered in alterations of front. The Protective Tariff of 1816 was introduced and defended, respectively, by two South Carolinians--Lowndes and Calhoun. The signature of a Virginia president--Madison--made it a law. This tariff was opposed by New England in the person of Webster. In 1828, in the debate over the "Tariff of Abominations", the situation was just the reverse--Calhoun opposed protection, Webster championed it. In spite of Webster's explanation that New England was acquiescing, against her inclination, in the expressed will of the country, it is the bottom truth that, as Lodge declares, "Opinion in New England changed for good and sufficient business reasons, and Mr. Webster changed with it ... when the weight of interest in New England shifted from free trade to protection Mr. Webster following it." And Mr. Scherer has done justice to the underlying forces in saying, "Calhoun was neither better nor worse. Both of them simply swung true to the economic interests of their respective constituencies."[119] Cotton, nearly exclusively in the South, and to a notable degree in New England, was responsible underneath for the changes which were displayed in the superficial play of politics. It was the disintegration of manufactures brought about by the more and more extensive embracing of cotton cultivation that turned the South from protection to free trade; it was the growing absorption in industry, especially cotton manufacture, and the relative relinquishing of commerce, that made New England protectionist instead of, as before, the champion of free trade.[120] This is not the place to remark at length how economic interests are changing the South back, in partial measure, to the first position. Cotton is again central. Cotton factories are largely responsible for the little leaven that is working in a large loaf, producing in the heart of the Solid South Republican adherents and voices for protection. "Slavery has been abolished. The South has re-established manufactures. Its interests in free trade and protection are changed from what they were in 1860. We need not only domestic trade, but foreign markets. We need, apparently, protection and free trade at the same time.... The South is as much interested in protection to home markets as New England is. New England is as much interested in export markets as the South is. In this situation we ought all to get together. We ought to get together for 'Protection and Reciprocity.'"[121] In summary of the ante-bellum years, which have just been under review, Mr. Clark writes: "Between 1810 and 1860 three periods of progress marked the factory development of the cotton states. During our last war with England ... mill builders from the North migrated to the Southern highlands, and with local co-operation established small yarn factories at several places in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.... During the decade ending with 1833, when hostility to the tariff made the Southern people bitterly resent economic dependence on the North, there was a second movement towards manufactures, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, directed mainly towards the erection of larger and more complete factories. This agitation bore fruit in some corporate enterprises, most of which had but qualified success. Finally, in the late forties real factory development began simultaneously at several points, and had not two financial crises and a war checked its progress, we should probably date from this time the beginning of the modern epoch of cotton manufacturing in the South."[122] Two objections against this passage have pertinence. In the first place, these three periods of comparative interest in manufactures can hardly be called "movements" in any social or economic sense. That of the twenties and running into the thirties may claim more color of this than the other two.[123] The plants set up by the New Englanders earlier were in response to individual enterprise, and that enterprise born out of the boundaries of the South. Co-operation with the newcomers was not of the sort that marks the considerable interest of a community. To the extent that mills were built in the forties as an effect of agitation, William Gregg was almost solely responsible. It has been pointed out above that Gregg was a voice crying in the wilderness--he was a missionary who spoke an unaccepted faith. He was not a social exponent. Also, while some real factories were built, it seems that to speak of these as constituting a "real factory development" is questionable. In the second place, it is rather gratuitous to count upon what would have been the case had not the war broken in upon declared industrial beginnings. The Civil War was not a fortuitous event. It had to come. It was the disastrous evidence of the dominance in the South of a system which gave no room to widespread industrial enterprise, and in which no beginnings could grow and become permanent. Could the war be regarded simply as an occurrence, an unfortunate happening, there might be ground for assuming that industrial enterprise might have been built into and finally changed wholesomely the economic regime of the Southern States, but facts show that it was a case where mastery between mutually exclusive plans had to be made on the basis of comparative strength; the spirit for manufactures had not sufficient force to avert the war, but only enough life to show, in expiring, that it had begun to be born. The foregoing pages have not dwelt, except by chance, upon the decade 1850-1860. These years have been reserved for specific discussion because of the effort which has been made by two writers to invest them with a character of industrialism superior to that of the ante-bellum period generally. Not only is the argument defeated by external evidence, but an internal examination of Mr. Edmonds' presentation shows his own consciousness of serious modifications upon the doctrine, and explains in a very natural light the occasion for the point of view which he sometimes too dogmatically expresses. The late Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, in treating the subject, was heavily influenced in his opinion by Mr. Edmonds' work; it will be seen that in his discipleship, while he rid Mr. Edmonds' statement of one outstanding error, he failed to notice some of the major allowances made by him, and altogether Murphy's pronouncement is more positive and absolute than that of the source from which he chiefly drew his beliefs. Mr. Edmonds is practically on all fours which Tompkins and others quoted in this study, in recognizing that certainly from early in the nineteenth century until the fifth decade industry was little attended to in the South. This he attributes to the high prices to be obtained from cotton, averaging for the years 1800 to 1839 a fraction over seventeen cents a pound. Then he declares: "Beginning with 1840 there came a period of extremely low prices and the cotton States suffered very much from this decline. In that year the average of New York prices dropped to nine cents, a decline of four cents from the preceding year, and this was followed by a continuous decline until 1846, when the average was 5.63 cents.... In 1847 the crop was short and prices advanced sharply, only to drop back to eight and then to seven and one-fourth cents, making the average from 1840 to 1849 the lowest ever known in the cotton trade for a full decade. "These excessively low prices brought about a revival of public interest in other pursuits than cotton cultivation, and the natural tendency of the people to industrial matters, as evidenced by the history of the colonies prior to the Revolution, but which had long been dormant, was again aroused, and for some years there was a very active spirit manifested in the building of railroads and the development of manufactures. "The decade ending with 1860 witnessed a very marked growth in Southern railroad and manufacturing interests.... In 1850 the South had 2335 miles of railroad, and the New England and Middle States 4798 miles; by 1860 the South had increased its mileage to 9897 miles, a quadrupling of that of 1850, while the New England and Middle States had increased to 9510 miles. The conditions were reversed by 1860, and the South then led by 387 miles.... While devoting great attention to the building of railroads, the South also made rapid progress during the decade ending with 1860 in the development of its diversified manufactures." Flour and meal, sawed and planed lumber mills are mentioned, with iron founding and the manufacture of steam engines and machinery. "Cotton manufacturing had commenced to attract increased attention, and nearly $12,000,000 were invested in Southern cotton mills. In Georgia especially this industry was thriving, and between 1850 and 1860 the capital so invested in that State nearly doubled." Noting that while most of the Southern manufacturing enterprises were comparatively small, those of New England in the early stages were of the same character, he says that "In the aggregate, however, the number of Southern factories swelled to very respectable proportions, the total number of 1860 having been 24,590, with an aggregate capital invested of $175,100,000. "A study of the facts ... should convince anyone that the South in its early days gave close attention to manufacturing development,[124] and that while later on the great profits in cultivation caused a contraction of the capital and energy of that section in farming operations, yet, after 1850, there came renewed interest in industrial matters, resulting in an astonishing advance in railroad construction and in manufactures."[125] Figures are set up to show the favorable economic condition of the South in 1860 as compared with the North, and these head up naturally in the observation that, "Blot out of existence in one night every manufacturing enterprise in the whole country, with all the capital employed, (he was writing in 1894) and the loss would not equal that sustained by the South as a result of the war.... New England and the Middle States, having grown rich by the war, almost trebled their property (from 1860 to 1870) while the South drops from the first place to the third. In 1860 it outranked the Northern section by $750,000,000."[126] In criticism of these quotations specifically it is to be said that the early development in industrial pursuits and the thorough lapse before 1840 are properly observed. The present writer believes that Mr. Edmonds has exaggerated in his own mind both the spirit for manufactures, particularly in the decade from 1850 to 1860, and the extent of their establishment. The recital that there were 24,590 plants, with an investment of $175,100,000, seems at first to be striking, but a simple division shows that on an average this made the investment in each only $7,144.37, which is surely not indicative of considerable importance. Many of the enterprises must have been much smaller than would be represented by this average, and the few which were a great deal larger were rare exceptions. The very disparity in size of establishments points away from any concerted movement toward manufacturing. As to the railroad construction, much of it was narrow-gauge, and all of the facts tend to show that railroads were looked upon as facilitating commerce rather than manufactures; even after the war the pet scheme to build a railroad over the mountains gathered sentiment in the long-cherished desire to link Charleston with "the producing interior" typefied in Cincinnati; as rails were laid, piecemeal, through the Piedmont, advantages afforded by them for the erection of factories were seldom mentioned, and their utility in tapping pools of available labor was not considered. The easier transport of cotton and the development of the South Atlantic ports were the thoughts uppermost. To vaunt property figures of the South of 1860 by including, as Mr. Edmonds has done, the value of slaves, is an obvious error; and especially because of the failure to note the inclusion of this factor, the spirit of the other exhibits is cast in doubt. Though legally they were property, in the social-economic sense the slaves did not constitute capital any more than their owners represented capital. The question is rather whether this part of the population, as productive agents under the system of enforced labor, did not mean a liability and not an asset at all.[127] Mr. Edmonds is guilty sometimes of careless statement, as when he says, "The Southern people do not lack in energy or enterprise, nor did they prior to 1860.... From the settlement of the colonies until 1860 the business record proves this."[128] Or again, "the energy and enterprise displayed by the South in the extension of its agricultural interests was fully as great as the energy displayed in the development of New England's manufactures or that of the pioneers who opened up the West to civilization."[129] Such expressions, it will presently be shown, proceed from a loyalty to the South and a just desire to defend her against assault respecting her part in post-bellum development, but facts brought out in these pages show the mistaken zeal in seeking to place the old South abreast in industry or even agriculture. Allowing what is perhaps the exciting cause of Mr. Edmonds' argument to appear from his own context, light is shed in the following sentences: "... 'The New South', a term which is so popular everywhere except in the South, is supposed to represent a country of different ideas and different business methods from those which prevailed in the old ante-bellum days.... Its use ... as intended to convey the meaning that the South of late years is something entirely new and foreign to this section, something which has been brought about by an infusion of outside energy and money is wholly unjust to the South of the past and present. It needs but little investigation to show that prior to the war the South was fully abreast of the times in all business interests, and that the wonderful industrial growth which has come since 1880 has been due mainly to Southern men and Southern money. The South heartily welcomes the investment of outside capital and the immigration of all good people ... but it insists that it shall receive from the world the measure of credit to which it is entitled for the accomplishment of its own people." And then he instances the cotton mills and Birmingham and Atlanta.[130] His explanation of the inactivity in the South for ten or fifteen years following the war, in the fact and causes of which he is entirely correct,[131] bears out the belief, clearly indicated in the passage just quoted, that it is his real purpose to accord to the ante-bellum South her deserved praise. However, he overreached in trying to establish anything like continuity for Southern enterprise over the ante-bellum years. The interpretation here given of the new South is now a platitude, but it may not have been a tilting at windmills when he wrote; indeed, its acceptance now may be due in no small part to Mr. Edmonds. Altogether, it is best to rest Mr. Edmonds' theory with the following passage, in which there is no confusion of his own thought and no controversy with anyone: "Since 1880, although the South is still (1894) practically without great accumulated wealth, her people have turned to manufacturing with a facility that not only shows that they are in no way lacking in capability to compete in manufacturing pursuits, but, considering the limited capital, this section has exhibited remarkable gains in developing its resources under adverse conditions. In a little more than a decade from the time the work of development may be said to have begun, it is not a question whether Alabama can compete with Pennsylvania in iron, but rather whether Pennsylvania can compete with Alabama. Nobody now doubts that the South can compete with New England in the manufacture of cotton goods, but many do doubt whether New England can compete with the South.... Since 1880 the growth of manufactures in the South and their success has been more than astonishing."[132] Edgar Gardner Murphy in his spiritual interpretation of the South showed himself discerning and gifted beyond almost any other writer. His conception of the economic history of the South may be held to have been secondary in his purpose and so in his thought. However, his position as an expositor of the section and the emphasis which he places upon his economic opinions regarding its past, make it incumbent upon the student to examine his views. In the following quotation the turn which he gave to the influencing argument of Mr. Edmonds and his personal slant in interpretation of this, are apparent: "The present industrial development of the South is not a new creation. It is chiefly a revival. Because the labor system of the old South was so largely attended by the economic disadvantages of slavery, and because the predominant classes of the white population were so largely affected by social and political interests, it has often been assumed that the old order was an order without industrial ambitions. "The assumption is not well founded. Instead of industrial inaction we find from the beginnings of Southern history an industrial movement, characteristic and sometimes even provincial in its methods, but presenting a consistent and creditable development up to the very hour of the Civil War. The issue of this war meant no mere economic reversal. It meant economic catastrophe, drastic, desolate, without respect of persons, classes or localities.... Thus the later story of the industrial South is but a story of reemergence."[133] There are then outlined the steps of Mr. Edmonds' argument, except that Murphy failed to make clear the almost total lapse of industrial activity by 1840. The incentive to discover an industrial past for the section, which Mr. Edmonds found in the desire to establish the South as the magician of her ante-bellum awakening, is matched in Murphy's motive by a more subtle design. In one place he said: "... the most distinctive element in the economic movement of this period (1880 to 1900) is the increasingly dominant position of manufactures as contrasted with agriculture. This industrial revival is but the reemergence of the tendency which we found so manifest in the statistics of 1860. It is but one reassertion of the genius of the old South."[134] Here with his absolute conception of the ante-bellum South is hinted the purpose which really animated it. That in speaking of the post-bellum development as "one reassertion of the genius of the old South" he did not mean, as very easily might be supposed, that through the earlier history of the section had run a genius for industrialism, is made clear in the following passage, which, though it refers particularly to social relationships, is pertinent for the industrial bearings: "The old South was the real nucleus of the new nationalism. The old South, or in a more general sense the South of responsibility, the men of family, the planter class, the official soldiery, or (if you please) the aristocracy,--the South that had had power, and to whom power had taught those truths of life, those dignities and fidelities of temper, which power always teaches men,--this older South was the true basis of an enduring peace between the sections and between the races." He regretted that this old South was not enabled to come into force until after Reconstruction because "a doubt was put upon its word given at Appomattox. Its representatives were subjected to disfranchisement. Power was struck from its hands. Its sense of responsibility was wounded and confused."[135] This is a fine statement of a primary and outstanding truth in the development of the South that began about the year 1880. The old South did draw breath with the new. The permanent character of the South, the forces resident in the South of earlier as of later years, were those which largely made possible a complete change in viewpoint, which carried through the measures of, if not indeed giving birth to, the potent consciousness of a reversal of program. But, as Murphy failed to see clearly, there is a radical distinction between the continuity of this quality in the South and any continuity of its evidences in industrial pursuits. The new South did not receive from the old South a heritage of industrial tradition; what it received was a traditional and ingrained and living social morality, not marred in its essential characteristics and presence, and very likely even assisted, by the institution of slavery. As again Murphy said: "... this sense of responsibility, deepened rather than destroyed by the burden of slavery, was the noble and fruitful gift of the old South to the new, a gift brought out of the conditions of an aristocracy, but responsive and operative under every challenge in the changing conditions of the later order."[136] In this apology for Murphy's view is splendidly apparent the best resource with which to turn from the South that was to the South that is. CHAPTER III _CONDITIONS PRECEDENT TO THE ERECTION OF THE MILLS_ To understand the establishment of cotton mills in the South, it is necessary to grasp the deeper impulses which actuated every policy certainly from the year 1880 onward, continuing in only modified degree to the present. Every phase of the movement for the building of cotton mills was conditioned by motives at once tender and heroic, universal in their applicability and too intimate in appeal to admit of more than passing argument. In a study of the actual erection of factories, the hundreds of problems that arose and the mass of practical detail attendant upon their solving constitute, it seems to the writer, a hopeless or at best profitless puzzle, unless it is clearly understood that these minutiae point back to something elemental and primal which gave them character. On the other hand, if this fact is recognized, the circumstances which accompanied the setting of mills in operation, such as the securing of capital, the obtaining of adequate labor, the selection of sites for the location of buildings and the like, from the very coldness of the subjects, and their unsentimental aspect as commonly thought of, strike into peculiarly bold relief the purposes that lay behind them. When it came to money-getting, psychical factors must be crystallized into something very forceful and admitting of unquestioned faith. It is the aim of the present paper to be an introduction to the study of the problems involved in the setting up of cotton mills, by giving the antecedent action, as it were, and by showing the motive force as it developed, operated and concentrated. This responsible cause, catching the phrase from a writer of the day, may be termed "real reconstruction". The impulse for it came over the South in 1880 like a great ground swell, translating itself into a thousand activities and ramifications. "Real reconstruction" was spectacularly the outcome of the defeat of Hancock by Garfield in the presidential election immediately, but its roots run deeper and have their hold in the slow but sure recuperation of the South from the devastation of the Civil War through the troubles of radical rule, assisted by a brief breathing space from the termination of carpet bag government in 1876, when the lesson of fifteen terrible years soaked in thoroughly. It is sufficient here to say that in 1880[137] the South suffered a change of heart, a revulsion of conscience that was fundamental. The people turned on their heel, and faced about to find a new future of the largest promise. A newspaper which before had bent every effort towards the election of Hancock, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, as securing for the South political independence and revenge for Northern mistreatment, a week after his defeat printed an editorial headed "Our Refuge and Our Strength", with these words: "... we have been defeated in the national contest. In the administration of the national government for the next four years we need not concern ourselves, for as far as possible our councils will be ignored. What, then, is our duty? It is to go to work earnestly to build up North Carolina. Nothing is to be gained by regrets and repinings.... It is idle to talk of home independence so long as we go to the North for everything from a tooth pick to a President. We may plead in vain for a higher type of manhood and womanhood among the masses, so long as we allow the children to grow up in ignorance. We may look in vain for the dawn of an era of enterprise, progress and development, so long as thousands and millions of money are deposited in our banks at four per cent. interest when its judicious investment in manufactures would more than quadruple that rate, and give profitable employment to thousands of our now idle women and children. "Out of our political defeat we must work a glorious material and industrial triumph. We must have less politics and more work, fewer stump speakers and more stump pullers, less tinsel and show and boast, and more hard, earnest work. We must make money--it is a power in this practical business age. Teach the boys and girls to work and teach them to be proud of it.... "Demand all legislative encouragement for manufacturing that may be consistent with free political economy. Work for the material and educational advancement of North Carolina, and in this and not in politics, will be found her refuge and her strength."[138] The uselessness of attempting a political salvation as contrasted with the logic of giving all energy to the building up of the South materially, clearly shown in the passage quoted, occurs time and time again.[139] President C. C. Baldwin, of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, born in Maryland but for many years resident in New York, and competent to take a comprehensive view of the South and its problems, said in an interview with the New York Herald in 1881, after the new program had gotten under way: "The commercial men of the states fully appreciate the situation.... They now see clearly how very little politics have done for them, and seriously turn toward the real 'reconstruction' which active trade will inaugurate. All the war issues are dead and buried except to a few politicians who misrepresent their constituents and merely use the language of the past to give them, personally, a passing prominence. True, we hear a great deal more about the men who stand forth prominently as the advocates of these dead issues than we do of the thousands of young and energetic Southern men who are building cotton and woollen mills; who are opening mines and starting iron, copper and zinc furnaces, or who are relaying the roads between the Atlantic and the Ohio and the Gulf. These men don't talk, they don't write books, they don't go to the Legislature or to Congress. They speak, trumpet toned, in results, however. The people of the South have suffered--it is not pertinent whether we regard their sufferings as just or unjust--but they have put aside mourning and are ready for work."[140] The Sumter, S.C., Southern voiced the same idea: "The Southern people, outside of the professional politicians, care very little about Federal politics. They are endeavoring to develop the resources of the South and regain the broken-down fortunes left by the desolation of civil war. "So taking the past and the present as indices for the future, it is plain to see that a dissolution of the Solid South will cut at the very roots of all these wrangles between the North and the South[141] in which sectionalism is involved."[142] "The people of the South are beginning to learn that the true road to power is not through the White House, supported by a swarm of federal officials", said a Tennessee paper in March of 1880. "They are learning that solid wealth is power, and that wealth is attainable only by working up their cotton and wool into fabrics and their ores into metals."[143] The clear-headedness of the following extract from an editorial which appeared in the Columbia, S.C. Register, at the time the city was putting forth every energy to realize a desire for cotton mills, is unsurpassed: "But if we lost the victory, in one sense, we have won it in another. We have been taught what the South can do for itself if it wills to do it. If we have lost the victory on the field of fight, we can win it back in the workshop, in the factory, in an improved agriculture and horticulture, in our mines and in our schoolhouses. "There is where our fight lies now, and the only enemies before us are the prejudices of the past, the instinct of isolation, the brutal indifference and harmful social infidelity which stands up in our day with the old slave arguments at its heart and on its lips, 'I object' and 'You can't do it'."[144] In the broken and all but disheartened condition of the South after enduring the war, radical rule and defeat of political hopes, this conception of another economic future, once it burst upon the consciousness of the Southern people, amounted to nothing less than a religion.[145] Every one of the old pangs added devotion to the new purpose. The whole pride of the South seemed about to go to disruption, and the imminent danger of this lent a passionate loyalty to the changed program which appealed to everything that was best and noblest in the people. The new spirit was strongest in North and South Carolina and in that portion of Georgia contiguous to South Carolina. Distance from this region as a center about marks the intensity of feeling and comprehensiveness of grasp with which the impulse was voiced. Florida and Mississippi felt it little, due probably to their position so very far South as to be still submerged in misery; Virginia was only slightly affected and Maryland hardly at all in the same sense as the middle South, because of proximity to the North and difference of character, by reason of the absence of cotton as the staple. North and South Carolina and the region about Augusta, Georgia, gave the plan its first conception and its most whole-hearted support because, it appears, North Carolina is by nature resourceful and hardy above any Southern State, and South Carolina, despite every discouragement, would have the heart to try again because she is thoroughbred in a company of thoroughbreds.[146] Just as the philosophy varied in intensity territorially, so it varied in degree within the same region. Some wished salvation through material advance for the sake of the State; this was natural, as growing out of a well-known loyalty of the citizens of Southern commonwealths.[147] Others with larger view proclaimed the new gospel for the whole South as a section, rather adopting an attitude of aloofness toward the North, wishing the Southern people to work out their great problem without assistance from those who would be predisposed to meddlesome criticism. It is true that reorganization for the South was the most national thing Southerners could turn themselves to at that time, and in the judgment of many still is, but speakers and writers often failed of just the most fortunate expression of their purpose in that they did not strike the national note very consciously.[148] It is something to have gone through what the South went through and come out not dispirited utterly, not defiant against fate or enemies, not forgetful of the past, but, remembering the worst, determined soberly, quietly, thoroughly to do the fundamental thing and do it nationally. It was left for Charleston more than all others--noblesse oblige--to speak this greatest message: "The Southern people must be national themselves, in their aspirations and conduct, if they would have the government truly national in spirit", and have Garfield "President of the whole country, and not of a section, or party, to have a government of 'the whole country', to be entitled to it, we must think of the whole country as our own, and demand no more than we are ready to give. It must come to this. In the near future the successful leaders, South and North, will be those whose first thought is for the Republic, men who are national in feeling and purpose; men who understand that the political and social strength and safety of each State depend not on isolation and separation, but on combination and union."[149] By the late fall and winter of 1880 the mind of the South was ripe for progress and accomplishment. Perhaps the first gropings after procedure struck upon the consideration that manufactures would add another profit to the profit of agriculture. The big, general conception was first grasped without refinements or modifications or drawbacks; it was received with almost childlike simplicity and faith.[150] But it came to be ingrained. "The cotton which now comes into Charleston and is sold here pays commissions to the factors and brokers, and when shipped leaves behind it the price of the drayage, compressing and storage. Cotton which comes into Charleston and is manufactured here is doubled in value, and an amount equal, at least, to the value of the raw cotton when it reached the city boundary is distributed among the people of Charleston. This is the simple key to the prosperity which invariably attends the development of manufactures. Manufacturing gives additional value to raw material, and this additional value goes into the communities where the manufacturing is done. At present Charleston does nothing to increase the value of the cotton which comes here for sale. It leaves us as it finds us. The city lives on the pickings and scrapings.... "Cotton mills change all this. A bale of raw cotton worth forty dollars is spun into yarns or cloth worth eighty dollars.... The stockholders and the working people get the whole difference between the cost of the cotton and the value of the yarns or cloth, except what little may be expended for material that cannot be purchased here."[151] President H. P. Hammett, of the Piedmont Factory, in a remarkable address before the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society and State Grange, of South Carolina, to which reference will several times be made, after describing the earlier absorption of the South in a single pursuit, and the ills that grew from this, said: "A new condition of things and a changed sentiment amongst the people prevail at present; with the changed relations of society and institutions a sentiment favorable to a diversity of pursuits has developed ... a disposition is manifested to develop the many resources heretofore lying dormant or hidden.[152] Capital when needed is furnished, and men of energy, enterprise and ability develop ... the general sentiment of the people is to utilize all the facilities within their reach.... Under such circumstances it is natural that the public mind should be directed to the manufacture of their great staple."[153] There were a score of reasons making this course seem plausible.[154] They were advanced, scrutinized, at the South sometimes accepted with a grain of salt, at the North not infrequently flatly and stoutly challenged as absurd; they were patiently explained or difiantly, and not always with the closest reasoning, flung in the faces of their objectors--but finally they were proclaimed as gospel, and in this sign the South set out to conquer. Of these beliefs is to be placed first and foremost the conviction that, other things aside, manufacturing was most economical and so logically belonged, at the source of production. Here is the doctrine, given in all simplicity, and not without the force characteristic of newspaper correspondences of that day: "Sir, it matters not what anyone may say to the contrary, common sense tells us that other things--machinery, skilled labor, motive power and facilities of shipment--being equal, a cotton factory in the midst of cotton fields must prove more profitable than the same concern a thousand miles from its base of supply could possibly be."[155] Other factors there were--cheap labor, unused water powers, abundance of wood and coal nearby, local market for the sale of product, longer running time than in the North, a favorable climate, saving in fuel and light, absence of damage to cotton by compress, saving in bagging and ties, assistance to be given to women and children much in need of work--all of them bore their part in focussing the energies of the South upon that program which was to mean so much in so many ways--the "cotton mill campaign."[156] The current passion for building cotton mills--it was nothing short of this--was stimulated and guided by press[157] and platform in urging, chronicling and praising advances. The Columbia, Georgia, Enquirer, after recounting the progress of the city in spinning--it had 60,000 spindles--said: "These are the weapons peace gave us, and right trusty ones they are.... The story the spindles tell is one of joy to all, and show (shows) how rapidly we are climbing the hill of prosperity."[158] The affectionate tone of this item from the Rock Hill, S.C. correspondence of The News and Courier is unmistakable: "In conclusion let me say a few words in regard to the 'pet' of the town, the Rock Hill Cotton Factory. This factory is owned and controlled by the citizens of the town, (except $15,000 in stock owned in Charleston). It has a capital of $100,000, has over 6,000 spindles, with 1,500 more to be added in a few days."[159] The Marion, S.C. correspondent of the same paper a year earlier contributed this for his town: "Our wants: A bank, an academy, a cotton factory, a comfortable room for passengers at the depot, an iron foundery, and last, but not least, work upon our streets."[160] So much did cotton mills come to be considered the natural signs of progress that Raleigh made apology for not having a single mill. "There is not a cotton factory in Raleigh, but there are not less than five large planing mills, two foundries, two boiler factories ...", and there follows a list of everything in the corporate limits, including schools and even newspapers.[161] Under its caption, "The Cotton Mill Campaign", the active News and Courier every few days listed new entries into the field of cotton manufacture. The issue of February 8, 1881, presented a particularly large number of items from different towns. The Newberry Herald exhorted the citizens with reference to Charleston's achievement thus: "Cheer for Charleston--A Movement all Along the Line. Charleston is in a fair way to have two large cotton factories in a short while.... Camden is preparing for a cotton factory. Hodges, Abbeville County, is preparing for a cotton factory. Rock Hill has a cotton factory. Greenville has several cotton factories. Newberry, the best location for a cotton factory in the State, and the place most needing one is not preparing for a cotton factory, and there is no present likelihood that she ever will." The method followed here, of citing the advance of other places in mill building as an incentive, was widely used, and not commonly with the rather complaining tone of the above from Newberry.[162] That the spirit was in the air is clearly discernible in a Winnsboro contribution: "Why does not Fairfield (the county in which the town of Winnsboro is located) make the experiment? It is said that $15,000 will set in motion over five hundred spindles, and continual additions can be made." While recognizing that water power was difficult of access, steam might be used, for there was plenty of cheap fuel for years to come, and the Charlotte railroad offered easy communication with the world for a mill located along its tracks. The Hampton, S.C. Guardian struck the note: "Factories are springing up all over the State, and our people must not be found lagging in the race of progress."[163] How the people were reaching out for cotton mills, with their attendant profits and advantages, may be seen in this advertisement appearing in the winter of 1881: "We will give to a Cotton Manufacturing Company, that will organize and locate at Landsford, S.C., with a capital of $300,000 a site, 20 acres of land and 3000 horse water power. Apply for particulars to T. C. Robertson, Allen Jones, Rock Hill, S.C.; Wm. R. Landsford; Edward McCrady, Jr., Charleston."[164] A little earlier the cotton mill campaign had extended itself to the point of interesting class effort, for the most prominent German citizens of Charleston organized a mill in a short space of time.[165] The cotton mill campaign had gotten well under way[166] when its further progress was greatly facilitated and its successful outcome made plain by the projection of a plan to display the resources of the Southern States in an exposition at Atlanta. The scheme was first proposed in October of 1860, and the International Cotton Exposition was opened in Atlanta October 5, 1881. The exposition, in organization, history and influence, is inseparably bound up with the name of Edward Atkinson, economist, publicist and manufacturer of Boston. He gave it its inception; in an unselfish and magnanimous spirit he guided its beginnings and brought it, by his advocacy and superintendence, to completion. He was "the father of the Atlanta exposition."[167] In a sincere desire to see the South extricated from the disorganization of the war and the years that followed, he planned this method of showing the people what he considered to be their true interest, namely, concentration upon better methods of cultivating and preparing cotton for market and for manufacture. With a fine comprehension of the most fundamental needs of the section in many directions, he conceived the care of cotton between the field and the factory to be properly the first concern of the Southern States, not temporarily, but for all time. The Atlanta exposition he proposed as the lens through which to focus attention upon this. But Mr. Atkinson, most singularly for a man of his grasp, penetration and experience, had not reckoned upon the force of the enthusiasm for manufacturing cotton, which, as has been shown, came over the Southern people. That cotton mills were being built he could not but see; that they were making profits he could not deny--but in the economic wholesomeness and permanency of the factories he would not believe. In the International Cotton Exposition he created a Frankenstein to amaze and frighten and torment him. For once the resources, of the South were displayed in visible, tangible form in reasonable compass, and once the people were united upon an effort which should gauge their strength and possibilities, the invitation, or, as some put it, the duty to manufacture the staple in the fields where it grew leaped out as a fact more patent than ever. The people had felt the strength that came from union in a common purpose, and nothing could deter them from following the light that this brought to them. Mr. Atkinson, who had acted in the best of faith and with great ability, was surprised and chagrined; when he found that, while following his lead in showing the necessity of more careful culture and preparation of the crop for manufacture, the South, by the agency of the exposition, was fascinated in going beyond his goal, and building mills to make up the cotton for itself, he protested earnestly, and went to no end of pains to turn the people from their course. But the horse had taken the bit in his mouth, had glimpsed a broader highway open ahead, and the reins that had directed him once were of no avail to arrest his career. Conscious of his New England milling and insurance interests, it is likely that Edward Atkinson felt the South, which he had tried to help, distrusted him. And though the fact of his connections, coupled with a manner of addressing himself to the Southern people at times unfortunate in its seeming superiority, and tendency to become impatient and didactic, might easily have led the section to regard him with enmity, it is to be remembered to the credit of the Southerners that they showed as great charity for his, as they regarded them, short-comings of judgment, as they held in esteem his friendship and constructive co-operation. The vision which the South had caught rose superior, in almost all cases, to any pleasure to be found in taunting those who differed in view, especially when so much was owing to a man as belonged to Mr. Atkinson. His position is one of the most important in the whole history of cotton manufacturing, not only in the South, but in this country, and it is the most dramatic and pathetic. He stood virtually alone after the exposition had run a few months, protesting impotently against a new state of things, every development of which seemed to cry the lie to his objections. His very antagonism lent impetus to the current setting toward cotton mills for the cotton estates. And, to make the sting even more poignant, instead of looking upon his opposition to Southern cotton manufacturing as representing a class of jealous industrialists at the North--and many things there were to lend color to such a belief--the South was appealing over his head to New England capitalists to come down and help erect factories.[168] How Southern sentiment had grown beyond Mr. Atkinson's purposes for the exposition is to be seen in the words of A. O. Bacon, speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, in welcoming a party of South Carolina legislators and their friends to the Exposition three months after its opening: "This exposition--marks an important epoch in the industrial history of the country. It has aroused the South to the value of new enterprises and of new methods of labor; it has awakened the North to a realization of the boundless resources and enormous industrial capacities of the South. It comes at a most propitious moment, for the South, in sympathy with the quickening energies which excite the continent, is even now trembling in the initial throes of the mighty industrial revolution that surely awaits her. A great change is about to come upon us. 'In the fabric of thought and of habit' which we have woven for a century we are no longer to dwell, and a new era of progressive enterprise opens before us."[169] The place of the Cotton Exposition in furthering the cotton mill campaign, already attained to a healthy start, is seen in this from Clifton, S.C.: "It is to be hoped the Atlanta Exposition will not take all the enthusiasm out of our capitalists and enterprising men,[170] but that it will only tend to a greater and more steady development of our resources. There are new families coming in constantly (to the Clifton Mill) and the cottages as far as completed are occupied, and still they come."[171] And again: "A good work has been done, the benefits of which will be felt in every part of the country. The New South takes a fresh start at the Atlantic Exposition."[172] Here also is evidence of the very fortunate juncture at which the exposition happened to fall. The show did much for the South irrespective of its exhibits; indeed, before a shovelful of earth was turned, a real service was rendered. It proved to the people that they could organize and exert a force in common; the South was less individual from that day. It demonstrated besides that the South had resources and possibilities worth presenting to the world. Once the exposition was opened, three distinct influences were brought to bear in carrying forward the work already begun. The people of the South were shown for the first time as a whole the implements of cotton manufacture, capitalists in general were introduced to the opportunities of cotton milling in the section, and, in visualizing and making more than ever evident the industrial future, less effective reflex from the ultimate proposals of Edward Atkinson and others of his belief was afforded once for all. The very day of opening, the exposition greeted crowds of visitors with these words from Daniel W. Vorhees, of Indiana; "There is a far higher remuneration than has ever been given by cotton yet in store for the laborer, the manufacturer, the South and the entire country. In the midst of the cotton plantations themselves there is a career for manufacturing development such as the world has not yet seen. With coal, iron and timber in perfection and inexhaustible, and water power everywhere, by what rule of political economy should the Southern people send their cotton, at an expense always deducted from its price, to distant sections and foreign countries to be spun and woven? If the manufacturer in Great Britain, transporting his cotton from India and the United States, can realize substantial profits, why may they not be realized here...? We have seen the manufacturer of New England, at a long distance from a productive base of supplies, turn a sterile country into the seat of culture, refinement and wealth. Why shall not the South put forth its energies and reap the same and a far greater reward? Here the cotton grows up to the doorsteps of your mills, and supply and demand clasp hands together. The average exportation during the last ten years, from these wonderful fields to England and other European ports, has been over 3,000,000 of bales per annum; while to the mills of New England and other Northern states another million have (has) been annually carried away from your midst, and from the best manufacturing region on the globe."[173] So, even from the opening of the exposition, matters had taken a decided turn toward cotton manufacturing for the South. After the fair had been in progress three weeks, Mr. Atkinson and a committee from the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association came down for their initial visit. From Mr. Hemphill's letter to The News and Courier[174] it is clear that the New Englanders appreciated most those parts of the exhibit which had to do with "ginning and preparing." Still considering all cotton manufacturing to belong to the North, just as all cotton growing belonged to the South, the verdict of the party on this first inspection was: "Nothing ever happened in the history of the country to prove so adequately the identity of the interests of the cotton grower and cotton manufacturer as this exhibition." Thus were visitors coaxed to examine into the increased efficiency and profit which lay in sending clean Southern cotton to Northern manufacturers. Soon the situation demanded more drastic handling. Edward Atkinson, in a set speech on the exposition grounds, stated his position clearly: "You have depreciated every crop of cotton you have made at least 12 per cent. by want of care and attention in ginning, baling, pressing and caring for the cotton between the field and the factory. You can save half your labor and add 10 per cent. to the value of your crop if you will use the new tools and machinery here on exhibition and heed the words which I now speak. "The Southern planter and farmer has no knowledge, as yet, outside of the sea island district, of the merits of a true roller gin. Clark's cleaner has just been introduced and is only known within narrow limits.... Now, I am going to touch a tender subject--cotton manufacturing.... I have never taken the ground that there were any climatic difficulties in many parts of the South. The real difficulty is that the margin of profit is very small on a very large capital, and unless you can work, in the long run, on a very small margin you cannot succeed. These times are no criterion.... May I say that the true preparation for success in cotton manufacturing must be in knowing how to save the fraction of a cent.... You cannot spin cotton when you do not know the difference between a cent and a nickel."[175] The reception with which Mr. Atkinson's theory met is seen in an editorial comment on his December address: "The future of the South is described with great power in the ... speech of Mr. Edward Atkinson at the Atlanta Exposition.... Mr. Atkinson is misleading only when invincible prejudice keeps him from seeing clearly, and even Northern newspapers admit[176] that he is wrong in his belief that cotton manufacturing, on a large scale, will not pay in the South. The speech otherwise is suggestive and instructive."[177] In a review of an article by Mr. Atkinson on "The Solid South", appearing in the International Review for March, 1881, William E. Boggs, of Atlanta, wrote: "If one so sincere as Mr. Atkinson in the desire that the South shall flourish can so misunderstand the Southern people, what must be the mental condition of those who have prejudice without good-will? Mr. Atkinson is the father of the Atlanta Exposition, and is, in his way, a true friend of the South."[178] There was one more condition precedent to the erection of cotton mills in the South. The people of the section might come to a determination to set up schools, run telegraph and telephone lines, construct railroads, stop political quibbling and back-biting, and, above all, institute manufactures as the surest release from a condition calling for the strongest action; they might turn themselves wholeheartedly to the building of cotton mills, calling forth every native resource and ingenuity, enterprise and sacrifice, and these would avail much. But the task was so huge in its proportions that sooner or later it must cease to be a sectional matter, and not only was this necessary, but it was proper that it should be the case. The North must be called upon for help. If there are two facts in the building of cotton mills in the South which stand out head and shoulders above all the rest, they are that the Southern people, impelled by inner forces, undertook the work, and that when it became apparent that outside capital and advice were needed and could be had, these were welcomed gratefully.[179] There were certain forces which made for a national mind in the South--certain external influences aside from the reasonings of the choicer spirits. These bound the North and South together, and helped to make possible the augmenting of Southern energy and resources by Northern capital and experience. Just as the International Cotton Exposition at Atlanta lent impetus to the sectional furtherance of the cotton mill campaign, so the shooting of President Garfield, his lingering illness through three months, and his death, occurring at approximately the same stage as the exposition, may be thought to have done much in preparing the way for receiving Northern, and, indirectly, European capital into the South. "This (the South) is a region where manliness is held in superlative honor", said the Charleston paper so often quoted, "and assassination is loathed for its cowardliness even more than it is abhorred as an offence against law and society.... There could be no doubt then that Guiteau's dastardly act would be heartily denounced--and there was reason to look for some special indignation on account of the exalted official position which Gen. Garfield holds. It could not have been foreseen, however, that the outburst of sympathy and condemnation would have been universal in its manifestation, affectionate in tone and National in spirit. South Carolina does more than reprobate assassination. The people of the State, the whole people, resent the deed because the victim is the President of the United States, the Chief Magistrate of our country.... The process of reunion has gone on with a rapidity which few appreciated. All the elements of cordial friendship and of national good-will were there. It needed only the threat of a common misfortune to give shape and voice to the recreate but sturdy love of the Republic."[180] The following appeared with the announcement of President Garfield's death. "In the history of the United States, President Garfield will be remembered as he whose nomination by the National Republican Convention strangled imperialism in its cradle, and as he whose assassination was quickly followed by an outburst of sorrow and sympathy which manifested to the North the true nature of the South, and do more than the arguments, the prayers and the common intercourse of thrice five years to bring together the peoples whom war had made separate. By the shedding of blood the North and South were sundered; and through the shedding of blood they are united.... In his wounding unto death passed away the alienation, the estrangement which prevented this country from being truly one, although men and millions had made it in appearance indivisible."[181] Railroads, both because they allowed sentiment to become solidified in the South, and afforded great currents of intercourse with the North, were of first importance. And in the railroads, with the encouragement they gave to manufactures, and the stability they lent to trade in furnishing a strong commercial backbone,[182] appear early hints of the unifying force of Northern capital itself. A railroad, in which Northern men chiefly were interested, which proposed running up the James River Valley to Clifton Forge, was hailed by Richmond as bringing new prosperity. "We welcome the Northern gentlemen who are to co this invaluable work for Virginia, and we trust and believe that they may never have cause to regret the investment of their capital here. Every such investment is a new band around the States of the Union binding them more closely together."[183] CHAPTER IV _CAPITAL_ In the chapter on the conditions precedent to the erection of cotton mills in the South the attempt was made to show how the stage was set for the actual building of factories. The impulse for manufactures, and especially cotton mills was traced through its several more or less definite periods of development. The first of these was the recoil from the Hancock-Garfield election; the failure of the South's determined hopes for the success of the Democratic candidate, which would mean, it was thought, freedom from political insult and economic servitude, and an opportunity to wreak vengeance for the wrongs of radical rule, virtually marked the death struggle of the old exclusive social philosophy as the animating force in the South. This had been bred by the ante-bellum regime, called into concrete trial by the civil war, and intensified in character through each year of Reconstruction, and through each year proven more untenable. The questioned election of 1876, when Tilden was thrown out under circumstances peculiarly galling to the South, set the section as a unit and unalterable for the next four years in a passionate and dogged resolution against all odds to make a Democrat president in 1880. When Hancock was beaten in a fair fight by Garfield, the South was thrown prostrate; devastated by the war, pillaged and ridden in Reconstruction, to gather all her forces for a final defiant stand and have her last poor hope dashed was tragic. But this very extreme of bitterness was the South's salvation. The leaders, with remarkable accord and almost simultaneously in all quarters, after recovery from the first inescapable shock, rallied to the situation like heroes, and called their less valiant brethren after them in a new resolution to build up another South founded on democracy and a purpose to employ every material resource for the building of a foundation which would bear the weight of the different structure that had to be erected. Words unfamiliar in the South were heard on every hand; in this proposal of "real reconstruction" notions as novel as they were salutary were involved. Communication between States and parts of the same State, by railroads, telegraph and telephone; schools, churches, diversification of crops, deepening of harbors and rivers, municipal pride and civic reform were urged; it was demanded that politics and political wrangles be dropped forthwith, and that the section set about the course of material advancement as the only method of asserting rights against the North, and the only means of bearing her share of the national burden. In the canvas of resources which this impulse brought, cotton mills were pounced upon as affording the readiest and most permanent instruments of success. It has been seen how platform and press and people concentrated their interest and attention upon the "cotton mill campaign", every new factory being hailed as another banner lifted in the fight. Two great impelling motives were patriotism--either local, state, sectional or national--and humanitarian considerations. These were held up in the plainest view of all, and impressed unceasingly. It was as a means to an end that cotton mills were argued for; their advocacy was grounded in the most splendidly fundamental beliefs and aspirations. Descending from these lofty ideals, the practical inducements to the building of cotton mills as they were brought before the South and the country at large have been pointed out. It was shown that over and above all others stood out prominent and unquestioned the fact of the presence of the raw cotton. Proximity to the material of manufacture was felt to constitute the chief invitation to go into the textile business in a systematic way. But there were other arguments used, running out to great length--of these the leading one was an abundance of cheap and intelligent if untrained labor crying for employment, and this has been dwelt upon in its phases. A store of unused water powers, favorable freight rates, low cost of living, suitable climate, the supply of inexpensive fuel, and the innumerable gains to the community were made the grounds of advocacy of cotton mills. Estimates of the expenses of erection, maintenance and operation of hypothetical factories of all sizes were worked out in elaborate detail, the saving over manufacture of cotton in New England or in Old England being remarked at every juncture. It is a nice problem to determine how far these advantages possessed or thought to be possessed by the South were aired as a result of deep-lying motives of patriotism and philanthropy, and to what extent they were themselves the exciting forces behind the crystallization of these motives. Did these superiorities of the South come to light mainly because the South had made up its mind to remake the section, or did the South enter upon a course of development because it possessed certain outstanding advantages? To strike a balance here would be an interesting speculative venture. But, however, this may be, it is reasonably clear, as has been previously pointed out, that when it came to putting their money into cotton mills, capitalists, North and South, acted usually upon the assurance given them in the physical assets obtaining. To the extent that general impulses placed in public view definite, concrete and tangible reasons why cotton mills could be made to pay dividends, the undercurrent was indirectly responsible for the erection of the factories. It is not the purpose of the present paper to set out in any detail the unique resources of the South, either as they constituted the magnet for capital directly, or reacted through the general cotton mill campaign to swell the tide making toward a new character for the section. They deserve separate treatment, especially since they occupy so central a position and have such sensitive contact with the other forces present. Whether, however, physical advantages existing at the South crystallized out of an original philosophical impulse, or operated, more or less unconsciously in the Southern mind, to induce that impulse, it is perfectly clear that the movement for the building of cotton mills in the South originated with the South, and that at least contemporary with the attraction of capital, went an advocacy of the establishment of cotton factories that was consistent, permanent and practically universal. From the very nature of the movement, Southern and in most cases strictly local capital was first appealed to, both by the actual projectors of the mills and the public organs which interested themselves in the enterprises, and local capital was the first offered. It might be questioned whether outside capitalists, perceiving in the Southern manufacture of cotton a favorable field of investment, did not come in as a result of the publicity of the cotton mill campaign, without waiting for either solicitation from the South or proof of the success of the new plants erecting in that section, but it will be shown that, as a matter of fact, this was not the case. At the time the South felt herself to be isolated, cut off from the national life, discriminated against by Congress and the country at large. In the beginning and in essence continuing to the end, the building of cotton mills was a sectional matter. It is not to be said that outside capital was an afterthought with the promoters of the Southern cotton mills, but every circumstance surrounding the movement, and every instinct of the hour, argued for the exhaustion of native resources before help should be sought from without. The story of how capital was secured for the cotton mills of the South may be commenced with a sentence from a North Carolina newspaper which strikes the key-note: "All questions of domestic economy, and especially those involving the capital of our people, whether in the shape of labor or dollars, will necessarily be canvassed and scrutinized very closely in their bearings on our material progress."[184] The nature of the appeals made to local capital will best appear by looking at some of them individually. Patriotism, a consciousness of unity, and appreciation of the dynamic character of manufactures in the South, appear in a solicitation printed on the editorial page of the Charleston News and Courier for capital for a scheme for the development of water power and cotton mills at Columbia. The enterprise had a peculiarly appealing history, which will be recounted in considering the response of domestic capital. After a summary of these facts, the article concludes: "The work--is one of great magnitude and involves expenditure beyond the ability of this community (Columbia). Nor is the interest merely local, but reaches out to every part of the State. We call, therefore, upon all, from the mountains to the seaboard, to take part in this great central development, involving not only the prosperity of our capital, but, in its ramifications, affecting the prosperity of the entire State."[185] A week earlier, in a Columbia dispatch to the same paper, Charleston was advised that books of subscription to the stock of the company would soon be opened there, and the argument for investment was placed on more practical grounds: "If the recent subscriptions to factories have left any money in the pockets of the people there (Charleston), it had better be saved for this purpose--a franchise like this is not obtained every decade."[186] Implying that when the South should make a start in cotton manufacture, outside capital would flow in, but impressing particularly the need for the entrance of domestic interests into the field, a statement of H. T. Inman, capitalist, relative to the plan to purchase Oglethorpe Park, the site of the Atlanta Exposition, from the city authorities and use the buildings for cotton factories, is striking: "We must demonstrate what we have been saying, that there is money in manufacturing in the South. If we wait for others to come here and do it, it will never be done."[187] The argument that the South had faith in her ability to manufacture cotton profitably, as proved by putting her money into the projected mills, was frequently used in soliciting subscriptions at the North, and more frequently Southerners were urged, as here, to go into the ventures, with the specific reason that by so doing Northern capital would be induced to join in. Money accumulating in bank at low rates of interest was often made the basis of observations on the great gain from manufactures, and was pounced upon as evidence of lack of sympathy with the spirit of the time, which was grounded in the deepest needs of the people. In such cases the cotton mill campaign and the gathering of capital as a matter of practical concern usually overlap. An instance quoted in another place is typical: "But with all its (North Carolina's) varied and splendid capabilities it is idle to talk of home independence so long as we go to the North for everything from a tooth pick to a President.... We may look in vain for the dawn of an era of enterprise, progress and development, so long as thousands and millions of money are deposited in our banks at four per cent. interest when its judicious investment in manufactures would more than quadruple that rate...."[188] Several months later the same paper[189] instanced the success of Edward Richardson, of the firm of Richardson & May, cotton factors of New Orleans, in running, in addition to ten or twelve plantations producing 15,000 to 18,000 bales of cotton a year, a nest of factories with 18,000 spindles, 400 looms and 800 hands in the town of Cresson, which he built. He was said to be worth more than $15,000,000--"all accumulated in the South, the poor South." The closing remark is significant: "His ... accumulations are but the results of forethought, enterprise and nerve. He has no heavy deposits in bank at four per cent." This same galling fact of bank deposits lying relatively idle when they might be used to further the plans held so much at heart was lamented in cases where it hindered the cotton mill campaign, or the taking of initial steps toward realizing a desire for a mill; but it was made more galling where a venture, properly launched, stood still because the moneyed people held themselves aloof. In distinction to the position of Newberry, South Carolina, where there were "numbers of people ready to aid in the enterprise, convinced as they are that it will be a profitable investment, but ... nobody to take the lead,"[190] was Chester another town in the same State, of about the same size. In February of 1881, after the cotton mill campaign had gotten a fair start, the Chester Bulletin commented: "Just now there is a widespread and deep feeling amongst our people throughout the State to foster the manufacturing interests of the country. More than a year has elapsed since our people felt beat a pulse of enthusiasm for the home industries. (Reference was here had to the chartering by the Legislature of two mill corporations which attracted almost no subscriptions.) There is money enough in the county to start the hum of three thousand spindles. The large amount of personal deposits in bank indicate too truly the lack of confidence in home industrial enterprises."[191] It may be well to consider a typical comprehensive appeal for domestic capital. For this purpose a leading editorial in The News and Courier asking support for the Charleston Manufacturing Company is particularly useful.[192] In the first place, this company marked the entry of Charleston into the field of regular cotton manufacture, and the enterprise took firm hold on the interest of the city from this cause. Also, South Carolina experienced the cotton mill campaign as a movement more highly conscious than in any other State; Charleston was the center of the campaign, as spiritual leader no less by reason of her sufferings than her heroism, and the News and Courier was the mouthpiece of Charleston. To begin with, the editorial, headed "Everybody's Opportunity", sets forth clearly the division of arguments: "The Charleston Manufacturing Company addresses itself to the citizens of Charleston in a double capacity: _First_, as a means of making money for the stockholders. _Second_, as a means of enlarging the common income, stimulating the growth and increasing the prosperity of the city." Proceeding under the first of these heads, it is pointed out that the mill will succeed because the management, in the hands of men known for their business sagacity and activity, will be both economical and progressive. There is no doubt that, along with other appeals to local resources, confidence in the projectors of a cotton mill, as personal acquaintances and men whose whole lives were familiar knowledge in a small community, had a powerful influence. Next it is shown that the profits of the South Carolina mills for the year 1879, probably the last available for citation, warranted a belief that the Charleston mill would succeed, having at least as good a chance as county plants. These profits had ranged from 18 to 25-1/2 per cent. It is explained that steam power will be used, but that it is used in England, and that the trend of the better opinion is toward steam power rather than water power, as being more reliable and capable of better control. The approval of steam by the superintendent of the Camperdown Mills at Greenville in the same State, on these grounds and also because he knew that the Northern mills using steam made larger profits than those using water, is instanced. It is evident that the necessity of employing steam power, instead of being able to use the water power of the interior, was a hard obstacle to get over, for recurrence is several times had to it in the course of the argument, and the great advantages of coastal location are stressed as a counterbalancing consideration. The favorable facts that the Charleston mill will be able to buy cotton all the year round, and so avoid carrying a heavy stock, that samples and tops may be utilized, that the rates of insurance will be low and water freights nominal, and lastly that no cottages or schools or churches will have to be built, city location avoiding this source of expense to a provincial establishment are recited, and the prospective stockholders are reminded that by State law the whole of the capital invested in manufactures is exempted from taxation for ten years. On the second account, of increasing the prosperity and welfare of the community, it is shown how every $228 invested in cotton manufactures in South Carolina the year before supported one person, and how when people earn they have something to spend; house rents will go up as a result of the new demand. Besides, the State at large benefits from a new means of support for the people. The very potent argument of the addition to value which manufacturing brings about is next employed. "At a low estimate the value of cotton is doubled by the conversion into yarns." If the Charleston Manufacturing Company uses 10,000 bales of 400 pounds a bale, at 10 cents per pound, $400,000 will be returned to the growers of the raw cotton. When made into yarns the cotton will be worth $800,000. Every dollar of this $400,000 difference, except what will be spent for materials not to be precured locally, will be disbursed in Charleston in wages and dividends. "It is evident that the building of half-a-dozen cotton factories could revolutionize Charleston. Two or three million dollars additional poured annually into the pockets of the shop-keepers and tradespeople would make them think that the commercial millenium had come." The appeal concludes: "In a two-fold sense, then, the Charleston Manufacturing Company is entitled to support. For the stockholders it will earn money. To the city it will give the life and vigor which nothing short of manufactures will assure us."[193] An editorial in the same paper the next spring encouraging subscriptions to the capital stock of the Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company, the enterprise already mentioned, which was opening books in Charleston, urged the two benefits already noticed, profit flowing from physical and economic advantages, and a social gain resulting from the indirect bearings of the plant.[194] The value of the franchise, the offer by the State of more than 146,000 days of convict labor at a low wage, the rebate of taxation on plant and improvements for ten years, and estimated earnings of 17 per cent, on a total outlay of $431,607, or running as high as 25 per cent. on an outlay of $725,000, were held up on the side of material things; in dealing with the gain expected to result to the State at large, the influx of immigrants and the employment of thousands of idle women and girls, already present, for whom it was so hard to find profitable work, were pointed out. Not unusually, in place of the larger social sense, local pride as such furnished the point of departure in the proclamation of an enterpriser to his fellow-citizens. It is to be feared that sometimes this was made the means of demegoguery, the appeal to local spirit being linked with a disparagement of Northern assistance merely for effect. Instances of this will appear when the attitude toward outside capital is considered. The case of Mr. Winn's scheme for Sumter illustrates the personal appeal to local pride. It is to be noticed that he reduced everything to an individual and immediate basis. He spoke through the paper of the town, the Sumter Southron:[195] "I am now engaged in getting up a mill of 2,500 spindles at this place. I do not expect to seek a dollar of foreign subscription, but I want our own citizens throughout the county to be interested in it and to help me build and operate it." There follows a description of his findings at several nearby mills which he visited. One is inclined to believe that he paraded the facts to impress his audience in a general way, rather than to appeal to strict business sense. He cites the earnings of the mill at Charlotte, North Carolina, owned by the Oates Brothers. With running expenses of $60, "we have the neat little profit of $155 per day". The Sumter mill could save haulage, and use one-third of its cotton not packed, thus saving in bagging and ties. A concluding sentence indicates his frame of mind: "Will a mill pay in Sumter? Why not?" A statement of the advantages possessed by a mill already in operation as contrasted with those which would contribute to the success of a proposed mill was a favorite method of argument. Thus the Kershaw Gazette said: "Let us realize that what is good for Charleston in this respect is better for us. (Reference was had to the Charleston Manufacturing Company.) She has to use steam as a motive power, which, in the form of coal, has to be brought long distances and at great cost. We have but to harness the magnificent water-powers which are slipping idly by us, and the thing is done. In Charleston, it is the investment of capital on hand, seeking profitable employment. With us, it will be the creation of capital itself; for we venture the assertion that one hundred thousand dollars invested in a cotton factory at Camden would develop interests to more than double that amount." The saving of three-fourths of a cent per pound in the freight between Camden and Charleston would in itself bring a fair dividend upon the capital invested, it was said. "And yet Charleston expects to, and will, make money by what she is about to do. Let the people of Camden and of Kershaw County be up and doing in this matter."[196] These, then, were the grounds upon which domestic and more strictly local capital were solicited. It is proper now to notice with what success the appeals were made. In the most respectable trade summary published by any newspaper in the South, it was stated in September of 1881: "The industrial feature of the year is the rapid extension of cotton manufacturing in South Carolina in common with other Southern States (naming the plants and the capital invested in or subscribed to each.) A most gratifying feature connected with the establishment of cotton mills in the South is that the great bulk of the capital employed in their operation has been furnished by Southern people. Southern capitalists are putting their shoulders to the wheel.... More than three-fourths of the capital invested in the cotton mills since the war has been subscribed by our own people...."[197] The conclusion of Mr. Thompson after a review of the rise of cotton mills in North Carolina is interesting: He says that capital for almost 200 mills that grew up in twenty years "has come chiefly from a multitude of small investors within the State"; again, "The development of the cotton industry in North Carolina is a striking instance of the manner by (in) which a people in poor or moderate circumstances can establish manufactures." He gives credence to estimates by those he considers best informed that 90 per cent. of the capital for mills in North Carolina has come from residents of the State. "The industry is distinctly a home enterprise, founded and fostered by natives of the State."[198] The Rock Hill Cotton Factory was spoken of as the "pet" of the town. Its $100,000 of capital stock was owned in Rock Hill, with the exception of $15,000 held in Charleston.[199] Most of the stock of the Belmont Manufacturing Company, the enterprise projected by Mr. Winn in Sumter, already noticed, was taken in the town, and the few thousand dollars needed to increase the capacity above 2,000 spindles would come from Charleston, where President Winn was soliciting support.[200] The experience of Yorkville, another little town in South Carolina, is interesting, especially for the naive way in which it was related.[201] "... the 'Cotton Mill Campaign' is progressing satisfactorily in Yorkville. We heard an old citizen remark some days ago that he had never seen the town so thoroughly aroused and united.... Yorkville to all appearances is moving forward with a determined purpose to put into successful operation a cotton mill.... The shares have been placed at $500 each, and up to this writing about $25,000 have been subscribed. I would state that this amount has been raised within the limits of the town. A prospectus will be forthcoming this week and the doors will be thrown open to citizens generally of the county who may be able and disposed to assist in carrying forward the project." A similar instance is that of Walhalla, South Carolina, a very small place indeed. The people began to talk about a cotton manufactory, and at an informal meeting of a few of those interested nearly $10,000 was subscribed. "It is believed that as much as $25,000 will be subscribed in that neighborhood, and if the people of the county will join in the enterprise as much as $50,000 might be made available."[202] A typical notice is this one: "The enterprising citizens of the new town of Gaffney City have subscribed $40,000 towards building a cotton factory at that place."[203] Columbus, Georgia, was held up to praise for her loyal support of the cotton manufacturing industry. Before the war she was a little Lowell, it was said. The Federal army captured the place in 1865 and burned 60,000 bales of cotton and all the mills. "The very heart of the city was burned out, but nothing could extinguish its indomitable spirit." In fifteen years the mills had been rebuilt until they were taking annually nearly 17,000 bales of raw cotton, which was almost trebled in value by manufacture. "But the proudest boast of Columbus is that she rebuilt her mills by her own aid and money."[204] The statement of a railroad man in the New York Herald is valuable: "Mills for the weaving of the coarser cotton fabrics are now in successful operation in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and several of the Atlantic Coast States, all of which have been built by native labor, mostly with local capital and are managed by Southern men."[205] The Clifton Mill near Spartanburg, furnishes a fair example of the distribution of holdings of the capital stock of a larger enterprise. The joint stock company owning the mill operated under a special act of incorporation of the Legislature, exempting the property from taxation for a period of years, and relieving the stockholders of personal liability. The shares were of a par value of $100. and aggregated $500,000 of which $250,000 was paid in. The stock was held mostly in Spartanburg, Charleston, Boston and Baltimore. Spartanburg capitalists owned $200,000 worth of the stock, Charlestonians $150,000, and $50,000 was held in Boston.[206] To make the capital stock $500,000 most of the original stockholders had doubled their subscriptions.[207] For a factory near Gaffneys, South Carolina, which would need $500,000 capital stock to the amount of $200,000 would be subscribed for in Chester County, it was thought, and for the remaining $300,000 the North would be looked to.[208] Together with large subscription to the stock of the Atlanta Exposition from the North and East, went an early subscription of $20,000 in Atlanta.[209] While it might be considered under the heading of the cotton mill campaign, or denominated "Southern enterprise", I believe it will be most interesting to relate at this point briefly the facts in the Columbia canal scheme, as illustrating how domestic capital threw itself into the situation in which the South found herself in 1880, and the years immediately following. It is especially instructive to notice how Northern enterprise, while, so far superior to Southern initiative at all times before, after 1880 failed where in the South sometimes native energy succeeded. Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, is located at the falls of the Congaree River. Today there is a canal of about three miles in length, 60 or 75 feet in breadth, terminating at the lower part of the city. At the end of the canal is a duck mill. In 1868 the Messrs. Sprague, manufacturers of Rhode Island, took up a plan of developing this water power at Columbia, but "in consequence of their misfortunes, failed", and the whole matter of the canal passed to the hands of the State Canal Commission. Some prominent Columbians, hoping to revive the project, contributed money to the employment of one Mr. Holly, a first-rate hydraulic engineer of Rochester, New York. Mr. Holly was making surveys and progressing satisfactorily when, after three months, his engagement was discontinued. The reason for this was that Thompson and Nagle, engineers of Providence, on a tour of inspection through the South, were attracted to the water power at Columbia, and Mr. Thompson appealed to the State for franchises, in which appeal he was supported by the citizens of Columbia who had helped promote the modest work under Mr. Holly. On February 10, 1880, the final contract between Thompson and Nagle and the State Canal Commission was entered into; by its terms the engineers were to have the use of 200 convicts for three years, and at the expiration of this time they were to have developed at Gervais Street 15,000 horse power of water power, and have in operation a cotton mill of at least 16,000 spindles. Thompson and Nagle thought the necessary capital could be had at the North. They failed to secure it, and attributed their failure to the turmoil of the presidential campaign which was raging. Though this was probably a valid basis for the appeal to the Legislature for an extension of the rights granted them, the application for extension was denied. At this juncture, modifying the scope of the plans somewhat, the foremost citizens of Columbia took up the matter themselves, and organized the Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company to bring about the development.[210] Nightly meetings were held of those interested in the purchase of Mr. Thompson's charter. In one hour eleven subscribers gave $5,000 each--$55,000--toward the amount.[211] A few days later the subscriptions in Columbia had reached $117,600, and the expectation was that the sum set to be raised in Columbia--$125,000--would be exceeded.[212] Mention has been made several times of the Charleston Manufacturing Company. At the end of the first day $120,000 of its capital stock had been taken.[213] A little later the subscriptions to the stock had become $200,000 and more, mostly "for small amounts, which is what is desired. At the present rate the whole capital required will soon be subscribed." On July 6, the News and Courier had these two editorial paragraphs, the justifiable satisfaction pervading which is not to be mistaken: "We are authorized and requested to say that the whole of the stock of the Charleston Manufacturing Company, being half a million dollars, has been subscribed, and that the books are closed. It is useless, therefore, to continue to send in subscriptions. "We believe that more than three-fifths of the whole capital stock are held in Charleston, so that right here will come the bulk of the direct profit by the working of the company...." But before the Charleston Manufacturing Company had completed its organization another corporation had come into existence. This was a mill company promoted and most largely subscribed to by the Germans of Charleston, headed by Captain Tecklenburg. Not much was said about the concern in the papers, but of its $100,000 of capital stock, $75,000 were subscribed between January and May of 1881. This Palmetto Manufacturing Company, as it was called, was apparently, the most restricted in its stockholders of any mill that had been projected in the South to this time. Little towns, villages almost, did not fail of local enthusiasm and capital in small amounts.[214] In January of 1882 Fort Mill, in York County, was agitating the building of a cotton mill there, and $50,000 was set as the amount of stock to be secured.[215] Chester, a little earlier concluded her size would compel her to produce $300,000 for a mill within her borders.[216] A gentleman of Griffin, Georgia, offered to subscribe one fourth of the capital necessary to start a mill there.[217] Having seen the character of the arguments used in attracting native capital to the Southern cotton mill projects, and the extent of the response to these appeals, it is next necessary to turn to the other source of assistance--outside capital. Practically this may be termed Northern capital, although Englishmen interested themselves in the Southern ventures, and much money came from what were strictly termed, the Eastern States. In the minds of the people of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and those States, capital stock of a Southern mill held in Baltimore would be classed as appertaining to the North. It is proper first to consider the attitude of the South toward Northern capital; second, the appeals made to Northern capital; and third, the effect of these appeals or the response of them. In many aspects the rise of cotton mills in the South was less an industrial development than a subtle drama, powerful in its great motives. As William Garratt Brown has said of the history of the Southern States in their struggle upward after the war, it is not only to be studied with diligence of research, but is to be viewed with passion. The story of the cotton mills is filled with elemental emotions; the moving characters are splendid, clear-cut dramatic types; there are the villain, the hero, the schemer, the lover of his fellow men. The vices and virtues take their part--self-sacrifice, jealousy, hate, charity, revenge, bravery, honor, patriotism. The first act of the drama is constituted in the defeat of Hancock and the magnificent refusal of the South to be baffled--the oath to rebuild her shattered fortunes. The actors leave the stage with hope filling the future. The curtain rises on the second act to discover the chief spirits of the South setting systematically about "the cotton mill campaign"; their brethren converted to a belief that manufacturing the staple would transform the South, they turn in entreaty to their fellows for support, and the answer is loyal and gallant. The third act opens with a situation which tests the greatness of the players' faith in what they profess. Domestic resources exhausted or exhausting, or slow in response to the need, should the object for which they were striving be lessened in its meaning, importance and desirability? Should the cotton mills which were to mean so much be restricted to the means of the South, urged to the front by a splendid pride and devotion? Should the _esprit de corps_ which animated the Southerners, and the cheerfulness of their co-operation, with all that inspired these, when they failed of further effect, be considered to set the natural and proper limits to expansion? Was this to close the action? Or was the South, remembering her vows, to cling to her ambition undiminished? In spite of wounds yet fresh and burning, which in the name of pity and honor and self-esteem cried out to be nursed and comforted at home, could the South face again her enemies, and this time not just to challenge, which was hard, but to entreat, which was hardest? Would the South rise superior to pride, and be content with nothing short of the fullest heroism? Would she go to the North for capital for her young cotton mills? It was a silent struggle with herself. Little was uttered, but fundamental emotions were at play. When she decided to appeal for assistance in a work which she knew to be right, the climax of the drama had been reached. The crucial test had been endured, and the South had emerged triumphant. As has been said, few lines are there to indicate the feeling. It is largely dumb show. But we may look at the expressions that did occur to show the attitude of the South toward the question of Northern capital. The following manifesto is significant, involving as it does recognition of the necessity for a modification of political views if capital to be invested in the South, in the eyes of the North, was to be made safe: "In this state (South Carolina) we need capital and less party and politics.... Such men as Gould, Vanderbilt and Plant have invested millions of dollars in our railroads, manufactories and other enterprises, and have been remunerated in the face of a 'Solid South and a Solid North'. It is useless to say that millions have been driven off from like investments on account of personal whims and jealousies among prominent politicians in both parties. _Can the South afford to remain solid?_ This is the great question of the day, and it can be answered in the negative.... We want all the capital possible to develop our hidden and inexhaustible resources...."[218] And again: "So long as we have section unity in politics in the South its material prosperity will be checked and an absolute injury will be sustained through its entire commercial and agricultural dealings by exciting distrust of capital.... So taking the past and the present as indices for the future, it is plain to see that a dissolution of the solid South will cut at the very roots of all these wrangles between the North and the South in which sectionalism is involved."[219] The News and Courier wished to accord to every dollar of Northern capital invested in the South the same credit as was felt to be due home capital likewise contributed to the building up of the section. "Outside capital ... is beginning to seek this Southern field to aid in a more rapid and thorough work of restoration of dead or dormant enterprises. This movement needs a wise encouragement by public and private approval. Some of that credit which was accorded to the man who caused an additional blade of grass to grow should be given to everyone who affords facilities to manufacture an additional boll of cotton, or to carry it and other produce to market."[220] A gentleman connected with the International Cotton Exposition said: "We people of the South should embrace every opportunity which, like the opportunity afforded by this Exposition, will bring among us intelligent and interested observers of our industrial condition, resources and aptitudes. We have in the midst of us the raw material, so to speak, of a magnificent prosperity. We lack knowledge, population and capital. These may be slowly accumulated in the course of years, or they may be rapidly by well directed efforts to obtain them from beyond our own borders. We advocate the latter plan."[221] This is as business-like as anyone could desire. In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Francis Cogin reviewed the cotton manufacturing situation in Augusta, reciting the profits and asserting that the Southern mills had an advantage over those of the North such as would allow the former to earn dividends at a time when the latter would not be making a dollar. He concluded: "The future of cotton manufacture in the South will be limited simply by the good sense and courtesy of our own people. If we invite capital, make it safe here, and welcome those who bring it, we will get all we want."[222] The element of safety, here remarked, meant frequently safety to be brought about by political arrangements which would violate the established creed of the South; but sometimes ordinary business balance was pleaded for, as when a North Carolina paper quoted with approval from the Financial Chronicle: "Why cannot the South understand ... that the worst hindrance to her needed influx of industry and capital is uncertainty?"[223] In another chapter the degrees of intensity with which the cotton mill campaign was urged were seen to vary, roughly, with the distance from Columbia, South Carolina, say, as a center. There is a casual note in the little that found its way into the Richmond papers. This is to be remarked in Richmond's attitude toward Northern capital. It was not a stirring, vital thing in Virginia. For instance: "When we consider that the takings of the Continent from Lancashire are not piece goods, but yarns, why cannot we in the South make these yarns for the Continent ourselves and save to ourselves the profit of conversion now enjoyed by the English buyer of the raw material? Why not have a large and successful cotton manufacturing industry? "We are persuaded that once the folks in New England, who have surplus money awaiting employment, thoroughly investigate the points Richmond presents for a safe lodgment of that capital in manufacturing, the flow will start this way."[224] The attitude of W. H. Gannon was peculiar, but serves as an introduction to the mention of a phase of the subject which is important. Mr. Gannon, referred to in other connections, believed that Northern capital ought to be welcomed at the South as helping to develop an industry in which the South could stand without a rival. He favored inducing Northern manufacturers to set up plants bodily in the South. But, being the agent of a society which sought to colonize New England consumptive operatives in co-operative mill villages in the South, the settlement to be financially backed by a Northern capitalist or manufacturer, Mr. Gannon wished to place a modification upon the influx of capital to the Southern States. He asked whether the South should encourage an economic system with "large stock companies with hundreds of thousands of dollars, in which the operatives have no pecuniary interest in the plant, and from the active management of which we ourselves would be virtually excluded? (It is to be borne in mind that, as at present organized, the treasurer and selling agents in those great concerns necessarily control their direction); or is it better that we aid small co-operative concerns wherein the plant is owned in great part by the operatives, and in which we might familiarize ourselves with manufacturing in all its details?"[225] To contend for small mills, whether as above for the co-operative features suitable to them, or as a means of insuring proper caution in the development of the industry, frequently with entire sincerity, was nonetheless, I think, one evidence of dislike and distrust of Northern capital. H. P. Hammett, an old cotton mill man in South Carolina, said: "I do not share in the opinion commonly expressed that we must procure capital from the North to manufacture the cotton at the South. I would by no means exclude it, but gladly welcome it." But he worked around gradually to this concluding statement, relative to the report that English and Northern capitalists were seeking to locate mills on the water powers of the South: "--it would be unfortunate if most of the best powers should pass from the control of our own people before they knew it."[226] One more characteristic quotation, and the point is clear: Objection had been raised to the legislation forbidding the pooling of railroads, producing corners in freights with rising rates--the Sherman Act was probably meant. This was too much for the Winnsboro, South Carolina, News, the reaction of which resulted in these words: "Well enough is it to talk about repelling Northern capital by discriminating legislation, but far better have no Northern capital than have it holding native noses down to the grindstone. The half-starved wolf refused to change places with the sleek mastiff that wore a master's collar. Northern capital that brings Northern collars is not what we wish, and we will not have it as long as the people send incorruptible legislators to Columbia. We welcome foreign capital down here, provided it recognizes that the State is supreme...."[227] While it is easily understood how this attitude obtained--the wonder is, in fact, as already seen, that it was not more nearly universal than sporadic--the shortsightedness of such a policy for the South is apparent. For whatever outside capital reaped in dividends, the South reaped a larger advantage in collateral benefits socially. The gain to the communities where mills were located, supposing even that Northern capital was greatly in preponderance, were more than any money earnings, in sums however large, for it meant building for the future in material institutions that would prove dynamic. The cotton mills, and all they brought in their train, presaged a change in social ideals and economic outlook on which no price was to be set. If Mr. Baldwin, the railroad president, was a little early in making the statement in the middle months of 1881, surely his purpose was good, and his hopefulness was justified, when he said: "I say on the strength of recent and extended observation that whatever of antagonism to Northern capital may have existed in the South has disappeared. I never met it, at any time, but (I) am willing to grant that it may have existed sometime and somewhere."[228] As a corollary of the fact, recognized at the South, that whatever were the social gains resultant upon the establishment of cotton factories, capitalists put their money into these ventures because they believed the conditions of manufacture assured to them dividend, the South grounded its appeals to Northern investors in the hard physical advantages possessed by the South as a field for cotton manufacture, usually stressing superiorities over the Northern States. Northern capitalists were as eager to reap profits as were Southern projectors of mills to enlist their aid and interest, and so the claims of the South were easily investigated without the medium of propaganda. The widespread publicity given to the whole matter of Southern manufacturing in the cotton mill campaign, while no doubt it was registered in all parts of the North and East, was commenced and carried on as of concern to the South. Correspondence of the New York Times from Atlanta well illustrates this. It is to be noticed how quickly the preliminaries are got over--considerations and speculations in which Southern papers indulged to any length: "Manufacturing in the South is the one subject on which thinking men here speak with entire confidence. They have, most of them, some qualifying doubts as to agricultural progress, the cheapening of cotton production, the raising of home supplies, immigration, mining, and the many other now ambitions and enterprises which have engaged so much attention since the opening of the new era of industrial development. But concerning the future of manufactures, particularly of cotton, all men of intelligence and business experience speak with the assurance of inspired prophecy. It is, in fact, not easy to see why the mill should not seek the cotton instead of the cotton seeking the mill." With this introduction, the plunge is made into the supporting facts, which ought to turn the flow of capital toward the South. The first statement is that it is a dead waste to ship raw cotton to a mill 1,500 miles away, when it can be made into yarns or fabrics in factories distant from the field only short half-day's journey for a mule. The cost of sending the cotton to New England is reckoned, in expenses of bagging, ties, ginning, baling, storage, insurance, drayage, sampling, compressing, commissions of brokerage, waste in handling, and freight to amount to $14.90 per bale, or almost exactly 1-1/2 cents per pound which the New England manufacturer pays for the cotton above the price received by the planter. The estimate of $100,000,000 is given as the charge on the cotton crop of the South of 1879, on Edward Atkinson's figures, for the items mentioned. "... to the anxious capitalist tired of a petty 4 per cent. and seeking new and more profitable investments such facts are not without interest. They go to support the claim that the Southern mill has an advantage of from 10 to 20 per cent. over its New England competitor. But these advantages are by no means confined to the elimination of unnecessary charges for baling and transportation." Water power in the South, six dollars per horse power per annum, or in some instances given away for the location of a mill, as against a cost of twelve dollars in New England, is dwelt upon, with the greater utility of the Southern water powers due to the absence of freezes. The cheapness of labor is given prominent place, and the suitability of the climate of the South for cotton manufacture.[229] Exemption from taxation was a regular method of inviting outside as well as encouraging domestic investment. South Carolina exempted from taxation for a period of ten years all new machinery put in a factory. The Observer, of Raleigh, said editorially: "... North Carolina might well learn a lesson from the liberal course pursued in South Carolina and exempt from taxation for ten years all cotton factories within our borders. The tax does not net the State more than a thousand dollars or so, and the counties only double as much. But then there may be a great deal in it tending to induce Northern capitalists to make investments with us. Once here, they will be so pleased with our advantages that they will never think of leaving us."[230] As early as 1872 Georgia had passed a statute remitting taxes on cotton and woolen mills for a decade.[231] An indication of the comparative coolness of the States near Northern influence, already remarked, in a little controversy which took place in the Richmond papers over exemption of mills from taxation. Said "Hanover": "It is true that a law exempting capital invested in manufacturing, even for a limited period, is unconstitutional. But if it is necessary to that end, the constitution can be amended." The farmers would not object, he thought, since increased size and prosperity of the cities would mean increased gains to them in sale of produce. Richmond, he said, in addition to her natural advantages, needed to offer exemption from taxation to secure the desired capital. But "King William", in rejoinder, asserted that the city was more dependent upon the country than was the latter on the former; that exempting manufactures from taxation would mean increasing the tax for farmers; and that Richmond was doing well enough as it was. An indirect appeal to outside capital was felt to lie in a direct appeal to domestic capital, and the fact that foreign interest would be attracted by evidence of native faith in the mills was used as an argument in securing capital at home. Thus the Columbia Register, speaking of the plan of the Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company said editorially: "Columbia is now resolved to find money for herself, in the City and the State, for the development of the Canal and the establishment of factories. This will bring in outside capital later on. Nothing so attracts investors in other States as the knowledge that people on the ground have proved their faith in an undertaking by putting money in it."[232] Again it was said: "More than three-fourths of the capital invested in the cotton mills since the war has been subscribed by our own people, and new enterprises are opening up the way to a proud and successful future. The Southern investment encourages Northern capital to come into the same field, and the rate of progress is far more rapid than if it depended on either Southern savings or Northern capital alone."[233] A county paper told its readers: "We believe there is money enough in the county, here and there, to make at least a modest beginning so as to attract outside capital."[234] Having sought to define the attitude of the South toward Northern capital, and to indicate the nature of the appeals made to the outside capitalist, the last topic of this discussion is reached in an examination of the response of investors outside of the South to invitations, and the influx of capital when the opportunities for profit had become apparent. It must be plain that as the sections drew together with each year that removed the "reminders of the Civil War, the South was more welcoming in her attitude toward Northern capital, and the North more ready to invest in the South. This is recognized in an editorial of The News and Courier, headed The North and Europe Building Up the South": "It has been evident during the past two years that the distrust which had prevented capital from coming to the Southern States for investment has, in a large measure, been dissipated, and that the disposition to place money in the South in undertakings which promise a fair return is rapidly growing strong. Indeed, the process has gone on much more swiftly than is supposed by those who have not watched the course of events...." Continuing, the editorial quotes an estimate appearing in the New York Herald, that in the eighteen months preceding Northern and European capitalists subscribed to Southern enterprises located in the section east of the Mississippi and South of the James, $100,000,000. Of this amount, more than $90,000,000 was invested in railroads, without the $20,000,000 in the Cincinnati Southern. "Besides the investments in railroads there are the investments in cotton manufactures. There is hardly a city in the South in which there is not a new factory building organizing, and in nearly every case a considerable part of the capital is raised at the North."[235] The Baltimore American said the same thing: "The South is now the focal point of trade aspirations for the whole country. Capital and industrial activity are crowding upon it from every point of the compass. Every railroad system in the land is struggling to reach it...."[236] Outside capital invested in Southern cotton mills took two forms--subscriptions to the stock of mills managed in whole or in part by Southern men, and the actual setting up of plants in the South owned throughout by Northern promoters. Of these two, the second was of much the rarer occurrence. Capital not domestic came from two main sources, the North and East, and from England. There is no reason to believe that the English subscriptions, in spite of frequent allusions to England as a possible investor, were large or many. Pawtucket being the pioneer cotton manufacturing place in the North, Providence, which had come to virtually absorb the smaller city, took a great interest in the new mills of the South after the Civil War. A Providence mechanical engineer designed the mills and machinery for some of the most successful plants, and that its men were thinking of setting up mills of their own in the South is evidenced by the visit of Mr. Boyd to Georgia in 1881, when on behalf of New England capitalists he prospected the State for the best location for a large cotton factory.[237] A little later it was given as common knowledge that several of the largest manufacturing firms of Manchester, England, had secured sites for mills in the Southern States.[238] A London correspondent of the New York World remarked a clear disposition of English capital to seek investment in Southern manufactures.[239] The railroads, both the minor lines connecting individual points, and the great systems penetrating the South in this period, were influential in fostering and inaugurating manufactures. The little railroads helped the mills by affording transportation facilities and by making the inland water powers accessible, but the big ones could lend money and did of course make it their business to encourage manufacturing along their lines. President Baldwin, of the Louisville and Nashville, distinguished three ways in which the railroads assisted the sections by aiding mills in reach of their tracks, by uniting the parts of the country, and by affording a strong commercial backbone.[240] Hon. Gabriel Gannon urged the claims of railroads upon South Carolina as bringing capital to the Southern field; he attributed the erection of a mill with $500,000 capital largely to the railroad connections of Spartanburg.[241] An article already referred to said of the railroads in their bearing upon manufactures: "The railroad syndicates are of necessity interested in the general growth of the country through which the lines run, and will spare no pains to bring in immigrants and to encourage the opening of mines and the establishment of factories." In the majority of instances, Northern capitalists subscribed to the stock of Southern mills after a considerable proportion of the shares had been taken at the South. Similarly, a very usual juncture for the investment of Northern capital was a projected enlargement of a plant, machinery manufacturers taking stock in payment for equipment. Thus the Rock Hill Cotton Factory, the $100,000 capital stock of which was owned in Rock Hill and Charleston, South Carolina, in doubling the capital secured a large part of the additional $100,000 at the North.[242] A vigorous solicitor of Northern funds for Southern mills was D. L. Love, the pioneer cotton manufacturer of Huntsville, Alabama. Before going on one of his trips to New England "for continuous exertion for the establishment of factories in the South," he made a statement of his successes and plans. His project of a cotton mill at Vicksburg, Mississippi, was "on the high-road to success;" he had secured the organization of a company with $40,000 then subscribed to manufacture the staple at Jackson, Tennessee; he had about consummated a contract with New England capitalists to revive manufacture in a building at Corinth, Mississippi; a Connecticut manufacturer was looking for an opening at the South, and would be induced to settle at Huntsville; in all, he expected to bring about the investment of $1,000,000 in factories in Huntsville in the three years to come. Mr. Verdery, of Augusta, telegraphed from New York news of his success in seeking capital at the North. He "placed $85,000 of the new stock of the Enterprise Factory, and expects to book from $25,000 to $50,000 more in that city. He has had urgent requests from Boston, Philadelphia and other cities to go to those places, and has no doubt he will be able to obtain large subscriptions...."[243] Much is to be learned from a close study of the founding of the Charleston Manufacturing Company, which was a representative Southern mill, a child of the cotton mill campaign and an expression of the patriotism, statesmanship and farsightedness of the South of the day. It embodied in its history nearly every element and feature to be noticed in this study. In an advertisement calling for additional local subscriptions, the company made the statement: "Arrangements have been made with capitalists at the North to take such an amount of stock as may be necessary to ensure the success of this enterprise."[244] This statement is to be interpreted in connection with the announcement a fortnight later[245] of the complete organization of the company, with the exception of the election of a secretary and treasurer, two of the nine directors being W. H. Baldwin, Jr., and O. H. Sampson. "Maj. Smythe stated that a considerable amount of the stock was held in Baltimore and Boston, and for that reason Mr. W. H. Baldwin, Jr., of Baltimore, and Mr. C. H. Sampson, of Boston, had been nominated." Woodward, Baldwin and Norris were dry goods commission merchants of Baltimore, and "agents for the goods of several Southern cotton mills," and C. H. Sampson was the senior partner in the firm of Sampson & Co., of Boston, "dealers in yarns and also agents for several Southern cotton mills." Two days earlier Messrs. Sampson and Baldwin visited the site for the company's mill and expressed themselves as pleased with it. On the same day a meeting was held at which it was decided that the mill should manufacture standard sheetings and 3-ply yarns. In this instance the commission merchants in all probability were those who agreed "to take such an amount of stock as may be necessary to ensure the success of this enterprise," it being either agreed that in return for this they should get the brokerage of the mill, or even, perhaps, receiving their pay as agents in shares of stock, which meant taking dividends instead of commissions. The practise was a common one, and machinery manufacturers followed the same plan. It is not at all clear that it could have been avoided, and the net profits which were earned by the mills of the South in this period would seem to dispute the statement, that the commissions charged by firms which had thus gained control over the product were exorbitant, and left the mills barely enough earnings to continue to turn out the goods which was the instrument of their own exploitation. A final instance of Northern pecuniary interest in the development of cotton manufactures at the South may be noticed in the fact that New York bankers were expected to exceed the subscription of $25,000 to the International Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, alloted to the city. Among the large subscribers were Inman, Swan & Co., $2,000; Drexel, Morgan & Co., $1,000; Brown Bros. & Co., $1,000.[246] CHAPTER V _FINANCING THE MILLS_ The preceding chapter dealt with the capital of the Southern cotton mills in the period of their establishment. It was first noticed that local capital was naturally drawn upon before any other, and the character of the appeals to local resources and the response to these appeals were brought out. The second division of the report dealt with the attitude of the Southern mill promoters toward outside, usually Northern capital, the nature of the appeals made to Northern capital, and the extent of the response to these solicitations. Altogether, the surface aspects of the securing of capital were dealt with in a large way; in denominating the present chapter and that following: "The Financing of the Mills", it is intended to bring out the minutiae of the process, and to set forth the mechanism of the problem in its detail. In seeking to make clear the methods of securing capital in the South, it is convenient to consider first the soliciting of subscriptions to stock, and at the outset it will be well to give a notice that appeared in the financial advertising columns of the Charleston News and Courier at the beginning of the period of cotton mill growth. This notice is directed by "The Charleston Manufacturing Company to The Citizens of Charleston", and carries a contemporary flavor that is of service in an understanding of the problem. Given almost entire, it reads: "The necessity of establishing manufactures in our city, not only as a profitable means of utilizing capital, but more especially for furnishing employment to many in our midst, has been long felt. To put this matter into practical operation, a few gentlemen applied to the last Legislature and obtained a most favorable charter for 'The Charleston Manufacturing Company'. "The intention is to raise the capital necessary and to proceed forthwith with energy and activity to erect and put into operation a cotton factory and yarn mill which will be second to none in the South. The marked and rapid success of the Charleston Bagging Company shows what can be done here. "The undersigned, therefore, being those named in the charter and their associates, lay the matter before you, and respectfully urge your co-operation in carrying the work into effect. "For this purpose Books of Subscription to the Capital Stock of 'The Charleston Manufacturing Company', under the charter granted by the last Legislature, will be opened on Thursday next, 27th instant, at 10 o'clock A.M., at Office of the Carolina Savings Bank, corner of East Bay and Broad Streets, and continue open from day to day until the entire Capital stock is subscribed. Shares One Hundred Dollars each. Ten per cent. of the amount subscribed will be called for when all the Capital is taken and the Company organized. Further instalments will be called for as needed."[247] There follow the twenty names of those obtaining the charter. The dignified yet homely character of this advertisement is made even more intimate by a dispatch from the capital, Columbia, to the same paper two months later, in which it is announced that over $90,000 had been subscribed in amounts of $2,500 and $5,000 to the project of "The Columbia and Lexington Water-Power Company" (a plan for a large development of cotton mills). The charter provided for a minimum capital of $500,000 and a maximum of $1,000,000. "The present object (in opening books of subscription before calling upon first subscribers for more) is to give everybody in the State an equal chance.... It is designed to visit each county of the State, with a view of making it as far as possible a State institution. It is expected that the $500,000 necessary can be easily secured in the State, but as much in addition will be welcomed to complete the capital stock ... nearly every man who is able will contribute to its (the undertaking's) speedy fruition." There is added the significant circumstance that "Governor Hagood will accompany the committee when they go to Charleston (to open books there) and use his influence in behalf of the enterprise."[248] The plant of the Pelzer Manufacturing Company is in the so-called up-country of South Carolina, but its projectors were Charlestonians, and Charleston was the financial center of the State and of the South, indeed, at that time. Consequently books of subscription were opened in Charleston,[249] rather than in Greenville or Spartanburg, the little cities they were then, near the water power which should drive the mill. Ten per cent. of the amount subscribed would be required in cash.[250] The time necessary to secure the needed subscriptions may be checked up by following the optimistic notices that appeared in the paper from day to day as the capital grew. In this instance books were opened on January 25th, and on the twenty-seventh it was published that "the subscriptions to the stock ... amounted yesterday to $30,000, leaving but $50,000 to be subscribed. The books remain open today...." Toward the Trough Shoals (South Carolina) mill project of Walker, Fleming & Co., $50,000 was subscribed in capital stock in one week.[251] Subscriptions to the Charleston Manufacturing Company, pursuant to the advertisement already quoted, were first received on January 27th; by February 4th, 189 subscribers had taken stock to the amount of $206,600.[252] Two days later the amount had reached $220,200 representing 195 shareholders.[253] Mr. Converse, one of the proprietors of the Glendale Factory, which had proved itself successful, bought up the site of the Rolling Mill of Mr. Boles, at Hurricane Shoals, seven miles from Spartanburg; the first $200,000 was quickly subscribed for, and books of subscription for $300,000 additional stock were opened January 1st; February 14th they were closed, the amount having been taken.[254] This suggests a practise which was and still is frequent in the development of cotton mills in the South, namely, that of increasing the capital stock over the amount first proposed, as soon as the original sum had been subscribed, or when subscriptions somewhat in excess of the intended maximum had been received. In the case above, the additional stock was larger by $100,000 than the amount first offered. The Cannon Cotton Mill, Concord, North Carolina, was organized with a capital of $75,000. Before the building was completed, the capital stock was increased to $90,000 or so, most of the stockholders adding to the amount of their subscriptions.[255] The Seminole Mill, now erecting at Gastonia, was designed to have $175,000 capital. Mr. Armstrong, its projector, saw that more persons wanted stock, and he increased the capitalization to $225,000. The plant was intended first to have 10,000 spindles, later increased to 12,000 or 15,000 spindles.[256] Similarly, some others of the new mills under construction in Gastonia are capitalized above the amount named in their charters.[257] A very usual occasion for increase in the capital stock of a mill company has been the enlargement of the plant. Thus the Enterprise Factory, Augusta, Georgia, declared a 10 per cent. dividend and decided to increase its capacity by 125 per cent. or more.[258] In this case the entire $350,000 extra capital stock was being negotiated for by M. J. Verdery & Co., brokers of Augusta; it was understood that one man and his friends would take stock to the amount of $140,000.[259] If the statement of a rather flambuoyant trade review of three years later may be trusted, the entire stock of this mill after enlargement was $500,000 which would make the increase in stock $200,000 greater than the original capital.[260] It is probable that the stock was doubled to bring it up to $500,000;[261] three months after the decision to increase the stock, it appears, all but $50,000 had been secured, and this would be placed within the week. The directors of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad took $95,000 of the stock--"of course as individuals."[262] Evidently, the plan of the brokers did not carry through, and the mill corporation put its stock regularly up for subscription. The mill projected by Walker, Fleming & Co., already mentioned, was intended to have $100,000 capital as a beginning, this later to be increased to $200,000. At a meeting of the organizers of the Salisbury Cotton Mills, held in November of 1887, "The capital stock was upon motion fixed at not less than $50,000, and not exceeding $100,000."[263] A month later at a meeting of the subscribers, it appeared that $66,400 had been subscribed.[264] Later the stock was increased; those soliciting subscriptions to the original stock experienced no difficulty in securing increase of these subscriptions. By March, 1893, the capital stock of the company had reached $250,000.[265] This last instance accords with what was told me by a gentleman of wide experience in the business, that the plants now having a stock of $100,000, etc., got their large capitalization by selling additional stock to the original subscribers at a reduction--say at 75 or 80 when the par was 100. The ventures were profitable generally, and the stock was maintained at its par value.[266] The character of the promoters of a venture always carries weight, but this was peculiarly true in the establishment of cotton mills in the South. Today, truly prominent men are known all over this State, and all over the section. Thirty-five years ago this was the fact even more than at present; the signatures to prospectuses were important through personal qualities as well as through business reputation. When it was said that those back of the scheme to build a factory in York County, South Carolina, were "among the most reliable and responsible men" in the county, the statement probably carried as much earnest of good faith as the accompanying notice that $25,000 toward $75,000 had already been taken.[267] The size of the plant to be erected was given consideration in financing a mill, though this did not enter to the extent that one would think. Opposite views were held as to the practicability of financing small mills. As far back as 1849 it seems natural to find a plan for financing a mill, by which fifteen planters would take each $4,000 worth of stock, select a site near their plantations, each detail three men, making a building force of forty-five, with teams and an overseer and general manager, the latter one of the stock-holders; these proceeding to put up a wooden building of three rooms.[268] A persistence of the economy which suggested this arrangement is reflected, perhaps, in an editorial of The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, thirty years later, in which it is pointed out: "The people of the South who have money to put into manufacturing enterprises should build spinning mills. The South is not rich enough to do much weaving, but there is no reason why it should not convert a good part of the great crop into yarns.... There is plenty of surplus money in the South with which to establish spinning mills.... We do not refer now to mammoth mills, but to little neighborhood spinning mills."[269] The mills about Greenville are nearly all of considerable size. This is due perhaps to the effect of the example of the failure of the Huguenot and Campderdown mills, small ventures, both located within the city limits, as contrasted with the success of Pelzer, built later, and in the depths of the country. It is said to be the impression around Greenville that the small mill is hard to finance; so far from considering the small project suitable to the financial strength of the community in which the plant is proposed to be located, the reason for the lack of favor for small concerns was given the writer in the opinion that they could not attract outside capital, and that consolidations had recently resulted in South Carolina from this fact.[270] For different reasons, principally considerations of managements, there is now a well discerned tendency in the Carolinas, at least, back to the small mill. Mention has been made of the power of reputation in the financing of a cotton mill. Not only was this stressed in suitable ways by those concerned in securing funds directly, but it was used in another way. This may be conveniently illustrated by the history of the great mill at Albemarle, North Carolina. Some years ago this village was an isolated one of five or six hundred inhabitants. A family of planters near the place, the Efirds, wanted to see a cotton mill located at Albemarle. They were probably as little able to attract capital as the village was uninviting to the industrialist. In this situation, the Efirds approached J. W. Cannon, of Concord, a town nearby, who had succeeded in the cotton manufacturing business and had extended his interests to mills in other places, and asked him to take the presidency of the mill proposed, and subscribe to $10,000 of stock. Mr. Cannon was not much inclined to go into the venture, but the Albemarle family showed determination. The plant today is a mile long, and represents an investment of some $3,000,000.[271] It is said that most of Mr. Cannon's mills outside of Concord had birth in the minds of people of the several communities; for instance, a merchant named Petterson interested him in a mill at China Grove.[272] One of the most interesting cotton mills in the Southern States is that of the Gaffney, South Carolina, Manufacturing Company. The mill was conceived by a building contractor of the place while working upon churchs and cottages in a nearby mill village, that of Clifton. When he had planted his idea in the minds of the leading men of Gaffney, spurred them to local subscription and then to seeking money at the North, and because receiving small encouragement in New York and Philadelphia, their enthusiasm subsided, Mr. Baker, considering home enterprise and outside assistance unavailing, went to Mr. Converse, head of the successful Clifton Mill, and asked him to take over the Gaffney project at the point at which it had been dropped. Mr. Converse was aged, and felt himself overburdened with mill cares, but he encouraged the Gaffney man in his ambition, saying that mills in the South would pay better dividends than Northern mills, either large or small. Meantime, however, Mr. Baker had come to know H. D. Wheat, the superintendent at Clifton. The indomitable promoter had hard work to persuade the practical-minded superintendent to leave his good position at Clifton for the uncertain fortune of a factory at a town which had failed to establish the mill itself, and could not interest Northern support; but finally, Mr. Wheat agreed to raise $20,000 besides his own subscription, to add to the subscriptions still in force at Gaffney, and to take charge of the mill as its active president. The $20,000 was invested by friends of Mr. Wheat at Clifton and at Kings Mountain, nearby. Directors were soon elected, and the imported president with his contributions to the venture, was installed.[273] At the commencement of the great period of cotton mill building in the South, every town which could make any pretensions to ability to establish a mill was engaging the utmost resources of the moneyed men it had--capital was hardly seeking opportunities for investment. Sometimes, however, a place with almost no resources and with only a few enterprising citizens, perhaps, would advertise itself openly as an inviting chance. An advertisement in the winter of 1881 read: "We will give to a Cotton Manufacturing Company, that will organize and locate at Landsford, S.C., with a capital of $300,000 a site, 20 acres of land and 300 horse water power." Those interested were directed to apply for particulars to three gentlemen living respectively in Rock Hill, Landsford and Charleston.[274] These were doubtless promoters who had settled on this particular town as worth effort, or who were burdened with real estate of no value unless the town could be built up. But these instances were the exception at a time when everybody was too much concerned with the cotton mill in his own town, to think of the needs of another place. There is a notable instance of the bidding of one place against another for a proposed cotton mill, however, in recent years. Captain Ellison A. Smythe announced that he would put up a fine goods mill as all of his interests in the Piedmont of South Carolina have prospered, there was keen rivalry between Greenville and Laurens for the plant. There were campaigns in both places, much enthusiasm being evidenced; Greenville was able to offer the best proposition, and got the Dunean Mill.[275] In the methods of securing capital at home, two co-operative schemes are to be considered. The plan that comes first to mind as co-operative is said by Mr. Holland Thompson book to have been often employed in the building of cotton mills in North Carolina; shares would be of $100 par value, made payable in weekly instalments of one dollar, fifty or even twenty-five cents, thus attracting the very small investor--operatives took shares under such an arrangement. The last payment plan requires eight years for completion, as against four or two for the first plans; those wishing to do so might pay cash, less six per cent. for the aver payment-time, the discount bringing the share down to $89.60 plus.[276] The second mill--the Cabarrus--built by Mr. Cannon at Concord, North Carolina, was financed in this manner. Its plant was an old wood-working and iron establishment slightly modified to house cotton machinery; its capital stock was only $15,000 one-half paid up, and the other half payable in fifty cents weekly instalments, the whole to be paid in two years. Mr. Hartsell of Concord, remembers seeing the old secretary-treasurer of the mill going about the town with his collection books under his arm.[277] The Spartan Mills, Spartanburg, South Carolina, were rected under a building and loan scheme which gave the mill management little ready money.[278] Besides the expense of collecting the small and frequent payments, serious disadvantages might result from such a method of financing a mill. For instance, in the case of the Spartan Mills, John H. Montgomery, the projector, was persuaded to buy the old machinery of a mill at Newberryport, Massachusetts; he lacked capital to purchase machinery otherwise, and the Newberryport mill took payment in stock. The machinery thus installed was worn out, out of date, showed quick deterioration and proved very expensive.[279] The other co-operative plan is said to have been followed in the case of a good many South Carolina mills. All of those who might contribute to the erection of the plant--dealers in lumber, paint, tin, brick, etc.,--would be asked the question: "If you get this contract, how much stock will you take?"[280] Some account has been given of the additional issues of stock on account of extensions in plant. There is evidence that very often, however, increases in capacity were made through earnings and credit rather than by the issue of more stock. Indeed, the latter method has been much more frequently followed, if the opinion of one of the best informed of the younger cotton mill men is to be taken.[281] He recited in support of his contention the typical case of the 5,000 spindle mill at Williamston, South Carolina, which issued extra stock to $30,000 and increased its spindleage to 15,000. Since then, the plant has grown to have 32,000 spindles, its capital standing at $300,000; this was accomplished through earnings and credit. It is fair to say that the normal capitalization of a plant of 32,000 spindles would be something in excess of $600,000, computing the cost at $20 to the spindle. The first two-story addition of the Gaffney Manufacturing Company was rected upon earnings of the original plant in the first three years of its operation.[282] The finishing plant of the same mill, erected some years later, had to be dismanteled and given over to looms because the stockholders in the company would not give the president the required support, and the debt incurred was pressing.[283] The Young-Hartsell Mill, at Concord, North Carolina, has been built up in plant by putting earnings back into the factory. Considerable enlargement, on the most approved lines, has recently been completed, the end of the extension being weatherboarded to allow of easy further addition.[284] The capital stock of the Arlington Mill, Gastonia, organized by G. W. Ragan and some of his friends who had withdrawn their holdings in the Trenton Mill, at the same town, was over-subscribed in fifteen minutes. At organization, the stock was fixed at $130,000 for 3,000 spindles; in three years an additional stock dividend of $45,000 was issued, and the spindleage increased to 9,500 and later still to 12,000.[285] There evidently was not here, as it has been intimated there sometimes was, an impetus toward expansion by reason of over-subscription at the time of organization, for the additional stock issued, presumably at least, went automatically to the original subscribers. It was a case of extension from earnings. The mills established at the opening of the era made frequently huge profits, which made increases in size from earnings to the natural course.[286] Also, just as earnings have in such cases quickened plant extension, so the investment of profits back into the business has in turn increased efficiency and earnings. The capital of the Salisbury Mill, as has been said, has now reached $250,000, but much of the increase in size of the plant has come by the agency of gains reinvested.[287] Having seen some of the ways in which capital was secured from Southern sources, the paragraphs following deal with the means through which capital was induced to come to the Southern cotton mills from without the section. From a reading of the preceding chapter, the question might naturally be asked: By just what methods did a Southerner anxious to establish a cotton mill secure financial assistance at the North? Not a few Southern mills were projected by merchants, frequently small country store-keepers, as they would be called; but it is to be borne in mind that the proprietor of a general store in a rural community or in a small town in the South occupies a position very different from that of the small merchant elsewhere. The economy of the neighborhood pivots upon him--he is the agent of the fertilizer manufacturers, and extends, credit for fertilizers and food until the cotton crop is gathered; he probably markets the cotton when the bales are hauled. He is the link between the great sphere of business without and the little world of affairs within. What the country lawyer is as real estate broker and arbiter of landed fortunes, that, and a great deal more, is the country merchant in all other departments of material activity. Holding, as he did, the contacts of the community with moneyed interests without, it was natural that the merchant should often be the leader, and also natural that he should turn to his mercantile connections for assistance. One case will illustrate how this worked out. James W. Cannon was born at or near the little place of Concord, North Carolina. He early went into a general store as clerk, and through successive stages, largely aided by his attention to business and his civility, he came to own a general merchandise business of his own in the town. He was in the habit of buying brogans from the house of Albert Stone; cloth he got from Leo Loeb, and he had an arrangement by which he shipped raw cotton to William Wood and Son. He decided to build a cotton mill at Concord--really the first at the place belonging to the great period of establishment--and got some $60,000 in subscriptions to stock locally. This was not sufficient capital, $75,000 being aimed for. Mr. Cannon under these conditions went to Stone, to Loeb and to Wood and Son and explained his plans. The mill would enable the town of Concord to grow, and he could do a larger business with each of them. Whether moved by this reasoning, or influenced by the fact, that it was almost worth the amount of the subscription to keep Cannon's business and good will, each of the three firms subscribed to $5,000 worth of stock.[288] Judging from the statement made by an old gentleman who has seen the whole development of Mr. Cannon's interests, he has held to these former merchant-day connections, though he is now as far from country store-keeping as could well be imagined. After explaining that Mr. Cannon in the early days was merchandising and could get money from his mercantile connections at the North, he said that retired wholesale merchants of Philadelphia, New York and Boston have so much confidence in him that they give him any amount of capital he needs.[289] Out of 1,287 shares of the Young-Hartsell Mill at the same town, 1,250 are held by North Carolinians. The other 37 shares are owned in Baltimore. Mr. Hartsell was born on a farm near Concord, and some thirty years ago came to town and went in business. In this way he knew the Baltimore merchants who hold 35 of the thirty-seven shares, the other two shares belonging now to the son of one of these men. Of the two sources[290] of outside assistance to Southern Cotton Mills, cotton goods commission houses and manufacturers of cotton machinery were more often appealed to for capital in financing a mill than were firms with which the Southerner had mercantile relations. The influence of the commission houses and machinery manufacturers upon the rise, development and degree of success of cotton manufactures in the Southern States is of the first rank of importance, and not the least interesting phase of their connection with the industry is the way in which they were approached for help. A South Carolinian, say, wishing Northern capital for a cotton mill which he was projecting, would usually have associated with him some man who had experience in manufacturing in the State. The manufacturer would introduce the projector to the commission merchant in New York who was serving his mill. The Southern promoter thus put upon the track would make the best bargain in New York that he could, that is to say, find the commission house which would take the largest block of stock and lend the most money. He would, similarly, be introduced to machinery manufacturers, and might induce several to become parties to his venture.[291] Commission houses and cotton machinery manufacturing companies were not, however, making yarns and cloth. Other things apart, their business was selling the product and supplying the means of production, rather than manufacturing goods. They were willing, and sometimes anxious, to lend their assistance to a proposed mill to get its business, but they were not ordinarily interested in establishing mills. Consequently, the promoter had to have his home money first. He would secure, say, for the mill of ordinary size, $50,000 locally, and would go to the machinery people and say he had this backing, asking whether they would sell him the machinery, and what amount of the payment they would be willing to take in stock.[292] The history of the relations of the Gaffney Manufacturing Company with commission houses is instructive. When Mr. Baker commenced the agitation in Gaffney for a cotton mill, A. N. Wood was doing a sort of private banking and investment business in the work. A fund of about $50,000 was subscribed, Mr. Wood made president of the organization, and a charter applied for.[293] Mr. Wood went North to seek additional capital, going to Baltimore and New York. In Baltimore he called upon Woodward Baldwin & Co., Mr. Baldwin was very cordial, and when the plans of the Gaffney people had been explained to him, took $5,000 of the stock right away, with no strings tied to the subscription. It was not specifically understood that the firm was to have the account of the mill, but Mr. Wood supposes Mr. Baldwin expected it, and that probably it would have been given to his house. Mr. Wood introduced himself to the chief member of another firm, of whom he knew as commission merchant for the Pacolet Manufacturing Company in South Carolina. In this case, the promise of the account was wanted, but to this Mr. Wood did not agree. Mr. Wood said that it was attempted from the outset to take advantage of the position in which he was placed.[294] Having noticed to this extent the minutiae of securing assistance from commission houses and machinery manufacturers, it will be interesting to observe in general the part played by such firms in the establishment of mills in the South. First of commission houses. It is possible to be deceived as to the wealth of Southern communities thirty-five years ago by a recital of the capitalization of the mills they built, coupled with the statement that a large proportion of the stockholders were local people, and that nearly all of the paid-up capital was from the neighborhood or State. There might well be a greater number of small local investors, and one or two Northern firms with quite as large holdings as all these together; the capital paid in might be of local origin, but only a small proportion might be paid up,[295] the rest representing the holdings of commission houses and machinery manufacturers in one way and another. If it be asked how the mills hoped to succeed with so little paid-up capital, the answer lies partly in the fact of reliance upon earnings to take care of debt, and partly in the scarce provision of working capital. The influence of the commission house on the Southern cotton mill is a subject of the deepest interest, and this might be drawn out in some detail under a discussion of the marketing of the product of the mills. Whether the commission houses' participation, as marketing agents, or as stockholders with a voice in the affairs of the company, was on the whole helpful or detrimental is of concern where only incidentally as pertaining to those involved in the launching of the enterprises. For the present purpose, that the commission merchant was an investor is enough, except only for the consideration as to whether it were wise to invite his connection in the first place. One practical-minded man declared that the mills could not have existed without the commission houses, be their influence good or bad, and dismissed the matter with this.[296] A mill president grown old in the business in North Carolina said that the Southern mills could not have gotten along at all without the commission houses at first; that not only in their establishment, but in selling their product, they needed an influential agent.[297] After explaining that Northern commission houses had supplied much of the capital for the developing of the cotton manufacturing in his region, another mill president, and one who has had experience of every phase of the mills' growth, said: "Their influence (that of the commission houses) was good; you ought to praise always the bridge that carried you over."[298] The editor of one of the chief textile periodicals in North Carolina said that there were cases where the commission houses hurt the profits of the mills, but they did start the mills.[299] Another North Carolinian, of conservative turn of mind and much practical knowledge, gave a parallel statement, that even as a general rule the commission houses formerly had a baleful influence, though this is no longer the case; that they have had the effect of promoting the development of mills in the South.[300] A mill treasurer in what is perhaps the most progressive and ambitious spinning district of the South, gave it as his belief that as a whole, while there are commission houses and commission houses, their influence on the Southern textile industry had been bad. Asked whether there were not many Southern mills that would not have come into existence but for the aid of the commission houses, he answered yes, but that such mills were built as feeders for a commission house and not to earn money for the local stockholders.[301] Reference has been made to the effort of Mr. Wood to secure capital from commission firms for the Gaffney Manufacturing Company. He returned to the South discouraged, and the mill project for Gaffney was dropped for the time. When it was later revived, no subscriptions were sought from commission houses. Mr. Wood said: "We wanted to be free and do as we pleased. A mill is very unfortunate to be controlled by a commission house. have not done as well as others."[302] The South Carolinian well versed in the financial affairs and history of cotton mills in the South, computes that in the cases where the mill projector sought the commission house and machinery manufacturer, from 40 to 50 per cent. of the total capital was supplied by them. Mr. Separtk, of Gastonia, already quoted as opposed to the participation of commission houses in the financial affairs of Southern mills, said that in the two mills of which he is treasurer and the one of which he is vice-president, no stock is owned by commission houses, and that "They can't get it." The way to rid a mill of the influence of a commission house, he said, is to pay what is owed. If this debt is held by the commission house in the shape of a majority of the shares, they must be bought at an exorbitant figure, but nonetheless bought.[303] One of the principal bankers of Raleigh asserted with some feeling that the commission houses have been an incubus on the cotton mills of the South; it is true, partially, that many mills would not have come into existance without them, but it is also true that the commission houses put into the hands of the mill projectors little real money; they would take bonds or advance working capital after the _capital_ stock of the mill was exhausted in erecting the plant, but when they advanced money, it was usually on goods sent them to sell, and then only two-thirds of the value of the goods would be advanced.[304] This statement is rather borne out by information given by a member of a commission firm which has gone into the South with all its interests, and would therefore be inclined, one would suppose, to lend sympathetic ear to Southern mills in their financing problems, namely, that usually the commission house stands to the mill in the position of creditor rather than of shareholder, for it must have a liquid and not a fixed capital; the commission house arranges loans, discounts loans, and lends direct.[305] It would appear from one source that when a commission firm lent money to a mill, it did not take a mortgage on the plant, for this would have destroyed its credit. They had, in fact, hardly any security other than the value of the plant.[306] A young lawyer whose firm has had considerable to do with suits over cotton mill securities, referred to the fact that in the process of starting a mill capital is often depleted before goods are got on the market; at this critical juncture, he said, come to the commission men. Their part has not by any means always been for the good of the people of the South. They get a breeches hold on the president of a mill. The mill may in time go up, but they will have cleared on their commissions.[307] For a reason which will appear in a moment, the same importance, from a financing standpoint, does not attach to the machinery manufacturers in their relation to the Southern cotton mills as immediately applies in the case of commission firms. There seems to be a strange diversity of opinion as to the extent of the participation of machinery manufacturers in the financing of the mills. A mill man of Anderson, South Carolina, said that the machinery people have played a larger part than the commission houses in the establishment of Southern mills; that the machinery business was at a standstill in New England at the time of the great activity in mill building in the Southern States, and the machinery manufacturers began to look about for mills to equip.[308] Another informant stated that the machinery manufacturers are not found to be very heavy stockholders; that the stock is sometimes not even in the name of the machinery manufacturing company, but is held by the president and directors of the company.[309] A third, whose testimony, however, may be questioned very seriously on this point, went so far as to say that cotton machinery manufacturers took no stock in the mills of the South to amount to anything; nobody asked them to take stock; the machinery was bought outright.[310] Whatever the extent of the participation of the manufacturers of the machinery in the building of the mills in which it was installed, their arrangement for payment seems to have included three means of reimbursements--stock, cash and time notes; a mill might have purchased machinery from several firms under such agreements.[311] It is said that those mills which bought their machinery for cash, rather than seeking to make the machinery manufacturers to greater or less degree a party to the venture, received rebates and many privileges and advantages, though the mill men were assured, particularly those projecting new plants, that the time payment method was just as advantageous to them.[312] While the fact might better find place in the discussion of the part played by machinery manufacturers and commission houses in the extension of plants, it may be mentioned here, and in conclusion of this particular topic, that Southerners projecting mills were sometimes encouraged, by the offers of machinery manufacturers to sell machinery for stock and on time, to make their plants too large.[313] The opinion was held by a well-informed man very close to the whole Southern industry that the influence of the machinery manufacturers has been good, except that they caused the mills to expand beyond wise limits; they have not exploited the mills otherwise.[314] It has been said above that the same importance did not attach, from a financing standpoint, to the taking of stock by machinery manufacturers as applied in the case of commission houses. The reason for this is that, generally speaking, the machinery manufacturers have not held their shares for long, while the commission firms have usually been stockholders over a period of years, their holdings sometimes diminishing and sometimes decreasing, but their influence in the affairs of the mills being always felt. A banker's experience was that generally machinery manufacturers taking stock in a mill sold it almost immediately at a discount; it is not reasonable to suppose that a machinery manufacturer would wish to take stock; he did it in order to sell his machinery.[315] An interesting explanation of the statement that the machinery manufacturers were heavier stockholders in the Southern mills than the commission houses is implied in a remark made by Mr. Thackston, of Greenville, a stock broker already quoted; the machinery men must get their profits quickly; these they received partly in the cash payment, two-thirds of the price of the machinery; their shares may have been numerous for either or both of two reasons--they may have been forced to take considerable stock in consequence of making the largest possible sale of machinery, which in turn was made necessary if they were to get a profit out of the proportion of the price paid in cash, or knowing that they must look forward to a quick sale at discount, they figured this into their price to the mill man, and counted upon deriving a profit from as large a number of shares as they could get in payment.[316] The commission men, on the other hand, must expect to get their returns slowly,[317] either through dividends as shareholders, or through profits from the handling of the product of the plant, or by both of these means; in the former case, the necessity of their holding their shares is obvious; in the latter case, to have a voice in the affairs of the mill, particularly in the annual elections and in instances where increased profits from commissions must come through extension of output, active connection with the affairs of the mill must be maintained.[318] The machinery men have in a few cases held the stock they have taken in a mill.[319] An instance of this is seen in the fact that D. A. Tompkins, until a few years ago, the representative in Charlotte, North Carolina, of many Northern machinery manufactures, was obliged to have sold two or three mills to which he had supplied machinery and taken payment partly in stock; ordinarily the machinery manufacturers would not stay in long enough for the first flush of establishment to dwindle to failure, taking away all possibility of sale with minimum discount losses.[320] Another case in which the machinery manufacturers have retained their stock, and a very notable one, is that of the great Loray, known as the "Million Dollar Mill," at Gastonia, North Carolina. The mill is controlled by machinery makers, holding preferred stock, of which there is an actual majority; they became thus heavily involved when the mill was reorganized incident to the doubling of its capacity, to which more detailed reference appears later. The president of the mill is a representative of a large machinery manufacturing concern, and, in the affairs of the mill, speaks for another great firm.[321] Before concluding this division of the subject, it is proper to say something of borrowing particularly from banks, in the financing of the mills. Soon after the outbreak of the war in Europe, the greatest of the cotton mill mergers in the South came to disruption. A committee representing New England manufacturers made an investigation into the affairs of the mills concerned in the combination and found that, in its opinion, the mills of the South have an advantage over mills in other parts of the country, particularly New England, amounting to 25 per cent. in labor, and 50 per cent. in respect to taxes. The statement was made by the committee that, in spite of these superiorities of situation, the cotton mills in the South make less than the mills of New England because, in considerable measure, of poor financing, particularly poor borrowing facilities; their credit is not good.[322] Northern mills can borrow money frequently at 2 or 3 per cent. less than Southern mills even today, though the credit of the Southern manufacturies has steadily risen. It is true that New England mill paper will sell cheaper, almost invariably, than Southern mill paper.[323] In spite of this disadvantage, however, if its credit is good, a Southern mill can borrow money at 4-1/2 or 5 per cent. It was formerly, early in the period, frequently the case that a mill company borrowed money to augment local subscriptions and the assistance given by commission houses and machinery manufacturers, to put up the plant.[324] Borrowing for this purpose is not often done today--the time of very large earnings, due to superior local advantages unmarred by competition, and to the peculiar conditions of manufacture then, which made it possible to pay off a plant debt, is passed; money is still sometimes borrowed for extensions of plant, however. But while it was once a rule to borrow all the working capital, in addition probably to some of the fixed capital, working capital has not passed from this category; the mills still borrow working capital at certain periods.[325] Richmond has done more than any Southern city in recent years, not excepting Baltimore, to assist the cotton mills of the section in their operation and growth. The mills with which one young official is connected, centering about Anderson, South Carolina, have at some seasons of the year owed Richmond as much as $3,000,000 or even $4,000,000. He said that the First National Bank of Richmond, probably has more Southern cotton mill paper than all the banks of Atlanta combined.[326] The next paragraphs consider the principal channels through which capital came to the development of the Southern industry from outside sources, more or less of its own accord, rather than being the subject of solicitation on the part of the Southern manufacturers. Undoubtedly, one of the chief influences contributing to the physical growth of the cotton manufacturing industry of the South has been the willingness, perhaps the eagerness, of commission firms and manufacturers of cotton machinery to encourage enlargements and extensions of plants; and in the enumeration of counts against these houses, this consideration figures in the mind of the Southern mill man. When the second and effective agitation for a cotton mill at Gaffney, already referred to, was proving successful, it was determined not to seek aid from commission merchants because they "--want too many enlargements; they want more goods; the more they sell, the more they get. This does not always suit the local stockholders."[327] An interesting allusion, showing the effect of the desire for enlargment on the part by commission houses and machinery manufacturers, is contained in an Augusta dispatch to The News and Courier, Charleston, in April, 1881. "At the meeting of the Sibley Manufacturing Company today (it was the first annual meeting of the stockholders)[328] it was decided to increase the capital stock to one million dollars. Stock for the additional amount will first be offered, and, if this is not promptly taken, seven per cent. bonds will be issued." The resolution for the increase was offered by Mr. Samuel Keyser of New York, and seconded by Mr. David Sinton, of Cincinnati, two of the largest stockholders in the company.[329] Mr. Keyser and Mr. Sinton were two of the six directors of the company.[330] The mill was first planned to be three stories high, with 23,936 spindles and 672 looms; the doubled capitalization was to allow of an increase of stories to four, in spindleage of 30,000, and in looms to 1,000; $66,500 was proposed to be spent on the village-tenements, operatives' homes, boarding house, etc.[331] While there is no specific evidence to show that these directors represented commission houses or machinery manufacturers, or that they would take the seven per cent. bonds in case the community would not absorb the additional stock to be issued first,[332] indications point to this having been the case. It has been seen how the builders of the Gaffney Manufacturing Company's first plant refrained from including commission merchants in the venture, and still earlier in this chapter it was said that the two-story addition, next built, was a product of the earnings of the original plant in its first three years of operation. When, however, the third addition to the plant was made, a great mill costing $800,000, the persistence of the projectors was weakened by the four years since the first mill was erected, or perhaps success had altered judgment, with some local subscriptions, the machinery people took a considerable amount of stock.[333] A striking case here is that of the Rock Hill, South Carolina, Cotton Factory, "the 'Pet' of the town," it was called by the correspondent of a State newspaper, who continuing said: "This factory is owned and controlled by the citizens of the town, except $15,000 in stock owned in Charleston. It has a capital of $100,000 has over 6,000 spindles, with 1,500 more to be added in a few days. The best evidence of its success is that not one dollar of its stock can be bought." This clearly, was a mill born of local effort, with about the right capitalization for a plant of its small size. The conclusion of the notice, coupled with information taken from the same paper of two days later date, is significant: "It is the intention of the company, at an early day to run the factory day and night in order to keep up with its orders. The company, I learn, expect to increase their stock to $200,000 and build a duplicate factory."[334] A large part of the stock for this enlargement was subscribed by Northern capitalists.[335] The circumstances attending the enlargment of the Loray Mill, at Gastonia, have been alluded to in another connection, John F. Love, a Gastonia man, and the son of R. C. G. Love, who had been very prominent in the Gastonia development, was the primary projector of the mill, he having a larger part in the enterprise than G. A. Gray, the greatest of the Gastonia mill builders. He got the building up, but the factory had not commenced operation, when the company had to be reorganized. It was intended when the mill was started to have 25,000 spindles; it was now wished to increase the spindles to 50,000. The local investors were scared off by this proposal, but the machinery manufacturers encouraged the enlargement, supplying the machinery and taking preferred stock in payment. The Whitin and Draper companies own most of the stock of the mill, and the Whitin representative in Charlotte is president of the mill. Commission houses hold some of the stock. The Loray Mill is the largest and the poorest in Gastonia; it makes coarse cloth from the local short-staple cotton on some 2,000 looms,[336] while the small mills built by local capital for the most part are making good profits from some of the finest yarns, of long-staple cotton, spun anywhere in the Southern States. It has not always been the machinery manufacturers alone or together with the commission houses who facilitated the installation of more looms and spindles. Sometimes the ends aimed at by the commission merchants could be accomplished only through machinery, and they have been willing to undertake the financing of the enlargements or alterations in plant singly. The so-called Plaid Trust was sought to be formed; it was to handle the plaids of all the Southern mills, and was to be a New Jersey corporation. The plan did not carry, and the Cone Export and Commission Company went into the Southern field to handle the products of the mills generally. The older sheetings and plaids had been sold largely in the South, or almost so; the commission firm, to supply a larger trade, found it must re-organize the product of its client mills. It was attempted to persuade a mill at Durham, North Carolina to increase its denim output, but this was not done. In order to provide canton flannel, a new goods for the South, the commission house induced some interests to establish a mill at Greensboro, North Carolina. This prospered, and the house itself built a denim mill at the same place. All this time the mills were being urged to diversify their product, and the commission firm was financing them in the machinery changes which frequently had to be made. The client mills served were slow in establishing, as the commission firm urged them to do, individual finishing plants, and until this growth came about, the Southern Finishing Mills, founded by the Cones at Greensboro, served them; it was discontinued as a finishing plant when the mills had their own finishing works, which they presently built and operated successfully.[337] There is another way in which unsolicited outside capital frequently has lodged in the Southern mills. The conditions under which this would come about are well described by a banker now in Richmond and formerly the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Raleigh, North Carolina; "Usually the people who made the spirit for cotton mills in this way (through appeals to town pride and by town rivalry) were those least able to participate financially. Many mills started without sufficient capital and never did have enough till they failed in the hands of the original promoters and were bought up by other people, those who had been responsible for the enterprise losing out entirely."[338] Thus as far back as 1882 Colonel Walter S. Gordon, one of the projectors of the Georgia Pacific Railroad, purchased the Stansbury Cotton Mills, Carrollton, Mississippi, which cost originally $210,000. "The Georgia Pacific Railroad", says the notice of the purchase, "will run almost by its doors, and will give competition in freights."[339] Evidently here was a mill which was commenced by local effort and had declined until it could be bought at a lower figure than its cost and held out the prospect of becoming profitable by the coming of new transportation facilities. The Kessler Mill, the third built at Salisbury, North Carolina, offers a case in point. The first mill built in the place was a produce of the most whole-hearted local support centering about community pride; the second mill was an outgrowth of the success of the first, and was advantaged by the spirit aroused by the first mill, not too far spent. The Kessler Mill was organized by a faction which split off from the projectors of the first enterprise; local capital already seriously depleted was not quick in offering because of lack of interest in the project.[340] Under these circumstances the mill ran an indifferent course until taken over by a large manufacturer of a nearby town, who could command outside capital.[341] A mulatto started a cotton mill at Concord in the same State; no white people of the place took shares; the negroes all over the State who subscribed were allowed to pay in little instalments. The operatives were negroes. The promoter was faithful to the enterprise, but came to be heavily in debt, foreclosure followed on ill success, and the mill passed to the hands of the same capitalist who took over the Kessler Mill of Salisbury.[342] CHAPTER VI _FINANCING THE MILLS (Continued)_ An eminently successful mill president in Augusta was full of pessimism toward all the problems broached to him, but three characteristic sentences as to the capacity of Southern cotton manufacturers for financial administration fit the case of too many mill officials, undoubtedly: "The people of the South have got no business sense; I am a Southern man, and I say that. Back yonder before the war what money they had was in land and niggers. They knew nothing about financial management on close make-or-lose propositions." This judgment is borne out by that of one of the foremost newspaper editors of the South, who is also a large investor in cotton factories, who said: "The history of the industry abundantly vindicated what Edward Atkinson said about the South not knowing the difference between a penny and a nickel. None of the projectors, with the exception of H. P. Hammett and a few like him, could carry to the mills more than a general business and executive capacity." Because of prosperous conditions, he said, most of them made money in their ventures, despite their lack of business experience, but he added "... when depression came, when it was necessary to discriminate between a penny and a nickel, the mill went to blazes. It was the exceptional man who could endure the test of the penny rather than the nickel." Similarly, a Charlestonian who had just returned to the city after attending the reorganization of one of the most famous mills in the South, in which he is a heavy investor, was moved to declare: "Mismanagement and incompetency (the Southern people are the poorest business men in the world with a few exceptions) ... are responsible for most failures." Mr. August Kohn, in Columbia, who is himself a broker and the historian of the South Carolina mills, while recognizing the fact of these shortcomings in Southerners, as obtaining in the past and yet not overcome, held out a more hopeful view for the future: "Lack of capital and lack of trained management have been the great difficulties where mills have failed. We are developing management of the trained sort in experience and in the improvement in the business tone of our people."[343] With this introduction, it is convenient under the general topic of financial administration, to dispose of several random points at the outset of the chapter. Until the outbreak of the European war, two great cotton mill combinations in North and South Carolina, were those controlled by Mr. James W. Cannon, and centering about Concord and Kannapolis, North Carolina, and that of the late Mr. Lewis W. Parker, with principal offices at Greenville, South Carolina. The former consists of thirteen plants, and the latter, which is no longer in existence, once numbered as many as sixteen mills. These combinations were financed on opposite plans. A gentleman trained by Mr. Parker, and at one time in a leading position in the management of the mills in the Parker Merger, so called, explained that "... Lewis Parker in his merger thought that amalgamation would reduce over-head expense; that he could get cheaper money and cheaper supplies by buying in quantities." He "... was offered immense sums of money at 3 per cent. when his merger went together, although before he had never gotten money at least than 5 per cent. for the individual mills." In distinction from this plan, the Cannon mills have not been constituted into a merger in the same sense, though they are all under the presidency of Mr. Cannon, who said: "The management of each of the ... mills is distinct, though there are practically the same stockholders in all the mills. Lewis Parker had a merger, and tried to run it all from one office. my view is that each mill must have its own management and separate attention to secure success." He admitted that "There is not much saving on concentration where each corporation is a separate organization. Each mill has its own directors. Each mill must stand on its own financial strength. In many instances where the quantity is large, supplies are purchased for all the mills together, but where the quantity is less, this is not done."[344] These two plans are brought nearer together, however, by Dr. Beattie's opinion that in practice Dr. Parker's idea of the saving to be derived from the merger would not work out, from the fact that all officers and higher employees of the combination would want increased pay for additional work, and not in proportion to the extra labor and responsibility imposed.[345] To this is to be added the caution that Mr. Cannon probably does, in borrowing and in administration generally, accomplish many economies not indicated in his statement. An editor said that there was no "graft" particularly in the promoting of the mills; that the minutest details of an enterprise were watched by the people of the community. This tends to be a confirmation of the view the writer brought to take of the development of the industry in the South, that it was to a larger extent the child of the public initiative and concern than most economic movements. Mr. Thompson says that "The North Carolina mills have been almost invariably managed honestly in the interest of all the stockholders."[347] This is true of the entire South. There have, however, been two instances of fraud, one chargeable to Northern selling agents, but the other, unhappily, though also inexplicably, the result of wrong-doing on the part of a Southern man who had drawn together a number of mills. The former case was one in which a New York commission firm which had taken the president of a successful plant under its patronage, and placed him at the head of a mill in which the firm was sinking large sums, was angered at his effective attempts to free the second mill from the influence of the selling agents, and sought vengeance by ruining the original mill of which he was president. In the second instance, it is said, the president of the merger, during years in which his associates and the general public had every confidence in him, had been owing, unknown to a soul, $400,000 to the holding company and to the constituent mills. When there was a directors' meeting of the holding company, the constituent mills would appear to be the ones involved, and when the several companies met, the sum seemed due to the general company. One of his intimate co-workers stated that "His failure shook this whole section, not only in a business way, but in a moral way."[348] And of both incidents, it was believed by another that to them was attributable a loss of interest by the Southern communities in mill building. The depression following the panic of 1873 gave trouble to most of the cotton mills established in the years before the period of the industrial revival. During the hard times, for instance, some of those who had gone into Colonel Hammett's enterprise for the Piedmont Factory declined to pay their subscriptions. For the three months during which the machinery was being installed, the only pay the workmen got was credit for groceries at a small store in Greenville, two officers of the company giving their individual note of $500 as guarantee.[349] Colonel Hammett drew upon every resource of business and personal friendship to tide the venture over from 1873 to 1876.[350] He went so far as to mortgage his horses and carriage to buy the belting for the plant.[351] In some of the mills, the treasurer has the largest part in financial administration. In such cases he is frequently a younger man, a product of the newer South, who has pushed his way up in the enterprise to the position of real power, leaving the president, who is perhaps a man better equipped in community esteem than in specific training, as nominal head of the concern. This has happened at Gastonia, North Carolina, a particularly progressive spinning place. But in most of the companies, especially the smaller concerns, the president is in chief control of financial affairs. He often stamps his personality deeply on every department of the business of the mill and village and region even. A case in point is that of Mr. Charles Estes, when interviewed 98 years old, and for twenty years before his retirement in 1901, president of the John P. King Manufacturing Company, Augusta. With some show of pride, he related how during his active career the manager of the R. G. Dunn commercial agency in Augusta one day called him into the office and let him see the report of the King Mill. It read: "John P. King Mfg. Co. Capital Stock $1,000,000. 3 per cent. semi-annual dividends. President calls directors together once in six months and tells them what he has done." "And that was the way I ran the mill," he declared.[352] The Salisbury, N.C., Mill has a singular plan. Financial administration is concentrated in the hands of a finance committee composed of the president, treasurer and agent, or manager. The directors do about as the finance committee indicates; they hold a less important place because of the ill health of several of their number. Though nominally the whole finance committee passes on questions, the president does not attend regularly, and one of the directors not on the committee always agrees in the action of the smaller group.[353] The effect of strong personality in a promoter and of the business reputation of his enterprise upon impressionable Southern communities has been mentioned in a previous report. This came out clearly in the ease with which money could be borrowed. It was said by an old gentleman who knew Colonel Hammett in South Carolina very well that "The few capitalists we had then (we didn't have many) just came to his assistance whenever he asked them."[354] With respect to certain wholesale merchants of New York, Philadelphia and Boston, the writer was made to believe that they have so much confidence in a particular North Carolina manufacturer, that they give him any amount of capital he needs.[355] Mention has already been made in another connection, of the fact that Mr. Parker was offered large sums of money at 3 instead of 5 per cent. when he broached his merger successfully. The recent depression of the famous Graniteville mill, one of the first in the South, was accounted for by the statement that everybody was ready to lend money to Graniteville as an old and reliable mill, and never thought of requiring it back, until all at once all the lenders wanted their money, and this fortuitous trend made reorganization necessary.[356] During the war the old Augusta Factory was sold into new hands at, ostensibly, $200,000. The new company capitalized the plant at $600,000, about what it was worth. It must have been a device to lend financial prestige to the mill that Governor Jenkins of Georgia was given $100,000 stock for his influence as a director. He did nothing to earn this, was the writer's assurance.[357] Perhaps it was to facilitate financial management of his mill that William C. Sibley preferred New York and Cincinnati subscriptions to large blocks of stock, to local subscriptions in smaller amounts, when soliciting backing for the Sibley Mill at Augusta.[358] Turning now from the subject of financial administration of the mills to that of profits; it is not clear that gratifying earnings were usually due to good management; it is, however, true that poor profits or no profits were due oftener than otherwise to faulty executive control. It is meant by this to indicate that the industry in the South has shown itself, on the side of profitableness, singularly responsive to the material condition of the section, and to the state and trend of public opinion. The degree of success of the mills has displayed the fundamental fact that the South has in the past forty years been above all else in a process of growth, and has given fresh proof of the intimate connection between the fortunes of the companies and the changes in the whole section--economic, mental and spiritual. The profits of the mills have constituted a good barometer to the evolution of the South since Reconstruction. Graphically represented, the earnings of the plants would exhibit a curve of decided aspect. It is sought by specific references to make this curve appear, and afterwards to sum up the results with several reasons therefore. Tompkins, by many believed to have been the best authority on cotton manufacturing in the South, wrote: "It has been abundantly proved by experience in the Carolinas that cotton mills on every class of goods manufactured there, can make a profit of 10 to 30 per cent. This has been done by the smallest as well as the largest mills on the coarsest and the finest yarns, single as well as twisted; and on the heaviest as well as the lightest weight cloths; and on dyed and undyed yarns and cloths. The variation in profit between 10 and 30 per cent. is caused by variation in prices of cotton and of manufactured goods, and also by variation in management." In another passage he has said: "From the experience of the best mills that have been running in the South for twenty years and over, and which have always been kept well up to date, it would appear that about 15 per cent. is the average annual profit in clear money for the whole time."[359] The writer was given the opinion by Mr. Thackston of Greenville, South Carolina, in whose knowledge and judgment great reliance is put, that for the last ten years the average earnings for well-managed Southern mills have been $2.50 per spindle, which, reckoning the average cost of the plants at $20 to the spindle (leaving aside other capital invested) is a profit of 12.25 per cent.[360] A banker of Winston-Salem, which is an industrial community, could not understand how the Southern mills succeeded "as well as they have." When there were mentioned to him several mills which have been consistently profitable, he found special advantages accountable for their favorable showing. In one case it was tidewater freight rates, in another skilful cotton buying by a manager of long experience. It was his belief that the average profits of Southern mills from 1880 to 1914 (omitting, that is, the years since the outbreak of the war) were not as much as 10 per cent.[361] So much for the gains over the whole period. The earnings at several points in the development of the industry show a wider range. A nephew of Mr. Tompkins, quoted above, who has succeeded in considerable measure to his uncle's manufacturing interests, and who is of too practical a turn of mind to be affected by the enchantment of distance, speaking of the success of mills right at the opening of the era, said that some made from 30 to 70 per cent. profit.[362] In a previous chapter, it has been seen how many mills at this juncture increased their plants from earnings. A Utopian tinge may be suspected in an article appearing in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, in March of 1880, which, in urging upon Southern communities the establishment of spinning mills, stated: "At prevailing prices there is nearly or quite six cents per pound profit over all expenses in spinning No. 14 yarn, or three cents per spindle per day; this would give $9 per spindle per year, and as spinning mills can be built for less than $18 per spindle, no other figures are required to demonstrate the statement that the spinning mills in the South bid fair to realize this year fifty per cent. on the capital invested. Nearly all of these mills are running night and day, and every one of them is realizing handsome profits. These are facts."[363] The goods of the Wesson Cotton Mills, Mississippi, took a premium at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. The company started with one mill and a capital of $300,000. This plant made 30 per cent. profits, so another was built and the stock increased to $1,000,000.[364] A North Carolina newspaper trying to encourage cotton manufacturing in that State, stated in 1880 that upon the $2,288,000 invested in the mills in South Carolina, the profits ranged from 18 to 25 per cent.[365] The Boston Journal of Commerce in 1881 gave the opinion of an Englishman visiting the Eagle and Phoenix Mills, Columbus, Georgia, that the No. 3 Mill, then new, was the best equipped in the world, and said that "The profit of these mills last year was 20 per cent. on a capital of $1,250,000 or $5.76 per spindle."[366] Saffold Berney, in his Handbook of Alabama, published in 1878, made a rather elaborate computation of the earning capacity of a 4,000-spindle, 125-loom mill, making 6,000 yards of cloth per day.[367] It may not be uninteresting to see how he worked out a considerable rate of profit for a small plant. His calculations are: 3,000 yds. 7-8 shirting at 6 cents $ 180.00 3,000 yds. 4-4 sheeting " 7 " 210.00 -------- Total gross income $ 390.00 Cotton on a basis of 10 1-2 cents, 15 per cent. waste $220.94 Labor and mill expenses 63.44 Office and general expenses 9.62 Coal, gas, oil, starch & supplies 19.00 Insurance 3.11 Charges in selling goods, 2 1/2 per cent 9.75 Wear and tear machinery 5 per cent 13.69 339.55 ------ ------- Leaving a net profit per day of $ 50.45 Or for 300 working days or one year of $15,135.00 Figuring the cost of this mill at $20 per spindle, and leaving aside, as before, money otherwise invested about the business, there is a capital of $80,000, upon which a profit of $15,135.00 is 18.8 per cent. "Profits in the past," says Mr. Thompson, "have been so large that often before the last payment on the stock is due, a sum sufficient to pay all obligations has been accumulated." He cites as a particularly favorable instance, that of a mill which required no further instalments on subscriptions after a little more than one-third of the instalment-payment period had run out.[368] A little incident is interesting as involving two of the most important and picturesque personalities and one of the chief mills connected with the rise of cotton manufacturing in the South, and it bears directly on the topic now being considered. It seems that the founding of the Piedmont Factory by Colonel H. P. Hammett in South Carolina inspired a notice from Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, in which he reasoned that cotton manufacturing in the South could never pay. This came under the eye of Colonel Hammett. To the article he pinned his annual balance sheet, showing a profit of 20 per cent., and sent the two to Mr. Atkinson.[369] In regard to these first years of the large establishment of cotton mills in the South, it is common to hear the opinion that the big profits made attracted the energies of the people to mill building.[370] Going a little further back, the mills in operation just before the textile era, though few in number, showed gains that bore a part in the boom about 1880.[371] Twelve years after taking charge of the plant, Colonel Hickman had earned by the old Graniteville mill sufficient surplus to build the Vaucluse Mill at a cost of $361,513.24 without calling for assessments upon stockholders, and five years later had accumulated a cash surplus of $220,831.86. He had doubled the production of the original Graniteville Mill. The statement of the affairs of the two plants in 1804 showed: _Gross Profits:_ Graniteville $82,724.69 Vaucluse 37,131.31 ----------- Total profits $120,856.00 Net profits 80,701.71 This net profit amount represented 13.5 per cent. profit on $600,000 capital.[372] Coming down, now, a decade later in the period. There is shown a degree of success pretty much uniform for the various mills. The first plant of the Gaffney Manufacturing Company which was paid for when operation commenced, in three years earned enough to build an additional plant of two stories.[373] This mill indicates very well a fact brought out in the preceding chapter, that many additions to plant, which were being made after the mills had been a few years in operation, were accomplished from earnings. The Salisbury Mill is a case in point. Its inception and that of the Gaffney Mill the two being projected at about the same time had many things in common (as did the towns in which they were built). Increases in plant of the Salisbury Mill have been greater proportionally than the increases in capitalization.[374] From manufacturers, from investors, and from persons acquainted with the public economy, have been had statements, each reflecting an individual bias, but each showing unmistakably that there was a general and marked decline in profits in the second decade of the development. A retired mill president, whose decision to leave the field was perhaps affected by the condition she described, regretted that the companies are still laboring under decreased profits as a result of the fact that mills were built more rapidly than the market for goods expanded to meet the development.[375] Another mill president thought that no more mills are likely to be built in his section too many years. "They went it too rank, you know," he declared with some feeling. "Once in a while you hear of a new mill starting up, but its not as common as it was ten or fifteen years ago." He put the date of the fall-off in profits at about 1900.[376] The son of Colonel Hammett, several times mentioned, who is a successful manufacturer, deplored the building of too many mills in a short period, and said that profits fell away abruptly.[377] A bank president whose institution has played a leading part in the textile prominence of Columbia, South Carolina, said that "1890 to 1900 was the heaviest borrowing period, as this was the greatest period of development. Profits were poor, especially from 1895 to 1903."[378] Though he does not believe selling agents have taken much stock in North Carolina mills, Mr. Thompson attributes many failures of mills to "slavery to commission houses through which they sell their product." He implies that it was the grip which the agents got on the mill by the loan of running capital that brought the ill effects. At any rate, the commission houses became more deeply interested in the mills as the plants increased in numbers, and profits were hurt by this fact, he believes.[379] This influence continues, thinks a former president of the great Graniteville Mill, who said: "The commission merchants take the very heart out of the mills. The commission houses of New York, Philadelphia and Boston get more out of the mills than the stockholders in the South."[380] While it is true that "most of the mills of the South have succeeded,"[381] there have been, besides some concerns which have stood still, neither making nor losing, a few notable failures. It is the common opinion that failures have been due almost entirely to lack of capital and bad management. Probably these faults and a good many others contributed to the ill success of the old Charleston Manufacturing Company, which began life with such high hopes at the outset of the cotton mill era. If any enterprise was an expression of the motive forces in the South in 1880, this one was. It supplied a potent example to communities all over the South contemplating cotton factories. The property of the Charleston Manufacturing Company was sold under the hammer to the Vesta Cotton Mill Company, which was not more successful with the plant. After standing a year idle, the attempt was made to operate the mill with colored help, and a reorganization of the Vesta Company was had for this purpose. A large proportion of the subscribers to the original company remained in the two reorganizations that followed.[382] In the experiment of negro operatives the old factory was again opening up a vista to the South, for, as it was vainly pointed out to the negro population of Charleston, if the trial of colored operatives in the Vesta Mill had succeeded, plants all over the section would offer employment to negroes.[383] When this third effort to use the plant for a cotton mill came to nought, the machinery was moved to Gainesville, Georgia, and though the top of the new mill was carried away by a cyclone almost as soon as completed, the company is now doing well in its new location.[384] The great, gloomy pile that thrice held so much of the confidence of the South and the best hopes of Charleston still flanks the railway tracks and rears itself above the depot, and seems all very silent in spite of the fact that it is now occupied by tobacco manufacturers. The grandfather mill, as it might be called, of the Southern textile industry, is that of Graniteville, established by William Gregg in 1846. The factory nearly failed in 1867, but was saved by the genius of H. H. Hickman, a merchant of Augusta, who became its president at the critical juncture. He died in 1898, and his son came in as president. At his retirement and the reorganization of the mill, a business man of Augusta has been elected the new president, but it will require, it is said, from seven to ten years for him to build up the organization again.[385] The Royal Mills, the only cotton factory now operating in Charleston, was built eighteen or twenty years ago, in the period of stress just noticed. George Wagener, the original manager, left the mill at his death with a surplus of $90,000. It went into slovenly hands, and failed. It has been remodelled, however, and is now making money.[386] The small mills' success inspired the belief that large plants would succeed. The Olympia, until recently the largest mill in the world, was built at Columbia, and the Loray Mill, with more than half as many spindles, was founded at Gastonia. It is the general opinion, whether colored too largely by the unsatisfactory history of these two conspicuous factories or not it cannot be told, that there have been more failures among the large than among the small mills.[387] It has been said of the North Carolina manufacturers as opposed to those of South Carolina that they "are not so ambitious for big places, (at the head of large companies) and a lot of those little fellows are getting rich." The North Carolina mind seems to run on smaller things. I am not sure but what the North Carolina mills have been more successful than the South Carolina mills. A committee representing New England manufacturers has stated in spite of an advantage over the Eastern mills of 25 per cent. in labor, and 50 per cent. in respect to taxes, the Southern mills have made less profits than their older competitors because of poor financing. However this may be, the total losses on $100,000,000 invested in cotton manufacturing in the South in thirty years does not represent more than 20 per cent., is the belief of Mr. Thackston, of Greenville.[388] To go to a lyceum lecture on a sultry summer night and be whisked away by picture and description to the snowy peaks and green glaciers of the Canadian Rockies is not a more complete or refreshing transition than that experienced by the traveler who lumbers along the Southern Railway for weary, slow miles of sodden country and ill-kept settlement, all at once to alight at the neat station and view the trim town of Gastonia, North Carolina. It is not attempted here to account for the New England psychology that animates this nonetheless Southern place, but it is deserving of better praise than its harsh name gives it. Neither is it proper in this place to seek to account for the success of its score and a half of cotton mills. The recital of the profits they have made since the European War is astounding, but there is every cause to believe in the accuracy of the information given. In the first place, while the big Loray Mill, as has been seen, has not reflected much credit upon the community of factories at Gastonia, and is spoken of not very warmly there, no mill in Gastonia has ever had a receivership.[389] The mills at Belmont right near Gastonia are making on the average 25 per cent profits. The Treanton Mill at Gastonia, paid 100% in cash during the first five years of its operation. The Majestic Mill, at Belmont, was expected to make in 1916-1917, 100 per cent., or the price of the plant in a single year.[390] In cataloguing the notes from a summer trip to the mill towns, the writer feared he had made some mistake in setting down the results of an interview with the vice-president and cashier of the First National Bank, Gastonia, which is most largely interested in the mills of the place, as to the earnings. He therefore wrote for a restatement on doubtful points, and found himself confirmed. To quote the case of one mill from Mr. Robinson's reply. "We have a mill here that had $150,000 capital paid in, and after a short time issued a stock dividend of 20 per cent. which gave them (it) a capital of $180,000, and this mill made $155,000 net profits for the year 1915. I am satisfied that this same mill will make 125 per cent. profit this year (1916) on their (its) $180,000 capital, or around $225,000 net profit."[391] From the interview, there is the instance of a 12,000 spindle mill; not one of the most successful in Gastonia, which made $2,500 the week previous. While the mill expected to make 125 per cent. net profits for 1916 is said to be exceptional, a number of mills were, as near the end of the old year as November 28th, expected to show from 75 to 100 per cent. net profits for 1916, the writer was told that it would be a pretty poorly managed plant that did not clear the lower percentages.[392] A burly, forceful man in middle life, who has risen from foot pedlar to mill president, said with frankness: "I am making more money than I know what to do with. I am ashamed to take it!" He showed me the statements of the orders for product with which his four mills would be kept busy for the next four or five months. He expected to clear $60,000 on the output of each plant for this period.[393] Mr. Robinson, previously quoted, recognizes that the cotton mills at Gastonia are more prosperous than those of any other section of which he knows.[394] Not even early in the period, when mills were first building, did they make such profits as now, is the opinion of an old manufacturer at Gastonia.[395] The foregoing citation of the earnings of various mills at various points of time in the period since their establishment has served to exhibit the general movement of profits. At the outset, most conditions were favorable to large gains--there was little competition, labor was most plentiful and cheap, the lack of advantageous marketing facilities was to some degree offset by purely local demand for the product, and the deficiencies of management tended to be neutralized by the presence of physical advantages which disappeared when a more advanced development increased the size of plants, widened the area from which raw cotton was drawn, and extended the market for product. It is said repeatedly that in those days any fool could make money in cotton manufacture in the South.[396] With the closing years of the second decade of the mill growth, most of these advantaging circumstances were fading before the increase of competition. Their very success was proving fatal to the mills. They had ceased to be local affairs. When outside influences came in--commission and machinery men--new and difficult problems had to be faced. The factories were assuming the physical proportions which they were bound to assume, and which it was right they should assume, but they ran ahead of the development in the textile industry, and in the South of expertness of management, business resourcefulness and economic outlook. The spirit could not keep up with the flesh, and the mind lagged behind the body. The prosperity which the mills are now enjoying they very well understand to be hectic, the result of the European War. They were having a hard time enough until the war came and put them all on velvet, as someone expressed it; 25% of the Southern Mills were in bad shape, defaulting an interest, etc.[397] There are in the industrial community of Gastonia, however, and in certain individual mills and managers, particularly in North Carolina, signs, that point to a catching up of internal capacities with external maturity. There is being developed--not yet clearly seen by any means, and in not a few points apparently contradicted[398]--a manufacturing spirit in the South, an industrial faculty that is able to cope with difficult conditions, the results of economic progress. This promises that the South is learning after forty years what Edward Atkinson said it did not know, the difference between a penny and a nickel. It indicates that the South will be meeting narrow margins of profit with close figuring of the costs of production. It is natural to turn from the subject of profits to that of dividends. There is in the history of the mills a general parallel between the two, with, however, certain variations arising from the fact that the industry has been and is now in constant process of growth. With the exception of perhaps a few years, earnings could always be profitably invested in the business,[399] particularly in expansions of plant.[400] As will be seen in more detail later, the peculiar conditions under which the mills took their rise involved indebtedness for plant and for running capital, and earnings had to go to pay interest and principal of this. The Augusta Factory was founded in 1847,[401] and, with Graniteville nearby, though in South Carolina, resembled in its earlier years, and to a diminished extent still does, the English and Continental textile manufactories.[402] They have both fallen upon evil days more recently. The Augusta Factory made 5 per cent. quarterly dividends for eight years and nine months from its founding.[403] In 1858, eleven years after establishment, the plant was sold to a company with Wm. H. Jackson at its head, for the sum of $140,000. Though the stockholders in the Jackson Company paid $60,000 for repairs to the property, the purchase price, payable in instalments for ten years, was made up from profits. The mill at the close of the war was the wealthiest in the South. It was said in 1884 that it had had an uninterrupted course of prosperity since the war. From 1865 to 1880 the company paid average annual dividends of 14 21/32 per cent.[404] In 1880 the stock of the mills at Augusta, Georgia, paid about 8 per cent. interest per annum, in semi-annual and quarterly dividends.[405] Under Col. H. H. Hickman's management of Graniteville there were regular dividends of 10 per cent.[406] The son of this former president, and until recently himself president of the mill as his father's successor, said: "Graniteville was so successful it had a large influence. It never ceased operation, and to my certain knowledge it had a fifty-year record of dividends."[407] Perhaps some indication of the widespread popularity of cotton mills as an investment from a purely dividend-seeking point of view is contained in a newspaper notice of 1881 setting forth that a large mill at Nashville, Tennessee, had declared a dividend of 14 per cent. and another was built. In 1881 the Enterprise Factory, in Georgia, declared a 10 per cent. dividend, and decided to increase its capacity by 125 per cent. or more--from 13,890 spindles to over 33,000, and from 264 looms to more than 600.[408] Mills as Pulaski, in the same State, were anxious to double their capacity; $50,000 was subscribed for a mill at Jackson, West Tennessee; Dallas, Texas, was starting a $200,000 spindle plant, and the town of Sherman wanted a $75,000 factory.[409] The following year, the same paper printed an item showing further that dividends were being paid to stockholders in factories all over the South: "The cotton mills in Mississippi have proved bonanzas for the owners. The one at Wesson (it has been seen that this company made 30 per cent. profit from the plant) pays 26 per cent. dividends...."[410] The mill established by Mayor Courtenay, of Charleston, at Newry, South Carolina, paid no dividends for the first seven years of its life; this distinction from the earlier mills in regard to dividends, bears out what was said of profits in the period in which this plant was built (1892-3). Over the whole twenty-four years of its history, however, the company has paid an average of 6 per cent. to its shareholders.[411] The building of the Salisbury Mill was completed December 1, 1888. The first cloth was turned out February 9, 1889. The first dividend of 5 per cent. was declared January 11, 1890. The mill has missed only one dividend payment, a quarterly one, since this time.[412] It is true that for the first three or four years of its life, the concern was in an uncertain way, the panic of 1893 proving embarrassing to it, though not as seriously so as in the case of the Newry Mill, just cited. For a long time the investment paid 8 per cent. dividends, then for several years of late 10 per cent. On July 10, 1916, the directors declared an extra dividend of 5 per cent., paid August 1. A part of the profits has for years and years gone back into the business, enabling it now to earn good sums.[413] In the first ten years of its operation, the Laurens Mills were very profitable. Borrowing money to bring its spindleage up to thirty thousand, it expanded to 43,000 spindles on earnings. At the end of the ten-year period there was the plant worth about $800,000; the company owed no money, and the only liability against it was $350,000 of common stock. There was a cash surplus, probably small. For six years it had been paying 12 per cent. annual dividends. The mill was incorporated in 1895.[414] It is not certain that dividend payments were made by this company while it was carrying its debt, but the Anderson Mill, Anderson, South Carolina, paid interest on its indebtedness and 8 per cent. dividends as well.[415] Reference has been made to Mr. Thompson's statement that large profits have frequently enabled mill companies to discharge all obligations before the last subscription-payment was due. He cites the case of an enterprise of $100,000 capitalization, with shares payable in weekly instalments of 50 cents, which after 70 weeks, with only $35 on the share paid up, declared a dividend of 4 per cent. on the capitalization. This plant, which he says is by no means universal, has, besides building large additions from profits always paid 4 or 5 per cent. in dividends each half-year. This is probably the Cabarrus, one of the Cannon mills, at Concord.[416] From Mr. August Kohn was had a valuable estimate of the whole matter of Southern cotton manufactories as investments, assuming, that is, that the mills of his State have been typical in this respect of those of the rest of the section. He said: "If the people of South Carolina had put their money into farm loans at 7 per cent.--the same people and the same money--they would have been better off personally than they are after having invested in cotton mills. There are no failures in real estate mortgages at 7 per cent., but in cotton mill investments, principal and interest has frequently been lost."[417] If this opinion is to be believed, had Mr. Goldsmith taken all the factories of the State, and not "the fifty more important cotton mills of South Carolina," he would have found an annual average dividend for 1905, 1906 and 1907, not of 7.56 per cent., but something below 7 per cent.[418] It is well to conclude this random review of the dividends paid by the textile enterprises of the South with a thoughtful caution from Mr. Thackston, of Greenville, who has been of chief assistance to the writer in the financial aspects of the problem: "When it is said that the mills (have) made such and such dividends, it is to be remembered that in many cases the plant had cost more than the capitalization would show. Twelve or 10 per cent. on a $50,000 investment is very different from 12 or 10 per cent. on $30,000 paid up. The mills made so much money that they could pay off their indebtedness frequently in a few years, but the returns on capital paid up were not so great as might appear in some statements. "Piedmont is capitalized at $800,000. The plant probably cost $1,500,000. When they pay 10 per cent. on the investment, it is because they are neglecting to reduce the debt on the plant. They are really paying about 6 per cent. on the investment, considering the total liabilities of the stockholders." Tompkins has placed a useful modification upon the nominal showing of dividends which finds place here, and has application to what was earlier said of profits as well: "The tables ... showing range of profits, are made up from exhibits as usually made in annual reports. This is exclusive of depreciation, or wear and tear. Even in cases where an item of depreciation is carried in the accounts, it is often simply a matter of bookkeeping, and not a sum set aside for replacing of machinery.... Where large profits are reported, and large dividends paid, it is always a question whether the vitality of the mill is not suffering. There is a number of cases where mills have paid several large dividends at the start, but, on account of making no provision for depreciation, have finally collapsed."[419] Some mills to continue Mr. Thackston's statement, cost in plant, he said four times their total capital. A man would build a 10,000-spindle mill and add to it greatly, not increasing the capital at all; he trusted to earnings to care for the debt, and delayed payments on common stock. A remark of Mr. Goldsmith, though he unfortunately does not give the source of his information, confirms this calculation. He says: "The average South Carolina weaving mill costs about $20 to $21 per spindle; it is capitalized at about $12 per spindle, and earns from $2 to $4 per annum per spindle."[420] A statement covering five years for average well-managed mill properties in and around Greenville, South Carolina, shows, he said: Average earnings on plant cost 13.47 per cent. " " per spindle $ 2.94 " cost " " 21.08 Capitalized at " " 12.72 His conclusion was that "In general, the dividends on the actual cost of the plants have not been over 12 per cent."[421] As to the development, nature and persistence of a market in the South for cotton mill securities, the principal partner in a firm dealing in stocks, bonds, real estate loans, and fire insurance, who has besides long been identified with the cotton manufacturing industry in the Piedmont region, said: "... as far as I am able to recall, the stock market began to develop in this section about 1898 to 1901; and referring to some old records, as of March, 1901, I find such entries as this: "5 Monaghan at 95 3 Brandon at 90" with other entries of the same kind. "About this date, in the up-country there were several young men who began trading in these stocks largely on a brokerage proposition. I recall the names of: A. M. Law & Co Spartanburg, S.C. W. D. Glenn Spartanburg, S.C. F. C. Abbott & Co Charlotte, N.C. George E. Gibbon Charleston, S.C. and a few others whose names I do not recall just now. "In Greenville, there was Mr. A. G. Furman.... All these men are still in the same line of business, and from small beginnings, have developed satisfactory business in the buying and selling of these securities. "One element that lends itself to this business was the fact that in a number of instances builders of machinery would take part of their bill in stock, and later dispose of these holdings at concessions. I recall in one year that I disposed of about $2,000,000.00 worth of such stocks."[422] An investor with considerable cotton mill holdings, in his replies, threw a little different light on the matter in some particulars: "A market for cotton mill securities developed between 1890 and 1900. There is less sale for them now, but in those ten years they used to go like hot cakes. All these brokers take a whack at them, but any man would starve that tried to deal in them exclusively. I had a friend that tried to make his living from dealing in them, but he didn't make his office rent, I deal in them a little, more than anything else for accommodation to friends. There is practically nothing in it for me."[423] Mr. Buist has here placed the commencement of this market as far back as 1890. But in the early months of 1881 M. J. Verdery & Co., brokers of Augusta, were negotiating for the entire issue of $350,000 extra capital stock to be made in connection with enlargements to the Enterprise Factory. It was said that one man and his friends would take $140,000 of the stock.[424] This was, however, an underwriting transaction, such as those of which the first quotation speaks as being conducted on a brokerage proposition, rather than the regular marketing of stocks indicated by Mr. Buist. Another said: "Nobody deals exclusively in cotton mill securities, and they are not quoted on the big exchanges either."[425] There is no doubt about either of these points, judging from all the information received. And further: "At the opening of the period, the sale for cotton mill stocks was very local, and each mill took charge of its own sales."[426] A mill president of Augusta said that he frequently has inquiries for stock; he refers these applicants to brokers in the city.[427] It has been seen that the curve of dividends of the mills shows a rough correspondence to that of profits; it may be observed in the paragraphs that follow that the third curve of market values of mill stocks follows more or less the other two curves. There will be mentioned first the cases in which the securities sold, for one reason and another, at low figures, and second the instances of more advantageous quotation, with some comments on the occasion for the high and low prices. The cotton manufacturing business in the South has been a precarious one; it has proved quixotic, and there have been intervals of sterility.[428] This may be taken as accountable for the fact that "mill stocks usually sell below their book value."[429] This consideration has not, however, as will appear more clearly a little later, prevented great variation in the selling price of securities of mills in different sections of the South, at the same point of time. "Mill shares have been a drug on the market and confidence in them has been lost to a large degree."[430] In conformity with this, an ex-manufacturer, now a cotton factor, of Augusta, Georgia, explained that: "Stocks of mills in Augusta haven't sold at par in twenty years. You can buy preferred stock of mills in Augusta at less than par. You can buy the stock of the Augusta and Enterprise mills at 20 or so. The Augusta Factory hasn't paid a dividend in twenty years." He could not understand why this was true of the local manufacturing community, which is one of the most notable in the entire South.[431] These considerations are in contrast to the statement of Mr. Goldsmith: "The market value of the stock is almost always above par, increasing in proportion to the age of the mill." The writer inclined to doubt this accuracy of Mr. Goldsmith's information.[432] Referring now to the sale of stock at less than its book value, it may be noticed again that during the war the Augusta Factory was sold into new hands at, ostensibly, $200,000. The new company capitalized it at $600,000 about what it was worth.[433] F. W. Wagener and Julius Koester bought in the property which is now the Royal Mills, at Charleston, at about 20 cents on the dollar.[434] An indication of the prevalence of this condition is seen in the fact that the people of Charleston, who previously had been generous subscribers to cotton mill stock, every promoter going to Charleston for the placement of a large block, "about 1905 or 6 ... got canny, and quit subscribing to the stock of new mills, for they found they could wait and buy the stock at less than par. For twelve or fourteen years Charleston has not contributed to new mills."[435] The reason for the general drop in the value of mill securities twelve or fourteen years ago lies in the depression in the industry caused by the ill-considered boom in mill building, already dwelt upon; a cause which had its rise earlier, but which no doubt continued to operate through this later period, was set forth plainly by a banker of Columbia. He said: "Suppose a Southerner was promoting a mill that was to cost $1,000,000. In contracting for $600,000 worth of machinery, the machinery people would take half of the amount in stock. Machinery was in great demand, and high in price. The machinery manufacturers could throw their stock on the market quickly at 50 cents on the dollar, and make money. But in doing this they hurt the price of the stock of the mill."[436] There seems to be pretty clear cause for the sensational drop that once occurred in the selling price of the stock of Pacolet, one of the greatest of the Southern mills. The factory had been making heavy goods for the Chinese market; this market was so unfavorably affected by the exclusion act that the goods became unprofitable to the mill. It cost money to change the machinery. So much preferred stock was issued that the common stock of the mill fell from 300 to a point below par.[437] It has been seen that for the last six years of the first decade of the operation of the Laurens Mills, 12 per cent. annual dividends were paid. Within two years after the fight between local shareholders and Northern selling agents, the dividends got down to 5 per cent. and the stock fell from 175 to par.[438] A similar decline has been very apparent in the stock of Pelzer, in the same State, which ten years ago was selling at 175 or 180, and which now may be bought at a little above par. T. C. Duncan built the Union Mills, and these succeeded. The stock went to $150 a share in 1900 or 1902. Then he built the Buffalo Mills. The projector of these mills was, however, a cotton speculator, it is said, and the market went against him. The town of Union, South Carolina, "busted with Tom Duncan", as it was expressed. At the opening of the cotton mill period, it was said of the Rock Bill Cotton Factory that "The best evidence of its success is that not one dollar of its stock can be bought."[439] In the same month of the same year it was published that of the successful Mississippi mills, "The one at Wesson pays 26 per cent. dividends, and the stock is worth over 300."[440] Pacolet was built in 1880. The architect suggested a certain firm as selling agents for the mill, and Captain John H. Montgomery, the projector of the company, was introduced to a member of this firm. In consideration of receiving the account of the factory, this official subscribed for the commission firm to fifty or a hundred shares of Pacolet's stock. He told a friend shortly afterwards that he did not know why he bought the stock, and offered to sell it at $50 on the share. It happened that he held the stock, and he afterwards sold the stock at $300 per share.[441] This buoyant success of the early mills, previously remarked with reference to profits and dividends, and here seen in the advance in the price of stock, is further illustrated by the history of some plants now having large capitalization. These sold additional stock to the original subscribers at a reduction--say at 75 or 80 when the par was 100. The ventures were so profitable that the stock remained at par value.[442] The same observation comes out, as applicable to a still earlier time, in the circumstance of the issue, in 1865, when the Augusta Factory was paying more than 14 per cent. dividends of three shares for one, bringing up the capitalization to $600,000.[443] Fifteen years later it was said: "Augusta is becoming prominent in the South as a manufacturing city, there being eight cotton factories running here successfully.... These factories aggregate about 2,500 looms and 10,000 spindles; they consume about 50,000 bales of cotton annually, manufacture about 50,000,000 yarns (yards) of cloths, (this besides yarn mills) and employ 2,000 operatives. The capital stock of nearly all these factories is at a high premium."[444] If the success of the Augusta Factory in 1865 was sufficient to maintain at par issues of extra stock, as just noted, the reverse was true of Graniteville two years later, when the elder Hickman took charge. Twenty years earlier, the plant had cost to build $375,000. By 1867 the stock had increased to $716,000, and the shares had fallen to $62.50 in value. The mill was $50,000 in debt. Colonel Hickman cancelled $116,000 capital shares, bringing the interest-bearing stock of the company down to $600,000. He restored the depreciated stock to its proper value.[445] Reference has been made to a stock dividend of 20 per cent. issued by a mill of Gastonia within the last few years. A very present instance of this same quality, reflected this time in the recuperative power of a mill, is contained in a prediction made by the gentleman who knows most about the Graniteville Mill, that the stock which then, at reorganization, sold for $60 the share will in a year, if all goes well, sell at par.[446] It has been said that the stock of the Rock Hill Cotton Factory could not be bought, and that the stock of several mills sold for $300 per share. That of the Tucapau Mills, in South Carolina, is not to be had today, or it can be had only at 3 or 5 for one. This is by some regarded as the most successful mill in the State. It would seem that absolutely no stock of the Salisbury Mills is on the market. Recently an energetic young man anxious to buy stock of the mill for principals, went to the treasurer of the company and to shareholders individually, without success. The treasurer said that by looking long enough, and waiting for his chance, he might induce some stockholder to sell at 200.[447] This comparatively low figure in his prognostication is perhaps accounted for by the conservative character of the company from the start, and the uniformly satisfactory, though not brilliant dividends of the enterprise, together with the fact, maybe most potent of all, that sixty of the one hundred and five shareholders in the Salisbury Mills are ladies, the majority of whom have received their holdings through inheritance.[448] The Majestic Mill, Gaston County, North Carolina, which in 1916 after nine months' operation declared a dividend of 10 per cent., sold three shares of stock which in some way had not been marketed, at 150 each.[449] In mentioning the contrast between the market price at this time of the stock of mills in various localities. Thought was particularly of the facts as to the Augusta mills' securities and those of the plants in and about Gastonia. The latter are as optimistic as the former are the reverse. Mills in Gastonia making in 1916 from 75 to 100 per cent. net profits, are represented by stock selling at figures ranging from $150 to $250 the share.[450] VITA Broadus Mitchell was born at Georgetown, Kentucky, December 27, 1892; he attended a primary school in Richmond, Virginia, and then, for four years until 1908, Richmond Academy; for one session, 1908-1909, attended the Hope Street High School, Providence, Rhode Island; in 1909 entered the University of South Carolina; in the summer of 1911 was a member of the reportorial staff of The Daily Record, Columbia, South Carolina; graduated from the University of South Carolina with A.B. degree in 1913; from June, 1913, until October, 1914, was a member of the reportorial staff of the Richmond Evening Journal; entered The Johns Hopkins University in 1914; was a Hopkins Scholar during this and the succeeding session; was Fellow in Political Economy, 1916-1917; in July, 1917, became special staff writer The New Leader, Richmond, Virginia, and was given furlough from this position to return to the University in the fall of 1917; Fellow by Courtesy and instructor in Courses in Business Economics, 1917-1918. FOOTNOTES: [1] P. H. Goldsmith, The Cotton Mill South, p. 4. [2] D. A. Tompkins, in The South in the Building of the Nation, Vol. II, p. 58. A more summary statement by the same author is the following; after speaking of the prominence in the South of manufactures in the early years of the nineteenth century: "The profit of cotton raising with slave labor drew people away from manufactures to cotton planting. On the abolition of slavery, the capabilities of the people to organize and conduct manufactures showed itself again.... The re-establishment was not commenced immediately after the civil war, because of the chaotic disorder brought about by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the negro." But now (1899) "every obstacle to the development of manufactures has been removed. In many parts of the South the development is already well advanced and in others it will undoubtedly grow rapidly." (Ibid., Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 108-109.) [3] The South's Position in American Affairs, p. 1. Cf. "Upon the whole, the last half of the Eighteenth Century, before the influence of the cotton gin and Arkwright's inventions were fully felt in the South, was a period when agriculture yielded some ground in primary manufactures and household industries." (V. S. Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 308.) [4] Holland Thompson, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill, p. 25. "Except in the East, the feeling against slavery was strong during the first quarter of the nineteenth century", and there is remarked the foundation in 1816 of the Manumission Society, which had thirty-six branches in 1825 and 1600 active members in 1826. (Ibid., pp. 26-27.) [5] August Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 10-11. [6] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 9-10. [7] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 10-11. In 1809 the legislative committee on incorporations reported unfavorably a request of John Johnson, Jr., President of the Homespun Company of South Carolina, for a loan on account of a patent, but it was recommended that he be allowed until the next meeting of the legislature "to report on the utility of the machine called the Columbia Spinster, so as to entitle, in case the same be approved, the inventor of the same to the sum provided by law for his benefit." (Ibid., pp. 11) Cf. Ibid., pp. 11-13. [8] For these facts the writer is indebted to an unpublished manuscript of M. R. Pleasants, "Manufacturing in North Carolina before 1860", to which reference will frequently be had. [9] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 310. [10] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7. [11] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7. [12] Ibid. [13] Ibid. [14] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7. His citation is of the South Carolina and American General Gazette, Jan. 30, 1777. Cf. Ibid., pp. 6-7. [15] Ibid., p. 8. Reference is particularly to the City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, of Charleston, January 24, 1779. [16] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina. Citation is of the American Museum, VIII, Appendix IV, part II, July 1, 1790. The question mark is Mr. Kohn's. [17] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 8-9. [18] W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, p. 26. [19] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 312. Cf. Ibid., pp. 328-9. Referring to the manufactories near Charleston and Statesburg, and to carding and spinning machinery set up in eastern Tennessee in 1791, he concludes, "However the industrial progress of these years was irregular and local rather than general and permanent." Ibid., p. 310. [20] Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860, p. 537. As indicating further the lack of causation in these earliest ventures, it is said: "Maryland is hardly typical industrially of the Southern States. Its factories date from the Revolution...." (Ibid., in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 328-9.) [21] "In this country, as well as in England, the germ of the textile industry existed in the fulling and carding mills; the former, dating earlier, being the mills for finishing the coarse cloths woven by hand in the looms of our ancestors; and in the latter, the carding mill, the wool was prepared for the hand-wheel. At the close of the Revolution the domestic system of manufactures prevailed throughout the states" (Carroll D. Wright, "The Factory System of the U.S." p. 6, in U.S. Census of manufactures, 1880.) [22] The Bolton Factory was built in 1811 on Upton Creek, nine miles southwest of Washington, Wilkes County, Ga., in 1794, on this site had been erected one of Whitney's first cotton gins, propelled by the water power that later ran the cotton mill. It is said that here Lyon conceived important improvements on the Whitney invention, making a saw gin. (Southern Cotton Spinners' Association proceedings seventh annual convention, pp. 41 ff.) Here is a rather striking indication of the fact that the South was on the right road--a gin, so far from diverting attention entirely to the cultivation of the staple, gave way to a cotton mill which was located on the same site and operated by the same water power. [23] H. R. Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, (ed. of 1860) pp. 161-162. [24] W. F. Marshall, interview, Raleigh, N.C., September 16, 1916. [25] "The first cotton mill built in North Carolina was built at Lincolnton in 1813 by Michael Schenck.... This mill was the forerunner of that remarkable industrial development which has taken place in North Carolina since that time." (Pleasants, ibid.) [26] John Nichols, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. A. A. Thompson, President of the Raleigh Cotton Mill, expressed about the same view in an interview at Raleigh on the same day. [27] J. L. Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., September 2nd 1916. [28] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 15. Cf. Charlotte News, (N.C.) Textile Industrial Edition, Feb., 1917, with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill. [29] Though their father had been prominent for his conduct of the mill and had displayed in his personality a generous disposition toward the community, the sons were said to be wild and reckless, and when they fell heir to the plant alienated the sympathies of the people of the vicinity. Any possible public character for the business was thus destroyed. [30] Charles E. Johnson, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. [31] C. D. Wright, "Factory System of the U.S.", p. 6, in U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880. Cf. Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V., p. 319. [32] For a careful narrative of the establishments of the settlers who moved into South Carolina from New England about 1816, with details of the mills of the Hills, Shelden, Clark, Bates, Hutchings, Stack, the Weavers, McBee, Bivings, etc., consult Kohn, Cotton Mills of S.C., and The Water Powers of South Carolina; for those in North Carolina H. Thompson is useful. Cf. also Southern Cotton Spinners' Association proceedings seventh annual convention, pp. 41 ff. and Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 301-302. [33] Wood for the boiler of the Mount Hecla Mills, growing scarce, the machinery was taken to Mountain Island, and there run by water. (H. Thompson, pp. 48-9.) [34] Cf. Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 14. [35] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 14. Cf. Charlotte News, Ibid., with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill. [36] H. Thompson, pp. 45 ff. [37] Ibid. [38] J. B. Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [39] H. Thompson, pp. 42-43. Cf. p. 12. [40] Theckston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [41] Theckston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [42] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V., p. 321. Cf. Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, giving quotation from Columbia Telescope. [43] Charlotte News, Ibid. The McDonald Mill at Concord during the Civil War dealt in barter. A gentleman in a nearby town told the writer that he remembered as a boy trading a load of corn for yarn to be woven by the women at home. (Theodore Klutz, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916.) In 1862 the Confederate government commandered the Batesville factory in South Carolina, and took nearly all of the product. That portion which was allowed to private purchasers was always sold by ten o'clock in the morning. (Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916.) [44] Thompson, pp. 48-9. [45] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 183-4. [46] Walter Montgomery, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5th, 1916. [47] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12th, 1916. [48] John W. Fries, interview, Winston-Salem, N.C., Aug. 31, 1916. Another with a broad view of the history of the industry in the South was willing to include in a similar statement the Graniteville mill about which a good deal of controversy has clustered: "The cotton mills in the South before the war were third-rate affairs. I speak of Graniteville and Batesville and such plants as these. I remember my mother's telling me that the warp ... used to be supplied by the mills for use in the homes of the housewives. They were not regular cotton mills as the plants of later establishment have come to be." (W. W. Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 1, 1917.) [49] Figures of Thompson give 700 ______ and 7000 bales of cotton consumed. (Thompson, pp. 49 ff.) [50] U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1900. Cotton Manufactures, pp. 54 ff. A map showing the distribution of cotton spindles in 1839 indicates a good representation for all the Southern States, except Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, as to mills of small size, but the localization both as to plants and spindles in New England is marked. (Clark, History of Manufactures in the U.S., section on cotton manufactures, pp. 533-560. See the whole section for a masterful discussion of both historical and economic phases.) [51] Cf. Thompson, pp. 49 ff. [52] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 319-320. "Few mills south of Virginia had power looms prior to 1840." (Ibid., p. 321.) Cf. omission of looms for Southern States in the census figures quoted above. [53] Clark, South in Building of Nation, Vol. V. p. 322. [54] William E. Dodd, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V. pp. 566-7. [55] Quoted in Pleasants. [56] Quoted in Pleasants. [57] Quoted from Niles' Register, May 10, 1828, in Pleasants. Mr. Pleasants remarks that not until the late twenties did the leaders of thought awaken to the disintegrating process that had set in two decades before, and he notices the striking fact that in a report to the legislature in 1828 it was said: "Nothing but a change of system can restore health and prosperity at large. With all the material and elements for manufacturing, we annually expend millions for the purchase of articles manufactured in Europe and in the North out of our own raw material. At this rate the state is on the road to bankruptcy. There must be a change. But how is this important revolution to be accomplished? We unhesitatingly answer--by introducing the manufacturing system into our own state and fabricating at least to the extent of our wants.... Our habits and prejudices are against manufacturing, but we must yield to the force of things and profit by the indications of nature. The policy that resists the change is unwise and suicidal. Nothing else can restore us." [58] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg County, Vol. I, p. 124. Cf. Ibid., pp. 126-7. [59] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 18-19. [60] Clark, History of Manufactures in U.S., pp. 553 ff. Cf. Ibid., in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 213-214, and pp. 316 ff. [61] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 16. [62] "Cheapness of cotton, abundance of water-power, the resources of the coal-fields, when steam began to supplant the dam, the other mineral resources, and the wealth of forests of pine, live oak, cypress, and other woods in which the South abounded, did not even attract from other parts sufficient capital to develop the section to anything like its full extent. No artificial expedients were necessary there. But capital did not come." (Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 73.) [63] Quoted in A. B. Hart, The Southern South, pp. 231-232. [64] Helper, p. 25. [65] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 100. [66] Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 200-201. [67] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 98-99. This statement is strongly influenced by Tench Coxe. Cf. Ibid., Cotton Growing, pp. 3-4. It has been said of the Irish people by Lord Dufferin that "the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley which it once fertilized", and Sir Horace Plunkett comments, "The energies, the hopes, nay, the very existence of the race, became thus intimately bound up with agriculture." (Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century, p. 20.) [68] Tompkins, Building and Loan Associations, p. 43. Cf. Ibid., The Cultivation, Picking, Baling and Manufacturing of Cotton from Southern Handpoint, pp. 5-6. [69] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 109-110. It is interesting that this occurs in a book by a practical manufacturer intended to point the way to technical success in mill management. It is perhaps an indication of how social the South is in even its most distinctly industrial aspects. [70] Another has used the expression that "the South was throttled by an out grown Economic System." (F. T. Carlton, History and Problems of Organized Labor, pp. 19-20.) [71] Tompkins, Cultivation, Picking, Baling and Manufacturing of Cotton, pp. 5-6. "Agricultural Methods were 'stereotyped'." This writer did more than any other in showing the character of the equipment for cotton cultivation and the alterations made therein after the war. [72] W. H. Gannon, The Landowners of the South, and the Industrial Classes of the North, pp. 7 ff. [73] William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 18-19. [74] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 194. "The price which America paid for the introduction and use of cotton was sectionalism, slavery, and war." (James A. B. Scherer, Cotton as a World Power, p. 243.) For a careful description of the circumstances surrounding the invention of the cotton gin, and the legal documents in the dispute over the rights to it, cf. ibid., Cotton and Cotton Oil, pp. 19 to 31, inclusive, and appendix. "We abandoned a once leading factory system; we imported slaves; we let all public highways become quagmires; we destroyed every possibility for the farmer except cotton and by cut-throat competition amongst ourselves we reduced the price to where there was not a living in it for the cotton producer. We made cotton in a quantity and at a price to clothe all the world excepting ourselves." (Ibid., Road Building and Repairs, p. 24.) [75] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 49. [76] Scherer, p. 253. [77] Scherer, pp. 168 ff. Cf. Walter H. Page, The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths, p. 139. [78] A. D. Mayo, In The Social Economist, Oct., 1893, pp. 203-204. [79] F. L. Olmsted, The Seaboard Slave States, pp. 140-141. Cf. Ibid., p. 185, pp. 213-214. [80] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 298-299. Cf. "The amount of it, then, is this: Improvement and progress in South Carolina is forbidden by its present system." (Ibid., pp. 522-523. And for his general philosophy on the subject, Ibid., pp. 490-491.) [81] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 179-180. [82] Ibid., pp. 288 ff. [83] Plunkett, p. 147. [84] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 68-69. [85] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 11. [86] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 213-214. Not only did slavery deter from coming to the South immigrants opposed to the institution, but the Southern whites were indisposed to welcome those who refused to grow into the system. A Southern Newspaper of the fifties betrayed this: "A large proportion of the mechanical force that migrate to the South, are a curse instead of a blessing; they are generally a worthless, unprincipled class--enemies to our peculiar institutions, and formidable barriers to the success of our native mechanics. Not so, however, with another class who migrate southward--we mean that class known as merchants; they are generally intelligent and trustworthy, and they seldom fail to discover their true interests. They become slaveholders and landed proprietors; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they are better qualified to become constituents of our institution, than even a certain class of our native born.... The intelligent mercantile class ... are generally valuable acquisitions to society, and every way qualified to sustain 'our institution'; but the mechanics, most of them, are pests to society, dangerous among the slave population, and ever ready to form combinations against the interest of the slave-holder, against the laws of the country, and against the peace of the Commonwealth." (Quoted in Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 511.) [87] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. II, p. 204. [88] Cf. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 153. [89] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 511. [90] Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War, pp. 342-343. [91] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 543. [92] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 210. [93] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 10. [94] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 9-10. "He who has possessed himself of the notion that we have the industry, and are wronged out of our hard earnings by a lazy set of scheming Yankees, to get rid of this delusion, needs only seat himself on the Charleston wharves for a few days, and behold ship after ship arrive laden down with the various articles produced by Yankee industry." (Ibid.) [95] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 9-10. "He who has possessed himself of the notion that we have the industry, and are wronged out of our hard earnings by a lazy set of scheming Yankees, to get rid of this delusion, needs only seat himself on the Charleston wharves for a few days, and behold ship after ship arrive laden down with the various articles produced by Yankee industry." (Ibid., p. 11.) [96] Helper, pp. 21 and 23. See these pages also for interesting illustrations of dependence upon the North, some of which plainly influenced Henry W. Grady. [97] William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 8. Nothing is more frequently remarked as indicative of the exclusive attention to the cultivation of cotton than the large reliance of an almost purely agricultural country upon other sections for many articles of food. And not only subsistance for the people, but subsistence for the plantation as such often had to be imported. Missing nothing, Olmsted said, in a description of a rail journey in North Carolina, "The principal other freight of the train was one hundred and twenty bales of Northern hay. It belonged ... to a planter who lived some twenty miles beyond here, and who had bought it in Wilmington at a dollar and a half a hundred weight, to feed to his mules. Including the steam-boat and railroad freight, and all the labor of getting it to his stables, its entire cost to him would not be much less than two dollars a hundred. This would be at least four times as much as it would have cost to raise and make it in the interior of New York or New England.... He had preferred to employ his slaves at other business." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 376-379.) But Gregg gave encouragement in any brighter aspects that he found, as when he said, "Limited as our manufactures are in South Carolina, we can now, more than supply the State with Coarse Cotton Fabrics. Many of the fabrics now manufactured here are exported to New York, and for aught I know, find their way to the East Indies." (Ibid., pp. 11) And he held out to his State the prospect of the results that might reasonably be expected from adoption of his proposals: "Were all our hopes ... consumated, South Carolina would present a delightful picture. Every son and daughter would find healthful and lucrative employment; our roads, which are now a disgrace to us, would be improved; we would no longer be under the necessity of sending to the North for half made wagons and carriages, to break our necks; we would have, if not as handsome, at least as honestly and faithfully made ones.... Workshops would take the place of the throngs of clothing, hat, and shoe stores, and the watch-word would be, from the seaboard to the mountains, success to domestic industry." (Ibid., p. 17.) When Southern resources were exploited, the total benefit might not come to the locality; "The great abundance of the best lumber for the purpose, in the United States, growing in the vicinity of the town, has lately induced some persons to attempt ship-building at Mobile. The mechanics employed are mainly from the North." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 567.) [98] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 544. [99] Quoted in Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 175. [100] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 363. [101] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 166. [102] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, preface to appendix. This is one of a thousand incidents which bring to mind the similarity between Irish temperament and that of the people of the South--how prone both have been to obscure to themselves real issues in public affairs for a joke's sake. And the reflection would be dismal for both peoples but for the finer discernment of which each, at other times, has shown itself capable. Cf. Plunkett. [103] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 18. [104] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 47. Cf. Burkett and Poe, Cotton, pp. 312 and 313, and E. C. Brooks, The Story of Cotton, p. 157. [105] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 169. [106] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 20. "Lamentable, indeed is it to see so wise and so pure a man as Langdon Cheves, putting forth the doctrine, to South Carolina, that manufactures should be the last resort of a country. With the greatest possible respect for the opinions of this truly great man, and the humblest pretensions on my part, I will venture the assertion, that a greater error was never committed by a statesman." (Ibid., p. 14) For a very fine passage, omitted here only because of its length, showing the fallacy of Cheves' position, and defining what Gregg meant by "domestic manufactures"--not household industry, but the erection of steam mills in Charleston, of cotton factories there and throughout the State; "I mean, that, at every village and cross-road in the State, we should have a tannery, a shoe-maker, a clothier, a hatter, a blacksmith ... a wagon maker ... this is the kind of manufactures I speak of, as being necessary to bring forth the energies of a country, and give healthful and vigorous action to agriculture, commerce and every department of industry"--See Ibid., pp. 14-15-16. The Southern Quarterly Review in 1845 quoted Cheves: "'Manufacturing should be the last resort of industry in every country, for one forced as with us, they serve no interests but those of the capitalists who set them in motion, and their immediate localities'." And Mr. Kohn remarks, "This expression was not peculiar to any one class of leaders in South Carolina at that time," and he instances other examples. (Kohn, Cotton Mill of S.C., p. 13.) Cf. also references to Burkett and Poe and to Brooks. [107] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 14. See p. 52. [108] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 19-20. [109] Ibid., p. 20. [110] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 67. [111] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 29. [112] Quoted in The News and Courier, Charleston, March 9, 1881. Said Olmsted in 1856: "Singularly simple, childlike ideas about commercial success, you find among the Virginians.... The agency by which commodities are transferred from the producer to the consumer, they seem to look upon as a kind of swindling operation: ... They speak angrily of New York, as if it fattened on the country without any good in return." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 138.) [113] "... the labor of negroes and blind horse can never supply the place of _steam_, and this power is withheld lest the smoke of an engine should disturb the delicate nerves of an agriculturist; or the noise of the mechanic's hammer should break in upon the slumber of a real estate holder, or importing merchant, while he is indulging in fanciful dreams, or building on paper, _the Queen City of the South_--the _paragon_ of the age. No reflections on the members of the City Council are here intended, they are no doubt fairly representing public opinion on this subject...." (Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 23.) [114] "The State of South Carolina has been extremely guarded in extending grants to banking institutions, and in this she has shown her wisdom, for it is an extremely dangerous power to exercise." He hoped, however, that the danger to be apprehended from banking privileged would "not be confounded with, and brought injudiciously to bear against the charters which are necessary to develop the resources of our country, and give an impetus to all industrial pursuits.... The practice of operating by associated capital gives a wonderful stimulus to enterprise, and where such investments are fashionable, no undertaking is too great to be consummated. Why is it that the Bostonians are able in a day, or a week, to raise millions at one stroke, to purchase the land on both sides of a river, for miles, to secure a great water power and the erection of a manufacturing city?... The divine, lawyer, doctor, schoolmaster, guardian, widow, farmer, merchant, mechanic, common labourer, in fact, the whole community is made tributary to these great enterprises. The utility and safety of such institutions is no longer problematical.... If we shut the door against associated capital and place reliance on individual exertion, we may talk over the matter and grow poorer for fifty years to come, without effecting the change in our industrial pursuits, necessary to renovate the fortunes of our State. Individuals will not be found amongst us who are willing to embark their 100, 200 or $300,000 in untried pursuits: ... If liberal charters were granted, one hundred successful establishments would spring into existence, where one, of feeble order, could be expected from individual effort.... About three-fourths of the manufacturing of the United States, is carried on by joint-stock companies: ... We shall certainly have to look to such companies to introduce the business with us...." He showed the perpetuity of the corporate form by instancing one South Carolina cotton factory operated by a joint stock company; "... there is but one of the original proprietors living, yet the factory is still going on prosperously, producing as good results as it ever has done ...", and this mill he contrasted with the venture of an individual which was prosperous until his death, when the legatees, not able to carry on the manufacture, forced the sale of the property at half its value. (Gregg, An Enquiry into the Propriety of Granting Charters of Incorporation for Manufacturing and Other Purposes, in South Carolina, pp. 4-11.) [115] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 314-315. [116] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 361. [117] Ibid., pp. 358-359. [118] Ingle, Southern Side Lights, p. 32 ff. "There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Massachusetts, 1161 and Illinois, 489. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates." (William E. Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, p. 231.) Cf. the map on p. 188, showing the industrial belt of 1860 to extend along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire to the head of Chesapeake Bay, covering the coastal States, with scattering development indicated to the westward. The territory south of Maryland shows a few plants of an output of $250,000. [119] Upon this whole matter, see Scherer, p. 179 ff. "In 1816, when Webster opposed protection, there was a capital of only about $52,000,000 invested in textile manufacture, of which much still lay in the South. In 1828, when he reversed his position, this capital had probably doubled, and had become localized in and about New England." (Ibid., p. 181.) Cf. Ibid., p. 234. [120] Scherer, p. 152. "When the United States of America was formed, manufacturing interests were as well developed in the South as the North. Slavery ... existed under protection of law more than a hundred years in Massachusetts before it was tolerated by law in Georgia. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the tariff was not a matter which was exclusively political.... The subject ceased to be an economic one and became a political one in proportion as slavery grew in the South and diminished in the North, and in inverse proportion as manufactures dried up in the South and became of greater importance in the North.... The time came when the South stood for free trade and the North for protection. This was because slavery made agriculture more profitable in the South and protection made manufacturing more profitable in the North with the South as a protected market." (Tompkins, The Tariff and Reciprocity.) [121] Tompkins, Tariff and Protection. [122] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 316 ff. See pp. 30-31-32. Contrast Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 133-137. [123] But some of the agitation in favor of industries in this period, as in other ante-bellum and indeed post-bellum years, had a flavor not symptomatic of healthy desire for improvement. One hundred and thirty-one delegates represented nineteen North Carolina counties at a meeting held in Salisbury in 1836, at which resolutions were adopted asking the legislature to give assistance in the building of railroads; another evidence of this interest was the Knoxville railroad convention of about the same date. Of the advantages which it was agreed would flow from the building of the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad, it was declared that "it will form a bond of union among the States which will give safety to our property and security to our institutions." (Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 125.) Of more positive character was the utterance of a Southerner who viewed with deep concern the danger that the North would crush slavery and place the South under complete submission to tariff aggressions, congressional representation for the latter section finding a stop in the limit to slave territory: "Under these circumstances, the true policy of the south is distinct and clearly marked. She must resort to the same means by which power is accumulated at the North, to secure it for herself. She must embark in that system of manufacturing which has been so successfully employed at the north.... All civilized nations are now dependent upon our staple to give employment to their machinery and their labor.... If, then, we manufacture a large portion of it ourselves, we reduce the quantity for export, and the competition for that remainder will add greatly to our wealth, while it will place us in a position to dictate our own terms. The manufactories will increase our population; increased population and wealth will enable us to chain the southern States proudly and indissolubly together by railroads and other internal improvements; and these works by affording a speedy communication from point to point, will prove our surest defense against either foreign aggression or domestic revolt." (J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the South and Southwest, Vol. II, p. 127.) J. H. Taylor, of Charleston, combatted the antipathy toward massing the poor whites in factories with the reflection that small farming in competition with slave labor brought discontent that might mean social upheaval, whereas the factory opened a door of opportunity that allowed of intelligence and stability; with the chance of coming to own a slave, "they would increase the demand for that kind of property, and would become firm and uncompromising supporters of Southern institutions." (Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 25-26.) [124] In earlier pages he has developed with much care the promising industrial status of the Colonial and Revolutionary South. "In the Southern colonies iron making became an important industry, even before the beginning of the eighteenth century." The activity in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia is shown: Governor's Spottswood's ventures in Virginia, the passage in 1727 by the Virginia General Assembly of "an act for encouraging adventures in iron-works"; South Carolina forges built in 1773 are dwelt upon. His original investigations reveal valuable facts as to iron-making in North Carolina and upper South Carolina--details are given of the works of E. Graham & Company, formed in 1826 and later merged with the King's Mountain Iron Company; the Magnetic Iron Company, 1837, near the former plant, and the South Carolina Manufacturing Company. It is to be noticed, however, as a modification upon the good effect which might have been expected from these enterprises, that the Graham Company had a considerable part of its capital invested in slaves, and sixty per cent. of the Magnetic Company's capital of $250,000 was used for the same purpose. (Richard H. Edmonds, Facts About the South, Ed. 1894, pp. 3 ff.) [125] Ibid., pp. 10 ff. [126] Edmonds, p. 18 ff. [127] In reference to the false idea of wealth and prosperity in the ante-bellum South, it has been said, "A delusion of great wealth was created in the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount of at least two thousand millions." (A. B. Hart, The Southern South, p. 218.) [128] Edmonds, p. 2. [129] Ibid., p. 14. [130] Edmonds, pp. 1-2. [131] Ibid., pp. 2-8, 19-20. [132] Edmonds, p. 21. Cf. Ibid., pp. 19-20. [133] E. G. Murphy, The Present South, p. 97. [134] Murphy, p. 102. [135] Murphy, pp. 10-11. [136] Murphy, p. 21. [137] There were earlier expressions of the same spirit, some, as if in foretaste of the South's fate under the old system, before the Civil War, and others immediately following the war. But the motives were liable to be selfish and unsound, as for the purpose of retaining slavery, and if they did not lack, that fire and conviction which marked the full movement commencing fifteen years later, they were fruitless of large results. "We are going to work in good earnest, not only to repair the waste places of the war, but to build up and improve and prosper, and to show the world that we can be good soldiers in peace as we are in war." (W. J. Barbee, published 1866) Cf. [138] News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 9, 1880. [139] "... business is driving sentimental politics to the woods." (News and Observer, Dec. 31, 1880.) [140] Reprinted in News and Courier, Charleston, S.C., July 11, 1881. [141] "... they (the New York Times, which carried an editorial questioning the word of General Wade Hampton, and the 'malignants' of the Republican party) must realize the difference between a Southern gentleman and a Northern malignant. They know that the former cannot prevaricate, while the Northern leaders of the Republican party and the malignants are usually devoid of personal honor." This is from an editorial in the News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., and is too characteristic of most of the political writing in the South which was an outcome of reconstruction. [142] Reprinted in News and Courier, May 14, 1881. [143] Reprinted from the Memphis Avalanche, in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, Ga., March 30, 1880. [144] Reprinted in News and Courier, March 18, 1881. The writer had been a slave-holder. [145] A sentence occurring in an editorial of the News and Courier, in the issue of March 24, 1881, is indicative of the love with which this city looked upon the undertaking proposed: "A man who has been in the whirl of New York or in any of the brand new cities of the great West coming into Charleston might readily enough come to the conclusion that the old city was in a sad state of decadence ... but our own people ... if they have their eyes open (or hearts open would perhaps be the better expression) could not fail to see manifest improvement." "They dub thee idler, smilingly sneeringly, and why?-- How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught? Or that thou dost not bow thee silently Before some great unutterable thought." --Henry Timrod [146] "The people of South Carolina are nothing if not heroic, and right or wrong, they are sincere, earnest, and brave ... the same heroic qualities are now leading in the restoration of the South to prosperity, and on a basis that must speedily give the reconstructed States a degree of substantial wealth and power that was never dreamed of before the war." (A. K. McClure, "The South: Industrial, financial and political", p. 55, published 1886.) [147] The News and Courier, in an editorial on March 19, 1881: "Every true South Carolinian must rejoice at the prudence and energy exhibited by the citizens of Columbia in their management of the cotton mill campaign.... It will be a happy day for the whole State when the hum of myriad spindles is heard on the banks of the historic canal. Columbia will then grow rapidly, speedily rivalling Augusta in the number and success of the cotton mills. Thousands will be added to the population, and from our political center additional life and energy will flow to every part of the State.... we confess to having a weakness for Columbia, which suffered so sorely at the end of the war, and which is the only place of consequence in South Carolina that has not improved its business and enlarged its boundaries since the overthrow of Radicalism in 1876. But cotton mills will soon make amends for the vicissitudes and hopelessness of the past, and for that reason The News and Courier takes the warmest possible interest in the cotton mill campaign at Columbia." The Observer, Raleigh, N.C., July 11, 1800: "... when our people once begin to mingle freely, having a community of interests and a common purpose, sectional feelings will be obliterated, and we will forget that there has been an East, a center, or a West, and remember only that we are all North Carolinians, sharing the same fortunes, blessed with a common hope and ennobled with the same proud memories of a glorious past." The News and Courier, January 25, 1881, carried a plea for State aid for Columbia in her enterprise to build a 16,000-spindle mill, the same as forms the subject of the first part of this note. The editorial especially advocated the placing of convicts at work on the construction: "... The capital, _because it was the capital_, was laid in ashes by Sherman's troops. In the person of Columbia, all South Carolina was ravaged and laid waste. The city which suffered so sorely may reasonably expect the just assistance of the State in the endeavor to repair her losses caused by war, and intensified by years of contact with political profligacy and misrule." [148] "What the South should do is the caption that graces the editorial effusions of all classes cf papers, and especially those of our own deeply solicitous and anxious friends of the North. Many of us think we know. The South should depend upon its own virtue, its own brain, its own energy, attend to its own business, make money, build up its waste places, and thus force upon the North that recognition of our worth and dignity of character to which that people will always be blind unless they can see it through the medium of material, industrial and intellectual strength. We may proclaim political theories, but it is the more potent and powerful argument of the mighty dollar that secures an audience there, and the sooner we realize it the better for us." (News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 27, 1880.) [149] Editorial in News and Courier, Mar. 9, 1881. [150] It is interesting and pathetic to observe how unaccustomed the South was to the most obvious facts of business. Concentration upon one crop had precluded from the Southern mind--speaking in the aggregate, of course--the first reasonings springing from diversification of industry and from ordinary competition. But once the necessity for a different attitude became apparent, the statesmanlike manner in which this was pressed must provoke admiration. The article in J. D. B. DeBow's "Industrial Resources", etc., pp. 124-125, presents the consideration that the cotton crop of Tennessee, amounting to 200,000 bales, 90,000,000 pounds at 6-1/2 cents an average pound, gave the producers 11-1/2 per cent. profit on their investment, while the manufacturers of the same crop made 24 per cent. profit--more than twice as great. "Are there any so blind as not to see the advantages of the system?" Much earlier Southern statements of the true fact from manufacturing cotton was to be found, but in the delirium of the latter days of slavery these were lost sight of. Wm. J. Barbee, in his "The Cotton Question" pp. 138 and following, commends for the reflection of capitalists in 1866 the "Manufacture of Cotton by its Producers, suggestions of S. R. Cockrill seventeen years ago." Cockrill speculated as to the gain to be derived from cotton mills in the cotton states, and said: "Facts like these should fix the attention of the cotton planter, teach him his true interest, and stimulate him to become the manufacturer of the product of his field, instead of permitting others to reap the entire profit." [151] News and Courier, Feb. 2, 1881. The editorial appeared apropos of the opening of books for subscriptions to the Charleston Manufacturing Company, which occupies a prominent place in the history of cotton manufacturing in the South. The editorial concluded: "This is the logic of the investment of money in cotton mills in Charleston. It will pay the stockholders their ten or twelve per cent., and the city at large will get a dollar's profit on every dollar's worth of raw cotton that the mills consume." [152] While the manufacture of cotton was the most prominent manifestation of the newly quickened spirit in the South, it was by no means the only one. Every opportunity for productive enterprise was eagerly investigated; the discovery of one of these was hailed in the papers with an enthusiasm like the joy of a child in a new-found plaything. Properties of soils, the use of the telephone, the most profitable employment for State convicts were some of the topics of interest. There was, of course, a complete absorption for a time in railroads in the Southern Atlantic coast states, either for the further building of small independent lines, the merging of these into systems, or the extension of the coastal lines over the mountains into Tennessee. There was also a phase of the movement distinctly moral in tone, as, e.g., the wide formation of temperance societies about this time. [153] News and Courier, Aug. 1, 1881. [154] While it is clear that the purpose to build cotton mills in the South arose irrespective of the means at the disposal of the people with which to do so, and would have come about had their financial limitations been even more discouraging, it is certainly true that a revival of business at the time of the commencement of the cotton mill campaign was a spur to the widespread investigation into the profitableness of cotton manufacturing. That there was coming to be money seeking investment, or at any rate capable of investment, was good reason for the searching out of opportunities for productive industry. The following gives an insight into the better times that had begun: "The year that is just finished will be to the present generation a red-letter one, for it brought to an end the long and weary period of enforced economy and restricted business that followed the panic of 1873, and put every branch of industry at work. Agriculture was encouraged in the West and South by good crops and remunerative prices, the factories received more orders than they could fill, the railroads were blocked with freight, the mines were pushed to a greater extent than ever, and all other interests were quickened towards the end of the old year in a way that was full of promise." This summary of the year 1879 appeared in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, January 7, 1880. The return to specie payments did much to stimulate trade. A contribution to the Savannah, Ga. Morning News, quoted by W. H. Gannon in "The Landowners of the South and the Industrial Classes of the North", pp. 6, 7 and 8. The article was probably written by Mr. Gannon himself. [155] Quoted from Savannah Morning News by W. H. Gannon, The Landowners of the South and the Industrial Classes of the North. "The cotton mill to the cotton field" was the familiar dogma which crystallized out of the course events were taking. [156] The term is taken from The News and Courier, where it was used first, perhaps, in the issue of January 31, 1881. Before long it had come to be a phrase in everybody's mouth, and proved to be apt beyond any thought, probably, of the editor who first ran the line over a column of notices of new mills established. [157] "The News and Courier busies itself with every enterprise, big and little, that will turn a dollar's worth of raw material into more than a dollar's worth of manufactures." (News and Courier, Mar. 19, 1881.) [158] Reprinted in Daily Constitution, Mar. 9, 1880. [159] News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882. [160] Ibid., Feb. 22, 1881, see p. 11, note 3. [161] Ibid., January 26, 1881. [162] "While Charleston and other points in the State are discussing and initiating their cotton manufactories, Spartanburg is pushing ahead with her grand enterprise. (Spartanburg correspondence of News and Courier, Feb. 4, 1881.) The same purpose to encourage new mills actuated the News and Observer, December 24, 1880, in referring to Edward Richardson, of the firm of Richardson and May, cotton factors, in New Orleans ... the cotton king of the world. He runs ten to twelve plantations.... Has built a town (Cresson) ... where he has factories employing 400 looms, 18000 spindles and 800 hands. He is worth from $15,000,000 to $18,000,000, all accumulated in the South, the poor South." The encouragement lent by one mill to others to come into the field was recognized. In working for the establishment of the Charleston Manufacturing Company, the News and Courier was starting a force that would grow in power through the years: "When this pioneer company shall have made a good start, other companies will speedily follow...." (January 28, 1881). And again (Observer, January 2, 1880): "Another large cotton factory. The Charlotte Observer chronicles the erection in the immediate future of a cotton factory in that city, and regards it as the beginning of a prosperous growth of manufactures." An item in the Barnwell, S.C. Sentinel, reprinted in the News and Courier, Feb. 8, 1881, declared: "The people of Charleston should have never hesitated as long as they have about embanking in the manufacture of cotton goods, and we firmly believe, as the ball is started, that it will be kept moving...." The Keowee Courier, in an editorial also reprinted in the Charleston paper, commended Charleston as setting an example to the entire State. A Georgia note, carried in the News and Courier of February 24, 1881, is especially specific in this connection: "If the organization of this manufacturing company (the Enterprise Factory, Augusta, Georgia, which was to be greatly enlarged after making good profits) proves a good omen--its extension may work as an invaluable stimulus to other enterprises now. It will hurry up the walls of the stupendous Sibley Mill, where 25,000 spindles will soon mingle in our industrial acclaim. It will quicken the shuttles of that giant corporation, the Augusta Factory." "It will spur on the Globe Factory and the Summerville Mills to renewed effort, while our South Carolina neighbors cannot but catch the spirit of improvement." [163] Reprinted in the News and Courier, Jan. 31, 1881. [164] Reprinted in the News and Courier, Feb. 23, 1881. [165] Ibid., Jan. 27, Mar. 20 and May 4, 1881. [166] The commencement of the movement was right clearly marked in the minds of the people. The News and Courier (August 1, 1881) in an editorial commenting on the address of Major Hammett on cotton manufacturing in the South, printed in that issue of the paper, had these words: "Major Hammett was the founder of the Piedmont Factory, which, under his management, is one of the finest and most profitable cotton mills in the South. The Piedmont Factory was projected and built before the opening of the cotton mill campaign in the South, and Maj. Hammett ranks, therefore, as one of the pioneers in cotton manufacturing in South Carolina." [167] News and Courier, Oct. 13, 1881. [168] "We people of the South should embrace every opportunity which, like the opportunity offered by this exposition, will bring among us intelligent and interested observers of our industrial condition, resources and aptitudes. We have in the midst of us the raw material, so to speak, of a magnificent prosperity. We lack knowledge, population and capital. These may be slowly accumulated in the course of years, or they may be rapidly by well directed efforts to obtain them from beyond our own borders. We advocate the latter plan." (Interview with one of the officials of the exposition, printed in News and Courier, Mar. 14, 1881.) [169] News and Courier, Dec. 27, 1881. [170] An Atlanta dispatch to the News and Courier, February 25, 1881, said the executive committee of the exposition was fully organized, with H. I. Kimball, chairman and J. W. Rickman, secretary. By March 8 (News and Courier) $20,000 had been subscribed in Atlanta, and General Sherman had headed the Northern subscription to the capital stock with $2,000. By the 17th (News and Courier) the stock had reached $40,000, four subscriptions of $1,000 each having been received from private individuals, and eleven of $500 each from like sources. Railroad subscriptions at this date were: Western and Atlantic Railroad Company, $10,000; Louisville and Nashville, $5,000; Richmond and Danville Road, $2,500; East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Road, $2,000. By the first day of April (News and Courier still) New York bankers seemed likely to increase by $5,000 the amount of subscriptions sought from them, and make their shares $30,000. Inman, Swan & Co. subscribed to $2,000 worth of stock Drexel, Morgan & Co. took $1,000; and Brown Bros. & Co. $1,000. Before the week was out, (News and Courier, April 5) the Boston Herald had taken $1,000 worth of stock. The executive committee had sent an agent to Europe and had made a tour of investigation through the North earlier. [171] News and Courier, Oct. 21, 1881. [172] Ibid., Oct. 7, 1881. [173] News and Courier, Oct. 10, 1881. [174] November 1, 1881. This paper maintained Mr. Hemphill as staff correspondent at the exposition for some time after its opening. [175] News and Courier, Dec. 5, 1881. The speech details the number of miles of railroads that spread like a web over New England. "I have said that there is no better simple standard than the proportion of railroads to the square mile of territory of any State, by which to gauge the condition and prosperity of the people. I ask you, gentlemen of Georgia, if you will lag behind. I ask you men of the South what you will do in this matter." "I told you last year you needed the savings bank more than any other institution; there is a vast unused capital in your Southern States in the hordes of the working people waiting for us, but there is one condition precedent to the savings bank--you must set up schools." This paragraph illustrates Mr. Atkinson's ideas singularly well. His advocacy here of common schools was a part of his great desire to see the South rebuilt, and so was his proposal of savings banks. But he could not understand how the South wished to see money taken out of savings banks and placed immediately in cotton mills, where it would be more productive to its owners, and to the country. As far as Mr. Atkinson went, his reasoning was astonishing sound, but where he stopped, he stopped irrevocably. "Where are your dairies? You farmers of the hills of Georgia, from the mountains of the Carolinas and Tennessee, aye, from the North Cumberland valley, from the French Broad River, even from that great blue grass country of Kentucky. Where are your dairies?" he seemed to think of everything but what to his hearers seemed most obvious. He suggested stock raising as profitable in the South, and finally the culture of Pongee, Tussah or Cheefoo silk worms, though the latter would be, he thought, perhaps of doubtful success. A week after this speech, Mr. Atkinson had a talk, reported in the News and Courier of May 8, 1881, with the press representatives in their pavilion. He discussed first "whether a single roller gin, operating against a saw gin, will do an equal amount of work with less motive power and less labor." He had arranged to take to Boston to lay before the New England Cotton Manufactures' Association samples of cotton from all the gins on the grounds. "Mr. Atkinson has proposed another trial of every kind of gin, cleaner, press and picker, to be made in the building of the New England Mechanics' Institute in Boston, in December, 1882. Every man in the South who is especially interested in cotton production and manufacture will be invited to plant a specific acre for use at this trial, which will be the second step in what has been so well begun in Atlanta. The picking and saving the cotton wasted on the ground, the cleaning, ginning and packing of the staple in good condition, offers to the Southern States a branch of manufacturing the most important in the whole series of operations which neither the Northern States nor Europe can share, but in which there is greater opportunity for profit in ration to the capital invested than in any other department of manufacture. 'No staple in the world,' said Mr. Atkinson, 'except the sugar raised by the Maylays, is treated so barbarously as the cotton produced in the Southern States of the American Union'." Tests, Mr. Atkinson thought, showed that cotton from the Charlotte steam compress worked up more smoothly, though the yarn was somewhat weaker, perhaps, than cotton from the county compresses and loose cotton just as it came from the field. It may be that this interview was written by Mr. Atkinson himself, and run into the reports of the day at the exposition as sent out by the correspondents. [176] Examples of this abound. The Manufacturer and Industrial Gazette, Springfield, Mass., was quoted in the News and Courier, Feb. 3, 1881: "They (the Southern States) have the advantage of cotton location, and, when they have secured new and improved machinery, will do any unrivalled business. They can save freights, buy cheaper and hire cheaper labor. They save buyers' commission, and warehouse delivery and cartage, sampling, classing, pressing, shipping, marine risks and freight and cartage to interior towns, which amounts in all to some seven dollars per bale. The Northern mills also lose from receiving cotton poorly ginned, containing a good deal of leaf and sand, which is computed at six per cent. of the entire crop. The difference between the cost of a bale sent to Fall River, Mass., and a bale sent to Columbia, Ga., is eight dollars and six cents. This makes a tax of eighteen per cent. which Fall River pays in competition with Columbus. It is estimated that, if the planters could manufacture their cotton near home, they would save $50,000,000 in transportation.... As yet the South manufactures principally coarser goods, yarns, ducks, unbleached muslins, sheetings, shirtings, osnaburgs, jeans, etc., but the time is not distant when it will come to make prints, cambrics, laces, and all the finer qualities of staple goods." [177] News and Courier, Dec. 5, 1881. (In the same issue excerpts from the address were printed.) [178] News and Courier, Oct. 13, 1881. In the following editorial comment of the Augusta, Ga., Chronicle and Constitutionalist (reprinted in the News and Courier, Dec. 8, 1881) the contrast between Mr. Atkinson's views and the facts as the South was finding them is made sharp: "Augusta has an abiding faith in her manufactories, despite Mr. Edward Atkinson, and people outside seem to think as well of them, at any rate they are willing to invest their money in such enterprise.... For such factories as the Augusta, the Enterprise and Sibley and the King are of immense importance to a city. There will be when all of them are at work, fully twenty thousand people dependent upon them, including the operatives and their families, to say nothing of the stores that will be supported by their trade. Each factory like the Sibley or the King adds five thousand to the population." [179] "We have found that we cannot stand alone, that our fight must be made within the Union." (News and Courier, Oct. 24, 1881.) [180] News and Courier, Charleston, S.C., July 13, 1881. When Garfield was shot, July 2, this paper carried an editorial of similar content. Five days after the appearance of the editorial here quoted, when recovery seemed assured, the paper said this: "One thing the President's desperate illness has unquestionably effected. It has done more than years of ordinary events in bringing the North and South together--vainly will the politicians flourish the 'bloody flag'. The people will not rally on the ensanguined colors again. For the Republic, as well as the President, the danger line is well nigh, passed." [181] News and Courier, Sept. 20, 1881. Garfield died at Elberton, N.J., September 19. That Charleston meant what she said is shown in the reception which was accorded the First Connecticut Regiment, invited to visit the city after attending the Centennial Celebration at Yorktown, Virginia. The New Englanders came six weeks after the death of Garfield--October 24. On this day the newspaper carried at the head of the first column the Connecticut and South Carolina flags crossed, above them the words "Yankee Doodle Came to Town", and below "A Welcome Invasion!" An editorial headed "Happy Day" had these words: "It does not strain the probabilities to believe that the visit of the First Connecticut Regiment to Charleston is the outgrowth and sentiment and interest which found expression when the President of the United States lay dying, and when after his long agony he died. Had not President Garfield been slain, and the South felt differently and, therefore, acted differently, this present unpremeditated fraternization would have been impossible. There is no shock now in removing mourning trappings to make room for the wreaths and garlands of joy. It is the fit succession of events, a consequence of the murder of the President. The blood of the Chief Magistrate is the seed of union. Yorktown in itself a reminder of the days when North and South had felt one aim and purpose, furnished the opportunity or occasion, and the unselfish sorrow of the Southern people during the President's mortal illness furnished the motive. The relation of the two events is too plain to be ignored or misunderstood. This is the significance of the coming of the Connecticut First from the land of abundance and diversified wealth to battle-scarred and struggling Charleston." [182] Interview with C. C. Baldwin In the New York Herald, reprinted in News and Courier, July 11, 1881. [183] The Daily Dispatch, Richmond, Va., March 5, 1880. [184] News and Observer, Dec. 1, 1880. [185] News and Observer, Mar. 25, 1881. [186] Mar. 18, 1881. In this instance also it is apparent that the State was looked to as a natural unit upon which the company had claims. The dispatch says: "The estimates of the subscriptions here has (have) been raised, in view of the encouragement received already, to at least $125,000, and it is believed that with this substantial backing the whole State will be assured of the character of the organization, and join in the enterprise." [187] News and Courier, Jan. 14, 1882. [188] News and Observer, Raleigh, Nov. 9, 1880. [189] Dec. 24, 1880. [190] Newberry Herald, quoted in News and Courier, Feb. 8, 1881. [191] Quoted in News and Courier, Feb. 8, 1881. [192] January 28, 1881. [193] The same dual basis of appeal was recognized in a notice supplementing an advertisement of the company appearing the day before the editorial here quoted (Jan. 27, 1881): "The advantages, direct and incidental, accruing to every citizen of Charleston from this industry about to be started in our city are so manifest that those who have inaugurated the enterprise have every reason to feel confident of a ready response to the call for capital and for abundant success." [194] News and Courier, Apr. 13, 1881. [195] Quoted in News and Courier, Mar. 31, 1881. [196] Quoted in News and Courier, Jan. 31, 1881. [197] News and Courier, Sept. 1, 1881. [198] Thompson, P. [199] Rock Hill Correspondent in News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882. [200] News and Courier, Dec. 17, 1881. [201] Yorkville Correspondence, Ibid., March 25, 1881. [202] Ibid., Feb. 26, 1881. [203] Ibid., Apr., 6, 1881; see p. 19. [204] The Observer, Sept. 10, 1880. The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, on Mch. 9, 1880, carried from the Columbus Enquirer: "... there are 213,157 spindles to Georgia's credit.... Of this number Columbus has 60,000--near a third of the whole.... The Eagle and Phenix mills alone operate 44,000 spindles. All this has been done since 1866 ... with Southern capital and brains." The editor of The Observer, Raleigh, paid a visit to Durham and Winston, North Carolina, and went back to his desk glowing with enthusiasm for what they had accomplished. In an editorial (May 19, 1880) headed "Manufacturing Towns"; he wrote of Durham: "Literally the town has been created through the energy and enterprise of its inhabitants. They began with no capital to speak of, and now they levy contributions on hundreds of thousands of people who live in distant parts of the Union, and with their gains have built and beautified a town whose history should be continually kept in view by all who would have their own homes to prosper." [205] C. C. Baldwin, president Louisville and Nashville Railroad; the interview was reprinted in News and Courier, July 11, 1881. [206] Staff correspondence from Spartanburg to News and Courier, May 21, 1881. [207] Ibid., Feb. 4, 1881. [208] News and Courier, Oct. 24, 1881. [209] News and Courier, Mch. 8, 1881. [210] News and Courier, Mar. 19 and 25, 1881. The personnel of committees appointed from among the early subscribers is significant. The names are all, or nearly all, old ones in South Carolina, and some of the men are still among the first citizens of the capit. The committees were made up of W. A. Clark, Jno. C. Seegers, Nathaniel B. Barnwell, F. W. McMaster, Preston C. Lorick, T. A. McCreery, Jno. T. Sloan, Jr. [211] Ibid., Mar. 17, 1881. [212] Columbia Dispatch, Ibid., Mar. 31, 1881. [213] News and Courier, Jan. 28, 1881. [214] See p. 14. [215] News and Courier, Jan. 9, 1882. [216] News and Courier, Dec. 14, 1881. [217] Ibid., Mch. 25, 1881. [218] "Brutus", writing from Barnwell to News and Courier, May 25, 1881. [219] Sumter, S.C. Southron, quoted in News and Courier, May 14, 1881. [220] News and Courier, June 28, 1881. [221] Ibid., Mar. 14, 1881. [222] Quoted News and Courier, Aug. 18, 1881. [223] Observer, June 27, 1880. [224] Dispatch quoted in News and Courier, Mar. 25, 1881. Francis Fontaine, commissioner of immigration for Georgia, did not represent the method of appeal of his fellow Georgians, when he said tritely and smugly: "The truth is only to be made known, when capital will find its own way to the sunny land." (Observer, Mar. 20, 1880.) [225] Gannon, W. H., The Landowners of the South, and the Industrial Classes of the North, pp. 6, 7 and 8. [226] News and Courier, Aug. 9, 1881. [227] Quoted in News and Courier, July 7, 1881. The isolation of this editor and the provincial quality of his utterance are clearly seen in such phrases as "we welcome foreign capital down here". Even without the context. [228] Quoted from New York Herald, in News and Courier, July 11, 1881. Hon. Cassius M. Clay, writing in The Industrial South declared: "I am tired of hearing the deprecating cry of 'We want Yankee brains and enterprise.' We don't want any such thing; We want Southern brains and enterprise." (Quoted in Gannon, pp. 18 and 19.) [229] Quoted in News and Courier, Nov. 5, 1881. [230] Feb. 13, 1880. [231] News and Courier, Nov. 5, 1881. [232] Quoted in News and Courier, Mar. 8, 1881. [233] Quoted in News and Courier, Annual Trade Summary, Sept. 1, 1881. [234] Winnsboro (South Carolina) News, quoted in News and Courier, Feb. 8, 1881. [235] July 30, 1881. [236] Quoted in News and Courier, Apr. 25, 1881. [237] Ibid., Apr. 9, 1881. The Batesville Cotton Factory, built by William Bates forty years before, was bought by G. Putnam, of Massachusetts for $8,000, and he invested $10,000 additional in the plant. The building was frame, two and half stories high, all was burned in March of 1881, catching from sparks from the boiler room. It was believed that Mr. Putnam would rebuild the plant on better lines. (Ibid., Mar. 2, 1881, et seq.) [238] Ibid., July 11, 1881. [239] Ibid., Nov. 10, 1881. [240] News and Courier, July 11, 1881. [241] Ibid., Jan. 14, 1882. [242] News and Courier, Jan. 12 and 14, 1882. When the Sibley Manufacturing Company of Augusta, Georgia, was increasing its capital by $400,000, President W. C. Sibley received from Boston a telegram ordering $20,000 of the new stock. (News and Courier May 21, 1881.) Cf. Thompson. [243] News and Courier, Apr. 6, 1881. [244] Ibid., Mch. 15, 1881. [245] Ibid., Mch. 29, 1881. [246] News and Courier, Apr. 1, 1881. These subscriptions may have been partly influenced by the purpose of Mr. Atkinson to have the Exposition further the cultivation and preparation, and not the manufacture, of the staple. [247] Jan. 27, 1881. [248] March 21, 1881. [249] News and Courier, Jan. 21, 1881. [250] It seems to have been usual to call first for a payment of 10 per cent. of the stock subscribed, rather than to require a certain proportion in cash at subscription. Thus the books of subscription of the Charleston Manufacturing Company were opened January 27th; on March 29th the directors called for the payment of the first instalment of 10 per cent., and at 2 o'clock on the morning of April 9th--how closely the progress of the undertaking was watched by papers and public!--more than half of the amount was in the hands of the officers of the company. [251] Ibid., Feb. 10, 1882. [252] Ibid., Feb. 5, 1881. [253] Ibid., Feb. 7, 1881. [254] News and Courier, Mar. 25, 1881. [255] Hartsell, J. L., interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [256] C. B. Armstrong, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [257] Joseph Separt, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [258] S. N. Boyce and J. Lee Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [259] Ibid., Feb. 26, 1881. [260] News and Courier, S.C., Feb. 24, 1881. [261] Augusta Trade Review, Augusta, Ga., Oct., 1884. [262] News and Courier, Apr. 9, 1881. This paper in the issue of Feb. 26th spoke of the additional stock as being $350, but puts the amount at $100,000 lower in this later notice. [263] North Carolina Herald, Salisbury, N.C., Nov. 9, 1887, quoted in minute book of Salisbury Cotton Mills. [264] The meeting was held Dec. 2nd; the minute book record is signed by F. J. Murdoch, sec. pro tem. [265] Klutz, Theodore F., interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1918. [266] J. B. Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [267] News and Courier, Mar. 31, 1881. [268] Barbee, Wm. J., The Cotton Question, pp. 138 ff. [269] March 18, 1880. [270] Clement F. Haynesworth, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [271] J. L. Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [272] W. R. Odell, interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [273] L. Baker, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [274] News and Courier, Feb. 23, 1881. [275] Haynesworth, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [276] From Cotton Field to Cotton Mill, pp. 82 ff. [277] Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [278] L. G. Porter, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [279] Potter, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [280] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [281] B. B. Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [282] Baker, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [283] Ibid. [284] Hartsell, interview. Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [285] Rogan, G. W., interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [286] Sterling Graydon, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [287] C. S. Morris, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [288] Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 2, 1916. [289] Charles McDonald, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 3, 1916. [290] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [291] J. W. Norwood, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [292] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. J. A. Chapman, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5, 1916. The mills around Spartanburg had a nucleus of local capital, and the commission houses and machinery manufacturers took an interest in the development. [293] Baker, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [294] Wood, Interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [295] Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [296] Chapman, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5, 1916. [297] A. A. Thompson, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. [298] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [299] Clark, David, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [300] C. D. Morris, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [301] Seport, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [302] Wood, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [303] Separk, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [304] Charles E. Johnson, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. [305] Bernard Case, interview, Greensboro, N.C., Aug. 30, 1916. [306] Chapman, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5, 1916. [307] Haynesworth, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [308] Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [309] Haynesworth, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [310] Odell, W. R., interview, Concord, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [311] Norwood, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [312] Ibid. [313] Norwood, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [314] Clark, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [315] Ibid., Also Separk, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916; also H. D. Wheat, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [316] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [317] Ibid. [318] Graydon, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916, also J. A. Brock, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [319] Separk, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916; also Thackston, ibid. [320] Graydon, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [321] Boyce, and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916; also Ragan, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14th, 1916. [322] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [323] Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [324] Chapman, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5, 1916; also Boyce and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [325] Boyce and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [326] Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [327] Wood, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [328] News and Courier, Apr. 29, 1881. [329] April 28, 1881. [330] News and Courier, Apr. 28, 1881. [331] Ibid., Apr. 29, 1881. [332] One commission house thirty years ago took all the bonds of a mill. A. A. Thompson, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. [333] Wheat, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [334] News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882. [335] Ibid., Jan. 14, 1882. [336] Boyce, and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [337] Bernard Cone, interview, Greensboro, N.C., Aug. 30, 1916. [338] Henry E. Litchford, interview, Richmond, Va., Aug. 29, 1916. [339] News and Courier, Jan. 14, 1882. [340] Klutz, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [341] O. D. Davis, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [342] McDonald, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 3, 1916. The Caborrus Mill, at Concord, previously referred to as having been financed on the co-operative plan was begun by others and taken over by Mr. Cannon when its prospects had declined. (Ibid.) [343] Interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 5, 1917. [344] James W. Cannon, interview, Concord, N.C., Jan. 6, 1917. [345] J. H. Meaus Beattie, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917. [346] W. W. Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917. [347] Thompson, pp. 82 ff. [348] W. W. Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917. A minor episode partaking of the character of both of the above may be worth mentioning. Mrs. M. Putnam Gridley, who, until her retirement from the presidency of the Batesville, S.C. Mill, was the only woman cotton mill president in America, said that the Boston commission house which owned and operated the factory under her father's control, was "about to commit a wrong" when the enterprise failed of its own accord. (Mrs. M. Putnam Gridley, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916.) [349] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [350] Jas. D. Hammett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [351] Marshall Orr, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 10, 1916. [352] Charles Estes, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. "When I was mayor of Augusta and Black was City Attorney, we ran the city on the commission plan and didn't know it. I used to draft ordinances in my own handwriting, show them to Black to see whether they were legal, and to Blum to see if they were grammatical, and that was all there was to it!" [353] David, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. The financial administration of this mill is attributable in its form to the conservatism of the company, and to the peculiar conditions of its inception. One director has nervous prostration, and another is too aged to attend meetings, but none have been elected in their places. [354] Samuel Stradley, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [355] McDonald, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 3, 1916. [356] Thomas W. Loyless, interview, Augusta, Ga. [357] Estes, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [358] T. S. Raworth, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 30, 1916. [359] D. S. Thompson, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, p. 51. [360] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [361] John W. Fries, interview, Winston-Salem, N.C., Aug. 31, 1916. [362] Graydon, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [363] Mar. 18, 1880. [364] News and Courier, Aug. 12, 1881. [365] Observer, Feb. 13, 1880. [366] Quoted in News and Courier, Mar. 22, 1881. [367] p. 271. [368] Thompson, pp. 82 ff. [369] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [370] Orr, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 10, 1916. [371] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [372] Augusta Trade Review, Oct., 1884 [373] Baker, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [374] Morris, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [375] Mrs. Gridley, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 9, 1916. [376] J. A. Brock, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [377] Jas. D. Hammett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. [378] Washington Clark, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 1, 1917. [379] Thompson, pp. 89 and 90. [380] Tracy I. Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [381] Thomas Purse, interview, Savannah, Ga., Dec. 26, 1916. [382] Geo. W. Williams, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 27, 1916. [383] W. P. Carrington, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 27, 1916. [384] Geo. Williams, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 27, 1916. [385] H. R. Buist, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 28, 1916. [386] Julius Koester, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 27, 1916. [387] Boyce and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [388] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. [389] Boyce and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [390] Royan, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [391] J. Lee Robinson, letter, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 28, 1916. [392] Boyce and Robinson, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916, and Robinson, letter, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 28, 1916. [393] C. B. Armstrong, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [394] Robinson, letter, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 28, 1916. [395] Rogan, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [396] Estes, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [397] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [398] The trained men in the industry are in the technical branches, and that when a leader is wanted at the top, as for the president of a mill, a man is still chosen who enjoys a general business reputation rather than specific mill experience. [399] Morris, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [400] Graydon, interview, Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4, 1916. [401] Augusta Trade Review, Oct., 1884. [402] G. T. Lynch, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 30, 1916, and Tracey I. Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [403] Estes, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [404] Augusta Trade Review, Oct., 1884. [405] News and Observer, Nov. 16, 1880. [406] Augusta Trade Review, Oct., 1884. [407] Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [408] News and Courier, Feb. 24, 1881. [409] Ibid., Aug. 12, 1881. [410] Ibid., Aug. 12, 1881. [411] Buist, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 28, 1916. [412] Keatz, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [413] Davis, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [414] Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917, and Davison's Textile Blue Book, 1916. [415] Brock, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916. See p. [416] Thompson, pp. 82 ff. [417] Interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 5, 1917. [418] Goldsmith, p. 6. [419] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, p. 172. [420] Goldsmith, p. 6. [421] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916. A mill man near Greenville said: "The money actually paid in was more or less local in those days (the early years of the period) but not much paid in." (Gossett, interview, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 11, 1916.) [422] W. J. Thackston, letter, Greenville, S.C., Nov. 28, 1916. [423] Buist, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 28, 1916. [424] News and Courier, Feb. 24, 1881. [425] Raworth, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 30, 1916. He knew of no Southern mills quoted on any of the exchanges. [426] Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [427] Raworth, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 30, 1916. [428] Ball, interview, Columbia, Jan. 3, 1917. [429] Ibid. [430] Ragan, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [431] Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [432] Goldsmith, The Cotton Mill South. [433] Estes, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [434] Buist, interview, Charleston, S.C., Dec. 28, 1916. [435] Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917. [436] Washington Clark, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 1, 1917. [437] Wool, interview, Gaffney, S.C., Sept. 13, 1916. [438] Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 3, 1917. [439] A Rock Hill correspondent in News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882. [440] In ibid., A Rock Hill correspondent in News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882. [441] Walter Montgomery, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5, 1916. [442] Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916. [443] Augusta Trade Review, Oct. 1884. [444] News and Observer, Nov. 16, 1880. [445] Augusta Trade Review, Oct. 1884. [446] Hickman, interview, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1916. [447] Davis, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916. [448] Ibid. [449] Ragan, interview, Gastonia, N.C., Sept. 14, 1916. [450] Robinson, letter, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 28, 1916. Transcriber's Notes: Underlined passages are indicated by _underline_. The original text includes a blank spaces in Footnote 49 which is represented by ______ in this text version. The following typographical and spelling errors have been corrected: "evidenes" corrected to "evidences" (page 2) "be lieved" corrected to "believed" (page 4) "American" corrected to "America" (page 15) "powerul" corrected to "powerful" (page 16) "controservy" corrected to "controversy" (page 16) "Carolinaian" corrected to "Carolinian" (page 17) "Id" corrected to "If" (page 18) "build" corrected to "built" (page 19) "newsness" corrected to "newness"(page 19) "propserous" corrected to "prosperous" (page 22) "mangers" corrected to "managers" (page 22) "temas" corrected to "teams" (page 26) "tage" corrected to "stage" (page 29) "advances" corrected to "advanced" (page 29) missing "in" added (page 29) "steambot" corrected to "steamboat" (page 31) "sucess" corrected to "success" (page 33) "delcared" corrected to "declared" (page 45) "Calhoung" corrected to "Calhoun" (page 46) "feel" corrected to "fell" (page 48) "quote" corrected to "quite" (page 49) "imiginary" corrected to "imaginary" (page 52) "repating" corrected to "repeating" (page 58) "reproahced" corrected to "reproached" (page 59) "expression" corrected to "expressing" (page 67) "tectile" corrected to "textile" (page 69) "warm" corrected to "war" (page 71) "seaw" corrected to "sea" (page 75) "where" corrected to "were" (page 75) "perosns" corrected to "persons" (page 76) "charged" corrected to "changed" (page 77) "an" corrected to "as" (page 82) "advances" corrected to "advanced" (page 83) "repvailed" corrected to "prevailed" (page 89) "understodd" corrected to "understood" (page 95) "munitiae" corrected to "minutiae" (page 95) "Herland" corrected to "Herald" (page 98) "sawrm" corrected to "swarm" (page 100) "officiaals" corrected to "officials" (page 100) "Sate" corrected to "State" (page 105) "and" corrected to "an" (page 112) "grow" corrected to "grew" (page 117) "happaned" corrected to "happened" (page 123) missing "is" added (page 126) "back-bitting" corrected to "back-biting" (page 127) "wlecomed" corrected to "welcomed" (page 128) "bounds" corrected to "bound" (page 128) "adhorred" corrected to "abhorred" (page 129) "whol" corrected to "whole" (page 129) "di" corrected to "do" (page 130) "pilosophy" corrected to "philosophy" (page 132) "telehone" corrected to "telephone" (page 133) "capaign" corrected to "campaign" (page 134) "loca" corrected to "local" (page 134) "natice" corrected to "native" (page 137) "capitalists" corrected to "capitalist" (page 139) "urges" corrected to "urged" (page 139) "Souther" corrected to "Southern" (page 148) "anive" corrected to "naive" (page 150) "hav" corrected to "have" (page 150) "struglle" corrected to "struggle" (page 159) "renumerated" corrected to "remunerated" (page 160) "Crhonicle" corrected to "Chronicle" (page 162) "If" corrected to "It" (page 170) "And" corrected to "An" (page 171) "Heraldn" corrected to "Herald" (page 173) "1811" corrected to "1881" (page 174) "pressent" corrected to "present" (page 181) "porblem" corrected to "problem" (page 181) "he" corrected to "the" (page 181) "ot" corrected to "to" (page 182) "aided" corrected to "added" (page 184) "wss" corrected to "was" (page 186) "neat" corrected to "near" (page 189) "mil;" corrected to "mill" (page 194) "sotkc" corrected to "stock" (page 201) "sone" corrected to "some" (page 202) "in" corrected to "is" (page 203) "orgin" corrected to "origin" (page 205) "yed" corrected to "yes" (page 207) "ouright" corrected to "outright" (page 211) "consideraion" corrected to "consideration" (page 218) "intented" corrected to "intended" (page 221) "build" corrected to "built" (page 221) "or" corrected to "of" (page 222) "propsered" corrected to "prospered" (page 222) "Unitl" corrected to "Until" (page 227) "annul" corrected to "annual" (page 232) "Salsibury" corrected to "Salisbury" (page 233) "wanters" corrected to "wanted" (page 234) "deciaion" corrected to "decision" (page 242) "theys" corrected to "they" (page 251) "unproftiable" corrected to "unprofitable" (page 266) "laides" corrected to "ladies" (page 270) "inheirtance" corrected to "inheritance" (page 270) "Commerical" corrected to "Commercial" (footnote 2) "us" corrected to "up" (footnote 19) "2n" corrected to "2nd" (footnote 17) "destroyer" corrected to "destroyed" (footnote 29) "Commerical" corrected to "Commercial" (footnote 45) "Grenville" corrected to "Greenville" (Footnote 47) "suidical" corrected to "suicidal" (footnote 57) "Ibis." corrected to "Ibid." (footnote 82) "sgainst" corrected to "against" (footnote 86) "Olmstead" corrected to "Olmsted" (footnote 97) "Ble" corrected to "Blue" (footnote 110) "itno" corrected to "into" (footnote 114) "intenal" corrected to "internal" (footnote 123) "1811" corrected to "1881" (footnote 144) missing "to" added (footnote 147) "solicitious" corrected to "solicitous" (footnote 148) "to" corrected to "the" (footnote 150) "ot" corrected to "to" (footnote 162) "acaclim" corrected to "acclaim" (footnote 162) "Nasvhile" corrected to "Nashville" (footnote 170) "unusued" corrected to "unused" (footnote 175) "you" corrected to "your" (footnote 175) "rebuilt" corrected to "rebuild" (footnote 237) "Bid." corrected to "Ibid." (footnote 237) "Grenville" corrected to "Greenville" (footnote 291) "Grenville" corrected to "Greenville" (footnote 421) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. 
3799	----	THE HISTORY OF LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND. By Joseph Fisher, F.R.H.S. "Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but there is that is destroyed for want of Judgment."--PROV. 13: 23. "Of all arts, tillage or agriculture is doubtless the most useful and necessary, as being the source whence the nation derives its subsistence. The cultivation of the soil causes it to produce an infinite increase. It forms the surest resource and the most solid fund of riches and commerce for a nation that enjoys a happy climate.... The cultivation of the soil deserves the attention of the Government, not only on account of the invaluable advantages that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by nature on mankind."--VATTEL. INTRODUCTION. This work is an expansion of a paper read at the meeting of the Royal Historical Society in May, 1875, and will be published in the volume of the Transactions of that body. But as it is an expensive work, and only accessible to the Fellows of that Society, and as the subject is one which is now engaging a good deal of public consideration, I have thought it desirable to place it within the reach of those who may not have access to the larger and more expensive work. I am aware that much might be added to the information it contains, and I possess materials which would have more than doubled its size, but I have endeavored to seize upon the salient points, and to express my views as concisely as possible. I have also preferred giving the exact words of important Acts of Parliament to any description of their objects. If this little essay adds any information upon a subject of much public interest, and contributes to the just settlement of a very important question, I shall consider my labor has not been in vain. JOSEPH FISHER. WATERFORD, November 3, 1875. I do not propose to enter upon the system of landholding in Scotland or Ireland, which appears to me to bear the stamp of the Celtic origin of the people, and which was preserved in Ireland long after it had disappeared in other European countries formerly inhabited by the Celts. That ancient race may be regarded as the original settlers of a large portion of the European continent, and its land system possesses a remarkable affinity to that of the Slavonic, the Hindoo, and even the New Zealand races. It was originally Patriarchal, and then Tribal, and was communistic in its character. I do not pretend to great originality in my views. My efforts have been to collect the scattered rays of light, and to bring them to bear upon one interesting topic. The present is the child of the past. The ideas of bygone races affect the practices of living people. We form but parts of a whole; we are influenced by those who preceded us, and we shall influence those who come after us. Men cannot disassociate themselves either from the past or the future. In looking at this question there is, I think, a vast difference which has not been sufficiently recognized. It is the broad distinction between the system arising out of the original occupation of land, and that proceeding out of the necessities of conquest; perhaps I should add a third--the complex system proceeding from an amalgamation, or from the existence of both systems in the same nation. Some countries have been so repeatedly swept over by the tide of conquest that but little of the aboriginal ideas or systems have survived the flood. Others have submitted to a change of governors and preserved their customary laws; while in some there has been such a fusion of the two systems that we cannot decide which of the ingredients was the older, except by a process of analysis and a comparison of the several products of the alembic with the recognized institutions of the class of original or of invading peoples. Efforts have been made, and not with very great success, to define the principle which governed the more ancient races with regard to the possession of land. While unoccupied or unappropriated, it was common to every settler. It existed for the use of the whole human race. The process by which that which was common to all became the possession of the individual has not been clearly stated. The earlier settlers were either individuals, families, tribes, or nations. In some cases they were nomadic, and used the natural products without taking possession of the land; in others they occupied districts differently defined. The individual was the unit of the family, the patriarch of the tribe. The commune was formed to afford mutual protection. Each sept or tribe in the early enjoyment of the products of the district it selected was governed by its own customary laws. The cohesion of these tribes into states was a slow process; the adoption of a general system of government still slower. The disintegration of the tribal system, and dissolution of the commune, was not evolved out of the original elements of the system itself, but was the effect of conquest; and, as far as I can discover, the appropriation to individuals of land which was common to all, was mainly brought about by conquest, and was guided by impulse rather than regulated by principle. Mr. Locke thinks that an individual became sole owner of a part of the common heritage by mixing his labor with the land, in fencing it, making wells, or building; and he illustrates his position by the appropriation of wild animals, which are common to all sportsmen, but become the property of him who captures or kills them. This acute thinker seems to me to have fallen into a mistake by confounding land with labor. The improvements were the property of the man who made them, but it by no means follows that the expenditure of labor on land gave any greater right than to the labor itself or its representative. It may not be out of place here to allude to the use of the word property with reference to land; property--from proprium, my own--is something pertaining to man. I have a property in myself. I have the right to be free. All that proceeds from myself, my thoughts, my writings, my works, are property; but no man made land, and therefore it is not property. This incorrect application of the word is the more striking in England, where the largest title a man can have is "tenancy in fee," and a tenant holds but does not own. Sir William Blackstone places the possession of land upon a different principle. He says that, as society became formed, its instinct was to preserve the peace; and as a man who had taken possession of land could not be disturbed without using force, each man continued to enjoy the use of that which he had taken out of the common stock; but, he adds, that right only lasted as long as the man lived. Death put him out of possession, and he could not give to another that which he ceased to possess himself. Vattel (book i., chap, vii.) tells us that "the whole earth is destined to feed its inhabitants; but this it would be incapable of doing if it were uncultivated. Every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the land that has fallen to its share, and it has no right to enlarge its boundaries or have recourse to the assistance of other nations, but in proportion as the land in its possession is incapable of furnishing it with necessaries." He adds (chap. xx.), "When a nation in a body takes possession of a country, everything that is not divided among its members remains common to the whole nation, and is called public property." An ancient Irish tract, which forms part of the Senchus Mor, and is supposed to be a portion of the Brehon code, and traceable to the time of St. Patrick, speaks of land in a poetically symbolic, but actually realistic manner, and says, "Land is perpetual man." All the ingredients of our physical frame come from the soil. The food we require and enjoy, the clothing which enwraps us, the fire which warms us, all save the vital spark that constitutes life, is of the land, hence it is "perpetual man." Selden ("Titles of Honor," p. 27), when treating of the title "King of Kings," refers to the eastern custom of homage, which consisted not in offering the person, but the elements which composed the person, EARTH and WATER--"the perpetual man" of the Brehons--to the conqueror. He says: "So that both titles, those of King of Kings and Great King, were common to those emperors of the two first empires; as also (if we believe the story of Judith) that ceremonies of receiving an acknowledgment of regal supremacy (which, by the way, I note here, because it was as homage received by kings in that time from such princes or people as should acknowledge themselves under their subjection) by acceptance upon their demand of EARTH and WATER. This demand is often spoken of as used by the Persian, and a special example of it is in Darius' letters to Induthyr, King of the Scythians, when he first invites him to the field; but if he would not, then bringing to your sovereign as gifts earth and water, come to a parley. And one of Xerxes' ambassadors that came to demand earth and water from the state of Lacedaemon, to satisfy him, was thrust into a well and earth cast upon him." The earlier races seem to me, either by reasoning or by instinct, to have arrived at the conclusion that every man was, in right of his being, entitled to food; that food was a product of the land, and therefore every man was entitled to the possession of land, otherwise his life depended upon the will of another. The Romans acted on a different principle, which was "the spoil to the victors." He who could not defend and retain his possessions became the slave of the conqueror, all the rights of the vanquished passed to the victor, who took and enjoyed as ample rights to land as those naturally possessed by the aborigines. The system of landholding varies in different countries, and we cannot discover any idea of abstract right underlying the various differing systems; they are the outcome of law, the will of the sovereign power, which is liable to change with circumstances. The word LAW appears to be used to express two distinct sentiments; one, the will of the sovereign power, which being accompanied with a penalty, bears on its face the idea that it may be broken by the individual who pays the penalty: "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree, for on the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die," was a law. All laws, whether emanating from an absolute monarch or from the representatives of the majority of a state, are mere expressions of the will of the sovereign power, which may be exacted by force. The second use of the word LAW is a record of our experience--e.g., we see the tides ebb and flow, and conclude it is done in obedience to the will of a sovereign power; but the word in that sense does not imply any violation or any punishment. A distinction must also be drawn between laws and codes; the former existed before the latter. The lex non scripta prevailed before letters were invented. Every command of the Decalogue was issued, and punishment followed for its breach, before the existence of the engraved tables. The Brehon code, the Justinian code, the Draconian code, were compilations of existing laws; and the same may be said of the common or customary law of England, of France, and of Germany. I am aware that recent analytical writers have sought to associate LAW with FORCE, and to hold that law is a command, and must have behind it sufficient force to compel submission. These writers find at the outset of their examination, that customary law, the "Lex non scripta," existed before force, and that the nomination to sovereign power was the outcome of the more ancient customary law. These laws appear based upon the idea of common good, and to have been supported by the "posse comitatus" before standing armies or state constabularies were formed. Vattel says (book i., chap. ii.), "It is evident that men form a political society, and submit to laws solely for their own advantage and safety. The sovereign authority is then established only for the common good of all the citizens. The sovereign thus clothed with the public authority, with everything that constitutes the moral personality of the nation, of course becomes bound by the moral obligations of that nation and invested with its rights." It appears evident, that customary law was the will of small communities, when they were sovereign; that the cohesion of such communities was a confirmation of such customs of each, that the election of a monarch or a parliament was a recognition of these customs, and that the moral and material FORCE or power of the sovereign was the outcome of existing laws, and a confirmation thereof. The application of the united force of the nation could be rightfully directed to the requirements of ancient, though unwritten customary law, and it could only be displaced by legislation, in which those concerned took part. The duty of the sovereign (which in the United Kingdom means the Crown and the two branches of the legislature) with regard to land, is thus described by Vattel: "Of all arts, tillage or agriculture is doubtless the most useful and necessary, as being the source whence the nation derives its subsistence. The cultivation of the soil causes it to produce an infinite increase. It forms the surest resource, and the most solid fund of riches and commerce for a nation that enjoys a happy climate. The sovereign ought to neglect no means of rendering the land under his jurisdiction as well cultivated as possible.... Notwithstanding the introduction of private property among the citizens, the nation has still the right to take the most effectual measures to cause the aggregate soil of the country to produce the greatest and most advantageous revenue possible. The cultivation of the soil deserves the attention of the Government, not only on account of the invaluable advantages that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by nature on mankind." Sir Henry Maine thinks that there are traces in England of the commune or MARK system in the village communities which are believed to have existed, but these traces are very faint. The subsequent changes were inherent in, and developed by, the various conquests that swept over England; even that ancient class of holdings called "Borough English," are a development of a war-like system, under which each son, as he came to manhood, entered upon the wars, and left the patrimonial lands to the youngest son. The system of gavel-kind which prevailed in the kingdom of Kent, survived the accession of William of Normandy, and was partially effaced in the reign of Henry VII. It was not the aboriginal or communistic system, but one of its many successors. The various systems may have run one into the other, but I think there are sufficiently distinct features to place them in the following order: 1st. The Aboriginal. 2d. The Roman, Population about 1,500,000. 3d. The Scandinavian under the ANGLO-SAXON and Danish kings--A.D. 450 to A.D. 1066. The population in 1066 was 2,150,000. 4th. The Norman, from A.D. 1066 to A.D. 1154. The population in the latter year was 3,350,000. 5th. The Plantagenet, from 1154 to 1485; in the latter the population was 4,000,000. 6th. The Tudor, 1485 to 1603, when the population was 5,000,000. 7th. The Stuarts, 1603 to 1714, the population having risen to 5,750,000. 8th. The Present, from 1714. Down to 1820 the soil supported the population; now about one half lives upon food produced in other countries. In 1874 the population was 23,648,607. Each of these periods has its own characteristic, but as I must compress my remarks, you must excuse my passing rapidly from one to the other. I. THE ABORIGINES. The aboriginal period is wrapped in darkness, and I cannot with certainty say whether the system that prevailed was Celtic and Tribal. An old French customary, in a MS. treating upon the antiquity of tenures, says: "The first English king divided the land into four parts. He gave one part to the ARCH FLAMENS to pray for him and his posterity. A second part he gave to the earls and nobility, to do him knight's service. A third part he divided among husbandmen, to hold of him in socage. The fourth he gave to mechanical persons to hold in burgage." The terms used apply to a much more recent period and more modern ideas. Caesar tells us "that the island of Britain abounds in cattle, and the greatest part of those within the country never sow their land, but live on flesh and milk. The sea-coasts are inhabited by colonies from Belgium, which, having established themselves in Britain, began to cultivate the soil." Diodorus Siculus says, "The Britons, when they have reaped their corn, by cutting the ears from the stubble, lay them up for preservation in subterranean caves or granaries. From thence, they say, in very ancient times, they used to take a certain quantity of ears out every day, and having dried and bruised the grains, made a kind of food for their immediate use." Jeffrey of Monmouth relates that one of the laws of Dunwalls Molnutus, who is said to have reigned B.C. 500, enacted that the ploughs of the husbandmen, as well as the temples of the gods, should be sanctuaries to such criminals as fled to them for protection. Tacitus states that the Britons were not a free people, but were under subjection to many different kings. Dr. Henry, quoting Tacitus, says, "In the ancient German and British nation the whole riches of the people consisted in their flocks and herds; the laws of succession were few and simple: a man's cattle, at death, were equally divided among his sons; or, if he had no sons, his daughters; or if he had no children, among his nearest relations. These nations seem to have had no idea of the rights of primogeniture, or that the eldest son had any title to a larger share of his father's effects than the youngest." The population of England was scanty, and did not probably exceed a million of inhabitants. They were split up into a vast number of petty chieftainries or kingdoms; there was no cohesion, no means of communication between them; there was no sovereign power which could call out and combine the whole strength of the nation. No single chieftain could oppose to the Romans a greater force than that of one of its legions, and when a footing was obtained in the island, the war became one of detail; it was a provincial rather that a national contest. The brave, though untrained and ill-disciplined warriors, fell before the Romans, just as the Red Man of North America was vanquished by the English settlers. II. THE ROMAN. The Romans acted with regard to all conquered nations upon the maxim, "To the victors the spoils." Britain was no exception. The Romans were the first to discover or create an ESTATE OF USES in land, as distinct from an estate of possession. The more ancient nations, the Jews and the Greeks, never recognized THE ESTATE OF USES, though there is some indication of it in the relation established by Joseph in Egypt, when, during the years of famine, he purchased for Pharaoh the lands of the people. The Romans having seized upon lands in Italy belonging to conquered nations, considered them public lands, and rented them to the soldiery, thus retaining for the state the estate in the lands, but giving the occupier an estate of uses. The rent of these public lands was fixed at one tenth of the produce, and this was termed USUFRUCT--the use of the fruits. The British chiefs, who submitted to the Romans, were subjected to a tribute or rent in corn; it varied, according to circumstances, from one fifth to one twentieth of the produce. The grower was bound to deliver it at the prescribed places. This was felt to be a great hardship, as they were often obliged to carry the grain great distances, or pay a bribe to be excused. This oppressive law was altered by Julius Agricola. The Romans patronized agriculture--Cato says, "When the Romans designed to bestow the highest praise on a good man, they used to say he understood agriculture well, and is an excellent husbandman, for this was esteemed the greatest and most honorable character." Their system produced a great alteration in Britain, and converted it into the most plentiful province of the empire; it produced sufficient corn for its own inhabitants, for the Roman legions, and also afforded a great surplus, which was sent up the Rhine. The Emperor Julian built new granaries in Germany, in which he stored the corn brought from Britain. Agriculture had greatly improved in England under the Romans. The Romans do not appear to have established in England any military tenures of land, such as those they created along the Danube and the Rhine; nor do they appear to have taken possession of the land; the tax they imposed upon it, though paid in kind, was more of the nature of a tribute than a rent. Though some of the best of the soldiers in the Roman legions were Britons, yet their rule completely enervated the aboriginal inhabitants--they were left without leaders, without cohesion. Their land was held by permission of the conquerors. The wall erected at so much labor in the north of England proved a less effectual barrier against the incursions of the Picts and Scots than the living barrier of armed men which, at a later period, successfully repelled their invasions. The Roman rule affords another example that material prosperity cannot secure the liberties of a people, that they must be armed and prepared to repel by force any aggression upon their liberty or their estates. "Who will be free, themselves must strike the blow." The prosperous "Britons," who were left by the Romans in possession of the island, were but feeble representatives of those who, under Caractacus and Boadicea, did not shrink from combat with the legions of Caesar. Uninured to arms, and accustomed to obedience, they looked for a fresh master, and sunk into servitude and serfdom, from which they never emerged. Yet under the Romans they had thriven and increased in material wealth; the island abounded in numerous flocks and herds; and agriculture, which was encouraged by the Romans, flourished. This wealth was by one of the temptations to the invaders, who seized not only upon the movable wealth of the natives, but also upon the land, and divided it among themselves. The warlike portion of the aboriginal inhabitants appear to have joined the Cymri and retired westward. Their system of landholding was non-feudal, inasmuch as each man's land was divided among all his sons. One of the laws of Hoel Dha, King of Wales in the tenth century, decreed "that the youngest son shall have an equal share of the estate with the eldest son, and that when the brothers have divided their father's estate among them, the youngest son shall have the best house with all the office houses; the implements of husbandry, his father's kettle, his axe for cutting wood, and his knife; these three last things the father cannot give away by gift, nor leave by his last will to any but his youngest son, and if they are pledged they shall be redeemed." It may not be out of place here to say that this custom continued to exist in Wales; and on its conquest Edward I. ordained, "Whereas the custom is otherwise in Wales than England concerning succession to an inheritance, inasmuch as the inheritance is partible among the heirs-male, and from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary hath been partible, Our Lord the King will not have such custom abrogated, but willeth that inheritance shall remain partible among like heirs as it was wont to be, with this exception that bastards shall from henceforth not inherit, and also have portions with the lawful heirs; and if it shall happen that any inheritance should hereafter, upon failure of heirs-male, descend to females, the lawful heirs of their ancestors last served thereof. We will, of our especial grace, that the same women shall have their portions thereof, although this be contrary to the custom of Wales before used." The land system of Wales, so recognized and regulated by Edward I., remained unchanged until the reign of the first Tudor monarch. Its existence raises the presumption that the aboriginal system of landholding in England gave each son a share of his father's land, and if so, it did not correspond with the Germanic system described by Caesar, nor with the tribal system of the Celts in Ireland, nor with the feudal system subsequently introduced. The polity of the Romans, which endured in Gaul, Spain, and Italy, and tinged the laws and usages of these countries after they had been occupied by the Goths, totally disappeared in England; and even Christianity, which partially prevailed under the Romans, was submerged beneath the flood of invasion. Save the material evidence of the footprints of "the masters of the world" in the Roman roads, Roman wall, and some other structures, there is no trace of the Romans in England. Their polity, laws, and language alike vanished, and did not reappear for centuries, when their laws and language were reimported. I should not be disposed to estimate the population of England and Wales, at the retirement of the Romans, at more than 1,500,000. They were like a flock of sheep without masters, and, deprived of the watch-dogs which over-awed and protected them, fell an easy prey to the invaders. III. THE SCANDINAVIANS. The Roman legions and the outlying semi-military settlements along the Rhine and the Danube, forming a cordon reaching from the German Ocean to the Black Sea, kept back the tide of barbarians, but the volume of force accumulated behind the barrier, and at length it poured in an overwhelming and destructive tide over the fair and fertile provinces whose weak and effeminate people offered but a feeble resistance to the robust armies of the north. The Romans, under the instruction of Caesar and Tacitus, had a faint idea of the usages of the people inhabiting the verge that lay around the Roman dominions, but they had no knowledge of the influences that prevailed in "the womb of nations," as Central Europe appeared to the Latins, who saw emerging therefrom hosts of warriors, bearing with them their wives, their children, and their portable effects, determined to win a settlement amid the fertile regions owned and improved by the Romans. These incursions were not colonization in the sense in which Rome understood it; they were the migrations of a people, and were as full, as complete, and as extensive as the Israelitish invasion of Canaan--they were more destructive of property, but less fatal to life. These migratory hosts left a desert behind them, and they either gained a settlement or perished. The Roman colonies preserved their connection with the parent stem, and invoked aid when in need; but the barbarian hosts had no home, no reserves. Other races, moving with similar intent, settled on the land they had vacated. These brought their own social arrangements, and it is very difficult to connect the land system established by the aborigines with the system which, after a lapse of some hundreds of years, was found to prevail in another tribe or nation which had occupied the region that had been vacated. Neither Caesar nor Tacitus gives us any idea of the habits or usages of the people who lived north of the Belgae. They had no notion of Scandinavia nor of Sclavonia. The Walhalla of the north, with its terrific deities, was unknown to them; and I am disposed to think that we shall look in vain among the customs of the Teutons for the basis from whence came the polity established in England by the invaders of the fifth century. The ANGLO-SAXONs came from a region north of the Elbe, which we call Schleswig--Holstein. They were kindred to the Norwegians and the Danes, and of the family of the sea robbers; they were not Teutons, for the Teutons were not and are not sailors. The Belgae colonized part of the coast--i.e., the settlers maintained a connection with the mainland; but the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes did not colonize, they migrated; they left no trace of their occupancy in the lands they vacated. Each separate invasion was the settlement of a district; each leader aspired to sovereignty, and was supreme in his own domains; each claimed descent from Woden, and, like Romulus or Alexander, sought affinity with the gods. Each member of the Heptarchy was independent of, and owed no allegiance to, the other members; and marriage or conquest united them ultimately into one kingdom. The primary institutions were moulded by time and circumstance, and the state of things in the eleventh century was as different from that of the fifth as those of our own time differ from the rule of Richard II. Yet one was as much an outgrowth of its predecessor as the other. Attempts have been made, with considerable ingenuity, to connect races with each other by peculiar characteristics, but human society has the same necessities, and we find great similarity in various divisions of society. At all times, and in all nations, society resolved itself into the upper, middle, and lower classes. Rome had its Nobles, Plebeians, and Slaves; Germany its Edhilingi, Frilingi, and Lazzi; England its Eaorls, Thanes, and Ceorls. It would be equally cogent to argue that, because Rome had three classes and England had three classes, the latter was derived from the former, as to conclude that, because Germany had three classes, therefore English institutions were Teutonic. If the invasion of the fifth century were Teutonic we should look for similar nomenclature, but there is as great a dissimilarity between the English and German names of the classes as between the former and those of Rome. The Germanic MARK system has no counterpart in the land system introduced into England by the ANGLO-SAXONs. If village communities existed in England, it must have been before the invasion of the Romans. The German system, as described by Caesar, was suited to nomads--to races on the wing, who gave to no individual possession for more than a year, that there might be no home ties. The mark system is of a later date, and was evidently the arrangement of other races who permanently settled themselves upon the lands vacated by the older nations. And I may suggest whether, as these lands were originally inhabited by the Celts, the conquerors did not adopt the system of the conquered. Even in the nomenclature of FEUDALISM, introduced into England in the fifth century, we are driven back to Scandinavia for an explanation. The word FEUDAL as applied to land has a Norwegian origin, from which country came Rollo, the progenitor of William the Norman. Pontoppidan ("History of Norway," p.290) says "The ODHALL, right of Norway, and the UDALL, right of Finland, came from the words 'Odh,' which signifies PROPRIETORS, and 'all,' which means TOTUM. A transposition of these syllables makes ALL ODH, or ALLODIUM, which means absolute property. FEE, which means stipend or pay, united with OTH, thus forming FEE-OTH or FEODUM, denoting stipendiary property. Wacterus states that the word ALLODE, ALLODIUM, which applies to land in Germany, is composed of AN and LOT--i.e., land obtained by lot. I therefore venture the opinion that the settlement of England in the fifth and sixth centuries was not Teutonic or Germanic, but SCANDINAVIAN. The lands won by the swords of all were the common property of all; they were the lands of the people, FOLC-LAND; they were distributed by lot at the FOLC-GEMOT; they were ODH-ALL lands; they were not held of any superior nor was there any service save that imposed by the common danger. The chieftains were elected and obeyed, because they represented the entire people. Hereditary right seems to have been unknown. The essence of feudalism WAS A LIFE ESTATE, the land reverted either to the sovereign or to the people upon the death of the occupant. At a later period the monarch claimed the power of confiscating land, and of giving it away by charter or deed; and hence arose the distinction between FOLC-LAND and BOC-LAND (the land of the book or charter), a distinction somewhat similar to the FREEHOLD and COPYHOLD tenures of the present day. King Alfred the Great bequeathed "his BOC-LAND to his nearest relative; and if any of them have children it is more agreeable to me that it go to those born on the male side." He adds, "My grandfather bequeathed his land on the spear side, not on the spindle side; therefore if I have given what he acquired to any on the female side, let my kinsman make compensation." The several ranks were thus defined by Athelstane: "1st. It was whilom in the laws of the English that the people went by ranks, and these were the counsellors of the nation, of worship worthy each according to his condition--'eorl,' 'ceorl,' 'thegur,' and 'theodia.' "2d. If a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides (600 acres) of land, church and kitchen, bell-house and back gatescal, and special duty in the king's hall, then he was thenceforth of thane-right worthy. "3d. And if a thane thrived so that he served the king, and on his summons rode among his household, if he then had a thane who him followed, who to the king utward five hides, had, and in the king's hall served his lord, and thence, with his errand, went to the king, he might thenceforth, with his fore oath, his lord represent at various needs, and his and his plant lawfully conduct wheresoever he ought. "4th. And he who so prosperous a vicegerent had not, swore for himself according to his right or it forfeited. "5th. And if a 'thane' thrived so that he became an eorl, then was he thenceforth of eorl-right worthy. "6th. And if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the wide sea by his own means (or vessels), then was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy." The oath of fealty, as prescribed by the law of Edward and Guthrum, was very similar to that used at a later period, and ran thus: "Thus shall a man swear fealty: By the Lord, before whom this relic is holy, I will be faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns, according to God's law, and according to the world's principles, and never by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught of what is loathful to him, on condition that he me keep, as I am willing to deserve, and all that fulfil, that our agreement was, when I to him submitted and chose his will." The Odh-all (noble) land was divided into two classes: the in-lands, which were farmed by slaves under Bailiffs, and the out-lands, which were let to ceorls either for one year or for a term. The rents were usually paid in kind, and were a fixed proportion of the produce. Ina, King of the West Saxons, fixed the rent of ten hides (1200 acres), in the beginning of the eighth century, as follows: 10 casks honey, 12 casks strong ale, 30 casks small ale, 300 loaves bread, 2 oxen, 10 wedders, 10 geese, 20 hens, 10 chickens, 10 cheeses, 1 cask butter, 5 salmon, 20 lbs. forage, and 100 eels. In the reign of Edgar the Peaceable (tenth century), land was sold for about four shillings of the then currency per acre. The Abbot of Ely bought an estate about this time, which was paid for at the rate of four sheep or one horse for each acre. The FREEMEN (LIBERI HOMINES) were a very numerous class, and all were trained in the use of arms. Their FOLC-LAND was held under the penalty of forfeiture if they did not take the field, whenever required for the defence of the country. In addition, a tax, called Danegeld, was levied at a rate varying from two shillings to seven shillings per hide of land (120 acres); and in 1008, each owner of a large estate, 310 hides, was called on to furnish a ship for the navy. Selden ("Laws and Government of England," p. 34) thus describes the FREEMEN among the Saxons, previous to the Conquest: "The next and most considerable degree of all the people is that of the FREEMEN, anciently called Frilingi, [Footnote: This is a Teutonic, not an ANGLO-SAXON term; the ANGLO-SAXON word is Thane.] or Free-born, or such as are born free from all yoke of arbitrary power, and from all law of compulsion, other than what is made by their voluntary consent, for all FREEMEN have votes in the making and executing of the general laws of the kingdom. In the first, they differed from the Gauls, of whom it is noted that the commons are never called to council, nor are much better than servants. In the second, they differ from many free people, and are a degree more excellent, being adjoined to the lords in judicature, both by advice and power (consilium et authoritates adsunt), and therefore those that were elected to that work were called Comites ex plebe, and made one rank of FREEMEN for wisdom superior to the rest. Another degree of these were beholden for their riches, and were called Custodes Pagani, an honorable title belonging to military service, and these were such as had obtained an estate of such value as that their ordinary arms were a helmet, a coat of mail, and a gilt sword. The rest of the FREEMEN were contented with the name of Ceorls, and had as sure a title to their own liberties as the Custodes Pagani or the country gentlemen had." Land was liable to be seized upon for treason and forfeited; but even after the monarchs had assumed the functions of the FOLC-GEMOT, they were not allowed to give land away without the approval of the great men; charters were consented to and witnessed in council. "There is scarcely a charter extant," says Chief Baron Gilbert, "that is not proof of this right." The grant of Baldred, King of Kent, of the manor of Malling, in Sussex, was annulled because it was given without the consent of the council. The subsequent gift thereof, by Egbert and Athelwolf, was made with the concurrence and assent of the great men. The kings' charters of escheated lands, to which they had succeeded by a personal right, usually declared "that it might be known that what they gave was their own." Discussions have at various times taken place upon the question, "Was the land-system of this period FEUDAL?" It engaged the attention of the Irish Court of King's Bench, in the reign of Charles I., and was raised in this way: James I. had issued "a commission of defective titles." Any Irish owner, upon surrendering his land to the king, got a patent which reconvened it on him. Wentworth (Lord Stafford) wished to SETTLE Connaught, as Ulster had been SETTLED in the preceding reign, and, to accomplish it, tried to break the titles granted under "the commission of defective titles." Lord Dillon's case, which is still quoted as an authority, was tried. The plea for the Crown alleged that the honor of the monarch stood before his profit, and as the commissioners were only authorized to issue patents to hold in capite, whereas they had given title "to hold in capite, by knights' service out of Dublin Castle," the grant was bad. In the course of the argument, the existence of feudal tenures, before the landing of William of Normandy, was discussed, and Sir Henry Spelman's views, as expressed in the Glossary, were considered. The Court unanimously decided that feudalism existed in England under the ANGLO-SAXONs, and it affirmed that Sir Henry Spelman was wrong. This decision led Sir Henry Spelman to write his "Treatise on Feuds," which was published after his death, in which he reasserted the opinion that feudalism was introduced into England at the Norman invasion. This decision must, however, be accepted with a limitation; I think there was no separate order of NOBILITY under the ANGLO-SAXON rule. The king had his councillors, but there appears to have been no order between him and the FOLC-GEMOT. The Earls and the Thanes met with the people, but did not form a separate body. The Thanes were country gentleman, not senators. The outcome of the heptarchy was the Earls or Ealdermen; this was the only order of nobility among the Saxons; they corresponded to the position of lieutenants of counties, and were appointed for life. In 1045 there were nine such officers; in 1065 there were but six. Harold's earldom, at the former date, comprised Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex; and Godwin's took in the whole south coast from Sandwich to the Land's End, and included Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Wilts, Devonshire, and Cornwall. Upon the death of Godwin, Harold resigned his earldom, and took that of Godwin, the bounds being slightly varied. Harold retained his earldom after he became king, but on his death it was seized upon by the Conqueror, and divided among his followers. The Crown relied upon the LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN. The country was not studded with castles filled with armed men. The HOUSE of the Thane was an unfortified structure, and while the laws relating to land were, in my view, essentially FEUDAL, the government was different from that to which we apply the term FEUDALISM, which appears to imply baronial castles, armed men, and an oppressed people. I venture to suggest to some modern writers that further inquiry will show them that FOLC-LAND was not confined to commonages, or unallotted portions, but that at the beginning it comprised all the land of the kingdom, and that the occupant did not enjoy it as owner-in-severalty; he had a good title against his fellow subjects, but he held under the FOLC-GEMOT, and was subject to conditions. The consolidation of the sovereignty, the extension of laws of forfeiture, the assumption by the kings of the rights of the popular assemblies, all tended to the formation of a second set of titles, and BOC-LAND became an object of ambition. The same individual appears to have held land by both titles, and to have had greater powers over the latter than over the former. Many of those who have written on the subject seem to me to have failed to grasp either the OBJECT or the GENIUS of FEUDALISM. It was the device of conquerors to maintain their possessions, and is not to be found among nations, the original occupiers of the land, nor in the conquests of states which maintained standing armies. The invading hosts elected their chieftain, they and he had only a life use of the conquests. Upon the death of one leader another was elected, so upon the death of the allottee of a piece of land it reverted to the state. The GENIUS of FEUDALISM was life ownership and non-partition. Hence the oath of fealty was a personal obligation, and investiture was needful before the new feudee took possession. The state, as represented by the king or chieftain, while allowing the claim of the family, exercised its right to select the individual. All the lands were considered BENEFICIA, a word which now means a charge upon land, to compensate for duties rendered to the state. Under this system, the feudatory was a commander, his residence a barrack, his tenants soldiers; it was his duty to keep down the aborigines, and to prevent invasion. He could neither sell, give, nor bequeath his land. He received the surplus revenue as payment for personal service, and thus enjoyed his BENEFICE. Judged in this way, I think the feudal system existed before the Norman Conquest. Slavery and serfdom undoubtedly prevailed. The country prospered under the Scandinavians; and, from the great abundance of corn, William of Poitiers calls England "the store-house of Ceres." IV. THE NORMANS. The invasion of William of Normandy led to results which have been represented by some writers as having been the most momentous in English history. I do not wish in any way to depreciate their views, but it seems to me not to have been so disastrous to existing institutions, as the Scandinavian invasion, which completely submerged all former usages. No trace of Roman occupation survived the advent of the ANGLO-SAXONs; the population was reduced to and remained in the position of serfs, whereas the Norman invasion preserved the existing institutions of the nation, and subsequent changes were an outgrowth thereof. When Edward the Confessor, the last descendant of Cedric, was on his deathbed, he declared Harold to be his successor, but William of Normandy claimed the throne under a previous will of the same monarch. He asked for the assistance of his own nobles and people in the enterprise, but they refused at first, on the ground that their feudal compact only required them to join in the defence of their country, and did not coerce them into affording him aid in a completely new enterprise; and it was only by promising to compensate them out of the spoils that he could secure their co-operation. A list of the number of ships supplied by each Norman chieftain appears in Lord Lyttleton's "History of Henry III." vol. i., appendix. I need hardly remind you that the settlers in Normandy were from Norway, or that they had been expelled from their native land in consequence of their efforts to subvert its institutions, and to make the descent of land hereditary, instead of being divisible among all the sons of the former owner. Nor need I relate how they won and held the fair provinces of northern France--whether as a fief of the French Crown or not, is an open question. But I should wish you to bear in mind their affinity to the ANGLO-SAXONs, to the Danes, and to the Norwegians, the family of Sea Robbers, whose ravages extended along the coasts of Europe as far south as Gibraltar, and, as some allege, along the Mediterranean. Some questions have been raised as to the means of transport of the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles, but they were fully as extensive as those by which Rollo invaded France or William invaded England. William strengthened his claim to the throne by his military success, and by a form of election, for which there were many previous precedents. Those who called upon him to ascend it alleged "that they had always been ruled by legal power, and desired to follow in that respect the example of their ancestors, and they knew of no one more worthy than himself to hold the reins of government." His alleged title to the crown, sanctioned by success and confirmed by election, enabled him, in conformity with existing institutions, to seize upon the lands of Harold and his adherents, and to grant them as rewards to his followers. Such confiscation and gifts were entirely in accord with existing usages, and the great alteration which took place in the principal fiefs was more a change of persons than of law. A large body of the aboriginal people had been, and continued to be, serfs or villeins; while the mass of the FREEMEN (LIBERI HOMINES) remained in possession of their holdings. It may not be out of place here to say a few words about this important class, which is in reality the backbone of the British constitution; it was the mainstay of the ANGLO-SAXON monarchy; it lost its influence during the civil wars of the Plantagenets, but reasserted its power under Cromwell. Dr. Robertson thus draws the line between them and the vassals: "In the same manner Liber homo is commonly opposed to Vassus or Vassalus, the former denoting an allodial proprietor, the latter one who held of a superior. These FREEMEN were under an obligation to serve the state, and this duty was considered so sacred that FREEMEN were prohibited from entering into holy orders, unless they obtained the consent of the sovereign." De Lolme, chap. i., sec. 5, says: "The Liber homo, or FREEMAN, has existed in this country from the earliest periods, as well as of authentic as of traditionary history, entitled to that station in society as one of his constitutional rights, as being descended from free parents in contradistinction to 'villains,' which should be borne in remembrance, because the term 'FREEMAN' has been, in modern times, perverted from its constitutional signification without any statutable authority." The LIBERI HOMINES are so described in the Doomsday Book. They were the only men of honor, faith, trust, and reputation in the kingdom; and from among such of these as were not barons, the knights did choose jurymen, served on juries themselves, bare offices, and dispatched country business. Many of the LIBERI HOMINES held of the king in capite, and several were freeholders of other persons in military service. Their rights were recognized and guarded by the 55th William I.; [Footnote: "LV.--De Chartilari seu Feudorum jure et Ingenuorum immunitate. Volumus etiam ac firmiter praecipimus et concedimus ut omnes LIBERI HOMINES totius Monarchiae regni nostri praedicti habeant et teneant terras suas et possessiones suas bene et in pace, liberi ab omni, exactione iniusta et ab omni Tallagio: Ita quod nihil ab eis exigatur vel capiatur nisi servicium suum liberum quod de iure nobis facere debent et facere tenentur et prout statutum est eis et illis a nobis datum et concessum iure haereditario imperpetuum per commune consilium totius regni nostri praeicti."] it is entitled: "CONCERNING CHEUTILAR OR FEUDAL RIGHTS, AND THE IMMUNITY OF FREEMEN. "We will also, and strictly, enjoin and concede that all FREEMEN (LIBERI HOMINES) of our whole kingdom aforesaid, have and hold their land and possessions well and in peace, free from every unjust exaction and from Tallage, so that nothing be exacted or taken from them except their free service, which of right they ought to do to us and are bound to do, and according as it was appointed (statutum) to them, and given to them by us, and conceded by hereditary right for ever, by the common council (FOLC-GEMOT} of our whole realm aforesaid." These FREEMEN were not created by the Norman Conquest, they existed prior thereto; and the laws, of which this is one, are declared to be the laws of Edward the Confessor, which William re-enacted. Selden, in "The Laws and Government of England," p. 34, speaks of this law as the first Magna Charta. He says: "Lastly, the one law of the kings, which may be called the first MAGNA CHARTA in the Norman times (55 William I.), by which the king reserved to himself, from the FREEMEN of this kingdom, nothing but their free service, in the conclusion saith that their lands were thus granted to them in inheritance of the king by the COMMON COUNCIL (FOLC-GEMOT) of the whole kingdom; and so asserts, in one sentence, the liberty of the FREEMEN, and of the representative body of the kingdom." He further adds: "The freedom of an ENGLISHMAN consisteth of three particulars: first, in OWNERSHIP; second, in VOTING ANY LAW, whereby ownership is maintained; and, thirdly, in having an influence upon the JUDICIARY POWER that must apply the law. Now the English, under the Normans, enjoyed all this freedom with each man's own particular, besides what they had in bodies aggregate. This was the meaning of the Normans, and they published the same to the world in a fundamental law, whereby is granted that all FREEMEN shall have and hold their lands and possessions in hereditary right for ever; and by this they being secured from forfeiture, they are further saved from all wrong by the same law, which provideth that they shall hold them well or quietly, and in peace, free from all unjust tax, and from all Tallage, so as nothing shall be exacted nor taken but their free service, which, by right, they are bound to perform." This is expounded in the law of Henry I., cap. 4, to mean that no tribute or tax shall be taken but what was due in the Confessor's time, and Edward II. was sworn to observe the laws of the Confessor. The nation was not immediately settled. Rebellions arose either from the oppression of the invaders or the restlessness of the conquered; and, as each outburst was put down by force, there were new lands to be distributed among the adherents of the monarch; ultimately there were about 700 chief tenants holding IN CAPITE, but the nation was divided into 60,215 knights' fees, of which the Church held 28,115. The king retained in his own hands 1422 manors, besides a great number of forests, parks, chases, farms, and houses, in all parts of the kingdom; and his followers received very large holdings. Among the Saxon families who retained their land was one named Shobington in Bucks. Hearing that the Norman lord was coming to whom the estate had been gifted by the king, the head of the house armed his servants and tenants, preparing to do battle for his rights; he cast up works, which remain to this day in grassy mounds, marking the sward of the park, and established himself behind them to await the despoiler's onset. It was the period when hundreds of herds of wild cattle roamed the forest lands of Britain, and, failing horses, the Shobingtons collected a number of bulls, rode forth on them, and routed the Normans, unused to such cavalry. William heard of the defeat, and conceived a respect for the brave man who had caused it; he sent a herald with a safe conduct to the chief, Shobington, desiring to speak with him. Not many days after, came to court eight stalwart men riding upon bulls, the father and seven sons. "If thou wilt leave me my lands, O king," said the old man, "I will serve thee faithfully as I did the dead Harold." Whereupon the Conqueror confirmed him in his ownership, and named the family Bullstrode, instead of Shobington. Sir Martin Wright, in his "Treatise on Tenures," published in 1730, p. 61, remarks: "Though it is true that the possessions of the Normans were of a sudden very great, and that they received most of them from the hands of William I., yet it does not follow that the king took all the lands of England out of the hands of their several owners, claiming them as his spoils of war, or as a parcel of a conquered country; but, on the contrary, it appears pretty plain from the history of those times that the king either had or pretended title to the crown, and that his title, real or pretended, was established by the death of Harold, which amounted to an unquestionable judgment in his favor. He did not therefore treat his opposers as enemies, but as traitors, agreeably to the known laws of the kingdom which subjected traitors not only to the loss of life but of all their possessions." He adds (p. 63): "As William I. did not claim to possess himself of the lands of England as the spoils of conquest, so neither did he tyrannically and arbitrarily subject them to feudal dependence; but, as the fedual law was at that time the prevailing law of Europe, William I., who had always governed by this policy, might probably recommend it to our ancestors as the most obvious and ready way to put them upon a footing with their neighbors, and to secure the nation against any future attempts from them. We accordingly find among the laws of William I. a law enacting feudal law itself, not EO NOMINE, but in effect, inasmuch as it requires from all persons the same engagements to, and introduces the same dependence upon, the king as supreme lord of all the lands of England, as were supposed to be due to a supreme lord by the feudal law. The law I mean is the LII. law of William I." This view is adopted by Sir William Blackstone, who writes (vol. ii., p. 47): "From the prodicious slaughter of the English nobility at the battle of Hastings, and the fruitless insurrection of those who survived, such numerous forfeitures had accrued that he (William) was able to reward his Norman followers with very large and extensive possessions, which gave a handle to monkish historians, and such as have implicitly followed them to represent him as having by the right of the sword, seized upon all the lands of England, and dealt them out again to his own favorites--a supposition grounded upon a mistaken sense of the word conquest, which in its feudal acceptation signifies no more than acquisition, and this has led many hasty writers into a strange historical mistake, and one which, upon the slightest examination, will be found to be most untrue. "We learn from a Saxon chronicle (A.D. 1085), that in the nineteenth year of King William's reign, an invasion was apprehended from Denmark; and the military constitution of the Saxons being then laid aside, and no other introduced in its stead, the kingdom was wholly defenceless; which occasioned the king to bring over a large army of Normans and Britons who were quartered upon, and greatly oppressed, the people. This apparent weakness, together with the grievances occasioned by a foreign force, might co-operate with the king's remonstrance, and better incline the nobility to listen to his proposals for putting them in a position of defence. For, as soon as the danger was over, the king held a great council to inquire into the state of the nation, the immediate consequence of which was the compiling of the great survey called the Doomsday Book, which was finished the next year; and in the end of that very year (1086) the king was attended by all his nobility at Sarum, where the principal landholders submitted their lands to the yoke of military tenure, and became the king's vassals, and did homage and fealty to his person." Mr. Henry Hallam writes: "One innovation made by William upon the feudal law is very deserving of attention. By the leading principle of feuds, an oath of fealty was due from the vassal to the lord of whom he immediately held the land, and no other. The King of France long after this period had no feudal, and scarcely any royal, authority over the tenants of his own vassals; but William received at Salisbury, in 1085, the fealty of all landholders in England, both those who held in chief and their tenants, thus breaking in upon the feudal compact in its most essential attribute--the exclusive dependence of a VASSAL upon his lord; and this may be reckoned among the several causes which prevented the continental notions of independence upon the Crown from ever taking root among the English aristocracy." A more recent writer, Mr. FREEMAN ("History of the Norman Conquest," published in 1871, vol. iv., p. 695), repeats the same idea, though not exactly in the same words. After describing the assemblage which encamped in the plains around Salisbury, he says: "In this great meeting a decree was passed, which is one of the most memorable pieces of legislation in the whole history of England. In other lands where military tenure existed, it was beginning to be held that he who plighted his faith to a lord, who was the man of the king, was the man of that lord only, and did not become the man of the king himself. It was beginning to be held that if such a man followed his immediate lord to battle against the common sovereign, the lord might draw on himself the guilt of treason, but the men that followed him would be guiltless. William himself would have been amazed if any vassal of his had refused to draw his sword in a war with France on the score of duty toward an over-lord. But in England, at all events, William was determined to be full king over the whole land, to be immediate sovereign and immediate lord of every man. A statute was passed that every FREEMAN in the realm should take the oath of fealty to King William." Mr. FREEMAN quotes Stubbs's "Select Charters," p. 80, as his authority. Stubbs gives the text of that charter, with ten others. He says: "These charters are from 'Textus Roffensis,' a manuscript written during the reign of Henry I.; it contains the sum and substance of all the legal enactments made by the Conqueror independent of his confirmation of the earlier laws." It is as follows: "Statuimus etiam ut OMNIS LIBER HOMO feodere et sacramento affirmet, quod intra et extra Angliam Willelmo regi fideles esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare et eum contra inimicos defendere." It will be perceived that Mr. Hallam reads LIBER HOMO as "vassal." Mr. FREEMAN reads them as "FREEMAN," while the older authority, Sir Martin Wright, says: "I have translated the words LIBERI HOMINES, 'owners of land,' because the sense agrees best with the tenor of the law." The views of writers of so much eminence as Sir Martin Wright, Sir William Blackstone, Mr. Henry Hallam, and Mr. FREEMAN, are entitled to the greatest respect and consideration, and it is with much diffidence I venture to differ from them. The three older writers appear to have had before them the LII of William I., the latter the alleged charter found in the "Textus Roffensis;" but as they are almost identical in expression, I treat the latter as a copy of the former, and I do not think it bears out the interpretation sought to be put upon it--that it altered either the feudalism of England, or the relation of the vassal to his lord; and it must be borne in mind that not only did William derive his title to the crown from Edward the Confessor, but he preserved the apparent continuity, and re-enacted the laws of his predecessor. Wilkins' "Laws of the ANGLO-SAXONs and Normans," republished in 1840 by the Record Commissioners, gives the following introduction: "Here begin the laws of Edward, the glorious king of England. "After the fourth year of the succession to the kingdom of William of this land, that is England, he ordered all the English noble and wise men and acquainted with the law, through the whole country, to be summoned before his council of barons, in order to be acquainted with their customs, Having therefore selected from all the counties twelve, they were sworn solemnly to proceed as diligently as they might to write their laws and customs, nothing omitting, nothing adding, and nothing changing." Then follow the laws, thirty-nine in number, thus showing the continuity of system, and proving that William imposed upon his Norman followers the laws of the ANGLO-SAXONs. They do not include the LII. William I., to which I shall refer hereafter. I may, however, observe that the demonstration at Salisbury was not of a legislative character; and that it was held in conformity with ANGLO-SAXON usages. If, according to Stubbs, the ordinance was a charter, it would proceed from the king alone. The idea involved in the statements of Sir Martin Wright, Mr. Hallam, and Mr. FREEMAN, that the VASSAL OF A LORD was then called on to swear allegiance to the KING, and that it altered the feudal bond in England, is not supported by the oath of vassalage. In swearing fealty, the vassal knelt, placed his hands between those of his lord's, and swore: "I become your man from this day forward, of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear you faith for the tenements at that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our Sovereign Lord the King." This shows that it was unnecessary to call vassals to Salisbury to swear allegiance. The assemblage was of the same nature and character as previous meetings. It was composed of the LIBERI HOMINES, the FREEMEN, described by the learned John Selden (ante, p. 10), and by Dr. Robertson and De Lolme (ante, pp. 12, 13). But there is evidence of a much stronger character, which of itself refutes the views of these writers, and shows that the Norman system, at least during the reign of William I., was a continuation of that existing previous to his succession to the throne; and that the meeting at Salisbury, so graphically portrayed, did not effect that radical change in the position of English landholders which has been stated. I refer to the works of EADMERUS; he was a monk of Canterbury who was appointed Bishop of St. Andrews, and declined or resigned the appointment because the King of Scotland refused to allow his consecration by the Archbishop of Canterbury. His history includes the reigns of William I., William II., and Henry I., from 1066 to 1122, and he gives, at page 173, the laws of Edward the Confessor, which William I. gave to England; they number seventy-one, including the LII. law quoted by Sir Martin Wright. The introduction to these laws is in Latin and Norman-French, and is as follows: "These are the laws and customs which King William granted to the whole people of England after he had conquered the land, and they are those which KING EDWARD HIS PREDECESSOR observed before him." [Footnote: The laws of William are given in a work entitled "Eadmeri Monachi Cantuariensis Historia Novorum," etc. It includes the reigns of William I. and II., and Henry I., from 1066 to 1122, and is edited by John Selden. Page 173 has the following: "Hae sunt Leges et Consuetudines quas Willielmus Rex concessit universo Populo Angliae post subactam terram. Eaedum sunt quas Edwardus Rex cognatus ejus obscruauit ante eum. "Ces sont les leis et les Custums que le Rui people de Engleterre apres le Conquest de le Terre. Ice les meismes que le Rui Edward sun Cosin tuit devant lui. "LII. "De fide et obsequio erga Regnum. "Statuimus etiam ut omnes liiben homines foedere et sacramento affirment quod intra et extra universum regnum Anglias (quod olim vocabatur regnum Britanniae) Willielmo suo domino fideles esse volunt, terras et honores illins fidelitate ubique servare cum eo et contra inimicos et alienigonas defendere."] This simple statement gets rid of the theory of Sir Martin Wright, of Sir William Blackstone, of Mr. Hallam, and of Mr. FREEMAN, that William introduced a new system, and that he did so either as a new feudal law or as an amendment upon the existing feudalism. The LII. law, quoted by Wright, is as follows: "We have decreed that all FREE MEN should affirm on oath, that both within and without the whole kingdom of England (which is called Britain) they desire to be faithful to William their lord, and everywhere preserve unto him his land and honors with fidelity, and defend them against all enemies and strangers." Eadmerus, who wrote in the reign of Henry I., gives the LII. William I. as a confirmatory law. The charter given by Stubbs is a contraction of the law given by Eadmerus. The former uses the words OMNES LIBERI HOMINES; the latter, the words OMNIS LIBERI HOMO. Those interested can compare them, as I shall give the text of each side by side. Since the paper was read, I have met with the following passage in Stubbs's "Constitutional History of England," vol. i., p. 265: "It has been maintained that a formal and definitive act, forming the initial point of the feudalization of England, is to be found in a clause of the laws, as they are called, of the Conqueror, which directs that every FREEMAN shall affirm, by covenant and oath, that 'he will be faithful to King William within England and without, will join him in preserving his land with all fidelity, and defend him against his enemies.' But this injunction is little more than the demand of the oath of allegiance taken to the Anglo-Saxon kings, and is here required not of every feudal dependant of the king, but of every FREEMAN or freeholder whatsoever. In that famous Council of Salisbury, A. D, 1086, which was summoned immediately after the making of the Doomsday survey, we learn, from the 'Chronicle,' that there came to the king 'all his witan and all the landholders of substance in England, whose vassals soever they were, and they all submitted to him and became his men, and swore oaths of allegiance that they would be faithful to him against all others.' In the act has been seen the formal acceptance and date of the introduction of feudalism, but it has a very different meaning. The oath described is the oath of allegiance, combined with the act of homage, and obtained from all landowners whoever their feudal lord might be. It is a measure of precaution taken against the disintegrating power of feudalism, providing a direct tie between the sovereign and all freeholders which no inferior relations existing between them and the mesne lords would justify them in breaking." I have already quoted from another of Stubbs's works, "Select Charters," the charter which he appears to have discovered bearing upon this transaction, and now copy the note, giving the authorities quoted by Stubbs, with reference to the above passage. He appears to have overlooked the complete narration of the alleged laws of William I., given by Eadmerus, to which I have referred. The note is as follows: "Ll. William I., 2, below note; see Hovenden, ii., pref. p. 5, seq., where I have attempted to prove the spuriousness of the document called the Charter of William I., printed in the ancient 'Laws' ed. Thorpe, p. 211. The way in which the regulation of the Conqueror here referred to has been misunderstood and misused is curious. Lambarde, in the 'Archaionomia,' p. 170, printed the false charter in which this genuine article is incorporated as an appendiz to the French version of the Conqueror's laws, numbering the clauses 51 to 67; from Lambarde, the whole thing was transferred by Wilkins into his collection of ANGLO-SAXON laws. Blackstone's 'Commentary,' ii. 49, suggested that perhaps the very law (which introduced feudal tenures) thus made at the Council of Salisbury is that which is still extant and couched in these remarkable words, i. e., the injunction in question referred to by Wilkins, p. 228 Ellis, in the introduction to 'Doomsday,' i. 16, quotes Blackstone, but adds a reference to Wilkins without verifying Blackstone's quotation from his collection of laws, substituting for that work the Concilia, in which the law does not occur. Many modern writers have followed him in referring the enactment of the article to the Council of Salisbury. It is well to give here the text of both passages; that in the laws runs thus: 'Statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo foedere et sacremento affirmet, quod intra et extra Angliam Willelmo regi fideles esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate eum eo servare et ante eum contra inimicos defendere' (Select Charters, p. 80). the homage done at Salisbury is described by Florence thus: 'Nec multo post mandavit ut Archiepiscopi episcopi, abbates, comitas et barones et vicecomitas cum suis militibus die Kalendarum Augustarem sibi occurent Saresberiae quo cum venissent milites eorem sibi fidelitatem contra omnes homines jurare coegit.' The 'Chronicle' is a little more full: 'Thaee him comon to his witan and ealle tha Landsittende men the ahtes waeron ofer eall Engleland waeron thaes mannes men the hi waeron and ealle hi bugon to him and waeron his men, and him hold athas sworon thaet he woldon ongean ealle other men him holde beon.'" Mr. Stubbs had, in degree, adopted the view at which I had arrived, that the law or charter of William I. was an injunction to enforce the oath of allegiance, previously ordered by the laws of Edward the Confessor, to be taken by all FREEMEN, and that it did not relate to vassals, or alter the existing feudalism. As the subject possesses considerable interest for the general reader as well as the learned historian, I think it well to place the two authorities side by side, that the text may be compared: LII. William I., as given by Eadments. "De fide et obsequio erga Regnum. "Statuimus etiam ut omnes LIBERI HOMINES foedere et sacramento affirment quod intra et extra univereum regnum Anglise (quod olim vocabatur regnum Britanniae) Wilhielmo suo domino fideles ease volunt, terras et honores ilius fidelitate ubique servare cum eo et contra inimicos et alienigenas defendere." Charter from Textus Roffensis, given by Mr. Stubbs. "Statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo feodere et sacramento affirmet, quod intra et extra Angliam. Willelmo regi fideles ease volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare et ante eum contra inimicos defendere." I think the documents I have quoted show that Sir Martin Wright, Sir William Blackstone, and Messrs. Hallam and FREEMAN, labored under a mistake in supposing that William had introduced or imposed a new feudal law, or that the vassals of a lord swore allegiance to the king. The introduction to the laws of William I. shows that it was not a new enactment, or a Norman custom introduced into England, and the law itself proves that it relates to FREEMEN, and not to vassals. The misapprehension of these authors may have arisen in this way: William I. had two distinct sets of subjects. The NORMANS, who had taken the oath of allegiance on obtaining investiture, and whose retinue included vassals; and the ANGLO-SAXONS, among whom vassalage was unknown, who were FREEMAN (LIBERI HOMINES) as distinguished from serfs. The former comprised those in possesion of Odhal (noble) land, whether held from the crown or its tenants. It was quite unnecessary to convoke the Normans and their vassals, while the assemblage of the Saxons--OMNES LIBERI HOMINES--was not only to conformity with the laws of Edward the Confessor, but was specially needful when a foreigner had possesed himself of the throne. I have perhaps dwelt to long upon this point, but the error to which I have referred has been adopted as if it was an unquestioned fact, and has passed into our school-books and become part of the education given to the young, and therefore it required some examination. I believe that a very large portion of the land in England did not change hands at that period, nor was the position of either SERFS or VILLEINS changed. The great alteration lay in the increase in the quantity of BOC-LAND. Much of the FOLC-LAND was forfeited and seized upon, and as the king claimed the right to give it away, it was called TERRA REGIS. The charter granted by King William to Alan Fergent, Duke of Bretagne, of the lands and towns, and the rest of the inheritance of Edwin, Earl of Yorkshire, runs thus: "Ego Guilielmus cognomine Bastardus, Rex Anglise do et concede tibi nepoti meo Alano Brittanias Comiti et hseredibus tuis imperpetuum omnes villas et terras qua nuper fuerent Comitis Edwini in Eborashina cum feodis militise et aliis libertatibus et consuetudinibus ita libere et honorifice sicut idem Edwinus eadem tenuit. "Data obsidione coram civitate Eboraci." This charter does not create a different title, but gives the lands as held by the former possessor. The monarch assumed the function of the fole-gemot, but the principle remained--the feudee only became tenant for life. Each estate reverted to the Crown on the death of him who held it; but, previous to acquiring possession, the new tenant had to cease to be his own "man," and became the "man" of his superior. This act was called "homage," and was followed by "investiture." In A.D. 1175, Prince Henry refused to trust himself with his father till his homage had been renewed and accepted, for it bound the superior to protect the inferior. The process is thus described by De Lolme (chap, ii., sec. 1): "On the death of the ancestor, lands holden by 'knight's service' and by 'grand sergeantcy' were, upon inquisition finding the tenure and the death of the ancestor, seized into the king's hands. If the heir appeared by the inquisition to be within the age of twenty-one years, the King retained the lands till the heir attained the age of twenty-one, for his own profit, maintaining and educating the heir according to his rank. If the heir appeared by the inquisition to have attained twenty-one, he was entitled to demand livery of the lands by the king's officers on paying a relief and doing fealty and homage. The minor heir attaining twenty-one, and proving his age, was entitled to livery of his lands, on doing fealty and homage, without paying any relief." The idea involved is, that the lands Were HELD, and NOT OWNED, and that the proprietary right lay in the nation, as represented by the king. If we adopt the poetic idea of the Brehon code, that "land is perpetual man," then HOMAGE for land was not a degrading institution. But it is repugnant to our ideas to think that any man can, on any ground, or for any consideration, part with his manhood, and become by homage the "man" of another. The Norman chieftains claimed to be peers of the monarch, and to sit in the councils of the nation, as barons-by-tenure and not by patent. This was a decided innovation upon the usages of the Anglo-Saxons, and ultimately converted the Parliament, the FOLC-GEMOT, into two branches. Those who accompanied the king stood in the same position as the companions of Romulus, they were the PATRICIANS; those subsequently called to the councils of the sovereign by patent corresponded with the Roman NOBILES. No such patents were issued by any of the Norman monarchs. But the insolence of the Norman nobles led to the attempt made by the successors of the Conqueror to revive the Saxon earldoms as a counterpoise. The weakness of Stephen enabled the greater fudges to fortify their castles, and they set up claims against the Crown, which aggravated the discord that arose in subsequent reigns. The "Saxon Chronicles," p. 238, thus describes the oppressions of the nobles, and the state of England in the reign of Stephen: "They grievously oppressed the poor people with building castles, and when they were built, filled them with wicked men, or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured; they suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads." The nation was mapped out, and the owners' names inscribed in the Doomsday Book. There were no unoccupied lands, and had the possessors been loyal and prudent, the sovereign would have had no lands, save his own private domains, to give away, nor would the industrious have been able to become tenants-in-fee. The alterations which have taken place in the possession of land since the composition of the Book of Doom, have been owing to the disloyalty or extravagance of the descendants of those then found in possession. Notwithstanding the vast loss of life in the contests following upon the invasion, the population of England increased from 2,150,000 in 1066, when William landed, to 3,350,000 in 1152, when the great-grandson of the Conqueror ascended the throne, and the first of the Plantagenets ruled in England. V. THE PLANTAGENETS. Whatever doubts may exist as to the influence of the Norman Conquest upon the mass of the people--the FREEMEN, the ceorls, and the serfs--there can be no doubt that its effect upon the higher classes was very great. It added to the existing FEUDALISM--the system of Baronage, with its concomitants of castellated residences filled with armed men. It led to frequent contests between neighboring lords, in which the liberty and rights of the FREEMEN were imperilled. It also eventuated in the formation of a distinct order-the peerage--and for a time the constitutional influence of the assembled people, the FOLC-GEMOT, was overborne. The principal Norman chieftains were barons in their own country, and they retained that position in England, but their holdings in both were feudal, not hereditary. When the Crown, originally elective, became hereditary, the barons sought to have their possessions governed by the same rule, to remove them from the class of TERRAREGIS (FOLC-LAND), and to convert them into chartered land. Being gifts from the monarch, he had the right to direct the descent, and all charters which gave land to a man and his heirs, made each of them only a tenant for life; the possessor was bound to hand over the estate undivided to the heir, and he could neither give, sell, nor bequeath it. The land was BENEFICIA, just as appointments in the Church, and reverted, as they do, to the patron to be re-granted. They were held upon military service, and the major barons, adopting the Saxon title Earl, claimed to be PEERS of the monarch, and were called to the councils of the state as barons-by-tenure. In reply to a QUO WARRANTO, issued to the Earl of Surrey, in the reign of Edward I., he asserted that his ancestors had assisted William in gaining England, and were equally entitled to a share of the spoils. "It was," said he, "by their swords that his ancestors had obtained their lands, and that by his he would maintain his rights." The same monarch required the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk to go over with his army to Guienne, and they replied, "The tenure of our lands does not require us to do so, unless the king went in person." The king insisted; the earls were firm. "By God, sir Earl," said Edward to Hereford, "you shall go or hang." "By God, sir King," replied the earl, "I will neither go nor hang." The king submitted and forgave his warmth. The struggle between the nobles and the Crown commenced, and was continued, under varying circumstances. Each of the barons had a large retinue of armed men under his own command, and the Crown was liable to be overborne by a union of ambitious nobles. At one time the monarch had to face them at Runnymede and yield to their demands; at another he was able to restrain them with a strong hand. The Church and the barons, when acting in union, proved too strong for the sovereign, and he had to secure the alliance of one of these parties to defeat the views of the other. The barons abused their power over the FREEMEN, and sought to establish the rule "that every man must have a lord," thus reducing them to a state of vassalage. King John separated the barons into two classes--major and minor; the former should have at least thirteen knights' fees and a third part; the latter remained country gentlemen. The 20th Henry III., cap. 2 and 4, was passed to secure the rights of FREEMEN, who were disturbed by the great lords, and gave them an appeal to the king's courts of assize. Bracton, an eminent lawyer who wrote in the time of Henry III., says: "The king hath superiors--viz., God and the law by which he is made king; also his court--viz., his earls and barons. Earls are the king's associates, and he that hath an associate hath a master; and therefore, if the king be unbridled, or (which is all one) without law, they ought to bridle him, unless they will be unbridled as the king, and then the commons may cry, Lord Jesus, pity us," etc. An eminent lawyer, time of Edward I., writes: "Although the king ought to have no equal in the land, yet because the king and his commissioners can be both judge and party, the king ought by right to have companions, to hear and determine in Parliament all writs and plaints of wrongs done by the king, the queen, or their children." These views found expression in the coronation oath. Edward II. was forced to swear: "Will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm to the people of England the laws and customs to them, granted by the ancient kings of England, your righteous and godly predecessors; and especially to the clergy and people, by the glorious King St. Edward, your predecessor?" The king's answer--"I do them grant and promise." "Do you grant to hold and keep the laws and rightful customs which the commonalty of your realm shall have chosen, and to maintain and enforce them to the honor of God after your power?" The king's answer--"I this do grant and promise." I shall not dwell upon the event most frequently quoted with reference to the era of the Plantagenets--I mean King John's "Magna Charta." It was more social than territorial, and tended to limit the power of the Crown, and to increase that of the barons. The Plantagenets had not begun to call Commons to the House of Lords. The issue of writs was confined to those who were barons-by-tenure, the PATRICIANS of the Norman period. The creation of NOBLES was the invention of a later age. The baron feasted in his hall, while the slave grovelled in his cabin. Bracton, the famous lawyer of the time of Henry III., says: "All the goods a slave acquired belonged to his master, who could take them from him whenever he pleased," therefore a man could not purchase his own freedom. "In the same year, 1283," says the Annals of Dunstable, "we sold our slave by birth, William Fyke, and all his family, and received one mark from the buyer." The only hope for the slave was, to try and get into one of the walled towns, when he became free. Until the Wars of the Roses, these serfs were greatly harassed by their owners. In the reign of Edward I., efforts were made to prevent the alienation of land by those who received it from the Norman sovereigns. The statute of mortmain was passed to restrain the giving of lands to the Church, the statute DE DONIS to prevent alienation to laymen. The former declares: "That whereas religious men had entered into the fees of other men, without license and will of the chief lord, and sometimes appropriating and buying, and sometimes receiving them of gift of others, whereby the services that are due of such fee, and which, in the beginning, were provided for the defence of the realm, are wrongfully withdrawn, and the chief lord do lose the escheats of the same (the primer seizin on each life that dropped); it therefore enacts: That any such lands were forfeited to the lord of the fee; and if he did not take it within twelve months, it should be forfeited to the king, who shall enfeoff other therein by certain services to be done for us for the defence of the realm." Another act, the 6th Edward I., cap. 3, provides: "That alienation by the tenant in courtesy was void, and the heir was entitled to succeed to his mother's property, notwithstanding the act of his father." The 13th Edward I., cap. 41, enacts: "That if the abbot, priors, and keepers of hospitals, and other religious houses, aliened their land they should be seized upon by the king." The 13th Edward I., cap. 1, DE DONIS conditionalitiis, provided: "That tenements given to a man, and the heirs of his body, should, at all events, go to the issue, if there were any; or, if there were none, should revert to the donor." But while the fiefs of the Crown were forbidden to alien their lands, the FREEMEN, whose lands were Odhal (noble) and of Saxon descent, the inheritance of which was guaranteed to them by 55 William I. (ANTE, p. 13), were empowered to sell their estates by the statute called QUIA EMPTORES (6 Edward I.). It enacts: "That from henceforth it shall be lawful to every FREEMEN to sell, at his own pleasure, his lands and tenements, or part of them: so that the feoffee shall hold the same lands and tenements of the chief lord of the fee by such customs as his feoffee held before." The scope of these laws was altered in the reign of Edward III. That monarch, in view of his intended invasion of France, secured the adhesion of the landowners, by giving them power to raise money upon and alien their estates. The permission was as follows, 1 Edward III., cap. 12: "Whereas divers people of the realm complain themselves to be grieved because that lands and tenements which be holden of the king in chief, and aliened without license, have been seized into the king's hand, and holden as forfeit: (2.) The king shall not hold them as forfeit in such case, but will and grant from henceforth of such lands and tenements so aliened, there shall be reasonable fine taken in chancery by due process." 1 Edward III., cap. 13: "Whereas divers have complained that they be grieved by reason of purchasing of lands and tenements, which have been holden of the king's progenitors that now is, as of honors; and the same lands have been taken into the king's hands, as though they had been holden in chief of the king as of his crown: (2.) The king will that from henceforth no man be grieved by any such purchase." De Lolme, chap. iii., sec. 3, remarks on these laws that they took from the king all power of preventing alienation or of purchase. They left him the reversionary right on the failure of heirs. These changes in the relative power of the sovereign and the nobles took place to enable Edward to enter upon the conquest of France; but that monarch, conferred a power upon the barons, which was used to the detriment of his descendants, and led to the dethronement of the Plantagenets. The line of demarcation between the two sets of titles, those derived through the ANGLO-SAXON laws and those derived through the grants of the Norman sovereigns, was gradually being effaced. The people looked back to the laws of Edward the Confessor, and forced them upon Edward II. But after passing the laws which prevented nobles from selling, and empowering FREEMEN to do so, Edward III. found it needful to assert his claims to the entire land of England, and enacted in the twenty-fourth year of his reign: "That the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all land in his kingdom; that no man doth or can possess, any part of it but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him to be held on feodal service." Those who obtained gifts of land, only held or had the use of them; the ownership rested in the Crown. Feodal service, the maintenance of armed men, and the bringing them into the field, was the rent paid. The wealth which came into England after the conquest of France influenced all classes, but none more than the family of the king. His own example seems to have affected his descendants. The invasion of France and the captivity of its king reappear in the invasion of England by Henry IV., and the capture and dethronement of Richard II. The prosperity of England during the reign of Edward had passed away in that of his grandson. Very great distress pervaded the land, and it led to efforts to get rid of villeinage. The 1st Richard II. recites: "That grievous complaints had been made to the Lords and Commons, that villeins and land tenants daily withdraw into cities and towns, and a special commission was appointed to hear the case, and decide thereon." The complaint was renewed, and appears in Act 9 Richard II., cap. 2: "Whereas divers villeins and serfs, as well of the great Lords as of other people, as well spiritual as temporal, do fly within the cities, towns, and places entfranched, as the city of London, and other like, and do feign divers suits against their Lords, to the intent to make them free by the answer of the Lords, it is accorded and assented that the Lords and others shall not be forebound of their villeins, because of the answer of the Lords." Serfdom or slavery may have existed previous to the ANGLO-SAXON invasion, but I am disposed to think that the Saxon, the Jutes, and the Angles reduced the inhabitants of the lands which they conquered, into serfdom. The history of that period shows that men, women, and children were constantly sold, and that there were established markets. One at Bristol, which was frequented by Irish buyers, was put down, owing to the remonstrance of the Bishop. After the Norman invasion the name of Villein, a person attached to the villa, was given to the serfs. The village was their residence. Occasional instances of enfranchisement took place; the word signified being made free, and at that time every FREEMAN was entitled to a vote. The word enfranchise has latterly come to bear a different meaning, and to apply solely to the possession of a vote, but it originally meant the elevation of a serf into the condition of a FREEMAN. The act of enfranchisement was a public ceremony usually performed at the church door. The last act of ownership performed by the master was the piercing of the right ear with an awl. Many serfs fled into the towns, where they were enfranchised and became FREEMEN. The disaffection of the common people increased; they were borne down with oppression. They struggled against their masters, and tried to secure their personal liberty, and the freedom of their land. The population rose in masses in the reign of Richard II., and demanded-- 1st. The total abolition of slavery for themselves and their children forever; 2d. The reduction of the rent of good land to 4d. per acre; 3d. The right of buying and selling, like other men, in markets and fairs; 4th. The pardon of all offences. The monarch acted upon insidious advice; he spoke them fair at first, to gain time, but did not fulfil his promises. Ultimately the people gained part of their demands. To limit or defeat them, an act was passed, fixing the wages of laborers to 4d. per day, with meat and drink, or 6d. per day, without meat and drink, and others in proportion; but with the proviso, that if any one refused to serve or labor on these terms, every justice was at liberty to send him to jail, there to remain until he gave security to serve and labor as by law required. A subsequent act prevents their being employed by the week, or paid for holidays. Previous to this period, the major barons and great lords tilled their land by serfs, and had very large flocks and herds of cattle. On the death of the Bishop of Winchester, 1367, his executors delivered to Bishop Wykeham, his successor in the see, the following: 127 draught horses, 1556 head of cattle, 3876 wedders, 4777 ewes, and 3541 lambs. Tillage was neglected; and in 1314 there was a severe dearth; wheat sold at a price equal to L30 per quarter, the brewing of ale was discontinued by proclamation, in order "to prevent those of middle rank from perishing for want of food." The dissensions among the descendants of Edward III. as to the right to the Crown aided the nobles in their efforts to make their estates hereditary, and the civil wars which afflicted the nation tended to promote that object. Kings were crowned and discrowned at the will of the nobles, who compelled the FREEMEN to part with their small estates. The oligarchy dictated to the Crown, and oppressed and kept down the FREEMEN. The nobles allied themselves with the serfs, who were manumitted that they might serve as soldiers in the conflicting armies. From the Conquest to the time of Richard II., only barons-by-tenure, the descendants of the companions of the Conqueror, were invited by writ to Parliament. That monarch made an innovation, and invited others who were not barons-by-tenure. The first dukedom was created the 11th of Edward III., and the first viscount the 18th Henry VI. Edward IV. seized upon the lands granted by former kings, and gave them to his own followers, and thus created a feeling of uneasiness in the minds of the nobility, and paved the way for the events which were accomplished by a succeeding dynasty. The decision in the Taltarum case opened the question of succession; and Edward's efforts to put down retainers was the precursor of the Tudor policy. We have a picture of the state of society in the reign of Edward IV. in the Paston Memoirs, written by Margaret Paston. Her husband, John Paston, was heir to Sir John Fastolf. He was bound by the will to establish in Caister Castle, Fastolf s own mansion, a college of religious men to pray for his benefactor's soul. But in those days might was right, and the Duke of Norfolk, fancying that he should like the house for himself, quietly took possession of it. At that time, Edward was just seated on the throne, and Edward had just been reported to Paston to have said in reference to another suit, that "He would be your good lord therein as he would to the poorest man in England. He would hold with you in your right; and as for favor, he will not be understood that he shall show favor more to one man to another, not to one in England." This was a true expression of the king's intentions. But either he was changeable in his moods, or during these early years he was hardly settled enough on the throne always to be able to carry out his wishes. This time, however, in some way or another, the great duke was reduced to submission, and Caister was restored to Paston. In 1465 a new claimant appeared; and claimants, though as troublesome in the fifteenth as the nineteenth century, proceeded in a different fashion. This time it was the Duke of Suffolk, who asserted a right to the manor of Drayton in his own name, and who had bought up the assumed rights of another person to the manor of Hellesdon. John Paston was away, and his wife had to bear the brunt. An attempt to levy rent at Drayton was followed by a threat from the duke's men, that if her servants "ventured to take any further distresses at Drayton, even if it were but of the value of a pin, they would take the value of an ox in Hellesdon." Paston and the duke alike professed to be under the law. But each was anxious to retain that possession which in those days seems really to have been nine points of the law. The duke got hold of Drayton, while Hellesdon was held for Paston. One day Paston's men made a raid upon Drayton, and carried off seventy-seven head of cattle. Another day the duke's bailiff came to Hellesdon with 300 men to see if the place were assailable. Two servants of Paston, attempting to keep a court at Drayton in their master's name, were carried off by force. At last the duke mustered his retainers and marched against Hellesdon. The garrison, too weak to resist, at once surrendered. "The duke's men took possession, and set John Paston's own tenants to work, very much against their wills, to destroy the mansion and break down the walls of the lodge, while they themselves ransacked the church, turned out the parson, and spoiled the images. They also pillaged very completely every house in the village. As for John Paston's own place, they stripped it completely bare; and whatever there was of lead, brass, pewter, iron, doors or gates, or other things that they could not conveniently carry off, they hacked and hewed them to pieces. The duke rode through Hellesdon to Drayton the following day, while his men were still busy completing the wreck of destruction by the demolition of the lodge. The wreck of the building, with the rents they made in its walls, is visible even now" (Introd. xxxv.). The meaning of all this is evident. We have before us a state of society in which the anarchical element is predominant. But it is not pure anarchy. The nobles were determined to reduce the middle classes to vassalage. The reign of the Plantagenets witnessed the elevation of the nobility. The descendants of the Norman barons menaced, and sometimes proved too powerful for the Crown. In such reigns as those of Edward I., Edward III., and Henry VI., the barons triumphed. The power wielded by the first Edward fell from the feeble grasp of his son and successor. The beneficent rule of Edward III. was followed by the anarchy of Richard II. Success led to excess. The triumphant party thinned the ranks of its opponents, and in turn experienced the same fate. The fierce struggle of the Red and White Roses weakened each. Guy, Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," sank overpowered on the field of Tewkesbury, and with him perished many of the most powerful of the nobles. The jealousy of Richard III. swept away his own friends, and the bloody contest on Bosworth field destroyed the flower of the nobility. The sun of the Plantagenets went down, leaving the country weak and impoverished, from a contest in which the barons sought to establish their own power, to the detriment alike of the Crown and the FREEMEN. The latter might have exclaimed: "Till half a patriot, half a coward, grown, We fly from meaner tyrants to the throne." The long contest terminated in the defeat alike of the Crown and the nobles, but the nation suffered severely from the struggle. The rule of this family proved fatal to the interest of a most important class, whose rights were jealously guarded by the Normans. The Liberi Homines, the FREEMEN, who were Odhal occupiers, holding in capite from the sovereign, nearly disappeared in the Wars of the Roses. Monarchs who owed their crown to the favor of the nobles were too weak to uphold the rights of those who held directly from the Crown, and who, in their isolation, were almost powerless. The term FREEMAN, originally one of the noblest in the land, disappeared in relation to urban tenures, and was applied solely to the personal rights of civic burghers; instead thereof arose the term FREEHOLDER from FREE HOLD, which was originally a grant free from all rent, and only burdened with military service. The term was subsequently applied to land held for leases for lives as contradistinguished from leases for years, the latter being deemed base tenures, and insufficient to qualify a man to vote; the theory being that no man was free whose tenure could be disturbed during his life. Though the Liberi Homines or FREEMEN were, as a class, overborne in this struggle, and reduced to vassalage, yet their descendants were able, under the leadership of Cromwell, to regain some of the rights and influence of which they had been despoiled under the Plantagenets. Fortescue, Lord Chief-Justice to Henry VI., thus describes the condition of the English people: "They drunk no water, unless it be that some for devotion, and upon a rule of penance, do abstain from other drink. They eat plentifully of all kinds of flesh and fish. They wear woollen cloth in all their apparel. They have abundance of bed covering in their houses, and all other woollen stuff. They have great store of all implements of household. They are plentifully furnished with all instruments of husbandry, and all other things that are requisite to the accomplishment of a great and wealthy life, according to their estates and degrees." This flattering picture is not supported by the existing disaffection and the repeated applications for redress from the serfs and the smaller farmers, and the simple fact that the population had increased under the Normans--a period of 88 years--from 2,150,000 to 3,350,000, while under the Plantagenets--a period of 300 years--it only increased to 4,000,000, the addition to the population in that period being only 650,000. The average increase in the former period was nearly 14,000 per annum, while in the latter it did not much exceed 2000 per annum. This goes far to prove the evil from civil wars, and the oppression of the oligarchy. VI. THE TUDORS The protracted struggle of the Plantagenets left the nation in a state of exhaustion. The nobles had absorbed the lands of the FREEMEN, and had thus broken the backbone of society. They had then entered upon a contest with the Crown to increase their own power; and to effect their selfish objects, setup puppets, and ranged under conflicting banners, but the Nemesis followed. The Wars of the Roses destroyed their own power, and weakened their influence, by sweeping away the heads of the principal families. The ambition of the nobles failed of its object, when "the last of the barons" lay gory in his blood on the field of Tewkesbury. The wars were, however, productive of one national benefit, in virtually ending the state of serfdom to which the aborigines were reduced by the Scandinavian invasion. The exhaustion of the nation prepared the way to changes of a most radical character, and the reigns of the Tudors are characterized by greater innovations and more striking alterations than even those which followed the accession of the Normans. Henry of Richmond came out of the field of Bostworth a vistor, and ascended the throne of a nation whose leading nobles had been swept away. The sword had vied with the axe. Henry VII. was prudent and cunning; and in the absence of any preponderating oligarchical influence, planted the heel of the sovereign upon the necks of the nobles. He succeeded where the Plantagenets had failed. His accession became the advent of a series of measures which altered most materially the system of landholding. The Wars of the Roses showed that the power of the nobles was too great for the comfort of the monarch. The decision in Taltarum's case, in the reign of Edward IV., affected the entire system of entail. Land, partly freed from restrictions, passed into other hands. But Henry went further. He destroyed their physical influence by ridigly putting down retainer; and in one of his tours, while partaking of the hospitality of the Earl of Oxford, he fined him L15,000 for having greeted him with 5000 of his tenants in livery. The rigid enforcement of the laws passed against retainers in former reigns, but now made more penal, strengthened the king and reduced the power of the nobles. Their estates were relieved of a most onerous charge, and the lands freed from the burden of supporting the army of the state. Henry VII. had thus a large fund to give away; the rent of the land granted in knights' service virtually consisted of two separate funds--one part went to the feudee, as officer or commmandant, the other to the soldiery or vassals. The latter part belonged to the state. Had Henry applied it to the reestablishment of the class of FREEMEN (LIBERI HOMINES), as was recently done by the Emperor of Russia when he abolished serfdom, he would have created a power on which the Crown and the constitution could rely. This might have been done by converting the holdings of the men-at-arms into allodial estates, held direct from the Crown. Such an arrangement would have left the income of the feudee unimpaired, as it would only have applied the fund that had been paid to the men-at-arms to this purpose; and by creating out of that land a number of small estates held direct from the Crown, the misery that arose from the eviction and destruction of a most meritorious class, would have been avoided. Vagrancy, with its great evils, would have been prevented, and the passing of the Poor laws would have been unnecessary. Unfortunately Henry and his counsellors did not appreciate the consequence of the suppression of retainers and liveries. By the course he adopted to secure the influence of the Crown, he compensated the nobles, but destroyed the agricultural middle class. This change had an important and, in some respects, a most injurious effect upon the condition of the nation, and led to enactments of a very extraordinary character, which I must submit in detail, inasmuch as I prefer giving the ipsissima verba of the statute-book to any statement of my own. To make the laws intelligible, I would remind you that the successful efforts of the nobles had, during the three centuries of Plantagenet rule, nearly obliterated the LIBERI HOMINES (whose rights the Norman conqueror had sedulously guarded), and had reduced them to a state of vassalage. They held the lands of their lord at his will, and paid their rent by military service. When retainers were put down, and rent or knights' service was no longer paid with armed men, their occupation was gone. They were unfit for the mere routine of husbandry, and unprovided with funds for working their farms. The policy of the nobles was changed. It was no longer their object to maintain small farmsteads, each supplying its quota of armed men to the retinue of the lord; and it was their interest to obtain money rents. Then commenced a struggle of the most fearful character. The nobles cleared their lands, pulled down the houses, and displaced the people. Vagrancy, on a most unparalleled scale, took place. Henry VII., to check this cruel, unexpected, and harsh outcome of his own policy, resorted to legislation, which proved nearly ineffectual. As early as the fourth year of his reign these efforts commenced with an enactment (cap. 19) for keeping up houses and encouraging husbandry; it is very quaint, and is as follows: "The King, our Sovereign Lord, having singular pleasure above all things to avoid such enormities and mischiefs as be hurtful and prejudicial to the commonwealth of this his land and his subjects of the same, remembereth that, among other things, great inconvenience daily doth increase by dissolution, and pulling down, and wilful waste of houses and towns within this his realm, and laying to pasture lands, which continually have been in tilth, WHEREBY IDLENESS, THE GROUND AND BEGINNING OF ALL MISCHIEF, daily do increase; for where, in some towns 200 persons were occupied, and lived by those lawful labors, now there be occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue full of idleness. The husbandry, which is one of the greatest commodities of the realm, is greatly decayed. Churches destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the patrons and curates wronged, the defence of the land against outward enemies feebled and impaired, to the great displeasure of God, the subversion of the policy and good rule of this land, if remedy be not hastily therefor purveyed: Wherefore, the King, our Sovereign Lord, by the assent and advice, etc., etc., ordereth, enacteth, and establisheth that no person, what estate, degree, or condition he be, that hath any house or houses, that at any time within the past three years hath been, or that now is, or heretofore shall be, let to farm with twenty acres of land at least, or more, laying in tillage or husbandry; that the owners of any such house shall be bound to keep, sustain, and maintain houses and buildings, upon the said grounds and land, convenient and necessary for maintaining and upholding said tillage and husbandry; and if any such owner or owners of house or house and land take, keep, and occupy any such house or house and land in his or their own hands, that the owner of the said authority be bound in likewise to maintain houses and buildings upon the said ground and land, convenient and necessary for maintaining and upholding the said tillage and husbandry. On their default, the king, or the other lord of the fee, shall receive half of the profits, and apply the same in repairing the houses; but shall not gain the freehold thereby." This act was preceded by one with reference to the Isle of Wight, 4 Henry VII., cap. 16, passed the same session, which recites that it is so near France that it is desirable to keep it in a state of defence. It provides that no person shall have more than one farm, and enacts: "For remedy, it is ordered and enacted that no manner of person, of what estate, degree, or condition soever, shall take any farm more than one, whereof the yearly rent shall not exceed ten marks; and if any several leases afore this time have been made to any person or persons of divers and sundry farmholds whereof the yearly value shall exceed that sum, then the said person or persons shall choose one farm, hold at his pleasure, and the remnant of the leases shall be void." Mr. Froude remarks (History, p. 26), "An act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by its consequences. The farm-houses were rebuilt, the land reploughed, the island repeopled; and in 1546, when the French army of 60,000 men attempted to effect a landing at St. Helens, they were defeated and driven back by the militia, and a few levies transported from Hampshire and the surrounding counties." Lord Bacon, in his "History of the Reign of Henry VII., says: "Enclosures, at that time, began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived) were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people and (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the like. The king, likewise, knew full well, and in nowise forgot, that there ensued withal upon this a decay and diminution of subsidies and taxes; for the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies. In remedying of this inconvenience, the king's wisdom was admirable, and the parliaments at that time. Enclosures they would not forbid, for that had been to forbid the improvement of the patrimony of the kingdom; nor tillage they would not compel, for that was to strive with nature and utility; but they took a course to take away depopulating enclosures and depopulating pasturage, and yet not by that name, or by any imperious express prohibition, but by consequence. The ordinance was, that all houses of husbandry, that were used with twenty acres of ground and upward, should be maintained and kept up for ever, together with a competent proportion of land to be used and occupied with them; and in nowise to be severed from them, as by another statute made afterward in his successor's time, was more fully declared: this, upon forfeiture to be taken, not by way of popular action, but by seizure of the land itself, by the king and lords of the fee, as to half the profits, till the houses and land were restored. By this means the houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce a dweller; and the proportion of the land for occupation being kept up, did of necessity enforce that dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance, that might keep hinds and servants, and set the plough a-going. This did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood of the kingdom, to have farms, as it were, of a standard sufficient to maintain an able body out of penury, and did, in effect, amortise a great part of the lands of the kingdom unto the hold and occupation of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gentlemen and cottagers or peasants. Now, how much this did advance the military power of the kingdom, is apparent by the true principles of war, and the examples of other kingdoms. For it hath been held by the general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars (howsoever some few have varied, and that it may receive some distinction of case), that the principal strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot. And to make good infantry, it requireth men bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner. Therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandman and ploughman be but as their workfolks and laborers, or else mere cottagers (which are but housed beggars), you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable bands of foot; like to coppice woods, that if you leave in them standing too thick, they will run to bushes and briars, and have little clean underwood. And this is to be seen in France and Italy, and some other parts abroad, where in effect all is nobles or peasantry. I speak of people out of towns, and no middle people; and therefore no good forces of foot: insomuch as they are enforced to employ mercenary bands of Switzers and the like for their battalions of foot, whereby also it comes to pass, that those nations have much people and few soldiers. Whereas the king saw that contrariwise it would follow, that England, though much less in territory, yet should have infinitely more soldiers of their native forces than those other nations have. Thus did the king secretly sow Hydra's teeth; whereupon (according to the poet's fiction) should rise up armed men for the service of this kingdom." The enactment above quoted was followed by others in that reign of a similar character, but it would appear they were not successful. The evil grew apace. Houses were pulled down, farms went out of tillage. The people, evicted from their farms, and having neither occupation nor means of living, were idle, and suffering. Succeeding sovereigns strove also to check this disorder? and statute after statute was passed. Among them are the 7th Henry VIII., cap. 1. It recites: "That great inconveniency did daily increase by dissolution, pulling down, and destruction of houses, and laying to pasture, lands which customarily had been manured and occupied with tillage and husbandry, whereby idleness doth increase; for where, in some town-lands, hundreds of persons and their ancestors, time out of mind, were daily occupied with sowing of corn and graynes, breeding of cattle, and other increase of husbandry, that now the said persons and their progeny are disunited and decreased. It further recites the evil consequences resulting from this state of things, and provides that all these buildings and habitations shall be re-edificed and repaired within one year; and all tillage lands turned into pasture shall be again restored into tillage; and in default, half the value of the lands and houses forfeited to the king, or lord of the fee, until they were re-edificed. On failure of the next lord, the lord above him might seize." This act did not produce that increased tilth which was anticipated. Farmers' attention was turned to sheepbreeding; and in order to supply the deficiency of cattle, an act was passed in the 21st Henry VIII., to enforce the rearing of calves; and every farmer was, under a penalty of 6s. 8d. (about L3 of our currency), compelled to rear all his calves for a period of three years; and in the 24th Henry VIII. the act was further continued for two years. The culture of flax and hemp was also encouraged by legislation. The 24th Henry VIII., cap. 14, requires every person occupying land apt for tillage, to sow a quarter of an acre of flax or hemp for every sixty acres of land, under a penalty of 3s. 4d. The profit which arose from sheep-farming led to the depasturage of the land; and in order to check it, an act, 25 Henry VIII., cap. 13, was passed. It commences thus: "Forasmuch as divers and sundry persons of the king's subjects of this realm, to whom God of His goodness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of movable substance, now of late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways and means how they might gather and accumulate together into few hands, as well great multitude of farms, as great plenty of cattle and in especial sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage: whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns, and enhanced the old rates of the rents of possessions of this realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but have also raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such commodities almost double above the prices which hath been accustomed, by reason whereof a marvellous multitude of the poor people of this realm be not able to provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and children, but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the lands of this realm from the occupying of the poor husbandmen, and so use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the great profit that cometh of sheep, which be now come into a few persons' hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects, so that some have 24,000, some 20,000, some 10,000, some 6000, some 5000, and some more or less, by which a good sheep for victual, which was accustomed to be sold for 2s. 4d. or 3s. at most, is now sold for 6s., 5s., or 4s. at the least; and a stone of clothing wool, that in some shire of this realm was accustomed to be sold from 16d. to 20d, is now sold for 4s. or 3s. 4d. at the least; and in some counties, where it has been sold for 2s. 4d. to 2s. 8d., or 3s. at the most, it is now 5s. or 4s. 8d. at the least, and so arreysed in every part of the realm, which things thus used to be principally to the high displeasure of Almighty God, to the decay of the hospitality of this realm, to the diminishing king's people, and the let of the cloth making, whereby many poor people hath been accustomed to be set on work; and in conclusion, if remedy be not found, it may turn to the utter destruction and dissolution of this realm which God defend." It was enacted that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own inheritance more than 2000 sheep, under a penalty of 3s. 4d. per annum for each sheep; lambs under a year old not to be counted; and that no person shall occupy two farms. Further measures appeared needful to prevent the evil; and the 27th Henry VIII., cap. 22, states that the 4th Henry VII., cap. 19, for keeping houses in repair, and for the tillage of the land, had been enforced on lands holden of the king, but neglected by other lords. It, therefore, enacted that the king shall have the moiety of the profits of lands converted from tillage to pasture, since the passing of the 4th Henry VII., until a proper house is built, and the land returned to tillage; and in default of the immediate lord taking the profits as under that act, the king might take the same. This act extended to the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, Rutland, Northampton, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Berkshire, Isle of Wight, Hertford, and Cambridge. The simple fact was, that those who had formerly paid the rent of their land by service as soldiers were without the capital or means of paying rent in money; they were evicted and became vagrants. Henry VIII. took a short course with these vagrants, and it is asserted upon apparently good authority that in the course of his reign, thirty-six years, he hanged no less than 72,000 persons for vagrancy, or at the rate of 2000 per annum. The executions in the reign of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, had fallen to from 300 to 400 per annum. 32 Henry VIII., cap. 1, gave powers of bequest with regard to land; as it explains the change it effected, I quote it: "That all persons holding land in socage not having any lands holden by knight service of the king in chief, be empowered to devise and dispose of all such socage lands, and in like case, persons holding socage lands of the king in chief, and also of others, and not having the lands holden by knight service, saving to the king, all his right, title, and interest for primer seizin, reliefs, fines for alienations, etc. Persons holding lands of the king by knight's service in chief were authorized to devise two third parts thereof, saving to the king wardship, primer seizin, of the third paid, and fines for alienation of the whole lands. Persons holding lands by knight's service in chief, and also other lands by knight's service, or otherwise may in like manner devise two third part thereof, saving to the king wardship of the third, and fines for alienation of the whole. Persons holding land of others than the king by knight's service, and also holding socage lands, may devise two third parts of the former and the whole of the latter, saving to the lord his wardship of the third part. Persons holding lands of the king by knight's service but not in chief, or so holding of the king and others, and also holding socage lands, may in like manner devise two thirds of the former and the whole of the latter, saving to the king the wardship of the third part, and also to the lords; and the king or the other lords were empowered to seize the one third part in case of any deficiency." The 34th and 35th Henry VIII., cap. 5, was passed to remove some doubts which had arisen as to the former statute; it enacts: "That the words estates of inheritance should only mean estates in fee-simple only, and empowers persons seized of any lands, etc., in fee-simple solely, or in co-partnery (not having any lands holden of knight's service), to devise the whole, except corporations. Persons seized in fee-simple of land holden of the king by knight's service may give or devise two thirds thereof, and of his other lands, except corporation, such two thirds to be ascertained by the divisor or by commission out of the Court of Ward and Liveries. The king was empowered to take his third land descended to the heir in the first place, the devise in gift remaining good for the two thirds; and if the land described were insufficient to answer such third, the deficiency should be made up out of the two thirds." "The next attack," remarks Sir William Blackstone, vol. ii., p. 117, "which they suffered in order of time was by the statute 32 Henry VIII., c. 28, whereby certain leases made by tenants in tail, which do not tend to prejudice the issue, were allowed to be good in law and to bind the issue in tail. But they received a more violent blow the same session of Parliament by the construction put upon the statute of fines by the statute 32 Henry VIII., cap. 36, which declares a fine duly levied by tenant in tail to be a complete bar to him and his heirs and all other persons claiming under such entail. This was evidently agreeable to the intention of Henry VII., whose policy was (before common recovery had obtained their full strength and authority) to lay the road as open as possible to the alienation of landed property, in order to weaken the overgrown power of his nobles. But as they, from the opposite reasons, were not easily brought to consent to such a provision, it was therefore couched in his act under covert and obscure expressions; and the judges, though willing to construe that statute as favorably as possible for the defeating of entailed estates, yet hesitated at giving fines so extensive a power by mere implication when the statute DE DONIS had expressly declared that they should not be a bar to estates-tail. But the statute of Henry VIII., when the doctrine of alienation was better received, and the will of the prince more implicitly obeyed than before, avowed and established that intention." Fitzherbert, one of the judges of the Common Pleas in the reign of Henry VIII., wrote a work on surveying and husbandry. It contains directions for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, and for enriching the soil and reducing it to tillage. Fallowing before wheat was practised, and when a field was exhausted by grain it was allowed to rest. Hollingshed estimated the usual return as 16 to 20 bushels of wheat per acre; prices varied very greatly, and famine was of frequent recurrence. Leases began to be granted, but they were not effectual to protect the tenant from the entry of purchasers nor against the operation of fictitious recoveries. In the succeeding reigns the efforts to encourage tillage and prevent the clearing of the farms were renewed, and among the enactments passed were the following: 5 Edward VI., cap. 5, for the better maintenance of tillage and increase of corn within the realm, enacts: "That there should be, in the year 1553, as much land, or more, put wholly in tillage as had been at any time since the 1st Henry VIII., under a penalty of 5s. per acre to the king; and in order to secure this, it appoints commissioners, who were bound to ascertain by inquests what land was in tillage and had been converted from tillage into pasture. The commission issued precepts to the sheriffs, who summoned jurors, and the inquests were to be returned, certified, to the Court of Exchequer. Any prosecution for penalties should take place within three years, and the act continues for ten years." 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 2, recites the former acts of 4 Henry VII., cap. 19, etc,, which it enforces. It enacts: "That as some doubts had arisen as to the interpretation of the words twenty acres of land, the act should apply to houses with twenty acres of land, according to the measurement of the ancient statute; and it appoints commissioners to inquire as to all houses pulled down and all land converted from pasture into tillage since the 4th Henry VII. The commissioners were to take security by recognizance from offenders, and to re-edify the houses and re-convert the land into tillage, and to assess the tenants for life toward the repairs. The amount expended under order of the commissioners was made recoverable against the estate, and the occupiers were made liable to their orders; and they had power to commit persons refusing to give security to carry out the act." 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 3, was passed to provide for the increase of milch cattle, and it enacts: "That one milch-cow shall be kept and calf reared for every sixty sheep and ten oxen during the following seven years." The 2d Elizabeth, cap. 2, confirms the previously quoted acts of 4 Henry VII., cap. 19; 7 Henry VIII., cap. 1; 27 Henry VIII., cap. 22; 27 Henry VIII., cap. 18; and it enacts: "That all farm-houses belonging to suppressed monasteries should be kept up, and that all lands which had been in tillage for four years successively at any time since the 20th Henry VIII., should be kept in tillage under a penalty of 10s. per acre, which was payable to the heir in reversion, or in case he did not levy it, to the Crown." 31 Elizabeth, cap. 7, went further; and in order to provide allotments for the cottagers, many of whom were dispossessed from their land, it provided: "For avoiding the great inconvenience which is found by experience to grow by the erecting and building of great number of cottages, which daily more and more increased in many parts of the realm, it was enacted that no person should build a cottage for habitation or dwelling, nor convert any building into a cottage, without assigning and laying thereto four acres of land, being his own freehold and inheritance, lying near the cottage, under a penalty of L10; and for upholding any such cottages, there was a penalty imposed of 40s. a month, exception being made as to any city, town, corporation, ancient borough, or market town; and no person was permitted to allow more than one family to reside in each cottage, under a penalty of 10s. per month." The 39th Elizabeth, cap. 2, was passed to enforce the observance of these conditions. It provides: "That all lands which had been in tillage shall be restored thereto within three years, except in cases where they were worn out by too much tillage, in which case they might be grazed with sheep; but in order to prevent the deterioriation of the land, it was enacted that the quantity of beeves or muttons sold off the land should not exceed that which was consumed in the mansion-house." In these various enactments of the Tudor monarchs we may trace the anxious desire of these sovereigns to repair the mistake of Henry VII., and to prevent the depopulation of England. A similar mistake has been made in Ireland since 1846, under which the homes of the peasantry have been prostrated, the land thrown out of tillage, and the people driven from their native land. Mr. Froude has the following remarks upon this legislation: "Statesmen (temp. Elizabeth) did not care for the accumulation of capital. They desired to see the physical well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained in the highest degree which the producing power of the country admitted. This was their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient majority of the nation. At one time Parliament interfered to protect employers against laborers, but it was equally determined that employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this directly appears from the 4th and 5th Elizabeth, by which, on the most trifling appearance of a diminution of the currency, it was declared that the laboring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by the Act of Henry VIII.; and a sliding scale was instituted, by which, for the future, wages should be adjusted to the price of food. The same conclusion may be gathered also indirectly fom the acts interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition showed itself to exercise them selfishly. "The city merchants, as I have said, were becoming landowners, and some of them attempted to apply their rules of trade to the management of landed estates. While wages were rated so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land into pasture, but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding which it regarded as petty treason to the state. Self-protection is the first law of life, and the country, relying for its defence on an able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance, it could not permit the owners of land to pursue, for their own benefit, a course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not often that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific results so clearly as in the present instance. The first attempts of the kind which I have described were made in the Isle of Wight early in the reign of Henry VII. Lying so directly exposed to attacks by France, the Isle of Wight was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep in a state of defence, and the 4th Henry VII., cap. 16, was passed to prevent the depopulation of the Isle of Wight, occasioned by the system of large farms." The city merchants alluded to by Froude seem to have remembered that from the times of Athelwolf, the possession of a certain quantity of land, with gatehouse, church, and kitchen, converted the ceorl (churl) into a thane. It is difficult to estimate the effect which the Tudor policy had upon the landholding of England. Under the feudal system, the land was held in trust and burdened with the support of the soldiery. Henry VII., in order to weaken the power of the nobles, put an end to their maintaining independent soldiery. Thus landlords' incomes increased, though their material power was curtailed. It would not have been difficult at this time to have loaded these properties with annual payments equal to the cost of the soldiers which they were bound to maintain, or to have given each of them a farm under the Crown, and strict justice would have prevented the landowners from putting into their pockets those revenues which, according to the grants and patents of the Conqueror and his successors, were specially devoted to the maintenance of the army. Land was released from the conditions with which it was burdened when granted. This was not done by direct legislation but by its being the policy of the Crown to prevent "king-makers" arising from among the nobility. The dread of Warwick influenced Henry. He inaugurated a policy which transferred the support of the army from the lands, which should solely have borne it, to the general revenue of the country. Thus he relieved one class at the expense of the nation. Yet, when Henry was about to wage war on the Continent, he called all his subjects to accompany him, under pain of forfeiture of their lands; and he did not omit levying the accustomed feudal charge for knighting his eldest son and for marrying his eldest daughter. The acts to prevent the landholder from oppressing the occupier, and those for the encouragement of tillage, failed. The new idea of property in land, which then obtained, proved too powerful to be altered by legislation. Another change in the system of landholding took place in those reigns. Lord Cromwell, who succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as minister to Henry VIII., had land in Kent, and he obtained the passing of an act (31 Henry VIII., cap. 2) which took his land and that of other owners therein named, out of the custom of gavelkind (gave-all-kind), which had existed in Kent from before the Norman Conquest, and enacted that they should descend according to common law in like manner as lands held by knight's service. The suppression of the RELIGIOUS HOUSES gave the Crown the control of a vast quantity of land. It had, with the consent of the Crown, been devoted to religion by former owners. The descendants of the donors were equitably entitled to the land, as it ceased to be applied to the trust for which it was given, but the power of the Crown was too great, and their claims were refused. Had these estates been applied to purposes of religion or education they would have formed a valuable fund for the improvement of the people; but the land itself, as well as the portion of tithes belonging to the religious houses, was conferred upon favorites, and some of the wealthiest nobles of the present day trace their rise and importance to the rewards obtained by their ancestors out of the spoils of these charities. The importance of the measures of the Tudors upon the system of land-holding can hardly be exaggerated. An impulse of self-defence led them to lessen the physical force of the oligarchy by relieving the land from the support of the army, and enabling them to convert to their own use the income previously applied to the defence of the realm. This was a bribe, but it brought its own punishment. The eviction of the working farmers, the demolition of their dwellings, the depopulation of the country, were evils of most serious magnitude; and the supplement of the measures which produced such deplorable results was found in the permanent establishment of a taxation for the SUPPORT of the POOR. Yet the nation reeled under the depletion produced by previous mistaken legislation, and all classes have been injured by the transfer of the support of the army from the land held by the nobles to the income of the people. Side by side, with the measures passed, to prevent the Clearing of the Land, arose the system of POOR LAWS. Previous to the Reformation the poor were principally relieved at the religious houses. The destruction of small farms, and the eviction of such masses of the people, which commenced in the reign of Henry VII., overpowered the resources of these establishments; their suppression in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth aggravated the evil. The indiscriminate and wholesale execution of the poor vagrants by the former monarch only partially removed the evil, and the statute-book is loaded with acts for the relief of the destitute poor. The first efforts were collections in the churches; but voluntary alms proving insufficient, the powers of the churchwardens were extended, and they were directed and authorized to assess the parishioners according to their means, and thus arose a system which, though benevolent in its object, is a slur upon our social arrangements. Land, the only source of food, is rightly charged with the support of the destitute. The necessity for such aid arose originally from their being evicted therefrom. The charge should fall exclusively upon the rent receivers, and in no case should the tiller of the soil have to pay this charge either directly or indirectly. It is continued by the inadequacy of wages, and the improvidence engendered by a social system which arose out of injustice, and produced its own penalty. Legislation with regard to the poor commenced contemporaneous with the laws against the eviction of the small farmers. I have already recited some of the laws to preserve small holdings; I now pass to the acts meant to compel landholders to provide for those whom they had dispossessed. In 1530 the act 22 Henry VIII., cap. 12, was passed; it recites: "Whereas in all places through the realm of England, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased, and daily do increase, in great and excessive numbers by THE OCCASION OF IDLENESS, THE MOTHER AND ROOT OF ALL VICES, [Footnote: See 4 Henry VII., cap, 19, ante, p. 27, where the same expression occurs, showing that it was throwing the land out of tilth that occasioned pauperism.] whereby hath insurged and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the inquietation and damage of the king and people, and to the marvellous disturbance of the commonweal of the realm." It enacts that justices may give license to impotent persons to beg within certain limits, and, if found begging out of their limits, they shall be set in the stocks. Beggars without license to be whipped or set in the stocks. All persons able to labor, who shall beg or be vagrant, shall be whipped and sent to the place of their birth. Parishes to be fined for neglect of the constables. 37 Henry VIII., cap. 23, continued this act to the end of the ensuing Parliament. 1 Edward VI., cap. 3, recites the increase of idle vagabonds, and enacts that all persons loitering or wandering shall be marked with a V, and adjudged a slave for two years, and afterward running away shall become a felon. Impotent persons were to be removed to the place where they had resided for three years, and allowed to beg. A weekly collection was to be made in the churches every Sunday and holiday after reading the gospel of the day, the amount to be applied to the relief of bedridden poor. 5 and 6 Edward VI., cap. 2, directs the parson, vicar, curate, and church-wardens, to appoint two collectors to distribute weekly to the poor. The people were exhorted by the clergy to contribute; and, if they refuse, then, upon the certificate of the parson, vicar, or curate, to the bishop of the diocese, he shall send for them and induce him or them to charitable ways. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 5, re-enacts the former, and requires the collectors to account quarterly; and where the poor are too numerous for relief, they were licensed by a justice of the peace to beg. 5 Elizabeth, cap. 3, confirms and renews the former acts, and compels collectors to serve under a penalty of L10. Persons refusing to contribute their alms shall be exhorted, and, if they obstinately refuse, shall be bound by the bishop to appear at the next general quarter session, and they may be imprisoned if they refuse to be bound. The 14th Elizabeth, cap. 5, requires the justices of the peace to register all aged and impotent poor born or for three years resident in the parish, and to settle them in convenient habitations, and ascertain the weekly charge, and assess the amount on the inhabitants, and yearly appoint collectors to receive and distribute the assessment, and also an overseer of the poor. This act was to continue for seven years. The 18th Elizabeth, cap. 3, provides for the employment of the poor. Stores of wool, hemp, flax, iron, etc., to be provided in cities and towns, and the poor set to work. It empowered persons possessed of land in free socage to give or devise same for the maintenance of the poor. The 39th Elizabeth, cap. 3, and the 43d Elizabeth, cap. 2, extended these acts, and made the assessment compulsory. I shall ask you to compare the date of these several laws for the relief of the destitute poor with the dates of the enactments against evictions. You will find they run side by side. [Footnote: The following tables of the acts passed against eviction, and enacting the support of the poor, show that they were contemporaneous: Against Evictions. 4 Henry VII., Cap. 19. 7 Henry VIII, Cap. 1. 21 Henry VIII, 24 Henry VIII, Cap. 14. 25 Henry VIII, Cap. 13. 27 Henry VIII, Cap. 22. 5 Edward VI., Cap. 2. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, Cap. 2. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, Cap. 3. 2 Elizabeth, Cap. 2. 31 Elizabeth, Cap. 7. 39 Elizabeth, Cap. 2. Enacting Poor Laws. 22 Henry VIII., Cap. 12. 37 Henry VIII., Cap. 23. 1 Edward VI., Cap. 3. 5 and 6 Edward VI., Cap. 2. 2 and 4 Philip and Mary, Cap. 5. 5 Elizabeth, Cap. 3. 14 Elizabeth, Cap. 5. 18 Elizabeth, Cap. 3. 39 Elizabeth, Cap. 3. 43 Elizabeth, Cap. 2.] I have perhaps gone at too great length into detail; but I think I could not give a proper picture of the alteration in the system of landholding or its effects without tracing from the statute-book the black records of these important changes. The suppression of monasteries tended greatly to increase the sufferings of the poor, but I doubt if even these institutions could have met the enormous pressure which arose from the wholesale evictions of the people. The laws of Henry VII and Henry VIII., enforcing the tillage of the land, preceded the suppression of religious houses, and the act of the latter monarch allowing the poor to beg was passed before any steps were taken to close the convents. That measure was no doubt injurious to the poor, but the main evil arose from other causes. The lands of these houses, when no longer applicable to the purpose for which they were given, should have reverted to the heirs of the donors, or have been applied to other religious or educational purposes. The bestowal of them upon favorites, to the detriment alike of the State, the Church, the Poor, and the Ignorant, was an abuse of great magnitude, the effect of which is still felt. The reigns of the Tudors are marked with three events affecting the land--viz.: 1st. Relieving it of the support of the army; 2d. Burdening of it with the support of the poor; 3d. Applying the monastic lands to private uses. The abolition of retainers, while it relieved the land of the nobles from the principal charge thereon, did not entirely abolish knight's service. The monarch was entitled to the care of all minors, to aids on the marriage or knighthood of the eldest son, to primerseizin or a year's rent upon the death of each tenant of the Crown. These fees were considerable, and were under the care of the Court of Ward and Liveries. The artisan class had, however, grown in wealth, and they were greatly strengthened by the removal from France of large numbers of workmen in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. These prosperous tradespeople became landowners by purchase, and thus tended to replace the LIBERI HOMINES, or FREEMEN, who had been destroyed under the wars of the nobles, which effaced the landmarks of English society. The liberated serfs attained the position of paid farm-laborers; had the policy of Elizabeth, who enacted that each of their cottages should have an allotment of four acres of land, been carried out, it would have been most beneficial to the state. The reign of this family embraced one hundred and eighteen years, during which the increase of the population was about twenty-five per cent. When Henry VII. ascended the throne in 1485 it was 4,000,000, and on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 it had reached 5,000,000, the average increase being about 8000 per annum. The changes effected in the condition of the farmers' class left the mass of the people in a far worse state at the close than at the commencement of their rule. VII. THE STUARTS. The accession of the Stuarts to the throne of England took place under peculiar circumstances. The nation had just passed through two very serious struggles--one political, the other religious. The land which had been in the possession of religious communities, instead of being retained by the state for educational or religious purposes, had been given to favorites. A new class of ownership had been created--the lay impropriators of tithes. The suppression of retainers converted land into a quasi property. The extension to land of the powers of bequest gave the possessors greater facilities for disposing thereof. It was relieved from the principal feudal burden, military service, but remained essentially feudal as far as tenure was concerned. Men were no longer furnished to the state as payment of the knight's fee; they were cleared off the land, to make room for sheep and oxen, England being in that respect about two hundred years in advance of Ireland, though without the outlet of emigration. Vagrancy and its attendant evils led to the Poor Law. James I. and his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class burdened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised 160 temporal and 26 spiritual lords, 800 barons, 600 knights, and 3000 esquires. The knight's fee was subject to aids, which were paid to the Crown upon the marriage of the king's son or daughter. Upon the death of the possessor, the Crown received primer-seizen a year's rent. If the successor was an infant, the Crown under the name of Wardship, took the rents of the estates. If the ward was a female, a fine was levied if she did not accept the husband chosen by the Crown. Fines on alienation were also levied, and the estates, though sold, became escheated, and reverted to the Crown upon the failure of issue. These various fines kept alive the principle that the lands belonged to the Crown as representative of the nation; but, as they varied in amount, James I. proposed to compound with the tenants-in-fee, and to convert them into fixed annual payments. The nobles refused, and the scheme was abandoned. In the succeeding reign, the attempt to stretch royal power beyond its due limits led to resistance by force, but it was no longer a mere war of nobles; their power had been destroyed by Henry VII. The Stuarts had to fight the people, with a paid army, and the Commons, having the purse of the nation, opposed force to force. The contest eventuated in a military protectorship. Many of the principal tenants-in-fee fled the country to save their lives. Their lands were confiscated and given away; thus the Crown rights were weakened, and Charles II. was forced to recognize many of the titles given by Cromwell; he did not dare to face the convulsion which must follow an expulsion of the novo homo in posession of the estates of more ancient families; but legislation went further--it abolished all the remaining feudal charges. The Commons appear to have assented to this change, from a desire to lessen the private income of the Sovereign, and thus to make him more dependent upon Parliament, This was done by the 12th Charles II., cap. 24. It enacts: "That the Court of Ward and Liveries, primer seizin, etc., and all fines for alienation, tenures by knight's service, and tenures in capite, be done away with and turned into fee and common socage, and discharged of homage, escuage, aids, and reliefs. All future tenures created by the king to be in free and common socage, reserving rents to the Crown and also fines on alienation. It enables fathers to dispose of their children's share during their minority, and gives the custody of the personal estate to the guardians of such child, and imposes in lieu of the revenues raised in the Court of Ward and Liveries, duties upon beer and ale." The land was relieved of its legitimate charge, and a tax on beer and ale imposed instead! the landlords were relieved at the expense of the people. The statute which accomplished this change is described by Blackstone as "A greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even Magna Charta itself, since that only pruned the luxuriances that had grown out of military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigor; but the statute of King Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches." The efforts of James II. to rule contrary to the wish of the nation, led to his expulsion from the throne, and showed that, in case of future disputes as to the succession, the army, like the Praetorian Guards of Rome, had the election of the monarch. The Red and White Roses of the Plantagenets reappeared under the altered names of Whig and Tory; but it was proved that the decision of a leading soldier like the Duke of Marlborough would decide the army, and that it would govern the nation; fortunately the decision was a wise one, and was ratified by Parliament: thus FORCE governed LAW, and the decision of the ARMY influenced the SENATE. William III. succeeded, AS AN ELECTED MONARCH, under the Bill of Rights. This remarkable document contains no provision, securing the tenants-in-fee in their estates; and I have not met with any treatise dealing with the legal effects of the eviction of James II. All patents were covenants between the king and his heirs, and the patentees and their heirs. The expulsion of the sovereign virtually destroyed the title; and an elected king, who did not succeed as heir, was not bound by the patents of his predecessors, nor was William asked, by the Bill of Rights, to recognize any of the existing titles. This anomalous state of things was met in degree by the statute of prescriptions, but even this did not entirely cure the defect in the titles to the principal estates in the Kingdom. The English tenants in decapitating one landlord and expelling another, appear to have destroyed their titles, and then endeavored to renew them by prescriptive right; but I shall not pursue this topic further, though it may have a very definite bearing upon the question of landholding. It may not be uninteresting to allude rather briefly to the state of England at the close of the seventeenth century. Geoffrey King, who wrote in 1696, gives the first reliable statistics about the state of the country. He estimated the number of houses at 1,300,000, and the average at four to each house, making the population 5,318,000. He says there was but seven acres of land for each person, but that England was six times better peopled than the known world, and twice better than Europe. He calculated the total income at L43,500,000, of which the yearly rent of land was L10,000,000. The income was equal to L7, 18s. 0d. per head, and the expense L7, 11s. 4d.; the yearly increase, 6s. 8d. per head, or L1,800,000 per annum. He estimated the annual income of 160 temporal peers at L2800 per annum, 26 spiritual peers at L1300, of 800 baronets at L800, and of 600 knights at L650. He estimated the area at 39,000,000 acres (recent surveys make it 37,319,221). He estimated the arable land at 11,000,000 acres, and pasture and meadow at 10,000,000, a total of 21,000,000. The area under all kinds of crops and permanent pasture was, in 1874, 26,686,098 acres; therefore about five and a half million acres have been reclaimed and added to the arable land. As the particulars of his estimate may prove interesting, I append them in a note. [Footnote--Geoffrey King thus classifies the land of England and Wales: Acres. Value/Acre Rent Arable Land, 11,000,000 L0 5 10 L3,200,000 Pasture and Meadow, 10,000,000 0 9 0 4,500,000 Woods and Coppices, 3,000,000 0 5 0 750,000 Forests, Parks, and Covers, 3,000,000 0 3 6 550,000 Moors, Mountains, and Barren Lands, 10,000,000 0 1 0 500,000 Houses, Homesteads, Gardens, Orchards,) 1,000,000 (The Land, 450,000 Churches, and Churchyards, ) (The Buildings, 2,000,000 Rivers, Lakes, Meres, and Ponds, 500,000 0 2 0 50,000 Roadways and Waste Lands, 500,000 ---------- ------- ---------- 39,000,000 L0 6 0 L12,000,000 He estimates the live stock thus: Value without the Skin Beeves, Stirks, and Calves, 4,500,000 L2 0 0 L9,000,000 Sheep and Lambs, 11,000,000 0 8 0 4,400,000 Swine and Pigs, 2,000,000 0 16 0 1,600,000 Deer, Fawns, Goats and Kids, 247,900 15,247,900 Horses, 1,200,000 2 0 0 3,000,000 Value of Skins, 2,400,000 ----------- L20,647,900 The annual produce he estimated as follows: Acres Rent Produce Grain, 10,000,000 L3,000,000 L8,275,000 Hemp, Flax, etc., 1,000,000 200,000 2,000,000 Butter, Cheese, and Milk, ) ( 2,500,000 Wool, ) ( 2,000,000 Horses bred, ) ( 250,000 Flesh Meat, )- 29,000,000 6,800,000 -( 3,500,000 Tallow and Hides, ) ( 600,000 Hay Consumed, ) ( 2,300,000 Timber, ) ( 1,000,000 ---------- ----------- ----------- Total 39,000,000 L10,000,000 L22,275,000] He places the rent of the corn land at about one third of the produce, and that of pasture land at rather more. The price of meat per lb. was: beef 1 and 1/8d.; mutton, 2 and 1/4d.; pork, 3d.; venison, 6d.; hares, 7d.; rabbits, 6d. The weight of flesh-meat consumed was 398,000,000 lbs., it being 72 lbs. 6 oz. for each person, or 3 and 1/6 oz. daily. I shall have occasion to contrast these figures with those lately published when I come to deal with the present; but a great difference has arisen from the alteration in price, which is owing to the increase in the quantity of the precious metals. The reign of the last sovereign of this unfortunate race was distinguished by the first measures to inclose the commons and convert them into private property, with which I shall deal hereafter. The changes effected in the land laws of England during the reigns of the Stuarts, a period of 111 years, were very important. The act of Charles II. which abolished the Court of Ward and Liveries, appeared to be an abandonment of the rights of the people, as asserted in the person of the Crown; and this alteration also seemed to give color of right to the claim which is set up of property in land, but the following law of Edward III. never was repealed: "That the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all land in his kingdom, and that no man doth or can possess any part of it but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him to be held on feodal service." No lawyer will assert for any English subject a higher title than tenancy-in-fee, which bears the impress of holding and denies the assertion of ownership. The power of the nobles, the tenants-in-fee, was strengthened by an act passed in the reign of William and Mary, which altered the relation of landlord and tenant. Previous thereto, the landlord had the power of distraint, but he merely held the goods he seized to compel the tenant to perform personal service. It would be impossible for a tenant to pay his rent if his stock or implements were sold off the land. As the Tudor policy of money payments extended, the greed for pelf led to an alteration in the law, and the act of William and Mary allowed the landlord to sell the goods he had distrained. The tenant remained in possession of the land without the means of tilling it, which was opposed to public policy. This power of distraint was, however, confined to holdings in which there were leases by which the tenant covenanted to allow the landlord to distrain his stock and goods in default of payment of rent. The legislation of the Stuarts was invariably favorable to the possessor of land and adverse to the rights of the people. The government during the closing reigns was oligarchical, so much so, that William III., annoyed at the restriction put upon his kingly power, threatened to resign the crown and retire to Holland; but the aristocracy were unwilling to relax their claims, and they secured by legislation the rights they appeared to have lost by the deposition of the sovereign. The population had increased from 5,000,000 in 1603 to 5,750,000 in 1714, being an average increase of less than 7000 per annum. VIII. THE HOUSE OF HANOVER. The first sovereign of the House of Hanover ascended the throne not by right of descent but by election; the legitimate heir was set aside, and a distant branch of the family was chosen, and the succession fixed by act of Parliament; but it is held by jurists that every Parliament is sovereign and has the power of repealing any act of any former Parliament. The beneficial rule of some of the latter monarchs of this family has endeared them to the people, but the doctrine of reigning by divine right, the favorite idea of the Stuarts, is nullified, when the monarch ascends the throne by statute law and not by succession or descent. The age of chivalry passed away when the Puritans defeated the Cavaliers. The establishment of standing armies and the creation of a national debt, went to show that money, not knighthood or knight's service, gave force to law. The possession of wealth and of rent gave back to their possessors even larger powers than those wrested from them by the first Tudor king. The maxim that "what was attached to the freehold belonged to the freehold," gave the landlords even greater powers than those held by the sword, and of which they were despoiled. Though nominally forbidden to take part in the election of the representatives of the Commons, yet they virtually had the power, the creation of freehold, the substance and material of electoral right; and consequently both Houses of Parliament were essentially landlord, and the laws, for the century which succeeded the ascension of George I., are marked with the assertion of landlord right which is tenant wrong. Among the exhibitions of this influence is an act passed in the reign of George II., which extended the power of distraint for rent, and the right to sell the goods seized--to all tenancies. Previous legislation confined this privilege solely to cases in which there were leases, wherein the tenant, by written contract, gave the landlord power to seize in case of non-payment of rent, but there was no legal authority to sell until it was given by an act passed in the reign of William III. The act of George II. presumed that there was such a contract in all cases of parole letting or tenancy-at-will, and extended the landlord's powers to such tenancies. It is an anomaly to find that in the freest country in the world such an arbitrary power is confided to individuals, or that the landlord-creditor has the precedence over all other creditors, and can, by his own act, and without either trial or evidence, issue a warrant that has all the force of the solemn judgment of a court of law; and it certainly appears unjust to seize a crop, the seed for which is due to one man, and the manure to another, and apply it to pay the rent. But landlordism, intrusted with legislative power, took effectual means to preserve its own prerogative, and the form of law was used by parliaments, in which landlord influence was paramount, to pass enactments which were enforced by the whole power of the state, and sustained individual or class rights. The effect of this measure was most unfortunate; it encouraged the letting of lands to tenants-at-will or tenants from year to year, who could not, under existing laws, obtain the franchise or power to vote--they were not FREEMEN, they were little better than serfs. They were tillers of the soil, rent-payers who could be removed at the will of another. They were not even freeholders, and had no political power--no voice in the affairs of the nation. The landlords in Parliament gave themselves, individually by law, all the powers which a tenant gave them by contract, while they had no corresponding liability, and, therefore, it was their interest to refrain from giving leases, and to make their tenantry as dependent on them as if they were mere serfs. This law was especially unfortunate, and had a positive and very great effect upon the condition of the farming class and upon the nation, and people came to think that landlords could do as they liked with their land, and that the tenants must be creeping, humble, and servile. An effort to remedy this evil was made in 1832, when the occupiers, if rented or rated at the small amount named, became voters. This gave the power to the holding, not to the man, and the landlord could by simple eviction deprive the man of his vote; hence the tenants-at-will were driven to the hustings like sheep--they could not, and dare not, refuse to vote as the landlord ordered. The lords of the manor, with a landlord Parliament, asserted their claims to the commonages, and these lands belonging to the people, were gradually inclosed, and became the possession of individuals. The inclosing of commonages commenced in the reign of Queen Anne, and was continued in the reigns of all the sovereigns of the House of Hanover. The first inclosure act was passed in 1709; in the following thirty years the average number of inclosure bills was about three each year; in the following fifty years there were nearly forty each year; and in the forty years of the nineteenth century it was nearly fifty per annum. The inclosures in each reign were as follows: Acts. Acres. Queen Anne, 2 1,439 George I., 16 17,660 George II., 226 318,784 George III., 3446 3,500,000 George IV., 192 250,000 William IV., 72 120,000 ---- --------- Total, 3954 4,207,883 These lands belonged to the people, and might have been applied to relieve the poor. Had they been allotted in small farms, they might have been made the means of support of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 families, and they would have afforded employment and sustenance to all the poor, and thus rendered compulsory taxation under the poor-law system unnecessary; but the landlords seized on them and made the tenantry pay the poor-rate. The British Poor Law is a slur upon its boasted civilization. The unequal distribution of land and of wealth leads to great riches and great poverty. Intense light produces deep shade. Nowhere else but in wealthy England do God's creatures die of starvation, wanting food, while others are rich beyond comparison. The soil which affords sustenance for the people is rightly charged with the cost of feeding those who lack the necessaries of life, but the same object would be better achieved in a different way. Poor-rates are now a charge upon a man's entire estate, and it would be much better for society if land to an amount equivalent to the charge were taken from the estate and assigned to the poor. If a man is charged with L100 a year poor-rate, it would make no real difference to him, while it would make a vast difference to the poor to take land to that value, put the poor to work tilling it, allowing them to enjoy the produce. Any expense should be paid direct by the landlord, which would leave the charge upon the land, and exempt the improvements of the tenant, which represent his labor, free. The evil has intensified in magnitude, and a permanent army of paupers numbering at the minimum 829,281 persons, but increasing at some periods to upward of 1,000,000, has to be provided for; the cost, about L8,000,000 a year, is paid, not by landlords but by tenants, in addition to the various charities founded by benevolent persons. There are two classes relieved under this system, and which ought to be differently dealt with--the sick and the young. Hospitals for the former and schools for the latter ought to take the place of the workhouse. It is difficult to fancy a worse place for educating the young than the workhouse, and it would tend to lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained and educated in separate establishments from those for the reception of paupers. Pauperism is the concomitant of large holdings of land and insecurity of tenure. The necessity of such a provision arose, as I have previously shown, from the wholesale eviction of large numbers of the occupiers of land; and, as the means of supplying the need came from the LAND, the expense should, like tithes, have fallen exclusively upon land. The poor-rates are, however, also levied upon houses and buildings, which represent labor. The owner of land is the people, as represented by the Crown, and the charges thereon next in succession to the claims of the state are the church and the poor. The Continental wars at the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century had some effect upon the system of tillage; they materially enhanced the price of agricultural produce--rents were raised, and the national debt was contracted, which remains a burden on the nation. The most important change, however, arose from scientific and mechanical discoveries--the application of heat to the production of motive power. As long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. The application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, and the discovery of engines capable of competing with the human hand, led to the substitution of machine-made fabrics for clothing, in place of homespun articles of domestic manufacture. This led to the employment of farm-laborers in procuring coals, to the removal of many from the rural into the urban districts, to the destruction of the principal employment of the family during the winter evenings, and consequently effected a great revolution in the social system. Many small freeholds were sold, the owners thinking they could more rapidly acquire wealth by using the money representing their occupancy, in trade. Thus the large estates became larger, and the smaller ones were absorbed, while the appearance of greater wealth from exchanging subterranean substances for money, or its representative, gave rise to ostentatious display. The rural population gradually diminished, while the civic population increased. The effect upon the system of landholding was triplicate. First, there was a diminution in the amount of labor applicable to the cultivation of land; second, there was a decrease in the amount of manure applied to the production of food; and lastly, there was an increase in the demand for land as a source of investment, by those who, having made money in trade, sought that social position which follows the possession of broad acres. Thus the descendants of the feudal aristocracy were pushed aside by the modern plutocracy. This state of things had a double effect. Food is the result of two essential ingredients--land and labor. The diminution in the amount of labor applied to the soil, consequent upon the removal of the laborers from the land, lessened the quantity of food; while the consumption of that food in cities and towns, and the waste of the fertile ingredients which should be restored to the soil, tended to exhaust the land, and led to vast importations of foreign and the manufacture of mineral manures. I shall not detain you by a discussion of this aspect of the question, which is of very great moment, consequent upon the removal of large numbers of people from rural to urban districts; but I may be excused in saying that agricultural chemistry shows that the soil--"perpetual man"--contains the ingredients needful to support human life, and feeding those animals meant for man's use. These ingredients are seized upon by the roots of plants and converted into aliment. If they are consumed where grown, and the refuse restored to the soil, its fertility is preserved; nay, more, the effect of tillage is to increase its productive power. It is impossible to exhaust land, no matter how heavy the crops that are grown, if the produce is, after consumption, restored to the soil. I have shown you how, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a man was not allowed to sell meat off his land unless he brought to, and consumed on it, the same weight of other meat. This was true agricultural and chemical economy. But when the people were removed from country to town, when the produce grown in the former was consumed in the latter, and the refuse which contained the elements of fertility was not restored to the soil, but swept away by the river, a process of exhaustion took place, which has been met in degree by the use of imported and artificial manures. The sewage question is taken up mainly with reference to the health of towns, but it deserves consideration in another aspect--its influence upon the production of food in the nation. An exhaustive process upon the fertility of the globe has been set on foot. The accumulations of vegetable mould in the primeval forests have been converted into grain, and sent to England, leaving permanent barrenness in what should be prolific plains; and the deposits of the Chincha and Ichaboe Islands have been imported in myriads of tons, to replace in our own land the resources of which it is bereft by the civic consumption of rural produce. These conjoined operations were accelerated by the alteration in the British corn laws in 1846, which placed the English farmer, who tried to preserve his land in a state of fertility, in competition with foreign grain--growers, who, having access to boundless fields of virgin soil, grow grain year after year until, having exhausted the fertile element, they leave it in a barren condition, and resort to other parts. A competition under such circumstances resembles that of two men of equal income, one of who appears wealthy by spending a portion of his capital, the other parsimonious by living within his means. Of course, the latter has to debar himself of many enjoyments. The British farmer has lessened the produce of grain, and consequently of meat; and the nation has become dependent upon foreigners for meat, cheese, and butter, as well as for bread. This is hardly the place to discuss a question of agriculture, but scientific farmers know that there is a rotation of crops, [Footnote: The agricultural returns of the United Kingdom show that 50 and 1/2 per cent of the arable land was under pasture, 24 per cent under grain, 12 per cent under green crops and bare fallow, and 13 per cent under clover. The rotation would, therefore, be somewhat in this fashion: Nearly one fourth of the land in tillage is under a manured crop or fallow, one fourth under wheat, one fourth under clover, and one fourth under barley, oats, etc., the succession being, first year, the manured crop; next year, wheat; third year, clover; fourth, barley or oats; and so on.] and that as one is diminished the others lessen. The quantity under tillage is a multiple of the area under grain. A diminution in corn is followed by a decrease of the extent under turnips and under clover; the former directly affects man, the latter the meat-affording animals. A decrease in the breadth under tillage means an addition to the pasture land, which in this climate only produces meat during the warm portions of the year. I must, however, not dwell upon this topic, but whatever leads to a diminution in the labor applied to the land lessens the production of food, and DEAR MEAT may only be the supplement to CHEAP CORN. I shall probably be met with the hackneyed cry, The question is entirely one of price. Each farmer and each landlord will ask himself, Does it pay to grow grain? and in reply to any such inquiry, I would refer to the annual returns. I find that in the five years, 1842 to 1846, wheat ranged from 50s. 2d. to 57s. 9d.; the average for the entire period being 54s. 10d. per quarter. In the five years from 1870 to 1874 it ranged from 46s. 10d. to 58s. 8d., the average for the five years being 54s. 7d. per quarter. The reduction in price has only been 3d. per quarter, or less than one half per cent. I venture to think that there are higher considerations than mere profit to individuals, and that, as the lands belong to the whole state as represented by the Crown, and as they are held in trust TO PRODUCE FOOD FOR THE PEOPLE, that trust should be enforced. The average consumption of grain by each person is about a quarter (eight bushels) per annum. In 1841 the population of the United Kingdom was 27,036,450. The average import of foreign grain was about 3,000,000 quarters, therefore TWENTY-FOUR MILLIONS were fed on the domestic produce. In 1871 the population was 31,513,412, and the average importation of grain 20,000,000 quarters; therefore only ELEVEN AND A HALF MILLIONS were supported by home produce. Here we are met with the startling fact that our own soil is not now supplying grain to even one half the number of people to whom it gave bread in 1841. This is a serious aspect of the question, and one that should lead to examination, whether the development of the system of landholding, the absorptions of small farms and the creation of large ones, is really beneficial to the state, or tends to increase the supply of food. The area under grain in England in 1874 was 8,021,077. In 1696 it was 10,000,000 acres, the diminution having been 2,000,000 acres. The average yield would probably be FOUR QUARTERS PER ACRE, and therefore the decrease amounted to the enormous quantity of EIGHT MILLION QUARTERS, worth L25,000,000, which had to be imported from other countries, to fill up the void, and feed 8,000,000 of the population; and if a war took place, England may, like Rome, be starved into peace. An idea prevails that a diminution in the extent under grain implies an increase in the production of meat. The best answer to that fallacy lies in the great increase in the price of meat. If the supply had increased the price would fall, but the converse has taken place. A comparison of the figures given by Geoffrey King, in the reign of William III., with those supplied by the Board of Trade in the reign of Queen Victoria, illustrates this phase of the landholding question, and shows whether the "enlightened policy" of the nineteenth century tends to encourage the fulfilment of the trust which applies to land--THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD. The land of England and Wales in 1696 and 1874 was classified as follows: 1696. 1874. Acres. Acres. Under grain, 10,000,000 8,021,077 Pastures and meadows, 10,000,000 12,071,791 Flax, hemp, and madder, 1,000,000 --------- Green crops, --------- 2,895,138 Bare fallow, --------- 639,519 Clover --------- 2,983,733 Orchards, 1,000,000 148,526 Woods, coppices, etc, 3,000,000 1,552,598 Forests, parks, and commons, 3,000,000| Moors, mountains, and bare land, 10,000,000|- 9,006,839 Waste, water, and road, 1,000,000| ----------- ----------- 39,000,000 37,319,231 The estimate of 1696 may be corrected by lessing the quantity of waste land, and thus bringing the total to correspond with the extent ascertained by actual survey, but it shows a decrease in the extent under grain of nearly two million acres, and an increase in the area applicable to cattle of nearly 8,000,000 acres; yet there is a decrease in the number of cattle, though an increase in sheep. The returns are as follows: 1696. 1800. 1874. Cattle 4,500,000 2,852.428 4,305,440 Sheep 11,000,000 26,148,000 19,859,758 Pigs 2,000,000 (not given) 2,058,791 The former shows that in 1696 there were TEN MILLION acres under grain, the latter only EIGHT MILLION acres. Two million acres were added for cattle feeding. The former shows that the pasture land was TEN MILLION ACRES, and that green crops and clover were unknown. The latter that there were TWELVE MILLION ACRES under pasture, and, in addition, that there were nearly THREE MILLION ACRES of green crop and THREE MILLION ACRES of clover. The addition to the cattle-feeding land was eight million acres; yet the number of cattle in 1696 was 4,500,000, and in 1874, 4,305,400. Of sheep, in 1696, there were 11,000,000, and in 1874, 19,889,758. The population had increased fourfold, and it is no marvel that meat is dear. It is the interest of agriculturists to KEEP DOWN THE QUANTITY AND KEEP UP THE PRICE. The diminution in the area under corn was not met by a corresponding increase in live stock--in other words, the decrease of land under grain is not, PER SE, followed by an increase of meat. If the area under grain were increased, it would be preceded by an increase in the growth of turnips, and followed by a greater growth of clover; and these cattle-feeding products would materially add to the meat supply. A most important change in the system of landholding was effected by the spread of RAILWAYS. It was brought about by the influence of the trading as opposed to the landlord class. In their inception they did not appear likely to effect any great alteration in the land laws. The shareholders had no compulsory power of purchase, hence enormous sums were paid for the land required; but as the system extended, Parliament asserted the ownership of the nation, over land in the possession of the individual. Acting on the idea that no man was more than a tenant, the state took the land from the occupier, as well as the tenant-in-fee, and gave it, not at their own price, but an assessed value, to the partners in a railway who traded for their mutual benefit, yet as they offered to convey travellers and goods at a quicker rate than on the ordinary roads, the state enabled them to acquire land by compulsion. A general act, the Land Clauses Act, was passed in 1846, which gives privileges with regard to the acquisition of land to the promoters of such works as railways, docks, canals, etc. Numbers of acts are passed every session which assert the right of the state over the land, and transfer it from one man, or set of men, to another. It seems to me that the principle is clear, and rests upon the assertion of the state's ownership of the land; but it has often struck me to ask, Why is this application of state rights limited to land required for these objects? why not apply to the land at each side of the railway, the principle which governs that under the railway itself? I consider the production of food the primary trust upon the land, that rapid transit over it is a secondary object; and as all experience shows that the division of land into small estates leads to a more perfect system of tillage, I think it would be of vast importance to the entire nation if all tenants who were, say, five years in possession were made "promoters" under the Land Clauses Act, and thus be enabled to purchase the fee of their holdings in the same manner as a body of railway proprietors. It would be most useful to the state to increase the number of tenants-in-fee--to re-create the ancient FREEMEN, the LIBERI HOMINES--and I think it can be done without requiring the aid either of a new principle or new machinery, by simply placing the farmer-in-possession on the same footing as the railway shareholder. I give at foot the draft of a bill I prepared in 1866 for this object. [Footnote: A BILL TO ENCOURAGE THE OUTLAY OF MONEY UPON LAND FOB AGRICULTURAL PURPOSES. Whereas it is expedient to encourage the occupiers of land to expend money thereon, in building, drainage, and other similar improvements; and whereas the existing laws do not give the tenants or occupiers any sufficient security for such outlay: Be it enacted by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same: 1. That all outlay upon land for the purpose of rendering it more productive, and all outlay upon buildings for the accommodation of those engaged in tilling or working the same, or for domestic animals of any sort, be, and the same is hereby deemed to be, an outlay of a public nature. 2. That the clauses of "The Land Clauses Consolidation Act 1845," "with respect to the purchase of lands by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase and taking of lands otherwise than by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase money or compensation coming to parties having limited interests, or prevented from treating or not making title," shall be, and they are hereby incorporated with this act. 3. That every tenant or occupier who has for the past five years been in possession of any land, tenements, or hereditaments, shall be considered "a promoter of the undertaking within the meaning of the said recited act, and shall be entitled to purchase the lands which he has so occupied, 'either by agreement' 'or otherwise than by agreement,' as provided in the said recited act." Then follow some details which it is unnecessary to recite here.] The 55th William I. secured to freemen the inheritance of their lands, and they were not able to sell them until the act QUIA EMPTORES of Edward I. was passed. The tendency of persons to spend the representative value of their lands and sell them was checked by the Mosaic law, which did not allow any man to despoil his children of their inheritance. The possessor could only mortgage them until the year of jubilee--the fiftieth year. In Switzerland and Belgium, where the nobles did not entirely get rid of the FREEMEN, the lands continued to be held in small estates. In Switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for every hundred families, and in Belgium the average size of the estate is three and a half hectares--about eight acres. These small ownerships are not detrimental to the state. On the contrary, they tend to its security and well-being. I have treated on this subject in my work, "The Food Supplies of Western Europe." These small estates existed in England at the Norman Conquest, and their perpetual continuance was the object of the law of William I., to which I have referred. Their disappearance was due to the greed of the nobles during the reign of the Plantagenets, and they were not replaced by the Tudors, who neglected to restore the men-at-arms to the position they occupied under the laws of Edward the Confessor and William I. The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the rent was of two classes--personal service or money; the latter was considered base tenure. The legislation of the Tudors abolished the payment of rent by personal service, and made all rent payable in money or in kind. The land had been burdened with the sole support of the army. It was then freed from this charge, and a tax was levied upon the community. Some writers have sought to define RENT as the difference between fertile lands and those that are so unproductive as barely to pay the cost of tillage. This far-fetched idea is contradicted by the circumstance that for centuries rent was paid by labor--the personal service of the vassal--and it is now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as land will be unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by tame animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them. Rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the occupant. In some cases it is income derived from the labors of others. A broad distinction exists between the rent of land, which is a portion of the fruits or its equivalent in money, and that of improvements and houses, which is an exchange of the labor of the occupant given as payment for that employed in effecting improvements or erecting houses. The latter described as messuages were valued in 1794 at SIX MILLIONS per annum; in 1814 they were nearly FIFETEEN MILLIONS; now they are valued at EIGHTY MILLIONS. [Footnote--A Parliamentary return gives the following information as to the value of lands and messuages in 1814 and 1874: 1814-15. 1873-74. Lands, L34,330,463 L49,906,866 Messuages, 14,895,130 80,726,502 The increase in the value of land is hardly equal to the reduction in the value of gold, while the increase in messuages shows the enormous expenditure of labor.] The increase represents a sum considerably more than double the national debt of Great Britain, and under the system of leases the improvements will pass from the industrial to the landlord class. It seems to me to be a mistake in legislation to encourage a system by which these two funds merge into one, and that hands the income arising from the expenditure of the working classes over to the tenants-in-fee without an equivalent. This proceeds from a straining of the maxim that "what is attached to the freehold belongs to the freehold," and was made law when both Houses of Parliament were essentially landlord. That maxim is only partially true: corn is as much attached to the freehold as a tree; yet one is cut without hindrance and the other is prevented. Potatoes, turnips, and such tubers, are only obtained by disturbing the freehold. This maxim was at one time so strained that it applied to fixtures, but recent legislation and modern discussions have limited the rights of the landlord class and been favorable to the occupier, and I look forward to such alterations in our laws as will secure to the man who expends his labor or earnings in improvements, an estate IN PERPETUO therein, as I think no length of user of that which is a man's own--his labor or earnings--should hand over his representative improvements to any other person. I agree with those writers who maintain that it is prejudicial to the state that the rent fund should be enjoyed by a comparatively small number of persons, and think it would be advantageous to distribute it, by increasing the number of tenants-in-fee. Natural laws forbid middlemen, who do nothing to make the land productive, and yet subsist upon the labor of the farmer, and receive as rent part of the produce of his toil. The land belongs to the state, and should only be subject to taxes, either by personal service, such as serving in the militia or yeomanry, or by money payments to the state. Land does not represent CAPITAL, but the improvements upon it do. A man does not purchase land. He buys the right of possession. In any transfer of land there is no locking up of capital, because one man receives exactly the amount the other expends. The individual may lock up his funds, but the nation does not. Capital is not money. I quote a definition from a previous work of mine, "The Case of Ireland," p. 176: "Capital stock properly signifies the means of subsistence for man, and for the animals subservient to his use while engaged in the process of production. The jurisconsults of former times expressed the idea by the words RES FUNGIBILES, by which they meant consumable commodities, or those things which are consumed in their use for the supply of man's animal wants, as contradistinguished from unconsumable commodities, which latter writers, by an extension of the term, in a figurative sense, have called FIXED capital." All the money in the Bank of England will not make a single four-pound loaf. Capital, as represented by consumable commodities, is the product of labor applied to land, or the natural fruits of the land itself. The land does not become either more or less productive by reason of the transfer from one person to another; it is the withdrawal of labor that affects its productiveness. WAGES are a portion of the value of the products of a joint combination of employer and employed. The former advances from time to time as wages to the latter, the estimated portion of the increase arising from their combined operations to which he may be entitled. This may be either in food or in money. The food of the world for one year is the yield at harvest; it is the CAPITAL STOCK upon which mankind exist while engaged in the operations for producing food, clothing, and other requisites for the use of mankind, until nature again replenishes this store. Money cannot produce food; it is useful in measuring the distribution of that which already exists. The grants of the Crown were a fee or reward for service rendered; the donee became tenant-in-fee; being a reward, it was restricted to a man and his heirs-male or his heirs-general; in default of heirs-male or heirs-general, the land reverted to the Crown, which was the donor. A sale to third parties does not affect this phase of the question, inasmuch as it is a principle of British law that no man can convey to another a greater estate in land than that which he possesses himself; and if the seller only held the land as tenant-in-fee for HIS OWN LIFE and that of HIS heirs, he could not give a purchaser that which belonged to the Crown, the REVERSION on default of heirs (see Statute DE DONIS, 13 Edward I., ANTE, p. 21). This right of the sovereign, or rather of the people, has not been asserted to the full extent. Many noble families have become extinct, yet the lands have not been claimed, as they should have been, for the nation. I should not complete my review of the subject without referring to what are called the LAWS OF PRIMOGENITURE. I fail to discover any such law. On the contrary, I find that the descent of most of the land of England is under the law of contract--by deed or bequest--and that it is only in case of intestacy that the courts intervene to give it to the next heir. This arises more from the construction the judges put upon the wishes of the deceased, than upon positive enactment. When a man who has the right of bequeathing his estate among his descendants does not exercise that power, it is considered that he wishes the estate to go undivided to the next heir. In America the converse takes place: a man can leave all his land to one; and, if he fails to do so, it is divided. The laws relating to contracts or settlements allow land to be settled by deed upon the children of a living person, but it is more frequently upon the grandchildren. They acquire the power of sale, which is by the contract denied to their parents. A man gives to his grandchild that which he denies to his son. This cumbrous process works disadvantageously, and it might very properly be altered by restricting the power of settlement or bequest to living persons, and not allowing it to extend to those who are unborn. It is not a little curious to note how the ideas of mankind, after having been diverted for centuries, return to their original channels. The system of landholding in the most ancient races was COMMUNAL. That word, and its derivative, COMMUNISM, has latterly had a bad odor. Yet all the most important public works are communal. All joint-stock companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are communes. They hold property in common, and merge individual in general rights. The possession of land by communes or companies is gradually extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be applied more extensively to landholding. It may not be unwise to review the grounds that we have been going over, and to glance at the salient points. The ABORIGINAL inhabitants of this island enjoyed the same rights as those in other countries, of possessing themselves of land unowned and unoccupied. The ROMANS conquered, and claimed all the rights the natives possessed, and levied a tribute for the use of the lands. Upon the retirement of the Romans, after an occupancy of about six hundred years, the lands reverted to the aborigines, but they, being unable to defend themselves, invited the SAXONS, the JUTES, and the ANGLES, who reduced them to serfdom, and seized upon the land; they acted as if it belonged to the body of the conquerors, it was allotted to individuals by the FOLC-GEMOT or assembly of the people, and a race of LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN arose, who paid no rent, but performed service to the state; during their sway of about six hundred years the institutions changed, and the monarch, as representing the people, claimed the right of granting the possession of land seized for treason by BOC or charter. The NORMAN invasion found a large body of the Saxon landholders in armed opposition to William, and when they were defeated, he seized upon their land and gave it to his followers, and then arose the term TERRA REGIS, "the land of the king," instead of the term FOLC-LAND, "the land of the people;" but a large portion of the realm remained in the hands of the LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN. The Norman barons gave possession of part of their lands to their followers, hence arose the vassals who paid rent to their lord by personal service, while the FREEMEN held by service to the Crown. In the wars of the PLANTAGENETS the FREEMEN seem to have disappeared, and vassalage was substituted, the principal vassals being freeholders. The descendants of the aborigines regained their freedom. The possession of land was only given for life, and it was preceded by homage to the Crown, or fealty to the lord, investiture following the ceremony. The TUDOR sovereigns abolished livery and retainers, but did not secure the rights of the men-at-arms or replace them in their position of FREEMEN. The chief lords converted the payment of rent by service into payment in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the establishment of the Poor Laws, The STUARTS surrendered the remaining charges upon land: but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion of another, the validity of patents from the Crown became doubtful. The PRESENT system of landholding is the outcome of the Tudor ideas. But the Crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of Edward I., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people, and that individuals HOLD but do not OWN it; and upon this sound and legal principle the state takes land from one and gives it to another, compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed. I have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me most important in tracing the history of LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND, and laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles which underlay them; and I shall have failed in conveying the ideas of my own mind if I have not shown you that at least from the Scandinavian or ANGLO-SAXON invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the people, or the Crown as representing the people: that individual proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant to the principles of the British Constitution; that the largest estate a subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an owning of the soil; and I cannot conceal from you the conviction which has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination of the state of proprietary occupants on the Continent, that the best interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which can be attained by the extension of principles of legistration now in active operation. All that is necessary is to extend the provisions of the Land Clauses Act, which apply to railways and such objects, to tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that act; to treat their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater PRODUCTION OF FOOD as a public outlay; and thus to restore to England a class which corresponds with the Peasent Proprietors of the Continent--the FREEMAN or LIBERI HOMINES of ANGLO-SAXON times, whose rights were solemnly guaranteed by the 55th William I., and whose existence would be the glory of the country and the safeguard of its institution. 
38437	----	Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 38437-h.htm or 38437-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38437/38437-h/38437-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38437/38437-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/womanspartarecor00yate [Illustration: THE MANUFACTURE OF 4.5-INCH CARTRIDGE CASES: OPERATING THE DRAWING PRESS] THE WOMAN'S PART A Record of Munitions Work by L. K. YATES New York George H. Doran Company CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE ADVENT OF WOMEN IN ENGINEERING TRADES 7 SHARING A COMMON TASK 9 DILUTION 11 HEROISM IN THE WORKSHOP 12 II. TRAINING THE MUNITION WORKER 14 THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE WORK 15 THE INSTRUCTIONAL FACTORY 17 FIRST STEPS IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 18 III. AT WORK--I. 20 SHELLS AND SHELL CASES 21 IN THE FUSE-SHOP 23 CARTRIDGES AND BULLETS 25 IV. AT WORK--II. 28 THE MAKING OF AIRCRAFT 28 OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS 30 IN THE SHIPYARDS 33 V. COMFORT AND SAFETY 37 WELFARE SUPERVISION 37 PROTECTIVE CLOTHING 41 REST-ROOMS AND FIRST AID 42 WOMEN POLICE 43 VI. OUTSIDE WELFARE 45 RECREATION 45 MOTHERHOOD 47 THE FACTORY NURSERY 48 VII. GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL CANTEEN 52 GENERAL PRINCIPLES 54 THE WORKER'S OASIS 55 VIII. HOUSING 57 BILLETING 58 TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION 59 PERMANENT ACCOMMODATION 61 ILLUSTRATIONS THE MANUFACTURE OF 4.5-INCH CARTRIDGE CASES: OPERATING THE DRAWING PRESS _Frontispiece_ PAGE TURNING THE COPPER BAND OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL 16 DRILLING SAFETY-PIN HOLE IN FUSE 16 INSPECTING AND GAUGING FUSES 17 TURNING THE OUTSIDE AND FORMING THE NOSE-END OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL 17 ASSEMBLING FUSES 20 COOLING SHELL FORGINGS 20 OPERATING A LUMSDEN PLAIN GRINDER: RE-FORMING 8-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE CUTTERS 21 ENGRAVING METAL PARTS FOR COMPASSES 28 COLOURING AEROPLANE PLANES 28 CHIPPING AND GRINDING BLADES OF CAST IRON PROPELLER WITH PORTABLE TOOLS 29 WOMAN ACTING AS MATE TO JOINER MAKING SEA-PLANE FLOATS 29 CUTTING FRAYED-EDGE TAPE 36 BRAZING TURBINE ROTOR SEGMENT 36 MOUNTING CARDS FOR DRY COMPASSES 37 TREADLE POLISHING-MACHINES, FOR SMOOTHING LENSES 37 SLITTING AND ROUGHING OPTICAL GLASS 44 VIEW OF CANTEEN KITCHEN 44 WEIGHING FERRO CHROME FOR ANALYSIS 45 BALSAMING LENSES 52 MAKING INSTRUMENT SCALES 53 PAINTING A SHIP'S SIDE IN DRY DOCK 60 GENERAL VIEW OF WOMEN AT WORK ON AIRCRAFT FABRIC 61 THE CANTEEN 61 THE WOMAN'S PART CHAPTER I: THE ADVENT OF WOMEN IN ENGINEERING TRADES SHARING A COMMON TASK--DILUTION--HEROISM IN THE WORKSHOP In a period of titanic events it is difficult to characterize a single group of happenings as of special significance, yet at the end of the war it is likely that Great Britain will look back to the transformation of her home industries for war purposes as one of the greatest feats she has ever accomplished. The arousing of a nation to fight to the death for the principle of Liberty is doubtless one of the most stirring of spectacles in the human drama; it has repeated itself throughout history; but it has been left to this century to witness in the midst of such an upheaval the complete reorganization of a nation's industry, built up slowly and painfully by a modern civilization for its material support and utility. Before the outbreak of hostilities Great Britain was supplying the world with the products of her workshops, but these products were mainly those needed by nations at peace. The coal mines of Northumberland, the foundries of the Midlands, the cotton mills of Lancashire were aiding vast populations in their daily human struggle, but the demand of 1914 for vast requirements for war purposes found Great Britain unprepared. The instantaneous rearrangement of industries for war purposes, possible to Germany by reason of forty years of stealthy war preparations, was out of the question for a nation that neither contemplated nor prepared for a European conflagration. Eight or nine months had to elapse before the people of Great Britain were aroused to the realities of modern warfare. It was then only that a large public became aware that the Herculean struggle was not merely a conflict between armies and navies, but between British science and German science, between British chemists and German chemists, between British workshops and the workshops of Germany. The realization of these facts led to the creation of the Ministry of Munitions in May 1915 and the rapid rearrangement of industries and industrial conditions. Before the war, three National factories in Great Britain were sufficient to fulfil the demand for output for possible war purposes; to-day, there are more than 150 National factories and over 5,000 Controlled Establishments, scattered up and down the country, all producing munitions of war. The whole of the North Country and the whole of the Midlands have, in fact, become a vast arsenal. Standing on an eminence in the North, one may by day watch ascending the smoke of from 400 to 500 munition factories, and by night at many a point in the Midland counties one may survey an encircling zone of flames as they belch forth from the chimneys of the engineering works of war. The vast majority of these workshops had previously to the war never produced a gun, a shell, or a cartridge. To-day, makers of agricultural and textile machinery are engaged on munitions, producers of lead pencils are turning out shrapnel; a manufacturer of gramophones is producing fuses; a court jeweller is engaged in the manufacture of optical instruments; a maker of cream separators has now an output of primers. Nor is this all. New industries have been started and languishing trades have been revived. The work of reorganization has been prodigious, and when the history of Britain's share in the war comes to be written in the leisured days of peace, it is unlikely that the record will transmit to a future generation how much effort it has taken to produce the preponderance in munitions now achieved. With the huge task of securing an adequate supply of raw material has gone hand in hand the production of a sufficiency of suitable machinery and machine tools, the equipment of laboratories for chemical research, the erection, or adaptation, of accommodation in which to house the new 'plant', and the supply of a continuous stream of suitable labour. In face of the growing needs of the Navy and Army this labour question has been a crucial test; it is a testimony to the 'will to win' of the whole people that the problem from the outset has found its solution. As soon as the importance of the demand for munitions workers was widely understood, a supply of labour has continuously streamed into the factory gates. There are now 2,000,000 persons employed in munitions industries--exclusive of Admiralty work--of which one-third are women. The advent of the women in the engineering shops and their success in a group of fresh trades may be accounted as an omen of deep significance. Women in this country have, it is true, taken their place in factory life from the moment that machinery swept away the spinning-wheel from the domestic hearth, and it is more often the woman mill-hand, or factory 'lass', who is the wealthier partner in many a Lancashire home. Women before the war, to be sure, took part in factory life where such commodities as textiles, clothing, food, household goods, &c., were produced, but by consensus of opinion--feminine as well as masculine--her presence in Engineering Works, save on mere routine work, or on a few delicate processes, was considered in the pre-war period as unsuitable and undesirable. _Sharing a Common Task_ At the outbreak of hostilities, a few of the most far-sighted employers, contemplating a shortage of labour through the recruitment of men for military service, hazarded the opinion that women might be employed on all kinds of simple repetition work in the Engineering Shops. Further than that even the optimist did not go. There was also no indication that women would be willing to adventure into a world where long hours and night-work prevailed, from which evils they were protected in the days of peace by stringent Factory Acts. Events have proved that the women of Great Britain are as ready as their menfolk to sacrifice comfort and personal convenience to the demands of a great cause, and as soon as it was made known that their services were required, they came forward in their hundreds of thousands. They have come from the office and the shop, from domestic service and the dressmaker's room, from the High Schools and the Colleges, and from the quietude of the stately homes of the leisured rich. They have travelled from far-off corners in the United Kingdom as well as from homesteads in Australia and New Zealand, and from lonely farms in South Africa and Canada. Every stratum of society has provided its share of willing women workers eager from one cause or another to 'do their bit'. Even in the early days of the advent of women in the munitions shops, I have seen working together, side by side, the daughter of an earl, a shopkeeper's widow, a graduate from Girton, a domestic servant and a young woman from a lonely farm in Rhodesia, whose husband had joined the colours. Social status, so stiff a barrier in this country in pre-war days, was forgotten in the factory, as in the trenches, and they were all working together as happily as the members of a united family. Employers and former employees likewise often share a common task in the workshops of the war. At Woolwich, for example, a lady of delicate upbringing could, at one period, have been seen arriving at the Arsenal in the early hours of each morning, accompanied by her former maid, both being the while 'hands' in the employ of the State. It is well known in certain circles how Lady Scott, the widow of the famous Antarctic explorer, put aside all private interests to take up work in a munitions factory, how Lady Gertrude Crawford became an official, supervising women's work in shipyards, and how Lady Mary Hamilton (now Mrs. Kenyon Slaney), the eldest daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General Drummond, have won distinction as workers in 'advanced' processes of munitions production. These are but a few distinguished names amongst a crowd of women of all degrees of society who have achieved unexpected success in work to which they were entirely unaccustomed. Amongst this nameless multitude, attention has been called from time to time to the remarkable feats in the engineering and chemical trades, in electrical works, and in the shipyards, of kitchen-maids and of dressmakers, of governesses and children's nurses. The underlying motives, all actuated by war conditions, which have turned the tide of women's work into new and unfamiliar occupations, are, however, more diverse than is generally supposed. Unquestionably, the two main driving forces have been patriotism and economic pressure, and of these patriotism, the love of country, the pride of Empire, accounts for a large proportion of women recruits. Yet there are other motives at work: the old human forces of family love and self-sacrifice, pride, anger, hatred, and even humour. I have questioned workers at the lathes and in doping rooms, in Filling Factories, and in wood-workers' shops, and find the mass of new labour in the munitions works is there from distinctive individual reasons. It is only by the recognition of all these forces that successful management of a new factor in the labour problem is possible. An indication of the life-history of one or two individual munitions workers may exemplify the point. There is the case of a girl tool-setter in a factory near London. She is the only child of an old Army family. When war broke out, she realized that for the first time in many generations her family could send no representative to fight the country's battles. Her father was an old man, long past military age. The girl, although in much request at home, took up work in a base hospital in France, but at the end of a year, when broken down from over-strain, was ordered six months' rest in England. Recovery followed in two months, and again, spurred by the thought of inaction in a time of national peril, she entered a munitions factory as an ordinary employee. After nine months' work she had only lost five minutes' time. Another factory worker is a mother of seven sons, proud-spirited, efficient, and accustomed to rule her family. The seven sons enlisted and she felt her claim to headship was endangered. She entered a munitions factory and, to soothe her pride, sent weekly to each son a detailed account of her industrial work. At length, the eldest son wrote that he thought his mother was probably killing more Germans than any of the family. Since then, she says, she has had peace of mind. In another factory, in the West of England, there is an arduous munitions maker who works tirelessly through the longest shifts. Before her entry into the industrial world she was a stewardess on a passenger-ship. The vessel was torpedoed by a German submarine, and she was one of the few survivors. Daily she works off her hatred on a capstan lathe, hoping, as she tells the visitors, some day to get equal with the unspeakable Huns. Then there is a typical case of a wife who has learned some of life's little ironies through her work on munitions production. Her husband, an old sailor, worked for the same firm before the war. He used to come home daily and complain of the hardness of his lot. It was 'a dog's life', he constantly reiterated, and his wife was careful to make reparation at home. War broke out and the naval reserve man was recalled to sea. The firm were put to it, in the labour shortage, for a substitute, and invited the wife's aid. Having heard so much of the hardships of the work, she refused, but after some persuasion agreed to give the job a trial. At the end of a week, she surmised the task was not so hard as she contemplated; after a month had passed she realized the position. The job had been a capital excuse to ensure forgiveness for domestic short-comings. The wife awaits her husband's return with a certain grim humour. Having arrived in the engineering trades, actuated by whatever motives, the woman munitions maker has more than justified the hopes of the pioneer employers who sponsored her cause. As soon as organized labour agreed that trade union rules and pre-war shop practice should be suspended for the duration of the war, women were rapidly initiated in the simple repetition processes of shell-making and shell-filling. Machinery was adapted to the new-comers, and the skilled men workers were distributed amongst the factories to undertake the jobs possible only to experienced hands. _Dilution_ Thus, the principle of dilution, as old as Plato's _Republic_, which as a theory was reintroduced to British students by Adam Smith, has widely come into practice through the urgency of the war. Women have been successfully introduced into a new group of occupations, men have been 'upgraded', so that many semi-skilled men have become skilled; and the skilled men have been allocated entirely to employment on skilled jobs. Once introduced to the munitions shops, women soon mastered the repetition processes, such as 'turning', 'milling' and 'grinding', as well as the simpler operations connected with shell-filling. The keenest amongst them were then found fit for more 'advanced' work where accuracy, a nice judgment, and deftness of manipulation are essential. Such are the processes connected with tool and gauge-making, where the work must be finished to within the finest limits--a fraction of the width of a human hair; such are the requirements for the work of overlooking, or inspection of output; and such are the many processes of aeroplane manufacture and optical glass production, upon which women are being increasingly employed. They are also undertaking operations dependent on physical strength, which in pre-war days would have been regarded as wholly unsuitable to female capacity. War necessity has, however, killed old-time prejudice and has proved how readily women adapt themselves to any task within their physical powers. One may, for example, to-day watch women in the shipyards of the North hard at work, chipping and cleaning the ships' decks, repairing hulls, or laying electric wire on board H.M. battleships. High up in the gantry cranes which move majestically across the vaulted factory roof, one may see women sitting aloft guiding the movement of the huge molten ingots; in the foundries, one may run across a woman smith; in the aeroplane factories, women welders work be-goggled at the anvils. An engineering shop is now sometimes staffed almost entirely by women 'hands', and it is no uncommon sight to find in the centre of the shop women operators at work on the machines; at one end a group of women tool-setters, and at another women gaugers who test the products of this combined women's labour. In the packing-rooms the lustier types of women may be seen dispatching finished shells, and on the factory platforms gartered women in tunic suits push the loaded trollies to waiting railway-trucks for conveyance to the front. One of the most surprising revelations of the war in this country has, indeed, been the capacity of women for engineering work, and to none has the discovery been more surprising and more exhilarating than to the women themselves. _Heroism in the Workshop_ The work has, in fact, called for personal qualities usually thought to be abnormal in women. The women in the engineering shops have disproved any such surmise. Where occasion has demanded physical courage from the workers, the virtue has leaped forth from the average woman, as from the average man. Where circumstances call for grit and endurance, there has been no shirking in the factories by the majority of the operators of either sex. The heroism of the battlefields has frequently been equalled by the ordinary civilian in the factory, whether man or woman. Sometimes incidents of women's courage in the works have been reported in the press as matters for surprise. They are merely typical instances of the spirit that animates the general mass of the workers in Great Britain. A few examples may be added in illustration. On a recent occasion, a woman lost the first finger and thumb of her left hand through the jamming of a piece of metal in a press. After an absence of six weeks, she returned to work and was soon getting an even greater output than before. Another instance relates to a serious accident in an explosives factory, when several women were killed and many were injured. Within a few days a considerable number of the remaining female operators applied and were accepted for positions in the Danger Zone at another factory. Another incident is reported from some chemical works in the North. The key controlling a valve fell off and dropped into a pit below, rendering the woman in charge unable to control the steam. An accident seemed imminent and the woman, in spite of the likelihood of dangerous results to herself, got down to the pit, regained the key and averted disaster. In a shipyard on the North-East coast, a woman of 23 years had been engaged for some time in electric-wiring a large battleship. One day, when working overhead, a drill came through from the deck, piercing her cotton cap and entering her head. She was attended to in the firm's First Aid room and sent home. To the surprise of every one concerned, she returned to work at 6 a.m. on the following day, and laughingly remarked that she was quite satisfied that it was better to lose a little hair than her head. In the trivial accidents which are, of course, of more frequent occurrence, the women display similar calmness and will stand unflinchingly while particles of grit, or metal, are removed from the eyes, or while small wounds--often due to their own carelessness--are dressed and bound. The endurance displayed during the early period of munitions production, when holidays were voluntarily abandoned and work continued through Sundays, and in many hours of overtime, was no less remarkable in the women than in the men. Action is continuously taken by the Ministry of Munitions to reduce the hours of overtime, to abolish Sunday labour, and to promote the well-being of the workers, but without the zeal and courage of the women munitions makers the valour of the soldiers at the Front would often be in vain. As the Premier remarked in a recent speech: 'I do not know what would have happened to this land when the men had to go away fighting if the women had not come forward and done their share of the work. It would have been utterly impossible for us to have waged a successful war, had it not been for the skill and ardour, enthusiasm and industry, which the women of the country have thrown into the work of the war'. CHAPTER II: TRAINING THE MUNITION WORKER THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE WORK--THE INSTRUCTIONAL FACTORY--FIRST STEPS IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE When, in answer to the demand for shells and more shells, factories were built, or adapted to the requirements of war, it was soon found that a supply of suitable labour must be ensured, if the maximum output was to be maintained. The existing practice of the engineering shops, by which a boy arrived by gradual steps, counted in years, from apprenticeship to the work of a skilled operator, was obviously impossible where an immediate demand for thousands of employees of varying efficiency had to be fulfilled. The needs of the Navy and Army further complicated the problem by the withdrawal of men of all degrees of skill from factory to battlefield. The discovery of an untapped reservoir of labour in women's work, and the adaptation of a larger proportion of machines to a 'fool-proof' standard, certainly eased the situation, yet the problem remained of the immediate provision of workers able to undertake 'advanced', as well as simple work, in the engineering shops. Factory employers were from the outset alive to the situation, and at once adopted measures for the training of new-comers within their shops, but harassed as the managers were by the supreme need for output, it was hardly possible to develop extensive schemes for training within the factory gates. Hence, arose a movement throughout the United Kingdom among the governing bodies of many institutions of University rank, among Local Education Authorities, and among various feminist groups, to make use of existing Technical Schools and Institutions for the training of recruits in engineering work. The effort was at first mainly confined to the instruction of men in elementary machine work, and the London County Council may fairly claim to have acted as pioneer in this connexion. Yet, as early as August 1915, a group of women connected with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (of which Mrs. Fawcett, widow of a former Postmaster-General, is the president) decided to finance a scheme for the training of women oxy-acetylene welders, converting for this purpose a small workshop run by a woman silversmith. It was soon observed by the Ministry of Munitions that these sporadic efforts--sometimes successful beyond expectation, and sometimes failing for want of funds, or for lack of intimacy between training-ground and factory employer--must be co-ordinated, if they were to tackle successfully the growing task imposed by war conditions. The conception of a Training Section for factory workers within the Ministry of Munitions arose, took root. The section was established in the early autumn of 1915. In the October of that year, authority to finance approved training schemes throughout the country was given to the new department. Some fifty colleges and schools, undertaking independent schemes, were then brought into touch with the Ministry, and steps were taken to develop the existing systems. Equipment was thereby improved, recruiting of students stimulated, and a scheme for the payment of maintenance during training--such as the Manhattan Schools in New York had previously introduced to social investigators in this country--was established. The extension of the courses of training from instruction in simple processes to such advanced engineering work as lead-burning, tool-setting, and gauge-making soon followed, and was accompanied by necessary theoretical instruction in the methods of calculation of fine measurements. _The Quintessence of the Work_ For these advanced classes, men alone were at first eligible as students, women being only instructed at the outset in elementary parts of the work. In the early days, the women were invited 'to do their bit', by learning how to bore, how to drill, how to plane, how to shape, and above all, how to work to size. The chief battle of the Training Centre with regard to the instruction of women was then, and still remains, the implanting of a feeling for exactitude in persons accustomed to measure ribbons or lace within a margin of a quarter of a yard or so, or to prepare food by a guess-work mixture of ingredients. I remember, at the beginning of a course of training for women, how an instructor at a large metropolitan Centre remarked that 'ninety-nine per cent. of the new students do not know what accuracy means', and he detailed how difficult it was to instil into their mind 'that quintessence of their work'. Scientific methods of tuition, helped no doubt by women's proverbial patience, have, however, enabled the lesson to be learned after a few weeks' intensive training. The courses last but six to eight weeks and, at the conclusion of the carefully graduated tasks, it is not too much to say that the success of the women has been, in an overwhelming number of cases, surprising both to teachers and pupils. I have before me a batch of letters from factory employers, written in the early period of the training schemes. They all bear testimony to the value of the outside instruction. One manager notes how the trained women from the Schools were able 'to become producers almost at once'; another states that the drafting of the women students from School to factory has enabled the work of munitions to be carried on 'with greater expedition than would otherwise have been the case', and yet another, with a scarcely concealed note of astonishment, relates that his students were able to be engaged at once on 'all kinds of machinery, capstan lathes, turning lathes, milling and wheel cutting machinery'. This discovery of the employer, of the potentialities of women's work in the engineering trades, soon led to a development of the instruction of female students in the Training Centres; more advanced machine work was added to the curriculum, as well as tuition in aeroplane woodwork and construction, in core-making and moulding, in draughtsmanship and electrical work, in optical-instrument making, including the delicate and highly-skilled work of lens and prism making. New Training Centres are constantly being opened in provincial areas, the instruction being adapted to the needs of local factories. There are now (December, 1917) over forty training schools for engineering work in Great Britain, as well as nine instructional factories and workshops, and the proportion of women to men trained in all the processes may be reckoned roughly as two to one. The system of instruction is based, in some of the Centres, on the general principle that the School undertakes the preliminary work of tuition in the simpler engineering processes; the Instructional Factory, or workshop, specializing in the more skilled processes, acts as a clearing-house for promising students from the schools. The urgency of warfare does not, however, permit the application of any hard-and-fast rules. I have seen specimens of some of the most 'advanced' work produced in a School; indeed, the delicate work of lens polishing and centring, the intricacies of engineering draughtsmanship, the precise art of tool-setting and gauge-making have become specialisms of the Schools in certain localities. [Illustration: TURNING THE COPPER BAND OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL] [Illustration: DRILLING SAFETY-PIN HOLE IN FUSE] [Illustration: INSPECTING AND GAUGING FUSES] [Illustration: TURNING THE OUTSIDE AND FORMING THE NOSE-END OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL] As I write, the face of an eager girl of 21 years recurs to memory. She was showing me, the other day, a master gauge produced at a School in the Eastern counties. 'I made it all myself,' she said joyfully, 'dead exact, and all the other gauges of this size in the School are made from it. I have just been appointed assistant instructor in gauge-making.' When it is recalled that the deviation in the measurements of a gauge is only tolerated within such limits as a 3/10000 part of an inch, the production in a School of a master gauge, 'dead exact' in all its dimensions, is a proof that the student has already gone some way in the mastery of the craft of the engineer. _The Instructional Factory_ On the other hand, the Instructional Factory is often forced by war conditions to enrol raw recruits who seem likely material for the urgent needs of surrounding factories. In such cases, the candidate is placed on trial for a week or two in the Instructional Workshop, as in the School. If, at the close of the period of probation, she is deemed unsuitable, she is advised at that preliminary stage to return to her former occupation. Speaking generally, the rejects are extraordinarily few, and although it would be premature to draw definite conclusions, the experience of the Training Section suggests that there is considerable latent capacity for engineering work in a large number of women. A tour of the Instructional Workshops emphasizes the point; everywhere, women may be seen mastering in the short intensive course the one advanced job for which each is being trained. In the Instructional Workshop, the atmosphere of a School is exchanged for that of a factory, the conditions of a modern engineering shop being reflected within its precincts. Thus the students 'clock on and off' on arrival and on departure, observe factory shifts, work on actual commercial jobs, obtain their tools from an attached store, and so on. The work varies in these Instructional Factories as in the engineering shop of the commercial world. In one section of such a hall of tuition you may see the women intent on the production of screws, or bolts, or nuts; in another part, such objects as fuse needles may be in the course of manufacture. You stop to see the magic which is answerable for the birth of the tiny factor which shall detonate the explosive, and you are amazed to find that a fuse needle requires six tools for its production and eight to nine gauges for testing the accuracy of its measurements. Or, you may perhaps pause before a machine which is turning out tiny grub screws. To see a rod of steel offer itself, as it were, to the rightful instruments on a complicated machine to impress the thread and slit, to watch it proceeding on its way until a tiny section is divided and a complete screw is handed over to a tray outside the machine, is, to the uninitiated, a miracle in itself. To see the whole of these complicated processes guided and operated by a smiling girl makes one hopeful for the national industries of the future. Setters-up of tools are at work in another section of the same Instructional Factory and at other machines are students grinding, milling, or profiling. You may then visit another Instructional Factory to find that aircraft is the specialty. I recall one such training-ground in a bay of an aeroplane factory. There the girls learn almost every part of aircraft production, from the handling of the tiny hammers used on the woodwork for the body and wings, to the assembling, or putting together the tested parts. In this training factory, a system prevails of lectures by the practical instructors on the use of necessary tools; questions from the students are encouraged at the close of the lecture, and, I was informed, when on one occasion I was one of the audience, that the saving of the instructor's time by the adoption of this method was beyond expected results. Again, you may visit an Instructional Factory where foundry work is included in the curriculum, or where advanced machine work is a feature. I have stood in one Instructional Workshop where some 600 machines were whirring simultaneously, and where the spirit of energy and goodwill of both students and instructors seemed as tangible as the metal objects produced. In this institution all the accomplished work is for production; night as well as day shifts are worked, and the needs of our armies, or those of our Allies, are frankly discussed with the operators. There is no occasion for other incentive: raw recruits, students from the Schools, discharged soldiers from the Front, men unfit for active service, all these denizens of the training-shop vie with each other to produce a maximum output. It speaks volumes for this workshop that in spite of the continual changes of operators--each set of students remaining only for a course of six to eight weeks--it is entirely maintained on a commercial basis. To reach such a standard in these circumstances is to imply that the heroism of the workshop has become an ingrained habit in operators and staff. _First Steps in Industrial Life_ I remember watching in this training-ground the manufacture of small aero-engine parts, exact in dimensions to within the smallest limits of tolerance. I put a query as to the wastage of material in such an operation, when handled by comparative new-comers. 'Scrapping from this process', replied the production manager with pride, 'does not exceed a total average of one per cent.' The women at work at the time had come from the most varied occupations. A large proportion had never worked outside their own home, others were domestic servants, cooks, housemaids, and so on, others were dressmakers from small towns, and one, I recall, was an assistant from a spa, where she had been engaged handing out 'waters' to invalids. 'It is not the rank of society from which the student is drawn that matters,' remarked an instructor; 'it is the personality of the individual that counts.' Every care has been taken by the Ministry of Munitions to make it easy for women of all classes to participate in their schemes of instruction. The middle class girl who has never undertaken independent work, the woman who has always lived and worked within the shelter of her own home, undoubtedly felt in many cases debarred from entering industrial life. The necessity of living away from her family, in order to enter a Training-School, the absence of home conditions in school or factory, the dread of an entirely masculine superintendence, all helped to strengthen artificial barriers between potential students and the needed engineering work. The Training Section, watching the development of its schemes, became aware of the necessity of making arrangements for students from the Welfare point of view, and an organization has thus developed by which the first steps in industrial life are made easy for the most apprehensive of new-comers. Girl students by rail are met by a responsible woman official and are accompanied to suitable lodgings, or to hostels. In the event of pressure in accommodation, the new student is introduced to temporary apartments, or to a 'Clearing Hostel', where she awaits in comfort a vacancy. In the large Training Centres, a woman supervisor is in charge. She makes all arrangements as to the provision of meals, rest-rooms, cloak-rooms, First-Aid centres, and so on, and is ready to advise the women students on all points relating to their personal interests. Women students are also enabled to wear a khaki uniform, as members of the Mechanical Unit of the Women's Legion, a privilege found to be of distinct value to girls unaccustomed to steering an independent course in the more boisterous streams of life. The appreciation of the students of the safe-guarding of their individual desires crops out in unexpected places. In a handful of correspondence from students, one gleans such remarks as the following: 'Mrs. H. never spares herself any trouble as long as she can make things pleasant for me, she considers it her "war work" to make munition workers happy, and it is very nice to meet people that appreciate what we are doing for our country.'... 'We were met at the station by the works motor. All at once we turned up an avenue of lime-trees and drew up at the door of our country estate. It is a real lovely house and we revel in the glories of fresh air, lawns and gardens, good beds and well-spread tables. We cross a field to the works. Dinner and tea await us when we get here, and there is a well-stocked vegetable garden to give us fresh vegetables, so we all feel indeed that our lines are fallen in pleasant places, and we are very grateful.' In these ways a bridge has been built by the Ministry of Munitions between the normal life of the women in this country and the work in the munitions factory. CHAPTER III: AT WORK--I SHELLS AND SHELL CASES--IN THE FUSE SHOP--CARTRIDGES AND BULLETS Arrived in the munitions factory, the new-comer, whether from a Government Training Centre, or from another occupation, is given two or three weeks' trial on the task she has come to undertake. Only a very small proportion of the women offering their services--one experienced manager puts it at 5 per cent.--are found unsuitable, and these are discharged during the probationary period. Except in the case of those who have received a preliminary training, or of those who have merely transferred their energies from other factory work, the average woman has, at the initial stage in the munitions shops, to overcome an instinctive fear of the machine. Occasionally, the fear is intensified into an unreasoning phase of terror. 'One has to coax the women to stay with such as these,' said one understanding foreman, pointing to a monster machine with huge-toothed wheels. 'We don't ask a woman to sit alone with these at first, for she wouldn't do it, so we put a man with her, and let her sit and watch a bit, and after a while she loses her fear and won't work anything else, if she can help it.' The women, in fact, soon get attached to the machines they are working, in a manner probably unknown to the men. 'I've been here a year on this machine, and I can't do near so well on any other,' is a remark many a girl has made to me as I have watched her on a difficult job. From time to time, a girl will even confess that she 'can't bear to think of some one on the night-shift working _her_ machine'. An understanding has arisen between the machine and the operator which amounts almost to affection. I have often noticed the expression of this emotion in the workshops; the caressing touch of a woman's fingers, for instance, as a bore is being urged on to the job on the machine. This touch, which cannot be taught, or imparted, enables the operation to be started in the most effective method possible, and goes to the making of an excellent and accurate worker. The femininity of the worker has, however, its drawbacks, and for the sake of successful handling of women in the munitions factory, it is as well that these psychological points should be noted. If, for example, a machine is out of gear, or if the operation is held up for any other cause, the women munition makers will sometimes behave in an unreasonable manner, quite bewildering to a foreman accustomed only to dealing with men. The temporary cessation of work may make only a slight money difference to the woman operator by the end of the week: 'not enough to fuss about,' as the foreman judges. But the woman nevertheless often _does_ fuss, because in her eyes the wages do not loom so large as the interruption to her work. She 'hates standing-by', she will say, for she cannot express the emotion of which she is but dimly conscious, that a woman's deep instinct is to give freely of her fullness, and it frets her very soul to be balked in the middle of a job. [Illustration: ASSEMBLING FUSES] [Illustration: COOLING SHELL FORGINGS] [Illustration: OPERATING A LUMSDEN PLAIN GRINDER: RE-FORMING 8-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE CUTTERS] Other initial obstacles in the employment of 'new' female labour in the factories result from the exchange of the manifold duties of the woman in her own home for repetition work performed in the company of hundreds of other human beings. These difficulties are, however, soon overcome, and the new-comer, generally speaking, rapidly becomes one of a large and merry company. The whirr of the wheels and the persistent throb of the machinery may at first distract her, but after a short time the factory noises are unnoticed, save as an accompaniment to her thoughts, her laughter, or her song. I have indeed met in the England of to-day nothing more inspiriting, outside the soldiers' camps, than the women munition workers at work or at play. In August 1916, there were some 500 different munitions processes upon which women were engaged. To-day, they are employed upon practically every operation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works, of which they are physically capable. Within the limits of this publication it is not possible to follow them into every field of their endeavours, yet a glance at their work in a few typical products may give some slight indication of women's contribution to Britain's effort in the World War. _Shells and Shell Cases_ Of the numbers of operations that go to the making of a shell, women now undertake every process, in some works, including even the forging of the billets in the foundry. It was the urgent need of a greatly increased output of shells in 1915 which led to the widespread introduction into the engineering shops of female labour, and the women have repaid this unique opportunity by their unqualified success. So rapid, and so marked, has been their progress in shell production that by the spring of 1917 the official announcement was justified, that, by March 31 of that year, Government contracts for shells of certain dimensions would only be given where 80 per cent. of the employees were women. At first, the women were mainly engaged in simple machine operations, such as boring, drilling, and turning, or in filling the shells. They are, at present, working hydraulic presses, guiding huge overhead cranes, 'tonging', or lifting the molten billets, 'setting', or fitting the tools in the machines, inspecting and gauging, painting the finished shell cases, making the boxes for dispatch of the finished product, and trucking these when finally screwed up and ready for exit from the factory to the Front. It is not possible to describe here in detail women's entire contribution to the production of a shell, but, from foundry to railway truck, she has become an alert and promising worker. In the foundry, her appearance is as yet exceptional, yet in the North country it is no unusual sight to find a woman in the cage suspended from the overhead travelling crane, operating its protruding arm. Now, she will pick up with the clumsy iron fingers a pig of iron and thrust it into the glowing depths of a furnace, or she will lift the red-hot billet and bring it to the hydraulic press, where it is roughly hollowed into its predestined shape. In the shell shop proper you may watch the woman operator on some scores of processes; at one machine, she may be attacking the centre of the billet with a revolving nose, at another she may be 'turning' the outside of a shell. The shavings curl off in this process like hot bacon rind and fall in iridescent rings around her: blue, purple, peacock, or gleaming silver. Or, you may watch the woman worker 'threading' the shell, a process by which the screw threads are provided, into which the nose of the shell is afterwards fitted; or, you may stand and marvel at the skill of the worker who so deftly rivets the base-plate into the shell's lower end. But, perhaps, the most attractive operation to the visitor to the shell shop is the fitting and grooving of the shell's copper band, a process which leaves the machine and worker half-hidden in the glory of sunset tints, as the copper scrap falls thickly from the machine. At every stage, the shell is gauged and tested, examined and re-examined, since accuracy is the watch-word of its production. Sometimes, the machine-operator will gauge her own product; at other stages, the shell passes into the hands of women overlookers of the factory, the final tests being made by Government 'viewers'. The inside, as well as the outside of the shell is submitted to such inspection, and you may see women peering into the interior of the shells, aided by the light from a tiny electric bulb, mounted on a stick. This contrivance is thrust successively into rows and rows of shells. Women are now exclusively used for the painting of the shells, a process accomplished, not by means of a brush and paint-pot, but by the operator playing a fine electrically-worked syringe on to the surface of the shell. This process is undertaken in what is often called 'the butcher's shop', the shells, in pairs, being swung up on a rope into a compartment where the operator works from behind a protective iron screen. In the Filling shops, women's devotion to their work has been proved once and again. Whether the process undertaken be in company of a few comrades, or in isolated huts where lonely vigils are kept over stores of explosives, the munition-girls are hardly known to flinch in their duty. Sometimes, they have volunteered to work throughout the night when air-raids are in progress, at other times, women-workers have returned to the Danger Zone immediately after some bad experience there; and, in every case, the woman worker in the Filling Factory cheerfully sacrifices much which she holds dear in life. It may signify but little to a man to give up his small personal possessions whilst at work in the danger areas, but to many a woman worker it means much, that she may not wear a brooch, or a flower, while on duty, and that her wedding-ring, the only allowable trinket, must be bound with thread while she works. Her tresses, which she normally loves to braid, or twist into varying fashions, must also be left hairpinless beneath her cap. She must relinquish her personal belongings before going to her allotted task; no crochet-hook or knitting-pin may accompany her into the zone where friction of steel, or hard metal, might spell death to a multitude of employees. Yet this sacrifice of individuality is given freely by the woman in the Filling shop, and she is still merry-hearted and blithe as she fills the small bags with deadly powder, or binds the charge which shall fire the shell. When the shell is finally filled and passed 'O.K.', or perfect, it is a woman who packs it into its box and who wheels it on a truck, sometimes for a mile or more over narrow platforms, to hand it to another woman who stacks it into the waiting railway-wagon. Any one who has watched throughout the production of a shell in a factory of to-day can only echo a well-known author's recent salute: 'Hats off to the Women'. _In the Fuse Shop_ The fuse, that small and complicated object which explodes the shell, is a war-product now largely produced by women's labour. A few inches in length, it requires some hundreds of operations for its manufacture, even if the initial processes on the metal are excluded from the count. In section, it looks like a complicated metal jig-saw puzzle of exquisite finish and cohesion: viewing it externally, a child might mistake it for a conjurer's 'property', a bright metal egg, or roll often surrounded by a metal ring marked with time measurements. The care and accuracy necessary for the production of this small object can hardly be imagined by the uninitiated: it is measured and re-measured in every diameter, since on its perfection depends the life of the gunner and his team. The fuse shop is usually characterized by its cleanliness and quietude. I recall one such shop stretching far away into distance both in length and breadth. Under its roof some 1,500 women were at work. Conversation could be held in any part of the shop, undisturbed by the usual factory noises. The fuse parts are, indeed, so small that the machinery is necessarily light, and in such a shop it is dexterity and accuracy that tell, rather than physical strength. Rows of graceful women and girls were standing at their machines, and I recall how their overalls and caps of varied hues made a rainbow effect, as one watched from a distant corner. Some were in cream colour and some in russet-brown, or apple green, the caps sometimes matching the overall and sometimes offering a strong contrast. A splash of purple, or a deep magenta, mingled with the head-dresses of softer hue, for in this shop, away from the Danger Zone, no insistence was made on uniformity of factory costume. Other women, wearing a distinctive armlet, were passing in and out between the rows of workers, now stopping and bending over a machine, now making some bright remark to the operator, as a ripple of laughter indicated, or again, pointing out in sterner wise some danger, or some error in the job. These itinerary women are the overlookers, who since the war have perfected themselves in their special job and can now supervise the operators. At long tables, other women were sitting; some quite elderly and grey-haired, some mere girls. They were measuring with small gauges parts of the fuse, some the size of a good-sized bead. There are 150 different gauges authorized for the measurement of one type of fuse, and in practice even more are used, to ensure perfection of accuracy. I stood spell-bound at one of these gauging tables and watched the examination of small screws and flash plugs. There were six little squares of felt on the table, on which the examiner placed rejects, classified according to the detected flaw. The work proceeded with the utmost dispatch, the 'accepted' or 'perfect' heap growing as if by magic. At another table, a girl was testing springs of about an inch long. If any of these showed the smallest fraction too much length after being submitted to a given pressure, they were put aside as 'scrap'. At yet another table, tiny fuse needles were being examined for length, thickness of phlange, and accuracy of point, and on a high flat desk, near a machine, I noticed seventeen different gauges were ranged for the examination of the percussion end of the fuse-body, one ten-thousandth part of an inch being the limitation or variation allowed in such parts. When all the parts have been examined they are passed to other tables for assembling, or putting together. In this operation almost superhuman care is required, and the work is reserved for the best operators and time-keepers as a reward for long service. 'Assembling' is regarded as the plum of the fuse-room. The operators are well aware of the importance of the task, as they stow away in the time fuses the pea-ball, pellet, spring, stirrup, ferrule, and other components of the fuse. The needle is fixed by blows from a small hammer, and at length the fuse is completed and passes out of the room of its creation to receive its 'filling' from other hands. _Cartridges and Bullets_ The production of cartridges and bullets is another branch of munitions production in which women are mainly employed. These objects, which, when completed, are together no longer than a ball-room pencil, make in their manufacture no great demand on physical strength. On entering a cartridge and bullet shop, one is at once struck with its individuality. There is more stir and movement than in a fuse-room, but less of the imperiousness of the machinery than in the shell or gun shop. There is in the cartridge and bullet room still the whirr of wheels and, above that, the deep constant throb of the driving-force, that makes conversation almost inaudible to the new-comer. But beneath this bass accompaniment, one can hear the lesser sounds belonging to the cartridge and bullet-room alone. There may be the buzz of the circulating gas machines--which resemble miniature merry-go-rounds--the tap, tap, of the cartridges as they are thrown out of the machine into a box below, and the tinkle of bullets as they are poured into weighing machines, or on to tables, or into huge barrels, such as are used on the wharves for the transport of herrings. A cartridge and bullet-shop sometimes is as animated and as picturesque as an open-air market under a southern sky. I remember such a shop where the girls were in various factory costumes, some at the machines in khaki and some in cream-coloured overalls and caps; some, who were 'trucking', or removing the product in boxes, were in cream trouser-suits, with smart head-dresses fashioned from brightly-coloured oriental handkerchiefs. In between the rows of girls men in dark suits were passing to and fro, now stopping to examine, or alter a machine and now taking up a box of bullets and pouring out its glittering contents like a silver stream, so that the output from each worker might be weighed and assessed. Through an open door, at one side of the shop, one could see other men, like stern magicians, dropping cartridges into vats of acid, and just to the side of the vats I caught sight of two girls vigorously shaking a sack of cartridges, hot from the furnace. As they shook, they sang an army refrain: 'Take me back to dear old Blighty,' with a chorus of laughter. At the extreme end of the shop, near the door whence the product made its exit, were long narrow tables, piled with bullets, reminding one of a haul of silver sprats on the quay-side. These were the inspecting tables where the bullets receive minute attention from women viewers. The women's work in the bullet-shop is of extraordinary interest to the onlooker, although many of the processes must be infinitely more monotonous, from the worker's standpoint, than operations in other munitions productions. The elongation of the little metal vessel, resembling an acorn-cup, into a full-length cartridge, or bullet, necessitates many operations in which the dexterity of human fingers and the ingenuity of the machine both come into play. In the shop I recall, in one machine employed for semi-annealing, the cartridge was being 'fed' into a metal revolving plate. This passed behind an asbestos screen into a double row of gas jets, where the semi-annealing or hardening process was being accomplished. The dexterity of the operators was so great that one woman was often feeding two machines, apparently without effort, and never missed placing the cartridge into the correct aperture in the revolving plate. In another process, I watched young girls sitting round a table and placing bullets into circular apertures in small trays, resembling solitaire-boards. Many of the girls were working with such speed that it was impossible to follow the movements of their fingers, but they, unconscious of their prowess, worked with averted heads, smiling in amusement at the visitor's astonishment. In yet another operation, it was the machine that held one's attention. The operator was feeding cartridges into a metal band which slipped out of view while the process of 'tapering' was performed. When finished, a metal thumb and index finger appeared, which delicately picked up the cartridges, one by one, and threw them aside. The displaced cartridge then hopped out of the machine into a box at the side of the machine. Entranced by the many mysteries in the production of cartridges and bullets in the shop I am recalling, I had not noticed that the tea-interval had arrived, and suddenly found that the work-room was almost empty of human beings. Only two girls remained. They were sitting sewing, whilst they devoured thick slices of bread and butter out of a newspaper packet. The woman inspector, who was my guide, turned sharply. 'What are you doing here?' she said, 'Eating your tea in the workshop, instead of outside, or in the canteen. Be off at once into the fresh air.' Then, with the indignation fading out of a good-humoured face: 'What next?' she said. Looking out of the open door at the streams of bright and happy girls laughing, singing, dancing, and running, as only healthy youth can do in the midst of these dark days of war, I seemed to see other and brighter days ahead stretching out into the years of the future, when the workfolk would all taste a fuller joy in life. With renewed hope, I gave her back her challenge: 'Well! and what next?' CHAPTER IV: AT WORK--II THE MAKING OF AIRCRAFT--OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS--IN THE SHIPYARDS _The Making of Aircraft_ The production of aircraft, undertaken in this country on a large scale only since the outbreak of the war, has fallen more naturally into the hands of women. The work is for the most part light, and the new factories, often erected in open country, are bright, airy, and largely free from the noise of machinery. Added to these special attractions to the woman worker, there is apparently a distinct appeal to the youth of both sexes and to women of all ages in anything connected with the art of flying. It is no secret that our output of aircraft is steadily increasing, and that during 1917 it has been doubled. In one factory in London, the output has been trebled within three months; in Lancashire, there are instances in which it has been doubled, and other areas show an improved production varying from 25 to 50 per cent. Yet the increased demand for labour for this work has always been immediately answered, and there is a steady flow into the factories of the best type of women workers from every class of society. Here and there, one already meets a woman who, during the short period of the war, has risen to be manager or partner in an aircraft factory. Unconsciously, such a one emphasizes the fact that the mastery of the element of the future is likely to be an affair of both the sexes. A visit to any aeroplane factory repeats the hint, and reveals the extraordinary versatility of skill latent in women, which can well be applied to this form of industry. 'Women _must_ have been cabin'd, cribbed, and confined before the war', said a foreman in taking me over his shop in an aircraft works. 'Look what they can do at this kind of job, and yet many of them are ladies, from homes where they sat about and were waited upon.' The wonder of it cannot fail to impress a visitor, since only four years ago women were allowed to undertake in aircraft construction merely those parts which convention deemed suitable for feminine fingers: such processes, for instance, as the sewing of the wings by hand, or by machine, or the painting of the woodwork. [Illustration: ENGRAVING METAL PARTS FOR COMPASSES] [Illustration: COLOURING AEROPLANE PLANES] [Illustration: CHIPPING AND GRINDING BLADES OF CAST IRON PROPELLER WITH PORTABLE TOOLS] [Illustration: WOMAN ACTING AS MATE TO JOINER. MAKING SEA-PLANE FLOATS] To-day, they undertake almost every other process both at the carpenter's bench and in the engineering shop, and the chief impression you carry away from a stroll through such a factory is that the women are thoroughly at home in the work. The operations are often so clean that the workers' overalls and caps of the daintiest shades of pink, blue, white, and heliotrope, remain fresh; the material for aeroplane parts is usually so light that the handling of it presents no difficulty to a slip of a girl. When within the works, the visitor is constantly stimulated to the thought that the hand which rocks the cradle should obviously be the one to make the air-machine. One expects, of course, women's familiarity with the occupation in the room where the fine Irish linen is cut out and fashioned into wings. One is not surprised at the facility with which the measuring and cutting out are accomplished, and, maybe, an emotion of admiration arises, similar to that evoked by the contemplation of old tapestries, when one watches the hand-sewing of a seam in a wing of some 10 feet in length. Not a stitch of the button-holing of such a seam deviates by a hairbreadth from its fellows. Such work has, however, been women's province through the ages. But a new sensation is awakened in the carpenter's shop where women are working with dexterity at the bench, handling woodwork like the men, now dealing with delicate wooden ribs, or again, fashioning propellers out of mahogany or walnut with such nicety that there is not the slightest deviation between the dimensions of a pair. In the room where the linen is stretched over the wooden ribs, I have seen women working with tiny hammers, giving fairy blows that never miss their mark on tiny nails. It is with fascination that a visitor stands by be-goggled women as they undertake the welding of metal joints by the oxy-acetylene process. Here, conscientiousness is a vital quality in the operator, since an undetected flaw in the weld, as a works foreman recently remarked, 'might easily send an airman to Kingdom Come'. For this process, women of education are more often selected. It is with awe that you watch the women at work on the metal parts of the aeroplane, drilling, grinding, boring, milling on the machine, or soldering tiny aluminum parts for the fuselage, and in each process gauging and re-gauging, measuring and re-measuring. Women also work on aero-engines, and help in the manufacture of the magneto, the very heart of the machine. They even undertake special processes, which before the war were only entrusted to a select body of men. I stood one day, for example, watching a woman splicing steel rope, a process undertaken in pre-war days by sailors. She was working with extraordinary speed and unconcern, and had learned the job in three or four days. Before then, she told me, she had been her employer's cook. But the most alluring scene of all is the assembling of aircraft. The infinite number of separate parts are now ready; they have been tested by factory overlookers and retested by Government inspectors. The greatest care is taken in these examinations: it is the only possible insurance of the lives of the brave youths on their journey above the clouds. All the workers know this, and the seriousness of the job is reflected on their faces. But now all the parts are ready and to hand in the Erecting shop. Then wings and propeller are added to body, the engine and leather-upholstered seats introduced, the electric apparatus fitted up, the compass, ammunition box and other instruments and weapons placed in position. The aeroplane is at length complete, and stands in the hangar like some great bird, with outstretched pinions, awaiting its first flight into the Unknown. Women undertake every process of this assembling, and have acquired familiarity with all the parts. This was put to the test recently in a certain works when a woman operator was directed to dismantle a machine. Without hesitation, she stripped the complex network of the structural stay-wires and the control wires, and then re-assembled them, correct in every particular, at the first attempt. _Optical Instruments_ Of the many industries developed by the war, the production of optical instruments offers a striking example of rapid progress. Before 1914, the optical glass industry of Europe was largely in the hands of Germany and Austria, and the outbreak of hostilities meant the total closing of that market to the Allies. The lack of optical instruments thus occasioned was at first a source of grave national peril, since optical glass provides, as it were, eyes for both Navy and Army. The eyes of the guns are the range-finder, the director, the sighting telescope, periscope, prism binoculars, and other instruments for observing fire and correcting the aim; the tank would be blind without its periscope, and observations are made from aircraft by means of photographic cameras and lenses. At sea, the tale is repeated; the submarine requires at least one eye, and the submarine chaser needs many, while, by means of optical instruments, the naval gunner can fire at a target which is about 15 to 20 miles away. The very health of the army depends, in great measure, on optical glass, since the Royal Army Medical Corps fights malaria and other diseases due to parasites, which must be magnified by a microscope a thousand times before they can be identified. Hence, the solution of the problem of optical munitions was a vital matter in the early days of the war. With characteristic energy, Great Britain set to work and soon restored a languishing trade. The task was enormous; the industry had to be revived from its very foundations. The production of the peculiar types of glass required for optical instruments in itself presented a formidable obstacle, even its principal ingredient, a special quality of sand, being formerly derived mainly from Fontainebleau and Belgium. But by widespread investigation efficient substitutes were soon discovered, the problem of mixing the ingredients was at length solved, formulæ for special glasses devised, and we are now producing large quantities of optical glass of perfect quality. The production of the raw material was, however, only a first step in obtaining an adequate supply of optical instruments. Numbers of delicate processes stand between the rough glass and the finished implement. The glass must be cut, ground, and curved exactly to the requisite design, which in itself takes many days of high mathematical computation; it must be smoothed and polished, cleaned with meticulous care, and adjusted to a nicety in the particular instrument for which it is fashioned. The difficulties and pitfalls are incalculable; from start to finish the glass obeys no fixed laws, but answers only to the skilled handling of the scientist and craftsman. 'Optical glass is the mule of materials', comments a recent writer with sincerity. The absence of requisite labour for what was practically a new industry was a serious menace, and it is to the credit of Englishwomen that, as soon as the need for their services in this direction was made known, they stepped without hesitation into this unfamiliar and highly skilled industry. Their success therein is remarkable, and many, from such callings as high-class domestic service, kindergarten instruction, music teaching, blouse and dressmaking, have achieved a wonderful record in the delicate and highly technical processes of lens-smoothing and polishing and in the production of prisms of faultless polish and cut. There is, I take it, no more interesting munitions development than in factories where these lenses and prisms are produced. The work is so fine and so delicate that one feels it might be more suitably transferred for manipulation to elves, or fairy folk, who might undertake the various processes standing at a large-sized toad-stool. But with the stern reality of war upon us, willing feminine fingers have had to be trained to handle these lenses, the smallest of which, when ranged in trays, resemble a collection of dewdrops, and the largest of which would easily fill the port-hole of an ocean-liner. Optical glass when it comes into the workshop has the appearance of small blocks of rough ice of a greyish hue. These blocks are roughly sliced and cut into shape by a rotating metal disk charged with diamond dust. The prisms and lenses in their initial stage are then handed on to women, who complete the work on their surfaces. Each process has its particular lure for the interested visitor. You may watch the slices of glass being shaped into prisms by handwork against the tool; you may follow these embryo prisms through the various processes of smoothing and polishing until a small magnifying prism is obtained for use in a magnetic compass, or until a large prism is completed suitable for a submarine periscope. You may follow the creation of a lens from the roughing and grinding of the glass slices with emery, or carborundum, until the approximate shape is given, or you may follow a later process of sticking the smaller lenses on to pitch, so that they may form a single surface for smoothing and polishing. Again, you may watch the superlatively difficult operation of centring a lens. This task is necessary to ensure the polished surfaces of the lens running perfectly true and it requires a skilled touch and a trained eye to undertake it satisfactorily. In a shop in a certain optical munitions factory I met the first woman who worked a centring machine in that area. She was formerly a housemaid, and told me that, at first, all the men had discouraged her from the job and had said it was 'impossible for a woman to do such work'. But she 'stuck it'--so she said--and in a few weeks, to her own surprise and the men's dismay, this peculiarly skilled job became familiar to her. 'Now I feel I am doing something,' she said in triumph. This sentiment was echoed by another worker in that factory who was accomplishing the surprising task of 'chamfering', or putting a tiny bevel onto the edge of a lens. The large lenses measure only 2 inches in diameter; the smaller ones are about the size of a threepenny bit, and every operation, whether grinding, trueing, smoothing, polishing, or centring, must be accomplished with the utmost care. Even the final process in the manufacture of the lens or prism, 'wiping off', is fraught with responsibility to the operator. 'Wiping off,' or cleaning the lens, can only be done with a silken duster, for the finished glass, like a dainty lady, will tolerate the touch of nothing coarse. In cases where the glass is graticulated, or marked with fine lines for measurement purposes, the task of 'wiping off' is of extraordinary difficulty; in the opinion of at least one foreman with whom I have discussed this question, the operation is only perfectly successful when performed by a girl's fingers. It is of supreme importance that no speck of dirt or hint of grease from a finger-mark be left on the glass when finally adjusted, or the instrument would become a source of danger to the user. No wonder that the feeling of the optical instrument workshop expresses itself in the words: 'Cleanliness is more than godliness at this job.' The completed glass at length reaches the stage where it is set in its instrument, be it periscope, dial-sight, telescope, and so on. Although the most exact measurements have been observed both in the metal part and on the glass, small adjustments are necessary; for the fit must be so perfect that even if the metal case suffers shell-shock, the glass must still not rattle. But it is the metal alone which is submitted to alteration, and it is wonderful how women have been able to obtain sufficient dexterity to make these infinitesimal changes in the metal parts. One can see a mere girl undertaking such a task by giving the metal three or four delicate strokes from a file so fine that it would not hurt a baby's skin. Meantime, the lens or prism is finally examined (also by women) for size, scratches, and other imperfections, and is then re-cleaned. Girls and women take a full share in the production of the metal parts for the optical instruments and also assemble, or collect the parts, for the adjustment of the glass, but so far they do not generally adjust or test the completed instrument. The operations used in the production of optical instruments for war purposes are, of course, similar to those required in the manufacture of implements used in peace-time, such as opera-glasses, telescopes, microscopes, surveying instruments, photographic and cinematograph apparatus, &c., and it is expected that women who have entered the new war-time industry will happily find themselves, when peace dawns, in possession of a permanent means of livelihood in a skilled occupation. _In the Shipyards_ 'Ships, ships, and still ships': such is the main need of the Allies in this, the fourth year of the war. To answer this demand, every dockyard in the country is working at the highest pressure. Into this work, strange as it may seem to those familiar with the rough-and-tumble life of a shipyard, women have penetrated and have so far surmounted all obstacles in the tasks to which they have been allocated. At first, dilution in shipyards was looked upon as a hazardous experiment. The work is mostly heavy and clumsy, and the type of men undertaking it, splendid fellows enough in their physique and general outlook, are mainly accustomed to dealings with the boisterous elements and with men comrades of their own pattern. Their attitude towards women, it was feared, would make for trouble immediately that the other sex was introduced as fellow-workers. Even the most optimistic amongst shipbuilders were aghast at the idea of women working shoulder to shoulder with men on board ship. Yet here and there a pioneer employer has arisen, and the experiment has been tried. It is succeeding unquestionably. I have been into the shipyards and seen the amazing sight and am convinced of its expediency, at all events as a war-time measure. Special care must, of course, be taken in the planning and the supervision of women's work on board ship, but given the right type of inspectress, charge hand, and workers, there is no reason why women should not, in increasing numbers, fill the gaps in the shipyards, as in the factories. The women chosen to undertake such tasks are well aware of the service they are rendering to the nation at this juncture, and to the women workers the first day on board ship is one of supreme happiness. 'They are so excited when they actually get on board,' said a dockyard inspectress to me recently 'that they forget all about the difficulties and objections to the work.' It is well that this is so, for it is not too easy for the novice to move about below, even on a big battleship. I was taken over one where the women were working. It was in a big yard crammed with shipping of every kind--so full that one could echo the words of the old Elizabethan, who said of a crowd: 'There was not room for a snail to put out its horns.' A stiff breeze was blowing, and the sea beyond ran full and blue. The great battleship along the dock lay serene and stately, bearing, as it were, with grim humour the meddlesome tappings and chippings of impertinent human beings, who presumed to furbish her up. There were men on the conning-tower, busy with paint-pots, and there was a tangle of ropes and pots on the upper decks where the guns were biding their time. Men were calling lustily to each other, and were darting here and there as brisk and wholesome as the breeze. 'We go down here,' said the inspectress, pointing to a ladder as steep as the side of a house. She bounded down with the ease of an antelope. Another ladder, and yet another. The inspectress seemed to have forgotten their steep incline and I was left, a helpless landlubber, cautiously descending step by step. When I joined her in the engine-room she was already deep in conversation with one of her staff. And then I noticed the secret aid to her agility. All the women aboard ship were dressed in trouser suits. The suits, of blue drill for the supervisors, and of a similar material in brown for the labourers, were made with a short tunic, and the trousers were buckled securely at the ankle. A tight-fitting cap to match completed the smart workmanlike costume which permits of perfect freedom of movement in confined places. Without such a costume it would be hardly possible for women to work on board. The women workers on this particular battleship were engaged in renewing electric wires and fittings, a job which requires a good deal of care and accuracy. On the lower deck, they were fitting up new cables and were perched in high places, here 'sweating in' a distribution box, there marking off the position for the wires. Others were drilling holes, others again were 'tapping', or making a thread in the holes. In the engine-room the women were busy stripping worn-out electric wiring and were working by the light of tall candles, as merry as a party preparing a Christmas tree. Everywhere the women were working in pairs, an arrangement found especially advisable on board. Behind a small iron door we found one couple working on a fire-control in a nook where the entrance of a single visitor caused bad overcrowding. 'These are my mice', said the inspectress; 'they always get away into the cupboard-jobs, and very well they work there too. But we have to maintain a strict discipline on board, far stricter than anything known in the factories.' No talking, I was informed, is allowed in that dockyard, during the working hours on board, between the sailors or men labourers and the women and there is constant supervision of the women employed. These work on board in parties of 20-22, each party being under the care of a charge hand. When the staff included three charge hands for supervision on board, an inspectress was appointed for this special branch of the work. The system seems to work well, and I noticed how the men and women had evidently accepted each other as comrades. Coming into a secluded gangway a man-labourer, who had finished his job, was unconcernedly shaving before a square of mirror, while two or three women just beyond went on, just as unconcernedly, tap, tapping at the electric fittings. There was no chaffing, no 'larking', between the men and women, but a sense of comradeship, such as one notices in a Co-education School. The women on electric-wiring receive, in that dockyard, one month's instruction on dummy bulk-heads before going on board; their instructors--expert men--accompany them to the number of two to every party of twenty or so, and remain with them for ten to twelve months. After that, the women are able to work without an instructor, and I was an eyewitness to this arrangement on a cargo vessel, where electric wiring was also being undertaken. Besides the work on board, women in dockyards are employed in the various engineering shops where almost every description of construction and repair work for vessels is undertaken. I have seen numbers of women at work in such an electrical department, winding armatures, making parts for firing-gear, polishing, or buffing and repairing electrical apparatus, &c. The work in such a repair section is full of interest and variety. From day to day the operators receive consignments of electrical apparatus damaged on board by the elements, or worse. Great dispatch is needed, and the women work with the utmost zeal and efficiency. I noticed them undertaking such varying operations as lackering guards for lamps and radiator fronts, repairing junction and section boxes, fire-control instruments, automatic searchlights, &c., and they were turning out their work, the foreman said, just like men. In the constructional department, women are now employed in making bulkhead pieces, or metal-work of various kinds, in oxy-acetylene welding, and occasionally in the foundry. When it is recollected that before the war only elderly women--the grandmothers--were, generally speaking, employed in the dockyards, and those only on such ornamental tasks as flag-making or upholstery for yachts, it is hardly credible that the granddaughters are now working successfully on intricate processes and even at jobs where physical strength is a qualification. 'We can hardly believe our eyes,' said a foreman recently, 'when we see the heavy stuff brought to and from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job all right though, and the only thing they ever complain about is that their toes get cold.' 'They don't now', said a strapping young woman-driver, overhearing the conversation. 'We've got hot-water tins.' Then, in a low voice, for my ears alone, 'I love my work, it's ever so interesting.' It is this note that one finds above all, amongst the women in the dockyards. The spirit of the sea, the almost forgotten heritage of an island population, has been stirred once more, and the sight of the good ships in harbour thrills the woman-worker, as the man, with a sense of independence, freedom, and love for 'this England, ... this precious stone set in the silver sea'. No wonder that Englishwomen find their work in the dockyards 'ever so interesting'. [Illustration: CUTTING FRAYED-EDGED TAPE] [Illustration: BRAZING TURBINE ROTOR SEGMENT] [Illustration: MOUNTING CARDS FOR DRY COMPASSES] [Illustration: TREADLE POLISHING-MACHINES, FOR SMOOTHING LENSES] CHAPTER V: COMFORT AND SAFETY WELFARE SUPERVISION--PROTECTIVE CLOTHING--REST-ROOMS AND FIRST AID--WOMEN POLICE The problems arising from the sudden employment of thousands of women in the factories have obviously been connected not only with the technical training of the workers and with the adaptation of machinery to their physical strength. Something had to be done, and that without delay, to ensure the comfort and safety in the workshops of these new-comers to industrial life. In the first great rush for an increased munitions supply, war emergency dictated the temporary suppression of the Factory Acts. There was no demur within the factory gates. Women worked without hesitation from twelve to fourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with the voluntary sacrifice of public holidays. Their home conditions in a vast number of cases offered no drop of consolation. Many of these women were immigrants from remote corners of the Empire, or from faraway towns and villages of the United Kingdom. Housing accommodation in crowded industrial areas, or in a thinly populated countryside, was strained to breaking-point. Undaunted, these workers--many of whom had previously led an entirely sheltered life--rose before dawn to travel long distances to the factory, and returned to take alternative possession with a night-shift worker of a part share of a bedroom. The shameful conditions to which the factory children were subjected at the period of the Industrial Revolution seemed about to return. _Welfare Supervision_ Such a state of things could not be tolerated, and Mr. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, grasped the situation. 'The workers of to-day', he said, 'are the mothers of to-morrow. In a war of workshops the women of Britain were needed to save Britain; it was for Britain to protect them.' Measures were immediately adopted to improve the conditions of the workers in the factory. A Departmental Committee was appointed to consider all questions relating to the health of munition workers, and at the Ministry of Munitions, on their recommendation, a Welfare and Health Department was established, charged with 'securing a high standard of conditions for all workers in munitions factories and more especially for the women and juvenile employees'. Since then, step by step the machinery is being set in motion for improving the conditions of life of munition workers. Yet Welfare work in the factory is no new thing in England. In pre-war days it had not, it is true, reached as widespread a development as in the United States, but as long ago as 1792 it was in practice in this country under another name. It is recorded of that period of one David Dale, whose factory was a model to his contemporaries, that he 'gave his money by shovelfuls to his employees' to find that 'God shovelled it back again.' From the early part of the nineteenth century, sporadic attempts were successfully made to improve the conditions of the factory workers over and above the requirements of legislation, and before 1914 a number of enlightened factory owners had won renown by the practice of Welfare work within their precincts. The seal of official sanction has, however, only been gained since the war, through the influx of women into munitions trades.[1] The Health of Munitions Workers Committee has, since its inception, investigated at factory after factory such questions as the employment of women, hours of labour, Sunday labour, juvenile employment, industrial fatigue, canteen equipment, the dietary of workers. It has published its conclusions in memoranda, stripped bare of officialism, so as to reveal with frankness facts acquired by scientists in touch with reality. Working in connexion with this Committee is the Welfare and Health Department of the Ministry of Munitions. It follows closely the suggestions of the experts, its Welfare officers moving up and down the country, now offering a suggestion to the management of a factory, and again, assimilating some practical experiment in Welfare work, originated by a progressive factory-directorate. Thus, a pooling of ideas is being effected, and isolated experiments of value are now being propagated throughout the country. But possibly one of the most valuable tasks of the Welfare and Health Department is the selection and training of candidates for the work of Welfare Supervision in the factories. A panel of approved candidates is kept in readiness, so that a busy factory-manager may have at hand a choice of Welfare workers who will, if necessary, undertake the entire supervision of the personal interests of his female, or juvenile staff. These officers, after engagement by the factory management, are responsible solely to the firms that employ them and not to the Ministry of Munitions. In establishments where T.N.T. (Tri-nitro-toluene) is handled, the presence of a lady Welfare Supervisor is compulsory; in all National factories such an officer is recognized as a necessary part of the staff; and in Controlled Establishments, where a number of female operators are employed, the management is officially encouraged to make such an appointment. In many cases, engineering shops are for the first time employing female operators, and the management depute with relief all questions as to the personal requirements of the 'new labour' to the lady superintendent; in other instances, such matters as the engagement of the employees, canteen arrangements, and so on, are placed in the hands of other officials. Hence, the duties of the lady Welfare Supervisor differ from factory to factory. Generally speaking, the supervisor, or lady superintendent within the factory is made responsible for some, or all, of the following matters: 1. She aids, or is entirely responsible for, the selection of women, girls, and boys for employment. 2. The general behaviour of the women and girls inside the factory falls under her purview. 3. The transfer of a woman employee from one process to another is suggested by the Welfare Supervisor where health considerations make such an alteration advisable. 4. She is consulted on general grounds with regard to the dismissal of women and girls. 5. Factory conditions come under her observation, and reports are made, when necessary, to the management, on the cleanliness, ventilation, or warmth of the establishment. 6. The necessity of the provision of seats is suggested, where this is possible. 7. In large factories, where the canteen is under separate management, the Welfare Supervisor reports as to whether the necessary facilities are available for the women employees. In smaller factories, the Welfare Supervisor may be called upon to manage the canteen. 8. While not responsible, except in small factories, for actual attention to accidents, the Welfare Supervisor works in close touch with the factory doctors and nurses. She also helps in the selection of the nurses, and should see that their work is carried out promptly. She supervises the keeping of all records of accidents and illness in the ambulance room, and of all maternity cases noted in the factory. She keeps in touch with all cases of serious accident or illness and with the Compensation Department inside the works. 9. She supervises cloak-rooms and selects the staff of attendants necessary for these. 10. The protective clothing supplied to the women at work comes under her supervision. In large establishments where the female and juvenile staff is counted by the thousand, these multifarious duties are necessarily divided among many individuals, and the Welfare work within the factory (Intra-mural Welfare, as it is now termed) develops into a Department. A typical example of such an evolution may be seen at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. In pre-war days, the female staff numbered 125; to-day some 25,000 women are there at work. The Welfare supervision is happily in charge of a super-woman. In addition to her manifold duties she has trained a staff of assistants who, like herself, spare no effort to promote the health and happiness of those under their care. I have stood many an hour in this super-woman's office and watched her, surrounded by a throng of workers, fitting new-comers into vacancies, listening to reasons from others for a desired transference, or advising as to work, or meals, health, or recreation. No girl was refused a hearing, however trivial the difficulty, and a grievance as to the colour of a factory cap was discussed with as much attention with one employee as the causes of a 'shop' disagreement was with another complainant. I have accompanied her on visits through the works (the entire tour would take almost a week to accomplish), and have noted the diplomacy with which a suggested improvement in ventilation, or a needed cloak-room alteration, was discussed with the official in charge, and carried through. I have seen the faces of rows of workers light up as this modern Florence Nightingale passed through their shop, and have walked through the Danger Zone amazed at the arrangements for the protection of the worker. What is true of the life in such large concerns as Woolwich Arsenal, or His Majesty's Factory, Gretna, is typical on a large scale of the development of Welfare work in many a munitions factory throughout the kingdom. Protective clothing has been universally adopted, ambulance-rooms and rest-rooms have been opened, cloak-room accommodation improved, canteens established, sane recreation encouraged, and the protection of a women-police service introduced. In short, an atmosphere is being introduced by which the old-time barrier between employer and employed is being helped to disappear. _Protective Clothing_ So much has been accomplished since the advent of women in the munitions factories with regard to protective clothing for the worker that the subject might well fill a chapter to itself. A separate Department in the Ministry of Munitions now concerns itself solely with its supply, and is continually experimenting with improvements in aprons, gloves, boots, caps, and tunics. Cotton overalls are now generally worn by the women employees and much thought has been given to the production of these garments in suitable materials and design. They are made with firmly stitched belts and with inset pockets, so as to avert accidents by contact of loose ends in the machinery, and are more often in the popular shades of khaki, or brown, with scarlet facings, or dark blue faced with crimson. But there is no set rule either as to colour, or design, so long as the principle of protection is followed. Caps, which at first were much disliked by the workers, have at length found general favour, not, it is true, by reason of the immunity they offer against accident, but because they have been fashioned so as to add 'chic' to the wearer. They are usually of the 'Mob,' or 'Dutch' variety, and match the overall in colour and texture; they are all designed so that there is no pressure round the head. Sometimes, the cap of safety has been skilfully used as a mark of distinction, and one may see, in a shop staffed by women, the operators at the machines in khaki headgear, the setters-up of machines in scarlet caps, and the overlookers or inspectors of the product in bright blue head-dress. For wet and dusty work there are trouser suits in cotton, woollen, or mackintosh, or tunic suits with knee breeches and leggings, or gaiters. Mackintosh coats are also provided for outdoor work in shipyards, or for trucking and lorrying, or for overhead crane-work within the factory. Acid-proof and oil-proof aprons are now furnished for certain operations, and for other processes specially prepared gloves are supplied. The varieties in workshop gloves are now very great; they are made in such materials as india-rubber, canvas, or leather, or a union of these three, or in teon-faced canvas or teon-faced leather. Some are cuffless; others, for work in acids, have turned-up cuffs, and others again are gauntlets reaching the elbow. In every case, the process for which they are provided is minutely studied, and the fashion adopted is dictated by utility. Footgear has also received a considerable amount of attention, and there are now available Wellington boots, or half-Wellingtons, for outdoor work, or wooden clogs for processes in the shops where the flooring is apt to become persistently wet. But, possibly, factory fashions receive most care when designed for wearers in Filling shops. For these, suits in wool lasting-cloth are found satisfactory, the most popular and smartest being in cream-colour, faced with scarlet. Fire-proofed blue serge overalls and asbestos coats with caps of the same material are also employed in certain of these factories. For work in the Danger Zone no metal fasteners are permissible, and the coat, or overall, is cut so as to protect the neck and throat from contact with the powder used in the process. Boots and shoes for this type of work are also specially designed. No iron must enter into their composition, the soles being either machine-sewn, or riveted with brass. Sometimes, cloth and india-rubber over-shoes are the chosen footwear of the Danger Zone, and in this case the fasteners must also be free from iron. These precautions are no mere fad, but essential safeguards where friction between a fragment of iron and a combustible powder might lead to an explosion. Respirators, and in some cases veils, are also needful accessories of the Filling factory, and these too are provided for the workers. A complete factory uniform has thus evolved since the war: it is a model of suitable clothing for industrial work. Arising from within the workshops to meet essential needs, these fashions are not only free from vulgarity, or eccentricity, but have a distinct beauty of their own. It is unlikely that women, once accustomed to the comfort and cleanliness of such garments, will desire to return to the discredited habit of tarnished finery worn at work. _Rest-Rooms and First Aid_ Ambulance and First-Aid work within the factory was not unusual even in pre-war days. Since the development of munitions production it has become almost a commonplace, and from December 1, 1917, its provision has been obligatory in blast furnaces, foundries, copper-mills, iron-mills, and metal works. Where T.N.T. is handled, the employment of at least one whole-time medical officer is compulsory, if the employees number 2,000, and, if in excess of that figure, at least one additional medical officer must be employed. The professional work of these doctors is supervised by the medical officers of the Welfare and Health Department, who also in a similar way supervise the safety of workers employed upon the manufacture of lethal gases. The extra expense involved in the provision of such safeguards is by no means unproductive. In one factory, for example, it has been estimated that 2,500 hours were saved in a single week by prompt attention to minor ailments; in another factory, where the firm meets all smaller claims for Workmen's Compensation, it was found that in a period of eighteen months following the establishment of a First-Aid organization, a credit balance of nearly £500 accrued to the management after all expenses connected with the factory doctor and the nurses had been defrayed. Tribute should be paid to the medical staff for their share in the triumph of First-Aid work within the munitions factory, for without their extraordinary devotion the record of misadventure would undoubtedly be higher. One hears from time to time how, in a temporary breakdown of such a staff, a single worker will hold the fort. A typical case is recorded in the press as I write. It tells of a young nurse who worked shifts of twenty-four hours at a stretch, for a fortnight, during the absence of her colleagues. The development of the factory rest-room and cloak-room has also been a marked feature in the munitions factories where women are employed. Formerly, it was usual to see the women workers' outdoor garments hung round the workshop walls; to-day, in numbers of munitions works, the women's cloak-rooms are provided with cupboards where hot pipes dry wet boots and clothing, where each girl has her own locker with lock and key, and where the maximum of wash-hand basins supplied with hot and cold water are set up. In T.N.T. workshops compulsory washing facilities are even more elaborate. Bath-rooms are available, as well as a generous supply of towels, and face ointment, or powder, are supplied as preventatives to any ill effects from handling explosives. Inside the workshops the spirit of reform is equally apparent; seats are provided where possible, and lifting-tackle, or sliding boards, are introduced to minimize strain when dealing with heavy weights. Sometimes, one hears how such improvements, suggested for the women employees, are extended to the men. At a certain engineering works, for example, where in pre-war days women had never been employed, it was suggested by a Government official that seats should be supplied for the women. The management looked askance. It would be 'such a bad example to the apprentices', it was said. The point was, however, pressed, and after a short time the suggestion materialized. The manager then stated, with surprised satisfaction, that the seats 'seemed to renew people', and he had accordingly extended the improvement to the men. _Women Police_ One of the most recent developments in the protection of women in the factories is the employment of women police. In the summer of 1916, when it was found necessary to obtain further control and supervision of the women employees in munitions works, Sir Edward Henry, the Chief Commissioner of Police, recommended that the Ministry of Munitions should apply to the Women Police Service for a supply of trained women police. This request has now created an extensive development of such work, and to-day women police are undertaking numerous duties in munitions works. They check the entry of women into the factory; examine passports; search for such contraband as matches, cigarettes, and alcohol; deal with complaints of petty offences; assist the magistrates at the police court, and patrol the neighbourhood of the factory with a view to the protection of the women employed. As many of the works have been erected in lonely places, and as the shifts are worked by night as well as by day, it can easily be imagined what a safeguard to the young employee is the presence of these female guardians of the peace. Even within the precincts of the factory, the security assured by the patrolling police-women is of great importance, since many of the factories are built on isolated plots extending perhaps six miles from barrier to barrier, and within these boundaries women are often employed in isolated huts, should they be engaged on the production of explosives. The preventive work of the women police is, in these areas, incalculable. In such ways, Welfare work has taken root in the factories of Britain, and in the words of Mr. Lloyd George, 'it is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should afford the occasion to humanize industry. Yet such is the case.' [Illustration: SLITTING AND ROUGHING OPTICAL GLASS] [Illustration: VIEW OF CANTEEN KITCHEN] [Illustration: WEIGHING FERRO CHROME FOR ANALYSIS] CHAPTER VI: OUTSIDE WELFARE RECREATION--MOTHERHOOD--THE FACTORY NURSERY _Recreation_ The gift in the early days of munitions development of several thousands of pounds from an Indian prince, the Maharajah of Gwalior, for the benefit of munitions employees, helped to focus attention from the outset on their needful recreation. The necessity for a maximum output, bringing in its train long shifts, overtime, and a minimum of holidays, at first left scant leisure at the munition girl's disposal, yet it was at once apparent that some effort must be made to render that leisure healthful and invigorating. As soon as the Welfare Supervisors took up their positions in the factories and came into living touch with the needs of the women employed, requests found their way to the Ministry of Munitions for grants for recreation purposes from the Maharajah's fund. At first, 'a piano for the recreation-room or canteen' was the more general appeal; for, strangely enough, after the long hours in the engineering shops the normal munitions girl craves most, not for passive amusement, such as 'the pictures', but for free movements of her own body. Above all, she desires to dance, or to enjoy the rhythm of physical drill, or, in the summer, to swim or dive, or to chase a ball in one or other of the popular team games. Within doors, the piano provides, as it were, a spring-board from which she can jump into a leisure-time atmosphere of merriment; it is the send-off to her dance, the guide to her song, and the backbone to the joy found in the united action of physical drill. The piano once provided in canteen, or recreation-room, you will find the munition girl footing it in the dinner-hour, or tea-interval, or in any other period when she is off duty. So long as the tune be bright, the merry-hearted munition-maker will dance the old dances, or the more complicated modern steps, as her mood suggests. From self-taught dancing, the desire for a more perfect expression in movement is a natural evolution, and in certain cases grants from the Maharajah's fund have defrayed the fees of dancing mistress, or sports instructor. Sums from the same source have been paid to assist the organization of a club, for the provision of a recreation-room, for the erection of swings and see-saws, for the installation of a swimming-bath, for tools and seeds for factory girls' gardens, for dramatic entertainments, for lectures for the instruction of apprentices, and in Ireland, for the enlargement of schools for children of women munition workers. Side by side with these endeavours, other efforts to promote sane amusement for munition makers have been fructifying. Many an enlightened factory employer, studying the problem of woman-labour within his own works, has come to the conclusion that 'if women are called upon to work continuously, especially at repetition jobs, their pleasure in life must be kept alive'. Being business men, they have soon turned the theory into practice, and have encouraged, started, and financed recreation schemes for their own employees. In Sheffield, for example, successful dramatic entertainments have been given, the actors and actresses emerging from the engineering shops; near Birmingham, a firm has provided a cinema, an orchestra, and a dancing-room for their workpeople, and on Saturday evenings, free conveyance in an omnibus is arranged for those workers resident in outlying hostels and married quarters. At Norwich, another firm has appointed a woman recreation officer to teach the girls physical drill, dancing, tennis, and other games. Dances and a fancy-dress ball have been organized there, and in the summer, tennis, bowls, and cricket are played in a large recreation ground. These are but a few instances, typical of the growing understanding amongst employers in this country of the value of playtime to a women's staff. Outside the factory other agencies have been at work, voluntarily attempting to provide rest and refreshment for the women whose sacrifices for the war are so great and so patiently endured. Such bodies as the Young Women's Christian Association or local Civic Associations have opened recreation clubs--sometimes for girls only and sometimes 'mixed'--where concerts, dramatic entertainments, and lectures are given, and classes in useful arts or games are held. Women from the aristocracy and working women, civic authorities and the clergy, have joined hands throughout the country to help forward this effort for the physical, spiritual and intellectual recreation of the munitions worker. The very spontaneity and eagerness of the movement have naturally led here and there to overlapping, and in the spring of 1917 it was found advisable to co-ordinate local streams of goodwill and energy. A branch of the Welfare and Health Department of the Ministry of Munitions was thus established to keep in touch with all agencies outside the factory which deal with schemes regarding recreation, sickness, maternity-cases, crèches, housing, and transit facilities. Extra-mural Welfare officers have since been appointed to undertake such duties in various localities. These act as _liaison_ officers between existing associations of every denomination in a given district, and centralize all outside efforts for the protection and relaxation of the munition women of that area. The Welfare officer at first surveys carefully the needs of the district, and institutes an inquiry as to provisions for their satisfaction. If necessary, a conference is then called of individuals and representatives of local bodies dealing with these matters, and sub-committees are appointed for each part of the work. When the numbers of women workers are comparatively small in a given area and no adequate provision has been made for their recreation, a central club is often opened. In other localities, existing clubs, or institutions, are adapted to new requirements, or new ones are added, according to local needs. Where night shifts are worked in the local factories, it is usual to arrange the open hours of the club to suit the workshop leisure hours. Thus, a club may be open from 6 to 8 a.m.; at midday, for two hours, and again from 4.30 to 9.30 p.m. In such cases, it is often necessary to employ paid club managers, as well as local voluntary help. The clubs, however, vary, both in scope and management, the general principle followed by the Welfare officer being to ensure provision for recreation, and then to leave the administration to local effort. Encouragement is given by the Ministry of Munitions to employers of Controlled Establishments and to the management of National factories to help forward the movement for recreation for their staffs by allowing Treasury grants out of excess profits to be made towards approved schemes. In many districts the grants are 'pooled' for recreation purposes for the whole area. Recreation for the munition worker thus rests on a secure basis. In the winter months, dancing, physical drill, theatricals, games, and classes are in full swing in the principal munitions areas, and in the summer, outdoor sports are encouraged, as well as the tending of vegetable plots and flower gardens. _Motherhood_ A more difficult task falling to the 'Outside Welfare' officer is the supervision of maternity cases arising among munition workers. The all-important question of motherhood necessarily crops up in the factories where hundreds of thousands of women are in daily employment. Numbers of them are wives of men hard at work in war industries at home; others are war-widows, and while the illegitimate birth-rate has not gone up disproportionately in munitions areas, the unmarried mother, from time to time, presents a special problem. The care of the expectant mother necessarily begins within the factory gates. We have so far no published conclusions from an authoritative survey of this question, such as Dr. Bonnaire (Chief Professor of Midwifery at the Maternity Hospital, Paris) has provided for France, yet scientific investigations and experiments undertaken by the Health of Munition Workers' Committee are in progress. As far as possible, the women Welfare Supervisors within the works keep their management informed of maternity cases as they are noted, and, where possible, the expectant mother is placed on lighter work. No woman known to be in that condition is, after a certain period, kept on at night work, nor is she allowed to work in an explosives factory, nor yet to handle T.N.T. 'We send the girl to the doctor and we act on his advice. If we can keep her, we always take her off night work and heavy machines and where there is a good deal of exertion,' is a report typical of the procedure in such cases in many factories. 'It is too risky for an expectant mother to stay on at all,' is a characteristic opinion from a Filling Factory; and from a high-explosives factory comes the verdict that an expectant mother should, after a certain period, be discharged from the works in view of the occasional occurrence there of small explosions. Such maternity cases are, when possible, transferred, through local agencies, to lighter national work outside the factory. _The Factory Nursery_ Closely connected with the safeguarding of motherhood is the case of the munition workers' children of pre-school age. After two months' interval from the baby's birth, many of the maternity cases from the factory return to their previous work, and the infant must, in the mother's absence, be nursed by others. A similar condition applies to the work of other mothers whose labour is required for munitions production. It sometimes happens that in a given area the call to the munitions factories has been answered by practically all the available women in the neighbourhood whose home ties are light, and the local labour reserve is found amongst the women with one or two young children. If these women are to offer their services, it is essential that their young family should not be neglected. Sometimes, the mothers are able to make their own arrangements and a 'minder', either a relative, or a neighbour, is forthcoming, but, generally speaking, such a plan is not satisfactory in a locality where every active individual is undertaking urgent war work. Thus has arisen in many districts the claim that a nursery for munition workers' children should be established. A local association, or an individual, often finds it possible to finance such a scheme; in other cases, monetary aid is required and obtained from the Ministry of Munitions. In the latter circumstances, the Ministry of Munitions, co-operating with the Board of Education, grants 75 per cent. of the approved expenditure on the initial provision and equipment of the nursery, as well as 7_d._ a day for each attendance of a child, the balance of the expenses being met partly by fees (varying from 7_d._ to 1_s._ a day, or from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 9_s._ 6_d._ a week) charged to the mothers, and partly by contributions from the local originators of the scheme. Where night shifts are worked, the munition workers may claim night accommodation for their children; arrangements are also made to board the infants by the week. In the schemes approved by the Ministry it has generally been found possible to adapt existing buildings, but where no suitable accommodation is available within reasonable distance of the mothers' homes a new building is erected. Such a nursery has been erected near Woolwich and provides a useful model for this country. It is a long low building of bungalow type, surrounded by a small garden. The main room, the babies' parlour, is a long apartment enclosed on two sides by a verandah, and on the third, by a wide passage well ventilated at each end. The room itself is full of light and air, there is plenty of play room, and no awkward corners to inflict bruises unawares. A lengthy crawl brings a baby-boarder into the sunshine of the verandah and the safe seclusion of its play-pens, and a longer crawl and a hop is rewarded by entrance into the surrounding garden, where a delectable sand-pit is a permanent feature. Brightly-coloured flowers enliven the garden in spring and in summer and attract bird and insect visitors, companions often more interesting to a two-year-old than the most sprightly of humans. Mattresses occupy part of the floor space of the nursery, and at night-time are developed into full-fledged beds. At one end of the room are cupboards let into the walls, at the other, furniture fashioned for the needs of each 'two feet nothing'. There, instead of being perched on a high chair to feed with giants from an elevated table-land, the infant visitor sits on a miniature arm-chair at a table brought to the level of childhood. The low tables are, in fact, kidney-shaped and hollowed on the inside, so that a nurse, or attendant, seated in the centre, may feed half a dozen children in turn. The toddler's dinner in this retreat recalls the feeding time in a nest. A smiling nurse in the centre feeds, turn by turn, her open-mouthed charges whose satisfaction is expressed in human 'coos'. Another room in this delightful babies' house is devoted to infants: a brigade in cots, of which the advance-guard, during fine weather, invade the verandah. The daintiness of the room with its blue curtains and cot-hangings and the chubby satisfaction of the cot-dwellers must be a constant inspiration to the visiting working mothers. Spotless kitchens for the preparation of the children's meals are situated in the rear of the nurseries; there is also an isolation room where suspect infectious cases are detained, and a laundry with an indefatigable laundress. The bathing room, fitted with modern appliances, is in many respects excellent. The whole establishment is warmed by a central-heating installation, the radiators being well protected with guards. It may not always be possible, through lack of funds, to reproduce these ideal conditions, but where the accommodation is less and the ground space more limited, every care is taken that the factory nursery shall have an ample provision of fresh air. Efforts are also made to obtain as much local support as possible. In some districts, the whole of the clothing provided at the nursery is made by the little girls from a neighbouring Elementary School. At Acton, Middlesex, for example, I was shown piles of the daintiest little underwear, diminutive shoes and charming cotton frocks, all made in the sewing classes at their school, by pupils of eleven to thirteen years of age. The boys of the local manual schools--not to be outdone--contributed to this nursery all the carpentry for the cots for the elder babies. These small beds, fashioned out of hessian cloth, swung on long broom poles, with a wooden board at head and foot, seemed of a particularly economical and practical pattern. The factory nursery is certainly gaining popularity as a war-time measure; as a permanency in peace times it is recognized that there are some objections to its establishment. An alternative scheme, even in the war period, is being mooted. The suggestion is made that babies should be 'billeted', or boarded out in the munitions area amongst women who are not employed outside their home. Supervision of the baby boarders, it is thought, might be undertaken by inspectors under the Local Authority. This scheme might, it is true, largely prevent the congregation of many children in one nursery and the resultant danger of the spread of contagious infantile disease. On the other hand, the proposal, if accepted, might open the doors to overcrowding in thickly populated areas and to the neglect of the baby boarder, undetected by a local inspectorate, already overstrained by war-time conditions. The scheme is, however, only at the discussion stage, as I write. In any case, the care of the munition workers' children is attracting considerable public attention, since in spite of the war, or because of it, the importance of the health and well-being of the ordinary individual, and more especially of the young, is becoming part of the creed of the average citizen. CHAPTER VII: GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL CANTEEN GENERAL PRINCIPLES--THE WORKER'S OASIS 'Money hardly counts; it is labour we have to consider nowadays', recently remarked the managing director of a large munitions works. It is this new conception that has given impetus to the development of the industrial canteen, now a feature of the munitions factory. In the opinion of Mr. John Hodge, M.P., Minister of Pensions, who since the war has acted for a long period as Minister of Labour, canteens in the engineering shops were 'necessary from the start', and one of the earliest investigations of the Health of Munition Workers' Committee was on the subject of the provision of employees' meals. The results of the inquiry are embodied in three valuable White Papers.[2] I have since been into many canteens connected with munitions works, and so far I have not met a factory manager who has regretted their introduction. Yet, only three or four years ago, the average employer would have told you that a dinner brought by a worker in a newspaper, or tied up in a red handkerchief, stored in the works, heated anywhere, and eaten near the machines, was 'quite all right': and, as for the boys in the factory, it was considered shameful to 'coddle them'; if necessary, a factory lad should 'eat his dinner on a clothes line'. To-day, when the utmost ounce of energy is needed from man and woman, and boy and girl, wherever munitions production is concerned, it is recognized that the quality and quantity of the workers' food matters, and that even the surroundings where the meal is partaken of counts in the conservation of the essential reserve of human energy and power of will. Thus, the best type of industrial canteen is designed not only 'to feed the brute', but to rest his mind. This is especially the case in certain Filling Factories, where immunity from ill-effects from the handling of T.N.T. has been found to depend largely on the physical fitness of the workers. In such factories, as well as in establishments where women are employed on night shifts, the provision of canteens is obligatory on employers and, indeed, recent legislation (the Police, Factories, &c. (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1916) has empowered the Home Secretary to require the occupiers of workshops and factories to make arrangements, where necessary, for the supply of meals for their employees. In the stress of warfare, when the demand for a maximum output is necessarily the pre-occupation of the factory manager, it was, however, recognized that the canteen must be State-aided. A Canteen Committee was therefore appointed under the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic). The work of this committee is twofold: it aids the factory management to open its own canteen or canteens, and it supervises and helps approved dining-rooms managed by voluntary bodies. In the first case, the expense for any necessary canteen is entirely borne by the Government, if the factory is a 'National' one. In Controlled Establishments, the employer is allowed to charge the cost of the canteen as 'a trade expense', a concession by which the State practically bears the expense out of funds which would otherwise reach the Exchequer. In the case of canteens provided by voluntary bodies, such as the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Church Army, the Salvation Army, the National People's Palace Association, Ltd., &c., the Board pays half the capital expenditure, where approved.[3] [Illustration: BALSMING LENSES] [Illustration: MAKING INSTRUMENT SCALES] The efforts of these voluntary bodies have been of the utmost service, especially at the outset of munitions production on a vast scale, when the factory proprietors, or directors, were unable to devote even a fraction of their time to matters not obviously connected with output. The devotion of the unpaid workers in the voluntary canteen has through the turmoil of war hardly received due recognition, but it is no less than that of the nurses in the military hospitals, or of the munitions workers themselves. Women of aristocratic families, accustomed to personal service from a large staff of domestic servants, and entirely unused to physical labour, as well as women hard-worked in their own homes or in livelihood occupations, have, since the need of the canteen was declared, come, by day and by night, to undertake the arduous duties of cooking and scrubbing for vast numbers of working-people. _Mr. Punch's_ delightful illustration, 'War, the Leveller', where the rough scullery-maid from the slums is depicted issuing the emphatic order to the well-bred marchioness, 'Nah then, Lady Montgummery Wilberforce, 'urry up with them plates',[4] is by no means a fancy picture of the hither side of canteen-life. In one factory, substantial meals have been provided daily by 17 voluntary assistants for some 1,200 workers; in another locality, the food of 2,000 to 3,000 munitions employees has been arranged by 23 volunteers; and in another establishment, 6,000 workers have been provided with standing-up refreshments by 17 voluntary helpers. The rapid growth of the canteen system during the past fifteen months, accompanied by the increasing difficulties of catering for vast numbers under war-time conditions, has, however, led to the transference of numbers of voluntary canteens to the care of the factory management. _General Principles_ Industrial canteens differ from one another in many respects, partly because there was at first no fund of common experience in this country from which to draw, and partly because hours of work, tastes and customs in industrial areas vary considerably. Hence, methods of administration and catering, found possible or popular in one canteen, are sometimes a complete failure when tried in other districts. In one canteen, with a seating capacity for 2,000 women, I found that three gallons of pickles were sold in pennyworths daily; in another district, the popular taste ran in the direction of jam tarts. Yet, even with the small store of experience so far accumulated, certain general principles at least as regards site, construction, equipment, and administration of the canteen have been evolved. For instance, as regards site, a gloomy dining-room is never popular. If possible, a garden outlook should be arranged, and at the least, the canteen walls should be of a restful colour. It seems obvious that if pictures are introduced, they should be varied and bright, yet I have seen one canteen of which the walls were covered at intervals with reproductions of the same uninteresting print. Another obvious point, too often neglected, is the insurance of good ventilation in canteen and kitchen. The dining-room should, if possible, provide separate accommodation for men and women, and should have a buffet-bar and serving-counter with separate hatchments for different items of the menu. Again, it is a matter of common consent that the 'ticket system' of payment for the food handed over the counter is the best. Ticket-offices, where the 'checks' are obtainable for cash, should be carefully placed with regard to entrance doors, serving-counters and dining-tables, so that the minimum time is expended in preliminaries by a _clientèle_ who has but a strict dinner-hour at its disposal. In a well-organized canteen I have seen over a thousand workers seated and served within ten minutes of the announcement of the dinner-hour within the factory shops. In the larger canteens, developments, as may be expected, run chiefly along the lines of labour-saving appliances. Electric washing-up machines, electric bacon-cutters, as well as electric bread-cutters, tea-measuring machines, counter hot-closets for warming food brought by employees may now be seen in many kitchens where the needs of thousands of diners must be considered. But it is perhaps in the smaller concerns that the development of the industrial canteen is most assured. Experiments can there be more easily tried, and if necessary, discarded, where the customers are counted by hundreds, rather than by thousands. From a tour of canteens, I select a couple of such instances. The other day I happened, during the dinner-hour, to be in a new munitions factory concerned with the production of magnetos, aero-engines, electric switches, and so on, work undertaken by men and women, boys and girls. The manager of this works has studied the labour question up and down the country, and has set down his conclusions, not on minute sheets, but in the bricks and mortar of new buildings, in green lawns and flower beds bright with colour, and in allotments round his shops. _The Worker's Oasis_ The canteen is a feature of the place. It stands apart from the factory, a long low building, one side looking on to a tennis court and the other on to homely but delightful vegetable plots. The workers' dining-room is divided down the centre: one side for the men, the other for the women. A serving-table, but no partition-wall, separates it from the kitchen, which, in its turn, is divided by further serving-tables from mess-rooms for the engineers and staff employees. The kitchen, in reality a series of ovens, stoves, and steamers, is a revelation of labour-saving appliances, heated by electricity. On the day of my visit there was not the slightest odour of cooking from these various utensils, although hot meals for some 250 persons were in preparation. The factory hooter 'buzzed'. The dinner hour, the workers' oasis, had arrived, yet there was no clatter of dishes, or bustle of serving-maids, in the canteens. An atmosphere of repose was as manifest as in a well-appointed reception-room of some stately English home. The workers evidently react to these conditions, and standing at the back of the kitchen I was quite unaware of the diner's entry. 'When do the people come in?' I asked from my shelter behind a huge steamer where puddings were rising to the occasion. 'A hundred men are already seated and served', was the amazing reply. They had entered through a side door leading out of the garden, had there purchased a 'check' for the value of the dinner required, and presenting the 'check' at the serving-counter, had received their portion, piping hot from the hot shelves fitted beneath. Picking up the necessary cutlery from an adjoining table, the customers had seated themselves at any special small marble-topped table of their fancy. Waitresses, some voluntary workers garbed in rose-coloured overalls and mob-caps, and some staff employees in white or blue uniforms, moved about amongst the tables, supplying small wants. Through the open windows floated the scent of hay and flowers; it seemed almost ludicrous to connect the scene with war and the manufacture of its engines of destruction. The quality of the food was excellent and the variety great. A dinner hour spent in such a canteen is a refreshment to both body and soul of the employees. In another instance, the firm have handed over the canteen and its management to a workers' committee upon which the managing director also sits. I noticed in this canteen various devices worthy of imitation, where catering is undertaken for large numbers. The method adopted, for example, of dividing the serving-counter into hatchments for the various items on the menu, and separating by rails the floor-space in front of each compartment, seems to economize both the time and patience of the customers. The note of economy with efficiency is emphasized in this, as in many canteens, and I was shown with pride some 'little brothers' on an adjoining piece of land--pigs that were fattening on the canteen 'waste'. These developments, started in munitions areas during the urgency of warfare, will, without doubt, have permanent importance in the days of peace, and it is probable that the munition workers' canteen, doubtingly adopted by employers some two years ago, is symptomatic of a revolution in the home life of the industrial worker, as well as of new methods of economy in the national supply of fuel and food. CHAPTER VIII: HOUSING BILLETING--TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION--PERMANENT ACCOMMODATION Of the indirect problems arising from a prolific output of munitions the most acute has undoubtedly been the affair of the housing of the workers. The opening of a new factory, or the conversion of existing works to the needs of the State, often involve the transference of thousands of workers, and in some cases the districts to which the stream of immigration is directed are already congested, and already suffering from inadequate housing accommodation. In one town in the North, for example, the population has since 1914 increased by immigration from 16,000 to 35,000; in another town, where the 1911 census showed a population of 107,821, an unexaggerated estimate gives the figure for the end of 1917 as 120,000; in other munition areas a similar inflation of population has taken place. The housing problem has been further complicated by the almost total prohibition of building during the war period, save for Government purposes. The effect of these conditions in the early days of the war was, as may be imagined, highly unsatisfactory to the residents in certain munition areas, as well as to the immigrant work-people. Overcrowding became rife; lodgers were at the mercy of unscrupulous landladies, and all the evils associated with bad housing conditions began to make their appearance. Then the Ministry of Munitions came to grips with the question, and although it remains a thorny subject, the activities of the Department may be fairly said to have accomplished a miracle in some areas in the housing of the munition workers. The infinite variety of local conditions, as well as the humanness of the workers, obviously complicate the matter, and while it has been found possible to synthesize the factory system of a given area, no stereotyped regulations can conceivably be produced to cover the accommodation of its employees. The problem is therefore attacked piece-meal, each local proposition being decided on its own merits. A broad guiding principle has, however, been educed wherever the housing situation occasioned by the output of munitions demands State intervention. In the first place, it is decided whether the needed accommodation can be met in part, or altogether, by existing houses--a system now sanctioned by the Billeting Act of May 1917. Secondly, when it is found necessary to provide further housing room, consideration is given as to whether new buildings shall be of a temporary or of a permanent type. _Billeting_ Chronologically, an authorized system of billeting munition workers has been the latest development in the State housing schemes, but even in the early days of the war this arrangement existed in embryo. Local committees were then appointed which, with the aid of the Employment Bureaux, compiled lists of suitable lodgings for immigrant women workers. From the earliest war period, too, provision was made to meet young women new-comers at railway stations and to place them, if necessary, in temporary unimpeachable lodgings, until permanent accommodation was available. This scheme has now developed into the regularized activities of a Billeting Board (established August 1917), working under powers given by the Billeting Act. Under this enactment, compulsory billeting is provided for, but in practice is not adopted, sufficient facilities having so far been forthcoming from voluntary sources. The Billeting Board works in hearty co-operation with local authorities and individuals, and has met with extraordinary success. In the first instance, two executive members of the Board proceed to a congested munitions area and, with local aid, institute an inquiry as to whether billeting can be successfully carried out. In such areas as the Clyde, or Woolwich, billeting would, for example, be out of the question, but in other localities, such as Barrow and Hereford, where public opinion ran that there was no further accommodation even for a stray cat, the Board has yet found suitable billets for 900 persons in Barrow and 1,200 in Hereford. The question of transit, it is true, is intimately connected with the housing problem, and through the action of the Billeting Board it has in many cases been possible to remove difficulties of locomotion, and hence to bring further accommodation within reach of the factories. The Board has also been enabled to form local committees on which sit representatives of each housing interest (e. g. landlady, locality, lodger), and it has authority to recover rent from defaulting tenants. These, and other powers, have resulted in throwing many additional apartments on to the market. Yet difficulties remain in the administration of the Act in that the industrial workers are under no discipline such as that applied to soldiers, and there is no local authority to compel a munitions worker either to go into a given billet, or to remain there when placed. The goodwill of the locality and of the employees has, however, been so great that the system works smoothly, and from August 1917 to December 31, 1917, 3,000 to 5,000 munition workers have been placed in existing houses. In a congested district where lodging accommodation is exhausted, the Billeting Board reports on the need for further houses, and at such centres as Barrow and Lincoln new houses are now being erected on their recommendation. _Temporary Accommodation_ Excluding the utilization of local lodgings and the adaptation of existing buildings such as Poor-Law structures, Elementary Schools, charitable institutions, three distinct types of provisional accommodation for munition workers have made their appearance: temporary cottages, hostels, and colonies. The temporary cottage corresponds fairly closely to the ordinary type of permanent industrial cottage, save that the former is built of wood or concrete and is usually one story instead of two; it contains three to five rooms, and is rented on the basis of about 5_s._ 6_d._ to 7_s._ 6_d._ per week for a three-roomed abode. Generally speaking, these rooms are allocated to married rather than to single women; sometimes the wife, as well as the husband, works in the neighbouring factory, but more usually the wife, housed in the temporary cottage, remains at home, housekeeping for the man worker. The unmarried girls and women workers in crowded districts are generally accommodated in hostels, or in colonies, the term used for a group of hostels. The hostel, which is designed to accommodate from 30 to 100 persons, is provided with its own kitchen, dining-room, and common-room, and to a certain extent life therein approximates to that of a large family. The Colony, or group of hostels, has been found convenient where a large number of women must be housed. Each hostel, or hutment, in the group is arranged for the sleeping accommodation of 100-130 persons, the dormitories being divided into cubicles (some single, some double), accommodation for bath-rooms being always made in these dormitory blocks. Under the Colony system, meals are usually partaken of in a separate building or buildings. The residents from all the hutments also meet in the recreation-room and in the laundry, common to all. Experience, however, teaches that each hostel should have its own common room and that a Colony should not shelter very large numbers. About 500 girls, in five hostels, seems to be the ideal number for effective home-making, yet we have large housing schemes for the accommodation of many thousands which are at present answering their purpose as a war-time measure. For the management of the Colony an exceptionally capable lady superintendent is needed, into whose hands usually falls the selection of the hutment matrons and their staffs, as well as the canteen managers and their subordinates. In the most developed Colonies a recreation officer is often appointed. I recall a visit to one of the largest Colonies for munition workers in the Midlands. The scheme embraces the housing and feeding of some 6,000 women, drawn from every part of the United Kingdom, indeed, possibly from every corner of the Empire. The staff, in all, comprises some 300 persons. Perfect harmony reigned, and the girls seemed thoroughly at home in their novel surroundings. Each girl can claim a separate cubicle, which is divided from the adjoining compartment by a wall and door. Here and there, indeed, the arrangement was varied and two friends--terrified at sleeping alone--had secured permission to pool their bedrooms and to arrange a double sleeping-room and dressing-room. The cubicle system is, notwithstanding, much appreciated by the woman, who, working in company of hundreds of her fellows, and sharing perhaps a common life for the first time, rejoices in the possession of some spot in which to express her inner self. In some cubicles in that Colony a desire for beauty asserted itself and the walls were gay with prints from illustrated papers; in others, dainty coloured curtains had been introduced and the locker was covered with a cloth to match. In another room, the owner had evidently a taste for embroidery, and all the toilet accessories bore this feminine touch. But, generally speaking, the chief feature I noticed in that, as well as in other Colonies where the cubicle system prevails, was the cleanliness and order of the apartments. A taste for purity is infectious, and it is unlikely that girls, having once come under an influence that induces them to leave their sleeping apartment immaculate before going to work before dawn, will ever again tolerate slum conditions. The many problems involved in the housing of these girls of various types are indeed almost lost sight of by the visitor, but, as a lady superintendent once reminded me, there are difficulties inherent in the job. Some girls will arrive with uncleanly habits, even when the medical officer has sorted out those unclean in person; others will, at first, show signs of violent antipathies and strange fears, and there is always the need for upholding an atmosphere of religious and racial toleration. In the Midlands Colony a system has been adopted of placing the bedrooms of girls from one part of the United Kingdom in the same corridor, the Irish in one wing, the Scotch in another, and so on, but in the other parts of the country I have found perfect harmony where such classification is not observed. [Illustration: PAINTING A SHIP'S SIDE IN DRY DOCK] [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF WOMEN AT WORK ON AIRCRAFT FABRIC] [Illustration: THE CANTEEN] The feeding of the hostel residents presents its own difficulties, especially in these days of war. In some hostels and colonies, such as the one in the Midlands, the residents take their meals in their own canteen; it being possible to supply the needs of a shift in the interval from work. In other hostels, arrangements are made by which meals can be had either at the hostel or the factory canteen. In these days of fluctuating food prices, it is difficult to indicate the cost of up-keep of a munition-workers' hostel, but, in general, it has not been found practicable to put the hostel on an entirely self-supporting basis. This is especially the case in the Government establishments, where the return on expended capital is at present only sought in increased munitions output. _Permanent Accommodation_ At first sight, the provision of temporary accommodation alone may appear the obvious method for the housing of munition workers. Cheaper and more rapid construction is obtainable by this method, and existing buildings may be adapted. But if, in an area of pre-war housing shortage, there is good prospect of permanent manufacturing activity, it is more often decided that permanent, rather than temporary, structures are provided. It may be of interest to note the methods that have been adopted by the State in the provision of permanent accommodation. These may be detailed under four heads: 1. In a certain number of cases loans have been made to Public Utility Societies for the construction of dwellings for munition workers. Such loans are conditioned after the manner already made familiar to the public by Garden Suburb and other Associations. 2. Loans have been made directly to certain individual firms to enable them to house their immigrant employees. These loans have been issued at the current rate of interest--usually 5 per cent.--and run, generally speaking, for a period of forty years. 3. In a few exceptional cases, certain private firms--now Controlled Establishments--are permitted to charge a part of the increase on the cost of building (due to war conditions) to that portion of the firm's profits which would otherwise have gone to the Exchequer. 4. A contribution is, in some instances, made by the State to certain local authorities of a part of the capital cost of building. In all cases this contribution is less than the estimated increase due to war conditions. The type of permanent building erected by such means is that which characterizes many of our newer industrial districts, namely a two-story brick cottage, containing two or three bedrooms, a living-room and a kitchen, a bath, in some cases a bath-room. Sometimes a complete village or township has arisen, as it were from the earth, to shelter the working population who have so willingly left their homes to further the common cause by land and sea. In another instance, a large National factory has been erected on an isolated waste in the North country. The workers come from long distances, and not only need accommodation, but some reasonable provision for recreation and the amenities of life. Beyond the great high road sweeping on to Scotland, some one- or two-roomed cottages, a village shop or two, and a few more imposing residences there was, in June 1915, nothing but bogland in the immediate neighbourhood of the site of this new factory. The landscape presented a view of coarse grass and brackish water; beyond that, beach and sea, and a horizon bounded by rugged mountains, capped in winter by snow. It needed courage, as well as genius, to undertake the transformation of such a desolate waste into surroundings which should offer a lure to industrial workers. But the work has been done in silence, quickly as well as efficiently, with imagination, as well as thoroughness, and with an eye to the future destiny of the place. By July 1915, the first huts were occupied, and by December 1917, when I was a privileged visitor, there had arisen a thriving busy township and a village some five miles beyond. Excellent railway communication between township, village, and factory has been established, many good roads have been built, there are permanent cottages, churches, a school, shops, a staff club, an institute, a large entertainment hall, a cinema house, and a central kitchen, providing cooked meals for all the workers in the factories, and raw food-stuff for hostels and huts. Little gardens surround the houses big and small, temporary or permanent, and allotments are in great request, and there is also provision for outdoor recreation, such as bowls, tennis, cricket, &c. The permanent brick cottages are built in blocks of twelve, which are now thrown together to form a hostel. The construction is so planned that ultimately these cottages can be re-separated for family use. There is housing accommodation for over 6,000 women operators, which was practically all in use. The task of supervising the home conditions of this army of women falls into the hands of a lady Welfare Superintendent, who keeps all the complicated machinery of hostels, huts, and lodgings in running order. The possibilities in the housing of industrial women away from their own homes have, I believe, never been so clearly demonstrated as in this town on the marshes. The lady superintendent who has pioneered this movement is of the opinion that its success is bound up with the fact that the hostels are limited to the accommodation of from 70 to 100 girls in each. Other key-notes to the prevailing happiness of the women residents are, I gathered, that a minimum number of rules are enforced and that the women are treated as responsible human beings. The elder women are often housed in bungalows under the care of a housekeeper-cook, and they greatly enjoy the greater independence and the appeal to their individuality possible in such surroundings. The hostels, at the time of my visit, were in most hospitable mood. It was the eve of Christmas, and festivities, tempered to war-time needs, were the order of the day. The sound of a piano and singing outside a certain hostel suggested a frolic within. We entered, the lady superintendent and myself. The lower floor had been converted into reception-rooms and supper was laid out on tables decorated with spoils from the hedge. Gleaming red berries and glistening holly-leaves were on walls and brackets and here and there a sprig of mistletoe placed in suitable places for 'auld lang syne'. There were present young men, as well as girls, and a lively game, 'the Duke of York', was in progress. Suddenly the singing and accompaniment came to a sudden halt and the whole of the company trouped in from adjoining rooms. A young girl came forward. 'We wish to take this opportunity', she said, 'of thanking our matron and our secretary for the most happy time we have had under this roof. We do it now because we hope not to be here next year, but instead to be welcoming our boys home from the Front'. It was a simple, spontaneous expression of the general emotion of the hostel residents in that area. Everywhere I found a similar joy of life among the workers: in the Institute clubs, where both girls and men were reading, studying, singing, and dancing; in the cinema hall, where the ever-popular 'movies' were taking place; and in the big recreation hall, where a weekly 'social' was being held. There, two girls provided the band, to which other girls danced with girls, or with men in khaki, or with factory workers in civilian dress. There was a healthy comradeship between girls and men and, when the hour of parting came there were leave-takings of which no one could be ashamed. Laughter and jollity in plenty, and snatches of song up and down the darkened streets, as group after group found its way home, but self-respect and dignity noticeably present. In a new town, emerging during the hurry and bustle of the war, amongst new occupations, at which women needs must wear a masculine costume, we have at least accomplished this: that the spirit of home-life, of joy, and of love has not been discouraged: rather has it been fostered, or rekindled, in these unaccustomed homes provided by the State. Indeed, many of the girls passing through this strange war-time adventure have assuredly gained by their pilgrimage precisely in those qualities most needed by the wives and mothers of the rising generation. It was an inspiring glimpse into a new industrial world, a portent, maybe, of the time to come. The words of a golden sonnet welled up: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. FOOTNOTES: [1] Welfare work has since been officially extended to factories other than those engaged in munitions production by Clause 7 of the Police, Factories, &c. (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (1916). [2] _Health of Munition Workers Committee_, Memorandum No. 3, Report on Industrial Canteens (Cd. 8133); Memorandum No. 6, Appendix to Memorandum No. 3, Canteen Construction and Equipment (Cd. 8199); Memorandum No. 19, Investigation of Workers' Food and Suggestions as to Dietary: Report by Leonard E. Hill, M.B., F.R.S. (Cd. 8798). [3] A Food Section of the Ministry of Munitions has since been established to carry on the work of the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic). [4] _Punch_, September 6, 1916. 
38932	----	STEEL The Diary of a Furnace Worker _By_ CHARLES RUMFORD WALKER [Illustration: Logo] THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON _Copyright, 1922, by_ CHARLES RUMFORD WALKER PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Foreword In the summer of 1919, a few weeks before the Great Steel Strike, I bought some second-hand clothes and went to work on an open-hearth furnace near Pittsburgh to learn the steel business. I was a graduate of Yale, and a few weeks before had resigned a commission as first-lieutenant in the regular army. Clean-up man in the pit was my first job, which I held until I passed to third-helper on the open-hearth. Later I worked in the cast-house, became a member of the stove-gang, and at length achieved the semi-skilled job of hot-blast man on the blast-furnace. I acquired the current Anglo-Hunky language and knew speedily the grind and the camaraderie of American steel-making. In these chapters I have put down what I saw, felt, and thought as a steel-worker in 1919. Steel is perhaps the basic industry of America. In a sense it is the industry that props our complex industrial civilization, since it supplies the steel frame, the steel rail, the steel tool without which locomotives and skyscrapers would be impossible. And in America it contains the largest known combination of management and capital, the United States Steel Corporation. Some appreciation of these things I had when I went to work in the steel business. It was clear that steel had become something of a barometer not only for American business but for American labor. I was keenly interested to know what would happen, and believed that basic industries like steel and coal were cast for leading rôles either in the breaking-up or the making-over of society. The book is written from a diary of notes put down in the evenings when I was working on day shifts of ten hours. Alternate weeks, I worked the fourteen-hour night shift, and spent my time off eating or asleep. The book is a narrative--heat, fatigue, rough-house, pay, as they came in an uncharted wave throughout the twenty-four hours. But it is in a sense raw material, I believe, that suggests the beginnings of several studies both human and economic. Mr. Walter Lippmann has recently pointed out that men do not act in accordance with the facts and forces of the world as it is, but in accordance with the "picture" of it they have in their heads.[1] Nowhere does the form and pressure of the real world differ more sharply from the picture in men's heads than among different social and racial groups in industry. Nor is anywhere the accuracy of the picture of more importance. An open-hearth furnace helper, working the twelve-hour day, and a Boston broker, owning fifty shares of Steel Preferred, hold, as a rule, strikingly different pictures of the same forces and conditions. But what is of greater importance is that director, manager, foreman, by reason of training, interest, or tradition, are often quite as unable to guess at the picture in the worker's head, and hence to understand his actions, as the more distant stockholder. Perhaps a technique may some day arise which will supply the executives of industry not only with the facts about employees in their varied racial and social groups but supply the facts with _due emphasis_ and in _three dimensions_ so that the controller of power may be able to see them as descriptive of men of like mind with himself. The conclusion most burned into my consciousness was the lack of such knowledge or understanding in the steel industry and the imperative need of securing it, in order to escape continual industrial war, and perhaps disaster. There are certain inferences, I think, like the above, that can be made from this record. But no thesis has been introduced and no argument developed. I have recorded the impressions of a complex environment, putting into words sight, sound, feeling, and thought. The book may be read as a story of men and machines and a personal adventure among them no less than as a study of conditions and a system. C. R. W. FOOTNOTE: [1] _Public Opinion_: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922. Contents I CAMP EUSTIS Bouton, Pennsylvania 1 II MOLTEN STEEL IN THE "PIT" An Initiation 16 III THE OPEN-HEARTH FURNACE Night-Shifts 30 IV EVERYDAY LIFE 45 V WORKING THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR SHIFT 62 VI BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP 81 VII DUST, HEAT, AND COMRADESHIP 96 VIII I TAKE A DAY OFF 114 IX "NO CAN LIVE" 127 EPILOGUE 141 STEEL I CAMP EUSTIS--BOUTON, PENNSYLVANIA A small torrent of khaki swept on to the ferryboat that was taking troops to the special train for Camp Merritt. They stood all over her deck, in uncomfortably small areas; there seemed to be no room for the pack, which perhaps you were expected to swallow. Faces were a little pale from seasickness, but carried a uniformly radiant expression, which proceeded from a lively anticipation of civilian happiness. The conversation was ejaculatory, and included slapping and digging and squeezing your neighbor. Men were saying over and over again: "This is about the last li'l war they'll ketch me for." I succeeded in getting beside the civilian pilot. "What's happening in America?" I asked. "Oh," he said, "it's a mess over here. There ain't any jobs, and labor is raisin' hell. Everybody that hez a job strikes." He looked out over the water at a tug hurrying past. "I don't know what we're comin' out at. Russia, mebbe." In the spring of the year Camp Eustis was an island of concrete roads and wooden barracks salvaged from an encroaching sea of mud. Its site had been selected at an immense distance from any village, or even any collection of human dwellings, for particular reasons. It was to contain the longest artillery range in the United States. After wallowing in bog road through Virginian forest, one came with a shock of relief to a wide, raised, concrete roadbed, which passed newly built warehouses and, after an eighth of a mile, curved into the centre of the camp. It was like any one of the score of mushroom military centres that grew up on American soil in the years from 1917 to 1919, except that there was an unusual abundance of heavy guns. They covered field upon field, opposite the ordnance warehouses, and their yellow and green camouflage looked absurdly showy in the spring sunshine. Mornings, there was apt to be a captive balloon or two afloat from the balloon school, against blue sky and white clouds; and the landscape held several gaunt observation towers, constructed of steel girders and rising from the forest to a height of seventy-five or eighty feet. The camp was crowded with returning overseas units, awaiting demobilization and praying earnestly for it day by day, as men pray for pardon. In a few weeks I should be out of this, going to work somewhere, wearing cits. What a variety of moods the world had split into, from the enormous tension that relaxed on the eleventh of November. Geographically the training-camp was two thousand miles from the devastations of Europe; and from the new forces that were destroying or renewing civilization, how many more? It seemed like the aftermath of an exciting play that had just been acted; waiting here was like staying to put away properties, and dismiss the actors. It occurred to me that the camp was at least ten thousand miles from America. There was one consolation in this interminable lingering amid the spring muds and rains of Virginia. Duties were light, and there were a hundred and fifty cavalry horses in the stables, needing exercise. Sometimes we went out on the drill-ground and were taught tricks by an old cavalry officer; or hurdles were set up and we practised jumping our horses. The roads were deeply gutted by spring rains and the pressure of heavy trucks, but there were wood-trails good to explore, and interesting objectives like Williamstown or Yorktown. I fell into doing my thinking in the saddle. Naturally I wondered about my new job--my civilian job. It was not just an ordinary change from one breadwinning place to another. It was a new job in a world never convertible quite to the one that had kindled the war. It was impossible not to feel that the civilized structure had shaken and disintegrated a bit, or to escape the sense of great powers released. I was unable to decide whether the powers were cast for a rôle of great destruction or of great renewal. Even in Eustis we received newspapers. The urge and groan of those powers naturally worked into phrases now and then, and even into special tightly worded formulæ. I remember newspaper ejaculations, professorial dissertations, orators' exaggerations: "Capital and labor--Labor in its place--The proletariat--A new order"--and so forth. I felt confused and distrustful in the face of phrases and of the implied doctrines, old and new. Besides the business of demobilizing the national army, the remaining regular officers and non-coms went into the school of fire, and practised observation of shots over a beautiful relief map of the "Chemin-des-Dames." This was the most warlike thing we did and continued for several months. One day I took a walk beside the ordnance warehouses, and looked over at the rows of guns stretching for a quarter of a mile beside railroad tracks. In a short time I would be turning my back on these complicated engines. I was even sorry about it, a little; I had spent so much sweat and brain learning about their crankinesses. In that civil life to follow, I began to see that I wanted two things: 1, a job to give me a living; 2, a chance to discover and build under the new social and economic conditions. I was twenty-five, a college graduate, a first-lieutenant in the army. In the civilian world into which I was about to jump, most of my connections were with the university I had recently left, few or none in the business world. Why not enlist, then, in one of the basic industries, coal, oil, or steel? I liked steel--it was the basic American industry, and technically and economically it interested me. Why not enlist in steel? Get a laborer's job? Learn the business? And, besides, the chemical forces of change, I meditated, were at work at the _bottom_ of society-- The next day I sent in the resignation of my commission in the regular army of the United States. Outside the car window, ore piles were visible, black stacks and sooty sheet-iron mills, coal dumps and jagged cuts in the hills against greenness and the meadows and mountains beyond. There were farms, here and there, but they seemed to have been let in by sufferance amid the primary apparatus of the steel-makers. What an amazingly primary thing steel had become in the civilization we called modern! Steel was the basic industry of America; but, more than that, it was, in a sense, the buttress, the essential frame, rather, of present-day life. It made rails, surgical instruments, the girders of skyscrapers, the tools which cut, bored, and filed all the other tools that made, in their turn, the material basis of our living. It was interesting to think that it contained America's biggest "trust," the greatest example of integration, of financial, of managerial combination, anywhere to be found. Steel was critical in America's future, wasn't it--critical for business, critical for labor? I met a salesman on the train, who was about to go into business for himself. "I intend to start out on a new tack," he said. He told me briefly his life-story, and how things were forcing him to start a new enterprise, alone. He was very much excited by the idea. He was going to quit his employer, having been with him twenty-nine years. "I'm getting a new job myself," I said; "I've just got out of the army." We both fell into silence, and thought of our own separate futures. What were a young man's chances in American business to-day? I thought of a book I had just been reading called, "The Age of Big Business." In it was the story of the first captains who saw a vision of immense material development, and with the utmost vigor and hardihood pushed on and marked the leading trails. But apparently the affair had been too roughly done, the structure too crudely wrought: machinery jarred, broke, threatened to bring life down in a rusty heap. "No, you are wrong," I fancied the business leader saying; "it is the agitator who, by dwelling on imaginary ills, has stirred up the masses of mankind." I gazed out of the window at the black mills as we passed them. I was about to learn the steel business. I knew perfectly well that the men who built this basic structure were as hardy and intelligent--no less and no more so, I hazarded--as this new generation of mine. But the job--difficult technical job though it was--appeared too simple in their eyes. "Build up business, and society will take care of itself," they had said. A partial breakdown, a partial revolution had resulted. Perhaps a thoroughgoing revolution threatened. I didn't know. I knew there was no "solution." There was nothing so neat as that for this multiform condition. But an _adjustment_, a _working arrangement_ would be found out, somehow, by my generation. I expected to discover no specific--no formula with ribbons--after working at the bottom of the mill. I did expect to learn something of the practical technique of making steel, and alongside it,--despite, or perhaps because of, an outsider's fresh vision,--some sense of the forces getting ready at the bottom of things to make or break society. Both kinds of education were certainly up to my generation. The train jarred under its brakes, and began to slow down. "Good luck," I said to the salesman; "I hope you make it all right." "Good luck," he said. The train stopped and I found the Bouton station, small and neatly built, of a gray stone, with deeply overhanging roof and Gothicized windows. It seemed unrelated to the rest of the steel community. On the right, across tracks, loomed a dark gathering of stacks arising from irregular acres of sheet-iron roofs. Smoke-columns of various texture, some colored gold from an interior light, streaked the sky immediately above the mill stacks. The town spread itself along a valley and on the sides of encircling hills on my left. In the foreground was Main Street, with stores and restaurants and a fruit-seller. I went across the street to explore for breakfast. "Can I look at the job?" I asked. "Sure," he said, "you can look at the job." I walked out of the square, brick office of the open-hearth foreman, and lost my way in a maze of railroad tracks, trestles, and small brick shanties, at last pushing inside a blackened sheet-iron shell, the mill. I entered by the side, following fierce white lights shining from the half-twilight interior. They seemed immensely brighter than the warm sun in the heavens. I was first conscious of the blaring mouths of furnaces. There were five of them, and men with shovels in line, marching within a yard, hurling a white gravel down red throats. Two of the men were stripped, and their backs were shiny in the red flare. I tried to feel perfectly at home, but discovered a deep consciousness of being overdressed. My straw hat I could have hurled into a ladle of steel. Some one yelled, "Watch yourself!" and I looked up, with some horror, to note half the mill moving slowly but resolutely onward, bent on my annihilation. I was mistaken. It was the charging-machine, rattling and grinding past furnace No. 7. The machine is a monster, some forty feet from head to rear, stretching nearly the width of the central open space in the mill. The tracks on which it proceeds go the whole length, in front of all the furnaces. I dodged it, or rather ran from it, toward what appeared open water, but found there more tracks for stumbling. An annoyed whistle lifted itself against the general background of noise. I looked over my shoulder. It relieved me to find a mere locomotive. I knew how to cope with locomotives. It was coming at me leisurely, so I gave it an interested inspection before leaving the track. It dragged a cauldron of exaggerated proportions on a car fitted to hold it easily. A dull glow showed from inside, and a swirl of sparks and smoke shot up and lost themselves among girders. The annoyed whistle recurred. By now the charging affair had lumbered past, was still threatening noisily, but was two furnaces below. I stepped back into the central spaces of the mill. The foreman had told me to see the melter, Peter Grayson. I asked a short Italian, with a blazing face and weeping eyes, where the melter was. He stared hostilely at me. "Pete Grayson," I said. "Oh, Pete," he returned; "there!" I followed his eyes past a pile of coal, along a pipe, up to Pete. He was a Russian, of Atlas build, bent, vast-shouldered, a square head like a box. He was lounging slowly toward me with short steps. Coming into the furnace light, I could see he was an old man with white hair under his cap, and a wooden face which, I was certain, kept a uniform expression in all weathers. "What does a third-helper do?" I asked when he came alongside. Pete spat and turned away, as if the question disgusted him profoundly. But I noticed in a moment that he was giving the matter thought. We waited two minutes. Finally he said, looking at me, "Why a third-helper has got a hell of a lot to do." He seemed to regard this quantitative answer as entirely satisfying. "I know," I said, "but _what_ in hell does he do?" He again looked at the floor, considered, and spat. "He works around the furnace," he said. I saw that I should have to accept this as a prospectus. So I began negotiations. "I want a job," I said. "I come from Mr. Towers. Have you got anything now?" He looked away again and said, "They want a man on the night-shift. Can you come at five?" My heart leaped a bit at "the night-shift." I thought over the hours-schedule the employment manager had rehearsed: "Five to seven, fourteen hours, on the night-week." "Yes," I said. We had just about concluded this verbal contract, when a chorus of "Heows" hit our eardrums. Men make such a sound in a queer, startling, warning way, difficult to describe. I looked around for the charging machine, or locomotive, but neither was in range. "What are they 'Heowing' about?" I thought violently to myself. But Pete had already grabbed my arm with a hand like a crane-hook. "Want to watch y'self," he said; "get hurt." I saw what it was, now: the overhead crane, about to carry over our heads a couple of tons of coal in a huge swaying box. I looked around a little more before I left, trying to organize some meaning into the operations I observed; trying to wonder how it would be to take a shovel and hurl that white gravel into those red throats. I said to myself: "Hell! I guess I can handle it," and thought strongly on the worst things I had known in the army. As I stood, a locomotive entered the mill from the other end, and went down the track before the furnaces. It was dragging flat-cars, with iron boxes laid crosswise on them, as big as coffins. I went over and looked carefully at the train load, and at one or two of the boxes. They were filled with irregular shapes of iron, wire coils, bars, weights, sheets, fragments of machines, in short--scrap. "This is what they eat," I thought, glancing at the glowing doors; "I wonder how many tons a day." I waited till the locomotive came to a shaken stop in front of the middle furnace, then left the mill by the tracks along which it had entered. I followed them out and along a short bridge. A little way to my right was solid ground--the yards, where I had been. Back of Mr. Towers's little office were more mills. I picked out the power house--half a city block. Behind them all were five cone-shaped towers, against the sky, and a little smoke curling over the top--the blast-furnaces. Behind me the Bessemer furnace threw off a cloud of fire that had changed while I was in the mill from brown to brownish gold. In front, and to my left, the tracks ran on the edge of a sloping embankment that fell away quickly to a lower level. Fifty yards from the base was the blooming-mill, where the metal was being rolled into great oblong shapes called "blooms." A vague red glow came out of its interior twilights. Down through the railroad ties on which I walked was open space, twenty feet below. Two workmen were coming out with dinner-buckets. It must be nearly twelve. I had a curiosity to know the arrangement and workings of the dark mill-cellar from which they came. Turning back on the open-hearth mill, when I had crossed the bridge, I could see that it extended itself, in a sort of gigantic lean-to shelter, over what the melter had called the "pit." There was a crane moving about there, and more centres of light, which I took to be molten steel. I wondered about that area, too, and what sort of work the men did. When I reached the end of the track, I thought to myself: "I go to work at five o'clock. How about clothes?" No one in the mill wore overalls, except carpenters and millwrights, and so on. The helpers on the furnaces were clad in shapeless, baggy, gray affairs for trousers, and shirts were blue or gray, with a rare khaki. Hats were either degraded felts, or those black-visor effects--like locomotive engineers. The twelve-o'clock whistle blew. A few men had been moving toward the gate slowly for minutes. The whistle sent them at top walking-speed. I stared at them to assure myself as to the correct dress for steel makers. Main Street began at the tracks, and ran straight through the town, mounting the hills as it went. At the railroad end was the Hotel Bouton, where I had breakfasted. Beside it was an Italian fruit store sprawling leisurely over the sidewalk, and a Greek restaurant, one of four. The Greeks monopolized the feeding of Bouton. A block farther, on the right, I ran into a clothing-store, a barber-shop, and two rudimentary department stores. Then, on the same side, a finished city block, looking queer and haughty amid its village companions. "What's that?" I asked a strolling, raw-boned Slav. "Comp'ny store," he said. I passed a one-story movie "palace," almost concealed behind chromatic advertising, and then the street twisted and I entered the "American quarter." Half a mile of neat, slightly varying brick houses, with lawns fifteen by twenty, and children in such quantity as seriously to menace automobiles. I looked at the numbers with growing interest, to discover in which I should go to bed to-morrow morning at 7.30. The employment manager had given me the number 343 to try. Here it was, on the right, quite like the others, and, I guessed, about twenty minutes from the mill. Calculation of the rising-times for future night-shifts came into my mind. I was shown the back room on the second floor--a very good room, with a big bed, and two windows. "You can see our garden," said Mrs. Farrell standing at one of the windows. I looked out and found the most intensively cultivated twenty-foot plot I had ever seen or imagined. Behind was the back road and a mud cliff. The room seemed a little extravagant for a third-helper, but I took it, in order to have a place for the night, and contracted to pay four dollars a week. I walked through a street where the prices of clothing were moderate, but where there seemed a dearth of second-hand shops. In one store were green suits, belted, and hung on forms. They had the close-fitting waist, and were marked, "Style Plus Garments: Our Special Price, $15.00." The proprietor, who stood in the doorway, to be handy for collaring the prospective customer, rushed out at me, hands threatening. He was of the prevailing racial type. "Fix you up wid a dandy suit," he said. "What I am looking for," I said, "is something second-hand. Do you have any?" I shot this out partly as a check. "Old man upstairs, fix you up. That door." I went through that door and up two flights, to a room containing an old man, a sewing machine, and a large table covered with old clothing. "I'm looking for something for working-clothes," I said; "second-hand coat and pants." He lifted a number from the tangled mass of garments, and displayed them. They appeared to me too clean, too new, too dressy. "No," I said, "not that." He searched again and came up with a highly respectable blue coat, with a mere raveling on one sleeve. "No," I said, "I'll find one." I fished very deeply, and caught some green pants, evidently "old" and spattered with white paint on the knees. He hastened to point out the white paint. I tried to explain that I liked a little white paint on my clothes, but saw I was unconvincing. I finally bought the suit with a sort of violence for two dollars, and left with a sense of fortunate escape. Now for a hat. Two blocks down the street I found one, somewhat soiled and misshapen. "I'll take that," I said. The clerk lifted it, and, when I was fumbling for money, brushed off a vast portion of the dirt, and reshaped it into smooth, luxuriant curves. But still I bought the hat. "At any rate," I thought, "I can restore the thing." II MOLTEN STEEL--AN INITIATION At four o'clock I put on my paint-spattered pants, the coat with a conspicuous hole near one of the buttons, and my green hat. I climbed the little hill before the gate, among leisurely first arrivals, and found myself attracting no attention whatsoever. I felt for the brass check in my shirt pocket, found it, and rebuttoned the pocket. The guard peered into my face, as if he were going to ask for a pass, but didn't. I walked the four hundred yards to the open-hearth, and noticed clearly for the first time the yard of the blooming-mill. Here varied shapes of steel, looking as if they weighed several thousand pounds each, were issuing from the mill on continuous treads, and moving about the yard in a most orderly, but complex manner. Electric cranes were sweeping over the quarter-acre of yard-space, and lifting and piling the steel swiftly and precisely on flat cars. I entered the open-hearth mill by the tracks that ran close to the furnaces. The mill noises broke on me: a moan and rattle of cranes overhead, fifty-ton ones; the jarring of the train-loads of charge-boxes stopping suddenly in front of Number 4; and minor sounds like chains jangling on being dropped, or gravel swishing out of a box. I was conscious of muscles growing tense, in the face of this violent environment, a somewhat artificial and eager calm. I walked with excessive firmness, and felt my personality contracting itself into the mere sense of sight and sound. I looked for Pete. "He's in his shanty--over there," said an American furnace-helper, who was getting into his mill clothes. I went after Pete's shanty. It was a sheet-iron box, 12 by 12, midway down the floor, near a steel beam. Pete was coming out, buttoning the lower buttons of a blue shirt. He looked through my head and passed me, much as he had passed the steel beam. With two or three steps I moved out and blocked his way. He looked at me, loosened his face, and said very cheerfully: "Hello." "I've come to work," I said. "Here," he said, "you'll work th' pit t' night. Few days, y' know, get used ter things." He led the way to some iron stairs, and we went down together into that darkened region under the furnaces, about whose function I had speculated. To the left I could make out tracks. Railroads seem to run through a steel mill from cellar to attic. And at intervals, from above the tracks, torrents of sparks swept into the dark, with now and then a small stream of yellow fire. We stumbled over bricks, mud, clay, a shovel, and the railroad track. In front of a narrow curtain of molten slag, falling on the floor, we waited for some moments. We were under the middle furnaces, I calculated. Gradually the curtain ceased, and Pete leaped under the hole from which it had come. "Watch yourself," he said. I followed him with a broad jump, and a prayer about the falling slag. We came out into the pit, which had so many bright centres of molten steel that it was lighter than outdoors. I watched Pete's back chiefly, and my own feet. We kept stepping between little chunks of dark slag, which made your feet hot, and close to a bucket, ten feet high, which gave forth smoke. Wheelbarrows we met, with and without men, and metal boxes, as large as wagons, dropped about a dirt floor. We avoided a hole with a fire at its centre. At last, at the edge of the pit, near more tracks, we ran into the pit gang: eight or ten men, leaning on shovels and forks and blinking at the molten metal falling into a huge bucket-like ladle. "Y' work _here_," said Pete, and moved on. I remember feeling a half-pleasurable glow as I looked about the strenuous environment, of which I was to become a part--a glow mixed with a touch of anxiety as to what I was up against for the next fourteen hours. Two of the eight men looked at me, and grinned. I grinned back and put on my gloves. "No. 6 furnace?" I asked, nodding toward the stream. "Ye-ah," said the man next me. He was a cleanly built person, in loose corduroy pants, blue shirt open at his neck. Italian. He grinned with extraordinary friendliness, and said, "First night, this place?" "Yes," I returned. "Goddam hell of a ---- job," he said, very genially. We both turned to look at the stream again. For ten minutes we stood and stared. Two men lit cigarettes, and sat on a wheelbarrow; four of the others had nodded to me; the other three stared. I was eager to organize into reasonableness a little of this strenuous process that was going forward with a hiss and a roar about me. "That's the ladle?" I said, to start things. "Ye-ah, w'ere yer see metal come, dat's spout, crane tak' him over pour platform, see; pour man mak li'l hole in ladle, fill up moul'--see de moul' on de flat cars?" The Italian was a professor to me. I got the place named and charted in good shape before the night was out. The pit was an area of perhaps half an acre, with open sides and a roof. Two cranes traversed its entire extent, and a railway passed through its outer edge, bearing mammoth moulds, seven feet high above their flat cars. Every furnace protruded a spout, and, when the molten steel inside was "cooked," tilted backward slightly and poured into a ladle. A bunch of things happened before that pouring. Men appeared on a narrow platform with a very twisted railing, near the spout, and worked for a time with rods. They prodded up inside, till a tiny stream of fire broke through. Then you could see them start back in the nick of time to escape the deluge of molten steel. The stream in the spout would swell to the circumference of a man's body, and fall into the ladle, that oversized bucket thing, hung conveniently for it by the electric crane. A dizzy tide of sparks accompanied the stream, and shot out quite far into the pit, at times causing men to slap themselves to keep their clothing from breaking out into a blaze. There were always staccato human voices against the mechanical noise, and you distinguished by inflection, whether you heard command, or assent, or warning, or simply the lubrications of profanity. As the molten stuff rose toward the top of the ladle, curdling like a gigantic pot of oatmeal, somebody gave a yell, and slowly, by an entirely concealed power, the 250-ton furnace lifted itself erect, and the steel stopped flowing down the spout. But it splashed and slobbered enormously in the ladle at this juncture; a few hundred pounds ran over the edge to the floor of the pit. This, when it had cooled a little, it would be our job to clean up, separating steel scrap from the slag, and putting it into boxes for remelting. When a ladle was full, the crane took it gingerly in a sweep of a hundred feet through mid-air, and, as Fritz said, the men on the pouring platform released a stopper from a hole in the bottom, to let out the steel. It flowed out in a spurting stream three or four inches thick, into moulds that stood some seven feet high on flat cars. "Clean off the track on Number 7, an' make it fast," from the pit boss, accompanied by a neat stream of tobacco juice, which began to steam vigorously when it struck the hot slag at his feet. We passed through to the other side of the furnaces, by going under Number 6, a bright fall of sparks from the slag-hole just missing the heels of the last man. "Isn't that dangerous and unnecessary?" I said to myself, angrily. "Why do we have to dodge under that slag-hole?" We moved in the dark along a track that turned in under Seven, into a region of great heat. Before us was a small hill of partially cooled slag, blocking the track. It was like a tiny volcano, actively fluid in the centre, with the edges blackened and hard. I found out very quickly the why of this mess. The furnace is made to rock forward, and spill out a few hundred pounds of the slag that floats on top. A short "buggy" car runs under, to catch the flow. But somebody had blundered--no buggy was there when the slag came. "Get him up queek, and let buggy come back for nex' time," explained an Italian with moustachios, who carried the pick. "Huh, whatze matter goddam first-helper, letta furnace go?" he added angrily. "Lotza work." This job took us three hours. The Italian went in at once with the pick, and loosened a mass of cinder near one of the rails. Fritz and I followed up with shovels, hurling the stuff away from the tracks. The slag is light, and you can swing a fat shovelful with ease; but mixed with it are clumps of steel that follow the slag over the furnace doors. It grew hotter as we worked in--three inches of red heat, to a slag cake six inches thick. "Hose," said someone. The Italian found it in back of the next furnace, and screwed it to a spigot between the two. We became drowned in steam. We had been at it about an hour and a half, and I was shoveling back loose cinder, with a little speed to get it over with. "Rest yourself," commanded Moustachios. "Lotza time, lotza time." I leaned on my shovel and found rather mixed feelings rising inside me. I was a little resentful at being told what to do; a little pleased that I was up, at least, to the gang standard; a little in doubt as to whether we ought not to be working harder; but, on the whole, tired enough to dismiss the question and lean on my shovel. The heat was bad at times (from 120 to 130 degrees when you're right in it, I should guess). It was like constantly sticking your head into the fireplace. When you had a cake or two of newly turned slag, glowing on both sides, you worked like hell to get your pick work done and come out. I found a given amount of work in heat fatigued at three times the rate of the same work in a cooler atmosphere. But it was exciting, at all events, and preferable to monotony. We used the crowbar and sledge on the harder ledges of the stuff, putting a loose piece under the bar and prying. When it was well cleared, a puffy switch-engine came out of the dark from the direction of Number 4, and pushed a buggy under the furnace. The engineer was short and jolly-looking, and asked the Italians a few very personal questions in a loud ringing voice. Everyone laughed, and all but Fritz and I undertook a new cheekful of "Honest Scrap." I smoked a Camel and gave Fritz one. Then Al, the pit boss, came through. He was an American, medium husky, cap on one ear, and spat through his teeth. I guessed that Al somehow wasn't as hard-boiled as he looked, and found later that he was new as a boss. I concluded that he adopted this exterior in imitation of bosses of greater natural gifts in those lines, and to give substance to his authority. He used to be a workman in the tin mill. "All done? If the son of a ---- of a first-helper on the furnace had any brains ..." and so forth. "Now get through and clean out the goddam mess in front." We went through, and Fritz used the pick against some very dusty cinder that was entirely cool, and was massed in great piles on the front side of the slag-hole. "Getta wheelbarrow, _you_." I started for the wheelbarrow, just the ghost of a resentment rising at being "ordered about" by a "Wop" and then fading out into the difficulties I had in finding the wheelbarrow. Two or three things that day I had been sent for--things whose whereabouts were a closed book. "Where the devil," I muttered to myself, violently disturbed, "are wheelbarrows?" I found one, at last, near the masons under Number 4, and started off. "Hey, what the hell? what the hell?" So much for that wheelbarrow. I found another, behind a box, near Number 8, and pushed it back over mud, slag, scrap, and pipes and things. I never knew before what a bother a wheelbarrow is on an open-hearth pit floor. Only four of us stayed for work under Number 7, a German laborer and I coöperating with shovel and wheelbarrow on the right-hand cinder pile. We had been digging and hauling an hour, and it was necessary to reach underneath the slag-hole to get at what was left. I always glanced upward for sparks and slag when shoveling, and allowed only my right hand and shovel to pass under. Just as arm and shovel went in for a new lot Fritz yelled, "Watch out!" I pulled back with a frog's leap, and dodged a shaft of fat sparks, spattering on the pit floor. A second later, the sparks became a tiny stream, the size of a finger, and then a torrent of molten slag, the size of an arm. The stuff bounded and splashed vigorously when it struck the ground. It didn't get us, and in a second we both laughed from a safe distance. "Goddam slag come queek," said Fritz, grinning. "How you like job?" he added. Before I had any chance to discuss the nuances of a clean-up's walk in life, Fritz was pointing out a new source of molten danger. We were standing now in the main pit, beyond the overhanging edge of the furnace. "Look out now, zee!" said Fritz, pointing upward. Almost over our head was Number 7's spout, and, dribbling off the end, another small rope of sparks. We fell over each other to the pit's edge, stopping when we reached tracks. Looking back at once, we saw that the stream had thickened like the other in the slag-hole. But here it was molten steel, and with a long drop of thirty feet. The rebound of the thudding molten metal sent it off twenty-five or thirty feet in all directions. Three different groups of men were backing off toward the edge of the pit. The stream swelled steadily till it reached the circumference of a man's body, and fell in a thudding shaft of metallic flame to the pit's floor. Spatterings went out in a moderately symmetrical circle forty feet across. The smaller gobs of molten stuff made minor centres of spatter of their own. It was a spectacle that burned easily into memory. The gang of men at the edge of the pit watched the thing with apparent enjoyment. I wondered slowly two things: one, whether anyone ever got caught under such a molten Niagara, and two, whether the pit was going to have a steel floor before it could be stopped. How could it be stopped, anyway? The craneman had been busy for some minutes picking up a ladle from Number 4, and at that instant he swung it under, and the process of steel-flooring ceased.[2] What the devil had happened? I talked with everybody I could as they broke up at the pit's edge. It was a rare thing I learned: the mud and dolomite (a limestone substance) in the tap-hole had not been properly packed, and broke through. My companions told me about another occasion, some years before, when molten steel got loose. It happened on the Bessemer furnaces, and the workers hadn't either the luck or agility of ourselves. It caught twenty-four men in the flow--killed and buried them. The company, with a sense of the proprieties, waited until the families of the men moved before putting the scrap, which contained them, back into the furnace for remelting. As I ate three bowls of oatmeal at the Greek's, at 7.15, I thought, "Those fellows do these shifts, year after year. What does the heat, and the danger, and the work do to them? Maybe they 'get used to' the whole business. Will I?" I went to bed at 8.05, and all impressions faded from consciousness, except weariness, and lame arms, and a burn on each ankle. After two or three days in the pit, I began to know the gang a little by name and character. There was Marco, a young Croat of twenty-four, who had started to teach me Croatian in return for some necessary American; Fritz, a German with the Wanderlust; Adam, an aristocratic person, very mature, and with branching moustachios; Peter, a Russian of infinite good-nature; and a quiet-eyed Pole, who was saving up two hundred dollars to go to the old country. For several days it was impossible to break into Adam's circle of friends; he would talk and work only with veteran clean-ups, and showed immense pomposity in a knowing way of hooking up slag and scrap to the crane. One day, however, I found him working alone with a wheelbarrow, cleaning cinder from around a buggy car under furnace No. 8. He looked over at me as I passed, and yelled: "Hey, you!" He wanted my assistance on the wheelbarrow. We worked together for an hour or so, and I felt that perhaps the ice was broken. "Did you ever work on the floor?" I asked. "Two years," he said; "no good." A little later I talked to Marco about him. "Hell," he said, "he got fired from furnace, for too goddam lazy." I felt less hurt at his snobbishness after that. Marco and I became good chums. We sat on a wheelbarrow one day, after finishing a job on the track under Six. "You teach me American," he said; "I teach you Croatian." "Damn right," I said; and we began on the parts of our body, and the clothing we wore, drawing out some of the words in the dirt with a stick, or marking them with charcoal on a board. "Did you ever go to school in America?" I asked. "Three month, night school, Pittsburgh. Too much, work all day, twelve hour, go to school night," he said. "Do you save any money? Got any in the bank?" I asked, feeling a little fatherly, and wondering on the state of his economic virtues. "Hell, no," he said; "I don' want money in bank, jes nuff get along on." I talked to a good many on the savings question, and found the young men very often didn't save, but "bummed round," while practically all the "Hunkies" of twenty-eight or thirty and over saved very successfully. A German who put scrap in the charge-boxes, after the magnet had dropped it, had saved $4000 and invested it. One man said to me: "A good job, save money, work all time, go home, sleep, no spend." Speaking of the German, "He no drink, no spend." The savers, I think, are apt to be the single men who return to their own country in ten or fifteen years. I came out of the mill one morning after a night-shift, with an appetite that made me run from the railroad bridge to Main Street. I went to the Hotel Bouton, where the second-helper on Eight usually eats, and started at the beginning, with pears. I ate the cereal, eggs, potatoes, toast, coffee, and griddle-cakes, taking seconds and thirds when I could negotiate them--the Bouton is stingy under a new management, probably finding that steel-workers eat up the profit. I got up from the table feeling as hungry as when I sat down, and went to the restaurant just two doors below--unpalatable, but serving fairly large portions. There I had another breakfast: coffee, oatmeal, eggs. I felt decidedly better after that, and started home in good humor. But by the time I reached the window of Tom, the Wiener man, I felt that there was room for improvement, and looked in my pocketbook to see if I had any breakfast money left. I hadn't a cent, but there were quantities of two-cent stamps. I went in and sat down at Tom's counter, where I ate a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk. Then I opened my purse. In a moment or two I convinced Tom that two-cent stamps were good legal tender, and went home. FOOTNOTE: [2] I learned later the flow could have been stopped by simply tilting back the furnace, but the craneman was ready and so brought the ladle up. III THE OPEN-HEARTH--NIGHT-SHIFTS "Have a cigarette, Pete," I said, offering a Camel to a very fat and boyish-looking Russian. "No t'ank." "What, no smoke?" I asked, incredulous. "No, no smoke." "No drink?" I asked, wondering if I had found a Puritan. "Oh, _drink_" he said with profound emphasis; and continuing, he told me of other solaces he found in this mortal life. "Look!" cried some one. Herb, the craneman, in a fit of extreme playfulness had thrown some wet green paint forty feet through the air at the pit boss, greening the whole side of his face. Al was doing a long backward dodge, and slapping a hand to his painted face, supposing it a draught of hot metal. When he perceived that he wasn't killed, he picked up cinder-hunks and bombarded the crane-box. It sounded like hail on tin. Pete, the Russian melter, came out on the gallery behind the furnaces, and I could see by the way he looked the pit over, that he was picking a man for furnace work. Somebody had stayed out and they were short a helper. He looked at the fat workman beside me, and then grunted. This was the third time he had picked Russians in preference to the rest of us, who are Serbian, Austrian, and American. The next day I went on the floor, and tackled Pete. "How about a chance on the floor?" I said, standing in front of him to keep him from lurching away. "Y' get chance 'nuff, don' worry." "If I can't get a crack at learning this game in Bouton, I'll go somewhere I can," I said, boiling up a little. Dick Reber, the Pennsylvania-Dutch melter, came up. "I want a chance on the floor," I said. "All right, boy, go on Number 7 to-day." I made all speed to Number 7. "Is he doing that," I thought, as I picked up my shovel, "because I'm an American?" I looked up and saw the big ladle-bucket pouring hot metal into a spout in the furnace-door, accompanied by a great swirl of sparks and flame, spurting upward with a sizzle. "At last," I said, "I'm going to make steel." The steel starts in as "scrap" in the mill-yard. Scrap from anywhere in America; a broken casting, the size of a man's trunk, down to corroded pipe, or strips the thickness of your nail, salvaged in bales. The overhead crane gathers them all from arriving flat cars by a magnet as big as a cart wheel, and the pieces of steel leap to meet it with apparent joy, stick stoutly for a moment, and fall released into iron charge-boxes. By trainloads they pass out of the stockyard and into the mill, where the track runs directly in front of the furnace-doors. There the charging-machine dumps them quickly into the belly of the furnace. It does its work with a single iron finger, about ten feet long and nearly a foot thick, lifting the box by a cleat on the end, and poking it swiftly into the flaming door. Old furnaces charged by hand hold from twenty-five to thirty-five tons; new ones, up to two hundred and fifty. That is the first step in starting to make a "heat," which means cook a bellyful to the proper temperature for steel, ready to tap into a ladle for ingot-making. Next comes "making front-wall," which signifies that no self-respecting brick, clay, or any other substance, can stand a load of metal up to steel-heat without being temporarily relined right away for the next draft of flame. We do that relining by shoveling dolomite into the furnace. The official known as second-helper wields a Brobdingnag spoon, about two inches larger than a dinner-plate and fifteen feet long, which a couple of third-helpers, among them myself, fill with dolomite. By use of the spoon, he carefully spreads the protection over the front-wall. But the sporting job on the open-hearth comes a bit later, and consists in "making back-wall." Then all the men on the furnace and all the men on your neighbor's furnace form a dolomite line, and marching in file to the open door, fling their shovelfuls across the flaming void to the back-wall. It's not a beginner's job. You must swing your weapon through a wide arc, to give it "wing," and the stuff must hop off just behind the furnace-door and rise high enough to top the scrap between, and land high. I say it's not a beginner's job, though it's like golf--the first shovelful may be a winner. What lends life to the sport is the fact that everybody's in it--it's the team play of the open-hearth, like a house-raising in the community. Another thing giving life is the heat. The mouth of the furnace gapes its widest, and you must hug close in order to get the stuff across. Every man has deeply smoked glasses on his nose when he faces the furnace. He's got to stare down her throat, to watch where the dolomite lands. It's up to him to place his stuff--the line isn't marching through the heat to warm its hands. Here's a tip I didn't "savvy" on my first back-wall. Throw your left arm high at the end of your arc, and in front of your face; it will cut the heat an instant, and allow you to see if you have "placed" without flinching. It's really not brawn,--making back-wall,--but a nimble swing and a good eye, and the art of not minding heat. After that is done, she can cook for a while and needs only watching. The first-helper gives her that, passing up and down every few minutes to look through the peepholes in her furnace-doors. He puts his glasses down on his nose, inspects the brew, and notices if her stomach's in good shape. If the bricks get as red as the gas flame, she's burning the living lining out of her. But he keeps the gas blowing in her ends, as hot as she'll stand it without a holler. On either end the gas, and on top of it the air. The first-helper, who is cook of the furnace, makes a proper mixture out of them. The hotter he can let the gas through, the quicker the brew is cooked, and the more "tonnage" he'll make that week. "Get me thirty thousand pounds," said the first-helper when I was on the furnace that first night. Fifteen tons of molten metal! I was undecided whether to bring it in a dipper or in my hat. But it's no more than running upstairs for a handkerchief in the bureau. You climb to a platform near the blower, where the stuff is made, and find a man there with a book. Punch him in the arm and say, "Thirty thou' for Number 7." He will swear moderately and blow a whistle. You return to the furnace, and on your heels follows a locomotive dragging a bucket, the ladle, ten feet high. Out of it arise the fumes of your fifteen tons of hot metal. The overhead crane picks it up and pours it through a spout into the furnace. As it goes in, you stand and direct the pouring. The craneman, as he tilts or raises the bucket, watches you for directions, and you stand and make gentle motions with one hand, thus easily and simply controlling the flux of the fifteen tons. That part of the job always pleased me. It was like modeling Niagara with a wave of the hand. Sometimes he spills a little, and there is a vortex of sparks, and much molten metal in front of the door to step on. She cooks in anywhere from ten hours to twenty-four. The record on this floor is ten, which was put over by Jock. He has worked on most of the open-hearths, I learn, from Scotland to Colorado. When it's time for a test, the first-helper will take a spoon about the size of your hand and scoop up some of the soup. But not to taste. He pours it into a mould, and when the little ingot is cool, breaks it with a sledge. Everyone on the furnace, barring myself, looks at the broken metal and gives a wise smile. I'm not enough of a cook. They know by the grain if she has too much carbon or needs more, or is ready to tap, or isn't. With too much carbon, she'll need a "jigger," which is a few more tons of hot metal, to thin her out. That's about the whole game--abbreviated--up to tap-time. It takes, on an average, eighteen hours, and your shift may be anything from ten to twenty-four. Of course, there are details, like shoveling in fluor-spar to thin out the slag. Be sure you clear the breast of the furnace, with your shovelful, when you put that into her. Spar eats the dolomite as mice eat cheese. At intervals the first-helper tilts the whole furnace forward, and she runs out at the doors, which is to drain off the slag that floats on top of the brew. But after much weariness it's tap-time and the "big boss" comes to supervise. Move aside the shutters covering the round peepholes on her doors, at this time, and you'll see the brew bubbling away like malt breakfast-food ready to eat. But there's a lot of testing before serving. When it is ready, you run to the place where you hid your little flat manganese shovel and take it to the gallery back of the furnace, near the tap-spout. There you can look down on the pit strewn with those giant bucket-ladles and sprinkled with the clean-up men, who gather painfully all that's spilled or slobbered of hot metal, and save it for a second melting. The whole is swept by the omnipresent crane. At a proper and chosen instant, the senior melter shouts, "Heow!" and the great furnace rolls on its side on a pair of mammoth rockers, and points a clay spout into the ladle held for it by the crane. Before the hot soup comes rushing, the second-helper has to "ravel her out." That function of his almost destroyed my ambition to learn the steel business. Raveling is poking a pointed rod up the tap-spout, till the stopping is prodded away. You never know when the desired but terrific result is accomplished. When it is, he retires as you would from an exploding oil-well. The brew is loose. It comes out, red and hurling flame. Into the ladle it falls with a hiss and a terrifying "splunch." The first and second helpers immediately make matters worse. They stagger up with bags (containing fine anthracite) and drop them into the mess. They have a most damning effect. The flames hit the roof of the pit, and sway and curl angrily along the frail platform on which you stand. Some occult reasoning tells them how many of these bags to drop in, whether to make a conflagration or a moderate house-burning. The melter waits a few minutes and then shouts your cue. You and another helper run swiftly along the gallery to the side of the spout. At your feet is a pile of manganese, one of the heaviest substances in the world, and seeming heavier than that. It's your job and your helper's to put the pile into the cauldron. And you do it with all manner of speed. The tap stream--at steel heat--is three feet from your face, and gas and sparks come up as the stream hits the ladle. You're expected to get it in fast. You do. There are almost always two ladles to fill, but you have a "spell" between. When she's tapped, you pick up a piece of sheet iron and cover the spout with it. That's another job to warm frost-bitten fingers. Use gloves and wet burlap--it preserves the hands for future use. One more step, and the brew is an ingot. There are several tracks entering the pit, and at proper seasons a train of cars swings in, bringing the upright ingot moulds. They stand about seven feet high from their flats. When the ladle is full and slobbering a bit, the craneman swings her gingerly over the first mould. Level with the ladle's base, and above the train of moulds, runs the pouring platform, on which the ingot-men stand. By means of rods a stopper is released from a small hole in the bottom of the ladle. In a few seconds the stream fills a mould, and the attendant shuts off the steel like a boy at a spigot. The ladle swings gently down the line, and the proper measure of metallic flame squirts into each mould. A trainload of steel is poured in a few minutes. But this is when all omens are propitious. It's when the stopper-man has made no mistakes. But when rods jam and the stopper won't stop, watch your step, and cover your face. That fierce little stream keeps coming, and nothing that the desperate men on the pouring platform can do seems likely to stem it. Soon one mould is full. But the ladle continues to pour, with twenty tons of steel to go. It can't be allowed to make a steel floor for the pit. It must get into those moulds. So the craneman swings her on to the next mould, with the stream aspurt. It's like taking water from the teakettle to the sink with a punctured dipper: half goes on the kitchen floor. But the spattering of molten metal is much more exciting. A few little clots affect the flesh like hot bullets. So, when the craneman gets ready to swing the little stream down the line, the workers on the platform behave like frightened fishes in a mill pond. Then, while the mould fills, they come back, to throw certain ingredients into the cooling metal. These ingots, when they come from the moulds virgin steel, are impressive things--especially on the night turn. Then each stands up against the night air like a massive monument of hardened fire. Pass near them, and see what colossal radiators of heat they are. Trainloads of them pass daily out of the pit to the blooming-mill, to catch their first transformation. But my spell with them is done. I stood behind the furnace near the spout, which still spread a wave of heat about it, and Nick, the second-helper, beside me yelling things in Anglo-Serbian, into my face. He was a loose-limbed, sallow-faced Serbian, with black hair under a green-visored cap, always on the back of his head. His shirt was torn on both sleeves and open nearly to his waist, and in the uncertain lights of the mill his chest and abdomen shone with sweat. "Goddam you, what you think. Get me"--a long blur of Serbian, here--"spout, quick mak a"--more Serbian with tremendous volume of voice--"furnace, see? You get that goddam mud!" When a man says that to you with profound emotion, it seems insulting, to say, "What" to it. But that was what I did. "All right, all right," he said; "what the hell, me get myself, all the work"--blurred here--"son of a--third-helper--wheelbarrow, why don' you ---- _quick now when I say!_" "All right, all right, I'll do it," I said, and went away. I was never in my life so much impressed with the necessity of _doing it_. His language and gesture had been profoundly expressive--of what? I tried to concentrate on the phrases that seeped through emotion and Serbian into English. "Wheelbarrow"--hang on to that; "mud"--that's easy: a wheelbarrow of mud. Good! I got it at the other end of the mill--opposite Number 4. "Hey! don't use that shovel for mud!" said the second-helper on Number 4. So I didn't. I wheeled back to the gallery behind Seven, and found Nick coming out at me. When he saw that hard-won mud of mine, I thought he was going to snap the cords in his throat. "Goddam it!" he said, when articulation returned, "I tell you, get wheelbarrow dolomite, and half-wheelbarrow clay, and pail of water, and look what you bring, goddam it!" So that was it--he probably said pail of water with his feet. "Oh, all right," I said, smiling like a skull; "I thought you said mud. I'll get it, I'll get it." This is amusing enough on the first day; you can go off and laugh in a superior way to yourself about the queer words the foreigners use. But after seven days of it, fourteen hours each, it gets under the skin, it burns along the nerves, as the furnace heat burns along the arms when you make back-wall. It suddenly occurred to me one day, after someone had bawled me out picturesquely for not knowing where something was that I had never heard of, that this was what every immigrant Hunky endured; it was a matter of language largely, of understanding, of knowing the names of things, the uses of things, the language of the boss. Here was this Serbian second-helper bossing his third-helper largely in an unknown tongue, and the latter getting the full emotional experience of the immigrant. I thought of Bill, the pit boss, telling a Hunky to do a clean-up job for him; and when the Hunky said, "What?" he turned to me and said: "Lord! but these Hunkies are dumb." Most of the false starts, waste motion, misunderstandings, fights, burnings, accidents, nerve-wrack, and desperation of soul would fall away if there were understanding--a common language, of mind as well as tongue. But then, I thought, all this may be because I'm oversensitive. I had this qualm till one day I met Jack. He was an old regular-army sergeant, a man about thirty. He had come back from fixing a bad spout. They had sledged it out--sledged through the steel that had crept into the dolomite and closed the tap-hole. "Do you ever feel low?" he said, sitting down on the back of a shovel. "Every once'n while I feel like telling 'em to take their job and go to hell with it; you strain your guts out, and then they swear at you." "I sometimes feel like a worm," I said, "with no right to be living any way, or so mad I want to lick the bosses and the president." "If you were first-helper, it wouldn't be so bad," he mused; "you wouldn't have to bring up that damn manganese in a wheelbarrow--and they wouldn't kick you round so much." "Will I ever get that job?" We were washing up at one end of the mill, near the Bessemers. There was plenty of hot water, and good broad sinks. I took off my shirt and threw it on top of a locker; the cinder on the front and sleeves had become mud. Forty men stood up to the sinks, also with their shirts off, their arms and faces and bodies covered with soap, and saying: "Ah, ooh," and "ffu," with the other noises a man makes when getting clean. Every now and then somebody would look into a three-cornered fragment of looking-glass on one of the lockers, and return to apply soap and a scrubbing-brush to the bridge of his nose. A group of Slovene boys, who worked on the Bessemer, picked on one of their number, and covered him with soap and American oaths. Somebody told an obscene story loudly in broken English. The men who had had a long turn or a hard one washed up silently, except for excessive outbreaks if anybody took their soap. Some few hurried, and left grease or soot on their hands or under their eyes. "I wash up a little here," said Fred, the American first-helper on Number 7, "and the rest at home. Once after a twenty-four hour shift, I fell asleep in the bathtub, and woke up to find the water cold. Of course, you can't really get this stuff off in one or two washups. It gets under your skin. When the furnace used to get down for repairs, and we were laid off, I'd be clean at the end of a week." He laughed and went off. I had scraped most of the soot from arms and chest, and was struggling desperately with the small of my back. A thick-chested workman at the next bowl, with fringes of gray hair, and a scar on his cheek, grabbed the brush out of my hand. "Me show you how we do in coal-mine," he said; and proceeded vigorously to grind the bristles into my back, and get up a tremendous lather, that dripped down on my trousers to the floor. "You wash your buddy's back, buddy wash yours," he said. I went out of the open-hearth shelter slowly, and watched the line--nearly a quarter of a mile long--of swinging dinner-buckets. Some were large and round, and had a place on top for coffee; some were circular and long; some were flat and square. I looked at the men. They were the day-shift coming in. "I have finished," I said to myself automatically. "I'm going to eat and go to bed. I don't have to work now." I looked at the men again. Most of them were hurrying; their faces carried yesterday's fatigue and last year's. Now and then I saw a man who looked as if he could work the turn and then box a little in the evening for exercise. There were a few men like that. The rest made me think strongly of a man holding himself from falling over a cliff, with fingers that paralyzed slowly. I stepped on a stone and felt the place on my heel where the limestone and sweat had worked together, to make a burn. I'd be hurrying in at 5.00 o'clock that day, and they'd be going home. It was now 7.20. That would be nine and a half hours hence. I had to eat twice, and buy a pair of gloves, and sew up my shirt, and get sleep before then. I lived twenty minutes from the mill. If I walk home, as fast as I can drive my legs and bolt breakfast, seven hours is all I can work in before 3.30. I'll have to get up then to get time for dinner, fixing up my shirt, and the walk to the mill. I wonder how long this night-shift of gray-faced men, with different-sized dinner-buckets, will be moving out toward the green gate, and the day-shift coming in at the green gate--how many years? The car up from the nail mill stopped just before it dove under the railroad bridge. "I'm in luck." I suddenly had a vision of how the New York subway looked: its crush, its noise, its overdressed Jews, its speed, its subway smell. I looked around inside the clattering trolley-car. Nobody was talking. The car was filled for the most part with Slavs, a few Italians, and some negroes from the nail mill. Everyone, except two old men of unknown age, was under thirty-five. They held their buckets on their laps, or put them on the floor between their legs. Six or eight were asleep. The rest sat quiet, with legs and neck loose, with their eyes open, steady, dull, fixed upon nothing at all. IV EVERYDAY LIFE I came into the mill five minutes late one morning, and went to the green check-house at the gate, to pick 1611, the numerical me, from the hook. A stumpy man in a chair looked up and said: "What number?" I gave it. "An easy way to lose forty-three cents," I thought, feeling a little sore at the stumpy man, and going out through the door slowly. I increased my step along the road to the open-hearth, and reached my locker just as the Pole who shared it was leaving. "Goddam gloves!" he was saying. "Pay thirty-five cents--three days--goddam it--all gone--too much. What you think?" "I think the leather ones at fifty cents last better," I said. He made a guttural noise, signifying disgust, and left. I opened the locker, and disentangled my working-clothes, still damp from the last shift, from the Pole's. I removed all my "good" clothes, and stood for a minute naked and comfortable. The thermometer had registered 95° when I got up, at 4.00. For the past few days I had been demoted to the pit; there had been no jobs open on the floor. As I took up my gloves and smoked glasses, I wondered how I could get back to furnace work. Pete was moving with his lurching short steps past Six. "How about helping to-day on the floor?" I said. He snapped back quickly in his blurred voice, "You work th' pit, tell y'--goddam quick, want y' on the floor." I looked back at him, swore to myself, and went slowly down the pit stairs. I couldn't find the gang at first, but later found half of them: Peter the Russian, the short Wop, the Aristocrat, and a couple more, all under furnace Eight, cleaning out cinder. The Aristocrat was trying to get the craneman to bring up one of the long boxes with curved bottoms for slag. The craneman was damning him. There was one too many at the job,--four is enough to clean cinder,--so I threw a bit of slag at Peter (for old time's sake) and passed on. I met Al, and said, "Where are they working?" "Clean up the pipes," he said. The Croat, Marco, Joe, and Fritz were at Number 6, with forks. You see, the pipes run up the ladle's side and release a stopper for pouring the steel. They are covered with fire clay, which is destroyed after one or two ladlings and has to be knocked off and replaced. We loosened the clay with sledges, and Marco watered down the pipes with a hose, to cool them. They were moderately warm when Fritz and I started piling them on the truck. Once or twice the pipe touched Fritz's hand through a hole in his glove, and he yowled, and then laughed. Once or twice I yowled and laughed also. When we piled near the top, we swung in unison, and tossed the pipe into the air. It was like piling wood. I caught a torn piece of my pants on a sharp bit of slag while carrying two pipes, and acquired a rip halfway from pocket to knee. Marco had a safety pin for me at once; he kept emergency ones in his shirt-front. We finished the job in half an hour, and pushed the truck till it came under jurisdiction of a crane. Marco fixed the hooks rather officiously, pushing Fritz and me aside. There is, I suppose, more snobbishness induced by the manner of crane-hooking than in any other pit function. The crane swung the pipes on holders and dropped them in front of the blacksmith shop. We carried them into the shop, Marco and I working together. Inside there were half a dozen small forges, some benches, and a drop hammer. It was the place where ladles and spoons were repaired. The blacksmiths and helpers gave us friendly, but condescending glances. As we walked back, we saw the crane swing a ladle from the moulds into which it had been pouring toward the dumping pit in front of Five. When the giant bucket approached, the chain hooked to the bottom lifted slowly, and dregs half-steel, half-ash, rolled out into the dump. After a little cooling, we would clean up there. With the chain released, the bucket righted itself with a shuddering clank, and swayed in the air scattering bits of slag and burnt fire clay. A little later, we did a three-hour job on those dregs. We loosened the slag with picks first, and then lifted forkfuls and shovelfuls into the crane-carried boxes. A good deal of scrap was in the lot, probably the makings of half a ton of steel. This, of course, went into a separate box. I hooked up a couple of big scrap-hunks, weighing perhaps 500 pounds each, and took some sport out of it. That is one small matter, at least, where a grain of judgment and ingenuity has place. A badly hooked scrap-hunk may fall and break a neck, or simply tumble and waste everybody's time. Loosening up with the pick, too, demands a slight knack and smacks faintly of the miner's skill. We had to go down into a pit, where there was heated slag on all sides, using boards to save scorching our shoe leather. In turning up fractures eight or ten inches thick, there would be an inner four inches still red-hot. At eleven o'clock, I was working at a fair pace, flinging moderately husky forkfuls over a ten-foot space into the box, when Marco looked up. "Hey," he called. I glanced at him for a moment. He was smiling. "Rest yourself," he said; "we work hard when de big bosses come." During the next fifty shovelfuls, the remark went the rounds of my head, trying to get condemned. My memory threw up articles in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," with "inefficiency and the labor-slackers," and "moral irresponsibility of the worker on the job," and so forth, in them. A couple of sermons and a vista of editorial denunciations of the laboring man who is no longer willing to do "an honest day's work for an honest day's pay," seemed to bring additional pressure for righteous indignation. I asked the following questions of myself, one for every two forkfuls:-- "Isn't it morally a bad thing to soldier, anyway? "Is Marco a moral enormity? "Do business men soldier? "Isn't 'Get to hell out of here if you don't want to work' the answer? Or has the twelve-hour day something to do with it? "Can these five or six thousand unskilled workmen take any interest in their work, or must they go at it with a consciousness similar to that of the slaves who put up the Pyramids?" I had to use the pick at this point, which broke up the inquiry, and I left the questions unanswered. I saw wheelbarrowing ahead for the afternoon, and corralled the only one properly balanced, when I started work at 1.00 P.M., keeping it near me during a scrap-picking hour, until the job should break. At 2.15, it did. Al said: "Get over and clean out under Seven. If we can ever get this goddam stuff cleaned out--" That was an optimism of Al's. One of the new men and I worked together all afternoon: pick at the slag, shovel, wheelbarrow, dump in the box, hook up to crane. Start over. There was a lot of dolomite and old fine cinder, very dusty, but not hot. This change in discomfort furnished a sensation almost pleasurable. I found out that everyone hid his shovel at the end of the shift, beside piles of brick in the cellar of the mill, under dark stairways, and so forth. I hadn't yet acquired one, but used mostly a fork, which isn't so personal an instrument, and of which there seemed to be a common supply. I felt keen to "acquire" though. After supper, I wrote in my diary and thought a bit before going to bed. There's a genuine technique of the shovel, the pick, and especially of the wheelbarrow, I thought. That damn plank from the ground to the cinder-box! It takes all I can muster to teeter the wheelbarrow up, dump without losing the thing quite, and bring it down backward without barking my shins. There's a bit of technique, too, in pairing off properly for a job, selecting your lick of work promptly and not getting left jobless to the eyes of the boss, capturing your shovel and hiding it at the end of the turn, keeping the good will of the men you're with on team-work, distinguishing scrap from cinder and putting them into the proper boxes, not digging for slag too deeply in the pit floor, and so forth and so on. I wonder if I shall learn Serbian, or Russian, or Hungarian? There seems to be a Slavic polyglot that any one of a half-dozen nationalities understands. That word, "Tchekai!--Watch out!"--even the Americans use it. It's a word that is crying in your ears all night. Watch out for the crane that is taking a ladle of hot metal over your head, or a load of scrap, or a bundle of pipes; watch out for the hot cinder coming down the hole from the furnace-doors; watch out for "me" while I get this wheelbarrow by; and "Heow! Tchekai!" for the trainload of hot ingots that passes your shoulder. I set my alarm for five o'clock, and got into bed with the good-night thought of "The devil with Pete Grayson! I'll get on that furnace!" Another day went by, hewing cinders in the pit. I tried to figure to myself persuasive or threatening things I could say to the melters, to let me work on the floor. A shrewd-looking little man with moustachios worked near me. "Did you ever work on the floor?" I asked. "Oh, yes," he said: "too much hot; to hell with the money!" They pay you two cents more an hour on the floor. At twenty minutes to five I went upstairs to my locker. Dick Reber, senior melter, stopped me. "Need a man to-night; want to work?" he said; "always short, you know, on this ---- long turn." "Sure," I said. That was one way to get promoted, I thought, and wondered how I'd stand fourteen more hours on top of the ten I had had. "Beat it," yelled the melter. Jack and I got our flat manganese shovels, and went on the run to the gallery. We were tapping at last. This furnaceful had cooked twenty-two hours. Nick was kneeling on water-soaked bagging, on the edge of the hot spout. He dug out the mud in the tap-hole with a pointed rod and sputtered oaths at the heat. Every few minutes the spout would burn through the bagging to his knees. He would get up, refold the bagging, and kneel again to the job. Finally the metal gurgled out, a small stream the size of two fingers. Nick dodged back, and it swelled to a six-inch torrent. "Heow, crane!" Pete Grayson had come out, and was bawling something very urgently at the pit crane. The ladle swung closer; we could feel the increased wave of heat. He looked over at us and held up two fingers. That meant both piles of manganese that lay on the gallery next the crane were to be shoveled in--double time for us, in the heat. "Heow!" yelled the melter. Jack and I leaped forward to the manganese, and our shovels scraped on the iron gallery. I saw Jack slapping his head to put out a little fire that had started on the handkerchief wound round his neck. I slapped a few sparks that stung my right leg. We finished half the pile. There was something queer about this heat. The soles of my feet--why in hell should the gallery burn so! There was a blazing gas in the air--my nostrils seemed to flame as they took it in. This was different from most manganese shoveling. My face glowed all over in single concentrated pain. What was it? I saw Jack shoveling wildly in the middle of that second pile. We finished it in a panic. "What was the matter with that damn ladle?" I asked as we got our breath in the opening between the furnaces. "Spout had a goddam hole in the middle," he said; "ladle underneath, see?" I did. The fire-clay of the spout had given way, and a hole forming in the middle let the metal through. That made it necessary, in order to catch the steel, to bring the ladle close, till part of it was under the platform on which we worked. The heat and gas from the hot steel in the ladle had been warming the soles of our feet, and rising into our faces. "Here's a funny thing," I said, looking down. One of the sparks which had struck my pants burned around, very neatly taking off the cuff and an inch or two of the pant-leg. The thing might have been done with a pair of shears. I came out of the mill whistling and feeling pretty much "on the crest." I'd worked their damn "long turn," and stood it. It wasn't so bad, all except that ladle that got under the manganese. I ate a huge breakfast, with a calm sense of virtue rewarded, and climbed into bed with a smile on my lips. The alarm clock had been ringing several minutes before I realized what it was up to. I turned over to shut it off, and found needles running into all the muscles of my back. I struggled up on an elbow. I had a "hell of a head." The alarm was still going. I fought myself out of bed and shut it off; stood up and tried to think. Pretty soon a thought came over me like an ache: it was "Fourteen hours!" That was beginning in fifty-five minutes--fourteen hours of back-walls, and hot ladles, and--Oh, hell!--I sat down again on the bed, and prepared to lift my feet back in. Then I got up, and washed fiercely, threw on my clothes, and went downstairs, and out into the afternoon sun. Down by the restaurant, I met the third-helper on Eight. "Long turn wouldn't be so bad, if there weren't no next day," he said, with a sort of smile. In the mill was a gang of malignant men; things all went wrong; everybody was angry and tired; their nerves made mistakes for them. "I only wish it were next Sunday!" I said to someone. "There aren't any goddam Sundays in this place," he returned. "Twenty-four hours off between two working days ain't Sunday." I thought that over. The company says they give you one day off every two weeks. But it's not like a day off anywhere else. It's twenty-four hours sandwiched between two work-days. You finish your night-week at 7.00 Sunday morning, having just done a week of one twenty-four hour shift, and six fourteens. You've got all the time from then till the next morning! Hurrah! How will you use it? If you do the normal thing,--eat breakfast, and go to bed for eight hours,--that brings you to 5.00 o'clock. Will you stay up all night? you've had your sleep. Yes, but there's a ten-hour turn coming at 7.00. You go to bed at 11.00, to sleep up for your turn. There's an evening-out of it! Hurrah again! But who in hell does the normal thing? Either you go on a tear for twenty-four hours,--you only have it twice a month,--or you sleep the twenty-four, if the week's been a bad one. Or--and this is common in Bouton--you get sore at the system and stay away a week--if you can afford it. "Hey, you, get me a jigger, quick. Ten thou'." "All right," I said, and shut off my mind for the day. I usually had bad words and bad looks from "Shorty." Jack calls him "that dirty Wop." Late one afternoon he produced a knife and fingered it suggestively while he talked. So I always watched him with all the eyes I had. One day we had shoveled in manganese together over a hot ladle, and I noticed that he was in a bad mood. We finished and leaned against the rail. "Six days more," he said very quietly. I looked up, surprised at his voice. "What do you mean?" "Six days more, this week, me quit this goddam job." "What's the matter?" "Oh, ---- me lose thirteen pound this job, what the hell!" "What job will you get now?" "I don't know, I don't know; any damn job better than this," he said very bitterly. Having adopted the quitting idea, these six days were too much to endure. A little later, Jock was ready to make front-wall. He saw Shorty and said, "Get me that hook and spoon." Shorty stood and looked at Jock, with the utmost malignity in his face, and said finally, "Get your goddam hook and spoon yourself." Jock was greatly surprised, and returned, "Who the hell are you?" Shorty snapped instantly, "Who the hell are you?" And then he was fired. This is the second "quitting mad" I've seen. The feeling seems to be something like the irrepressible desire that gets piled up sometimes in the ranks of the army to "tell 'em to go to hell" and take the consequences. It's the result of accumulated poisons of overfatigue, long hours, overwrought nerves, "the military discipline of the mills." The practical advantage of being "given the hook" is that you can draw your pay immediately; whereas, if you simply leave, you have to wait for the end of the two weeks' period. I ate my dinner at the Greek's. "Make me some tea that's hot, George. This wasn't. Oh, and a double bowl of shredded; I've got a hole to fill up." George kept the best of the four Greek restaurants. It had a certain variety. It splurged into potato salad, and a few other kinds, and went into omelets that were very acceptable. The others confined themselves to fried things, with a few cereals and skimmed milk. I looked up from my shredded wheat. George was wiping up a rill of gravy and milk from the porcelain table, and a man was getting ready to sit down opposite. It was Herb, the pit craneman. "Always feed here?" he asked. "Yes," I said, "best place in town, isn't it?" He nodded. "How big is Bouton? how many people has it?" I asked. He grinned slowly, and put his elbows on the table. He was a Pennsylvania Dutchman, with worry settling over good nature in a square face. "Twenty thousand," he said. "It seems small for twenty thousand," I returned; "like a little village. There's really only one store, isn't there,--the company store,--where they keep anything? Only one empty newspaper, no theatre, unless you count that one-story movie place, no enterprise--" "A one-man town," he said, quickly. "Nearly every house in town is owned by Mr. Burnham. Now look here, suppose a man works like hell to fix things up, to work around and get a pretty damn good garden, puts a lot of money into making his house right. Suppose he does, and then gets into a scrap with his boss. What can he do? The company owns his house, the company owns every other damn thing in town. He's got to beat it--all his work shot to hell. That's why nobody does anything.--Hey, ham and--Where you workin' now? Ain't seen yer in the pit." "I'm on the floor, helpin' on Number 7." "Att-a-boy!" At last, Saturday night. Everyone felt Sunday coming, with twenty-four hours of drunkenness or sleep alluringly ahead. The other shift had tapped the furnace at three o'clock. We might not tap again, and that was nice to think about. A front-wall and a hot back-wall we went through as if it were better fun than billiards. "Look out for me, I've got the de'il in me," from Jock, Scotch First on Number 8. I looked up, and the crazy fool had a spoon--they weigh over a hundred--between his legs, dragging it like a kid with a broomstick. As it bounced on the broken brick floor, he yelled like a man after a Hun. "Who's the maun amang ye, can lick a Scotchman?" he cried, dropping the spoon to the floor. "Is this the best stuff you can show on Number 8?" said Fred slowly. He dived for Jock's waist, and drew it to him, though the Scotchman tried to break his grip with one of his hands and with the other thrust off his opponent's face. When Fred had him tight, he caught one of Jock's straying arms, bent it slowly behind his back, and contrived a hammerlock. "You're no gentlemen,"--in pain; "you're interruptin' my work." Fred relaxed, and Jock jumped away. "Come over to a good furnace, goddam it, and fight it out!" he yelled, from a distance that protected his words. The charging-machine, in its perpetual machine-tremolo, shook past and stopped. George slid down from his seat, and came over to Number 8's gang. "Well, Fred, how in hell's the world usin' yer?" "Ask me that to-morrow." "Well, guys, good night; I'm dead for forty minutes." He picked up a board some six feet long and about six inches in width. He laid himself carefully on it, and was sleeping inside of a minute. I looked at him enviously for a few minutes. Suddenly it occurred to me that the board lay over a slit in the floor. It was the opening through which the pipes that attach to the gas-valve rise and fall. When gas is shifted from one end of the furnace to the other, the pipes emerge through the slit to a height several feet from the floor. Finally Fred made the same discovery, and a broad smile spread over his face. He continued to watch George, his grin deepening. At last he turned to the second-helper. "Throw her over," he said. Nick threw the switch. Slowly and easily the valve-pipes rose, lifting George and the head of his bed into the air, perilously. An immense and ill-controlled shout swelled up and got ready to burst inside the witnesses. George slept on, and the bed passed forty-five degrees. In another second it rolled off the side of the pipes, and George, scared, half-asleep, and much crumpled, rolled over on the furnace floor. It was several seconds before he recovered profanity. The pure joy of that event spread itself over the entire shift. When the light from the melting scrap-iron inside the furnace shot back, it lit up the hills and valleys in Nick's face. I noticed how sharp the slope was from his cheek-bones to the pit of his cheeks, and the round holes in which his eyes were a pool at the bottom. His lips moved off his white teeth, and twisted themselves, as a man's do with effort. He looked as if he were smiling. I picked up my shovel, and shoved it into the dolomite pile, with a slight pressure of knee against right forearm that eases your back. The thermometer in the shade outside was 95°. I wondered vaguely how much it was where Nick stood, with the doors open in his face. We walked back together after the front-wall to the trough of water. "Not bad when you get good furnace, good first-helper," he said. "Fred good boy, but furnace no good. A man got to watch himself on this job," he went on bitterly; "he pull himself to pieces." "I can't manage quite enough sleep," I said, wondering if that was the remark of a tenderfoot. "Sometime--maybe one day a month--I feel all right, good, no sleepy," he went on. "Daytime work, ten hour, all right, feel good; fourteen hour always too much tired. Sometime, goddam, I go home, I go to bed, throw myself down this way." He threw both arms backward and to the side in a gesture of desperate exhaustion, allowing his head to fall back at the same time. "Goddam, think I no work no more. No day nuff sleep for work," he concluded. Later on in the day, I saw Jimmy let the charge-up man, George, take the spoon and make front-wall. The heat "got his goat." "I lose about ten or fifteen pounds every summer," he said, "but I get it back in the winter. My wife is after me the whole time to leave this game. I tell her every year I will. Better quit this business, buddy, while you're young, before you get stuck like me." I walked home with Stanley, the Pole. He always called me Joe, the generic name for non-Hunky helpers. "Say, Joe," he said, as we came under the railroad bridge, "what's your name right?" "Charlie," I answered. "By the way, where have you been?" "Drunk, Charlie," he answered, smiling cheerfully. "Ever since I saw you in the pit?" "Three week," he stated, with satisfaction; "beer, whiskey, everyt'ing. What the hell, work all time goddam job, what the hell?" V WORKING THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR SHIFT 7 A.M. _Sunday_ I tried to get a lot of sleep last night for handling the long turn; managed about nine hours. When I came to the locker, Stanley was there, dressed, cleaning his smoked glasses. "How much sleep last night?" I asked. "Oh, six, seven hour," said Stanley. "You're a damned fool," I said; "this is the long turn." "I know, I know," he returned, "I have t'ing to do. No have time sleep." I looked at him. He had a big frame, but his limbs were hung on it, like clothes on hooks. His face was a gray pallor, sharply caving in under the cheek-bones. His eyes were very dull, and steady. I'd noticed those eyes of his before, and never could decide whether they showed a kind of sullen defiance, or resignation, or were just extraordinarily tired. "Two month more," he said. "Two month more what?" "Two month more this work every Sunday--goddam work all day like hell, all night like hell. Pretty soon go back to good job." I knew what he meant now. He had told me weeks before, when we had hewed cinders together in the pit, how he was a rougher in a Pittsburgh mill. Worked only twelve hours a day and no Sundays. "No more goddam long turn," he concluded; "work of rougher slack now, all right October." He moved off slowly, with no spring in his step, and no energy expended beyond what was absolutely necessary to move him. I walked out on the floor to look at the clock. The night gang on every furnace was washing up, very cheerfully and with an extraordinary thoroughness. They were slicking up for the once a fortnight twenty-four-hour party. Nearly everyone drank through his day off, or raised hell in some extraordinary manner. It was too precious and rare to spend in less violent reaction to the two weeks' fatigue. I looked at them and tried not to be envious. The first-helper on Seven was taking a last look through the peepholes as he put on his collar. A great Slavic hulk on Number 5 was brushing his clothes with unheard of violence. Dick Reber passed by. He saw me leaning against a girder buttoning my shirt. "Front-wall, Number 5, you!" he bawled. I was sore at myself for having been seen standing about doing nothing. But I was sore at Dick also, unreasonably. I went back to my locker, got my gloves, and went to Number 5. I began filling the spoon, with the help of "Marty," the Wop. He glared at me, and interfered with my shovel twice when we went together to the dolomite pile. Marty had made enemies widely on the furnaces because of a loud mouth, and an officiousness that sat ridiculously on his stature and his ignorance of steel-making. I was glad when the front-wall was done. I took the hook down, and went over to the fountain in back of Five, cooled my head, neck, and arms, and went over to Seven, without taking a swallow. I had decided to have only two drinks of water in the half-day. Dick Reber saw me coming up and, I think in punishment for loafing, said: "Clean up under there. I want you to clean all that filth out, all of it, from behind that girder." It was near the locker and under the flooring, in a sort of shelf, where lime, dolomite, dirt, old gloves, shoes, filth of all sorts had accumulated. I cleaned it out with a broom and a stick. It took me half an hour. "All right," said the first-helper; "now get me ten thousand." So I went off to the Bessemer, rather glad of the walk. I climbed the stairs to the pouring platform, and watched the recorder, who had left his book, operate the levers. The shifting engine backed a ladle under, and slowly the huge pig-iron mixer, bubbling and shooting out a tide of sparks, dipped and allowed about 20,000 pounds to drop into the ladle. "Ten thou' for Seven," I said. In another five minutes, the engine brought up a ladle for my ten thousand, and the boy dipped it out for me with the miraculous levers. "All right," I said; and ran down the stairs fast enough to catch a ride back past the furnaces, on the step of the locomotive. The second-helper grabbed the big hook which came down slowly on a chain from the crane, and stuck it into the bottom of the ladle. As the chain lifted, the ladle tipped, and poured the ten thousand pounds with a hiss. But the craneman was careless, which isn't usual. Fred kept saying, "Whoop, whoop!" but he went right on spilling for quite a spell before he recovered control. "Dolomite," said the first-helper to me, after the "jigger" was poured. I went to a box full of the white gravel, at the end of the mill, and yelled at Herb, the craneman. A box of dolomite is about eight feet square and three high. This one was perched on top of a dolomite pile, ten feet off the ground. I struggled up on top, and took the hooks Herb gave me from the crane,--eight-inch hooks,--and put them into the corners of the box, using both hands. Then I slid down, and the box rose and swung over my head. Herb settled it neatly on our own little dolomite pile in front of Seven. I slipped out the front hooks, and the back ones lifted and dumped the load, with a soft swish, nearly on the low part of the old pile. There was a little time to sit down after this--perhaps ten minutes. I smoked a Camel, which had spent the last shift in my shirt pocket. It was a melancholy Camel, and tended to twist up in my nose, but it tasted sweet. I sat on Seven's bench, and watched Fred take his rod and move aside the shutters of the peepholes, to give final looks at the furnace. She must be nearly ready. He looked back at me, and I knew that meant "test." I grabbed tongs, lying spread out by the anvil, clamped hold of the mould, and ran with them to about ten feet from number two door of the furnace. Fred had the test-spoon lifted and shoved into the door; he moved it around in the molten steel, and brought it out full, straining his body tense to hold it level and not lose the test. I shifted the mould a little on the ground, and closed my hands as tight as I could on the tongs, so the mould wouldn't slip and turn. He poured easily and neatly, just filling the mould, and flung the spoon violently on the floor, to shake off the crusting steel on the handle. I ran with mould and tongs to the water-trough in front of Eight, and plunged it in, the steam coming up in a small cloud. I brought it out and held it on the anvil, end-wise, with the tongs, while Nick flattened in the top slightly on both edges, to make it break easily. Nick broke the ingot in two blows, and Fred and the melter consulted over the fragments. "All right," said Dick. We were about to tap. I went after my flat manganese shovel, but it was gone from the locker. Some dog-gone helper has nailed it. I took out an ordinary flat shovel. In back of the furnace Nick was already busy with a "picker," prodding away the stopping from the tap. He burned his hands once, swore, gave it up, went halfway along the platform away from the tap, returned, and went at it again. Finally, the steel escaped, with its usual roar of flame and its usual splunch as it fell into the ladle. I stepped back, and nearly into "Shorty," who had come to help shovel manganese. "Where you get shovel?" he said, with his eyes blazing, pointing to mine. "Out of my locker," I said. He started toward it, and I held it away from him. "I tell you that goddam shovel mine--" he began; but Dick, from the other side of the spout, shouted at us how many piles to shovel, and Shorty shut up. We were to get in the first big pile and the next little one. The ladle was beginning to fill. "Heow!" yelled Dick. Shorty and I went forward and put in the manganese. It was hot, but I took too much interest in shoveling faster than Shorty, to care. Then came the second ladle, during which Shorty's handkerchief caught on fire, and made him sputter a lot, and rid himself of some profanity in Anglo-Italian. I went to that trough by Eight afterward, to wash off the soot and cinder, and put my head under water, straight down. I knew back-wall was coming, and sat down a minute, wondering, rather vaguely, how I was going to feel at six or seven the next morning. Back-wall came. I had bad luck with it, trying too hard. It was too hot for one thing. There are times when a back-wall will be so cool you can hesitate a long second, as you fling your shovelful, and make sure of your aim; at others, your face scorches when you first swing back, and you let the stuff off any fashion, to get out of the heat. There's a third-helper on Five, I'm glad to say, who is worse than I. They put him out of the line this time; he was just throwing into the bottom of the furnace. Everyone develops an individual technique. Jimmy's is bending his knees, and getting his shovel so low that it looks like scooping off the floor. Fred's is graceful, with a smart snap at the end. Then front-wall. I start in search of a spoon and a hook. It's not easy to get one to suit the taste of my first-helper. There's one that looks twenty feet,--I haven't any technical figures on spoons,--but it's too long, I know, for Fred. There's a spoon three feet shorter, just right. Hell--with two inches melted off the end! I pick a short one in good repair,--he can use the thing or get his own,--and drag it to Seven, giving the scoop a ride on the railroad track, to ease the weight. Fred has put a hook over number one door; so I hurry, and lift the spoon handle with gloved hands to slip it on the hook. If it's not done quickly, you'll get a burn; you're an arm's length from molten steel, and no door between. I get it on, and pick up a shovel. Front-wall can be very easy,--you can nearly enjoy it, like any of the jobs,--if the furnace is cool, and there's a breeze blowing down the open spaces of the mill. And, too, if the spoon hangs right in the hook, and the first-helper turns it a little for you, then you can stand off, six feet from the flame, and toss your gravel straight into the spoon's scoop. You hardly go to the water fountain to cool your head when the stunt's over. On number one the hook hung wrong, the spoon wouldn't turn in it, and you had to hug close, and pour, not toss. I tried a toss on my second shovel, and half of it skated on the floor. "Get it on the spoon, goddam you!" from Nick. So I did. After that, we sat around for twenty minutes. Fred looked at the furnace once or twice, and changed the gas. Several gathered in front of Seven--Jock, Dick, the melter, Fred, and Nick. "Do you know what my next job's going to be?" said Fred. The others looked up. "In a bank." "Nine to five," said Dick. "Huh! gentlemen's hours." "Saturday afternoons, and Sundays," said Fred. The other faces glowed and said nothing. "This wouldn't be so bad if there were Sundays," said Fred. "I'll tell you, there'll come a time," broke in the melter, "when Gary and all the other big fellers will have to work it themselves--no one else will." "Now in the old country, a man can have a bit of fun," said the Scotchman. "Picnics, a little singin' and drinkin',--and the like. What can a man do here? We work eight hours in Scotland. They work eight hours in France, in Italy, in Germany--all the steel mills work eight hours, except in this bloody free country." The melter broke in again. "It's the dollar they're after--the sucking dollar. They say they're going to cut out the long turn. I heard they were going to cut out the long turn when I went to work in the mill, as a kid. I'm workin' it, ain't I? Christ!" I left, to shovel in fluor spar with Fred. When we finished, Fred said: "You better get your lunch now, if you want it. Then help Nick on the spout." I ate in the mill restaurant. My order was roast beef, which included mashed potato, peas, and a cup of coffee--for thirty-five cents. Then I had apple pie and a glass of milk. The waiters are a fresh Jew, named Beck, and a short, fat Irish boy, called Pop. There is a counter, no tables; the food is clean. I went back to help Nick on the spout, and found him already back on the gallery with a wheelbarrow of mud. He looked up gloomily and said: "One more." I dumped the wheelbarrow, and went after more, bounced it over tracks and a hose, and up and down a little board runway to where the mud-box stands. After filling up, I went back slowly, dangerously, swayingly, over bits of dolomite and coal, navigated the corner of the gallery by a hair's tolerance, and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow by Nick with relief. It's bad on my back, that's it. I'd rather do two back-walls, and tap three times in high heat, than wheel these exacting loads of mud. Nick knelt on the other side of the spout, and I gave him the mud with my shovel, to repair the holes and broken places of the spout, which the last flow of molten steel had carried away. When he finished the big holes, I gave him small gobs of mud, dipping my hands in a bucket of water between each two, to keep the stuff from sticking. A wave of weakening heat rose constantly from the spout still hot from the last flow. I prayed God Nick would hurry. He made a smooth neat surface on the whole seven-feet of spout, rounding the edges with his hands. When I came back from the spout, Fred was in front of the furnace, blue glasses on his nose, inspecting the brew. He put his glasses back on his cap, glanced at me, and pointed to a pile of dolomite and slag which had been growing in front of Number 3 door. "All right," I said, and picked up a shovel from the dolomite pile. For a couple of minutes, I shoveled the stuff down the slag hole, and remembered vividly the bygone pit-days. Then I would have been cleaning up around the buggy. For a minute I felt vastly superior to pit people. I earned two cents more an hour, and threw down a hole the dolomite and dirt they cleared away. I began to feel a little tired in back and legs, and repeated Fred's formula on how to get away with a long turn: "Take it like any other day to five o'clock. Then work for midnight. Anyone can stand it from midnight to morning." I did a front-wall on that basis. "Watch those buggies!" I ran over to the furnace and glanced down the slag hole, yelling back, "Half full." Then Fred went to an electric switch, and the whole furnace tilted till the hot running slag flowed over at the doors, and dripped into the buggy-car beneath, in the pit. I held my hand up as one of them filled, and Fred caught the pitching furnace with the switch, and stopped the flow of slag. 4 P.M. _Sunday_ Number 8 furnace tapped, and I shoveled manganese into the ladle with that man from Akron, who is new, and who, I noticed, burned his fingers in the same way I did on my first day. Then back-wall and front-wall, and Jock saying all the while, "It's a third gone, lads." 5 P.M. _Sunday_ I felt much more tired after this first ten hours than later; it was the limp fatigue that comes from too much heat. I ate fried eggs and a glass of milk, and then my appetite took a start and I ordered cold lamb and vegetables. When I finished, I went back into the mill to my locker, and took out a cigarette. I sat on a pile of pipes against a main girder, intending to smoke; the cigarette went out, and I slept a half hour. Things were going first-rate from six to nine. Jigger, clean up scrap, front-wall Number 6, front-wall Number 8. I couldn't distinguish between this and any other night shift; the food must have acted for sleep. But after nine the hours dragged. From 9.20 to 10.00 was a couple of hours. In the middle of a front-wall, I saw the efficiency man, Mr. Lever, come through and stare at the furnace, walk around a little, and stare profoundly at the furnace. Mr. Lever was pointed in two places, I noticed for the first time. He had a pointed stomach, and his face worked into a point at his nose. I noticed carefully that he had a receding chin and a receding forehead. As he watched us scoop the dolomite, drag up to the spoon, dump, scoop up the dolomite, and do it over, for three quarters of an hour, I thought about him. I wanted to go up to him, and give him my shovel. I had to struggle against that impulse--to go up to him and give him my shovel. The evening dragged. I fought myself, to keep from looking at the clock. I fought for several hours after ten o'clock, and then, when I thought dawn must be breaking, went up and found it ten minutes of eleven. I did feel relieved at twelve, and went out to the restaurant, saying: "Hell, anyone can wait till morning." Sometimes, when things are hurried, when tapping is near or a spout is to be fixed, you have to eat still drenched in sweat. But to-night I had time, and at quarter of twelve hung my shirt on the hot bricks at the side of the furnace, and stood near the doors in the heat, to dry my back and legs. I then washed soot and dolomite dust from ears and neck, and dipped my left arm, which was burned, in cold water. At twelve I put on the dried shirt, and went to eat. Half the men wash, half don't. There were a number of open-hearth helpers in the restaurant, with black hands and faces, two eating soup, two with their arms on the counter. Their faces lacked any expression beyond a sullen fatigue; but their eyes roved, following Beck about. Lefflin had his arms on the counter and his face on them. I ate ham and eggs, which included coffee, fried potatoes, two slices of bread, and a glass of milk. Walking back to the furnaces was an effort of will. I climbed the embankment to the tracks very slowly, the stones and gravel loosening and tumbling downhill at each step. I tried hard to concentrate on a calculation of the probable number of front-walls to come. Then I wondered if it wouldn't pay to cut out breakfast in the morning, and get nine hours of sleep instead of eight and a quarter. Friselli came up the bank behind me. He is third on Number 6. "Well," I said, "make lots of money to-night." "What's the good money, kill yourself?" he said, and went past me along the tracks. Number 8 was preparing to make front-wall. I felt weary, and full of ham and eggs, and very desirous of sitting down right there on the floor. But Jock, the first-helper on Eight, said, "Oh, Walker!" when he saw me, and we began. Through that front-wall Jock was tiring. He worked in little spurts. For "half a door" he would sing, and goad us on in half-Scotch, and for the next half he would be silent, and wipe his face with his sleeve. After that door, he came up to us and said with profound conviction, "It's a lang turn, it's a lang turn." When we finished, Jock lay down on a bench. It's a part of a third-helper's duties to keep five or six bags of fine anthracite coal on the little gallery back of the furnace, near the spout. I went after that little job now. Fifty pounds of coal in a thick paper bag isn't much to carry, till you get doing it a couple of days running. I sat on the seat where the Wop stays who works the furnace-doors; they call him the "pull up." That had some sacks and a cushion, and was broad, with a girder for back. I fell asleep. Something twisting and pinching my foot woke me up. It was the first-helper. "Fifteen thousand, quick!" he said. I got up with a jerk, feeling not so sleepy as I expected, but immeasurably stiff. I moved in a wobbly fashion down toward the Bessemer. I felt as if I were limping in four or five directions. Very vigorously and insistently I thought of one thing. I would look at the clock opposite Number 6 when I went by, and possibly, very probably, a whole pile of hours had been knocked off. Then I thought with a sting that we had not tapped, and it couldn't be more than three o'clock. It was two! "Fifteen thousand," I said to myself, "quick"; and climbed the iron stairs to the Bessemer platform. When I came back, I walked beside the locomotive as it dragged the ladle and the fifteen thousand pounds of molten pig iron. Through closing eyes I watched the charging-machine thrust in the spout. That long finger lifted the clay thing from its resting-place on the big saw-horses between furnaces. Then, moving on the rails, the machine adjusted itself in front of number two door, and shoved the spout in with a jar. I stood lazily watching the pouring of the molten steel. Fred motioned slowly with his hands, with "Up a little, whoop!" as the stream flowed very cleanly into the spout and furnace. Then came the noise of lifting, that characteristic crane grind, with a rising inflection as it gained speed and moved off. "Pretty soon tapping, after tapping back-wall, front-wall, the spout, morning," I meditated. "Well, how in hell are you?" It was Al, the pit boss. "Fine!" I said as loudly as I could; and went and sat down at once. My chin hit my chest. I stopped thinking, but didn't go to sleep. "Test!" yelled Fred. We tested three times, and then tapped. There were two ladles, with four piles of manganese, to shovel in. A third-helper from Number 4, a short stocky Italian, shoveled with me. The ladle swung slightly closer to the gallery than usual, and sent up a bit more gas and sparks. We put out little fires on our clothes six or seven times. After the first ladle, the Italian put back the sheet iron over the red-hot spout, and after the second ladle, I put it on. We rested between ladles, in a little breeze that came through between furnaces. "What you think of this job?" he asked. "Pretty bad," I said, "but pretty good money." He looked up, and the veins swelled on his forehead. His cheeks were inflamed, and his eyes showed the effects of the twenty hours of continuous labor. "To hell with the money!" he said, with quiet passion; "no can live." The words sank into my memory for all time. The back-wall was, I think, no hotter than usual, but men's nerves made them mind things they would have smirked at the previous morning. The third-helper on Eight and Nick quarreled over a shovel, and Nick sulked till Fred went over and spoke to him. Once the third-helper got in Nick's way. "Get out, or I'll break your goddam neck!" And so on-- I felt outrageously sore at everyone present--not least, myself. After that back-wall all except Fred threw their shovels with violence on the floor, and went to the edge of the mill. They stood about in the little breeze that had come up there, in a state of fatigue and jangled nerves, looking out on a pale streak of morning just visible over freight cars and piles of scrap. We made front-wall, and when it was over, I went to the bench by the locker and sat down, to try to forget about the spout. I had been forgetting about it for twenty minutes when Nick came up, and shook me, thinking I had fallen asleep. "Mud," he said. I got him mud. Nick fixed up the spout amid an inclination to cursing in Serbian, and gave me commands in loud tones in the same language. I felt exceedingly indifferent to Nick and to the spout, and finished up in a state of enormous indifference to all things save the chance of sleep. Jack, the second-helper of Eight, was making tea, having dipped out some hot steel with a test-spoon, and set a tea-pot on it. "Want some?" he said. I nodded. Watching him make it, and drinking the tea woke me up. "What time is it?" I asked. "Four-thirty," said he. "Thanks for the tea." Then the summoning signal for a third-helper rang out--a sledge-hammer pounding on sheet iron. They were "spooning up," that is, making front-wall, on Number 6. All through that stunt I was wide awake, quite refreshed, though with the sense, the conviction, that I had been in the mill, doing this sort of thing, for a week at the inside. Coming back to Seven from that, I found Fred flat on his back, looking "all in." Jock came up for a drink of water, and looked over at me. "You look to me," he remarked, "like the breaking up of a bad winter." He laughed. 5 A.M. _Monday_ The sun came into the mill, looking very pallid and sick beside the bright light from the metal. I watched the men on Eight make back-wall, and heard the sounds; I sat on the bench, my legs as loose as I could make them, my head forward, eyes just raised. "Lower, lower, goddam you, lower!" came a desperate command to the "pull-up" man to close the furnace doors. "Get out--" "One more--" "Up, up, goddam it! where are your ears?" "Come on, men, last door." "My shovel you son-of-a--!" Now they were tapping on Number 6. The melter came out of his shanty; he had had a sleep since the last furnace tapped. He rubbed his eyes, and went out on the gallery. I could hear his "Heow." Four poor devils were standing in the flame, putting in manganese. Thank God, I don't shovel for Six. "A jigger," from Fred. "Sure." When I went for it, the sores on the bottom of my feet hurt, so that I walked on the edges of my shoes. I was so delighted with the idea of its being six o'clock, with no back-walls ahead, that I almost took pleasure in that foot. I stopped in front of a fountain and put my right arm under the water. The recorder in the Bessemer was asleep. He was a boy of twenty. I woke him up, and grinned in his face. "Fifteen thou' for Number 7." "You go to hell, with your goddam Number 7!" I grinned at him again, knew it was just the long turn, knew he'd give me that fifteen thousand pounds; went down stairs again-- Twenty minutes of seven. It's light. Nobody talks, but everyone dresses in a hurry. Everyone's face looks grave from fatigue--eyes dead. We leave at ten minutes of seven. 7 A.M. _Monday_ It's a problem--a damn problem--whether to walk fast and get home quick, or walk slow and sort of rest. I try to go fast, and have the sense of lifting my legs, not with the muscles, but with something else. I shake my head to get it clearer. One bowl of oatmeal. Coffee. "I feel all right." I get up and am conscious of walking home quietly and evenly, without any further worry about the difficulty of lifting my feet. "The long turns, they're not so bad," I say out loud, and stumble the same second on the stairs. I get up, angry, and with my feet stinging with pain. Old thought comes back: "Only seven to eight hours sleep. Bed. Quick." I push into my room--the sun is all over my bed. Pull the curtain; shut out a little. Take off my shoes. It's hard work trying to be careful about it, and it's darn painful when I'm not careful. Sit on the bed, lift up my feet. Feel burning all over; wonder if I'll ever sleep. Sleep. VI BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP At the end of every shift, when I walked toward the green mill-gate just past the edge of the power house, I could look over toward the blast-furnaces. There were five of them, standing up like mammoth cigars some hundred feet in height. A maze of pipes, large as tunnels, twisted about them, and passed into great boilers, three or four of which arose between each two furnaces. These, I learned, were "stoves" for heating the blast. I had had in mind for several days asking for a transfer to this interesting apparatus. There was less lifting of dead weight on the blast-furnace jobs than on the open-hearth. Besides, I wanted to see the beginning of the making of steel--the first transformation the ore catches, on its way toward becoming a steel rail, or a surgical instrument. I went to see the blast-furnace superintendent, Mr. Beck, at his house on Superintendent's Hill. "I'm working on the open-hearth," I said, "and want very much to get transferred to the blast-furnace. I intend to learn the steel business, and want to see the beginnings of things." "How much education?" he asked. "I graduated from college," I said, "Yale College." Would that complicate the thing, I wondered, or get in the way? I wanted badly to sit down for a talk, tell him the whole story--army, Washington, hopes and fears; I liked him a good deal. But he was in a hurry--perhaps that might come on a later day. We talked a little. He said I ought to come into the office for a while and "learn to figure burdens." I replied that I wanted the experience of the outside, and a start at the bottom. "All right," he said, "I'll put you outside. Come Monday morning." On Monday morning I followed the cindered road inside the gate for three hundred yards, turned off across a railroad track, and passed a machine-shop. The concrete bases of the blast-furnaces rose before me. Somebody had just turned a wheel on the side of one of the boiler-like "stoves," and a deafening blare, like tons of steam getting away, broke on my eardrums. I asked where the office was. "Through there." Up some steps, over a concrete platform, past the blaring "stove," I went, to the other side of the furnaces, and found there a flat dirty building--the office. Inside was Mr. Beck, who turned me over at once to Adolph, the "stove-gang boss." I was a little anxious over this introduction to things, and thought it might embarrass or prevent comradeships. But it didn't. No one knew, or if he did, ever gave it a thought. It may perhaps have accounted for Adolph's letting me keep my clothes in his shanty that night, and for considerable conversation he vouchsafed me on the first day. But my individuality passed quickly, very quickly; I became no more than a part of that rather dingy unit, the stove-gang. While I was putting on my clothes in Adolph's sheet-iron shanty, he grinned and said: "Last time, pretty dirty job, too, eh?" "Yes," I said, "open-hearth." He led me out of the shanty, past three stoves, up an iron staircase, past a blast-furnace, and through a "cast-house." That is not as interesting as I hoped. It is merely a place of many ditches, or run-ways, that lead the molten iron from the furnace to the ladle. Very little iron is ever "cast," since the blast-furnaces here make iron only for the sake of swiftly transporting it, while still hot, to the Bessemer and open-hearth, for further metamorphosis into steel. We came at last to more stoves, a set of three for No. 4 blast-furnace. Near the middle one was a little group of seven men, three of them with a bar, which they thrust and withdrew constantly in an open door of the stove. Inside were shelving masses and gobs of glowing cinder. "You work with these feller," Adolph said; and passed out of sight along the stoves. I watched carefully for a long time, which was a cardinal rule of practice with me on joining up with a new gang. It was best, I thought, to shut up, and study for a spell the characters of the men, the movements and knacks of the job. I think this reserve helped, for the men were first to make advances, and before the day was out, I had a life-history from most of them. "Where you work, las' job?" asked a little Italian with a thin blond moustache, after he had finished his turn on the crowbar. "Open-hearth," I said, "third-helper." "I work three week open-hearth," he said, "too hot, no good." "Hot all right," I said; "how's this job?" "Oh, pretty good, this not'ing," he said; "sometime we go in stove, clean 'em up, hot in there like hell. Some day all right, some day no good." I had been watching the stove, and caught the simple order of movements. Two or three men, with long lunging thrusts, loosened the glowing cinder inside a fire-box; another pulled it out with a hoe into a steel wheelbarrow; another dumped the load on a growing pile of cinder over the edge of the platform. When one of the men disappeared for a chew, I grabbed the wheelbarrow at hauling-out time, and worked into the job. In fifteen minutes that fire-box was cleared out, and we moved to the next stove. We skipped that; the door was locked and wedged. I learned later that, if we had opened it, the blast (being "on" in the stove) would in all likelihood have killed us. It blows out with sufficient pressure to carry a man forty yards. But the next stove we tackled. I tried the thrusting of the bar this time. The trick is to aim well at a likely crack, thrust in hard and together, and with all the weight on the bar, spring it up and down till the cinder gives. It was good exercise without strain, and so cool in comparison with open-hearth work that I took real joy in the hot cinder. The heat was comparable to a wood fire, and only occasionally was it necessary to hug close. We did five stoves, taking the wheelbarrow with us, and carrying it up the steps, when we passed from one level to another. After the five came a lull. Two of the men rolled cigarettes, the rest reinforced a chew that already looked as big as an apple in the cheek. For both these comforting acts "Honest Scrap" was used, a tobacco that is stringy and dark, and is carried in great bulk, in a paper package. The men sat on steps or leaned against girders. A short Italian near me, with quick movements, and full of unending talk, looked up and asked the familiar question, "What job you work at last time?" "Open-hearth," I said. "How much pay?" "Forty-five cents an hour." "No like job?" "No, like this job better," I returned. He paused. Then, "What job you work at before open-hearth?" "Oh," I said, "I was in the army." His face became alert at once, and interested. The others stopped talking, also, and looked over at me. "Me have broder in de American army; no in army, mysel'; me one time Italian army. How long time you?" "Nearly two years," I said. "Oversea?" "Yes, but didn't get to front, before war over. No fight," I answered, adopting abbreviated style, as I sometimes did. It seemed unnecessary and a little discourteous to use a rounded phrase, with all the adorning English particles. He jumped down from the steps and took up a broom, executing a shoulder arms or two, and the flat-hand Italian salute, performed with a tremendous air. "Here," I said, "bayonet." I took the broomstick, and did the bayonet exercises. The gang stood up and watched with delight, making comments in several languages. Especially the eyes of the Italians danced. The incident left a genial social atmosphere. Adolph came in from behind one of the stoves as I was concluding a "long point." "Come on," he said, looking at me with a grin; and when I had followed him, "I show you furnace, li'l bit." He took me to a stair-ladder near the skip that ascended to the top of Number 5. For every furnace, a skip carries up the ore and other ingredients for melting inside. It is a funicular-like thing, a continuous belt, with boxes attached, running from the "hopper" at the top of the furnace to the "stockroom" underground. We started to climb the steps at the left of the belt. There was a little rail between us and the moving boxes of ore. "See dat," said Adolph, pointing through at the boxes. "Keep head inside," he said, "keep hand inside, cut 'em off quick." He illustrated the amputation, with great vivacity, on his throat and wrists. It was a climb of five minutes to the furnace-top. We paused to look at the mounting boxes. "Ore?" I asked. He nodded. Pretty soon the iron ceased coming, and a white stone took its place in the boxes. "What's that?" "Limestone," he said. "Next come coke. Look." We were near enough to the top to see the boxes tilt, and the hopper open and swallow the dumping of stone. In a minute or two, we stepped out on the platform on top of the furnace. Adolph looked at me and grinned. "You smell dat gas?" he asked. I nodded. He referred to the carbon monoxide that I knew issued from the top of all blast-furnaces. "You stay li'l bit, pretty soon you drunk," he said. "Let's not," I returned. "You stay li'l bit more," he continued, his grin broadening, "pretty soon you dead." I learned in later days that this was perfectly accurate. We stood on a little round platform fifteen or twenty feet across, with the hopper in the centre gobbling iron ore and limestone. A layer of ore dust, an inch thick, covered the flooring, and a faint odor of gas was in the air. Each of the other five furnaces had a similar lookout, and a narrow passageway connected them with the tops of the stoves. The top of these gigantic shafts likewise had a diameter of some fifteen feet; there were little railings about them, and in the centre a trapdoor. "What's that for?" I asked. "Go inside to clean 'em out," he returned. I wondered, with a few flights of imagination, what that job would be like, and remembered that the Italian with the blond moustache had spoken of the duty in uncomplimentary terms. We could look forth from this eminence and see the whole mill yard, which was nearly a mile in extent. Over the "gas house"--a large building I hadn't noticed before, the source of gas for the open-hearth--and far to the left, were the Bessemers, spouting red gold against a very blue sky. On their right rose the familiar stacks of the open-hearth. I looked intently at them and wondered what Number 7 did at that moment--front-wall, back-wall, or tapping its periodic deluge of hot steel? In the foreground, a variety of gables, and then the irregular roof, far beyond, that I knew must be the blooming-mill, because of the interesting yard with the muscular cranes, tossing about bars and shapes and sheets of steel. An immense system of railways everywhere, running down as far as the river bank, where were piles of cinder, and a trainload of ladles moving there to dump. A half-mile away another ironclad cluster of buildings, the tube mill, the nail mill, and the rest, with convenient rails running up to them. I turned around. Near by, slightly beyond the foot of the skips, was that impressive hill of red dust, the ore pile. Iron ore was being taken away for the skips with one of those spider-like mechanisms that combine crane, derrick, and steam-shovel. It was built hugely, two uprights forty or fifty feet high, at a distance, I estimate, of a hundred yards, with their bases secured to railway cars. A crossbeam joined them, which was itself a monorail, along which a man-carrying car ran. From that car dropped chains, attaching themselves at the bottom to the familiar automatic shovel or scoop. First the whole arrangement moved--the uprights, the crosspiece, and the monorail car--very slowly over the whole hill of ore, to a good spot for digging. Then the monorail car sped to the chosen position, and the shovel fell rapidly into the ore. With a mouthful secure, the chains lifted a little, enough to clear the remaining ore, and the car ran its mouthful to the hill's edge, to dump into special gondolas on railroad tracks. The whole gigantic ore-hill was within easy reach of a single instrument. "Ought to last a while," I said. "Will be gone in a month," he returned. We went down the ladder-steps, and stopped near one of the furnaces. I rather hoped the stove-gang boss would talk. He did. "Ever work blast-furnace before?" he began. "No," I said; "I have worked on the open-hearth furnaces a little. But before that I spent about two years in the army." "Me in Austrian army," he said musingly, "fifteen year ago. Sergeant artillery." I thought about that, and it occurred to me that he retained something of the artillery sergeant still, necessarily adapted a little to the exigencies of American blast-stoves. I found he knew about ordnance, and boasted of Budapest cannon-makers. "How do you like this country?" I asked. "America, all right," he said. "Good country?" I pushed him a little. "Mak' money America," he explained; "no good live. Old country fine place live." We developed that a little. We discussed cities. He asked me about London and Paris, and other European cities. Which did I like best, cities over there or American cities? I said American cities. He asked what was the difference. I thought a minute, comparing New York and London. European cities did not have the impressive forty-story edifices of American, and looked puny with four or five. "Ah," he said, "tall buildings no look good. Budapest good city, no can build over five story." Here was unlooked-for discrimination. I began feeling provincial. He went on to describe the cleanliness of Budapest, and to contrast it with Pennsylvania cities of his acquaintance. He certainly had me hands down. He continued: "No can build stack that t'row smoke into neighbor's house. Look at dis place," he said, pointing to Bouton, "look at Pittsburgh." I said no more, but nodded swift agreement. He was a little more encouraging about the United States when it came to government. "You have a man president; that no good, after four year you kick him out. My country sometime get king, that's all right, sometime get damn bad one. No can kick him out." But he relapsed into censure again when he came to American women. "Women," he said, "in my country do more work than men this country." "They have more time, here," I said, "and don't have to work so hard." "American women, when you meet 'em, always ask: 'How much money in de pock?' What they do? Dress up,--hat, dress, shoe,--walk all time Main Street. Bah!" It was a refreshing shock to receive this outspoken critique of America from a Hunky, a Hungarian stove-gang boss of a blast-furnace. I was amused very much by it, except the phrase "America all right mak' money, old country place live." I coupled it up with some talks I had had with men on the open-hearth. America, steel-America, which was all they knew, was very largely a place of long hours, gas, heat, Sunday work, dirty homes, big pay. There was a connection in that, I thought, with the gigantic turnover figures of laborers in steel, the restless moving from job to job that had been growing in recent years so fast. Too many men were treating America as a good place for taking a fortune out of. The impulse toward learning English, building a home, and becoming American, certainly wasn't strong in steel-America. But I left these questions in the back of my head, and returned to the stove gang at Adolph's command. In a few days I was well in the midst of my gang-novitiate. We got formally introduced by name one day in front of No. 12 stove. The little Italian with the black moustache said: "What's your name?" "Charlie," I said, knowing that first names were the thing. "All right," he said, "that's Jimmy, Tony, Joe. Mike not here. You know Mike? Slavish. John, that's me. That's John too wid de bar.--Hey!" with an arresting yell, that made the others look up, "_Dis is Charlie!_" I became a part of an exclusive group of seven men, who had worked together for about two years. There is a cohesiveness and a structure of tradition about a semipermanent mill-group of this sort that marks it off from the casual-labor gang. The physical surroundings remain unaltered, and methods and ways of thought grow up upon them. I was struck by the amount of character a man laid bare in twelve hours of common labor. There are habits of temper, of cunning and strength, of generosity and comradeship, of indifference, that it is capable of throwing into relief beyond any a priori reasoning. It begins by being extensively intimate in personal and physical ways; you know every man's idiosyncrasies in handling a sledge or a bar or a shovel, and the expression of his face under all phases of a week's work; you know naturally the various garments he wears on all parts of his body. You proceed to acquaint yourself, as the work throws up opportunity, with the mannerisms and qualities of his spirit. It is astonishing, with the barrier of a different language, only partly broken down by a dialect-American, how little is ultimately concealed or kept out of the common understanding. I was impressed by the precise practices established in doing the work. Every motion and every interval of the job had been selected by long trial. If you didn't think the formula best, try it out. Many considerations went into its selection--to-day's fatigue, to-morrow's, and next month's. It had an eye for gas effect, for the boss's peculiar character, and for all material obstacles, many of which were far from obvious. When the flue dust had been removed from the blast-stoves, I found wheeling and dumping it an easy and congenial set of movements, and consequently took off my loads at a great speed. At once I became a target, "Tak' it eas'--What's the matter with you; tak' it eas'." John--Slovene, and Stoic--put in an explanation: "Me work on this job two year, me know; take it easy. You have plenty work to do." "Take it easy," I said, "and no get tired, eh? feel good every day?" "You no can feel good every day," he amended quickly. "Gas bad, make your stomach bad." So I slowed up on my wheelbarrow loads, sat on the handles, and spat and talked, till I found I was going too slow. There was a work-rhythm that was neither a dawdle nor a drive; if you expected any comfort in your gang life of twelve hours daily, you had best discover and obey its laws. It might be, from several points of view, an incorrect rhythm, but, at all events, it was a part of the gang _mores_. And some of its inward reasonableness often appeared before the day was out, or the month, or the year. Everybody wore good clothes to work, and changed in the shanty to their furnace outfit. I usually came in a brown suit, which had been out in the rain a good many times and was fairly shapeless. One day I entered the mill in a gray suit, which fitted and was moderately pressed. At the dinner-bucket hour in the shanty, I was asked by John the Italian: "How much you pay for suit, Charlie?" I was embarrassed, fearing vaguely explanations that might have to follow a declaration of price. I suddenly recalled the fact that the suit had been given me by my brother, so that I didn't know the price, and said so. "My brother give me suit, I don't know how much he pay," I said. That dumped me into another quandary. "What job your brother have?" I was immediately asked. I thought a moment and answered truthfully again. "My brother, priest," I said. That arrested immediate attention, and I was looked at with respect and curiosity. Tony finally said, "Why you no be priest, Charlie?" "Oh," I answered, laughing, "I run away; I like raise hell too much be priest." This was pretty accurate, too. "O Charlie!" they bellowed. After that, the gang were friends to the death. VII DUST, HEAT, AND COMRADESHIP One day I was promoted to stove-tender or hot-blast man on Number 6. The keeper of the furnace was a negro. When he was rebuilding the runways for the tapped metal, I noticed that his movements were sure and practised. He patted and shaped the mud-clay in the runway, like a potter moulding a vessel. When it was tap time, he bored the tap hole with the electric drill easily and neatly; when the metal flowed, he knew the exact moment to lift the gates for drawing away slag. I watched him to see how he managed the four white men that worked for him. They were Austrians, and I found they joked together and showed no resentment of status. Commands were given with a nod or gesture. With the Americans on the furnace, the relation was the traditional one. The negro was light and seemed too slightly built for the job, but he performed it very efficiently, and so did his gang. The blower was Old McLanahan, a man somewhere between thirty-five and sixty. A long, successful life of inebriety had given him a certain resignation to the ills of man, and enabled him to keep the heart of a viveur throughout his life. His skin appeared thrown like a bag over an assemblage of loosely fitted bones--the only considerable part of him being a paunch which coursed forward into a moderate point. He was rather proud of being a blower on furnace No. 6. After the slag had been sampled he said: "Where d'ye eat, boy?" "I eat at Mrs. Farrell's." "How much?" "Seven a week." "Too much. Pretty goddam good is it?" "Damn good food," I said. "Is Mrs. Farrell a widder woman?" "No," I said, "she's not." "Well," he said, "if you hear of a damn fine little widder woman, let me know will yer?" "Sure," I said. "I'm lookin' for a place ter board, and most of all I'm lookin' for a little widder woman ter honor wid holy matrimony." After tapping that morning at 8.00, McLanahan took a silver dollar out of his pocket. "If it comes heads," he said, "I'm goin' out to-night, see, I'm goin' out ter find a woman." He flipped the coin and it fell tails. "Don't count," said he, "two out of three." This flip fell heads. "Hah," he said, "if this comes heads, I'm goin' out to-night ter find a woman." It fell tails. "Hell!" he said, "Don't count, flipped it with the wrong hand." He kept this up all day. Finally at 5.30 the coin came heads. He picked the coin up and put it in his pocket. "Goin' out, to-night," he said. "Boss wants to keep Number 6 lookin' right. Go down below, and clean out all that flue dust." I shoveled between the stone arches of the furnace base, that curved overhead like the culverts of a bridge. Sometimes the flue dust was wet and clotted with mud, and came up in cakes on the shovel; sometimes it was light, and flew in your nose and eyes. I made a pile of it six feet high, and shaped it into a brick-red pyramid with my shovel. I washed the arches white with a hose. "Change 'em before we tap," McLanahan ordered, nodding at the stoves. I went among the rangy hundred-foot shafts with a certain sense of control over great forces. Every set differs in its special crankiness. Number 9's have stiff-working valves, but are powerful heaters; Number 8's are cool stoves, but their valves slide genially into place. I always a little dreaded "blowing her off." Resting my arms on the edge of the wheel, and grabbing the top with my hands, I wrenched it over to the left, and the blast began. The immense volumes of compressed air escaped with a gradually accelerated blare. I gritted my teeth a little, and my ears sang. Then came "putting on the gas." I climbed to a little platform near the combustion chamber, and with a hunk of iron scrap for hammer, knocked out some wedges that held tight a door. By now I knew just the pressure for making the iron slab creep on its rollers. I braced my feet and pulled with back and arms. Through the door, the combustion chamber glowed red. I went down the steps and slowly turned the gas-pipe crank, bringing an eight-inch pipe close to the red opening. I dodged the back flare as it ignited. When the "new" stove was on, and the "old" one lit for reheating, I went to the pyrometer shanty. In a little hut among the furnaces were tell-tale discs, that let you know if you were keeping your heat right. I found my heat curve was smooth with only a tiny hump.... Two Hunkies were inside the shanty. "Nine-thirty," said one. "How do you know?" I asked. He pointed to the end of the curve on the disc, that was opposite the 9.30 mark on the circumference. "Saves me a watch," he said, with a grin. After supper that evening, I mended a sleeve of my shirt that had been torn on a piece of cinder in the cast-house. Sounds of conversation were rising from the porch. I went out and found Mr. Farrell sitting in a rocker with one leg on the railing and his face screwed into an attitude of thinking. Mrs. Farrell, having done the dishes, had come out to knit, and a lanky visitor, who leaned uncomfortably against the railing, was doing the talking. The conversation was political. "Before I came to this town, nobody had the guts to vote Democratic," said the visitor. "I'm from Democratic parts," he went on, "and when I first come here I used to go round. 'Come, come,' I said, 'you fellers is Democrats, you know you is. Sign up.' 'We know it,' they'd say, 'but we can't afford ter, there's the wife and kids--we can't afford ter, we've got a job and we're goin' to keep it.' That's how bad it was." "You mean--" "I mean you voted with the Company or pretty quick you moved out of Bouton, for you hadn't any job to work at.... I used ter work at glass blowin', that's a real business--" "Mr. Herder is always telling us how much better the glass business is than the steel business," said Mrs. Farrell. "You'll have to get used to that." She gave everybody a smoothing-out smile. It was fun when you could pick up "dope" in the course of a morning's sweat. I learned one Sunday a few pointers about judging conditions through the peepholes. If there is a lot of movement, your furnace is O.K. If the cinder begins to settle into the tuyère, your furnace is cold. If she looks reddish, cold; blue, O.K. Don't be fooled by different colored glasses in the peepholes. One day we kept the stoves on "all heat" for the furnace was cold. "All you can give her, goddam it," McLanahan said, looking through the peepholes. McLanahan was always a little ridiculous. Anxiety made him hop about and waddle from peephole to peephole, like a hen looking for grain. I heaved on the hot-blast chain, and the indicator climbed. We had a pleasant, light brown chocolaty slag, that day, which meant good iron. When the metal runs out with large white speckles, she has too much sulphur; when she smokes, you'll get good iron. The other day they had too large a load of ore for the coke and stone in her. "Sledge!" yelled the keeper. A cinder-snapper brought up two, and held the bar while the keeper and first-helper sledged. They worked well, and I watched with fascination the hammer head whirl dizzily, and land true at the bar. At last the liquid slag broke through, jet-black as if it were molten coal, flowing thickly down the clay spout. The clay notch was hammered and eaten away, and had to be remade. I watched the stove-tender on Number 7 as he opened the cold-air valve. His motions were exactly calculated--the precise blow, to an ounce, to loosen that wedge. "How long have you been stove-tender?" I asked. "Ten years," he said. "Go down to the stockroom and tell the skip-man, one more coke," said McLanahan. I was glad to get a glimpse of that part of the blast-furnace operation. Gondola cars bring up ore and the other ingredients of blast-furnace digestion, and run over tracks with gaps between the sleepers. The cars, by means of their collapsible bottoms, drop the loads down through, and the material falls into an underground "stockroom." I entered it by climbing down two ladders, and found the skip-man at the base of one of the endless chains. The chamber had the appearance of a mine gallery de luxe. I looked at the tons of ore moving upward neatly, efficiently. What an incalculable saving of labor and time, this endless chain affair with its continually moving boxes, over the old manner of hoisting painfully, in few-pound lots, by hand! I gave McLanahan's order to the skip-man and went up the ladders. You've got to tap, "when the iron's right," and when a little later the keeper held the steam drill in front of the mud wall of the tap hole, the steam stayed at home. There was no time for a steam-fitter. Young Lonergan and I beat it for the electric drill. It was heavy enough to make us waddle as we carried it on the run. "That's bludy funny," said McLanahan. The electric drill wouldn't electrify. A hurry call followed for the electrician. He smiled benignly while twelve sweaty men looked on. And in thirty seconds he fixed the connection, and we tapped in time to save the iron. When the drill had almost bored through the hard mud in the tap hole, the keeper shoved in a crowbar, and a couple of helpers sledged rhythmically for one minute. Then the molten iron broke the mud into bits, and tumbled out. Little sheets of flame from the slag skated along the top of the red river. It rose in the runway with bubbles and smoke on top. The keeper grabbed a scraper--an exaggerated hoe--and started the slag through a side ditch. "Now try it," said Old Mac. By then, I had the test spoon ready, scooped up a bubbling ten pounds, carried it carefully, and poured it into two moulds. When I had broken the little ingots, still red, Mac said, "Too much sulphur." By now the metal stream had run to the edge of the cast-house and was falling spatteringly into a ladle ten feet below. Somebody said, "Whoop!" The negro keeper opened the iron gate of a new runway, and the metal rolled on its way to a second ladle. There were five to fill, each on a railway car. I noticed the switch engine was getting ready to drag the trainload of molten metal to the Bessemer. "Heow!" out of Old Lonergan's throat. The bottom of one ladle had fallen out and was letting down molten iron on the track. There was nothing to do but watch it. We did that. It covered the track like a red blood-clot, and ran off sizzling, and curdling in the sand. It cooled, blackened, and clotted over one rail--about 10,000 pounds. "Who clean dat up?" I heard a Sicilian cinder-snapper say with a blank smile. After the furnaceful of metal had all flowed forth, we prepared to plug that tap. I went over to the other side of the tap hole, and picked up a piece of sheet iron. A shallow puddle of iron was still molten in the runway. The tap hole was crusting over with cooling iron, still aglow. I dropped the sheet iron over the runway. The helpers came up behind and dropped others. "Hey, you," said the keeper summoning a helper. They swung out the "mud gun" on a kind of crane and pointed its muzzle into the glowing aperture. It was a real gun, looked like a six-inch fieldpiece, but fired projectiles of mud by steam instead of powder. "Quick," said the keeper. I pushed a wheelbarrow towering with mud up to the sheet iron; then, with a long scoop-shovel standing against the furnace, shoveled mud in the gun. The keeper stood almost over the runway with only the rapidly heating sheet-iron between himself and the liquid-metal puddle beneath. He operated a little lever that shot mud charges by steam into the hole. Every time he shot the gun, I took a new scoop of mud. We worked as fast as our arms let us. Some of the helpers kick at this part of their duties, but it is cooler by several degrees than the open-hearth, and thinking of those sizzling nights lightens it for me. Besides, it has excitement and requires a streak of skill. I spent several days with young Lonergan helping the water-tender, Ralph. "Water connections damn important thing," said Lonergan. I was beginning to see why. The whole wall of the great cone-shaped furnace was covered with cooling water-conduits. Without these the furnace would melt away. We ranged from furnace to furnace, climbing up to a platform that ran around the fattest part and spending long quarter-hours on our bellies unscrewing valves. There was always something leaking. Ralph could come and take a look at the furnace, and send us after tools. "Ralph's all right," said Lonergan, "has new names though for everything. Doesn't call a goddam wrench a wrench, calls it a 'jigger.' Have to learn all your tools over again by his goddam Hunky names." Young Lonergan was very "white" to me, as they say. "I'll show you how to clean that peephole." And he grabs a cleaning rod, and imparts the knack of knocking cinder out of that important little observation post. "I used to work stove-tender," he explained. "If you want to know anything ask Dippy, he'll talk, don't McLanahan, he don't know he's livin'.... Have a chew?" "No, I'll smoke." One day we had been discussing the bosses, and how they had got their start, till the talk drifted to young Lonergan and his own very typical career of youth. "Used to work on the open-hearth," he began. "I used to test the metal--you know in the little shanty where 'Whiskers' is now. Chemist!" he grinned. "Then, by God, I went to work in the blooming-mill, chasing steel--you know; keepin' track of all the ingots comin' in. A hell of a job--by God you didn't stop a second--you knew you'd been workin', boy, when you pulled out in the mornin'. I worked my head off at that job. "Then I fought with Towers. He gave me a week. After I came back I had another run-in.... When I carried my bucket out o' that place, I was off work entirely. Didn't go to work for three months, thought I never would work again. "But after a hell of a spell, gotta job, pipe mill New Naples--eight hours--a good job, but the mill's shut down now. Then the suckers drafted me. Balloon comp'ny a bloody year and a half." There followed a very vast series of parties in the army, and explicit views on all the officers he'd had. There was usually a new army story whenever I met him. He was extraordinarily clever in getting away with A. W. O. L.'s. "When I got my discharge, father wanted me to come to work here, so I did. Worked on those stoves where you are, for a while--stove-tender helper, then stove-tender. Then I got this job.... Don't you chew?... I'll lose it too if I take many more days off for sickness. Last time I was 'sick'"--he grinned--"Bert Cahill and the bunch and I took three skirts in Bill's car to Monaca. Had six quarts of damn good whiskey. I was out a week. Ralph says, when I come back: 'Pretty damn sick, you!' But to hell with 'em! I'm not afraid of my job." That little blower called Dippy, I found, knew the furnace game in all its phases with great practical thoroughness. I used to try to get chances of talking with him on questions of technique. "What about those jobs in the cast-house?" I said one day, "the helper's jobs? Isn't it a good thing to know about those if you're learning the iron game?" "You don't want to work there," he said quickly, "only Hunkies work on those jobs, they're too damn dirty and too damn hot for a 'white' man." So I got thinking over the "Hunky" business, and several other conversations came into my mind. Dick Reber, senior melter on the open-hearth, had once said, "There are a few of these Hunkies that are all right, and damn few. If I had my way, I'd ship the whole lot back to where they came from." Then I thought of the incident of my getting chosen from the pit for floor work on the furnaces. Several times Pete, who was a Russian, discriminated against me in favor of Russians. Until Dick came along and began discriminating in my favor against the Hunkies. How many Hunkies have risen to foremen's jobs, I thought, in the two departments where I have worked? One in the open-hearth--a fellow who "stuck with the company" in the Homestead Strike--and none on the blast-furnaces except Adolph, the stove-gang boss. My recollections were broken into by a call for violent action. "Cooler," yelled McLanahan, his voice going up into a husky shriek. That meant molten iron inside, melting the cone-shaped water-chamber around the blast pipe. If let alone, the cooling at that place would cease, and in a short time there would follow an escape of molten metal. "Cooler!" yelled on a blast-furnace means "Hurry like hell." I grabbed a wrench to take the nut off the "bridle"--the first step in taking out a sort of outside cooler, the tuyère. "Bar," said the Serbian stove-tender very quietly, picking up a specially curved one, and McLanahan took the other end. Somebody knocked out some keys with a sledge, and the blowpipe fell on the curved bar, making the holders of it grunt. They took it off fast, for the instant the thing loosens, a flame shoots through the hole and licks its edges. Then the tuyère comes loose with a few strokes of a pull bar. All of these moves are fast; a tuyère goes bad every other day and men work fast like soldiers at a gun drill. But coolers don't break a lead but once in three months or so; and the cone's heavier, the gang bigger, there's less efficiency and more holler and sweat. When the pull bar gets into action it looks a little like a mediæval mob with a battering ram. A "pull bar" is a tool designed to translate the muscle of many men into pull, on a small gripping edge against which sledging is impossible. At one end a thick hook grips the edge of the cooler, at the other a weight is brought against a flange that runs around the bar. Everybody on the gang has a piece of a rope attaching to that weight. The stove gang moving between stoves Thirteen and Fourteen were caught and brought into this for muscle, and a couple of passing millwrights drafted. "Hold up the goddam end," from Steve, boss by common consent. "A little beef this time!" from a blower. "What the hell's the matter, _sick_?" We all swear between breaths, and take a grip higher on the rope--the weight cracks the flange again, and makes the bar shiver. When the new cooler, which resembles more nearly a gigantic flower pot, without any bottom, than anything else, is in place, there's a cry of: "Big Dolly!" That involves four or five men, lifting a kind of ramrod with a square hammer-end, from the rack, and lugging it to the cooler. I get near the ramming end this time; Tony is near me on the other side. Together we hold the hammer against the cooler. As the end strikes, the jar goes back through the men's hands. "Now top." Arms raise the bar painfully, and hold it poised a little unsteadily, sway back, tense, and drive. "Hold it, hold it on the cooler, goddam you." Tony and I had let our arms shake a fraction, and the hammer fell glancing on the cooler's edge. "Now!" Seated this time. Arms relax and stretch. When things are ready, Adolph makes the water connections. "Hold de goddam shovel, what you t'ink, I burn up." A cinder-snapper holds a shovel in front of the hole to keep the flame from his hands. "All right, all right." The job's done; the millwrights pick up their tools, and the stove gang moves off leisurely to their cleaning. I hear the superintendent talking with a blower near the sample box. "They did that in pretty good time," he says. I used to eat my lunch and kept my clothes in a little brick shanty near Number 4, sharing it with the Italians of the stove gang. Although by the bosses' arrangement it was a mixed gang, Italian and Slav, the mixture did not extend to shanty arrangements, and race lines prevailed. I felt that I should learn low Italian in a few weeks if I continued with this group; the flow of it against my ear drums was incessant and some of it had already forced an entrance. Besides I was learning a great deal about: how to live, what to wear on your head, on your feet, and next your skin; where to get it--good material to resist the blast-furnace, and cheap as well; wisdom in eating and drinking, and saving money, in resting, in working, in getting a job and keeping it. There was a whole store of industrial _mores_. In some respects the ways of living of these workmen seemed as rooted and traditional as the manners of monarchs, and as wise. I won considerable merit, when I brought in a kersey cap that I got for seventy-five cents, and lost much when I reluctantly admitted the price of my brown suit. Everyone on the gang performed the washing up after work with the greatest thoroughness and success. They devoted minute attention to the appearance of clothes worn home. Rips and holes got a neat patch at once, and shoes were tapped at the proper period--before holes appeared. I have seen only one or two men in the mill who were not clean in their going-home clothes. I talked to John one day on the subject of neatness. He asked, "You have to clean up good in the army?" I dilated on the necessity of policing when wearing khaki. He said: "Man that no look neat, no good. I no like him, girls no look at him. Bah!" I was almost always offered some food from the bursting dinner buckets of my friends: a tomato, some sausage, a green pepper, some lettuce and cucumbers. I accepted gladly for it was always superior to my restaurant provender. Tony told me one day that Jimmy had come over "too late from old country, to learn speak English and be American." He was thirty-one years old. He was going back this Christmas. And Tony was going too, but just for a visit. They were going to Rome. We had talked it over a good many times, all Italy in fact, people, women, farms. Tony turned to me: "You come Italy with Jimmy and me this Christmas? We go see Rome." I assented quickly, wishing I somehow could, and was extraordinarily proud of that invitation. I must not forget the occasion of the green pepper. One noon I sat beside Jimmy during the lunch hour. The whole Italian wing were together, sitting on benches in the brick shanty. Jimmy reached among the loaves of bread in his bucket, and hauled out a green pepper as big as an orange. He offered it to me and I accepted. Treating it like my old friends the stuffed peppers, I bit deep. The whole shanty watched eagerly for results. I hadn't reckoned its raw strength and instantly felt like a blast-furnace on all heat. Despite all efforts I couldn't keep my face in shape, or resist putting out the fire with the water jug. The pleasure I furnished the Roman mob was enormous. After that I learned to eat green peppers rationally and agree with my friends that they are beneficial. Beyond their health qualities they have an economic justification. With their help you can make a meal of cheap dry bread. Plain and unbuttered it costs you but six cents a half loaf which is a full meal, and hot green peppers will compel you to stow it away in self-defense. As Tony phrases it:-- "Pepper, make you eat bread like hell!" Tony thinks that Americans eat too much that is sweet; it makes them logy and sleepy. I think he is right. Joe claims that the people in America do not know how to make bread; the wheat he says is cut when it is too green. The gang, of course, bring Italian bread in their buckets. It is certain that the American lunch of a soggy sandwich and piece of pie leaves a man heavy for the afternoon. The average dinner bucket in the shanty contains: a loaf of bread, a piece of meat,--lamb, beef, chicken, or sausage,--three or four green peppers, a couple of tomatoes, a bunch of grapes, and some vegetable mixture like tomatoes chopped with cucumbers and lettuce. One day the gang got absorbed in stunts, climbing a ladder with the hands, giving a complete twist to a hammer with grip the same, the usual turning trick of a broomstick held to the floor, etc. My contribution was squatting slowly on the right leg with the left stiff and parallel with the floor. John complained of a lame thigh for three days after, I am gratified to say. With Tony I occasionally picked a wrestling quarrel; he has a terrific grip and one day very nearly squeezed the life out of me in a fit of playfulness. I called him "Orso" afterward for his squeezing attribute. Tony's make-up includes a sense of humor. One day when he had rolled about on the floor in front of Number 3, he said: "Ain't you 'shamed, Charlie, you young man, fight old man like me. You twenty-two, twenty-three, me thirty-seven!" Tony could put me beyond this vale of tears with his left hand. VIII I TAKE A DAY OFF I decided on a day off. John had lately taken one for the festival at New Naples, and had come in to work the next morning with the wine still at festivals in his head. Sitting atop the blast-furnaces the other day, looking at the blue rivers and the three hills, and speculating about men going down to the sea in ships--because of the fat river-boat we could see--had made me sicken of the smell of flue-dust. I decided to take a day off. Sometimes the foreman, when you got back after cutting a turn, would say, "I don't believe you want this job; you like loafing better; I'll give it to Jimmy." But with a seven-day week, only the mean ones hollered. Men took an occasional holiday. I ate breakfast with a very conscious leisure at George's, putting down scrambled eggs, at 8.00 o'clock, instead of the coffee and toast at 5.15 A.M. "No work to-day," said George; "lotza mon', eh?" "Wrong," said I. "Mebbe you see best girl to-day." "Guess again." "Married?" "No." "Mr. Vincent's wife is sick," said George, changing the subject. "Oh, I'm sorry." "He no work to-day; come in here for breakfast, ten minutes before you." Vincent was a young American, twenty-one or two, whose brother I had known in college. He had not gone himself, but took a straw boss's job in the pipe mill. He had married six months before, and his wife lived with him in two rooms in Bickford Lodge--the other hotel in Bouton. We went to the movies together sometimes, and often met for supper at the Greek's. I looked for Vincent, and found him reading the "Saturday Evening Post" in the front room. "Elizabeth is sick," he explained. "I'm sticking around to-day." We fell to talking mill. "What hours do you work now?" I asked. "Six to six." "You get up at five." "Yes, about that." "That's not true, Philip," came over the transom from the sick room. "I set the alarm at four-thirty, Phil sleeps till five-thirty, drinks one cup of coffee, leaves his eggs, and catches the twenty-of-six car." "You now have the story," said Phil. "It's a stinking long day, isn't it?" "Phil has it all figured out," Elizabeth shouted from the back room. "From six to nine, he pays his rent--" "Yes, I've figured it that way," he said. "The money I earn between nine and one is enough to pay my day's board and my wife's; one to three is clothes and shoes; three to five, all other expenses; five to six I work for myself!" "That's bully; I think I'll figure mine." "But there aren't any evenings, are there," he went on, "or any Sundays?" Suddenly he looked up at the chandelier. "See all the pipes in that," he said; "I find pipes and tubes everywhere, since I've worked in the mill. It's darn interesting to pick them out. The radiator in this room is made of pipe, see; the bed in the back room; notice those banisters outside. I see them everywhere I look. If I had a little money, I'd put it in a pipe mill. 'S money in that game, once you get the market; Coglin and I have it all doped out." For fifteen minutes, Phil's enthusiasm for pipe-manufacture built the mills of the future. Toward noon I went to George's. The pit craneman, Herb, was there, eating George's roast beef and boiled potato, and looking half asleep. "I'll fire you," I said. "I'm on nights this week," he returned, with a slow smile; "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get up and eat some. Besides, I've got to go to the bank. You're with the blast-furnaces now, huh?" "Yes." "Like 'em?" "Yes, I think I'll like blast-furnace work," I said, "if I get to be stove-tender or something. Good boss, Beck." "They say so. Pete's as crabby as ever in our place. He fired one of the second-helpers last week, Eric--d'you know him? Used to come in drunk every day, worked for Jock on Eight." "That's too bad," I said; "he gave everyone a good time. Let me tell you how I amuse the gang on the blast-furnace. You know the way they break ingots for a test on the open-hearth?" "Yes." "It's not like that with us. I gave everybody on Five a treat because I thought it was." Herb looked interested. "Of course, on the open-hearth you pick them up with a tongs, when they're red-hot, and cool them in water." Herb nodded. "So there are always halves of test-ingots on the floor, _cold_. On the blast-furnace the stove-tender pours the test and knocks it out of the mould. Iron breaks easier than steel, so he never bothers to cool the ingot, but breaks it red-hot. Last Wednesday I wander up from the stoves when the furnace is ready to tap. The blower kicks busted halves of a test-ingot out of the way, and somebody says, 'A little too much sulphur.' I'm ambitious to learn iron smelting, too, and think I'll study the fracture. I walk in front of the blower and pick up the test." Herb grinned. "It wasn't red-hot," I went on; "but it had blackened over--_just_. I dropped it, and snapped my hand three feet behind me. The blower, the stove-tender, the first, second, and third helpers, and the assistant superintendent, who were all gathered, enjoyed the thing all over the place for several minutes. It gave them a good time for the afternoon." When I left Herb, I took a walk through the Greek and Slavic quarters, and stopped a while on Superintendent's Hill, to study the graded superiority of foremen and superintendents. There were excellent little houses here, though too young and new to express any other character than moderate prosperity. Perhaps it was an ungracious thing to demand more. I walked on, past farms, and up and down considerable hills. I lay down on the ground, in high grass, under apple trees which were near a tumble-down stone wall. It was enormously satisfactory to lie in the high grass, under an apple tree, listening to the small August noises--for a swift hour and a half. After supper, I wanted badly to take a look at furnace fires against a night sky, and stepped out alone to do it. Close to the railroad station I set foot on the hill, and climbed past a Greek hotel and staggering tenements to a ridge. From there I could look over multitudinous roofs to the flat spaces by the river, where the mills roared and shone. I heard heavy things dropped here and there over acres of plate flooring; they melted into a roar. The even whirr of the power house increased it, and the shrieks of machinery gave it a streaky quality. There were staccato punctuations, of course, by the whistles, and when a distant "blaw" came to me, I thought how loudly it drove into the ears of the hot-blast man, turning his wheel by a stove. But it was mostly the summed-up roar that occupied your head--an insistent thing, that made you excited and weary at the same time. The mills had been running for ten years; they always had a night-shift in Bouton. It is easy to get excited about a steel-mill sky at night. I like to look at them. There weren't many lights at the nail mill but just enough to show broken outlines of a sheet-iron village there. The rolling-mills gave some of the brightness of hot billets through the windows, and over the stacks of the open-hearth were sparks. By closing my eyes, I could see curdling flame in the belly of Number 7. The open-hearth fires showed themselves, a confused glow under a tin roof. Some little light came on the mills out of the night itself, though thin clouds kept washing the face of the moon, and now and then a blast-furnace got into the moonlight and looked perfectly confused with its pipe labyrinth and its stoves. From where I stood, I could see the Bessemer converter pouring a fluid rope of white light; I knew it for a stream the thickness of a hydrant. A rusty, glowing cloud rose over the converter, changing always, and turning that patch of sky into gold. The pattern of smoke the blower knows like a textbook, and follows the progress of his steel by the color of the cloud. My mind swept over many memories as I looked at the yellow fire of the Bessemers. There was no order or arrangement in them. They were a stream, thick in some passages, shallow in others, with scraps of all sorts riding over the top. One scrap was the price the Wop cobbler charged for soling, and another, Dick's words when he damned me for forgetting a bag of coal. Then there were things that wrung me and made the palms of my hands wet, as if thoughts went over nerves and not brain. I looked over at the eight stacks of the open-hearth, closed my eyes, and saw Seven tapping. The second-helper broke the mud stoppage with his "picker," and liquid steel belched. Pete held up two fingers. Stanley the Pole was third-helper with me. We shoveled in the two piles. I could feel heat in my nose and throat and sparks light on the blue handkerchief I had tied around my neck. We cooled off in a breeze between the two furnaces, and as we caught our breath, watched Herb swing the ladleful, over the moulds for pouring. I lived through the dragged hours in the morning of a long turn. Between two and four is worst--I remembered "fixing the spout" with Nick at three--wheelbarrow loads of mud and dolomite--a pitched battle with sleep-- At intervals in my memories, I grew conscious of the steady roar the mills sent me from the river; then forgot it, quite. Finished ladles of iron came into mind, and I tried to follow in the dark the path they would take along tracks to the Bessemer. Thick red ingots of steel, big as gravestones, I knew, were coming from "soaking pits" to rolls, and getting flattened into blooms and billets. I could see trainloads of even steel shapes moving out of the freight yard to become the steel framework of the world. "It is perfectly certain that civilization is kept from slipping, by a battle," I said to myself, beginning a line of thought. An express train shot into view in the black valley at my feet, and passed the Bouton station, with that quickly accelerating screech that motion gives. I thought of the steel in the locomotive, and thought it back quickly into sheets, bars, blooms, back then into the monumental ingots as they stood, fiery from the open-hearth pouring, against a night sky. Then the glow left, and went out of my thinking. Each ingot became a number of wheelbarrow loads of mud, pushed over a rough floor, Fred's judgment of the carbon content, and his watching through furnace peepholes. The ladlefuls ceased as steel, becoming thirty minutes' sledging through stoppage for four men, the weight of manganese in my shovel, and the clatter of the pieces that hit the rail, sparks on my neck burning through a blue handkerchief, and the cup of tea I had with Jock, cooked over hot slag at 4.00 A.M. A battle certainly, to make an ingot--trench work in a quiet sector, perhaps, but a year-after-year affair. The multiform steel prop which civilization hung upon came to me for a moment--rails, skyscrapers, the locomotive just passed, machinery that was making the ornament and substance of the environment of men. It rested on muscle and the will to push through "long turns," I thought. It could slip so easily. A huge mistaken calculation: not enough coal or cars to carry it. Or what if the habitual movements of the muscles were broken, or the will fallen into distemper? Suppose men thought it not worth the candle, and stopped to look on? Were we to get more of the kind of civilization we knew, conquer more ground, or have less of it? It depended on the battle. And that hung, I was sure, on the morale of the fighter. I wondered if it wasn't cracking badly-- But at this point I considered how late it was, and whether it was not time for bed, that I might not have bad morale myself, with a headache added to it, at 6.00 A.M. The roar again--I began breaking it up once more into the fragments of grind and rattle that composed it. In imagination I jumped on the step of the charging-machine as it moved on its rails past Seven. It shook and jarred grumpily about its business, I thought. Near Five I got off, and started to make front-wall. I remembered how I felt on a front-wall a few weeks ago. I had tried to throw my mind into the unsleeping numbness that protects a little against the load of monotony. Other men I had seen do it, drawing a curtain over nine tenths of their brain; not thinking, but only day-dreaming faintly behind the curtain, leaving enough attention to the fore for plunging the shovel into dolomite, and keeping the arms out of heat. Other passages from open-hearth shifts came into my mind in violent contrast. Shorty, who was always clearly to be distinguished anywhere on the floor because he wore his khaki shirt outside his pants, quarreled with me one day, and showed his temper, as one shows temper in Italy. He stood by the drinking fountain back of Number 4, hair on end, chest bare, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his mouth sullen and drawn at the corners, as it always was. The argument was about a shovel. Shorty took out a long knife from his pocket and explained its use in argument. I remembered how the mill stayed in your mind when you left it. In the hour or so in which you washed up, walked home, ate, and went to bed, it loomed as a black sheet-iron foreman, demanding that you get to bed and prepare for the noise and jar it had in store for you at 5.00 o'clock. That sense of imminence was a thing to bear, especially if you wondered whether sleep would come at all. Then there were long strings of neutral days when you did not think well of life, or ill of it. And there were the occasional satisfactions. The keen pleasure of acquiring a knack, as when I learned to "get it across" in back-wall. And the pleasures of rough-house. Jock, the first-helper on Seven, had once told me in a burst of enthusiasm for furnace work that he "liked the game because there was so much hell-raisin' in it." In the midst of listening to the roar, and thinking of shifts, good and bad, it occurred to me abruptly that men would make front-walls in front of hot furnaces for several hundred years, in all likelihood. I wondered. Perhaps Mr. Wells's army of inventors would alter that. For several hundred years, thousands of men had labored without imagination or hope in Egypt, and built the Pyramids. There were similarities. Civilization rested on the uninspired, unimaginative drudgery of nine tenths of mankind. "There have always been hewers of wood, and drawers of water," I heard some elderly person say at me, in a voice of finality. I did not stop to reply to the implications of that sentence in my own mind, but thought more closely of the Pyramid-builders I had known in the pit. Marco drew Croatian words for me with a piece of chalk on his shovel, and I put down English ones for him. He had attended night school after working twelve hours a day in Pittsburgh. But Marco was, perhaps, exceptionally gifted. The jobs we did were pick-and-shovel jobs. But have you ever used a pick on hot slag? There is judgment and knack, and he is a fool who says that "anyone can do the job." Whenever the chance for special skill happened by, as in hooking the crane to a difficult piece of scrap, there was an abundance, and much rivalry to show it off. Could such substance of "knacks" ever grow into anything more for this "nine tenths of mankind?" I wonder. How much of strength, of skill, of possible loyalty, does modern industry tap from the average Hunky? I asked the question, but did not answer it--for modern industry. I answered it for the gang in the pit and the crew on the stoves of the blast-furnace. Not half. There were vast unused areas of men's minds and of their muscles, as well as of their powers of will, that were wholly unreached in the rough job adjustment of modern industry. I mean among the so-called groups of "lower intelligence." It was an interesting speculation whether any engineer would ever find a means of tapping this unused voltage. I suddenly thought how inconceivable the stoppage of that roar would be. A silent valley, with all those ordered but gigantic forces stopped, would be almost terrible. But just such a silence was likely to happen. By a walk-out. The great strike had been going a week, in other towns--tying up the steel production of the country. Meetings had followed, and riots, with an occasional bloody conflict with the "mud guard" of Pennsylvania. Part of that untapped force! I said to myself--dynamos of power of all sorts. Would it bludgeon over a change in steel conditions, or flow back, waste voltage, into the ground? The rumble in the valley again. Could I hear the shake of the charging-machine at this distance? The Bessemer glow had changed. The nail mill roar seemed to increase. I went down the hill. When I reached Mrs. Farrell's and climbed into my back room, I set the alarm for 4.00 o'clock, putting the clock a foot and a half from the bed. It has a knob on top, and you can stop it by knocking down the knob with the palm of your hand. I went to sleep, to dream about the men who built the Pyramids. IX "NO CAN LIVE" I went into the employment office one day, to fix up the papers of my transfer to the blast-furnace, and got into a talk with Burke, the employment manager, about personnel work. "What do you think of the game?" I asked. "It's great," he returned; "it's working with human material--that's what it is; there's nothing like it. But," he added, "if you have any ideas about unions keep them in the back of your head--that is, if you want a job in steel. They won't stand for that sort of thing." He looked down on his desk, where there was a news-clipping of the demands of the American Federation of Labor's Strike Committee--the twelve demands. He pointed to it. "We give them practically all of these here in Bouton," he said, "all but two or three." "The eight-hour day?" I queried. "Yes, we give them the eight-hour day. Overtime for everything over eight hours." "Could I stop work to-day after eight hours' work on the furnace?" I asked. "Could anyone before six o'clock, and hold his job?" "Oh, no," he returned. "I should call that a twelve-hour day," I said. The "safety man" came in, and interrupted. He was a stocky young man with the intelligent face of an engineer. "That man might do something for the steel-worker," I thought. The men on the furnaces were talking about the strike that day. One young American said: "Well, strike starts Monday. Damned if I won't go if the rest do." There were no leaders about, and it was unlikely, perhaps, that any would appear. There seemed to be a current opinion that any organizers "get taken off the train before they get to Bouton." The Old Home Week Carnival had been called off through the influence of the mill authorities. They were afraid of a strike committee coming from the next town, and having a parade to lead the men out. A special train went through Bouton that day at about five o'clock. Everyone watched it from the furnaces, and speculated what it meant. It was a double-header and passed through at top speed. "Troops going to quell strike riots," the Assistant Superintendent, Lonergan, suggested. "A lot of those fellers are overseas men of the National Guard. They're havin' trouble with 'em. I don't blame the boys a damn bit for not wantin' 'to preserve order in the steel towns,' as the papers call it," he concluded, with a grin. Haverly, an American blower, came up. "Fight for democracy overseas and against it over here," he said. It is difficult to say what the men here would have done if they had had leadership. They had none, since no organizers whatever appeared, and no speechmaking occurred in town. There was pretty good feeling toward the company itself, which is, I believe, one of the best. A deep-seated hatred, however, existed against the whole system of steel. There was anger and resentment that ran straight through, from the cinder-snapper to the high-paid blowers, melters, and, in some cases, to the superintendents. I was quite amazed--because of what the newspapers were continually saying--at the absence of any sociological ideas whatever. I remember one day I met my first and only Socialist. He was a stove-tender of great skill and long experience; he told me how bad he thought war was, and how he couldn't understand why people didn't live in peace and be sociable with one another. But, though there were few doctrines, except in rare instances, there was a mighty stream of complaint against certain things such as the company-owned town, the twelve-hour day, the twenty-four-hour shift, the seven-day week, and certain remediable dangers. It pervaded all ranks. There were certain days in my summer in the mills that burned among the others like a hot ingot of steel on the night-shift. One of them was the cleaning out of No. 15 stove early in my gang apprenticeship. Ordinarily, the duties of the stove gang were to move leisurely from stove to stove while they were alight, and remove cinder from the combustion chambers. It was pried up with a crowbar, and hoed out on to a wheelbarrow. But when a stove was cooled for thorough cleaning, we did our real work. The gas was turned off in the combustion chamber on the night-shift, and the stove allowed to cool for several hours. We prepared to go inside her, the next morning, to cut away the hardened cinder. John, the Slav, went in first, with pick and shovel, and worked an hour. Then Tony turned to me. "You go in with me, I show you," he said. We put on wooden sandals, foot-shaped blocks an inch thick, with lacing straps, donned jackets that buttoned very tight in the neck, and pulled down the ear-flaps of our kersey caps. Over our eyes we wore close-fitting goggles. We looked like Dutch peasants dressed for motoring. The combustion chamber is a space eight or ten feet long by three or four wide. It was partly filled with cooling cinder, some of it yielding to the pick, some only to the bar and sledge. Someone shoved an electric light through the hot-blast valve, and the appearance of the place was like a mine gallery. The chamber was hot and gaseous, but it was quite possible to work inside over an hour. After Tony had loosened several shovelfuls, I could see that the pick failed against a great shelf of the stuff that glowed red along its base. "Bar," he called. The bar came in through the little round door in three or four minutes. He held it for me, and I sledged. It needed a little work like this to make you yearn for real air. The heat weakened you quickly. We worked about forty minutes, and then lay on our bellies and wriggled out. The means of entrance and egress is a small door, about fourteen inches in diameter, which means absorbing a good deal of cinder when you caterpillar through. We finished the whole job in three hours, and then went to the other side of the stove and cleared out half a carload of flue-dust from the brick arches that compose the groundwork of that side of the stove. The dust lay a foot or two thick, and one man worked with a shovel in each archway. Here it was hardly hot at all, but merely thick with the red iron-dust. As you bent over inside the archways, knee-deep in the stuff, it would rise and settle on your arms and shoulders; you kept up a blowing with your nose to keep it out. Some of it was hard and soggy, and pleasanter shoveling. Five or six of us could work inside the stove at once, in the different archways, each with a teapot lamp near by, and a large, light shovel. Men at the entrances hoed the stuff out as we threw back. But it was the next day's cleaning that I remember most strongly. The word went about that we were to "poke her out," to-morrow. That night the gang, and especially John, the Italian, instructed me very seriously to bring a selected list of clothing the next morning: a jacket, a cap with flaps for the ears, two pairs of gloves, and two bandanna handkerchiefs. We went on top of Number 15, and started to dress for the job of poking her out. Over our faces we tied the handkerchiefs, leaving only our eyes exposed. Our necks and ears were covered with the winter caps, our hands with two pairs of gloves. The stove, as I said, looked like a very tall boiler: half was a long brick-lined flue, where the gas burned; half, a mass of brick checkerwork for retaining the heat. Masses of flue-dust had clogged the holes in the checkerwork and reduced its power for holding heat. It was our job to poke out that dust. John and Mike and I unscrewed the trap at the top very deliberately, and dropped a ladder down. There was a space left at the top of the checkerwork for cleaning purposes. We worked on top of that. Jimmy, I think, went in first, taking a teapot lamp with him and a rod. In three minutes he was out again, and Mike down. I began to wonder what the devil they faced for three minutes in the chamber. Tony looked at me and said, "I teach you, now." I tied the handkerchiefs around my face, sticking the end of one in my collar, and followed Tony. My first sensation, as I stepped off the ladder to the checkerwork inside the stove, was relief. It was hot, but quite bearable. I picked my way slowly to Tony, and tried to study in the dull light his motions with the rod. The dust was too thick and the lamp guttered too violently for me to follow his hand. I bent over to watch the end of his rod, and recoiled. I felt as I had when the ladle got under me on the manganese platform--flame seemed to go in with breath. It was the hot blast that continued to rise from the checkerwork, and made it impossible to work beyond three minutes in the stove. When I mounted the ladder, and moved out into the air, I thought, "I haven't learned much from Tony, except that he somehow cleaned the checkerwork, and it's best to keep the head high; no more bending." Five minutes passed, and I was scheduled to take my turn alone. Every man poked three holes and came up. I was full of resolutions for glory and poked four, coming up rather elated. John looked at me sadly when I stepped off the ladder. "What's the matter, Charlie? You only poke 'em half out." He simulated my motions with the rod. I hadn't qualified. John, the Slav, was tying his handkerchief back of his ears. "I show him; you come with me, Charlie, I show you all right." I wasn't gleeful. The last time I had done a job with John, we had carried pipes, many more at a time than anyone else. John, I anticipated, would stay in the stove, poking away, till ordinary mortals lost their lungs. He picked up a poking rod, after very carefully putting on his gloves, and went over to the ladder, descending slowly. I followed him with my teeth in my lips, feeling for the rungs of the ladder with my feet, and holding my poking rod in my right hand. When I stepped off at the bottom, I felt my fingers closing over the bent handle of the rod in a death grip. I determined on no half-way poking. John set to work at once, and I after him, rattling my rod in the checkerwork with all my strength, and pushing her in up to the hilt. I did three holes, and John four. My lungs were like paper on fire, when John turned to go up. We climbed out of the hole, and took down the handkerchiefs. The gang looked at me, and then at John. "He do all right," he cried rather loudly, "every time all right." I felt extraordinarily elated, and much as if John had given me a diploma, with a cum laude inscribed in gold letters. There was later a trip down inside with Jimmy. He shouted a great many things at me in Anglo-Italian, which caused me a good deal of anxiety but no understanding. I learned on coming up that he was trying to tell me not to approach the combustion chamber adjoining the checkerwork. That is a clear shaft to the bottom. I was given in some detail the story of the man who fell down a year ago, and was found with no life in him at the bottom. "Kill him quick," said John the Italian; "take him out through hot-blast valve." Two burns on my wrists were an embarrassing legacy of this affair, for they required an explanation whenever I took off my coat. My arms were too long and shot from my sleeves, when poking out, and got exposed to the gas and flame, which were still rising in the checkerwork. This incident put me into good standing with John, the Slav, I am delighted to say. He was a stoical person, without much conversational warmth, but he approached me at the foot of the furnace steps in the late afternoon; "Some people, no show new man; I show him, I Slovene, no Italian, been in this country eighteen year." That was about all, but enough for a basis of friendship. I sat on my bed and sewed up a rip in my trousers, eleven inches long. It was lucky I had salvaged that khaki "housewife" from the army. My gray flannel shirt lay on the bed. There were little holes, you could pass matches through, all over it, with brown edges that sparks had made. Would that sleeve last? I made it last. Then there were the pants. That second-hand paint-spattered pair of mine had lasted five days. The next, a sort of overally kind, had stood it a month, the last week in entire disgrace; these mohair ones I got at the Company store were going yet. But the seat needed emergency attention. After sewing-time, I got up and stared out of the window at Mrs. Farrell's four stalks of corn. They were doing well. I looked across at the back road, along which a junk-dealer's wagon jangled. The mud cliff was the horizon of the prospect. I watched a little stream going down it among roots, which I had watched a good many times before, and finally picked up my army field-shoes, and took them out to a Greek cobbler for resoling. I shall remember for all time the "blowing in" of Number 9, which means its first lighting up. A blast-furnace, once lit, remains burning till the end of its existence. I got inside her, and was delighted to satisfy a deep-seated curiosity: we crawled in the cinder notch. The hearth of the furnace lay six or eight feet below the brick flooring, and the effect of standing inside, with the fourteen round blowpipe holes admitting a little sunlight, was like being in a round ship's cabin, with fourteen portholes, except that the hollow furnace shot up to dark distances that the light didn't penetrate. We built a scaffolding six or eight feet above the hearth to hold firewood, and filled in beneath with shavings and kindling. Then we took in cords upon cords of six-foot sticks and set them on end on top; there were two or three layers of these, and on top of them, according to the orthodox rule, were dumped quantities of coke, dumped down from the top, of course, by skips; and above that, light charges of ore. Below the scaffold, we spent half a day arranging kindling, with shavings placed at each blowpipe hole. When the wood was arranged,--a three-days' job,--the crane brought us some barrels of petrol, and we poured about half a one in each blowpipe hole. The cinder notch was likewise thoroughly provided with soaked shavings. That was to be the torch. Men assembled as at a house-raising. Nobody worked from 11.00 to 12.00 on the day of blowing in Number 9. From all parts of the blast-furnace they came, and arranged themselves about the cinder notch, and on the girders above. The men and their bosses came. There was the labor foreman, and the foreman of all the carpenters, of all the window-glass fixers, all the blowers, the electricians, the master mechanic. Then came the superintendent of the open-hearth and Bessemer, Mr. Towers, and Mr. Brown his boss; and, finally, Mr. Erkeimer, the G. M., with an unknown Mr. Clark from Pittsburgh. We waited from 11.00 to 12.00 for Mr. Clark to come and drop a spark into the shavings. When he arrived the crowd parted quickly for him, and, with Mr. Erkeimer and Mr. Swenson, he stood talking and smiling for some minutes more at the notch. Mr. Clark was a tall slender person, with glasses and an aspect of unfamiliarity with a blast-furnace environment. No one knew, or ever found out, who he was. Mr. Swenson showed him, very carefully, how to ignite the shavings with a teapot lamp. Twice the photographer, who had come early, got focused for the awful moment, and twice Mr. Clark deferred lighting the shavings and went on talking with Mr. Swenson. Finally, he bent over and lit them. Mr. Swenson rapidly turned to the gang behind him. "Three cheers for Mr. Clark!" he cried, raising his hand. When it is recalled that none of us knew the man we cheered, it wasn't a bad noise. The furnace smoked lustily in a few minutes, and several helpers rushed around it to thrust red-hot tapping bars in the blow-holes. They ignited at once the petroleum and shavings packed around them. Immediately after the cheers, Mr. Swenson's bright-looking office-boy hurried through the gang with a box of cigars, another immemorial custom in operation. The more aggressive got cigars, then disappeared. It was a little odd during the afternoon to see a sweat-drenched cinder-snapper at his work with a long black cigar between his teeth. When they were burned out, the department settled back to normal production. Many years might pass before such another occasion in that place. During that period there would be no slackening of the melting fires, or of the work of the helpers who kept them alive. I stood on the platform waiting for the 10.05 train, and turned for a look at the landscape of brick and iron. I remembered a Hunky who had worked in the tube-mill for eighteen years and at length decided to go back to the old country. On the day he left, he went out the usual gate at the tempered after-work pace, walked the gravel path to the railroad embankment, and stopped for a moment to look back at the mill. He stood like a stone-pile on the embankment for a quarter of an hour, looking at the cluster of steel buildings and stacks. He had spent a life in them, making pipe, and I haven't a doubt this was the first time it came to him in perspective. From my own brief memories, I could guess at those fifteen minutes: pain, struggle, monotony, rough-house, laughter, endurance, but principally toil without imagination. I thought quickly over my summer in the mills, and it looked rather pleasurable in retrospect. Things do. There's a verse on that sentiment in Lucretius, I think. I thought of sizzling nights; of bosses, friendly and unfriendly; of hot back-walls, and a good first-helper; of fighting twenty-four-hour turns; of interesting days as hot-blast man; of dreaded five-o'clock risings, and quiet satisfying suppers; of what men thought, and didn't think-- And again, of how much the life was incident to a flinty-hearted universe and how much to the stupidity of men. I knew there were scores of matters arranging themselves in well-ordered data and conclusion in my head. I had a cool sense that, when they came out of the thinking, they would not be counsels of perfection, or denunciations, but would have substance, be able to weather theorists, both the hard-boiled and the sentimental, being compounded of good ingredients--tools, and iron ore, and the experience of workmen. Is there any one thing though that stands out? I heard the train whistle a warning of its arrival. Perhaps, if a very complicated matter like the steel-life can be compounded in a phrase, it had been done by the third-helper on Six. On the day we had thrown manganese into a boiling ladle, in a temperature of 130°, he had turned to me slowly and summed it all up. "To hell with the money," he said; "no can live!" EPILOGUE A FURNACE-WORKER TALKS OVER THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY EPILOGUE I have tried to put down the record of the whole of my life, as I lived it, and the whole of my environment, as I saw and felt it, among the steel-workers in 1919. To me the book is the story of certain obscure personalities, and the record of certain crude and vital experiences we passed through together. I think it may be read as a story of men and things. Many people, however, have asked me the questions: What were the conditions in steel and what is your opinion of them? What do you think of the twelve-hour day? or, How bad was the heat? and the like. And, What do you suggest? Since no man who has worked in an American steel mill, whatever his sympathies or his indifference, can fail to have opinions on these points, I have decided to set down mine, for what they are worth, as simply and informally as I can. There is a proper apology, I think, that can be made for the presumption of conclusions based upon an individual experience. An intimate and detailed record of processes and methods and the physical and mental environment of the workers in any basic industry is rare enough, I believe, except when it is heightened or foreshortened for a political purpose. No industrial reform can rest upon a single narrative of personal experience; but such a narrative, if genuine, can supply its portion of data, and possibly point where scientific research or public action can follow. Let me state my bias in the matter as well as I can. I was by no means indifferent to economic and social values when I began my job; in fact, I confess to being interested keenly in most of them. But I never sought information as an "investigator." Most of my energy of mind and body was spent upon doing the job in hand; and what impressions I received came unsought in the course of a day's work. I began my job with an almost equal interest in the process of steel-making, the administration of business, and the problem of industrial relations. Some apology I owe to the several hundred steel-workers with whom I worked, and the many thousands in other mills, since most of them know from a far longer and deeper experience the conditions and policies of which I speak. My sole reason for raising my own voice in the presence of this multitude of authorities is that the Hunkies, who constitute the major part, are unable either to find an audience or to be understood if they find one. Again, they are like Pete, who, when I asked him what were the duties of a third-helper, which I have described to the length of several pages in this book, replied: "He has a hell of a lot to do." And as to the American workers and bosses, most of them lack the opportunity of any speaking that will be heard beyond their own furnaces; and, again, they are too close to their environment to see what is in it. They are natives, while I am more nearly a foreigner, and can see their steel country with something of the freshness and perspective that a foreigner brings. I want to add that the management of the mill where I worked was a body of men exceedingly efficient and fair-minded, it appeared to me; and any remarks upon the twelve-hour day, or other conditions, are critical of an arrangement typical of American steel-management as a whole, and not of individuals or a locality. The twelve-hour day makes the life of the steel-worker different in a far-reaching manner from the life of the majority of his fellow workers. It makes the industry different in its fundamental organization and temper from an eight-hour or a ten-hour industry. It transforms the community where men live whose day is twelve hours long. "What is it really like? How much of the time do you actually work? Are you 'all in' when you wash up in the morning after the shift, and go home?" To tell it exactly, if I can: You go into the mill, a little before six, and get into your mill clothes. There may be the call for a front-wall while you're buttoning your shirt. You pick up a shovel and run into a spell of fairly hot work for three quarters of an hour. On another day you may loaf for fifteen minutes before anything starts. After front-wall, you take a drink from the water fountain behind your furnace, and wash your arms, which have got burned a little, and your face, in a trough of water. A "clean-up" job follows in front of the furnace, which means shoveling slag--still hot--down the slag-hole for ten minutes, and loading cold pieces of scrap, which have fallen on the floor, into a box. Pieces weigh twenty, forty, one hundred pounds; anything over, you hook up with a chain and let the overhead crane move it. This for a half-hour. Suddenly someone says, "Back-wall!" Lasts say thirty or forty minutes. It's hot--temperature, 150° or 160° when you throw your shovelful in--and lively work for back and legs. Everybody douses his face and hands with water to cool off, and sits down for twenty minutes. Making back-wall has affinities with stoking, only it's hotter while it lasts. The day is made up of jobs like these--shoveling manganese at tap-time, "making bottom," bringing up mud and dolomite in wheelbarrows for fixing the spout, hauling fallen bricks out of the furnace. They vary in arduousness: all would be marked "heavy work" in a job specification. They are all "hard-handed" jobs, and some of them done in high heat. Between, run intervals from a few minutes to two or three hours. From some of the jobs it is imperative to catch your breath for a spell. Sledging a hard spout, making a hot back-wall, knocks a gang out temporarily--for fifteen or twenty minutes; no man could do those things steadily without interruption. It is like the crew resting on their oars after a sprint. Again, some of the spells between are just leisure; the furnace doesn't need attention, that's all; you're on guard, waiting for action. Furnace work has similarities with cooking; any cook tends his stove part of the time by watching to see that nothing burns up. I have had two or three hours' sleep on a "good" night-shift; two or three "easy" days will follow one another. Then there will come steady labor for nearly the whole fourteen hours, for a week. So, briefly, you don't work every minute of those twelve hours. Besides the delays that arise out of the necessities of furnace work, men automatically scale down their pace when they know there are twelve or fourteen hours ahead of them: seven or eight hours of actual swinging of sledge or shovel. But some of the extra time is utterly necessary for immediate recuperation after a heavy job or a hot one. And none of the spells, it should be noticed, are "your own time." You're under strain for twelve hours. Nerves and will are the Company's the whole shift--whether the muscles in your hands and feet move or are still. And the existence of the long day makes possible unrelieved labor, hard and hot, the whole turn of fourteen hours, if there is need for it. Inseparable from the twelve-hour day in the open-hearth where I worked were the twenty-four-hour shift, and the seven-day week. What does it mean to make steel twenty-four hours a day? to your muscles, to your thoughts, to the production of steel? Sunday morning, at 7.00, you begin work. There is an hour off at 5.00 P.M. Front-wall, fix spout, tap, back-wall, front-wall, fix spout, tap, back-wall--the second half is something of a game between time and fatigue. For a hot back-wall, or sledging out a bad tap-hole, may as easily come upon you at 5.00 or 6.00 of the second morning as at noon of the first day. I've worked "long turns" that I didn't mind overmuch, and others that ground my soul. If you are young and fit, you can work a steady twenty-four hours at a hot and heavy job and "get away." But in my judgment even the strongest of the Czechoslovaks, Serbs, and Croats who work the American steel-furnaces cannot keep it up, twice a month, year after year, without substantial physical injury. "A man got to watch himself, this job, tear himself down," the second-helper on Seven told me. He had worked at it six years, and was feeling the effects in nerves and weight. Let me make an exception: one Hunky, a helper on Number 4, was famed for having "a back like a mule." He could, I am sure, work seven twenty-four-hour shifts _a week_ with comfort. But for all other men, with the exception of Joe, the long turn is an unreasonable overtaxing of human strength. Lastly, the effort of will, the "nerve" that the thing calls for in the last hours before that second morning, is too heavy a demand, for any wages whatever. The third-helper on Number 8 took, I think, a reasonable attitude when he said: "To hell with the money, no can live!" The "long turn" leaves a man thoroughly tired, "shot," for several shifts following. As I said in the first part of this book, it is hardly before Friday that the gang makes up sleep and comes into the mill in normal temper. Here is the condition. You have ten hours for recuperation after twenty-four hours' work. Washing up in a hurry, getting breakfast, and walking home gets you in bed by 8.00. Eight hours' sleep is the best you can get. At 4.00 o'clock you must dress, eat, and walk to the mill. Men who live an hour or more from the mill, as some do, must, of course, subtract that time as well from sleep. After the ten hours off, you return to the mill at 5.00, to begin another fourteen-hours' steel-making. That night is unquestionably the worst of the two-weeks' cycle. The nervous excitement that helps any man through the twenty-four turn has gone--quite. The seven or eight hours of day sleep seem to have taken that away without substituting rest; and what you have on your hands is an overfatigued body, refusing to be goaded further. My observation was that, on this Monday after, men made mistakes; there were arguments, bad temper, and fights, and a much higher frequency of collision with the foreman. Efficiency, quality, discipline dropped. The other accompaniment of the twelve-hour shift, the averaging of seven working-days per week, has, I am convinced, an equally bad physiological effect upon the healthiest of men. As I have said earlier, "the twenty-four hours off," which comes once a fortnight on alternate weeks to the twenty-four-hour shift, is a curiously contracted holiday. It comes at the conclusion of fourteen hours' work on the night-shift, and is immediately followed by ten hours' work on the day-shift. As far as I could observe, men went on a long debauch for twenty-four hours, or, if the week had been particularly heavy, slept the entire twenty-four. In the first instance they deprived themselves of any sleep, and went to work Monday in an extraordinarily jaded condition. In the second, they forfeited their only holiday for two weeks. Another feature that impresses you when you actually work under the system is that the sleep you get is troubled, at best. You are compelled to go to bed one week by day, and the next by night. By about Friday, I found my body getting itself adjusted to day sleep; but the change, of course, was due again Monday. And yet, by comparing my sleeping hours with those of my fellow workers, I found my day rest was averaging better than theirs. Many of them, I found, went to bed at 9.00 in the morning and got up about 2.00. They complained of being unable to sleep properly by day. The body will adjust itself to continued day sleeping, I know; but apparently not to the weekly shifts, from day sleep to night sleep, customary in steel. The "long turn" of twenty-four hours and the "seven-day week" I have never heard defended, either in the mill by any foreman or workman, or outside by any member of the management, or even in a public statement. If, by an arrangement of extra workers, it were possible to eliminate these features and still keep the twelve-hour work-day for six days a week, there would, I think, be a certain number of men ready enough to work under that arrangement. I met one man, for example, who said: "Good job, work all time, no spend, good job save." There are a few foreign workers whose plan is to work steadily for ten or fifteen years, and then carry the money back to the old country. These men are willing to spend the maximum time within mill walls, since they have no intention of marrying, settling down, and becoming Americans. But their numbers are small, and the desirability of their type is questionable. It is unwise, at any rate, to build the labor policy of a great industry in their interest. On those first night-shifts I wondered if my feelings on the arrangement of hours were not solely those of a sensitive novice. I'd "get used to it," perhaps. But I found that first-helpers, melters, foremen, "old timers," and "Company men" were for the most part against the long day. They were all looking forward, with varying degrees of hope, to the time when the daily toll of hours would be reduced. The twelve-hour day gives a special character to the industry itself as well as to the men. I remember noticing the difference in pace, in tempo, from that of a machine shop or a cotton mill. Men learn to cultivate deliberate movement, with a view to the fourteen-hour stretch they have before them. When I began work with a pickaxe on some hot slag, on my first night, I was reproached at once: "Tak' it eas', lotza time before seven o'clock." And the foremen fell in with the men. They winked at sleeping, for they did it themselves. Another kind of inefficiency that flowed quite naturally from excessive hours was "absenteeism," and a high "turnover" of labor. Men kept at the job as long as they could stick it, and then relaxed into a two or three weeks' drunk. Or they quit the Company and moved to another mill, for the sake of change and a break in the drudgery. I remember an Austrian with whom I worked in the "pit," who said he was going to get drunk in Pittsburgh, go to the movies, and move to Johnstown the following Monday. He had been on the job three weeks. New faces appeared on the gangs constantly, and dropped out as quickly. I achieved my promotion from common labor in the pit to the floor of the furnace by supplying on a twenty-four-hour shift, when absentees are apt to be numerous, and it is hard fully to man the furnaces. The company kept a large number of extra men on its pay roll because of the number of absentees, and the turnover percentage ran high. It is impossible to live under this loose régime--with high turnover, and the work-pace necessarily keyed low because of the excessive burden of hours spent under the roof of the mill--and not wonder if there isn't an engineering problem in it. The impression was of a vast wastage of man-hours. The question suggested itself: "Is it in the long run, good business--an efficient thing?" An exhaustive investigation by engineers and economists could surely be made to answer this question. People ask: "Is there any mechanical or metallurgical reason for the twelve-hour day?" The answer is: No. There are several plants of independent steel companies that run on a three-shift, eight-hour basis; and the steel mills in England, France, Germany, and Italy operate with three eight-hour shifts. The long day is not a metallurgical _necessity_, therefore. The metallurgical _explanation_ of the twelve-hour day, however, is this. The process of making iron or steel is necessarily a continuous one, because the heat of the furnaces must be conserved by keeping up the fires twenty-four hours a day. So the division into either two shifts of twelve hours or three shifts of eight becomes imperative. Other industries might reduce their hours gradually from twelve to ten, and then to nine. With steel the full jump from twelve to eight must be made. Without doubt, this metallurgical factor accounts in some measure for the conservatism of the steel companies in making the change. It is none of my business, in summing up a personal experience, to review the story of steel mills which have undertaken a three-shift plan of operation, of eight hours each, in place of the two shifts of twelve. But the study has been made by engineers and economists, who have collected figures as to the cost of operation on an eight-hour basis as contrasted with a twelve. The increased cost in product which such a change would entail is between three and five per cent.[3] The community of workers takes on a special character, where men live whose day is twelve hours long. "We haven't any Sundays," the men said; and "There isn't time enough at home." This is the most far-reaching effect of "hours" in steel, I think, and easily transcends the others. "What do you do when you leave the mill?" people ask. "On my night-week," I answer, "I wash up, go home, eat, and go to bed." Anything that happens in your home or city that week is blotted out, as if it occurred upon a distant continent; for every hour of the twenty-four is accountable, in sleep, work, or food, for seven days; unless a man prefers, as he often does, to cheat his sleep-time and have his shoes tapped, or take a drink with a friend. The day-week is decidedly better. You work only ten hours, from seven to five. Those evenings men spend with their families, or at the movies, or going to bed early to rest up for the "long turn." It is not, however, as if it were a "ten-hour industry." Some of the wear and tear of the seven fourteen-hour shifts of the night-week protracts itself into the day-week, and you hear men saying: "This ten-hour day seems to tire me more than the fourteen; funny thing." However the week may be divided up, it is impossible to keep the human body from recording the fact that it averages seven twelve-hour days, or eighty-four hours of work, in the week. For the men who did a straight twelve hours, "six to six," for seven days, the sense of "no time off" was very strong. I worked these hours for a time on the blast-furnace, and remember that the complaint was, not so much that there wasn't some bit of an evening before you, but that there was no _untired_ time when you were good for anything--work or play. When you had sat about for perhaps an hour after supper, you recovered enough to crave recreation. A movie was the very peak to which you could stir yourself. There were men who went further. I knew a young Croat in Pittsburgh who attended night-school after a twelve-hour day. But he is the only one of all the steel-workers I met who attempted such heroism. And he had to stop after a few weeks. Now it should be mentioned that some of the social life that most workers find outside the mill gets squeezed somehow into it. In the spells between front-walls we used to talk everything, from scandal about the foreman to the presidential election. The daily news, labor troubles, the late war, the second-helper's queer ways passed back and forth when you washed up, or ate out of your bucket, or paused between stunts. Then there was kidding, comradely boxing, and such playfulness as hitching the crane-hooks to a man's belt. One first-helper remarked: "I like the game because there's so much hell-raisin' in it." But this is hardly a substitute for a man's time to himself, for seeing his wife, knowing his own children, and participating in the life of larger groups. Soldiers have a faculty for taking so good-humoredly the worst rigors of a campaign, that some people have made the mistake of turning their admirable adaptability into a justification for war. The twelve-hour day, I believe, tends to discourage a man from marrying and settling into a regular home life. Men complained that they didn't see their wives, or get to know their children, since the schedule of hours shrunk matters at home to food, sleep, and the necessities. "My wife is always after me to leave this game," Jock used to say, the first-helper on Seven. Mathematically, it figures something like this: twelve hours of work, an hour going to and from the mill, an hour for eating, eight hours of sleep--which leaves two hours for all the rest, shaving, mowing the lawn, and the "civilizing influence of children." I have no brief to offer for the eight-hour day as a general panacea for evils in industry. I merely bear witness to the fact that the twelve-hour day, as I observed it, tended either to destroy, or to make unreasonably difficult, that normal recreation and participation in the doings of the family group, the church, or the community, which we ordinarily suppose is reasonable and part of the American inheritance. Steel has often been described by its old timers as a "he-man's game." That has even figured as an argument against any innovation that might lighten the load of the workers in it, and against any change in the twelve-hour day itself. The industry has certainly a rough-and-tumble quality and a dangerous streak in it, that will always call for men with some toughness of fibre. But I question whether the quality of the men it attracts, and the type it moulds within its own ranks, will ever be improved by the twelve-hour day. The excessive hours, I know, operate as a check against many younger men, who would otherwise enter the industry. The inherent fascination of making steel is, I think, very great. It was for me. But the appeal is the mechanical achievement of the industry, its size, power, and importance, even its dangers. The twelve-hour day, on the other hand, tends to place a premium on time-serving and drudgery, in lieu of the more masculine qualities of adventure and initiative. FOOTNOTE: [3] The Three Shift System in Steel--Horace B. Drury: an address to the Taylor Society and certain sections of the Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers and of the Am. Inst. Electr. Engineers, Dec. 3, 1920. 
39030	----	images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE INFLUENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH GILDS. London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LEIPZIG: F. A. BROCKHAUS. NEW YORK: MACMILLAN AND CO. Cambridge Historical Essays. No. V. THE INFLUENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH GILDS: AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF THE CRAFT GILDS OF SHREWSBURY. BY FRANCIS AIDAN HIBBERT, B.A., OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ASSISTANT MASTER IN DENSTONE COLLEGE. _THIRLWALL DISSERTATION_, 1891. Cambridge: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1891 [_All Rights reserved._] Cambridge: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. _TO THE REV. D. EDWARDES, M.A., HEAD MASTER OF DENSTONE, IN REMEMBRANCE OF MUCH KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT._ PREFACE. I should explain that, in the present Essay, I have restricted myself to associations which had for their object the regulation of trade. Frith Gilds and Religious or Social Gilds have received only passing notice. The Merchant Gild is too wide a subject to be treated in an Essay such as this. Moreover the records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild are too meagre to afford much information, and I would therefore have gladly passed over the whole question in silence but that without some notice of it the Essay would have seemed incomplete. My attention has thus been concentrated on the Craft Gilds, and on the later companies which arose out of these. It is greatly to be regretted that we have no work on Gilds which deals with the subject from an English point of view, and traces the development of these pre-eminently English institutions according to its progress on English soil. The value of Dr Brentano's extremely able Essay is very largely diminished, for Englishmen, not only because he is continually attempting to trace undue analogies between the Gilds and Trades Unions, but still more because he has failed to appreciate the spirit which animated English Merchants and Craftsmen in their relations with one another, and so has missed the line of Gild development in England. If he had not confined his attention, so far as English Gilds are concerned, solely to the London Companies he could hardly have failed to discover his mistake. Something has been done to set the facts of the case in a clearer light by Dr Cunningham briefly in his _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_[1]. But it is to be feared that Mr J. R. Green's _History_ is so deservedly popular, and Mr George Howell's _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_ is so otherwise reliable, that views differing from those which these writers set forward--following Dr Brentano as it appears--stand little chance of being generally known. Great as is the weight which must attach to such important authorities, I have endeavoured--by looking at the facts in my materials from an independent standpoint--to avoid being unduly influenced by their conclusions, or by a desire to find analogies where none exist. The materials from which I have worked call for but little description. They are simply the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds--either in their original form as preserved in the town Museum and Library, or as printed in the Shropshire Archæological Society's _Transactions_. Though my view has been thus confined it has been kept purposely so. English local history is its own best interpreter, and although in some instances the documents have required illustrating and supplementing from extraneous sources, these occasions have been few. At the same time I have not omitted to notice how the effects of national events were felt in provincial changes, and I have especially striven to point out how the Shrewsbury records bear upon the various theories which have been put forward respecting Gilds. Writing thus in a historical rather than an antiquarian spirit I have not considered it necessary to overburden the pages with needless footnotes referring repeatedly simply to the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds. _October, 1890._ NOTE.--_The Gild Merchant_, by Charles Gross, Ph.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890), appeared after the above had been written and the Essay sent in. I have since had the advantage of reading it. The general conclusions at which the writer arrives are so similar to those I had already formed, that I have not found it necessary to alter what I had written. I have however to some extent made use of the material he has brought together in Vol. II., chiefly by way of strengthening the authorities in the footnotes to which reference is made in the text. EXTRACT FROM THE REGULATIONS FOR THE THIRLWALL PRIZE. "There shall be established in the University a prize, called the 'Thirlwall Prize,' to be awarded for dissertations involving original historical research." "The prize shall be open to members of the University who, at the time when their dissertations are sent in, have been admitted to a degree, and are of not more than four years' standing from admission to their first degree." "Those dissertations which the adjudicators declare to be deserving of publication shall be published by the University singly or in combination, in an uniform series, at the expense of the fund, under such conditions as the Syndics of the University Press shall from time to time determine." CONTENTS. PAGES CHAPTER I. Introductory 1-6 CHAPTER II. The Merchant Gild 7-29 Note 1. Chronological Table of Merchant Gilds 24-28 Note 2. List of Trades and Professions 28-29 CHAPTER III. The Craft Gilds 30-54 Note 1. Indenture of Apprenticeship (1414) 52-53 Note 2. Oath of Freemen 53-54 CHAPTER IV. The Early History of the Gilds 55-76 CHAPTER V. Reconstruction of the Gild System 77-97 CHAPTER VI. The Degeneracy of the Companies 98-112 CHAPTER VII. Shrewsbury Show 113-127 CHAPTER VIII. The End of the Companies 128-144 Appendix I. Non-Gildated Tradesmen 145-156 Appendix II. Authorities cited 157-159 Index 160-168 NOTE. On page 26 Liverpool should be inserted. The charter was granted in 1229, by the king. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. [Sidenote: _Local life in England always varied._] In these days of convenience and easy transit, when distance has been annihilated by the telegraph wire and the express train, we can hardly realise, even with an effort, the extent to which such changes have revolutionised the social life of Englishmen. Of local sentiment there can be now but little, yet local sentiment has played a greater part in our history than perhaps any other motive. The England of to-day is little more than a great suburb of its capital. Yet it is a peculiar feature of the England of the past that its local life was always singularly varied, not only in the Middle Ages but down to quite recent times. Indeed the characteristic is still more than traceable in some of our less busy districts. In the past, too, some parts possessed the feature in a more marked degree than others. We should naturally expect that few towns would have a stronger infusion of local feeling than Shrewsbury. Through all its history it has indeed been marked by strong individuality. [Sidenote: _Early growth of Shrewsbury._] Situated in the midst of the Marches of Wales, the centre round which long waged the struggle for the fair lands westward of the Severn, its strong walls and insular position soon gave it a marked commercial superiority over the surrounding country. In consequence we find Shrewsbury at an early date considerably more advanced than the unprotected land outside, which lay open to the ravages of the Welsh. This condition of affairs, the reverse of favourable for commercial advancement, continued to depress the neighbourhood after Edward the First's conquest of the Principality, for the disorders of the Lords Marchers kept the Borders in a state of continual alarm, and prevented the inhabitants from settling down to any regular and profitable industry[2]. Henry IV. on the death of Glendower effected the reconquest of Wales, and enacted severe laws against the inhabitants. The only result was, however, the organisation of robber bands whose definite object was to plunder and harass more completely their English neighbours. The evil became so intolerable that a special court had to be erected to remove it, and in 1478 was formed the Court of the President and Marches of Wales. By dint of powers of summary jurisdiction over disturbers of the public peace, a diminution was effected in the disorders, and the border lands were able to participate in the increase of trade which was such a marked feature of the fourteenth century. In spite of the temporary shock given to industry by the Reformation, the district had, by the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, quite recovered from the Welsh ravages, and its prosperity at this time was very remarkable. The fertility of the district brought wealth to the market towns, and provided a wide area of comfortable purchasers for the products of their industries. The expansion of the Welsh cloth trade gave rise to a twofold struggle. There was firstly a strenuous effort of the border towns to keep it to themselves, and secondly a private quarrel as to which of them should engross the market. Shrewsbury eventually secured the monopoly after an arduous contest, and the importance of the town was thus considerably enhanced. [Sidenote: _Its later prosperity._] The internal history of its Gilds will show how peculiarly the state of Shrewsbury illustrates the period of quiet prosperity before the introduction of machinery broke in upon the comfortable life of provincial England. The county towns then possessed an importance of which they have since been shorn by various causes[3]. Each was the capital of its district, filling the part of a distant metropolis to which neither the country gentleman nor the wealthy burgess could expect to go more than once or twice in a lifetime. Shrewsbury, in particular, was possessed of features which serve not only to make it especially typical of the social habits of the period, but which at the same time give it an interest exceptionally its own[4]. [Sidenote: _Its stationary condition in recent times._] And when the introduction of machinery transformed the face of England to such a large extent, the changes which it brought to Shrewsbury were extremely slight. Local life was strong. The town was slow to accommodate itself to new conditions of industry. Its Gilds and companies maintained their vigour to the end. Their yearly pageant continued to our own day. The timbered houses which the substantial tradesmen built in the days of their prosperity are still, many of them, standing. The streets of the town have been only gradually altered and improved. They still follow the old lines, often inconvenient, but always interesting: they still are called by their old names, full of confusion to the stranger, full of significance to the student. [Sidenote: _Importance of history of its Gilds._] [Sidenote: _Their quiet development._] Shrewsbury, then, exhibits a character eminently its own, from whatever point we view its history. But it is a distinction of similarity rather than the prominence of singularity. The progress of the town has gone on quietly and calmly, seldom interrupted and never forced. The history of its Gilds must of necessity present similar features. It will be a record of silent development, often leaving few traces, yet not the less evident to careful observation. [Sidenote: _Peculiarities._] But it is also a history in studying which we must be particularly on our guard against being led astray by the analogy of similar institutions in other parts of England or on the Continent. The desire to arrive at, or to conform to, general conclusions often blinds writers to the fact to which we have already drawn attention, namely, that local life in England was always varied; that each town and district had its own strongly-marked peculiarities. Bearing this in mind, deviations--apparent or real--from the ordinary course of Gild history will cause us no surprise. The shearmen's maypole quarrel[5] with the bailiffs is almost the only trace of serious conflict at Shrewsbury between the municipal authorities[6] and the companies until the seventeenth century. There are no signs of the rise of Yeomen Gilds[7] in earlier or later years, though evidence in plenty is found of the complete disregard shown by the masters for the interests of the journeymen[8]. On the other hand, so far from the Court of Assistants being a late creation we meet with it at Shrewsbury very early in Gild history. [Sidenote: _Especial points of value._] It will also be a record rich in illustrations of contemporary social life[9]. The closeness of relationship between religion and the ordinary business pursuits of the mediæval burgess; the wide public influence exercised by the Gilds in their earlier years, and the remarkable family feeling they maintained within the boundaries of the old towns even down to the time when the companies had become utterly demoralised, will be exemplified not less remarkably than the continuity of the Gild sentiment through the shocks of the Reformation period, through the economic changes of Elizabeth, and even (in some sort) through the Reforms of 1835. It is a history too which will help us to understand a problem of considerable difficulty. We shall not only see the degenerated societies of capitalists in full vigour down to the date of their enforced termination as trading companies, but we shall also be enabled to perceive how it was that they managed to retain their prejudicial and antiquated privileges to the very end of their existence. It is indeed in the light which their history throws on the conditions of provincial trade and the social customs of an ordinary provincial town during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that its special importance lies. The rapid progress which marked the commencement of that period, not less than the torpor and decay which characterised the corporate towns at its close will be found to be eminently exemplified in the history of the Shrewsbury Gilds. CHAPTER II. THE MERCHANT GILD. [Sidenote: _Universality of Gild feeling._] Dr Brentano[10] is particularly desirous to make it clear that he considers England "the birthplace of Gilds." But it is scarcely necessary to point out that the conception of the Gild belongs to no particular age and to no particular country. Not to insist unduly on the universality of an institution from which some writers have derived the Gilds, and to which they certainly bear considerable resemblance, the family--common to humanity itself--we note that the Greeks had their [Greek: eranoi][11] and their [Greek: xunômosiai][12], and the Romans their _collegia opificum_[13], each exhibiting not a few of the features of the mediæval Gilds. _Corps des métiers_ existed in France in very early times, perhaps in direct continuation of the Roman institutions, and played a great part in the beginnings of many towns[14]. So early as to be anterior to the earliest known Frith Gilds, that is to say in the latter half of the seventh century, a regularly organised system of confederation existed among the Anglo-Saxon monasteries throughout England, according to the rules of which the united Abbeys and Religious Houses undertook to pray for the members, living and departed, of one another[15]: [Sidenote: _English and Continental Gilds._] Each of these associations, so various in date and object, bore great resemblance to the Gilds of later times, according as the latter are considered in the light of some one or other of their functions: now it is the common feast, now it is the possession of corporate property, here it is the union of all the workmen of a craft into one sodality, there it is the association of neighbours for mutual responsibility and protection; now it is the confraternity "in omni obsequio religionis." Such a tendency to association is simply the result of man's gregarious nature, and there is no need to restrict what is found alike in all peoples and all periods. But it is none the less true that the tendency has been more strongly marked in England than elsewhere. The earliest Gild Statutes which have come down to us are English[16], and the development of Gilds in England proceeded according to its normal course without being diverted and confused by external and disturbing circumstances. The real history of Gilds will thus be the history of _English_ Gilds, not of those of the Continent, whose records detail rather a bitter struggle between rival classes in the towns[17]. If the constitutional importance of the Gilds was thus greater on the Continent than it was in England[18], this was because _there_ a social institution was dragged out of its proper sphere of action, and in the arena of politics was shorn of the most attractive of its features. [Sidenote: _Value of history of local Gilds._] In these pages we shall be concerned solely with examples drawn from the history of our own country. Where necessary reference will be made to the institutions of other towns, but in general our attention will be concentrated on one provincial borough only--a town, as we have seen, well calculated to illustrate the social life of England in the past. It is only by working out the several departments of local municipal history that anything like a complete view of the subject can be ultimately obtained[19]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made to contribute something towards such a consummation. The records of the later Craft Gilds at Shrewsbury are entirely satisfactory, but unfortunately those of the Merchant Gild are of the most meagre description. They throw but little light therefore on its functions or history, and still less on the interesting question as to the precise nature of the relationship which existed between the Gilda Mercatoria and the Communa. Our attention will consequently be chiefly directed to an examination of the history and development of the _Craft Gilds_. A few remarks, more or less general in their scope, on the Merchant Gild seem however to be called for, in anticipation of the history of the later trade associations. [Sidenote: _Growth of towns in twelfth century._] In England, as elsewhere, the growth of the towns was one of the most marked features of the twelfth century. This was due to various causes. William's conquest had opened up increased facilities for communication with the Continent: the Norman soldiers brought skilled Norman traders in their train, and so war ministered to commerce just as subsequently the Crusades were largely helpful to the growth of trade and the progress of the towns. The vigorous administration of Henry I. and Henry II. had also facilitated the expansion of industry. Henry I. favoured the rising towns both because of their commercial utility and in order to make use of their counterbalancing influence against the power of the Barons. Shrewsbury he took into his own hands, having enforced the surrender of the town from the rebellious Robert de Belesme. The amendment of the currency and the organisation of the Courts of King's Bench and Exchequer were also as favourable to material prosperity as were the legal reforms of Henry II. afterwards. The circuits of the Justices Itinerant were restored, and appeals to the king in Council were established. A further weakening of baronial power was also effected by the destruction of the castles which the lawlessness of Stephen's tenure of the sovereignty had permitted; while the introduction of scutage made the king in some measure independent of the feudal forces by enabling him to call in the support of mercenary troops. On the other hand the Assize of Arms restored the national militia to its old important place. Shrewsbury had seemed to be depressed by the conquest. The town had been granted, in the first instance, to Roger de Montgomery, whose two great works, his castle and his abbey, yet remain. Both the earl and his works were at first the cause of complaint. In Domesday Book it is pointed out that Montgomery had destroyed 51 houses to make room for his castle; to the abbey he had granted 39 burgesses; 43 houses in the town were held by Normans and exempted from taxation. Consequently, as the same sum was required from the town as had been paid _tempore regis Edwardi_, the burden fell with undue hardship on the English inhabitants who remained. But the ultimate result of both castle and monastery was beneficial to the town. The latter attracted trade and the former protected it[20], and Shrewsbury early became a commercial centre of some importance. [Sidenote: _They differed little from country, except in possession of a Merchant Gild_] The towns at this period differed but little from the country. They both engaged in agriculture as well as trade; they were alike governed by a royal officer, or by some lord's steward. In the towns the houses were of course more closely clustered, and a further difference arose afterwards in the fact that a freeman in the town, when admitted to the Gild, might be landless[21]. The chief distinction indeed between town and country lay in the fact that the former had a Merchant Gild. [Sidenote: _to preserve peace._] The origin of such commercial unions is lost in the dimness of antiquity. Even in Anglo-Saxon times Dover had its Gildhall, and Canterbury and London are said to have been also possessed of trading associations. They came into being at first probably to preserve peace. At the date of the Conquest the right of jurisdiction almost invariably belonged to whoever held the town, but we cannot conceive that Roger Montgomery's successors would be likely to concern themselves overmuch with internal police. As a fact it would rest with the burghers themselves to protect their goods and persons from mishap. [Sidenote: _A.-S. Frith Gilds._] [Sidenote: _Trade regulations._] [Sidenote: _Royal authorisation: earliest mention._] Frith Gilds, with much the same objects, had been common anterior to the Conquest[22]. In most places where there was a market it was essential that some recognised authority should be in existence to keep the peace, as well as to be witness to sales[23]. The "laws of the city of London" were apparently drawn up with the express design of supplementing defective law[24]. They exhibit to us a complete authority for the supervision of trade, corresponding to the later Merchant Gild in nearly every particular: there is the common stock, the head man, the periodical meetings at which "byt-fylling" plays its usual important part[25]. The "ordinance which King Ethelred and his Witan ordained as 'frith-bot' for the whole nation" imposed the duty of pursuing offenders on the town to which they belonged[26]. There was thus evidently some organisation within the boundaries of the town, and as the chief of the burgesses forming this organisation were also the chief merchants (since trade was the _raison-d'être_ of the towns) it soon began naturally to frame commercial regulations[27]. So the Town Gild became, when, after the Norman Conquest, trade had assumed important dimensions, the Gilda Mercatoria with exclusive powers and privileges by royal charter. The earliest unmistakable mention of a Merchant Gild is at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century[28]. Under Henry I. grants of Merchant Gilds appear in one or two of the charters granted to towns[29], and under Henry II., Richard and John they become more frequent[30]. Shrewsbury was one of the few which had the Merchant Gild confirmed as early as the reign of Henry II.[31] By these charters what had originally been a voluntary association now became an exclusive body to which trade was restricted. Important as were the advantages gained by the procuring of such royal authorisation, these charters only set the seal to what had existed in effect before. The landed and mercantile interests were practically identical within the towns: the great merchants were also the great landowners; the Gilda Mercatoria could thus frame regulations which it would be extremely difficult for any trader to disregard[32]. [Sidenote: _Functions._] Besides, the benefits which resulted from common trading would be too obvious for any individual who could procure entrance into the Gild to abstain from doing so. It was far more to the common interest that one representative should buy for all and then divide the purchase equitably than that each should compete with each and so minister simply to the profit of the seller. There are several examples of such combined purchasing by a royal or municipal officer in towns where there was no Merchant Gild[33]. It was however generally effected by means of the latter, the granting of which meant the according of permission to the members to settle for themselves their custom in buying and selling. The retail trade within the town was restricted to their own members individually, and the wholesale trade coming _to_ the town was reserved to themselves collectively. Members of the Merchant Gild alone might sell within the walls, and traders coming from without might sell only to the Merchant Gild. There was no danger then as there would be now of such a practice driving all trade away from the town, for the restrictions in force at one place would be paralleled almost exactly in every other. At the periodical fairs alone did free trade prevail. But the exclusive privileges might be exceedingly harmful if the main body of householders were not members of the Merchant Gild. It was then the fact that the restricted trading was not "to the advantage of the community of the borough but only to the advantage of those who are of the said society[34]." When however the great majority of the householders were members of the trading corporation the arrangement would work well and beneficially for the whole town. [Sidenote: _All Burgesses are Gildsmen._] The effect of the granting of royal authorisation was, therefore, to finally draw all burgesses into the Gild, for all townsmen of any importance were traders. The records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild, though of the scantiest description, are sufficient to show how comprehensive was its range. All branches of trade were, at least down to the time of Edward I., represented in it[35]; it comprised every rank and degree, proportioning its fines and payments accordingly. The progress of the fusion of races is shown by the lists of names, which are both Saxon and Norman in indiscriminate order. [Sidenote: _Duties of Gildsmen._] [Sidenote: _Tendency to amalgamation of Gild and Communa._] So closely indeed did the practical boundaries of Gild and town coincide that in many places the former seemed to become the Communa, when the kings began to grant charters of incorporation. Richard I. can even say that all the privileges of his charter are granted "_civibus nostris Wintoniæ de gilda mercatorum_[36]," seeming to imply that at Winchester at least there were no citizens extraneous to the Merchant Gild. The villain flying from his lord could only be admitted to freedom through the machinery of the Merchant Gild. The Merchant Gild was ready to the hand of the burgesses as a centre, and the only centre, round which to rally when engaged in defending their liberties or in procuring fresh privileges. On the other hand the existence of such a secure and wealthy body, which would be at all times able to ensure payment of the _firma burgi_, and the frequent royal assessments which were laid upon the towns, would be an additional inducement to the kings in granting the charters of liberties. Glanvill, in the time of Henry II., doubtless already looked on the Merchant Gild and the Communa as, for all practical purposes, identical[37], from which the inference seems to lie that the possession of such a gild had thus early come to be looked upon as the sign and symbol of municipal independence. It is true that a town _might_ become a free borough without possessing a Merchant Gild, but this would be an exception to the general rule. It would be similar to the case of a free borough not holding the _firma burgi_: such a contingency was possible but unusual. To the mind of the lawyer therefore the possession of a Merchant Gild seemed the necessary precursor of a royal charter of privileges. And in practice this was found to be, speaking generally, the case. This apparent identity of Burgesses and Gildsmen would find palpable expression in the fact of the Gild Hall becoming the Town Hall. This naturally did not take place to any considerable extent before the 14th century, though during that period it became fairly common. It may have been that the Merchant Gild permitted the use of its Hall for public purposes, at first only occasionally and then more and more frequently until at length what had been exceptional became normal (either through precedent or purchase[38]); certain it is that the two names of Gild Hall and Town Hall became practically synonymous in about the 14th and 15th centuries. This had been foreshadowed at an early date. Domesday Book spoke of the "gihalla Burgensium[39]" at Dover. At Shrewsbury, in a charter of 1445, the Town Hall is called, as it is at this day, the Gildhall. [Sidenote: _But all Gildsmen not Burgesses._] But the _ideas_ of Gild-members and townsmen were long kept separate. Burgess-ship depended on residence[40] and the possession of a burgage-tenement, but not so membership of the Merchant Gild, which often comprised among its numbers many outsiders[41]. In this way the two bodies were clearly distinguished. At Ipswich it was ordered in John's charter[42] that the statutes of the town were to be kept distinct from those of the Gild "as is elsewhere used in cities and boroughs where there is a Gild Merchant," for the latter would probably consist of both "de hominibus civitatis" and also "de aliis mercatoribus comitatus[43]." Ecclesiastics[44] and women might also be members of the Gild, but of course could not be burgesses. Such members had, in some towns, to pay additional fees[45]. [Sidenote: _Distinction between Gild and Communa preserved in Charters, but not in practice._] The charters were always granted to the "Burgesses," without reference to their capacity as Gild-members, except in the cases where the privileges granted were such as would only concern members of the Gild. It was the "burgesses" who purchased the _firma burgi_ and who paid such goodly sums for trading and other privileges. But in making up these payments they were glad to avail themselves of the assistance of the non-burgess merchants, not the least of whose recommendations seemed doubtless to lie in the share they were willing to bear in contributing to the periodical tallages and similar royal charges. They were indeed as a document expresses it most serviceable when it was requisite "_defectus burgi adimplere_[46]." Although in name it was the burgesses who paid the money and who purchased the _firma burgi_, it was in fact the Merchant Gild which bore the largest part. In another way also the "foreigners" who were members of the Merchant Gild were useful to the burgess-members of it. During earlier years all the Craftsmen who so desired, and could afford the necessary payments, were admitted into the Gild of Merchants. The designation 'merchant' was then extended to all who engaged in trade. But as the Gilda Mercatoria became in practice more and more identical with the Communa the idea seems to have grown up that landless men, renters of their shops within the towns, should not be admitted to the Gild. [Sidenote: _Gild seems to become Communa._] For in this period, that is during the 14th and 15th centuries, the old democratic government of the towns was giving place to a close governing council[47]. This was in no sense the Merchant Gild, though probably all the members of the select body would be members of the Gild[48]. Being also the most important of its members they would be able to use its influence for their own ends, and in these measures they would generally have on their side the majority of the "foreigners," who would not know or care much about the internal concerns of the town. Thus it came about that having secured important trading privileges the influence of the Merchant Gild was chiefly directed, though by a small coterie of its members, towards municipal rather than mercantile objects. [Sidenote: _Rise of Craft Gilds favoured by Merchant Gild and Communa._] [Sidenote: _This favour natural under the circumstances and proved by the Charters._] These latter it left to be dealt with by the new companies into which the craftsmen were beginning to amalgamate. In this action they were helped and encouraged by the Merchant Gild, or as it now was in practice, the municipal authority. It is a mistake to speak of the rise of the Craft Gilds in England as a movement bitterly hostile to the Merchant Gilds and therefore strenuously opposed by the latter. The reverse was the fact. The increased complexity of the task of regulating trade, as division of labour developed and commerce expanded its bounds, became difficult, and the central body was for this additional reason glad to depute its powers to, and to exercise its functions through, smaller and specialised agencies. The charters of the Craft Gilds too contain no articles which would stand the members in stead in a conflict with a higher power, whereas if these charters had been the hardly-won prize of a severely contested struggle they would assuredly have contained some bitter articles in consequence of the past and in preparation for the future. We shall however examine the rise and history of the Craft Gilds in the subsequent chapters. [Sidenote: _Summary._] The substance of the foregoing paragraphs may be briefly summarised thus. The most noticeable feature in the Economic history of England during the years immediately succeeding the Norman Conquest was the growth of the towns. They differed however but little from the country districts in government except in the particular that they possessed a Merchant Gild. These trading corporations are first unmistakeably perceived soon after the Conquest, originating probably in the need which arose, as the towns increased in wealth and importance, for the existence of some authority to preserve peace within their borders, as without peace and order trade could not prosper. Such an union for securing internal peace, consisting as it did of the principal persons interested, easily went on to enact commercial regulations. These were, on the one hand, the reserving to its own body the privilege of purchasing the stock of the foreign merchant, and, on the other, restricting the right of selling within the town to its own members. Royal authorisation set the seal to this practice. When the kings began to give charters to the towns, the legal recognition of their Merchant Gild was one of the chief of the privileges desired by the townsmen. This restricted trading was not prejudicial to the town because practically all the burgesses were members of the Gild. If they all were not Gildsmen _before_ the royal authorisation they would be likely to become so afterwards. But all Gildsmen were not burgesses. The latter _must_ be residents: the former frequently included outsiders among their number. Nevertheless as the years went by, the Gild seemed to become the Communa, even as the Gild Hall became the Town Hall. Various reasons conduced to this. There were practically no burgesses extraneous to the Merchant Gild, though there were often Gildsmen who were not burgesses. The Merchant Gild was the only machinery for freeing the fugitive villain after a year and a day's residence in the town. It also afforded the best, and as a fact the only, centre round which the burgesses could rally in the defence of their old privileges or in the struggle for fresh ones. Its wealth and stability were also an additional inducement to the kings in granting to the towns their _firma burgi_. In theory the Gilda Mercatoria might be kept distinct from the Communa, but in practice the two bodies were found to be identical. But the later Communa did not take cognisance of trade affairs except indirectly through the Craft Gilds which the increasing complexity of trade was calling into being. Many of the members of these latter bodies were members of the Merchant Gild, and to them were added large numbers of the lesser craftsmen. The Craft Gilds specialized the work of the Merchant Gild, which gradually ceased to discharge any important office as a collective whole, though through the many branches into which it had ramified its influence continued to be of the greatest importance to the welfare of town and trade. NOTE 1. LIST OF MERCHANT GILDS. The following is an attempt to construct a table of grants of the Merchant Gild (down to 1485), in chronological order, and showing also, where possible, by whom the grant was made. Unfortunately the list is in several cases only approximately correct, as the document from which I have obtained my date shows that the Merchant Gild has evidently been granted at some previous time. In all cases however the earliest known mention of the Gild is given. In compiling this table I should acknowledge my plentiful use of the materials recently made available in _The Gild Merchant_, by Charles Gross (Oxford, 1890). _William II. and Henry I._ (1087-1135) Burford 1087-1107 Earl of Gloucester Canterbury 1093-1109 _Henry I._ (1100-35) Wilton 1100-35 King Leicester 1107-18 Robert, Earl of Mellent Beverley 1119-35 Abp Thurstan of York York 1130-31 _Stephen_ (1135-54) Chichester King Lewes Reginald de Warrenne _Stephen and Henry II._ (1135-89) Petersfield _Henry II._ (1154-89) Carlisle King Durham Fordwich Lincoln King Oxford Shrewsbury King Southampton King Wallingford King Winchester King Marlborough 1163 King Andover 1175-6 King Salisbury 1176 King Bristol 1188 John, Earl of Moreton _Richard I._ (1189-99) Bath 1189 King Bedford King Gloucester Nottingham John, Earl of Moreton Bury S. Edmund's 1198 _John_ (1199-1216) Chester 1190-1211 Earl of Chester Dunwich 1200 King Ipswich 1200 King Cambridge 1201 King Helston 1201 King Derby 1204 King Lynn Regis 1204 King Malmesbury 1205-22 Yarmouth 1208 King Hereford 1215 King Bodmin 1216 King Totnes 1216 King Newcastle-on-Tyne 1216 King _Henry III._ (1216-1272) Preston Haverfordwest Portsmouth Worcester 1226-27 King Bridgenorth 1227 King Rochester 1227 King Montgomery 1227 King Hartlepool 1230 Bp of Durham Dunheved (Launceston) 1231-72 Richard, Earl of Cornwall Newcastle-under-Lyme 1235 King Liskeard 1239-40 Richard, Earl of Cornwall Wigan 1246 King Sunderland 1247 King Cardigan 1249 King Reading 1253 King Scarborough 1253 King Guildford 1256 Kingston-on-Thames 1256 King Boston ? 1260 Macclesfield 1261 King Coventry 1267-68 King Lostwithiel 1269 _Edward I._ (1272-1307) Berwick Bridgwater Congleton Henry de Lacy Devizes King Welshpool Griffith, Lord of Cyveiliog Aberystwith 1277 King Windsor 1277 King Builth 1278 King Rhuddlan 1278 King Lyme Regis 1284 King Caernarvon 1284 King Conway 1284 King Criccieth 1284 King Flint 1284 King Harlech 1284 King Altrincham 1290 Hamon de Massy Caerswys 1290 King Overton 1291-2 Newport (Salop) 1292 Chesterfield 1294 John Wake Kirkham 1295 King Beaumaris 1296 King Henley-on-Thames 1300 ? Earl of Cornwall Barnstaple 1302 Newborough 1303 King _Edward II._ (1307-1327) Llanfyllin Ruyton 1308-9 Earl of Arundel Wycombe 1316 Bala 1324 King _Edward III._ (1327-1377) Gainsborough Earl of Pembroke Bamborough 1332 Grampound 1332 Lampeter 1332 Denbigh 1333 King Lancaster 1337 Cardiff 1341 Hugh le Despenser Nevin 1343-76 Prince of Wales Llantrissaint 1346 Hugh le Despenser Hedon 1348 King Hope 1351 Prince of Wales Pwllheli 1355 Prince of Wales Neath 1359 Edward le Despenser Kenfig 1360 Edward le Despenser Newton (S. Wales) 1363 Prince of Wales _Richard II._ (1377-1399) Axbridge Newport 1385 Earl of Stafford Oswestry 1398 King _Henry IV._ (1399-1413) Saffron-Walden Cirencester 1403 King _Henry V._ (1413-1422) None _Henry VI._ (1422-1461) Plymouth 1440 Walsall 1440 Weymouth 1442 Woodstock 1453 King _Edward IV._ (1461-1483) Ludlow 1461 King Grantham 1462 Stamford 1462 Doncaster 1467 Wenlock 1468 _Richard III._ (1483-1485) Pontefract NOTE 2. LIST OF TRADES, HANDICRAFTS AND PROFESSIONS COMPRISED IN THE LISTS OF MEMBERS OF THE SHREWSBURY MERCHANT GILD. apotecarius, specer, spicer--apothecary aurifaber--goldsmith baker, bakere, pistor, pictor--baker barber, tonsor, tyncer--barber bercarius, tannator, tanner--tanner botman--corn-dealer brewer--brewer carnifex--butcher carpentarius, faber--carpenter carrere--carrier cementarius--? plasterer cissor, tailur, taylor, tayleur, parmentarius, parminter, parmonter--tailor clericus--clerk cocus--cook colier, coleyer--collier[49] comber--? wool-comber corvisarius, gorwicer, cordewaner, sutor--shoemaker coupere, hoppere (?)--cooper deyer--dyer forber--sword-cutler ganter, cirotecarius, glover--glover garnusur--garnisher grom--groom gunir, gynur harpour--harper haukerus, hawkerus, hawker--hawker justice--judge leche--leech loxmith, locker, lok--locksmith mason--mason mercer--mercer, merchant or retailer of small wares molendarius--miller palmer-- pannarius--draper, clothier petler, ? pelterer--seller of skins piscator--fisherman potter--potter prest, presbyter--priest sadeler--saddler scriptor--transcriber sherer, shearman--clothworker tabernarius, taverner--tavern-keeper teynterer-- walker or waller--? builder webbe--weaver wodemon--woodman wolbyer--wool-buyer CHAPTER III. THE CRAFT GILDS. [Sidenote: _The Merchant Gild and the craftsmen._] We have seen how the Merchant Gild consisted of all the traders whose business lay in the town. Such an association, though nominally open to all whether landowners or not who could afford to pay the requisite fees, was in essence oligarchical, and this feature became in course of time its most apparent characteristic. We saw, also, how there grew up a large class extraneous to the privileged Merchant Gild. This body of outsiders became continually larger and more important. The Welsh ravages in the exposed country would induce numbers to seek the friendly shelter of the town, which by this continuous infusion of fresh blood, found its trade become more and more flourishing, and consequently its attractions to "foreigners" more and more powerful. Each branch of industry was also incessantly receiving large accessions of strength in the shape of fugitive villains from the country-side, who, by residence during a year and a day were released from fear of a reclaim to serfdom. These new settlers, some of whom the advance of time found making considerable strides towards prosperity, seeing themselves shut out from the Town Gild both by the exclusive spirit of that body and by the fact that they themselves were not owners of land within the town[50], but (even in the case of the wealthiest of them) only renters of their shops, were naturally drawn, by the spirit of the times, towards amalgamation[51]. [Sidenote: _Tendencies to union among the latter: Religious,_] It was natural that men working at the same trade,--living probably in the same neighbourhood[52], and during intervals of rest exchanging gossip from adjacent door-steps,--meeting one another in all the actions of daily life and with thoughts and language running in similar grooves,--should also desire to be not separated in worship. Likewise, in time of trouble, when death brought gloom to the house of a fellow-workman, or when through accident or misfortune he failed to appear at his accustomed place in yard or workshop, it was by the ordinary promptings of nature that his brother craftsmen came to offer their sympathy and help. And so we find the men of the various trades forming themselves into fraternities, in order to pour united supplications for Divine assistance and to offer thanks in common for Divine favour[53]. The Tailors and Shoemakers had their chantries in St Chad's Church, where the Weavers also had their especial altar, maintaining in addition a light before the shrine of St Winifred in the Abbey of the Holy Cross. The Drapers of the town early became drawn together in a religious brotherhood, the chapel of which in the collegiate church of Our Lady was the object of frequent and solicitous care when the fraternity of the Holy Trinity was definitively changed into the Worshipful Company of the Drapers. In the church of St Juliana the altar of the Shearmen stood in the north aisle, where a chaplain said their special mass for a yearly stipend of £4[54]. It was the pride of the Gilds to expend the best efforts of their wealth and skill on the embellishment and maintenance of their chapel upon which they were able to look as their own. Their worldly possessions at no one time reached a figure high enough for them to provide a large endowment for church or chantry, but the thankofferings of the years sufficed for all current expenses. The fixed stipend was small, but the fabric, raised and adorned as funds allowed, was commodious and beautiful[55]. It was to this ever-present desire to consecrate some portion of the yearly profits of trade to the honour of Him who had given the increase, that the annual pageant owed its pomp. The Corpus Christi procession was an occasion of especial prominence at Shrewsbury, where the Gild charters and records are full of minute regulations for its order. [Sidenote: _Social,_] The associations of fellow workmen for the purposes of religion also took the form of clubs for mutual benefit and assistance. The Drapers were maintaining their school and schoolmaster in 1492[56]; their almshouses were only rivalled by those of the Mercers. The maintenance of poor and decayed members was always one of the most prominent of the objects of association. Attendance at the last offices by the grave of a deceased brother, and remembrance of him in prayer, were likewise universal duties of brethren. Edward VI.'s confiscation of Gild property broke down in all the towns a great system of poor-relief which had hitherto freed the government of that most difficult problem. Nor did the Gilds wait until a brother was completely crushed before they came to his assistance. Fluctuations of trade then as now sometimes brought occasions of temporary embarrassment. But "the false and abominable contract of Usury ... which the more subtily to deceive the people they call 'exchange' or 'chevisance,' whereas it might more truly be called 'mescheaunce,'" ... was rightly looked upon as unworthy of fellow-workers for the common good, "seeing that it ruins the honour and soul of the agent, and sweeps away the goods and property of him who appears to be accommodated, and destroys all manner of right and lawful traffick[57]." The common chest of the Gild was therefore at the service of the brethren[58], not, as in the days of degeneracy, to aid the capitalist in grinding down his workmen, but to keep the craftsman from the clutches of the usurer. [Sidenote: _Commercial._] Out of these religious fraternities and social clubs developed what we may more correctly term Craft Gilds; or to speak more strictly we should perhaps rather say that many of these societies began to add to their social and religious objects an additional one, namely trade regulation[59]. They would be encouraged in this direction by the action of the Merchant Gild, or its successor the municipal authority, which, as the expansion of trade necessitated specialisation, was glad to depute its powers to such associations[60]. [Sidenote: _Early Craft Gilds._] [Sidenote: _Effect of their growth on Merchant Gild._] The earliest mention of Craft Gilds is in the reign of Henry I., when notice is found of the Weavers of London, Oxford, Winchester, Lincoln and Huntingdon, the Cordwainers of Oxford and the Fullers of Winchester[61]. They became more common and more influential as the development of industry was fostered by the central government. This was especially the policy of Edward I. and Edward III. By the end of the 14th century the Craft Gilds become numerous. As they took over the duties and functions of the Merchant Gild the existence of the latter was rendered to a considerable extent superfluous, and the merging of the Gilda Mercatoria into the Communa became not only inevitable but convenient and natural. During the 14th and 15th centuries, when the Craft Gilds attained their highest power, the decay of the Merchant Gilds became very marked. [Sidenote: _The later "Merchant Gild."_] In some places where this happened the name of the Merchant Gild wholly disappeared. In others where the expression continued in use the institution changed its character and became simply a religious fraternity. In a few instances the select corporation alone inherited the name: in some the whole body of freemen did so. Again, there are examples of a survival of the expression as applied to the whole body of tradesmen, that is the whole of the members of the various Gilds[62]. A Patent of Queen Elizabeth, dated 1586, thus alludes to the aggregate of unions under the collective name of "the Gild of Burgesses of Shrewsbury." In the same way we read of "the several companies belonging to the guild merchant of Reading," "the Guild of Merchants in Andever, which Guild is divided into three several Fellowships," etc. Just as the Merchant Gild differentiated itself into Craft Gilds, the Craft Gilds afterwards again in the aggregate took the name and style of the Merchant Gild. [Sidenote: _Identity of interests of Corporation and Gilds seen in Police regulations;_] If such additional proof were needed this action on their part might be adduced in support of the assertion, which cannot be too strongly emphasised or too often repeated, that in England there was no conflict between the Merchant Gild and the Craft Gilds. Though these latter associations had grown up in vindication, as it might seem, of the principle of free amalgamation in opposition to oligarchical exclusiveness, and although it was evident that as they increased the Merchant Gild must decline, yet there was at no time any idea of antagonism between the two kinds of authority within the town. On the contrary internal police was very materially assisted by the Gilds[63]. They carried on the good work which the Merchant Gild had inaugurated. Not only were dissensions among combrethren to be brought before the Wardens and Stewards instead of forming the occasion of unseemly brawls and disturbances, but one of the objects for which the associations existed is expressly stated to be "for the weale, rest and tranquilitie of the same towne, and for good rule to be kept there[64]." With this object in view the composition of the Tailors and Skinners (1478) contains several articles which show how materially the officers of the Gild assisted the bailiffs of the town[65]. [Sidenote: _evidenced by supervision of municipal authorities,_] The Gild officers, though freely elected by the combrethren took their oaths of office before the bailiffs of the town, who also secured, if necessary, the enforcement of the ordinances of the Gilds[66]. The town authorities exercised, too, a general supervision: it seems to have been the rule for the compositions to be annually (or periodically) inspected; and for new regulations to be subject to municipal approval[67]. [Sidenote: _(therefore supported by them;) shown by Charters,_] One consequence of this authorisation by the town officials was that the latter ceased to take cognisance of trade affairs except indirectly through the Gilds; another was that the Gilds were supported by the town authorities. In order to carry out the rules of the Gilds it was imperative that all men of a trade should belong to the particular Gild of that craft. For there might come men carrying on trade in the town unwilling to submit to the rules framed for ensuring good work and protecting the interests of the craft. These it would be impossible to check until the Gild had been recognised and authorised by the crown or the corporation, and so had obtained power to enforce its ordinances in a legitimate way. It was in this manner that the necessity arose for obtaining a charter[68]. The Fraternities, which in their earlier stages had existed as voluntary associations, now received authoritative recognition, by virtue of charters obtained from the king by the aid of the corporation. The composition of the Tailors and Skinners (1478) shows the company and the corporation in the closest connection; that of the Mercers, granted by Edward Prince of Wales, Son of Edward IV., in 1480-81, is countersigned by the bailiffs. The necessity for this authoritative recognition is clearly seen in the continually recurring ordinance calling upon all men of the craft to join the Gild. If the Gild had not been supported by royal and municipal authority it would have been impossible for it to have carried out its aims; as it was the task was sufficiently difficult. [Sidenote: _and Oaths._] The unity of interests of the Gilds and the corporation is further shown by the words of the oaths. The wardens' oath of the company of Glovers ran as follows. "You shalbe true to our Sov'aigne lord King ... his heirs and successors and obedient to the Bailiffs of this town for the time being and their successors. And you shall well and truly execute and p'forme your office of Wardens of Glovers, Poynt-makers, pursers, ffelmongers, Lethersellers and pa'hment-makers for this yeare according to the true extent and meaning of your composition and of all and singular articles and agreements therein expressed and declared to the uttermost of your power. So helpe you God." The oaths of the other officers, and of the Freemen, contained like promises[69]. [Sidenote: _Composition of Gilds._] [Sidenote: _Masters._] [Sidenote: _Apprentices._] [Sidenote: _Journeymen._] [Sidenote: _Women._] In the composition of the Trade Gilds there was no attempt to erect a monopoly. All workers of the Craft except such as could make separate terms with the corporation[70] were not only permitted to join the Gild, but were compelled to do so. The members included Apprentices and Journeymen as well as Masters[71]. Women too were not debarred from joining[72], though they, like the Apprentices and Journeymen[73], took no part in the business of administration[74]. The charter of the Drapers[75] speaks of both brethren and sistren, and the list of members as given on the occasions of "cessments" shows women-members, both wives of combrethren, independent tradeswomen, and widows of deceased brothers. [Sidenote: _Officers._] In the election of their officers the English Gilds differed materially from similar associations on the continent. In England the choice appears to have been always unrestricted[76]. Refusal to accept office when elected exposed the reluctant brother to a money fine. The oaths of the officers, as we have seen, contained declarations of loyalty to the crown and municipal authority, and in this way we may account for the absence of _Masters_ among the officials of the Shrewsbury Gilds. The place of the Master seems to have been filled, in some sort at least, by the bailiffs of the town. At any rate none of the many Gilds of Shrewsbury ever had a Master at the head of their officers. The _Wardens_ were uniformly two in number, freely elected by all the brethren from such as were "the most worthiest and discreetest and which will and best can[77]." That it was not altogether a needless precaution to order that the elected wardens should be members of the Gild appears from the later abuses which arose, wardens being sometimes chosen from without the number of the combrethren[78]. The functions of these, the principal officers, were generally to carry into effect the objects of the Gild. To do this they possessed the right of search for inadequate materials or unsuitable tools, and a general supervision over workmen to secure competency. The composing of quarrels among combrethren was a prominent part of their duties. [Sidenote: _Assistants._] The Board of Assistants which exercised so harmful an influence over the companies in later days is found at Shrewsbury at an early date[79]. The composition of the Tailors and Skinners, 1478 A.D., speaks of the "Fower men ordeigned to the said Wardens to be assistant in counsel in good counsel giving." They reappear in 1563 as the Four Assistants "for advising them [the Wardens] in the Government of the Gild[80]." In this particular as in so many others the Gilds of Shrewsbury seem to have been distinguished by a greater desire to widen the area of the governing body than was the case with the great companies of London and elsewhere. For the language of some bye-laws of the corporation passed in 18 Edward IV., seems to imply that the "Four Men" were common to all the companies. In the Gilds of most provincial towns such Assistants no doubt shared in the government from early years. The _Stewards_ were two in number. At a later date they were nominated by the Wardens[81], though in earlier times probably elective. Their particular duties nowhere very clearly appear. They seem to have assisted the Wardens and Four Men in hearing and examining of "all manner of matters, causes and controv'sies which shall happen amongst the brethren[82]." The _Beadle_ summoned members to meetings and officiated in whatever of formality was observed in them. He would keep the door of the Hall, and see that none but brethren were admitted within the privileged chamber. His was the duty of providing that due order and regularity was observed in the proceedings, and, if necessary, of carrying into effect the decisions of the assembly against refractory members. In the annual Procession we can well imagine that the Beadles of the respective companies would bear themselves with no common pride. Their duties also included the summoning of members to weddings and funerals of brethren. The Mercers' composition of 1424 carefully details the duties of the _Searcher_. He, as also the Beadle, was usually nominated by the Wardens, Four Men and Stewards jointly, and, as his name implied, was charged with bringing to the notice of the Gild anything contrary to its rules or prejudicial to its interests. A _Clerk_ is also mentioned, who drew up indentures of apprenticeship and kept the Gild registers. At a later period the office of _Treasurer_ was introduced and became of considerable importance. [Sidenote: _Meetings._] The election of officers was the principle item of business at the great annual meeting of the Gild. This was held on the festival of the Saint in whose name the Gild was dedicated. It was preceded by Mass in the Parish Church whither the brethren and sistren went in procession wearing their distinctive hoods and liveries, and bearing lights in their hands. To add to the dignity of the occasion a play or mystery was sometimes performed, but more usually such representations were reserved for the great common feast of Corpus Christi. [Sidenote: _Business at meetings._] [Sidenote: _Penalties._] At the meeting, which from its most general name of "mornspeche" appears to have followed soon after Mass, great solemnity was observed. The double-locked box[83] was opened by the two Wardens[84] amidst a reverential silence, and the composition or charter preserved in it rehearsed to the assembled brethren. Business was then proceeded with:--election of officers, admittance of new brethren, authorisation of indentures. Then if necessary regulations were passed for the government of the Gild and ordinances made for the due protection of trade, such as summonses to Intruders to enter the union. The ordinary penalties which the companies might inflict were fines of money or of wax, (in which king and corporation shared and which they were consequently willing to enforce,) and, in extreme cases total expulsion from the Gild, which of course meant exclusion from trade within the town. [Sidenote: _Halls._] After the "mornspeche" came the mutual feast. The brethren had begun the day by union for worship, they ended it with union for social and convivial festivity. In later times the business portion of the meeting was transacted in the Hall of the Gild and the brethren afterwards adjourned to some convenient tavern. Several of the Halls were standing until quite recent times. Such were those of the Mercers, Tailors, and Weavers[85]. That of the Shearmen is now used as an Auction Mart, but the Drapers' Hall still retains its former dignity. [Sidenote: _Necessity of historical attitude_] It will be necessary to attempt some estimation of the extent and value of the influence which the Gilds exercised on contemporary life and thought. In doing this, and indeed in dealing with the whole subject of trade regulation in the Middle Ages, it is necessary to bear continually in mind that not only were the conditions of trade then very materially different from those under which we now live, but that Economic Theory was still more at variance with modern views. It is necessary therefore to take a historical attitude, and to try to appreciate both the difference of social conditions, and the difference of objects in view. These objects may be considered firstly as individual and perhaps selfish; and, secondly, as general and for the common good. [Sidenote: _in estimating importance of Gilds; Commercial,_] 1. If we consider the charters from the first point of view we see that the trade regulations were dictated by the desire to secure to all the brethren their means of livelihood: "no broder" was to "induce or tyce any other Mastres Accostom," or to employ the servants of another combrother, or otherwise to act in a spirit of unbrotherly and dishonourable competition. The charters are full of such regulations. No member might obtrude wares before passers in the open street, or erect booths "for to have better sale than eny of the combrethren[86]." 2. Similarly also if we view the compositions in light of what we have described as the second of their objects. The excellent motive of mediæval regulation of industry was to secure the prosperity of trade by ensuring skilled workmanship and proper materials. In consequence it was forbidden for workmen whose capacity was unknown to work in the town until their efficiency had been proved. The Barbers' composition of 1432 ordered that "no man' p'sone sette up nother holde no shoppe in Privite ny apperte ny shave as a Maistre withinne the saide Tow' ny Franchise in to the Tyme that ev'y such p'sone have the Wille and Assent of the Stywardes and Maistres of the saide Crafte." It was the desire to ensure the public being well served that prompted the articles in the composition of the Mercers (1480-1) which ordered the Searcher "to make serche uppon all the occupyers of the saide Craftes ... that non of theym occupie eny false Balaunce Weight or Mesures belongeing to the sayde Craftes or eny of theym, wherebie the Kyngs People in eny wyse myght be hurt or dysseyved." It was also part of the same officer's duties to "oversee that any thyng app'tenyng to the saide Craftes or eny of theym to be boght and solde in the saide Towne and Frauncheses be able suffyceant and lawfull and that noe dyssayte nor gyle to the Kyngs liege people therbye be had." No indentures were to be drawn for less than "seven years at the least," so that adequate training should be secured. We thus perceive how the Craft Gilds differed, on the one hand from the Frith Gilds of more ancient times, and on the other from the Commercial Companies of later days. The former were associations in which every member was responsible for the actions of each of his fellows; in the Craft Gilds each member bound himself to abide by the regulations of the rest. The essence of the later Commercial Companies is union for mere pecuniary gain; the Gilds set in the forefront of the objects of their association the material benefit of the community and the religious and moral good of the individual. The resemblance between Trades Unions and the Mediæval Gilds is not entirely fanciful; but no two documents can be more widely different than the Prospectus of a Limited Liability Company and a Gild Charter of the Middle Ages. [Sidenote: _Social,_] The Gild system may be considered from various points of view. Regarded in its social aspect its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It has been pointed out how the work of the Gilds prevented the difficulty of poor relief becoming acute, and also how valuable their influence was in the maintenance of order, through the respect they evinced for the established law. The immense weight they must have had on the side of morality, by the importance they attached to the moral character of their members must not be overlooked. "The rules of the Gilds which have come down to us, quaint and homely as they sound, breathe a spirit as elevated as it is simple, and although we must probably make the usual allowance for the difference between men's acts and their words, we cannot but believe that the generations which formed such grand conceptions and which so persistently strove to realise them, had a better side than posterity has discovered[87]." The extent, too, to which they operated in linking class to class was very great. There was no impassable barrier between commerce and birth. In the lists of apprentices which have been preserved to us the entries of names belonging to county families are frequent. It was the ordinary custom for the younger sons to be put to business in the town. The social value of such a habit must have been great. Within the craft, too, the distinctions were only caused by differences in the degrees of wealth. By industry and perseverance the meanest apprentice might look forward to attainment of the highest honours his Gild could bestow, and even, by success in trade, to nobility. As in Athelstan's time the merchant who fared thrice beyond the sea at his own cost became of thegn-right worthy[88], so it was all through the Middle Ages: even in the 17th century Harrison says "our merchants do often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the other[89]." [Sidenote: _Constitutional._] The education obtained by the framing of their own ordinances was also no slight gain to the townsmen. They provided for their peculiar needs in their own peculiar way, not always we may say in the best way, but in that which they, who knew the special requirements of the case, considered the best. Each who took part in drawing up those regulations would feel that a certain share of responsibility rested with him to see that they were kept. The constitutional importance also of this training, in imparting an appreciation of the responsibilities and duties which devolve on those who frame regulations was not unimportant. The services which the Gilds rendered to the cause of liberty by the feeling of strong cohesion which they produced among the townsmen would be less difficult to estimate if the burgesses had played a more distinctive part in the work of Parliament[90]. It is easier to point out how, if they may have interfered to some extent with family life on the one hand, they on the other increased the tendency to narrowness and localism which was otherwise sufficiently strong throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed through considerably later times. Everything was antagonistic to the widening of the townsman's sympathies. He found his trade, his ambition, almost his whole life, satisfied within the walls of the borough in which he dwelt; and the Craft Gilds crystallised, as it were, this tendency towards insularity. [Sidenote: _Special interest of their history at present time._] It may be noticed how a special interest attaches at the present time to the history of the Gilds and to the study of their influence and development. The condition of the working classes must always be a point of vital importance to the welfare of the state. It is peculiarly so to-day. Anything therefore which can assist us to understand how the present degradation of the craftsman has been brought about, and which may help towards his amelioration, will be valuable and of practical usefulness. Five hundred years ago the working man differed very widely from his modern representative; how widely may be gathered from a single illustration. The architects of the Churches and other buildings which the Middle Ages have bequeathed to us in such large numbers and of such exquisite beauty are, in the vast majority of cases, unknown to-day even by name. They were not less unknown to contemporaries. For they were men of like nature with their fellows: _ancestors of our modern artisans_. How great a change has grown up in the generations which have intervened. Five centuries ago the workman was intelligent and skilled, he is now untrained and degraded: he was then able and accustomed to take a proper pride in his work, he is now careless and indifferent: he used to be provident and thrifty, now he is usually reckless and wasteful. It is not too much to say that a great reason of this vast difference is to be found in the influence which the Gilds exercised. In their character as Benefit Clubs they taught their members to be thrifty: by insisting on a careful and systematic training during seven years of apprenticeship they made them skilled and capable workmen, and as such able to take an interest in, and to derive pleasure from their work. It has been pointed out that the Gilds prevented extreme poverty from ever becoming at all normal. Uncertainty of employment and demoralising fluctuations of wages are among the most crying evils of our modern social _régime_. The Craft Gilds did much to secure regularity of work and to steady the price of labour. Thus it is evident how great and peculiar an interest attaches to the whole subject of the Gilds at the present day. It is a subject which does not merely offer attractions to the antiquary or provide valuable materials for the student of constitutional and municipal development. It has a far wider and more human significance. A study of the extent and nature of the influence which the Gilds exercised on the condition and skill of the working man in the past will help to solve the problem of his improvement in the present and in the future. NOTE I. INDENTURE OF APPRENTICESHIP FROM THE MERCERS' COMPANY'S RECORDS. A.D. 1414. Hæc indentura testatur etc. inter Johannem Hyndlee de Northampton, Brasyer, et Gulielmum filium Thomæ Spragge de Salopia, quod predictus Gulielmus posuit semetipsum apprenticium dicto Johanni Hyndlee, usque ad finem octo annorum, ad artem vocatam _brasyer's craft_, quâ dictus Johannes utitur, medio tempore humiliter erudiendum. Infra quem quidem terminum præfatus Gulielmus concilia dicti Johannis Hyndlee magistri sui celanda celabit. Dampnum eidem Johanni nullo modo faciet nec fieri videbit, quin illud cito impediet aut dictum magistrum suum statim inde premuniet. A servicio suo seipsum illicite non absentabit. Bona et catalla dicti Johannis absque ejus licentiâ nulli accomodabit. Tabernam, scortum, talos, aleas, et joca similia non frequentabit, in dispendium magistri sui. Fornicationem nec adulterium cum aliqua muliere de domo et familia dicti Johannis nullo modo committet, neque uxorem ducet, absque licentia magistri sui. Præcepta et mandata licita et racionabilia magistri sui ubique pro fideli posse ipsius Gulielmi, diligenter adimplebit et eisdem mandatis libenter obediet. Et si prædictus Gulielmus de aliqua convencione sua vel articulo præscripto defecerit, tunc idem Gulielmus juxta modum et quantitatem delicti sui magistro suo satisfaciet emendam aut terminum apprenticiatus sui duplicabit. Et præfatus Johannes et assignati sui apprenticium suum in arte prædicta meliori modo quo idem Johannes sciverit ac poterit tractabunt docebunt et informabunt, seu ipsum informari facient sufficienter, debito modo castigando, et non aliter. Præterea dictus Johannes concedit ad docendum et informandum dictum Gulielmum in arte vocata _Peuterer's Craft_ adeo bene sicut sciverit seu poterit ultra convencionem suam præmissam. Et idem Johannes nullam partem artium prædictarum ab apprenticio suo concelabit. Invenient insuper Johannes et assignati sui dicto Gulielmo omnia sibi necessaria, viz. victum suum et vestitum, lineum, laneum, lectum, hospicium, calceamenta et cætera sibi competencia annuatim sufficienter, prout ætas et status ipsius Gulielmi exigerint. In cujus rei testimonium etc. 1414. NOTE II. OATH TO BE TAKEN BY THE FREEMEN OF THE MERCERS' COMPANY. In the Company's records this oath occurs immediately after a curious calendar, written in 15th century hand, and before a list of "Brethren received and incorporated in the time of Rici Attynchin and John Cutlere wardens" in 3 Henry VI., (1424-5). FIDELITAS. I shall trewe man be to God o'r Lady Seynt Marie Seynt Mychell th'archangell patrone of the Gylde and to the Fraternite of the Mercers Yremongers and Goldsmythes & Cappers w'in the Towne and Fraunches of Shrowesbury I shall also Trewe man be to the king our liege lorde and to his heyres kyngys and his lawes and mynystars of the same Truly obs've and obey And ov' this I shall be obedyent to my wardens and their sumpneys obey and kepe I shall be trewe and ffeythfull to the Combrethern of the Gylde aforeseyd and ther co'ncell kepe All lawdable and lefull actes and composic'ons made or to be made w{t}in the Seide Gylde truly obeye p'forme and kepe aft' my reason and power I shall be contributare bere yelde and paye all man' ordynare charges cestes and contribucons aftur my power as any other master occupyer or combrother of the seid Gylde shall happen to doe and bere: Soe helpe me God and halidame and by the Boke. CHAPTER IV. THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GILDS OF SHREWSBURY. [Sidenote: _Existed before they held charters._] In the foregoing chapter it has been shown how the Craft Gilds were called into being. They possessed at first no charters[91] because none were needed. It was only when friction arose that there came any necessity for royal authority to step forward with its support and sanction[92]. [Sidenote: _Scanty notice at first._] And as they at first possessed no charters, so they have left few or no records of their earliest life. So long as they worked in thorough accord with the spirit of the age and completely fulfilled its requirements they left scanty traces. It is only when the period of degeneracy commences that we begin to have anything like adequate materials for their detailed history. [Sidenote: _Fourteenth century; difficulties for Gilds to face._] The 14th century was fruitful in illustrations of the difficulties which beset the work of the Gilds. The development of trade alone had proceeded far enough to render their task already complicated: their difficulties were increased abnormally by the exceptional conditions of labour brought about by the Black Death. The Peasant Revolt compelled Parliament to take cognisance of industrial difficulties. In 1388, at its meeting at Cambridge, it was largely occupied with trade questions[93], and ordered the issue of writs to the sheriff of each county in England, commanding returns of all details as to the foundation, objects, and condition of both religious fraternities and Craft Gilds. These returns show that most of the Gilds obtained their charters during the 13th and the early years of the 14th centuries[94]. [Sidenote: _Development of industry._] It does not appear that any legislation followed upon this parliamentary action, but provisions now begin to appear for the settlement of disputes between masters and workmen, and also between brethren of the Gild. So far the different classes of workmen had worked together in harmony upon the whole, but it could not fail that a severance or at least a marked diversity of interests should arise. Most important, as demonstrating that it was the change in external circumstances, and not so much the internal degeneracy of the Gilds themselves, which was causing the friction, are the evidences which show that a great division of labour was in progress[95]. In the 13th century the tailor and the cloth-merchant sever their former connection: the businesses of the tanner and of the butcher become distinct branches of trade[96]. Similarly the tanner and the shoemaker were made separate callings[97]. The same movement is still more clearly seen in the disputes which arose between allied Gilds as to the particular work which each was charged with supervising[98]. It was the creation of opposing interests, of which such were the outward signs, that introduced the seed of decay into the Gild system. [Sidenote: _Fifteenth century: avowal of abuses,_] How rapidly the degeneracy proceeded may be gathered from a petition of the Commons early in the 15th century (1437), which evoked an Act (15 Hen. VI., cap. 6) definitely recognising the existence of abuses. After reciting how the "masters, wardens, and people of Gilds, fraternities, and other companies corporate, dwelling in divers parts of the realm, oftentimes by colour of rule and governance to them granted and confirmed by charters and letters patent ... made among themselves many unlawful and little reasonable ordinances ... for their own singular profit and to the common hurt and damage of the people," the statute proceeded to order that the Gilds should not in the future "make or use any ordinance in disparity or diminution of the franchises of the king or others, or against the common profit of the people, nor allow any other ordinance if it is not first approved as good and reasonable by the Justices of the Peace or the chief Magistrates aforesaid and before them enrolled and to be by them revoked and repealed afterwards if they shall be found and proved to be little loyal and unreasonable." [Sidenote: _but approval of the system._] [Sidenote: _Policy of Reform._] But it is abundantly clear that the complaints are against the abuses of the system and not against the system itself. Dissatisfaction is expressed at the "little reasonable ordinances" of the Gilds but not against the companies themselves. The policy therefore of Henry VI. and Edward IV. was to reform the Gilds by amending their ordinances, or, if necessary, giving them charters of incorporation which should set forth definitely their objects, and state both the extent and the limitation of their powers. It is from this period that we date most of the existing records of the Shrewsbury companies. The barbers are said to have been chartered by Edward I. in 1304[99]; their earliest extant composition[100] is dated 1432 (10 Hen. VI.). The Shoemakers' composition of 1387 recited a charter of Edward III.[101] A Vintners' company is said to have been erected in Shrewsbury by Henry IV. in 1412[101]. But it is with the accession of Henry VI. that the great number of present charters and compositions begins. The date of the Fishmongers' company is 1423[101], and the entries of the Mercers commence in the next year[101]. The Barbers' composition of 1432 has been already mentioned. Then follow the Weavers (1448-9), the Fletchers (1449), the Carpenters (1449-50) in close proximity[101]. The Tailors and Skinners (1461) were recognised in the last year of Henry VI.[101], and eighteen years subsequently received a new composition from Edward IV. (1478), who had in the first year of his reign united the Fraternity of the Blessed Trinity with the company of the Drapers[102]. The companies of the Millers, Bakers, Cooks, Butchers and Shearmen certainly existed before 1478, as they are mentioned as taking part in the Corpus Christi Procession at that date. In that year the Tanners and Glovers were incorporated[103], as also were the Saddlers[103]. The royal recognition of the Mercers[101] in the next year completed the list of Shrewsbury companies erected before the 16th century. [Sidenote: _Later Religious Gilds._] It will be convenient here to draw attention to a different kind of Gild which was founded in Shrewsbury towards the close of this period: the religious Gild of S. Winifred. The ancient Monks' Gilds which had spread so early over England, found as was to be expected later imitators in large numbers. The oldest accounts of these Gilds also, like those of the Monks' Gilds, are found in England[104]. Religious or Social they are usually called. They all evinced a strong religious character, but in addition had a care for the old and needy. If a Gild-brother suffer loss through theft "let all the Gildship avenge their comrade," says the Cambridge statute. They also took cognisance of public welfare. If a Gild-brother do wrong "let all bear it: if one misdo, let all bear alike." If a man be slain in fair quarrel with a Gild-brother the _wite_ is to be borne by all, but the wilful or treacherous murderer is "to bear his own deed." These Gilds rapidly spread over all Europe, and existed probably in every town. They doubtless formed the model to which the later associations looked, and, except in details, differed little from the Craft Gilds. They were frequently connected with trade, even in some instances consisting entirely of followers of specific crafts[105], and loans were made out of the common chest to help members in misfortune[106]. We have scant information of early religious Gilds in Shrewsbury, though there can be but little doubt they flourished there as elsewhere. Later, in the 15th century, one was founded by the Abbot of the Holy Cross, which presents several unusual and interesting features. Thomas Mynde was elected Abbot on January 8th, 1460, but it was not till 1486 that he took measures to found the Fraternity of S. Winifred, though probably the scheme had been previously shaping itself through the long period of unsettlement which the Civil Wars had caused. The present Gild differed from the earlier foundations in being deliberately created by royal charter. The reason was that without such security it could not receive grants of land, and Abbot Mynde was desirous to bequeath to it his private possessions rather than to leave them to his Monastery,--a curious commentary perhaps on the low estimation into which the religious houses had fallen. The royal charter was not obtained without some trouble. The License itself says it was granted "by [reason of] the sincere devotion which we have and bear towards S. Winefrida Virgin and Martyr;" but Abbot Mynde assures us that this laudable zeal required the practical stimulus of "a large sum of money" before it would take effect in action. The terms of the charter allowed both brethren and sisters to join the fellowship, the number being unregulated. The oath to support the Gild was taken by each member on admittance, kneeling before the altar in the Abbey of the Holy Cross. Power was given for the election of a Master, whose duties were the regulation of the Gild and the supervision of its property. The fraternity had its common seal, and the ordinary powers and privileges of corporations. It was especially exempted from the Mortmain Acts, and was allowed to acquire property to the yearly value of £10. The objects to which this was to be devoted were the finding of two Chaplains, or at least one, whose duties were the saying of a daily Mass at the Altar of S. Winifred in the Abbey, and the celebration of a Requiem Mass on the decease of a brother or sister of the Fraternity. At such Masses it was especially provided that the prayers for the departed soul should be _in English_. The Gild was joined in considerable numbers by the principal folk of the town, but there is little information[107] respecting its history, which may be at once anticipated here. At the confiscation of the Chantry and Gild property the fraternity of S. Winifred was not able to plead the excuse of usefulness for trade purposes, and it fell unnoticed in the ruin of the great Abbey with which it was connected. Its life had been a short one, but coming as it did at a time when religious fervour was weak and morality lax, it no doubt served a useful purpose and deserved a better fate than almost total oblivion. [Sidenote: _Charters granted to Craft Gilds._] Returning after this digression to the Craft Gilds it will be interesting and profitable to make an examination and comparison of two of their charters, one selected from the earlier and one from the later portion of the period. The charter[108] of the Barbers' Gild, granted by Henry VI. in 1432, may be placed beside the composition[109] which Edward IV. gave to the Mercers in 1480. [Sidenote: _Religious articles._] A point which strikes us forcibly on the most superficial examination of the charters, is the prominence given, in one as in the other, to the Corpus Christi procession. It is a striking illustration of the extent to which mediæval materialism had permeated society, and how deeply rooted was that "tendency to see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the doctrine into its most literal application[110]," which scholastic philosophy had nurtured. The procession indeed would almost appear, from the charters, to be the principal object for which the Gilds exist. A considerable share of the fines is expressly devoted to the "Increce of the Lyght that is boren yerely in the heye and worthie ffest of Corpus Xti Day." The Mercers' composition regulates the order of the procession and the weight of the candle which the company provides in it. No member is to be out of his place on the festival without permission, and the combrethren are especially prohibited from going to "the Coventrie Fayre" at this season under penalty of a fine of twelve pence. The fact of being enabled to take part in the procession is manifestly looked upon as one of the great privileges and duties of the companies. The Mercers' Gild also provided for a priest to say a daily Mass at the altar of S. Michael in the Church of S. Chad; and thirteen poor Bedesmen were retained at a penny per week to pray for the King and Queen and Councillors, and for the brethren of the Gild "both quyke and dedd." [Sidenote: _Trade articles._] The trade regulations of the two compositions are naturally cast in the same mould. In both appears the prohibition of foreign labour (the Mercers say "except in fayre tyme"), and of under-selling by combrethren as well as unfair competition generally. The later regulations go further and provide for the carrying out of the ordinances of the composition by the appointment of a searcher to secure the use of good materials and to prevent "dissayte and gyle," the use of false weights, &c. They also forbid the taking of aliens as apprentices[111]. All indentures are to be for seven years at the least, and none are to be taken as apprentices without being properly bound by indentures approved by the wardens and recorded by the clerk. There is also the article which now becomes common, against divulging the secrets of the craft, and an interesting one against "eny confederacye or embracerye wherebie any p'judices hurt or hynd'ance myght growe." [Sidenote: _Articles of reform._] In the later charter, too, it is evident that there had arisen no small need for reform. In the forefront it is stated that the previous "Fines assessyd uppon ev'y App'ntice at their entries to be maysters Combrethyrn and Settursuppe of the said Craftes or any of them," "and in like wyse gret Fynes uppon eny Forreyn that shoulde entre into the same" are "thought overchargeable" and so are to be "dymynished and refowrmed." If members refuse to pay them, as thus amended, they may be levied by distress. Of how great a falling-off from the original spirit of brotherhood do these two short articles speak. [Sidenote: _Police._] Both the documents provide for the trial of dissensions among brethren, in preference to going before the ordinary tribunals, though by permission cases might be taken before the bailiffs of the town. [Sidenote: _Liveries._] In a similar spirit of pacification the Mercers' composition forbids the wearing of liveries "saving the lyverray of gownes or hodes of the said Gylde to be ordeyned and worne," and that of the municipal corporation[112]. This was in accordance with the Act 13 Henry IV. cap. 3. The abuse of liveries had evoked from Parliament an attempt to put a total stop to the custom[113] (13 Rich. II.). Such endeavours were futile. This was at last recognised, and in 13 Henry IV. the use of liveries of cloth was prohibited, but with the important proviso, "Gilds and fraternities and crafts in the cities and boroughs within the kingdom which are founded and ordained to good intent and purpose alone being excepted." In 1468 Edward IV. confirmed previous legislation on the subject[114]. [Sidenote: _Sixteenth century._] In spite of reforms by improved compositions and legislative measures the degeneracy of the Gilds proceeded apace. The statute 19 Hen. VII. cap. 7 repeats the complaint of 15 Hen. VI. cap. 6, and re-enacts the same restrictions. "Divers and many ordinances have been made by many and divers private bodies corporate within cities, towns, and boroughs contrary to the King's prerogative, his laws, and the common weal of his subjects:" in future therefore the Gilds are prohibited from making any new by-laws or ordinances concerning the prices of wares and other things "in disheritance or diminution of the prerogative of the King, nor of other, nor against the common profit of the people, but that the same Acts or Ordinances be examined and approved by the Chancellor, Treasurer of England, or Chief Justices." The repetition of the same articles shows how little effective they had been in checking the abuses against which they were directed. [Sidenote: _Policy of reform pursued._] Nevertheless Henry VII. and Henry VIII. persevered in the work of regulating, reforming and strengthening the Gilds. The statute of 1530[115] once more diminished entrance fees, which had been inordinately and illegally raised; but another of 1536[116] repeating the same prohibition shows the utter futility of such measures in the condition of trade which had been brought about. A more serious abuse appears in the latter statute, namely the attempt of the masters to exact from their apprentices an oath promising to refrain from prosecuting trade on their own account without consent of their late master. Such abuses exhibit the Gilds in a state of wholesale demoralisation. [Sidenote: _Reformation._] This was not unnatural under the circumstances, for the course of the Reformation had tended to turn public opinion against the Gilds. Moreover it now gave them a severe shock on one side, at any rate, of their functions. [Sidenote: _Confiscation of Chantries and robbery of Gilds._] The confiscation of monastic lands had shown how easy it was for a needy government to seize upon corporate property to its own use, and the example was not long without being followed. The statute 37 Hen. VIII. cap. 4 gave the whole property of all Colleges, Hospitals, Fraternities and Gilds to the king. Before this wholesale desolation could be effected Henry died, but Somerset obtained a renewal[117] of the grant to Edward VI. The words of the Act are absolute in making over to the king all the lands and other possessions of Chantries, Colleges, Hospitals, Gilds and bodies of a similar nature, both religious and secular. No distinction is made as to aim or object, utility or abuse. According to the terms of the statute, we should expect every Gild and corporate body in the country to come to an end with the years 1547-8. Nevertheless though the Chantries were seized the Craft Gilds in general remained. The reason for this apparent divergence between the provisions of the statute and the facts of the case is given by Burnet. Two parties opposed the passing of the Act. Cranmer and the best of the Reformers were grieved to see the material supports of the Church one after another torn away to prop up the failing fortunes of needy and rapacious courtiers. They desired to preserve the lands of the Chantries till the king came of age, when they hoped they might be devoted to the suitable object of augmenting the livings which had been in such numbers impoverished by the Reformation changes. On the other hand were the burgesses. These had no mind to see their own property confiscated, and their benefit societies and clubs suddenly broken up. We may appreciate the feelings of the nation respecting the proposed measure by considering what would be the effect of a statute taking over the properties of all benefit clubs, Trades Unions, Lodges of Oddfellows and Foresters, and similar associations, to-day. Cranmer and his supporters failed to overthrow the measure in the Lords, but when it came to the lower house it was at once evident that a considerable amount of careful statesmanship and astute policy would be requisite if the statute was to pass. Apparently no opposition was expected, as the bill was already engrossed, or perhaps it was hoped that it might be smuggled through amidst the hurry of the closing session. But the government discovered that they had gone to the length of the nation's patience. The Commons saw in its true enormity the conspiracy of the rich and powerful against the weak and poor, and this once perceived a check was given, tardy but not quite too late, to the long and disastrous course of spoliation and confiscation. The opposition to the bill was obstinate, especially as regarded that portion which dealt with the Gilds. Led by the members for Lynn and Coventry the house showed unmistakeably that it was at length determined to submit no longer. In fact the feeling was evidently so strong that the government perceived the absolute necessity of drawing back. The mode in which this was done is explained in the following extract, which, though written from the court point of view, shows up the whole incident as a choice specimen of the statesmanship of the period. "Whereas in the last Parliament holden at Westminster in November the first year of the King's Majesty's reign, among other articles contained in the Act for colleges and chantry lands, etc., to be given unto his Highness, it was also insisted that the lands pertaining to all guilds and brotherhoods within this realm should pass unto his Majesty by way of like gift: At which time divers there being of the Lower House did not only reason and arraign against that article made for the guildable lands, but also incensed many others to hold with them, amongst the which none were stiffer, nor more busily went about to impugn the said Article than the burgesses for the town of Lynn in the county of Norfolk and the burgesses of the city of Coventry in the county of Warwick.... In respect of which their allegations and great labours made herein unto the House such of his Highness's Council as were of the same House there present, thought it very likely that not only that Article for the guildable lands should be clashed, but also that the whole body of the Act might either sustain peril or hindrance, being already engrossed, and the time of the Parliament's prolongation hard at hand, unless by some good policy the principal speakers against the passing of that article might be stayed. Whereupon they did participate the matter with the Lord Protector's grace and other of the Lords of his Highness's Council: who pondering on the one part how the guildable lands throughout this realm amounted to no small yearly value, which by the article aforesaid were to be accrued to his Majesty's possessions of the Crown; and on the other part weighing in a multitude of free voices what moment the labours of a few settlers had been of heretofore in like cases, thought it better to stay and content them of Lynn and Coventry by granting to them to have and enjoy their guild lands etc. as they did before, than through their means, on whose importance, labour, and suggestions the great part of the Lower House rested, to have the article defaced, and so his Majesty to forego the whole lands throughout the realm. And for these respects, and also for avoiding of the promise which the said burgesses would have added for the guilds to that article, which might have ministered occasion to others to have laboured for the like, they resolved that certain of his Highness's Councillors, being of the Lower House, should persuade with the said burgesses of Lynn and Coventry to desist from further speaking or labouring against the said article, upon promise to them that if they meddled no further against it, his Majesty once having the guildable lands granted unto him by the Act ... should make them over a new grant of the lands pertaining then unto their guilds etc. to be had and used to them as before: which thing the Councillors did execute, as was desired, and thereby stayed the speakers against it, so as the Act passed with the clause for the guildable lands accordingly[119]." [Sidenote: _Importance of the Opposition._] This remarkable document, which Canon Dixon printed for the first time, is of surpassing interest, not only to the historian of the Craft Gilds but also to the student of constitutional history. The unscrupulous recourse of the government to jobbery and corruption is not more revolting than the evidence of the increasing constitutional power of the Commons is interesting. It is evident from the account that when the country was with the house of Commons the voice of the latter could not be disregarded. The upshot was that an understanding was entered into, to the effect that the Gild lands were to be only surrendered _pro formâ_, and that they should not in fact be confiscated. In most cases this arrangement was adhered to, and when the great crisis was past it was seen that the Gilds had lost their Chapels and Chantries with the fittings of these, but that their other possessions remained to them. [Sidenote: _Need of caution._] It has been pointed out how the increasing constitutional power of the Commons could make itself felt when the opinion of the nation was at its back. That it undoubtedly was so at the present juncture cannot be doubted. The method which was adopted for carrying out the provisions of the Act demonstrates fully how violently the country had been excited by the measure and by the danger to which the Gild lands had been exposed. The usual way of putting such an Act into execution would have been to send down commissioners to take particulars of the Gilds and Chantries and of their possessions. But royal commissioners had come to be looked upon, not without ample reason, as merely the formal heralds of state robbery. If therefore such commissioners were now sent out to manage the dissolution of the Chantries and Hospitals it was feared that disturbance would arise beyond the power of the government to manage. The more politic plan was therefore adopted of enlisting the people themselves in the cause as much as might be. [Sidenote: _Injunctions._] Injunctions[120] were issued "to the Parson, Vicar, Curat, Chaunter, Priests, Churchwardens, and two of the most honest Persons of the Parish of ________ being no Founders, Patrons, Donors, Lessees, nor Farmers of the Promotions of Corporations hereafter recited." These, or four of them, were to make a return as to the number of "Chantries, Hospitals, Colleges, Free Chapels, Fraternities, Brotherhoods, Guilds and Salaries, or Wages of Stipendiary Priests" in their parish, together with all particulars as to the revenues, ordinances, objects, abuses, names and titles of the same. Full lists were to be drawn up of the lands and possessions of the Chantries, Colleges, and Gilds, and enquiry was instituted respecting any recent dissolutions or alienations which might have been made in prospect of the recent Act. The contingency alluded to in the last article has sufficed to provide some writers with an excuse for the measure destroying the Chantries. No doubt the shock which the action of Henry VIII. in reference to the monasteries had given to all forms of corporate property had led many of the Gilds to attempt the realization of their property. All such transactions were to be null and void. [Sidenote: _Gilds too powerful and popular to be wholly destroyed._] Accordingly the commissioners went down to each town and hamlet and took full particulars of all matters concerning the Gilds and Chantries. "All such as have enye vestments or other goods of the Co{y} [of Mercers are ordered] to bring them in," in order to be sold, with the rest of the Chantry fittings, "to the most p'fitt." The fate of the other kinds of property held by the Gilds, such that is as could not be definitely made out to have been intended for the support of obits and the maintenance of lights, seems to have depended considerably on fortuitous circumstances. In each individual case the Gild had to secure for itself the best terms it could. Sometimes its property was obtained by the town, either by grant or by purchase[121]. At Shrewsbury the almshouses of the Drapers and Mercers survived[122], and the vicar of S. Almond's Church in the same town still receives the yearly sum which the Shearmen settled on the chaplain they maintained in that church. [Sidenote: _Perversion of the confiscated revenues._] [Sidenote: _Disastrous effects on Gilds, and on Craftsmen._] As for the object which the Act itself alleged to have been the motive for the destruction of the Chantries, namely the desire on the part of the government to devote the revenues to the foundation and improvement of grammar schools, it was forgotten as soon as parliament had separated. Strype[123] is obliged to confess that the Act was "grossly abused, as the Act in the former King's reign for dissolving religious houses was. For though the public good was pretended thereby (and intended too, I hope), yet private men, in truth, had most of the benefit, and the King and Commonwealth, the state of learning, and the condition of the poor, left as they were before, or worse. Of this, great complaints were made by honest men: and some of the best and most conscientious preachers reproved it in the greatest auditories, as at Paul's Cross, and before the King himself. Thomas Lever, a Fellow, and afterwards Master of St John's College in Cambridge, in a sermon before the King, in the year 1550 showed 'how those that pretended, that (beside the abolishing of superstition) with the lands of abbeys, colleges, and chantries, the King should be enriched, learning maintained, poverty relieved, and the Commonwealth eased, purposely had enriched themselves.... And bringing in grammar schools, which these dissolved chantries were to serve for the founding of, he told the King plainly ... many grammar schools, and much charitable provision for the poor, be taken, sold and made away; to the great slander of you and your laws, to the utter discomfort of the poor, to the grievous offence of the people, to the most miserable drowning of youth in ignorance.... The King bore the slander, the poor felt the lack. But who had the profit of such things, he could not tell. But he knew well, and all the world saw, that the Act made by the King's Majesty and his Lords and Commons of his Parliament, for maintenance of learning and relief of the poor, had served some as a fit instrument to rob learning, and to spoil the poor.'" The measure was indeed an act of spoliation devoid either of excuse in its cause or benefit in its results. The suppression of the Monasteries could doubtless be amply excused, but no real justification is possible for this attempted wholesale seizure of institutions founded and maintained for the benefit of the poor, for the relief of suffering, and for the regulation of industry and police. As regards the last--the regulation of industry and police--the attempt was to a certain extent foiled, but in other respects it succeeded only too well. Even on the Gilds which escaped its effects were disastrous. Their spiritual aspect was taken away; their prestige and authority very materially lessened. For they completely changed their nature. Instead of being brotherhoods of workmen,--masters, journeymen, and apprentices,--striving together for the common good, they now became simply leagues of employers, companies of capitalists. The new powers which the masters obtained were used to still further oppress the craftsman, who was sufficiently degraded already through a variety of causes. He was too poor and powerless to be able to take any part in the new companies, and continued to sink deeper and deeper into degradation and misery. And this, too, in spite of the great and rapid development of trade which came simultaneously with this weakening blow at the authority and stability of the Gilds. Shrewsbury participated in this expansion of industry, and in the latter portion of the sixteenth century was peculiarly prosperous. There was no migration of its trade to the freer air of the neighbouring villages. The town was successful in retaining its monopoly. But these two causes, (i) the weakening of the Gilds and their change of character, and (ii) the vast development of trade which the age was witnessing, combined to render the companies which survived the Reformation quite unable to perform the work which the mediæval Gilds had done. Yet then above all was a controlling and a guiding power essential. Elizabeth in consequence found that one of her first measures must be in remedy of this condition of affairs. CHAPTER V. REORGANISATION OF THE GILD-SYSTEM. [Sidenote: _Reign of Elizabeth._] Elizabeth, on her accession, found that immediate reform was imperative in almost every department of state. The whole trade of the country was in a condition of agitation. Everything seemed unsettled and insecure. [Sidenote: _Economic disturbances and industrial activity._] For the social upheaval which the Reformation had brought about came in the train of a long period of economic disorder. The changes in the mode of cultivation had thrown the mass of the country population out of work. These were driven in large numbers by stress of circumstances into the towns, which were consequently overstocked with hands. At this juncture came the breaking down of the social police within the towns by the weakening of the Gilds, while in the rural districts the dissolution of the monasteries took away from the poor their main hope of sustenance. The evils which such a policy of mere destruction must inevitably have brought upon the nation were averted through the national growth of wealth which the same period had witnessed. In the country parts the ejection of the easy-going old abbots had at least favoured the adoption of newer and improved methods of cultivation, so that a greater number of labourers came in time to be required on the estate[124]. But far more satisfactory for absorbing the surplusage of labour was the development which the period witnessed in manufacture. The woollen trade in the west, the worsted trade in the east, the iron trade in the south, and unmistakeable signs of the cloth trade in the north already showed how the foundations of England's wealth were laid. The writers of the period abound in notices of the unparalleled growth of trade and commerce. Harrison laments "that every function and several vocation striveth with other, which of them should have all the water of commodity ran into her own cistern[125]." Ample openings for capital broke through the old prejudices against the taking of interest. "Usury" as it was called--"a trade brought in by the Jews--is now perfectly practiced almost by every Christian, and so commonly that he is accompted but for a fool that doth lend his money for nothing[126]." The English workman too was growing rich and lazy in the sunlight of prosperous times, so that "strangers" were frequently preferred to native craftsmen as "more reasonable in their takings, and less wasters of time by a great deal than our own[127]." This was the commencement of the period of Shrewsbury's greatest prosperity. Edward IV.'s erection of the Court of the President and Marches of Wales (1478) was a material cause of the advent of peace to the Borders. Henry VII. could gratify national sentiment by tracing his descent from Owen Tudor: he gave it a practical turn by placing his son Arthur at Ludlow as ruler of the principality. The Welshmen had thus begun to feel that their union with England was a real one before Henry VIII. finally incorporated the country with the English kingdom. [Sidenote: _Increase of comfort._] The cessation of Welsh distractions had greatly favoured the advancement of Shrewsbury. Its grammar school--founded by Edward VI.--as the entrance register of Thomas Ashton, its first Headmaster, evidences, attracted scholars from a very wide area, and helped to bring renown and wealth to the town. Shrewsbury too was the market to which the Welsh cloth trade naturally gravitated, though the town had powerful rivals with which to contend. In the reign of Elizabeth it employed six hundred shearmen in the woollen industry. Camden, writing in 1586, describes it as "a fine city, well-inhabited and of good commerce, and by the industry of the Citizens is very rich." From this period date the substantial homes of the tradesmen of Tudor times which still survive in not inconsiderable numbers to give so much picturesqueness to the streets of the town. This was the era of improvements in domestic architecture. "If ever curious building did flourish in England," says Harrison[128], "it is in these our years." Ireland's mansion, which dates from 1570, and the house at the south-east corner of the Market Square, built by John Lloyd in 1579, are existing examples of this "curious building." Their elegance, no less than their stability, betokens the advancement of manners as well as of wealth. Though these houses are "yet for the most part of strong timber" "brick or hard stone[129]" were beginning to be largely used. Rowley's mansion (1618) is said to have been the first house in the town built wholly of these materials. Everything combines to mark the reign of Elizabeth as an epoch in the history of England. [Sidenote: _Economic policy._] The foundations of modern society were laid. We seem to come into the range of modern, as distinct from mediæval ideas and habits. The principal points in which modern society differs from mediæval are distinctly visible. The problem of poor relief in particular becomes acutely appreciated. The rise of capital is seen both in the modification of the Usury laws, spoken of above, and in the enhancing of rents: prices hitherto dependent on custom and regulation must now be decided by competition. Not less remarkable is the permanence which attended Elizabeth's legislation. Her economic settlement remained practically unchanged until the development of machinery altered those social conditions for which it had been adapted. [Sidenote: _The Statute 5 Eliz. a turning-point in Gild history._] She made trade regulation national instead of local. The Act of 5 Elizabeth, c. 14, is a turning-point in the history of the Gilds. By it the whole system of Gilds was re-modelled. Their experience was by no means thrown away[130]. The information they had been accumulating was now appropriated by the state, which took over many of the functions they had hitherto performed. [Sidenote: _Many of the functions of the Gilds taken over by the state._] What had long been common law now became statute law. The old minimum of seven years' apprenticeship was still enjoined as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of any craft. Such apprentices when bound must be of an age less than twenty-one years, and could only be bound to householders in corporate or market towns. The proportion of journeymen to apprentices was regulated: there were to be three apprentices to one journeyman. The workman was protected from wilful dismissal. The hours of labour were defined, and Justices of the Peace or the town magistrates were to assess wages yearly at the Easter Sessions. All disputes between masters and servants were to be settled by the same authorities. The statute incorporated everything that was worth taking in the ordinances of the Gilds and applied it nationally to the regulation of the country's trade. [Sidenote: _Trade-regulation becomes national instead of local._] [Sidenote: _This allows development of new centres_] The results of such a revolution in industrial regulation were great both on trade in general and on the Gilds. There was no longer any excuse for attempting to retard the development of the new centres which were springing up. The action of the government in the matter of the Welsh woollen trade to which reference will presently be made shows how its policy was tending more and more towards allowing industry to take its own course, instead of attempting to restrict it to one market. [Sidenote: _and encourages native workmen._] Another important result of the Act was the protection henceforth shown to the native in opposition to the alien workman. The aim of the government is now to regulate, protect, encourage, _native_ industry: the objects of its desire in the past had been to provide plenty for the consumer and to increase the strength of the country by extending its capacity for production. The royal support accorded in consequence to Flemish and German traders had made them objects of bitter jealousy to the struggling English merchants[131]. This feeling of antipathy to alien workmen may be traced from the reign of Richard II. It becomes very marked in that of Edward IV.[132] The composition of the Mercers of Shrewsbury, dated 1480-81, had forbidden the apprenticeship of anyone "that is of Frenshe, Flemyshe, Irysh, Douche, Walshe or eny other Nacyones not beyng at Truse w{t} our Sov'ayne Lorde the Kynge, but onlye mere Englysshe borne." The new policy inaugurated by the statute of Elizabeth is however not more national in its scope than in the preference it gives to native over foreign workmen. [Sidenote: _Results on Gilds._] [Sidenote: _Many come to an end._] [Sidenote: _Many made more comprehensive._] [Sidenote: _These sometimes come into conflict with royal officers._] The results on the Gilds were more diverse. Many came to an end. This was brought about through two causes: firstly, the need for many Gilds ceased in consequence of the government now taking over their functions; secondly, in many places the numerous Gilds were organized and amalgamated into one or two larger and amended corporations[133]. On the other hand the encouragement now afforded to native workmen caused a great incorporation of new trades into many old Gilds, which became in consequence more comprehensive. In a large number of cases these performed their duties well for a long period. The new composition granted to the Barbers of Shrewsbury in 1662 places this fact upon record. Occasionally they came in conflict with the royal officers appointed to scrutinise the wares, as was the case with the Mercers and the Anager at one period of the company's existence. [Sidenote: _Many become state agents._] Not a few became the authorised agents of the state. Several of the Shrewsbury Gilds were strengthened and encouraged with this object in view. New compositions were granted by Elizabeth to the Tailors and Skinners in 1563 (confirmed in the next year), to the Glovers in 1564 and to the Shearmen in 1566. The Drapers had also figured in the Statute Book on two occasions. The Acts 8 Elizabeth, c. 7, and 14 Elizabeth, c. 12, had both been concerned with the affairs of the Drapers of Shrewsbury in their capacity of state agents for the regulation of industry[134]. In 1605 the company of Drapers was incorporated by James I. and the Smiths in 1621. The Tailors received a composition in 1627 and another in 1686. The Tanners were regulated by a new composition in 1639, the Smiths in 1661, the Barbers in 1662. The records of the Mercers contain entries of "cessments for renewing the Composition" in several years--1639, 1640, 1644, 1646 etc. [Sidenote: _Many new Gilds formed._] In many places of recent growth, or where the old Gilds had been destroyed without there having been any construction of fresh machinery to take their place, deliberate grants were made of new trade companies. The Merchant Adventurers of Exeter were incorporated by Elizabeth expressly for the purpose of supervising trade and "on account of the inconveniences arising from the excessive number of artificers and unskilled persons occupying the art or mystery of merchandising[135]." The charter which was granted "hominibus mistere Marceriorum" at York in 1581 allowed them to form themselves into a company under officers chosen with the consent of the municipal authorities: the evils which necessitated the forming of the company being expressly stated to be such as had ensued from a lack of due regulation of trade[136]. At Axbridge every householder, whether engaged in trade or not, was ordered, in 1614, to enrol himself in one of the three companies of the town[137]. [Sidenote: _Intimate connection with civic authorities._] In all these charters care was taken that the new corporations should be in due subordination to the town authorities[138]. In some places the Mayor or other officer of the town was _ex officio_ head of the Gild. Sometimes it was granted to the "Mayor, bailiffs and commonalty and their successors for ever, that they shall and may from time to time ordain, create, and establish, a society, gild, or fraternity, of one master and wardens of every art, mystery and occupation used or occupied, or hereafter to be used or occupied, within the said city and the suburbs thereof; and that they with the assistance of the wardens of the said arts and mysteries may make, constitute, ordain and establish laws, constitutions and ordinances for the public utility and profit and for the better rule and regiment of our city of Winchester and of the mysteries of the citizens and inhabitants of the same[139]." Such power of supervision was generally allowed to the municipal authorities. The head of the Gild frequently took his oath of office before the Mayor. The Common Council of the town had power to make such ordinances as it might think fit for the good estate, order and rule of the Gildsmen. In certain cases too the Mayor had power "to call and admitt unto the same Free Guild and Burgeshipp of the said Town such and soe many able and discreete persons as ... shall seeme fitt" and also "uppon any iust and lawful grounds and causes to disffranchise them[140]." Under these conditions the public authorities of the town would be ready to support the companies. In some cases they were expressly ordered to do so. At Shrewsbury we shall find the town Bailiffs assisting the companies in the efforts of the latter to prevent the encroachments of foreigners. What all this change and reform amounted to was this. The system of Gilds was re-organised and strengthened. Part of the functions which the Craft Gilds had performed were taken over by the state. Part were left to be still performed by the companies. The companies were in all cases brought into the closest possible connection with the town and the town authorities. As regards the designation of these 16th century trade associations it appears that they were generally termed societies or companies in public documents, probably because the name "Gild" might seem to savour somewhat of the Chantries and mass-priests. But in their own books and lists they still called themselves Gilds and fraternities. [Sidenote: _The new companies show permanence of Gild-feeling._] Though they differed essentially from these, as has been already pointed out, yet, viewed superficially, they might seem to have retained many of the features of the old Gilds. In practice they bore no small share of the burden of public charities. They were also not unmindful of the wants of their members, though of course these now consisted of masters only. Elizabeth's charter to the Merchant Adventurers of Bristol ordered them to distribute yearly among twenty poor men twenty "vestes panneas" and to assist all of the company who were impoverished by mischance or otherwise. In their ordinances and compositions they were even more similar in appearance to the old Gilds. The composition which Elizabeth granted to the Glovers of Shrewsbury in 1564 is as strict as any mediæval regulation. It restricted all masters to a maximum of three apprentices. It confined each brother to a single shop, and to the selling of the products of his own work only. It authorised the Wardens to seize corrupt or insufficient wares, and was altogether a most thorough piece of industrial regulation, entirely modelled on the lines of the old Gild arrangements. Other indications of the same spirit were not lacking. In 1621 "by and with the allowance and agreement of the right worthie" the town authorities, skins and fells were ordered to be purchased only between sunrise and sunset. As though the Wardens of the Barbers' company had not been sufficiently thorough in executing their duties the new composition which the company received from Charles II. in 1662 made provision for the appointment of a searcher and defined the duties appertaining to the office. The composition granted to the Smiths in 1621 forbade the keeping of two shops by a single tradesman in the town, and disallowed the employment of foreigners for a longer period than a week without express permission obtained from the Wardens. The composition of the Tailors, granted in 1627, forbade the wearing of "any lyvere of any Earle Lorde Barronett Knight Esquire or Gentleman" while occupying any Gild office; prohibited unfair competition and the employment of foreigners; and ordered that "noe pettie Chapman or other p'son or p'sons shall buy any Skynnes of furre" within the town. In the composition of 1686 the articles are repeated against indiscriminate admittance of foreigners, and against the piratical infringement of unfree persons on the province of the brethren. The "Regulated Companies" which arose about the same time were a further development of the same movement, but on a larger scale. In many respects indeed the Craft Gilds of the 14th and 15th centuries were but little different from the Regulated Companies of the 17th. Admission was practically free on payment of a fine, the individual so received into membership being left to prosecute his trade in his own way, by his own means, and to his own particular profit. [Sidenote: _Though altered conditions of trade make their work difficult._] But the difficulties attendant on attempts to regulate expanding trade were daily growing greater and more numerous. "The false making and short lengths of all sortes of cloths and stuffes" necessitated the appointment by the Mercers of two men "to oversee and look after" these things in 1638. The Barbers too in 1662 empowered the stewards to search for bad materials. In 1639 the Glovers' company was brought to something like a crisis "by the taking of many apprentices." It was thought necessary to dock each brother of one of the apprentices allowed by the Elizabethan composition of 1564[141]. The frequency with which it was necessary to renew the compositions, the reiteration of the same articles,--against employing foreigners, against unfair competition, against neglect of the legal period of apprenticeship,--again shows the futility of such restrictions. Actions against intruders even thus early figure frequently on the records. In those of the Tailors and Skinners the decision of the company under date of August 23, 1627, is recorded thus:--"The Wardens and Sitters met and agreed that the Wardens should fetch process for Intruders and implead them before the Council in the Marches, and Mr Chelmicke to draw the bill against them." The history of the Welsh woollen trade in its connection with Shrewsbury well exhibits the economic policy of the day, and as it therefore illustrates several of the points with which we have been concerned it may be given here at some length. [Sidenote: _The features of the period seen in history of Welsh woollen trade of Shrewsbury._] [Sidenote: _Flourishing in reign of Elizabeth,_] In the earlier part of the 16th century Oswestry appears to have been the principal market for the Welsh products. At Shrewsbury however there was also a large woollen trade, as we learn from the Act 8 Elizabeth, cap. 7, entitled, "An Act touching the Drapers, Cottoners, and Frizers of Shrewsbury." This statute recited that there had been time out of mind a Gild of the art and mystery of Drapers legally incorporated in Shrewsbury, which had usually set on work above six hundred persons of the art or science of Shearmen or Frizers. Of late however it had come to pass that divers persons, not being members of the said company, neither brought up in the use of the said trade, had "with great disorder, upon a mere covetous desire and mind, intromitted with and occupied the said trade of buying Welsh cloth or lining, having no knowledge, experience or skill in the same." The result is asserted to be that the men of the company are impoverished and like to be brought to ruin unless speedy remedy be provided. It is therefore forbidden that anyone inhabiting Shrewsbury shall "occupy the trade" of buying Welsh woollens, unless he be free of the company of the Drapers[142]. [Sidenote: _but injured by over-regulation caused by selfish interests._] Such a stringent regulation of trade met with directly contrary results to those which had been expected. A statute six years later acknowledges the failure of the measure, although it attempts to shift the blame from the shoulders of the Government by representing the measure as one taken at the request of the Drapers, instead of as a piece of state-craft[143]. The statute of 14 Elizabeth, cap. 12, almost entirely repeals 8 Elizabeth, cap. 7, "at the humble suit of the inhabitants of the said town and also of the said artificers, for whose benefit the said Act was supposed to be provided[144].... For experience hath plainly taught in the said town that the said Act hath not only not brought the good effect that then was hoped and surmised, but also hath been and now is like to be the very greatest cause of the impoverishing and undoing of the poor Artificers and others at whose suit the said Act was procured, for that there be now, sithence the making of the said Act, much fewer persons to set them awork than afore." The whole incident is extremely interesting. It affords an excellent illustration of the way in which the Gilds were in some places made state agents for carrying into effect 5 Elizabeth, cap. 14. It also shows plainly that state intervention was beginning to be found harmful even by the men of that day. It evidences, moreover, how large the Welsh trade of Shrewsbury had already grown. Oswestry however continued to be the chief emporium, and the Drapers of Shrewsbury repaired thither every Monday for a long period after the date of the statutes we have been considering. [Sidenote: _The Drapers' Company represents the interests of Shrewsbury_] The company of the Drapers was the most considerable and influential of the trade associations of Shrewsbury. It numbered among its brethren the great majority of the chief burgesses of the town. Its relations with the municipal corporation were, as would be expected, very intimate. It was the custom of the Drapers to attend divine worship in the church of St Alkmund before setting out for the Oswestry market. In 1614 an order was made for the payment of six and eightpence to the clerk of the church for ringing the morning bell to prayers on Monday mornings at six o'clock, not by the company as we should expect, but by the corporation[145]. [Sidenote: _in opposition to Oswestry, Chester,_] There arose considerable competition for the lucrative market which the expansion of Welsh industry was every day rendering more profitable. The inhabitants of Chester made a vigorous attempt to obtain the erection in their city of "a staple for the cottons and friezes of North Wales." Shrewsbury was however enabled to prevent the completion of the scheme[146]. [Sidenote: _London; especially the last._] The attempt of London to obtain a share in the trade seemed fraught with so much danger that the two rivals, Shrewsbury and Oswestry, made common cause against the intruder. The complaint was a general one that the merchants of London and their factors forestalled and engrossed productions before they came to market. These obnoxious practices seem to have been carried to a particularly distasteful length on the borders of Wales. The transactions of a London dealer named Thomas Davies in 1619 appear to have brought matters to a crisis. There had been complaints about the same man, with others, previously. He had, by craft, obtained admission to the freedom of Oswestry, by which means he could the better purchase the Welsh cloths. These he then carried to London where he sold them "privately"[147]--that is, not in the proper and public market. The Drapers of the two towns petitioned that the matter might be settled before the Council[148]. Being foiled in his attempt to plead his freedom of Oswestry[148] Davies appealed to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the Metropolis to support his claims to trade throughout England in right of his citizenship of London[149]. The order of the Council depriving the Londoners of what they called their "ancient privilege" evoked strenuous opposition in the Metropolis, and petitions numerously signed[150] were sent in asserting that the Drapers of Shrewsbury and Oswestry had obtained the order by misrepresentation[151]. It does not appear that these petitions were successful, as Thomas Davies in his examination before the Council a little later, expressed his willingness to resign his London freedom and to confine his dealings to Oswestry. The fear of creating a precedent which would be largely followed, and with probable detriment to the trade of Shrewsbury and Oswestry, restrained the Council from allowing him to do this[152]. Not that the trade of Shrewsbury, at any rate, was likely to decrease through any apathy on the part of its company of Drapers. They were on the contrary singularly active at this time. And there was every need for them to be vigilant. For, with the object of stimulating the industry of the Principality by allowing a more extensive market, and probably also as a result of the recent proceedings between the Drapers of Shrewsbury and Oswestry and the citizens of London, a Proclamation was issued allowing free trade in Welsh cloths. The novelty pleased neither the Welshmen[153] nor the merchants of the borders. To the latter the chief consequence seemed to be that the French company, which had the monopoly of exporting such goods to France, was enabled to purchase direct from the manufacturers in Wales instead of through the Drapers. The case was undoubtedly a hard one for the latter, who could not export. Consequently their grievance was a real one, and, as they showed in their petition to the Council, ruin stared them in the face unless they too might be allowed to export and so dispose of the large stock which was thrown on their hands[154]. But at the same time they were successfully endeavouring to draw the Welsh trade from Oswestry entirely to Shrewsbury[155]. They had prepared for the attempt by obtaining a new charter from Elizabeth's successor in 1605. That they had lost no time in putting their privileges to practical use is seen from their answer, four years later, to a mandate issued to them by Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who held the overlordship of Oswestry, to desist from their efforts to undermine the trade of his town. Their answer is entitled "The Copy of a Letter sent by the Company to the Earle of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlen of his Majesties Househoulde, the 24 June 1609," and begins "Right Honerabell, "Your letter bearing date the second of this June by the hands of Mr Kinaston wee have receaved: wherein ytt appeareth yo{r} Lordship was informed that wee the Societie of Drapers wentt abowte by underarte and menesses to withdrawe your markett of Walshe Clothe from your towne of Oswester." [Sidenote: _All competitors worsted._] Though they proceed to exculpate themselves from the charge, it is evident their intention was to pursue in the future the same policy which they had hitherto practised. In 1618 Suffolk fell and Oswestry was deprived of his support, so that in 1621 the Shrewsbury Drapers felt justified in resolving "That they will not buy Cloth at Oswestry or elsewhere than Salop," in spite of the opposition of the clothiers of North Wales[156], who, whether from convenience or old association, appeared to prefer Oswestry as the locale of their market. However the Drapers' company, assisted by the town[157], was sufficiently powerful to turn the Proclamation allowing free trade in Welsh cloths to their own good, and the market was drawn to Shrewsbury in spite of orders by the Council that it should be re-established at Oswestry. The company did not hesitate to declare to the Council itself that they were prepared, if necessary, to disregard its orders. By 1633 the market at Oswestry had practically died out. It was held at Shrewsbury on Wednesdays, and afterwards on Fridays. In 1649 the date was altered to Thursday. [Sidenote: _Expansion of trade, and interlopers, destroy Shrewsbury's monopoly._] To the Market House flocked the Welsh farmers, their bales of cloth being borne to the town on the backs of hardy ponies. The merchandise was exposed for sale in the large room upstairs. The Drapers assembled beneath, and proceeded to make their purchases in order of seniority, according to ancient usage. The custom which the Welshmen brought to the town easily accounts for the keenness of the competition to secure the market. For a long time the trade flourished. Gradually however the action of "foreigners" in buying from the Welsh manufacturers at their homes[158] broke down the monopoly which Shrewsbury had so long enjoyed. At the end of the 18th century the sales had shrunk to miserable proportions. In 1803 the room over the market was relinquished by the Drapers, and though a certain amount of Welsh trade was still carried on, it withdrew gradually from the town until it finally left Shrewsbury altogether. The Drapers might have realised that the time for restricting trade to the freemen of their company was past. CHAPTER VI. THE DEGENERACY OF THE COMPANIES. [Sidenote: _Outside competition_] The competition of "interlopers" ruined the Welsh trade of Shrewsbury. It was not, as we have seen, from any lack of vigilance on the part of the companies. Stimulated by their new compositions they became extremely active. As early as 1622 the actions against "foreigners" begin. Soon afterwards they become of frequent occurrence until at length the books of the companies are almost mere records of a daily struggle for existence. [Sidenote: _inevitable under the altered conditions of trade._] [Sidenote: _But the companies themselves are unsatisfactory._] [Sidenote: _Friction with the town authorities;_] This was of course inevitable under the altered conditions of trade. But the companies exhibited in themselves all the radical defects which must pertain to such a system when it has outgrown its necessity. We have seen how free the earlier companies were from friction with the municipal authorities. In the 17th century this is changed. The propriety of setting up a May-pole had formerly been almost the only ground of conflict between the bailiffs and the craftsmen. But in 1639 we find that the Tanners were thought to be overstepping their powers; the corporation appointed a committee to examine their composition. Some seventeen years later, extreme measures had to be taken with regard to the same company. It was the custom for the charters to be inspected by the corporation periodically. In 1656 the Tanners refused to comply with the request to produce their composition for the mayor's perusal, with the result that the company was prosecuted by the corporation[159]. The town had been willing to support the Drapers in their measures to draw the Welsh trade to Shrewsbury, but it did not approve of the line of action they tried subsequently to take, namely, to limit all the trade to their own members. In 1653 regulations were framed to prevent the company "forestalling or engrossing the Welsh Flannels, Cloaths etc.[160]" A more serious abuse transpired in connection with the Feltmakers' company in 1667. They refused to make one who had been lawfully apprenticed to the trade in Shrewsbury free of their company. On this occasion the mayor and aldermen exercised their right of supervision by ordering the Wardens to admit the man, "and the Mayor is desired to give him the oath of a Freeman of the said Company[161]." The importance of the mayor being thus empowered by the municipal authorities to administer the oath of admittance to one of the Gilds is very great, and shows how real was the subordination of the latter to the town when the corporation chose to exert its rights. An order of the corporation[162] directing that burgesses only are to be elected Wardens of the companies points to another abuse, the existence of which is proved by other evidence, viz., the admittance of non-residents in the town to membership in the companies on payment of a sufficiently large entrance fee. Yet the extent to which corruption could go was seen forty years later when the corporation stultified itself by passing an order[163] allowing the Haberdashers to elect persons, though they might not be burgesses, as Wardens of their company. The general impression which such transactions leave is that extreme laxity prevailed in all departments. The town woke up for a moment in 1702 when the prospect perhaps of a harvest of unpaid fines induced them to make an effort to recover all such[164]. It is to be regretted that nothing remains to show to what extent the abuse had prevailed, nor how far the present effort was successful. The annual fine of the Bakers' company was £3. 6_s._ 8_d._ which they appear to have generally paid with considerable reluctance[165]. The supply of provision to the town seems to have given much trouble in the early years of the eighteenth century. Permission was given, in 1730, to the country butchers to sell in the town unless the town butchers could furnish meat in sufficient quantity. Similar permission was accorded to the country bakers, if the Bakers' company in the town would not pay their yearly fine. This they were unwilling, or unable, to do, and the country bakers were in consequence called in[166]. [Sidenote: _with one another,_] The picture given by such incidents is not more significant of the degeneracy of the Gilds than is that which the friction of the companies one with another presents. The Mercers and the Drapers had frequently made mutual complaints of intrusion: the Mercers and the Glovers also appear as great rivals in later years. In 1679 and at several subsequent dates there were actions at law between the two companies. In 1727 the records of the Glovers show that similar actions were again in process. In 1721 the company unanimously agreed to withstand the Tailors in the matter of widow Steen, whom they pledge themselves to support; "and that shee may goe on with makeing Brichess peruided shee dos not line them with flonen or Buckrom or cennet onlye Lether." [Sidenote: _and with their own members._] Nor is the evidence of intestine friction within the Gilds themselves less significant of decay. So early as 1636 the Mercers were fain to confess that the spirit of mutual assistance had disappeared, in the order which they passed to the effect that any combrother refusing to pay his assessment was to be distrained upon by authority of the Wardens. There are several records of such distraints. In 1700 they find it necessary to pass an ordinance against freemen taking the sons of intruders as apprentices. The records of the other companies are, similarly, full of like evidences of demoralisation. The companies are declared to be impoverished by the taking of inordinate numbers of apprentices. The same sort of abuse is found in a complaint which appears in the Glovers' books in 1656: "the company is much impoverished by the taking in of foreigners freemen such as have not served" their due apprenticeship. "The disorderly manner of electing Wardens" about which the Glovers have to "take account" in 1668 points to a great deterioration in the manner of holding Gild meetings from that which has been sketched in a previous chapter[167]. Worse than all is the confession that the Gild brothers have sunk so low as to connive at intruders "for fraudulent lucre and gain[168]." The Saddlers have the same sort of complaint in 1740. Some brethren are infringing on the trades of others: resolutions are passed against such conduct. Their books show that the resolutions were soon forgotten[169]. The other Gilds experienced similar difficulties. In 1745 the Barbers levied a fine of ten shillings on brethren who should so far forget themselves as to instruct "men or women servants to dress hair." The problem of regulating trade would have been difficult enough under the most favourable circumstances. With the Gilds in the condition which we have been considering it was an impossibility. There was indeed a feature in the modern companies which at the outset deprived the attempt to utilise them beneficially for trade-purposes of all chance of success. [Sidenote: _The Gilds have changed to capitalist companies._] The old Gilds, which had lived through the shocks of the Reformation, and the Elizabethan changes, had quite altered their character. The new ones which had arisen differed widely from the old fraternities. Instead of being brotherhoods of craftsmen desirous of advancing the public weal, they were now mere societies of capitalists, intent only on private and personal advantage. As a writer of 1680 observes "most of our ancient Corporations and Guilds [have] become oppressive Oligarchies[170]." There is a constant endeavour to restrict the companies to favoured individuals. Every "foreigner" is subjected to a heavy fine, which grows larger in amount as the companies feel the trade slipping from their hands in spite of their desperate endeavours to restrict it. The new compositions continually point to this abuse by bringing back the fines to their original sum, or rather reducing them to an amount less inordinate than that which they have irregularly reached. The admission stamp of the Saddlers was 4/- in 1784. It reached 8/2 in 1799. In 1831 it was 20/2. The Mercers' fine was fixed at £40. 6_s._ 8_d._ in 1789, "besides fees." In 1823 it had sunk to £20. The Mercers were of course one of the richest of the companies, yet the sum was a large one to pay for the privilege of opening a shop in a provincial town. Other means to restrict themselves were also attempted. Increase in the number of apprentices was viewed with disfavour. There are frequent complaints of the "impoverishment" of the companies through the indiscriminate admittance of "foreigners." All the evidence shows how entirely they have degenerated into mere societies of capitalists. Their records almost decline into bald columns of pounds, shillings and pence. For it was to this completeness of degradation that the social body had sunk. The merest selfishness was lauded as a patriotic virtue. Private gain was recommended as a public benefit. Social disintegration and industrial anarchy ruled supreme, and when commercial success had come to be looked upon as the one avenue to honour and advancement, it was not to be expected that the companies would escape the general infection. They formed simply one among many means by which the individual was enabled to fill his own pockets at the cost of a suffering and squalid populace. This change in their character, which became more marked as time went by, naturally was not unattended by a change in their government. All authority became engrossed by the richer members. The Four Assistants with the Wardens and Stewards formed a close aristocratic board. Brentano, speaking it would appear more particularly of the London companies, says[171] the king nominated the first members of this court and afterwards as vacancies occurred they were filled by co-optation. This was not exactly the case with the Shrewsbury companies. There the annual meeting[172] retained a considerable power in the election of officers to the last. In some cases the Assistants or Four Men were elected freely by the assembled combrethren, in others two only were thus elected, the two retiring Wardens completing the number. The Tailors' composition of 1563 provided that the two Wardens should be elected by the whole Gild: the Four Assistants were then nominated by these Wardens "for advising them in the Government of the Gild." The Wardens and Assistants then proceeded to nominate the two Stewards. [Sidenote: _The companies and the close corporations._] They were thus as exclusive and aristocratic as the town corporations had become. The degeneracy of the latter had been largely intensified by the degeneracy of the former. For the principal members of the companies were the principal members of the town corporation, which had silently, since the fourteenth century, been usurping the ancient powers of the general body of the burgesses. It was the companies which mainly profited by it. They profited indirectly, by the influence which they exercised through individual members on the town council, which had obtained part of the functions of the Leet. They profited directly as they themselves acquired definitely other of the powers of the Court Leet. They became the chief or the sole medium for the acquisition of municipal freedom, and were distinct town organs for the regulation of trade and industry. [Sidenote: _The journeymen no longer in the companies._] It is by reason of the widely-reaching influence of their degeneracy that their later history is of importance. For as regards the poorer members of society their history is useless. The workman disappears from their books. That he no longer was looked upon as the brother member of the masters is quite evident. "Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease, We go when we will, and we come when we please[173]." [Sidenote: _They begin to form benefit societies, animated by much of the old Gild-spirit._] The most general means which the poor adopted to help themselves was the formation of Friendly Societies. These arose in great numbers during the 18th century. The companies were not slow in helping to swell public subscriptions and in assisting to pauperise the labouring class. To the necessity of rendering real help to their unfortunate workmen they were however entirely oblivious. This side of the work performed by the old Gilds had been almost wholly overlooked by the post-reformation companies, though it had been one of the most important of their predecessors' functions. It was found that society could not get along without something of the kind, and as the higher companies would not perform the work, the lower craftsmen found it necessary to do it themselves. Here was a distinct severance of interest between employers and workmen, yet it does not seem unlikely that it was the old Gilds themselves which formed the models for the new societies. At any rate the analogies between the Gilds and the Benefit Societies, in the earlier phases of the latter, and looking at the social and religious side of the former, are very striking[174]. The simple rules of trade association show as much concern for the morals of members as did the charters of the Gilds: they had their annual feast, provided by subscription: they usually went in their procession to the parish church on the day of the feast. They were perhaps the earliest signs of that necessary return to something like the old Gild system which the later Trades Unions have done so much to bring about. The companies watched them grow up without a twinge of conscience, though it was their own neglect of duty which made such associations an absolute necessity. Being the only forms of combination which were left unmolested by the government they were extensively formed, and this was well, for the need of them was very great. [Sidenote: _Difficulties of reform; members would not, state would not, the town authorities would not._] In spite of unmistakeable signs of inevitable changes the companies refused to take warning. Their reform was indeed difficult, and, as it proved, impossible. The workmen as we have seen could not, the masters would not, take steps in this direction. The state derived too good an income from them to be anxious for a change. The admission stamps, constantly increasing in amount, were a profitable source of revenue. The notices of "cessments for renewing the composition" are frequent. There were also continual contributions of men and money for the "exigencies of the State[175]." In 1798 the Mercers voted £100 annually to the government "during the continuance of the war." The town also seemed to profit by them. They were obliged, some of them at all events, to exhibit their compositions annually or periodically to the mayor and pay a customary fine on doing so. They continued to be of some service to the community in the inefficient condition of the public police. Their social utility to the town was also in their favour. In 1608 the corporation provided materials in case of fire, when each of the companies was required to maintain its proper proportion of hooks and buckets. Entries relating to the "spout or water engine" are frequent in their records. In aid of procuring public benefits the companies were not backward. Their chests were readily opened to assist towards improvements in the town, such as widening of streets, erection of bridges and the like. To the last also they preserved something of their charitable character, though its exercise was as open to criticism as other forms of poor relief during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless if the membership lists of the Drapers and the Mercers could be made public they would be found to contain the majority of the public benefactors of Shrewsbury during this period. Public charities, such as the Infirmary and the Lancaster School received annual subscriptions until the companies came to an end. The necessity of continuing the annuities to the inmates of S. Chad's almshouses formed a chief argument against the dissolution of the Mercers' company. "The Worshipful Company of Drapers" still subscribes to schools and charities year by year. [Sidenote: _Contemporaneous opinion of the companies._] In these circumstances we cannot wonder that the old companies found many champions. The following letter is valuable as affording a view of the contemporaneous opinion held of the Gilds by a man of ordinary common sense and average education. It appeared in the _Salopian Journal_ of August 27, 1823. It was evoked by a decision of the Judges of Assize in favour of the Mercers' company in an important case to which reference will be made in a later page. It was addressed to the editor of the newspaper and commenced-- "SIR, As the Company commonly called 'the United Company of Mercers, Grocers, Ironmongers, and Goldsmiths' in this town have established the validity of their ancient customs by a suit at law of which there is no account of their having done so since the time when the King's Court for the Marches of Wales was held at Ludlow; at which time and place the Council then, who held the pleas, determined also a like suit in their favour: and as there is much argument for and against the existence and usage of this incorporate body; permit me to lay before the public an outline of both, that the subject at least might be better understood than we often hear it repeated. It is contended against, as exercising an arbitrary monopoly of trade, to the detriment and oppression of the subjects of the realm; and which is moreover injurious to the town itself, by depriving the Trade thereof of that competition which brings down the Articles of manufacture to a fair marketable value for the supply of its inhabitants. These are the charges against them, which if indeed they could be substantiated would be sufficient to show that their existence was an evil. But let us look at the facts on the other side of the question, and see whether there is any reality in these serious charges. In the first place the Companies hold it requisite, in order to be free of their body, that all but the sons of Freemen shall serve a regular apprenticeship to one of the Corporation. Now in this they have been sanctioned and dictated to by the ancient law of the land ... that youths might be properly taught their respective arts, and that the community might not be imposed upon by pretenders to that which they were not properly acquainted with. On Foreigners or such as have not served a regular apprenticeship they impose a fine of £20, before they will admit them as freemen, and certainly in doing this they do not over-rate a seven years' servitude, when the one is made equivalent to the other. Let us now see to the application of the money. A fund is made of it, somewhat similar to 'Benefit Societies.' No part of it is applied to private purposes; for even the Company's annual feast, about which there is so much said, is not always at the expense of the fund, but [is] borne individually; and the utility of such a feast to promote harmony and goodwill, is acknowledged by all Societies[176]. But further, these funds are confined to the relief of decayed and deserving members of the Companies[177], and to every charitable and public emergency wherein the general interest or welfare of the town is concerned; and their annual disbursements, for centuries past, have been regularly serviceable to the community at large as well as to individual cases of distress. This the account of their expenditure will show. Now, then this monopoly, as it is called, extends no further than to exact an apprenticeship of seven years, or to a fine of £20; the former sanctioned by law and the latter a sum of no comparative amount to a respectable person, desirous of establishing a respectable trade, especially if there be any truth in the argument, that goods are sold by this corporate body for more money than they would be, if no such corporation existed. Neither can the fine be called excessive, because it is added to a stock which he from whom it is exacted directs in common to be applied to the common good; and which he may himself, as many others have done in cases of distress, receive back again with large additions. But the increased population of Birmingham and Manchester is brought forward as a proof of towns flourishing where trade is what is called _free_. Let us look a little into this argument. Are not the wares vended in these places proverbially _bad_? Do not all manner of imposters from these places deluge the country with their spurious goods, and impose them upon the unwary part of the public? Are these towns to be compared with London, Liverpool, Bristol, for respectability of their trade, for the goodness and cheapness of their articles, when the quality is taken into account? Yet the trade of these latter towns is regulated by corporations. I contend therefore that the Corporation in question is _beneficial_ to this town and county, inasmuch as it tends to protect it from the inundations of empirics and imposters, while it holds out no hindrance to the fair and honest dealer who has a mind to compete with its respectable tradesmen and settle amongst them. I am not in trade myself; but hope I shall always see my native town preserved from that sort of population which it has never yet been disgraced with. I have the honour to be, Mr Editor, In technical language, A COMBROTHER OF THE GUILD. SHREWSBURY, Aug. 22, 1823." CHAPTER VII. SHREWSBURY SHOW. [Sidenote: _Characteristic features of the Middle Ages._] A strange glamour hangs around the Middle Ages. We know so little of man's actual life in those years,--and what little we do know seems to partake so largely of the mysterious and the picturesque--all, his modes of life and manners of thought are so far removed from our own,--that mediæval history would easily resolve itself into an enchanting pageant bright with its colour and bewildering with its contradictions. It is perhaps in the strange contrasts which are presented to us that its chief wonder is found. In those years we find lust and rapine, and sacrilege and tyranny, side by side with the fairest forms of chivalry[178], the most devoted readiness to champion the cause of religion, the firmest attachment to the forms of law[179]. We see only the prominent lights and the great shadows of the picture, but all that should go to make it human and comprehensible to us is hidden under the dust of centuries. We have noticed the existence of something of this contradictory spirit in the view we have had of the early Gilds[180]. The elevated ideal which they set before their members must of course have been far above the level which was ever actually reached. We may smile at their vain attempts after the impossible, yet we cannot but allow that their perseverance betokens the widespread acceptance of a nobler conception of human life than is common in our own too merely practical age. To the men of those days there seemed no great incongruity in the lofty ideals of the Gild-compositions and the lower standard which the brethren actually attained. It added but another to the many striking contrasts which environed their daily life. [Sidenote: _Fondness for pageantry._] [Sidenote: _Its social importance._] That life was one passed largely in dulness and perhaps comparative squalor. But the occasions of colour and merriment were not few. Each season had its festivities, social and religious, when rich and poor met on something like equal ground in the rude merry-making. This feature in ordinary life was not without its social importance, and if only for this reason no account of the Gilds would be complete which failed to take notice of their processions and, in so doing, of the general life and habits of the brethren at the different epochs of Gild history. We have now nothing to take the place of those occasions of mutual enjoyment and mirth, when "ceremony doff'd his pride" without censure, when the bashful apprentice might perhaps tread a measure with his master's daughter, and when the condescending mistress of the house might even allow herself to be led out for a dance by one or other of her goodman's journeymen. "A Christmas gambol oft would cheer A poor man's heart through half the year[181]." [Sidenote: _The Corpus Christi procession._] We have already seen how important an influence religious feelings had in the actions of the Gilds. Among the yearly festivals the feast of Corpus Christi soon became one of the most splendid for pomp and pageantry, and to it the Gilds were naturally attracted. Some indeed existed with the primary object of ensuring the glory of this particular feast. Most important of these was the Corpus Christi Gild at York[182]. The Gild of the Holy Trinity, also at York, concerned itself with the annual production of a religious play illustrating the Lord's Prayer. The Gilds of S. Helen (which represented the Invention of the Cross), of S. Mary, and of Corpus Christi, at Beverley[183], were other famous fraternities with similar objects. At Stamford was one which maintained a secular play[184]. In most towns in England it became the custom for the Gilds, each with its banners and insignia, to accompany the Corpus Christi procession: in some places the event seems to have become especially picturesque. At Coventry[185] and also at Shrewsbury, the procession has lasted in some sort down to our own day[186]. At the former city Lady Godiva has even lately ridden, though at fitful and uncertain intervals: at the latter town, although the procession has now become a thing of the past, it is little more than a decade since "Shrewsbury Show" was to be seen annually, on the Monday following the feast of Corpus Christi, passing along under the eaves of the timbered houses of the old border town. [Sidenote: _The pageants of the Gilds._] The prominence which the charters of the Shrewsbury Gilds gave to the procession has been sufficiently pointed out already. Every care was taken to secure its fitting glory and splendour. Among the goods of the companies which the inventories name are "Baners," "Baners for ye Mynstrellys werying," "skukions for my'strells," "torches," "coots of sense," "stondarts of mayle," "other pec's of mayle," besides many swords and halberts, and the like. These various properties decked out the pageant which each Gild contributed to the common procession. It was exhibited by means of a wooden scaffold on wheels, differing probably but little in appearance from the drays or trollies which were utilised in later years. Dugdale in his _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ relates that "before the suppression of the Monasteries this city[187] was very famous for the pageants that were played therein upon Corpus Christi Day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto: which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house had theaters for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city for the better advantage of the spectators." At Shrewsbury there appears never to have been an elaborate miracle play presented by the crafts[188]. Most likely the Show early took that form which it exhibited in the later times of which we have more definite record. The Gilds of the town walked in the procession, each member bearing, in mediæval days, a light "in honour of the Blessed Sacrament," the officers wearing their liveries and carrying the banners and other insignia, and thus escorting a tableau more or less appropriate to the craft. No small expense and even taste appears to have been expended on these representations, though their precise suitability it is in some cases difficult to appreciate. Before Reformation times the tableaux were generally of a biblical or ecclesiastical nature: after the 16th century they were usually mythological or historical. Thus the Tailors were presided over by Adam and Eve "the first of their craft," or by Queen Elizabeth in ruffles of right royal magnitude. The Shearmen or Clothworkers had a personation of bishop Blasius, with a black mitre of wool and doubtless also the wool-comb with which he had been tortured at his martyrdom. The place of the saint was subsequently usurped by the king--Edward IV., who was remembered as having especially cultivated the good offices of the wool-merchants. The Skinners and Glovers were ruled by the king of Morocco, whose "Cote" was an expensive item in their accounts; they had also an elaborate mechanical stag accompanied by huntsmen sounding bugle blasts. The Smiths were appropriately represented by Vulcan, or a knight in black armour "supported by two attendants who occasionally fired off blunderbusses." The Painters were accustomed to find their best representative of later years in a cheery-looking Rubens brandishing palette and brush, while the Bricklayers, for some occult reason, considered themselves adequately represented by bluff king Hal. The twin saints Crispin and Crispianus patronised the Shoemakers, and S. Katharine (at a spinning wheel) the Barbers. Venus and Ceres presided over the Bakers. [Sidenote: _The Reformation._] [Sidenote: _Mary._] At the Reformation the Corpus Christi procession became shorn of its splendour even before it altogether ceased under Edward VI. With Mary's attempt to revive the old order efforts were made to restore the Show in its pristine grandeur, though Edward VI.'s pillaging of the Gilds had rendered the furnishing of the lights and vestments a matter of serious difficulty. At Shrewsbury the municipal authorities endeavoured to keep up the mystery plays by means of contributions from the various companies. [Sidenote: _Elizabeth._] The accession of Elizabeth was not likely to do any harm to the plays and pageants, though the outward reason for their performance might be changed. Elizabeth fully perceived the political and social usefulness of such festivities: her provincial progresses were a succession of brilliant shows and interludes which served a useful purpose in diverting the nation's attention from the graver dangers which threatened England during the queen's eventful reign. Elizabeth was also naturally fond of gaiety and wit, and the tone of the people from the highest to the lowest was dramatic. The Court had its "master of the revels," the Universities and Inns of Court had their regular plays. Interludes were provided for the queen's entertainment as she moved from town to town both at the houses of the higher gentry and by the common people. They were indeed the ordinary means by which honour was paid to any very distinguished visitor. The Shrewsbury playwright was Thomas Ashton the first master of the grammar school. His theatre was the open ground without the walls, the Quarrell or Quarry. The season of the year at which these performances of Thomas Ashton took place was Whitsuntide, at which time Chester was also engaged in its more famous productions. It is to be regretted that no records[189] remain of these Shrewsbury plays, or a valuable addition might be made to the scanty collections of such antiquities which have been made public. These academic entertainments did not supplant the old annual procession (the date of which was transferred to the Monday following the feast of Corpus Christi) which continued apparently until the power of the Puritans became too strong to admit of its longer existence. Already that influence was at work, and Elizabeth had many detractors among those of the stricter persuasion. The character of their sternness, as well as the nature of their dissatisfaction at the gaiety which Elizabeth fostered, is well exemplified at Shrewsbury in the incident of the Shearmen's tree. The event is also noteworthy as being the only occasion until later days on which anything like friction occurred between the companies and the municipal corporation[190]. [Sidenote: _The Shearmen's tree._] The woollen trade, as we have seen[191], gave occupation to a very large number of Shearmen. These belonged to the more unskilled class of labourers, the work they performed being simply that of preparing the wool for the later stages of manufacture. They were precisely the class to fail to appreciate the religious changes, and such as would be likely to resort to the physical force argument on any occasion. It was also to such men that the revelry of Christmastide, Maytime, and the like were most precious. Their life was a hard and colourless one, and they would for this reason cling desperately to the old occasions of merriment. The festival which appears to have been particularly odious to the Puritans was that of May Day, when, Stow[192] tells us, it was the custom for the citizens "of all estates" to have their "Mayings," and to "fetch in Maypoles, with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morris dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long; and toward the evening they had stage plays, and bonfires in the streets." To the youth of the town it was a sufficiently harmless summer holiday. To the precise it was plainly and purely a heathen survival. At Shrewsbury they were early in active antagonism to it. In 1583 there occurred "soom contrav'sie about the settinge upp of maye poales and bonfyers mackinge and erection of treese before the sherman's haule and other places[193]," though apparently without immediate effect, for two years later appears another entry "Pd. for cutting down the tree, and the journeymen to spend xv{d}.[194]" But it was not long before the Puritans prevailed. The May Day merry-making was stopped and even the Gild festival prohibited. "This yeare [1590-1] and the 6 day of June beinge Soondaye and the festivall day of the Co{y} of the Shearmen of Salop aboute the settinge upp of a greene tree by serte yonge men of the saide Co{y} before their hall doore as of many years before have been acostomid but preachid against by the publicke precher there and commawndid by the baylyffs that non sutche shoulde be usid, and for the disobedience therein theye were put in prison and a privey sessions called and there also indicted and still remayne untill the next towne sessions for further triall[195]." The letter of the law however was in their favour. At the sessions the judges decided that the tree should be erected and "usyd as heretofore have be' so it be don syvely and in lovynge order w{th}out contencion[196]." But the soreness remained and the Shearmen were very turbulent for a long period. A curious entry in 1596 betokens a continuance of the friction: "P{d} oure fyne for not rerynge of Cappes to Mr Bayliffe 3/4[197]." For Puritan influence had waxed stronger, and at length it was "agreed that there shall not be hereafter any interludes or playes within this town or liberties uppon anye Soundays or in the night tyme. Neyther shall there be any playinge at footballe, or at hiltes or wastrells, or beare baytinge, within the walles of this towne[198]." [Sidenote: _Commonwealth._] [Sidenote: _The Restoration._] During the civil wars and under the rule of the Commonwealth the inhabitants of the town were too heavily burdened with taxes for the maintenance of soldiers and for the repairs of the walls (for which the companies were severally assessed) to have much wealth to expend on revelry and merry-making, even had Puritan sourness admitted any such. But the reaction consequent on the Restoration brought back the glory to Shrewsbury. The agriculture of the district had now quite recovered from the long-distant Welsh ravages: the internal trade of the town was also very considerable. Shrewsbury was therefore a place of no small importance. It played the part of a local metropolis in which the fashions of the capital were mimicked by the wealthy tradesfolk, their wives and daughters, and the country gentry and their families. For neither class could often go to London. Travelling was a serious affair not lightly to be undertaken. Consequently, just as the country gentleman now spends a portion of the year in London, so his ancestor in the seventeenth century made the adjacent county town his residence at certain seasons. Besides "he was often attracted thither by business and pleasure, by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals and races.... There were the markets at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were exposed for sale.... There were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery[199]." In Shrewsbury did the provincial beaux and belles promenade by the side of the Severn and in the abbey gardens. These latter were especially attractive. They were laid out "with gravell walks set full of all sorts of greens--orange and Lemmon trees.... Out of this went another garden much larger with severall fine grass walks kept exactly cut and roled for company to walk in: every Wednesday most of y{e} town y{e} Ladies and Gentlemen walk there as in St James's Parke, and there are abundance of people of quality lives in Shrewsbury[200]." Farquahar in his sprightly comedy _The Recruiting Officer_ describes the lively doings of the same "people of quality," and also of the more stolid burghers. "I have drawn," he says, "the Justice and the Clown in their _Puris Naturalibus_; the one an apprehensive, sturdy, brave blockhead; and the other a worthy, honest, generous gentleman, hearty in his country's cause and of as good an understanding as I could give him, which I must confess is far short of his own." Farquahar seems to have obtained a particularly good impression of the worthy Salopians. He dedicates his comedy to "All Friends round the Wrekin." "I was stranger to everything in Salop but its Character of Loyalty, the Number of its Inhabitants, the Alacrity of the Gentry in Recruiting the Army, with their generous and hospitable Reception of Strangers. This Character I found so amply verify'd in every Particular that you made Recruiting, which is the greatest Fatigue upon Earth to other, to be the greatest Pleasure in the World to me[201]." Shrewsbury was one of the gayest of those many provincial capitals "out of which the great wen of London has sucked all the life[202]." [Sidenote: _Shrewsbury Show in 17th century._] Farquhar may have seen the old Show, which the Restoration had naturally brought back, wend its noisy way to Kingsland. The procession itself was easily rehabilitated, but the arbours on Kingsland, where the day was spent in merrymaking, called for much attention. Great activity was evinced in their repair, for they had fallen into sad decay during the hard rule of the Puritans. Some of the companies adorned their arbours with gateways, arms and mottoes, "dyalls," and the like. Most of the gateways were of wood, but in 1679 the Shoemakers company erected a handsome stone portal, which a few years subsequently they adorned with figures of their patron saints, Crispin and Crispianus. As though the events of a century previous were still fresh in men's minds, the legend was painted underneath, "We are but images of stonne Do us no harme--we can do nonne." About this time it is evident the Show was in a very prosperous condition. Puritanism had not taken any real hold on the country, and the Church was restored, and old ways of thinking and acting brought back, without any disturbance or opposition[203]. Even in the companies the religious element which was so strong in the earlier Gilds was not entirely wanting: the day's proceedings included a sermon in the Church[204]. In the morning the Wardens and members met in the open space before the castle, whence they passed in a merry procession through the gaily decked streets to Kingsland. There each Gild had its arbour surrounded by trees and supplied with tables and benches. The mayor and corporation used to attend, and were accustomed to visit each arbour in succession. The remainder of the day passed in festivity and merriment, and the craftsmen with their friends returned home in the evening "much invigorated with the essence of barley-corn," as a writer of fifty years ago expresses it. [Sidenote: _Degeneracy._] But the degeneracy of the revived Show was very apparent. The dropping off of the sermons deprived the companies of the last trace of that strong religious element which had characterised their mediæval ancestors. A private letter of 1811 says, "Shrewsbury Show was on the 19th [of June] but I did not go to it. That, like other things, is getting much worse." The Drapers and Mercers had never gone to Kingsland, and gradually the other companies began to withdraw from the Show. The formal procession became confined practically to apprentices[205], while the masters contented themselves with a dinner at one of the inns of the town[206]. Everything was significant of the approaching end of the pageant. [Sidenote: _Reform agitation tends to check degeneracy, but Reform Acts fatal to the Show._] When the Reform agitation threatened to deprive the companies of their trading privileges at no distant period, and later, when it had succeeded in doing so, attempts seem to have been made to bring into prominence their social aspect[207], and the procession was again reinvigorated. The pomp which signalised George the Fourth's coronation may also have given a stimulus to pageantry. The arbours were repaired and rebuilt, and the year 1849 witnessed a grand revival of the procession. Attempts in this direction were now not infrequent, but were necessarily spasmodic. Yet the time-honoured Show was found to be possessed of wonderful vitality. When the Municipal Corporations Act destroyed the exclusive privileges of trading which the companies possessed they clung to their annual feast and to the yearly procession, for which they retained the arbours at some expense and self-denial. Gradually however as the successive freemen died the arbours reverted one by one to the corporation of the town; the other Gild property, which was not already divided, was shared among surviving members, or fell through debt or similar causes into other hands. Kingsland itself was to revert to the town at the decease of the last of the members of the companies, according to an arrangement concluded in 1862. Even still the old Show was hard to kill. In spite of much that was saddening, and much degradation, the procession lingered on till some twelve or fourteen years ago, when it died a natural death. So another link with the past was broken, and another spot of colour wiped away from these duller days of uniformity and routine. CHAPTER VIII. THE END OF THE COMPANIES. [Sidenote: _Failure of efforts to restrict trade._] The system of elaborate organisation by which men had regulated trade in the past had given way to an equally complete system of individualism. Confused philosophical reasoning, combined with the decay of old means of regulation, had produced this anti-social state of things. Individual competition, in uncontrolled energy, reigned supreme amid almost incredible suffering and squalor. Everything which might tend to check the progress of the devastation was looked upon with suspicion and swept swiftly out of the way. All the old restraints were wanting, and self-interest alone formed the mainspring of action. To this fetish everything was sacrificed--men's bodies and men's principles. Commercial dealings took the most questionable forms: adulteration of products went on unchecked by any qualms of honesty. The companies had long ago ceased to make any attempts in the direction of industrial regulation. The whole efforts of their members were concentrated on the vain endeavour to restrict trade to the chartered towns. Yet even the apologist for the companies, quoted at the end of the sixth chapter, was obliged to allow that in this they had failed. The result of the action of the "oppressive oligarchies" was the "excluding or discouraging the English Subjects from Trading in our greatest and best situated towns, where the markets are[208]." Shrewsbury saw the free towns around growing up to importance and outstripping her in the race for prosperity. Birmingham, not far distant, was already famous. Another free town which rose rapidly was Manchester, where most of the new industries did not come under the Apprenticeship Act, and were consequently free and unshackled. Such formidable rivals drew away trade from the old privileged boroughs. The companies were quite unable to retain their monopolies. But more than this. Even the measure of commercial prosperity which Shrewsbury possessed--it was not small--cannot be in any appreciable degree ascribed to the companies. A writer of 1825[209] who considers the trade of the town at that date by no means "inconsiderable[210]" attributes the fact to anything rather than the "Chartered Companies[211]." "Here are two very large linen factories, besides several manufactories for starch, soap, flannels, cotton goods, an extensive iron and brass foundry, two ale and porter breweries, a spirit distillery, etc.[212]" "Its fabrication of threads, linen cloths etc. etc. stands unrivalled; whilst the more common articles of domestic life are executed in a stile of neatness, certainly equal, if not superior, to those of any other place of similar size[213]." The various causes which he looks upon as conducing to this prosperity he sets forth with considerable detail: "its contiguity to the Principality, the facility which it possesses for the importation and exportation of goods, by means of its noble river and canals, and its situation as the capital of an extensive and populous county, combine to give it many advantages over a variety of places equally insular[214]." That the companies had any hand in ministering to this prosperity, or even served any useful purpose, seems never to have so much as occurred to him. [Sidenote: _Struggle against intruders_] Yet they were putting their charters to the utmost use. They used every means in their power to hold the trade. They obtained the assistance of the municipal officers in seeking out and expelling intruders, even hawkers and pedlars. Actions at law became rapidly more frequent, until at last the life of the companies becomes one long effort to compel intruders to take up their freedom by paying the necessary fines. The Barbers even went so far as to prosecute men and women-servants for presuming to dress their masters' and mistresses' hair. Though these measures were unsuccessful in attaining their object they were not without most important results. [Sidenote: _impoverishes the companies,_] In the first place the companies saw their stock become rapidly impoverished, and themselves on the verge of bankruptcy. So early as 1692 the Mercers were obliged to raise £50 by means of mortgage, and in the next year they were twice forced to sell some of their property. The Grocers had, half a century previously[215], noted with sorrow how "the Stock of the Company yearly decreaseth." The Barbers so early as 1744 resolve to spend no more money at Show time "except the third part of the Weavers' Bill." The Saddlers' stock in the three per cents. has to be sold to defray the charges of actions against intruders in 1810, and about the same time the Bakers' arbour was seized "on account of sustained charges against the company in an action for supposed infringement of their rights." Even the wealthy company of the Drapers had been compelled to relinquish their annual holiday, at which open house was kept for town and neighbourhood, in 1781. [Sidenote: _and calls down public odium on them._] But worse perhaps than this was the public odium they brought upon themselves. That this was so was acknowledged in formal meeting at the close of their public life, yet it had existed long before and grew daily stronger. [Sidenote: _Other signs of decay._] [Sidenote: _Internal disorder._] [Sidenote: _Accounts carelessly kept._] [Sidenote: _Trade leaves them._] These two causes would have been alone sufficient to bring about the downfall of the companies. But there were other signs of decay in plenty. Internal disorder was adding to the degradation into which the once honourable associations were falling. Even in 1668 the Glovers are compelled to take into account "the disorderly manner of making wardens." So late as 1832 the Saddlers inflict a fine on their steward for attending meetings in a state of intoxication. The books are much less carefully kept. The Glovers' company came to an untimely end in 1810 through maladministration and carelessness in dealing with the yearly balance sheet[216]. In 1822 so great a company as the Mercers' is found appointing a committee to search for the charter, which is ultimately found in the hands of a private individual whose magnanimity in surrendering what did not belong to him is highly praised by a formal resolution[217]. We have seen already how trade had fallen off. In 1770 a member of the Saddlers' company paid five guineas "to be for ever excused from serving the office of Steward or Warden." Private interest alone formed the motive of action in commercial dealings. The individual knew nothing of obligations due to society. [Sidenote: _General demoralisation._] Society was indeed in a state of rottenness. Outwardly there was plentiful decorum; really there was sufficient sham with its usual concomitant, laxity of morals, in a very marked degree[218]. It could hardly be expected that this should be otherwise in the general disregard which prevailed of all finer instincts: questionable commercial dealings and adulteration of products, on the one hand, were naturally accompanied by brutality and squalor on the other. Commercial success was the only criterion, and as the companies could not stand the test of this touchstone of merit they were doomed. [Sidenote: _Efforts to delay the end._] The Gilds of workmen in building trades had been seriously affected, if not destroyed, long before by the Statute 2 and 3 Edward VI. cap. 15, which allowed "any Freemason, roughmason, carpenter, bricklayer, plasterer," etc. "borne in this realme or made Denizon, to work in any of the saide Crafts in anye cittie Boroughe or Towne Corporate ... albeit the saide p'son or p'sons ... doe not inhabyte or dwell in the cittee Borough or Towne Corporate ... nor be free of the same." But in all other trades the law had upheld the companies, and associations strong as these were in antiquity were not to be destroyed without a struggle. In the early years of the nineteenth century they began to think about internal reformation, which, had it been accomplished with singleness of purpose, might perhaps have secured their further usefulness and life. The expenses connected with the annual feasts were regulated[219]. We have seen in the foregoing chapter how the senior members began to withdraw from the dissoluteness of the Show. The actions against intruders, which had long become chronic, were pushed on with new vigour. In the hopes apparently of deciding the question once for all the Mercers' company instituted a great suit against a Mr Hart in the year 1823 which was looked upon by all parties as a test case. Two years previously a committee had been appointed to search for the charter and other documents which might be serviceable to the company in the great struggle they were apparently then meditating. The opinion of counsel was taken, and it being favourable to the company a full meeting unanimously resolved to act upon it. The first thing to be done was to retrench the expenses. It was decided that no dinner could be held that year (1823), and the annual subscriptions to the Infirmary, the Lancaster School, and other charitable objects were suspended. The costs of the actions were to be borne by all the combrethren "rateably and in proportion agreeable to the ancient custom and usage of the Company." But several resignations and withdrawals took place, which show that there was some doubt, if not as to the exact legality, at any rate as to the expediency of the step which was being taken. But the great majority were resolved to press the matter to the issue. Actions against several intruders were consolidated, and that against Mr Hart came on for trial. Important counsel were engaged, and everything was done on both sides to discover the actual state of the law. The result was a verdict entirely in favour of the company. But the assessment of damages at a farthing (while the expenses incurred by the company were between six and seven hundred pounds) showed how strongly public opinion ran in a direction contrary to the mere letter of the law[220]. The defendants however in the present case submitted at once, and the company soon recovered its former financial prosperity. Its subscriptions were again paid after a brief interval. But it is noticeable that actions against intruders went on precisely as before. The effect of this great verdict, which was hailed with public dinners and illuminations, was absolutely _nil_. It however stimulated the efforts of the companies in the direction of reform. In consequence of the action the Mercers resolved that the enrolment of apprentices (which they confessed had been "criminally neglected") should be better carried out in future, and that a _bona fide_ indenture for seven years should be required in all cases before any claim to the freedom of the company could be admitted. As a tangible result a new book of apprenticeship was commenced, which continued to be carefully and neatly kept to the end. Its first entry is dated August 1, 1823, though there are several records of earlier indentures. Its last is July 2, 1835. A new book for recording the petitions of foreigners to be admitted was also provided. These were comparatively few in number. They extend from July 31, 1823, to June 2, 1834. [Sidenote: _The Municipal Corporations Act._] Such was the condition of the companies when the Municipal Corporations Act[221] was passed. No detailed description of this measure, albeit it was "second in importance to the Reform Act alone[222]," is needed here. As far as the companies were concerned its provisions were simple. It took away from them wholly and entirely all their exclusive privileges of trading. "Whereas in divers cities, towns, and boroughs a certain custom hath prevailed, and certain bye-laws have been made, that no person, not being free of a city, town, or borough, or of certain guilds, mysteries, or trading companies within the same or some or one of them, shall keep any shop or place for putting to show or sale any or certain wares or merchandize by way of retail or otherwise, or use any or certain trades, occupations, mysteries, or handicrafts for hire, gain, or sale within the same: Be it enacted that, notwithstanding any such custom or bye-law, every person in any borough may keep any shop for the sale of all lawful wares and merchandizes by wholesale or retail, and use every lawful trade, occupation, mystery, and handicraft, for hire, gain, sale or otherwise, within any borough." In these words, which might seem the echo of Magna Carta[223] through the centuries, liberty of trading was made a fact throughout England. [Sidenote: _End of the companies._] It is interesting that we have recorded for us the way in which this sweeping change was received by those most concerned. The Mercers had foreseen (July 31, 1835) that it would be advisable to drop all pending actions against foreigners until the result of the Act then before Parliament should be decided. After it had become law the company met, for the last time under the old conditions, on March 25, 1836, to consider their position and to take steps for the future. It was apparently a stormy meeting. An influential minority proposed to divide the property among the members there and then, and so have done with the company. It was however carried "That the chief rents ... be not disposed of, but reserved to meet the payments to be made to the Alms people of St. Chad's Almshouses[224], and for other purposes." The fire engine, the company's weights and measures etc., were sold. The other companies acted in a similar manner. The Saddlers divided at once the funds which remained in the treasurer's hands, and which amounted to £1. 7_s._ 0_d._ for each member[225]. Their arbour was however retained, and the rent from it expended on the annual feast on Show Monday. This arrangement was to continue so long as any of the freemen should be living: on the decease of the last survivor the arbour was to devolve to the town council. Lastly, all books, and whatever else remained to the company, were to be deposited with the wardens for the time being. [Sidenote: _Partial continuation of the companies._] For attempts were made, even in the desperate pass to which the companies seemed to be brought, to prolong the end. A few patriotic members kept up the shadows of the old fraternities. The ancient custom of electing officers was maintained; the Mercers' records bring the lists complete down to 1876. The arbours were repaired, mostly at the cost of private individuals, and at spasmodic intervals, while the Show still continued to afford opportunities for dissolute revelry to the lowest of the town and neighbourhood. The companies themselves fell back into their original condition of voluntary associations of individuals united for purposes partly benevolent but mainly social, and of which the state took no cognisance. "No one can give much attention to the subject without coming to the conclusion that feasting was one of the essential and most valued features of the companies in their early days[226]:" it became so again in their later. As they had existed long before external circumstances brought them into prominence, so they continued long after they had ceased to influence public affairs, and so they lingered on even after the nation had plainly signified that their existence was not only superfluous but injurious. For their endeavours to restrict trade had been, so far as they had been successful, detrimental to the prosperity of the town, while they had allowed the duty of succouring needy workmen to slip entirely from their hands. The Friendly Societies which had long taken up this very important part of the functions which the mediæval Gilds had performed rose meanwhile into public favour. Their excellent work was so apparent that an Act of Parliament was passed for their encouragement in 1793, and it was even urged that they should be made compulsory. [Sidenote: _Their property gives them life._] The companies had to all intents and purposes long forgotten their duty in this respect, and they could not take it up again now, though had this course been possible they might have commended themselves to public favour. There was only one means which kept them alive. The secret of their vitality was their possession of property[227], and as that melted away the companies were found dropping out of existence. For being deprived of their real essence they had nothing to recommend them. Even the Show degenerated into a public scandal, and the companies, like their annual pageant, at length died, one by one, unnoticed and unregretted[228]. [Sidenote: _Return to organisation._] Yet there was arising, even at the time when the old companies were being destroyed, a movement in favour of some return to organisation and regulation. Organisation indeed seems to have been a characteristic of the English people at all stages of their history. The Saxons had their Frith Gilds and their Monks' Gilds; the English of the Middle Ages had their Merchant, Religious, Social, and Craft Gilds; in the sixteenth century they had their Trade Societies, the direct and in many cases the little-altered successors of the Craft Gilds. Then came the larger Regulated Companies, which also had some features in common with the mediæval Gilds, more with the sixteenth century societies. The main differences between the earlier associations and those of a later date lay in the avowed motive of confederacy and in the nature of the influence they exercised. The ostensible motive of the Gilds was the general welfare: in the case of the companies it was individual gain. The influence of the Gilds may be called a healthy social and moral influence[229]; that of the post-reformation companies in the towns was in the main directed to selfish and political ends[230]. New organisations, adapted to altered conditions of life and new modes of thought, resembling and yet differing from the Gilds, were now to arise and take the place of the companies as these had taken the place of the mediæval fraternities. The growth of these however will be beyond the scope of the present essay. It was doubtless necessary that the companies should be pulled down from the lofty heights which they once had occupied. It was requisite that all relics of the detailed system of trade-organisation which the Middle Ages had handed down to us should be broken up, to make room for a _régime_ more conformable to modern conditions of industry. The anarchic reign of individualism through which trade passed at the beginning of this century was an unavoidable step in economic development. But it was a step attended with infinite loss and inestimable suffering, and it is well that proofs are not wanting of the approaching end of unrestrained competition and anti-social individualism. Signs of change are not wanting. Experience is continually demonstrating that organisation can accomplish vastly more than individual enterprise; that combination is immeasurably more powerful than competition. It is indeed the tracing out of this reaction in favour of combination for common ends, which lends to the economic history of the last hundred years its chief, perhaps its only, human interest. [Sidenote: _Socialists and other forms of organisation._] The reaction has manifested itself in various ways. The _Socialists_ have always made State-organisation of labour one of the strongest planks of their platform[231]. At the same time Englishmen have looked with peculiar jealousy on any attempts by the state to extend its sphere of action. Nevertheless a steady development has been witnessed in this direction; the various Civil Services show a uniform increase with the numbers and requirements of the nation. The Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Charity and Ecclesiastical Commissioners, are further indications of the same tendency towards organisation. [Sidenote: _Trades Unions;_] The Gilds cannot, as we have seen, be censured for low aims; moreover their endeavours to reach the level they set themselves were constant and sincere. And the latter half of the nineteenth century has seen a repetition of somewhat similar attempts. [Sidenote: _their achievements._] [Sidenote: _Improvement in status of labour._] The Trades Union movement[232] is one pregnant with promise for the future[233]. Though the Unions were formed in the first instances for the purpose of resistance to the masters, it may be hoped that as the need for this grows weaker the analogy which their promoters love to institute between them and the old Craft Gilds may become more and more real. They have already done much to raise the condition of labour, and as Friendly Societies they are of the highest value to the workmen[234]. There are signs too that we may even obtain organisations which, with due allowance for altered conditions, may accomplish much of the other good work which Gilds performed for mediæval industry. [Sidenote: _Attempts at regulation of trade._] The Unions already aim at ensuring stability of employment through deliberate regulation of trade. By this means they hope to strike a death-blow at that root-evil of our present industrial system, irregularity of employment and uncertainty of wages. [Sidenote: _Further necessary approximation to Gilds._] But they yet fall short of the Gilds in two important particulars, and until these deficiencies are made good Trades Unions can only be considered as insufficient means to a highly desirable end. [Sidenote: _Appreciation of the common interests of masters and men,_] In the first place there must be no association of men against masters, or masters against men, but union of men with masters for the common good of the craft. Fifty years ago it was pointed out[235] that "the recent destruction of the old Gilds was a purely negative policy, which required to be followed up by a reconstruction on similar, but modified, lines[236]." But of course nothing was attempted, though it is for their care in seeing that the public was well served that the Gilds are chiefly praised to-day. [Sidenote: _and of the necessity of ensuring a higher standard of work._] In the second direction much less advance has been made[237]. Yet it cannot be expected that a high standard of wages is to be maintained unless a high standard of workmanship is also ensured. Improvement in pay can only with justice accompany improvement in skill and application. Something of the sentiment and tradition of good work which so strongly characterised the Middle Ages must be brought back. As yet it is wofully lacking. Up to the present the Trades Unions have made no real attempt to grapple with this evil, though its removal is a necessary preliminary to anything like completeness in our industrial reformation. Until they can show their ability to direct trade in this respect in a manner more beneficial to the community than competing capitalists have done during the past, the student will find their analogy to the mediæval Gilds incomplete (and that in a point where the latter might be followed with benefit), and the public will consider their usefulness to society unsatisfactory. APPENDIX I NON-GILDATED TRADESMEN[238]. The ordinary authorities on Economic history say little or nothing of the non-gildated tradesmen in the towns, though these formed an important portion of the commercial community. To understand fully the conditions under which trade was carried on in mediæval England the existence of such unfree merchants must be taken into account and their importance appreciated. Within the commercial class the enforcement of the Gild regulations doubtless depended very largely on circumstances and individual temperament. Moreover their reiteration evidences their futility in attaining the objects they had in view. There must have been much greater freedom and elasticity of thought and action during the Middle Ages than is generally recognised. It must be remembered too that there were important exceptions to the regulations of the Gilds. The king's servants, when exercising the royal privileges of purveyance and pre-emption, were naturally unrestricted. In Fair-time--and the Fairs were a very important feature in mediæval life--there was unrestrained freedom of trade. But more important than these was another. It was quite possible for ungildated tradesmen to purchase temporary or partial exemption from the local restrictions. It will be observed that the royal charters which authorise the Gilds and grant exclusive privileges of trading differ somewhat in later years from those of the earliest date. In the earliest grants the words simply allude to the Gild only. Henry II.'s Charter to Lincoln is "Sciatis me concessisse civibus meis Lincolniæ ... gildam suam mercatoriam." There is no hint of any tradesmen external to the Gild. But early in the thirteenth century it becomes evident that such stringent exclusiveness could not be enforced. The charter which Henry III. granted to Shrewsbury in 1227 confirmed the Gild in the following terms:--"Concessimus etiam eisdem Burgensibus et heredibus eorum quod habeant Gildam Mercatoriam cum Hansa et aliis consuetudinibus et libertatibus ad Gildam illam pertinentibus, et quod nullus qui non sit in Gilda ilia mercandisam aliquam faciat in predicto Burgo _nisi de voluntate eorundem Burgensium_." At about the same time the Earl of Chester and Huntingdon gave a charter to Chester forbidding trade in the town "nisi ipsi cives mei Cestrie et eorum heredes _vel per eorum gratum_." The phrase "nisi de voluntate eorundem Burgensium (or Civium)" now became usual in the charters. In those granted by Edward I. to the towns which he founded in Wales, and which may be looked upon in some measure as model town constitutions, the provision appears in each. Thus it may be said that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become customary for the town authorities to grant exemptions from the Gild restrictions by their own authority. They practically gave over to the Gilds the supervision of trade, but at the same time retained in their own hands the power of admitting traders without obliging them to join the mercantile fraternities. This power of granting exemptions from the restrictions of the Gilds seems to have been exercised in various towns in different degrees. In some it extended no further than the permitting "foreigners" to come to casual markets on payment of a toll upon each occasion. In others however it was more largely and generally used, merchants being allowed to be resident and to trade continually and regularly by payment of an annual fine. In the latter case the effect was to create two distinct classes of traders within the town. The burgesses may be divided into two classes, those of them who were gildsmen and those who were not. We now see that the tradesmen dwelling in the towns may similarly be divided into two classes, (i) those who were free of the town or of one of the Gilds (or free both of the town and one of its Gilds), and (ii) those who were neither burgesses nor gildsmen. Thus another has been added to the classes into which the inhabitants of towns are usually divided. Mention of these _unfree_ tradesmen is found in the records of many towns in England and Wales: in Norwich, Winchester, Lincoln, Leicester, Andover, Yarmouth, Canterbury, Henley-on-Thames, Malmesbury, Bury S. Edmunds, Totnes, Wigan, Chester, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Clun, Brecknock, Neath, Bishops' Castle, and others. The designation of these unfree tradesmen varies. At Andover they were known as _custumarii_ (in opposition to the _hansarii_--the full members of the Gild). At Canterbury a similar body appears under the name of _intrants_. In Scotland and the north of England they were called _stallingers_. The most usual name for them is however _censer_, _chencer_, _tenser_, and variations of these. _Censer_ is apparently the name applied to one who pays a _cense_ or _cess_. In Domesday mention is made of _censarius_--"Ibi sunt nunc 14 censarii habentes septem carucatas"--and the _censarius_ is described as "qui terram ad censum annuum tenet." The connection of the word is here purely territorial. It becomes more personal later in the history as is seen in the "Compotus Civitatis Wyntoniæ" of the third year of Edward I., which contains the following entry:--"Et de xliiij_s._ ij_d._ _ob._ de hominibus habitacionibus in civitate Wynton' qui non sunt de libertate, qui dicuntur Censarii, per idem tempus." Here the _censarii_ are evidently considered in their capacity not as possible landowners, but solely as tradesmen. The _census_ has changed from the land rent of Domesday to a distinctly personal payment. A somewhat different class from the _censarii_ of Winchester are mentioned in the statute 27 Henry VIII., cap. 7. From the preamble we can form a good idea of the lawlessness and confusion which prevailed on the borders of Wales at that period. It is related that in the Marches, where thick forests frequently fringe the roads, "certain unreasonable Customs and Exactions have been of long time unlawfully exacted and used, contrary both to the law of God and man, to the express wrong and great impoverishment of divers of the king's true subjects." The most crying of these evils was that the foresters were accustomed to plunder all passing along the roads (probably under the plea of taking toll), unless they bore "a Token delivered to them by the chief Foresters ... or else were yearly Tributors or Chensers." The statute offers no explanation of these terms, but it is most likely they applied to persons paying an annual sum, either to the king or the Lords Marchers, of the nature of Chief Rent, especially as Cowell, in giving his explanation of the word _chenser_ which will be noticed later, refers to this Act of Henry VIII. in support of his definition. If this be so we see that although the signification of the term had been extended so as to include distinctly personal and commercial tolls, it had, in some districts, also retained its original connection with land. This, censor, censer, gensor, chencer, and other variations, is the most usual form of the word, but occasionally it is found as tenser, tensor, tensur, and tensure. Tenser and tensor are used at Shrewsbury; at Worcester the same word appears as tensure or tensar (_English Gilds_, pp. 382, 394). It is difficult to say whether or no _tenser_ is a confusion of _censer_. Etymologically the words seem akin, _cense_ being a tax or toll (cess), and _tensare_ meaning to lay under toll or tribute. In the Iter of 1164 enquiry is directed to be made "de prisis et tenseriis omnium ballivorum domini regis ... et quare prisæ illæ captæ fuerint, et per quem" etc. Another derivation of _tenser_ has been given. Owen and Blakeway (Vol. ii. p. 525) explain it to be a corruption of "tenancier," and apparently intend to imply that these non-gildated traders were considered as holding directly of the king. This view receives some confirmation from Cowell's definition of the "censure" and "censers" of Cornwall. He says (_A Law Dictionary: or the Interpreter_ etc., ed. 1727) "Censure, or _Custuma vocata_ censure, (from the Latin _Census_, which Hesychius expounds to be a kind of personal money, paid for every Poll) is, in divers Manors in _Cornwall_ and _Devon_, the calling of all Resiants therein above the age of sixteen, to swear Fealty to the Lord, to pay _ij{d} per Poll, and j{d} per an._ ever after; as _cert-money_ or _Common Fine_; and these thus sworn, are called _Censers_." "Chensers," he says again, "are such as pay Tribute or _cense_, Chief-rent or Quit-rent, for so the French _censier_ signifies." Whether or no we receive Owen and Blakeway's derivation of the word from _tenancier_, even with the support of Cowell's "censers" of Cornwall, we may press the latter authority into service in showing that the signification of _censer_ and _tenser_, however different the two words might be in origin, became very similar in actual use. The fines which the tensers or censers paid were imposed in the Court Leet. On the Court Leet Rolls at Shrewsbury are entered lists of names and fines headed "Nomina eorum qui merchandizant infra villam Salopie et Suburbia eiusdem, et non Burgenses, ergo sunt in misericordia." In the first year of the reign of Henry IV. (A.D. 1399) it was ordered that these fines should be levied before the feast of S. Katharine (November 25) in each year. The Court Leet also decided the amount of the fines, but in later times when the select body of magnates had deprived the popular courts of so many of their powers and privileges we find that the apportioning of the tensers' fines had also passed to the close corporation. In 1519 the corporation fixed the tolls at 6_d._ quarterly. The statute 35 Henry VIII., cap. 18, gave the control of the unfree tradesmen in Canterbury to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City. "No foreigner, not being free of the said City, shall buy or sell any Merchandize (saving Victual) to another foreigner; nor shall keep any shop nor use any mystery within the said City or the liberties thereof, without the License of the Mayor and Aldermen, or the major part of them, in writing under their Seal." At Winchester in 1650 the rates were revised by the Mayor and Aldermen. The highest limit was fixed at £5, but the fees actually paid were generally sums varying from 6_d._ to 3/4 only (Gross, II. 264). When such a privilege was exercised by a select body it was certain to give rise to abuses. Such was found to be the case in early years when the fines were imposed by an authority other than the general assembly of burgesses. In the county court held at Lincoln in 1272 it was alleged that the late Mayor had taken pledges from the burgesses of Grimsby unjustly under the plea of exacting _gildwite_ (as the fine or toll was sometimes called). We learn that at Shrewsbury in 1449-50 "this yeare the Burgesses and Tenssaars ... did varye." What the cause of contention was, or how the dispute was settled, we do not know, but it could hardly arise over anything other than the question concerning the tolls to be paid by the tensers. In some towns special civic officials were appointed to supervise the tensers. At Chester the "leave-lookers" were among the most important of the borough officers. The word _leve_ or _leave_ has very much the same signification as the word _cense_ or cess. It is the English "levy," and was the fee or toll for permission to trade. The "leve-lookers" were the officials who exacted the levy or toll which unfree tradesmen were obliged to pay. At Chester they were "appointed annually by the Mayor for the purpose of collecting the duty of 2_s._ 6_d._ claimed by the corporation to be levied yearly upon all non-freemen who exercise any trade within the liberties of the City." Their duties are described as having been "to give Licence and compound with any that came either to buy or sell within these liberties contrary to our grants;" "if any did dwell within the city that were not free, if they did ever buy or sell within the liberties, they did likewise compound with the _Custos_ and _Mercator_ [Custos Gilde Mercatorie] by the year ... the Leave-lookers do gather two pence halfpenny upon the pound, of all Wares sold by Forraigners within the City." (Gross, II. 42.) The same name is found at Wigan, where the duty of the "gate-waiters or leave-lookers" was to see that all "foreigners" paid their fines for licence to reside and trade in the town. (Sinclair, _Wigan_, _passim_.) It is not easy to define the exact status of the tensers. They were certainly considered as an inferior body of burgesses, and might comprise three classes. Firstly, those not willing or not able to enter one of the gilds; secondly, traders waiting to be admitted burgesses; thirdly ex-burgesses fallen from the higher state through misfortune. 1. As an inferior class of tradesmen they could only purchase their stock from townsmen (Gross, II. 177); they were incapable of bearing municipal office (_Ibid._ II. 190) and they were liable to be called upon "to be contributorie to alle the comone charges of the Citie, whan it falleth" (_Ibid._ II. 190). In the general course of trade but little difference might be perceptible between the tensers and the Gildsmen, but attempts to fuse or to confuse the two classes were jealously resented whenever they were discovered. Naturally these attempts to minimise the distinctions between Gildsmen and non-gildsmen were generally prompted, in later times, by political reasons. Only freemen of the town and members of the companies had the privilege of voting in Parliamentary elections, and great was the desire to obtain a position on the list of voters. In "An Account of the Poll for Members of Parliament for the Borough of Shrewsbury taken June 29 and 30, 1747" etc., information is supplied concerning certain townsmen who had claimed to be freemen but were rejected on account of having proved themselves to be otherwise by payment, in times past, of the tensers' fines. Of John Bromhall, baker, we read "It was objected to his vote that he was no Burgess, in support of which it was proved that he had paid Tensership several years, and that his ffather had paid toll. This Tensership is a ffine or acknowledgement commonly paid by persons following trade in the town that are no Burgesses, but it being insisted that it was paid through ignorance or mistake, his ffather was called and admitted to prove that he had voted at a former election for this Borough, whereupon the Mayor admitted his vote, but upon examining a copy of the Poll for the year 1676 it appears that all the ffamily of this Bromhall were upon a scrutiny rejected as not Burgesses." 2. They comprised also among their number many tradesmen waiting to be made burgesses. We learn this distinctly from an ordinance of the corporation of Leicester passed in the year 1467, to the effect that every person opening a shop in the town should pay yearly 3/4 _till he enter into the Chapman Gild_. (Nichols, _County of Leicester_, I. 376.) There were several causes which would account for the existence of this class. The towns grew increasingly jealous of extending their privileges, as these became valuable. The Gildsmen would also desire to learn somewhat of the character of the new-comer before admitting him to full membership with themselves; while on the other hand the latter would wish to see whether the trade of the town were sufficiently prosperous to warrant him settling in the borough permanently. This cause would specially operate in the case of the Welsh boroughs which grew up after Edward I.'s conquest of the principality. The townsmen however did not approve of the growth of a wealthy class of traders, sharing almost equal commercial privileges with themselves and at the same time not liable to the burdens which were the necessary accompaniment of those privileges. They therefore made it incumbent upon every tenser who evidently was sufficiently satisfied with the trade of the town to make the borough his permanent home, and who had attained to a fair competency, that he should throw in his lot fully and completely with them. He must become in fact a full burgess. This is carefully explained in the _Ordinances of the City of Worcester_--regulations concerning the trade of the town dating from the reign of Edward IV. No. XLVII. says "Also, that euery Tensure be sett a resonable fyne, aft{r} the discression of the Aldermen, and that euery tensure that hath ben w{t}yn the cyte a yere or more dwellynge, and hath sufficiaunt to the valo{r} of XL_s._ or more, be warned to be made citezen, by resonable tyme to hym lymitted, and iff he refuse that, that he shalle yerly pay to the comyn cofre XL_d._, ouer that summe that he shalle yerly pay to the Baillies or any other officers; and so yerly to contynue tylle he be made citezen" (_English Gilds_, p. 394). 3. There were, thirdly, those who had fallen from a higher state through misfortune or other cause. We read of individuals surrendering their freedom and paying the tenser's fine. "He withdrew and surrendered the freedom to the Commonalty, and now pays toll" (Gross, II. 240). As regarded their dealings other than commercial in nature the tendency was to assimilate the tensers and the townsmen. In a grant made to Shrewsbury by Henry VI. and confirmed by Parliament in 1445 the same privileges are extended to the tensers as are possessed by the burgesses in the matter of exemption from the necessity of finding bail in certain cases. Similarly at Worcester the "tensures" shared with the citizens the right to the assistance of the afferors in cases of wrongful or excessive amercement. (_English Gilds_, 394.) Nevertheless where commercial privileges were at stake the distinction was rigidly preserved by every means in the possession of the townsmen. The tenser's fine was maintained up to the present century, though not without considerable difficulty. On every hand there were evidences that the companies had outlived their usefulness. Friction was everywhere injuring the social machine. Competition and individualism had taken the place of custom and co-operation. At Winchester there were grievous complaints of intruders who did "use Arts, Trades, Misteries and manual occupations ... without making any agreement or composition for soe doing, contrary to the said antient usage and custome, tending to the utter undoeing of the freemen ... and decay of the same City." Everywhere the records of the companies detail little else than summonses to intruders to take up their freedom and notices of actions at law against them for refusing to do so. General demoralisation prevailed, and the existence of a class holding such an equivocal position as that of the unfree tradesmen did not help to mend matters. The case of John Bromhall which has been mentioned above illustrates the general looseness which prevailed in all departments of municipal administration. A ludicrous incident which happened at Shrewsbury in connection with the tensers in later years is recorded by Gough in his _Antiquities of Myddle_, published in 1834. "This Richard Muckleston was of a bold and daring spirit, and could not brook an injury offered to him. He commenced a suit against the town of Shrewsbury for exacting an imposition on him which they call tentorshipp, and did endeavor to make void their charter, but they gave him his burgess-ship to be quiet." The companies were preserved from repetitions of this strange indignity by the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, in consequence of which there could no longer be any invidious distinction between freemen and non-freemen, hansarii and custumarii, gildsmen and tensers. APPENDIX II. AUTHORITIES CITED. Abram, W. A.--Memorials of the Preston Guilds. An Account of the Poll for Members of Parliament for the Borough of Shrewsbury etc. (1747). Boeckh, A.--Public Economy of Athens, translated by George Cornewall Lewis (1842). Brentano, Lujo--On the history and development of Gilds and Origin of Trade-Unions. "Britannia Languens, or a discourse of trade." (1680.) Bryce, J.--The Holy Roman Empire (1887). Cowell--A Law Dictionary: or the Interpreter etc. (1727). Cunningham, W.--The Growth of English Industry and Commerce (1885). Dugdale, W.--Antiquities of Warwickshire. Ebner, Dr Adalbert--Die klösterlichen Gebets-Verbrüderungen bis zum Ausgange des Karolingischen Zeitalters (1891). Eden, Sir F. M.--The State of the Poor. Eyton, W.--Antiquities of Shropshire. Farquhar--The Recruiting Officer. Foucart--Les Associations réligieuses chez les Grecs. Foxwell, H. S.--Irregularity of Employment and Fluctuations of Prices (1886). Froude, J. A.--History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth (12 vols., 1862-70). Gneist--Geschichte des Self-Government in England. Gneist--Das heutige Englische Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrecht. Gough--The Antiquities of Myddle (1834). Green, J. R.--A Short History of the English People (1886). Gross, Charles--The Gild Merchant (1891). Grote, George--History of Greece (1888). Hallam, H.--View of Europe during the Middle Ages. 1 vol. Harrison, W.--A description of England (in "Elizabethan England," Camelot Series). Hatch, E.--The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches (Bampton Lectures, 1881). Howell, G.--Conflicts of Capital and Labour (1890). Howell, Thomas--The Stranger in Shrewsbury (1825). Kemble, J. M.--The Saxons in England. Longfellow--The Golden Legend. Macaulay, Lord--History of England from the Accession of James II. (1889). May, Erskine--Constitutional History of England. 3 vols. (1887). Merewether and Stephens--History of the Boroughs. Nichols, J.--The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (1795-1815). Ordericus Vitalis--Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy (Bohn's Series). Owen and Blakeway--History of Shrewsbury. [Owen, Hugh]--Some Account of the Ancient and Present State of Shrewsbury (1808). Perry, C. G.--A History of the English Church (Vol. II.) (1878). Pidgeon's Memorials of Shrewsbury (old Ed.). Pidgeon's Some Account of the Ancient Gilds, Trading Companies, and the origin of Shrewsbury Show (1862). Poynter, E. J.--Ten Lectures on Art (1880). Quarterly Review, Vol. 159. Riley, H. T.--Memorials of London ... in the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries. Rogers, Thorold--Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1889). Rogers, Thorold--The Economic Interpretation of History (1888). Scott, Sir Walter--Marmion. Sinclair, D.--The History of Wigan. Smith, Toulmin--English Gilds (E. E. T. S.). State Papers, Domestic (Elizabeth). Statutes at Large (6 vols, 1758). Stow, John--A Survey of London (Carisbrooke Library). Strype--Ecclesiastical Memorials (1821). Stubbs, W.--Constitutional History of England (1883). Stubbs, W.--Select Charters (1884). Stubbs, W.--Lectures on Mediæval History. Taylor MS. in Library of Shrewsbury School (Reprinted in S. A. S. Vol. III.). Thackeray, W. M.--The Four Georges. Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary, being the Diary of Celia Fiennes. Transactions of the Shropshire Archæological Society (cited as S. A. S.), Vols. I-XI. Wordsworth, W.--The Happy Warrior. INDEX. Abbey at Shrewsbury, 11, 31, 60 Aberystwith, 26 Adventurers, Merchant, of Exeter, 84, 87 Aliens not to be taken as apprentices, 64, 82 Almshouses, 73, 109, 137 Altrincham, 26 Amalgamation natural in Middle Ages, 31 and at all times, 140 Anager, 83 Andover, 25, 35, 147 Anglo-Saxons, gilds of, 12 municipal organisation of, 13 Apothecary, 28 Apprentices, 39, 40, 46, 47, 52, 64, 66, 81 Arthur, son of Henry VII., 79 Arundel, Earl of, 27 Ashton, Thomas, 79, 119 Assistants, 5, 41 Assize of Arms, 11 Axbridge, 27, 85 Bailiffs, assist gilds, 37 assisted by gilds, 36 supervise gilds, 37, 40 Bakers, 28, 59 Bala, 27 Bamborough, 27 Barbers, 28, 45, 58-9, 62, 83-4, 87, 89, 100, 102, 130 Bargains, common, 14, 15 Barnstaple, 27 Bath, 25 Beadle, duties of, 42 Beaumaris, 27 Bedesmen, 63 Bedford, 25 Benefit Clubs, 106, 110 Berwick on Tweed, 26 Beverley, 24, 115 Birmingham, 111, 129 Bishops' Castle, 147 Black Death, 56 Board of Trade, 141 Bodmin, 25 Borough, distinction between Merchant Gild and, 18, 19 rise and development of, 10 incorporation of, 14 position of Merchant Gild in, 14, 16 select body in, 19, 105 classes of inhabitants, 147 Boroughs, list of, possessing Merchant Gilds, 24-28 Boston, 26 Brasier, 53 Brecknock, 147 Brentano, Dr, 7, 9, 104, 105 Bricks, revival of use of, 80 Bricklayers, 118 Bridgenorth, 26 Bridgewater, 26 Bristol, 25, 87, 111 Bromhall, John, 153, 155 Builder, 29 Builth, 26 Burford, 24 Burgesses, 3 charters granted to, 14 small share in work of Parliament, 49 Burgess-ship, qualifications of, 18, 106 not identical with gildship, 18 villains, women, and ecclesiastics excluded from, 18 Burnet, 67 Bury S. Edmund's, 25, 147 Butchers, 28, 57, 59 Byt-fylling, 13 Caerswys, 26 Cambridge, 25, 56, 60, 74 Camden, 79 Canterbury, 12, 24, 147, 148, 150 Cappers, 53 Cardiff, 27 Cardigan, 26, 69 Carlisle, 25 Carnarvon, 26 Carpenters, 28, 59 Carrier, 28 Castle at Shrewsbury, 12 Censers or Tensers, see Shrewsbury Chantries, 32, 63, 67, 74, 86, 92 Charity Commissioners, 141 Charles II., 87 Charters did not necessarily create the gilds, 55 to burgesses, 14 Chelmicke, Mr, 89 Chepgauel, 18 n. Chester, 25, 92, 119, 146, 147, 151 Earl of, 25, 146 Chesterfield, 27 Chichester, 24 Cirencester, 27 Civil Services, 141 Clerk, 28, 43 Cloth Trade, 78-9 cloth-workers, 29, 117 cloth-merchant, 57 Clun, 147 Collier, 28 Commissioners for plundering gilds, 73 Commonwealth, 122 Communa, 14, 16 Companies, commercial, 6, 47, 86, 88, 98 et seq., 140 Compositions, 37-8, 55 n. Conflicts between Merchant Gild and Craft Gilds, 5, 9, 20, 21 Congleton, 26 Conquest, Norman, 10 Continent, commerce with, 10 merchant gilds of, 5, 9, 20, 21 Conviviality, 13, 44, 111 Conway, 26 Cooks, 28, 59 Coopers, 28 Cordwainers, 35 Corn-dealer, 28 Cornwall, 149 Earl of, 26, 27 Corporations, municipal, 14, 16, 105, 109, 127 _Corps-de-métier_, 8 Corpus Christi, gilds and Feast, 33, 43, 59, 63, 115, 118 Cottoners, 90 County Towns, their former importance, 3, 122-3 Coventry, 26, 115 Craft Gilds, earliest mention of, 34 become numerous, 35 favoured by Merchant Gild, 20, 22, 34, 36 take over work of Merchant Gild, 20, 35 motives for forming, religious, 31-2 social, 33 commercial, 34 police, 36 incorporated, 38, 55 at Shrewsbury, 10 favoured by municipal authorities, 36, 38, 43 composition of, 39 officers, election unrestricted, 40 wardens, 41 assistants, 41 stewards, 42 beadle, 42 searcher, 43, 46, 87 clerk, 43 treasurer, 43 key-keeper, 44 take oath before bailiffs, 37, 40 meetings, 43 importance of, commercial, 45 social, 33, 34, 47-50 constitutional, 48-9 as benefit clubs, 50 specially interesting at present time, 49-51 development of trade introduces abuses, 56-7 policy of reform, 58 demoralisation, 65-7 robbed by government, 67 et seq. effects of this, 75 et seq. reorganisation, 81, 84-97 its effects on gilds, 82 intimate connection of later companies with corporation, 85-6, 99, 105, 120-22 they retain many of old gild characteristics, 87-8, 108-9 though altered conditions make their work difficult, 88, 98 and companies themselves are unsatisfactory, 98-102, 105 they change to capitalist companies, 103-5 from which journeymen are excluded, 106 difficulties of reform, 107-8 contemporaneous opinion of, at end of 18th century, 109-12 destruction of, 136-137 return to organisation partly on gild principles, 141-144 Craftsman of middle ages, 49 degraded by Reformation, 75 Cranmer, 68 Criccieth, 26 Crispin and Crispianus, 118, 125 Custumarii, 147 Cyveiliog, Earl of, 26 Davies, Thomas, 92 Denbigh, 27 Derby, 25 Despenser, le, 27 Devizes, 26 Devon, 150 Dixon, Canon, 71 Domesday Book, 11, 148 Doncaster, 28 Dover, 12 Drapers, 29, 32-3, 59, 73, 83-4, 90-7, 99, 101, 108-9, 126, 131 Dugdale, 116 Dunheved or Launceston, 26 Dunwich, 25 Durham, 25 Bp of, 26 Dutch, 82 Dyer, 38 Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 141 Edward the Confessor, 12 Edward I., 16, 26, 27, 35, 58 his conquest of Wales, 2, 146, 154 Edward II., 27 Edward III., 27, 35, 59 Edward IV., 28, 38, 42, 58, 59, 62, 65, 79, 82, 117, 154 Edward VI.'s confiscation of gild property, 33, 62, 67, 118 Elizabeth, 35, 76-79, 81, 84, 86, 117, 118 Enclosures, 78 "England the birthplace of Gilds", 9 English Gilds differ from continental, 5, 9, 20, 21 Ethelred, 13 Exchequer, 11 Exeter, 84 Fairs, freedom of trading at, 15, 146 Family sometimes considered the germ of the Gild, 7 Farquhar, 123 Faversham, 81 n. Feasts of Gilds, 13, 44, 111 Fee Farm or firma burgi, 17, 18, 19, 22 Fellmongers, 39 Feltmakers, 99 Fire-engine supported by gilds, 106, 137 Fishmongers, 29, 59 Flemings, 82 Fletchers, 59 Flint, 26 Fordwich, 25 "Foreigners," Forinseci, 19, 20, 98, 110, 147 Foresters, 68 Four Men, 41-2, 104 France, _corps-de-métier_ in, 8 French, 82 French company, 94 Freemen of companies, 39, 53, 106 Friendly Societies, 68, 116, 139, 142 Frith bot, 13 Frith gilds, 8, 13, 46, 140 Frizers, 90 Fullers, 35 Funerals attended by brethren, 43 Fusion of races shown in Shrewsbury gild records, 16 Gainsborough, 27 Garnisher, 28 George IV., 126 German Merchants, 82 Gildhall, at Dover, 12 becomes town hall, 17-18 Gild Merchant, see Merchant Gild Gilds, see Companies, Craft Gilds, Frith Gilds, Merchant Gilds, Monks' Gilds, Religious Gilds, Yeoman Gilds differences between English and foreign, 5, 9, 20, 21 universality of gild feeling, 7 earliest gild statutes, 9 Glanvill, 17 Gloucester, 25 Earl of, 24 Glovers, 28, 39, 59, 83, 87, 101, 118 Godiva, 116 Goldsmith, 28, 53, 109 Grammar Schools, 74 Grampound, 27 Grantham, 28 Great Yarmouth, see Yarmouth Greeks, gilds among, 7 Griffith, Earl of Cyveiliog, 26 Grimsby, 151 Grocers, 109, 131 Groom, 28 Guildford, 26 Haberdashers, 100 Halls of Gilds, see Gild Hall, 42, 44 Hansarii, 147 Harlech, 26 Harper, 29 Harrison, 78, 80 Hart, Mr, 134 Hartlepool, 26 Haverfordwest, 25 Hawkers, 29 repressed by companies, 130 Hedon, 27 Helston, 25 Henley-on-Thames, 27, 147 Henry I., 10, 11, 14, 24-34 Henry II., 10, 11, 14, 17, 25, 146 Henry III., 26, 146 Henry IV., 2, 27, 59, 65, 150 Henry V., 27 Henry VI., 28, 57, 58, 59, 62, 66, 155 Henry VII., 65, 66, 79 Henry VIII., 66, 67, 73, 79, 118, 150 Henry de Lacy, 26 Hereford, 25 Historical attitude essential in studying history of gilds, 44 Hope, 27 Hugh le Despenser, 27 Huntingdon, 35 Incorporation, municipal, 14, 16 Indentures of apprenticeship, 46, 52, 64 Infirmary, 109 Inns of Court, 119 Intrants, 148 Intruders and Interlopers, 89, 98 cf. also Foreigners Ipswich, 18, 25 Irish not to be taken as apprentices, 82 Iron Trade, 78 Ironmongers, 53, 109 James I., 84, 95 Jews, 78 John, 14, 18, 25 Journeymen, 39, 40, 106 Judge, a member of Merchant Gild, 29 Justices Itinerant, 11 Justices of the peace, 81 S. Katharine, 118, 150 Kenfig, 27 Kinaston, Mr, 95 King's Bench, 11 Kingsland, 125, 127 Kingston-on-Thames, 26 Kirkham, 27 Lampeter, 27 Lancaster, 27 Launceston, 26 Leather-sellers, 39 Leech, 29 Leet assesses Tensers' fines, 150 loses its powers, 105, 150 Leicester, 24, 147, 153 Leve-lookers or leave-lookers, 151, 152 Lever, Thomas, 74 Lewes, 24 Lincoln, 25, 35, 146, 147 Liskeard, 26 Liverpool, 111 Livery, 43, 65 Llanfyllin, 27 Llantrissaint, 27 Lloyd, John, 80 Local Government Board, 141 Local history, value of, 10 Local life, always varied in England, 1 Locksmith, 29 London, 111 its "laws", 13 its Anglo-Saxon Gilds, 12 its Craft Gilds, 35 its rivalry with provincial towns, 92, 124 its modern pre-eminence, 1, 3, 123 Lostwithiel, 26 Ludlow, 28, 79, 109 Lyme Regis, 26 Lynn Regis, 25, 69 Macclesfield, 26 Machinery, introduction of, 4 Magna Carta, 136 Malmesbury, 25, 147 Marches, of Wales, 2, 148 Lords of, 2 Court of, 2, 89 President of, 2 Markets, 13, 15 Marlborough, 25 S. Mary, Chantry in Church of, 53 Mary, 118 Mason, 29 Masters, 40-41, 67, 75-76, 103, 105 May Day, 5, 98, 120 Mayor administers oath of admission, 99 Mellent, Robert, Earl of, 24 Mercers, 33, 44, 53, 59, 62, 63, 64, 73, 82, 83, 84, 88, 101, 103, 108, 126, 131, 135, 137, 138, of York, 84 Merchant, 14, 29, 38, 48 Merchant Gilds, the chief difference between town and country, 12, 21 originated to preserve peace, 12, 21 compared with Frith Gilds, 13, 46 trade regulations follow, 13 earliest mention, 14 royal authorisation, 14, 21 at Shrewsbury, 10, 14 effects, 16, 22 chronological list of, 24-8 relations with communa, 10, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 34 with Craft Gilds, 20 compared with Trades Unions, 46 functions and privileges of, 14-16, 18-19, 21 duties of gildsmen, 17 comprised majority of householders, 15, 22 all branches of trade, 16, 19, 30 and professions, 18 and women, 18 and ecclesiastics, 18 a rallying point for burgesses, 16, 22 all burgesses are gildsmen, 16 but all gildsmen are not burgesses, 18 efforts towards municipal objects, 20 gild hall becomes town hall, 17 in later years delegates its mercantile functions to Craft Gilds, 20, 22, 30, 34, 36 who sometimes in aggregate receive name of "Merchant Gild", 35 subsequent history, 35 S. Michael, patron of Mercers' Company, 53, 63 Militia, national, 11 Miller, 29, 59 Monasteries, 8, 67, 77 Monks' Gilds, 8 (and n. 2), 59, 140 Monks excluded from burgess-ship, 18 Montgomery, 26 Mornspeche, 43-44 Mortmain Acts, 55 (n. 2), 61 Much Wenlock, see Wenlock Municipal Corporations Act, 127, 136, 156 Municipalities, see Boroughs Mynde, Abbot, 61 Neath, 27, 147 Nevin, 27 Newborough, 27 Newcastle-on-Tyne, 25 Newcastle-under-Lyme, 26 Newport (Salop), 26 Newport, 27 Newton, 27 Norfolk, 69 Norman Conquest, 10 favours trade, 13, 21 Norwich, 147 Nottingham, 25 Oaths, 39, 53 Odd Fellows, 68 see Friendly Societies Oswestry, 27, 89 rivalry with Shrewsbury, 91-96 Overton, 26 Oxford, 25, 35 Pageants, 4, 33, 42, 63, 113-127 Painters, 118 Palmer, 29 Parchment-makers, 39 Paul's Cross, 74 Peasant Revolt, 56 Pelterer, 29 Pembroke, Earl of, 27 Petersfield, 24 Pewterer, 53 Plasterer, 28 Plymouth, 28 Pointmaker, 39 Police regulations aided by gilds, 65, 108 Pontefract, 28 Poor maintained by Craft Gilds, 33, 47, 80 Portsmouth, 26 Potter, 29 Pre-emption, gildmen's right of, 15 royal right of, 145 Preston, 25 Priest, 29 Privileges of gildsmen, 15, 17, 63, 64, 65 Processions, see Pageants Puritans, 120, 125 Pursers, 39 Pwllheli, 27 Reading, 26, 35 _Recruiting Officer_, 123-4 Reformation, its shock to industry, 3, 6, 77 to gilds, 67 Reform movement fatal to companies, 6, 127 and Show, 127 Religion and trade, 5, 107, 125 Religious Gilds, 60 of Holy Trinity, 59 of S. Winifred, 31, 59-62 frequently connected with trade, 60 Residence not requisite for membership of Merchant Gild, 18 Restoration, 122, 125 Rhuddlan, 27 Richard I., 14, 16, 25 Richard II., 27, 65, 82 Richard III., 28 Richard, Earl of Cornwall, 26 Robert de Belesme, 11 Rochester, 26 Roger de Montgomery, 11, 12 Romans, gilds of, 7 Rowley's Mansion, 80 Rubens, 118 Ruyton, 27 Saddlers, 29, 59, 131 Saffron Walden, 27 Salisbury, 25 _Salopian Journal_, 109 Scarborough, 26 Schools maintained by Gilds, 33 Lancaster, 109 Searcher's duties, 43 Severn, 123 Shearmen, 5, 32, 59, 79, 83, 90, 103, 117, 120-2 Shoemakers, 28, 32, 57, 58 Shrewsbury, its strong individuality, 1 its geographical position, 2 early growth, 2, 3 in Domesday, 11 depressed by Conquest, 11 taken by Henry II., 11 later prosperity, 3 streets and houses, 4 its abbey, 11, 31, 60 castle, 12 peculiarities of its gild history, 5, 40-42 its gild-records, 10, 16 gilds, 4, 36, 58-9 gild hall, 17 gild-chantries, 32, 63, 74, 92 religious gilds, 31, 59-62 Merchant Gild confirmed, 14, 25, 146 incorporation of Craft Gilds, 58-9 early history of, 55-76 Reformation changes, 77-97 obtains monopoly of Welsh cloth trade, 3, 91-7 rivalry with Coventry, 63 in 16th century, 76, 79 with Oswestry in the 17th century, 89-96 with Chester, 92 with London, 92, 124 typical of the 17th century, 4, 122-5 influence of machinery upon, 4 later degeneracy of its companies, 98-112, 129-139 Shrewsbury Show, 113-127, 137 Tensers of, (Appendix 155) and other towns, 147 etymology, 149-150 their fines, 150 status, 152-154 privileges, 147, 155 relations with burgesses, 155 later history, 155 Skinners, 36, 38, 41, 59, 83, 89, 118 Skins, seller of, 29 Smiths, 84, 88, 118 Social Gilds, see Religious Gilds Socialists, 141 Social life changed by newer conditions, 1, 123 Somerset, 67 Southampton, 25 Stafford, Earl of, 27 Stallingers, 148 Stamford, 28, 115 Steen, Widow, 101 Stephen, 24 Stewards, duties of, 42 Stow, 120 Strype, 74 Suffolk, Earl of, 95 Sunderland, 26 Sword Cutler, 28 Tailors, 28, 32, 36, 38, 41, 44, 57, 59, 83, 84, 88, 89, 101, 117 Tanners, 28, 57, 59, 98-9 Tavern-keeper, 29 Tensers, see Shrewsbury Teynterer, 29 Thegn-right obtained by three voyages, 48 Thurstan, Abp of York, 24 Tolls paid by ungildated merchants, 146-156 Totnes, 18 (n. 6), 25, 147 Town bargains, common, 15 Townhall, 17-18 Towns, growth of, in twelfth century, 10, 21 differed little from country, 12, 21 trade their _raison-d'être_, 13 town gild, 13, 31 struggle of classes in continental, 9 but not in English, 9 growth of select body, 19, 105 Trade favoured by Conquest, 10, 13, 35 expansion of, 20 localisation of, 31 Trade Unions, 47, 68, 141-144 Treasurer of gild, 43 Tudor, Owen, 79 Universities, 119 Usury, 33, 78, 80 Villain enfranchised by joining Merchant Gild, 16, 22, 30 Vintners, 59 Vulcan, 118 Wake, John, 27 Wales, 2, 30, 146, 154 incorporated with England, 79 cloth trade of, 3, 89-97, 99 Prince of, 27, 38, 79 Wallingford, 25 Walsall, 28 Wardens' Oath, 39 Warenne, Reginald de, 24 Warwick, 69 Warwickshire, 116 Weavers, 29, 32, 34, 44, 59, 131 Weddings, 43 Welshpool, 26 Wenlock, 28 Weymouth, 28 Wigan, 147 leve-lookers or gate-waiters at, 152 William I., 10 Wilton, 24 Winchester, 16, 25, 35, 85, 147, 148, 155 Windsor, 26 S. Winifred, 31, 59, 61 Witan, 13 Wite, 60 Women, members of gilds, 39, 40 but not burgesses, 18 Woodman, 29 Woodstock, 28 Wool-comber, 28 wool-buyer, 29 woollen-trade, 78 Worcester, 26, 147, 149, 154, 155 Working men, of middle ages, 49 degraded by Reformation, 75 and by subsequent policy, 106 hopes for their future, 142-144 Worsted Trade, 78 Wrekin, 124 Wycombe, 27 Yarmouth, 25, 147 Yeomen gilds, 5 York, 24, 84, 115 Abp Thurstan of, 24 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. & SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. FOOTNOTES: [1] I speak of the old edition. I have not had the advantage of using the newer work. [2] That the land did not contain a population adequate for its cultivation is evident from a Statute of 1350 which allows the people of the Marches of Wales (and Scotland) to go about in search of work at harvest-time, as they had been accustomed to do aforetime. (_Rot. Parl._ II. 234.) _Work and Wages_, pp. 131-2. [3] Cf. Thackeray, _The Four Georges_, p. 320, "decayed provincial capitals, out of which the great wen of London has sucked all the life." [4] Macaulay. _History of Eng._, Vol. I. pp. 165-6. Infra, Chap. VII. [5] Cf. infra, Chap. VII. [6] Brentano, 44, 52, 54, 58. Green, _Short Hist._, 193. G. Howell, _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, 22-25, 29, 31. [7] Cunningham, _Growth of Industry_, 212. Brentano, 90, 95. [8] Cf. infra, Chap. V. [9] Cf. especially Chap. VII. [10] _The Hist. and Development of Gilds._ Cf. especially Note 1. [11] _Ibid._ 8. "The objects of the [Greek: eranoi] were of the most varied description; ... associations of this kind were very common in the democratic states of Greece, and to this class the numberless political and religious societies, corporations, unions for commerce and shipping, belonged." Boeckh, _Public Economy of Athens_, p. 243. [12] Grote, _Hist. of Greece_, Vol. VI. p. 247, n. 1, where several interesting parallels with the Mediæval Gilds will be found. (Cf. also infra, p. 34, note 2.) [13] E. Hatch, Bampton Lectures, Lect. II. notes. [14] Cunningham, p. 124. [15] Cf. _Die klösterlichen Gebets Verbrüderungen bis zum Ausgange des Karolingischen Zeitalters_, von Dr Adalbert Ebner. Similar spiritual confederations are found in Italy in the second quarter of the eighth century, and in the ninth they become common in southern Europe. Alcuin speaks of them by the terms _pacta caritatis_, _fraternitas_, _familiaritas_. The monks of the allied houses were termed _familiares_. Dr Brentano (p. 20) says that at later times "conventions like that between the Fraternity of London Saddlers and the neighbouring Canons of St Martin-le-Grand, by which the saddlers were admitted into brotherhood and partnership of masses, orisons, and other good deeds with the canons, were common." [16] Brentano, pages 1, 2. They are printed in Kemble's _The Saxons in England_, Vol. I. Appendix D. [17] Brentano, 49. [18] Gneist, _Self Government_, Vol. I. p. 110; _Verwaltungsrecht_, Vol. I. p. 139. [19] Stubbs, III. 576, 578. [20] _Work and Wages_, p. 126. [21] Stubbs, I. 452. [22] Stubbs, I. 449: _Select Charters_, 63, cap. 27, 28: 67, cap. iii., viii., 1., etc. [23] _Select Charters_, 66, 12: 72, 6. [24] Stubbs, I. 450. [25] _Select Charters_, 67, iii., viii., 1. [26] _Ibid._ 72, ii. cap. 6. [27] Cunningham, 129, Stubbs, I. 452, Brentano, 42. [28] Gross, I. 5; II. 28, 37. See note 1 to this Chapter. [29] Cf. note 1 to this Chapter. [30] _Ibid._ [31] _Select Charters_, 167 etc.; Stubbs, I. 452, and n. 1; Eyton's _Shropshire_, XI. 134. [32] _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159. [33] Gross, I. 135, 136 and notes; II. 133, 149. [34] _Ibid._ I. 42. [35] Cf. note 2 to this Chapter. [36] _Select Charters_, 265. [37] _Select Charters_, 162, "Communam scilicet gildam." [38] Gross, I. 83 and note 1. [39] Stubbs, I. 451. [40] _Select Charters_ (Helston), 314. [41] Gross, I. 54. The Rolls of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild contain a large number of names of "foreigners." For instance in 1209 there were apparently 56 foreigners; in 1252 these had increased to 234. [42] Printed in Gross, II. 114-123. [43] _Select Charters_, 166 (Charter of Henry II. to Lincoln). [44] Gross, II. 235, and cf. note 2 to this Chapter. [45] Cf. the "Chepgauel" at Totnes. Gross, II. 236. [46] Gross, I. 57. [47] Owen and Blakeway, I. 169-174. Erskine May, _Const. Hist._ III. 276-77. [48] This close relationship of, and actual difference between, the two bodies is very distinctly seen at Bristol in the reign of Edward IV., when it was the custom for the Mayor and Council of the town to choose the chief officers of the Merchant Gild, and to pass ordinances for its regulation. Gross, II. 25. [49] On the early use of coal, cf. _Work and Wages_, p. 124. [50] The Statutes of Labourers first gave a recognised position to the "men who neither held land, nor were free burgesses," but who had a dwelling, and paid the rates of some town. Cf. Cunningham, 193-4. Supra, p. 19. [51] _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159; _Economic Interpretation_, p. 298. [52] Cf. "Butchers' Row" at Shrewsbury, where also the High Street was formerly called Bakers' Row (Pidgeon's _Handbook_, old Ed. p. 37). The Street which was afterwards known as Single Butcher Row had been earlier called "Shoemakers' Row" (Phillips, p. 200). [53] Cf. the Monks' Gilds alluded to above, p. 8 and n. 2. [54] "Which is now the only fragment left to the incumbent of the Church's income before the Reformation." S. A. S. x. 223. [55] Longfellow expresses this well in _The Golden Legend_: "The Architect Built his great heart into these sculptured stones, And with him toiled his children, _and their lives Were builded, with his own, into the walls, As offerings unto God_." [56] At Worcester a Gild School educated 100 scholars. The substitute which the Government provided at the Reformation was for less than half that number. Toulmin Smith's Collection, p. 203 and note. [57] Ordinances of the City of London, framed in 1363. [58] The Greeks had private Societies called [Greek: thiasoi] and [Greek: orgeônes] which also presented this feature. Cf. Foucart, _Les Associations réligieuses chez les Grecs_. [59] Brentano, 54. Cunningham, 203, n. 2. [60] Cf. supra, p. 20. In writing thus I have not forgotten that an opposite view is taken by Dr Brentano, Mr J. R. Green, Mr Geo. Howell, and in fact most of the writers who have touched on the subject. [61] Gross, I. 114. [62] Hartlepool, 1673. "It is ordered at a general guild ... that whosoever ... shall presume to come in and within the liberty of this corporation, to trade or occupye ... to the prejudice of the free trades and companyes within the corporation" etc. Gross, II. 106-7. [63] Cunningham, 209, n. 1. [64] Tailors' Composition, of 1478. [65] The Bailiffs are to apprehend on the third day any person coming to the town "suspitiouslie w{th}oute anie lawfull errand or occasion," and to detain him in prison "till he have found suertie of his good bearing or els to avoide the towne." "And if anie man be comitted to their warde by the wardens w{th} the fower men ordeigned to the said wardens to be assistaunt in counsell in good counsell giving of anie crafte w{th}in the said Towne and Frauncheses that then that person that is so comitted to warde ... be not deliv'ed out of warde by the Bailiffs w{th}out assent and agreement of the said wardens and fower men." "Item ... that no manne of their Crafte journeyman or other be attendant nor at the calling of anie gentleman, nor to noe other person otherwise than the lawe will but onlie to the wardens of their Crafte for the good rule of the same and assisting of the Bailiffs for keeping of the peace and for good rule of the Towne." Mercers' Composition, 1480-81. The searcher is "to make serche and espye all suche p'sones as frawdelentlye abbrygg, w{t}draw or cownceyle the payments of theyre dewties" (such as Toll, Murage, etc.). No livery is to be worn except that of the Gild or Corporation. When the town bell rings the alarum members of the Gild are to go to the help of the Bailiffs only. [66] Tailors' Composition, of 1478. Cf. _Eng. Gilds_, pp. 286, 385, 407, 420, etc. [67] There are examples of the town drawing up trading ordinances to which the Gildsmen conformed. Cf. The Usages of Winchester and the Ordinances of Worcester in _Eng. Gilds_, pp. 349, 370. Cf. also pp. 334-337. [68] Also before they could hold land in mortmain it would be necessary to obtain a charter. [69] The Oath of the Freemen of the Mercers' Company is given as a note to this Chapter. [70] Cf. Appendix. [71] "The position of master and journeyman was not that of capitalist and labourer, so much as that of two fellow-workers, one of whom, from his superior status, was responsible to the town for the conduct of both." Cunningham, 211. As showing the position of an apprentice in the 15th century a Shrewsbury Indenture is given as a note to this Chapter. [72] Cunningham, 211, n. 1. Brentano, 40, 68. [73] "The Stock in Trade required to set up in business was not great and an apprentice when his term of service was over, became a master almost as a matter of course. Journeymen were scarce, or at any rate not plentiful enough to have much influence on Trade.... Thus Capital and Labour were united." _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159, p. 53. [74] Brentano, 40. [75] Merewether and Stephens. [76] For interference with Free Election on the Continent cf. Brentano. [77] Tailors' Composition, 1563. [78] Cf. infra, Chap. VI. [79] Cf. the four Auditors to superintend the accounts of the London Grocers (1348) and the six members who were chosen "to aid the Wardens in the discharge of their duties" (1397), of whom Mr George Howell says: "_Other than these, no notice of the existence of a committee or of assistants, in England, appears earlier than the sixteenth Century_." _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, p. 40. Brentano, p. 62. Cf. the four Assistants in the Merchant Gild of Ipswich, Gross, I. 24. [80] The "Four Men of Counsel" of the Mercers were, by the Composition of 1480-81, chosen by the Wardens. [81] Mercers' Composition, 1480-81. Tailors' and Skinners', 1563. [82] Tailors' Composition, 1563. [83] Several of these are in the Town Museum at Shrewsbury. [84] A "Key-keeper" appears later in the lists of officers. [85] Their situation is given in _Some account of the Ancient and Present state of Shrewsbury_, published in 1808. [86] Barbers' Composition (1483 A.D.). [87] _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159, p. 44. [88] _Select Charters_, p. 65. [89] _Elizabethan England_, p. 9. [90] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, Vol. III., p. 607. [91] The writs issued in 1388 order returns of the "Charters and Letters Patent _si quas habent_": cf. Toulmin Smith, pp. 128, 130. The "Compositions" spoken of below were renewals and confirmations of previously enjoyed privileges. They usually assert that the Gild has been in existence "a tempore quo non extat memoria." [92] Charters were also necessary before lands could be acquired in mortmain. [93] Stubbs, ii. p. 504 and note 1. [94] Toulmin Smith. Introduction, p. xxiv. It is from these returns that Mr Toulmin Smith has compiled his collection of ordinances of "English Gilds," which however comprise but a small portion of the whole, and throw little or no light on the working of the Graft Gilds. The documents have not yet been calendared, but they do not appear to contain anything relating to Shrewsbury. [95] Cunningham, p. 210, 211. [96] Green, _Short History_, p. 192. [97] Cunningham, p. 214. [98] Brentano, 75: Riley, _Memorials_, 539, 565, 568, 570, 571, &c. [99] Pidgeon's _Gilds of Shrewsbury_; _S. A. S._, Vol. V. p. 265. [100] _S. A. S._, Vol. V. p. 266. [101] Pidgeon's _Gilds_. [102] Merewether and Stephens. Pidgeon's _Gilds_. [103] Pidgeon's _Gilds_; _S. A. S._ Vol. x. p. 33. [104] Those of Abbotsbury, Cambridge and Exeter. Cf. supra, p. 9. [105] Toulmin Smith, pp. 29, 42, &c. [106] _Ibid._, 7, 8, 11, &c. [107] The little that is known about it is given in Owen and Blakeway's _History of Shrewsbury_, II. 122. [108] It is printed in _S. A. S._, Vol. V. [109] _S. A. S._, Vol. VIII. [110] Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 95. [111] "None that is of Frenshe, Flemmyshe, Irysh, Dowche, Walshe, or any other Nacyones borne not beyng at Truse w{t} our Sov'ayne Lorde the kynge, but onlye mere Englysshe borne." [112] Such Articles against the wearing of Liveries were common in the Gild Statutes. Cf. Toulmin Smith, _passim_. [113] Except by the Nobility to their personal dependents. Cf. Stubbs, III. 552. [114] 8 Edw. IV. c. 2. [115] 22 Hen. VIII. c. 4. The Entrance Fees for Apprentices had been raised in some cases to 30/- and 40/-. They are now reduced to 2/6 Entrance Fee, and 3/4 Fee on taking up freedom. [116] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 5. [117] 1 Edw. VI. cap. 14. [118] _Hist. of Reformation_, II. 72. [119] May, 1548; Council Book MS. in the Privy Council Office. Cf. Dixon, _Hist. of Church of Eng._ Vol. II. page 462, note. [120] Burnet, _Hist. of Reformation_, IV. 281. [121] Cf. Gross, I. 162, II. 14, 170, 279. [122] The Statute 14 Eliz. c. 14 was enacted "For the assurance of gifts, grants etc. made and to be made to and for the relief of the poor in the Hospitals etc." [123] _Memorials_, Vol. II. Part I. page 100. [124] Against this were to be set the "enclosing" and "non-residence" grievances. [125] _Elizabethan England_, p. 11. [126] _Ibid._, p. 121. [127] _Ibid._, p. 117. [128] _Elizabethan England_, p. 117. [129] _Ibid._ [130] The good work of the Gilds is expressly acknowledged in many charters of the time, e.g. the charter granted to Faversham (1616) recites that long experience had shown that the dividing of the government of towns into several companies had worked great good, and was the means of avoiding many inconveniences and preposterous disorders, in respect that the government of every artificer and tradesman being committed to men of gravity, best experienced in the same faculty and mystery, the particular grievances and deceits in every trade might be examined, reformed and ordered. Gross, II. 89. [131] Cunningham, p. 181. [132] Cf. especially, 3 Edw. IV. c. 4; 22 Edward IV. c. [133] Gross, II. 1, 2, 55, 89, 186-7, 208, 250. [134] Cf. infra, pp. 90-91. The repealing statute (14 Eliz. c. 12) avowed that not only had the former Act been "supposed for the benefit of the said town" but had also been intended for the "advancing of the Corporation of Drapers, Cottoners and Friezers of the said town." [135] Gross, II. 87. [136] Gross, II. 281. Cf. also pp. 12, 87, 199, 234, 247-8, 250, 281, 355, 360. [137] _Ibid._, 12. [138] _Ibid._, 56, 90, 91, 176, 186, 193, 199, 234, 247, 251, 264, 364, 385. [139] Merewether and Stephens, 1408. [140] Cromwell's Charter to Swansea. Gross, II. 234. [141] Cf. the ordinance which appears in the Tailors' records, A.D. 1711, April 11. "No combrother shall at any one time have more than two apprentices, one having served 3-1/2 years before the other apprentice be bound, and no apprentice above 17 years taken, and he must be unmarried." [142] It was also directed against the paying of the Shearmen in kind. [143] Cf. also 18 Eliz. cap. 15 (Goldsmiths): 8 Eliz. cap. 11 (Haberdashers). [144] In 1570-1 when Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of Wales, passed through Shrewsbury. [145] Shrewsbury Corporation Records. [146] State Papers, Domestic, 1566? (p. 285). [147] State Papers, Domestic, 1619, Oct. ? [148] _Ibid._, 1620, Jan. ? [149] _Ibid._, 1620, Jan. ? (There are several petitions against other intruders also, by the countenance of the City of London, "who wish to engross all markets.") [150] _Ibid._, 1620, Jan. ? [151] _Ibid._, 1620, Jan. 28. [152] _Ibid._, 1620, Feb. 21. [153] State Papers, Domestic, 1622. Several petitions from North Wales against the Proclamation. [154] _Ibid._, 1621. Petition of Drapers of Shrewsbury. [155] _Ibid._, 1621, May 21. Petition of Clothiers of North Wales: the Drapers of Shrewsbury are trying to draw all trade to Shrewsbury, which will be their ruin. [156] State Papers, Domestic; Oswestry Corporation Records, printed in _S. A. S._ Vol. III. [157] In 1622 the Bailiffs had requested a loan from the Mercers towards the establishing of a market for Welsh cloth in Shrewsbury. [158] The traders of Liverpool seem to have been the first to do this, so far as the Welsh trade of Shrewsbury was concerned. Cf. Owen's _Shrewsbury_. [159] Orders of Corporation (collected by Godolphin Edwardes, Mayor in 1729). _S. A. S._ Vol XI. [160] _Ibid._ [161] _Ibid._ [162] Orders of Corporation (1689). [163] _Ibid._ (1729). [164] _Ibid._ [165] "1619. That the Corporation endeavour to compel the wardens of the Bakers' Company to pay their old annuity of £4. 6_s._ 8_d._ (sic) to the Corporation." Orders of Corporation printed in Phillips' _History of Shrewsbury_, p. 170. [166] Orders of Corporation printed in Phillips' _History of Shrewsbury_. [167] Cf. supra, p. 44. [168] Glovers' records, 1681. [169] 1782. Two members were called upon to show cause why they practise a profession contrary to that they have sworn to follow. [170] _Britannia Languens_, p. 355. [171] p. 88. [172] Consisting however of masters only. [173] Macaulay, _History of England_, Vol I. p. 204, n. [174] Cf. Howell, _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, pp. 16, 62, 79, 103, 109, 472. [175] Resolution of Saddlers in 1798, voting £50. [176] This sentiment finds expression even in some of the compositions. [177] That is, masters only, not workmen. [178] _The Happy Warrior_ of Wordsworth gives us probably a very true idea of the mediæval conception of the perfect knight. [179] Cf. Stubbs' _Lectures on Constitutional History_. [180] Cf. supra, p. 47. [181] Scott's _Marmion_. [182] Brentano, p. 21. [183] _Ibid._ p. 21. [184] Toulmin Smith, p. 192. [185] It is a curious coincidence that these two towns which earlier evinced such jealousy towards one another's procession (cf. supra, p. 63) should have maintained it longest. [186] The festivities of the Preston Gild were held at intervals of twenty years. The last took place in 1882 (cf. Abram, _Memorials_), but many features place the Preston pageants in a different class from that to which those of Shrewsbury and Coventry belong. [187] i.e. Coventry. [188] Though there is no doubt that the Quarry was used for the performance of plays by other actors. Cf. infra, p. 119. [189] Phillips (p. 201) gives the titles of two of these plays: "Julian the Apostate" (at which Elizabeth intended to be present, but was misinformed as to the date: when she arrived at Coventry tidings reached her that it was already performed) in 1565, and "The Passion of Christ" in 1567. [190] Cf. supra, pp. 5, 36, 85, 92, 98-9. [191] Cf. supra, p. 90. [192] Stow's _Survey_, p. 124. [193] Shearmen's records. [194] _Ibid._ [195] Taylor MS. [196] Shearmen's records. [197] _Ibid._ [198] (1594.) Owen and Blakeway, Vol. I. p. 396. [199] Macaulay, _History of England_, Vol. I. p. 164. [200] _Through England on a Side Saddle in the time of William and Mary, being the Diary of Celia Fiennes._ [201] From the dedication to _The Recruiting Officer_. [202] Thackeray, _The Four Georges_, p. 320. [203] Perry, _Church History_, Vol. II. p. 512. [204] Glovers' records, 1781. "Item, 1/- for carrying the Flag to Church on Show Day." [205] Saddlers' records, 1810. "Treasurer to pay 2 guineas to the apprentices to go to Kingsland on Show Monday, and that they may have the use of the Cloth, Flag and Streamers belonging to the Company." [206] Saddlers' records, 1812. "That £10 be allowed to dine the company instead of going to Kingsland." [207] Cf. infra, p. 138. [208] _Britannia Languens_, p. 355. [209] _The Stranger in Shrewsbury._ [210] _Ibid._ p. 24. [211] _Ibid._ On p. 28 they are described as being 16 in number. They appear to have varied considerably in number at different periods. [212] _The Stranger in Shrewsbury_, p. 24. [213] _Ibid._ p. 97. [214] _Ibid._ p. 97. [215] In 1637. [216] Though a few patriotic members kept the arbours etc. in repair a few years longer. [217] "1822. Thomas Frances Dukes made a Combrother free of all expense, for his handsome conduct in giving up the Charter." (Mercers' Records.) [218] Cf. _The Stranger in Shrewsbury_, p. 28. [219] The Mercers decide that their dinner shall not cost above £25. [220] A similar case was tried at Ludlow in 1831 when the Hammer-men obtained a verdict in their favour and a farthing damages. [221] 5 and 6 Will. IV. c. 76. [222] _Constitutional History of England_, Erskine May, Vol. III. p. 285. [223] Section 41. Omnes mercatores habeant salvum et securum exire de Anglia, et venire in Angliam, et morari et ire per Angliam, tam per terram quam per aquam, ad emendum et venendum, sine omnibus malis toltis. [224] These were finally pulled down in 1859. [225] The Mercers followed this example in 1878. [226] _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159, p. 50. [227] _Quarterly Review_, Vol. 159, p. 56. The Drapers' company at Shrewsbury still survives to manage S. Mary's Almshouses. [228] In 1835 there appear to have been companies in at least the following other towns in England, Alnwick, Bristol, Carlisle, Chester, Coventry, Durham, Gateshead, Haverfordwest, Kendal, Kingston-on-Thames, Lichfield, London, Ludlow, Morpeth, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Oxford, Preston, Richmond, Ruthin, Sheffield, Southampton, Wells, and York. [229] Cf. supra, pp. 47-51. [230] Cf. supra, pp. 105-106. [231] Howell, _Conflicts of Capital_ etc., p. 494. [232] The story of the rise of Trades Unions has been told with much detail by Mr G. Howell in his _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, and by Dr Brentano in the last portion of his Essay on Gilds. [233] It is to be hoped that the development of the "New Unionism" will not frustrate this hope. [234] Mr John Burns has recently been urging on Trades Unions the advisability of surrendering this feature, so that the funds may the more completely be devoted to militant purposes. [235] By Henry Lytton Bulwer, M.P., in a letter to the Handloom weavers when they petitioned for the creation of gilds of trade. [236] Foxwell, _Irregularity of Employment_, p. 72. [237] "There is of late a partial revival of good workmanship in many trades ... but it will require years of toil to recover our lost ground in the markets of the world." G. Howell, _Conflicts of Capital_ etc., p. 225. Prof. Foxwell points out that "the master cutlers of Sheffield have done something in [the] direction lately of exposing and punishing falsification" etc., _Irregularity of Employment_ etc., p. 80 and note. Mr E. J. Poynter notices that "the firm of which Mr William Morris is the head, of which indeed he is the sole member, started the idea, now well understood, that the only possible means of producing work which shall be satisfactory from every side is to return to the principles on which all works of art and art-manufacture were executed, not only in the Middle Ages, but at all epochs up to the beginning of this century." _Ten Lectures on Art_, p. 274. [238] This paper was written for the Shropshire Archæological and Natural History Society, and was printed in substance in their _Transactions_, 2nd Series, Vol. III., Part ii., p. 253. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. Footnote 118 appears on page 67 of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page. The original text includes an intentional blank space. This is represented by ________ in this text version. 
41181	----	+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ THE GREAT STRIKE ON THE "Q" WITH A HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION AND GROWTH OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS, BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN, AND SWITCHMEN'S MUTUAL AID ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA. BY John A. Hall, _Ex-Yardmaster C., B. & Q. Railway_. 1889. ELLIOTT & BEEZLEY, CHICAGO AND PHILADELPHIA. COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY JOHN A. HALL. DEDICATION. A history of the spoliations, robberies, and oppressions of corporate capital in America, is a history of shame, degradation and disgrace, not to be obscured in the halo of great achievements in material progress, though adorned by the splendid triumphs of science and art. It is the impersonation of the passion of avarice, and no more soul-debasing passion afflicts the human race. It becomes more ravenous the more its maw is gorged; it always and everlastingly wants more; in growth it never reaches maturity. The only firm and determined resistance that has ever confronted this power has come from the widely extended but fraternally combined labor organizations of the country; though not always successful in resistance, they have ever left the enemy too feeble to follow up a technical victory. To that mighty bulwark that will yet stem the tide of corporate greed, and insure to the laborer a fair share of the produce of his toils, this book is respectfully dedicated. PREFACE. The cause of right is but the cause of reason. Let all men reason together, and be brothers. Let all help each other and it will be easier for all. We are all victims of monopoly, and it lies within our own efforts to reform a system which enslaves the many and makes heartless misers of the few. We must not fear a thing because it seems radical; truth is always radical, and every advance that humanity has ever made has been born in radicalism. To act upon the dictates of reason is to be radical. This fearful thing called radicalism is the hope of society. With it you will bury monopoly, injustice and oppression. Him the world calls Master, because of His worthiness, nobleness, manhood and justice, was far from being conservative. He espoused the cause of the poor, the weak and the helpless against the rich, the strong, and the powerful. Instead of favoring and fostering the existing evils of society, He sought to reform them, and set into motion the great wheels of Christianity that are rolling over the whole earth. Let those who call themselves His followers, strive to make His commands practicable. Let them have more of justice, charity and humanity. ORGANIZATION. To obtain justice, and obtain it legally, the weak must organize. Whatever may be the ideal to which labor reformers aspire, the first step must be organization. This is living protest against monopoly and injustice, and the means by which we must reform our social system, if we would last as a nation. A tramp at the base of the social pyramid, and a millionaire at the top, argues ill for the middle classes. With the foundation rotten, and the summit top-heavy, the whole structure must fall or be rebuilt. Much of the matter contained in this book came under the personal observation of the writer; more was furnished by the Brotherhoods and the correspondence of the strikers. Thanks are due to Chairmen Hoge and Murphy, for kindness and favors rendered. Yours Truly, JOHN A. HALL. THE GREAT STRIKE ON THE Q. This work should properly begin with a short history of the origin and growth of the three Orders whose members were connected with the strike upon the Burlington system. Naturally the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers should come first, as the strike originated with them, and was brought about by the injustice and oppression of the Burlington Officials toward this Order. The organization of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers originated in the State of Michigan, in the year 1863. For some years before that time, the locomotive engineers on various roads throughout the country had cause for serious complaints owing to the treatment they received at the hands of railroad officials. It was felt that the men handling the locomotives on the growing railroad system of America were performing important duties that required good, responsible men, and deserved fair and honorable treatment, which, in many instances, was not given. The tendency of many railroad officers, in fact, was to degrade engineers, and refuse them the justice and fair dealing which is their just due. The immediate cause of the formation of the Order was the harsh treatment received by the engineers employed on the Michigan Central Railroad from the superintendent of motive power of that road. The disposition manifested by him to wage a remorseless war upon the best interests of labor, and especially his incroachments upon the established rights and usages of the engineers in the employ of that company, and the reduction of their pay, at length became insufferable, and the engineers, as a class, became satisfied that the safety of their pecuniary interests demanded a unity of purpose and combined organization. A meeting was held, composed of engineers employed by the Michigan Central Railroad, and the result of their deliberations, at this primary meeting, was a call for a Convention of Engineers, to meet in the city of Detroit, on the fifth of the ensuing month, May. The call was extended only to the engineers on the following roads: The Michigan Central, Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana, Detroit & Milwaukee, Grand Trunk on the American side, and the Detroit Branch of the Michigan Southern. At the Convention, the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana was represented by F. Avery, L. Wheeler and John Kennedy; the Detroit Branch of that road by T. Wartsmouth and E. Nichols; the Detroit & Milwaukee by H. Higgins; the Grand Trunk by B. Northrup; and Geo. Q. Adams represented the Eastern Division of the Michigan Central, and W. D. Robinson the Middle Division of the same road. With but little formality in their organization, these delegates entered upon their duties. A Constitution and By-Laws, embodying the fundamental principles of our present organization, was adopted. The necessity of something further on the part of engineers than the common consent to become and remain members of this organization so long as suited their convenience, and no longer, became apparent to minds of the delegates, and an obligation, as a bond of union, was unanimously adopted, and on the 8th of May, 1863, a band of twelve engineers, the delegates included, joined hands and pledged themselves to support the Constitution and By-Laws then adopted, and to resist the wrong and maintain the right. Officers were elected, and Division No. 1, of Detroit, Brotherhood of the Foot-Board, stood forth as the pioneer in the work of the regeneration and elevation of the locomotive engineers on this continent, eager to extend the hand of fellowship and alliance to all worthy members of the craft who had any faith in their rights as a class and a belief that in organized action alone rested a hope of vindication. The organization of Divisions soon began, and in three months ten Divisions had sprung into existence. At this time, the Chief Engineer of Division No. 1 issued a call for a meeting of one delegate from each Division, to meet at Detroit August 18, 1863, for the purpose of forming a Grand National Division, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. At this meeting, the Constitution and By-Laws were changed and provisions made for the formation and government of a Grand National Division. W. D. Robinson was elected Grand Chief Engineer of the Order, and served in that capacity until August 20, 1864, at which time there were thirty-eight Sub-Divisions, covering the railroads from Michigan, through Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Charles Wilson, the second Grand Chief Engineer, was elected to succeed W. D. Robinson, and continued in office until February 25, 1874. At a special session of the Grand International Division, held in the city of Cleveland, P. M. Arthur, the present incumbent, was elected his successor, and re-elected at the close of each term of three years to the present time, executing the duties of the office with such success and judgment that the Order has continued to grow and improve, until it now numbers three hundred and sixty Sub-Divisions with 25,000 members, and covers every railroad and every State and Territory in the United States, as well as a large part of the British Provinces and Mexico. We believe that the law of the Order, enforced by him, of "doing by others as we would be done by," is the only true solution to the labor problem of the present day. In these days of strikes and increasing labor agitation, the course adopted by them has proved to be unquestionably the best, and to that alone we ascribe the great success that has attended their efforts and made their Order known and respected everywhere. This course is, that any differences between members and their employers shall be settled by arbitration. St. Paul says, "Come, let us reason together;" and this advice they have found to be so good that they have it to say, that never since its adoption by them have they resorted to a strike when the officials of a company where dissatisfaction existed would receive and treat with our committee. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. The organization known as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen was organized at Port Jervis, N. Y., December 1, 1873, and is consequently fifteen years old. The following "Preamble" to the Constitution explains the aims and objects of the Order: For the purpose of uniting Locomotive Firemen, and elevating their social, moral and intellectual standing, and for the protection of their interests and the promotion of their general welfare, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen has been organized. The interests of our members and their employers being identical, we recognize the necessity of co-operation, and it is the aim of the Brotherhood to cultivate a spirit of harmony between them, upon a basis of mutual justice. Realizing the fact that our vocation involves ceaseless peril, and that it is a duty we owe to ourselves and our families to make suitable provision against these disasters which almost daily overtake us on the rail, the necessity of protecting our interests as firemen and of extending to each other the hand of charity, and being sober, industrious and honorable men, becomes self-evident: And, hence, the Brotherhood has adopted as its cardinal principles, the motto: "Protection, Charity, Sobriety and Industry." The organization was formed by eleven men on the Erie Railroad, and the first Lodge numbered eleven men. Its growth and development has been phenomenal; starting with that first Lodge of eleven men in New York, the organization expanded into immense proportions, with lodges in every State and Territory of the Union, covering Canada and extending into Mexico. There are at present 385 subordinate lodges, with a membership of 19,000 men. The rapid growth fully demonstrates the necessity for its existence. It might be supposed that this phenomenal increase would be a source of weakness, instead of strength. Such, however, is not the case. The Brotherhood of Firemen has never, at anytime, been unwieldy, but on the contrary the addition of each new lodge has been so well assimilated by the whole, that this body of 19,000 is as compact, firm and as thoroughly under control as a division of the Regular Army. Another grand element of strength is the fact that there is no aristocracy in the Order. It must not be thought that all has been clear and smooth sailing with the Brotherhood of Firemen; this great result has been won by years of incessant labor by earnest, determined men, with confidence in themselves and in the justice of their cause. Probably no organization has had a harder struggle for existence; it has experienced serious reverses; the year of its birth was the year of the great commercial panic. Born and nurtured in adversity, it has steadily worked its way to the front. In 1877 the country was agitated from Maine to California by labor troubles, and labor organizations received a severe check, and an unsettled condition existed for several years. "Seventy-eight" and "'79" were critical periods, and were years of anxiety for the safety of the Brotherhood. Starting in 1873 as a purely benevolent institution, it developed into a labor organization in 1885, retaining, however, all of its moral and benevolent features intact. There are no State organizations in this Brotherhood. It is governed by a Grand Lodge composed of a Grand Master, Vice-Grand Master, Grand Secretary and Treasurer, Editor and Manager of the Magazine, Grand Executive Board of five members, and a Board of Grand Trustees, consisting of three members. OFFICERS. The first Grand Master was J. A. Leach, now residing in Kansas City; the first Grand Secretary and Treasurer was Wm. N. Sayre, of Buffalo, N. Y.; second Grand Master, W. R. Worth, followed in succession by F. B. Alley and W. T. Goundie (now General Manager of the New York Elevated Railway), and F. W. Arnold. S. M. Stevens, of Lowell, Mass., was, for several years, Grand Organizer and Instructor, succeeded in 1885 by J. J. Hannahan, of Englewood, Ill., who now holds that office in connection with that of Vice-Grand Master. The present officers are: F. P. Sargent, Grand Master, Terre Haute, Ind.; J. J. Hannahan, Vice-Grand Master and Grand Organizer and Instructor, Englewood, Ill.; Eugene V. Debs, Grand Secretary and Treasurer, Terre Haute, Ind.; H. H. Walton is Chairman of the Grand Executive Board, Philadelphia, Pa.; W. E. Burns, Secretary, Chicago, Ill.; the Grand Executive Board is composed of J. J. Leahy, Philadelphia, Pa.; W. H. McDonnell, Scranton, Pa.; F. Holl, Minneapolis, Minn., and C. W. Gardner, Fort Dodge, Ia. The circulation of the Magazine, the official organ of the Brotherhood is 26,000 copies. BENEVOLENCE OUTSIDE OF THE ORDER. Standing squarely on the broad principles of Benevolence and Human Justice, this Order has ever extended the helping hand and given counsel and assistance to the laboring man in his struggle for independence. The Brotherhood of Railway Brakemen owe much to the B. of L. F., and never in its history has the B. of L. F. opposed itself to labor organization. Remembering their own desperate struggle for existence, charity, sympathy and aid have been freely given to younger organizations. Ever foremost in the battle for justice and right, it was the first to call attention to the imperative necessity for federation of railroad employes. The strike upon the "Q" has demonstrated the absolute need of federation. GRAND MASTER SARGENT. The following extract from the address of Grand Master Sargent, at Minneapolis, three years ago, covers many of the points in controversy to-day, and will be found interesting to the public: The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen ask nothing that is not just; we do not want one penny more than we rightfully earn; we believe that our calling is one that should command good wages for faithful service, and we desire also that all our members shall render such service. We recognize the fact that our employer has certain rights that we, as employes, are bound to respect, and it is never our purpose to antagonize. Justice is our motto--justice not only to ourselves, but to our employer. I believe that if organizations of labor keep in mind that great principle, and are officered by men that are conservative, that are willing to work at both sides of a question and settle on a basis of equal justice to both employer and employe, and when the employer will be willing to treat his employe with that spirit of fairness which is due all faithful workmen, recognizing in them men of intelligence, capable of knowing right from wrong, that strikes and strife will seldom come, and if they do, it will be when every well-thinking man that has the true principle of manhood will endorse the organization struggling for its rights. I desire the members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen to so conduct themselves that when they go before a General Manager, Superintendent or Master Mechanic, they will meet with those courtesies due a manly man. I want General Managers, Superintendents and Master Mechanics to feel that they have in a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen a faithful employe, one they can place confidence in, and when he comes to them in a respectful way, and lays before them a grievance, that they will give him a hearing and render him justice. Our system of adjusting grievances is by arbitration, believing this is the only sure method of preserving harmony between employer and employe. If at any time we feel aggrieved, we make a statement of our grievance and place it in the hands of the Grievance Committee of the local Lodge. The chairman of this committee, through its secretary, calls the committee together, and examines into the merits of the grievance, and if considered just, the committee so reports to the Lodge with proper recommendations, and if the Lodge considers the grievance worthy of action, it orders the committee to proceed to adjust the matter. The committee then calls on the Master Mechanic and Superintendent, and in a gentlemanly manner lay the grievance before them, and if possible arrive at a satisfactory settlement. If the Master Mechanic and Superintendent have not the power, or show no disposition to treat with the committee, they go to the General Manager, from him to the President, and so on until all means have been exhausted to secure an adjustment. If they fail, they then send for their chief executive, and on his arrival, he, in conjunction with the committee, again uses all means within reason to effect a settlement. Failing again, it then lies in the power of the Grand Master to order the men to quit work, or, in more plain terms, to strike. Now, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen have been in existence nearly thirteen years, and during that time we have not been involved in a single strike. We believe that the conservative stand that has always been taken, and the intelligence of the men that have been our leaders and committees have been the means of making this record. It has been said that firemen would never be recognized by railway officials in the adjustment of wages or the settlement of grievances. I desire to dispel any such opinion from the minds of all. During the last year we have had a large number of our committees wait on Presidents and General Managers, and in every instance they were cordially treated and received a satisfactory advance of pay, and the result is that firemen are looked upon by officials as men capable of reasoning, that they are qualified to go before a President or General Manager and discuss questions relative to their vocation better than men that are not following the same occupation, even though they ride upon the same engine. The Brotherhood feels proud of its record, and it is our purpose to carry forward our good work in the same straightforward manner. We ask nothing of our employer but what is reasonable, believing that it is the policy of the railway managers of the present day to treat with their employes in a fair and liberal manner. It has been my experience, during the limited time that I have been connected with railroads, that most of the dissatisfaction that arises between employer and employe originates from the overbearing, tyrannical action of some petty foreman, ofttimes a Master Mechanic, and employes censure the officials, and sometimes affairs assume a serious aspect, when, if the employe would go to the proper authority--the President or General Manager--and lay his grievance before them, he would get immediate satisfaction. Ofttimes the officials know nothing of the existence of any dissatisfaction until they are informed that the employe has struck; then it is too late to present the true situation to the official, who, having had no intimation of trouble, feels greatly incensed at the action of the employe, and immediately turns against him, when, had the facts been presented to him, the foreman or the petty boss that caused the dissatisfaction would have been looking for employment, while the employe would have had justice. There is only one way to adjust our grievances, and that is by a careful statement to the proper authority. Then, if we fail to obtain satisfaction, we can feel that we have done our duty, and the responsibility rests with employer, not employe. During the past few months we have observed in many localities troubles between employer and employe. The cry has always been, Labor fighting capital. Capital is not the enemy of labor; it is not capital that labor is opposing; it is the monopolist, and such a monopolist grinds down the laboring man to starvation wages in order that he may enrich his own coffers. Labor is the creator of capital, and as such there can be no strife between them. It is the monopolists that control capital that antagonizes the laborer, and compels him to work for scarcely enough to keep his family in food; and it is those monopolists that to-day have capital bound in chains and separated from its creator--labor. For years laboring men have been subject to reductions in wages until, in many instances, the amount of their daily earnings would scarcely buy food sufficient to sustain life. Men of liberal views have observed this state of affairs, and many of our great thinkers have examined into this question, and, becoming convinced that it was wrong to allow their fellow-men to be trodden down by a class of men that have only one ambition, and that is to control all the capital of the land, have organized for the purpose of getting for the laborer, the creator of the vast wealth of this country, a reasonable day's pay for a reasonable day's work; not to antagonize capital, but to ask that he who creates the wealth of the land shall have at least enough to clothe and feed his family and live in a respectable little home. To be sure, there have many things occurred during the past few months that have caused some of these organizations of labor to be looked upon with suspicion, and there are many that stand ready to condemn them. But let us not be too severe; we have all made mistakes, and we should always be willing to concede to others what we ask for ourselves--charity; and let us be charitable to those that during the past year have been involved in difficulties with their employers. The members are not to be censured for all that is done by these organizations. Officers that wield the power can involve an Order in difficulty by making unjust demands. Men ought never to be placed at the head of these labor organizations who are unprincipled or unjust. Place men there who will work to the interests of those they represent, and at all times avoid conflict when it is uncalled for. I am convinced that the labor troubles of the past few months have been beneficial to us all, notwithstanding there have been many wrongs committed, many lives lost and much property destroyed. This we all deplore, and any Order that sanctions any such actions on the part of its members should be condemned. We believe that the trouble we have experienced will teach a lesson to all organizations of labor. We cannot be too careful whom we admit to our Order, one bad man may ruin a whole Lodge. Look well to a man's character and standing before you admit him, and then you will find that in all his duties he will do right and bring credit to himself and the Order. In admitting only such men, we may hope to receive the endorsement of all good people. We turn to our Constitution, and there read in the preamble: "For the purpose of effecting a unity of Firemen, and elevating them to a higher social, moral and intellectual standard, and for the promotion of their general welfare, and the protection of their families, the Brotherhood has been organized." Let these words be engraven upon the hearts, not only of our membership, but the great public, so that our aims may be understood and our ambitions appreciated. Our preamble voices the sublime sentiments of our fraternity, and we trust they may touch a responsive chord in the hearts of all good people. Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association of North America. This Association is growing rapidly in influence and numbers. It is now one of the most powerful labor organizations on this continent. The large field from which it draws its membership, the character of its members, and the care exercised in admitting none but the right type of men, the energy and determination of each individual, and, above all other considerations, the absolute equality guaranteed by its Constitution and unwritten laws, warrant the assertion that this Association must soon stand among the first in the list of labor organizations. OBJECT. The preamble to the Constitution reads as follows: 1st. Is to unite and promote the general welfare and advance the interests, social, moral and intellectual, of its members. Benevolence, very needful in a calling as hazardous as ours, has led to the organization of this Association. 2d. Believing that it is for the best interests, both of our members and their employers, that a good understanding should at all times exist between them, it will be the constant endeavor of this Association to establish mutual confidence and create and maintain harmonious relations between employer and employe. 3d. Such are the aims and purposes of the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association of North America. Benevolence is its corner-stone,--to relieve the distress of disabled brothers, to care for their widows and orphans, and to see to the decent burial of deceased members. The National Association, strong as it is in numbers, is but little over three years old. The first Switchmen's Union was founded in Chicago, on August 18, 1877. That was a local society, and was chartered by the State of Illinois. The charter members were--Edward W. Jennings, Thos. Griffin, James Cullerton, Wm. Hopper, Thaddeus Boyd, Thos. Green, Edward Scanlon, John Kenny, Wm. Short, Chas. Richardson, Wm. Rosencranse and John Reily. The officers were--Wm. Hopper, President; Thaddeus Boyd, Vice-President; Thos. Griffin, James Cullerton and Edward Jennings, Trustees. While for several years the Union made little headway, it succeeded in maintaining a nucleus for something better. In 1884, new life was instilled into it by the demands and spirit of the times, coupled with the selection of a set of officers with unusual energy, ability and determination. Rapid growth, and the creation and dissemination of sentiments of organization were the immediate results. Other cities followed Chicago's example, and very soon there were a number of flourishing Unions throughout the United States. Then the necessity of a National organization became manifest. Several Unions, moved by the same spirit, took hold of this matter about the same time. A call for a meeting of delegates of the various local bodies, to meet at 112 East Randolph street, Chicago, on February 22, 1886, was issued, and in response thereto a large assemblage of representative switchmen met at the place on the day named. The meeting lasted eight days, and was quite harmonious and exceedingly enthusiastic. The Convention was called to order by Mr. John Drury, who stated that the object was to amalgamate the different organizations into one grand body, whose authority should extend throughout the United States. The Convention was duly organized by the election of Mr. John Drury as Chairman, Mr. James A. Healey, of Chicago, as Secretary, Mr. Joseph D. Hill, of Kansas City, Reading Clerk, and Mr. M. J. Keegan, Sergeant-at-Arms. A Constitution and By-Laws were adopted, and the following grand officers elected for the current year: Grand Master, James L. Monaghan; Vice-Grand Master and Instructor, John Drury; Grand Secretary and Treasurer, John Downey. Board of Directors, M. J. Keegan, of Chicago; James A. Kelly, of Chicago; W. A. Simmons, of Chicago; James A. Healey, of Chicago; Joseph D. Hill, of Kansas City; J. L. Hyer, of Rock Island, and W. R. Davison, of Joliet. A great deal of important business was transacted in secret session pertaining to the Order, after which the Grand Lodge resolved to aid Mr. C. R. Wooldridge in the publication of a monthly magazine devoted to the interests of the Order. A uniform pin was adopted, and an invitation to attend the second annual ball, given by local Lodge No. 1, in honor of the Grand Lodge, was accepted with thanks. The Convention then adjourned, to meet in Kansas City, Monday, September 20, 1886. James L. Monaghan, the first Grand Master, graduated from the public schools of Philadelphia, and studied law for two years. Bad health, however, compelled him to abandon an indoor life, and he took to railroading. He first did duty as a clerk, but found that was little better for him than the law, and he then entered the service as a switchman on the P., W. & B. Ry. He came West in 1879, and has been prominently identified with the switchmen and their organizations until November, 1888, when he was elected to the lower house of the Illinois Legislature. He was succeeded in the office by Frank Sweeney, of Minneapolis. John Drury, the first Vice-Grand Master, is an Englishman. He first entered upon railroad work as a brakeman on the Grand Trunk of Canada. As an organizer during the early days, John Drury was eminently successful, and the Association progressed in a surprising manner during the first year of its National existence. The First Annual Convention was held at Kansas City, September 20, 1886, and was composed of delegates from twenty-five Lodges. This represented the growth of the Order for one year. The important business of the complete reconstruction of the Constitution and By-Laws to keep pace with the growing propensities of the Association, was the result of that body's deliberations. The Second Annual Convention was held at Indianapolis, September 19, 1887. The result of this meeting was a still further revision of the laws, and the election of Wm. A. Simsrott as Grand Secretary and Treasurer. At the Third Annual Convention at St. Louis, in September, 1888, Frank Sweeney, of Minneapolis, was elected Grand Master; John Downey, of Chicago, Vice-Grand Master; Geo. S. Bailey, Grand Organizer and Instructor. John W. Callahan, Chicago, Ill.; Edward Hutchinson, Chicago, Ill.; S. K. Hardin, St. Louis, Mo.; John M. Kelley, Fort Wayne, Ind.; Jas. F. Scullen, Omaha, Neb., Grand Board of Directors. Grand Master Frank Sweeney was born in Zanesville, O., in 1855. His parents moved West in 1860, and located at Monroe, Wis. He received a common-school education, and for a time studied medicine. He disliked the profession, however, and soon abandoned it and entered the railway service. His first railroading was in the capacity of brakeman on the M. & St. P. After braking on several roads for the period of four years, he began switching in the yard of the Minneapolis & St. Louis in 1886. At that time there were but three switch engines in Minneapolis. He has been in the yard service in that city ever since, until elevated to the position of Grand Master of the Order. He was one of the active men that organized Lodge No. 30, and was elected a delegate to the Second Annual Convention, held in Indianapolis, in 1887. At that session he was elected Vice-Grand Master of the Association, and his recent elevation to the highest position in the Order speaks better than words as to what opinion the switchmen have of him. He was instrumental in organizing the Northwest, and won the admiration of the switchmen of the country by his intelligent and conservative handling of questions that arose in that locality. Grand Secretary and Treasurer William A. Simsrott was born in Chicago in 1861, and has the hustle characteristic of the average Chicagoan. He received a common-school education, and began his railroading in 1878 as a clerk on the P., Ft. W. & C. Railway. In 1882 he entered the yards of the Chicago & Western Indiana Railway as a switchman. In 1883 he entered the service of the L., N. A. & C. Railway, and continued with that road until elected to the office of Grand Secretary and Treasurer. He was a yardmaster at the time of leaving the company's employ. He was accepted in Lodge No. 1 in 1883, and in a few months elected to the office of Financial Secretary. Mr. Simsrott was one of the thirteen that established the Association as a National organization, and was a delegate from Lodge No. 1 to the First Annual Convention at Kansas City in 1886. At this Convention he was chosen as one of the Grand Board of Directors, and at the Second Annual Convention, held in Indianapolis in 1887, he was elected Grand Secretary and Treasurer. None have shown a higher regard for the good of the Association than this officer. Vice-Grand Master John Downey was born in Cleveland, Ohio, October 12, 1853, and came to Chicago in the fall of 1858. He received a common education, and in the winter of 1869-70 commenced railroading. He first began braking on the P., Ft. W. & C. road, but soon went to switching in the Ft. Wayne yards. He had not been there long, however, before he had his left thumb completely shot off by the accidental discharge of a shotgun he was handling. In September, 1871, he lost two fingers off of the right hand, after which he went to tending switches on the Ft. Wayne. In 1872 he had his right foot caught and lost part of it, and 1875 he had his left foot caught and so severely injured that it laid him up for six months. In 1876 he went braking on passenger on the Ft. Wayne, where he remained for nine months, when he went braking on freight, and 1879 went back switching in the Ft. Wayne yards, where he has remained ever since. John Downey joined Lodge No. 1 in September, 1884, and was soon afterward elected Treasurer of the Lodge, a position he held continuously until October, 1887, when he resigned. He was elected Grand Secretary and Treasurer of the then Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association of the United States of America, at its first Convention, held in Chicago, February 22, 1886. He served for some time in this capacity, but was forced to resign, owing to ill health, and when W. S. Condon absconded with all the money of the Grand Lodge he was asked by the Board of Directors of the Grand Lodge to fill out the unexpired term as Grand Secretary and Treasurer, and straighten out the tangled financial affairs of the Grand Lodge. He responded with that patriotism he is noted for, and won encomiums from all connected with the Association for his work. He has represented Lodge No. 1 in the Grand Lodge twice--Kansas City in 1886 and St. Louis in 1888. Grand Organizer and Instructor George S. Bailey was born in Edgar County, Illinois, in 1858. After receiving a common-school education, he studied law for some time, but had to abandon his studies on account of ill health. He commenced railroading in 1878 on the I. & St. L. Railway, braking on local freight. He was employed as a switchman in East St. Louis a number of years, and was prominent in the great railroad strike of 1886. When the "Q" strike occurred, he was selected to go over a portion of the road and address the railroad men. He spoke at Kansas City, St. Joe, Council Bluffs and other western points. He was a delegate from Lodge No. 37 at the Convention of 1888, and was then elected to his present position. He was a member of the Illinois Legislature in 1886, and made a creditable record. He introduced, and had passed through the House, "House Bill No. 268," which provided for a State Board of Arbitration, but before it reached the Senate the General Assembly had adjourned. Mr. Bailey is full of energy and ability, yet does not allow his enthusiasm to overbalance his good judgment. He has the faculty of controlling men and at the same urging them on to a sense of the duty they owe to themselves and those dependent upon them, as well as to their employers. It has been but a few months since the Convention of 1888, and already fifteen new Lodges have been organized, while about a dozen others are ready and are clamoring for admission to the Association. The whole Eastern section of the country yet remains to be organized, and the switchmen throughout that section are fully alive to the needs of the hour. The present year will witness the addition of several thousand earnest men to the Association. One grand element of strength is shown by this organization--namely: The absolute equality of its members. They have not permitted designing men to foster and establish a set of so-called "High-Class Runs" among them to breed discord and disunion. One switchman is the same as another, and a thousand are but as one, in all the essential points that originally brought them together. Other railway labor organizations have allowed grades and castes to grow up in their Orders, those of the lower grade having scarcely any rights that the others are bound to respect and assist them to maintain. Not so with the switchmen; the young blood in their Association will enable them to steer clear of the rocks and shoals that are sadly trying the timbers of the older Orders. In the strike upon the Burlington system this Association was not officially connected, and had no part whatever in the management or final settlement of that trouble. "We know what Master laid thy keel, What workman wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast and sail and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge, and what a heat, Were shaped the anchors of thy hope." THE GREAT STRIKE. In order to give our readers an intelligent understanding of the causes that led to the strike, it will be necessary to state that for a number of years an iniquitous system of classification had been in vogue on the Chicago Burlington & Quincy lines--a system under which gross injustice was done to engineers and firemen, in that they were so graded that their wages were reduced far below the average of the recognized standard of pay on ninety per cent of the roads in the United States and Canada. For years the men were dissatisfied; all along the lines could be heard the mutterings of discontent. The complaints touching the grievances were universal; and these complaints expanded into proportions of the gravest character. The tendency of the agitation was toward organized action. Engineers and firemen realized the necessity of co-operation, and, as a consequence, committees of the two Brotherhoods were convened in Chicago, in the month of January, 1888. Joint action was decided upon as the basis of operation. S. E. Hoge was selected as Chairman of the Engineers' Committee, and J. H. Murphy as Chairman of the Firemen. The following schedule of grievances was prepared, which met with the unanimous approval of the joint committees. This schedule was presented to the officials of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy road in a spirit of moderation and fairness. Every proposition had been carefully considered, and there was no disposition to take any undue advantage of the company. BROTHERHOOD'S SCHEDULE. _Revised Schedule of Wages Governing the Pay of Engineers and Firemen on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad and Operated Lines, Presented to the General Managers on February 15, 1888, by Committee of Engineers and Firemen._ _Article I._ No engineer or fireman shall be suspended or discharged without just or sufficient cause; and in case an engineer or fireman believes his discharge or suspension to have been unjust, he shall make out a written statement of the facts in the premises, and submit it to his Master Mechanic, and at the same time designate any other engineer or fireman (as the accused may wish) who may be in the employ of the Company; and the Master Mechanic, together with the engineer or fireman last referred to, shall, in conjunction with the Superintendent, investigate the case in question without unnecessary delay, and render a prompt decision; and in case the aforesaid discharge or suspension is decided to be unjust, he (the accused) shall be at once reinstated, and shall be paid for all time lost on such account. _Article II._ SECTION 1. Engineers and firemen shall be called at a reasonable time before leaving time. The caller shall have a book, in which the engineer and fireman must register their names and time when called. Engineers' and firemen's time shall commence when they take charge of the engine; or, if the engine is not ready, the time they report at the office for duty, and shall end at the time designated on roundhouse register as arriving, or otherwise relieved from duty. Time shall be taken from roundhouse register, instead of conductor's register or train-sheet. SEC. 2. When engineers or firemen are ordered out, and not used on account of train being abandoned, or other causes, the engineer or fireman called on duty shall receive pay for one-half (½) day for five (5) hours or less, and stand first out. _Article III._ SECTION 1. All passenger engineers running four-wheel connected engines shall receive three and one-half (3½) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, three and eight-tenths (3-8/10) cents per mile. All passenger firemen firing four-wheel connected engines shall receive two and one-tenth (2-1/10) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, two and one-fourth (2¼) cents per mile. One hundred miles or less to be considered a day's work; over one hundred miles, at the same rate per mile. SEC. 2. All freight engineers running four-wheel connected engines, four (4) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, four and three-tenths (4-3/10) cents per mile. All freight firemen, firing four-wheel connected engines, two and four-tenths (2-4/10) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, two and six-tenths (2-6/10) cents per mile. One hundred miles or less to constitute a day's work. Over one hundred miles at the same rate per mile. SEC. 3. Engineers running consolidated (eight-wheel connected) engines, four and one-half (4½) cents per mile. Firemen firing consolidated engines, two and four-tenths (2-4/10) cents per mile, two firemen on each consolidated engine. One hundred miles or less to constitute a day's work. Over one hundred miles at the same rate per mile. SEC. 4. On freight runs which occupy more than ten (10) hours to the one hundred miles, overtime shall be paid at the rate of forty (40) cents per hour for engineers, and twenty-four (24) cents per hour for firemen. SEC. 5. Local freight runs on Middle Iowa Division will be allowed one trip and one-half (1½) each way; overtime to be allowed after being on the road fifteen (15) hours. _Article IV._ SECTION 1. In computing the delayed time, the first hour shall not be counted, but if delayed one hour and thirty minutes, shall be counted as two hours, and any fraction of thirty minutes, or over, thereafter, shall be considered one hour. Engineers on freight to be paid forty (40) cents per hour; firemen on freight, twenty-four (24) cents per hour. Engineers on passenger, thirty-five (35) cents per hour; firemen on passenger, twenty-one (21) cents per hour. This article refers only to delays before starting and after arriving at terminals. SEC. 2. Engineers and Firemen called to go to Transfers or Junction Points before card time, delayed time shall commence from time of leaving roundhouse. _Article V._ On passenger runs that do not exceed three dollars and seventy-five cents ($3.75) per day, engineers shall receive three dollars and seventy-five cents ($3.75), and firemen two dollars and twenty-five cents ($2.25) per day; overtime shall be allowed in same proportion when on duty over twelve (12) hours in making such runs. In case actual mileage exceed $3.75, actual mileage at the rate of three and one-half (3½) cents for engineers, and two and one-tenth (2-1/10) cents for firemen per mile shall be allowed. _Article VI._ Short freight runs of less then eighty (80) miles when doubled within twelve hours, mileage allowed according to Sec. 2, Article III, and if not doubled within twelve hours to be allowed one day each way. _Article VII._ All engineers and firemen of work trains or helpers to be paid three dollars and fifty cents ($3.50) per day for engineers, and two dollars and ten cents (2.10) per day for firemen; twelve hours or less, one hundred miles or less, to be called a day's work. If the run should exceed one hundred miles, full freight rates as per class of engine for the entire run. _Article VIII._ SECTION 1. Engineers in snow-plow service (when on duty) shall be paid at the rate of six ($6.00) dollars per day, and firemen in snow-plow service shall be paid at the rate of three dollars and sixty cents ($3.60) per day; ten hours or less to constitute a day's work; all over ten hours to be paid at the rate of sixty (60) cents per hour for engineers, and thirty-six (36) cents per hour for firemen. When engines in snow-plow service are held in roundhouse subject to call for service, the engineer of said engine shall be paid four dollars ($4.00), and firemen two dollars and forty cents ($2.40) per day, of twenty-four (24) hours or less. SEC. 2. Engineers and firemen on weed-destroying engines shall be paid at the same rates as in snow-plow service. SEC. 3. Engineers and firemen on suburban trains between Chicago and Downers Grove will receive, the engineer one dollar and seventy-five cents ($1.75), and the firemen one dollar and five cents ($1.05) for each round trip. _Article IX._ Switch engineers to receive three dollars and firemen one dollar and eighty cents per day, of twelve hours or less; all over twelve hours to be paid, the engineer thirty cents per hour and the fireman eighteen cents per hour; except in Chicago and Kansas City yards, where ten (10) hours or less will constitute a day's work, at $3.00 for engineer and $1.80 for fireman per day; thirty cents (30) for engineers and eighteen cents (18) for firemen per hour for all over ten (10) hours. Any fraction of thirty minutes, or over, shall be counted one hour. They shall have regular engines, and shall not be taken off to give work to extra men. _Article X._ Where engineers and firemen are compelled to double hills, they shall receive one hour's pay per double, at the rate of forty cents for engineers and twenty-four cents for firemen. _Article XI._ Hostlers shall be paid at the rate of two dollars and forty cents per day; twelve hours or less to constitute a day's work. All over twelve hours to be paid at the rate of twenty-four cents per hour. They shall not be required to knock fires. Hostlers to be provided at all terminal points. In all cases where engineers and firemen have to watch their engines, they shall be paid at the full rate per hour. _Article XII._ SECTION 1. Engineers and firemen taking light engines over the road, or dead-heading over the road on company business, will be paid passenger rates; and where light engines are taken over the road, a flagman is to be furnished. In case engineers or firemen are to attend court, or on any company business, engineers to receive four dollars per day and expenses, and firemen two dollars and forty cents per day and expenses. SEC. 2. That no engineer or fireman be required to pull any train without a conductor, or a man to take charge of said train. _Article XIII._ Engineers and firemen will run, first in, first out, and, as far as practicable, on their respective divisions; and where engines are pooled, not to be governed by train department. _Article XIV._ Rights to regular runs, when ability is equal, will be governed by seniority. Engineers and firemen having regular runs up to the Agreement of 1886 will not be affected by this Article. _Article XV._ No more extra engineers or firemen will be assigned than is necessary to move the traffic with promptness and dispatch, and should any engineer or fireman feel himself aggrieved by the assignment of too many men, he can proceed as in Article I, but will receive no pay for loss of time. Galesburg Division engineers and firemen will not be required to run east of Aurora. _Article XVI._ No road engineer or fireman will be expected to do regular yard work at terminal stations. In the event of their being called upon to do said work, the engineer shall receive forty (40) cents per hour, and the fireman twenty-four (24) cents per hour. _Article XVII._ No fines shall be assessed against engineers or firemen. _Article XVIII._ That engineers and firemen and their families be given transportation when applied for, and that some arrangement be made to pass Brotherhood men over the road. _Article XIX._ SECTION 1. That where time is not allowed, the Master Mechanic shall cause the trip report to be returned to the engineer or fireman sending it in, stating why the time is not allowed, as soon as practicable. SEC. 2. All officers, engineers and firemen will observe strict courtesy of manners in their intercourse with each other. _Article XX._ All road engines will be provided with cracked coal suitable for firing, and the company shall do all outside cleaning, and where engines are pooled, the company to do all the cleaning. _Article XXI._ Engineers and firemen shall not be required to go out when they need rest, and they are expected to judge for themselves whether they need rest or not. _Article XXII._ It is understood that there will be no more examinations or tests, except such as are agreed upon by the General Manager and the General Grievance Committee. _Article XXIII._ That on the adoption of this schedule, it shall be kept posted in a conspicuous place in all register rooms on the line of road. All previous schedules and contracts shall be considered void. (Signed) S. E. HOGE, _Chairman Engineers_. J. H. MURPHY, _Chairman Firemen_. It will readily be seen that the engineers and firemen request that the compensation be fixed by the mile, as that is the method adopted by nine-tenths of the railroads in the United States. The Burlington officials have said that this compensation was sought by the Brotherhoods without regard to other conditions or circumstances. This position of the company will not bear inspection. For instance: in cases of high-class runs which they have cited, taking only a few hours for the trip, engineers and firemen have been compelled to care for their own engines; in fact, keep up the repairs of the engine, thereby saving to the company the cost of a hostler, and keeping the engine in constant use without the aid of the machinist. It was not sought by the Brotherhoods to create these high-class runs; on the contrary, the desire was to do away with them. Article XI. of the foregoing schedule plainly says that hostlers must be provided at terminal points, and where absolutely necessary for the engineer and fireman to perform this duty, that they be paid the full rate per hour. It was evidently the desire of the men to force these so-called high-class runs off the schedule, while the company desired to retain them. It is also seen that while the Brotherhoods asked for compensation according to the miles run, the trip pay could still have been continued, providing that the company did not require them to do the work of roundhouse men and machinists. The only question involved here is, that this company should pay as much per trip of equal length as is paid by the other important lines of the country. If the desire had been to pay the men honestly and fairly, it was immaterial whether the compensation be by the trip or mile. To illustrate: If a passenger engineer runs one hundred miles, this schedule calls for three dollars and fifty cents. This rate is paid by the C., R. I. & P., A., T. & S. F., Wabash, and in fact ninety per cent. of the great railway systems in the United States. The Burlington, not desiring to pay upon a basis that would make a fair comparison of wages with those of other companies, abandons the mile schedule, and simply says: "We will pay you three dollars for the trip;" in other words, three cents per mile for the same service for which other roads pay three and one-half cents. It is true that the Brotherhoods have demanded in this schedule "a considerable average increase of pay," but the public must understand that they did not demand this increase from the Burlington over what is paid by its competitors in business. Had the Burlington conceded this increase of pay, it would only have been called upon to pay precisely what its neighbors and rivals have been paying for years. A large average increase of pay must be made before the employes of this road are placed upon an equal footing with those of other roads. For many years the Burlington road had the advantage of a first-class equipment of enginemen at rates of pay far below what its competitors have been compelled to pay for the same service. In strict justice, these men might have demanded restitution, but they only asked for honest treatment in the future. They did not ask for the abolishment of classification based upon merit, age or experience. The proposition is substantially this: If an engineer is compelled to pull the best train on the Burlington road, he should have the best pay. It is not material whether he has been an engineer one year or ten years--competency alone is the requisite. When the company places a man in charge of one of its great express trains, and intrusts to his skill and judgment the lives and property of its patrons, by that very act it certifies that he is a first-class engineer, and entitled to receive pay accordingly. A first-year man is not necessarily a man of inferior ability; the company would not risk its own property and reputation, nor would the public risk their lives, with third-rate men. Why, then, should the company insist on paying them third-class wages? It is injustice, imposition, and avarice! The man who is able to perform the work of a first-class engineer should receive first-class pay, whatever that may be; and he is a slave who accepts less. On the other hand the company takes this position: It places a man in a position which requires at his hands the skill, knowledge and ability of a first-class engineer. The first year it pays him much less than a first-class engineer's wages; the second year it slightly advances his wages, but still keeps them below that of the first-class; the third year he is paid their highest wages to an engineer (which is still less than that paid by other roads), having done the same character and quality of work for three years. The result is that the company is continually gaining from the men who are in their first and second year's service a large per cent of wages. It thus gains all the percentages in this scheme, because a number of men who work the first or second year do not remain long enough in the employ of this company to be entitled to the wages that are paid to the men who have served their third year. These first and second year men who resign to accept better positions on other roads, enter other occupations in life, or are crippled, killed, or discharged by the company, are replaced by other first and second year men, and the company is thus enabled to keep a large percentage of employes at greatly reduced rates of wages. No objection could be offered to paying those who had been employed on the road a long time an extra gratuity if so desired, nor could complaint be made if, in its generosity, the company wished to pension men who had served it faithfully a number of years; but when this gratuity (?), this generosity (?), is only a small portion of the sum stolen from the same employes, the men were only human and failed to appreciate the kindness intended. One of two things must be true: either that the engineers were first-class men entitled to first-class pay, or that the public was deceived when it was asked to travel upon or risk property on trains run by second and third grade, and, consequently inferior men. The latter could not be maintained by the company. Every General Manager in the Western country knows that the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy road was equipped with first-class men in these departments, second to none anywhere. This is clearly proven by their general eagerness to re-engage the former employes of this company. Mr. Jeffrey, General Manager of the Illinois Central road, and Chairman of the General Managers' Association, stated that in the future all vacancies upon his line would be held for the ex-employes of the Burlington road. Nor is Mr. Jeffrey an exception in this matter; the C., R. I. & P., C., S. F. & C., C. & N.-W., C. M. & St. P., Wisconsin Central, M. & N. W., C., A. & St. L., together with the Eastern lines, are rapidly receiving these men into their employ. What has been said in relation to the engineers applies also to the firemen, because upon all the roads the fireman's wages is based upon those of the engineer, and he receives from fifty-five to sixty per cent of the wages that is paid to the engineer; therefore, a shaving down of the engineer's pay means also a shaving down of the amount paid to the fireman, so that on all sides the peculiar system adopted by the Burlington road robs both classes and enriches its own treasury. In the circular issued by the company it says: "The company reserves the right to ascertain by whatever examinations it may think advisable, whether its employes of all classes are capable of fulfilling the duties they undertake, and the public also demand that the railroad company shall take every precaution to employ only those men who can safely perform the work entrusted to them." This was one of the main points at issue. When the company had made such examinations, and found that an engineer or fireman was capable of taking charge of an engine, and that he was competent to fill the company's obligation to the public, what right, in justice, had they to ask that the man accept a lower grade of compensation? He performed the same service rendered by the older men, or those who had been longer on the road, and, in justice, should have received the same pay. If sent out on freight runs, he performed harder service, and a service that required skill and judgment equal at least to the passenger engineer, and should have been paid accordingly in strict sense of justice and equity. The question now arises, had these men just cause to complain? Were the engineers and firemen of the Burlington road seeking to take any undue advantage of that corporation? Were they as well paid as the employes of other roads performing similar services? We invite the attention of the public to the following comparisons: On the "Q" road there is a round trip between Rockford and Aurora which is made twenty-six times a month by the engineer. On the North-Western road there is a round trip between Rockford and Chicago which is also made twenty-six times per month. The North-Western round trip is twenty-two miles greater than the "Q" round trip. The North-Western engineer travels 572 miles per month more than the "Q's" engineer. At the rate of compensation asked by the engineers--viz: 3½ cts. per mile--the North-Western road should only pay $20.02 per month to the engineer on the Rockford-to-Chicago trip greater than that paid to the "Q" engineer who runs on the Rockford-to-Aurora trip. But the fact is that the "Q" road pays its engineer $104 per month, while the North-Western pays its engineer $175. The "Q" engineer holds just as responsible a position as the engineer on the North-Western. He has to cross three intersecting roads in the making of his trip, and, in addition to his work as an engineer, the labor of hostling or caring for the engine is imposed upon him, while the engineer for the North-Western is not obliged to care for his engine. The latter's work begins when he jumps on the engine at one end of the trip, and ceases when he delivers it at the other end. The engineer on the Sterling Branch run draws $84.10 for ninety-eight miles. He stops in Rock Falls six hours, and takes care of his own engine. The engineer that runs the Batavia and Geneva accommodation receives $87.10, and the Chicago & North-Western pays for like runs $96.20, the distance being two miles greater on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. The reason we ask more pay for the branch runs is to compensate the men for the extra work done on account of the engineers having to do the work of a machinist. The engineer on the Rockford way-freight runs nightly (twenty-six nights constituting one month), for which he receives $56.00; fireman, $35.00 per month. The engineers on the fast mail, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 125 miles per day, receive $97.50 for twenty-six days' time. The engineers on the Chicago & North-Western, for the same service, receive $120.00. The runs on the main line of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 125 miles per day, thirty-five days per month, amount received, $131.00. On the trunk lines out of Chicago, for the same service, the engineers receive $161.00. The engineers on the Buda and Vermont Branch of the "Q" line, 188-3/10 miles per day, twenty-six days constituting one month, receive for same $125.50. The Chicago & North-Western Railway pays for like service $181.00. We desire further to state that no first-class engineer on the Chicago & North-Western receives less than $96.20 for twenty-six days' work, if ready for duty. The Rock Island road pays its engineers on all of its passenger trains $3.60, and its firemen $2.15 for the 100-mile run. The Quincy road only pays $3.50 for this same run to the engineers on a few of its heaviest trains--like the Kansas City one--and on all other trains it pays only $3.37½. It only pays its firemen $2.00 when with the engineer who is paid $3.50, and $1.90 when with the engineer who receives $3.37½. The Rock Island road pays $4.15 for a run of one hundred miles to its freight engineers, and does not require them to act as hostlers for their engines. The Quincy road pays its freight engineer on the 101-mile run from Galva to New Boston $3.75. This run is on a branch road, and the engineer is compelled to do hostler's duty for his engine at both ends of his run. Let us compare two short runs: The first is on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul road. The round trip between Chicago and Elgin is seventy-four miles, for which the engineer is paid $3.70. The engineer has full control of his time every second day, and has not to act as hostler for his engine. The second is on the "Q" road. The round trip between Chicago and Aurora is seventy-seven miles. The engineer is paid $3.35. He has to "hostle" his engine, and his entire time belongs to the road. Some days he has to be under the orders for eighteen hours per day. Complaint is made in the road's circular because we asked that "Galesburg Division engineers and firemen be not required to run east of Aurora." The idea sought to be conveyed by the company is that this request is unreasonable, and calculated to impose greater expense on the road. The fact is that compliance with this request will not impose one cent of extra expense on the road. No objection has been offered to running the engines through from Galesburg to Chicago. The change of crews--engineers and firemen--at Aurora will not increase the company's outlay. There are about 300 of the engineers and firemen who live in Aurora. Many of these men own homes; some of these homes, however, are not entirely paid for. If they are compelled to run from Galesburg to Chicago and return, they would have to sacrifice their property, and remove either to Galesburg or to Chicago. They ask that the crews be made to run on the one end of the route only from Chicago to Aurora and return, and on the other end only from Galesburg to Aurora and return. If we were paid on the mile system, the change of crews would not cost the road one cent. It is also complained that we ask that some arrangements be made in relation to passing Brotherhood men on the "Q" trains. We make no demand in this regard. Our purpose in making this request was to get some uniform rule put in force on this road, the same as prevails on other roads. We have no right to demand this. We did not demand it; our desire was, while we were negotiating, to get this question, now unsettled, so determined that the conductors would hereafter know precisely what to do, and thus be able to avoid conflicts. On the Pan Handle road the freight engineer who runs from Indianapolis to Bradford, a distance of 105 miles, receives $4.25 for the trip; his fireman receives $2.15. On the "Q" road the round trip run from Galesburg to Peoria is 105 miles, for which the engineer receives $3.60 and the fireman $2.10. From Quincy to Colchester the round trip is 107 miles. The "Q" road pays its engineer for that trip $3.75, and its fireman $2.15. For runs of 100 miles on the Union Pacific road the engineer on passenger trains receives $3.85. The "Q" road is a competitor of the Union Pacific, and for a long distance travels over parallel lines through country of precisely the same character. Yet we have only asked $3.50 per 100 miles for a passenger engineer on the "Q" road. SUBMITTING THE PROPOSITIONS. The requests of the men were met with indifference at the hands of the Burlington officials. Not the slightest encouragement was given to the Committees. They were given to understand, substantially, that no concessions on the part of the company need be expected. The abominable system of classification, the chief source of complaint, would be continued, and the protests of the men, however emphatic or unanimous, would not prevail. FURTHER EFFORTS TO SECURE JUSTICE. The Committees having exhausted every expedient to effect an amicable adjustment, appealed to their Grand Executive Officers to come to the rescue. Grand Chief Arthur and Grand Master Sargent responded to the call. The Joint Committee was convened by the Grand Officers, and a careful analysis of the grievances was made. Having satisfied themselves that the demands of the men were reasonable and just, the Grand Officers, accompanied by the Joint Committee, called upon the officials of the C., B. & Q. system. A protracted interview followed, which resulted practically in a failure, as the officials declined to accede to a single proposition of the Committee, notwithstanding numerous modifications were made in the interest of harmony. The interview ended abruptly upon the declaration of General Manager Stone, that he would not accede to any part of the proposition bearing upon classification. In this, he was emphatic and uncompromising. This ended the conference so far as General Manager Stone was concerned, and the Committee respectfully withdrew. STILL FURTHER EFFORTS IN THE INTEREST OF HARMONY AND JUSTICE. Grand Chief Arthur and Grand Master Sargent, realizing that the difficulty had assumed a most serious phase, decided, upon consultation, to make a final effort to avert what now seemed inevitable--a strike. A telegraphic dispatch was transmitted to President Perkins, at Boston, appealing to him to do justice by his men and avert the impending strike. His answer was evasive, indefinite, showing an utter indifference as to what the result might be. NEARING THE CRISIS. Having now been cut off from every avenue leading to an honorable adjustment of grievances, having exhausted every reasonable expedient to prevent trouble, the Committee, with the sanction of the Grand Officers, decided that the engineers and firemen should withdraw in a body from the service of the company, at 4 o'clock, on Monday morning, February 27, unless some disposition was shown to remedy the grievances of the men. On Sunday, February 26, the day previous to the inauguration of the strike, Chairmen Hoge and Murphy called upon General Manager Stone, and informed him of the action of the Committee, again appealing to him to render justice to the men. The General Manager arbitrarily declined to make any concessions, or to give the Committee any satisfaction, and here the matter ended with the final conference, with the strike inevitable and its consequences in full view. THE STRIKE. On Monday morning, the 27th instant, at 4 o'clock, the strike began, all engineers and firemen on the entire system withdrawing from the service of the company. All trains on the road at that hour were taken to their terminal points. The men had exhibited throughout, patience, prudence and forbearance, and the strike at once became monumental of an infamous policy on the part of a rich and powerful corporation to rob its trusted employes of money earned, that it might increase its profits, and with equal distinctness does the strike record the fact that a great body of workingmen sought by every honorable means to secure their rights, preferring to suffer than to be longer degraded. THE PRESS. No sooner was the strike inaugurated than the press began to manipulate public opinion. The most sensational reports were concocted and published throughout the length and breadth of the land; and while at the inception of the strike there seemed to be a disposition to treat the men fairly, it was not long be fore a change of sentiment pervaded the utterances of the press, and fair-dealing and honest criticism gave place to the grossest misrepresentations, with the evident purpose of arousing public opinion against the strikers, thereby making them the victims of the corporation they were struggling against, and of which it was the subsidized agent and representative. When the switchmen joined the engineers and firemen, March 23, for a short time there was a change in the tone of the press reports. They evidently feared a repetition of the lawlessness of the strikes of 1877, but when they found that the switchmen, too, were a law-abiding class of men, they again acknowledged allegiance to the corporation. Reporters were sent to the meetings of the strikers, who, believing that they would be fairly dealt with, had appointed a Press Committee. In almost every instance the papers failed to print the matter as given to the reporters, and in many cases did print exactly the reverse. This Press Committee, composed of conservative men, soon learned that the reporters went directly from them to the Burlington officials, where the interviews were inspected and put in proper shape to answer the purposes of the company. An effort was then made by the Press Committee to get their communications directly to the papers, without the use of the reporters. In a short time this also failed. Chiefs Arthur and Sargent and Chairmen Hoge and Murphy, at the Grand Pacific Hotel, had a similar experience. It was impossible to get proper representation of the facts printed. March 26 one paper accepted and printed a communication from the Press Committee, but from that time on nothing was printed verbatim. The article referred to is herewith given: "As the Burlington Bureau of Information has ceased to give out facts, but are drawing on advertising material, we wish to state the causes of their trouble with the switchmen. They have not struck, but have left the service of that company. 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature.' This is the reason in a nutshell. For the past week every switch engine in the house has been out. Three have gone in again disabled, and less than half of the regular work has been done. As long as the company were satisfied to let the men take time to insure safety there was no trouble. But as the cars accumulated in the yards, they considered it necessary to push the men beyond the point of safety, against their protests, and the 'strike' or stoppage was the result. A few of the engineers and firemen are locomotive men, but the majority are not, and all are ignorant of our signals and methods of work. In switching cars there should be no one in the cab but the engineer and fireman, and both should be watching the movements and signals of the switchmen. As it is now, the fireman stands in the gangway, while his seat is occupied by two or three Pinkerton men. No signal can be seen from that side of the engine. The engineer keeps his window closed, to shut out the taunts of passers-by, and the switchmen are left to take their chances. As long as he was allowed to pull pins with the train at a stand-still, and make couplings with the engine attached, he could do the work with reasonable safety, but this is not the manner of handling cars on our western roads, and would not have been tolerated one month ago. Aside from pulling pins and coupling cars, there is the continual danger of collisions, as at Hawthorne, last Thursday night, when switch engine 176 was run through by a road engine and train, whose engineer did not see stop signals nor the headlight ahead of him on a straight track. The tracks in and about Chicago are cut up with railroad crossings, semaphores, connections and the interlocking switch systems. These new engineers know nothing about them, and are continually running through and under them, to the imminent danger of themselves, switchmen and opposing trains. These varied sources of danger to life and limb are so great that the men are undoubtedly justified in leaving the service of that company." THE FIRST BOYCOTT. From a circular issued in June, by the Brotherhood of Engineers the following is taken: "Shortly after the inauguration of the strike, reports were received at headquarters to the effect that certain lines of railway, parallel to the C., B. & Q., were hauling the cars and handling the traffic of that company. These reports created decidedly bitter feeling on the part of the striking employes, and ultimated in the convening of the chairmen of the Grievance Committees of the several systems complained of. At this meeting, which took place at Chicago, on March 5, it was agreed that the engineers and firemen employed on said systems should serve notice on their respective officials, through the proper committees, that while they were willing to perform all their legitimate duties, they would decline thenceforth to haul C., B. & Q. cars, or transact any of the business properly devolving upon that company, as by so doing, they would virtually be taking the positions vacated by their striking brethren, and by that means contribute to their defeat, while at the same time they would be giving aid and comfort to the corporation against which they were struggling for their rights. THE QUESTION OF LAW INTRODUCED. "Out of this action of the Committees arose a series of the most threatening complications, which it may be well to explain at this point. It should be understood, in the first place, that there is upon the statute books of Illinois a law which provides that any officer, chairman or leader of a labor organization, association or combination, who advises or causes a body of employes to withdraw their services from any company or corporation, thereby crippling the business or interfering with the operations of the said company or corporation, shall be deemed guilty of conspiracy, and shall be fined or imprisoned in proportion to the extent of the injury caused. It will be observed that the provisions of this law were exceedingly embarrassing to the Grand Officers; and upon taking legal advice they found, to their discomfiture, that they were even then occupying untenable ground and exposing themselves to the liability of being prosecuted under the conspiracy act referred to. Not only this, but it soon became apparent that the action taken by the Committee on March 5 did not meet with the unanimous approval of the engineers and firemen employed on the several systems there represented. On the contrary, the engineers and firemen on some of the lines positively refused to be bound by the agreement, and openly avowed their intention to perform any and all duties that might be required of them, including the handling of C., B. & Q. business. WANT OF UNITY AND HARMONY. "The lack of unanimity at this particular juncture proved fatal to any good results that might have followed concert of action in carrying out the instructions of the Committee. Division, discontent and disorder soon began to appear. There was a total lack of harmony in the spirit and purpose of the men, and those who were disposed to act in good faith and refuse to handle C., B. & Q. traffic simply laid themselves liable to dismissal from the service of the company, without assurance or hope of protection or support from the men employed on the same system. STRIKE ON THE SANTA FE. "Under this condition of affairs occurred the noted strike on the Santa Fe system, which was precipitated on March 16, on account of the alleged aid given the C., B. & Q. by that company in hauling its cars and transacting its business. Upon a more careful investigation of the matter, it was found that there was no adequate cause for the strike--that it grew out of a misapprehension of the facts in the case, and on March 18, after being out two days, the men returned to work in a body, the road resumed operations, and the same satisfactory relations between the company and the men which had hitherto prevailed, were restored. THE SWITCHMEN. "From the very inception of the strike, the members of the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association evinced a profound interest in the struggle and freely tendered their sympathy and support to the strikers. They realized that the contest was for the maintenance of a common cause, and that the employes in every department of the railway service were interested in the result. The Grand Master, J. L. Monaghan, prompted by a desire to protect the interests of his men, as well as to extend a helping hand to his co-laborers, came to the front nobly, and with the aid of the members of his Order, took a decided stand in favor of the strikers. The switchmen realized that their interests were largely at stake, that a victory for the strikers meant a victory for them, and _vice versa_, and, with this feeling, they left the service of the company in a body, preferring to sacrifice their situations rather than serve in the employ of a company that refused to do common justice to its employes. Candor compels the admission, that we are indebted to the switchmen for aid freely given in the hour of our direst necessity. They acted the part of manly men, and are entitled to the thanks and gratitude of the Brotherhoods." Equal candor on the part of those who signed the above circular would compel the admission that the switchmen have not yet received that which was so freely promised them during the early days of March and on the night of March 22,--namely, federation. From the 1st of March until the 22d, Mr. Monaghan was in frequent consultation with Chiefs Arthur and Sargent. It was evident that the switchmen in remaining at work with the new engineers were doing the cause an incalculable injury, and efforts were made to overcome this new difficulty. FEDERATION. The switchmen and the brakemen were willing and anxious to unite with the Brotherhood. They did not wish the company to be victorious through aid given by them, and they were equally unwilling to give aid to the Brotherhood in this struggle and receive what many had received in the past, only injury. In this condition of affairs an arrangement was made whereby, in future troubles, the two Brotherhoods and the Association of Switchmen were to stand faithfully by each other. It was at this time the universal opinion among the switchmen, engineers and firemen that some such plan should be devised, and the Constitutions changed accordingly, and this feeling was concurred in by the officers of the three organizations. The legal counsel was called into the conference and a plan formulated for future action, which was to be subject to the Annual Convention of each organization. True to the promises given by Grand Master Sargent, the Convention of Firemen did, in September, 1888, put forward a most comprehensive plan of federation, which was adopted by the Convention of Switchmen in the same month, and which apparently died at the Convention of Engineers in October. Whatever the action since taken, the switchmen were then perfectly satisfied--particularly so, as at the union meeting held in Chicago on the night of March 22, prominent members of the two Brotherhoods from all parts of the United States gave their unqualified approval to the action of their officers, and, furthermore, pledged the honor of the Brotherhoods that the obligation would be faithfully met and promptly carried out. More solemn or binding obligations were never entered into by men. The switchmen were promised, and written pledges given by the officers of the Brotherhoods, that the same financial assistance given to the engineers engaged in the strike should also be given to them, as long as an engineer received a dollar, the switchmen should receive a like amount. SWITCHMEN ENTER THE STRIKE. On the morning of March 23 the switchmen, with the consent of Grand Master Monaghan, left the service of the Burlington Company in Chicago, not one single man remaining behind. Out of seventeen yardmasters, eleven went with the switchmen. Two of these, however, remained out but a few days, and then returned to the service of the company. Of the switchmen, but one returned. ALONG THE LINE. Messengers were immediately dispatched over the system to notify the switchmen what action had at last been decided upon, and these, with few exceptions, took the same course as was taken by their Chicago brethren. At Aurora, Galesburg, Burlington, Ottumwa, Creston, Plattsmouth, Omaha, Lincoln, Kansas City, St. Joe, Beardstown, and all points where switch engines are employed, the men, with few exceptions, made the sacrifice required of them, and did it freely. At Quincy the men also went out; but on an offer of the agent to increase their pay, all but five returned to work. It is gratifying to the rest of the men to know that this promise was never fulfilled to the Quincy switchmen. BRAKEMEN. The brakemen did not go out in this movement, as was expected by the switchmen. Written pledges were offered them by the Brotherhoods, similar to those accepted by the Switchmen. Mr. Wilkinson did not feel like assuming the responsibility of calling his men out on the strength of these pledges. The constitution gave him no such authority and he did not feel like taking the responsibility of doing an unconstitutional act. The feeling among those actually engaged in the strike is friendly toward the Brotherhood of Brakemen. They know that these men were not opposed to them, although they remained in the service of the Company. SECOND BOYCOTT. Immediately after the switchmen left the service of the C., B. & Q. corporation, a meeting of yard engineers, firemen and switchmen was held at Chicago, at which it was agreed that no C., B. & Q. cars should be handled from and after that time. Upon the taking effect of this agreement, it became apparent that the yardmen would not receive the support of many of the road men in carrying out its provisions; in fact, it was currently reported, and not denied, that upon certain lines the road men had decided to handle the business of the C., B. & Q., in the event of the yard men declining to do so. This division in the policy of the men created the most intense dissatisfaction, and gave rise to deep indignation. The men who declined to handle C., B. & Q. cars were given to understand that dismissal would be the penalty if they persisted in carrying out that policy. Other men were ready to perform their duties. To adhere to the agreement meant the sacrifice of their situations. A number of them had already been dismissed. Demoralization and dismay, the fruit of discord and disunion, were beginning to take root. ON THE C., M. & ST. P. RAILWAY this agreement was more faithfully carried out. When the yard engineers refused to handle "Q" cars they were at once joined by the switchmen and yardmasters (including the General Yardmaster). Switch-tenders, road engineers and firemen, brakemen, and most of the conductors were entirely in accord with them. The result was a general closing down of business on the road. The men were discharged, and fully one-third of the entire force of the road laid off. The company evidently intended to clear the decks for a great battle. It has been repeatedly claimed, that if the other roads centering in Chicago had made the prompt action of the C., M. & St. P. men general, the boycott, with all that the term implies would have been on to the fullest extent. A NEW DEPARTURE was demanded to avert the gravest complications, which seemed inevitable. A meeting was called, and counsel was taken from those who were in position to map out a new and better line of action. This meeting was addressed by the Grand Master of the Switchmen's Association, the Grand Master of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, General Manager Jeffery of the Illinois Central, and others. The situation was clearly defined, the peril of continuing in a hopeless crusade against C., B. & Q. cars was vividly outlined, and, as a result of the meeting, traffic was resumed upon the several railways the following morning, and all those who had been dismissed for refusing to handle C., B. & Q. cars were reinstated in their former positions. Much unjust criticism has been passed upon this action, and yet we feel confident that if the situation and surrounding conditions had been half understood, it would have met with universal approval. It must be remembered that unity of action had not been secured, and there was no authority in the Brotherhood to enforce it, even if the chief so-willed, which he evidently did not. Under the circumstances, to continue the boycott against "Q" cars was to destroy or divide the Brotherhood; the men were not yet educated up to the point of making so great a sacrifice, or at least what they considered a sacrifice. And yet, if this unity of action had been attained, if not one Brotherhood man in the United States had taken another's place who refused to handle "Q" cars, where was the power to defeat them? Such a power does not exist! Not even in the General Government. KNIGHTS OF LABOR. At the very outset of the strike it was claimed by the Burlington management that Knights of Labor stood ready to supplant the Brotherhoods upon their lines. This has been proven to be a misrepresentation to a very great extent. It was true, however, that there was considerable feeling existing between the Knights of Labor and the Brotherhood of Engineers, growing out of the strike of 1873 and the Reading strike. In the strike of "'73" many of the Knights of Labor, or those who are now Knights, took the places vacated by Brotherhood men on the Pennsylvania lines. In the Reading strike of the Knights, members of the Brotherhood, in turn, supplanted them. At the commencement of the "Q" strike, individual members of the Knights of Labor took it upon themselves to retaliate upon the Brotherhood, at least it was called retaliation, but the object was apparently to secure better jobs. There is positive proof that these measures of retaliation were not, in either case authorized by the heads of the organizations. The Burlington Company sought to make capital for themselves out of this old trouble, and did everything in their power to widen the breach. During the months of January and February, the agents of the company thoroughly canvassed the labor districts of the East, searching out every dissatisfied Knight and every unprincipled character, who could by any possible means be induced to put the finishing touches to his disgrace. Among this horde were some few hitherto respectable workmen, who were induced by brilliant promises to drop their respectability and disgrace themselves by joining such a band and for such a cause. Retaliation was their excuse, but a thinner disguise never clothed a scoundrel. Had the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association ever done them a wrong? And yet, more of these so-called Knights are switching cars to-day than are handling the throttle and scoop. For a time these men were actually thought to be Knights of Labor in good standing, and coming West with the full sanction of their Order. Ample proof, however, exists that they were but the riffraff of the Order. It is but justice to the Knights of Labor to say that these fellows were a class who acknowledged allegiance to no particular Order, and recognized no authority. Many of them belonged to suspended Assemblies, or were expelled from the K. of L. as well as from the B. of L. E. for dissolute habits and other causes. T. V. POWDERLY. On February 29, Grand Master Workman Powderly, issued a noted letter to his Order, calling upon them to stand back and keep hands off in this strike. The following extract from the letter demonstrates the fact that Mr. Powderly's attitude was consistent with justice and right. "Let the past be forgotten in this strike; no matter how bitter you may feel toward these men, remember that they have not yet stepped out of the rut of selfishness, and it is best to teach them what manhood means by keeping your hands off the C., B. & Q. strike. The spectacle presented by men of labor who belong to different organizations rushing at each other's throats whenever a strike takes place, must be a gratifying thing to the employers of labor. It must indeed give satisfaction to the corporations to know that neither Knights of Labor nor Brotherhood men dare in future ask for better treatment, with any assurance of receiving it. It must be a consoling thought to the monopolist to know that his power is not half so dangerous to the labor organizations as the possibility that another labor organization will espouse his cause through revenge. Labor will forever be bound hand and foot at the feet of capital as long as one workingman can be pitted against another. "No strike should be entered into until the court of last resort has been reached; until the last effort consistent with manhood has been made; until the heads of the opposing forces on both sides have been consulted, and their verdict given; until the last bridge has been burned between them; then, if it was determined that the last thing possible had been done to avert trouble, every detachment of labor's army--horse, foot and artillery--should be wheeled into line to defend the rights of men in the breach. Knights of Labor, from Maine to California, stand back! Keep your hands off! Let the law of retaliation be disregarded, and let the men of the "Q" road win this strike if they can!" That all of these men did not stand back is not the fault of this organization. Bad men exist in every Order, and probably always will. The "Q" retain many of them, but it is no disgrace to the Knights of Labor. They are men who have not the principles of Knighthood in their hearts. About the middle of April a committee of Brotherhood men went East to confer with Grand Master Workman Powderly. The result of that meeting was that all Knights of Labor who still acknowledged allegiance to that Order should be called off from all lines operated by the Burlington Company where they had taken the places of strikers. The general result of this order was not very satisfactory. As before stated, they were a class of men who recognized no authority from any labor organization. The following circular of a later date gives the true standing of the Knights of Labor on this question: OFFICE OF STATE MASTER WORKMAN, } Beatrice, Neb., June 21, 1888. } AN APPEAL. I have given thorough and conscientious examination into the troubles existing between the striking Brotherhood of Engineers, Firemen and Switchmen and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. The justice of their cause against this corporation appeals to my judgment and my sympathies. It should arouse every Knight of Labor in the State, and place him to the front in defense of their cause and in placing opprobrium upon the Burlington monopoly. The Order should take a distinctive and pronounced stand for these men, who are simply battling for justice, and no more. What is the purpose of the C., B. & Q. people in this struggle with the Brotherhood? It is to stamp organized labor with defeat, and millions of dollars are behind them to accomplish this result. Should they succeed, every laborer and producer will sink lower in the scale of manhood and deeper into the degradation of slavery. It is the purpose of the C., B. & Q. to fasten perpetual manacles upon them, from which there can be no escape but in death. It means slavery for all who toil, more appalling and horrible than the slavery of the South, the fetters of which were broken by war. I urge, therefore, upon every knight in the State to boycott this road that is the enemy of labor. Do not ride in its cars. Drive your stock to some competing line, and do not sell your grain where it will be shipped by them. Let the boycott be absolute and complete so far as your patronage goes. Have nothing to do with those who are in business and employ this road in any capacity. Spend your dollars with those who are the friends of organized labor. Persuade your friends to adopt the same course. There is only one debt that the Knights of Labor owe to the C., B. & Q. road, and that is the infamy of their eternal hate. Its hand has forever been raised against us. Whenever its employes have come to our ranks, that was sufficient ground for their discharge from its service. Its power, its wealth, its secret detective service and all the means at its command have been aimed at our destruction. Do not stop to consider that there have been differences in the past between the Knights of Labor and the Brotherhoods. It is not the time to argue which organization has been in the wrong. The past is a dead thing; let us give our thoughts to the future and the living present. The question is, are we going to help this corporation to destroy labor organizations, or are we going to present a solid front, a phalanx of determined men, who will say to the Brotherhoods, "We will stand by you till you conquer in this fight, and all the power of our membership and assemblies will be directed to help you win." This is my theory of true knighthood, and I want to see it placed in successful practice in the present grave emergency. Let us do more than this. Let us make certain the defeat of this corporation as a lasting memorial that will bear a lesson to all corporations so long as time shall be. Fraternally, M. D. HUBBARD, S. M. W. STATE RAILWAY COMMISSION. This book would be incomplete did it not give an extract of the testimony taken before the State Board of Warehouse and Railway Commissioners on the 3d, 4th and 5th days of April, 1888. This testimony grew out of the charges made before the Board by the citizens of Aurora. We are indebted to the _Sunday World_ of April 15 for the matter herein contained, which was not published or referred to by any other Chicago paper, and was suppressed by the Board. _Citizens of Aurora_ vs. _The C., B. & Q. Railway Company_: Testimony taken before the Board of Warehouse and Railway Commissioners of Illinois, on the 3d, 4th and 5th days of April, A. D. 1888: Present: Alexander Sullivan, Esq., on behalf of the citizens of Aurora; Chester A. Dawes, Esq., on behalf of the C., B. & Q. Railway Company. Franklin L. Bliss, a witness called on behalf of the complainants, having been duly sworn, was examined in chief by Mr. Sullivan, and testified as follows: Q. What is your name? A. Franklin L. Bliss. Where do you live? Rock Island, Illinois. What is your occupation? Locomotive engineer. In what company's employ are you? Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. How long have you been a locomotive engineer? Over twenty-three years. Were you the engineer on the train on the Milwaukee road with which a Quincy train collided on February 27? I was. State to the Board, as briefly as you can, the circumstances; what you did at that crossing; what it was your duty to do as to stopping and giving signals, and whether or not you performed your duty, and then state the occurrence of the accident? When I was within half a mile of this crossing I gave a long signal for the crossing; I brought the train to a full stop within 400 feet of the railroad crossing; then I stepped over and looked on the left side of the engine, and could see no train or hear no train on the left; on the right there was no train I could see; then I gave two whistles and started my train for the crossing; when I got the engine onto the crossing (the cab was about on the crossing) I looked to the left and saw a train coming down the Burlington track right at me. Commissioner Marsh: Just after you got on the crossing? A. Yes; the cab of the engine was about on the crossing when I saw. Commissioner Rinaker: Was there anything to hinder you seeing that train before you got onto the crossing? Commissioner Marsh: Any obstruction in the way? A. Well there is a cut on the east. I should think the mouth of the cut was some 900 feet from the crossing on the Burlington road. Mr. Sullivan: When you looked before you started your engine was there anything between you and that crossing--was the engine in sight? A. No, sir. Q. Describe the grade on the Quincy road between that cut and where the collision occurred at the crossing; is it smooth? It is down-grade to the crossing. From the mouth of the cut? Yes, sir. To the crossing? Yes, sir. Did that engine, after it came out of that cut, stop before it reached the crossing and collided with your train? A. No, sir. It did not? No, sir. I gave two short whistles before I started the train, after making the stop. You came to a full stop? I came to a full stop; yes, sir. Commissioner Rogers: What crossing do you have reference to--the crossing at Aurora? A. This crossing is just about two miles and a quarter south of Fulton Junction, on the Milwaukee road. Q. Where the C., B. & Q. crosses? A. Yes, sir. Commissioner Rinaker: How near to the crossing were you when you stopped? Within 400 feet; the cylinder of my engine was just about opposite the stopping board. Q. Go on and describe the accident. You were describing what you did, the signals you gave; go on and finish that. A. That was all the signals I did give. Two sharp whistles? Yes; then I started the train. I didn't see the train till the engine got on the crossing, just about the cab. The "Q" engine struck my tender just about midway of the back truck. Mr. Sullivan: What damage, if you know, was done to your train, and to the other, and what injuries to persons? Commissioner Rinaker: The back truck of your engine or tender? A. Of the tender--it throwed my tender or the tank down into the ditch; took the back truck with it, and throwed the mail car also down the bank; wrecked the mail car, too; also the "Q" engine went off the track, and run along; the engine and baggage car kind of went over, nearly onto one side; went into the ground and stopped. Q. Was yours a passenger train? A. Yes, sir. Was the other the "Q"? Yes, sir. Both passenger trains? Yes, sir. Who, if anyone, was hurt on your train? There was a route agent by the name of Wilhelm; I don't know exactly what his name was. Where does he live, do you know? Rock Island, I think. An express messenger by the name of Morrison. Do you know where he lived? I do not. Who else? A mail agent by the name of Brown. Do you know whether or not anyone was hurt on their train--the Quincy train? The roadmaster, engineer and conductor of the train. That was all that was injured? That was all that was injured. Do you know their names? I do not. F. L. Bliss, being recalled, was examined by Mr. Sullivan, and testified as follows: Q. At what rate of speed did you pull out after you left that 400-foot board--between that and the crossing? A. I pulled out slow; it would not average over about six or eight miles an hour, anyway. Were you trying to make up for your lost time? No, sir. Why? We have an order not to make up any time from Fulton Junction to three miles west of Albany. There was an order on the board, and has been there. So that you were not trying to make up time, and were not running at an extraordinary rate of speed? Not running any faster than though we had been right on time. And you think the time you were running between that 400 feet and the crossing was about six to eight miles? I don't think when we was on the crossing--I don't think it was over eight miles an hour, anyway--six or eight. Mr. Dawes: You rely on your fireman, don't you, to look out for his side? A. No, sir. Who do you rely on? I hardly ever go over the crossing without looking myself; still, he tells me, but I think it is safer to look myself. You looked on your side? I did. Did you look out on the other side? I did. Where did you look out last? Before I started. Before you started from the 400-foot post? Yes, sir. Did you look out after that at all? Not after I started on the train until I got on the crossing. The fireman was shoveling in coal, wasn't he--firing up? Yes, sir. Did you look out of your side of the cab after you left the 400-foot station, down the Burlington track? Yes, sir; I looked on my side. How long has that 400-foot post been there, do you know? The 400-foot on our track? Yes. It has been there ever since I have run down there. I have been running about fourteen years on that run. I don't know how much longer it has been there. Mr. Sullivan: That is all. The people that have been injured we could not get. Mr. Dawes: We will admit people were injured. The engineer we shall call was injured more than anybody else. D. W. Rhodes, a witness called on behalf of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, being first duly sworn, was examined in chief by Mr. Dawes, and testified as follows: Q. What is your full name? A. D. W. Rhodes. What is your business? Superintendent of motive power on the C., B. & Q. road. Are the engineers responsible to you? Through my assistants they are directly responsible to me. But they are immediate employes of your department? They are immediate employes of my department. Of which you are the head? Yes, sir. Do you know Mr. Pearce? Yes, sir. What is his business now, and what was it on the 19th day of March? Mr. Pearce is assistant engineer of tests in our laboratory at Aurora. Is he an engineer in the employ of the Burlington road now? He is not a locomotive engineer. Was he ever, at any time, an engineer in the employ of the Burlington road? He was never examined as an engineer for the Burlington road. You say he was not? No, sir; he was not. Where was he sent? He was sent on this Clinton run, from Mendota to Clinton. Do you know about what time that run is made? No, I do not. Was anybody sent with him? He had a pilot; the roadmaster was his pilot. The roadmaster of that section or division? Yes, sir. I am not very clear about what Mr. Pearce's crew was. I had to take an engine out myself that morning, and I was not at Aurora. Mr. Sullivan: Do you know anything about it at all, except from hearsay? Do you know from your own knowledge who was on the train? A. From being present, no. Mr. Sullivan: This testimony on that subject should be stricken out. The witness: May I make one correction? I said I took an engine out myself that morning; I fired an engine out that morning. Cross-examination by Mr. Sullivan: Q. Did Mr. Pearce ever run a locomotive engine before? A. Mr. Pearce had handled a locomotive engine; yes, sir. The question was, did he ever run a locomotive engine before? Please answer that? I am not able to say whether he did or not. Are you in the habit, when exercising your best judgment to select engineers, to put a man on the road to run a locomotive engine when you don't know whether he has ever run one before or not? In a case like this, where our trains were---- In any case? We do so; I would do so again. Where the lives of the public and the property of the public are in peril, you will take a man without knowing whether he ever ran an engine before or not, and put him in charge of an engine? No, sir; Mr. Pearce's education and training justified me in believing that he could handle that train properly. Do you believe any technical education in the shops, without practical experience, fits a man to be placed in charge of an engine to which is attached a passenger train? Properly guided by a pilot and conductor on the engine, I say so, decidedly. You would do so at any time? If there had been no strike, you would select a man of that experience, would you? I would only do that under the circumstances as we were. Only under emergencies? Yes, sir. You would not say generally it is a wise thing for a railroad to do; would you? I would say under circumstances such as we were left in there it was a wise thing for us to do. I ask you generally? If I had time to make a thorough examination of a man I certainly would do it. William H. Pearce, a witness called on behalf of the C., B. & Q. railroad company, being first duly sworn, was examined in chief by Mr. Dawes, and testified as follows: Q. What is your name? A. William H. Pearce. What is your business? Assistant engineer of tests in the C., B. & Q. State under what circumstances you took this engine on the 27th day of February last? Upon learning of the strike, I, with several other young men, signed a letter to Mr. Rhodes offering to go out in any position which they should deem it advisable. I was detailed by the Master Mechanic to go to Mendota and take that train to Fulton, with the understanding that I was to have a pilot; we struck the train; we had as pilot the roadmaster. We left Mendota five minutes late, and we were about six minutes late when I first see the St. Paul train. How far was that out of Mendota, do you remember? It was somewhere about in the neighborhood of sixty miles. You had lost a minute in sixty miles, had you? Lost a minute in running sixty miles. Who were with you on the engine beside the roadmaster? When we started out of Mendota there was only Mr. Chapin, the civil engineer of the Chicago Division, and the roadmaster, Mr. Seegers, and a machinist who came from the Aurora shop. After leaving Garden Plain, which is the last stop before arriving at the crossing, the conductor also came on the engine. Were you familiar with that division, had you ever run over it before? No, I never knew it; I never run over it at all. Now state, Mr. Pearce, how this accident occurred. We were going along, I should judge, about forty-five miles an hour. I will preface it by saying that the roadmaster was very careful all the way coming up, and I had no reason whatsoever to fear any lack of duty in warning me of any such place; we were going about forty-five miles an hour, and I had to look out for my water; it was getting a little dark; we were going west; of course it cast a shadow and I could not see the water glass; after losing a little time that way I tried my gauge cocks; when I got through with that I looked up and I saw this St. Paul train; that is the first intimation I had of the crossing. What did you do then? I shut off and put on the brakes. Right off, did you? Yes, sir. You struck this train as described? I struck a train; yes. Did you do everything in your power to prevent that accident? Yes, sir; I don't see how I could do anything more. Commissioner Rinaker: Tell exactly what you did do? A. I shut off and put the air on. How far were you from the train, in your judgment, when you did that? I should say in the neighborhood of 600 feet when I saw it, and I would say right here about the speed, that that speed, down grade, would require about a thousand feet to stop; it has been proved by the Burlington tests. Mr. Dawes: What became of you, do you know? A. I only know that from hearsay. I know I was knocked off the engine and they got me up; I was leaning against the drivers, they told me, laying up against the drivers; the engine jumped the track, I understand; I don't know; I didn't remember anything until the next morning. Is your sight good--your eyesight? Yes; I think my sight is normal, with my glasses. You can see at a distance, can you, as well as ordinary individuals? I think so. In reference to your hearing? Well, I am hard of hearing in a room, but I am not hard of hearing on an engine. Had you received any warning before coming to this crossing, as far as you remember of it? No. It is fair to say that the roadmaster says he warned you; I say that in justification of him. He says he did. You did not hear any notice; that is what you swear, isn't it? I did not hear him. Are you, in your own judgment, from your education and experience, both in study and on the road, capable of running a locomotive engine? On such a train as that, yes; it is a branch road, and there are comparatively few trains; I would not care about going on a main line. Cross-examination by Mr. Sullivan: Who was the pilot who was furnished you? A Mr. Seegers, the roadmaster. Can you not hear without putting your hand up? I don't wish to be offensive, but I want, as a matter of fact, to find out. Not in that tone. I can hear, yes; but I can hear better by putting it up, as anyone could reasonably argue; probably you can yourself. It is not necessary to do that where there is any noise or confusion going on. Could you have heard a notice to stop, or a notice that there was a crossing, if Seegers had given it to you? I would have heard as well as any other person. Then you would have heard him if he gave such an order or gave such information? You are very well aware of the fact you have to speak more or less loud on an engine to anyone. Did anyone speak more or less loud to you as to notify you that there was a crossing there, and that you should stop 400 feet from it? No. Did you notice the crossing board on the Quincy road? I did not. There is a board 400 feet from that crossing, four or five feet in height? Mr. Dawes: Who says there is a board there? Mr. Sullivan: I will show there is by another witness. Mr. Dawes: There may be, but I have not heard anybody say so yet. Mr. Sullivan: How long would it have taken you to bring that train to a full stop, running at the rate of forty-five miles an hour? When I say how long, I mean in distance; at what space from that crossing should you have attempted to bring it to a full stop in order to stop it? A. If I knew the crossing? How long would it take a train to stop? It would take in the neighborhood of 1,000 feet. You could not have stopped it at the rate of speed you were running if you had noticed it at the 400 feet distance? No, sir. When you got out of the cut was any information given to you that it was necessary to stop there? I received no information. The first intimation I had was the sight of the train. Mr. Sullivan: Was there an engineer on the cab with you at the time? Yes, sir. Wasn't that engineer who was on the cab at that time held responsible for it? He was. When you were held responsible for it you never in your life run an engine that length before, did you? No, sir. If you had been working at the engine-house, and there was no such emergency as this, would you have considered yourself competent to do it? Not on a road in which I was entirely unfamiliar. You were entirely unfamiliar with this, were you not? I was entirely unfamiliar. Did you shut off steam before you saw the Milwaukee train? No, sir. How far was it from you when you did shut off the steam? Fifty or sixty feet. Did you reverse the engine? No, sir, I did not. With a well designed driver-brake there is no benefit in reversing the engine. Did you bring the lever down in front? No, sir. Did you drop the reverse lever forward when you shut off? I don't remember that particularly. When you put the air on, did you use all that was indicated on your gauge? I naturally should do so. Did you? No, I slapped the air around, put the handle full around; I didn't stop to see what was indicated on the gauge. Did you use any sand? No. Were quite excited at the time? I suppose I naturally was. You lost your head in fact; isn't that the fact now? No, because it is still on my shoulders. You might as well have been without a head; you lost your judgment, didn't you? I don't see that any judgment would come in after having shut the steam off and put the air on. Couldn't you have used sand? I did not. You could have used it if you had thought of it? No, sir; because I didn't see any benefit; as long as the drivers don't slip it is all right. Do you know that sand will help to stop a train quicker? No, sir, I don't know it. Do you swear it will not? No, sir, because I have never made any experiment in that. Then you know nothing about it? You don't know whether it would help or not? I have only my judgment, which is formed after quite an elaborate series of experiments on the brakes. John F. Laughlin was examined in chief by Mr. Sullivan, and testified: Q. What is your name? A. John Francis Laughlin. Where do you live? At 818 Washtenaw avenue. What is your business? Switchman, in charge of switch engine. For what road are you working? Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; I was at one time, until I quit. Were you employed on the 23d of March for that road? Yes, sir. Why did you quit? Because I did not see fit to work with incompetent engineers. What were you engaged at on the evening of March 23d, and where were you employed? March 23d I did not do much. I only took one train to the Stock Yards and came back. This accident I have reference to happened March 22d, I believe, at 10:30 p. m. What were you doing on the evening of the 22d, and where were you employed? On the evening of the 22d of March I had fifty cars shoving into the new yard at Hawthorne, which is about three miles and a half, as near as I can judge, from Western avenue. We stopped to give me a chance to raise the semaphore for the protection of trains coming east, and also set the switches going into the new yard. I got up and gave the signal to go ahead, and as I did a crash came. What character of train was it that run into yours--a freight? A freight train. What was the condition of the track, so far as obstructions were concerned, between your train and the train which collided with you? There was no obstruction whatever; there was a clear view four miles or three miles and a half; something like that. What time in the evening was it? About half-past ten. Had you a headlight on your engine? Yes, sir. Had you a light on the other end of your train? No, sir; only my own lamp. You were at that end? And a red light; yes, sir. You had a red light, as well? Yes, sir. Do you know the number of the engine which collided with yours? Yes, sir; 310. What was the number of yours? 176. Was engine 310 flagged? I presume it was, according to my helpers' statement. Your helpers are here, are they? Yes, sir. You had enough helpers to give the necessary flagging? I believe I had; I had two. To how many of these new men did you give signals who were unable to answer or failed to answer the signals? I should say three or four. Did you have any conversation with any of them in relation to the signals? No, sir; well, I had a conversation with one; I gave him a signal and he says, "I don't understand that signal." Was that signal which you gave him and which he said he did not understand the usual signal given by railroad men? Yes, sir. The same signal which has been used on the road all the time you have been in its employ? Yes, sir. When was that, about what time? That was a couple or three nights before I left. Commissioner Marsh: State what conversation between you and him there was at the time he told you he did not understand that signal? I merely gave him a signal to back up. He says, "Partner, I don't understand that signal." I merely says to him, "What kind do you understand--steamboat signals?" He says, "No, stationary engines." William G. Frisbie was examined by Mr. Sullivan and testified: Q. Were you on the train to which engine 176 was attached? A. I belonged to that crew. At Hawthorne, March 22. I belonged to that crew? Yes, sir. Did you flag 310 that night? I did. State to the Commissioners how far you went from your own engine, 176, to flag 310, the one which collided with it? I can tell you perhaps better by car lengths; I can make a guess at the number of feet. I did not measure it exactly. I should think it was in the neighborhood of 1,500 feet to 2,000 feet that I was back of where our engine stood. I found the train was not coming to a stop, and kept going back myself as long as it was possible, giving them all the swing that it was proper and right to stop him. He paid not the slightest attention to my signal; never even whistled for brakes until after his train passed me. Did you start back as soon as your train stopped to flag? Yes, sir. You went as far as you could? Yes, sir. Re-direct examination by Mr. Sullivan: Q. Did you ever, in all your experience, know a case where an engineer was flagged on a clear track, as in this case, and disobeyed a signal and run into another train? No, sir. Stewart W. Hadlock, examined in chief by Mr. Sullivan, testified as follows: Q. What is your name? A. Stewart W. Hadlock. Where do you reside? At Aurora. What is your business? Engineer. How long have you been an engineer? Nineteen years. In what company's employ were you recently? C., B. & Q. How long were you in the employ of that company? Twenty-three years. As engineer and fireman? Engineer and fireman both. Do you know Hose De Witt? I do. Do you know in whose employ he now is? He is in the employ of the C., B. & Q. In what capacity? Passenger engineer. Hector H. Hall was examined in chief by Mr. Sullivan, and testified: Q. What is your name? A. Hector H. Hall. Where do you live? At Pullman. What is your occupation? Engineer. What company are you working for? Pullman Company. Do you know Hose De Witt? Yes, sir. How long have you known him? About eight years. Is he a sober man? No, sir. What is his general reputation for sobriety? He is an habitual drunkard. Is that the reputation in the neighborhood where he lives? Yes, sir. Have you ever heard it discussed? His wife has been around to all the saloons forbidding them to sell him anything. Why? Because he was an habitual drunkard. When did you see him last? I think it was last Thanksgiving day. What condition was he in then? He was very drunk. Did you ever see him sober? Well, no, sir; very seldom. I have once or twice, probably; as a general thing he was under the influence of liquor. John B. Clark, examined in chief by Mr. Sullivan, testified: Q. State your name? A. John B. Clark. Where do you live? Aurora. What is your business? I was a locomotive engineer. How long were you engaged in that capacity? Ten years, probably. For what company were you employed? Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Did you serve on any committee for that road while you were in its employ? I was on the local examining board for the Chicago division. Do you know Hose De Witt? I do. How long have you known him? About fourteen years, I think. Do you know he was discharged from this company because of his connection with a wreck at Naperville? I do. Do you know what his reputation for sobriety is and has been during all the time of your acquaintance? He was always a hard drinker, when he fired and run here both. Have you known him since he was in the employ of the company; have you seen him since? I have seen him on my way through Plano; he worked at Plano for the Plano Manufacturing Company, and I see him there about in the neighborhood of a year ago; he struck me for a ride to Chicago. Mr. Dawes: I object to any specific instance of drunkenness a year ago. Mr. Sullivan: Was he drunk or sober? A. He was not sober. Did you ever see him sober? I don't think I did; not what I should call dead sober. You have known him eight years? I have known him fourteen years. Why did you refuse to give him a ride when he applied to you? Well, it was against the rules; and then he was too full of whisky to be a safe man to have around there. You haven't seen him since, then? I have not, except since he came back to work for the C., B. & Q. Acting as engineer? Yes, sir. Passenger or freight? Passenger. On what road? On the C., B. & Q., on the main line? Mr. Dawes, cross-examining: Did you regard that as a proper method of determining the qualifications of engineers? A. Yes, sir; it is well enough. Is this (handing witness a paper) an accurate copy of the protest of the Brotherhood? I will direct your attention to Article 22. I don't represent the Brotherhood; I am here as a witness. I will ask you whether you know as a matter of fact, Mr. Clark, whether Article 22 is a copy of a grievance presented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers to the Burlington road? I did not present it. I understand you did not; you know, do you not? Mr. Sullivan: I object to all this as immaterial. Commissioner Rinaker: I do not regard that as cross-examination at present. Is that offered for the purpose of showing that the rule itself was not regarded as a proper one? Mr. Dawes: I want to ask this witness what his opinion is of this particular grievance. Mr. Sullivan: How often have you seen him in eight years? A. He laid around Aurora two or three years before he got a job any place. He lived around Aurora two or three years after he was discharged? Yes, sir. When he hung around Aurora for two or three years did you see him regularly? He hung around a variety saloon that used to be there in Aurora. Commissioner Rinaker: How often do you mean we shall understand you are stating you have seen this man drunk in the last eight or ten years? Commissioner Rogers: When was it he wanted to come up with you on the engine? A. As near as I can remember it was in the neighborhood of a year ago. Commissioner Rinaker: How many times have you seen him drunk? A. He was drunk at that time. How many more times? Between the seven years before that? Well, I would not want to say how many times; but at the time he was hanging around Aurora he was off and on. He would go away and hunt for a job and come back, go away and come back; that is the way he was. Was he drunk when you would see him around this variety show? Yes, we very seldom seen him sober. Mr. Sullivan: Prior to this controversy between the railroad and its employes could such a man as De Witt receive employment as an engineer; would you have employed such a man? (Objected to by Mr. Dawes.) Q. Would they employ a man who had been dismissed as being responsible for a wreck, as this man was? (Objected to by Mr. Dawes.) Commissioner Rinaker: Do you know why he was discharged? A. He was discharged for having a collision about half a mile east of Naperville station. You know that from your own knowledge? Yes; I was mixed up a little bit in it myself. I came near getting into trouble with it myself. Hector H. Hall being recalled, was examined by Commissioner Rogers, and testified as follows: Q. How long is it since this notice was given by De Witt's wife to the saloon-keepers not to give him liquor? A. I think it was on Thanksgiving day, or the day after. That is last year? Yes, sir. That was on Thanksgiving day? Thanksgiving day or the day after; I am not positive which. J. A. Murray, locomotive engineer of thirteen years' service, residing at Rock Island, testified that Frank Hamilton, Frank Horn, Joseph Roach, J. Logston, Harry Zimmerman and William Patterson, running engines on the C., B. & Q. R. R., were brakemen, conductors and baggagemen, respectively; that he was acquainted with them all for eight to ten years, and that they were inexperienced as engineers or firemen. Frank Hamilton, witness on behalf of the C., B. & Q. Railroad Company, testified: Q. Give your name in full? A. Frank Hamilton. What is your business? Formerly conductor until the 10th of last month; now I am running an engine. Conductor on the C., B. & Q.? Yes, sir; St. Louis division. How long have you been a railroad man? For the C., B. & Q. Company, running a train since November, 1880, with the exception of five months, up until the 10th of last month. Have you been examined as to the manipulation of an engine? To a certain extent. By whom? Mr. Wallace. Is Mr. Wallace here? Mr. Wallace is here. Cross-examination by Mr. Sullivan: Q. You never got any technical instruction as to the running of an engine in your life, did you? A. Explain that word, please. You never got any instruction in the shop from those who manufacture engines and are familiar with their detail? No, sir. You don't understand the meaning of the word technical yourself? I do; yes, sir. Why do you want me to explain it? Because I wanted to understand. Witness testified that he had been handling engines off and on ever since he had been on the road. Q. What you mean is you jumped on; would go on when the regular engineer in charge was there? A. Yes, sir. And the fireman in charge was there? I run the engine a certain distance. You were allowed to handle it in their presence, just as many others are allowed? Yes, sir. Do you mean to tell this Commission, on your oath, that in that way you acquired sufficient knowledge to make you a competent engineer? That is the way, from what I understand, to learn to be an engineer. The way they all get to be engineers. You say you were examined to some extent. Were you not examined as thoroughly as all other men were examined? I don't know how other men were examined. How did you come to say you were examined to some extent? What do you mean by that? I mean to the extent that I was able to answer the questions. You were only examined to that extent you were able to answer, and you were not examined as to those you were not able to answer? I don't know if there were any questions I was not to answer or not; I answered all the questions. You used that expression, you were examined to some extent. I want to know what you mean by that? I answered all the questions that were asked me. Do you mean to say that all questions were asked you which are equally asked applicants for employment as engineers? I do not. Was anyone else examined at the same time you were? There was not. Who was present when you were being examined? Anyone but the Board? No; there was not. No one but the Board of Examiners? No. Where were you examined? The principal place was in the building where the general officers are. Were you examined more than once? I was instructed another time. I asked you about examinations? No, sir, not on an engine. How long did your examination take? I could not tell that. How many questions were you asked? I could not say; I did not count them. Have you no idea without counting them? I answered more questions--I asked and answered more questions than was asked me. You examined yourself, practically, did you? The Board was there to hear it. The Board was there to hear you examine yourself--asking questions and answering them? Those I did not thoroughly understand were questions I asked, and then I answered my way, and if I was not right, then I was instructed. And upon that instruction which you got at that time you were employed as an engineer on the road? Oh, no; this is since. How long after that was it before you were put in charge of an engine, since you got this instruction? I took an engine on the 10th of last month, and I run up to yesterday. When was your examination? To-day. You were examined to-day? Yes, sir. Was this the first examination that took place? This is the first. You were not examined before you were put in charge of an engine? No, sir. You were put in charge of an engine without an examination at all? Without any examination. You were this morning examined, and prepared for being examined here; is that it? No, sir; I don't know as I was prepared at all. I asked questions, and they were answered to me. If I could explain them in the language that was used in regard to the management of engines. And that is the first time you have been examined by anybody representing this road as an engineer? Examined on an engine. Did you ever draw pay as an engineer or as a fireman at any time in the employ of this or any other railroad company in the United States before this? As an engineer or fireman? As an engineer or fireman? I did not. Did you ever perform the duties of an engineer or fireman at any time in your life before this date, on any road? That is, to draw pay for it? To draw pay for it, and perform its duties regularly? No, sir. Did you ever put a wick in a headlight? I did. When? The other day. Not until that? That is the first one, but I have frequently saw it done. How old are you? I was thirty-four years old on the 16th day of last January. Can you tell what the notches in the quadrant are for? Yes, sir. Please do so? They are to govern the working of an engine. State in what respect they govern the working of an engine? They start from the center and work both ways; the forward and back motions drop the engine down forward and you give her the full stroke. If you put her back to a less stroke and increase the speed. What do you mean by the stroke? The stroke of the piston that travels in the cylinder. What is the stroke of your engine? I don't know. Has an engine more or less stroke when it is hooked down or hooked up? It has the same stroke, but it receives steam through the ports to a less stroke. In what condition? Both ways; either working in the forward or back motion. What do you refer to when you speak of receiving more steam? Can you explain that? To a certain extent, yes. To that certain extent please explain it? As the engine is working you drop her down and give her full stroke and she is receiving steam at full stroke; as you cut her back she receives steam to a less portion as you cut her back, and then start to travel the other way--the valve it is. Do you know anything about the points of cut-off of a valve on an engine? No, sir. You never got any instruction on that subject? No, sir. You were not examined on it this morning, were you? No, sir. Evidence of a large number of expert engineers and practical railroad men was heard, together with the testimony of the incompetent men. A copy of the entire proceedings is in the hands of Mr. Alexander Sullivan, counsel for the Brotherhood. INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION. The result of the State Board's examination, with a vast amount of new evidence, was prepared to place before the Inter-State Commerce Commission, which had signified its willingness to sit in Chicago May 1, to examine into the charges that the Burlington was operating its lines with incompetent men. For some reason never made public the promised investigation was not made. The Brotherhood side of the case was ready, and in the hands of experienced legal counsel; however, no action was taken by the Commission. MEETING OF THE STOCKHOLDERS. As the stockholders were to meet on May 16, it was expected that they, having suffered great financial loss from the strike, would take some steps toward bringing about a settlement between the men and the company. It was considered by the strikers that the road had not been successfully operated by the class of men then in its employ, and that self-interest would prompt the stockholders to do justice to their old employes. Contrary to the anticipations of the men, the management was unanimously endorsed at this meeting and by this action gave notice that nothing in the line of concessions could be expected. FINAL ACTION OF THE MEN. Subsequent to this meeting, the Joint Grievance Committee was convened, and it was resolved not to declare the strike off but to continue resistance indefinitely, this action to be subject to the approval of the men. The resolution of the Committee was duly submitted to the men along the line, and a vote was taken as to whether the strike should be declared off or not. The result of the vote was an almost unanimous expression to continue the strike without abatement. After the stockholders' meeting, the men at Chicago appointed a day to discuss anew the proposition to declare the strike off. This caused great uneasiness along the line, but was only done in order to give those who had not been present at the first vote taken an opportunity to express their sentiments. This discussion, like the preceding one, ended in an unanimous decision to continue the strike. Every effort had been made by the company to break the lines. At Galesburg and other points, it was claimed that large sums of money had been offered to individuals to break the ranks and again enter the services of the company. Outside of Chicago, the men were subject to all manner of persecutions to compel them to yield to the company's offers, but without effect; not a single case of weakness was developed after the second week of the strike. In Chicago, as before stated, but two men returned, one of these, a yardmaster, had been struggling under the name of "scab" since "'82" and he was naturally expected to take the course that he did. On the morning of March 23, he was the first yardmaster to refuse to do duty as a switchman, and the first and only one to seek reinstatement. At other points along the line, the record is even better than this. Probably not over a dozen men weakened; from Chicago to Denver, all have stood firm and solid on the ground they first occupied. The following quotation from the Brotherhood circular heretofore alluded to, will be of interest. "THE LOYALTY OF THE STRIKERS. "Just here it is proper to place upon record the fact--luminous in the annals of labor strikes--of the loyalty of the men, their devotion to principle, and their unexampled faithfulness to their obligations. As one man they responded to the call. So thoroughly imbued were they with the justice of their cause, that with an unanimity which will forever challenge the admiration of manly men, they surrendered their positions and faced with an unaltering fortitude all the privations incident to a strike, rather than sacrifice their manhood, their independence and self-respect. "Be it said to the everlasting honor of the engineers, firemen and switchmen on the C., B. & Q. system, that they acted their part nobly from the first to the last. There was no deserters or traitors to the cause; faithful to their obligations, true to their manhood, honorable in all their methods, they have dignified themselves and glorified the Orders to which they belong, and while courage and fidelity have admirers, they will be remembered for their unyielding purpose by every true knight of the throttle and scoop where-ever the iron horse draws a train." FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE ROAD. In June the following statement appeared in the Chicago _Herald_: "The Burlington Company is having a hard time to make both ends meet. Its statement of net earnings for the month of May, which came to light yesterday, showed a decrease of $803,000, and for the first five months of 1888 the loss compared with the corresponding period last year reaches the astounding total of $4,194,172. Never in the history of Western railroads has such a disastrous record been made by a big railway corporation in so short a time. Less than a year ago the Burlington Company was reported to be the strongest corporation of its kind in the country. It paid the highest rate of dividends, and its securities commanded larger prices than any similar paper on the New York Stock Exchange. Since the beginning of 1888 its dividend rate has been reduced from eight to four per cent, and even the four per cent has not been earned by many thousand dollars. The interest requirements, which come ahead of the stock, alone amount to, approximately, $6,000,000 per year, or at the rate of $500,000 per month. The net earnings for five months, however, are only a little over $1,000,000, or less than half of what would be required to pay current interest charges. In face of this showing, however, the company has, since the beginning of 1888, paid three per cent in dividends on $77,000,000 stock. This required an expenditure of nearly $2,400,000. If this $2,400,000 be deducted from the net earnings of the company for the first five months of the year an actual deficit of nearly $1,400,000 is left, without allowing anything whatever for interest on bonds, which are always a prior lien. Deducting $2,500,000 interest charges, which somebody must pay, and the deficit is swelled to nearly $4,000,000. To put the matter plainly, the Burlington Company lacks $4,000,000 of being able to pay its debts out of its current earnings. It had a a surplus at the end of last year of $1,000,000, but this has been wiped out, and a floating indebtness of approximately $3,000,000 now stares the Burlington management in the face. It is currently rumored that the company has been trying to negotiate a loan of $2,000,000 in Chicago to help it out of its present difficulties, but these negotiations have fallen through, and it is understood that an effort will be made to raise the money in the East. The depreciation in value of the $77,000,000 stock, of at least one-third, is another serious loss, which will probably never be retrieved." THE DYNAMITE PLOT. July 5, J. A. Bowles, Thos. Broderick and J. Q. Wilson were arrested on the train leaving Aurora, at 2:15 P. M., by Deputy Marshal Burchard and Superintendent McGinty of the Pinkerton Agency. A package of some substance, said to be dynamite, was taken from the rack over the seat occupied by Wilson. They were arraigned before United States Commissioner Hoyne, under section 5353, United States Statutes, which provides a penalty of $1,000 to $10,000 fine for transporting or having in possession dynamite on trains or vessels carrying passengers. Chairman Hoge was sent for, but when he learned the gravity of the charge against the prisoners he had little comfort to give them, but promised to secure an attorney if he found on investigation that their cause was worthy. All three of the men denied ownership of the package found in the rack. Bowles came to Aurora at the beginning of the strike, and ran an engine for thirteen days. His brother finally induced him to leave the service of the company, and he was taken into the Brotherhood Division at Aurora. The Burlington officials testified that Broderick was in their employ as late as April last, two months after the strike began. Wilson was a Pinkerton detective. Thus it will be seen that the trio were Burlington and Pinkerton employes. The company claimed that dynamite was used at Eola, West Aurora, Galesburg and Creston, to blow up and wreck trains, but that no damage was done, except to a portion of a flange on an engine wheel at Eola. In some of these cases a portion of the dynamite was found unexploded, together with parts of the wrapper. If this stuff had really been dynamite, it is impossible to conceive how part of the cartridge could have remained unexploded. J. A. Bauereisen, Chief of the Aurora Division of B. of L. E., was arrested July 6 as an accomplice, it having been claimed that Bowles received the package from him before starting for Chicago with Wilson and Broderick. Alexander Smith was arrested July 6. Smith is a fireman, and was charged with having handled the dynamite in connection with the explosion at Eola and West Aurora. Attorneys Donohue and David were retained for the defense of these men. Chairman Hoge stated that the Brotherhood did not tolerate violence of any kind, and would not come to the assistance of any member caught in the act of committing crime. The Brotherhood would look into these cases, and if satisfied that the men were victims of a conspiracy, it would aid and defend them, but if it were shown that they had explosives and meant violence, they would be left to shift for themselves. At this time Mr. Hoge was charged by the Burlington people with having issued a circular April 16, to the various divisions of the Brotherhood, advising that a large number of engineers go to work for the road, and, after disabling as many engines as possible with sal-soda and emory, to quit in a body. Mr. Hoge denies having written this circular, or of having signed it, and stated that it was a forgery, if it existed at all. However, Hoge and Chairman Murphy of the firemen were arrested July 10 for conspiracy, and held under the Merritt law in bonds of $1,500, which was furnished by W. R. Fitzgerald. The complaint alleged that the defendants issued a circular with the fraudulent or malicious intent, wrongfully and wickedly to injure the property of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad. The penalty upon conviction is five years in the penitentiary or a fine of $2,000, or both. The warrant also contained the names of John J. Kelly and J. H. McGilvery, secretaries to Hoge and Murphy, who were arrested later in the day, but not locked up. Kelly made a statement to the effect that he issued the circular at the dictation of Hoge, and that the latter signed it. It was written with hektograph ink and copied on a hektograph. Kelly also swore that he had been in the employ of Pinkerton for several months, during which time he acted as secretary to Hoge. This man belonged to the Brotherhood of Firemen, but was running a switch engine on the "Q" in Chicago, and at the time of the strike was taken into the Brotherhood of Engineers. He is a tall, slender man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, blonde, very natty in appearance, small brown moustache, light eyes inclined to be deep set, and a clear ringing voice, like the voice of a woman. He was considered of a giddy, frothy nature by his intimates, who were surprised at his ability to keep secret the fact that he was in the employ of Pinkerton. George Godding, an engineer, was arrested in Aurora July 9, charged with Bauereisen in violating the United States law in handling dynamite. George Clark, an engineer, was arrested at Galesburg July 17, charged with the same offense. During the examination of these men, Bowles, Smith, Wilson, Kelly and McGilvery appeared with the prosecution as detectives and informers. Bauereisen was tried, and sentenced to two years imprisonment, at the last term of Kane County Court, at Geneva, Ill. He was convicted on the testimony of the informers and Pinkerton men, Bowles, Broderick, Smith and Wilson. The weight of evidence was clearly in favor of Bauereisen, but the fact that it was a Kane County jury, and that the Burlington Company was the prosecutor, settled the case against him. An appeal for a new trial is now pending. None of the other cases have matured, and probably never will. The general opinion of the strikers, and those who have been particularly interested in these cases, can be summed up in a few words. Knowing that the strike had financially wrecked the property, the management found it necessary to make capital for themselves, and concluded that a dynamite scheme would answer their purpose. They believed that the Brotherhoods were a law abiding class of citizens, and that they would be dumfounded at the evidence of a dynamite plot, and immediately declare the strike off. That it was originally intended as a bluff is proven by the low grade of dynamite used, which had scarcely the explosive power of black powder. The evidence shows that the "Q" employes and the detectives procured and used the stuff without effect. The only evidence against the Brotherhood men was that they had been told by these spies what they were doing; and while the defendants placed no reliance in the story, this knowledge was considered sufficient evidence of guilt to hold them as accomplices. This course was probably decided upon when it was found impossible to make them active participants in the crime. In the case of Hoge and Murphy, the web was easier to weave. Having a Pinkerton man as Hoge's secretary, it was a simple matter to put up a fraudulent circular, and back it up with the utterances of other confederates who visited him, and sought to induce him to resort to violence as a means of compelling a settlement of the strike. PROPOSITIONS FOR A SETTLEMENT. July 14, Mr. Stone sent for Chairmen Hoge and Murphy to talk over a settlement of the strike. Being under bonds, Hoge and Murphy declined to go without their attorney; therefore, Mr. Alexander Sullivan was included in the invitation. They met Mr. Stone at his residence the same evening, but having no authority to make a settlement, only a general conversation ensued. Mr. Stone indicated a willingness to take up the schedule and pay as good wages as was paid by the other roads, especially so in the passenger runs. Another meeting was arranged for July 16, at which meeting Messrs. Arthur, Sargent, Sullivan, Hoge and Murphy, on behalf of the men, and Messrs. Stone, Perkins and Dexter, for the company, were present. Mr. Perkins had arrived unexpectedly from Boston, and seemed dissatisfied with the action of Mr. Stone in calling the meeting, and for a time refused to make any concessions. Mr. Stone insisted, and the following was drawn up as a basis of settlement by the company: "If the strike be declared off, the company agrees to take back such of the old men as can at present be given employment, and as business increases and more men are needed, they will be taken from the ranks of the strikers in preference to hiring men who had not previously been in the employ of the company. "The company further agree that those men not so taken back would not be blacklisted, and that those whose previous record had been good would be given letters of recommendation. Mr. Perkins also agreed to rescind the order of J. D. Besler, dated March 25, to the effect that the switchmen would not again be employed by the Burlington company. "That engineers, firemen and switchmen would be treated alike in the matter of re-employment." This was in substance all that the company would concede. As these gentlemen had no authority to make any settlement without the consent of the men, it was decided to submit the proposition to them along the entire system, and Messrs. Hoge, Murphy and the writer were appointed to lay the matter before them. Mr. Arthur was opposed to the switchmen being represented on this committee. Before going out on the road, a meeting of the Chicago strikers was held at Curran's Hall. In order to get the matter properly before them, the following resolution was put by the chairman, "_Resolved_, That the striking engineers, firemen and switchmen do hereby appoint the following Committee to settle the strike: Arthur, Sargent, Alexander Sullivan, Hoge, Murphy and Hall, with the understanding that we will abide by their decision and will accept the above proposition of the company, if no better terms can be obtained by the Committee." Arthur, Sargent and Mr. Sullivan strongly recommended the acceptance of the terms, and sent letters to that effect by the Committee to the men along the line. The resolution was rejected by the Chicago men, and, in fact, by every body of strikers along the entire system. In these terms of settlement nothing was said about dismissing the dynamite cases, it being understood that they would be continued. July 17 the Committee left Chicago to place the proposition before the men, and returned July 27. The strikers everywhere decided to accept no terms that did not include the signing of their schedule and the absolute discharge of all the new men. They considered that the company had asked them to make an unconditional surrender, and that the conspiracy cases had influenced their leaders to side with the company, and they would not now make any settlement that was not made by the entire Grievance Committee and include the whole schedule and discharge of the new men. Hoge and Murphy knew the temper of the men and knew what the result would be, but felt it their duty to present the propositions as instructed by their chiefs, Arthur and Sargent, and to give the men a complete statement of the condition of the strike, prospects of support, etc. It was a disagreeable duty, but they performed it faithfully. Many of the men were inclined to censure the Committee for presuming to offer them such terms. UNION MEETING AT ST. JOE, July 24, 1888. The following is the official report: The Chairman stated the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the C., B. & Q. strike and to try and adopt some plan to bring it to a speedy termination. He also explained and outlined the situation of affairs on the C., B. & Q. R. R. The Chairman then introduced Bro. G. W. Hitchens, Chairman of the G. G. Com., K. C., Ft. S. & G. R. R., who made a good speech, encouraging the C., B. & Q. Bros. and saying that he was in favor of the Boycott and Federation. Bro. R. Powers, a member of the B. of R. B., was then introduced, and spoke encouragingly to the C., B. & Q. Bros., telling them to stand firm and they were sure to win. Bro. F. P. Sargent, G. M. of the B. of L. F., was the next speaker. He was in favor of Federation, but did not speak very encouragingly to the C., B. & Q. Bros. in their struggle for Right and Justice. Bro. Bailey, of the S. M. A. A., made an able address, which was enthusiastically received. Bro. L. W. Rodgers, of the B. of R. B., and a man who has traveled over the C., B. & Q. R. R. several times, spoke and outlined the condition of the C., B. & Q., and urged the the Bros. to stand firm and they were sure of victory. Speeches were made by Bro. Wm. McClain, of Quincy, and a member of the G. G. Com. of the C., B. & Q.; Bro. Slattery, of Butte City, M. T.; J. F. Bryan, of Creston, Iowa; and a great many other Bros. of the different organizations, who nearly all spoke in favor of Federation and said they would do all in their power to assist the C., B. & Q. Bros. who are now battling for justice. And they all told the Bros. to never declare the strike off but to fight it to the bitter end. On motion, a committee of nine was appointed to draw up resolutions and adopt a line of action for this meeting. The Chairman appointed the following Committee on Resolutions: W. H. Young, of Div. 307; W. F. Gould, Div. 184; R. Lacy, 105, B. of L. F.; T. J. Hayes, 44, B. of L. F.; L. W. Rodgers, B. of R. B.; T. Slattery, 151, B. of R. B.; F. Wells, Grand Lodge. S. M. A. A.; and T. C. Lyons, No. 9, S. M. A. A. On motion adjourned until 9 o'clock, A. M., July 25, 1888. _Second Day._ Meeting called to order by F. P. McDonald in the chair. On motion resolutions were ordered read, and each article taken up and adopted or rejected at one time. The following resolutions were read and unanimously adopted, the last article being debated freely: _To the Engineers, Firemen, Switchmen and Brakemen, in Union Meeting assembled_: We, your Committee on Resolutions, beg leave to report the following: _Resolved_, That in regard to the alleged dynamite plot, we denounce all unlawful acts; and that while we believe the accused innocent until proven guilty, yet should any member of our organization be proved guilty of the atrocities charged, we will not only promptly expel them, but be the first to demand their punishment. _Resolved_, That we regard this as a conspiracy by the C., B. & Q. Co. and the Pinkertons, to bring our Order into disrepute, and turn public opinion and sympathy against us; and we ask the public to withhold their decision until the case has been passed upon by a fair and impartial jury. _Resolved_, That we thank the managers of this meeting for their vigilance in discovering the company's spy who had been secreted in the opera house to report our proceedings, and that we denounce such dishonorable methods of obtaining information. _Resolved_, That we, the engineers, firemen, switchmen and brakemen represented in this meeting, heartily endorse the plan of federation, and ask our coming conventions to authorize immediate action on this subject. _Resolved_, That this meeting ask Bros. Hoge and Murphy, or the G. G. Com. of the C., B. & Q., to place on the payroll the names of the trainmen who struck April 1, 1888, and that they receive $40 per month for the time they have been out. _Resolved_, That each and every delegate at this union meeting be instructed to use every endeavor to have his subordinate Division or Lodge, take such action as will guarantee financial support to our brothers now struggling for their legitimate rights, until such time as the several conventions shall convene, and shall incorporate in their constitutions such laws as shall thoroughly unite the several organizations. _Resolved_, That we return to our respective Divisions and Lodges and notify our constituents to prepare to place a boycott on C., B. & Q. cars as soon as the Chairmen of the several Grievance Committees think it practicable, and we earnestly ask the Chairmen to institute this boycott as soon as in their judgment it can be worked with advantage to our cause. _Resolved_, That this meeting heartily endorse the action taken by the C., B. & Q. Brothers, in refusing to declare the strike off. All business pertaining to the purpose of the meeting being accomplished, the meeting adjourned at 5:15 P. M., July 25. At a special meeting of the engineers at St. Joe, a plan was formed to call together the Chairmen of all the Grievance Committees in the United States and Canada authorized by the chiefs of the Brotherhoods to meet in St. Louis August 9, 1888. The previous meeting at Kansas City, New York and St. Joe were the results of local arrangements, and unauthorized by the chiefs of the Brotherhoods, and their actions were without proper authority, although giving expression to the general feelings of the men. A Committee was appointed to visit Chiefs Arthur and Sargent and request them to make an official call of all the Chairmen of Grievance Committees. This was done, and the meeting convened in St. Louis August 9. SECRET MEETING AT ST. LOUIS. Chiefs Arthur and Sargent were present. The entire Grievance Committee of the Burlington and the Chairmen of all the other Committees composed the assembly. All work was done in secret session. Nothing whatever was given to the public. The strike was the only question dealt with at this meeting. Many of the men favored an immediate boycott of "Q" cars and "Q" freight. After two days of discussion, it was agreed that the time and conditions were not such as to warrant a boycott; it was believed that the road had no business of consequence to be injured. This matter was then laid aside to be taken up in October. Another Committee was appointed to confer with the "Q" officials. This Committee was composed of Chairmen of roads not on strike. The meeting adjourned Saturday, August 11. On Monday, August 13, Alexander Sullivan, Chairman Vrooman of the Union Pacific and his committee had an interview with Vice President Peasley and General Superintendent Besler. The meeting was an informal one. The proposition presented by the Committee was a demand that all the men be taken back in a body; that the former proposition of Mr. Stone, to pay as good wages as his neighbors, be accepted by the Brotherhood. Mr. Peasley stated that he had no power to act in the absence of Manager Stone and President Perkins, but that he would submit the proposition to these officials on their return from the East. He also said that the company desired peace with the Brotherhoods. No action was taken by Messrs. Stone and Perkins; the only result of the meeting was to strengthen them in their determination to fight the Brotherhoods to the end. All efforts to produce a boycott had failed. The only result of the union meetings held at various points was to convince the strikers that the boycott was not necessary, in fact that they had already won the strike. They continued their meetings, and were just as much out of the way of the company as though they had been locked up for months. In the meantime, and in fact from the beginning of the strike, the company had been moving heaven and earth in their efforts to bring victory out of what seemed hopeless defeat. Starting with an inferior grade of men, they have been constantly weeding out the poorer ones as fast as a more competent man appeared who was willing to work for them. A very great number of those originally hired have disappeared and better men have taken their places. Many competent men, who had been driven out of the Brotherhoods for dissolute habits, or from prejudice, and who had at first stood aloof from the trouble, had now come forward and entered the service. Beginning on the 27th of February with their business almost wholly destroyed, they have used every means in their power, and have left no stone unturned that promised to increase their traffic. In this they have not been unsuccessful, and their business is today probably as good as any other Western road. In their relation to the strikers, they have outwitted them at every point, and have used with fatal effect every weapon that came to their hand. The truth is that the old employes never had a leader, from the 27th of February until the present day; they have been under the orders and at the beck and call of this committee and that committee, and have trusted to this chairman and that chief until they were bewildered, and finally lost. The "Ides of March" was as fatal to them as to Cæsar. When the first boycott was lifted, their defeat was absolute and certain; as an evidence of that the action of the self-constituted Advisory Board, in sending road engineers into the yards in Chicago to take the switch engines given up by their brothers at the second boycott, the last of March, should have been deemed ample and sufficient. Any strike, by any body of men, conducted as this one was, would have the same ignominious ending. When a class of men are forced into a strike, and their places are filled by men who are allowed to retain them; when the business interests, interrupted by the strike, are permitted to be resumed, does not such a condition plainly indicate failure? There should be no more great railroad strikes until men, other than those immediately interested, are ready and willing to win them. AT THE CONVENTIONS. At the Firemen's Convention, the promised plan of federation was put forward. Before the firemen adjourned, the switchmen had met in Convention. They received and endorsed the plan outlined by the firemen, and appointed a committee of the Grand Officers to act with the engineers and firemen in putting it into execution. Contrary to the expectations of the firemen and switchmen, the engineers at their Convention failed to ratify the move toward federation, and had nothing ready to offer in its stead. They did, however, pass a resolution favoring "some means of bringing the organizations closer together." This action of the engineers was generally understood as a desire upon their part to drop the federation scheme entirely, and much ill feeling has in consequence resulted. The striking switchmen naturally felt that the sacrifice made by them had failed to bear fruit, and that the Brotherhood had not redeemed their pledges--nay, more, that they had fallen back into their old position of "refraining from all entangling alliances" and ignoring the other organizations. Affairs remained in this unsatisfactory condition until the latter part of November. In the meantime, many of the strikers, engineers, firemen and switchmen sought and obtained work on other roads, the Chicago, Santa Fe & California gaining the most of them. ANOTHER COMMITTEE. At the Engineers' Convention, a committee of nine had been appointed, with A. R. Cavener as chairman, to handle the remains of the "Q" strike. Hoge was retired, or rather had resigned, and the payments to the men were now made through the local divisions of the Brotherhood. Up to November 25, nothing had been heard of the committee of nine, and it was not known that they were making any efforts to assist the strikers. It was understood that this committee had been given all the power in the Brotherhood, even to the boycott, if necessary to win the strike. CUTTING OFF THE SWITCHMEN. November 25, letters were received by the chairman of each local body of strikers, from Cleveland, signed by P. M. Arthur and the Finance Committee of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. These letters were to the effect, that after the October payment had been made, the switchmen were to be stricken from the payrolls; that the late Convention had made no provision for the further payment of these men. It will be remembered that prior to the switchmen engaging in this strike, an agreement had been made with them that as long as the strike lasted they were to be paid the same wages that were paid to the engineers. A written contract was entered into, a copy of which is now in possession of James L. Monoghan. During the different phases of the strike this agreement was frequently mentioned by prominent members of the Brotherhoods, and acknowledged by the Chiefs. At the same time the switchmen were cut off from assistance, the pay of the engineers was raised from $40 to $50 per month. This increase of $10 would have been ample to pay the switchmen. Protests were sent to Cleveland from all over the "Q" system. The following is the text in full of the Chicago letter, together with the signatures of engineers, firemen and switchmen: CHICAGO, ILL., NOV. 24, 1888. HEADQUARTERS C., B. & Q. STRIKERS.--CURRAN'S HALL. _To Messrs. P. M. Arthur, T. S. Ingraham, H. C. Hayes_: DEAR SIRS: In receipt of yours of the 22d, we must say that a more sad turn or blow has not struck this body since the beginning of the strike as the decision of that letter. Have we solicited the friendly hand of our fellow switchmen the past eight months, have we sustained brotherly feeling and fought the common enemy all summer hand in hand, only to throw our participants broadcast over the land after proving themselves loyal to us and men of their word? Do we have to bring disgrace upon ourselves, by being connected with such unmanly actions, and involve thereby bitter antagonistic feelings in the future? We engineers went out with grievances, where the switchmen had none, but sympathy only; would it not be more justice to cut us off and pay these men for their manly actions? After the return of the regular delegates from the Convention, information was communicated to us of their firm understanding that the treatment of the engineers and switchmen would be the same in the future as in the past. In regard to dividing our $40 per month with the switchmen in the future, we can only refer to figures; about thirty to thirty-one engineers against sixty-five switchmen [in Chicago--AUTHOR], both parties in debt more or less for the necessaries of life for the eight months, winter at hand, and our men badly in need. Some provision must be made! How in the name of God can we share with others, having scarcely enough for ourselves? The future prosperity of our Order undoubtedly depends upon the just action taken in this C., B. & Q. struggle. How can we expect to gain and retain the kindly feeling of members of other organizations relative to us in railway service by practicing acts of injustice and partiality in our own midst? Look at the switchmen at this point. When employed, their salary ranges from $75 to $90 per month. They have stepped down for principle's sake, and not for the $40 per month, barely sufficient at this point to keep soul and body together. Now, at this great Convention it has been overlooked to provide for these men who fought the battle according to instructions. Only a portion of the men being thought of, and the balance of them--those who sacrificed all for principle and friendship--have been thrown out into the world without any previous notice whatever. Here we are today to fight our own battle. Rather than being sacrificed and deserted in this style, we will accept previous favorable offers at Chicago, saving at least this point, although at the sad experience of broken promises. Indeed, sad it is for men to fight honorably, and with whole soul, only to find out, after losing all, that they are cut off from ammunition! Now then, left without ammunition, what is left for the soldier to do--surrender or be cut down? Our course in this depends on speedy action, and we therefore demand immediate answer from your Grand Lodge, stating decidedly the future treatment. Shall it continue as before, or shall it be cut off? As our men are radical, we ask you to answer by telegraph, up to 2 P. M., Monday, November 26, "Yes" or "No." If no answer is received up to this time it will be considered by this body a negative answer, and copies of this will be sent to all subordinate divisions and lodges of the Big Four organizations. Yours fraternally, [Signed] T. J. TIERNEY, M. T. MAHONEY, J. RYAN, Engineers. M. SHIELDS, JOHN A. HIENISH, DAVID BAIN, Switchmen. The answer came by mail, and reads as follows: OFFICE OF THE GRAND DIVISION BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS, CLEVELAND, NOV. 26, 1888. _M. T. Mahoney_: DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: Yours of the 24th at hand, and in reply thereto we sent a check Saturday, to pay the engineers and switchmen alike for October. After that time we can pay nothing for the switchmen. You seem to think that the power is vested in the Grand Officers to levy assessments for the support of the switchmen; but such is not the case. We can only act as directed by the Convention. The Convention directed that an assessment be levied for the support of the engineers at $50 per month, and that is as far as we can act. Yours fraternally, [Signed] T. S. INGRAHAM, F. G. A. E. Previous to these letters, the Chairman of the switchmen had written to Cleveland to make inquiry about the October pay. The answer to his letter is also herewith given: CLEVELAND, O., NOV., 22, 1888. _J. A. Hienish, Esq._: In reply to yours of 18th, I can only say that, although the Grand Chief was particular to call attention to the fact that no provision was made for October payroll, no steps were taken to supply that want, and all that we can do is to forward the amounts as fast as money comes in on donations, which is very slow, and with October payroll all payments to switchmen and brakemen will cease, as the further assessment was levied to pay engineers only. We have, however, advised the engineers to share what they receive with the switchmen. Whether or not they will do it, they can answer. We shall send a draft today to pay the men at Chicago, both engineers and switchmen for October, and to other points as fast as we can get the money, which is the best we can do. Yours truly, [Signed] T. S. INGRAHAM, F. G. A. E. Letters were sent by the strikers to all the Brotherhood Divisions throughout the western country, notifying them of the arbitrary action of the officers and telling them the condition of the men. No word had been received from Chairman Cavener or his committee of nine until after the 9th of December, when the switchmen of Chicago declared the strike off, as far as concerned themselves. This action was taken with the consent and advice of the Grand Master of the Association, and letters were sent to the switchmen along the line of road, advising them to take the same action and make any terms that they were able to make with the company. The striking engineers and firemen at Chicago also advised this course and even offered to unite with the switchmen in following it out. The switchmen along the line, acting on the advice of the Brotherhood men, refused to recognize the strike as off, and remained with the engineers, but without aid from the Brotherhood, as seen from the letters herewith given. December 11, Mr. Cavener arrived in Chicago, and on the 28th of December representatives of the Brotherhood from west of the Missouri river assembled in Chicago to the number of two hundred. They were called together by Mr. Cavener to take final action on the strike. From the 28th day of December to the 4th day of January, the daily papers were full of sensational rumors of boycotts, but no such action was contemplated by the Brotherhoods. Below is given the full report of the settlement, issued from the Grand Lodge of the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association. OFFICE OF THE GRAND LODGE, SWITCHMEN'S MUTUAL AID ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA. CHICAGO, ILL., Jan. 10, 1889. _To All Subordinate Lodges_: SIRS AND BROTHERS: At the late Convention of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, held at Richmond, Va., a Committee of nine was appointed to examine into the condition of the strike on the C., B. & Q. Railroad, and devise ways and means whereby it might be brought to a close. The Committee was composed of the following named gentlemen: A. R. Cavener, A. W. Perley, T. Hollinrake, Thos. Humphreys, A. Le May, A. W. Logan, Edward Kent, Wm. C. Hayes and T. P. Bellows. After the Committee had made a thorough investigation, they requested the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen to appoint a Committee to act in conjunction with them, and Grand Master Sargent appointed L. Mooney and S. W. Dixon as such Committee. This Joint Committee, in their report to the two Brotherhoods, say: An interview with the officials of the C., B. & Q. company was solicited and granted. Other interviews followed, in which the strike, in all its details was discussed, with a thorough appreciation of the gravity and importance of the situation. The Committee sought by all the means at its command to secure a settlement that would be of the largest possible advantage to the strikers. Every point was brought out and thoroughly discussed, and after a careful, patient and exhaustive review of the situation, a settlement was effected which met with the unanimous approval of the Joint Committee. Preliminary to our report of the settlement, we desire to introduce the following documents, which are self-explanatory: CHICAGO, Jan. 4, 1889. _Mr. E. P. Ripley, General Manager, Chicago_: DEAR SIR: The enclosed is a copy of the communication which I was directed to give to the Committee of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, who have been in conference with us today, which was accepted by them, and they have declared the strike settled. It is important that no question should arise as to the good faith of the company, and it is our desire and intention that there should be no opportunity for such question. As to the meaning of the word "available," I desire to say that when it becomes necessary to employ men outside of those now in the service, care must be taken to consider all the qualifications that go to make up availability, including experience and familiarity with our surroundings and rules. In short, that the very best men are to be selected, regardless of personal relations or prejudices for or against any men or class of men. It should be further fully understood that the company does not desire to pursue those who have been guilty of improper conduct during the late strike, and while such men cannot be re-employed, and while we cannot give letters to them, no officer or employe should continue the animosities of the conflict after it is over, or interfere to prevent the employment of such men elsewhere. Yours truly, HENRY B. STONE. Similar letters will be sent to all the officers in charge of our different properties, and by them transmitted to their operating officers. H. B. STONE. WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY. BOSTON, Jan. 3, 1889. _To Henry B. Stone, Vice President C., B. & Q. Ry., Chicago_: I did not telegraph yesterday, as you requested, because it seemed important under the circumstances, and since we have been asked by the engineers to say what our position is, that it should be done with the authority of the whole Executive Committee. The Committee is now in session, and I am authorized and instructed to send you the following: "The company will not follow up, black list, or in any manner attempt to proscribe those who were concerned in the strike, but, on the contrary, will cheerfully give to all who have not been guilty of violence, or other improper conduct, letters of introduction, showing their record in our service, and will, in all proper ways, assist them in finding employment. "The first duty of the management is to those who are in the company's employ, and we must remember, and protect their interests by promotions, and by every other means in our power. Beyond this, if it should become necessary to go outside of the service for men in any capacity, it is our intention to select the best men available, and in making selections, not to exclude those who were engaged in the strike of February 27, if they are the best men available, and provided they have not since been guilty of violence and other improper conduct." You are authorized to give a copy of this message to the engineers who called upon you. [Signed] C. E. PERKINS. CHICAGO, Jan. 4, 1889. _Mr. A. R. Cavener, Chairman Committee Brotherhood Locomotive Engineers_: DEAR SIR: The above is a copy of a telegram received yesterday from Mr. Perkins, our President, and which, in accordance with his instructions, I have submitted to you, and which has been fully discussed with you and your Committee. Yours truly, HENRY B. STONE. CHICAGO, Jan. 4, 1889. _Mr. Henry B. Stone, Second Vice President_: DEAR SIR: We, the undersigned Committee, in behalf of our respective organizations--Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen--and as representatives of the ex-employes of the Burlington system, who left the services of said company February 27, 1888, or later, on account of the strike, approve of the foregoing agreement, and hereby declare the strike of the said ex-employes as settled. Yours truly, ALEX. R. CAVENER, A. W. PERLEY, T. HOLLINRAKE, THOS. HUMPHREYS, A. LE MAY, WM. C. HAYES, A. W. LOGAN, EDW. KENT, T. P. BELLOWS, S. W. DIXON, L. MOONEY. The Joint Committee submitted their report to the Grand Officers of the B. of L. E. and B. of L. F., and the settlement "met with their entire and unqualified approval." The Grand Officers, therefore, issued a circular to their respective Divisions and Lodges, under date of January 7, 1889, in which they say "The strike of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen on the C., B. & Q. railway system, inaugurated February 27, 1888, is hereby officially declared at an end, and the striking employes are now at liberty to make applications for situations on said system." The purpose of this circular is to advise the striking switchmen who desire to be re-employed, to file their applications at their respective Division headquarters, on or before February 1, 1889. This advice is given at the request of the officials of the company. Applications filed after February 1 will not be considered. The settlement may not be all that might be expected or desired, but it seems to be the best that could be secured under the condition of things, and I hope it will be received in good faith, and that all hostility will cease. In closing, I urge upon switchmen, members of our Association, to exert their influence in securing situations for the ex-employes of the C., B. & Q. system. Yours fraternally, FRANK SWEENEY, Grand Master S. M. A. A. of N. A. The letters herein printed are given without comment, further than to say that as they seem to have some bearing on the settlement, they were evidently intended for that purpose. The business of the Burlington, as with the other western roads at this time, is but little over half its usual volume. No switchmen, engineers or firemen returned to the employ of that company during January. Advices from along the entire system indicate the same condition of affairs at the present date, February 8, 1889. The new men, laid off on account of dull business, still remain on hand, and as business increases they will return to work, and not until their ranks are exhausted will there be any vacancies for the old men. The probabilities are, that several months will elapse before any of the strikers will be needed by the Burlington road. The following letters having been made public by the Grand Officers of the firemen, through the medium of their magazine, we violate no confidence in giving them publicity here. We particularly desire to print them, from the fact that they indicate a condition of affairs in relation to the settlement that should be made known to the general public. The letters and comments are from the February, 1889, number of the Firemen's Magazine. "The B. of L. E., at its Richmond Convention, not only declined to repeal laws, the enactment of which was an indignity of such unquestioned insolence, that 'a wayfaring man though a fool' need not err in comprehending the outrage, but in its deliberations relating to ending the C., B. & Q. strike, it concluded to ignore the B. of L. F. entirely, as if the Order had no interests at stake and was unworthy of notice. In proof of this we introduce here an extract of a letter from P. M. Arthur, Grand Chief, dated November 5, 1888, which is conclusive: "The Convention also decided to appoint a Committee of nine, with Bro. Alex. Cavener as chairman, to determine when the strike _shall end_ on the C., B. & Q. Bro. Cavener will first go over that system, and see how the situation is, and address the men at the different places on the line, in view of a _settlement_. After which he will _convene his Committee_ and they are to _decide when the trouble shall end_, and _no one but themselves is to know the result until they report to the Grand Officers_. "We have italicised certain expressions in Grand Chief Arthur's letter to Grand Master Sargent, to enable our readers to see how effectually the B. of L. F. was squelched, left out in the cold, disregarded and tabooed by the B. of L. E. in the 'settlement' of the strike. "In reply to Grand Chief Arthur's letter of November 5, we here introduce extracts from Grand Master Sargent's letter of November 7: _P. M. Arthur, Esq._: DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: I am in receipt of your communication of November 5, written by S. G. E. Bro. Everett, and I have noted its contents carefully and I must acknowledge that I am disappointed in the action taken at Richmond on the question of federation. Referring to the strike, I had hoped that your Convention would end it, believing as I do that it is a useless waste of time and money to continue it any longer. We are already feeling the strain ourselves; my mail is continually filled with communications coming from the officers of the Subordinate Lodges, appealing to me in behalf of their members to excuse them from paying the heavy assessments which we have been compelled to levy. Others are prepared to surrender their charters, and the situation is anything but agreeable to me. There can be no change, however, until such time as the strike is declared off. And we will be compelled to contribute to the support of these men for a long time after, as many of them will be without situations. Whatever may be the decision of the Committee which you have appointed, I hope that they will bear in mind that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen are just as much interested in this strike as is the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and that they will also consider this claim, that the members of the Brotherhood of Firemen are not all wealthy men. "In reply to Grand Master Sargent's letter of the 7th, Grand Chief Arthur writes as follows, under date of November 9: In regard to the strike we are deeply sensible of the circumstances by which you are surrounded, and nothing could have been further from our thought than to ignore you or your Brotherhood, but in view of the fact that your Convention adjourned without action touching that matter, and as you had expressed a hope that our Convention should declare it off, it was deemed wise to take steps to fix a time to end it without giving any aid or comfort to the company. This is what was kept in view and the welfare of the firemen in it was as much an object as was that of the engineers, and when the Committee reports you will be fully informed of the course decided upon. "We are not disposed to indulge in severity of language in criticising Grand Chief Arthur's letter to Grand Master Sargent, of November 9. It is easily seen that Mr. Arthur was not only 'deeply sensible' of the circumstances which 'surrounded' the B. of L. F., but was quite as 'deeply sensible' that the circumstances 'which surrounded' the B. of L. E. were of character which he found it exceedingly difficult to explain. When the B. of L. E. deliberately 'ignored' the B. of L. F., giving it a direct slap in the face in a matter in which the interests of its members were vitally involved, the declarations of the Grand Chief 'that nothing could have been further from our thoughts than to ignore you or your Brotherhood,' the very climax of irony is reached. Look at it; here were two great Brotherhoods engaged in a life and death struggle with a powerful corporation. It had cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Firemen, with a fidelity born of heroism worthy of monuments of marble, had stood by the engineers until they were impoverished. At this supreme juncture, the B. of L. E. concludes to take steps to terminate the strike. Does it consider the interests, the rights, the sacrifices of the B. of L. F.? No, not in the least. There is no word, no sign of recognition. On the contrary the action of the B. of L. E. is that of the most offensive ostracism. There is not so much as a squint at co-operation or federation. The gush and slush about the 'twin Brotherhoods' disappears, and yet Grand Chief Arthur declares, as if he expected his assertion would be accepted as true, that in the appointment of a Committee of nine, clothed with full power to settle the strike, in which no reference was made to the B. of L. F. or to its interests, 'nothing could have been further from our thought than to ignore' the B. of L. F. It is sufficient to say that the declaration of Grand Chief Arthur was not accepted as conclusive. It is neither an apology nor an explanation. Indeed, it only serves to emphasize the fact that the B. of L. E. deliberately and purposely ignored the B. of L. F. "Proceeding with the history, it will be seen that Mr. Alexander K. Cavener, Chairman of the Committee of nine engineers, proceeded to carry out his instructions. He went over the roads of the 'Q' system, he held meetings and obtained information. He assembled his Committee of engineers and made his reports. The conclusion was to declare the strike at an end. In all of this no fireman had been consulted--no attention paid to the B. of L. F. officers or men. There had been neither co-operation nor federation--no allusion to the 'twin (?) Brotherhoods.' "At this juncture, Mr. Alexander K. Cavener, Chairman of the Committee of nine, bethought himself of the fact that there was such a Brotherhood as the B. of L. F. The B. of L. E. had not authorized him to indulge such a thought, but he did remember it and sent the following telegram: CHICAGO, Dec. 27, 1888. _Sargent and Debs_: Can you select a Committee of your Order to act in conjunction with our Committee? Meet us at Commercial Hotel morning of December 29. [Signed] ALEX. R. CAVENER. "This was the first intimation the B. of L. F. had that the B. of L. E., or the Committee of nine, recognized that the B. of L. F. had any interest whatever in the 'Q' strike, or in the settlement of the strike. Grand Master Sargent was not in Terre Haute when the message was received, and Grand Secretary and Treasurer Debs, of the B. of L. F., replied as follows: TERRE HAUTE, IND., Dec. 27, 1888. Grand Master Sargent is expected home from the East this evening, and your message will be referred to him on his arrival. For myself I do not favor the appointment of a Committee such as you suggest at this time. The invitation for joint procedure comes too late in the day. I have no doubt our regular Committee representing the C., B. & Q., now at Chicago, will be amply able to look after our interests. E. V. DEBS. "Upon the arrival of Grand Master Sargent the following message was sent to Chairman Cavener, at Chicago: TERRE HAUTE, IND., Dec. 29, 1888. _A. R. Cavener, Commercial Hotel, Chicago, Ill._: Referring to your telegram we have to say, that in our opinion we should have been given an opportunity of being represented in the tour of inspection of the "Q" system. We are in the habit of acting for ourselves in such matters, and hence we are not disposed at this late hour to join in the "amen" to what has been done. If we were not capable of doing our part from the beginning we are not willing to join issues now. We respectfully decline to appoint any Committee for the purpose suggested in your telegram. [Signed] F. P. Sargent, Grand Master. E. V. DEBS, Grand Sec. & Treas. "The refusal of the B. of L. F. to appoint a Committee to act with the engineers' Committee was adversely criticised, and resulted in sending to Terre Haute a Committee of two, Bro. R. H. Lacy, Chairman of the C., B. & Q. Committee, having charge of strike affairs, and Bro. George Godding. These men visited Terre Haute, and, acting under advice, represented to Grand Master Sargent that it was important that a Committee should be appointed to represent the firemen on the Committee of engineers. "Grand Master Sargent thereupon transmitted to Grand Chief Arthur the following message: TERRE HAUTE, IND., Jan. 2, 1889. _P. M. Arthur, Cleveland, Ohio_: I have been requested by A. R. Cavener, Chairman of Committee at Chicago, to appoint a Committee of firemen to act with them in the matter now before them. Will you inform me if he has the authority to do this, and if you approve of the same as the Executive of the Order? Has this Committee full power to act regardless of you? Answer at my expense. [Signed] F. P. SARGENT, Grand Master. "In response to the foregoing, the following reply was received from Grand Chief Arthur: CLEVELAND, O., Jan. 2, 1889. _Frank P. Sargent_: Would advise you to grant Cavener's request in the interest of peace and harmony. He has not complied with my instructions, but I waive all in favor of having an end put to the strike. P. M. ARTHUR. "Upon receipt of this message, Grand Master Sargent appointed Bros. S. W. Dixon, of Baraboo, Wis., and L. Mooney, of St. Joe, Mo., a Committee to represent the B. of L. F.'s interests, as set forth in the following communication addressed to Chairman Cavener of the B. of L. E. Committee under date of January 2: GRAND LODGE } BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN. } TERRE HAUTE, IND., Jan. 2, 1889. } _A. R. Cavener, Esq., and members of the Committee representing the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the interests of the C., B. & Q. engineers engaged in the present strike_: GENTLEMEN AND BROTHERS: It is not necessary for me to introduce myself to you honorable gentlemen, as I am, no doubt, known to you both officially and socially, and I will proceed to place before you certain facts, and at the same time explain to you the reason of my forwarding the message to Bro. Cavener, Chairman of your Committee, signed jointly by Bro. Debs and myself, in reply to a request made by Bro. Cavener for us to appoint a Committee representing the firemen to go with you before the officials of the Burlington system. I desire to trespass upon your valuable time long enough to call your attention to the original compact entered into between the engineers and firemen in the beginning of this eventful strike. It was understood that in all our dealings both as Committees and as executive officers among ourselves, or when before the officers of the company, that we should act together. I am not disposed at this time to pass any criticism whatever upon the action of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers or upon any of its executive officers; I simply wish to call attention to this matter in a fair and unbiased light. When our Convention convened at Atlanta, the situation of the Brotherhood was not of an encouraging nature; we were incumbered with debt; we knew that we could not as a body, take any action in the matter of the strike, except to provide means for the maintenance of the men engaged therein, until such time as the Convention of your honorable body had convened and decided upon what they believed to be the best course to pursue. We provided means for the further sustenance of our men and awaited the action of your body. Being honored with an invitation to be present in Richmond as a guest of your Brotherhood, I was able to meet with many of the prominent members, together with the Grand Officers, and I presented, when the opportunity offered, my exact position as an Executive Official, stating, that we, as an organization, were willing, at all times to do anything that was honorable toward bringing about a satisfactory settlement of the difficulty. I was assured that some action would be taken whereby some means would be devised which would lead to the ending of the strike. I returned home, and shortly after the termination of your Convention, I received an official communication from Grand Chief Arthur, in which he informed me that a Committee of nine had been appointed with Bro. Alex. R. Cavener as Chairman, to determine when the strike should end on the C., B. & Q.; that Bro. Cavener should first go over the system and see what the situation was, and address the men at different places along the line in view of a settlement; after which he would convene the Committee, and they were to decide when the trouble should end, and no one but themselves was to know the result until after reporting to the Grand Office. I immediately wrote a letter to Grand Chief Arthur, in which I expressed a feeling of dissatisfaction on account of the firemen not being requested to appoint members of the organization to represent them; I believed that if there was a representative of the engineers organization going over the system that there should also be a representative of the firemen accompanying him. I may have been wrong in my view, still I have seen nothing yet to change my opinion. In reply to my letter to Grand Chief Arthur, he stated that it was not the intention to ignore us in any manner, but as I had expressed the hope that his Convention would devise the means of ending the strike, it was deemed wise to take steps and fix a time to end it without giving any aid or comfort to the company. He further stated that the firemen and their welfare were kept in view, and that when the Committee made its report that I would be fully informed of the course decided upon, no intimation being made, however, that I was at liberty to appoint any firemen to go in conjunction with the Committee of engineers. While the communication did not just meet my views, I said to my associate, "We will await the report of this Committee." A few days after I visited Cleveland and had a conversation with Grand Chief Arthur, in which I again broached this matter, and was again informed by him that it was no intention on the part of the Convention to ignore the firemen and that our interests were considered equally with theirs. He furthermore informed me regarding the authority delegated to the Committee, and led me to believe that all you could do was simply to assemble, receive the report of Bro. Cavener, and then recommend what further action should be taken by the Grand Officers when we should convene as Grand Officers and decide the issue. A few days after this I was present in the city of St. Paul, and had a pleasant interview with Bro. Hayes, who is, I believe, a member of your Committee. I expressed to Bro. Hayes my opinion, and I desire to say I found him exceedingly courteous, and he coincided with my views, saying it was all due to an oversight and that he would communicate with Grand Chief Arthur on the subject. I stated to Bro. Hayes that if Grand Chief Arthur requested of me the appointment of a Committee, I would gladly do so; nothing more was heard of the matter. I was receiving communications daily from all sections of the country, asking why the firemen were not represented on this Committee; such communications I answered in as honorable a manner as I knew how, placing no censure upon any one and saying nothing that would in any manner, lead intelligent men to think we had any desire to antagonize. In my absence from the city Bro. Debs received a telegram from Bro. Cavener, requesting us to appoint a committee. Bro. Debs answered the message, expressing his sentiments, not for the purpose of creating ill-feeling, but simply to place us and our Order before the Committee in an honorable light. Upon my return the message was submitted to me, and in view of the fact that throughout this entire strike we have acted jointly, believing that we should have been requested to make appointments on that Committee of engineers, and in view of the further fact that at the time of learning officially of the action of the Committee, I wrote to Grand Chief Arthur, calling his attention to my feelings and afterward in my conversation with Brother Hayes, in which I gave him to understand that if Grand Chief Arthur would request of me the appointing of a Committee that I would gladly do so. I believed, as did Bro. Debs, that it was entirely wrong to ask us to send a Committee to go before the officers of the company after the Committee's work in a large measure had been accomplished. When I say "Committee's work" I refer to the Chairman, who had been over the system interviewing men and observing the situation while we were not represented nor even requested to be; and for this reason our message was sent. This morning a Committee of two of the General Committee representing the firemen on the C., B. & Q. R. R. presented the position you occupy and authority delegated to you by your Grand Body. After a careful consideration of the matter and a desire to bring about an amicable settlement of the present difficulty, create harmony and good will between all labor organizations, especially our co-workers, the engineers, we have wired the following message to Grand Chief Arthur: "I have been requested by A. R. Cavener, Chairman of Committee at Chicago, to appoint a committee of firemen to act with others in the matter now before them. Will you inform me if he has the authority to do this and if you approve of the same as the Executive of the Order? Has this Committee full power to act regardless of you? Answer at my expense." Considering the correspondence and conversation we have had on this subject with Grand Chief Arthur, it is no more than right that he should, as an executive of the organization he represents, endorse the appointing of a Committee representing the firemen, to take part in these deliberations. Upon receiving his reply, if he endorses your request, I shall immediately instruct two members of our Order, who are intelligent, capable and somewhat familiar with the situation, to report to you at once. I can assure you that whatever you decide upon doing, these representatives will acquiesce in so long as it is to the interests of the organizations involved. I am sorry that there should be any misunderstanding on account of this matter, but I think time will demonstrate to intelligent, thinking minds that the position taken by the Grand Officers of the B. of L. F. has been an honorable one, and all we ask is that consideration which all honest men are entitled to. We may differ in opinion, but that we have a right to do, and when it comes to a matter of such grave importance as the one that now presents itself for our consideration, we should set aside all personal feelings and act to the best interests of those we represent. I can assure you, gentlemen, that you have the best wishes of the Grand Officers of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and we only trust that through your deliberations may come such good results as will redound in honor to yourselves as well as to the organization which you represent. Yours fraternally, F. P. SARGENT. "In this connection it becomes necessary to state that among other things charged in support of the allegations that the B. of L. F. is responsible for the failure of the strike, is a letter written by Grand Master Sargent in reply to a letter received from Bro. J. E. Kline, of Plattsmouth, Neb. As special efforts have been made to misrepresent Grand Master Sargent in the matter, we here give the full text of the correspondence: PLATTSMOUTH, NEB., Dec. 6, 1888. _F. P. Sargent, Esq., Grand Master_: DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: Yours of recent date to Bro. Zinn was referred to me, and I was requested to ask for information. Since you cannot assure us our support after November, can you give us any encouragement in regard to the Committee of nine, with Cavener at the head, which was appointed at the late Engineers' Convention? We have been notified that they would put on the boycott, which I think is the only means to win this fight. I am very much afraid that this strike is lost, and that we (the men on the Q.) are sacrificed. I have been a Brotherhood fireman about two years, and have done everything in my power to promote the Order, and I have always thought that nothing could break our organization, but I am afraid if this strike is lost, that we fall beneath the heels of capital; yet I am satisfied that some move can be made by our Order to crush the C., B. & Q. into submission. Now, in regard to some of the strikers refusing employment on other roads, preferring to lay idle on the forty ($40) dollars paid us for so doing, I think is false, and I am satisfied I can convince your informant. In the first place, well do you know that there are many roads that want men, but refuse to employ C., B. & Q. strikers, until the strike is declared off. Furthermore, we have men working on all the roads in the country that will employ strikers. I am sorry that those men who are being expelled for non-payment, cannot see that it is to their benefit to sacrifice a few dollars per month, while we who are in the fight sacrifice on an average of thirty-five ($35) dollars per month. I would to God that those men have their wages cut down one-half in the next twenty-four hours. In conclusion, I ask you your _candid opinion in regard to the boycott_. Please let me hear from you at once. Sincerely yours, JNO. E. KLINE. GRAND LODGE } BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN, } TERRE HAUTE, IND., Dec. 14, 1888. } DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: Your favor of December 6 came to hand during my absence from the city, which accounts for a delayed answer. I cannot give you any information of the action of the Committee appointed by the engineers in their Convention, other than what I received from Grand Chief Arthur and one member of the Committee. I have heard that it was the intention of the Committee to end the strike; but I can say to you honestly and candidly, that so far as a boycott is concerned it is simply nonsense to talk about it. Any sane man who will carefully consider the present situation of the C., B. & Q., and the condition of our organization, would see the folly of our contemplating such a step. The day for boycott has long gone by; there was a time when it could have been put into effect, and something accomplished by it, had there been any disposition on the part of a large number of men to maintain it, but any man who was a witness of the situation at Chicago, during the time of the boycott, would see the folly of talking about one in this instance; and I must say to you very firmly and honestly, that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, as an organization, will have nothing whatever to do with a boycott, no matter what Mr. Cavener's statements may be. I am waiting for the report of this Committee which has been appointed by the engineers. When their report comes in, if they have no way of ending the strike, I will find a way of getting the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen out of it, and I will go to work and endeavor to find employment for our members who are not able to find it themselves. It is a very good idea to go to work and preach federation and all these different doctrines, and then, when the time comes to act upon them, repudiate them. There is no man who appreciates the manly stand of the C., B. & Q. firemen more than I, and there is no one in a better position to see the condition of the organization than I am. I am speaking for no effect other than to express my honest opinion. The time has come when this strike must end and the men must look for employment, and the quicker this is done the better it will be for all concerned. There are those in our Order who are not earning $40 per month and whose wages are far below the wages paid on the Western roads. These men have paid their last dollar and they are in want; their families must have clothes, they must have fuel to keep them warm; and I can tell you as a friend and brother that I do not propose to drive such men out of the organization after having done what they could to maintain the strike. As soon as the strike is off we will devote our time and attention to finding employment for such men as desire to make application to the Grand Officers. Let the consequences be what they will, we have decided upon the stand we shall take, and I shall take it as an official of the Order. The engineers in their Convention were informed of my opinion, as was Mr. Cavener, and it seems to me that when their Committee was appointed, it would have been nothing more than proper courtesy to have requested one of our members to act with them. This they did not do. They say it was an oversight, but it does not change my opinion as to their duty. I have learned through a member of the Committee of what their action will be; and I desire to say to you as a brother, with the best feelings towards you and other members of your Lodge and all strikers, that the advice we gave you in our last communication was for your best interests as well as to the interests of every member in the country. The men who preach boycott had better be engaged in bringing about federation of the different organizations, so that they may act in harmony one with another. Better be men and acknowledge the strike lost, look for work and get themselves in a position to fight again when we are called upon to do so. I trust you will receive this communication in the spirit in which it is written, as I desire to be honest with you and to give you what I believe the best advice that I possibly can, and, mark my words, the day will come when you will say that I was right. It may be when I am officially dead, but I know what the final result will be. I have the best of feeling for the engineers on the Burlington system, they have done their duty and done it manfully; and had they the support which they ought to have had, the result of the strike would have been very different. Trusting that the Brothers have decided to take the advice of one who is their friend, and if they desire assistance in the way of positions and situations that they will apply for them, and wishing you all success, I remain, Yours fraternally, FRANK P. SARGENT, G. M. "The particular charge made was that Grand Master Sargent had advised firemen to take the places of engineers. And upon this gratuitous falsehood every conceivable charge has been rung. It will be observed that there is not so much as an intimation of such a thing, nor can any amount of torture of Grand Master Sargent's language make it convey such an idea." 
39291	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Characters enclosed by curly braces are superscripted (example: iii{d}) BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP * * * * * SOME PRESS OPINIONS Times.--"The problem already felt acutely in London and in large towns has now appeared even in the country town and village, and to those who still doubt its extent or seriousness we commend this most instructive work." Morning Post.--"An important book on an important subject." Daily News.--"Mr. Bray's book is as full of counsel as of instruction, and it should be in the hands of every student of one of the most serious of social problems." * * * * * BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP by REGINALD A. BRAY L.C.C. Author of "The Town Child" Second Impression London Constable & Co. Ltd. 1912 PREFACE We are beginning to realize clearly that all is not well with the youth of this country. From all sides complaints of neglect, and the evils of neglect, are thronging in. Boys as they leave school are casting off the shackles of parental control, and, with no intervening period of youth, are assuming the full independence of the adult. The old apprenticeship system is falling into disuse, and methods of industrial training are at once unsatisfactory and, for the majority, difficult to obtain. Boys in increasing numbers are entering occupations where they learn nothing and forget all they have previously learned, and in which they can see no prospects of employment when manhood is reached. As a consequence, there is a general drift into the army of unskilled labour, and later into the ranks of the unemployed. All expert opinion is unanimous in voicing these complaints. The Report of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and Minority alike, with its volumes of special inquiries and evidence, is one long testimony to the gravity of the evils which are the consequence of neglected youth. Further, we are coming to understand that the period of adolescence forms a critical epoch in the development of the lad. "The forces of sin and those of virtue never struggle so hotly for possession of the youthful soul." [1] And the boy too often is left to fight out this struggle without assistance, and even without advice. The conditions of modern life are increasingly hard on youth. "Never has youth," says Mr. Stanley Hall, the greatest living authority on adolescence, "been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our land and day. Increasing urban life, with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli, just when an active objective life is most needed; early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline; the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time; the mad rush for sudden wealth, and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth----" all in increasing degree imperil the passage to manhood. And, lastly, we are compelled to confess that an evil which is at once a grave and a growing evil is one which demands immediate attention. It is not a problem that can be laid on the shelf for that convenient season which never arrives, when legislators have nothing else to think about. There is urgent need for reform in the near future, unless we would see a further degeneration of the youth of the country. The object of this volume is altogether practical--to show what reforms are necessary to prevent the growth of the evil by laying the foundation of a new and true apprenticeship system. But to achieve this object it is necessary first to explain how the problem was dealt with in days gone by, when life was more stable and industrial conditions less complex; and, secondly, to understand in detail the characteristic features of the question as it presents itself to-day. Only with the experience of the past and the present to guide us can we face the future with any hope of controlling its destinies. As "she" is mentioned nowhere else in the volume, it seems desirable to say a word here about the girl. This book is, indeed, concerned with boys alone, but, with a few changes in details, all that is written about conditions, and all that is recommended in the way of reforms, is equally applicable in her case also. I have endeavoured, even at the risk of being termed unduly dogmatic, to make my proposals for reform as definite as possible. I have done so in the cause of clearness. But if I fail to carry my readers with me all the way, I shall be well content if only I have succeeded in starting them on a pilgrimage in quest of the new apprenticeship system. REGINALD A. BRAY. ADDINGTON SQUARE, CAMBERWELL, S.E. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v CHAPTER I THE ESSENTIALS OF APPRENTICESHIP 1 CHAPTER II THE OLD APPRENTICESHIP 4 I. The Age of the Gilds 4 II. The Statute of Apprentices 11 III. The Industrial Revolution 20 CHAPTER III THE AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION 26 CHAPTER IV THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THE STATE 36 I. State Supervision 36 § 1. State Regulation 37 (_a_) Prohibition of Employment 41 (_b_) Limitation of Hours 43 (_c_) Protection of Health 52 § 2. State Enterprise 59 II. State Training 62 (_a_) The Elementary School 63 (_b_) The Continuation School 65 III. State Provision of an Opening 70 CHAPTER V APPRENTICESHIP OF TO-DAY 75 I. The Contribution of the State 76 § 1. State Regulation 76 § 2. State Enterprise 83 § 3. Summary 88 II. The Contribution of Philanthropy 89 III. The Contribution of the Home 92 § 1. The Boy of School Age 96 § 2. The Boy after School Days 100 IV. The Contribution of the Workshop 103 § 1. London 104 (_a_) The Employment of School-Children 105 (_b_) The Entry to a Trade 113 (_c_) The Passage to Manhood 142 (_d_) Summary 149 § 2. Other Towns 151 (_a_) The Employment of School-Children 151 (_b_) The Entry to a Trade 155 (_c_) The Passage to Manhood 160 § 3. Rural Districts 161 V. The Break-up of Apprenticeship 165 CHAPTER VI THE NEW APPRENTICESHIP 176 I. Supervision 191 (_a_) The Raising of the School Age 192 (_b_) The Prohibition of Child Labour 195 (_c_) The New Half-Time System 197 (_d_) The Parents' Point of View 202 II. Training 207 III. The Provision of an Opening 221 IV. General Conclusions 231 LIST OF AUTHORITIES 241 INDEX 245 BOY LABOUR AND APPRENTICESHIP CHAPTER I THE ESSENTIALS OF APPRENTICESHIP Originally the term "apprenticeship" was employed to signify not merely the practical training in the mysteries of a trade, but also that wider training of character and intelligence on which depends the real efficiency of the craftsman. Apprenticeship was regarded as a preparation for life, and not only as a preparation for the workshop. It is in this sense that the word is used throughout the present volume. In a volume concerned with any branch of social reform, and consequently likely to arouse differences of opinion, it is always desirable to start on good terms with the reader. This can best be done by beginning with assumptions the truth of which no one is likely to call in question. In dealing with the problem of boy labour and apprenticeship, it is not difficult to venture on certain statements which will receive the unqualified approval of all. An apprenticeship system worthy of the name must satisfy three conditions. First, it must provide for the adequate supervision of boys until they reach at least the age of eighteen. Before that age a lad is not fit to be his own master, and should remain at least to some extent under the control of elder persons. Such supervision must have respect both to his conduct and to his physical development. Secondly, an apprenticeship system must offer full opportunities of training, both general and special--the training of the citizen and the training of the worker. And, lastly, it must lead forward to some opening in the ranks of adult labour, for which definite preparation has been made, and in which good character may find reasonable prospects of permanent employment. Supervision, training, the provision of a suitable opening--these must be regarded as the three essentials of an apprenticeship system. How they may be assured is, no doubt, a problem which invites controversy; that they ought to be assured will be allowed by all. Further, it is perhaps allowable to assume that an apprenticeship system must not be regarded merely as a means of entering a skilled trade. We must not think of it as an organization reserved for a comparatively small section of the community: all must be brought within the sphere of its influence. All boys alike need supervision; all boys alike require some training; all boys alike should see before them, as manhood approaches, the prospects of an opening in some form of occupation where diligence and aptitude may receive its due reward. And all alike must one day play their part in the complex life of the State. We want some to be skilled workers; we want all to be intelligent and well-conducted citizens. Apprenticeship, then, using the word in its widest sense, must be universal. Here again, it is hoped, the reader may express his agreement. In what follows an attempt is made to examine the old apprenticeship system, to criticize apprenticeship as it exists to-day, and so to lead on to proposals which will pave the way for the coming of the new and real apprenticeship system of to-morrow. Throughout, the industrial organization will be judged by bringing it to the test of the principles just laid down. An apprenticeship system must be universal; it must make proper provision for three essentials--supervision, training, opening. Where these are wanting, in whole or in part, the youth of the nation must, in a more or less degree, suffer irreparable loss. CHAPTER II THE OLD APPRENTICESHIP Prior to the nineteenth century and the beginning of factory legislation the conditions of boy labour were determined in and through the industrial organization of the times. Of this organization, so far as the youthful worker was concerned, the indentured apprenticeship system formed the most characteristic feature. The history of the apprenticeship system falls into three periods. In the first the gilds were the predominant factor; in the second the State, by prescribing a seven years' apprenticeship, insured the continuance of the system; in the third the industrial revolution and the triumph of _laissez-faire_ ushered in the age of decay and dissolution. I. THE AGE OF THE GILDS. During the Early and Middle Ages the gilds constituted the central feature of the industrial organization. The merchant gilds began to come into existence in the second half of the eleventh century.[2] They were societies formed for the purpose of obtaining the exclusive privilege of carrying on trades. Later they became either identified with the municipal body, or a specialized department of that authority. The craft gilds appeared about a century later, and were associations of artisans engaged in a particular industry. It is not necessary here to enter on a discussion of the complex relations between these two kinds of gilds. The subject is obscure, but, so far as concerns the regulation of boy labour, the general facts are unquestioned. Either by obtaining a royal charter of their own or by using the authority of the municipality, the gilds were enabled to prescribe, down to the most minute details, the conditions under which the trades of the district were carried on. The control was essentially of a local character, varying from place to place; it was, moreover, a control with, for all practical purposes, the full force of the law at its back. "The towns and even the villages had their gilds, and it is certain that these gilds were the agencies by which the common interests of labour were protected." [3] The gild organization included three classes of person--the apprentice, the journeyman, and the master. _The Apprentice._--The apprentice paid the master a premium, and was indentured to him for a period of years, usually seven. He lived in his master's house, and received from him, in addition to board and clothing, wages on a low and rising scale. The master engaged to teach him his trade, and the boy promised to serve his master honestly and obediently. The following is a typical example of a fifteenth-century indenture:[4] "This indenture made the xviii of September the year of the reign of King Edward the iiiith the xxth between John Gare of Saint Mary Cray in the county of Kent, cordwainer on that oon partie and Walter Byse, son of John Byse sumtyme of Wimelton, in the same county, fuller on that other partie, Witnesseth that the saide Walter hath covenanted with the saide John Gare for the time of vii yeres, and that the saide John Gare shall find the saide Walter mete and drink and clothing during the saide time as to the saide Walter shall be according. Also the saide John Gare shall teche the saide Walter his craft, as he may and can, and also the saide John Gare shall give him the first yere of the said vii yeres iii{d} in money and the second yere vi{d} and so after the rate of iii{d} to an yere, and the last yere of the saide vii yeres the saide John Gare shall give unto the said Walter x shillings of money. And the saide Walter shall will and truly keep his occupacyon and do such things as the saide John shall bid him do, as unto the saide Walter shall be lawful and lefull, and the saide Walter shall be none ale goer neyther to no rebeld nor sporte during the saide vii yeres without the licence of the saide John. In witness whereof the parties aforesaide chaungeably have put their seales this daye and yere abovesaide." _The Journeyman._--At the expiration of the identureship the apprentice became a journeyman. The change of status, beyond bringing with it a rise in wages, made no great difference to the youth. He usually continued to work for his master, and not infrequently remained a lodger in his house. To some extent the master was still responsible for the good conduct of his journeymen. Various regulations forbade the master to entice away the journeymen of others and the journeymen to combine against the masters. _The Master._--By a somewhat similar process of growth and without any sudden break in social status, the journeyman became a master. Between journeyman and master there were no class distinctions. Both worked at their craft; and, in an age preceding the era of capitalistic production on a large scale, the need of capital to start business on his own account presented no difficulties which could not easily be overcome by any intelligent journeyman. Period of apprenticeship, hours and conditions of work, wages and premiums, were all rigidly determined by the rules of the gild. Through its officers the gild visited the workshops, inspected the articles in process of manufacture, satisfied themselves as to their quality, prescribed methods of production, were empowered to confiscate tools not sanctioned by the regulations, and settled all disputes between the three classes of persons concerned. Masters, journeymen, and apprentices alike benefited by an organization which was created and controlled in their common interests; while the general public were well served in the system of expert inspection which guaranteed the quality of the goods supplied. The gild, in short, was "the representation of the interests, not of one class alone, but of the three distinct and somewhat antagonistic elements of modern society--the capitalist _entrepreneur_, the manual worker, and the consumer at large." [5] From the point of view of the boy's training the system presented unique advantages. To the age of twenty-one, and sometimes twenty-four, he was under control. Living in the same house as his master, that control was paternal in character, inspired by a living and individual interest in his welfare. He received a thorough training in the trade to which he was indentured. Finally, when apprenticeship was over, he found ready-made for himself an opening that led upwards from the journeyman to the small master. Under this system there was no boy his own master from an early age, no master irresponsible for the conduct of his boys outside the workshops, and no blind alley of boy employment that closed with boyhood and ended in the sink of unskilled labour. It its best days the gilds represented something more than a privileged trade organization. The close connection between the gilds and the municipality guarded the interests of the public. "The city authorities looked to the wardens of each craft to keep the men under their charge in order; and thus for every public scandal, or underhand attempt to cheat, someone was responsible, and the responsibility could, generally speaking, be brought home to the right person." [6] Further, there was no sharp barrier between trade and trade. It is true that no one could enter a trade without being apprenticed, but the person who had served his seven years' apprenticeship in any one trade became free to follow all trades within the city.[7] The gild system represented therefore something very different from the individualist methods of modern times. There was in a real sense, at any rate in each town, a trade organization under no inconsiderable amount of collective control. But the organization of the gild was suited only to the conditions of a more or less primitive society. For a country rising rapidly to a front place in the commercial world it was ill adapted. Increasing trade brought wealth and a desire for wealth; and with wealth came power to those who possessed it. The richer members of the gild gained the upper hand in the administration of its affairs and oppressed the poorer.[8] The gild was no longer an association of equals; and the weaker went to the wall. Competition turned the methods of production in the direction of cheapness rather than good quality; and the supervisory functions of the gild disappeared. In general the whole system, rigid and inelastic, became a heavy drag on the industrial organization. The members had paid for their privileges in money and a long apprenticeship, and bitterly resented the appearance of intruders not hall-marked by the gild. With shortsighted policy, the gilds limited admissions by exacting high entrance-fees, and strove to secure the maximum of benefits for the smallest possible number. No longer an association of equals, united by common interests and a common outlook; no longer a guarantee of excellence in matters of craftmanship; no longer the guardian of the interests of the general public, but a narrow sect claiming exclusive privileges--the gilds, rent by strife and envy within, and regarded with open hostility by those outside, drifted slowly towards that inevitable end which awaits those who seek to sacrifice the needs of all on the altar of the selfish desires of the few. "In the sixteenth century," says Dr. Cunningham, "the gilds had in many cases so entirely lost their original character that they had not only ceased to serve useful purposes, but their ill-judged interference drove workmen to leave the towns and establish themselves in villages where the gilds had no jurisdiction." [9] They received their death-blow in the year 1547, through the legislation directed against the property of the semi-religious bodies. With the decay of the gilds and their final dissolution passed the ancient system which had for centuries regulated the conditions of boy labour. So far as the boy was concerned the system was founded on three principles: It recognized his need for prolonged control and supervision, and made provision for the need by securing for him, through his master, an interest at once individual and paternal. It recognized the need for a thorough training in the mysteries of the craft; and it recognized the need that, at the close of this training, the lad should find opening out for him a career for which he had been specially prepared. And it made provision for these needs by its scheme of inspection and control carried on by those responsible for the common interests of the trade. In short, the gild organization, in its earlier and flourishing days, may justly be regarded as satisfying the conditions of a true apprenticeship system. II. THE STATUTE OF APPRENTICES. If the gild system was dead, the principles for which it stood and made provision continued to be as important as ever. Nor under the industrial conditions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did there appear to be any practical difficulty in the way of enforcement. The small master remained, and with him remained the possibility of an effective apprenticeship system. Regulated by custom or by the municipal authority, apprenticeship lost nothing of its old vitality. Indeed, with the increase of trade and the increasing profits derived from trade, it became more popular than ever. None the less, signs are not wanting that people were conscious of faults in the industrial organization. Into the statute book of the period creep frequent allusions to intruders who had entered the trade other than through the door of apprenticeship. There was nothing new in these complaints; they existed even in the best days of the gilds. "We seem at a very early time," says Mrs. Green, "to detect behind the gild system a growing class of 'uncovenanted labour,' which the policy of the employers constantly tended to foster, their aim being on the one hand to limit the number of privileged serving-men, and on the other to increase the supply of uncovenanted labour." [10] But with the decay of the supervisory functions of the gild these complaints became more frequent. The condition of this "uncovenanted labour" has always been the unsolved problem in any apprenticeship system. If uncovenanted labour is allowed to enter a trade on the same terms as those who have served an apprenticeship, the latter have clearly a grievance. They have paid for their privilege in premium and long service at low wages, and not unnaturally demand some assured recompense in return. If, on the other hand, uncovenanted labour is rigidly excluded, there is no method of rapidly increasing the supply of workers in times of expanding trade. From this dilemma there is but one way of escape. All boys, irrespective of the trades they follow, must pass through a system of apprenticeship before they are permitted to earn the wages of a man. Two conditions are necessary to success. First, all boys without exception must serve an apprenticeship; secondly, having served this apprenticeship, they must not in their employment be restricted to the trade to which they have been indentured. As already shown, the gilds, at any rate in certain districts, allowed a person who had served an apprenticeship in one trade to be free of all the trades of the town. The gilds satisfied the second condition, and in their earlier days, when they included the majority of the population, they satisfied to a large extent the second condition as well. To satisfy the first condition was clearly, as will appear later, the intention of the Statute of Apprentices. But apart from the problem of uncovenanted labour, the disappearance of the controlling influence of the gilds left many anomalies. Here apprenticeship was regulated by custom, here by charter, and there left undetermined. In one place a certain period of service was exacted, in another place a different period. Finally, in the minds of the leaders of the day there was firmly fixed the belief that, as trade was becoming the life-blood of the nation, there was need of a general and consolidating Act giving the force of law to what was often only a floating custom applicable in a certain district. In the reign of Elizabeth these growing feelings of discontent found voice in an Act which marks an epoch in industrial legislation. It is usually known as the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices. After reciting the confusion that existed in previous legislation, the preamble continues: "So if the substance of as many of the said Laws as are meet to be continued shall be digested and reduced into one sole law and Statute, and in the same an uniform Order prescribed and limited concerning the Wages and other Orders for Apprentices, Servants and Labourers, there is good hope that it will come to pass, that the same law (being duly executed) should banish Idleness, advance Husbandry, and yield unto the hired person, both in the time of Scarcity and in the time of Plenty, a conventient Proportion of Wages." [11] We are here concerned with the Act only so far as it affects the conditions of boy labour. The principal regulations are the following: "No person shall retain a servant in their services (_i.e._, in employment for which apprenticeship was required) under one whole Year." [12] Husbandmen may take apprentices "from the age of 10 until 21 at least," or till twenty-four by agreement.[13] Householders in towns may "have and retain the son of any Freeman not occupying Husbandry nor being a Labourer ... to serve and be bound as an Apprentice, after the Custom and Order of the City of London, for seven years at the least so as the Term and years of such Apprentice do not expire or determine after such Apprentice shall be of the Age of twenty-four Years at the least." [14] "None may use any manual occupacyon unless he hath been apprenticed to the same as above." [15] "If a person be required by any Householder to be an Apprentice and refuse he may be brought before a justice of the peace who is empourred to commit him unto Ward, there to remain until he be contented, and will be bounden to serve as an Apprentice should serve." [16] The Elizabethan Poor Law gave additional powers with regard to the compulsory apprenticing of those likely to fall into evil ways, and made it lawful for churchwardens and overseers "to bind any such children as aforesaid to be Apprentices, when they shall see convenient, till such Man child shall come to the age of four-and-twenty yeares." [17] Taken together, these two Acts gave to public authorities large powers of control over the growing boy. They did not, indeed, provide that everyone should be apprenticed, but in the majority of occupations no one could be employed unless he had served his time. Nor did they allow a person who had been apprenticed to one trade to work at another. But they applied the system of compulsory apprenticeship to all parts of the country, and they made provision for the proper care, by way of apprenticeship, of neglected children. People of the time were clearly of one mind in their desire to supervise, through the State, the training of the youth. "Contemporary opinion held that it was neither good for society nor trade that the young man should enjoy any independence. 'Until a man grows unto the age of xxiii yeares he for the moste parte, thoughe not alwayes, is wilde, withoute Judgment, and not of sufficient experience to govern himself. Nor (many tymes) grown unto the full or perfect knowledge of the arte or occupation that he professed.'" [18] As to the general effect of the far-reaching Statute of Apprentices, it is not possible to do better than quote Dr. Cunningham: "A proof of the wisdom of the measure seems to lie in the fact that we have no complaints as to these restrictions in the Act or proposals for amending the clauses, but that, on the contrary, there was, on more than one occasion, a demand that it should be rigorously enforced, so that the industrial system of the country should be really reduced to order." [19] For more than two centuries, without amendment, the Act remained in force; and while it lasted it provided at least the possibility for the adequate training and supervision of the youth of the country. These two centuries constitute the second stage in the history of boy labour regulation. From a superficial point of view there appears no essential difference between this period and the preceding. In the first apprenticeship was enforced through the action of the gilds, in the second by special legislative enactment. In either case apprenticeship was, for all practical purposes, compulsory; but here the similarity ends. Under the régime of the gilds apprenticeship was enforced, but in addition its conditions were determined by a careful system of regulation. The gild, an association representing the three classes concerned--masters, journeymen, apprentices--supervised the industrial organization in the interests of all alike. In the best days of the gilds the trade, as a whole, inspected the workshops; the trade, as a whole, watched over the training of the youth; the trade, as a whole, so fixed the number of those entering, that at the conclusion of the apprenticeship there was room in the ranks of the skilled artisan for those who had learned their craft. During the disintegration of the gilds, this second factor gradually disappeared. The Statute of Apprentices did indeed make apprenticeship compulsory, but provided no efficient system of regulation. Measures were frequently advocated and occasionally embodied in Acts for determining the proportion of apprentices to journeymen, but never proved effective. We see gradually emerging the struggle between the conflicting interests of those engaged in production. A seven years' apprenticeship, enforced by law, gave the employers a source of cheap labour, and we begin to hear complaints that the number of apprentices was unduly multiplied and that boys were taking the place of men. To what extent this practice prevailed it is not easy to ascertain; but there is no question that, at any rate among one class of apprentice--the pauper apprentice--abuses were grave and frequent. The whole story of the pauper apprentice forms an ugly episode in the industrial history of the period. The Statute Book is punctuated with frequent allusion to his unfortunate lot, coupled with proposals for reform, for the most part ineffective. As already mentioned, the overseers had large powers of compulsorily apprenticing the children of the poor. A sum was paid to the employer, the lad handed over, and no steps taken to guard his well-being or guarantee his training. It was inevitable that under conditions such as these abuses should occur. The employer found himself provided with a continual supply of lads, bound to serve him until the age of twenty-one, or sometimes twenty-four; he was not troubled by visits of inspectors; he could use them as he pleased. The luckless apprentices were herded together in overcrowded and insanitary dwellings; they were overworked and underfed; they learned no trade, and were regarded as a cheap form of unskilled labour. If they misbehaved themselves the justices of the peace would punish them; if they ran away the law would see to it that they were returned to their masters; if they complained of ill-treatment there was no one to substantiate the charge. Whole trades seemed to have flourished by exploiting the parish apprentices; and not infrequently the overseer, himself an employer, made a comfortable profit out of their misfortunes.[20] In his "History of the Poor Law" Sir G. Nicholls summarizes the legislation on the subject.[21] With the rapid increase in the number of paupers at the close of the eighteenth century these evils multiplied, and to an increasing extent engaged the public attention. If one class of apprentice was thus exploited, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, in a less degree, others suffered in a similar way. Compulsory apprenticeship, without effective regulation, brought with it the danger of compulsory servitude. The State was conscious of the danger, and duties of supervision were laid on the justices of the peace. The State was likewise conscious of the value of apprenticeship, and gave much attention to the subject. A Commission of Charles I. dealt with the problem, while an Act of James I. was concerned with the misuse of apprenticeship charities, which led to children being brought up in idleness, "to their utter overthrow and the great prejudice of the commonwealth." [22] But legislation proved incapable of preventing evils which increased rapidly as the years went by. From the standpoint of the boy the second period, whose characteristic was compulsion without supervision, was distinctly inferior to the first, when the gilds regulated the affairs of the trade for the common good. But if the apprenticeship system was weakening and abuses on the increase, an effective training was always possible. The small master still remained, there was still the call for the all-round craftsman, and the huge changes in methods of production, that were destined to appear later, still lay in the mists of the future. III. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. It was the invention of the steam-engine and the consequent introduction of machinery that ushered in the period of the industrial revolution. In the trades affected the consequences were immediate, profound, and disastrous for boys, journeymen, and small masters alike. "On the whole, machinery rendered it possible in many departments of industry to substitute unskilled for skilled labour." [23] In branches of certain trades boys took the place of men. "Under the new conditions (of calico-printing) boys could be employed in what had been hitherto the work of men; so that, in the introduction of machinery, complaints began to be made by the journeymen as to the undue multiplication of apprentices. There was one shop in Lancashire where fifty-five apprentices had been working at one time and only two journeymen; it was obvious that under such circumstances the man who had served his time had very little hope of obtaining employment." [24] A system of compulsory apprenticeship, under such conditions, was exploited for the benefit of the employer, and led inevitably to the injury of the boy. The latter was bound and could not escape, while the former could readily find an excuse for discharging an apprentice. Further, with the growing division of labour and the separation of boys' work from men's work, training became less easy. The boy was kept to a single operation, and when his time was up found no further call for his services. The position of the workmen in the trade appeared desperate. Owing to the competition of boys and the decrease in the demand for his skill, wages were rapidly falling, and at the same time the price of corn was rising by leaps and bounds. The small master, unable to compete with the cheapness of the machine-made goods, fared as badly as the journeyman. Both appealed to Parliament for redress, "usually demanding the prohibition of the new machines, the enforcement of a seven years' apprenticeship, or the maintenance of the old limitation of the number of boys to be taught by each employer." [25] But appeals of this kind fell on deaf ears. The spirit of the age was against interference, and opposition to all form of regulation was rapidly growing. The Statute of Apprentices was disliked by the large employers, and an eager agitation began for its repeal. Though obsolescent, it was still sufficiently alive to be troublesome. A seven years' apprenticeship, it was argued, was unnecessarily long; weaving, for example, could be learnt in two or three years. A Commission was appointed to consider the question, and the large employers pointed out "that the new processes could be learnt in a few months instead of seven years; and that the restriction of the old master craftsman to two or three apprentices apiece was out of the question with the new buyers of labour on a large scale." [26] In the House of Commons "Mr. Sergeant Onslow urged the repeal of the Act, and remarked that 'the reign of Elizabeth was not one in which sound principles of commerce were known.' The true principles of commerce (said another M.P.) appeared at that time to be misunderstood, and the Act in question proved the truth of this assertion. The persons most competent to form regulations with respect to trade were the master manufacturer, whose interest it was to have goods of the best fabric, and no legislative enactment could ever effect so much in producing that result as the merely leaving things to their own courses and operations." [27] The skilled craftsmen, on the other hand, petitioned in favour of compulsory apprenticeship. But in the growing enthusiasm for the theory whose sole tenet lay in the belief that the haven of prosperity lay in the mid-ocean of uncontrolled liberty, all pleas in favour of regulation were treated with contempt. The famous Chalmers, speaking of the Statute of Apprentices, declared that "this law, so far as it requires apprenticeship, ought to be repealed, because its tendency is to abolish and to prevent competition among workmen." [28] In the year 1814 the Statute of Apprentices was repealed;[29] and with its repeal the State washed its hands of all responsibility for the well-being of the youth of the land. Henceforth things were to be left "to their own courses and operations." It is no doubt true that there remained the "Health and Morals of Apprentices Act," passed in 1802; this Act prescribed certain conditions as to hours of work and sanitation. But the Act in itself was utterly "ineffective," [30] and for all practical purposes employers were unfettered in their use or misuse of children. There remained one more blow to be struck before the condition of the boy touched the lowest level of misery reached in the whole history of this country; and it was soon struck with that relentless vigour which marked the actions of the reformer in those times. After the repeal of the Statute of Apprentices there was for the lad no sort of legal guarantee of training, no kind of State supervision over his conduct; he could work how and when it pleased him or his parents. But the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 made it necessary for him to work how and when it pleased his employer, and took from him all possibility of effective choice. This Act abolished the allowance system in aid of wages. Salutary and even necessary as some reform of the kind was, in the particular way in which it was carried out it fell with crushing force on the unfortunate children. Hitherto parents could receive so much per child out of the rates; from henceforth this was to be illegal. Wages indeed rose, but rose slowly and in patches. The earnings of the child were required to make existence even possible for the family. A foreign and impartial student of English affairs has made this truth abundantly clear: "Even granted that the labourer himself now needed no allowance, what had he in place of the allowance for his family and the out-of-work relief? Something in place of these he must have, for even labourers' families must live.... What was the way out? The labourer must sell more labour power; and since his own was already sold, he must put that of his family upon the market. This was how the problem of the married man was solved.... We have already seen that the expansion of the gang system took place mainly after 1834; it appears that the exploitation of child-labour and women's labour is the main characteristic of the period between the Poor Law and the Education Acts. When Dr. Kay was examined before the Lords' Committee on the Poor Law Amendment Act, he described the astonishment of travellers at the number of women and children working in the fields, and traced their increased employment to the Poor Law. In his own words: 'The extent of employment for women and children has most wonderfully increased since the Poor Law came into operation. It has had that effect by rendering it necessary that the children should be so employed in order to adjust the wages to the wants of the family....' And a country clergyman gave expression to similar views in 1843: 'By these allowances their children were not then obliged, as now, to work for their subsistence. Their time was at their own disposal; and then they were sent more regularly to the schools. But since the new Poor Law this has been reversed.'" [31] Those persons who nowadays talk genially of the ease with which the new Poor Law was enforced, would do well to remember that the ease was purchased at the high price of the physical and moral deterioration of the children. Chalmers had got his way, there was now free competition among the workmen; and free competition among the workmen meant then, as it has always meant since, the unregulated slavery of the weak. With the repeal of the Statute of Apprentices and the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, the old apprenticeship system came to an end. No longer capable of being controlled in the common interests of the trade and the community, no longer capable of being enforced by statutory enactment, the apprenticeship system in its ancient form, though it might linger among certain industries, was destined slowly to disappear. We may regret its disappearance, as the vanishing of a fragment of an old-world life; but repinings are idle unless directed toward the search for some substitute adequate to the needs of the present. CHAPTER III THE AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION The last chapter closed on the darkest scene in the long history of child labour in this country. Of the three factors essential to a true apprenticeship, not one was found or its need even recognized in the wild riot of the industrial revolution. Of public or organized supervision of the youth of the land there was not a trace. The controlling influence of the gild system had long since disappeared; the powers of regulation that lay in the Statute of Apprentices and the Elizabethan Poor Law had been withdrawn; free and unrestricted traffic in the use of children was the watchword of the age. Babies of four and five years worked alongside the adult and for the same number of hours; there were persons of intelligence who saw in this gain extracted from infants not the least of the triumphs of the day. Children's lives were often a mere alternation of two kinds of darkness--the darkness of night giving place to the darkness of the mine. Boys and girls were hired out in troops to a taskmaster, herded in barns regardless of the claims of health and decency, and driven in gangs into the fields of the farmer. Whether in the mine or the factory or on the farm, the present profits of the employer, and not the future welfare of the race, were alone considered. Industrial training throughout the new manufacturing districts was treated with open contempt. A person, the masters urged, could learn the trade in a few months; while as for the provision of an opening that would lead from the work of the youth to the work of the adult, it was not to be imagined that a subject of this complexity should receive attention at a time when the narrow circuit of the prosperous factory set a limit to the horizon of men's thoughts. In short, over the whole field of industry the desire for immediate success dominated the larger, but more remote, interests of the future. What was most significant of the times was not the flood of misery that swept over the country so much as the spirit of complacent satisfaction with which it was regarded. That the industrial revolution was in the cause of progress, the reform of the Poor Law essential, and the decay of the old apprenticeship system inevitable, men of intelligence could not fail to recognize; but they might also have recognized that the profound transformation of the whole social and industrial structure involved could not take place without widespread suffering and demoralization. Men of the day did see these things, but saw them with unconcern. Progress involved change, and change demanded its toll of pain; but it was not the duty of the State to ease the passage or to yield to the outcry of what they looked on as the silly sentimentalist. The general view of contemporary opinion finds itself reflected in the Whig and Radical journals. In 1819 the _Edinburgh Review_ declared: "After all, we must own that it was quite right to throw out the Bill for prohibiting the sweeping of chimneys by boys--because humanity is a modern invention; and there are many chimneys in old houses that cannot possibly be swept in any other manner;" while the Radical paper, the _Gorgon_, was also inclined to sneer at the House of Commons for "its ostentatious display of humanity in dealing with trivialities like the slave trade, climbing-boys, and the condition of children in factories." [32] The above represents the orthodox opinion of the time. The age was the age of the triumph of the individualist. His was the gospel that inspired the economist; his were the maxims which guided the legislator; his were the principles that were realized in the practice of the manufacturer. For one brief moment in the history of the world's progress the individualist was supreme; and then the world reeled back in horror from the hell of sin and misery he had created. Even in the early days there were not wanting voices to protest against the theory that in the balance-sheet of the trader was to be found the final test of national righteousness. As far back as the year 1801 Mr. Justice Grose, in sentencing an employer for overworking and maltreating an apprentice, declared: "Should the manufacturers insist that without these children they could not advantageously follow their trade, and the overseers say that without such opportunity they could not get rid of these children, he should say to the one, that trade must not for the thirst of lucre be followed, but at once, for the sake of society, be abandoned; and to the other, it is a crime to put out these children, who have no friend to see justice done, to incur deformity and promote consumption or other disease. This obviously leads to their destruction--not to their support." [33] And in the year 1802 was passed the "Health and Morals of Apprentices Act," an Act important not for its results, which were insignificant, but as a protest against the gospel of individualism, and as the first of the long series of Factory Acts which heralded the dawn of a new age. This new age, which reaches down to the present time, and of which the end is not yet, was an age of reconstruction. It represented an attempt, unconscious for the most part, to reinstate in a changed form the principles which underlay the old apprenticeship system. It is true that throughout the whole period indentured apprenticeship was in process of gradual decay, and is now become almost a negligible factor in the industrial world; but it is no less true that from its ruins was slowly rising an organization destined to prove a fitting and even a superior substitute. The final stage of development lies still in the future; the adjustments required to meet the complex needs of modern industry are innumerable; and we are only beginning to see the outlines of a new apprenticeship system towards which we have been drifting for nearly a century. To tell in detail the history of these long years of slow progress would be foreign to the purpose of this book; but certain characteristics, which mark the process of change, are sufficiently germane to the discussions of to-day to justify consideration. In the first place, the forces which repeatedly faced and beat down the resistance of those who stood for unregulated industry were not the forces of economic analysis; few forces that make for great changes are the product of such unimpassioned reason. Factory and kindred legislation were throughout the triumph of sentiment, and not the victory of logic. During the course of the nineteenth century men became slowly more sensitive to the fact of suffering, less tolerant of its continued existence. The Liberal essayist was historically correct when he said contemptuously that humanity was a modern invention. In earlier days little heed was paid to the physical well-being of the individual journeyman or apprentice. If the gilds forbade the carrying on of a craft by night, it was because the dim gloom of ancient illuminants meant bad work, and not because protracted toil made unhealthy workmen. When the State concerned itself with hours of employment, it was to prescribe a minimum, and not to fix a maximum; to keep a man busy, and therefore out of mischief, was deemed more important than to allow him leisure for thought or recreation. In this new sentiment of humanity lay the motive power which drove Parliament on to spasmodic acts of factory legislation. The sentiment was at once a source of weakness and a source of strength. It was a source of weakness because sentiment is essentially local in its sphere of influence. It does not search out the objects on which its favours are lavished; they must be brought by others to its very doors and repeatedly thrust over the threshold till entrance is forced. It lacks the breadth, the insight, and the calm of that imaginative reason which is now slowly taking its place. In the case of suffering, for example, it troubles itself not at all about the more remote causes of suffering or the more remote sufferer, but surges round some particular sufferer or some particular grievance, existing here and now.[34] Sentiment, at any rate the British type of sentiment, is not touched by abstractions; visions of humanity in the throes of travail leave it unmoved; appeals to the ultimate principles of justice fail to produce even a throb of sympathetic interest; it is only the concrete--the oppressed child or the widowed mother--that lets loose the flood. For the more profound solution of social problems such sentiment is useless, but for the attack of specific evils, especially where the opposition is well organized, it displays amazing stubbornness and resource. Its strength lies in its unreason; argument is of no avail; here are certain cases of suffering it will not tolerate; a remedy must be found and Parliament must find it; there will be no peace until something is done. It was in this way that regulation of child labour began, and indeed has continued down to the present time. The result is patchy, and the removal of evils partial and unsystematic. There has been, for example, no serious attempt made to set up a minimum standard of conditions under which alone children shall be employed; least of all has the State endeavoured to formulate a new apprenticeship system, adapted to the needs of modern industry. Much indeed has been done in both directions; but much more remains for the future to carry through before we can hope to read in the efficiency of the race the sign-mark of our success. The first characteristic, then, of the age of reconstruction is to be found in the predominating influence of sentiment. The second characteristic is seen in the triumph of the idealist over the combined forces of the doctrinaire and the practical man. Every proposal for regulating child labour was fought on the same lines; there were the same arguments and the same replies. The individualist urged that State interference was in itself an evil, that, though the consequences might be delayed and the immediate effect even beneficial, you might rest assured that in the long-run your sin would find you out. The wealthy citizen declared that if boys might not climb his chimneys, his chimneys must go unswept; the manufacturer predicted certain ruin to his trade if he were forbidden to use children as seemed best to him; while all united in urging that if the children were not at work they would be doing something worse, and pointed out the obvious cruelty of depriving half-starved parents of the scanty earnings of their half-starved offspring. To all these and similar objections the idealist, with his clearer vision of the reality of things, and firm in his faith that the prosperity of a people could never be the final outcome of allowing an obvious wrong, made response. He sympathized with the individualist for the dreary pessimism of a creed which could see the future alone coloured with hope if heralded by the sobs of suffering children. The wealthy citizen he bade roughly burn his house and build another sooner than sacrifice the lives of boys to the needs of his chimneys. While as for the manufacturer, he told him, as Mr. Justice Grose had told him earlier, that, if his engines needed children as fuel, his was a trade the country was best rid of. To those employers who pleaded the small wages of the parents he suggested the grim and crude and obvious remedy of paying those parents more. And the idealist, with the sentiment of the British public to back him, won the day. But if sentiment gave the idealist his victory, it was the future that brought him a full justification. His sin after many years is yet seeking him; the wealthy citizen found other and innocent means of cleansing his chimneys; the manufacturer placidly adapted himself to the new conditions, and his trade flourished exceedingly; the wages of parents rose rapidly, and what small measure of health and happiness that has come to the children of the poor during the last century has come to them through the defeat and the defiance of the individualist. A hundred years have rolled by, and yet to all new regulation the same old objections are raised by the individualist. But his day is gone, and with his day he also is going. A few, indeed, are left, interesting survivals of the early Victorian age. But for the great majority of the population regulation has no fears; they welcome and invite it. And, further, not only are they willing to forbid unsatisfactory conditions of employment, they are also ready to spend public money to secure a proper environment and a suitable training for children. What they will not tolerate is the continued existence of unnecessary suffering; and they are coming more and more to realize that a vast mass of the suffering of to-day is unnecessary. Principles, even though openly professed, will not look suffering in the face and pass on.[35] Humanity is no longer a modern invention, it has become the guiding spirit of the age. Thus we can face the morning of the twentieth century in a spirit of hope. We may look for more consistent support and less strenuous opposition than in the past. We may in consequence think out and introduce schemes of a more far-reaching character. Empirical patching will give place to reconstruction on a large scale. In other words, the sentiment of the nineteenth century, wayward and uncertain in its method of action, and at its best troubling itself about a remedy for actual suffering, will be superseded by the imaginative reason of the twentieth, which looks rather to prevention than to cure. CHAPTER IV THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THE STATE The age of reconstruction is not complete, and for the moment we are left with the products of sentiment as revealed in the tangled and piecemeal legislation respecting boy labour. Before making new proposals, it is desirable to survey the existing laws on the subject, in order to discover to what extent the State acts as the guardian of the child by making provision for the three essential factors of a true apprenticeship system--supervision, training, opening. The present chapter will be concerned with a description of the statutory machinery; in the next the value of the machinery will be tested by examining its results in actual experience. I. STATE SUPERVISION. Supervision is the first essential of an apprenticeship system. A boy must remain under adequate control, as regards his conduct and physical development, until the age of eighteen is reached; before then he is too young to be allowed safely to become his own master. What part does the State, as guardian, play in this work of supervision? This volume is concerned with the answer to the question only so far as that answer has a direct bearing on the general problem of boy labour. A statement, for example, of the criminal law, of the law relating to public health, or of the poor law, lies outside its scope. The guardianship of the State, in respect of supervision, is of two kinds. On the one hand the State appears as the guardian of the boy by restricting his employment, or by forbidding it under certain specified unfavourable conditions--State regulation; on the other hand--as, for example, in its system of education--it assumes a more active rôle, and itself provides for the boy some of the discipline and training he requires--State enterprise. § 1. STATE REGULATION. The State, by regulation, may protect the boy in three ways-- 1. _Prohibition._--The State may protect the boy by forbidding his employment below a certain age or in certain classes of industry. 2. _Limitation of Hours._--The State may protect the boy by fixing a limit to the number of hours during which he may be employed. 3. _Health and Safety._--The State may protect the boy by enforcing certain regulations as regards sanitation in the workshop or the proper guarding of machinery, or may require a medical certificate to show that the boy is physically fit for the occupation in which he is engaged. We shall best understand the measure of protection afforded the boy by the State by classifying the statutory regulations under these three headings rather than by taking the individual Acts and analyzing them separately. The principal Acts concerned are the following: The Factory and Workshop Act, 1901. Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 1872. Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887. Mines (Prohibition of Child Labour Underground) Act, 1900. The Shop Hours Act, 1892. The Employment of Children Act, 1903. The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1894. Children Act, 1908. And the various Acts relating to compulsory attendance at school-- Elementary Education Act, 1876. Elementary Education Act, 1880. Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act, 1893. And the Act amending this last Act, 1899. To make what follows clearer, and to avoid repetition, it is desirable to add a few remarks about two of these Acts. The Factory and Workshop Act is concerned with the conditions of employment in premises "wherein labour is exercised by way of trade or for purposes of gain in or incidental to any of the following purposes--namely: "(i.) The making of an article or part of any article; or "(ii.) The altering, repairing, ornamenting, or finishing of any article; or "(iii.) The adapting for sale of an article." [36] Premises in which such operations are carried on are divided into these four classes: 1. _Textile factories_, where mechanical power is used in connection with the manufacture of cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, or other like material; 2. _Non-textile factories_, where mechanical power is used in connection with the manufacture of articles other than those included in (1), and, in addition, certain industries, such as "print works," or lucifer-match works, whether mechanical power is or is not employed;[37] 3. _Workshops_ where articles are manufactured without the aid of mechanical power; and-- 4. _Domestic workshops or factories_, where a private house or room is, by reason of the work carried on there, a factory or a workshop, where mechanical power is not used, and in which the only persons employed are members of the same family dwelling there.[37] The Act also has a limited reference to laundries, docks, buildings in course of construction and repair, and railways.[39] Certain definitions are important in the interpretation of the regulations. The expression "child" means a person under the age of fourteen, who is not exempt from attendance at school.[40] The expression "young person" means a person who has ceased to be a child, and is under the age of eighteen.[41] These expressions will be used with this significance in the remainder of this chapter, unless the contrary is stated. The authority for the enforcement of the Factory and Workshop Act is in general the Home Office, acting through its inspectors. In certain cases, which will be mentioned later, the duty of enforcement is imposed on one or other of the locally elected bodies. The regulations comprised in the Employment of Children Act are in part of general application, in part dependent on by-laws made by the local authority, and approved by the Home Secretary. The local authority, for the enforcement of the Act and for the making of by-laws, is, in the case of London, exclusive of the City, for which the Common Council is the authority, the London County Council; in the case of a municipal borough with a population according to the census of 1901 of over 10,000, the Borough Council; in the case of any other urban district with a population of over 20,000, the District Council; in the case of the remainder of England and Wales, the County Council.[42] These are the chief Acts through which are regulated the conditions of boy labour. Each in a more or less degree is concerned with prohibition, limitation of hours, and health regulations. It now remains to examine the extent of the protection provided. _(a) Prohibition of Employment._ There is no law forbidding children below a certain age to work for wages. In default of local by-laws, it is still legal to employ children of any age, however young, in a large number of occupations. Prohibition takes the form of forbidding the employment of children in certain trades regarded as specially dangerous to health or demoralizing to character. 1. It is illegal to employ children or young persons "in the part of a factory or workshop in which there is carried on the process of silvering mirrors by the mercurial process or the process of making white lead." [43] And the Secretary of State has power to extend this prohibition to other dangerous trades.[44] 2. It is illegal to employ underground in any mine boys under the age of thirteen,[45] and no boy under the age of twelve may be employed above-ground in connection with any mine.[46] 3. A child may not be employed "in the part of a factory or workshop in which there is carried on any grinding in the metal trade, or the dipping of lucifer-matches." [47] 4. A child under the age of eleven may not be employed in street-trading--_i.e._, in "the hawking of newspapers, matches, flowers, and other articles, playing, singing, or performing for profit, shoe-blacking, or any like occupation carried on in streets or public places." [48] 5. In theatres and shows, children under seven may not be employed at all, and children under eleven can only be employed on a licence granted by a magistrate.[49] Omitting ways of earning money, as by begging, which cannot properly be regarded as forms of employment, and ancient Acts, such as the Chimney Sweepers Act of 1840, which prohibited the apprenticing of children under the age of sixteen to the trade of the sweep, or the Agricultural Gangs Act, 1867, which forbade the employment of children under eight in an agricultural gang--Acts which have now little practical importance--the regulations outlined above comprise the whole of the regulations which prohibit throughout the country the employment of boys in certain forms of occupation. For any extension of prohibition we must look to the by-laws which may, but need not, be made by local authorities under the provisions of the Employment of Children Act. Under this Act the local authority may make by-laws prescribing for all children below the age which employment is illegal, and may prohibit absolutely, or may permit, subject to conditions, the employment of children under the age of fourteen in any specified occupation.[50] The by-laws may likewise prohibit or allow, under conditions, "street trading" by persons under the age of sixteen.[51] But in either case the by-laws, before becoming operative, must be confirmed, after an inquiry is held, by the Home Secretary.[52] As an example of prohibition through by-laws made under this Act, the case of London outside the City may be cited. The by-laws of the London County Council forbid the employment of all children under the age of eleven, the employment of children under the age of fourteen as "lather boys" in barbers' shops, and the employment of boys under the age of sixteen in "street trading," unless they wear on the arm a badge provided by the Council. _(b) Limitation of Hours._ There is no law limiting for all children or for all young persons the number of hours which may be worked. It is still legal in the majority of occupations to employ young persons, and in default of by-laws school-children on days when the schools are closed, for a number of hours restricted only by the length of the day. As with prohibition, so the matter stands with the limitation of hours. Glaring evils, just because they glared, have from time to time been dealt with by legislation; other evils no less serious have been ignored merely because they have not chanced to attract attention. The result of this piecemeal legislation and enactment by by-laws is a chaos of intricate regulations, applicable to persons of different age and different sex, varying from trade to trade and from place to place. I am, fortunately, concerned here only with the male sex, and shall begin with the boy young person, and then proceed to the boy child. _The Young Person._--Far the most important, because the most detailed and the most comprehensive, of the Acts dealing with the limitation of hours is the Factory and Workshops Act. Under this Act the hours of employment are restricted by specifying the hours during which alone employment may be carried on. No employment is allowed on Sundays except in the case of Jewish factories closed on Saturday, or of certain industries specially sanctioned for the purpose by the Home Secretary. In textile factories,[53] the period of employment for young persons is from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with two hours for meals, and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., with half an hour for meals.[54] In non-textile factories and workshops the chief difference lies in the fact that the interval for meals is half an hour shorter, while on Saturdays employment is permitted between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., with half an hour for meals.[55] In domestic factories and workshops the hours of employment are from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with four and a half hours for meals, and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., with two and a half hours for meals.[56] Overtime is in general prohibited.[57] Employment inside and outside a factory or workshop in the business of the factory or workshop is prohibited, except during the recognized period, on any day on which the young person is employed inside the factory or workshop both before and after the dinner-hour.[58] Thus the maximum number of hours in a week, including meal-times, during which a young person may be employed is, in textile factories, 65-1/2; in non-textile factories and workshops, 68; in domestic factories and workshops, 85; or, excluding meal-times, the hours in the three classes are 55, 60, and 60 respectively. The Act applies only to those employed in factories and workshops. It has limited application to certain other trades, but the application is unimportant in connection with boy labour. To the regulations quoted there are numerous exceptions, and the Home Secretary has large discretionary powers.[59] A young person may not be employed "in or about a shop" for a longer period than seventy-four hours, including meal-times, in any one week. Further, an employer may not knowingly employ a young person who has already on the same day been employed in a factory or workshop, if such employment makes the total number of hours worked more than the full time a young person is permitted to work in a factory or workshop.[60] By-laws may be made limiting the hours of employment of young persons under the age of sixteen engaged in "street trading." [61] The by-laws of the London County Council forbid the employment of such persons "before 7 a.m. or after 9 p.m., or for more than eight hours in any day, when employed under the immediate direction and supervision of an adult person having charge of a street stall or barrow; before 7 a.m. or after 8 p.m. when employed in any other form of street trading." With the exception of the regulations outlined above, there is no limit to the number of hours during which young persons may legally be employed. _Children._--The most important Acts regulating the hours of employment for children are the Acts which enforce attendance at school. They limit hours, not by fixing a maximum number of hours during which children may be employed, but by pursuing the far more effective plan of seeing that the children are in school, and therefore not in the workshop, during part of the day. Taken together, these Acts provide that children shall be at school, and consequently not at work, at all times when the schools are opened until the age of twelve is reached. There is one exception to this regulation: children may, under a special by-law of the local education authority, be employed in agriculture at the age of eleven, provided that they attend school 250 times a year up to the age of thirteen. This exception is of small importance, as "the number of children who are exempt under this special by-law seems to be very small, not exceeding apparently 400 in the whole country." [62] Between the ages of twelve and fourteen attendance is compulsory, subject to a complex scheme of partial or total exemptions, depending on the by-laws of the local education authority. It rests, for instance, with each local education authority to decide "whether, as regards children between twelve and fourteen, they will grant full-time or half-time exemption, or both, and upon what conditions of attendance or attainments, always subject, of course, to the fact that the by-laws must be approved by the Board of Education, and must not clash with any Act regulating the employment of children." [63] For all practical purposes, it is possible for the local education authority, if they think fit, to insist on such a standard of attainment to be reached before exemption is allowed that, with a few exceptions, relatively insignificant, children are compelled to attend school until the age of fourteen. It is important to remember that these Acts limit the employment of children only during times when the schools are opened. As a general rule, the hours of attendance are between 9 and 12 in the morning, and between 2 and 4.30 in the afternoon; while the schools are open on five days a week during some forty-four weeks in the year. During holidays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, so far as these Acts are concerned, there is no limit to the numbers of hours a child may work. A further limit is put on the hours children may work by the Employment of Children Act, 1903. A child under fourteen may not be employed between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. This provision is subject to variation by local by-laws.[64] Local by-laws may prescribe for children under fourteen: (_a_) The hours between which employment is illegal; (_b_) the number of daily and weekly hours beyond which employment is illegal; and (_c_) may permit, subject to conditions, the employment of children in any specified occupation.[65] Under this Act the by-laws of the London County Council provide that a child liable to attend school shall not be employed on days when the school is open for more than three and a half hours a day, nor-- (_a_) Between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.; (_b_) Before 6.30 a.m. or after 9 p.m.; and on days when the school is not open-- (_a_) Before 6.30 a.m. or after 9 p.m.; (_b_) For more than eight hours in any one day. On Sundays a child shall not be employed except between the hours of 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. for a period not exceeding three hours. A child liable to attend school shall not be employed for more than twenty hours in any week when the school is open on more than two days, or for more than thirty hours in any week when the school is open on two days only or less. Additional limitations are imposed on the number of hours during which children may be employed by the Factory and Workshop Act. A child between "twelve and thirteen, who has reached the standard for total or partial exemption under the Elementary Education Acts, and consequently may be employed, must still, if employed in a factory or workshop, attend school in accordance with the requirements of the Factory Act. So must a child of thirteen who has not obtained a certificate entitling him to be employed as a young person." [66] The famous half-time system is not, as sometimes supposed, a special privilege allowed to workshops and factories. It is permissible in all forms of occupation in a practically unrestricted shape. In factories and workshops the conditions are subject to definite regulations. It is, however, only in factories and workshops, and, indeed, only in certain trades among these, that the half-time system has much practical importance. The general regulations, subject, however, to certain variations, are as follows:[67] Employment must be either in morning and afternoon sets, or on alternate days The morning set begins at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., and ends-- (_a_) At one o'clock in the afternoon; or (_b_) If the dinner-hour begins before one o'clock, at the beginning of dinner-time; or (_c_) If the dinner-time does not begin before 2 p.m. at noon. The afternoon set begins either-- (_a_) At 1 p.m. (_b_) At any later hour at which the dinner-time terminates; or (_c_) If the dinner-hour does not begin before 2 p.m., and the morning set ends at noon, at noon-- and ends at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. On Saturdays the period of employment is the same as for young persons--6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m.--but a child shall not be employed on two successive Saturdays, nor on Saturday in any week if on any other days in the same week his period of employment has exceeded five and a half hours. A child must not be employed in two successive periods of seven days in the morning set, nor in two successive periods of seven days in an afternoon set. On the alternate day system, the period of employment is the same as for a young person--_i.e._, from 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., with two hours for meals; and on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., with half an hour for meals. Under this system a child may not be employed on two successive days, nor on the same day in two successive weeks. Under all the systems a child may not be employed continuously for more than four and a half hours without an interval of half an hour for meals.[68] Nor must a child be employed on any one day on the business of the factory or workshops both inside and outside the factory or workshop.[69] This system of regulation refers to textile factories, but these include the vast majority of half-timers. The regulations with regard to non-textile factories and workshops are less rigorous; and in the case of domestic workshops and factories there is additional relaxation of the rules. The parent or guardian of the half-timer is responsible for the child's attendance at school. As an additional precaution against truancy, the employer may not employ the child unless each Monday the child has obtained from the school a certificate of attendance during the past week.[70] If we take into account the hours worked in the factory and the hours spent in school, we shall find that the half-timer's week of strenuous effort is a long and a weary one. "Taking one week with another, the employment of the half-timer is for twenty-eight and a quarter hours a week in a textile factory, and thirty in a non-textile factory or workshop; and as he is in school for thirteen or fourteen hours, his total week in school and factory is from forty to forty-four hours." [71] In view of proposals made later, I have thought desirable to insert in detail the half-time regulations, in order to show how, in the actual carrying out of industrial operations, a half-time system can be put into effect. _(c) Protection of Health._ There is no law prescribing in all cases the conditions as to buildings, sanitary arrangements, and safety, under which alone children and young persons may be employed. There is no law requiring in all cases a medical certificate from children and young persons to show that they are physically suited for the employment in which they are engaged. It is no doubt true that the buildings in which juveniles are employed come, in respect of sanitation, drainage, and water-supply, under the general Public Health Acts. It is no doubt a fact that local building by-laws occasionally insist on means of escape in case of fire in premises where more than a certain number of persons are employed. It is likewise part of the law of the land that, if a lad in the course of his work meets with a fatal accident, twelve just men and a coroner must sit on the dead body and investigate the cause. But, apart from such regulations, which are not confined to the employment of juveniles, or, indeed, to employment generally, it is only in special forms of occupation that there are required additional precautions designed to protect the health and safety of the workers. Elaborate rules prescribe the conditions which must be observed in the management of a railway or a mine. The Shop Hours Act requires that seats should be provided for shop assistants. Such Acts have in practice only a limited application in the case of children and young persons, who do not to any large extent come into the classes affected. Here, as in regard to the regulation of hours, the chief Act of importance is the Factory and Workshop Act. This Act makes careful provision, so far as premises are concerned, for the health of the workers, juveniles and adults alike. Whether the provisions are in practice always enforced is a matter open to some doubt. In the case of factories,[72] the outside walls, ceilings, passages, and staircases must be painted every seven years, and washed every fourteen months; and in general the premises must be kept clean and free from effluvia, and the floors properly drained. Ventilation must be adequate, and all gases, dust, and other impurities generated in the course of work rendered, so far as is practicable, innocuous to health. In certain cases the inspector may insist on the provision of ventilating fans. Overcrowding is prevented by requiring a minimum space in each room of 250 cubic feet for each person, or during overtime of 400 cubic feet. A reasonable temperature must be maintained in each room in which any person is employed. There must be sufficient and suitable supply of sanitary conveniences. In textile factories a limit is set on the amount of atmospheric humidity. In certain dangerous or poisonous trades additional precautions are required. The Secretary of State has large powers of imposing additional regulations on the one hand, and of granting exemptions on the other. The authority for enforcing the regulations in factories is the inspector acting through the Home Office. The regulations applicable to workshops do not differ very materially from those imposed on factories, but the enforcing authority is different. The authority in the case of workshops is the district or the borough council--_i.e._, the public health authority. The medical officer of health and the inspector of nuisances have for this purpose the power of factory inspectors. A breach of the law on the subject is declared to be a nuisance, and may be dealt with summarily under the Public Health Acts. The district or borough council are compelled to keep a register of the workshops within their area; and the medical officer of health is required to report annually to the council on the administration of the Factory Acts in the workshops and workplaces in the district. A copy of this report must be sent to the Secretary of State, who remains the supreme authority, and in certain cases of default may authorize a factory inspector to take the necessary steps for enforcing these provisions, and recover the expenses from the defaulting council. An attempt is also made to regulate the sanitary conditions under which out-workers are employed. Where provisions are made by the Secretary of State, the employers concerned are made responsible for the condition of the places in which his out-workers carry on work. The employer must keep lists of out-workers. The district council, in cases where the place is injurious to the health of the out-workers, may take steps to have the evil remedied or the employment stopped. The Act requires machinery to be properly fenced, and special precautions to be taken in cleaning machinery in motion. Children may not clean any part of machinery in motion, or any place under such machinery other than a overhead gearing. Children and young persons may not be allowed to work between the fixed and traversing parts of a self-acting machine while the machine is in motion. When there occurs in a factory or workshop any accident which either (_a_) causes loss of life to a person employed in the factory or workshop, or (_b_) causes to a person employed in the factory or workshop such bodily injury as to prevent him on any one of the three working days after the occurrence of the accident from being employed for five hours on his ordinary work, written notice shall forthwith be sent to the inspector for the district. In the case of new factories erected since January 1, 1892, and of new workshops erected since January 1, 1896, in which more than forty persons are employed, a certificate must be obtained from the local authority for building by-laws, stating that reasonable provision for escape has been made in case of fire. With regard to older factories and workshops, the local authority must satisfy itself that reasonable means of escape are provided. From these regulations it will be seen that precautions guarding the health of boys are taken in the case of factories and workshops. There are rules, there is an enforcing and inspecting authority, and there is required a report in all cases of serious accident. But, with one exception, no steps are taken to test the adequacy of the precautions by a periodic medical examination of children and young persons, or to prevent the employment of certain individuals who are physically unfit for the work. The exception is important, and observes attention, because it indicates a possible line of reform. "In a factory a young person under the age of sixteen, or a child, must not be employed ... unless the occupier of the factory has obtained a certificate, in the prescribed form, of the fitness of the young person or child for employment in that factory. When a child becomes a young person, a fresh certificate of fitness must be obtained." [73] A certifying surgeon is appointed for each district. "He must certify that the person named in the certificate is of the age therein specified, and has been personally examined by him, and is not incapacitated by disease or bodily infirmity for working daily for the time allowed by law in the factory." [74] "The certificate may be qualified by conditions as to the work on which a child or young person is fit to be employed," and the employer must observe such conditions.[75] The surgeon has power to examine any process in which the child or young person is employed.[76] A factory inspector who is of opinion that any young person or child is unsuited on the ground of health for the employment on which he is engaged may order his dismissal, unless the certifying surgeon, after examination, shall again certify him as fit.[77] This provision only applies to young persons under the age of sixteen, and to children. It does not, moreover, apply to workshops. In the case of workshops, the employer may obtain, if he thinks fit, a certificate from the certifying surgeon.[78] The Secretary of State has, however, power to extend the regulation to certain classes of workshops, if he considers the extension desirable.[79] In these cases, and these cases alone, is it necessary to call in the doctor to certify the physical fitness of the boy for the employment in which he is engaged. But under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, taken in conjunction with the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, it is possible to extend considerably the system of medical tests. Under the first of these Acts, which applies to children under the age of fourteen-- "Sect. 3 (4). A child shall not be employed to lift, carry, or move anything so heavy as to be likely to cause injury to the child. "(5) A child shall not be employed in any occupation likely to be injurious to his life, limb, health, or education, regard being had to his physical condition. "(6) If the local authority send a certificate to the employer saying that certain employment will injure the child, the certificate shall be admissible as evidence in any subsequent proceedings against the employer in respect of the employment of the child." If the child has left school--and under certain conditions a child can leave school at the age of twelve--it is not easy to see how the local authority can enforce these provisions. But with children attending school, whole or part time, circumstances are different. Medical inspection of school-children is now compulsory, and it is within the power of the education authority to inspect any such children.[80] They are therefore at liberty to examine any children known to be at work, and any certificate of "unfitness" sent to an employer would probably be effective. Further, under the Employment of Children Act, Sects. 1 and 2, a local authority may make by-laws permitting, subject to conditions, the employment of children under the age of fourteen in any specified occupation; and in the case of "street trading" the age is extended to sixteen. It would be possible therefore, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, to make by-laws requiring a medical certificate of fitness in certain forms of occupation in which children under the age of fourteen are engaged. § 2. STATE ENTERPRISE. In the preceding sections the State has played a passive part in the supervision of the boy. It has contented itself with giving orders to others, and with taking some more or less inadequate steps to see that its commands are obeyed, but has directly done nothing itself. We are now to see the State assuming duties of its own, and appearing as the active guardian of the child. Individual or voluntary effort having failed, it has been driven, at first reluctantly, but later with increasing readiness, to fill the gap. The State has now made itself directly responsible for providing schools for the children of the nation. The schools play an important part in the supervision of character. Attendance at school may be either compulsory or voluntary. The law of compulsory attendance has already been stated.[81] As a rule children must attend school till they reach the age of twelve, and under local by-laws can in general be retained till they reach the age of fourteen. In certain cases, important from the point of view of discipline, the period of compulsory attendance can be prolonged. Children under fourteen found begging, or wandering without home, or under the care of a criminal or drunken guardian, or in general living in surroundings likely to lead to crime, may be brought before a magistrate and sent to an industrial school.[82] Here they are boarded and lodged, and may be kept there up to the age of sixteen, after which time the managers of the school have duties of supervision for a further period of two years, with power of recall if desirable. Children who are truants or are convicted of criminal offences can be treated in the same way. For the majority of boys State guardianship is confined to the years of compulsory attendance. But a considerable number continue their education in various ways, and so remain under some sort of supervision. Children may remain at the elementary school till the close of the school year in which they attain the age of fifteen. The education authority has power to provide and aid secondary and trade schools, and to make these institutions accessible by means of scholarships; and secondary schools, if in receipt of grants from the Board of Education, must in general reserve a quarter of the places for pupils whose parents cannot afford to pay fees. The education authority has power to provide evening continuation classes for those who desire to avail themselves of the opportunities thus afforded. Those who choose to attend these places of higher education continue in some degree under the supervision of the State. But the supervision of the State through its schools is not confined to the supervision of conduct. The education authority now exercises important duties in connection with the health of the children in the elementary schools. It is now obligatory on every education authority to inspect medically all children on their admission to school, and at such other times as may be prescribed by the Board of Education.[83] In their original memorandum to education authorities the Board of Education required these inspections--on admission to school, and at the ages of seven and ten.[84] These regulations have not at present been enforced, but the London County Council has now adopted a scheme which practically embodies them. The local education authority is empowered, with the consent of the Board of Education, to make arrangement for attending to the health of the children.[85] Medical inspection is compulsory, medical treatment optional. Further, the local education authority may draw on the rates to feed school-children, whether their parents are destitute or not, provided it is satisfied that the children, for lack of food, are unable to profit by the instruction given.[86] Finally, the local education authority may receive into its day industrial schools children at the request of their parents, who must pay towards the expense such sum as may be fixed by the Secretary of State.[87] It will be seen that, acting through the local education authorities, the State has now assumed large duties in connection with the supervision of children. To submit to the discipline of the schools the vast majority of the children of the county; to examine medically all children in these schools; to feed the necessitous children, and to treat medically the ailing children in the elementary schools; to remove and provide for until the age of sixteen unfortunate children exposed to an unfavourable environment--these are powers which constitute no small measure of State enterprise. II. STATE TRAINING. Training that shall fit a boy for a trade is of two kinds, general and special. The first must develop those mental qualities of alertness, intelligence, and adaptability required in all forms of occupation; the second must give definite instruction in the principles and practice of some particular industry or branch of industries. For the first provision is made in the elementary school system, with its powers of compelling attendance. For the second we must look to the various types of continuation school. Here, under existing conditions, the State can only offer facilities; it cannot enforce attendance.[88] Since the passing of the Education Act, 1902 and 1903, progress has been marked in both directions. The old "voluntary" schools, whose rolls contained the names of half the scholars in the country, and whose limited funds constituted an impassable barrier to all advance, are now maintained out of the rates; and the gap between non-provided and council schools is closing up. The breaking up of the small School Boards and the establishment of larger authorities controlling all forms of education have made for efficiency, while the merging of educational matters in the general municipal work is insuring that practical criticism of his schemes which the educationalist always resents but always requires. _(a) The Elementary School._ It is obvious that, with the variety of children every school contains and their tender age, no definite trade training can be given in the elementary school. On the other hand, we have advanced far beyond the old educational ideal of providing a common and uniform type of instruction in the common school. Types of school are being multiplied to meet the needs of different kinds of pupils. Provision has long since been supplied for the mentally and physically defective, and serious attempts are now being made to break up and classify that huge group which includes the so-called normal child. In addition to the varying types of elementary school which are in process of being adapted to the differing needs of the locality, and the different classes of child, we have, under the elementary school system, what is known as the "higher elementary school." Originally a school specializing in science and of little value, it is tending to become, under the more recent regulations of the Board of Education, a school where a definite bias, either in the direction of commerce or industry, is given to the curriculum. It is true that the number of schools called "higher elementary" shows little signs of increase.[89] This is due to the rigid and inflexible rules of the Board of Education, which seem expressly designed to kill, and not to encourage, the experiment. But while the name is being dropped, the thing is being preserved and multiplied. London, for example, has recently adopted a scheme for the development of sixty of these types of school, to be called "central schools." The curriculum of each school is determined after taking into account the industrial needs of the neighbourhood in which it is placed. The education given is general in character, but the selection of subjects has special reference to some profession or group of trades. Broadly speaking, there are two general types of school, the commercial and the industrial. The industrial type is already subdivided into the woodwork and the engineering type, and further subdivisions will gradually be formed. In these schools no attempt will be made to teach a trade, but such subjects are included in the curriculum as will be found useful in the trade. In the woodwork type, for example, in addition to a considerable amount of time devoted to practical instruction in woodwork, special attention is given to the kinds of arithmetic and drawing required by the intelligent carpenter. An elaborate scheme for picking out between the ages of eleven and twelve the children suitable for these different kinds of school has been drawn up. A four years' course of instruction is provided for. In order to induce the poorer parents to allow their children to remain beyond the age of compulsory attendance, the education committee offers bursaries, thereby exercising that negative form of compulsion technically known as a bribe. Other education authorities are establishing schools with similar aims. The experiments are recent, and mark an important and new development. Two advantages are anticipated. First, the variety in the types of school and the careful selection of scholars will promote intelligence by providing that particular kind of educational nutriment best adapted for encouraging the growth of a particular order of mind. Secondly, by guiding the interests of boys in the direction of various occupations, it is hoped that on leaving school these interests will lead the boys to enter those occupations for which to some extent they have been prepared, and in which they are most likely to succeed. The elementary schools, as a body, will thus become a kind of sorting-house for the different trades, and be freed from that charge, to some extent justified, of catering only for the lower ranks of the clerical profession. _(b) The Continuation School._ It is becoming year by year more generally recognized that a system of education which comes to an end somewhere about the age of fourteen is incomplete and profoundly unsatisfactory. Without attendance at a continuation school of some kind, a boy rapidly loses much of the effect of his previous education, and at the same time is deprived of all opportunity of enjoying the advantages of a more specialized training. To meet this need a complex system of continuation school has grown up. It lacks, however, the element of compulsion, except that negative form already alluded to--the bribe of a scholarship. Looking at the machinery as a whole, it may be admitted that the State does afford considerable opportunity to those anxious to continue their general education, or to obtain some specific form of technical instruction. Whether sufficient use is made of this opportunity is a question that must be answered in the following chapter. But taking the machinery as a whole, and as it exists under the best education authorities, the machinery does touch to some extent the principal trades and professions.[90] 1. Provision is gradually being made for those likely to succeed in the higher branches of industry and commerce. The number of secondary schools is being increased, their quality improved, and their types varied. Technical institutes providing day and evening classes of an advanced character are being rapidly multiplied. University instruction, aided out of public funds, is becoming more plentiful and efficient, and, whether during the day or in the evening, is year by year offering larger opportunities to students. Progress is especially marked in the faculties of economics and technology. Scholarship systems, more or less incomplete, make access to these institutions possible for the poorer classes of the community. The trend of development seems to suggest that a system of organization, calculated to provide training for the highest positions in the industrial and commercial world, is developing along the following lines: Between the ages of eleven and twelve the brightest children will be transferred from the elementary to the secondary school. The secondary school will provide a course of instruction extending to the age of eighteen. Broadly speaking, there will be three types of secondary school, the first giving a general and literary education, the second specializing in commerce, and the third in some branch of science and technology. At the age of eighteen the suitable students will be removed to the University, where they will receive a three or four years' course of instruction suitable to the profession they are intending to enter. It is probable that at the age of fourteen there will be an additional, though smaller, transfer of children from the elementary schools, in order that provision may be made for those who have slipped through the meshes of the scholarship net at the first casting. Scholarships with liberal maintenance grants will make readily accessible to all who are fit the advantages of a prolonged education. Evening classes, leading even to a degree, will remain for those who, for one reason or another, have failed to obtain in their earlier years the advanced instruction they now require. An organization of this kind is not at present found anywhere in its complete form, but it is sufficiently complete in certain directions to be considered here, where we are concerned with attainments, and not reserved for a later chapter, where we shall be examining new paths of progress. 2. For those likely later to fill the position of foreman, or to become the best kind of artisan, the day trade school is provided. The boys enter the trade school on leaving the elementary school about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and go through a two and sometimes a three years' course of instruction. These schools continue the education of the boy, with special reference to the trade concerned, and at the same time devote a large amount of time to supplying an all-round training in the various skilled operations the trade requires. They are essentially practical in character, and this practical character is often assured by a committee of employers, who visit the school and criticize the methods of instruction. 3. For those already apprenticed to, or engaged in, the trade two forms of instruction are provided. The most satisfactory are the classes attended during the day. Attendance at such times can only be secured by inducing the employers to allow their lads time off during working hours. In some cases the element of compulsion is introduced by the employers, who make attendance at such classes a condition of employment. The other form of instruction is provided during the evening at a technical institute. In either case the instruction is of a practical nature, and designed to supplement the training of the workshop. 4. For those who have entered, or desire to enter, the lower walks of commerce, or the civil or municipal service, there is the evening school of a commercial type, usually held in the building of an elementary school. 5. Of the boys who, engaged in unskilled work during the day, are anxious to continue their general education or to improve their position, the evening school again supplies the need. Some practical work is done in the woodwork or metal centres, but the limited equipment of the elementary school stands in the way of any advanced technical instruction. If we omit the commercial classes, already mentioned, attendance at an evening school often means little more than attendance once a week at a class where instruction is given in a single subject, and not infrequently the recreative element is predominant. Recently, and with considerable success, the "course" system has been introduced. Here the students, instead of being present at a single class once a week, attend on several evenings during the week, and go through a course of instruction in several subjects connected together and leading up to some definite goal. If to these various types of continuation school we add the large number of lectures on numerous subjects, we shall see that the State through its schools supplies a considerable amount of technical instruction. It would be false to say that the boys receive all the training that they need, but it would not be beyond the mark to assert that in the case of many education authorities they are afforded all, and not infrequently more than all, the opportunities for which they ask. It is the demand, and not the supply, that is deficient. III. STATE PROVISION OF AN OPENING. Until the year 1910 the provision of openings in suitable occupations was not considered among the duties of the State. It is true that here and there, usually in co-operation with voluntary associations, an education committee made some attempt to place out in trades the boys about to leave school. But any expenditure in this direction was illegal, and under no circumstances was it possible to do anything for those who had already left school. But in the year 1910 the State, without premeditation, has found itself committed to the duty of finding openings for children and juveniles. The revolution was upon us before we had seen the signs of its approach. This assumption of a new duty was the unforeseen result of the establishment of Labour Exchanges. The Act of 1909 thought nothing, said nothing, about juveniles. It was passed as a measure intended to deal with the problem of adult unemployment. Now, there is no problem of unemployment in connection with boys and youths; the demand of employers for this kind of labour appears insatiable. Nevertheless, no sooner were Labour Exchanges opened, than the question of juveniles came to the front. Employers asked for juveniles, and the managers of the local Labour Exchange, eager to meet the wishes of the employer, searched for and found juveniles. Enthusiastic about his work, and prompted by the laudable desire to show large returns of vacancies filled, it did not occur to him that the problem of the juvenile and the problem of the adult had little in common. He was not permitted to remain long in this condition of primitive ignorance. Questions were asked in the House, letters were written to the papers, deputations waited on the President of the Board of Trade, all complaining that the Labour Exchange was becoming an engine for the exploitation of boy labour. In the case of adults, no bargain as to conditions was struck with the employer; the man had to make his own terms. But the boy could not make his own terms, and public opinion had for some years been uneasy about the increasing employment of boys in occupations restricted to boys, and leading to no permanent situation when the years of manhood were reached. Returns showed that it was largely into situations of this character that lads were being thrust by the Labour Exchange. The Board of Trade rapidly realized the evil, and set itself to work to repair the unforeseen mistake. It wisely decided to grapple seriously with the problem, and did not, as it might well have done, restrict the Labour Exchange to adults. It determined to appoint Advisory Committees to deal with juveniles. In London the following machinery is in process of being established: There is a Central Advisory Committee, consisting of six members nominated by the Board of Trade, six by the London County Council, and six by the committee of employers and trade unionists, who advise the Board of Trade on questions of adult employment. The duty of this Central Committee is to advise the Board of Trade as to the appointment of the local Advisory Committees, which will be formed to control the juvenile department in connection with each of the London Labour Exchanges. It will also be the duty of the Central Advisory Committee to advise generally on questions affecting the employment of juveniles. Though the duties of this committee are nominally advisory, its work will in practice become administrative in character. Here then is an organization which in course of time will probably have to deal with the problem of finding suitable occupations for the child and juvenile population of London. Similar bodies are being formed in other towns. As will appear later, this is one of the most important social questions of the day. How these committees will do their work only the future can show. But if the Board of Trade act liberally in matters of expenditure, there is no cause for despondency, and we may well hope that, by the purest of accidents, we are on the threshold of a new era in the history of industrial organization. Chance is not always blind, and some of its wild castings hit the mark. Such, in broad outline, have been the achievements of the State during the age of reconstruction, so far as concerns the problem of boy labour and apprenticeship. Guided by sentiment, partial and limited in the sphere of its operations, the State has yet drifted far from the moorings of _laissez-faire_, and is destined to drift farther as the years go by. How far the intricate machinery, slowly pieced together during the last three-quarters of a century, is successful when judged by results, what are its more serious defects, and what should be the lines of future advance, before the establishment of a real apprenticeship system, it will be the object of the following chapters to explain. But one truth should now be abundantly clear: of the three essential factors of that system, not one has been altogether neglected by the State, and in certain departments its guardianship has been widely extended. In the department of supervision it has, through its schools, created an organization to watch over and to control the conduct of all its children; it has recently recognized through the same agency its duty to provide for them at least the elements of physical well-being; and through numerous Acts it has endeavoured to insure for the boy worker a minimum standard--low, indeed, but still real--of proper conditions of employment. In the department of training it has covered the land with a network of educational institutions, which offer to all the possibilities of nearly every kind of instruction. While, as regards the provision of an opening, it has realized the urgency of the problem, and has taken the first steps to supply the deficiency. These are all, in spite of many shortcomings, solid achievements, hopeful in the present, and more hopeful for the promise they bring of a larger measure of State guardianship in the years that are to come. CHAPTER V APPRENTICESHIP OF TO-DAY A true apprenticeship system, as already explained, must satisfy three conditions: It must guarantee the adequate supervision of the youth of the country as regards physical and moral development until the age of eighteen at least is reached; it must supply means of effective training, both general and specialized; and, finally, it must provide to those about to cross the threshold of manhood an opening in some form of occupation for which definite preparation has been given. The efficiency of the industrial organization of to-day must be judged by the extent to which these three conditions are satisfied. To what extent does the apprenticeship of to-day satisfy the conditions of a true apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must look far beyond the narrow limits of indentured apprenticeship as it still exists. It touches only a fringe, and a vanishing fringe, of the problem. Life for the youth has grown more complex since the passing of the old organization of the gilds; its success or failure is the outcome of the interplay of numerous forces. Four factors contribute, in a more or less degree, to the result. There is the contribution of the State--the last chapter was concerned with the description of the machinery which has slowly been set up during the age of reconstruction--we have yet to test its influence in the actual working; there is the contribution of philanthropic enterprise, as represented in the religious bodies, the clubs, the apprenticeship associations, and skilled employment committees; there is the contribution of the home, with its discipline and training; and, finally, there is the contribution of the workshop, using this term to include all forms of occupation, with the methods of entry and the organization for securing a supply of labour. Only when we have taken into account the effects of these four factors can we pass judgment on the apprenticeship of to-day. I. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE STATE. In estimating the contribution of the State towards apprenticeship of to-day, it will be convenient, as in the last chapter, to trace the effect of this influence in two sections, the one devoted to a survey of the results of State regulation, and the other to an examination of the achievements of State enterprise. § 1. STATE REGULATION. In its scheme of regulation the State has aimed, broadly speaking, at securing three results. It has endeavoured to prevent boys from being overworked or wrongly worked; it has sought to guard them from being engaged in demoralizing forms of employment; and it has striven to secure satisfactory conditions within the walls of the workshop. The third task presents the fewest difficulties. Medical science is sufficiently advanced to prescribe the conditions as to ventilation, heating, sanitation, and cubic contents essential to the health of the boys. The sad catalogue of accidents is sufficiently long to show where danger, through inadequately guarded machinery, is probable. To enforce the necessary regulations is comparatively easy. There must be a suitable number of inspectors, and these inspectors must be specially trained for their work. Neither condition is at present fulfilled. The staff of inspectors is much too small, and the inspectors themselves frequently lack the requisite technical qualifications. In the work of guarding boys from being engaged in occupations demoralizing to character, the State has only recently taken the first steps. The Employment of Children Act prohibits street trading under certain conditions. As will appear later in this chapter, there are a large number of occupations where regulation is much required. Indeed, it is a comparatively new idea that the nature of the employment of the boy may have a profound influence on the well-being of the man. In the department of regulation the most elaborate machinery has grown up around the attempts of the State to prevent boys from being overworked or wrongly worked. The difficulties in the way of success have been two. There has been the difficulty in getting the necessary law passed. In this respect it is enough to mention that the "half-time" system, in spite of practically universal condemnation, is still permitted, to show the almost insurmountable obstacles presented by vested interests. There is next the difficulty of enforcing the law. It is often urged that it is idle to place on the statute-book laws which can easily be evaded. Too much weight must not, however, be given to this argument. There is a moral effect in the passing of every law. The fact that the State has condemned certain modes of action is an important factor in the formation of public opinion. Many people realize for the first time that the evils which are the result of conduct hitherto regarded as harmless, because not regarded at all, are sufficiently serious to call for State interference. The law may not have its full effect; it will without doubt have some effect. The question of enforcement is, however, of vital importance, and it is well to consider the limits of the power of enforcement. The best method of restricting the hours of employment is to see that the boy is somewhere else during part of the working day. The half-time system, which insured that the boy should spend half his time in school, was established, not primarily with a view to his education, but to prevent him from being overworked. It has, moreover, from its point of view, been completely successful, and has in practice been enforced without difficulty. The various laws relating to compulsory attendance at school have exercised an influence more potent in the work of limiting the hours of employment than all the other elaborate regulations on the subject. If we see to it that a boy is in school, he cannot at the same time be found in the factory. The machinery for enforcing attendance now runs without difficulty, and its action is uniform and comprehensive. The next method of restricting employment is the method of prohibition. Here, again, enforcement presents no serious difficulty. If we forbid children under a certain age to work for wages or to take part in certain forms of occupation, it is enough to find them so engaged at any one moment to secure a conviction. The third method, which seeks to prevent boys from being overworked by setting a limit on the number of hours during which they may be employed, is almost impossible to carry out. The Shop Hours Act is frequently infringed, and only the most rigid system of inspection can get evidence of cases of infringement. Yet even here detection is comparatively easy. A watch can be kept on the number of hours during which a shop is open, and if this exceed the legal limit we have a fair presumption that the shop assistants are over-employed. But in the case of children we cannot draw this conclusion. We are supposing their hours are more limited than in the case of the adults, and the mere fact that the shop is open during a longer period affords no proof that the child is there all the day on all days of the week. To enforce regulations of this kind we must set a watch on the individual child, and on a large scale this is impracticable. In judging of the results of State regulation, as described in the preceding chapter, we may assume that the regulations are enforced--or at any rate are enforceable--where employment is prohibited, or where attendance at school is required, but that regulations which entail the counting of hours have little effect in preventing overwork except by the indirect method of forming public opinion. Further, when we are seeking a path of reform, we must take the road of prohibition or alternative attendance at school. Leaving general considerations, and coming to details, it may be said that, so far as children under the age of fourteen are concerned, the system of State regulation, though a little cumbersome, covers a considerable part of the field, provided always that local education authorities make full use of the powers conferred by the Education Acts, the School Attendance Acts, the Children Act, and the Employment of Children Act, and provided also that the Board of Education and the Home Office render full and cordial support. Unfortunately, these provisos are very far from being fulfilled. More than 58 per cent. of the population, for example, live in districts where the attendance by-laws allow of conditional exemption at the age of twelve. It is true that in nearly half the cases a fairly high standard of attainment is required from the children, but with the remainder no higher standard is required than that reached by the normal child at the age of twelve.[91] Or, again, in connection with the Employment of Children Act, out of seventy-four county boroughs, fifty have made by-laws in reference to street trading, but large towns, like Leeds, Nottingham, or Salford, have made none. Out of 191 smaller boroughs and urban districts, only forty-one have made by-laws; and out of the sixty-two administrative counties, other than London and Middlesex, only one.[92] It may fairly be assumed that, where no by-laws relating to street trading exist, little is done to enforce the other provisions of the Act. As regards young persons, if we exclude the Acts relating to mines, which affect a comparatively small number of lads, the Shop Hours Act, with its mild provisions of seats for assistants and a maximum week of seventy-four hours, the only Act which can be said to exert a large measure of supervision is the Factory and Workshop Act. Assuming that the system of regulation there found is adequate, and adequately enforced--both assumptions far from being fulfilled in practice--there remain the young persons who do not come within its provisions. The number of these is very large. In the next chapter figures are given relating to the occupations of London children on leaving school and between the ages of fifteen and twenty. A study of these tables will show that not more than at most a third of the young persons are brought within the scope of the Factory and Workshop Act. A large proportion of the lads engaged in the building trades, and practically the whole of those employed in shops, in transport, in commerce, and in general labour, are excluded. In their case there is no State supervision to regulate the conditions of their work. Coming to concrete examples, the van-boy may in all kinds of weather spend a dozen hours a day lolling on the tail of a cart, idle for much of his time, and for the remainder holding the horses outside a public-house, or lifting weights too heavy for his strength. The errand-boy, none too well clad or shod, may, delivering parcels and messages, trudge through the cold and rain over long leagues of streets during long stretches of the week. The office-boy may be cooped up in a dark and ill-ventilated office during most of the hours of daylight. The shop-boy may stand ten, twelve, or on Saturdays fifteen hours of the twenty-four in the street or in the shop, with one eye on the goods and the other on a penny novelette. And there is no public authority to say whether the conditions of his employment are satisfactory, no power to have him medically inspected, no possible guarantee to insure that when he passes the threshold of early manhood the vigour and the brightness of youth shall not have given way to the feeble health and the torpor of old age. Unquestionably, we owe much to sentiment for the evils it has denounced and remedied, but we owe also to the régime of sentiment the fact that some two-thirds of the young persons in the country are engaged in occupations carried on without regulation and unvisited by any inspector of the State. § 2. STATE ENTERPRISE. The most signal example of State enterprise in the realm of boy labour is to be found in that huge organization of schools, elementary and continuation, which now cover the country, and whose efficiency is rapidly increasing. The organization has already been described; it remains to summarize briefly its principal effects. First, the boys attend school with astonishing regularity. An average percentage of attendances during the year of ninety-five, and even more, is become common. Truancy is rare, and growing rarer. The truant schools are being gradually emptied, and several have been closed. This result is no doubt in part due to the increased fine for non-attendance, and the pressure thus placed on the parent. But excellent attendance implies much more than the elimination of the truant; it means that, after making allowance for absences due to illness and other sufficient causes, the boy attends school with perfect regularity and punctuality at all times when the schools are opened. Now, this ideal is in the case of the vast majority of boys attained. The result must be attributed to the influence of the teachers over the boy. Prosecution of the parent may cure gross irregularity, but perfect attendance can only be secured by enlisting the co-operation of the boy. The first effect of the school, then, is seen in the almost unqualified regularity and punctuality of the attendance. If we reflect on the home conditions of many of the boys, we shall be compelled to pay a high tribute of praise to the work of the teacher. The second achievement lies in the admirable order maintained within the walls of the school. Ready obedience is the rule, and not the exception. This is in general not the result of a system of harsh discipline--corporal punishment is decreasing at once in severity and in frequency--it is due to the personal influence of the teacher. In the third place, a spirit of industry and active attention pervades the work of the school. In discussing with the authorities of secondary schools the career of the children who have won scholarships from the elementary schools, I have more than once been told that the chief characteristic of these scholars lies in their patient and strenuous diligence. In this respect they serve as an admirable example to the fee-paying pupils. It is true that the scholars are picked children, but ability and diligence are, as experience shows, by no means inseparable companions. Here, again, we see the effect of the school. Finally, the schools are institutions which make for character in the best sense of the word. The moral training is gradually freeing itself from the "do and don't" of the home, and is beginning to reach the higher level of morality where the command is "to be this, not that." A standard of school honour is being sought for, and sometimes attained. To take a single example. In what is perhaps the poorest school in all London, set in the most squalid and vice-haunted region, it has been made a matter of honour with the boys who are receiving school dinners to come to the headmaster as soon as the home circumstances temporarily improve and say: "I don't want a dinner this morning, because father has got a day's work." Habits of regularity, obedience, and industry, and the cultivation of a sense of honour--these are the chief results of State supervision carried out by means of the schools. Two questions require an answer: Do these qualities, found within the precincts of the school, overflow and affect the conduct of the boys outside the school? Do they last when school-days are over, and the boys gone out to work? With regard to the first, there is good reason to believe that they do overflow. The school training does influence the conduct of the boys outside. No one who has watched a zealous headmaster replace an ancient and inefficient teacher of the old type can fail to have observed a striking change in the behaviour of the boys as seen in the street and in the home. With regard to the second question, we must reply that undoubtedly in many cases the qualities gradually disappear. When we come, as we shall do shortly, to the survey of the conditions of boy labour, we shall not be surprised at this unfortunate truth. It would be difficult to imagine any form of training that would be permanent when all discipline is relaxed or entirely discontinued at the most critical period of the development of the boy. The elementary school is now made responsible for the supervision of the health of the children. Medical inspection of all children is now compulsory, while medical treatment is made legal. The education authority may also draw on the rates to provide meals for necessitous children. It is too soon to estimate the effect of these new powers, but if they are used with wise generosity they should exercise a profound influence on the health of the rising generation. But however beneficent may be the influence of the elementary school, it comes to an end abruptly at the age of fourteen, and often a year or two earlier. Up to the age of leaving school, the boy is carefully guarded by the State, and then, with no transitional stage, he becomes a man, and, so far as the State is concerned, all control is withdrawn. Two or three per cent., with the help of scholarships, may pass annually to the secondary school, where State supervision is continued. Not more than 30 per cent. of those who leave the elementary school attend an evening school,[93] and even if they do there is no medical inspection in such places, and little effective discipline is possible for boys attending evening school on two or three nights a week. The remaining two-thirds disappear from the sight of the State, which henceforth renounces all responsibility for their supervision. We have next to regard the schools as training-grounds for the workmen of the future. We ought not to look to the elementary schools to provide any definite preparation for a trade. Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, and because of the industrial development of the day, the schools are turning out in thousands lads completely equipped for a certain class of occupation. We have already seen that the most signal triumph of the schools is to be found in the habits of regularity, intelligence, and obedience, which they impress on the boys. Now, these qualities are essential to success in all walks of life; but for one form of employment alone are they all that is required. This form of employment includes those occupations in which boys and boys only are engaged, and where the boys are discharged as soon as they become men. The messenger-boy, the shop-boy, the van-boy, and even the boy who attends to some machine which monotonously performs a single operation--the boy who comes into one of these classes need take with him nothing but the three recommendations of regularity, obedience, and intelligence. We shall trace later the disastrous effects of these forms of employment. It is not without significance that the rapid increase in the number of boys so engaged has synchronized with the rapid improvement in the system of elementary education. It is something of a tragedy that the most signal triumph of the schools should be, perhaps, the cause of their most signal failure. Definite training must be looked for in the continuation school. It is unnecessary to add much to what has been said in the last chapter; the State offers opportunity, but with its existing powers can do little more. Speaking generally, for the child of comparatively well-to-do parents, for the clever child, for the child of unusual energy and physical vigour, these opportunities can be enjoyed; but for the remainder--and that the great majority--they are useless, because beyond the reach of ordinary endeavour. Of State enterprise in the provision of an opening it is too early to speak; the juvenile branch of the Labour Exchange is only creeping into existence. In the next chapter an attempt will be made to explain how best can be realized the possibilities which lie latent in these institutions. § 3. SUMMARY. We are now in a position to summarize the achievements and the defects of the contribution of the State towards the creation of a true apprenticeship system. Its machinery of regulation has removed the worst abuses of child labour, and in certain departments of industry protects, with some degree of success, the health of the young persons engaged. Its enterprise in the field of education is providing supervision over the health and conduct of the boy till he reaches the age of fourteen, while for the young person it offers opportunities of longer supervision and technical training. If much has been done, much more remains undone. Regulation still leaves rampant many of the evils of child labour. Some two-thirds of the boys as they leave school enter occupations where regulation hardly exists. State enterprise for all practical purposes exerts no supervision over lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen--the most important epoch of their lives. Technical training, and even the continuance of general education, are possible only for a favoured few, and for the present there is no State provision of an opening. These are grave defects, and apprenticeship of to-day stands condemned unless it can be shown that one or other of the remaining factors supply what the State has failed to give. II. THE CONTRIBUTION OF PHILANTHROPY. The second of the general forces, as distinguished from the individual and special influences of the home and the workshop, which may make some contribution towards the apprenticeship of to-day must be sought among the varied religious and philanthropic associations. While we could not expect from these bodies any assistance in the work of technical training, we might hope to find in their midst conditions which make for the better supervision and control of the lads who have left school. Beginning with the more distinctly religious associations, we find among them practical unanimity of opinion. One and all confess sadly that they are unable to keep in touch with the boys after they have gone out to work. For the tens of thousands of schoolboys who attend Sunday-school there are only hundreds of lads on the roll of Bible-classes. The sudden change from the status of schoolboy to the status of wage-earner, which for the majority severed all connection with the education authority, has even more decisively brought to an end the supervision of church and chapel. The miscellaneous associations represented by clubs, lads' brigades, boy scouts, and the like, have all been called into existence for the express purpose of exerting some measure of control over that transition period of life which separates the boy from the man. How many lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen come within the sphere of influence it is not possible to say with any exactness. The Twentieth Century League estimated in 1903 that in London about 27,780 boys were connected with institutions of this character, and we shall see later that there are in London about 120,000 boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. It would be no less difficult to weigh the value of the work done. Existing as they do on a voluntary basis, and free from all element of compulsion, such supervision as they exert must take the form of tactful guidance. Their success or failure depends less on the machinery and more on the personal qualities of the manager. The wide and admirable influence of the best clubs is the triumph, not of the system, but of the exceptional individual. Exceptional individuals are, it must be remembered, exceptional, and an organization which depends on their presence is necessarily limited in the extent of its operations. We cannot therefore look to these associations to meet adequately the call for supervision. Of recent years numerous associations have been formed with the object of providing suitable openings for boys. There are two sides to their work. On the one hand, situations are found, terms made with employers as to wages and training, and steps taken to see that these terms are carried out. On the other hand, periodic visits are paid to the boy in his home, advice given as to attendance at evening schools, and friendly relations established between boy and visitor. In general, these bodies are concerned with placing out lads in skilled trades, though here and there some attempts have been made to attack the better parts of the unskilled labour market. Work of this character entails the expenditure of much time and money, and requires for the negotiation with employers considerable technical qualifications. Experience has shown that a staff of volunteers cannot alone perform the necessary duties, and paid officers have been appointed. The cost necessarily limits the expansion of the organization. Out of the 30,000 boys who annually leave the elementary schools of London, it is probable that not more than 2 per cent. come under the influence of these associations. On the other hand, if the sphere of their operations is limited, within that sphere it has achieved very considerable success. They have been pioneers in a new movement, have fully justified their existence, and must now look to the State to continue on a larger scale, but on the same general lines, the work that they have begun. Unlike most volunteers, these employment committees welcome this transfer, and are now readily placing their services at the disposal of the Board of Trade through its juvenile Labour Exchange. This brief survey of the contribution of philanthropic enterprise to the apprenticeship of to-day reveals one obvious conclusion: the associations only touch a fringe of the problem, and in no way exert any comprehensive measure of control over the lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Their number, their variety, and their enthusiasm, indicate the urgent need of supervision rather than supervision successfully achieved. We cannot look to them to supplement in any large degree the defects in the scheme of State guardianship, or the more grave defects which will appear when the conditions of home and workshop have been passed in review. III. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE HOME. What contribution does the home make to the solution of the apprenticeship question? We cannot, indeed, expect to find within the walls of the home provision made for the general education of the boy, or the specialized training of the youth; but it is not unnatural to look to the parent to exercise supervision over his children till manhood is reached, and likewise to offer to the boy leaving school advice and material assistance in the selection of a trade. We are still inclined to regard the family as the one relic of the patriarchal system that has retained a vigorous vitality through all the ages; we are still apt to see in the home a small world, edged off from the large world outside, self-centred, self-ruled, and enjoying all the advantages of a benevolent despotism. To what extent is this general assumption justified by the results of actual experience? The question is of profound importance, and has not received the attention it deserves from those who have written on boy labour. If we can take it for granted that in the normal home we have the means of controlling the boy and the growing lad up till the age of eighteen, we have a solid foundation on which to rest the new apprenticeship. Abnormal homes may need attention; but if the problem of supervision is solved for the majority, if there is an authority to which the boy submits himself as a matter of course, to add training and to organize openings are tasks which should present no serious difficulty. Can we look to the home to provide this fundamental basis of a true apprenticeship system? To answer this question we must study the homes themselves. A few years ago I devoted a large amount of time to the collection of material touching the character of family life in towns. The results were published in an essay entitled "The Boy and the Family." [94] I may perhaps be allowed to summarize the conclusions there established. Home varies from home; each may be said to have its own individuality, but each has much in common. To give definiteness to the problem, I endeavoured to class the homes under three types. In the main, type number one referred to the inhabitants of one and two room tenements; type number two embraced the families possessing three rooms; while the third type included those persons fortunate enough to rent more than three rooms. The size of the home proved a rough, though the best attainable, method of classifying the characteristics of the inmates. Supervision has been interpreted to mean two things--supervision of health and supervision of conduct. So far as the supervision of health is concerned, it is probable that very few of the parents belonging to the three types possess the necessary knowledge to carry out this duty. Among all classes of the community ignorance on matters affecting the hygiene of the home is almost universal. But even if knowledge were present, the resources at the disposal of large numbers would prove inadequate to make that knowledge effective. With type number one overcrowding is the rule; with type number two it is common; and only in the third type do we reach conditions of housing favourable to health. The experience derived from medical inspection of school-children and the administration of the Provision of Meals Act has revealed the deplorable condition of large numbers of children when left to the unaided care of their parents. The returns of necessitous children fed, which are published weekly in the minutes of the London County Council, showed that during the winter of 1909-10 at the time of most acute distress, about 9 per cent. of the children in the schools were receiving meals. A careful inquiry, the most elaborate of its kind, made into the home circumstances of the necessitous children in certain schools showed that the number of children actually fed was probably below, and certainly not above, the number who required meals. The same inquiry, with its lurid pictures of squalor and distress, proved how small was the prospect of health for many of those children, even though they were fed at school. It may be regarded as a conclusive demonstration of the call for more searching regulation on the part of the State.[95] It is probable, however, that the need for food is far larger than that represented by the number of children actually fed. Several inquiries, such as those carried out by Mr. Charles Booth in London, and Mr. Rowntree in York, indicate that the effective income of nearly a third of the population is too small to supply in adequate quantity even the bare necessities of existence. Medical inspection is now revealing the number of children suffering from definite ailments, and urgently requiring medical treatment, which they have hitherto been unable, in a large proportion of cases, to obtain. It would appear that some 10 per cent. suffer from defective vision, about 1 per cent. from discharging ears, about the same number from ringworm, while at least a third are suffering in health from the result of decaying teeth.[96] Everywhere we have abundant evidence to show that, from want of supervision, or of the effective means of supervision in the home, large numbers of children are growing up ill-clad, ill-nourished, and suffering from definite diseases, all alike leading to inefficient manhood. The second department of supervision is concerned with the supervision of character. Can we rest satisfied that the parents exercise over the growing lads that salutary control all growing lads require? The question is of profound importance, if, as all agree, character is the condition of success when the first steps are taken in the industrial world. It is necessary to distinguish between the boy attending school and the boy exempt from compulsory attendance. In what follows I shall draw largely on my essay in "Studies of Boy Life." The conclusions are derived from the experience of many years' residence in a poor part of London, and have been tested by a careful inquiry among ministers of religion, school-teachers, rent-collectors, and others with special knowledge of the subject. § 1. THE BOY OF SCHOOL AGE. If the parents are to control the boys, the boys must come much under the personal influence of the parents; in other words, rulers and ruled must meet frequently. Now, in all three types of family the father exercises little direct control over the children. If of good character, he is either out at work or out looking for work during five days of the week, and sees the children only in the evening. On Saturday afternoons and on Sundays he is at home; but a week-end visitor cannot be the dominant factor in domestic affairs. If control is exercised, it must be exercised by the mother. To trace her influence, it is necessary to picture the kind of life led by each type. I quote from my essay: "So far as the first type is considered, it is not easy to say when the children and parents meet.... The general order of events is something as follows: If it is one of the days on which he elects to work, the father rises about five o'clock, finds his own breakfast, and then quits the house. Some two or three hours later the school-children get out of bed, wash their faces, take a slice of bread and dripping, and go out. Sometimes the mother rises at that time and gets the breakfast, but in most cases remains in bed. At nine the boys go to school. At noon school is over, and the boys, after amusing themselves in the playground or street for an hour, go home to get some food. The mother meanwhile has risen, dressed the smaller children, performed the irreducible minimum of domestic work, and then left the house to gossip with a neighbour, or earn a few pence by charing. On rare occasions she may cook the children some dinner, but as a rule they get what food they can find, and eat it in the streets. Sometimes they receive a halfpenny to buy their own meal at a fried-fish shop. The boys then return to school, escape at half-past four, possibly go home to tea, and then once more turn for amusement to the streets. There they remain until it is dark, and often in summer till dawn begins to break, when at length they seek their dwelling and go to bed. In many cases the boys do not find their way back to their own houses, but take up their quarters for the night in the house of some friend. Sometimes they do not sleep in a house at all. In one case of which I have heard three boys spent a fortnight in a wash-house on the top of some blocks. There they lived an independent existence, getting their food and attending school regularly all the while. Later on, being discovered by a policeman, they were sent to their respective families.... Week follows week with little variation to mark the march of time. As brief a fragment of the boy's life as is possible is spent within the common dwelling, which offers him no occupation, and is entirely devoid of interest or attraction. The mother does not demand his presence indoors, while he himself has no wish to be there. The street, and not the house, ought probably to be regarded as the home or meeting-place of the family." [97] Supervision under circumstances of this kind must be an almost negligible factor in the life of the home. Let us now come to the second type. I quote again: "In the second type, as already mentioned, the family usually occupies three rooms. At first sight the conditions found in the former type seem to prevail here also. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the boys spend hardly more time at home than those just considered. Out of school hours they are either in the street or employed in some form of paid work.... School, street, meals, and bed alternate with one another here in much the same way as they did in the first type. But while the facts remain for the most part unchanged, their setting and colouring are very different. Another atmosphere seems to pervade the whole life; some sense of order and regularity begins to manifest itself; meals are at fixed hours; and the boys are expected home and sent to bed at more or less definite times. They return to their own tenements, and do not spend the night with some of their neighbours. As will appear later, home interests begin to develop; and if the boys spend their leisure in the streets, this is due more to their own choice than to the wish of their parents.... The mother does not display the utter indifference to the state of the dwelling or the habits of the children conspicuous in the first type. Some sort of ideal of home she seems to possess, but to obtain this ideal is beyond her power. She has the look of one who feels that things are wrong, and yet can see no remedy. She notes, for example, the evil influence the street exerts on the characters of her boys, but does not know how to preserve them from its overwhelming attractions." [98] "The chief difference, then, between the first and second type lies not so much in a different kind of life as in a certain change of atmosphere that pervades and transforms the common existence. In the third type this change of atmosphere becomes more conspicuous. A great part of the boy's time is, indeed, still spent outside the dwelling-place, but the life at home begins to assume larger proportions. There is more order and quiet in the house--a condition which reacts favourably on the boys. They are no longer seen hanging about the streets, loafing at the corners, or shouting noisily in the gutters. Though much out of doors, they go farther afield, and visit parks or museums; while, if they stay near home, they will usually be discovered in the school playground. In the evening many of them are indoors, and have various occupations, of which, perhaps, reading is the chief." [99] In type number one, then, there is, for all practical purposes, a complete absence of supervision. In the second type there is a desire for supervision, but the narrowness of the house accommodation thrusts the boys into the streets. In the third type alone are the conditions favourable to supervision. § 2. THE BOY AFTER SCHOOL DAYS. If the boy while at school is under little parental control, it is not to be expected that this control will be tightened when school days are over. With the first type of family there was no supervision before, and there is no more afterwards. The boy is self-supporting, and troubles little about the home, and the home troubles little about him. There is a partial exception in the case of the coster. Here the boy may become one of the regular working members of the establishment, and remains with his father; but the discipline is of a rude and ready sort. With the second type of family the boy's earnings are of great importance to the family, and the mother does her best to keep him at home. Any exercise of discipline is avoided, lest the lad should take his earnings and go elsewhere. He is rather in the position of a favoured lodger, whose presence is valuable to the home, and who must be treated well for fear he should give notice. In the third type of family, the boy, with growing years, passes out of the control of the mother, and is resentful of any restraint exerted by a woman. What supervision he enjoys comes from the father. The two do not meet often; father and son are seldom employed together, and the long distance that frequently separates home and work places the boy beyond the reach of parental control during the greater portion of the week. Such in broad outline, rendered jagged, no doubt, by numerous exceptions, is the quantity and the quality of the supervision exercised by the town parent over the town boy. Even with the highest type no high standard is reached, while with the lower we cannot contemplate the picture with any degree of satisfaction. Speaking generally, the city-bred youth is growing up in a state of unrestrained liberty; and what makes the problem more serious is the fact that all evidence goes to show that this disquieting phenomenon is not an accident, but the direct product of the social and industrial conditions of the times. Towns are growing larger, and with the growth of towns the whole conditions of family life are being transformed. The old patriarchal system is gone; the father is no longer an autocratic ruler in his small world. The family, so to say, has become democratized; we have in it an association of equals in authority. Now, the most ardent advocates of the extension of the suffrage have always limited their demands to an appeal for adult suffrage; they have never clamoured for children to be given a vote. Yet this, for all effective purposes, is what happens in the home in the case of the boy as soon as he has left school. The status of wage-earner has brought with it the status of manhood, and his earnings have conferred on him immunity from control and the right to be consulted in the politics of the home. Another fact, not sufficiently recognized, tends to break down the patriarchal system. With the steady improvement in the State schools, the boy is usually better educated than the father; the father knows this, and the boy knows it too. It is idle, therefore, to look for any large amount of parental control over the boy who has left school. We must face realities, however unpleasant these realities may happen to be; and one of the realities of the time is the independence of the lad. What is equally significant is the suddenness with which this independence comes. Until the age of fourteen he has remained under a carefully designed system of State supervision, exerted by the school authorities; while in a large number of cases the discipline of the home has been an important factor in his existence. At the age of fourteen, as a general rule, the control of school and home end together. The lad goes to bed a boy; he wakes as a man. There should therefore be little cause for surprise if the habits of the school and home are rapidly sloughed off in the new life of irresponsible freedom. Whether, therefore, we look to the State, to philanthropic enterprise, or to the home, we find no satisfactory guarantee for the supervision of the youth of the country. We have yet to search for this supervision in the workshop; but if it is absent there, we shall be faced with the disquieting phenomenon of the boy at the age of fourteen enjoying the full and complete independence of the adult. IV. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE WORKSHOP. Having examined three out of the four factors which contribute to the apprenticeship of to-day, and found them all inadequate, we must now turn to the workshop in the hope that we shall discover there conditions more favourable to the well-being of the youth of the country. If, however, this last factor prove defective, the apprenticeship of to-day will stand condemned, and the case for drastic reform will become unanswerable. It will therefore be desirable to devote considerable space to this, the central feature of the problem of boy labour. In what follows it is proposed first to make a detailed study of conditions in London, and then to present a general picture of the state of boy labour in other parts of the country. London has been selected for a detailed study because in a peculiar degree it represents the extreme type of urbanization. There is also the advantage that in the case of London the material required for the examination has to a large extent been collected. The investigations of Mr. Charles Booth, the publications and inquiries on the subject carried out by the London County Council, Mr. Cyril Jackson's report on boy labour presented to the Poor Law Commission, and numerous other writings, have provided for the study of London a mass of information which, though not in all respects exhaustive, is more complete than can be found elsewhere. § 1. LONDON. A study of the problem of boy labour in London involves the study of three questions. First we have to consider the case of the children who, while still attending school, are employed for wages. Next we must devote special attention to the boys as they leave school and distribute themselves among the different occupations. Finally, we must watch the later career of those lads, and in particular endeavour to ascertain in what way and with what results is made the difficult passage from the status of the youth to the status of the man. _(a) The Employment of School-Children._ In London the half-time system is not permitted. The standard of attainment for total exemption has been made sufficiently high to prevent the great majority of boys from leaving school till the age of fourteen is reached. It is, however, a fact that improved methods of instruction and more rapid promotion from class to class are tending to lower the age at which it is possible to obtain a Labour Certificate. How far this opportunity is used it is not easy to say; but in certain schools, situated in the poorer districts, it is alleged that there is a growing tendency for the brighter children to claim exemption in this way. The regularity of attendance is admirable, the average attendance in boys' schools exceeding 90 per cent. We may therefore assume that, if the boys work for wages, they must work at times when the schools are not opened. To what extent are boys employed while still liable to attend school? In 1899 a return was obtained throughout the elementary schools of England and Wales of the number of children so employed. In London, in the case of boys, the figures were 21,755.[100] The tables also give the ages of the children, but boys and girls are not separated. If, however, we assume that the number of children of each sex at each age is proportionate to the total number of children of each sex at all ages, we find that 78 per cent. of the boys were eleven and upwards, and 22 per cent. under eleven. The number of boys of eleven and upwards would be about 17,000. There are in the elementary schools about 70,000 boys eleven years of age and upwards, so that about 24 per cent. of these boys are employed. In other words, nearly a quarter of the boys in the elementary schools above the age of eleven were employed at the time of the return. The actual number of boys who are employed during the course of their school career would be considerably larger, as they would not all be employed at the same moment. The return is more than ten years old, but, with the exception of the children under eleven, it is improbable that there has been much change. Similar figures may be deduced from the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of School-Children, 1901.[101] With regard to the number of hours worked, Miss Adler's evidence is selected, and typical schools show that 56 per cent. were employed for more than twenty hours a week, while 14 per cent. were employed thirty-five hours or upwards.[102] In individual cases the figures were much higher. "Thus a boy of eleven years of age, for four shillings a week, was employed for forty-three and three-quarter hours in carrying parcels from a chemist's shop, and, except on Sundays, was practically every moment of his life at school or at work from seven in the morning till nine o'clock at night. Another boy, aged thirteen, worked fifty-two hours a week, being employed by a moulding company, and attending a theatre for five evenings a week and for half a day on Wednesday for a _matinée_--for the last, however, playing truant from school." [103] The following graphic account taken from a school composition, and obtained under circumstances which guarantee its essential accuracy, shows the amount of work which may be compressed into a single day. It refers to Saturday: "I first got up from bed about half-past six, and put my clothes on and had a wash. Then I went to work at B.'s, and swept out his shop, and then I did the window out. But after I done the window I had my breakfast and went in the shop again. I started taking out orders that came in. While I was taking the orders out, Mr. B. went to the Borough market for some potatoes, cabbages, and some onions; but when he came home I had to unload his van. After I unloaded his van, he went for some coal, which he sells at one and sixpence a hundredweight, but he got two tons of coal in. Then we had dinner about one o'clock. When we had our dinner, I had a rest till about four o'clock, when I had tea. When I had my tea I had to go and chop some wood, when it was time to shut up the shop. I had my supper and went home, and went to bed, and the time was about twelve o'clock." [104] It will be seen that, with the exception of a break in the middle of the day, the boy was on duty for nearly three-quarters of the twenty-four hours, and for part of the time was engaged in heavy manual labour. What effect does employment have on the physical condition of children under the age of fourteen? "That excessive employment is injurious alike to the education and to the health of the children is hardly in question. It was testified to by witness after witness, many of them in no way likely to be influenced by merely theoretical objections to child labour." [105] On the other hand, most of the witnesses that appeared before the Interdepartmental Committee were of opinion that "moderate work" was in many cases not only not injurious, but "positively beneficial." [106] It is not easy to understand what is meant by the last statement. If some form of employment is beneficial, then the 76 per cent. who are not so employed suffer, and steps should be taken to encourage them to work. It is doubtful whether the witnesses would have accepted this conclusion, from which, on their own assumptions, there is really no escape. The difficulty lay in drawing the line. "Most of the witnesses seemed to suggest that twenty hours might be fixed as the maximum weekly limit; but, on the other hand, we found some cases where less than twenty hours a week, if concentrated in one or two days, or if done at night, must be injurious." [107] But the evidence of most value on the subject is to be found in a Report of the Medical Officer of the London County Council.[108] About 400 boys employed outside school hours were examined. The following table, with defects in percentages, was obtained as the result:[109] +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Actual |Fatigue| |Severe| |Severe| |Hours worked | Number |Signs. |Anæmia.|Nerve |Deformities.|Heart | | Weekly. |of Boys.| | |Signs.| |Signs.| |------------------|--------|-------|-------|------|------------|------| |All schoolboys of | | | | | | | | district workers| | | | | | | | and non-workers | 3,700 | -- | 25 | 24 | 8 | 8 | |Working 20 hours | | | | | | | | or less | 163 | 50 | 34 | 28 | 15 | 11 | |Working 20 to 30 | | | | | | | | hours | 86 | 81 | 47 | 44 | 21 | 15 | |Working over 30 | | | | | | | | hours | 95 | 83 | 45 | 50 | 22 | 21 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ It will be seen that the defects rise rapidly with increase in the hours of work; while, even in the case of those working less than twenty hours, there is a serious deviation from the average. The fact that 50 per cent. of those working less than twenty hours should exhibit signs of fatigue, even where no permanent physical evil results, must seriously affect the value of the school instruction. In every case the workers compare unfavourably with the average for the whole of the workers and non-workers. We cannot view with satisfaction the truth that, even in those employed with moderation, deformities and severe heart signs should be nearly 50 per cent. above the average. The medical officer adds other conclusions no less disquieting. "Working eight hours on Saturday is as inimical as thirty hours during the week, and working through the dinner-hour appears particularly productive of anæmia," [110] "Retardation in school work was noted in 209 out of these 330 boys, 86 being one standard, 83 two standards, 37 three standards, and 3 four standards behind that corresponding to their age." [111] As his final conclusion the medical officer states: "We must set up as an ideal the suppression of child labour below twelve years of age, and during school life regulate it to twenty hours weekly, and a maximum of five hours on any one day." [112] The figures, however, would seem to go far in justifying the more drastic remedy of complete prohibition. It is, however, fair to mention that the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee, and also the Report of the Medical Officer, refer to a state of affairs prior to the passing of the Employment of Children Act. Under this Act, as explained in the last chapter,[113] employment of children under the age of eleven is forbidden, while the by-laws of the Council place restrictions on the number of hours children may work, and the times of day during which such work may be carried on. It is too soon to judge of the extent to which these restrictions can be enforced. During the first year of effective operation in London there were, in respect of boys under the age of sixteen, 13,461 cases of infringement. Prohibition under a certain age or during certain times of the day is comparatively easy to enforce; but limitation of hours, as experience of the Shop Act shows, is extremely difficult to enforce, and peculiarly difficult where, as with school-children, persons are not employed regularly, but work irregularly at times when the schools are not open. To get evidence sufficient to justify convictions is almost impossible, except in a few outrageous cases. What, if any, effect does the employment of school-children have on the general question of the preparation for a trade? Into this general question the Interdepartmental Committee did not enter. They did indeed regard certain forms of occupation as injurious, while they pronounced as beneficial employment in moderation. But this statement has apparently reference only to matters of health, and not to the relation of employment during school days to employment afterwards. The question is of great importance, as habits, in respect of work for wages, formed by the boy cling persistently to the youth. It is necessary, therefore, to pay some attention to the characteristics of the work which schoolboys undertake. In London 90 per cent. of the work would be included in the three following classes: (1) Shops--errand-running and delivery of parcels, milk, newspapers, and watching the goods spread on the counters outside the shops; (2) domestic--knife and boot cleaning, and occasionally baby-minding; and (3) street employment--hawking of newspapers, matches, and flowers, organ-grinding, and the like. Now, none of these forms of occupation provide any trade-training, or offer an opening with satisfactory prospects, to the boy as he leaves school. On the other hand, this class of work has distinctly injurious effects. First, it is employment of a casual character. Affected as it is, on the one hand, by attendance at school, and on the other by Saturdays and holidays, it is essentially irregular as regards hours. Secondly, it is easy to obtain, and consequently lightly undertaken and lightly dropped. Where another situation can be obtained at will, there is no demand on the worker to display the qualities that make for permanence of employment. Thirdly, it is work in which youths as well as boys are engaged; in other words, it does provide an opening to the boy as he leaves school--an opening which he is likely to accept, because it is the most obvious, but at the same time an opening in one of those forms of occupation entrance into which we should, as will appear later, do our utmost to discourage. It is singularly unfortunate that a boy's first association with any kind of paid employment should be of this nature. And, finally, it is at least open to grave doubt whether that sense of independence of home which comes with the consciousness of earning wages should begin at as early an age as twelve or thirteen. It would not be easy to imagine a more unsatisfactory form of preparation for a trade than that provided by the kind of work carried out by wage-earning children. If we add to this demoralizing influence the injurious effect on health and education, the case for total prohibition of boy labour during school-days becomes very strong. _(b) The Entry to a Trade._ The great majority of boys remain at the elementary school till they attain the age of fourteen; it is no less true that the vast majority cease attendance as soon as that age is reached. The period of the next four years--that is, from fourteen to eighteen--forms the most critical time of their career. It is during these four years that the boy must, if ever, have taken the first steps towards learning a trade. During this interval his physical strength must mature, his character take on itself a more or less permanent set, and the question whether his education shall represent something more than a faint shadow of early impressions be finally determined. In short, it is during these four years that the future citizen is made or marred. The previous survey, whether of the factors which contribute to the apprenticeship of to-day, or of the evils which are found among wage-earning school-children, does not guarantee a favourable start in the world of whole-time employment. Each year about 30,000 boys leave school at the age of fourteen to take up some form of work. These figures do not agree with the Census returns, because the latter include all London boys in all classes of society, whether at school or at work. Here we are concerned only with the boys of fourteen who leave the elementary school with the intention of earning their own living. Between the ages of fourteen and eighteen there will therefore be 120,000 boys. It is the careers of these 120,000 boys that we must now try to follow. What are the first occupations selected by these 120,000 boys? During the last few years the London County Council has endeavoured to find an answer to this question. Each head-master of an elementary school is required annually to fill up a form in respect of each boy who has left the school during the preceding twelve months. The information asked for is "occupation of parent," "occupation of boy," "whether skilled or unskilled," or "whether a place of higher education is attended." Returns have been received and summarized for the years 1906-07 and 1907-08. The first return was incomplete, but the second included the vast majority of those who left. Below is given the summary for the two years: +----------------------------------------------------------+ | | Skilled.| Unskilled.| Higher | | | | |Education.| |-------------------------|---------|-----------|----------| | Number | 8,662 | 15,910 | 1,524 | | Percentage | 33·2 | 61·0 | 5·8 | | Percentage, 1906-07 | 28·5 | 67·9 | 3·6 | +----------------------------------------------------------+ It will be seen that, including those who went to some higher form of education, little more than a third of the boys left school to enter a skilled trade.[114] TABLE I. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number. | Percentage. | | Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------| | | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| |Trades and industries | 615 | 347 | 40·87 | 18·74 | |Domestic offices or services | 23 | 46 | 1·52 | 2·48 | |Transport (including messengers,| | | | | | errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 191 | 829 | 12·69 | 44·76 | |Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | | | and dealers | 137 | 133 | 9·10 | 7·18 | |Commercial occupations | 61 | 141 | 4·05 | 7·61 | |General labour | 436 | 215 | 28·98 | 11·61 | |Professional occupations and | | | | | | their subordinate services | 11 | 5 | 0·73 | 0·27 | |General or local government | 26 | 6 | 1·73 | 0·32 | |Defence of the country | 5 | 1 | 0·33 | 0·06 | |Higher education | -- | 27 | -- | 1·45 | |Unemployed | -- | 102 | -- | 5·52 | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| | Total | 1,505 | 1,852 | 100·00 | 100·00 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ It is unfortunate that no full analysis has been made of these returns. The value of the information which would have thus been obtained was not supposed to justify the labour and expenditure involved in such an analysis. I have, however, roughly analyzed nearly 4,000 cases, and endeavoured to classify the occupations, in accordance with the table founded on the Census return which will be given later.[115] I selected for this purpose typical districts in London. Table I. includes returns from all the schools in the electoral areas of Bermondsey, North Camberwell, and Walworth; it represents a typical miscellaneous working-class district. Table II. includes the electoral areas of Dulwich and Lewisham; it may be regarded as typical of suburban villadom so far as its inhabitants send their children to the elementary schools. Table III. includes the electoral areas of Whitechapel and St. George's-in-the-East, districts distinguished by the presence of a large number of small trades and sweated industries. Table IV. includes the collective results of the three preceding tables, and may be taken as fairly typical of London as a whole. It was necessary to exclude the returns of a few schools as incomplete, indefinite, or obviously inaccurate. Parent stands for occupation of parent, boy for occupation of boy. The two do not quite correspond, as in a certain number of instances the occupation of the parent was unknown. I have included the telegraph-boys under "Transport," as for my purpose this classification was the more suitable. TABLE II. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number. | Percentage. | | Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------| | | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| |Trades and industries | 347 | 151 | 35·57 | 14·86 | |Domestic offices or services | 14 | 27 | 1·45 | 2·64 | |Transport (including messengers,| | | | | | errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 70 | 350 | 7·24 | 34·31 | |Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | | | and dealers | 100 | 126 | 10·34 | 12·35 | |Commercial occupations | 180 | 157 | 18·61 | 15·38 | |General labour | 144 | 54 | 14·89 | 5·29 | |Professional occupations and | | | | | | their subordinate services | 47 | 2 | 4·86 | 0·19 | |General or local government | 66 | 9 | 6·83 | 0·88 | |Defence of the country | 2 | 5 | 0·21 | 0·48 | |Higher education | -- | 76 | -- | 7·45 | |Unemployed | -- | 63 | -- | 6·17 | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| | Total | 967 | 1,020 | 100·00 | 100·00 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ TABLE III. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number. | Percentage. | | Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------| | | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| |Trades and industries | 349 | 305 | 51·09 | 41·84 | |Domestic offices or services | 25 | 18 | 3·66 | 2·47 | |Transport (including messengers,| | | | | | errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 72 | 189 | 10·54 | 25·93 | |Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | | | and dealers | 91 | 48 | 13·33 | 6·58 | |Commercial occupations | 11 | 39 | 1·61 | 5·35 | |General labour | 116 | 63 | 16·99 | 8·64 | |Professional occupations | | | | | | and their subordinate services| 10 | 3 | 1·46 | 0·41 | |General or local government | 8 | -- | 1·17 | -- | |Defence of the country | 1 | -- | 0·15 | -- | |Higher education | -- | 7 | -- | 0·96 | |Unemployed | -- | 57 | -- | 7·82 | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| | Total | 683 | 729 | 100·00 | 100·00 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ TABLE IV. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number. | Percentage. | | Class of Occupation. |------------------|------------------| | | Parent. | Boy. | Parent. | Boy. | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| |Trades and industries | 1,308 | 803 | 41·46 | 22·31 | |Domestic offices or services | 62 | 91 | 1·97 | 2·53 | |Transport (including messengers,| | | | | | errand-boys, van-boys, etc.) | 333 | 1,368 | 10·55 | 38·00 | |Shopkeepers, shop-assistants, | | | | | | and dealers | 328 | 307 | 10·39 | 8·52 | |Commercial occupations | 252 | 337 | 7·98 | 9·36 | |General labour | 696 | 332 | 22·06 | 9·22 | |Professional occupations and | | | | | | their subordinate services | 68 | 10 | 2·16 | 0·28 | |General or local government | 100 | 15 | 3·17 | 0·41 | |Defence of the country | 8 | 6 | 0·26 | 0·16 | |Higher education | -- | 110 | -- | 3·05 | |Unemployed | -- | 222 | -- | 6·16 | |--------------------------------|---------|--------|---------|--------| |Total | 3,155 | 3,601 | 100·00 | 100·00 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ In the interpretation of these tables certain facts must be borne in mind. None of the parents are returned as unemployed; this is because the trade of the parent was asked for, and no account was taken as to whether he was or was not employed. Secondly, the occupations are somewhat vaguely described; this in particular is true of the term "labourer." More exact information would no doubt have removed the parent from the class "general labour," and placed him in the class "transport," and occasionally in the classes "domestic servant" or "shop-assistant." Thirdly, the messenger-boys are included partly under "transport" and partly under "shop-assistants," the boy being termed sometimes an errand-boy and sometimes a shop-boy. The term "office-boy," which appears frequently in the returns, is vague. I have classed the office-boy as an errand-boy unless the school return places him in the column "skilled employment," when I have included him under the heading "commercial occupation." Making allowance for a certain inevitable inaccuracy which belongs to returns of this kind, we have a general picture, accurate in all essentials, of the distribution of boys among the various forms of occupation immediately after leaving the elementary school. The columns which refer to the trade of the parents, and indicate therefore the distribution of the parents among the various forms of occupation, are of considerable value. If we take Table IV., which may be regarded as typical of London as a whole, and compare the last two columns, we shall at once notice the striking difference that marks the distribution of boys and of adults among the several kinds of employment. In "trades and industries," 41 per cent. of parents are engaged, and only 22 per cent. of boys; 38 per cent. of the boys are engaged in "transport," and only 10 per cent. of parents. This fact carries with it a conclusion of great importance--son and father can seldom work together. If, for example, 10 per cent. of the parents are included under "transport," and 38 per cent. of the boys, it is clear that little more than a quarter of such boys can be employed in company with their parents. The actual facts, as revealed by an examination of the individual returns, are much stronger, and demonstrate the extreme rareness of father and son following the same occupation. In the case of "trades and industries" the trade of father and son is not infrequently the same; this is in particular true of "tailoring" trades of the East End, included in Table III., where the proportion of adults to boys are as fifty-one to forty-two. In suburban villadom, pictured in Table III., the clerk is often father to the clerk, while the son of a shopkeeper occasionally assists his parents in the shop. The coster habit likewise runs in families. But with these exceptions father and son do not work together. In consequence, in his first situation the boy is cut adrift from the home and its control, such as it is. He has not his father by his side to note and guide his conduct; and if he enters a skilled trade, he lacks the personal interest of the parent to guarantee his satisfactory training. We have already seen that the school supervision is at an end; in consequence, the only disciplinary influence left is the influence of the employer. The character of the employment and the nature of the supervision of the master become, therefore, of supreme importance to the well-being of the boy. It is consequently necessary to examine in some detail the distinguishing features of the various kinds of occupation. They are usually roughly classed as skilled or unskilled, according as they do or do not lead to a form of employment which requires specialized skill or specialized intelligence. THE UNSKILLED TRADES.--Practically the whole of the unskilled trades are included under the terms "domestic service," "transport," "shop," and "general labour," and the great majority of the boys who select these occupations may be said to select an unskilled trade. In Table I., a typical working-class district, it will be seen that 66 per cent. of the boys who leave the elementary schools come within this class. In Table II., a suburban area, the figures are 55 per cent.; but a considerable proportion of those included under "shops" appear to be employed in the shops of their parents, and to be learning the business. In Table III., representing the small East End trades, the figures are 44 per cent.; but, judged by wages and conditions of employment, the majority of the 42 per cent. included under trades should be transferred to the class of unskilled work. For all the districts, as a whole typical of London, Table IV. shows the figures to be 58·27 per cent. The figures quoted above ignore the boys returned as unemployed and unknown, the number of these for all London being 6 per cent. They are boys waiting for something to turn up; what will turn up it is impossible to predict. But it is safe to say that a considerable portion will drift into unskilled work. The unskilled trades fall into three classes. The first and smallest is included under "domestic service." Under this head are found boys in barbers' shops, page-boys, club-boys, boot and knife boys. Employment in a barber's shop is notoriously unhealthy;[116] a barber's shop is also supposed to be not infrequently the resort of the betting fraternity. The fortunes of the page and club boy await the zeal of an investigator; the knife and boot boy soon passes to some other occupation. Of the three classes, domestic service is the least important and the soonest left by the boy. The second class, included under "transport" and "shopkeepers," is far the largest and the most important. In all London some 47 per cent. of the boys are found here; or, if we add a half of the 6 per cent. returned as unemployed, we may say that half the boys who leave the elementary schools belong to this class. It is necessary to take "transport" and "shopkeepers" together, because it is impossible to tell whether a "shop-boy" is merely an errand-boy, or a boy on the road to become a properly trained shop-assistant. It is probable, however, that only a small number could be regarded as future shop-assistants. Ignoring these exceptions, we have to follow the fortunes of 50 per cent. of the boys leaving school--in other words, of 15,000 persons. Their forms of employment have much in common. In the first place, they are what is known as "blind-alley" occupations--they lead nowhere. Boys only are engaged, and when the boys become men they are cast adrift. Sometimes they are absorbed in the adult service, but more usually, if they have not already left, are given notice, and must at the age of eighteen seek out some new way of earning a living. The report of Mr. Cyril Jackson makes this fact abundantly clear.[117] "The industrial biographies received," he says, "show clearly that there is generally a time of transition when boys have to seek new occupations, for which they have little aptitude." [118] Or again: "There appears to be no doubt that the restlessness of many of the boys doing more or less unskilled work obscures from some employers the fact that they are using a greater number of boys than can ever be employed in connection with their trade as men. The employers who have filled up forms often state that they 'never discharge a boy who is willing to stay,' or 'that boys are only discharged for misconduct,' when it is evident from the figures appearing in the same form that there must be a considerable proportion of the boys passing out of the trade each year.... That many employers, on the other hand, do in fact discharge a considerable proportion of their boys because they have no room for them as men--or, to express the same thing in the form in which it presents itself to the masters, because they cannot afford to offer men's wages--is shown in the short accounts of the trades in the Appendix." [119] It is needless to labour the point further, as everyone familiar with the conditions of boy work give evidence to the same effect. The second characteristic of these trades is that they are mainly concerned with fetching or carrying something--messages, letters, parcels. It is characteristic of that stage of civilization at which we have arrived that we want to save ourselves trouble, or to save ourselves time. Boys are the instruments we use. "Here we are, all of us," says a modern writer, "demanding an endless number of tiny jobs to be done on our behalf. Every year multiplies these demands, increasing the pace at which the jobs can be done, and the number of them that can be crowded into the time. We learn to expect more and more conveniences at our elbow by which communication can be made, business transacted, messages despatched, parcels transferred, news brought up to date, transit hastened, things of all kinds put under our hand. We touch buttons, press knobs, ring bells, whisper down telephones, keep wires throbbing with our desires, bustle and hustle the world along. And all this in the end means _boys_. Boys are what we set moving. Boys are the material in which we deal. Boys are our tools. Every wire has a boy at the end of it." [120] This tendency to demand the services of boys has spread through all classes of society. To take a single example of quite recent growth: It is becoming less and less common for the housewife to bring the results of her marketing home herself; a boy delivers the goods instead. Go into any shop, even in the poorest part of the town, and make a few purchases; the shopman will probably offer to send them home for you. There is something flattering and pleasant in the offer; it is one of the new products of competition to multiply conveniences instead of cutting prices. The demand for boys is rapidly increasing; and while the demand is increasing, the supply of boys has diminished. The raising of the school age, the improved attendance, and the decrease of truancy, have all removed from the labour market an immense number of boys. "The Census figures show that there has been a steady diminution of boys employed under fifteen during the last quarter of a century." [121] The Labour Exchanges testify to the same effect, the managers frequently saying: "There is an unsatisfied demand for juvenile labour of an unskilled type." [122] This growing demand has two effects. First, as it becomes increasingly easier for boys to obtain situations, there is less and less inducement for them to show such industry and good conduct as are necessary to retain their places. Dismissal has no terrors; it means, if they please, a few days' holiday, or, if they prefer it, a new employer can be at once discovered. It becomes therefore difficult for an employer to exercise over the boys the discipline they need; if he attempt to do so, he will soon find himself without boys. Lads change situations for the mere sake of change, to see what happens. "I have known," says Mr. J. G. Cloete, "boys who, within three years of leaving school, have been employed in as many as seventeen different occupations." [123] The second consequence of the increased demand for boys in these kinds of occupations is a rise in wages. The earnings of these boys are considerably higher than those obtained by a boy who enters a skilled trade. "The casual and low-skilled employments give higher wages in the early years in order to attract the boys." [124] With boys choosing, as they do, their own occupations, high wages at the outset are more attractive than low wages with the prospect of learning a trade. The third characteristic these occupations have in common lies in certain general conditions of employment. Hours are long; at the same time, the boy is often idle for long periods, waiting for messages to come in and parcels to go out. Shop-boys and telegraph-boys are kept hanging about with nothing to do. The office-boy in a small office is often the whole staff, and is left alone for hours when his master is out, and "spends his time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature." [125] The boy has often heavy goods to carry long distances, and overtaxes his strength. Either there is too much idleness or too much work; these are the alternatives. In neither case is there the possibility of much supervision. The fourth characteristic has not received the attention it deserves. These forms of occupation, though unskilled in the sense that the boy receives no training in his present place of business, nevertheless demand qualities of a high standard. The boy must be regular, obedient, and, above all, intelligent. A dull boy as a messenger is liable to make stupid and irritating mistakes. The stories of district messengers carrying letters unaided over the Continent show that the boys possess no ordinary intelligence. Now, we have already seen that these are the qualities which are in a peculiar degree the product of the elementary schools. The schools turn out innumerable boys of this kind. It is not, perhaps, a mere coincidence that the increasing use of boys in occupations which call for alertness of mind has gone on side by side with improvements in the educational system. The State has spent much money on these boys. A boy who starts to attend school at the age of three and leaves at fourteen has had spent on him a sum of money which, if invested year by year at 4 per cent., and left to accumulate till the time for leaving school comes, would amount to nearly £100. Each year in the 30,000 boys who leave school £3,000,000 of State-created value is turned adrift. The State has therefore a right to demand that this capital sum of £100 invested in the boy shall not be squandered by the employer. He ought to give back at the age of eighteen at least as valuable an article as he received four years earlier. This consideration leads to the last characteristic distinguishing these occupations. They lead to nothing, and when the boy reaches the end, he is, in the majority of cases, distinctly inferior in every way to what he was three or four years before. Evidence in favour of this assertion is overwhelming. "At the present time, at the age of eighteen, after a four years' course of employment, whose chief characteristics are the long hours, the lack of supervision, and the total absence of any educational influence, the lad is a distinctly less valuable article in the labour market than he was when he left school four years previously. His only asset is represented by greater physical strength, accompanied probably by a marked decrease in general health and vigour. He has lost the intelligence and aptitude of the boy, and remains a clumsy and unintelligent man, fitted for nothing but unskilled labour, and likely to become sooner or later one of the unemployed." [126] "There seems little doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect of good work when they become adults." [127] "The most hopeless position is that of the errand-boy at a small shop in a poor neighbourhood; his prospects are absolutely nil." [128] "The chart prepared from the forms filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows that the small proportion who find steady and skilled employment afterwards have ceased to be errand-boys very early; the vast majority become workers in low-skill trades, or general and casual labourers." [129] "Mr. Courtney Terell, who has been making inquiries from the Passmore Edwards Settlement, writes: 'I feel confident ... that the messenger work produced a definite effect on the boys, as will the continual performance of any one of a definite function which admits of no improvement, and that this has unfitted them for other work.'" [130] "The injury done to these boys is not that they are compelled as men to devote themselves to low-skilled labour, but that from the more or less specialized nature of the work which has employed this boyhood, they are unfitted to become good low-skilled labourers." [131] It is impossible to resist the mass of evidence of this kind which might easily be increased indefinitely. The boy gains nothing from this form of employment and loses much. He loses the results of his training in the elementary school; the habits of obedience, regularity, and industry are dead; the bright intelligence is dulled, and with the coming of dulness goes the power of learning. He loses his prospects; his future is the future of the unskilled labourer--the unskilled labourer, robbed of that grit and alertness which alone secure for unskilled labour the adequate reward of permanent employment at a steady wage. His loss is the loss of the community, which is compelled later to relieve him and his family, and perhaps in the end find a home for him in the workhouse. And in thinking of this deterioration, and of that hopeless future which that deterioration involves, we must never forget that it is not a mere handful of lads who suffer in this way, but that half the boys who leave the elementary school start on this dreary journey, and, so starting, bid fare to reach that dreary end. Reckoned in money, the State has spent a million and a half on these boys, and but little comes back to the State or remains with the boy. If it has gone anywhere, and it probably has, then it has gone into the pockets of the employers who have sucked out of the boys their value, and then cast them aside as worthless refuse, a sort of slag or waste product of their works, for which neither they nor anyone else can find a use. In saying this there is no desire to censure unfairly the employers. They are undoubtedly to blame, because thoughtlessness and ignorance in persons of their position are always blameworthy; but there is nothing deliberate in their actions, and they are largely unconscious of the harm they are doing. There is no active cruelty, and often much rude and ready kindness. The boys to them are merely instruments in the machinery of their business, for the moment the cheapest instruments that can be found, to be used until a new and better supply takes the place of those who are used up. They are ignorant of the consequences of their conduct, and, as their evidence shows, generally imagine that the boys who leave find suitable jobs. It is only of late years that numerous investigators and managers of boys' clubs have revealed the grave results of this thoughtlessness. Employers who generally enjoy a good reputation as employers are often the worst offenders. Indeed, the most flagrant example of this exploitation of boy labour is to be found in the Imperial Government and the Municipal Service. Mr. Cyril Jackson has in his report devoted much space to the telegraph-boys in the service of the Post Office. "The boys come from very good homes, and are often the pick of the family. They are examined medically, and bring characters." [132] A mere fraction are absorbed in the adult service. "It appears as if the Post Office is one of the least promising occupations into which a boy can enter. The better boys go into it, and it is very depressing to see from our returns how very few of the very large number discharged at sixteen or seventeen get into as good employment as their good social standing and general standard of education should have guaranteed for them." [133] "Everyone of experience seems to agree that these telegraph-messengers who are discharged exemplify in a very striking way the evils of a parasitic trade." [134] Yet these things had been going on for years in a service like that of the Post Office, which is subject to much criticism by its employees, and yet no attention had been called to the evil. Unfortunately, boys have no votes, and do not form trade unions. Other Government departments and the Municipal Service seem no less ignorant and no less worthy of blame. A short time back the Education Committee called the attention of the London County Council to the misuse of its boy labour, and now the Council allows its boys, weekly, six hours "off" during working hours, and provides classes which they are compelled to attend. At the same time it has nominated one of its officers to look after the interests of these boys, and to guide them into useful occupations. If the public service is thus guilty, we must not be surprised that private employers are not conscious of wrongdoing in their use of boys. The evil is now revealed; there can be no further excuse for ignorance. How to deal adequately with the problem must be left to the consideration of the next chapter. The third division of the unskilled occupations comes under the head "General Labour." Some 9 per cent. of the boys as they leave school fall into this class. This is a nondescript class not clearly defined in the returns. Probably a considerable proportion should be brought into the preceding class, but there are evidently a large number who could not be disposed of in this way. Boys employed in warehouses, in gardens and parks, boys in small places assisting the master in the lighter forms of labour, boys accompanying their fathers and joining in his work--these come into this division. The returns are not sufficiently explicit to yield materials for a critical examination; but one or two conclusions can be derived from their examination. It will be seen that 22 per cent. of the parents, as compared with 9 per cent. of boys, are recorded as being general labourers. There is here no excess of boys; there should not be the same difficulty in boys finding openings in the adult service as in those occupations where boys can claim a practical monopoly. Boys have always taken some part in labouring work, and so passed to the better class of unskilled labour. Boys in warehouses, for example, frequently find there permanent situations. Further, the proportion of parents to sons would indicate the possibility of the two being employed together, and the boy thus remaining under the supervision of his father. An examination of individual returns justifies this conclusion. On the other hand, it is to be remembered that the hours of employment are frequently very long, and the work arduous and ill suited to the strength of a growing lad, and in no way regulated by legislation. Taken as a whole, it is probable that the boys who enter this kind of occupation, though without opportunity of continuing their education, are not in as forlorn a condition as those in the previous class. But the whole question is obscure, and it is difficult, without fuller information, to test the nature of their training. THE SKILLED OCCUPATIONS.--The skilled occupations fall into two classes--those where manual skill is required, and those concerned with commercial and clerical operations. The former are included under "Trades and Industries," and the latter under "Commercial Occupations," "Professional Occupations," and "Local Government." 1. _Trades and Industries._--From the tables printed on pp. 115-118, it will be seen that under this heading there are in Table I., the type of a working-class district, 41 per cent. of parents and 19 per cent. of boys; in Table II., the type of a suburban district, the figures are 36 and 15 respectively; in Table III., the type of the small trader of the East End, 51 and 42; while in Table IV., the type of London as a whole, the percentage is in the case of fathers 41, and in the case of boys 22. We have now to consider the prospects as regards supervision, training and opening which these trades offer to the boys who enter. Table III., with its percentage of 51 parents and 42 boys engaged in trades and industries, presents a pleasing appearance, but the bulk of the trades concerned belong to the tailoring and other industries where sweating is rife, where the skill required is of a low order, and the wages small and often below the level of bare subsistence. The boys learn something, are frequently employed with their fathers, and have a more or less permanent outlook, though within the horizon of that outlook is seldom included the vision of a living wage. They in general do not form part of the class which finds its way into the ranks of that miscellaneous unskilled labour whose chief characteristic is casual employment. Ignoring this table, and taking the table for all London, we find again the great disproportion of boys and parents. There are two ways in which the boys may learn. They may become indentured apprentices, or, engaged only by the week, though sometimes still termed apprentices, they may enter the workshop, and take what chance is afforded them of "picking up" the mysteries of the trade. _(a) Indentured Apprenticeship._--Apprenticeship is of little importance in London; the system is rapidly becoming obsolete. Whether this is desirable is a matter of opinion; that it is a fact cannot be gainsaid. All evidence is unanimous in support of this conclusion. In 1906 a special committee was appointed by the London County Council to make inquiries into the question, and, after careful investigation, reported that "in London the old system of indentured apprenticeship has for many years been falling into decay. In the majority of the industries it has almost entirely disappeared; in others it is occasionally found existing in a haphazard and highly unsatisfactory manner; while in only a few trades can it be said to be the commonly recognized way of entering the profession." [135] There are in London various charities, with an income of about £24,000 a year, which, in accordance with the terms of their trusts, might be used for purposes of apprenticeship; "but not more than a third of the income has been devoted to this purpose." "The fact that so small a fraction of the income has been devoted to apprenticeship indicates that the trustees have not found it an easy task to find candidates anxious to be indentured to one of the skilled trades." [136] "The recurring note," says Mr. Charles Booth, "throughout the whole of the industrial volumes of the present inquiry is that the system of apprenticeship is either dead or dying." [137] The numerous letters to the Press, the wealth of speeches on the matter, the sundry public meetings presided over by all manner of persons, from the Lord Mayor downwards, all voice the same opinion. It is needless to labour the question; we may take it as an accepted fact that in London indentured apprenticeship is obsolescent, and the system itself of negligible value as a factor in the training of youths in the process of skilled trades. _(b) Picking up a Trade._--Here a boy enters a workshop, and takes his chance of learning the trade from watching and assisting the men. The employer is under no agreement to give him instruction--least of all, to make an all-round craftsman of him. The boy rarely acquires more than a certain dexterity in the performance of a single operation; and, however proficient he may become in that operation, his general intelligence and skill suffer from a narrow and exclusive specialization. The system and consequences are dealt with at length in the Report of the London County Council already mentioned. The importance of the problem must be the justification for a long quotation: "The high wages a lad can earn as an errand-boy ... are more attractive than the low wages associated with an industrial training. Earning looms larger in his imagination than the laborious and less remunerative learning.... Even if, on leaving school, he obtains employment in a workshop, his prospects may not be materially improved. As an errand-boy running in and out of the workshop, if possessed of aptitude and sharpness, he may in a haphazard fashion pick up a smattering of the trade. If he is taken into the shop as a learner, he has little chance of getting an all-round training. He is frequently out of work, and even when employed seldom learns more than a single operation. The Advisory Committee of the London County Council Shoreditch Technical Institute[138] recently held an exhaustive inquiry on the subject, and some of the conclusions are so germane to the present question that they merit quotation. 'It is thus possible,' they write, 'for a boy to be at one branch of a trade for a few months only, and when bad trade intervenes he is thrown out of employment, and frequently finds himself at twenty years of age without a definite knowledge of any craft whatever, and he swells the ranks of the unemployed. We have it on the authority of foremen, employers, apprentices, and parents, that very little opportunity exists, even in big houses, for a boy to learn his trade thoroughly; indeed, we have had students who have been in a workshop as apprentices for three or four years who could not make a small drawer, and in many cases who could not square up true or make the usual joints; and in the woodworking trade their knowledge of drawing when they come to us is practically _nil_. It is a rare thing to find a young workman who can attack any branch of his trade successfully. It frequently occurs that, in consequence of extensive subdivision of labour and excessive competition, a man or boy is set to do one thing--_e.g._, music-stools, overmantels, chair-legs, sideboards--all the time. It is true the man or boy becomes skilled in one direction, but correspondingly narrow in a true appreciation of his trade. It is also a frequent occurrence that a master who has a job on hand which is slightly out of the usual run finds it impossible to put it in the hands of his usual staff. Moreover, when work of delicate design and construction has to be made from specified drawings, it is extremely difficult to obtain men who can proceed with the work on their own responsibility. Not only do these remarks apply to the woodcrafts generally, but they apply with equal force to such work as upholstery (both stuffing and drapery), to metal-work, and to carving. In connection with the latter subject, it is a rare thing indeed for carvers to design a carcass in the rough, and then to see whether the proposed carved portion is in harmony with the whole--whether the said carving be too much in relief, too flat, too expansive, or altogether out of character with the general work. It is notorious that good polishers and furniture decorators are exceedingly rare, and many a high-class manufacturer has his goods spoiled on account of bad polish and decorative treatment.'" [139] It must be remembered that this last quoted opinion is not the opinion of the amateur, but the informed opinion of representative employers. The woodwork and furniture trades are not peculiar in the characteristic of inadequate training. "We have reason to believe," continues the Report, "that if a similar inquiry were made into other trades, the same unsatisfactory picture would be disclosed. Either the training is one-sided, or there is no training at all. The consequences are sufficiently obvious. The skilled trades are, we fear, recruited in the main by immigrants outside London. In many trades the Londoner is at a discount. Acquainted as he is with but one or two operations of his industry, if he loses his situation, it is only with the greatest of difficulty that he can find another. Mr. Charles Booth states that 'with carpenters and joiners, brick-layers, carriage builders, engineers, smiths, and saddlers, the percentages of heads of families born out of London range from 51 to 59,' An inquiry made of the Technical Board of the London County Council on the Building Trades in 1858 showed that '41 typical firms in various branches of the building trades having 12,000 employés had only 80 apprentices and 143 learners, instead of 1,600, which would have been the normal proportion.' The same Report mentions that 'among the foremen and operatives who have come before us, not one stated that he was born or trained in London.' In these trades the better positions go inevitably to the country-bred man, with his all-round training. In the docks alone does the Londoner hold his own. An inquiry there showed that among the dock-labourers proper more than 72 per cent. were born in London--a result not calculated to excite any very solid satisfaction. These facts should arouse serious apprehension concerning the future of the London-bred citizen. We cannot view with equanimity his relegation to lower positions, while the better places are given to better-trained immigrants. We are not prepared to admit that the Londoner is, on the average, inherently inferior either in intelligence or manual dexterity to his country-born neighbour." [140] These quotations indicate clearly the general aspects of the situation. They show the small prospects boys enjoy who enter a skilled trade in London. Parents are not blind to the condition of affairs, and it is not unnatural on their part to allow the boys to go out as errand-boys, where at least the immediate earnings are larger and the hope of advancement not much more discouraging. 2. _Clerical and Commercial Occupations._--Including under this head commercial and professional occupations, and general or local government, we find in Table I., the type of a working-class district, 6-1/2 per cent. of parents and 8 per cent. of boys; in Table II., the type of the suburbs, 30 per cent. of parents, and 16-1/2 per cent. of boys; in Table III., typical of the East End, 4 per cent. of parents, and 6 per cent. of boys; in Table IV., typical of London as a whole, 13 per cent. of parents, and 10 per cent. of boys. In the school returns no boy was placed under these headings unless he appeared in the column "Skilled Work." In judging of these results it must be borne in mind that the better positions fall to those who have had at least a secondary education. Nevertheless, clever boys, who attend evening schools, have some prospects of advancement. One feature in the returns was the large number of boys who were apparently employed with their fathers. In many instances boys obtain their positions as the result of examination. This is true of several banks, assurance companies, railway companies, and is becoming the general practice in the Civil and Municipal Service. Many of these examinations are within the standard of attainment reached by the cleverer boys in the elementary schools. The boys at their place of employment are taught sufficient to enable them to do the work allotted them. This is often of a specialized character; and without further education they cannot expect to escape from the lowest ranks of clerks. If well conducted, they can probably obtain a permanent position when manhood is reached, or, at any rate, are not discharged because they have become men. Change in the methods of business, or failure of the concern, may entail dismissal; and after dismissal a new position is not easily obtained. But the lower ranks of the clerical profession are ill paid, and the need to present a good appearance makes serious inroads on the meagre stipend. Unless the boy continues his education and means to rise, his outlook is not very encouraging. He has, however, the advantage of supervision, of relatively short hours, and enjoys the possibilities of attendance at evening schools. In spite of what is often said to the contrary, taking things as they are, he has the best prospects of those included in the returns. The fact that so large a proportion of boys coming from the suburbs is found in this class would seem to indicate that the more thoughtful parents share this opinion. _(c) The Passage to Manhood._ The tables quoted on pp. 115-118, and founded on school returns, refer only to the first occupations of boys as they leave school. It is unfortunate that no figures exist which trace year by year the later careers of the boys. All persons, however, who have any intimate knowledge of the subject agree that the boys repeatedly move in an almost aimless fashion from one situation to another. The census returns indicate in a general way the distribution, among the trades and occupations, of persons of various ages. They do not, however, give us a yearly survey; and after the age fourteen to fifteen we are compelled to rest content with figures which cover periods of five years. The following table is taken from a table printed in a Report to the Education Committee of the London County Council, made by a special committee appointed to deal with the apprenticeship question; it is founded on the 1901 census return:[141] OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS AND MEN. PERCENTAGES. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Class of Occupation. | Age | Age | Age | Age | | | 14-15. | 15-20. | 20-45. | 45-65. | |-----------------------------|--------|---------|---------|---------| |Trades and industries | 14·74 | 31·54 | 35·76 | 38·85 | |Domestic offices or services | 1·75 | 3·29 | 3·55 | 3·35 | |Transport (including | | | | | | messengers, errand-boys, | | | | | | van-boys, etc.) | 27·65 | 19·49 | 16·04 | 14·19 | |Shopkeepers, shop-assistants,| | | | | | and dealers | 6·03 | 12·52 | 14·51 | 9·23 | |Commercial occupations | 4·61 | 11·50 | 9·55 | 12·40 | |General labour | 1·46 | 5·53 | 8·46 | 7·02 | |Professional occupations and | | | | | | their subordinate services | 0·73 | 2·00 | 4·55 | 5·08 | |General or local government | | | | | | of the country (including | | | | | | telegraph-boys) | 3·01 | 2·53 | 3·70 | 2·24 | |Defence of the country | 0·15 | 1·77 | 1·40 | 0·62 | |Without specified occupation | | | | | | or unoccupied (including | | | | | | boys at school) | 39·87 | 9·83 | 2·48 | 7·02 | |-----------------------------|--------|---------|---------|---------| |Total number analyzed | 41,889 | 208,921 | 869,466 | 313,949 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ In comparing this table with the tables founded on the school returns, it must be borne in mind that this table is not confined to persons who have passed through the elementary schools, but refers to all the inhabitants of London. The most striking feature in the table is the marked difference in the distribution of occupations at the age of fourteen to fifteen, and at other ages. The third column, which includes persons between the ages of twenty and forty-five, covers the period of a man's greatest vigour, and may be regarded as the normal or stable distribution. Comparing the first and the third column, it becomes obvious that the first year, at least, after leaving school is a year of uncertainty and aimless wandering. The boys have not definitely chosen any particular occupation as their life's work. How long is spent in this state of unprofitable drifting the census returns do not show as the following years are not separated. But the fact that the distribution in the second column differs materially from the normal distribution of the third column would seem to indicate that this period stretches some distance into the years that lie between the ages of fifteen and twenty. In default of this general information, we must fall back on special investigations; and here the facts are drawn from too narrow a circle of inquiry to be regarded as altogether typical. In his report to the Poor Law Commission, Mr. Cyril Jackson gives an instructive table[142] (see p. 145). It is founded on biographies of boys obtained from boys' clubs, schoolmasters, and managers of schools. I have omitted the ages that follow, as the number of boys concerned was too few to justify any conclusions. The rapid diminution in the number of boys when the age of eighteen is reached impairs the value of the last two columns. In general, the districts from which the boys are drawn are poor; but the fact that the boys come into relation with various organizations, and were no doubt assisted by them, should lead us to believe that the picture presented errs, if anything, by being too favourable. The steady increase in the trades, and the equally steady decrease in the number of van-boys, Post Office boys, errand and shop boys during the first three years is instructive. Trades, skilled and low-skilled, reckoned in percentages, have risen from 39·4 to 50·9, while the messenger class has fallen from 40·1 to 23·8. The changes in the earlier years are the most significant, and little stability of occupation is reached before the age of eighteen. The age of fourteen evidently represents the year of greatest indecision and maximum drift. PERCENTAGE OF BOYS IN VARIOUS GROUPS OF OCCUPATIONS AT EACH AGE. +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Occupations. |Age 14.|Age 15.|Age 16.|Age 17.|Age 18.|Age 19.| |-----------------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------| |Skilled trades | 11·2 | 14·0 | 16·8 | 17·8 | 18·0 | 16·3 | |Clerks | 14·6 | 15·0 | 16·4 | 15·2 | 15·4 | 14·3 | |Low-skilled | 28·2 | 32·8 | 34·1 | 33·9 | 32·5 | 34·1 | |Carmen | 0·6 | 0·2 | 0·6 | 2·6 | 4·5 | 5·1 | |Van-boys | 8·2 | 6·6 | 5·2 | 4·9 | 2·8 | 1·2 | |Post Office | 1·4 | 1·4 | 0·2 | 0·2 | 0·3 | 1·2 | |Errand and shop | | | | | | | | boys | 30·5 | 22·0 | 18·4 | 15·0 | 12·6 | 10·3 | |General and | | | | | | | | casual labour | 5·3 | 7·0 | 6·7 | 6·9 | 6·4 | 8·7 | |Army | -- | 0·6 | 0·6 | 1·1 | 3·6 | 4·0 | |At sea | 0·2 | 0·4 | 0·8 | 1·5 | 2·8 | 3·5 | |Emigrants | -- | -- | 0·2 | 0·4 | 0·8 | 1·2 | |-----------------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------| |Total No. of boys| 485 | 500 | 474 | 448 | 356 | 252 | |Unemployed | 1 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 22 | 22 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ In other parts of his report Mr. Jackson has endeavoured to follow the history of boys who have begun life as errand-boys or as van-boys. "From the forms returned," he writes, "it seems clear that the theory that boys can become errand-boys for a year or two, and then enter skilled trades, cannot be maintained. Very few boys can pick up skill after a year or two of merely errand-boy work." [143] Or again: "The chart prepared from the forms filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows the small proportion who find any steady and skilled employment afterwards, and those have ceased to be errand-boys very early. The vast majority become workers in low-skilled trades or general and casual labourers." [144] Of all the "blind-alley" occupations, that of the van-boy appears the most deplorable. "The life of the van-boy is a rough and somewhat lazy one. They have long hours, spells of idleness, and considerable opportunities of pilfering and drinking." [145] "The chart shows that it is a very low grade of occupation, and that very few boys who begin as van-boys get into skilled trades--a far lower percentage, in fact, than errand-boys." [146] The second point to be noted in the table founded on the census returns is the large number--nearly 40 per cent.--of boys of the age of fourteen returned as without specified occupation or unoccupied (including boys at school). There are in the elementary schools about 5,000 boys between the age of fourteen and fifteen, and probably about the same number in secondary schools. Converted into percentages, this 40 per cent. would be broken up into 24 per cent. at school and 16 per cent. without specified occupation. The last figure is high, and justifies the conclusion, not only that the boys of fourteen wander from occupation to occupation, but that they also are frequently doing nothing. The habit of shifting from situation to situation necessarily involves considerable periods of unemployment. Thus early in their career the boys become accustomed to the evils of casual labour. We can arrive at the same conclusion by approaching the problem from a somewhat different point of view. If in some trades we discover an excess of boys, and in others an excess of men, it is clear that there must be shocks and shiftings in the passage from youth to manhood. In London the number of lads between the ages of fourteen and twenty is 17·5 per cent. of the number of males between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five. If, therefore, we find the proportion of lads to total males engaged in any trade, reckoned in percentages, differs much from 17·5, either lads must at some time pass out of the trade or men come in. On the other hand, in a trade where this percentage is approximately 17·5 boys who enter have, at any rate, the chance of finding employment as men. In this sense we may regard the distribution of lads and men in a trade as normal when this percentage lies between 15 and 20; less than normal when it drops below 15; more than normal when it rises above 20. The following table may be taken as an example of trades in which considerable numbers of persons are engaged: +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number in | Number in | | | Trade. |1,000 of Males|1,000 of Males|Percentage.| | | Aged 14-20. | Aged 14-65. | | |---------------------------|--------------|--------------|-----------| |LESS THAN NORMAL: | | | | | Building trades | 13·2 | 144·2 | 9·1 | | Skin, leather, etc. | 2·6 | 8·5 | 14·1 | | Food, tobacco, drink, | | | | | and lodging | 19·9 | 135·2 | 14·8 | | General labour | 15·0 | 111·1 | 13·5 | | General or local | | | | | government | 6·5 | 45·8 | 14·3 | | Professional | 4·8 | 62·2 | 7·8 | |NORMAL: | | | | | Domestic services | 7·8 | 51·7 | 15·1 | | Commercial occupations | 25·9 | 131·1 | 19·8 | | Metals, machines, etc. | 14·4 | 92·7 | 15·5 | | Precious metals | 6·6 | 36·5 | 18·2 | | Furniture, etc. | 9·3 | 59·5 | 15·7 | | Textile fabrics | 4·1 | 23·5 | 17·3 | |MORE THAN NORMAL: | | | | | National Government | | | | | (messengers, etc.) | 3·9 | 13·5 | 29·2 | | Clerks, office-boys, etc.| 23·1 | 83·0 | 27·8 | | Transport, errand-boys, | | | | | etc. | 52·3 | 236·3 | 22·1 | | Printers | 7·1 | 34·1 | 20·7 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ If we could have taken the period fourteen to eighteen instead of fourteen to twenty, these tables would have been even more striking than they are. But, even as they are, they are sufficient to enforce the lesson that between the occupation of the boy and the occupation of the man there is a gulf fixed. The one does not lead naturally to the other. When the boy becomes a man he does not find provided for him a natural opening; with more or less pains, he is driven to force a way in trades for which he has received no definite preparation, and in which diligence and good character do not afford any guarantee of success. _(d) Summary._ Before proceeding to examine the conditions of boy labour in other parts of the country, it will be desirable to summarize the results for London, and so to determine how far the essentials of a true apprenticeship system are found in that city. _Supervision._--The boy should be under adequate supervision until he reaches the age of at least eighteen. In London, so far as the majority are concerned, all State supervision ends at fourteen. When the boy goes out to work what measure of supervision was previously found in the home comes to an end; it is beyond the power of parents to exert any real control over the boy. He is his own master, finds his employment for himself, and leaves it when he thinks fit. Philanthropic enterprise touches a fringe, and a fringe only, of the boys; their growing sense of independence resents restraint. The story of the workshop points the same moral. Personal relations between boy and employer are seldom possible; and where the demand for the services of boys is unlimited and unsatisfied, attempts to enforce discipline fail, because, sooner than submit, the boy seeks another situation. _Training._--For the unskilled labourer of the future London provides no training. The schools do, indeed, turn out in the boys ready made and completely finished articles for boy-work and "blind-alley" occupations, and three or four years of such employment destroy the most-marked results of elementary education. The skilled workman of the future finds in the workshop small chance of gaining that all-round training which will make of him a man, and not a machine. Technical education for the minority is successful, but without power to compel attendance and limit the hours of boy-labour it is only the few who can avail themselves of the opportunities offered. _Opening._--Boys' work is separated from man's work, and there is no broad highway leading from the one to the other. The lad of eighteen is compelled to make a new beginning just when new beginnings are most difficult. His power of learning is gone from him, and in the unskilled labour market alone does he see any prospect of earning immediate wages. The State Labour Exchange is an infant which has yet to justify its creation. In London the provision of supervision, of training, of an opening, is alike defective, and beyond the age of fourteen for the majority of boys can hardly be said to exist at all; and, what is most serious, we are face to face with a state of affairs where there is no sign of improvement, and where all tendencies indicate for the future an accelerated rate of progressive failure. In short, London cannot claim even the beginnings of a real apprenticeship system. § 2. OTHER TOWNS. Among the cities London does not stand alone in its conditions of boy labour. It may indeed be regarded as the most extreme example of urbanization, but it is nothing more; it is a normal type, not an exception or monstrous exaggeration. As the capital of the Empire and the seat of government, it has its own characteristics, but so likewise has every other town. But dominating all these local variations and giving uniformity to the conditions of boy labour in our cities, remain the common features of the industrial development of to-day. This, at any rate, is the unanimous testimony of all those investigators--and they have been many--who have studied the problem. I shall not, therefore, make any attempt to apply to other towns the detailed method of investigation I have endeavoured to employ in the case of London. It will be enough to show that the general conditions are the same. What differences exist are differences of degree, and not differences of kind. _(a) The Employment of School-Children._ The investigations of the Interdepartmental Committee has proved beyond doubt that throughout the country it is common for children, while still attending school, to work long hours for wages. One or two quotations will be sufficient to justify this statement. The Report declares "that, as the door has been closed to their employment in factories and workshops and during school-hours, there has been a tendency, which many witnesses believe to be an increasing one, towards their employment in other occupations before morning school, between school-hours, in the evening, and on Saturdays and Sundays. Provided they make eight or ten attendances every week, they may be employed (with a few exceptions, and these little enforced) in the streets, in the fields, in shops, or at home, for the longest possible hours, and on the hardest and most irksome work, without any limit or regulation." [147] Evidence abounded to show that such possibilities of overwork were frequently realized. Examples have already been quoted in the case of London, and it is unnecessary here to go over the same ground again. That legislation, as at present enforced, has done little to cure the evil of overwork may be seen from the reports of school medical officers. Some of these are quoted in the Annual Report for 1909 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education. The school medical officers were not asked to report specially on the problem, but their inspection of school-children revealed the magnitude of the evil. "Several school medical officers report on the question of child labour during 1909. Dr. Thresh (school medical officer, Essex) places on record the serious extent to which children are employed out of school-hours in the Grays and Tilbury districts, and gives many individual examples. Dr. Forbes (school medical officer, Brighton) gives some interesting particulars from a statement prepared by the Inspector under the Employment of and Cruelty to Children Acts. In this area the head-teachers furnish regularly lists of children known by them to be employed out of school-hours. Among these children it was found that 39, 25, and 22 per cent. were illegally employed during 1907, 1908, and 1909 respectively. Dr. Clarke (school medical officer, Walthamstow) found that 19 per cent. of the boys examined were employed out of school-hours, of whom 19 per cent. worked an average of eleven hours per week; 32 per cent. worked ten hours and over on Saturdays; 20 per cent. worked twenty hours or over during school-days. A full analysis of all children known to be employed out of school-hours at Yeovil is made by Dr. Page (school medical officer), who found that 22 per cent. of all children eight years of age and upwards were so employed, and of these 40 per cent. worked for twenty hours and upwards per week. Dr. Hope (school medical officer of Liverpool) produces evidence to show how usefully medical inspection may be linked up with the arrangements made to put into force by-laws relating to the employment of children. Thus, all cases where there was reason to suppose that the by-laws were being infringed were reported to the Sanitary Department. These children cases numbered 308 during the year, and a table is given showing in what manner they were dealt with. At Leamington, 119 boys and 30 girls were reported by Dr. Burnet as employed in a wage-earning capacity either before or after school-hours, and 90 boys and 11 girls both before and after school-hours. Of these, 63 children were of subnormal nutrition, 22 were suffering from anæmia, 2 from phthisis, 8 from heart disease, and 25 had enlarged tonsils. Several of these children were quite unfit for such employment, and the subject is deserving of a thorough investigation with a view to adopting protective measures where necessary. At Southport, 131 leaving boys (32·7 per cent.) were found to be doing unskilled or casual work, and in Oldham 179 of the children inspected were similarly engaged." [148] As in London, so in other parts of the country, school-children work for long hours, and no adequate means exist at present to prevent the evil. As in London, so in other parts of the country, signs of serious physical weakness are the common accompaniments of this employment, and the health of the rising generation is injured. As in London, so in other parts of the country, the forms of employment in which children are engaged are uneducational, and tend to lead children, when school-days are over, into the "blind-alley" occupations. Besides these children, there are about 38,000 "half-timers." [149] It is needless here to dilate on the evils of the half-time system, which allows children who have reached the age of twelve to spend half the day in the factory and workshop. It is condemned by all qualified to pass on it an impartial judgment. Its continuance reflects little credit on the humanity of those employers and those trade unions who have repeatedly opposed its abolition. _(b) The Entry to a Trade._ The survey of conditions of juvenile employment in London made clear certain facts. There was the growing demand for boys in what has been called "blind-alley" occupations, and the demoralizing effect of such work. There was the difficulty of obtaining adequate training for those who had entered a skilled trade. There was a general lack of supervision in the workshop. And, finally, there was no easy passage from youth to manhood. It is impossible to read the Report of the Poor Law Commission and the volumes of evidence, or to study the various investigations into the conditions of sundry towns, without being convinced that London is in no way peculiar. The chief difficulty in approaching the problem lies in the selection of the all too numerous witnesses. The Report of the Poor Law Commission probably provides the best summary of the mass of evidence on the subject. Both Reports--Majority and Minority--alike realize the gravity of the problem, not for London alone, but for the whole of the country. "The problem," says the Majority Report, "owes its rise in the main to the enormous growth of cities as distributive centres, giving innumerable openings for errand-boys, milk-boys, office and shop boys, bookstall-boys, van, lorry, and trace boys, street-sellers, etc. In nearly all these occupations the training received leads to nothing; and the occupations themselves are, in most cases, destructive to healthy development, owing to long hours, long periods of standing, walking, or mere waiting, and, morally, are wholly demoralizing." [150] Or, again: "The almost universal experience is that in large towns boys, owing to carelessness or selfishness on the part of the parents, or their own want of knowledge and thought--for the parents very often have little voice in the matter--plunge haphazard, immediately on leaving school, into occupations in which there is no future, where they earn wages sufficiently high to make them independent of parental control and disinclined for the lower wages of apprenticeship, and whence, if they remain, they are extruded when they grow to manhood." [151] Or, to go to the Minority Report: "There are the rivet-boys in shipyards and boiler shops, the 'oil-cans' in the nut and bolt department, the 'boy-minders' of automatic machines, the 'drawers-off' of sawmills, and the 'layers-on' of printing works, and scores of other varieties of boys whose occupations presently come to an end." [152] Or, again: "In towns like Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, the proportions of van-boys, etc., are as large as in London." [153] Employers do not always conceal the fact: "In the words of a frank employer, they (the boys) are not taught; they are made to work continuously at their own little temporary trades." [154] If we desire actual figures of those engaged in one class of the "blind-alley" occupations--messengers--Mr. Jackson tells us that "under fourteen years of age there are no less than 32,536 (23·5 per cent. of those occupied under that age), while there are 41,659 aged fourteen, and 54,592 from fifteen to nineteen years of age inclusive, of which it is probable that the bulk are under seventeen years of age." [155] Writing of Norwich, the same writer says: "There seems little doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect of good work when they become adults." [156] Apart from the Report of the Poor Law Commission, individual writers of wide and varied experience outside London have voiced the same view. "It has never been so easy," writes Dr. Sadler, "as it is in England to-day, for a boy of thirteen or fourteen to find some kind of virtually unskilled work, involving long hours of deteriorating routine, in which there is little mental or moral discipline, but for which are offered wages that for the time seem high, and flatter his sense of being independent of school discipline and of home restraint." [157] And the same writer continues: "Certain forms of industry, which make large use of boys and girls who have recently left the elementary schools, are in part (except where the employers make special efforts to meet their responsibility) parasitic in character, and get more than they ought, and more than their promoters realize that they are getting, of the physical and moral capital of the rising generation." [158] The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, who has devoted special attention to the problem, writes: "The characteristic evils of boy work invade office work in a peculiarly subtle and dangerous form. In every city small offices are to be found in which the whole of the business, such as it is, is carried on by the master himself, who has frequently to be absent from his one-roomed office. The office-boy, who constitutes the entire staff, is meanwhile left in charge. He has probably nothing to do, and spends his time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature." [159] Under such conditions supervision and control are negligible factors in the training of the workshop. It seems unnecessary to multiply examples; all persons of experience lament the increasing employment of boys in "blind-alley" occupations, and deplore the general lack of supervision. The question of the skilled trades has received less attention, and there is much need of such a careful inquiry in various towns as had been made by Mr. Tawney in the case of Glasgow. Writing of the woodwork trades in that town, he says: "There is no regular training system; a boy learns incidentally, and is only shifted from one machine to another when the shop needs it.... One of its employés was the best producer of wooden rings in his town, but could not make a wage at turning a table-leg," and adds that, "with the exception of a few old men who were trained under the apprenticeship system, the foremen are the only men with all-round skill." [160] While of the engineering trades he says: "On entering the works the lad who is going to be a fitter goes straight to the fitting shop and learns nothing else; a lad who is going to be a turner goes to the machine shop and does not learn fitting." [161] Specialization is pushed even farther, and lads are kept to a single machine. Drilling, milling, slotting, punching, band-sawing, or screwing machines can be used after a few days' training, and this is all the experience a boy gets. And, speaking generally of Glasgow firms, Mr. Tawney says: "Boys are kept, as a rule, in their own departments. They are not taught; they are made to work." These facts were obtained as the result of a careful inquiry among 100 firms in Glasgow. Glasgow, then, repeats the story of London; and there is good reason to believe that other towns, if submitted to a similar examination, would demonstrate the fact of the inadequacy of the workshop training of to-day. Apprenticeship, according to numerous witnesses, is everywhere decaying, and there is nothing except the technical school rising to take its place; and under existing conditions the technical school can touch only a fringe of the problem. _(c) The Passage to Manhood._ The evidence of the last few pages, relating to the increase in the number of "blind-alley" occupations and to the inadequate training of the workshop, would show that, as in London, so likewise in other towns, there is no easy passage from the work of the youth to the work of the man. There is a break in the continuity of the service somewhere about the age of eighteen. New openings have then to be searched for, and new beginnings made, when the habits of learning have disappeared, even if the opportunities for it presented themselves. It would seem superfluous to repeat for other towns the statistical evidence in support of this statement which was given in the case of London. "Blind-alley" occupations and troubled passage to manhood necessarily go together. Mr. Tawney's researches in Glasgow indicate clearly the difficulties of this transition period. A single quotation must suffice: "A district secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers says of a world-famous firm which employs several thousand men making a particular kind of domestic machine: 'It is a reception home for young bakers and grocers. Boys go to it from other occupations to do one small part of the machine.... When they leave they are not competent engineers, and find it difficult to get work elsewhere.'" [162] Detailed figures for the country as a whole in respect of certain trades may be found in Mr. Jackson's Report on Boy Labour. All evidence, from wheresoever collected, goes to show the existence of the break between the work of the boy and the work of the man. * * * * * It is trusted that sufficient evidence has been produced to prove conclusively that the conditions of boy labour in London do not differ essentially from the conditions of boy labour in other towns. The evidence could have been multiplied indefinitely and, what is most striking, among the mass of witnesses forthcoming there is none found to venture a contrary opinion. We may take it, then, as a well-established fact that in other towns besides London, supervision, training, and the provision of an opening are alike gravely and progressively defective. In other words, among the urban districts of the country no true apprenticeship system exists or is in course of creation. § 3. RURAL DISTRICTS. No comprehensive inquiry has been made into the conditions of boy labour in rural districts and small towns. A few studies of individual villages exist--as, for example, "Life in an English Village," by Miss Maude Davies--but these are not sufficiently numerous to justify any general conclusions. The return on Children Working for Wages, made to the House of Commons in 1899, gives certain statistics. From the returns on pages 21 and 23 we see that for England and Wales some 5·2 per cent. of children above Standard I. were working for wages. The percentage for boys alone would be 8·5 per cent., or for boys eleven years and upwards about 17 per cent., compared with 24 per cent. for London alone. These figures would seem to show that, while common, work among school-children over the country as a whole does not quite reach the London level. So far as can be gathered from the returns, it is in towns that the employment of school-children is most frequent, though in rural districts it is frequent enough to constitute a grave evil. The same return gives the occupation of children as they leave school. On page 163 is the summary. The table is incomplete: "In London the proportion of children is no less than 94 per cent.; in the group of large urban districts, 72 per cent.; while in the rest of England and Wales, including the rural districts and small towns, the percentage sinks to 47." [163] Without a careful analysis, such as only local knowledge could supply, it would be dangerous to give much weight to the return. It does, however, appear from the summary that "blind-alley" occupations bear a close relation to urbanization, and that the two increase together. Or looking at the question from another point of view, a boy in rural districts enjoys greater opportunities of continuity of employment in the passage from youth to manhood than he does in the towns. OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS ON LEAVING SCHOOL IN (1) LONDON, (2) LARGE URBAN AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, AND (3) RURAL AND SMALL URBAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.[164] +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | |Large Urban and| Rural and | | Occupation. | London. | Manufacturing | Small Urban | | | | Districts. | Districts. | |----------------------|---------------|---------------|---------------| | | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | |Agriculture | 101 | -- | 730 | 2 | 17,950 | 26 | |Building | 787 | 3 | 1,973 | 4 | 3,744 | 5 | |Woodworking | 905 | 4 | 591 | 1 | 661 | 1 | |Metal, engineering, | | | | | | | | and shipbuilding | 949 | 4 | 4,090 | 8 | 3,119 | 4 | |Mining and quarrying | -- | -- | 1,584 | 3 | 6,510 | 9 | |Textile | 49 | -- | 6,046 | 13 | 5,522 | 8 | |Clothing | 665 | 3 | 1,634 | 3 | 1,612 | 2 | |Printing and allied | | | | | | | | trades | 1,121 | 4 | 868 | 2 | 680 | 1 | |Clerical | 2,060 | 8 | 5,666 | 12 | 2,727 | 4 | |In shops | 3,584 | 14 | 6,084 | 13 | 7,045 | 10 | |Errand, cart, boat, | | | | | | | | etc., boy | 10,283 | 40 | 10,496 | 22 | 9,917 | 14 | |Newsboy and street | | | | | | | | vendor | 964 | 4 | 1,472 | 3 | 1,223 | 2 | |Teaching | 120 | -- | 430 | 1 | 557 | 1 | |Domestic service | 301 | 1 | 173 | -- | 1,090 | 2 | |Miscellaneous and | | | | | | | | indefinite | 2,256 | 9 | 4,159 | 9 | 4,817 | 7 | |----------------------+--------|------|--------|------|--------|------| | Total occupied | 24,145 | 94 | 45,996 | 96 | 67,174 | 96 | |No reported occupation| 1,623 | 6 | 2,097 | 4 | 2,765 | 4 | |----------------------|--------|------|--------|------|--------|------| | Grand total | 25,768 | 100 | 48,093 | 100 | 69,939 | 100 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ There is good reason to believe that the prospects of an all-round training are more favourable in a village than in a town. The fact, already mentioned, that immigrants from rural districts obtain the better positions in London trades, especially in the building trades, would seem to justify this conclusion. There is also the general consideration that rural districts are always nearly a century behind the industrial development of the towns, and represent therefore an older condition of affairs. Workshops are smaller, the gulf between man and employer less impassable, and the old paternal relation between boy and master more possible of attainment. We may therefore assume, without much risk of error, that training is better in rural districts than in towns. On the other hand, while it is true that in industrial progress the villages lag behind the towns, they still follow them, though at an interval. Machine-made goods, especially in the woodwork trades, are in villages replacing the hand-made goods, and the demand for manual dexterity is to this extent decreasing. It would also seem to be true that the old indentured apprenticeship is falling into disuse. In the Wiltshire village of Corsley, for example, while apprenticeship occupied a prominent position in the past, in the story of to-day it passes almost without mention. In Miss Davies's[165] study of the occupations of the inhabitants of that village, only one apprentice is mentioned. It is also a fact that those who are concerned with the administration of local charities for apprenticeship are finding increasing difficulty in discovering masters who are willing to take boys as indentured apprentices, even for a premium, and boys who are desirous of being indentured. We may, perhaps, therefore assume that, while the conditions of boy labour are more favourable in rural districts than they are in towns, the old machinery of training is falling into disuse, and no adequate substitute is taking its place. V. THE BREAK-UP OF APPRENTICESHIP. The survey of the elements that make up the apprenticeship of to-day is now complete. Each of the factors which contribute to the result--the State, Philanthropy, the Home, the Workshop--has been examined, and their influence appraised. It is therefore possible to pass judgment on the system, and, by realizing the present situation in all its relations, to understand clearly the nature and the extent of the problems which call for solution in the immediate future. The period of apprenticeship has been shown to divide itself naturally into two parts. There are the years during which the boy is at school, ending somewhere about the age of fourteen. For the right use of these years we have seen that the State is beginning to accept full responsibility. Whether we have been concerned with the conduct, the physical welfare, or the training of the child, we have found collective enterprise assuming new duties, and carrying them out with a growing enthusiasm. Nor can we have remained blind to the large measure of success achieved. If defects here and there mar the result, they are clearly the defects that belong to all experiments in the early stages, and are obviously not the ineradicable faults of a worn-out system. In short, so far as regards the earlier years of the apprenticeship of to-day, there is no cause for despondency. Progress is the distinguishing characteristic of this first period; the boy is the centre of influences increasing in number, and deliberately planned to promote his well-being. One disquieting phenomenon that calls for attention is the large mass of school-children working long hours. Health is undermined, the effect of education impaired; while the occupations, essentially of the "blind-alley" type, encourage an unfortunate taste for this form of employment. Further, the various local authorities, especially in rural districts, have been very lax in using the powers conferred by the Employment of Children Act. The second stage of apprenticeship covers the years between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. In our survey of this period we have been unable to find much cause for satisfaction. The State no longer recognizes its responsibility for the well-being of all its youth; it is content to offer opportunities of training to those who are able and willing to avail themselves of these advantages, and these last form only a small minority of the whole. The success of evening schools, technical institutes, and other places of higher education, so far as concerns those who come within that sphere of influence, only adds to our regret that that sphere of influence is so narrowly restricted. The majority, at least two-thirds, of the boys pass out of the control of the State, and for the completion of their apprenticeship we must look in other directions. Our search in these other directions has met with little reward; we have found everywhere failure, and, what is worse, failure that is rapidly progressive. Nowhere on a large scale can we discover provision made for the supervision and training of juveniles; from all sides we receive a tumult of complaint that things have gone astray. Philanthropic enterprise, whether represented by the religious bodies or lads' clubs, laments the lack of control over the boys, and frankly confesses its inability to deal satisfactorily with more than a small minority. The testimony of the home is the same; parents complain of the growing independence of their children, and to a large extent have ceased to attempt to exert any restraint over the conduct of their sons. Under the stress of modern industrial conditions and accentuated urbanization, the old patriarchal system of the family has broken down; the home represents an association of equals, in which, perhaps, the young can claim a predominant influence. When we pass to the workshop, in the hope of reaching law and order and constructive thought, it is only to be confronted with the most signal example of an organization which defies every principle of a true apprenticeship system. That the boy of to-day is the workman of to-morrow is a thought that suggests itself to only a few of the most enlightened employers. To the many he is merely a cheap instrument of production to be used up, and then scrapped as waste machinery. He is kept at "his own little temporary task"; and, to make things worse, he is in so much demand that discipline cannot keep him very steadily even to this, or his services will be withdrawn. With the separation of man's work from boy's work there is no easy passage from youth to manhood. With the minute subdivision of operations, there is small chance of a lad in a skilled trade becoming a master of his craft. Apart from the small amount of medical inspection required by the Factory and Workshop Act, no attempt is made to insure that the growing lad is physically fit for the work in which he is engaged. His health is the concern of no one till its breakdown brings him under the Poor Law or thrusts him into the ranks of the unemployable. Undisciplined, with health and training neglected, the lad of eighteen tends to find himself more and more left without prospects, and a person for whom no one in particular has any particular use. In short, our survey of the problem of the apprenticeship of to-day shows conclusively that we have, in the true sense of the word, no apprenticeship system. The old apprenticeship system has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place. It would be incredible if serious consequences did not accompany this complete break-up of the apprenticeship system; and it needs but little search to discover evils of far-reaching significance. There is first the evil of an uncontrolled youth. A child at the age of fourteen is not fitted to enjoy the independence of an adult. This statement is a truism, but there is tragedy in the fact that society of to-day confers, as we have seen, this irresponsible freedom, in a more or less unqualified form, on the majority of boys when they leave the elementary schools. In the hooligan of the streets or in the youthful criminal we have the most striking example of the fruits of an undisciplined boy. The report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908, makes this clear. Writing of the Borstal Association, they say: "In this admirable report" (the report, that is, of the Borstal Association), "which should be studied by all who are interested in the causes of crime, after specifying many circumstances which induce the criminal habit, they refer in particular to the absence of any system of control or organization for the employment of the young, as one of the principal causes of wrong-doing. 'When a boy leaves school the hands of organization and compulsion are lifted from his shoulders. If he is the son of very poor parents, his father has no influence, nor, indeed, a spare hour, to find work for him; he must find it for himself; generally he does find a job, and if it does not land him into a dead alley at eighteen he is fortunate, or he drifts, and the tidy scholar becomes a ragged and defiant corner loafer. Over 80 per cent. of our charges admit that they were not at work when they got into trouble,'" [166] The Poor Law Commission calls attention to the evil effects of certain forms of employment which the boys choose because of the freedom they give."'Street-selling, for example,' says the Chief Constable of Sheffield, 'makes the boys thieves.' 'News-boys and street-sellers,' says Mr. Cyril Jackson, 'are practically all gamblers.' 'Of 1,454 youths between fourteen and twenty-one charged in Glasgow during 1906 with theft and other offences inferring dishonesty, 1,208, or 83·7 per cent., came from the class of messengers, street-traders, etc.,' says Mr. Tawney." [167] And it would be easy to multiply indefinitely examples of this kind. It must not, of course, be assumed that all boys become hooligans or criminals, but all do suffer from the want of control and the need of a more disciplined life. Hooliganism is merely an extreme type of a disease which in a milder form fastens upon the boys who are allowed unrestrained liberty. The disease is the disease of restlessness--the restlessness of the town, the dislike of regularity, the joy in change for change's sake, and the habit of roving from place to place. This disease, with the lack of proper technical training, leads on to unemployment when the age of manhood is reached. Unemployment is not the fate of the old only; it is becoming common among the young. "The percentage of men under thirty years of age qualified for assistance under the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, was:[168] +------------------------------------------------------------+ | |Up to March 31, 1906.|Twelve Months ending| | | | March 31, 1907. | |-----------------|---------------------|--------------------| | London | 23·9 | 27·4 | | Whole of England| 27·3 | 30·2" | +------------------------------------------------------------+ "It has become clear," says a manager of boys' clubs with a very wide experience, "to all students of the labour problem that a wrong choice of their first work--or, rather, no choice at all, but a drift into it--is responsible for the presence of considerable numbers of young men amongst the unemployed." [169] The Reports of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and Minority alike, repeatedly voice the same opinion. "The great prominence given to boy labour, not only in our evidence, but in the various reports of our special investigators, leads us to the opinion that this is perhaps the most serious of the phenomena which we have encountered in our study of unemployment. The difficulty of getting boys absorbed, through gradual and systematic training, in the skilled trades is great enough; but when to this are added the temptations, outside the organized industries, to enter at an early age into occupations which are not themselves skilled and give no opportunity for acquiring skill, it seems clear that we are faced by a far greater problem than that of finding employment for adults who have fallen behind in the race for efficiency--namely, that the growth of large cities has brought with it an enormous increase in occupations that are making directly for unemployment in the future." [170] The Minority Report is equally emphatic. "There is no subject," it says, "as to which we have received so much and such conclusive evidence as upon the extent to which thousands of boys, from lack of any sort of training for industrial occupations, grow up, almost inevitably, so as to become chronically unemployed or under-employed, and presently to recruit the ranks of the unemployable. In Glasgow nearly 20 per cent. of the labourers in distress are under twenty-five, and one-half of them are under thirty-five." [171] Or again: "It has been demonstrated beyond dispute that one of the features of the manner in which we have chosen to let the nation's industry be organized is that an increasing number of boys are employed in occupations which are either uneducative (in the sense of producing no increase of efficiency and intelligence) or unpromising (in the sense of leading to no permanent occupation during adult life); secondly, that there is a constant tendency for certain industrial functions to be transferred from men to boys, especially when changes in the processes of manufacture or in the organization of industry are taking place rapidly. The resulting difficulty is the double one of the over-employment of boys and the under-employment of men." [172] It is hoped that the present chapter may have made clear the various steps in this unfortunate process of industrial development. First, we have the qualities which are the result of the school training--qualities of regularity, obedience, and intelligence--qualities required, indeed, in all forms of work, but supplying a complete technical outfit alone for the "blind-alley" occupations. The boys leave school, having had expended on them in each case a capital sum of public money of about one hundred pounds. They are valuable assets, and employers have discovered the fact, and adjusted their methods of production or distribution to make full use of this new and valuable supply. High wages attract the boy, who makes his own choice, and earning is regarded as more attractive than the laborious and less remunerative learning. This leads on to the second stage, the "blind-alley" occupation or the skilled trade where there is no real training. Four years of this kind of work dissipate the effects of elementary education. Too often weakened physically by long hours of employment, demoralized by the life of freedom and the fatal facility in obtaining a second job when fancy has made him throw up the first, robbed by disuse of the power to learn even if the inclination were present, he is, at the age of eighteen, a distinctly less valuable asset in the labour market than he was four years before. The hundred pounds investment of public money intended for life has been squandered in youth; the employer has possessed himself of it; and when the boy asks the wages of a man, he is informed that his services are no longer wanted, and told to transfer them elsewhere. Then comes the final stage of degeneration--unemployment or under-employment. The habit, acquired through four years of constant practice, of throwing up a job on the smallest pretext, remains with the lad of eighteen, but the facility of finding another is no longer his. The intensity of the demand for men varies almost inversely with the intensity of the demand for boys; the two are competitors in the same labour market, and of the two the boy is the cheaper and the more efficient instrument of production. Further, habits of boyhood have too often bred a liking for casual employment, with its frequent holidays. Here, also, the employers are willing to oblige him; they find it convenient to have at their beck and call a reserve of labour which can be drawn upon when business is brisk, and discharged in times of slackness. Finally, if he desires regular employment, it is none too easy to discover a suitable opening. The sphere of his usefulness is small; he has for sale a certain amount of animal strength, none too well developed, but has little else to offer. He can push and he can pull indifferently well, but in the world of industry there is not, as is supposed sometimes, an unlimited demand for pulling and pushing. And all the time he is faced with the fact that recruits to the army of pushing and pulling are coming from all sides. Men skilled in the performance of a single operation, and robbed of their well-paid employment by a new invention; men from decaying trades and incapable through lack of training of adapting themselves to fresh conditions; men a little past the vigour of manhood; men discharged for misconduct; men who have lost their work through the bankruptcy of a company or the death of a master--all alike, when everything fails them, turn in desperation to pulling and pushing; and meanwhile machines of novel design decrease year by year the demand for pulling and pushing. All these effects, with innumerable variations, are the result of a wrong start, and of the neglect during the years that lie between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Want of supervision, want of technical training, want of an opening for which special preparation has been given--these are the three great and characteristic evils of the present industrial situation. Taken together, they are a negation of all apprenticeship in the true sense of the word. During the course of the last few years we have at least learned to know the cause of our suffering, and to know the cause is at least the first step in the path of prevention. And, further, we have begun to see rising from the ruins of the old stabilities of life and the ancient order of industrial organization an edifice--small, indeed, at the moment, but bearing the mark of constructive thought, because reared by the growing power of collective enterprise; and, knowing this, we can turn in a spirit of hope to the task of creating a new apprenticeship system. CHAPTER VI THE NEW APPRENTICESHIP In the present chapter we must endeavour to find some remedy for the evils disclosed in the preceding pages. The old apprenticeship system has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place. In consequence, the youth of the country is to a large and growing extent passing through the years of adolescence without supervision, without technical training, without prospects of an opening when manhood is reached. These are defects in the industrial organization so obvious that they are now attracting general attention, so grave that there is need of immediate and comprehensive measures of reform. In what direction is the remedy to be looked for? From what quarter may we expect the new apprenticeship to come? The survey of the conditions of boy labour, contained in an earlier portion of this volume, has disclosed two forces at work in the training of the youth of the country. The one force is destructive in its action; the other constructive. Reform obviously lies in the repression of the former and in the encouragement of the latter; there is no other alternative. The force of destruction has been found throughout associated with the characteristic phenomena of the industrial revolution. The accentuated spirit of competition, the increasing use of capital and machinery, with the consequential development of large undertakings, and the rapid changes in methods of production to meet new demands or to make use of new inventions, have all alike been hostile to the well-being of the boy. The system, created by what may be called the natural growth of modern business organization, has been a system which has, in one form or another, continually attempted to exploit child labour. Under this system children, in days gone by, were driven to the mine and to the factory, or herded in gangs in the fields and barns of the farm, and even at the present time are allowed to perform tasks far beyond their strength. Under this system we have watched the slow and continuous decay of indentured apprenticeship, the steady decrease of facilities for obtaining an all-round training in the workshop, and the ever-broadening gulf separating youth from manhood in the sphere of industry. As a result of this system we have seen the hand of control lifted from the shoulder of youth, and have noted lads, under the wayward guidance of an irresponsible freedom, drifting into the path of crime and disorder. We are driven to believe that it is the young who swell the armies of unemployment, and have realized with sudden dismay that, young though they are, they are yet too old to break the set habits of an unfortunate past. And we are beginning to perceive clearly that these phenomena, of ill omen, are not a mere accident, but an integral part of the industrial organization; and to understand that, in spite of numerous superficial changes, the system, born of the revolution of a hundred years ago, has not altered in essentials, and now, as then, threatens with destruction the youth of the land. That system has never enjoyed full freedom of development, but the limits set on its power for evil have not come from within; they have come from without, and been imposed on the employers by the legislative action of the State. It is the State which has throughout the period supplied the second or regulative and constructive force in the training of the youth of the country. It has forbidden the employment of boys in some occupations, and in others limited the hours of employment. Acting without any clearly defined plan, but striking at the evils, which gusts of popular opinion denounced and refused to tolerate, it has yet made impossible the worst abuses of child labour. It has, however, long since passed beyond the realm of mere veto, and has these many years entered the sphere of constructive reform. The scheme of compulsory education, the provision of opportunities for technical instruction, and the powers, recently conferred on local education authorities, to attend to the physical condition of school-children, are all signal examples of the beneficent influence of the second force. We are left, then, with these two forces--the force of destruction and the force of construction; and the fate of the youth turns on the issue of the struggle between the two. They are not, indeed, the only forces concerned in the problem of boy labour, but, compared with their influence, all others sink into insignificance. The State and the industrial system both possess the characteristic of universality, and no other organization can make the same claim. Philanthropic and religious associations have always been found to protest against the abuses of child labour, but their protest only became generally effective when the State gave to it the force of law. Philanthropic and religious associations have been pioneers in the field of education, but the advantages were offered to all only when the State stepped in and assumed the responsibility. Individual employers have always been found to offer to their lads humane conditions of work and full opportunities of training, but these remained the privileges of a few, and it was only through State interference that the many obtained their share. As pointing the way to reform, these other agencies have been, and are, of priceless value to the community, but as themselves the instrument they have invariably proved a failure. We are left, then, with two forces which alone need to be taken into account--the industrial organization and the State. For the creation of the new apprenticeship system either the industrial organization must reform itself, or the State must reform the industrial organization: there is no third alternative. Let us begin with the first alternative, and ask ourselves whether there is any reasonable hope of reform from within the industrial organization. The experience of the past is uniformly hostile to any such expectation. In the history of the last hundred years there is no single exception to the rule that all general improvements in the conditions of boy labour have come from without, and not been carried out from within. The experience of the present repeats in an even more emphatic way the experience of the past. It is impossible to point to one single example of an industrial reform now in course of development, and affecting on a large and beneficent scale the prospects or the training of the boy. It would be easy to cite a hundred instances of the contrary process. The whole of the last chapter is nothing but a detailed summary of the progressive defects of the industrial system, and its attempts to exploit in its own interests the value of boy labour. We saw how, by the multiplication of "blind-alley" occupations, the industrial system contrived to lay hold on and use up most of the products of an improved elementary education initiated by the State. Past and present experience are in accord; we cannot look for reform from within. It is necessary to guard against a possible misinterpretation. There is no thought here of blaming the employer. The fight lies not between boy and employer, but between the force of the State and the force of competition, using the last word to denote the most marked characteristic of the industrial revolution. The employer is in general as much a victim of the process as the boy. He cannot be justly blamed for what he cannot be fairly expected to prevent. The exigencies of competition drive him to select the cheapest methods of production at the moment. If these methods involve the exploitation of the boy, it is unfortunate for the boy, but the employer has no other alternative. To produce as cheaply as his neighbours is the one condition of success; more remote considerations cannot enter into a business undertaking. Those well-intentioned persons, with a smattering of ill-digested science and a system of economics far removed from all practical realities, who talk amiably of the interests of employers and their boys, as future workmen, being identical, confuse the good of the present generation with the good of the generation that comes after. It is undoubtedly a fact that any system which injures the workers will in the long-run injure the trade of the country, but this is true only in the long-run, and the run is often very long. Now, survival in business is determined in the immediate future. The heavy charges on fixed capital, the interest on outstanding loans, the weekly wages bill, and the long tale of daily outgoings, make it impossible for the employer to follow proper methods of training in the hope that the new generation of workers will, by their added efficiency, recoup him for his expenditure. To last till that time he must live through the interval, must obtain that contract to-day, this order to-morrow, and must get it at a profit--in other words, he must choose the cheapest method of production here and now; there and next year will be too late. It will be no inducement to him to reflect that his methods would in the long-run prove the best, if he knows that he cannot stay the course. Competition is of to-day; it takes no account of the happenings of to-morrow. Those who in the struggle cannot survive this year will not live to reap the harvest of future years. Agreement among employers on such questions has been found impossible; the temptation to win by evasion an illicit success proves too strong for the majority. Those who pursue the better methods disappear; those who pursue the worse survive to propagate their kind. There is valid in the world of business a law somewhat analogous to Gresham's law in matters of currency; the bad pushes out and replaces the good. There is a real struggle between the interests of one generation and the next. The employer must concern himself with the things of his own day; it is for the State, whose life is ageless, to guard the welfare of those who are to come. By insisting on the methods that are good in the long-run, by forbidding those which are good only in the immediate present, it places all employers on the same level, and enables the best of them to do what was before impossible. It does not thereby interfere with competition; it merely changes the direction of competition by guiding it into less injurious channels. But the secret of success, as demonstrated by the experience of more than a century, must be sought in the enactment of general regulations, which will apply to all employers, and not be looked for in what is sometimes termed the spirit of growing enlightenment. Unless it can be shown that the immediate interest of the employer is one with the proposed reform, nothing really effective can be done by moral suasion; while, if the two are in accord, moral suasion is superfluous. It can hardly be supposed that the contemplative outsider should know the business of the employers better than they do themselves. The mere fact of calling to our aid the power of moral suasion should be enough to show that enlightened self-interest will not suffice; we do not appeal to a man's conscience when we can appeal to his pocket. If, then, reform and the immediate interest are not in accord, consent on the part of one employer means risk of failure in a world where salvation depends on very small margins of profit. It is, therefore, for the most part labour lost to devote time to the consideration of reforms which do not rest on the basis of legal obligation, and we might at once turn to considerations of State control and State enterprise if it were not for the fact that in the minds of many there still remains a hope of the coming of salvation from another direction. They advocate the revival of the old indentured apprenticeship system, and believe that they have only to explain the situation adequately to the employer for him to realize that his interests lie in its revival. This belief assumes, as already mentioned, that the outsider knows the business of the employer better than he does himself--a tolerably large assumption. We might drop the matter with this criticism, but a re-examination of the old apprenticeship system, in the light of the industrial revolution and of the proposals for its revival, will help us on our journey towards the goal of the new apprenticeship. Such examination will show, first, the conditions which a true apprenticeship must fulfil; and, secondly, that those who hark back upon the past for their ideals of reform are conscious that the past must change its dress before it can hope to commend itself to the critical taste of the present. Now, in its best form, as was shown in the second chapter of this book, the old apprenticeship system was a success. It did afford means of adequate supervision over the youth of the country; it did supply them with technical training; and it did provide an opening in an occupation for which special preparation had been made. But a closer examination of the problem showed that success depended on the satisfaction of three conditions: First, it was essential for the apprentice to live with his master, or at any rate that the relations between the two should be of a paternal character; the second essential was the universality of the small workshop, with the facilities it gave for an all-round training; and, thirdly, an essential part of the system was the existence of the gild, which represented masters and men alike, and in the interests of all inspected and controlled the methods of the workshop. With the dissolution of the gilds we saw the first weakening of the apprenticeship system. There was now no authority guarding the interests of the trade as a whole; compulsory apprenticeship was often used as a means of supplying the employer with cheap and enforced labour, for whose future he had no responsibility. With the advent of the industrial revolution we watched the steady disappearance of the small workshop. Training became difficult, and often impossible. With both masters and men formal apprenticeship lost favour, and the system entered on its second stage of decay. With the multiplication of "blind-alley" occupations, with the growing cleavage between man's work and boy's work, and with division of labour pushed to its utmost extreme, came, as has been proved, the break-up of the apprenticeship system. Now, there is nothing in the signs of the times to herald the approach of a new industrial revolution and a return to the old order of the Middle Ages. Machines and machine methods have come to stay, and must stay if the varied needs of the huge populations of to-day are to be satisfied. The more serious advocates of the revival of indentured apprenticeship admit this fact, and fully realize that modifications of the system are necessary. They suggest that committees of volunteers should assume certain of the functions of the gild; they should exercise a kindly supervision over the boy in his home, and take steps to insure that the conditions of the indenture are observed by the employer. Secondly, they propose that the one-sided training of the workshop should be supplemented by technical classes provided by the education authority and supervised by an advisory committee of representatives of the trade. Finally, they urge that these proposals, so far from being visionary, have actually been realized in practice with complete success. Why may not we look for a general extension of these methods? The answer is tolerably obvious. The experiments have undoubtedly been successful. They have shown the steadying influence exerted over the boy by an indenture; they have shown the advantages that come from friendly visiting at the home or the workshop; they have shown the value of technical classes and trade schools supervised by representatives of the trade. But what they have not shown is that the experiment, while resting on a purely voluntary basis, admits of indefinite expansion. Indeed, the fact that the co-operation of the education authority is invoked, in order to provide technical instruction that shall supplement the training of the workshop, is sufficient evidence that we cannot dispense altogether with the assistance of the State. But much more remains to be said against the possibility of indefinite extension. Take the case of indentures. It is true that some employers can be found willing to receive indentured apprentices, and some boys willing to be indentured. But this does not affect the general rule that the conditions of the modern workshop do not allow of the use of apprentices, whose training is enforceable at law, or discount what is a matter of common observation--that neither employers nor boys like to bind themselves together for a period of years. Indentures may be an excellent plan for curbing the independence of the boy, but it does not, unfortunately, follow that the boys who most want curbing will be the boys who will accept this fretting restraint. What happens in practice is that a select number of boys willing to submit to control are brought into relations with a select number of employers willing to be troubled with boys. This is good as far as it goes, but it goes no way in the direction of providing supervision for the boys who most need it. Or take again the question of supplementing in the technical institute the training of the workshop. Experience here and in other countries shows conclusively that technical instruction, to be really effective, must be given during the daytime, when the lad is fresh, and not during the evening, when he is wearied out by the day's work. But, ignoring the necessarily limited number of cases in which boys are able to forgo earning altogether, instruction during the day is possible only where employers allow their apprentices time off during the day to attend classes. It is true that some few employers have given this permission, but their number is strictly limited. In the hope of extending the principle, the London County Council recently carried out an elaborate inquiry among employers, but with very small results. "If we compare," says the report, "the magnitude of the elaborate inquiry carried out by the principals of polytechnics and technical institutes, by the skilled employment committees, and by the Council itself, with the extent of the success attained, we are bound to admit that the results are of the most meagre dimensions. There appears no prospect of inducing employers on any large scale to co-operate with us in the establishment of a satisfactory system of 'part-time' classes." [173] Extension on a large scale and on a voluntary basis is impossible. But, neglecting the question of possibilities, is the revival of an indentured apprenticeship, as a method of learning certain trades, in itself a thing to be desired? There remains one difficulty that has never satisfactorily been surmounted. If indentured apprenticeship is the door leading to a skilled trade, there will be a movement in the trade to close all other doors. Those who have paid a premium, or at any rate served their time for low wages, cannot be expected to allow without complaint vacancies in the trade to be filled by men who have not passed through a similar period of servitude. If the door is closed, there is no way of recruiting the trade in times of expanding business. But, in general, prohibition has not proved practical, and other ways of entry are discovered, and as these ways are easier, it is only natural that people should tend to choose the easier path. Indentured apprenticeship has never escaped from this dilemma; either the trade is closed to strangers when there is no means of expansion, or the trade is open when there is no inducement to be apprenticed. The change in modern industry, with its tendency to break down the barriers between trade and trade, only accentuates the acuteness of the dilemma. Finally, assuming indentured apprenticeship to be both practical and desirable, would it provide a solution for the problem of boy labour? It is obvious that it would only touch a fringe of the question. We have already seen that some two-thirds of the children, as they leave the elementary school, enter a form of occupation which leads only to unskilled labour, and even for that provides no adequate training. An apprenticeship system would not affect these two-thirds. A boy cannot be apprenticed as an errand-boy, or in one of those workshops where practically only boys are engaged. Not only is this class the most important in respect of numbers; it is also the class most urgently in need of control. It is here that degeneration and demoralization are most marked, while it is here that indentured apprenticeship offers not even a shadow of a remedy. A system which ignores the majority, even if it provided for the favoured few, cannot be regarded as affording a possible solution of the problem of boy labour. We cannot, therefore, look to the revival of apprenticeship, even when supplemented by technical training, to carry us far on the road of reform. It would, however, be a mistake to under-rate the lessons of the experiments. They have shown the value of indentures as a means of controlling the boy; they have shown the value of sympathetic supervision; and they have shown the value of the technical school in widening the inadequate training of the workshop. The defects of the experiment lay in the necessary limitations of the case. Remove the limitations, and you remove the defects. We want universal indentures, universal supervision, universal training. To guard against the dangers of creating a privileged class through the establishment of an apprenticeship system we must see to it that all alike serve a period of apprenticeship. Obviously, we cannot apprentice all boys to employers; we must, therefore, apprentice all boys to the State. There is nothing new in this proposal. Already, through the law of compulsory attendance at school, all boys are so apprenticed between the ages of five and fourteen. What is necessary is an extension of the period of an already existing apprenticeship system. In the search of a means of preventing an evil, the most difficult task is always to exclude the inadequate and the irrelevant. When all paths of advance, with one exception, have been blocked, there is no longer any choice or risk of losing one's way. We have now seen that all ways, except the way of collective control and collective enterprise, fail to reach the desired goal, and, having exhausted all other alternatives, must fall back upon the State. Some do this willingly, some reluctantly, but all, with a few exceptions that may be disregarded, appeal to the State when they are convinced that help can be looked for from no other source. We are now in that position, and must frankly face the situation. Failing assistance in any other direction, we must call on the State to organize a new apprenticeship system. Such a system must make due provision for supervision, training, and an opening. It remains to be considered how these three essentials can be secured. I SUPERVISION. A boy must be under some sort of supervision until he reaches at least the age of eighteen. Such supervision must have respect to his physical well-being as well as to his conduct. Neither the home, nor philanthropy, nor the workshop can be looked for to provide this supervision. They have all failed, and that failure is progressive. The State remains as our only hope. The State has not failed; it has made impossible the worst abuses of child labour, and through its educational system has been an influence for good in the moral and physical development of the children. Its success has been great, and that success has been progressive. Where it has failed, it has failed because its supervision has been withdrawn too soon. The remedy is obvious: we must extend the sphere of State supervision. Three reforms are urgently necessary: (1) The raising of the age of compulsory attendance to fifteen; (2) the complete prohibition of the employment of school-children for wages; and (3) the compulsory attendance of lads between the ages of fifteen and eighteen at some place of education for at least half the working day. With regard to these proposals, it may be said that all three are supported by the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission and by the labour organizations which have in general expressed their approval of that Report. (1) and (3) are the recommendations of the Report of the Education Committee of the London County Council, adopted unanimously by that body in February, 1909; while (1) and (3) also received a qualified approval from the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, and from the Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Continuation Schools. They have, therefore, behind them a strong backing of expert opinion. _(a) The Raising of the School Age._ More than ten years have elapsed since Parliament last raised the age of compulsory attendance. There is almost universal agreement that the time has come for adding another year. The discipline of the school is successful while it lasts, but fails in permanent effect because it is withdrawn too soon. In the last chapter we saw from the study of the census tables that for at least the first year after school the boys have settled down to no very fixed employment. Many of the skilled trades do not take learners and apprentices before the age of fifteen. "It is clear," say the Education Committee of the London County Council, "that the year after leaving school--the year, that is, between the ages of fourteen and fifteen--is for the children concerned a year of uncertainty. Nearly half are returned as without specified occupation. No doubt a large proportion of the number are attending some place of education, but it is no less true that a considerable number are not classified, because for the time being they are doing nothing. They have thrown up one situation and are looking out for another. In this respect we must remember that it is a common practice--at any rate, so far as the poorer section of the community is concerned--for the children, and not their parents, to select for themselves the form of occupation and find for themselves situations. The children are too young to choose wisely, and, as a natural consequence, shift from place to place until they discover something that suits their taste or ability. It would be difficult to imagine a more unsatisfactory method of training. Till the age of fourteen they are carefully looked after in school; at the age of fourteen they are set free from all forms of discipline, and become practically their own masters. We must not, therefore, be surprised that under such conditions the effect of the school training is transient, and the large amount of money spent on their education to a great extent wasted." [174] And, summing up the whole case for the raising of the school age, the Education Committee say: "The advantages of keeping children at school until the age of fifteen are many and obvious. They receive an extra year's instruction at a time when they are most apt to learn; they are kept for another year under discipline just at the period when it is easiest to influence permanently the development of character. With the extension they escape the year of aimless drifting from occupation to occupation, and, when called on to choose a profession, they will have a year's extra experience to help them in the choice. We may hope that under these new conditions the tendency to follow the line of greatest initial wages will decrease, and be replaced by a tendency to consider as of paramount importance prospects of training and hope of future advancement." [175] In raising the school age we should take the opportunity of getting rid of certain anomalies which now exist. While for the vast majority of children in London and many other places attendance is compulsory up to the age of fourteen, exemption is possible at the age of twelve and thirteen for a small minority. In certain parts of the country large numbers of children are allowed to leave before the age of fourteen. It is unfortunate that it is the cleverest children who are entitled to this earlier exemption. We are here looking at the problem of apprenticeship from the standpoint of supervision, and in the case of supervision age and not mental attainment must be the determining principle. The bright precocious boy of twelve or thirteen is precisely the boy who stands most in need of control. Morally and physically he is likely to suffer from the effects of premature freedom. The sleepy dullard, who is kept at school until fourteen, could be freed from discipline at an earlier age, with less risk of serious harm. In raising, then, the age of compulsory attendance to fifteen, we must abolish the privileges of exemption and the powers of local option, and enact that all children shall attend school full time until they reach the age of fifteen. _(b) The Prohibition of Child Labour._ Much space has in this volume been devoted to the task of demonstrating the extent and the evils of child labour. It has been shown that anything except the very lightest employment is physically injurious. It has been made clear that the work in which children are engaged is frequently demoralizing, while it never paves the way to entering a skilled trade when school is left. They are essentially "blind-alley" occupations. Further, we have seen good reason to believe that the habit of earning money and the precocious sense of independence so encouraged are not in the best interests of order and discipline. We note the evil in its worst form under the "half-time" system. "The half-timers," we are told, "become clever at repartee and in the use of 'mannish' phrases, which sound clever when they dare use them. They lose their childish habits ... some of the boys commence to smoke and to use bad language." [176] Finally, it has been proved that limitation of the hours of employment in the case of school-children is in practice impossible; there is no ready way of detecting breaches of the law. We are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that, unless the evils are to remain--and this is not tolerable--we must prohibit altogether the employment for wages of children liable to attend school full time. Various objections are made to the proposal. We are told by many of the witnesses who appeared before the Interdepartmental Committee on Wage-earning Children that a little light work was good for boys; it kept them out of mischief. Ignoring the difficulties of insuring that the work shall be little and light, they do not seem to make out their case. In London, as has been shown, not more than a quarter of the boys during the course of their school time are ever engaged seriously in paid employment. If, therefore, the work was beneficial, we should expect to find in the after-career of the 25 per cent. evidence of the advantages they have enjoyed, and in the case of the 75 per cent. signs of failure due to their less fortunate training. But all experience points in the opposite direction. It is the 25 per cent. who drift most generally into the "blind-alley" occupations; it is from this 25 per cent. that the majority of hooligans and youthful criminals are recruited. It is also argued that there are certain tasks which only children can perform, because they occupy only a small portion of the day. Papers must be delivered and milk left at people's houses. But in Germany much of this work is done by old men,[177] and even in this country the "knocker-up" in the morning is not a child, but an old man. Employers in the textile trades declared that it is only by beginning young that children can acquire the necessary quickness and deftness of touch. But as these trades absorb in the adult service only a small proportion of the children engaged, and seeing that in many instances the half-time system has been dropped as uneconomic, there does not seem much force in this objection. Moreover, it cannot be beyond the power of manual training in the schools to provide a fitting and less injurious substitute. The arguments in favour of the continued employment of school-children are the arguments of the old world, and the new world is becoming a little tired of the arguments of these old-world people. The time has come to make a stand, and insist that for all children there shall be insured the blessings of childhood. The first step in this direction lies in making it impossible for them to enter the ranks of the wage-earners as long as their names remain on the roll of the elementary school. _(c) The New Half-Time System._ The proposals for raising the school age and for prohibiting child labour during that period will do much to strengthen the system of supervision. Another year of school discipline; another year of medical inspection and medical treatment; protection during another year from the evil effects of overwork and from the demoralization due to "blind-alley" occupations and premature earning--these reforms will bring us some way on our journey towards the new apprenticeship, but they will not bring us the whole way. There remain the three years which lie between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and include the greater part of the period of adolescence--in some respects the most important period in the development of a human being. It is during these years that character begins to take its permanent set; it is during these years that, with the coming of puberty, there is most risk of ugly and dangerous outbreaks; it is during these years that physical health demands the most careful attention; and it is during these years that, with the exception of the failures of civilization--the physically, the mentally, and the morally defective--there is no real supervision or, under existing conditions, any hope of securing it. To allow irresponsible freedom during these years is to court disaster; to give it suddenly and in an unqualified degree, as it is given now when the school career is brought to an abrupt end, is to follow a course condemned by all educationalists. No parent, even the most thoughtless, among the well-to-do classes would think of treating his son in this fashion. His whole scheme of education is founded on the principle of a slow and gradual loosening of the bonds of discipline. The close supervision of the private school is replaced by the larger liberty of the public school, which in turn opens into the greater but still restricted freedom of the University. Freedom must come slowly. We want a bridge between the elementary school of the boy and the full-time workshop of the man. Such a bridge would be created by the establishment of the proposed half-time system. For half the day--or at any rate, for half his time--the lad between the ages of fifteen and eighteen would be compelled to attend a place of education, and only during the remaining half be permitted to undertake employment for wages. The advantages of this proposal are many. First, the influence of the school would be retained for an additional three years, and under the half-time system the freedom of the youthful wage-earner would find a suitable limitation in the half-time control of the school. Secondly, we should have the opportunity of another three years' medical inspection and medical treatment. With supervision over the health of the community continued until the age of eighteen we might fairly anticipate a rapid improvement in the physical efficiency of the worker. In particular, we should be able to detect, in a way now impossible, the effects of various forms of employment on those engaged in them. Inspection under the provisions of the Factory and Workshops Act, as has been shown, is too limited in character to do more than pick out a few young persons obviously unfit for the occupation they have selected; but, with the education authority responsible for the health of juveniles, and using to the full extent its powers to provide preventive measures or to veto in the case of certain individuals certain forms of work, we should have gone far to secure that no one should enter on or remain in a trade for which he was physically unfit. Thirdly, as already shown, a half-time system is the only really effective way of limiting the hours of juvenile employment. If the lad is compelled to be elsewhere than in the workshop for half his time, we have an automatic check on excessive work. Other advantages of this system will appear when we come to deal with questions of training and the provision of an opening. The half-time system should be made compulsory throughout the country; it ought not to be left to local option to decide. The local rating authority naturally wishes to encourage the establishment of workshops and factories within its area, and would be unwilling to adopt Acts which might prove a deterrent. It would be a most unsatisfactory state of affairs for employers to evade the spirit of the law by moving into districts where the law was not enforced. It is a little unfortunate that the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, which allows a limited amount of compulsion in connection with continuation schools, is founded on the principle of local option. The recommendations of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education are vitiated in a similar way. Local option can never be really successful. It will elect to act only where there is least opposition from employers--in other words, where action is least necessary; and it will do nothing where boy labour is most exploited and regulation most urgently required. In one direction alone can local option be allowed with advantage. It may be permitted to decide on the precise kind or kinds of half-time to be enforced within their area. Boys might attend school on the half-day system or on the alternate day system. Or, again, they might spend three days in the workshop and three days in the school, or under certain circumstances devote six months of the year to the workshop and the remaining six months to the school. It would be desirable to allow the local authority considerable liberty in their methods of adapting the half-time system to the special needs of the trades of the district, provided always that a true half-time system was established. There is no serious difficulty in the way of compelling attendance at the half-time school. It would be enforced just as attendance at the elementary school is enforced, and by the same officers. Further, no employer would be permitted to employ a boy between the ages of fifteen and eighteen who could not show satisfactory evidence of attendance at school. Or if, as may be the case, it is found desirable to permit boys to be engaged only by means of the Labour Exchange, the Labour Exchange itself would prove a most effective way of enforcing attendance. There is nothing new or impracticable in the principle of the proposal. Compulsory attendance at continuation schools can be required in Scotland. Such attendance is compulsory in parts of Germany and Switzerland.[178] It is exacted by certain employers in this country from their apprentices. Further, the fact that for many years the half-time system has been in use in the case of many important industries, and tens of thousands of children so employed, demonstrates clearly enough that there is nothing impossible in the application of a half-time system to juveniles. It would, no doubt, cause some inconvenience, and some employers might dispense with the services of juveniles; but no more difficulty would arise than has arisen when any fresh regulations have been imposed; and we should see, as we have always done in the past, the employers who predicted inevitable ruin before the event, as soon as the proposal became law adapt themselves, with that placid content and admirable success which they have always displayed after the event, to the new condition of affairs. _(d) The Parents' Point of View._ The three proposals just made have one characteristic in common-they all directly set a limit to the employment of children and young persons. It is possible that some readers may regard them from another point of view, and say that in limiting employment they seriously diminish the income of the family. Will the poor parent, whose lot is pitiable enough as things are, be able to stand the loss? In considering this, the parents' point of view, we must guard against being caught in the noose of a vicious circle. We must not perpetuate an evil in order to mitigate its present effects. Many, probably most, of those parents whose income hovers about the margin of possible existence are in this pitiful position because their own childhood has been neglected. As children, they have been overworked, and they are now physically unfit for regular employment; as children, they have been allowed to go uncontrolled and untrained, and now, as men, they are paying a heavy tax for the earnings of their boyhood. They receive little because they are worth little; their work is precarious because the sphere of their usefulness is small. We must not allow their children to live as _they_ lived when children, and so pass on to the next generation the taint of inefficiency and its consequent wages of starvation merely because to-day wages of starvation need to be supplemented. We can never hope to overtake and pass an evil if we always cast it in front of us. The one clear message to the reformer of to-day is that he should look to prevention, and not merely to cure; and the one clear hope of a nation's future lies in insuring to every youth, as he crosses the threshold of manhood, the fullest realization of that development whose promise was his at birth. It might be well worth while for a country lavishly to endow poverty for a generation in order to free itself once for all from its fatal infection. But there is no reason to believe that we must resort to this drastic measure because there is no reason to believe that the proposed restrictions of child labour will in any way injure the parents. Take first the earnings of school-children. There is very little reason to believe that they often make any effective contribution to the income of the home. They are irregular, they are small, and very frequently the boys retain them as pocket-money. Where they are large, as in the case of children employed during the pantomime season, they often form a convenient excuse for the parent to go idle for a time. The only large exception to this rule is the case of the widow. Here, indeed, the earnings do usually find their way home, materially increase the miserable pittance allowed by the guardians, and must be regarded as a tax levied on children in aid of the ratepayer. Humanity and a reformed Poor Law may be trusted to remove the tax. Take next the raising of the school age to fifteen. The age has not been raised for more than ten years, and when it was last raised it was raised without friction and without complaint on the part of the parent. We might, perhaps, have expected that the percentage of attendance would have decreased because of the difficulty of enforcing it on the children of poverty-stricken parents. This has not been the experience; indeed, the last decade has been remarkable for the rapid rise in that percentage. There is not a scrap of evidence to show that the last raising of the school age caused even temporary suffering on a large scale. Never was a large reform carried out with greater ease. There is no reason to believe that, if we raised the age again, that favourable experience would not be repeated. We come now to the new half-time system. The earnings of boys between fifteen and eighteen years are considerable. To diminish them by one-half, it is urged, would be to adopt a course which would prove intolerable to the poor parent. Now, in the first place, though it is true that the lads could be employed for only half the time they were before, it by no means follows that they would only receive half the present money. We have already seen that the demand for boys far outruns the supply. The half-time system would halve the supply, and, though some employers might cease to use boys, the demand would certainly not be halved. The demand for boys would then considerably exceed the demand of to-day. The rate of wages would, in consequence, rise. The boys would no doubt earn less, but certainly more than half of what they now earn. In the next place, it must be remembered that the parent rarely receives the whole of the boy's earnings even during the first year, and each year the proportion of wages that comes to the home grows less. At the age of seventeen it is seldom that more than half finds its way into the family exchequer. The boy keeps the rest, and, as we have already seen, the large amount of money he has to spend on himself is by no means an unmixed benefit. The parent cannot usually get from the boy much more than is required to keep him; indeed, he is afraid to enlarge his demand lest the boy, who is economically independent, should leave home. But under the half-time system, though he may earn his keep, he will rarely earn enough to support himself outside the family. In addition, the fact of being compelled to attend school will be a healthy reminder that he is not yet a man, and so check the growing spirit of independence. Home influence and parental authority will thus be strengthened, and the father will be able to exact a much larger share than before of the boy's earnings. Now, if the earnings are not diminished by so much as half, and if at the same time the parent obtain an increased proportion, it is by no means clear that the home affairs will suffer. Among the poorest families, where home discipline ceases altogether when the boy leaves school, it is quite possible that the financial position of the parent will be improved rather than worsened. But we have not yet taken into account what is, perhaps, the most important consideration. The three proposals under discussion will undoubtedly largely diminish the amount of work performed by boys, but will not diminish the amount of work that requires to be done. Somebody must take up the tasks formerly allotted to boys, and, if boys fail, men must fill their place. Now, the work was given to boys because, to give it to men would cost more. In future, the work will be given to men, and more money will be paid for it than before. In other words, the increased earnings of men will more than make up for the diminished earnings of boys, and much more than compensate for the loss, because, as we have seen, only a portion of the boys' earnings ever reach the home. Or we may look at the question from another point of view, and say that the decreased use of boys will mean an increase in the demand for men, and, consequently, an increase in the wages of men. The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission arrives at these three proposals by starting from the opposite point of view, and advocates their adoption not primarily for the good of the boys, but for the good of their parents. In the task of decasualizing labour, they are met with the difficulty that a considerable number of men will in the process be thrown out of employment altogether. Work must be found for them, and the easiest and the best way to find it is shown to be the withdrawal from the labour market of persons, like children, who ought not either to be employed at all or to be employed for such long hours as at present. Hence arises the suggestion of a rigid limitation of boy labour. It is much in favour of these proposals that they are the outcome of an elaborate analysis which in the one case begins with the man, and in the other with the child. We may take it, then, as clear that, from the parents' point of view, there is nothing to hinder us in raising the school age to fifteen, prohibiting the employment of school-children, and instituting a new half-time system. II. TRAINING. The second essential in an apprenticeship system worthy the name is the provision of adequate training. The word "training" is used in its broadest sense to include preparation, not only for the life of the workman, but for the life of the citizen as well. In the preceding chapter we have seen that the scholarship schemes, connecting the elementary school with the University, and rapidly increasing throughout the country, are offering opportunities of training for those likely to rise high in the professional, the commercial, and the industrial world. It is probable that sufficient attention has not as yet been given to the supply of the most advanced kind of technological instruction, but the fault is being remedied, and the defect is due rather to lack of knowledge than to lack of will; and it is the instruction, and not the facilities of access to it, that is wanting. What we are concerned with in this chapter is the training of those destined to fill the posts of foremen and managers of small undertakings, of the skilled workmen of the future, and of those never likely to rise above the ranks of unskilled labour. We are also concerned with those who will occupy corresponding positions in the commercial world. It has already been shown that the training of these persons is one-sided and inadequate, and, in the case of the majority, can hardly be said to exist at all. On the other hand, we have seen good reason to believe that the technical school can be, if not a complete substitute for the workshop, at any rate a necessary and fitting supplement. The day has gone by when it was necessary to argue at length the uses of technical instruction. Employers in this country, as they have long since done on the Continent and in America, recognize the advantages. Yearly, whether by compelling the lads in their service to attend the technical school, or forming themselves into committees to advise as to the most desirable methods of teaching, they are displaying a keener interest in the question, and a fuller faith in the possibilities of practical training given outside the walls of the workshop. The defect of existing arrangements has been shown to lie in their limitation. For the majority technical instruction has been unsatisfactory or impossible of access. We must show in the present chapter how all may enjoy the advantages of training; but before doing so we must consider, a little more closely than has been done before, the kind of training required by the petty officers and the rank and file of the industrial army. In much of the preceding discussion it has been assumed that what the man wants is an all-round training. This is undoubtedly a fact, but by an all-round training is not necessarily meant a training that will produce a craftsman of the old school, equally capable of turning his hand successfully to any of the operations with which his trade is concerned. Except in rural districts, in a few of the artistic crafts, and in certain branches of repairing work, a man of this kind is not generally required. It seems probable that the industrial tendencies of to-day are making decreasing demands for purely manual skill. The Report of the Poor Law Commission contains a valuable discussion of the question, and sums up the conclusions in the following passage: "The general trend of our answers was that the 'skill' of modern industry is scarcely comparable with the skill of labour in the past. One might say that, within twenty years, with the universal employment of machinery and the excessive subdivision and specialization of its use, the character of the productive process has quite changed. There is a growing demand for higher intelligence on the part of the few; a large and probably growing demand for specialized machine-minders; and, unhappily, a relegation of those who cannot adapt themselves to a quite inferior, if not worse paid, position. If, then, the 'skill' which we might have looked for and desired is what might be called 'craftsmanship,' we must conclude that the demand for skill is, on the whole, declining. The all-round ability which used honourably to mark out the mechanic is no longer in demand, so much as the work of the highly specialized machine-minder." [179] But if there seems a less demand for all-round skill, there appears to be an increasing demand for trained intelligence. "In the greater industries employing adult male labour, 'machinery' does not in the least resemble the long lines of revolving spindles one sees in a cotton mill. In the machine tools of an engineering shop there is comparatively little of such automatism, and, even where the machines are automatic, single men are put in charge of a number of machines, and the setting and supervising of these is work probably demanding a higher level of intelligence than ever before. 'I should say the skilled men require even more skill than they did,' says Mr. Barnes, 'because of the finer work and more intricate machinery.... Side by side with automatic machines there has come about more intricate and highly complicated machinery.' 'The semi-skilled of to-day,' says Sir Benjamin C. Brown, 'is in many cases as good as the skilled was a quarter of a century ago.'" [180] Or, as another witness puts it: "The tendency of machinery is always to cause a substitution of intelligence for dexterity, the person who was in effect a machine by reason of his dexterity giving place to one who could understand a direct and mechanical process." [181] There seems also good reason to believe that the demand for intelligence outruns the supply. In the workmen, usually classed as skilled, the employer requires intelligence, but he wants something more; he wants trustworthiness, and frequently a certain highly specialized manual dexterity. The training of the workshop can supply the third of these qualifications; it cannot, however, supply the other two, which are in the main the products of education. But between the second and the third there is a certain antagonism. Monotony in the workshop does not cultivate intelligence; it is actively hostile to such growth. Unless there is a well-trained intelligence to begin with, the continual performance of a single task will reduce the man to the level of a mere machine. Now, the employer does not want a mere machine; if he did, in these days of inventive genius, he would soon discover something more reliable in the way of machines than flesh and blood. He wants a machine with intelligence; he must therefore have a man. But the intelligence must rest on a broad basis of education, or the machine element will prove too much for it. This is the reason of the statement, found so often in evidence on technical training given by enlightened employers, that what is mostly required is a good general education. Now we are coming to see that a general education does not imply a certain specific syllabus of instruction; it may be the result of the most varied kinds of instruction. We have ceased to take the narrow view that it consists only in book-learning and aptness with the pen. We have recognized that manual training may rightly play a large part in any system of education, and for the full development of certain types of mind is absolutely indispensable. Consequently, though the employer does not need the man of all-round skill, there is no reason why the workman should not acquire a general use of the tools employed in his trade. Whatever it may be to the employer, the possession of a certain amount of all-round skill is not a matter of indifference to the workman. If he can boast skill in a single operation alone, the bridge that lifts him above the gulf of unskilled labour is very fragile. A change in demand or a new invention may any day render his specialized skill useless, and precipitate him into that gulf whence is no escape. But this is not the case with the man who has received an all-round training. Thrust out of one branch of the trade, he can, if intelligent, comparatively easily find an opening in another. The all-round skill, though not required in the workshop, is necessary to the man if his position in the skilled labour market is to be secure. In a sense, the measure of his all-round skill is the measure of the stability of his industrial status. Further, the possession of all-round skill is a necessary condition of the possession of intelligence. It gives a man a clearer insight into the significance of his trade, and robs monotony of some part of its soul-killing power. Pure specialization is hostile to intelligence; the man who can only do one thing cannot do that one thing well. Finally, from these skilled workmen must be chosen the foremen and small managers, and these people must possess the wider knowledge and a more varied skill. To a large extent at the present time they are not recruited from the large workshop; they come from the country district, where this all-round skill can still be acquired. But, as we have seen, this supply is not inexhaustible, and there are signs that the methods of the industrial revolution are invading the village. Unless, therefore, we are prepared to see a scarcity of trained foremen in the future, we must to-day aim at producing the skilled workman, who is at once intelligent and possesses a general knowledge of the tools of his trade. "We do not to-day," says Sir Christopher Furness, "want men who are all-round at building marine engines; we do need men who are all-round mechanical engineers--men who can apply the principles of their craft to any form of machinery that may be called for. That is a class of training which cannot be achieved by any system of apprenticeship, and is essentially a matter which the governing authority must handle if this country is to maintain its position in the industrial world." [182] "The characteristics," says the Consultative Committee, "that employers most value and most deplore the lack of would appear to be general handiness (which is really to a large extent a mental quality), adaptability and alertness, habits of observation--and the power to express the thing observed--accuracy, resourcefulness, the ability to grapple with new unfamiliar conditions, the habit of applying one's mind and one's knowledge to what one has to do." [183] It is clear that within the narrow sphere of the workshop an all-round training of this kind can never be secured. We must look, then, to the elementary schools supplemented by the technical institute, to insure to the workmen an all-round intelligence and a general knowledge of the use of tools employed in his trade. For commerce, intelligence and an all-round training are no less necessary. "You produce a better clerk," it has been said, "if the boy takes an industrial rather than a commercial course." There is therefore no conflict of interest between what the employer wants and what the workman wants. The employer wants intelligence, and cannot get it from a workman who does not possess a general knowledge of his trade. The workman wants an all-round knowledge of his trade because without it his position as a skilled artisan is precarious and at the mercy of every new invention or change in fashion. We have hitherto spoken as if all were skilled workmen, and as though the unskilled labourer did not exist. Now, there are at the present time huge armies of men that can by no stretch of imagination be regarded as skilled at anything; but it is by no means clear that it is desirable for this huge army to continue as such. It is generally assumed that the performance of so-called unskilled work requires no training and makes no demand on skill. This is a grave mistake; let anyone, without previous experience, try a day's digging in his garden, and he will realize the fact. But it is not merely a question of manual training and practice; the unskilled labourer, to be efficient, needs intelligence. Skilled and unskilled work call for, in this age of machines, more intelligence than was wanted in the past. Almost everyone nowadays uses a machine of some sort; and there can be no question that in such use there is a serious lack of intelligence. The unskilled labour engaged with machinery is almost always inadequate and unsatisfactory. The agricultural labourer, for example, has to manage machines whose complex mechanism is far beyond his ill-trained intelligence to comprehend. The same may be said of the general run of machine-minders. Breakdowns, stoppages, and accidents are the costly consequences of their defect. Of all forms of labour, the unskilled labour of to-day is probably the most expensive to the employer. The labourer is worth, as a rule, little more than he receives, and, not infrequently, a good deal less. The preservation of stupidity is among the most foolish and most expensive of modern luxuries. What the employer wants is the intelligent unskilled labourer, and such a class must be the product, not of the workshop, but of the schools. The training to be provided would be very similar to that required by the skilled workman. From the point of view of the employer, we require more intelligence in the unskilled labourer; from the point of view of the community and the man himself, the need is even more urgent. We must not forget the man in the labourer. He is not for all his time an unskilled labourer; he is the autocrat of the home, the father of a family, and, as a voter, one of the rulers of the Empire. These last functions belong essentially to the highly skilled class of work. Uneducated parents are a danger to their children, and so to the future prosperity of the nation; the illiterate voters a peril to the safety of the State. Finally, the man himself, with a wider outlook on the world, and with a life richer in interests, and so with more opportunities of healthy enjoyment, would be a happier and a better citizen. The shame of modern civilization and the abiding menace to its security lie in the miserable horde of stupid, unintelligent, and uninterested labourers who are good for nothing except the exercise of mere brute strength and indulgence in mere animal pleasures, and not very much good even for this. Looking, then, at the problem of the training of skilled and unskilled workmen alike, whether from the point of view of man or master, we see that the great essential is the possession of a large measure of intelligence. With the continual changes in the methods of industry, men must be capable of changing too; they must be capable of readily adapting themselves to new conditions, and not become petrified in a rigid and inflexible mould. Intelligence, properly developed, means adaptability. If we could secure this, the problem of dealing with the unemployed would be comparatively easy of solution. The inextricable tangle of to-day lies in the hopeless task of securing employment at a living wage for men who are not worth it. Let each man be made good for something, and it will not be beyond the range of wise statesmanship to find that good thing for him to do. How is the necessary training to be provided? The answer to this question need not detain us long. We have already seen that elementary and technical education can solve the problem in the case of those who have been able to avail themselves of the opportunities offered. The only outstanding difficulty was the difficulty of insuring ready access to all; and this has been surmounted in the proposals of the last section. The raising of the school age to fifteen, the prohibition of the employment of school-children, and the new half-time system, give facilities for education never before enjoyed. The boy will remain at the elementary school till the age of fifteen, and there will be no employment outside school hours to undermine his health and render him unfit to profit by the instruction given. We have already noticed the transformation of the elementary school now going on, and the multiplication of various types of school. The process will continue, and the results following the raising of the school age will be increased in value. The school will, in the first place, be regarded as a sorting-house, in which the different kinds of ability are discovered and classified. It will next be an institution where proper provision is made to insure that each kind of ability shall have the fullest opportunity of development. The only meaning of a general education is the discovery and the cultivation of the special interests of the individual. When the boy leaves the elementary school his interests and ability will guide him to search for employment where they will have most scope. How this opening is to be found is a question that will be discussed in the next section. Let us take the boy who enters a skilled trade--say a branch of the woodwork industry--and follow his fortunes. He can be employed in the workshop for only half the day; during the remainder he must attend the half-time school. We have hitherto looked at this half-time school as a means of exercising supervision over conduct and physical development; we must now regard it as a place of technical instruction. There must, therefore, be various types of schools corresponding to the different groups of trades. The boy who enters a woodwork trade will attend a school designed to meet the needs of that industry. At his place of employment he will no doubt be kept to a narrow range of operations, and in their performance will acquire that dexterity which only workshop experience can give. In the half-time school he will receive the training necessary to make of him an intelligent and all-round workman. Here his ordinary education will be continued; instruction in drawing, in mensuration, and in science--all specially adapted to the requirements of his trade--will be provided; and, lastly, in the school workshop he will acquire skill in the general use of the woodwork tools. If it is urged that it will be difficult to find room in the curriculum for such varied training, it must be remembered that the subjects of instruction will all have formed part of the curriculum of the elementary school, with a bias in the direction of the woodwork industry. The boy will remain at the school for three years, and at the age of eighteen we shall have at least laid the foundation of those qualities required by the employer for success in the workshop and by the workman for success in life. Let us take now the case of a boy who, on leaving school, finds employment in some occupation which does not lead to a skilled trade, and provides no educational training. Let us suppose he becomes an errand-boy. We cannot prevent lads of fifteen and upwards from being employed in such occupations, however undesirable, but we can at least guard against the more serious evils which are now the result. The boy will only be employed for half the day; he also must attend a half-time school. At this school he will continue his ordinary education; manual training will be provided to make him clever with his hands, while special attention will be devoted to his physical development. He will not, of course, be taught a definite trade, but will learn the general use of tools. How far, then, schools may be specialized, into different types it must be left for the future to decide. We have hitherto never seriously considered the training of the unskilled labourer, and much pioneer work of an experimental character remains to be done. At the age of eighteen the lad, like his brother in the skilled trade, will be a valuable asset in the labour market. We shall have created what we have not got now, and what we much need--a race of intelligent and adaptable unskilled labourers. There are certain other advantages which the half-time system can claim. First, the training of the workshop and the training of the school are carried on at the same time; instruction and practice go hand in hand. Secondly, only those boys will in general be taught a skilled trade in the schools who have already entered a skilled trade. This removes an objection often felt by Trade Unionists to what they term a multiplication through the schools of half-skilled workmen. Thirdly, we have in it a system of universal apprenticeship. All boys will have been learners, and worked for the same period at low wages. There will, therefore, be no obstacle of a privileged class to make difficulties in the way of those entering a trade who have not passed through the normal course of preparation for it. Fitness for the work will be, as it should be, the sole qualification. Looked at in a general way, the half-time schools will be called on to play a double part. They must train the man in the interests of the community and in the interests of the trade. From the employer's standpoint these schools must be essentially places of practical instruction in close touch with the workshop. Already, under existing conditions, employers and representatives of the trade have been found willing to form advisory committees to visit the schools, criticize the teaching, and make suggestions for increasing its value. The principle must be extended; only in this way shall we get the expert inspection necessary to secure real efficiency. On the other hand, the education authority, the representative of the community, will manage the schools, and make them training-grounds of true citizenship. Under this double system of control, wisely administered, we shall not lose the man in the worker or the worker in the man; the interests of the individual and the interests of the employer will alike be safeguarded. In a real sense, and in fashion adapted to modern requirements, we shall have brought back the best traditions of the old apprenticeship system in which the gild, standing at once for the community and for the trade, watched over the training of the youth of the nation. III. THE PROVISION OF AN OPENING. The third and last essential of an apprenticeship system is the provision of an opening. In the last chapter we have seen the aimless drift of boys as they leave school into "blind-alley" occupations; we have watched them rapidly slough off the effects of the school training; and we have found them a few years later left stranded without prospects; and we have been driven to confess that this process of waste and demoralization is not a passing phase, but an integral part of the industrial development in its present unregulated condition. Boys, parents, employers are alike impotent to cure the evil; once again we are compelled to look to the State for help. The State must guide the choice of boys as they leave school. It must assist them during the period of adolescence to find better forms of employment, or at any rate to retain and increase the value of the school training, and it must bridge the gulf that now separates the work of the lad from the work of the man. Already the necessary organization is in process of formation. We have seen how the establishment of Labour Exchanges for adults has, quite unexpectedly, led to the creation of special departments for juveniles. It is singularly fortunate that this accident has led naturally to the Board of Trade being regarded as the proper authority to carry out the work. It is, however, a fact that Parliament has recently passed an Act which gives power to education authorities to spend money for this purpose. It may do no harm for education authorities to be able, without fear of surcharge, to spend money in co-operating with the Board of Trade, but it would be disastrous if they came to think themselves the responsible authority for the undertaking. One of the chief objects of the machinery is the bridging of the gulf between youth and manhood. We should not enter on this difficult task with much hope of success if we perpetuated the distinction by making the Board of Trade responsible for the work of adults, and the education authorities responsible for the work of juveniles. Further, we are coming to see that questions of employment are questions which must be dealt with by a national, and not a local, body. Only a national authority, with its knowledge of the conditions over the whole country, could be in a position to estimate the prospects in any trade, or to decide as to the right proportions of boys to men. Next, the unit of area for employment bears no relation to the unit of area for educational purposes. Towns are separated from the adjoining districts. The unit of area for London employment, for example, is not the administrative county, but Greater London, and in Greater London there are more than thirty education authorities. If these are not in agreement--and when are thirty local authorities in agreement?--no system of regulation would be effective. If, let us say, the London County Council, in order to discourage the employment of van-boys, declined to supply them through their Exchange, their action would be without result if the adjoining districts did not follow suit, while it is impossible to conceive a more chaotic organization than one which would allow employers in the City to be canvassed for openings by thirty independent bodies. For these and many other reasons the Board of Trade must be regarded as the dominant authority for the organization of the Juvenile Labour Exchange. On the other hand, there must be close co-operation between the Labour Exchange and the education authority. The Board of Trade has recognized the importance of this co-operation, and is making full provision for it in the machinery it is setting up. It is forming local advisory committees in connection with each Labour Exchange, and is making them practically responsible for the control of the juvenile department. On this committee are appointed persons nominated by the Board of Trade on the one hand, and on the other by the education authority. The committee thus represents the two branches of the organization. These committees are only just coming into existence, and it is too early to judge of their success. The problem is one of immediate practical importance; it is, therefore, desirable to consider a little in detail the principles that should guide them in their work. For the same reason it is desirable to ignore for the moment the proposals made in the preceding sections, to take things as they are, and to show what can be achieved under existing conditions. The work of the Juvenile Labour Exchange divides itself naturally into a number of different parts or stages. The first stage is concerned with the boy while still at school. Some months before he is likely to leave he must be seen with the view of inducing him to make use of the Labour Exchange to obtain employment. A form will be filled up showing his position in the school, and any particular ability he may have displayed, recording the state of his health as revealed by medical inspection, and indicating any particular desire as to occupation expressed by himself or his parents. The interview and the filling up of the form will be undertaken by someone connected with the school organization--a teacher, or probably a volunteer. The institution of care committees for each school in connection with medical treatment, and the supply of meals to necessitous children, has enlisted the services of a large number of volunteers who would probably be found willing to make themselves responsible for this part of the work. The form, when filled up, will be sent to the Labour Exchange, where, if thought desirable, arrangements will be made by certain members of the advisory committee, in company with the secretary, to interview the boy and his parents. The next part of the work is connected with the finding of vacancies. Either the employer will notify the Exchange of forthcoming vacancies or vacancies be obtained by canvassing employers. In either case it will be necessary to ascertain exactly the nature and the prospects of the employment. For this work expert knowledge is essential, and it will devolve almost entirely on the secretary or other paid officers of the Exchange. Having found boys wanting employers and employers wanting boys, it will be the duty of the advisory committee to bring the two parties together. The second stage in the work begins as soon as the boy has obtained employment. It will be desirable, if possible, to secure periodic reports, either by interview or by letter, from the employer, who in the majority of cases would no doubt be willing to give the information asked for. We should then know how the boy is getting on at his work from the employer's point of view. We must also know how he is getting on from his own point of view. For this and other reasons it is absolutely essential to keep in touch with the boy in his home. A tactful person, paying periodic visits to the home and seeing the boy, would soon learn what prospects the employment offered, what progress he was making, and would be able to advise him as to what evening classes he should attend, and to help him in those many ways in which a boy can be helped when first he goes out to work. In this way a large amount of valuable though unostentatious supervision would be kept over the boy. The persons most capable of doing this home-visiting are volunteers. In many cases the member of the school case committee who originally interviewed the boy would undertake the duty of supervision; in other cases we might get the assistance of the manager of a boys' club or other similar institution of which the boy was a member; but in all cases the advisory committee must make provision for supervision in the home. The reports from the home and the reports from the employer would be filed at the Exchange. They will enable the advisory committee to follow the career of every boy placed out, and at the same time gradually furnish a mass of detailed information respecting the employers of the district. To what kind of employers or to what classes of employment shall we send boys? To all who ask, or to only selected number? Experience will no doubt show that there are certain employers of such a kind that under no circumstances ought we to trust them with boys. The number of such will be very small, and presents no serious difficulty. We should not supply boys until we had a guarantee that the conditions offered were improved. The question of the class of employment requires more careful consideration. There is a danger into which the advisory committee may easily fall. Recognizing the evils of "blind-alley" occupations, they may be inclined to refuse to send boys to such forms of employment, and only recommend boys to places where there is a prospect of learning a trade. Such a policy would be a fatal one. We should not thereby discourage "blind-alley" occupations, employers would get their boys as they have got them in the past, and the only result would be that we should lose all control over the boys, be unable to move them later to better situations, and so leave the problem not only unsolved, but, for want of knowledge, without possibility of solution. We ought not in the Labour Exchange to bar out any form of employment unless we are prepared to make that employment illegal by Act of Parliament. Street-selling might fairly come within that category, and no doubt other forms of employment will later be brought within the same class. But to bring them within that class, accurate information as to evil effects must be collected in order to stiffen public opinion, and if we wash our hands from the outset of all responsibility for such trades, we shall never have that accurate information. The first step in the way of regulation is that accurate knowledge which a detailed supervision of the boys placed out alone can give. There will, however, always be a temptation for the Exchange to confine its activities to the skilled trades, and let the others go. In Munich, for example, we find the education authority devoting much attention to the apprenticeship section of the work, while "unskilled labourers appear to be left to the Labour Exchange, and they receive, therefore, no advice in selecting their work." [184] The same tendency is seen in this country among the various voluntary associations for obtaining employment for boys. They have concentrated almost exclusively on the skilled trades. The results, expressed in figures or percentages, are pleasing, but altogether misleading. They ignore the large residuum which drifts without advice and without supervision into the less favourable openings, and in matters of social reform it is the large residuums that count. It is always nice to get a nice place for a nice boy that we know; but if we do no more, there is no reason to believe that our action is of any advantage to the community at large. The nice places always are filled, and not infrequently the only effect of interference is that A., who is known, gets the job instead of the unknown B. The Labour Exchange must resist this temptation. It should aim at inducing all employers to obtain their supply of boy labour from the Exchange; its influence will then be at a maximum. The mere establishment of a Juvenile Labour Exchange cannot create favourable openings; it cannot in itself alter the direction of the demand for labour. It might, therefore, be asked what is the use of an exchange for boys who can already find employment of a sort more easily than is good for them? First, there are the advantages of supervision and the opportunities for friendly advice and sympathy; secondly, there is the task of collecting accurate information which will lead up to legislative action, and the system of regulation which is ultimately inevitable; thirdly, while not closing the door to the "blind-alley" occupations, there is no need for the advisory committees to press them on the parent. They would, on the contrary, point out the evils, and suggest either that the opening should be refused or accepted only as a temporary expedient. The object should be to induce the parent to refuse situations which did not afford any prospects of learning or allow time off to attend a continuation school. The "blind-alley" occupations would disappear to-morrow if parents stubbornly refused to permit their boys to fill them. For the moment, moreover, the advantage is all on the side of the parent, as the demand for boys outruns the supply. But neither individual parent nor individual boy can take advantage of this fact; they have not the knowledge or the opportunity to make their voices effectively heard. There is no trade union of parents or trade union of boys, or, indeed, can be, in the "blind-alley" occupations. Collective bargaining must be done for them, and the advisory committee must be its instrument. They must first create the opinion among the parents, and then give effect to it through the Exchange. If employers found that, so long as they refused to offer better conditions, they were either unable to get boys or only got the least satisfactory boys, there would be a strong inducement for them to change their ways. Finally, there is the reverse of this system of educating the parents--the educating of the employers. There is already growing up a feeling among employers that if they cannot give the boys employment as men they might at least offer them opportunities of continuing their education. At a conference held in 1910 between agencies interested in the welfare of boys and employers of labour, under the presidency of the Chairman of the London Chamber of Commerce, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: "That the London Chamber of Commerce be asked to consider the advisability of establishing a register of its members who would be willing to engage or apprentice boys with a view to the co-operation of the Chamber with the various institutions interested in the welfare of boys." "That employers of labour be recommended, by reducing the present hours of labour or otherwise, to give such facilities as may be possible consistently with the requirements of their business to enable boys and youths to obtain technical instruction." Judicious canvassing among a certain class of employers may, therefore, lead to most beneficent results. It should also be borne in mind that in London and other towns into which there is a large immigration of adult labour, there is room for new openings leading on to skilled trades. While much can unquestionably be done under existing conditions to improve and supervise the conditions of boy labour by means of the Juvenile Labour Exchange, it is certain that sooner or later there will be need of regulation by Act of Parliament. Probably the best course would be to give the Board of Trade power in the case of certain occupations to limit at their discretion the employment of boys to boys engaged at the Exchange. If in addition the proposals made in the previous sections were to become law, we should be in a very strong position to launch the youth on the ocean of manhood with all the prospects of a successful voyage. IV. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. At the end of a long and rather complex discussion it is desirable to attempt some general summary of what has already been achieved and of the proposals necessary for the creation of a true apprenticeship system. It will make for clearness if we take a boy and follow his career through its various stages. At the age of five or thereabouts he will enter the elementary school. It is to be hoped that the reorganization of the public health services and the more careful attention devoted to the period of infancy may send him to the school free from those physical defects so common now, and healthy within the limits of nature. Here he will begin his education. Improved methods of teaching will make for increased intelligence and the growth of numerous interests, while physical exercises, medical inspection and treatment, added to the supply of wholesome food to the necessitous, will promote the healthy development of his body. At the age of eleven comes an important epoch in his career. It is then that, if found suitable, he will, with the help of a scholarship, be sent to the secondary school, and thence be led along a broad road to the University. Failing the winning of a scholarship, he will, if he display any special aptitude, be drafted off to a central school with a commercial or industrial bias. Failing, again, the proof of any exceptional ability, he will remain in the ordinary school. In either case he will continue at school till the age of fifteen, will be forbidden to work for wages outside school hours, and will throughout be periodically examined by the school doctor. With the approach to the age of fifteen begins the second important epoch in his career. Some time before the day of leaving school arrives he will have been interviewed by a friendly volunteer, who, with the help of the school record and medical register, will be able to decide for what form of employment he is best suited. In the meanwhile the Labour Exchange will have found for him a suitable opening, or, failing this, a temporary situation pending a more satisfactory and permanent position. If he gain a place in a skilled trade, the half-time school, which he must attend for the next three years, will add to the training of the workshop that all-round training, whose result is intelligence and adaptability, required to make of him an efficient artisan. If he is destined to fill the ranks of unskilled labour, he will likewise attend a half-time school carefully designed to enable him to play a useful part in the world of life. In both cases he will remain for half-time under the supervision of the education authority; in both cases periodic medical inspection will watch over his physical development, and if it show him physically unfit for the work he has undertaken, he will be found employment more suitable to his strength; in both cases the advisory committee of the Labour Exchange will receive reports from the home, the school, and the employer, and these reports will enable them to discover whether the occupation and the training are well adapted to foster his natural abilities. For three years, while at work, he will also remain at school; for three years his training will be guided by employers who will see to it that it turns out the efficient workman, and by the education authority, which, acting in the interests of the community, will see that it makes for the efficient citizen. In process of time, with the gradual accumulation of experience, and with the knowledge of the Board of Trade behind it, the advisory committee will be able to adjust the supply of boys in course of special training to meet the demands of special trades, and even if some unforeseen transformation of industry upsets the calculations, there should be no insurmountable difficulty of disposing of lads at the age of eighteen who are at once well conducted, physically fit, and intelligent. We come back to the position from which we started in the introduction--the need of securing for the youth of the country adequate supervision up to the age of at least eighteen, appropriate training during that period, and at its conclusion the provision of an opening in some occupation for which special preparation has been given. We have seen that for at any rate a large section of the people these conditions were satisfied during the best days of the gilds, and that they were satisfied in direct proportion to the extent to which the gilds stood for the common interests. With the decay and disappearance of the gilds the training of the youth became a matter of individual bargaining between parent and employer. No authority, standing for the common good, superintended the process. Apprenticeship might be enforced; its efficiency could not be guaranteed. Further, the existence of apprenticeship tended to create a privileged class who resented the intrusion of those who entered a trade by other means. With the coming of the industrial revolution, training itself became more difficult. The large workshop and the division of labour were unfavourable to apprenticeship. Employers wanted to use boys, and not to train them. Rapid progress of invention continually discounted the value of acquired manual skill, and parents could not see at the conclusion of the apprenticeship any prospect of a favourable opening in a skilled trade; while the gradual break-up of the system of supervision bred a spirit of independence among boys which rendered them disinclined to bind themselves for a period of years. Finally, competition, with the urgent need of surviving the struggle of to-day, made it hard for employers to prepare for the future by providing for the training of the future workmen. The industrial system gave no guarantee for the efficiency of the next generation of workers. The old apprenticeship system had broken down. But in the period of general disintegration there was slowly developing--at first unconsciously, and later with more clearly directed effort--an organization which made for constructive reform. It was called into being as a last resort, and to save the country from the ruin which was threatened by the exploitation of children. Competition demanded the sacrifice of to-morrow to-day; the State, whose interests belong to all time, was driven to forbid the sacrifice. Competition demanded that children of tender years should labour in the mines and the factories, and under conditions that made all health a mockery; the State insisted on a minimum standard of health and safety for its children. The standard, low at first, has steadily been raised. Thus has grown up the regulation of child labour and the Acts relating to factories and workshops. Competition cared nothing for the education of the children; it wanted to use them up and cast them on the waste-heap. The State, recognizing the dangers of an uneducated people, established by slow degrees a system of universal education. So the struggle between the two has gone on, the State only interfering as a last resort and in despair of other means to stop the evil. Throughout its action has been generally beneficial, but the benefits have been limited because that action has been partial and patchy. Much of the expenditure, for example, on education has been wasted just because the education came to an end too soon. The time had come for a more comprehensive study of the situation that should indicate the faults of the existing system. Such a study has been attempted in the present volume. The task has been comparatively easy, because the evils are generally admitted. What has not hitherto been recognized sufficiently is the fact that these evils are growing, and not in course of removal. The various factors in the process have been examined, and, ignoring the State, they are clearly inadequate, and progressively inadequate, to the task of solving the problem. As a last resort the State remains. If the principles underlying the training of youth are admitted, if out of the various possible forces concerned all with one exception have been proved defective, then we must put our hopes in the one exception. We must enlarge the sphere of influence of the State. How this should be done has been shown in the present chapter. The principles underlying the proposals have all been drawn from experience, and are founded on the apprenticeship system, but applied with modifications suitable to changed conditions. Under the gild system there were three interests concerned and conjoined--the interests of the master, the interest of journeyman and apprentice, and the interest of the community. Since the gilds have gone these interests have become separate and increasingly antagonistic. For the successful training of the youth of the country the claims of these clashing interests must again be brought together and reconciled. Ultimately and in the long-run they are identical; it is only competition, with its dimmed and narrow vision, that made the cleavage. It is hoped that the proposals outlined in this chapter will point the road towards a final peace. Let us, in conclusion, bring them to the test of the three essentials for which a true apprenticeship system must make adequate provision. There must be supervision--supervision of conduct, supervision of health. Under the new apprenticeship system the State will be the ultimate authority for the supervision of conduct. Till the age of fifteen the boy will remain subject to the control of the schools. Long experience has demonstrated the beneficent influence exercised by the teachers over the children even under present conditions, when the school career is brought to an end at the age of thirteen or fourteen. There is, therefore, nothing wild in the expectation that, with compulsory attendance extended to the age of fifteen, we shall receive richer and more lasting fruits. For the next three years, the critical period of a boy's life, with its first experience of the workshop and the sense of independence which comes with earning wages, the supervision of the State will only in part be withdrawn. During these years he will be compelled to attend the half-time school, and so continue under the control of the education authority. Nor is this all. The advisory committee of the Labour Exchange will advise him in the choice of employment, assist him to obtain it, and generally watch over his career. Thus, helped on his journey and surrounded with wise and friendly influences, he will approach the threshold of manhood with such promise of success as good habits and an ordered life may bring. The State, likewise, will be responsible for the supervision of the boy's health. Periodic medical inspection will watch and aid his physical development. We have not yet learned to appreciate the full value of this periodic inspection; it is, however, destined to become the most powerful instrument of reform. The ill-nourished child, the delicate child, the child in the early stages of phthisis, the child of negligent parents, the child from the overcrowded or insanitary home--all these, the future weaklings of the nation, we know them now only when the evil has too often outrun the possibility of a cure and it is too late. Under the new conditions we shall detect the evil in its first beginning, while there is yet hope. Medical inspection is also the key to the situation after the boy goes out to work, and for three years he will remain under its control. At the present time we only dimly realize the disastrous effects that come to a boy from the choice of an occupation ill-suited to his strength. We forbid a few forms of work, attempt for the most part ineffectively to limit the hours of employment in a few others, but in our clumsy fashion legislate as a rule for the normal child, and it is the abnormal child that suffers most. Under the new conditions there will be no work for children under the age of fifteen, while for the three following years medical inspection will enable us to legislate for the individual boy, taking into account his physical characteristics. Not only shall we be able to help a boy to avoid making a wrong choice, but we shall be able to remove him as soon as medical inspection shows him unfit for the work. Thus, to the age of eighteen the State has its finger on the pulse of the youth. Secondly, there must be an adequate provision of training, special and general, accessible to all. Here, again, we are building on the firm rock of solid experience. The elementary schools have proved themselves to be schools for the cultivation of intelligence. With a year or two added to the school life; with the relief from that distracting influence which comes from wage-earning while at school; with the improved methods of teaching and a clearer differentiation of types of school to suit varying types of mind--reforms already under way--we may fairly hope for a general rise in the intelligence of the boys. The half-time school, with its three years' course, will supply the more specialized training required in the different trades and occupations, while committees of employers will provide the expert criticism essential to success. Finally, there must be the provision of an opening in some form of employment for which special preparation has been given. The Labour Exchange, the juvenile branch worked in close co-operation with the adult section, will supply the opening, while the technical training will give good guarantee for the adequacy of the preparation. The Elementary School, the Half-time School, the Education Authority, and the Advisory Committee, all acting together, will insure a safe passage from youth to manhood. The new apprenticeship system is more complex than the old--it lacks something of the picturesqueness of the Middle Ages--but it finds its compensation in an organization at once more flexible and more comprehensive, and therefore better suited to stand the shock of those huge changes in methods of production and methods of living which have been the ungainly offspring of the industrial revolution. LIST OF AUTHORITIES I PARLIAMENTARY AND MUNICIPAL PUBLICATIONS Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages), Parts I. and II., Parliamentary Return. 1899. Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of School-Children. 1901. Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children Act, 1903. 1910. Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress. 1909. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on Boy Labour. 1909. Report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908. Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education for the year 1909. Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Higher Elementary Schools. 1906. Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Attendance, Compulsory or Otherwise, at Continuation Schools. 2 vols., 1909. Report on the By-Laws made by the London County Council under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, by Chester Jones. 1906. London County Council Report of the Medical Officer (Education) for the year 1906. London County Council Report of the Medical Officer (Education) for the year 1909. London County Council: Medical Treatment of Children attending Elementary Schools--Report of Education Committee. 1909. London County Council: Home Circumstances of Necessitous Children in Twelve Selected Schools. 1909. London County Council: The Apprenticeship Question. 1906. London County Council: Report of the Higher Education Sub-Committee on Apprenticeship: Agenda of Education Committee, February 24, 1909, pp. 412-425. London County Council: Technical Education Board Report on the Building Trades. 1899. London County Council: Report by Miss Durham, Inspector of Women's Technical Classes on Juvenile Labour in Germany. 1910. London County Council: Report by Mr. R. Blair (Education Officer) on Organization of Education in London. P. S. King and Son, Westminster. County Council of Middlesex: Report by Mr. A. J. Bird (Inspector of Schools) on Employment Bureaux for Children of School-leaving Age. Urban District Council of Finchley: Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health, including the Report to the Education Committee for the year 1908. Gloucestershire Education Committee: Report of the Minor Committee to consider Certain Proposals for the Creation of an Apprenticeship Fund and a Labour Bureau. 1907. II AUTHORS ABRAHAM AND DAVIES: Factories and Workshops. 1902. ABRAM, A.: Social Life in the Fifteenth Century. 1909. ALDEN, MARGARET: Child Life and Labour. ASHLEY, W. J.: Introduction to English Economic History. 1888. BEVERIDGE, W. H.: Unemployment. 1909. BLACK, CLEMENTINA: Sweated Industry. 1907. BLAIR, R.: Some Features of American Education. 1904. BOOTH, CHARLES: Life and Labour of the People, 9 vols. 1896. BRAY, REGINALD A.: The Apprenticeship Question, in _Economic Journal_, September, 1909. BRAY, REGINALD A.: The Town Child. 1907. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION: Report on the Employment of Boys in the London Area. 1910. Continuation Schools in England and Elsewhere, edited by M. E. SADLER. 1907. CREASEY, CLARENCE H.: Technical Education in Evening Schools. 1905. CROWLEY, RALPH H.: Hygiene of School Life. 1909. CUNINGHAM, W.: Growth of English Industry and Commerce: Early and Middle Ages. 1905. CUNINGHAM, W.: Growth of English Industry and Commerce: Modern Times, 2 vols. 1903. DAVIES, MAUDE F.: Life in an English Village. 1909. FRERE, MARGARET: Children's Care Committees. 1909. GIBB, THE REV. SPENCER J.: The Problem of Boy Work. 1906. GIBB, THE REV. SPENCER J.: Boy Work and Unemployment. C.S.U. Pamphlet. GORDON, OGILVIE: Handbook of Employments. 1908. GREEN, J. R.: History of the English Peoples, vols. i. and iv. 1896. GREEN, MRS. J. R.: Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols. 1894. HALL, G. STANLEY: Adolescence, 2 vols. HASBACH, W.: History of the English Agricultural Labourer. 1908. HAWKINS, C. B.: Norwich: A Social Study. 1910. HAYWARD, F. H.: Day and Evening Schools. 1910. HOGARTH, A. H.: Medical Inspection of Schools. 1909. HUTCHINS AND HARRISON: A History of Factory Legislation. 1907. JACKSON, CYRIL: Unemployment and Trade Unions. 1910. JEBB, EGLANTYNE: Cambridge: A Brief Study in Social Questions. 1906. KEELING, FREDERIC: The Labour Exchange in Relation to Boy and Girl Labour. 1910. KIRKMAN, GRAY B.: A History of English Philanthropy. 1905. KIRKMAN, GRAY B.: Philanthropy and the State. KNOWLES, G. W.: Junior Labour Exchanges. 1910. MACMILLAN, MARGARET: Labour and Childhood. 1907. MOSELEY: Educational Committee Report. 1904. NICHOLLS, SIR G.: History of the English Poor Law. 1898. ROGERS, J. E. T.: Six Centuries of Work and Wages. 1884. ROWNTREE, B. S.: Poverty: A Study of Town Life. 1901. RUSSELL, C. E. B.: Manchester Boys. 1905. RUSSELL AND RIGBY: The Making of the Criminal. 1906. RUSSELL AND RIGBY: Working Lads' Clubs. 1908. SHADWELL, ARTHUR: Industrial Efficiency. 1909. Studies of Boy Life in our Cities, edited by E. J. URWICK. 1904. TAWNEY, R. H.: The Economics of Boy Labour, in _Economic Journal_, December, 1909. Trades for London: Boys. Compiled by the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Committee. 1908. Trades for London: Girls. Compiled by the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Committee. 1909. TUCKWELL AND SMITH: The Workers' Handbook. 1908. WEBB, SIDNEY AND BEATRICE: History of Trade Unionism. 1907. WEBB, SIDNEY AND BEATRICE: Industrial Democracy, 2 vols. 1897. INDEX Abraham and Davies, 45, 49, 53 Abram, A., 9 Adler, Miss, 106 Adolescence, vi, 176, 198 Agricultural Gangs Act, 42 Apprentices, statute of, 13-15; effect, 16, 17; pauper, 15, 17-19; repeal, 22 Apprenticeship, break-up of, 165-175 charities, 19; decay, 25, 135, 164, 165-175, 177; difficulties of, 12, 188; essentials, 43, 237; indentured, 5, 135, 187-189; meaning, 1; under gilds, 4-11, 234, 237; under industrial revolution, 26-29; under statute, 11-19; universal, 3, 13, 189 of to-day: contribution of home, 92-103; of philanthropy, 89-92; of State, 73-74, 76-89; of workshop, 103-165 the new: Juvenile Labour Exchange, 231-231; new half-time, 191, 197-202; prohibition of employment, 191, 195-197; raising school age, 191-195, 217; summary, 231-240 Ashby, W. J., 4 Attendance at school, Acts relating to, 38, 46-48; percentage of, 83, 106, 105 Blair, R., 86 "Blind-alley" occupations, 87, 112, 123-130, 145, 157, 158, 163, 169-172, 180, 227 Board of Education, 61, 64 Board of Trade, 71, 72, 223, 233 Booth, C., 95, 104, 136, 139 Borstal Association, 169 Boy labour: difficulties of regulation, 79, 80; effects of regulation, 77-82, 88, 89 half-time, 49-52, 78, 197-202, 204, 205 health and safety, 52-58, 77, 197-202 limitation of hours, 43-52, 197-202 prohibition of, 41-43, 195-197, 203, 204 regulation under gilds, 7-11, 234, 237; under industrial revolution, 20-25; under statute, 13, 14 Boys: clubs, 90; errand, 82, 112, 119, 129, 145; lather, 43; office, 119, 126, 158; shop, 122, 126, 128, 145; telegraph, 126, 131, 145; van, 82, 119, 145 Boys: employment of, at school, 103-113, 151-155; on leaving school, 114-119, 163; entering manhood, 143 unemployed, 119; under London County Council, 132 Bursaries, 65 Chamber of Commerce, 230 Chapman, Professor, 211 Child, definition of, 40 Children Act, 38, 59, 61, 80 Children, employment of. _See_ Boys Chimney Sweepers Act, 42 Cloete, J. G., 126, 129 Coal Mines Regulation Act, 38, 42 Competition, 177, 235 Cuningham, W., 4, 6, 10, 16, 20, 22, 28 Davies, Miss Maude, 161, 164 Distribution of trades, 115-118, 142-149, 163; normal, 147-149 Durham, Miss, 196, 228 _Economic Journal_, 116, 159 Education Acts, 1902-03, 62 Administrative Provisions Act, 1907, 58, 60, 61 Provision of Meals Act, 61 Employment of children. _See_ Boys Employment of Children Act, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 57, 58, 77, 80, 81, 111, 166 Factory legislation, causes of, 30 Factory and Workshops Act, 38, 168; authority for enforcement, 40, 51; definitions, 39-41; effects of, 77, 81, 82, 88; half-time, 49-51; health and safety, 52-56; limitation of hours, 43-52; prohibition of employment, 41, 42 Furness, Sir Christopher, 213 Gibb, Spencer J., 124, 158 Gilds, 4-11, 234, 237 Girls, vii Green, Mrs. J. R., 12 Half-time system, 49-51, 78, 197-203, 204-205 Hall, G. Stanley, vi Hasbach, W., 25 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, 17, 18, 23, 29 Hutchins and Harrison, 23, 29 Idealist, triumph of, 28 Indenture, old, 6 Individualist, triumph of, 32-34 Industrial revolution, 20-26; effects of, 26-29, 173-175; characteristics, 177-185 schools, 61 Jackson, Cyril. _See_ Report on Boy Labour Labour Exchange, 70, 125; Juvenile, 71, 72, 83, 201, 221-231, 232-240 Lather-boy. _See_ Boys London, employment of school-children, 105-113; entry to a trade, 113-142; passage to manhood, 142-151 Medical certificate, 56, 57, 58 inspection, 58, 60, 61, 85, 86, 94, 168, 197, 231, 232, 233, 238, 239 Messenger-boy. _See_ Boys Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 38 Mines (Prohibition of Child Labour Underground) Act, 38, 41 Necessitous children, 94, 95 Nicholls, Sir G., 18 Occupations, clerical, 140-142; distribution of, 115-120, 143, 142-149, 163; skilled, 132-140; unskilled, 112, 121-133 Office-boy. _See_ Boys Opening. _See_ Provision of Poor Law, Elizabethan, 15; Amendment Act, 23-26; Report of Royal Commission. _See_ Reports Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 38, 42 Provision of opening, need for, 2; Labour Exchange, 70-72, 221-231, 240; under gilds, 8-11; under industrial revolution, 20-26 Report of Board of Education, 64 of Commissioners for Prisons, 169 of Consultative Committee on Continuation School, 47, 81, 154, 192, 201 of Consultative Committee on Higher Elementary Schools, 214 of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 81, 125 of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of Children, 51, 110, 152 of London County Council on Apprenticeship, 66, 115, 128, 135, 136, 139, 140, 143, 187, 192, 194 of Medical Officer, Board of Education, 152, 174 of Medical Officer (Education) of London County Council, 96, 109, 110 Report of Poor Law Commission, 31, 104, 155, 156, 172, 191, 192, 206, 209, 210, 211, 213 Report on Boy Labour, by Mr. Cyril Jackson, 104, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 144, 145, 146, 156, 157 on Home Circumstances of Necessitous Children, 95 Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 5 Rural Districts, 161-165 Sadler, M. E., 157, 171, 195 Scholarships, 66-68, 86, 232 School: age, 46-48, 192-195; central, 64, 65; elementary, 46, 47, 63-65, 83-86, 218, 224, 231; evening, 60, 67, 69, 86; industrial, 59, 61; part-time, 68, 132, 187, 218-221, 231; secondary, 60, 67, 86, 232; Sunday, 89; technical and trade, 60, 66, 68, 208 Scott-Holland, Canon, 124 Shop-boy. _See_ Boys Shop Hours Act, 38, 46, 79, 81 Skilled Employment Committees, 91, 92, 185 Supervision, need for, 2; under gilds, 8-11; under statute, 13-15; under industrial revolution, 20-26; by State regulation, 37-58; by State enterprise, 59-70; effects of State, 76-88; by philanthropy, 89-92; in home, 92-103; in workshop, 125; in London, summary, 149, 150; general summary, 165-168; under new apprenticeship, 191-202, 221-231, 237, 238 Tawney, R. L., 159, 160 Technical instruction. _See_ Schools Trades, distribution of, 115-120, 142-149, 163; picking up, 136-140; skilled, 133-142, 208-214, 218, 239; unskilled, 112, 121-133, 155-160, 165-175, 208, 215, 216, 219, 239 Training, need for, 2; under gilds, 9-12; under statute, 13, 14; under industrial revolution, 20-27; in single operation, 21, 137-139; in elementary schools, 63-65; in continuation schools, 65-70; in workshops, 111-113, 121-142, 165-175; in new apprenticeships, 207-221, 233 Van-boy. _See_ Boys Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 8, 21, 22 Young person, 40, 44-46, 81, 83 THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD FOOTNOTES: [1] G. Stanley Hall, "Adolescence," vol. ii., p. 83. [2] See, for a general description of gilds, "Economic History," by W. J. Ashby; "Growth of English History and Commerce: Early and Middle Ages." by W. Cunningham. [3] J. E. Thorold Rogers, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," p. 566. [4] Quoted, Cunningham, pp. 349-350. [5] Sidney and Beatrice Webb, "A History of Trade Unionism," p. 17. [6] Cunningham, p. 460. [7] _Ibid._, p. 345. [8] A. Abiam, "Social England in the Fifteenth Century," p. 118. [9] Cunningham, p. 509. [10] Mrs. J. R. Green, "Town Life in the Fifteenth Century," vol. ii., p. 102. [11] 5 Elizabeth, Cap. iv. [12] Sect. 3. [13] Sect. 25. [14] Sect. 26. [15] Sect. 31. [16] 5 Elizabeth, Cap. iv., Sect. 35. [17] 43 Elizabeth, Cap. ii., Sect. 5. Similar powers had been given to Justices of the Peace in earlier Acts (see 27 Henry VIII., Cap. xxv.; Edw. VI., Cap. iii.) [18] W. Cunningham, "Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times," pp. 29-30. [19] _Ibid._, p. 33. [20] See 3 Chas. I., Cap. v. [21] Sir G. Nicholls, "History of the Poor Law," vol. ii., p. 223 _et seq._ 1898. [22] James I., Cap. iii. [23] Cunningham, p. 615. [24] _Ibid._, pp. 640-641. [25] Sidney and Beatrice Webb, "History of Trade Unionism," p. 47. [26] Sidney and Beatrice Webb, "History of Trade Unionism," p. 47. [27] Cunningham, p. 660. [28] _Ibid._ [29] 54 George III., Cap. xcvi. [30] Hutchins and Harrison, "History of Factory Legislation," p. 16. [31] Herr W. Hasbach, "A History of the English Agricultural Labourer," pp. 224, 225. [32] Quoted by Cunningham, "Growth of Industry and Commerce in Modern Times," p. 776. [33] Quoted by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, in "A History of Factory Legislation," p. 15. [34] In the Report of the Poor Law Commission we have an interesting example side by side of the two forces that make for reform. The Majority Report is altogether the work of sentiment. The proposed variation in the terminology applicable to those in receipt of relief, the loosening of the deterrent system, the advocacy of the more generous treatment of the young and the sick, the general neglect to consider remote causes, and the total absence of any consistent principle, can be explained in no other way. Its cold reception by the British Constitutional Association--that body of people who still hold aloft the tattered banners of the individualist--is but another proof that sentiment, and not the _a priori_ assumptions of the old school, is the guiding spirit. In the Minority Report we see everywhere the mark of the imaginative reason--that reason which, starting with facts and not with theories, strives to picture the long chain of cause and effect which leads up to the sufferer, and finally, seeing the whole process in its true proportions, strikes at the evil where it begins and can be prevented, and not where it ends, when only a more or less modified failure can be looked for. [35] A striking instance of this is supplied by the Municipal Reform Party on the London County Council. Opposed in principle to feeding or treating medically children at the cost of the rates, they have yet been compelled to do both these things. And they have been compelled to take action, not by the pressure of public opinion--the public opinion of their own side generally condemned them for forsaking their principles--but by the sheer inability of members to learn, week after week, that hungry children were unfed and sick children left without treatment. [36] See Part X. of the Act. Needless to say, the decision as to what kinds of industry come within these definitions has exercised the ingenuity of the lawyer. In one case (Law _v._ Graham), for example, Lord Alverstone, Chief Justice, expressed the opinion that bottling beer is not within paragraph (i.) or paragraph (ii.) above; that by a somewhat strained construction it might be said to be within paragraph (iii.), as being an adapting of an article for sale, but that the powers used in washing the bottles was not "in aid of the process of bottling." [37] For complete list of such industries, see Sch. VI. of the Act. [38] See Part VI. of the Act for details and exceptions. [39] Sects. 103, 104, 105, 106. [40] Sects. 71 and 156. [41] Sect. 156. [42] Sect. 13. [43] Factory and Workshop Act, Sect. 77. [44] Sect. 99. [45] Mines Act, 1900, Sect. 1. [46] Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, Sect. 7. [47] Factory and Workshops Act, Sect. 77. [48] Employment of Children Act, Sects. 3 and 13. [49] Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1894, Sect. 3. [50] Sect. 1. [51] Sect. 2. [52] Sect. 4. [53] For definitions, see p. 39. [54] Sect. 24. [55] Sect. 26. [56] Sect. 111. [57] Sects. 51, 53. [58] Sects. 31, 46. [59] The best detailed account of the Act is found in "The Law Relating to Factories and Workshops," by Abraham and Davies. [60] Shop Hours Act, Sect. 3. [61] Employment of Children Act, Sect. 2. [62] Report of the Consultative Committee on Continuation Schools, vol. i., p. 22. [63] _Ibid._, vol. i., p. 21. [64] Employment of Children Act, Sect. 3 (1). [65] Sect. 1. [66] Abraham and Davies, "The Law Relating to Factories and Workshops," fourth edition, p. 41. [67] Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, Sect. 25. [68] Sect. 25. [69] Sects. 31 and 46. [70] Sect. 69. [71] Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of School-Children, p. 12. [72] The summary of the provisions that follow is founded on "The Law Relating to Factories and Workshops," by Abraham and Davies, chap. ii. [73] Factory and Workshop Act, Sect. 63, (1) and (2). [74] Sect. 64 (4). [75] Sect. 64 (5). [76] Sect. 64 (6). [77] Sect. 67. [78] Sect. 65. [79] Sect. 66. [80] Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, Sect. 13. [81] See pp. 46-48. [82] Children Act, 1908, Sect. 58. [83] Education (Administration Provisions) Act, 1907, Sect. 13. [84] Board of Education Circular 576, Sect. 12. [85] Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, Sect. 13. [86] Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, Sect. 3. [87] Children Act, Sect. 77. [88] I am here speaking of England; in Scotland there are limited powers of enforcing attendance. [89] Report of Board of Education, 1908-09, p. 110. [90] For a more detailed account of the machinery considered desirable, see the Report of the London County Council on "The Apprenticeship Question." [91] See Report of the Consultative Committee on Continuation Schools, p. 22. [92] Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children Act, pp. 6, 7. [93] "The Organization of Education in London," by R. Blair, Education Officer to the London County Council, p. 29. [94] "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities," edited by E. J. Urwick. Dent and Co. [95] "Home Circumstances of Necessitous Children in Twelve Selected Schools." Report of the London County Council. [96] See "Medical Treatment of Children attending Elementary Schools," in Report of the Medical Officer (Education) of the London County Council for the year 1909. See also Report of the Medical Officer of the Board of Education for 1909. [97] "Studies of Boy Life," pp. 22-25 _passim_. [98] "Studies of Boy Life," pp. 26-28 _passim_. [99] "Studies of Boy Life," p. 32. [100] Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages) Parliamentary Return, 1899, p. 32. [101] Report on Employment of School-Children, p. 8. [102] _Ibid._, p. 9. [103] Report on the Employment of School-Children, p. 9. [104] Quoted from "Studies of Boy Life," p. 24. [105] Report on Employment of School-Children, p. 10. [106] _Ibid._, p. 11. [107] Report on Employment of School-Children, p. 11. [108] Report of the Education Committee submitting the Report of the Medical Officer (Education) for the year 1906. P. S. King and Son. [109] Report of Medical Officer, p. 22. [110] Report of the Medical Officer (Education) 1906, p. 23. [111] _Ibid._, p. 23. [112] _Ibid._, p. 24. [113] See p. 43. [114] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, Minutes of the Education Committee of the London County Council for February 24, 1909, p. 414. [115] The substance of what follows appeared in an article published in the _Economic Journal_ for September, 1909, and is reproduced by the kind permission of the Editor. [116] L.C.C. Report of Medical Officer (Education), 1906, p. 23, showed that this was the most injurious form of work in which school-children were engaged. [117] Report of Mr. Cyril Jackson on Boy Labour, prepared for the Poor Law Commission. [118] Report on Boy Labour, p. 7. [119] Report on Boy Labour, pp. 7 and 8. [120] Canon Scott Holland, Introduction to "The Problem of Boy Work," by the Rev. Spencer J. Gibb. [121] Report on Boy Labour, p. 4. [122] Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910, p. 14. [123] "Studies of Boy Life," p. 111. [124] Cyril Jackson, Report on Boy Labour, p. 14. [125] The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, "The Problem of Boy Work," p. 33. [126] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, Minutes of the Education Committee of the London County Council, February 24, 1909, p. 424. [127] Report on Boy Labour, p. 27. [128] Mr. Cloete, in "Studies of Boy Life," p. 125. [129] Report on Boy Labour, p. 20. [130] _Ibid._, p. 20. [131] _Ibid._, p. 26. [132] Report on Boy Labour, p. 17. [133] _Ibid._, p. 16. [134] _Ibid._, p. 17. [135] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, p. 1. London County Council Publications. P. S. King and Son. [136] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, p. 2. [137] Charles Booth, "Life and Labour of the People," vol. ix., p. 222. [138] This Advisory Committee contains representatives of the chief woodwork industries of the district. [139] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, p. 4. [140] Report on the Apprenticeship Question, p. 4. [141] Minutes of the Education Committee, February 24, 1909, p. 415. [142] Report on Boy Labour, p. 47. [143] Report on Boy Labour, p. 20. [144] _Ibid._, p. 20. [145] _Ibid._, p. 22. [146] _Ibid._, p. 23. [147] Report on Employment of School-Children, p. 5. [148] Report of Chief Medical Officer of Board of Education for 1909, pp. 80-81, _note_. [149] Report of Consultation Committee on Continuation Schools, p. 206. [150] Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 325. [151] _Ibid._, p. 325. [152] Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 1166. [153] _Ibid._, p. 1166. [154] Minority Report on the Poor Law Commission, p. 1166. [155] Report on Boy Labour, p. 5. [156] _Ibid._, p. 27. [157] M. E. Sadler, "Continuation Schools," Preface, p. xii. [158] M. E. Sadler, "Continuation Schools," Preface, p. xiii. [159] The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, "The Problem of Boy Work," p. 33. [160] _Economic Journal_, December, 1909, p. 522. [161] _Ibid._, p. 522. [162] _Economic Journal_, December, 1909, p. 532. [163] Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages) Act, Part (2), Return for England and Wales, 1899, p. iv. [164] Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages) Act, Part (2), Return for England and Wales, 1899., p. vii. [165] M. F. Davies, "Life in an English Village," chap. x. [166] Report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908, p. 14. [167] Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 325. [168] _Morning Post_, January 3, 1909, letter from Professor M. E. Sadler. [169] Russell and Rigby, "Working Lads' Club," p. 286. [170] Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 326. [171] Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 1165. [172] _Ibid._, p. 1166. [173] Minutes of the Education Committee, February 24, 1909, p. 422. [174] Minutes of the Education Committee, February 24, 1909, p. 416. [175] Minutes of the Education Committee, February 24, 1909, p. 416. [176] M. E. Sadler, "Continuation Schools," p. 334. [177] "Berlin, though growing luxurious, is not yet as spendthrift of young life as is London. The newspaper-boy and the street-trader are unknown" (Report to the London County Council, by Miss Durham, p. 3). [178] See Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Continuation Schools, chap. x. [179] Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 346. [180] Report of the Poor Law Commission, pp. 346-347. [181] _Ibid._, Professor Chapman, footnote, p. 346. [182] Report of the Poor Law Commission, p. 351. [183] Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education in Higher Elementary Schools, p. 7. [184] Report by Miss Durham to the London County Council on Juvenile Labour in Germany, p. 7. 
42187	----	of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY. AGRICULTURAL LIFE. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION OF IMMIGRATION TO THE LAND. A STATEMENT IN REGARD TO THE RELATIONS WE HOLD TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS. WHAT THEY MAY EXPECT. MINNESOTA. GENERAL STATE STATISTICS. CROP STATISTICS. FARM STATISTICS. GENERAL REMARKS. CATHOLIC COLONIES IN MINNESOTA. SWIFT COUNTY COLONY. GRACEVILLE COLONY. ST. ADRIAN COLONY. AVOCA COLONY. THE BEST TIME TO COME. A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. HOW TO SECURE GOVERNMENT LAND. ADVERTISEMENTS. Transcriber's Notes. CATHOLIC COLONIZATION IN MINNESOTA. REVISED EDITION. PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC COLONIZATION BUREAU OF MINNESOTA. UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE RIGHT REV. JOHN IRELAND, COADJUTOR BISHOP OF ST. PAUL. ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, JANUARY, 1879. THE PIONEER PRESS CO. INTRODUCTORY. The increase in the number of our Catholic Colonies in Minnesota, and the changes which population and other causes have brought about, make it necessary to publish a revised edition of the Immigration Pamphlet, issued by the Catholic Colonization Bureau of Minnesota, in 1877. We are pleased to notice the increased interest which is manifested all over the country, by Catholics, in the matter of Catholic immigration from the cities to the land. The sympathy, aid, and words of cheer, we are continually receiving from friends totally unconnected with our local work, assure us of this pleasing fact; which we attribute, in a great measure, to the honest, intelligent advocacy, and generous support our Catholic newspapers have given to the question. For ourselves, we are glad to gratefully acknowledge the liberal support the Catholic editors have given to our work: the confidence which they placed, from the very beginning, in the purity of our motives and the soundness of our business arrangements, is an indorsement of which we are justly proud. They have recognized that our aim is to do good to the many; and in all cases where our advice has been taken, our instructions followed, our warnings heeded, we do not fear that we have injured one. The approbation of our co-religionists, conveyed to us from all parts of the country, the success which God has been pleased to give to our humble labors, are cheering guarantees that we are on the right road; and we pray God that He will continue to bless our efforts, enlighten us in our present task, and keep our ardor in the cause we have espoused strictly within the bounds of truth. It is an axiom that "they who own the soil own the country." Happily, in this country, the people's title to the land is recognized, they are invited to take possession of their own, and the tall, luxuriant grasses of the broad prairie are the messengers it sends forth from its virgin bosom, telling of the wealth it has in store to reward honest, patient labor. There is no angry contest here for the possession of the soil, but there is, and should be, a noble, wise emulation among the various races that have emigrated to these shores, for their just portions of it. The surplus populations in our cities, the depression of business, the scarcity of employment, the poverty, suffering and discontent attending thereon, the magnitude of labor strikes, and the dread of their repetition, have made the question of immigration to the land from our over-crowded cities of pressing, national interest. The policy of our people immigrating in large numbers to the lands of the West, is no longer a theory to discuss, but a necessity, calling for the active support of every good, intelligent Catholic. It is not necessary to review the many causes which have heretofore retarded the immigration of our people to the land. Among those causes was one which should endear them to every Catholic heart, and which stands out in bright contrast to the irreligious indifference of the age. _They feared that if they came West, they would be beyond the reach of church and priest._ The danger of a Catholic settling in any of the Western States now, and finding himself entirely isolated, by distance, from his church, is scarcely to be apprehended, for the West has now its handsome churches, its priests and Catholic schools; but it might come to pass, that coming undirected, and without any Catholic organization to which he might apply, the Catholic immigrant might find himself settled in a locality inconveniently distant from church and priest, and where he and his family would be separated from Catholic associations. Bearing this in mind, the religious welfare of those coming to our colonies, was one of the main features to which Bishop Ireland devoted his attention when organizing the Catholic Colonization Bureau. Before the arrival of any of our immigrants, the rule was established that whenever we opened a colony and invited our people to it, the resident priest and church should go in with our first settlers, be their number small or large. To this good rule we attribute, to a great extent, not alone our success in bringing settlers to our colonies, but likewise their general contentment in their new homes and brave cheerfulness in meeting the trials, hardships, and set-backs, which are incident to new settlements. No question is so frequently asked by our correspondents as, "How near can I get land to a Catholic Church?" In no portion of any of the Catholic Colonies of Minnesota, established by the Catholic Bureau, under the auspices of the Right Rev. Bishop Ireland, shall a settler find himself beyond the easy reach of church and priest. AGRICULTURAL LIFE. ADVANTAGES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE OVER CITY LIFE, TO THE MAN WHO MAKES HIS LIVING BY THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW. INDEPENDENCE ON THE LAND. GENERAL PROSPERITY OF CATHOLIC SETTLEMENTS IN MINNESOTA.--INDIVIDUAL PROSPERITY. WHAT OUR EARLY SETTLERS HAD TO GO THROUGH--HOW THEY GOT THROUGH IT AND CAME OUT AT THE TOP OF THE HEAP. THEIR BRAVE BATTLE FOR INDEPENDENCE--THEIR BOUNTIFUL REWARD. "It's na' to hide it in a hedge; It's na' for train attendant; But for the glorious privilege Of being independent." Thus sung Robert Burns long ago in praise of independence. This is one of the rewards which the land holds out to the honest, hard-working, persevering settler; and never does it break its promise to industry and perseverance. In the city, dangers surround the poor laboring man; temptations arise on every side to drag him down; insurmountable barriers oppose his advancement. Well, he may avoid the dangers--we wish to give the best view of the case, and, thank God, there are thousands of instances to sustain it--spurn the temptations, and even surmount some of the outward barriers to his advancement. He may be respectably housed and clothed; he may have a good boss. Ah, there is the rub, good or bad-- HE HAS A BOSS, a man at whose nod he must come and go. He may have money in a savings bank honestly managed; but if a spell of sickness prostrates him, how much of his hard-earned savings will be left when he rises from his sick bed? And suppose he feels that he has his death sickness, can you, by going into sorrow's counting-house, attempt to estimate the agony of the poor Catholic parent when he thinks of the fate which may await his children, left fatherless in a sinful city? There are other pictures of a poor man's city life, which we care not to draw. But we will take this prosperous workingman, with a good boss, from the city, and place him in his first rude house on his own land. He misses many things, many comforts. He misses the society of friends who used to come round from time to time--the milkman's bell, the butcher's cart: everything was so handy in the city. He is lonely: a feeling of desolation comes over him as he stands at the door of his new home, and looks around at the unimproved land. The land is rich and good, and the scene is fair to look at; but the reality is so different from the mental picture he made before setting out for the West, that he feels sad and disappointed. Then as he looks around him _at his own_, HE MISSES THE BOSS. At the thought, the spirit of independence which has led this man thousands of miles, perhaps, to seek a new home, and which sadness and disappointment--the first effects of a great change--for awhile subdued, leaps in his heart, and sends the red blood surging through his veins. NO BOSS. His eyes grow bright with pride as he looks out upon the land, a wide circle of which he calls his own. THE BOSS HAS DISAPPEARED, And the man, the owner of a wide stretch of real estate, conscious of a great awaking of self-respect in his being, stands erect at the door of his own house, on his own property, and feels that no one better than he is, shall pass him by all day. How the consciousness of independence, the feeling of self-respect, will sustain this man through many hardships, disappointments and trials! In a short time one or two cows take the place of the dingy cans of the milkman, and some young grunters in the hog pen represent the meat-market. After some years are past we visit the scene again. There is no loneliness here now, for it is harvest time, and the farmer and his sons are busy in the fields, his wife and eldest daughters busy in the house preparing for the keen appetites the men will bring in with them. The first rude shanty has given place to a nice two-story frame house, well sheltered from sun and wind by the healthy young trees the farmer planted with his own hands, and in the rear are the snug barn and granary. Where once the wild prairie grass waved, comes the cheery clatter of the harvester, and swath after swath of the golden grain falls down before it. By and by the younger children return from school, rosy and hungry, and a small skirmisher is thrown out and enters the pantry; he is repulsed and falls back on the main body; then, taking advantage of the "good woman," being obliged to run to the oven to keep the bread from burning, the whole force advance, a pie is spiked and carried off in triumph. As the shades of evening fall, a herd of cattle march lazily into the farm yard, and then from the field come the farmer and his sons. Lonely, indeed! Why the noise of Babel is renewed here. Dipping his hot face in a basin of cool water, the farmer splutters out his directions; seizing a jack towel, he scrubs his face, and continues to halloo to Mike, and Tom, and Patrick. Why, _the boss has come back_. Ay, but THE MAN HIMSELF IS THE BOSS NOW. All things come to an end, so does the farmer's supper; and as we sit with him on the porch outside we say, "You have a splendid place here." "It will do," he answers quite carelessly; but he can't fool us. We know that he is proud of his success. "I had to work hard for it," he continues, "but God has been very good to us." We are not romancing. We have drawn a picture from the original, which can be duplicated a thousand fold in this State. It is not individual success alone we can point to, but likewise the success of whole farming communities, where the people commenced poor--many of them, perhaps the majority, with scarcely any means at all--under disadvantages that would now appear to us, with railroads and markets on every side, almost insurmountable, and where to-day we cannot find one exceptional case of failure without an exceptional cause for it. Thoroughly acquainted with the Catholic settlements in Minnesota, we cannot call to mind a case where a hard-working, industrious, sober man failed to make a comfortable home for his family. We know of many cases where such a man met with reverses, lost his crop, his cattle, his horses; but never a case where a man met his reverses with a brave heart and trust in God, that he did not overcome them, and come out of the battle a better and prouder man. Let a poor man in the city find his all swept away from him, and what does he do? He slinks into its alleys and lanes, his pleasant, decent rooms are changed for one foul room in a tenement house, from whence, after a little, charity carries him to a pauper's grave. We have spoken of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota, and we have not to travel far from its capital to find some of them--only into the adjoining county, Dakota, one of the very finest in the State. Fully two-thirds of the lands of the county are owned (mind, _owned_.) by Catholic settlers, Irish and German. Some twenty-five years ago, a few poor Irishmen settled in the timber in this county. It was very generally supposed, at that time, that people could not live on a prairie in Minnesota; but by and by, those who had settled in Dakota county found out their mistake, and commenced making claims on the adjoining prairie, Rosemount prairie, to-day the garden of Minnesota. But not before Hugh Derham, of the County Meath, Ireland, now the Honorable Hugh Derham, came along and put up his shanty on the prairie. "I had seven hundred dollars," he said to us some time ago, "when I came on here; oxen were dear then, and when I had a yoke bought, together with a cow, and my shanty up, I had little or none of the money left. But I went to work, broke up all the land I could, got seed, put in my first crop, and lost every kernel of it." To-day this man owns four hundred acres of improved land, in a circle round his house. Fifty dollars an acre would be a low value to put on his land. Some four years ago his neighbor, a man of the name of Ennis, bought one hundred and twenty acres of land adjoining, for something like ten thousand dollars. When Hugh Derham settled here there was not a railroad nearer than two hundred miles of him, now passengers on the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, passing within half a mile in front of his house, point from the windows of the cars to his place, as a model home of a thrifty farmer. His handsome, two-story frame house stands embowered in the orchard and shade trees, sturdy Hugh Derham planted with his own hands; his barn alone cost three thousand dollars; he has flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and horses as he requires them; and he has a good wife, who assisted him in his early struggles, healthy, fresh and handsome still. He has had his eldest daughter at a convent school, and bought for her last year a five hundred dollar piano. It is said that he has some ten thousand dollars loaned out at interest. Now, is Hugh Derham's an exceptional case? If you came along, and we were inclined to brag, and show you a specimen of our Catholic farmers in Minnesota, we would bring you direct to Hugh Derham, not for his herds, and stock, and well filled granary--he is surpassed by many of our farmers in all these--but for the look of respectable thriftiness all around him. There is his next neighbor, Wm. Murphy, another well-to-do, respectable farmer, not perhaps as well off as Derham, but still able to bear some time ago a loss of five thousand dollars by fire, and to make no poor mouth about it. Another neighbor, Mich. Johnson, a prosperous man, better still, a high spirited, fine fellow, and an earnest worker in the cause of temperance. Another neighbor, Tom Hiland, as rich a man as Derham. In the next township, the Bennetts--three or four brothers that a poor but good, intelligent, widowed mother, with much struggling, managed to bring West, and locate on government land. These brothers now farm five times as much land as Derham, and raise five times as much wheat. And as we have been led into giving individual cases of success,--not at first intended, for such cases must be always in certain features more or less exceptional--we will give one more, that of Mich. Whalen of Whalen township, Fillmore county. His history is a remarkable one, as told by himself to us; remarkable in his brave struggle for independence, his sagacity, and final success. We give some points: About thirty years ago Mich. Whalen landed from Ireland in New York. He was then forty years of age, and had a wife and eight children--all his wealth. Yes, his wealth, he thought, if he could but reach with them the broad acres of the West. So he sawed wood for seventy-five cents a cord in the city of New York: the more he sawed the less he liked the work, and making a brave effort he found himself, with wife and children, squatted on one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Fillmore county, Minnesota. When the land came into market he was not able to pay the government price, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, but Capt. McKenney, the then receiver of the U. S. Land Office, managed to give him time, and the next year's crop enabled him to pay up. At this time John, his eldest of six sons, was sixteen years of age, and able to help his father. To-day Mich. Whalen is the owner of thirteen hundred acres of land in Fillmore county. The village of Whalen with mills and a fine water power, is on his land: or rather, on the land of his son John, for as the boys get married the old man gives them title to portions of the land, on which they build. There is another mill within a few rods of the old homestead, and there is not less than from six thousand to ten thousand bushels of wheat raised on the farm each year. "Why, Mr. Whalen," said a friend some time ago, "you got on splendidly; with such a large and almost helpless family at the beginning, I don't see how you could have managed it." "We put our trust in God, _avourneen_!" replied the old man, "and we stuck together." Where were the special advantages in this man's case; which enabled the poor wood-sawyer of New York to become one of the solid men of a rich county? They are to be found in the fact that he was blessed with good children, who, as they grew up and became able to help him, remained at home and did help--and amply are they rewarded for it to day-- "THEY STUCK TOGETHER." But it is of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota that we wish more particularly to speak, for as a general rule there is no business which has not its representative successful men. Dakota County being close to the capital of the State, (St. Paul,) and possessing the advantage of having, on the Mississippi River, a market for its produce, at a time when there was not a mile of railroad in the State, was settled up at an early day. Among its settlers were Irish and German Catholics. From that period out these settlers have not alone held their own, but, year after year receiving fresh additions to their numbers, they have advanced from township to township, buying improved farms and wild land, until, as we have stated before, two-thirds of the lands of the county belong to them. Travel which side you will, and you shall find evidence that one "can read as he runs" of their prosperity, intelligence and respectability; handsome houses, good offices, young orchards, ornamental planting, and the grand big wheat fields around, which have supplied the means to build up those pleasant homes. Traveling along down the Mississippi to the eastern boundary of the State and taking a wide range of country on the Minnesota side of the river, we find many prosperous settlements of our people. Again southwest, up the beautiful valley of the Minnesota River, in Scott, Sibley, Le Sueur, Nicollet and Blue Earth counties, there are numerous Catholic settlements, both in the woods and on the prairie. So, too, in the midland counties of Rice, Steele, Waseca, Olmsted, Dodge and Mower counties, our people are settled, prosperous and happy, their valuable farms giving ample and cheerful evidence, how bountifully the soil rewards honest labor. Nor, in their prosperity, have they forgotten Him from whom all blessings flow. Where a few years ago the Catholic settlers, few and poor, waited anxiously for the visit of the priest, and where the holy sacrifice of the mass was offered up in the settler's cabin, we now find the resident priest, the handsome church, and in many instances, the Sisters' school. In those settlements the whole atmosphere is Catholic; here, with no bad influences around them, the young people grow up pure and virtuous, with the love of their religion warm in their hearts. An ample reward to their parents, those brave men, the early settlers, who displayed such indomitable perseverance in their battle for INDEPENDENCE. They had to steer their way with the compass, over trackless prairies, often while the snow lay upon the ground, to blaze their way through the forest or follow an Indian trail, carrying their provisions on their backs, and when the claim shanty was put up and the provisions exhausted, the new settler would often have to return twenty, forty, sixty miles to some place where he could buy a few more pounds of flour, and with this and perhaps half a bushel of potatoes to put in the ground, he would again set off to his new claim. But in all the privations they went through, those connected with religion they felt the most. And, praise be to God, among the earliest evidences of their growing prosperity was the erection of temples to His worship, that to-day, on every side, ornament the State. Wherever in the State there is a clustering of Catholic settlements, there you will find a clustering of Catholic churches. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION OF IMMIGRATION TO THE LAND. To a Catholic, this is, after all, the most important view, and must not be overlooked; at the same time it is obvious that it cannot be done justice to in a condensed pamphlet of this kind. There is about the same difference between the moral atmosphere of the rural Catholic colonies to which we invite our people, and the back streets and alleys of the over-crowded city, as there is between the pure air of the prairie and the foul air of the city lane. Some time ago, a friend from the East, to whom we were showing some of our Catholic settlements, said to us, "Why, it is not surprising that the people settled out here in the country should be moral and religious, they have much to make them so, and nothing to make them otherwise in their surroundings; but look at our poor people, huddled together in the tenement houses of New York. When you find them good, give them praise." "And many of them are good," we said. "Oh, yes," he answered; "but the great danger is to the children. The priest does his best, the Catholic parent grounded in his religion before he ever saw a city does his best, but his circumstances compel him to live where the foul air reeks with blasphemy, and low debauchery; vice and drunkenness are ever before their eyes." This is a very sad picture, but a very true one. It is a fearful reality before the eyes of many a poor Catholic parent, who obliged to be continually absent from his children, knows but too well the society they are likely to fall into. In our Catholic colonies in Minnesota a parent has no such dread. He knows where his boys are on week days; they are helping him on the farm. He knows where they are on Sundays; they are with him at church. When they are amusing themselves, he knows that they are with the young people of his neighbors, their companions and co-religionists. Here, too, the anxious heart of the loving mother is at rest; for she sees her daughters associating with the good and innocent of their own age, and growing up pure and virtuous. "God made the country and man made the town," is an old saying. The immigration of those of our people adapted to agricultural life from the city to the land will be a benefit, not alone to themselves, but to those they leave behind. By this healthful drain the latter will be left more room, and have more opportunities to better their condition. From any side we view it, it is a great and good work to encourage and labor for Catholic immigration to the land, where INDEPENDENCE shall reward labor, and Catholic zeal shall spread our holy faith over the fertile prairies of the West. We would be very sorry to see, even if it was practicable, our people leaving the cities _en masse_. Many of them, well adapted for city life, rise to prosperity and social position in the city. Some to high professional or business standing, others to moderate respectable independence; others, in humbler walks of life, to decent homes of their own, and the city affords to the well brought up children of such homes, many solid advantages. We want full representation for our people in the city, and full representation on the land. By encouraging those of our people adapted, and best adapted for agricultural pursuits, to seek the land, we benefit them and benefit those who remain behind as well, for we give the latter healthy room and more opportunities: in a word, we improve the condition of our people, both in the city and in the country. A STATEMENT IN REGARD TO THE RELATIONS WE HOLD TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS. WHAT THEY MAY EXPECT. THE CLASS WE INVITE.--THE PROPER TIMBER MUST BE IN THE MAN HIMSELF. The great drawback to organized colonization is, that people expect too much; therefore we will be explicit, and state exactly what is proposed to be done for those coming to the Catholic colonies of Minnesota. In the first place, they will get in this pamphlet truthful and full statistics of the State, so far as those statistics are of interest to them; they will also get full details in regard to our colonies, and all the directions and information necessary. When they arrive here (in St. Paul,) by calling at the office of the Catholic Colonization Bureau they will be directed to whichever colony they may wish to go. Arrived at the colony, they will be shown over its lands. Then when the immigrant has made his selection and taken possession, he must depend from thenceforth, on himself, and the more he does so the more he will feel himself a man. The Catholic immigrant coming now to Minnesota will not be subject to the severe trials and hardships the early settlers encountered, while he will be altogether exempt from the religious and social privations they had to bear through many lonely years. The immigrant is now conveyed to the Catholic Colony he may select, by railroad train, and finds before him church and priest, market and settlers; nevertheless he should be a man possessing that noble quality which western life so well develops-- SELF-RELIANCE. Under God, it is on himself he must depend for future success. And here is the proper place to speak of the class of persons whom we can confidently invite to our Catholic colonies-- FARMERS ALONE. Not necessarily those who have heretofore been engaged altogether in agricultural pursuits, but persons who come to settle on farms, and who are able and willing to hold the plow. The poor man to succeed on a farm in Minnesota, must hold his own plow, and do his own chores; and, above all, have courage and strength to depend upon himself. If he has a good, healthy, cheerful, wife, who prefers the prattle of her children to the gossip of the street, why, all the better--let him come along, and we will put him on the road to PROSPERITY. He has made more than half the journey already, when he has secured a good wife. MINNESOTA. ITS GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION--SIZE--OPINIONS OF DISTINGUISHED MEN--FERTILITY, BEAUTY AND HEALTHFULNESS OF THE STATE. The State contains 83,153 square miles or 53,459,840 acres, and is, therefore, one of the largest in the Union. It occupies the exact centre of the continent of North America. It lies midway between the Arctic and Tropic circles--midway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans--and midway between Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It embraces the sources of three vast water systems which reach their ocean termini, northward through Hudson's Bay, eastward through the chain of great lakes, and southward via the Mississippi River. It extends from 43-1/2° to 49° of north latitude, and from 89° 29' to 97° 5' of west longitude; and is bounded on the north by the Winnipeg district of British America, on the west by the Territory of Dakota, on the south by the State of Iowa, and on the east by Lake Superior and the State of Wisconsin. In official reports before us, we find many interesting extracts from the writings of well-known public men, agriculturists, geologists, professors in various branches of science, engineers, surveyors and government officials, who have visited Minnesota at various times on business or pleasure, and who have borne enthusiastic testimony of her resources, the fertility of her soil, the healthfulness of her climate and the beauty of her scenery. A few sentences from all these writings will suffice for us in this place. In the official report of General Pope, who was commissioned by the government to make a topographical survey of portions of the State, we find the following sentence, which embraces almost all that can be said in praise. He says: "I KNOW _of_ NO COUNTRY _on_ EARTH _where so_ MANY _advantages are presented to the_ FARMER AND MANUFACTURER." The adaptability of our rich soil for all the staple crops, as proven by experience, the large yield per acre in wheat, oats, potatoes, &c., &c., the immense quantity of good land in large bodies, the truly magnificent water power within the State, and so beneficently located in its different sections; all these advantages, seen beneath a sky always bright, and in a climate at all seasons healthy, may well account for the enthusiasm which inspired the above eulogy on Minnesota. The accredited correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, who visited this State some three years ago, is equally enthusiastic in his published letters to his paper. We give two extracts from those letters. "No wonder the people here wear such smiling countenances. They are full of hope. I have yet to see the first despairing or gloomy face. Melancholy belongs to the overcrowded cities, and there is plenty of it in Chicago. "Is it not astonishing that so many able-bodied men should hang about our large cities doing nothing, because they can find nothing to do, and nearly starving to death, when these broad and fertile prairies are calling upon them to come and release the treasures which lie within the soil. "The resources or this State are immense. It has every variety of wealth, and every facility for profitable exchange. There is no more productive soil in the world. Then the State has an abundance of pine timber. It has a vast amount of available water power, and offers every facility and encouragement to manufacturing industry. It has mineral wealth on Lake Superior of iron and copper, in inexhaustible abundance. There is no region in this country, or any country, that I am aware of, that is so well watered. And the water is everywhere clear and pure. It is a land of great rivers, pellucid lakes, and sparkling streams. "All this may sound enthusiastic, but every word is calmly written and justified by the facts; and it is strictly within the facts. If the advantages of this region were only adequately made known, there would surely be a great flow of labor from the cities and places where it is not wanted, into a region like this, where every variety of labor is needed and where it is certain to meet with a rich reward." In the second extract we give, this correspondent expresses himself in language very similar to that made use of by General Pope. He says, still speaking of Minnesota: "I know of no other portion of the earth's surface where so many advantages are concentrated, and where the man of industry and small means may so quickly and with so much certainty render himself independent. Here you have a climate of exceeding purity, a soil of amazing productiveness, abundance of the clearest water, with groves, and lakes, and rivers and streams wherever they are wanted. Then the great railway lines are beginning to intersect this country in all directions, and thus furnish the farmer with a cheap and immediate outlet for his produce." We will close these brief extracts--taken from the writings of persons well qualified to form a sound judgment on the subject they were discussing, and totally unconnected personally with the interests of Minnesota--with two extracts from a speech of the distinguished statesman, Hon. Wm. H. Seward, delivered in St. Paul, the capital of our State, so far back as 1860. Mr. Seward said, and America has not produced so far-seeing a statesman: "Here is the place--the central place--where the agriculture of the richest region of North America must pour out its tributes to the whole world. On the east, all along the shore of Lake Superior, and west, stretching in one broad plain in a belt quite across the continent, is a country where State after State is yet to rise, and where the productions for the support of human society in the old crowded States must be brought forth. * * * * * I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this great continent will be found, somewhere within a circle or radius not very far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi river." GENERAL STATE STATISTICS. LAKES, RIVERS, TIMBER, CLIMATE, SOIL, STOCK RAISING. In the following we have borrowed much from authorized State reports, adding our own comments when necessary. LAKES. Minnesota abounds in lakes of great beauty. They are from one to fifty miles in diameter, and are well stocked with a variety of fish. Those beautiful lakes are found in every portion of the State, sparkling on the open prairie, hidden in groves, or resting calm and pure in the depths of the silent forest. "It may be interesting," says John W. Bond, Secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Immigration, "to note the areas of a few of the largest lakes in our State. Lake Minnetonka contains 16,000 acres; Lake Winnebagoshish, 56,000 acres; Leech Lake, 114,000 acres; and Mille Lacs, 130,000 acres. Red Lake, which is much larger than any other in the State, has not yet been surveyed. "The above estimate of 2,700,000 acres in lakes does not embrace the vast water areas included in the projected boundary lines of the State in Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods, and along the great water stretches of the international line." The importance to the State of having Lake Superior as an outlet for its produce cannot be overestimated. The day is not distant when a large amount of grain will be shipped in bulk from the Minnesota harbor (Duluth) on Lake Superior, to the Liverpool market in England. RIVERS. Minnesota has five navigable rivers. The Mississippi (The Father of Waters,) having its rise in Lake Itaska, in the northern part of the State. The St. Croix, flowing through a large portion of the lumbering region. The Minnesota, rising in Dakota Territory and flowing through a large portion of the State empties into the Mississippi, five miles above St. Paul. It is navigable, in favorable seasons, about 300 miles. The Red River of the North, forming the northwestern boundary of the State for a distance of 380 miles, and navigable about 250. The St. Louis River, flowing into Lake Superior on our northeastern boundary, a distance of 135 miles. Besides these, the largest rivers are the Root, Rum, Crow, Sauk, Elk, Long Prairie, Crow Wing, Blue Earth, Le Sueur, Maple, Cobb, Watonwan, Snake, Kettle, Redwood, Wild Rice, Buffalo, Chippewa, Marsh, Pomme de Terre, Lac qui Parle, Mustinka, Yellow Medicine, Two Rivers, Cottonwood, Cannon, Zumbro, Whitewater, Cedar, Red Lake, Straight, Vermillion, and others. These, with a vast number of smaller streams tributary to them, ramifying through fertile upland and grassy meadow, in every section of the State, afford invaluable facilities for the various purposes of lumbering, milling, manufacturing and agriculture. In connection with her rivers, we will say that Minnesota has perhaps the finest water power, within her bounds, to be found in the world. This power is found all over the State, and though only very partially developed, it serves to manufacture 2,600,000 barrels of flour annually, and runs 250 saw mills. TIMBER. Minnesota is neither a timber nor a prairie State; yet it possesses in a large degree the advantages of both, there being unquestionably a better proportion of timber and prairie, and a more admirable intermingling of the two than in any other State. It is estimated that about one-third of Minnesota is timbered land, of more or less dense growth. In Iowa, it has been officially estimated that only about one-tenth to one-eight of the State is timbered. On the head-waters of the various tributaries of the extreme Upper Mississippi and St. Croix rivers is an extensive forest country, known as the "pine region," comprising an estimated area of 21,000 square miles. Extending in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, about 100 miles long, and an average width of 40, is the largest body of hard-wood timber between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. It lies on both sides of the Minnesota River, comprising in all an area of 5,000 square miles, and is known as the "Big Woods." CLIMATE. Prominent among the questions proposed by the immigrant seeking a new home in a new country, are those concerning the climate, its temperature, adaptation to the culture of the grand staples of food, and its healthfulness. "The climate of Minnesota has often been the subject of unjust disparagement. 'It is too far north;' 'the winters are intolerable.' These and other similar remarks have found expression by those who should have known better. To the old settler of Minnesota, the seasons follow each other in pleasing succession. As the sun approaches his northern latitude, winter relaxes its grasp, streams and lakes are unbound, flowers spring up as if by the touch of some magic wand, and gradually spring is merged into the bright, beautiful June, with its long, warm days, and short, but cool and refreshing nights. The harvest months follow in rapid succession, till the golden Indian summer of early November foretells the approach of cold and snow; and again winter, with its short days of clear, bright sky and bracing air, and its long nights of cloudless beauty, completes the circle." "Men," says the late J. B. Phillips, Commissioner of Statistics, "suffer themselves to be deluded with the idea that heat is in some way a positive good, and cold a positive evil. The world is in need of a sermon on the gospel and blessing of cold. "What is there at best in the indolent languor of tropic siestas for any live man or woman to be pining after? Macauley, after his residence in India, did not. He said that you boiled there four or five months in the year, then roasted four or five more, and had the remainder of the year to 'get cool if you could.' 'If you could!' No way of refrigerating a tropic atmosphere has ever yet been devised; while you can be perfectly comfortable in any north temperate zone." Again he says: "The healthfulness of Minnesota is one of its strongest points. Having been, for a long time, a sanitary resort for persons threatened with pulmonary complaints, it has disappointed no reasonable expectation. It is equally favorable for those afflicted with liver diseases. Thus for the two great organs in the tripod of life, the liver and lungs, that is for two-thirds of life, Minnesota offers the most favorable conditions. She is more exempt from paludial fevers then any new State settled in the last half century. The fearful cost of human life it has required to subdue the soil in the States along the line of lat. 40° has never been estimated. With a moist, decaying vegetation, and a certain intensity and duration of summer and autumn heat, sickness of that kind is certain to come, no matter what they may _say_ about having 'no sickness here.' It always exists when the requisite conditions are present. Freed from the depressing influence of this decimating foe, the average Minnesotian eats with a craving appetite, sleeps well, moves with a quick step and elastic spirits, and fights his life-battle sturdily and hopefully to the issue." The mean yearly temperature of our Minnesota climate, (44.6,) coincides with that of Central Wisconsin, Michigan, Central New York, Southern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; but in the dryness of its atmosphere it has, both for health and comfort, at great advantage over those States. It is well known that dampness is the element from whence come sickness and suffering, either in cold or warm weather, and the dry atmosphere of winter in Minnesota, at an average temperature of 16°, makes the cold less felt than in warmer but damper climates several degrees farther south. With the new year generally commences the severe cold of our winter, but for the last few seasons the old Minnesota winters seem to be giving place to much milder ones. During last winter the thermometer, in the most exposed places, scarcely ever marked zero, and now, on the 21st of December--weeks after they have had fierce snow storms south and southwest of us--good sleighing in Chicago and St. Louis--we are getting our first regular fall of snow, (only a slight sprinkling before,) which is falling unaccompanied with either wind or cold and giving a good promise of merry sleigh rides during the Christmas holidays. Whether or not there has come a permanent change in our Minnesota winters, brought about by causes affected by population and settlement, we cannot say; but that such a change would not be acceptable to many of our old settlers we are convinced; not certainly to the enthusiast who writes as follows of our old, crisp, bright winters: "Winter in Minnesota is a season of ceaseless business activity, and constant social enjoyment; and by those accustomed to long wintry storms, and continued alternations of mud, and cold, and snow, is pronounced far preferable to the winters in any section of the Northern States. Here there is an exhilaration in the crisp atmosphere which quickens the blood, and sends the bounding steps over the ringing snow with an exultant flurry of good-spirits akin to the highest enjoyment." Doubtless this was written from the stand-point of warm robes, a light cutter, a fast horse, and tingling sleigh-bells; nevertheless it is in the main true. When the surface of the body is warmly clothed, one can enjoy out-door exercise in the winter with every comfort. The greatest and only objection that we find against the winter season in Minnesota, is its length.--It is true that, as a general rule, we have all our spring wheat in the ground, and for the most part over ground, before the end of April.--This infringement of winter, as we may term it, upon the domain of spring, is the draw-back to our climate. It is a slight one compared to those of other climates, where spring brings with its flowers, fever, ague, and chills. The summer months are pleasant. We have hot days, as one can judge by bearing in mind that our wheat crop is put into the ground, cut and often threshed, all within three months, but our nights are always beautiful and cool. Then comes autumn, when the wayside copse, blushing at the hot kisses of the sun, turns scarlet, and every tint of shade and color is seen in the variegated foliage of the forest; and then the hazy, Indian summer--nothing so lovely could last long on earth--when forest and prairie, dell and highland, palpitate with a hushed beauty, and to live is happiness sufficient. Pure air is health, life. Winter and summer, fall and spring, the air of Minnesota, free from all malaria, is pure. We promise to the new settler making a home on land in Minnesota, plenty of hard work, and the best of health and spirits--so far as climate has any effect on those blessings, and it has a great deal--while doing it. It will not be necessary for him to get acclimated, but to pitch right in. Disturnell, author of a work on the "Influence of Climate in North and South America," says that "_Minnesota may be said to excel any portion of the Union in a healthy and invigorating climate_." In connection with this very important subject, health, the following comparative statement as to the proportion of deaths to population, in several countries in Europe and States in the Union, will be read with interest: Minnesota 1 in 155 | Wisconsin 1 in 108 Great Britain and Ireland 1 in 46 | Iowa 1 in 93 Germany 1 in 37 | Illinois 1 in 73 Norway 1 in 56 | Missouri 1 in 51 Sweden 1 in 50 | Michigan 1 in 88 Denmark 1 in 46 | Louisiana 1 in 43 France 1 in 41 | Texas 1 in 46 Switzerland 1 in 41 | Pennsylvania 1 in 96 Holland 1 in 39 | United States 1 in 74 The above is so conclusive an exhibit in confirmation of the healthfulness of the Minnesota climate, that it exhausts the subject. SOIL. Under this head, the late J. B. Phillips, Commissioner of Statistics, from whose work we have already quoted, says: "The soil of the arable part of the State is generally of the best quality, rich in lime and organic matter, and particularly well adapted to the growth of wheat, over 26,400,000 bushels of which cereal were produced in 1873, and over 30,000,000 in 1875. Although its fertility has never been disputed, these authentic figures prove it beyond question. Good wheat lands in a favorable season will produce from 25 to 30 bushels to the acre. I believe the whole county of Goodhue, in a yield of between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 bushels, very nearly averaged the first figures in 1875. A great portion of the State is equally adapted to stock raising, and many farmers think it would be more profitable." We will add to this, by way of a note, that in 1877, as will be seen on another page, Minnesota with only 3,000,000 acres of her land under cultivation, produced 35,000,000 bushels of wheat, almost all No. 1 quality, and that Goodhue County, mentioned in the extract quoted, had a yield of 4,050,250 bushels. STOCK RAISING. We know of no country where stock, horses and sheep, do better than in Minnesota, and we believe that it will be found true that the climate conducive to the health of human beings is one where all kinds of domestic animals will thrive. We had, some time ago, a very interesting conversation with Mr. Featherston, an English gentleman residing in Goodhue County, on this subject. He informed us that he had farmed in England, in the State of New York, in Kansas, and now in Minnesota, and he was never in a place where sheep and stock did better than here. "I attribute this," he said, "to the dryness of our winter weather. Sheep here are not weighed down with wet fleeces; and as for cattle, they suffer more in southern Kansas, where they can remain out all the year, than they do here in the coldest days of winter." "How is that?" we asked. "Easily accounted for," he replied. "One part of the day, in Kansas, it will be raining, the coats of the cattle will be saturated with wet, then it comes on to freeze, and they become sheeted with ice; this is very injurious to the health of a beast. Sheep raising in Minnesota I have found very profitable farming indeed." "What about the soil of Minnesota?" we asked. "Well," he replied, "I was home in England two years ago, traveled about a good deal, and did not see any soil equal to the soil of Minnesota." Now, in speaking of Minnesota for stock-raising, it must be borne in mind that it is more expensive to keep cattle here, where they must be fed many months in the year, than where they can run at large the whole year; but, if properly housed during winter, young cattle fed on wild hay--which can be put up for $1.50 per ton--will come out in the spring in fine condition. The opportunities of getting wild hay in the localities where our Catholic colonies are located, are not surpassed in any part of the State; and it will be borne in mind that if there is extra expense and trouble in raising cattle here, there is also extra good prices to get for them. A steer that will sell for $10 in places where, like Topsey, he "just grows," will sell here for from $30 to $40. The following, taken from a late report of a committee of the Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul, will be read with interest: "Our climate and soil appear to be peculiarly adapted for grazing purposes. Its healthfulness for cattle of every kind is well established. The abundant and prolific yield of both tame and wild or natural grasses, of every description incident to the West, affords abundant and cheap pasturage during the summer, and the choicest of hay for winter, which is produced at less expense per ton than in most of the States in the Union. If necessary, your committee could refer to countless instances in regard to the profit of raising stock in the State. The demand for horses has always been in excess of the supply. Thousands are introduced into our midst every year from the adjoining States. The demand will increase as the country west of us becomes settled. Choice herds of cattle have been imported into the State during the past few years, attended in every instance, as far as your committee have been able to learn, with much profit to the enterprising parties who embarked in the lucrative business. The dairy is being introduced in the shape of cheese and butter factories in many neighborhoods and attended with much success. It appears that shipments of both these home products have been made to England with satisfactory results. The sheep-fold to some extent has been neglected, but those who have engaged in wool-growing are greatly encouraged. Flocks of sheep brought from the East have, with their progeny, improved to such an extent by the influence of our climate, that they have been repurchased by those from whom they were originally bought, and transported back East to improve the breed of their stock. The wool becomes of a finer texture when produced in our State, also an increase in size of the carcass of the sheep." The advantages which our present Catholic colonies afford, abounding in nutritious grasses and the best quality of wild hay lands, will we trust turn the attention of settlers to stock raising, butter packing and cheese factories, and we are informed that some enterprising parties are going to establish one of the latter at Clontarf, in Swift County Colony. Farming to be prosperous the industry on the farm must be diversified; there should be rotation of crops. It will not do to depend altogether on wheat or to be too ambitious to have a great breadth of it under cultivation; not an acre more than the farmer knows he will be well able to have out of the ground in good season, making no chance calculations. CROP STATISTICS. WHEAT, OATS, POTATOES, CORN, HAY, SORGHUM, FRUITS. In 1849, Minnesota was organized into a territory, and the following year, 1850, she had under cultivation 1,900 acres of land. In 1877, she had 3,000,000 acres. In these twenty-seven years, during which the breadth of her cultivated lands has increased over one thousand five hundred fold, the quality and average quantity per acre of all the great staple crops have been equally satisfactory, until we find her to-day, taking the foremost place as an agricultural State. To quote from the writings of the Hon. Pennock Pusey, than whom there is no more upright gentleman nor one more qualified to deal with statistics, we find that "According to the census of 1870, the entire wheat product of New England was sufficient to feed her own people only three weeks! That of New York sufficient for her own consumption six months; that of Pennsylvania, after feeding her own people, afforded no surplus; while the surplus of Ohio was but 3,000,000 bushels for that year, and for the past six years her wheat crop has fallen below her own consumption. In the ten years ending in 1870, the wheat crop of these States decreased 6,500,000 bushels. "In the light of these facts, the achievements of Minnesota in wheat growing, as well as her untaxed capacity for the continued and increased production of that grain, assume a proud pre-eminence." This is not too high praise for Minnesota, when we find the great State of Ohio for the last six years failing to raise sufficient wheat for her own consumption, while Minnesota with but 2,232,988 acres under wheat, has, after bountifully supplying her own population, exported in 1877 over fifteen million of bushels. The important position which Minnesota is destined, in the near future, to assume as a great contributor to the supply of the most important article of food used by the human family, is well put forward by Mr. Pusey in the paper we have already quoted from. He says: "But a more practical as well as serious aspect of the subject pertains to those social problems connected with supplies of bread. The grave significance of the question involved is not susceptible of concealment, when the fact is considered, that while the consumption of wheat, as the choice food of the human race, is rapidly extending, the capacity of wheat-growing regions for its production is rapidly diminishing." We will now give some extracts from the report of the late J. B. Philips, Commissioner of Statistics. We select from his report with great satisfaction, because he has been very careful to make his calculations rather under than over the truth. We find the following under the head of WHEAT, 1875. The number of bushels of wheat gathered and threshed, according to the returns reported to the Commissioner for the year 1875, was 28,769,736; but there were 77,032 acres unreported, which at 17-1/2 bushels per acre, (the general average,) would make a total of 30,079,300 bushels. The number of acres reported as cultivated in wheat for 1875 was 1,764,109. Illinois, with her large cultivated area, has until recently been the largest wheat-raising State. In 1860 she produced 23,837,023 bushels, and in 1870 30,128,405 bushels. "In 1871," says one of her statisticians, "the United States produced 235,884,700 bushels of wheat, of which 27,115,000 are assigned to Illinois, or about 700,000 bushels more than any other State." In 1871 the product of the United States was 230,722,400 bushels, of which Illinois had 25,216,000, being followed by Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. In 1870 Illinois produced 30,128,405. "But," says the same authority, "we now (1870) find Iowa close alongside of us, her product being 29,435,692 bushels of wheat." It is to be remarked that neither Minnesota nor California were deemed worthy of notice in this rivalry of these older States. But in three years from that date Minnesota, as well as Iowa, was "close alongside" of Illinois, raising from 15 millions in 1870 to 22 millions in 1872, and 26,402,485 in 1873. In 1874 the wheat product of Minnesota was within a fraction of 24 millions. I give her yields in this table: WHEAT YIELD FOR FOUR YEARS IN SUCCESSION. Bushels. Average per acre. 1872 22,069,375 17.40 1873 26,402,485 17.04 1874 23,988,172 14.23 1875 30,059,300 17.05 I am not aware that any State ever did, or can, show a better record than this for four successive years. I give below a few of the MAXIMUM WHEAT PRODUCTS OF STATES. Ohio, 1850 30,309,373 California, 1874 30,248,341 Illinois, 1870 31,128,405 Minnesota, 1875 30,079,300 Iowa, 1870 29,435,692 "It will be observed," remarks the Commissioner, "that according to these figures Minnesota ranks fourth." True enough, but fast on the heels of 1875 comes the crop of 1877, and with a bounce to 35,000,000 bushels of wheat Minnesota stands at the head of all as a wheat-producing State. 35,000,000 BUSHELS of almost all No. 1 grade. In 50,000 bushels of wheat graded in Minneapolis, something less than 300 bushels graded No. 2, and none under that figure. We now give the following condensed statistics for the year 1877. Number of acres under cultivation in 1877 3,000,000 Crops. Bushels. Wheat 35,000,000 Oats 20,000,000 Corn 12,000,000 Barley 3,000,000 Potatoes 3,000,000 ---------- Total 73,000,000 Or 24-1/3 bushels to every acre under cultivation. But the average is much higher than this, for in the above table no account is taken of the gardens and large breadth of flax under cultivation. The official report, when published, may differ slightly with the above, but not to an extent to make any alteration necessary. We are informed that, in several instances, land giving wheat for the last twenty years, without being fertilized or manured, produced in 1877 over twenty bushels of wheat to the acre; a fact creditable to the land, but very discreditable to the farmers engaged in such _land murder_. While Minnesota has, without dispute, established her reputation as a great wheat producer, and the dangers which always lie in wait for the growing crops are perhaps less here than in most of the other western States, still it must not be supposed that we can expect to be always free from them. If we had any such idea it would have been dispelled by our experience the past season. Never since the State was organized was there a finer prospect of a magnificent wheat yield than we had during the months of May, June and the first half of July, 1878. It was not that the general crop was good, but one could not, in a day's travel, find one poor looking field; but just as the wheat was within a few days of being fit to cut, a fierce, hot sun, lasting a week or so, came and wilted up the grain, so that the crop lost materially in quality, weight and measure. Yet this evil had its compensating good. Our corn and potato crops were very fine, so that our farmers have learned a lesson in the value of having diversity of crops as a leading feature in their farming system, and be it remembered that without system there is no successful farming. The following statement is taken from the immigration pamphlet, issued by the Minnesota Board of Immigration for 1878: OATS. Oats is peculiarly a northern grain. It is only with comparatively cool atmosphere that this grain attains the solidity, and yields the return which remunerate the labor and cost of production. The rare adaptation of the soil and climate of Minnesota to the growth of this grain, is shown not only by the large average, but the superior quality of the product, the oats of this State being heavier by from three to eight pounds per bushel than that produced elsewhere. The following is an exhibit of the result for the several years named: No. bushels Average yield Year. No. acres sown. produced. per acre. 1868 212,064 7,831,623 36.00 1869 278,487 10,510,969 37.74 1870 339,542 10,588,689 31.02 1875 401,381 13,801,761 34.38 1877 432,194 16,678,000 37.75 The following is a statement of the product of oats in Minnesota, compared with that in the other States named: Average Bushels to per acre. each inhabitant. Ohio, average of 11 years 23. 9.17 Iowa 28.30 17.80 Minnesota 37.70 23.88 CORN. The foregoing exhibits abundantly sustain the extraordinary capacity of Minnesota for the production of those cereals which are best produced in high latitudes. Our State is often supposed to be too far north for Indian corn. This is a great mistake, founded on the popular fallacy that the latitude governs climate. But climates grow warmer towards the west coasts of continents; and although its winters are cold, the summers of Minnesota are as warm as those of Southern Ohio. _The mean summer heat of St. Paul is precisely that of Philadelphia_, five degrees further south, while it is considerably warmer during the whole six months of the growing season than Chicago, three degrees further south. The products of the soil confirm these meteorological indications. The average yield of corn in 1868 was 37.33 bushels per acre, and in 1875--a bad year--25 bushels. In Illinois--of which corn is the chief staple--Mr. Lincoln, late President of the United States, in the course of an agricultural address in 1859, stated that the average crop from year to year does not exceed twenty bushels per acre. These results, so favorable to Minnesota as a corn growing as well as wheat growing State, will surprise no one who is familiar with the fact established by climatologists, that "the cultivated plants yield the greatest products near the northernmost limits at which they will grow." COMPARISON WITH OTHER STATES. A comparison with other States affords the following exhibit: Bushels per acre. Ohio, average of nineteen years 32.8 Iowa, average of six years 31.97 Minnesota, average of nine years 30.98 POTATOES. The average yield in Minnesota and other States is here shown: Bushels per acre. Minnesota, average for five years 120.76 Iowa, average for five years 76.73 Ohio, average for nine years 74.55 HAY. Among the grasses that appear to be native to the soil of Minnesota are found timothy, white clover, blue grass and red top. They grow most luxuriantly, and many claim that they contain nearly as much nutriment as ordinary oats. So excellent are the grasses that the tame varieties are but little cultivated. The wild grasses which cover the immense surface of natural meadow land formed by the alluvial bottoms of the intricate network of streams which everywhere intersect the country, are as rich and nutritious in this latitude as the best exotic varieties, hence cultivation is unnecessary. The yield of these grasses is 2.12 tons to the acre, or 60 per cent more than that of Ohio, the great hay State! SORGHUM. The cultivation of the sugar cane is fast becoming popular among the farmers of Minnesota, and one Mr. Seth H. Kenney, of Rice county, claims that it can be made more profitable than even the wheat crop. The syrup and sugar produced is of the finest character, possessing an extremely excellent flavor. An acre of properly cultivated land will yield from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred gallons of syrup, worth seventy cents a gallon. FRUITS. The following short extracts are taken from a paper written by Col. D. A. Robertson, of St. Paul, a scientific amateur fruit grower; one thoroughly conversant with the subject on which he writes, and to whose disinterested labors in this branch of industry the State owes much: "There is no doubt that Minnesota will become a great fruit State, because wherever wild fruits of any species grow, improved fruit of the same or cognate species may be successfully cultivated. The indigenous flora of Minnesota, embraces apples, plums, cherries, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries. We may, therefore, successfully and profitably cultivate the improved kinds of all these fruits. The conditions of success are only these:--experience, knowledge and perseverance. "All kinds of Siberian Crab apples, (which are valuable chiefly for preserves,) including the improved Transcendant and Hyslop, are perfectly adapted to our climate; and flourish in almost every soil and situation where any other tree will grow, and also produce great crops. "At our State Fair at St. Paul, in October, 1871, there was a magnificent display of home grown fruits, which would have been creditable to any State in the West. Among the numerous varieties of excellent fruit exhibited in large quantities were the following: "APPLES.--Duchess of Oldenburg, Red Astracan, Saxton or Fall Stripe, Plum Cider, Fameuse, Haas, Jefferson County, Perry Russet, American Golden Russet, Yellow Bellflower, Ramsdale Sweeting, Geniton, Lucy, Winona Chief, Jonathan, Price's Sweet, Westfield, Seek no Further, Sap, Wagner, Winter Wine Tay, English Golden Russet, Dominie, St. Lawrence, Pomme Gris, Ben Davis, Sweet Pear, and about thirty other varieties." RAILROAD AND POPULATION STATISTICS--HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION LAW IN MINNESOTA: TABULATIONS FROM COMPANY REPORTS. LENGTH AND LOCATION. _The Railroads of Minnesota, with Termini and Lengths in this State, on June 30, 1876._ ========================================================= Name of road. | Abbrev. ---------------------------------------------+----------- Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul-- | River Division | a Hastings and Dakota Division | b Iowa and Minnesota Division | c Iowa and Minnesota Division, Branch | d Iowa and Minnesota Division, Branch | e Chicago, Dubuque and Minnesota | f Central Railroad of Minnesota | g St. Paul & Duluth | h Minneapolis & Duluth | i Minneapolis & St. Louis | j Northern Pacific | k St. Paul & Sioux City | l Sioux City & St. Paul | m St. Paul & Pacific, First Division--Main Line| n " --Branch | o " --St. Vincent Extension| p " " | q " " | r St. Paul, Stillwater & Taylor's Falls | s " --Branch | t " --Branch | u Southern Minnesota | v Stillwater & St. Paul | w Winona & St. Peter | x Winona, Mankato & New Ulm | y ===================================================================== Road abbrev. | Termini. | Miles. -----------------+-----------------------------------------+---------- a | From La Crescent to St. Paul | 128 b | " Hastings to Glencoe | 75 c | " St. Paul to Southern State line | 127 d | " Mendota to Minneapolis | 9 e | " Austin to Lyle | 12 f | " La Crescent to southern State Line| 25 g | " Mankato to Wells | 40 h | " St. Paul to Duluth | 156 i | " Minneapolis to White Bear | 15 j | " Minneapolis to Sioux City Junction| 27 k | " Duluth to Moorhead | 253-1/2 l | " St. Paul to St. James | 121-1/4 m | " St. James to southern State line | 66-1/4 n | " St. Anthony to Breckenridge | 207 o | " St. Paul to Sauk Rapids | 76 p | " Sauk Rapids to Melrose | 35 q | " Brainerd, 4-1/2 miles south | 4-1/2 | " a point 12 miles S. of Glyndon to | r | a point 28 miles N. | 104 | of Crookston | s | " St. Paul to Stillwater | 17-1/2 t | " Junction to Lake St. Croix | 3-1/4 u | " Stillwater to South Stillwater | 3 v | " Grand Crossing to Winnebago City | 167-1/2 w | " White Bear to Stillwater | 13 x | " Winona to western State line | 288-1/2 y | " Junction to Mankato | 3-3/4 +---------- | 1978 Since the publication of the report of the railroad commissioner as given above, showing 1978 miles of railroads in Minnesota; there have been 216 miles built in 1877, and 350 miles in 1878--total, 2544 miles now operated in the State. In 1862, we had but ten miles of railroad in Minnesota; in 1878, sixteen years afterwards, two thousand five hundred and forty-four miles. This past year, the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad has extended its line to the British Possessions in Manitoba, connecting with a road there and giving us direct railroad communication with the vast country lying north of us; while the Southern Minnesota, the Hastings & Dakota, the St. Cloud branch of the St. Paul & Pacific, are extending their lines, like arteries, through the heart of the State. In much less than ten years, Minnesota will have the most perfect railroad system on this continent. POPULATION. Number. Population in 1870 439,706 Population in 1875 597,407 Population in 1877 750,000 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION LAW. We are proud of the Homestead Law of Minnesota. The State says to its citizen: you may be unfortunate, even culpably improvident, nevertheless you and your family shall not be left homeless or without means to enable you to retrieve past misfortunes or faults. The law reads-- "That a homestead consisting of any quantity of land not exceeding eighty acres, and the dwelling house thereon and its appurtenances, to be selected by the owner thereof, and not included in any incorporated town, city or village, or instead thereof, at the option of the owner, a quantity of land not exceeding in amount one lot, being within an incorporated town, city or village, and the dwelling house thereon and its appurtenances, owned and occupied by any resident of this State, shall not be subject to attachment, levy, or sale, upon any execution or any other process issuing out of any court within this State. This section shall be deemed and construed to exempt such homestead in the manner aforesaid during the time it shall be occupied by the widow or minor child or children of any deceased person who was, when living, entitled to the benefits of this act." Thus the State, in its bountiful protection, says to its citizen, "You may be unfortunate, even blamably improvident, nevertheless the State shall not allow you and yours to be thrown paupers on the world. Your homestead is still left to you, a competency at least." There are also reserved for the settler, free from all law processes, all his household furniture up to the value of $300, 3 horses, or in lieu 1 horse and yoke of oxen, 2 cows, 11 sheep, 3 hogs, wagon, harness, and all his farming machinery and implements; also a year's supply of family provisions or growing crops, and fuel, and seed grain not exceeding 50 bushels each of wheat and oats, 5 of potatoes, and one of corn, also mechanics' or miners' tools, with $400 worth of stock-in-trade, and the library and instruments of professional men. This is the beneficent protection which the State throws around the poor man's home. Yet there is one way in which he may forfeit it. Should he have the misfortune to mortgage his homestead the law can no longer protect him; he is in the toils of the money lender, and should poor crops or other set-backs come to him now, there is every probability that he will lose his home. We say to our settlers, avoid this fatal error, misfortune almost always follows it; toil, slave, fast, rather than mortgage your homestead. FARM STATISTICS. We come now to a very important part of our work. Under this head we have made several calculations, for the guidance of the immigrant. They have been made with care, and are, we think, as nearly correct as it is possible to make such calculations. By a careful study of them the intending immigrant will learn WHAT HE HAS TO DO WHEN HE HAS SECURED HIS LAND. THE VARIOUS MODES HE MAY TAKE TO OPEN HIS FARM. THE EXPENSES INCURRED BY EACH METHOD. THE EXPENSE OF LIVING UNTIL HIS FIRST CROP COMES IN. These, with minor details, we have set forth in the following calculations. They embrace the case of the poor man with a small capital and the man with quite a respectable capital, who may wish to put it in a bank that never fails, and in which he will himself be the director and owner. THESE TABLES CLEARLY SHOW THE LEAST CAPITAL a man requires to settle in one of our colonies, and also, if he can afford it, how advantageously he can lay out a considerable sum for which he will receive a quick return. We will take up the poor man's case first, as it is the one we have the most interest in, and we land him on his land IN THE SPRING. He puts up a very cheap house; by and by, he will have a better one--but, in the meantime, he can make this one comfortable, warm and clean--much better than a cheap lodging in a city. We will give the dimensions of the house as 16 � 18 ft., to be built of single boards; these to be sodded on the outside to any depth the owner may wish. In this way, he can have a house far warmer than a poorly put up frame house, at the following cost: 1,600 feet of lumber $25 00 2 windows, 2 doors 6 50 Shingles 7 25 ------ Total $38 75 Now, we must furnish the house: HOUSE FURNITURE. Cooking stove $25 00 Crockery 5 00 Chairs 2 00 Table 2 00 3 bedsteads 9 00 ------ Total $43 00 CATTLE AND FARMING IMPLEMENTS He buys a breaking yoke of oxen, weighing from 3,200 to 3,400 lbs. at about $100 00 Breaking plow 23 00 Wagon 75 00 ------- Total $198 00 Then he goes to work and breaks up, we will say, 50 acres of land. He has to live sixteen months before his principal crop comes in, but he can have his potatoes and corn, planted on the sod, within a few months, to help him out in his living; that is, when he breaks his land the first year, he will plant a portion of it under corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, sufficient for his own use, and for feed for his cattle. WHAT IT WILL COST HIM TO LIVE. For a family of four, 30 bushels of wheat, ground into flour, at $1, a bushel $30 00 Groceries 15 00 1 cow for milk 25 00 Fuel 30 00 ------ Total $100 00 He has besides, vegetables, and corn sufficient, that he raised on his breaking, and two hogs that he raised and fattened on the corn, and for which we should have charged him two or three dollars. In the fall, his hogs weigh 200 lbs. each, and he can sell them or eat them; we recommend the latter course. HOW HE STANDS THE SECOND SPRING. He has laid out, for a house $38 75 For Fuel 30 00 " Furniture 43 00 " Cattle and farming implements 198 00 Cost of living, including price of cow 100 00 ------- Total $409 75 This sum he will absolutely require to have when he arrives on the land. To this, in his calculations, he must add his expenses coming here. Railroad fares from different points will be given in another place. We have not here made any calculations in regard to the purchase of his land, in the first place because the lands are different prices in different colonies, and secondly because most of our settlers with small means, buy their farms on time, getting very easy terms of payments. All information in this respect will be found in its proper place, when we come to speak of our colonies. It must be born in mind (and it may be as well said here as elsewhere) that the Catholic Bureau owns no lands; we but control them and hold them at their original prices for our immigrants. We have also secured advantages in prices and terms of payment which immigrants cannot get outside of our colonies. Now having no crop the first year, he works out in the harvest and earns $60.00. This he requires now, and more when he puts in his first crop, but, as he will get time for some, perhaps all, of the following charges, we will not charge them to his original capital. SECOND SPRING'S WORK AND EXPENSES. 1 drag to put in the crop, shaking the seed by hand $12 00 Seed wheat for 50 acres. 1 bushel and 2 pecks to the acre 75 00 Hires his grain cut and bound 75 00 Shocking, stacking, etc., done by exchanging work with neighbors. Machine threshing at 5 cents a bushel 50 00 Extra labor done by exchanging work. ------- $212 00 We have now come down to the harvest and the second year on the land Up to this the settler's expenses have been $621 75. Let us see what the land is likely to set off against this sum, 50 acres of wheat 20 bushels to the acre $1,000 00 Charges 621 75 --------- Balance in favor of crop $378 25 Adding to this the sixty dollars the man earned the first harvest, he has in hand $438.25. It must be borne in mind that the settler has supported himself and family for sixteen months, his home is made, stock paid for, his farm opened, and at least $300 added to the value of his land. We will suppose that he plows the second year fifty acres more and has one hundred acres under his second crop. With this good set off, we leave him. Now we will give the CASH EXPENSES, for the same number of acres, where a man hires all his work done. He may prefer to do this, to buying cattle or horses to break, as he may be a man who can earn high wages, until his first crop comes in. Breaking 50 acres, at $2.50 per acre $125 00 Seed wheat 75 00 Seeding and dragging, at 90 cents per acre 45 00 Cutting and binding, $1.50 per acre 75 00 Stacking, five days, two men and team 25 00 Threshing and hauling to market, at 12 cents a bushel 120 00 ------- Cash expenses of crop $465 00 CREDITS. Fifty acres of wheat, 20 bushels to the acre, at $1 per bushel $1,000 00 Charged to the crop 465 00 --------- Balance in favor of crop $535 00 Now, the expense of breaking, by right, should not be charged to the first crop, for it is a permanent value, added to the value of the land, and should be calculated as capital: 50 acres broken on a farm of a 160, adds fully $2 an acre to the value of the property. But in the above calculation, we have not alone charged the first crop with the breaking expenses, but also with the cash price of every dollar's worth of labor expended, until the wheat is in the railroad elevator, and the owner has nothing more to do, unless to receive his money for it; and yet there is a clear profit over all expenses of $535.00. In making these calculations, it is necessary to put a certain value on the wheat per bushel, and to allow for a certain amount of bushels to the acre, but it will be obvious to any reader that in both these important items there are continual variations. The calculations we now give appeared in the edition of our pamphlet for 1877, and were based, in a measure, on our fine wheat crop for that year. The crop of 1878, as we have already stated, fell short of 1877, and were we basing our estimate on it we should calculate wheat second grade at 66 cents per bushel, but the crop of 1879 may surpass the crop of 1877; taking the average of many years' crops and prices, our calculations are as near correct as they can be made. SECOND CALCULATION OF HOUSE BUILDING. In our calculation of the smallest sum a man would require, coming to settle on the land, we made an estimate of a very cheap house indeed, nevertheless one that can be made warmer than many a more expensive one. We give an estimate of the cost of a frame house 16�24, a story and a half high, with a T addition, and a cellar 12 by 16. We give the exact expenses of a house of this kind as it stands at present in one of our colonies. It has three rooms up stairs with a hall, two rooms down stairs with a hall and pantry, and has had one coat of plaster: Material for house $280 Work 75 ---- Total $355 A man himself helping, can lessen this item for work, say $25, leaving the cost of the house $330. In our first calculation we put down as the lowest sum a man would require to have after his arrival on the land, $409.75. But in this calculation we gave him a house, such as it was, for $38.75. Now, if he wants the better house we have just described, his capital should be $726. WHAT A MAN WITH MODERATE CAPITAL CAN DO. We now come to the case of a man with moderate capital, who wishes to start with a complete outfit of farming machinery, &c. Coming in the spring, in time to commence breaking, the end of May, he buys Three horses $375 00 One sulky plow--seat for driver, breaker attachment 70 00 Seeder 65 00 Harrow 12 00 Harvester and self-binder 285 00 Horse rake and mower 125 00 Wagon 75 00 --------- Total $1,007 00 N. B.--It is calculated that the grain saved by the self-binder over hand work, pays for the wire used in binding, and in labor 50 cents an acre is saved, besides the board of two men. We will soon have twine and straw binders perfected, an improvement which will do away with the expense of wire altogether. With a sulky plow and three horses, our farmer breaks 100 acres of land, and puts it under wheat the following year. He has been already at an outlay for horses and machinery of $1,007 00 Seed wheat costs 150 00 Shocking and stacking 70 00 Threshing and hauling, using his three horses, 10 cents a bushel 200 00 --------- Total $1,427 00 CREDITS. 2,000 bushels of wheat $2,000 00 Hay cut by mower 200 00 --------- $2,200 00 Expenses 1,427 00 --------- Balance in favor of crop $773 00 Now, it will be born in mind, that we have charged the first crop with horses and machinery, property that, by right, should come under the head of capital; we have charged it with what will work the farm for years, and help to produce successive crops, not of one hundred acres, but of two or three hundred acres; and yet, with all the charges, the crop shows a profit of $773. What other business can make such a showing as this? As a matter of fact, all the ready money the settler will require to provide himself with machinery, will be ten per cent. on the price; for the balance he will get two years time at 12 per cent. interest. GENERAL REMARKS. While our figures and illustrations in regard to the opening of a farm, and the expenses attending thereon, have been as explicit and full as our space would permit, still we regard them but as a basis for a variety of similar calculations to be made by intending immigrants. For instance, two friends might buy a breaking team between them, and break, say twenty acres, on each one's farm. One could do the breaking, while the other might be doing some other work. In fact, each man's case has its own peculiar features, which he must bring his own judgment to bear upon, and we don't pretend to have done more than to have given him a good guide to assist him in his calculations. Twenty acres would be a pretty fair breaking for a poor man the first year, and quite sufficient to enable him to support a small family. We have farmers in the woods, now prosperous men, who for years had not more than from five to ten acres cleared, for it is hard work to clear heavy timbered land, and much easier to plant young trees than to cut old ones down. But heretofore poor men were frequently deterred from going on prairie land on account of the heavy expense attached to fencing their tillage land. This was about the highest item of expense. It is not so now, for in the counties in which our Catholic colonies are situated, and in the adjoining counties, A HERD LAW is in force, whereby cattle have to be herded during the day, and confined within bounds during the night. In this way one man or boy can herd the cattle of a whole settlement, and the heavy, vexatious and continual tax of fencing is entirely done away with. All the lands in our Catholic colonies are prairie lands, and in the colonies and adjoining counties, as we have already stated, the herd law is in full force. No one, at the present day, who has any experience in farming in the West, would settle on an unimproved timber farm. It takes a lifetime to clear such a farm, and even then a man leaves some stumps for his grandchildren to take out. But we earnestly impress upon our settlers the necessity of setting out trees around their prairie homes. The rapid growth of trees set out on any of our prairies, is absolutely wonderful. In six years after planting, a man will have nice, sheltering, young groves, around his house. One of the first things a settler should do after breaking up his land is to set out some young trees, which he can buy very cheap. All our railroads carry such freight free. If he cannot get the trees he can sow the seed, which will do as well. For comfort on a prairie, trees are a necessity; but it is worse than useless, it is loss of time, to set them out, unless they are taken care of: give them solitude, and keep the weeds and cattle from them for a little while, and they will soon be able to take care of themselves. Cord-wood can be bought at any of the railroad stations in our colonies at an average of about five dollars a cord. There is another matter which may well come under the head of general remarks. While we have shown by figures the good profits which may be calculated upon by an industrious farmer, still, he must not look for a great increase of money capital, for some years at least. While he will be enabled under God, by industry, sobriety and perseverance to give his family a good, comfortable living, it must be to the increase in the value of his farm each year, that he must look for an increase of capital, to that and the increase of his LIVE STOCK. Above all things, he must attend to the latter; it is almost incredible the way young stock will increase. A man starting with one cow will have his yard full of young stock in a few years by raising the calves that come to him. It is a fact that men who came to this State without any means whatever, and settled on land, are to-day among our most prosperous farmers; but they came uninvited, at their own risk, and if they had failed, they could only blame themselves. The case is altogether different in regard to persons coming to our Catholic colonies. They come invited, and depending upon the information we give to them; therefore, there must be no misunderstanding on either side. We say to the immigrant, with the capital we have specified, you can open a farm in Minnesota, and if you are industrious, brave and hopeful, we promise you, under God, an independent home. If you come without this capital, you do so at your own risk. CATHOLIC COLONIES IN MINNESOTA. LOCATION, POPULATION, SOIL, TOWNS, EXTRACTS FROM INTERESTING LETTERS FROM RESIDENTS, &c., &c. We now come to speak of our Catholic Colonies. In doing so we will be as accurate and as truthful as it is possible to be. At the same time we recognize the difficulty of making others see things as we see them, they are too apt to draw imaginary pictures from our facts. For instance when we speak of settled communities and towns, it should be borne in mind that our oldest settlement was only opened in the spring of 1876, our two latest in the spring of 1878, and that both farms and towns exhibit the rough, unfinished appearance of new places in the West, which it takes time, perseverance and industry to mould into thrifty comeliness; with the aid of the two latter (perseverance and industry) the former (time) will be but a very short period indeed. We have now four Catholic Colonies in Minnesota, two in the western and two in the southwestern part of the State. SWIFT COUNTY COLONY. This is the oldest and doubtless best known of our colonies. The colony lands commence 120 miles west of St. Paul and extend for 30 miles on each side of the St. Paul and Pacific railroad. Within the bounds of the colony are four railroad towns, one of them, Benson, being the county seat; but the two colony towns proper, are De Graff and Clontarf, being organized and run, as they say out West, by our own people. In fact, Swift County Colony may very well be spoken of as two colonies, for the present under one name, the Chippewa River dividing the colony lands about in the center, having De Graff on the east and Clontarf on the west. Each town too, has its own Catholic church, congregation and resident priest--the Rev. F. J. Swift, pastor at De Graff, and the Rev. A. Oster, pastor at Clontarf. The colony lands on the east side of the Chippewa, stretch out from the town of De Graff, 18 miles in length and 12 miles in width, and Clontarf lands on the west side of the river, have equal proportions. This division and explanation may be of service to correspondents, some of whom frequently write to one or other of the resident priests, for information, in preference to writing direct to the Catholic Bureau, in St. Paul. When Bishop Ireland in 1876, got control of the unsold railroad lands within the present bounds of Swift County Colony, there was a large quantity of Government lands lying beside these railroad lands, and open for homestead and pre-emption entries, so that a great number of our people were able to secure farms of 80 and 160 acres by merely paying the fees of the U. S. Land Office. Early settlers too, on the railroad lands, had an opportunity by paying cash to get their farms much below the market value, for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company (the owner) having fallen behind hand in paying the interest on its bonds held by foreign capitalists, these bonds became depreciated in the market, but were, nevertheless, good for their full amount, in payment of the lands belonging to the company. In this way we were enabled in the first edition of our pamphlet for the year 1877, to offer lands, much below, in some instances more than half below, their average value; but as prices depend altogether on the market value of the bonds, a value which is always fluctuating, we deem it unwise to bind ourselves to arbitrary prices. The average railroad price of lands in Swift County Colony is $6.50 per acre; the actual cash price, by buying bonds and paying for the land with same, will be much less than this, and we will, when called upon get the bonds for the immigrant at their then value, but what the exact prices of the bonds may be or how long they will remain in the market available for the purchase of land, we cannot take upon ourselves to say. In this connection we wish to point out to immigrants, that irrespective of paying for land in bonds, for which they must pay cash, they can make contracts, on long time, with the company, for their farms. There are other ways too by which our people can make homes in this well-settled colony. Non-Catholics who were settled in the county before the colony was established, will be willing to sell out. Homesteaders, too, who got their land free from the government, and made improvements, are frequently anxious to realize a little capital by the sale of those improved farms, and go still farther west. There is also a large quantity of school and State lands in the county, which will be in the market in 1879; so notwithstanding that the greater part of the colony railroad lands have passed from the control of the Bureau into the possession of settlers, and that all the government lands have been taken up, we look forward, with pleasure, to see many more of our people settling in Swift county next spring. They will find a goodly number of their co-religionists settled before them and anxious to give them a friendly welcome. There are very few of the New England or Middle States that have not representatives in the colony. From a communication received from the Register of the United States Land Office at Benson, the county seat, we find that since the Bureau opened this colony in 1876, 425 Catholic settlers have taken up government land in the colony; of these, 300 families were Irish, the remainder Germans, Poles and French. About an equal number of Catholics--a large majority Irish--have taken railroad lands--80,000 acres of which have been sold; so that we can claim at least 800 Catholic settlers, with their families, in Swift County Colony at the present writing. Driving west from De Graff to Clontarf, seventeen miles, and still eleven miles farther west from Clontarf to the _Pomme de Terre_ River, one is never out of sight of a settler's house; and some of those farm houses would be a credit to a much older settlement, for we have settlers who farm as much as five hundred acres, while others again farm but eighty acres. The general quality of the soil is a dark loam, slightly mixed with sand and with a clay sub-soil, admirably adapted for wheat, oats, &c., &c., while the bountiful supply of good water and the large quantity of natural meadow lands, scattered all over the colony--there is scarcely a quarter section (160 acres) without its patch of natural meadow--give the settler an opportunity to combine stock raising and tillage on his farm. The village or town of De Graff has a railroad depot and telegraph office; a grain elevator, with steam power--which is the same as saying, a cash market for all farm produce--six or seven stores, with the general merchandise found in a country town; lumber yard, machine warehouse, blacksmith, carpenter and wagon maker shops; an immigrant house, where persons in search of land can lodge their families until they are suited; a resident doctor, and resident priest, Rev. F. J. Swift; a fine commodious church; a handsome school house and pastor's residence. No saloon. The business men of the town are our own people, and a Catholic fair, for the benefit of the new church, held last fall, and patronized exclusively by the colonists, netted $1,000 clear. Traveling along the railroad and passing through Benson, half way between De Graff and Clontarf, we come to the latter, the youngest town in this young settlement, but it has a very fine class of settlers around it: west of the village the land is as fine as any in the State, known as the Hancock Ridge. Clontarf has two general stores, a grain elevator, an immigrant house, a railroad depot, blacksmith shop, a large church and a very handsome residence for the priest, the Rev. A. Oster. No part of the colony is settling up more rapidly than the portion around Clontarf and several new buildings will go up in the village next summer. Swift County Colony is fast beginning to wear the features of a settled community. Many of our farmers have harvested this year their second crop; our merchants report that they are doing a lively business; bridges are being built, roads laid out, plans of improvement discussed by the settlers; and we challenge any part of the West to produce a more intelligent rural class. True to the memory of the old land and their love for their church, the settlers have given familiar names to many of the townships in the colony, such as Kildare, Cashel, Dublin, Clontarf, Tara, St. Michaels, St. Josephs, St. Francis, &c., &c. The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, running through the whole length of the colony, has, by its late extension, become one of the great railroad thoroughfares of the northwest, and added much to the value of the colony lands. Commencing at St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, it crosses the Northern Pacific at Glyndon in this State and continues on to St. Vincent, situated on the line separating the State of Minnesota and the British Possessions in Manitoba. Here it connects with a railroad just completed and running to Winnipeg, the capital of the British province of Manitoba. GRACEVILLE COLONY. This colony is located in Big Stone County, west of Swift. It is our Homestead Colony, and one which we feel very proud of. What is thought of Big Stone County by Western men, in connection with stock raising, is shown by the following extract from a published communication. "Stock raising now receives more attention from the prairie farmers than ever before, since the erroneous impression heretofore existing that the wintering of cattle was too expensive, has been entirely disproved. Numbers of settlers from the lower part of our State, and from Iowa, have removed to Big Stone County with large droves of cattle, that they herd on the vast natural meadows of that county, which also furnish all the necessary hay for winter food." We will add to this, that the soil of Big Stone County, for agricultural purposes, is deemed as good as any in the State, without exception. The lands in the county being government lands, we could not of course have any control of them, they were open to all comers; but by prompt action the Bureau located during the months of March, April and May, one hundred and seventy-five families in the county. Many of those colonists were poor people who were induced to leave Minnesota towns and settle on land. But we will let a resident of the colony, one who has examined every quarter section in it and materially aided in its settlement, speak for it. In answer to a letter from us, Col. J. R. King, a resident of Graceville, and a practical surveyor, who has acted as agent for the Bureau since the opening of the colony, writes: "During the months of March and April, 1878, a great number of claims for our people were entered in the United States Land Office, but before any of them come on to their lands, Bishop Ireland shipped, in March, five car loads of lumber for erecting a church building; the church was commenced the same month and completed, in the rough, in about three weeks. This is the first instance, in my knowledge, where a church was erected in advance of settlement. Our Right Rev. Bishop must have had a foreknowledge of what was to follow. "In the short space of three months there was built, in a radius of six miles from Graceville Church, over 150 comfortable cabins, and on each claim from five to ten acres broken for a garden and planted with potatoes, corn, beans, turnips, &c., &c., which yielded quite a good supply for the present winter. Our colonists had the advantage of being early on the ground and had their gardens planted in May. "The colonists broke during last summer from fifteen to thirty acres per man, so that next spring they will be able to get in wheat sufficient to carry them through the second winter handsomely. They are all in the very best spirits and could not be induced to return to the cities--for they already feel independent and masters of the situation. "The soil here is splendid and the country beautiful. Gently rolling prairie, with numerous ponds or small lakes and plenty of the finest hay. "The balance of Big Stone County, outside of our colony, has all been taken up; a large majority of the claims occupied and substantial improvements made by the settlers, who are first class. Traverse County, adjoining us on the north, is fast filling up. "I must not forget to say that we have good water in abundance; my own well is sixteen feet deep, with as fine, pure water as ever was found. "And now to tell you about our little village, Graceville, named in honor of our revered Bishop, the Right Rev. Thos. L. Grace. It is beautifully situated on the north shore of one of the two large lakes known as Tokua Lakes, and has three general stores, one hotel, one blacksmith and wagon shop, a very handsome little church and the priest's residence attached. Around the lake is a fine belt of timber which adds much to the beauty of the place. The village is 26 miles due east from Morris, on the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, but the Hastings & Dakota Railroad, now built close to the line, will run through our county next summer; by and by we will have a cross road running through the colony lands. "Our resident pastor is the Rev. A. V. Pelisson, a veteran missionary, who is doing a wonderful deal of good, temporal and spiritual, among his people, and is 'the right man in the right place,' full of energy and zeal. "The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered up in our church every day, and on Sundays we have High Mass, for Graceville has a sweet church choir. "It is most edifying to see the crowd of men, women and children who flock in from all points of the compass to church on Sundays. Father Pelisson had the first temporary church taken down and in its place he has erected one of the prettiest and neatest churches in the State; a credit both to the good father and his people who so cheerfully assisted in its erection, under many difficulties. "From the roof of the church I can count to-day over 70 houses where last March there was nothing but a bare prairie. If God prospers our people next season with good crops, they will be over their difficulties, in a fair way to prosperity." We do not know that we have anything to add to Col. King's very graphic and truthful statement in regard to Graceville Colony and the prospects of its settlers, very many of whom were so poor when they went in, that it required Western pluck to face the prairie. The building of the Hastings & Dakota Railroad last summer, giving them employment, was a great help. No doubt they had and will have a rough time of it for a little longer, but, they are toiling with hope, with the hope of an honest independence in the future. And with this hope in his heart, the settler toils and feels himself "every inch a man." Traverse County, mentioned in Col. King's letter, has, at the present writing, a large quantity of government land open to homestead and pre-emption entries. (See the Homestead Law in another place.) There is no doubt too, but that persons, during the land excitement last year, made government claims in Big Stone County--some within the colony bounds--which, from one cause or another, they will neglect to hold, by not fulfilling the conditions required by the law governing such claims. In all cases of the kind the lands revert to the government and are again subject to entry. Yet, so rapidly are those lands taken up that we cannot promise to our people, coming from the East, that when they arrive, they will find any homestead land adjoining or within any of our colonies. ST. ADRIAN COLONY. This colony, situated in Nobles County, in the southwestern portion of the State, close to the State line of Iowa, on the Luverne and Sioux Falls branch of the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad, was opened in September, 1877. Before going into details in regard to the colony we will give some extracts from an article (lately published) treating of southwestern Minnesota, where, as we have stated, St. Adrian colony is located. "Southwestern Minnesota has made rapid progress in stock raising. As capital increases, and the utility and profit of stock raising become better understood by the farmer, we shall see fine flocks and herds, in addition to the fields of waving grain, and our rich prairies teeming with the life they can so amply sustain. The abundance of clear, sweet water, dry atmosphere, its elevation, rich pasturage, freedom from disease, and direct and ready access to all the prominent markets, unite to make Minnesota the paradise of stock raisers. Good hay can be put in the stack in Southwestern Minnesota for $1.25 per ton. It can be secured without other expense than cutting, and with very little labor, enough can be made for the maintenance of a large amount of stock. * * * * * "This section has been settled but seven years, yet it is already teeming with a population of wide-awake, industrious people, whose fields are evidences of the innate wealth of the region. The soil of Southwestern Minnesota is adapted to the successful cultivation of grain, and so celebrated has its grain producing qualities become, that capitalists have put their money into large tracts of land, and have now immense fields under cultivation, and their investments have proven extremely profitable. There are farms of 600, 1,000 and 2,000 acres, all producing Minnesota's great staple, wheat. Every year, as the success of these investments becomes known, new and large farms are opening. * * * * * "Southwestern Minnesota is on the move, and to those who wish to locate in a thriving, driving, pushing, growing country, no locality on the green earth promises more faithfully, and none will redeem its pledges with greater pride to the wide-awake, stirring husbandman. The very soil teams with wealth, and the air is laden with the most precious gifts of health." Making allowance for the rather high coloring of the above extracts, its facts are correct. Southwestern Minnesota has many advantages for stock raising, its soil is good, none better. Stock raising has been carried on successfully there to the advantage of a great many poor settlers, and men of wealth have opened large grain farms in this section of the State; the largest of these farms adjoins the colony lands of St. Adrian. Of the 70,000 acres of railroad land which Bishop Ireland holds the control of for colony purposes, 22,000 acres have been sold to settlers. The colony lands adjoin the railroad town of Adrian. A little over a year ago it had three houses, now it is one of the brightest, liveliest, most bustling little burgs in Southwestern Minnesota. But, as in the case of Graceville, we will let a resident of St. Adrian speak for the town and colony. The following is an extract from a letter which we received the other day from the Rev. C. J. Knauf, the pastor in charge of the St. Adrian colony. Father Knauf resides in the town of Adrian--where immigrants, bound for the colony, leave the train--and takes an active part in locating immigrants. Father Knauf writes: "The village of Adrian consisted of three houses when I came here, September 20, 1877, one year and three months ago to-morrow; now there are 68 houses in the village. We have three hotels, one restaurant (no beer,) three lumber yards, one steam feed mill, four general stores, one drug, two hardware stores, one jewelry store, one barber shop, one large livery stable, two furniture dealers, four dealers in farming machinery, one shoe maker, one tailor, three blacksmiths, one carpenter shop, four wheat and produce buyers; a public school house, costing $1,800; a Catholic Church, well finished, and the pastor's house, the latter costing $1,840. "I sold, up to date, 22,000 acres of land. Thousands of acres were broken last season. I was the first Catholic to arrive here: now we have sixty Catholic families in the colony. Next spring we will have 160 Catholic families, for a great many bought farms last year, had breaking done--some broke extensively, others moderately--and will move on, with their families, to their new farms, next spring, in time to put in their first crop." In explanation of that portion of Father Knauf's letter which speaks of parties who have purchased farms in the colony but who have not moved on to them as yet, we will say, that since the Bureau, at the solicitation of many correspondents, agreed to have land selected and contracts made out for persons anxious to secure land in some one of our colonies, and yet unable, from one cause or another, to come on immediately; a great many have adopted this mode to get land. We find from Father Knauf's letter that he has on his books the names of one hundred families who have secured land in St. Adrian colony, and will move on to their new homes next spring, so that he is looking forward to very lively times. There is also coming out to St. Adrian Colony in the spring a brave-hearted little lady from Brooklyn, N. Y., to get in her first crop, and put up her first farm house. She was on here last summer, spent a month or so at St. Adrian, bought 270 acres of land, left money to pay for the breaking of 200 acres, and will come on to settle in the spring. She has no doubt but that she will make the venture pay, and prefers to make the trial rather than have her money bearing small interest in the East. Lands sell in the colony from $5 to $7.50 per acre. A discount of 20 per cent. from these prices is allowed for cash. The conditions for time contracts are as follows: At time of purchase, one-tenth of principal and interest on unpaid principal; second year, interest only; third year one-fourth of remaining principal and interest on unpaid principal; same for three ensuing years: after the expiration of which the full price of the land is paid. As an instance, showing the value set on land in this part of Minnesota, we will state, that school lands, sold last spring, at public sale, in the neighborhood of St. Adrian, brought from $7.50 to $17 per acre: the price obtained heretofore having been $5 per acre. On stepping from the train at St. Adrian, last summer, one witnessed a scene of bustle and activity similar to those frequently described by writers in sketches of Western life in new settlements, with some important exceptions, for neither in Adrian nor in any of the towns under the control of the Catholic Bureau, can there be found rowdies, nor the saloons that vomit them forth. This fact may take from the dramatic effect of such sketches, but it is the anchor of family unity and love, the harbinger of prosperity. The town of Adrian is 197 miles from St. Paul. A daily train from St. Paul to Sioux Falls, D. T., passes through it; it has also railroad communication with Sioux City, Iowa. The lands of the colony are first-class, both for agriculture and stock raising: and to those of fair capital we strongly recommend St. Adrian Colony. The colonists are German and Irish Catholics. AVOCA COLONY. This is the latest opened of our colonies, Bishop Ireland having only secured control of the lands last April. It is situated in Murray County (Southwestern Minnesota,) adjoining Nobles County on the north, and in the whole 52,000 acres of land secured by the Bishop for the colony, we very much doubt if one poor section (640 acres) could be found, nor do we suppose that any of the land will remain unsold by the 1st of next July. While the beauty of the location and fertility of the soil, make Avoca one of the most desirable locations in Minnesota, the easy terms on which a farm can be secured, are additional and substantial advantages for men of small means. The centre of the colony--the village of Avoca, situated on a beautiful lake--is just twenty miles from Heron Lake, a station on the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad, 160 miles southwest of St. Paul; but the Southern Minnesota Railroad, which will give this portion of the State a direct communication with the Milwaukee and Chicago markets, is now completed to within forty-five miles of Avoca, and we expect to see it running through our colony lands by next fall. This will give to the settlers in Avoca Colony, a direct southern route to Chicago, and a choice of markets for their produce: the latter an advantage which farmers can well appreciate. The price of lands in the colony are from $5 to $6.50 per acre, on the following easy terms of payment. At the time of purchase, interest only, one year in advance, seven per cent., is required; at the end of one year, interest only for another year; at the end of two years, one-tenth of the principal, and a year's interest on the balance; at the end of three years, one-tenth of the principal, and interest on balance; at the end of each year thereafter, twenty per cent. of the principal, and interest on balance; until all is paid. We subjoin a practical illustration of these terms: We will say that January, 1879, a man contracts for 80 acres of land at $5 per acre, this will come to $400, with 7 per cent. interest, which sums he will have to pay as follows: Jan. 1st, 1879, At time of purchase, one year's interest in advance, at 7 per cent. $28 00 Jan. 1st, 1880, One year's interest in advance, at 7 per cent. 28 00 Jan. 1st, 1881, Ten per cent. of principal. $40 00 One year's interest on balance $360, at 7 per ct. 25 20 ------ 65 20 Jan. 1st, 1882, Ten per cent. of principal. 40 00 One year's interest on balance $320, at 7 per ct. 22 40 ------ 62 40 Jan. 1st, 1883, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $240, at 7 per ct. 16 80 ------ 96 80 Jan. 1st, 1884, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $160, at 7 per ct. 11 20 ------ 91 20 Jan. 1st, 1885, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $80, at 7 per ct. 5 60 ------ 85 60 Jan. 1st, 1886, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 ------ Total. $537 20 The advantage of the terms is, that the principal payments are all postponed until the farmer has had time to raise several crops from his land. A quarter-section of land will support a family, pay for itself, leave after seven years a balance in cash, and be worth more than twice its original value. We have already selected several 80 and 160 acre farms in Avoca for persons not in a position to come on immediately to the land. Now let us explain how this operates. An intending immigrant writes to the Bureau to have 80 acres of land in Avoca at $5 per acre, selected for him, (as a general rule a man should take a quarter-section, 160 acres, by doing so he will be likely to have both meadow and tillage land on his farm.) For those 80 acres, he pays down, before getting his contract from the railroad company, one year's interest, $28. He writes on then, next spring, to the Bureau, to have 30 acres of his land broken and ready for a crop the following spring--1880. His breaking will cost at $2.50 per acre, $75. He will have paid the first year $103, and have his land ready for the seed; he comes on then the second spring, 1880, pays $28, another year's interest, to the railroad company, puts in his crop and has it saved and ready for market in August. Up to this time--not calculating the expenses chargeable to the crop, which we have estimated already in another place--he has paid out $131, and has his farm opened and in a fair way to pay for itself. In soil and location the Colony of Avoca is not surpassed in the Northwest. Nine miles from the village of Avoca there is a large body of timber. Settlers can also get coal from Iowa. The Rev. Chas. Koeberl is pastor of the colony, address, Avoca, Murray County, Minnesota. He writes to us under date of December 20th, 1878: "In regard to this colony it promises, thank God, to be a great success. Since June, when the land sales commenced, we have sold 9,850 acres, and forty-five Catholic families are preparing to move into the colony next spring. Immigrants will have in our village of Avoca, a building where they can leave their families until they have put up their houses, also a boarding house and store. "In speaking of our climate you can boast honestly of its health. Among 200 families belonging to my missionary district, I have not known of one case of internal disease, during my seven months' stay here. It would be well to particularly mention in your forthcoming pamphlet, that this is a prairie, not a timber county. I receive so many letters asking about the cost of clearings, &c., &c. "I expect quite a rush for land in Avoca, next spring, and will be glad if our people come on early, in time to plant potatoes, corn, &c." * * * * * In bringing this brief review of our Catholic colonies to a close, we again thank the Catholic press of this country, for its honest advocacy of Catholic immigration to the land. The favorable notices its editors have given to our humble labors in our own field of duty, and the service rendered to our work thereby, can never be forgotten by us. Our friend, P. Hickey, Esq., editor of the _Catholic Review_, came specially from New York, last summer to visit our colonies, to judge for himself; and what he saw, the favorable impressions he carried away with him, together with sound argument in favor of Catholic colonization, have appeared, from time to time, since his return, in able and lucid articles from his pen. * * * * * God has blessed our labors beyond our expectations. We see our colonies fast merging into settled communities, where honest labor goes hand in hand with religion, and where men work not for a mere pittance from a master's hand, to support them for a day or a week, but with the hope, the prospect, of an inheritance for their children, in the future. THE BEST TIME TO COME. WHEN TO COME, WHAT TO BRING--WHO SHOULD COME. RAILROAD FARES FROM DIFFERENT POINTS--HALF FARES FROM ST. PAUL TO OUR COLONIES. WHERE TO CALL IN ST. PAUL. Decidedly the best time for the emigrant to come to Minnesota is the spring. If possible, he should not arrive later than the first week in May. He should have his land selected in time to commence to break for garden stuff and corn about the 20th of May, then he can continue to break, for his next year's wheat crop, up to the early part of July. The month of June is the month for breaking, for then the grass is young and succulent, and will rot readily. A man coming in the early part of June can have land broken for his next year's crop, but he loses the advantages of garden stuff and sod corn to help him out in his living until his first crop comes in. WHAT TO BRING. All your bedding that is of value. All your bedclothes. All wearing apparel, good clothing of every description: nothing more. Do not think of bringing stoves, nor any kind of house furniture. You can get all such at the stores in the colonies, or here in St. Paul, new, for nearly what the freight on your old furniture, worthless and broken, perhaps, by the time it arrived here, would come to. The better way is to sell what you have in this line, before leaving, and buy here. WHO SHOULD COME. We intend that our closing remarks shall treat fully and clearly on this very important portion of our subject. They will be found under the head of A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. Here we will but say what we have already written. WE INVITE FARMERS ONLY to our colonies. No doubt the country builds up the town, and we look for quite a building up of our young Catholic towns next summer; but, in the way of business, stores and mechanics' shops, the home supply is generally fully up to the demand, and at present we would not feel justified in inviting any one to our Catholic colonies but a man WHO WANTS A FARM, And who is able and willing to work one. RAILROAD FARES FROM DIFFERENT POINTS. 1st Class. 2d Class. Immigrant. New York $35 25 $30 25 $24 00 Philadelphia 33 50 28 45 24 00 Montreal 36 25 26 00 Toronto 29 25 23 00 Buffalo 29 25 23 00 Cleveland 25 25 20 00 Chicago 15 25 12 00 Milwaukee 12 25 9 00 N. B.--The above are the fares from the points mentioned to St. Paul. Doubtless persons coming in a large party from the same place would get special low rates. From St. Paul to any of our colonies, immigrants are carried for half fare; about $3 for an adult. They also get low rates for baggage &c., &c. WHERE TO GO ON ARRIVING IN ST. PAUL. Immigrants, on arriving in St. Paul, will immediately report themselves at the Catholic Colonization Office, situated in the basement of the Cathedral school building, corner of Sixth and Wabashaw streets. There they will be received by an agent of the Bureau, who will give them all necessary information and instructions, also half-fare tickets to railroad points in the Catholic colonies, and procure for them half-freight charges on goods and extra baggage. Office hours from 8 o'clock A. M. to 6 o'clock P. M. All communications should be addressed to THE CATHOLIC COLONIZATION BUREAU, St. Paul, Minn. A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. We wish that this concluding chapter of our pamphlet may be read carefully, and thought well over by intending immigrants. We wish it for their benefit, and our own benefit and protection. It is, we might say, a fearful responsibility to advise another in a matter which contemplates a change in his habits, mode of life, and home, and such a change should never be undertaken, especially by a man of family, without a most thorough investigation, not alone as to the place he intends going to, but likewise as to his own fitness for the change. When you have examined this pamphlet from cover to cover, then commence an examination of yourself, not forgetting your wife, if you have one, who is part of you, and a very important part in connection with this question of your going upon land. This is especially necessary if you and your wife have lived for years in a city and become habituated to city life. It is a great change from city life in the East to country life in the West, especially when the part of the country one moves to is new and settlements just forming. You are not to expect to realize the advantages of the change right off; it is through yourself, through your own grit and industry, those advantages must come. To a Western farmer there is nothing bleak or lonely in a prairie; to a man coming fresh from a city and looking on it, for the first time, with city eyes, it may, very likely, seem both. Indeed, a sense of loneliness akin to despondency is a feeling which the newly-arrived immigrant has generally to contend against, a feeling which may increase to a perfect scare if he is a man anxious to consult Tom, Dick and Harry--who are always on hand--as to the wisdom of the step he has just taken. We speak from experience, from facts we have a personal knowledge of. Our labors in the cause of immigration have brought to us much happiness and some pain. To illustrate: Two immigrants arrived here last year, in high spirits, called at our office a few minutes after landing, and so impatient were they to go hunt up land that they were quite disappointed to find they would have to stop over one night in St. Paul. Well, the next morning they called at the office again, all courage, all desire to go upon land wilted out of them, and informed us that they had changed their minds and were going back to Massachusetts. Why? Well, they had met a man at the boarding house they stopped over night at, who advised them not to go out and settle on a prairie. He told them, too, that "he was fifteen years in Minnesota and never could get a dollar ahead." Now here were men, rational to all appearance, having traveled two thousand miles or so to settle upon land, when they came within sight of the land, as we may say, losing all desire to visit it, all courage, all confidence in disinterested, experienced friends, and in the information they gave to them; in everything but the word of a loafer, who never did a day's good in his life, nor never will, and who was anxious to shuffle off the onus of his slipshod condition from himself to the country. Here is another case, which occurred a few months after Swift Colony was opened and while the country around looked still wild and lonely. Two men arrived here from Philadelphia. They went on to the Catholic colony in Swift County, and in a day or two returned, saying that they had made up their minds to go back to Philadelphia. Why? Did they not find everything as it was reported to them? "Oh, yes, the land was good, and there was a good chance for a poor man to make a home on it, if he could content himself, but it was too lonely for them." Lonely, to be sure it was; with the noise of the city still ringing in their ears, with its crowds and its gaslights still in their eyes, these men found the prairie lonely, and without pausing to consider all the circumstances, they turned their back upon it. They were both decent, intelligent men, and, had they remained, taken land, gone to work, opened a farm, and seen their first crop ripening, you could no more have got them back to Philadelphia than you could get them into the penitentiary. Now, we say to those for whose benefit this pamphlet has been written, if you come here you must come fully prepared to feel the effects of a great change. If you come from a city, you will, doubtless, feel lonely for a while, until you get accustomed to prairie life; you will miss many immediate comforts; you will have to put up with discomforts, with disappointments, with trials. The man who feels he can stand up against all such difficulties in the present, and look bravely to the future for his reward, let him come to Minnesota. The man who feels within him no such strength, who is easily disheartened and inclined to listen to the idle talk of every man whom he meets, let him stop away and listen; better to listen now, where you are, than after going to the expense of coming here. To the family man we say: We would much prefer that you should come on here in the spring and see for yourself before breaking up your present home and bringing on your family. If you settle down, you can send or go for your family; if you are not pleased with the change, there will not be much harm done. Another very important piece of advice we give to you: If your wife is very much opposed to going upon land, do not come out. A discontented wife on a new farm is far worse than the Colorado beetle. But if she urges you to come, if, in this matter, she thinks of your welfare and that of her children, rather than of the society of the gossips she will leave behind her; if she says to you, "we will have the children out of harm's way anyhow," then come with a brave heart and the smile of the true wife and mother shall be as a sunbeam in your prairie home. HOW TO SECURE GOVERNMENT LAND. Although we cannot promise government land in any of our colonies, still we give the following synopsis of the laws affecting such land, as likely to be of benefit to those who wish to secure homes in this way. HOMESTEADS. 1. _Who may enter._--First, every head of a family; second, every single person, male or female, over the age of twenty-one years, who are citizens of the United States, or have declared their intentions to become such. 2. _Quantity that may be entered._--80 acres within ten miles on each side of a land-grant railroad, and 160 acres without. 3. _Cost of entry._--Fourteen dollars. 4. _Time for settlement._--After making his entry the settler has six months within which to remove upon his land. 5. _Length of settlement._--The settler must live upon and cultivate his entry for five years. At any time after five, and within seven years, he makes proof of residence and cultivation. 6. _Proof required._--His own affidavit and the testimony of two witnesses. 7. _Residence._--Single, as well as married men, are required to live upon their homesteads. 8. _Soldiers' Homesteads._--Every honorable discharged soldier, sailor or marine, who served for ninety days, can enter 160 acres within railroad limits, upon payment of eighteen dollars. The time spent in the service will be deducted from the five years' residence required. TIMBER CULTURE ENTRY. 1. _Who may enter._--The same qualifications are required as in a homestead entry. 2. _Quantity that may be entered._--40, 80, or 160 acres. 3. _Limitations._--But one-fourth of any section can be entered. 4. _Requirements._--No settlement is required. By the amended law only ten acres need be broken and set out in trees on 160 acres, (quarter section.) First year, break five acres. Second year, break five acres and cultivate in crop first year's breaking. Third year, set out trees in first five acres broken and crop second five acres. Fourth year, set out trees in latest five acres broken. N. B.--Seed or cuttings can be put in in place of trees. If the timber entry be but 80 acres, one-half the quantity before given is planted; if 40 acres, one-fourth. 5. _Proof required._--Affidavit of party, and testimony of two witnesses. 6. _Cost of entry._--Fourteen dollars for any entry, without regard to quantity. A man making a Homestead entry, is also entitled to make a Timber-culture entry. This would give him, outside of the ten miles railroad grant, half a section of land; a son or daughter, twenty-one years of age, can also enter under the Homestead and Timber-claim acts, half a section; and thus one family can secure a whole section of land. PRE-EMPTION ACT. Under this act, a man can enter 80 acres of government land, inside the ten miles railroad limits, price $2.50 per acre; or 160 acres, outside the railroad grant, for which he will have to pay, getting two years time $1.25, government price. If he wishes, he can pay up in six months, on proof of actual residence, having made the improvements on the land required by the law, which are easily done, and get his title; having secured this, he can then enter 80 or 160 acres more, under the Homestead act. He cannot Pre-empt and Homestead at the same time. None of the government conditions for securing land are at all burdensome to the actual settler; whether required by law or not, to be a farmer, a man must live upon his land and cultivate it. [ADVERTISEMENT.] THE VERY BEST LINE TO ST. PAUL OR MINNEAPOLIS, IS THE CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RAILWAY. _It is the only Northwestern Line connecting in same Depot in Chicago, with any of the great Eastern or Southern Lines, and is the most conveniently located with reference to reaching any depot, hotel, or place of Business in that city._ PASSENGERS approaching Chicago by any Railway, will find Parmalee's Omnibus Checkman on the trains, who will exchange their checks, and give them all requisite information. Parmalee's Omnibusses are on hand at all depots, on arrival of trains, to convey passengers to the depot of this Company. Passenger Agents of this Company are at the several depots, on arrival of connecting trains, for the purpose of directing and assisting passengers. 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THE LATEST NEWS FROM ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD RELATING TO THE CONDITION AND PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH. ALL FOREIGN and DOMESTIC NEWS. =Farm Statistics, Local Intelligence=, AND MARKET REPORTS. =TERMS.= =$2.50 per Year, Payable in Advance.= N. W. PUBLISHING CO. Catholic Block, Third Street. ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. [ADVERTISEMENT.] GAMMON & DEERING, HARVESTING MACHINERY. The Marsh Harvester and Harvester King, with or without their celebrated Automatic Crane Binder Attachment for 1879. [Illustration] We present, on this page, a cut representing the latest improvements in grain-cutting machinery, as shown in the celebrated _Marsh Harvester with Automatic Crane-Binder Attachment_. The Marsh Harvester itself is too widely and favorably known to require an extended description or commendation. It was the first of this class of grain-harvesting machines, and, indeed, for some years the only one, forcing itself into favor against the united opposition of the various reaper manufacturers who are now so clamorous in praise of their imitation harvesters. It also made practicable automatic grain binding. All attempts to put self-binding attachments to other reapers proved futile, and have only been successful when attached to harvesters cutting and elevating the grain, as is done by this harvester. The manufacturers of the Marsh Harvester have been fully alive to the importance of having a self-binding attachment to their harvesters that should be correspondingly for a binder what their harvester is admitted to be--_the best of its class_. To this end they have had skilled labor specially employed for several years, and have invented and patented several important improvements and devices, and have bought others. They have also had their binders in the grain fields for several years past, following the progress of the harvest from Texas to Manitoba. Last season this binder did remarkable work. Such minor defects as the most thorough tests and roughest usage developed have been carefully remedied. It is no longer a question of success with this binder, success is a fully demonstrated fact. Another thing will be obvious to all who carefully examine this binder, that it is very simple and easily understood. This is an indispensible requisite to a successful machine. Farmers are too busy and too much hurried in harvest time to study mechanics or tinker on machinery. They want a machine they can put in the field, and do good work, without bother, loss of time or undue perplexity. This harvester and binder will do good work with certainty. The Marsh Harvester cuts a five-foot swath the King cuts six feet. All of these harvesters are so made this year that a binder attachment can be put on at any time hereafter, so that a farmer, desiring to divide the expense, can buy the harvester this year and the binder next. Look at it! A few years ago it required six or seven men to do, with a self-rake reaper, what the Marsh Harvester and Binder will do with one man or one boy. The Harvester also does the work cleaner and better. It binds every straw, and saves enough in this way to nearly or quite pay for the wire. The wire-bound bundles can be made as large or as small as you like. The wire is unobjectionable in threshing, the wire passing through without injury to the thresher. No cattle will eat wire, and no one has ever been known to be injured by it. It requires about three pounds of wire to an acre of grain of average stand. This machine reduces the cost and the labor of grain harvesting to a minimum. No progressive farmer can afford to do his work with an old-fashioned reaper. He might almost as well return to the hand sickle. It is now a question of the best binder. _Thus far the manufacturers of the Marsh Harvester have furnished the best harvester, and now they offer the best binder_, and still propose to keep their machines in the lead, as they have been, and are now. We also manufacture the old and reliable WARRIOR MOWER, admitted by all to be one of the best mowers in use. Apply to the nearest agency or to Gammon & Deering, Chicago, Ill., for circulars containing full particulars in regard to those machines. =_W. H. JONES & CO._=, =_GAMMON & DEERING_=, General Agents for Minnesota Manufacturers, Chicago, Ill. and Manitoba. Transcriber's Notes: The original edition did not include a table of contents. Some inconsistent hyphenation (i.e. overcrowded vs. over-crowded) has been retained from the original -- text quoted from different sources may have different standards. Within several long quotes, series of asterisks on line ends have been replaced with thought breaks -- these presumably indicate abbreviations to the quotations. Page 14, changed "successs" to "success." Page 16, changed "similiar" to "similar." Page 24, removed stray comma from "average, quantity." Page 30, changed "indegenous" to "indigenous." Page 31, inconsistent capitalization in table retained from original. Split table to fit width of text edition; HTML edition provides better rendering. Page 37, changed "every dollars'" to "every dollar's." Page 42, added missing period after "Rev" in "Rev. F. J. Swift." Pages 43 and 44, normalized "DeGraff" to "De Graff" for consistency. Page 49, changed "$1800" to "$1,800" for consistency. Page 53, converted oe ligature to oe in "Koeberl" for Latin-1 compatibility; HTML edition retains ligature. Page 55, added period after "Minn." Page 60, removed extraneous space from "$2. 50." Page 64, changed "to busy" to "too busy." 
41068	----	[Transcriber's note: It is noted that on page 92 "From December 1, 1894, to September 12, 1892, 329 francs 75 centimes was collected;" that the dates are not sequential. The word _sabotage_ has been consistently placed in italics. Individual correction of printers' errors are listed at the end.] STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume XLVI] [Number 3 Whole Number 116 SYNDICALISM IN FRANCE BY LOUIS LEVINE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS SECOND REVISED EDITION OF "The Labor Movement in France" AMS PRESS NEW YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 116 COPYRIGHT 1912 BY LOUIS LEVINE The series was formerly known as _Studies in History, Economics and Public Law_. Reprinted with the permission of Columbia University Press From the edition of 1914, New York First AMS EDITION published 1970 Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Number: 76-127443 International Standard Book Number: Complete Set ... 0-404-51000-0 Number 116 ... 0-404-51116-3 AMS PRESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 The term syndicalism sounds strange to an English reader. Its equivalent in English would be Unionism. A syndicat is a union of workingmen, on a trade or on an industrial basis, for the defense of economic interests. Revolutionary Syndicalism, however, has a broader connotation than the etymology of the term would suggest. A critical analysis of existing institutions, a socialist ideal, and a peculiar conception of revolutionary methods to be used for the realization of the ideal--are all contained in it. Revolutionary Syndicalism appears, therefore, as a phase of the general movement towards a reorganization of society on socialist principles.[1] [1] The term "socialist" is here used in a wide sense to include all varieties, even communistic anarchism. Revolutionary Syndicalism cannot be treated, however, exclusively as a phase of the evolution of Socialism. As the term suggests, it is also a development of the French Labor Movement. The organization which represents Revolutionary Syndicalism in France is the General Confederation of Labor (_La Confédération Générale du Travail_, generally referred to as the C. G. T.)--the central organization of the labor unions or syndicats in France. The history of Revolutionary Syndicalism coincides almost entirely with the history of the General Confederation, and it may be said that its future is entirely bound up with the destinies of this organization. In fact, Revolutionary Syndicalism is an attempt to fuse revolutionary socialism and trade unionism into one coherent movement. Peculiar conditions of French social history have thrown the socialists and anarchists into the syndicats and have secured their leadership there. In this respect, Revolutionary Syndicalism is a unique and interesting chapter in the history of both Socialism and Trades unionism and of their mutual relations. Revolutionary Syndicalism has attracted much attention outside of France. Its more or less rapid development, the turmoil into which it has thrown France several times, the extreme ideas which it expresses, the violent methods it advocates, and its attempts of proselytism outside of France have awakened an interest in it. A number of studies on the movement have appeared in German, Italian, Russian and other European periodicals and books. In English, however, the subject has not received the consideration it would seem to deserve from the theoretical as well as from the practical point of view. Revolutionary Syndicalism is an aggressive movement. Its aim is to do away with existing institutions and to reconstruct society along new lines. It must, therefore, necessarily call forth a definite attitude on the part of those who become acquainted with it. Those who speak about it are either its friends or its enemies, and even those who want to be impartial towards it are generally unable to resist the flood of sentiment which such a movement sets loose in them. Impartiality, however, has been the main effort of the writer of this study. It has appeared to him more important to describe the facts as they are and to understand the conditions back of the facts, than to pass sentence whether of approval or of condemnation. He has made the effort, therefore, to suppress his personality entirely in all that part of his work which is purely descriptive. The method adopted has been to describe ideas and facts sympathetically--whether syndicalist or anti-syndicalist, whether promoting or hindering the development of Revolutionary Syndicalism. The idea that has guided the writer is as follows: Let us imagine that social phenomena could be registered automatically. All social facts would then be recorded with all the sympathies and antipathies with which they are mixed in real life, because the latter are part of the facts. When social descriptions go wrong it is not because they are tinged with feeling, but because they are colored by those feelings which they arouse in the writer and not by those which accompany them in reality. The main task of the writer, therefore, is to try to enter into the feelings which go along with the facts which he is describing. This means that the writer must alternately feel and think as a different person. However difficult this may be, it is still possible by an effort of imagination prompted by a desire to get at the truth. This method seems more correct than an attempt to remain entirely indifferent and not to be swayed by any feeling. Indifference does not secure impartiality; it results mostly in colorlessness. For instance, were the writer to remain indifferent or critical while describing the syndicalist ideas, the latter could not be outlined with all the force and color with which they appear in the exposition of their representatives. This would not produce an impartial description, therefore, but a weak and consequently untrue one. On the contrary, by trying to feel and to think as a revolutionary syndicalist, while describing the syndicalist ideas, it is possible to come nearer to reality. The same method is used in the description of anti-syndicalist ideas and efforts. The result seems to the writer to be the creation of the necessary illusion and the reproduction of the atmosphere in which the movement developed. A critical and personal attitude has been taken only when the writer wished to express his own views. Whether the writer has been more successful than others in this attempt, is for the reader to decide. From the point of view taken in this essay, Revolutionary Syndicalism has to be described both as a theory and as a practice. The effort is made throughout, however, to consider the theory in close relation to the practice. The first chapter is introductory and serves merely to give the necessary historical perspective. This explains its brevity. Revolutionary Syndicalism is undoubtedly a peculiar product of French life and history. Still many of its ideas have a general character and may be of interest to men and women of other countries. After all, the problems that confront the whole civilized world to-day are the same, and the conditions in which their solution has to be tried are everywhere alike in many respects. It has been the writer's sincere hope throughout this work that the history of syndicalism may stimulate the readers of this essay to reflection and criticism that may be of help to them in their efforts to advance the cause of social progress in their own country. The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgments to Professor Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Professor Henry Rogers Seager and other professors of Columbia University who have in one way or another aided him in the prosecution of his work; but especially is he indebted to Professor Franklin H. Giddings for invaluable criticisms and suggestions which have guided him throughout his work, and to Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman for encouragement and advice, and help in making it possible for the work to appear in its present form. NOVEMBER, 1911. LOUIS LEVINE. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The term syndicalism no longer needs an introduction to the English reader. Within the past two years it has been naturalized in all English-speaking countries, and has become more or less widely known. It has even been enriched as a result of its migration. In France it simply expressed the comparatively innocent idea of trade unionism, while both in England and America it has come to designate those explosive and aggressive forms of labor unionism which the French described in the words "revolutionary syndicalism." The English use of the term has reacted upon the French syndicalists who have now generally dropped the adjective "revolutionary" and speak of their movement as "le syndicalisme" or "le syndicalisme français." In a word, as a result of recent industrial events the world over, syndicalism has emerged as a new movement of international scope and character. The most significant manifestation of this new development was the first international syndicalist congress which was held in London during the month of September of last year and at which delegates from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, the United States, England and other countries were present. The appearance of syndicalist tendencies in other countries has thrown some new light upon the subject. What was considered at one time the peculiar product of France or of the "Latin spirit," appears now to transcend the boundaries of particular countries and of kindred racial groups. It is evidently more closely related to industrial conditions. But its emergence in such countries as England and the United States destroys the familiar hypothesis that syndicalism is bred only by the small workshop. The latter may explain some peculiar aspects of French syndicalism; it can not explain the methods of direct action and the syndicalist spirit common to all countries. The explanation seems to me to lie in the direction indicated in the concluding chapter of this book. Three essential causes for the development of French syndicalism are pointed out in it: namely, political disillusionment, the economic weakness of the labor elements, and the comparatively static character of French industry. Recent industrial developments in England and the United States prove that the same conditions explain the appearance of syndicalist tendencies everywhere. The disappointment of the British workers in the political possibilities of the Labor Party, the general mistrust of "politicians" and the actual disfranchisement of large elements of the working population in the United States are facts which are not disputed, and the influence of which in recent industrial events is no longer denied. The comparative weakness of sectional unionism in England and of the unskilled elements in the American labor movement has been brought home to the workers themselves and has determined their change of tactics. Some French syndicalists have criticized the author of this book for laying too much emphasis on the financial weakness of the syndicats in France. But that is a misunderstanding on their part; the emphasis is not on finances, but on weakness which may be the result of many circumstances. Labor unions may have millions in the banks, and still be weak economically on account of the technical conditions of the industry or of the strong organization of the employers. A consciousness of weakness in certain respects must not lead necessarily to submission or to despair. But it generally leads to efforts in new directions and to new methods of action. It has resulted in the amalgamation of unions in England and in the wonderful effort to create a general spirit of solidarity among all elements of labor the world over. The comparatively static character of industrial life in France has no parallel in England or the United States. This explains why in the latter two countries the ideal aspects of syndicalism have obtained less significance, than in France. In an atmosphere of slow industrial growth, possibilities of immediate industrial gains do not loom up large in the eyes of the workers and no hope of considerable permanent improvement under given conditions is aroused; on the other hand, the forcible acquisition of the whole industrial equipment and its co-operative management seem comparatively easy. In the concluding chapter of this book, the possibilities of a change in the character of French syndicalism which were indicated in the first edition are left unchanged. Developments are not yet ripe to warrant any definite conclusion. Of course, some very important phenomena have taken place. The most significant, perhaps, is the development of the iron and steel industry in the eastern parts of France, particularly in the Department Meurthe-et-Moselle. Something very similar to what happened in the steel industry of the United States is happening there; large plants are being erected, gigantic industrial combinations are being formed, labor organizations are relentlessly fought, and foreign workers are imported from Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria and other countries. Under these conditions, new problems are thrust upon the French labor movement, and it is significant that the Federation of the metal workers has played the leading part in the recent campaign against the "anarchistic" tendencies of the General Confederation of Labor and has demanded a return to the platform of Amiens (1906) and to a more definite program of labor demands. This does not mean a change in the ideas of French syndicalism, but it certainly indicates a tendency towards the more positive work of organization and of purely trade conquests. It may be many years, before the struggle of tendencies in the General Confederation of Labor is determined either way. Meanwhile, the significance of French Syndicalism to the world of thought and action has become greater than it was before. France continues to present both the ideas and activities of syndicalism in the most lucid and developed form. This fact, I take it, has been partly responsible for the keen interest in the first edition of this book and for the necessity of bringing forth a second edition. LOUIS LEVINE. NEW YORK CITY, MARCH, 1914. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 5 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 9 INTRODUCTION, by Professor Franklin H. Giddings 17 CHAPTER I THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN FRANCE TO THE COMMUNE(1789-1871) Legislation of French Revolution on trade associations; law le Chapelier, 1791--Laws of Napoleon--Prohibition of strikes--Violation of these laws--Secret labor organizations in France: compagnonnages, societies of resistance--Revolution of 1848 and the co-operative movement--Influence of Louis Blanc--Reaction during the fifties--Revival of labor movement in 1862--Effort of French Workingmen to break legal barriers--New law on strikes in 1864--Toleration of labor unions by Government of Napoleon III--Syndicats and co-operation--Failure of co-operative central bank in 1868--Communistic and Revolutionary tendencies in "The International"--Success of "The International" in 1869--Franco-Prussian War and its influence on the French labor movement 19 CHAPTER II ORIGIN OF THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR (1871-1895) The influence of the Commune on the syndicats--Barberet and his rôle in the syndical movement (1872-78)--The first Labor Congress in France (1886)--Acceptance of the Socialist program by the syndicats at the congress of Marseilles (1879)--The Socialist groups in France: Guesdists, Broussists, Allemanists, Blanquists, Independents, Anarchists--Their points of agreement and of difference--Influence of socialist divisions on development of labor organizations--Attempts of syndicats to form a central organization--The National Federation of Syndicats; its failure--The Bourse du Travail--The Federation of Bourses du Travail--The idea of the general strike--Its conception--Criticism by Guesdists--Split in National Federation of Syndicats--Formation of General Confederation of Labor by advocates of general strike and opponents of Guesdists 45 CHAPTER III THE FEDERATION OF BOURSES DU TRAVAIL Importance of Bourses du Travail; their rapid growth--Municipal and governmental subventions--Program of Bourses du Travail--Federation of Bourses du Travail organized in 1892--Its original purpose--Fernand Pelloutier Secretary of Federation--His rôle and influence--Conception of syndicat as the cell of future society--Growth of Federation of Bourses; its relations with the General Confederation of Labor 73 CHAPTER IV THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR FROM 1895-1902 Reasons for dividing history of General Confederation into two periods--Weakness of Confederation before 1902--Congress of Tours in 1896--Discussion of the idea of the general strike--Congress of Toulouse in 1897--Discussion of _sabotage_ and boycott and of "Direct Action"--Congress of Rennes in 1898--Congresses of Paris in 1900 and of Lyons in 1901--Revolutionary character of Congress of Lyons: New conception of general strike; revolutionary character of syndicat; anti-militaristic ideas; opposition to labor legislation--Causes of revolutionary ideas: changes in the program and methods of socialist parties; Dreyfus affair; entrance of socialist Millerand into "bourgeois" government--Congress of Montpellier in 1902 and the fusion of the Federation of Bourses du Travail with the General Confederation of Labor 91 CHAPTER V THE DOCTRINE OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM Class struggle, its meaning and importance--Syndicat the proper organization for carrying on class struggle--Strength of syndicat by uniting workingmen without distinction of race, religion, political or philosophical ideas--Industrial unionism versus Craft unionism--Syndicats and "Direct Action"--Methods of "Direct Action:" strike, boycott, _sabotage_, label--The direct struggle against the State; exclusion of parliamentary methods--Criticism of democracy--Class struggle versus co-operation of classes--Anti-patriotism--Anti-militarism--General strike the means of emancipating workingmen--The ideal society of the syndicalists: economic federalism--The rôle of the "conscious minority"--Syndicats the true leaders of the working-class 123 CHAPTER VI THE THEORISTS OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM Two groups of writers on syndicalism, (_a_) workingmen (_b_) intellectuals--Their points of disagreement--Representative of intellectuals; Georges Sorel--His works--His conception of syndicalism as neo-Marxism--Fundamental idea of Marx; no Utopias--Task of socialists to teach workingmen--The importance of the idea of the general strike--The general strike a "social myth"--What is a "social myth?"--Importance of "social myths" in revolutionary movements--The general strike as a means of producing a complete rupture between working-class and bourgeoisie--Sorel's theory of progress; only technical progress continuous; succession of cultures not continuous--Necessity of combating democracy--Democracy--the régime of professional politicians who rule the people--Class struggle and violence; meaning of violence--General strike a great moral force--Syndicalist ideas founded on pessimistic basis--Pessimism as cause of great historical achievements--Ideas of Bergson--Criticism of Sorel; neo-Marxism not true to spirit of Marx--Lagardelle and his writings--Gustave Hervé and "La Guerre Sociale"--Influence of Sorel--Criticism of Prof. Sombart's views--Syndicalism a development independent of Sorel--Relation of syndicalism to other social theories 141 CHAPTER VII THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR SINCE 1902 Constitution of General Confederation of Labor adopted in 1902--Activity of General Confederation--Movement to suppress employment bureaus--Congress of Bourges in 1904--Triumph of revolutionary syndicalism--Movement for eight-hour day from 1904 to 1906--Agitation in France--Fear of "social revolution"--Government arrests leaders--Results of strike movement--Congress of Amiens in 1906--Struggle between revolutionaries and reformists--Adoption of resolution "the charter of syndicalism"--Revolutionary activity of Confederation after Congress of Amiens Demonstration of Villeneuve St. George in 1908--Collision with troops; killed and wounded; arrest of syndicalist leaders--Congress of Marseilles in 1908--Congress of Toulouse in 1910--Congress of Havre in 1912--Growth of General Confederation of Labor--The demonstrations of the General Confederation against war--The "crisis" of revolutionary syndicalism--Relations of General Confederation with International Secretariat of Labor 162 CHAPTER VIII CHARACTER AND CONDITIONS OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM Revolutionary syndicalism as a result of a coalition in the Confederation--The parties to this _bloc_: anarchists, revolutionary socialists, syndicalists--Formation and strength of the _bloc_--The socialist ideal of a free workshop--Historical traditions and the revolutionary spirit in French workingmen--Causes of the distrust of "politicians" and of parliamentary methods--The antagonism between workingman and intellectual--Revolutionary syndicalists not a minority in General Confederation--Conditions of syndicalism: poverty of French syndicats; psychology of French workingmen--Syndicats loosely held together--Weakness as cause of violent methods--French love of theory and of formulas--Similar actions of revolutionists and reformists in Confederation according to circumstances--Conditions necessary for realization of program of revolutionary syndicalism--Outlook for the future 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 INTRODUCTION The democratic social movement has overleaped its platform and escaped out of the hands of its instigators. It is larger than any school of ideas and will not be bound by any program. It can be analyzed in part, and in general terms described, but it can no longer be defined. Socialism as one phase of this unmanaged and unmanageable tide, has itself been profoundly affected by the magnitude, the complexity, and the waywardness of the mass motion. It now has its "Right" and its "Left." There is a conservative, and there is a radical socialism. Each proclaims the class struggle, and both demand the collective ownership of the chief means of production. But conservative socialism lays stress upon collective ownership, and would move toward it by peaceful, evolutionary steps. It relies on the ballot, believes in legislation, in law, and in government; while radical socialism proclaims "the revolution," plans for the general strike, and preaches the expediency of _sabotage_ and violence. At first sight almost identical with radical socialism is Syndicalism, which, however, proves upon examination to be both more and less than any socialistic program. In its most characteristic expression, syndicalism denies the state and would substitute for it a purely voluntary collectivism. So far it is at one with anarchism, and there are those who conceive of syndicalism as an anarchistic movement in opposition to socialism. The trade-union organization of labor the world over is looked upon by the syndicalist as the natural basis and agency of his enterprise, quite as existing political organizations are accepted by the conservative or parliamentary socialist as the best preliminary norms from which to evolve a new social order. In this division of the forces of social democracy into right and left groups over the question of organization and control, we have a significant demonstration of the inadequacy of that Marxian analysis which resolves all social conflict into the antagonism of economic classes. More profound than that antagonism, and in the order of time more ancient, is the unending warfare between those who believe in law and government for all, and those who believe in law and government for none. The more or less paradoxical character of the socialistic movement at the present moment is attributable to the circumstance that, for the time being, these antagonistic forces of socialism and anarchism are confronting a common enemy--the individualist, who believes in law and government for everybody but himself. To describe, explain and estimate a phenomenon so complex as modern revolutionary syndicalism is a task from which the economist and the historian alike might well shrink. To understand it and to enable readers to understand it is an achievement. I think that I am not speaking in terms of exaggeration in saying that Dr. Levine has been more successful in this arduous undertaking than any predecessor. His pages tell us in a clear and dispassionate way what revolutionary syndicalism is, how it began, and how it has grown, what its informing ideas and purposes are, and by what methods it is forcing itself upon the serious attention of the civilized world. I think that it is a book which no student of affairs can afford to overlook, or to read in any other spirit than that of a sincere desire to know what account of the most profound social disturbance of our time is offered by a competent reporter of the facts. FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. CHAPTER I THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN FRANCE TO THE COMMUNE (1789-1871) The economic legislation of the French Revolution was guided by individualistic ideas which expressed the interests of the rising middle classes who felt a necessity of removing the obstacles in the way of economic initiative and of personal effort. These interests and ideas dictated the law of March 2-17, 1791, which abolished the guilds and inaugurated the era of competition in France (_Liberté du Travail_). The law declared that henceforth everybody was "free to do such business, exercise such profession, art, or trade, as he may choose."[2] [2] _Les Associations Professionelles Ouvrières_, Office du Travail (Paris, 1899), vol. i, p. 7. The abolition of the guilds cleared the way for the technical changes that had just begun and the development of which was yet in the future. These changes may be summarized as the application of science to industry and the introduction of machinery. The process went on in France irregularly, affecting different industries and different localities in various degrees. The first machine (_machine à vapeur_) was introduced in France about 1815; in 1830 there were about 600 in operation. Some idea of the later changes may be gained from the following table giving the number of machines in France from 1839 to 1907: _Year_ _No. of Machines_ _Total Horsepower_ 1839 2,450 33,000 1851 5,672 71,000 1861 15,805 191,000 1871 26,146 316,000 1881 44,010 576,000 1891 55,967 916,000 1901 75,866 1,907,000 1910 82,238 2,913,013[3] [3] _Annuaire Statistique_. The introduction of machinery meant the absorption of a larger part of the population in industry, the concentration of industry in a smaller number of establishments and the absolute and relative increase in the numbers of the working population of France. This class of the population was regulated in its economic action for nearly a century by another law passed June 14-17, 1791, and known by the name of its author as the law Le Chapelier. The law Le Chapelier, though dictated by the same general interests and ideas as the law on the guilds, was made necessary by special circumstances. The abolition of the guilds had as one of its effects an agitation among the journeymen for higher wages and for better conditions of employment. During the summer of 1791, Paris was the scene of large meetings of journeymen, at which matters of work and wages were discussed. The movement spread from trade to trade, but the struggle was particularly acute in the building trades. Profiting by the law of August 21, 1790, which gave all citizens the "right to assemble peacefully and to form among themselves free associations subject only to the laws which all citizens must obey,"[4] the carpenters formed _L'Union fraternelle des ouvriers en l'art de la charpente_, an association ostensibly for benevolent purposes only, but which in reality helped the carpenters in their struggle with their masters. The masters repeatedly petitioned the municipality of Paris to put an end to the "disorders," and to the "tyranny" of the journeymen. The masters complained that a general coalition of 80,000 workingmen had been formed in the capital and that the agitation was spreading to the provincial towns.[5] The municipal authorities tried to meet the situation, but their "notices" and "decrees" had no effect. They then appealed to the Constituent Assembly for a general law on associations and combinations. The result was the law Le Chapelier. [4] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, p. 8. [5] H. Lagardelle, _L'Évolution des Syndicats Ouvriers en France_ (Paris, 1901), p. 13. The report by which the bill was introduced brought out very clearly the individualistic ideas by which the legislators of the Revolution were inspired. "Citizens of certain trades," read this report, "must not be permitted to assemble for their pretended common interests. There is no longer any corporation (guild) in the State; there is but the particular interest of each individual and the general interest...." And further, "It is necessary to abide by the principle that only by free contracts, between individual and individual, may the workday for each workingman be fixed; it is then for the workingman to maintain the agreement which he had made with his employer."[6] [6] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, pp. 11-12. The law identified the new combinations with the ancient guilds. Its first clause declared that "whereas the abolition of all kinds of corporations of citizens of the same estate (_état_) and of the same trade is one of the fundamental bases of the French Constitution, it is prohibited to re-establish them _de facto_ under any pretext or form whatsoever". The second clause formulated the prohibition to form trade organizations in terms which left nothing to be desired in clearness and precision. It read: "The citizens of the same estate or trade, entrepreneurs, those who run a shop, workingmen in any trade whatsoever, shall not, when assembled together, nominate presidents, nor secretaries, nor syndics, shall not keep any records, shall not deliberate nor pass resolutions nor form any regulations with reference to their pretended common interests." The fourth clause declared all acts contrary to this law unconstitutional, subject to the jurisdiction of the police tribunals, punishable by a fine of 500 _livres_ and by a temporary suspension of active rights of citizenship. The sixth and seventh clauses determined higher penalties in cases of menace and of violence. The eighth clause prohibited all "gatherings composed of artisans, of workingmen, of journeymen or of laborers, or instigated by them and directed against the free exercise of industry and work to which all sorts of persons have a right under all sorts of conditions agreed upon by private contract (_de gré a gré_)". "Such gatherings are declared riotous, are to be dispersed by force, and are to be punished with all the severity which the law permits."[7] [7] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, pp. 13-14. After the law was passed by the Assembly, the author of the law, Le Chapelier, added: I have heard some say that it would be necessary to make an exception in favor of the Chambers of Commerce in cities. Certainly you understand well that none of us intend to prevent the merchants from discussing their common interests. I therefore propose to insert into the proceedings the following clause: "The National Assembly, considering that the law which it has just passed does not concern the Chambers of Commerce, passes to the order of the day." The proposition was adopted. "This last vote," remarks the official historian of the _Office du Travail_, "demonstrates sufficiently that the law was especially directed against the meetings, associations and coalitions of workingmen."[8] [8] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, p. 14. The determination to prevent collective action on the part of the workingmen also guided the legislative activity of Napoleon. In 1803, during the Consulate, a law was passed against coalitions; the same law contained a provision whereby all workingmen were to have a special certificate (_livret_)[9] which subjected them to a strict surveillance of the police. The law of 1803 against coalitions was replaced in 1810 by the clauses 414-416 of the Penal Code which prohibited and punished all kinds of coalitions. These articles which made strikes and all collective action a crime, and which showed clearly discrimination against workingmen, were as follows: [9] The obligation of the _livret_ was abolished in 1890. G. Weill, _Histoire du Movement Social en France_ (Paris, 1904), p. 332. Art. 414. Any coalition among those who employ workingmen, tending to force down wages unjustly and abusively, followed by an attempt or a commencement of execution, shall be punished by imprisonment from six days to one month and by a fine of 200 to 3,000 francs. Art. 415. Any coalition on the part of the workingmen to cease work at the same time, to forbid work in a shop, to prevent the coming or leaving before or after certain hours and, in general, to suspend, hinder or make dear labor, if there has been an attempt or a beginning of execution, shall be punished by imprisonment of one month to three months maximum; the leaders and promoters shall be punished by imprisonment of two to five years, and Art. 416. There shall also be subject to penalty indicated in the preceding article and according to the same distinctions, those workingmen who shall have declared fines, prohibitions, interdictions and any other proscriptions under the name of condemnations and under any qualification whatsoever against the directors of the shops and employers, or against each other. In the case of this article as well as in that of the preceding, the leaders and promoters of the crime, after the expiration of their fine, may be made subject to the surveillance of the police for two years at least and five years at most.[10] [10] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, pp. 18-19. The prohibition against combination and organization was aggravated for the workingmen by articles 291-294 of the Penal Code which forbade any kind of associations of more than twenty persons. These articles were made more stringent by the Law of 1834 which prohibited associations even of twenty persons, if they were branches of a larger association.[11] [11] _Ibid._, pp. 19-20, and p. 26. The workingmen, however, soon began to feel that the _Liberté du Travail_ as interpreted by the laws of the country put them at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Individually each one of them was too weak to obtain the best bargain from his employer. This was notoriously so in the industries in which machinery was making headway, but the relations between employer and workingmen were aggravated by competition even in those industries where the old conditions of trade did not change perceptibly for some time. Competition forced the employer to become a "calculator above everything else" and "to consider the workingman only from the point of view of the real value which his hands had on the market without heed to his human needs."[12] The workingman, on the other hand, to remedy his individual helplessness was driven to disregard the law and to enter into combinations with his fellow-workers for concerted action. [12] M. Du Cellier, _Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France_ (Paris, 1860), p. 362. The figures published by the Department of Justice give the number of those prosecuted for violating the law on strikes--the number of accused, of acquitted and of condemned. These figures are incomplete. They give, however, some idea of the frequency and persistence with which the workingmen had recourse to strikes in spite of the law. The figures have been published since 1825. The table on the next page gives the annual figures from that date to 1864, when a new law on strikes was passed. There is other information to show that the strikes often assumed the character of a general movement, particularly under the influence of political disturbances. During the years that followed the Revolution of July (1830) the workingmen of France were at times in a state of agitation throughout the entire country, formulating everywhere particular demands, such as the regulation of industrial matters, collective contracts and the like.[13] [13] Octave Festy, _Le Movement Ouvrier au Début de la Monarchie de Juillet_, _passim_. ------+------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------- | | | |Condemned|Condemned| | | | |to Prison|to Prison| |Number| | | for One |for Less |Condemned | of | | | Year or | than a |to Pay a Year |Cases |Accused|Acquitted| More | Year |Fine Only ------+------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------- 1825 | 92 | 144 | 72 | 1 | 64 | 7 1826 | 40 | 244 | 62 | 3 | 136 | 43 1827 | 29 | 136 | 51 | 2 | 74 | 9 1828 | 28 | 172 | 84 | .. | 85 | 3 1829 | 13 | 68 | 26 | 1 | 39 | 2 1830 | 40 | 206 | 69 | 2 | 134 | 1 1831 | 49 | 396 | 104 | .. | 279 | 13 1832 | 51 | 249 | 85 | 1 | 140 | 23 1833 | 90 | 522 | 218 | 7 | 270 | 27 1834 | 55 | 415 | 155 | 7 | 227 | 26 1835 | 32 | 238 | 84 | 1 | 141 | 12 1836 | 55 | 332 | 87 | .. | 226 | 19 1837 | 51 | 300 | 64 | 5 | 167 | 64 1838 | 44 | 266 | 86 | 1 | 135 | 44 1839 | 64 | 409 | 116 | 3 | 264 | 26 1840 | 130 | 682 | 139 | 22 | 476 | 45 1841 | 68 | 383 | 79 | .. | 237 | 67 1842 | 62 | 371 | 80 | 2 | 263 | 26 1843 | 49 | 321 | 73 | .. | 240 | 8 1844 | 53 | 298 | 48 | .. | 201 | 49 1845 | 48 | 297 | 92 | 3 | 778 | 124 1846 | 53 | 298 | 47 | .. | 220 | 31 1847 | 55 | 401 | 66 | 2 | 301 | 32 1848 | 94 | 560 | 124 | 2 | 399 | 35 1849 | 65 | 345 | 61 | 1 | 241 | 42 1850 | 45 | 329 | 59 | 14 | 182 | 74 1851 | 55 | 267 | 33 | 6 | 199 | 29 1852 | 86 | 573 | 119 | 2 | 396 | 56 1853 | 109 | 718 | 105 | 1 | 530 | 82 1854 | 68 | 315 | 51 | 13 | 196 | 55 1855 | 168 | 1182 | 117 | 24 | 943 | 98 1856 | 73 | 452 | 83 | 4 | 269 | 96 1857 | 55 | 300 | 37 | 11 | 204 | 48 1858 | 58 | 269 | 34 | 1 | 202 | 32 1859 | 58 | 281 | 29 | .. | 223 | 29 1860 | 58 | 297 | 34 | .. | 230 | 33 1861 | 63 | 402 | 78 | .. | 283 | 41 1862 | 44 | 306 | 44 | 1 | 199 | 62 1863 | 29 | 134 | 17 | .. | 43 | 74 ------+------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------- In many cases, the strikes were spontaneous outbursts of discontent among unorganized workingmen. Frequently, however, the strikes were either consciously called out or directed by organizations which existed by avoiding the law in various ways. These organizations were of three different types: the _compagnonnages_, the friendly societies (_mutualités_) and the "societies of resistance". The _compagnonnages_ originated under the guild-system and can be traced back as far as the fifteenth century. Their development was probably connected with the custom of traveling which became prevalent among the journeymen of France about that time.[14] A journeyman (called _compagnon_ in French) would usually spend some time in visiting the principal cities of France (make his _tour de France_) to perfect himself in his trade. A traveling _compagnon_ would be in need of assistance in many cases and the _compagnonnages_ owed their development to the necessity of meeting this want. [14] Octave Festy, _Le Movement Ouvrier au Début de la Monarchie de France_ (Paris, 1900), vol. i, pp. 600 _et seq._ The _compagnonnages_ consisted of bachelor journeymen only. If a member married or established himself as master, he left the _compagnonnage_. Besides, admission to the _compagnonnage_ was dependent on tests of moral character and of technical skill. Thus, the _compagnonnages_ always embraced but a small part of the workingmen--the élite from the technical point of view. To attain the required technical standard, members had to pass some time as aspirants before they could become _compagnons_. The organization of the _compagnonnages_ was very simple. All the _compagnons_ of the same trade lived together in one house, usually in an inn, kept by the so-called _mère_ (mother) or _père_ (father) of the trade. The _compagnons_ were generally the only boarders in the house. If not numerous enough to occupy the entire house, they had one hall for their exclusive occupation. Here they held their meetings, initiated new members, and kept their records and treasury. Here, also, _compagnons_ arriving from other towns made themselves "recognized" by special signs and symbols. All the _compagnons_ of France were divided among three "orders" called _devoirs_. The _devoirs_ had strange names indicating the legends with which the origins of these organizations were connected. The _devoir_, "Sons of Master Jack" (_Enfants de Maitre Jacques_) was founded, according to the story, by one of the master-builders of King Solomon's Temple. The "Sons of Solomon" (_Enfants de Solomon_) were sure that their order was founded by King Solomon himself. The "Sons of Master Soubise" regarded another builder of Solomon's Temple as the founder of their _devoir_. Each _devoir_ consisted of a number of trades, and sometimes one and the same trade was divided between two _devoirs_. Ceremonies and rites constituted an inseparable part of the _compagnonnages_. The initiation of a new member, the "recognition" of a newly arrived _compagnon_, the meeting of two traveling _compagnons_ on the road, etc., were occasions for strange and complicated ceremonies which had to be accurately performed. These ceremonies were due in a large measure to the secrecy in which the _compagnonnages_ developed under the ancient régime, persecuted as they were by the royal authorities, by the church, and by the master-craftsmen. Within the _compagnonnages_ the feeling of corporate exclusiveness and the idea of hierarchical distinctions were strong. Emblems of distinction, such as ribbons, canes, etc., were worn on solemn occasions, and the way in which they were worn, or their number, or color, indicated the place of the _compagnonnage_ within the whole corporate body. Many riots and bloody encounters were occasioned between _devoir_ and _devoir_ and between different _compagnonnages_ within each _devoir_ by disputes over "ribbons" and other emblems appropriate to each. For instance, the joiners were friends of the carpenters and of the stonecutters, but were enemies of the smiths whom the other two trades accepted. The smiths rejected the harness-makers. The blacksmiths accepted the wheelwrights on condition that the latter wear their colors in a low buttonhole; the wheelwrights promised but did not keep their promise; they wore their colors as high as the blacksmiths; hence hatred and quarrels. The carpenters wore their colors in their hats; the winnowers wanted to wear them in the same way; that was enough to make them sworn enemies.[15] Besides, the _compagnonnages_ did not strive to embrace all members of the same trade or all trades. On the contrary, they were averse to initiating a new trade and it sometimes took decades before a new trade was fully admitted into the organization. [15] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, p. 95. While these features harked back to the past, the economic functions of the _compagnonnages_ anticipated and really were a primitive form of the later syndicat. The _compagnonnages_ offered effective protection to the _compagnons_ in hard stresses of life as well as in their difficulties with their masters. "The 'devoir' of the compagnons" (read the statutes of one of these societies) "is a fraternal alliance which unites us all by the sacred ties of friendship, the foundations of which are: virtue, frankness, honesty, love of labor, courage, assistance and fidelity."[16] These abstract terms translated themselves in life into concrete deeds of mutual aid and of assistance which were immensely valuable to the traveling _compagnons_. A traveling _compagnon_, on arriving at a city or town, would only have to make himself "recognized" and his fellow-compagnons would take care of him. He would be given lodging and food. Employment would be found for him. If sick or in distress, he would receive aid. If he wished to leave the town to continue his _tour de France_, he would be assisted and would be accompanied some distance on the road. [16] Maxime Leroy, _Syndicats et Services Publics_ (Paris, 1909), p. 12. With their simple organization, the _compagnons_ were able to exert a strong economic influence. They served as bureaus of employment. One _compagnon_, elected _rouleur_, was charged with the duty of finding employment for _compagnons_ and "aspirants". He kept a list of those in need of work and placed them in the order of their inscription. Usually the masters themselves addressed the _rouleurs_ for workingmen, when in need of any. This fact gave the _compagnonnages_ a control over the supply of labor. They could withhold labor from a master who did not comply with their demands. They could direct their members into other towns of the _Tour_ if necessary, as everywhere the _compagnons_ would find friends and protection. They could, therefore, organize strikes and boycott a master or workshop for long periods of time. In fact, by these methods the _compagnonnages_ struggled for higher wages and better conditions of employment as far back as the sixteenth century. During the Great Revolution the _compagnonnages_ existed in twenty-seven trades and directed the strike-movement described above. They attained the height of their development during the first quarter of the nineteenth century when they were the only effective workingmen's organizations exerting an influence in the economic struggles of the time. The _compagnonnages_ persisted in several trades during the larger part of the nineteenth century. After 1830, however, their influence declined. The new industrial conditions reduced the significance of the personal skill of the workingmen, shifted the boundaries of the ancient trades, and entirely transformed most of them. The rapid development of the modern means of communication made the _tour de France_ in its old form an anachronism. The spread of democratic and secular ideas brought the medieval usages and ideas of the _compagnonnages_ into disrepute and ridicule. Several attempts to reform the _compagnonnages_ and to bring them into harmony with the new conditions of life were made by members of the organization, but with no results.[17] [17] On the _compagnonnage_ see, J. Connay, _Le Compagnonnage_, 1909; E. Martin St. Leon, _Le Compagnonnage_, 1901; Agricol Perdiguier, _Le Livre du Compagnonnage_, 1841. While the _compagnonnages_ were reconstituting themselves during the Consulate and the First Empire, another form of organization began to develop among the workingmen. This was the friendly or benevolent society for mutual aid especially in cases of sickness, accident or death. Several such societies had existed before the Revolution and the law Le Chapelier was directed also against them. "It is the business of the nation," was the opinion of Le Chapelier, accepted by the Constituent Assembly, "it is the business of the public officials in the name of the nation to furnish employment to those in need of it and assistance to the infirm".[18] Friendly societies, however, continued to form themselves during the nineteenth century. They were formed generally along trade lines, embracing members of the same trade. In a general way the government did not hinder their development. [18] _Les Assoc. Profess._, vol. i, p. 193. Mrs. Beatrice Webb and Mr. Sidney Webb have shown that a friendly society has often been the nucleus of a trade union in England. In France the friendly societies for a long time played the part of trade unions. The charge of promoting strikes and of interfering with industrial matters was often brought against them.[19] There were 132 such trade organizations in Paris in 1823 with 11,000 members, and their numbers increased during the following years. [19] _Ibid._, p. 199. The form of organization called into being by the new economic conditions was the _société de résistance_, an organization primarily designed for the purpose of exercising control over conditions of employment. These societies of resistance assumed various names. They usually had no benefit features or passed them over lightly in their statutes. They emphasized the purpose of obtaining collective contracts, scales of wages, and general improvements in conditions of employment. These societies were all secret, but free from the religious and ceremonial characteristics of the _compagnonnages_. One of the most famous of these societies in the history of the French working-class was the _Devoir Mutuel_, founded by the weavers of Lyons, in 1823. This society directed the famous strikes of the weavers in 1831 and 1834. Its aim, as formulated in its statutes, was: first, to practice the principles of equity; second, to unite the weavers' efforts in order to obtain a reasonable wage for their labor; third, to do away with the abuses of the factory, and to bring about other improvements in "the moral and physical condition" of its members. The society had 3,000 members in 1833.[20] [20] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i. pp. 201-203. In 1833 the smelters of copper in Paris formed themselves into a society which was to help them in their resistance against employers. Two francs a day was to be paid to every member who lost employment because he did not consent to an unjust reduction in his wages or for any other reason which might be regarded as having in view the support of the trade; in other cases of unemployment, no benefit was allowed, in view of the fact that in ordinary times the smelters were seldom idle.[21] The society was open to all smelters, without any limitation of age; it was administered by a council assisted by a commission of representatives from the shops, elected by the members of the society of each shop. The society was soon deprived, however, of its combative character by the government.[22] [21] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 204. [22] _Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i, p. 204. A strong society of resistance was organized by the printers of Paris in 1839. Though secret, it gained the adherence of a large part of the trade. In 1848 it had 1,200 members--half of all the printers at that time in Paris. It was administered by a committee. Through its initiative a mixed commission of employers and workingmen was organized which adopted a general scale of wages. This commission also acted as a board of mediation and conciliation in disputes between employers and workingmen.[23] [23] _Ibid._, pp. 205-6. The _compagnonnages_, _mutualités_ and resistance-societies aimed partly or exclusively to better conditions of employment by exerting pressure upon employers. These societies reveal the efforts that were being made by workingmen to adjust themselves to the economic conditions of the time. But after 1830, other ideas began to find adherents among the French workingmen; namely, the ideas of opposition to the entire economic régime based on private property and the idea of substituting for this system a new industrial organization. The history of the socialist movement of France before 1848 can not here be entered into. It has been written and rewritten and is more or less known. For the purposes of this study, it is only necessary to point out that during this period, and particularly during the revolutionary period of 1848, the idea of co-operation, as a means of abolishing the wage system, made a deep impression upon the minds of French workingmen.[24] [24] On the history of French socialism: R. T. Ely, _French and German Socialism_ (1878); Th. Kirkup, _A History of Socialism_ (1906); G. Isambert, _Les Idées Socialistes en France_ (1905); P. Louis, _Histoire du Socialisme Français_ (1901). The idea of co-operation had been propagated before 1848 by the Saint-Simonists and Fourierists, and particularly by Buchez who had outlined a clear plan of co-operation in his paper _L'Européen_ in 1831-2. Similar ideas were advanced during the forties by a group of workingmen who published _L'Atelier_. But only with the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, and under the influence of Louis Blanc, did the co-operative idea really become popular with the workingmen. Between 1848 and 1850 the enthusiasm for co-operative societies was great, and a considerable number of them were formed. On July 6, 1848, the Constituent Assembly voted a loan of 3,000,000 francs for co-operative societies, and this sum was divided among 26 societies in Paris and 36 in the provinces.[25] But the number of those founded without assistance was much greater; about 300 in Paris and many more in the provinces. Of these societies most perished within a short time while the rest were dissolved by the administration of Napoleon III after the _coup-d'état_ of 1851.[26] [25] Georges Renard, _La République de 1848_. [26] Albert Thomas, _Le Second Empire_ (Paris, 1907). The Revolution of 1848 was an important moment in the history of the French working-class. Though the socialist idea of the "Organization of Work" (_L'Organisation du Travail_) which was so prominent during the Revolution passed into history after the days of June, it left an impression upon the minds of French workingmen. The belief in a possible social transformation became a tradition with them. Besides, the Revolution gave a strong impulse to purely trade organizations such as the _sociétés de résistance_. Before 1848 they had existed in a few trades only. The period of the Revolution witnessed the formation of a large number of them in various trades and strengthened the tendency towards organization which had manifested itself before. During the first decade of the Second Empire all workingmen's organizations were persecuted; most of them perished; others went again into secrecy or disguised themselves as mutual aid societies. With the advent of the second decade of the Empire the labor movement acquired an amplitude it had never had before. Its main characteristic during this period was a decided effort to break the legal barriers in its way and to come out into the open. The workingmen's chief demands were the abolition of the law on coalitions and the right to organize. The workingmen were given an opportunity to express their views and sentiments on occasions of National and International Exhibitions. It had become a custom in France to send delegations of workingmen to such exhibitions. In 1849 the Chamber of Commerce of Lyons sent a delegation of workingmen to the National Exhibition in Paris. In 1851 the municipality of Paris sent some workingmen to the International Exhibition in London. A delegation was sent again to London in 1862 and to Paris in 1867. The workingmen-delegates published reports in which they formulated their views on the condition of their respective trades and expressed their demands and aspirations. These reports have been called the _cahiers_ of the working-class. The authors of the reports--workingmen themselves, elected by large numbers of workingmen--were representatives in the true sense of the term and voiced the sentiments and ideas of a large part of the French workingmen of their time. The reports published by the delegates of 1862 contain a persistent demand for freedom to combine and to organize. The refrain of all the reports is: "Isolation kills us".[27] The trade unions of England made a deep impression on the French delegates and strengthened their conviction of the necessity of organization. "Of 53 reports emanating from 183 delegates of Paris, 38 by 145 delegates express the desire that syndical chambers be organized in their trades."[27] [27] G. Weill, _op. cit._, pp. 63-65. The government of the Empire, which hoped to interest the workingmen in its existence, gave way before their persistent demands. In 1864, in consequence of a strike of Parisian printers which attracted much public attention, the old law on coalitions was abolished and the right to strike granted. The right to strike, however, was bound up with certain other rights which the French workingmen were still denied. Unless the latter had the right to assemble and to organize, they could profit but little by the new law on coalitions. Besides, the French workingmen were generally averse to strikes. The reports of 1862, though demanding the freedom of coalition, declared that it was not the intention of the workingmen to make strikes their habitual procedure. The delegates of 1867, who formed a commission which met in Paris for two years, discussing all the economic problems that interested the workingmen of the time, were of the same opinion. A special session of the Commission was devoted to the consideration of the means by which strikes might be avoided. All agreed that, as one of the delegates expressed it, strikes were "the misery of the workingmen and the ruin of the employer"[28] and should be resorted to only in cases of absolute necessity. What the delegates demanded was the right to organize and to form "syndical chambers". They hoped that with the help of these organizations, they would avoid strikes and improve their economic condition. [28] _Commission Ouvrière de 1867, Recueil des Procés-Verbaux_, vol. i, p. 28. In the beginning of 1868, a number of delegates to the Exhibition of 1867 were received by the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works to present their views and demands. The vice-president of the Commission, M. Parent, indicated clearly what the workingmen meant by "syndical chambers" in the following words: We all agree to proceed by way of conciliation, but we all have also recognized the necessity of guaranteeing our rights by a serious organization which should give the workingmen the possibility of entering easily and without fear into agreement with the employers.... It is thus in order to avoid strikes, guaranteeing at the same time the wages of the workingmen, that the delegates of 1867 solicit the authorization to establish syndicats in each trade in order to counter-balance the formidable organization of the syndical chambers of the merchants and manufacturers.... The workingmen's syndical chambers, composed of syndics elected by the votes of the workingmen of their trade, would have an important rôle to fulfil. Besides the competent experts which they could always furnish for the cases subject to the jurisdiction of the prud'hommes, for justices of the peace and for the tribunals of Commerce, they could furnish arbiters for those conflicts which have not for their cause an increase in wages. Such are: the regulations of the workshops, the use of health-endangering materials, the bad conditions of the machinery and of the factory which affect the health of the workingmen and often endanger their lives, the protection of the inventions made by workingmen, the organization of mutual and professional education, which cannot be entirely instituted without the help of the men of the workshop, etc.[29] [29] Lagardelle, _Évolution des Syndicats_, pp. 218-9. On the 30th of March, 1868, the Minister of Commerce and Public Works announced that without modifying the law on coalitions, the government would henceforth tolerate workingmen's organizations on the same grounds on which it had heretofore tolerated the organizations of employers. With this act began the period of toleration which lasted down to 1884, when the workingmen's organizations were brought under the protection of a special law. The declaration of toleration gave free scope to the workingmen to form their syndical chambers. Some syndicats had been openly formed before. In 1867, the shoemakers had formed a society--the first to bear the name of syndicat--which had openly declared that it would support members on strike and would try to defend and to raise wages. But only after the declaration of the government in 1868 did these societies begin to increase in numbers. While organizing for resistance, the workingmen during this period, however, placed their main hopes in co-operation; the co-operative society of production was to them the only means of solving the labor question. As one of the delegates to the Workingmen's Commission of 1867 put it: "Salvation is in association" (_Le salut c'est l'association_).[30] The main function of the syndical chamber was to promote the organization of co-operative societies. [30] _Commission Ouvrière de 1867_, vol. i, p. 28. The revival of enthusiasm for co-operative societies began in 1863. Men of different political and economic views helped the movement. It found supporters in liberal economists, like M. Say and M. Walras; it was seconded by Proudhon and his followers, while a number of communists took an active part in it. Profiting by the experience of 1848-50, the workingmen now adopted a new plan. The co-operative society of production was to be the crowning part of the work, resting upon a foundation of several other organizations. First the members of one and the same trade were to form a syndical chamber of their trade. The syndical chamber was to encourage the creation of a "society of credit and savings" which should have for its aim the collection of funds by regular dues paid by the members. Such "societies of credit and savings" began to develop after 1860, and they were considered very important; not only because they provided the funds, but also and mainly because they helped the members to become acquainted with one another and to eliminate the inefficient. With a society of credit in existence, it was deemed necessary to create a co-operative of consumption. The productive co-operative society was to complete this series of organizations which, supporting one another, were to give stability to the entire structure. The plan was seldom carried out in full. Co-operatives of production were formed without any such elaborate preparation as outlined above. However, many "societies of credit and saving" were formed. In 1863 there were 200 of them in Paris; and in September, 1863, a central bank, _La Société du Credit au Travail_ was organized. Similar central banks were formed in Lyons, Marseilles, Lille and other large cities. In Paris the _Credit au Travail_ became the center of the co-operative movement between 1863 and 1868. It subsidized successively _L'Association_ (Nov., 1864-July, 1866) and _La Co-opération_ (Sept., 1866-Feb., 1867)--magazines devoted to the spread of co-operative ideas. It gave advice and information for forming co-operatives. Most of the co-operative enterprises of the period were planned and first elaborated in the councils of this society. Finally it furnished the co-operatives with credit. Its business done in 1866 amounted to 10½ million francs.[31] [31] P. Hubert-Valleroux, _La Co-opération_ (Paris, 1904), pp. 14-17. In 1868 the co-operative movement, after several years of development, suffered a terrible blow. On November 2nd, the _Credit au Travail_ became bankrupt; it had immobilized its capital, and had given out loans for too long periods, while some of the other loans were not reimbursed. The bank had to suspend payment and was closed. The disaster for the co-operative movement was complete. The _Credit au Travail_ seemed to incarnate the co-operative movement; "and its failure made many think that the co-operative institution had no future".[32] [32] P. Hubert-Valleroux, _op. cit._, p. 16. The failure of the co-operative movement turned the efforts of the workingmen into other channels. They now began to join the "International Association of Workingmen" in increased numbers and to change their ideas and methods. The "International", as is well known, was formed in 1864 by French and English workingmen. The French section, during the first years of its existence, was composed mainly of the followers of Proudhon, known as _mutuellistes_. The program of the _mutuellistes_ was a peaceful change in social relations by which the idea of justice--conceived as reciprocity or mutuality of services--would be realized. The means advocated were education and the organization of mutual aid societies, of mutual insurance companies, of syndicats, of co-operative societies and the like. Much importance was attached to the organization of mutual credit societies and of popular banks. It was hoped that with the help of cheap credit the means of production would be put at the disposal of all and that co-operative societies of production could then be organized in large numbers. The _Mutuellistes_ emphasized the idea that the social emancipation of the workingmen must be the work of the workingmen themselves. They were opposed to state intervention. Their ideal was a decentralized economic society based upon a new principle of right--the principle of mutuality--which was "the idea of the working-class".[33] Their spokesman and master was Proudhon who formulated the ideas of _mutuellisme_ in his work, _De la Capacité Politique des Classes Ouvrières_. [33] P. J. Proudhon, _De la Capacité Politique des Classes Ouvrières_ (Paris, 1865), p. 59. Between 1864 and 1868, the "International" met with little success in France. The largest number of adherents obtained by it during this period was from five to eight hundred. Persecuted by the government after 1867, it was practically dead in France in 1868.[34] But in 1869 it reappeared with renewed strength under the leadership of men of collectivist and communist ideas, which were partly a revival and survival of the ideas of 1848, partly a new development in socialist thought. [34] A. Thomas, _Le Second Empire_, p. 332. One current of communist ideas was represented by the Blanquists. Blanqui, a life-long conspirator and an ardent republican who had been the leader of the secret revolutionary societies under the Monarchy of July, took up his revolutionary activity again during the latter part of the Second Empire. A republican and revolutionary above everything else, he had, however, gradually come to formulate in a more precise way a communistic program, to be realized by his party when by a revolutionary upheaval it would be carried into power. The Blanquists denounced the "co-operators" and the "mutuellistes" and called upon the workingmen to organize into secret societies ready, at a favorable moment, to seize political power. Towards the end of the Second Empire, the Blanquists numbered about 2,500 members in Paris, mainly among the Republican youth.[35] [35] A. Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 332. The other current of communist ideas had its fountainhead in the "International" which Caesar de-Paepe, Marx and Bakounine succeeded in winning over to their collectivist ideas. The congresses of the "Association" in Brussels in 1868 and in Bâle in 1869 adopted resolutions of a collectivist character, and many members of the French section were won over to the new ideas.[36] [36] E. E. Fribourg, _L'Association Internationale des Travailleurs_ (Paris, 1871). The success of the "International" in France in 1869 was the sudden result of the strike-movement which swept the country during the last years of the Second Empire. The members of the "International" succeeded in obtaining financial support for some strikers. This raised the prestige of the "Association", and a number of syndicats sent in their collective adhesion. It is estimated that toward the end of 1869 the "International" had a membership of about 250,000 in France. These facts had their influence on the French leaders of the "International". They changed their attitude toward the strike, declaring it "the means _par excellence_ for the organization of the revolutionary forces of labor".[37] The idea of the general strike suggested itself to others.[38] At the Congress of Bâle in 1869, one of the French delegates advocated the necessity of organizing syndicats for two reasons: first, because "they are the means of resisting the exploitation of capital in the present;" and second, because "the grouping of different trades in the city will form the commune of the future" ... and then ... "the government will be replaced by federated councils of syndicats and by a committee of their respective delegates regulating the relations of labor--this taking the place of politics."[39] [37] A. Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 363. [38] _Ibid._, p. 358. [39] James Guillaume, _L'Internationale, Documents et Souvenirs_ (Paris, 1905), vol. i, p. 205. Under the influence of the "International" the syndicats of Paris--there were about 70 during the years 1868-1870--founded a local federation under the name of _Chambre Fédérale des sociétés ouvrières de Paris_. This federation formulated its aim in the following terms: This agreement has for its object to put into operation the means recognized as just by the workingmen of all trades for the purpose of making them the possessors of all the instruments of production and to lend them money, in order that they may free themselves from the arbitrariness of the employer and from the exigencies of capital.... The federation has also the aim of assuring to all adhering societies on strike the moral and material support of the other groups by means of loans at the risk of the loaning societies.[40] [40] A. Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 352. These organizations were entirely swept away by the events of 1870-71: the Franco-Prussian War, the Proclamation of the Republic, and especially the Commune. After 1871 the workingmen had to begin the work of organization all over again. But the conquests of the previous period were not lost. The right to strike was recognized. The policy of tolerating workingmen's organizations was continued, notwithstanding a few acts to the contrary. But, above all, the experience of the workingmen was preserved. The form of organization which they generally advocated after the Commune was the syndicat. The other forms (_i. e._, the _Compagnonnages_ and the secret _Société de résistance_) either disappeared or developed independently along different lines, as the friendly societies. In other respects, the continuity of the labor movement after the Commune with that of the preceding period was no less evident. As will be seen in the following chapter the problems raised and the solutions given to them by the French workingmen for some time after the Commune were directly related to the movement of the Second Empire. The idea of co-operation, the _mutuellisme_ of Proudhon, and the collectivism of the "International" reappeared in the labor movement under the Third Republic. CHAPTER II ORIGIN OF THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR (1872-1895) The vigorous suppression of the Commune and the political events which followed it threw the French workingmen for some time into a state of mental depression. Though trade-union meetings were not prohibited, the workingmen avoided the places which had been centers of syndical activity before the Commune. Full of suspicion and fear, they preferred to remain in isolation rather than to risk the persecution of the government. Under these conditions, the initiative in reconstituting the syndicats was taken by a republican journalist, Barberet.[41] Barberet was prompted to undertake this "honorable task" by the desire to do away with strikes. He had observed the strike movement for some years, and had come to the conclusion that strikes were fatal to the workingmen and dangerous to the political institutions of the country. His observations had convinced him that the Second Empire had fallen largely in consequence of the strike movement during 1868-70, and he was anxious to preserve the Republic from similar troubles. As he expressed it, strikes were "a crime of _lèse-democratie_"[42] which it was necessary to prevent by all means. [41] Barberet was afterwards appointed chief of the Bureau of Trade Unions, which was constituted as part of the Dept. of the Interior. [42] J. Barberet, _Monographies Professionelles_ (Paris, 1886), vol. i, p. 16. Barberet outlined the following program for the syndicats. They were to watch over the loyal fulfilment of contracts of apprenticeship; to organize employment bureaus; to create boards of conciliation composed of an equal number of delegates from employers and from workingmen for the peaceful solution of trade disputes; to found libraries and courses in technical education; to utilize their funds not to "foment strikes", but to buy raw materials and instruments of labor; and finally, "to crown these various preparatory steps" by the creation of co-operative workshops "which alone would give groups of workingmen the normal access to industry and to commerce" and which would in time equalize wealth.[43] [43] Barberet, _op. cit._, pp. 20-25. Under Barberet's influence and with his assistance syndicats were reconstituted in a few trades in Paris during 1872. These syndicats felt the necessity of uniting into a larger body, and in August of the same year they founded the _Cercle de l'Union Ouvrière_, which was to form a counter-balance to the employers' organization _L'Union Nationale du Commerce et de l'Industrie_. The _Cercle_ insisted on its peaceful intentions; it declared that its aim was "to realize concord and justice through study" and to convince public opinion "of the moderation with which the workingmen claim their rights."[44] The _Cercle_ was nevertheless dissolved by the government. [44] Fernand Pelloutier, _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_ (Paris, 1902), p. 35. The syndicats, however, were left alone. They slowly increased in numbers and spread to new trades. There were about 135 in Paris in 1875. Following the example of the syndicats of the Second Empire, they organized delegations of workingmen to the Exhibitions of Vienna in 1873 and of Philadelphia in 1876. But their supreme effort was the organization of the first French Labor Congress in Paris in 1876. The Congress was attended by 255 delegates from Paris and 105 from the provincial towns. The delegates represented syndicats, co-operative societies and mutual aid societies. The program of the Congress included eight subjects: (1) The work of women; (2) syndical chambers; (3) councils of _prud'hommes_; (4) apprenticeship and technical education; (5) direct representation of the working class in Parliament; (6) co-operative associations of production, of consumption and of credit; (7) old-age pensions; (8) agricultural associations and the relations between agricultural and industrial workers. The proceedings of the Congress were calm and moderate. The organizers of the Congress were anxious not to arouse the apprehension of the government and not to compromise the republicans with whose help the Congress was organized. The reports and the discussions of the Congress showed that the syndical program outlined by Barberet was accepted by almost all the delegates. They insisted upon the necessity of solving peaceably all industrial difficulties, expressed antipathy for the strike and above all affirmed their belief in the emancipating efficacy of co-operation. At the same time they repudiated socialism, which one of the delegates proclaimed "a bourgeois Utopia".[45] [45] _Séances du Congrès Ouvrier de France_, Session de 1876, p. 43. The syndicats held a second congress in 1876 in Lyons. The Congress of Lyons considered the same questions as did that of Paris, and gave them the same solutions. In general, the character of the second congress was like that of the first. The third Labor Congress held in Marseilles in 1879, was a new departure in the history of the French labor movement. It marked the end of the influence of Barberet and of the "co-operators" and the beginning of socialist influence. The Congress of Marseilles accepted the title of "Socialist Labor Congress", expressed itself in favor of the collective appropriation of the means of production and adopted a resolution to organize a workingmen's social political party. This change in views was brought about by a concurrence of many circumstances. The moderate character of the syndicats between 1872-1879 had been due in large measure to the political conditions of France. The cause of the Republic was in danger and the workingmen were cautious not to increase its difficulties. But after the elections of 1876 and 1877 and upon the election of Grevy to the Presidency, the Republic was more or less securely established, and the workingmen thought that they should now be more outspoken in their economic demands. The Committee which had organized the Congress of Paris had formulated these sentiments in the following terms: "From the moment that the republican form of government was secured", wrote the Committee, "it was indispensable for the working-class, who up to that time had gone hand in hand with the republican bourgeoisie, to affirm their own interests and to seek the means which would permit them to transform their economic condition."[46] It was believed that the means to accomplish this task was co-operation. The belief in co-operation was so intense and general at that time that one of the delegates to the Congress of Paris, M. Finance,[47] himself an opponent of co-operation, predicted a large co-operative movement similar to the movements of 1848-50 and 1864-67. The prediction did not come true. Nothing important was accomplished in this field, and the hopes in co-operation receded before the impossibility of putting the idea into practice. The critics and opponents of co-operation did the rest to discredit the idea. But when the idea of co-operation lost its influence over the syndicats, the ground was cleared for socialism. The Congress of Lyons had declared that "the syndicats must not forget that the wage-system is but a transitory stage from serfdom to an unnamed state."[48] When the hope that this unnamed state would be brought about by co-operation was gone, the "unnamed" state obtained a name, for the Socialists alone held out to the workingmen the promise of a new state which would take the place of the wage system. [46] _Séances du Congrès Ouvrier_, 1876 (Paris, 1877), p. 9. [47] Afterward one of the active members of the _Office du Travail_. [48] _Assoc. Profess._, vol. i, p. 243. On ground thus prepared the Socialists came to sow their seed. A group of collectivists, inspired by the ideas of the "International", had existed in Paris since 1873.[49] But this group began to attract attention only in 1877 when it found a leader in Jules Guesde. Jules Guesde is a remarkable figure in the history of French Socialism and has played a great part in shaping the movement. He had edited a paper, _Les Droits de l'Homme_, in Montpelier in 1870-1 and had expressed his sympathy for the Commune. This cost him a sentence of five years in prison. He preferred exile, went to Switzerland, there came into contact with the "International" and was influenced by Marxian ideas. [49] Terrail-Mermeix, _La France Socialiste_ (Paris, 1886), p. 51. On his return to France, Jules Guesde became the spokesman and propagandist of Marxian or "scientific socialism". Fanatical, vigorous, domineering, he soon made himself the leader of the French collectivists. Towards the end of 1877, he founded a weekly, _L'Égalité_, the first number of which outlined the program which the paper intended to defend. "We believe," wrote _L'Égalité_, "with the collectivist school to which almost all serious minds of the working-class of both hemispheres now belong, that the natural and scientific evolution of mankind leads it irresistibly to the collective appropriation of the soil and of the instruments of labor." In order to achieve this end, _L'Égalité_ declared it necessary for the proletariat to constitute itself a distinct political party which should pursue the aim of conquering the political power of the State.[50] [50] _L'Égalité_, 18 Nov., 1877. The collectivists found a few adherents among the workingmen who actively propagated the new ideas. In 1878, several syndicats of Paris: those of the machinists, joiners, tailors, leather dressers and others, accepted the collectivist program. The collectivist ideas were given wider publicity and influence by the persecution of the government. In 1878, an international congress of workingmen was to be held in Paris during the International Exhibition. The Congress of Lyons (1878) had appointed a special committee to organize this international congress. Arrangements were being made for the congress, when the government prohibited it. The more moderate elements of the Committee gave way before the prohibition of the government, but Guesde and his followers accepted the challenge of the government and continued the preparations for the Congress. The government dispersed the Congress at its very first session and instituted legal proceedings against Guesde and other delegates. The trial made a sensation and widely circulated the ideas which Guesde defended before the tribunal. From the prison where they were incarcerated the collectivists launched an appeal "to the proletarians, peasant proprietors and small masters" which contained an exposition of collectivist principles and proposed the formation of a distinct political party. The appeal gained many adherents from various parts of France.[51] [51] Terrail-Mermeix, _op. cit._, p. 98. The idea of having workingmen's representatives in Parliament had already come up at the Congress of Paris (1876). This Congress, as indicated above, had on its program the question of the "Representation of the Proletariat in Parliament." The reports on this question read at the Congress were extremely interesting. The "moderate co-operators" and "Barberetists", as they were nicknamed by the revolutionary collectivists, insisted in these reports upon the separation which existed between bourgeois and workingmen, upon the inability of the former to understand the interests and the aspirations of the latter, and upon the consequent necessity of having workingmen's representatives in Parliament. These reports revealed the deep-seated sentiments of the workingmen which made it possible for the ideas of class and class struggle to spread among them. The Congress of Lyons (1878) had advanced the question a step further. It had adopted a resolution that journals should be created which should support workingmen-candidates only. With all this ground prepared, the triumph of the Socialists at the Congress of Marseilles (1879) was not so sudden as some have thought it to be. The influences which had brought about this change in sentiment were clearly outlined by the Committee on Organization, as may be seen from the following extract: From the contact of workingmen-delegates from all civilized nations that had appointed a rendezvous at the International Exhibition, a clearly revolutionary idea disentangled itself.... When the International Congress was brutally dispersed by the government, one thing was proven: the working class had no longer to expect its salvation from anybody but itself.... The suspicions of the government with regard to the organizers of the Congress, the iniquitous proceedings which it instituted against them, have led to the revolutionary resolutions of the Congress which show that the French proletariat is self-conscious and is worthy of emancipation.[52] [52] Leon Blum, _Les Congrès Ouvriers et Socialistes Français_ (Paris, 1901), pp. 33-4. To a similar conclusion had come the Committee on Resolutions appointed by the Congress of Lyons. In the intervals between the two Congresses, it had a conference with the deputies of the Department of Rhone and could report only failure. The deputies, one of whom belonged to the Extreme Left, were against the limitation of hours of work in the name of liberty, and against the liberty of association in the name of the superior rights of the State. "The remedy to this state of affairs," concluded the Committee, "is to create in France a workingmen's party such as exists already in several neighboring states."[53] [53] _Ibid._, p. 36. The Congress of Marseilles carried out the task which the collectivists assigned to it. A resolution was adopted declaring that the co-operative societies could by no means be considered a sufficiently powerful means for accomplishing the emancipation of the proletariat. Another declared the aim of the Congress to be: "The collectivity of soil and of subsoil, of instruments of labor, of raw materials--to be given to all and to be rendered inalienable by society to whom they must be returned."[54] This resolution was adopted by 73 votes against 23. [54] Leon de Seilhac, _Les Congrès Ouvriers en France_ (Paris, 1899), p. 47. The Congress also constituted itself a distinct party under the name of the "Federation of Socialist Workingmen of France". The party was organized on a federalist principle. France was divided into six regions: (1) Center or Paris; (2) East or Lyons; (3) Marseilles or South; (4) Bordeaux or West; (5) North or Lille; (6) Algeria. Each region was to have its regional committee and regional congress and be autonomous in its administration. A general committee was to be appointed by the Congress of the Federation, to be held annually in each of the principal regional towns in turn. After the Congress of Marseilles (1879) the leadership of the syndical movement passed to the Socialists. This led to a split at the next Congress held in Havre in 1880. The "moderates" and "co-operators" separated from the revolutionary collectivists. The former grouped themselves about _L'Union des Chambres Syndicales Ouvrières de France_. They held two separate congresses of their own in 1881 and 1882, which attracted little attention and were of no importance. The _Union des Chambres Syndicales_ confined itself to obtaining a reform of the law on syndicats. The Collectivists themselves, however, were not long united. The movement was soon disrupted by internal divisions and factions. At the Congress of Marseilles (1879) the triumph of collectivism was assured by elements which had the principles of collectivism in common, but which differed in other points. In Havre (1880) these elements were still united against the "moderate" elements. But after the Congress of Havre they separated more and more into distinct and warring groups. The first differentiation took place between the parliamentary socialists on the one hand, and the communist-anarchists on the other. Both divisions had a common aim; the collective appropriation of the means of production. They did not differ much in their ideas on distribution; there were communists among the parliamentary socialists. What separated them most was difference in method. The anarchists rejected the idea that the State, which in their view was and always had been an instrument of exploitation, could ever become an instrument of emancipation, even in the hands of a socialist government. The first act in the Social Revolution, in their opinion, had to be the destruction of the State. With this aim in view, the anarchists wished to have nothing to do with parliamentary politics. They denounced parliamentary action as a "pell-mell of compromise, of corruption, of charlatanism and of absurdities, which does no constructive work, while it destroys character and kills the revolutionary spirit by holding the masses under a fatal illusion."[55] The anarchists saw only one way of bringing about the emancipation of the working-class; namely, to carry on an active propaganda and agitation, to organize groups, and at an opportune moment to raise the people in revolt against the State and the propertied classes; then destroy the State, expropriate the capitalist class and reorganize society on communist and federalist principles. This was the Social Revolution they preached.[56] [55] _Pourquoi Guesde n'est-il pas anarchiste?_ p. 6. [56] On the anarchist theory, the works of Bakounin, Kropotkin, Reclus and J. Grave should be consulted; on anarchism in France see Dubois, _Le Péril anarchiste_; Garin, _l'Anarchie_; also various periodicals, particularly, _Le Révolte_ and _Les Temps Nouveaux_. From 1883 onward the anarchist propaganda met with success in various parts of France, particularly in Paris and in the South. There were thousands of workingmen who professed the anarchist ideas, and the success of the anarchists was quite disquieting to the socialists.[57] [57] John Labusquière, _La Troisième République_ (Paris), p. 257. The socialists, on the contrary, called upon the workingmen to participate in the parliamentary life of the country. Political abstention, they asserted, is neither helpful nor possible.[58] The workingman believes in using his right to vote, and to ignore his attitude of mind is of no avail. Besides, to bring about the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist society, the political machinery of the State must be used. There is no other way of accomplishing this task. The State will disappear after the socialist society has been firmly established. But there is an inevitable transitory period when the main economic reforms must be carried out and during which the political power of the State must be in the hands of the socialist party representing the working-class. The first act of the Social Revolution, therefore, is to conquer the political power of the State.[59] [58] _L'Égalité_, 30 June, 1880. [59] In socialist writings this transition period is always spoken of as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Within the socialist ranks themselves further divisions soon took place. In 1882, at the Congress of St. Etienne, the party was split into two parts; one part followed Guesde, the other followed Paul Brousse. The latter part took the name of _Parti ouvrier socialiste révolutionnaire français_--it dropped the word "_révolutionnaire_" from its title in 1883--and continued to bear as sub-title, the name "Federation of socialist workingmen of France." Guesde's party took the name of _Parti Ouvrier Français_. The _Parti Ouvrier Français_ claimed to represent the "revolutionary" and "scientific" socialism of Marx. It accepted the familiar doctrines of "orthodox" Marxism, which it popularized in France. It affirmed its revolutionary character by denying the possibility of reforms in capitalist society and by insisting upon the necessity of seizing the political power of the State in a revolutionary way. In 1886 J. Guesde wrote as follows: In the capitalist régime, that is, as long as the means of production and of existence are the exclusive property of a few who work less and less, all rights which the constitutions and the codes may grant to others, to those who concentrate within themselves more and more all muscular and cerebral work, will remain always and inevitably a dead letter. In multiplying reforms, one only multiplies shams (_trompe-l'oeil_).[60] [60] Jules Guesde, _Le Socialisme au jour le jour_ (Paris, 1899), p. 268. Inability to carry out real reforms was ascribed to both national legislative bodies and to the municipalities. Therefore, if the party has entered into elections, it is not for the purpose of carving out seats of councillors or deputies, which it leaves to the hemorrhoids of bourgeois of every stamp, but because the electoral period brings under our educational influence that part of the masses which in ordinary times is most indifferent to our meetings.[61] [61] Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, _Le Programme du Parti Ouvrier_, 4th edition (Paris, 1897), p. 32. The municipalities conquered were to become just so many centres of recruiting and of struggle. The _Parti Ouvrier_ was to be a "kind of recruiting and instructing sergeant preparing the masses for the final assault upon the State which is the citadel of capitalist society."[62] For only a revolution would permit the productive class to seize the political power and to use it for the economic expropriation of capitalistic France and for the nationalization or socialization of the productive forces. Of course no man and no party can call forth a revolution, but when the revolution which the nineteenth century carried within itself arose as a result of national and international complication, the _Parti Ouvrier_ would be the party to assume the rôle of directing it.[63] [62] _Le Programme du Parti Ouvrier_, p. 52. [63] _Le Programme du Parti Ouvrier_, p. 30. The _Parti Ouvrier_ adopted a centralized form of organization. It became in time the strongest and best organized socialist party of France. It was particularly strong in the _Department du Nord_ and among the textile workers. It was also known as the "Guesdist" party, after its leader Guesde. The _Parti Ouvrier_ denounced the members of the _Parti Ouvrier révolutionnaire socialiste_, or "Broussists," also thus named after their leader Brousse, as "opportunists and possibilists" because they believed in the possibility of reforms and had said that it was necessary "to split up our program until we make it finally possible."[64] The nickname, _possibilists_, has remained as another designation of the _Broussists_. [64] L. Blum, _op. cit._, p. 75. The _Broussists_ cared little for the theories of Marx. They were disposed to allow larger differences of doctrine within their ranks and more local autonomy in their organization. They ascribed much importance to municipal politics. They conceived the conquest of political power as a more peaceful process of a gradual infiltration into the municipal, departmental and national legislative bodies. But like the "Guesdists," they were collectivists and took the class struggle as their point of departure. From the very outset, the _Broussists_ concentrated their efforts upon gaining an entrance into Parliament and into the municipalities. They had a numerous following in Paris among the working population, and among the lower strata of the middle class. The split between _Guesdists_ and _Broussists_ was followed by another in the ranks of the latter. In 1887 the _Broussists_ succeeded in electing seven of their members to the municipal council of Paris. This led to internal difficulties. A number of party members were discontented with the organization which they claimed was entirely "bossed" by its leaders. They grouped themselves in their turn about J. Allemane and became known as "Allemanists." The Allemanists accused the Broussists of being too much absorbed in politics and of neglecting the propaganda and organization of the party. In 1890 they separated from the Broussists and constituted a socialist party of their own. The Allemanists absorbed the more revolutionary elements of the party and were the leading spirits in some of the largest and strongest syndicats. Two more socialist groups must be mentioned in order that the reader may have a complete view of the socialist world in which the syndicats of France were moving during this period. These two were the Blanquists and the Independent Socialists. The Blanquists--known also as the _Comité Révolutionnaire Central_--were held together by a bond of common tradition, namely, by their loyalty to the name of Blanqui, spoken of in the preceding chapter. The leaders of the Blanquists were men who had taken a more or less prominent part in the Commune and who had returned to France after amnesty was granted in 1880. They considered themselves the heirs of Blanqui and the continuators of his ideas; but under the political conditions of the Third Republic they brushed aside the secret practices of former times and entered into politics as a distinct party with a communist program. Their aim was also the conquest of political power for the purpose of realizing a communistic society and they approved of all means that would bring about the realization of this end. The group of Independent Socialists grew out of the "Society for Social Economy" founded in 1885 by Malon, once a member of the "International". The "Society for Social Economy" was organized for the purpose of elaborating legislative projects of a general socialist character which were published in the monthly of the Society, _La Revue Socialiste_.[65] But the Society soon gained adherents among advanced Republicans and Radicals and entered into politics. It advocated the gradual nationalization of public services, laws for the protection of labor, self-government for the communes, etc. The party became an important factor in the political life of France. Some of the best known socialists of France have come from its ranks, as J. Jaurès, Millerand, Viviani and others. [65] On the socialist groups of this period see Leon de Seilhac, _Le Monde Socialiste_ (Paris, 1896). Amid these socialist factions, the syndicats were a coveted bit torn to pieces because everybody wanted the larger part of it. At their Congress of Paris (1883) the "Broussists" adopted a resolution that "the members of the Party will be bound to enter their syndical chamber or respective trade group and to promote the creation of syndical chambers and of trade groups where none exist as yet."[66] The Guesdists in their turn had adopted a similar resolution at their Congress in Roanne in 1882, and at their succeeding Congress, in Roubaix (1884), they adopted a resolution to promote "as soon as possible the formation of national federations of trades which should rescue the isolated syndicats from their fatal weakness."[67] When the Allemanists separated from the Broussists, they, in their turn, made it obligatory for members of their party to belong to their respective syndicats. [66] Seilhac, _Les Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 124. [67] Blum, _op. cit._, p. 93. These acts, while promoting the organization of the syndicats, impressed upon the latter a political character. The syndicats were utilized for electoral purposes, were made to serve the interests of the socialist group to which they adhered, and were drawn into the whirlpool of political dissensions and rivalry. The effect was destructive for the syndicats. The acrimonious and personal polemics of the socialist leaders bred ill-feeling among their workingmen followers; the invective and abuse filling the periodical literature of the socialist groups found an echo in the assemblies of the workingmen; the mutual hatreds separating politically Allemanists from Guesdists, Guesdists from anarchists, were carried over into the syndicats which were hindered thereby in their growth or entirely driven to disintegration. The adherence of a syndicat to any one socialist group generally repelled the non-socialists and enraged the adherents of other socialist groups, and often led to the organization of rival syndicats in the same trade and locality. The literature of the French labor movement is full of instances of the disorganizing effect which these political dissensions exerted upon the syndicats. Economic conditions, however, were impelling the workingmen to union. Since the Commune, the industrial development of France had gone on without interruption, concentrating the economic powers of the employing classes. In the face of the economic organizations of the employers, the scattered and isolated syndicats were of little significance, and the necessity of a larger combination made itself felt. Besides, in 1884, a new law on syndicats was passed. This law authorized the formation of syndicats under certain conditions of which article 4 was obnoxious to the workingmen. This article 4 of the new law made it obligatory for every syndicat to send in the names and addresses of its administrators to the municipal authorities. In Paris they had to be sent to the Prefect of the Police. The workingmen thought that this condition would subject them to the mercy of the police and of the employers, and they wanted to manifest their attitude to the new law. Under these conditions a general congress of syndicats was called in Lyons in October, 1886. Organized workingmen of various political opinions met here and at once the sentiments and needs which brought them together found expression in the report of the Committee on Organization from which the following lines may be quoted: We are organized workingmen who have made a study of social problems and who have recognized that the diversity of doctrines contributes powerfully to divide us instead of uniting us. Slaves of the same master, bearing the same claims, suffering from the same evils, having the same aspirations, the same needs and the same rights, we have decided to set aside our political and other preferences, to march hand in hand, and to combine our forces against the common enemy. The problems of labor have always the power of uniting the workingmen.[68] [68] _Séances du Congrès Ouvrier_, session de 1886, pp. 18-19. The first question on the program of the Congress was the "prospect of a Federation of all workingmen's syndicats." The discussion brought out the fact that the delegates had different ideas on the future rôle of the Federation. Still the majority united on the following resolution: Considering that in face of the powerful bourgeois organization made without and against the working-class, it not only behooves, but it is the duty of the latter to create, by all means possible, groupings and organizations of workingmen against those of the bourgeois, for defense first, and we hope for offensive action soon afterwards; Considering that every organization of workingmen which is not imbued with the distinction of classes, by the very fact of the economic and political conditions of existing society, and which exist only for the sake of giving assent to the will of the government and of the bourgeoisie, or of presenting petty observations of a respectful and therefore of a humiliating nature for the dignity of the working-class, cannot be considered as part of the workingmen's armies marching to the conquest of their rights; for these reasons, A National Federation is founded....[69] [69] _Congrès National des Syndicats Ouvriers, Compte Rendu_, pp. 344-5. The aim of the Federation was to help individual syndicats in their struggles with employers. "The National Federation of Syndicats," however, did not achieve its end. It soon fell into the hands of the Guesdists who utilized the organization for political and electoral purposes. The Congresses of the "National Federation of Syndicats" were held in the same place and about the same time as were those of the _Parti Ouvrier_, were composed of the same men and passed the same resolutions. Besides, the "National Federation of Syndicats" never succeeded in establishing connections between the local syndicats and the central organization (the _Conseil fédéral national_) and could, therefore, exert little economic influence. While the "National Federation of Syndicats" became a war-engine at the service of the Guesdists,[70] another central organization was created by the rivals of the Guesdists. This was the "Federation of Labor Exchanges of France" (_Fédération des Bourses du Travail de France_). The idea of the _Bourse du Travail_ may be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century and even further back to the Great Revolution.[71] At first the idea was to erect a building where the workingmen in need of work and the employers in need of workingmen could meet. It was proposed that the prevailing rate of wages in each industry be published there day by day and that the quotations of the _Bourse du Travail_ then be inserted in the newspapers.... It was expected that the workingmen of an entire country, even of an entire continent would be enabled in this manner to know, day by day, the places where work might be obtained under the most favorable conditions, and where they might choose to go to demand it.[72] But after the law of 1884 which legalized the syndicats, the _Bourse du Travail_ was conceived in a larger spirit, as a center where all the syndicats of a locality could have their headquarters, arrange meetings, give out information, serve as bureaus of employment, organize educational courses, have their libraries and bring the workingmen of all trades into contact with one another. The municipalities were to promote their creation and to subsidize them.[73] [70] Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 60. [71] Charles Franck, _Les Bourses du Travail et la Confédération Générale du Travail_ (Paris, 1910), p. 17. [72] G. de Molinari, _Les Bourses du Travail_ (Paris, 1893), p. 257. [73] Molinari, _op. cit._, p. 280. The first _Bourse du Travail_ was opened in Paris in 1887. The example of Paris was followed by other municipalities of France, and in a short time many of the larger cities of France had their _Bourses du Travail_. The Allemanists obtained the predominating influence in the _Bourses du Travail_, and they conceived the idea of opposing to the "National Federation of Syndicats"--which was an instrument in the hands of the Guesdists--a "Federation of _Bourses du Travail_," in which they would have the leading part.[74] The "Federation of _Bourses du Travail_" was organized in 1892 with the following program: (1) To unify the demands of the workingmen's syndicats and to bring about the realization of these demands; (2) To extend and to propagate the action of the _Bourses du Travail_, in the industrial and agricultural centers; (3) To nominate delegates to the National Secretariat of Labor; (4) To collect statistical data and to communicate them to the adhering Bourses, and at the same time to generalize the gratuitous service of finding employment for workers of both sexes and of all trades.[75] [74] Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 64. [75] Seilhac, _Les Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 230. The "National Secretariat of Labor" mentioned was created after the International Socialist Congress of Brussels in 1891. The Congress of Brussels had proposed to create in all countries National Secretariats in order to unify the labor and socialist movement of the world. In France, the National Secretariat of Labor soon experienced the fate of other organizations. In view of political differences, it was abandoned by the Guesdists, Independents, and Broussists. It therefore could not achieve the aim it had in view and lost all significance. Into this situation there now entered another factor, which was to determine the course of further groupings. This factor was the idea of the general strike. The idea was not new in the history of the labor movement and not original with France. It had been widely discussed in England during the 30's[76] and afterwards at the Congresses of the "International".[77] It reappeared in France in the second half of the 80's and seems to have been suggested by the wide strike movement in America during 1886-7. Its first propagandist in France seems to have been a French anarchist workingman, Tortelier, a member of the syndicat of carpenters.[78] [76] B. & S. Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, pp. 118-122. [77] Dr. E. Georgi, _Theorie und Praxis des Generalstreiks in der modernen Arbeiterbewegung_ (Jena, 1908). [78] H. Lagardelle, _La Grève Générale et le Socialisme_ (Paris, 1905), p. 42. The idea of the general strike was hailed enthusiastically by the French syndicats. On the one hand it seemed to give the workingmen a new weapon in their economic struggles. It was seen above how reluctant French workingmen had been to use the strike during the 60's and 70's. Though forced by economic conditions to use it, the French workingmen still considered it a necessary evil which never fully rewarded the sacrifices it involved. The general strike seemed to repair the defects of the partial strike. It seemed to insure success by increasing the number of strikers and by extending the field of disturbance. On the other hand, the general strike suggested itself as a method of bringing about the Social Revolution. This question was a vital one with the socialist syndicats. It was much debated and discussed and divided deeply the adherents of the various socialist and anarchist groups. "The conquest of political power," the method advocated by Guesdists and others, seemed vague and indefinitely remote; a general revolt, such as advocated by the anarchists, seemed impossible in view of the new armaments and of the new construction of cities which made barricades and street fighting a thing of the past. These two methods eliminated, the general strike seemed to present the only and proper weapon in the hands of the workingmen for the realization of their final emancipation. In this sense, the principle of the general strike was voted for the first time in 1888 at the Congress of the "National Federation of Syndicats" in Bordeaux. The idea spread rapidly. The Allemanists declared in favor of it at their Congresses in 1891 and 1892.[79] Fernand Pelloutier, of whom more will be said in the next chapter, defended it successfully before a socialist congress in Tours in 1892. The same year, Aristide Briand appeared as the eloquent champion of the general strike before the Congress of the "National Federation of Syndicats" in Marseilles.[80] The Blanquists admitted the general strike as one of the possible revolutionary means. Only the Guesdists were against the general strike and at their Congress in Lille (1890) declared it impossible. [79] L. Blum, _op. cit._, pp. 129, 137. [80] _Le Congrès National des Syndicats, Compte Rendu_, pp. 45 _et seq._ The conception of the general strike that prevailed during this period was that of a peaceful cessation of work. The strike, it was agreed, is a right guaranteed by law. Even if a strike were to spread to many industries and assume a general character, the workingmen would still be exercising their rights and could not be lawfully prosecuted. The general strike, therefore, would enable the workingmen to carry out a Revolution by legal means and would make the revolution an easy matter. The general strike must mean revolution because a complete cessation of work would paralyze the life of the country and would reduce the ruling classes to famine. Lasting a few days only, it would compel the government to capitulate before the workingmen, and would carry the workingmen's party into power. Thus, a "peaceful strike of folded arms" (_grève des bras croisés_) would usher in the Social Revolution which would bring about the transformation of society. The feeling prevailed that the general strike could begin any moment and that it assured the speedy realization of the socialist ideal. At first it was thought that the general strike could be organized or decreed, but this idea was soon given up, and the general strike came to be thought of as a spontaneous movement which might be hastened only by propaganda and organization. The conception of the general strike involved one more important point. It implied the superior value of the economic method of organization and struggle over the political. The general strike is a phenomenon of economic life and must be based on an economic organization of the working-class. On this conception of the general strike the Guesdists threw themselves with all the subtlety of their dialectics. They asserted that the idyllic picture of the social revolution was too puerile to be taken seriously; that before the capitalists felt the pangs of hunger, the workingmen would already have starved.[81] They insisted that no such peaceful general strike was possible: that either the workingmen would lose their composure, or the government would provoke a collision. On the other hand, they affirmed that a successful general strike presupposes a degree of organization and solidarity among workingmen which, if realized, would make the general strike itself unnecessary. But, above all, they argued that the general strike could not be successful, because in the economic field the workingmen are weaker than the capitalists and cannot hope to win; that only in the political field are the workingmen equal, and even superior to the employers, because they are the greater number. The conclusion, therefore, was that "the general strike is general nonsense" and that the only hope of the workingmen lay in the conquest of political power. The syndicat could only have a secondary and limited importance in the struggle for emancipation.[82] [81] To meet this criticism the Allemanists argued that the militant workingmen could have "reserves" accumulated little by little which would allow them to await for some time the results of the general strike. [82] G. Deville, _Principes Socialistes_ (Paris, 1896), pp. 191-201. The attitude of the Guesdists towards the general strike brought them into conflict with the "National Federation of Syndicats" which voted in favor of the general strike at Marseilles in 1892. The conflict at first was latent, but soon led to a split in the "National Federation of Syndicats" and to a readjustment of the various elements of the syndicats. This took place in the following way. In 1893 the _Bourse du Travail_ of Paris was authorized by the Second Congress of the "Federation of Bourses" to call a general trade-union Congress in which all syndicats should take part. The Congress was to convene the 18th of July, 1893. About ten days before this, the government closed the _Bourse du Travail_ of Paris. The reason given was that the syndicats adhering to the Bourse had not conformed to the law of 1884. This act of the government provoked an agitation among the workingmen, the Congress took on a character of protest, and a large number of syndicats wished to be represented. The Congress of Paris adopted the principle of the general strike by vote, but in view of governmental persecution, the necessity of unifying the forces of the workingmen was thought to be the most important question. It was discussed at length, and the Congress adopted a resolution, that all existing syndicats, within the shortest possible time, should join the Federation of their trade or constitute such a federation if none as yet existed; that they should form themselves into local federations or _Bourses du Travail_ and that these Federations and _Bourses du Travail_ should form a "National Federation," and the Congress invited the "Federation of Bourses du Travail" and the "National Federation of Syndicats" to merge into one organization. The Congress of Paris also called a general Congress of syndicats for the following year in Nantes and commissioned the _Bourse du Travail_ of Nantes to arrange the Congress. The "Bourse" of Nantes had already received a mandate from the "National Federation of Syndicats" to arrange its Congress. It therefore decided to arrange both Congresses at the same time and to make one Congress out of two. The National Council of the "Federation of Syndicats", where the Guesdists presided, protested, but with no result. A general Congress of syndicats was held in Nantes in 1894. By this time the number of syndicats in France had considerably increased. According to the _Annuaire Statistique_, the growth of the syndicats since 1884 was as follows: _Year_ _Number of syndicats_ _Membership_ 1884 68 1885 221 1886 280 1887 501 1888 725 1889 821 1890 1,006 139,692 1891 1,250 205,152 1892 1,589 288,770 1893 1,926 402,125 1894 2,178 403,440 Of these, 1,662 syndicats were represented at the Congress of Nantes. This fact shows how keen was the interest felt in the idea of the general strike which, it was known, was to be the main question at the Congress. The Congress of Nantes adopted a motion in favor of the general strike, appointed a "Committee for the propaganda of the general strike" and authorized this committee to collect 10 per cent of all subscriptions for strikes. The Guesdist delegates after this vote left the Congress and held a separate Congress by themselves. The majority of the delegates remained and voted the creation of a "National Council" which should form the central organization of all the syndicats of France. The "National Council" functioned unsatisfactorily. At the next general Congress in Limoges (1895) the "National Council" was abolished and the foundations of a new organization were laid. This new organization was the "General Confederation of Labor". The workingman had come to recognize that political divisions were disastrous to the growth of the syndicats. The elimination of politics from the syndicats was, therefore, adopted at Limoges as a condition of admission to the "General Confederation". The first article of the Statutes read: Among the various syndicats and associations of syndicats of workingmen and of employees of both sexes existing in France and in its Colonies, there is hereby created a uniform and collective organization with the name General Confederation of Labor. The elements constituting the General Confederation of Labor will remain independent of all political schools (_en dehors de toute école politique_). The aim of the Confederation was evidently formulated to satisfy all conceptions. Its vague wording was as follows: "The General Confederation of Labor has the exclusive purpose of uniting the workingmen, in the economic domain and by bonds of close solidarity, in the struggle for their integral emancipation."[83] [83] Seilhac, _Les Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 286. The "General Confederation of Labor" incorporated the general strike as part of its program. The creation of the "General Confederation of Labor" may be considered the first important manifestation of the revolutionary tendency in the syndical movement of France. As Mr. Leon de Seilhac justly remarks, "the Congress of Limoges was a victory of the syndicalist revolutionary party over the syndicalist party of politics (_Parti syndical politicien_)." The victory was on the side of those who hailed the general strike, who asserted the superiority of economic action over political and who wanted to keep the syndicats independent of the political parties. These ideas contained the germ of revolutionary syndicalism and the Allemanists who emphasized them before others may thus be said to have pointed out the lines along which revolutionary syndicalism was to develop. The "General Confederation of Labor", however, was not founded by Allemanists alone. Its organization was advocated by Blanquists and non-socialist workingmen. The Blanquists had always insisted upon the necessity of an independent economic organization and had refused to admit syndicats into their political organizations as constituent elements. The non-socialist workingmen, on the other hand, contributed to the foundation of the "General Confederation" because they felt the economic importance of a central syndical organization. The "General Confederation of Labor" took the place of the "National Federation of Syndicats". The Guesdists that had split off at the Congress of Nantes continued for some time to bear the title of "National Federation of Syndicats", but their organization was of no importance and was soon lost in the general organization of the _Parti Ouvrier_. The "National Secretariat of Labor" died a quiet death (in 1896), after having expended the little energy it had. There were, therefore, now two central organizations: (1) The General Confederation of Labor, and (2) The Federation of Bourses du Travail. In these the further history of syndicalism centers. CHAPTER III THE FEDERATION OF BOURSES DU TRAVAIL. (1892-1902) The _Bourses du Travail_ met an important want in the syndical life of France. The local syndicats were generally poor and could accomplish but little in their isolation. The _Bourse du Travail_ furnished them with a center where they could easily come to a common understanding and plan common action. The first _Bourse du Travail_, as indicated above, was opened by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1887. In 1892 there were already fourteen Bourses in existence. Their number increased as follows: _Year_ _Bourses du Travail_ 1894 34 1896 45 1898 55 1899 65 1900 75 1902 96 Outside of Paris, the initiative of creating a _Bourse du Travail_ was generally taken by the workingmen themselves. The local syndicats would elect a committee to work out statutes and a table of probable expenses and income. The project of the committee would then be submitted to the general assembly of the syndicats. The assembly would also elect an administrative council, a secretary, treasurer and other officers. The statutes, the list of adhering syndicats, and the names of the administrative officers would then be presented to the municipal authorities, and the _Bourse du Travail_, which in fact was a local federation of unions, would be formally constituted. In many places, local federations existed before 1887. These simply had to assume the new title to transform themselves into _Bourses du Travail_. The municipalities would then intervene and grant a subvention. Up to 1902 inclusive, the municipalities of France spent 3,166,159 francs in installing _Bourses du Travail_, besides giving the annual subventions. In 1902, the subvention received by all the _Bourses du Travail_ of France from the municipalities amounted to 197,345 francs, and 48,550 francs besides were contributed to their budget by the Departments.[84] The readiness of the municipal councils to subsidize the _Bourses du Travail_ was due mostly, if not always, to political considerations. [84] _Annuaire Statistique_. Though soliciting subventions from the municipalities, the syndicats insisted on being absolutely independent in the administration of the Bourses. The first Congress of the _Bourses du Travail_ in 1892 declared that: Whereas the _Bourses du Travail_ must be absolutely independent in order to render the services which are expected from them; Whereas this institution constitutes the only reform which the workingmen have wrested from the ruling class; The Congress of _Bourses du Travail_ of 1892 declares that the workingmen must reject absolutely the meddling of the administrative and governmental authorities in the functioning of the Bourses,--an interference which was manifested in the declaration of public utility; Invites the workingmen to make the most energetic efforts in order to guarantee the entire independence of the _Bourses du Travail_, and to refuse the municipalities if they or the government desire to interfere with their functioning.[85] [85] Seilhac, _Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 231. The municipalities, on the contrary, wanted to have some control over the funds they furnished. The result was more or less friction. In 1894, the Congress of the _Bourses du Travail_ decided to demand that the Bourses be declared institutions of public utility; this, it was thought, would put them under the protection of the law and make impossible any hostile act on the part of the administration. But the next year the fourth Congress of the _Bourses du Travail_ reversed the decision of the preceding Congress and declared for complete independence. As the _Bourses du Travail_ became more aggressive, the difficulties with regard to the municipalities increased. At the fifth congress of the _Bourses du Travail_ (1896) in Tours, a report was presented showing the Bourses how they could exist without the subvention of the municipalities. The question of financial independence was brought up at later Congresses, but received no solution. The Bourses could not live on their own resources, while they continued the activities which brought them now and then into conflict with the municipal authorities. The program which the _Bourses du Travail_ gradually outlined for themselves has been classified under four heads: (1) Benevolent Services, or as the French term it _Mutualité_; (2) _Instruction_; (3) _Propaganda_; and (4) _Resistance_.[86] [86] On the _Bourses du Travail_ see, F. Pelloutier, _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_, 1902; Ch. Franck, _Les Bourses du Travail et la Confédération Générale du Travail_, 1910; P. Delesalle, _Les Bourses du Travail et la C. G. T._ (Paris, 1910). The services of _Mutualité_ included finding employment for workingmen out of work (_Placement_), assistance to workmen who go from city to city in search of employment (_Viaticum_), aid to other unemployed persons, sick benefit, etc. The Bourses paid particular attention to the service of _placement_. Pelloutier, the Secretary of the Federation of Bourses, wrote: The Placement is in fact the first and greatest advantage which the federative grouping can offer to the workingmen, and it constitutes a powerful instrument of recruiting. In consequence of the instability of employment, the use of private employment bureaus for whose services payment has to be made, soon becomes so onerous that many workingmen exasperated by the necessity of deducting from their future wages (which are more and more reduced) considerable tithes for the services of employment bureaus, prefer often--though losing thereby--to spend their time in search of a place which will secure a livelihood. Besides, it is known--and the proceedings of Parliament have furnished decisive proof--that the habitual practice of the employment bureaus is to procure the most precarious employments so as to multiply the number of visits which the workingmen will have to pay them. It is therefore easy to understand the readiness with which the unfortunates go to the _Bourse du Travail_, which offers desired employment gratuitously. In this manner men who would hold aloof from the syndicats out of ignorance or indifference, enter them under the pressure of need and find there instruction, the utility and importance of which escaped them before.[87] [87] Pelloutier, _op. cit._, pp. 87-88. The services of instruction comprised the founding of libraries, the organization of technical courses, the arrangement of lectures on general subjects (economic, literary, historical, etc.), workingmen's journals, bureaus of information, etc. The propaganda of the Bourses had for its general aim the intellectual development of the workingman and the extension of the syndical movement. The Bourses were to support the syndicats in existence, organize new ones, promote the adherence of single syndicats to their national federations, carry on a propaganda among the agricultural laborers and perform other functions of a similar character. The services of resistance consisted in lending material and moral aid to the workingmen in their economic struggles. The Bourses regarded themselves mainly as societies of resistance whose principal function was to support the workingmen in struggle. The other functions were considered subordinate to this main service. Every Bourse carried out this program only in proportion to its means. The Bourses differed a great deal in number of adherents, in financial resources, in command of organizers, etc. Some consisted of a few syndicats with a few dozen members only; others comprised tens of syndicats with thousands of organized workingmen and with a budget running into the thousands. A few figures may help to form some idea of the extent of the services rendered by the _Bourses du Travail_ during the period considered in this chapter. The number of positions filled by the Bourses were as follows: _Applications _Offers of _Placed at _Placed away _Year_ for employment_ employment_ residence_ from residence_ 1895 38,141 17,190 15,031 5,335 1898 83,648 45,461 47,237 38,159 1902 99,330 60,737 44,631 30,544[88] [88] _Annuaire Statistique_. The service of _viaticum_ was organized differently by different Bourses. Some paid one franc a day, others one and one-half and two francs. In many Bourses the traveling workingmen received part only of the _viaticum_ in money, the rest in kind (tickets to restaurants, lodging, etc.). The reports of the Bourses presented to their Congress at Paris in 1900, contain some information on the subject. The Bourse of Alger spent from 600 to 700 francs a year on the service of _viaticum_. The Bourse of Bordeaux distributed during certain months about 130 francs, during others, only 60; other Bourses spent much less. The following table presents the amounts spent in successive years by the Bourse of Rennes: _Assistance_ _Year_ _Passing Workmen_ _Francs_ _Centimes_ 1894 25 37 50 1895 22 33 1896 47 60 50 1897 41 81 1898 (till Sept.) 32 64 In organizing technical courses, the _Bourses du Travail_ pursued the aim of fighting "the dominant tendency in modern industry to make of the child a laborer, an unconscious accessory of the machine, instead of making him an intelligent collaborator."[89] Again in this respect the services of the Bourses varied. In the Bourse of Etienne, 597 courses of two hours each were attended by 426 pupils from October 1, 1899, to June 30, 1911. The Bourse of Marseilles had in 1900 courses in carpentry, metallurgy, typography and others. The Bourse of Toulouse organized 20 courses and had its own typographical shop. [89] Pelloutier, _op. cit._, pp. 121-2. Nearly all Bourses organized their own libraries, some of which consisted of several hundred volumes, while the library of the _Bourse du Travail_ of Paris contained over 2,000 volumes. Besides, every large Bourse had its periodical, weekly or monthly.[90] [90] There were 23 in 1907. Franck, _op. cit._, pp. 127-8. The _Fédération des Bourses du Travail_ was formed in 1892 to systematize and to unify the activities of the Bourses. Though it owed its origin to political motives, the Federation soon devoted its main energies to the economic functions of the Bourses which it tried to extend and to strengthen. This turn in its policy the Federation owed chiefly to Fernand Pelloutier, who became secretary of the Federation in 1894 and who remained in this post till his death in 1901. Fernand Pelloutier (1867-1901) came from a bourgeois family and was educated in a Catholic school.[91] He entered political life at an early age in a provincial town (St. Nazaire), as an advanced republican, but soon passed into the socialist ranks. Though a member of the _Parti Ouvrier_ (Guesdists), he defended the general strike in 1892 before a socialist Congress in Tours. This caused his break with the _Parti Ouvrier_. In 1893 he came to Paris and here came under the influence of the Anarchist-Communists, whose ideas he fully accepted and professed to his last day. [91] On the life of Pelloutier see Maurice Pelloutier, _F. Pelloutier. Sa Vie, son Oeuvre_ (Paris, 1911). Pelloutier was appointed secretary of the Federation of Bourses in order to assure the political neutrality of the organization. As indicated in the previous chapter, the Federation owed its birth largely to the political interests of the Allemanists. The Federation, however, soon found itself composed of various elements--Blanquists, Guesdists, etc.--but the economic interests which stimulated the growth of the Bourses were strong enough to create a desire on the part of the workingmen to avoid political dissensions and quarrels. An anarchist at the head of the Federation seemed to guarantee the necessary neutrality. Fernand Pelloutier realized the expectations placed in him. He was disgusted with politics and his "dream was to oppose a strong, powerful economic action to political action."[92] The Federation of Bourses became his absorbing interest in life. To it he devoted most of his time and energy. He proved himself a man of steady purpose, of methodical procedure, and of high organizing abilities. He has been recognized as the most able organizer of the working class that modern France has produced. His services to the development of the syndicalist movement have been recognized by men of various opinions and political convictions. M. Seilhac wrote of him in 1897, "a young man, intelligent, educated, sprung from the bourgeoisie, has just entered the Federation as Secretary; M. F. Pelloutier has led the Federation with a talent and a surety of judgment which his most implacable enemies must acknowledge. Having passed through the 'Guesdist' school, M. Pelloutier violently broke away from this intolerant and despotic party and was attracted by pure anarchism. The Federation owes its rapid success in great measure to him."[93] [92] P. Delesalle, _Temps Nouveaux_, 23 Mars, 1901. [93] Seilhac, _Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 272. In 1892 the Federation was formed by ten Bourses out of the fourteen then in existence. Its growth was as follows: _Year_ _Bourses_ _Syndicats_ 1895 34 606 1896 46 862 1897 40 627 1898 51 947 1899 54 981 1900 57 1,061 1902 83 1,112 The Federation was represented by a Federal Committee in Paris. Each Bourse had the right to a delegate in the Committee, but a single delegate could represent several Bourses. As the Federal Committee was in Paris, the delegates were not members of the Bourses they represented. They were chosen by the Bourses from a list sent to them by the Secretary of the Federation and made up of men either personally known by him or recommended to him. This gave rise to dissatisfaction, and it was decided that the secretary should complete the list of candidates with remarks on their political attachments, so that the Bourses might choose representatives expressing exactly their opinions. In this way the Federal Committee came to be composed of various political elements. In 1899 there were 48 Bourses in the Federation; of these three were represented in the Federal Committee by Blanquists, eleven by Allemanists, five by Guesdists. The last named soon left the Federation; the rest did not adhere to any party. "Within the group of their representatives particularly," wrote Pelloutier, "must one look for those convinced libertarians[94] whom the Bourses have maintained as delegates regardless of the reproaches of certain socialist schools, and who, without fuss, have done so much for some years to enhance the individual energy and the development of the syndicats."[95] The Committee had no executive officers, not even a chairman. The business was done by the secretary, an assistant secretary and a treasurer. The first received 1,200 francs a year. Each session began with the reading of the minutes of the preceding session, and of the correspondence; then the discussion of the questions raised by the correspondence, inscribed on the order of the day, or raised by the delegates, occurred. A vote took place only in cases, "extremely rare", when an irreconciliable divergence of views sprang up. The meetings took place twice a month. [94] The anarchists in France call themselves _libertaires_. [95] Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 151. Pelloutier wrote: The suppression of the chairmanship and of useless voting dates only from the entrance of the libertarians into the Committee, but experience soon convinced all members that between serious and disinterested men there is no necessity of a monitor because everyone considers it an honor to respect the freedom of discussion and even, (without wavering from his principles) to conduct the debate in a conversational tone. The Federal Committee proceeded in a methodical way. Between 1894-1896 it devoted itself mainly to propaganda and to organization. It invited the local syndicats and unions of syndicats to constitute themselves into _Bourses du Travail_. To guide them Pelloutier wrote a little pamphlet on _The method of organizing and maintaining Bourses du Travail_. After 1895 the Federal Committee thought the multiplication of Bourses too rapid. The Committee feared that the Bourses were constituting themselves without sufficient syndical strength and that they were putting themselves at the mercy of a dissolution or of an unsuccessful strike. The Committee, therefore, thought it wise if not to moderate the organizing enthusiasm of the militant workingmen, at least to call their attention to the utility of extending to arrondissements, sometimes even to an entire department, a propaganda which was till then limited to a local circle. Two or three Bourses per Department, wrote Pelloutier, would group the workingmen more rapidly and at the cost of less efforts than seven or eight insufficiently equipped and necessarily weak.[96] [96] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 77. In 1897, at the Congress of Toulouse, Pelloutier read two reports in which he invited the _Bourses du Travail_ to extend their activities to the agricultural population and to the sailors. These reports reveal a thorough study of the conditions in which these two classes of the population spend their lives, and contain indications how to attract them to syndical activity. Pelloutier recommended the Bourses to create commissions which should be specially devoted to agricultural problems and which should train propagandists for the country. He also recommended the institution of homes for sailors in the ports. Some Bourses acted on the suggestion of Pelloutier and since then dates the propaganda carried on by some Bourses among the wood-cutters, the wine-growers, the agricultural laborers, the fishermen, sailors and similar groups of the working population. From 1898 to 1900 the Federal Committee was trying to systematize the services of the _placement_ and of the _viaticum_. The suggestion came from some Bourses, which particularly felt this necessity. Some Bourses had already been placing workingmen at a distance through correspondence. They wanted to generalize this by having the Federal Committee publish statistics of the fluctuations of employment in the various Bourses. On the other hand, the Bourses had difficulties with the service of _viaticum_. The diversity of conditions in this respect gave rise to dissatisfaction, while the Bourses were unable to control abuses. The secretaries could not know the number of visits paid them by workingmen, nor the amounts received by each. At the Congress of Rennes (1898), the Federal Committee presented a plan of a "federal viaticum", and in 1900, the _Office national de statistique et de placement_ was organized. The "federal viaticum" was optional for members of the federation, and though presenting certain advantages for the Bourses, was accepted by very few of them. Organized in 1899, it functioned unsatisfactorily. The _Office national_ began activity in June, 1900. It was organized with the financial aid of the government. In 1900, after the Universal Exhibition, Paris was overcrowded with unemployed workingmen, and the government thought it could make use of the Federation of Bourses to disperse them over the country. Before that, in November, 1899, the Federal Committee had addressed the government for a subsidy of 10,000 francs to organize the _Office national_. In June, 1900, the Government granted 5,000 francs. The _Office_ began to publish a weekly statistical bulletin containing the information on the fluctuation of employment sent to the Federal Committee by the Bourses. The _Office_, however, did not give the expected results. In organizing these services, the Federation of Bourses always kept in mind the interests of the syndicats. It directed workingmen to employers who satisfied the general conditions imposed by the syndicats. The _viaticum_ also served to diminish competition among workingmen in ordinary times, or during strikes. In all its activity the Federal Committee generally followed the same policy. It called the attention of one Bourse to the experiments and to the achievements of others; it made its own suggestions and recommendations and it carried out the decisions of the Congresses. It did not regard itself as a central organ with power to command. Constituted on a federalist basis, the Bourses expected from the Federal Committee merely the preliminary study of problems of a common interest, reserving for themselves the right to reject both the problems and the study; they considered even their Congresses merely as _foyers_ where the instruments of discussion and of work were forged.[97] [97] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 154. The activity of the Federal Committee was handicapped by insufficiency of means. The financial state of the Federation between 1892 and 1902 may be gathered from the following table: _Receipts_ _Expenses_ _Francs_ _Centimes_ _Francs_ _Centimes_ 1892-1893 247 209 45 1893-1894 573 95 378 95 1894-1895 1,342 55 960 07 1895-1896 2,380 05 1,979 1896-1897 2,310 75 1,779 45 1897-1900 6,158 75 5,521 45 1900-1901 4,297 85 3,029 71 1901-1902 5,541-- 85 4,320 80 The Bourses paid their dues irregularly and Pelloutier complained that with such means the Committee could not render all the services it was capable of and that it was necessarily reduced to the rôle of a correspondence bureau, "slow and imperfect in its working." Whatever others may have thought of the results obtained by the Federation of Bourses, the leaders themselves felt enthusiastic about the things accomplished. Pelloutier wrote: Enumerate the results obtained by the groupings of workingmen; consult the program, of the courses instituted by the _Bourses du Travail_, a program which omits nothing which goes to make up a moral, complete, dignified and satisfied life; regard the authors who inhabit the workingmen's libraries; admire this syndical and co-operative organization which extends from day to day and embraces new categories of producers, the unification of all the proletarian forces into a close network of syndicats, of co-operative societies, of leagues of resistance; consider the constantly increasing intervention into the diverse manifestations of social life; the examination of methods of production and of distribution and say whether this organization, whether this program, this tendency towards the beautiful and the good, whether this aspiration toward the complete expansion of the individual do not justify the pride the Bourses du Travail feel.[98] [98] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, pp. 170-1. This feeling and the preoccupation with socialist ideals led Pelloutier and other members of the Federation to think that the _Bourses du Travail_ could not only render immediate services, but that they were capable of "adapting themselves to a superior social order". Pelloutier thought that the _Bourses du Travail_ were evolving from this time on the elements of a new society, that they were gradually constituting a veritable socialist (economic and anarchic) state within the bourgeois state,[99] and that they would, in time, substitute communistic forms of production and of distribution for those now in existence. The question was brought up for discussion at the Congress of Tours (1896) and two reports were read on the present and future rôle of the _Bourses du Travail_. One report was written by Pelloutier, the other was prepared by the delegates of the Bourse of Nimes, Claude Gignoux and Victorien Briguier (Allemanists). [99] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 160. The report of the Bourse of Nimes starts out from the idea that no new plan of a future society need be fabricated; that the _Bourses du Travail_ show themselves already capable of directing the economic activities of society and that with further growth they will become more and more capable of so doing. The natural development of the Bourses, it held, leads them to investigate the number of unemployed in each trade; the causes of industrial perturbation, the cost of maintenance of each individual in comparison with wages received; the number of trades and of workingmen employed in them; the amount of the produce; the totality of products necessary for the population of their region, etc., etc. Now, it further set forth, with all this information at hand, and with all this economic experience, each Bourse could, in case of a social transformation, assume the direction of the industrial life of its region. Each trade organized in a syndicat would elect a council of labor; the syndicats of the same trade would be federated nationally and internationally. The Bourses, knowing the quantity of products which must be produced, would impart this information to the councils of labor of each trade, which employ all members of the trade in the manufacture of necessary products. By their statistics, the Bourses would know where there is excess or want of production in their regions, and would determine the exchange of products between the territories which by nature are adapted for some special production only. The report presupposed that property would become "social and inalienable"; and the assumption was that the workingmen would be stimulated to develop the industrial powers of their regions and to increase the material welfare of the country. The report concluded: This summary outline gives those who live in the syndical movement an idea of the rôle which falls and will fall to the _Bourses du Travail_. It would not do to hurry decisions; the methodical pursuit of the development of our institutions is sufficient to realize our aim, and to avoid many disappointments and retrogressions. It is for us, who have inherited the thought and the science of all those who have come before us, to bring it about that so many riches and so much welfare due to their genius should not serve to engender misery and injustice, but should establish harmony of interests on equality of rights and on the solidarity of all human beings.[100] [100] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, p. 163. The report of the Federal Committee, prepared by Pelloutier, contained the same ideas but emphasized some other points. "We start out from the principle," read this report, "that the task of the revolution is to free mankind not only from all authority (_autorité_), but also from every institution which has not for its essential purpose the development of production. Consequently, we can imagine the future society only as a voluntary and free association of producers."[101] In this social system the syndicats and the Bourses are to play the part assigned to them in the report of the Bourse of Nimes. [101] F. Pelloutier, _op. cit._, pp. 163-4. The consequence of this new state, of this suppression of useless social organs, of this simplification of necessary machinery, will be that man will produce better, more and quicker; that he will be able, therefore, to devote long hours to his intellectual development, to accelerate in this way mechanical progress, to free himself more and more from painful work, and to arrange his life in greater conformity to his instinctive aspirations toward studious repose. Pelloutier laid emphasis on the idea that this future state was being gradually prepared and was dependent upon the intellectual and moral development of the working-class; he conceived it as a gradual substitution of institutions evolved by the working-class for those institutions which characterize existing society. He believed that the syndicalist life was the only means of stimulating the power and the initiative of the workingmen and of developing their administrative abilities. His report, quoted above, concluded: "And this is the future in store for the working-class, if becoming conscious of its intellectual faculties, and of its dignity, it will come to draw only from within itself its notion of social duty, will detest and break every authority foreign to it and will finally conquer security and liberty."[102] [102] Seilhac, _Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 317. This conception of the syndicat has since become fundamental with revolutionary syndicalists. Formulating it, the _Fédération des Bourses du Travail_ really laid the foundations of what later became revolutionary syndicalism. The "Federation of Bourses" also made the first step in the propaganda of anti-militarism and in outlining a policy of opposition to the State. The latter ideas, however, were at the same time developed in the General Confederation of Labor and will be considered in connection with the history of that body in the next chapter. From 1894 to 1902 the _Fédération des Bourses du Travail_ was the strongest syndical organization in France. Pelloutier claimed 250,000 members for it, but the figure is exaggerated. There is no way, however, of finding out the true figures. Conscious of its comparative strength, the Federation of Bourses at times ignored, at times dominated the General Confederation of Labor. These two organizations were rivals. The General Confederation of Labor had adopted at Limoges (1895) statutes according to which the Confederation could admit not only National Federations of Syndicats, but single syndicats and single Bourses. This was obnoxious to the Federation of Bourses. The latter wished that the General Confederation should be composed exclusively of two federal committees; one representing the Federation of Bourses; the other representing the National Federations of trade. Until this was accepted, the Federation of Bourses, at its Congress in Tours (1896), refused to give any financial aid to the General Confederation in view "of the little vitality" which it displayed. The General Confederation of Labor modified its statutes year after year, but no harmony between the two organizations could be established for some time. In 1897, the Federation of Bourses joined the General Confederation, but left it again in 1898. The friction was due partly to personal difficulties, partly to the differences of spirit which prevailed in the central committees of the two organizations. After 1900, however, the two organizations, though distinct, co-operated, and the question of unifying the two organizations was more and more emphasized. In 1902, at the Congress of Montpellier, this unity was realized; the Federation of Bourses entered the General Confederation of Labor, and ceased to have a separate existence. CHAPTER IV THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR FROM 1895 TO 1902 The General Confederation of Labor has continued its existence under the same name since its foundation in 1895. Still the period from 1895 to 1902 may be considered separately for two reasons: first, during this period the organization of the Confederation under which it now functions was evolved;[103] and secondly, during this period the tendency known as revolutionary syndicalism became definite and complete. This period may be considered therefore as the formative period both from the point of view of organization and from the point of view of doctrine. [103] The changes in the form of organization which have been made since 1902 are in harmony with the fundamental ideas of the constitution adopted in 1902. The gradual elaboration of organization and of doctrine may best be considered from year to year. The 700 syndicats which formed the General Confederation at Limoges in 1895 aimed to "establish among themselves daily relations which would permit them to formulate in common the demands studied individually; they wanted also and particularly to put an end to the disorganization which penetrated their ranks under cover of the political spirit."[104] [104] _XI Congrès National Corporatif_ (Paris, 1900), p. 35. The Congress held the following year at Tours (1896) showed that the aim was not attained. Only 32 organizations had paid the initiation fee (two francs) as requested by the statutes adopted at Limoges. Of the 32 only four, the _Fédération des Travailleurs du Livre_,[105] the Syndicat of Railway Men, the Circle of Machinists, and the Federation of Porcelain Workers, paid their dues regularly; the rest paid irregularly or did not pay at all. The entire income for the year amounted to 740 francs.[106] [105] Typographical Union. [106] Seilhac, p. 328. The National Council of the Confederation did not function because the number of delegates elected by the adhering organizations was insufficient to constitute the committees among which the work was to be divided. The few delegates that did attend the meetings quarreled for political and other reasons. The Federation of Bourses showed itself hostile, because the statutes adopted at Limoges admitted Bourses, single syndicats, local and regional federations. The "Committee for the propaganda of the General Strike" could also report but little progress. The Committee had been authorized by the Congress of Nantes (1894) to collect 10 per cent of all subscriptions for strikes. The Committee, however, reported to the Congress of Tours, that the syndicats and Bourses did not live up to the decision. From December 1, 1894, to September 12, 1892, 329 francs 75 centimes was collected; for 1895-96, 401 francs 95 centimes. With such limited means but little headway could be made.[107] [107] Seilhac, _Congrès Ouvriers_, p. 325; Ch. Franck, _op. cit._, p. 323. The Congress of Tours tried to remedy the situation by making several changes in the statutes. Single Bourses were not to be admitted. This was a concession to the Federation of Bourses, which was invited to join the Confederation; single syndicats were to be admitted only if there were no national federations in their trades. Each National Federation of trade or of industry could send three delegates to the National Council; syndicats and local federations, only one. Each delegate to the National Council could represent two organizations only, while formerly he could represent five. The National Council was to nominate an executive committee consisting of a secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, assistant treasurer, and archivist. The work of the Confederation was to be divided among seven committees. Dues were to be paid on a graduated scale according to membership. Besides modifying the statutes, the Congress of Tours discussed several other questions; eight-hour day, weekly rest, the general strike and the establishment of a trade organ. The idea of the general strike, defended by Allemanists and anarchists, was indorsed by the Congress with a greater majority than at previous Congresses. By this time, however, several modifications had taken place in the conception of the general strike. These were emphasized by M. Guérard who defended the idea before the Congress. Said M. Guérard: The conquest of political power is a chimera; there are at present only three or four true socialists in the Chamber of Deputies out of 585. Of 36,000 communes, only 150 have as yet been conquered. The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the employers protected by the government. The general strike will last a short while and its repression will be impossible; as to intimidation, it is still less to be feared. The necessity of defending the factories, workshops, manufactures, stores, etc., will scatter and disperse the army.... And then, in the fear that the strikes may damage the railways, the signals, the works of art, the government will be obliged to protect the 39,000 kilometers of railroad lines by drawing up the troops all along them. The 300,000 men of the active army, charged with the surveillance of 39 million meters, will be isolated from one another by 130 meters, and this can be done only on the condition of abandoning the protection of the depots, of the stations, of the factories, etc. ... and of abandoning the employers to themselves, thus leaving the field free in the large cities to the revolted workingmen. The principal force of the general strike consists in its power of imposing itself. A strike in one trade, in one branch of industry, must involve other branches. The general strike can not be decreed in advance; it will burst forth suddenly: a strike of the railway men, for instance, if declared, will be the signal of the general strike. It will be the duty of militant workingmen, when this signal is given, to make their comrades in the syndicats leave their work. Those who continue to work on that day will be compelled, or forced, to quit.[108] [108] Seilhac, _Congrès Ouvriers_, pp. 331-2. And M. Guérard, applauded by the audience, concluded: "The general strike will be the Revolution, peaceful or not." However, as a concession to the opponents of the general strike, the Congress of Tours decided that the "Committee for the propaganda of the general strike" should be independent of the Confederation. It was also from now on to collect only five per cent of all strike-subscriptions. The Congress of Tours also admonished the syndicats to abandon their political preoccupations which were held to be the cause of disorganization. These changes helped but little. During 1896-97 the Confederation counted 11 federations, 1 federated union, 1 trade union, the Union of Syndicats of Paris, and three national syndicats. The Federation of Bourses declined either to join or to help the Confederation. The number of delegates to the National Council was again insufficient to constitute the committees. The income for the year, including the balance from the previous year, amounted to 1,558 francs.[109] [109] Ch. Franck, _op. cit._, pp. 226-7. The Congress of Toulouse, therefore, decided to make new changes. Accepting the suggestion of the Federation of Bourses whose adherence was desired, the Confederation was to consist now of (1) the Federation of Bourses du Travail, (2) of National federations of trade and of industry, and (3) of local syndicats or of local federations of trades which were not yet organized nationally or whose national federations refused to join the Confederation. The Confederation was to be represented by the Federal Committee of the Federation of Bourses and by the National Council of the Federations of trade. The Congress of Toulouse again declared that "the general strike was synonymous with Revolution," and decided that sub-committees for the propaganda of the general strike should be established in the _Bourses du Travail_ to keep in touch with the General Committee in Paris. It discussed several other questions: trade-journal, suppression of prison-work, eight-hour day, and among these, for the first time, the questions of the boycott and of _sabotage_. The report on boycott and _sabotage_[110] was prepared by two anarchists, Pouget and Delesalle. The report explained the origin of the boycott and of _sabotage_, and gave instances of their application in different countries. It referred in particular to the _Go Canny_ practice of the English workingmen whose principle the report merely wanted to generalize and to formulate. [110] _Sabotage_ means the obstruction in all possible ways of the regular process of production; _cf._ ch. v. Up to the present time [read the report] the workingmen have declared themselves revolutionary; but most of the time they have remained on theoretical ground: they have labored to extend the ideas of emancipation, they have tried to sketch a plan of a future society from which human exploitation should be eliminated. But why, beside this educational work, the necessity of which is incontestable, has nothing been tried in order to resist the encroachments of capitalists and to render the exigencies of employers less painful to the workingmen? To this end the report recommended the use of the boycott and of _sabotage_, which should take place by the side of the strike as the workingmen's means of defense and offense. The report shows how these methods could be used in particular cases. _Sabotage_ particularly, sometimes applied to the quantity, sometimes to the quality, should bring home to the employer that the workingmen are determined to render "poor work for poor pay". The report concluded: The boycott and its indispensable complement, _sabotage_, furnishes us with an effective means of resistance which--while awaiting the day when the workingmen will be sufficiently strong to emancipate themselves completely--will permit us to stand our ground against the exploitation of which we are the victims. It is necessary that the capitalists should know it: the workingman will respect the machine only on that day when it shall have become for him a friend which shortens labor, instead of being, as it now is, the enemy, the robber of bread, the killer of workingmen.[111] [111] E. Pouget, _Le Sabotage_ (Paris, 1910), pp. 15-16. The Congress adopted unanimously and with great enthusiasm a motion inviting the workingmen to apply the boycott and _sabotage_ when strikes would not yield results. During 1897-98 the Federation of Bourses and the Confederation were to work together, but no harmony was possible. The report presented to the Congress of Rennes (1898) is full of complaints and of accusations on both sides. Personal difficulties between the two secretaries, M. Pelloutier and M. Lagailse, who was an "Allemanist," sprang up; besides, the National Council and the Federal Committee were animated by a different spirit. The Federal Committee evidently tried to dominate the National Council. The latter was weak. It counted only 18 organizations, and no new members were gained during 1897-98. The National Council did not function regularly; the explanation given was that as no functionaries were paid, they had but little time to devote to the business of the Confederation. The dues paid during 1897-8 amounted to 793 francs; the whole income was 1,702 francs. The treasurer thought that this showed that the "General Confederation of Labor was in a flourishing condition." The "Committee for the propaganda of the General Strike" admitted on the contrary that it had accomplished little. Only twenty Bourses formed sub-committees. The five per cent of strike subscriptions was not paid by the syndicats. Only 835 francs came in from this source; together with the income from other sources, the receipts of the Committee totaled 1,086 francs; of this it spent 822 francs. During 1898 the Syndicat of Railroad Workers had a conflict with the railroad companies and a railroad strike was imminent. The Secretary of the General Confederation of Labor sent out a circular to all syndical organizations of France calling their attention to the "formidable consequences for capitalism" which such a strike could have, if joined by all trades. The circular formulated eight demands, such as old-age pensions; eight-hour day, etc., which "could be realized in a few days if the working-class, conscious of its force, and of its rights, was willing to act energetically."[112] [112] _X Congrès National Corporatif_ (IV de la C. G. T.), Rennes, 1898, p. 77. The "Committee for the propaganda of the general strike" also took up the question. It sent out a question to all syndicats for a referendum vote. The question was: "Are you for an immediate general strike in case the railroad workingmen should declare a strike?" The report of the Committee to the Congress of Rennes complained that the syndicats voted for the general strike at conventions but changed their opinions or their disposition "when the hour for action came."[113] "It was disastrous to make such a discovery," read the report, when it was expected that by the strike of our comrades of the railroads, many other trades would be compelled by the force of events to quit work, and that this would have been the starting-point of the general strike, and possibly of that economic revolution which alone can solve the great problems which confront the entire world.[114] [113] _X Congrès National Corporatif_ (Rennes, 1898), p. 334. [114] _Ibid._, p. 334. The Syndicat of the Railroad Workingmen voted for a strike. But the government intercepted the strike order of the National Committee of the Syndicat, and the strike did not take place. The Congress of Rennes made new changes in the statutes of the Confederation. The Federation of Bourses was to leave the Confederation. The latter was to be composed only of national federations of trade and of national syndicats and to be represented by the National Council. The "Committee of the general strike" was to be part of the Confederation, but was to be autonomous and was to live on its own resources. The Congress discussed a number of questions: Alcoholism, suppression of employment bureaus, election of inspectors of industry, etc. Most reports on the various questions adopted by the Congress assert that the workingmen must solicit the co-operation of their representatives in the legislative bodies of the country in order to obtain any reforms. But one report was presented which emphasized the opposite idea of "direct action". This report was presented by the "Committee on the Label, the Boycott, and _Sabotage_." The reporter on the boycott and _sabotage_--M. Pouget--noted the little progress that had been accomplished in the application of these two methods since 1897, but again affirmed their validity and recommended them to the workingman; the report affirmed that the menace, only, of _sabotage_ is often sufficient to produce results. "The Congress," said the report, cannot enter into the details of these tactics; such things depend upon the initiative and the temperament of each and are subordinate to the diversity of industries. We can only lay down the theory and express the wish that the boycott and the _sabotage_ should enter into the arsenal of weapons which the workingmen use in their struggle against capitalists on the same plane as the strike, and that, more and more, the direction of the social movement should be towards the direct action of individuals and towards a greater consciousness of their personal powers.[115] [115] _X Congrès National Corporatif_ (Rennes, 1898), p. 302. The Congress of Paris (1900) again recorded but little progress. In the interval since Rennes (1898-1900) only a few new federations joined the General Confederation. The others, whose adherence was solicited, refused or even were not "polite enough" to make a reply. The adhering organizations paid irregularly; the decisions of the Congresses were not executed. The Committees still did not function because the number of delegates to the National Council was small. The total income for both years amounted to 3,678 francs, of which 1,488 were dues paid. The "Committee for the propaganda of the general strike" had collected during this period (1898-1900) 4,262 francs. Of this 3,172 francs were the five per cent of the strike subscriptions. It may also be interesting to note that the organizations which contributed most to this sum were: Union of Syndicats of Seine, 901 francs; the Union of Machinists of Seine, 727 francs; the Federation of Moulders, 536 francs; the Federation of Metallurgy, 457 francs. The Committee published thirteen numbers of a journal, "The General Strike," and a brochure on the general strike. The general strike was again the subject of a long discussion at the Congress of Paris. But the discussion was given a new turn. The question now was: "The general strike, its organization, its eventuality, its consequences." And the ideas that prevailed revealed some further modifications in the conception. The question was given this turn because certain syndicats thought that the principle of the general strike had been sufficiently affirmed and that it was time to treat the subject practically. As the discussion showed, the majority of the delegates thought that the general strike could take place at any moment and that in order to be successful, it did not presuppose a majority of organized workingmen, nor big sums of money. A daring revolutionary minority conscious of its aim could carry away with it the majority of workingmen and accomplish the act of appropriating the means of production for society as a whole. Some even thought that in order that the general strike should be prompt and lead to the aim in view it was best to have no money at all; everyone would then take what he needed wherever he found it, and the result would be the completest possible emancipation.[116] As one of the delegates expressed it: "Count exclusively upon the enthusiasm (_entrainement_) of the working-class."[117] [116] _XI Congrès National Corporatif_ (Paris, 1900), p. 198. [117] _Ibid._, p. 113. This conception of the general strike attributed to the syndicat a revolutionary rôle, as the syndicat was to take possession of the means of production in the name of society as a whole. It did not exclude however the parallel action of political parties. The latter could profit by the general strike and seize the political power of the State to co-operate in the transformation of society. But the syndicats were not to count upon this possibility; on the contrary it was their task to make the general strike absolutely independent of all political parties, to perform the principal part in the economic revolution and to leave to the new government, if one arose, no other function but that of sanctioning the economic change accomplished by the syndicats. This emphasis upon the revolutionary and preponderant part to be played by the syndicats went together with a mistrust and defiance of political parties. "All politicians are betrayers,"[118] exclaimed one delegate. "In politics one has always to deal with intrigues," said another, and the same sentiment pervaded the other speeches. Though not refusing to make use of all methods, "for the disorganization of capitalism," all delegates emphasized the necessity for the workingmen to rely mainly upon themselves and upon their syndical organizations. [118] _XI Congrès National Corporatif_ (Paris, 1900), p. 110. The majority of delegates recognized also that the general strike must necessarily have a violent character. Though a few still thought of the general strike as of a "peaceful revolution," a "strike of folded arms," the majority rejected this conception as childish and foresaw the inevitable collision to which the general strike would lead. All these ideas were briefly summarized in the conclusions of the Committee appointed by the Congress to report on the question. This Commission recommended leaving the "Committee for the propaganda of the general strike" as free as possible in its action. The Congress merely determined the syndicats which were to elect the members of the Committee. The latter was now to obtain regular monthly dues for the continuation of its work. The revolutionary spirit which manifested itself in the conception of the general strike expressed itself also in the resolution of the Congress on the army. This resolution demanded the suppression of permanent armies, and invited the syndicats to establish relations with the workingmen in military service, to invite them to social gatherings and to assist them financially (to establish the so-called _Sou du Soldat_). The same spirit characterized the report of the Committee which formulated the ideas of the Congress on the "practical means of realizing the international harmony of the workingmen." "Capital," read the report, "in its various forms is international," and it is necessary that labor should also be organized internationally. The slight differences in conditions of life varying from country to country are not important. "The predominating fact everywhere, in all countries, is the division of society into two categories; the producer and the non-producer, the wage-earner and the employer." The report went on to say that the idea of "fatherland" (_patrie_) is a means of protecting the strong against the weak, "an emblem of speculation, of exploitation," "a synonym of property," "a fiction for the workingmen who possess nothing."[119] The practical conclusion of the Committee was to bring together the wage-earners of all countries in an international organization which should be represented by an international secretariat. [119] _XI Congrès National Corporatif_ (Paris, 1900), p. 205. During 1900-1 the Confederation displayed a little more activity than before. The National Council employed a permanent employee to attend to the business of the Confederation, at first for two, then for four hours a day at a remuneration of 50 and then 100 francs a month. In December, 1900, the Confederation began also to publish its own weekly, _La Voix du Peuple_. Since 1896 the question of a trade-journal had been on the order of the day. It was discussed at every Congress and various plans were recommended in order to obtain the financial means for a daily. The Congress of Paris, in view of the financial impossibility of starting a daily and recognizing that "it was more than ever necessary to create a revolutionary syndicalist organ," decided to publish a weekly. One of the Committees of the National Council was to attend to it. The _Voix du Peuple_, however, was not in a satisfactory condition at the time of the Congress of Lyons (1901). Pouget, the editor of the paper and the secretary of the Committee of the _Voix du Peuple_, complained that the _Voix du Peuple_ "suffered from the apathy and the negligence of the comrades." Only 260 syndicats subscribed for the paper (out of 2,700 syndicats then in existence). In Paris only 600 copies were sold weekly. The finances showed a deficit for the year of over 6,000 francs. The number of copies printed fell from 12,000-14,000 during the first months to 800 during the later months. The secretary of the Confederation, M. Guérard, also complained that the "Confederation was anaemic for lack of means." The twenty organizations--federations and syndicats--which adhered to the Confederation during 1900-1901 paid in 1,478 francs. The total income was 4,125 francs. With such limited means the Confederation could do nothing. The Congress of Lyons (1901)--where all these reports were read--was provided for by a subvention from the municipality of Lyons which appropriated 7,000 francs for the purpose. The Congress of Lyons, nevertheless, showed that the Confederation was beginning to feel a little more confidence in its future. The Congress decided that henceforth only syndicats adhering to the Confederation should take part in its Congresses. Previous to that all syndicats were invited to send a delegate or their mandate to the Congresses of the Confederation. The Congresses, therefore, neither revealed the strength of the Confederation, nor had a binding character, and were significant merely as revealing the state of mind of a large part of the organized workingmen of the time. The decision of the Congress of Lyons was to do away with this condition and to give the Congresses of the Confederation a more coherent and binding character. Another decision taken by the Congress of Lyons was to admit local and regional federations of syndicats. This was directed against the Federation of Bourses. Though more friendly since 1900, the relations between the two organizations still gave trouble. The question of unity, however, was urged by many workingmen, and the Congress decided to call a special Congress for 1902 to solve this problem. The Congress of Lyons revealed the further progress of revolutionary ideas among the delegates. There were 226 delegates; these represented 26 Bourses and 8 local federations, comprising 1,035 syndicats with 245,000 members;[120] eight regional federations composed of 264 syndicats with 36,000 members; 8 federations of trade or industry counting 507 syndicats with 196,000 members; 492 syndicats with 60,000 workingmen were represented directly. The exact number of syndicats and of workingmen represented cannot be obtained from these figures, because one syndicat could be represented several times in a local federation, in a Bourse, and in the federation of trade. The delegates, however, came from different parts of the country and were numerous enough to show that the ideas they expressed were accepted by a considerable number of French workingmen. [120] The growth of syndicats in France since 1895 is shown in the following table: _Year_ _Syndicats_ _Members_ 1895 2,163 419,781 1896 2,243 422,777 1898 2,324 437,793 1899 2,361 419,761 1900 2,685 492,647 1901 3,287 588,832 Of the questions discussed at Lyons three had a particular significance as showing the revolutionary tendency which the Confederation was taking. These were the questions of the general strike, of labor-laws, and of the relations to the political parties. The "Committee for the propaganda of the General Strike" reported more activity for the year 1900-1 and greater success in its work. The Committee published a brochure on the General Strike of which 50,000 copies were distributed. It collected over 1,500 francs in monthly dues, and its total income amounted to 2,447 francs. It was in touch with a number of sub-committees in the different _Bourses du Travail_, arranged a number of meetings on various occasions, and lent its support to some strikes. The Committee affirmed that the idea of the general strike had spread widely during the year and attributed this fact to the big strikes which had taken place in France after the International Exhibition of 1900 and which had thrown the workingmen into a state of agitation. At the time the Congress of Lyons was being held, the miners were threatening to strike, if their demands were not granted by the companies. The delegate of the miners was at the Congress, and the discussion that took place under these conditions was very characteristic. The Committee on the general strike which consisted of fifteen members reported: The idea of the general strike is sufficiently understood to-day. In repeatedly putting off the date of its coming, we risk discrediting it forever by enervating the revolutionary energies. What better occasion to realize it! The miners will give the signal on the first of November; the working-class--in case of a revolution--counts upon this movement which must bring them their economic liberation. And the report of the Committee went on to point out the conditions which in its opinion indicated "that the moment had come to try the general strike (_faire la Grève générale_) with strong chances of success."[121] [121] _XII Congrès National Corporatif_ (Lyons, 1901), p. 170. The delegate from the miners said: "If you wish to join us, we will be able not only to strike, but to bring about the revolution; if we were made sure of the co-operation of all trades, even if it were necessary to wait for it two, three, or even six months, we are ready to grant you this concession."[122] [122] _Ibid._, pp. 177-8. The following motion was then adopted: The Congress declares that the General Strike cannot be the means merely of obtaining amelioration for any category of workingmen. Its aim can be only the complete emancipation of the proletariat through the violent expropriation of the capitalist class. The Congress, in view of the situation, declares that the movement which may take place in favor of the miners, the importance or character of which nobody can foresee and which may go to the point of a general emancipation, will be in any case a movement of solidarity which will not impair in the least the revolutionary principle of the general strike of all workingmen.[123] [123] _Ibid._, p. 179. The delegate of the Typographical Union (_La Fédération du Livre_) combated the idea of the general strike and argued that it was impossible in view of the small number of organized workingmen. But his argument had no effect on the Congress. It was rejected as of no importance because the minority of organized workingmen could carry away with it the majority. The question of labor laws was the subject of an animated discussion at the Congress because of its importance. The answer given to this question was to determine the attitude of the General Confederation to legislative reforms and to the State in general. The question was a very practical one. The government of Waldeck-Rousseau (22 June, 1899-6 June, 1902), in which the socialist, Millerand, was Minister of Commerce and Industry, outlined a number of labor laws which touched upon the most vital questions of the labor movement. The most important of these law-projects were on strikes and arbitration, on the composition of the superior Council of Labor, on the institution of Councils of Labor, and on the modification of the law of 1884. The policy of the government in planning these laws was clear and expressly stated. It was the continuation and accentuation of the policy which had guided M. Waldeck-Rousseau in 1884 when he was Minister of the Interior in the Cabinet of Jules Ferry, and which had then found partial expression in the ministerial circular on the application of the new law on syndicats. This "Circular," sent out to the Prefects August 25, 1884, pointed out to the Prefects that it was the duty of the State not merely to watch over the strict observation of the law, but "to favor the spirit of association" among the workingmen and "to stimulate" the latter to make use of the new right. In the conception of the government the syndicats were to be "less a weapon of struggle" than "an instrument of material, moral and intellectual progress." It was "the wish of the Government and of the Chambers to see the propagation, in the largest possible measure, of the trade associations and of the institutions which they were destined to engender" (such as old-age pension funds, mutual credit banks, libraries, co-operative societies, etc.) and the government expected the Prefects "to lend active assistance" in the organization of syndicats and in the creation of syndical institutions.[124] [124] See the "Circulaire" in G. Severac, _Guide Pratique des Syndicats Professionnels_ (Paris, 1908), pp. 125-136. The aim of Waldeck-Rousseau was to bring about the "alliance of the bourgeoisie and of the working-class"[125] which Gambetta and other republican statesmen had untiringly preached as the only condition of maintaining the Republic. In the period 1899-1902 this policy seemed still more indispensable. It was the time when the agitation caused by the Dreyfus affair assumed the character of a struggle between the republican and anti-republican forces of France. Republicans, Radicals, Socialists, and Anarchists were fighting hand in hand against Monarchists, Nationalists, Anti-Semites and Clericals. The cabinet of Waldeck-Rousseau constituted itself a "Cabinet of Republican Defense" and it sought to attain its end by securing the support of all republican elements of the country. This was the cause which prompted Waldeck-Rousseau to invite a socialist, Millerand, to enter his cabinet and to accentuate his policy of attaching the working-class to the Republic by a series of protective labor laws. [125] G. Hanoteaux, _Modern France_ (tr. by J. C. Tarver, New York, 1903-09), vol. ii, p. 181. The policy of the Government was clearly expressed by Millerand in the Chamber of Deputies on November 23, 1899. "It has appeared to me," said he, "that the best means for bringing back the working masses to the Republic, is to show them not by words, but by facts, that the republican government is above everything else the government of the small and of the weak."[126] [126] A. Lavy, _L'Oeuvre de Millerand_ (Paris, 1902), p. 2. The facts by which M. Millerand undertook to show this were a number of decrees by which the government tried to enforce a stricter observation of labor-laws already in existence and a series of new law-projects for the future protection of labor, such as the bill on a ten-hour day, which became law on March 30, 1900. As M. Millerand expressed it, this law was "a measure of moralization, of solidarity, and of social pacification." Social pacification was the supreme aim of M. Millerand and of the government. M. Millerand hoped to attain this by calling workingmen to participation in the legislative activities of the Republic, by accustoming them to peaceable discussions with employers, and by regulating the more violent forms of the economic struggle. A decree from September 1, 1899, modified the constitution of the Superior Council of Labor, in existence since 1891, so that it should henceforth consist of 22 elected workingmen, 22 elected employers and 22 members appointed by the Minister from among the deputies of the Chamber, the senators and other persons representing "general interests." The Superior Council of Labor was "an instrument of study, of information and of consultation" in matters of labor legislation. It studied law-projects affecting the conditions of labor, made its own suggestions to the government, but had no legislative powers. The decree of M. Millerand was particularly significant in one respect: it called upon the workingmen organized in the syndicats to elect fifteen members of the Superior Council of Labor. M. Millerand pointed out the significance of this measure in a speech delivered on June 5, 1900. Said he: The workingmen are henceforth warned, that in order to participate through delegates sprung from their own ranks in the elaboration of economic reforms which concern them most, it is necessary and sufficient that they enter the ranks of that great army of which the syndicats are the battalions. How can they refuse to do this? By inducing them to do so we believe that we are defending their legitimate interests at the same time that we are serving the cause of social peace in this country.[127] [127] A. Lavy, _op. cit._, p. 66. The "Councils of Labor" were organized by two decrees from September 17, 1900, and from January 2, 1901. Composed of an equal number of workingmen and of employers, these Councils had for their principal mission to enlighten the government, as well as workingmen and employers, on the actual and necessary conditions of labor, to facilitate thereby industrial harmony and general agreement between the interested parties, to furnish in cases of collective conflicts competent mediators, and to inform the public authorities on the effects produced by labor legislation.[128] [128] _Ibid._, p. 79. M. Millerand emphasized that the Councils of Labor were to bring workingmen and employers together for the discussion of "their general interests" and that this new institution would be one more motive for the utilization of the law of 1884 on syndicats. "To encourage by all means the formation of these trade-associations, so useful for the progress of social peace," wrote the Minister in his decree, "is a task which a republican government cannot neglect."[129] [129] A. Lavy, _op. cit._, p. 80. To enlarge the possible operations of the syndicats, the government also introduced a bill into the Chamber (November 14, 1899) which contained several modifications of the law of 1884. This bill proposed to extend the commercial capacities of the syndicat and to grant the syndicat the rights of a juridical person. To complete the series of measures which were to impart a peaceful character to the syndical movement, M. Millerand introduced into the chamber a bill (November 15, 1900) on the regulation of strikes and on arbitration. This law-project proposed a complicated mechanism for the settlement of economic conflicts. It hinged on the principle that strikes should be decided by secret ballot and by a majority vote renewed at brief intervals by all workingmen concerned; permanent arbitration boards in the industrial establishments were part of the mechanism.[130] [130] Only the most important measures of M. Millerand are mentioned; they do not by any means exhaust his legislative activities during this period. Toward this series of labor laws the Congress of Lyons was to define its attitude. The principle of the Superior Council of Labor was accepted by a majority of 258 against 205 votes (5 blank); the project on the regulation of strikes and on arbitration was rejected by a unanimous vote minus five; the Councils of Labor proposition was rejected by a majority of 279 against 175 (18 blank). The discussion on the labor laws brought out the fact that the idea of "direct action" had undergone further modifications as a result of the policy of the government. M. Waldeck-Rousseau was denounced by the speakers as "a clever defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie" who wished merely to stop the offensive movement of the workingmen.[131] The legislative measures of the "pseudo-socialist minister",[132] Millerand, were interpreted as schemes for restraining the revolutionary action of the syndicats.[133] The workingmen were warned that, if they accepted the laws, they would "reinforce a power which they wanted to destroy".[134] They were reminded that the main function of the syndicat was to organize the workmen for their final emancipation which presupposes the "abolition of the wage-system" and that all "so-called labor laws" would only retard the hour of final liberation. [131] _XII Congrès National Corporatif_ (VI de la C. G. T.), Lyons, 1901, p. 110. [132] _Ibid._, p. 114. [133] _Ibid._, p. 210. [134] _Ibid._, p. 112. The revolutionary elements of the Congress did not deny, however, the possibility or the desirability of reforms. They insisted only upon particular methods of obtaining reforms and upon a particular kind of reforms. They rejected all peaceful discussion with employers because the interests of employers and of workingmen were held to be distinct and antagonistic. They did not want an "economic parliamentarism"[135] which would necessarily take the sting out of the workingmen's weapons and deprive the syndicats of their force. They wanted such reforms only as should "undermine the foundations"[136] of existing society and which should advance the movement for "integral emancipation" by strengthening the forces and the organization of the workingmen. [135] _Ibid._, p. 218. [136] _Ibid._, p. 110. Such reforms could be obtained only "independently of all parliamentarism",[137] by the workingmen organized in their syndicats displaying all their initiative, manifesting all their energies, relying only upon themselves and not upon intermediaries. Only in this way would the syndicats wrest "piece by piece from capitalistic society reforms the application of which would finally give the exploited class the force which is indispensable in order to bring about the social revolution".[138] [137] _XI Congrès National Corporatif_, p. 114. [138] _Ibid._, p. 119. These ideas showed the further application which the principle of "direct action" was given by the revolutionary elements in the syndicats. The syndicats were not only to carry on their struggle "directly" against employers by strikes, boycotts and _sabotage_, but also against the State, and not only against the State appearing as the "enemy of labor", but also against the State wishing to become the protector and benefactor of the workingmen. This hostility to the State and to its reform-legislation marked a further accentuation of the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism. The Congress of Lyons took, also, a decided stand on the relations of the syndicats to political action. Under "political action" of course the action of the Socialist parties was meant. After the foundation of the General Confederation of Labor certain important changes had taken place in the socialist movement of France which could not but have their effect upon the syndicats. In 1893 the socialist parties had their first big success in the general elections. They obtained about 600,000 votes[139] and elected over 50 deputies. The socialist deputies in the Chamber constituted a Parliamentary Group--_Union Socialiste_--which acted in common. This strengthened the tendency toward union which had already manifested itself, during the elections, when the Socialists had entered into unions among themselves. [139] A. Hamon, _Le Socialisme et le Congrès de Londres_ (Paris, 1897), p. 11. The unity in action was further made possible by a unity in views which was becoming more and more manifest. After 1892, when the Guesdists obtained a large number of votes in the municipal elections and gained a number of municipalities, their ideas on some of the most important points of their program began to change. In 1894, at their Congress of Nantes, the Guesdists elaborated a detailed program of reforms designed to win the votes of the agricultural population. This program made no mention of the collective appropriation of the soil; on the contrary, it stated that, "in the agricultural domain, the means of production, which is the soil, is in many places still in the possession of the producers themselves as individual property" and that "if this state of conditions, characterized by peasant proprietorship, must inevitably disappear, socialism must not precipitate its disappearance."[140] With similar promises of reform the Guesdists addressed other classes of the population: artisans, small merchants and the lower strata of the middle classes. [140] L. Blum, _Congrès Ouvriers et Socialistes_, p. 146. Formerly ardent revolutionists, they now began to emphasize the legal aspect of their activity and the emancipating influence of universal suffrage. Jules Guesde himself in his speeches in the Chamber of Deputies on various occasions expressed his belief that universal suffrage was the instrument with which all questions might be peacefully solved,[141] and that nothing but legal weapons would throw the Republic into the hands of the socialist army. G. Deville, then one of the principal theorists of the party, affirmed in 1896 that the only actual task of the party was to increase the number of socialist electors and representatives.[142] With the affirmation of the emancipating significance of universal suffrage the importance of parliamentary action was more and more emphasized. [141] _Chambre des Deputés, Débats Parlementaires_; July 11, 1895; November 22, 1895. [142] Deville, _Principes Socialistes_. Thus the "revolutionary" socialists were approaching the reformist elements composed of Broussists and of Independents. In 1896 this _rapprochement_ was manifested at the banquet of Saint Mandé arranged on the occasion of the success obtained by the socialists during the municipal elections of that year. All socialist parties took part in it and Millerand delivered a speech in which he outlined the common points of the socialist program. This program emphasized the peaceful and evolutionary character of socialism: "We address ourselves only to universal suffrage," said Millerand, ... "In order to begin the socialization of the means of production, it is necessary and sufficient for the Socialist party to pursue with the help of universal suffrage the conquest of the political powers."[143] Guesde, present at the banquet, approved and "applauded" the definition of Socialism given by Millerand. [143] A. Millerand, _Le Socialisme Réformiste Français_ (Paris, 1903), pp. 31-32. The Dreyfus affair brought the socialists for some time into still closer contact. A "Committee of Harmony" (_Comité d'Entente_) was formed in which all the socialist organizations were represented. The demand for unity was expressed in the socialist periodical press, and J. Jaurès outlined a plan according to which the old separate and rival factions were to disappear in one unified party.[144] The belief in the possibility of such a unified party was general. [144] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_, Jan., 1899. The entrance of Millerand into the Ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau was a sudden shock which again disrupted the elements tending toward union. The Guesdists, Blanquists and a few other groups denounced the act of Millerand as a violation of the principles of class and class-struggle--the fundamental principles of Socialism. The Independents, Broussists and similar elements, on the contrary, insisted upon the necessity of taking part in the general life of the country and of assuming responsibilities when they are inevitable. At two general Congresses of all socialist organizations held in Paris (December, 1899, and September, 1900) this question was discussed. The Congresses ended with a quarrel among the various socialist organizations which led to complete rupture at the following Congress in Lyons in May, 1901. The Guesdists, Blanquists and several regional federations formed the _Parti Socialiste de France_; the Independents, Broussists, and Allemanists formed the _Parti Socialiste Français_, which supported Millerand and the cabinet of Waldeck-Rousseau. Within each new grouping, however, the old organizations remained intact. The "case Millerand" raised such violent polemics, such bitter mutual accusations among the Socialists that many members of the party felt disgusted. Even the French socialist movement, so rich in inner divisions and dissensions, had never before experienced such a critical condition. In view of this situation the organized workingmen were anxious now more than ever to keep politics out of the syndicats. The resolution adopted unanimously by the Congress of Lyons insisted upon the fact that the introduction of politics into the syndicats would cause division in the syndicalist ranks, and therefore invited the syndicats and the federations to remain independent of all political parties, "leaving to individuals the undeniable right to devote themselves to that kind of struggle which they prefer in the political field." The syndicat as an organization, however, should remain neutral; otherwise it would be "false to its true rôle which consists in grouping all the exploited without distinction of race, nationality, philosophical or religious opinions, and political views."[145] [145] _XII Congrès Corporatif_ (Lyons, 1901), p. 151. The reaction of socialist workingmen, however, to the situation created by the "case Millerand" was of a more complicated character. While the entrance of a socialist minister into the government aroused hopes and expectations in the minds of many, to others it seemed the beginning of the end of socialism. Habitually regarding socialism as a class-movement, imbued with the ideas of class and class-struggle, they were shocked and grieved at the "collaboration of classes" which Millerand practised in the government and the Socialists in Parliament. To these socialist workingmen the danger seemed the greater because it presented itself as a crowning act of a policy that had been pursued for some time by all the socialists. As we have seen, even the revolutionary Guesdists had become more and more moderate. They had co-operated in Parliament with the republican parties and had concluded alliances during elections with "bourgeois" parties. At the general Congress of socialists in Paris in 1899, M. Briand in a clever and somewhat biting speech pointed out to the revolutionary socialists that their policy had made the "case Millerand" possible. "It seems," said Briand, "that great astonishment has been aroused in our comrades of the _Parti Ouvrier_ (Guesdists) by the entrance of our comrade Millerand into a bourgeois government. But, citizens of the _Parti Ouvrier_, what has taken place is the very consequence of the policy which by successive concessions you have forced upon the entire socialist party."[146] And Briand pointed out these "successive concessions" which deprived the Guesdists of their revolutionary character. To quote M. Briand again: [146] _Congrès Général des Organisations Socialistes_ (Paris, 1899), p. 152. Yes, you become interested in these [electoral] struggles which gave immediate results, and little by little our militant comrades also became interested in them, took a liking for them to such a degree that they soon came to believe that in order to triumph definitely over the capitalist society nothing was necessary but to storm the ballot-boxes. Thus within recent years the country could gain the impression that the socialist party was no longer a revolutionary party.[147] [147] _Ibid._, p. 155. This impression many socialist workingmen had, and the "case Millerand" strengthened it in them. But preservation of the revolutionary character of socialism was for them a necessity, equivalent to maintaining their belief in the coming of socialism at all. These workingmen of all socialist parties, Allemanists, Blanquists, and even Guesdists, therefore, now threw themselves with greater energy into the syndicalist movement which seemed to them the only refuge for the revolutionary spirit. There they met the Communist-Anarchists who had been taking an active part in the syndicalist movement for some time. The Communist-Anarchists before 1895 had generally shown little sympathy for the syndicats where the workingmen, they said, were either engaged in politics or trying to obtain paltry reforms. But tired of carrying on a merely verbal propaganda and spurred on by Pelloutier,[148] they began to change their attitude after 1895, and after 1899 became influential in many syndicalist organizations. Their criticism of electoral action, their denunciation of political intriguing, now under the conditions created by the "case Millerand," fell on prepared ground and yielded fruit. A decided anti-political tendency gained strength in the syndicats. [148] To understand the change in the attitude of the anarchists towards the syndicats, the disillusioning effect of their terroristic campaign from 1890 to 1894, during which the exploits of Ravachole, Henri, Casiers, and others took place, must also be considered. This tendency was further strengthened by the economic events of the period. During these years, particularly after the Exhibition of Paris, a series of big strikes took place in various parts of France, among the miners in the north, the dockers in the ports of the south, in the Creusot works, etc. These strikes were partly the result of the large expectations aroused in the workingmen by the entrance of a socialist minister into the government. But the government sent troops against some of the strikers and in two or three cases blood was shed. The agitation aroused by the bloodshed was great and intensified the defiance toward Millerand and toward the political parties in general. On the other hand, some of the strikes became more or less general in character and were won by the energetic action of the strikers. This strengthened the conviction in the efficacy of economic action and in the possibility of the general strike. Under the combined influence of all these conditions, the socialist and anarchist workingmen, during this period, began to ascribe to the syndicats a decided preponderance in all respects, and they actively engaged in making their revolutionary ideas predominant in the syndical organizations. The resolutions and discussions at the Congress of Lyons revealed this state of mind and the progress attained. The revolutionary elements of the syndicats had by this time become conscious of themselves, and in opposition to the program of the political socialists, they advanced the idea of the General Confederation of Labor as a distinctly unifying conception which in the future was to play a great social rôle. "The General Confederation of Labor uniting all the workingmen's syndical forces," said the Secretary, Guérard, in his report to the Congress of Lyons, "is destined to become the revolutionary instrument capable of transforming society."[149] In greeting the delegates at the opening of the Congress, Bourchet addressed them as "the representatives of the great party of Labor" (_grand parti du travail_).[150] The same term was used by other delegates,[151] and in the summing-up of the work of the Congress, the emphasis was laid upon the demarcation between the syndicalists and the politicians which the Congress had clearly shown. [149] _XI Congrès Corporatif_, (Lyons, 1901), p. 29. [150] _Ibid._, p. 14. [151] _Ibid._, p. 69. Thus, with the Congress of Lyons the General Confederation of Labor may be said to have entered definitely upon the revolutionary path. The main ideas of revolutionary syndicalism were clearly formulated and consciously accepted. The main functionaries elected after the Congress were revolutionists, viz., the secretary Griffuelhes and the assistant secretary and editor of the _Voix du Peuple_ Pouget. The Congress of Montpellier held next year (1902) showed constant accentuation of the revolutionary tendencies. The Congress of Montpellier was almost entirely occupied with the elaboration of a new constitution which would unite the General Confederation and the Federation of Bourses. Statutes acceptable to both organizations were adopted to go into force on January 1, 1903. At the Congress of Montpellier the report of the Secretary Griffuelhes claimed that during the year the Confederation had made progress. But this progress was very slight. The real growth of the Confederation began after its fusion with the Federation of Bourses. Since then also dates the more active participation of the Confederation in the political and social life of the country. But before taking up the history of the General Confederation since 1902, it seems advisable to sum up the main ideas of revolutionary syndicalism in a more systematic way. CHAPTER V THE DOCTRINE OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM When the General Confederation of Labor adopted its new constitution in 1902, the main ideas of revolutionary syndicalism had already been clearly formulated. Since then, however, a considerable amount of literature has appeared on the subject, either clarifying or further developing various points of the doctrine. This literature consists mainly of numerous articles in the periodical press and of pamphlets and is, accordingly, of an unsystematic character. The attempt is made in this chapter to sum up in a systematic way the leading ideas of revolutionary syndicalism common to all who call themselves revolutionary syndicalists. Consideration of individual ideas and of contributions of particular writers will be left to a following chapter. The fundamental idea of revolutionary syndicalism is the idea of class-struggle. Society is divided into two classes, the class of employers who possess the instruments of production and the class of workingmen who own nothing but their labor-power and who live by selling it. Between the two classes an incessant struggle is going on. This struggle is a fact, not a theory in need of proof. It is a fact manifested every day in the relations between employers and wage-earners, a fact inherent in the economic organization of existing society. The class-struggle is not a fact to be deplored; on the contrary, it should be hailed as the creative force in society, as the force which is working for the emancipation of the working-class. It is the class-struggle which is consolidating the workingmen into a compact unity opposed to the exploitation and domination of employers. It is the class-struggle which is evolving new ideas of right (_droit_) in opposition to the existing law. It is the class-struggle which is developing the self-consciousness, the will-power and the moral character of the workingmen and is creating forms of organization proper to them. In a word, it is the class-struggle which is forging the material and moral means of emancipation for the workingmen and putting these weapons into their hands. The task of the syndicalists is to organize the more or less vague class-feeling of the workingmen and to raise it to the clear consciousness of class-interests and of class-ideals. This aim can be attained only by organizing the workingmen into syndicats. The syndicat is an association of workingmen of the same or of similar trades, and is held together by bonds of common interest. In this is its strength. Of all human groupings it is the most fundamental and the most permanent, because men in society are interested above everything else in the satisfaction of their economic needs. The strength, permanence, and class-character of economic groups are made conspicuous by comparison with forms of grouping based on other principles. Political parties, groups of idealists, or communities professing a common creed, are associations which cannot but be weak and transient in view of their heterogeneous composition and of the accidental character of their bond of union. Political bodies, for instance, are made up of men of various interests grouped only by community of ideas. This is true even of the Socialist party which consists of manufacturers, financiers, doctors, and lawyers, as well as of workingmen. Even the Socialist party cannot, therefore, make prominent the class-division of society, and tends to merge all classes into one conglomeration which is unstable and incapable of persistent collective action. Only in groupings of real and fundamental interests such as the syndicats, are men of the same conditions brought together for purposes inextricably bound up with life. The syndicat groups men of one and the same trade in their capacity of workingmen only, regardless of any other qualifications. The workingmen entering a syndicat may be Catholics or Protestants, Republicans, Socialists, or Monarchists, they may be of any color, race or nationality; in their capacity of workingmen they are all equally welcome and legitimate members of the syndicat. A workingman enrolling in a syndicat is not entering a party, not subscribing to a platform, nor accepting a creed. He is simply entering into a relation which is forced upon him by his very position in society, and is grouping himself with his fellowmen in such a way as to derive more strength for himself in the struggle for existence, contributing at the same time to the strength of his fellowmen. These conditions make the syndicat peculiarly fit to serve the interests of the workingmen. The syndicat is a sphere of influence which by the volume of its suggestion and by the constancy and intensity of its action shapes the feelings and ideas of the workingmen after a certain pattern. In the syndicat the workingmen forget the things which divide them and are intent upon that which unites them. In the syndicat the workingmen meet to consider common interests, to discuss their identical situation, to plan together for defense and aggression, and in all ways are made to feel their group-solidarity and their antagonism to the class of employers. In view of this the syndicats should prefer industrial unionism to craft unionism. The separation of workingmen into trades is apt to develop in them a corporate spirit which is not in harmony with the class-idea. The industrial union, on the contrary, widens the mental horizon of the workingman and his range of solidarity with his fellow workers and thus serves better to strengthen his class-consciousness. The syndicat is the instrument with which the workingmen can enter into a "direct" struggle with employers. "Direct action" is what the syndicalists most insist upon, as the only means of educating the workingmen and of preparing them for the final act of emancipation. "Direct action" is action by the workingmen themselves without the help of intermediaries; it is not necessarily violent action, though it may assume violent forms; it is the manifestation of the consciousness and of the will of the workingmen themselves, without the intervention of an external agent: it consists in pressure exerted directly by those interested for the sake of obtaining the ends in view. "Direct action" may assume various forms, but the principal ones in the struggle against employers are: the strike, the boycott, the label, and _sabotage_. The strike, in the view of the syndicalists, is the manifestation of the class-struggle _par excellence_. The strike brings the workingmen face to face with the employers in a clash of interests. A strike clears up, as if by a flash of lightning, the deep antagonism which exists between those who employ and those who work for employers. It further deepens the chasm between them, consolidating the employers on the one hand, and the workingmen on the other, over against one another. It is a revolutionary fact of great value. All strikes, partial, general in a locality, or general in some one trade, have this revolutionary influence, particularly when they are conducted in a certain way. If the workingmen rely only on their treasury, the strike degenerates into a mere contest between two money bags--that of the employer and that of the syndicat--and loses much of its value. Still more are the syndicalists opposed to methods of conciliation and arbitration. The idea of the revolutionary syndicalists is that a strike should be won by _Sturm und Drang_, by quick and energetic pressure on employers. The financial strength of workingmen when striking should not be considered. Money may be supplied by contributions of workingmen of other trades and localities, in itself another means of developing the solidarity of the working-class. Sometimes a strike may be won by calling out sympathetic strikes in other trades. Strikes conducted in this manner yield practical results and serve also as means of educating the workingmen. They reveal to the workingmen their power, as producers, and their importance in the productive system of society. The label, on the other hand, is a means of bringing home to the workingmen their importance as consumers, and of making them wield this power for their own benefit. The boycott reveals the power of the workingmen, either as producers or as consumers. It may be wielded against an employer whose shop is avoided, or against a firm in its capacity as seller. It is an effective means of forcing employers to terms. _Sabotage_ consists in obstructing in all possible ways the regular process of production to the dismay and disadvantage of the employer. The manifestations of _sabotage_ are many, varying with the nature of the industry and with the ingenuity of the workers. In its primitive form, _sabotage_ is a tacit refusal on the part of the workers to exert properly their energy or skill in the performance of their work, in retaliation for any injustice which, in their opinion, had been inflicted upon them by their employers. This form of _sabotage_ includes such practices as those summarized in the Scotch _Ca Canny_ (slow work for low wages) and in the French principle of a _mauvaise paye mauvais travail_ (bad work for bad pay). It also includes the recent practices of the railroad workers in Austria, Italy, and France who disorganized the railway service of their respective countries by obeying literally all the rules and regulations of the service code and by refusing to apply discretion and common sense in the performance of their duties. The distinguishing characteristic of this form of _sabotage_ is that in applying it the workers remain within the limits of their contract and avoid any manifest violation of the law, though the loss inflicted upon the employer may be very heavy. A more aggressive form of _sabotage_ is that which expresses itself in deliberate damage done either to the product of labor or to the nature of the service. An instance of the latter was the so-called _grève perlée_ applied by the French railway men, which consisted in wilful misdirection of baggage and of perishable merchandise. This form of _sabotage_ implies disregard for the laws of property and for the clauses of the labor contract, but it is carried on in a manner which makes detection of motive very difficult.[152] [152] An intermediate form of _sabotage_ is that known as _sabotage à bouche ouverte_ (_sabotage_ of the open mouth). It consists in the disclosure of conditions generally withheld from the public, such as conditions in hotel-kitchens and restaurants, methods of weighing and measuring in stores, practices followed by druggists, frauds resorted to by contractors and builders, etc. From this form of _sabotage_ it is but a short step to the most aggressive and violent kind which finds expression in the deliberate and open disorganization of machinery. This form of _sabotage_ has nothing in common with the destruction of machinery practiced by unorganized workers during the early stages of the capitalist régime. It aims not at the destruction of the machine as a means of production, but at the temporary disability of the machine during strikes for the purpose of preventing employers to carry on production with the help of strikebreakers. Even in this most aggressive form, _sabotage_ may involve very little violence. The syndicalists strongly condemn any act of _sabotage_ which may result in the loss of life. Such are the "direct" methods of struggle against employers. But the revolutionary syndicalists have another enemy, the State, and the struggle against the latter is another aspect of "direct action." The State appears to the syndicalists as the political organization of the capitalist class. Whether monarchist, constitutional, or republican, it is one in character, an organization whose function it is to uphold and to protect the privileges of the property-owners against the demands of the working-class. The workingmen are, therefore, necessarily forced to hurl themselves against the State in their efforts toward emancipation, and they cannot succeed until they have broken the power of the State. The struggle against the State, like the struggle against the employers, must be carried on directly by the workingmen themselves. This excludes the participation of the syndicats in politics and in electoral campaigning. The parliamentary system is a system of representation opposed in principle to "direct action," and serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, for the management of which it is particularly suited. The workingmen can derive no benefit from it. The parliamentary system breeds petty, self-seeking politicians, corrupts the better elements that enter into it and is a source of intrigues and of "wire-pulling." The so-called representatives of the workingman do not and cannot avoid the contagious influence of parliament. Their policy degenerates into bargaining, compromising and collaboration with the bourgeois political parties and weakens the class-struggle. The syndicats, therefore, if not hostile, must remain at least indifferent to parliamentary methods and independent of political parties. They must, however, untiringly pursue their direct struggle against the State. The direct method of forcing the State to yield to the demands of the workingmen consists in exerting external pressure on the public authorities. Agitation in the press, public meetings, manifestations, demonstrations and the like, are the only effective means of making the government reckon with the will of the working-class. By direct pressure on the government the workingmen may obtain reforms of immediate value to themselves. Only such reforms, gained and upheld by force, are real. All other reforms are but a dead letter and a means of deceiving the workingmen. The democratic State talks much about social reforms, labor legislation and the like. In fact, however, all labor laws that are of real importance have been passed only under the pressure of the workingmen. Those which owe their existence to democratic legislators alone are devised to weaken the revolutionary strength of the working-class. Among such laws are those on conciliation and arbitration. All democratic governments are anxious to have Boards of Conciliation and of Arbitration, in order to check strikes which are the main force of the working-class. Workingmen must be opposed to these reforms, which are intended to further the harmony and collaboration of classes, because the ideology of class-harmony is one of the most dangerous snares which are set for the workingmen in a democratic State.[153] This ideology blinds the workingmen to the real facts of inequality and of class-distinctions which are the very foundations of existing society. It allures them into hopes which cannot be fulfilled and leads them astray from the only path of emancipation which is the struggle of classes. [153] The fundamental principle of democracy is that all citizens are equal before the law and that there are no classes in the state. Another idea which is used by the democratic State for the same purpose is the idea of patriotism. "Our country", "our nation", are mottoes inculcated into the mind of the workingman from his very childhood. But these words have no meaning for the workingman. The workingman's country is where he finds work. In search of work he leaves his native land and wanders from place to place. He has no fatherland (_patrie_) in any real meaning of the term. Ties of tradition, of a common intellectual and moral heritage do not exist for him. In his experience as workingman he finds that there is but one real tie, the tie of economic interest which binds him to all the workingmen of the world, and separates him at the same time from all the capitalists of the world. The international solidarity of the workingmen and their anti-patriotism are necessary consequences of the class struggle. The democratic State, like any other State, does not rely upon ideological methods alone in keeping down the workingmen. It has recourse to brute force as well. The judiciary, the administrative machinery and especially the army are used as means of defeating the movements of the working-class. The army is particularly effective as a means of breaking strikes, of crushing the spirit of independence in the workingmen, and as a means of keeping up the spirit of militarism. An anti-militaristic propaganda is, therefore, one of the most important forms of struggle against the State, as well as against capitalism. Anti-militarism consists in carrying on in the army a propaganda of syndicalist ideas. The soldiers are reminded that they are workingmen in uniforms, who will one day return to their homes and shops, and who should not, therefore, forget the solidarity which binds them to their fellow workingmen in blouses. The soldiers are called upon not to use their arms in strikes, and in case of a declaration of war to refuse to take up arms. The syndicalists threaten in case of war to declare a general strike. They are ardent apostles of international peace which is indispensable, in their opinion, to the success of their movement. By "direct action" against employers and the State the workingmen may wrest from the ruling classes reforms which may improve their condition more or less. Such reforms can not pacify the working-class because they do not alter the fundamental conditions of the wage system, but they are conducive to the fortification of the working-class and to its preparation for the final struggle. Every successful strike, every effective boycott, every manifestation of the workingmen's will and power is a blow directed against the existing order; every gain in wages, every shortening of hours of work, every improvement in the general conditions of employment is one more position of importance occupied on the march to the decisive battle, the general strike, which will be the final act of emancipation. The general strike--the supreme act of the class-war--will abolish the classes and will establish new forms of society. The general strike must not be regarded as a _deus ex machina_ which will suddenly appear to solve all difficulties, but as the logical outcome of the syndicalist movement, as the act that is being gradually prepared by the events of every day. However remote it may appear, it is not a Utopia and its possibility cannot be refuted on the ground that general strikes have failed in the past and may continue to fail in the future. The failures of to-day are building the success of to-morrow, and in time the hour of the successful general strike will come. What are the forms of the social organization which will take the place of those now in existence? The Congress of Lyons (1901) had expressed the wish to have this question on the program of the next Congress. In order that the answer to this question should reflect the ideas prevalent among the workingmen, the Confederal Committee submitted the question to the syndicats for study. A questionnaire was sent out containing the following questions: (1) How would your syndicat act in order to transform itself from a group for combat into a group for production? (2) How would you act in order to take possession of the machinery pertaining to your industry? (3) How do you conceive the functions of the organized shops and factories in the future? (4) If your syndicat is a group within the system of highways, of transportation of products or of passengers, of distribution, etc., how do you conceive its functioning? (5) What will be your relations to your federation of trade or of industry after your reorganization? (6) On what principle would the distribution of products take place and how would the productive groups procure the raw material for themselves? (7) What part would the _Bourses du Travail_ play in the transformed society and what would be their task with reference to the statistics and to the distribution of products? At the Congress of Montpellier, in 1902, a number of reports were presented answering the above questions. The reports were in the name of the syndicats and came from different parts of France. Only a limited number of them were printed as appendices to the general report of the Congress. Among them, it may be interesting to note, was the report of the syndicat of agricultural laborers. The rest were summed up in the official organ of the Confederation, _La Voix du Peuple_. The reports differed in details. Some emphasized one point more than another and _vice versa_. But the general character of the reports was identical and showed a consensus of opinion on the main outlines of that "economic federalism" which is the ideal of the syndicalists. According to this ideal, the syndicat will constitute the cell of society. It will group the producers of one and the same trade who will control their means of production. Property, however, will be social or collective, and no one syndicat will be the exclusive owner of any portion of the collective property. It will merely use it with the consent of the entire society. The syndicat will be connected with the rest of society through its relations with the Federation of its trade, the _Bourse du Travail_, and the General Confederation. With the National Federation relations will be mainly technical and special, and the rôle of the Federation will be insignificant. With the General Confederation relations will be indirect and mainly by mediation of the _Bourse du Travail_. Relations with the latter will be of permanent importance, as the _Bourses du Travail_ will be the centers of economic activity. The _Bourse du Travail_--in the ideal system of the syndicalists--will concentrate all local interests and serve as a connecting link between a locality and the rest of the world. In its capacity as local center it will collect all statistical data necessary for the regular flow of economic life. It will keep itself informed on the necessities of the locality and on its resources, and will provide for the proper distribution of products; as intermediary between the locality and the rest of the country it will facilitate the exchange of products between locality and locality and will provide for the introduction of raw materials from outside. In a word, the Bourse will combine in its organization the character both of local and of industrial autonomy. It will destroy the centralized political system of the present State and will counter-balance the centralizing tendencies of industry. To the General Confederation will be left only services of national importance, railways for instance. However, even in the management of national public utilities the National Federation and the Bourses will have the first word. The function of the General Confederation will consist mainly in furnishing general information and in exerting a controlling influence. The General Confederation will also serve as intermediary in international relations. In this social system the State as now constituted will have no place. Of course, one may call the ideal system of the syndicalists a State. All depends on the definition given to the term. But when the syndicalists speak of the State, they mean an organization of society in which a delegated minority centralizes in its hands the power of legislation on all matters. This power may be broken up and divided among a number of governing bodies, as in the federal system of the United States, but it does not thereby change its character. The essential characteristic of the State is to impose its rule _from without_. The legislative assemblies of the present State decide upon questions that are entirely foreign to them, with which they have no real connection in life and which they do not understand. The rules they prescribe, the discipline they impose, come as an external agency to intervene in the processes of social life. The State is, therefore, arbitrary and oppressive in its very nature. To this State-action the syndicalists oppose a discipline coming _from within_, a rule suggested by the processes of collective life itself, and imposed by those whose function it is to carry on those processes. It is, as it were, a specialization of function carried over into the domain of public life and made dependent upon industrial specialization. No one should legislate on matters unless he has the necessary training. The syndicats, the delegates of the syndicats to the _Bourses du Travail_, and so on, only they can properly deal with their respective problems. The rules they would impose would follow from a knowledge of the conditions of their social functions and would be, so to speak, a "natural" discipline made inevitable by the conditions themselves. Besides, many of the functions of the existing State would be abolished as unnecessary in a society based on common ownership, on co-operative work, and on collective solidarity. The necessary functions of local administration would be carried on by the _Bourses du Travail_. In recent years, however, revolutionary syndicalists have not expatiated upon the forms of the future society. Convinced that the social transformation is inevitable, they have not thought it necessary to have any ready-made model upon the lines of which the social organization of the future should be carved. The revolutionary classes of the past had no idea of the new social system they were struggling for, and no ready-made plan is necessary for the working-class. Prepared by all preliminary struggle, the workingmen will find in themselves, when the time comes, sufficient creative power to remake society. The lines of the future, however, are indicated in a general way by the development of the present, and the syndicalist movement is clearly paving the way for an "economic federalism". The workingmen are being prepared for their future rôle by the experiences of syndicalist life. The very struggle which the syndicats carry on trains the workingmen in solidarity, in voluntary discipline, in power and determination to resist oppression, and in other moral qualities which group life requires. Moreover, the syndicats, particularly the _Bourses du Travail_, are centers where educational activities are carried on. Related to the facts of life and to the concrete problems of the day, this educational work, in the form of regular courses, lectures, readings, etc., is devised to develop the intellectual capacities of the workingmen. The struggle of the present and the combat of the future imply the initiative, the example and the leadership of a conscious and energetic minority ardently devoted to the interests of its class. The experience of the labor movement has proven this beyond all doubt. The mass of workingmen, like every large mass, is inert. It needs an impelling force to set it in motion and to put to work its tremendous potential energy. Every strike, every labor demonstration, every movement of the working-class is generally started by an active and daring minority which voices the sentiments of the class to which it belongs. The conscious minority, however, can act only by carrying with it the mass, and by making the latter participate directly in the struggle. The action of the conscious minority is, therefore, just the opposite of the action of parliamentary representatives. The latter are bent on doing everything themselves, on controlling absolutely the affairs of the country, and are, therefore, anxious, to keep the masses as quiet, as inactive and as submissive as possible. The conscious minority, on the contrary, is simply the advance-guard of its class; it cannot succeed, unless backed by the solid forces of the masses; the awareness, the readiness and the energy of the latter are indispensable conditions of success and must be kept up by all means. The idea of the "conscious minority" is opposed to the democratic principle. Democracy is based upon majority-rule, and its method of determining the general will is universal suffrage. But experience has shown that the "general will" is a fiction and that majority-rule really becomes the domination of a minority--which can impose itself upon all and exploit the majority in its own interests. This is inevitably so, because universal suffrage is a clumsy, mechanical device, which brings together a number of disconnected units and makes them act without proper understanding of the thing they are about. The effect of political majorities when they do make themselves felt is to hinder advance and to suppress the progressive, active and more developed minorities. The practice of the labor movement is necessarily the reverse of this. The syndicats do not arise out of universal suffrage and are not the representatives of the majority in the democratic sense of the term. They group but a minority of all workingmen and can hardly expect ever to embrace the totality or even the majority of the latter. The syndicats arise through a process of selection. The more sensitive, the intellectually more able, the more active workingmen come together and constitute themselves a syndicat. They begin to discuss the affairs of their trade. When determined to obtain its demands, the syndicat enters into a struggle, without at first finding out the "general will." It assumes leadership and expects to be followed, because it is convinced that it expresses the feelings of all. The syndicat constitutes the leading conscious minority. The syndicat obtains better conditions not for its members alone, but for all the members of the trade and often for all the workingmen of a locality or of the country. This justifies its self-assumed leadership, because it is not struggling for selfish ends, but for the interests of all. Besides, the syndicat is not a medieval guild and is open to all. If the general mass of workingmen do not enter the syndicats, they themselves renounce the right of determining conditions for the latter. Benefiting by the struggles of the minority, they cannot but submit to its initiative and leadership. The syndicat, therefore, is not to be compared with "cliques," "rings," "political machines," and the like. The syndicat, it must be remembered, is a group of individuals belonging to the same trade. By this very economic situation, the members of a syndicat are bound by ties of common interest with the rest of their fellow-workingmen. A sense of solidarity and an altruistic feeling of devotion to community interests must necessarily arise in the syndicat which is placed in the front ranks of the struggling workingmen. The leadership of the syndicalist minority, therefore, is necessarily disinterested and beneficent and is followed voluntarily by the workingmen. Thus, grouping the active and conscious minority the syndicats lead the workingmen as a class in the struggle for final emancipation. Gradually undermining the foundations of existing society, they are developing within the framework of the old the elements of a new society, and when this process shall have sufficiently advanced, the workingmen rising in the general strike will sweep away the undermined edifice and erect the new society born from their own midst. CHAPTER VI THE THEORISTS OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM The writers who have contributed to the development of revolutionary syndicalism may be divided into two groups. One comprises men who, like Pelloutier, Pouget, Griffuelhes, Delesalle, Niel, Yvetot and others, either belong to the working-class, or have completely identified themselves with the workingmen. The other consists of a number of "intellectuals" who stand outside of the syndicalist movement. The members of the first group have played the leading part in building up the syndicalist movement. Pelloutier was secretary of the Federation of Bourses from 1894 to 1901; Griffuelhes was secretary of the General Confederation of Labor from 1901 to 1908; Pouget was assistant secretary of the Confederation and editor of the _Voix du Peuple_ from 1900 to 1908; Yvetot has been one of the secretaries of the Confederation since 1902; Niel was secretary of the General Confederation for a short time in 1909, and the others now occupy or have occupied prominent places in the syndicalist organizations. The close connection of the members of this group with the syndicalist movement and with the General Confederation of Labor has had its influence upon their writings. Their ideas have been stimulated by close observation of the facts of syndicalist life, and the course of their thought has been determined largely by the struggles of the day. There is a stronger emphasis in their writings upon methods, upon "direct action," and upon relations to other existing groups. There is less speculation and pure theorizing. In other respects the men of this group differ. They have come from different political groupings: Pouget and Yvetot, for instance, from the Communist-Anarchists; Griffuelhes from the Allemanists. They have different views on the relation of revolutionary syndicalism to other social theories, differences which will be brought out further on. The second group of writers, the so-called "intellectuals" outside the syndicalist movement, have grouped themselves about the monthly _Le Mouvement Socialiste_, started in 1899 by M. Hubert Lagardelle, a member of the Socialist Party, and about the weekly _La Guerre Sociale_, of which Gustave Hervé is editor. _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ was at first a Socialist monthly review, but accentuated its sympathy for the syndicalists as time went on, and became an expressly revolutionary syndicalist organ in 1904. The _Mouvement Socialiste_ counted among its constant contributors down to 1910 M. Georges Sorel and Edouard Berth. These three writers, Sorel, Lagardelle, and Berth, have tried to systematize the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism and to put them on a philosophical and sociological basis. The most prolific of them and the one who has been proclaimed "the most profound thinker of the new school" is M. Georges Sorel. M. Georges Sorel has written on various subjects. Among the works from his pen are volumes on Socrates, on _The Historical System of Renan_, on _The Ruin of the Ancient World_, a number of articles on ethics and on various other topics. The works that bear on revolutionary syndicalism which alone can be here considered, are: _L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats_, _La Décomposition du Marxisme_, _Introduction à l'Économie Moderne_, _Les Illusions du Progrès_, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, and a number of articles in various periodicals. The works of M. Sorel on revolutionary syndicalism stretch over a period of ten to twelve years: _The Socialist Future of the Syndicats_ was written in 1897; the second edition of his _Reflections on Violence_ appeared in 1910. Within this period of time the thought of M. Sorel has not only steadily developed in scope but has also changed in many essential points. It would require a separate study to point out the changes and their significance. This is out of the question in this study. The salient points only of M. Sorel's theories will be treated here, therefore, without consideration of their place in the intellectual history of their author. M. Sorel has attached his theories to the ideas of Marx. Revolutionary syndicalism is to M. Sorel but the revival and further development of the fundamental ideas of Marx. The "new school" considers itself, therefore, "neo-Marxist," true to "the spirit" of Marx[154] though rejecting the current interpretations of Marx and completing the lacunae which it finds in Marx. This work of revision it considers indispensable because, on the one hand, Marx was not always "well inspired,"[155] and often harked back to the past instead of penetrating into the future; and because, on the other hand, Marx did not know all the facts that have now become known; Marx knew well the development of the bourgeoisie, but could not know the development of the labor movement which has become such a tremendous factor in social life.[156] [154] G. Sorel, _L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats_ (Paris, 1901), p. 3. [155] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_ (Paris, 1910), p. 249. [156] _Ibid._, p. 246. The "new school" does not consider itself by any means bound to admire "the illusions, the faults, the errors of him who has done so much to elaborate the revolutionary ideas."[157] What it retains of Marx is his essential and fruitful idea of social evolution, namely, that the development of each social system furnishes the material conditions for effective and durable changes in the social relations within which a new system begins its development.[158] Accordingly, Socialists must drop all utopian ideas: they must understand that Socialism is to be developed gradually in the bosom of capitalism itself and is to be liberated from within capitalistic surroundings only when the time is ripe. [157] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_ (Paris, 1910), p. 249. [158] G. Sorel, _L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats_, pp. 3-4. The ripening of socialism within capitalism does not mean merely technical development. This is indispensable of course: socialism can be only an economic system based on highly developed and continually progressing productive forces; but this is one aspect of the case only. The other, a no less if not more important aspect, is the development of new moral forces within the old system; that is, the political, juridical and moral development of the working-class,[159] of that class which alone can establish a socialist society. [159] _Ibid._, p. 39. This was also the idea of Marx: "Marx also saw that the workingmen must acquire political and juridical capacity before they can triumph."[160] The revolution which the working-class is pursuing is not a simple change in the personnel or in the form of the government; it is a complete overthrow of the "traditional State" which is to be replaced by the workingmen's organizations. Such a complete transformation presupposes "high moral culture" in the workingmen and a capacity for directing the economic functions of society. The social revolution will thus come only when the workingmen are "ready" for it, that is, when they feel that they can assume the direction of society. The "moral" education of the working-class, therefore, is the essential thing; Socialism will not have to "organize labor", because capitalism will have accomplished this work before. But in order that the working-class should be able to behave like "free men" in the "workshop created by capitalism",[161] they must have developed the necessary capacities. Socialism, therefore, reduces itself "to the revolutionary apprenticeship"[162] of the workingmen; "to teaching the workingmen to will, to instructing them by action, and to revealing to them their proper capacities; such is the whole secret of the socialist education of the people."[163] [160] _Ibid._, p. 4. [161] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, pp. 289-5. [162] _Ibid._, p. 42. [163] G. Sorel, _Preface_ to Pelloutier's _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_. The workingmen can find the moral training necessary for the triumph of socialism only in the syndicats and in the experience of syndical life. The syndicats develop the administrative and organizing capacities of the workingmen. In the syndicats the workingmen learn to do their business themselves and to reject the dictatorship of "intellectuals" who have conquered the field of politics which they have made to serve their ambitions. The greatest organizing and educating force created by the syndicalist movement is the idea of the general strike. The general strike means a complete and "absolute" revolution. It is the idea of a decisive battle between the bourgeoisie and the working-class assuring the triumph of the latter. This idea is a "social myth" and hence its tremendous historic force. "Social myths" always arise during great social movements. The men who participate in great social movements, represent to themselves their actions in the near future in the form of images of battles assuring the triumph of their cause. These images are "myths." The images of the early Christians on the coming of Christ and on the ruin of the pagan world are an illustration of a "social myth." The period of the Reformation saw the rise of "social myths," because the conditions were such as to make it necessary for the "men of heart" who were inspired by "the will of deliverance" to create "images" which satisfying their "sentiments of struggle" kept up their zeal and their devotion. The "social myth" presupposes a social group which harbors an intense desire of deliverance, which feels all the difficulties in its way and which finds deep satisfaction in picturing to itself its future struggles and future triumph. Such images must not and cannot be analyzed like a thing; they must be taken _en bloc_, and it is particularly necessary to avoid comparing the real historic facts with the representations which were in circulation before the facts took place. "Myths" are indispensable for a revolutionary movement; they concentrate the force of the rising class and intensify it to the point of action. No myth can possibly be free from utopian conceptions. But the utopian elements are not essential. The essentials are the hope back of the myth, the ideal strengthened by the myth, and the impatience of deliverance embodied in the myth. The general strike is the "social myth" of the working-class longing for emancipation. It is the expression of the convictions of the working-class "in the language of movement," the supreme concentration of the desires, the hopes, and the ideals of the working-class. Its importance for the future of Socialism, therefore, is paramount. The idea of the general strike keeps alive and fortifies in the workingmen their class-consciousness and revolutionary feelings. Every strike on account of it assumes the character of a skirmish before the great decisive battle which is to come. Owing to the general strike idea, "socialism remains ever young, the attempts made to realize social peace seem childish, the desertion of comrades who run over into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, far from discouraging the masses, excites them still more to revolt; in a word, the rupture (between bourgeoisie and working-class) is never in danger of disappearing."[164] [164] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, p. 179. This rupture is an indispensable condition of Socialism. Socialism cannot be the continuation of democracy; it must be, if it can be at all, a totally "new culture" built upon ideas and institutions totally different from the ideas and from the institutions of democracy. Socialism must have its own economic, judicial, political and moral institutions evolved by the working-class independently from those of the bourgeoisie, and not in imitation of the latter. Sorel is bitter in his criticism of democracy; it is, in his view, the régime _par excellence_ in which men are governed "by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation."[165] It is the kingdom of the professionals of politics, over whom the people can have no control. Sorel thinks that even the spread of knowledge does not render the masses more capable of choosing and of supervising their so-called representatives and that the further society advances in the path of democracy, the less effective does control by the people become.[166] The whole system of democracy, in the opinion of M. Sorel, is based on the "fiction of the general will" and is maintained by a mechanism (campaigning, elections, etc.) which can result only in demoralization. It delivers the country into the hands of "charlatans," of office-seekers and of idle talkers who may assume the air of great men, but who are never fit for their task. [165] G. Sorel, _Illusions du Progrès_ (Paris, 1911), p. 10. [166] G. Sorel, _Illusions du Progrès_, p. 59. The working-class must, therefore, break entirely with democracy and evolve from within itself its own ideas and original institutions. This complete rupture between the ideas of the past and those of the future contradicts the conception of progress now in vogue. But the conception of progress is rather a deception than a conception. As held to-day, it is full of illusions, of errors, and of misconceptions. The idea of progress is characteristic of democracy and is cherished by the bourgeois classes because it permits them to enjoy their privileges in peace. Lulled by the optimistic illusion that everything is for the best in this best of all worlds, the privileged classes can peacefully and hopefully pass by the misery and the disorders of existing society. This conception of progress, like all other ideas of democracy, was evolved by the rising middle classes of the eighteenth century, mainly by the functionaries of royalty who furnished the theoretical guides of the Revolution. But, in truth, the only real progress is the development of industrial technique[167]--the constant invention of machinery and the increase of productive forces. The latter create the material conditions out of which a new culture arises, completely breaking with the culture of the past. [167] _Ibid._, p. 276. One of the factors promoting the development of productive forces is "proletarian violence." This violence is not to be thought of after the model of the "Reign of Terror" which was the creation of the bourgeoisie. "Proletarian violence" does not mean that there should be a "great development of brutality" or that "blood should be shed in torrents" (_versé à flots_).[168] It means that the workingmen in their struggle must manifest their force so as to intimidate the employers; it means that "the social conflicts must assume the character of pure struggles similar to those of armies in a campaign."[169] Such violence will show the capitalist class that all their efforts to establish social peace are useless; the capitalists will then turn to their economic interests exclusively; the type of a forceful, energetic "captain of industry" will be the result, and all the possibilities of capitalism will be developed. [168] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, pp. 256-7. [169] _Ibid._, p. 150. On the other hand, violence stimulates ever anew the class-feelings of the workingmen and their sentiments of the sublime mission which history has imposed upon them. It is necessary that the revolutionary syndicalists should feel that they are fulfiling the great and sublime mission of renovating the world; this is their only compensation for all their struggles and sufferings. The feelings of sublimity and enthusiasm have disappeared from the bourgeois-world, and their absence has contributed to the decadence of the bourgeoisie. The working-class is again introducing these feelings by incorporating them in the idea of the general strike, and is, therefore, making possible a moral rejuvenation of the world. All these ideas may seem tinged with pessimism. But "nothing very great (_très haut_) has been accomplished in this world" without pessimism.[170] Pessimism is a "metaphysics of morals" rather than a theory of the world; it is a conception of "a march towards deliverance" and presupposes an experimental knowledge of the obstacles in the way of our imaginings or in other words "a sentiment of social determinism" and a feeling of our human weakness.[171] The pessimist "regards social conditions as forming a system enchained by an iron law, the necessity of which must be submitted to as it is given _en bloc_, and which can disappear only after a catastrophe involving the whole."[172] This catastrophic character the general strike has and must have, if it is to retain its profound significance. [170] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, p. 8. [171] _Ibid._, p. 12. [172] _Ibid._, p. 13. The catastrophic character of the general strike enhances its moral value. The workingmen are stimulated by it to prepare themselves for the final combat by a moral effort over themselves. But only in such unique moments of life when "we make an effort to create a new man within ourselves" "do we take possession of ourselves" and become free in the Bergsonian sense of the term. The general strike, therefore, raises socialism to the rôle of the greatest moral factor of our time. Thus, M. Sorel having started out with Marx winds up with Bergson. The attempt to connect his views with the philosophy of Bergson has been made by M. Sorel in all his later works. But all along M. Sorel claims to be "true to the spirit of Marx" and tries to prove this by various quotations from the works of Marx. It is doubtful, however, whether there is an affinity between the "spirit" of Marx and that of Professor Bergson. It appears rather that M. Sorel has tacitly assumed this affinity because he interprets the "spirit" of Marx in a peculiar and arbitrary way. Without any pretense of doing full justice to the subject, three essential points may be indicated which perhaps sufficiently prove that "neo-Marxism" has drifted so far away from Marx as to lose touch with his "spirit." These three points bear upon the very kernel of Marxism: its conception of determinism, its intellectualism, and its emphasis on the technical factors of social evolution. The Marxian conception of social determinism is well known. The social process was thought of by Marx as rigidly "necessary," as an organic, almost as a mechanical process. The impression of social necessity one gets in reading Marx is so strong as to convey the feeling of being carried on by an irresistible process to a definite social end. In M. Sorel's works, on the contrary, social determinism is a word merely, the concept back of it is not assimilated. M. Sorel speaks of the general strike and of Socialism as of possibilities or probabilities, not of necessities. In reading him, one feels that M. Sorel himself never felt the irresistible character of the logical category of necessity. The difference in the second point follows from the difference in the first. Marx never doubted the possibility of revealing the secret of the social process. Trained in the "panlogistic school," Marx always tacitly assumed that socialism could be scientific, that the procedure of science could prove the necessity of social evolution going in one direction and not in any other. It was the glory of having given this proof which he claimed for himself and which has been claimed for him by his disciples. M. Sorel is expressly not "true to the spirit" of Marx in this point. "Science has no way of foreseeing,"[173] says he. His works are full of diatribes against the pretention of science to explain everything. He attributes a large rôle to the unclear, to the subconscious and to the mystical in all social phenomena. A sentence like the following may serve to illustrate this point. Says M. Sorel: [173] G. Sorel, _L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats_, p. 54. Socialism is necessarily a very obscure thing, because it treats of production--that is, of what is most mysterious in human activity--and because it proposes to realize a radical transformation in this region which it is impossible to describe with the clearness which is found in the superficial regions of the world. No effort of thought, no progress of knowledge, no reasonable induction will ever be able to dispel the mystery which envelops Socialism.[174] [174] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, pp. 201-2. This, according to Sorel, is just what "Marxism has recognized": M. Sorel, certainly, "knows his Marx." In the third point, M. Sorel "the revolutionary revisionist," comes very close to M. Bernstein, "the evolutionary revisionist." The coming of Socialism is made independent of those technical and economic processes which Marx so much emphasized. The conceptions of the concentration of capital, of proletarization, etc., are given up. On the contrary, Socialism is to be prepared by the "revolutionary apprenticeship" of the working-class, an apprenticeship to be made in action and under the influence of a "social myth" created by imagination spurred on by the subconscious will. There certainly are pronounced voluntaristic elements in Marx, but this whole conception of M. Sorel seems to attribute to Marx a "spirit" by no means in harmony with his make-up. Though claiming to be a disciple of Marx, M. Sorel seems to be more in harmony with Proudhon whose works he often quotes and whose views, particularly on morals, he accepts. But besides Proudhon many other writers have had a considerable influence on M. Sorel. Besides Bergson, already mentioned, Renan and Nietzsche, to quote but two, have had their share of influence in many of the ideas expressed by M. Sorel. M. Sorel has an essentially mobile mind quick to catch an idea and to give it a somewhat new and original turn. He lacks the ability of systematizing his views and his reader must have considerable patience with him. The systematic way in which his views have been given in this chapter is rather misleading; M. Sorel himself proceeds in a quite different way; he deals with an idea for a while but is led away into digression after digression, to pick up the thread of his previous argument tens of pages later. Lack of system makes it easier for contradictions to live together without detection. It also predisposes a writer to assimilate and to transform any ideas he may meet. With Sorel this is evidently so, though his main claim is "profundity." The pages of his work bristle with the word _approfondir_ which is so often repeated that it makes the poor reader dizzy. The disappointment is sharp, because M. Sorel soon loses the thread of his thought before having had time to fathom his subject. His works, however, savor of freshness of thought and of originality. Quite a different writer is M. Lagardelle. His exposition is regular, systematic, fluent, and clear. While Sorel is mainly interested in the philosophical aspect of his problems and has been called, probably sarcastically, by M. Jaurès "the metaphysician of revolutionary syndicalism," M. Lagardelle considers the economic and political aspects of the new doctrine. His works need not be dwelt upon because his ideas do not differ essentially from those of M. Sorel. Two points, however, may be singled out; M. Lagardelle, though criticizing democracy, is careful to point out that Socialism has been made possible by democracy and that no return to ancient political forms is desired; secondly, he allows a place for the political [socialist] party in the general social system; its rôle is to attend to those problems which are not entirely included within the domain of industrial activities.[175] [175] H. Lagardelle, _Le Socialisme Ouvrier_ (Paris, 1911). While the "Mouvement Socialiste" devoted its attention mainly to the philosophical and sociological aspects of syndicalism, the weekly _La Guerre Sociale_ took up questions of policy and method, particularly the questions of anti-militarism and anti-patriotism. Gustave Hervé, the editor of the paper, attracted widespread attention by his attacks on the army and on the idea of patriotism, and became the _enfant terrible_ of the French socialist movement because of his violent utterances on these questions. On other questions of method, M. Hervé was no less violent being a disciple of the Blanquists who believed in the efficacy of all revolutionary methods including the general strike. However, the theoretical contributions of M. Hervé to the philosophy of the movement are slight. Now, what are the relations of the two groups of writers described in this chapter and what part has each played in the history of the movement? These questions must be carefully considered if a correct understanding of revolutionary syndicalism is desired. The view which prevailed outside of France is that M. Sorel and his disciples "created" the theory of revolutionary socialism in opposition to the parliamentary socialists, and that they have been able to impress their ideas upon a larger or smaller portion of the organized French workingmen. This view was first presented by Professor W. Sombart in his well-known work on _Socialism and the Social Movement_, and has made its way into other writings on revolutionary syndicalism. M. Sorel is often spoken of as the "leader" of the revolutionary syndicalists, and the whole movement is regarded as a form of Marxian revisionism. This view, however, is a "myth" and should be discarded. French writers who have studied the social movement of their country and who are competent judges have tried to dispel the error that has gotten abroad.[176] The theorists of the _Mouvement Socialiste_ themselves have repeatedly declined the "honor" which error has conferred upon them. M. Lagardelle has reiterated time and again that revolutionary syndicalism was born of the experience of the labor movement and worked out by the workingmen themselves. M. Sorel has said that he learned more from the syndicalist workingmen than they could learn from him. And in an article reviewing the book of Professor Sombart, M. Berth has insisted that Professor Sombart was in error. "If we had any part," wrote he, "it was the simple part of interpreters, of translators, of glossers; we have served as spokesmen, that's all; but it is necessary to avoid reducing to a few propositions of a school, a movement which is so essentially working-class and the leading ideas of which, such as direct action and the general strike, are so specifically of a working-class character."[177] [176] See articles of Lagardelle, G. Weil and Cornelissen in the _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_, 1907-1910. [177] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (May, 1908), p. 390. This must not be taken as over-modesty on the part of "intellectuals" who are careful not to pose as leaders or as inspirers. The facts are there to prove the statements of M. Lagardelle and of M. Sorel. The idea of the general strike was elaborated by workingmen-members of the various committees on the general strike. The idea of "direct action," as has been shown, found its defenders in the first Congresses of the General Confederation of Labor. The theory of the social rôle of the syndicat was formulated by Pelloutier and by other members of the "Federation of Bourses" before M. Sorel wrote his little book on _The Socialist Future of the Syndicats_. Even the statement of M. Berth must be somewhat modified. The theorists of the _Mouvement Socialiste_ have never by any means been the authorized "spokesmen" of the revolutionary syndicalists of the General Confederation. They were no more than a group of writers who, watching the syndicalist movement from the outside, were stimulated by it to their reflections and ideas. They thought they found in the syndicalist movement "a truly original force capable of refreshing the socialist conception", and they formulated their ideas on the subject. They never took any part in the movement, and could not feel themselves its representatives. What then was their influence? In general, the same as that of other socialist writers. They were and are read by the French workingmen just as Kropotkin, Jaurès, Proudhon and other contemporary or former socialist and anarchist writers, and as many non-socialist writers are. Naturally, some workingmen came more under their influence, than under that of others; and such workingmen may be disposed to look upon them as their theoretical guides and leaders. But even the latter interpretation is by no means applicable to all the theories of M. Sorel, for the main ideas of Sorel seem fundamentally incapable of inspiring a movement of large masses. The theory of the "social myth" may be original and attractive, but if accepted by the workingmen could not inspire them to action. If "images of battles" are important for the "rising classes" as an impelling force, they can be so only so long as they are naïvely and fully believed in. The worm of reflection must not touch them. The "men longing for deliverance" must believe that the future will be just as they picture it, otherwise their enthusiasm for these pictures would find no nourishment. Should they come to realize the "utopian" and "mythical" character of their constructions they would abandon them. The pessimistic basis of M. Sorel's _Weltanschauung_ may appeal to literary men, to students of philosophy and to individuals longing for a moral theory. It can not be assimilated by a mass "moving toward emancipation." When one reads the original documents of the syndicalist movement, he is struck, on the contrary, by the powerful torrent of optimism by which the movement is carried along. Only a strong belief in a "speedy emancipation" created the enthusiasm for the idea of the general strike. There may be a subconscious pessimism back of this optimism, but its appearance in the field of clear consciousness would have been destructive for the movement. It is, therefore, quite natural that the writers representing the General Confederation of Labor who address the workingmen directly do not reproduce these theories of M. Sorel. As has been indicated already, their writings bear a different stamp. And if among these writers some, as for instance M. Griffuelhes, seem to have come more under the influence of the group _Le Mouvement Socialiste_, the rest occupy an independent position even from the theoretical point of view. How little M. Sorel could have been the "leader" of the revolutionary syndicalist movement may be illustrated by the following comparison. At the Congress of Lyons in 1901 the secretary of the General Confederation of Labor, M. Guérard, wrote, as we have seen, that the Confederation is destined to transform society. In the same year, M. Sorel, in his preface to Pelloutier's _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_, wrote: "The Confederation of Labor appears to me to be destined to become an officious Council of Labor, and an academy of proletarian ideas, which will present its wishes to the government, as the large agricultural societies do." The history of the General Confederation of Labor since 1902, to be considered in the following chapter, will show that M. Sorel missed the point too far to be able to claim the title of "leader" whose function, presumably, is to point out the way and not to acknowledge it, after it has once been taken. It is necessary to bear all this in mind in order to grasp the real character of revolutionary syndicalism. M. Sorel has recently renounced his revolutionary syndicalist ideas. In December, 1910, he wrote to the Italian revolutionary syndicalists who invited him to their Congress at Boulogne: It seems to the author [of the _Reflections on Violence_] that syndicalism has not realized what was expected from it. Many hope that the future will correct the evils of the present hour; but the author feels himself too old to live in distant hopes; and he has decided to employ the remaining years of his life in the deepening (_approfondir_) of other questions which keenly interest the cultivated youth of France.[178] [178] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (March, 1911), pp. 184-5. Previous to that, M. Sorel and M. Berth had both promised collaboration in a so-called neo-monarchist monthly, _La Cité Française_, which, however, did not see the light. This probably seemed to them natural in view of their opposition to democracy. But under the political conditions of France such an act could not but shock the workingmen who may criticise democracy but who are bitterly opposed to everything connected with the _ancien régime_. This act of M. Sorel and M. Berth weakened the group of _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ which, however, is still published by M. Lagardelle, though with less force and _éclat_ than before. The act of M. Sorel, however, could have no perceptible significance for the revolutionary syndicalist movement. The latter is led by other leaders and is determined in its march by other influences. The revolutionary syndicalist ideas embodied in the movement represented by the General Confederation of Labor were evolved, as has been shown, in the syndicalist organizations of France. The Anarchists entering the syndicats largely contributed to the revolutionary turn which the syndicats took. Their influence, hailed by some, deplored by others, is recognized by all. The Anarchists themselves often speak as if they "created" the entire movement, though this is an exaggeration. The rôle of the Allemanists has been considerable, as was shown in the preceding chapters. And the more definite formulation of revolutionary syndicalist ideas in the period of "Millerandism" was the work of revolutionary socialist workingmen of all brands--Allemanists, Anarchists, Blanquists and others. This clears up the question of the relation of revolutionary syndicalism to other social theories. The theorists of the _Mouvement Socialiste_ have proclaimed revolutionary syndicalism as a new social theory. They have been very persistent in trying to delimit their theoretical dominion from parliamentary socialism on the one hand, and from Anarchism on the other. From the latter particularly they wished to be separated, feeling as they did how dangerously close they came to it. Many workingmen have accepted this view, proud to proclaim that they have evolved a theory of their own--the theory of the working-class. Others, however, have taken the correct point of view. They see that the main ideas of revolutionary syndicalism cannot be said to be new. They may all be found in the old "International Association of Workingmen," and especially in the writings of the Bakounist or federalist wing of that Association. If not the terms, the ideas on direct action, on the general strike, on the social rôle of the syndicat, and on the future "economic federalism" may all be found there more or less clearly stated.[179] [179] J. Guillaume, _L'Internationale_, vols. i-iii; also Report of 7th Congress of "International" in Brussels in 1874. Revolutionary syndicalism appears then, from this point of view not as a new theory, but as a return to the old theories of the "International" in which the combined influence of Proudhon, Marx and Bakounin manifested itself. The formulation of revolutionary syndicalism, however, is not to any great degree a conscious return to old ideas, though this conscious factor had its part; Pelloutier, for instance, was expressly guided by the conceptions of Proudhon and Bakounin. References to the "International" are also frequent in the discussions of the Congresses of the General Confederation. The more important factors, however, were the conditions of the French syndical movement itself. The workingmen of different socialist groups meeting on the common ground of the syndicat had to attenuate their differences and to emphasize their common points. Thus, by a process of elimination and of mutual influence a common stock of ideas was elaborated which, absorbing the quintessence of all socialist theories, became what is known as revolutionary syndicalism. Its similarity to the ideas of the "International" is partly due to the fact that in the "International" similar conditions existed. Mainly worked out in the practice of the syndicalist movement, the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism are also mainly determined in their further evolution by this practice. The ideas, therefore, must be judged in connection with the conditions in which they developed. These conditions will be further described in the following chapters. CHAPTER VII THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR SINCE 1902 Before taking up the history of the Confederation after 1902, a general outline of the constitution adopted at Montpellier must be given. Passim will be indicated the changes that have been made since. The General Confederation of Labor consists of National Federations of industries and trades,[180] of National Syndicats, of isolated single syndicats (in that case only if there is no national or regional federation of the trade, or if the federation does not adhere to the Confederation), and of _Bourses du Travail_, considered as local, departmental or regional central unions.[181] [180] In 1906 the statutes were so modified as to admit no new trade federations. This was a decided step in the direction of the industrial form of organization. [181] At the last congress of the Confederation which was held in Havre in September, 1912, a resolution was passed that the Bourses du Travail in each Department of France should form Departmental Unions (Unions Departmentales), and that on January 1, 1914, these Departmental Unions should take the place of the Bourses du Travail in the organization of the Confederation. The resolution has not yet been fully carried into effect, and the process of reorganization is still going on. When it is completed, the General Confederation of Labor will emerge with a more compact and centralized form of organization embracing Federations of industry, on the one hand, and Departmental Unions, on the other. The single Bourses will not disappear, and their functions will not be curtailed; but they will henceforth form the constituent elements of the more comprehensive Departmental Unions and will have no individual representation in the Confederal Committee. The reorganization was made necessary by the rapid growth of Bourses du Travail, the number of which far outstripped the number of Federations of industry and which thus controlled the policies of the Confederal Committee. The number of the Departmental Unions can not exceed eighty-seven (87), as there are but eighty-seven political subdivisions in France called Departments. Every syndicat adhering to the Confederation must fulfil the condition of so-called "double adherence;" that is, it must belong to its national federation of industry or trade, and to the _Bourse du Travail_ of its locality. Besides, every federation must have at least one subscription to the _Voix du Peuple_, which is the official organ of the Confederation. These conditions, however, were, and still are disregarded by a considerable number of syndicats.[182] [182] E. Pouget, _Le Confédération Générale du Travail_ (Paris, 1908), p. 16. The General Confederation is represented by the Confederal Committee which is formed by delegates of the adhering organizations. Each organization is represented by one delegate in the Confederal Committee. This point should be noticed as it is the cause of struggle within the Confederation. It means that a large Federation has only one delegate and one vote in the Confederal Committee, just as another smaller Federation. The number of delegates in the Confederal Committee, however, is not always equal to the number of adhering organizations, because one delegate may represent as many as three organizations. The delegates must be workingmen who have been members of their syndicat for at least a year. The General Confederation has five central organs; two sections and three commissions. The first section is called: "The Section of Federations of trades and of industries and of isolated syndicats;" the second is "The Section of the Federation of _Bourses du Travail_."[183] The three commissions are (1) the Commission of the journal; (2) the Commission of strikes and of the general strike, and (3) the Commission of Control. [183] From Jan. 1, 1914, called the "Section of the Federation of Departmental Unions." The two sections are autonomous in their internal affairs. The first section is formed by the delegates of the National Federations of trades and industries. They take the name of _Comité des Fédérations d'industries et de metiers_. This section appoints it own secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, assistant treasurer, and archivist, who form the executive committee of the section. This section collects monthly from every adhering organization 40 centimes[184] for every hundred members, or for any fraction of a hundred; isolated syndicats pay five centimes monthly for each member. [184] Increased in 1909 to 60 centimes. For further increase see page 195. The Sections of Federations of industries and trades is convened by its secretary and meets whenever necessary. Its functions are to promote the organization of new federations and to maintain relations between the adhering federations. It takes "all measures necessary for the maintenance of syndical action in the field of economic struggle." It also tries to induce isolated syndicats to join their _Bourses du Travail_. The "Section of the Federation of _Bourses du Travail_" is formed by the delegates of the local, departmental and regional central unions. The delegates take the title of _Comité des Bourses du Travail_.[185] The section appoints its own secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, assistant treasurer, and archivist, and these five members form the executive committee of the second section. It collects from the _Bourses du Travail_ 35 centimes monthly for each adhering syndicat.[186] [185] When the reorganization is completed, this section will consist of one delegate from each Departmental Union, who will form the _Comité des Unions Departmentales_. See note 181 on page 162. [186] Changed in 1909 to five centimes for each member per year. The second section promotes the creation of new _Bourses du Travail_ and coördinates the activities of the adhering Bourses. Its functions embrace "everything that bears upon syndical administration and upon the moral education of the workingmen;" its task is to collect statistics of production, of consumption, of unemployment; to organize gratuitous employment bureaus, to watch the progress of labor legislation, etc. It also tries to induce single syndicats to join their national federations. This section also meets whenever necessary at the invitation of its secretary. The Commission of the Journal is composed of twelve members, six from each section. It appoints its own secretary. The journal must be edited only by workingmen-members of the Confederation. The Commission of strikes and of the general strike consists also of twelve members, six from each section, and appoints its own secretary. The functions of this commission are: to study the strike movement in all countries, to send speakers and organizers to, and to collect subscriptions in favor of workingmen on strike, to make propaganda for the general strike, and to promote "the penetration of this idea into the minds of organized workingmen." For this purpose the commission creates wherever possible sub-committees of the general strike. This commission has its own resources which consist of 50 per cent of all money collected by the sub-committees, and of 50 per cent of the assessments collected by both sections of the Confederation. The Commission of Control is also formed of twelve members, six from each section; it verifies the financial reports of both sections and of the other two commissions. It appoints its own secretary. The Confederal Committee is formed by the delegates of both sections. It meets every three months, except in extraordinary cases. It executes the decisions of the Congresses, intervenes in all issues concerning the working-class and decides upon all questions of a general character. The Confederal Bureau[187] consists of thirteen members, of the ten members of the bureaus of both sections and of the three secretaries of the three commissions. The Confederal Bureau summons the Confederal Committee and executes the decisions of the latter. The secretary of the "Section of Federations" is the general secretary of the Confederation. The Confederal Bureau is renewed after every Congress, that is every two years, but functionaries whose terms have expired may be re-elected. [187] Executive Committee. Article 37 of the statutes adopted read: "The General Confederation of Labor, based on the principles of federalism and of liberty, assures and respects the complete autonomy of the organizations which conform to the present statutes." The _Bourses du Travail_ and the Federations of industries and of trades were, therefore, to pursue independently the activities that concerned them alone. The _Bourses du Travail_ continued in the main the activities described in the third chapter. Their growth was steady both in number of organizations and in membership, as may be seen from the following table: -----+-------------------+--------------------- | Number of Bourses | Number of Syndicats | belonging to the | in Bourses of | Confederation | Confederation. | of Labor. | -----+-------------------+--------------------- 1902 | 83 | 1,112 1904 | 110 | 1,349 1906 | 135 | 1,609 1908 | 157 | 2,028 1910 | 154 | 1,826 1912 | 153 | -----+-------------------+--------------------- After 1906 Bourses of the same region or Department began to form regional and Departmental Unions in order to coördinate their activities and to influence larger groups of the working population. This has led to the process described above, which is transforming the basis of representation in the General Confederation of Labor. In matters of administration the _Bourses du Travail_ have made a step in advance since the early part of the century. They have succeeded in organizing the _viaticum_ (aid to workingman traveling from town to town in search of work) on a national basis, and have amplified their services as employment bureaus. They are now systematizing their statistical work by making monthly and quarterly reports on the state of employment in their locality, on strikes, on the growth of organization, and on other industrial matters of interest. Their financial situation has been considerably improved, and in a number of cities they have left the municipal buildings and have built their own "people's houses" (_maisons du peuple_). Regard for matters of administration has not diminished the zeal of the Bourses for anti-militaristic propaganda. Most of them have organized in recent years the so-called _Sou du Soldat_ (Soldier's Penny). They send financial aid to workingmen who are doing military service, invite them to the social gatherings of the syndicats, distribute syndicalist literature among them, and in all ways try to maintain in the soldiers a feeling of solidarity with the organized workers. The Federations of industries and trades after 1902 concentrated their attention upon their particular trade and industrial interests. The story of these Federations is the story of organization, education, and strikes which can not be told here in detail. While the Bourses and industrial federations attended to the particular, local and administrative interests of their respective organizations, the General Confederation of labor intervened or took the initiative in questions that interested all or a considerable part of all workingmen. The new statutes went into force on January 1, 1903. The elections secured the predominance of the revolutionary syndicalists in the Confederal Committee; Griffuelhes was elected secretary of the Confederation; Pouget, assistant; Yvetot, secretary of the Section of Bourses. In October of the same year the Confederal Committee was summoned to an extraordinary meeting to consider the question of the suppression of employment bureaus. This question had agitated a considerable part of the working-class for many years. The workingmen had protested time and again against the methods and procedure of these bureaus, and their protests had been found to be well founded by all who investigated the matter.[188] The methods of the employment bureaus had been condemned in Parliament, and the Chamber had passed a bill to suppress the employment bureaus with indemnity in 1901-2. The Senate, however, rejected it in February, 1902, and the question was dropped indefinitely. [188] Senator Paul Straus in _La Grande Revue_ (Feb., 1914), pp. 320 _et seq._ The workingmen of the food-producing industries (_alimentation_) were particularly interested in the suppression of the employment bureaus. In October, 1903, exasperated by the fact that twenty-five years of lobbying and of petitioning had produced no results, they decided to take the matter into their own hands. October 29th, a "veritable riot" took place in the _Bourse du Travail_ of Paris, the police used their arms, and many were wounded on both sides.[189] [189] _Journal des Débats_ (Nov. 6, 1903), p. 865. The Confederal Committee decided to lend its help to the workingmen in the struggle. It appointed a special committee to direct the movement. The plan adopted was to carry on a wide agitation for some time and then to arrange protest-meetings on the same day in all industrial centers of France. December 5, 1903, hundreds of meetings were held all over France, at which the same demand was made that the employment offices be abolished. The meetings were arranged with the help of the _Bourses du Travail_ which appear in all such cases as the centers of agitation. November 5, 1903, the Chamber, by 495 votes against 14, voted a law suppressing the Employment Bureaus within a period of five years, with an indemnity of six million francs. In February, 1904, the law passed the Senate with some modifications. The agitation for the suppression of the employment bureaus appeared to all as a manifestation of the new theories on "Direct Action." "The socialist syndicats have wrested the vote of the Chamber by the pressure of rebellion (_Coup d'émeutes_)" wrote the _Journal des Économistes_.[190] The revolutionary syndicalists themselves considered the agitation as an illustration of their methods, and the success obtained as a proof of the efficiency of the latter. The report to the Congress of Bourges (1904) read: [190] _Journal des Économistes_ (November, 1903), p. 315. Under the pressure of the workingmen the Government, till then refractory to the reform, capitulated.... To-day it is an accomplished fact; wherever syndicalist action was exercised with perseverance and energy, the employment bureaus have gone. This fact is characteristic. The General Confederation has the merit, thanks to the immense effort of the interested themselves, of having obtained a reform in a relatively short time, if it is compared with the slowness with which everything concerning the workingmen is done.[191] [191] _XIV Congrès National Corporatif_ (Bourges, 1904), p. 8. The policy of the General Confederation, however, had opponents within the Confederation itself. A struggle for supremacy between the two tendencies was inevitable, and it took place at the very next Congress of the Confederation at Bourges (1904). The report presented to the Congress of Bourges showed that the Confederation had made considerable progress since 1902. It counted now 53 Federations of industries and trades, and National syndicats (against 30 in 1902), 15 isolated syndicats, and 110 _Bourses du Travail_, a total of 1,792 syndicats (against 1,043 in 1902), with 150,000 members. The Section of Federations of industries had received in dues for the two years, 11,076 francs; its total budget amounted to 17,882 francs; the Section of _Bourses du Travail_ had collected in dues 9,016 francs and had a total budget of 12,213 francs. The _Voix du Peuple_ was now self-supporting, and had increased the number of its subscriptions. The Congress of Bourges, for the first time, was organized on the financial resources of the syndicats without municipal or governmental subsidies. It was known before that the Congress of Bourges would discuss the question of methods, and both sides, the revolutionary syndicalists and those who were called "reformists," made all efforts possible to obtain a majority at the Congress. There were 1,178 mandates from as many syndicats. This was the system of representation adopted by the Statutes of the Confederation in 1902. At its Congress the Confederation resolves itself into an association of syndicats; the Federations and Bourses disappear and their constituent elements, the syndicats, take their place. Each syndicat--no matter how large or how small--has one vote; and one delegate may represent as many as ten syndicats. At the Congress of Bourges the 1,178 mandates were distributed among 400 delegates, of whom 350 came from the Provinces and 50 from Paris. The attack on the Confederal Committee was led by M. Keufer, the delegate and secretary of the Typographical Union (_La Fédération du Livre_). He accused the Confederal Committee of violating the statutes, of being partial and biased and of trying in every way to harm the _Fédération du Livre_, because the latter pursued "reformist" methods. "Yes," said M. Keufer, "we prefer the reformist method, because we believe that direct and violent action, commended by the anarchists, will cost thousands of workingmen their lives, without assuring durable results."[192] He insisted that it was necessary to try conciliatory methods before declaring strikes and to solicit the help of representatives in the legislative bodies. He showed that, on the one hand, even the revolutionary syndicalists were compelled by circumstances to use such methods, while the _Fédération du Livre_, on the other hand, did not shrink from strikes and from direct action, when that was inevitable. M. Keufer was supported by M. Lauche, the delegate of the machinists, and by M. Guérard, the delegate of the railway workers. [192] _XIV Congrès Corporatif_ (Bourges, 1904), pp. 95-6. The accusations of the "reformists" were repudiated by a number of revolutionary syndicalists who reaffirmed in their speeches adherence to the ideas, described in the preceding chapters, on the State, on direct action, etc. They were the victors, and the report of the Confederal Committee was approved by 812 votes against 361 and 11 blank. The main struggle, however, centered on the question of proportional representation. This question had been brought up at previous Congresses by the delegates of some larger syndicats. At one time even some of the revolutionary syndicalists had advocated proportional representation as a means of finding out the real strength of the various tendencies in the Confederation. But after the Confederation became decidedly revolutionary, the revolutionary syndicalists became decidedly opposed to proportional representation which they now regarded as a move on the part of the "reformist" element to obtain control of the Confederation.[193] [193] _Mouvement Socialiste_ (Nov., 1904), p. 61. Proportional representation was defended by the delegates of the Typographical Union, of the Machinists and of the Railway Workers. They criticised the statutes adopted at Montpellier which gave every organization, regardless of its numbers, one vote only in the Confederal Committee. This system, they declared, vitiated the character of the Confederation, and gave predominance to the minority. They claimed that the delegates in the Confederal Committee expressed the opinions shared by a small proportion only of the organized workingmen and that the Confederation was, therefore, a tool in the hands of a few "turbulent" individuals. They demanded that some system of proportional representation should be adopted which should give every organization a number of votes in the Confederal Committee proportional to the number of its members. The opponents of proportional representation argued that this system would stifle the small syndicats; that all syndicats were of equal value from the point of view of the economic struggle, because small syndicats often achieve as much, and even more, than large ones; they pointed out that proportional representation would make necessary continual changes in the number of delegates in the Confederal Committee, because the effective force of the syndicats is in constant flux and that it would be impossible to find out the true figures. They claimed that proportional representation could not be applied to economic life, because it was no fault of any one trade or industry if only a few thousand workers were employed in it, while other industries required hundreds of thousands of workingmen. Even from the point of view of strength, they argued, a small syndicat may have more value than a large one because it may embrace a larger proportion of workingmen employed in the trade. The opponents of proportional representation repudiated the assertion that only the small syndicats were with them and pointed out that some of the largest federations, as the Metallurgical Federation with 11,500 members, the Federation of Marine with 12,000 members and others, were against proportional representation. The opponents of proportional representation carried the day and the proposition of "reformist" delegates was rejected by a vote of 822 against 388 (one abstained). The Congress of Bourges thus sanctioned the revolutionary character of the Confederation. The "reformists" frankly admitted that they had suffered a defeat and attributed it to the fact that two-thirds of the delegates were new men in the movement and under the influence of the anarchists.[194] The revolutionary syndicalists triumphed, and extolled the historical significance of the Congress of Bourges which, in their opinion, was a "landmark" in the history of syndicalism. [194] A. Keufer, _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (Nov., 1904), p. 93. The Congress of Bourges adopted a resolution which was to concentrate the attention of the Confederation for the next two years on one question: an eight-hour working day. The Committee appointed by the Congress to consider the question reported that two ways of obtaining an eight-hour day had been indicated. One proposed to prepare a bill to be presented to the public authorities and to organize public meetings in order to show the government that public opinion demanded the passage of the law. This method was rejected by the Committee because ever since 1889, workingmen had presented such petitions to the public authorities on the first of May, but without any results whatsoever. On the contrary, the other "direct" method which recommended the workingmen to "hold aloof" from the public authorities, and to exert all possible pressure "on their adversaries" was adopted by the Committee. The Committee argued that the experience with the employment agencies had shown that this method gave better results. The report of the Committee read: If the recent campaign has resulted in the suppression of the employment bureaus, it is because the movement was becoming dangerous. Every day employment bureaus were abolished, anonymous violence was committed against the owners of the offices (_placeurs_), a considerable number of shops were damaged, numerous collisions took place between the police and the workingmen, Paris was in a state of siege, and it was in order to calm this agitation that Parliament voted a law making it permissive for the municipalities to abolish the employment bureaus.[195] [195] _XIV Congrès Corporatif_ (Bourges, 1904), pp. 205-6. The Committee, therefore, recommended that the same method be used to obtain an eight-hour day, that big manifestations be organized all over France on the 1st of May, 1905, and that afterwards an active propaganda be carried on by a special commission appointed for that purpose by the Confederal Committee "in order that beginning with the 1st of May, 1906, no workingman should consent to work more than eight hours a day nor for a wage below the minimum established by the interested organizations."[196] The recommendation of the Committee was adopted by the Congress with an amendment of Pouget which still more emphasized the "direct" method to be used. [196] _Ibid._, p. 207. To carry out the decisions of the Congress, the Confederal Committee appointed a special commission to direct the movement for an eight-hour day. The Commission sent out a questionnaire to all syndical organizations, asking all those who were in favor of the movement to lend their help. A number of manifestoes, posters and pamphlets were published and spread abroad in tens of thousands of copies in which the meaning of the movement and its importance were explained. In the trade-journals, in the cars, in the streets, and wherever possible, brief mottoes were posted, such as: "Eight hours of work means more rest and more health," "To work more than eight hours means to lower your wages," etc. On the _Bourse du Travail_ of Paris a big placard was put up with the words: "From the first of May, 1906, we shall not work more than eight hours." Delegates were sent out on repeated tours into the province to carry on the propaganda and agitation. On the first of May, 1905, over 150 meetings were arranged in different parts of France at which the question of the eight-hour day was considered. As May 1, 1906, neared, the agitation in the country became more and more intense. A number of events helped to increase the agitation. In March, 1906, a catastrophe occurred in the mining districts of Northern France which resulted in the loss of workingmen's lives. A strike accompanied by violence followed. In April, the letter carriers of Paris struck, causing some disorganization in the service for a few days. Toward the end of April the number of strikes and manifestations increased in Paris. The agitation was exploited by the enemies of the government and particularly by the monarchist papers. The Government of M. Clemenceau, on the other hand, tried to discredit the movement by spreading rumors that a plot against the Republic had been discovered in which monarchists and leaders of the Confederation were involved. The _Voix du Peuple_ published a protest of the Confederal Committee against this accusation. Nevertheless the government searched at the same time the houses of Monarchists, Bonapartists and of leading members of the Confederation, and on the eve of the first of May, it arrested Griffuelhes, Pouget, Merrheim and other syndicalists together with a number of well-known monarchists. The first of May found Paris in a state of siege. Premier Clemenceau had collected numerous troops in the capital. Since the days of the Commune Paris had not seen so many. Among the bourgeoisie a real panic reigned. Many left Paris and crossed the Channel. Those who remained in Paris made provision for food for days to come. The papers spoke of the "coming revolution" which the General Confederation of Labor was to let loose on society.[197] [197] _Journal des Débats_ (27 April, 1906), p. 769. The strike movement was very wide. According to official statistics, the agitation of the Confederation affected 2,585 industrial establishments and involved 202,507 workingmen. The sweep of the movement may be grasped from the following table giving the statistics of strikes in France since 1892: _Year_ _Number of _Number of _Number of strikes_ establishments_ workingmen_ 1892 261 500 50,000 1893 634 4,286 170,123 1894 391 1,731 54,576 1895 405 1,298 45,801 1896 476 2,178 49,851 1897 356 2,568 68,875 1898 368 1,967 82,065 1899 740 4,290 176,826 1900 902 10,253 222,714 1901 523 6,970 111,414 1902 512 1,820 212,704 1903 567 3,246 123,151 1904 1,026 17,250 271,097 1905 830 5,302 177,666 1906 1,309 19,637 438,466 1907 1,275 8,365 197,961[198] [198] _Statistique des Grèves_, 1893-1908. The movement assumed various forms in different trades. The printers, for instance, pursued their conciliatory methods and obtained a nine-hour day in about 150 towns. In some trades the strikes developed a more or less acute character and continued for several months after the first of May. Some of the "reformists" declared that the movement was a complete failure.[199] According to official statistics,[200] the results of the strike movement were as follows: [199] _XV Congrès National Corporatif_ (Amiens, 1906), p. 103. [200] _Statistique des Grèves_, 1906, pp. 774 _et seq._ A: Strikes B: Establishments C: Strikers -----------+----------------+--------------------+-------------------- | Success | Compromise | Failure Demand |----------------|--------------------|-------------------- | A | B | C | A | B | C | A | B | C -----------+----+-----+-----|----+-------+-------|----+-------+------- 8 hour day| 2 | 5 | 45 | 13 | 1,970 |25,520 | 88 | 7,556 |109,786 9 hour day| 36 | 135 |2723 | 28 | 994 |30,750 | 45 | 755 | 17,023 10 hour day| 40 | 582 |7409 | 16 | 220 | 2,000 | 27 | 368 | 7,251 -----------+----------------+--------------------+-------------------- The revolutionary syndicalists did not claim much material success, but they argued that this had not been expected. The main purpose of the movement, they asserted, was, "by an immense effort, to spread among the large mass of workingmen the ideas which animate the militant groups and the syndical organizations. The problem to be solved, at first, was, thus, by means of a vigorous propaganda to reach the workingmen who had remained indifferent to the syndicalist movement."[201] And this task, in the opinion of the revolutionary syndicalists, had been accomplished. The agitation had aroused the workingmen in all parts of France. [201] _XV Congrès Corporatif_ (Amiens, 1906), p. 3. In September, 1906, the Congress of the Confederation met at Amiens. The report of the secretary showed continued progress of the Confederation since 1904. The Section of Federations of industries now counted 61 federal organizations with 2,399 syndicats and 203,273 members. The dues collected by this section for the two years amounted to 17,650 francs; and its total budget to 20,586 francs. The section of the Federation of Bourses consisted now of 135 Bourses with 1,609 syndicats; it collected in dues 11,821 francs, and had a total budget of 15,566 francs. The report of the Confederal Committee again called forth the attacks of "reformist" syndicalists, but was approved by 781 votes against 115 (21 blank and 10 contested). But the main question which absorbed the largest part of the work of the Congress was the relation of the General Confederation of Labor to the Socialist Party. This question had again assumed a new character. The International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam (1904) had exhorted and advised the French Socialists to accomplish as soon as possible the unification of their separate parties into one national Socialist Party. In April, 1905, a "Congress of Unification" was held at Paris, at which the _Parti Socialiste de France_ and the _Parti Socialiste Français_ formed the _Parti Socialiste Unifié_. A common program was accepted and a new form of organization elaborated. At its first Congress in Chalons in October, 1905, the Unified Party counted 35,000 paying members distributed in 2,000 groups, 67 federations and 77 departments. In the elections of 1906 the Unified Party obtained an increase of votes and elected 54 members to Parliament. It now seemed to many that there was no reason for the General Confederation of Labor to keep aloof from the Socialist Party. The reason heretofore given was that the divisions in the Socialist Party disorganized the syndicats, but since the Socialist Party was now unified, the reason lost all significance, and it seemed possible to establish some form of union between the two organizations. The question was taken up soon after the unification of the Socialist Party by the "Federation of Textile Workers" who had it inserted in the program of the coming Congress of Amiens. The question was discussed for some time before the Congress in the socialist and syndicalist press, and the decision that would be taken could have been foreseen from the discussion. M. Renard, the Secretary of the "Federation of Textile Workers," defended the proposition that permanent relations should be established between the General Confederation and the Unified Socialist Party. His argument was that in the struggle of the working-class for emancipation, various methods must be used, and that various forms of organization were accordingly necessary. The syndicat, in his opinion, could not suffice for all purposes; it was an instrument in economic struggles against employers, but by the side of this economic action, political action must be carried on to obtain protective labor legislation. For this purpose he considered it necessary to maintain relations with the Socialist Party, which had "always proposed and voted laws having for their object the amelioration of the conditions of the working-class as well as their definitive emancipation."[202] Besides, argued M. Renard, "if a revolutionary situation should be created to-day," the syndicats now in existence, with their present organization could not "regulate production and organize exchange," and "would be compelled to make use of the machinery of the government." The co-operation of the Confederation with the Socialist Party, therefore, was useful and necessary from the point of view both of the present and of the future. [202] _XV Congrès Corporatif_ (Amiens, 1906), pp. 135-6. M. Renard repudiated the accusation that he meant to introduce politics into the syndicats or to fuse the latter in the Socialist Party. On the contrary, he accused the Confederal Committee of carrying on political agitation under the cover of neutrality. Against this "special politics" his proposition was directed. "When anti-militarism is carried on," said M. Renard, "when anti-patriotism is indulged in, when [electoral] abstention is preached, it is politics."[203] This anarchistic policy has prevailed since the "libertarians have invaded the Confederation and have transformed the latter into a war-engine against the Socialist Party. The Federation of Textile Workers wants to put an end to the present state of affairs."[204] [203] _Ibid._, p. 134. [204] _Ibid._, p. 165. The proposition of the Textile workers was combated by revolutionary and "reformist" syndicalists alike. M. Keufer, who had bitterly attacked the revolutionary syndicalists at Bourges (1904), now fought the political syndicalists. He agreed with M. Renard that political action was necessary though he did not place "too great hopes in legislative action and in the intervention of the State;" still he thought that the latter was inevitable, and alluded to the fact that the revolutionary syndicalists themselves were constantly soliciting the intervention of the public authorities. But to secure a successful parallel economic and political action, M. Keufer believed that it was better for the Confederation to remain entirely independent of the Socialist Party, and he proposed a resolution repudiating both "anarchist and anti-parliamentarian agitation" and permanent relations with any political party.[205] [205] _XIV Congrès Corporatif_ (Amiens, 1906), pp. 154-157. * * * * * The revolutionary syndicalists in their turn criticised the part assigned to the syndicat both by the political syndicalists and by the "reformists." They emphasized the "integral" and revolutionary rôle of the syndicat which makes it unnecessary and dangerous to conclude any alliance with any political party. They denied that the Confederal Committee was carrying on an anarchist propaganda. Said M. Griffuelhes: Keufer insists very much on the presence of libertarians in the Confederal Committee; they are not so numerous as the legend has it; this is only a stratagem to arouse the fear of an anarchist peril which does not exist. On the contrary, the vitality of the Confederation is the result of a co-operation of various political elements. When, after the entrance of M. Millerand into the government, the latter began its policy of "domesticating" the workingmen, a coalition of Anarchists, Guesdists, Blanquists, Allemanists and other elements took place in order to isolate the government from the syndicats. This coalition has maintained itself and has been the very life of the Confederation.[206] [206] _XV Congrès Corporatif_ (Amiens, 1906), p. 167. The proposition of the Textile Federation was rejected by 724 votes against 34 (37 blank). The defeat for the political syndicalists was complete. By an overwhelming majority of 830 against 8 (one blank), the Congress adopted the following proposition of Griffuelhes: The Confederal Congress of Amiens confirms article 2 of the constitution of the General Federation. The C. G. T. groups, independent of all political schools, all the workingmen who are conscious of the struggle to be carried on for the disappearance of the wage system.... The Congress considers that this declaration is a recognition of the class struggle which, on an economic basis, places the workingmen in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, put into operation by the capitalist class against the working-class. The Congress makes this theoretic affirmation more precise by adding the following points: With regard to the every-day demands, syndicalism pursues the coördination of the efforts of the workingmen, the increase of the workingmen's welfare through the realization of immediate ameliorations, such as the diminution of working hours, the increase of wages, etc. But this is only one aspect of its work; syndicalism is preparing the integral emancipation which can be realized only by the expropriation of the capitalist class; it commends as a means to this end the general strike, and considers that the syndicat, now a group of resistance, will be in the future the group of production and of distribution, the basis of social organization. The Congress declares that this double task of every-day life and of the future follows from the very situation of the wage-earners, which exerts its pressure upon the working-class and which makes it a duty for all workingmen, whatever their opinions or their political and philosophical tendencies, to belong to the essential group which is the syndicat; consequently, so far as individuals are concerned, the Congress declares entire liberty for every syndicalist to participate, outside of the trade organization, in any forms of struggle which correspond to his philosophical or political ideas, confining itself only to asking of him, in return, not to introduce into the syndicat the opinions which he professes outside of it. In so far as organizations are concerned, the Congress decides that, in order that syndicalism may attain its maximum effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the class of employers, and the Confederal organizations must not, as syndical groups, pay any attention to parties and sects which, outside and by their side, may pursue in full liberty the transformation of society. The vote on this resolution showed that all parties interpreted the resolution in their own way. To the "reformists" it meant complete political neutrality, to the political syndicalist it emphasized the liberty of political action outside the syndicat; the revolutionary syndicats saw in the resolution the "Charter of French Syndicalism" in which their theories were succinctly formulated. After the Congress of Amiens the General Confederation continued its policy of direct action. During 1907 it helped the movement for a law on a weekly rest (_Repos Hebdamodaire_) which was carried on by the commercial employees and by workingmen of certain trades. The movement expressed itself often in street demonstrations and riotous gatherings and brought the Confederation into conflict with the government. The government of M. Clemenceau took a determined attitude towards the Confederation. Papers like the _Temps_ called upon the government to dissolve the Confederation. "Against syndicalism," wrote the _Temps_, "are valid all the arguments of law and of fact as against anarchy." Members of the Confederal Committee were arrested here and there for incendiary speeches and for anti-militaristic propaganda. In the Chamber of Deputies the Confederation was the subject of a heated debate which lasted several days, and in which radicals, conservatives, socialists, and members of the government took part. The Confederal Committee in its turn vehemently attacked the government. In June, 1907, troubles occurred among the wine-growers in the south of France, and blood was shed. The Confederal Committee launched a manifesto against the government with the heading, "Government of Assassins," in which it praised one of the regiments that had refused to shoot into the crowd at the order of the officers. The government instituted legal proceedings against twelve members of the Confederal Committee for "insults to the army." The trial took place in February, 1908; all the accused were acquitted. In June, 1908, a strike in one of the towns near Paris, Draveuil, occasioned the intervention of the police. Shooting took place, one workingman was killed, one mortally wounded, and several others severely wounded. On the 4th of June the Confederal Committee published a protest calling the government "a government of assassins" and Premier Clemenceau, "Clemenceau the murderer" (_Clemenceau le Tueur_) and called upon the syndicats to protest against the action of the government. As the strike in Draveuil was among workingmen of the building trades, the "Federation of the Building Trades," the most revolutionary syndical organization in France, took the lead in the movement, seconded by the Confederal Committee. Manifestations took place at the funerals of the killed workingmen in Draveuil and Villeneuve St. George (neighboring communes) in which bloody collisions with the police were avoided with difficulty. The "Federation of the Building Trades" and many members of the Confederal Committee advocated a general strike as a protest against the action of the government. Meanwhile the strike at Draveuil was going on. On the 27th of July a collision between the police and the strikers again took place, and the "Federation of Building Trades" decided upon a general strike and upon a demonstration for the 30th of July. Some members of the Confederal Committee, the Secretary Griffuelhes, for instance, were opposed to the manifestation, but the decision was taken against their advice. The manifestation of Villeneuve St. George resulted in a violent collision; there were many killed and wounded. The agitation grew, and the Confederal Committee together with the federal committee of the Building Trades called upon the other trades to join them in a general strike to be continued as a protest against the "massacres." The call of the Confederal Committee was only partly followed. The events of Villeneuve St. George aroused the press and the government against the Confederation. The "Confederal Committee," wrote the _Temps_, "is not an instrument for trade conquests. It is a purely insurrectional Committee. It should be treated as such." The government arrested all the leading members of the Confederal Committee. On the 4th of August, as a move against the government, the Confederal Committee which constituted itself after the arrests and of which M. Luquet was temporary secretary, admitted the Federation of Miners with 60,000 members into the Confederation. The Federation of Miners had for some time expressed its wish to enter the Confederation, but certain difficulties, more or less personal, had stood in the way. After Villeneuve St. George these difficulties were smoothed and the adherence of the Miners to the Confederation was made possible. The events of Villeneuve St. George aroused some protests within the Confederation. The collisions and the bloodshed were ascribed by the opponents of the Confederal Committee to revolutionary methods and "anarchist" tactics. The polemics between the "reformist" and "revolutionary" elements which had not ceased since the Congress of Amiens now became more and more bitter. In September, 1908, the Congress of the Confederation met at Marseilles. The reports to the Congress showed that the Section of Federations of industries counted 68 federal organizations with 2,586 syndicats and 294,398 members; total receipts amounted to 24,719 francs. The Section of Bourses counted 157 _Bourses du Travail_ with 2,028 syndicats and with a budget of 16,081 francs. The Congress of Marseilles expressed its sympathy with the arrested members of the Confederation, and "denounced before the entire public the abominable procedures" of the government. The reports of the Confederal Committee were approved by 947 with none against and 109 blanks, "not because the members of the Confederal Bureau were arrested, but because the acts of the Bureau and of the Confederal Committee were the expression of the mandate entrusted to them." The Congress of Marseilles rejected the proposition to apply the principle of proportional representation which was again advanced. It discussed the question of industrial and trade unionism and decided in favor of the former, inviting all trade federations to fuse into industrial federations. But the main question which agitated the Congress was that of anti-militarism. At Amiens (1906) an anti-militaristic resolution introduced by Yvetot (Secretary of the Section of _Bourses du Travail_) had been passed. But it was passed in a hurry, as there was no time to discuss it, and it raised strong opposition among the "reformist" elements. It was taken to the Congress of Marseilles, therefore, for another discussion. The Congress of Marseilles accepted the resolution introduced by Yvetot. The resolution read: The Congress of Marseilles, repeats and renders more precise the decision of Amiens, namely: Considering that the army tends more and more to take the place of the workingmen on strike in the factory, in the fields, in the workshop, when it has not the function of shooting them, as in Narbonnes, Raon-L'Etape, and Villeneuve St. George; Considering that the exercise of the right to strike will be only a fraud as long as the soldiers agree to substitute the workers in civil work and to massacre the workingmen; the Congress, keeping within purely economic limits, recommends the instruction of the recruits (_jeunes_) in order that on the day when they put on the military uniform they should be convinced that they should remain nevertheless members of the family of workingmen and that in the conflict between capital and labor their duty is not to use their arms against their brethren, the workingmen; Considering that the geographical boundaries are modifiable at the will of the possessors, the workingmen recognize only the economic boundaries separating the two class-enemies--the working-class and the capitalist class. The Congress repeats the formula of the International: "The workingmen have no fatherland;" and adds: That whereas, consequently, every war is but an outrage (_attentat_) against the workingmen; that it is a bloody and terrible means of diverting them from their demands, the Congress declares it necessary, from the international point of view, to enlighten the workingmen, in order that in case of war they may reply to the declaration of war by a declaration of a revolutionary general strike.[207] [207] _XVI Congrès National Corporatif_, p. 213. The resolution was adopted by 681 votes against 421 and 43 blank. Many voted against the resolution because of its anti-patriotic character, though they accepted the part bearing upon the use of the army in strikes. In November, 1909, the government freed the arrested members of the Confederal Committee, but they did not regain their former positions of authority. In February, 1909, the "reformist" elements succeeded in electing as secretary of the Confederation their candidate, M. Niel, who was once a revolutionary but had become more moderate. M. Niel was elected by a majority of one vote, and his position was very difficult in the Confederal Committee. He aimed, as he expressed it, to bring about "moral unity" in the Confederation, but was hampered in his activities by the revolutionaries and not sufficiently supported by the "reformists." In March, 1909, the Post Office employees went on strike. The Confederation took no part in the movement but invited the workingmen to sympathize with the strikers. The strike was successful, and the government promised to consider the grievances of the Post Office employees whose main demand was the removal of the Secretary of the Department. The promises of the government were unofficial, and the strikers after some time claimed that the government had not kept its word. A second strike followed in May, but there was less enthusiasm among the employees, and a failure was inevitable. The leaders of the strike appealed to the Confederation for help. The Confederal Committee invited the workingmen of Paris to go out on a general strike, but the invitation of the Confederation found very little response, and the Post Office employees returned to work. The failure was ascribed to the "reformists", M. Guérard,[208] secretary of the Railway Workers, and to M. Niel, who had delivered a speech on the eve of the general strike declaring that the miners were not ready for it. This speech, the revolutionaries alleged, produced an impression disastrous for the general strike. The bitter criticism of the revolutionists forced Niel to resign on May 28, 1909. The election of Jouhaux secured the triumph of the revolutionary syndicalists once more. [208] M. Guérard, once revolutionary, had become moderate. The dissensions between "reformists" and "revolutionaries" became still more acute after the resignation of M. Niel. The rumor that the "reformist" syndicats would leave the Confederation circulated more persistently than before. The "reformists" formed in July, 1909, a _Comité d'Union Syndicaliste_ to react against the anarchistic syndicalism, to realize the union of workingmen, independent of all politics, in the exclusively economic and industrial domain.[209] The situation was considered very critical by both friends and enemies of the Confederation. [209] G. Weill, _Histoire du Mouvement Social du France_, 386. The struggle of tendencies and personalities within the Confederation came to a climax at the next congress held at Toulouse from Oct. 3 to Oct. 10, 1910. The greater part of the time of the congress was consumed in discussing the resignation of Niel, the accusations against the former secretary Griffuelhes, and the quarrels of "reformists" and revolutionists generally. Both sides were disgusted with the proceedings, but hoped that the atmosphere of mutual hostility and distrust would be cleared thereby, and that a new period of harmonious action would be the result. The Congress was hardly over, when a strike unexpectedly broke out among the railway men of the _Paris-Nord_. The National Syndicat of Railway workers had been considering the advisability of a general strike for some time, but was postponing action in the hope of effecting a peaceful settlement. The Syndicat of railway workers was among the so-called "reformist" syndicats, and its leaders laid great stress on peaceful negotiations with employers and on soliciting the co-operation of the government. The demands of the railway men were: an increase in wages, one day of rest in the week, the retroactive application of the old-age pension law passed in 1909, and several other concessions relating to conditions of work and matters of discipline. The railway companies had refused to meet the representatives of the railway men, and M. Briand, who was Premier at the time, advised the officials of the railway union that he could do nothing to make the railway companies change their attitude. The leaders of the syndicat, however, were still continuing their efforts to bring pressure to bear upon the companies, when their plans were frustrated by the sudden outbreak on the railroad system known as Paris-Nord. The strike, begun in Paris on October 10, rapidly spread over the system Paris-Nord. The next day the strike committee ordered a general railroad strike, and the order was followed on October 12 by the Western system of railroads. On October 13 M. Briand arrested the members of the strike committee and ordered the striking railway men under colors, thus putting them under martial law. A second strike committee automatically took the place of the leaders who were arrested, but it did not display much energy. Besides, the response to the strike order on the eastern and southern railroad lines was very slight, and towards the end of the week the strike was practically defeated. By order of the second strike committee work was resumed on all lines on October 18. The failure of the railway strike was a heavy blow not only to the syndicat of Railway Workers, but to the general labor movement of France. It resulted in the disorganization of one of the strongest syndicats and added fuel to the dying embers of factional strife. The revolutionary elements in the Confederation attributed the failure of the strike to the hesitating tactics of the "reformist" leaders and to the intervention of the socialist politicians who tried to make political capital out of the strike situation. The "reformists," on the other hand, accused the revolutionists of precipitating the strike and of defeating the general movement by hasty action on the Paris-Nord. Two facts, however, stand out clear: first, that the Confederation of Labor did not direct the strike, which was a purely trade movement largely dominated by reformist and political elements; secondly, that the strike was defeated mainly by the quick and energetic action of M. Briand, who treated the strike as a revolt, sent soldiers to replace the strikers, and mobilized the latter for military service. The dissensions provoked by the railway strike accentuated the "crisis" in the General Confederation of Labor and hampered its activities. Still, amid these internal struggles, the Confederal Committee made persistent efforts to carry out the program of action which was outlined for it at the congress of Toulouse. During 1910-1911 it carried on a relentless campaign against the old-age pension law which was passed in April, 1910. The French workingmen were opposed to the age limit imposed by the law (65 years), to the system of capitalization, and to the obligatory deductions of the worker's contribution from his wages. The campaign was effective to the extent of forcing several important modifications in the law in favor of the workers. At the same time the Confederation carried on a campaign against the high cost of living ascribing it to speculation and to the protective system. Meetings were held throughout France, and demonstrations were arranged; in many places bread riots took place in which the leaders of the Bourses and of the Confederal Committee took part. But the greatest part of the energy of the Confederation was directed against the wave of militarism and nationalism which began to sweep France after the incident of Agadir in the summer of 1910. The Confederation of Labor felt that the labor movement in general and the revolutionary tendencies in particular were endangered by the nationalist spirit and military excitement which was stirring the country. Meetings were organized all over France to protest against war and militarism; several international meetings were arranged in Berlin, Madrid, Paris, and London, at which speakers representing all European countries spoke against war and in favor of international peace. The idea of a general strike in case of war was revived and agitated in the syndicalist organizations as a warning to the French government. In September, 1912, the twelfth congress of the Confederation was held at Toulouse. The report of the Confederal Committee showed that the Confederation was not making as much progress as before. The growth of the General Confederation of Labor in relation to the general labor movement of the country may be judged from the following table: -----+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------- | | | Number of | | | Total |Total Number| Federations | | |Number of|of Organized| of industry | Syndicats | |Syndicats| Workingmen | adhering to | adhering to | Members of Year |in France| in France |Confederation|Confederation|Confederation -----+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------- 1902 | 3,680 | 614,204 | 30 | 1,043 | | | | | | 1904 | 4,227 | 715,576 | 53 | 1,792 | 150,000 | | | | | 1906 | 4,857 | 836,134 | 61 | 2,399 | 203,273 | | | | | 1908 | 5,524 | 957,102 | 63 | 2,586 | 294,398 | | | | | 1910 | 5,260 | 977,350 | 57 | 3,012 | 357,814 | | | | | 1912 | 5,217 | 1,064,000 | 53 | 2,837 | 400,000 -----+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------- The slackening in the growth of the Confederation was attributed partly to the persistent persecutions of the government, but in the main to internal dissensions and struggles. As a result of the latter, many of the old militants who had taken a leading part in the syndicalist organizations had become disillusioned and had left the movement. Many of the syndicats had lost in membership, and new syndicats were formed with great difficulty. The supreme effort of the Congress of Toulouse was, therefore, to assert once more the leading ideas of syndicalism and to unite all labor elements upon a common platform of action. A long debate between representatives of the various tendencies took place in consequence of which the Congress reaffirmed the resolution of Amiens (1906) known as the "charter of syndicalism."[210] The most important resolution, however, was that in favor of a general movement for the reduction of hours of labor, particularly for the establishment of the "English week" (La semaine Anglaise, i. e. half holiday on Saturday). The Confederal Committee was authorized to carry on a campaign similar in character to the Campaign of 1906 in favor of the eight hour day. To meet the necessary expenses the dues were raised to ten francs per thousand members for each Federation of industry and to seven francs per thousand members for each Departmental Union. [210] See page 183. The discussion at the Congress of Toulouse showed very clearly that the leaders of the syndicalist organizations were becoming tired of perennial debates and that they were anxious to save the Confederation from its present critical condition by a vigorous campaign for shorter hours, which would appeal to the mass of working men and women. The Confederal Committee, however, has not been very successful in this since the congress of Toulouse, for two principal reasons: the militaristic excitement of Europe and the general industrial depression. During 1913, the Confederation was engaged in fighting the increase in military expenses and particularly the passage of the three years' military service law. In May and June a number of revolts took place in the barracks, mainly among the soldiers who would have been released in 1913, had not the new law been made retroactive. The government accused the Confederation of instigating the revolts of the soldiers, and made numerous arrests among the leaders of the principal syndicats in Paris and in the province. The Confederation repudiated complicity in the revolts, but asserted its right to maintain relations with the soldiers by means of the _Sou du Soldat_. A number of protest meetings were held in Paris and other cities against the new military law, and there can be little doubt that this agitation resulted in the modifications of the law which practically reduced the actual time of service by several months. At the same time, the activities of the General Confederation of Labor during 1913 revealed a conscious determination to steer clear of hazardous movements of a revolutionary character. In July, 1913, the Federations of industries and the Bourses du Travail held their third annual Conference in Paris, at which questions of administration and policy were discussed. A number of delegates demanded that a general strike be declared on September 24, when the soldiers ought to have been released from the barracks. This proposition was defeated as an unwise measure. Among those who spoke against the proposition were some of the ablest representatives of the revolutionary syndicalists, like Jouhaux, the general secretary; Merrheim, the secretary of the Federation of the metal industry, and others. The cautious action of the Confederation incensed the anarchist groups who had supported the Confederation all along, and they began to criticise the latter for "turning to the right." The leaders of the Confederation, however, explained their action not by any change in ideas, but by a desire to hew to the line of strictly labor demands for the time being. While making efforts to increase its strength at home, the Confederation of Labor has been endeavoring in recent years to spread the ideas of French syndicalism abroad, and has been watching with great interest the new tendencies in the labor movement of England and the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States. Its main efforts outside of France, have been exerted at the conferences of the International Secretariat of Labor. These conferences have been held every two years since 1903 by the secretaries of the adhering National Trade Union Centers.[211] The General Confederation took part in the Conference of Dublin in 1903, but sent no delegates to the Conferences of Amsterdam (1905) or of Christiana (1907) because these conferences refused to discuss the questions of the general strike and of anti-militarism. The relations of the Confederation to the International Secretariat have been much discussed at the Congresses of the Confederation and in the press. The Congress of Marseilles, though approving the policy of the Confederal Committee, recommended that the latter enter into closer relations with the International Secretariat. Since then the Confederation has taken part in the Conferences of Paris in 1909,[212] Budapest (1911), and Zurich (1913). [211] The first two conferences were held at Balberstadt (1900) and at Stuttgart (1902). [212] An account of the Paris conference is given in Mr. Gompers' _Labor in Europe and America_ (New York, 1910). In the International organization the Confederation tries to enforce its views on the general strike and advocates the organization of International Labor Congresses. Its ideas meet here, however, with the opposition of American, English, German and Austrian trades unions. The latter are the more numerous. Germany pays dues to the International Secretariat for 2,017,000 organized workingmen; the United States for 1,700,000; England for 725,000; Austria for 480,000; France for 340,000. The total number of organized workingmen affiliated with the International Secretariat is 6,033,500.[213] [213] These figures are for 1911. CHAPTER VIII CHARACTER AND CONDITIONS OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM The history of the General Confederation of Labor as told in the preceding chapters has brought out in a general way the character of revolutionary syndicalism and the conditions which have influenced its rise and development. It remains now in this last chapter to emphasize the principal points and to strengthen them by a more complete analysis of facts and conditions. It has been maintained throughout this work that revolutionary syndicalism was created by a _bloc_ of revolutionary elements in the Confederation. This character of a _bloc_ has been denied by many. Those hostile to the Confederation are anxious to create the impression that the latter is exclusively the creation and the tool of the anarchists. Others more or less impartial fail to acknowledge the part played in the movement by the non-anarchist elements. Some anarchists themselves are only too glad to be considered the creators of the movement and to maintain a view which is a tribute to their organizing ability and to their influence. Many revolutionary syndicalists, however, protest against being considered anarchists. Some of them are active members of the Unified Socialist Party. Others do not belong to the Socialist party, but have never been connected with the Anarchists. They are revolutionary syndicalists, "pure and simple." And these two other elements are by no means less influential in the Confederation than the Anarchists. The three elements enumerated have somewhat different ways of regarding revolutionary syndicalism. To the anarchists revolutionary syndicalism is but a partial application of anarchist ideas. M. Yvetot, secretary of the section of Bourses, said at the recent Congress of Toulouse (1910): "I am reproached with confusing syndicalism and anarchism. It is not my fault if anarchism and syndicalism have the same ends in view. The former pursues the integral emancipation of the individual; the latter the integral emancipation of the workingman. I find the whole of syndicalism in anarchism."[214] [214] _La Vie Ouvrière_, 20 Oct., 1910, p. 483; _XVII Congrès National Corporatif_ (Toulouse, 1910), p. 226. To the revolutionary socialists in the Confederation syndicalism is the primary and fundamental form of revolutionary socialism. It does not exclude, however, other forms; on the contrary, it must be completed by the political organization of the Socialist party, because it has no answer of its own to many social problems. The third group of revolutionary syndicalists regards revolutionary syndicalism as self-sufficing and independent of both anarchism and socialism. This group, like the first, emphasizes the fact that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between syndicalism and political socialism. "It is necessary," writes Jouhaux, secretary of the Confederation, "that the proletariat should know that between parliamentary socialism, which is tending more and more toward a simple democratization of existing social forms, and syndicalism, which pursues the aim of a complete social transformation, there is not only divergence of methods, but particularly divergence of aims."[215] [215] L. Jouhaux, _Le Terrassier_, 20 June, 1911. Those who consciously call themselves revolutionary syndicalists belong to one of the groups described, and the three groups constitute the _bloc_ spoken of above. To understand revolutionary syndicalism means to understand this _bloc_ of revolutionary elements, how it was made possible, why it is maintained, and what conditions have secured for it the leadership in the General Confederation of Labor. It has been shown in the preceding chapters that since 1830 a considerable part of the French workingmen, the so-called "militant" workingmen, have always cherished the hope of a "complete" or "integral" emancipation which should free them from the wage-system and from the economic domination of the employer. The desire of independence had guided the life of the journeyman under the guild-system, and its birth under modern economic conditions is natural enough to need no explanation. But while under the guild-system this desire had an individualistic character, under the technical conditions of the present time it necessarily led to collectivist ideas. With the development of highly expensive means of production, only an insignificant number of workingmen could hope to become economically independent by individual action, and the only way to attain economic freedom and equality for all pointed to the collective appropriation of the means of production and to the collective management of industrial activities. The insistence on economic freedom--in the sense indicated--runs through all the literature of the French Labor Movement. It is not only and not so much the inequality of wealth, the contrasts of distribution that stimulate the militant workingmen to their collectivist hopes, as it is the protest against the "arbitrariness" of the employer and the ideal of a "free workshop." To attain the latter is the main thing and forms the program of the General Confederation as formulated in the first clause of its statutes. The sensitiveness to economic inferiority is increased in the French militant workingmen by the fact that in a country like France economic distinctions are combined with social distinctions. Owing to the traditions of the past, economic classes are separated by a number of other elements, in which intellectual, social and other influences combine and which transform the economic classes into social classes. The aspiration towards economic equality increases, therefore, in volume and becomes a striving after social equality. The historical traditions of France combined with the impatience for emancipation explain the revolutionary spirit of the French socialist workingman. All who have come into contact with French life have convinced themselves of the power which the revolutionary traditions of the past exert over the people. The French workingman is brought up in the admiration of the men of the Great Revolution; his modern history is full of revolutionary secret societies, of insurrections, and of revolutionary struggles. He cherishes the memory of the Revolution of 1848, his indignation is aroused by the story of the Days of June, his pity and sympathy are stimulated by the events of the Commune. Looking backward into the history of the past century and a half, he can only get the feeling of political instability, and the conviction is strengthened in him that "his" revolution will come just as the revolution of the "Third-Estate" had come. Combined with the desire to attain the "integral" emancipation as soon as possible, these conditions engender in him the revolutionary spirit.[216] [216] On the peculiar character of French history see Adams, _Growth of the French Nation_; Berry, _France since Waterloo_; Barrett Wendell, _France of To-day_. The revolutionary spirit predisposes the socialist workingman to a skeptical attitude toward parliamentary action which rests on conciliation and on compromise and is slow in operation. He seeks for other methods which seem to promise quicker results. The methods themselves may change; they were insurrection once, they are now the general strike. But the end they serve remains the same: to keep up the hope of a speedy liberation. The distrust of parliamentary methods has been strengthened in the French socialist workingman by another fact. The French workingmen have seen their political leaders rise to the very top, become Ministers and Premiers (_e. g._, Millerand, Viviani, Briand), and then turn against their "comrades" of old. The feeling has been thereby created in the socialist workingmen that parliamentary methods are merely a means to a brilliant career for individuals who know how to make use of them. The mistrust of "politicians" finds some nourishment in the fact that the political leaders of the Socialist movement are generally the "intellectuals," between whom and the workingmen there is also some antagonism. The "intellectuals" are thrown out upon the social arena principally by the lower and middle bourgeoisie and generally enter the liberal professions. But whether lawyer, writer, doctor or teacher, the French "intellectual" sooner or later enters the field of "politics" which allures him by the vaster possibilities it seems to offer. In fact, the "intellectual" has always been a conspicuous figure in the history of French Socialism. As a socialist poet, Pierre Dupont, sang, "Socialism has two wings, The student and the workingman." And as the socialist ideas have spread, the number of "intellectuals" in the socialist movement has been constantly increasing. The "two wings" of the Socialists, however, cannot perfectly adapt themselves to one another. The "intellectual" generally lacks the "impatience for deliverance" which characterizes the socialist workingman. The "intellectual" is bound by more solid ties to the _status quo_; his intellectual preoccupations predispose him to a calmer view of things, to regard society as a slow evolutionary process. Besides, the "intellectual" takes pride in the fact that he supplies "the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress"; he is inclined, therefore, to dominate the workingman as his "minor brother", and to advocate methods which secure his own predominant part in the movement. Parliamentary action is the field best adapted to his character and powers. The socialist workingman, on the other hand, protests against the tendencies of the "intellectual", particularly against the dominating impulses of the latter. He is anxious to limit the powers of his leaders, if possible, and to create such forms of organization as shall assure his own independence. When the syndicats began to develop in France, the revolutionary workingmen seized upon them as a form of organization particularly adapted to their demands. The syndicat was an organization which could take up the ideal of social emancipation; in the general strike, which the syndicat seemed to carry within itself, there was a method of speedy liberation; the syndicat excluded the "intellectuals" and above all by its "direct action" it maintained and strengthened the revolutionary spirit and safeguarded the revolutionary ideal from the compromises and dangers to which politics and the parliamentary socialists subjected it. These conditions: the hope of social emancipation, the impatience for deliverance, the revolutionary spirit, and the defiance of the "intellectuals" and of the "politicians," gave and continue to give life to revolutionary syndicalism. They brought into being the "revolutionary _bloc_" in the General Confederation of Labor and maintain it there. Of course, differences of temperament and shadings of opinion exist. On the one extreme are those who are most vehement in their propaganda and who combat the Socialist party; on the other, are the revolutionary socialists who are disposed to co-operate with the parliamentary socialists, but who want to have an independent organization to fall back upon in case of disagreement with the political party. But differing in details, the revolutionary elements agree in the main points and they stamp upon the Confederation the character which it bears and which is described in the terms "revolutionary syndicalism." The opponents of the revolutionary syndicalists claim that the latter are followed only by a minority in the General Confederation and that they maintain their leadership by means of the existing system of representation and by other more or less arbitrary devices. This statement, however, cannot be proved in any satisfactory way. The best way of obtaining the exact number of revolutionary syndicalists in the Confederation would seem to be by means of an analysis of the votes taken at the Congresses. This method, however, is defective for several reasons. In the first place, not all the syndicats adhering to the Confederation are represented at the Congresses. At the Congress of Bourges (1904), 1,178 syndicats out of 1,792 were represented; at the Congress of Amiens, 1,040 out of 2,399; at the Congress of Marseilles, 1,102 out of 2,586, and at the Congress of Toulouse, 1,390 out of 3,012. It is evident, therefore, that even if all the votes were taken unanimously, they would still express the opinion of less than half the syndicats of the Confederation. In the second place, the votes of the Confederation being taken by syndicats, to get the exact figures it would be necessary to know how many syndicats in each federation are revolutionary or not, and what is the proportional strength of both tendencies in each syndicat. This is impossible in the present state of statistical information furnished by the Confederation. At the Congress of Amiens, for instance, the vote approving the report of the Confederal Committee (Section of Federation) stood 815 against 106 (18 blanks). This vote is important, because to approve or to reject the report meant to approve or to reject the ideas by which the General Confederation is guided. Now, an analysis of the vote at Amiens shows that while some organizations voted solidly for the Confederal Committee, none voted solidly against it and that the votes of many organizations were divided. But even the number of those represented by the unanimous vote of their syndicats cannot in the most cases be ascertained. For instance, the agricultural syndicats cast their 28 votes for the Confederal Committee; the report of the Confederal Committee gives the Federation of Agricultural Laborers 4,405 members; but the same report says that the Federation consisted of 106 syndicats; of these 106 syndicats only 28 were represented at the Congress, and how many members they represented there is no possibility of ascertaining. The same is true of those Federations in which the syndicats did not cast the same vote. This difficulty is felt by those who try to prove by figures that the Confederation is dominated by a minority. M. Ch. Franck, for instance, calculates that at the Congress of Marseilles 46 organizations with 716 mandates representing 143,191 members obtained the majority for the _statu quo_ against the proposition of proportional representation; while the minority consisted of 15 organizations with 379 mandates representing 145,440 members. In favor of the anti-militaristic resolution, he calculates further, 33 organizations with 670 mandates representing 114,491 members obtained the majority against 19 organizations with 406 mandates representing 126,540 members. But he is compelled to add immediately: "These figures have no absolute value, because we have taken each organization in its entirety, while in the same federation some syndicats have not voted with the majority"; he thinks that the proportion remains nevertheless the same because he did not take into consideration the divisions on each side.[217] [217] _Op. cit._, pp. 345-6. The last assumption, however, is arbitrary, because the syndicats dissenting on the one side may have been more numerous than those not voting with the majority on the other side; the whole calculation, besides, is fallacious, because it takes the figures of the federations in their entirety, while only a part of the syndicats composing them took part in the votes. The attempt, therefore, to estimate the exact number of the revolutionary syndicalists in the Confederation must be given up for the present. The approximate estimate on either side can be given. According to M. Pawlowski,[218] 250,000 members of the Confederation (out of 400,000) repudiate the revolutionary doctrine; the revolutionary syndicalists, on the other hand, claim a majority of two-thirds for themselves. The impartial student must leave the question open. [218] A. Pawlowski, _La Confédération Générale du Travail_ (Paris, 1910), p. 51. It must be pointed out, however, that the system of representation which exists now in the Confederation affects both revolutionary and reformist syndicalists in a more or less equal degree. At the Congress of Amiens, for instance, the _Fédération du Livre_, with its 10,000 members, had 135 votes; the Railway Syndicat, with its 24,275 members, had only 36 votes; these two organizations were among the "reformists" who combated the Confederal Committee. On the other hand, the revolutionary Federation of Metallurgy had 84 votes for its 14,000 members, but the Federation of Marine, which is also revolutionary, disposed of six votes only for its 12,000 members. The revolutionary syndicalists, therefore, may be right in their assertion that proportional representation would not change the leadership of the Confederation. This belief is strengthened in them by the fact that in all so-called "reformist" organizations, as the _Fédération du Livre_, the Railway Syndicat, etc., there are strong and numerous revolutionary minorities. It is often asserted that only the small syndicats, mostly belonging to the small trades, follow the revolutionary syndicalists. This assertion, however, is inexact. An examination of the syndicats which are considered revolutionary shows that some of them are very large and that others belong to the most centralized industries of France. For instance, the Federation of Building Trades is the most revolutionary organization in the Confederation; at the same time it is the most numerous, and its members pay the highest dues (after the _Fédération du Livre_) in France.[219] The revolutionary Federation of Metallurgy is also one of the large organizations in the Confederation and belongs to an industry which is one of the most centralized in France. The total horse-power of machines used in the metallurgic industries has increased from 175,070 in 1891 to 419,128 in 1906; the number of establishments has diminished from 4,642 in 1891 to 4,544 in 1906; that is, the total horse-power of machinery used in every industrial establishment has increased during this period from 38 to 92;[220] the number of workingmen per industrial establishment has also increased from 508 in 1896 to 697 in 1901 and to 711 in 1906. In fact the metallurgic industry occupies the second place after the mining industry which is the most centralized in France.[221] [219] _Mouvement Socialiste_, May, 1911. [220] E. Thery, _Les Progrès Économiques de la France_ (Paris, 1909), p. 181. [221] _Journal des Économistes_, Jan., 1911, p. 133. A diversity of conditions prevails in the industries to which the other revolutionary organizations belong. On the other hand, the so-called reformist organizations, the Federation of Mines, the _Fédération du Livre_, the Federation of Employees, differ in many respects and are determined in their policy by many considerations and conditions which are peculiar to each one of them. The influence of the revolutionary syndicalists, therefore, can be explained not by special technical conditions, but by general conditions which are economic, political and psychological. To bring out the relation of these conditions to the syndicalist doctrine it is necessary to analyze the latter into its constituent elements and to discuss them one by one. The fundamental condition which determines the policy of "direct action" is the poverty of French syndicalism. Except the _Fédération du Livre_, only a very few federations pay a more or less regular strike benefit; the rest have barely means enough to provide for their administrative and organizing expenses and can not collect any strike funds worth mentioning. In 1908, for instance, there were 1,073 strikes; of these 837 were conducted by organized workingmen. Only in 46 strikes was regular assistance assured for the strikers, and in 36 cases only was the assistance given in money.[222] The French workingmen, therefore, are forced to fall back on other means during strikes. Quick action, intimidation, _sabotage_, are then suggested to them by their very situation and by their desire to win. [222] _Statistique des Grèves_, 1909, vi-vii. The lack of financial strength explains also the enthusiasm and the sentiments of general solidarity which characterize French strikes. An atmosphere of enthusiasm must be created in order to keep up the fighting spirit in the strikers. To the particular struggle in any one trade a wider and more general significance must be attributed; it must be interpreted as a partial manifestation of a more general class-struggle. In this way the determination to struggle on is strengthened in those who strike and a moral justification is created for an appeal to the solidarity of all workingmen. These appeals are made constantly during strikes. Subscription lists are kept in the _Bourses du Travail_, in the Confederal Committee on Strikes, and are opened in the workingmen's and socialist newspapers whenever any big strike occurs. New means to make up for the lack of financial resources are constantly devised. Of these means two which have come into existence within recent years are the _soupes communistes_ and the "exodus of children." The _soupes communistes_ are organized by the _Bourses du Travail_ and consist of meals distributed to those on strike. The _soupes communistes_ permit the feeding of a comparatively large number of strikers at small expense. Distribution occurs at certain points. The workingmen, if they wish, may take their meals home. The last Conferences of the section of Bourses have discussed the question how to organize these _soupes communistes_ more systematically and as cheaply as possible. The "exodus of children" consists in sending away the children of the strikers to workingmen of other towns while the strike is going on. It has been used during several strikes and attracted widespread attention. The "exodus of children" relieves the strikers at home and creates sympathy for them over the country at large. Financial weakness has also led French syndicats in recent years to reconsider the question of co-operation. Various federations have expressed themselves at their federal congresses in favor of "syndicalist co-operatives" in which all associates are at the same time members of the syndicat and organized on a communist basis. The main argument brought forward in favor of such co-operatives is the support they could furnish to workingmen on strike. The poverty of the French syndicats is the result of the reluctance of the French workingmen to pay high dues. In the _Fédération du Livre_, which has the highest dues, every member pays a little over two francs a month. In other federations the dues are lower, coming down in some organizations to 10 centimes a month. In recent years there has been a general tendency in all federations to increase dues, but the efforts of the syndicalist functionaries in this direction have met with but slow and partial success. The reluctance to high dues is in part the result of the comparatively low wages which prevail in France. Another factor is the psychology of the French workingman. "Our impulsive and rebellious (_frondeur_) temperament," wrote the Commission which organized the Congress of Montpellier, "does not lend itself to high dues, and if we are always ready to painful sacrifices of another nature, we have not yet been able to understand the enormous advantages which would follow from strong syndicalist treasuries maintained by higher assessments."[223] The French workingmen are conscious of their peculiar traits, and the literature of the syndicalist movement is full of both jeremiads and panegyrics with regard to these traits, according to the speaker and to the circumstances. The French workingmen recognize that they lack method, persistence and foresight, while they are sensitive, impulsive and combative.[224] [223] _XIII Congrès National Corporatif_, 1902, pp. 30-31. [224] _X Congrès National Corporatif_, p. 203; _XII Congrès National Corporatif_, pp. 15, 29, 44. The result of this psychology is not only poor syndicats, but syndicats weak in other respects. Many syndicats are but loosely held together, are easily dissolved and are composed of a more or less variable and shifting membership. The instability is increased of course by the absence of benevolent features in the syndicats. The _Fédération du Livre_ alone pays sick and other benefits. The weakness of the syndicats predisposes the French workingmen to more and more generalized forms of struggle. Syndicats on strike impelled by the desire to increase their forces try to involve as many trades and workingmen as possible and to enhance their own chances by enlarging the field of struggle. This is why such general movements, as the movement for an eight-hour day in 1906, described in the preceding chapter, are advocated by the syndicats. The latter feel that in order to gain any important demand they must be backed by as large a number of workingmen as possible. But in view of their weakness, the syndicats can start a large movement only by stirring up the country, by formulating some general demand which appeals to all workingmen. The same conditions explain in part the favor which the idea of the general strike has found in the syndicats. Such forms of struggle must necessarily bring the syndicats into conflict with the State, particularly in France where the State is highly centralized and assumes so many functions. With a people so impulsive as the French, the intervention of the forces of the State in the economic struggles must inevitably lead to collisions of a more or less serious character. The result is a feeling of bitterness in the workingmen towards the army, the police and the government in general. The ground is thus prepared for anti-militaristic, anti-State and anti-patriotic ideas. The organized workingmen are a minority of the working-class. Still they must act as if they were the majority or the entirety of the workingmen. The contradiction must be smoothed over by some explanation, and the theory of the "conscious minority" arises to meet the situation. The weaker the syndicats and the more often they are exposed to the danger of dissolution the greater the necessity of the theory. A disorganized syndicat generally leaves behind a handful of militant workingmen determined to keep up the organization. The theory of the "conscious minority" is both a stimulus to and a justification for the activities of these persistent "militants." To the conditions described the French love of theory, of high-sounding phrases, and of idealistic formulas must be added. For a Frenchman it is not sufficient to act under necessity: the act must be generalized into a principle, the principles systematized, and the system of theory compressed into concise and catching formulas. And once abstracted, systematized and formulated, the ideas become a distinct force exerting an influence in the same direction as the conditions to which they correspond. When all this is taken into account, it is easier to understand the influence of the revolutionary syndicalists. It is insufficient to explain their leadership by clever machinations of the Confederal Committee, as M. Mermeix and many others do. It is quite true that the Confederal Committee tries to maintain its power by all means possible. It sends out delegates to Federal Congresses, on conference tours over the country, to assist workingmen on strikes, etc. In most cases it sends only men who represent the revolutionary ideas of the Committee and who, therefore, strengthen the influence of the latter by word and deed. It is also true that in most _Bourses du Travail_ the secretaries are revolutionary and that they help to consolidate the influence of the Confederal Committee. But these secretaries have not usurped their power. They are elected because they have come to the front as speakers, writers, organizers, strike-leaders, etc. And they could come to the front only because conditions were such as to make their ideas and services helpful. Whatever one's attitude to the Confederation, one must acknowledge the results it has achieved. The strike statistics of France, given in the following table, show the following facts: _Per cent of _Per cent of _Period_ strikes which strikers who lost failed_ their strikes_ 1890-1899 44.61 38.63 1891-1900 43.86 34.17 1892-1901 42.69 35.42 1893-1902 42.48 31.75 1894-1903 42.13 26.98 1895-1904 40.24 25.09 1896-1905 39.07 23.76 1897-1906 38.05 25.91 1898-1907 38.14 25.37 1899-1908 35.79 25.83 Of course, these results can not be attributed entirely to the action of the Confederation. On the other hand, the influence of the Confederation on the improvement of general conditions of employment, on social legislation, etc., is undeniable. "In all branches of human activity," says M. Pawlowski, "wages have risen with a disconcerting and disquieting rapidity."[225] The agitation for the eight-hour day and the rising of 1906 hastened the vote on the weekly rest, induced the government to consider the application of the ten-hour day, popularized the practice of the "English week," etc.[226] [225] A. Pawlowski, _La Confédération Générale du Travail_, p. 130. [226] _Ibid._, p. 123. Whether the same or better results could have been obtained by "reformist" methods, is not a question to be considered, because in most cases the syndicats have no choice. A strike once begun, the character of the struggle is determined by conditions which exist and not by any that would be desirable. This is proved by the fact that very often the so-called "reformist" syndicats carry on their struggles in the same way and by the same methods as do the revolutionary ones. The comparative influence of the Confederation explains the fact why the "reformists" do not leave the organization, though they are bitter in their opposition to the revolutionists. The "reformists" feel that they would thereby lose a support which is of value to them. Besides, in many cases such an act would lead to divisions within the reformist federations, all of which, as already indicated, contain considerable revolutionary minorities. The revolutionary syndicalists, however, are in their turn compelled to make concessions to those exigences of the labor movement which have nothing to do with revolutionary ends. Of course, the revolutionary syndicalists are workingmen and they are interested in the immediate improvement of economic conditions. But there can be little doubt that the leaders and the more conscious and pronounced revolutionary syndicalists are mainly interested in their revolutionary ideal, in the abolition of capitalism and of the wage-system. The struggles for higher wages, shorter hours, etc., are a necessity which they must make a virtue of while awaiting the hoped-for final struggle. And when they theorize about the continuity of the struggles of to-day with the great struggles of to-morrow, when they interpret their every-day activities as part of a continuous social warfare, they are merely creating a theory which in its turn justifies their practice and preserves their revolutionary fire from extinction. But theorizing does not essentially change the character of all syndicalist activities. The Confederal Committee must attend to the administrative and other questions, such as the questions of _viaticum_, of the label, etc. The necessities of the syndical movement often lead the members of the Confederal Committee into the antechambers of Parliament or into the private rooms of the Ministers whose assistance is solicited. The most revolutionary federations can not help entering into negotiations with employers for the settlement of strikes. In practice, therefore, the distinction between "revolutionary" and "reformist" syndicalists is often obscured, because both act as they must and not as they would.[227] [227] This is admitted by both sides. See reports of last Congress held at Toulouse (1910), p. 111. This must not be interpreted to mean that there is any conscious hypocrisy or undue personal interest on the part of the leaders of the revolutionary syndicalists. On the contrary, the most bitter opponents of the Confederation must admit that the reverse is true. "However one may judge their propaganda," says M. Mermeix, "he is obliged to acknowledge the disinterestedness of the libertarians who lead the syndicalist movement. They do not work for money...."[228] There is also no field in the Confederation for political ambition. Still the movement has its demands which require suppleness and pliability on the part of the leaders and which make impossible the rigid application of principles. [228] Terrail-Mermeix, _La Syndicalisme contre le Socialisme_ (Paris, 1907), p. 231. On the other hand, the revolutionary syndicalists have in the syndicats a tremendous force for their revolutionary ends. The close relation of syndical life to all political and economic problems gives the Confederal Committee the opportunity to participate in all questions of interest. The high cost of living, the danger of a war, the legislative policy of the government, troubles among the wine-growers, any public question, indeed, is the occasion for the intervention of the Confederal Committee. The latter appears, then, also as a revolutionary organization which is always ready to criticise, to discredit and to attack the government, and which is openly pursuing the overthrow of existing institutions in France. And when one keeps in mind the indefatigable anti-militaristic and anti-patriotic propaganda carried on by the _Bourses du Travail_ all over the country, the revolutionary character of the Confederation may be fully appreciated. What is the future that may be predicted for the General Confederation of Labor? Will the synthesis of revolutionism and of unionism that has been achieved in it continue more or less stable until the "final" triumph of the revolutionary syndicalists? Or will the latter be overpowered by the "reformist" elements who will impress their ideas on the Confederation and who will change the character of French syndicalism? These questions cannot at present be answered. The movement is so young that no clear tendencies either way can be discerned. The two possibilities, however, may be considered in connection with the conditions that would be required to transform them into realities. Those who predict a change in the character of French syndicalism generally have the history of English Trades Unionism in mind. They compare revolutionary syndicalism to the revolutionary period of English Trades Unionism and think of the change that came about in the latter in the third quarter of the past century. But the comparison is of little value, because the conditions of France are different from those of England, and because the international economic situation to-day is very different from what it was fifty years ago. It is probable that if the French syndicats should develop into large and strong unions, highly centralized and provided with large treasuries, other ideas and methods would prevail in the syndicalist movement. But this change is dependent on a change in the economic life of France. France must cease to be "the banker of Europe," must cease to let other countries use its piled-up millions[229] for the development of their natural resources and industry, and must devote itself to the intensification of its own industrial activities. Such a change could bring about greater productivity, higher wages, and a higher concentration of the workingmen of the country. This change in conditions of life might result in a modification of the psychology of the French workingmen, though how rapid and how thorough-going such a process could be is a matter of conjecture. But whether France will or can follow the example of England or of Germany, in view of its natural resources and of the situation of the international market, it does not seem possible to say.[230] Besides, to change completely the character of French syndicalism, it would be necessary to wipe out the political history of France and its revolutionary traditions. [229] It is estimated that France has about 40,000,000,000 francs invested in foreign countries. [230] See Preface to Second Edition. On the other hand, the triumph of the revolutionary syndicalists presupposes a total readjustment of groups and of interests. The Confederation counts now about 600,000 members. Official statistics count over 1,000,000 organized workingmen in France. But it must be remembered that the federations underestimate their numbers for the Confederation in order to pay less, while they exaggerate their numbers for the _Annuaire Statistique_ in order to appear more formidable. The Confederation, besides, for various reasons rejects a number of organizations which desire to join it. It may be safe to say, therefore, that the Confederation brings under its influence the greater part of the organized workingmen of France. But the total number of workingmen in France, according to the Census of 1906, is about 10,000,000, of which about 5,000,000 are employed in industry and in transportation. The numbers of independent producers in industry, commerce, and agriculture is about 9,000,000, of which about 2,000,000 are _petits patrons_. Over a million and a half persons are engaged in the liberal professions and in the public services.[231] [231] The active population in 1906 was over 20,000,000, out of a total population of over 39,000,000. _Journal des Économistes_, Jan., 1911. Among the latter the revolutionary syndicalists have met with success in recent years. The ideas of revolutionary syndicalism have gained adherents among the employees of the Post Office, Telegraph and Telephone, and among the teachers of the public schools. The recent Congresses of the teachers have declared themselves ready to collaborate with the workingmen for the realization of their ideal society. The following motion adopted by the recent Congress of Nantes, at which 500 delegates were present, is very characteristic: "The professional associations of teachers (men and women), employees of the State, of the Departments and of the Communes," reads the motion, "assembled in the _Bourses du Travail_, declare their sympathy for the working-class, declare that the best form of professional action is the syndical form; express their will to work together with the workingmen's organizations for the realization of the Social Republic."[232] [232] _L'Humanité_, August 8, 1911. Also among the industrial and commercial middle classes there are some who look with favor on syndicalism. The French middle classes have for the last quarter of a century tried to organize themselves for resistance against the "financial feudalism" from which they suffer. Several organizations have been formed among the small merchants and masters, and in 1908 the "Association for the Defense of the Middle Classes" was constituted. The president of this Association, M. Colrat, wrote: "The ideas of the bourgeois syndicalism on the future are the same as those of the workingmen's syndicalism.... Far from contradicting one another, the syndicalism of the middle classes and the syndicalism of the working-classes reinforce each other in many respects, and notwithstanding many vexations, they lead to a state of relative equilibrium by a certain equality of opposing forces."[233] In the struggle against the big capitalists the leaders of the middle classes appear to be ready to form an alliance with the working-class. There can be little doubt, however, that the middle classes in general are opposed to the revolutionary ideals of the syndicalists. To succeed, the revolutionary syndicalists must bring about a change in the attitude of these classes, for the history of France has shown that the fear of "Communism" may throw the middle classes into the arms of a Caesar. [233] M. Colrat, _Vers l'équilibre social_, quoted by Mr. J. L. Puecht, "Le Mouvement des Classes Moyennes," in _La Grande Revue_, Dec., 1910. Whatever possibility may become a reality, France seems destined to go through a series of more or less serious struggles. Hampered by the elements which hark back to the past and which have not yet lost all importance, disorganized by the revolutionists who look forward to the future for the realization of their ideal, the Republic of France is still lacking the stability which could save her from upheavals and from historical surprises. The highly centralized form of government and the dominating position which Paris still holds in the life of France make such surprises easier and more tempting than would otherwise be the case. The process of social readjustment which is going on all over the world at present, therefore, must lead in France to a more or less catastrophic collision of the discordant elements which her political and economic history have brought into existence. The struggle has already begun. 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Estey, James Arthur. _Revolutionary Syndicalism_. London, 1913. Faguet, E. _Le socialisme en 1907_. Paris, 1907. Festy, Octave. _Le mouvement ouvrier au debut de la Monarchie de Juillet_. Paris. _Forces productives de la France_. Conferences organisées a la Société des anciens élèves de l'École libre des Sciences politiques. Paris, 1909. Franck, Charles. _Les Bourses du Travail et la Confédération Générale du Travail_. Paris, 1910. Fribourg, E. E. _L'Association internationale des travailleurs_. Paris, 1871. Garin, J. _L'anarchie et les anarchistes_. Paris. 1885. Georgi, E. _Theorie und Praxis des Generalstreiks in der modernen Arbeiterbewegung_. Jena, 1908. _Grande Revue_. Monthly. Griffuelhes, V. _Voyage révolutionnaire; impressions d'un propagandiste_. Paris, 1910. Griffuelhes, V. _L'action syndicaliste_. Paris, 1908. Griffuelhes, V. et Niel, L. _Les objectifs de nos luttes de classes_. Paris, 1909. _Guerre Sociale, La_, revolutionary weekly edited by Gustave Hervé. Guesde, J. _Le Socialisme au jour le jour_. Paris, 1899. Guesde, J. et Lafargue, P. _Le programme du parti ouvrier_. Paris, 1897. 4th edition. Guillaume, James. _L'Internationale, documents et souvenirs_. 4 vols. Paris, 1905-10. Hamon. A. _Le Socialisme et le congrès de Londres_. Paris, 1897. Hanoteaux, G. _Modern France_. 4 vols. New York, 1903-09. Harley, J. H. _Syndicalism_. London, 1912. Hervé, Gustave. _My Country, Right or Wrong_. English translation by Guy Bowman. London, 1911. Hubert-Valleroux, P. _La Co-opération en France_. Paris, 1904. Humbert, Sylvain. _Le Mouvement Syndical_. Vol. 9 of Histoire des partis socialistes, edited by Zévaès. Paris, 1912. Humbert, Sylvain. _Les Possibilistes_. Vol. 4 of Histoire des partis socialistes, edited by Zévaès. Paris, 1911. _L'Humanité_. Socialist daily published since 1905. Contains many articles by revolutionary and reformist syndicalists. Isambert, G. _Les idées socialistes en France de 1815 à 1848_. Paris, 1905. Jouhaux, L. _Le Syndicalisme français_. Bruxelles, 1911. _Journal des Débats_. Weekly. _Journal des Économistes_. Monthly. Kirkup, Th. _A History of Socialism_. Third edition. New York, 1906. Kritsky. _L'Évolution du syndicalisme en France_. Paris, 1908. Labusquière. _La Troisième République_. Paris, 1909. Lagardelle, H. _L'Évolution des syndicats ouvriers en France_. Paris, 1901. Lagardelle, H. _La grève générale et le socialisme_. Paris, 1905. Lagardelle, H. _Le socialisme ouvrier_. Paris, 1911. Lagardelle, H. "Die Syndikalistische Bewegung in Frankreich." _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_. Tübingen, 1908. Laurin, M. T. _Les Instituteurs et le syndicalisme_. Paris, 1908. Lavy, A. _L'Oeuvre de Millerand_. Paris, 1902. Leroy, Maxime. _Syndicats et Services Publics_. Paris, 1909. Levasseur, E. _Histoire des classes ouvrières et d'industrie en France avant 1789_. 2 vols. Second edition. Paris, 1900. Levasseur, E. _Histoire des classes ouvrières et d'industrie en France de 1789 à 1870_. 2 vols. Second edition. Paris, 1903. Levine, Louis. "The Development of Syndicalism in America." _Political Science Quarterly_, September, 1913. Levine, Louis. "Direct Action." _Forum_. New York, May, 1912. Levine, Louis. "Syndicalism." _North American Review_. July, 1912. Levine, Louis. "The Standpoint of Syndicalism." _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_. 1912. Lewis, Arthur D. _Syndicalism and the General Strike_. London, 1912. _Libertaire, Le_. Anarchist weekly. Lorulot, André. _Le Syndicalisme et la transformation sociale_. Arcueil, 1909. Louis, Paul. _Histoire du socialisme français_. Paris, 1901. Louis, P. _Histoire du mouvement syndical en France_. Paris, 1907. Louis, P. _Le syndicalisme contre l'état_. Paris, 1910. Louis, P. "Die Einheitsbestrebungen im französischen Sozialismus." _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_. Tübingen, 1909. Macdonald, J. Ramsay. _Syndicalism_. 1912. Méline, J. _The Return to the Land_. Tr. from the French. New York, 1907. Milhaud, A. _La lutte des classes à travers l'histoire et la politique_. Paris. Millerand, A. _Le socialisme réformiste français_. Paris, 1903. Molinari, G. _Les Bourses du Travail_. Paris, 1893. Molinari, G. _Le mouvement socialiste et les réunions publiques_. Paris, 1872. _Mouvement Socialiste_. Published since 1899. Particularly valuable for students of revolutionary syndicalism. Orry, Albert. _Les Socialistes Indépendant_. Vol. 8 of Histoire des partis socialistes, edited by Zévaès. Paris, 1911. Parti Socialiste. Proceedings of annual conventions (1904-1913). Pataud, E. et Pouget, E. _Comment nous ferons la révolution_. Paris, 1909. Translated into English by Charlotte and Frederick Charles, under title: _Syndicalism and the Co-operative Commonwealth_. London, 1913. Pawlowski, A. _La confédération générale du travail_. Paris, 1910. Pelloutier, F. _Le congrès général du parti socialiste français_. Paris, 1900. Pelloutier, F. _Histoire des bourses du travail_. Paris, 1902. Pelloutier, Maurice. _Fernand Pelloutier, sa vie, son oeuvre_. Paris, 1911. Pelloutier, F. et M. _La vie ouvrière_. Paris, 1900. Perdiguier, Agricol. _Le livre du compagnonnage_. Second edition. Paris, 1841. Pierrot. _Syndicalism et révolution_. Second edition. Paris, 1908. Pouget, E. _Le sabotage_. Paris, 1910. English translation by Arturo M. Giovannitti. Pouget, E. _Les bases du syndicalisme_. Paris. Pouget, S. _Le syndicat_. Paris. Pouget, E. _Le parti du travail_. Paris. Pouget, E. _La confédération générale du travail_. Paris, 1908. Prolo, Jacques. _Les Anarchistes_. Vol. 10 of Histoire des partis socialistes, edited by Zévaès. Paris, 1912. Proudhon, J. P. _De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières_. Paris, 1865. Renard, Georges. _La république de 1848_. Paris, 1907. Renard, G. _Syndicats, trades unions, et corporations_. Paris, 1909. Rénault, Ch. _Histoire des grèves_. Paris, 1887. _Revue Socialiste_. Monthly. _Revue Syndicaliste_. Monthly published from May, 1905, to January, 1910. Séances du Congrès Ouvrier de France. Session de 1876. Paris, 1877. Seilhac, Leon de. _Syndicats ouvriers, fédérations, bourses du travail_. Paris, 1902. Seilhac, Leon de. _Les congrès ouvriers en France_. Paris, 1899. Seilhac, Leon de. _Le monde socialiste_. Paris, 1896. Severac, G. _Guide pratique des syndicats professionnels_. Paris, 1908. Smith, L. _Les coalitions et les grèves_. Paris, 1885. _Socialiste, Le_. Organe central du Parti Socialiste Français. Sombart, Werner. _Socialism and the Social Movement_. English tr. by M. Epstein. New York, 1909. Sorel, G. _L'avenir socialiste des syndicats_. Revised edition. Paris, 1901. Sorel, G. _La décomposition du marxisme_. Paris, 1908. Sorel, G. _Illusions du progrès_. Paris, 1911. Second edition. Sorel, G. _Réflexions sur la violence_. Paris, 1910. Second edition. Sorel, G. _Introduction à l'économie moderne_. Second edition. Paris. Sorel, G. _La révolution dreyfusienne_. Second edition. Paris, 1911. Sorel, G. "La polémique pour l'interprétation du marxisme." _Revue internationale de sociologie_. Paris, 1900. Sorel, G. "L'éthique du socialisme." _Morale Sociale_. Paris, 1900. Spargo, John. _Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism, and Socialism_. New York, 1913. Stoddart, J. T. _The New Socialism_. London, 1910. St. Leon, E. Martin. _Le compagnnonnage_. Paris, 1901. _Syndicalisme et socialisme_. Paris, 1908. Syndicat et syndicalisme; opinions par Griffuelhes, Yvetot, Pouget, etc. Paris. Terrail-Mermeix. _La France socialiste_. Paris, 1886. Terrail-Mermeix. _Le syndicalisme contre le socialisme_. Paris, 1907. _Terrassier, Le_. Published bi-weekly by some syndicats of the building-trades. _Temps Nouveaux_. Anarchist weekly. Thomas, Albert. _Le second empire_. Paris, 1907. Tridon, André. _The New Unionism_. New York, 1913. _Vie Ouvrière_. Revue Syndicaliste Bi-mensuelle. Paris. Villetard, Edmond. _History of the International_. Tr. from the French, 1874. _Voix du Peuple_. Organe de la Confédération Générale du Travail. Warbasse, James Peter. _The Ethics of Sabotage_. Pamphlet. New York, 1913. Ware, Fabian. _The Worker and his Country_. London, 1912. Warin, Robert. _Les Syndicats Jaunes_. Paris, 1908. Webb, Sydney and Beatrice. _An Examination of Syndicalism_. London, 1912. Webb, B. and S. _History of Trade Unionism_. Weill, George. _Histoire du mouvement social en France_. First edition, 1904. Second edition, 1910. Weill, G. "Die Formen der Arbeiterbewegung in Frankreich." _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_. Tübingen, 1909. Yvetot, George. _A. B. C. syndicaliste_. Paris. Yvetot, G. _Manuel du soldat_. Paris. Zévaès, Alexandre. _Histoire des partis socialistes en France_. 11 volumes. Paris, 1911. Zévaès, Alexandre. _Le Socialisme en France depuis 1871_. Paris, 1908. Zévaès, Alexandre. _Le Syndicalisme Contemporain_. Paris, 1911. Zévaès, Alexandre. _Le Socialisme en 1912_. Vol. 11 of Histoire des partis socialistes. Paris, 1912. Zévaès, Alexandre. _De la semaine sanglante au Congrès de Marseille (1871-1879)_. Vol. 2 of Histoire des partis socialistes, edited by Zévaès. Paris, 1911. Zévaès, Alexandre. _Les Guesdistes_. Vol. 3 of Histoire des partis socialistes. Paris, 1911. [Transcriber's note: List of corrected printers' errors: pages 14, 15, 48, 132, 145, 183 and 189 "working class" changed to "working-class" Page 5 "devolpment" changed to "development" ("it is also a development of the French Labor Movement.") page 13 "coöperative" changed to "co-operative" ("Revolution of 1848 and the co-operative movement") and ("Failure of co-operative central bank in 1868") page 13 "coöperation" changed to "co-operation" ("--Syndicats and co-operation--") page 16 -- added ("French workingmen--Causes of the") page 30 "Perdigiuer" changed to "Perdiguier" ("Agricol Perdiguier, _Le Livre du Compagnonnage_, 1841.") page 32 "resistance" change to "résistance" ("was the _société de résistance_") Page 32 "." replaced with "," ("_Les Associations Professionelles_, vol. i. pp. 201-203.") page 35 "presecuted" changed to "persecuted" ("organizations were persecuted;") page 40 "Cöopération" changed to "Co-opération" ("_La Co-opération_ (Paris, 1904)") page 51 "bourgois" changed to "bourgeois" ("separation which existed between bourgeois and workingmen") page 52 footnote reference altered, referred to wrong footnote page 56 "hemmoroids" changed to "hemorrhoids" ("which it leaves to the hemorrhoids of bourgeois of every stamp") page 62 "Counseil" changed to "Conseil" ("(the _Conseil fédéral national_)") page 65 "Arbeiter-bewegung" changed to "Arbeiterbewegung" ("_Theorie und Praxis des Generalstreiks in der modernen Arbeiterbewegung_") page 68 missing "not" added ("they argued that the general strike could not be successful") page 71 "employes" changed to "employees" ("of workingmen and of employees of both sexes") page 71 missing " added ("(_Parti syndical politicien_)."") page 75 missing "(" added ("_Bourses du Travail_ (1896)") page 80 "Nouveoux" changed to "Nouveaux" ("_Temps Nouveaux_, 23 Mars, 1901.") page 93 "Alemanists" changed to "Allemanists" ("defended by Allemanists and anarchists,") page 93 "Guerard" changed to "Guérard" ("M. Guérard who defended the idea before the Congress. Said M. Guérard:") page 94 "Guerard" changed to "Guérard" ("And M. Guérard, applauded by the audience,") page 96 "recomended" changed to "recommended" ("To this end the report recommended") page 97 "sub-committes" changed to "sub-committees" ("Only twenty Bourses formed sub-committees.") page 98 "Congès" changed to "Congrès" ("_X Congrès National Corporatif_") page 101 removed " ("the completest possible emancipation.") page 103 "posesses" changed to "possess" ("the workingmen who possess nothing.") page 104 "Guerard" changed to "Guérard" ("The secretary of the Confederation, M. Guérard,") page 104 , removed "," from "complained that the _Voix du Peuple_" page 109 "bourgeoise" changed to "bourgeoisie" ("alliance of the bourgeoisie and of the working-class") page 111 footnote reference altered, referred to wrong footnote page 113 removed " ("stop the offensive movement of the workingmen.") page 114 missing " added (""independently of all parliamentarism"") page 116 "Parlémentaires" changed to "Parlementaires" ("_Chambre des Deputés, Débats Parlementaires_") page 117 "Francais" changed to "Français" ("_Parti Socialiste Français_") page 117 "Jaures" changed to "Jaurès" ("and J. Jaurès outlined a plan according") page 126 "," replaced with "." ("the strike, the boycott, the label, and _sabotage_.") page 127 missing "." added ("It is a revolutionary fact of great value.") page 129 "merchchandise" change to "merchandise" ("and of perishable merchandise.") page 130 missing " added to end of phrase ("source of intrigues and of "wire-pulling."") page 135 "counterbalance" changed to "counter-balance" ("will counter-balance the centralizing tendencies") page 137 "particulary" changed to "particularly" ("Moreover, the syndicats, particularly") page 137 "train" changed to "trains" ("The very struggle which the syndicats carry on trains the workingmen") page 138 "workinmen" changed to "workingmen" ("The mass of workingmen") page 138 "massess" changed to "masses" ("keep the masses as quiet,") page 154 "Jaures" changed to "Jaurès" ("by M. Jaurès "the metaphysician of revolutionary syndicalism,"") page 155 "Movement" changed to "Mouvement" ("_Mouvement Socialiste_") page 155 "Sozialwissenchaft" changed to "Sozialwissenschaft" ("_Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_") page 156 "Les" changed "Le" ("_Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (May, 1908), p. 390.") page 157 "Jaures" changed to "Jaurès" ("just as Kropotkin, Jaurès, Proudhon") page 158 "Guerard" changed to "Guérard" ("General Confederation of Labor, M. Guérard, wrote,") page 159 "approfundir" changed to "approfondir" ("his life in the deepening (_approfondir_)") page 164 "," replaced with "." ("relations between the adhering federations.") page 164 "it" replaced with "its" ("This section appoints its own secretary,") page 169 "idemnity" changed to "indemnity" ("employment bureaus with indemnity in 1901-2.") page 170 "Economistes" changed to "Économistes" ("_Journal des Économistes_") page 172 "Guerard" changed to "Guérard"("and by M. Guérard, the delegate of the railway workers.") page 177 "Debats" changed to "Débats" ("_Journal des Débats_ (27 April, 1906), p. 769.") page 181 "economie" changed to "economic" ("it was an instrument in economic struggles") page 182 "coöperation" changed to "co-operation" ("a co-operation of various political elements.") page 187 "," replaced with "." ("of the government. The reports of the") page 190 "Offie" changed to "Office" ("employees grievances of the Post Office employees") page 190 missing " added (""revolutionaries"") page 191 "coöperation" changed to "co-operation" ("soliciting the co-operation of the government.") page 196 extra "the" removed ("the passage of the three years'") page 200 missing " added ("" ... but particularly divergence of aims."") page 200 "sydicalists" changed to "syndicalists" ("The third group of revolutionary syndicalists") page 203 "Vivani" changed to "Viviani" ("(_e. g._, Millerand, Viviani, Briand)") page 209 "Economistes" changed to "Économistes" ("_Journal des Économistes_") page 211 extra "and" removed ("the strikers at home and creates") page 211 "yeas" changed to "years" ("in recent years") page 211 "Fèdèration" changed to "Fédération" ("_Fédération du Livre_") page 214 "sytematized" changed to "systematized" ("the principles systematized,") page 224 "Etude" changed to "Étude" ("_Étude historique, économique et juridique sur les coalitions et les grèves_") page 225 "Ecole" changed to "École" ("Conferences organisées a la Société des anciens élèves de l'École libre des Sciences politiques.") page 226 "Evolution" changed to "Évolution" ("Kritsky. _L'Évolution du syndicalisme en France_.") page 226 "," replaced with "." ("Louis, Paul.")] 
41953	----	CYRUS HALL McCORMICK His Life and Work [Illustration: C. H. McCormick (signature)] CYRUS HALL McCORMICK His Life and Work by HERBERT N. CASSON Author of "The Romance of Steel," "The Romance of the Reaper," etc. Illustrated [Illustration] Chicago A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909 Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909 Published October, 1909 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England The Lakeside Press R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company Chicago INTRODUCTION Whoever wishes to understand the making of the United States must read the life of Cyrus Hall McCormick. No other one man so truly represented the dawn of the industrial era,--the grapple of the pioneer with the crudities of a new country, the replacing of muscle with machinery, and the establishment of better ways and better times in farm and city alike. Beginning exactly one hundred years ago, the life of McCormick spanned the heroic period of our industrial advancement, when great things were done by great individuals. To know McCormick is to know what type of man it was who created the United States of the nineteenth century. And now that a new century has arrived, with a new type of business development, it may be especially instructive to review a life that was so structural and so fundamental. As Professor Simon Newcomb has observed, "It is impressive to think how few men we should have had to remove from the earth during the past three centuries to have stopped the advance of our civilization." From this point of view, there are few, if any, who will appear to be more indispensable than McCormick. He was not brilliant. He was not picturesque. He was no caterer for fame or favor. But he was as necessary as bread. He fed his country as truly as Washington created it and Lincoln preserved it. He abolished our agricultural peasantry so effectively that we have had to import our muscle from foreign countries ever since. And he added an immense province to the new empire of mind over matter, the expansion of which has been and is now the highest and most important of all human endeavors. As the master builder of the modern business of manufacturing farm machinery, McCormick set in motion so many forces of human betterment that the fruitfulness of his life can never be fully told. There are to-day in all countries more than one hundred thousand patents for inventions that were meant to lighten the labor of the farmer. And the cereal crop of the world has risen with incredible gains, until this year its value will be not far from ten thousand millions of dollars,--very nearly the equivalent of all the gold in coin and jewelry and bullion. So, if there is not power and fascination in this story, it will be the fault of the story-teller, and not of his theme. The story itself is destined to be told and retold. It cannot be forgotten, because it is one of those rare life-histories that blazon out the peculiar genius of the nation under the stress of a new experience. As it is passed on from generation to generation, it may finally be polished into an Epic of the Wheat,--the tale of Man's long wrestle with Famine, and how he won at last by creating a world-wide system for the production and distribution of the Bread. H. N. C. CHICAGO, _September 1, 1909_. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE WORLD'S NEED OF A REAPER 1 II. THE McCORMICK HOME 13 III. THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 26 IV. SIXTEEN YEARS OF PIONEERING 48 V. THE BUILDING OF THE REAPER BUSINESS 68 VI. THE STRUGGLE TO PROTECT PATENTS 91 VII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE REAPER 105 VIII. THE CONQUEST OF EUROPE 123 IX. McCORMICK AS A MANUFACTURER 139 X. CYRUS H. McCORMICK AS A MAN 154 XI. THE REAPER AND THE NATION 188 XII. THE REAPER AND THE WORLD 203 XIII. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD 234 INDEX 249 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK _Frontispiece_ OLD BLACKSMITH SHOP ON WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA 14 THE OLD McCORMICK HOMESTEAD, WALNUT GROVE FARM, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA 18 PORTRAIT OF ROBERT McCORMICK 22 PORTRAIT OF MRS. MARY ANN HALL McCORMICK 24 NEW PROVIDENCE CHURCH, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA 28 FACSIMILES FROM MANUSCRIPT BY MR. McCORMICK, GIVING HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE REAPER 30 FIRST PRACTICAL REAPING MACHINE 34 THE FIELD ON WHICH THE FIRST McCORMICK REAPER WAS TRIED, WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA 38 INTERIOR OF BLACKSMITH SHOP IN WHICH C. H. McCORMICK BUILT HIS FIRST REAPER 42 REAPING WITH CRUDE KNIVES IN INDIA 50 REAPING WITH SICKLES IN ALGERIA 56 REAPING WITH CRADLES IN ILLINOIS 60 AN EARLY ADVERTISEMENT FOR McCORMICK'S PATENT VIRGINIA REAPER 64 THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847, ON WHICH SEATS WERE PLACED FOR THE DRIVER AND THE RAKER 70 PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1839 76 PANORAMIC VIEW SHOWING THE McCORMICK REAPER WORKS BEFORE THE CHICAGO FIRE OF 1871, ON CHICAGO RIVER, EAST OF RUSH STREET BRIDGE 82 MEN OF PROGRESS 96 THE FIRST McCORMICK SELF-RAKE REAPING MACHINE 112 PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1858 120 PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1867 136 McCORMICK REAPER CUTTING ON A SIDE HILL IN PENNSYLVANIA 144 REAPER DRAWN BY OXEN IN ALGERIA 150 THE REAPER IN HEAVY GRAIN 166 HARVESTING NEAR SPOKANE, WASHINGTON 174 PORTRAIT OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1883 182 THE WORKS OF THE McCORMICK HARVESTING MACHINE COMPANY 190 McCORMICK REAPER IN USE IN RUSSIA 196 CHART SHOWING RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION OF VALUES BY PRODUCING COUNTRIES OF 1908 OF WORLD'S PRODUCTION OF FIVE PRINCIPAL GRAINS 206 CHART SHOWING RELATIVE VALUES IN 1908 OF THE WORLD'S PRODUCTION OF THE FIVE PRINCIPAL GRAINS 206 MAMMOTH WHEAT-FIELD IN SOUTH DAKOTA WITH TWENTY HARVESTERS IN LINE 214 HARVESTING IN ROUMANIA 222 HARVESTING HEAVY GRAIN, SOUTH AMERICA 230 INDIANS REAPING THEIR HARVEST, WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA 236 A HARVEST SCENE UPON A RUSSIAN ESTATE 242 CYRUS HALL McCORMICK HIS LIFE AND WORK CHAPTER I THE WORLD'S NEED OF A REAPER Either by a very strange coincidence, or as a phenomenon of the instinct of self-preservation, the year 1809, which was marked by famine and tragedy in almost every quarter of the globe, was also a most prolific birthyear for men of genius. Into this year came Poe, Blackie, and Tennyson, the poet laureates of America, Scotland, and England; Chopin and Mendelssohn, the apostles of sweeter music; Lincoln, who kept the United States united; Baron Haussemann, the beautifier of Paris; Proudhon, the prophet of communism; Lord Houghton, who did much in science, and Darwin, who did most; FitzGerald, who made known the literature of Persia; Bonar, who wrote hymns; Kinglake, who wrote histories; Holmes, who wrote sentiment and humor; Gladstone, who ennobled the politics of the British empire; and McCormick, who gave the world cheap bread, and whose life-story is now set before us in the following pages. None of these eminent men, except Lincoln, began life in as remote and secluded a corner of the world as McCormick. His father's farm was at the northern edge of Rockbridge County, Virginia, in a long, thin strip of fairly fertile land that lay crumpled between the Blue Ridge on the east and the Alleghanies on the west. It was eighteen miles south of the nearest town of Staunton, and a hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. The whole region was a quiet, industrious valley, whose only local tragedy had been an Indian massacre in 1764, in which eighty white settlers had been put to death by a horde of savages. The older men and women of 1809 could remember when wolf-heads were used as currency; and when the stocks and the ducking stool stood in the main street of Staunton. Also, they were fond of telling how the farmers of the valley, when they heard that the Revolution had begun in Massachusetts, carted 137 barrels of flour to Frederick, one hundred miles north, and ordered it sent forthwith to the needy people of Boston. This grew to be one of the most popular tales of local history,--an epic of the patriots who fought for liberty, not with gunpowder but flour. By 1809 the more severe hardships of the pioneer days had been overcome. Houses were still built of logs, but they were larger and better furnished. In the McCormick homestead, for instance, there was a parlor which had the dignity of mahogany furniture, and the luxury of books and a carpet. The next-door county of Augusta boasted of thirteen carriages and one hundred and two cut-glass decanters. And the chief sources of excitement had evolved from Indian raids and wolf-hunts into elections, lotteries, and litigation. It was perhaps fortunate for the child McCormick that he was born in such an out-of-the-way nook, for the reason that in 1809 almost the whole civilized world was in a turmoil. In England mobs of unemployed men and women were either begging for bread or smashing the new machines that had displaced them in the factories. In the Tyrol, sixty thousand peasants, who had revolted from the intolerable tyranny of the Bavarians, were being beaten into submission. In Servia, the Turks were striking down a rebellion by building a pyramid of thirty thousand Servian skulls,--a tragic pile which may still be seen midway between Belgrade and Stamboul. Sweden was being trampled under the feet of a Russian army; and the greater part of Holland, Austria, Germany, and Spain had been so scourged by the hosts of Napoleon as to be one vast shamble of misery and blood. In the United States there was no war, but there certainly did exist an abnormal surplus of adversity. The young republic, which had fewer white citizens than the two cities of New York and Chicago possess to-day, was being terrorized in the West by the Indian Confederacy of Tecumseh; and its flag had been flouted by England, France, and the Barbary pirates. Its total revenue was much less than the value of last year's hay crop in Vermont. It was desperately poor, with its people housed for the most part in log cabins, clothed in homespun, and fed every winter on food that would cause a riot in any modern penitentiary. There was no such thing known, except in dreams, as the use of machinery in the cultivation of the soil. The average farmer, in all civilized countries, believed that an iron plow would poison the soil. He planted his grain by the phases of the moon; kept his cows outside in winter; and was unaware that glanders was contagious. Joseph Jenks, of Lynn, had invented the scythe in 1655, "for the more speedy cutting of grasse"; and a Scotchman had improved it into the grain cradle. But the greater part of the grain in all countries was, a century ago, being cut by the same little hand sickle that the Egyptians had used on the banks of the Nile and the Babylonians in the valley of the Euphrates. The wise public men of that day knew how urgent was the need of better methods in farming. Fifteen years before, George Washington had said, "I know of no pursuit in which more real and important service can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture." But it was generally believed that the task was hopeless; and any effort to encourage inventors had hitherto been a failure. An English society, for instance, had offered a prize of one hundred and fifty dollars for a better method of reaping grain, and the only answer it received was from a traveller who had seen the Belgians reaping with a two-foot scythe and a cane; the cane was used to push the grain back before it was cut, so that more grain could be cut at a blow. As to whether or not he received the prize for this discovery is not recorded. The city of New York in 1809 was not larger than the Des Moines of to-day, and not nearly so well built and prosperous. Two miles to the north of it, through swamps and forests, lay the clearing that is now known as Herald Square. There was no street railway, nor cooking range, nor petroleum, nor savings bank, nor friction match, nor steel plow, neither in New York nor anywhere else. And the one pride and boast of the city was Fulton's new steamboat, the _Clermont_, which could waddle to Albany and back, if all went well, in three days or possibly four. As for social conditions, they were so hopelessly bad that few had the heart to improve them. The house that we call a "slum tenement" to-day would have made an average American hotel in 1809. Rudeness and rowdyism were the rule. Drunkenness was as common, and as little considered, as smoking is at the present time; there was no organized opposition to it of any kind, except one little temperance society at Saratoga. There were no sewers, and much of the water was drawn from putrid wells. Many faces were pitted with small-pox. Cholera and yellow jack or strange hunger-fevers cut wide swaths of death again and again among the helpless people. There was no science, of course, and no sanitation, and no medical knowledge except a medley of drastic measures which were apt to be as dangerous as the disease. The desperate struggle to survive appears to have been so intense that there was little or no social sympathy. There was very little pity for the pauper,--he was auctioned off to be half starved by the lowest bidder; and for the criminal there was no feeling except the utmost repulsion and abhorrence. It was found, for instance, in 1809, that in the jail in New York there were seventy-two women, white and black, in one chairless, bedless room, all kept in order by a keeper with a whip, and fed like cattle from a tub of mush, some eating with spoons and some with cups and some with their unwashed hands. And the men's room of that jail, says this report, "is worse than the women's." Also, in 1809, the chronic quantity of misery had been terribly augmented by the Embargo,--that most ruinous invention of President Jefferson, whereby American ships were swept from the sea, with a loss to capital of twelve millions a year, and a loss to labor of thirty thousand places of employment. According to this amazing act of political folly, every market-boat sailing from New Jersey to New York--every sailboat or canoe--had to give bail to the federal government before it dared to leave the dock. Whatever flimsy little structure of industry had been built up in thirty years of independence, was thrown prostrate by this Embargo. A hundred thousand men stood on the streets with helpless hands, begging for work or bread. The jails were jammed with debtors,--1,300 in New York alone. The newspapers were overrun by bankruptcy notices. The coffee-houses were empty. The ships lay mouldering at the docks. In those hand-to-mouth days there was no piled-up reserve of food or wealth,--no range of towering wheat-banks at every port; and the seaboard cities lay for a time as desolate as though they had been ravaged by a pestilence. In that darkest year the hardscrabble little republic learned and remembered one of its most important lessons,--the fact that liberty and independence are not enough. Here it was, an absolutely free nation,--_the only free civilized country in the world_,--and yet as miserable and poor and hungry as though it were a mere province of a European empire. So, by degrees, there came a change in the American point of view,--a swing from politicalism to industrialism. The mass of the people were now surfeited with oratory and politics and war. They began to settle down to hard facts and hard work. Instead of declaiming about the rights of man, they began to build roads and weave cloth and organize stock companies. Slowly they came to realize that a second Revolution must be wrought,--a Revolution that would enable them to write a Declaration of Independence against Hunger and Hardship and Hand Labor. Up to the year 1809 the chief topics of interest in American legislatures and grocery stores were the blockades, the Embargo, the treaties, the badness of Napoleon, the blunders of Jefferson, and the rudeness of England and France. But after that year the chief topics of interest came to be of a wholly different sort. They were such as the tariff, the currency, the building of factories and canals, the opening of public lands, the problem of slavery, and the development of the West. The hardy, victorious little nation began to talk less and work more; and so by a natural evolution of thought the era of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson came to an end, and the era of Robert Fulton and Peter Cooper and Cyrus Hall McCormick was in its dawn. From 1810 to 1820 there was a rush to the land. Twenty million acres were sold, in most cases for two dollars an acre. Thousands of men who had been sailors turned their backs on the sea and learned to till the soil. Town laborers, too, whose wages had been fifty cents a day, tramped westward along the Indian trails and seized upon scraps of land that lay ownerless. Nine out of ten Americans began to farm with the utmost energy and perseverance,--_but with what tools?_ With the wooden plow, the sickle, the scythe, and the flail, the same rude hand-labor tools that the nations of antiquity had tried to farm with,--the tools of failure and slavery and famine. Such was the predicament of this republic for the first seventy-five years of its life. It could not develop beyond the struggle for food. It was chained to the bread-line. It could not feed itself. Not even nine-tenths of its people could produce enough grain to satisfy its hunger. Again and again, until 1858, wheat had to be imported by this nation of farmers. So, as we now look back over those basic years, from the summit of the twentieth century, we can see how timely an event it was that in the dark year 1809 the inventor of the Reaper was born. CHAPTER II THE McCORMICK HOME IF we wish to solve the riddle of the Reaper,--to know why it was not invented in any of the older nations that rose to greatness and perished in so many instances for lack of bread,--we can find the key to the answer in the home and the ancestry of the McCormicks. We shall see that the family into which he was born represented in the highest degree that new species of farmer,--self-reliant, studious, enterprising, and inventive,--which was developed in the pioneer period of American history. Robert McCormick, the father of Cyrus, was in his most prosperous days the owner of four farms, having in all 1,800 acres. But his acres were only one-half of his interests. He owned as well two grist-mills, two sawmills, a smelting-furnace, a distillery, and a blacksmith-shop. He did much more than till the soil. He hammered iron and shaped wood, and did both well, as those can testify who have seen an iron crane and walnut cabinet that were made by his hands. More than this, he invented new types of farm machinery,--a hemp-brake, a clover huller, a bellows, and a threshing-machine. The little log workshop still stands where Robert McCormick and his sons hammered and tinkered on rainy days. It is about twenty-four feet square, with an uneven floor, and a heavy door that was hung in place by home-made nails and home-made hinges. There was a forge on either side of the chimney, so that two men could work at the same time; and one small rusted anvil is all that now remains of its equipment. [Illustration: OLD BLACKSMITH SHOP ON WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA In this shop the first practical reaping machine was built by Cyrus Hall McCormick in 1831] As for the McCormick homestead itself, there were so many manufacturing activities in it that it was literally half a home and half a factory. Shoes were cobbled, cotton, flax, and wool were spun into yarn, woven into cloth, and fashioned into clothes for the whole family. The stockings and mitts and caps were all home-made, and so was the cradle in which the eight children were rocked. What with the moulding of candles, and sewing of carpet-rags, and curing of hams, and boiling of soap, and drying of herbs, and stringing of apples, the McCormick home was practically a school of many trades for the people who lived under its roof. Robert McCormick was an educated man. He was not at all like the poor serfs who tilled the soil of Europe. He belonged to the same general class as those other eminent farmers,--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Webster, and Clay. He was a reader of deep books and a student of astronomy. Lawyers and clergymen would frequently drive to his house to consult with him. And in mechanical pursuits he had an unusual degree of skill, having been born the son of a weaver and accustomed from babyhood to the use of machinery. He was a gentle, reflective man, with a genius for self-reliance in any great or little emergency. When a new stone church was built, and he found that his pew was so dark that he could not see to read the hymns, he promptly cut a small window in the wall,--a peculiarity which is still pointed out to visitors. On another occasion, with this same spirit of resourcefulness, he drove the spectre of yellow fever from the home. This dreaded disease was gathering in a full harvest in the farm-houses of the county. It had cut down three of Mrs. McCormick's family,--her father, mother, and brother,--and had swung its fatal scythe toward the boy Cyrus, who was then five years of age. When the doctor was called, he insisted that the child should be bled. "But you bled all the others, and they died," said Robert McCormick quietly; "I'll have no more bleedings." No remedy for yellow fever, except bleeding, was known to the doctors of a century ago, so Robert McCormick at once invented a remedy. He devised a treatment of hot baths, hot teas, and bitter herbs; and Cyrus was rescued from the fever and restored to perfect health. Such a man as Robert McCormick would have been practically impossible in any other country at that time. There, in that isolated hollow of the Virginian mountains, he was a citizen of a free country. His vote had helped to make Thomas Jefferson President. He was a proprietor, not a serf nor a tenant. He was not compelled to divide up every cord of wood and bushel of wheat with a king or a landlord. Whatever he earned was his own. He was an American; and thus, in the endless chain of cause and effect, we can trace the origin of the Reaper back, if we wish, to George Washington and Christopher Columbus. The whole spirit of the young republic pushed towards the invention of labor-saving machinery,--towards replacing the hoe with the steel plow, the needle with the sewing-machine, the puddling-furnace with the Bessemer converter, the sickle with the Reaper. And it is fair to say that the social forces that represented the American spirit were focused to a remarkable degree in the home in which Cyrus H. McCormick had his birth and his education. There was another contributing influence, too, in the making of McCormick,--the fact that the blood of his father and mother came to him in a pure strain of Scotch-Irish. It was this inheritance that endowed him with the tenacity and unconquerable resiliency that enabled him not only to invent a new machine, but to create a new industry and hold fast to it against all comers. The Scotch-Irish! The full story of what the United States owes to this fire-hardened race has never yet been told,--it is a tale that will some day be expanded into a fascinating volume of American history. It is not possible to understand either the character or the success of McCormick without knowing the Scotch-Irish influences that shaped him. The one man who did more to launch the Scotch-Irish on their conquering way, so it appears, was John Knox. This preacher-statesman, "who never feared the face of man," forced Queen Mary from her throne, and established self-government and a pure religion in Scotland, about seventy-five years after the discovery of America. This brought English armies down upon the Scotch, and for very nearly two centuries the struggle was bitter and desperate, the Scotch refusing to compromise or to bate one jot or tittle of a covenant which many of them had signed with their blood. [Illustration: THE OLD McCORMICK HOMESTEAD, WALNUT GROVE FARM, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA] At the height of this conflict, about 300,000 of these Scotch Covenanters left their ravaged country and set out in a fleet of little vessels for the north of Ireland. Here they settled in the barren and boggy province of Ulster, and presto! in the course of two generations Ulster became the most prosperous, moral, and intelligent section of the British empire. Its people were, beyond a doubt, the best educated masses of that period, either in Great Britain or anywhere else. They were the most skilful of farmers. They wove woollen cloth and the finest of linen. They built schools and churches and factories. But in 1698, the English Parliament, jealous of such progressiveness, passed laws against their manufacturing, and Ulster was overrun, as Scotland had been, with the police and the soldiery of England. The Scotch-Irish fought, of course, even against such odds. They had never learned how to submit. But as the devastation of Ulster continued, they resolved to do as their great-grandfathers had done,--emigrate to a new country. They had heard good reports of America, through several of their leaders who had been banished there by the British government. So they packed up their movable property, and set out across the wide uncharted Atlantic Ocean in an exodus for liberty of industry and liberty of conscience. By the year 1776 there were more than 500,000 of the Scotch-Irish in this country. They went first across the Alleghanies, into the new lands of western Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas. Beyond all question, they were the hardiest and ablest founders of the republic. They dissolved the rule of the Cavaliers in Virginia; and in the little hamlet of Mecklenburg they planned the first defiance of Great Britain and struck the key-note of the Revolution. They gave Washington thirty-nine of his generals, three out of four members of his cabinet, and three out of five judges of the first Supreme Court. Of all classes of settlers in the thirteen colonies, they were the best prepared and most willing for the struggle with England, for the reason that they had begun to fight for liberty two hundred and fifty years before the battle of Bunker Hill. They were not amateurs in the work of revolution. They were veterans. And so, because they were pioneers and patriots by nature and inheritance, the Scotch-Irish became, in the words of John Fiske, "the main strength of our American democracy." Naturally, they were pathfinders in industry as well as in the matter of self-government, as many of them had been manufacturers in Ireland. "Thousands of the best manufacturers and weavers in Ulster went to seek their bread in America," writes Froude, "and they carried their art and their tools with them." In one instance, by the failure of the woollen trade, 20,000 of them were driven to the United States. As might have been expected, these Scotch-Irish Americans have produced not only five of our Presidents, but also such merchants as A. T. Stewart; such publishers as Harper, Bonner, Scribner, and McClurg; and such inventors as Joseph Henry, Morse, Fulton, and McCormick. They were possibly the first large body of people who had ever been driven from manufacturing into farming; and it was not at all surprising, therefore, that the new profession of making farm machinery should have been born upon a Scotch-Irish farm. As for Cyrus H. McCormick, he represented the fourth generation of American McCormicks. His great-grandfather, Thomas McCormick, quit Ulster in the troublous days of 1735. He was a soldier at Londonderry; and later became noted as an Indian fighter in Pennsylvania. His son Robert, who moved south to Virginia, carried a rifle for American independence at the battle of Guilford Court-house, North Carolina, in 1781. He was a farmer and weaver by occupation, a typical Ulsterman, whose farm was a busy workshop of invention and manufacturing. [Illustration: ROBERT McCORMICK] On his mother's side, too, Cyrus McCormick had behind him a line of battling Scotch-Irish. She was the daughter of a Virginian farmer named Patrick Hall, one of whose forefathers had been driven out of Armagh by the massacre of 1641. Patrick Hall was the leader of the old-school Presbyterians in his region of Virginia. So rigid was he in his loyalty to the faith of the Covenanters, that once when a new minister came to preach in the little kirk, and lined out a Watts hymn instead of a psalm of David, Patrick Hall picked up his hat and strode out, followed by a goodly part of the congregation. He at once built upon his own farm a new church of limestone, in which no such levity as hymn-singing was permitted. Cyrus McCormick's mother inherited her father's strength of character, without his severity. She was a thorough Celt, impulsive, free-spoken, and highly imaginative. Judging from the stories about her that are remembered in the neighborhood, it is evident that she was a woman of exceptional quality of mind. She was not as studious as her husband, but quicker and more ambitious. As a girl, she had been strikingly handsome, with a tall and commanding figure. She was saving and shrewd, with the Scotch-Irish passion for "getting ahead." She allowed no idle moments in the home. If the children were dressed before breakfast was ready, out they went to cut wood or weed the garden. She knew the profession of housekeeping in all its old-fashioned complexity; and she worked at it from dawn to starlight, with no rest except the relief of flitting from one task to another. "Mrs. McCormick came riding by our farm one day," said an aged neighbor, "at a time when my father and mother were hurrying to save some hay from a coming rain-storm. 'If you don't hurry up you'll be too late,' she said; and then tying her horse to the fence she picked up a rake and helped with the hay until it was all in the barn. That's the kind of woman she was,--always full of energy and ready to help." [Illustration: MRS. MARY ANN HALL McCORMICK] But Mrs. McCormick was much more than industrious. She had a fine pride in the ownership of beautiful things,--flowers and handsome clothes and silverware and mahogany furniture. Her flock of peacocks was one of the sights of the county; and in her later life, when she was for ten years the sole manager of the farm, she was accustomed to drive about in a wonderful carriage with folding steps, drawn by prancing horses and driven by a stately colored coachman,--an equipage of so much style and grandeur that it is still remembered by the neighbors. "She loved to drive fast," said one old lady; "and I was much impressed as a little girl with the startling way in which her horses would come clattering and dancing up to the door." Thus there was in the McCormick home the spiritual and imaginative element that was vital to the development of a man whose whole life was a battle against the prejudices and "impossibilities" of the world. Cyrus McCormick was predestined, we may legitimately say, by the conditions of his birth, to accomplish his great work. From his father he had a specific training as an inventor; from his mother he had executive ability and ambition; from his Scotch-Irish ancestry he had the dogged tenacity that defied defeat; and from the wheat-fields that environed his home came the call for the Reaper, to lighten the heavy drudgery of the harvest. CHAPTER III THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER Not far from the McCormick homestead was the "Old Field School," built of logs and with a part of one of the upper logs cut out to provide a window. Here the boy Cyrus sat on a slab bench and studied five books as though they were the only books in the world,--Murray's Grammar, Dilworth's Arithmetic, Webster's Spelling Book, the Shorter Catechism, and the Bible. He was a strong-limbed, self-contained, serious-natured boy, always profoundly intent upon what he was doing. Even at the age of fifteen he was inventive. One winter morning he brought to school a most elaborate map of the world, showing the two hemispheres side by side. First he had drawn it in ink upon paper, then pasted the paper upon linen, and hung it upon two varnished rollers. This map, which is still preserved, reveals a remarkable degree of skill and patience; and the fact that a mere lad could conceive of and create such a map was a week's wonder in the little community. "That boy," declared the teacher, "is beyond me." At about this time he undertook to do a man's work in the reaping of the wheat, and here he discovered that to swing a cradle against a field of grain under a hot summer sun was of all farming drudgeries the severest. Both his back and his brain rebelled against it. One thing at least he could do,--he could make a smaller cradle, that would be easier to swing; and he did this, whittling away in the evening in the little log workshop. "Cyrus was a natural mechanical genius," said an old laborer who had worked on the McCormick farm. "He was always trying to invent something." "He was a young man of great and superior talents," said a neighbor. At eighteen he studied the profession of surveying, and made a quadrant for his own use. This is still preserved, and bears witness to his good workmanship. From this time until his twenty-second year, there is nothing of exceptional interest recorded of him. He had grown to be a tall, muscular, dignified young man. The neighbors, in later years, remembered him mainly because he was so well dressed on Sundays, in broadcloth coat and beaver hat, and because of his fine treble voice as he led the singing in the country church. Even as a youth he was absorbed in his inventions and business projects. He had no time for gayeties. In a letter written from Kentucky to a cousin, Adam McChesney, in 1831, he says: "Mr. Hart has two fine daughters, right pretty, very smart, and as rich probably as you would wish; but alas! I have other business to attend to." [Illustration: NEW PROVIDENCE CHURCH, ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA] Ever since Cyrus was a child of seven, it had been the most ardent ambition of his father to invent a Reaper. He had made one and tried it in the harvest of 1816, but it was a failure. It was a fantastic machine, pushed from behind by two horses. A row of short curved sickles were fastened to upright posts, and the grain was whirled against them by revolving rods. It was highly ingenious, but the sinewy grain merely bunched and tangled around its futile sickles; and the poor old Reaper that would not reap was hauled off the field, to become one of the jokes of the neighborhood. This failure did not dishearten Robert McCormick. He persevered with Scotch-Irish tenacity, but in secret. Hurt by the jests of the neighbors, he worked thenceforward with the door of his workshop locked, or at night. He hid his Reaper, too, upon a shelf inside the workshop. "He allowed no one to see what he was doing, except his sons," said Davis McCormick, who is now the only living person in the neighborhood with a memory that extends back to that early period. "Yes," said this lone octogenarian, "Robert McCormick was a good man, a true Christian; and he worked for years to make a Reaper. He always kept his plans to himself, and he told his wife that if visitors came to the house, she should send one of the children to fetch him, and not allow the visitors to come to his workshop." By the early Summer of 1831, Robert McCormick had so improved his Reaper that he gave it a trial in a field of grain. Again it was a failure. It did cut the grain fairly well, but flung it in a tangled heap. As much as this had been done before by other machines, and it was not enough. To cut the grain was only one-half of the problem; the other half of the problem, which up to this time no one had solved, was how to properly handle and deliver the grain after it was cut. [Illustration: FACSIMILES FROM MANUSCRIPT BY MR. McCORMICK GIVING HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE REAPER] By this time Cyrus had become as much of a Reaper enthusiast as his father. Also, he had been studying out the reasons for his father's failure, and working out in his mind a new plan of construction. How this _new plan_ was slowly moulded into shape by his creative fancy is now told for the first time. A manuscript, written by Cyrus H. McCormick himself, and which has not hitherto been made public, gives a complete description of the process of thought by which he became the inventor of the first practical Reaper. This account, it may be said in explanation, was written by Mr. McCormick shortly before the Chicago fire of 1871. It was to be published at that time, and was in type when the fire came and left not a vestige of the printery. The original manuscript was preserved; but the labor of rebuilding his factory prevented him from carrying out his original design. He wholly forgot his authorship in the troubles of his city; and so his own story of his invention lay untouched among the private papers of the family for thirty-eight years. "Robert McCormick," says this document, "being satisfied that his principle of operation could not succeed, laid aside and abandoned the further prosecution of his idea." He had labored for fifteen years to make a Reaper that would reap, and he had failed. At this point Cyrus took up the work that his father had reluctantly abandoned. He had never seen or heard of any Reaper experiments except those of his father; but he believed he saw a better way, and "devoted himself most laboriously to the discovery of a _new principle of operation_." He showed his originality at the outset by beginning where his father and all other Reaper inventors had left off,--with the cutting of grain that lay in a fallen and tangled mass. He faced the problem worst end first. The Reaper that would cut such grain, he believed, must first separate the grain that is to be cut from the grain that is left standing. It must have at the end of its knife a curved arm--a _divider_. This idea was simple, but in the long history of harvesting grain no one had thought of it before. Next, in order to cut this snarled and prostrate grain without missing any of it, the knife must have two motions: its forward motion, as drawn by the horses, and also a slashing sideways motion of its own. How was this to be done? McCormick's first thought was to cut the grain with a whirling wheel-knife, but this plan presented too many new difficulties. Suddenly the idea came to him--why not have a straight blade, with a back and forward motion of its own? This was the birth-idea of the _reciprocating blade_, which has been used to this day on all grain-cutting machines. It was not, like the divider, a wholly new conception; but Cyrus McCormick conceived it independently, and did more than any one else to establish it as the basic feature of the Reaper. The third problem was the supporting of the grain while it was being cut, so that the knife would not merely flatten it to the ground. McCormick solved this by placing a row of _fingers_ at the edge of the blade. These fingers projected a few inches, in such a way that the grain was caught and held in position to be cut. The shape of these fingers was afterwards much improved, to prevent wet grain from clogging the slit in which the knife slid back and forth. A fourth device was still needed to lift up and straighten the grain that had fallen. This was done by a simple revolving _reel_, such as fishermen use for the drying of their nets. Several of the abortive Reapers that had been tried elsewhere had possessed some sort of a reel; but McCormick made his much larger than any other, so that no grain was too low to escape it. The fifth factor in this assembling of a Reaper was the _platform_, to catch the cut grain as it fell; and from which the grain was to be raked off by a man who walked alongside of it. The sixth was the idea of putting the shafts on the outside, or stubble side, of the Reaper, making it a _side-draught_, instead of a "push" machine. And the seventh and final factor was the building of the whole Reaper upon one big _driving-wheel_, which carried the weight and operated the reel and cutting-blade. The grain-side end of the blade was at first supported by a wooden runner, and later--the following year--by a small wheel. [Illustration: FIRST PRACTICAL REAPING MACHINE Built and used by Cyrus Hall McCormick on Walnut Grove Farm, Va., in 1831] Such was the making of the first practical Reaper in the history of the world. It was as clumsy as a Red River ox-cart; but _it reaped_. It was made on right lines. The "new principle" that the youth McCormick laboriously conceived in the little log workshop became the basic type of a wholly new machine. It has never been displaced. Since then there have been 12,000 patents issued for reaper and mower inventions; but not one of them has overthrown the type of the first McCormick Reaper. Not one of the seven factors that he assembled has been thrown aside; and the most elaborate self-binder of to-day is a direct descendant of the crude machine that was thus created by a young Virginian farmer in 1831. The young inventor toiled "laboriously," he says, to complete his Reaper in time for the harvest of 1831. He was very nearly too late, but a small patch of wheat was left standing at his request; and one day in July, with no spectators except his parents and his excited brothers and sisters, Cyrus put a horse between the shafts of his Reaper, and drove against the yellow grain. The reel revolved and swept the gentle wheat downwards upon the knife. Click! Click! Click! The white steel blade shot back and forth. The grain was cut. It fell upon the platform in a shimmering golden swath. From here it was raked off by a young laborer named John Cash. It was a roughly done specimen of reaping, no doubt. The reel and the divider worked poorly. But for a preliminary test it was a magnificent success. Here, at last, was a Reaper that reaped, the first that had ever been made in any country. The scene of this first "reaping by horse-power" was then, and is to-day, one of unusual beauty. The field is near by the farm-house, rolling in several undulations to the rim of a winding little rivulet. In the centre of the field is a single tree, a wide-branched white oak, which was probably born before the first colonists arrived at Jamestown. And in the background, not more than two miles distant, rise the tall and jagged crags of the Blue Ridge, twelve sharp peaks flung high from deep ravines, on which the lights and shades are incessantly changing,--a most impressive staging for the first act of the drama of the Reaper. This McCormick farm, having 600 acres of land, is now owned by the McCormick family. The whole region has changed but little. Once, and once only, the great noisy outside world surged into this quiet valley,--when a Union army under General Butler clattered through it, burning and destroying, and so close to the McCormick homestead that the blue uniforms could be seen from its front windows. Doubtless, when farmers have time to take a proper pride in the history of their own profession, they will visit the McCormick farm as a spot of historic interest,--the place where the New Agriculture was born. It is no longer a difficult place to reach, as it is now possible to lunch to-day in either Chicago or New York and to-morrow in the same comfortable red brick farm-house that sheltered the McCormicks in 1831. Several days after the advent of the Reaper on the home farm, Cyrus McCormick had improved its reel and divider, and was ready for a public exhibition at the near-by village of Steele's Tavern. Here, with two horses, he cut six acres of oats in an afternoon, a feat which was attested in court in 1848 by his brothers William and Leander, and also by three of the villagers, John Steele, Eliza Steele, and Dr. N. M. Hitt. Such a thing at that time was incredible. It was equal to the work of six laborers with scythes, or twenty-four peasants with sickles. It was as marvellous as though a man should walk down the street carrying a dray-horse on his back. The next year, 1832, Cyrus McCormick came out with his Reaper into what seemed to him "the wide, wide world." He gave a public exhibition near the little town of Lexington, which lay eighteen miles south of the farm. Fully one hundred people were present--several political leaders of local fame, farmers, professors, laborers, and a group of negroes who frolicked and shouted in uncomprehending joy. At the start, it appeared as though this new contraption of a machine, which was unlike anything else that human eyes had ever seen, was to prove a grotesque failure. The field was hilly, and the Reaper jolted and slewed so violently that John Ruff, the owner of the field, made a loud protest. "Here! This won't do," he shouted. "Stop your horses. You are rattling the heads off my wheat." [Illustration: THE FIELD ON WHICH THE FIRST McCORMICK REAPER WAS TRIED, WALNUT GROVE FARM, VIRGINIA] This was a hard blow to the young farmer-inventor. Several laborers, who were openly hostile to the machine as their rival in the labor market, began to jeer with great satisfaction. "It's a humbug," said one. "Give me the old cradle yet, boys," said another. These men were hardened and bent and calloused with the drudgery of harvesting. They worked twelve and fourteen hours a day for less than a nickel an hour. But they were as resentful toward a Reaper as the drivers of stage-coaches were to railroads, or as the hackmen of to-day are towards automobiles. At this moment of apparent defeat, a man of striking appearance, who had been watching the floundering of the Reaper with great interest, came to the rescue. "I'll give you a fair chance, young man," he said. "That field of wheat on the other side of the fence belongs to me. Pull down the fence and cross over." This friend in need was the Honorable William Taylor, who was several years later a candidate for the governorship of Virginia. His offer was at once accepted by Cyrus McCormick, and as the second field was fairly level, he laid low six acres of wheat before sundown. This was no more than he had done in 1831, but on this occasion he had conquered a larger and more incredulous audience. After the sixth acre was cut, the Reaper was driven with great acclaim into the town of Lexington and placed on view in the court-house square. Here it was carefully studied by a Professor Bradshaw of the Lexington Female Academy, who finally announced in a loud and emphatic voice, "This--machine--is worth--a hundred--thousand--dollars." This praise, from "a scholar and a gentleman," as McCormick afterwards called him, was very encouraging. And still more so was the quiet word of praise from Robert McCormick, who said, "It makes me feel proud to have a son do what I could not do." Of all who were present on that memorable summer day, not one is now alive. Neither in Lexington nor in Staunton--the towns that lay on either side of the McCormick farm--can we find any one who saw the Reapers of 1831 and 1832. But among those who testified at various lawsuits that they had seen the Lexington Reaper operate were Colonel James McDowell, Colonel John Bowyer, Colonel Samuel Reed, Colonel A. T. Barclay, Dr. Taylor, William Taylor, John Ruff, John W. Houghawout, John Steele, James Moore, and Andrew Wallace. There was an old lady, also, in 1885, Miss Polly Carson, who told how she had seen the Reaper hauled along the road by two horses, which, she said, "had to be led by a couple of darkies, because they were scared to death by the racket of the machine." And she expressed the general unbelief of that day, very likely, by saying, "I thought it was a right smart curious sort of a thing, but that it wouldn't come to much." Cyrus McCormick was far from being the first to secure a Reaper patent. He was the forty-seventh. Twenty-three others in Europe and twenty-three in the United States had invented machines of varying inefficiency; but there was not one of these which could have been improved into the proper shape. Without any exception, the rival manufacturers who rose up in later years to fight McCormick did him the homage of copying his Reaper; and certainly none of them attempted to offer for sale any type of machine that was invented prior to 1831. A careful study of the pre-McCormick Reapers reveals one fault common to all,--they were made by theorists, to cut ideal grain in ideal fields. Some of them, if grain always grew straight and was perfectly willing to be cut, might have been fairly useful. They assuredly might have succeeded if grain grew in a parlor. But to cut actual grain in actual fields was another matter, and quite beyond their power. None of them, apparently, knew the fundamental difference between a Reaper and a mower. They did not observe that grain is easy to cut but hard to handle, while grass is hard to cut and easy to handle; and they persisted in the assumption that grain could be reaped by a mower. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF BLACKSMITH SHOP IN WHICH C. H. McCORMICK BUILT HIS FIRST REAPER] These inventors who failed, but who doubtless blazed the way by their failures to the final success of McCormick, were not, as he was, a practical farmer on rough and hilly ground. One was a clergyman, who devised a six-wheel chariot, with many pairs of scissors, and which was to be pushed by horses and steered by a rudder that in rough ground would jerk a man's arm out of joint. A second of these inventors was a sailor, who experimented with a few stalks of straight grain stuck in gimlet holes in his workshop floor. A third was an actor, who had built a Reaper that would cut artificial grain on the stage. A fourth was a school-teacher, a fifth a machinist, and so on. In no instance can we find that any one of these pre-McCormick inventors was a farmer, who therefore knew what practical difficulties had to be overcome. The farmers, on the other hand, thought first of these difficulties and scoffed at the parlor inventors. The editor of the "Farmer's Register" spoke the opinion of most farmers of that time when he said that "an insurmountable difficulty will sometimes be found to the use of reaping-machines in the state of the growing crops, which may be twisted and laid flat in every possible direction. A whole crop may be ravelled and beaten down by high winds and heavy rains in a single day." One of the basic reasons, therefore, for the success of Cyrus McCormick was the fact that he was not a parlor inventor. He was primarily a farmer. He knew what wheat was and how it grew. And his first aim in making a reaper was not to produce a mechanical curiosity, nor to derive a fortune from the sale of his patent, but to cut the grain on his father's farm. So far as the pre-McCormick inventors are concerned, the whole truth about them seems to be that a few invented fractional mowers or reapers that were fairly good as far as they went, and that most of them invented nothing that became of any lasting value. Nine-tenths of them were pathfinders in the sense that they showed what ought _not_ to be done. Very little attention would have been given them had it not been for the persistent effort made by rival manufacturers to detract from McCormick's reputation as an inventor. This they did in a wholly impersonal manner, of course, so that they should not be obliged to pay him royalties, and because his prestige as the original inventor of the Reaper enabled him to outsell them among the farmers. But now that the competition of Reaper manufacturers has been tempered by consolidation, the time has arrived to do justice to Cyrus McCormick as the inventor of the Reaper. The stock phrase,--"He was less of an inventor than a business man," which was so widely used against him during his lifetime, ought now in all fairness to be laid aside. The fact is, as we have seen, that he was schooled as a boy into an inventive habit of mind; and that before his invention of the Reaper, he had devised a new grain-cradle, a hillside plow, and a self-sharpening plow. There is abundant corroborative evidence in the letters which he wrote to his father and brothers, instructing them to "make the divider and wheel post longer," to "put the crank one inch farther back," and so forth. Also, in the will of Robert McCormick, there is a clause authorizing the executor to pay a royalty to Cyrus of fifteen dollars apiece on whatever machines were sold by the family during that season, showing that the father, who of all men was in the best position to know, regarded Cyrus as the inventor. Of all the manufacturers who fought McCormick in the patent suits of early days, three only have survived to see the passing of the McCormick Centenary--Ralph Emerson, C. W. Marsh, and William N. Whiteley. In response to a question as to Cyrus McCormick's place as an inventor, Mr. Whiteley said: "McCormick invented the divider and the practical reel; and he was the first man to make the Reaper a success in the field." Mr. Marsh said: "He was a meritorious inventor, although he combined the ideas of other men with his own; and he produced the first practical side-delivery machine in the market." And Mr. Emerson said: "The enemies of Cyrus H. McCormick have said that he was not an inventor, but I say that he was an inventor of eminence." Thus it appears that the invention of the Reaper was not in any sense unique; it came about by an evolutionary process such as produced all other great discoveries and inventions. First come the dreamers, the theorists, the heroic innovators who awaken the world's brain upon a new line of thought. Then come the pioneers who solve certain parts of the problem and make suggestions that are of practical value. And then, in the fulness of time, comes one masterful man who is more of a doer than a dreamer, who works out the exact combination of ideas to produce the result, and establishes the new product as a necessary part of the equipment of the whole human family. Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the Reaper. He did more--he invented the business of making Reapers and selling them to the farmers of America and foreign countries. He held preëminence in this line, with scarcely a break, until his death; and the manufacturing plant that he founded is to-day the largest of its kind. Thus, it is no more than an exact statement of the truth to say that he did more than any other member of the human race to abolish the famine of the cities and the drudgery of the farm--to feed the hungry and straighten the bent backs of the world. CHAPTER IV SIXTEEN YEARS OF PIONEERING In 1831 Cyrus McCormick had his Reaper, but the great world knew nothing of it. None of the 850 papers that were being printed at this time in the United States had given the notice of its birth. There was the young inventor, with the one machine that the human race most needed, in a remote cleft of the Virginian mountains, four days' journey from Richmond, and wholly without any experience or money or influence that would enable him to announce what he had done. He had such a problem to solve as no inventor of to-day or to-morrow can have. He was not living, as we are, in an age of faith and optimism--when every new invention is welcomed with a shout of joy. He confronted a sceptical and slow-moving little world, so different from that of to-day that it requires a few lines of portrayal. In general, it was a non-inventive and hand-labor world. There were few factories, except for the weaving of cotton and woollen cloth. There was no sewing-machine, nor Bessemer converter, nor Hoe press, nor telegraph, nor photography. It was still the age of the tallow candle and stage-coach and tinder-box. Practically no such thing was known as farm machinery. Jethro Wood had invented his iron plow, but he was at this time dying in poverty, never having been able to persuade farmers to abandon their plows of wood. As for steel plows, no one in any country had conceived of such a thing. James Oliver was a bare-footed school-boy in Scotland and John Deere was a young blacksmith in Vermont. Plows were pulled by oxen and horses, not by slaves, as in certain regions of Asia; but almost every other sort of farm work was done by hand. Railways were few and of little account. Eighty-two miles of flimsy track had been built in the United States; the Baltimore and Ohio was making a solemn experiment with locomotives, horses, and _sails_, to ascertain which one of these three was the best method of propulsion. The first really successful American locomotive was put on the rails in this year; and Professor Joseph Henry set up his trial telegraph wire and gave the electric current its first lesson in obedience. There was no free library in the world in 1831. The first one was started in Peterborough, N. H., two years later. In England, electoral reform had not begun, a General Fast had been ordered because of the prevalence of cholera, and a four-pound loaf cost more than the day's pay of a laborer. The United States was a twenty-four-State republic, with very little knowledge of two-thirds of its own territory. The source of the Mississippi River, for instance, was unknown. To send a letter from Boston to New York cost the price of half a bushel of wheat. There was no newspaper in Wisconsin and no house in Iowa. The first sale of lots was announced in Chicago, but there was then no public building in that hamlet, nothing but a few log cabins in a swampy waste that was populous only in wild ducks, bears, and wolves. Forty of the latter were shot by the villagers in 1834. [Illustration: REAPING WITH CRUDE KNIVES IN INDIA] Of the many eminent men who had the same birth-year as McCormick, Poe and Mendelssohn had begun to be known as men of genius in 1831. But Lincoln was then "a sort of clerk" in a village store. Darwin was setting out on H. M. S. _Beagle_ upon his first voyage as a naturalist. Gladstone was a student at Oxford. Proudhon was working at the case as a poor printer. Oliver Wendell Holmes was somewhat aimlessly studying law. Chopin was on his way to Paris. Tennyson had left college, without a degree, to devote his life to the service of poetry. Three great men who had been born earlier, Garrison, Whittier, and Mazzini, began their life-work in 1831. And science was a babe in the cradle. Herbert Spencer, Virchow and Pasteur were learning the multiplication table. Huxley was six and Bertheiot four. There was no Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, California, nor Texas. Virginia was the main wheat State. Local famines were of yearly occurrence. The period between 1816 and 1820 had been one of severe depression and was bitterly referred to as the "1800-and-starve-to-death" period. Seventy-five thousand people had been imprisoned for debt in New York in a single year, and a workingmen's party had sprung up as a protest against such intolerable conditions. Even as late as 1837 there was a bread riot in the city of New York. Five thousand hungry rioters broke into the warehouse of Eli Hart & Company, and destroyed a great quantity of flour and wheat. Five hundred barrels of flour were thrown from the windows; and women and children gathered it up greedily from the dirty gutter where it fell. So the world that confronted Cyrus McCormick was not a friendly world of science and invention and prosperity. It was slow and dull and largely hostile to whoever would teach it a better way of working. And we shall now see by what means McCormick compelled it to accept his Reaper, and to give him the credit and pay for his invention. He was resolved from the first not to be robbed and flung aside as most inventors had been. Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, had said in 1812: "The whole amount I have received is not equal to the value of the labor saved in one hour by my machines now in use." Fulton had died at fifty, plagued and plundered by imitators. Kay, Jacquard, Heathcoat, and Hargreaves, inventors of weaving machinery, were mobbed. Arkwright's mill was burned by incendiaries. Gutenberg, Cort, and Jethro Wood lost their fortunes. Palissy was thrown into the Bastile. And Goodyear, who gave us rubber, Bottgher, who gave us Sèvres porcelain, and Sauvage, who gave us the screw propeller, died in poverty and neglect. But Cyrus McCormick was more than an inventor. He was a business-builder. In the same resolute, deliberate way in which he had made his Reaper, he now set to work to make a business. He planned and figured and made experiments. "His whole soul was wrapped up in his Reaper," said one of the neighbors. Once while riding home on horseback in the Summer of 1832, his horse stopped to drink in the centre of a stream, and as he looked out upon the fields of yellow grain, shimmering in the sunlight, the dazzling thought flashed upon his brain, "Perhaps I may make a million dollars from this Reaper." As he said in a letter written in later years: "This thought was so enormous that it seemed like a dream-like dwelling in the clouds--so remote, so unattainable, so exalted, so visionary." His first step was seemingly a mistake, though it must have contributed much toward the development of self-reliance and hardihood in his own character. He received a tract of land from his father, and proceeded with might and main to farm it alone. There was a small log house on his land, and here he lived with two aged negro servants and his Reaper. He needed money to buy iron--to advertise--to appoint agents. And he had no means of earning money except by farming. It is very evident that he had not set aside his purpose to make Reapers, for we find in the _Lexington Union_ of September 28, 1833, the first advertisement of his machine. He offers Reapers for sale at $50.00 apiece, and gives four testimonials from farmers. But nothing came of this advertisement. No farmer came forward to buy. The four men who had given testimonials had only seen the Reaper at work. They were not purchasers. McCormick was "a voice crying in the wilderness" for _nine years_ before he found a farmer who had the money and the courage to buy one of his Reapers. After living for more than a year on his farm, McCormick saw that as a means of raising money it was a failure. It had given him a most valuable period of preparatory solitude, but it had not helped him to launch the Reaper; so he looked about him for some enterprise that would yield a larger profit. There was a large deposit of iron ore near by, and he resolved to build a furnace and make iron. Iron was the most expensive item in the making of a reaper. At that time it was $50.00 a ton--two and a half cents a pound. So as he had been unable to establish the Reaper business with a farm, he now set out to do it with a furnace. He persuaded his father and the school teacher to become his partners; and they built the furnace and were making their first iron in 1835--the same year, by the way, in which a babe named Andrew Carnegie was born in the little Scotch town of Dunfermline. [Illustration: REAPING WITH SICKLES IN ALGERIA] For several years the furnace did fairly well. It swallowed the ore and charcoal and limestone, and poured into the channelled sand little sputtering streams of fiery metal. Cyrus made the patterns for the moulds, and, because of his great strength, did much of the heaviest labor. But the work was so incessant that he had no time to build Reapers. And in 1839, when the effects of the 1837 panic were felt in the more remote regions of Virginia, Cyrus McCormick realized to the full the aptness of that couplet of Hudibras-- "Ah, me, the perils that environ The man who meddles with cold iron!" The price of iron fell; debtors were unable to pay; the school teacher signed over his property to his mother; and the whole burden of the inevitable bankruptcy fell upon the McCormicks. Cyrus gave up his farm to the creditors, and whatever other property he had that was saleable. He did not give up the Reaper, and nobody would have taken it if he had. Thus far, he had made no progress towards the building of a Reaper business. Instead of being the owner of a million, or any part of a million, he was eight years older than when he had begun to seek his fortune, and penniless. In this hour of debt and defeat Cyrus became the leader of the family. Here for the first time he showed that indomitable spirit which was, more than any other one thing, the secret of his success. At once he did what he had not felt was possible before--he began to make Reapers. Without money, without credit, without customers, he founded the first of the world's reaper factories in the little log workshop near his father's house. In the year of the iron failure, 1839, he gave a public exhibition on the farm of Joshua Smith, near the town of Staunton. With two men and a team of horses he cut two acres of wheat an hour. At this there was great applause, but no buyers. The farmers of that day were not accustomed to the use of machinery. Their farm tools, for the most part, were so simple as to be made either by themselves or by the village blacksmith. That the Reaper did the work of ten men, they could not deny. But it was driven by an expert. "It's all very wonderful, but I'm running a farm, not a circus," thought the average spectator at these exhibitions. Also, there was in all Eastern States at that time a surplus of labor and a scarcity of money, both of which tended to retard the adoption of the Reaper. Neither did the business men of Staunton pay any serious attention to it. There was a Samson Eager at that time who made wagons, a David Gilkerson who made furniture, a Jacob Kurtz who made spinning wheels, and an Absalom Brooks who made harness. But none of these men saw any fortune in the making of Reapers, and Staunton lost its great opportunity to be a manufacturing centre. Failure was being heaped on failure, yet Cyrus McCormick hung to his Reaper as John Knox had to his Bible. He went back to the little log workshop with a fighting hope in his heart, and hammered away to make a still better machine. This was the darkest period in the history of the McCormicks--from 1837 to 1840. Once a constable named John Newton rode up to the farm-house door with a summons, calling Cyrus and his father before the County Judge on account of a debt of $19.01. A teamster named John Brains had brought suit. His bill had been $72.00 and he had been paid more than three-fourths of the money. But the constable was so impressed with the honesty and industry of the McCormicks, that he rode back to town without having served the summons. A little later, Mr. John Brains received his money; and it may be said that had he accepted, instead, a five per cent interest in the Reaper, he would have become in twenty years or less one of the richest men in the county. As it happened, not one of Cyrus McCormick's creditors thought of such an idea as seizing the Reaper, or the patent, which had been secured in 1834. If the queer-looking machine, which was regarded as part marvel and part freak, had been put up to auction in that neighborhood of farmers, very likely it would have found no bidders. There appeared to be one man only, a William Massie, who appreciated the ability of Cyrus McCormick and lent him sums of money on various urgent occasions. But in 1840 a stranger rode from the north and drew rein in front of the little log workshop. In appearance he was a rough-looking man, but to Cyrus he was an angel of light. He had come to buy a Reaper. He had been one of the spectators at the Staunton exhibition, and he had resolved to risk $50 on one of the new machines. His name, which deserves to be recorded in the annals of the Reaper, was Abraham Smith. [Illustration: REAPING WITH CRADLES IN ILLINOIS] Several weeks later came two other angels in disguise--farmers who had heard of the Reaper and who had ridden from their homes on the James River, a forty-mile journey on horseback through the Blue Ridge Mountains. These men had never seen a Reaper, but they had faith. They were notable men. Both ordered machines, and Cyrus McCormick accepted one of the orders only, as he was not satisfied with the way his Reaper worked in grain that was wet. It was apt to clog in the grooves that held the blade. Even in this darkest and most debt-ridden period of his life, McCormick was much more intent, apparently, upon making his Reapers work well than upon winning a fortune. Almost breathlessly, the young inventor waited for the next harvest. This was the unique difficulty of his task, that he had only a few weeks once a year to try out his machine and to improve it. He had now sold two, so that there were three Reapers clicking through the grain-fields in the Summer of 1840. They failed to operate evenly. Where the grain was dry, they cut well; but where it was damp, they clogged and at times refused to cut at all. Wet grain! This, after nine years of arduous labor, still remained a stubborn obstacle to the success of the Reaper. It was especially hard to overcome, because in that primitive neighborhood McCormick could not secure the best workmanship in the making of the cutting-blade. However, this obstacle did not daunt him. He gave his blade a more serrated edge, and to his delight it cut down the wet grain very nearly as neatly as the dry. This success had cost him another year, for he sold no machines in 1841. But he had now, at least, a wholly satisfactory Reaper. Fortified with a testimonial from Abraham Smith, he fixed the price at $100 and became a salesman. By great persistence he sold seven Reapers in 1842, twenty-nine in 1843, and fifty in 1844. At last, after thirteen years of struggle and defeat, Cyrus McCormick had succeeded; and the home farm was transformed into a busy and triumphant Reaper factory. There were new obstacles, of course. A few buyers failed to pay. Four machines were held on loitering canal-boats until they were too late for the harvest. There was strong opposition in several places by day laborers. A trusted workman who was sent out to collect $300 ran away with both horse and money. But none of these trifles moved the victorious McCormick. The great stubborn world was about to surrender, and he knew it. By 1844 he had done more than sell machines. He had made converts. One enthusiastic farmer named James M. Hite, who had made a world's record in 1843 by cutting 175 acres of wheat in less than eight days, was the first of these apostles of the Reaper. "My Reaper has more than paid for itself in one harvest," he said; and he gave $1,333 for the right to sell Reapers in eight counties. Closely after this man came Colonel Tutwiler, who agreed to pay $2,500 for the right to sell in southern Virginia. And a manufacturer in Richmond, J. Parker, bought an agency in five counties for $500; and won the renown of being the first business man who appreciated the Reaper. All this money was not paid in at once. Some of it was never paid. But after thirteen years of struggle and debt, this was Big Business. Best of all, orders for seven Reapers had come from the West. Two farmers in Tennessee and one each in Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio, had written to McCormick for "Virginia Reapers," as they were called in the farm papers of that day. These seven letters, as may be imagined, brought great joy and satisfaction to the McCormick family, which was now, under the leadership of Cyrus, devoting its best energies to the making of Reapers. The Reapers were made and then, when the question of their transportation arose, Cyrus for the first time saw clearly that the Virginia farm was not the best site for a factory. To get the seven Reapers to the West, they had first to be carried in wagons to Scottsville, then by canal to Richmond, re-shipped down the James River to the Atlantic Ocean and around Florida to New Orleans, transferred here to a river boat that went up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati, and from Cincinnati in various directions to the expectant farmers. Four of these Reapers arrived too late for the harvest of 1844, and two of them were not paid for. Clearly, something must be done to supply the Western farmers more efficiently. [Illustration: AN EARLY ADVERTISEMENT FOR McCORMICK'S PATENT VIRGINIA REAPER] At this time a friend said to him, "Cyrus, why don't you go West with your Reaper, where the land is level and labor is scarce?" His mind was ripe for this idea. It was the call of the West. So one morning he put $300 into his belt and set off on a 3,000-mile journey to establish the empire of the Reaper. Up through Pennsylvania he rode by stage to Lake Ontario, then westward through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri. For the first time he saw the _prairies_. So vast, so flat, so fertile, these boundless plains amazed him. And he was quick to see that this great land ocean was the natural home of the Reaper. Virginia might, but the West _must_, accept his new machine. Already the West was in desperate need of a quicker way to cut grain. As McCormick rode through Illinois, he saw the most convincing argument in favor of his Reaper. He saw hogs and cattle turned into fields of ripe wheat, for lack of laborers to gather it in. The fertile soil had given Illinois five million bushels of wheat, and it was too much. It was more than the sickle and the scythe could cut. Men toiled and sweltered to save the yellow affluence from destruction. They worked by day and by night; and their wives and children worked. But the tragic aspect of the grain crop is this--it must be gathered quickly or it breaks down and decays. It will not wait. The harvest season lasts from four to ten days only. And whoever cannot snatch his grain from the field during this short period must lose it. Truly, the West needed the Reaper; and McCormick's first plan was to overcome the transportation obstacle by selling licenses to many manufacturers in many States. By 1846 he had, with herculean energy, started Fitch & Company and Seymour, Morgan & Company in Brockport, N. Y., Henry Bear in Missouri, Gray & Warner in Illinois, and A. C. Brown in Cincinnati. These manufacturers, and the McCormick family in Virginia, built 190 Reapers for the harvest of 1846. This was multiplying the business by four, very nearly, but the plan was not satisfactory. Some manufacturers used poor materials; some had unskilled workmen; and one became so absorbed in new experiments that when the harvest time arrived, his machines were not completed. The new difficulty was not to get manufacturers to make Reapers, but to get them to make _good_ Reapers. What was to be done? The thought of having defective Reapers scattered among the farmers was intolerable to Cyrus McCormick. He pondered deeply over the whole situation. He considered the fact that the supremacy in wheat was slowly passing from Virginia to Ohio. He took note of the railroads that were creeping westward. He remembered the limitless prairies, far out in the sunset country, that were still uncultivated. Plainly, he must make Reapers in a factory of his own, so as to have them made well, and he must locate that factory as near as possible to the prairies, at some point along the Great Lakes. With the most painstaking diligence he studied the map and finally he put his finger upon a town--a small new town, which bore the strange name of _Chicago_. CHAPTER V THE BUILDING OF THE REAPER BUSINESS Of all the cities that Cyrus McCormick had seen in his 3,000-mile journey, Chicago was unquestionably the youngest, the ugliest, and the most forlorn. It lacked the comforts of ordinary life, and many of the necessities. For the most part, it was the residuum of a broken land boom; and most of its citizens were remaining in the hope that they might persuade some incoming stranger to buy them out. The little community, which had absurdly been called a city ten years before, had at this time barely ten thousand people--as many as are now employed by a couple of its department stores. It was exhausted by a desperate struggle with mud, dust, floods, droughts, cholera, debt, panics, broken banks, and a slump in land values. Other cities ridiculed its ambitions and called it a mudhole. Its harbor, into which six small schooners ventured in 1847, was obstructed by a sand-bar. And the entire region, for miles back from the lake, was a dismal swamp--the natural home of frogs, wild ducks, and beavers. The six years between 1837 and 1843 had been to Illinois a period of the deepest discouragement. There was little or no money that any one could accept with confidence. Trade was on a barter basis. The State was hopelessly in debt. It had borrowed $14,000,000 in the enthusiasm of its first land boom, and now had no money to pay the interest. Even as late as 1846 there was only $9,000 in the State treasury. Buffalo was at this time the chief grain market of the United States. We were selling a little wheat to foreign countries--much less than is grown to-day in Oklahoma. Hulled corn was the staff of life in Iowa. The Mormons had just started from Illinois on their 1,500-mile pilgrimage to the West, through a country that had not a road, a village, a bridge, nor a well. The sewing-machine had recently been invented by Howe, and the use of ether had been announced by Dr. Morton; but there was no Hoe press, nor Bessemer steel, nor even so much as a postage stamp. And in the Old World the two most impressive figures, perhaps, were Livingstone, the missionary, who was groping his way to the heart of the Dark Continent, and DeLesseps, the master-builder of canals, who was now cutting a channel through the hot sand at Suez. In Chicago, there was at this time no Board of Trade. The first wheat had been exported nine years before--as much as would load an ordinary wagon. There was no paved street, except one short block of wooden paving. The houses were rickety, unpainted frame shanties, which had not even the dignity of being numbered. There was a school, a jail, a police force of six, a theatre, and a fire-engine. But there was no railroad, nor telegraph, nor gas, nor sewer, nor stock-yards. The only post-office was a little frame shack on Clark Street, with one window and one clerk; and one of the lesser hardships of the citizens was to stand in line here on rainy days. [Illustration: THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847, ON WHICH SEATS WERE PLACED FOR THE DRIVER AND THE RAKER] Prosperity was still an elusive hope in 1847, but the spirit of depression was being overcome. The Federal bankrupt law of 1842 had broken the deadlock, and the Legislature had passed several "Hard Times" measures for the relief of debtors. To such an extent had the little community recovered its confidence that it opened a new theatre, welcomed its first circus, founded a law-school, launched a new daily paper called the _Tribune_, and organized a regiment for the Mexican War. There were two Chicago events in this year which must have deeply impressed Cyrus McCormick. The first was the arrival of a horde of hunger-driven immigrants from Ireland. The famine of 1846, which had caused 210,000 deaths in that unfortunate island, was driving the survivors to America; and the people of Chicago showed the warmest sympathy towards these gaunt, sad-faced newcomers. Even in the depth of her own depression, Chicago called a special meeting to consider what could be done to alleviate the suffering of the Irish, and gave several thousand dollars for their relief. The second event was the holding of the great "River and Harbor Convention" in Chicago. This was the first formal recognition of Chicago by Congress, and gave the greatest possible amount of delight and reassurance to its citizens. Abraham Lincoln, who had just been elected to Congress, was there; and Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. There was a grand procession in the muddy little main street. A ship under full sail was hauled through the city on wheels. The newly organized firemen, in the glory of red shirts and leather hats, threw a stream of water over the flag-staff in the public square, and Thurlow Weed, in a peroration that aroused the utmost enthusiasm, prophesied that "on the shores of these lakes is a vast country that will in fifty years support one-quarter of a million people." It is interesting to notice that had Thurlow Weed lived fifty years after the delivery of that optimistic prophecy, he would have seen one-quarter of a million school children in the city of Chicago alone. As a matter of history, the arrival of McCormick was a much more important event for Chicago than the "River and Harbor Convention." He was the first of its big manufacturers. His factory was the largest and the busiest; and the Reapers that it produced were a most important factor in the growth of Chicago. Every Reaper shipped to the West was a feeder of the city. It brought back more wheat. It opened up new territory. The Reaper gave the farmers of the Middle West an ideal weapon with which to win wealth from the prairies. And it established the primary greatness of Chicago as the principal wheat market of the world. This incoming flood of wheat gave Chicago its start as a railway and shipping centre. Chicago was never obliged to give money, or to lend it, to railroad companies. The railroads came into Chicago without the inducement of subsidies, because they wanted to carry its wheat. And ships, too, came more and more readily to Chicago when they found that they could be sure of a return cargo. The choice of Chicago as his centre of operations was one of the master-strokes of McCormick's career. At that time, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and St. Louis were more prosperous cities; but McCormick considered one thing only--the making and selling of his Reaper, and he saw that Chicago, with all its mud and shabbiness, was the link between the Great Lakes and the Great West. Here he could best assemble his materials--steel from Sheffield, pig iron from Scotland and Pittsburg, and white ash from Michigan. And here he could best ship his finished machines to both East and West. Chicago, in fact, and the McCormick Reaper, had many characteristics in common. Both were born at very nearly the same time. Both were cradled in adversity. Both were unsightly to the artistic eye. Both were linked closely with the development of the West. And both inevitably achieved success, because they were fundamentally right--Chicago in location and the Reaper in design. At the time that he began to build his Chicago factory, Cyrus McCormick was no longer a country youth. He was thirty-eight years of age, and a tall powerful Titan of a man, with a massive head and broad shoulders. His upper lip was clean-shaven, but he had a thick, well-trimmed beard, and dark, wavy hair, worn fairly long. His nose was straight and well-shaped, his mouth firm, and his eyes brown-gray and piercing. In manner he was resolute and prompt, with a rigid insistence that could not be turned aside. He had won the prize in the contest of reaper-inventors; and he was now about to enter a second contest, against overwhelming odds, with a number of aggressive and competent business men who had determined that, by right or by might, they would manufacture McCormick Reapers and sell them to the farmers. As McCormick had neither money nor credit, it was evident to him that his first step in business-building must be to secure a partner who had both of these. He looked about him and selected the man who was unquestionably the first citizen of Chicago--William B. Ogden. Ogden had been the first mayor of the little city. He had been from the beginning its natural leader. He had built the first handsome house, promoted the first canal, and was now busy in the building of the first railroad from Chicago to Galena. William Butler Ogden had been born in the little New York hamlet of Walton, four years earlier than the birth of McCormick. To use his own picturesque words, he "was born close to a saw-mill, was early left an orphan, christened in a mill-pond, taught at a log school-house, and at fourteen fancied that nothing was impossible, which ever since, and with some success, I have been trying to prove." Once in Chicago he quickly made a fortune in real estate, and was generally looked to as the leader in any large enterprise that promised to help Chicago. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK From a Daguerreotype, taken about 1839] He was a tall man of striking appearance. At that time he wore no beard, and with his keen eyes, high forehead, long straight nose, and masterful under-lip, he would attract attention in any assemblage. By his hospitality and courtly manners he made many friends for the city. Among his guests were Webster, Van Buren, Bryant, Tilden, and Miss Martineau. And when Cyrus McCormick came to him and proposed the building of a Reaper factory, Ogden was as quick as a flash to see its value to Chicago. "You are the man we want," said he to McCormick. "I'll give you $25,000 for a half interest, and we'll start to build the factory at once." This partnership helped McCormick greatly. It gave him at once capital, credit, prestige, and a factory. It enabled him to escape from the tyranny of small anxieties. It set him free from contract-breaking manufacturers, who looked upon the making of Reapers merely as business, and not, as McCormick did, as a mission. He now had his chance to manufacture on a large scale; and he immediately made plans to sell 500 Reapers for the harvest of 1848. He built the largest factory in Chicago, on the spot where John Kinzie had built the first house in 1804, and thus once for all was solved the problem of where and how his Reapers should be made. For two years it was one of the sights of Chicago to see McCormick and Ogden walking together to their factory. They were both tall, powerful, dominating men, and were easily the chief citizens--the Romulus and Remus of a city that was destined to be more populous than Rome. But they were not suited as co-workers. Each was too strong-willed for co-operative action. Also, Ogden was a man of many interests, while McCormick was absorbed in his Reaper. There was no open quarrel, but in 1849 McCormick said: "I will pay you back the $25,000 that you invested, and give you $25,000 for profits and interest." Ogden accepted, well pleased to have doubled his money in two years; and from that time onward McCormick had no partners except the members of his own family. Moving at once from one obstacle to another, as McCormick did throughout the whole course of his life, he now began to create the best possible _system_ of selling his Reapers to the farmers. This he had to do, for the reason that there was no means at that time whereby he could offer them for sale. The village blacksmith was too busy at his anvil to become an agent. The village storekeeper was not a mechanic, and was too careful of his reputation among the farmers to offer for sale a machine that he did not understand. Therefore, McCormick bent all his energies to this new task of devising a mode of action. He began to develop what he was apt to call "the finger-ends of the business." And he created a new species of commercial organization which is by many thought to be fully as remarkable as his invention of the Reaper. First, he gave a _Written Guarantee_ with every machine. He had conceived of this inducement as early as 1842. He "warranted the performance of the Reaper in every respect," and by this means made seven sales in that year. In 1848 he had his guarantee printed like an advertisement, with a picture of the Reaper at the top, and blank spaces for the farmer, the agent, and two witnesses to sign. The price of the machine was to be $120. The farmer was to pay $30 cash, and the balance in six months, on condition that the Reaper would cut one and a half acres an hour, that it would scatter less grain than the grain-cradle, that it was well made, and that the raking off could easily be done from a raker's seat. If the Reaper failed to fulfil these promises, it was to be brought back and the $30 was to be refunded. This idea of giving a free trial, and returning the money to any dissatisfied customer, was at that time new and revolutionary. To-day it is the code of the department store, and even the mail-order establishments are in many instances adopting it. It has become one of the higher laws of the business world. It has driven that discreditable maxim, "Let the buyer beware," out of all decent commercialism. To McCormick, who had never studied the selfish economic theories of his day, there was no reason for any antagonism between buyer and seller. He trusted his Reaper and he trusted the farmers. And he built his business foursquare on this confidence. Second, he sold his Reapers at a _Known Price_. He announced the price in newspapers and posters. This, too, has since become an established rule in business; but it was not so sixty years ago. The Oriental method of chaffering and bargaining was largely in vogue. The buyer got as high a price as he could in each case. Among merchants, A. T. Stewart was probably the first to abolish this practice of haggling, and to mark his goods in plain figures. And in the selling of farm machinery, it was McCormick who laid down the principle of equal prices to all and special rebates to none--a principle which has been very generally followed ever since, except during periods of over-strenuous competition. Third, he was one of the first American business men who believed heartily in a policy of _Publicity_. As early as September 28, 1833, he began to advertise his Reaper; and his advertisement was nearly a column in length. Also, in the same paper, he had a half-column advertisement of his hillside plow. This was publicity on a large scale, according to the ideas of advertising that were then prevalent. Even George Washington, when advertising an extensive land scheme in 1773, had not thought of using more than half a column of a Baltimore paper. McCormick was an efficient advertiser, too, as well as an enterprising one. When he talked to farmers, he knew what to say. He told the story of what one of his Reapers had done, and named the time and the farm and the farmers. He made great use of the argument that the Reaper pays for itself, and showed that it would cost the farmer less to buy it than _not_ to buy it. Among the many testimonials that he got from farmers the one that pleased him most, and which he scattered broadcast, was one in which a farmer said: "My Reaper has more than paid for itself in one harvest." [Illustration: PANORAMIC VIEW SHOWING THE McCORMICK REAPER WORKS BEFORE THE CHICAGO FIRE OF 1871, ON CHICAGO RIVER, EAST OF RUSH STREET BRIDGE] In 1849, when the rush to the new gold mines of California began, he was quick to see his opportunity. This sudden exodus of a hundred thousand men to the Pacific coast meant much to him, and he knew it. It meant a decrease in the number of farm laborers and an increase in the amount of money in circulation. More than this, it meant that Chicago was no longer a city of the Far West. It was _central_. It was the link between the banks and factories of the East and the gold mines and prairies of the West. So McCormick quickly prepared an elaborate advertisement, warning the farmers that labor would now become scarce and expensive, that the coming grain crop promised to be a large one, and giving the names and addresses of ninety-two farmers who were now using his machines. The fourth factor in the McCormick System was the appointment of a _Responsible Agent_ and the building of a storage warehouse at every competitive point. He did not wait for the business to grow. He pushed it. He thrust it forward by sending an agent to every danger-spot on the firing-line. As one of his competitors complained, in an 1848 lawsuit, McCormick "flooded the country with his machines." He knew that many farmers would be undecided until the very hour of harvest, when there would be no time to get a Reaper from Chicago; and therefore he had supplies of machines stored in various parts of the country. By 1849 he had nineteen of these agencies. His plan, with regard to these agents, was to fasten them to him by exclusive contracts, which forbade them to sell Reapers made by any other manufacturers. Each agent was given free scope. He was not worried by detail instructions. He was picked out for his aggressive, self-reliant qualities, and the whole responsibility of a certain territory was put upon him. Once a month he made a report; but he stood or fell by the final showing for the year, which he made in October. This plan of leaving his men free and putting them upon their mettle, developed their mental muscle to the utmost. Also, it made them intensely loyal and combative--a regiment, not of private soldiers, but generals, each one in charge of his own province, blamed for his defeats and rewarded for his victories. The fifth factor in the McCormick System was the _Customers' Good-Will_. For the good-will of other capitalists or for the applause of the public in general, no men cared less than McCormick. But he always stood well with the farmers. "I have never yet sued a farmer for the price of a Reaper," he said in 1848. This heroic policy he pursued as long as possible, knowing the fear that all farmers have of contracts that may lead them into litigation. More than this, he freely gave them credit, without being safeguarded by any Dun or Bradstreet. He allowed them to pay with the money that was saved during the harvest. "It is better that I should wait for the money," he said, "than that you should wait for the machine that you need." So he borrowed money in Chicago to build the Reapers, borrowed more money to pay the freight, and then sold them on time to the farmers. In some cases he lost heavily, as in Kansas and North Dakota, where the first settlers were driven off by drought. But as a rule he lost little by bad debts. Immigrants of twenty nationalities swarmed westward upon the free land offered to them by the United States Government, and usually each man found waiting for him at the nearest town one of the McCormick agents, ready to supply him with a Reaper, whether he had the money to pay for it or not. As may be imagined, the effect of this policy upon the settlement and welfare of the West was magical. There are to-day tens of thousands of Western farmers who date the era of their prosperity from the day when a McCormick Reaper arrived in all the glory of its red paint and shining blade, and held its first reception in the barn-yard. One instance of this deserves to be embodied in the history of the Reaper. In 1855 a poor tenant farmer, who had been evicted from his rented land in Ayrshire, Scotland, arrived with his family at the banks of the Mississippi. There was then no railroad nor stage-coach, so the whole family walked to a quarter section of land farther west, not far from where the city of Des Moines stands to-day. The first year they cut the wheat with the cradle and the scythe, and the following year they bought a McCormick Reaper. They prospered. The father went back for a visit to Ayrshire and paid all his creditors. And the eldest son, James, became first Speaker of the Iowa Legislature, then a professor in an agricultural college, and finally the founder of the Department of Agriculture in all its present completeness. To-day we know him as the Honorable James Wilson, the first official farmer of the United States. There was one other method in the marketing of farm machinery, which seems to have been originated by McCormick--the _Field Test_. As a means of stirring up interest in an indifferent community, this was the most electrical in its effects of any plan that has ever been devised. As a pioneering advertisement, it was unsurpassed. It was nothing less than a contest in a field of ripe grain between several machines that belonged to rival manufacturers. Sometimes there were only two machines, and in one grand tournament there were forty. And all the farmers in the county were invited to come and witness the battle free of charge. The first of these field tests occurred near Richmond in 1844. McCormick had challenged Obed Hussey, a Baltimore sailor who had invented a practical mowing-machine, and who was offering it for sale to cut grain as well as grass. In this instance McCormick won easily. The judges said that while the Hussey machine was stronger and simpler, having no reel nor divider, the McCormick Reaper was lighter, cheaper, scattered less grain, and was better at cutting grain that was wet and in its method of delivering the grain. "Meet Hussey whenever you can and put him down," Cyrus McCormick wrote to his brothers. In one letter, written the following year, he is so enthusiastically aggressive in the pursuit of Hussey that he proposes to his brothers a grand final contest. Hussey is to be dared to sign an agreement that in case of defeat, he will pay McCormick $10,000 and become the Maryland agent for the McCormick Reaper. McCormick, on his part, is to agree that if he is beaten he will pay Hussey $10,000 and become the Virginia agent for the Hussey machine. Nothing came of this confident proposal, either because it was not put into effect by McCormick, because Hussey refused to accept it. But the field test flourished for more than forty years. It did more in the earlier days than any other one thing to make talk about the Reaper and to move the farmers out of the old-fashioned ruts. It provided the vaudeville element which is necessary in salesmanship where people are not interested in the commodity itself. As often happens, it was in the end carried too far. It became the most costly weapon of competition. It introduced all manner of unfairness and often violence. The most absurd tests were frequently agreed to. Mowers would be chained back to back and then forcibly torn apart. Reapers were driven into groves of saplings. Machines of special strength were made secretly. And so the warfare raged, until by general consent the field test was abandoned. These six factors of the McCormick System became the six commandments of the farm machinery business. They were largely adopted by his competitors, and exist to-day, with the exception of the exclusive contract and the field test. By 1850 McCormick had not only solved the problem of the Reaper; he had worked out a method of distribution. He had established a new business. But even this was not enough. He was now beset by a swarm of manufacturers who sought to deprive him of his patents and of a business which he naturally regarded as his own. It remained to be seen whether he could stand his ground when opposed by several hundred rivals; and whether he could duplicate in the courts the victories that he had won in the fields. CHAPTER VI THE STRUGGLE TO PROTECT PATENTS In 1848 Cyrus McCormick's original patent expired. He applied to have it extended, and at once there began one of the most extraordinary legal wars ever known in the history of the Patent Office. It continued with very little cessation until 1865. It enlisted on one side or the other the ablest lawyers of that period--such giants of the bar as Lincoln, Stanton, Seward, Douglas, Harding, Watson, Dickerson, and Reverdy Johnson. The tide of battle rolled from court to court until the final clash came in the chamber of the Supreme Court and the halls of Congress. It was perhaps the most Titanic effort that any American inventor has ever made to protect his rights and to carry out the purpose of the Patent Law. McCormick had strong reasons for believing that his patent should be extended. He was asking for no more than the Patent Office, on other occasions, had granted to other inventors. A patent was supposed to protect an inventor for fourteen years, and he had lost half of this time in making a better machine, and in finding out the best way to carry on the business. He had received from all sources nearly $24,000, and most of it had been swallowed up in expenses. He was still a poor man in 1848. He was no more than on the threshold of prosperity. And his peculiar difficulty, which gave him a special claim upon the Patent Commissioners, was the shortness of the harvest season. He had only three or four weeks in each year in which he could make experiments. For eight years McCormick's claim was tossed back and forth like a tennis ball between the Patent Office and Congress. This delay threw the door wide open to competition. A score of manufacturers built factories and began to make McCormick Reapers, with trifling variations and under other names. If McCormick had won his case, they would have had to pay him a royalty of $25 on each machine. Consequently, they combined against him. They hired lawyers and lobbyists, secured petitions from farmers, and raised a hue and cry that one man was "trying to impose a tax of $500,000 a year upon the starving millions of the world." One firm of lawyers in Cincinnati sent a letter to these manufacturers in 1850, saying that, "McCormick can be beaten in the Patent Office, and must be beaten now or never. If funds are furnished us, we shall surely beat him; but if they are not furnished us, he will as certainly beat us. Please, therefore, take hold and help us to beat the _common enemy_. The subscriptions have ranged from $100 to $1,000.... Send in also to Patent Office hundreds of remonstrances like this: We oppose the extension of C. H. McCormick's patent. He has made money enough off of the farmer." Towards the end of this famous case, the anti-McCormick lobby at the Capitol became so rabid that Senator Brown, of Mississippi, made an indignant protest on the floor of the Senate. He said: "Why, Mr. President, if it were not for the people out of doors, people without inventive genius, people without the genius to invent a mouse-trap or a fly-killer, who are pirating on the great invention of McCormick, there would never have been an hour's delay in granting all that he asks. I know, and I state here, in the face of the American Senate and the world, that these men have beset me at every corner of the street with their papers and their affidavits--men who have no claim to the ear of the country, men who have rendered it no service, but who have invested their paltry dollars in the production of a machine which sprang from the mind of another man; and who now, for their own gain, employ lawyers to draw cunning affidavits, to devise cunning schemes, and to put on foot all sorts of machinery to defeat McCormick." What worried McCormick most was not this consolidation of competitors, but the fact that a few farmers had signed petitions of protest against his claim. This was "the most unkindest cut of all." But he made no attack upon them. Manufacturers he would fight, and inventors and lawyers and judges--any one and every one, if need be, except farmers. "How can the farmers be against me?" he asked in amazement. "They save the price of the Reaper in a single harvest." McCormick lost his suit, as he did a second time in 1859, and a third time in 1861. Not one of his patents was at any time renewed. Up to 1858 he had received $40,000 in royalties, but it had cost him $90,000 in litigation. From first to last he did not get one dollar of net profit from the protection of the Patent Office. Many other inventors were fairly treated by Congress. Fulton, for example, was presented with a bonus of $76,300. Willmoth, who improved the turret of a battleship, received $50,000. Professor Page, for making an electric engine, was given $20,000. Morse was awarded $38,000. The patents of Goodyear, Kelly, Howe, Morse, Hyatt, Woodworth, and Blanchard were extended. The protection of inventors had been a national policy--an American tradition. In the phrasing of Daniel Webster: "The right of an inventor to his invention is a natural right, which existed before the Constitution was written and which is above the Constitution." The benefit of the Reaper to the nation, and the fact that McCormick was its inventor, were admitted freely enough. Senator Johnson, of Maryland, estimated in 1858 that the Reaper was then worth to the United States $55,000,000 a year. D. P. Holloway, the Commissioner of Patents, sang an anthem of eloquent praise to McCormick in 1861. "He is an inventor whose fame, while he is yet living, has spread through the world," he said. "His genius has done honor to his own country, and has been the admiration of foreign nations. He will live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the reaping-machine is employed in gathering the harvest." Then, in an abrupt postscript to so fine a eulogy, this extraordinary Commissioner adds: "But the Reaper is of too great value to the public to be controlled by any individual, and the extension of his patent is refused." [Illustration: PAINTING BY C. SCHUSSELE, PHILADELPHIA, 1861 ENGRAVED ON STEEL BY JOHN SARTAIN, PHILADELPHIA, 1862 MEN OF PROGRESS STANDING, LEFT TO RIGHT: 1, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, first man to administer ether to a patient; 2, J. Bogardus, invented ring spinner (for cotton spinning), an engraving machine, and dry gas meter; 3, S. Colt, revolver; 4, Cyrus Hall McCormick, reaper; 5, Joseph Saxton, locomotive differential pulley and deep sea thermometer; 6, Peter Cooper, founder of Cooper Union and inventor machine for mortising hubs for carriage wheels; 7, Prof. J. Henry, inventor of communication by electricity; 8, E. B. Bigelow, power loom for spinning jenny. SITTING, LEFT TO RIGHT: 1, C. Goodyear, vulcanizer of rubber; 2, J. L. Mott, iron manufacturer and inventor; 3. Dr. E. Nott, base burner for stoves: 4, F. E. Sickles, inventor of cut-off of steam in engine; 5, S. F. B. Morse, telegraph; 6, H. Burden, cultivator, and machine for making horseshoes; 7, R. M. Hoe, printing press; 8, I. Jennings; 9, T. Blanchard, machine for cutting and heading tacks, and lathe for turning irregular forms: 10, E. Howe, sewing machine.] The truth seems to be that McCormick was too strong, too aggressive, to receive fair play at the hands of any legislative body. The note of sympathy could never be struck in his favor. He personally directed his own cases. He dominated his own lawyers. And he fought always in an old-fashioned, straight-from-the-shoulder way that put him at a great disadvantage in a legal conflict. Also, he was supposed to be much richer than in reality he was. He had made money by the rise in Chicago real estate. By 1866 he had become a millionaire. And his entire fortune was assumed by opposing lawyers to be the product of the Reaper business. It is to be said, to the lasting honor of South Carolina, that she gave a grant of money to Whitney, out of the public treasury, as a token of gratitude for the invention of the cotton gin. But no wheat State ever gave, or proposed to give, any grant or vote of thanks to Cyrus McCormick for the invention of the Reaper. The business that he established was never at any time favored by a tariff, or franchise, or patent extension, or tax exemption, or land grant, or monopoly. Single-handed he built it up, and single-handed he held it against all comers. If, as Emerson has said, an institution is no more than "the lengthened shadow of one man," we may fairly say that the immense McCormick Company of to-day is no more than the lengthened shadow of this farm-bred Virginian. By 1855 McCormick realized that the Federal Government was not the impartial tribunal that he had believed it to be. He saw that he could not depend upon it for protection, so he made a characteristic decision--he resolved to protect himself. He, too, would hire a battery of lawyers and charge down upon these manufacturers who were unrighteously making his Reaper and depriving him of his patents. He engaged three of the master lawyers of the American bar, William H. Seward, E. N. Dickerson, and Senator Reverdy Johnson, and brought suit against Manny and Emerson, of Rockford, Illinois, for making McCormick Reapers without a license. Then came a three-year struggle that shook the country and did much to shape the history of the American people. Manny and Emerson, who were shrewd and forceful men, hired twice as many lawyers as McCormick and prepared to defend themselves. They selected as the members of this legal bodyguard, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Edwin M. Stanton, Peter H. Watson, George Harding, and Congressman H. Winter Davis. It was a battle of giants. Greek met Greek with weapons of eloquence. But Stanton out-classed his great co-debaters in a speech of unanswerable power which unfortunately was not reported. The speech so vividly impressed McCormick that in his next lawsuit he at once engaged Stanton. It awoke the brain of Lincoln, as he afterwards admitted; and drove him back to a more comprehensive study of the law. It gave Lincoln so high an opinion of Stanton's ability that, when he became President several years later, he chose Stanton to be his Secretary of War. And it gripped judge and jury with such effect that McCormick lost his case. It was a wonderful speech. Abraham Lincoln, who made no speech at all, was the one who derived the most benefit in the end from this lawsuit. It not only aroused his ambitions, but gave him his first big fee--$1,000. This money came to him at the precise moment when he needed it most, to enable him to enter into the famous debate with Douglas--the debate that made him the inevitable candidate of the Republican party. It is interesting to note how closely the destinies of Lincoln and McCormick were interwoven. Both were born in 1809, on farms in the South. Both struggled through a youth of adversity and first came into prominence in Illinois. Both labored to preserve the Union, and when the War of Secession came it was the Reaper that enabled Lincoln to feed his armies. Both men were emancipators, the one from slavery and the other from famine; and both to-day sleep under the soil of Illinois. No other two Americans had heavier tasks than they, and none worked more mightily for the common good. Of all McCormick's lawsuits, and they were many, the most extraordinary was the famous Baggage Case, which lasted for twenty-three years--from 1862 to 1885. It was probably the best single instance of the man's dogged tenacity in defence of a principle. The original cause of this trial was a comedy of mishaps. A McCormick family party of six, with nine trunks, boarded a train at Philadelphia for Chicago. The train was about to start, when the baggage-master demanded pay for 200 pounds of surplus baggage. The amount was only $8.70, but McCormick refused to pay it. He called his family out of the train and ordered that his trunks be taken off. The conductor refused to hold the train, and the trunks were carried away. Mr. McCormick at once saw the president of the railroad, J. Edgar Thompson, who telegraphed an order for the trunks to be put off at Pittsburg. The McCormicks set out for Chicago by the next train. At Pittsburg they learned that the trunks had been carried through to Chicago. And the next day, in Chicago, when McCormick went to the Fort Wayne depot, he found it a mass of smoking cinders. It had caught fire in the night, and the nine trunks had been destroyed. McCormick sued the railroad for $7,193--the value of the trunks and their contents. Repeatedly he won and repeatedly the railroad appealed to higher courts. After twenty years the worn and battered case was carried up to the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. They decided for McCormick. But even then the railroad evaded payment for three years, until after McCormick's death. Then the president of the road signed a check for $18,060.79, which was the original value of the nine trunks plus twenty-three years' interest. McCormick did not for a moment regard this case as trivial. It involved a principle. Once when a friend bantered him for fighting so hard over a small matter, he replied, "My conscience, sir! I don't know what would become of the American people if there were not some one to stand up for fair dealing." His victory did much to teach the railroads better manners and a finer consideration of the travelling public. Soon after the conclusion of the case, a trunk belonging to a relative of the McCormicks was destroyed on the New York Central. It value was $1,300, and one of the railroad's lawyers promptly sent a check, saying, "We don't want to have a lawsuit with the McCormicks." For these numerous lawsuits McCormick paid a terrible price, both in money and friendship. He acquired a reputation as "a man who would law you to death." He brought down upon himself to a remarkable degree the hostility of his competitors, and prevented himself from receiving the full credit and prestige that he deserved. Instead of being revered as the father of the Reaper business, he was feared as an industrial Bismarck--a man of unyielding will and indomitable purpose, who regarded his competitors as a pack of trespassers in an empire that belonged by right to him. The truth is that this situation did not arise because of the natural perversity of either McCormick or his competitors. In his later life, McCormick proved that he could co-operate with his equals in the most harmonious way, in a new business enterprise. His competitors, too, were for the most part men of ability and uprightness. Neither in their public nor private lives, was there any stain upon the honor of such men as Wood, Osborne, Adriance, Manny, Emerson, Huntley, Warder. Bushnell, Glessner, Jones, and Lewis Miller. But these men were all newcomers. They were beardless striplings compared to McCormick. He had made and exhibited a successful Reaper twenty years before the first of them began. His father had grappled with the problem of the Reaper before most of them were born. It was inevitable, therefore, that there should have been an unspanable gap between the two points of view. McCormick stood alone because he _was_ alone. He and the Reaper had grown up together in long hazardous years of pioneering, through ridicule and poverty and failure. It was his dream come true. And in the same spirit with which he had fought to create it, he also fought to hold it, and to protect it from men to whom it was not a dream and a life-mission, but a mere machine. CHAPTER VII THE EVOLUTION OF THE REAPER Of all the varieties of difficulties that confronted Cyrus H. McCormick during his strenuous life, the most baffling and disconcerting difficulty was when his Reaper began to grow. For fifteen years--from 1845 to 1860--it had remained unchanged except that seats had been added for the raker and the driver. It did no more than cut the grain and leave it on the ground in loose bundles. It had abolished the sickler and the cradler; but there yet remained the raker and the binder. Might it not be possible, thought the restless American brain, to abolish these also and leave no one but the driver? This at once became a most popular and fascinating problem for inventors. There was by this time everything to gain and nothing to lose by improving the Reaper. There was no opposition and no ridicule. To cut grain by horse-power had become, of course, the only proper way of cutting it. As many as 20,000 Reapers of all kinds were made in 1860; and McCormick's factory had grown to be the pride of Chicago. It was 90 by 150 feet in size, two stories high, and gave work to about a hundred and twenty men. As early as 1852 a fantastic self-rake Reaper had been invented by a mechanical genius named Jearum Atkins. This man was a bed-ridden cripple, who, to while away the tiresome hours of his confinement, bought a McCormick Reaper, had it placed outside his window, and actually devised an attachment to it which automatically raked off the cut grain in bundles. It was a grotesque contrivance. The farmers nicknamed it the "Iron Man." It consisted of an upright post, with two revolving iron arms. These arms whirled stiffly around, windmill fashion, and scraped the grain from the platform to the ground. An amusing anecdote of this machine was told by Henry Wallace, known to all farmers of the Middle West as the founder of _Wallace's Farmer_. "The first Reaper that my father bought," said Mr. Wallace, "was a McCormick machine that had an 'Iron Man' on it. The first day that it was driven into the grain it made such a clatter that the horses ran away. It was certainly a terrifying sight as it rattled through the wheat, with its long, rake-fingered arms flying and hurling the cut grain in the wildest disorder. It was as good as a chariot race in a circus to the crowd of farmers, who had come to see how the new machine would operate. The next day my father tried again. There had been rain during the night, and the heavy machine stuck fast in the mud. It had cost $300, but my father took the 'Iron Man' off, and during the remainder of that harvest we raked off the grain by hand." A great variety of self-rake Reapers soon appeared, and after 1860 the farmers would buy no other kind. Thus a part of the problem had been solved. The raker was abolished. There now remained the much more difficult work of supplanting the binder--the man, or sometimes woman, who gathered up the bundles of cut grain, and, making a crude rope of the grain itself, bound it tightly around the middle, making what was called a sheaf. This was hard, back-breaking work, intolerable when the sun was hot, except to men of the strongest physique. It required not strength only, but skill. Ninety-nine farmers out of a hundred believed that it would always have to be done by hand. "How can it be possible," they asked, "that a machine which is being dragged by horses over a rough field can at the same time be picking up grain and tying knots?" Just then two young farmers near De Kalb came to the rescue by inventing a new species of machine. It was neither a Reaper nor a self-binder. It was half-way between the two. It was the missing link. It appeared that an inventor named Mann had taken a McCormick Reaper and built a moving platform upon it, in such a way that the grain was carried up to a wagon which was drawn alongside. These two young farmers had bought a Mann machine, and one of them, when he saw it in operation, originated a brilliant idea. "Why should the grain be carried up to a wagon?" he asked. "Why can't we put a foot-board on the machine, for two of us to stand on, and then bind the grain as fast as it is carried up?" This was the origin of the "Marsh Harvester," which held the field for ten years or longer. It did not abolish the man who bound, but it gave him a chance to work twice as fast. It compelled him to be quick. It saved him the trouble of walking from bundle to bundle. It enabled him to stand erect. And best of all, it put half a dozen inventors on the right line of thought. Plainly, what was needed now was to teach a Marsh Harvester to tie knots. One evening in 1874 a tall man, with a box under his arm, walked diffidently up the steps of the McCormick home in Chicago, and rang the bell. He asked to see Mr. McCormick, and was shown into the parlor, where he found Mr. McCormick, sitting as usual in a large and comfortable chair. "My name is Withington," said the stranger. "I live in Janesville, Wisconsin. I have here a model of a machine that will automatically bind grain." Now, it so happened that McCormick had been kept awake nearly the whole of the previous night by a stubborn business problem. He could scarcely hold his eyelids apart. And when Withington was in the midst of his explanation, with the intentness of a born inventor, McCormick fell fast asleep. At such a reception to his cherished machine, Withington lost heart. He was a gentle, sensitive man, easily rebuffed, and so, when McCormick aroused from his nap, Withington had departed and was on his way back to Wisconsin. For a few seconds McCormick was uncertain as to whether his visitor had been a reality or a dream. Then he awoke with a start into instant action. A great opportunity had come to him and he had let it slip. He was at this time making self-rake Reapers and Marsh Harvesters; but what he wanted--what every Reaper manufacturer wanted in 1874--was a self-binder. He at once called to him one of his trusted workmen. "I want you to go to Janesville," he said. "Find a man named Withington, and bring him to me by the first train that comes back to Chicago." The next day Withington was brought back and treated with the utmost courtesy. McCormick studied his invention and found it to be a most remarkable mechanism. Two steel arms caught each bundle of grain, whirled a wire tightly around it, fastened the two ends together with a twist, cut it loose and tossed it to the ground. This self-binder was perfect in all its details--as neat and effective a machine as could be imagined. McCormick was delighted. At last, here was a machine that would abolish the binding of grain by hand. A bargain was made with Withington on the spot; and the following July a self-binder was tried on the Sherwood farm, near Elgin, Illinois. It cut fifty acres of wheat and bound every bundle without a slip. From this time onwards no one was needed but a man, a boy, a girl, anybody, who could hold the reins and drive a team of horses. Of the ten or twelve sweating drudges who toiled in the harvest-field, all were now to be set free--the sicklers, cradlers, rakers, binders--every one except the driver, and he (or she) was to have the glory of riding on the triumphal chariot of a machine that did all the work itself. "There were ten men working in my wheat-field in the old days," said an Illinois farmer. "But to-day our hired girl climbs upon the spring seat of a self-binder and does the whole business." McCormick was not the first to make one of these magical machines. There was an able and enterprising manufacturer in New York State, Walter A. Wood, who in 1873 had made three Withington binders, under the supervision of Sylvanus D. Locke, who had been a co-worker with Withington. McCormick had given Wood his start, as early as 1853, by selling him a license to make Reapers; and Wood, by his high personal qualities, had built up a most extensive business. But McCormick was the first to make self-binders upon a large scale. He made 50,000 of the Withington machines, and pushed them with irresistible energy. [Illustration: THE FIRST McCORMICK SELF-RAKE REAPING MACHINE] He originated a new method of advertising the self-binders among the farmers. Special flat-cars were provided for him by the railroads. Upon each one of these cars a binder was placed, in the charge of an expert. These cars, during the harvest season, were attached to ordinary freight trains; and whenever the train came to a busy wheat-field it was stopped for an hour or more, the self-binder was rushed from the car to the field, and an exhibition of its skill given to the wondering farmers. Then it was put back on its car, and the train resumed its leisurely course until it arrived at the next scene of harvesting. The sensitive-natured inventor, Charles B. Withington, who gave such timely aid to McCormick, was one of the most romantic knights-errant of industry in his generation. Born near Akron a year before McCormick invented his Reaper, he was trained by his father to be a watchmaker. At fifteen, to earn some pocket-money, he went into the harvest field to bind grain. He was not robust, and the hard, stooping labor under a hot sun would sometimes bring the blood to his head in a hemorrhage. There were times after the day's work was done when he was too weary to walk home, and would throw himself upon the stubble to rest. At eighteen he set out to find his fortune in the far West, became a Forty-niner, drifted to Australia, and in 1855 came back to Janesville, Wisconsin, with three thousand dollars or more in his belt. All this money he proceeded to fritter away on the invention of a self-rake Reaper--"a crazy scheme," as the townspeople called it. As it happened, the whole southern region of Wisconsin was being stirred up at that time by the speeches of an inventive Madison editor, who went by the name of "Pump" Carpenter. Carpenter's hobby was that the binding of grain must be done by machinery. He was eloquent and popular, and his arguments were substantiated by a little model which he was accustomed to carry about with him. Withington heard him speak and was converted. He dropped his self-rake reaper and went to work upon a self-binder. He completed his first machine in 1872, and was thrust from one discouragement to another until two years later he met McCormick. It is a most interesting fact, and certainly not an accidental one, that the group of noted inventors who together produced the self-binder all appeared from the region south of Madison, which had been so aroused by the eloquence of "Pump" Carpenter. Besides C. B. Withington, there were Sylvanus D. Locke, also of Janesville, H. A. Holmes, of Beloit, John F. Appleby, of Mazomanie, W. W. Burson, Jacob Behel, George H. Spaulding, and Marquis L. Gorham, of Rockford. Until 1880, all went well with McCormick and the Withington self-binder. Apparently, the process of invention had ceased. The Reaper had become of age. This miraculous wire-twisting machine was working everywhere with clock-like precision, and was believed to be the best that human ingenuity could devise. Then, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, came the news that William Deering had made and sold 3,000 _twine_ self-binders, and that the farmers had all at once become prejudiced against the use of wire. Wire, they said, got mixed with the straw and killed their cattle. Wire fell in the wheat and made trouble in the flour-mills. Wire cut their hands. Wire cluttered up their barn-yards. They would have no more to do with wire. What they wanted and must have was _twine_. William Deering, the newcomer who had caused this disturbance, became in a flash McCormick's ablest competitor. He had entered the business eight years before with a running start, having been a successful dry goods merchant in Maine. His geneology in the harvester industry shows that he had become an active partner of E. H. Gammon in 1872. Gammon, who had formerly been a Methodist preacher in Maine, had started as an agent for Seymour and Morgan of Brockport, which firm had been licensed by McCormick in 1845. Deering was the first highly skilled business man to enter the harvester trade. He was not a farmer's son, like McCormick. He was city-bred and factory trained. And in 1880 he staked practically his whole fortune upon the making of 3,000 twine self-binders, and won. Cyrus McCormick saw at a glance that the wire self-binder must go. It was his policy to give the farmers what they wanted, rather than to force upon them an unpopular machine. So he called to his aid a mechanical genius named Marquis L. Gorham--one of those who had been lured into the quest of a self-binder by the insistence of "Pump" Carpenter. Gorham's most valuable contribution was a self-sizing device, by which all bound sheaves were made to be the same size. By the time that the grain stood ripe and yellow the following season, Gorham had prepared a twine self-binder that worked well, and McCormick, yielding to this sudden hostility against wire, pushed the Gorham machine with the full force of his great organization. This evolution of the Reaper into the twine self-binder was a momentous event. It tremendously increased the sales. There were 60,000 machines of all kinds sold in 1880, and 250,000 in 1885. And it strikingly decreased the number of manufacturers. There were a hundred or more until the appearance of the twine binder: and all but twenty-two fell out of the race. Some of these were driven out by the expensive war of patents that now ensued. But most of them gave up the contest for lack of capital. The era of big production had arrived, and the little hand-labor shops could not produce an intricate self-binder for the low price at which they were being sold. Even McCormick lost heavily at first, before a truce was called in this battle of the binders. One lawsuit cost him more than $225,000 and one experiment, with what was called a "low-down" binder, cost him $80,000. He was as determined as ever not to be beaten; and although he was at this time over seventy years of age, and sorely crippled by rheumatism, he straightway entered into a trade war with Deering, which was not ended until 1902. Many of the older workmen who are now employed in the McCormick works can remember the stress and strain of those battling years, and how their indomitable old leader, at times when he was unable to walk, would have himself pushed in a wheeled chair through the various buildings of his immense plant, to make sure that every part of the great mechanism was working smoothly. Of all the competitors who had fought him in the early days, before the Civil War, there were few now remaining. Hussey, his first antagonist, had sold out to a mowing machine syndicate in 1861. Emerson, Seymour, and Morgan had decided not to make self-binders. Jerome Fassler, of Springfield, Ohio, took his fortune of two million dollars and went to New York City in 1882 with a scheme to build a subway. Manny was dead, and very few were living of those who had seen the Reaper of 1831. John P. Adriance, of Poughkeepsie, had survived. He was a gentle-natured man, who was content with a small and safe percentage of the business. Byron E. Huntley, of Batavia, had also built up a small, but solidly based, enterprise. He had been the office-boy, in 1845, in the factory where the first hundred McCormick Reapers were made; and he had been a manufacturer on his own account since 1850. He, too, was a quiet, dignified man, very highly esteemed in both the United States and Europe. Lewis Miller, who deserves most credit as the creator of the mower, continued to do business at Akron. Mr. Miller was almost equally famous as a Methodist and the originator of the Chautauqua idea. At Auburn, N. Y., David M. Osborne was fighting manfully to keep in the race. He had built seven Reapers as early as 1856; and had made many friends by his ability and uprightness. At Hoosick Falls, N. Y., there was Walter A. Wood--a most competent and enterprising man; at Plano, Illinois, there was William H. Jones--self-made and as honest as the soil; and at Springfield, Ohio, were the picturesque William N. Whiteley and the powerful company of Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner. Whiteley was an inventor who had changed a McCormick Reaper into what he called a "combined machine"--a combined Reaper and mower. And Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner had begun to make McCormick Reapers, by means of a license from Seymour and Morgan, in 1852. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1858] Such were the most notable men who, together with McCormick and Deering, began in 1880 or soon afterwards to manufacture the new knot-tying device that had become necessary to the Reaper. As for Cyrus H. McCormick himself, he lived to see it the universal grain-cutter of all civilized countries. He lived to see it perfected into one of the most astonishing mechanisms known to man--an almost rational machine that cuts the grain, carries it on a canvas escalator up to steel hands that shape it into bundles, tie a cord around it as neatly as could be done by a sailor, and cut the cord; after which the bound sheaf is pushed into a basket and held until five of them have been collected, whereupon they are dropped carefully upon the ground. Since 1884 there has been no essential change in the fashion of the self-binder. It is the same to-day as when McCormick was alive. In the span of his single life the Reaper was born and grew to its full maturity. He saw its Alpha and its Omega. Best of all, he saw not only its humble arrival, in a remote Virginia settlement, but, as we shall see, he saw it become the plaything of Emperors, the marvel of Siberian plainsmen, the liberator of the land-serf in twenty countries, and the bread-machine of one-half of the human race. CHAPTER VIII THE CONQUEST OF EUROPE By 1850 Cyrus H. McCormick was ready for new business. He now had a factory of his own, and the assistance of his brothers, William and Leander. He had a score of busy agents and a few thousand dollars in the bank. He had fought down the ridicule of the farm-hands. It was only six years since he had set out from his Virginian farm with $300 in his belt and the Idea of the Reaper in his brain; but in those six years he had worked mightily and succeeded. His Reapers were now clicking merrily in more than three thousand American wheat-fields. So, it was a natural thing that in the first flush of victory, he should look across the sea for "more worlds to conquer." There was at that time no general demand for Reapers in any European country. Labor was plentiful and cheap--forty cents a day in Great Britain and about half as much in Germany and France. In Austria and Russia the farm laborers received no wages at all. They were serfs. There was no economic reason why serfs should be replaced by machinery. They had first to become free and expensive to employ, before this Reaper, this product of a free republic, could set them free from the drudgery of the harvest. England had been the first European country to abolish this serfdom. Several centuries before, the ravages of the Black Death had made farm laborers so scarce that their rights had begun to be respected. Also, the upgrowth of the factory system and the development of English shipping had called thousands of men away from the fields, and raised the wages of those who were left behind. And the falling off in profits was compelling many English land-owners to study better methods of farming, and to favor the introduction of farm machinery. Fortunately for McCormick, he had no sooner begun to think of foreign trade than there came the famous London Exposition of 1851. This mammoth Exhibition was to Great Britain what the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was to the United States--magnificent evidence of industrial progress. Its main promoter had been Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, and its success gave the keenest pleasure to the young Queen. In a letter written to the King of the Belgians, she thus describes her impressions upon the opening day: "My dearest Uncle," she writes, "I wish you could have witnessed the 1st May, 1851, the _greatest_ day in our history, the _most beautiful_ and _imposing_ and _touching_ spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved Albert. Truly it was astonishing, a fairy scene. Many cried, and all felt touched and impressed with devotional feelings. It was the _happiest, proudest_ day in my life, and I can think of nothing else. You will be astounded at this great work when you see it. The beauty of the building and the vastness of it all!" The crowning jewel of this Exposition was the priceless Koh-i-noor diamond, which the Queen had received from India the previous year, and had loaned to the Exposition managers. For five thousand years, so the legend ran, this diamond had been one of the most precious treasures of Asia. It had been worn by the hero Karna. And it had been so often the most coveted prize in war that there was a Hindoo saying--"Whoever possesses the Koh-i-noor has conquered his enemies." Most of the courts of Europe had sent some dazzling treasure. There were tapestries from the Viceroy of Egypt, and rugs from the Sultan of Turkey, and silks from the King of Spain. There were marbles from Paris, and paintings from Dresden, and embroideries from Vienna. And in the midst of this resplendent Exposition, surrounded and outshone by the exhibits of Russia, Austria, and France, lay a shabby collection of odds and ends from the United States. For three weeks the American department was the joke of the Exposition. It was nicknamed the "Prairie Ground." It had no jewels, nor silks, nor golden candelabra. There were only such preposterous things as Dick's Press, Borden's Meat Biscuit, St. John's Soap, and McCormick's Reaper. This last contraption was the most preposterous of all. It was said to be "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying-machine." It was unlike anything else that English eyes had ever seen, and by all odds the queerest and most ungainly thing that lay under the glass roof of the Crystal Palace. Undeniably it was the "Ugly Duckling" of the American exhibit. But one day there came to the Reaper booth a remarkable Anglo-Italian named John J. Mechi. His father had been the barber of George III., and he himself, by the invention of a "Magic Razor Strop," had made a fortune. His hobby was scientific farming, and he was hungry for new methods and new ideas. At the time of the Exposition, his farm, which lay not far from London, had become the most famous experimental ground in England. Therefore, when he spied this new contrivance called a Reaper, he proposed that it be taken out to his farm and put to the test. This was done on July twenty-fourth. In spite of a pouring rain, there were present a group of judges and two hundred farmers. Lord Ebrington was there, and Prince Frederick of Holstein, and several other titled agriculturists. One other machine was to be tested, besides McCormick's. It was put into the grain first and was at once seen to be a failure. It broke down the grain instead of cutting it. Seeing this mishap, several of the farmers said to Mr. Mechi, "You had better stop this trial, because it is destroying your grain." Whereupon Mr. Mechi made one of the noblest replies that can be found in the annals of progress. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is a great experiment for the benefit of my country. When a new principle is about to be established, individual interests must always give way. If it is necessary for the success of this test, you may take my seventy acres of wheat." Then came the McCormick Reaper, driven by an expert named Mackenzie. It swept down the field like a chariot of war, with whirling reel and clattering blade--seventy-four yards in seventy seconds. It was a miracle. Such a thing had never before been seen by Europeans. "This is a triumph for the American Reaper," said the delighted Mechi. "It has done its work completely; and the day will come when this machine will cut all the grain in England. Now," he continued, swinging his hat, "let us, as Englishmen, show our appreciation by giving three hearty English cheers." Horace Greeley, who was present on this occasion, described the victory of the McCormick Reaper as follows:--"It came into the field to confront a tribunal already prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood John Bull--burly, dogged, and determined not to be humbugged,--his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. There was a moment, and but a moment, of suspense; then human prejudice could hold out no longer; and burst after burst of involuntary cheers from the whole crowd proclaimed the triumph of the Yankee Reaper. In seventy seconds McCormick had become famous. He was the lion of the hour; and had he brought five hundred Reapers with him, he could have sold them all." Suddenly the "Ugly Duckling" had become a swan. The glory of the Reaper began to rival that of the Koh-i-noor. McCormick was given not only a First Prize but a Council Medal, such as was usually awarded only to Kings and Governments. The London _Times_, which had led the jeering, became now the loudest in the chorus of approval. "The Reaping machine from the United States," said the _Times_ editor, "is the most valuable contribution from abroad, to the stock of our previous knowledge, that we have yet discovered. It is worth the whole cost of the Exposition." Also, speaking on behalf of the English people, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer said, "For all manly and practical purposes, the place of the United States is at the head of the poll. Where, out of America, shall we get a pistol like Mr. Colt's, to kill our eight enemies in a second, or a reaping machine like Mr. McCormick's, to clear out twenty acres of wheat in a day?" On the whole, this Exposition gave the United States its first opportunity to answer the unpleasant questions that Sidney Smith had asked in 1820. What have the Americans done, he had asked, for the arts and sciences? Where are their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys? Here he was answered by the McCormick Reaper, the Colt revolver, the Hobbs lock, the Morse telegraph, the Howe sewing-machine, the Deere plow, and the Hoe press. And, as if to make the triumph of American invention complete, it was in this year that the yacht _America_ easily out-classed the famous yachts of England in a great race at Cowes, and that the American steamer _Baltic_, of the Collins Line, broke all the ocean records and became the speediest vessel on the high seas. This Exposition did much for McCormick. It was the first appreciation of his work, in a large way, that he had received. It was a welcome change after twenty strenuous years. It gave him the distinction that a naturally strong nature craved, and secured the friendship of such eminent men as Junius Morgan, George Peabody, J. J. Mechi, and Lord Granville. From a business point of view, also, the Exposition was of great service to McCormick. It enabled him to draw up a new plan of campaign for the foreign trade. In the United States, he had made his appeal directly to the mass of the farmers. In Europe he could not do this. The vast bulk of the farmers here were tenants or serfs. But it was also true, he observed, that the Kings of Europe, and the members of the nobility, were land-owners. Here was his chance. He would begin at the top. He would sell his Reapers to the kings. He noticed that kings and queens were not the remote and inaccessible personages that he had believed them to be. Prince Albert was plainly more interested in farm machinery than in the Koh-i-noor. The one prize which was awarded to him personally was for a model cottage, in which a workingman's family might live with greater comfort. And one morning, while McCormick was giving attention to his Reaper, the Queen and her ten-year-old son (now the King of England) walked past and had a view of the American Reaping machine that had been so widely ridiculed and praised. McCormick had to hurry back to the United States, on account of a patent suit that was then in full swing; but before he left England he established an agency in London, and started a vigorous campaign among the titled land-owners. He prepared a statement, showing that even at the low rate of wages that were paid on English farms a Reaper would mean a handsome saving to English wheat-growers. But he did not depend upon the argument of economy. He placed his reliance also upon the fact that the Reaper had become the playtoy of kings, and that their fancy would presently make it the fashion. Four years later he went with another Reaper to an Exposition at Paris, won the Gold Medal, and sold his machine to the Emperor. Then, in 1862, with his wife and young son and daughter, he made his headquarters in London, and opened up a two-years' campaign in Great Britain, Germany, and France. Up to this time the foreign trade had grown but slowly. All European countries combined were not buying more than half a million dollars' worth of farm machinery a year from Americans--less than we sell them now in five days. So McCormick exerted himself to the utmost. He held field tests to awaken the farmers. He advertised and organized. There were now several dozen other manufacturers in the field, all making Reapers more or less like McCormick's; and he gave battle to them at London, Lille, and Hamburg. After the Hamburg contest, Joseph A. Wright, the United States Commissioner, cabled to New York: "McCormick has thrashed all nations and walked off with the Gold Medal." Again, in 1867, McCormick had a notable time at Paris. The Emperor Napoleon III., then in the last days of his inherited glory, permitted McCormick to give a sort of Reaper _matinée_ on the royal estate at Châlons. The Emperor was present, at first on horseback, and then on foot. The sun was hot, and presently he said to McCormick, "If you will allow me, I'll come under your umbrella." So the two men, dramatically different in the tendencies they represented, walked arm in arm behind the Reaper, and watched it automatically cut and rake off the grain. The Emperor was delighted. He forgot for the moment his impending troubles, and at once offered McCormick the Cross of the Legion of Honor. This was, in all probability, the last time that the coveted Cross was conferred in France by the hand of a sovereign; and the meeting of the two men was a highly impressive event, the one man typifying a falling dynasty that had risen to greatness by the sword, and the other the founder of a new industry that was destined to bring peace and plenty to all nations alike. Two years later, because of the clamor of McCormick's competitors, a grand Field Test was arranged by the German Government at Altenberg. Thirty-eight contestants entered the lists, and after a most exciting tournament the judges awarded the Gold Medal and a special prize of sixty ducats to McCormick. Such contests, from this time onward, came thick and fast. Several days later McCormick swept the field at Altona. In 1873 he was decorated by the Austrian Emperor. And in 1878 the French Academy of Science elected him a member, for the reason that he "had done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1867 From Painting by Cabanel] From that time to the present day the making of Reapers and Harvesters has remained an American business. An American machine must pay twenty dollars to enter France, and twenty-five to enter Hungary. But try as they may, other nations cannot learn the secret of the Reaper. They cannot produce a machine that is at once so complex, so hardy, and so efficient. When Bismarck, at the close of his life, was inspecting several American self-binders which he had bought for his farm at Fredericksruhe, he asked, "Why do they not make these machines in Germany?" As we have seen, had he wished a complete answer he would have had to read the history of the United States. He would have seen that the Reaper can be produced only in countries where labor receives a high reward, where farmers own their own acres without fear of being despoiled by invading armies, and where the average of intelligence and enterprise is as high in the country as in the city. In 1898 Europe had become so dependent upon America for its reaping machinery that 22,000 machines were shipped from the McCormick plant alone--so many that a fleet of twelve vessels had to be chartered to carry them. There are now as many American Reapers and Harvesters in Europe as can do the work of 12,000,000 men. Of all American machines exported, the Reaper is at the head of the list. It has been the chief pathfinder for our foreign trade. Four-fifths of all the harvesting machinery in the world is made in the United States; and one-third, perhaps more, in the immense factory-city that Cyrus H. McCormick founded in Chicago in 1847. It was McCormick's most solid satisfaction, in his later life, to see foreign nations, one by one, adopt his invention and move up out of the Famine Zone. No news was at any time more welcome to him than the tidings that a new territory had been entered. And although the foreign trade has been vastly multiplied in the past five or six years, he lived long enough to see his catalogue printed in twenty languages, and to know that as long as the human race continued to eat bread, the sun would never set upon the empire of the Reaper. CHAPTER IX McCORMICK AS A MANUFACTURER "If I had given up business, I would have been dead long ago," said Cyrus H. McCormick in 1884, only a few weeks before his death; and this statement was by no means an exaggeration. His business was his life. It was not a definite, walled-off fraction of his life, as with most men. It was the whole of it. His business was his work, his play, his religion, his grand opera, his education. There was business even in his love-letters and his dreams. McCormick believed in business. He had the sturdy pride of a "John Halifax, Gentleman." He never wanted to be anything else but a worker. He never wasted a breath in wishing for an easier life. He worked hard for twenty-five years after he had made his fortune, because he believed in work and commerce and the reciprocities of trade. He was never dazzled nor deflected for a moment by the pomps and pageantries of the world, and for the glory that springs from war he had very little respect. In 1847, when offering a place in his factory to his brother Leander, he writes, "This will be as honorable an enterprise as to go to Mexico to be shot at." And in later life, in a conversation with General Lilley, of Virginia, he said, "I expect to die in the harness, because this is not the world for rest. This is the world for work. In the next world we will have the rest." In the vast mass of letters, papers, etc., left by Mr. McCormick, there is one mention, and only one, of recreation. After his first visit to the West, in 1844, he wrote to one of his brothers and described a hunting trip in which he shot three prairie chickens near Beloit. But during the rest of his life, he was too busy for sport. His energy was the wonder of his friends and the despair of his employees. His brain was not quick. It was not marvellously keen nor marvellously intuitive. But it was at work every waking moment, like a great engine that never tires. "He was the most laborious worker I ever saw," said one of his secretaries. One of the words that annoyed him most was _to-morrow_. He wanted things done to-day. With regard to every important piece of work, it was his instinct to "do it now." He abhorred delay and dawdling. Even as a boy, when sent on an errand, he would set off upon a run. Walking was too slow. And although he was in France on many occasions, the French phrase that he knew best was "_Depechez-vous_." His plan of work, so far as he could be said to have a plan, was this--_One Thing at a Time, and the Hardest Thing First_. He followed the line of _most_ resistance. If the hardest thing can be done, he reasoned, all the rest will follow. And as for all work that was merely routine, he left as much as possible of it to others. He was not an organizer so much as a creator and a pioneer. His problem was not like that which troubles the business men of to-day. He was not grappling with the evils of competition, nor with the higher questions of efficiency and "community of interest." He was making a business that had not existed. He was clearing away obstacles that are now wholly forgotten. Consequently, as each new difficulty appeared, he had to consider it in all its details. He could not pass it over to Lieutenant Number One or Lieutenant Number Two. McCormick was like a general who was leading an army into an unknown country rather than like the business man of the twentieth century, who can travel by time-table and schedule. When an obstacle blocked his path, it had to be removed; and until it was out of the way, nothing else mattered. Thus it was impossible for McCormick to have business hours. Once his mind had applied itself to a problem, he cared nothing for clocks and watches. Sometimes he would work on through the night, hour after hour, until the gray light of another day shone in the window. On all these arduous occasions, he had no idea of time, and he would allow no distractions nor interruptions. So rigid was this grasp of his mind that if his body rebelled and he fell asleep, he would invariably when he woke take up the matter in hand at the exact point at which it had been left. Not even sleep could detach his mind from a task that was unfinished. When anything was going well, he let it alone. As soon as his factory was in good running order, he gave it little attention. It was managed first by his brothers, William and Leander, and afterwards by such thoroughly competent men as Charles Spring and E. K. Butler. The work that he chose to do himself was invariably new business. He cared little for the mere making of money. The success always pleased him much more than the profit. He was at heart a builder, and therefore when he had finished one structure, he moved off and began another. It is a remarkable fact that as an investor, also, he had no interest in businesses that were already established. Stocks were offered to him, stocks that were safe and sure, but he bought none of them. The money that he invested outside of his own business was put into pioneering enterprises. He bought land in Chicago and Arizona. He opened up gold mines in South Carolina and Montana. He supplied the capital for a company which set out to bring mahogany from San Domingo. He invested $55,000 in the Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad, an ambitious attempt to join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by rail, which was begun in 1879 and came to an inglorious end several years later. And he was one of that daring group of Americans who planned and financed the Union Pacific Railway--the first road that really joined sea to sea and reached to the farthest acre in the West. [Illustration: McCORMICK REAPER CUTTING ON A SIDE HILL IN PENNSYLVANIA] In all these undertakings he lost money, except in the instances of Chicago real estate and the Union Pacific. By 1883 he had several hundred thousand dollars invested in gold mines, and yet had not received one dollar of profit. It was the fascination of pioneering that had lured him. He saw no charm, as the gambler does, in the risk itself. The Wall Street game he regarded as child's play. The thing that gripped him was the developing of new material resources--the colonization of new lands--the mastery of whatever is hostile to the welfare of the human race. Another McCormick trait, which is not usually found in men who have the pioneering instinct, was _Thoroughness_. He never said, "This is good enough," or "Half a loaf is better than no bread." He wanted what was _right_ whether it came to him or went from him. He never believed in a ninety per cent success. He wanted par. Once his mind was fully aroused upon a subject, there was no detail too petty for him to consider. He labored hard to be correct in matters that appeared trifling to other men. Even in his letters to members of his family, the sentences were carefully formed, and there were no misspelled words. Once he gave advice to a younger brother on the importance of spelling words correctly. "You should carry a dictionary, as I do," he said. All slovenliness, whether of mind or body, he abhorred. To take thought about a matter and to do it as it ought to be done, was to him a matter of character as well as of business. When a telegram was submitted to him for approval, it was his custom to draw a circle around the superfluous words. This was a little lesson to his managers on the importance of brevity and exactness. He insisted that clocks and watches should be correct, and in his later life carried a fine repeater which could strike the hour in the night and in which he took an almost boyish pride. Once, when he had been given the management of a political campaign in Chicago, he created consternation among the politicians by the rigid way in which he supervised the expense accounts. "This will never do," he said. "Things are at loose ends." If a bill was ten cents too much it went back. One bill for $15 was held up for a week because it was not properly drawn. The amazed politicians could not understand such a man,--who would readily sign a check for $10,000, and put it in the campaign treasury, and yet make trouble about the misplacing of a dime of other people's money. McCormick demanded absolute honesty from his employees. One young man lost his chance of promotion because he was seen to place a two-cent stamp, belonging to the firm, on one of his personal letters. But once he had tested a man, and found him to be pure gold, he trusted him completely. A new employee would be pelted with questions and complete answers insisted upon. This was often a harsh ordeal. It was irritating to a man of independent spirit, until he realized that it was a sort of discipline and examination. McCormick was always an optimist. He was not one of those who said, "Let well enough alone." He never endured unsatisfactory business conditions. When he found that the freight charges on Reapers from Virginia to Cincinnati were too high, he arranged to have Reapers built in Cincinnati. When he found that other manufacturers were apt to be careless as to the quality of their materials, he built a factory of his own. Again and again in the course of his life, came the temptation to be satisfied with what he had already achieved. But he could not endure the thought of being beaten. Instead of being content and complacent, he was far more likely to be planning a wholly new policy, on larger lines. A daring proposition from a competent man always caught his attention. Once, when he was sitting in his office, he heard E. K. Butler, who was at that time the head of his sales department, protest that the factory was not making as many machines as it should. "It is sheer nonsense," said Butler, "to say that the factory is producing as much as it can. If I were at the head of it, I could double the output with very little extra expense." Most employers would have regarded this sort of talk as mere boastfulness, but not so McCormick. He knew that Butler was a most adaptable and competent man, so he called him into the office and straightway appointed him to be the superintendent of the factory. Butler was thus put upon his mettle. He went out to the factory resolved that McCormick's confidence in him should not be overthrown. He routed the wastes and inefficiencies, and keyed the whole plant up to such a pitch that, in a remarkably short period, he had made good his boast and doubled the output without hiring an extra man. But the preëminent quality in the character of Cyrus McCormick was not his power of concentration, nor his spirit of pioneering, nor his thoroughness. It was his strength of will--his _Tenacity_. This was the motif of his life. He was not at all a shrewd accumulator of millions, as many have imagined him. He had not an iota of craft and cunning. Neither was he a financier, in the modern sense. It would be nearer the truth to say that he was a farmer-manufacturer, of simple nature but tremendous resolution, whose one overmastering life-purpose was to teach the wheat nations of the world to use his harvesting machinery. "The exhibition of his powerful will was at times actually terrible," said one of his lawyers. "If any other man on this earth ever had such a will, certainly I have not heard of it." A drizzle of little annoyances and little matters always irritated him, but he could stand up alone against a sea of adversity without a whimper. In fact, he would sooner be asked for a thousand dollars than for fifty cents. He would storm over the loss of a carpet slipper and smile blandly at the loss of a lawsuit. "He made more fuss over a pin-prick," said one of his valets, "than he did over a surgical operation." He disliked the petty odds and ends of life. His mind was too massive to adapt itself readily to small matters. But when a great difficulty came in view, he rose and went at it with a sort of stern satisfaction and religious zeal. He was so confident of his own strength, and of the justice of his cause, that it was almost a joy to him to-- "Breast the blows of circumstance, And grasp the skirts of happy chance, And grapple with his evil star." A defeat never meant anything more to McCormick than a delay. Often, the harder he was thrown down the higher he would rebound. Again and again he was thwarted and blocked. In the race of competition, there was a time when he was beaten by Whiteley, and there was a time when he was beaten by Deering. Most of his lawsuits were decided against him. But no one ever saw him crushed or really disheartened. In 1877, after he had made a long hard struggle to become a United States Senator, the news came to him that he was defeated. "Well," he said, "that's over. What next?" [Illustration: REAPER DRAWN BY OXEN IN ALGERIA] Usually, McCormick was at his best when the situation was at its worst. His Titanic work immediately after the great Chicago Fire of 1871 is the most striking evidence of this. He had been living at the corner of Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue, in New York City, for four years before the Fire; but he was in Chicago during the greatest of all Illinois disasters. In one day of fire and terror he saw his city reduced to a waste of ashes. It was no longer a city. It was two thousand acres of desolation. He was himself in the midst of the fire-fighting. When his wife, in response to his telegraphic message, came to him in Chicago two days later, he met her wearing a half-burned hat and a half-burned overcoat. His big factory, which was at that time making about 10,000 harvesters a year, was wholly destroyed. In a flash he found himself without a city and without a business. But McCormick never flinched. The arrival of a great difficulty was always his cue. First he ascertained his wife's wishes. Did she wish the factory to be rebuilt, or did she want him to retire from active business life? She, thinking of her son, said--"Rebuild." At once McCormick became the most buoyant and confident citizen in the ruined city. His great spirit was aroused. He called up one of his attorneys and sent him in haste to the docks to buy lumber. He telegraphed to his agents to rush in as much money as they could collect. Every bank in the city had been burned, so for a time this money was kept by the cashier in a market basket, and carried at night to a private house. There was one day as much as $24,000 in the basket. Before the cinders were cool, McCormick had given orders to build a new factory, larger than the one that had been burned down. More than this, he had also given orders that his house in New York should be sold, and that a home should be established in Chicago. Chicago was his city. He had seen it grow from 10,000 to 325,000. And in this hour of its distress he tossed aside all other plans and gave Chicago all he had. His unconquerableness gave heart to others. Several of the wealthiest citizens, who had lost courage, rallied to the help of the city. One merchant, who had lost his store, borrowed $100,000 from McCormick and started again. And so McCormick became not only one of the main builders of the first Chicago, but also of the second Chicago, which in less than three years had become larger and finer than the city that was. It was this steel-fibred tenacity that was the main factor in the success of McCormick, whether we consider him as a manufacturer or as a great American. It enabled him to establish the perilous industry of making harvesting machines--a business so complex and many-sided that out of every twenty manufacturers who set out to emulate McCormick, only one survives to-day. It enabled McCormick to hold his own in spite of adverse litigation, the hostility of Congress, the rivalry of other inventors, and the calamity of the Great Fire. It was so remarkable, and so productive of good to his country and to himself, that he will always remain one of the creative and heroic figures in the early industrial history of the United States. CHAPTER X CYRUS H. McCORMICK AS A MAN Cyrus H. McCormick was a great commercial Thor. He was six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds, and had the massive shoulders of a wrestler. His body was well proportioned, with small hands and feet. His hair, even in old age, was very dark and waving. His bearing was erect, his manner often imperious, and his general appearance that of a man built on large lines and for large affairs. Men of lesser caliber regarded him with fear, not for any definite reason, but because, as Seneca has said--"In him that has power, all men consider not what he has done, but what he may do." He was so strong, so dominating, so ready to crash through obstacles by sheer bulk of will-power, that smaller men could never quite subdue a feeling of alarm while they were in his presence. He was impatient of small talk and small criticisms and small objections. He had no tact at retail, and he saw no differences in little-minded people. All his life he had been plagued and obstructed by the Liliputians of the world, and he had no patience to listen to their chattering. He was often as rude as Carlyle to those who tied their little threads of pessimism across his path. At fashionable gatherings he would now and then be seen--a dignified figure; but his mind was almost too ponderous an engine to do good service in a light conversation. If a subject did not interest him, he had nothing to say. What gave him, perhaps, the highest degree of social pleasure, was the entertaining, at his house, of such men as Horace Greeley, William H. Seward, Peter Cooper, Abram S. Hewitt, George Peabody, Junius Morgan, Cyrus W. Field, or some old friend from Virginia. His long years of pioneering had made him a self-sufficient man, and a man who lived from within. He did not pick up his opinions on the streets. His mind was not open to any chance idea. He had certain clear, definite convictions, logical and consistent. What he knew, he knew. There were no hazy imaginings in his mind. The main secret of his power lay in his ability to focus all his energies upon a few subjects. Once, in 1848, he mentioned the French Revolution in one of his letters. "It is a mighty affair," he wrote, "and will be likely to stand." But usually he paid little attention to the world-dramas that were being enacted. He was too busy--too devoted to affairs which, if he did not attend to them, would not be attended to at all. McCormick was a product of the Protestant Reformation, and of the capitalistic development that came with it. The whole structure of his character was based upon the two great dogmas of the Reformation--the sovereignty of God and the direct responsibility of the individual. Whoever would know the springs at which his life was fed must read the story of Luther, Calvin, and Knox. They must call to mind the attitude of Luther at the Diet of Worms, when he faced the men who had the power to take his life and said, "Here I stand. I can do no other." They must recollect how these three men, who were leaders of nations, not sects, stood out alone against the kings and ecclesiasticisms of Europe, without wealth, without armies, without anything except a higher Moral Idea, and succeeded so mightily they actually changed the course of empires and became the pathfinders of the human race. McCormick was so essentially a result of this religio-economic movement that it is impossible to separate his religion and his business life. He was an individualist through and through--as well marked a type of the Covenanter in commerce as the United States has ever produced. He believed in presbyters in religion, private capitalists in business, and elected representatives in government. He was opposed to feudalism and bureaucracy in all their myriad forms. He held the middle ground, the _via media_, between the over-organization of the fourteenth century, when the rights of the individual were forgotten, and the lax liberalism of to-day, when too much is left to individual whim and caprice, and when duties and responsibilities are too apt to be ignored. Above all constituted authorities stood a man's own conscience. This was McCormick's faith, and it was this that made him the fighter that he was. It gave him courage and the fortitude that is rarer than courage. It compelled him to oppose his own political party at the Baltimore Convention of 1861. It made him stand single-handed against his fellow-manufacturers, in defence of his rights as an inventor. It enabled him to beat down the Pennsylvania Railroad, after a twenty-three year contest, and to prove that a great corporation cannot lawfully do an injustice to an individual. McCormick was nourished on this virile Calvinistic faith from the time when he first learned to read out of the Shorter Catechism and the Bible. It had been the faith of his fathers for generations, and it was bred into him from boyhood. Nevertheless, according to the practice of the Presbyterians, there had to come a time when he himself openly made his choice. This occasion came in 1834, when McCormick was twenty-five years of age. A four-day meeting was being held in the little stone church on his grandfather's farm. Three ministers were in charge. As was the custom, there was constant preaching from morning until sundown, with an hour's respite for dinner. At the close of the fourth day, all who wished to become avowed Christians were requested to stand up. Cyrus McCormick was there, and he was not a member of the church; yet he did not stand up. That night his father went to his bedside and gently reproached him. "My son," he said, "don't you know that your silence is a public rejection of your Saviour?" Cyrus was conscience-stricken. He leapt from his bed and began to dress himself. "I'll go and see old Billy McClung," he said. Half an hour later, old Billy McClung, who was a universally respected religious leader in the community, was amazed to be called out of his sleep by a greatly troubled young man, who wanted to know by what means he might make his peace with his Maker. The next Sunday this young man stood up in the church, and became in name what he already was by nature and inheritance--a Christian of the Presbyterian faith. After he left home his letters to the members of his family are strewn with scraps of religious reflection. In 1845, for instance, he writes, "Business is not inconsistent with Christianity; but the latter ought to be a help to the former, giving a confidence and resignation, after using all proper means; and yet I have sometimes felt that I came so far short of the right _feeling_, so worldly-minded, that I could wish myself out of the world." On another occasion, when he was struggling with manufacturers who had broken their contracts, he wrote, "If it were not for the fact that Providence has seemed to assist me in our business, it has at times seemed that I would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me; but I believe the Lord will help us out." And after his first visit to New York City, he summed up his impressions of the metropolis in the following sentence, "It is a desirable place and people, with regular and good Presbyterian preaching." McCormick enjoyed with all his heart the logical, doctrinal sermon. His favorite Bible passage was the eighth chapter of Romans, that indomitable victorious chapter that ends like the blast of a trumpet: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us; for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." His favorite hymn, which he sang often and with the deepest fervor, was that melodious prayer that begins-- "O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight, On whom in affliction I call, My comfort by day, and my song in the night, My hope, my salvation, my all." In his earlier journeys through the Middle West, McCormick was distressed at the rough immorality of the new settlements. "I see a great deal of profanity and infidelity in this country, enough to make the heart sick," he wrote in 1845. These towns and villages needed more preachers, and better preachers, he thought. Consequently, soon after he had acquired his first million dollars, he determined to establish the best possible college for the education of ministers. He almost stunned with joy the Western friends of higher education for ministers, by offering them $100,000 with which to establish a school of theology in Chicago. This offer was made in 1859--half a century ago, and resulted in the removal of a moneyless and decaying Seminary at New Albany, Indiana, to Chicago. Thus was founded the Northwestern Theological Seminary, afterwards named the McCormick Theological Seminary, which, in its fifty years of life, has given a Christian education to thousands of young men. Thirteen years later he bought _The Interior_ and made it what it has remained ever since--a religious weekly of the highest rank. These two--the college and the paper--were his pride and delight. He fathered them in the most affectionate way. No matter what crisis might be impending in the war of business, he always had time to talk to his editors and his professors. So, though McCormick had received much from his religious inheritance, it is also true that he gave back much. His last public speech, which was read for him by his son Cyrus because he was too weak to deliver it himself, was given at the laying of the corner-stone of a new building which he had given to the college. Its last sentence was typical of McCormick--full of hope and optimism: "I never doubted that success would ultimately reward our efforts," he said; "and now, on this occasion, we may fairly say that the night has given place to the dawn of a brighter day than any which has hitherto shone upon us." McCormick went into politics, too, with the same conscientious abandon with which he plunged into business and religion. He was a Democrat of the Jeffersonian type. One of his keenest pleasures was to go to the Senate and listen to its debates. He was not a fluent speaker himself, but he delighted in the orations of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. He believed in politics. He thought it a public danger that the strong and competent men of the republic should willingly permit men of little ability and low character to manage public affairs. In fact, he was almost as much a pathfinder and pioneer in this matter as he had been in matters of business, but without the same measure of success. Politics, he found, was not like business. Its successes depended not upon your own efforts, but upon the votes of the majority. What McCormick tried to do as a citizen and a patriot was the one heroic failure of his life. He ran for office on several occasions, but he was never elected. He was not the sort of man who gets elected. He stood for his whole party at a time when the average politician was standing only for himself. He talked of "fundamental principles" while the other leaders, for the most part, were thinking of salaries. He gave up his time and his money as freely for politics as he did for religion; but he was out of his element. He was too sincere, too simple, too intent upon a larger view of public questions. He could never talk the flexible language of diplomacy nor suit his theme to the prejudice of his listeners. Usually, to the political managers and delegates with whom he felt it his duty to co-operate, he was like a man from another world. They could never understand him, and tolerated his leadership mainly because of his generous contributions. Again and again he astonished them by developing a party speech into a sermon on national righteousness, or by speaking nobly of a political opponent. On one memorable occasion, for instance, in the white-hot passion of the Hayes-Tilden controversy, and after he had lavished time and money in support of Tilden, he sprang to his feet in a Democratic convention and amazed the delegates by saying: "Mr. Hayes is not a Democrat, but he is too patriotic and honest to suit his party managers and we must sustain him so far as he is right." He was one of the first Americans who rose above sectional interests and party loyalties, and surveyed his country as a whole. No other man of his day, either in or out of public office, was so free from local prejudices and so intensely national in his beliefs and sympathies. He refused to stamp himself with the label of the North or of the South. He had been reared in the one and matured in the other. And in the ominous days before the Civil War he strove like a beneficent giant to make the wrangling partisans listen to the voice of reason and arbitration. [Illustration: THE REAPER IN HEAVY GRAIN] He went to the Democratic Convention at Baltimore, just before the war, and set before the Southerners the standpoint of the North. Then he bought a daily paper--_The Times_--to explain to Chicago the standpoint of the South. He wrote editorials. He made speeches. He poured into the newspapers, day after day for two years, a large share of the profits that he derived from his Reaper. He was no more popular as an editor than as a political candidate. He was a maker, not a collector, of public opinion; and instead of pandering to the war frenzy, he opposed it,--put his newspaper squarely in its path, and held it there until the feet of the crowd had trampled it into an impossible wreck. He was so strong, so indomitable, this heir of the Covenanters, that when the war had openly begun, he strode between the North and South and labored like a Titan to bring them to a reconciliation. He actually believed that he could establish peace. He proposed a plan. Horace Greeley indorsed it, and the two men, who were throughout life the closest of comrades, undertook to bring the severed nation back to union and the paths of law. The "McCormick Plan," in a word was to call immediately two conventions--one to represent the Democrats of the North and the other the Democrats of the South. These conventions would elect delegates to a board of arbitration, which would consider the various causes of the war and arrange a just basis upon which both sides could agree to disband their armies and reëstablish peace. After the war, too, almost before the nation had finished counting its dead, it was Cyrus H. McCormick whose voice was first heard in favor of church unity. Among the many speeches and letters of his which have been preserved, the most beautifully phrased paragraph is the ending of an article that he published in 1869, protesting against the invasion of political partisanism into the religious life. "When are we to look for the return of brotherly love and Christian fellowship," he asked, "so long as those who aspire to fill the high places of the church indulge in such wrath and bitterness? Now that the great conflict of the Civil War is past, and its issues settled, religion and patriotism alike require the exercise of mutual forbearance, and the pursuit of those things which tend to peace." For the mere game of party politics Mr. McCormick cared little or nothing. It was all as irksome to him as the task of governing Geneva was to John Calvin; but he could not help himself. His political convictions were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. They were racial traits which his forefathers and foremothers had spent at least three centuries in developing. On one occasion Dr. John Hall of New York, seeing how Mr. McCormick was worried by political obligations, said to him: "Why do you plague yourself with these uncongenial things? What glory can you hope to get from politics that will add to what you now possess as the inventor of the Reaper?" "Dr. Hall," replied Mr. McCormick, "I am in politics because I cannot help it. There are certain principles that I have got to stand by, and I am obliged to go into politics to defend them." The form of Mr. McCormick's religious faith had been forged by such preacher-patriots as John Knox and Andrew Melville; and he, like them, found it as imperative upon his conscience to fight for both civil and religious liberty. With his whole heart he believed in American institutions as they had been established by the nation-builders of 1776. He did not want the Constitution to be ignored by Federal reformers, nor the Union to be broken by secession. He was by temperament and tradition a conservative, and opposed especially to all extreme measures and sectional innovations. As he had adapted his Reaper so that it would cut grain in all States, he could never see why political policies, too, should not be lifted above the limitations of geography and made to conserve the welfare of the whole people. As he said on one strenuous occasion when laboring mightily to beat back the extremists in his own party: "Is not every government on the face of the earth established upon the principle of compromise?" To special privileges of every sort he was unalterably opposed. He asked for none for himself--no favoring tariff or grant of public land or monopolistic franchise. "I have been throughout my life," he said, "opposed to all measures which tend to raise one class of the American people upon the ruin of others, or one section of our common country at the expense of another. The country is the common property of all parties, and all are interested in its prosperity." All this shows the heroic side of McCormick; but he was not always heroic. He was a giant, but a most human and simple-natured giant. Strange as it may sound to those who knew him only with his armor on, it is true that he could be tender or humorous. There were tears and laughter in him. There was no cruelty in his strength and no revenge in his aggressiveness. He was a big, red-blooded, great-hearted man, who might to-day be threatening to cane a politician who had deceived him, and to-morrow be playing with his younger children and letting their two pet squirrels, Zip and Zoe, chase each other around his shoulders. He was fond of power, not because of its privileges and exemptions, but because it furthered the work that he had in hand. He was often surrounded by sycophants--by men who said yes to his yes and no to his no; and while he accepted this homage with a certain degree of satisfaction, he was not deceived by it. On one occasion, when he was attending the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati--the convention that nominated Hancock as candidate for President,--he was beset by a court of flatterers and lip-servers. After it was over, he remarked simply to his valet, "Well, Charlie, there is a lot of farce and humbug about this." Dr. Francis L. Patton, who was for years the president of Princeton University and also at one time editor of _The Interior_, was especially impressed with this direct naturalness of McCormick. "One meets with all sorts of men in the course of a lifetime," said Dr. Patton. "There are patronizing men, pompous men, men who habitually wear a mask of seriousness, men who clothe themselves with dignity as with a coat of mail lest you should presume too much or go too far, men whose position is never defined, and double-minded men with whom you never feel yourself safe. But Mr. McCormick was not like one of these. There is that in the possession of power which always tends to make men imperious. I do not mean to imply that he was altogether free from this tendency, for he was not. But he was approachable, companionable, and ready to hear what I had to say. He was not one of those men who are so uninterestingly self-controlled as to be always the same. There were times when his mirth was contagious and times when his wrath was kindled a little. We did not always agree, and sometimes we both grew hot in argument; but at the end his cheery laugh proclaimed the fact that our differences had only been the free and easy give-and-take of friendship." To see McCormick laugh was a spectacle. There was first a mellowing of his usual Jovian manner. His gray-brown eyes twinkled. The tense lines of his face relaxed. Then came a smile and soon a burst of laughter, shaking his powerful body and putting the whole company for the time into an uproar of merriment. It was the triumph of the genial and magnetic side of his nature--the side that was ordinarily repressed by the pressure of his big affairs. McCormick had humor, but not wit. His jokes were simple and old-fashioned, such as Luther and Cromwell would have laughed at. There was no innuendo and no cynicism. On one occasion two small urchins knocked at the door and asked for food. McCormick heard their voices and had them brought into the sitting-room, where he happened to be in consultation with his lawyer. "Now," said he to the youngsters, "we are going to put both of you on trial. I will be the judge and this gentleman will be the prosecutor." Each boy in turn was placed on the witness-stand, and plied with questions. It was soon clear that neither of them was telling the truth, so "Judge" McCormick took them in hand and gave them a serious talk on the folly and wickedness of lying. Then he gave them twenty-five cents apiece, and sent them down to the kitchen to eat as much supper as they could hold. [Illustration: HARVESTING NEAR SPOKANE, WASHINGTON] At another time a very dignified and self-centred military officer was taking supper with the McCormick family. The first course, as usual, was corn-meal mush and milk. This was served in Scotch fashion, with the hot mush in one bowl and the cold milk in another, and the practice was to so co-ordinate the eating of these that both were finished at the same time. The officer planned his spoonfuls badly, and was soon out of milk. "Have some more milk to finish your mush, Colonel," said McCormick. Several minutes later the Colonel's mush bowl was empty, at which McCormick said, "Have some more mush to finish your milk." And so it went, with milk for the mush and mush for the milk, until the unfortunate Colonel was hopelessly incapacitated for the four or five courses that came afterwards. McCormick was not by any means a teller of stories, but he had a few simple and well-worn anecdotes that appealed so strongly to his sense of humor that he told and re-told them many times. There was the story of the man who stole the pound of butter and hid it in his hat, and how the grocer saw him and kept talking in the store, beside a hot stove, until the butter melted and exposed the man's thievery. Another favorite story was about the pig that found its way into a garden by walking through a hollow log, and how the gardener fooled the pig by placing the hollow log in such a way that both ends of it were on the outside of the garden. Even McCormick's jokes had a certain moral tang--a flavor of the first Psalm and the eighth chapter of Romans. They were apt to deal with the troubles of the ungodly who had been caught in their wickedness. There were times, too, when his sense of humor and his sense of justice would co-operate in odd ways. Once, when a roast game bird, which had been sent to him as a gift from the hunter, was left over from supper, he ordered that his dainty be kept and served for the next day's luncheon. At luncheon the next day it did not appear. On asking for the game bird, a roast chicken was set before him, and he at once noticed that it was not the same bird which he had ordered to be kept. He questioned the butler, who protested that it was the same. After the meal McCormick ordered that the servants involved should be called into the dining-room. From them, by a series of questions, he soon obtained the truth and proved the butler to be the culprit. The one thing that he would tolerate least was a lie. As he would say at times, "A thief you can watch, but I detest a liar." There were very few who had the temerity to play a practical joke upon the great inventor himself. His two youngest sons, Harold and Stanley, would hide in the hallway when they saw him approaching, and pounce out upon him with wild yells in small-boy fashion, but they were both privileged people. McCormick was a most hearty and hospitable man. He was an ideal person for such a life-work--the abolition of famine. He was fond of food and plenty of it. He loved to see a big table heaped with food. The idea of hunger was intolerable to him. He might well have been posing for a statue of the deity of Plenty, as he squared himself around to the long, family dinner-table, with his napkin worn high and caught at his shoulders by a white silk band that went around his neck, and with a complacent, "Now, then," plunged the carving-fork into a crisp and fragrant fowl that lay on the platter in front of him. The fact that McCormick seldom made a social call was not due to his own choosing, but because of the many worries and compulsions of his life. Once, when confiding in an intimate friend, he said, "It pains me very much to think how little I am known by my neighbors, but I seem to be always too busy to meet them." He was not at all, as many have thought because of his strenuous life, a man of harsh and rough exterior. There was nothing rough about him except his strength. He was irreproachable in dress and personal appearance. He did not drink, smoke, nor swear. And his manners and language, on formal occasions, were those of a dignified gentleman of the old school--a Calhoun, or a Van Buren. He was not a hard-natured man, except when he was battling for his rights and his principles. He would often turn from an overwhelming mass of business to play with one of his children. He was as ready to forgive as he was to fight. He never cherished resentments or personal grudges. He knew that life was a conflict of interests and policies; and when he forgave, his forgiveness was free and full, and not a formal ceremony. It was as honest and as spontaneous as his wrath. He was one of the few men who could freely pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." His fame and honors and intimacies with people of rank never made him less democratic in his sympathies. He always had a profound respect for the man or woman who did useful work, if the work was done well. Once, when a poor woman went to him for advice about some trifling thing that she had invented, he turned from his work and explained to her, with the utmost patience and courtesy, the things that she wished to know. With his trusted employees, too, he was usually kindly and sometimes jovial. "I had only one brush with him in thirty-five years," said one of his cashiers. "The last time that I saw him, he met me on the street and said, 'Hello, Sellick, have you got lots of money? Can you give me a hundred thousand dollars to-day?' 'Yes, sir,' I answered. 'Well, I'm glad I don't need it,' he said with a laugh." The loyalty of his workmen and his agents was always a source of pride to McCormick. It was one of the favorite topics of his conversation. He would mention his men by name and tell of their exploits with the deepest satisfaction. On one occasion, when a body of agents made a united demand for higher salaries, there was one agent in Minnesota who refused to take part in the movement. "I don't want to force Mr. McCormick," he said. "I have worked for him for nearly thirty years, and I know that he is a just man, and that he will do what is right." Not long afterwards, McCormick was told of this man's action, and he immediately showed his appreciation by making the agent a present of a carriage and fine team of horses. There was one man who was wholly in McCormick's power--a negro named Joe, who, by the custom that prevailed in the South before the Civil War, was a slave and the property of McCormick. They were of the same age, and had played together as boys. Joe grew up to be a tall, straight, intelligent negro, and his master was very fond of him. He is mentioned frequently in McCormick's letters, usually in a considerate way. Years before the Civil War McCormick gave Joe his freedom, and some land and a good cabin. Now and then, even in the stress and strain of his business-building, he would stop to write Joe a short letter of good wishes and advice. There was no other one thing, perhaps, which proved so convincingly the essential kindliness of his nature as his treatment of Joe. In his family relations, too, McCormick was a man of tenderness and devotion. When his father died, in 1846, he was struck down by sorrow. "Many a sore cry have I had as I have gone around this place and found no father," he wrote to his brother William. And as soon as he was solidly established in Chicago, his first act was to send for his mother, and to give her such a royal welcome that she could hardly believe her eyes. "I feel like the Queen of Sheba," she said to her neighbors when she returned to Virginia; "the half was never told." McCormick helped his younger brothers--William and Leander, by making them his partners. William died in 1865--a great and irreparable loss. He was a man of careful mind and rare excellence of character, especially able in matters of detail--a point in which Cyrus McCormick was not proficient. The two men were well suited as partners. Cyrus planned the work in large outlines, and broke down the obstacles that stood in the way; while William added the details and supervised the carrying out of the plan. Leander, who also held a high place in the business in its earlier days, withdrew from it later, and died in 1900. [Illustration: CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1883 His Last Portrait] Until 1858 McCormick had thought himself too busy to be married. But in that year he met Miss Nettie Fowler, of New York, and changed his mind. It was soon apparent that his marriage was not to be in any sense a hindrance to his success, but rather the wisest act of his life. Mrs. McCormick was a woman of rare charm, and with a comprehension of business affairs that was of the greatest possible value to her husband. She was at all times in the closest touch with his purposes. By her advice he introduced many economies at the factory, and rebuilt the works after the Great Fire of 1871. The precision of her memory, and the grasp of her mind upon the multifarious details of human nature and manufacturing, made her an ideal wife for such a man as Cyrus H. McCormick. As he grew older, he depended upon her judgment more and more; and as Mrs. McCormick is still in the possession of health and strength, it may truly be said that for more than half a century she has been a most influential factor in the industrial and philanthropic development of the United States. Four sons were born, and two daughters--Cyrus Hall, who is now President of the International Harvester Company; Robert, who died in infancy; Harold, Treasurer of the International Harvester Company; Stanley, Comptroller of the Company; Virginia; and Anita, now known as Mrs. Emmons Blame. Mr. McCormick was a most affectionate husband and father. He took the utmost delight in his home and its hospitalities; and invariably brought his whole household with him whenever the growth of his business obliged him to visit foreign countries. In the last few years of his life it gave him the most profound satisfaction to know that his oldest son would pick up the McCormick burden and carry it forward. "Cyrus is a great comfort to me," he said to an intimate friend. "He has excellent judgment in business matters, and I find myself leaning on him more and more." The truth is that there was a tender side to McCormick's strong nature, which was not seen by those who met him only upon ordinary occasions. He was in reality a great dynamo of sentiment. He was deeply moved by music, especially by the playing of Ole Bull and the singing of Jenny Lind, who were his favorites. He was as fond of flowers as a child. "I love best the old-fashioned pinks," he said, "because they grew in my mother's garden in Virginia." Often the tears would come to his eyes at the sight of mountains, for they reminded him of his Virginian home. "Oh, Charlie," he said once to his valet, as he sat crippled in a wheel-chair in a Southern hotel, "how I wish I could get on a horse and ride on through those mountains once again!" McCormick was not in any sense a Gradgrind of commercialism--a man who enriched his coffers by the impoverishment of his soul. He made money--ten millions or more; but he did so incidentally, just as a man makes muscle by doing hard work. Several of his fellow Chicagoans had swept past him in the million-making race. No matter how much money came to him, he was the same man, with the same friendships and the same purposes. And it is inconceivable that, for any amount of wealth, he would have changed the ground-plan of his life. It is strictly true to say that he was a practical idealist. He idealized the American Constitution, the Patent Office, the Courts, the Democratic Party, and the Presbyterian Church. He was an Oliver Cromwell of industry. All his beliefs and acts sprang from a few simple principles and fitted together like a picture puzzle. There was religion in his business and business in his religion. He was made such as he was by the Religious Reformation of Europe and the Industrial Revolution of the United States. He was all of one piece--sincere and self-consistent--a type of the nineteenth-century American at his best. He was not sordid. He was not cynical. He was not scientific. He was a man of faith and works--one of the old-fashioned kind who laid the foundations and built the walls of this republic. He felt that he was born into the world with certain things to do. Some of these things were profitable and some of them were not, but he gave as much energy and attention to the one as to the other. In 1859, for instance, he had a factory that was profitable, and a daily paper and a college that were expensive. He was struggling to extend his trade at home and in Europe, to protect his patents, to prevent the war between the North and South, and to maintain the simplicity of the Presbyterian faith. To contend for these interests and principles was his life. He could not have done anything else. It was as natural for him to do so as for a fish to swim or a bird to fly. Once, towards the end of his life, when he was sitting in his great arm-chair, reflecting, he said to his wife, "Nettie, life _is_ a battle." He made this announcement as though it were the discovery of a new fact. All his life he had been much less conscious of the battle itself than of the _cause_ for which he fought. In 1884 McCormick died, at that time of the year when wheat is being sown in Spain and reaped in Mexico. The earth-life of "the strong personality before whom obstacles went down as swiftly and inevitably as grain before the knife of his machines," was ended. His last words, spoken in a moment's awakening from the death-stupor, were--"Work, work!" Not even the dissolution of his body could relax the fixity of his will. And when he lay in state, in his Chicago home, there was a Reaper, modelled in white flowers, at his feet; and upon his breast a sheaf of the ripe, yellow wheat, surmounted by a crown of lilies. These were the emblems of the work that had been given him to do, and the evidence of its completion. CHAPTER XI THE REAPER AND THE NATION When Cyrus H. McCormick died in 1884 he had provided hunger-insurance for the United States and the greater part of the civilized world. In that year his own factory made 50,000 harvesting machines, and there were in use, in all countries, more than 500,000 McCormick machines, doing the work of 5,000,000 men in the harvest fields. The United States was producing wheat at the rate of ten bushels per capita, instead of four, as it had been in 1847, when McCormick built his first factory in Chicago. And the total production of wheat in all lands was 2,240,000,000 bushels--enough to give an abundance of food to 325,000,000 people. Chicago, in 1884, was a powerful city of six hundred thousand population. It had grown sixty-fold since McCormick rode into it by stage in 1845. It had 3,519 manufacturing establishments, giving work to 80,000 men and women and producing commodities at the rate of $5,000,000 worth in a week. It was then what it is to-day--the chief Reaper City and principal granary of the world. The wheat and flour that were sent out from its ports and depots in the year that the inventor of the Reaper died were enough to make ten thousand million loaves of bread, which, if they were fairly distributed, would have given about forty loaves apiece to the families of the human race. The United States, in 1884, had been for six years the foremost of the wheat-producing nations. It had also grown to be first in mining, railroads, telegraphs, steel, and agriculture. It was the land of the highest wages and cheapest bread--an anomaly that foreign countries could not understand. In the bulk of its manufacturing, it had forged ahead of all other nations, even of Great Britain; and yet, although a vast army of men had been drawn from its farms to its factories, it had produced in that year more than half a billion bushels of wheat--six times as much as its crop had been in the best year of the sickle and the scythe. So, in the span of his business life--from 1831 to 1884,--McCormick had seen his country rise from insignificance to greatness, and he had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that his Reaper had done much, if not most, to accelerate this marvellous progress. As we shall see, the invention of the Reaper was the right starting-point for the up-building of a republic. It made all other progress possible, by removing the fear of famine and the drudgery of farm labor. It enabled even the laborer of the harvest-field to be free and intelligent, because it gave him the power of ten men. [Illustration: THE WORKS OF THE McCORMICK HARVESTING MACHINE CO.] The United States as a whole, had paid no attention to the Reaper until the opening of the California gold mines in 1849. Then the sudden scarcity of laborers created a panic among the farmers, and boomed the sale of all manner of farm machinery. Two years later the triumph of the McCormick Reaper at the London Exposition was a topic of the day and a source of national pride. And in 1852 the Crimean War sent the price of wheat skywards, providing an English market for as much wheat as American farmers could sell. But it was not until the outbreak of the Civil War that the United States learned to really appreciate the Reaper. By the time that President Lincoln had made his ninth call for soldiers, by the time that he had taken every third man for the Northern armies, the value of the Reaper was beyond dispute. By a strange coincidence, in this duel between wheat States on the one side, and cotton States on the other, it was a Northerner, Eli Whitney, who had invented the cotton-gin, which made slavery profitable; and it was a Southerner, Cyrus H. McCormick, who had invented the Reaper, which made the Northern States wealthy and powerful. It was the Reaper-power of the North that off set the slave-power of the South. There were as many Reapers in the wheat-fields of 1861 as could do the work of a million slaves. As the war went on, the crops in the Northern States increased. Europe refused to believe such a miracle; but it was true. Fifty million bushels of American grain went to Europe in 1861, and fifty-six million bushels in the following year. More than two hundred million bushels were exported during the four years of the war. Thus the Reaper not only released men to fight for the preservation of the Union. It not only fed them while they were in the field. It did more. It saved us from bankruptcy as well as famine, and kept our credit good among foreign nations at the most critical period in our history. After the Civil War came the settling of the West; and here again the Reaper was indispensable. In most cases it went ahead of the railroad. The first Reaper arrived in Chicago three years before the first locomotive. "We had a McCormick Reaper in 1856," said James Wilson; "and at that time there was no railroad within seventy-five miles of our Iowa farm. The Reaper worked a great revolution, enabling one man to do the work that many men had been doing, and do it better. By means of it the West became a thickly settled country, able to feed the nation and to spare bread and meat for the outside world." When McCormick was a boy, more wheat was raised in Virginia than in any other State. But by 1860 Illinois was ahead, and by degrees the sceptre of the wheat empire passed westwards, until to-day it is held by Minnesota. What with the Homestead Act of 1862, and the offer of McCormick and the other Reaper manufacturers to sell machines to the farmers on credit, it was possible for poor men, without capital, to become each the owner of 160 acres of land, and to harvest its grain without spending a penny in wages. Thus the immense area of the West became a populous country, with cities and railways and State Governments, and producing one-tenth of the wheat of the world. The enterprise of these Western farmers brought in the present era of farm machinery. It replaced "the man with the hoe" by the man with the self-binder and steel plow and steam thresher. It wiped out the old-time drudge of the soil from American farms, and put in his stead the new farmer, the _business_ farmer, who works for a good living and a profit, and not for a bare existence. Such men as Oliver Dalrymple, of North Dakota, led the way by demonstrating what might be done by "bonanza farms." This doughty Scottish-American secured 30,000 acres of the Red River Valley in 1876, and put it all into wheat. It was such a wheat-field as never before had been seen in any country. The soil was turned with 150 gang plows, sown with 70 drills, and reaped with 150 self-binders. Twelve threshing-machines, kept busy in the midst of this sea of yellow grain, beat out the straw and chaff and in the season filled two freight trains a day with enough wheat in each train to give two thousand people their daily bread for a year. Led on by such pathfinders, American farmers launched out bravely, until now they are using very nearly a billion dollars' worth of labor-saving machinery. The whole level of farm life has been raised. It has been lifted from muscle to mind. The use of machinery has created leisure and capital, and these two have begotten intelligence, education, science, so that the farmer of to-day lives in a new world, and is a wholly different person from what he was when Cyrus McCormick learned to till the soil. This elevation of the farmer is now seen to be our best guarantee of prosperity and national permanence. It was the incoming flood of wheat money that put the United States on its feet as a manufacturing nation. The total amount of this money, from the building of the first McCormick Reaper factory until to-day, is the unthinkable sum of $5,500,000,000, which may be taken as the net profit of the Reaper to the nation. Thus the Reaper was not, like the wind-mill, for instance, a mere convenience to the farmer himself. It was the link between the city and the country. It directly benefited all bread-eaters, and put the whole nation upon a higher plane. It built up cities, and made them safe, for the reason that they were not surrounded by hordes of sickle-and-flail serfs, who would sooner or later rise up in the throe of a hunger-revolution and pull down the cities and the palaces into oblivion. When the first Reaper was sold, in 1840, only eight per cent of Americans lived in towns and cities; and to-day the proportion is _forty_ per cent. Yet bread is cheaper and more plentiful now than it was then; and there is the most genial and good-natured co-operation between those who live among paved streets and those who live in the midst of the green and yellow wheat-fields. There are no Goths and Vandals on American farms. Instead of the tiny log workshop on the McCormick farm, in which the first crude Reaper was laboriously hammered and whittled into shape, there is now a McCormick City in the heart of Chicago--the oldest and largest harvester plant in the world. In sixty-two years of its life, this plant has produced five or six millions of harvesting machines, and it is still pouring them out at the rate of 7,000 a week. If it were to ship its yearly output at one time, it would require a railway caravan of 14,000 freight-cars to carry the machines from the factory to the farmers. [Illustration: McCORMICK REAPER IN USE IN RUSSIA] This McCormick City is one of the industrial wonders that America exhibits to visiting foreigners, and it is so vast that it can only be glanced at in a day. It covers 229 acres of land. In its buildings there is enough flooring to cover a 90-acre farm, and if they were all made over into one long building, twenty-five feet wide and one story high, it would be very nearly forty miles long, as far as from Chicago to Joliet. The population of McCormick City, counting workers only, is 7,000, whose average wages are $2.20 a day. Here you will find a mammoth twine-mill--the largest of its kind in any country. Into this mill come the bright yellow sisal fibres from Yucatan and the manila fibres from the Philippines. These fibres are cleaned and strewn upon endless chains of combs, which jerk and pull the fibres and finally deliver them to spindles--1,680 spindles, which whirl and twist 19,000 miles of twine in the course of a single day, almost enough to put a girdle around the earth. Most of this work is done by Polish girls and women, who are being displaced as farm laborers in their own country by American harvesting machines. This plant is so vast that from one point of view it seems to be mainly a foundry. Thousands of tons of iron--88,000 tons, to be exact,--pour out of its furnaces every year and are moulded into 113,000,000 castings. But from another point of view it appears to be a carpenter shop. In its yard stand as many piles of lumber as would build a fair-sized city--60,000,000 feet of it, cut in the forests of Mississippi and Missouri. And so much of this lumber is being sawed, planed, and shaped in the various wood-working shops that eight sawdust-fed furnaces are needed to supply them with power. The marvels of labor-saving machinery are upon every hand, in this McCormick City. The paint-tank has replaced the paint-brush. Instead of painting wheels by hand, for instance, ten of them are now strung on a pole, like beads on a string, and soused into a bath from which they come, one minute later, resplendent in suits of red or blue. The labor-cost of painting these ten wheels is two cents. Guard-fingers, for which McCormick paid twenty-four cents apiece in 1845, are now produced with a labor-cost of two cents a dozen. And as for bolts, with two cents you can pay for the making of a hundred. Both bolts and nuts are shaped by automatic machines which are so simple that a boy can operate five at once, and so swift that other boys with wheelbarrows are kept busy carrying away their finished product. There is one specially designed machine, with a battery of augurs, which bores twenty-one holes at once, thus saving four-fifths of a cent per board. Another special machine shapes poles and saves one cent per pole. Such tiny economies appear absurd, until the immense output is taken into account. Whoever can reduce the costs in the McCormick plant one cent per machine, adds thereby $3,500 a year to the profits, and helps to make it possible for a farmer to buy a magical self-binder, built up of 3,800 parts, for less than the price of a good horse, or for as much wheat as he can grow in one season on a dozen acres. The vast McCormick City has its human side, too, in spite of all its noise and semi-automatic machinery. Cyrus McCormick was not one of those employers who call their men by numbers instead of names, and who have no more regard for flesh and blood than for iron and steel. He had worked with his hands himself, and brought up his sons to do the same. The feeling of loyalty and friendliness between the McCormick family and their employees has from the first been unusually strong. In 1902, at the suggestion of Stanley McCormick, gifts to the amount of $1,500,000 were made to the oldest employees of the business, as rewards for faithful service and tokens of good-will. Also, a handsome club-house was built for the comfort of the men of the McCormick City, and a rest-room for the women, under the mothering superintendence of a matron and trained nurse. But this one McCormick City, immense as it is, does not by any means represent the sum total of McCormick's legacy to the United States. As the founder of the harvesting-machine business, he deserves credit for an industry which now represents an investment of about $150,000,000. With the sole exception of the Australian stripper, every wheat-reaping machine is still made on the lines laid down by McCormick in 1831. New improvements have been adopted; but not one of his seven factors has been thrown aside. Fully two-thirds of this industry is still being done by the United States, although four-fifths of the wheat is grown in other countries. Our national income, from this one item of harvesting machinery, has risen to $30,000,000 a year--more than we derive from the exportation of any other American invention. No European country, apparently, has been able to master the complexities and multifarious details which abound in a successful harvester business. In 1902 the efficiency of the larger American plants was greatly increased by the organization of the International Harvester Company, which has its headquarters in Chicago. The McCormick City is the most extensive plant in this Company, and McCormick's son--who is also Cyrus H. McCormick--is its President. In this Company sixteen separate plants are coordinated, four of these being in foreign countries. Its yearly output averages about $75,000,000 in value; and in bulk is great enough to fill 65,000 freight-cars. It has 25,000 workmen and 35,000 agents. The lumber with which its yards are filled comes from its own 80,000-acre forest; the steel comes from its own furnaces and the iron ore from its own mines. It is so overwhelmingly vast, this new famine-fighting consolidation, that the value of its output for one hour is greater than the $25,000 of capital with which McCormick built his first factory in Chicago. So, it is evident that the McCormick Reaper has been an indispensable factor in the making of America. Without it, we could never have had the America of to-day. It has brought good, and nothing but good, to every country that has accepted it. It has never been, and never can be, put to an evil use. It cannot, under any system of government, benefit the few and not the many. It is as democratic in its nature as the American Constitution; and in every foreign country where it cuts the grain, it is an educator as well as a machine, giving to the masses of less fortunate lands an object-lesson in democracy and the spirit of American progress. CHAPTER XII THE REAPER AND THE WORLD We shall now see what the invention of the Reaper means to the human race as a whole. We shall leave behind McCormick and the United States, and survey the field from a higher standpoint. The selection of wheat as the first world-food,--its abundance made possible by the Reaper--its transportation by railroads and steamships--its storage in elevators--the production of flour--the growth of wheat-banks, wheat-ports, and exchanges--the new wheat empires--the international mechanism of marketing--the conquest of famine and the stupendous possibilities of the future! These are the subjects that group themselves under the general title--_The Reaper and the World_. To find a world-food,--that was the beginning of the problem. All human beings wake up hungry every morning of their lives; and consequently the first necessity of the day is food. The search for food is the oldest of instincts. It is the master-motive of evolution. It has reared empires up and thrown them down. As Buckle has shown, where the national food is cheap and plentiful, population increases more rapidly. And as Sir James Crichton-Browne, in a recent book on "Parcimony in Nutrition," maintains, the lack of food is a prolific cause of war, disease, and social misery in its various forms. "Nothing is more demoralizing," he says, "than chronic hunger." "For lack of bread the French Revolution failed," said Prince Krapotkin. For lack of bread the opium traffic flourishes in India and China; the secret of the prevalence of opium is that the natives use it to prevent hunger-pangs in time of famine. Once let those countries have cheap bread, and there may be no more opium sold there than there is to-day in Kansas. For lack of bread came the war between Russia and Japan; what the one nation wanted was a seaport for the grain of Siberia, and what the other wanted was more land for the support of her swarming population. For lack of bread have come most of the crimes of greed and violence,--most of the social systems based on sordid self-interest, most of the ill-humor that has postponed the coming of an era of peace on earth and good-will among men. Now, of the three main foods of the human race, flesh, rice, and wheat, wheat is the best suited to be a world-food. Flesh becomes too expensive once the wild game of the forests is destroyed; and it is not suitable for food in tropical countries. Rice, on the other hand, is not a flesh-forming food, and so is not suited for food in cold countries. Wheat is the one food that is universal, as good for the Esquimaux as for the South Sea Islander. It is not easily spoiled, as milk and fruits are; and it contains all the elements that are needed by the body and in just about the right proportion. Wheat, to the botanist, is a grass--"a degraded lily," to quote from Grant Allen. It was originally a flower that was tamed by man and trained from beauty to usefulness. We do not know when or where the prehistoric Burbank lived who undertook this education of the wheat-lily. But we do know that wheat has been a food for at least five thousand years. We find it in the oldest tombs of Egypt and pictured on the stones of the Pyramids. We know that Solomon sent wheat as a present to his friend, the King of Tyre; and we have reason to believe that its first appearance was in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, near where the ancient city of Babylon rose to greatness. [Illustration: Chart Showing Relative Distribution of Values by Producing Countries in 1908 of World's Production of Five Principal Grains. Approximate Value, $9,280,000,000] [Illustration: Chart Showing Relative Values in 1908 of World's Production of the Five Principal Grains. Approximate Value, $9,280,000,000] Wheat is not a wild weed. It is a tame and transient plant--a plant of civilization. It could not continue to exist without man, and man, perhaps, could not exist except in the tropical countries without wheat. Each needs the other. If the human race were to perish from the face of the earth, wheat might survive for three years, but no longer. So close has this co-operation been between wheat and civilized man, that an eminent German writer, Dr. Gerland, maintains with a wealth of evidence that wheat was the original cause of civilization, partly because it was the first good and plentiful food, and partly because it was wheat that persuaded primitive man to forsake his wars and his wanderings and to learn the peaceful habits of agriculture. In any case, whatever its earlier history may have been, wheat is to-day the chief food of the civilized races of mankind. It is the main support of 600,000,000 people. It has overcome its natural enemies--weeds, fungus diseases, insects, and drought,--and attained a crop total of 3,500,000,000 bushels a year. To the intelligent, purposeful nations that have become the masters of the human race, wheat is now the staff of life, the milk of Mother Earth, the essence of soil and air and rain and sunshine. But, although wheat was known to be the best food for fifty centuries, it did not until very recently, until thirty or forty years ago, become a world-food. Every community ate up its own wheat. It had little or none to sell, because, no matter how much grain the farmers planted, they could not in the eight or ten days of harvest gather more than a certain limited quantity into their barns. All that one man could do, with his wife to help him, was to snatch in enough wheat to feed ten people for a year. Each family could do no more than feed one other family and itself. This was the Tragedy of the Wheat. There was never enough of it. It was so precious that none could be sure of it except the kings and the nobilities. As for the masses of peasantry who sowed the wheat and reaped it with hand-sickles, they would almost as soon have thought of wearing diamonds as of eating white bread. Then, in 1831, came the Reaper. It was not invented in any of the older countries, nor in any of the great cities of the world. For five thousand years neither the peasants nor the kings had conceived of any better way of reaping wheat than with the sickle and the scythe. The man who had cut the Gordian knot of Famine was the son of a citizen-farmer, Cyrus Hall McCormick by name, Scotch-Irish by race, American by birth, and inventor by heredity and early training. This new machine, the Reaper, when it was full-grown into the self-binder, was equal to forty sickles. With one man to drive it, it could cut and bind enough wheat in one season to feed four hundred people. In its most highly developed form, the combined harvester and thresher, it has become so gigantic a machine that thirty-two horses are required to haul it. This leviathan cuts a fifty-foot roadway through the grain, threshes it and bags it at the rate of one bag every half-minute. And the total world production of Reapers of every sort--self-binders, mowers, headers, corn-binders, etc.,--is probably as many as 1,500,000 a year, two-thirds of them being made in the United States. Because of this harvesting machinery, the wheat crop of the world is now nearly twice what it was in 1879. The American crop has multiplied six and a half times in fifty years. Western Canada, Australia, Siberia, and Argentina have become wheat producers. The cost of growing one bushel in America, with machinery and high wages, is now about half a dollar, which is less than the cost in Europe and as low as the cost in India, where laborers can be hired for a few pennies a day. With a sickle, the time-cost of a bushel of wheat was three hours; with a self-binder, it is now ten minutes. And so, because of these amazing results, the rattle of the harvester has become an indispensable part of the music of our industrial orchestra, harmonious with the click of the telegraph key, the ring of the telephone bell, the hum of the sewing-machine, the roar of the Bessemer converter, the gong of the trolley, the whistle of the steamboat, and the puff of the locomotive. Next to the Reaper, the most important factors in this world-mechanism of the bread, are the Railroad and the Steamboat. These arrived on the scene just at the right time to distribute the surplus that the Reaper produced. The Steamboat, and its humble relative, the barge, came first. The Erie Canal of 1825, the Suez Canal of 1869, and the Sault Ste. Marie Canal of 1881, were built largely for the carrying of the wheat. By 1856 wheat was on its way from Chicago to Europe; and four years later the first wheat-ship curved around Cape Horn from California. Ten years ago an entirely new kind of ship, a sort of immense steel bag called a "whaleback," was built to carry 250,000 bushels of wheat in a single load. By this means a ton of wheat is actually carried thirteen miles for one cent. There are to-day small barges on the canals of Holland, large ones on the river Volga, and several thousand steamships on the world's main water-ways, all carrying burdens of wheat. Enough is now being transported from port to port to give steady work to fully three hundred steamships and summer work to very nearly as many more. There was an exciting contest between the ship and the car in the earlier days of transportation, to see which should carry the largest share of the wheat. About 1869 the car won. In this year, too, the United States was belted with a railway, east to west, which meant the opening up of the first great wheat-empire. Other railways pushed out into the vast prairies of the West, lured by the call of the wheat. They were the pioneers of the world's wheat-railways. Wheat was their chief freight and wheat farmers were their chief passengers. At the outset the grain was shipped in bags. Then some railway genius invented the grain-car, which holds as much as twenty or twenty-five wagons. And to-day one of the ordinary moving pictures of an American railroad is a sixty-car train travelling eastward with enough wheat in its rolling bins to give bread to a city of ten thousand people for a year. The trans-Siberian railway, which is the longest straight line of steel in the world, was built largely as a wheat-conveyor. So were the railways of western Canada, Argentina, and India. Ever since the advent of the Reaper wheat has been the prolific mother of railways and steamships. While the rice nations are still putting their burdens on ox-carts and on the backs of camels and elephants, the wheat nations have built up a system of transportation that is a daily miracle of cheapness, efficiency, and speed. This system is not yet finished. A new line of steamships is about to be set afloat between Buenos Ayres and Hamburg. The Erie Canal is being re-made, at a fabulous cost, so that a steamer with 100,000 bushels of wheat can go directly from Buffalo to New York. And an adventurous railway is now pushing its way north from the wheat-fields of western Canada to the unknown water of Hudson Bay, whence the wheat will be carried by boat to London and Liverpool. To-day it is not the long haul of wheat, but the short haul, that is more expensive. It is cheaper to carry wheat from one country to another than from the barn to the nearest town. The average distance that an American farmer has to haul his grain is nine and a half miles, and the average cost of haulage is nine cents per hundred pounds. Thus it has actually become true that to carry wheat ten miles by wagon costs more than 2,300 miles by steamship. Such is the tense efficiency of our wheat-carrier system that a bushel of grain can now be picked up in Missouri and sent to the cotton-spinners of England for a dime. Associated with this transportation problem was the matter of storage. There was no sort of a building known to man, fifty years ago, in which a million bushels of wheat might be conveniently kept. An entirely new kind of building had to be invented. All the wheat barns were overflowing. All the warehouses were outgrown. The difficulty was to make a huge building that could be quickly filled and emptied. Then, at the precise moment when he was needed, an inventor, F. H. Peavey, appeared with a device for elevating grain--an endless carrier to which metal cups were fastened. From this idea the _elevator_ was born. [Illustration: MAMMOTH WHEAT-FIELD IN SOUTH DAKOTA WITH TWENTY HARVESTERS IN LINE] The first city that appreciated the usefulness of this new, unlovely building was Chicago. It became not only the home of the Reaper, but also the main storehouse of the wheat. It erected one after another of these mastodonic buildings until to-day thirty-six of them stand along the water-front, roomy enough to hold the entire crop of Holland, Sweden, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, and New Zealand. What these immense grain-bins have done for the prosperity of Chicago would require many books to tell completely. It was largely because of them that Chicago outgrew Berlin and became the central metropolis of North America, with twenty-six railways emptying their freight at her doors and seven thousand vessels a year arriving at her harbor. At present Chicago has swung from wheat to corn and oats, and enabled Minneapolis to become the greatest actual wheat-storage city of the world. In Minneapolis the owning of elevators has become a profession. There are not only forty-four elevators in the city itself, but also forty elevator companies that have built more than two thousand elevators in the wheat States of the Northwest. The Jumbo of all elevators is here--a stupendous granary that holds 6,000,000 bushels, as much as may be reaped by two thousand self-binders from seven hundred square miles of land. Of all American cities, there are only five others that can put roofs over 10,000,000 bushels of grain. Duluth-Superior stands at the head of these, with twice the storage capacity of New York. This double city, with the picturesque location, Duluth on her Minnesota hillside and Superior on her Wisconsin plain, has in recent years overtaken all competitors and is now the leading wheat-shipping port in the world. Buffalo comes next as an elevator city, having twenty-eight towering buildings of steel operated by the energy of Niagara Falls. Even this famous cataract helps a little in the making of cheap bread. New York follows closely after Buffalo; with Kansas City and St. Louis running neck and neck at quite a distance behind. It is an odd fact that there is not one elevator on the Pacific coast. Because of the rainless weather, the wheat is put into bags and piled outdoors until the day of shipment. This is an expensive method of handling, as the bags cost four cents apiece and no machine has as yet been invented that will pick up and handle a sack of grain. The American elevator has now been very generally adopted as the ideal wheat-bin. Two Roumanian cities, Braila and Galatz, have suggested an improvement by using concrete instead of steel. And one Russian city, Novorossisk, on the Black Sea, has introduced a most original feature in the building of elevators by erecting a very large one a quarter of a mile back from the dock, because of the better view that this site affords of the harbor. London has no elevators, and never has had, although it buys more wheat than any other city. It has six million mouths to feed, so that the grain is devoured as fast as it arrives. To give bread to London would take the entire crop of Indiana or Siberia. Neither are there any elevators of any importance in Paris, Berlin, or Antwerp. Whatever wheat arrives at these cities is either hurried to the mill or re-shipped. Wheat is too precious in Europe to be stored for a year or for two years, as may happen in Minnesota. Rotterdam has one elevator only and of moderate size. Neither Odessa nor Sulina have any of the large proportions, for the reasons that in Odessa the labor unions have an unconquerable prejudice against elevators, and in Sulina the grain is held only a short time and then forwarded elsewhere. This Sulina, as a glance at the map of Europe will show, is the loneliest of all the wheat-cities. It stands on a heap of gravel at the mouth of the Danube--an oasis of human life in a vast marshy wilderness. The children born there have never seen a railway; but 1,400 ships leave the stone docks of Sulina every year laden with enough wheat to feed London, Paris, and Berlin. To find the exact reverse of Sulina, we must go to Buenos Ayres--the premier wheat-city of South America and the gayest of them all. Built up at first by the cattle trade, and now depending mainly upon wheat, this superb city has become the topmost pinnacle of South American luxury and refinement. It has several new elevators, erected by the railway companies. After the Reaper, the Railway, the Steamship, and the Elevator, came the Exchange. This, too, came first in Chicago, in its modern form. There was one little grain Exchange in the Italian city of Genoa, several centuries ago, and England points back to 1747 as the year when her first Corn Exchange was born. But it was the Exchange in Chicago, started by thirteen men in 1848, that first came into its full growth and became an arena of international forces. A wheat Exchange is to-day much more than a meeting-place for brokers. It is a mechanism. It is a news bureau--a parliament--a part of the whispering-gallery of the world. It not only provides a market where wheat can at once be bought and sold, but it obtains for both buyer and seller all the news from everywhere about the wheat, so that no bargain may be made in the dark. Before Exchanges were organized there were times when a farmer would drive twenty miles to the nearest town with a load of wheat, and find no one to buy it. Even in Chicago, in the early forties, a farmer ran the risk of not being able to trade his wheat for a few groceries. At present, when a buyer or a seller of wheat arrives at an Exchange, he goes at once to consult the weather map of the day. From here he passes to a series of bulletin-boards, which inform him of the arrival or outgo of wheat at many cities. One board tells him the visible supply of wheat in the world, so that he can easily ascertain, if he wishes to do so, _how much bread the human race ate last week_. Other boards have telegrams and cablegrams of disaster--frost in Alberta, hail in Minnesota, green bug in Texas, rust in Argentina, drought in Australia, locusts in Siberia, monsoon in India, and chinch bug in Missouri. Good news is here, too, as well as bad. There may be reports of a record-breaking crop in Roumania, an opulent rain in Kansas, a new steamship line from Kurrachee to Liverpool, and the plowing of a million acres of new land in western Canada. And also there are, of course, the records of the latest sales and prices in other Exchanges. Thus the farmer can not only find a ready buyer for his wheat. He can, by means of a newspaper or a telephone, know what price he ought to receive, as all the news gathered by the Exchanges is freely given to the public. Such is the perfection of the news mechanism that has been built up around the marketing of the wheat, that before a Dakota farmer starts out for town with a load of grain, he can go to the telephone under his own roof and learn the prices at various cities and the world-conditions of the wheat trade. The paper which best deserves to be called the official journal of the wheat is the _Corn Trade News_, of Liverpool; and the building which best deserves to be called the international headquarters of the wheat business is the handsome new Baltic Exchange, near by the Bank of England in London. This Baltic market is so practically international, in fact, that it is never closed. Whoever wishes to buy or sell wheat may do so here at any hour of the day or night. There are no days in this building and no seasons, for the reason that it is always noonday and harvest-time in some part of the world. In this Baltic Exchange, too, there is now a nucleus for a Wheat Parliament, organized under the name of the Corn Trade Association. This society has undertaken to put the wheat business in order, by establishing standard contracts, collecting samples of all wheats, arbitrating disputes, and condemning all dishonesties of whatever sort. As wheat Exchange cities, London, Liverpool, and Chicago outclass all others. Neither Italy nor France have any central or dominating market. In Paris, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Amsterdam the Bourses, as the Exchanges are called, are public buildings, and the members of each Bourse represent the local situation and nothing more. One of the most ambitious and speculative of the European Exchanges is the one at Budapest, which stands beside a dainty little park where the brokers eat their lunch in fine weather; and the youngest of all Exchanges is the one that was born in Buenos Ayres in 1908, representing a surplus of a hundred million bushels a year. Besides the brokers, in their Exchanges, there must also be inspectors in the marketing of the wheat. In some countries these inspectors are government officers, as in Germany and Canada; and elsewhere they are local officials or private employees, as in the United States. A carload of wheat, passing from Dakota to New York, will probably have from three to six inspections. [Illustration: HARVESTING IN ROUMANIA] Also, the insurance agent takes his place in the circle of co-operation when the wheat begins to move from barn to bakery. He insures the wheat in the elevators, on the cars, or in the steamships. He may even insure it against hail and tornadoes while it is growing. It is so precious, this brown seed, that we watch over every step of its progress. It is the bankers' busy season, too, when the wheat begins to move. The marketing of the grain ties up more money than any other yearly event. "It threatens us with disaster every fall," said one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, when making a plea for a more elastic currency. "We ship half a million dollars a day during harvest," said the president of a Chicago bank. "We drew more than five millions of currency from the East and sent thirty-eight millions to the country during September and October of last year," said a third financier, who spoke for Chicago as a whole. In short, the movement of the wheat means a matter of five hundred millions to American bankers; and it is the most important occurrence of the year to the bankers of Russia, Canada, Argentina, and Australia. Many a bank, as well as many a railroad, was founded upon the moving of the wheat. The broker, the banker, the inspector, and the insurance agent--these four render a useful service to the wheat that has left home; but there is a fifth man about whose usefulness there is the widest possible difference of opinion--the speculator. From one point of view, the speculator is the driving-wheel of the whole wheat trade. By his energy and his impetus he steadies and equalizes the conflicting forces, and gives the entire mechanism a continuous movement. From another point of view, he is a gambler, reckless and parasitical, who interferes with the natural laws of supply and demand, and snatches an unearned toll from the wheat bins of the world. Some of the wheat nations not only permit speculation in wheat, but practically encourage it by allowing more privileges to the speculator than to the ordinary business man. Others are resolutely stamping it out, as a nuisance and a crime. The nations that have voted "Yea" on speculation are Great Britain, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, France, and the United States; and the nations that have voted "Nay" are Germany, Holland, Belgium, Australia, Switzerland, Greece, and Argentina. Canada has been divided on the question, since the Province of Manitoba broke up the Winnipeg Grain Exchange by legislation in 1908. In the end, as organization increases, speculation will decline. Chicago will try to push prices up and London will try to pull them down; but there will be fewer violent fluctuations. Better methods of farming and a more reliable system of news-gathering will eliminate the element of chance to such an extent that the wheat trade will offer less and less scope for speculation and no inducements at all to the reckless plunger. Already the frantic methods of marketing wheat have been outgrown in the Exchanges of Liverpool and London. In neither of these places is there any Wheat Pit, or any maelstrom of frenzied brokers. Without any shouting or jostling or wild tumult of any kind, the English brokers are buying two hundred million bushels of wheat a year, and controlling the situation to a greater extent than any other body of men. This, too, without any restrictive legislation. Before wheat was made plentiful by the Reaper, it was possible for a daring man to establish a corner or monopoly; but no one has succeeded in doing this for more than forty years. The last wheat corner that did not fail was in 1867. Since then every would-be cornerer has been caught in his own trap. The wheat-machinery of the world has now become so vast that no individual can master it. Whoever has tried it has found that he was being cornered by the wheat; for as soon as he had raised the price to an artificial level, the grain has flowed in upon him and covered him up. The price of wheat to-day may be temporarily deflected by schemes and conspiracies, but not for long. Ultimately it is decided by the state of the crop and the state of public opinion in the thirty-six countries that grow wheat and eat bread. Within the last thirty years, since the Reaper has come into universal use, the area of the world's wheat-field has doubled. New countries have arisen, that were only waste places before. The habitable earth has grown immensely larger. There is more room for both wheat and men to grow, and less scope for the forestaller and the monopolist. Just as the Reaper was the advance-machine of civilization across the prairies of the West, so it is to-day opening up new territories and developing new resources. Northwestern Canada, for instance, was a dozen years ago supposed to be a barren wilderness of snow and ice, in which none but the hunter and the fur-trader might earn a living. Then several adventurous Minnesotans went across and planted wheat. It grew--forty bushels to the acre, and the acres, there were two hundred million of them, were waiting for the plow and almost to be had for the asking. Since then, more than three hundred thousand American farmers have swept across the line and joined in the greatest wheat-rush of this generation. Twelve hundred grain elevators have been built along the line of the Canadian Pacific; and Chicago self-binders rattled through the yellow wheat last Summer two thousand miles north of St. Louis. In Argentina, too, and Australia, where the wheat ripens just in time to decorate the Christmas trees, there is to be seen the same conquest of nature. Desolate plains are being tamed by the plow and exploited by the harvesters. In the semi-arid belt that lies east of the Rocky Mountains, new kinds of wheat, less thirsty, are being taught to grow. In Russia and Siberia a vast tract of twenty-five million acres has been rescued from idleness in the last fifteen years. And even in the valley of the Euphrates, where wheat, so it is believed, was born, a new railway is now being constructed which, when it is finished, will carry oil and wheat. By thus opening up new regions to settlement, the wheat-farmer not only thwarts the monopolist and makes the world a larger place to live in, he does more: he compels the gold to come out of its vaults in the great cities and to flow to the outermost parts of the earth. For every eighteen thousand pounds of wheat that go to the city, there will go back to the farmer one pound of gold. For every loaf of bread upon a Londoner's table, there will go a cent and a half to the man behind the Reaper. And so, the sale of every wheat-crop means that the gold will come throbbing out into the arteries of business, like the blood from the heart, and on its way back and forth nourish the whole body of the nation. It is in the very nature of the wheat trade to benefit the masses and not the few. The more wheat that grows, the less danger there is of an aristocracy of wheat. More wheat means more luxury in the farm-house, more traffic on the railway, and more food in the slums. It means busier factories and steel-mills, because the farmer, when he receives his wheat-money, becomes the customer of the manufacturer. Thus it was not at all accidental that the wealth of Buenos Ayres came with the exportation of wheat, or that the commercial awakening of Canada followed the opening up of her western prairies, or that the industrial supremacy of the United States dates from the immense wheat harvests that began in 1880 to push the whole country forward with the power of $500,000,000 a year. As one of McCormick's competitors, J. D. Easter of Evanston, once declared, "It seems as though the McCormick Reaper started the ball of prosperity rolling, and it has been rolling ever since." [Illustration: HARVESTING HEAVY GRAIN, SOUTH AMERICA] If we wish to know what the Reaper will eventually do for these new wheat countries, we have but to glance back over the short history of our ten prairie States. Here, by the use of both science and machinery, the New Farmer has reached his highest level of success. By 1884 these ten States had twenty million thriving settlers, riding on forty-two thousand miles of railway, raising as much wheat in a day as New England could in a year, and storing their profits in twenty-five hundred banks. Incredible as it may seem to Europe and Asia, it is true that even the poorhouses in Iowa and Kansas were used last year as storehouses for wheat. And it is true that in the co-operative commonwealth called Kansas, at the last assessment, there were found to be forty-four thousand pianos and six million dollars' worth of carriages and automobiles. This in a State where there are no Grand Dukes and where every man works for a living! If the lords of Siberia wish to know what may be done with that famine-swept vastitude they may come and see that bed of an ancient sea, which in thirty years has been transformed into the world's greatest bread-land--the Red River Valley. Here the banks are not only packed with millions, but hundreds of millions, belonging to the shirt-sleeved proprietors of the soil. Here, in the yellow days of August, a man may travel for days and see no limit to the ocean of waving, shimmering wheat, that ripples around him in a vast sky-bounded circle. Wheat--wheat--wheat! Nothing but wheat! It is a Field of the Cloth of Gold, that adds nothing to the glory of kings, but much to the glory of the common people. Drop the German Empire down upon this valley and its expanse of dizzying, swirling wheat, and the wheat would not be wholly eclipsed. There would still be enough grain around the edges to make a golden fringe. The children born and bred in this Red River Valley have never seen, except in pictures, a sickle or a flail. Their only conception of a harvest time is that a battery of red self-binders, with reels whirling and knives clacking, shall charge upon the wheat as though each acre were a battalion of hostile infantry, and make war until the land is strewn with heaps of fallen sheaves. Famine, to these children of the wheat, seems as remote a danger as the cooling of the sun. Even the one young State of North Dakota, not yet of age, is now growing food for herself, and for twelve million people besides. So, the urgent world-problem is to teach other nations the lesson of the Red River Valley. There is not yet enough bread so that we may put a loaf at every plate. To feed the whole race according to the present American standard of living would require ten thousand million bushels--three times as much as we are raising now; and the demand is fast outgrowing the supply. Sooner or later the Chinese will learn to eat at least one loaf a week apiece, and when they do, it will mean that the world's wheat crop must be increased ten per cent. More wheat and a more efficient organization of wheat agencies--that is the programme of the future. Already one unsuccessful effort has been made to hold an international Wheat Congress; and the second attempt may end more happily. Now that the world has become so small that a cablegram flashes completely around it in twelve minutes; now that there are forty-four nations united by The Hague Conferences and fifty-eight by the Postal Union; now that war has grown to be so expensive that one cannon-shot costs as much as a college education and one battleship as much as a first-class University,--it is quite probable that the march of co-operation will continue until there is a Congress, and a central headquarters and a Tribunal, which will represent nothing less than an international fellowship of the wheat. CHAPTER XIII GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD We have now seen the machinery by which the wheat is cut, moved, stored, financed, and marketed. Its next and last step, as wheat, is to the Flour-mill, whence it goes to the bakeries, the groceries, and the homes of six hundred million people. Here, too, there have had to come new methods since the advent of the Reaper. In the Dark Ages of the sickle and the flail, two flat stones did well enough for a flour-mill. Even the bread that was found in the ruins of Pompeii had been made of wheat that was merely crushed. Later came the mill run by horse-power or by the energy of a little stream. Such were the first American mills. The mill that was operated by George Washington at Mount Vernon, for instance, was run by water-power and produced flour that sold for thirteen dollars a barrel. Rochester, N. Y., was the first American "Flour City"; but the modern flour-mill did not come until it was compelled to come by the deluge of Reaper wheat that flooded the markets in 1870. As usually happens in the case of inventions, it came where it was not expected. It made its arrival in the Hungarian city of Budapest in 1874. The "new process," as it was called, was based upon the use of steel rolls instead of stones. It was as superior to the old-fashioned way as the Reaper had been to the sickle or as the thresher was to the flail. It was amazingly quick and produced a better flour. By reason of these new mills, Budapest became at a bound the foremost "Flour City" of the world, and held its place against all comers until 1890. Then the prestige passed to Minneapolis--a young city on the head-waters of the Mississippi, the recent home of the prairie-dog and the buffalo. Shortly before the Civil War, a youthful lawyer named William D. Washburn drifted westwards from Maine until he came to Minneapolis, at that time a tiny village on the frontier. He found no clients here, and no law; but he did find a ledge of limestone rock jutting across the Mississippi and making the only large water-fall in all that region. So he threw aside his legal education and became the organizer of a water-power company and the owner of a little flour-mill. Soon the long line of Reapers reached Minneapolis and swept on westwards into the richest wheat lands that had ever been known. The wheat overwhelmed the slow old-fashioned mills, so the ex-lawyer in 1878 adopted the Budapest system and built a roller-mill that was the quickest and most automatic of its kind. Other millers had by this time come to Minneapolis--Pillsbury, Crosby, Christian, and Dunwoody; and all together they pushed the flour business until in twelve years they had become the main millers of the world. [Illustration: INDIANS REAPING THEIR HARVEST, WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA] To-day the river of wheat is deepest at Minneapolis. Its twenty-two great mills roll 120,000,000 bushels into flour as an ordinary year's work. While the swiftest mill in Athens, in the age of Pericles, produced no more than two barrels a day, there is one mill of incredible size in Minneapolis that fills _seventeen thousand_ barrels in a twenty-four hours' run--enough to give bread to New York State and California. What the Greeks did in a day the Minnesotans do in ten seconds. Five million barrels of this Minneapolis flour is each year scattered among foreign nations, a fact which informs us that flour is now not a local product, but part of the real currency of nations. No doubt the people who dwell by the Sea of Galilee, whose fathers were once miraculously fed upon seven loaves of bread and a few fishes, are now being fed miraculously upon loaves of bread made from the flour of Minneapolis. The making of the bread--that is the final step in this movement of the wheat. As yet, this is a local process, though not wholly so. Certain ready-to-eat foods are now being made from wheat and boxed in such a way that they may be sent from one country to another. If we trace back the original of a loaf of bread of ordinary size, we shall find that it was made from two-thirds of a pound of flour, which was rolled from one pound of wheat, containing about twelve thousand grains that were grown on forty-eight square feet of land and reaped by a self-binder in two seconds. When the wheat was cut in the old-fashioned way, with a hand-sickle, every loaf of bread required eighty seconds' labor instead of two. In a public test made last year in the State of Washington, wheat was cut, threshed, ground into flour, and baked into biscuits in twenty-three minutes. This is an evidence that all the machinery for handling grain has now been brought up to the same high level of speed and efficiency as the self-binder. It also helps us to understand the daily marvel of cheap bread--the fact that a hundred loaves of bread are now delivered one by one at an American workingman's door for the cost of a seat at the opera or a couple of song-records by Caruso. So plentiful is this bread that the loaves baked from American flour in 1907 would have made a wall of bread around the earth, or have given thirty loaves apiece to every human creature; and so cheap has it become in these latter days that even in the United States it is not more than three cents a day per capita. The unskilled laborer who receives $1.50 a day, earns his bread in the first ten minutes, every work day morning. And the total tax he pays to the men who make the self-binders is not more than one tenth of a cent per loaf. Three-sevenths of the people of the world are now on a wheat basis. They are the lesser fraction in point of numbers, but the larger in point of prosperity and progress. A wheat map of the globe would be very nearly a map of modern civilization. As yet, there are many peasants who grow wheat and cannot afford to eat it. But the number of bread-eaters is steadily increasing, probably at the rate of four or five million a year. The nation that eats most bread per capita is Belgium. After her come France, England, and the United States. As the Belgians, with their scanty acres, cannot grow more wheat than would support them for nine weeks, they are compelled to import nearly fifty million bushels a year; and it is this continual influx of grain that has done most to make Antwerp the third busiest port in the world and the home of forty steamship lines. France is second as an eater, and third as a grower, of wheat. But it is not an important factor in the international market, as there is usually almost an even balance between what it grows and what it eats. It has very little either to buy or to sell. Its crops are steady and large, and by intensive cultivation the thrifty French are obtaining the same amount of grain from less and less land. There are two countries only, Great Britain and Holland, that impose no tariff upon either wheat or flour. Neither the British nor the Dutch will tolerate a bread tax. Both countries have barely enough land to grow one-quarter as much wheat as they need, although there was a period in the early history of England when it was nicknamed "the Granary of the North," because of its many wheat-fields. To-day the bread on three British tables out of four is made of wheat brought in a British ship from some foreign country; and the total amount of wheat consumed in the United Kingdom is so great that it requires an army of 93,000 men with self-binders to cut it and tie it into sheaves. If it had to be reaped with sickles, it would be a ten-day harvesting for half the able-bodied men in the two islands. Germany eats less wheat than Great Britain, and raises more than twice as much. The Germans are skilled wheat-farmers. They grow as much on half an acre of poor soil as Americans grow on a whole acre of good soil. The Italians eat very nearly as much as the Germans, and raise a larger crop by dint of great labor on the tiny farms and terraced hillsides of Italy. Both countries tax the bread of the poor by a tariff of thirty-eight to forty-eight cents a bushel on foreign wheat. The Austrians and Hungarians, in spite of a climate of extremes and sudden changes, manage to supply themselves with more than ten billion loaves of bread by the tillage of their own fields, and usually have some flour to sell to the neighboring countries. The Spanish cannot quite feed themselves; in addition to the wheat they grow, they are obliged to buy about a hundred ship-loads a year. Denmark comes out even. Portugal buys her bread for four months of the year. Greece, Norway, and Sweden raise half enough wheat. The Swiss can get no more from their valley-farms than will feed them for ten weeks. And the peasants of Russia and Roumania, who raise wheat in abundance, have unfortunately not yet risen to that luxurious level of life in which white bread is the every-day food of the people. Although Russia has more wheat to sell than any other nation, a Russian eats one-third as much wheat as a Belgian, and there is a famine somewhere in the vast Russian Empire almost every winter. [Illustration: A HARVEST SCENE UPON A RUSSIAN ESTATE] Africa is not yet a wheat-eating continent. Egypt, which was, in the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, the wheat-centre of the world, now grows less grain than Oregon; Algeria raises less than Ohio; and Tunis, from the fields that surround the ruins of ancient Carthage, produces less grain than Tennessee. India is slowly shifting from rice to wheat. Many of the fields that once grew indigo are now yellow with grain. At present India is the most uncertain factor in the situation, as it may have eighty million bushels to sell or none. As it is one-third as large as the United States, and crowded with three times the population, there is always need of its grain at home. As yet, the Reaper has not been allowed to extend its benefits to India. Most of the grain is reaped in the old slow, wasteful way. It is sown by hand, cut by sickles, stored in pits, and transported on the backs of camels. Little Japan is falling into line as a bread-eating country, growing now as much wheat as California. And even China, which is not as a whole on the wheat-map of the world, has recently begun to grow wheat in Manchuria and to build flour-mills at Hong-Kong. So, the human race will soon be able to feed itself. It has learned how and needs only to use to the full the agencies that are already invented and established. Beginning with the McCormick Reaper in 1831, there has been constructed a world mechanism of the bread, which promises to wholly abolish Famine and its brood of evils. The crude machine that was hammered and whittled into shape in a log workshop on a Virginian farm, has now become a System--a _McCormick System_, that cuts ten million bushels of ripe wheat a day and transports it hither and thither as handily as though the whole round earth were girt with belt-conveyors. That young Virginian farmer who awoke from his dream and made his dream come true, made it possible for a few in each country to provide enough food for all. He found a cure for Hunger, which had always persisted like a chronic disease. He heaped the plates on the tables of thirty-six nations. He took a drudgery and transformed it into a profession. He instructed the wheat-eating races how to increase the "seven small loaves" so that the multitudes should be fed. He picked up the task of feeding the hungry masses--the Christly task that had lain unfulfilled for eighteen centuries, and led the way in organizing it into a system of international reciprocity. To-day there is no longer in most countries any tragic note in the Epic of the Wheat. There is no sweating peasant with a hoe. The plowman may even sit, if he wishes, upon the sliding steel knife that slices the soil into furrows, or upon the steel harrow that combs the clods into soft, loose earth. The sower is no heavy-footed serf, scattering his grain in handfuls upon the surface of the soil, where the birds of the air may devour it. He, too, rides upon a machine with steel fingers that plant the living seed securely in the living earth. And when, at the call of the sun and the rain, the black field becomes green and ripens from green to gold, its yellow fruitage is swept down and into barns, not by a horde of stooping laborers, but by the Grand March of the Harvesters, the drivers of painted chariots, who ride against the grain and leave it behind them in bound sheaves. Henceforth civilization may be based upon higher motives than the Search for Food. The struggle for existence may become the struggle of the nobler nature for its full development. The gentle need not be eliminated by the strong. Instead of contending with one another in an unbrotherly competition, men may move upward to the higher activities of social self-preservation and organized self-help. By mastering the problem of the bread, they have opened up such opportunities for education, for travel, for happier homes, for the prosperity and friendship of the nations, as no previous generation has ever had. And it is here, it is in this larger and kindlier civilization, that is now made possible by the Reaper and the wheat-mechanism which has grown up around it, that we shall find the full spiritual value to the world of that stout-hearted bread-winner of the human race whose life began among the hills of Old Virginia one hundred years ago. THE END INDEX A Adams, John, 15 Adriance, John P., 103, 119 Advertisements of Reaper, 54, 81-83, 112, 134 Africa not a wheat-eating country, 242 Agencies established for sale of Reapers (about 1844), 63 Agents, Cyrus H. McCormick's plan in regard to, 83, 84, 86 Agriculture, Department of, 87 Albert, Prince, 125, 132 Algeria, 242 Allen, Grant, 205 _America_, yacht, 131 Amsterdam, 222 Antwerp, no grain stored in, 217; Bourse in, 222; third busiest port in world, 239 Appleby, John F., 115 Argentina, 209, 212, 225, 228 Arkwright, inventor, 53, 131 Armagh massacre of 1641, 22 Athens, mills at, 236 Atkins, Jearum, 106 Augusta County, Virginia, 3 Australia, wheat crop of, 209; legislation against speculation in, 225; development of, 228 Australian stripper, 200 Austria in 1809, 4; farm laborers received no wages in, 123; climate and wheat production in, 241 Austrian Emperor decorated Cyrus H. McCormick, 135 Ayrshire, Scotland, 86 B Babylon, 206 Baggage Case, 1862-1885, 100-102; _see also_ Pennsylvania Railroad Baltic Exchange, London, 221 _Baltic_, holder of ocean record, 131 Baltimore and Ohio Railway, 49 Baltimore Convention of 1861, 158, 166 Bankers concerned in moving of wheat, 223, 224 Barbary pirates, 4 Barclay, Col. A. T., 40 Barge, invention of, 210 Battleship turret, improver of, 95 Bavarians in the Tyrol (1809), 4 _Beagle_, H. M. S., Darwin's voyage in, 51 Bear, Henry, 66 Behel, Jacob, 115 Belgian method of reaping, 6 Belgians, King of the, 125 Belgium, legislation against speculation in, 225; consumption of bread per capita in, 239, 242 Berlin, 214, 217 Berthelot, 51 Bessemer converter, 17, 49, 69, 210 Bismarck, 136 Black Death in England, 124 Blackie, 1 Blame, Mrs. Emmons, 183 Blanchard, inventor, 95 Blue Ridge Mountains, 2, 36 Board of Trade, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70 Bonanza farms, 194 Bull, Ole, 184 Bonar, 1 Bonner, Henry, publisher, 21 Bottgher, 53 Bourses, or European Exchanges, 222 Bowyer, Col. John, 40 Braila, Roumania, 216 Bradshaw, Prof., 40 Brains, John, 59 Bread, making of, 237, 238; record time from standing grain to, 238; cheapness of, 238 Bread tax, 240, 241 Brokers, wheat, 219, 222, 224 Brooks, Absalom, 58 Brown, A. C., 66 Brown, Senator, of Miss., 93 Bryant, 76 Buckle, 204 Budapest, Bourse in, 222; "new process" mills in, 235, 236 Buenos Ayres, 218, 222, 229 Buffalo, N. Y., 69, 216 Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, 130 Burson, W. W., 115 Bushnell, Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120 Butler, E. K., 143, 148 Butler, Gen., 36 C Cablegrams, 233 Calhoun, 164, 178 California, 51, 82, 190, 243 Calvin, John, 156, 157, 168 Canada, grain inspectors in, 222; grain speculation in, 225 Canada (western), wheat crop of, 209; railways of, 212, 213; development of, 227, 229 Canadian Pacific Railway, 227 Canal, first, in Chicago, 75 Carlyle, 155 Carnegie, Andrew, 56 Carpenter, "Pump," 114, 115, 117 Carson, Miss Polly, 40, 41 Carthage, ruins of, 242 Cash, John, 35 Cavaliers of Virginia, 20 Châlons, Emperor Napoleon's estate, 134 Chautauqua idea, originator of, 120 Chicago, 4, 30, 31, 37, 50, 67, 68, 70-78, 83, 85, 97, 106, 137, 144, 146, 151-153, 162, 166, 188, 189, 192, 196, 201, 214, 215, 218, 219, 222, 223 Chicago fire of 1871, 30, 151-153, 182 China, opium traffic of, 204; future use of wheat in, 232, 243 Chopin, 1, 51 Christian, Minneapolis miller, 236 Cincinnati Democratic Convention, 171 Circus, first, in Chicago, 71 City and town dwellers, proportion of, 195, 196 Civil War, _see_ Secession, War of Clay, Henry, 15, 164 _Clermont_, Fulton's steamboat, 7 Cleveland, Ohio, 73 Collins Line, 131 Colt's pistol, 130, 131 Columbus, Reaper traced back to, 17 Congress, first recognition of Chicago by, 72; Lincoln elected to, 72; patent suits carried to, 91, 92; how inventors have been treated by, 95 Cooper, Peter, 11, 155 Corn stored at Chicago, 215 Corn Trade Association, London, 221 _Corn Trade News_, of Liverpool, 221 Corners in wheat, 226 Cort, 53 Cotton-gin, 52, 97, 191 Covenanters, Scotch, 19, 23, 157 Cradle, 5, 27, 45 Crichton-Browne, Sir James, 204 Crimean War, 190 Criminals in period of 1809, 8 Cromwell, 173, 185 Crosby, Minneapolis miller, 236 Cross of the Legion of Honor given Cyrus H. McCormick by Emperor Napoleon III., 135 Crystal Palace, London, 127 D Dalrymple, Oliver, 193, 194 Darwin, 1, 51 Davis, H. Winter, 99 Davy, 131 Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, 100 Deere, John, 49, 131 Deering, William, 115, 116, 118, 121, 150 De Lesseps, 70 Denmark, 241 Department store, free trial given by, 80 Des Moines, Iowa, 6, 86 Dickerson, E. N., 91, 98 Diet of Worms, 156 Diseases prevalent in 1809, 7 Divider, origin of, 32, 46 Douglas, Stephen A., 91, 99, 100 Driving-wheel of Reaper, 34 Drunkenness in 1809, 7 Duluth-Superior, 215 Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie's birthplace, 56 Dunwoody, Minneapolis miller, 236 Duties imposed on American machines entering Europe, 136 E Eager, Samuel, 58 Easter, J. D., 230 Eastern States, labor and money in (about 1839), 58 Ebrington, Lord, 127, 128 Edward, King, 132 Egypt once wheat-centre of world and present production in, 242 Egyptian tombs, wheat found in, 206 "1800-and-starve-to-death" period, 51 Elastic currency, demands for, 223 Electric engine, builder of, 95 Electrical experiments, 50 Elevators, grain, 214-217 Embargo (1809), 8-10 Emerson, Ralph, 45, 46, 98, 103, 119 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 97 England, riots in (1809), 3, 4; U. S. flag flouted by, 4; at war with Scotland, 18, 19; with Ireland, 19; Scotch-Irish ready for war with, 20; conditions in (1831), 50; price of labor in, 123; labor conditions and farm machinery in, 124; Corn Exchange in, 218; speculation in, 224; consumption of bread in, 239; no tariff on wheat or flour in, 240; has lost place as "granary of the North," 240; contrasted with Germany, 241 Erie Canal, 210, 212 Ether, use of, 69 Euphrates, valley of, 228 Europe, introduction of Reaper into, and trade with, 123-138; cost of growing wheat in, 209; American wheat exported to, 210; wheat stored in, 217 Exchanges, grain, 218-222 F Factories in 1831, 48, 49 Factory, rebuilding of, after fire, 31, 152, 182; present size of, 47, 196-200; in Virginia, poor transportation from, 64; McCormick's plan to build his own, 67; Chicago chosen as site of, 77, 137, 202; largest in Chicago, 77; in 1860, 106; output of, 137; at time of Chicago fire, 151; in 1884, 188 Famine of 1846 in Ireland, 71 Famines, local, 51; in Russia, 242 Farm laborers drawn by 1849 gold rush, 82, 83, 190 Farm machinery, none in 1809, 5, 11; invention of, 17; profession of making, 22; none in 1831, 49; farmers not using (about 1839), 57, 58; fixed prices for, 81; field test as method of marketing, 87; McCormick's system of selling, 89; introduction of, in England, 124; sale of, boomed after 1849, 190; present era of, 193-195 Farmers, increase of (1810-1820), 11, 21; their opinions of early types of mowers and reapers, 43; McCormick's confidence in, 80; advertising among, and testimonials from, 82; McCormick stood well with, 85; his business methods with, 85; McCormick hurt by petitions of protest from, 94; credit extended to, 193; farm machinery used by, 193-195 "Farmer's Register," 43 Fassler, Jerome, 119 Federal bankrupt law of 1842, 71 Field, Cyrus W., 155 Field tests, 87-89, 134, 135 Fingers on cutting blade, origin of, 33 Fire department, Chicago, 1846, 72 Fiske, John, 21 Fitch & Co., 66 FitzGerald, 1 Fixed price, Reapers sold at, 80, 81 Flesh food, 205 "Flour Cities," 234, 235 Flour, manufacture of, 234-237 Flour-mills, 234-237 Food, first necessity, 203, 204; relation between population and, 204; three principal articles of, 205 Foreign trade in Reapers, 123, 124, 131-138 Fowler, Miss Nettie, _see_ McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H. France, U. S. flag flouted by, 4; price of labor in, 123; no central wheat market in, 222; speculation in, 225; consumption of bread in, 239, 240; wheat grown in, 240; intensive cultivation in, 240 Frederick of Holstein, Prince, 128 Frederick, Virginia, 3 Fredericksruhe, Bismarck's estate, 136 Free library, none in 1831, 50 Free trial of Reaper, 80 French Academy of Science elected Cyrus H. McCormick a member, 136 French Revolution, 156, 204 Froude, 21 Fulton, Robert, 7, 11, 21, 53, 95 Fulton's steamboat, 7 G Galatz, 216 Galena, Ill., 76 Galilee, Sea of, people who dwell by the, 237 Gammon, E. H., 116 Garrison, William Lloyd, 51 Gas not used in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70 Genoa, 218 Gerland, Dr., 206 Germany in 1809, 4; price of labor in, 123; reasons why Reapers are not made in, 136; grain inspectors in, 222; legislation against speculation in, 225; compared with Red River Valley, 231; compared with Great Britain, 240; intensive cultivation in, 241 Gilkerson, David, 58 Gladstone, 2, 51 Glanders, a contagious disease, 5 Glessner, Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120 Gold put in circulation by wheat, 228, 229 Gold rush to California, 1849, 82, 190 Goodyear, 53, 95 Gorham, Marquis L., 115, 117 Grain-car, invention and use of, 211, 212 Granville, Lord, 131 Gray & Warner, 66 Great Britain, _see_ England Greece, 225, 241 Greeley, Horace, 72, 129, 155, 167 Gutenberg, 53 H Hague, The, Conferences, 233 Hall, Dr. John, 169 Hall, Patrick, 22, 23 Hamburg, 222 Hancock, candidate for President, 171 Hand-labor, Reaper invented in era of, 48, 49 "Hard Times" measures in Legislature, 71 Harding, George, 91, 99 Hargreaves, inventor of weaving machinery, 53 Harper, Henry, publisher, 21 Hart, Eli, & Co., 52 Harvest season only opportunity of testing Reaper, 61, 92 Haussemann, Baron, 1 Hayes, President, 165 Hayes-Tilden controversy, 165 Heathcoat, inventor of weaving machinery, 53 Henry, Joseph, 21, 50 Herald Square, New York, 6 Hewitt, Abram S., 155 Hite, James M., 63 Hitt, Dr. N. M., 37 Hobbs lock, 131 Hoe press, 49, 69, 131 Holland in 1809, 4; legislation against speculation in, 225; no tariff on wheat or flour in, 240 Holloway, D. P., 96 Holmes, 1, 51 Holmes, H. A., 115 Homestead Act of 1862, 193 Hong-Kong, flour-mills at, 243 Houghawout, John W., 40 Houghton, Lord, 1 Howe, 69, 95, 131 Hudson Bay, 213 Hulled corn, use of, 69 Hungary, speculation in, 224; climate and wheat production of, 241 Hunger, evils due to, 204, 205 Huntley, Byron E., 103, 119 Hussey, Obed, 87, 88, 119 Huxley, 51 Hyatt, inventor, 95 I Illinois, 64, 65, 69, 100, 151, 193 Immigrants supplied with Reapers on credit, 85, 86 India, opium traffic of, 204; cost of wheat production and labor in, 209, 242; railways of, 212; area and population of, 242, 243; wasteful methods practised in, 243 Indian Confederacy of Tecumseh, 4 Indian Massacre (1764) in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 2 Indiana wheat crop, 217 Indigo displaced by wheat in India, 242 Inspectors of grain, 222, 224 Insurance agents for wheat, 222-224 Intensive cultivation, 240, 241 _Interior, The_, 162, 163, 172 International Harvester Company, 183, 201 Inventors not encouraged, 6; how treated by Congress and the Patent Office, 95; rights of, as stated by Webster, 95 Iowa, 50, 63, 69, 230 Ireland, Scotch Covenanters in, 19, 21; famine of 1846 in, 71 Irish immigrants in Chicago, 71 Iron furnace operated by Cyrus H. McCormick, 55-57 "Iron Man," Atkins's self-rake Reaper, 106, 107 Iron, price of, about 1833, 55, 56 Italy, no central wheat market in, 222; wheat consumption and production in, 241 J Jacquard, inventor of weaving machinery, 53 Jails, conditions in, 8, 9 Jamestown colony, 36 Janesville, Wis., 114 Japan, object of, in war with Russia, 204; more wheat consumed and raised in, 243 Jefferson, President, 8, 10, 11, 15, 16 Jenks, Joseph, of Lynn, 5 Johnson, Reverdy, 91, 98 Johnson, Senator, of Maryland, 96 Jones, William H., 104, 120 K Kansas, 51, 85, 204, 230, 231 Kansas City, 216 Kay, inventor of weaving machinery, 53 Kelly, inventor, 95 Kentucky, Scotch-Irish in, 20 Kinglake, 1 Kinzie, John, 77 Knox, John, 18, 58, 156, 157, 169 Koh-i-noor diamond, 125, 126 Krapotkin, Prince, 204 Kurtz, Jacob, 58 L Land sales from 1810 to 1820, 11 Law-school, first in, Chicago, 71 Lexington Female Academy, 40 _Lexington Union_, 54 Lexington, Virginia, 37, 39, 40 Licenses to manufacturers of McCormick's Reaper, 66, 98, 112, 116, 120 Lilley, General, 140 Lincoln, Abraham, 1, 2, 51, 72, 91, 99, 100, 191 Lind, Jenny, 184 Liverpool, 221, 222, 225 Livingstone, 70 Locke, Sylvanus D., 112, 115 Locomotives, early, 49, 50, 192, 210 London Exhibition of 1851, 124-127, 130, 131, 190 London, no grain elevators in, 217; wheat consumption of, 217; Baltic Exchange in, 221, 222; methods of wheat marketing in, 225 "Low-down" binder, 118 Luther, Martin, 156, 157, 173 M Mackenzie, expert Reaper operator, 128 Mail-order houses, free trial given by, 80 Manchuria, wheat raised in, 243 Manitoba, Province of, 225 Mann, inventor, 108 Manny and Emerson, of Rockford, Ill., 98, 103, 119 Manufacturers licensed to build McCormick's Reapers, _see under_ Licenses Marsh, C. W., 45, 46 "Marsh Harvester," 109, 110 Martineau, Miss, 76 Mary, Queen of Scots, 18 Masses benefited by wheat trade, 229 Massie, William, 60 Mazzini, 51 McChesney, Adam, 28 McClung, Billy, 159 McClurg, Alexander C., publisher, 21 McCormick, Miss Anita, _see_ Blame, Mrs. Emmons McCormick Centenary, 45 McCormick City, 196-202 McCormick Company, present, 98 McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 2, 3, 11-13, 16-18, 21, 22, 25-28, 30-35, 37-48, 51-68, 71-85, 87-105, 109-113, 115-119, 121-124, 129-191, 193, 195, 198-202, 208, 230, 244, 246 McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H., 182, 183 McCormick, Cyrus H., Jr., 163, 183, 184, 201 McCormick, Davis, 29 McCormick family, 13, 17, 22-25, 64, 66, 78 McCormick, Harold, 183 McCormick home in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 2, 3, 13-16, 25, 35-37, 40, 48, 62 McCormick, Leander, 37, 123, 140, 143, 181, 182 "McCormick Plan," 167 McCormick, Robert, 13-17, 22, 25, 28-31, 40, 45, 104, 181 McCormick, Mrs. Robert, 23-25, 181 McCormick, Robert, son of Cyrus H. McCormick, 183 McCormick, Stanley, 183, 200 McCormick System, 243 McCormick Theological Seminary, 162, 163 McCormick, Thomas, 22 McCormick, Miss Virginia, 183 McCormick, William, 37, 123, 143, 181, 182 McDowell, Col. James, 40 Mechi, John J., 127-129, 131 Mecklenburg, Virginia, 20 Melville, Andrew, 169 Mendelssohn, 1, 51 Mexican War, Chicago organized regiment for, 71 Michigan white ash used in manufacture of Reapers, 74 Miller, Lewis, 104, 120 Milwaukee, 73 Minneapolis, 215, 235-237 Minnesota, 51, 193, 217 Mississippi River, 50 Missouri, 63 Moore, James, 40 Morgan, Junius, 131, 155 Mormons, 69 Morse, 21, 95, 131 Morton, Dr., 69 Mount Vernon flour-mill, 234 Mower, Miller's, 120 N Napoleon, 4, 10 Napoleon III., Emperor, 134, 135 Nebraska, 51 New Albany, Ind., Seminary, 162 New England, 230 "New process" flour-mills, 235 New York City, 4, 6, 8, 9, 37, 52, 119, 160, 216 Newspapers in 1831, 50 Newton, John, 59 Niagara Falls, power from, 216 North Dakota, 85, 232 Northwestern Theological Seminary, 162 Norway, speculation in grain in, 225; wheat production in, 241, 242 Novorossisk, Russia, grain elevator at, 216, 217 O Oats stored at Chicago, 215 Odessa, 217 Ogden, William B., 75-78 Ohio, 64, 67, 242 Oklahoma, 69 Oliver, James, 49 Opium traffic, 204 Oregon, 242 Oriental method of chaffering and bargaining, vogue of, 81 Osborne, David M., 103, 120 P Pacific coast, no grain elevators on, 216 Page, Prof., 95 Palissy, 53 Papers in 1831, 48 "Parcimony in Nutrition," 204 Paris Exposition (1855), 133 Paris, no grain stored in, 217; Bourse in, 222 Parker, J., 63 Pasteur, 51 Patent, Cyrus H. McCormick's first, on Reaper, 59; expiration of original, 91; suits over extension of, 91-98 Patent Law, 91 Patent Office, 91-93, 95, 185 Patents for Reaper and mower inventions, 34, 41; suits over, 45, 90-98; for self-binders, 118 Patton, Dr. Francis L., 172 Paupers in period of 1809, 8 Paved streets, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70 Peabody, George, 131, 155 Peavey, F. H., 214 Pennsylvania Railroad, 158; _see also_ Baggage Case Pericles, mills in time of, 236 Peterborough, N. H., 50 Photography, 49 Pillsbury, Minneapolis miller, 236 Pittsburg, Pa., 74 Platform on Reaper, origin of, 33 Plow, hillside, 45, 81 Plow, iron, thought to poison soil, 5; invention of, 49 Plow, self-sharpening, 45 Poe, 1, 51 Police force of Chicago in 1847, 70 Polish female laborers, 197 Pompeii, bread found in ruins of, 234 Poorhouses used as storehouses for wheat, 230 Portugal, 241 Post-office, Chicago, in 1847, 70 Postage in 1831, 50 Postage stamps, 70 Postal Union, 233 "Prairie Ground," American display at London Exhibition of 1851, 126 Prairies, need of Reapers to harvest on the, 65, 73; uncultivated before advent of Reaper, 67 Prairie States, ten, 230 Presbyterian Church, 158, 185, 186 Princeton University, 172 Protestant Reformation, 156, 185 Proudhon, 1, 51 Publicity, Cyrus H. McCormick believed in policy of, 81 Puddling-furnace, 17 Pyramids, wheat pictured on, 206 R Railway from Chicago to Galena, 76 Railways in 1831, 49; extending westward, 67; none reaching Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70; Chicago becomes a centre for, 73; preceded by Reaper in West, 192; distribution of food-stuffs by, 210, 211; building of trans-continental, 211; across Siberia, 212; in western Canada, Argentina, and India, 212; as wheat-conveyors, 212; converging at Chicago, 214; in Prairie States, 230 Ready-to-eat foods, 237 Reaper, McCormick, 13, 17, 28-48, 52-67, 73-76, 78-86, 88, 89, 92, 95-98, 100, 103-108, 110-113, 115, 117, 119-124, 126-135, 137, 138, 147, 166, 169, 170, 188-193, 195, 196, 200-203, 208, 210, 212, 214, 226, 227, 230, 243-246 Reapers of all makes, total annual production of, 209 Reciprocating blade, origin of, 32 Red River Valley, 194, 231, 232 Reed, Col. Samuel, 40 Reel, origin of, 33, 46 Republican party, 100 Revolutionary War, 3, 20 Rice, 205, 212, 242 Riots in 1837, 52 "River and Harbor Convention," Chicago, 71, 72 Rochester, N. Y., 234 Rockbridge County, Virginia, McCormick farm in, 2 Rotterdam, wheat stored in, 217 Roumania, 242 Roumanian cities use concrete grain elevators, 216 Rubber manufacture, inventor of, 53 Ruff, John, 38, 40 Russia, farm laborers received no wages in, 123; in war with Japan, 204; development of, 228; wheat production, consumption, and exportation in, 242; famines in, 242 Russian army in Sweden (1809), 4 Russo-Japanese War, 204 S Sailors become farmers, 11 St. Louis, Mo., 73, 216 Sales system of Cyrus H. McCormick, 47, 78 _et seq._ Saratoga, N. Y., 7 Sault Ste. Marie Canal, 210 Sauvage, inventor of screw propeller, 53 School attended by Cyrus H. McCormick, 26 Scotch-Irish, the, 17-23, 25, 29 Scotland, 18, 74 Screw propeller, inventor of, 53 Scribner, Charles, publisher, 21 Scythe, invention of, 5 Secession, War of, 100, 166-168, 191, 192 Self-binders, 110-115, 117, 118, 121, 208-210, 238 Self-rake Reapers, 106, 107, 110, 114 Self-sizing device, Gorham's invention of, 117 Seneca, quoted, 154 Serfs, 15, 124 Servia, conditions in (1809), 4 Sèvres porcelain, 53 Seward, William H., 91, 98, 155 Sewerage, none in Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70 Sewing-machine, 17, 49, 69, 131, 210 Seymour, Morgan & Co., 66, 116, 119, 120 Sheffield steel used in manufacture of Reapers, 74 Sherwood farm, near Elgin, Ill., 111 Shipping, Chicago becomes centre for, 73, 215 Siberia, Russia seeking seaport for, 204; wheat crop of, 209, 217; railway across, 212; development of, 228; might take lesson from Red River Valley, 231 Sickle, its use in 1809, 5 Side-draught construction of Reaper, 33, 34 Side-delivery machine, first practical, 46 Skulls, pyramid of, 4 Slaves, work of, 191 Smith, Abraham, 60, 62 Smith, Joshua, 57 Smith, Sidney, 130 Social conditions in 1809, 7-9 Solomon, 206 South Carolina, 97 Spain, in 1809, 4; wheat imported by, 241 Spaulding, George H., 115 Speculators, grain, 224, 225 Spencer, Herbert, 51 Spring, Charles, 143 Stanton, Edwin M., 91, 99 Staunton, Virginia, 2, 40, 57, 58, 60 Steamboat, invention of, 210 Steele, Eliza, 37 Steele, John, 37, 40 Steele's Tavern, Virginia, 37 Stewart, A. T., 21, 81 Stock-yards not located at Chicago when Cyrus H. McCormick came, 70 Storage of wheat, 213, 214 Suez Canal, 70, 210 Sulina, 217, 218 Surveying, Cyrus H. McCormick's study of, 27 Sweden in 1809, 4; speculation in grain in, 224; wheat production in, 241, 242 Switzerland, 225, 242 T Taylor, Dr., 40 Taylor, Hon. William, 39, 40 Tecumseh, 4 Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad, 144 Telegraph, 49, 50, 70, 131, 210 Telephone, 210 Temperance society at Saratoga, 7 Tennessee, Scotch-Irish in, 20; first Reaper purchased in, 63; comparison of grain production of, 242 Tennyson, 1, 51 Texas, Scotch-Irish in, 20; not in the Union in 1831, 51 Theatres in early Chicago, 70, 71 Thompson, J. Edgar, 101 Tilden, 76, 165 _Times_, Chicago, 166 _Times_, London, 130 Town and city dwellers, proportion of, 195, 196 Town laborers become farmers, 11 Trans-Siberian railway, 212 Transportation charges on wheat, 213 Transportation of Reapers from Virginia farm, 64 _Tribune_, of Chicago, founded, 71 Trolley, introduction of, 210 Tunis, 242 Turks in Servia (1809), 4 Tutwiler, Colonel, 63 Twine-mill in McCormick factory, Chicago, 197 Twine self-binders, 115-118, 121 Tyre, King of, 206 Tyrol, riot in (1809), 4 U Ulster, county of, 19, 21, 22 Union Army in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 36 Union Pacific Railway, 144 United States, in 1809, 4 _et seq._; Scotch-Irish in, 18-21; papers printed in (1831), 48; railways in (1831), 49; extent and development of (1831), 50; Buffalo chief grain market of, 69; London Exposition display from, 126; inventions credited to, 130; reasons why Reapers were invented in, 136, 201; McCormick's place in history of, 153; production of wheat in, 188, 189; manufacturing and labor in (1884), 189; Reaper little used in, until after 1849, 190; Reaper appreciated in, 191; industrial supremacy of, 195, 229; harvesting machinery industry in, 201; wheat crop of, 209; cost of production of wheat in, 209; railway across, 211; grain inspection in, 222; speculation in, 225; cultivation of semi-arid land in, 228; consumption of bread in, 239; area and population of, compared with India, 242, 243 V Van Buren, Martin, 76, 178 Vermont hay crop, relative value of, 5 Victoria, Queen, 125, 132 Virchow, 51 "Virginia Reapers," 64 Virginia, Scotch-Irish in, 20; main wheat State in 1831, 51, 193; supremacy passing to Ohio, 67 W Wages of harvesters at time of introduction of Reaper, 38 Wallace, Andrew, 40 Wallace, Henry, 106, 107 _Wallace's Farmer_, 106 Walton, N. Y., 76 Warder Reaper manufacturer, 103, 120 Warehouses at Reaper agencies, 83, 84 Warfare, expenses of modern, 233 Washburn, William D., 235, 236 Washington, George, 5, 6, 11, 15, 17, 20, 81, 234 Washington State, 238 Watson, Peter H., 91, 99 Watt, 131 Weaving machinery, inventors of, 53 Webster, Daniel, 15, 76, 95, 164 Weed, Thurlow, 72 West, orders for Reapers from the, 63; transportation to the, 64; McCormick visits the, 65; need of quicker method of cutting grain in the, 65, 66; Chicago helped by use of Reaper in, 73; McCormick's policy developed the, 86; Reaper preceded railway in the, 192; wheat crop of the, 193; railways in the, 211; Reaper advance-machine of civilization in, 227 Wet grain, adaptation of the Reaper to cut, 33, 61, 62 "Whaleback" grain ships, 210 Wheat, 51, 67, 69, 70, 73, 188-196, 201, 203, 205 _et seq._ Wheat Congress, international, 233 Wheat-ships, 210-213 Whiteley, William N., 45, 46, 120, 150 Whitney, Eli, 52, 97, 191 Whittier, 51 Willmoth, improver of battleship turret, 95 Wilson family from Ayrshire, Scotland, 86 Wilson, Hon. James, 86, 87, 192 Winnipeg Grain Exchange, 225 Wire self-binders displaced by twine self-binders, 115-117 Wisconsin, 50, 63, 114 Withington, Charles B., 109-115 Wood, Jethro, 49, 53 Wood, Walter A., 103, 112, 120 Woodworth, inventor, 95 World's Fair, Chicago, 1893, 124 Wright, Joseph A., 134 Written guarantees given with McCormick Reapers, 79 Y Yellow fever in the McCormick family, 16 * * * * * Transcriber's note: Simple typographical errors were corrected. Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Page 91: "Beverdy Johnson" corrected to "Reverdy Johnson." Page 256: "see Blaine" corrected to "see Blame." 
43040	----	CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS THE ETHICS OF BUYING CHEAP BY J. ELLIOT ROSS, Ph.D. NEW YORK THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 1912 Copyright, 1912, by THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY NOTE J. ELLIOT ROSS is a member of an old and prominent Southern family. He has long been an ardent student of economics, of sociology, and of the enslaved condition of the Wage-Earner,--and _who, save the idle rich and the social drone, is not a wage-earner_? Dr. Ross is a graduate of George Washington University. The Catholic University of America conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for this, his excellent work in behalf of the Consumer, the Wage-Earner, and the Oppressed. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE POINT AT ISSUE 3 CHAPTER II OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS 8 CHAPTER III WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER? 38 CHAPTER IV THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 47 CHAPTER V INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES 66 CHAPTER VI INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH 77 CHAPTER VII INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS 95 CHAPTER VIII WHAT SHOULD THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER DO? 107 APPENDIX 133 BIBLIOGRAPHY 135 CHAPTER ONE THE POINT AT ISSUE Have you ever stood in a country store and from the superior heights of mature wisdom watched a chubby-faced, bright-eyed boy invest a penny in a prize-bag? To you it is simply a paper enclosing a few nuts, a piece of candy, and a variable quantity in the shape of a tin flag, an imitation ring, etc. But to the child there is an excitement in getting one knows not what. All the gambling instincts of the race that squanders thousands upon the turf, all the love of adventure that peopled our continent, are summed up in that one act. The child has, perhaps, contentedly endured the routine of the farm for weeks in the anticipation of this one moment of blissful joy when his anxious fingers nervously reveal the delight or the disappointment. * * * * * Years have brought wisdom (or is it disillusionment?) and imitation rings no longer have the same importance in our eyes. No matter how wistfully we may look back, those days will never return. Yet prize-bags may once again loom large in our intellectual horizon, though with a difference. This time we look beyond the rosy-cheeked, healthy country lad, bred amid the beauties of God's fields and nourished with unadulterated home products, to the pale, nervous, over-worked girls who spend their days filling these bags. In an ill-lighted, ill-ventilated room, in a great dusty, dirty city they work feverishly for ten hours at the rate of four cents a hundred bags. "They stand at a table with boxes before them, from which they take peanuts, candy and prizes with quick automatic motion. They turn down the corners of each bag, and string the bags when full in long bulky curls of seventy-two."[1] Speeding to the utmost they cannot make enough to live on. A room in a cheap boarding-house, morally and physically dirty, insufficient food, and no chance for legitimate pleasures--this is the prize-bag life holds for them. What wonder if the temptation to supplement these wages in the way always possible for women prove too strong? Who is to blame? Is the little chap hundreds of miles away in the country, happily unconscious of their existence, in any way responsible? This is the question with which we are going to busy ourselves. Our little boy and over-worked girl are not, probably, typical Consumers and Producers. Still they represent large numbers of the economic world, and the solidarity of industry is such that one could not exist without the other. In a way, the country lad is a shadow of President Taft pressing a button to start the machinery of a world's fair. The child, with wonderful effect on others, furnishes a portion of the nation's industrial mechanism. In the satisfaction of his own desires, he is all unconscious of this, and unconscious, too of the responsibilities of power that modern social workers would thrust upon him. It was once, indeed, the object of reformers to excite a sense of wrong in the oppressed. The fashion found expression in Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man." Now their purpose is also to arouse a sense of obligation in the powerful, and the change of front is indicated by Mazzini's "Duties of Man." One duty after another has been forced upon the race's conscience, and to-day the attempt is made to compel the final, and some say the most powerful, element of the industrial world,--the Consumer,--to shoulder his share of responsibility. Briefly, the line of argument is this: Laborers have a right to "a fair wage for a fair day's work." If employers fail in their duty of meeting this right, then the obligation neglected by the employers must be assumed by those who also benefit by the laborers' work,--by the _Consuming Class_. At first, the obligation is made abstract and hypothetical in this way because of difficulties in establishing the concrete content of the workman's right to a fair wage, and just what line of conduct is incumbent upon the individual Consumer confronted by this situation. Persons who readily agree that the laborer has a right to a fair wage, and that if this right is violated the Consumer ought to do something, will wrangle unendingly as to just what is a fair wage and just what a Consumer ought to do. After fixing this general obligation upon the Consuming Class, however, the other question as to whether the employers are actually neglecting their duties towards their employees, and what the individual Consumer can and should do, will be considered. The fixing of an abstract, hypothetical obligation for a whole class, rather than a concrete duty for a particular individual, is not useless. If it is proved, that, provided employers neglect their duties and the Consuming Class can do anything to fulfill them, there is an obligation upon the Consuming Class to carry out these duties--if this is established, it is only necessary when a particular case presents itself to ask: Have the men through whose labor this Consumer is benefiting been unjustly treated by their employers, and can this Consumer, without a disproportionately grave inconvenience, do anything to help them? Unless both questions are answered in the affirmative, this particular individual Consumer can have no duty of fulfilling the abstract obligation. This is much easier than working out the principle anew for each case. It is the difference between blowing bottles and molding them. FOOTNOTES: [1] "Women and the Trades," The Pittsburgh Surrey, by Elizabeth Beardsley Butler: N. Y., 1909: p. 47. CHAPTER TWO OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS Practically all are agreed on the fundamental point that laborers have a right to a fair wage for a fair day's work. Leo XIII has said, that though contracts between laborers and employers are free, "nevertheless, there is a dictate of natural justice underlying them more imperious than any bargain between man and man, that remuneration ought to be sufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner."[2] Later in the same encyclical, he indicates that this wage should be large enough to enable a workman to "maintain himself, his wife and his children in reasonable comfort" (p. 237), and allow a margin for saving against a rainy day. The present Pope, Pius X, has quoted these words of his predecessor and agreed that workmen have a strict right in justice to a fair wage, time to fulfill their religious duties, and freedom from work unsuited to their age, strength, or sex.[3] The Rev. J. Kelleher, one of the most recent and respected writers on the question, goes even further. "_The right to work_," he says, "or some other right that will secure an opportunity of providing for reasonable living to the less fortunate members of the social body who do not happen to be possessed of property, is an essential condition of any equitable economic system."[4] Cardinal Capecelatro has said that each one has "a right to raise himself towards the infinite, a right to the intellectual nourishment of religion, and, therefore, a right to the time necessary for the worship of God, a right to repose, a right to honest enjoyment, a right to love in marriage, and the life of the home. In woman Christianity recognizes with her function of child-bearing in Christian marriage, a right to the time for the nurture of her children. In children it recognizes a right to the supreme benefit of health, given them by God, but endangered by overmuch work. In young girls it recognizes a right to such moderation in their duties as may assure them health and strength. In all, finally, it acknowledges the immortal soul, with its rights to education, to salvation, to the time that these things need."[5] Now when Pope Leo and the other authorities quoted used the words "right," "just," "duty," what did they mean? These words are often employed vaguely and carelessly, but we may be sure that here they were taken in a strict and well-defined sense, such as usually found among Catholic ethicists. A right, as it is thus ordinarily defined, is "a legitimate power of doing or acquiring something for one's own good."[6] The word power is not taken here in the sense of physical ability. It means that moral potency or capacity without which nothing can be acquired or recovered: for a person may have a right to do what he has not the physical power to perform. "Legitimate" means granted by or conformable to law: hence we have not a right to do everything for which we have the physical power. Once we get this idea of "right" firmly fixed in our minds, the concepts of "justice," "injustice," and "duty" easily follow. For "justice," in a definition of Ulpian that has been accepted all down the ages since, is simply the constant and perpetual will of giving to each one his right.[7] And injustice, naturally, is merely a voluntary violation of another's right. A "duty" is simply the obverse of a right, it is the obligation corresponding to a right. Or as Bouquillon put it, it is "something reasonably due from one person to another because of a necessary connection between the end to be attained and the means used."[8] As the end varies between justice and charity, so does the duty. In the one case, our object is to fulfill the precept, "love thy neighbor as thyself"; in the other, to give to each man what he has a right to have. The fundamental concept of a "right" may be looked at from four points of view: (a) the _subject_, or who has the right; (b) the matter, or _content_ of the right; (c) the _title_ or reason for the right; (d) and finally, the _term_, or who has to respect the right. Asking these questions about the right at present under consideration, we find that the subject of the right is each individual who contributes to the production or distribution of the articles purchased by the Consumer. The content of this right we have already given in the words of Leo XIII and others. Briefly, it may be summarized as the right to a decent living. On what grounds have employees these rights? By the very fact that they are men; that is, intelligent beings destined for a supernatural end. Therefore these rights are _connatural_, as belonging to them by their nature; _inalienable_, because they cannot be renounced; _perfect_, because so strict that the duties corresponding to them are matters of commutative justice. And who has the duties corresponding to the workman's right to a decent living? Primarily, the direct employer. He has a strict duty of justice in the matter. If he fulfill it, then no one else is bound. But in the case before us, we assume that the direct employer has failed to do his strict duty of commutative justice to his employees. It makes no difference whether the direct employer be formally guilty or not. He may be unable to perform his duty, or he may wilfully neglect it. That does not matter. _De facto_, he does neglect it. What then is the duty of the Consuming Class? We think that the Consuming Class is bound to assume the obligations that the direct employers have neglected. And we are going to support this contention by four arguments. These arguments are: I. _The devolution of duty argument_: the direct employer has failed to fulfill his duty, and this duty thereupon devolves upon the indirect employer, the Consuming Class. II. _The value argument_: ideally, the buyer of an article is bound to pay its value, and, as a general rule, if proper economy has been exercised in its production, this must be sufficient to pay a living wage to the men engaged in producing and distributing that article. III. _The co-operation argument_: the direct employer is guilty of an injustice in which the Consuming Class is bound not to co-operate. IV. _The social argument_: it is for the common good that the average employee should be paid a living wage. And since the Consuming Class is merely the body politic, from one point of view, it is bound to sacrifice the advantage of cheap buying for the sake of the rounded advantage of the whole. I. We have explained briefly to what every employee has a right--that is to say, what every employer must give his workmen, or commit injustice. We have assumed, further, that the employee often does not get what he has a right to have. Now, this is not always the employer's fault. Often an employer would be glad to raise wages, to improve sanitary conditions, to shorten hours, but the stress of competition prevents him. But the employer being unable or unwilling to pay a proper wage, etc., what becomes of the employee's right? Does it cease? Has he no claim upon anyone else? Those who would fix an obligation on the Consuming Class say that the employee's right does not cease. He has a claim, they contend, upon all who in any way benefit by his labor, the strength of the claim depending upon the closeness of the relationship, the importance of the benefit derived, and the injustice suffered. First of all, they point out, there is the rent-taker. But for the labor of these men (assumed to be underpaid, etc.), there would be no return out of which to pay rent. For the mere fact of ownership, which in itself may not stand for any addition to the ground's productive capacity, these men are allowed to take a part at least of what would be necessary to raise the condition of the men producing the wealth to a just standard. Therefore, because the rent-taker seems to receive the most gratuitous benefit from the employee, the duty of the employer devolves first upon him. If the employer fail, wilfully or not, to fulfill his duties to his men, then they become binding upon the rent-taker. Should he, too, fail, the laborer still has a claim. There is another very important sharer in distribution--the interest-taker. It is true that the product is the joint result of labor and capital. But when there is the case of anonymous, impersonal capital receiving interest, and living, breathing, human machines being under-fed and unprotected, then humanity's claims supersede those of capital.[9] The inalienable rights of the laborer, which Cardinal Capecelatro has so excellently summarized, replace the alienable rights of the individual capitalists based upon the mere possession of property. The interest-taker is bound to give even the whole of his share to maintain a just standard of wages, etc. And this principle is admitted in civil law by making wages a first lien upon the product and exempting wages from legal action.[10] But if the interest-taker, also, be unwilling to fulfill his duties, there is still an economic element upon which the laborer has a claim--the Consuming Class. Production on a huge scale, the interposition of wholesalers and middlemen of all sorts, shopping by mail or telephone, should not disguise the fact that the Consuming Class are really employers. It is only in an indirect way, it is true, but still a real way for all that. If the direct employer, the rent-and interest-taker refuse or are unable to perform their duties, then (leaving aside the legislature for the present) these devolve upon the Consuming Class _in so far as they benefit by the laborer's work_. This argument for the obligation of the Consuming Class is based upon the devolution of duties. Here it may appear new and strange, because applied to a new field, but it is admitted elsewhere as beyond contradiction. If, for instance, parents will not or cannot support their children, then the grandparents have just as real a duty towards them as if they were their own immediate children. And if they, too, neglect this duty, then it devolves upon collateral relatives until finally it falls on mere neighbors. Likewise, the Consuming Class, it is claimed, if those whose duty is prior to theirs refuse to perform it, must fulfill the duty that has devolved upon them. The rent-and interest-taker may be unjust to the employee and to them, but that is not a valid excuse. The same principle, though arrived at by a different process of reasoning, underlies the dictum, coming to be more and more recognized by legislators and economists, that the costs of production should be borne by the Consumers. That is to say, that the risks of professional hazard and accidents due to the carelessness of fellow-servants have been transferred from the employee to the employer. Naturally then, the employer compensates himself out of the price. II. This question of the duty of the Consuming Class towards the men who make or sell the goods they buy, may be viewed from another angle than that of the devolution of duties or the obligation of indirect employers. Leaving out of consideration the idea of indirect employer, it is further contended that the Consuming Class, simply as purchasers, may be guilty of injustice in another sense. For what are the duties of the buyer? To pay the true "value" of an article.[11] And what determines the true value of an article? Not necessarily the price. This may be fixed by law, as is the case with bread in many large cities. A loaf of a certain weight must be sold for five cents. Or we may have the natural or market price, which is determined by common consent. This is nothing more than the price resulting from the interaction of supply and demand. But although ordinarily, justice is fulfilled if a person pay either the legal or market price, neither is really based on justice. The price fixed by law will come closer to being a just price. In a self-governing community, it probably will not do a great injustice to either party for any length of time. In this country its field is so limited, that it may be disregarded in the present discussion. The market price, however, makes no pretense of being determined by justice. It is the shrewdness of one man pitted against the shrewdness of another, or even the greed of one against the other's need. One wants to sell for as high a price while the other wants to buy for as low a price as he can. When there are numerous buyers and numerous sellers, all knowing their business pretty well, the result will be a close approximation to what would be a just price, if the cost to the entrepreneur producing the commodities or the person managing the distributing agency were all that should be taken into consideration. In a society where the actual producer sells directly to the Consumer, where there is no production on an enormous scale employing hundreds and thousands of hands who have no voice in fixing the price of the product, then the price reached by the higgling of the market is likely to be just. Under the medieval system of craftsmen and one or two journeymen or apprentices who formed part of the household it was possible (by lack of competition) to maintain the rate of reward by limiting the supply. "No serious attempt was made to push trade or develop business, but only to carry on each trade according to the habitual rate of reward. According to this policy, the conditions of the producer were allowed to be the first consideration, and the consumer had to pay a price at which these conditions could be maintained."[12] But conditions of business have changed immensely since the Middle Ages. The Industrial Revolution has brought big scale production, driving out of existence the small producer ministering directly and immediately to the wants of the community. Department stores have supplied the same principle in the distributing end of industry, and very largely replaced the small retailer. The employees of the big producer and distributor, the ones most concerned, have no voice in fixing the price of the article made or distributed by their labor. As a consequence competition will often depress the price below the point where it will yield a living wage to them. Not their rights determine this point, but what crude irresistible hunger will force them to accept. Many times it is only a difference between starving rapidly or slowly. But competition is inexorable. It is true, that sometimes the actual producers or distributors may not be getting living wages because the entrepreneurs or the rent-or the interest-takers are absorbing too much. But ordinarily it is probable that stress of competition between capitalists and between managers will keep their shares within fairly moderate bounds. Capital competes with capital for a share in production just as one firm competes with another to secure a market for its product. Hence it may be reasonably presumed in any given case, when nothing is known to the contrary, that where the laborers are insufficiently remunerated, it is because the price obtained for their product will not cover just wages. Nor are appearances always a safe guide. A man who owns and manages a factory (thus drawing by himself alone wages of management, rent, and interest) may seem able easily to afford higher wages. Yet to divide his whole income among all his employees might give only an inappreciable increase to each. Therefore, it would seem that the principle of the market price being just, cannot be applied strictly to-day. On the contrary, many persons are claiming that the market price fixed by competition is usually unjust. A better principle, a more fundamental principle, one that really strikes its roots down into justice itself, would be to say that a just price is one that will yield a just return to all concerned--the actual laborers who produce the commodities, the clerks in the stores that distribute them, wages of management to the entrepreneurs concerned, and interest on the capital invested. Certainly if this be not done, the equality between the "value" of the article and the price is not preserved. And as Ballerini says, "when the equality is not preserved, so that the seller sells for more than the highest price or the buyer buys for less than the lowest ... injustice is committed."[13] But even though the price asked were sufficient to pay the employees just wages and the entrepreneur simply refused to do it, would the Consuming Class be justified in buying the article? It is contended that they would not. For one of the duties of the seller is to give a just title. And it would seem clear that one who hires a person to make a certain article, playing upon his necessity to avoid paying what his labor is worth, has not acquired a just title to the object produced. There is something in that article for which he has not paid. Human flesh and blood that has not been compensated for have gone into its making. The seller not having a good title himself, cannot transfer such to another. Persons who buy from him do not, therefore, secure a just title, and hence, it is argued, commit a grave injustice by buying such an article.[14] III. The third argument adduced in favor of an obligation on the part of the Consuming Class is, that the purchase of articles made under unjust conditions is co-operation in the injustice. It makes no difference whether or not the employers are formally guilty of injustice. They may be forced by the competitive system, as many contend, to underpay their workmen. Nevertheless, material injustice at least is committed, and the Consuming Class have no right to co-operate formally in what may be merely material injustice for another. Yet the Consuming Class by buying goods made under unjust conditions does co-operate, it is alleged, in three ways: (A) as the recipient of the result of the injustice; (B) by furnishing the means for the act; (C) and by counselling the action. "For a co-operator is one who at the same time with another is the cause of the injury, whether secondary or equally principal, whether positive or negative. For there is not the same manner of co-operation in all cases, but this is common to all, that one person should concur with another to commit an injury."[15] (A) One of the ways of positively co-operating with an injustice, is by receiving the results of the injustice. Thus a thief will not steal a bulky piece of silver unless he has a fence to receive it, and the fence becomes guilty of the theft by receiving the article. So a business man will not manufacture an article and thus commit an injustice against the laborers whom he underpays, unless he is reasonably sure some one will receive this article after it is made. The persons who receive it, then, or the purchasers, it is argued, are in the position of the thief's fence: They are receiving an article that was obtained by injustice; and it matters not whether the article was stolen outright or the injustice committed in a more gentlemanly way. Nor does the fact of the manufacturer committing the injustice to increase his profits, rather than (as has been shown elsewhere) to meet a demand for cheapness on the part of the Consuming Class, alter the situation. For a thief steals for his own enrichment, not for the advantage of the recipient of the stolen goods.[16] (B) One can co-operate in an injustice not only by receiving the results, but by furnishing the means for committing the injustice, and it is contended that the Consuming Class co-operate also in this way. Nor is this simply a different name for the co-operation just considered. For in the previous case, the Consuming Class co-operated with an act already performed in anticipation of this co-operation. Whereas in the phase now under discussion they co-operate with an act to be done in the future. A concrete example will make this clear. Mr. ---- invests $50,000 in the shoe business. After paying for his plant, raw material, and the wages of his men until he has produced marketable articles, he has practically nothing left. His continuance in business depends upon his selling these articles to gain money for current expenses. The purchasers of these goods co-operate (by receiving the articles) in the injustice under which they are assumed to have been manufactured, _and also_, by furnishing the necessary means, in the injustice he will commit by manufacturing more under the same conditions. (C) Nor is the Consuming Class's co-operation yet exhausted. For they may be looked upon as truly counselling, voting for this injustice on the part of the manufacturer. The Consumers do not go personally to the manufacturer and urge him to produce a certain article at a certain price, nor do they vote as specifically as an alderman for a contract with a factory, but their action amounts to practically the same thing. They go from one store to another seeking the cheapest price, and the manufacturer knows this. To meet this demand (a very real, though to some extent impersonal) demand for cheapness, the manufacturer commits the injustice of underpaying his employees. It makes no difference whether you call this "demand," or "counsel," or "voting," it is the real cause of the injustice, and hence the Consuming Class are guilty of co-operation.[17] It makes no difference if the Consumer knows that the injustice will continue whether he purchase or not.[18] In purchasing he is guilty of a moral wrong. For as a man who buys a ticket for an obscene show, co-operates in this obscenity even though his money be not necessary for its production, so do they participate in the manufacturer's injustice.[19] Or, to give Ballerini's illustration, if ten men suffice to launch a ship and an eleventh helps, certainly he is truly said to be helpful.[20] In the same way, Consumers who buy an article that was made under unjust conditions co-operate in this injustice even though it would have taken place without the money received from their purchase. For these reasons, it is contended, the Consuming Class, in buying goods made under unjust terms, co-operate in this injustice by receiving the goods, by furnishing the means for committing the injustice, and by urging such production by practical financial support. IV. We now come to the _social argument_, that is especially popular to-day, though it is by no means new. It was familiar to the Scholastics, and it was pithily formulated by Suarez as, "Public is to be preferred to private good."[21] Aquinas expresses it more at length: "For any individual in respect to what he is and has is related to the multitude, just as a part is related to the whole: whence nature sometimes injures a part to save the whole."[22] Elsewhere, Suarez confers upon the civil law the power of binding in conscience because "this power is necessary for the good government of the republic."[23] Various extremely important and far-reaching rights and obligations are fixed by this argument. It is lawful, for instance, for the state to kill criminals "if they are dangerous and injurious to the community."[24] Ballerini says it is lawful to kill a criminal in so far as it is ordained for the safety of the whole society.[25] But only the properly appointed persons have this right, because greater evils would befall the _state_ if each one were the judge in his own case. (L. c.) And not only may the state directly kill a guilty person, it may also, when necessary for the _common good_ indirectly kill an _innocent_ person.[26] Wholesale organized slaughter, called war, is right and proper when the good of the state requires it.[27] Whereas sedition is wrong, because it violates the good of "public quiet and civil concord."[28] Again, while suicide is unlawful, because, for one reason, a man is part of the community and whoever kills himself does an injury to the community, a man may yet lawfully expose himself to certain death for the _good of the community_. Similarly, though it is illicit to cut off a member of the body, because it is a part of the whole and cannot be removed without injuring the whole (Aquinas, l. c., Q. 65, A. 1), Liguori approves of at least one form of serious mutilation for the good of the community.[29] Private property is justified because it tends to the peace of the state.[30] Lehmkuhl determines the gravity of an injustice not only from the injury done to the individual, but also, "from the injury and danger which the public good and security would suffer, if it were allowed with impunity."[31] Social necessity, then, is widely recognized as a valid proof for a right or duty. The binding force of civil law, the wickedness of suicide and self-mutilation, the morality of executing guilty and innocent, the righteousness of private property, are all settled by this norm. Therefore, since the social necessity of the average workman getting a living wage is beyond contradiction, the Consuming Class, who benefit especially by the labor of these workmen, are especially bound to see that these rights are obtained. * * * * * We have now considered the arguments advanced to prove that justice binds the Consuming Class to see to it that goods are made under fair terms. These arguments may be summarized as follows: I. Because as indirect employers the Consuming Class are bound to maintain just conditions for those whom they indirectly employ. II. Because as buyers the Consuming Class are first bound to pay the full value of the article, which must include sufficient to give the persons employed in its manufacture and distribution a living wage, etc.; and secondly, because the Consuming Class are bound not to buy an article to which the seller has not a just title, the seller of an article made under unjust conditions not having a just title since there is work in the object for which he has not paid. III. Because the Consuming Class would co-operate in an injustice in three ways: (A) by receiving the goods made under unjust conditions; (B) by furnishing the means for committing the injustice; (C) by urging such production by this practical financial support. IV. Because the Consuming Class are bound to seek the social good, and that demands the payment of fair wages. II So far we have considered only the arguments for an obligation of justice on the part of the Consuming Class. But may there not also be a duty of charity? Certain general considerations relating to this second of the two greatest commandments, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," must be referred to before answering that question. The precept of charity requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And by the term neighbor we mean everyone. No religion, "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" removes a man from the category of our neighbor. A Christian's love must be all embracing. T. H. Green has well said that progress in civilization has been an enlargement of the meaning of neighbor and neighborliness. The meaning of these terms, once confined to one's relatives, then extended to one's city, tribe, nation, has now widened out until it embraces the world. But while we must look upon everyone as our neighbor, and love him as ourselves, this does not mean that we must love each one in the same degree. We must love him as ourselves, but not necessarily _as much as_ ourselves. We must have a universal internal love by which we wish our neighbor well in his spiritual, corporal, and material goods and succor him in necessity. Yet the amount of good we wish him, and the strength of the obligation to effect it, vary both with the special relationship existing between us and our mutual conditions. By mutual conditions, is meant his state of indigency and ours of prosperity. Almost innumerable grades of necessity may be distinguished, but for present purposes four will be sufficient: (1) extreme necessity, in which a person is in danger of death, or will be very shortly; (2) quasi-extreme necessity, in which one is in danger of falling into extreme necessity or a grave evil, either perpetual or lasting for a long time; (3) grave necessity, where one suffers a serious evil, but not for so long a period, or not so great; (4) common necessity, when one experiences some inconvenience, but not grievous inconvenience. The obligation varies, too, with the conditions existing on our part. For if the duty of succoring our neighbor from our own goods is to bind, we must be in possession of superfluous goods. Otherwise our own need would have a prior claim. Material possessions may be superfluous to life, that is, just more than enough to keep body and soul together; superfluous to our state in life, or goods without which we should have to sink to a lower social plane; or superfluous to the decency of our state, those over and above what are required even for the proper support of our family in accordance with the usual custom of those in the same position, the education and starting of our children in life, the giving of charity, gifts, entertainment of guests, etc. This last class of goods may be called absolutely superfluous. Now, it would not seem rigoristic (especially in these days when the right to any private property is seriously questioned) to say, that a person in extreme or quasi-extreme necessity is to be succored from goods that are necessary to the decent support of our station in life. One merely in grave or common necessity need be helped only out of absolutely superfluous goods. This would certainly be the minimum that any Christian would require. But this obligation also varies directly according to the closeness of our relationship with the person in want. A connection of blood, whether direct as between father and son, or collateral as between uncle and nephew, evidently produces stronger reciprocal obligations of charity than simple kinship through Adam. So, too, there is a stronger bond between those who have assumed artificial relationships, such as a pastor to his people, or those of the same religious faith, or those in the same social class, or those who have acquired, whether voluntarily or not, associational or economic ties. A captain, for example, has greater obligations of charity towards a man in his own company than towards one in another company, towards one in his regiment than towards one in another regiment, and so on. Certainly not least strong among these artificial relationships of society is that of employer and employee. There was a time in social organization, when the permanent subjection of Gurth to Cedric brought out more clearly the mutual obligations. The ties of the relationship seemed stronger because more lasting. Fortunately or unfortunately, the right of free contract has abolished this permanency. Men wander from one employer to another, from one city to another, from one country to another. But no transitoriness of employment, no mobility of labor, should obscure the fact that while the relationship of employer and employee lasts, there also exist special and stronger obligations of charity between the two. Not as strong, probably, as between master and serf, yet nevertheless too strong to be entirely fulfilled by the simple payment of the current wage. As Carlyle says, "Never on this Earth was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone.... Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another: nor could it nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.... In brief, we shall have to dismiss the Cash-Gospel rigorously into its own place: we shall have to know, on the threshold, that either there is some infinitely deeper Gospel, subsidiary, explanatory, and daily and hourly corrective to the Cash one: or else that the Cash one itself and all others are fast travelling."[32] That infinitely deeper Gospel is the teaching of Christian charity. This tells us that there is another bond between employer and employee than a mere "cash-nexus." The needy employee has a claim upon his employer in preference to others, and the employer must discharge it before dispensing charity to those in no greater necessity who stand in no such relation to him. Charity begins at home, and the employee is closer home than one related simply by the tie of a common nature. Of course, the relation between the direct employer and his workmen is more obvious than that between the Consuming Class (which we have called the indirect employer) and these same men. But the relation of the latter is none the less real and important for being obscure. Ordinarily it will probably be less close than that of the direct employer, but circumstances are conceivable in which the situation would be reversed. And certainly it would seem that the benefit which the laboring class confers upon the Consuming Class is such that there is some special claim arising upon their charity. Not labor in itself but consumption is the object of work, and this terminus of all activity, the Consuming Class, would seem to be bound both in justice and charity to see that their own satisfaction is not attained at the cost of the comfort and happiness of those who minister to it. * * * * * We may conclude, then, that if the direct employers fail to fulfill their duties towards their employees, that the Consuming Class, as being a beneficiary of the work done, are bound to assume these duties. As yet, however, the obligation is abstract as being fixed upon a class and not some particular individual about to purchase an article; and it is hypothetical as simply assuming that employers neglect their duties. The further question now presents itself: Do employers actually neglect their duties, and what can and should the Consumer do? FOOTNOTES: [2] Great Encyclicals of Leo XIII, "On the Condition of Labor," p. 236: N. Y., 1903. [3] "Pope Pius X on Social Reform," London, 1910: p. 8. [4] Kelleher, "Private Ownership," Dublin, 1911: p. 174; cf. also p. 179. Italics added. [5] "Christ, the Church, and Man," p. 74: St Louis, 1909. [6] Gury: "Compendium theologiæ moralis," n. 579: De just. et jure: Ratisbon, 1874. [7] See Appendix, 1. [8] See Appendix, 2. [9] Cf. John A. Ryan, "The Church and Interest-Taking," p. 31: St. Louis, 1910. [10] Cf. Bull. U. S. Bur. Lab., Jan. 1, 1911, pp. 876, 878, 881. [11] Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, 2a 2ae, Q. 77, A. 1-2; St. Alphonsus, Lib. IV, Tr. V, n. 793. [12] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 114: London, 1910. [13] See Appendix, 3. [14] Cf. Liguori, l. c. [15] See Appendix, 4. [16] Cf. De Lugo, XIX, II, 4-5. [17] Cf. De Lugo, L. c., XVII, II, n. 37. [18] L. c., n. 16, n. 19. [19] Liguori, Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 427. [20] Ballerini, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 696-7. [21] See Appendix, 5. [22] See Appendix, 6. [23] See Appendix, 7. [24] Aquinas, l. c., Q.64, A.2. [25] L. c., Pt. I, Tr. VI, Sec. V, n. 49. [26] Liguori, l. c., Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 393; Ballerini, l. c, n. 62. [27] Liguori, l. c., n. 402. [28] Ballerini, l. c., n. 126. [29] Liguori, l. c., n. 374. [30] Aquinas, l. c., Q.66, A.2; Noldin, l. c., De Sept. Praec., n. 368, ed. 8a. [31] See Appendix, 8. [32] "Past and Present," Bk. III, Ch. X. CHAPTER THREE WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER? The terms "fair wages," "reasonable comfort," "living wage" have often been used in the previous discussion. No attempt was made to make them more definite because it was not necessary at the time. Employers were simply assumed to violate the standard represented by these expressions. But if we are going to decide _de facto_ that employers are actually neglecting their duties, we must manifestly have some norm by which to judge them. What is this standard? At first sight, this may seem easy to define. But its apparent ease is an illusion. Even the simplest and least questionable standard, that of bare subsistence (and to simplify it still further, restrict the consideration entirely to the question of food), is extremely elusive. Of course a man needs some clothing, a certain amount of fresh air, and a shelter from the weather. But we shall have a sufficiently complicated problem without introducing these factors. How much food, then, does a man need to repair the daily waste and keep him in good physical condition? This depends to some extent upon the character of the work he does. A stevedore needs more food than a clerk. It will depend, too, upon the climate. Those in northern latitudes require more food, and usually of a more expensive kind, than those living in the tropics, and they ought to have more in winter than in summer. Again, racial characteristics must be taken into account. A Chinese coolie may get fat on fish and rice, or an Italian may do well on cheese and macaroni, while an Anglo-Saxon would starve on such a diet. In addition to all these points, there is an individuality about the digestive organs that must be weighed. With our exact chemical science it looks simple enough to calculate how much muscle and blood and nervous force are lost in doing a certain amount of work, and just how much food would be required in a given time to make good that loss. This would be easy if we could buy muscle and nervous force done up in neat packages and simply apply them where needed just as we apply a coat of paint to a weather-beaten house. But, unfortunately, we cannot do this. The brawn and nerve must be bought in entirely different forms, broken up by certain interior organs, and gradually sent by a long and complicated assimilating process to the point requiring them. And what becomes of the subsistence standard if the organs of some people refuse to assimilate what those of others heartily relish? or if at different periods, and for no apparent reason, the same man can get no strength or satisfaction from what he formerly craved? But if we cannot tell what mere subsistence requires are we not getting even vaguer when we add an indefinite "more" to it? When people talk of "frugal comfort," "decent livelihood," "living wage," etc., what do they mean? Do these terms mean to-day just what they did fifty years ago or will mean half a century hence? A little reflection will show us that they do not. They are largely relative. When the gentry scorned to read and write, farm hands could hardly consider it an injustice not to have instruction in the three Rs; and when everybody went barefoot, it would have been foolish to riot for shoes. As means of production are perfected, as we get away from the danger of starvation, always threatening primitive nomadic peoples, the standard of living of the more fortunate rises, as does that standard which they are willing to allow the lower classes, and which the lower classes demand. As a consequence, what is looked upon in one age as just and generous, may in another be considered thoroughly unfair. Concrete standards of justice vary with the time and are soon superseded by others. This is an important fact, and it must be mastered before one can use the current standard with honesty or intelligence. The principle of justice upon which the changing concrete standard is based, the moral right of each individual as a human being to the fullest development of all his faculties consistent with such rights in others, is doubtless unchanging. But it is conditioned by the stage of production that society has reached, upon how much there is to go round; and the wage necessary to secure this standard is conditioned by governmental supplement such as free education, insurance, etc. It would seem impossible, therefore, to determine the exact wage that a particular individual is entitled to until we can determine the total net product and this individual's contribution to it as compared with other individuals. We are not aware that this has been done. The attempt has been made, however, to establish both the absolute minimum standard and this relative standard. In the sixteenth volume of the report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," the former is fixed at $400.00. But have we an absolute minimum below which wages could not fall without endangering existence when a girl of ten and a boy of six are allowed more money for clothing than their mother? Upon the relative living wage, whole volumes have been written. But they would seem either to deal with the concrete expression of the standard of a particular class, or, if they do attempt to establish the right of individuals here and now to a particular remuneration in money, they do not quite prove their contention. But there are people who believe that the right of the laborer to a specific wage (and hence the employer's obligation of paying it) can be demonstrated. Dr. John A. Ryan, whose treatise on "The Living Wage" has attracted marked attention, has made such a claim for an estimate of $600.00 as a family living wage in cities of five hundred thousand or over in the United States.[33] This was in 1906 and the cost of living has advanced considerably since then. Dr. Ryan would probably, therefore, not consider too high the estimate of the Bureau of Labor (l. c.) of $600.00 for cotton mill operatives in the South. Under this standard, the father supports the family, the mother stays at home looking after the house, and the children go to school. It includes insurance. Now for the sake of argument let us assume that laborers have a strict right in justice to a standard represented by $600.00 a year in a Southern mill town. I must reluctantly admit that $600.00 cannot be proved conclusively to be the sum to which all laborers have a right. But for the time being we shall take it for granted, and from the standpoint of this assumption judge the justice or injustice of industrial conditions. I have said that I do not think that this obligation can be _proved conclusively_, that is, as conclusively as a proposition in geometry. But I do think that it is capable of the same proof that we have for many other moral truths that pass unquestioned. We must beware of applying to new propositions that corrosive logic which, if impartially exercised on old and new alike, would destroy the very basis of morality. This principle, that moral truths cannot be absolutely demonstrated, is generally admitted and many concrete examples could be given from prominent ethicists: thus De Lugo in speaking of so fundamental a question as the unlawfulness of suicide, does not hesitate to say: "The whole difficulty consists in assigning a reason for this truth: for though its [suicide's] turpitude is immediately apparent, it is not easy to find the foundation of this judgment: whence (_a thing that happens in many other questions_) the conclusion is more certain than the reason adduced by various authors for its proof."[34] Again, Ballerini, in treating of the unlawfulness of one of the sins mentioned by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, remarks that "it is most difficult to assign a reason for this." Then, after rejecting all the reasons usually brought forward, he adds: "It must be admitted that there are some practical truths necessary for the right association of men with each other, which men feel and perceive by a sort of rational instinct, whose reason, nevertheless (at least a demonstrative one), when these same men seek it analytically, they find it hard to discover. It would seem that nature, or the Author of our nature, wished to supply the defect of the exercise of reason by an instinct or rational sense of this kind: ... Among the truths of this nature, the one of which we treat happens to be found."[35] If unquestioned authorities like Ballerini and De Lugo admit their inability to prove such fundamental and important obligations (it will be noted that De Lugo says there are _many_ such) as those of refraining from the above mentioned sins, it need not surprise us to find that the obligations of Consumers cannot be proved _apodictically_. It would be foolish, therefore, to claim absolutely to demonstrate this obligation. All that can be done is to adduce the same proofs that Aquinas, Suarez, and other master minds have used to fix other duties, and show that they have equal force in the present discussion. It is simply the familiar argument _a pari_, and the claim would seem reasonable, that any objectors meeting these arguments on purely rational grounds, must show that they do not equally apply to this obligation, or else deny their force as proof for the other duties. FOOTNOTES: [33] Others have approximated this estimate, though possibly without giving it exactly the same ethical implications as Dr. Ryan. Thus Chapin, "Standard of Living in New York City," N. Y., p. 245, claims $800.00 as the minimum for New York City. Miss Butler, "Women and the Trades," N. Y., p. 346, says $7.00 a week for a single woman in Pittsburgh. The United States Bureau of Labor in the third volume of its report on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," p. 560, declares for $2.00 a week per capita. [34] See Appendix, 9. [35] See Appendix, 10. CHAPTER FOUR THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION Modern industrial conditions may be considered either _a priori_ or _a posteriori_, either theoretically or _de facto_. We may examine the principles of economic organization, and conclude that they will or will not lead to low wages; or we can go to the facts themselves, and decide from an examination of actual conditions whether or not wages are low, etc., always remembering the standard we have adopted. Beginning with the first method, we may, speaking roughly and with sufficient allowance for monopolies, say that we live under a competitive system. Men compete with others for their share in the product of industry. Goods are not put in one general fund and distributed according to each one's needs. Nor are they awarded to suit the whim of some ruler. Undoubtedly our present industrial organization is individualistic rather than socialistic, and its chief characteristic is probably a rivalry between its various members. Some assume that competition is universal and unrestrained. Then they draw conclusions as to the present system from what would happen if such competition prevailed. Others forget that competition is as universal as it really is, and that it exists not only between laborer and laborer to get the job, but between capitalist and capitalist to secure the laborer. To subscribe to either of these errors will vitiate any conclusions as to social policy. For if unrestrained competition have certain evil tendencies, we cannot therefore assume that the present restricted form will have such results. And the fact that competition exists between capitalists as well as between laborers has very wide-reaching implications. It means no less than that competition may raise wages as well as lower them. The average person is apt to look upon an object as drawn only to the earth by gravitation. He forgets that the same force is also pulling at it in an opposite direction. And in the same way the average person is likely to forget that competition is continually pulling wages both up and down. If we imagine some object suspended between the earth and the moon, and being constantly drawn towards each according to some power inherent in them which varies from time to time so that the object now approaches one and now the other, we shall have a rough illustration of how competition affects wages. We can look upon the amount of wages as the object of attraction between competition on the part of laborers and competition on the part of capitalists. According as competition among capitalists is keen as compared with that among laborers, wages will rise, and vice versa; just as when, in our illustration, gravity was strong in the moon, the object rose towards it, and when it was stronger in the earth the object fell towards that body. But in both cases the result is due to the same force, though acting from different points. It would be an error, therefore, to attribute all the evils of our present system to competition, and all the good to some other agency. Competition has good results as well as bad, and this two-fold influence must always be remembered. Doubtless absolutely unrestrained competition between laborers with no corresponding rivalry between capitalists would depress wages. But such competition does not exist. Competition is not absolutely unrestricted. It is limited by organization among the workmen, by legislation, by natural ability, and in various other ways. As a result, the effects are limited in various ways. If a bricklayers' union is strong enough practically to eliminate competition between this class of laborers while capitalists compete with each other to obtain their services, then the working out of competition has been modified in such a way as to have an upward effect upon wages. Competition, then, is not necessarily bad. In many cases, competition is not only the life of trade, but the builder of character as well. As a whole, those who have to earn their living amid keen business rivalry are more energetic, quickwitted and resourceful than those government employees who live in a somewhat listless, non-competitive atmosphere. And the superiority of Western to Eastern civilization and character may be due to the fact that there competition has been too much limited by caste systems, repressive legislation, and unchanging custom. Under the restricted form of competition existing to-day, many employers pay living wages and treat their employees fairly in every way. Indeed, the entrepreneur sometimes finds it to his advantage to give his employees even more than strict justice would demand. When competition for workmen is keen between employers, certain inducements may be necessary to prevent experienced men leaving and to avoid the consequent loss of breaking in new laborers. At any rate we find that many employers do all that can reasonably be expected. For instance, in contrast with the conditions of the garment trade prevailing in many places, the Pittsburgh Survey found two factories in that city to be run on excellent lines. They were well-lighted by large windows, the ventilation was good, the walls newly whitewashed, and the floors swept and scrubbed. In one, indeed, the upper windows were opened at intervals, and the work-rooms had windows on three sides. (Butler, l. c., p. 109.) Nine others were good because they were swept daily and exhibited a manifest standard as to a work-room (l. c., p. 107). One firm, too, was found to allow its employees to share in its progress. Thus when new buttonhole machines were introduced a few years ago the girls could turn out a third more work than formerly, but they were paid at the same piece-rate (l. c., pp. 119-120). The variation between individual stores as regards wages will be shown from the following table, adapted from page 121 of the first volume of the Pittsburgh Survey: -------------+-----------+---------------+-------- | | Weekly wages | Article | No. of +-------+-------+ Average manufactured | operators | Min. | Max. | -------------+-----------+-------+-------+-------- Shirts | 15 | $ 6 | $12 | $ 7 Shirts | 1 | 10 | 10 | Shirts | 3 | 8 | 10 | 8 Shirts | 24 | 6 | 8 | 8 Shirts and | | | | Overalls | 39 | 4 | 12 | 8 Overalls | 26 | 6 | 10 | 8 Overalls | 75 | 6 | 10.5 | 7 Shirts | 5 | 7 | 11 | Shirts | 18 | 7 | 14 | 10 Shirts | 51 | 5 | 15 | 8 Shirts | 7 | 6.5 | 12 | 8 Pants | 114 | 4 | 14 | 9 Pants | 37 | 3 | 12 | 8 Pants | 6 | 3 | 9 | 7 Pants | 284 | 4 | 9 | 7 Pants | 10 | 4 | 9 | 8 -------------+-----------+-------+-------+-------- Such differences are reproduced in all the needle trades.[36] Similar distinctions are also found in laundries. A very few have properly constructed plants, with wash-rooms on the upper floors and some arrangement for carrying off the inevitable steam (Butler, l. c., p. 170). In one, however, there are "exhaust pipes over the mangles, and fans in the walls, and there are windows along the side. The feeders are seated while handling small work, and the folders have comfortable benches" (p. 174). Wages, too, are considerably higher here than in other laundries. Four laundries in Pittsburgh have adopted an improved cuff-ironing machine which saves the operator from the extreme physical exertion of the old style (p. 182). A North Side laundry has set aside a bright sunny section of the building "for a lunch-room; there are attractive dishes, tables covered with white cloths, comfortable chairs. The noon interval is an hour and a half" (p. 312). Turning to mercantile houses we also find a great contrast. Some provide only half a dozen chairs for five hundred girls, while others do not allow chairs to be used at all.[37] Many stores have a working week at Christmas of from seventy-two to eighty-four hours without extra pay (Butler, l. c., p. 303). "Some employers are generally reputed among salesgirls to assume that their women employees secure financial backing from outside relationships, and knowingly pay wages that are supplementary rather than wages large enough to cover the cost of a girl's support." (L. c., p. 306.) Indeed, some employers frankly admit this and advertise for sales-women, "preferably those living at home."[38] Compare with these stores the one that "exemplifies a higher standard at each point under discussion; in the comprehensiveness of its ventilating system; in its observance of the spirit of the law in providing an average of four seats to a counter for its employees; in the fact that it has no Christmas overtime; ... and finally in its wage standard.... Seven hundred girls are paid $7.00; ... one hundred girls are paid $8.00 to $10.00, and sometimes $15.00 in the case of a head of stock." (Butler, l. c., p. 304.) Some glass factories furnish shutters over the leer-mouths to protect employees from heat;[39] prevent radiation from the melting tanks by various devices (l. c., p. 79); provide blue glass screens at the glory holes (ib.); artificially cool the shops in summer (l. c., p. 80); work shorter hours (p. 98); eliminate night-work (p. 104); provide hoods and exhausts for the etching baths (p. 322) and the sand blasts (p. 317). In one woolen factory the milligrams of dust in a cubic centimeter of air were reduced from twenty to seven by the installation of an exhauster.[40] The fact, too, that organizations such as trade unions and consumers' leagues can allow the use of their labels to certify that an article has been made under fair conditions, is a striking confirmation of the fact that some manufacturers do maintain proper factories and treat their employees justly. Nevertheless, competition has a black as well as a silver lining. It is self-evident that for any length of time laborers cannot get more than the total product of their work coupled with the necessary capital. Nor will it be denied that capitalists will always be in a position to appropriate a part of this joint product, how much depending very largely upon the relative supply of capital and labor and the keenness of competition between them. The share that is left and which goes to the laborers is not divided equally. It is distributed competitively. Those who are economically strongest seize what they can, and the weaklings must be content with the remainder. Frequently this is not sufficient to afford them the standard we are considering, but they are helpless to remedy matters. And there are some things that tend to keep this share at a minimum. Industrial organization is not simply a case of competition between capital and labor, but capitalists are competing with capitalists as well as with laborers, and laborers with each other as well as with capitalists. The result is that the weakest parties to this fray get hit hardest, and their only hope would seem to be the addition of some other check to competition that will prevent the present distressful consequences. This is not to say, as Socialists argue, that competition is to be abolished entirely, for we have seen that it may really have excellent effects for the workman. Rather it is to be harnessed and guided into beneficent channels, as a miller directs a stream to turn a wheel. He does not destroy the stream but makes it do his will. An analysis of industrial society will show, I think, that despite the good work the stream of competition is doing, there is a little eddy undermining the bank and working havoc in some places. The description of one phase of competition, even though it be isolated from the rest, will probably give a correct enough idea of how this force while working out to the advantage of some, is resulting in harm to others. The considerations that must be omitted in a short sketch do not change the matter essentially. They limit the hardship wrought, but they do not prevent a considerable number of workmen from being mercilessly ground down. Modern industry, then, is organized for sale, not use. Business men care nothing about what they manufacture so long as they can find a profitable sale for the article. The typical employer makes shoes not because he likes to, as an artist may paint a picture. He does it because he thinks a sufficient number of purchasers will want this commodity at a price paying him for his trouble. But to get these purchasers he must (unless he have some sort of monopoly) offer his product at a price no higher than other manufacturers are willing to take for the same article. If he deviate only a few cents, the expert buyers of retail stores will know it and go elsewhere. There is a constant demand for cheapness, a universal eagerness to "get your money's worth"; and factories and retail firms must meet it, or see their trade taken away by competitors. The intense desire of individual buyers for minute savings of a cent here or a fraction of a cent there, becomes, in the aggregate, an irresistible Demand with a capital D, "a blood-power stronger than steam," compelling the retailer (who in his turn reacts upon the manufacturer) to sell cheap. "The phenomena of sweating are a standing warning against the dangers that are inherent in unregulated competition.... The underlying cause of the evil," affirms a noted English economist, "is certainly to be found in the indiscriminate preference of the public for that which is low-priced."[41] The seller, then, must meet the Consumer's demands; and since these are for cheapness, he must sell cheap. But how can cheapness be obtained? Only by cutting down the expenses of production. Other manufacturers possess the same machinery, about the same advantages of location, and approximately the same talent. Given a system of unrestrained competition, each firm will have to count costs to within a fraction of a cent and reduce expenses to the lowest possible amount. To this end wages are often cut, workmen speeded, and the health of employees endangered. "No one of us," says the manager of a big department store in St. Louis, "has any particular consideration in the purchase price of goods; the ease of communication and the large amount of advertising make it impossible for us to have any serious advantage over others in point of selling price. The women can go from one store to another, effectually preventing one store from being materially higher priced on the same goods than another. "The great struggle is over the expense account. This brings up the whole question of salaries, the amount that can be paid to employees directly, the amount that is spent by us in caring for them, compensation for length of service.... All these have to be handled from the expense account, and it is on this point that some of the most delicate questions of morals arise, and they involve both the employer and the customer in the treatment of the employee."[42] It is true that some economists have maintained that the price of an article must cover its cost of production.[43] But as Professor Carver says, such an opinion "is probably the source of more error and confusion in economic discussions than any other mistake." (Loc. cit.) It may be granted, indeed, that the price will never be much below the _expenses_ of production, understanding by "expenses of production" what the entrepreneur must pay out in wages, interest, etc. Yet even this is not because the expenses of production directly govern prices. They affect the price only indirectly by limiting the supply. For no entrepreneur will long continue in business if he be not able to sell his product at a profit, and his going out of business will decrease the supply and so raise the price by the well-known law of supply and demand. But "costs of production," being the sum of the efforts and sacrifices of all concerned in making an article, are very different from "expenses of production."[44] It is by no means true, as Professor Sidgwick pointed out twenty-five years ago, that the amount necessary to enable a laborer to keep himself in good physical condition and reproduce himself forms a minimum below which the self-interest of an employer will not allow wages to fall.[45] For in the first place, there is no assurance that a laborer is going to spend his wages for this purpose. How, then, can it be to his employer's advantage to pay him more than he is willing to take, when the surplus may be squandered in drink? And even assuming that the generality of laborers must receive such an amount in order to meet the demand for workmen, still they need not all receive it from their employers. An industry, such as the department stores, may try to get girls who obtain part of their support from fathers or brothers employed in other businesses.[46] Or wages of large classes may be supplemented by public or private alms. This was long the case under the English Poor Law. As the land-occupiers paid the greater portion of the rates, it was to the Manufacturers' advantage to have wages really come partly from the parish. And the numbers of laborers can be kept stationary without each workman, or even every class, receiving enough to perpetuate himself. For their ranks can easily be recruited from an over-supply of some higher class. There is a constant pressure upon the upper strata, forcing down the unfit, and it is readily conceivable that these failures should take the places of still greater failures below. There is, then, no physical or economic necessity forcing employers to pay fair wages to each individual worker, in the sense in which we are using the word "fair" for the sake of argument. "The effort to organize business with a view to cheap production, may be carried on in such fashion as to press unduly on those who work for wages; employers are in a position in which they may be able to drive hard bargains as to hours of work and rates of pay, and to pass on the risk of loss, which arises from fluctuations of business, to be borne by those who are thrown out of employment."[47] And not only may this, but there is every inducement and almost necessity urging that it should, be done except where the workmen are organized. No employer can afford to pay a workman more than his surplus over and above what would be produced without him, and it will be to his advantage to pay less. He is a purchaser of labor, and like every other purchaser wants to get that commodity at the lowest figure. And there are several differences between him and the purchaser of any other commodity that give him a distinct advantage in the bargain. In the first place, not merely increased profits, what would be represented by a housewife's saving in shopping, urge him to buy cheap labor, but his own industrial existence, which will be lost if he does not get his workmen as cheap as his competitors. Having a greater prize at stake, he develops a greater skill. He has a wider view of economic conditions, a better knowledge of the state of trade elsewhere, and so he can outbargain the unorganized laborer. Again, the laborer is in a worse position than the seller of almost any other commodity. For what he does not sell to-day disappears absolutely. If he does not dispose of it now he cannot to-morrow. A fruiterer can keep his oranges until the next day, if he is not satisfied with the current price. But to-day's labor can be sold only to-day. And if it be not sold, it is probable that the workman will be physically less fit to-morrow. Yet even if he does accept the wage offered, and it is less than enough to repair the daily waste of force, the same result will be brought about gradually. He is, therefore, confronted by the dilemma of taking what the idle are willing to accept, or becoming idle himself. It needs only the imagining of one's self in the position of the unemployed to see that there is hardly any limit below which the wages of the weakest may not fall. A man without special skill and without savings, with not only himself but others to look out for, will be glad to get even what he knows will not completely support him. "Without organization and by means of individual bargaining, wages are drawn downward toward the level set by what idle men will accept, which may be less than they will produce after they receive employment and will surely be less than they will produce after they have developed their full efficiency. When labor makes its bargains with employers without organization on its side, the parties in the transaction are not on equal terms and wages are unduly depressed. The individual laborer offers what he is forced to sell, and the employer is not forced to buy. Delay may mean privation for the one party and no great inconvenience or loss for the other. If there are within reach a body of necessitous men out of employment and available for filling the positions for which individual laborers are applying, the applicants are at a fatal disadvantage."[48] Such is the opinion of a conservative economist with an especially kindly feeling towards the competitive system. It would seem, therefore, that the competitive organization of industry has a tendency to crush out the weaklings. How numerous are these weaklings, we shall now discuss. FOOTNOTES: [36] L. c., pp. 121, 122, 134, 152; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 303. [37] Butler, p. 301; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Factories," pp. 109, 178. [38] U. S. Bur. Lab., l. c., p. 22; Report Minneapolis Vice Commission, 1911, p. 127. [39] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 54. [40] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Industrial Hygiene," 1908, p. 79. [41] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," pp. 122-123: London, 1910. [42] "The Socialised Church," p. 120, address on "The Relation of the Church to Employees in Department Stores," by Hanford Crawford, B.S.: St. Louis, N. Y., 1909. [43] Cf. T. N. Carver, "Distribution of Wealth," p. 31: N. Y., 1908. [44] Cf. H. R. Seager, "Introduction to Political Economy," pp. 53-54: N. Y., 1908. [45] H. Sidgwick, "Principles of Political Economy," p. 297: London, 1887. [46] Cf. "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 22: U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1911. [47] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 118: London, 1910. [48] J. B. Clark, "Essentials of Economic Theory," pp. 453 and 456: N. Y., 1907. CHAPTER FIVE INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES What has been said regarding industrial conditions is not mere theorizing. Private, state and federal investigations into actual conditions confirm the contention that there is a large margin of unemployed, and that a considerable portion of those who do find employment are overworked and underpaid regardless of life and limb. Anyone who studies the various official reports on this subject, must conclude that Dr. Devine's summary of the _Pittsburgh Survey_ was well within the truth and is applicable to practically the whole country: "Low wages for the great majority of the laborers employed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low compared with the prices--so low as to be inadequate to the maintenance of a normal American standard of living; wages adjusted to the single man in the lodging house, not the responsible head of a family. "Still lower wages for women, who receive, for example, in one of the metal trades, in which the proportion of women is great enough to be menacing, one-half as much as unorganized men in the same shops and one-third as much as men in the union. "The destruction of family life; not in any imaginary or mystical sense, but by the demands of the day's work, and by the very demonstrable and material method of typhoid fever and industrial accidents; both preventable, but both costing in single years in Pittsburgh considerably more than a thousand lives, and irretrievably shattering nearly as many homes."[49] Assuming, throughout this discussion, that $6.00 a week ($1.00 a week less than Miss Butler's estimate), or $312.00 a year is the lowest fair individual wage; and $11.00 a week, or $572.00 a year is the lowest fair family living wage:[50] it is easy to show from reliable reports that scores of thousands of individuals and heads of families fall below this standard. But in considering any figures quoted here, or to be found elsewhere, it should always be remembered that the actual wage may be much below the rate of wage. One employed at the rate of $6.00 a week may not make anything like that because of loss of time. How much is lost through unemployment, it is hard to say. The United States Industrial Commission was of the opinion, that "it is impossible to collect statistics of any value whatever relative to the unemployment of unorganized labor, among whom lack of employment is a much more serious thing than it is with skilled or organized labor."[51] It would seem, however, that in the clothing trades, the employees lose at least one day in every six.[52] According to a Federal report issued in 1911, in Baltimore one-fifth of the force worked between five days and full time; one-tenth between four and five days; one-seventh between two and three, and five per cent, two days or less.[53] A report of the New York State Bureau of Labor for 1906[54] contains the following suggestive table regarding the unemployment of certain classes of _organized_ labor. It may rightly be assumed that among unorganized workmen conditions are worse. TABLE I. NO. AND PROPORTION OF UNEMPLOYED WAGE-EARNERS ----+--------+--------+--------+-----++---------------------------------- | No. of | No. of |No. idle|Per || Per cent idle Mon.| unions | memb'rs| at end |cent |+------+------+------+------+------ |report'g|report'g|of month|idle || 1905 | 1904 | 1903 | 1902 |1902-5 ----+--------+--------+--------+-----++------+------+------+------+------ Jan.| 191 | 84,539 | 12,682 |15. || 22.5 | 25.8 | 20.5 | 20.9 | 22.4 Feb.| 190 | 85,155 | 13,031 |15.3 || 19.4 | 21.6 | 17.8 | 18.7 | 19.4 Mch.| 192 | 25,956 | 2,952 |11.6 || 19.2 | 27.1 | 17.6 | 17.3 | 20.3 Apr.| 192 | 90,352 | 6,583 | 7.3 || 11.8 | 17.0 | 17.3 | 15.3 | 15.4 May | 192 | 91,163 | 6,364 | 7.0 || 8.3 | 15.9 | 20.2 | 14.0 | 14.6 June| 192 | 92,100 | 5,801 | 6.3 || 9.1 | 13.7 | 23.1 | 14.5 | 15.1 July| 195 | 94,571 | 7,229 | 7.6 || 8.0 | 14.8 | 17.8 | 15.6 | 14.1 Aug.| 195 | 94,220 | 5,462 | 5.8 || 7.2 | 13.7 | 15.4 | 7.1 | 10.9 Sep.| 195 | 94,290 | 5,252 | 6.3 || 5.9 | 12.0 | 9.4 | 6.3 | 8.4 Oct.| 195 | 92,052 | 6,383 | 6.9 || 5.6 | 10.8 | 11.7 | 4.2 | 9.8 Nov.| 195 | 93,042 | 7,052 | 7.6 || 6.1 | 11.1 | 16.4 | 14.3 | 12.0 Dec.| 195 | 93,318 | 14,352 |15.4 || 11.1 | 19.6 | 23.1 | 22.2 | 19.0 ----+--------+--------+--------+-----++------+------+------+------+------ Mean for year| | | 9.3 || 11.2 | 16.9 | 17.5 | 14.8 | 15.1 -------------+--------+--------+-----++------+------+------+------+------ Other deductions that must be made from the apparent wage are the withholding of pay for long periods, exorbitant prices and rents obtained through company stores and houses, fines, and increases in the cost of living. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the per diem or weekly wage rate as given by the Bureau of Labor and other reports, affords, by itself, an accurate statement only of the maximum yearly wage. This should always be remembered in judging any facts hereafter adduced. In the fifteenth volume of the bulletins of the Bureau of Labor will be found many interesting tables bearing on this question of wages. But as it is impracticable to quote them at any length here, a few of the more salient facts must suffice. Laborers in the flour mills of the South were working twelve hours a day for 11c. an hour.[55] Women in the carpet factories of the North were getting no more.[56] In the factory product of the clothing trade great numbers received less than 10c., 11c., and 12c. an hour (p. 35), and the compensation in sweatshops was much less. Male boarders in the knit-goods factories of the North-Central section were averaging less than $387.00 per annum. Women in the same factories were getting much less, some even as low as 7c. and 8c. an hour (p. 43). Silk-spinners in the North-Atlantic section were making only $5.00 a week, or less than $260.00 a year, for a nine and one-half hour day (p. 58). Male cigar-stemmers in the same section were making $6.00 a week (p. 59). In Michigan, in 1905, there were 3414 boys between fourteen and sixteen earning on an average 77c. a day, and 1725 girls making 64c. a day. In 1904, the average yearly earnings in the food preparations industry was $441.00; in salt production, $451.00; on tobacco and cigars, $393.00 (p. 334). In New Jersey, in 1904-5, the average earnings in the cigar industry were $316.70; silk-weaving, $480.11; woolen and worsted goods, $373.43. In the same State in 1903-4, there were 1985 adult males receiving less than $3.00 a week; 3234 between $3.00 and $4.00; 5595 between $4.00 and $5.00; 6037 between $5.00 and $6.00; 12,406 between $7.00 and $8.00; 14,300 between $8.00 and $9.00, though $9.00, working full time every week, would be only $468.00 a year. The very latest reports available confirm these figures. In the cotton textile industry alone, 29,974 employees, or 53.77% of the total number investigated (11,484 men and 18,490 women) were being paid at a rate less than $6.00 a week.[57] If we take the $11.00 rate, or family living wage, we find that 19,382 men (89% of the total) fall below it (l. c.). And as only 55% of the men employed in this industry were single (l. c., p. 132), at least 7285 of these men must have been married, and hence receiving less than the normal family living wage. It must be remembered, too, that these figures are based upon the assumption that full time is made. Could we get the actual wages, these groups would be much larger. This is shown by the table on page 329 of this report, where actual wages average $1.32 less than computed full time earnings. If we turn to the clothing industry, we find conditions even worse. In the five cities investigated (New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Rochester, and Philadelphia), 6788 employees, or 37% of the total (1217 men and 5571 women) were being paid at a rate less than the individual living wage of $6.00. Taking the family living wage of $11.00 as our standard, 3499 men, or 62% of the total, fail to reach it.[58] Again it must be repeated, that the actual wages are from 7-1/2 to 20-1/2% lower than these figures (l. c., p. 161). In one New York special order shop, the earnings for December fall to 55% of the average (l. c., p. 178). These figures, however, are for shop-workers only. The _average_ wages for home-workers are: Chicago, $4.35; Rochester, $4.14; New York, $3.61; Philadelphia, $2.88; and Baltimore, $2.24. "Here again the caution must be borne in mind that home-workers' wages, low as they are, often stand for the earnings of more than one worker. Sometimes, as reported on the books of the firm, it represents the earnings of more than one week" (l. c., p. 139). Ninety-eight per cent. of the married shop-finishers, and practically all of the home-finishers, too, earned less than $350.00 a year (l. c., p. 226). The average yearly earnings of home-workers are given as varying from $120.00 in New York to $196.00 in Rochester. From page 235 to 239 inclusive, the details of the earnings, size of families, and number of those working is gone into at great length. It must suffice here to say that families of five are recorded whose total yearly earnings are less than $100.00. One family of eleven is chronicled whose yearly income was $445.00, sixty-five dollars of which was earned by home-work. Working six days a week for ten hours a day, the home-worker cannot hope to make more than $156.00 a year.[59] Seventy-six per cent. of the women employed in the glass industry earned less than six dollars a week.[60] Their average annual earnings, in fact, are stated as ranging from $163.00 for those sixteen years old to $292.00 for those from twenty-five to twenty-nine (l. c., p. 544). Nearly one-third of the female department-store employees receive less than $6.00 a week.[61] Yet many of them had other persons depending upon them (l. c., p. 55). One family, consisting of a mother, seventeen-year-old daughter, and three younger children, was supported by the daughter's $5.00 a week. They managed it by living in two rooms and eating practically nothing besides bread and tea or coffee (l. c., p. 56). In New York State in 1906,[62] it was found that even among organized laborers reporting to the Bureau of Labor, 6078 men and 2011 women were earning less than the lowest individual living wage ($300.00), and 59,226 men and 8881 women (17.6% and 63.8% respectively) were earning less than the lowest family living wage ($600.00). If conditions were so bad among union men, they were probably much worse among unorganized workers. In Pittsburgh, in the canneries, 59% of the girls make only $6.00 a week, or less (Butler, l. c., p. 38). Of those employed in the confectionery trades, only twenty-one earn as much as seven dollars (l. c., p. 50). And these two trades have inevitable dull seasons that cut wages much below these figures. Seven hundred out of nine hundred girls in the cracker business receive less than $6.00 a week (l. c., p. 70). Laundries are amongst the worst paying establishments, and there is practically no chance of advancement. The shakers-out never earn more than $4.00 a week, and usually only $3.00 or $3.50 (l. c., p. 170). No mangle girl makes more than $6.00 and most between $3.00 and $5.00 (p. 173). Broom-making often gives only $2.50 a week, and the highest is $5.00 (p. 252). Many box-makers earn only 60c. or 80c. a day, and 80% of the girls are being paid less than $6.00 a week (p. 261). Packing soap-powder in stifling rooms pays $4.50 (p. 270). Nearly 50% of the girls in the printing trades are below the $6.00 standard. These, then, are the facts concerning wages. But no social fact can be entirely isolated. It is always intimately connected with many others, and no treatment of wages can be at all satisfactory without going to some extent into the ramifications of this subject along other lines. A chapter, therefore, will be devoted to the question of health and of morals as affected by industrial conditions and low wages. FOOTNOTES: [49] Report of annual convention of the American Sociological Society, 1908, or Charities and the Commons, now the Survey, March 6, 1909. [50] Cf. p. 36f for discussion of fair wage. [51] Vol. XIX, p. 754. [52] Loc. cit., p. 755. [53] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 113. [54] P. XI. [55] Loc. cit., p. 37. [56] P. 31. [57] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 305, 1910. [58] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 129. [59] L. c., p. 301; cf. also 20th Annual Report Bureau of Labor Statistics of N. Y., pp. 66-67, here quoted. [60] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 405, 1911. [61] U. S. Bureau Lab., "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 46, 1911. [62] Report of Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York for 1906, p. XXXI. CHAPTER SIX INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH The inevitable result of low wages is poor health. Bad housing conditions and insufficient food must follow upon the heels of scanty pay, unless the wages are supplemented in some other way; and that means anemia, tuberculosis, typhoid, and general physical debility. "In the New York block" bounded by E. Houston, Mott, Prince, and Elizabeth Sts., "one of every nine children born dies before it attains the age of five years. The death and disease rates are abnormal. The death rates for all ages in the City of New York in 1905-6 was 18.35 per thousand, and for those under five years it was 51.5; but in this block it was 24.0 for all ages and for those under five years it was 92.2."[63] "Nothing could be added to or taken away from these homes to add to their squalor." (P. 296.) The conditions of many workers' homes can be learned in detail from pages 254-259 of the Federal report just quoted. Here only a few of the leading facts can be mentioned. Thus in Pittsburgh 51.1% of the families investigated had as many as three persons per sleeping room.[64] Eleven per cent. of female factory and miscellaneous employees and nine per cent. of store girls are rated as having "bad" housing conditions and bad food.[65] Very few girls doing "light housekeeping" get proper breakfasts (l. c., p. 18), or, indeed, any other meals. It is not because they can't cook, but because they have to keep food expenses to a minimum in order to buy clothes, pay room-rent, doctors, etc. "'You see I'm dieting,' said a frail slip of a department-store girl as she held out her tray upon which the cafeteria cashier, in the presence of the Bureau's agent, put a two-cent check, covering the cost of the girl's lunch--a small dish of tapioca. She may have been dieting, but the evidences were pathetically against the need thereof, and there were some things telling other tales to a thoughtful observer. The girl's shoes and waist and skirt were plainly getting weary of well-doing, and to hold her position as sales-woman they must soon be replaced" (l. c., p. 17). The tables on pages 80 and 81, to one who practises the "great transmigratory art" (as Charles Reade calls it) of putting yourself in another's place, tell pitiful stories of making ends meet (l. c., pp. 54-55). NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS KEEPING HOUSE CLASSIFIED BY COST OF LIVING AND WAGE GROUPS ------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------- | No. of women with average weekly cost of living ($) | (food, shelter, heat, light, laundry) ------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ Average |Un- |1.00|1.50|2.00|2.50|3.00|3.50|4.00|4.50|5.00|5.50|6.00|6.50| weekly |der | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to |and |Total earnings |1.00|1.49|1.99|2.49|2.99|3.49|3.99|4.49|4.99|5.49|5.99|6.49|over| ------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ $1.00: $1.49| .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 3 1.50: 1.99| .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 2.00: 2.49| .. | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 6 2.50: 2.99| .. | 1 | .. | 2 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 4 3.00: 3.49| .. | .. | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 7 3.50: 3.99| 1 | .. | 1 | 2 | 1 | .. | 3 | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 9 4.00: 4.49| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 13 4.50: 4.99| 1 | 5 | 4 | 6 | .. | 5 | 3 | .. | 2 | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 27 5.00: 5.49| 2 | .. | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 19 5.50: 5.99| .. | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | .. | 2 | .. | .. | 17 6.00: 6.49| .. | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 20 6.50: 6.99| .. | .. | .. | 2 | 1 | .. | 1 | 2 | 2 | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 9 7.00: 7.49| .. | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 16 7.50: 7.99| 1 | .. | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | .. | .. | 2 | 1 | 1 | 22 8.00: 8.49| .. | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 23 8.50: 8.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | 5 9.00: 9.49| .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 2 | .. | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | .. | 1 | 10 9.50: 9.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 | 1 | 1 | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 5 10.00: 10.49| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 2 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 2 | 4 10.50: 10.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 11.00: 11.49| .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 | 3 11.50: 11.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 2 12.00: 12.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 2 | .. | 1 | 1 | .. | 5 13.00: 13.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 14.00: 14.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 2 15.00 & over| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 2 ------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ Total | 7 | 17 | 29 | 32 | 26 | 36 | 29 | 19 | 16 | 2 | 12 | 4 | 7 |236[A] ------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ [A] 16.6% of those for whom the information necessary was secured. In the cities investigated (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis, and St. Paul) there were, in 1905, 400,000 women employed in stores, mills, factories, and other similar establishments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS KEEPING HOUSE WHO HAVE SPECIFIED NUMBER OF PERSONS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY DEPENDENT ON THEM FOR SUPPORT, BY WAGE GROUPS --------------+-----------------------------++---------------------------- | No. of women having || No. of women having | wholly dependent || partially dependent | on them || on them +-----------------------------++---------------------------- Average | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | || 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Weekly | per-| per-| per-| per-| || per-| per-| per-| per-| Earnings | son | sons| sons| sons| Tot.|| son | sons| sons| sons|Tot. --------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----++-----+-----+-----+-----+---- $ 1.00: $ 1.49| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || .. | .. | .. | .. | .. 1.50: 1.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || .. | .. | .. | .. | .. 2.00: 2.49| .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 || 1 | 3 | .. | .. | 4 2.50: 2.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || 1 | .. | 1 | .. | 2 3.00: 3.49| 1 | .. | 1 | .. | 2 || 2 | 1 | .. | .. | 3 3.50: 3.99| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || 1 | 2 | .. | 1 | 4 4.00: 4.49| 2 | .. | 1 | .. | 3 || 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 9 4.50: 4.99| 1 | .. | 2 | 2 | 5 || 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 11 5.00: 5.49| .. | .. | 1 | 1 | 2 || 7 | 1 | .. | 2 | 10 5.50: 5.99| 2 | 1 | .. | .. | 3 || 4 | 1 | .. | .. | 5 6.00: 6.49| .. | 1 | 1 | .. | 2 || 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 10 6.50: 6.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || 4 | 1 | 1 | .. | 6 7.00: 7.49| 3 | 1 | .. | .. | 4 || 1 | 1 | .. | 1 | 3 7.50: 7.99| .. | 3 | 2 | .. | 5 || 10 | .. | .. | 1 | 11 8.00: 8.49| 6 | .. | 1 | .. | 7 || 4 | .. | 2 | 1 | 7 8.50: 8.99| 2 | 1 | .. | .. | 3 || 2 | .. | .. | .. | 2 9.00: 9.49| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || 2 | 2 | 1 | .. | 5 9.50: 9.99| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 10.00: 10.49| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || 2 | .. | .. | .. | 2 10.50: 10.99| .. | 1 | .. | .. | 1 || .. | .. | .. | .. | .. 11.00: 11.49| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || 1 | .. | .. | 1 | 2 11.50: 11.99| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 12.00: 12.99| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || 1 | .. | 1 | .. | 2 13.00: 13.99| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. || .. | .. | .. | .. | .. 14.00: 14.99| 1 | .. | .. | .. | 1 || .. | .. | .. | .. | .. 15.00: over | 1 | .. | 1 | .. | 2 || .. | 1 | .. | .. | 1 --------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----++-----+-----+-----+-----+---- Total | 24 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 46 || 54 | 21 | 15 | 11 | 101 --------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----++-----+-----+-----+-----+---- But bad food and bad housing are not the only enemies of the workman's health. The nature of his daily toil and the conditions under which it is performed are often against him. Even ventilation becomes important when one has to spend ten, eleven, or twelve hours a day in one room, and yet this is almost entirely neglected. In 1908 a special officer was appointed in New York State to make tests of the atmospheric conditions in places of business. One hundred and thirty-six factories were examined, and in some printing establishments as many as forty parts of carbonic-acid gas (CO_{2}) in ten thousand volumes of air were found, though a legal limit of twelve is recommended. One cigar factory, with windows partly open, had eighty such parts. The following table will exhibit the results of this investigation.[66] ------------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Parts of CO_{2} in| | | | | | | | 10,000 vols. air |5-12|13-20|21-25|26-30|31-40|42-60|65-70|75-80 ------------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Factories in | | | | | | | | each class | 82 | 166 | 80 | 67 | 30 | 8 | 3 | 3 ------------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Sometimes the exigencies of the trade require that there should be no draft, as in the handling of carbon filaments for incandescent lamps, and then the conditions of the atmosphere become acutely unhealthy. In addition, in some of the rooms numerous bunsen burners are always lighted and all currents of air carefully excluded to prevent their flickering.[67] Elsewhere, the process of manufacture often vitiates the air, as the "blow-over" in bottle shops. "In some factories, at times the air is so full of this floating glass that the hair is whitened by merely passing through the room. It sticks to the perspiration on the face and arms of the boys and men and becomes a source of considerable irritation. Getting into the eyes it is especially troublesome" (l. c., p. 66). Something similar occurs in etching glass by a sand-blast. Unless a hood and exhaust are provided, a pressure of from fifty to ninety pounds scatters fine sand and glass dust through the air and is breathed in by the operator (l. c., p. 440). Even worse, however, is the acid etching, as the fumes of hydrochloric acid cause severe irritation to the throat and lungs (l. c., p. 442). Even when there is no such irritant in the air as just mentioned, extreme differences in temperature between the work-room and the outside, or between various parts of the shop, may be a source of serious danger to health. In the glass industry, many persons have to work in temperatures ranging from ninety to one hundred and forty degrees, and as high as fifty degrees above the outside air (l. c., p. 75). Industries where an artificial humidity is required, such as silk, cotton and flax spinning, are likely to induce rheumatism, pleurisy, etc. After working ten hours in a room filled with live steam to prevent breaking of threads, to pass into a New England blizzard is apt to produce serious results. The boys in bottle-making shops are obliged to pass continually from a temperature of 140 degrees at the "glory-hole" to one of 90 degrees or less in other parts (l. c., pp. 49ff.). And even if conditions of atmosphere and ventilation are good, the mere fact of continuing work for thirteen hours seven days a week tells seriously upon the physical endurance of the strongest.[68] When night work is required in addition to the day's labor, as in the glass industry, the consequences are likely to be worse, especially where children are concerned.[69] Night work frequently means a presence in the factory of at least twenty hours out of the twenty-four. "During the course of the investigation there were found two cases of recent death, both children, which could be directly attributed to exhaustion due to double-shift work in the furnace room" (l. c., p. 122). In the clothing trade, "some piece and task-workers reported that they commonly worked seventy-two and even seventy-eight hours a week during busy periods" (l. c., p. 115). "There were instances where women said they worked from 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning to 9, 10, or 11 o'clock at night" (l. c., p. 241). For store girls, "thirteen and one-half hours on Saturday is not only excessive but works considerable hardship."[70] "One girl worked 24-1/2 hours at one stretch with but two half-hour intermissions for meals.... Four girls working in one establishment on the 'night force' one day for each week reported their 'longest day's' labor as 16-3/4, 20-1/4, 22-1/2, 24-1/4 hours" (l. c., p. 205). On the elevated railways in Chicago, at the time of the investigation, 1907-08, women worked for 80-1/2 hours a week (l. c., p. 208). When the business requires the maintaining of practically one position all day, whether standing or sitting, such long hours are bound to have a bad physical effect. This is the case, for example, in department stores (l. c., p. 178); in the glass industry where many growing boys are cramped before the furnace holes all day long;[71] in many processes in the manufacture of incandescent lamps (l. c., p. 482-483); and numerous other occupations. But there is frequently added to mere length of hours a feverish haste in working induced by starvation piece-rates or by the necessity of keeping up with a machine. When a woman perforates 3100 bulbs a day and welds tubes to them, there must be a constant nervous tension to attain such rapidity (l. c., p. 469). The even more complex operation of stem-making for these bulbs proceeds at a rate varying from 2600 to 3500 a day (l. c., p. 467). Three thousand stems and bulbs are assembled each day (p. 470), while in one day, an expert will test the candle-power of 5000 lamps (p. 472). The operation of mounting Tungsten filaments in small copper wire is very much like threading an exceedingly small needle. If one imagines this repeated 3000 times a day, with thread that has to be handled with the greatest care to prevent breaking, he will have some idea of the strain on eyes and nerves (p. 478). Twenty thousand completed lamps are tested daily at a piece rate of 6c. per thousand lamps (pp. 486-487). Very frequently, too, these long hours at an intense strain must be spent at work positively dangerous on account of the process, such as matchmaking[72] or painting lamps.[73] Chemical poisoning is frequent in hatters' and furriers' work, and plumbism, which is very similar to phosphorous poisoning, besets any trade in which lead is used. This is the case, in the production of white, red, or yellow lead, industries in which goods dyed with them undergo the process of building, winding, weaving, etc., and such an apparently innocuous occupation as the manufacture of earthenware and pottery. "One of the first symptoms of plumbism is a blue gum, followed by loosening and dropping out of the teeth. Blindness, paralysis, and death in convulsions frequently follow. Besides plumbism there are serious indirect results from lead-poisoning in a number of industries."[74] Readers of George Bernard Shaw will remember that Mrs. Warren adopted her profession through fear of contracting this disease. Her sister had fallen a victim to it and the frightful ravages made among her friends drove her to this course. In other industries such as wool sorting, blanket stoving and tentering, and warp dressing, lock-jaw is an incident. Closely allied to a question already discussed, that of ventilations, is the insidious injury wrought by dust in the air. Some trades in which this condition is pronounced, seem materially to shorten life, as shown by a bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor for May, 1909, on "Mortality from Consumption in Certain Occupations." The proportion of those reaching the age of 65 and over among tobacco and cigar factory operatives was 1.8%; glove-makers, 2.3%; bakers, 2.4%; leather curriers and tanners, 2.9%; and confectioners, 3.1%: as against 4.7%, the average expected normal on the basis of all occupied males in the United States (l. c., p. 623). Eighty-nine per cent. of the clergymen who died in 1900 were over 44, and 55% over 65 years of age; 76% of the lawyers dying in this year were over 44, and 41% over 65; 73% and 41% of the physicians had passed these respective ages; 80% and 37% of the bankers, officials of companies, etc., were over 44 and 65: yet more than half of the compositors dying in the United States for the year were under 49 years of age. About one-half of these died of pulmonary tuberculosis. Only 18% were over 60.[75] Between 1892 and 1898, 32% of the deaths of glass bottle-blowers were due to tuberculosis, largely induced, probably, by the strain on the lungs, the "blow-over," and conditions of temperature.[76] Industrial mortality insurance statistics show that 23% of the deaths of those employed in trades exposed to organic dust are from consumption and 14% from other respiratory diseases, as against 14.8% and 11.7%, the expected respective averages for the United States.[77] The following table taken from the bulletin just quoted will probably exhibit the results more strikingly (p. 626): -------------+-------------------------------------------- | Per cent. of deaths due to consumption | among: Age at death +---------------------+---------------------- | Occupations exposed | Males in registration | to organic dust | area, 1900-1906 -------------+---------------------+---------------------- 15-24 years | 40.1 | 27.8 25-34 years | 49.0 | 31.3 35-44 years | 35.3 | 23.6 45-54 years | 21.6 | 15.0 55-64 years | 11.0 | 8.1 65 and over | 4.5 | 2.7 -------------+---------------------+---------------------- It will be seen from this table, that deaths from consumption in these trades exposed to organic dust were more than half again as much as might reasonably have been expected. And it must be remembered that statistics indicate, "that general organic dust is less serious in its fatal effects than mineral or metallic dust, and as a result the proportionate mortality from consumption and other respiratory diseases in this group is more favorable than in the groups of occupations with exposure to mineral and metallic dusts" (l. c., p. 627). More evident dangers of occupation, because more directly traceable to their causes, are industrial accidents. Manufacturers and employers sometimes wantonly, sometimes through ignorance, neglect the precautions and appliances necessary properly to safeguard their workmen. The introduction of complicated machinery, the use of high-power explosives, the strenuous conduct of production, without corresponding efforts to offset the natural tendencies of these conditions and tools, has made peace more horrible and dangerous than war. Of all such sources of accident, mines are probably the most prolific. "The percentage of miners killed in this country is greater than in any other, being from two to four times as large as in any European country."[78] "Every year of the past decade," 1890-1900, "has seen from 500 to 700 Pennsylvania miners killed and from 1200 to 1650 injured. By comparing these figures with the total number employed, it will be found that on the average about one man in every 400 employed in the mines is killed yearly and about one out of every 150 injured."[79] In 37 New England cotton mills in 1907, 1428 employees were injured.[80] The Bethlehem Steel Works alone had a record of 927 accidents in 1909.[81] In New York State, during a year of industrial depression, 1907, there were 14,545 accidents recorded,[82] and we know that they are more numerous in prosperous years. Time and again we find in the succinct official reports such terse statements as: "While working on top of boiler was overcome by gas: dead when found," "struck by pieces thrown from bursting emery wheel, died from injuries ten days later," "heavy piece of machinery was being moved by crane which broke, allowing machinery to fall against tank, which in turn fell against deceased, crushing his legs and injuring him internally: death occurred one hour later," "caught in belt and whirled around shafting; death occurred before machinery could be stopped," "struck in face by broken belt; eyeball broken: death ensued two days later at hospital from effects of anæsthetic," "broken elevator shaft caused elevator to fall with operator; skull fractured and ear lacerated: death ensued later at hospital" (l. c., pt. I, pp. 109-113). Such are the official reports. They give no idea of the suffering of the families, the struggles of widows and orphans when the head of the family has been struck down; they do not show the carelessness or greed that subjects men to the danger of working with worn-out cranes, or defective emery wheels, or weak belting; but they do show, in connection with the other data quoted, in a cold official way, that hundreds of thousands of men and women in this country are working for excessive hours, amid unsanitary surroundings, and without proper protection from the dangers of their work: judging by the standard which for the time being has been accepted as just. Such conditions are hard enough for grown men and women to face, they are harder still for children. And by taking children away from school and putting them at work, frequently beyond their capacity, they are handicapped mentally and physically for making enough later on to support a family. The percentage of children so injured cannot be definitely arrived at, but they are employed in considerable numbers in a large variety of occupations. Sweatshops, glass factories, the making of neckties, cigars, paper and wooden boxes, picture frames, furniture, and shoes are a few of the widely different trades that take their quota. In the Southern cotton mills, twelve appears to be the age at which children are ordinarily expected to begin work; but some of the mills employ children under that age, now and then, in fact, as young as nine, eight, and even six years.[83] "Probably the most serious and far-reaching effect of child-labor is the prevention of normal development, physical and mental. Besides being deprived of the schooling they would otherwise get, children are injured by confinement and sometimes worn out by work. In other cases the work is demoralizing because it does not call out the best faculties of the children, or leaves them altogether idle for a part of the year. "It has been found that children are much more liable to accidents in factories than adults. Thus a recent report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor shows that boys under sixteen have twice as great probability of accident as adults, while girls under sixteen have thirty-three [_sic_] times as great a probability of being hurt as women over sixteen.... It has also been found that overstrain of the muscular or nervous system is much more serious in children than in adults, and that children are also more susceptible to the poisons and injurious dusts arising in certain processes than grown persons."[84] FOOTNOTES: [63] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 297. [64] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 607. [65] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 134. [66] Cf. Report of Commissioner of Labor of New York for 1908 Vol. I, pp. 76-93. [67] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 500. [68] U. S. Commissioner of Labor, "Strike at Bethlehem Steel Works," p. 10, 1910. [69] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 118. [70] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Factories," p. 127. [71] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 48. [72] U. S. Bur. Lab., Bulletin No. 68, Jan., 1910: "Phosphorus Poisoning in the Match Industry." [73] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," pp. 485-486. [74] U. S. Indus. Comm., Vol. XIX, p. 901f. [75] Rep. N. Y. State Bur. Lab., 1906, pp. CVII-CXXXV. [76] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 240. [77] Bull. U. S. Bur. Lab., May, 1909, p. 626. [78] "Monthly Catalogue U. S. Public Documents," Nov., 1909, p. 184. [79] U. S. Indus. Com., Vol. XIX, p. 906. [80] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 383. [81] U. S. Commissioner of Labor, "Report on Strike at Bethlehem Steel Works," p. 121. [82] Report of Commissioner of Labor of N. Y., 1908, pt. I, p. 62. [83] L. c., pp. 45, 65, 83, 85, 86: U. S. Bur. Lab., "Cotton Textile Industry." [84] U. S. Industrial Commission, Vol. XIX, p. 917f; cf. also U. S. Bur. Lab., "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 385f. CHAPTER SEVEN INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS Industrial conditions, as at present constituted, not only injure the health of the body; they also endanger the soul. The Chicago Vice Commission has thus summarized these influences: "Among the economic conditions contributory to the social evil are low wages, unsanitary conditions, demoralizing relationships in stores, shops, domestic service, restaurants and hotels: the street vending of children in selling papers and gums, collecting coupons and refuse; the messenger service of boys, especially in the vicinity of disorderly houses, vicious saloons, dance halls and other demoralizing resorts; employment agencies which send servants to immoral places; the rest rooms or waiting places where applicants for work resort; too long hours and the high pressure of work; the overcrowding of houses upon lots, and of persons in single rooms" (Report, 1911: p. 230). When inability to secure decent lodging forces men and women to occupy the same sleeping rooms, there must be an inevitable lowering of moral standards. One case is recorded in "Packingtown," where eight persons--men and women--were sleeping in a room approximately ten by fifteen feet.[85] When a woman pays less than $1.50 a week for board and lodging, as many are forced to do (see page 71f) she can have no privacy. "If there are men lodgers in the house, the entrance to their room is sometimes through the girl's room, or vice versa. In one house visited, the women received the agent about nine P.M. in the room of a man lodger who had already gone to bed. This seemed to be the only available sitting room and disconcerted no one save the agent" (l. c., p. 62). The girl who lives away from home in a cheap boarding house is no myth. In Pittsburgh, "in the garment trades she numbers 38% of the total force; in the wholesale millinery trade 10%; in the mercantile houses 20%. On the lowest estimate, there are 2300 of her kind in Pittsburgh."[86] It is not only low wages, as leading to a lack of decent housing, that has a bad moral effect. All are born with a natural craving for happiness, and long hours of work under a nervous strain intensify this desire. Economic conditions have kept most of those in the grip of such a situation from developing the higher side of their nature until they can find pleasure and recreation in a symphony concert or an epic poem. The jaded nerves need a stronger stimulus to cause pleasure. "The desire for ecstasy," says Algar Thorold, a keen psychological observer, "is at the very root and heart of our nature. This craving, when bound down by the animal instincts, meets us on every side in those hateful contortions of the social organism called the dram-shop and the brothel."[87] As a consequence of this insatiable longing for pleasure and the inability to pay for it, thousands of young women in our big cities patronize public dance halls and other questionable places of amusement. The code of their social set has come to sanction accepting tickets for such places, refreshments, etc., from men met haphazard at these resorts.[88] Dance halls are such a serious menace to public morals that legislation has become necessary. Elizabeth, Paterson, Newark and Hoboken, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, Kansas City, and Cleveland are all agitating the question of their regulation (Survey, June 3, 1911, p. 345). A. B. Williams, general secretary of the Humane Society of this last city, is quoted as declaring that "one out of every ten children in Cleveland is born out of wedlock. In nine out of every ten cases that we handle, the mothers tell us, 'I met him at a public dance'" (l. c., p. 346). In Chicago alone there are about 306 licensed dance halls and nearly 100 unlicensed. Among these, "one condition is general: most of the dance halls exist for the sale of liquor, not for the purpose of dancing, which is only of secondary importance. A saloon opened into each of 190 halls, and liquor was sold in 240 out of 328. In the others--except in rare instances--return checks were given to facilitate the use of neighboring saloons. At the halls where liquor was sold practically all the boys showed signs of intoxication by one o'clock" (l. c., p. 385: Louise de Koven Bowen). And just as women who have toiled hard all day long, crave some strong excitement such as can only be afforded by the dance hall or a similar place, so men in the same circumstances naturally turn to the saloon. It is in the cheerfully lighted, comfortably heated gin-shop, in the temporary stimulus of liquor, that insufficient food, unhealthful surroundings at home and at work, a cold, uninviting house are forgotten. It is often said that workmen would have enough to live on comfortably if they did not squander their wages in drink, and that to raise their pay would only be to increase the profits of saloon-keepers. In some cases this may be true. But in the vast majority, it is probable that to increase their power of getting the comforts at home that they find in the saloon would be to lessen the drink evil, rather than increase it. The marvel is not that laborers who come home day after day from hard, long toil to poor food, cold rooms, a generally comfortless home should seek out the gin-palace, but that they drink as little as they do. These are some of the indirect, though important, moral results of economic conditions. Oftentimes the direct influences of a person's occupation also make for evil. The messenger boy, for instance, on the streets at all hours and in all sections, can hardly fail to see and hear much that no parent would want a child of fourteen, sixteen, or eighteen to know. Indeed, a great part of his employment at night comes from those indulging in debauchery, and it is his most profitable source of tips.[89] From the nature of the case, women are probably more exposed in their work than men. Such occupations as will occur to every one, are manicure parlors where girls are peculiarly exposed to danger and insults. But most important, because employing the largest numbers, are the department stores. It has been charged over and over again, that many employers knowingly pay wages that are insufficient to support a girl in the expectation that she will be subsidized by some "gentleman friend." How far this is true is hard to say; and it is just as difficult to determine how many department-store employees are really immoral. The report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Wage-Earning Women and Children" combats the idea that immorality among them is widespread. Nevertheless, there is a strong opinion that store girls are not all they should be, and many careful observers have enumerated quite a startling array of individual instances where a girl's fall can be largely traced to her employment as a sales-woman. An investigator for the Chicago Vice Commission, for instance, gives in the report of that body quite a number of cases which are said to be typical. "Violet works in a department store, salary $5.00 per week. Was seduced and left home. Baby died and she solicits on the side to support herself.... Mag 18 years old. Works in department store. Salary $5.50 per week. Tells parents she receives more. Helps support parents and 'solicits' at dances for spending money. Father is sickly.... Marcella (X913), alias Tantine (X904). Came to (X905) about three years ago, and started to work in the (X916) department store. One of the managers insisted on taking her out, which she finally had to do 'to hold her job,' as she asserts" (pp. 187, 195). Miss Elizabeth Butler, investigating for the Pittsburgh _Survey_, reports the same thing in that city. "Vera ----" she says, "is twenty years old. Four years ago she was employed as a salesgirl at $3.50 a week. After a year she left for another store where she was employed as a cashier at a salary of $10.00 a week, for making concessions to her employer. After two years she left the store for a house of prostitution.... Jennie ---- came to Pittsburgh from Akron, Ohio. She had no friends in the city and was obliged to be self-supporting. She obtained a position at $6.00 a week as a sales-woman. After five months in the store she consented to be kept in an apartment in the East End. She still keeps her position in the store.... A girl whose father was killed by an electric crane was the only one of the family old enough to work. Forced by financial needs to accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below her own cost of subsistence, much more below the cost of helping to maintain a family of dependents, she drifted into occasional prostitution."[90] These are only particular instances, it is true, and one must not generalize too widely. But there is undoubtedly considerable foundation for the charge so often made and so firmly fixed in the public mind. And if many of the girls exposed to such dangers have hitherto remained pure, we must thank the sterling characters inherited from those raised under different conditions, not conclude that the system needs no improvement. All these and certain less tangible economic influences making for evil have been well summarized by the Minneapolis Vice Commission. It points out that the advent of great numbers of young girls into industry has produced conditions that lead to the blasting of thousands of lives yearly. "The chance for the making of promiscuous male acquaintances, the close association of the sexes in employment, the necessary contact with the general public, the new and distorted view of life which such an environment compels, taken with the low wage scale prevailing in so many callings and affecting so many individuals, combine to create a situation that must inevitably weaken the moral stamina and lead to the undoing of many. The fault is plainly not so much in the individual; it is rather the results of the industrial system. The remedy lies in large part in the reforming of the system" (Report, 1911, p. 126). Some of the remedies suggested by this commission are higher wages, better sanitary conditions, and "_the education of public opinion in this field to the point where it will demand a living wage and proper working conditions and social conditions for those who serve them in industry_."[91] Nor is this commission alone in attributing a great moral influence to economic conditions and in looking to the public for a large part of the remedy. In fact, it was simply following in the steps of the New York and Chicago Vice Commissions.[92] And all merely voiced a widespread conviction among social workers and the public generally. "Are flesh and blood so cheap," asks the Chicago Commission, "mental qualifications so common, and honesty of so little value, that the manager of one of our big department stores feels justified in paying a high school girl, who has served nearly one year as an inspector of sales, the beggarly wage of $4.00 per week? What is the natural result of such an industrial condition? Dishonesty and immorality, not from choice, but necessity--in order to _live_. We can forgive the human frailty that yields to temptation under such conditions--but we cannot forgive the soulless corporation, which arrests and prosecutes this girl--a first offender--when she takes some little articles for personal adornment.... Prostitution demands _youth_ for its perpetration. On the public rests the mighty responsibility of seeing to it that the demand is not supplied through the breaking down of the early education of the young girl or her exploitation in the business world" (Report, pp. 43-44). This insistence upon the _public_ as being really responsible for these economic and moral conditions is significant. For the Consumers are the public. Each individual of which the public is composed is, in one aspect, a Consumer, and it is important to notice how widespread is an insistence upon his responsibility in the matter. From this discussion it may be reasonably concluded: (1) that many persons in many industries are receiving less than a living wage, in the present acceptation of that term; (2) that many persons are being injured in health and limb by long hours, unsanitary workshops, and improperly guarded machinery; (3) that the conditions of work often tend to produce vice. The treatment has been largely statistical. No matter how thorough, therefore, it is subject to the limitations of this method. Sissy Jupe long ago called statistics "stutterings," and newer editions of Gradgrind have not perfected their articulation. Statistics are necessarily quantitative. They do well enough for computing rainfall, or something of the sort, but human life with its pleasures and pains, its joys and tragedies, refuses to be labeled and ticketed. It is intangible to such gross systems of classification. "All the world's coarse thumb And finger fail to plumb" the depths of happiness and suffering in the least of human creatures. FOOTNOTES: [85] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Factories," p. 119. [86] E. B. Butler, "Women and the Trades," pp. 320-1. [87] Preface to "Dialogue of St Catherine of Siena," p. 13: London, Kegan Paul, 1896. [88] U. S. Bur. Labor, "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Factories," p. 75. [89] Cf. Report of Chicago Vice Commission, p. 242f, and unpublished reports of the National Child Labor Committee, Washington, D. C. [90] "Women and the Trades," pp. 305-306, 348. [91] Italics added. Cf. pp. 114, 115, 126. [92] Survey, Apr. 15, 1911, p. 99; May 6, 1911, p. 215. CHAPTER EIGHT WHAT SHOULD THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER DO? The question now arises, even supposing the conditions are bad and that a duty of improving them rests upon the Consuming Class; what is the individual Consumer bound to do? Making all due allowances for the fact that we have assumed what is a just or unjust wage, and without any intention of forcing this standard upon the conscience of individuals, there will be times when a particular Consumer is convinced, e.g. that those employed at stores he patronizes are not being paid anything like what they have a right to receive. What should he do? Does any obligation devolve upon him? In answering this question, the general principle must be kept in mind, that a Consumer is not bound to act under a disproportionately grave inconvenience. He is not bound to sacrifice considerable personal good to do a very little good to the laborers making the articles he buys; nor is he obliged to put himself to any inconvenience if no good whatever is going to follow. But if he can conveniently buy goods made under just conditions rather than under bad, and the price is no higher, then he is bound to do so. And if he is well off and can easily afford to pay a little more for the justly made goods, he ought to buy them, provided he can be reasonably sure that the increase in price will go to maintain good working conditions and not simply to swell the manufacturer's profits. As Father Cuthbert, a Capuchin, says, not the employers only are responsible for the oppression of workingmen, "but all who patronize such labor contribute to the sin. The insatiable yearning to buy cheap without any thought as to how cheapness is obtained, this is the incentive which tempts men to buy cheap labor and to underpay workmen. Were people in general not willing accomplices, there would be no sweating system, no unfair competition. The sin falls not on the few [manufacturers] but on the many [patrons] who too readily condone the sin of the few for the sake of the resultant advantage to themselves. They pay half a penny less for a pound of sugar or a shilling or two less on a ton of coal: what does the public care that the shop assistant or the miner is unable to get a human wage?"[93] The purely individual action of Consumers, however, can have but little effect for good. For only comparatively few have sufficiently developed social consciences to realize the desirability of such action; and even if more had, their means of discovering which goods are justly made are so limited as seriously to hamper their activity. The remedy for this difficulty would seem to be organization among Consumers. There can be little doubt that if they united in sufficient numbers in patronizing only those shops that maintained good working conditions their action would exert considerable pressure. The labor unions have shown that the boycott is a powerful weapon. How efficient it can be, may be guessed from the sums spent by employers in opposing it. Astute business men do not tilt at windmills, and if they have fought the legality of the boycott in every tribunal in the land, including the Supreme Court, it was only because they realized the compelling power it placed in labor's hands. But some greater animus than pure philanthropy seems necessary to make Consumers band together in this way on a large enough scale. They need the class spirit, the enthusiasm of industrial warfare afforded by the trade unions. For though an organization of Consumers has been in existence now for more than twenty years, it is forced sorrowfully to admit that the good accomplished simply through the economic pressure of its members has been but slight. But if it had been possible so to unite Consumers in a powerful society for the collection of information and the distribution of patronage, it has been asked: Would it not have become wofully corrupt? Can we safely trust an irresponsible club with such power? And, therefore, is it wise for conscientious individuals now to join this league? For either it will remain practically powerless, or else it will become so strong as to be a menace. The answer must be that if the Consumers' League ever does become strong enough to exercise a great influence in the industrial world, it will probably abuse and sell its power. Rich unfair firms may be able to bribe those in control to give them a recommendation they do not deserve, and various other kinds of corruption will most likely creep in. But such an argument proves too much. If we are to give no authority where it will not be misused, we shall come to anarchy at once. For have not political parties, and states and employers and trade unions--all, at one time or another, abused power. Seldom have men enjoyed power for long without using it for selfish ends. But we must not, therefore, destroy all authority and power. Rather we should embrace the dictum of de Maistre, that power must be balanced against power, one organization set to watch another. And if it should happen that a league of Consumers became too strong and abused its strength, it would be time enough then to set about checking it by building up power somewhere else. So far, however, there has been no danger of such a contingency. The Consumers' League has been active, earnest, and honest--and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. The League has embraced all work that came to hand whether strictly within the economic field first marked out for it, or extending to other preserves. Its activity in the Legislative domain has not been inconsiderable, and it is probable that the influence of Consumers will be most marked here in the future. There is much talk now of minimum wage legislation to guarantee laborers a certain standard. If we look upon compulsory arbitration as practically the same thing, we can say that it has already been extensively tried. Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand have shown that it is possible in some fields but the controversy always aroused by a new project has not yet subsided sufficiently to enable one to speak definitely concerning its success. The elaborate system of state insurance against sickness, accident, old age, and unemployment, now in operation in England and Germany is another governmental attempt to secure a certain standard of living for all. And the public-schools, in which rich and poor are put on a plane of equality regarding elementary education, are so familiar that we are apt to lose sight of the fact that they are really only one link in this chain of state intervention to provide the means for everybody enjoying certain advantages that have come to be looked upon as necessities in our civilization. In our own country during 1911, there was much discussion, some action, and every prospect for still further activity along these lines. A conspicuous feature was the movement to introduce a more equitable system of compensation or insurance for industrial accidents.[94] There was a non-compulsory minimum wage law passed recently in Massachusetts, and several States prescribed the rate of pay for public work done by contract. An amendment to the Charter of San Francisco fixes the minimum of employees on street railways at $3.00 per day, with one and one-half pay for overtime. Vermont, Wisconsin and South Dakota have given wages a preference over other debts (l. c., pp. 876, 878, 881). It would seem then that the legislative field is the one in which most success is to be expected. And since the Consumers are the beneficiaries of labor's exertion, they are especially bound to effort in this direction. Those who have influence and leisure are more bound than those who have but little power or opportunity, but all are obliged to do something. The results of our examination of this question may be summed up in the following conclusion: I. Assuming that employers are violating the rights of their laborers then there is a duty incumbent upon the _Consuming Class_ to do what they can to secure these rights. II. Employers are violating the rights of their employees to such an extent as to create a serious social problem. III. The individual Consumer is bound to do what he can without serious inconvenience to remedy these conditions. He can act individually, by joining an organization, and through legislation. Should it be asked which is the most effective way, the answer would certainly incline towards legislation. If we survey the industrial history of the last quarter century, we can see gain after gain by this method;[95] while the Consumers' League, in its strict capacity of an organization of _purchasers_ has done but little. What it has accomplished has been largely through the advocacy of legislation, rather than by merely economic pressure. And so, while Consumers could doubtless effect tremendous changes if they wished, it seems impossible to get them to co-operate in sufficient numbers. Nevertheless, the Consumers' League is founded on a great and noble principle, and for the moment I want to put aside the judicial attitude and enthusiastically chronicle what it has done, and what could be done along the same lines. The Consumers' League is unique in the field of philanthropy as affording an opportunity to everyone no matter how big or how little. For by its original principle of buying only goods made under fair conditions, it gives a chance to the unimportant individual to share in a great philanthropic movement, somewhat as a private does in an imperial army; and by its activity in the legislative field, it opens up an opportunity for those who have the time, and talent, and position necessary for effectiveness there. And whether or not we look upon the dictates of charity and justice as clearly indicating a duty, whether or not one's "moral resonance" responds to what has been said, surely we cannot deny that here is a splendid opportunity. Here is a practical way for each and everyone to play the Good Samaritan. Not all of us can meet men along a road who have been set upon by thieves, bundle them into an automobile, and carry them to a hospital. We cannot all give thousands in charity. We cannot all engage in publicly urging reforms by legislation, nor give generously of time in philanthropic ministration to the poor. But we can see to it in the way already outlined that some at least of our expenditures go to ward off misery rather than foster it. We can see to it that we prevent misery from spreading at least in one little sphere. [96]This is no mere theory. Reforms have actually been accomplished in some places by the Consumers' League. Realizing that to be effective they must be organized, it is the object of members of this League to act as a sort of inverted megaphone gathering up the weak whisperings of each individual purchaser and blending them with thousands of others until they all become one mighty concerted shout that must be heard. Laborers have known the strength of combination in fighting industrial conditions for more than a generation; the aggregations of capital have been growing larger and larger; why should not the most powerful of all the elements of industrial society, the Consumer himself, learn by their experience? Organized in 1891 in New York City, the Consumers' League now has almost a hundred branches in eighteen of the United States, in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium. To Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell is due the credit of its inception. An investigation during 1889-90 into the conditions of work among sales-women and cash-children, which she directed for the Working Women's Society, forced upon her the futility of starting reform from the producing end. The competitive system of industry ties the hands of the employer, while it seems impossible successfully to organize a union among women. There was but one element of the economic world left to work with--the Consumer. Therefore, in May, 1890, a public meeting was called in Chickering Hall, New York, to discuss the organization of this all-powerful factor of industry. It was decided to found the Consumers' League upon the following platform: "I. That the interest of the community demands that all workers should receive, not the lowest, but fair living wages. "II. That the responsibility for some of the worst evils from which wage-earners suffer, rests with the Consumers, who persist in buying in the cheapest markets, regardless of how cheapness is brought about. "III. That it is therefore, the duty of Consumers to find out under what conditions the articles they purchased are produced, and to insist that these conditions shall be, at least, decent and consistent with a respectable existence on the part of the workers. "IV. That this duty is especially incumbent upon Consumers in relation to the product of women's work since there is no limit beyond which the wages of women may be pressed down, unless artificially maintained at a living rate by combinations, either of the workers themselves or of the Consumers."[97] The first step taken to carry out these objects was to prepare a "white list" of stores coming up to a certain standard. Since it is illegal to boycott, or to urge persons not to deal with stores placed on a "Black List," the Consumers' League accomplishes the same results by persuading persons to buy from firms on a white list. Once published, merchants feel the effects of such a list, and, to get the patronage of the League, volunteer all the good points about themselves, not to mention the bad ones about their competitors. The list itself thus becomes an invaluable means of getting information not otherwise obtainable. Necessarily this list had to be somewhat elastic and considerably below the ideal. The people at the head of the Consumers' League were practical persons of wide experience and they went on the principle that half a loaf is better than none at all--that every little bit helps. After consultations with the employers and the Working Women's Society, a standard was adopted from which no retreat has been made. Whatever changes have been made, have been on the side of greater strictness. To-day it stands as follows: WAGES A Fair House is one in which equal pay is given for work of equal value, irrespective of sex, and in which no sales-woman who is eighteen years or over--and who has had one year's experience as sales-woman receives less than six dollars a week. In which wages are paid by the week. In which the minimum wages for cash-children are three dollars and a half per week, with the same conditions regarding weekly payments. HOURS A Fair House is one in which the number of working hours constituting a normal working day does not exceed nine. At least three-quarters of an hour is given for luncheon. A general half-holiday is given on one day of each week during at least two summer months. A Vacation of not less than one week is given with pay during the summer season. All overtime is compensated for. Wages are paid, and the premises closed for the seven principal legal holidays, viz., Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, the Fourth of July, Decoration Day, and Labor Day. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS A Fair House is one in which work, lunch and retiring rooms are apart from each other, and conform in all respects to the present Sanitary Laws. In which the present law regarding the providing of seats for sales-women is observed, and the use of seats permitted. OTHER CONDITIONS A Fair House is one in which humane and considerate behavior towards the employees is the rule. In which fidelity and length of service meet with the consideration which is their due. In which no children under fourteen years of age are employed. In which no child under the age of sixteen years works for more than nine hours a day. In which no child works, unless an employment certificate issued by the Board of Health has been first filed with the employer, and the name, etc., of the child has been entered on a register kept by the employer. In which the ordinances of the city and the laws of the State are obeyed in all particulars. When it is remembered that in 1891 only eight stores in New York were eligible for the standard (then less strict), while to-day there are more than fifty; that then overtime was never paid for, and fines often reduced the pay to almost half, while to-day fines go to a benefit fund, and overtime is paid for, or a corresponding time off is given; that then the child-labor law was openly violated, and many grown women received less than four dollars-and-a-half, sometimes less than two dollars, a week, while the standard now is six; that the chair law, providing one seat for every three girls, was disregarded, or the girls never allowed to use them, while to-day inspectors of the State Labor Bureau strictly enforce its regulations; that the year after the influence of the Consumers' League passed the Mercantile Employers' Bill providing for the essentials of the above standard, there were twelve hundred infractions reported, and nine hundred under-age children released from drudgery as shipping clerks, etc.: when this advance towards a decent standard of living, and the considerable part of the Consumers' League in bringing it about, is kept in mind, the power of the purchaser is seen to be no day-dream of an idealist, no mere pretty theory of an arm chair economist. As one reform after another was accomplished, the League turned itself to new labors. To-day it is agitating strongly against the cruelties of such seasons as Christmas, that should mean peace and joy to all. "Glad tidings of great joy" sounds like a hollow mockery to the sales-women and children who work from eight in the morning until midnight. Therefore the League sends out thousands of post-cards, and advertises in newspapers, magazines, and street-cars, urging persons to shop early out of consideration for the employees of stores. The first large success from this movement came in 1910 when the leading department stores of Philadelphia, employing 35,000 persons, decided to close at six o'clock during the entire Christmas season. Late on the evening of December 1, the head of one of the largest retail firms in the city called up the Consumers' League to say that he had good news. "I thought that you should certainly be the first to hear that we are going to close early," he said. "I congratulate you and the women you represent on what you have enabled us to do."[98] All this activity, however, is concerned with the retailer; in the meantime manufacture was not neglected. The League early saw the evils prevailing in many factories, and therefore decided to carry the white-list idea under a slightly different form into this field. After a thorough investigation by its own representatives and consultation with the State factory inspectors, the League, where the situation is satisfactory, allows the use of its label guaranteeing that the goods are made under clean and healthful surroundings. The conditions under which the label is issued are: 1. The State factory law is obeyed. 2. No children under the age of sixteen are employed. 3. Work at night is not required, and the working day does not exceed ten hours. 4. No goods are given out to be made away from the factory. Similar to the Consumers' League label are the labels of various trade unions. These latter, indeed, were in the field many years before the Consumers' League was even organized. They are based upon exactly the same principle. When a factory maintains the conditions demanded by the union, it is allowed to use the label on its goods. Anyone, therefore, who buys union-made goods at a store where the employees are protected by the retail-clerks union can be sure that those engaged in both the production and distribution of these articles have obtained their just rights so far as this is possible. By having firms on the white list handle labeled goods and, recently, by establishing a store of its own in New York, a market is created for them among the members of the League. The practicalness underlying the whole management of the League is very clearly shown here both in the dove-tailing of its activities in manufacture and distribution and in the appeal made to the self-interest of purchasers to buy white goods, wrappers, etc., made in clean factories rather than germ-carrying sweatshops goods. It has been the aim of the League all along to make it to the Consumer's personal advantage to buy labeled goods at white-list stores. The idea is to give him a better article and better service for the same money, the increased cost to the manufacturer and retailer to come out of the increased sales. In 1898 the various local Leagues that had sprung up in different sections were united into one national organization and the activities became even more important. The sweatshop, child-labor, excessive hours for women, were attacked with considerable effect. In many States the public conscience was sufficiently aroused by reform agencies with which the League zealously co-operated to pass stringent laws, and the League's representatives, either as private individuals or as honorary inspectors of the State tried to see that they were carried out. If New York to-day has the strictest child-labor law in the United States, a good share of the honor is due to the untiring labors of an enlightened Consumers' League. Here one concrete instance of these activities must suffice. England had as early as 1844 enacted laws protecting women, but, owing to the Constitution of the United States various State Supreme Courts had held that any restriction of the right of free contract of adult women was unconstitutional. Therefore when the State of Oregon proceeded against a laundryman for violation of a State Law by working women longer than allowed by that Law, the laundryman promptly appealed from the State Court to the United States Supreme Court. The local Consumers' League thereupon notified the National League, with headquarters in New York City, that information concerning the effect of work upon women was necessary to win the case before the highest tribunal of the United States. Expert counsel was obtained, and Miss Josephine Goldmark, of the League, was detailed to collect the information. She employed ten readers, some of them medical students, and special privileges were granted her at Columbia University Library, the Astor Library of New York City, and the Library of Congress in Washington. The result was a sweeping verdict sustaining the State. * * * * * There are two great classes of the poor--those who for some reason or other do not work, and those who, while working, do not receive enough to support themselves and their families. To the former the Church has been a staunch friend. It is one of her glories that her enemies accuse her of fostering pauperism by too lavish charity. Her hospitals and orphanages, her homes for the fallen and aged, her refuges for the sick of soul and body are dotted over the whole land, and are administered with a devotion and self-sacrificing heroism compelling the admiration of all. As John Boyle O'Reilly said, hers is not "Organized charity scrimped and iced In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." But what are we doing for that other great class of poor, those who work but do not receive a just compensation? What are we doing in the way of preventive philanthropy, to keep these men from becoming utterly destitute? It is for the sublime struggle of the underpaid workman that our sympathies need now to be aroused. No Crusader ever fought for the Sepulcher with more heroism than many a poverty-stricken laborer to support himself and family. Day after day he takes up the hopeless task, while nearer and nearer yawns the slough of pauperism where four million human beings who were once self-respecting workmen like himself, now crawl in lethargic content.[99] No waving pennons and blare of trumpets, but a factory whistle at 6 A.M. and a chimney puffing black smoke summon him to battle with powers stronger than Saladin in his might. What Robert Southwell wrote of himself during imprisonment might to-day be applied to millions of wage-slaves: "I live, but such a life as ever dies, I die, but such a death as never ends; My death to end my dying life denies, And life my living death no whit amends." Yet notwithstanding the workman's almost superhuman efforts to avoid pauperism, once he reaches that abyss he loses all desire to rise from it. You cannot drive him back into that industrial war which is daily crushing better and stronger natures. Such being the situation, is it not an inspiration to the Consumer who longs to do something for humanity to feel that he is contributing his mite to keep some workmen from becoming paupers? There are persons, I know, to whom their utter helplessness in the face of all the social evils oppressing us to-day, has been the keenest suffering. To them this doctrine of the responsibility of Consumers and the plans of fulfilling it have come as a gospel of good news. They have felt that they could now find rest from their tortures of conscience: they have felt that they could now have a purpose in life worth living for. And what if in our sober moments we must admit, that the good we individually accomplish as regards the workman be small? What if we are tempted to look upon it as useless? Let us take courage from the fact that we are members of an organization, that everything that the group accomplishes is in some way attributable to us. One hundred men associated together can accomplish much more than those same men working separately for the same ends. This fact is evident in the case of a religious community. If the members of these communities were scattered as individuals over the earth, how paltry would be the results of all their self-sacrifice and devotion compared with what it is to-day. And so each individual Consumer, banded with others in an organization, can feel that all the work of the whole body is to some extent his. His powers of doing good are multiplied, and the mere fact of his association with others multiplies their capacities too. But even if this were not so, the mere fact of realizing this principle and co-operating with other noble-minded persons in its fulfillment will be an immense gain to ourselves and will finally result in unexpected good to society. Simply to know that we are accomplishing some little mite in the field of preventive philanthropy will be an inspiration in our lives. To ask ourselves, not whether a hat be exactly the latest style, not whether it be absolutely the cheapest we can get, but how it was made, what effect is our buying it going to have upon the workers and society in general, will beget an invaluable spirit of self-effacement. A social conscience will be generated and grow until it becomes a dominant note in our lives. And from us this gospel of charity and justice, this good news to men of good will, will spread until it becomes a mighty force for social amelioration. We have passed through ages of autocratic tyranny; the individualistic democracy of the last century is waning; there is approaching an era of social effort, social morality, a recognition of social interdependence. "The quick and sensitive ear," to quote Miss Scudder, "hears the beat of a new music, to which men begin to rally.[100] It is a concerted harmony, no mere solitary bugle call; and those who march to it are more or less consciously swayed by a new rhythm. For it is notable that the rhythms of life are coming more and more to connote harmony rather than melody, or rather to weave many melodic phrasings into one complex whole. Association--or to use the fairer word, fellowship--becomes a term of increasing modern cogency." What matter, that to any but the superficial observer, the situation looks dark. It may be that the more we study it, the blacker it grows. As we look back upon the history of man's strivings for some better social organization, the conflict may seem hopeless. We may be tempted to reflect with William Morris, "How men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name." But it is nobler to say with Mrs. Browning: "We will trust God. The blank interstices Men take for ruins, He will build into With pillared marbles rare, or knit across With generous arches, till the fane's complete. This world has no perdition if some loss." FOOTNOTES: [93] Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., "Catholic Ideals in Social Life," p. 211: N. Y., 1904. [94] Bulletin of U. S. Bur. of Lab., Jan. 1, 1911, p. 869. [95] Cf. Mrs. Florence Kelly, "Some Ethical Gains through Legislation," N. Y., Macmillan, 1905; Bulletins of U. S. Bur. Lab. giving resumé of labor legislation. [96] The next few pages appeared substantially as here given in The Month, March, 1911, under the title "The Consumer's Opportunity." The author thanks the editor of this magazine for kind permission to reproduce this matter. [97] "Historical Sketch of the Pioneer Consumers' League," p. ii, Consumers' League of New York City, 1908. For further information address Mr. V. P. Kellogg, 105 E. 22nd St, New York City. [98] Cf. _The Survey_, Dec. 17, 1910. [99] Cf. Hunter, "Poverty," New York, 1906. [100] Hibbert Journal, Apr., 1909. APPENDIX 1 Constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum unicuique tribuendi; voluntaria laesio et violatio juris alieni: De Lugo, De just. et jure, Disp. VIII, Sec. I, n. 1. 2 Debitum rationale ex necessaria connectione mediorum cum fine necessario resultans: Theologia moralis fundamentalis, ed. 2a, Bruges, 1890, p. 188. 3 "Quoties aequalitas non servatur ut venditor ultra supremum pretium, vel emptor emat infra infimum ... injustitia commititur." L. c., Tr. VII, n. 380. 4 In hac re cooperator est, qui simul cum alio est causa damni, sive immediata sive positiva sive negativa. Non enim in omnibus eadem est ratio cooperationis, sed hoc est omnibus commune, quod cum alio concurrant ad damnum seu injuriam damnosam. Ballerini L. c., Tr. VII, n. 128: cf. De Lugo, L. c. XVII, II, 37. 5 Praeferendum est enim commune bonum privato. Pt. I, Tr. III, Tom. IX, Sec. IV, p. 1171. 6 Cum enim unus homo sit pars multitudinis, quilibet homo hoc ipsum quod est, et quod habet, est sicut et quaelibet pars id quod est, est totius; unde et natura aliquod detrimentum infert parti, ut salvet totum: 2a 2ae, Q.96, A.4. 7 Haec potestas est necessaria ad bonam rei publicae humanae gubernationem. Op. cit., Pt. I, Tom. V, Lib. III, Cap. 21. 8 Ex damno et periculo, quod bono publico publicaeque securitati inferretur si impune id agere liceret. Theol. Mor., Pt. I, Lib. I, Div. II, Par. 4, n. 761. 9 Tota difficultas consistit in assignanda ratione hujus veritatis: nam licet turpitudo haec statim appareat, non tamen facile est ejus fundamentum invenire: unde (quod in aliis multis quaestionibus contingit) magis certa est conclusio, quam rationes, quae variae a diversis afferuntur ad ejus probationem. De Just. et Jure, Disp. X, Sec. I, Num. 2. 10 Fatendum est esse aliquas practicas vertitates humano convictui necessarias, quas homines instinctu quodam rationali percipiunt et sentiunt, quarum tamen rationem prorsus demonstrativam, cum eam iidem analytice quaerunt, difficulter inveniunt. Videtur voluisse natura sive auctor naturae hujusmodi instinctu aut sensu rationali supplere defectum rationis se exercentis: ... Inter hujusmodi veritates haec quoque forte, qua de agimus, invenitur. Theologia Moralis, Tr. VI, Sec. VI, Num. 119, Vol. II, pp. 727-728. BIBLIOGRAPHY J. Kelleher, Private Ownership, Dublin, 1911. Capecelatro, Cardinal, Christ, the Church, and Man. St. Louis, 1909. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, secunda secundae. De Lugo, Cardinal John, De Justitia et Jure. Bouquillon, Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis, ed. 2a, Bruges, 1890. Liguori, Alphonsus, Theologia moralis. Noldin, H., Theologia Moralis, 3 vols., 8th ed., N. Y., 1911. Ballerini, Antonio, Theologia Moralis. Cuthbert, O. F. M. Cap., Catholic Ideals in Social Life, N. Y., 1904. Cunningham, W., Christianity & Social Questions: London, 1910. Clark, J. B., Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907. United States Bureau of Labor: Report on the Condition of Woman & Child Wage-Earners in the United States, 19 vols., 1910-1912. Charities Publication Committee, The Pittsburgh Survey. Minneapolis Vice Commission, Report, 1911. Chicago Vice Commission, Report, 1911. Seligman, E. R. A., The Social Evil, N. Y., 1912. United States Bureau of Labor, Industrial Hygiene, 1908. Kelly, Florence, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, N. Y., 1905. Hunter, Robert, Poverty, N. Y., 1905. Le Play, F., La Reforme Sociale, Tours, 1878, 3 vols. Missiaen, Berthold, O. M. Cap., L'Appauvrissement des Masses, Louvain, 1911. Clark, J. B., The Distribution of Wealth, N. Y., 1889. Woods, Robert A., ed., Americans in Process, Boston, 1903. Bliss, Wm. D. P., ed., New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, N. Y., 1908. Clark, Sue Ainslie, & Edith Wyatt, Making Both Ends Meet, N. Y., 1911. Streightoff, Frank Hatch, The Standard of Living among the Industrial People of America, Boston, 1911. Butler, Eliz. Beardsley, Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores, N. Y., 1912. Ryan, John A., A Living Wage, N. Y., 1906. Devine, Edw. T., Principles of Relief, N. Y., 1904. Bousanquet, Helen, The Standard of Life, London, 1908. Chapin, Coit, The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City, N. Y., 1909. Journal of Political Economy. Economic Journal. Quarterly Journal of Economics. Journal of the American Sociological Society. Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science. The Survey. International Journal of Ethics. INDEX Accidents: 90ff. Alphonsus, Saint: See Liguori Aquinas: 11, 18, 28, 29, 46 Ballerini, Antonio: 22, 27, 28, 29, 45 Bouquillon, Thomas: 11 Bowen, Louise de Koven: 98 Browning, Eliz. B.: 132 Butler, Eliz. B.: 4, 43, 51ff, 67, 96, 101, 102 Capecelatro, Card.: 9 Capital punishment: 28 Carlyle, Thomas: 35f. Carver, T. N.: 60 Chapin, Coit: 43 Charity: Consumers' obligations of, 31ff; duties of, 11 Cheapness: demand for, 58ff. Chicago Vice Commission: 95, 100, 101, 104 Child-Labor: 93f. Child-Labor Committee, National: 100 Clark, J. B.: 65 Common good: Scholastic conception of, 28ff. Competition: 19ff, 47ff, 55f. Compulsory Arbitration: 112 Conscience, Social: 131 Consumers: Duties of, 13ff, 16f, 129ff; individual action, 107, 109, 114; organization among, 109, 110, 130; responsibility of, 5ff. Consumers' League: 110, 111, 114ff. Consumption (disease): 88ff. Co-operation in evil: 13, 23 Costs of production: 60ff. Crawford, Hanford: 60 Cunningham, W.: 20, 58, 63 Cuthbert, Father: 108 Dance Halls: 97f. Dangerous occupations: 86ff. De Lugo, Card. John, S. J.: 25, 26, 44 Department Stores: 100, 103 Devine, Edward T.: 66f. Dust: 87f. Duty: definition of, 11; devolution of, 13ff. Employers: duties of direct, 12; liability of, 17 English Poor Law: 62 Expenses of production: 59ff. Food, Insufficient: 78ff. Goldmark, Josephine: 127 Green, T. H.: 32 Gury, J. P.: 10 Hibbert Journal: 131 Hours of work: 4, 84f. Housing conditions: 77ff, 95f. Hunter, Robert: 128 Industrial Commission, U. S.: 68, 87, 94 Injustice, definition of: 11 Innocent: indirect killing of, lawful, 28 Interest: 15 Interest-takers, duties of: 15 Justice: Consumers' obligations of, 13ff; definition of, 11; duties of, 11 Kelleher, Rev. J.: 9 Kelley, Florence: 114 Label: See White List Labor, N. Y. S. Bureau of: 68f, 74ff, 88 Labor, N. Y. S. Commissioner of: 82, 91 Labor, U. S. Bureau of: 16, 42, 43, 52ff, 61, 68, 70ff, 77ff, 89ff, 96, 97, 113 Labor, U. S. Commission of: 84 Law: binding force of civil: 28 Lehmkuhl, Aug.: 29 Leo XIII: 8 Liguori, Saint Alphonsus: 18, 23, 27, 28, 29 Living, Standard of: 9, 38ff, 66 Lowell, Josephine Shaw: 117 Maistre, de: 111 Mazzini, Giuseppe: 5 Mercantile Employers' Bill: 122 Middle Ages, Medieval system: 19f. Minneapolis Vice Commission: 54, 103 Morris, William: 132 Mouth, The: 116 Necessity: definition of, 33 Neighbor: meaning of, 31 Night work: 84f. Noldin, H.: 29 O'Reilly, John Boyle: 127 Packingtown: 96 Paine, Thomas: 5 Pittsburgh Survey: 51, 52, 66 Pius X: 8 Poisoning: 86f. Poverty: 127ff. Price: 18ff, 57f, 60 Property: justification of private, 29; superfluous, 1, 33 Prostitution: 95, 101ff. Rent-takers: duties of, 14 Right: definition of, 10ff. Ryan, John A.: 15, 42f. Saloon, The: 99 Scudder, Vida: 131 Seager, H. R.: 61 Sidgwick, H.: 61 Social argument: 13, 27ff. Southwell, Robert: 105, 128 Speeding-up: 85f. State: authority of, 28 State-Insurance: 112 Suarez, Francisco, S. J.: 27, 28, 46 Subsistence standard: 39 Suicide: 29f. Survey: 67, 98, 101, 104, 123 Thomas, Saint: See Aquinas Thorold, Algar: 97 Title, just: 22f. Tuberculosis: 88ff. Ulpian: 11 Unemployed: 66 Unemployment: 68f. Value: 13, 17ff. Ventilation: 79ff. Wage, Minimum: 42, 46, 112, 113 Wages: 4, 48ff, 62ff, 66ff, 70ff; right to living, 9; standard of living, 8, 9 War: 29 White List: 55, 118, 124, 125 Williams, A. B.: 98 Women: conditions of work, 4; hours of work, 4; wages, 4, 67 Work: conditions of, 4, 51ff; right to, 9 Working Women's Society: 117, 119 * * * * * _Just Published_ My Unknown Chum "_AGUECHEEK_" Foreword by Henry Garrity _What critical book-lovers say of this book_: "The best book in the English language." "A treat for those who are regretting that graceful, delightful English is a lost art." Rev. CHARLES A. CASSIDY, World Traveler and Lecturer on Art and Literature: "I have read it with the greatest of pleasure, and have turned to it often. I could read it a hundred times. 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WALKER: "Nothing as yet written equals in charm the story of the supernal character and beauty of the English girl and woman--the writer's ideal of girlhood and womanhood--who might well have inspired the poet's 'A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still and bright With something of an angel light.'" JOSEPH I. BREEN: "A splendid book; the only one I know that I can read often or at random and always find therein some new charm. Is there anything more delightful than the author's description of Behind the Scenes, of Theatre Alley, and of Napoleon's room at the Louvre?" Mrs. WOODROW: "A delightful book. I liked it so much I read my borrowed copy twice." At your bookseller's, or sent postpaid to any address, $1.65 THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 437 Fifth Avenue, New York 
44966	----	Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain. A Paper ON CRAFT GILDS, READ BY THE REV. W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., _At the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings._ There is, as I understand it, a double object in the work of this Society; it interests itself in the preservation of ancient buildings, partly because they are monuments which when once destroyed can never be replaced, and which bear record of the ages in which they were made and the men who reared them; and in this sense all that survives from the past, good and bad, coarse or refined, has an abiding value. But to some folks there seems to be a certain pedantry in gathering or studying things that are important merely because they are curiosities, a certain fancifulness in the frame of mind which concentrates attention on the errors of printers, or the sports of nature, or the rubbish of the past. And much which has been preserved from the past is little better than rubbish, as the poet felt when he wrote: "Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of the present and future." Still, the view Clough takes is very superficial; there is a real human interest about even the rubbish heaps of the past if we have knowledge enough to detect it; the dulness is in us who fail to recognise the interest which attaches to trifles from the past or to read the evidence they set before us. But there is another reason why the vestiges of bygone days claim our interest--not as mere curiosities, but as in themselves beautiful objects, excellently designed and skilfully fashioned. There are numberless arts in which the men of the past were adepts; their skill as builders is patent to all, but specialists are quite as enthusiastic over the work that was done by mediæval craftsmen in other departments. Their wood-carving, and working in metals, the purity of their dyes, the beauty of their glass, these are things which move the admiration of competent critics in the present day. Machinery may produce more rapidly, more cheaply, more regular work, of more equal quality, and perhaps of higher finish, but it is work that has lost the delicacy and grace of objects that were shaped by human hands and bear the direct impress of human care, and taste, and fancy. We may be interested in the preservation of the relics of the past, not merely as curiosities from bygone ages, but as examples of beautiful workmanship and skilled manipulation to which the craftsmen of the present day cannot attain. Most Englishmen--all those whose opinions are formed by the newspapers they read--are so proud of the vast progress that has been made in the present century, that they do not sufficiently attend to the curious fact that there are many arts that decay and are lost. In this country it appears that the art of glass-making was introduced more than once, and completely died out again; the same is probably true of cloth dressing and of dyeing. It seems to me a very curious problem to examine what were the causes which led to the disappearance of these particular industries. In each single case it is probably a very complicated problem to distinguish all the factors at work--what were the social or economic conditions that destroyed this or that useful art once introduced? But into such questions of detail I must not attempt to enter now. I wish to direct your attention to-day to a more general question, to an attempt to give a partial explanation, not of failure here and there, but of conspicuous success. In the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a very high degree of skill was attained, not in one art only, but in many. It is at least worth while to look a little more closely at one group of the conditions which influenced the work of the times, and examine the organisations which were formed for controlling the training of workmen, for supervising the manner in which they lived, and maintaining a high standard of quality in the goods produced. There is no need to idealise the times when they were formed, or the men who composed them; the very records of craft gilds show that the mediæval workman was quite capable of scamping his work and getting drunk when opportunity tempted him. But the fact remains that a very great deal of first-rate work was done in many crafts, for portions of it still survive, and I cannot but believe that some of the credit is due to the gilds which set themselves to rule each craft, so that the work turned out should be a credit to those who made it. Herein, as it seems to me, lies the secret of the importance of the craft gilds during the period of their useful activity. They were managed on the principle that "honourable thing was convenable;" that honesty was the best policy; the good of the trade meant its high reputation for sound work at fair prices. It has got another meaning to our ears; a time when trade is good means a time when it is more possible than usual to sell any sort of goods at high prices, and the craft gilds in their later days were contaminated by this lower view of industry. The ancient anecdote of the Edinburgh glazier who was caught breaking the windows of peaceful inhabitants for "the good of the trade," may illustrate the modern sense of the phrase, while the conduct of the stalwart citizen who thrashed him within an inch of his life, and said at every blow "it's all for the good of the trade," was in closer accord with the disciplinary character of mediæval rules. I trust I have said enough to justify my selection of this topic as one which is not unfitting the attention of this society; the subject is a very wide one, and I think the treatment may be somewhat less diffuse if I draw most of my illustrations from a single centre of industry, and speak chiefly of the craft gilds of Coventry. It is a town which I visited recently, and where, through the kindness of the Town Clerk and Mr. W. G. Fretton, the antiquary, I was able to make good use of the few hours I had to spend. It may be convenient too, to arrange the matter under the following heads:-- I. The introduction of craft gilds. II. The objects and powers of mediæval craft gilds. III. The resuscitation of craft gilds. I. There is a certain amount of assumption in talking about the introduction of craft gilds, because it suggests the belief that they were not a native development. The word gild is, after all, a very vague term, much like our word association, and though we can prove the existence of many gilds before the Conquest,--at Cambridge and Exeter and elsewhere,--their laws contain nothing that would justify us in regarding them as craft gilds. It is much more probable, though Dr. Gross, the greatest living authority on the subject, speaks with considerable reserve, that the hall where the men of Winchester drank their own gild, or the land of the knights' gild at Canterbury, belonged to bodies which had some supervision over the trade of the town--in fact, were early gilds merchant. But I know of no hint in any of the records or histories of the period before the Norman Conquest, that can be adduced to show that there were any associations of craftsmen formed to control particular industries. The earliest information which we get about such groups of men comes from London, where, as we learn, Henry I. granted a charter to the Weavers. It is pretty clear that by this document some authority was given to the weavers to control the making of cloth (and it possibly involved conditions which affected the import of cloth). It is certain that there was a long continued struggle between the weavers' gild and the citizens, which came to a peaceful close in the time of Edward I. There were weavers' gilds also in a considerable number of other towns in the reign of Henry II.; Beverley, Marlborough, and Winchester may be mentioned in particular, as the ordinances of these towns have survived, and there are incidental references which seem to show that the weavers, and the subsidiary crafts of fullers and dyers had, even in the twelfth century, considerable powers of regulating their respective trades. The evidence becomes more striking if we are justified in connecting with it the cases of other towns, where we find that regulations had been enforced with regard to cloth, and that the townsmen were anxious to set these regulations aside, and buy or sell cloth of any width. So far what we find is this; while we have no evidence of craft gilds before the Conquest, we find indications of a very large number of gilds among the weavers and the subsidiary callings shortly after that date. But there is a further point; so far as we can gather, weaving before the Conquest was a domestic art; we have no mention of weavers as craftsmen; the art was known, but it was practised as an employment for women in the house; but in the time of the Conqueror and of his sons there was a considerable immigration of Flemings, several of whom were particularly skilled in weaving woollen cloth; they settled in many towns in different parts of the country, and it seems not unnatural to conclude that weaving as an independent craft was introduced from the Continent soon after the Norman Conquest. Institutions analogous to craft gilds appear to have existed in some of the towns of Northern France time out of mind, and some can apparently trace a more or less shadowy connection with the old Roman Collegia. Putting all these matters together, it appears that craft organisation first shows itself in England in connexion with a trade which was probably introduced from abroad; and it seems not impossible that the Continental artisans brought not only a knowledge of the art of weaving but certain habits of organisation with them. Some sort of organisation was probably necessary for police and fiscal purposes if for none others. Town life was a curiously confused chaos of conflicting authority; in London each ward was an independent unit, in Chester and Norwich the intermingling of jurisdictions seems very puzzling. The newcomers were not always welcomed by the older ratepayers, and they might perhaps find it convenient to secure a measure of _status_ by obtaining a royal charter for their gild. Just as the Jews or the Hansards were in the city and yet not citizens, but had an independent footing, so to some extent were the weavers situated, and apparently for similar reasons; they seem to have had _status_ as weavers, which they held directly from the King, which marked them out from other townsmen, and which possibly delayed their complete amalgamation with the other inhabitants. There is yet another feature about these weavers' gilds; the business in which they are engaged was one which was from an early time regulated by royal authority. King Richard I. issued an assize of cloth defining the length and breadth which should be manufactured.[1] The precise object of these regulations is not clear; they may have been made in the interests of the English consumer; they may have been made in the interest of the foreign purchaser, and the reputation of English goods abroad; they may have been framed in connexion with a protective policy, of which there are some signs. But amid much that is uncertain these three things seem pretty clear:-- [1] Richard of Hoveden, Rolls Series, iv. 33. 1. That there were no craft gilds before the Conquest. 2. That there were many craft gilds in connexion with the newly introduced weavers' craft in the twelfth century. 3. That they exercised their powers under royal authority in a craft which was the subject of royal regulation. So far for weavers; I wish now to turn to another craft in which we hear of craft gilds very early--the Bakers. There is a curious parallelism between these two callings. In the first place baking was, on the whole, a domestic art before the Conquest, not a separate employment; in the next place, it was a matter of royal regulation; the King's bakers doubtless provided the Court supplies, and the gave their experience for the framing of the assize of bread, under Henry II. and under King John.[2] It may, I think, be said that in both of the trades in which gilds were first formed, there was felt to be a real need for regulation as to the quality of the goods sold to the public; and it also appears that this regulation was given under royal authority. So far the fact seems to me to be pretty clear; and it is at least more than probable that the form of association adopted--analogous as it was to associations already existing on the Continent--had come over in the train of the Conqueror. These few remarks may suffice in justification of the phrase the "introduction of craft gilds." [2] Cambridge University Library, Mm i. 27. II. In the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century there was a very rapid development of municipal life in England, and the burgesses in many towns obtained much larger powers of self-government than they had previously possessed. They became responsible for their own payments to the Exchequer, and they obtained larger rights for regulating their own affairs; the town of Coventry had indeed possessed very considerable municipal privileges from the time of Henry I., but it shared in the general progress a century later, and the new requirements were marked by new developments. I have tried to show how the earlier craft gilds were formed under royal authority, but as the powers of local self-government increased and were consolidated, there was no need, and there was, perhaps, less opportunity, for direct royal interference in matters of internal trade. We thus find a new order of craft gilds springing up--they were called into being, like the old ones, for the purpose of regulating trade--but they exercised their powers under municipal, and not under royal authority. One craft gild of this type which still exists, and which is said to have been formed by the authority of the leet in the sixth year of King John, is the Bakers' Gild at Coventry; it still consists of men who actually get their living by this trade, for it does not appear to have received so many love brothers as to destroy the original character of the body; it still has its hall--or, at least, room--and chest where the records are kept. There are, probably not many other bodies in the kingdom that have so long a history, and that have altered so little from their original character during all those centuries. None of the other Coventry gilds, so far as I know, can at all compare with it. The weavers were a powerful body there in later times, but I doubt if there is any evidence of the existence of this and the allied trades in Coventry before the fourteenth century; we may, perhaps, guess that it was one of the places where this trade settled under Edward III. But, apart from the question of origin, the Bakers have a unique position. Of some half-dozen other crafts which still maintain a formal existence, none can trace their history back beyond the time of Edward III., their members have no interest in the craft which they were empowered to regulate, and a tin box in a solicitor's office is the only outward and visible sign of their existence. Such are the Walkers and Fullers, the Shearmen and Weavers, the Fellmongers, the Drapers, the Mercers, and the Clothiers. Of the Tanners I cannot speak so decidedly, as during a hurried visit to Coventry I had no opportunity of examining their books. In looking more closely at the powers of mediæval craft gilds, it is necessary to distinguish a little; a craft gild was a gild which had authority to regulate some particular craft in a given area. I do not, therefore, want to dwell on the features which were common to all gilds, and which can be traced in full detail in the admirable volume edited by the late Mr. Toulmin Smith for the Early English Text Society. I desire to limit consideration to the powers that were special to craft gilds. Like other gilds they had a religious side, in some cases strongly developed, and the members engaged in common acts of worship, especially in common prayers and masses for departed brethren. Like other gilds they had the character of a friendly society, and gave loans to needy brethren, or bestowed alms on the poor. Like other gilds they had their feasts, when the brethren drank their gild, and they had hoods, or livery, which they wore at their assemblies. Like other gilds they took their share in civic festivities and provided pageants at considerable cost; but all these common bonds, important as they were in cementing men into a real fellowship, and in calling forth such different interests and activities among the members, were of a pious, social, or charitable character. There was no reason why such associations should not be multiplied on all sides; even when a gild consisted of men who followed the same craft it was not a craft gild. The case of the journeymen tailors in London who assembled at the Black Friars Church may be taken as conclusive on this point. A gild was not a craft gild unless duly empowered to regulate a particular craft; it might be called into existence for this purpose, or an existing gild might be empowered to exercise such functions, much as the brotherhood of S. Thomas à Becket was changed into the Mercers' Company. The important thing about a craft gild was that it had been empowered to exercise authority in a given area and over certain workmen, as the weavers' gilds had been empowered by charter from Henry I., and as the bakers were empowered by the Court Leet at Coventry, in the sixth year of King John. Two points were specially kept in view in framing any set of regulations. They were, first, the quality of the goods supplied; and, second, the due training of men to execute their work properly--admirable objects certainly. The machinery which was organised for attaining these objects was also well devised; the men who were thoroughly skilled, and were masters in the craft, had the duty of training apprentices, and the wardens had the right of examining goods exposed for sale, and of making search in houses where the trade was being carried on--again, an excellent arrangement where it could be satisfactorily carried out. And on the whole it seems as if the scheme had worked well, for this simple reason--that while it was maintained, so much work of excellent design and quality was executed. I wish to lay stress on this, because the historian of craft gilds is apt to overlook it. When craft gilds appeared on the stage of history, it was because something was out of gearing, and the institution was working badly. One is apt to infer that since they worked badly whenever we hear of them, they also worked badly when we do not; but I am inclined to interpret the periods of silence differently, and to regard them as times when the organisations were wisely managed, and when the craft gilds enjoyed the proverbial happiness of those who have no history. There were, however, three different dangers of disagreement, and possible quarrel:--(1) Between a craft gild on one hand and the municipal authorities on the other; (2) between one craft gild and another; (3) between different members of a craft gild. 1. It is obvious that the gilds, if they were to exercise any real authority, required to have _exclusive_ powers within a given district; it is also obvious that these exclusive powers might be misused, so as to be mischievous to the consumers of the goods; a craft gild might take advantage of its monopoly to the gain of the members and the impoverishing of the citizens. The feeling of the citizens would be that the goods supplied by the members of the gild were bad and were dear at the price. It was therefore of the first importance that the citizens should be, in the last resort, able to control the gild, and resume the privileges which their officers exercised. There is a well-known case, which is detailed in Mr. Toulmin Smith's book, which shows how the tailors of Exeter enjoyed a charter from the Crown, and how much trouble they gave to the local authorities under Edward IV.; but it was a matter of common complaint that in many places the gilds had charters from great men which exempted them from proper control.[3] Even in Coventry, where there does not appear to have been interference from without, it was necessary for the leet to keep a tight hand on the craft gilds. An ordinance of 8 Henry V. runs as follows:--"Also that no man of any craft make laws or other ordinance among them but it be overseen by the mayor and his council; and if it be reasonable ordinance and lawful it shall be affirmed, or else it shall be corrected by the mayor and his peers."[4] At a later date we have another entry of the same kind:--"Also that the mayor, warden, and bailiffs, taking to the mayor eight or twelve of the General Council, to come afore them the wardens of all the crafts of the city with their ordinances, touching their crafts and their articles, and the points that be lawful, good, and honest for the city be allowed them, all other thrown aside and had force none, and that they make new ordinances against the laws in oppression of the people, upon pain of imprisonment." In some other towns the craftsmen had to yield up their powers annually and receive them back again from the municipal authority; this was the case with the cordwainers at Exeter,[5] but the Coventry people did not insist on anything so strict. [3] Rot. Parl., II. 331. [4] Leet Book, £37. [5] Toulmin Smith, "English Gilds," p. 332. 2. The difficulties between one craft gild and another might arise in various ways; as time went on or trade developed there was an increasing differentiation of employment, and it was not always clear whether the original gild had supervision over all branches of the trade. Thus in London the weavers' gild claimed to exercise supervision over the linen as well as over the woollen cloth manufactures, and this claim was insisted on on the ground that the two trades were quite distinct. In Coventry the worsted weavers, the linen weavers, and the silk weavers were one body, in later times at any rate, though the arts cannot be precisely similar. In other cases there was a question as to whether different processes involved in the production of one complete article should be reckoned as separate crafts or not. Thus the Fullers were organised in independence of the Shearmen in 1438; and during the fifteenth century the sub-division of gilds appears to have gone very rapidly at Coventry, as there were something like twenty-three of them at that time; at the same time from the repeated power which is given to the Fullers to form a fellowship of their own,[6] it appears that they were from time to time re-absorbed by the parent gild. Perhaps an even better illustration of the difficulty of defining the precise processes which certain gilds might supervise would be found in the history of the leather trades in London--Tanners, Cordwainers, Saddlers, and so forth. But enough may have been said to show how easy it was for disputes to arise between one or more craft gilds as to their respective powers. [6] Leet Book, f. 400; May 3, 1547. Quoted by Mr. Fretton, Memorials of Fullers' Guild, page 11. 3. There were also disputes within the gilds between different members. (_a_) There was at least some risk of malversation of funds by the Master of the craft gild; and strict regulations were laid down by the Fellmongers and Cappers as to the time when the amounts were to be rendered and passed, but a much greater number of the ordinances deal with the respective duties of masters and apprentices and masters and journeymen. (_b_) The question of apprenticeship was of primary importance, as the skill of the next generation of workmen depended on the manner in which it was enforced. There are a good many ordinances of the Coventry Cappers in 1520. No one was to have more than two apprentices at a time, and he was to keep them for seven years, but there was to be a month of trial before sealing; nobody was to take apprentices who had not sufficient sureties that he would perform his covenant. If the apprentice complained that he had not sufficient "finding," and the master was in fault, the apprentice was to be removed on the third complaint, and the master was handicapped in getting another in his place. Once a year the principal master of the craft was to go round the city and examine every man's apprentice, and see they were properly taught. The Clothiers, in regulations which I believe to be of about the same date, though they are incorporated with rules of a later character, had a system of allowing the apprentice to be turned over to another master if his own master had no work, so that he might not lose his time--this was a system which was much abused in the eighteenth century: the master was to teach the apprentice truly, and two apprentices were not to work at the same loom unless one of them had served for five years. No master was to teach any one who was not apprenticed, and he was to keep the secrets of the craft; this was a provision which constantly occurs in the ordinances. Some such exclusive rule was necessary if they were to secure the thorough competence, in all branches of the art, of the men who lived by it. In the case of the Coventry Clothiers there is an exception which is of interest; the master might give instruction to persons who were not apprenticed as "charity to poor and impotent people for their better livelihood." (_c_) The limitation of the number of apprentices, though it was desirable for the training of qualified men, was frequently urged in the interests of the journeymen. There had been frequent complaint on the part of journeymen that the masters overstocked their shops with apprentices, and that those who had served their time could get no employment from other masters, while they also complained that unnecessary obstacles were put in the way of their doing work on their own account. One or two illustrations of these points may be given from the Coventry crafts; the Fullers in 1560 would not allow any journeyman to work on his own account. The Clothiers in the beginning of the sixteenth century ordained that none shall set any journeyman on work till he is fairly parted from his late master, or if he remains in his late master's debt; journeymen were to have ten days' notice, or one cloth to weave before leaving a master; their wages were to be paid weekly if they wished it, and they were to make satisfaction for any work they spoiled. Similarly the Cappers in 1520 would not allow journeymen to work in their houses. Some of the most interesting evidence in regard to the grievances of the journeymen comes from the story of a dispute in the weaving trade in the early part of the fifteenth century. "The said parties--both masters and journeymen--on the mediation of their friends, and by the mandate and wish of the worshipful Mayor, entered into a final agreement." The rules to which they agreed throw indirect light on the nature of the points in dispute. It was evidently a time when the trade was developing rapidly, and when an employing class of capitalists and clothiers was springing up among the weavers. It was agreed that any who could use the art freely might have as many looms, both linen and woollen, in his cottage, and also have as many apprentices as he liked. Every cottager or journeyman who wished to become a master might do so in paying twenty shillings. Besides this, the journeymen were allowed to have their own fraternity, but they were to pay a shilling a year to the weavers, and a shilling for every member they admitted.[7] On the whole it appears that the journeymen in this trade obtained a very considerable measure of independence, but this was somewhat exceptional, and on the whole it appears that the grievances and disabilities under which journeymen laboured had a very injurious effect on the trade of many towns, and apparently on that of Coventry, during the sixteenth century. There was a very strong incentive for journeymen to go and set up in villages or outside the areas where craft gilds had jurisdiction, and there is abundant evidence[8] that this sort of migration took place on a very large scale. I should be inclined to lay very great stress on this factor as a principal reason for the decay of craft gilds under Henry VIII., so that Edward VI.'s Act gave them a death-blow. They no longer exerted an effective supervision, because in so many cases the trade had migrated to new districts, where there was no authority to regulate it. This is, at any rate, the best solution I can offer of the remarkable manner in which craft gilds disappeared, as effective institutions, about the middle of the sixteenth century. Their religious side was sufficiently pronounced to bring them within the scope of the great Act of Confiscation, by which Edward VI. despoiled the gilds; but there was an effort made to spare them then, and I cannot but believe that if they had had any real vitality a large number would have survived, as some, like the Bakers and Fullers at Coventry, actually did. At the same time, it appears to be true that these cases are somewhat exceptional and that the craft gilds, as effective institutions for regulating industry, disappeared. Part of the evidence for this opinion comes from Coventry itself, for we find that a deliberate and conscious effort was made to resuscitate the gilds in 1584. It is of this resuscitation, involving as it does a previous period of decay, that I now wish to speak. [7] Leet Book, f. 27. [8] Worcester, 25 H. VIII. c. 18. III. The disappearance of the craft gilds appears to have been connected with one of their accidental features, as I may call them--their common worship. The attempted resuscitation at Coventry was due to another--to the fact that each craft provided a certain amount of pageantry for the town. I suspect that the so-called "Mistery plays" were the plays organised by the different "misteries" or crafts. The Chester plays, the Coventry plays, and the York plays,[9] have been published, and they present features which force comparison with the Passion Play which is being given this year at Ober Ammergau; and they were most attractive performances. The accounts of the various trading bodies show that these pageants were continued through the sixteenth century; they were suspended for eight years previous to 1566, and again in 1580 and three following years, when the preachers inveighed against the pageants, even though "there was no Papistry in them"; revived once more in 1584, they were finally discontinued in 1591.[10] [9] Recently edited by Miss L. T. Smith for the Clarendon Press. [10] T. Sharp, "Pageants" (1815), p. 12, 39, and 39. I have lately seen the originals of the dialogue of the Weavers' Pageant, with the separate parts written out for the individual actors. During the fifteenth century, these pageants were performed with much success, and several of the smaller trades appear to have been united for the purpose of performing some pageant together. In 1566 and in 1575 Queen Elizabeth visited Coventry, and the pageants were performed, and with the view of reviving the diminished glories of the towns considerable pains were taken to reorganise the old crafts; thus the Bakers and Smiths joined in producing a pageant in 1506.[11] The Fullers appear to have been reorganised in 1586, and there was a very distinct revival of the old corporations about that time. This same element, the manner in which the crafts had contributed to the local pageants, was noticeable in connection with the organisation of the bodies at Norwich; and I cannot but connect the resuscitation of some of the Coventry Gilds at this time with the desire to perpetuate these entertainments; certain common lands had been enclosed by the town to bear another part of the expense.[12] Though the interest in the pageants marks the beginning of this revival at Coventry, it yet appears that during the seventeenth century it continued. There was some general cause at work connected with the condition of industry which called out a new set of efforts at industrial regulation, but the power which called these gilds or companies into being was no longer merely municipal; they rely, as in the earliest instances, on royal or Parliamentary authority. It is by no means easy to see what was the precise motive in each case of the incorporating of new industrial companies in the seventeenth century. The Colchester Bay-makers introduced a new trade, so, perhaps, did the Kidderminster Carpet-weavers, but the movement at this time appears to be connected with the fact that industry was becoming specialised and localised. I am inclined to suspect that the companies of the seventeenth century differ from the craft gilds of the fifteenth, partly, at least, in this way, that whereas the former were the local organisations for regulating various trades in one town, the latter were the bodies, organised by royal authority for regulating each industry in that part of the country where it could be best pursued. It was at this date that the Sheffield Cutlers were incorporated, and indeed a large number of organisations in different towns. Several of the Coventry gilds, notably the Drapers and the Clothiers, were incorporated by royal charters during the seventeenth century, and if we turned to a northern town like Preston, we might be inclined to say that this was the real era when associations for industrial regulation flourished and abounded. [11] Fretton, "Memorials of Bakers' Gild," Mid-England, p. 124. [12] Sharp, "Pageants," 12. It is no part of my purpose to speak of the decay of these newly formed or newly resuscitated companies as it occurred in the eighteenth century. I have endeavoured to indicate the excellent aims which these institutions set before them, and the success which attended their efforts for a time. At the same time, it is a significant fact that they failed to maintain themselves as effective institutions in the sixteenth century, and when they were resuscitated they failed to maintain themselves as useful institutions in the eighteenth. Partly, as I believe, for good, and partly, as we here recognise, for evil, business habits have so changed that whatever is done for the old object--maintaining quality and skill--must be done in a new way. The power which we possess of directing and controlling the forces of nature has altered the position of the artisan, and made him a far less important factor in production. The maintenance of personal skill, the unlimited capacity for working certain materials, is no longer of such primary importance for industrial success as was formerly the case. There is another--perhaps a greater--difficulty in the diffusion of a wider and more cosmopolitan spirit; the sympathies of the old brethren for one another were strong, but they were intensely narrow. No town can be so isolated now, or kindle such intense local attachments as did the cities of the Middle Ages. There has been loss enough in the destruction of these gilds, but we cannot, by looking back upon them, reverse the past or re-create that which has been destroyed through the growth of the larger life we enjoy to-day. Let us rather remember them as showing what could be accomplished in the past, and as pointing towards something we ought to try to accomplish in some new fashion to-day. When we see that the mediæval workman was a man, not a mere hand; that in close connexion with his daily tasks the whole round of human aspiration could find satisfaction; that he was called with others to common worship, called with others to common feasts and recreations, and encouraged to do his best at his work, we feel how poor and empty, in comparison, is the life that is led by the English artisan to-day. But if there is a better and more wholesome life before the labourer in days to come, if new forms of association are to do the work which was done by the gilds of old, we may trust that those who organise them will bear in mind not only the successes, but the failures of the past, and learn to avoid the mistakes which wrecked craft gilds not once only, but twice. 
43377	----	Transcriber's note: Spelling and punctuation inconsistencies been harmonized. Obvious printer errors have been repaired. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Bold text has been marked with =equal signs=. Subscript numbers have been rendered, as for example for subscript 2, as _{2}. LEATHER _Common Commodities and Industries Series_ Each book in crown 8vo, cloth, with many illustrations, charts, etc. =2s. 6d.= net. =Tea: From Grower to Consumer.= By A. Ibbetson. =Coffee: From Grower to Consumer.= By B. B. Keable. =Sugar: Cane and Beet.= By Geo. Martineau, C.B. =Cotton: From the Raw Material to the Finished Product.= By R. J. Peake. =Rubber: Production and Utilisation of the Raw Product.= By C. Beadle and H. P. Stevens, M.A., Ph.D., F.I.C. =Iron and Steel: Their Production and Manufacture.= By C. Hood. =Silk: Its Production and Manufacture.= By Luther Hooper. =Tobacco: From Grower to Smoker.= By A. E. Tanner. =Wool: From the Raw Material to the Finished Product.= By J. A. Hunter. =Coal: Its Origin, Method of Working, and Preparation for the Market.= By Francis H. Wilson, M. Inst. M.E. =Linen: From the Field to the Finished Product.= By Alfred S. Moore. =Timber: From the Forest to its Use in Commerce.= By William Bullock. =Clays and Clay Products.= By A. B. Searle. =Leather: From the Raw Material to the Finished Product.= By K. J. Adcock. =Oils: Animal, Vegetable, Essential, and Mineral.= By C. Ainsworth Mitchell, B.A., F.I.C. =Wheat and its Products.= By A. Millar. =Copper: From the Ore to the Metal.= By H. K. Picard, Assoc. Royal School of Mines, Mem. Inst. of Min. and Met. =Paper: Its History, Sources, and Production.= By H. A. Maddox. =Glass and Glass Manufacture.= By Percival Marson. =Soap: Its Composition, Manufacture, and Properties.= By William H. Simmons. =The Motor Industry.= By Horace Wyatt, B.A. =The Boot and Shoe Industry.= By J. S. Harding. =Gums and Resins.= By Ernest J. Parry. =Furniture.= By H. E. Binstead. _Other Volumes in preparation._ [Illustration: BLEACHING OIL-TANNED LEATHER BY EXPOSURE TO THE SUN The Rosary Leather Mills. Ashtead] _PITMAN'S COMMON COMMODITIES AND INDUSTRIES_ LEATHER FROM THE RAW MATERIAL TO THE FINISHED PRODUCT BY K. J. ADCOCK LONDON SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., 1 AMEN CORNER, E.C.4 BATH, MELBOURNE AND NEW YORK PRINTED BY SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., LONDON, BATH, MELBOURNE AND NEW YORK CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. EVOLUTION OF LEATHER MANUFACTURE 1 II. HIDES AND SKINS 5 III. TANNING MATERIALS 32 IV. MACHINERY 52 V. PREPARATION OF HIDES AND SKINS FOR TANNING 62 VI. TANNING PROCESSES 91 VII. DRESSING, DYEING, AND FINISHING OF LEATHER 112 INDEX 159 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE BLEACHING OIL-TANNED LEATHER _Frontispiece_ MECHANICAL FLAYING 23 PIM'S SYSTEM OF FLAYING 24 WARBLE FLY 28 WARBLED KIP (584 HOLES) 29 WARBLED HIDE (MAGNIFIED) 30 TANNING EXTRACT PLANT 48 SHAVING CYLINDER 53 BLADED CYLINDER FOR BUFFING 54 BAND-KNIFE SPLITTING MACHINE 54 SHAVING KNIFE 55 SHAVING MACHINE _bet. pp._ 56 & 57 SHAVING, OLD METHOD 56 SHAVING MACHINE, KNIFE GUARD 59 SHAVING MACHINE 61 DRUM TUMBLER 67 FALLER STOCKS 67 TANNER'S BEAM 68 LIME YARD 73 DEHAIRING KNIFE 80 DEHAIRING AND FLESHING MACHINE 81 FLESHING KNIFE 83 SCUDDING KNIFE 86 BARK MILL 93 TAN-YARD 94 ROUNDING OF HIDES 95 BARKOMETER 97 PADDLE VAT 103 PINNING SOLE BUTTS 121 ROLLING MACHINE 122 ROLLING SOLE LEATHER 123 FAN FOR DRYING 124 FAN FIXED IN CHAMBER 125 SUTCLIFFE SYSTEM OF DRYING 126 SLEEKER 128 FLUFFING MACHINE 129 STRIKING-OUT AND SCOURING MACHINE 130 LEATHER-STUFFING DRUM 135 STAKING AND GLAZING MACHINE 143 LEATHER CHAPTER I EVOLUTION OF THE ART OF LEATHER MANUFACTURE Before describing the making of leather by up-to-date methods, it may be useful to attempt to outline the evolution of the ancient art of tanning and dyeing skins. As everyone knows, leather is the preserved skin of various animals, but the origin of the conversion of raw skins into an imputrescible material will probably never be traced, and it can only be assumed that the processes necessary to produce leather from skins were gradually and, in most cases, accidentally discovered. Long before the Christian era, the ancient Egyptians had succeeded in bringing the manufacture of leather to remarkable perfection, and, had they at their service the wonderful machinery now available to the leather industry, it is certain that their productions would have lost little or nothing by comparison with modern leather. Happily, specimens of ancient Egyptian leather have been preserved in one national museum, and, although they are said to have been made at least 3,000 years ago, the colour and natural strength of the leather are unimpaired. Judging by the advanced state of the art of leather manufacture in the early Egyptian period, it is obvious that the origin of its manufacture must have considerably antedated that period, and, indeed, it would be necessary to go back almost to the creation of man to find the origin of the use of preserved animal skins for clothing. The primitive method would naturally consist of simply drying the skin, in which condition it would keep for many years unless it came into contact with moisture, though its horniness would no doubt cause the wearer much discomfort. It must not be supposed that the wearing of dried raw skins with the hair left on was impracticable, for even to-day some of the skins of fur-bearing animals used for personal adornment are cured in this primitive way, with the additional treatment with napthalene for disinfecting purposes and keeping away injurious insects and moths, the object of the limited amount of dressing being to preserve the natural strength and coloration of the fur. In such a condition, however, the skins are liable to acquire an unpleasant odour, and for hygienic reasons it is advisable that all skins in the hair used for clothing or rugs should be properly dressed, so that no decay sets in to loosen the hair or fur. Even now, the process of simply drying hides and skins to preserve them before sending them to the tanner is largely practised, especially in hot climates and in those countries where salt is not readily available. This process of curing rests on the chemical theory of dehydration, which, in a modified form, has recently been successfully applied to some experiments in making leather. Finding that the simple drying of skins would not properly prepare them for clothing, primeval man would naturally look for some means of treating them to conserve their original softness and pliability, and the nearest substances at hand would be animal fats and brains. It is almost safe to assume that this process was the first by which hides were preserved in a state differing from their original condition, the oxidation of the fatty matters naturally producing a partial tannage. The effect of smoke may also have been discovered in the earliest days of skin-curing, and it is reported that even now one or two tribes use smoke to preserve skins. The somewhat imperfect preservation of the hides by this method would lead to further experiments being made, which evidently resulted in the discovery of the tanning effect of leaves, twigs, and barks of trees when soaked in water. It may be that the preservative effect of alum was discovered even before the vegetable tanning process, for the original Japanese white leather was made simply by steeping the raw hides in certain rivers which contained a bed-rock of alum. This primitive process is even followed to-day in one or two places in Japan, but the leather is afterwards treated with oil to impart tensile strength and increased suppleness. Strictly speaking, these hides are not leather when finished, and they are quite unsuitable for boots; but, being the toughest material known in the leather trade, with the possible exception of raw hide, it is particularly suitable and chiefly used for brace ends, and occasionally for ladies' belts. It must not be inferred from reference to this process that the Japanese only use this earliest method of making leather; on the contrary, they are producing all classes of leather, and especially belting and sole, by modern European methods, and it may not be long before their competition with American and European productions becomes an accomplished fact. The available information seems to show that, until about thirty years ago, the development of the industry was mainly the result of accidental discoveries, and that the theory of tanning and leather-dressing was imperfectly understood until within quite recent times. Records of the leather trade 300 years ago prove that the methods then in vogue were of the rudest kind; further, they show that the practice of skimping the tanning process was not unknown in those days, for a contemporaneous author describes the horny condition of some of the leather which, despite the Government inspection, appeared to have passed into the old Leadenhall market for sale by the simple operation of "greasing the fist of the seller." Spain and Hungary had by that time established the manufacture of morocco and curried leather on a fairly sound basis, while a few years later France began to develop the industry of leather manufacture. Until about twenty years ago, waxed calf, crup, calf kid, and alum-tanned kid were staple upper leathers, together with the old Spanish cordovan leather. The sole leather used in England was chiefly the output of tanneries in the United Kingdom. About twenty years ago, however, the successful application of the chrome tanning process caused quite a revolution in the leather trade, with the result that about nine-tenths of the world's production of boot upper leather is chrome-tanned. The introduction of this process on a practical scale gave a great impetus to the work of chemists, who have since made some remarkable discoveries and have placed the art of leather manufacture on a scientific basis. The old methods, however, are by no means obsolete, and it is somewhat remarkable to find that a British patent was taken out last year (1914) for converting hides and skins into leather by treating them with brains and smoke. CHAPTER II HIDES AND SKINS The hides and skins of animals form the principal raw material of the tanner. Technically, the term "hides" is applied to the skins of the larger animals, while the word "skins" is used in the case of the smaller animals. Thus, the tanner speaks of ox, cow, bull and horse _hides_, and of calf, sheep, and goat _skins_. There is an intermediate size between a full-grown calf skin and a small hide, and this is known as a "kip," but the line of demarcation is not very clear. Buyers often settle the difficulty by examining the growth marks and the irregular substance of the skin, and, if these are marked features, it is classified as a kip. The condition of the hides of cattle is usually inferior during the six months after the animal has become a yearling. East India tanned hides, which are largely imported into England, are frequently described as E.I. "kips" in the trade. This is hardly accurate, but the mistake is probably due to the small size of full-grown Indian hides, which are very little larger than the average European kips. It is interesting to observe that furriers always refer to both their raw material and the finished product as skins, irrespective of the size of the fur-bearing animals. Most of the skins of wild animals are dressed without removing the hair or fur, and this is quite a distinct trade from leather manufacture, the only exception being the dressing of closely cut and fine-haired calf skins for slippers and fancy articles. Practically every country in the world contributes to the supply of hides and skins, but there are a few countries which are far in advance of the others in the industries of cattle and sheep-raising. The sources of tanners' raw material have undergone great changes since the establishment of freezing and chilling stores for the preparation of meat for export, and the market prices of hides are to a large extent controlled by the supply in North and South America, South Africa, and Australia. Whether or not the concentration of these huge meat works into two or three centres is likely to benefit the leather trade is a debatable point. The flaying, trimming, and curing of hides in these establishments are certainly superior to the work done by the average butcher, while, owing to the large numbers of cattle slaughtered, the hides can be closely selected. On the other hand, the value of hides and skins has risen enormously in the last decade, the period coincident with the rapid growth of the chilled and frozen meat industry, but the increased use of leather in many directions may be mainly responsible for the higher cost of the raw material, although it is obvious that the concentration of the chief supplies of hides in a few lands must tend to increase the severity of the competition among buyers. Apart from the high prices of the hides, the concentration of the meat industry in large chilling and freezing works has had the effect of increasing the prices of beef and mutton, which are now higher in price than freshly-killed English meat was a few years ago. It appears to have been a grave error on the part of the British Government when they stopped the imports of live cattle owing to the fear of foot-and-mouth disease being communicated to domestic herds. The disease has broken out in several places since the embargo was imposed, so that the theory that the infection was only carried by imported live cattle has been clearly disproved. The butchering of cattle provides a large amount of work in subsidiary industries, and the Government embargo on the importation of live cattle has caused a great deal of distress in Deptford and Birkenhead, where large abattoirs were erected for the reception of live cattle, which used to be imported in fairly large numbers. There is no danger of foot-and-mouth disease getting beyond the abattoirs or of the slaughter of diseased cattle for food, and both tanners and butchers hope to see the removal of the embargo. So far as possible, each country should raise its own cattle to provide its own meat supply, and this principle is recognised by many countries which prohibit the import of foreign meat: but, owing to the rapid growth of populations in industrial countries, with the consequent increase in the value of land, it has become impracticable to raise enough cattle to supply domestic needs. Even the United States of America, which formerly had a great cattle-raising industry, has lately been obliged to import live cattle to meet the requirements of its inhabitants. Similar conditions prevail almost throughout Europe, and tanners have to look to South America, Australia, and Africa for large supplies of raw hides, although there are still some tanners in the United Kingdom who use only the hides produced in this country. The bulk of the production of hides and skins in the United Kingdom is disposed of at weekly public auctions in the principal towns: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Glasgow being the largest centres of distribution. However, there is still a large quantity bought by private treaty, and opinions are divided as to which is the better method of buying. Before the establishment of public auctions, hides were very cheap, but tanners were unable to get a good selection, although, for sole leather, that was not a very important matter. Public auctions have become so firmly established that it would be impossible for tanners to revert to the old system even if they desired it. The competition of private buyers with the auction markets has certainly benefited the butcher at the expense of the tanner, and the weighing and classification of hides ultimately became so irregular in many markets that the Tanners' Federation of the United Kingdom had to take strong action not long ago to protect their interests. They demanded the appointment of an independent inspector at each market to check the weighing and sorting of the hides, but this was successfully resisted by the market proprietors, who eventually agreed to the tanners appointing travelling inspectors to visit the markets periodically. The system is said to have improved matters. The English markets do not collect enough hides to permit their close sorting, so that, while the hides are graded according to weight and quality and the sex of the animal, the question of varying substances is generally ignored. There is usually a difference of 10 lb. in each class where the hides are sorted by weight Ox, cow, heifer, and bull hides are sold separately, as each sort has a different value. Bull hides are comparatively poor in quality, owing to their irregular substance and strong growth marks in the neck. Ox hides are the most suitable for sole leather and belting, while cows' and heifers' are used mainly for dressing hides, which are finished into bag, case, strap, and boot leathers. The hides known as Scotch and Hereford runts are the best of those produced in the United Kingdom, as they are well-grown, compact, and well-suited to the making of sole leather and belting. The grading of the weight of these hides at the auction markets is generally as follows: 100 lb. and above, 90-99 lb., 80-89 lb., 70-79 lb., 60-69 lb., 59 lb. and less. This does not give an ideal classification, as hides vary so much in texture and substance, and it is quite possible to find spready hides of poor substance and quality which would be heavier than a small but compact and well-grown hide. It would be better from the tanner's point of view if the hides were selected according to substance and quality. There are not many bull hides grown in the United Kingdom, and in many markets they are not classed by weight but simply into best and secondary qualities. Horse hides are of even less value than those of bulls, owing to their weaker texture and irregular substance. That part of the skin under the mane is almost worthless, while the flanks and sides are only useful for a secondary class of boot upper leather, although some fairly good patent sides have lately been produced from horse hide, which is suitable for that purpose owing to its soft grain and pliable texture when tanned. The most valuable part of a horse hide is the butt, which consists of the part known as the "shell." This shell is covered with an extremely fine grain which is not found in any other part of the hide. The well-known crup leather is made from the shell of the horse hide. In addition to hides, there are fairly large quantities of calf and sheep skins sold at the weekly auctions, but veal is not such an important article of food in England as it is on the Continent. Sheep skins are far more numerous, as Great Britain is a big mutton-consuming country. Home supplies of both hides and skins have been greatly reduced, however, by the immense import of frozen and chilled meat. Although the domestic supply of hides and skins is quite inadequate to meet the needs of British tanners, a large proportion is exported. American tanners buy large quantities of the best hides and pickled sheep skins. The latter are dewoolled and preserved by a process of pickling with formic or sulphuric acid and salt before exportation. Those preliminary operations are the work of the fellmonger. Nearly all of the horse hides produced in the United Kingdom are, or were before the War, sent to Germany, and British leather-dressers appear to have lost the art of finishing horse hide, or are unable to convert it into leather profitably. The interchange of raw hides between various countries, and even between those where leather manufacture is an important industry, is somewhat remarkable, and only goes to prove that the concentration of a particular industry in one or two centres of the world gives these places a great advantage in regard to labour, organisation, and technical skill, even over those countries where the raw material is plentiful. Theoretically and economically it should be advantageous to establish tanneries close to the supply of raw hides, since the latter, under present conditions of preservation, steadily deteriorate from the time they are removed from the carcase until they reach the tannery. In some countries the methods of preserving hides are actually so bad that the hides have often lost half of their value before the tanner gets them. Two or three of the largest American meat-packing establishments have erected or taken over tanneries to deal with raw hides, one of their by-products. Tanneries have also been erected near some of the large meat works in the Argentine, but the development of the leather trade there is by no means rapid, and at present the United States of America is the largest leather-producing country in the world. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom come next in the order named. South Africa is an important source of supply of raw material, and large quantities of Cape hides are sent to England. The production of raw hides there is likely to be on a very large scale in a few years' time, as the raising of Afrikander and other breeds of cattle is sure to become an important industry now that the ravages of the terrible disease, known as "tick," have been checked. China is another large hide-exporting country; most of the hides from this source are dried in the open air and are generally arsenicated to prevent the ravages of insects. Immense quantities are also provided in all other populous countries, but the demand for leather is generally greater than the production of raw material in those countries. India is a noteworthy exception to this general rule; the production of Indian hides is enormous, and, although the leather trade is being developed, there is a large surplus of raw hides and skins for export. Large quantities are roughly tanned, however, and exported to England, Germany, France, and other European countries to be dressed and finished. The greater proportion of these hides and skins is used for the making of shoe leather, while a good quantity is used for bag (hide) and imitation morocco (goat) leathers. Naturally, there is in the aggregate a considerable supply of raw hides and skins from other parts of the world in addition to that from the countries specially named, and new sources are being frequently found. It would be impossible to describe the characteristics of the numerous varieties of hides and skins except in a full-sized text-book, but a brief description of the principal sorts may be given. Some of the varieties produced in the United Kingdom have already been described. In the main, there is not a great deal of difference in the hides of various breeds, but there is a type of well-grown and stout hides specially suitable for sole and belting leather; this class is known as runts, and these hides are obtained from the Scotch and Hereford breeds of cattle. The Scotch runts from the Highland cattle are more valuable than any other class of hide found in the United Kingdom; unfortunately, the production is small. Irish cattle also yield good hides, but in England the interests of the cattle owner, or feeder, are in conflict with those of the tanner, for the system of artificially fattening cattle with oil cakes tends to make the hides very greasy and weaker in the fibres than those hides from animals which are reared on natural food-stuffs. This grease is very difficult to remove and reduces the selling value of sole leather by about 2d. per lb. The use of a borax solution for soaking partially removes the grease, while it has been proposed that the pelts should be treated with a solution of hyposulphite of soda just before placing them in the tan liquors. A drawback of the latter process is that a little weight is lost in the finished leather. The trouble caused by the presence of a large quantity of natural grease is even more pronounced in sheep skins than in cattle hides. Naturally, a sheep arrives at maturity in about two years; but by the modern system of intensive feeding with oily food-stuffs it can be fattened in about ten months. This is obviously a great advantage to the sheep-breeder; in other respects it is an unsatisfactory method, for the mutton is not so well matured, and, therefore, is not so nourishing; it contains too large a proportion of fat, and the skins are very greasy and weak in fibre. The excess of grease does not detract from the value of the wool, and may even be beneficial. There are several varieties of sheep in the United Kingdom, with widely different characteristics. A fellmonger should have a good knowledge of the skins of various breeds in order to buy the particular sorts that will meet the requirements of his customers, as his business is to separate the wool from the skins and to supply the former to the woollen factories and the latter to the leather-dressers. He has, therefore, to study carefully both the wool and pelt markets. While some breeds of sheep yield fine long wool of bright lustre, others have comparatively short-stapled, and "kempy" wool. Between these two classes, there are numerous grades, and the task of sorting the various qualities of wool in those fellmongeries where several classes of skins are worked is by no means easy. It is a generally accepted axiom that the pelt (_i.e._, the skin denuded of wool) is weaker in fibre in those skins which yield the finest and best wool. In support of this, the Welsh mountain sheep may be cited. This sheep has short, curly wool, but its skin is tough and strong on the grain. In fact, it is about the only breed suitable for roller leather, which is used in the cotton industry for covering the drawing rollers of spinning-machines. Most of this leather is made in North Wales, whence it is exported to every country where the cotton industry is carried on. Notable exceptions of the general rule regarding the relative qualities of wool and pelts are found in two or three English varieties, namely: the Lincolns, Leicesters and black-faced Suffolks, which produce both fine wool and large pelts of good quality. Other useful British breeds are the Southdowns, Devons, Shropshires, Wensleydales, Scotch black-faced, Cotswolds, and Kerrys. Of the imported varieties, the New Zealand and Cape sheep skins are the best. The former, principally merino stock, not only provide very fine wool, but also pelts of choice quality and large pattern. Although the quality of the wool of Australian merino sheep is little, if any, inferior to that of the New Zealand type, the skins are not so good in quality, due, no doubt, to the hotter climate, which is favourable to the breeding of insects and other pests which damage the skins. The Cape sheep provide a skin which is quite different in texture from that of any other breed. It has a certain looseness of texture and softness of grain which make it particularly suitable for the manufacture of glove leather. South America is another large sheep-breeding country; but the skins of this variety are not largely imported into England, most of them being sent to Mazamet, the great centre of the fellmongering industry in France. Buenos Aires skins are the most favoured of the South American skins, owing to their large size and good substance. Monte Videos are also very fine skins. Smyrnas and Bagdads are other well-known varieties, but they are generally imported in a rough-tanned condition, or, as it is known technically, "in the crust." Leather-dressers finish them for various purposes, but mainly for boot and shoe lining leather. When properly tanned by the natives, these skins produce a supple finish, especially those of the Smyrna variety. Unfortunately, many lots are merely coloured on the surface with the tan liquor, with the result that they dry hard and tinny; such partially-tanned leather is very difficult to finish and is rarely satisfactory. Even when the tannage is completed elsewhere before finishing them, they never produce such good leather as skins properly tanned in the first instance. Russia is another important country for the production of all kinds of raw hides and skins suitable for leather manufacture. American tanners buy very largely from this market, and a few enterprising firms even send their own representatives to the great annual fair held at Nishni Novgorod, where large quantities of dried hides and skins, besides many other kinds of produce, are offered for sale. British tanners take comparatively little interest in this important supply, but, as a result of the great European War, an increase of trade between Russia and the United Kingdom is anticipated, although the Russian leather trade is developing rapidly and will absorb increasing quantities of native raw material. Excepting a few in Ireland, raw goat skins are not produced in Great Britain. The chief drawback to goat breeding there is a somewhat inexplicable aversion on the part of the public to the flesh of goats; although another reason may be the destructive nature of the animals themselves, for they devour and uproot anything edible that comes in their way. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that some of the large areas of uncultivated land in Great Britain are not given up to the breeding of goats on a large scale, since these hardy animals will thrive on rough, hilly lands. Apart from the value of the meat, it might be a paying proposition to rear large herds of goats for the supply of milk (which is more nourishing than cows') and skins. Leather-dressers are, therefore, dependent on imported supplies, of which the principal sources are India (North-Western District), Mexico, Arabia, Africa, South America, and several European countries. Goat skins from the main sources of supply vary very much in quality--even those produced in the same country. In India, for example, skins may be obtained in some districts which can be made into leather to sell at about 5d. per square foot; from another district, when finished into the same kind of leather, say glazed kid, they may be worth 1s. 4d.[1] per foot. Fineness and clearness of grain and good substance are the main essentials of a first-class goat-skin leather; unfortunately these qualities are rarely combined in one class of skin, and there is a decided surplus of light thin skins which are hardly saleable, even for ladies' shoes. Some American shoemakers overcome this difficulty by pasting a piece of cloth on the back of the skin. In fairness to the buyer, the boots made of such leather should be specially marked, as the wearing quality of a backed thin leather is not to be compared with one naturally stout. [1] It must be understood that, owing to the war, these prices have been greatly increased. The skins of goats are used for many purposes besides the manufacture of the famous glacé kid leather; gloves, moroccos for bookbinding, upholstery for furniture, fancy articles such as purses, pocket-books, bags, and ladies' belts all require large quantities of goat and kid skins. It may be pointed out here, however, that quite nine-tenths of the so-called kid gloves are made of lamb and sheep skins. In appearance, there is very little difference between the real kid and the lamb skin gloves, but the former are more durable and warmer in wear than the latter. With an enormous range of qualities, it is a difficult task for the goat-skin dresser to find the most suitable sorts for his trade. The skins used in the glove industry are largely obtained from the Near Eastern countries, Arabia, Austria, Spain, and the Cape. The selections best suited to the making of glazed and "patent" (japanned) kid are found in the North-Western provinces of India, Brazil, China, Russia (especially the Asiatic provinces), Mexico, the Cape, and Arabia. The Indian goats known as the Patnas, which are collected in the district of Behar, are commonly supposed to be the best in the world, chiefly because of their fine grain and stout substance; but the best Brazilian and Mexican skins are equally good in quality. The best moroccos for fancy articles are made from Continental skins, and in this respect Germany has the great advantage of a good supply of native skins. Norway and Spain also provide skins suitable for real morocco leather. A very large quantity of Indian-tanned goat skins are imported into European countries and dressed for "morocco" leather. There should be a distinctive name for this class of leather, as, although it is similar in appearance, it is not nearly so good in quality as the real morocco. In addition to cattle hides, sheep, and goat skins, which are the main supply of raw material for leather, other kinds of hides and skins are utilised. Horse hides, which, in the United Kingdom, are graded according to size and quality in four or five selections and sold by the piece, are largely used on the Continent, and especially in Germany; nearly all of the British production being sold to that country. When chrome tanned, these hides produce quite a serviceable upper leather of good wearing quality, but, owing to their somewhat loose texture, the characteristic grain of box calf cannot be reproduced naturally, and the surface of the leather has, therefore, to be printed. This style of finished leather does not meet with the favour of British boot manufacturers, and the industry has not been greatly developed in consequence. In view of the increasing cost of other kinds of leather, however, more attention may be paid to that made from horse hide, but the supply of this raw material is very small compared to the production on the Continent, where horse flesh is consumed freely. Russia produces large quantities of horse hides and colt skins, most of which are exported to the United States of America, where they are made chiefly into japanned, or so-called "patent," leather, which commands a very high price in relation to the cost of the raw material. Next in importance to horse hides is the pig skin, which produces a wonderfully tough leather. The pig skin leather industry is chiefly confined to Scotland and Germany, the reason being that the skins are left on the carcases in the other parts of the world. On the average, a pig skin is worth about 6s., yet it is seldom removed from the carcase. One reason is the great difficulty of flaying the animal; it appears to be almost impossible by present methods to remove the skin without cutting away a large quantity of fat, and the value of the skin compared to the loss of weight of the meat offers very little inducement to remove the skin, in addition to which, the custom of leaving the rind on bacon and pork effectually prevents any attempt at present to increase the supply of pig skins. This is a great loss to the leather trade, for the pig skin is particularly suitable for saddles and various kinds of strong leather goods. Imitation pig-skin leather is made from hides, shoulders, bellies, or persians, but real pig skin is distinguished from the imitation by its peculiarly marked grain, formed of groups of three small holes which penetrate well into the skin and form part of the sheaths of the pig's bristles. Among other skins useful for leather are those of the wallaby, kangaroo, dog, lizard, crocodile, alligator, ichneumon, frog (Japanese), deer, antelope, and chamois, while it is said that even rabbit skins have been pressed into service in Germany, though they cannot have much value owing to their small size and thin substance. Dog-skin leather wears well, mainly on account of the large amount of natural grease present in the skin, but the supplies are naturally small. The hides of the walrus, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and other wild animals are also tanned in small quantities, walrus leather being well adapted for knife and sword polishing. The mammals also contribute their quota to the supply of raw material of the leather trade, the seal perhaps, being the most important. This refers to the hairy seal hunted off the North American coast. The raw skins are shipped chiefly from Newfoundland, where the industry of seal fishing is well organised and provides employment for about 6,000 men. The seal caught in the North Atlantic Ocean is hairy and quite distinct from the fur seal captured in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska. The skin of the hair seal is only suitable for making into leather, but there is a layer of fat underneath it which furnishes a valuable raw material for the manufacture of oils and soap. The skins are salted and shipped to America and England. They are easily distinguished from other kinds of commercial hides and skins by the oily appearance of the flesh side. According to an American Consular Report, the results of the fishing during the season 1913 were satisfactory. The total number of seals captured was 272,965, which were valued at £98,800. The number of skins exported was 212,285, valued at £64,300, of which the United States of America bought 151,355, the United Kingdom 60,754, and Canada 176. The porpoise, or sea hog, has a very useful hide which, when dressed, makes a tough leather suitable for laces. The hides of other cetaceous mammals, such as the whale and narwhal, are convertible into useful leather. The British "porpoise" laces are generally made from the skin of the white whale (_beluga_). DEFECTS OF RAW HIDES AND SKINS A remarkable feature of the leather trade is the great waste due to the careless preparation of a large number of hides and skins. Naturally, owing to their greatly increased value in recent years, there has been a decided improvement, but much loss occurs every day from damage to hides which ought to be avoided. The chief faults are in flaying and curing, but there are other important defects due to natural causes. Bad flaying may be due (1) to cutting holes in the hides or skins; (2) to "scoring" or "siding" (_i.e._, cutting into the hide without going completely through), this generally occurring in the flanks or sides which are the most difficult parts of the hide to remove from the carcase; and (3) to mis-shaping the hide, which ought to be left square. Any or all of these defects may be found in a single hide. Despite the active work of several proprietors of hide markets and the tanners' federations the proportion of badly-flayed hides in England constitutes a serious loss, which, however, may not fall directly on either the butcher or the tanner, for the former may save in wages by employing an inexperienced slaughterman, while the tanner pays a reduced price for the hide. The losses due to bad flaying and curing in the United Kingdom are mainly attributable to the butchers' preference to kill these beasts in their own back-yard rather than in a public abattoir. Many of these small private slaughterhouses ought to be condemned by the authorities; but very few people outside those immediately interested have taken the trouble to inspect a modern public abattoir where everything is provided to carry on the work expeditiously and hygienically. On the Continent, where the conservatism of traders is not permitted to interfere with the public welfare to such an extent as it is in England, public abattoirs have become quite a feature in many cities, and one of the principal results of the system has been a remarkable improvement in the preparation of raw hides and skins for the tanner. In fact, a mechanical method of flaying has been invented in Paris, and is used extensively at the public abattoirs, by which hides are removed from cattle without a single mark or scratch. The method is known as _dépouille mécanique_ (mechanical flaying) and consists in forcibly removing, by means of a windlass worked by electric power, the portions of hide which adhere firmly to the carcase and which are found over the ribs, the buttocks, and the tail. The remaining part of the hide can be easily removed with the ordinary butchers' flaying knife or with a heavy hammer of special design. The apparatus required to carry out the mechanical method of flaying, beyond the fixtures in the abattoirs where the process is adopted, consist of two lengths of chain to hold the carcase firmly, two special hammers, and one pair of strong pincers; the cost of one set is about £4. Mr. Gaston Tainturier, of Paris, is the inventor of this system, which has added thousands of pounds to the incomes of Parisian butchers. Figure 1 is from a photograph taken at the Islington (London) Abattoir, where a demonstration of the process was given by Mr. Tainturier in February, 1913. Naturally, this method cannot be adopted in small slaughterhouses in back-yards, but is readily adaptable to public abattoirs, where practically all of the heavy work is done by electrical power. This exemplifies only one of several advantages of modern abattoirs over private slaughterhouses. Although it cannot be expected that the English butchers will readily change their prejudice against modern abattoirs, they are slowly but gradually improving the flaying process in view of the high prices paid for perfect hides. The most progressive of the proprietors of the English hide markets are offering money prizes to slaughtermen for the best flayed hides. Strictly speaking, this encouragement should come from the butcher, who receives the benefit of increased prices for hides removed without a scratch. The Tainturier system, however, gives better results, no matter how well the hides are removed with the knife. The method is not patented, and it is open to anyone to adopt it merely for the cost of the apparatus, yet, despite this gain, no butcher outside France and Belgium has yet adopted the method, although the trade is losing hundreds of pounds every week through bad flaying. Several other systems of improved flaying have been devised, and some of them patented, but very few have been adopted on a practical scale. One of the most useful consists of fixing a safeguard about a quarter of an inch from the edge of the knife; this prevents the possibility of cutting holes into the hide, although it does not, of course, prevent scoring, which is a serious defect in hides made into sole leather. A safe method is to use a sharp knife of hard wood, such as hickory, which has been successfully tried in one of the large American meat-packing establishments. The hides from these abattoirs are generally well-flayed, properly cured, and closely trimmed, with the result that they command higher prices than any other class of salted hides. The quotations for "packer" hides are followed with keen interest by tanners in all parts of the world. [Illustration: FIG. 1 MECHANICAL FLAYING (_dépouille mécanique_)] Another useful method of preventing damage to the hides by cuts with a knife is that invented by Mr. E. Pim, a Liverpool hide factor. The apparatus used is known as the tail extractor. It is of simple construction, consisting of four pieces of iron riveted together loosely in the shape of a diamond with a clamp attached to secure the tail. The hide is then forcibly removed from the tail and the buttocks by pulling it downward (Fig. 2). The importance of this operation can be gauged from the fact that by the use of the butcher's knife both of these parts of the hide are often cut very badly. [Illustration: FIG. 2 PIM'S SYSTEM OF FLAYING] Even the apparently trivial matter of removing the hide from the cheeks and face is economically important, for, unless those parts are removed so as to get the maximum surface, they are only fit to be cut off and thrown in a pit with other pieces and roundings which are made into glue. Imperfect preservation is another serious form of damage to hides and one that cannot be easily remedied in some of the hot climates. Hides and skins may be simply dried, salted and dried, wet-salted, treated with arsenic solution and dried, brined or pickled with acid and salt; of these methods the last-named is the most effective, but is not practicable, or, at least, has not yet been applied practically to the cure of hides and calf skins. Salt is not available, or is too costly in most tropical countries; hence, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Colombian, and Arabian hides and skins are generally exported in a dry condition. Even when the hides are dried under the best conditions in a cool and shady place, they are of less value than a fresh or a wet-salted hide, owing to a certain loss of gelatinous matter in softening them before they can be placed in the lime liquors. But it not infrequently happens that hides are dried by exposure to the hot sun, or perhaps in a strong current of air. In either case, the hide is much reduced in value and may be irreparably ruined. The effect of submitting hides to these conditions is that the exterior surface becomes rapidly dry and, naturally, contracted, so that the air or heat cannot reach the interior, which retains moisture. This moist inner layer may be quite thin, but it contains sufficient nutrient to develop putrefactive organisms, so that when the hide is soaked in water it practically falls to pieces. The effect of hot sun or heat of any kind is, of course, disastrous to raw hides and skins, and there have been not a few claims on shipping companies as the result of storing hides near the boilers of ships. Salt is almost invariably used for curing both hides and calf skins, but though it is a good preservative it has one or two minor defects. It contains too much water, and is liable to contain traces of iron which is inimical to both raw hides and leather in process of manufacture. Common salt is also liable to cause stains which cannot be removed in later processes, and which are even accentuated in the tan liquors. One trade chemist attributes these stains to the presence of calcium sulphate (Ca. SO_{4}) or gypsum in the salt, which is converted into calcium phosphate by the action of the phosphoric acid in the nuclei of the hide on the sulphate of calcium. Another well-known technical chemist is certain that stains are produced by the growth of bacteria, and to prove his assertion prepared in gelatine several cultures from salt-stained skins. Practical men generally attribute the stains to the presence of blood on the hides or skins at the time of curing, and the majority of the stains are probably due to this cause, although the presence of calcium sulphate as an impurity of the salt would undoubtedly contribute to this defect. Blood contains a percentage of iron, and, with other extraneous matters, should be washed from the hides before salting them. Fortunately, chemists have lately paid attention to the advantages of the use of pure salt in various industries, with the result that at least two chemically pure products are now available. The use of these salts should be general for the cure of hides and skins, as they are quite dry, and, therefore, easily spread. As a curing agent, they are much more effective and lasting than common salt. The use of glauber salts (Na_{2} SO_{4}) is recommended by the International Commission for the Preservation, Cure, and Disinfection of Hides and Skins instead of ordinary salt, where the latter is unobtainable. The preparation of a sterilised salt, however, renders its export a practical proposition to almost any part of the world. Although the loss due to bad curing and flaying is very great, it is quite small compared with the damage caused by natural defects. The ravages of disease cause a great wastage of hides and skins, as animals infected with anthrax are immediately destroyed and cremated in all civilised countries, while, in Great Britain, foot-and-mouth disease is kept in check by the same drastic method. In many other countries, the infected cattle are isolated, treated with an antiseptic hoof-and-mouth wash and generally cured, as it is a mild fever which soon runs its course, although it is very contagious. The germ of foot-and-mouth disease has not yet been discovered, for the most powerful microscope fails to reveal its presence, but cattle readily show the complaint, as their hoofs and mouths become covered with swollen lesions. Another kind of fever, known as "tick," was prevalent in the southern part of the United States, but this disease was eventually eliminated by systematically "dipping" the cattle three or four times a year. The cattle "dip" used effectually prevented the ravages of the fly which caused the disease. A similar method has of late years been adopted in South Africa, with the result that cattle-raising in that country is developing rapidly. Anthrax is due to the presence of _bacillus anthracis_, a vegetable organism of Siberian origin. Dry Chinese and Russian hides are specially liable to contain the spores of anthrax, and, as the disease proves fatal to workmen infected by it unless treatment with anti-anthrax serum be given in the early stages, hides and skins from infected areas should be disinfected before shipment. The method proposed by Mr. A. Seymour-Jones, which consists in treating hides with very dilute formic acid and one part of bichloride of mercury in 1,000 of water, and afterwards with a saturated solution of salt solution (.02 per cent.) of bichloride of mercury, seems to be the most effective without damaging the hides. [Illustration: WARBLE FLY (1) Egg, (2) Larva, (3 and 4) Chrysalides, (5) Natural form of fly, (6) Magnified fly.] A peculiar natural defect is found in many South American goat skins, especially the Brazilian, which are often badly scratched by the animals rubbing themselves against cactus plants. Although, perhaps, more of an artificial than a natural defect, the scratches caused by cattle rubbing their hides against barbed wire constitute a serious, but easily avoidable, loss. Such a barbarous system of fencing ought never to be used. [Illustration: A KIP CONTAINING 584 HOLES CAUSED BY THE WARBLE FLY (The skin belongs to W. D. Mark & Sons, Hide Factors, Newcastle.)] [Illustration: FIG. 3 HOLE IN COW HIDE, MADE BY THE GRUB OF THE WARBLE FLY (Magnified fifteen times)] The most serious loss in connection with hides and skins, however, is caused by the warble flies, _hypoderma bovis_ and _hypoderma lineatum_, which lay their eggs on the hides of cattle. It has been a debatable point for some years as to whether these eggs hatched and burrowed their way into the hides from the exterior or were licked and swallowed by the cattle and, after traversing the digestive tract, pierced the hide from the interior. Professor Carpenter, who has been experimenting a number of years for the Department of Agriculture for Ireland, has succeeded in taking a remarkable photograph (Fig. 3) which proves that the larvae penetrate the hide from the exterior. These develop within the hide and often penetrate to the flesh before they fall out to the ground and change into the fly. The most effective way of getting rid of the pest is to destroy the larvae, either by cutting them out and crushing them under foot, or by piercing them with a hot needle. No satisfactory dressing has yet been found, but Prof. Carpenter states that sulphur dioxide is effectual, if a good method of applying it can be devised. While sheep skins are immune from the attacks of the warble fly, they are often damaged by the blow-fly, lice, keds, and ticks; by scab caused by the action of a mite or acarus; and by "cockle," which causes a wrinkled grain. The origin of cockle is not definitely known, but it is a seasonal defect which begins to show on a large number of skins in December and does not disappear until the sheep are shorn in the following spring. CHAPTER III TANNING MATERIALS Tanning materials are derived from the vegetable, mineral, and animal kingdoms. The vegetable materials used are woods, barks, shrubs, leaves, and fruits, either in their natural state or in the form of extracts. The majority of the minerals have a more or less tanning effect on animal fibres, but the principal are basic chrome salts, formaldehyde, alum and salt. Titanium, iron, cerium and potassium salts also convert skins into leather, but are not yet used commercially. The animal matters that will convert skins into leather consist of oxidised oils (chamois leather), fats, and brains (crown, Helvetia, or Preller's leather). Each of these classes of tanning materials has characteristic effects which render them easily distinguishable. The use of combinations of vegetable and mineral tannins has lately increased, and it is possible that the blending of the two classes of materials may produce an ideal tannage for certain classes of leather. In fact, this result is already claimed for a chemically combined tanning material which, according to the American patent, is prepared by the following method: 125 lb. of solid quebracho extract is dissolved in the same weight of hot water and allowed to cool; 16 lb. of commercial caustic soda dissolved in two or three times its weight of water is added, and the mixture agitated about half an hour; 150 lb. of chromium sulphate is then added. In this way an insoluble tannate of chrome is produced, but, on boiling and agitating, it changes to a greenish brown colour and forms a sulphotannate of chrome. The combination of the alum tannage and gambier (a vegetable extract) has been used successfully for years past. Another combination which has given good practical results is the tannage with alum and chrome salts in the manufacture of glove leather. The vegetable materials containing tannin should be arranged botanically, but the following classification is simpler for practical purposes. NATURAL TANNING MATERIALS 1. _Barks._--Oak, Hemlock, Pine, Fir, Alder, Khaki, Willow, Cork, Mimosa or Wattle, Babool, Larch, Mangrove, Spruce, Elm, Birch, Pomegranate, Cebil. 2. _Leaves, Twigs, etc._--Sumach, Mangrove, Mango, Eucalyptus, Pistacia, Lentiscus. 3. _Roots._--Canaigre, Palmetto. 4. _Fruits._--Myrobalans, Valonia, Divi-Divi, Cascalote, Mangosteen, Pomegranate, Celavinia, Bablah, Algarobilla. 5. _Excrescences._--Gall Nuts, Chinese Galls, Pistacia Galls, Tamarisk Galls. TANNING EXTRACTS 1. _Woods._--Oak, Quebracho, Hemlock, Chestnut, Mimosa, Mangrove, Spruce. 2. _Barks._--Oak, Wattle or Mimosa, Larch. 3. _Shrubs, Leaves, etc._--Gambier, Cutch, Catechu, Kino, Sumach. 4. _Fruits._--Myrobalans, Valonia. 5. _Roots._--Palmetto. Of these materials, only about twenty are of much importance commercially, the principal being oak, chestnut, quebracho, hemlock, valonia, gambier, myrobalans, mimosa or wattle, sumach, mangrove, divi-divi, spruce, larch, and babool. OAK BARK (_quercus robur_) is still an important material, but is rarely used alone. The bark from English oaks contains from 8-14 per cent. of tannin (quercitannic acid) as estimated by the impregnation of a standardised hide powder in a given quantity of the tanning material in solution. Owing to its weakness in tannin compared with other materials, oak bark tans very slowly. Used for sole leather, it would not produce the essential quality of firmness and solidity, and it is now customary to use a stronger tanning material, such as valonia, or valonia extract, or gambier in the latter stages of the process. This is the nearest approach to the pure oak bark tannage of former days, and, if carefully regulated, is a great improvement on the old method. If dressing hides and calf skins required for boot upper leather are bark-tanned, the tannage is often completed in a sumach liquor, the object in this case being to lighten the colour so that the leather can be dyed evenly. In England, oak bark is harvested in April and May, when the sap rises in the tree. Rings are cut round the tree soon after it is felled and the bark is peeled from the tree with a special tool which is forced between the bark and the wood. It is peeled in narrow strips about 3 ft. in length, and on delivery to the tannery is stacked in huge ricks. If harvested in a good, dry condition, the bark is said to improve with age, although analytical tests have shown that there is always a certain loss of tannin. An old rick is much darker in colour than a new one, owing to exposure to the air. Coppice bark from young trees is preferred by tanners, as it is free from ross and generally contains more tannin than the rough bark. In view of the modern demand for materials in extract form, English oak bark would almost certainly be preferred in the form of a concentrated liquid, if the supply of the raw material was plentiful within a limited area. During the last few years it has not met with a ready sale, owing to the large supply of other materials, but it would doubtless regain some of its former popularity if it were prepared in the form of an extract containing about 25 per cent. of tannin. The only oak bark extract on the market is the American chestnut oak (_quercus prinus_). OAK WOOD is very largely used for the manufacture of tanning extract, especially in Hungary and Canada. The extract contains from 24-28 per cent. of tannin, and is extensively used in the tannage of heavy leathers, as it strengthens the liquors and hastens the process, while keeping the quality of the leather at a high standard. VALONIA (_quercus aegilops_) is the acorn cups of an oak tree which grows abundantly in Asia Minor and the Greek Archipelago. No other part but the acorn cups is exported. The harvest in Asia Minor takes place in August, when the fruit ripens and the cups can be easily beaten from the trees. They are left to dry on the ground and are then sent to stores in seaport towns, and principally to Smyrna. The drying is still further completed in spacious warehouses, where the cups are spread out and turned over until fermentation ceases. During this process the acorns shrink and are rejected. The cups should be perfectly dried and very hard before export. The Turkish valonia contains from 30 to 35 per cent. of tannin, and is of much better quality than the Greek, which is usually harvested before it is ripe, and, therefore, contains the acorn. As the acorn has practically no tannin value, the Greek valonia contains only 25 to 28 per cent. tannin. There are several grades of valonia, the best going to Russia, Austria, and Italy. English tanners seem to prefer the lower qualities at present, probably because the price is much less than that of the best grade. The beard of the valonia cup is much richer in tannin than the shell, and, as several of the spines become detached during the storage of the material, there is always a certain quantity of beard (_trillo_) on offer. This may contain up to 42 per cent. of tannin, but its price is usually the same as that of ordinary valonia. Of late years, very large quantities of valonia have been made into extract at two works in Smyrna. The production of extract will no doubt increase, with a corresponding reduction in the export of the raw material. The great advantages of the extract over the natural cup are its superior strength of tannin (60 to 65 per cent.), easier solubility, uniformity of quality, lower cost per unit of tan, and guaranteed purity. Valonia is well adapted for the tannage of sole leather in conjunction with oak bark, for it deposits a heavy bloom (ellagic acid), imparts weight and solidity, and increases the resistance of the leather to moisture. THE CHESTNUT TREE (_castanea vesca_) probably provides the next tanning material of importance. This must not be confused with the chestnut oak, an American tree which also yields a very useful tannin. The chestnut is indigenous to the South of France and Italy, where the forests have been considerably reduced in size to meet the great demand for this popular tanning material. The greater part of the denuded forests have not been replanted with the chestnut, as the land has been put under cultivation whenever possible. A further depletion has been caused by the ravages of an insect, which turns the interior of the wood quite black and renders it unfit for tanning purposes. It will, naturally, be several years before the supply is exhausted, even if no reafforestation is undertaken. As it is the most important tanning material grown in France, and the chestnuts are used as a food, steps may be taken to cultivate the trees on areas unsuitable for agriculture. Liquid chestnut extract contains from 30 to 32 per cent. of tannin, and, when decolorised, gives a light brown colour to the leather. It is rarely, if ever, used alone, but generally in conjunction with quebracho, valonia or myrobalan extracts. THE CHESTNUT OAK TREE is indigenous to America and the wood yields a very good tanning extract, containing up to 30 per cent. of tannin. This material is the principal tanning agent used in America, where the tannages are roughly classified in three sections: (1) oak, (2) hemlock, and (3) the union (_i.e._, a mixture of hemlock and oak). American tanners also use other materials to a smaller extent, chiefly for blending with the principal tannins. Quebracho and spruce extracts are specially favoured. QUEBRACHO COLORADO is a tree indigenous to South America, the best wood for tanning purposes being found in the Gran Chaco district in the north of Argentina, and in Uruguay. The wood contains from 17 to 22 per cent. of tannin, and is so hard and heavy that it sinks in water. In fact, its name is derived from two Portuguese words meaning "axe-breaker." After felling the trees, they are cut up into logs about 4 ft. in length and either exported in this state to Hamburg, Havre, and Liverpool, or sent to the numerous factories in close proximity to the forests to be made into extract, in which an enormous trade has of late years been developed. Very little of the natural material is now used, as, even after cutting the wood into chips, the tannin is extracted only with great difficulty, whereas the extract can be treated with sulphites, alkalies, or neradol (the artificial tannin) to render it easily soluble, besides which the concentration of the material raises the percentage of its tannin to 65 or even 70 per cent. Owing, perhaps, to faulty preparation, this tanning extract was not well received at first, but it is now among the principal tannins and increases in importance every year. MYROBALANS is the unripe fruit of an Indian tree (_terminalia chebula_) and contains from 35 to 40 per cent. of tannin which gives a light colour to leather. This material is useful both for light and heavy leathers, but is generally used in admixture with other tannins. It deposits much bloom (ellagic acid) and is largely used for brightening the dark colour produced by other tannins. A large quantity of this material is now made into extracts, which are more convenient to handle and more uniform in strength of tannin. Natural myrobalans have the appearance of shrivelled nutmegs, except that they are yellowish in colour; they are very hard and require a special milling machine to reduce them to powder. The quality of myrobalan nuts varies in different districts, the best being Bhimlies and Jubbalpores. SUMACH is a valuable tanning material, and is used for a large proportion of the light and fancy leathers. It is a small bush plant which grows in Italy, Spain, Southern France, America, and Algeria, but of the numerous varieties the Sicilian (_rhus coriaria_) is by far the most important. Sumach is one of the few materials cultivated on an extensive scale; most tanning materials are derived from natural sources and, chiefly owing to the length of time before trees reach maturity, it would not be a paying proposition to cultivate them. The sumach shrubs are propagated from small cuttings and the leaves can be picked at the end of the first year, but it is better to allow the shrubs to become more firmly established before stripping them. The leaves are dried and sometimes exported whole, especially for the use of the silk manufacturers in Lyons; but they are more often ground to a fine powder. All sumachs should be ventilated to remove foreign matters and all traces of iron, which would cause dark bluish stains on the leather. "Ventilation" is effected by passing currents of air, preferably with a fan, through a narrow room, when the pure sumach is sent forward, while the heavier particles of dirt and small pieces of wood remain behind. Sometimes the process is repeated, and the best brands of sumach are generally described as "pure, extra ventilated." As far as possible, the male plants (_mascolino sommacco_) are cultivated in Sicily, where the best sumach is grown. Female sumach (_femminello sommacco_), grown in parts of Italy, is weaker in tannin than the male, but is rarely sold separately. The serious amount of adulteration formerly practised by the admixture of inferior plants, and particularly of lentisco (_pistacia lentisco_) led to the Italian Government taking strong action a few years ago, and it is now possible, for a very small sum, to have any consignment inspected and analysed by the Government. Lentisco is now sold separately and is used for common work. Sumach has been successfully introduced into Australia, but its development is retarded owing to difficulties of labour, which render competition with the European product almost impossible. An inferior sumach (_rhus glabra_) is grown in America, chiefly in the State of Virginia. It contains from 15 to 20 per cent. of tannin, and produces a darker coloured leather than Sicilian, the best qualities of which contain 27 to 30 per cent. of tannin. A useful test for finding out if a sumach has been adulterated is to treat a small quantity with strong nitric acid, which destroys the structure of the leaves. The mass is washed and neutralised with an alkali, when the appearance of the midrib and veins of the leaves of the common adulterants are easily recognised. Sumach is not so much used for shoe upper leather as it formerly was, but it is the best tanning agent for many kinds of fancy light leathers, such as bookbinding, calf, and skivers (the grain of split sheep skins), moroccos, furniture leather, etc. It is also less subject to the action of the air and gaslight than any other tanning material, and is strongly recommended for tanning purposes by a special committee appointed by the Society of Arts to enquire into causes of the rapid decay of leather bindings. Sumach is very useful for brightening up the colour of leather tanned with darker tannins, and is frequently used for improving the colour of both dressing and sole leather. By itself, it yields an almost white leather which affords a good foundation for the most delicate shades. GAMBIER or TERRA JAPONICA (_uncaria gambir_) is a crude extract of a shrub indigenous to the Malay Peninsula. Nearly the whole of the production is shipped from Singapore. The leaves and twigs are boiled in an iron vessel, and when the mass has become syrupy it is strained through a rough sieve into a shallow tub, where it is cooled. The liquor is stirred while cooling and rapidly thickens. Before it sets, it is cut into 1 in. cubes and thoroughly dried. Good qualities contain from 50-65 per cent. of tannin. An inferior product, called "block gambier," is made by allowing the syrupy mass to set in large blocks weighing about 2 cwt. each. These are packed in coarse matting. The strength of tannin varies from 30 to 40 per cent. Gambier is a good tanning material, but its use has been declining for some years past owing to its being frequently adulterated with sago and other farinaceous plants. However, a pure gambier extract, manufactured on the latest scientific principles, has been placed on the market, and there will undoubtedly be a revival of the use of this valuable tannin. This pure gambier is prepared at Asahan, in Sumatra, and is guaranteed to contain a minimum of 38 per cent. of tannin. Gambier can be used to advantage in keeping up the strength of bark liquors in the tannage of sole leather and hastening the process, while it may be used alone for the tannage of boot upper leather and dressing hides. It produces an exceptionally mellow and plump leather. It is preferable, however, to complete a gambier tannage with a little oak wood or quebracho extract, in order to fix the tannin principle of gambier, which, perhaps on account of its viscosity, does not readily combine with the fibres of the skin. MANGROVE or MANGLE, a tree found on the coasts of several tropical countries, yields a useful bark for tanning purposes. At low tide, these trees show their great arched roots standing high above the ground. The best varieties, the _ceriops_ species, are found in the East Indies and Bengal, and the bark of these is said to contain sometimes nearly 40 per cent. of tannin. Other varieties contain from 15 to 25 per cent. The bark is generally made into a solid extract, or "cutch," in which form it contains more than 60 per cent. of tannin, It is useful to blend with other materials, such as oak wood, chestnut, and quebracho extracts, but used by itself it imparts a strong reddish colour to the leather. Some of the Indian varieties are used as dyeing materials, and act as a satisfactory mordant in dyeing leather a dark shade. MIMOSA or WATTLE trees, which belong to the _acacia_ species, yield bark rich in tannin. Australia is the native country of several varieties, including the Black Wattle (_acacia pycnantha_), the Golden Wattle (_A. longifolia_), and the Green Wattle (_A. decurrens_). The bark contains from 20 to 45 per cent. of tannin. The cultivation of wattle in Australia seems to have declined, owing to the high cost of labour and inability to compete with the mimosa bark imported from South Africa, where it is cultivated on a very large scale and where labour conditions are more favourable for the growers, as is clearly shown by the fact that the wattle growers in Australia successfully petitioned the Government a short time ago to place a duty of £1 10s. per ton on the imported bark. The introduction of the industry into South Africa was quite an interesting adventure. A Mr. Vanderplank brought the seeds from Australia to England about seventy years ago, and afterwards took them to South Africa, where, in recognition of certain services a few months after his arrival, he was granted a farm by the Dutch Government. He then planted the seeds of the black wattle, which grew so well that it was only a question of developing the industry. It was some years before any African bark was exported, and only £11 worth was shipped in 1886. In 1911, the exports had risen to £288,000. Wattle trees can be grown on soil that is unsuitable for agriculture, and there is every prospect of the industry expanding in South Africa, where a factory has lately been established for the purpose of converting the bark into an extract, which, it is said, will contain between 50 and 60 per cent. of tannin. By far the greater proportion of wattle bark is still exported in the natural form, ground or chopped, and packed into bags weighing about 1 cwt. each. Before the European War nearly the whole of the bark was shipped to Hamburg, English tanners taking very little interest in it, although it was largely used by German tanners. But since the supplies of the materials favoured by British tanners have become somewhat restricted, attention has been drawn to the value of mimosa bark. DIVI-DIVI (_caesalpinia coriaria_) is the dried pods of a Central American tree. It has also been successfully cultivated in India. The pods are rich in tannin, containing anything from 40-50 per cent., but its value is discounted by its liability to fermentation, which, however, may be checked to some extent by the use of antiseptics, such as carbolic acid, formaldehyde, or by the addition of synthetic tannin, neradol. If this tendency to fermentation and oxidation of the colouring matter could be checked completely, divi-divi would be a valuable material, as it makes a firm leather of good colour. When dried, the pods curl up in the shape of the letters S and C. The tannin is found in the husks of the pod. The seeds, which contain no tannin, are so hard that it has not yet been found profitable to extract the oil from them. Very similar tanning materials to divi-divi are cascalote, indigenous to Mexico, and algarobilla (_caesalpinia brevifolia_) which grows in Chili. Cascalote is chiefly used by Mexican tanners and is rarely exported. Algarobilla is not available in large quantities, otherwise it would be largely used in Great Britain, as it does not ferment so readily as divi-divi, and is even richer in tannin. CELAVINIA (also spelt celavina and cevalina) has been on the English market since 1905, but has only lately been sold in large quantities. The scarcity of some of the popular tanning materials since the outbreak of the European War resulted in enquiries for materials that were very little known, and celavinia has proved worthy of attention. It consists of the seed pods of the tree _caesalpinia tinctoria_, which grows abundantly in certain districts of Central and South America. The pod is from 4 to 6 in. long and is flaky when dried. It contains 30 to 32 per cent, of tannin of the pyrogallol class, and gives a very light-coloured and almost white leather. It is the only pyrogallol tannin which does not deposit bloom, or ellagic acid, on the leather. It may be used as a substitute for sumach in tanning, but has not the same bleaching effect in the retanning process. A tanning extract of celavinia would be useful for some classes of light leathers, where paleness of tint is important. It is difficult to make a second extraction of tannin in the case of the natural material, as, after the first extraction, it forms a soft pulp, through which water will not easily percolate. HEMLOCK (_abies canadiensis_) is an important tanning material, both the bark and the wood being extensively used in America. The wood is now generally converted into extracts in factories built near the principal forests. Of late years, this extract has been imported into the United Kingdom in fairly large quantities, in order to produce a cheap red sole leather to compete with the American hemlock-tanned leather. It contains only about 25 per cent. of tannin, but its value is increased by its contents of insoluble non-tannins, which give weight and solidity to the leather. Hemlock really gives a strong, durable leather, but in America the practice of using artificial weighing materials, such as glucose and Epsom salts, with a reduced quantity of tanning material, has considerably lowered the value of this leather. In addition to the materials described, there are several of minor importance which can only be briefly mentioned. LARCH BARK is obtained from the tree _larix Europea_, which is found in Scotland and North Europe. It contains 10-12 per cent. of tannin, which gives a light colour and pleasant odour to leather. Scotch basils (sheep skins) are tanned with this bark. BIRCH BARK, from the white birch, _betula alba_, is another aromatic tanning material. It contains only about 5 per cent. of tannin, and is, therefore, generally used with other tanning materials. It contains a tar which imparts an agreeable scent to the leather that protects it from the ravages of insects. In conjunction with willow bark (_salix arenaria_) it is used in the tanning process for the real Russia leather. An oil containing the scent can be extracted from the birch bark by dry distillation, and this extract is sometimes used during the dyeing process, in the manufacture of imitation Russia leather, which, however, only retains the scent for a few months, whereas the real Russia leather has a permanent odour. CANAIGRE (_rumex hymenosepalum_) is the tuberous root of a dock plant indigenous to Mexico and the Southern States of America. It is fairly rich in tannin (25-30 per cent.) and yields a moderately firm leather. It contains too large a proportion of starch, however, and cannot be described as a really satisfactory tannin. Moreover, it is not harvested economically and the only way to make a satisfactory tannin of it is to convert it into extract and remove the starchy matters near the source of supply, if anyone dare take the risk of establishing a factory in Mexico. BABLAH or BABOOL (_acacia arabica_ or _acacia vera_) grows in India, Egypt, and the Sudan. The bark of the babool tree is one of the principal tanning materials used in India for hides, calf, and sheep skins, which are sent in large quantities to Great Britain in a rough-tanned state and dressed there. It contains 15-20 per cent. of tannin, which readily oxidises in the leather in contact with light, turning into a bright pink colour. It also seems to weaken the fibres of animal tissues, and, for that reason, babool-tanned leather was condemned by the Society of Arts Commission on Bookbinding. The pods contain from 20-30 per cent. of tannin and give a mellow and plump leather similar to that produced by gambier. The bleaching of the material is troublesome, and it is probable that its use would be increased if the tannin were prepared in the form of extract. CUTCH is a crude extract made from the Indian tree _acacia catechu_. This is the real cutch, as distinguished from the mangrove "cutch." It is very rich in tannin (50-60 per cent.), but contains a large proportion of insoluble matter and is, therefore, very little used for tanning. It is well adapted for the dyeing of dark colours or black with mineral strikers, such as chrome and iron salts; but its chief use is for tanning fishermen's nets, which it renders waterproof. Commercial tannic acid, used for medicinal purposes, is prepared from galls or excrescences on oak trees growing in Asia Minor. These galls are caused by an insect (_cynips_) puncturing the small branches and producing abnormal growth in the perforated parts. The acid is gallotannic, which, if used for making leather, would produce a soft, spongy, and nearly white leather. This tanning material is used a little by Near Eastern tanners, but the result is unsatisfactory. CLASSIFICATION OF TANNING MATERIALS Tanning materials are divided into two main classes: (1) Pyrogallol, (2) Catechol. The pyrogallol tannins give a bluish-black colour, and the catechol tannins a greenish-black, with iron salts. Bromine water does not precipitate pyrogallols, but causes a precipitate with catechols. Pyrogallols yield ellagic acid (called "bloom" in the trade), which improves the waterproof qualities of leather. On the other hand, catechols contain a large proportion of insoluble reds, or phlobaphenes, which are deposited between the fibres and thus give solidity to the leather. Pyrogallol tannins give a light coloured, soft leather, and can be used alone satisfactorily; but heavy leathers, such as sole and belting, need a blend of both kinds of tannin. The pyrogallol tannins include sumach, chestnut, myrobalans, divi-divi, oakwood, algarobilla, chestnut oak, willow, and galls. The catechols include quebracho, gambier, hemlock, mimosa or wattle, mangrove, larch, birch, canaigre, and cutch. Oak bark and valonia contain some of the properties of both classes of tannins. There are sub-divisions of these two classes, arranged according to chemical tests, by which one tanning material can be distinguished from another. TANNING EXTRACTS The manufacture of extracts from vegetable tanning materials has increased so rapidly of late years that the process of tanning has undergone radical changes; and, whereas the tanner was limited to three or four materials thirty years ago, he now has the choice of about twenty good materials. These tannins can be suitably blended to produce first-class leather. The processes in extract manufacture are few. The wood, bark, or fruit is broken up into small pieces and macerated in hot or cold water. The concentration of the liquid is done in vacuum, or in an evaporator. The latest method is to treat the tan liquor in a "triple-effect" evaporator (Fig. 4), the object of using three compartments being to economise in steam. This apparatus makes liquid extracts; where a powdered or crystal extract is required, the liquid is afterwards treated in a vacuum drying apparatus. Some extracts contain a lot of colouring matter and insoluble substances. To overcome this defect, they are clarified with blood albumen, sulphites, casein, or acetate of lead. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--TRIPLE-EFFECT EVAPORATOR (Blair, Campbell & McLean, Ltd.)] SYNTHETIC TANNINS The discovery of a synthetic tannin, in 1911, by Dr. Stiasny, who was then an assistant in the Leather Industries Department of Leeds University, created a great deal of interest in the leather trade, and can certainly be regarded as a triumph of the application of chemistry to industry. It was thought at first that these tannins might play as important a part in the leather trade as the synthetic dye-stuffs have, but it is now generally believed that this will not be the case. Their use is likely to be as an aid to tanning, rather than as a complete tanning agent, although it has been found practicable to use them for one or two classes of light skins, where it is essential that the colour of the leather should be nearly white. The original patent was taken out in September, 1911, in Austria, the native country of the inventor, but the patent rights have also been protected in other countries, while the manufacture and sale of the product passed into the hands of a large German dye firm, who have since taken out several patents for other synthetic tannins. The original tannin is produced by treating a sulphonated phenol with formaldehyde. A patent had been taken out several years before for the use of formaldehyde in tanning, but this expired early in 1911; many patents had also been granted for sulphonated phenol preparations, chiefly as disinfectants, but it was left to Dr. Stiasny to discover the value of combining the two chemicals by the process of condensation. The preparation, first known as "neradol," is now made in England under licence, but, since the war, its cost has been more than doubled, so that it is unlikely to replace natural tanning materials to any great extent. Formaldehyde itself has certain properties which are harmful to leather, and it must be used with extreme caution and in small quantities to avoid these defects. It is used in the leather trade chiefly for keeping up the substance of hides during the tanning process, and thus causing a rapid absorption of tannin. At the beginning of the tanning process, the liquors are acidified, preferably with a weak organic acid, which causes the fibres of the hides to distend. It is at this stage that the formaldehyde is used. This method, which cannot improve, but may easily damage, the leather, is almost entirely confined to the Continent. Formaldehyde has a hardening and tanning effect on animal tissues, and leather treated by this process often has inferior wearing qualities. In the case of the artificial tannin, this property of formaldehyde is to a large extent modified by the chemical reaction with a sulphonated phenol, the addition of which also increases its tanning effect; but, while the tannage is very rapid, especially in the case of light skins, leather produced solely by means of artificial tannin has a slight tendency to dryness after being in stock for some time. No doubt, however, methods will be found to overcome initial difficulties, and various liquors will be prepared to meet different requirements. The question of price remains the deciding factor as to its use on an extensive scale, for, while it is so high, natural tanning materials will be preferred, except in a few special cases. According to the hide-powder method of tannin analysis, Neradol contains about 30 per cent. of tannin, but there are many natural tannin extracts containing nearly double the amount of tannin at nearly half the price of the artificial tannin; the latter, however, has a more rapid action and also produces a nearly white leather. Another advantage of Neradol is that it prevents drawn grain, so that, if raw hides be treated with a small quantity before tanning, stronger vegetable tan liquors may be safely used to hasten the process. In the manufacture of sole leather, for example, limed hides, after washing in water, may be suspended in a solution of Neradol containing 3 to 5 lb. per 100 gal. of water for twelve to twenty-four hours. This quantity produces a slight tanning effect, the hides are thoroughly delimed, and strong vegetable tan liquors may then be used to complete the tannage without the grain of the hide being drawn or dark in colour, as would be the case if the hides were not first treated with the artificial tannin. Neradol is also said to be an effective bleaching agent for tanned leather in a 5 per cent. solution for a few hours, without any loss of weight. This property may also be utilised in the production of chrome leather, where a whiter colour is required than that produced by the ordinary chrome tannage. For this purpose it may be used in a pickling liquor before the one-bath process, or in the second bath of the two-bath tannage. For dressing wool and fur skins, the synthetic tannins are much superior to the alum and salt process. CHAPTER IV LEATHER WORKING MACHINERY When it is considered that the construction of machinery for the leather trade had barely started thirty years ago, the wonderful variety and utility of modern machines are remarkable, and it is a moot point whether engineering science has not played as great a part as, or even greater than, applied chemistry. Excepting the bark mill, various kinds of tumblers, the fulling stocks, glazing and rolling machines, there were practically no efficient mechanical aids to lighten the exceedingly laborious operations incidental to leather manufacture two decades ago; but so many improvements have lately been made in the construction of machinery for practically every operation in the trade that most of the machines require very little skill to work them, and can be operated by intelligent youths after a few weeks' experience. The change has been of great benefit to the health of the workers, for the continual stooping over beams and sloping tables, combined with the arduous nature of the work, was very injurious. The reputation that tanning had as a healthy occupation was due more to the work of the labourers than that of the skin workers. (The old-fashioned lime-yards and tan-yards were generally in the open, whereas modern tanneries are roofed.) Leather trades machinery was not a success at first, probably because it was very difficult to get the necessary information from leather manufacturers. However, as the engineers gained more experience of the methods of leather-making, the defects were gradually remedied until it may be truly said that the machines now reach a high state of perfection. It was no uncommon thing for workmen to lose a finger or two in a machine, but such accidents are now rare, owing to improvements in the construction of the machines. Most of the machines used in the leather trade are of the cylinder type, the raw skins or leather passing between two rollers, of which the upper one performs the operation while the lower one helps to draw the material through the machine. To prevent accidents and control the working of machines, a third roller is often used, which serves to "feed" the leather or skins to the working cylinders. Of this type of safety roller, the Seymour-Jones attachment to the shaving and buffing machine is of great importance. [Illustration: FIG. 5 SHAVING CYLINDER] The operations of the tannery, which are performed by cylindrical machines, are dehairing, fleshing, scudding, samming, shaving, scouring, striking-out, setting, boarding, buffing, graining, printing, embossing, and blacking or colouring. The working cylinders usually vary according to the character of the operation, although one or two types may be used for at least three different operations. Where cutting or paring is done, the working cylinder is fitted with brass blades, or steel blades backed with iron. The blades are spiral in some machines, and are so arranged that half of them converge to the left, and half to the right (Fig. 5). When in work, this type of cylinder not only performs the operation for which it is specially intended, but also stretches the leather outward, by reason of the arrangement of the blades or knives. The blades overlap one another to obviate marking, for if the blades met exactly at the centre they would make a line on the leather. Figure 6 shows another arrangement of knives for the process of buffing. [Illustration: FIG. 6 BLADED CYLINDER FOR "BUFFING" LEATHER] [Illustration: FIG. 7 BAND-KNIFE SPLITTING MACHINE] The most important machines outside the working cylinder type are the splitter, and the glazer. There are several kinds of splitting machines, but the band-knife machine (Fig. 7) is the most largely used. This is a veritable triumph of the engineer's art, for it is possible to make five or six layers, all about the same size, out of one hide, although leather is only split once or twice as a rule. Of course, sole, belting, and other thick leathers are not usually split. The invention of the belt-knife splitting machine revolutionised the leather trade, and there would undoubtedly have been a great shortage of leather without it. Formerly, all the levelling and reducing of substance was done by paring off quite small pieces with the shaving knife (Fig. 8), a difficult and laborious work. These parings were only suitable for pulping and compressing into leather board; but now the flesh splits removed by the machine can be curried, enamelled, printed, or rolled to make serviceable leathers, although, of course, not nearly so good in quality as the top or grain split. The main working part of the splitting machine is an endless steel knife which passes round two wheels placed at opposite ends of the machine. The leather is drawn to the knife through two rollers, of which the lower one is in sections to allow very thick parts of the hide to pass through the machine. It would need a large volume to describe in detail all the different machines used in the leather trade; the constructional details of only one machine can be given, and, in view of its importance, the shaver is selected. Reproductions of other machines will appear in succeeding chapters. [Illustration: FIG. 8 SHAVING KNIFE] Nearly every leather trades' engineer constructs shaving machines, but the Howard-Smith is described here, not because it is the most popular (unfortunately there is a decided preference for low-priced machines), but because it is one of the best from an engineering point of view, and because several improvements are embodied in its construction. [Illustration: FIG. 9 SHAVING LEATHER (Old method)] This machine consists of nearly one hundred parts and each is made of the best material available. The advantage of this is obvious when the question of repairs is fully considered. The first Howard-Smith machine made has been running more than four years, and has not cost the owner a penny for repairs, beyond, of course, the expense of replacing the blades of the working cylinders; whereas it is no uncommon occurrence for a cheap machine to be thrown on the scrap heap after a few years' wear. It is always advisable, therefore, to buy machinery of the best grade. [Illustration: FIG. 10 DRAWING OF SHAVING MACHINE] Figure 10 represents a drawing of the shaving machine, _A_ being the side view, and _B_ the front. The work of the draughtsman generally appears to the uninitiated to border on the miraculous; he is often the designer and architect of the machine, and his work is certainly interesting and skilful. Many of the heavy parts, such as main castings, pedestals, etc., are made in the foundry, which may be part of the leather trades' engineer's works if he is in a large way of business. The finer parts, those which might be termed the fittings, are made in the turnery department; while the machine is assembled in the fitters' shop. Figure 10 _A_ shows the side, and 10 _B_ the front construction of the shaving machine. The figures indicate, by following the arrows, the principal parts of the machine, which are shown in detail in sectional tracings. For example, _T._ 65, of which no working parts are shown in the diagram of the complete machine, is reproduced in detail in a separate drawing shown in Figure 11. Each part of the machine is numbered and entered in a stock-book. In describing the principal parts indicated in Figure 10, it will give an idea of the assembling of the machine if a beginning be made with the main iron castings. These comprise the main bed (64), two side frames (62), and the front frame (58). The side frames are strengthened by the ribs which form the edge, and which are about three times as thick as the body of the casting. The object of the front frame is to support the foot lever (59), the rocking frame (57) carrying the rubber roll (79), and the wooden roof (75) over which the leather is passed. The spring (76) pulls back the rocking frame (57) when relieved by the operator removing his foot from the lever (59). The long spring (77) lifts up the foot lever (59) when the latter is released. The pullies (73) are connected with the knife cylinder which shaves the leather. The cylinder is obscured by the wheel-guard (65) and is, therefore, shown separately. This cylinder is comprised of a shaped piece of steel (turned out of solid metal bars of 4-3/4 in. diameter) into which spiral steel blades are caulked with copper or brass. When turned, the body of the cylinder is 4-5/8 in. in diameter, but the parts forming the bearings are reduced to 1-1/2 in. The number of blades is twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, according to the kind of leather shaved, and to the choice of the operator. It is interesting to note that these blades are now being made in Sheffield, although, before the war, they had to be imported. The knife guard (65), shown in detail in Figure 11, is an ingenious contrivance which prevents the operator's hands being drawn into the machine. It consists of an automatic shutter worked by a steel chain from the foot lever. Figure 11 _a_ represents the shutter closed down on the knife with the rubber roll, on which the leather is carried to the knife, at a safe distance from the shutters. Fig. 11 _b_ shows the position when the machine is shaving the leather, the guard being clear and the rubber roll engaged with the knife. [Illustration: FIG. 11 _a_.] [Illustration: FIG. 11 _b_.] In order to sharpen the blades of the cylinder, a carborundum wheel is fixed in close proximity, its position being indicated in the drawing by the wheel cover (67). A bracket for feeding the wheel to the blades when grinding them is shown at 66. When grinding the blades, the saddle (68) carries the wheel backwards and forwards across them. A special feature of the saddle in this particular machine is the double-thread screw, one a right hand, and the other a left hand. The saddle (68) is actuated by a "swimmer," as the makers term it, which engages, say, first the right-hand thread; when the saddle has travelled to the end of its movement the "swimmer" automatically enters the left-hand thread, and the saddle is rotated in the opposite direction. The "swimmer" can be disengaged instantaneously. A brush (55) is fixed near the cylinder to remove any leather shavings adhering to the blades. It also acts to some extent as a fan, and, by creating a current of air, carries the leather dust away from the operator. A trough is filled with water to catch the dust from the carborundum wheel, while the knives are being ground. The trough should be cleared out and refilled with clean water from time to time. It is essential that no dust from the grinding wheel comes into contact with vegetable tanned leather required in a natural or colour finish, otherwise it will cause iron stains, which are difficult to remove without damaging the leather. For this reason, the knives should not be ground while this class of leather is being shaved. An important detail of the machine under description is a trueing device. Knives are often roughened owing to the carborundum wheel wearing irregularly. The trueing device keeps the wheel perfectly true by means of a diamond held in the end of a screw (78). Another ingenious arrangement (patented) is a spring (79_a_) placed at the back of the rubber roll (79), which enables the roll to spring back when the leather, or any part of it, is too thick for the cutting cylinder. A unique advantage of the Howard-Smith machine is that it is ball-bearing throughout. The main driving shaft revolves on four massive ball-bearings in case (71). The pullies are firmly fixed to the driving shaft with keys or feathers. Afterwards the pullies are machined, so that the whole shaft with its pullies is perfectly balanced, and the machine runs smoothly without vibration. The bladed cylinder is likewise mounted on four ball-bearings. The intermediate driving shaft (70), which is mounted on two ball-bearings, is connected with a large drum shaft (70_a_) which, in its turn, sets the carborundum wheel in motion. [Illustration: FIG. 12 SHAVING-MACHINE (Haley)] Fig. 12 represents another make of shaving machine. CHAPTER V PREPARATION OF HIDES AND SKINS FOR TANNING Before beginning a description of manufacturing processes, a precise definition of leather may be given. Laymen usually describe leather as "hides tanned with bark," Since the introduction of modern processes, however, this is only partly true. In any case, the definition is very broad. The primary objects of treating raw hides and skins to produce leather is to make them imputrescible and impart various degrees of pliability. These qualities are essential, but the simpler the methods used to attain them, the greater the strength of the leather produced. The number of materials that will produce leather is legion. Whereas oak bark was almost exclusively used for tanning until the last century, there are now at least twenty useful vegetable tanning materials. The active ingredient of all of these materials is tannin, a colloidal or uncrystallisable substance. Correctly speaking, the term "tanning," used to designate the process of converting hides into leather, should be confined to the use of vegetable tannins; unfortunately, the trade has largely adopted the word in many other processes of making leather. For example, large quantities of leather are produced by the use of minerals, and especially of chrome salts; where the latter is used, the leather is said to be "chrome-tanned," although "chromed" would be a more accurate definition. One mineral process of making leather, namely, that involving the use of alum, or alumina sulphate, and salt, is technically described as "tawing," The conversion of skins into leather by the use of oxidised oil is known as "chamoising," imitation chamois leather being made by that process. Nearly every mineral has the property of converting skins into leather, though most of them are of little practical value. The most successful are the chrome salts, and alum and salt. The use of iron salts would be by far the cheapest process, if means could be found whereby they could be successfully used. Sixty years ago, a chemist named Knapp experimented with iron salts, but failed to produce satisfactory leather. Patents were taken out in Austria in the early part of 1914 for the use of iron salts in tanning, while a patent of more recent date covers the use of iron salts in combination with chrome salts. Neither of these appears to be of much practical value. The cheapest and most stable iron salts, the sulphate and chloride, have strongly acidic properties, and, therefore, have a somewhat destructive and hardening effect on animal fibres. The iron salt that might convert skins into leather is the carbonate, which is difficult to prepare cheaply enough for commercial purposes, though it is used medicinally. A basic iron salt might also be useful, but iron tannages would only be suitable for black leather. Oils and fats also have leather-making properties, fish oils being used for the manufacture of "chamois" and antelope leather. There are other methods of producing leather which are not used on a large scale, but sufficient examples have been given to show that an exact definition of leather cannot be summed up in one or two words. There are now many kinds of leather produced by varying methods, and each class requires its own definition. Broadly speaking, however, leather is an imputrescible material produced from the raw skins of animals, chiefly of cattle, sheep, and goats, by treating them with tannins extracted from the barks, wood, fruit, or leaves of trees; or with chemicals (chiefly chrome salts, or alum and common salt); or with oils and fats. The preliminary processes are of great importance, as they determine to a large extent the character of the finished leather. Mistakes made in the early processes can never be effectually remedied. The first operation is technically known as soaking, and its object is to cleanse the hides or skins thoroughly. This is quite simple in the case of raw hides received direct from the slaughterhouse, as it is merely a question of soaking them in clean, soft water for a few hours. If the only water available is hard, 1/2 lb. of borax should be added for every 100 lb. of raw hides. Borax is useful in any case, as it is a splendid cleanser and a very useful chemical in the tannery. Most of the hides used in the United Kingdom, however, are wet-salted (_i.e._, salted in the wet state), as it has become customary for most butchers to send hides and skins to the auction markets in all the principal towns, where they are offered for sale every week. It is still a debatable point among tanners as to whether it is better to buy hides direct from the butcher or through these markets. It is certainly a great advantage to put hides into work quickly (although not before they are quite cool), as time is saved in the soaking process, and there is practically no loss of gelatinous matter. On the other hand, the tanner is able to buy just the selection of hides that he wants from the auction markets. Under this arrangement, several days must elapse before the tanner receives them, and it is, therefore, absolutely necessary to preserve them, otherwise they begin to decompose quickly. The first sign of decay is the slipping of the hair, which, in that condition, may be pulled out of its roots quite easily. Micro-organisms multiply rapidly in the gelatine of the hide, the grain comes away, and decomposition sets in so quickly that, in a few days after the removal of the hide from the carcase, it may lose nearly half its value for tanning purposes if it has not been preserved by salting or by drying rapidly in the shade in a current of air. Salted hides need a more prolonged soaking than fresh hides, as it is essential that all trace of salt be removed before the next process, otherwise the finished leather may be flat, and poor in quality. Usually, two days' soaking in several changes of water is necessary. For the soaking process, fresh or salted hides and skins are either soaked in square, cement-lined, brick pits, or in wooden vats filled with clean, cold water. A good system is to put a pack of skins in one huge tank filled with clean water and leave them in soak overnight before transferring them to the ordinary pits. Each pit will take 50 hides, or 10 dozen calf skins, or 20 dozen goat skins. Tanners designate as a "pack" each lot of hides or skins they work through, irrespective of the quantity. [Illustration: FIG. 13 DRUM TUMBLER] [Illustration: FIG. 14 FALLER STOCKS] Besides salting them, there are other ways of curing hides and skins, and a large proportion is simply dried or dry-salted, the salt in the latter method being applied while the hides are moist. Dry hides, whether "flint" (i.e., simply dried) or salted, require special treatment to make them soft and pliable, without which it would be impossible to convert them into leather. Soaking in plain water is insufficient, as it would need too much time, during which there would be a great loss of gelatine. The use of chemicals and mechanical motion are required; sometimes chemicals alone will thoroughly soften the hides, but this is not often the case. Both alkalies and acids may be used for softening dried hides, and it is difficult to say which gives the better result, although the former are frequently used, mainly because treatment with acids is a comparatively recent innovation. Both kinds are effective, but the use of acids retards the loosening of the hair, although it has been proved experimentally that acid-softened hides give a slightly improved yield of leather compared with the effect of the alkaline process--a noteworthy advantage where the finished leather is to be sold by weight. The acid generally used--formic--has antiseptic properties, and can have no harmful effect on animal tissues, as is generally the case where mineral acids, especially sulphuric, are used. Sulphurous acid is also said to be a good softening agent for hides, but it is rarely used. The most satisfactory alkalies are sulphide of sodium (crystallised or concentrated) and caustic soda, and of these two, the sulphide is preferred in nine cases out of ten. The quantities used vary according to the condition of the hides, but the average is about 1 lb. of caustic soda, or 1 lb. of concentrated sulphide of sodium (65 per cent.), or 2 lb. of crystallised sulphide of sodium (30 per cent.) for every 100 gal. of water. Of formic acid, 1 lb. is sufficient for 100 gal. of water. It is possible to soften hides by these means without mechanical acid, but the time is considerably shortened by "drumming" the hides, _i.e._, placing them in a round or, preferably, a square tumbler fitted inside with shelves or staves (Fig. 13). The drum is rotated mechanically for a few hours, during which time the hides are thoroughly kneaded and softened by the alkali. Tanners often use a machine known as the "faller stocks" (Fig. 14), which kneads the hides very thoroughly, though somewhat drastically. The drum method is preferable, providing the hides can be suitably softened. An old method, and one that is used now by some of the small firms, is to "break over" (_i.e._, vigorously scrape) the hides with a curved blunt knife fitted into two wooden handles. For this manual operation, the hide is placed, flesh side up, over the tanner's beam (Fig. 15) and is then scraped with the knife. [Illustration: FIG. 15 TANNER'S BEAM] Another old method, which has not yet disappeared, is to make use of stale soak liquors, which, although efficient for softening purposes, cause a great loss of hide substance owing to the active growth of bacteria, which are developed as a result of the water becoming foul and putrid with dirt, blood, and dissolved gelatinous matter. This method of soaking is always dangerous, apart from the great loss of gelatine, for the thin grain (hyaline layer) is liable to be eaten away in patches, a defect which greatly reduces the value of leather. Dried hides are not only difficult to treat successfully in the different processes of making them into leather, but they are also of highly speculative value, although they are well preserved when completely dry. It sometimes happens, however, that the drying is imperfect; it may, for example, have been so rapid that the exterior of both sides is thoroughly dried before the air is able to penetrate into the centre. The result is that the interior of the hide putrefies, but there may be no indication of this until the hides are soaked and softened, when they may fall to pieces and are only saleable to glue makers. Again, the hides may be dried in the hot sun and be badly blistered, with the same result as regards their value for leather. If the hides are dried in too high a temperature, they become horny and rarely make satisfactory leather owing to the difficulty of softening them. It is estimated that quite 10 per cent. of the dried hides are improperly cured and, therefore, useless for making into satisfactory leather. Apart from the commercial risk in buying dry hides, their import, especially from Russia and China, is a source of danger in conveying the disease of anthrax to workmen. It has been conclusively proved that dried hides are much more liable than wet-salted hides to cause infection. So far, only one country, the United States of America, has taken steps to prevent the importation of the disease of anthrax, although most countries have issued regulations in regard to the precaution to be taken to avoid infection by anthrax in those factories where imported hides, wool, hair, and bones are treated. It would seem that the most rational method would be to disinfect the hides before they are shipped, as it certainly appears to be unwise to import any form of disease; unfortunately, the first regulations issued by the American Government proved to be impracticable, as the suggested method had the effect of lowering the quality of the hides, and making the preliminary operations troublesome. Their second scheme, consisting of baling a certain number of hides in canvas disinfected with a 0.02 per cent. solution of mercuric chloride, is more satisfactory, for, although it may not sterilise all the anthrax spores inside the bale, it should prevent them reaching other goods. This Government order only applies to hides, skins, hair, and wool coming from countries where anthrax is known to be prevalent. The disease of anthrax is generally contracted by workers through sores or cuts in the hand; the bacilli multiply rapidly in contact with the blood, and the first sign of disease is usually shown by a red swelling or pimple in the neck. If treated at this stage by anti-anthrax serum a cure is often effected, but if treatment is delayed the disease quickly proves fatal, the patient dying in awful agony. The germs of the disease may also be swallowed and the disease develop internally, but cases of this kind are rare. Besides the danger to workers, there is the risk of cattle being infected. The effluent from tanneries where anthrax-infected skins are treated contains millions of bacilli, and it is doubtful if the latter are sterilised even when the effluents are precipitated and aërated before they are run into streams or municipal sewers. In any case, the sediment may be infected, and this ultimately finds its way to the land. Until the various European Governments insist on imported hides from anthrax-infected areas being sterilised before shipment, the use of a disinfectant such as lysol or a similar cresylic compound, or bichloride of mercury, seems imperative in the first process of soaking. The use of these disinfectants would make the waste liquors fit for discharge into sewers or streams. The English Public Health and River Pollution Acts have had a great effect in improving the hygiene of the tannery, although leather manufacturers have not welcomed them, as, in some cases, they have meant considerable expense in providing settling tanks for the treatment of waste liquors. The Public Health Act gives power to any town corporation to declare as offensive trades such businesses as tanning, hide and skin merchanting, fellmongering, tallow melting, etc., and several boroughs have taken advantage of this law. In such cases, anyone desiring to set up business in these trades must apply to the Town Council, who may or may not give their consent; in fact, a few applications to establish these businesses have lately been refused. While the curing of wet hides with salt or in brine is more satisfactory than drying them, the use of ordinary salt is not an ideal method, as 10 per cent. brine dissolves hide substance. The recent introduction of a pure dry salt (99-98 per cent.) and of a sterilised salt for commercial purposes has to a large extent removed the objections to ordinary salt. Dry sulphate of soda is also a satisfactory cure. It may be that, as hygienic conditions are further advanced in the various industries, a suitable disinfectant will have to be used for all hides, in addition to the salt, except where the hides are sent direct to the tannery from the slaughterhouse. The cure of hides in hot countries, especially where cheap salt is unavailable, is often unsatisfactory. A method of obviating this difficulty has been found in China, where, in one or two of the principal towns, hides and skins are preserved by freezing them in cold-storage. Although this process stiffens the hides, it is said to be fairly satisfactory if they are allowed to soften naturally before soaking them. If submitted to rough treatment before the stiffness relaxes, there is a great danger of the hide fibres being ruptured. Freezing removes the difficulty of softening which is experienced in treating dried hides, while it preserves the hide substance. After the operation of soaking, hides and skins are ready to be treated for the removal of the hair. There are several ways of loosening the hair sheaths, but most of them consist of treating the hides in a solution of a caustic alkali. The use of a solution of common lime was practically universal until a few years ago, but nowadays sulphide of sodium, red arsenic sulphide (realgar), and caustic soda are also used, generally in admixture with the lime. Another process consists in sweating the hides in a heated room, preferably a damp cellar, where rapid decomposition of the hides soon loosens the hair. This method is rarely used in England, but a few American tanners seem to prefer it for certain classes of hides. In the American process, the hides are first soaked, and then cut in half down the back, forming what are known as sides. Dry hides are subjected to the usual mechanical operations in the faller stocks, in which they are kneaded by two large hammers (Fig. 14), or they are drummed in the tumbler (Fig. 13). After the sides are thoroughly softened and drained, they are transferred to the sweat pit, which is, preferably, a dark underground chamber. The stock requires very careful attention as the process is risky. The temperature should never exceed 75° F., otherwise the hides may be irretrievably ruined. The process may take from one to four days, according to the varying conditions of the hides and of the weather. The loss of nitrogenous matter gives rise to the development of a strong odour of ammonia, which is sometimes even too pungent for the workmen. When the hair is judged to be sufficiently loose, the sides are washed in cold water and put in the stocks again for about ten minutes, when all the hair will be removed; or the hair may be scraped off in the unhairing machine. This method is not useful for sole leather, as it causes too great a loss of gelatine, but it saves time in the production of sides intended for boot upper leather, which is usually sold by measurement (superficial area). A dehairing process has lately been invented and patented, however, which may supersede all of the methods just described. This process consists in treating the hides with various enzymes which loosen the hair so effectively that it can be removed more easily than the hair of a limed hide. The fine, short hairs underneath are also removed, whereas by the lime method a further process is needed to get rid of these hairs. The only drawback to its use is that the inventor has not yet been able to produce a material cheap enough to place on the market, but as soon as this difficulty is overcome the enzyme method may become fairly general. Neither the hair nor the gelatine of the hide can be damaged by this method. [Illustration: FIG. 16 LIME YARD ("Dri-ped" Tannery)] The usual method of liming is carried out in brick pits of square or rectangular shape with a sloping front on which the hides or skins can be piled to drain (Fig. 16). There is a great variation in the quality of lime, and in all cases it should be tested for the available percentage of caustic lime. A good sample should contain between 70 and 80 per cent. of pure lime. Buxton lime, which can be obtained in powdered form, is particularly suitable for the tannery. The ordinary lime is preferable to the chalk lime, as it is usually stronger, though it sometimes contains more impurities. Gas lime is the poorest of all. Lime should be stored in a dark place, otherwise the outside of the heap carbonates quickly, forming chalk (CaO + CO_{2} = CaCO_{3}) which is of no use for the liming process. To prepare the lime for the pits it is slaked (_i.e._, formed into a paste with water. All the lumps should be reduced to paste in order to avoid lime burns, which are caused by direct contact of the hides with pieces of unslaked lime. A certain quantity of the paste is then added to the water or old lime liquor in the pit, and the liquor is well plunged up to hasten solution and diffusion of the lime. A long wooden pole, with a flat block of wood attached, is used for this purpose and also for pressing down the hides under the surface of the liquor. Two methods of liming are in vogue: (1) the single-pit system, and (2) the three-pit system; but the latter is the better method, as it is more easily controlled, and causes less loss of gelatine than the former. In this system the liquor is strengthened with fresh lime for each pack of skins. Its great fault is that the pit is only cleared out at long intervals in order to take advantage of the mellowness of used lime liquors; hence, there is frequently large accumulation of insoluble limestone and other sediment from the lime, in addition to a quantity of dissolved gelatine, which rapidly accumulates putrefactive bacteria. When the pit is cleared out the process of liming is disturbed for a time, as fresh lime liquors are not beneficial to hides and skins, and the loosening of the hair is delayed. On the other hand, the three-pit system permits liquors of uniform strength, and the process is continued without interruption. Each new pack is first placed in the oldest of the three liquors, which is then cleared out, and a new liquor prepared. From the weakest pit the hides pass to a stronger liquor, and the process is finished in the third pit, which should contain a new lime liquor. The mellow liquors, being charged with bacteria, facilitate the loosening of the hair, while the third liquor, consisting of fresh lime, serves to swell the fibres of the hide, by means of which the flesh is more effectually removed. The lime also forms a soap with the natural grease of the hide; this grease can therefore be removed. In some cases, however, especially in the cattle fed up for Christmas, the hides contain a larger quantity of fat than the alkali of the lime liquor can convert into a soap, and the surplus grease is frequently seen in the finished leather, as it is difficult to remove in later processes. A solution of hyposulphite of soda, or lactic acid, given just before the process of tanning is said to remove the grease, although a slight loss results in the case of those leathers sold by weight. The objection to natural grease in leather can be understood where the latter is intended for colours, but in the case of sole leather it ought not to be a disadvantage, yet, owing merely to the darker appearance of the leather where the grease reaches the grain, its selling value is reduced by 2d. or 3d. per lb. The strange part is that the grain of this sole leather, when made into boots, is buffed on an emery wheel, then sometimes coloured with a paint, and finally sold in boots at the same price as leather free from grease and regular in colour. The liming process in pits takes from six days to a month, according to the character of the leather required. Light calf skins may be ready for unhairing within a week, while hides intended to be finished for "raw hide leather" may be left in the pits quite a month, the object being to distend and harden the fibres. Lamb skins intended for parchment, and small calf skins for vellum, are also subjected to prolonged liming. Between these extremes, there are several stages in the process which have varying effects on the character of the finished leather. In fact, it is a tanner's dictum that leather is made or marred in the lime liquor, though this, of course, only applies to a certain extent. Generally, however, the heavier the hides, the longer the liming required. Fortunately, the limited solubility of the lime in water affords a wide margin of safety in working, and the only danger to guard against is the too prolonged use of old liquors, which are readily detected by the strong odour of ammonia. One important property of lime is its lower solubility in hot than in cold water. Lime by itself does not readily attack the hair bulbs, and the slowness of the process has led to the introduction of other chemicals, generally for use in conjunction with lime. The principal of these are sulphide of sodium and red arsenic. Mixtures of sulphide of sodium and lime, or red arsenic and lime are now largely used, the former for hides, calf, and sheep skins, and the latter for goat and kid skins. Both sulphide of sodium and arsenic dissolve keratinous matters (horns, hair, etc.) and workmen should, therefore, be provided with rubber gloves to prevent the loss of their finger nails. Sulphides naturally lower the commercial value of the hair removed and, if used alone, destroy it. In admixture, however, the hair has some value, although it is not so good as that removed by the use of pure lime. Against this, however, there is a great saving of time and less loss of hide substance and, therefore, increased weight of leather. Sulphide of sodium is prepared in crystallised or concentrated form; the former, about 30 per cent. strength, is preferred in Great Britain, while the latter--65 per cent. strength--is prepared for export, the main object being to save the cost of transit of 35 per cent. of water. About thirty different sulphide salts may be used, but the sodium and arsenic disulphides are the best, as it has been shown that the most rapid loosening of the hair occurs where the quantities of sulphur and alkali are nearly the same. There are two arsenic salts used in the trade, namely, realgar, or red sulphide of arsenic (As_{2}S_{2}) and orpiment, or the yellow sulphide (As_{2}S_{3}), but the former is often preferred as it is said to give better results than the latter. In practice, the proportion of arsenic used is 1 part in 20 parts of lime, although it naturally varies a little according to the class of skin under treatment. Sulphide of sodium is used in the proportion of 1 part to 10 of lime, or, if concentrated sulphide be used, 1 in 20. The quantities of lime, or lime and sulphide, used are estimated on the weight of the raw hides. For hides intended for sole leather, 5 per cent. of lime on the weight of hides is ample, while a little more may be used for hides intended for dressing leather (_i.e._, leather which has to be dressed or finished with a certain degree of flexibility for bags, boot uppers, etc.). When a mixture of lime and sulphide is used, 3 per cent. and 0.3 per cent. respectively is a satisfactory quantity. The action of this mixture on hides is complex and has not yet been definitely ascertained, but it is thought that the calcium sulphydrate formed by the chemical reaction between sulphide of sodium and calcium hydrate (slaked lime) is the active principle. In the pit method of liming, it is essential that the liquors be frequently plunged, while the hides should be taken out ("hauled"), piled to drain for a few hours, and put back again ("set"), or transferred to another pit. Although lime is more soluble in cold than in warm water, it is found in practice that the process may be stopped or considerably retarded in very cold weather, and the activity of the liquors is increased by the application of waste steam (conveyed through iron pipes from the boiler). Sulphide of sodium and lime are sometimes made into a thin paste, which is applied to the hair side of hides and skins with a mop or fibre brush. The hides are then folded down the back with the flesh sides out; other hides are similarly treated and placed in a pile. This saves a great amount of labour in pitting, and, if the paste is fairly strong, consisting of 2 to 2-1/2 per cent. sulphide, the hair can be removed after a few hours. With so many depilatories available, it is not surprising that several patents have been granted and numerous suggestions made with the object of trying to improve on the old process of liming. While there may be some objections to lime, it has a few advantages which are lacking in other depilatories. These advantages are not perfectly understood theoretically, but the tanner recognises them in practice. Hence, there are very few tanneries where lime is not used at all, and the only progress that seems to have been made in the process of liming consists in the admixture of sulphide of sodium or arsenic to hasten the process, reduce the loss of gelatine, and, in the case of arsenic, to improve the fineness of the grain of skins for boot upper and glove leathers. One patented method consisted in forming the calcium hydrate within the hide by treating it with a 1 per cent. solution of caustic soda and then with a 1-1/2 per cent. solution of calcium chloride, the reaction of these two chemicals forming calcium hydrate (lime) and sodium chloride (salt). This method, however, does not loosen the hair at all and has to be supplemented by soaking the hides in putrid water. It is a good method of liming hides or skins dressed in the hair, as it opens up the fibres without weakening the hair roots and prepares the hides in a suitable condition for tanning. Another method consists in mixing a small quantity of soda ash with the lime, thereby hastening the process by increasing the alkalinity of the liquor. A somewhat complicated method was introduced a few years ago, but, although it seemed advantageous from a chemical point of view, it has not proved successful in practice so far as is known, probably because of its expense. In consisted of four distinct processes. The hides were first mopped on the hair side with a thin paste of lime and arsenic, and dehaired after twenty-four hours. In the second process, they were treated in a drum for twenty-four hours with a solution of sodium sulphide, they were then drummed for twenty-four hours in a solution of hyposulphite of soda, and finally placed in a vat or pit containing a solution of lime and a little arsenic for two to five days. After washing, etc., they were ready for tanning. The sulphide of sodium swelled the hides or skins by distending the fibres, and the natural fat is converted into a soluble soap. The hyposulphite arrests the action of the sulphide and acts as an antiseptic. In modern yards it is a growing practice to use mechanical power to keep the hides in motion, instead of handling them. The hides are attached to poles joined to a strong cross beam, which, in its turn, is connected by stout iron rods with the main pullies and shafting. The installation is expensive, but it saves an enormous amount of manual labour and time, while ensuring uniform treatment. This method is not so much used for liming as for the tanning process. After loosening the hair and opening up the fibres, the next operation is dehairing or depilation, or, as it is generally described in the trade, "unhairing." The hair must slip quite easily before beginning this operation, otherwise a number of them will be left in the hide and will be difficult, or almost impossible, to remove later on if the hides are being made into sole leather. These hairs present an unsightly appearance and lower the value of the leather. Depilation may be done by hand or machine; but the latter method is rapidly superseding the former, as it is in nearly every other process of leather manufacture. In the manual process, the hair is removed by scraping it off in a downward direction with a blunt, convex-shaped knife, fitted into two wooden handles (Fig. 17), the hides being placed on a sloping convex beam (Fig. 15) supported by a trestle. A series of grooves under the beam permits it to be placed at any angle. The beam (different from that used by curriers) may be of wood, iron, steel, or zinc-covered wood. [Illustration: FIG. 17 DEHAIRING KNIFE] There are several types of unhairing machines, of which the Leidgen more nearly approaches hand work than any other. The skins are placed on a soft bed of felt, and the working roller, fitted with spiral knives, is brought into contact with the hide and scrapes off the hair. [Illustration: FIG. 18 DEHAIRING AND FLESHING MACHINE] The type of machine often used, however, is shown in Figure 18; the working part is a long spindle fitted with helical knives. The advantages of this machine are its large output and its use for other operations by simply changing the working roller. The blades must be blunt for dehairing, but sharpened blades are needed for fleshing. If hides intended for sole leather are being dehaired, the short hairs which are not removed by the dehairing knife are carefully scraped off with a sharp knife. Other kinds of hides and skins are freed from short hairs in a later operation. When the hides are dehaired, they are sometimes submitted at once to the next operation of fleshing, which, as its name implies, consists in removing loose flesh and fat from the "flesh" side, that is, the side near the carcase. The extent to which this operation is carried out depends on the quality of the finished leather. Naturally, the more flesh left on the greater the weight, particularly as loose flesh will absorb a large quantity of tannin, and, unfortunately, of adulterants which are frequently used for weighting common leathers. The flesh ought to be removed in all cases, for the loose flesh forms very poor and spongy leather. Where hides and skins are tanned and then dried for sale to leather dressers and finishers, there is often the tendency to leave far too much loose flesh on them, with the object of producing as much weight of leather as possible. From the point of view of economy, this is a mistake, for the loose flesh must be removed during the dressing process, whereas, if it had been taken off at first, both material and time would have been saved in the process of tanning. If the fleshing is not done directly after dehairing, the hides or skins should be placed in a weak lime liquor, and this method is to be recommended. The great point to be observed is to keep the limed hides, both before and after dehairing, away from contact with the air, as the chemical action of the carbonic acid on lime results in the formation of chalk, which tends to harden the hides and to roughen the grain, so that it is likely to be scratched in later operations. Where the hides are intended for sole leather, and not treated with an acid before entering the tanning liquors, the presence of chalk would lead to an uneven colouring of the leather. [Illustration: FIG. 19 FLESHING KNIFE] Fleshing by hand demands great skill. The knife used (Fig. 19) is similar to the unhairing knife, except that it has two edges. The cutting is done with the convex edge, which has to be kept very sharp. The concave edge need not be sharp, its use being limited to scraping off loose particles of flesh, while the parts not removed by this means are cut off with the sharp edge. The knife is held slantingly, with the blade almost parallel with the beam. The strokes should be short and in a semicircular direction, otherwise it is difficult to avoid cutting the skins. This manual operation is now largely superseded by machinery, and will, no doubt, soon be obsolete. The early types of fleshing machines were not a success, but the modern machine is very effective. There are several makes on the market, but in most cases the working tool is of similar construction and consists of a long cylinder to which spiral knives are fixed. (Fig. 18.) Half of these blades converge to the left and half to the right, the object being not only to cut away the flesh but also to stretch the hides outward, thus ensuring an evenly cut surface. The fleshings and useless pieces of skin are kept in a weak lime liquor until there is a sufficient quantity to send to the glue maker; although in some of the larger tanneries this offal, technically termed "spetches," or glue pieces, is converted into glue on the premises. In hot weather, a large accumulation of fleshings is liable to putrefaction, despite the use of plenty of lime water. While lime certainly arrests putrefaction of gelatinous matter for a time, decomposition afterwards sets in and serious damage may be done. To avoid this, it has been a common practice in Germany to use formaldehyde, but, while this acts as a preservative, it hardens animal tissues, and has a tanning effect, with the result that the pieces are rendered insoluble and cannot, of course, be reduced to a liquid gelatine by boiling. Glue makers have condemned the use of formaldehyde, but other preservatives, such as "lysol" (a cresylic compound) and "arasol," have no tanning effect and may be used with safety. After the operation of fleshing, it is necessary to get rid of the lime in the hides, for, if they were put directly into tan liquors, the lime, being alkaline, would neutralise the acidity of the tan liquors and retard the beginning of the tanning process for a long period. The leather would ultimately be poor, thin, stained, and brittle. Up to the process of deliming, there is not a great deal of difference in preparing the hides and skins for the large variety of leathers, but between the fleshing and the tanning processes the work varies considerably, and largely determines the character of the finished leather. When the hides or skins are in the limed state, they are gristly and firm in texture. A certain amount of this firmness is desirable in some leathers, such as sole and belting, and, therefore, it is deemed advisable to leave a small quantity of lime in the hides, although, to get them evenly coloured in tanning, it is essential that the lime should be completely removed from the surface of the hide. An old method, which is even in use to-day in some tanneries, is to wash the fleshed hides in a cubical or hexagonal drum for several hours in running water, which is conveyed through an iron pipe in the journal of the drum, and escapes through small holes in the drum. The effect of using a hard water for washing out the lime is shown in the interior of these washing drums, the sides of which become incrustrated with a thick, hard deposit. The surface of this incrustration is irregular, and small projections are sometimes formed which mark the hides and reduce their value, as the impressions are not removed in later processes. The modern method of deliming hides intended for sole leather is to use a weak solution of acid, or an acid salt. For this purpose, sulphuric and hydrochloric acids are by far the cheapest, but require handling with great care, as any excess used has a corrosive and destructive effect on the fibres, which results in weak leather. Mild organic acids are much safer, and those generally preferred are lactic, formic, and butyric, although boracic and acetic acids are favoured by some tanners. Butyrate of ammonia is used for the same purpose by a number of French tanners. The same acid bath can be used for a second lot of hides, but sufficient acid should be added to raise the acidity of the liquor to its former standard. It is inadvisable to use one bath more than four or five times. The salt formed during the process by the combination of the lime with the acid--calcium lactate, formate, butyrate, acetate, or borate, according to the acid used--must be washed from the hides, either in a pit or drum, before they are ready for the tan liquors. [Illustration: FIG. 20 SCUDDING KNIFE] Other kinds of hides and skins require additional treatment, according to the class of leather it is intended to make. Hides to be dressed for such purposes as bags, portmanteaus, cases, harness, belting, and stout uppers are usually steeped in an infusion of hen or pigeon dung. A vat is filled with tepid water, a quantity of the dung, usually about half a pailful, is added and well stirred in the water before putting the hides in. The acid fermentation evolved neutralises the lime, while bacteria multiply and rapidly reduce the rubbery limed hide to a soft, flaccid condition. The hides are then well washed in clear water and scudded, after which they are transferred to the tan pits. "Scudding" is the technical name of an operation performed on hides and skins with a special tool, known as the scudding knife, which consists of a convex piece of slate or vulcanite fitted into a wooden or steel handle (Fig. 20). The hides are placed on the beam, grain side up, and vigorously worked with the knife to scrape off scud (_i.e._, short hairs, dirt, and soluble lime salts). Both sides of the hides should be scudded for best work. The process of treating hides with excrement is known technically as "bating," Calf skins, which are curried or dressed after tanning, should be reduced to a more supple condition than hides intended for harness, belting, and military leathers. A more active dung is, therefore, used for skins of all kinds which have to be rendered supple. Dog manure is generally used, that from the hunting kennels being preferred. Imported dry dung has to be used by some firms, as the supply of fresh dung is insufficient. The demand for the latter is very keen, as it is more effective than the dry product. Goat skins dressed for the famous shoe leather known as glazed or _glacé_ kid, and kid skins for glove leather, need a larger proportion of "puer" than nearly every other kind of leather, for the grain of goat skins is naturally hard and requires a large quantity of dung to reduce it to the necessary softness and suppleness of "kid" leather. Although these processes can only be described as disagreeable, they apparently have no injurious effect on the workmen. Further, the hides and skins are thoroughly cleaned before putting them in the tan liquors, in which the bacterial activity caused by the infusion of dung is quickly arrested. Fortunately, from the hygienic point of view, the use of natural "bates" and "puers," although still extensive, is likely to be superseded everywhere by artificial products. So far there are nearly 2,000 tanneries throughout the world where the artificial bating materials are preferred, German and American tanners being the principal users. The best known artificial bate is "Oropon," which consists of a mixture of pancreatin or trypsin, ammonium salts, and a large quantity of sawdust, the last-named merely acting as a mechanical agent. The enzyme, pancreatin, is the active ingredient, and may be prepared from the intestines of the pig. It has the effect of breaking up the albuminous matters of hides and skins, which are rapidly reduced to a soft and supple condition, while the ammonium salts cleanse them. The quantities used vary according to the degree of suppleness required in the finished leather. The patentee and vendor of this proprietary article claims that it is suitable for all classes of leather. Hides for sole leather are sometimes treated with a weak "Oropon" liquor in Continental tanneries and, as a result of the cleansing properties of this bating material and its effect in opening up the fibres, the tannage proceeds rapidly. The use of enzymes for bating was discovered by an English leather manufacturer and chemist, who did not take out a patent for his invention, probably because he had previously patented and worked on a commercial scale a bacterial bate which gives very good results but requires much skill in application. The artificial product, "Oropon," has many advantages over excrements. It is simpler, cleaner, and more rapid in working, and never damages the grain of the skin. On the contrary, great care and experience are needed in using excrements, and the skins may be so badly damaged through negligence as to be almost worthless. Bate burns are fairly frequent when dung is used, and are generally due to hard pieces being insufficiently broken up and diffused in the liquor. Other useful artificial products are: "Erodin," and "Puerine," a patented American product which consists of a weak organic acid and a small proportion of molasses. Possibly, malt enzymes or diastase could be utilised for the manufacture of an artificial bate or puer, although they would not be so effective as animal products. Where hides and skins have been treated with Oropon, they may be transferred to the tan liquors after being rinsed in water, although it is better to submit them to the operation of scudding. There are two tests to determine the end of the process of bating and puering, although the extent to which the reduction is carried depends on the kind of leather wanted. For this reason, it is not advisable to remove every trace of lime from hides which must possess a certain degree of firmness when finished into leather. Of the two tests, one is chemical and the other mechanical. In the former case, a cross section is made in the thickest part of the hide and a few drops of phenolphthalein are added to the cross section; if the whole of the lime has been removed, no coloration is given, but, if lime be present, a purplish colour is given, which varies in intensity according to the contents of lime in the hide. The other test is made by pressure with the thumb nail, and, if the impression be permanent, the hides or skins are in a sufficiently reduced, or, as it is technically known, "fallen" condition for all practical purposes. The latter test is really only useful when the process has to be carried to its fullest practical extent, as it affords no idea of the intermediate stage. The experienced workman can judge the progress made by appearance and touch. In cases where skins have been puered with excrement it is often necessary, after scudding them, to submit them to a further process before tanning. This is known as "drenching," and consists in treating the skins in an infusion of wheaten bran or pea flour. The acid fermentation produced by these ingredients effectually cleanses the skins by neutralising the last traces of lime and scud, and prepares them in an ideal condition for the process of tanning. The combined processes of bating with Oropon and drenching in bran are extremely useful for skins to be dressed into glove leather. Following the processes of bating, puering, or drenching, the skins are washed in water to remove all mechanical impurities, and are then in a perfectly clean condition for tanning. CHAPTER VI TANNING PROCESSES The methods of tanning may be classified as follow: (1) Vegetable tanning processes; (2) methods of chroming; (3) tawing processes; (4) oil tannages; (5) formaldehyde tannages; (6) sundry tannages, chiefly mineral; and (7) combination tannages. The public is chiefly familiar with types of vegetable tannage in boot sole, bag, and portmanteau leathers; of chrome tannage, in box calf and glazed kid used for boot uppers; of the tawing process, in kid glove leather; and of the oil tannage in wash leather or "chamois." VEGETABLE TANNING PROCESSES The methods of tanning with infusions of barks, leaves, and fruits of trees and plants containing tannin are much more numerous than they were a decade ago, and tanners have now to pay special attention to the selection and blending of the materials they use in order to produce the various qualities of leather required. Formerly, most of the sole leather was tanned in oak bark liquors, and, in the later stages of the process, valonia and gambier were added to quicken the process and give solidity to the leather. This tannage, which may be described as an oak bark tannage, is still used by a few tanners, but the wide choice of materials available has brought other tanning agents into prominence, chiefly because they possess more astringent properties, and, therefore, tan more quickly than oak bark. Moreover, the need of other materials than oak bark became a necessity several years ago, as the supply of the latter would be inadequate to produce the large quantity of leather now required, even allowing for the rapid development of mineral tannages. Further, it is amply proved that a good blend of materials (mixed tannage) produces quite as durable and a firmer leather than the old oak bark tannage; unfortunately, there are other blends, occasionally combined with extraneous weighting materials, which account for the poor quality of a great deal of modern sole leather. While the mixed tannage is now popular for sole, belting, harness, and other heavy leathers, vegetable tanned light skins, such as calf, goat, and sheep, are in most cases treated with a single material, sumach being used for a good proportion of them. Whichever method be used, the first essential is the most suitable means of leaching the materials, or extracting the tannin. It seems, however, that this process may be eventually eliminated from the tannery, for most tanning materials are now converted into extracts, which only require dissolving in water to prepare the tan liquor. The manufacture of tanning extracts is quite a separate business, which is generally, but not always, conducted in factories situated near the source of the raw materials. There are important extract works in the Argentine, Paraguay, Canada, the United States, Hungary, North Germany, Borneo, Smyrna, France, Italy, and England. [Illustration: FIG. 21 BARK MILL] Where natural tanning materials are used, either entirely or in conjunction with extracts, the leaching is done in a series of large square pits, four of which would suffice for a small yard, while a very large tanning would need twelve or sixteen. Oak bark, which is usually delivered to the tannery in strips measuring 3 to 6 ft. in length, must be chopped or ground into small pieces by machine (Fig. 21). A measured quantity (a certain number of baskets or skeps full) is placed in the empty pits, which are then filled with water. The liquor is pumped from these pits, as required, to others in which the hides are tanned. The hard fruit of myrobalans, which somewhat resembles nutmegs, is powdered in a disintegrator or special crusher. [Illustration: FIG. 22 TAN-YARD ("Dri-ped" Tannery)] [Illustration: FIG. 23 HIDE ROUNDED FOR SOLE LEATHER] The three principal vegetable tannages are those for sole, dressing, and light leathers, and it is obvious that a careful selection of materials is necessary to obtain the desired effects. For this reason, oak bark, although a good tanning material for dressing leather, is insufficient to produce a firm sole leather, and, therefore, even in the so-called pure bark tannages, valonia or other suitable tannin is used towards the end of the process in order to increase the solidity and waterproof quality of the leather. There are two general methods of tanning sole leather, namely, the pit and the drum tannage. In the first case, the hides are passed through three series of pits containing gradually increased strengths of tannin (Fig. 22). These series are technically described as "suspenders" or "colouring pits," "handlers," and "layers" or "layaways." To facilitate handling and economise tanning materials, hides are "rounded" (_i.e._, cut into sections) either before tanning or after the hides have passed through the suspenders (Fig. 23). The obvious advantage of the former method is that the offal (shoulders and bellies) removed can be chrome tanned if required. The suspenders may consist of any number of pits from six to twenty-four, according to the size of the tannery. As the name implies, the hides are suspended in the liquors from poles, which extend across the top of the pit. The hides are attached to the poles by means of stout cord or copper hooks. Various mechanical appliances are in use to supersede the old method of allowing the hides to rest during this process. These methods save time and tend to produce even coloration, the latter being a very important point in the early stages of tanning. Some of the methods advocated, however, are too vigorous for the hides at this stage, when the chief object should be to preserve as much gelatine as possible. The best mechanical system is that which gently raises and lowers the hides in the liquors. Some of the American tanners use a mechanical contrivance known as the rocker, which consists of a stout wooden beam rocking from a central pivot, and with a see-saw movement. The objection to this method is that the hides do not receive equal treatment, those in the centre receiving hardly any movement, while others at the ends of the beam are raised too far out of the liquor. Under these conditions, the colouring of the leather must be irregular. Another method, invented in England, consists in suspending the hides from a wooden frame which can be mechanically moved on wheels. As the contact of tanning liquors with iron must be avoided to prevent discoloration (iron and tannin form the basis of inks), the wheels should be galvanized. This mechanical method is very satisfactory, for the hides are moved gently and kept in the liquors. As some tannins oxidise rapidly (_i.e._, darken in colour by exposure to the air), any process which exposes the hides at this stage for lengthy periods should be avoided. [Illustration: FIG. 24 BARKOMETER] The theory of the vegetable tanning process is not perfectly understood, and the principal trade chemists are not yet agreed as to whether the changes are chemical, physical, or both. Many are inclined to believe that both changes take place, and this view is probably correct, as a pure tannic acid produces a thin, empty leather, while a tanning material which contains a fair proportion of non-tannin matters, yields a full and firm leather. The practical tanner who adapts his work to the theory that tanning is a process of feeding the hides with gradually increasing strengths of tannin, is, in any event, on the right track. The suspender liquors are always weak in tannin, and are pumped from "handler" liquors through which packs of hides have already passed. It is important that these liquors possess a certain degree of acidity, and, if the natural acids of the tan liquor are too weak, or neutralised completely by the lime in a pack of hides that has been treated, a small quantity of acetic, formic, or lactic acid is added. Formic acid has the additional advantage of making the liquor antiseptic. It is absolutely necessary that the liquors have acid properties, otherwise tanning cannot proceed. Acid assists penetration of tannin. Hyposulphite of soda, formaldehyde, or synthetic tannin may be used for the same purpose, while these also help to keep the leather light in colour, owing to their bleaching properties. After passing through three or four suspender pits, in which the tan liquor is gradually strengthened, the hides are often rounded and the butts (Fig. 23) are transferred to the handlers. The first handler liquor should register about 25 degrees by the barkometer (Fig. 24), an instrument which registers the density of tan liquors. The handlers consist of a series of six or eight, and the strength of the liquors should be increased gradually. After a day's immersion in the first handler liquor, the hides are hauled out with a sharp two-pronged hook fixed to the end of a long wooden pole, similar to that used in the liming process. After they have been piled up for a few hours, two workmen, one on each side of the pit, place the hides flat in the next pit. The tan liquor is then run off the first handler to the suspender and fresh liquor is pumped into the empty pit, which then becomes the head or strongest liquor of the series. The succeeding packs will, therefore, follow in rotation: the first going to No. 2 pit, the second to No. 3, and so on. In the last two or three handler pits, the hides are sometimes dusted with freshly ground tanning material, such as oak bark, myrobalans, or divi-divi, the object being to strengthen the tan liquor so that it penetrates the hides before they are transferred to the layers. The handler liquors, which are originally sent back from the layers, are also frequently strengthened by the addition of oakwood, chestnut, or quebracho extracts, although some tanners only use extracts in the layers. Gambier is a useful material at this stage, as it keeps the liquors mellow and plumps the leather. In the layers, the last series of tan pits, the hides are treated with very strong extracts, and are also heavily dusted with such natural tanning materials as give firmness and solidity to the leather. For this purpose, nothing is better than valonia, or valonia extract, which deposits a large quantity of bloom, or ellagic acid. Where a mixed tannage of natural materials is used, the density of the liquors may reach 50 degrees barkometer, but if strong extracts be added, the barkometer may exceed 100 degrees. The relation between the layers and handlers in regard to the disposal of the used liquors is similar to that between handlers and suspenders; the first layer used is sent to the last handler. By the English method, the leather is not, as a rule, transferred immediately from one pit to another, as it is found preferable to lay the hides in pile for a few hours, by which means the great weight helps to force the tannin through them. By draining the hides, they are in good condition for the absorption of the next tan liquor. The English method of handling is too slow for most of the American tanneries, where the greater proportion of the hides are cut straight down the centre to form "sides," as they are technically known. In America, the pieces of leather, whether hides, butts, bellies, or shoulders, are often tied together and transferred from one pit to another by means of a skeleton reel, worked either by hand or mechanically. The latest type of reel is a great improvement on the old reel. The cost of manual labour in many English tanneries is very great, in view of the fact that the hides have to pass through many pits, and the work of transferring the hides from one pit to another is done entirely by hand. It seems that there is plenty of scope for mechanical ingenuity in overcoming this difficulty, and it may yet be found possible to construct a perforated brass platform, connected with a crane, by which the whole of the hides could be lifted out in a second, left to drain for half an hour or more, and then bodily transferred to, and lowered in, the next pit. Naturally, it is easier, and quite within the bounds of practicability, to raise the hides from suspenders by mechanical power, as it would not be difficult to fix a stout cross-beam to the pulley from which the hides are suspended. The leather can be safely treated with very astringent tannin in the last series of pits, and the use of strong extracts is, therefore, a common practice at that stage, not only to give solidity and firmness to the leather, but to increase its weight. It would be quite fatal to the production of good leather if strong tannins were used in the early stages of the process, because the surface on both sides would tan quickly, the grain of the hide would be badly drawn owing to the sensitiveness of gelatine to astringent solutions, and it would be impossible to make the tannin penetrate the hide. The final product would be a half-tanned leather which would be extremely brittle and poor in quality; in fact, quite unsuitable for sole leather. Despite the well-known axiom that the vegetable tannage (but not the mineral) must proceed slowly and gradually in the early stages of the process if the hides are to be properly tanned, the modern tendency is to speed up the tanning, with the result that, in some cases, the so-called sole leather is really not fit for the purpose for which it is intended. The root of the evil is the desperate attempt made by many boot manufacturers to produce lower-priced boots than those of their competitors. Taking into account the development of leather trades chemistry, it is not surprising that the problem of reducing the time required to complete the old processes of tanning has received much attention. The results have been successful in some instances and have certainly proved that very good sole leather can be made without leaving the hides in the pits for a year or longer. It has also been shown that the absorption of tannin can be accelerated by treating the hides, before putting them in the suspenders, with a solution of acid (lactic or butyric for preference), or hyposulphite of soda, or synthetic tannin. The latter penetrates the hides in a few hours without contracting the grain, increases the solubility of the vegetable tannins subsequently used, and helps to keep the leather light and uniform in colour. It is of no use alone for heavy leathers, however, as it lacks the physical properties necessary to make the leather firm and resistant to water. The use of "soluble" oils in the tan liquors is another late innovation which has given good results. The term "soluble" in connection with oils merely means that they are made miscible with water by treating them with acids. Solubilised cod oil might be specially useful, as it has tanning properties and would increase the wearing and waterproof qualities of the leather. The chief objects of using oil in tanning, however, are to increase the weight of the leather and permit the use of strong liquors. The tanning process outlined is the oak bark tannage, which is now supplanted in many yards by the mixed tannage, in which various tannins, chiefly exotic, are skilfully blended to produce the kind of leather wanted. Each tannin seems to have special characteristics, although the materials are classified into only three groups, namely: pyrogallol, catechol, and mixed (pyrogallol and catechol) tannins. Generally, the best mixed tannages for solid leather consist of a combination of both pyrogallol and catechol tannins. Reviewing the characteristics of some of the principal tanning materials, it may be said that oak bark produces a nice, fawn-coloured leather of strong texture, but tans slowly; valonia makes the leather solid, durable, and waterproof; myrobalans quicken the process and lighten the objectionable colour of other tannins; divi-divi and algarobilla are very rich in tannin, and are, therefore, useful in later stages of the process; gambier mellows the astringency of other liquors and plumps the leather; while most of the tanning extracts on the market penetrate the hides much more quickly, often give a lighter colour than that produced by solutions of the natural materials, and expedite the process considerably. The most popular tanning materials are: oakwood, quebracho, chestnut, valonia, myrobalan, mangrove, mimosa, hemlock and spruce extracts, oak bark, valonia, gambier and sumach. The following are some of the combinations in use-- _For Sole Leather._ 1. Oak bark and valonia, or valonia extract. 2. Oak bark, valonia, and gambier. 3. Oak bark, quebracho extract, and myrobalan extract. 4. Chestnut, quebracho and valonia extracts. 5. Chestnut and oakwood extracts. 6. Oakwood and quebracho extracts, and divi-divi or algarobilla. 7. Quebracho extract, myrobalans, and valonia. 8. Quebracho, mangrove, and valonia extracts. 9. Oakwood, mimosa, and valonia extracts. 10. Hemlock and oak extracts (American union tannage). _For Dressing Leathers._ 1. Oak bark and sumach. 2. Oakwood and quebracho extracts, and sumach. 3. Synthetic tannin and oakwood extract. 4. Synthetic tannin and myrobalans. 5. Gambier and sumach. 6. Wattle bark and myrobalans. Sumach is often used alone for some classes of goat, sheep, and calf skins. Synthetic tannins can also be used alone for light leathers. Many other variations may be tabulated, for nearly every tanner has his own recipe, having found by experience the blend of tannage that best suits his trade. Apart from these innumerable combinations, the only method whereby the vegetable tanning process may be hastened is the mechanical, for which purpose either the paddle (Fig. 25) or the drum (Fig. 13) is used. The former consists of a wheel constructed of wooden shelves which, when in motion, dip a little way into the tan liquor in a vat, and so keep it in constant circulation. The drum is fitted inside with wooden shelves or pegs, which carry some of the hides or skins to the top of the drum at each revolution. Were it not for these shelves, the tannage would probably be irregular or otherwise unsatisfactory, as the hides would always be heaped together at the bottom of the drum. The paddles and drum are more often used for light than for heavy leather, as they not only have the effect of making the leather loose on the grain, but also make it soft and supple, characteristics which are not required in most of the heavy leathers. [Illustration: FIG. 25 PADDLE VAT] However, the drum is now largely used on the Continent for the tannage of sole leather. A great saving in the cost of production is thereby effected, but the leather, although of satisfactory appearance, lacks the durability and waterproof quality of pit-tanned leather. The process is much simpler than the pit method, and less room is required. There are only two stages of tanning: (1) by placing the hides in colouring pits or suspenders, in which the hides are nearly struck through with tannin; and (2) running them in slowly-revolving drums containing solutions of tannin which are gradually strengthened until the process is finished. There can be no doubt that the tannin is rapidly forced between the fibres of the hide by mechanical action, but it is not so firmly combined as that slowly absorbed by the hide in the pit method. This can be proved by placing two pieces of weighed leather--one tanned in pits and the other in a drum--for twenty-four hours, drying the leather and reweighing it, when it will be found that the drum-tanned leather has lost the greater percentage of weight. To obviate this disadvantage as far as possible, use is made of special oils, which serve to fix the tannin more firmly between the fibres and render the leather more resistant to water. Other frequent drawbacks of drum tanning are looseness of grain and lack of substance. In sole leather tanning, the former is modified to some extent by extra pressure in rolling the leather during the finishing operations; while the latter difficulty is sometimes overcome by swelling the leather with acid and then fixing the swollen condition of the hide by treating it with a weak solution of formaldehyde. This chemical also has tanning properties, so that the process is hastened; but leather prepared in this way cannot be as durable as that produced by a natural tannage. It seems that the aid of the engineer is necessary to overcome the difficulty of looseness of the grain caused by the severe pounding of the hides in the drums. The constant circulation of the tan liquor is required, but the hides should only be subjected to gentle motion. It is true there are tanning drums on the market which are said to obviate all the difficulty found in making sole leather in ordinary drums fitted with shelves or pegs, but a drum that meets the ideal conditions for the production of a solid yet flexible sole leather has not yet been invented. It seems that a kind of inner framework, to which the hides can be attached and which rotates much more slowly than the main drum, may solve the problem. The drum tannage permits the use of an excessive quantity of tannin, which, of course, adds to the weight of the leather. By the drum method of tanning, heavy hides can be tanned in two days after leaving the colouring pits; lighter hides are, naturally, tanned in less time, proportionate to their substance. The pit method occupies any time from one to fifteen months, although nowadays very few hides are left in the tan pits for a year. The methods of tanning just described relate chiefly to sole leather, but there is an enormous production of leather known as dressing hides, which are tanned, dried in the rough state, and sent to curriers or leather dressers for finishing. These hides are used for numerous purposes, including bags, portmanteaus, harness, saddlery, straps, belting, and boot uppers. The tannage of dressing hides differs slightly from that of sole leather; the liquors must be mellower and contain less insoluble matter, in order to obtain the necessary pliability, and a good, clear colour on the grain. A satisfactory tannage is obtained by treating the hides in oak bark liquors, which, in the later stages of the process, may be strengthened with oak wood, or myrobalan extract, or pure gambier, and completing the process in a tepid bath of sumach, which clears and lightens the colour. The drum is more suitable for the tannage of dressing hides than it is for sole leather. A quick method of drum tanning would be to treat the hides first in a 5 per cent. solution of neradol, the artificial tannin, and then complete the process with oakwood, chestnut, or quebracho extracts, or even in mixtures of these extracts. In this way, fairly good leather could be made in about two days. Neradol prevents the drawn grain and dark coloration that would result from the use of vegetable extracts alone. In the case of light skins, such as calf, goat, and sheep, the method of vegetable tannage again differs from those just described, although there is a fair quantity of calf skins tanned with oak bark, especially those used in the shoe trade. The tendency, however, is to complete the process rapidly by using extracts, such as oakwood, quebracho, or mimosa. A very good tannage for the production of a mellow and plump leather is that of pure gambier, the colour produced forming a good ground for brown shades. Where light, fancy colours are required on the finished leather, this tannage must be completed by placing the skins in a tepid bath of sumach. A large proportion of the vegetable-tanned sheep and goat skins is produced by sumach alone, which was adjudged by the Commission appointed a few years ago by the Royal Society of Arts to investigate the cause of decay in bookbinding leather to be the best tanning material and the one least affected by exterior conditions, such as gas, sunlight, air and dust. Many sheep skins are split into two sections by machine before tanning, the top portion, known as the grain, being tanned in sumach, and described as "skivers." The under section, the side near the carcase, is known in the trade as a "lining," and is usually made into the so-called "chamois" leather by means of the oxidation of fish oils. Other noteworthy vegetable tannages are those used in the production of Russia leather, and a large proportion of East India leather. Real Russia leather, of which the raw material consists of small native hides and calf skins, has a characteristic and pleasant odour, which is derived from the birch and willow barks used in the tanning process. Birch bark contains an essential oil, which is permanently fixed on the fibres of the leather during the process of tanning. This leather is only produced in Russia, and chiefly in one large tannery, although imitations are made in Great Britain, America, and Germany. These are produced by the use of ordinary tanning materials, and the scent is applied, either during or after the dyeing process by the addition of birch tar oil, which is made by the distillation of birch bark. In some respects, for example, in brilliance of finish, smoothness of grain, and freedom from defects, the imitation is better than the real, but the latter has the great advantage that its perfume is of superior fragrance and permanent, whereas the imitation leather only retains the odour for about a year. It is somewhat remarkable, in view of the good demand that exists for the leather, especially in England and Germany, that no firm outside Russia has thought it worth while to produce the genuine article. The tannage would be particularly serviceable for bookbinding leather, as the oil of the birch has both insecticidal and antiseptic properties. The principal vegetable tannage used for Indian leather, namely, the bark of the _acacia arabica_, known to the natives as babul, or babool, has quite a contrary effect, for it contains a large quantity of red colouring matter, which is incorporated with the leather in the tanning process, and although it shows very little in the rough-tanned leather, it is apt to darken if the finished leather is exposed to strong light for a long period. This oxidation is accompanied by a gradual weakening of the fibres of the leather, which is, therefore, quite unsuitable for bookbinding. Fortunately, Indian tanners are making rapid progress in using other tanning materials, a good number of which are found in India. Although the bark of the _acacia arabica_ is not altogether satisfactory, the pods of the same tree, which are commercially known as "bablah" and contain nearly twice as much tannin as the bark, produce a very light-coloured, almost white, leather, and it is asserted that this material is a valuable substitute for sumach. MINERAL TANNAGES By far the most important of the mineral tannages is the chrome process, the merits and demerits of which have not only been freely discussed in the trade, but also in the lay press. Fanciful theories of the poisonous character of this kind of leather have been published from time to time in the daily press. Such absurd statements as that prussic acid and mercury are used in the manufacture of chrome leather hardly need refuting, as, even if they could convert skins into leather, the cost would prohibit their use. The only poisonous acid used in one of the many chrome processes is chromic acid, but this is converted into the oxide of chromium in a second bath and is, therefore, made quite innocuous. The chrome tannage is effected either by the one-bath method or the two-bath. In the former case, the tanning agent, either a basic chromium sulphate or chloride, is present in the one liquor used; in the latter method, the hides or skins are impregnated with a solution of chromic acid, which is reduced to chromic oxide in a second bath consisting of sulphurous acid and a small quantity of free sulphur. The properties of leather produced by the two-bath process render it especially suitable for vulcanising on rubber; hence its large use for non-skidding bands for motor tyres. There are several recipes for making one-bath liquors. A favourite mixture consists of chrome alum and sodium carbonate (common soda). Another method consists of reducing a solution of chromic acid with glucose or grape-sugar. This liquor has a greater plumping effect on the leather than the chrome alum liquor has. A third process of making a one-bath liquor combines the use of bichromate of potash and chrome alum, which, when dissolved, is converted into a basic chrome salt by means of a reducing agent. The one-bath liquor can be easily and safely applied to hides and skins, and is used in much the same manner as a vegetable tan liquor, beginning with a weak solution and gradually increasing the strength until the process is completed. The two-bath method needs great care, as a slight difference in the proportions of the ingredients used may alter the character of the leather produced. The formula now largely used is practically the same as that of the original patentee, Augustus Schultz, an American chemist. The first bath, the chromic acid solution, is made by treating bichromate of potash or soda with hydrochloric, sulphuric, or formic acids. Bichromate of potash and hydrochloric acid (commonly known as muriatic acid, or spirits of salts) are commonly used, and in the proportion of 5 per cent. and 2-1/2 per cent. of the weight of the drained pelts (5 lb. of bichromate and 2-1/2 lb. of acid for 100 lb. of pelts). The chemical reaction is represented by the following equation-- K_{2}Cr_{2}O_{7} + 2HCl = 2KCl + 2CrO_{3} + H_{2}O Bichromate of potash + Hydrochloric Acid = Potassium chloride + chromic acid + water. This process is most conveniently carried out in the paddle-vat (Fig. 25), which, in this case, should be fitted with a wooden cover to exclude light, since the colour of the chromic acid liquor is affected by strong light. Some chrome tanners prefer to use the drum tumbler (Fig. 13), but the pounding of the skins by this method is apt to make the grain loose. Whichever method be adopted, the hides or skins should be horsed up to drain for several hours before transferring them to the second bath. It is important that they be placed grain to grain and smoothed out, as creases and air bubbles between the skins become fixed in the second liquor, and depreciate the value of the finished leather. To avoid this danger, many tanners pass the hides or skins through a striking-out machine under light pressure. Another detail of importance is to cover the chromed skins with canvas or matting to keep them from the light. Although the skins are preserved by chromic acid, they are not made into leather, for in this condition they would dry quite horny. Hence, it is undesirable that the hides should be dried at this stage and sold as leather, although such a proceeding has been attempted. Further, chromic acid is an irritant poison which may cause an eruption on the hands and arms of workers handling the hides in this solution, unless they are protected by rubber gloves, or by coating the hands with a mixture of vaseline and lanoline. The second bath consists of chemicals which reduce the chromic acid to the oxide, which is quite inert, so that there is no danger whatever of contracting a poisoned foot as the result of wearing chrome leather. The chemicals largely used for the second bath are hyposulphite of soda and hydrochloric acid. Sodium sulphite may also be used without the addition of acid. The skins change from an orange colour to a pale, bluish-grey tint, but the process is not completed until a cross section shows that the colour has changed right through the skin. A suitable proportion is 10 per cent. "hypo" and 2-1/2 per cent. acid (28° Twaddell) calculated on the weight of the drained pelts. Calf, goat, and sheep skins are usually treated in the drum, but hides, especially if a certain degree of firmness is required, are preferably run in the paddle-vat. The reaction of the chemicals in the second bath are somewhat complicated, but the principal point is the reduction of the chromic acid (CrO_{3}) to chromic oxide (Cr_{2}O_{3}). The sulphurous acid produced acts as the reducing agent, but is not freely liberated until towards the end of the process, the skins first changing into a dirty brown colour which gradually gives place to a beautiful pale-bluish tint. The last stages of the process are also marked by the formation of free sulphur, which aids materially in softening the leather, and giving the two-bath chrome tanned leather its characteristic rubbery texture. The vats in which this process is carried out should always be fitted with lids to confine the strong sulphurous fumes. By adding an excess of "hypo," the skins can be bleached until they are nearly white. This has no harmful effect on the leather, but makes it softer, though somewhat looser on the grain. When completely tanned, the skins are horsed up again, left to drain for at least twenty-four hours, and are then ready for dressing and finishing. The recipes for the one-bath process are numerous, but it is becoming a common practice for tanners to buy the liquors or extracts already prepared in chemical works, which are, naturally, better fitted up for the production of a more uniform material than it would be possible to make in most tanneries. COMBINATION TANNAGES Combination tannages have steadily grown in favour during the last few years, and will probably have an important bearing on future methods of tanning. Among those found practicable are: (1) Vegetable and chrome; (2) vegetable and alum; (3) alum and chrome; (4) synthetic and natural tannins; (5) synthetic and chrome; (6) alum and synthetic; (7) formaldehyde and chrome; (8) chrome and iron. CHAPTER VII THE DRESSING, DYEING, AND FINISHING OF LEATHER The dressing and finishing of leathers of all kinds seems to be of growing importance every year, despite the fact that the durability of leather is often impaired by the chemicals and heavy machinery used in order to get a clear and bright colour or a highly-glazed finish. One exception to this rule, however, is japanned and enamelled leathers made by the new collodion-amyl acetate process, which not only produces the so-called "patent" finish, but also adds to the strength of the leather. Dressing and finishing may be conveniently classified in four sections-- 1. Finishing of boot sole leather. 2. Dyeing and finishing of machine belting, strap, harness, and other heavy greasy leathers. 3. Dyeing and finishing of boot, portmanteau, case, bookbinding, hat, and upholstery leathers, and of the numerous fancy leathers. 4. Dressing, dyeing, and finishing of glove and chamois leathers. There are also a few special kinds of leather which do not come within the scope of this list. The limited size of this book makes it impossible to outline the finishing of all kinds of leather, and only a few of the important varieties can be referred to in the following pages. SOLE LEATHER Formerly, the finishing of sole leather was a fairly easy matter, as the slow process of tanning with oak bark which was in general use gave the latter a nice fawn colour. The modern tendency, however, is to demand even lighter-coloured leather than that produced by an oak bark tannage, and, as most of the mixed tannages impart a darker colour, the practice of bleaching has been universally adopted. This process is to be greatly deprecated, since it reduces the strength of the leather. Further, it has the serious drawback of removing matters which would add to the waterproof quality of the leather, and yet the boot manufacturers demand light-coloured sole leather. As in many other articles of modern manufacture, quality is sacrificed for appearance. The colour of sole leather is of no importance whatever to the wearer of the boot, and the public should make a strong protest against bleached sole leather, and also against leather weighted with adulterants, if they wish to get boots of good wearing quality. It is difficult to know where the finishing of some of the modern sole leather begins. Formerly, the line of demarcation between tanning and finishing was distinct, for the finishing processes were begun as soon as the hides were sufficiently tanned. This is by no means the case to-day, as, in many cases, the finishing may be said to begin with a supplementary but unnecessary tannage in very strong tanning extracts, with the object of making the leather firm and plump, and, incidentally, imparting additional weight. This practice would be discontinued if sole leather were sold by superficial measurement. On the other hand, those who favour the continuance of the present system of selling by weight assert that the adoption of the measurement system would indubitably result in the production of a lot of under-tanned leather, that mechanical means would be devised to stretch the leather and thus give it an artificial area, and that a fair quantity of the leather produced does not lie flat, and would, therefore, be difficult to measure correctly. A great point in favour of selling by measurement is that there would be no necessity to weight the leather, and a mere visual examination would suffice to determine the quality, whereas it is often difficult to state whether leather has been treated with injurious artificial matters or not, and certainly impossible to determine the extent of this fraud, without a careful and somewhat elaborate analysis. Of course, there are some rough practical tests for ascertaining the quality of sole leather, especially in regard to the extent of its resistance to water. A weighed quantity of the leather is soaked in water for twenty-four hours, taken out, squeezed, dried, and reweighed. If the loss of weight does not exceed 5 per cent., the leather is a good sample and well tanned; on the other hand, it does not follow that a loss, say, of 40 per cent., would indicate adulteration with injurious materials, as the leather may have been tanned with an excess of strong extracts which have not properly combined with the fibres, with the result that the excess is easily removed in contact with water. However, methods of fixing tanning extracts on the fibres of the leather have been devised (see p. 117). A careful note should be made of the time required to soak the leather through; if water is absorbed rapidly, the leather is, naturally, unfit for soles. After the tanner has taken great pains to produce the paleness of tint required, the shoemaker buffs away the grain, thereby reducing the resistance of the leather to wear, and then generally covers it with a black, tan, or white dressing. In its turn, this finish is likewise spoiled the first time the leather is worn. There could be nothing more futile than the elaborate finishing of sole leather to make it pale in colour, as it means that fully 80 per cent. of the leather produced has to be bleached in some way or other; and the manner in which this process is effected has a direct influence on reducing the wearing quality of the leather. If, for example, the colour of the leather is brightened with myrobalans, or sumach, or with extracts of these materials, the wearing quality is not affected; unfortunately, this method is not largely used, as it does not increase the weight of the leather and would tend to make it soft. A large proportion of sole leather is treated with strong sulphited extracts, which both bleach and increase the weight of the leather. In some cases, the leather is placed in vats containing hot tanning extracts to increase the bleaching effect and add to the weight. The gain of weight by this surplus tannage may be, and often is, from 8 per cent. to 10 per cent., and, whereas the tanner a century ago used to get only slightly above 50 per cent. of leather on the weight of the raw hide, it is no uncommon thing nowadays to get a yield of nearly 70 per cent. The tanners are hardly to be blamed for this practice, which really ought to be stopped; it is almost entirely due to the demand of buyers for leather at a low price per lb., irrespective of its superficial area compared with a higher-priced and often cheaper article. It is only fair to state that those boot manufacturers who have taken careful costings of their leather have not suffered great loss in this way, but most repairers buy common leather in order to be able to do their work at fixed prices usual in this trade. A large proportion of this leather is under-tanned or weighted, and, in either case, absorbs water like a sponge. This kind of leather is quite unfit for soles, and ought to be condemned, as it not only absorbs moisture but also retains it for a long time, so that it is frequently a cause of colds and other complaints arising from chills. If the repairer does not cost his leather as accurately as the wholesale boot manufacturer, the latter often neglects to take into account the quality of the leather, so long as cheap soles can be cut from it. The continual demand for leather which will yield low-priced soles has brought about another practice which is much worse than the use of hot extracts. In this case, the hides are not tanned thoroughly, but, instead of completing the process with tanning extracts, the leather is treated with cheap chemicals, such as epsom salts (magnesium sulphate), glucose, and barium salts. These add considerable weight and save the cost of expensive tanning materials; further, it is claimed that they give increased firmness and substance to the thinner parts of the leather, which otherwise could not be used for soles. It is conceivable, therefore, that leather of this kind could be cut to greater advantage than that properly tanned, but, since this artificial filling is washed out on the first contact with water and the leather rapidly deteriorates through attracting and retaining moisture, the fraud of the system is at once apparent. Although the use of leather artificially weighted with hygroscopic chemicals is extremely detrimental to health, it was only during last year that laws were passed forbidding the adulteration of leather, and even these are inadequate. Strange to relate, the two countries where these legal measures have been taken, Australia and South Africa, enjoy for the most part a hot and dry climate, while it is in wet weather that adulterated leather is most harmful. However, to Australia belongs the honour of initiating legal measures against frauds in leather manufacture, and their praiseworthy action must soon be copied by other civilised countries. On the other hand, it would be inadvisable to prohibit the addition of every other material except those with tanning properties. There are undoubtedly a few substances which, used in combination with the tanning materials, add to the strength and value of the leather, and it is the opinion of some tanners that great developments will take place in this direction. Certain oils, sulphonated in order to render them easily miscible with water, and known commercially as "soluble" oils, exercise a beneficial effect when mixed with the tan liquors, for they lubricate the fibres of the leather, assist penetration of and fix the tannin. The time required for the process is, therefore, much reduced, as strong liquors may be used without harmful effect. The oil also serves as a lubricant for the fibres, obviates the harshness and brittleness usually associated with rapidly-tanned leather, and fixed to the extent of about 3 per cent., must increase its durability. Best of all, from the tanner's point of view, there is a moderate increase of weight. There are two or three special tanning oils on the market. A vegetable gummy product has lately been introduced to the trade which has been found to give remarkable results when used in conjunction with tanning materials. This gummy matter is extracted from vegetable seeds and is placed on the market under the name of Tragasol. Its composition is somewhat similar to that of tannins, the Tragasol Co.'s analysis showing it to contain 43.51 per cent, of carbon, 6.23 per cent. of hydrogen, 48.38 per cent. of oxygen, 0.39 per cent. of nitrogen, and 1.49 per cent. of ash. It is very largely used for strengthening and sizing textile fabrics, and seems destined to play an important part in the leather trade, for it has tanning properties, increases the strength of the leather, and considerably hastens the process. Its most important advantage is that it permits successful tannage in the drum, thus effecting a great saving of time and labour. Hitherto, rapid tannages have not been very successful, as they generally made the leather harsh and brittle, and lessened its durability. Leather tanned by previous rapid methods was also less waterproof than that tanned in pits by slow methods. All these defects are avoided by using Tragasol, which, when combined with tanning extracts, forms a curdy precipitate, described by the makers of Tragasol as cutiloid (contraction of cutis and colloid, cutis meaning "skin," and the Tragasol being, chemically, a colloid). The cutiloid tannage increases the water-resistant properties of leather, and prevents the oxidation and consequent darkening of the colour of the tanning material used with it. Tests have been made which show that cutiloid-tanned leather will withstand a fall of water 12 in. high for six weeks before complete penetration takes place; ordinary tannages do not often resist water for more than a few hours. For the tannage of sole leather in the drum by the cutiloid process, about 120 per cent. of Tragasol and 40 per cent. of chestnut or oakwood extract are required; this quantity is divided into four equal portions, which are added to the drum successively at intervals of one hour. The hides should then be nearly tanned through, and the process is completed with strong extract (chestnut and quebracho, or myrobalans, according to the kind of leather required). After drumming the hides for ten hours, they should remain at rest for two hours, then drummed another hour, and so on, alternately, until the completion of the process, which may require from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, according to the substance of the hides. By this process, the yield of leather may exceed 60 per cent. of the weight of the raw pelts. This percentage of yield may be raised to 70 per cent. or more in the case of sole leather by steeping the hides in hot extract. The action of acids in swelling gelatine is sometimes abused, particularly on the Continent and in America. As pointed out before, tan liquors must be mildly acid in character before the process can proceed, and, if the organic acids of the tanning materials are insufficient, the addition of a small quantity of formic, or lactic, or acetic acid is necessary; but, in many of the American acid tannages, an excessive quantity of mineral acid is used, with the object of swelling the hides. When in this condition, they rapidly absorb an abnormal quantity of tannin, and the finished leather is unnaturally thick. To make matters worse, the tannage is sometimes not completed, but, instead, the hides are treated ("doped") with hygroscopic chemicals, which not only increase the weight of the leather but also endanger the health of those who have to wear it. Most of the American tanneries make no secret of their use of these unnecessary chemicals, but assert that they are obliged to use them in order to meet competition, and because a large number of bootmakers insist on buying sole leather at a low price per lb. The Leather and Paper Department of the U.S.A. Bureau of Industry analysed several American leathers in 1913 and found that a large majority were artificially weighted with glucose and Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate). Barium compounds are also used for the same purpose, but the American tannages are apparently free of this adulterant. The results were published in a pamphlet by the United States Government, together with a list of the firms whose leathers were tested. While the European tanners do not weight their leather so freely as the Americans with these chemicals, the practice of swelling the hides unduly is not unknown, with the difference that, especially on the Continent, the swollen fibres are fixed by treating the hides with a weak solution of formaldehyde, which also acts as a preliminary tanning agent. The tannage can then be rapidly completed with fairly strong extracts, as the formaldehyde prevents the contraction of the grain which would ensue if untreated raw pelts were placed in strong tan liquor. The acid-formaldehyde process is risky, and cannot be recommended. The use of the artificial tannin, neradol, has replaced it in many Continental sole-leather tanneries. A preliminary tannage with neradol forms a good mordant for the use of the strong extracts. [Illustration: FIG. 26 PINNING SOLE BUTTS] Whatever the method used to improve or depreciate the natural tannage, the surplus material left on the surface is raised or brushed off, and, after the leather has been left to drain for a few hours, it is sent to the finishing department, which is usually the drying shed. There, it is left piled up for a day or two, until it is in the right condition for oiling. The leather must be oiled, otherwise the grain would be harsh and brittle when dry, and would darken in colour, especially at the edges. Cod oil is generally used, and sometimes a little mineral oil is added to it to prevent possible impurities in the fish oil rising to the surface of the leather or causing damage in other ways. A cod oil purified by distillation would, however, be quite safe to use, and there seems to be no reason why tanners should use crude oils so frequently as they do, now that a large number of oils specially prepared for the leather trade are available. Linseed oil is also used in admixture with cod oil, its oxidising properties hastening the process of drying. The leather is liberally oiled with a brush or swab on the grain side and immediately hung up in the drying shed, where it is left until it reaches what is technically known as a "sammed" condition (_i.e._, just damp enough to exude no water when the leather is doubled over). It is then struck out ("pinned") on the grain side, either with a hand tool (Fig. 26) or by machine. In the former case, the leather is placed on a long wooden beam and the pinner works from the left side, keeping two of the three edges of his knife flat on the leather while making heavy forward strokes. As the scum is worked out, the operator mops it up with a wet cloth. Machinery has replaced hand labour in this operation in all modern tanneries. The pressure of the tool removes scud and dirt, varying in quantity according to the amount of "bloom" contained in the particular tanning materials used. The leather is then laid in pile for a few hours, when it is in a fit condition for the first rolling, which is known in the trade as "rolling on." This operation is generally done by machine (Fig. 27) nowadays, but the old method of using a hand roller heavily weighted with an iron box (Fig. 28) is still practised in a few yards. After rolling, the leather is hung up again until nearly dry, when it is taken down and sized with a weak colouring matter, made up of annatto or tumeric, with chalk or whitening dissolved in white vinegar (acetic acid) and diluted. It is then rolled again ("rolling off") and polished with a piece of flannel. Finally, it is hung up to air off, and is then ready for the warehouse. [Illustration: FIG. 27 ROLLING MACHINE] In many yards the finishing consists merely in striking out the leather, rolling it when properly tempered, hanging up until nearly dry, and re-rolling. An American machine for giving the final polish to sole leather has lately been introduced. Instead of the rolling machine, some French tanners use the hammering machine, which gives good results, but is necessarily slow and frightfully noisy in action. The steel hammer moves up and down with remarkable rapidity, but only a small area is covered by each blow. [Illustration: FIG. 28 OLD METHOD OF ROLLING SOLE LEATHER] The artificial drying of sole leather, or of any other kind, is a matter that needs careful attention, for it is obvious that great delay would occur, and a large amount of business would be lost, if tanners relied solely on the climatic conditions of the British Isles; in fact, the weather is so rarely fit for drying leather that every up-to-date tannery contains some artificial aids, the need for which has been more pressing since a large proportion of leather contains a surplus of tanning matter which is liable to oxidise in contact with strong light and air, thereby darkening the leather and making it brittle. Among the satisfactory drying plants are those of Howard-Smith & Co., and the Sutcliffe Ventilating and Drying Co., Ltd. Both work on the theory of fanning a continuous current of hot air through the drying-room, so that the moisture evaporating from the leather is constantly drawn off while the apparatus is at work. [Illustration: FIG. 29 FAN (Howard-Smith system)] The Howard-Smith plant consists of a series of steel tubes into which hot water or steam is pumped. These pipes are enclosed in a chamber in which the air naturally acquires great heat. A fan (Fig. 29) is fixed in one side of this chamber (Fig. 30) and, when in motion, drives the hot air through a wide tube which leads to the drying chamber. [Illustration: FIG. 30 FAN FIXED IN CHAMBER (Howard-Smith system)] Figure 31 shows the Sutcliffe Fan and Heater installed in a tannery. At least two hygrometers should be hung up in a drying-room to determine the amount of moisture in the air. CHROME SOLE LEATHER The manufacture of chrome sole leather suitable for ordinary walking boots is of comparatively recent origin, although natural chrome hides were dressed more than twenty years ago for tennis boot soles and other athletic shoes. There can be no doubt of the superior wearing and waterproof qualities of well-dressed chrome sole, but its high price, compared with that of vegetable-tanned sole leather, is against its general use. Either the one bath or two bath tannage (described on p. 108) may be used, but, on the whole, the one bath method is preferred for the following reasons: (1) Its application is easier; (2) it produces a firmer and less elastic leather; and (3) there is practically no danger of weakening the hide fibres. On the other hand, the two-bath process produces a plumper leather which can, naturally, carry more dressing and command a correspondingly better price. In skilled hands, it is also under better control than the one-bath process, while it is absolutely necessary for the popular pale bluish-grey tint of chrome leather tennis soles. [Illustration: FIG. 31 SUTCLIFFE SYSTEM OF DRYING] The natural chrome sole requires very little dressing. The chromed hides (usually rounded into butts or bends, shoulders and bellies) are allowed to remain on a horse two or three days after the completion of the tannage, so that the oxide of chromium may combine more firmly with the fibres. They are then placed in the drum tumbler again and washed in cold water for several hours. A constant stream is conveyed to the drum through a rubber pipe fixed to the tap, and escapes through small holes in the drum. The acid salts are not thoroughly removed by this washing and must, therefore, be neutralised with an alkali. Borax is the best for the purpose, owing to its mild action on leather and antiseptic properties. From 1 to 2 per cent. borax on the weight of the leather is generally sufficient, while, if soda be used for economical reasons, only half the quantity is required. The drum is revolved for about an hour; the liquor is then run off, and the leather receives a further washing in cold water for half an hour, when it is in a condition to receive the dressing, which is chiefly composed of materials which help to fill and lubricate the interstices of the fibres so that the substance is maintained and the natural strength of the fibres preserved. Gelatine, pure glue, Tragasol, paraffin wax, carnauba wax, spermaceti, Marseilles soap, are among the various ingredients used; while the delicacy of the tint may be improved with china clay or French chalk. Recipes vary considerably, each manufacturer claiming to have secret methods. Solutions are made of the ingredients, or, where one or more of the materials are insoluble, they are atomised in a mixing pan before use. To induce thorough penetration, the dressing liquid may be applied to the leather at a fairly high temperature, as chrome leather is unaffected by heat which would destroy the fibres of ordinary vegetable-tanned leather. Even so, it is inadvisable to use a higher temperature than 170° F. The leather is thoroughly impregnated with the dressing in about an hour's time, and is then piled on a wooden horse for several hours, or overnight, to drain and permit thorough incorporation of the dressing with the leather. When well-drained, the grain of the hides is smoothed by pressure with a special tool (Fig. 32) or by machine, the operation being known technically as "striking out." The machine (Fig. 34) gives quite satisfactory results and has replaced hand labour in all modern works. The hides are then "strained" (_i.e._, extended and nailed to wooden frames), or they are simply hung up to dry. In the latter case, there is a small shrinkage of the size of the hide, but the substance is maintained. With good straining, a satisfactory increase of surface measurement can be obtained. [Illustration: FIG. 32 SLEEKER] When the leather is completely dried, it may be sold at once, but if, as is generally the case, a special "nap" finish is required on the flesh side, the hides are placed in damped deal sawdust until they are in the right condition of flexibility for the next process, known as "fluffing." This is done on a rapidly revolving wheel (Fig. 33) covered with emery powder varying in the size of grain according to the effect desired on the finished leather. The abrasion of the leather on the flesh (_i.e._, the under side) raises a soft nap. Carborundum, a special abrasive made in America, by the fusion of sand, coke, and salt at a very high temperature, has to some extent supplanted the use of emery. As a final finish, the flesh side may be rubbed over with chalk or china clay to give it a clear saleable appearance. [Illustration: FIG. 33 FLUFFING MACHINE] The chrome sole leather used for ordinary boots is quite a different product, and it is only in the last two or three years that it has been used to any extent. The "Dri-ped" is the best known make of this leather. The tannage is effected by the one or two-bath methods already described. The processes preparatory to chroming are very important, as it is essential to get the maximum yield of pelt. The hides are, therefore, often treated with sulphide of sodium, which loosens the hair in twenty-four hours or less. They are then placed in fairly strong limes for two or three days to swell the fibres and saponify the grease. After being washed in cold water, the hides are treated with a weak solution of lactic, boracic, or butyric acid, or butyrate of ammonia, to remove all trace of lime, when they are ready to be chrome-tanned. After chroming them, neutralisation of the acid chrome salts is effected with borax, and the leather is ready for dressing. The principal objects of this process are to make the leather firm and waterproof, and to remedy its tendency to slip easily on wet pavements. The last-named is the greatest difficulty, and there are only about two or three firms who have really surmounted it. Each manufacturer keeps his recipe secret, but the ingredients that go to make the various dressings are drawn from the following: Stearines, mineral oil, Tragasol, resin, carnauba wax, beeswax, paraffin wax, glue. Resin, or asphalt, or both, may be used to prevent the leather slipping in contact with a wet pavement. One patent describes a method of dressing chrome sole leather with a mixture of asphalt, resin, and paraffin wax. [Illustration: FIG. 34 STRIKING-OUT AND SCOURING MACHINE] The waterproofing ingredients are preferably applied to the leather in the tumbler at a high temperature, say, 160-170° F. After running the drum for about three-quarters of an hour, the leather is impregnated with the mixture, and is then horsed up for at least twenty-four hours to allow complete incorporation of the fatty ingredients with the fibres of the leather. A suitable waterproof dressing and filling increases the strength of the leather. The finishing of the leather is simple. The butts or bends are smoothed and stretched out by machine (Fig. 34), oiled on the grain, nailed or extended with special metal grips on square wooden frames, and dried. In some cases, they are hung up until nearly dry, rolled by machine instead of being put on boards and aired off in a drying stove. A patented method of making waterproof chrome sole leather to prevent it slipping and losing its shape in wear consists in first treating the leather in a solution of glue, gelatine, agar-agar, or other colloidal substance, with the addition of formaldehyde, and then submitting it to strong pressure under the influence of a high temperature, in order to fix the colloidal matters. The pressure is made between heated plates. The leather is afterwards impregnated with a mixture of wool-grease, pitch, asphalt, resin, wax, gutta-percha, etc. A recipe given in the specification consists of wool grease (60 parts), asphalt (10 parts), soft pitch (25 parts) and gutta-percha (5 parts). The mass is fused and kept at 90° C. The hides are placed flat in this mixture, which they quickly absorb. If the British Government should ever introduce a Bill to stop the adulteration of leather, it may be found somewhat difficult to deal with chrome sole, which must have some filling material to make its use practicable. No exception can be taken to the dressing of leather with materials that make it waterproof and increase its strength; in fact, much more will be done in this direction than has ever been attempted in the past, as waterproof sole leather is a necessity in Great Britain. Any measure to check the adulteration of leather must, therefore, clearly define the chemicals which are known to be harmful in leather and which may not be used. This has not been overlooked by the Australian Government, which has forbidden the use of barium salts in leather, and likewise the importation of leather boots or any goods made of leather containing this chemical. Such goods sent to Australia are liable to confiscation, and it is reported that a few consignments of boots have already been condemned. Leather, either exported or imported, must not contain more than 3 per cent. of glucose unless the percentage is marked on each consignment, in which case, it is presumed, a tanner may use as much of the adulterant as he likes, although the fact that he has to disclose this practice acts as a deterrent in most cases. Unfortunately, the Australian Act leaves an important loophole, since the use of Epsom salts, which can be made to increase the weight of leather more than any other chemical, is not prohibited. In any case, none of these hygroscopic materials is of any use to chrome sole, for they would attract moisture which it is desirable to resist. VACHE SOLE LEATHER As its name implies, vache sole leather is a Continental product, being made chiefly in France, Belgium, and Germany. The raw material consists of light and medium cow hides. The details of working are somewhat similar to those used in tanning English sole leather, the main difference being that the hides are suspended in the lime liquors instead of throwing them in flat. The system of tannage is not so varied as the English, since the materials used generally consist of oak and pine barks, myrobalans, quebracho and oak extracts; and the finishing materials are of quite another character. The Continental tanners generally use the Réaumur thermometer, while the Beaumé hydrometer is used to determine the density of the tan liquors in place of the English barkometer (Fig. 24). One degree Beaumé is equal to 6.9° barkometer. Vache leather is more pliable than English sole leather, but the addition of valonia extract towards the end of the tanning process would greatly increase its firmness. The finish is applied to the flesh side of the leather, and a typical recipe consists of a size such as Irish moss or Tragasol (1 part), flour (20 parts), china clay (20 parts), and pure gambier (2 parts) in 200 parts of water. The size is dissolved and cooled, and the other ingredients are then added. MACHINE BELTING, HARNESS, AND SADDLERY LEATHERS These leathers are rarely made by one firm; usually, strap butts and most kinds of belting leathers are dressed by curriers, whose trade is quite distinct from that of currying shoe leather. The tanning and currying of harness and saddlery leathers is another special branch. Besides these three important trades, there is the dressing of hydraulic, mechanical, and other industrial leathers, which likewise form special sections of the heavy leather industry. Belting leather is an important item in the trade, and, as a good proportion is made from the finest hides, this class of leather is among the most expensive made. At present, there is much controversy in the trade as to whether the vegetable-tanned or the chrome-tanned article is the more economical in use. Briefly, chrome belting is superior in works where there is much steam or mineral acids, as it is not affected by these conditions to the same extent as bark-tanned belting. Its tensile strength is also greater, but against these advantages must be set its higher cost and tendency to stretch unduly in comparison with the vegetable-tanned product. It can be safely said, however, that the use of chrome belting is on the increase, although its production is not nearly on such a big scale as that of the old type of belting. The tannage of belting leather is similar to that of sole leather, except that there is no necessity to continue the process, after the tannin has struck through, with the object of increasing its firmness and weight. Attention must also be paid to the class of tanning materials used, especially for belting of the best quality, as it must have great tensile strength and stand a severe strain in the dynamometric test. Tannins that rapidly oxidise in contact with light and air have, therefore, to be avoided. The oak bark tannage, with a little chestnut and oakwood extracts to finish the process, is a good method of imparting to the hide the right degree of firmness and flexibility. As in the case of sole leather, belting may be artificially weighted during the tannage, although it is usually done in the currying process, if at all. There can be no doubt that a quantity of adulterated belting leather is made, and will continue to be made while the practice of selling by weight is in vogue. As a rule, sophisticated belting leather has a much weaker tensile strength than the pure product and is of relatively poor value, since the reduction of price is usually a matter of only a few pence. If users of belting bought on the principle of value instead of price, they would never buy adulterated leather. [Illustration: FIG. 35 LEATHER-STUFFING DRUM] In tanning hides for belting, the shoulders and bellies are cut off and usually dressed for sole or harness leather, leaving the butt, the prime part of the hide, 4-1/2 ft. in length (Fig. 23). The tanned butt is first shaved to level the substance, then washed in a solution of borax, and sumached in the drum. After smoothing the leather in the striking-out machine, it is partially dried ("sammed") and then rubbed on both sides with a dubbin of cod oil and tallow. In this condition the butts are left piled up for a few days, so that the dubbin penetrates the leather, which is then extended with the sleeker (Fig. 32) to make it smooth and to remove surplus grease, which is sold to soap-makers under the currier's name of "moisings." The leather is finally dried, rolled (optional), stretched by machine, and cut up in the width of belting required. Instead of "hand-stuffing" the leather with cod oil and tallow, which is still the best method, a large quantity of butts are now "drum-stuffed," the object being to make use of stearines, which are harder and heavier greases than tallow. The type of drum shown in Figure 35, in which the grease is incorporated with the leather by means of live steam, gives satisfactory results, although hot air apparatus is now replacing the steam injector. A patent has lately been granted to an American inventor for the production of a strong and cheap belting. Flesh splits of hides are simply stuck together with a collodion or nitrocellulose solution. Any number of layers may be used, according to the substance required, the only essential quality being that the leather should be free from grease. The adhesive property of nitrocellulose solutions is probably stronger than that of any other material, but, unfortunately, the tough film they form on drying does not grip a greasy surface. Before the solution used to join the pieces of leather together is dry, the leather is rolled under heavy pressure, and, when thoroughly dried, can be cut up for belting. The dressing of harness leather is similar to the manual process of making belting, with the exception that the butts or bends (half butts) are stained either black or a pale straw colour, the latter being known to the trade as the "London colour." Annatto is often used to get this colour. The bright, greasy finish on harness leather is obtained by rubbing buck tallow over the grain and polishing with a glass sleeker or a piece of flannel. The operation is sometimes done by machine, in which the working cylinder is covered with pieces of cotton rag. Saddlery leathers are dressed on similar lines, but the finish is not so greasy as harness. Pig skins make the best and toughest leather for this purpose. They are dressed in a similar manner to harness hides, but special attention has to be given to pig skins to get rid of the large quantity of natural grease they contain. BOOT UPPER LEATHERS Whereas the number of different kinds of boot upper leathers in use less than three decades ago was limited to five or six (waxed calf, calf kid, French kid, mock kid, levant, coloured calf) it is now almost legion. Although the variety is almost bewildering, however, the popular demand is confined to about half-a-dozen sorts, which include real and imitation box calf, box hide, _glacé_ or glazed kid, patent leather, willow calf, dull-finished chrome leather, and waxed kip butts and waxed splits for workmen's boots. Box leathers and glazed kid are the most popular of all. Generally speaking, glazed kid is more suitable for wear in the summer and autumn; while box leather, being thicker and stronger, is preferable for the winter. Imitation willow calf (_i.e._, calf skin tanned in vegetable and chrome liquors, either separately or combined) is very suitable for easy-wearing boots, but is not so durable and resistant to water as the pure chrome-tanned article. The tannage of box and willow leathers may be effected by the one or two-bath process already described (p. 108). Before the tannage, it is advisable to pickle the hides or skins in a solution of alum and salt, with the object of preventing contraction of the tissues of the hide, and providing a mordant for the more rapid absorption and fixation of the chrome salts. The tannage completed, the acid salts in the leathers are neutralised with borax, and after the leather has been washed in warm water it is ready for dyeing. The dyeing of box calf is generally done in the drum tumbler, but there are several other methods. One system used on the Continent is to dip the skins, a pair at a time and placed flesh to flesh, in a very strong dye liquor. This method is slow, and not in accordance with modern ideas; used for producing browns and fancy shades, it is very difficult to avoid irregularity of colour where large parcels are manipulated. Another method is vat dyeing, the process being carried out in a wooden vat (Fig. 25) and the dye liquor circulated by means of a paddle. The one advantage of this system is that the leather can be easily examined during the process. A useful method of dyeing is carried out by brushing the colouring materials on the grain side of the leather. This process is economical, and it has the further advantage that the finished leather can be used for unlined boots and other purposes where an undyed flesh is necessary. The original "box" leather was dyed a dark-blue shade in the drum before it was shaved, and, as the dye does not penetrate very far into chrome leather, unless a strong mordant of tannin be previously used, the subsequent shaving left the flesh side of the leather a very pale-bluish tint. The process of dyeing is least troublesome and most effective when done in the drum tumbler. The leather is run in warm water until the temperature reaches 140°-150° F (60°-66° C.) and the dyeing materials are added gradually in a box at the side of the drum whence it passes through the axle or journal into the tumbler. Although chrome leather is not materially affected by boiling water in contradistinction to vegetable-tanned leather, which cannot be treated with water above 60° C. without injury, it is inadvisable to dye it in boiling solutions, the above-mentioned temperature being the most satisfactory. There are two methods of dyeing blacks in the leather trade: (1) the logwood-ammonia, and (2) the aniline black. The former is the cheaper of the two and quite satisfactory, although many dyers seem to prefer the aniline process. The latter certainly gives a deeper black, but it is not at all necessary to make the flesh side of box calf black, and many buyers prefer the back blue, although, of course, the grain side of the leather must be finished a jet black. The crude logwood is generally subjected to a process of fermentation or "ageing." The new wood has to be placed on stone or cemented flooring in a warm room and frequently turned over until fermentation has ceased, which usually takes about a week. It is then cut into small chips by machinery and packed in bags. This is the form in which it always used to enter the tannery, but it is now generally prepared in paste or crystal extract by makers of tanning and dye-wood extracts, a business which grows in importance every year. The colouring matter of logwood is haematoxylin, which is converted into haematin by oxidation; hence, the extract is often referred to as haematin crystals. The paste may be used where it is desirable to increase the substance of the leather, but most dyers prefer the crystals, which are easily dissolved in hot water. One lb. of crystals, to which is added just enough ammonia to change the brown colour to violet blue, suffices for each 100 lb. of leather dyed. The colouring matter is absorbed by the time the drum has been running half an hour, leaving clear water behind. The next process is known technically as "fat-liquoring," which, as its name implies, consists in lubricating the fibres of the leather with fatty or oily matters. This is a very important process, for, when suitable ingredients are used, the pliability, strength, and waterproof quality of the leather are greatly increased. The making of special fat-liquors for different kinds of leather has become quite an important business, and most makes can be depended upon for the specified purposes. It is a debatable point as to whether fat-liquoring should precede or follow dyeing. Generally speaking, it is better to adopt the latter course, as the fatty ingredients help to fix the colouring matter on the fibres of the leather. The dye is also less liable to fade when fat liquoring follows the colouring. The number of materials that may be used for the process of fat-liquoring is almost legion, but the principal are soaps, oils, egg-yolk, tallow, flour, Tragasol, Irish moss, china clay, and starch. Unless the special preparations made by leather trade chemical firms be used, much care has to be exercised in selecting the most suitable ingredients for each class of leather. For example, the mixture that would give good results on vegetable-tanned leather might be quite unsuitable for chrome leather. Then, again, the selection of material is based on the style of finish required, a dull finish necessitating heavy fats and greases which would be quite unsuitable for bright leathers, and particularly for those of the chrome-tannage. Among the hundreds of recipes that have been published from time to time, tallow has only found a place in one or two mixtures, yet it is one of the finest materials for strengthening and lubricating the fibres of leather. If its splendid properties were fully known, it would be very largely used for fat-liquoring purposes. Of course, it is well known to the currying trade, having for several centuries formed the basis, together with cod oil, of the dubbin used in stuffing waxed leather and belting butts. The following is a useful recipe for a fat-liquor for box calf: 2 lb. Marseilles soap and 3 lb. neatsfoot oil for every 100 lb. of leather. The soap is cut into small pieces and dissolved in hot water, and the oil is added slowly and thoroughly mixed by stirring vigorously. Where possible, emulsification should be done in a machine, in order to atomise the ingredients. The finer they can be brought into a state of division, the better they will be absorbed by the leather. Other suitable fat-liquors for box leathers are the following: (1) Turkey red oil, 2 per cent. of weight of leather and neutral soap 1 per cent.: (2) neatsfoot oil, 2 lb.; tallow, 1 lb.; and Tragasol, 1 lb.: (3) cod oil, 2 lbs.; Marseilles soap, 1 lb.: (4) neatsfoot oil, 2 lbs.; egg-yolk, 1/2 lb., or six fresh yolks. The process is completed in 20-30 minutes. In the case of fancy colours or browns, the leather should generally be well-drained and warmed up again in the drum in hot water (170° F.) before fat-liquoring, but the precaution is unnecessary for black leathers. After the fat-liquoring process, the leather is removed from the drum, and piled up on the horse to drain, and left for several hours or overnight, to allow it to assimilate the fatty ingredients. It is then submitted to an operation known as sleeking or striking out, with the object of removing surplus water and so facilitating drying, and making the grain side smooth. Machinery is now almost universally employed, especially for chrome leather. A good type of striking out machine is shown in Figure 34. If done by hand, the skins are placed on a sloping glass or slate table, with the flesh side uppermost, which is then stretched out by strong pressure with a tool known as a sleeker, the strokes being made downward in the direction of the hair growth. The flesh side done, the whole skin is turned over and the grain side is similarly treated. Sometimes only the flesh side is struck out, especially if the grain is soft and tender. The sleeker consists of an iron, steel, or copper blade, about 6 in. square, fitted in a wood handle (Fig. 32). The skins are hung up in the drying-room immediately they are extended and smoothed by sleeking, and are then either allowed to dry completely, or, as is generally the case with best leather, they are hung up until a great deal of the moisture is evaporated and the skins are left in a slightly moist, or, as it is generally termed, "sammed" condition. The skins are then taken down, damped in dry parts, folded over, laid in piles to equalise the moisture, and finally smoothed out and stretched again by hand or machine. This second operation after the dyeing is known as "setting." Chrome-tanned skins are usually stretched and nailed on square boards after setting, as, owing to their elasticity, they are liable to shrink considerably in drying. The superficial area can be increased by fully extending the skins. This operation is technically described as "straining." It may be stated here that vegetable-tanned leathers are not generally "strained" on boards, as such leather is better in quality and substance when hung up and dried. Leather of combined tannage (_i.e._, tanned with vegetable and chrome products) is, however, frequently "strained," as the astringent property of chrome would otherwise cause contraction of the fibres. When dried on the boards the leather is somewhat stiff, and has, therefore, to be softened before any finishing ingredients are applied. Chrome leather is softened by placing it for a few days in damp sawdust, which, for brown or fancy coloured leather, must be of deal or white pine, and, therefore, free from objectionable colouring matter; but, for black leather, the sawdust of any wood is suitable. The skins must be systematically piled one above the other, and a little damped sawdust scattered over each skin. When properly "seasoned," the skins are brushed free of the sawdust and "staked," either by hand or machine, usually by the latter means. The staking knife may be fixed in a wood crutch (arm stake), or fixed upright in a vertical wooden stand (knee stake). In the former case, the skins to be staked must be secured in a horizontal wooden groove fixed to two uprights, the workman then pressing heavily in a downward direction with the staking knife, of which the crutch is held under the armpit. In using the upright stake, the leather is moved to and fro over the edge of the fixed knife. Both of these manual operations are arduous and somewhat dangerous, and should be displaced by machinery wherever possible (Fig. 36). [Illustration: FIG. 36 STAKING AND GLAZING MACHINE] The thoroughly softened leather is then dried, mordanted with a solution of logwood, or haematin crystals, blacked with levant ink, a specially prepared black dye, or with a suitable aniline dye, and dried again. It is finally seasoned with a glutinous or albuminous mixture (blood albumen, milk, and a little aniline black dye make a good mixture), dried, glazed, seasoned a second time, and reglazed. A light coating of mineral oil turns the finish into a jet black, and the leather is ready for the warehouse. There are several types of glazing machines, but the "grasshopper" (so called owing to its action) is the most popular for box calf. This machine is the same as shown in Figure 36, except that the working tool is replaced with a smooth glass or agate roller. The term "box" applied to this leather was invented by a prominent American tanner, and had he registered the name and patented his process he would have reaped a very rich harvest, for the leather is used in enormous quantities throughout the world. As it was, the American firm tried to obtain an injunction against English firms manufacturing the leather, but had to withdraw their claim, as they were not the inventors of chrome leather, which was made in Scotland before it was introduced to the States. Moreover, the word "box," as applied to leather, was not registered in the United Kingdom. Willow calf is exactly the same kind of leather as box calf, except that it is dyed brown instead of black. The seasoning mixture naturally differs and may consist of a mixture of egg albumen, milk, and a little of the same, or similar, dye solution as that used in the dyeing process. In order to get clear colouring, the dyes should be well dissolved and strained through fine muslin. CHAMOIS LEATHER This kind of leather is well known to the general public under the name of wash-leather, but it is, perhaps, not so widely known that there is practically no real chamois leather available, since the species of animal bearing this name is almost extinct. Nowadays, "chamois," or "shamoy" is made from the flesh split of sheep skin, and the method whereby the leather is produced is described as the oil tannage. The chamois leather dresser may also do the preliminary work of fellmongering, but more often he receives the pelts, or "fells," from the fellmonger. Although the pelts have been in a lime liquor known as the fellmonger's "gathering limes," the process of liming has to be continued and carefully regulated. Too much liming makes the pelts loose, owing to the development of bacteria. This effect would cause the finished leather to be soft and spongy. On the other hand, under-liming fails to remove sufficient of the cement substance which binds the fibres of the pelts; consequently, the leather produced from these pelts is thin and somewhat gristly. After being limed, the skins are "cobbed" (_i.e._, the bits of wool or hair left on by the fellmonger are removed) and the pelts are then fleshed by machinery. The next operation, splitting, is very important and requires skilful attention to get good results. The Reeder machine is largely in use, but the band-knife machine is also suitable. The top half of the sheep skin (_i.e._, the grain side) is utilised for the manufacture of skivers, while the under portion, or flesh side, technically called "lining," serves as the raw material for chamois leather. The best linings are generally sorted out for making into parchment, which, of course, commands a much higher price than chamois. Linings for chamois are then submitted to the operation of either re-splitting or frizing, the object being to remove the loose tissue lying between the grain and flesh. The pelts are re-split in the case of cheap chamois, but frized if intended for choice finish. Frizing is an operation peculiar to the making of chamois and glove leather. It is done with a very sharp knife, similar to the fleshing knife, and on a more upright beam than that used by tanners. The work requires great skill, frizers being among the best paid workers in the trade. Frizing done, the linings are freed from lime by washing them in the drum tumbler, or paddle-vat, through which cold water is allowed to flow continuously for two or three hours. When lamb skins, which are too thin to split, are made into chamois leather, the grain is removed by frizing. A quick and effective method of deliming is to treat the skins in a weak solution of lactic acid. Some dressers use a drench of pea-flour or bran. The mild acids produced by the fermentation of these materials not only neutralise the lime but also reduce the gristly nature of the skins to a soft, supple condition. The bran infusion is slightly warmed to hasten the process of fermentation, but the temperature must not exceed 100° F. (32° C.). The linings are then rinsed in cold water and sent to the stocking machines, in which they are kneaded until they become quite soft. Either the faller-stocks or the mechanical pushers (Fig. 14) may be used, the latter being the more modern machine. The operation may require from four to ten hours, the completion being determined by the condition of the skins. "Samming" follows stocking, and for this purpose the linings are hung up in the drying shed until thoroughly dripped, but not dried. In this slightly damp condition they are then prepared for the next process of oiling, which is the most important part of chamois-dressing, as it converts the perishable raw linings into leather. In the United Kingdom, cod oil (generally Newfoundland) is used exclusively, and gives best results. Whale and shark liver, or menhaden oils are often used abroad. The linings are placed in a tub or vat, a few at a time, and oil is poured over each layer until a sufficient number has been treated to fill the stocking machine. The stocks are run for half-an-hour, or until the oil has penetrated the linings, when they are put back into the vat, where they remain for about an hour. They are then re-stocked, taken into the shed to samm, re-oiled in the vat, and stocked again. These processes are repeated until the skins are thoroughly impregnated with the oil, when they are dried in a warm stove. The skins are not yet converted into leather, which only occurs in oil-dressing, after the oxidation of the oil. This is effected by spontaneous heat, the dry oiled skins being heaped in boxes and covered. Strict attention has to be paid to avoid over-heating the skins, which are turned over and changed at intervals. When the leather ceases to heat, the process is completed. It is then dipped into hot water and mechanically pressed, to remove surplus or uncombined oil, which is collected and sold under the name of "sod oil." The leather is afterwards drummed in warm water and finely cleansed in an alkaline solution, potash, soda, or borax, chiefly the first named, being used for this purpose. They are then rinsed in water, dried, damped, and softened by staking. At this stage, the best skins are sorted out for the glove makers. The others are finished for wash-leather by re-staking, paring with the moon-knife, and smoothing both sides of the skin with a scurfer, or fine pumice-stone. In the warehouse, they are damped, stretched out, piled up, and kept fully extended by placing heavy weights near the edges of each pile of skins. GLOVING LEATHER Progress in the art of making leather for gloves has been rapid during the last few years; but further important developments are expected, particularly in the process of tanning. Practically the only method that has been used for many decades for converting kid, lamb, and sheep skins into gloving leather is that known technically as "tawing," which consists of treating skins with alum, salt, egg-yolk, flour, and a vegetable oil. These substances change skins into extremely supple and "stretchy" leather, but when this is made into gloves it is far from ideal in wear, because it fails to keep the hands warm in cold, wet weather, it is easily soiled and cannot be cleaned without great expense, and it is not very strong in texture. Combination tannages have lately been produced, however, which remove the defects of alumed leather. By means of a light chrome tannage after tawing, the leather is strengthened and made more resistant to water, and can be cleaned with a damp rag or sponge. By tanning skins with the formaldehyde process, or with Neradol, the artificial tannin, for making into suède leather, the finished article is not only washable but also resists the action of alkalies and soap. The adaptation of combined tannages in the manufacture of gloving leathers has only lately been developed, and further improvements will doubtless be effected before long. Lamb, kid, goat, and sheep skins constitute the raw material for gloving leathers, although deer and antelope skins are also used to a small extent. Real kid skins are the best wearing dress gloves, but the great majority of so-called "kid" gloves are made of lamb skins. The raw kid and lamb skins are chiefly of European, Arabian, and Indian origin. Sheep skins from the Cape provide the raw material for a large number of men's gloves, and leather of very good quality can be produced from the best grades. Most of the skins are preserved by drying, or by salting and drying, although some kid skins are wet-salted and packed in barrels for export. It would save leather-dressers a great deal of trouble if they could always get wet-salted skins; but the object of drying them is to reduce the weight and lower the cost of freight. Soaking is done by methods already described (p. 65). Loose flesh and pieces of fat are cut off in order to facilitate the action of the depilitant, of which the best for glove leather is undoubtedly a paste of lime and red arsenic. Seven or eight parts of lime to one of arsenic is a satisfactory proportion, the quantities to be mixed depending on the number of skins to be treated, as a fresh mixture should be made for each lot, or "pack" as the tanner terms it. The lime should be well broken up, or, better still, pure powdered lime should be used and the red arsenic well mixed with it; a little water is then added to slake the lime gradually, and the mixture is stirred to promote chemical reaction. The compound is further diluted with water until it has the right consistency and the colour has changed. The reaction generates great heat, and the "paint" should, therefore, not be used at once. The flesh side is mopped with the paint and the skins are folded flesh to flesh. After a few hours, or as soon as the hair or wool is loosened, the skins are dehaired or dewoolled. The hair or wool is not allowed to come into contact with the depilitant, otherwise it would be damaged. In large yards, the white hair is separated from the coloured, as it is worth nearly twice as much. Wool is sorted into different qualities, of which the number may vary from four to eight, or even nine, according to the class of skins treated. The pelts are then thoroughly washed and placed in lime liquors, where they remain for one or two weeks, being hauled and set in the usual manner. Fleshing and piecing or trimming are the next operations, and then follows the very important process of puering, which, in the case of glove leather, must be thoroughly done so as to reduce the pelts to a very soft and flaccid condition. Success in the making of glove leather depends largely on the "puering" process. In most of the English tanneries a decoction of dog manure is used, at a temperature not exceeding 90° F., but on the Continent the artificial puer, oropon, is preferred. It is much safer to use and more uniform in its action than excrement, which develops bacteria rapidly in contact with gelatinous pelts, and could ultimately destroy them entirely. After puering them, the pelts are well washed and submitted to the process of drenching, which consists in putting the skins into a warm infusion of bran or pea-flour and leaving them covered until the following morning. The slightly acid fermentation causes the pelts to rise to the top of the vat. They are pushed into the liquor again with a pole and stirred round. This is repeated three or four times to prevent damage to the grain. The process is often done in the paddle-vat (Fig. 25), in which the bran liquor is circulated for several hours before the pelts are allowed to remain quiescent. Drenching thoroughly purges the pelts of the last traces of lime, and puts them in suitable condition for being made into leather. The pelts are then rinsed in tepid water and "scudded" on the grain with a slate or vulcanite tool, shaped somewhat like a dehairing knife. The scud removed consists of dirt, dissolved lime salts, short hairs, and pigment. Machines are rapidly replacing manual labour for this operation. The alum tannage, known technically as "tawing," is largely used for kid and lamb gloves. The tawing mixture is composed of alum, salt, egg-yolk, and wheaten flour. The proportions used vary considerably in different tanneries, but the following is a typical recipe: 4 lb. alum, 2 lb. salt, 1 lb. salted egg-yolk, or the yolks of twenty fresh eggs, and 5 lb. flour for 100 lb. of pelts. The flour is made into a paste, the egg yolk is diluted in warm water and mixed with the flour, the salt and alum are dissolved and added, and the mixture thoroughly stirred. A suitable quantity of water (about 2 gals. per 100 lb. pelts) is then placed in the drum tumbler, the tawing mixture is added, and the drum revolved for a few minutes before putting the pelts in. The process is completed in two or three hours in the case of thin skins. It is a good plan, however, to leave them at rest in the drum for a day, after which they are piled up overnight to allow further combination of the tawing materials with the fibres of the pelts. The leather is then dried out completely, damped in clean sawdust, or by sprinkling with water, levelled by shaving if necessary, staked over an upright knife fixed in a wooden stand or by machine, and dried in a hot stove. In this condition, or in the "crust," as dressers term it, the leather is allowed to remain several weeks to "age," a most essential process for the production of soft, and supple glove leather. Dressing and dyeing are begun as soon as the leather is satisfactorily aged. The skins are uniformly soaked in warm water, dyed, and re-dressed with egg yolk ("re-egged"), to which a small quantity of olive oil, or a sulphonated oil, is added. Some dressers prefer to give the second tawing mixture before dyeing, but the advantage of dressing the leather after dyeing is that the colour is securely fixed. In "re-egging," many dressers use a similar mixture to the first dressing. The dyeing process is of great importance, since the colour must be fast. The leather is dyed either in the drum or on a convex table. In the former case, the leather is naturally coloured both sides, while, in the latter, it is stained with a brush on the grain side only. Staining is the more difficult method. Kid glove leather may be dyed with aniline colours, or, as more generally practised, with natural dye-woods as a base and aniline dye for top-colouring. The great advantages of the latter method are economy in dye-stuffs and increased depth of colour. The skins are first prepared for dyeing by brushing with, or drumming them in, an alkaline solution. Stale urine was largely used for this process, but ammonical salts are now generally preferred, if only for sanitary reasons. The skins are then drummed or paddled in, or brushed with, dye-wood liquids which have been carefully strained. A large selection is available, including fustic, cuba wood, saffron, peachwood, logwood, sappan wood, cutch, Persian berries, gambier or terra japonica, and golden tan bark. Light and medium brown can be obtained from these dye-woods without the aid of aniline colours; but for dark shades, and to increase the brilliancy of other colours, a top dye or coal-tar dye is often given. The natural dyes are further developed with "strikers," which mainly consist of metallic salts. Iron, copper, and zinc sulphates, nitrate and acetate of iron, bichromate of potash, and titanium salts (titanium lactate, titanium potassium oxalate, and tanno-titanium oxalate) are the most important. The lactate, sold commercially under the name of "corichrome," is especially suitable, as, unlike the mineral acid salts, especially the sulphates, it has no destructive effect on the fibres of the leather. Dye-woods are now concentrated in the form of a paste, or dry extract, the latter being the more reliable. They are also very convenient to use and dissolve, while mixtures are, of course, easily prepared. A good tan shade on Cape sheep can be obtained by mordanting the leather with a solution of 1 lb. of bichromate of potash for every 100 lb. of leather, drumming it in 8-9 lb. of pure gambier, and then with a mixture of cuba wood extract, 1 lb.; fustic extract, 3/4 lb.; Brazil wood extract, 1/2 lb.; and logwood extract, 1/2 oz. After drumming the leather in this dye liquor for about an hour, the colour is developed with corichrome. If a darker shade be required, the leather can be treated with a suitable basic dye. After dyeing the leather, some dressers only fat-liquor it with egg-yolk and a small quantity of olive oil, while others prefer to re-dress it with a similar mixture to that used for tawing, namely, alum, salt, egg-yolk, and flour; but, where titanium salts are used, the latter method is not essential, because titanium has tanning properties. When dry, the leather is ready for finishing, but it is advisable to keep it in store for a few days before packing it in damp sawdust or sprinkling it with water to prepare it for the operation of staking. Anything more unlike leather would be difficult to imagine at this stage, but, after stretching the skin in the staking machine, or by drawing it over the upright stake, the dry, stiff, and shrivelled leather is reduced to a very supple condition. The flesh side of the leather is then pared with the moon-knife, or in the shaving machine, to equalise the thickness. In some works, a special tool which pares the leather on a flat table is preferred; this particular operation is called "doling." The flesh side is finished by fluffing it on the emery or carborundum wheel (Fig. 33). Finally, the grain is brushed and polished with the glass sleeker, or ironed. Chamois leather has been largely used for gloves of late years, but this leather has the defect, in common with suède leathers, of getting soiled much more quickly than grain leathers, such as kid, lamb, or Cape sheep. Nevertheless, suède and chamois gloves are likely to remain fashionable to a more or less extent. The manufacture of chamois leather is described on page 144. Sun-bleached skins are the best for dyeing, especially if delicate shades are wanted. The frontispiece shows a field covered with skins bleaching in the sun. Chemically bleached leather is likely to become discoloured after dyeing. Defective skins are often dyed with pigments (dust colours), and this system is also applied to skins which have to be dyed such delicate shades as cannot be produced by wood or aniline colours. Although it gives attractive results to the eye, and certainly covers up any defects of the grain, this method of dyeing is not altogether satisfactory, as the leather remains unpleasantly dusty in wear for quite a long time. The dyeing of chamois with wood-dyes or coal-tar colours is by no means easy, but this method gives the best results when successful. The grease must first be removed from the leather with a solution of 5 lb. of borax or 3-1/2 lb. of soda for every 100 lb. of leather. If the leather is still greasy on the surface, a further quantity of soda or borax is given, after which the leather is well washed in warm water, sumached, rinsed to remove the particles of sumach, and mordanted with titanium salts. The dyeing is then done with anilines or wood-dyes, or a combination of both, and this is followed by fat-liquoring with egg-yolk and a sulphonated oil. The finishing operations are staking and fluffing. To get a good, fast black on chamois and suède leathers is one of the difficult processes in the leather trade, although it is easier to get a good black on alumed or chromed leather than on vegetable-tanned. Alumed leather is washed in a solution of borax or carbonate of ammonia to remove uncombined dressing in order to prepare it for dyeing. Chrome-tanned suède leather does not need this preparation. The leather is first mordanted with dye-wood extract, of which a suitable mixture is logwood and fustic, or logwood and quercitron, in the proportion of 4 lb. and 2 lb. to every 100 lb. of leather. After drumming the leather in this solution for about an hour, a weak solution of copperas (ferrous sulphate) and bluestone (copper sulphate) is added, and the milling is continued for twenty minutes, when the leather is well prepared to receive the black dye. Instead of the iron and copper salts, corichrome is often preferred, as it is quite safe to use, whereas iron salts have a destructive action on the fibres of the leather, unless the precaution be taken to mordant the skins with a good quantity of dye-wood extract. Following the application of the iron or corichrome striker, the leather is dyed with suitable aniline black (leather black, or corvoline) and finally fat-liquored to nourish the leather, and to fix and intensify the black. This recipe also gives good results where the skins are dyed only on the flesh side, the solutions being applied with a brush. WHITE WASHABLE LEATHER Among the new kinds of leather for gloves, none is more remarkable or more useful than the washable sheep or goat skins. The great advantage of this leather is that it can be washed in warm water and soap any number of times without injury, whereas gloves of ordinary tawed kid and lamb skins have to be dry cleaned and cannot be renovated many times. An additional advantage of washable leather is its warmth. After being dehaired, puered and drenched, the skins are drummed in a solution of formaldehyde and soda. In two or three hours, the skins are tanned, and are then treated with a solution of sulphate of ammonia. The quantities required are about 3 lb. of formaldehyde (40 per cent.) and 8 lb. of sodium carbonate (80 per cent.), and 1 lb. of sulphate for 100 lb. of pelts, using sufficient water to cover the skins well in the drum. This tannage produces a white but somewhat thin and empty leather, and the fat-liquoring must, therefore, be filling and softening. An emulsion of white curd soap and olive oil, or of egg-yolk and neatsfoot oil, is suitable. "Crestanol," a special preparation, also gives satisfactory results, since it is adapted for giving nourishment and resiliency to thin, empty leather. FANCY LEATHERS The best known of the fancy leathers is "morocco." This variety has been made for ages, and the name probably originated from the fact that very fine leathers of this kind were manufactured in Morocco a few centuries ago. History records that a similar leather, dyed red, was made in the ninth century before the Christian era. The best morocco leather is made from Continental goat skins, which are mostly obtained from Central Europe and Spain. The Norwegian goat skins are also said to be of good quality for the morocco finish. An inferior morocco leather, which is produced in large quantities, is manufactured from East India goat skins, while a cheaper grade still can be produced from certain classes of East India sheep skins. The real moroccos are tanned in sumach, but the cheaper sorts are tanned in India with babool or turwar bark and re-tanned in sumach in the countries to which they are exported, chiefly Great Britain, Germany, France, and America. One of the best methods of sumach-tanning goat and calf skins is that known as the "bottle" tannage. Each skin is doubled over and sewn by machine round the edge, leaving part of the neck unsewn. The skins are then turned inside out and filled with a strong infusion of sumach, and floated in a tub containing sumach liquor. After being a few hours in the tub, the skins are heaped one above the other in a large pile, where the pressure forces the tannin through the skins. The process can be completed in twenty to twenty-four hours, after which the skins are cut open, rinsed, and finished in the usual manner. This method of tanning is now largely replaced by the use of paddle-vats (Fig. 25). The dyeing and finishing are somewhat similar to that of coloured boot upper leather, except that the leather is slightly oiled on the grain instead of being fat-liquored. There are several different methods of graining morocco leather; some of the grains are made naturally by pressing the leather, when folded over, with a cork-covered board, while others are first embossed in various ways and then boarded. The well-known "crushed morocco" is produced by glazing the grained leather under heavy pressure. Skivers, the grain splits of sheep skins (see p. 145) are extensively used for fancy articles. The majority are finished with a smooth grain for hat-bands, bookbinding, and linings. The grain of a sheep skin is, naturally, soft, and not very strong. To stiffen and strengthen the grain, an artificial layer, consisting of paste finishes, is often applied. Skins finished in this manner are termed "paste grain skivers." These are largely used for bookbinding and cheap purses. Sheep grains are sometimes given a finish somewhat similar to that of leather bags. This is produced in a printing machine by means of a copper roller which is run over the damp (but not too wet) leather. The skins are then described as "long-grain" skivers. The grain surface of sheep skins is particularly suitable for embossing, and wonderful imitations of all kinds of skins can be reproduced on skivers. The fancy leather trade is not confined to these imitations, however, as real lizard, seal, ichneumon, alligators, crocodile, shark, porpoise, snake, and even frog skins (Japanese) are utilised. INDEX Acid Swelling of Hides, 119 Adulterated Leather, 114 Ageing of Leather, 151 Algarobilla, 43 Alum Tannage, 150 Annatto, 136 Antelope Leather, 63 Anthrax, 27, 69 Arsenic Sulphide, 71 Bablah, 45, 107 Babool, 45, 107 Band-knife Splitting Machine, 54 Bark Mill, 93 Barkometer, 97 Bating, 86 Belting Leather, 133 Birch Bark, 106 ---- Tar Oil, 107 Bleaching Leather in Sun--_Frontispiece_ Boot Leather, 137 "Bottle" Tannage, 157 Borax, 64 "Box" Leather, 137 Buffing Cylinder, 54 Butts, 95 Butyrate of Ammonia, 85, 129 Butyric Acid, 85, 129 Canaigre, 45 Cape Sheep, 153 Catechol Tannins, 46 Caustic Soda, 66 Celavina, 43 Chamois Leather, 18, 144 Chestnut Oak, 37 ---- Tree, 36 Chrome-quebracho Tan Liquor, 32 Chrome Sole Leather, 125 ---- Tanning, 108 Cod Oil, 100, 120, 146 Collodion, 136 Colouring Pits, 94 Combination Tannages, 111 "Crestanol," 156 "Crust" Leather, 151 Currying, 133, 135 Cutch, 46 Dehairing Hides, 71 ---- Knife, 80 ---- Machine, 82 Dehydration, 2 Depilatories, 78, 149 Disinfection of Hides, 2 Divi-divi, 43 Doling, 153 Dressing Leathers, 102 ---- of Leather, 112 Drenching, 89 "Dri-ped" Leather, 129 Drum-tanned Leather, 103 Drum Tumbler, 66 Drying of Leather, 123 Dust Colours, 154 Dyeing, 112, 155 Dye-wood Extracts, 139, 152, 155 Ellagic Acid, 47, 121 Enzymes, 72 "Erodin," 88 Evolution of Leather Manufacture, 1 Extracts, 47 Faller Stocks, 66, 146 Fancy Leathers, 156 Fat Liquors, 139 Fellmongering, 145 Finishing, 112, 122, 127 Flaying: Mechanical method, 21 ----: Pim's method, 24 Fleshing Knife, 83 ---- Machine, 82 Fluffing, 128, 153 ---- Machine, 129 Foot and Mouth Disease, 6 Formic Acid, 28, 66, 85, 95, 100 Freezing Hides, 71 Frizing, 145 Fustic, 152 Gallotannic Acid, 46 Gambier, 40 Glazed Kid, 137 Glazing Machine, 143 Gloving Leather, 147 Goat Skins, 15 Golden Tan Bark, 152 Greasy Hides, 12 ---- Sole Leather, 75 Hammering Leather, 123 Handlers, 94 Harness Leather, 133 Hauling and Setting Limes, 77 Hemlock, 44 Hide Markets, 7 Hides and Skins, 5 ----, Curing, 2, 26 ----, Defects of, 19 ----, Disinfection of, 2, 26 ----, Horse, 17 ----, Sources of Supply, 5 Hyaline Layer, 68 _Hypoderma bovis_, 30 ---- _lineatum_, 30 Japanese White Leather, 3 Lactic Acid, 85, 95, 100, 129, 146 Larch Bark, 45 Layers, 94 Leather-working Machinery, 52 Liming, 71 Linings, 145 Logwood, 138 "Lysol," 84 Machinery, 52 Mangrove, 41 Marseilles Soap, 140 Mimosa, 42 Mineral Tannage, 108 Mixed Tannages, 101 Morocco Leather, 156 Motor Leather Bands, 108 Myrobalans, 38, 93 "Neradol," 50 Oak Bark, 34 Oakwood, 35 "Oropon," 87 Paddle-vat, 146 Parchment, 145 Pickled Sheep Skins, 10 Pigments, 154 Pig Skins, 18, 136 Pinning Leather, 121 ---- Machine, 121 Porpoise Laces, 19 Preparation of Hides for Tanning, 63 "Puerine," 88 Puering, 150 Pyrogallol Tannins, 46 Quebracho, 32, 37 Red Arsenic, 71, 149 "Reeder" Splitting Machine, 145 Roller Leather, 13 Rolling Sole Leather, 122 Rounding of Sole Leather, 95 Saddlery Leather, 133 Samming, 146 Scudding, 86 Seal Skins, 19 Setting, 142 Shaving Cylinder, 53 ---- Knife, 55, 56 ---- Machine, 56, 61 Sheep Skins, 12 Skins and Hides, 5 Skivers, 145, 157 Sleeker, 128 Soaking Hides, 65 Sod Oil, 147 Sole Leather, 95 "Soluble" Oils, 117 Staking Machine, 143 Sterilising Hides: Seymour-Jones's method, 28 Straining, 128, 142 Striking-out, 128, 130 Stuffing, 135 Suède Leather, 154 Sulphide of Sodium, 66, 76 Sulphonated Oils, 117 Sumach, 38 Suspender Pits, 94 Synthetic Tannin, 49, 95 Tanner's Beam, 68 Tanning Extracts, 47, 92 Tanning Materials, 32 ---- Processes, 92 Tan-yard, 94 Tawing, 150 _Terra japonica_, 40 Tick Fever, 27 Titanium Salts, 152 "Tragasol," 117, 130, 140 Turkey Red Oil, 141 Turwar Bark, 156 Vache Sole Leather, 132 Valonia, 35 Warble Fly, 28 Wattle Bark, 42 Weighted Leather, 114 White Washable Leather, 155 Willow Bark, 45, 106 ---- Calf, 144 Wool Skin Dressing, 51 THE END _Printed by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., Bath, England_ 
40628	----	THE IRON RATION by GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin AUSTRIAN SOLDIER IN CARPATHIANS GIVING HUNGRY YOUNGSTER SOMETHING TO EAT Moved by the misery of the civilian population the soldiers will often share their rations with them. An Austrian soldier in this case shares his food with a boy in a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, Hungary.] THE IRON RATION Three Years in Warring Central Europe by GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER Illustrated [Illustration] Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London THE IRON RATION Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published February, 1918 TO MY FRIEND DR. JEROME STONBOROUGH MAN--SCHOLAR--PHILANTHROPIST TABLE OF CONTENTS I WAR HITS THE LARDER OF GERMANY 1 II WHEN LORD MARS HAD RULED THREE MONTHS 22 III THE MIGHTY WAR PURVEYOR 34 IV FAMINE COMES TO STAY 56 V THE FOOD SHARK AND HIS WAYS 70 VI THE HOARDERS 93 VII IN THE HUMAN SHAMBLES 115 VIII PATRIOTISM AND A CRAVING STOMACH 131 IX SUB-SUBSTITUTING THE SUBSTITUTE 144 X THE CRUMBS 161 XI MOBILIZING THE PENNIES 173 XII SHORTAGE SUPREME 195 XIII "GIVE US BREAD!" 213 XIV SUBSISTING AT THE PUBLIC CRIB 245 XV THE WEAR AND TEAR OF WAR 265 XVI THE ARMY TILLS 275 XVII WOMAN AND LABOR IN WAR 293 XVIII WAR AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY 305 XIX SEX MORALITY AND WAR 325 XX WAR LOANS AND ECONOMY 353 XXI THE AFTERMATH 368 ILLUSTRATIONS AUSTRIAN SOLDIER IN CARPATHIANS GIVING HUNGRY YOUNGSTER SOMETHING TO EAT _Frontispiece_ PROVING-GROUND OF THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN _Facing p._ 30 A LEVY OF FARMER BOYS OFF FOR THE BARRACKS " 66 GERMAN CAVALRYMEN AT WORK PLOWING " 66 STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANY " 96 CASTLE HOHENZOLLERN " 188 TRAVELING-KITCHEN IN BERLIN " 260 STREET TRAM AS FREIGHT CARRIER " 260 WOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPEST " 296 VILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARY " 296 SCENE IN GERMAN SHIP-BUILDING YARD " 378 PREFACE "The Iron Ration" is the name for the food the soldier carries in his "pack" when in the field. It may be eaten only when the commanding officer deems this necessary and wise. When the iron ration is released, no command that the soldier should eat is necessary. He is hungry then--famished. Usually by that time he has been on half, third, and quarter ration. The iron ration is the last food in sight. There may be more to-morrow. But that is not the motive of the commander for releasing the food. What he has to deal with is the fact that his men are on the verge of exhaustion. The population of the states known as the Central Powers group of belligerents being in a position similar to that of the soldiers consuming their iron ration, I have chosen the designation of this emergency meal as title for a book that deals with life in Central Europe as influenced by the war. That life has been paid little attention by writers. The military operations, on the one hand, and the scarcity of food, on the other, have been the cynosures. How and to what extent these were related, and in what manner they were borne by the public, is not understood. Seen from afar, war and hunger and all that relates to them, form so bewildering a mosaic in somber colors that only a very general impression is gained of them. I have pictured here the war time life of Central Europe's social and political aggregates. Of that life the struggle for bread was the major aspect. The words of the Lord's Prayer--"Give us our daily bread"--came soon to have a great meaning to the people of Central Europe. That cry was addressed to the government, however. Food regulation came as the result of it. What that regulation was is being shown here. It will be noticed that I have given food questions a great deal of close attention. The war-time life of Central Europe could not be portrayed in any other manner. All effort and thought was directed toward the winning of the scantiest fare. Men and women no longer strove for the pleasures of life, but for the absolute essentials of living. During the day all labored and scrambled for food, and at night men and women schemed and plotted how to make the fearful struggle easier. To win even a loaf of bread became difficult. It was not alone a question of meeting the simplest wants of living by the hardest of labor; the voracity of the tax collector and the rapacity of the war profiteer came to know no bounds. Morsels had to be snatched out of the mouth of the poor to get revenue for the war and the pound of flesh for the Shylocks. So intense was that struggle for bread that men and women began to look upon all else in life as wholly secondary. A laxness in sex matters ensued. The mobilizations and the loss of life incident to the war aggravated this laxity. But these are things set out in the book. Here I will say that war is highly detrimental to all classes of men and women. When human society is driven to realize that nothing in life counts when there is no food, intellectual progress ceases. When bread becomes indeed the irreducible minimum, the mask falls and we see the human being in all its nakedness. Were I presumptuous enough to say so, I might affirm that this book contains the truth, nothing but the truth, and the whole truth about Germany and Central Europe. I have the necessary background for so bold a statement. I know the German language almost perfectly. German literature, tradition and thought, and I are no strangers. Three years of contact as newspaper-man with all that is German and Central European provided all the opportunities for observation and study one could wish for. And the flare of the Great War was illumining my field, bringing into bold relief the bad, which had been made worse, and the good, which had been made better. But there is no human mind that can truthfully and unerringly encompass every feature and phase of so calamitous a thing as the part taken in the European War by the Central Powers group of belligerents. I at least cannot picture to myself such a mind. Much less could I claim that I possessed it. What I have written here is an attempt to mirror truthfully the conditions and circumstances which raised throughout Central Europe, a year after the war had begun, the cry in city, town, village, and hamlet, "Give us bread!" During the first two months of the European War I was stationed at The Hague for the Associated Press of America. I was then ordered to Berlin, and later was given _carte blanche_ in Austria-Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. When military operations, aside from the great fronts in Central Europe, had lost much of the public's interest, I returned to Germany and Austria-Hungary, giving thereafter the Balkans and Turkey such attention as occasional trips made possible. In the course of three years I saw _every_ front, and had the most generous opportunities to become familiar with the subject treated in this book--life in Central Europe as it was amidst war and famine. You will meet here most of the personages active in the guiding of Central Europe's destiny--monarchs, statesmen, army leaders, and those in humbler spheres. You will also meet the lowly. Beside the rapacious beasts of prey stand those upon whom they fed. Prussianism is encountered as I found it. I believe the Prussianism I picture is the real Prussianism. The ways of the autocrat stand in no favor with me, and, being somewhat addicted to consistency, I have borne this in mind while writing. The author can be as autocratic as the ruler. His despotism has the form of stuffing down others' throats his opinions. Usually he thinks himself quite as infallible as those whose acts he may have come to criticize. But since the doctrine of infallibility is the mainstay of all that is bad and despotic in thought as well as in government, we can well afford to give it a wide berth. If the German people had thought their governments--there are many governments in Germany--less infallible they would not have tolerated the absolutism of the Prussian Junker. To that extent responsibility for the European War must rest on the shoulders of the people--a good people, earnest, law-abiding, thrifty, unassuming, industrious, painstaking, temperate, and charitable. Some years ago there was a struggle between republicanism and monarchism on the South African veldt. I was a participant in that--on the republican side. I grant that our government was not as good as it might have been. I grant that our republic was in reality a paternal oligarchy. Yet there was the principle of the thing. The Boers preferred being _burghers_--citizens--to being subjects. The word _subject_ implies government ownership of the individual. The word _citizen_ means that, within the range of the prudently possible, the individual is co-ordinate instead of subordinated. That may seem a small cause to some for the loss of 11,000 men and 23,000 women and children, which the Boers sustained in defense of that principle. And yet that same cause led to the American Revolution. For that same cause stood Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. For that same cause stands every good American to-day--my humble self included. S. NEW YORK, _January, 1918_. THE IRON RATION THE IRON RATION I WAR HITS THE LARDER OF GERMANY Press and government in the Entente countries were sure that Germany and Austria-Hungary could be reduced by hunger in some six months after the outbreak of the European War. The newspapers and authorities of the Central Powers made sport of this contention at first, but sobered up considerably when the flood of contraband "orders in privy council" began to spill in London. At first conditional contraband became contraband. Soon non-contraband became conditional contraband, and not long after that the British government set its face even against the import into Germany of American apples. That was the last straw, as some thought. The end of contraband measures was not yet, however. It was not long before the neutrals of Europe, having physical contact with the Central Powers, were to find out that they could not export food to Germany without having to account for it. Small wonder then that already in September of 1914 it was asserted that the elephants of the Berlin Zoo had been butchered for their meat. I was then stationed at The Hague, as correspondent for an American telegraphic news service, and had a great deal to do with the "reports" of the day. It was my business to keep the American public as reliably informed as conditions permitted. I did not publish anything about the alleged butchering of elephants and other denizens of the Berlin zoological establishments, knowing full well that these stories were absurd. And, then, I was not in the necessary frame of mind to look upon elephant steak as others did. Most people harbor a sort of prejudice against those who depart from what is considered a "regular" bill of fare. We sniff at those whom we suspect of being hippophagians, despite the fact that our hairier ancestors made sitting down to a fine horse roast an important feature of their religious ceremonies. I can't do that any longer since circumstances compelled me once to partake of mule. Nor was it good mule. Lest some be shocked at this seeming perversity, I will add that this happened during the late Anglo-Boer War. The statement, especially as amended, should serve as an assurance that I am really qualified to write on food in war-time, and no Shavianism is intended, either. Food conditions in Germany interested me intensely. Hunger was expected to do a great deal of fighting for the Allies. I was not so sure that this conclusion was correct. Germany had open-eyedly taken a chance with the British blockade. That left room for the belief that somebody in Germany had well considered this thing. But the first German food I saw had a peculiar fascination for me, for all that. Under the glass covers standing on the buffet of a little restaurant at Vaalsplatz I espied sandwiches. Were they real sandwiches, or "property" staged for my special benefit? It was generally believed in those days that the Germans had brought to their border towns all the food they had in the empire's interior, so that the Entente agents would be fooled into believing that there was plenty of food on hand. Vaalsplatz is the other half of Vaals. The two half towns make up one whole town, which really is not a whole town, because the Dutch-German border runs between the two half towns. But the twin communities are very neighborly. I suspected as much. For that reason the presence of the sandwiches in Vaalsplatz meant nothing. What assurance had I that, when they saw me coming, the sandwiches were not rushed across the border and into Germany, so that I might find the fleshpots of Egypt where the gaunt specter of famine was said to have its lair? This is the manner in which the press agents of starvation used to work in those days. And the dear, gullible public, never asking itself once whether it was possible to reduce almost overnight to starvation two states that were not far from being economically self-contained, swallowed it all--bait, hook, line, and sinker. My _modus operandi_ differed a little from this. I bought three of the sandwiches for ten pfennige--two and a quarter cents American--apiece, and found them toothsome morsels, indeed. The discovery was made, also, that German beer was still as good as it always had been. My business on that day took me no farther into Germany than the cemetery that lies halfway between Vaalsplatz and Aix-la-Chapelle. There I caught on the wing, as it were, the man I was looking for, and then smuggled him out of the country as my secretary. I had seen no other food but the sandwiches, and as I jumped from the speeding trolley-car I noticed that they were digging a grave in the cemetery. Ah! Haven of refuge for a famine victim! I said something of that sort to the man I was smuggling into Holland. Roger L. Lewis looked at me with contempt and pity in his eyes, as the novelist would say. "Are you crazy?" he asked. "Why, the Germans have more food than is good for them. They are a nation of gluttons, in fact." With Mr. Lewis going to London I could not very well write of the sandwiches and the grave in the cemetery. These things were undeniable facts. I had seen them. But the trouble was that they were not related to each other and had with life only those connections they normally have. The famine-booster does not look at things in that light, though. Four weeks later I was in Berlin. The service had sent me there to get at the bottom of the famine yarns. There seemed to be something wrong with starvation. It was not progressing rapidly enough, and I was to see to what extent the Entente economists were right. In a large restaurant on the Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin I found a very interesting bill of fare and a placard speaking of food. The menu was generous enough. It offered the usual assortment of _hors-d'oeuvre_, soup, fish, _entrée_, _relevée_, roasts, cold meats, salads, vegetables, and sweetmeats. On the table stood a basket filled with dinner rolls. The man was waiting for my order. But to give an order seemed not so simple. I was trying to reconcile the munificence of the dishes list with the legend on the placard. That legend said--heavy black letters on white cardboard, framed by broad lines of scarlet red: +--------------------------------------------+ | | | SAVE THE FOOD! | | | | The esteemed patrons of this establishment | | are requested not to eat unnecessarily. Do | | not eat two dishes if one is enough! | | | | THE MANAGEMENT. | | | +--------------------------------------------+ It was my first day in Berlin, and having that very morning, at Bentheim, on the Dutch-German border, run into a fine piece of German thoroughness and regard for the law, I was at a loss what to do under the circumstances. While I knew that the management of the restaurant could not have me arrested if I picked more than two dishes, I had also ascertained that the elephant steak was a fable. I was not so sure that ordering a "regular" dinner might not give offense. That is the sort of feeling you have on the first day in a country at war. I had seen so many war proclamations of the government, all in heavy black and red on white, that the restaurant placard really meant more to me than was necessary. I asked the waiter to come to my assistance. Being a native of the country, he would know, no doubt, how far I could go. "You needn't pay any attention to that sign, sir!" he said. "Nobody does any more. You can order anything you like--as many dishes as you please." I wanted to know whether the placard was due to a government regulation. "Not directly, sir. The government has advised hotels and restaurants to economize in food. The management here wanted to do its share, of course, and had these signs printed. At first our patrons minded them. But now everybody is falling back into the old eating habits, and the management wants to make all the money it can, of course." The war was then about two months old. What the waiter said was enough for me. I ordered accordingly and during dinner had much of the company of the serving-man. It seemed that to a great deal of natural shrewdness he had added, in the course of much traveling, a fair general education. When I left the restaurant I was richer by a good picture of food conditions in Berlin, as these had been influenced up to that moment by the intentions of the Prussian government. So far the authorities had done very little to "regulate" food questions, though problems were already in sight and had to be dealt with by the poor of the city. That economy had to be practised was certain even then. The government had counseled economy in consumption, and various patriotic societies and institutions of learning had given advice. But actual interference in public subsistence matters had so far not taken place. The German government had tried to meet the English "business-as-usual" with a policy of "eating-as-usual." It was felt that cutting down on food might put a damper on the war spirit. To be enthusiastic when hungry may be possible for the superman. It is hard work for the come-and-go kind of citizen. Nor had anybody found cause to abandon the notion that the European War would not last long. True enough, the western front had been congealed by Marshal Joffre, but there was then no reason to believe that it would not again be brought into flux, in which case it was hoped that the German general staff would give to the world a fine picture of swift and telling offensive in open-field operations. After that the war was to be over. Of the six months which the war was to last, according to plans that existed in the mouths of the gossips, two were past now, and still the end was not in sight. An uncomfortable feeling came upon many when seclusion undraped reality. That much I learned during my first week at the German capital. I must mention here that I speak German almost perfectly. Armed in this manner, I invaded markets and stores, ate to-day in the super-refined halls of the Adlon and shared to-morrow a table with some hackman, and succeeded also in gaining _entrée_ into some families, rich, not-so-rich, and poor. In the course of three weeks I had established to my own satisfaction, and that of the service, that while as yet there could be no question of food shortage in Germany, there would soon come a time when waists--which were not thin then by any means--would shrink. The tendency of food prices was upward, and, as they rose, more people increased the consumption of food staples, especially bread. Since these staples were the marrow of the country's economic organism, something would have to be done soon to limit their consumption to the absolutely necessary. The first step in that direction was soon to be taken. War-bread--_Kriegsbrot_--made its appearance. It was more of a staff of life than had been believed, despite its name. To roughly 55 per cent. of rye was added 25 per cent. of wheat and 20 per cent. of potato meal, sugar, and shortening. The bread was very palatable, and the potato elements in it prevented its getting stale rapidly. It tasted best on the third day, and on trips to the front I have kept the bread as long as a week without noticing deterioration. But the German had lived well in the past and it was not easy to break him of the habits he had cultivated under a superabundance of food. The thing had gone so far that when somebody wanted to clean an expensive wall-paper the baker would be required to deliver a dozen hot loaves of wheat bread, which, cut into halves lengthwise, would then be rubbed over the wall-paper--with excellent results as regards the appearance of the room and the swill-barrel from which the pigs were fed. On this subject I had a conversation with a woman of the upper class. She admitted that she herself had done it. The paper was of the best sort and so pleasing to her eyes that she could not bear having it removed when discolored from exposure to light and dust. "It was sinful, of course," she said. "I believe the Good Book says that bread should not be wasted, or something to that effect. Well, we had grown careless. I am ashamed when I think of it. My mother would have never permitted that. But everybody was doing it. It seems now that we are about to pay for our transgressions. All Germany was fallen upon the evil ways that come from too much prosperity. From a thrifty people we had grown to be a luxury-loving one. The war will do us good in that respect. It will show us that the simple life is to be preferred to the kind we have been leading for some twenty years now." Then the countess resumed her knitting, and spoke of the fact that she had at the front six sons, one son-in-law, and four automobiles. "But what troubles me most is that my estates have been deprived of so many of their laborers and horses that I may not be able to attend properly to the raising of crops," she continued. "My superintendents write me that they are from two to three weeks behind in plowing and seeding. The weather isn't favorable, either. What is going to happen to us in food matters, if this war _should_ last a year? Do you think it _will_ last a year?" I did not know, of course. "You ought to know the English very well," said the countess. "Do you think they really mean to starve us out?" "They will if the military situation demands this, madame," I replied. "Your people will make a mistake if they overlook the tenacity of that race. I am speaking from actual experience on the South African plains. You need expect no let-up from the English. They may blunder a great deal, but they always have the will and the resources to make good their mistakes and profit by them, even if they cannot learn rapidly." The countess had thought as much. I gained a good insight into German food production a few days later, while I was the guest of the countess on an estate not far from Berlin. The fields there were being put to the best possible use under intensive farming, though their soil had been deprived of its natural store of plant nutriment centuries ago. I suppose the estate was poor "farmland" already when the first crops were being raised in New England. But intelligent cultivation, and, above all, rational fertilizing methods, had always kept it in a fine state of production. The very maximum in crops was being obtained almost every year. Trained agriculturists superintended the work, and, while machinery was being employed, none of it was used in departments where it would have been the cause of a loss in production--something against which the ease-loving farmer is not always proof. The idea was to raise on the area all that could be raised, even if the net profit from a less thorough method of cultivation would have been just as big. Inquiry showed that the agrarian policy of the German government favored this course. The high protective tariff, under which the German food-producer operated, left a comfortable profit margin no matter how good the crops of the competitor might be. Since Germany imported a small quantity of food even in years when bumper crops came, large harvests did not cause a depression in prices; they merely kept foreign foodstuffs out of the country and thereby increased the trade balance in favor of Germany. Visiting some small farms and villages in the neighborhood of the estate, I found that the example set by the scientifically managed _Gut_ of the countess was being followed everywhere. The agrarian policy of the government had wiped out all competition between large and small producers, and so well did the village farmers and the estate-managers get along that the _Gut_ was in reality a sort of agricultural experiment station and school farm for those who had not studied agriculture at the seats of learning which the bespectacled superintendents of the countess had attended. I began to understand why Germany was able to virtually grow on an area less than that of the State of Texas the food for nearly seventy million people, and then leave to forestry and waste lands a quarter of that area. There was also the explanation why Germany was able to export small quantities of rye and barley, in exchange for the wheat she could not raise herself profitably. The climate of northern Germany is not well suited for the growing of wheat. If it were, Germany would not import any wheat, seeing that the area now given to the cultivation of sugar-beets and potatoes could be cut down much without affecting home consumption. As it is, the country exported before the war almost a third of her sugar production, and much of the alcohol won from potatoes entered the foreign market either in its raw state or in the form of manufactured products. But the war had put a crimp into this fine scheme. Not only was the estate short-handed and short of animal power, but in the villages it was no better. Some six million men had then been mobilized, and of this number 28 per cent. came directly from the farms, and another 14 per cent. had formerly been engaged in food production and distribution also. To fill the large orders of hay, oats, and straw for the army, the cattle had to be kept on the meadows--pastures in the American sense of the word are but rarely found in overcrowded Europe--and that would lead to a shortage in stable manure, the most important factor in soil-fertilizing. The outlook was gloomy enough and quite a contrast to the easy war spirit which still swayed the city population. Interviews with a goodly number of German government officials and men connected with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the impressions I had gained in the course of my food investigation. For the time being, there was enough of everything. But that was only for the time being. Public subsistence depends in a large measure on the products of animal industry. There is the dairy, for instance. While cows can live on grass, they will not give much or good milk if hay and grass are not supplemented by fat-making foods. Of such feed Germany does not produce enough, owing to climatic conditions. Indian corn will not ripen in northern Europe, and cotton is out of the question altogether. In the past, Indian corn had been imported from Hungary, Roumania, and the United States mostly, and cotton-seed products had been brought in from the United States also. Roumania still continued to sell Indian corn during the first months of the war, but Great Britain had put cotton-seed cake and the like under the ban of contraband. If the bread-basket was not as yet hung high, the crib certainly began to get very much out of reach. One day, then, I found that every advertisement "pillar" in the streets of Berlin called loudly for two things--the taking of an animal census throughout Prussia, and the advice that as many pigs as possible should be killed. Poor porkers! It was to be wide-open season for them soon. Gently, ever so gently, the Prussian and other German state governments were beginning to put the screws on the farming industry--the thing they had nursed so well. No doubt the thing hurt. But there was no help. Animal feed was discovered to be short. The authorities interfered with the current of supply and demand for the first time. Feed Commissions and Fodder Centrals were established, and after that the farmer had to show cause why he should get the amount of feed he asked for. The innovation recoiled on the lowliest first--among them the pigs. Into them and upon them had been heaped a great deal of fat by purposeful feeding with an ulterior motive. The porkers stood well in the glory for which they are intended. But the lack of fattening feed would soon cause them to live more or less on their own stores of fat. That had to be prevented, naturally. By many, a butchered two-hundred-pound porker is thought to be better than a live razorback. The knife began its deadly work--the slaughter of the porcine innocents was on. To the many strange cults and castes that exist we must add the German village butcher. He is busy only when the pork "crop" comes in, but somehow he seems to defy the law that only continued practice makes perfect. He works from November to February of each year, but when the next season comes he is as good as before, seemingly. But in 1914 the village butcher was busy at the front. Thus it came that men less expert were in charge of the conservation of pork products. The result could have been foreseen, but it was not. The farmers, eager not to lose an ounce of fat, and not especially keen to feed their home-raised grain to the animals, had their pigs butchered. That was well enough, in a way. But the tons of sausages that were made, and the thousands of tons of pickled and smoked hams, shoulders, sides-of-bacon, and what not, had been improperly cured in many cases, and vast quantities of them began to spoil. It was now a case of having no pigs and also no pork. The case deserves special attention for the reason that it is the first crevasse that appeared in the levee that was to hold back the high-flood of inflated prices and food shortage. The affair of the porkers did not leave the German farmers in the best frame of mind. They had needlessly sacrificed a goodly share of their annual income. The price of pork fell to a lower level than had been known in twenty years, and meanwhile the farmer was beginning to buy what he needed in a market that showed sharp upward curves. To this was being added the burden of war taxation. But even that was not all. Coming in close contact with the Berlin authorities, I had been able to judge the quality of their efforts for the saving of food. I had learned, for instance, that the Prussian and other state governments never intended to order the killing of the pigs. The most that was done by them was to advise the farmers and villagers to kill off all animals that had reached their maximum weight and whose keep under the reduced ration system would not pay. Zealous officials in the provinces gave that thing a different aspect. Eager to obey the slightest suggestion of those above, these men interpreted the advice given as an order and disseminated it as such. The farmer with sense enough to question this was generally told that what he would not do on advice he would later be ordered to do. I was able to ascertain in connection with this subject that all which is bad in German, and especially in Prussian, government has rarely its inception in the higher places. It is the _Amtsstube_--government bureau--that breeds the qualities for which government in the German Empire is deservedly odious. At any ministry I would get the very best treatment--far better, for instance, than I should hope to get at any seat of department at Washington--but it was different when I had to deal with some official underling. This class, as a rule, enters the government service after having been professional non-commissioned officers for many years. By that time the man has become so thoroughly a drill sergeant that his usefulness in other spheres of life should be considered as ended. Instead of that, the German government makes him an official. The effect produced is not a happy one. It was a member of this tribe who once told me that I was not to think. I confess that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that. The case has some bearing on the subject discussed here, and for that reason I will refer to it briefly. At the American embassy at Berlin they had put my passport into proper shape, as they thought. A Mr. Harvey was positive that such was the case. But at the border it was found that somebody was mistaken. The Tenth Army, in whose bailiwick I found myself, had changed the passport regulations, and the American embassy at Berlin seemed not to have heard of the change. A very snappy sergeant of the border survey service wanted to know how I had dared to travel with an imperfectly viséd passport. There was nothing else to say but that I thought the passport was in order. "_Sie haben kein Recht zu denken_" ("You have no right to think"), snarled the man. That remark stunned me. Here was a human being audacious enough to deny another human being the right to think. What next? The result of some suitable remarks of mine were that presently I was under arrest and off for an interview with the _Landrat_--the county president at Bentheim. The _Landrat_ was away, however--hunting, as I remember it. In his stead I found a so-called assessor. I can say for the man that he was the most offensive government official or employee I have ever met. He had not said ten words when that was plain to me. "Ah! You _thought_ the passport was in order," he mocked. "You _thought_ so! Don't you know that it is dangerous to _think_?" There and then my patience took leave of me. I made a few remarks that left no doubt in the mind of the official that I reserved for myself the right to think, whether that was in Germany or in Hades. Within a fortnight I was back in Berlin. I am not given to making a mountain out of every little molehill I come across, but I deemed it necessary to bring the incident at Bentheim to the attention of the proper authorities. What I wanted to know was this: Had the race which in the past produced some of the best of thinkers been coerced into having thinking prohibited by an erstwhile sergeant or a _mensur_-marked assessor? Of course, that was not the case, I was told. The two men had been overzealous. They would be disciplined. I was not to feel that I had been insulted. An eager official might use that sort of language. After all, what special harm was there in being told not to think? Both the sergeant and the assessor had probably meant that I was not to surmise, conclude, or take things for granted. But I had made up my mind to make myself clear. In the end I succeeded, though recourse to diagrams and the like seemed necessary before the great light dawned. That the German authorities had the right to watch their borders closely I was the last to gainsay. Nor could fault be found with officials who discharged this important duty with all the thoroughness at their command. If these officials felt inclined to warn travelers against surmise and conjecture, thanks were due them, but these officials were guilty of the grossest indecency in denying a rational adult the right to think. Those who for years have been hunting for a definition of militarism may consider that in the above they have the best explanation of it. The phrase, "You have no right to think," is the very backbone of militarism. In times of war men may not think, because militarism is absolute. For those that are anti-militarist enough to continue thinking there is the censorship and sedition laws, both of which worked smoothly enough in Germany and the countries of her allies. The question may be asked, What does this have to do with food and such? Very much, is my answer. The class of small officials was to become the machine by which the production, distribution, and consumption of food and necessities were to be modified according to the needs of the day. This class was to stimulate production, simplify distribution, and restrict consumption. No small task for any set of men, whether they believed in the God-given right of thinking or not. It was simple enough to restrict consumption--issue the necessary decrees with that in view, and later adopt measures of enforcement. The axiom, You have no right to think, fitted that case well enough. But it was different with distribution. To this sphere of economy belongs that ultra-modern class of Germans, the trust and _Syndikat_ member--the industrial and commercial kings. These men had outgrown the inhibitions of the barrack-yard. The _Feldwebel_ was a joke to them now, and, unfortunately, their newly won freedom sat so awkwardly upon their minds that often it would slip off. The class as a whole would then attend to the case, and generally win out. A similar state of affairs prevailed in production. To order the farmer what he was to raise was easy, but nature takes orders from nobody, a mighty official included. II WHEN LORD MARS HAD RULED THREE MONTHS Germany had reared a magnificent economic structure. Her prosperity was great--too great, in fact. The country had a _nouveau-riche_ aspect, as will happen when upon a people that has been content with little in the past is suddenly thrust more than it can assimilate gracefully. The Germany I was familiar with from travel and literature was a country in which men and women managed to get along comfortably by the application of thoroughness and industry--a country in which much time was given to the cultivation of the mind and the enjoyment of the fruits that come from this praiseworthy habit. Those were the things which I had grouped under the heading, _Kultur_. Those also were the things, as I was soon to learn from the earnest men and women of the country, for which the word still stood with most. But the spirit of the _parvenu_--_Protzentum_--was become rampant. The industrial classes reeked with it. From the villages and small towns, still the very embodiment of thrift and orderliness, I saw rise the large brick barracks of industry, topped off with huge chimneys belching forth black clouds of smoke. The outskirts of the larger towns and cities were veritable forests of smoke-stacks--palisades that surrounded the interests of the thousands of captains of industry that dwelt within the city when not frequenting the international summer and winter resorts and making themselves loathed by their extremely bad manners--the trade-mark of all _parvenus_. I soon found that there were two separate and distinct Germanys. It was not a question of classes, but one of having within the same borders two worlds. One of them reminded me of Goethe and Schiller, of Kant and Hegel, and the other of all that is ultra-modern, and cynical. The older of these worlds was still tilling the fields on the principle that where one takes one must give. It was still manufacturing with that honesty that is better than advertising, and selling for cost of raw material and labor, plus a reasonable profit. In the new world it was different. Greed was the key-note of all and everything. The kings of industry and commerce had forgotten that in order to live ourselves we must let others live. These men had been wise enough to compete as little as possible with one another. Every manufacturer belonged to some _Syndikat_--trust--whose craze was to capture by means fair or foul every foreign field that could be saturated. I have used the word "saturated" on purpose. Germany's industrials do not seem to have been content with merely entering a foreign market and then supplying it with that good tact which makes the article and its manufacturer respected. Instead of that they began to dump their wares into the new field in such masses that soon there was attached to really good merchandise the stigma of cheapness in price and quality. A proper sense of proportions would have prevented this. There is no doubt that German manufacturers and exporters had to undersell foreign competitors, nor can any reasonable human being find fault with this, but that, for the sake of "hogging" markets, they should turn to cheap peddling was nothing short of being criminally stupid--a national calamity. I have yet to be convinced that Germany would not have been equally prosperous--and that in a better sense--had its industry been less subservient to the desire to capture as many of the world's markets as possible. That policy would have led to getting better prices, so that the national income from this source would have been just as great, if not greater, when raw material and labor are given their proper socio-economic value. Some manufacturers had indeed clung to that policy--of which the old warehouses and their counting-rooms along the Weser in Bremen are truly and beautifully emblematic. But most of them were seized with a mania for volume in export and ever-growing personal wealth. Germany's population had failed to get its share of this wealth. Though the _Arbeiter-Verbände_--unions--had seen to it that the workers were not entirely ignored, it was a fact that a large class was living in that peculiar sort of misery which comes from being the chattel of the state, on the one hand, and the beast of burden of the captains of industry, on the other. The government has indeed provided sick benefits and old-age pensions, but these, in effect, were little more than a promise that when the man was worked to the bone he would still be able to drag on existence. The several institutions of governmental paternalism in Germany are what heaven is to the livelong invalid. And to me it seems that there is no necessity for being bedridden through life when the physician is able to cure. In this instance, we must doubt that the physician was willing to cure. The good idealists who may differ with me on that point have probably never had the chance to study at the closest range the sinister purpose that lies behind all governmental effort that occupies itself with the welfare of the individual. The sphere of a government should begin and end with the care for the aggregate. The government that must care for the individual has no _raison d'être_, and the same must be said of the individual who needs such care. One should be permitted to perish with the other. The deeper I got into this New Germany, the less I was favorably impressed by it. I soon found that the greed manifested had led to results highly detrimental to the race. The working classes of the large industrial centers were well housed and well fed, indeed. But it was a barrack life they led. At best the income was small, and usually it was all spent, especially if a man wanted to do his best by his children. It was indeed true that the deposits in the German savings-banks were unusually high, but investigation showed that the depositors were mostly small business people and farmers. These alone had both the incentive and the chance to save. For all others, be they the employees of the government or the workers of industry, the sick benefit and old-age pension had to provide if they were not to become public charges when usefulness should have come to an end. I found that Germany's magnificent socio-economic edifice was inhabited mostly by members of the _parvenu_ class, by men and women who dressed in bad taste, talked too much and too loud, and were forever painfully in evidence. For the purpose of illustrating the relative position of the two worlds I found in Germany, I may use the simile that the new world inhabited all the better floors, while the old was content with the cellar and the attic. In the cellar lived the actual producers, and in the garret the intellectuals, poor aristocracy, government officials, professional men, and army officers. Food being the thing everybody needs, and, which needing, he or she must have at any price, the men who in the past had "saturated" foreign markets turned of a sudden their attention to matters at home. The British blockade had made exports impossible. The overseas channel of income was closed. Exploitation had to be directed into other fields. The German government saw this coming, and, under the plea of military necessity, which really existed, of course, began to apply a policy of restriction in railroad traffic. More will be said of this elsewhere. Here I will state that from the very first military emergency was well merged with socio-economic exigency. The high priest of greed found that the government, by virtue of being the owner of the railroads, was putting a damper on the concentration of life's necessities and commodities. But that, after all, was not a serious matter. So long as the food shark and commodity-grabber owned an article he would always find the means to make the public pay for it. Whether he sold a thing in Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, or Stettin made little difference in the end, so long as prices were good. All that was necessary was to establish a _Filiale_--a branch house--at the point and all was well. But as yet there was no actual shortage. Things were only beginning to be scarce at times and intervals. The population had begun to save food. The counters and shelves of the retailers were still full, and the warehouses of the wholesalers had just received the harvest of the year. Hoarding had as yet not been thought of to any extent. Germany had not been at war for forty-three years, and normally the food-supply had been so generous that only a few pessimists, who saw a long war ahead, thought it necessary to store up food for the future. It was not until the fourth month of the war that prices of food showed a steady upward tendency. That this should be so was not difficult to understand, and the explanation of the authorities appeared very plausible indeed. Whenever the possibility of a shortage had at all to be intimated, the government took good care to balance its statement with the assertion that if everybody did what was fit and proper under the circumstances there would never be a shortage. If people ate war-bread, a lack of breadstuffs was said to be out of the question. That was very reassuring, of course. Not a little camouflage was used by the merchants. I never saw so much food heaped into store windows as in those days. On my way back and forth from my hotel to the office of the service, I had to pass through the Mauerstrasse. In that street four food-venders outdid one another in heaping their merchandise before the public gaze. One of them was a butcher. His window was large and afforded room for almost a ton of meat products. I do not wonder that those who passed the window--and they had to be counted in thousands--gained from it the impression that food would never be scarce in Germany. Farther on there was another meat-shop. Its owner did the same. Next door to him was a bakery. War-bread and rolls, cakes and pastry enough to feed a brigade, were constantly on exhibition. The fourth store sold groceries and what is known in Germany as _Dauerware_--food that has been preserved, such as smoked meat, sausages, and canned foods. The man was really doing his best. For a while he had as his "set piece" a huge German eagle formed of cervelat sausages each four feet long and as thick as the club of Hercules. I thought the things had been made of papier-mâché, but found that they were real enough. But camouflage of that sort has its good purposes. Men are never so hungry as when they know that food is scarce. The several state governments of Germany employ the ablest economic experts in the world. These men knew that in the end show would not do. The substance would then be demanded and would have to be produced if trouble was to be avoided. How to proceed was not a simple matter, however. From the food of the nation had to come the revenue of the government and the cost of the war. This had to be kept in mind. The assertions of the Entente press that Germany would be starved into submission within six months had been amply ridiculed in the German newspapers. That was all very well. Everybody knew that it could not be done in six months, and my first survey of the food situation proved that it could not be done in a year. But what if the war lasted longer? Nothing had come of the rush on Paris. Hindenburg had indeed given the Russians a thorough military lesson at Tannenberg. But this and certain successes on the West Front were not decisive, as everybody began to understand. The Russians, moreover, were making much headway in Galicia, and so far the Austro-Hungarian army had made but the poorest of showings--even against the Serbs. Thus it came that the replies in the German press to the Entente famine program caused the German public to take a greater interest in the food question. Propaganda and the application of ridicule have their value, but also their drawbacks. They are never shell-proof so far as the thinker is concerned, and ultimately will weaken rather than strengthen the very thing they are intended to defend. "_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_," say the French. The Prussian government inaugurated a campaign against the waste of food as associated with the garbage-pail. Hereafter all household offal had to be separated into food-remains and rubbish. Food-leavings, potato peels, fruit skins, the unused parts of vegetables, and the like, were to be used as animal feed. A week after the regulations had been promulgated and enforced, I took a census of the results obtained. These were generous enough and showed that as yet the Berliners at least were not stinting very much, despite the war-bread. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. PROVING-GROUND OF THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN The guns shown represent types of artillery used in modern warfare on land and sea.] About the same time I was able to ascertain that in the rural districts of Germany little economy of any sort was being practised so far, though the establishing by the government of Fodder Centrals was warning enough. The farmers sat at the very fountainhead of all food and pleased themselves, wasting meanwhile much of their substance by sending to their relatives at the front a great deal of food which the men were in no need of. The German soldier was well fed and all food sent to him was generally so much waste. It was somewhat odd that the government should not only permit this practice, but actually encourage it. But the authorities knew as little yet of food conservation as did the populace. So far the traffic incident to supplying large population centers with food had moved within its regular channels, the interference due to the mobilization duly discounted, of course. The ability of the Germans as organizers had even overcome that to quite an extent. There were delays now and then, but the reserve stores in the cities counteracted them as yet. Normally, all men eat too much. The Germans were the rule rather than the exception in this respect. Most men weighed anything from twenty to sixty pounds more than they should, and the women also suffered much in appearance and health from obesity. The _parvenu_ class, especially, was noted for that. The German aristocrat is hardly ever stout--hallmark of the fact that he knows how to curb his appetites. Before the war most Germans ate in the following manner: Coffee and rolls early in the morning. A sort of breakfast about nine o'clock. Luncheon between twelve and one. Coffee or tea at about four in the afternoon. Dinner at from seven to eight, and supper at eleven or twelve was nothing unusual. That made in many cases six meals, and these meals were not light by any means. They included meat twice for even the poorer classes in the city. Six meals as against three do not necessarily mean that people addicted to the habit eat twice as much as those who are satisfied with sitting at table thrice each day. But they do mean that at least 35 per cent. of the food is wasted. Oversaturated, the alimentary system refuses to work properly. It will still assimilate those food elements that are the more easily absorbed, which then produce fat, while the really valuable constituents are generally eliminated without having produced the effect that is the purpose of proper diet. It was really remarkable to what extent in this case an indulgence became a reserve upon which the German government could draw. A good 35 per cent. of all food consumed need not be consumed and would to that measure increase the means of public subsistence available. I am inclined to believe that the enemies of Germany overlooked this fact in the computation of elements adduced to show that, within six months from the outbreak of the war, famine would stalk the land. The Entente economists and politicians counted on actual production and consumption in times of peace and failed to realize that a determined people, whose complete discipline lacked but this one thing--economy in eating--would soon acquire the mind of the ascetic. It was not easy to forego the pleasures of the full stomach, since in the past it had generally been overfilled. But, as the Germans say, "When in need, the devil will eat flies." Upon this subject the Prussian and other German state governments concentrated all their efforts in November of 1914. A thousand methods of propaganda were used. "Eat less," was the advice that resounded through the empire. I do not think that, unsustained by government action, the admonition would have helped much in the long run, though for the time being it was heeded by many. It was the fact that the end of the war seemed not so imminent any longer which furnished the _causa movens_ for the saving of food. The war spirit was still very strong and the Germans began to resent the assertion of their enemies that they would be defeated by their stomachs, as some learned university professors insisted at the time. Not the least value of the propaganda was that it prepared the German public for the sweeping changes in food distribution which were to come before long. III THE MIGHTY WAR PURVEYOR Three months had sufficed to enthrone the _Kriegslieferant_--war purveyor. He was ubiquitous and loud. His haying season was come. For a consumer he had a government that could not buy enough, and the things he sold he took from a public that was truly patriotic and willing to make sacrifices. It was a gay time. Gone were the days in which he had to worry over foreign markets, small profits, and large turnover. He dealt no longer with fractions of cents. Contracts for thousands did not interest him. At the Ministry of War he could pick up bits of business that figured with round millions. I attended once a funeral that was presided over by an undertaker who believed in doing things on a large scale. The man in the coffin had always earned a large salary and the family had lived up to it. There was nothing left when he died. But the undertaker and the widow decided that the funeral should be a large one. It was, and when it was over and paid for the woman was obliged to appeal to her relatives for financial aid. The activity of the war purveyor was of the same quality. The Berlin hotels were doing a land-office business. The Adlon, Bristol, Kaiserhof, and Esplanade hotels were crowded to the attic--with war purveyors. When his groups were not locked up in conference, he could be seen strutting about the halls and foyers with importance radiating from him like the light of an electric arc. In the dining-rooms his eating could be heard when his voice was not raised in vociferous ordering in the best drill-sergeant style. Managers and waiters alike danced attention upon him--the establishment, the city, the country were his. "_Wir machen's_" ("We'll do it"), was his parole. The army might do its share, but in the end the war purveyor would win the war. The express in which I was traveling from Osnabrück to Berlin had pulled up in the station of Hanover. The train was crowded and in my compartment sat three war purveyors, who seemed to be members of the same group, despite the fact that their conversation caused me to believe that they were holding anything from a million tons of hay to a thousand army transport-wagons. Business was good and the trio was in good humor, as was to be expected from men of such generous dimensions and with so many diamonds on the fleshy fingers of ill-kept hands. One of them was the conspicuous owner of a stick-pin crowned with a Kimberley that weighed five carats if not more. He was one of the happiest men I have ever laid eyes upon. I was sitting next to the window, a place that had been surrendered to me because there was a draught from the window. But I can stand such discomfort much better than perfume on a fat man, and I didn't mind. After a while my attention was attracted by a tall young woman in black on the platform. She was talking to somebody on my car, and surreptitious passes of her hand to her throat caused me to conclude that some great emotion had seized her. No doubt she was saying good-by to somebody. I had seen that a thousand times before, so that it could not be mere and superficial curiosity that induced me to leave my seat for the purpose of seeing the other actor in this little drama. The woman was unusually handsome, and the manner in which she controlled her great emotion showed that she was a blue-blood of the best brand. I was anxious to learn what sort of man it was upon whom this woman bestowed so much of her devotion. A tall officer was leaning against the half-open window in the next compartment. I could not see his face. But the cut of his back and shoulders and the silhouette of the head proclaimed his quality. The two seemed to have no words. The woman was looking into the face of the man, and he, to judge by the fixed poise of his head, was looking into hers. I had seen enough and returned to the compartment. Presently the conductor's cry of "_Bitte, einsteigen!_" ("Please! All aboard!") was heard. The woman stepped to the side of the car and raised her right hand, which the officer kissed. She said something which I could not hear. Then she set her lips again, while the muscles of her cheek and throat moved in agony. It was a parting dramatic--perhaps the last. The train began to move. The war purveyor opposite me now saw the woman. He nudged his colleague and drew his attention to the object that had attracted him. "A queen!" he said. "I wonder what she looks like in her boudoir. I am sorry that I did not see her before. Might have stayed over and seen her home." "Would have been worth while," said the other. "I wonder whom she saw off." "From the way she takes it I should say that it was somebody she cares for. Class, eh, what?" The man rose from the seat and pressed his face against the window, though he could see no more of the woman in that manner than he had seen before. I think that is the very extreme to which I ever saw hideously vulgar cynicism carried. In a way I regretted that the war purveyor had not been given the chance to stay over. I am sure that he would have had reason to regret his enterprise. A few days later I was on my way to Vienna, glad to get away from the loud-mouthed war purveyors at the German capital. The ilk was multiplying like flies in summer-time, and there was no place it had not invaded. Though it was really not one of my affairs, the war purveyor had come to irritate me. I was able to identify him a mile off, and good-natured friends of mine seemed to have made it their purpose in life to introduce me to men who invariably turned out to have contracts with the government. Fact is that, while the war was great, the _Kriegslieferant_ was greater. When I found it hard to see a high official, some kind friend would always suggest that I take the matter up with Herr Kommerzienrat So-and-so, whose influence was great with the authorities, seeing that he had just made a contract for ever so many millions. And the "commercial counselor" would be willing, I knew. If he could introduce a foreign correspondent of some standing here and there, that would be water for his mill. The official in question might be interested in propaganda, and the war purveyor was bound to be. The inference was that the cause of Germany could be promoted in that manner. In some cases it was. Now and then the war purveyor would spend money on a dinner to foreign and native correspondents. His name would not appear in the despatches, but the _Kriegslieferant_ saw to it that the authorities learned of his activities. After that the margin of profit on contract might go up. For a man who had conceived a violent prejudice against war purveyors, Berlin was not a comfortable place. I was either playing in bad luck or half the world had turned into war purveyors. At any rate, I had one of them as travel companion _en route_ to Vienna. The man dealt in leather. He had a contract for the material of 120,000 pairs of army boots and was now going to Austria and Hungary for the purpose of buying it. He was a most interesting person. Before the war he had dealt in skins for gloves, but now he had taken to a related branch in order that he might "do his bit." The Fatherland, in its hour of need, depended upon the efforts of its sons. So far as he was concerned no stone would be left unturned to secure victory. He could be home attending to his regular business, instead of racing hither and thither in search of leather. But duty was duty. I might have gotten the man to admit that he made a _small_ profit on his patriotic endeavor. But that could serve no purpose. I feared, moreover, that this would needlessly prolong the conversation. When the war purveyor finally tired of my inattention, he took up his papers and I surveyed the country we were passing through. For the finest rural pictures in Central Europe we must go to Austria. The houses of the peasants, in villages and on farms alike, had a very inviting appearance. I noticed that the walls had been newly whitewashed. There was fresh paint on the window shutters, and new tiles among the old showed that the people were keeping their roofs in good repair, which was more than the government was doing with the state edifice just then. Prosperity still laughed everywhere. The train raced through small towns and villages. At the railroad crossings chubby youngsters off for school were being detained by the gateman. A buxom lass was chasing geese around a yard. Elsewhere a man was sawing wood, while a woman looked on. From the chimneys curled skyward the smoke of the hearth. It was hard to believe that the country was at war. But the groups of men in uniform at the stations, and the recruits and reservists herded in by men-at-arms over the country roads, left no doubt as to that. If this had not been sufficient proof for me, there was the war purveyor. In Austria, as well as in Germany, the fields had had the closest attention. And that attention was kind. Exploitation had no room in it. Though it was late in the season, I could still discern that plowing and fertilizing were most carefully done. The hedges and fences were in good repair. In vain did I look for the herald of slovenly farming--the rusty plow in the field, left where the animals had been taken from under the yoke. Orderliness was in evidence everywhere, and, therefore, human happiness could not be absent. There was a great deal of crop traffic on the good roads, and the many water-mills seemed very busy. Potatoes and sugar-beets were being gathered to add their munificence to the great grain- and hay-stacks. I ran over in mind some population and farm-production statistics and concluded that Austria was indeed lucky in having so large a margin of food production over food consumption. What I had settled to my own satisfaction on the train was seemingly confirmed at Vienna. Not even a trace of food shortness could I find there. There had been a slight increase in food prices, but this was a negligible quantity in times such as these. The Vienna restaurants and cafés were serving wheat bread, butter, and cream as before. In a single place I identified as many as thirty-seven different varieties of cakes and pastry. Everybody was drinking coffee with whipped cream--_Kaffee mit Obers_--and nobody gave food conservation a thought. While the Berlin bills of fare had been generous, to say the least, those of Vienna were nothing short of wasteful. Even that of the well-known Hardman emporium on the Kärntner Ring, not an extravagant place by any means, enumerated no less than one hundred and forty-seven separate items _à la carte_. I thought of the elephant steak and marveled at the imagination of some people. It seemed that in Austria such titbits were a long way off. A _mêlée_ of Viennese cooking, Austrian wine, and Hungarian music would have left anybody under that impression. But all is not gold that glitters! At the hotel where I was staying, a small army of German food-buyers was lodged. From some of them I learned what food conditions in Germany might be a year hence. These men were familiar with the needs of their country, and thought it out of place to be optimistic. The drain on farm labor and the shortage of fertilizer were the things they feared most. They were buying right and left at almost any price, and others were doing the same thing in Hungary, I was informed. These men were not strictly war purveyors. Most of them bought supplies for the regular channels of trade, but they were buying in a manner that was bound to lead to high prices. It was a question of getting quantities, and if these could not be had at one price they had to be bought at a higher. Within two days I had established that the war purveyors at Vienna were more rapacious than those at Berlin. But I will say for them that they had better manners in public places. They were not so loud--a fact which helped them greatly in business, I think. Personally, I prefer the polished Shylock to the loutish glutton. It is a weakness that has cost me a little money now and then, but, like so many of our weaknesses, it goes to make up polite life. Vienna's hotels were full of _Kriegslieferanten_. The _portiers_ and waiters addressed them as "_Baron_" and "_Graf_" (count), and for this bestowal of letters-patent nobility were rewarded with truly regal tips. But there the matter ended. I was holding converse with the _portier_ of the Hotel Bristol when a war purveyor came up and wanted to know whether telegrams had arrived for him--the war purveyor never uses the mail. "_Nein, Herr Graf_," replied the _portier_. The war purveyor seemed inclined to blame the _portier_ for this. After some remarks, alleging slovenliness on the part of somebody and everybody in so impersonal a manner that even I felt guilty, he turned away. The _portier_--I had known him a day--seemed to place much confidence in me, despite the fact that so far he had not seen the color of my money. "That fellow ought to be hung!" he said, as he looked at the revolving door that was spinning madly under the impulse which the wrathful war purveyor had given it. "He is a pig!" "But how could a count be a pig?" I asked, playfully. "He isn't a count at all," was the _portier's_ remark. "You see, that is a habit we easy-going Viennese have. The fellow has engaged one of our best suites and the title of count goes with that. It may interest you to know that years ago the same suite was occupied by Prince Bismarck." There is no reason why in tradition-loving and nobility-adoring Austria the title of count should not thereafter attach to any person occupying a suite of rooms so honored. For all that, it is a peculiar mentality that makes an honorary count an animal of uncleanly habits within the space of a few seconds. The Grand Hotel was really the citadel of the Austro-Hungarian war purveyors. Every room was taken by them, and the splendid dining-room of the establishment was crammed with them during meal-hours. Dinner was a grandiose affair. The _Kriegslieferanten_ were in dinner coats and bulging shirt-fronts, and the ladies wore all their jewels. Two of the war-purveyor couples were naturalized Americans, and one of them picked me up before I knew what had happened. While I was in Vienna I was to be their guest. It seems that the man had made a contract with the Austrian Ministry of War for ever so many thousands of tons of canned meat. He thought that his friends "back home" might be interested in that, and that there was no better way of having the news broken to them than by means of a despatch to my service. There is no doubt whatever that being a war purveyor robs a man of his sense of proportions. To see the Vienna war purveyor at his best it was necessary to wait until midnight and visit the haunts he frequented, such as the Femina, Trocadero, Chapeau Rouge, Café Capua, and Carlton cabarets. Vienna's _demi-monde_ never knew such spenders. The memory of certain harebrained American tourists faded into nothingness. Champagne flowed in rivers, and the hothouses were unable to meet the demand for flowers--at last one shortage. The gipsy fiddlers took nothing less than five crowns, and the waiters called it a poor evening when the tips fell below what formerly they had been satisfied with in a month. All of this came from the pockets of the public, and when these pockets began to show the bottom the government obligingly increased the currency by the products of the press. More money was needed by everybody. The morrow was hardly given a thought, and the sanest moment most people had was when they concluded that these were times in which it was well to let the evils of the day be sufficient thereof. One never knew when the Russians might spill over the Tartra and the Carpathians, in which case it would be all over. The light-heartedness which is so characteristic of the Austrians reached degrees that made the serious observer wonder. _Après nous le déluge_, was the motto of the times. So long as there was food enough, champagne to be had, and women to share these, the Russians could have the rest. I speculated how long this could go on. The military situation could be handled by the Germans, and would be taken in hand by them sooner or later. That much I learned in Berlin. But the Germans were powerless in the Austro-Hungarian economic departments. Though the Dual Monarchy had been self-contained entirely in food matters before the war, it seemed certain that the squandering of resources that was going on could in the end have but one result--shortage in everything. Despite that, Austrian government officials were highly optimistic. Starve out Austria and Hungary! Why, that was out of the question entirely--_ausgeschlossen_! At some statistical bureau on the Schwarzenbergstrasse I was given figures that were to show the impossibility of the Entente's design to reduce the country by hunger. These figures were imposing, I will admit, and after I had studied them I had the impression that famine was indeed a long way off. It seemed that the Stürgkh régime knew what it was doing, after all, as I had been told at the government offices. Everything would be well, even if the war should be long. Two weeks later I was at the Galician front. Going there I passed through northern Hungary. The barns of that district were bursting. The crops had been good, I was told. Every siding was crowded with cars loaded with sugar-beets and potatoes, and out in the fields the sturdy women of the race, short-skirted and high-booted, were taking from the soil more beets and more potatoes. The harvesting of these crops had been delayed by the absence of the men, due to the mobilizations. By the time I reached Neu-Sandez in Galicia, then seat of the Austro-Hungarian general headquarters, I had fully convinced myself that the Entente's program of starvation was very much out of the question. I found that the soldiers were well fed. The wheeled field kitchens were spreading appetizing smells over the countryside, and that their output was good was shown by the fine physical condition of the men. Having established this much, and the Russians coming altogether too close, I had occasion a week later to visit Budapest. In that city everybody was eating without a thought of the future, and that eating was good, as will be attested by anybody who has ever sat down to a Budapestian lamb _pörkölt_, of which the American goulash is a sort of degenerate descendant. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the Astoria Hotel was the only place in town not entirely occupied by the war purveyors. A trip through central and southern Hungary served merely to complete and confirm what I have already said here, and when later I took a look at Croatia, and the parts of Serbia known to-day as the Machwa, I began to realize why the Romans had thought these parts so necessary to them. Soil and climate here are the best any farmer could wish for. The districts are famous for their output in pork and prunes. With the Russians firmly rooted in Galicia, and with the Austro-Hungarian troops driven out of Serbia, my usefulness as a war correspondent was temporarily at an end. I returned to Budapest and later visited Vienna and Berlin. The food situation was unchanged. Austria and Hungary were consuming as before, and Germany was buying right and left. The course of the German mark was still high, despite the first issuance of Loan-Treasury notes, supported as it was by the generous surrender of much gold by the German people. Purchasable stores were still plentiful throughout southeast Europe. Despite that, the subject of food intruded everywhere. More concerned than it was willing to admit, the German government was gathering every morsel. Several neutral governments, among them the Dutch, Danish, Swiss, and Norwegian, had already declared partial embargoes on food, and these the German government had made up its mind to meet. It had in its hands the means to do this most effectively. There was Holland, for instance. Her government had reduced the export of food to Germany to a veritable minimum even then, as I learned on a trip to The Hague in December. That was well enough, but not without consequences. Holland has in Limburg a single mine of lignite coal. The output is small and suited for little more than gas production. But the country had to get coal from somewhere, if her railroads were to run, the wheels of industry to turn; if the ships were to steam and the cities to be lighted and heated. Much of the coal consumed in Holland in the past had been imported from Belgium. But that country was in the hands of the Germans. The British government had made the taking of bunker coal contingent upon conditions which the Dutch government thought unreasonable. The Dutch were between the devil and the deep blue sea. Coal they had to get, and Germany was the only country willing to supply that coal--provided there was a _quid pro quo_ in kind. There was nothing to do but accept the terms of the Germans, which were coal for food. The bartering which had preceded the making of these arrangements had been very close and stubborn. The Dutch government did not want to offend the British government. It could not afford, on the other hand, to earn the ill-will of the Germans. I had occasion to occupy myself with the case, and when my inquiry had been completed I had gained the impression that the German government had left nothing undone to get from the Dutch all the food that could be had. The insistency displayed and applied was such that it was difficult to reconcile with it the easy manner in which the subject of food had been discussed in Berlin. It seemed that the food and live-stock enumerations that had been made throughout the German Empire had given cause for anxiety. In January of 1915 I was sent to the Balkans for the purpose of surveying the political situation there. While in transit to Roumania I had once more taken stock in Berlin. No great change in food-supply conditions could be noticed. The war-bread was there, of course. But those who did not care to eat it did not have to do so. In Vienna they lived as before, and in Budapest they boastfully pointed to their full boards. But in Bucharest I once more ran into food actualities. Thousands of German commission-men were buying everything they could lay hands on, and with them co-operated hundreds of Austro-Hungarians who had long been residents of Roumania, and many of whom stood high on the grain exchange of Braila. Accident caused me to put up at the Palace Hotel, which was the headquarters of the grain-buyers. In the lobby of the establishment thousands of tons of cereals changed hands every hour. I evinced some interest in the trading in speaking to the man behind the desk. "Yes, sir! All these men are German grain-dealers," explained the Balkanite _portier_ to me. "This hotel is their headquarters. If you don't happen to sympathize with them, no harm will be done if you move to another hotel. There are many in town." But I don't mind being spoken to frankly, and since I had no special interests in grain-dealers of any sort, there was no reason why I should move, especially since the _portier_ had invited me to do that. By that time, also, I had traveled enough in Europe at war to know that discretion is always the better part of valor, and that being unperturbed was the best insurance against trouble. The German grain-dealers were doing a good business. It was easy to buy, but not so easy to export. Premier Bratianu did not like the transactions that were going on, and had passed the word to the management of the Roumanian state railroads that the traffic was to move as slowly as possible. There are ways and means of overcoming that sort of instruction, and the German grain-dealers found them. Far be it from me to run here a full record of bribery in Bucharest. I may state, however, that money left deep scars on many a fairly good character in those days. The influence and persuasion of the _chanteuses et danseuses_ of the cabarets on the Calea Victoriei played often a great rôle in cereal exports. I gained personal knowledge of a case in which a four-karat diamond secured the immediate release of eight thousand tons of wheat, and in that wheat was buried a large quantity of crude rubber, the slabs of which carried the name of a large automobile-tire manufacturer in Petrograd. Such things will happen when the ladies take a hand in war subsistence. My special mission now was to study the political situation on the Balkan peninsula and finally end up somewhere in Turkey. I did both. In Sofia the government was painfully neutral in those days. There was as yet no reason why the Germans should buy grain there, but contracts were being made for the next crop. Wool was also being bought, and many hides moved north into Germany and Austria-Hungary. But the deals were of an eminently respectable sort. Bribery was out of the question. The trouble was that the shipments secured in Bulgaria never reached their destination unless bribes moved the trains. The Serbs held the central reaches of the Danube, which, in addition to this, was ice-bound just then, and all freight from Bulgaria, going north, had to be taken through Roumania. To get them into that country was simple enough, but to get them out took more cash, more diamonds, and considerable champagne. In a single month the price of that beverage in Bucharest jumped from eighteen to forty francs, and, as if to avenge themselves, the Germans began shortly to refill the shelves with "champus" made along the Rhine. With Bulgaria explored and described, I set out for Turkey, where, at Constantinople, in July of that year, I ran into the first bread-line formed by people "who had the price." The Ottoman capital gets its food-supplies normally over the waterways that give access to the city--the Bosphorus from the north and the Black Sea and the Dardanelles from the south and the Mediterranean. Both of these avenues of trade and traffic were now closed. The Russians kept the entrance to the Bosphorus well patrolled, and the French and British saw to it that nothing entered the Dardanelles, even if they themselves could not navigate the strait very far, as some eight months' stay with the Turkish armed forces at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli made very plain to me. The Anatolian Railroad, together with a few unimportant tap lines, was now the only means of reaching the agricultural districts of Asia Minor--the Konia Vilayet and the Cilician Plain, for instance. But the line is single-tracked and was just then very much overloaded with military transports. The result of this was that Constantinople ate up what stores there were, and then waited for more. There was more, of course. The Ottoman Empire is an agricultural state, and would be more of one if the population could see its way clear to doing without the goat and the fat-tailed sheep. That its capital and only large city should be without breadstuff as early as July, 1915, was hard to believe, yet a fact. In May of that year I had made a trip through Anatolia, Syria, and Arabia. By that time the crops in Asia Minor are well advanced and wheat is almost ripe. These crops were good, but, like the crops of the preceding season, which had not yet been moved, owing to the war, they were of little value to the people of Constantinople. They could not be had. I hate estimates, and for that reason will not indulge in them here. But the fact is that from Eregli, in the Cappadocian Plain, to Eski-Shehir, on the Anatolian high plateau, I saw enough wheat rotting at the railroad stations to supply the Central Powers for two years. Not only was every shed filled with the grain, but the farmers who had come later were obliged to store theirs out in the open, where it lay without shelter of any sort. Rain and warmth had caused the grain on top to sprout lustily, while the inside of the heap was rotting. The railroad and the government promised relief day after day, but both were unable to bring it over the single track, which was given over, almost entirely, to military traffic. Thus it came that the shops of the _ekmekdjis_ in Constantinople were besieged by hungry thousands, the merest fraction of whom ever got the loaf which the ticket, issued by the police, promised. That was not all, however. Speculators and dealers soon discerned their chance of making money and were not slow in availing themselves of it. Prices rose until the poor could buy nothing but corn meal. A corner in olives added to the distress of the multitude, and the government, with that ineptness which is typical of government in Turkey, failed to do anything that had practical value. Though the Young Turks had for a while set their faces against corruption, many of the party leaders had relapsed, with the result that little was done to check the rapacity of the dealer who hoarded for purposes of speculation and price-boosting. Yet those in the Constantinople bread-lines were modest in their normal demands. Turk and Levantine manage to get along well on a diet of bread and olives, with a little _pilaff_--a rice dish--and a small piece of meat, generally mutton, once a day thrown in. With a little coffee for the Turk, and a glass of red wine for the Levantine, this is a very agreeable bill of fare, and a good one, as any expert in dietetics will affirm. I had occasion to discuss the food shortage in Turkey with Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi, Turkey's leading feminist and education promoter. She assigned two causes. One of them was the lack of transportation, to which I have already referred as coming under my own observation. The other was found in the ineptness of the Ottoman government. She was of the opinion that there was enough food in the Bosphorus region, but that the speculators were holding it for higher prices. This, too, was nothing new to me. But it was interesting to hear a Turkish woman's opinion on this nefarious practice. To the misfortune of war the greedy were adding their lust for possession, and the men in Stamboul lacked the courage to say them nay. That men like Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey, who had taken upon themselves the responsibility of having Turkey enter the lists of the European War, were now afraid to put an end to food speculation, showed what grip the economic pirate may lay upon a community. What the Allied fleet and military forces at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli had not accomplished the food sharks had done. Before them the leaders of the Young Turks had taken to cover. IV FAMINE COMES TO STAY That the food question should have become acute first in a state as distinctly agricultural as the Ottoman Empire furnishes an apt illustration of the fact that in the production of food man-power is all-essential. The best soil and climate lose their value when farming must be neglected on account of a shortage of labor. The plants providing us with breadstuff are the product of evolution. At one time they were mere grasses, as their tendency to revert to that state, when left to themselves, demonstrates in such climates as make natural propagation possible. It is believed that the "oat grass" on the South African veldt is a case of that sort. But apart from all that, every cropping season shows that man, in order to have bread, must plow, sow, cultivate, and reap. When the soil is no longer able to supply the cereal plants with the nutriment they need, fertilizing becomes necessary. I have shown that bread-lines formed in Constantinople when out in the Anatolian vilayets the wheat was rotting at the side of the railroad track. This was due to defects and handicaps in distribution. But there was also another side to this. I made several trips through Thrace, that part of the Ottoman Empire which lies in Europe, and found that its rich valleys and plains could have supplied the Turkish capital with all the wheat it needed had the soil been cultivated. This had not been done, however. The mobilizations had taken so many men from the _tchiftliks_--farms--that a proper tilling of the fields was out of the question. A shortage in grain resulted, and the food sharks were thus enabled to exact a heavy tribute from the public. It is a case of hard times with the speculator when things are plentiful. He is then unable to gather in all of the supply. There is a leakage which he does not control and that leakage causes his defeat in the end. It is a well-known fact that a corner in wheat is impossible, and a dangerous undertaking, so long as from 15 to 30 per cent. of the grain remains uncontrolled. That quantity represents the excess profit which the speculator counts upon. Not to control it means that the supply available to the consumer is large enough to keep the price near its normal curves, to which the speculator must presently adhere if he is not to lose money on his corner. But a great deal depends upon how corrupt the government is. The Turk-Espaniole clique in Stamboul and Pera had cornered the Thracian wheat crop in 1915, and the Anatolian Railroad was unable to bring in enough breadstuff from Anatolia and Syria. The bread-lines were the result. It was not much better in Austria and Hungary. Here, too, production had fallen off about one-fifth, and the many war purveyors, who had been driven out of business by saner systems of army purchasing, had turned their attention to foods of any sort. In Germany the same thing happened in a slightly less degree. Since in the Central states the bread ticket had meanwhile been introduced, and the quality and price of bread fixed, one may ask the question: Why was bread short in those countries when formerly they produced fully 95 per cent. of their breadstuffs? The answer is that, firstly, production had fallen off, and, secondly, there was much cornering by the speculators. It must be borne in mind that bread regulation so far consisted of attempts by the government to provide for the multitude bread at a reasonable price, without distribution being placed under efficient control. The rapacity of the food shark had forced up the price of breadstuffs, and nothing but government interference could check the avarice of the dealers. But the population had to have cheap bread, and attention had to be given the paucity of the supply. Fixed prices were to make possible the former, and a limitation in consumption was to overcome the latter. It will be seen that this procedure left the food shark a free hand. He could buy as before and sell when and to whom he pleased. Thus it came that, while the masses of Germany and Austria-Hungary had to eat war-bread in prescribed quantities, those better off materially still had their wheat-flour products. The authorities were not ignorant of this, but had good reason not to interfere. The time was come when the financial resources of the country had to be "mobilized," and this was being done by extracting from the population all the spare coin and concentrating it in the hands of the food speculators so that these could be taxed and enabled to buy war loans. These men were easily dealt with. Very often they were bankers, and kings of industry and commerce. To provide the government with funds for the war was to them a question of profit. The bread ticket did not favor an equitable distribution, nor was it ever intended to do that. Its sole purpose at first was to tax food in such a manner that those who were willing to buy more food than the bread ticket prescribed had to pay heavily for this indulgence. That this was a socio-economic injustice was plain to those who reasoned far enough. But the patient rabble accepted the thing at its face value, as it will accept most things that bear the stamp of authority. I had no difficulty anywhere in getting all the wheat bread and farinaceous dishes I wanted. It was not even necessary to ask for them. It was taken for granted that I belonged to the class that did not have to eat war-bread and do without pudding and cake, and that was enough. While I was supposed to have a bread ticket, few ever asked for it. In the restaurants which I frequented I generally found a dinner roll hidden under the napkin, which for that purpose was as a rule folded in the manner known as the "bishop's miter." But gone for the many was the era of enough food. The bread ration in Berlin was three hundred grams (ten and a half ounces) per day, and in Vienna it was two hundred and ten grams (seven and two-fifths ounces). Together with a normal supply of other eatables, flour for cooking, for instance, these rations were not really short, and in my case they were generous. But with most it was now a question of paying abnormally high prices for meat and the like, so that enough bread was more of a necessity than ever. It was rather odd that in Austria the bread ration should be smaller than in Germany. That country had in the past produced more breadstuff per capita than her ally, and would have been able to import from Hungary had conditions been different. Hungary had in the past exported wheat flour to many parts, due largely to the fine quality of her grain. Now, of a sudden, it, too, faced a shortage. The fact is that Austria-Hungary had mobilized a large part of her male population and had for that reason been extremely short of farm labor during the season of 1915. The large reserve stores had been exhausted by improvidence, and, to make things worse, the crops of that year were not favored by the weather. Meanwhile, much of the wheat had passed into the hands of the speculators, who were releasing it only when their price was paid. In Austria the bread ticket was the convenient answer to all complaints, and in Hungary, where the bread ticket was not generally introduced as yet, the food shark had the support of the government to such an extent that criticism of his methods was futile. Now and then an enterprising editor would be heard from--as far as his press-room, where the censor caused such hardihoods to be routed from the plate. The food outlook in Austria-Hungary was no pleasant one. Drastic regulation would be needed to alleviate conditions. It was no better in Germany, as a trip to Berlin showed. Food had indeed become a problem in the Central states of Europe. The same area had been put under crops in 1915; the area had even been somewhat extended by advice of the governments that all fallow lands be sown. But the harvest had not been good. The shortage of trained farmers, lack of animal-power, and the paucity of fertilizers had done exactly what was to be expected. Then, the growing season had not been favorable. The year had been wet, and much of the grain had been ruined even after it was ripe. For the purpose of investigating conditions at close range I made a few trips into the country districts. The large landowners, the farmers, and the villagers had the same story to tell. Not enough hands, shortage of horses and other draft animals, little manure, and a poor season. One of the men with whom I discussed the aspects of farming under the handicaps which the war was imposing was Joachim Baron von Bredow-Wagenitz, a large landowner in the province of Brandenburg. As owner of an estate that had been most successful under scientific methods of farming, he was well qualified to discuss the situation. He had tried steam-plowing and found it wanting. The man was on the verge of believing that Mother Earth resented being treated in that manner. The best had been done to make steam-plowing as good as the other form. But something seemed to have gone wrong. There was no life in the crops. It was a question of fertilizing, my informant concluded. The theory, which had been held, that there was enough reserve plant nutriment in the soil to produce a good crop at least one season with indifferent fertilization, was evidently incorrect, or correct only in so far as certain crop plants were concerned. Baron Bredow had employed some threescore of Russian prisoners on his place. Some of the men had worked well, but most of them had shown ability only in shirking. The older men and the women had done their best to get something out of the soil, but they were unable, in the first place, to stand the physical strain, and, secondly, they lacked the necessary experience in the departments which the men at the front had looked after. Elsewhere in Germany it was the same story. It simply was impossible to discount the loss of almost four million men who had by that time been withdrawn from the soil and were now consuming more than ever before without producing a single thing, as yet. To show what that really meant let me cite a few factors that are easily grasped. The population of the German Empire was then, roundly, 70,000,000 persons. Of this number 35,000,000 were women. Of the 35,000,000 men all individuals from birth to the age of fifteen were virtually consumers only, while those from fifty years onward were more or less in the same class. Accepting that the average length of life in Central Europe is fifty-five years, we find that the male producers in 1915 numbered about 20,000,000, and of this number about one-half was then either at the fronts or under military training. Of these 10,000,000 roughly 4,200,000 had formerly occupied themselves with the production and distribution of food. I need not state that this army formed quite the best element in food production for the simple reason that it was composed of men in the prime of life. A survey in Austria showed not only the same conditions, but also indicated that the worst was yet to come. Austria and Hungary had then under the colors about 5,000,000 men, of whom, roundly, 2,225,000 came from the fields and food industries, so that agriculture was even worse off in the Dual Monarchy than it was in Germany. The large landowners in Austria and Hungary told the same story as Baron Bredow. Experiences tallied exactly. They, too, had found it impossible to get the necessary labor, for either love or money. It simply was not in the country, and with many of the Austrian and Hungarian land-operators the labor given by the Russian prisoner of war was next thing to being nothing at all. The Russians felt that they were being put to work against the interest of their country, and many of them seemed to like the idleness of the prison camp better than the work that was expected of them on the estates, though here they were almost free. I remember especially the experiences of Count Erdödy, a Hungarian nobleman and owner of several big estates. After trying every sort of available male labor, he finally decided to cultivate his lands with the help of women. The thing was not a success by any means, but when he came to compare notes with his neighbors he found that, after all, the women had done much better than the men on his neighbors' estates. As a sign of the times I should mention here that Count Erdödy, no longer a young man, would spend weeks at a stretch doing the heaviest of farm work, labor in which he was assisted by his American wife and two daughters, one of whom could work a plow as well as any man. The war had ceased to be an affair that would affect solely the masses, as is often the case. Men who never before had done manual labor could now be seen following the plow, cultivating crops, operating reapers, and threshing the grain. The farm superintendents, most of them young and able-bodied men of education, had long ago been called to the colors as reserve officers, so that generally the owner, who in the past had taken it very easy, was now confronted with a total absence of executives on his estates, in addition to being short of man-power and animals of labor. But the large farm-operators were not half so poorly off as the small farmer. I will cite a case in order to show the conditions on the small farms and in the villages. The land near Linz in Austria is particularly fertile and is mostly held by small owners who came into possession of it during the Farmer Revolution in the 'forties. I visited a number of these men and will give here what is a typical instance of what they had to contend with in the crop season of 1915. "It is all right for the government to expect that we are to raise the same, if not better, crops during the war," said one of them. "For the fine gentlemen who sit in the Ministerial offices that does not mean much. Out here it is different. Their circulars are very interesting, but the fact is that we cannot carry out the suggestions they make. "They have left me my youngest son. He is a mere boy--just eighteen. The other boys--three of them--who helped me run this place, I have lost. One of them was killed in Galicia, and the other two have been taken prisoners. I may never see them again. They say my two boys are prisoners. But I have heard nothing of them. "My crops would have been better if I hadn't tried to follow some of the advice in the government circulars. It was my duty to raise all I could on my land, they said. I doubted the wisdom of putting out too much, with nobody to help me. "It would have been better had I followed my own judgment and plowed half the land and let the other lie fallow, in which case it would have been better for the crops next year. Instead of that I planted all the fields, used a great deal of seed, wasted much of my labor, first in plowing, then in cultivating, and later in harvesting, and now I have actually less return than usually I had from half the land." The records of the man showed that from his thirty acres he had harvested what normally fifteen would have given him. Haste makes waste, and in his instance haste was the equivalent of trying to do with two pairs of weak hands what formerly three pairs of strong arms had done. The farmer explained that for several years before the war he had done little work, feeling that he was entitled to a rest. Nor had his heart been in the work. One of his sons had been killed. Two others were in captivity, and the fourth, Franz, might be called to the colors any day. It seemed to him futile to continue. What was the use of anything, now that his family had been torn apart in that manner? [Illustration: Photograph from Brown Brothers, N. Y. A LEVY OF FARMER BOYS OFF FOR THE BARRACKS The fact that millions of food-producers of this type were taken from the soil caused Central Europe to run short of life's necessities.] [Illustration: Photograph from Brown Brothers, N. Y. GERMAN CAVALRYMEN AT WORK PLOWING As food grew scarcer the German army began to cultivate the fields in the occupied territories to lessen the burden of the food-producer at home.] Taxes were higher, of course. On the other hand, he was getting a little more for his products, but not enough to make good the loss sustained through bad crops. While the production of his land had fallen to about one-half of normal, he was getting on an average 15 per cent. more for what he sold, which was now a bare third of what he had sold in other years, seeing that from the little he had raised he had to meet the wants of his family and the few animals that were left. Neighbors of the man told a similar story. Some of them had done a little better in production, but in no instance had the crop been within more than 80 per cent. of normal. They, too, were not satisfied with the prices they were getting. The buyers of the commission-men were guided by the minimum-price regulation which the government was enforcing, and often they would class a thing inferior in order to go below that price--as the regulations permitted. These people felt that they were being mulcted. But redress there was none. If they refused to sell, the authorities could compel them, and rather than face requisition they allowed the agents of the food sharks to have their way. The thought that the government was exploiting them was disheartening, and was reflected in their production of food. This was the state of affairs almost everywhere. The able-bodied men had been taken from the soil, just as they had been taken from other economic spheres. Labor was not only scarce, but so high-priced that the small farmer could not afford to buy it. And then, I found that in the rural districts the war looked much more real to people. There it had truly fostered the thought that all in life is vain. The city people were much better off in that respect. They also had their men at the front. But they had more diversion, even if that diversion was usually no more than meeting many people each day. They had, moreover, the exhilarating sensation that comes from playing a game for big stakes. When the outlook was dreary they always found some optimist who would cheer them up; and the report of some victory, however small and inconsequential, buoyed them up for days at a time. Out in the country it was different. The weekly paper did its best to be cheerful. But its sanguine guesses as to the military future were seen by eyes accustomed to dealing with the realities of nature. I visited many Austrian villages and found the same psychology everywhere. The Austrian farmer was tired of the war by December of 1914. When I occupied myself again with him a year later he was disgusted and had come to care not a rap who governed in Budapest. Of course, it was different should the Russians get to Vienna. In that case they would take their pitchforks and scythes and show them. The Hungarian farmer was in the same mood. If the war could have been ended with the Italians getting no farther than Vienna things would have been well enough, but to have the Russians in Budapest--not to be thought of; not for a minute. Meanwhile, the Austrian and Hungarian governments, taking now many a leaf from the book of the Germans, were urging a greater production of food next season. Highly technical books were being digested into the every-day language of the farmer. It was pointed out what sorts of plowing would be most useful, and what might be omitted in case it could not be done. How and when to fertilize under prevailing conditions was also explained. The leaflets meant well, but generally overlooked the fact that each farm has problems of its own. But this prodding of the farmer and his soil was not entirely without good results. It caused a rather thorough cultivation of the fields in the fall of 1915, and also led to the utilization of fertilizing materials which had been overlooked before. The dung-pits were scraped, and even the earth around them was carted into the fields. Though animal urine had already been highly valued as a fertilizer, it was now conserved with greater care. Every speck of wood ash was saved. The humus on the woodland floors and forests was drawn on. The muck of rivers and ponds was spread over the near-by fields, and in northern Germany the parent stratum of peat growth was ground up and added to the soil as plant food. V THE FOOD SHARK AND HIS WAYS There were two schools of war economists in Central Europe, and they had their following in each of the several governments that regulated food--its production, distribution, and consumption. The two elements opposed each other, naturally, and not a little confusion came of this now and then. The military formed one of these schools--the radical. These men wanted to spread over the entire population the discipline of the barrack-yard. For the time being they wanted the entire state to be run on military principles. All production was to be for the state; all distribution was to be done in the interest of the war, and all consumption, whether that of the rich or the poor, was to be measured by the military value of the individual. It was proposed that every person in the several states should get just his share of the available food and not a crumb more. The rich man was to eat exactly, to the fraction of an ounce, what the poor man got. He was to have no greater a share of clothing, fuel, and light. That seemed very equitable to most people. It appealed even to the other school, but it did not find the approval of those who were interested in the perpetuation of the old system of social economy. What the military proposed was more than the socialists had ever demanded. The enforcement of that measure would have been the triumph absolute of the Social-Democrats of Central Europe. But for that the Central European politician and capitalist was not ready. With the capitalist it was a question of: What good would it do to win the war if socialism was thus to become supreme? It would be far better to go down in military defeat and preserve the profit system. The struggle was most interesting. I had occasion to discuss it with a man whose name I cannot give, for the reason that it might go hard with him--and I am not making war on individuals. At any rate, the man is now a general in the German army. He was then a colonel and looked upon as the ablest combination of politician, diplomatist, and soldier Germany possessed, as he had indeed proved. "You are a socialist," I said to him. "But you don't seem to know it." "I am a socialist and do know it," said the colonel. "This war has made me a socialist. When this affair is over, and I am spared, I will become an active socialist." "And the reason?" I asked. That question the colonel did not answer. He could not. But I learned indirectly what his reasons were. Little by little he unfolded them to me. He was tired of the butchery, all the more tired since he could not see how bloody strife of that sort added anything to the well-being of man. "When war reaches the proportions it has to-day it ceases to be a military exercise," he said on one occasion. "The peoples of Europe are at one another's throat to-day because one set of capitalists is afraid that it is to lose a part of its dividends to another. The only way we have of getting even with them is to turn socialist and put the curb on our masters." There would seem to be no direct connection between this sentiment and the economic tendency of the military in food regulation. Yet there is. The men in the trenches knew very well what they were fighting for. They realized that, now the struggle was on, they had to continue with it, but they had also made up their mind to be heard from later on. The case I have quoted is not isolated. I found another in the general headquarters of General von Stein, then commanding a sector on the Somme. In the camp of the military economists was also that governing element which manages to drag out an existence of genteel shabbiness on the smallest pay given an official of that class anywhere. This faction also favored the most sweeping measures of war economy. But it was in the end a simple matter of holding these extremists down. Their opponents always had the very trenchant argument that it took money to carry on the war, and that this money could not be had if the old system was completely overthrown. There was little to be said after that. To do anything that would make war loans impossible would be treason, of course, and that was considered going too far. Regulation thereafter resolved itself into an endeavor by the anti-capitalists to trim their _bête noire_ as much as was possible and safe, and the effort of the economic standpatters to come to the rescue of their friends. Now the one, then the other, would carry off the honors, and each time capital and public would either gain or lose. It depended somewhat on the season. When war loans had to be made, the anti-capitalist school would ease off a little, and when the loan had been subscribed it would return to its old tactics, to meet, as before, the very effective passive resistance of the standpatters. I may mention here that much of what has been said of the efficient organization of the German governments is buncombe--rot pure and simple. In the case of the Austrian and Hungarian governments this claim has never been made, could never have been made, and no remark of mine is necessary. The thing that has been mistaken for efficient organization is the absolute obedience to authority which has been bred into the German for centuries. Nor is that obedience entirely barrack bred, as some have asserted. It is more the high regard for municipal law and love of orderliness than the fear of the drill-sergeant that finds expression in this obedience. How to make good use of this quality requires organizing ability, of course. But no matter how the efficient organization of the Germans is viewed, the fact remains that the German people, by virtue of its love of orderliness, is highly susceptible to the impulses of the governing class. To that all German efficiency is due. There had been some modification of distribution early in 1915. That, however, was entirely a military measure. The traffic on the German state railroads was unusually heavy, and trackage, rolling-stock, and motive power had to be husbanded if a breakdown of the long lines of communication between the French and Russian fronts was to be avoided. There was no thought of social economy. The thing aimed at was to keep the railroads fit for military service. But by August of 1915 the military economists had managed to get their hands into economic affairs. It cannot be said that their efforts were at first particularly fortunate. But the German general staff was and is composed of men quick to learn. These men had then acquired at least one sound notion, and this was that, with the railroads of the several states under military control, they could "get after" the industrial and commercial barons whom they hated so cordially. "In the interest of the military establishment" a number of socio-economic innovations were introduced. The first of them was the distribution zone. There is no doubt that it was a clever idea. It was so sound, at the same time, that the friends of the trade lords in the government had to accept it. The arrangement worked something like this. A wholesaler of flour in western Hanover might have a good customer in the city of Magdeburg. Up to now he had been permitted to ship to that customer as he desired. That was to cease. He could now ship only to that point when he could prove that the flour was not needed nearer to where it was stored. But to prove that was not easy--was impossible, in fact. Since the German state railroads had in the past provided much of the revenue of the several governments, this was no small step to take. But it was taken, and with most salutary effects. The trundling of freight back and forth ceased, and the food shark was the loser. Ostensibly, this had been done in order to conserve the railroads. Its actual purpose was to check the trade lords by depriving them of one of their arguments why the price of necessities should be high. What was accomplished in this instance should interest any community, and for that reason I will illustrate it with an example of "economic waste" found in the United States. You may have eaten a "Kansas City" steak in San Antonio, Texas, if not at Corpus Christi or Brownsville. (I am an adopted "native" of that region and inordinately proud of it.) If you had investigated the history of that steak I think you would have been somewhat surprised. The steer which produced that steak might have been raised in the valley of the Rio Grande. After that the animal had taken a trip to Oklahoma, where better pasture put more meat on its back. Still later a farmer in Missouri had fattened the steer on the very cream of his soil, and after that it had been taken to Kansas City or Chicago to be butchered and "storaged." It might then have dawned upon you that a great deal of wasted effort was hidden in the price of that steak, though no more than in the biscuit that was wheat in North Dakota, flour in Minneapolis, biscuit in San Francisco, and a toothsome morsel to follow the steak. You would be a dull person indeed if now some economic short cut had not occurred to you. The steak might have been produced by Texas grass and North Texas corn, and the like, and it need never have traveled farther than San Antonio. The biscuit might have been given its form in Minneapolis. It was so in Germany before the military social economists took a hand in the scheme, though the waste was by no means as great as in the cases I have cited, seeing that all of the empire is a little smaller than the Lone Star State. But the little trundling there was had to go. In the winter of 1915-16 this budding economic idea was still in chrysalis, however. The several governments still looked upon it entirely as a measure for the conservation of their railroads. What is more, they were afraid to give the principle too wide an application. In the first place, the extension of the scheme into the socio-economic structure seemed difficult technically. It was realized that the reduction of traffic on the rails was one thing, and that the simplifying of distribution was quite another. To effect the first the Minister of Railroads had merely to get in touch with the chiefs of the "direction," as the districts of railroading are called. The chiefs would forward instruction to their division heads, and after that everything was in order. But distribution was another thing. In that case the several governments did not deal with a machine attuned to obey the slightest impulse from above, and which as readily transmitted impulses from the other end. Far from it. Not to meddle with distribution, so long as this was not absolutely necessary, was deemed the better course, especially since all such meddling would have to be done along lines drawn a thousand times by the Central European socialist. But the food shark had to be checked somehow. The unrest due to his sharp practices was on the increase. The minimum-maximum price decrees which had been issued were all very well, but so long as there was a chance to speculate and hoard they were to the masses a detriment rather than a benefit. Let me show you how the food shark operated. The case I quote is Austrian, but I could name hundreds of similar instances in Germany. I have selected this case because I knew the man by sight and attended several sessions of his trial. First I will briefly outline what law he had violated. To lay low what was known as chain trade throughout Central Europe, _Kettenhandel_, the governments had decreed that foodstuffs could be distributed only in this manner: The producer could sell to a commission-man, but the commission-man could sell only to the wholesaler, and the wholesaler only to the retailer. That appears rational enough. But neither commission-man nor wholesaler liked to adhere to the scheme. Despite the law, they would pass the same thing from one to another, and every temporary owner of the article would add a profit, and no small one. To establish the needed control the retailer was to demand from the wholesaler the bill of sale by which the goods had passed into his hands, while the wholesaler could make the commission-man produce documentary evidence showing how much he had paid the producer. Under the scheme a mill, or other establishment where commodities were collected, was a producer. Mr. B. had bought of the Fiume Rice Mills Company a car-load of best rice, the car-load in Central Europe being generally ten tons. He had brought the rice to Vienna and there was an eager market for it, as may be imagined. But he wanted to make a large profit, and that was impossible if he went about the sale of the rice in the manner prescribed by the government. The wholesaler or retailer to whom he sold might wish to see the bill of sale, and then he was sure to report him to the authorities if the profit were greater than the maximum which the government had provided. To overcome all this he did what many others were doing, and in that manner made on the single car of rice which he sold to a hunger-ridden community the neat little profit of thirty-five hundred crowns. Something went wrong, however. Mr. B. was arrested and tried on the charge of price-boosting by means of chain trade. When the rice got to Vienna he had sold it to a dummy. The dummy sold it to another dummy, and Mr. B. bought it again from the second dummy. In this manner he secured the necessary figures on the bill of sale and imposed them on the wholesaler. The court was lenient in his case. He was fined five thousand crowns, was given six weeks in jail, and lost his license to trade. _Preistreiberei_--to wit--price-boosting did not pay in this instance. After all, that sort of work was extremely crude when compared with some other specimens, though the more refined varieties of piracy needed usually the connivance of some public official, generally a man connected with the railroad management. Many of these officials were poorly paid when the war began and the government could not see its way clear to paying them more. The keen desire of keeping up the shabby gentility that goes with Central European officialdom, and very often actual want, caused these men to fall by the roadside. There was a little case that affected three hundred cars of wheat flour. Though Hungary and Austria had then no wheat flour to spare for export, the flour was actually exported through Switzerland into Italy, though that country was then at war with the Dual Monarchy! Thirty-two men were arrested, and two of them committed suicide before the law laid hands on them. The odd part of it was that the flour had crossed the Austro-Hungarian border at Marchegg, where the shipment had been examined by the military border police. It had then gone across Austria as a shipment of "cement in bags," had passed as such into Switzerland, and there the agents of the food sharks in Budapest had turned it over to an Italian buyer. Nobody would have been the wiser had it not been that a shipment of some thirty cars was wrecked. Lo and behold, the cement was flour! They had some similar cases in Germany, though most of them involved chain trading in textiles. The unmerciful application of the law did not deter the profiteer at all, any more than capital punishment has ever succeeded in totally eradicating murder. There was always somebody who would take a chance, and it was the leakage rather than the general scheme of distribution that did all the damage. Whatever necessity and commodity had once passed out of the channel of legitimate business had to stay out of it if those responsible for the deflection were not to come in conflict with the law, and there were always those who were only too glad to buy such stores. The wholesaler received more than the maximum price he could have asked of the retailer, and the consumer was glad to get the merchandise at almost any price so that he could increase his hoard. But the governments were loth to put the brake on too much of the economic machinery. They depended on that machinery for money to carry on the war, and large numbers of men would be needed to supervise a system of distribution that thwarted the middleman's greed effectively. These men were not available. The minimum-maximum price scheme had shown itself defective, moreover. In theory this was all very well, but in food regulation it is often a question of: The government proposes and the individual disposes. The minimum price was the limit which any would-be buyer could offer the seller. In the case of the farmer it meant that for a kilogram (2.205 pounds) of potatoes he would get, let us say, five cents. Nobody could offer him less. The maximum price was to protect the consumer, who for the same potatoes was supposed to pay no more than six and one-half cents. The middlemen were to fit into this scheme as best they could. The one and one-half cents had to cover freight charges, operation cost, and profit. The margin was ample in a farm-warehouse-store-kitchen scheme of distribution. But it left nothing for the speculator, being intended to stimulate production and ease the burden which the consumer was bearing. Not the least purpose of the scheme was to keep the money out of the hands of food-dealers, who would hoard their ill-gotten gain. The government needed an active flow of currency. All of which was well enough so long as the supply of food was not really short. But when it grew short another factor entered the arena. Everybody began to hoard. The quantities which the authorities released for consumption were not intended to be stored, however. Storing food by incompetents is most wasteful, as the massacre of the pigs had shown, and hoarding, moreover, gave more food to the rich than to the poor; so for the time being it could not be encouraged too openly, despite the revenues that came from it. But the hoarder is hard to defeat. The consumer knew and trusted the retailer, the retailer was on the best of terms with the wholesaler, and the rapacious commission-man knew where to get the goods. He made the farmer a better offer than the minimum price he usually received. He paid six cents for the kilogram of potatoes, or even seven. Then he sold in a manner which brought the potatoes to the consumer for eleven cents through the "food speak-easy." The middleman and retailer had now cleared four cents on the kilogram, instead of one and one-half cents; their outlay deducted, they would make a net profit running from two and one-half cents to three and one-half cents per 2.205 American pounds of potatoes. This sort of traffic ran into the tens of thousands of tons. The food shark was making hay while the weather was good. The entire range of human alimentation was at his mercy, and often the government closed an eye because the food shark would subscribe handsomely to the next war loan. In the winter of 1915-16 I made several trips into the country to see how things were getting along. On one occasion I was in Moravia. I had heard rumors that here the food shark had found Paradise. It was a fact. Near a freight-yard in Brünn a potato-dealer was installed. He bought potatoes in any quantity, being in effect merely the agent of the Vienna Bank Ring that was doing a food-commission business as a side line. I don't know why the government permitted this, except that this "concession" was a _quid pro quo_ for war-loan subscriptions. A little old Czech farmer drove up. He had some thirty bags of potatoes on his sleigh, all well protected by straw and blankets. The food shark looked the load over and offered the minimum price for that grade, which on that day was eighteen hellers the kilogram, about one and three-fourths cents American per pound avoirdupois. The farmer protested. "My daughter in Vienna tells me that she has to pay thirty-six hellers a kilogram," he said. "Not according to the maximum price set by the government, which is twenty-one hellers just now," was the bland remark of the agent. "That is all very well, sir!" returned the farmer. "But you know as well as I do that when my daughter wants potatoes she must pay thirty-six hellers or whatever the retailer wants. She writes me that when she stands in the food-line she never gets anything. So she does business with a man who always has potatoes." The food shark had no time to lose. Other farmers came. "Eighteen hellers or nothing," he said. The farmer thought it over for a while and then sold. The reader uninitiated in war-food conditions may ask: Why didn't that farmer ship his daughter the potatoes she needed? He couldn't, of course. The economic-zone arrangement prevented him. That zone was the means which the government employed to regulate and restrict distribution and consumption without giving money an opportunity to tarnish in the hands of people who might not subscribe to war loans. The zone "mobilized" the pennies by concentrating them in the banks and making them available _en masse_ for the war. Yet the fact was that the daughter of the farmer, buying potatoes clandestinely, may have bought the very product of her father's land. Who in that case got the eighteen hellers difference? The middlemen, of course. That the poor woman, in order to feed her children, might have been able to use to good advantage two kilograms at thirty-six hellers, instead of one, is very likely, but this consideration did not bother the food sharks known as the Vienna Bank Ring. On one occasion the same group of food speculators permitted two million eggs to spoil in a railroad yard at Vienna because the price was not good enough. The Bank Ring was just then agitating for a better price for eggs and hoped that the maximum would be raised. But the government was a little slow on this occasion, and before the price went up, "according to regulation," the eggs were an unpleasant memory to the yard-hands. Naturally, nobody was prosecuted in this case. I understood at the time that the Bank Ring presented to the Austrian government a sort of ultimatum, which read: "No profits, no war loans." The government surrendered. The fact that many of these speculators were of the Jewish persuasion caused a revival of a rather mild sort of anti-Semitism. Several of the Christian newspapers made much of this, but the government censors soon put an end to that. This was no time for the pot to call the kettle black. The food shark came from all classes, and the Austrian nobility was not poorly represented. There was the case of the princely house of Schwarzenberg, for instance. The family is not of German blood to any extent, as the name would seem to imply. Nowadays it is distinctly Bohemian, and in Bohemia its vast estates and properties are located. The managers of the Schwarzenbergs had a corner on almost everything that was raised in the localities of the family's domains. In the winter of 1915-16 they forced up, to unheard-of heights, the price of prunes. The prune was a veritable titbit then, and with most people in Central Europe it had come to be the only fruit they could get in the winter. Its nutritive value is great, and since every pfennig and heller had to buy a maximum in food values the demand for prunes soon exceeded greatly the supply--so everybody thought. But the trouble was not a shortage. The crop had been good, in fact. Orchards, so far as they had not been harmed by the paucity of copper for the manufacture of vitriol and Bordeaux mixture for the extermination of tree parasites, had not suffered by the war. The trees bore as usual, and fruit crops were generally what they had been before. Nor had there been an increase in operation expenses, aside from what little extra pay there was given those who gathered the crop. But the Schwarzenbergs and a few others made up their minds that they, too, would get a little of the war profits. They also were heavy investors in war loans. So long as this corner was confined to prunes and other fruits the thing presented no great problem--as problems went then. But the activity of this particular ring did not stop there. Its members dealt in everything the soil produced. During the first months of the war there had been set aside by the several military authorities certain agricultural districts from which the armies were to be supplied with food, forage, and the like. The idea was not a bad one. The armies were voracious consumers, and a scheme which would concentrate over as small an area as possible the supplies needed meant a great saving of time and effort when shipments had to be made. That would have been very well had the several governments bought all supplies from the producer direct through the medium of a purchasing branch of the commissary department. Such was not the case, however. The government continued to buy through war purveyors, who had, indeed, been curbed a little, but only in exchange for other privileges. Standing in well with the military, these men were able to sell out of the commissary-supply zones what the armies did not need--poultry, butter, fats, and eggs, for instance. These little side lines paid very well. I remember discovering on one trip that near Prague could be bought a whole goose for what in Vienna two pounds would cost. Since the Bohemian geese are never small birds, and weigh from nine to twelve pounds, this was a case of five to one. When in the cities butter was almost a thing unknown, I was able to buy in Bohemia any quantity at the very reasonable price of twenty-seven cents American a pound. In Vienna it cost one dollar and thirty cents a pound after the food shark had been satisfied. The military-supply-zone arrangement made exports from districts affected to the large population centers impossible, except upon special permit, which was not easy to get by the man who had no "protection," as they put it in Austria. The food shark always interfered. In doing that he had a sort of double objective. Scarcity was forcing up the prices in the cities, and when the government had been persuaded that the prevailing maximum price was not "fair to the farmer" the shark had a reservoir to draw upon. I found a similar state of affairs in Galicia. On the very outskirts of Cracow I ran into a veritable land of plenty. The military zone had completely isolated this district, and while elsewhere people had not seen butter in weeks, it was used here for cooking, and lard served as axle-grease. Finally the zone was opened to the civilian consumer. But this concession benefitted only the food sharks. In the population centers prices remained what they had been. I found similar conditions in Germany, though the cause was not entirely the same. The Mecklenburg states still have a government and public administration scheme that has come down to our day from the Middle Ages without much modification. They have no constitution as yet, and they would have no railroads, I suppose, were it not that their neighbors had to get access to one another through these principalities. The two countries are hard-boiled eggs indeed. And the Mecklenburgers are like their government. I understand that some enlightened ruler once offered his people constitutional government, but had a refusal for his pains. Enough food had been hoarded in Mecklenburg to meet all Germany's shortage three months. But nobody could get it out. The Imperial German government had no say in the matter. The several German states are as jealous of their vested rights as any American State could possibly be. And the Mecklenburg government had little influence with its farmers. The case was rather interesting. Here was an absolute government that was more impotent in its dealings with its subjects than constitutional Austria was. But the Mecklenburg farmers were of one mind, and that quality is often stronger than a regularly established constitution--it is stronger for the reason that it may be an unwritten constitution. The cellars and granaries of Mecklenburg were full to overflowing. But there the thing ended, until one day the screws were put on by the Imperial German government. The Mecklenburgers had been good war-loan buyers, however. Hard-headed farmers often prefer direct methods. In Westphalia they had similar food islands, and from Osnabrück to the North Sea victuals had generally to be pried loose with a crowbar. There the farmer was the peasant of the good old type; he was generally a hard person to deal with. It was shown that while he did not mind being classed as low-caste--_Bauernstand_--he also had cultivated a castal independence. He would doff his cap to the government official, and all the time resolve the firmer not to let his crops get out of his hands in a manner not agreeable to him. Passive resistance is too much for any government, no matter how absolute and strong it may be. It can be overcome only by cajolery. The clandestine food-buyer had better luck, of course. He knew how to impress and persuade the thickhead, and then made the dear general public pay for this social accomplishment, which may be as it should be. He also frustrated the plan of the government. Pennies so mobilized did not always go into war loans. To the men in high places this was not unknown, of course. They realized that something would have to be done soon or late to put this department of war economics on a smooth track. Appeals not to hoard and not to speculate in the interest of the nation were all very well, but they led to nothing. Still, it would not do to undertake the major operation on the vitals of the socio-economic organism which alone could set matters right. More doctoring was done during the summer of 1916. Those who did it were being misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of a good crop prospect. In August of that year I had an interview with Dr. Karl Helfferich, the first German food-dictator. He was averse just then to more food regulation. He had done wonders as it was. Everybody knew that, though he was most modest about it. More regulation of the economic machine seemed undesirable to him. He did not want to wholly unmake and remodel the industrial and commercial organism of the state, and preliminary crop reports were such that further interference seemed unnecessary at that moment. As it was, the rye crop of Germany met expectations. Wheat fell short, however, Oats were good, but the potatoes made a poor showing, as did a number of other crops that year. Crop returns in Austria were disappointing on the whole. The spring had been very wet and the summer unusually dry. When the harvesting season came a long rainy spell ruined another 10 per cent. of the cereals. Potatoes failed to give a good yield. In Hungary the outlook was equally discouraging, and reports from the occupied territories in Poland, Serbia, and Macedonia showed that what the "economic troops" and occupation forces had raised would be needed by the armies. To fill the cup of anxiety to the brim, Roumania declared war. The several governments had made arrangements to give furlough to as many farm-workers as possible, that the crops might be brought in properly. The entry of Roumania into the war made that impossible. And the moment for entry had been chosen well indeed. By reason of its warmer climate, Roumania had been able to harvest a good three-quarters of her crops by August, and the Indian corn could be left to the older men, women, and children to gather. But in the Central states it was different. Much of the wheat had been harvested, and some rye had also been brought in, but the bulk of the field produce, upon which the populations depended for their nourishment, was still in the fields. I have never experienced so gloomy a time as this. There was a new enemy, and this enemy was spreading all over Transylvania. The shortage of labor was greater than ever before, with the weather more unfavorable. What the conditions in Austria and Hungary were at that time I was able to ascertain on several trips to the Roumanian front. Cereals that should have been under roof long ago were standing in the fields, spilling their kernels when rain was not rotting them. Those who were left to reap struggled heroically with the huge task on their hands, but were not equal to it. If ever the specter of famine had stalked through the Central states, those were the days. All this left the food shark undisturbed. He laid hands on all he could and was ready to squeeze hard when the time came. VI THE HOARDERS The fact that business relations in Central Europe are very often family and friendship affairs was to prove an almost insuperable obstacle in government food regulation. It led to the growth of what for the want of a better term I will call: The food "speak-easy." The word _Kundschaft_ may be translated into English as "circle of customers." The term "trade" will not fit, for the reason that relations between old customers and storekeeper are usually the most intimate. The dealer may have known the mother of the woman who buys in his shop. He may have also known her grandmother. At any rate, it is certain that the customer has dealt at the store ever since she moved into the district. Loyalty in Central Europe goes so far that a customer would think twice before changing stores, and if a change is made it becomes almost a matter of personal affront. The storekeeper will feel that he has done his best by the customer and has found no appreciation. Not versed in the ways of Europe, I had several experiences of this peculiarity. While in Vienna I used to buy my smoking materials of a little woman who kept a tobacco "_Traffic_" on the Alleestrasse. I did not show up when at the front, of course, and, making many such trips, my custom was a rather spasmodic affair. The woman seemed to be worried about it. "It is very odd, sir, that you stay away altogether at times," she said. "Is it possible that you are not satisfied with my goods? They are the same as those you get elsewhere, you know." That was true enough. In Austria trade in tobacco is a government monopoly, and one buys the same brands at all the stores. "I am not always in town," I explained. I was to get my bringing-up supplemented presently. Those who know the Viennese will best understand what happened. "You are a foreigner, sir," continued the woman, "and cannot be expected to know the ways of this country. May I give you a little advice?" I said that I had never been above taking advice from anybody. "You will get much better service from storekeepers in this country if you become a regular customer, and especially in these days. You see, that is the rule here. Smoking material, as you know, is already short, and I fear that in a little while there will not be enough to go around." The tip was not lost on me, especially since I found that the woman really meant well. She had counted on me as one of those whom she intended to supply with smokes when the shortage became chronic, which it soon would be. And that she proposed doing because I was such a "pleasant fellow." After that I took pains to announce my departure whenever I had occasion to leave the city, and I found that, long after the "tobacco-line" was one of the facts of the time, the woman would lay aside for me every day ten cigarettes. My small trade had come to be one of the things which the woman counted upon--and she wanted no fickleness from me in return for the thought she gave my welfare. What a food shortage would lead to under such conditions can be imagined. The storekeeper would look out for his regular customers, before any other person got from him so much as sight of the food. The government regulations were less partial, however. The several food cards, with which would-be purchasers were provided, were intended to be honored on sight so long as the quota they stipulated was there. The food "speak-easy" had its birth in this. The storekeeper would know that such and such customer needed sundry items and would reserve them. The customer might never get them if she stood in line, so she called afterward at the back door, or came late of nights when the sign "Everything Sold" hung in the window. Had this illicit traffic stopped there and then things would have been well enough. But it did not. Before very long it degenerated into a wild scramble for food for hoarding purposes. As yet the several governments were not greatly interested in distribution methods that really were of service. The avenue from wholesaler to retailer was still open. The food cards were issued to the public to limit consumption, and the law paragraph quoted on them called attention to the fact that infraction of the regulations would be punished no matter by whom committed. Most of the little coupons were half the size of a postage stamp, and so many of them were collected by a storekeeper in the course of a week that an army of men would have been needed if the things were to be counted. So the governments took a chance with the honesty of the retailers. That was a mistake, of course, but it was the only way. There was at first no control of any sort over the quantities bought by the retailer. In fact, he could buy as much as he liked so long as the wholesaler did not have another friend retailer to keep in mind. The other retailer was doing business along the same lines, and could not be overlooked; otherwise there would be the danger of losing him as soon as the war was over; in those days it was still "soon." The wholesaler maintained the best of relations with the retailer, despite the fact that he was of a superior class. The two would meet now and then in the cafés, and there the somewhat unequal business friendship would be fostered over the marble-topped table. The customer of the retailer was already hoarding food. The retailer tried to do all the business he could, of course, and in the pursuit of this policy bought from the wholesaler all he could possibly get for money or love. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANY From the villages and small towns is recruited sixty per cent. of the German army.] Commission-men were licensed by the government, and when food regulation became a little more stringent they were obliged to make some sort of a slovenly report on the quantities they handled. But the government food commissions did not have the necessary personnel to keep close tally of these reports. This led to partial returns by the middlemen, a practice which entailed no particular risk so long as the government did not actually control and direct the buying of foodstuffs in the country and at the mills. Business moved smartly as the result of this combination of circumstances. The wholesaler bought twice as much from the commission-man, and the latter had to buy, accordingly, in the country. The maximum prices which the government set upon foods about to enter into possession of the consumer were invariably accompanied by minimum prices which the producer was to get. Reversely, the arrangement meant that the customer could not offer less for food than the government had decided he should pay, nor could the farmer or other producer demand more. That was well enough in a way. The farmer was to get for a kilogram (2.205 pounds) of wheat not less than four and one-half cents, and the middleman selling to the mill could not ask more than five and one-half cents. Labor and loss in milling taken into consideration, the mill was to be satisfied with seven cents, while the consumer, so said the regulations, was to get his flour for eight and one-quarter cents per kilogram. That was all very well, but it came to mean little in the end. The customer thought he would lay in two hundred pounds of wheat flour for the rainy day. The retailer could not see it in that way. That was just a little too much. There were other worthy customers who might have to go short of their regular quota if he sold in amounts of that size. But the customer wanted the flour and was willing to pay more than the regulation or maximum price for it. It took but little tempting to cause the fall of the retailer. The wholesaler would do the same thing. The commission-man was willing, since part of, let us say, a 20-per-cent. increase was being handed along the line. The mill got a few crowns more per hundred kilograms, and a little of the extra price would get as far as the farmer. That _l'appétit vient en mangeant_ is a notorious fact. A dangerous practice had been launched, nor was it always inaugurated by the consumer. No class of dealers was averse to doing business that might be illicit, but which brought large profits. A first result was that the farmer was spoiled, as the consumer and the government looked at it. While purchases from the farmer were bounded in price by a minimum, there was no prohibition of paying him as much more as he would take. The government's duty was to stimulate production, and that was the purpose of the minimum price. The government, learning that a certain farmer had been getting six cents for his wheat, might wonder how much the consumer paid and get after the middlemen, but it could not hold the farmer responsible. As a matter of fact, the government hardly ever heard of such transactions. They did not talk at the gate of the food "speak-easy." When questioned the farmer would always protest that he had all he could do to get the minimum price. Not only was the first excess in price passed along, but large profits attached themselves to the article as it progressed cityward. The commission-men got theirs, the miller did not overlook himself, the wholesaler was remembered, naturally, and the retailer, as factotum-general in the scheme, saw to it that he was not deprived of his share. As is always the case, the consumer paid the several pipers. And the special consumer to whom the food, thus illicitly diverted from the regular channels, meant the assurance that he would not starve although others might, paid cheerfully. What was the good of having money in the bank when soon it might not buy anything? The lines in front of the food-shops lengthened, and many retailers acquired the habit of keeping open but part of the day. But even that part was usually too long. When the card in the window said, "Open from 8 to 12," it usually meant that at nine o'clock there would not be a morsel of food on the counters and shelves. The members of the food-line who had not managed to gain access to the store by that time would get no food that day. At first the retailer would regret this very much. But he soon began to feel his oats. Women, who had stood in line for several hours, wanted to know why he had so small a quantity on hand. The man would often become abusive and refuse an explanation. Now and then some resolute woman would complain to the police. The retailer was arrested and fined. But the woman would never again get any food from him. That was his way of getting even and disciplining the good customers upon whom at other times he had waited hand and foot. The fine relations between customer and retailer of yore were gone by the board. The era of hoarding and greed was on. The good-natured Vienna and Berlin _Kleinkrämer_ grew more autocratic every time he opened his store. People had to come to him or go hungry, and it was ever hurtful to put the beggar on horse-back. Occasional visits to the lower courts proved very interesting and entertaining, though the story that was told was always the same. The retailer had lost his sense of proportions completely. No sergeant of an awkward squad ever developed so fine a flow of sarcastic billingsgate as did the butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers of the Central states in those days. Almost every case had its low-comedy feature, and often I came away with the impression that the sense of humor in some people is hard to kill, especially when some serious judge pronounced the maximum sentence for an offense about whose quaint rascality he was still chuckling. But the dear public was not as stupid as the retailers and their ilk thought. Almost everybody had a relative, friend, or acquaintance in the country, and when this was not the case one had a city friend who had such a country connection. Sunday excursions into the country became very popular, and week-days could not be put to better use. The many holidays called for by religious observance, and now and then a victory over the enemy, came to be a severe strain upon the country's food reserve. The trains coming into the city often carried more weight in food than in passengers. After all, that was the best way of laying in supplies. Why go to the retailer and stand in line when the farmers were willing to sell to the consumer direct? A high tide in hoarding set in. Everybody filled garret and cellar with the things which the farm produces. Flour was stowed away in all possible and impossible places. Potatoes were accumulated. Butter and eggs were salted away, and so much fruit was preserved that sugar ceased to be obtainable in countries which had formerly exported much of it. The authorities knew full well what would happen if the private route from farm to kitchen direct was not made impossible. Existing regulations already permitted the searching of trains. When the inspectors descended upon the hoarding holidayers there was much surprise, gnashing of teeth, and grumbling. But that did not help. The food illicitly brought in was confiscated, and the slightest resistance on the part of those having it in their possession brought a liberal fine and often a day or two in jail. The parcel post was used next by the private food-hoarders. The government wanted to be easy on the population and had for this reason closed its eyes to the packages of butter and other concentrated foods that went through the mails. But the good consumers overreached themselves. The result was that the postal authorities turned over all food found in the mails to the Food Commissions and Centrals. Next thing was that the farmer who came to market had to be curbed. That worthy man would enter town or city with a good load of eatables. By the time he had gone a few blocks he had disposed of everything. It was like taking up a drop of ink with a blotter. The first measures against this resulted in smuggling. Every load of produce that came into a population center had in it packages of other good things, especially butter and lard, and later eggs, when these fell within the scope of regulation. But the hoarding that was going on would have to be stopped if the food-supply was to last. Those who hoarded lost no chance to buy for their current consumption in the legal market, drawing thus doubly on the scant food-supplies. The authorities began to exercise their right of search. The food-inspector became an unwelcome visitor of households. The practice of hoarding was well enough for the well-to-do. But it left the poor entirely unprovided. The average wage-earner did not have the means to buy food at the fancy prices that governed the illicit food market, and the food that went to the hoarder cut short the general supply upon which the poor depended for their daily allowance. It was quite the regular thing for the wife of a poor man to stand in line three hours and then be turned away. The retailer would still have food in the cellar, but that was to go out by private delivery. The food cards held by the women were no warrant on the quantities they prescribed, but merely the authorization to draw so and so much if the things were to be had. The woman had to take the retailer's word for it. When that august person said, "Sold out," there was nothing to do but go home and pacify the hungry children with whatever else the depleted larder contained. Meanwhile much food was spoiling in the cellars and attics of the hoarders. People who never before in their lives had attempted to preserve food were now trying their hand at it--with unfortunate and malodorous results. An acquaintance of mine in Vienna had hoarded diligently and amply. The man had on hand wheat flour, large quantities of potatoes, butter in salt, and eggs in lime-water, and conserved fruits and vegetables which represented an excess consumption in sugar. He had also laid in great quantities of honey, coffee, and other groceries. There was food enough to last his family two years, so long as a little could be had in the legal market each day. Though the store on hand was ample, the man continued to buy where and whenever he could. One day he shipped from Agram several mattresses--not for the sake of the comfort they would bring of nights, but for the macaroni he had stuffed them with. I think that of all the hoarders he was the king-pin. The man had three growing boys, however, and allowance has to be made for that. He did not want those boys to be stunted in their growth by insufficient nourishment. Obliged to choose between paternal and civic duty, he decided in favor of the former, for which we need not blame him too much, seeing that most of us would do precisely that thing in his position. But to understand that fully, one must have seen hungry children tormenting their parents for food. Description is wholly inadequate in such cases. That there were others who had growing children may have occurred to the man, but meant nothing to him. So he continued to buy and hoard. The storage methods employed were wrong, of course, and facilities were very limited. The potatoes froze in the cellar and sprouted in the warm rooms. Weevils took birth in the flour, because it was stored in a wardrobe only some four feet away from a stove. The canned goods stood on every shelf in the place, littered the floors and filled the corners. Faulty preserving methods or the constant changes of temperature caused most of them to ferment and spoil. Every now and then something about the apartment would explode. The man had bought up almost the last of olive-oil that could be had in Central Europe. That, too, turned rancid. As I remember it now, he told me that of all the food he had bought--that he had hoarded it he never admitted--he had been able to use about one-third, and the annoyance he had from the spoiled two-thirds killed all the joy there was in having saved one-third. Hoarding in this case was an utter failure. So it was in most cases. To preserve food is almost a science, and suitable storage facilities play an important rôle in this. The private hoarder had no proper facilities. That it was unlawful to hoard food caused him to go ahead storing without asking advice of people familiar with the requirements; and the possibility that agents of the food authorities might come to inspect the quarters of the hoarder made hiding imperative. Often the servants would become informers, so that the food had to be hidden from them in barrels, trunks, and locked chests. The result of this can be easily imagined. There was a time when more food was spoiled in Central Europe by hoarding than there was consumed. The thing was extremely short-sighted, but everybody was taking care of himself and his own. There was no reason why food should spoil on the hands of the retailer. He never had enough to go around. But it was different with the wholesaler. This class was eternally holding back supplies for the purpose of inducing the government to increase the maximum prices. As time went on, the authorities had to do that, and the quantities then held in the warehouses benefited. The agitation of the producers for better minimum prices was water on the mill of the wholesaler. The government was eternally solicitous for the welfare of the farmer, and lent a ready ear to what he had to say. The minimum price was raised, and with it the consumer's maximum price had to go up. All quantities then held by the wholesalers were affected only by the increase in food prices that was borne by the consumer, not the increase that had to be given the farmer. It was the finest of business, especially since an increase of 5 per cent. in legitimate business meant an increase of another 15 per cent. in illicit traffic. In the spring of 1916 I made a canvass of the situation, and found that while the farmers were getting for their products from 10 to 15 per cent. more than they had received in 1914, food in the cities and towns was from 80 to 150 per cent. higher than it had been normally during five years before the war. I found that the dealers and middlemen were reaping an extra profit of approximately 80 per cent. on the things they bought and sold, after the greater cost of operation had been deducted. Small wonder that jewelers in Berlin and Vienna told me that the Christmas trade of 1915 was the best they had ever done. These good people opined that their increase in business was due to the general war prosperity. They were right, but forgot to mention that this prosperity was based on the cents wrung from the starving population by the buyers of the diamonds and precious baubles. Naturally, the dear farmer was not being left just then. He sold when he pleased for a time--until the government took a hand in moving his crops. But this interference with the affairs of the farmer was not entirely a blessing by any means. The brave tiller of the soil began to hoard now. Little actual loss came from this. The farmer knew his business. No food spoiled so long as he took care of it. All would have been well had it not been that the farmer was the very fountainhead of the hoarding which in the cities resulted in the loss of foodstuffs. There were still many loose ends in the scheme of food regulation. While the farmer was obliged to sell to the middleman, under supervision of the government Food Centrals, all cereals and potatoes which he would not need for his own use and seeding, the estimates made by the Food Central agents were generally very conservative. This they had to be if the government was not to run the risk of finding itself short after fixing the ration that seemed permissible by the crop returns established in this manner. The farmer got the benefit of the doubt, of course, and that benefit he invariably salted away for illicit trading. But illicit trading in breadstuffs was becoming more and more difficult. The grain had to go into a mill before it was flour. The government began to check up closely on the millers, which was rather awkward for all concerned in the traffic of the food "speak-easy." A way out was found by the farmers. They were a rather inventive lot. I am sure that these men, as they followed the plow back and forth, cudgeled their brains how the latest government regulation could be met and frustrated. Butter and fat were very short and were almost worth their weight in silver. They sold in the regulated market at from one dollar and sixty to one dollar and eighty cents a pound, and in the food "speak-easy" they cost just double that. Why not produce more butter? thought the farmer. He had the cows. And why not more lard? He had the pigs. A bushel of grain sold at minimum price brought so much, while converted into butter and lard it was worth thrice that much. Grain was hard to sell surreptitiously, but it was easy to dispose of the fats. In this manner hoarding took on a new shape--one that was to lead to more waste. None of the Central European governments had reason to believe that its food measures were popular. Much passive resistance was met. The consumer thought of himself in a hundred different ways. To curb him, the secret service of the police was instructed to keep its eyes on the family larder. Under the "War" paragraphs of the constitutions the several governments of Central Europe had that power. In Austria it was the famous "§14," for instance, under which any and all war measures were possible. Government by inspection is not only oppressive; it is also very expensive. It is dangerous in times when authorities are face to face with unrest; at any time it is the least desirable thing there is. It was not long before both government and public discovered that. To inspect households systematically was impossible, of course. The informer had to be relied upon. Usually, discharged servants wrote anonymous letters to the police, and often it was found that this was no more than a bit of spite work. If a servant-girl wanted to give a former mistress a disagreeable surprise she would write such a letter. Some hoards were really uncovered in that manner, but the game was not worth the candle. To get at the men who were hoarding _en masse_ for speculation and price-boosting purposes, an efficient secret service was needed. But this the Central European governments do not possess. The police of Germany and Austria-Hungary plays an important part in the life of man. But it does this openly. The methods employed are bureaucratic routine. The helmet shows conspicuously. Wits have no place in the system. One cannot move from one house to another without being made the subject of an entry on the police records. To move from one town to another was quite an undertaking during the war. Several documents were required. A servant or employee may not change jobs without notifying the police authorities. All life is minutely regulated and recorded on the books of the minions of the law. In matters of that sort the Central European police is truly efficient, because the system employed has been perfected by the cumulative effort and experience of generations. Detective work, on the other hand, is out of the reach of these organizations. The German detective is as poor a performer and as awkward as certain German diplomatists. He is always found out. Why the German and Austro-Hungarian detective services did not succeed in finding the commercial hoards I can readily understand. One could recognize the members of the services a mile off, as it were. It seemed to me that they were forever afraid of being detected. In the detective that is a bad handicap. Now and then the German detective could be heard. As a foreigner I received considerable attention from the German, Austrian, and Hungarian police forces in the course of three years. My case was simple, however. I looked outlandish, no doubt, and since I spoke German with a foreign accent it really was not difficult to keep track of me. In the course of time, also, I became well known to thousands of people. That under these circumstances I should have known it at once when detectives were on my trail can be ascribed only to the clumsy work that was being done by the secret-service men. In Berlin I once invited a "shadow" of mine to get into my taxicab, lest I escape him. He refused and seemed offended. But there is a classic bit of German detective work that I must give in detail, in order to show why the food speculator and his ilk were immune in spite of all the regulations made by the government. I had been in Berlin several times when it happened. I knew many men in the Foreign Office, and in the bureaus of the German general staff, while to most of the Adlon Hotel employees I was as familiar a sight as I well could be without belonging to their families. I had come over the German-Dutch border that noon, and had been subjected to the usual frisking. There had also been a little trouble--also as usual. The clerk at the desk in the Adlon did not know me. He was a new man. He had, however, been witness to the very effusive welcome which the _chef de réception_ gave me. That did not interest me until I came down from my room and approached the desk for the purpose of leaving word for a friend of mine where I could be found later. The clerk was engaged in earnest conversation with a stockily built man of middle age. I had to wait until he would be through. After a second or so I heard my room number mentioned--237. Then the sound of my name fell. I noticed that the clerk was fingering one of the forms on which a traveler in Central Europe inscribes his name, profession, residence, nationality, age, and what not for the information of the police. "He is a newspaper correspondent?" asked the stocky one. "So he says," replied the clerk. "You are sure about that?" "Well, that is what it says on the form." "What sort of looking fellow is he?" inquired the stockily built man. "Rather tall, smooth shaven, dark complexion, wears eye-glasses," replied the clerk. I moved around the column that marks the end of one part of the desk and the beginning of another part that runs at right angles to the first. The clerk saw me and winked at the man to whom he had been talking. The detective was in the throes of embarrassment. He blushed. "Can't I be of some assistance to you?" I remarked in an impersonal manner, looking from clerk to detective. "You seem to be interested in my identity. What do you wish to know?" There was a short but highly awkward pause. "I am not," stammered the detective. "We were talking about somebody else." "I beg your pardon," said I and moved off. I have always taken it for granted that the detective was a new man in the secret service. Still, I have often wondered what sort of detective service it must be that will employ such helpless bunglers. It may be no more than an _idée fixe_ on my part, but ever since then I have taken _cum grano salis_ all that has been said for and against the efficiency of the German secret service, be it municipal or international. At Bucharest there was maintained for a time, allegedly by the German foreign service, a man who was known to everybody on the Calea Victoriei as the German _Oberspion_--chief spy. The poor devil cut a most pathetic figure. All contentions to the contrary notwithstanding, I would say that secret service is not one of the fortes of the Germans. They really ought to leave it alone. That takes keener wits and quicker thinking on one's feet than can be associated with the German mind. The Austrians were rather more efficient, and the same can be said of the Hungarian detective forces. In both cases the secret-service men were usually Poles, however, and that makes a difference. There is no mind quite so nimble, adaptive, or capable of simulation as that of the Pole. In this the race resembles strongly the French, hence its success in a field in which the French are justly the leaders. For the food sharks the German detective was no match. He might impress a provident _Hausfrau_ and move her to tears and the promise that she would never do it again. The commercial hoarder, who had a regular business besides and kept his books accordingly, was too much for these men. So long as no informer gave specific details that left no room for thinking on the part of the detective, the food shark was perfectly safe. The thousands of cases that came into the courts as time went on showed that the detectives, and inspectors of the Food Authorities, were thoroughly incorruptible. They also showed that they at least were doing no hoarding--in brains. VII IN THE HUMAN SHAMBLES Somber as this picture of life is, its background was nothing less than terrifyingly lurid. For some minutes I had stood before a barn in Galicia. I was expected to go into that barn, but I did not like the idea. Some fourscore of cholera patients lay on the straw-littered earthen floor. Every hour or so one of them would die. Disease in their case had progressed so far that all hope had been abandoned. If by any chance one of the sick possessed that unusual degree of bodily and nerve vigor that would defeat the ravages of the germ, he would recover as well in the barn as in a hospital. The brave man wishes to die alone. Those in the barn were brave men, and I did not wish to press my company upon them in the supreme hour. Still, there was the possibility that some might question my courage if I did not go into the barn. Cholera is highly contagious. But when with an army one is expected to do as the army does. If reckless exposure be a part of that, there is no help. I stepped into the gloom of the structure. There was snow on the ground outside. It took a minute or two before my eyes could discern things. Some light fell into the interior from the half-open door and a little square opening in the wall in the rear. Two lines of sick men lay on the ground--heads toward the wall, feet in the aisle that was thus formed. Some of the cholera-stricken writhed in agony as the germ destroyed their vitals. Others lay exhausted from a spasm of excruciating agony. Some were in the coma preceding death. Two were delirious. There was an army chaplain in the barn. He thought it his duty to be of as much comfort to the men as possible. His intentions were kind enough, and yet he would have done the patients a favor by leaving them to themselves. As I reached the corner where the chaplain stood, one of the sick soldiers struggled into an upright position. Then he knelt, while the chaplain began to say some prayer. The poor wretch had much difficulty keeping upright. When the chaplain had said "Amen" he fell across the body of the sick man next to him. The exertion and the mental excitement had done the man no good. Soon he was in a paroxysm of agony. The chaplain was meanwhile preparing another for the great journey. The dead had been laid under one of the eaves. A warm wind had sprung up and the sun was shining. The snow on the roof began to melt. The dripping water laved the faces of the dead. Out in the field several men were digging a company grave. So much has been written on the hardships endured by the wounded at the front that I will pass by this painful subject. What tortures these unfortunates suffered is aptly epitomized by an experience I had in the hospital of the American Red Cross in Budapest. The man in charge of the hospital, Dr. Charles MacDonald, of the United States Army, had invited me to see his institution. I had come to a small room in which operations were undertaken when urgency made this necessary. During the day a large convoy of very bad cases had reached Budapest. Many of them were a combination of wounds and frostbite. In the middle of the room stood an operation-table. On it lay a patient who was just recovering consciousness. I saw the merciful stupor of anesthesia leave the man's mind and wondered how he would take it. For on the floor, near the foot end of the operation-table, stood an enameled wash-basin, filled with blood and water. From the red fluid protruded two feet. They were black and swollen--frostbite. One of them had been cut off a little above the ankle, and the other immediately below the calf of the leg. The amputation itself was a success, said the nurse. But there was little hope for the patient. He had another wound in the back. That wound itself was not serious, but it had been the cause of the man's condition, by depriving him temporarily of the power of locomotion. When he was shot, the man had fallen into some reeds. He was unconscious for a time, and when he recovered his senses he found that he could no longer move his legs. He was lying in a No Man's Land between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian lines. For two days his feeble cries were unheard. Finally, some ambulance-men came across him. By that time his feet had been frozen. The wound in his back was given some attention at a first-aid station behind the line. The surgeons decided that the amputation of the feet could wait until Budapest was reached. Meanwhile the poison of gangrene was gaining admission to the blood. The man's face was yellow. His whole body was yellow and emaciated. The lips no longer served to cover the teeth. He was breathing pantingly--in short, quick gasps. Slowly his mind shook off the fetters of the ether. A long breath--a faint sigh. The eyes opened. They were Slav eyes of blue-gray. I saw in them the appeal of the helpless child, the protest of a being tortured, the prayer for relief of a despairing soul. The man's lips moved. He wanted to say something. I bent over to catch the sibilant tones. I had not caught them, and indicated that by a shake of the head. The man repeated. He spoke in Polish, a language I do not know. To assure the man that I would find means of understanding him, I patted his cheek, and then called an orderly. "He says that he would like you to fetch his wife and his children," said the orderly-interpreter, as he righted himself. "He says he is going to die soon, and wants to see them. He says that you will have to hurry up. He says that he will say a good word to the Lord for you if you will do him this favor." "Ask him where they live," I said to the orderly. If it were at all possible I would do the man this kindness. It was some village near Cracow. That was a long way off. If the man lived for two days his wish could be met. "Tell the man that I will telegraph his wife to come as quickly as possible, but that she can't be here for a day or so," I instructed the interpreter. A shadow of disappointment swept over the patient's face. "Ask him if he knows where he is," I said. The man did not know. I told the orderly to make it clear to him that he was in Budapest, and that his home in Galicia was far away. He was to be patient. I would bring his wife and children to him, if it could be done at all. Did the wife have the money to pay the railroad fare? The patient was not sure. I read in his eyes that he feared the woman would not have the money. I eased his mind by telling him that I would pay the fares. Deeper gratitude never spoke from any face. The poor fellow tried to lift his hands, but could not. To assure him that his wish would be granted I once more patted his cheeks and forehead and then left the room, followed by the orderly and the wash-basin. "There is no use telegraphing," said Doctor MacDonald. "He won't live longer than another hour, at the most." Ten minutes later the man was dead. The operation-table was being wheeled down the corridor by the orderly. I had just stepped out of a ward. The orderly stopped. "You won't have to bring the woman here," he said, as he lifted the end of the sheet that covered the face. As reward for my readiness to help the poor man, I have still in my mind the expression of relief that lay on the dead face. He had passed off in gladsome anticipation of the meeting there was to be. I covered up the face and the orderly trundled the body away. Some months later I sat in a room of the big military hospital in the Tatavla Quarter of Constantinople. On a bench against the wall opposite me were sitting a number of men in Turkish uniform. They were blind. Some of them had lost their eyes in hand-to-hand combat, more of them had been robbed of their sight in hand-grenade encounters. Doctor Eissen, the oculist-surgeon of the hospital, was about to fit these men with glass eyes. In the neat little case on the table were eyes of all colors, most of them brownish tints, a few of them were blue. One of the Turks was a blond--son of a Greek or Circassian, maybe. "These things don't help any, of course," said Doctor Eissen, as he laid a pair of blue eyes on a spoon and held them into the boiling water for sterilization. "But they lessen the shock to the family when the man comes home. "Poor devils! I have treated them all. They are like a bunch of children. They are going home to-day. They have been discharged. "Well, they are going home. Some have wives and children they will never see again--dependents they can no longer support. Some of them are luckier. They have nobody. The one who is to get these blue eyes used to be a silk-weaver in Brussa. He is optimistic enough to think that he can still weave. Maybe he can. That will depend on his fingers, I suppose. It takes often more courage to live after a battle than to live in it." The dear government did not provide glass eyes. Doctor Eissen furnished them himself, and yet the dear government insisted that a report be made on each eye he donated. The ways of red tape are queer the world over. "And when the blind come home the relatives weep a little and are glad that at least so much of the man has been returned to them." In the corridor there was waiting a Turkish woman. Her son was one of those whom Doctor Eissen was just fitting with eyes. When he was through with this, he called in the woman. The young blind _asker_ rose in the darkness that surrounded him. Out of that darkness came presently the embrace of two arms and the sob: "_Kusum!_" ("My lamb!"). For a moment the woman stared into the fabricated eyes. They were not those she had given her boy. They were glass, immobile. She closed her own eyes and then wept on the broad chest of the son. The son, glad that his _walideh_ was near him once more, found it easy to be the stronger of the two. He kissed his mother and then caressed the hair under the cap of the _yashmak_. When the doctor had been thanked, the mother led her boy off. Blind beggars are not unkindly treated in Constantinople. There is a rule that one must never refuse them alms. The least that may be given them are the words: "_Inayet ola!_" ("God will care for you!"). Not long after that I sat on the shambles at Suvla Bay, the particular spot in question being known as the Kiretch Tépé--Chalk Hill. Sir Ian Hamilton had just thrown into the vast amphitheater to the east of the bay some two hundred thousand men, many of them raw troops of the Kitchener armies. Some three thousand of these men had been left dead on the slopes of the hill. As usual, somebody on Gallipoli had bungled and bungled badly. A few days before I had seen how a British division ate itself up in futile attacks against a Turkish position west of Kütchük Anafarta. The thing was glorious to look at, but withal very foolish. Four times the British assailed the trenches of the Turks, and each time they were thrown back. When General Stopford finally decided that the thing was foolish, he called it off. The division he could not call back, because it was no more. It was so on Chalk Hill. A hot August night lay over the peninsula. The crescent of a waning moon gave the dense vapors that had welled in from the Mediterranean an opalescent quality. From that vapor came also, so it seemed, the stench of a hundred battle-fields. In reality this was not so. The Turkish advance position, which I had invaded that night for the purpose of seeing an attack which was to be made by the Turks shortly before dawn, ran close to the company graves in which the Turks had buried the dead foe. There is little soil on Gallipoli. It is hardly ever more than a foot deep on any slope, and under it lies lime that is too hard to get out of the way with pick and shovel. The company graves, therefore, were cairns rather than ditches. The bodies had been walled in well enough, but those walls were not airtight. The gases of decomposition escaped, therefore, and filled the landscape with obnoxious odor. I had been warned against this. The warning I had disregarded for the reason that such things are not unfamiliar to me. But I will confess that it took a good many cigarettes and considerable will-power to keep me in that position--so long as was absolutely necessary. When I returned to Constantinople everybody was speaking of the stench in the Suvla Bay terrain. There were many such spots, and returning soldiers were never slow in dwelling on the topic they suggested. The war did not appear less awesome for that. But the shambles that came closest to the general public was the casualty lists published by the German government as a sort of supplement to the Berlin _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_, the semi-official organ of the German Imperial Government. At times this list would contain as many as eight thousand names, each with a letter or several after it--"t" for dead, "s v" for severely wounded, "l v" for lightly wounded, and so on. It was thought at first that the public would not be able to stand this for long. But soon it was shown that literally there was no end to the fortitude of the Germans. I was to spend some time on the Somme front. I really was not anxious to see that field of slaughter. But certain men in Berlin thought that I ought to complete my list of fronts with their "own" front. Hospitals and such no longer interested me. Wrecked churches I had seen by the score--and a ruined building is a ruined building. I said that I would visit the Somme front in case I was allowed to go wherever I wanted. That was agreed to, after I had signed a paper relieving the German government of all responsibility in case something should happen to me "for myself and my heirs forever." The front had been in eruption three weeks and murder had reached the climax when one fine afternoon I put up at a very unpretentious _auberge_ in Cambrai. The interior of the Moloch of Carthage never was so hot as this front, nor was Moloch ever so greedy for human life. Battalion after battalion, division after division, was hurled into this furnace of barrage and machine-gun fire. What was left of them trickled back in a thin stream of wounded. For nine days the "drum" fire never ceased. From Le Transloy to south of Pozières the earth rocked. From the walls and ceilings of the old citadel at Cambrai the plaster fell, though many miles lay between it and the front. Perhaps the best I could say of the Somme offensive is that none will ever describe it adequately--as it was. The poor devils really able to encompass its magnitude and terrors became insane. Those who later regained their reason did so only because they had forgotten. The others live in the Somme days yet, and there are thousands of them. I could tell tales of horror such as have never before been heard--of a British cavalry charge near Hebuterne that was "stifled" by the barbed wire before it and the German machine-guns in its rear and flanks; of wounded men that had crawled on all-fours for long distances, resting occasionally to push back their entrails; of men cut into little pieces by shells and perforated like sieves by the machine-guns; and again of steel-nerved Bavarians who, coming out of the first trenches, gathered for a beer-drinking in an apple orchard not far from Manancourt. But that seems _de trop_. I will leave that to some modern Verestchagin and his canvases. There is a "still-life" of death that comes to my mind. Not long after that I was in the Carpathians. General Brussilow was trying out his mass tactics. The slaughter of man reached there aspects and proportions never before heard of. It was not the machine murder of the West Front--that is to say, it was not so much a factory for the conversion of live men into dead as it was a crude, old-fashioned abattoir. On the slope of a massive mountain lies an old pine forest. In the clearings stand birches, whose white trunks pierce the gloom under the roof of dense, dark-green pine crowns. Where the clearings are, patches of late-summer sky may be seen. Through the pale blue travel leisurely the whitest of clouds, and into this background of soft blue and white juts the somber pine and the autumn-tinged foliage of the birch. The forest is more a temple of a thousand columns than a thing that has risen from the little seeds in the pine cones. The trunks are straight and seem more details of a monument than something which has just grown. There is a formal decorum about the trees and their aggregate. But the soft light under the crowns lessens that into something severely mournful. The forest is indeed a sepulcher. On its floor lie thousands of dead Russians--first as close together as they can be packed, and then in layers on top of one another. It would seem that these bodies had been brought here for burial. That is not the case, however. The wounds in the tree trunks, cut by the streams of machine-gun bullets from the red trenches at the edge of the forest, indicate what happened. The first wave of Russians entered the forest, was decimated, and retreated. The second one met a similar fate. The third fared no better. The fourth came. The fifth. The sixth--twice more the Russian artillery urged on the Russian infantry. Here they lie. Their bodies are distended by progressing dissolution. Narrow slits in the bloated faces show where once the merry and dreamy Slav eye laughed. Most mouths are open, still eager for another breath of air. Distended nostrils tell the same tale. From one mouth hangs a tongue almost bitten off. A face close by is but a mask--a shell splinter has cut off the back of the head, which now rests on the shoulder of the man. To-morrow will come the Austro-Hungarian burial parties, dig holes and bury these human relics. Meanwhile the pines sough sorrowfully, or maybe they soughed like this before. Still a little later I was standing at an ancient stone bridge in the Vörös Torony defile in the Transylvanian Alps. It was a late afternoon in the late fall. In the defile it was still, save for an occasional artillery detonation near the Roumanian border, where the fight was going on. The red of the beeches and oaks fitted well into the narrative I heard, and the song of the Alt River reminded that it, too, had played a part in the drama--the complete rout of the Second Roumanian army, a few days before. The breeze sweeping through the defile and along its wooded flanks brought with it the odor of the dead. The underbrush on each side of the road was still full of dead Roumanians. The gutter of the road was strewn with dead horses. Scores of them hung in the tree forks below the road. On a rock-ledge in the river dead men moved about under the impulse of the current. The narrative: "Do you see that little clearing up there?" "The one below the pines?" "No. The one to the left of that--right above the rocks." "Yes." "I was stationed there with my machine-guns," continued the Bavarian officer. "We had crept through the mountains almost on our bellies to get there. It was hard work. But we did it. "At that we came a day too soon. We were entirely out of reach of Hermannstadt, and didn't know what was going on. For all we knew the Roumanians might have turned a trick. They are not half-bad soldiers. We were surprised, to say the least, when, on arriving here, we found that the road was full of traffic that showed no excitement. "We heard cannonading at the head of the gorge, but had no means of learning what it was. We had been sent here to cut off the retreat of the Roumanians, while the Ninth Army was to drive them into the defile. "For twenty-four hours we waited, taking care that the Roumanians did not see us. It was very careless of them, not to patrol these forests in sufficient force, nor to scent that there was something wrong when their small patrols did not return. At any rate, they had no notion of what was in store for them. "At last the thing started. The German artillery came nearer. We could tell that by the fire. At noon the Roumanians began to crowd into the defile. A little later they were here. "We opened up on them with the machine-guns for all we were worth. The men had been told to sweep this bridge. Not a Roumanian was to get over that. We wanted to catch the whole lot of them. "But the Roumanians couldn't see it that way, it seems. On they came in a mad rush for safety. The artillery was shelling the road behind them, and we were holding the bridge almost airtight. Soon the bridge was full of dead and wounded. Others came and attempted to get over them. They fell. Still others pressed on, driven ahead by the maddened crowd in the rear. "The machine-guns continued to work. Very soon this bridge was full of dead and wounded as high as the parapet. And still those fools would not surrender. Nor did they have sense enough to charge us. There were heaps of dead in front of the bridge, as far as the house over there. "That should have been a lesson to them. But it wasn't. On they came. Some of them trampled over the dead and wounded. Those more considerate tried to walk on the parapet. The machine-guns took care that they did not get very far. "By that time those shot on top of the heap began to slide into the river. Those not under fire scrambled down to the river and swam it--those who could swim; the others are in it yet. You can see them down there and wherever there is sand-bank or rock-ledge. But those who swam were the only ones that escaped us. That crowd was so panicky that it didn't have sense enough even to surrender. That's my theory. "It was an awful sight. Do you think this war will end soon?" In private life the narrator is a school-teacher in a little village in the Bavarian highlands. VIII PATRIOTISM AND A CRAVING STOMACH Napoleon had a poor opinion of the hungry soldier. But it is not only the man-at-arms who travels on his belly--the nation at war does the same. I have found that patriotism at a groaning table in a warm room, and with some other pleasant prospects added, is indeed a fine thing. The amateur strategist and politician is never in finer mettle than when his belt presses more or less upon a grateful stomach and when the mind has been exhilarated by a good bottle of wine and is then being tickled by a respectable Havana. But I have also sat of nights--rainy nights at that--in the trenches and listened to what the men at the front had to say. They, too, were reasonably optimistic when the stomach was at peace. Of course, these men had their cares. Most of them were married and had in the past supported their families with the proceeds of their labor. Now the governments were feeding these families--after a fashion. What that fashion was the men came to hear in letters from home. It made them dissatisfied and often angry. I sat one night in the bombproof of an advanced position on the Sveta Maria, near Tolmein. My host was an Austrian captain whose ancestry had come from Scotland. A certain Banfield had thought it well to enter the Austro-Hungarian naval service many years ago, and the captain was one of his descendants. Captain Banfield was as "sore" as the proverbial wet hen. He hadn't been home in some fourteen months, and at home things were not well. His wife was having a hard time of it trying to keep the kiddies alive, while the good Scotchman was keeping vigil on the Isonzo. That Scotchman, by the way, had a reputation in the Austrian army for being a terrible _Draufgänger_, which means that when occasion came he was rather hard on the Italians. He would have been just as ruthless with the profiteers had he been able to get at them. Most uncomplimentary things were said by him of the food sharks and the government which did not lay them low. But what Captain Banfield had to complain of I had heard a thousand times. His was not the only officer's wife who had to do the best she could to get along. Nor was that class worse off than any other. After all, the governments did their best by it. The real hardships fell upon the dependents of the common soldier. I had made in Berlin the acquaintance of a woman who before the war had been in very comfortable circumstances. Though a mechanical engineer of standing, her husband had not been able to qualify for service as an officer. He was in charge of some motor trucks in an army supply column as a non-commissioned officer. The little allowance made by the government for the wife and her four children did not go very far. But the woman was a good manager. She moved from the expensive flat they had lived in before the mobilization. The quarters she found in the vicinity of the Stettiner railroad station were not highly desirable. But her genius made them so. The income question was more difficult to solve. A less resourceful woman would have never solved it. But this one did. She found work in a laundry, checking up the incoming and outgoing bundles. Somebody had to suffer, however. In this case the children. They were small and had to be left to themselves a great deal. I discussed the case with the woman. "My children may get some bad manners from the neighbors with whom I have to leave them," she said. "But those I can correct later on. Right now I must try to get them sufficient and good food, so that their bodies will not suffer." In that kind of a woman patriotism is hard to kill, as I had ample opportunity to observe. At Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of the Baroness Wangenheim, widow of the late Baron Wangenheim, then ambassador at the Sublime Porte. Hearing that I was in Berlin, the baroness invited me to have tea with her. Tea is a highly socialized function, anyway, but this one was to be the limit in that respect. The repast--I will call it that--was taken in one of the best appointed _salons_ I ever laid eyes on. Taste and wealth were blended into a splendid whole. The maid came in and placed upon the fine marquetry taboret a heavy old silver tray. On the tray stood, in glorious array, as fine a porcelain tea service as one would care to own. But we had neither milk nor lemon for the tea. We sweetened it with saccharine. There was no butter for the war-bread, so we ate it with a little prune jam. At the bottom of a cut-glass jar reposed a few crackers. I surmised that they were ancient, and feared, moreover, that the one I might be persuaded to take could not so easily be replaced. So I declined the biscuit, and, to make the baroness understand, offered her one of my bread coupons for the slice of bread I had eaten. This she declined, saying that the day was yet long and that I might need the bread voucher before it was over. "I am no better off than others here," the baroness explained to me in reply to a question. "I receive from the authorities the same number of food cards everybody gets, and my servants must stand in line like all others. The only things I can buy now in the open market are fish and vegetables. But that is as it should be. Why should I and my children get more food than others get?" I admitted that I could not see why she should be so favored. Still, there was something incongruous about it all. I had been the guest of the baroness in the great ambassadorial palace on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha in Pera, and found it hard to believe that the woman who had then dwelt in nothing less than regal state was now reduced to the necessity of taking war-bread with her tea--even when she had visitors. "If this keeps up much longer the race will suffer," she said, after a while. "I am beginning to fear for the children. We adults can stand this, of course. But the children...." The baroness has two small girls, and to change her thoughts I directed the conversation to Oriental carpets and lace. Her patriotism, too, is of the lasting sort. But the very same evening I saw something different. The name won't matter. I had accepted an invitation to dinner. It was a good dinner--war or peace. Its _pièce de résistance_ was a whole broiled ham, which, as my hostess admitted, had cost in the clandestine market some one hundred and forty marks, roughly twenty-five dollars at the rate of exchange then in force. There was bread enough and side dishes galore. It was also a meatless day. The ham was one of several which had found the household in question through the channels of illicit trade, which even the strenuous efforts of the Prussian government had not been able to close as yet. The family had the necessary cash, and in order to indulge in former habits as fully as possible, it was using that cash freely. After living for several days in plenty at the Palads in Copenhagen, and ascertaining that _paling_--eel--was still in favor with the Dutch of The Hague, I returned to Vienna. Gone once more were the days of wheat bread and butter. One rainy afternoon I was contemplating the leafless trees on the Ring through the windows of the Café Sacher when two bodies of mounted police hove into view on the bridle path, as if they were really in a great hurry. I smelled a food riot, rushed down-stairs, caught a taxi on the wing, and sped after the equestrian minions of the law. Police and observer pulled up in the Josephstadt in the very center of a food disturbance. The riot had already cooled down to the level of billingsgate. Several hundred women stood about listening to the epithets which a smaller group was flinging at a badly mussed-up storekeeper, who seemed greatly concerned about his windows, which had been broken by somebody. The police mingled with the crowd. What had happened? Nothing very much, said the storekeeper. That remark fanned the flame of indignation which was swaying the women. Nothing much, eh? They had stood since high noon in line for butter and fat. Up to an hour ago the door of the shop had been closed. When finally it was opened the shopkeeper had announced that he had supplies only for about fifty fat coupons. Those who were nearest his door would be served and the others could go home. But somehow the crowd had learned that the man had received that morning from the Food Central enough fat to serve them all with the amount prescribed by the food cards. They refused to go away. Then the storekeeper, in the manner which is typically Viennese, grew sarcastically abusive. Before he had gone very far the women were upon him. Others invaded the store, found the place empty, and then vented their wrath on the fixtures and windows. I was greatly interested in what the police would do with the rioters. But, instead of hauling the ringleaders to headquarters, they told them to go home and refrain in future from taking the law into their own hands. Within ten minutes the riot resolved itself into good-natured bantering between the agents of the law and the women, and the incident was closed, except for the shopkeeper, who in court failed to clear up what he had done with the supplies of butter and fat that had been assigned him for distribution. He lost his license to trade, and was fined besides. Talking with several women, I discovered that none of them held the government responsible. The "beast" of a dealer was to blame for it all. This view was held largely because the police had gone to work in a most considerate manner, according to the instructions issued by an anxious government. In a previous food riot, in the Nineteenth Municipal District, the gendarmes had been less prudent, with the result that the women turned on them and disfigured with their finger-nails many a masculine face--my visage included, because I had the misfortune of being mistaken for a detective. A muscular _Hausmeisterin_--janitress--set upon me with much vigor. Before I could explain, I was somewhat mussed up, though I could have ended the offensive by proper counter measures. It is best to attend such affairs in the Austrian equivalent for overalls. Some weeks before, the Austrian premier, Count Stürgkh, had been shot to death by a radical socialist named Adler. In his statements Adler said that he had done this because of his belief that so long as Stürgkh was at the helm of the Austrian ship of state nothing would be done to solve the food situation. There is no doubt that Adler had thoroughly surveyed the field of public subsistence. It is also a fact that he did the Austrian government a great service by killing the premier. The right and wrong of the case need not occupy us here. I am merely concerned with practical effects. Count Stürgkh was an easy-going politician of a reactionary type. He gave no attention of an intelligent sort to the food problem, and did nothing to check the avarice of the food sharks, even when that avarice went far beyond the mark put up by the war-loan scheme. His inertia led during the first months of the war to much waste and later to regulations that could not have been more advantageous to the private interests of the food speculators had they been made for them expressly. No statesman was ever carried to his grave with fewer regrets. In the Austrian government offices a sigh of relief was heard when it became known that Adler had shot the premier. A revolution could not have been averted in Austria had Stürgkh continued at his post much longer. At first he was attacked only by the _Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung_, a socialist daily controlled by the father of Adler, who, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of the publication, is a member of the Austrian Reichsrath and the leader of the Austrian Socialist party. But later other papers began to object to Stürgkh's _dolce far niente_ official life, among them the rather conservative _Neue Freie Presse_. Others joined. Ultimately the premier saw himself deserted even by the _Fremdenblatt_, the semi-official organ of the government. Though charged with incompetency by some and with worse by others, Count Stürgkh refused to resign. Emperor Francis Joseph was staying his hands and this made futile all endeavor to remove the count from his high office. The old emperor thought he was doing the best by his people, and had it not been that the Austrians respected this opinion more than they should have done, trouble would have swept the country. A new era dawned after Count Stürgkh's death. But his successors found little they could put in order. The larder was empty. Premier Körber tried hard to give the people more food. But the food was no longer to be had. The loyalty of the Austrian people to their government was given the fire test in those days. Now and then it seemed that the crisis had come. It never came, however. Other trips to the fronts presented a new aspect of the food situation. It was an odd one at that. The men who had formerly complained that their wives and children were not getting enough to eat had in the course of time grown indifferent to this. It was nothing unusual to have men return to the front before their furloughs had expired. At the front there were no food problems. The commissary solved them all. At home the man heard nothing but complaints and usually ate up what his children needed. Little by little the Central Power troops were infected with the spirit of the mercenary of old. Life at the front had its risks, but it also removed one from the sphere of daily cares. The great war-tiredness was making room for indifference and many of the men had truly become adventurers. So long as the _Goulaschkanone_ shot the regular meals every day all was well. The military commissaries had succeeded by means of the stomach in making the man at the front content with his lot. Food conditions in the rear always offered a good argument, inarticulate but eloquent, nevertheless, why the man in the trenches should think he was well off. In the case of the many husbands and fathers no mean degree of indifference and callousness was required before this frame of mind was possible. But the war had taken care of that. War hardly ever improves the individual. Out of sight, out of mind! It was the craving stomach of the civil population that caused the several Central European governments most concern. In the past, newspapers had been very careful when discussing the food question. They might hint at governmental inefficiency and double-dealing, but they could not afford to be specific. The censors saw to that. When the food situation was nearing its worst the several governments, to the surprise of many, relaxed political censorship sufficiently so that newspapers could say whatever they pleased on food questions. First came sane criticism and then a veritable flood of abuse. But that was what the authorities wanted. Hard words break no bones, and their use is the only known antidote for revolution. Abuse was in the first place a fine safety valve, and then it gave the authorities a chance to defend themselves. To-day some paper would print an article in which, to the satisfaction of the reader, it was shown that this or that had been badly managed, and to-morrow the food authorities came back with a refutation that usually left a balance in favor of the government. The thing was adroitly done and served well to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. Free discussion of the food problem was the order of the day. The light was let in on many things, and for the first time since the outbreak of the war the food shark had to take to cover. The governments let it be known that, while it was all very convenient to blame the authorities for everything, it would be just as well if the public began to understand that it had a share of responsibility. Informers grew like toadstools after a warm rain in June. The courts worked overtime and the jails were soon filled. The food situation was such that the lesser fry of the speculators had to be sacrificed to the wrath of the population. The big men continued, however, and pennies were now to be mobilized through the medium of commodities. It was no longer safe to squeeze the public by means of its stomach if patriotism was to remain an asset of the warring governments. The masses had been mulcted of their last by this method. Others were to supply the money needed for the war. I feel justified in saying that the craving stomach of the Central states would have served the Allied governments in good stead in the fall of 1916 had their militaro-political objectives been less extensive and far-reaching. The degree of hunger, however, was always counteracted by the statements of the Allied politicians that nothing but a complete reduction of Germany and Austria-Hungary would satisfy them. I noticed that such announcements generally had as a result a further tightening of the belts. Nor could anybody remain blind to the fact that the lean man is a more dangerous adversary than the sleek citizen. Discipline of the stomach is the first step in discipline of the mind. There is a certain joy in asceticism and the consciousness that eating to live has many advantages over living to eat. The Central Power governments did not lose sight of this truth. IX SUB-SUBSTITUTING THE SUBSTITUTE Much nonsense has been disseminated on the success of the Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in inventing substitutes for the things that were hard to get during the war. A goodly share of that nonsense came from the Germans and their allies themselves. But more of it was given to the four winds of heaven by admiring friends, who were as enthusiastic in such matters as they were ignorant of actual achievements. That much was done in that field is true enough. But a great deal of scientific effort resulted in no more than what, for instance, synthetic rubber has been. The first thing the German scientists did at the outbreak of the war was to perfect the system of a Norwegian chemist who had succeeded two years before in condensing the nitrogen of the air into the highly tangible form of crystals. Many are under the impression that the process was something entirely new and distinctly a German invention. I have shown that this is not so. Even the Norwegian cannot claim credit for the invention as in itself new. His merit is that he made the process commercially possible. The thing was a huge success. The British blockade had made the importation of niter from overseas impossible. There is no telling what would have happened except for the fact that the practically inexhaustible store of nitrogen in the air could be drawn upon. It kept the Central Powers group of belligerents in powder, so long as there was vegetable fiber and coal-tar enough to be nitrated. Incidentally, some of the by-products of the nitrogen process served in good stead as fertilizer. The quantity won was not great, however. I am not dealing with war as such, and for that reason I will pass by the many minor inventions of a purely military character that were made, nor would it be possible to do more than a cataloguing job if I were to attempt to refer here to all the innovations and substitutions that were undertaken as time went on. Science multiplied by three the store of textiles held in the Central states at the outbreak of the war. This was done in many ways and by various means. Take cotton, for instance. That almost anything could be converted into explosives by nitration has been known ever since Noble made nitroglycerine a commercial product. Any fat or fiber, even sugar, may be nitrated. That generally we use glycerine and cotton for the purpose is due to the fact that these materials are best suited for the process. But the fats that go into glycerine, and the cotton that becomes trinitrocellulose, could be put to better use by the Central states. In a general way coal-tar took the place of the former, and wood pulp that of cotton. That meant a tremendous saving in food and clothing. I remember well the shiver that went through Germany when Great Britain declared cotton to be contraband. The Entente press was jubilant for weeks. But any chemist familiar with the manufacture of explosives could have told Sir Kendall that he was too optimistic. It was known even then that birch pulp and willow pulp made most excellent substitutes for cotton, if the process, or "operation," as the thing is known technically, is suitably modified. Coal-tar explosives were already _un fait accompli_. Having attended to that little affair, the German scientists turned their attention to the winning of new textiles. There was the nettle in the hedges. Anciently, it had been to Europe what cotton was to the Mexico of the Aztecs. Times being hard, the nettle, now looked upon as a noxious weed fit only for goose fodder, was brought into its place. Very soon it was in the market as a textile, which often aspired to as imposing a name as "natural silk," a name the plant and its fiber well deserve. The chemist had very little to do with that. The process was known and, being in the main similar to the production of flax fiber, presented no difficulties. The plant is cut, packed tightly under water so that the vegetable pulp may decay, and is then dried in the sun and prepared for spinning. Though the Central states were now importing annually from Turkey in Asia some eighteen thousand bales of cotton, considerable silk and wool, and were getting wool also in the Balkan countries, there continued to be felt a shortage in textiles and their raw materials. The situation was never serious. The fiber of worn materials was being used again, and so long as enough new material was added the shoddy produced gave ample satisfaction. The paucity of textiles, however, gave rise to the paper-cloth industry. It was realized that for many purposes for which textiles were being used the paper cloth was well suited. That applied especially to all the uses manila and jute had been given in the past. Even here it was not a question of inventing something. Paper twine had been in use in Central Europe for many years; it had, in fact, been laid under ban by the Austrian government--I don't know for what reason. From paper twine to paper cloth was quite a step, however. Anybody can twist a piece of tissue-paper into a rope, but to make a reasonably strong thread or yarn of it is another matter. The pulp for paper cloth must be tough and not pack too tightly while the stuff is being made. In this first form the product much resembles an unbleached tissue-paper. Since the paper has to be in rolls, its manufacture was undertaken by the mills which in the past had turned out "news print." The rolls are then set into a machine, the principal feature of which is an arrangement of sharp rotary blades that will cut the sheet into strips or ribbons a quarter-inch wide--or wider, if that be desired. The ribbons are gathered on spools that revolve not only about their axes, but also about themselves, at a speed that will give the paper ribbon the necessary twist or spinning. Raw paper yarn has now been produced. For many purposes the yarn can be used in the condition it is now in. For others it must be chemically treated. The process is not dissimilar to "parchmenting" paper. During the treatment the yarn hardens quite a little. When intended to make bagging and other textiles of that sort, this will not matter. The yarn must be softened again if intended for the paper cloth that is to take the place of serge, possibly. This is done mechanically, by means of beating. The yarn does not have the necessary strength to form a fabric when not reinforced by a tougher fiber. As a rule, it becomes the warp of the cloth, flax, cotton, and even silk being employed as the weft. When intended for military overcoats a wool yarn is used. In this case the cloth is given a water-proofing treatment. A warm garment that is thoroughly water-proof without being airtight results. Paper cloth does not have the tensile qualities of good shoddy even, and for that reason it is mostly used for purposes to which severe usage is not incident. For instance, it will make splendid sweater coats for ladies and children. It will also take the place of felt for hats. The endeavor to find a substitute for sole leather was not so successful, even when finally it was decided that leather soles could be made only of animal tissue. There was leather enough for uppers always, and I am inclined to think that the supply of hides was large enough also to fill all reasonable demands for soles. The trouble lay in the nature of the hides, not in their scarcity. Horned cattle in Central Europe are stabled almost throughout the year and in this manner protected against the inclemency of the weather. A tender hide has been the result of this--a hide so tender that, while it will make the finest uppers, is next to useless as a sole. A very interesting solution was found in the use of wooden soles. A thousand capable brains had been occupied with the sole-leather substitutes, and finally they ruled that wood in its natural state was the next best thing. So far as the rural population was concerned, that was well enough. But wooden soles and city pavements are irreconcilable. How to make that wooden sole bend a little at the instep was the question. A sole was tried whose two halves were held together under the instep by a sort of specially designed hinge. That seemed an improvement over the single piece of wood, but soon it was found that it had the dangerous tendency to break down arches, which the hinged sole left unsupported at the very point where the support should have been. The experiments were continued. Inventors and cranks worked at them for nearly two years. The best they ever did was to displace the hinge for a flexible bit of steel plate. Common sense finally came to the rescue. The best shoe with a wooden sole was the one that gave the foot lots of room about the ankle, held the instep snug, and made up for the flexibility of the leather sole by a rounding-off of the wooden sole under the toes. A good and very serviceable wooden-sole shoe with leather uppers had been evolved. The scientists had nothing to do with it. It was the department of food substitution that was really the most interesting. For decades food in tabloid form has interested the men in the chemical laboratories. Some of them have asserted that man could be fed chemically. Theoretically that may be done; in practice it is impossible. If the intestinal tracts could be lined with platinum men might be able to live on acids of almost any sort. Such is not the case at present, however. The very wise pure-food laws of the Central states were thrown on the rubbish-heap by the governments when stretching the food-supply became necessary. They were first knocked into the proverbial cocked hat by the food sharks. What these men were doing was known to the governments, but these were not times to be particular. If it were possible to adulterate flour with ground clover there was no reason why this should not be done, even if the profit went into the pockets of the shark, so long as the same individual would later subscribe to the war loans. It was merely another way of mobilizing the pennies and their fractions. But to much of this an end had to be put. Too much exploitation of the populace might cause internal trouble. It might also lead to ruining the health of the entire nation, and that was a dangerous course. How to substitute flour was indeed a great and urgent problem. There were those enthusiasts who thought that it could be done chemically. Why leave to the slow and uncertain process of plant conversion that which chemistry could do quickly and surely? If certain elements passing through plant life made flour in the end, why not have them do that without the assistance of the crop season? I read some very learned articles on that subject. But there was always an _if_. If this and that could be overcome, or if this and that could be done, the thing would be successful. It never was, of course. Organic life rests on Mother Earth in layers, and the more developed this life is the farther it lies above the mere soil--the inorganic. The baby needing milk is above the cow, the cow needing vegetable food is above the plants, and even the plants do not depend on inorganic elements alone, as can be learned by any farmer who tries to raise alfalfa on soil that does not contain the cultures the plant must have. These cultures again feed on organic life. This was the rock on which the efforts of the chemical-food experts were wrecked. Soon they began to see that substitution would have to take the place of invention and innovation. They used to sell in the cafés of Vienna, and other large cities, a cake made mostly of ground clover meal, to which was added the flour of horse-chestnuts, a little rice, some glucose, a little sugar and honey, and chopped prunes when raisins could not be had. The thing was very palatable, and nutritious, as an analysis would show. There were enough food units in it to make the vehicle, which here was clover meal, really worth while. I mention this case to show what are the principal requirements of food for human consumption. There must be a vehicle if alimentation is to be normal. This vehicle is generally known as ashes. It is to the human alimentary system what bread is to butter and meat in the sandwich. Through it are distributed the actual food elements, and in their preparation for absorption it occupies the place of the sand and grit we find in the crop of the fowl. In the toothsome cake I have described, these factors had been duly honored, and for that reason the cake was a success even at the price it sold for--an ounce for three cents. The first war-bread baked was a superior sort of rye bread, containing in proportions 55, 25, 20, rye flour, wheat flour, and potato meal or flakes, sugar, and fat. That was no great trick, of course. Any baker could have thought of that. But rye and wheat flour were not always plentiful, even when government decree insisted that they be milled to 85 per cent. flour, leaving 15 per cent, as bran--the very outer hull. Oats, Indian corn, barley, beans, peas, and buckwheat meal had to be added as time went on. That was a more difficult undertaking and afforded the scientist the chance to do yeoman service. He was not found wanting. Imports of coffee had become impossible in 1916. The scant stores on hand had been stretched and extenuated by the use of chicory and similar supplements. I used to wonder how it was possible to make so little go so far, despite the fact that the _demi-tasse_ was coffee mostly in color by this time. A period of transition from coffee to coffee substitutes came. The first substitute was not a bad one. It was made mostly of roasted barley and oats and its flavor had been well touched off by chemicals won from coal-tar. The brew had the advantage of containing a good percentage of nutritive elements. Taken with a little milk and sugar it had all the advantages of coffee, minus the effect of caffeine and plus the value of the food particles. It was palatable even when taken with sugar only. Without this complement it was impossible, however. But the grain so used could be put to better purpose. This led to the introduction of the substitute of a substitute. The next sort of artificial coffee--_Kaffee-ersatz_--was made of roasted acorns and beechnuts, with just enough roasted barley to build up a coffee flavor. This product, too, was healthful. It may even be said that it was a little better than the first substitute. It certainly was more nourishing, but also more expensive. There were not acorns and beechnuts enough, however. Much of the store had been fed to the porkers, and before long the excellent acorn-beechnut coffee disappeared. A third substitute came in the market. Its principal ingredients were carrots and yellow turnips. To find substitutes for tea was not difficult. The bloom of the linden-tree, mixed with beech buds, makes an excellent beverage, and those who dote on "oolong" can meet their taste somewhat by adding to this a few tips of pine. If too much of the pine bud is used a very efficacious emetic will result, however. The mysteries of cocoa substitutions are a little above me. I can say, however, that roasted peas and oats have much to do with it. Some of the materials employed were supplied by coal-tar and synthetic chemistry. It was really remarkable what this coal-tar would do for the Germans and their allies. It provided them with the base for their explosives, made their dyes, and from it were made at one period of the war, by actual enumeration, four hundred and forty-six distinct and separate chemical products used in medicine, sanitation, and food substitution. If there be such a thing as an elixir of life, coal-tar may be expected to furnish it. But the net gain in this casting about for substitutes was slight indeed. The grains, nuts, and vegetables that were used as substitutes for coffee would have had the same food value if consumed in some other form. The advantage was that their conversion served to placate the old eating habits of the public. To what extent these had to be placated was made plain on every meatless, fatless, or wheatless or some other "less" day or period. There was the rice "lamb" chop, for instance. The rice was boiled and then formed into lumps resembling a chop. Into the lump a skewer of wood was stuck to serve as a bone, and to make the illusion more complete a little paper rosette was used to top off the "bone." All of it was very _comme il faut_. Then the things were fried in real mutton tallow, and when they came on the table its looks and aroma, now reinforced by green peas and a sprig of watercress, would satisfy the most exacting. Nor could fault be found with the taste. The vegetable beefsteak was another thing that gave great satisfaction, once you had become used to the color of the thing's interior, which was pale green--a signal in a real steak that it should not be eaten. The steak in question was a synthetic affair, composed of cornmeal, spinach, potatoes, and ground nuts. An egg was used to bind the mass together, and some of the culinary lights of Berlin and Vienna succeeded in making it cohesive enough to require the knife in real earnest. What I have outlined here so far may be called the private effort at substitution. But substitution also had a governmental application. Its purpose was to break the populace of its habit of eating highly concentrated foods, especially fats. The slaughter of the porkers in 1914 had accidentally led the way to this policy. The shortage in fats caused by this economic error was soon to illustrate that the masses could get along very well on about a quarter of the fat they had consumed in the past. Soon it was plain, also, that the health of the public could be improved in this manner by the gradual building up of a stronger physique. It would have been easy to again crowd the pigsties. The animal is very prolific, and a little encouragement of the pig-raisers would have had that result inside of a year had it been desired. But it was not done. It was difficult to get the necessary feed for these animals, and the small quantities that could be imported from Roumania were never a guarantee that the farmers would not feed their pigs with home-raised cereals and other foods that were of greater value to the state in the form of cereal and vegetable food for the population. The prices of fats and meats were well up. A hundred pounds of wheat converted into animal products would bring nearly three times what the farmer could get for the grain. Illicit trading in these articles, moreover, was easier carried on than in breadstuffs. Since no animal fats, be they butter, lard, or suet, could be produced without sacrificing a goodly share of the country's cereal supply, it was necessary to keep the animal-product industry down to its lowest possible level. It was easier to distribute equitably the larger masses of cereals and vegetables than the concentrated foods into which animal industry would convert them. To permit that would also have led to more hardship for the lower classes at a time when money was cheap and prices correspondingly high. The crux of the situation was to fill the public stomach as well as conditions permitted, and the consumption of fats could have no place in that scheme under the circumstances. It was decided, therefore, to have the human stomach do what heretofore had largely been attended to by the animal industries. An entire series of frictional waste could in that manner be eliminated, as indeed it was. The same policy led to a reduction in the supply of eggs. To keep the human stomach occupied had become as much a necessity as furnishing nutriment to the body. I doubt whether without this happy idea the Central states would have been able to carry on the war. The saving due to the policy was immense--so stupendous, in fact, that at the same time it discounted the impossibility of importing foodstuffs and took ample care of the losses in food production due to the shortage of labor and fertilizers. It was the one and only thing that stood between the Central Powers and swift defeat. It is needless to say that the effect upon certain classes of population was not so propitious. The lack of sufficient good milk caused an increase in infant mortality. The feeble of all ages were carried off quickly when concentrated foods could no longer be had to keep them alive, and persons of middle age and old age suffered so much that death was in many cases a welcome relief. While the healthy adult men and women did not suffer by this sort of rationing--grew stronger, in fact--those past the prime of life could not readjust themselves to the iron food discipline that was enforced. The alimentary system in that case had entered upon its downward curve of assimilation over elimination, and, constitutionally modified by the ease afforded by concentrated foods, it declined rapidly when these foods were withdrawn. Driven by necessity, the several states practised wholesale manslaughter of the less fit. I was greatly interested in these "home" casualties, and discussed them with many, among them life-insurance men, educators, and government officials. The first class took a strictly business view of the thing. The life-insurance companies were heavy losers. But there was no way out. Nothing at all could be done. It was hoped that the better physical trim of the young adults, and the resulting longevity, would reimburse the life-insurers. If the war did not last too long this would indeed happen. Premiums would have to be increased, however, if it became necessary for the government to apply further food restrictions. Some of the educators took a sentimental view of the thing. Others were cynically rational. It all depended upon their viewpoint and age. Those who believed in the theories of one Osler could see nothing wrong in this method of killing off the unfit aged. Their opposites thought it shameful that better provisions were not made for them. The attitude of the government was more interesting. It took cognizance of the individual and social aspects involved--of sentiment and reality. That manslaughter of the aged and unfit was the result of the food policy was not denied. But could the state be expected to invite dissolution because of that? "I understand you perfectly," said a certain food-dictator to me once. "My own parents are in that position, or would be, were it not that they have the means to buy the more expensive foods. That thousands of the poor aged are going to a premature death is only too evident. But what are we to do? We cannot for their sake lay down our arms and permit our enemies to impose upon us whatever conditions they please. Quite apart from the interests of the state as a political unit, there is here to be considered the welfare of the fit individuals. Being fit, they have the greatest claim to the benefits that come from the social and economic institutions which political independence alone can give. That the less fit must make sacrifices for that is to be expected, for the very good reason that it is the fit class which is carrying on the war and shedding its blood for the maintenance of the state. By the time we have provided for the infants and babies there is nothing left for the aged over and above what the adult individual gets. Of the babies we must take care because they are the carriers of our future. Of the aged we should take care because they have given us our past. But when it comes to choose which class to preserve, I would say the young every time." For live-stock-owning governments that is indeed the proper view to take; and since all governments belong to that class, more or less, it seems futile to find fault with this food-dictator. The man forced to decide whether he would give the last morsel to his old father or his young son might select to divide that morsel evenly between them. But if the old man was worth his salt at all he would insist that the boy be given all the food. A social aggregate that cannot act in accordance with this principle is shortening its own day. X THE CRUMBS October, 1916, marked the high water of the Central European public-subsistence problems. Misery had reached the limits of human endurance. For the next seven months the strain caused by it tore at the vitals of the Central states. The measures then conceived and applied would prove whether or no the collapse of Germany and her allies could be averted. So serious was the situation that the several governments felt compelled to send out peace-feelers, one or two of them being definite propositions of a general nature. The crumbs and scraps had been saved for a long time even then. As far back as November, 1914, all garbage had been carefully sorted into rubbish and food remnants which might serve as animal feed. But that was no longer necessary now. Food remnants no longer went into the garbage-cans. Nor was it necessary to advise the public not to waste old clothing and other textiles. The ragman was paying too good a price for them. Much of the copper and brass complement of households had been turned over to the government, and most copper roofs were being replaced by tin. The church bells were being smelted. Old iron fetched a fancy price. In the currency iron was taking the place of nickel. Old paper was in keen demand. The sweepings of the street were being used as fertilizer. During the summer and fall the hedges had been searched for berries, and in the woodlands thousands of women and children had been busy gathering mushrooms and nuts. To meet the ever-growing scarcity of fuel the German government permitted the villagers to lop the dead wood in the state forests. To ease the needs of the small live-stock-owner he was allowed to cut grass on the fiscal woodlands and gather the dead leaves for stable bedding. It was a season of saving scraps. The entire economic machinery seemed ready for the scrap-heap. Much of the saving that was being practised was leading to economic waste. The city streets were no longer as clean as they used to be. During the summer much light-fuel had been saved by the introduction of "summer time." The clocks were set ahead an hour, so that people rose shortly after dawn, worked their customary ten hours in the shops and factories, and then still had enough daylight to work in their gardens. When dusk came they went to bed. Street traction had been limited also. The early closing of shops, cafés, and restaurants effected further savings in light, and, above all, eatables. The countryside presented a dreary picture. Nobody had time to whitewash the buildings, and few cared about the appearance of their homes. What is the use? they said. They could wait until better times came. The dilapidated shutter kept fit company with the rain-streaked wall. The untidy yard harmonized with the neglected garden in a veritable diapason of indifference. The implements and tools of the farm were left where they had been used last. The remaining stock had an unkempt look about it. I remember how during a trip in Steiermark I once compared the commonwealth with a lonely hen I saw scratching for food in a yard. The rusty plumage of the bird showed that nobody had fed it in months. There was no doubt, though, that somebody expected that hen to lay eggs. It was now a question, however, of saving the scraps of the state--of the socio-economic fabric. The flood of regulation which had spilled over Central Europe had pulled so many threads out of the socio-economic life that, like a thin-worn shawl, it had no longer the qualities of keeping warm those under it. The threads had been used by those in the trenches, and the civilian population had been unable to replace them. It would be quite impossible to give within the confines of a single volume a list of these regulations, together with a discussion of their many purposes, tendencies, and effects. I would have to start with the economic embryo of all social economy--the exchange of food between the tiller of the soil and the fisherman--to make a good job of that. A little intensive reasoning will show what the processes applied in Central Europe had been up to the fall of 1916. Regulated was then almost everything man needs in order to live: bread, fats, meat, butter, milk, eggs, peas, beans, potatoes, sugar, beer, fuel, clothing, shoes, and coal-oil. These were the articles directly under control. Under the indirect influence of regulation, however, lay everything, water and air alone excepted. Now, the purpose of this regulation had been to save and to provide the government with the funds needed for the war. That was well enough so long as there was something to save. But the time was come in which the governmental effort at saving was futile endeavor. There was nothing that could be saved any more. Surpluses had ceased to be. Production no longer equaled consumption, and when that state of things comes crumbs and scraps disappear of themselves. Once I had to have a pair of heels straightened. I had no trouble finding a cobbler. But the cobbler had no leather. "Surely," I said, "you can find scraps enough to fix these heels!" "But, I can't, sir!" replied the man. "I cannot buy scraps, even. There is no more leather. I am allowed a small quantity each month. But what I had has been used up long ago. If you have another old pair of shoes, bring them around. I can use part of the soles of them to repair the heels, and for the remainder I will pay with my labor. I won't charge you anything for mending your shoes." I accepted the proposal and learned later that the cobbler had not made so bad a bargain, after all. A similar policy had to be adopted to keep the Central populations in clothes. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey produce considerable quantities of wool, flax, silk, and cotton. But what they produce was not enough to go around, and the men at the front were wearing out their uniforms at an alarming rate. The military authorities felt that nothing would be gained by making the uniforms of poor cloth. The wear and tear on the fabric was severe. Labor in the making and distribution of the uniforms could be saved only by using the best materials available. For the civilians it became necessary to wear shoddy. And to obtain shoddy every scrap must be saved. The time came when an old all-wool suit brought second-hand as good a price as a new suit fresh from the mill and the tailor shop. With the addition of a little new fiber that old suit might make two new ones. The old material was "combed" into wool again, and to this was added some new wool, cotton, or silk, and "new" goods appeared again on the counter. The "I-cash" never had done such business before. The attics and cellars were ransacked, and since those who had most old clothing to sell bought hardly any at all now, the pinch of the war in clothing was really never felt very much by the poor. To prevent the spread of contagious diseases the several governments saw to it that the shoddy was thoroughly sterilized. But economies of that sort are more or less automatic and lie within the realm of supply and demand. Unchecked, they may also become the cause of economic waste. The time comes when shoddy is an absolute loss. When fibers are used over and over, together with new elements, the oldest of them finally cease to have value. That means that the fabric does not have the wearing qualities which will give economic compensation for the labor spent on it and the price asked from the consumer. The stuff may be good to look upon, but in times of war that is not essential. The profiteer found a fine field in the manufacture of shoddy. All first-hand shoddy he would sell as new material, and before he admitted that a certain piece of cloth was "indifferent" in quality, it had to be poor indeed. He would ask a good price for a suit that might fall to pieces in the first rain, and the consumer was left to do the best he could with the thing. When the consumer complained he would be told that the "war" was responsible, and the consumer, knowing in a general and superficial manner that things were indeed scarce, would decide to be reasonable. But the government could not take that easy view. Labor which might have been put to better use had been expended in the making of that shoddy, and now the fabric served no good purpose. That had to be avoided. It was far better to abandon fiber of this sort than to have it become the cause of waste in labor and the reason for further discontent. Labor that results in nothing more than this is non-productive, and the governments of Central Europe knew only too well that they had no hands to spare for that kind of unavailing effort. I ran into a case of this sort in Bohemia. A large mill had turned out a great deal of very poor shoddy. The cloth looked well, and, since wool fiber newly dyed makes a good appearance even long after its wearing qualities have departed forever, the firm was doing a land-office business. All went well until some of the fine cloth got on the backs of people. Then trouble came. Some of the suits shrank when wet, while others did the very opposite. The matter came to the attention of the authorities. Experts in textiles examined the cloth. Some of the output was found to contain as much as 60 per cent. old fiber, and there was no telling how many times this old fiber had been made over. It was finally shown that, had the manufacturer been content with a little less profit, he could have converted the new fiber--which, by the way, he had obtained from the government Fiber Central--into some thirty thousand yards of first-class shoddy under a formula that called for 65 per cent. new fiber and 35 per cent. old. As it was, he had turned the good raw material into nearly fifty-two thousand yards of fabrics that were not worth anything and he had wasted the labor of hundreds of men and women besides. The man had been trying to make use of crumbs and scraps for his own benefit. Personal interests had led, in this instance, to an attempt to convert an economic negative into a positive. The useless fiber was a minus which no effort in plus could cause to have any other value than that which this profit-hunter saw in it. By the rational economist the shoddy had been abandoned, and all effort to overcome the statics of true economy, as here represented by the unserviceableness of the fiber for the use to which it had been assigned, was bound to be an economic waste. Cases such as these--and there were thousands of them--showed the authorities that there was danger even in economy. The crumbs and scraps themselves were useless in the end. Beyond a certain point all use of them resulted in losses, and that point was the minimum of utility that could be obtained with a maximum of effort. The economic structure could not stand on so poor a sand foundation. But the several governments were largely responsible for this. They had regulated so much in behalf of economy that they had virtually given the economic shark _carte blanche_. There was a season when I attended a good many trials of men who had run afoul of the law in this manner. They all had the same excuse. Nothing had been further from their minds than to make in times such as these excessive profits. They would not think of such a thing. If they had used poor materials in the things they manufactured, it was due entirely to their desire to stretch the country's resources. In doing that they had hoped to lighten the burden of the government. Conservation had become necessary and everybody would have to help in that. They had been willing to do their bit, and now the authorities were unreasonable enough to find fault with this policy. At first many a judge had the wool pulled over his eyes in that manner. But in the end the scheme worked no longer. Usually the limit of punishment fell on the offender. Abuses of this sort had much to do with an improvement in conservation methods. So far as the textile industry was concerned it led to the control by the government Raw-Material Centrals, which were established rather loosely at the beginning of the war, of all fibers. The ragman thereafter turned over his wares to these centrals, and when a spinner wanted material he had to state what he wanted it for and was then given the necessary quantities in proportions. That helped, and when the government took a better interest in the goods manufactured this avenue of economic waste was closed effectively. With these measures came the clothing cards for the public. After that all seemed well. The poorer qualities of cloth disappeared from the market overnight, and a suit of clothing was now sure to give fair value for the price. I have made use of this example to illustrate what the factors in regulation and conservation were at times, and how difficult it was to unscramble the economic omelet which the first conservation policies had dished up. There were other crumbs and scraps, however. Not the least of them was the socio-economic organism itself. That sensitive thing had been doctored so much that only a major operation could again put it on its feet. Economy faddists and military horse-doctors alike had tried their hands on the patient, and all of them had overlooked that the only thing there was wrong with the case was malnutrition. Everybody was trying to get the usual quantities and qualities of milk from a cow that was starving. Poor Bossy! Man lives not by food alone; nor does society. It takes a whole lot of things to run a state. While the government had already in its grasp all the distribution and consumption of food, there were many things it did not care to interfere with, even if they were almost as important as food. These things were the products of industry, rather than the fruits of the fields, though usually, as is natural, it was difficult to draw a strong line of demarcation in the division of spheres. In social economy that has always been so. To get the true perspective, take a dozen pebbles, label them food, fuel, clothing, and whatever else occurs to you, and then throw the pebbles in the pond. You will find that the circular wavelets caused by the pebbles will soon run into and across one another, and if by chance you have followed the waves of food you will notice that while they have been broken by the impact of the others they still remain discernible. Into the rippling pond the several governments had each thrown the cobblestones of regulation. The food, fuel, and clothing ripples were still there, of course, but they had been so obliterated that it was now difficult to trace them on the regulation waves. But the waves, too, subsided, and on the backwash of them the authorities read lessons which suggested saner methods--methods whose conception and application were attended by a better regard for the nature of the operation, be this production, distribution, or consumption. The saving of crumbs and scraps had not been without its value. It tended to make men short-sighted, however. The governments of Central Europe wanted to limit consumption to the absolutely necessary, but overlooked that their _modus operandi_ gave cause to serious losses. The various authorities did not wish to interfere too much with normal currents of economic life. That was well enough in a way, but had disastrous consequences. A shortage in the necessities of life was the great fact of the day. It could be met only by restricting consumption. But the machinery of this restriction was a haphazard thing. It promoted hoarding. There have been those who have condemned the hoarder in the roundest of terms. I am not so sure that he deserves all of the anathemas that have been hurled at him. When a government shouts day in and day out that the worst will come to pass if everybody does not save the crumbs, the more easily alarmed are bound to think only of themselves and of their own. High prices will cease to be a deterrent, for the reason that war brings only too many examples of the fact that only food and not money will sustain life. To act in accordance with this may be a weakness, but it is also along the lines of a natural condition, if self-preservation be indeed the first law of nature. Soon there are found those who promote and pamper this weakness for a profit. Food is then stored away by the majority. Some will waste much of it in over-consumption, while more will permit the food to spoil by improper storage methods, especially when the food has to be secreted in cellars and attics, wardrobes and drawers, as happens when government by inspection becomes necessary. But of this I have spoken already in its proper place. XI MOBILIZING THE PENNIES Food-regulators will be wroth, I suppose, if I should state that the consumption of life's necessities can be regulated and diminished for its own sake, and that high prices are not necessarily the only way of doing this. At the same time I must admit that prices are bound to rise when demand exceeds supply. In our system of economy that is a natural order of affairs. But this tendency, when not interfered with, would also result in a quick and adequate betterment in wages. In Central Europe, however, the cost of living was always about 50 per cent. ahead of the slow increase in earnings. That 50 per cent. was the increment which the government and its economic minions needed to keep the war going. What regulation of prices there was kept this in mind always. In order that every penny in the realm might be mobilized and then kept producing, no change in these tactics could be permitted. The food shark and price-boosting middleman were essential in this scheme, and when these were dropped by the government, one by one, it was nothing but a case of: The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. Elimination of the middleman worked upward, much as does a disease that has its bed in the slums. When the consumer had been subjected to the limit of pressure, the retailer felt the heavy hand of the government. It got to be the turn of the wholesaler and commission-man, and in October of 1916, the period of which I speak here, only the industrial and commercial kings and the banking monarchs were still in favor with the government. The speculators then operating were either the agents of these powers or closely affiliated with them. In the fall of 1916 the war system of national economy had taken the shape it has to-day. Food had become the irreducible minimum. Not alone was the quantity on hand barely sufficient to feed the population, but its price could no longer be increased if the masses were not to starve for lack of money instead of lack of food. The daily bread was now a luxury. Men and women had to rise betimes and work late into the night if they wanted to eat at all. Let me now speak of the sort of revision of economic regulations that was in vogue before the adoption of the new system. That revision started with the farmer--the producer of food. Some requisitioning had been done on the farms for strictly military purposes. Horses and meat animals had been taken from the farmer for cash at the minimum prices established by the authorities. Forage and grain for the army had been commandeered in a like manner, and in a few cases wagons, plows, and other implements. Further than that (taking into account the minimum prices, which were in favor of the farmer and intended to stimulate production), the government had not actually interfered with the tiller of the soil. He had gone on as before, so far as a shortage of labor, draft animals, and fertilizers permitted. He had not prospered, of course, but on the whole he was better off than the urbanite and industrial worker, for the reason that he could still consume of his food as much as he liked. The government had, indeed, prescribed what percentage of his produce he was to turn over to the public, but often that interference went no further. But in the growing and crop season of 1916 the several governments went on a new tack. Trained agriculturists, employees of the Food Commissions and Centrals, looked over the crops and estimated what the yield would be. From the total was then subtracted what the establishment of the farmer would need, and the rest had to be turned over to the Food Centrals at fixed dates. The farmers did not take kindly to this. But there was no help. Failure to comply with orders meant a heavy fine, and hiding of food brought similar punishment and imprisonment besides. With this done, the food authorities began to clear up a little more in the channels of distribution. The cereals were checked into the mills more carefully, and the smaller water-mills, which had in the past charged for their labor by retaining the bran and a little flour, were put on a cash basis. For every hundred pounds of grain they had to produce so many pounds of flour, together with by-products when these latter were allowed. The flour was then shipped to a Food Central, and this would later issue it to the bakers, who had to turn out a fixed number of loaves. To each bakery had been assigned so many consumers, and the baker was now responsible that these got the bread which the law prescribed. Potatoes and other foods were handled in much the same manner. The farmer had to deliver them to the Food Central in given quantities at fixed dates, and the Central turned them over to the retailers for sale to the public in prescribed allotments. Now and then small quantities of "unrestricted" potatoes would get to the consumer through the municipal markets. But people had to rise at three o'clock in the morning to get them. This meant, of course, that only those willing to lose hours of needed sleep for the sake of a little extra food got any of these potatoes. The ways of the efficient food-regulator are dark and devious but positive in their aim. The meat-supply was not further modified. The meatless days and exorbitant prices had made further regulation in that department unnecessary. Milk and fat, however, as well as eggs, were made the subject of further attention by the Food Commissions. All three of them were as essential to the masses as was bread, and for that reason they passed within the domain of the food zone--_Rayon_. In their case, however, the authorities left the supply uncontrolled. The farmer sold to the Food Central what milk, butter, lard, suet, tallow, vegetable-oil, and eggs he produced, and the Central passed them on to the retailers, who had to distribute them to a given number of consumers. The same was done in the case of sugar. Such a scheme left many middlemen high and dry. Those who could not be of some service in the new system, or found it not worth while to be connected with it, took to other lines of industry. The government had left a few such lines open. That, however, was not done in the interest of the middlemen. The better-paid working classes still had pennies that had to be garnered, and these pennies, now that food was surrounded by cast-iron regulations and laws, went into the many other channels of trade. I made the acquaintance of a man who in the past had bought and sold on commission almost anything under the heading of food. Now it would be a car-load of flour, then several car-loads of potatoes, and when business in these lines was poor he would do a legal or illicit business in butter and eggs. Petroleum was a side line of his, and once he made a contract with the government for remounts. I don't think there was anything the man had not dealt in. But the same can be said of every one of the thousands that used to do business in the quiet corners of the Berlin and Vienna cafés. I should mention here that the Central European commission-man does not generally hold forth in an office. The café is his place of business--not a bad idea, since those with whom he trades do the same. There are certain cafés in Vienna, Berlin, and Budapest, and the other cities, that exist almost for that purpose. In any three of them one can buy and sell anything from a paper of pins to a stack of hay. My acquaintance found that the new order of things in the food department left him nothing but the pleasant memory of the "wad" he had made under the old régime. He took to matches. Matches were uncontrolled and rather scarce. Soon he had a corner in matches. He made contracts with the factories at a price he could not have paid without a large increase in the selling price of the article. But he knew how to bring that condition about. Before long the price of matches went up. They had been selling at about one-quarter cent American for a box of two hundred. The fancier article sold for a little more. When the price was one cent a box, my acquaintance began to unload judiciously. Merchants did not want to be without matches again, and bought with a will. The speculator cleared one hundred and twenty thousand crowns on his first release, I was told. His average monthly profit after that was something like forty thousand crowns. Somehow he managed to escape prosecution under the anti-high-profit decree then in force. No doubt that was due to his connections with the Vienna Bank Food Ring. At any rate, his name appeared as one of the large subscribers to the fifth Austrian war loan, and, needless to say, he paid his share of the war-profit tax. In this case fractions of pennies were mobilized. I suppose almost anybody who can afford fuel can afford to light a fire with a match that costs the two-hundredth part of a cent. No doubt the government thought so. Why not relieve the population of that little accumulation of economic "fat"? Another genius of that sort managed to get a corner in candles. How he managed to get his stock has never been clear to me, since the food authorities had long ago put a ban on the manufacture of candles. I understand that some animal fats, suet and tallow, are needed to make the paraffin "stand" up. Those animal fats were needed by the population in the form of food. But the corner in candles was _un fait accompli_. The man was far-sighted. He held his wares until the government ordered lights out in the houses at eleven o'clock, and these candles were then welcome at any price, especially in such houses where the janitor would at the stroke of the hour throw off the trunk switch in the cellar. Here was another chance to get pennies from the many who could afford to buy a candle once or twice a week. The government had no reason to interfere. Those pennies, left in the pockets of the populace, would have never formed part of a war loan or war-profit taxes. Sewing-thread was the subject of another corner. In fact, all the little things people must have passed one by one into the control of some speculator. Gentle criticism of that method of mulcting the public was made in the press that depended more than ever on advertising. But that fell on deaf ears. And usually a man had not to be a deep thinker to realize that the government must permit that sort of thing in order to find money for the prosecution of the war and the administration of the state. To serious complaint, the government would reply that it had done enough by regulating the food, and that further regulation would break down the economic machine. That was true, of course. To take another step was to fall into the arms of the Social Democrats, and that responsibility nobody expected the government to take. The attitude of the public toward the governmentally decreed system of social economy is not the least interesting feature of it. The authorities took good care to accompany every new regulation with the explanation that it had to be taken in the interest of the state and the armies in the field. If too much food was consumed in the interior, the men in the trenches would go hungry. That was a good argument, of course. Almost every family had some member of it in the army; that food was indeed scarce was known, and not to be content with what was issued was folly in the individual--at one time it was treason. As an antidote against resentment at high prices, the government had provided the minimum-maximum price schedules, and occasionally some retailer or wholesaler was promptly dealt with by the court, whose president was then more interested in fining the man than in putting him in jail. The government needed the money and was not anxious to feed prisoners. If some favorite was hit by this, the authorities had the convenient excuse that it was "war." It is difficult to see how the attitude of the several governments could have been different. The authorities of a state have no other power, strength, and resources than what the community places at their disposal wittingly or unwittingly. The war was here and had to be prosecuted in the best manner possible, and the operations incident to the struggle were so gigantic that every penny and fraction thereof had to be mobilized. There was no way out of this so long as the enemy was to be met and opposed. Even the more conservative faction of the Social Democrats realized that, and for the time being the "internationalist" socialists had no argument they could advance against this, since elsewhere the "internationalists" had also taken to cover. The Liberals everywhere could demand fair treatment of the masses, but that they had been given by the government to the fullest extent possible under the circumstances. The exploitation of the public was general and no longer confined to any class, though it did not operate in all cases with the same rigor. To have the laws hit all alike would have meant embracing the very theories of Karl Marx and his followers. Apart from the fact that the middle and upper classes were violently opposed to this, there was the question whether it would have been possible in that case to continue the war. The German, German-Austrian, and Hungarian public, however, wanted the war continued, even when the belt had been tightened to the last hole. What, under these circumstances, could be done by the several governments but extract from their respective people the very last cent? Discussion of the policy was similar to a cat chasing its tail. We may say the same of the motive actuating the authorities when in the fall of 1916 they established municipal meat markets where meat could be obtained by the poor at cost price and often below that. Whether that was done to alleviate hunger or keep the producer in good trim is a question which each must answer for himself. It all depends on the attitude one takes. The meat was sold by the municipality or the Food Commission direct, at prices from 15 to 25 per cent. below the day's quotation, and was a veritable godsend to the poor. Whether the difference in price represented humaneness on the part of the authorities or design would be hard to prove. Those I questioned invariably claimed that it was a kind interest in the masses which caused the government to help them in that manner. Had I been willing to do so I could have shown, of course, that the money spent in this sort of charity had originally been in the pockets of those who bought the cheaper meat. But that is a chronic ailment of social economy, and I am not idealist enough to say how this ailment could be cured. In fact, I cannot see how it can be cured if society is not to sink into inertia, seeing that the scramble for a living is to most the only leaven that will count. That does not mean, however, that I believe in the maxim, "The devil take the hindmost"--a maxim which governed the distribution of life's necessities in Central Europe during the first two years of the war. The zonification of the bread, milk, fats, and sugar supply, and the municipal meat markets began to show that either the government had come to fear the public or was now willing to co-operate with it more closely than it had done in the past. At any rate, this new and better policy had a distinctly humane aspect. Some of the food-lines disappeared, and with them departed much of that brutality which food control by the government had been associated with in the past. The food allowance was scant enough, but a good part of it was now assured. It could be claimed at any time of the day, and that very fact revived in many the self-respect which had suffered greatly by the eternal begging for food in the lines. Having made a study of the psychology of the food-liner, I can realize what that meant. Of a sudden food riots ceased, and with them passed all danger of a revolution. I am convinced that in the winter of 1915-16 it was easier to start internal trouble in the Central states than it was a year later. A more or less impartial and fairly efficient system of food distribution had induced the majority to look at the shortage in eatables as something for which the government was not to blame. That, after all, was what the government wanted. Whether or no it worked consciously toward that end I am not prepared to say. By that time, also, the insufferable small official had been curbed to quite an extent. As times grew harder, and the small increases in pay failed more and more to keep pace with the increase in the cost of living, that class became more and more impossible. Toward its superiors it showed more obsequiousness than before, because removal from office meant a stay at the front, and since things in life have the habit of balancing one another, the class became more rude and oppressive toward the public. Finally the government caused the small official to understand that this could not go on. He also learned in a small degree that bureaucratism is not necessarily the only purpose of the officeholder, though much progress in that direction was yet necessary. It has often been my impression that government in Central Europe would be good if it were possible to put out of their misery the small officials--the element which snarls at the civilian when there is no occasion for it. It seems to me that the worst which the extremists in the Entente group have planned for the Central Powers is still too good for the martinet who holds forth in the Central European _Amtsstube_--_i. e._, government office. Law and order has no greater admirer than myself, but I resent having some former corporal take it for granted that I had never heard of such things until he happened along. Yet that is precisely what this class does. It has alienated hundreds of thousands of friends of the German people. It has stifled the social enlightenment and political liberty which was so strong in Central Europe in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. It is not difficult to imagine what that class did to a population which had been reduced to subsisting at the public crib. The bread ticket was handed the applicant with a sort of by-the-grace-of-God mien, when rude words did not accompany it. The slightest contravention brought a flood of verbal abuse. Pilate never was so sure that he alone was right. Between this official insolence, food shortage, and exploitation by the government and its economic minions, the Central European civilian had a merry time of it. But, after all, no people has a better government than it deserves, just as it has no more food than it produces or is able to secure. The martinets did not mend their ways until women in the food-lines had clawed their faces and an overwhelming avalanche of complaints began to impress the higher officials. Conditions improved rapidly after that and stayed improved so long as the public was heard from. It may not be entirely coincidence that acceptable official manners and better distribution of food came at the same time. In that lies the promise that the days of the autocratic small official in Central Europe are numbered. It was futile, however, to look for a general or deep-seated resentment against the government itself. Certain officials were hated. Before the war that would have made little difference to the bureaucratic clans, and even now they were often reluctant to sacrifice one of their ilk, but there was no longer any help for it. There was never a time when a change in the principle of government was considered as the means to effect a bettering of conditions. The Central European prefers monarchical to republican government. He is not inclined to do homage to a ruler who is a commoner--a tribute he still pays his government and its head. In the monarchy the ruler occupies a position which the average republican cannot easily understand. In the constitutional monarchy, having a responsible ministry, the king is generally little better than what is known as a figurehead. He is hardly ever heard from, and when he is the cause of his appearance in the spotlight may be some act that has little or nothing to do with government itself. He may open some hospital or attend a maneuver or review of the fleet, or convene parliament with a speech prepared by the premier, and there his usefulness ends--seemingly. But that is not quite so. In such a realm the monarch stands entirely for that continuation of policy and principle which is necessary for the guidance of the state. He becomes the living embodiment of the constitution, as it were. He is the non-political guardian thereof. Political parties may come and go, but the king stays, seeing to it, theoretically at least, that the parliamentary majority which has put its men into the ministry does not violate the ground laws of the country. In his capacities of King of Prussia and German Emperor, William II. has been more absolute than any of the other European monarchs, the Czar of Russia alone excepted. The two constitutions under which he rules, the Prussian and the German federative, give him a great deal of room in which to elbow around. When a Reichstag proved intractable he had but to dissolve it, and in the Prussian chambers of Lords and Deputies he was as nearly absolute as any man could be--provided always he did what was agreeable to the Junkers. They are a strong-minded crew in Prussia, and less inclined to be at the beck and call of their king than Germans generally are in the case of their Emperor. In Prussia the King is far more the servant of the state than the Kaiser is in Germany. But this is one of those little idiosyncrasies in government that can be found anywhere. Three years of contact with all classes of Germans have yet to show me the single individual, not a most radical socialist, who had anything but kind words for the King-Emperor and his family. What the Kaiser had to say went through the multitude like an electric impulse. No matter how uninteresting I might find a statement, because I could not see it from the angle of the German, the public always received it very much as it might the word of a prophet. It was conceded that the Emperor could make mistakes, that, indeed, he had made not a few of them; but this did not by any means lessen the degree of receptiveness of his subjects. Against the word of Kaiser Wilhelm all argument is futile, and will always remain futile. It was this sentiment which caused the German people to accept with wonderful patience whatever burden the war brought. Had it ever been necessary to cast into the government's war treasury the last pfennig, the mere word from the Kaiser would have accomplished this. What Napoleon was to his soldiers Emperor William II. is to his people. And then it must not be overlooked that the Emperor possesses marked ability as a press agent. He was always the first to conform to a regulation in food. Long before the rich classes had so much as a thought of eating war-bread, Emperor William would tolerate nothing else on his table. The Empress, too, adhered to this. All wheat bread was banished from the several palaces of the imperial _ménage_. Every court function was abandoned, save coffee visits in the afternoon for the friends of the Empress. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. CASTLE HOHENZOLLERN Ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The men and women in the foreground are good types of Germany's peasantry.] I saw the Emperor a good many times. At the beginning of the war he was rushed past me in the Unter den Linden in Berlin. The crowds were cheering him. He seemed supremely happy, as he bowed to right and left in acknowledgment of the fealty voiced. Since I am not so extraordinarily gifted as some claim to be, I could not say that I saw anything in his face but the expression of a man happy to see that his people stood behind him. Later I saw him in Vienna. He had come to the capital of his ally to view for the last time the face of his dead comrade-in-arms, the late Emperor Francis Joseph. He stepped out of the railroad carriage with a grave face and hastened toward the young Emperor of Austria to express his condolences. The two men embraced each other. I was struck by the apparent sincerity of the greeting. What impressed me more, perhaps, was the alacrity of the older man. For several minutes the two monarchs paced up and down on the station platform and conversed on some serious subject. I noticed especially the quick movements of the German Emperor's head, and the smart manner in which he faced about when the two had come to the end of the platform. The streak of white hair, visible between ear and helmet, accentuated in his face that expression which is not rare in old army officers, when the inroads of years have put a damper on youthful martial enthusiasm. The man was still every inch a soldier, and yet his face reminded me of that of Sir Henry Irving, despite the fact that there is little similarity to be seen when pictures of the two men are compared, as I had shortly afterward opportunity of doing. I should say that in civilian clothing I would take the Emperor for a retired merchant-marine captain, in whose house I would expect to find a fairly good library indiscriminately assembled and balanced by much bric-à-brac collected in all parts of the world without much plan or design. Such a retired sea-dog would be a very human being, I take it. His crews might have ever stood in fear of him, but his familiars would look upon him with the respect that is brought any man who knows that friendship's best promoter is usually a judicious degree of reserve. That was the picture I gained of the Emperor as he marched up and down the station platform in a Vienna suburb. The same afternoon he was taken over the Ring in an automobile. There was no cheering by the vast throng which had assembled to see the mighty War Lord from the north. The old emperor was dead. The houses were draped in black. Many of the civilians had donned mourning. To the hats that were lifted, Kaiser William bowed with a face that was serious. He was all monarch--King and Emperor. I can understand why a man of the type of Czar Nicholas should lose his throne in a revolution brought on by the shortage of food and the exploitation incident to war. How a similar fate could overtake a man of the type of William II. is not clear to me. For that he is too ready to act. His adaptiveness is almost proverbial in Germany. I have no doubt that should the impossible really occur in Germany becoming a republic William II. would most likely show up as its first president. In Germany nothing is really ever popular--the works of poets excluded. For that reason the Emperor is not popular in the sense in which Edward VII. could be popular. But Emperor William II. is a fact to the German, just as life itself is that. For the time being the Emperor is the state to the vast majority, and, incongruous as it may seem at a time when conditions in Germany are making for equipollence between the reactionary and the progressive, there is no doubt that no throne in Europe is more secure than that of the Hohenzollerns. To understand that one must have measured in Germany the patience and determination of those who bore the burden of the war as imposed by scant rations on the one hand and ever-increasing expenditures in warfare on the other. Since King Alfonso of Spain is better known than the German crown-prince, I will refer to him as the ruler whom the latter resembles most. The two men are of about the same build, with the difference in favor of the crown-prince, who is possibly a little taller and slightly better looking in a Teutonic fashion. Both are alike in their unmilitariness. One looks as little the soldier as the other, despite the fact that the interested publics have but rarely the opportunity to see these men in mufti. After all, that is scant reason for the comparison I have made. The better reason is that both are alike in their attitude toward the public. Alfonso is no more democratic than Frederick, nor would he be more interested in good government. To my friend Karl H. von Wiegand, most prominent of American correspondents in Berlin, the German crown-prince said on one occasion: "I regret that not more people will talk to me in the manner you have done. I appreciate frankness, but cannot always get it. The people from whom I expect advice and information make it their business to first find out what I might expect to hear and then talk accordingly. It is very disheartening, but what can I do?" Those who remember the last act of "_Alt-Heidelberg_" will best understand what the factors are that lead to this. We may pity the mind that looks upon another human being as something infinitely superior because accident suddenly places him in a position of great power. I am not so sure that he who becomes the object of that sort of reverence is not to be pitied more. Our commiseration is especially due the prince whom the frailties of human flesh cause to thus lose all contact with the real life by accepting _ipso facto_ that he is a superior being because others are foolish enough to embrace such a doctrine. A very interesting story is told in that connection of Emperor Charles of Austria. As heir-apparent he had always been very democratic. In those days he was little more to his brother officers than a comrade, and all of them, acting agreeably to a tradition in the Austro-Hungarian army, addressed him by the familiar _Du_--thou. After he had become Emperor-King, Charles had occasion to visit the east front, spending some time with the Arz army, at whose headquarters he had stayed often and long while still crown-prince. The young Emperor detected a chilling reserve among the men with whom he had formerly lived. Some of his comrades addressed him as "Your Majesty." Charles stood this for a while, and then turned on a young officer with whom he had been on very friendly terms. "I suppose you must say majesty now, but do me the favor of saying '_Du Majestät_.' I am still in the army; or are you trying to rule me out of it?" This may be considered a fair sample of the cement that has been keeping the Central states from falling apart under the stress of the war. To us republicans that may seem absurd. And still, who would deny that the memory of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln is not a thing that binds together much of what is Americanism? In the republic the great men of the past are done homage, in the monarchy the important man of the hour is the thing. Were it otherwise the monarchy would not be possible. It is this difference which very often makes the republic seem ungrateful as compared with the monarchy. But in the aggregate in which all men are supposedly equal nothing else can be looked for. We must look to that condition for an answer to the question which the subject treated here has suggested. And, after all, this is half a dozen of one and six of the other. In the end we expect any aggregate to defend its institutions, whether they be republican or monarchical. In the republic the devotion necessary may have its foundation in the desire to preserve liberal institutions, while in the monarchy attunement to the great lodestar, tradition, may be the direct cause of patriotism. In England, the ideal monarchy, we have a mixture of both tendencies, and who would say that the mixture, from the British national point of view, has been a bad one? XII SHORTAGE SUPREME A hundred and twelve million people in Central Europe were thinking in terms of shortage as they approached the winter of 1916-17. Government and press said daily that relief would come. The public was advised to be patient another day, another week, another month. All would be well if patience was exercised. That patience was exercised, but in the mind of the populace the shortage assumed proportions that were at times hard to understand. The ancestors of Emperor Francis Joseph had been buried in a rather peculiar manner. From the body were taken the brain, heart, and viscera in order to make embalming possible. The heart was then put away in a silver vessel, while the other parts were placed in a copper urn. In the funeral processions these containers were carried in a vehicle following the imperial hearse. The funeral cortège of Francis Joseph was without that vehicle. The old man had requested that he be buried without the dissection that had been necessary in other instances. That being the case, the vehicle was not needed. But its absence was misinterpreted by the populace. It gave rise to the belief that the copper for the urn could not be spared, seeing that the army needed all of that metal. That little copper would have been required to fashion the urn does not seem to have occurred to them. It was enough to know that the church bells had been melted down and that in the entire country there was not a copper roof left. The phantom of shortage waxed when it became known that the lack of the necessary chemicals had led to the embalming of the Emperor's body with a fluid which had so discolored the body and face that the coffin had to be closed during the lying-in-state of the dead ruler. It grew again when it became known that, owing to a lack of horses, many changes had to be made in the funeral arrangements, and that most of the pomp of the Spanish court etiquette of funerals would have to be abandoned. What had anciently been a most imposing ceremony became in the end a very quiet affair. With one half of the world at war with the other half, there was a dearth even in monarchs, nobility, and diplomatists to attend the funeral. Somehow I gained the impression that the word "Want" was written even on the plain coffin which they lifted upon the catafalque in St. Stefan's Cathedral in Vienna, twenty feet away from me. To get into the church I had passed through a throng that showed want and deprivation in clothing and mien. It was a chilly day. Through the narrow streets leading to the small square in which the cathedral stands a raw wind was blowing, and I remember well how the one bright spot in that dreary picture was the tall spire of the cathedral upon which fell the light of the setting winter sun. The narrow streets and little square lay in the gloom that fitted the occasion. The shadow of death seemed to have fallen on everything--upon all except the large white cross which presently moved up the central aisle. Under the pall which the cross divided into four black fields lay the remains of the unhappiest of men. His last days had been made bitter by his people's cry for bread. Since coal was scarce, the church had not been heated. But that night, as if in honor of the funeral guests, a few more lights burned on the principal thoroughfares of Vienna. Even that was reckless extravagance under the circumstances. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were sitting in cold rooms at that time. The coal-lines brought usually disappointment, but no fuel. Even the hospitals to which many of these unfortunates had to be taken found it difficult to get what coal they needed. The street-car service had been curtailed to such an extent that many were unable to reach their place of work. In Austria that was especially the fault of the Stürgkh régime, whose mad career in burning the candle at both ends the dead emperor had failed to check. To keep certain neighbors good-natured and get from them such foods as they could spare, the Central states of Europe had in 1916 exported roughly three million two hundred thousands tons of coal. Another million tons had been shipped into the territories occupied by the Centralist troops. This was no great coal business, of course, especially when we come to consider that some of this fuel came from Belgium. But the four million tons could have been used at home without a lump going begging. When Christmas came coal was as scarce in Germany, Austria, and Hungary as was food. And that is saying a great deal. Much economy had been already practised during the summer. "Summer time" meant the saving each day of one hour's consumption of fuel in city traction and lighting street, house, and shop. The saving was not great, when compared with the fuel a population of roundly one hundred and twelve millions will consume when given a free hand. But it was something, anyway. That something was an easement of conditions in the coal market during the summer months. It did not make available for the cold season so much as a shovelful of coal. Whatever the mines put out was carted off there and then. When winter came the bunkers were empty. The prospect of having to bear with an ever-craving stomach the discomforts of the cold and poorly lighted rooms was not pleasant. The government saw this and tried a little belated regulation. I say belated regulation because the measures came too late to have much value. That there would be a shortage in coal had been foreseen. Nothing could be done, however, to ward off the _Knappheit_. Among my many acquaintances is the owner of several coal-mines in Austrian Silesia. His handicaps were typical of what every mine-operator had to contend with. "The coal is there, of course," he would say. "But how am I to get it out? My best miners are at the front. Coal-mining may be done only by men who are physically the fittest. That is the very class of man the government needs at the front. I am trying to come somewhere near my normal output with men that are long past the age when they can produce what is expected of the average miner. "It can't be done, of course. "Women are no good underground. So I have tried Russian prisoners-of-war. I went to a prison camp and picked out seventy-five of the most likely chaps. I made willingness to work in a mine one of the conditions of their furlough. They all were willing--so long as they did not know what the work was. Right there the willingness of half the crew ended. I sent them back and tried my luck with the rest. "To get some work out of the men, I made arrangements with the government that I was to pay them four-fifths of the regular scale. It isn't a question of money. It's a question of getting at the coal. To make a long story short: Out of the seventy-five Russians seventeen have qualified. I can't afford to repeat the experiment, for the reason that apprentices litter up the works and interfere with the few miners I have left." The man was short then nearly two hundred workers at the mine shafts. He had underground most of his surface hands. With overtime and some other makeshifts he was able to produce about four-fifths of his normal output. The demand for fuel was such that he would have been able to sell twice as much coal as formerly. Natural resources mean nothing to a state so long as they cannot be made available. This was the case with Central Europe. More economy, more restrictions. Industries not contributing directly to the military strength of the Central Powers were ordered to discontinue all night work and overtime. Shops, cafés, hotels, restaurants, and other public places had to limit the consumption of fuel for heating and lighting purposes to one-third their usual quota. The lighting of shop-windows was cut down to almost nothing. Stores had to close at seven o'clock, eating- and drinking-places first at twelve and later at eleven. No light was to be used in the hotels after twelve. All unnecessary heating was prohibited, and the warm-water period in hotels shrank from four to two hours per day. On each stretch of corridor and at each stair-landing or elevator door one small light was allowed. In Vienna all places of amusement "not contributing to the cultivation of art for art's sake" were closed. This hit the cheaper theaters and every moving-picture house. A city of such restrictions would need no street lights at any time. But up to eleven o'clock two lights for each block were allowed. After that Stygian black reigned. Street traction ceased on some lines at eight o'clock; on all lines at nine, though arrangements were made for a few cars to run when the playing theaters closed. But the regulations came near spilling the baby with the bath. They were well meant, but poorly considered. Economic waste came from them. The several governments did their very best to get coal to the consumers. In Vienna, for instance, Emperor Charles took a personal interest in the matter. He issued an order that as many miners as possible be returned immediately from the front. For the workers at the mines, who had been living none too well so far as food went, he prescribed the subsistence given the men in the trenches and placed military commissaries in charge of the kitchens. Men from the military railroad organizations were given the running of coal-trains. For certain hours each day the passenger service of the city street traction systems was suspended in favor of the coal traffic, which often gave rise to the unusual sight of seeing an electric street-car drag behind it, over the pavement, from three to five ordinary coal-wagons, which later were towed to their destination by army tractors. It was a herculean labor that would have to be done in a few days, if a part of the population were not to perish in the cold spell that had come over Central Europe. The work of a whole summer was now to be done in a few days. From the front came whole columns of army motor trucks. These took a hand at coal distribution. And finally Emperor Charles gave over to the work every horse in the imperial stables. I will never forget the sight of the imperial coachmen in their yellow-and-black uniforms hauling coal all over Vienna. Their cockaded top-hats looked out of place on the coal-wagons, though no more so than the fine black and silver-adorned harness of the full-blooded horses that drew the wagons. The press was freer now. Political censorship had been reduced to a minimum. Criticism changed with valuable tips, and one of them was that the government had done a very foolish thing in closing the _Kinos_--movies. It was pointed out that their closing resulted in so small a saving of fuel for heating and lighting that, compared with the wasteful result of the regulation, it stood as one to hundreds. Such was the case. The men, women, and families who had formerly spent their evenings in the movies were now obliged to frequent the more expensive cafés or sit home and use light and fuel. Some man with a statistical mind figured out that the closing of a movie seating five hundred people and giving two performances in the evening, meant an increase in fuel consumption for heating and lighting purposes sixty times greater than what the movie used. That was simple enough, and a few days later the movies and cheap theaters resumed business. More than that followed. The government decided that this was a fine method of co-operation. It gave the cafés permission to use more fuel and light in return for a more liberal treatment of patrons not able to spend much money. In harmony with this policy the passenger service of the car lines was extended first to nine and later to ten o'clock, so that people were not obliged to spend every evening in the same café or other public place. The case was a fine example of co-operation between government and public, with the press as the medium of thought exchange. A twelve-month before, the reaching of such an understanding would have been next to impossible. The editor who then mastered the courage of criticizing a government measure had the suspension of his paper before his eyes. He no longer had to fear this. The result was a clearing of the political atmosphere. Government and people were in touch with one another for the first time in two years. For over a year all effort of the upper classes had lain fallow. The women who had done their utmost at the beginning of the war had not met enough encouragement to keep their labor up. It had been found, moreover, that charity concerts and teas "an' sich" were of little value in times when everything had to be done on the largest of scales. What good could come from collecting a few thousand marks or crowns, when not money, but food, was the thing? The fuel conjunction offered new opportunities. Free musical recitals, concerts, theatrical performances, and lectures were arranged for in order that thousands might be attracted away from their homes and thus be prevented from using coal and light. One of the leaders in this movement in Vienna was Princess Alexandrine Windisch-Graetz. The lady is either the owner or the lessee of the Urania Theater. In the past she had financed at her house free performances and lectures for the people in order that they might not be without recreation. A washed face and clean collar were the admission fee. Under her auspices many such institutions sprang up within a few weeks. "We are saving coal and educating the masses at the same time," she would say to me. "There are times when making a virtue of necessity has its rewards." And rewards the scheme did have. Lectures on any conceivable subject could be heard, and I was glad to notice that not a single one dealt with the war. The public was tired of this subject and the promoters of the lectures were no less so. Those whom lectures did not attract could go to the free concerts, and, when the cheaper music palled, payment of twelve cents American brought within reach the best Vienna has to offer in symphony and chamber music. At the same time "warming"-rooms were established in many cities. These were for unattached women and the wives of men at the front. Care was taken to have these places as cozy as circumstances permitted. Entertainment was provided. Much of it took the form of timely lectures on food conservation, care of the children, and related topics. Many of the women heard for the first time in their lives that there were more than two ways of cooking potatoes, and other manners of putting baby to sleep than addling its brain by rocking it in a cradle or perambulator. I must say that this solution of the coal problem was an unqualified success. The well-to-do also felt the pinch. Money no longer bought much of anything. The word "wealth" had lost most of its meaning. In the open food market it might buy an overlooked can of genuine Russian caviar or some real _pâté de foie gras_, and if one could trust one's servants and was willing to descend to illicit trading with some hoarding dealer, some extra food could be had that way. In most other aspects of subsistence rich and poor, aristocrat and commoner, fared very much alike. But I cannot say that this "democracy of want" was relished by the upper classes. By this time every automobile had been requisitioned by the government. That was painful, but bearable so long as taxis could be had. Of a sudden it was found that most of the taxicabs were being hired by the day and week, often months, by those who could afford it. That was contrary to the purpose for which the government had left the machines in town. They were intended mainly to take officers and the public from the railroad stations to the hotels, and _vice versa_. As an aid to shopping they had not been considered, nor had it been borne in mind that some war purveyor's family would wish to take the air in the park by being wheeled through it. Regulation descended swiftly. Hereafter taxicab-drivers could wait for a passenger five minutes if the trip from starting-point to destination had to be interrupted. If the passenger thought it would take him longer he was obliged to pay his fare and dismiss the taxi. Policemen had orders to arrest any taxi-driver who violated this rule; and since the two do not seem to get along well together anywhere, there was much paying of fines. Regulation being still somewhat piecemeal, the hacks had been overlooked. Those who had to have wheel transportation at their beck and call hired these now by the day and week. Another order came. The hack-driver could wait in front of a store or any place ten minutes and then he had to take another "fare." The upper classes had retained their fine equipages, of course. The trouble was that the government had taken away every horse and had even deprived the wheels of their rubber tires. With taxis and hacks not to be had, especially when the government ruled later that they could be used between railroad stations only, and not to points, even in that case, that could be reached with the street-cars, social life of the higher order took a fearful slump. Though a season of very quiet dressing was at hand, one could not go calling in the evening in the habiliment impervious to rain. Simple luncheons and teas were the best that society could manage under the circumstances. The theater remained a little more accessible. Street-cars were provided to take the spectators home. With the show over, everybody made a wild scramble for the cars. Central Europe was having democracy forced down its throat. The holder of a box at the Royal Opera had indeed abandoned the evening dress and _chapeau claque_. His lady had followed his example in a half-hearted manner. But all this did not make the ride home easier. The gallery angel in Central Europe is well-behaved and not inclined to be conspicuous or forward. But he takes up room, and one was elbowed by him. When soap was scarce he also was not always washed all over, and that made a difference. But the theaters did a fine business, for all that. The better institutions were sold out three weeks ahead, and the cheaper shows were crowded by the overflow. Admission to the theater was the one thing that had not gone up in price very much. The artists had agreed to work for a little less, and those to whom royalties were due had acted in a like public spirit. Managers were content with being allowed to run on about a 5-per-cent.-profit basis. I suppose they thought that half a loaf was better than none. There would have been none had they gone up in their prices. The performances were up to standard. A great deal of Shakespeare was being given. Two of the Vienna theaters played Shakespeare twice a week, and at Berlin as many as three houses had a Shakespearian program. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw plays were occasionally given and also some by the older French playwrights. Modern French authors seemed to be taboo. No changes were made in the play-lists of the operas, nor was prejudice manifested on the concert programs. All performances were in German, however--Hungarian in Budapest. In other parts of the Dual Monarchy they were given in the language of the district; Italian, for instance, in Trieste, where I heard a late Italian _opéra comique_ just imported _via_ Switzerland. The stage was not fallow by any means during the war. In Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest it was a poor week that did not have its two or three _premières_. It is rather odd that nobody wrote plays about the war. Of some twoscore new plays I saw in three years not a single one occupied itself with a theme related to the struggle that was going on. It seemed, too, that the playwrights had turned their attention to psychological study. One of these efforts was a phenomenal success. I refer to Franz Molnar's "_Fasching_." About twenty new "Viennese" operas made their _début_ during the war. Just two of them touched upon the thing that was uppermost in the mind of man. The others dealt with the good old days of long ago; the happy days of our great-grandfathers, when soldiers still wore green uniforms with broad lapels of scarlet and lapped-over swallowtails that showed the same color; when soldiers carried a most murderous-looking sidearm on "clayed" leather sashes hung rakishly over the shoulder. How happy those fellows looked as they blew imaginary foam from their empty steins in front of the inn! Ten operas were turned out in the three years. I give credit for much vitality to only one of them. It is known as "_Der Heiland_"--"The Saviour." It was voted the one addition to lasting music. With concert-composers also busy, there was no dearth of musical enjoyment. The art world did yeoman service to keep the population from going insane. As to that there can be no doubt. It was fortunate that the Central European public can find so much mental nourishment in the theater and concert-hall. Otherwise there would have been a lack of room in the asylums for the insane. Society, however, did not go to sleep entirely. The luncheons were simple repasts, but lasted all the longer. Usually one left in time to reach tea somewhere else. For dinner only the closest friends of the family were invited, and when others had to be entertained in that manner there was the hotel. Balls and similar frivolities were under the ban, of course. After listening all day long to what the people in the cafés and restaurants had to say of the war, it was really refreshing to hear what the aristocrats thought. Most of them were severely objective in their opinions, some verged on neutrality, and a small number took the tragedy of the war to heart. Among the latter was a princess related to Emperor Francis Joseph by marriage. She was a motherly old woman. The very thought of warfare was unwelcome to her. She had one expression for what she thought of the calamity: "Civilization has declared itself bankrupt in this war." What she meant was that a civilization that could lead to such a catastrophe had shown itself futile. She was plain-spoken for one of her station, and the American ambassador at Vienna was her _bête noire_. This will suffice to identify the lady to all whom her identity could interest. Much of the food shortage was laid at the door of the United States government. Why didn't the American government see to it that the Central states civilian populations received that to which international law and the recent The Hague and London conventions entitled them? I was asked that question a thousand times every week. With the male questioners I could argue the point, but with the ladies ... it was another matter. As many as ten at a time have nailed me down to that question. At first that used to ruin many a day for me, but finally one gets used to anything. The question was not so easily answered in Central Europe. The best reply was that I was not running anything aside from myself, in which I followed the ways of the diplomatist who is never responsible for the acts of his government so long as he wishes to remain _persona grata_. On the whole, Central European society was leading a rather colorless life when the war was three years old. Even their charity work had no longer much of a sphere. It was still possible to collect money by means of concerts, teas, and receptions--bazaars had to be abandoned because everybody had tired of them--but there was so little that money could buy. Government control had gradually spread over everything, and, with everybody working hard, nobody needed much assistance, as everybody thought. That was not the case by any means, but such was largely the popular impression. The truth was that everybody was tired of working at the same old charities. The shortage of fuel gave a new opportunity, but did not occupy many. It was one thing to pin a paper rosette to a lapel in return for an offering willingly made, and quite another to preside over a co-operative dining-room or a place where the women and children could warm themselves and pass the time with pleasure and profit to themselves. Not many were equal to that. Few had the necessary experience. The worst of it was that travel to the international summer and winter resorts was out of the question. And to move about in one's own country meant passes, visées, authorizations, health certificates, documents attesting good conduct and a clean slate with the police; and if by chance the trip should take one into an inner or outer war zone, the home authorities had to go on record as having established that he or she was not plagued by insects. It is remarkable what the Central governments would do in the interest of law and order, public security, and sanitation. But it was more remarkable that the highest nobility had to conform to the same rules. The only persons who had the right to sidestep any of these multifarious regulations were officers and soldiers whose military credentials answered every purpose. Since I traveled only on _Offene Order_--open order--the marching order of the officer, I was one of the few civilians exempt from this annoyance. That and the state of the railroads kept the upper classes at home. Many of them were thus afforded their first good chance to know where they lived. Shortage had even come to rule the day for the aristocrats. It was a bitter pill for them, but I will say that they swallowed it without batting an eye. XIII "GIVE US BREAD!" The food situation in Central Europe became really desperate in the third year of the war. The year's wheat crop had been short in quantity and quality. Its nutritive value was about 55 per cent. of normal. The rye crop was better, but not large enough to meet the shortage in breadstuffs caused by the poor wheat yield. Barley was fair under the circumstances. Oats were a success in many parts of Germany, but fell very low in Austria and Hungary. The potato crop was a failure. The supply of peas and beans had been augmented by garden culture, but most people held what they had raised and but little of the crop reached the large population centers. To make things worse, the Hungarian Indian corn crop was very indifferent. Great losses were sustained when the Roumanian army in September and October overran much of Transylvania, drove off some twenty thousand head of cattle, and slaughtered about fifty thousand pigs. Large quantities of cereals were also ruined by them, as I was able to ascertain on my trips to the Roumanian front. Up to this time the war-bread of the Central states had been rather palatable, though a steady loss in quality had been noticeable. Soon it came to pass that the ration of bread had to be reduced to about one-quarter of a pound per day. And the dough it was made of was no longer good. The 55-25-20 war-bread was good to eat and very nutritious. The stuff now passing for bread was anything but that, so far as Austria was concerned. Its quality fluctuated from one week to another. I was unable to keep track of it. Indian corn was already used in the loaf, and before long ground clover hay was to form one of its constituents. Worst of all, the bread was not always to be had. At the beginning of November the three slices of bread into which the ration was divided, as a rule, fell to two, so that the daily allowance of bread was not quite four ounces. On one occasion Vienna had hardly any bread for four days. In Hungary conditions were a little better, for the reason that the Hungarian government had closed the border against wheat and cereal exports. But the large population centers were also poorly provided with flour. Germany, on the other hand, was better off than either Austria or Hungary. The rye crop had been fairly good, and food regulation was further advanced there. It was, in fact, close to the point of being perfect. But the quantity allotted the individual was inadequate, of course. Throughout Central Europe the cry was heard: "Give us bread!" So far the several populations had borne all hardships in patience and stoical indifference. The limit of endurance was reached, however. Colder weather called for a greater number of calories to heat the body. The vegetable season was over. The hoardings of the poorer classes had been eaten up. The cattle were no longer on pasture, and, fed with hay only, gave now less milk than ever. It was a mournful season. All food was now regulated. While there had been no meat cards in Austria and Hungary as yet, there were two, and at times three, meatless days; though when on three days no beef, veal, or pork could be eaten, it was permitted to consume mutton and fowl on one of them. But the consumption of meat regulated itself, as it were. Meat has always been proportionately expensive in Central Europe, and but a small percentage of people ever ate it more than once a day. The majority, in fact, ate meat only three times a week, as was especially the case in the rural districts, where fresh meat was eaten only on Sundays. There was no inherent craving for this food, on this account, and beef at seventy cents American a pound was something that few could afford. Animal fat had in the past taken the place of meat. In the summer not much was needed of this, for the reason that the warm weather called for less body heat, to supply which is the special mission of fats. But with clothing worn thin, shoes leaking, and rooms poorly heated, the demand for heat-producing food grew apace. This was reflected by the longer potato-lines. On one occasion I occupied myself with a potato-line in the Second Municipal District of Vienna. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Distribution was going on. Those then served had been standing in that line since six o'clock. The first who had received their quota of the eight pounds of potatoes, which was to last for three days, had appeared in front of the shop at three o'clock in the morning. It had rained most of that time and a cold wind was blowing. I engaged one of the women in conversation. She had arrived at the store at about seven o'clock. There were three children she had to take care of. She had given them a breakfast of coffee and bread for the oldest, and milk for the two others. "I have nobody with whom I could leave the children," she said. "My neighbors also have to stand in the food-line. So I keep them from the stove by placing the table on its side in front of it. Against one end of the table I move the couch. The children can't move that, and against the other end I push my dresser." It appears that the woman had come home once from the food-line and had found her rooms on the verge of going up in a blaze. One of the children had opened the door of the stove and the live coals had fallen out. They had set fire to some kindlings and a chair. The children thought that great fun. I complimented the woman on her resourcefulness. Her husband, a Bohemian, was then at the front in Galicia. For the support of the family the woman received from the government monthly for herself 60 crowns ($12) and for each child 30 crowns, making a total of 150, of which amount she paid 48 crowns for rent every month. I could not see how, with prevailing prices, she managed to keep herself alive. Coal just then was from 3 to 5 crowns per hundredweight ($12 to $20 per ton), and with only one stove going the woman needed at least five hundred pounds of coal a month. After that, food and a little clothing had to be provided. How did she manage it? "During the summer I worked in an ammunition factory near here," she said. "I earned about twenty-six crowns a week, and some of the money I was able to save. I am using that now. I really don't know what I am going to do when it is gone. There is work enough to be had. But what is to become of the children? To get food for them I must stand in line here and waste half of my time every day." The line moved very slowly, I noticed. I concluded that the woman would get her potatoes in about an hour, if by that time there were any left. Since I used to meet the same people in the same lines, I was able to keep myself informed on what food conditions were from one week to another. They were gradually growing worse. Now and then no bread could be had, and the potatoes were often bad or frozen. The cry for food became louder, although it was not heard in the hotels and restaurants where I ate. My waiters undertook to supply me with all the bread I wanted, card or no card--but who would eat the concoction they were serving? I was able to buy all the meat I needed and generally ate no other flour products than those in the pastry and puddings. It was a peculiar experience, then, to eat in a well-appointed dining-room of supplies that were rather plentiful because the poor, who really needed those things, could not afford to buy them. The patrons of the place would come in, produce such cards as they had to have, and then order as before, with all the cares left to the management--which cares were comparatively slight, seeing that the establishment dealt with wholesalers and usually did much of its buying clandestinely. Somewhere the less fortunate were eating what the luck of the food-line had brought that day, which might be nothing for those who had come late and had no neighbors who would lend a little bread and a few potatoes. Suicides and crime, due to lack of food, increased alarmingly. There was a shocking gauntness about the food-lines. Every face showed want. The eyes under the threadbare shawls cried for bread. But how could that bread be had? It simply was not there. And such things as a few ounces of fats and a few eggs every week meant very little in the end. Perhaps it was just as well that those in the food-lines did not know that a large number of co-citizens were yet living in plenty. There were some who feared that such knowledge might lead to riots of a serious nature. But I had come to understand the food-lines and their psychology better. With the men home, trouble might have come--could not have been averted, in fact. But the women besieging the food-shops were timid and far from hysterical. Most of them were more concerned with the welfare of their children than with their own troubles, as I had many an occasion to learn. Not a few of them sold their bodies to get money enough to feed their offspring. Others pawned or sold the last thing of value they had. The necessity of obtaining food at any price was such that many a "business" hoard entered the channels of illicit trade and exacted from the unfortunate poor the very last thing they had to give. The price of a pound of flour or some fat would in some cases be 800 per cent. of what these things normally cost. The several governments were not ignorant of these things. But for a while they were powerless, though now they had abandoned largely their policy of "mobilizing" the pennies of the poor. To apply the law to every violator of the food regulations was quite impossible. There were not jails enough to hold a tenth of them, and a law that cannot be equitably enforced should not be enforced at all. The very fact that its enforcement is impossible shows that it is contrary to the interest of the social aggregate. In Germany a fine disregard for social station and wealth had marked almost every food-regulation decree of the government from the very first. The several state governments were concerned with keeping their civil population in as good a physical condition as the food situation permitted. The financial needs of the government had to be considered, but it was forever the object to make the ration of the poor as good as possible, and to do that meant that he or she who had in the past lived on the fat of the land would now have to be content with less. As the war dragged on, pauper and millionaire received the same quantity of food. If the latter was minded to eat that from expensive porcelain he could do so, nor did anybody mind if he drank champagne with it, for in doing so he did not diminish unnecessarily the natural resources of the nation. Food regulation in Austria had been less efficacious. In Hungary it was little short of being a farce. In both countries special privilege is still enthroned so high that even the exigencies of the war did not assail it until much damage had been done. It was not until toward the end of December that the two governments proceeded vigorously to attack the terrible mixture of food shortage and chaotic regulation that confronted them. The new ruler of the Dual Monarchy, Emperor-King Charles, was responsible for the change. While Emperor Francis Joseph lived, the heir-apparent had not occupied much of a place in government. The camarilla surrounding the old man saw to that. But by depriving the young archduke of his rightful place, which the incapacity of the Emperor should have assigned him, the court clique gave him the very opportunities he needed to understand the food situation he was to cope with presently--had to cope with if he wanted to see the government continued. The removal of Premier Stürgkh by the hand of the assassin had been timely; the death of Francis Joseph was timelier yet. The old monarch had ceased to live in the times that were. He came from an age which is as much related to our era as is the rule of the original patriarch, one Abraham of Chaldea. Food conditions might be brought to his attention, but the effort served no purpose. The old man was incapable of understanding why the interests of the privileged classes should be sacrificed for the sake of the many. At the several fronts, at points of troop concentration, and in the very food-lines, the young Emperor had heard and seen what the ailments and shortcomings of public subsistence were. One of the first things he did when he came into power was to take a keen and active interest in food questions. For one thing, he decided to regulate consumption downward. It was a great shock to the privileged class when it heard that the Emperor would cut down the supply of those on top in order that more be left for those beneath. To do that was not easy, however. The young man thought of the force of example. He prohibited the eating at court of any meals not in accord with the food regulations. Wheat bread and rolls were banished. Every servant not actually needed was dismissed so that he might do some useful work. Several of the imperial and royal establishments were closed altogether. The _ménage_ at Castle Schönbrunn was disbanded. The personnel of the Hofburg in Vienna was reduced to actual needs. It was ordered that only one suite in the palace be lighted and heated--a very simple apartment which the Emperor and his family occupied. Some very amusing stories are told in connection with the policy the Emperor had decided to apply. I will give here a few of them--those I have been able to verify or which for some other reason I may not doubt. They had been leading a rather easy life at the Austro-Hungarian general headquarters. The chief of staff, Field-Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorff, was rather indulgent with his subordinates, and had never discouraged certain extravagances the officers of the establishment were fond of. One of them was to have wheat dinner-rolls. A few days after the new Emperor's ascension of the Austrian throne he happened to be at Baden, near Vienna, which was then the seat of the general headquarters. After a conference he intimated that he would stay for dinner at the general mess of the staff. That was a great honor, of course, though formerly the influence of the archducal party had made the heir-apparent more tolerated than respected in that very group. After a round of introductions Emperor Charles sat down at the head of the table. On each napkin lay a roll and in a basket there were more. The Emperor laid his roll to one side and ate the soup without any bread. When the next dish was being served, and those at table had made good inroads upon their rolls, the Emperor called the orderly. "You may bring me a slice of war-bread, and mind you I do not want a whole loaf, but just the third of a daily ration, such as the law entitles me to. No more, no less!" Some of the officers almost choked on the morsel of wheat roll they were about to swallow. The Emperor said no more, however, and his conversation continued with all the _bonhomie_ for which he is known. But henceforth no more wheat bread in any form was to be seen in any officers' mess. A few days later came an order from the civil authorities that all patrons of hotels and restaurants were to bring their bread, issued to them in the morning, to their meals if they were not to go without it. The eating-house manager who gave bread to patrons would be fined heavily once or twice and after that would lose his license to do business. A few days after that I saw a rather interesting thing in the cloak-room of the Court Opera. A well-dressed couple came in. The lady was attired in quite the latest thing made by some able _couturier_, and the man was in evening dress, a rare sight nowadays. As he pushed his fur coat across the counter a small white parcel fell to the floor. The paper wrapping parted and two slices of very black war-bread rolled among the feet of the throng. "There goes our supper bread!" cried the woman. "So it seems," remarked the man. "But what is the use of picking it up now? It's been rolling about on the floor." "But somebody can still eat it," said the woman. Just then two men handed back the bread. Its owner wrapped it up again and put the parcel into a pocket. I suppose the servants of the household ate next day more bread than usual. Shortly after that I had tea at the residence of Mrs. Penfield, wife of the American ambassador at Vienna. Among other guests was a princess of the house of Parma. There are several such princesses and I have forgotten which one it was, nor could I say whether she was a sister or a cousin of Empress Zita. At any rate, the young woman had a son of an age when good milk is the best food. She said that the recent regulations of the government were such that not even she could transgress upon them, though that does not seem to have been her intention. How to get enough milk for her boy was a great problem, or had been. The problem had on that very day been solved by her, however. "I bought a good cow two weeks ago," said the princess. "That was certainly the best way of getting good milk," commented the American ambassadrice. "Yes, it was," remarked the Princess Parma. "But it did not end my troubles. I had the milk shipped here, and found that the food authorities would not allow it to be delivered to me, except that portion which the law prescribes for children and adults. That much I got. The remainder was turned over to the Food Central, and I got a letter saying that I would be paid for the milk at the end of the month." "But the allowance is too small, your Highness," suggested somebody, sympathetically. "That is the trouble, of course," returned the princess. "It is too small for a growing child. But what could I do? The authorities say that the law is the law. I spoke to the Emperor about it. He says that he is not the government and has nothing to do with it. Nor can he intercede for me, he says, because he does not want to set a bad example." "Then the buying of the cow did not solve the problem," I ventured to remark. "The solution is only a partial one, your Highness!" The princess smiled in the manner of those who are satisfied with something they have done. "The problem is solved, monsieur!" she said. "This morning I shipped my boy to where the cow is." There was no longer any doubt that food regulation was on in real earnest. When a woman allied to the imperial house was unable to get for her child more milk than some other mother could get, things were indeed on the plane of equity. That every person should thereafter get his or her share of the available store of bread is almost an unnecessary statement. The Austrian civil authorities had not made a good job of food administration. They were too fond of the normal socio-economic institutions to do what under the circumstances had to be done, and were forever afraid that they would adopt some measure that might bring down the entire economic structure. And that fear was not unwarranted, by any means. The drain of the war had sapped the vitality of the state. Though Austria was for the time being a dead tree, the civil administrators thought that a dead tree was still better upright than prostrate. Emperor Charles had surrounded himself with young men, who were enterprising, rather than attached to the interests of the privileged. Among them was a man known as the "Red Prince." It was not the color of hair that gave this name to Prince Alois Lichtenstein. Odd as it may sound, this scion of one of the most prominent families in Europe is an ardent socialist in theory and to some extent in practice, though not anxious to be known as one. He holds that the chief promoters of socialism the world over are professional politicians who have seized upon a very valuable socio-economic idea for the purpose of personal promotion, and that under these circumstances he cannot support them. His influence with the new Emperor was great, and led to a rather "unsocialist" result--the appointment of a military food-dictator, General Höfer, a member of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. It was argued that equity in food distribution could be effected only by placing it in charge of a man who would treat all classes of the population as the drill-sergeant does his men. The military food-dictator had no favors to grant and none to expect. General Höfer acted on this principle, and despite the fact that he was handicapped by a top-heavy regulation machine and a shortage in all food essentials, he was shortly able to do for Austria what Dr. Karl Helfferich had done for Germany. In speaking here particularly of Austrian regulations when the crisis came I have a special objective. I am able to give in this manner a better picture of what was done throughout Central Europe. The necessity for a certain step in food regulation and the _modus operandi_ move in a narrower sphere. In Germany the situation had been met more or less as its phases developed; in Austria and Hungary this had not been done. There had been much neglect, with the result that all problems were permitted to reach that concrete form which extremity was bound to give them. So many threads had been pulled from the socio-economic fabric that holes could be seen, while the Germans had always managed in time to prevent more than the thinness of the thing showing. The profit system of distribution manages to overlook the actual time-and-place values of commodities. Under it things are not sold where and when they are most needed, but where and when they will give the largest profit. That the two conditions referred to are closely related must be admitted, since supply and demand are involved. But the profit-maker is ever more interested in promoting demand than he is in easing supply. He must see to it that the consumer is as eager to buy as the farmer is anxious to sell, if business is to be good. This state of affairs has its shortcomings even in time of peace. What it was to be in war I have sufficiently shown already. The regulations to which the food crisis of the fall of 1916 gave justification laid the ax to the middleman system of distribution. The several governments empowered their Food Commissions and Centrals to establish shortcuts from farm to kitchen that were entirely in the hands of the authorities. Though the Purchasing Central was even then not unknown, it came now to supplant the middleman entirely. The grain was bought from the farmer and turned over to the mills, where it was converted into flour at a fixed price. The miller was no longer able to buy grain for the purpose of holding the flour afterward until some commission-man or wholesaler made him a good offer. He was given the grain and had to account for every pound of it to the Food Commissioners. Nor was the flour turned loose after that. The Food Centrals held it and gave it directly to the bakers, who meanwhile had been licensed to act as distributors of bread. From so many bags of flour they had to produce so many loaves of bread, and since control by means of the bread-card coupon would have been as impossible as it was before, the Food Commissions assigned to each bakeshop so many consumers. The bread cards were issued in colored and numbered series. The color indicated the week in which they were valid, while the number indicated the bakeshop at which the consumer had to get his bread--had to get it in the sense that the baker was responsible for the amount the card called for. The Food Central had given the baker the necessary flour, and he had no excuse before the law when a consumer had cause for complaint. If there were one thousand consumers assigned to a bakeshop the authorities saw to it that the baker got one thousand pounds of flour, and from this one thousand loaves of bread had to be made and distributed. The system worked like the proverbial charm. It was known as _Rayonierung_--zonification. Within a few days everybody managed to get the ration of bread allowed by the government. The bread-lines disappeared of a sudden. It made no difference now whether a woman called for her bread at eight in the morning or at four in the afternoon. Her bread card called for a certain quantity of bread and the baker was responsible for that amount. It was his duty to see that the consumer did not go hungry. Much of the socio-economic machine was running again--not on its old track, but on a new one which the government had laid for it. And the thing was so simple that everybody wondered why it had not been done before. But the greed of the profiteer was not yet entirely foiled. Bakers started to stretch the flour into more loaves than the law allowed, and some of them even went so far as to still turn consumers away. These were to feel the iron hand of the government, however. I remember the case of a baker who had been in business for thirty years. His conduct under the new regulations had led to the charge that he was diverting flour, turned over to him by the Food Centrals, into illicit trading channels. The man was found guilty. Despite the fact that he had always been a very good citizen and had been reasonable in prices even when he had the chance to mulct an unprotected public, he lost his license. The judge who tried the case admitted that there were many extenuating circumstances. "But the time has come when the law must be applied in all its severity," he said. "That you have led an honorable life in the past will not influence me in the least. You have obviously failed to grasp that these are times in which the individual must not do anything that will cause suffering. There is enough of that as it is. I sentence you to a fine of five thousand crowns and the loss of your license to operate a bakery. Were it not for your gray hairs I would add confinement in prison with hard labor for one year. I wish the press to announce that the next offender, regardless of age and reputation, will get this limit." The baker paid enough for the ten loaves he had embezzled. His fate had a most salutary effect upon others. What bread is for the adult milk is for the baby. It, too, was zonified. The milk-line disappeared. A card similar to that governing the distribution of bread was adopted, and dealers were responsible for the quantities assigned them. The time which mothers had formerly wasted standing in line could now be given to the care of the household, and baby was benefited not a little by that. Simple and effective as these measures were, they could not be extended to every branch of distribution. In the consumption of bread, milk, and fats known quantities could be dealt with. What the supply on hand was could be more or less accurately established, and the ration issued was the very minimum in all cases. Waste from needless consumption was out of the question. It was different in other lines. The governments wanted to save as much food as was possible, and this could best be done by means of the food-line. The line had boosted prices into the unreasonable for the profiteer, but was now used by the several governments to limit consumption to the strictly necessary. To issue potatoes and other foods in given quantities was well enough, but not all that could be done. In some cases half a pound of potatoes per capita each day was too little; in others it was too much, though taken by and large it was a safe average ration. The same was true of cooking-flour and other foods. Those able to buy meat and fish stood in no need of what the government had to allow those who could not include these things in their bill of fare. On the other hand, it was impossible to divide consumers into classes and allow one class a quarter of a pound and another half a pound of potatoes each day. That would have led to confusion and waste. A scheme of equalization that would leave unneeded food in the control of the government became necessary. The food-line provided that in a thorough manner. The woman not needing food supplies on a certain day was not likely to stand in a food-line, especially when the weather was bad. She would do with what she had, so long as she knew that when her supply was exhausted she could get more. The cards she had would not be good next week, so that she was unable to demand what otherwise would have been an arrear. The green card was good for nothing during a week of red cards. Nor was there anything to be gained by keeping the green card in the hope that some time green cards would again be issued and honored. By the time all the color shades were exhausted the government changed the shape of the card and later printed on its head the number of the week. Hoarding was out of the question now. In fact, the remaining private hoard began to return to the channels of the legitimate scheme of distribution. Those who had stores of food drew upon them, now that the future seemed reasonably assured, leaving to others what they would have called for had the food-line been abolished altogether and supplies guaranteed, as in the case of bread, milk, and fats. It must not be accepted, however, that the war-tax and war-loan policy was abandoned in favor of this new scheme. The state was still exacting its pound of flesh and the officials were too bureaucratic to always do the best that could be done. To illustrate the point with a story, I will give here another instance of how Emperor Charles interfered now and then. He is an early riser and fond of civilian clothing--two things which made much of his work possible. He was looking over the food-lines in the Nineteenth Municipal District of Vienna one fine morning in December of 1916. Finally he came to a shop where petroleum was being issued. The line was long and moved slowly. Charles and the "Red Prince" wondered what the trouble could be. They soon found out. At first the shopkeeper resented the interest the two men were showing in his business. He wanted to see their authority in black on white. "That is all right, my dear man!" said the "Red Prince." "This man happens to be the Emperor." The storekeeper grew very humble of a sudden. "It is this way, your Majesty," he explained. "The authorities have limited the allowance of coal-oil for each household to one and one-half liters [2.14 pints] per week. This measuring apparatus [a pump on the petroleum-tank whose descending piston drives the liquid into a measuring container] does not show half-liters, only one, two, three, four, and five whole liters. The customers want all they are entitled to, and usually think that I am not giving them the proper measure when I guess at the half-liter between the lines showing one and two liters. To overcome the grumbling and avoid being reported to the authorities I am measuring the petroleum in the old way by means of this half-liter measure. That takes time, of course. While I am serving one in this manner I could serve three if I could use the pump." "Do these people have the necessary containers for a larger quantity than a liter and a half?" asked the Emperor. "Yes, your Majesty," replied the storekeeper. "Nearly all of them have cans that hold five liters. Before the war petroleum was always bought in that quantity." An hour afterward the burgomaster of Vienna, Dr. Weisskirchner, to whose province the fuel and light supply belonged, was called up by the Emperor on the telephone. The conversation was somewhat emphatic. The mayor felt that he was elected by the people of Vienna and did not have to take very much from the young man whom accident had made Emperor. He offered to resign if he could not be left a free hand in his own sphere. "You can do that any time you are ready!" said the young man at the other end of the wire. "But meanwhile see to it that petroleum in the city of Vienna is issued in lots of three liters every two weeks. The food-line is necessary as a disciplinary measure to prevent waste, but I do not want people to stand in line when it is unnecessary. I understand that nearly every shop selling petroleum uses these pumps. Kindly see to it that they can be used. Three liters in two weeks will do that." Thereafter petroleum was so issued. The case led to a general clean-up in every department of food administration and regulation. In a single week more than eight hundred men connected with it were dismissed and replaced. And within a month food distribution in Austria and Hungary was on a par with that of Germany. The question has often been asked, To what extent is the scarcity of food in Central Europe the cause of the ruthless submarine warfare? Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, the former German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, discussed that subject with me several times while I was interviewing him. On one occasion he was very insistent that Germany would have to shorten the war. Though there was no reason why in 1916 that statement should have seemed unusual to me, since the Central European public was thoroughly tired of the war and all it gave rise to, I was nevertheless struck by the insistence which the Secretary of State put into his remarks. I framed a question designed to give me the information I needed to throw light on this. "England has been trying to starve us," said Mr. Zimmermann. "She has not succeeded so far. In the submarine we have an arm which, as our naval experts maintain, is capable of letting England feel the war a little more in food matters. I am not so sure that it is a good idea to use this weapon for that purpose, seeing that the measures incident to its use would have to be sweeping. So far as I am concerned, I am not for a policy that would make us more enemies. We have enough of them, God knows." I may say that this was in a general way the policy of the Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg. I have been reliably informed that even Emperor William was at first an opponent of the ruthless-submarine-warfare idea. Much of his gray hair is due to criticism heaped upon Germany for acts which were thought justified, but which others found nothing short of outlawry. He had always been very sensitive in matters of honor affecting his person and the nation, and, like so many of those around him, had come to believe that Germany and the Germans could do no wrong. Emperor Francis Joseph had been a consistent opponent of the ruthless submarine war. The _Ancona_ and _Persia_ cases, with which I occupied myself especially, convinced the old man and those near him that a recourse to the submarine, even if it were to end the war more rapidly, was a double-edged sword. The old monarch, moreover, did not like the inhuman aspects of that sort of war, whether they were avoidable or not. He came from an age in which armies still fought with chivalry--when a truce could be had for the asking. From his familiars I learned that nothing pained the old man more than when a civilian population had to be evacuated or was otherwise subjected to hardship due to the war. His successor, Emperor Charles, held the same view. One has to know him to feel that he would not give willingly his consent to such a measure as the ruthless submarine war. His sympathies are nothing short of boyish in their warmth and sincerity. When he ascended the throne, he was an easy-going, smart lieutenant of cavalry rather than a ruler, though the load he was to shoulder has ripened him in a few months into an earnest man. In January of 1917 Emperor Charles went for a long visit to the German general headquarters in France. He was gone three days, despite the fact that he had lots of work to do at home in connection with the public-subsistence problems. Connections informed me that the submarine warfare was the business which had taken him into the German general headquarters. Count Ottokar Czernin, I learned, had also quietly slipped out of town, as had a number of Austro-Hungarian naval staff men and experts. It was Count Czernin who, a few weeks later, gave me an all-sufficient insight into the relations between the ruthless submarine warfare and the food question. It would not have been proper, under the circumstances, to publish without some words of comment even so detailed a statement as that contained in the joint German-Austro-Hungarian note announcing the advent of the ruthless submarine war. Something had to be said to show the public why the risks involved were being taken. The German public was taken into the confidence of the government in a speech made by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Reichstag. That was a convenient method. In Austria-Hungary that way was not open. The Reichsrath was not in session. Count Czernin decided that I should be the medium of bringing before the world why the Austro-Hungarian government had decided to adhere to Germany's new submarine policy. Although knowing what was coming, the actual announcement that the crisis was here was somewhat of a shock to me. Count Czernin was seated at his big mahogany roll-top desk as I entered the room. He rose to meet me. I noticed that there was a very serious expression on his face. "We have notified the neutral governments, and through them our enemies, that the submarine war zone has been extended and shipping to Great Britain and her allies laid under new restrictions," said the Foreign Minister, after I had taken a seat. With that he handed me a copy of the _note diplomatique_ with the request that I read it. This done, he placed before me a statement which he wished me to publish. "I should like you to publish that," he said. "If you don't care for the text the way it is written change it, but be sure that you get into your own version what I say there. At any rate, you will have to translate the thing. Be kind enough to let me see it before you telegraph it." I found that the remarks of the Foreign Minister were a little too formal and academic, and said so. So long as he could afford to take the public of the world into his confidence through my efforts, I could venture to suggest to him how to best present his case. "I will use the entire statement," I said. "But there is every reason why it should be supplemented by a better picture of the food situation here in Austria." Count Czernin rose and walked toward a corner of the room, where on a large table were spread out several maps executed in red and blue. I followed him. "These are the charts the note refers to," he said. "This white lane has been left open for the Greeks and this for the Americans. What is your opinion?" My opinion does not matter here. "Well, if the worst comes to pass, we can't help it," said Count Czernin, returning to his desk. "We have to use the submarine to shorten the war. There is such a thing as being victorious at the front and defeated at home. The food situation here is most pressing. Our people are half starved all the time. Babies perish by the thousands because we cannot give them enough milk. Unless this war comes to an end soon, the effects of this chronic food shortage will impair the health of the entire nation. We must try to prevent that. It is our duty to prevent that by all means. "I grant that there are certain technicalities of international law involved here. But we can no longer regard them. It is all very well for some men to set themselves up as sole arbiters of international law, nor would we have any objection against that if these arbiters dealt as fairly with one side as they have dealt with the other. But they have not. The Central governments could not do anything right for some of their friends--the American government included, by the way--if they stood on their heads. "We have made peace offers. I have told you several times that we do not want any of our enemies' territory. We have never let it be understood that we wanted so much as a shovelful of earth that does not belong to us. At the same time, we do not want to lose territory, nor do we want to pay a war indemnity, since this war is not of our making. "We have been willing to make peace and our offer has been spurned. The food question, as you know, is acute. We simply cannot raise the food we need so long as we must keep in the field millions of our best farmers. That leaves but one avenue open. We must shorten the war. We believe that it will be shortened by the use of the submarine. For that reason we have decided to use the arm for that purpose. "I hope that our calculations are correct. I am no expert in that field. I also realize that a whole flood of declarations of war may follow our step. All that has been considered, however--even the possibility of the United States joining our enemies. At any rate, there was no way out. It is all very well for some to say what we are to do and are not to do, but we are fighting for our very existence. To that fight has been added the food shortage, whose aspects have never been graver than now. "I feel that I must address myself especially to the American public. The American government has condemned us out of court. I would like to have an American jury hear this case. The American government has denied us the right of self-defense by taking the stand that we must not use the submarine as a means against the enemy merchant fleet and such neutral shipping as supplies Great Britain and her allies with foodstuffs." Count Czernin grew more bitter as he progressed. He is an able speaker even in the English tongue. That afternoon I had on the wires one of the greatest newspaper stories, in point of importance, that have ever been despatched. I spoke to Count Stefan Tisza on the food question and its bearing upon the submarine warfare. We discussed the subject for almost two hours. When the interview ended I asked the Hungarian Premier how much of it I could use. "Just say this much for me," he remarked. "For the United States to enter the European War would be a crime against humanity." That is the shortest interview I ever made out of so long a session. As a matter of fact, Count Tisza said enough for a book. I may say, however, that Count Tisza found in the food question whatever justification there would be needed for anything the Central governments might do. In Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of Dr. Richard von Kühlmann, the present German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Doctor von Kühlmann was then the _conseiller_ of the German embassy at that point. He was somewhat of an admirer of the British and their ways, a fact which later caused his promotion to minister at The Hague. In all things he was delightfully objective--one of the few people I have met who did not mistake their wishes and desires for the fact. I met Doctor von Kühlmann again in Vienna, while he was ambassador at Constantinople. But ambassadors are not supposed to talk for publication. Be that as it may, Doctor von Kühlmann had not even then made up his mind that recourse to the submarine warfare was the proper thing under the circumstances, no matter how great the prospect of success might appear. I had found him in Constantinople, as well as in The Hague, a consistent opponent of the submarine as a means against merchantmen. He was wholly opposed to the ruthless submarine warfare, but had no say in the decision finally reached. The British _Aushungerungspolitik_--policy of starvation--was well in the limelight in those days. It had been discussed in the Central European press _ad nauseam_ before. Now, however, it was discussed from the angle of actual achievement. Shocking conditions were revealed--they were shocking to the better classes, not to me, for I had spent many an hour keeping in touch with public-subsistence matters. After all, this was but a new counter-irritant. The Austrian and Hungarian public, especially, did not fancy having the United States as an enemy. Though newspaper writers would belittle the military importance of the United States, many of the calmer heads in the population did not swallow that so easily. In the course of almost three years of warfare the public had come to understand that often the newspapers were woefully mistaken, and that some of them were in the habit of purposely misleading their readers, a natural result of a drastic censorship. There is no greater liar than the censor--nor a more dangerous one. By systematically suppressing one side of an issue or thing, the unpleasant one, he fosters a deception in the public mind that is as pitiful to behold as it is stupendous. Now the conjuncture was such, however, that a discussion in the newspapers of the hardship suffered and the damage done by Great Britain's starvation blockade could not but fan the Central states population into a veritable frenzy. The British were to experience themselves what it was to go hungry day after day. That thought overshadowed the possibility that the United States might soon be among the open enemies of the Central states. A secret enemy the United States had long been regarded. XIV SUBSISTING AT THE PUBLIC CRIB To eat under government supervision is not pleasant. It is almost like taking the medicine which a physician has prescribed. You go to the food authorities of your district, prove that you are really the person you pretend to be, and thereby establish your claim to food, and after that you do your best to get that food. Living at hotels, I was able to let others do the worrying. Each morning I would find at my door--provided nobody had stolen it--my daily ration of bread, of varying size--300 grams (10.5 ounces) in Germany, 240 grams (8.4 ounces) in Budapest, and 210 grams (7.3 ounces) in Vienna. At the front I fared better, for there my allowance was 400 grams (14 ounces) and often more if I cared to take it. For the other eatables I also let the manager worry. That worry was not great, though, so long as the food "speak-easy" was in operation. The hotel could afford to pay good prices, and the patrons did not mind if the dishes were from 150 to 300 per cent. dearer than the law allowed. The law, on the other hand, saw no reason why it should protect people who live in hotels--until it was seen that this policy was not wise on account of the heavy drafts it made on the scant stores. Whether a small steak costs 8 marks or 20 makes no difference to people who can afford to eat steak at 8 marks and lamb cutlets at 15. And to these people it also makes no difference whether they consume their legal ration or two such rations. [Illustration: ONE OF THE BREAD CARDS USED IN VIENNA AND LOWER AUSTRIA (transciption follows)] Niederösterreich. Tages-Ausweis über den Verbrauch von 210 _g_ Brot Gültig nur am ---- 1915 Verkauf nur nach Gewicht gegen Vorlegung der Ausweiskarte und Abtrennung eines entsprechenden Abschnittes zulässig. Nicht übertragbar! Sorgfältig aufbewahren! Nachdruck verboten! Strafbestimmungen. Zuwiderhandlungen werden an dem Verkäufer wie an dem Käufer mit Geldstrafen bis zu 5000 K oder mit Arrest bis zu 6 Monaten geahndet. Bei einer Verurteilung kann auf den Verlust einer Gewerbeberechtigung erkannt werden. Fälschung der Ausweiskarte wird nach dem Strafgesetze bestraft. K. k. n. ö. Statthalterei. Many months of war passed before that element began to feel the war at all. But it had to come to that in the end. Two people feeling the same degree of hunger are far better company than two who form opposite poles in that respect. Magnetic positive and negative never could be so repellent. Nor is this all one-sided. One would naturally expect that in such a case the underfed would harbor hard feelings toward the overfed. That is not always the case, however. One day a lady belonging to Central Europe's old nobility said to me: "Well, it is getting worse every day. First they took my automobiles. Now they have taken my last horses. Taxis and cabs are hard to get. I have to travel on the street-cars now. It is most annoying." [Illustration: THE BREAD CARD ISSUED BY THE FOOD AUTHORITIES OF BERLIN (transciption follows)] Nicht Nicht übertragbar übertragbar Berlin und Nachbarorte. Tages-Brotkarte Nur gültig für den ---- 1916 Ohne Ausfüllung des Datums ungültig. Rückseite beachten! I ventured the opinion that street-car travel was a tribulation. The cars were always overcrowded. "It is not that," explained the lady. "It is the smell." "Of the unwashed multitude?" "Yes! And--" "And, madame?" "Something else," said the woman, with some embarrassment. "I take it that you refer to the odor that comes from underfed bodies," I remarked. "Precisely," assented the noble lady. "Have you also noticed it?" "Have you observed it recently?" I asked. "A few days ago. The smell was new to me." "Reminded you, perhaps, of the faint odor of a cadaver far off?" The light of complete understanding came into the woman's eyes. "Exactly, that is it. Do you know, I have been trying ever since then to identify the odor. But that is too shocking to think of. And yet you are right. It is exactly that. How do you account for it?" "Malnutrition! The waste of tissue due to that is a process not wholly dissimilar to the dissolution which sets in at death," I explained. I complimented the woman on her fine powers of discernment. The smell was not generally identified. I was familiar with it for the reason that I had my attention drawn to it first in South Africa among some underfed Indian coolies, and later I had detected it again in Mexico among starving peons. "Good God!" exclaimed the lady, after a period of serious thought. "Have we come to that?" I assured her that the situation was not as alarming as it looked. In the end the healthy constitution would adjust itself to the shortage in alimentation. No fit adult would perish by it, though it would be hard on persons over fifty years of age. There could be no doubt that many of them would die of malnutrition before the war was over. Babies, also, would cease to live in large numbers if their diet had to be similarly restricted. The smell had a repellent effect upon the woman. I met her many times after that and learned that it was haunting her. Her desire to keep it out of her palatial residence caused her to pay particular attention to the food of her servants. The case was most interesting to me. I had sat for days and nights in the trenches on Gallipoli, among thousands of unburied dead, and there was little that could offend my olfactory nerves after that, if indeed it had been possible before, seeing that I had for many weary months followed the revolutions in Mexico. Thus immune to the effects of the condition in question, I was able to watch closely a very interesting psychological phenomenon. I found that it was torture for the woman to get near a crowd of underfed people. She began to shrink at their very sight. "I take it that you fear death very much, madame," I said, one day. "I dread the very thought of it," was the frank reply. "But why should you?" I asked. "It is a perfectly natural condition." "But an unjust one," came the indignant answer. "Nothing in nature is unjust," I said. "Nature knows neither right nor wrong. If she did, she would either cease to produce food altogether for your people and state, or she would produce all the more--if war can be laid at the door of nature in arguments of right and wrong." "But that has nothing to do with the smell--that awful smell," insisted the woman. "It has not, to be sure. Our conversation was side-tracked by your remark that death was an unjust natural condition. Your words show that you are living in illusions. You have an inherent loathing for the underfed, because your instincts associate the smell of their bodies with dissolution itself. But you are not the only one so affected. Thousands of others feel the same discomfiture." The long and short of the discussion was that I proved to my own satisfaction that the woman was one of those self-centered creatures to whom pity is merely known as a noun. I suggested discreetly that a little more sympathy for the afflicted, a little more love for her kind, would prove a first-class deodorant. Let us examine what the diet of the Central states population then was. In doing this, it must be borne in mind that the rural population, always at the fountainhead of food, fared much better. The conditions pictured are essentially those of the industrial classes in the towns and cities. The adult, after rising in the morning, would drink a cup or two of some substitute for coffee, or very bad tea, without milk, if there were children, and with very little sugar. With this would be eaten a third of the day's ration of bread, about two and one-half ounces. That meal had to suffice until noon, when a plate of soup, a slice of bread, two ounces of meat, and two ounces of vegetables were taken, to be supplemented by a small quantity of farinaceous food in the form of some pudding or cake. A cup of coffee substitute would go with this meal. At four in the afternoon another cup of substitute coffee or poor tea would be taken by those who could afford it, usually together with cake equal to a half-ounce of wheat flour and a quarter-ounce of sugar. The evening meal would be the same as dinner, without soup and pudding, a little cheese and the remaining seventy grams of bread taking their place. As a rule, a glass of beer was drunk with this. But the nutritive value of that was small now. It was more a chemical than a malt product, and contained at best but 4 per cent. of alcohol. That was the meal allowed by the government. Those who had the opportunity never allowed themselves to be satisfied with it. But the vast majority of people received that and nothing more, especially later when fish and fruit had soared skyward in price. A chemical analysis of this bill of fare would probably show that it was ample to sustain human life. Some American food crank might even discover that there was a little to spare. But the trouble is that often the scientific ration is compounded by persons who lead an inactive life and who at best make exercise the purpose of special study and effort. The bulk of any population, however, must work hard, and must eat more if elimination is not to exceed assimilation. The food scientist has his value. But he generally overestimates that value himself. Thus it happened that the Central states governments were soon obliged to allow a larger ration of bread, sugar, and fat to all persons engaged in heavy labor. At first this was overlooked here and there, and, bureaucratism being still strong then, strikes were necessary to persuade the governments to meet the reasonable demands of the hard-labor classes. [Illustration: THE BUTTER AND FAT CARD OF DRESDEN (transciption follows)] Der Rat zu Dresden. Bezugskarte für ¼ kg (½ Pfd.) Butter oder Margarine oder Speisefett oder Kunstspeisefett in der Zeit vom 30.11. bis 27.12.15. Scant as this daily fare was, it was not everybody who could add to it the allowance of meat. The unskilled laborer, for instance, did not earn enough to buy beef at from sixty to seventy-five cents American a pound, the cheapest cut being sold at that price. As a rule, he tried to get the small quantity of animal fat, lard, suet, or tallow which the authorities allowed him. But often he failed to get it. Potato soup and bread, and maybe a little pudding, would in that case make up the meal. If luck had been good there might also be a little jam or some dried fruit to go into the "pudding," which otherwise would be just plain wheat flour, of which each family was then given five ounces daily. If there were children to take care of, the wheat flour had to be left to them, for the reason that the quantity of milk allowed them was entirely too small, amounting in the case of children from three to four years to seven-eighths of a pint daily, with 1.76 pints the limit for any infant. [Illustration: MILK CARD ISSUED TO NURSING MOTHERS AND THE SICK AT NEUKOLLN, A SUBURB OF BERLIN (transciption follows)] Lfd. Nr. Vor-u. Zuname: Straße Nr. Milchkarte für stillende Mütter und Kranke Giltig für den Monat November 1915 Der Inhaber dieser Karte ist während der Gültigkeitsdauer berechtigt, aus einem der auf der Rückseite bezeichneten Geschäfte der Meierei J. Schmidt Söhne zum Preise von 28 Pf. täglich 1 Liter Vollmilch zu beziehen. Die Karte ist an jedem Tage beim Kauf der Milch vorzulegen und wird nach erfolgter Ausgabe der Milch durchlocht. Am letzten Gültigkeitstage ist die Karte gegen Umtausch einer neuen Karte in den Milchgeschäften zurückzugeben. Sind die Voraussetzungen für die Berechtigung der Milchentnahme fortgefallen, wird die Karte eingezogen. Neukölln, den ---- 1915 Der Magistrat Even this fare might have been bearable had it been supplemented by the usual amount of sugar. In the past this had been as much as six pounds per month and person; now the regulations permitted the consumption of only 2.205 pounds per month and capita for the urban and 1.65 pounds for the rural population, while persons engaged at hard labor were allowed 2.75 pounds. Parents who were willing to surrender all to their children went without sugar entirely. How these victuals were obtained by the woman of the household has already been indicated. Heretofore it had been necessary to stand in line for bread, fat, and milk, the latter two being usually obtained simultaneously at the Fat Central. The establishing of food zones--_Rayons_--had obviated that. The measure was a great relief, but since it governed no more than the distribution of these articles, much standing in line was still necessary. The disciplinary value of the food-line was still kept in mind in the distribution of potatoes, beets (_Wrucken_), wheat flour; now and then other cereal products, such as macaroni, biscuits, buckwheat flour, and oatmeal; meat when the city distributed it at or below cost price; fuel, coal-oil, sugar, and all groceries; soap and washing-powder; shoes, clothing, textiles of any sort, thread, and tobacco. Now and then dried fruits would be distributed, and occasionally jam, though with the ever-increasing shortage in sugar little fruit was being preserved in that manner. Once a week the solitary egg per capita would have to be waited for. One egg was not much to waste hours for, and usually people did not deem it worth while to claim it, if they had no children. The woman who had children was glad, however, to get the four, five, or six eggs to which her family was entitled. It might mean that the youngest would be able to get an egg every other day. Such, indeed, was the intention of the government, and such was the purpose of the food-line. It would happen now and then that there were so many who did not claim their weekly egg that the woman with children got a double ration! For many of these things certain days had been set aside. Potatoes could be drawn every other day, for instance, while wheat flour was issued every fourth day, meat on all "meat" days, fuel once a week, petroleum every two weeks, and sugar once a month. Shoes and clothing were issued only after the Clothing Central had been satisfied that they were needed. It was the same with thread, except silk thread, and with tobacco one took a chance. Other articles were distributed when they were available, a notice of the date being posted near some shop where the food-liners could see it. The arrival of "municipal" beef and pork was generally advertised in the newspapers. In this manner, then, was the government ration obtained. To it could be added fresh, salted, and dried fish, when available, and all the green vegetables and salads one wanted--peas and beans in season; in their dry form they were hard to get at any time. For a while, also, sausage could be bought without a ticket. The government put a stop to that when it was found that much illicit trading was done with that class of food. Many hours were wasted by the women of the household in the course of a month by standing in line. The newspapers conducted campaigns against this seemingly heartless policy of the food authorities, but without result. The food-line was looked upon as essential in food conservation, as indeed it was. In the course of time it had been shown that people would call for food allotted them by their tickets, whether they needed it or not, and would then sell it again with a profit. To assure everybody of a supply in that manner would also lead to waste in consumption. Those who did not absolutely need all of their ration did not go to the trouble of standing in a food-line for hours in all sorts of weather. Subsisting at the public crib was unpleasant business under such conditions, but there was no way out. The food "speak-easy" was almost as much a thing of the past as was the groaning board of ante-bellum times, though it was by no means entirely eradicated, as the trial of a small ring of food sharks in Berlin on October 10, 1917, demonstrated. How hard it was for the several governments to really eradicate the illicit trading in food, once this had been decided upon, was shown in this case, which involved one of the largest caches ever discovered. There were hidden in this cache 27,000 pounds of wheat flour, 300 pounds of chocolate, 15,000 pounds of honey, 40,000 cigars, and 52,000 pounds of copper, tin, and brass. The odd part of the case was that to this hoard belonged also 24 head of cattle and 9 pigs. On the same day there was tried in a Berlin jury court a baker who had "saved" 6,500 pounds of flour from the amounts which the food authorities had turned over to him. It was shown that the baker had sold the loaves of bread he was expected to bake from the flour. Of course he had adulterated the dough to make the loaves weigh what the law required and what the bread tickets called for. A fine profit had been made on the flour. The food authorities had assigned him the supply at $9 for each 200-pound bag. Some of it he sold illicitly at $55 per sack to a man who had again sold it for $68 to another chain-trader, who later disposed of it to a consumer for $80 a bag. There can be no doubt that this flour made expensive bread, but it seems that there were people willing to pay the price. But forty cents for a pound of wheat flour was something which only a millionaire war purveyor could afford. All others below that class, materially, ate the government ration and stood in line. Sad in the extreme was the spectacle which the food-lines in the workman quarters of Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest presented. Upon the women of the households the war was being visited hardest. To see a pair of good shoes on a woman came to be a rare sight. Skirts were worn as long as the fabric would keep together, and little could be said of the shawls that draped pinched faces, sloping shoulders, and flat breasts. There were children in those food-lines. Thin feet stuck in the torn shoes, and mother's shawl served to supplement the hard-worn dress or patched suit. Everything had to go for food, and prices of apparel were so high that buying it was out of the question. Once I set out for the purpose of finding in these food-lines a face that did not show the ravages of hunger. That was in Berlin. Four long lines were inspected with the closest scrutiny. But among the three hundred applicants for food there was not one who had had enough to eat in weeks. In the case of the younger women and the children the skin was drawn hard to the bones and bloodless. Eyes had fallen deeper into the sockets. From the lips all color was gone, and the tufts of hair that fell over parchmented foreheads seemed dull and famished--sign that the nervous vigor of the body was departing with the physical strength. I do not think sentimentalism of any sort can be laid at my door. But I must confess that these food-lines often came near getting the best of me. In the end they began to haunt me, and generally a great feeling of relief came over me when I saw that even the last of a line received what they had come for. The poorer working classes were not getting enough food under the system, nor were they always able to prepare the little they got in the most advantageous manner. While the effort had been made to instruct women how to get the maximum of nutriment from any article, and how to combine the allowances into a well-balanced ration, results in that direction were not satisfying. Many of the women would spend too much money on vegetable foods that filled the stomach but did not nourish. Others again, when a few extra cents came into their hands, would buy such costly things as geese and other fowl. Cast adrift upon an ocean of food scarcity and high prices, these poor souls were utterly unable to depart from their cooking methods, which had tastiness rather than greatest utility for their purpose. The consequence was that the ration, which according to food experts was ample, proved to be anything but that. In Berlin the so-called war kitchens were introduced. A wheeled boiler, such as used by the army, was the principal equipment of these kitchens. Very palatable stews were cooked in them and then distributed from house to house against the requisite number of food-card checks. The innovation would have been a success but for the fact that most people believed they were not getting enough for the coupons they had surrendered. The stew could not be weighed, and often there would be a little more meat in one dipperful than in another. There was grumbling, and finally the women who were giving their time and labor to the war kitchens were accused of partiality. The kitchens were continued a while longer. They finally disappeared because nobody cared to patronize them any more. It is possible, also, that people had grown tired of the stew eternal. The _Volksküchen_--people's kitchens--and those war kitchens which were established when the war began, operated with more success. The public was used to them. They were located in buildings, so that one could eat the food there and then, and their bill of fare was not limited to stews. Being managed by trained people, these kitchens rendered splendid service to both the public and the food-regulators. I have eaten in several of them and found that the food was invariably good. A class that had been hit hard by the war was that of the small office-holders and the less successful professionals, artists included. They were a proud lot--rather starve than eat at a war kitchen or accept favors from any one. The hardships they suffered are almost indescribable. While the several governments had made their small officials a war allowance, the addition to the income which that gave was almost negligible. At an average it represented an increase in salary of 20 per cent., while food, and the decencies of life, which this class found as indispensable as the necessities themselves, had gone up to an average of 180 per cent. The effect of this rise was catastrophic in these households. Before the war their life had been the shabby genteel; it was now polite misery. Yet the class was one of the most essential and deserved a better fate. In it could be found some of the best men and women in Central Europe. Devoted to the régime with heart and soul, this class had never joined in any numbers the co-operative consumption societies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, because of their socialistic tendencies. This delivered them now into the hands of the food shark. Finally, the several governments, realizing that the small official--_Beamte_--had to be given some thought, established purchasing centrals for them, where food could be had at cost and now and then below cost. Nothing of the sort was done for the small professionals, however. [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin TRAVELING-KITCHEN IN BERLIN A food-conservation measure that failed, because the people grew tired of the stew dispensed by the "Food Transport Wagon."] [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin STREET TRAM AS FREIGHT CARRIER As horses and motor fuel became scarce the street traction systems were given over part of each day to transporting merchandise.] Men and women of means came to the rescue of that class in the very nick of time. But a great deal of tact had to be used before these war sufferers could be induced to accept help. It was not even easy to succor them privately, as Mrs. Frederick C. Penfield, wife of the American ambassador at Vienna, had occasion enough to learn. To alleviate their condition en masse, as would have to be done if the means available were to be given their greatest value, was almost impossible. Shabby gentility is nine-tenths false pride, and nothing is so hard to get rid of as the things that are false. But there were those who understand the class. Among them I must name Frau Doctor Schwarzwald, of Vienna, whose co-operative dining-room was a great success, so long as she could get the necessary victuals, something that was not always easy. I had taken a mild interest in the charities and institutions of Frau Schwarzwald, and once came _near_ getting a barrel of flour and a hundred pounds of sugar for the co-operative dining-room and its frayed patrons. I announced the fact prematurely at a gathering of the patron angels of the dining-room, among whom was Frau Cary-Michaelis, the Danish novelist and poetess. Before I knew what was going on the enthusiastic patron angels had each kissed me--on the cheek, of course. Then they danced for joy, and next day I was forced to announce that, after all, there would be no flour and no sugar. The owner of the goods--not a food shark, but an American diplomatist--had disposed of them to another American diplomatist. I thought it best to do penance for this. So I visited a friend of mine and held him up for one thousand crowns for the co-operative dining-room. That saved me. I was very careful thereafter not to make rash promises. After all, I was sure of the flour and sugar, and so happy over my capture that I had a hard time keeping to myself the glad news as long as I did, which was one whole day. In that dining-room ate a good percentage of Vienna's true intellectuals--painters, sculptors, architects, poets, and writers all unable just then to earn a living. I was not always so unsuccessful, however. For another circle of down-at-the-heels I smuggled out of the food zone of the Ninth German Army in Roumania the smoked half of a pig, fifty pounds of real wheat flour, and thirty pounds of lard. Falkenhayn might command that army at the front, but for several days I was its only hero, nevertheless. But in food matters I had proved a good _buscalero_ before. The food craze was on. Women who never before in their lives had talked of food now spoke of that instead of fashions. The gossip of the _salon_ was abandoned in favor of the dining-room scandals. So-and-so had eaten meat on a meatless day, and this or that person was having wheat bread and rolls baked by the cook. The interesting part of it was that usually the very people who found fault with such trespass did the same thing, but were careful enough not to have guests on that day. In the same winter I was to see at Budapest an incident that fitted well into the times. I was one of the few non-Magyars who attended the coronation dinner of King Charles and Queen Zita. The lord chief steward brought in a huge fish on a golden platter and set it down before the royal couple. The King and Queen bowed to the gorgeously attired functionary, who thereupon withdrew, taking the fish with him. We all got the smell of it. I had eaten breakfast at four in the morning. Now it was two in the afternoon and a morsel of something would have been very much in order. Since seven I had been in the coronation church. It was none too well heated and I remember how the cold went through my dress shirt. But the fish disappeared--to be given to the poor, as King Stefan had ordained in the year A.D. 1001. In a few minutes the lord chief steward--I think that is the man's title--reappeared. This time he carried before him a huge roast. (Business as before.) For a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth time the high functionary paraded enticing victuals through the hall without coming down to business. It was a lonesome affair, that dinner, and everybody was glad when the King had taken a sip of wine and the cries of, "_Eljen a kiralyi_," put a period to that phase of the coronation. How well that ceremony fitted into the times! King Charles wanted to be impartial, and a few days later he inspected the dining-car attached to the train that was to take his brother Maximilian to Constantinople. In the kitchen of the car he found some rolls and some wheat flour. He had them removed. "I know, Max, that you didn't order these things," he said to his brother. "The dining-car management has not yet come to understand that no favors must be shown anybody. If the steward of the car should by any chance buy flour in Bulgaria or Turkey, do me the favor to pitch him out of the window when the car is running, so that he will fall real hard. That is the only way in which we can make a dent into special eating privileges." By the way, there was a time when the present Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary and his Empress-Queen had to live on a sort of sandwich income, and were glad when the monthly allowance from the archducal exchequer was increased a little when the present crown-prince was born. But that is another story. XV THE WEAR AND TEAR OF WAR It never rains but it pours. It was so in Central Europe. Not alone had the production of food by the soil been hamstrung by the never-ending mobilizations of labor for military purposes, but the means of communication began to fail from the same cause. If it takes a stitch in time to save nine in ordinary walks of life, it takes a stitch in time to save ninety, and often all, in railroading. The improperly ballasted tie means too great a strain in the fish-plate. It may also mean a fractured rail. Both may lead to costly train wrecks. But the makeshifts employed in Central Europe averted much of this. Where the regular track gangs had been depleted by the mobilizations, women and Russian prisoners-of-war took their places. But the labor of these was not as good as that given by the old hands. There is a knack even in pushing crushed rock under a railroad tie. Under one tie too much may be placed and not enough under another, so that the very work that is to keep the rail-bed evenly supported may result in an entirely different state of affairs. Two ties lifted up too much by the ballasting may cause the entire rail to be unevenly supported, so that it would have been better to leave the work undone altogether. Thus it came that all railroad traffic had to be reduced in speed. Expresses were discontinued on all lines except the trunk routes that were kept in fairly good condition for that very purpose. Passenger-trains ran 20 miles an hour instead of 40 and 45, and freight-trains had their schedules reduced to 12. That meant, of course, that with the same motive power and rolling stock about half the normal traffic could be maintained. But that was not all. The maintenance departments of rolling stock and motive power had also been obliged to furnish their quota of men for service in the field. At first the several governments did not draw heavily on the mechanicians in the railroad service, but ultimately they had to do this. The repair work was done by men less fitted, and cleaning had to be left to the women and prisoners-of-war. Soon the "flat" wheels were many on the air-braked passenger-cars. It came to be a blessing that the freight-trains were still being braked by hand, for otherwise freight traffic would have suffered more than it did. I took some interest in railroading, and a rather superficial course in it at the military academy had made me acquainted with a few of its essentials. Close attention to the question in the fall of 1916 gave me the impression that it would not be long before the only thing of value of most Central European railroads would be the right of way and its embankments, bridges, cuts, and tunnels--the things known collectively as _Bahnkörper_--line body. When I first made the acquaintance of Central Europe's railroads, I found them in a high state of efficiency. The rail-bed was good, the rolling stock showed the best of care--repairs were made in time, and paint was not stinted--and the motive power was of the very best. Efficiency had been aimed at and obtained. To be sure, there was nothing that could compare with the best railroading in the United States. The American train _de luxe_ was unknown. But if its comforts could not be had, the communities, on the other hand, did not have to bear the waste that comes from it. Passenger travel, moreover, on most lines, moved in so small a radius that the American "Limited" was not called for, though the speed of express-trains running between the principal cities was no mean performance at that. It was not long before all this was to vanish. The shortage in labor began to be seriously felt. There were times, in fact, when the railroad schedules showed the initiated exactly what labor-supply conditions were. When an hour was added to the time of transit from Berlin to Vienna I knew that the pinch in labor was beginning to be badly felt. When one of the expresses running between the two capitals was taken off altogether, I surmised that things were in bad shape, and when ultimately the number of passenger-trains running between Vienna and Budapest was reduced from twelve each day to four, it was plain enough that railroading in Austria-Hungary was down to one-third of what it had been heretofore--lower than that, even, since the government tried to keep up as good a front as possible. In Germany things were a little better, owing to the close husbanding of resources which had been done at the very outbreak of the war. But to Germany the railroads were also more essential than to Austria-Hungary, so that, by and large, there really was little difference. The neatly kept freight-cars degenerated into weather-beaten boxes on wheels. The oil that would have been needed to paint them was now an article of food and was required also in the manufacture of certain explosives. So long as the car body would stand on the chassis it was not repaired. Wood being plentiful, it was thought better economy to replace the old body by a new one when finally it became dangerous to pull it about any longer. It was the same with the passenger-cars. The immaculate cleanliness which I had learned to associate with them was replaced by the most slovenly sweeping. Dusting was hardly ever attempted. From the toilet-rooms disappeared soap and towel, and usually there was no water in the tank. The air-brakes acted with a jar, as the shoes gripped the flat surface of the wheels, and soon the little doll trains were an abomination, especially when, for the sake of economy, all draperies were removed from the doors and windows. The motive power was in no better condition. The engines leaked at every steam and water joint, and to get within 60 per cent. of the normal efficiency for the amount of coal consumed was a remarkable performance. It meant that the engineer, who was getting an allowance on all coal saved, had to spend his free time repairing the "nag" he ran. Constantly traveling from one capital to another, and from one front to the other, I was able to gauge the rapid deterioration of the railroads. To see in cold weather one of the locomotives hidden entirely in clouds of steam that was intended for the cylinders caused one to wonder how the thing moved at all. The closed-in passenger stations reminded me of laundries, so thick were the vapors of escaping steam. Despite the reduction in running-time, wrecks multiplied alarmingly. It seemed difficult to keep anything on the rails at more than a snail's pace. To the freight movement this was disastrous. Its volume had to be reduced to a quarter of what it had been. This caused great hardship, despite the fact that the distribution and consumption zones had put an end to all unnecessary trundling about of merchandise. In the winter the poor freight service led to the exposure of foodstuffs to the cold. It was nothing unusual to find that a whole train-load of potatoes had frozen in transit and become unfit for human consumption. Other shipments suffered similarly. In countries that were forced to count on every crumb that was a great loss. It could not be overcome under the circumstances. In the winter the lame railroads were unable to bring the needed quantities of coal into the population centers. This was especially true of the winter of 1916-17. Everybody having lived from hand to mouth throughout the summer, and the government having unwisely put a ban on the laying-in of fuel-supplies, there was little coal on hand when the cold weather came. Inside of three weeks the available stores were consumed. The insistent demand for fuel led to a rush upon the lines tapping the coal-fields. Congestion resulted, and when the tangle was worst heavy snows began to fall. The railroads failed utterly. Electric street traction shared the fate of the railroads. To save fuel the service was limited to the absolutely necessary. Heretofore most lines had not permitted passengers to stand in the cars. Now standing was the rule. When one half of the rolling stock had been run into the ground, the other half was put on the streets, and that, too, was shortly ruined. The traction-service corporations, private and municipal alike, had been shown scant mercy by the several governments when men were needed. Soon they were without the hands to keep their rolling stock in good repair. Most of the car manufacturers had meanwhile gone into the ammunition business, so that it was impossible to get new rolling stock. Further drafts on the employees of the systems led to the employment of women conductors, and, in some cases, drivers. While these women did their best, it could not be said that this was any too good on lines that were much frequented. Travel on the street cars became a trial. People who never before had walked did so now. As was to be expected, the country roads were neglected. Soon the fine macadamized surfaces were full of holes, and after that it was a question of days usually when the road changed places with a ditch of deep mire. The farmer, bringing food to the railroad station or town, moved now about half of what was formerly a load. He was short of draft animals. Levy after levy was made by the military authorities. By the end of 1916 the farms in Central Europe had been deprived of half their horses. It has been said that a man may be known by his clothing. That is not always true. There is no doubt, however, that a community may well be recognized by its means of transportation. Travel in every civilized country has proved that to my full satisfaction. I once met a man who insisted that if taken blindfolded from one country into another he would be able to tell among what people he found himself, or what sort of gentry they were, merely by traveling on their railroads. To which I would add that he could also very easily determine what sort of government they had, if he had an ear for all the "_Es ist Verboten_," "_C'est défendu_," and "It is not allowed" which usually grace the interiors of stations and car. Travel was the hardest sort of labor in the Central European states. I was obliged to do much of it. And most of it I did standing. I have made the following all-afoot trips: Berlin-Bentheim, Berlin-Dresden, Berlin-Cologne, Vienna-Budapest, and Vienna-Trieste, and this at a time when the regular running-time had become 80 to 150 per cent. longer. The means of communication of Central Europe had sunk to the level of the nag before the ragman's cart. The shay was not good-looking, either. But the wear and tear of war did not affect the means of communication alone. Every building in Central Europe suffered heavily from it. Materials and labor for upkeep were hard to get at any time and were costly. Real property, moreover, suffered under the moratorium, while the constantly increasing taxes left little in the pocket of the owner to pay for repairs. As already stated, paint was hard to get. Exposed to the weather, the naked wood decayed. Nor were varnishes to be had for the protection of interior woodwork. Many manufacturing plants had to be closed, first of all those which before the war had depended upon the foreign market. The entire doll industry, for instance, suspended work. In other branches of manufacture the closing-down was partial, as in the case of the textile-mills. Not alone had the buildings to be neglected in this instance, but a great deal of valuable machinery was abandoned to rust. As the stock of copper, tin, and brass declined the several governments requisitioned the metals of this sort that were found in idle plants and turned them over to the manufacturers of ammunition. While the owners were paid the price which these metals cost in the form of machinery parts and the like, the economic loss to the community was, nevertheless, heavy. Farm implements and equipment also suffered much from inattention. Tens of thousands of horses perished at the fronts and almost every one of them meant a loss to some farm. The money that had been paid for them had usually been given back to the government in the form of taxes, so that now the farmer had lost his horse or horses in much the same manner as if some epidemic had been at work. Valuable draft and milk animals were requisitioned to provide meat for the armies. In certain districts the lack of vitriol had resulted in the destruction of vineyards and orchards. To give a better picture of what this meant, I will cite the case of an acquaintance who is somewhat of a gentleman farmer near Coblentz, on the Rhine. When the war broke out this man had in live stock: Five horses, eight cows, forty sheep, and a large stock of poultry. He also had several small vineyards and a fine apple orchard. In the winter of 1916-17 his stock had shrunk to two horses, two cows, no sheep, very little poultry, and no vineyard. The apple orchard was also dying from lack of Bordeaux mixture. In January, 1917, I obtained some figures dealing with the wear and tear of war in the kingdom of Saxony. Applying them on a per-capita basis to all of the German Empire, I established that so far the war had caused deterioration amounting to $8,950,000,000, or $128 for each man, woman, and child. In Austria-Hungary the damage done was then estimated at $6,800,000,000. These losses were due to absence from their proper spheres in the economic scheme of some 14,000,000 able-bodied men who had been mobilized for service in connection with the war. This vast army consumed at a frightful rate and produced very little now. To non-productive consumption had to be added the rapid deterioration due to all abandonment of upkeep. The Central states were living from hand to mouth and had no opportunity of engaging in that thorough maintenance which had been given so much attention before. All material progress had been arrested, and this meant that decay and rust got the upper hand. XVI THE ARMY TILLS Men getting much physical exercise in the open air consume much more food than those confined. In cold weather such food must contain the heat which is usually supplied by fuel. All of which is true of the soldier in a greater degree. This, and the fact that in army subsistence, transportation and distribution are usually coupled with great difficulty, made it necessary for the Central Powers to provide their forces chiefly with food staples. Before the war about 35 per cent. of the men mobilized had lived largely on cereals and vegetables. Little meat is consumed by the rural population of Central Europe. For the reasons already given, that diet had to make room for one composed of more concentrated and more heat-producing elements. Bread, meat, fats, and potatoes were its principal constituents. Beans, peas, and lentils were added as the supply permitted. In the winter larger quantities of animal fats were required to keep the men warm, and in times of great physical exertion the allowance of sugar had to be increased. Since at first the army produced no food at all, the civil population had to produce what was needed. With, roughly, 42 per cent. of the soldiers coming from the food-producing classes, this was no small task, especially since the more fitted had been called to the colors. The governments of Central Europe realized as early as in the spring of 1915 that the army would have to produce at least a share of the food it needed. Steps were taken to bring that about. The war had shown that cavalry was, for the time being, useless. On the other hand, it was not good military policy to disband the cavalry organizations and turn them into artillery and infantry. These troops might be needed again sooner or later. That being the case, it was decided to employ mounted troops in the production of food. Fully 65 per cent. of the men in that branch of the military establishments of Central Europe came from the farm and were familiar with the handling of horses. That element was put to work behind the fronts producing food. No totals of this production have ever been published, to my knowledge, so that I can deal only with what I actually saw. I must state, however, that the result cannot have been negligible, though on the whole it was not what some enthusiasts have claimed for it. I saw the first farming of this sort in Galicia. There some Austro-Hungarian cavalry organizations had tilled, roughly, sixty thousand acres, putting the fields under wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes. When I saw the crops they were in a fair state of prosperity, though I understand that later a drought damaged them much. The colonel in charge of the work told me that he expected to raise food enough for a division, which should not have been difficult, seeing that three acres ought to produce food enough for any man, even if tilled in a slovenly way. Throughout Poland and the parts of Russia then occupied the Germans were doing the same thing. What the quality of their effort was I have no means of knowing, but if they are to be measured by what I saw in France, during the Somme offensive in 1916, the results obtained must have been very satisfying. One of the organizations then lying in the Bapaume sector was the German Second Guards Substitute-Reserve Division-- _Garde-Ersatz-Reserve-Division_. I think that the palm for war economy must be due that organization. In my many trips to various fronts (I have been on every front in Central Europe, the Balkan, Turkey, and Asia) and during my long stays there I have never seen a crowd that had made itself so much at home in the enemy country. The body in question had then under cultivation some sixteen hundred acres of very good soil, on which it was raising wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, lentils, sugar-beets, roots of various sorts, and potatoes. It had made hay enough for its own draft animals and had sold a large quantity to neighboring divisions. At Gommecourt the division operated a well-equipped modern dairy, able to convert into butter and cheese the milk of about six hundred cows. Its output was large enough to supply the men in the trenches with all the butter and cheese they could reasonably expect. A large herd of pigs was kept by the division, and as General von Stein, the commander of the sector, now Prussian Minister of War, informed me at a table that offered the products of the division at a luncheon, the organization was then operating, somewhere near the actual firing-line, two water-mills, a large sugar-plant, and even a brewery. Coffee, salt, and a few other trifles were all the division received from the rear. It was then the middle of August, so that I was able to see the results of what had been done by these soldier-farmers. I can state that soil was never put to better use. Cultivation had been efficiently carried out and the crops were exceedingly good. One of the most vivid pictures I retain from that week in "Hell" shows several German soldiers plowing a field east of Bucquoi into which British shells were dropping at the time. The shells tore large craters in the plowed field, but with an indifference that was baffling the men continued their work. I have not yet been able to explain what was the purpose of this plowing in August, except to lay the knife at the root of the weeds; nor can I quite believe that this end justified exposing men and valuable animals. At any rate, the thing was done. The case cited represents the maximum that was achieved in food production by any army organization, so far as I know. But that maximum was no mean thing. That division, at least, did not depend on the civil population for food. Several trips through Serbia and Macedonia in the same year showed me what the German "economic" and occupation troops had done in those parts. On the whole, the efforts at food production of the "economic" troops--organization of older men barely fit for service in the firing-line--had not been fortunate. The plan had been to put as much soil under crops as was possible. For this purpose traction plows had been brought along and whole country sites had been torn up. Though the soil of the valleys of Serbia is generally very rich, and the climate one of the best for farming, the crops raised in that year were far from good. Some held that it was due to the seed, which had been brought from Germany. Others were of the opinion that the plowing had been carelessly done, leaving too much leeway to the weeds. Be that as it may, the work of the economic companies was not a success. The occupation troops did much better, however. Together with the Serbian women they had cultivated the fields on the intensive principle. Yields had been good, I was told. In Macedonia the fields had also been put to use by the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Bulgars. The last named, familiar with the cultivation of the tobacco plant, were exchanging with the others tobacco for grain. Food production was also attempted by the Austro-Hungarians on the Isonzo front. But since they were fighting on their own territory in districts which still had their civil population, there was little opportunity, all the less since the soil of the Carso and Bainsizza plateaus, and the mountainous regions north of them, is not suited for agriculture on a large scale. Every _doline_--funnel-shaped depression--of the Carso had its garden, however, whence the army drew most of the vegetables it consumed. The food that was being raised for the army never reached the interior, of course. If an organization produced more than what it consumed, and such cases were extremely rare, it sold the surplus to the army commissaries. It took men and time to cultivate the fields, and these could not always be spared, especially when the losses in men were beginning to be severely felt and when the opponent engaged in offensives. It had meanwhile become necessary to throw, several times a year, divisions from one front to another, and that, too, began to interfere with the scheme, since the men no longer took the interest in the crops they had taken when they were established in a position. I spent considerable time with the Ninth German Army operating against the Roumanians late in the fall of 1916. Much booty in food fell into the hands of that organization, among it some eleven hundred thousand tons of wheat and other grains. Bread was bad and scarce in the Central states. When it became known that so large a quantity of breadstuff had fallen in the hands of the Centralist troops, people in Berlin and Vienna already saw some of it on their tables--but only in their minds. Falkenhayn and Mackensen issued orders that not a pound of breadstuff was to be taken from the war zone they had established, which comprised all of Roumania occupied, Transylvania, and the Dobrudja district. Nor could other food be exported to the Central civilian population. Whatever was found in the conquered territory was reserved for the use of the troops that had been employed, and the surplus was assigned to the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian commissaries-general. The quantities taken, however, were large, and six months later, when all needs of the armed forces had been met, the civilian populations were remembered so far as it was prudent to do so. To give that population too much might have resulted in a lessening of production at home, and that was something which could not be invited. This policy was followed always. I know of no instance in which it was abandoned, even when the clamor for bread at home was loudest. The army came first in all things, much in the manner of the driver of a team of mules. But it was not selfishness alone that gave rise to this policy. It served no good purpose to ship into the interior food that would later be needed by the troops. That merely increased the burden of the railroads, first by the transport of the booty homeward, and later by shipping back food as the troops needed it. Keeping the food where it was found obviated this traffic entirely. On the whole, the Centralist troops never fared poorly in subsistence. It had become necessary to reduce the bread ration from 500 grams (18 ounces) to 400 grams (14 ounces) per day, but this was made good by increasing the meat and fat ration. Enough to eat was the surest way of keeping the war popular with the soldiers. Since it is very easy to exaggerate the value of food production due to the army, I will state here specifically that this production took care of little more than what the men consumed in excess over their former diet. Their normal consumption was still borne by the civilian population, and, as the losses on the battle-field increased, and the reserves had to be employed oftener, food production in the army fell rapidly, though at present this condition appears to be discounted by the food produced in Roumania, Serbia, and Poland. The area involved is large, of course, but the surplus actually available is not great. The population of these territories has dwindled to old men, boys, and women, and their production is barely able to meet actual needs. The little that can be extracted from these people does not go very far in the subsistence of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. These countries have together a population of, roundly, one hundred and fifteen millions to-day, of which not less than ten million of the best producers are under the colors, thereby causing a consumption in food and _matériel_ that is at least one-third greater than normal--munitions and ammunition not included. But the army had much to do with food in other directions. It controlled inter-allied exports and imports and was a power even in trade with the neutrals of Europe. The relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey were essentially military. They were this to such an extent that they almost overshadowed even the diplomatic services of these countries. For the time being, the _Militärbevollmächtigte_--military plenipotentiary--as the chief communication officer was known, eclipsed often the diplomatic plenipotentiary. Militarism was absolute. The civil government and population had no right which the military authorities need respect. All commercial exchange passed into the hands of these military plenipotentiaries. The diplomatic service might reach an agreement for the exchange of food against manufactured articles, but finally the military saw to it that it was carried out. They bought and shipped, and received in turn the factory products that were the _quid pro quo_ for the food and raw material thus secured. In Roumania, so long as she was neutral, the _Einkaufstelle_--purchasing bureau--was indeed in the hands of civilians. As a neutral, Roumania could not permit German and Austro-Hungarian officers to be seen in the streets in their uniforms. They were, for all that, members of the army. For the time being, they wore mufti, nor did their transactions show that they were working directly for the army. The food that was bought was intended for the civilian population, naturally. But it has always been hard to keep from any army that which it may need. The same sack of wheat may not go to the military commissaries, but what difference will it make so long as it releases for consumption by the army a like quantity of home-grown cereals? The German and Austro-Hungarian purchasing bureaus in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similarly organized. Many members of their staffs are indeed civilians, but that does not change anything, since all shipments of food entering Central Europe fall immediately under the control of the government Food Commissions, if not under that of the military commissaries direct. To the military, then, the Central states civilian population had to look for such food as could be imported. There was the case of Bulgaria. That country is still essentially an agricultural state. Of the five and a half million inhabitants fully 90 per cent. engage in farming and animal industry. The products of the soil constitute the major portion of Bulgaria's exports. That meant that she could ease to some extent the food shortage in Germany and Austria-Hungary. An acquaintance of mine, a Captain Westerhagen, formerly a banker in Wall Street, was in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. He bought whatever was edible--wheat, rye, barley, peas, beans, potatoes, butter, eggs, lard, pork, and mutton. His side lines were hides, wool, flax, mohair, hay, and animal feed-stuffs. Indirectly, he was also an importer. Under his surveillance were brought into Bulgaria the manufactured goods Bulgaria needed, such as iron and steel products in the form of farm implements, farm machinery, building hardware, small hardware, and general machinery, glassware, paper products, instruments, surgical supplies, railroad equipment, medicines, and chemicals generally. When the German army needed none of the food Captain Westerhagen bought, the civilian population was the beneficiary of his efforts. The fact is that my acquaintance bought whatever he could lay hands on. Now and then he bought so much that the Bulgarians began to feel the pinch. In that event the Bulgarian general staff might close down on the purchasing central for a little while, with the result that the Germans would shut down on their exports. It was a case of no food, no factory products. This sort of reciprocity led often to hard feeling--situations which Colonel von Massow, the German military plenipotentiary at Sofia, found pretty hard to untangle. But, on the whole, the arrangement worked smoothly enough. It was so in Turkey. The Germans had in Constantinople one of their most remarkable men--and here I must throw a little light on German-Ottoman relations. The name of this remarkable man--remarkable in capacity, energy, industry, and far-sightedness--is Corvette-Captain Humann, son of the famous archeologist who excavated Pergamum and other ancient cities and settlements in Asia Minor. Captain Humann was born in Smyrna and had early in life made the acquaintance of Enver Pasha, now Ottoman Minister of War and vice-generalissimo of the Ottoman army. Raised in the Orient, Humann knew the people with whom he was to deal. The viewpoint of the Orient and the Turk was an open book to him. He had the advantage of being looked upon as half a Turk, for the reason that he was born in Turkey. To these qualifications Captain Humann added great natural ability and a perseverance without equal. Officially, Captain Humann was known as the commander of the German naval base in Constantinople and as naval attaché. Actually, he was the alpha and omega of German-Ottoman relations. There always was a great deal of friction between the Turks and the Germans. The Turk often could not see the need for speed, while the German was eternally in a hurry, from the Oriental point of view. The Turk was inclined to do things in a slovenly manner. The German insisted upon everything, in matters economic, military, and diplomatic, being in its place. German officers who had a great deal to do with these things had not always the tact and forbearance necessary. Bad blood would come of this. To make matters worse, the Turk was forever under the impression that he was being exploited. The Germans, also, refused to _bakshish_ the officials of their ally, and more trouble came from that. It is hard to say what the general result of this would have been had not Captain Humann been on the spot. He was on _du_--thou--terms with Enver Pasha, and when things refused to move at all he would call on his friend in the Harbiyeh Nasaret in Stamboul and set them into motion again. That Turk and German did not come to blows during the first year of the war is largely due to the genius of Captain Humann. So great was the man's influence in Constantinople that the successor of Ambassador Baron von Wangenheim, Prince Metternich, grew jealous of him and had him removed to Berlin, where in the Imperial Naval Office Captain Humann chewed pencils until conditions in Constantinople were so bad that the German Emperor had to send him back, despite the prejudices he held against him. Captain Humann is not a noble, and in those days the powers that be in Prussia and Germany were not yet ready to have a commoner, no matter how able, take away glamour from the aristocratic class. Though purchasing in Turkey was not one of the duties of Captain Humann, he was often obliged to take charge of it. I knew of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds of wool which the Germans had bought, but which the Turks were not willing to surrender because they were not satisfied with the price after the bargain had been closed. The case was ticklish in the extreme. Everybody had gone as far as safety permitted and the Turks had meanwhile grown more obdurate. In the end the matter had to be brought to the attention of the ambassador. He, too, decided that nothing could be done. Captain Humann was appealed to and succeeded in securing delivery of the wool. I have quoted this case to show that very often the exchange of commodities between the Central allies was attended with much friction and difficulty. More merchandise moved over and across the Danube as personal favors done than by virtue of the commercial treaties that had been made. Personal equation was everything in the scheme, especially at times when Germany's allies were in no pressing need for arms and ammunition. The very fact that Germany was the "king-pin" in the Central European scheme caused the lesser members of the combination to be sticklers in matters affecting their rights and sovereignty. On one occasion the predecessor of Captain Westerhagen in Sofia was said to have boastfully made the statement that what he could not get from the Bulgarians voluntarily he would find means to get, anyhow. General Jekoff, the chief of the Bulgarian general staff, heard of this, and promptly shut down on all exports. For two weeks not a thing moved out of Bulgaria, and when the two weeks were over there was a new man in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. The methods of the Prussian barrack-yard would not do south of the Danube. It took many a lesson to bring this home. Austria and Hungary were two separate economic units in the war. When food was scarce in Austria it did not necessarily follow that the Hungarians would make good the deficiency. It took a special permit to export and import from and into Hungary, and the same rules were enforced by Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in the case of all shipments made by civilians, so long as these had a hand in this inter-allied exchange of necessities and commodities. Little need be said of the German purchasing centrals in Austria and Hungary. The war was not very old before these countries had nothing to spare. Thereafter, exchange was limited entirely to materials needed in the manufacture of arms and ammunition. Austria and Hungary continued to exchange medical supplies, chemicals, and machinery for food and the like, respectively. They also managed now and then to get a little of the food in Bulgaria and Turkey, though the latter country could sell food only on rare occasions. Constantinople continued to live on Roumanian wheat, until the total cessation of activity by the Russian Black Sea fleet made navigation in those waters possible for the Turks and brought wheat and other food from northern Anatolia. The food secured by Germany in other markets was also under military control, as I have stated before. Exchange in this case depended even more upon reciprocity in kind than in the instances already cited. At one time the Swiss government was ready to close its borders against the export of food to Central Europe entirely. Nothing came of the intention. The German government informed the government at Bern that this would lead to an embargo on coal along the Swiss borders. France and Italy had no coal themselves, and Switzerland had to have fuel. It has been said that the incident in question was staged for the purpose of illustrating what the position of the Swiss actually was. At any rate, they would have no coal, not so much as a shovelful, if to-morrow they refused to export to the Germans and Austrians dairy products and animal fats. The same is true of iron products and chemicals. Holland is in the same position. Great Britain needs all the coal she can mine, and the Germans refuse to supply the little they can spare without getting something in exchange--dairy products, animal fats, vegetables, and fresh and preserved fish. Holland also gets her coal-oil and gasolene in that manner. Iron and steel and chemicals are other strong arguments in this scheme. Denmark is in exactly the same position, and when German gasolene and benzine are not available the Norwegian fishermen have to stay at home. For each gallon of these fuels, which Germany exports from the Galician and Roumanian oil-fields, the Norwegians are obliged to turn over so many pounds of fish. Sweden has no food to give for the coal and liquid fuel she gets from Germany, but exchanges them for wood pulp, certain specialty ores, and on rare occasions reindeer meat. That this commerce is strictly military those interested know, of course. But they have given up splitting hairs over it, because there is no way out. Coal and iron products, to say nothing of chemicals and medicines, are things which the European neutrals must have, and this need warring Central Europe has held over them as a whip. Incidentally, this traffic has done much toward keeping up the rate of the German mark. Central Europe would have been bankrupted long ago were it not that the neutrals must buy what these states have for sale and must buy it at prices fixed by monopoly. The need of coal and iron has been a far more efficacious discipline for the European neutrals than the German armies that have lain along their borders. That these countries have never combined for the purpose of throwing off this yoke is due to the influence of racial affinity--the sentiment upon which in the past has thriven Pan-Germanism. Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, rising simultaneously, could overnight cause the defeat of the Germans and their allies. But the ties of blood and kinship militate against that step, despite the dislike felt in these countries for certain aspects of German political life. XVII WOMAN AND LABOR IN WAR To the plow was yoked an ox and harnessed a horse. A tall and muscular woman was guiding it, while a small boy carried the whip. From the Isonzo front, not more than ten miles away, came the crash of heavy artillery. Neither the woman nor the boy seemed to mind that war was so near. I concluded that they were from the village which I had just come through, bound for the front named. The inhabitants of that place had listened to the noise of battle for eighteen months and it was possible that now the crash of guns meant less to them than the sound of the vesper bell. There was a tire blow-out. While the soldier-chauffeur was attending to that, I watched the woman draw furrows. Being somewhat of a farmer, I was interested in the quality of her work. It was good average plowing. The plow continued to cut down one side of the field and up the other. The automobile did not interest the woman. She had serious business to attend to. War must have seemed to her a sort of folly, and fools all those connected with it--myself included. She was tilling the land to get something to eat for her brood and to raise the money for taxes which those idiots at the front would waste in powder and the like. Her "hees" and "haws" punctuated the rumble of artillery like words of command for the oxen in the trenches. The woman behind the plow was a superb figure--the embodiment of nature herself. I went on. Toward evening I returned over the same road. The woman was still plowing, but now she had a little girl holding the whip. The sirocco had blown a heavy mist in from the Adriatic. Where the woman was plowing the vapors floated in layers of uneven density--the veils of evening. The plowers passed into them and out again, loomed now and then dwindled in the mist as the moods of light pleased. It struck me that it would be worth while to have a few words with this woman. She was so close to the war and yet, seemingly, so far from it that almost anything she could say promised to have an unusual color. "These people here are Slovenes, sir!" remarked my soldier-chauffeur when I had sought his advice. "They do not speak German, as a rule. But we can try." It was love's labor lost. The woman spoke some Slovene words in greeting and I replied in Bulgarian, of which language I know a few words. The chauffeur was no better off. I dug into a furrow with the tip of my shoe and said: "_Dobro!_" She nodded recognition of both my "remark" and appreciation of her work. To show the woman that I knew what I was talking about, I took the plow out of her hands and drew a furrow myself. It was her turn to say: "_Dobro!_" The fact that she limited her conversation to this word, as I was obliged to do, showed that she was a woman of understanding. When I was back at the road I shook hands with the woman and her child and hurried off to Adelsberg, where General Boreovic, commander of the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army, expected me for dinner. "Ah, she is a worker," said the old veteran, as I mentioned the incident to him. "Her husband is dead, you know. Was killed in the war. She is a remarkable woman. I have talked to her several times. She is worth a dozen of anything in skirts you can find in Vienna, or anywhere else, for that matter." I thought so, too, and think so yet, and, _Deo volente_, I will picture the plow-woman better some other time. In the Manfred Weiss works at Budapest thousands of women are engaged in the manufacture of ammunition. The little girls and older women who watched the infantry-ammunition machines did not greatly interest me. They were all neatly dressed and did no more than watch the mechanical contrivances that made cartridge-cases out of sheets of brass and bullet-casings out of sheets of nickel-steel. In the shell department of the establishment I saw quite another class of women. They were large and brawny and strong enough to handle the huge white-hot steel nuggets with ease. By means of a crane two of them would seize one of the incandescent ingots, swing it under the trip-hammer, and then leave the fate of the shell in the making to two others, who would turn the thing from side to side, while a fifth operated the hammer itself. At the far end of the shed, in flame-raked gloom, other women of the same type were engaged in casting. The ladle was operated by them with a dexterity that showed that neither strength nor skill were lacking. These daughters of Vulcan were stripped to the waist. Their labor seemed to be the only dress they needed. In fact, it never struck me that there was anything unconventional about this costume--the whole and total of which was a large leather apron and skirt of something that resembled burlap. Nor did they seem to mind me. It is impossible to say to what extent man's place in labor was taken by woman in Central Europe during the war. On the farms the women had always done much of the hard work. They had been employed in large numbers in the factories, stores, and offices, so that it was generally a case of employing more women instead of surrendering to them departments which heretofore had been entirely in the hands of men. It is true that women were working on street-car lines as conductors, and in a few cases as drivers, and that more of them found employment in the railroad and postal service, but the work they did was well within the capacity of any healthy woman. Woman's work during the war was to have results quite foreign to those immediately in prospect. [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin WOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPEST A pathetic aspect of the policy "Business as Usual" inaugurated at the outbreak of the European War. Central European women worked hard before the war, however.] [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin VILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARY These women and children struggled to keep food production close to normal, but failed.] The fact that women were employed in foundries and steel-works, in the manner stated above, is chiefly remarkable for the evidence furnished that woman is able to do much of the work for which in the past she has been thought unsuited, especially if her deficiency in bodily strength is discounted by the use of machinery. At the Weiss works I was told that the women doing heavy work with the aid of mechanical energy were in every respect the equal of the men who had done the same thing before the war. The war, then, has demonstrated in Central Europe that the woman is far less the inferior of man than was held formerly. To that extent the status of women has been bettered. When a man has seen members of the frail sex fashion steel into shells he is thereafter less inclined to look upon that sex as a plaything which an indulgent Scheme provided for him. Over his mind may then flash the thought that woman is, after all, the other half of humanity--not only the mother of men, but their equal, not a mere complement of the human race, but a full-fledged member of it. A little later I was the guest of Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi at her private school in the Awret Basar quarter of Stamboul, Constantinople. The Turkish feminist and promoter of education had asked me to take a look at the establishment in which she was training Turkish girls and boys along the lines adhered to in the Occident. She had arrived at the conclusion that the _medressi_--Koran school system--was all wrong, for the reason that it sacrificed the essential to the non-essential. Though her influence with the Young Turk government and the Sheik-ul-Islam was great, she had not asked that her experiments with Western education be undertaken at the expense of the public. Her father is wealthy. Several teachers had been invited to the tea. Like Halideh Hannym they were "Young Turk" women, despite the fact that most of them still preferred the non-transparent veil--_yashmak_--to the transparent silk _büründshük_. I commented upon this fact. "The _yashmak_ does indeed typify the Old Turkey," said Halideh Hannym. "But is it necessary to discard it because one takes an interest in the things identified as progress? To the _yashmak_ are attached some of the best traditions of our race; it comes from a period when the Turk was really great, when he was still the master of a goodly share of Europe--when he ruled, instead of being ruled." All of which was true enough. I pointed out that the _büründshük_, however, was the promise that the Turkish woman would soon be able to look into the world--that seclusion would before long be an unpleasant memory. To that my hostess and her other guests agreed. "The war has been a good thing for the Turkish woman," I ventured to remark. "It has been," admitted Halideh Hannym. "As an example, the university has been opened to women. Three years ago nobody would have thought that possible. To-day it is _un fait accompli_. The world does move--even here." Halideh Hannym did not mention that she was largely responsible for the opening of the Constantinople University to women. Modesty is one of her jewels. Nor would she admit that her novels and her trenchant articles in the _Tanin_ had much to do with the progress made in the emancipation of the Turkish woman. "If Turkey is to be regenerated, her women must do it," said Halideh Hannym, when we had come to speak of the necessity of better government in the Ottoman Empire. That one sentence comprises at once the field of endeavor and the motive of the woman. She believes that there is much good in her race, but that its old-time position of conqueror and ruler over subject races had been fraught with all the dangers of ease and idleness. "We must work--work--work," she said. "The race that lies fallow for too long a time gives the weeds too much chance. Our weaknesses and shortcomings are deep-rooted now. But I believe that the plowing which the race had during the present war will again make it a fertile field for the seeds of progress." Not long before that Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V. had told me the same thing. "We of the Orient are known to you Westerners as fatalists," remarked the old monarch in the course of the audience. "The fatalist is accepted to be a person who lets things drift along. This means that any fatalist may be no more than a lazy and shiftless individual. In our case that is not true. Our belief in the Fates--Kismet and Kadar--is to blame for what backwardness there is in the Ottoman Empire. But it will be different in the future. It is all very well to trust in God, but we must work." I told Halideh Hannym that probably his Majesty had read some of her writings. My reason for doing this was largely the fact that as yet this gospel of work was little known in Turkey. "That is not impossible," thought the woman. "At any rate, we must work, and it is the women of Turkey who must set the example. When the Turks have more generally embraced the idea that all there is worth while in life is labor, they will come to understand their non-Osmanli fellow-citizens better. I look upon that as the solution of the Ottoman race problems. Labor is the one platform upon which all men can meet. My objective is to have the races in the empire meet upon it. Turk, Greek, Armenian, and Arab will get along together only when they come to heed that old and beautiful saying of the Persians, 'How pleasantly dwell together those who do not want the ox at the same time.' That means that each of us must have his own ox--work ourselves, in other words." And Halideh Hannym applies this to herself. There is no reason why she should write novels and articles to make money--she does not need it, so far as I know, if town houses and a country seat on the island of Prinkipo mean anything at all. Halideh Hannym works for the satisfaction there is in knowing that duty is done and done to the limit of one's ability, and within that limit lies the seizing of one's opportunity. Hers came with the war, and while others stood by and lamented she set to work and wrung from ungenerous man that which under the pressure of the times he thought unimportant. Halideh Hannym and her friends and co-workers gathered these crumbs, one by one, and then made a loaf of them, and that loaf is not small. Some future historian may say that the emancipation of the Turkish woman was due to the Great War. I hope that he will not overlook Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi. The women of Central Europe have always worked hard, but at best they have been kept at drudgery. They have done what man would not do, as deeming it below his masculine dignity, or what he could not do. The result of this has not been a happy one for the women. The "lord of the household" has in the course of time come to look upon his wife as a sort of inferior creature, fit indeed to be the first servant in the house, but unfit to be elevated above that sphere. The rights of equality which he takes from his mate he generally bestows upon his daughters, and later he is inconsistent enough to have them enter the servitude of his wife. Thus it came that the majority of all women in Central Europe thought of nothing but the stomach of the lord and master, and when this was attended to they would put in their spare moments knitting socks. The picture of the German _Hausfrau_ may appeal to many. It does not to me. Nothing can be so disheartening as to spend an evening with a family whose women will talk to the accompaniment of the clicking of the knitting-needles. The making of socks should be left to machinery, even if they are intended to warm the "Trilbys" of the lord and master. I am glad to report that a large crevasse was torn into this _Hausfrau_ notion by the war. With millions of men at the front, the women had to stand on their feet, as it were. The clinging ivy became a tree. Though the ubiquitous knitting-needle was not entirely dispensed with, it came to be used for the sake of economy, not as the symbol of immolation on the altar of the _Herr im Hause_. The woman who has fought for bread in the food-line is not likely to ever again look upon the breadwinner of the family with that awe which once swayed her when she thought of "his" magnanimity in giving her good-naturedly what she had earned by unceasing effort and unswerving devotion. Thus has come in Central Europe a change that is no less great and sweeping than what has taken place in Turkey. All concerned should be truly thankful. The nation that does not give its women the opportunity to do their best in the socio-economic sphere which nature has assigned them handicaps itself badly. Not to do that results in woman being little more than the plaything of man, or at best his drudge, and, since man is the son of woman, no good can come of this. The cowed woman cannot but have servile offspring, and to this we must look for the explanation why the European in general is still ruled by classes that look upon their subjects as chattels. A social aggregate in which the families are ruled by autocratic husbands and fathers could have no other than an autocratic government. I believe that a pine forest is composed of pines, despite the fact that here and there some other trees may live in it. The war has upset that scheme in Central Europe. While the labor of woman was valuable to the state, through its contributions to the economic and military resources of the nation, it also fostered in the woman that self-reliance which is the first step toward independence. Of this the plow-woman and the women in the steel-works are the factors and Halideh Hannym the sum. While the plow-woman and steel-workers were unconsciously active for that purpose, the Turkish feminist had already made it the objective of a spreading social policy. What poor pets those women in the steel-mill would make! XVIII WAR AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY Harassed by the shortage in everything needed to sustain life, plagued by the length of the war and the great sacrifices in life and limb that had to be made, and stunned by the realization that Germany had not a friend, anywhere, aside from her allies and certain weak neutrals, the German people began to take stock of their household and its management. It seemed to many that, after all, something was wrong. I ran into this quite often in 1916. During the Somme offensive in August of that year I was talking to a German general--his name won't matter. The man could not understand why almost the entire world should be the enemy of Germany. I had just returned to Central Europe from a trip that took me through Holland, Denmark, and parts of Norway; I had read the English, French, and American newspapers, with those of Latin Europe and Latin America thrown in, and I was not in a position to paint for the soldier the picture he may have been looking for. I told him that the outlook was bad--the worst possible. He wanted to know why this should be so. I gave him my opinion. Not far from us was going on a drumfire which at times reached an unprecedented intensity. The general looked reflectively across the shell-raked, fume-ridden terrain. He seemed to be as blue as indigo. "Tell me, Mr. Schreiner, are we really as bad as they make us out to be?" he said, after a while. The question was frankly put. It deserved a frank reply. "No," I said, "you are not. Slander has been an incident to all wars. It is that now. The fact is that your government has made too many mistakes. War is the proof that might is right. Your government has been too brutally frank in admitting that and suiting its action accordingly. Belgium was a mistake and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a mistake. You are now reaping the harvest you sowed then." My questioner wished to know if _sans_ Belgium, _sans Lusitania_ the position of Germany would be better. That question was highly hypothetical. I replied that an opinion in that direction would not be worth much in view of the fact that it could not cover the actual causes of the war and its present aspects, of which the case of Belgium and the work of the submarine were but mere incidents. "Seen objectively, I should say that the invasion of Belgium and the use of the submarine against merchantmen has merely intensified the world's dislike of much that is German. I doubt that much would have been different without Belgium and without the _Lusitania_," was my reply. "This war started as a struggle between gluttons. One set of them wanted to keep what it had, and the other set wanted to take more than what it had already taken." Not very long afterward General Falkenhayn, the former German chief of staff, then commander of the Ninth German Army against the Roumanians, asked a similar question at dinner in Kronstadt, Transylvania. He, too, failed to understand why the entire world should have turned down its thumb against the Germans. My reply to him was more or less the same. A regular epidemic of introspective reasoning seemed to be on. At the Roumanian end of the Törzburger Pass I lunched a few days later with Gen. Elster von Elstermann. He also wanted to know why the Germans were so cordially hated. Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen, whose guest I was at Heltau, at the head of the Vörös Torony gorge, showed the same interest. "It seems that there is nothing we can do but make ourselves respected," he said, tersely. "I am one of those Germans who would like to be loved. But that seems to be impossible. Very well! We will see! We will see what the sword can do. When a race has come to be so thoroughly detested as we seem to be, there is nothing left it but to make itself respected. I fear that in the future that must be our policy." I made the remark that possibly it was not the race that was being detested. The general is a Bavarian--at least, he was commanding Bavarian troops. "So long as these shouters can make common cause with autocratic Russia, they have no reason to fasten upon the Prussians every sin they can think of. I am not one of those who think that everything in Germany is perfect. Far from it. We have more faults than a dog has fleas. Never mind, though! To lie down and beseech mercy on our knees is not one of these faults." I believe that Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen spoke for the army on that occasion without knowing it. What he said was the attitude of the vast majority of officers and men. Shortly before I had interviewed Baron Burian, then Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on that and related subjects. I will state here that he was the most professorly foreign minister I have met. His voice never rose above the conversational tone. Though a Magyar, he was evenness of temper personified. "I suppose there is nothing we can do in that direction," he said, slowly. "What the world wishes to believe it will believe. We cannot change that. Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with the cause and the outcome of this war. And what difference will it make in the end whether we are called barbarians or not? I know that a good many people resent what they say in the Entente newspapers, and I suppose the Entente public resents a great deal of what is being said in our newspapers. That is a small matter. There is nothing to be done, for what we could do would be a waste of effort. Let them talk. No! There is nothing I wish to say in connection with that. Our position is quite defensible. But to defend it would merely stir up more talk. By the time the hostile American newspapers have taken care of all that is being said against us, they must have used so much paper that it would be a shame to get them to use more on refutation." Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, at that time Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was more aggressive when I suggested the subject for the substance of an interview. Backing his position with certain documents that were found in the Belgian state archives, according to which there was some understanding between the British, French, and Belgians for the contingency of a German invasion, he held that Germany was entirely right in demanding access to France through Belgian territory. He was not sure, however, that doing this had been a good move politically. The military necessity for the step was something he could not judge, he said. Doctor Zimmermann said that the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a bad blunder. Responsibility for the act he would not fix, however. The thing was not within his province. So far as he knew, it had not been the intention to torpedo the ship in a manner that would cause her immediate sinking. If a ship was torpedoed in the fore or aft holds she would float for hours and might even be able to reach port under her own steam. "There is a great deal of mania in this Germanophobe sentiment that is sweeping the world," he said. "For the time being, we are everybody's _bête noire_. The world must have somebody on whom it can pick. Right now we are that somebody. Quite recently, during the Boer War, it was Great Britain. During the Japanese War the entire world, Germany excepted, made common cause with the Japs against the Russians, forgetting somehow that this was a war of the yellow race against the white. To-day we are it. To-morrow it will be somebody else. It is always fashionable to hate somebody." That was the cool, diplomatic view of it. But the Central European public was more inclined to take the view of the officer I had met on the Somme front. It was chagrined, disappointed, grieved, stunned. The question was asked whether the invasion of Belgium had been really necessary. Many held that the German general staff should have concentrated a large force on the Belgian border, with orders not to invade the country until the French had done so. There can be no doubt that this would have been the better policy. The contention of the German government that the French contemplated going through Belgium and had for the act the consent of the Belgian government and the acquiescence of the British government will not invalidate my assertion in the least. Granted that such an agreement had been really made for the purpose of giving the French army certain tactical advantages, it would be the policy of any wise and calm government to wait for the execution of the plan. There would be no Belgian question at all to-day if the Germans had given the French the chance they are said to have sought. That the French reached out for the German border _via_ Belgium would not have made the least difference in the sum of military operations, since it was first a question of keeping the French army out of Germany, and, secondly, of defeating the French forces wherever met. The few days gained, and the slight military advantages alleged to have been procured, were certainly not worth what Belgium was in the end to cost the Germans. This is all the more true when it is considered that the reduction of Liège and other Belgian fortifications might have never become a necessity, in view of the fact that the documents found in Brussels have never convinced me that the Belgian government was acting in bad faith. It seems that many have overlooked the fact that, between tentative arrangements made by the Belgian general staff and the allied governments and an authorization by the Belgian parliament that war should be declared against Germany, there is a great difference. The former existed; the latter had yet to be obtained. In case it had been obtained, in order to give the French troops marching through Belgium the status they needed, there was still time for the Germans to do what they did, under martial conditions that would have declared the French troops in Belgium mere raiders, on the one hand, and Belgium a violator of her neutral status, on the other. Belgium permitting the use of her territory by French troops about to fall upon Germany would have been obliged to also admit German troops, or declare war against Germany. That case is so simple that few can understand it, as a rule. That such might have been the initial events of the war began finally to dawn upon all thinking Germans. It occurred to many now that there was ample front in Alsace-Lorraine; so much, in fact, that the French succeeded in taking and holding quite a little of it. There was, also, Luxembourg. Though mobilizations are like the avalanche that starts at the mountain-top and thereafter obeys but one law, gravity, it was not impossible for the German general staff to divert south-ward the troops bound for the Belgian border. A day might have been lost. But even that seems uncertain, since troops were needed along the Belgian border, anyway, in view of what Berlin claims to have known. No matter how the thing is looked at, in the end it resolves itself into the question whether or not there was a difference in meeting French troops in Belgium or on their own soil. It was the objective of the Germans to defeat the French army. Whether that was done in the line of the French fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, as came to pass, or whether that was done in the line of the fortifications along the German-Belgian border, could make little difference to a government and general staff able to think on its feet. Since governments at war must of necessity take it for granted that only the men at the head of affairs have the right to think, this aspect of the invasion of Belgium has been but rarely treated in public print in Germany. I will say, however, that several military writers have attempted to speak on the subject, and have usually been called to task for their hardihood. To-day the average German is not at all sure that "Belgium" was necessary. He has no interest in Belgium, differing in this from his industrial and commercial lords. Most men and women with whom I discussed the subject were of the opinion that "one Alsace-Lorraine is enough." The greatest shock the German public received was the news that the _Lusitania_ had been sunk. For a day or two a minority held that the action was eminently correct. But even that minority dwindled rapidly. For many weeks the German public was in doubt as to what it all meant. The thinking element was groping about in the dark. What was the purpose of picking out a ship with so many passengers aboard? Then the news came that the passengers had been warned not to travel on the steamer. That removed all doubt that the vessel had not been singled out for attack. The government remained silent. It had nothing to say. The press, standing in fear of the censor and his power to suspend publication, was mute. Little by little it became known that there had been an accident. The commander of the submarine sent out to torpedo the ship had been instructed to fire at the foreward hold so that the passengers could get off before the vessel sank. Somehow that plan had miscarried. Either a boiler of the ship or an ammunition cargo had given unlooked-for assistance to the torpedo. The ship had gone down. The defense made by the German government was based largely on points in international law that govern the conduct of raiding cruisers. But the submarine was not a cruiser. It could not save many lives under any circumstances. People shook their heads and said nothing. It was best to say nothing, since to speak was treasonable. Nothing weaned the German public so much away from the old order of government as did the _Lusitania_ affair. The act seemed useless, wanton, ill-considered. The doctrine of governmental infallibility came near being wrecked. The Germans began to lose confidence in the wisdom of the men who had been credited in the past with being the very quintessence of all knowledge, mundane and celestial. Admiral Tirpitz had to go. Germany's allies, too, were not pleased. In Austria and Hungary the act was severely criticized, and in Turkey I found much disapproval of the thing. While the greater part of the Central European public accepted that there had been some necessity for the sinking of the ship, seeing that she carried freight of a military character, there were many who thought that in such cases politics and not military necessity should govern conduct. These people were better politicians than those in the government. But the others were better militarists and militarism was in control, being seated more firmly as each day brought more enemies, open and potential. The case was much like that of a family that may have difficulties within, but which would set in concerted action upon any outsider who might think it well to intervene. This was to be the fundamental quality of German public sentiment throughout the course of the war. As the ring of enemies grew stronger and tightened more upon the military resources of the empire, the public grew harder and harder. The pressure exerted being concentric, it grouped the German public closer and harder to its center--the government. It was no longer the absolute devotion of other years which the Germans brought their government--hardly that. It was the determination to win the war despite the government and despite what others thought and held of that government. The fact that government there must be is too clear to the German to make him act toward his _Obrigkeit_ with the impetuousness that has characterized events in Russia, where this was possible only because for decades many there have held the view that the time of anarchical society was at hand. This state of mind made possible the acceptance of the heavy sacrifices which were demanded by the war. The very private in the trenches felt that he would have to risk all against a world of enemies. Self-pity in the individual leads usually to maudlinism. The trait is not foreign to German temperament. Self-pity in the aggregate is a totally different thing. It is the quality that makes martyrs of men, so long as there is an audience. It is sentiment minus all sickly self-indulgence, and that is fortitude--the thing that will cause men to adhere to an idea or principle even in the face of the stake at the _auto da fé_. It was this spirit, also, that caused the German multitude to bear with patience the many deprivations and burdens due to the war. In Austria things were slightly different. The Austrian-German is probably more of Celtic than of Germanic blood. He is more volatile. Great issues do not hold his attention long. He becomes easily a slave to habit. To the Austrian-German the war was never more than a nuisance. It interfered with his business; above all, his enjoyments; it drove him from his favorite café and his clandestine lady-love. It upset life for him thoroughly. What was the preservation of the Austrian Empire to a man who shared that empire with Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, Italian, Bosniak Mussulman, and in a sense with the Magyar and Roumanian? The feeling of race interest would have to remain foreign to such a man, just as it was a stranger to all the others who fought at his side. Of the ten races in the Dual Monarchy only the Slav group could understand one another without special study of the other's language. Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, and Bosniak could with little difficulty master one another's language. German, so far as it was not familiar in the form of military commands, was unknown to most of them. Magyar was a total stranger to Slav and German alike, and Italian and Roumanian meant nothing to any of these. I remember philosophizing a bit at the execution wall of the fortress of Peterwardein in Hungary. To the left of me stood a little gallows--one of those peculiar strangulation implements they use in Austria-Hungary--descendant of the Spanish _garrote_, I believe. On the ancient brick wall were the marks left there by chipping steel bullets. Many a Serb seditionist had seen the light of day for the last time in that old moat. More of them were behind the grilled peepholes of the casemate. That morning two or three had died where I stood. In that there was nothing unusual, perhaps. But on my right was a large poster, framed with the Hungarian national colors, red, white, and green. The poster drew attention to a certain paragraph of the treason laws. It defined treason poignantly, precisely. I read the paragraph in German, concluded that the Hungarian said the same, surmised that the Slav languages in the country did not differ greatly from one another, found that Roumanian I could almost read, and saw that the Italian version said the same thing as the German. I suppose French had been left off the poster for the reason that the Austro-Hungarian inter-monarchical classes, which now use that language instead of Latin, as in the days of Marie Therese, did not need to have their attention drawn to the danger of sedition. The gallows and execution wall seemed fit companions to that poster. One might not have missed the other when seeing the one, but still there was harmony between the two. People who do not understand one another, be that a question of language or temperament, have no business to live together. But the thing happens often in wedlock, and governments at peace and leisure say that it is perfectly feasible from the viewpoints of state interests. I found that _Das Reich_--the empire--had no meaning to any member of the Austro-Hungarian group. But what held that conglomerate together? The Emperor-King. Soon I found that nothing had changed in Austria-Hungary since the days when the Empress-Queen Marie Therese, with her infant son in her arms, and tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, had implored the Magyar nobles to come to her assistance against Frederick the Great. The Magyar nobles tore off their fur _kalpacks_, drew their swords, and cried: "_Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!_" That was still the mass psychology in the dual monarchy. The old Emperor-King called to battle, and that was enough. Later the new Emperor-King renewed the call, and it was still enough. What the soldiers did in the trenches the civilian population did at home--a little half-heartedly at times, a little slovenly occasionally, but reliably at all times. "We must help our Macedonian brothers. The Bulgars can no longer remain deaf to their prayers to be relieved of the oppression of the Serbs," said the Bulgarian Premier, Doctor Radoslavoff, to me in February, 1915. In October of the same year he said during an interview: "There is not enough room for two strong states on the Balkan peninsula. Yet there must be a strong state if the Balkan problem is to be eliminated. That strong state will be either Bulgaria or Serbia. _We_ desire that it be Bulgaria. It will be Bulgaria when the Macedonians are permitted to join her. The time has come when they can do that. For that reason we go to war on the side of the Central Powers." The two statements picture Bulgarian mass psychology exactly. The Bulgar wanted the Macedonian to be one with him nationally, as he is racially. He wanted the ancient Bulgar capital of Monastir to lie again within Bulgarland. With that in perspective he had driven the Turk from the peninsula; for that purpose he wanted to make the Serb small. I found the same iron determination throughout Bulgaria and in all walks of life. The _shope_ farmer, the shepherd in the _planina_, the monks at Rila Monastir, the fishermen at Varna, the city and towns people, were all for that idea. And in so stern a manner! To me the Bulgar will always be the Prussian of the Balkan. He is just as morose, just as blunt, and just as sincere. I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the Faithful, etc., etc., etc. "They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the battleships _Bouvet_ and _Irresistible_ whom I had seen go down with their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks. We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up." Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment. Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat similarly. He was more diplomatically specific. "The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them. Guarantees--guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We joined the Germans because they offered none." All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the line of Ayesha. Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War, generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and what not, told me the same thing on several occasions. "Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that! They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it. Nonsense! Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to hell with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't like us don't have to. Nobody need love us. Let them keep out of our way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance." It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism. He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed, shrewd. "_Très bien, cher frère_" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation by _concessionnaires_, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feel the same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia, forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what was left, which would have been not so little. "When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we are doing. It's a mighty effort, _cher frère_, but there is no way out. We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are terrible competitors, I have been told. So far we have not done so poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand Vizier Köprülü. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached. But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that Turkey is developed for the benefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish." Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of mass psychology in the Ottoman Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the government. XIX SEX MORALITY AND WAR I have seen much comment on the increase of sexual laxness in the Central European states, owing to the influence of the war. Those who have written and spoken on the subject have, as a rule, proclaimed themselves handicapped by either prejudice or ignorance--two things which are really one. Much breath and ink has been wasted on certain steps taken by the several German and Austro-Hungarian governments for the legitimization of natural offspring by giving the mother the right to set the prefix _Frau_--Mrs.--before her maiden name. I have also run across the perfectly silly statement that the Central European governments, in allowing such women the war subsistence and pension of the legitimate widow and children, were purposely fostering that sort of illicit relations between men and women for the purpose of repeopling their states. On that point not much breath need be wasted, for the very good reason that each child is indeed welcome just now in Central Europe, and that the government's least duty is to take care of the woman and child who might ultimately have been the wife and legitimate offspring of the man who lost his life in the trenches. Sex problems are the inevitable result of all wars in which many men lose life and health. I may also say that in other belligerent countries this problem has as yet not been dealt with half so intelligently and thoroughly. Monogamy and polygamy are usually economic results rather than purely social institutions. A stay of nine months in Turkey showed me that polygamy in that country is disappearing fast, because the Turk is no longer able to support more than one wife. In the entire Bosphorus district, in which Constantinople lies and of which it is the center, there were in 1915 but seventeen Moslem households in which could be found the limit of four legitimate wives. Of the entire population of the district only seven per thousand Turks had more than one wife, so that, on the whole, legalized polygamy made a better showing in sex morality than what we of the Occident can boast of, seeing that prostitution is unknown among the Turks. That the war increased illicit sexual intercourse in Central Europe is true, nor was that increase a small one. It did not take on the proportions, however, which have been given to it, or which under the circumstances might have been looked for. In the first place, many of the slender social threads that restrain sex impulse in the modern state snapped under the strain of the war. Their place was taken by something that was closely related to the Spartan system of marriage. Free selection was practised by women whose husbands were at the front. The men did the same thing. The water on the divorce-mill took on a mighty spurt--evidence that this looseness did not always find the consent of the other party, though often his or her conduct may not have been any better. This is a case in which generalization is not permissible. The good stood beside the bad and indifferent, and reference to the subject might be dispensed with entirely were it not that public subsistence is closely related to sex morality. War takes from his home and family the man. Though the governments made some provision for those left behind, the allowance given them was never large enough to keep them as well as they had been kept by the labor of the head of the family. So long as the cost of living did not greatly increase, the efforts of the wife and older children met the situation, but all endeavor of that sort became futile when the price of food and other necessities increased twofold and even more. When that moment came the tempter had an easy time of it. From the family had also been taken much of the restraint which makes for social orderliness. The man was away from home; the young wife had seen better times. Other men came into her path, and nature is not in all cases as loyal to the marriage vows as we would believe. In many cases the mother, now unassisted by the authority of the father, was unable to keep her daughters and sons in check. War has a most detrimental effect upon the mind of the juvenile. The romance of soldiering unleashes in the adolescent male every quality which social regulation has curbed in the past, while the young woman usually discards the common sense of her advisers for the sickly sentimentalism which brass buttons on clothing cut on military lines is apt to rouse in the female mind. Soon the social fabric is rent in many places and governmental efforts at mending are hardly ever successful. We have of this an indication in the remarkable increase in juvenile delinquency which marked the course of the European War. In thousands of cases the boys of good families became thieves and burglars. Even highway robbery was not beyond them, and, odd as it may seem, nearly every murder committed in the Central states in the last three years had a lone woman of wealth for a victim and some young degenerate, male or female, as perpetrator. In the cases that came to my notice the father or husband was at the front. But apart from these more or less spontaneous failings of young men and women, there was the category of offenses in which external influence was the _causa movens_. Desperate need caused many to steal and embezzle; it caused many women to divest themselves of that self-respect which is decency and the glory of the _fille honnête_. Nothing can be so cynical as the laws of social administration. That was shown on every hand by the war, but especially did it become apparent in the gratification of the sexual appetite by that class which has nothing but money. While the father and husband was at the front, fighting for the state, and heaping the wealth of the community into the coffers of a rapacious industrial and commercial class, his daughter and wife were often corrupted by that very wealth. Nor was it always bitter want that promoted the lust of the wealthy profligate. The war had shaken the social structure to its very foundations. So great was the pressure of anxiety that the human mind began to crave for relief in abandonment, and once this had been tasted the subject would often become a confirmed "good-time" fiend. There was a certain war purveyor of whom it was said that he seduced a virgin once a week. The class he drew upon was the lowest. Most of his victims were factory-girls, and, such being the case, nobody thought much of it at a time when calamity had roused in all the worst qualities that may be wakened in the struggle for self-preservation. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost, and his Satanic Majesty did not overlook his chance. For a few days these girls would be the paramours of their masters. When, finally, they saw themselves cast off in favor of a prettier face, they would for a while frequent cafés where they would meet the officers on leave and small fry of civilians, and not long after that they did business on the street with a government license and certificate showing that they were being inspected by the authorities in the interest of public health. That was the usual career of one of these war victims. But the thing did not end there. The thousands who had grown rich on war contracts and food speculation began to tire of the very uninteresting sport of ruining factory-girls and shop-women. They reached out into those social classes in which refinement made a raid so much more delectable. To physical debauch had to be added moral and mental orgy. Taste had been stimulated to a degree where it demanded that social destruction should accompany lustful extravagance. And that only the woman of the better class could give. The gourmand became an epicure. Times favored him. What proportions this state of affairs reached may be illustrated by the "personal" advertisements carried at one time by one of Vienna's foremost newspapers, the _Tagblatt_. Throughout the week that paper would carry from forty to ninety inches, single column, of personal ads., each of them requesting a woman, seen here or there, to enter into correspondence with the advertiser for "strictly honorable" purposes. On Sundays the same paper would carry as much as two whole pages of that sort of advertising. Soon the time came when often as much as a quarter of these ads. would be inserted by women who disguised a heartrending appeal to some wretch in whatever manner they could. Emperor Charles deserves the highest credit for finally putting his foot down on that practice. The "personals" in the _Tagblatt_ began to irritate him, and one day he let it become known to the management of the publication that further insertion of that sort of matter would lead to the heavy hand of the censors being felt. That helped. After that the _Tagblatt_ ran only matrimonial advertising. Yet even that was not wholly innocuous. The daughter of a colonel was corrupted by means of it. I am glad to say that the old soldier took the law in his own hand. He looked up the man who had seduced the young woman and shot him dead in his tracks. The government had good sense enough to dispose of the case by having the colonel make a report. To my own attention came, in Budapest, the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been sold by her own mother to a rich manufacturer. The woman had advertised in a Budapest newspaper that did business along the lines of the Vienna _Tagblatt_. The girl knew nothing of it, of course. There was a sequel in court, and during the testimony the woman said that she had sold her daughter to the manufacturer in order to get the money she needed to keep herself and her other children. Josephus mentions in his _Wars of the Jews_ how a woman of Jerusalem killed, then cooked and ate, her own child, because the robbers had taken everything from her, and, rather than see the child starve, she killed it. He also mentions that the robbers left the house horror-struck. The war purveyor and food shark did not always have that much feeling left in them. Poor little Margit! When my attention was drawn to her she was a waitress in a café in Budapest, and her patrons used to give her an extra _filler_ or two in order that she might not have to do on her own account what she had been obliged to suffer at the behest of her raven mother. As I heard the story, the manufacturer got off with a fine, and the mother of Margit was just then sorting rags in a cellar, with tuberculosis wasting her lungs. Society at war is a most peculiar animal--it is anarchy without the safeguards of that anarchy which fires the mind of the idealist; for that system and its free love would make the buying of woman impossible. But there were sorts of sexual looseness that were not quite so sordid, which at least had the excuse of having natural causes as their background. Rendered irresponsible by sexual desire and the monotony of a poverty-stricken existence, many of the younger women whose husbands were in the army started liaisons, _Verhältnisse_, as they are called in German, with such men as were available. It speaks well for the openness of mind of some husbands that they did not resent this. I happen to know of a case in which a man at the front charged a friend to visit his wife. After I learned of this I came to understand that progress, called civilization, is indeed a very odd thing. The Spartans when at war used to do the same thing, and it was the practice of commanders to send home young men of physical perfection in order that the women should beget well-developed children. The offspring was later known as _partheniæ_--of the virgin born. But the laws of the Spartans favored an intelligent application of this principle, while in Central Europe no regulation of that sort could be attempted. An effort was made by the several governments to check this tendency toward social dissolution. For the first time in many years the police raided hotels. Now and then offenders were heavily fined. But authorities which in the interest of public health had licensed certain women were prone to be open-minded to practices due to the war. It was realized that the times were such that latitude had to be given; in the end it was felt that just now it did not matter how children were born. The state began to assume what had formerly been the duty of the father and proceeded with more vigor than ever against the malpractice of physicians. One of them, convicted on the charge of abortion, was given a two-year sentence of penal servitude. It cannot be said, however, that the woman who had made up her mind to remain a loyal wife or innocent was not given ample protection. The state was interested in the production of children, but had little patience with illicit sexual intercourse that did not result in this. There is the theory that the child whose father does not take some loving interest in the mother is not of as much value as that which has been born in the "wedlock" of love. With that in view, the government took what precaution there was possible. The profligate and _roué_ were given a great deal of attention, though little good came of this, since the times favored them entirely too much. But there is no doubt that the eyes of the law saw where they could see. Food-lines were as a rule attended by policemen, whose duty it was to maintain order and keep off the human hyenas who were in the habit of loitering about these lines for the purpose of picking out women. That was well enough. But the policeman could not see these women home, nor prevent the man from surveying the crowd, making his selection, and later forcing his attentions upon the woman. With the need for food and clothing always pressing, the ground was generally well prepared, and the public was inclined to be lenient in such matters anyway--as "war" publics have a knack of doing. I had scraped up acquaintances with a number of policemen in the district in which I lived. Most of them I had met in connection with my investigation of food-line matters. They were all very fine fellows, and red blood rather than red tape was in their veins. The suffering of the women in the food-lines had made these men more human than is usual in their business. "Another one of them has gone to the bad," said one of the policemen to me one day, as he pointed out to me discreetly a rather pretty young woman who had come for her ration of potatoes. "A fellow, who seems rather well-to-do, has been trailing her to and from this store for almost two weeks. I had my eye on him, and would have nabbed him quick enough had he ever spoken to the woman while in the line. Well, three days ago I saw the two of them together in the Schwarzenberg Café. The damage is done now, I suppose. You will notice that she has on a new pair of shoes. She must have paid for them at least one hundred and ten crowns." I suggested that the shoes were not necessarily proof that the woman had done wrong. "Under the circumstances they are," said the policeman. "Yesterday I managed to talk to the woman. She is the wife of a reservist who is now on the Italian front. The government gives her a subsistence of one hundred and twenty crowns a month. She has no other means. With two little children to take care of, that allowance wouldn't pay for shoes of that sort. It's too bad. She is the second one in this food-line this month who has done that." Shortly afterward I learned of the case of a woman who had sold herself in order to provide food and fuel for her two children. She was the widow of a reserve officer who had fallen in Galicia. Her own pension amounted to one hundred and ten crowns a month, and for the support of the children she was allowed another one hundred crowns, I believe. The sum was entirely too small to keep the three, being the equivalent of, roughly, twenty-seven dollars, depreciation of the Austro-Hungarian currency considered. At that time life in Vienna was as costly as it is normally in the United States. While her husband had been alive the woman had led a very comfortable life. She had kept a servant and lived in a good apartment in the Third Municipal District. The thing that struck me in her case was that she had not taken the step before. It is extremely difficult to be virtuous on twenty-seven dollars a month when one has not known need before. The many cases of that sort which I could cite would merely repeat themselves. I will make mention, however, of one which is due to what may be termed the psychology of the mass in war. In this instance it was not want that was responsible. Aggregates involved in war seem to sense instinctively that the violence of arms may draw in its wake social dissolution. The pathology of society is affected by that in much the same manner as is evident in other organisms when a change is imminent or pending. A period of relaxation sets in, which in the case of the human aggregate manifests itself in sexual looseness. In various parts of Serbia I had had occasion to notice that the women gave themselves readily to the invading soldiers. In the Austrian capital I ran into the same thing, though there was at that time no danger of invasion. Time lying heavy on my hands when I was not at a front, or occupied with some political situation in one of the Central European seats of government, I decided to pass some of it by taking piano lessons. I made the necessary arrangements with a master of the instrument near the Kärntner Ring. On the three half-hours a week which I took from the _maestro_ I was preceded on two by a pretty young woman greatly gifted musically. Her parents were well off, so that it was not a question of getting a "good time" in the only manner possible. After a while the young woman failed to appear for her lessons. The _Tonmeister_ wanted to know the reason for this. Confused and conflicting answers being all he received, he made up his mind that something was wrong. The poor old man had dealt with nothing but music all his life, and was delightfully ignorant of the ways of the world. He asked my advice. Should he inform the parents of the student? After I had ascertained that his responsibility as teacher was not weighted by friendship or even acquaintance with the girl's family, I suggested that he confine himself to his proper province by notifying the student that failure in the future to put in appearance at her hour would result in a report of that and past delinquencies to the parents. A very emotional interview between teacher and student resulted. By this time the girl had realized the folly of her conduct and seemed truly repentant. Being much attached to the old teacher, she made a clean breast of it. Her excuse was most interesting. "You see, dear master," she said, "these are war times. I thought that it wouldn't matter much. If the Russians came to Vienna it might happen anyway." There is used in the German army a word that comprises every rule of sex conduct to which the soldier is subject, or ought to be--_Manneszucht_--the moral discipline of the man. Infraction of this rule is severely punished in all cases, though the ordinary soldier may under it cohabit with a woman by her consent. To the officer this privilege is not given, however, it being assumed that as the instrument of military discipline he must be proof against many demands of nature and be in full control of himself at all times. The German officer who would violate a woman in an occupied territory fares badly, and the code forbids that he enter into liaison with a woman of the enemy. Nor may he visit the army brothels which now and then are established by the authorities. I do not mean to infer that the German army officer always and invariably adheres to these rules. But he does this generally. The abstinence thus practised reflects itself in that unqualified devotion to duty for which the German officer is deservedly famous. It tends to make of him, for military purposes, a sort of superman. He comes to regard the curb he sets upon himself as entitling him to despise the weaklings who satisfy their desires. In the course of time he extended the fine contempt that comes from this to his allied brothers-in-arms in Austria and Hungary, who were deplorably lax in that respect, despite the regulations. Though I do not especially deal with the latter subject, I must mention it here as a preamble to a certain experience I had one night in Trieste. The experience, on the other hand, showed to what extent war may influence the conduct of men whose station and opportunities might cause one to believe that they were above surrendering to sexual laxness. In the "Hall" of the Hotel Excelsior of Trieste were sitting at café tables some sixty Austro-Hungarian officers from the Isonzo front who on that day had been furloughed from the trenches for a certain purpose. At the tables sat also a fourscore of women who for the time being were the sweethearts of the officers. High revelry was on. The windows of the room, with all others along the Trieste water-front, had been well blinded, so that no beam of light fell into the inky blackness without through which a fierce _borea_--northern wind--was just then driving a veritable deluge. The room was well heated and lighted. I had on that very day walked off a sector on the Carso plateau, and found a most pleasant contrast between the cold and muddy trenches and the "Hall." It was exceedingly snug in the place. And there was the inevitable gipsy music. Across the bay, from Montfalcone, came the sound of an Italian night drumfire, and in the room popped the bottle of Paluguay champagne--the French products being just then hard to get. There were three other war correspondents in the party. An Austrian general-staff man was in charge. The officer was of the strait-laced sort and did not sanction the conduct of his colleagues. But then he was at headquarters at Adelsberg and could go to Vienna almost as often as he liked. The others were poor devils who had been sitting in the Carso trenches for months and had now come to Trieste to have a good time, even if that meant that next morning the pay of several months would be in the pocket of the hotel manager and in the hands of some good-looking Italo-Croat woman. It was not long before we had at our table some of the "ladies." One of the war correspondents had taken it upon himself to provide us with company. From that company I learned what the frame of mind of the officers was. After all, that attitude was simple enough. Each day might be the last, and why not enjoy life to-day when to-morrow there might be a burial without coffin, without anything except the regrets of comrades? What was etiquette under such circumstances? The champagne helped them to forget, and the women, though their conversation might be discouragingly banal, were, after all, members of the other sex. One of the women was able to take a very intelligent survey of the situation. She was capable of sensing real sympathy for these men. I learned that she had lost her husband in the war. It was the same old story. She had found the small pension for herself and the allowance for her boy entirely insufficient, was not minded to do poorly paid hard work, and had concluded that it was easy for the well-to-do to be decent. The poor had to do the best they could in these days of high prices. Out on the Carso the bombardment progressed, satisfactorily, I presume, as the next official _communiqué_ of the Italian government would say. The champagne bottles continued to pop. Men and women drank to one another's good health, the former oblivious, for the time being, that this might be the last good time they would ever enjoy. It strikes me that not much fault can be found with this, so long as we are human enough to allow those whom we are about to execute for the commission of some crime to choose their last breakfast--or is it supper? To be detailed into the advanced trenches was generally no better than to be sentenced to death. Only those who have been constantly threatened by the dangers of war can realize what state of mind these men were in. Nothing mattered any more, and, nothing being really important, the pleasures of the flesh were everything. It was so with the little music student I have mentioned. I could not reach a harsh judgment in either case, despite the picture of Prussian _Manneszucht_ before my eyes. At the same time, I am not ignorant of the fact that sleek communities living in peace and plenty cannot be expected to understand the moral disintegration which the dangers of war had wrought in this instance. I made the acquaintance of similar conditions in Berlin and other cities of the Central states. Being a matter-of-fact individual, I cannot say that they shocked me. The relations of cause and effect cannot be explained away, much as we may wish to do it. With some fourteen million men taken away from their families, whose sole support they were in the vast majority of cases, nothing else was to be expected. It speaks well for mankind in general that the resulting conditions were not worse. The responsibility involved falls rather upon those who brought on the war than upon the men and women who transgressed. And that responsibility was not shirked in the Central states. Before the war broke out there had already been held very liberal views on illegitimacy. The children of Hagar were no longer ostracized by the public, as, for instance, they are in the United States and other countries where social "justice" is still visited upon those whose misfortune it is to have been born out of wedlock. In Germany and Austria-Hungary it was held that a man is a man for all that. Small wonder, then, that during the winter of 1916, when the crop of "war" babies was unusually large--formed, in fact, more than 10 per cent. of the increase in population--the several Central European governments should decide to give such children and their mothers the allowances provided for the wives and widows of soldiers and their children. The German state governments, that of Prussia excepted, also abolished the "illegitimate" birth certificate and gave the unwed soldier wife or widow the right to use the designation _Frau_--Mistress--instead of, as heretofore, _Fräulein_, or Miss. This measure was a fine example of humaneness, seeing that otherwise many thousands of mothers of "war" babies would have been obliged to go through life with the stigma of illegitimacy branding both woman and child. It is somewhat typical of Prussia that its government should be willing to support illegitimate "war" babies and their mothers and yet deny them the comforts of social recognition, when their number was no less than two hundred thousand. There came up, in connection with this legislation, the question of whether the offspring of unmarried women whose paramours were not in the military service should receive the same liberal treatment. A great deal of opposition was voiced by the clergy and other conservative elements. It was argued that extension of this benefit to all would encourage a general recourse to free love. But the legislators and governments were less short-sighted. The legitimizing acts were so framed that they included all children, no matter who their fathers were. It was held that it would be absurd to expect the millions of women whom the war had robbed of their husbands, or the chance of getting one, to lead a life of celibacy. Nature would assert itself, and if the subject was not now dealt with in a rational manner, it would have to be disposed of later when conditions might be less favorable. There were certain examples to be recalled. At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War the South German states, being the hardest hit in losses of male population, adopted laws according to which any man with the necessary means could legitimately admit into his house as many women as he cared to support. Though well-intentioned, the law shared every defect which emergency legislation is apt to be afflicted with. The men able to support more than one wife were generally advanced in years, so that the very condition which the state had hoped to meet gave rise to chaos. It had not been the intention to afford the pleasures of the seraglio to the wealthy, but to take the best possible account of a social emergency. This was borne in mind when the Central states governments dealt with a similar condition in 1916, the factors of which were these: There had been killed in action, crippled for life, and incapacitated by disease nearly five million men who had gone to the fronts in the very prime of life. That meant a serious loss to a community--considering Germany and Austria-Hungary a single unit in this respect--which then had approximately twenty million women in the state of puberty. Reduced to statistics, the situation was that there were only four men of marriageable age for every five women. It was estimated at the time that before the war was over these odds would go to three to five. Recent casualty statistics show that this stage has been nearly reached. I must make reference here to the fact that the normal and healthy woman finds life with the physically impaired man a torture. A good many cases of that sort have come to my attention. One of them is so typical of all others that I will give its details. At a certain Berlin drawing-room I made the acquaintance of a charming young woman of the better class. I may say that she is a writer of considerable merit. A few months before the outbreak of the war she had married a professional man of quality. When the mobilization came he was drafted as an officer of the reserve. For months at a time the two did not see each other, and when finally the man returned home for good one leg had been amputated at the knee and the other a little above the ankle. The woman did what most women would do under the circumstances. She received the man with open arms and nursed him back to complete recovery. Soon it was evident that all was not well with the relations of the two. The woman tried to forget that her husband was a cripple for life. But the harder she tried the more grew a feeling of repulsion for the man. Finally, she decided to live alone. It would be very simple to label the woman a heartless creature. But it would be quite as unjust. The foes of even that small portion of realism which the most logical of us are able to identify may be inclined to take the stand that sex has little to do with what is called love. And yet in the healthy race it forms the social _force majeure_. It is not for me to decide whether the woman in question did well in leaving the man. After all, that is her own affair--so much more her own affair since the man, as yet not reconciled to his great misfortune, began to plague her with most vicious outbreaks of jealousy, when as yet he had no reason for it. The man is to be pitied by all, and unless he is able to calm his mind with the solace that comes from philosophical temperament, it would have been far better were he among the dead. He may in the end find another mate; but, seen from the angle of natural law, it must be doubted that the pity, which would have to be the great factor in such a love, would in any degree be as valuable as the sexual instinct which caused the other woman to go her own ways. Idealism and practice are always two different things. The former is the star that guides the craft, while practice is the storm-tossed sea. More than fifty thousand Russian prisoners-of-war petitioned the Austrian government to be admitted to citizenship in the country that held them captive. Many of these men had been sent into the rural districts to assist the farmers. Others were busy around the cities. They had come to be reconciled with their lot, had acquired a fair working knowledge of the language, and association with the women had led to the usual results. The crop of "war" babies increased. The Russians were willing to marry these women, but under the law could not do so. Hence the petition for admission to the usual civil rights. The Austrian government recognized the situation, but in the absence of the necessary legislative authority could do nothing to admit the Russian to Austrian _Staatsangehörigkeit_. Yet it was eager to do that. The new blood was needed. Travel about the country has often brought to my attention that in certain districts intermarriage for centuries had led to degeneration. Goiter, one of the first signals of warning that new blood must be infused in the race, was prevalent. Scientists had drawn attention to this long before the war. But there was nothing that could be done. The Russian prisoners-of-war came to serve as the solution of the problem. Their offspring were unusually robust, and some cranium measurements that were made showed that the children were of the best type mentally. A state which was losing men at a frightful rate every day could not be expected to view this increase in population with alarm. So long as the mothers were Austrian all was well from the political point of view, since it is the mother usually who rears the patriot. The Russians, moreover, soon grew fond of the institutions of Austria, and gave return to their own people hardly any thought. Conversation with many of them demonstrated that, on the contrary, they were not anxious to go home. Russia was then still the absolute autocracy, and these men were not minded to exchange the liberal government of Austria for the despotism they knew. I may state here that the Austrian government, serving in this instance as the example of all others in Central Europe, had done its level best to promote this very thing. On several trips to prison camps I visited the schools in which the Russian prisoners were being taught German. Thousands of the men were thus given their first chance to read and write, and to the more intelligent was apparent the irony of fate that caused them to read and write German instead of their own language. No more deliberate attempt to win friends could have been devised and executed. Small wonder that on one occasion a Russian working detachment employed in road-making on the Italian front rushed to the assistance of the Austrians who were being overwhelmed, and cut down the last of their allies with their spades and picks. To what extent Russian blood has been infused in the rural population of Austria and Hungary is at present entirely a matter of conjecture. The same applies to Germany, though I must state that in this case the number cannot be so great. Dreary as the picture is, it is not without its brighter spots. The mixture of blood which has occurred in many of these countries will improve the human stock. And who would care to gainsay that governments are not in the habit of looking at populations from that angle--the angle of stock? None will admit it, of course, they may not even be conscious of the fact that they hold this view. But so long as governments are interested more in quantity than in quality of propagation they cannot easily clear themselves of the suspicion. I am not at all sure that it is not better thus. I have so far treated the post-bellum aspect of sex morality entirely from the position of the man. Women will ask the question: What do the women think of it? That depends somewhat on conditions and circumstances. "When one is forty, one is satisfied with being _madame_," said a Hungarian lady to me once, when the subject had been discussed. She meant that the woman of forty was content with being the head of a household. Such an attitude takes a breadth of view altogether unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. I found it often in Central Europe, especially in Austria, where one day were pointed out to me two couples who not so very long before had changed mates by mutual consent on the part of all four concerned. One of the husbands is a rich banker, and the other, his best friend by the way, is also well off. The double pair go to the same café, sit at the same table, and their friends think nothing of it. They are regularly divorced and married, of course. While elsewhere in Central Europe the same easy view is not taken, it is a fact, nevertheless, that nowhere much puritanical strait-lacedness is to be encountered. I happen to know a certain successful diplomat who closed both eyes to his wife's infatuation for a young naval officer. The wife was young and her husband was past middle age. Rather than lose the woman and have a scandal besides, the diplomatist applied to himself what he had so often applied to others--the deception there is in self-restraint. The three of them got along well together. Often I was the fourth at table. While the diplomatist and I would smoke our cigars and sip our coffee, the two would sit side by side on the ottoman and hold intimate converse. But in Europe it is considered tactless to speak of such matters. There will be heartache, of course. Many a good woman will find herself displaced by a younger one. But that will not be without some compensation. The husband who would desert his mate because the charms of youth have flown may not be worth keeping. It may even be an act of mercy that he has rekindled his affection at some other shrine. The forsaken wife may have grown very weary herself of the life conjugal. In Protestant Germany the readjustment will be easier than in Catholic Austria and Hungary. In the latter countries much double-living will result, and that means that more women will have to sacrifice more self-respect. That is the worst part of it. But, again, the _légère_ views of Central Europe come into play. So long as the man has sense enough to keep his "war" wife in the background, nobody will take offense, and the legal wife may not mind. Officially, the paramour will not exist. As soon as she has children she will be a "Mrs." in her own right, and I suppose that many will not wait that long before changing "_Fräulein_" into "_Frau_." There is no doubt that the condition is unjust to two women at the same time. But there seems to be no escape from it. Ministers of the gospel have already roundly condemned what seeming sanction the government has given to illicit intercourse. But these good men are theorists, while the government is practical--practical for the reason that a great social problem has to be met in the best manner possible. It is far better to give the thing such aspects of decency as is possible rather than to encourage the growth of the social evil into proportions that might for all time impair the health of the race. Students of the social evil generally agree, throughout Europe at least, that its prime causes are economic. Communities in which the man, by reason of small income, is not able to establish a household early in life have not only the greatest number of loose women, but also the greatest number of free-living bachelors. The problem, then, has an economic side. In the instance here under scrutiny, the economic side is that more women than ever before must earn their own living in Central Europe to-day. The women will readily do that, so long as society will not entirely deny them the company of the man or place upon such company the stigma that generally attaches to it. Without such privileges many of these women--nature decrees ironically that they should be physically the best of the race--would take to vice in such numbers that society would lose more by being ungenerous than by taking a common-sense view of the problem it has to face. But logic in such matters is no balm of Gilead. The young married woman will be able to compete with the "surplus"; the older ones, I fear, will not. To them the war will be the thing of the hour, long after the grass has grown over the trenches, long after the work of reconstruction shall have healed the economic wounds. There will be many who can truly say, "I lost my husband in the war." And the worst of it is that they will not be able to say this with the tenderness that was in the heart at the departure for the field of battle. XX WAR LOANS AND ECONOMY During the last three years and a half the political economy of Germany and her allies has strongly resembled that in vogue among certain South Sea Islanders, who are supposed to make a living by taking in one another's washing. The same money has been making the rounds on one of the oddest economic whirligigs mankind has so far seen. The war has been carried on by means of funds derived mostly from war loans. By means of them Germany has so far raised, roughly, $19,800,000,000, and Austria-Hungary $8,600,000,000, making a total of $28,400,000,000. In addition to that the two countries have spent on the war about $2,300,000,000 derived from other sources--taxation, indemnities levied in occupied territories, and property here and there confiscated. Within my scope, however, lie only the war loans. The interest on the German war loans so far made amounts to $762,000,000 per year. To the German public debts the loans have added $293 per capita, or $1,082 for each producer in a population which the war has reduced to about 67,500,000 fit individuals. Each wage-earner in Germany will in the future carry a tax burden which in addition to all other moneys needed by the government will be weighted every year by $43.28 interest on the present war loans. Austria-Hungary's load of interest on war loans will amount to $344,000,000 annually. The burden is $204 per capita, or $816 for each wage-earner, out of a population which war losses have cut down to about 42,200,000. The annual interest each Austro-Hungarian breadwinner will have to pay on the war loans is $32.64, and in addition he must provide the revenues which his governments will need to operate. This means, of course, that the cry for bread will be heard long after the guns thunder no more. It must be borne in mind that the average yearly income of the wage-earner was a scant $460 in Germany, and $390 in Austria-Hungary. The war loan interest so far in sight will constitute about 9.3 per cent. and 8.2 per cent. respectively--no small burden when it is considered that all other revenues needed by the government must be added to this. But the bitter cup of economic losses due to the war is by no means full with these figures. The Germans have so far lost, killed in action and dead of wounds, fully 1,500,000 able-bodied producers, and have at this time to care for about 900,000 men, of whom one half is totally incapacitated and the other half partly so. The Austro-Hungarian figures are 650,000 men dead, and 380,000 totally or partly crippled. In other words, Germany has lost 2,300,000 able-bodied men, and Austria-Hungary 1,030,000. It may well be said that those dead can no longer figure in the economic scheme, because they consume no longer. On the other hand, each of these men had another twenty years of useful life before him. This long period of production has now been lost, and two decades must elapse before the Central states will again have as many producers as they had in 1914. Their propagation has also been lost, though, with the women as strong numerically as before, this loss will probably have been made good within ten years. Before treating further of the effects of war loans and their influence upon the body politic, I will examine here how these loans were made, in what manner they were applied, and what the system of economy was to which the transaction gave birth. The figures I have cited may well suggest the question: How was it possible under such conditions to make war loans? The superficial reply to that would be: By raising the money in the country--inducing the people to subscribe to the loans. The reply has no value, since it does not disclose how the necessary money was made available. The funds invested in the war loans were a part of the national capital, not a portion of the national wealth, the term wealth standing for the natural resources of a community. But capital is the surplus of production, and production results only from applying labor to natural resources; for instance, by tilling the soil, mining coal and ore, and engaging in the conversion of the less useful into the more useful, as is done in industry. A surplus of production is possible only, however, when consumption falls below production, for that which is left over of the thing produced makes the surplus. This surplus is capital. Incomplete figures which I was able to gather in 1916 showed that before the war the average wage-earner of Central Europe had produced and consumed in a ratio of 55 against 48, so far as the scale of pay and cost-of-living showed. The difference of 7 points represented the amount of money he could save if he wanted to do that. The 7 points, then, were the actual increase in the national capital. In the winter of 1916-17 the figures had undergone a remarkable change. Wages had been increased to 70 points, while the cost of food had risen to 115 points as against 48 formerly. In other words, while the wage-earner was getting 15 points more for his labor, he was paying 67 points more for his food and the necessities of life. The place of the 7 positives in capital production had been taken by 45 negatives, which meant that the national capital of Central Europe had fallen below static, the point where neither increase nor reduction takes place, by 38 points. The national capital had been decreased 38 per cent., therefore. That much of all present and former surplus production of the two states had been used up in the pursuit of the war. Governments deem it a safe policy to issue in times of financial stress three times as much paper currency as they have bullion in the vaults. One million in gold makes three millions in paper with that formula. This had been done in Germany and Austria-Hungary to quite an extent by the end of 1916. For every million of gold in the vaults there was a million of _bona fide_ paper money. That was well enough. The currency system of the United States adheres to that principle in times of peace even. But upon the same million of metal there had been heaped other paper currency which carried the promise of the government that on the given date it would be redeemed for gold or its equivalent. This method of national finance is known as inflation. It was this inflation that caused the wage-earner to show in his own little budget a deficit of 38 points. Why the government should have inflated its currency in that manner is not so difficult to understand as it may seem. From its own point of view, the wage-earner had to be lashed into greater effort if the moneys needed for the war were to be available and if the food and material consumed by the army were to be produced. The more the consumer had to pay for what he required to sustain life the harder he had to work. His deficit of 38 points was the yoke under which he labored for the army in the field, which was consuming without producing anything. These 38 points were only 17 points less than the 55 which had represented his income before the war--in round terms every two wage-earners in Central Europe were supporting in food, clothing, munition, and ammunition a soldier at the front. It could not be otherwise since two political aggregates having then approximately, with the women included, twenty-five million wage-earners, were keeping under arms about ten million soldiers, and were meanwhile providing the heavy profits made by the war purveyors. Though the 38 points were a deficit, the producer-consumer was not allowed to look at them in that manner. It was his task to cover this deficit. This he did by paying more for his food and necessities, through a channel which the inflated currency had filled with water in the familiar stock-jobbing phrase. The middlemen who owned the barges in the channel were taxed by the government on their war profits, but enough was left them to preserve interest in the scheme of war economy, a friendly act which the middlemen reciprocated by generous subscriptions to the war loans. The first, second, and third war loans in Central Europe were subscribed to with much, though later dwindling, enthusiasm. Patriotism had a great deal to do with their success. Real money was required by the government, moreover. Bank accounts, government securities, sound commercial paper, and savings deposits were turned over. The loans made later were devoid of many of these features. Those who bought war-loan certificates did so because it was necessary for one reason or another, and many of the war bonds obtained in the first loans were converted. The war and all that pertained to it was now entirely a matter of business with those who could subscribe. The poor were tired of any aspect of war. The government could not prevent their being tired, but it could see to it that indirectly the masses supported the war policy, no matter what they thought. That was not difficult. The high cost of living took from the producer-consumer what the government needed, and there is no system of discipline that is quite so efficacious as keeping a man's nose to the grindstone. Sleek bankers used to inform me that there was much prosperity in the country. There was from their point of view. The margin between the wages paid the producer and the prices asked of the consumer was great enough to satisfy the interested parties, government and middleman alike. The war loans had hardly been closed when a good share of them was again in circulation. The whirligig of war economy was spinning lustily, and there was no danger of things going wrong so long as the producer-consumer was kept well in hand. How the war loans made the rounds is quite interesting. It is the closest approach to perpetual motion I have come across. Since the Central states could buy in foreign countries only by means of special trade agreements that called for an exchange in commodities rather than for the medium of exchange, the money raised by the war loans remained within the realm. Much of it went to makers of arms and ammunition, of course. In their case a million marks--I am using this small amount as a unit only--would lead to the following results: To the manufacturer would go 60 per cent. of the total and to labor 40. Subdivided these shares paid for raw material, plant investment, operation expenses, and profits so large that the government could impose a tax of 75 per cent. without making it impossible for the manufacturer to subscribe to the next loan. Labor, on the other hand, found itself barely able to sustain life, and if a few marks were saved by some, little or nothing could be bought for them. The man who was earning 70 marks a week, instead of 55, was paying for his food and necessities 115 instead of 48 marks--an economic incongruity at first glance, but perfectly feasible so long as those affected could be induced to live on about 85 per cent. of the ration needed to properly nourish the body, and had given up entirely the comforts of life. That scheme left him hope for better times as the only comfort. No matter how often the money of the war loans rushed through his hands, none of it ever stuck to them. Before long it was plain that in this fashion the Central Powers could keep up the war forever. Their financial standing in foreign countries need not worry them so long as they could not buy commodities in them. To be sure, the public debt was increasing rapidly, but the very people to whom the government owed money were responsible for that money. If bankruptcy came to the state they would be the losers, and that responsibility increased as their wealth increased. Capital and government became a co-operative organization, and both of them exploited the producer-consumer, by giving him as little for his labor as he would take and charging him as much for the necessities of life as he would stand for--and that was much. When now and then it seemed necessary to placate the producer-consumer, he would be told that in the interest of the Fatherland the government was compelled to do what it did. But the necessity for this came not often. The small man was generally overjoyed when the government was able to announce that the war loan had been a success or had been over-subscribed. That is all he wanted to know, so long as he was not required to go to the front. The success of the war loan meant that he would have work--and live to see the end of a war which everybody claimed had been forced upon the state. It is certain that the Central states governments would have been bankrupt long ago had they been able to buy in the foreign market _ad libitum_, though in that case the foreign trade connections would have also seen to it that war loans were made to the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. There is no doubt at all that a Germany permitted to buy abroad would have later been less able to organize herself as efficiently economically as she did when her financial strength was still unimpaired for internal purposes. To this extent the swift descent of the British blockade is one of the gravest errors booked on the debit side of the Entente's politico-military ledger. Absolutely nothing was gained in a military sense by shutting the import door of the Central states. Far-seeing statesmen would have allowed Germany to import all she wanted and would then have seen to it that her exports were kept to a minimum, so far as the shortage of man-power in the country did not automatically bring about that result. As it was, the Central states supplanted and substituted right and left, made new uses of their own natural resources, and fitted themselves for the long siege at a time when doing that was still easy. The British blockade, if applied in the winter of 1915-16, would have had effects it could not hope to attain in the winter of 1914-15, when almost any rational being knew that to starve out the Central states was not to be thought of. The Central states would have continued to live very much as before, and by the end of 1915 the governments would have been obliged to shut down on imports of food for the civilian population if the gold reserve was not to be exhausted completely, as would have been the case if exports could not balance imports to any extent. Production and consumption would then not have been as well organized as they were under the auspices of the premature blockade, and the downfall for which the Entente has until now vainly hoped, and which will remain the greatest _spes fallax_ of all time, would then have surely come. That bolt was shot too soon by Great Britain. Though the Central governments were fully aware of this, as some of their officials admitted to me, they had no reason to bring this to the attention of their publics or the world. The British _Aushungerungspolitik_--policy of starvation--was the most potent argument the Central governments had to present to their war-tired people. What the German air raids on London accomplished in promoting the British war spirit the blockade of the Central states effected in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. In a war of such dimensions it was foolish to thus drive the governed into the arms of their governors. The financial condition of the Central European states to-day is as sound as that of the Entente states. That would not be true if any great share of the Central European war loans had been raised in foreign countries. But, as I have shown, this was not done. That the war debt is great is a fact. The government's creditors are all in the country, however, and if need be it can set against them the tax-tired multitude. For that there will be no necessity. The depreciation of the currency has automatically reduced by as much as 25 per cent. on an average all state indebtedness, in so far as capital is a lien against the community's natural resources and labor. But of this more will be said at the proper time. Early in the summer of 1917 the German and Austro-Hungarian governments were occupied with the question to what extent it would be possible to lighten the burden of the taxpayer. Nothing came of it for the reason that finally it was concluded that the time for financial reorganization was not yet come. Inflated money and high prices would still have to be used to keep the producer at maximum effort and prevent his consuming more than could be permitted. But the methods of financial reorganization, or we may call it reconstruction, that were discussed are none the less interesting. They involved a reduction of the interest which the government has to pay on war loans, as well as a lightening of the war-loan burden. It was tentatively proposed to either cut into half the rate of interest or to reduce by one-half the principal. One would think that the Central European bankers would oppose such a step. They did not, however. For the sake of pre-war loans and investments, these men must favor a rehabilitation of the currency, and nothing would do that as effectively as a reduction of the war debt. The mark and crown buy to-day from one-third to one-half what they bought in 1914. With the war debt cut down to one-half they would buy from 60 to 75 per cent. what they bought in that year. As a measure of socio-economic justice, if there be such a thing, the reconstruction proposed would appeal to all who invested money before the outbreak of the war. These people put up money at the rate of 100, while the interest they are getting to-day is worth from 33 to 50. The man who in 1914 invested 100,000 marks would indeed get back 100,000 marks. The trouble is that the mark has depreciated in purchasing power, so that his capital has shrunk to 33,000 or 50,000 marks, as the case may be. War does not only mortgage the future of a nation, but it also has the knack of tearing down the past. Tired of hotel life, I had made up my mind in Vienna to find private quarters. In the end I found what I wanted. I ought to have been satisfied with my lodging, seeing that it was the comfortable home of the widow of a former professor of the Vienna university. I never experienced such mixed feelings in my life as when I discussed terms with the woman. She was a person of breeding and tact and considerable false pride. How much did I want to pay? She did not know what she ought to ask. She had never rented rooms before. We arrived at an understanding. I moved into the well-furnished flat and the old lady into her kitchen, where she lived and cooked and slept, together with a parrot, until I turned over to her the bedroom and occupied the couch in the parlor. Before the war the woman had fared better. She was getting a small pension and had a little capital. The income had been large enough to give her a servant. When I moved in, the servant was gone long ago, and I suspect that since then there had been days when the old lady did not have enough to eat. Still, she was getting the same pension and her little capital was bringing the same interest. The difficulty was that the income bought but a third of what it had formerly secured. There were thousands of such cases, involving pensioners, widows, and orphans. In their case the world had not only stood still, but it had actually gone backward. The inflated currency left them stranded, and the worst of it was that taxes were growing with every day. The government was levying tribute on the basis of the inflated money. These people had to pay it with coin that was 100 so far as they were concerned. Real-estate owners were in no better position. The moratorium prevented them from increasing rents, which step had to be taken in the interest of the families of the men at the front. Taxes kept growing, however, and when the income from rent houses was all a person had there was nothing to do but stint. With the currency as low as it was, nobody cared to sell real property of course. It was nothing unusual to see the small rent-house owner act as his own janitor. While the war loans and government contracts were making some immensely rich, thousands of the middle class were being beggared. But there is nothing extraordinary in this. The socio-economic structure may be likened to a container that holds the national wealth. For purposes of its own the government had watered the contents of the bucket and now all had to take from it the thinned gruel. That thousands of aged men and women had to suffer from this could make little impression on governments that were sacrificing daily the lives and health of able-bodied producers on the battle-fields--one of whom was of greater economic value to the state than a dozen of those who were content to spend their life on small incomes without working. XXI THE AFTERMATH In Cæsar's time the pound of beef at Rome cost 1¼ American cents. At the end of the thirteenth century it was 2½ cents, due largely to the influence of the Crusades. In a Vienna library there is an old economic work which contains a decree of the Imperial German government at Vienna fixing the price of a pound of beef, in 1645, at 10 pfennige, or 2¼ American cents. When peace followed the Seven Years' War the pound of beef at Berlin was sold at 4 cents American. During the Napoleonic wars it went up to 6½ cents, and when the Franco-Prussian War was terminated beef in Germany was 9 cents the pound. The price of bread, meanwhile, had always been from one-tenth to one-quarter that of beef. In Central Europe to-day the price of beef is from 60 to 75 cents a pound, while bread costs about 5¼ cents a pound. The cost of other foods is in proportion to these prices, provided it is bought in the legitimate market. As I have shown, almost any price is paid in the illicit trade. I know of cases when as much as 40 cents was paid for a pound of wheat flour, $2.70 for a pound of butter, $2.20 for a pound of lard, and 50 cents for a pound of sugar. I have bought sugar for that price myself. These figures show that there has been a steady upward tendency in food prices ever since the days of imperial Rome, and we have no reason to believe that it was different in the days of Numa Pompilius. Looking at the thing from that angle, we must arrive at a period when food, in terms of currency, cost nothing at all. Such, indeed, is the fact. When man produced himself whatever he and his needed, money was not a factor in the cost of living. The tiller of the soil, wishing to vary his diet, exchanged some of his grain for the catch of the fisherman, the first industrial, who could not live by fish alone. The exchange was made in kind and neither of the traders found it necessary to make use of a medium of exchange--money. The necessity for such a medium came when exchange in kind was not possible--when food and the like began to have time, place, and tool value, when, in other words, they were no longer traded in by the producer-consumers, but were bought and sold in markets. But the question that occupies us here principally is, Why has food become dearer? Actually food is not dearer to-day than it was in Rome under Cæsar. The fact is that money is cheaper, and money is cheaper because it is more plentiful. Let me quote a case that is somewhat abstract, but very applicable here. Why should the farmer sell food when the money he gets for it will purchase little by virtue of having no longer its former purchasing power? He can be induced to sell such food if he is given enough dollars and cents to buy again for the proceeds of his soil and labor what he obtained through them before. That means that he must be given more money for his wares. But that he is given more money does not leave him better off. What difference does it make to him if for the bushel of wheat he gets one dollar or two dollars when the price of an article he must buy also jumps from one to two dollars? The result is a naught in both cases. To be sure, he could save more, apparently, from two than he could from one dollar. That, however, is fiction, for the reason that the twenty cents he may save of two dollars will in the new economic era buy no more than the ten cents he saved from the one dollar. It is clear now that the farmer has not profited by the increase in food prices. All others are in the same position. Money has ceased to buy as much as before. The worker who is getting twice the wages he received before the outbreak of a war is obliged to pay twice as much for food. Like the farmer, he is no better off than he was. He, too, sees nothing but zero when expenditures are subtracted from income. The body politic is a living organism for the reason that it is composed of living organisms--men and women. As a living organism this body has the inherent quality to repair or heal the wounds it has received. The men lost in war are replaced by the birth of others. In our time, at least, the women are no longer killed off, and since the remaining males are able to fertilize them a decade or two generally suffices to make good this loss which the body politic has sustained. It is a well-known fact that the average man is able to produce many times the number of children to which monogamy limits him. At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, when polygamy had to be legalized in southern Germany, Nuremberg boasted of a citizen who had thirty-seven children by six women. But even the economic wounds of the body politic heal rapidly. They begin to heal in war almost with the first day on which they are inflicted. Over them spreads the protecting scab of cheap money and high prices. The German mark buys to-day about one-third of what it bought in July, 1914; this means that it is worth no more in comparison with its former value as a lien against the wealth of the German nation. The several German governments, however, will continue to pay on their public debts the old rate of interest, and when the loans are called in the depreciated mark will take the place of a mark that had full value. The gain for the state is that it has reduced automatically its old public debt by 66 per cent. in interest and capital. The same applies to the first war loans. The German war loans up to the middle of 1915 were made with a mark that still bought 90 per cent. of what it had bought before. Interest on them will be paid and the loan redeemed with a mark which to-day has a purchasing power of only 33 pfennige. If nothing is done to interfere with this relation of currency values, the German governments will actually pay interest and return the loan with money cheaper by 62.97 per cent. than what it was when the loans were made. The fifth war loan was made at a time when the purchasing power of the mark was down to about 50 points, so that on this the "economic" saving, as established with the present purchasing power of the mark, would be only 33.34 per cent. On the seventh war loan, made with the mark down to roughly one-third of its former purchasing power, nothing could be saved by the government if redemption of the loan should be undertaken with a mark buying no more than what it buys to-day. We are dealing here with the mark as a thing that will procure in the market to-day the thing needed to live. In its time the mark that made up the public debt and the war loans served the same purpose, in a better manner, as it were. But that mark is no more. The several governments of Germany will pay interest and redeem loans in the mark of to-day, without paying the slightest heed to the value of the mark turned over to them when the loans were made. The result of this is that the older investments, be they in government securities or commercial paper, have lost in value. We must take a look at an investor in order to understand that fully. Let us say a man owns in government bonds and industrial stocks the sum of 200,000 marks. At 4 per cent. that would give him an annual income of 8,000 marks, a sum which in 1914 would have kept him in Germany very comfortably, if his demands were modest. To-day that income would go about a third as far. His 8,000 marks would buy no more than what four years ago 2,666 marks would have bought. His lien against the wealth of the community, in other words, is 2,666 marks to-day instead of 8,000 marks. Those who had to produce what the man consumed in 1914 have to produce to-day only a third of that. They would have to produce as before if the government returned to the old value of the mark, and since such a production is impossible to-day, with over two million able-bodied men dead and permanently incapacitated, with the same number of women and their offspring to be cared for, and with the losses from deterioration to be made good, the German government cannot take measures that would restore the pre-war value of the mark, especially since it would have to pay interest on war loans with a mark having more purchasing power than had the mark turned over to the government in these loans. In adopting the policy of cheaper money Central Europe is doing exactly what the Roman government did more than two thousand years ago and what every other government has since then done when wars had made the expenditure of much of the state's wealth necessary. Capital is the loser, of course. That cannot be avoided, however, for the reason that capital is nothing but the surplus of labor--that part of production which is not consumed. During the European War there was no such actual surplus. The increase in capital, as this increase appeared on the books of the state treasury and the investors, was nothing but an inflation--an inflation which now must be assimilated in figures, since its influence upon actual production is _nil_. I have already mentioned that the bankers of Central Europe are well disposed toward a partial cancelation of the public debts. They agree not because of patriotic motives, but for the reason that such a cancelation would better the purchasing value of the currency. A partial repudiation of the war loans would immediately force down prices of food and necessities, in which event the mark or crown would again buy more or less than it bought in 1915, let us assume. For the exigencies incident to foreign trade the step has merits of its own. It should not be necessary to point out that a Germany living on an American-dollar basis, as it is now doing with its depreciated mark, would find it hard to undersell the American competitor. German industrial and commercial interests must bear this in mind, and on that account will do their best to preserve the margin which has favored them in the past. Cheap money and high prices do not make for cheap labor, naturally. Even to-day labor in Central Europe has risen in price to within 70 per cent. of its cost in the United States, while food is about 15 per cent. dearer than in the American cities. Central Europe, all of Europe, for that matter, will live on what may be called the pre-war American basis when the war is over. The advantages enjoyed by the American dollar in Europe in the past are no more. Gone are the days when an American school-mistress could spend her vacation in Germany or Austria-Hungary and live so cheaply that the cost of the trip would be covered by the difference in the price of board and lodging. The cheap tour of Central Europe is a thing of the past--unless the public debt of the United States should increase so much that some slight advantage accrue therefrom. For what has taken place, or will take place in Europe, will happen in the United States when economic readjustment must be undertaken. Aside from some damage done to buildings in East Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, Galicia, and along the Isonzo, the Central states have not suffered directly from the war. The losses sustained in the districts mentioned are relatively small, and much of them has already been repaired. Reconstruction of that sort will not be so great a task, therefore. Much labor and huge expenditures will be required, however, in the rehabilitation of the railroads and the highroads. It will be necessary to relay at least a quarter of the bed mileage with new ties and rails, and fully one-half of the rolling stock and motive power now in use will have to be discarded before rail transportation in Central Europe can be brought to its former high standard. Pressing as this work is, the people of the Central states must first of all increase the production of their soil and bring their animal industry into better condition. For the first of these labors two or three years will suffice; for the second a decade is the least that will be needed. It will be necessary for many years to come to restrict meat consumption. With the exception of South America nobody has meat to sell, and since all will draw on that market high prices are bound to limit the quantities any state in Europe can buy. On the whole, the damage done by the war to the Central Europeans is not so catastrophic as one would be inclined to believe. In fact, the damage is great only when seen in the light of pre-war standards. In Central Europe, and, for that matter, in all of Europe, nobody expects trains to run a hundred kilometers per hour any more. The masses have forgotten the fleshpots of Egypt, and will be glad to get pork and poultry when no beef is to be had. Enough bread, with a little butter or some cheese on it, will seem a godsend to them for many a year. The wooden shoe has not proved so bad a piece of footgear, and the patched suit is no longer the hallmark of low caste. Enough fuel will go far in making everybody forget that there was a war. Viewed from that angle, reconstruction in Central Europe is not the impossible undertaking some have painted it. The case reminds somewhat of the habitual drunkard who has reformed and feels well now despite the fact that he has irretrievably damaged his health. The assertion has been made that the mechanical improvements and innovations made during the war would in a large measure balance the material damage done. I have tried hard to discover on what such claims are founded. The instance that would support such a contention has yet to be discovered, so far as I know. The little improvements made in gasolene and other internal-combustion engines are hardly worth anything to the social aggregate. I hope that nobody will take as an improvement the great strides made in the making of guns and ammunition. The stuff that has been written on the development of the aeroplane in war as a means of communication in peace is interesting, but not convincing. From that angle the world has not been benefited by the great conflagration that has swept it. But great hopes may be placed in the mental reconstruction that has been going on since the war entered upon its downward curve. Men and women in the countries at war have become more tolerant--newspaper editors and writers excepted, perhaps. As the war developed into a struggle between populations rather than between armies, the psychology of the firing-line spread to those in the rear. I have met few soldiers and no officers who spoke slightingly of their enemies. They did not love their enemies, as some idealists demand, but they respected them. There is no hatred in the trenches. Passions will rise, of course, as they must rise if killing on the battle-field is not to be plain murder. But I have seen strong men sob because half an hour ago they had driven the bayonet into the body of some antagonist. I have also noticed often that there was no exultation in the troops that had defeated an enemy. It seemed to be all in the day's march. In the course of time that feeling reached the men and women home. The men from the front were to educate the population in that direction. It may have taken three years of reiteration to accomplish the banishment of the war spirit. When I left Central Europe it had totally vanished. The thing had settled down to mere business. There is also a socio-political aftermath. That socialism will rule Central Europe after the war is believed by many. I am not of that opinion. But there is no doubt that the several governments will steal much of the thunder of the Social-Democrats. Some of it they have purloined already. The later phases of food control showed usually a fine regard for the masses. That they did this was never more than the result of making virtue of necessity. Endless hair-splitting in political theories and tendency would result, however, if we were to examine the interest in the masses shown by the several governments. What the socialist wishes to do for the masses for their own good the government did for the good of the state. Since the masses are the state, and since I am not interested in political propaganda of any sort, mere quibbling would result from the attempt to draw distinctions. Politics have never been more than the struggle between the masses that wanted to control the government and the government that wanted to control the masses. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. SCENE IN GERMAN SHIP-BUILDING YARD The great ship in the background has just been launched. Though the war left Germany no man to spare, every effort has been made to materially increase the country's merchant marine. To-day Germany's mercantile fleet is stronger than ever.] For the first time in the history of Central Europe, the several governments had to publicly admit that the masses were indispensable in their scheme instead of merely necessary. That they were necessary had been realized in the manner in which the farmer looks upon the draft animal. The several governments had also done the best they could to have this policy be as humane as possible. There were sick benefits and pensions. Such things made the populace content with its lot. So long as old age had at least the promise that a pension would keep the wolf from the door, small wages, military service, heavy taxes, and class distinctions were bound to be overlooked by all except the wide-awake and enterprising. The few that were able to examine the scheme from without, as it were, might voice their doubts that this was the best manner in which the ship of state could be steered, but their words generally fell on the ears of a populace to which government was indeed a divine-right institution. I have met Germans and Austro-Hungarians who were able to grasp the idea that the government ought to be their servant instead of their master. Their number was small, however. Generally, such men were socialists rather than rationalists. It is nothing unusual to meet persons, afflicted with a disease, who claim that nothing is wrong with them. The "giftie" for which Burns prayed is not given to us. It was so with the Germans and the thing called militarism. I have elsewhere referred to the fact that militarism as an internal condition in the German Empire meant largely that thinking was an offense. But the Prussian had accepted that as something quite natural. We need not be surprised at that. Prussia is essentially a military state. The army made Prussia what it is. Not alone did it make the state a political force, but it also was the school in which men were trained into good subjects. In this school the inherent love of the German for law and order was supplemented by a discipline whose principal ingredient was that the state came first and last and that the individual existed for the state. The non-Prussians of the German Empire, then, knew that militarism, in its internal aspect, was a state of things that made independent thought impossible. To that extent they hated the system, without overlooking its good points, however. The fact is that much of what is really efficient in Germany had its birth in the Prussian army. Without this incubator of organization and serious effort, Germany would have never risen to the position that is hers. As a civilian I cannot but resent the presumption of another to deny me the right to think. Yet there was a time when I was a member of an organization that could not exist if everybody were permitted to think and act accordingly. I refer to the army of the late South African Republic. Though the Boer was as free a citizen as ever lived and was of nothing so intolerant as of restraint of any sort, it became necessary to put a curb upon his mind in the military service. That this had to be done, if discipline was to prevail, will be conceded by all. The same thing is practised by the business man, whose employees cannot be allowed to think for themselves in matters connected with the affairs of the firm. On that point we need not cavil. The mistake of the men in Berlin was that they carried this prohibition of thinking too far. It went far beyond the bounds of the barrack-yard--permeated, in fact, the entire socio-political fabric. That was the unlovely part of militarism in Prussia and Germany. The policy of the several governments, to give state employment only to men who had served in the army, carried the command of the drill sergeant into the smallest hamlet, where, unchecked by intelligent control, it grew into an eternal nightmare that strangled many of the better qualities of the race or at best gave these qualities no field in which they might exert themselves. The liberty-loving race which in the days of Napoleon had produced such men as Scharnhorst and Lüchow, Körner and others, and the legions they commanded, was on the verge of becoming a non-thinking machine, which men exercising power for the lust of power could employ, when industrial and commercial despots were not exploiting its constituents. The war showed some of the thinkers in the government that this could not go on. Bethmann-Hollweg, for instance, saw that the time was come when Prussia would have to adopt more liberal institutions. The Prussian election system would have to be made more equitable. Agitation for that had been the burning issue for many a year before the war, and I am inclined to believe that something would have been done by the government had it not feared the Social-Democrats. The fact is that the Prussian government had lost confidence in the people. And it had good reason for that. The men in responsible places knew only too well that the remarkable growth of socialism in the country was due to dissatisfaction with the rule of Prussian Junkerism. They did not have the political insight and sagacity to conclude that a people, which in the past had not even aspired to republicanism, would abandon the Social-Democratic ideals on the day that saw the birth of a responsible monarchical form of government. What they could see, though, was that the men coming home after the war would not permit a continuation of a government that looked upon itself as the holy of holies for which the race was to spill its blood whenever the high priest of the cult thought that necessary. "We are fighting for our country!" is the reply that has been given me by thousands of German soldiers. Not a one has ever told me that he was fighting for the Emperor, despite the fact that against their King and Emperor these men held no grudge. And here I should draw attention to the fact that the German Emperor means comparatively little to the South Germans, the Bavarian, for instance. He has his own monarch. While the Emperor is _de jure_ and _de facto_ the War Lord, he is never more than a sort of commander-in-chief to the non-Prussian part of the German army. Liberal government is bound to come for Germany from the war. There can be no question of a change in the form of government, however. Those who believe that the Germans would undertake a revolution in favor of the republican form of government know as little of Germany as they know of the population said to be on Mars. The German has a monarchical mind. His family is run on that principle. The husband and father is the lord of the household--_Der Herr im Hause_. Just as the lord of the family household will have less to say in the future, so will the lord of the state household have less to say in the years to come. There will be more co-operation between man and woman in the German household in the future and the same will take place in the state family. The government will have to learn that he is best qualified to rule who must apply the least effort in ruling--that he can best command who knows best how to obey. This is the handwriting on the wall in Germany to-day. A large class is still blind to the "_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_," but that class must either mend its way or go down in defeat. The German at the front has ceased to think himself the tool of the government. He is willing to be an instrument of authority so long as that authority represents not a wholly selfish and self-sufficient caste. The indications for their development lie in the fact that the German generally does not hold the Prussian element in the empire responsible for the war. The Bavarian does not hate the Prussian. The West German does not entertain dislike for the men east of the Elbe river. What Bismarck started in 1870 is being completed by the European War. All sectionalism has disappeared. Three years' contact with the German army, and study of the things that are German, has convinced me that to-day there is no Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, Würtemberger, Badenser, Hanoverian, or Hessian. I have never met any but Germans, in contrast to conditions in the Austro-Hungarian army, where in a single army corps I could draw easily distinction between at least four of the races in the Dual Monarchy. It must be borne in mind that these people speak one language and have been driven into closer union by the defense of a common cause. What is true of racial affinity in the Anglo-Saxon race is true in the case of the German race; all the more true since the latter lives within the same federation. I must make reference here to the fact that even the German socialists are no great admirers of the republican form of government. Of the many of their leaders whom I have met, not a single one was in favor of the republic. Usually they maintained that France had not fared well under the republican form of government. When the great success of republicanism in Switzerland was brought to their attention, they would point out that what was possible in a small country was not necessarily possible in a large one. Upon the American republic and its government most of these men looked with disdain, asserting that nowhere was the individual so exploited as in the United States. It was that very exploitation that they were opposed to, said these men. Government was necessary, so long as an anarchic society was impossible and internationalism was as far off as ever, as the war itself had shown. Germany, they asserted, was in need of a truly representative government that would as quickly as possible discard militarism and labor earnestly for universal disarmament. A monarch could labor better in that vineyard than the head of a republic, so long as his ministers were responsible to the people. Upon that view we may look as the extreme measure of reform advocated by any political party in Germany to-day. It is that of the Scheidemann faction of Social-Democrats, a party which latterly has been dubbed "monarchical socialists." The extreme doctrinarians in the socialist camp, Haase and Liebknecht, go further than that, to be sure, but their demands will not be heeded, even after the pending election reforms have been made. The accession to articulate party politics in Germany, which these reforms will bring, will go principally to the Liberal group, among whom the conservative socialists must be numbered to-day. Not socialism, but rationalism will rule in Germany when the war is over. One of the results of this will be that the Prussian Junker will have passed into oblivion a few years hence. Even now his funeral oration is being said, and truly, to be fair to the Junker: The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft' interred with their bones. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. A table of contents was added. Hyphen removed: air[-]tight (p. 148), bread[-]winner (p. 354), fountain[-]head (p. 31), hall[-]mark (p. 31). P. 51: "quantitity" changed to "quantity" (a large quantity of crude rubber). P. 115: "sharps" changed to "sharks" (For the food sharks). P. 154: "Kaffee-ersatz-ersatz" changed to "Kaffee-ersatz". P. 227: "General Höefer" changed to "General Höfer". P. 366: "fron" changed to "from" (prevented them from increasing). 
44214	----	Proceedings Third National Conference Workmen's Compensation For Industrial Accidents Chicago, June 10-11, 1910 Including A Brief Report of The Second National Conference Washington, January 20, 1910 Copies may be had at fifty cents each from JOHN B. ANDREWS, _Assistant Secretary_, Metropolitan Tower, New York City. GENERAL OFFICERS. _Chairman_ CHARLES P. NEILL Commissioner United States Bureau of Labor _Vice-Chairman_ CHARLES MCCARTHY Chief Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library _Treasurer_ HENRY W. FARNAM Yale University _Secretary_ H. V. MERCER Chairman Minnesota Employees Compensation Commission _Assistant Secretary_ JOHN B. ANDREWS Secretary American Association for Labor Legislation EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. (In Addition to the General Officers). HENRY R. SEAGER, _Chairman_, Vice-Chairman, New York Commission WILLIAM E. MCEWEN, Member Minnesota Commission A. W. SANBORN, Chairman Wisconsin Commission EDWIN R. WRIGHT, Secretary Illinois Commission JAMES A. LOWELL, Chairman Massachusetts Commission WILLIAM B. DICKSON, Chairman New Jersey Commission WILLIAM J. ROHR, Chairman Ohio Commission HENRY W. BULLOCK, Delegate from Indiana JAMES V. BARRY, Delegate from Michigan MILES M. DAWSON, Member-at-large Proceedings Third National Conference Workmen's Compensation For Industrial Accidents Chicago, June 10-11, 1910 Including A Brief Report of The Second National Conference Washington, January 20, 1910 CONTENTS PAGE. I. INTRODUCTORY NOTE, INCLUDING BY-LAWS 3 II. PROGRAM 5-6 III. PROCEEDINGS 7 1. Friday Forenoon Session, June 10 10 2. Friday Afternoon Session, June 10 39 (1) "Worker's Compensation Code," An Outline for Discussion 40 3. Saturday Forenoon Session, June 11 82 APPENDIX,--Brief Report of Washington Conference, January 20, 1910 124 INDEX 136 Princeton University Press Princeton, N. J. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. The National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents was organized at Atlantic City, July 29-31, 1909. The second meeting was held in Washington, January 20, 1910. The third meeting, June 10-11, 1910, was in Chicago. The nature of the Conference is clearly set forth as follows: BY-LAWS. 1. The name of this organization shall be the National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents. 2. Its purpose shall be to bring together the members of the commissions and committees of the various States and of the National Government, representatives to be appointed by the governors of the different States, and other interested citizens, to discuss plans of workmen's compensation and insurance for industrial accidents. 3. Its officers shall be a chairman, a vice-chairman, a secretary, an assistant secretary and a treasurer, to be elected annually and to hold office until their successors shall have been elected. 4. The business of the organization shall be conducted by an executive committee, consisting of the officers and of other members, said committee to represent at least ten different States. 5. The voting members of the Conference shall be the members, secretaries and counsels of all State Commissions or committees on the subject, one or more representatives to be appointed by the governors of different States, and ten members at large to be elected at any regular meeting of the Conference. 6. Individuals and associations of individuals may be admitted as associate members, and as such, be entitled to the privileges of the floor and to receive the publication of the Conference upon the payment of $2.00 per annum for each such individual member, and $25.00 per annum for each such association. 7. No resolution committing the Conference to any fixed program, policy or principle, shall be deemed in order at any of its meetings, except upon unanimous vote. 8. The funds of the Conference shall be derived from contributions from the commissions and committees on the subject, and from voluntary subscriptions. The proceedings of the Atlantic City Conference are published in a volume of 340 pages, and copies may be had, at fifty cents each, from H. V. Mercer, of Minneapolis. The proceedings of the Chicago Conference (including as an Appendix on pages 124-135 a brief report of the Washington Conference, the proceedings of which have not been printed _in extenso_), may be had at fifty cents a copy by addressing John B. Andrews, Metropolitan Tower, New York City. PROGRAM Third National Conference on Industrial Accidents and Workmen's Compensation Auditorium Hotel, Chicago June 10-11, 1910 _Chairman_ CHARLES P. NEILL Commissioner United States Bureau of Labor _Secretary_ H. V. MERCER Chairman Minnesota Employees' Compensation Commission _Assistant Secretary_ JOHN B. ANDREWS Secretary American Association for Labor Legislation FRIDAY FORENOON SESSION, 9:30 BRIEF REPORTS FROM STATE COMMISSIONS _Minnesota_: H. V. Mercer, William E. McEwen, George M. Gillette. _Wisconsin_: A. W. Sanborn, E. T. Fairchild, John J. Blaine, Wallace Ingalls, C. B. Culbertson, Walter D. Egan, George G. Brew. _New York_: J. Mayhew Wainwright, Joseph P. Cotton, Jr., Henry R. Seager, Crystal Eastman, Howard R. Bayne, Frank C. Platt, George A. Voss, Cyrus W. Phillips, Edward D. Jackson, Alfred D. Lowe, Frank B. Thorn, Otto M. Eidlitz, John Mitchell, George W. Smith. _Illinois_: Ira G. Rawn, E. T. Bent, Robert E. Conway, P. A. Peterson, Charles Piez, Mason B. Starring, M. J. Boyle, Patrick Ladd Carr, John Flora, George Golden, Daniel J. Gorman, Edwin R. Wright. _New Jersey_: William D. Dickson, J. William Clark, Samuel Botterill, John T. Cosgrove, Harry D. Leavitt, Walter E. Edge. _Massachusetts_: James A. Lowell, Amos T. Saunders, Magnus W. Alexander, Henry Howard, Joseph A. Parks. _Ohio_: (Members to be appointed by the Governor.) GENERAL DISCUSSION "Workers' Compensation Code" (Outline for Discussion) Representatives of the Federal Government, Members of State Commissions, Delegates designated by Governors of States, Representatives of Manufacturers' Associations and Trade Unions, Insurance Companies, Russell Sage Foundation and Association for Labor Legislation, and other interested organizations and individuals. FRIDAY AFTERNOON SESSION, 2:00 WORKERS' COMPENSATION CODE (Discussion continued). SATURDAY FORENOON SESSION, 9:30 SPECIAL DISCUSSION: Classification of Hazardous Employments. Repeal of Common Law and Statutory Remedies. Contract vs. Absolute Liability. Limited Compensation vs. Pension Plan. Court Administration vs. Boards of Arbitration. PROCEEDINGS Third National Conference Workmen's Compensation For Industrial Accidents Chicago, June 10-11, 1910 The third meeting of the National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents brought together from widely separated parts of the United States a large number of those who represent the serious thought of the country on this most urgent question. Members of State Commissions in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts were present and submitted reports. Thirty-eight official delegates were appointed by the governors of States, and, in addition, representatives were present from manufacturers' associations, trade unions, insurance companies, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Association for Labor Legislation, and other interested organizations. Many individuals from the shops, the offices and the universities, attended the various sessions and listened to the arguments of the speakers or participated in the discussions. Among those present who took an active interest in the meetings were: Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago; T. W. Allinson, Henry Booth House, Chicago; W. A. Allport, Member Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases and State Delegate; L. A. Anderson, State Insurance Actuary, Madison, Wis.; John B. Andrews, Secretary American Association for Labor Legislation, New York City. James V. Barry, State Delegate from Michigan; William P. Belden, Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, Mich.; E. T. Bent, Member Illinois Commission; John J. Blaine, Member of Wisconsin Commission and State Delegate; M. J. Boyle, Member of Illinois Commission; Frank Buchanan, Structural Iron Workers' Union, Chicago; Henry W. Bullock, representing Indiana State Federation of Labor. Patrick Ladd Carr, Member Illinois Commission; Robert E. Conway, Member Illinois Commission; Clarence B. Culbertson, Member Wisconsin Commission and State Delegate. Edgar T. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois and State Delegate; Miles M. Dawson, Insurance Actuary, New York City; F. S. Deibler, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.; M. M. Duncan, State Delegate from Michigan. Crystal Eastman, Secretary and Member New York Commission; Herman L. Ekern, Deputy Commissioner of Insurance, Wisconsin. Henry W. Farnam, President American Association for Labor Legislation, New Haven, Conn.; John Flora, Member Illinois Commission; Lee K. Frankel, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City; Ernst Freund, University of Chicago and President Illinois Branch A. A. L. L. John H. Gray, University of Minnesota and President of Minnesota Branch, A. A. L. L.; John M. Glenn, Director Russell Sage Foundation, New York City; George Golden, Member Illinois Commission; Daniel J. Gorman, Member Illinois Commission. Walter D. Haines, Member Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases and State Delegate; Alice Hamilton, Expert Investigator Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases; Samuel A. Harper, Attorney Illinois Commission; Leonard W. Hatch, Statistician, New York State Department of Labor; Charles R. Henderson, Secretary Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases and State Delegate; J. C. A. Hiller, Missouri Commissioner of Labor and State Delegate; Frederick L. Hoffman, Statistician Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, New Jersey. Wallace Ingalls, Member Wisconsin Commission and State Delegate. Sherman Kingsley, United Charities, Chicago. Thomas F. Lane, Missouri State Delegate; Julia Lathrop, Director Chicago School of Civics; James A. Lowell, Chairman Massachusetts Commission. Charles McCarthy, Chief Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library; Edwin M. McKinney, Chicago; Ruben McKitrick, University of Wisconsin; Floyd R. Mechem, University of Chicago; H. V. Mercer, Chairman Minnesota Commission and State Delegate; H. E. Miles, National Manufacturers' Association and Racine-Sattley Company, Racine, Wis.; John Mitchell, Member New York Commission; William H. Moulton, Sociological Department, Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, Mich. Cecil Clare North, De Pauw University, Indiana. Irene Osgood, Assistant Secretary American Association for Labor Legislation, New York City. Joseph A. Parks, Member Massachusetts Commission; P. A. Peterson, Member Illinois Commission; Charles Piez, Member Illinois Commission; Ralph F. Potter, Attorney Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation, Chicago. Samuel Rabinovitch, Milwaukee Relief Society; G. A. Ranney, International Harvester Company, Chicago; Benjamin Rastall, University of Wisconsin; A. Duncan Reid, Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation, New York; C. T. Graham Rogers, Medical Inspector New York Department of Labor; David Ross, Secretary Illinois State Bureau of Labor. Amos T. Saunders, Member Massachusetts Commission; A. W. Sanborn, Chairman Wisconsin Commission and State Delegate; Ferd. C. Schwedtman, National Association of Manufacturers, St. Louis; Henry R. Seager, Member New York Commission and President of the New York Branch, A. A. L. L.; A. M. Simons, Chicago; Geo. W. Smith, Member New York Commission; John T. Smith, Secretary Missouri State Federation of Labor; Mason B. Starring, Member Illinois Commission; H. Wirt Steele, Charity Organization Society, Baltimore, Md.; Ethelbert Stewart, United States Bureau of Labor; Charles A. Sumner, City Club, Kansas City, Missouri. Edward G. Trimble, Employers' Indemnity Exchange, Houston, Texas; James H. Tufts, University of Chicago. Paul J. Watrous, Secretary Wisconsin Commission and State Delegate; Agnes Wilson, United Charities, Chicago; Edwin R. Wright, Member and Secretary Illinois Commission. FIRST SESSION, FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1910, 9.30 A. M. In the absence of Commissioner Charles P. Neill, of the United States Bureau of Labor, who was detained in Washington by urgent official matters, the first session of the Chicago Conference was opened by the Secretary, H. V. Mercer, Chairman of the Minnesota Employes Compensation Commission, and he was unanimously elected temporary chairman for the Chicago meetings. In formally opening the Conference and assuming the chair, Mr. Mercer said: CHAIRMAN MERCER: According to the program here, the first order of business for this meeting is brief reports from the different state commissions. I understand there are seven States that have commissions working on the question of compensation for industrial accidents, or perhaps, more properly speaking, for injuries occurring in the course of and arising out of the industries in which they are employed,--for "accidents," according to the courts in some States, do not mean what we want to cover. Some courts use that term in the popular sense; some use it as including, and some use it as excluding, any idea of fault or negligence. In view of the fact that you have made me temporary chairman, it would hardly be proper for me to open this meeting with a report from Minnesota, and hence I will call upon the other States first. (Upon the Call of States by the Chairman, the following responses were given.) WISCONSIN. SENATOR JOHN J. BLAINE: Our Committee is a legislative committee made up of three members of the Senate and four members of the Assembly. The committee was appointed at the last session of the Legislature in 1909. They have been diligently pursuing the course of their investigations with the object of arriving at a bill which the committee can recommend to the Legislature for its adoption. It was a few months before we got to work after our appointment and it was not until last April that we drafted the first tentative bills. I would state briefly that the first tentative bills were drafted with the object of drawing out discussion on the part of the employers and employes. We had held some meetings previously, and those who appeared before us were somewhat in the dark as to just what we intended to do and wanted to do, and therefore we drafted tentative bills to which they should direct their fire of criticisms and suggestions. The first bill presented was a bill destroying the common law defenses, assumption of risk, the co-employe doctrine, and modifying contributory negligence to that of comparative negligence. The second of the first tentative bills was a compensation measure. The purpose of the first bill was to use a "constitutional coercion," as we have termed it, making the compensation bill practically compulsory, but not in the language of the bill declaring it compulsory, hoping in this way to bring it within the constitution. That destroyed the common law defenses and then gave the employer the right to come under the compensation act. Also in that bill the employe was presumed to be acting under that bill unless he contracted to the contrary at the time of entering his employment. The matter of compensation and the details of the bill are not of particular interest to the Conference, because they are questions concerning which there is very little contention, and they resolve themselves practically to the point of working out the question of arbitration and the measure of compensation and the manner of arriving at compensation, and such court procedure as is necessary, in detail. We found that our first tentative bills performed the exact object which we intended they should. Neither the committee nor any of its members, I believe, had any idea that the first tentative bills represented their individual ideas or even the idea of the committee as a whole; but they certainly resulted in bringing about discussion, and after those bills were sent about the State to employers and employes they all got busy and we had very valuable and helpful discussions upon those bills. We held a conference in Milwaukee lasting about a week. There appeared before the committee representatives of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of Milwaukee, and from the northern part of the State representatives of the lumber and various other industries. We also had the State Federation of Labor. After that meeting we met again in May and drafted our second set of tentative bills, the first bill destroying the defense and assumption of risk, and also the co-employes doctrine as a defense, but embodying the question of contributory negligence. That bill, if enacted into law, independent of every other act, would make all employers of every nature subject to the law, whether the employer was a farmer, a manufacturer or whatsoever he might be. The second bill provided practically the same as our other bill. We found at these public hearings that the question of who shall pay for the insurance, as it is called, is not a matter of great contention in Wisconsin. I think the larger manufacturers, and the great majority of all of them, favor paying the compensation themselves and either assuming the obligation, or organizing mutual insurance companies or protecting themselves with liability insurance policies. There are a few who believe that the employes should contribute a small portion toward the compensation, but I do not believe that is the general sentiment among the employers and manufacturers in Wisconsin. I think the only serious problem we have to meet is whether we shall take away the common law right from the employe. The Federation of Labor of Wisconsin is very much opposed to that feature of our bill, and personally I am opposed to it. I have expressed that opposition at all the hearings and directed many questions along that line to ascertain the sentiment of employers and employes. Our bill creates the presumption that an employe is acting under the act unless he contracts to the contrary at the time of his employment, and of course the idea of that is to get around the constitutional provisions; therefore, there will be consent to act under the law, and consent to arbitration, and hence it will no doubt be constitutional. But the employes, through their representatives, believe that they should have the right of selection after the injury has occurred. The Federation bill that they have prepared, follows practically the same lines as the English act, giving the double remedy of a common law right of action, and then also compensation in case of their failure to recover under the common law; but they have gone so far, through their representatives, as to state that they would not ask for that provision in its entirety. While I am not going to speak authoritatively as to just what they will or will not do, I think it is their idea that if they are given the right to elect at the time or within a reasonable time of the injury, whether they shall proceed under the common law remedy or accept the provisions of the compensation act, that they will be willing to waive the double remedy, and whichever act the employe chooses to proceed under, will be a waiver of all other remedies. That question is going to be debated by both sides and I think if we are going to meet with any danger of defeat in promoting this legislation it will be upon that one subject, and personally I hope that the employers will find that under a reasonable bill, with reasonable compensation and protection drawn about them, so there will be no danger to mulct them in any great damages, that they will be willing to accept some provision giving the employes the right of election at the time of the injuries. Under the second tentative bill we have had public hearings throughout the State, particularly in the industrial centers, and concluded those hearings last Friday. We expect to meet as a committee, redraft our bills and get them into substantial form, and then I suppose, after we have determined what the committee intends to do as a committee in submitting its report to the Legislature on the essential points, we will then have public hearings and the questions that are debatable will be debated before that committee at these hearings, and then we will make our report accordingly. NEW YORK. MISS CRYSTAL EASTMAN: The New York Commission is in a peculiarly fortunate position. Our bills have both passed and one of them has already been signed by the Governor, so that to-day our labors would be all over and we could return to rest, except for the fact that we still have to inquire into the causes and prevention of industrial accidents, the causes and effects and remedies of non-employment, and the causes and remedies for the lack of farm labor in New York State. You will see from this that we received a life sentence on the New York Commission. The Legislature evidently thought it would give to us the solution of all the problems of modern industry and keep the reformers quiet for fifty years. However, we have finished up the Employers' Liability part of our job and we feel that we have done our part of the work in that regard and now have put it up to the Legislature. When I was planning what I should say here, I rather thought I would discuss the two bills which we have introduced, and passed, and leave out the discussion of how we did the work, but since I have come here I believe it is more important to tell you how we did it, and take it for granted that you know about the bills and are familiar with them. Our work, to my mind, is divided into five different sections. In the first place we had reports specially prepared for the Commission, one on the Employers' Liability Law in New York State and the other States. That was prepared by our counsel and sent to every member of the Commission early last summer. Then we had a report prepared on the Foreign Systems of Compensation and Insurance: That was mailed to the members of the Commission for their information. Then we had a report on Relief Associations in New York State, which was very voluminous and was not generally mailed, but was kept in the office for reference. The next section of our work was printed inquiries sent to all the employers whom we could get the names of from the State Department of Labor, and to all labor unions on record. These inquiries were just about the same as those sent to the employers, and in a general way we asked both the labor unions and the employers what they thought of the present law on employers' liability, how they thought it met the situation; and we asked them how they would like a law on workmen's compensation, describing it very briefly. We received replies from only a small proportion of the inquiries we sent out, but a large enough number to give us some general idea of the feeling of both the employers and the laboring people in the State on this subject. I can say positively, however, that we found no satisfaction; practically nobody liked the law. The employers disliked it for one reason and the workmen disliked it for another, and so nobody was satisfied with it. Another printed inquiry we sent to the insurance companies. This was more in the line of investigation, however, as we got from them not opinions so much as figures showing how much they had received in premiums from employers for liability insurance, and what proportion of this had been spent in paying actual claims, thus showing us what proportion was, so to speak, wasted in the business of defending claims. We then wrote letters, not printed inquiries, but letters containing a list of questions to a great many lawyers, and to all the judges in the State, asking their opinion about the constitutional questions involved. That, I think, ended the inquiry section of our work. Then we held public hearings, five or six up the State and as many in New York City, and tried to make the invitations as general as we could. Many of us felt that those hearings were not going to be important and perhaps were a waste of money, but after we had them I believe we all felt that they were worth while. They perhaps did not furnish us with any definite statistical information, but they did put us in touch with the feelings of the people of the State on this subject, and gave us a more concrete view of the subject than we could have gotten by correspondence or by any statistical inquiry, and brought us in touch with the people on both sides of the question, who were interested in the problem. But quite apart from the value to us, of these written inquiries and of the public hearings, in informing us on the situation, they were valuable in arousing interest all over the State, and in educating the public in regard to the problem. We were particularly gratified to see the way in which labor unions seized the opportunity to become interested and to educate themselves in regard to employers' liability and workmen's compensation. When we started out last fall most of the labor unions that answered our inquiries did not know what we were talking about, and now I hardly think there is a union of any size in the State that is not in a position to know what it wants in the matter of employers' liability and workmen's' compensation. The next section of our work was statistical inquiry--a regular statistical investigation. The bulk of this was done for us under Mr. Hatch's direction at the New York State Labor Department. A study was made of some fourteen hundred actual industrial accident cases, both injury and death, to show what was the loss of income to the man injured, how much he received from the employer, how much he paid to a lawyer and what was the effect of the accident upon his family; in other words, a study of the economic cost of work accidents. In addition to that Mr. Hatch conducted an inquiry into the cost of industrial accidents to some three hundred employers, showing how much they paid in a year on account of industrial accidents and into what different channels that money went; how much of it went to employers' liability and insurance premiums; how much went to the workmen and how much to the hospitals and so forth. All of this was exceedingly valuable in giving us information as to the conditions in our own State. In addition to this the Commission conducted a similar investigation of three hundred fatal industrial accident cases to determine their economic effect upon the family and the income loss, of compensation received and all that. These fatal accident cases we secured in a perfectly impartial way by taking a year's fatal industrial accidents reported to the coroners of Manhattan Borough and Erie County, where Buffalo is situated. As a result of these two inquiries we have a mass of statistics on this subject. We were able to put into our report a statement, from the statistics, of just about what proportion of workmen who were injured received anything to compensate them for the income loss, and with regard to the workmen killed, what proportion of the dependents received anything. Those four divisions, I think, cover our preliminary work. Then came the business of preparing and writing the report. The rough draft was prepared by two or three members of the Commission, and the counsel, in different sections. When it was in printed proof for the first time, Senator Wainwright, the chairman, called the whole Commission together and informed us that he intended to make us read the whole report aloud, all sitting together, so that every member of the Commission might feel that he had written the report and that it was his report. That idea astounded me, I will admit, when I first heard it, because I thought it was going to take us the rest of the year to do it; but it turned out to be a very excellent plan, and we actually did that. We sat down for three days without stopping, except for meals, and read the report aloud, and there is no member of the Commission who did not make suggestions, and valuable suggestions, and I think I may say that we all feel that it is our report. When it came to the bills which we introduced we followed somewhat the same plan. We went over every line and word of the bills, of course in much greater detail than we did the report, and the bills are the result of a giving in here and a giving in there, as you can readily imagine. They did not represent just exactly what every one of us wanted to do, but they represent what we could agree to do, and the Legislature has done us the honor to take our advice. And now just a word in regard to these bills. The first one is called the Optional Bill. It does two things: It remedies the glaring injustice of the present law on the basis of negligence by modifying the fellow-servant rule, by making all fellow-servants in positions of authority vice-principals instead of fellow-servants; by doing away with the extreme application of the assumption of risk rule which allows an employe to assume the risk of an employe's negligence by remaining in employment, and changes the burden of proof of contributory negligence over to the defendant. Those three things we felt it to be necessary to change in the employer's liability law on the basis of negligence, even if we never changed it in any other particular. In addition to this feature of the bill, there is afforded to the employes and employers, if they wish to escape this situation, by an amendment to the employer's liability law, the opportunity of making a contract. That is the option feature of the bill; there is nothing particularly interesting or original about that. Some members of the Commission were for it because it would force the employers into compensation, and some members were for it because they thought it remedied an injustice in the present law which they could not stand for, but, at any rate, all but two of us were able to agree on that. Then the second bill, which we call the Compulsory Compensation Act for dangerous trades, is our solution of two difficulties which we met and which, no doubt, all of the other commissions are having to meet. These two difficulties are the constitutional difficulty, the fact that we have written constitutions limiting our powers along all these lines; and, secondly, the interstate competitive difficulty, the fact that in this country our laws are made by States and we have state legislative lines, but no state competitive lines--the old cry of the manufacturer, that if you put a burden upon him in New York State he cannot compete with a manufacturer in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and will, therefore, either have to go out of business or out of the State. That difficulty of interstate competition we felt to be a real one. Whether it would actually drive the manufacturer out of business or not, it would inevitably hinder the passing of our bill, because the manufacturers of the State in a body would oppose it. The constitutional difficulty, to be a little more definite, in our case seemed to be pretty serious; we had only two lawyers in the State who wrote us that they thought a general compulsory compensation act similar to the English law would be constitutional, but we had a great deal of advice to the effect that if we could draw our bill so it would apply to the risk of the trade, and make the compensation depend upon the inherent risk of the trade, that that would be constitutional. With these two difficulties in mind we drew the bill applying to dangerous trades. As you know, it provides compensation for all workmen injured in eight specially dangerous trades, if they were injured either through the fault of the employer or any of his agents, which is plainly perfectly constitutional; or if they were injured in any sense through any risk inherent or necessary as a risk of the trade. The bill does not take away any statutory or common law rights that the workman now has, but he must choose between one or the other. If he begins proceedings under the compensation act, he loses his right to sue and _vice versâ_. The importance of this bill, in my mind, is very great. I think that is the way to go at it in this country. If the employer and the workman both profit by the enterprise they should both assume the risk of the trade, and that principle, I think, is what is established by our compulsory compensation bill. I want to make clear that the list of dangerous trades in this law is not an inclusive list of dangerous trades by any means. There is no reason why we should draw the line where we did draw it. Our reason in selecting these dangerous trades instead of all dangerous trades, as we originally had our list drawn, was a purely utilitarian opportunist reason. It was our solution of the second legislative difficulty in this country; that is, the interstate competition. We thought that it would be a good plan to get our entering wedge in on the industries which did not directly compete with other industries outside of the State. For instance, the builder in New York State competes with the builder in New York State, generally speaking; and the railroad in New York State competes with the railroad in New York State, generally speaking, and not with the outside railroads. We are quite frank in saying that we thought we could get this bill passed if we did not make it hit the manufacturer to begin with. We intend that it shall cover him in time, and just as soon as we can, make it cover him; but it seemed a fair as well as a wise thing to introduce the principle and get the employers used to the burden, and get the insurance rate adjusted for injuries, so that it would not be a serious competitive difficulty. Those two reasons, then, explain this bill; we limited it to the risks of trade instead of having it cover all accidents in the course of employment, as the representative list did, because we believed that that was the constitutional line for us to act on, and we limited it to those dangerous trades which, generally speaking, are not involved in interstate competition, because we thought we could pass it easier and it would be fair to try it out on those employers first. PROF. HENRY R. SEAGER (New York): I should like to add just a word along the line of the practical difficulties that all of our commissions face when it comes to getting legislation. Some members of the New York Commission felt that it would be a mistake to try to make any report at all this last winter when the proposal was first advanced. We felt that we had a very big problem. That, in addition to studying the experience in this country and getting reports on European laws, we ought to send some one over or go over ourselves to the other side and see just how the European laws operate. The consideration that finally led us to make a report, and try to get legislation, was the political situation in New York. As the winter advanced it became very clear that it was a highly opportune time to get through legislation that had popular sentiment behind it. The legislative members of our Commission were so impressed by that aspect of the matter that they were impatient, some of them, to bring in bills without any report at all to back them up, and that consideration finally led all of us to feel that we should hurry as much as we could and get in the best report we could in the short time that was allowed, with the hope that the bills we recommend, if reasonable and fair, would be passed. It was that situation that led us to make a report which at some points was not altogether satisfactory to the members of the Commission; and that consideration, I think, justified our action because, as it turned out, the Legislature was in a mood to act on our recommendations. The voluntary law was a bill, aside from the compensation feature of it, that had slumbered in Albany for five or six years in spite of the efforts of the labor representatives to have something done. That it was a favorable situation was shown by the comparative ease with which that bill was passed, in somewhat modified form, when we put ourselves behind it. It is those practical considerations, gentlemen, it seems to me, that we must consider quite as much as the ideal solution of this question for many years in this country. I say that because as a professor of political economy, as a theorist, I perhaps would not be expected to take that view of the matter. GEORGE W. SMITH (New York): I was sort of a moderate edition of the employers' representative on the New York State Commission. I was one against about thirteen. Of course, you can imagine that my advice could not have been considered very seriously, but I am willing to say that they certainly did give me considerable consideration, for the reason that I was not really a radical against any legislation that would be fair; and I feel that the employers of New York State felt largely as I did. I cannot help but remark, however, about the point that Professor Seager raised, of the opportunity that seemed to present itself at this session of our Legislature. I do not suppose I ought to criticise, but I hope that similar conditions will not exist in other States at the time this legislation is up, because I think it is of a very important character, and should not be put through for any personal reasons or in order to bring political capital to any of the legislative members. I suppose it is pretty well known that there were a great many shattered reputations in the Legislature of New York State this year, and it is always a pretty handy thing to have around an opportunity to do something for the boys that work hard for a living. I do not blame those that were in favor of this legislation for taking advantage of that very favorable opportunity, but it certainly was a good opportunity and was well taken advantage of. I had to smile, however, on a number of occasions at the attitude of some of the labor representatives. They did not seem to realize, a good many of them, how important this legislation was and how beneficial it was to them; but if they could have gone behind the scenes, and had a heart-to-heart talk with some of the employers, they would have realized that the employers did not like it very well. As for one of the bills being designated as a voluntary or optional bill by the removal and absolute wiping out almost of all of the employers' defenses, it practically makes that almost a compulsory bill. However, I believe that all the employers in the country realize that the time has arrived when some fair legislation must be enacted, and the only thing that I think should be well considered is not to go so far that you are going to put the country in a bad financial state. PROF. SEAGER: If Mr. Mitchell would say something about the labor situation when we started out I think it would be very interesting. JOHN MITCHELL (New York): The measures have been discussed so thoroughly by the other members of the Commission that I shall not attempt to discuss them now. When this Commission was first appointed in New York State, as Miss Eastman stated, the workmen knew very little about the systems of compensation in Europe, and they knew little about the principles of workmen's compensation. The Commission was appointed not because of a demand for workmen's compensation, but because of a demand for a comprehensive system of employers' liability. But after the Commission was appointed, and it was suggested that they go into an investigation of workmen's compensation, the unions took the matter up and made investigations on their own account, and drafted bills which they thought would cover the matter to their satisfaction. Of course, as was to be expected, they asked for a rate of compensation that was very much higher than anything that prevailed in Europe. While I, personally, was in sympathy with the workmen in their desire to have the very best system of compensation that it was possible to obtain, and one better than any they have in Europe, yet I think that the more conservative of the trade-union workmen recognized that we could not go very far beyond the system prevailing in England or in Great Britain until other States, and particularly the adjoining States, should also take up the matter. The consequence is, however, that as the matter was developed, and as the workmen were brought into the discussion of the matter with the Commission, that very many of them modified their original demands and were willing to accept the principles laid down both in the optional and in the compulsory bills which have passed the Legislature. It is, of course, not to be expected, either in New York or anywhere else, I assume, that the bill passed by the New York Legislature meets at all the desires of the workingmen. That is to say, they will continue to ask what they will eventually succeed in having, a compulsory law that will include all the trades. I think there is no special demand for a bill to include agricultural and domestic service. The great difficulty right now in New York is concern as to the scale of compensation. The New York workmen are not satisfied with one-half wages. They have asked recently that the bill be made full wages. I think, however, that somewhere between one-half wages and what they are asking will be accepted as a final solution of the difficulty. I want to make this one personal observation about these measures, and in this respect I think my views are not quite in accord with the views of all of my fellow-workers. I think the purpose of all this legislation should be first to do substantial justice to the workingmen, and I think the second consideration should be to take out of the courts all this long and expensive litigation, in order that the money that is not paid by employers, or whatever is paid by them, may be used for the relief of those who are suffering from industrial accidents. I do not believe, however, that the workmen should have the right to sue his employer, and, failing to win his suit, to go back and receive his compensation. I differ with most workmen in that respect, because I think if he has the right first to sue, and, failing to win his suit, to then accept the scale of compensation, that it is a temptation, an almost irresistible temptation, for him to sue, because it costs very little to enter the suit, and inasmuch as he knows in advance that if he fails to win the suit he will have his compensation any way, too many workmen would elect to sue perhaps on a contingent fee, and then go back if they failed to win and take the compensation. I do believe, however, that he should have the choice of suing under the employer's liability law or accepting the compensation, but, as I say, I do not think he ought to have both rights. I believe that perhaps the labor men who have made the most thorough investigation into the subject will agree with me that it is a fair proposition to give him his choice, but not both choices. ILLINOIS. MASON B. STARRING (Illinois): The Chairman of the Illinois Commission, Mr. Rawn, is unavoidably absent to-day and probably will not be able to attend the conference to-morrow. This second Illinois Commission is young. The act creating it was passed at a special meeting of the Legislature, and the appointments to membership on the Commission are of very recent date. In convening the Commission, the Governor of the State of Illinois expressed the hope that the members of the Commission would not indulge in deliberation or consideration of the features of a bill until first they had fully advised themselves as to the facts which would necessarily and properly govern the conclusions which they hoped to attain. Illinois, therefore, is in the position of being a student of this matter, and the progress and work of its Commission so far, I believe, to be largely that of investigation. We come here to learn. And were it not for the fact that the question of age destroys the illusion, when we heard the lady from New York (Miss Eastman) speak, we certainly would have felt that we were "sitting at the feet of Liberty Enlightening the World." I want to suggest to this meeting, Mr. Chairman, that there is no one connected with our Commission so familiar with all its workings, looking at it both from the side of the employer and the employe, as is our secretary. The Commission is composed of six men chosen from among the most respected and eminent leaders of the workingmen in the State of Illinois, supplemented by a selection by the Governor of six men from the ranks of the employers. The Chairman is Ira G. Rawn, president of the Monon Railroad, and the Secretary is Edwin R. Wright, president of the Illinois State Federation of Labor. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that it might please the members of this meeting, and certainly it would please the members of the Illinois Commission, if you would ask Mr. Wright to speak to you. EDWIN R. WRIGHT (Illinois): We have not in Illinois progressed far enough to make any report showing any particular progress. So far we have been trying to find ourselves, and to find a starting point from which we can work. It took us a meeting or two to become acquainted with each other, and another meeting or so to try and understand the different points of view. For years and years we have been going to the Legislature in Illinois pleading for protection; a measure that would protect our lives, a measure that would protect those who are dear to us, and year after year we have failed, until at the present time patience has almost ceased to be a virtue. We expect this Commission will make an investigation into how the men in the State of Illinois work and the compensation that is paid the injured workmen when any compensation is paid at all, and the relief that is given a man's family after the breadwinner is sacrificed on the altar of industry. The conditions are bad in Illinois; I do not believe they are any worse anywhere. I do not believe a man's' life is worth very much in Illinois. I am quite sure of it, and before we get through with the investigation I believe we can show that an employer owning a cart or a wagon, two good draft horses attached to this wagon and a good driver on the wagon, if an accident should occur blotting out the team, wagon and driver, that the employer, through our court system, values each of the horses attached to the wagon and the driver at about the same value; one is worth about as much as the other under our present court system. That is entirely wrong. At least, we believe so. To the men who are injured at the present time there is very little being paid. I believe, and I am speaking my own belief, I am sorry to say, instead of speaking the opinion of the Commission, that we should have an automatic compensation law in the State of Illinois, where the man will know absolutely what he is going to receive if he is injured; what his family is going to receive if he is killed. It does not make much difference whether we have a double or single liability. I prefer, of course, a double liability, but I find that under our court system a man does not get nearly as much under the double liability as he could expect to receive under a single liability law, and that if we would insist upon a double liability in this State we would have to cut down the other provisions of the bill to secure it. We have progressed far enough to put just exactly this provision in a circular form in the hands of every trades unionist in the State of Illinois at the present time, and we are going to find out what the rank and file of the workers want. Just as soon as the six labor members on the Commission find out what the workers of the State want we will then try to incorporate it into the bill. A circular has also gone forth from the Commission to the employers of the State, trying to crystallize their ideas into a concrete proposition, and then the six members of the Commission representing the employers and the six members representing the workingmen will sit down at a table and thresh this out just as a committee would do that was trying to settle a wage scale, and I believe we will arrive at some understanding; and when we arrive at an understanding with our employers who represent organized capital in the State of Illinois, and six trade unionists representing the organized workers in the State of Illinois, I believe that that position will be accepted by both sides, and that when we go to the next Legislature they will incorporate that into law, and it will be signed by the governor and put into full force and effect. I want to say just a word as to why we were anxious to have the Commission organized as it is. The original plan of the provision provided that the public should be represented, but the public is not particularly interested in this matter, not nearly so much as the other parties. The life of the employer is at stake in this matter. If we build up conditions so high that he will have to leave the State or abandon his property, he cannot afford to pay wages to the workingmen. We, on the other hand, have all we have to lose; we have not only our trade, but we have our lives at stake, and the public has no voice in it. Organized capital, through the Manufacturers' Association, the Mine Operators' Association, and so forth, has a voice. Organized labor has a voice, but if the public has any voice at all it does not amount to a great deal in the State of Illinois. We who have put everything that we possess into the balance in this matter expect to get something out of it which is definite, just and fair; and we have good reason to expect that after we have taken this matter up and threshed it out from one end of the State to the other that it will be to the advantage of the Legislature to meet us half-way. I have been in the Legislature as a labor lobbyist for some years and I have had a little experience in such matters. I do not know, Mr. Chairman, as I can enlighten you very much on what we are going to do. We have taken up the State Bureau of Labor report which we received from the secretary of the Bureau of Labor, who is here present, and we tried to get at the real meaning of that report. We intend to take up the state factory inspector's reports also, and try to get at and understand the real meaning of all these figures in these reports. It is one thing to publish column after column of figures which nobody reads and nobody pays any attention to, but it is an entirely different proposition to get back of those columns of figures and see what they stand for. These columns of figures stand for men's lives and they stand for the happiness of the family; yes, and they stand for the prosperity of the employer as well. In looking up a state report the other day I found an analysis that interested me. It showed apparently that every householder in the State of Massachusetts was paying $30 a year indirectly on account of the industrial accidents and occupational diseases that occurred in that State. That is where the public comes in; it costs the public too much. Should not that be shifted back upon the employer, and if it is shifted back upon the employer, the employer will, if possible, prevent the accidents, because it costs a great deal less to furnish suitable protection for the machinery than it does to pay damages to the injured employe or to the families of those who are killed. I want to say this for the trades unions; we do not wish to rob the employer; we do not wish any bill that will materially injure the employer. We want to stop the accidents. We do not want damages from the employers; we want our brothers to remain alive and able to do their work. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Is there any member of the first Illinois Commission present? PROF. ERNST FREUND (Illinois): Professor Henderson asked me a few years ago to give a little assistance in the drafting of the measure that the Commission had decided upon, and that is the only share I had in the work of that first Illinois Commission. That Commission was appointed for the sole purpose of reporting upon schemes of insurance. The whole matter of compensation was, therefore, only indirectly involved; at the same time the report as to insurance was unlimited, as far as I know, and not limited to accidents, but the Commission thought wise to confine their recommendations to an insurance scheme covering simply the matter of accidents. They found that it would have been extremely difficult to recommend or try to secure some plan of compulsory insurance, and for that reason it was finally suggested that there should be an opportunity offered for the employers to make a contract with the employes by which the employers and the employes together might substitute for the liability under the common law or statute a plan of insurance which was worked out with some care, to some extent upon the basis of the English act, one of the main features being that the employers and employes should contribute each one-half of the insurance premium. But the whole scheme was a tentative one, especially this feature, which was so much opposed, of the sharing of the cost of insurance between the employers and employes, and it was by no means suggested as a final solution. The whole matter was a tentative method of dealing with this problem, it being believed that in this way the plan of insurance might get a foothold in the State and might approve itself by experience. At the same time there was a very strong opposition and perhaps Mr. Wright could speak to that point, because Mr. Wright was one of those who opposed that scheme very strongly, and nothing came of it. I may say that in the same year Massachusetts passed a very similar measure, and that measure has been in effect now for several years, I believe, with very little practical result. I think the failure or lack of suggestion of the plan of Massachusetts was due to the fact perhaps that the public was not sufficiently familiarized with the scheme, and no determined effort was made to introduce it. As I say, the matter was suggested in Illinois as a tentative solution, not by any means as anything final; and I think it was felt that a compensation scheme of some kind would probably be called for sooner or later, and that was the reason the Legislature was urged to make provision for a compensation commission, which commission is now studying the problem. MASSACHUSETTS. JAMES A. LOWELL (Massachusetts): I am the last thing in commissions, together with these other gentlemen with me. We are just about a day old, and not quite that old. We were appointed in a great hurry when the bill went through, in order to get here to listen and find out what was being done by the other States, and in order to make up our mind what should be done in Massachusetts. The only thing I desire to say now is to explain the kind of a commission this is. Massachusetts has got so far under the resolution appointing us that they say, "We want other laws." We are not to investigate the question of whether other laws would be good or not; the Legislature has said, "We want other laws. The present laws are not satisfactory, and we will appoint five residents of Massachusetts to look into the matter and to see what kind of other laws are proper," and it is their command to us that we report at the next Legislature before the middle of next January some kind of a bill to change the law relating to injuries of workmen in Massachusetts. As perhaps most of you know, there have been two commissions in Massachusetts, or, rather, one Commission and a Legislative Committee. The first Commission sat in 1904, and Carroll D. Wright was the chairman. A great many things were referred to that Commission, not only this subject, but the subject of injunctions and the subject of blacklisting, and so on. That Commission reported a workmen's compensation act framed after the English act. That has come up before each succeeding Legislature since then. Then in 1907, I think it was, a Legislative Committee was appointed and a great many things referred to them, not only this present subject, but also boycotting and things of that kind. That committee did not report or, rather, the minority of it reported in favor of the same act which the former Commission reported in favor of, but it has never been passed, although it has come up at every session, and we have annual sessions in Massachusetts. So this Commission has now been appointed with the mandate to bring in some kind of a bill to change the law. I might be pardoned for saying a word about what seems to me to be the Massachusetts situation as it differs from others. Our industry there is largely factory industry. Of course, we have cotton mills and woolen mills, and boot and shoe factories, and all that sort of thing. It is a kind of an industry where, take it by large numbers, the injuries are probably a good many, but not very serious, so that a bill which might work well with a State where there were a good many hazardous trades, such as mining and not much manufacturing, might not work well in Massachusetts. Therefore what this Commission has to consider is some kind of a bill which we must report relating to the industries of Massachusetts which will be financially possible. Of course, we also have the same difficulty which everybody else has as to getting a constitutional bill. I suppose a voluntary bill would be constitutional, but, as Professor Freund has just said, we have had a voluntary bill in Massachusetts for two years which allowed, in the first place, the employers to propose a scheme for compensation and thereby get out from under our employer's liability law, and which the next year was amended so the employes could propose the scheme. That has been on the statute books for two years, and no one has ever made the slightest attempt to come in under it, so that as far as our present situation goes the voluntary system is of no use in Massachusetts. After a great deal of advertisement, nobody at the present time cares about it. It seems to me that some kind of a compulsory law would be necessary to effect anything, and the great legal difficulty is in getting one which will stand the test of the courts. JOSEPH A. PARKS (Massachusetts): I listened very attentively to the delegates from New York, and while they have done some work there, I was a little disappointed, on the whole. I do not think they have gone far enough to please your humble servant. I notice that they have not included any manufacturing establishments whatever. Of course, that touches me, because I happen to be a mill operative for about thirty years, and we have mostly mills in my State. I have introduced the bill for workmen's compensation in the Massachusetts Legislature for the last four years, the bill Mr. Lowell referred to, and, as has been stated, they have reported two different measures in two different years, and no one took any notice of them. In the mills in the city where I live, and in all the mill cities in Massachusetts, they have a great many more small accidents than they do of the serious ones. That is especially true in the weaver room, and I happen to be a weaver. We have a lot of things that are liable to take a finger off or injure an eye, or the shuttle is liable to come out of the loom suddenly, or you are liable to slip and get caught in the machinery. The machines are all crowded together, and a girl is liable to get her skirts or her hand caught in the machinery, and when little things like that occur, injuries that will possibly lay the employe up for a week or two, or three or four weeks, the employe should be protected. The operatives do not care much about the loss of a finger or the loss of beauty, or any such thing as that. The particular thing that the operative is interested in is, if he is a man of family, how his family is going to make out while he is on a sickbed and unable to work. He does not make large enough earnings so that he can lay aside his little savings for a rainy day. Unfortunately, the mill operative is the worst paid employe in the United States, without any doubt. They contribute a good deal to the prosperity of the commonwealth which I have the pleasure in part to represent, but they get very little of the cream of the industry. The industry in Massachusetts, as you all know, is a big success, and we are proud of it and want it to stay there, and do not want to do anything that will drive it out of the State; but we do want to do something for the mill operatives, at least I do, and I think that the Commission which has been appointed will bring about some system that will give them protection. They make all the way from $6 to $10.50 in the cotton mills. The average, I believe, is about $7 in Fall River to-day, so that you can see that a mill operative getting injured has not anything to fall back on. He wants to be assured that his family is going to be taken care of. The operative has recourse to the employer's liability act, but it takes too long. It is about two years before a case comes to court in our State, and while he is waiting his family is waiting for that income that has been cut off. I hope the New York delegation will pardon my referring to their having left out the manufacturers. There is some reason, no doubt, and I suppose in part it is due to interstate competition, and that is something we will have to look out for. If we have the time, Mr. Chairman, before this convention is over, I would like to hear from the New York delegation in regard to that feature. JOHN MITCHELL: I think perhaps Mr. Parks did not understand. As I remember it, both Miss Eastman and Professor Seager called attention to what was done for those employed in manufacturing in New York. While our bill did not include those engaged in manufacturing in express terms, it has provided for them. That is to say, we have taken from the manufacturer a great many of his defenses from suits for damages, so that those who are engaged in hazardous occupations may sue under the employers' liability law, and the employer sued cannot set up as a defense the assumption of risk; while mill employes, not only in Massachusetts, but in all the New England States, are denied redress simply because they assume the risk of the industry. Those who are employed in industries where they get their fingers nipped off and other accidents which are not necessarily fatal, but nevertheless cause a loss of two or three or four months' time, under the New York law can bring suit under the employers' liability law, and, no doubt, in most cases would be able to make settlements without going through the slow process of the courts, because there would be a liability on the part of the employer in New York, whereas in the case of Massachusetts I understand at present there is no liability at all. So that we have, while perhaps not ample provision for them, yet so much better provisions than they ever had before that I dare say that nine cases will be compensated for in a suit for damages or settled because of the right to sue, where only one would have been compensated for under the old law. MR. PARKS: I was not aware of that. I thought the bill covered merely those "dangerous occupations" Miss Eastman referred to. MR. MITCHELL: No, we have two bills in New York. NEW JERSEY. MILES M. DAWSON (New York): I am sorry to say that I do not know very much about what Governor Fort did in New Jersey, or what the New Jersey Commission has done, because I am a resident of New York. I do know, however, that a Commission has been appointed, and that several gentlemen prominent in labor circles are on the Commission, and an officer of the United States Steel Corporation, and an officer of the Public Service Company, which operates nearly all of the trolley lines and, I think, all the electric lighting systems in northern New Jersey, are members of the Commission. From the make-up of the Commission I should expect that they would do good work, but I do not understand that they have as yet completely organized. I have not heard of their appointing counsel even, although they may have done so, and I do not think they have yet got down to work. The fact that they are not represented at this Conference is an indication that such is the case. I do not think there is anything peculiar about their appointment or any unusual situation in New Jersey, except, as I understand it, that the Governor particularly and the Legislature to a large degree, are interested as nearly everybody is becoming interested nowadays in this general question, and so the Governor considered that there ought to be something done in New Jersey. FREDERICK L. HOFFMAN (New Jersey): I am not a member of the New Jersey Commission and so am not in a position to say very much about it. Mr. Clark, of the Clark Thread Company, is a member of the Commission, in addition to the gentlemen whom Mr. Dawson has mentioned. They have not as yet organized, so far as I know. They have not elected counsel, and they have not declared their plans, but I dare say when they get down to work they will follow very largely the methods of the New York Commission. OHIO. Ohio was called, but the members of the Ohio Commission had not yet been appointed by the Governor. MICHIGAN. M. M. DUNCAN (Michigan): There is no Commission in Michigan. The Governor of Michigan, however, appointed a committee of seven delegates to attend this convention in order that we might learn of the progress that is being made and report back. JAMES V. BARRY (Michigan): As Mr. Duncan stated, the Governor appointed seven delegates to this convention. We are here simply to observe what is taking place and to learn from the States that have made progress what report to make to our own State. We are not commissioned to prepare any legislation of any kind as are the States which have already spoken. MARYLAND. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Maryland had a bill at one time. Is there any one here representing Maryland? They had an act passed in 1902, and that act was declared unconstitutional by one of their lower courts in the spring of 1904, as I recall now, upon the ground that there were judicial powers delegated to the insurance commissioner. H. WIRT STEELE (Maryland): That is true; that act was declared unconstitutional and is inoperative. We have no legislation in Maryland covering the matter of workmen's compensation, and we have simply been relegated to the old doctrine of master and servant. I believe, however, that out of this Conference will perhaps come a movement for a Commission similar to the ones represented here. CONNECTICUT. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Connecticut had a Commission that reported, I believe, last year. Is there anyone present from Connecticut? PROF. HENRY W. FARNAM (Connecticut): I am from Connecticut, but I do not think there is very much to be said. I was not a member of that Commission, although I have read their report. It is rather negative, very cautious. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Is there any other State Commission represented? We cannot tell nowadays whether we will have a Commission the next day or not, and there may have been two or three appointed since this convention was called. If not, I will tell you briefly how we have studied the question in Minnesota. MINNESOTA. CHAIRMAN MERCER: We have not pursued the same theory exactly in Minnesota that has been pursued in any other State. We did not commence as most of the States have commenced. The commencement of the study of this question in Minnesota was originated in the Minnesota State Bar Association. At their annual meeting in Duluth, in the summer of 1908, a paper was read having reference to the then unfortunate conditions at common law, and asking that something be done in the way, or along the line, of or on, some compensatory plan. Somebody made a motion that a committee be appointed to draft a bill and to report it back to the next Legislature. Some of them were afraid to have that done for fear the committee might draft a bill that would not be rational, that would not be fair, and that it might go through the Legislature as a bar association measure. I was sitting in the front row, and I moved that the matter be referred to the Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, knowing that I was not on that committee and could not be on it under the then circumstances. The motion passed and then the convention became frightened for fear that it had placed too much power in the committee and resolved to have that committee report to a special meeting of the bar association which would be called in St. Paul, in January, so that they might go over the recommendations that were to be made before they would be presented to the Legislature. Up to the 20th of October absolutely nothing had been done on the matter. Then it so happened that I was asked to resign from another committee and take the chairmanship of that committee, its chairman having resigned. The committee was composed of gentlemen whom it was supposed would well balance the sentiment on the question. There was one lawyer that had made a specialty of liability insurance defenses, there was one country senator, the dean of the College of Law of the Minnesota University, an attorney that earned most of his living from the railroads and then I, neither a laborer nor a capitalist. We took up the question, and found immediately after going over it with different theorists and by correspondence that there was no data in Minnesota or elsewhere that we could get upon which to draw a proper bill. We looked at the experience of Maryland, we looked at the reports, and the experience of New York down to that time, and found that they had not passed a bill which had been recommended for a permissive plan of contract; we looked at conditions in Massachusetts and found they had not accomplished very much there except a lot of work; we looked over the work of the Illinois Commission and corresponded with them, and found that their bill which had recommended a permissive plan of contract had been defeated. We found in New York the constitutionality had been questioned, and in Massachusetts it had been questioned by the Commission. In Illinois the reports showed that the plan they wanted to adopt could not be adopted constitutionally, and they recommended the permissive plan in lieu thereof. Connecticut, I think, at that time had appointed a Commission, but it had not yet reported. The United States had passed a law known as the Act of June 11, 1906, which affected the comparative negligence rule and also provided certain obligations with respect to offsetting settlements, and the Supreme Court had declared that unconstitutional in January, 1908. Two important measures had been presented to Congress with able arguments to support them, and up to that time they had been practically limited in their discussion to leave to print in the _Congressional Record_. Our philanthropic and other state institutions in Minnesota had no data from which we could get any intelligent idea, according to the correspondence that we had. The Associated Charities, both state and national, had no sufficient data. The labor unions throughout the United States had no sufficient data. The National Manufacturers' Association had no sufficient data. I say this because I wrote to the President, and the correspondence was referred to Judge Emory, and we never got any information, because, as I understood, they had not then studied the matter sufficiently. I wrote to Mr. Mitchell, and he answered that he had no sufficient data, and referred me to Mr. Gompers. I wrote to Mr. Gompers concerning it and he answered practically to the same effect, sending back a bill to establish comparative negligence and some other provisions somewhat along the federal lines that had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, because covering business within the State as distinguished from interstate business; that is, it related to both, as the court construed it. From Eugene V. Debs, representing, as I thought, another group of men, I received an excellent letter explaining what had been done in other countries, and referring me to the data, he having evidently studied it considerably. From James J. Hill, through his counsel, I received the answer that they favored such legislation if it could be properly made. Andrew Carnegie had his secretary write that he favored an act along the lines of "Britain." Now, I may confess to you that up to this time, neither the Minnesota employers nor the labor unions were in this, and not because I was a politician, but because I had had some experience, I concluded if I could get some expressions from these various interests that it might be valuable when we came to the Legislature with this bill, if some bill along this line was drafted. I ransacked the libraries at home, and communicated with the largest libraries in Boston and New York and all over the country to secure the books and magazine articles touching on the matter, but nowhere could we find any sufficient argument as to the constitutionality of such a law, nor any sufficient data to make an economic law. A paragraph by Professor Freund, in his work on _Police Power_, and an article by P. Tecumseh Sherman, a former commissioner of the State of New York, were about all I found on the question of constitutionality. Later we found that the Russell Sage Foundation had been looking into the matter abroad, through two able men, Dr. Frankel and Mr. Dawson. They were abroad that summer to study the matter and we afterward got in touch with them. The result was that our committee, or rather myself and one other gentleman, because we were not able to get any of the others to meet with us, reported to the bar association that we thought we ought to have three kinds of laws passed; one to appoint a Commission to educate itself, another which would require those persons who had accidents, both employers and employes, to report data, and the third, one that would require the insurance companies insuring such risks in Minnesota to make reports in detail to the Commission, in order that they might study out precisely all the results. We found that New York and Wisconsin had valuable articles, and so had Massachusetts and one or two other States, in their Labor Bureau reports. Our correspondence with every labor department in the United States did not develop very much more, except some valuable work by the Illinois Commission, and some valuable work by some professors in various institutions in the form of articles and a pamphlet, I believe by the Chicago _Record-Herald_, that was put out while the Illinois Commission had this work under consideration. The bar association approved that report and asked us to send it on to the Legislature with recommendations for those three bills. Just prior to that we had arranged for meetings with the labor unions in our State for political reasons, to find out what their views were. Then with the president of the employers' association, again for political reasons, to find out what their views were. Finally we got the two together, and they had not been working together so well up there as they might have been in some other places. But by the time of the second meeting they passed a resolution which was to the effect that they would join hands in trying to get a compensation movement started in Minnesota, but that neither should undertake to take any advantage of the other in the Legislature, while they were both faithfully performing their part of that agreement, and they stuck loyally by it. Then we took up the question of how we should present the matter to the Legislature, and the Governor said he would send a special message to the Legislature recommending our plan. That was done, and bills immediately began to appear in the Legislature from various motives, but we all three stood on the position that we were going to have an absolute plan on an intelligent basis if we could get it. Along toward the end of the session the Legislature passed the three bills which we had recommended. Our Commission at the present time has thousands of reports of accidents in its possession, with the dates of the accidents and all the data concerning them, which we are not at liberty to make public because the bill does not permit us to do so. We wanted a bill that would prevent our doing so until we had our reports made, so that no one could get in and get hold of this information and take advantage of it. In addition to that, we have the reports coming into the labor department as to the actual injuries that occur. Those we have not yet tabulated. The Governor appointed George M. Gillette, who was a large manufacturer; William E. McEwen, the State Labor Commissioner, and myself on that committee. One of the first things we did when we met was to take up the question of the foreign laws. We found that they were not translated into English. One of the first things we undertook then was to get the labor department at Washington to translate all that were not translated. It agreed to do so. When we held the Atlantic City convention a resolution was passed at that meeting requesting the same thing. We wanted not only some education, but some uniform action. So we started to correspond with the members of the other commissions, like the New York Commission and some others that had been appointed in the meantime, and asked them to meet us and discuss matters. It was finally suggested that invitations be sent out for a joint meeting. That was done under my own name, representing the Minnesota Commission. We met down at Atlantic City, and after that meeting was held, we held our second meeting down in Washington, and this meeting is the third. Mr. McEwen and Mr. Gillette have been abroad to study the question and have just returned. I hoped they would be here, but they have not arrived. We have taken up the matter through correspondence, we have asked special questions through the press, and we expect to get our bills in shape so that they will be intelligible for discussion through this convention and others, and then put them up to the public and ask the manufacturers and the railroads and the labor unions and all of the other representative bodies that will be affected by them, to appoint men who may study the questions sufficiently to come before us and discuss them intelligently, so that we may be educated to the best possible theoretical standpoint. In the meantime I shall probably go to Europe in July. Our report will not be made until next January. The bill which passed the Legislature requires us to study the conditions in this country and abroad, and to report a bill or bills which we think are consistent with the necessities of the case, and, so far as possible, to make the bill or bills constitutional. The report of the Atlantic City Conference, when it was printed, was sent to the Governor of each State, to the attorney-general of each State, and to the labor department of each State, and that report was quite a large volume. Bar associations throughout the United States have quite generally taken this matter up, and I should think in not less than eight or ten States they have it under consideration now. The labor unions in quite a number of States also have it under consideration. We sent out invitations to the governors, and nineteen of them appointed delegates to the Conference held in Washington, in January. Fifteen States were represented. I do not know how many States are represented here to-day, but all these delegates were accredited to come to this convention. We have done a lot of miscellaneous work up there, but we are trying to get all our work in shape, so that when we do draft our bill we shall know as nearly as we possibly can, at least theoretically, what we are doing, and we are glad to see that New York and Wisconsin and all these other States are moving ahead. You have good commissions and we glory in the work you are doing. We only hope that we may be able to profit a little by your experience and by your legislation. We hope that the movement can be made as nearly uniform as possible. Up to the present time we have been discussing very largely in Minnesota the sort of a bill which has been sent out for discussion this afternoon, and I shall not go into that matter at all, but as temporary chairman. I wish to thank both you ladies and you gentlemen for being present at this meeting and for taking part in this discussion. PROF. SEAGER: At the last meeting of the Conference a committee of three was appointed to choose an Executive Committee of fifteen members. It appears that I am the only member of that committee of three present at this meeting, so I can offer a unanimous report. [The recommendations of Professor Seager were accepted by the Conference, which accordingly elected ten members of the Executive Committee to serve as executive officials with the five general officers. The complete list as finally elected is printed on the second page of the cover of this volume.] SECOND SESSION, FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1910, 2.00 P. M. Chairman Mercer called the second session of the Conference to order at 2 P. M., and announced that the Reports of Committees was the first order of business. As chairman of the Executive Committee, Professor Seager submitted a draft of by-laws, which was, with slight amendment, adopted by the Conference. The final draft is printed in the Introductory Note to this volume. The report of the Committee on Nominations was then presented by Miles M. Dawson, and upon motion adopted by the secretary casting the unanimous ballot of the Conference for the election of the general officers as printed on the second page of the cover of this volume. This completed the order of business to come before the Conference, and the discussion of the "Workers' Compensation Code" was taken up as follows: WORKERS' COMPENSATION CODE. CHAIRMAN MERCER: There is one further committee, I think, that was appointed to draft a bill for discussion, and we were so far apart that we never got together. One was sent out, however, in printed form, and I think all of you have had copies of it. A thousand copies were distributed. I will say before we begin the discussion of that bill that it was meant to be drawn as an outline, and to be sufficiently broad in the different sections to raise all the points for discussion and not intended to be either technically correct, or what might be called an artistic measure. It was intended to be broad enough to provoke discussion as to all of the necessary elements of a bill. The formal program, as outlined, involves this one that was distributed, and if that brings out all the points which you want to discuss it might be best to take that up section by section and hear your views on that, or other schemes if you desire. It would seem hardly right, however, since there are a number of other bills here, and they might not all agree, to limit you to this specific bill, but you ought to be permitted to discuss, I suppose, the principle involved in each section as you take it up. [The bill which was designed and used as an outline for the discussion which follows is here reprinted.] WORKERS' COMPENSATION CODE. (OUTLINE FOR DISCUSSION). BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA: Section 1. _Dangerous employment defined._ That every employer in the State of Minnesota conducting an employment in which there hereafter occurs bodily injuries to any of the employes arising out of, and in the course of, such employment, is for the purposes of this act hereby defined to be conducting a dangerous employment [at the time of such occurrence], and consequently subject to the provisions of this act and entitled to the benefits thereof. Sec. 2. _Liability of employers._ That every such employer shall be liable to pay to every such employe so injured, or in case of his death, to the legal representatives, as hereinafter defined and apportioned for all bodily injuries received by such employe arising out of, and in the course of, such employment in this State disabling such employe from regular services in such employment for more than ten days and according to the schedule of rates contained in Section 3 of this act, on the condition precedent only, that, in case of dispute as to the amount to be paid for such injuries, or the failure or refusal to agree upon or to pay the same, such employe or the legal representatives thereof shall comply with the provisions of this act. Sec. 3. _Compensation allowed._ The compensation herein and hereby allowed, if established as herein provided, having arisen out of and in the course of such dangerous employment within this State, shall be on the following basis: (a) For immediate death or for death accruing within five years as a result of such injuries, or for injuries causing total incapacity for that service for five years or more, 60 per cent. of the amount of wages the injured was receiving at the time of the accident for a period of five years, provided, such payment shall not continue longer than to aggregate $3000. (b) For total or partial disability for less than five years, 60 per cent. of the wages the injured was receiving at the time of the injury so long as there is complete disability for that service and that proportion of the said percentage which the depleted earning capacity for that service bears to the total disability when the injury is only partial or after it becomes only partial. (c) In addition to the foregoing payments, if the injured loses both feet or both hands, or one foot and one hand, or both eyes, or one eye and one foot or one hand, he shall receive, during the full period of five years, 40 per cent. of the wages which he was receiving at the time of such accident; or if he loses one foot, one hand, or one eye, the additional compensation therefor shall be 15 per cent. of his said wages; or if he be otherwise maimed or disfigured, then, for such maiming or disfigurement, during the time it shall continue, he shall receive therefor such proportion of 40 per cent. as such maiming or disfigurement bears in depleted ability in the employment to the relative loss of the members specified herein; _Provided_, That in no case shall all of the payments received herein exceed in any month the whole wages earned when the injury occurs, nor shall the said 40 per cent. when all received, or any portion thereof, and the said 60 per cent. when all received, or any portion thereof, continue longer than to make all sums aggregate $5000. Sec. 4. _Repeal of other liabilities._ The right to compensation and the remedy therefor, as herein specified, shall be in lieu of all other causes of action for such injuries and awards upon which they are based as to all persons covered by this act, whether formerly authorized or allowed by, or as the result of, either state, statute or common law, and no other compensation, right of action, damages or liability, either for such injuries or for any result thereof, either in favor of those covered by this act or against such employer based on state law, shall hereafter be allowed for such injuries to any persons or for any of the injuries covered by this act so long as this law shall remain in force, unless, and then only to the extent, that this law shall be specifically amended. Sec. 5. _Conditions precedent to right of recovery._ That as a condition precedent to such right to compensation, such employe or the legal representatives thereof, as the case may be, shall within ten days after knowledge of such injury, unless there be valid excuse for delay and then immediately after such excuse is removed, cause a written notice thereof in substantially the form designated in paragraph ---- (form to be provided) of this act, to be served upon the said employer by leaving a copy thereof addressed to the employer with the person in charge of such employe while he was so working, if that person is still in said employ, or with some superior agent, officer or person in charge of said business at any office thereof within this State in the same way that a summons can now be served; and in case of a dispute between the employe and the said employer, or in case of the failure of such employer and employe to agree upon such claim or in case of failure or refusal of such employer to pay, such employe shall submit his claim for compensation hereunder, both as to the nature of the injuries and the amount to compensate therefor under this act, to a board of three arbitrators, as hereinafter specified, in substantial compliance with the form contained in section ---- hereof. Sec. 6. _Board of arbitration and awards._ There is hereby created a Board of Arbitration and Awards, known as "Board of Awards" with jurisdiction throughout the State of Minnesota to arbitrate the questions arising hereunder and make awards consistent herewith, which is now and shall remain subdivided into districts with the same numbers and co-ordinate with the judicial districts of this State as they now are and may hereafter be changed, which board shall consist of three members from each judicial district, which members shall be non-partisan in politics, appointed by ....................., and hold their offices during a period of ............. years; except for fraud, or want of jurisdiction the findings and awards made herein shall be final and conclusive as to the nature of the injuries and the amount of compensation. Sec. 7. (The law shall provide for compensation, expenses and secretary, and probably that the Clerk of Courts act as Clerk and make annual report to Commissioner of Labor.) Sec. 8. _Remedy._ (a) Every person claiming the benefits of compensation under this act, may issue to the employer from whom he claims the same a notice of claim in substantially the following form: First: You are hereby notified that ...................... has this day filed the original of this notice of claim against you with the Clerk of the Board of Awards in District No. ........ and that you are required to answer the same with a copy served upon the undersigned within ten days. Second: Said ............................... was in your employ as a ......................... at .................. on or about the ....... day of ........ 19.... and received an injury of the supposed general nature following: .......................................................... by reason of the following incident (describe it) and that such injury arose in and out of the course of said employment and has lasted more than ten days and it is claimed that you are liable to pay compensation for .......... per cent. of the wages which were $....... per ........ at the time of such injury, and for ....... per cent. for maiming and crippling. (b) Answer. The answer shall 1. Admit or deny the employment. 2. Admit or deny that an injury was received at the time and place. 3. Admit or deny that the injury, if any, was in the course of employment and that it arose out of the course of employment. 4. Set up the injury claimed if different from the injured's claim. 5. Admit or deny or correct the amount of wages. 6. Give notice of any special claim to be urged to defeat compensation. (c) Reply. The reply shall so far as possible admit or deny the specific statements of the answer which contradict or bar the complaint. (d) Hearing. As soon as the reply is filed with proof of service the clerk shall set such claim for hearing in its order at the earliest date possible and notify both parties by mail, thereof. Sec. 9. _Award._ The Board of Awards shall make its award upon a full hearing, to both parties held after notice and shall consider the whole record and may visit the premises if within its district and make such award as it shall decide to be consistent with the spirit and powers of this act, and in the following form: 1. Title. 2. We find in the above case that the injured received injuries arising in and growing out of the course of such employment when he was receiving as wages the sum of $......... per ............ payable ................. 3. That the injuries appear now to be and are as follows: ........................................................... ........................................................... 4. That for ................. disability the compensation to be paid is hereby found and awarded against the employer ................... of ................. at ............ per cent. of such wages payable to the following persons in the respective proportions for ......... ........... and as said wages were paid and (of injuries uncertain) ................ this proceeding is hereby adjourned to the ........ ........ day of ............... for further consideration. Sec. 10. _How risk may be insured._ That any such employer, or any association of employers, may keep the risks created by this law fully covered by insurance, in associations, or insurance companies approved by the insurance department of this State, for policies covering the full liability under this law, and thereby relieve themselves from any further responsibility with respect to paying such compensation, and if any such employer or employers shall so insure such risks they shall be entitled to take and keep from the wages of their laborers, on a pro rata basis, of the wages, .......... per cent. of the amount necessary to pay the regular premiums for carrying such insurance. Sec. 11. All insurance and all benefits of compensation due or to become due to any employe under this act shall be and remain exempt from garnishment and all other forms of attachment. Sec. 12. Provision defining the words and phrases, and covering all tenses, pronouns and both sexes. Sec. 13. Of course the jurisdictional features and all matters of practice, rehearings, etc., must be worked out after we see what substantive provisions are to be made. CHAIRMAN MERCER: The reason for heading that, "Workers' Compensation Code," was to cover the constitutional provisions in some of the States, which prohibit a bill from covering more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title, and the fact that the term "code" means a system of law. By the adoption of that scheme it was our intention to raise the point, so that if you agreed to that general idea you could adopt a law with a heading sufficiently broad to codify the law of your State on that question, to allow you to repeal such portions of the common law as you wanted to repeal as a part of that chapter, and not be subject to the limitations of the constitutions of a number of States which would prohibit your covering more than one law. Do you care to waste any time on the heading? MR. DAWSON: I would like to ask one question about the heading and that is why the word "workers" was used instead of "workmen?" CHAIRMAN MERCER: Like everything else, that was used to provoke discussion. Workmen's Compensation, or Workingmen's Compensation, seems to have a technical meaning in this field of legislation. It seems to be understood generally as covering this whole subject, and yet when you come to define your bill and outline it and cover it section by section, you must either leave something to the construction of the courts, or else you must make provision to the effect that workmen shall cover workwomen and children and boys and girls and everybody connected with it. It seems to me it would cover that point (although it seems to be revolutionary in form) if we used the term "workers," because that would include everybody. MR. DAWSON: Your idea then was, Mr. Chairman, that the word "worker" is believed to have more comprehensive significance than the word "workmen," and that it would be certain to be so held by the courts? CHAIRMAN MERCER: That was my own idea. I think I am sound on it, but I have tried enough lawsuits to know that a fellow is never sound until he is done. Shall we pass to the first section and leave it without any expression as to the heading? MASON B. STARRING (Illinois): I would like to inquire in regard to Section 1, as to what extent that applies to farm workers. Supposing a man was driving a dredging machine in the field and his horses became frightened and ran away and killed him. Is the farmer liable under this act? CHAIRMAN MERCER: He was intended to be, if you adopt that act. JAMES A. LOWELL (Massachusetts): I should like to inquire why you say "every employer conducting an employment in which there hereafter occurs bodily injuries to any of the employes" shall be deemed to be conducting a dangerous employment? Is that from some idea that if you call an employment dangerous you thereby are allowed to change the terms of it by your constitution, and if you do not call it dangerous, you are not? CHAIRMAN MERCER: The idea was that if you worded the first section the way we have, it would provoke discussion on all those elements. That was the first plan. The fundamental reason was that if the employer was conducting an employment which was capable of being dangerous, and he guarded his employes through the safety devices he employed and the grade of men he employed, so that the whole scheme of his business was conducted in such a way that he did not have any accidents at all, that until he had some accidents he would not be classified as being in a dangerous employment. In other words, two men might run exactly the same institution with the same machinery manufacturing the same article; one set of men will run it so there will not be any accidents maybe in ten years; the other set may have ten accidents in the first year by reason of the way they rush, and their carelessness, and the grade of men they hire and their failure to protect their machinery and all that sort of thing. It was the intention to make that as broad as you possibly could make it, so as to provoke discussion as to whether you wanted to say every industry that had an accident should be liable, or whether you wanted to limit it to some of the industries as they have done in New York and in some of the foreign countries. MR. LOWELL: Then it was not the idea that by calling a cotton factory dangerous you thereby are allowed to put on certain provisions of the law which, if you do not call it dangerous, might not be constitutional? CHAIRMAN MERCER: Not exactly, except this: The idea was involved that it is within the province of the Legislature to declare an employment dangerous if there is a reasonable basis for argument as to whether it is a dangerous employment. That is our view of it. Now, if a court gets hold of that and should say that there was no basis for declaring that a dangerous employment, it would say that the Legislature acted arbitrarily. MR. LOWELL: I should judge your idea was that you could not impose the law on a cotton factory simply as a cotton factory, but you could impose it on a dangerous factory. CHAIRMAN MERCER: My idea was that it was a safer way to impose it on one that had accidents than to single out any certain line of industry that might not be as dangerous as some others. MR. LOWELL: I do not know that you quite get my point. My point is that it may be impossible for the Massachusetts Legislature, we will say, to put a certain kind of liability onto a cotton factory, which it might put onto a powder factory. Would they, if that were the case, make the situation any different by calling the cotton factory a dangerous factory? CHAIRMAN MERCER: Not unless there was some basis for it. MR. LOWELL: They certainly do have dangers; we will assume that people are injured there. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It is my view of the decisions of the court that that would be so. The reason that I put that that way is this: If you have an industry that has one accident, as expressed by Mr. Roosevelt in one of his messages, that is a dangerous industry to that man and his family. If it kills one man, in his way of putting it, it is not much consolation to his family or to him before he dies, to say that you are crippled, or you are hurt, but not in a dangerous employment. It was dangerous in his case. By defining it so that every employment that has an accident is dangerous, and then making the liability as one of the subsequent sections, exactly in proportion to the accidents they have instead of defining certain lines as dangerous, and others as non-dangerous, I think you have a better classification. PROF. SEAGER: To put a strong case, do you think that the courts would back you up in saying that the mere fact, we will say, that an employe in a cotton factory slipped on a banana peel in going to his machine in the morning and was injured, constituted that a dangerous trade in a sense that would justify making an employer liable for the injury as the latter sections of the act hold? Under the latter sections of the act that would seem to be in the course of his employment; going to his machine would be a necessary part of his employment. CHAIRMAN MERCER: If it grows out of the industry itself. In England in determining what is within the course of the employment, they have held that while two men might be working side by side in an employment, and one of them might be hurt while he was there, yet if he was hurt by reason of some horse play that he did on the side with some other fellow, that that was not really a risk of that industry, and that it does not grow out of the course of the employment. I should think your banana peeling case would be very close to the line, and it would depend upon whether it grew out of the employment. JOSEPH A. PARKS (Massachusetts): Suppose that we use a bobbin instead of a banana peel. PROF. SEAGER: There was a case where a man's eye was put out by the cork of a pop bottle when he was eating his lunch, and they held that was in the course of his employment. Would our courts, in your opinion, back us up in describing liability for accidents in that sweeping way? I do not question at all the desirability of doing it; it is only a question of the constitutionality of doing it. MR. LOWELL: Do you think it is necessary in Minnesota to distinguish between hazardous and non-hazardous employments? Apparently our friends in New York think that it is constitutionally necessary; that with certain risks, such as tunneling and railroad building and bridge building, which every one knows are hazardous, that a law applied to them would be constitutional, whereas if it applied to things that were not so hazardous it would not be constitutional. Is that your opinion of the law of Minnesota? CHAIRMAN MERCER: In a measure, yes; that is, so far as classification is concerned; you must have a reasonable basis for the classification. If you do not cover all the accidents then you cannot cover part. It would be my judgment, unless you have a reasonable basis for the classification, that that would be true. MR. LOWELL: The basis of classification would not be the fact then, that accidents happen, but that a good many happen. That is, it is not a hazardous business, but is a light business, as the insurance people call it. CHAIRMAN MERCER: I think that the courts in some of the cases would maintain the idea that if you picked out the industries that had a large number of accidents and were sure they would have accidents, they would maintain that classification. But if you picked out an industry that had a great many accidents and classified it as dangerous, and let one alongside of it go that had fully as many accidents, I think possibly the courts might hold that you had acted arbitrarily, and therefore knock out your legislation, to use a street phrase. SENATOR A. W. SANBORN (Wisconsin): If I understand that first section, it would include every employer, whether he is a farmer or a man who keeps a house servant. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It was meant to be broad enough, Mr. Sanborn, to raise that question. MR. SANBORN: That is what I understand this section, as now worded, would embrace. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Yes. SENATOR JOHN J. BLAINE (Wisconsin): The point that worries me as much as anything, is the question as to whether it is a dangerous occupation. This first section provides that every employer conducting an employment in which there hereafter occurs bodily injuries is defined to be conducting a dangerous employment. Is there any substantial difference between saying it in those words and saying that every occupation is dangerous, because I do not believe that we can conceive of any occupation that is not dangerous or in which no accidents occur. Even a school boy stubs his toe on the street. It is not in and of itself a dangerous occupation, but he accidentally gets hurt. Now, where an employment in and of itself would not be dangerous, but where through some unforeseen circumstance an accident should occur, would that fact of itself make an industry a hazardous industry? CHAIRMAN MERCER: When they covered that matter in England, I understand the definition was that the accident might occur in the course of the industry and not occur outside of it; it might occur outside of it and not occur within it. For instance, you might start to go to work, if you are a laborer, and after you got on the ground you might be traveling along the same as any other member of the public. You would be going to your employment but you would not be within the course of it. That is the way they defined it over there, and in that case the accident would be treated simply in the same way as an accident to any other member of the public. They might suffer an accident and yet there would not be a liability to the employer. SENATOR BLAINE: The point I can't distinguish is this: That the mere fact that an injury happens to an employment, that in and of itself makes that employment dangerous, any more than every industry is dangerous. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It has got to occur within the employment; that is, it has got to be a result of the employment to make it dangerous. SENATOR BLAINE: In the first place, is it possible to conceive of any employment where there is not a hazard growing out of the employment? If that is true, why not say that every employer shall compensate under the terms of the act, regardless of whether he is engaged in a hazardous occupation or not. In other words, can you define a hazardous occupation by a legislative act? Will not that in the end be the point around which the whole question will revolve; _i. e._, is it not as a matter of fact from the evidence produced, a dangerous occupation, no matter whether accidents have or have not resulted? For that reason is it not quite impossible to define a hazardous occupation? CHAIRMAN MERCER: That question in fact is first determined by the Legislature, as I understand it, as to whether it is a dangerous employment. SENATOR BLAINE: Can the Legislature intrude upon the judicial functions of our government? Can they say that is a fact or must not the courts do that themselves? CHAIRMAN MERCER: No, the courts, as I understand it, take judicial knowledge of the history and conditions out of which the legislative act may grow, and I believe would follow the rule the power of the State it is valid, although the judgment of the as laid down in Lockner _vs._ New York, 198 U. S., where the Court said: "This is not a question of substituting the judgment of the Court for that of the Legislature. If the act be within Court might be opposed to the enactment of such law." The reason why we did not cover every employment was that it did not seem to us every employment was dangerous, and if it was not dangerous and we were relegated to the police power of the State to define it, the law would be held invalid. But it seemed to me individually, and I do not want anybody to think that this is the judgment of the committee, because they could not all get together, that if we based it on the fact that injuries did occur, nobody could ever stand up in a courtroom or sit in comfortable court chambers and write an opinion on the theory that this employment, when an accident has occurred in the case, is not a dangerous employment if the Legislature find it so. The idea was to cover all the States so as to leave it as safe as we could get it. SENATOR BLAINE: Certainly the section will do what you contemplated, bring about discussion. MR. DAWSON: On the point that has just been raised I would like to say that this matter of the power of the Legislature to define a thing was before the United States Supreme Court in an oleomargarine case, originating, I think, in Pennsylvania. There had previously been an act passed, I think, by the New York Legislature, which, though not declaring oleomargarine deleterious to health, imposed certain regulations amounting almost to prohibition. That was tested through the various courts to the Supreme Court of the United States, I think, and it was definitely held by that court that the case had not been made out that it was deleterious. In other words, it was virtually held that it was not, and so that the law was not a proper exercise of the police power. Following this the Legislature of Pennsylvania adopted a similar bill, containing a declaratory provision that it is deleterious to health. That was carried to the same court and the Court held that the Legislature was entirely within its rights and had power to so declare. I think that might have some bearing upon this question. I would like to ask the Chairman if the effect of this is not virtually to declare all occupations hazardous occupations in view of the following facts: That the law would in any event be a nullity if no accidents happened in any given employment, and the moment an accident does happen in that employment, it is declared to be a dangerous employment; and would not the law cover that very accident. CHAIRMAN MERCER: The proposed law as I have since changed it has this provision: "That every employer in the State of ---- conducting an employment in which there hereafter occurs bodily injury to any of the employes, arising out of, and in the course of, such employment, is for the purposes of this act hereby defined to be conducting a dangerous employment _at the time of such occurrence_." That was not in the original draft and I do not know whether it is in the one you have or not. I put it in recently. When I came to read that section critically I concluded that the criticism you make is a good one. I do not want to take your time, but there are two or three short sentences here by the United States Supreme Court on that question which I think are authoritative, and I would like to read them. In the case of Holden _vs._ Hardy, 169 U. S., page 365, the Court says: "The protection of the health and morals as well as the lives of citizens is within the police power of the State Legislature." Then again, on page 789, the Court said: "Of course it is impossible to forecast the character or extent of these changes, but in view of the fact that from the day the Magna Charta was signed to the present moment, amendments to the structure of the law have been made with increasing frequency, it is impossible to suppose they will not continue and the law be forced to adapt itself to new conditions of society, and particularly to the new relations between employers and employes as they arise." That was a case of regulating the hours of work in mining. After reviewing a number of the decisions upon the police power and establishing that it was within the power of the Legislature to judge of those matters, the Court said: "These employments when too long pursued, the Legislature has judged to be detrimental to the health of the employes, and so long as there are reasonable grounds for thinking that that is so, this decision upon this subject cannot be reviewed by the Federal Courts." I take that as pretty conclusive, and they have followed that rule since. SENATOR SANBORN: In discussing a bill like this, section by section, it strikes me that we are going to reach practical results. There are three fundamental principles that underlie this whole subject that we ought to determine, or else we should proceed to draw either two or three bills based upon the different views upon those underlying principles: First: Shall we prepare a bill that is compulsory upon the part of the employer and optional as to the employe? Second: Shall we prepare a bill that is compulsory upon the part of the employer and compulsory upon the part of the employe? Third: Shall we prepare a bill that is optional both with the employer and with the employe? To my mind those are fundamentals, and if we are going to get at what is known as a uniform bill that will meet with the approbation of the different States and meet the constitutional difficulties that we find in the way, we must prepare a bill along lines that will meet the different situations in the different States, at least in those States that compete from a manufacturing point of view. I am here for information and I feel that we want light along those lines. While I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that under the police regulation you can make this law compulsory on the part of the employer, as New York has done, I am not yet willing to concede that you can make that law compulsory on the part of the employe. I think there is something yet there that must be overcome before you can reach that result. To illustrate what I mean for a moment, if you can imagine for a minute that I own this building, I should contend that the Legislature of the State of Illinois could not authorize you by your negligence to destroy this building and give me in compensation ten dollars; to make that the law. Of course my right arm may not be as important to me as the building, but I do not yet believe that the Legislature of Illinois can even authorize you by your negligence to destroy that and thus destroy my means of livelihood and say that I shall receive no compensation, or say that it shall be ten dollars or say that it shall be one hundred dollars, or that it shall be one thousand dollars which I shall receive for that arm; to destroy my usefulness to myself and my family and fix the compensation at one hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, without my consent. I have cited that as a mere matter of illustration, that there are difficulties to overcome if you are going to say that that is a compulsory law upon the part of the employe without any election. If we are drafting a bill that is compulsory upon the part of the employer the first question we have to consider is in Section 1 of this bill; we have got to define the dangerous employment. You can see then it is very material in that form of bill to define a dangerous employment. If, on the other hand, we are drawing an optional bill we have no interest in any such definition at all. I just offer these as suggestions, if we are going at this subject from a practical standpoint, and if we can I am perfectly willing to go to the extent of saying that we will work along all three lines and then determine which is the more likely to stand up and effect the purpose that we are trying to accomplish. SAMUEL R. HARPER (Illinois): On the question presented by the first section of the tentative bill presented this afternoon, the rule, as I understand it, is that the declaration by the Legislature that a certain trade is hazardous is merely an indication of the legislative judgment on that proposition and nothing more; and that that judgment is revocable by the courts and is not conclusive unless the declaration is based in some way on some reasonable classification of hazardous trades and industries. If the classification is based on some reasonable ground arising from the hazards of the business then the courts will say that is a reasonable classification, that the legislative classification is conclusive. On the points suggested by Senator Sanborn, I agree with him that the fundamental to adopt at the outset is whether or not we shall adopt a compulsory system or whether it shall be elective. If it is compulsory it must rest entirely within the police power of the State. If it is an elective system then it is a matter of contract and option with both parties. We ought to determine first what we are going to do about that because if we have an elective system we need not worry at all about the constitutional problem or the question of police power. I agree with the Senator on the proposition that a State under its police power may establish a compulsory system of compensation so far as the employer is concerned. It seems to me, however, when we attempt to shift the basis of our present system from that of tort to compensation we are simply reading into the oral contract of employment between the employer and employe a guarantee on the part of the employer that up to a certain limit he will protect and insure the employe against the hazards of that trade. We all of us, of course, are familiar with the doctrine of _respondeat superior_, and that doctrine arose in exactly the same way over two hundred years ago and it has never been questioned as yet. That arose not out of any theory of natural justice, but upon the theory exclusively that it was a proposition of safety, and that if the employer wished to delegate his business or that part of it conducted by servants, to those servants, he certainly should be responsible for their acts as long as they were in the discharge of their duties. Now, why isn't it, Mr. Chairman, just as reasonable to assume and why is it in conflict with any theory of natural justice to say that if an employer seeks to employ a man in a hazardous trade or in any trade, he shall compensate him to a reasonable extent; he shall guarantee to him a limited compensation and that he shall guarantee him against the consequences of an injury while he is engaged in that employment? Will not the courts read into that bill practically that contract of guaranty? We are talking about judge-made law on this proposition. The Legislature has never attacked this proposition at all. The courts have established this doctrine of respondeat superior and as to the safety appliances, etc., is the form of a Workmen's Compensation Law. PROF. SEAGER: The suggestion contained in this first clause seems to me a very valuable and helpful one; that is, that judicial opinion in this country may be ripe for taking this view other doctrines of that kind, and we do not know what the courts would do if the proposition were presented to them. I believe we lack courage a little bit on that subject. I should think that the courts would welcome the co-operation of the Legislature in changing this system. I believe they are in hearty sympathy with the movement, as indicated by recent decisions of the courts throughout the country. I believe that they are themselves out of sympathy entirely with the worn out doctrines which they are obliged to follow because of the precedents before them; and if the Legislature would step in and give them a chance I believe that they would be with them. CHAIRMAN MERCER: In making this draft of a bill we fully appreciated that the outlines which Senator Sanborn has given substantially represents the different theories; but this bill was drafted on the theory of bringing up for discussion the whole subject as to whether or not you wanted to define your dangerous employments and make them compulsory against the employer; to say that the employe should not have any common law liability; that he should comply with this law before he had any remedy; that he should be compelled to go before a committee of awards and that the award when given should be conclusive as to questions of fact, leaving the legal liability and the jurisdictional questions open to the courts on appeal. That was the scheme on which this was drawn. PROF. SEAGER: The suggestion contained in this first clause seems to me a very valuable and helpful one; that is, that judicial opinion in this country may be ripe for taking this view that a few years ago would have seemed rather revolutionary; the view that any industry in which an accident occurs is to that extent a hazardous industry, and therefore subject to special regulation under the police powers of the States, and that the form of regulation that should be adopted along with the regulations as to the safety appliances, etc., is the form of a Workmen's Compensation Law. The New York Commission, while some of us perhaps were inclined to agree with the optimistic views that Mr. Harper has just expressed, was not able, as a body, to believe that the courts would go quite so far as this first clause contemplates. It was for that reason mainly that we contented ourselves with enumerating extra-hazardous occupations which came clearly under the police power of the State, and limited the compensation in those employments to risks of those employments as distinguished from accidents that merely happen in connection with the employment or that might have happened in any employment. I hope very much myself that the other States which are working on this problem will be more courageous than we were, and that they will place the matter before the courts in this extreme form and determine what the courts will do with it. I think perhaps there is more reason to expect a favorable decision from some of the courts in the Western States than from the New York Court of Appeals. Looking at the matter as a national problem, I think it would perhaps be better to have the question come up first in some of the middle Western States before the courts there rather than to come up in some of our Eastern States. At the same time I agree with the suggestion that Senator Sanborn raised as to the necessity of protecting the rights of the employes. I do not see how, on the basis of the whole scheme of property rights, we can take away from the employe his right to sue for damages when the injury is due directly and clearly to the negligence of the employer, without a constitutional amendment. But that difficulty can be met by a saving clause that in practice need not interfere very much with the efficiency of the system. That is the plan we adopted in our New York bill, merely putting in a clause to the effect that except where the accident was due to the personal negligence of the employer the compensation bill should apply, leaving it to the courts to decide just how far that would go. A safety clause of that kind in practice, in my opinion, would be largely disregarded. After this system came into operation, the advantage of getting a certain compensation would appeal to a great majority of injured workmen as preferable to the gamble of a law suit. So that from the point of view of the expense to the employer such a provision need not impose a serious additional burden along with the burden of the compensation law. MR. PARKS (Massachusetts): In our State there is a bill before the Committee on Labor in the Legislature, of which I am a member, prohibiting the employment of minors under eighteen in trades which are dangerous to health. The committee decided to refer the bill to the State Board of Health, and an investigation by the State Board showed that continuous employment in such industries as the manufacture of cuff buttons and collar buttons, and so forth, was deleterious to the health on account of the small pieces of bone and other substances which had an injurious effect upon the health of the operatives. One factory in particular was alluded to at a hearing which we had on the matter, and after we passed the bill, and it became a law, I understand that that factory changed over their whole system, so that that particular industry instead of being as before this act was passed a dangerous industry to health, it became a safe industry to the health of minors. That was one effect of the naming of a particular industry as a dangerous trade, so far as health is concerned. PROF. ERNST FREUND (Illinois): It seems to me there are two things to be sought for in this matter, and that is, first, to find some principle of classification and then to see what portion of that principle we can reasonably hope to cover by legislation. When I look at this section it does not seem to me that the principle is what I could call a sound one, and I mean by that, one that appeals to our sense of justice. It is true that the English act is very comprehensive, but it has never appeared to me that the rule of the English law by which the head of a household is liable to a domestic servant for that domestic servant's carelessness is really a reasonable and just principle of law. Therefore we ought to have some particular reason for putting the liability upon the employer, and that reason might well be some particular element of danger. By calling an employment dangerous, I think, we do not make it dangerous even if now and then accidents occur in it. I think there are certain elements of danger which we could all point out, and that there are some elements of danger which we could all agree upon as making an occupation extremely hazardous. We should also consider whether it would not be wise for the present to confine the liability to concerns of some magnitude. I know that it is very much questioned whether you can confine this extraordinary liability to large concerns, because it is open to the criticism that you simply make those pay who can afford to guard themselves through liability insurance. However, I think there is a real difference of principle based upon difference of size, because the relation of the small concern to the employe is totally different from that of the large concern, and it is only in the large concerns that these conditions prevail which, under modern conditions, seem to demand a shifting of the responsibility from the employe to the employer. If you wish to be conservative, and not cover all the industries that have some element of hazard, you have to decide the very difficult question where to draw the line. When I read over the list of employments singled out in the compulsory bill recommended by the New York Commission, I was very much puzzled by the obvious fact that certain obviously hazardous employments were excluded, until I was informed that the principle was that of the non-competitive industry. Now, if you say that these industries are selected because they cannot get away from the law by moving across the state line, the discrimination looks objectionable; if, however, you say they are selected because they are not exposed to competition from industries operating under laws more favorable to the employer, the discrimination looks much more plausible. Even so, it is doubtful whether the principle of selection would approve itself to the Supreme Court of this State. DR. W. H. ALLPORT (Illinois): It is evident we have in contemplation here two methods of arriving at a tentative solution of this question. (1) One method suggested by Professor Freund, which looked to me like a modification of the German method; that is, the method by which certain occupations have been gradually selected as being more and more hazardous, and gradually including the less hazardous occupations, until, I believe, in Germany the law covers all occupations and almost all employments. That is, it now covers farm employes, agricultural employes and the employes of our small establishments. (2) The other method suggested by Senator Sanborn, as a tentative law, follows more or less the English method, where the law was made right away to cover practically all employments; that is, the farming industry, domestic industry and other industries. In considering this first clause of the tentative code, it would seem to me as though it would be possible to arrive at some definite definition. The English law has a section devoted entirely to the matter of definition, and defines employer, employe, dependent, and so forth, and some interesting questions have come up recently as to what are dependents under the English law. But the English law omits altogether to express what are hazardous employments. I will read the first section of Chapter LVIII of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906, which is now the law of England: "If in any employment personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment is caused to a workman, his employer shall, subject as hereinafter mentioned, be liable to pay compensation in accordance with the first schedule to this act." That covers all forms of employment, but it does not define any employment as being hazardous or non-hazardous. I suppose the basis of our effort in this tentative "workers' code" is to arrive at something which will go behind our present courts and bring us in line with the state and federal constitutions, which will give the power to a State to enact a law which under ordinary circumstances it would not have, and so, therefore, the effort is made here to define dangerous employments. It is interesting to note the ingenuity with which that point is reached; _i. e._, that any employment becomes dangerous after an accident happens. In the Wisconsin law the effort is made directly; there is no definition, so far as I can see, in the Wisconsin law nor in the New York law. There are certain employments which are defined as extra-hazardous and, therefore, subject to state regulation. There is another point in Section 1 and that is this: "An employment in which there hereafter occurs bodily injuries to any of the employes arising out of." To again recur to the English law, and also the German law, the English law covers other points besides bodily injuries; it covers in certain schedules dangerous diseases and trades accompanied by dangerous diseases. The question, therefore, which would arise in my mind is whether or not we should not in this tentative law embody a consideration of certain dangerous diseases. I happen to be a member of the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, and, therefore, perhaps would be expected to see that in the bill, but aside from that fact it does seem to me that that is a matter for careful consideration. That the bill should cover diseases arising from mining work, diseases from deposits in the lungs where men are engaged in the woolen industry and the lead industry and in the match industry, and certain other dangerous occupations which are dangerous not on account of the personal injuries sustained by the employes, but on account of the danger to the health. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Section 12 says. "Provision defining the words and phrases, and covering all tenses, pronouns and both sexes," should be put into the bill when it is finally drawn. FRANK BUCHANAN (Illinois): I am a structural iron worker by trade and have worked at it for many years, and I guess there would not be much trouble in defining it as an extra-hazardous trade. We have a large number of men injured and killed at that trade, and because of that fact I have given this question of employers' liability much thought and study. For that reason I am here as an interested party to-day. I am not in harmony with that part of the law as drawn up here which takes away the rights of a workman to bring an action in the courts. I take that view, first, because I believe it is the constitutional right of every worker to have action in the courts if he sees fit to do so. Secondly, I believe that when we do have that right of action, due to the negligence of an employer, that it is going to cause the employer to be more careful of how he conducts that particular kind of work, and the most important thing about this whole matter is to secure something that will act as a preventive of accidents. PROF. JOHN H. GRAY (Minnesota): Would you be in favor, Mr. Buchanan, of a bill which gave the choice to the workmen? MR. BUCHANAN: No; I favor the English law that gives him the right to bring suit if he sees fit and then take the compensation if he fails in his suit. I had hoped, in view of the fact that they have brought this law about in European countries, that some of our States might take it up in the same manner. We have a problem here to confront and overcome that they do not have in European countries, in that we are largely governed by the laws of the various States, which, of course, differ widely. In the manufacturing industry, that gives ground for an argument against one State creating a law that does not apply to another State, the claim being made that the competition is not equal, and, of course, there is some ground for that argument. I believe, however, it is going to take a long time and be a very difficult thing to bring about the necessary uniform legislation throughout the States. For that reason I had hoped that we might be able to find some way to create a law affecting only those industries that may not be in competition with the industries of other States, such industries as have been referred to, as the building industry and construction work, and so forth. There are more men killed and injured in that industry than any other two, but due to the fact that there is no competition in that industry it is possible to make a law affecting that and let it be tried out. It might be a starting place to find a way to cover the other industries without affecting those industries in each State which are competitive or obstructing them in any way. I find, however, in reading the history of the British labor legislation that the secretary of the Building Employers' Association in one of the large cities there has stated that that law has not obstructed the business, decreased the wages or decreased the profits, and that the building employers are not justified in any way in finding any fault with that law. It seems to me, therefore, there ought to be some way in which to pass a measure that would apply to that industry. Of course, it may be said that I am a structural iron worker, and interested in that craft which is a building trade, and am, therefore, more selfish about this matter. I feel, however, a great interest in securing better protection for workers in all industries. I know the dissatisfaction that is caused under present conditions; I know the women that are condemned to the washtub and the orphans to poverty, and, therefore, I am always willing to exercise my best efforts to secure better protection for those workers. In my opinion the present condition is the biggest blot that we have on our civilization. Take my own trade, for instance, I have some figures here which I secured from our local secretary which may be of use to you. In 1906, out of a membership of about 1200, we had 29 deaths from accidents and 114 injuries. In 1907, when the work was very much reduced and our membership was greatly reduced, due to the panic brought on at that time, we had 132 injured and 12 deaths. In 1908, while still suffering from the effects of the panic, and not so many men working, probably seven hundred or eight hundred, we had 113 accidents and 7 deaths. In 1909, after we had recovered from the panic in our industry, we had 175 injured and 8 deaths out of a membership of about 1200. In 1906, from the best information I could get, we paid out $12,060 in benefits to those who were injured or killed, and the average length of time of disability of those who were disabled was six weeks. In conclusion, I believe I am expressing the sentiments of the trade-union people in the city of Chicago when I say that we are opposed to any law that will waive the right of action now in the hands of a workman. We think it should be as it is in Great Britain at the present time. Personally, I am in favor of going even further than that. I believe when a workman suffers an injury due to the carelessness of an employer or a superintendent, that that employer or superintendent should be sentenced to prison for that negligence. I mean by that those who are in charge of that work and who are responsible for that work. I claim that there should be a penal offense attached to that negligent act, and I believe that the majority of employers would have no objection to it; that is, those who are willing to use the necessary care for preventing these accidents. I hope that in the very near future the people in this country will become awakened to the need of these measures, and I believe the present facts obtainable will show that there can be fair protective measures created without any hardship whatever on the employer, although it may be necessary for them to add a small price on the product or on the contract price when he is bidding on construction work. C. B. CULBERTSON (Wisconsin): I will assume a case in order that I may ask the last speaker a question. Say that in Wisconsin last year there was a loss, including the expense of court proceedings and obtaining judgments and everything that you could put under that head, of $460,000; that during that time the laboring men to whom this money should have gone got only from 18 to 25 per cent. of it; would he not prefer a law, if he could not get a better one, that would give 90 per cent. of that $460,000 to the sufferers, even if occasional large judgments should have to be waived? MR. BUCHANAN: I always prefer getting the best we possibly can. We must consider the conditions under which we are laboring. I do not believe that the laboring people are willing to waive their right of action in the courts for something that they do not consider especially good. Of course, I am not here representing any laboring body, but from my association with them I am led to believe that I can speak as to their sentiments in the city of Chicago. I am a delegate to the Chicago Federation of Labor, one of the largest bodies of its kind in the country, if not the largest, and have heard those matters discussed there, and I would say that we are willing to accept nothing less than the best we can get, and we are willing always to accept that. JOHN MITCHELL (New York): I do not know whether there will be any advantage in the discussion of the character of a bill that we should want to adopt or as to the measure that any group would desire. I hold no commission that gives me a right to represent the workingmen of the United States, notwithstanding that I am an officer of the American Federation of Labor. As a matter of fact, the American Federation of Labor, which is representative of practically all the organized workmen in the United States, has not itself decided formally upon the character of a compensation bill that they would favor. But I do have some knowledge of the general sentiment that prevails in the country, and I think that in part I can say for the workingmen of the United States, and they, after all, the ones most affected by this legislation, they are the ones that are demanding it, and it is for their relief that it is going to be enacted. I believe I can say for them, as Mr. Buchanan has said, that the workingmen will not be willing to waive their right to enter the courts and sue for damages. To that extent, I think, he is correct, and that the workmen would not be willing to waive their right to sue. On the other hand, I believe that if they understood the circumstances prevailing in Great Britain that they would not insist upon their right to sue, and then failing to win their suit to have their compensation. I do not have with me a table I have of statistics giving the amount secured in suits for damages and the average amount paid under the Workmen's Compensation Act of Great Britain, but my recollection is that the workmen of Great Britain, in cases where they have instituted suit under the employers' liability law or the common law, have received approximately $852, and that the average compensation paid under the Workmen's Compensation Act has been $848. My recollection is that the workingmen of Great Britain have received on the average more under the compensation act than they have under the liability act, and I think can we take it for granted that where men have sued under the liability laws of Great Britain it has been in cases where there has been a likelihood of responsibility on the part of the employer. Unless the workingman was convinced that he had a reasonably good case, he would not proceed under the liability laws, but would, on the other hand, proceed under the compensation act. Now, if the workingmen of Great Britain recover a larger amount under the Workingmen's Compensation Act than they do under the liability laws, is it not likely that they would do the same thing in the United States? In other words, has not the right of the workingman of Great Britain to proceed under the liability laws simply been a temptation to him to sue in the hope, and the false hope, as it turns out, that he might recover a larger amount than he would under the compensation act; and if the figures I have given you are approximately correct, has the result not been that the workingman, lured by the false hope that he would secure a large verdict, has given a large part of the money he would have received under the compensation act to attorneys, because he has had to pay the costs of the courts, he has had to pay his lawyers their fees, although possibly not in as large an amount as would be the case here, because in England the court fixes the amount of the attorney's fees; and has he not taken from the employer money that ought to have been used to compensate the men for accidents. Whenever a burden is put upon the employer that means nothing to the workman, it simply deprives the employer of the opportunity of paying a larger amount under the compensation act. Now, it is not because of any particular sympathy I have for the employer in the matter, although I want to be absolutely just to him, but it is because I want to protect the workingman and see that he receives the largest possible amount as a reward or as a compensation for his injury, that I am not in favor of giving the workman the right to sue under the liability laws, and, failing to win his suit, to then proceed under the compensation act. I think it is holding out to the workman a false hope, and I know the practice in England has been simply a lure, and has caused him to waste his own money and waste the money of the employer without any benefit to himself. On the other hand, when I say that I believe the workman should have the right to sue, I believe that because I believe there should be something done to cause the employer to prevent accidents, and I think the fact that a workman once in a while may secure a verdict of $5000, $10,000 or $15,000 is an incentive to the employer to prevent accidents. And when all is said and done, gentlemen, one of the principal purposes of this Conference should be to prevent accidents. Your compensation, quite apart from preventing accidents, is necessary, yet it is of a hundred times more importance that a life be saved than it is that some man or his dependents should receive $3000 or $4000 for his life. It is all very well to receive $1000 for the loss of an eye or the loss of an arm, but it is much better, not only for that man, but also for society, that the eye or the arm be not lost. Gentlemen, this gathering, if I may just make this general observation, is perhaps one of the most important gatherings that has met in the United States, because it is going to give impetus to a great movement to change our entire system of employers' liability. I doubt not but that within a very few years our courts will so broaden their vision, and so broaden their decisions, that they will find means, even under our present constitution, to recognize the growing demand on the part of the people for relief from our iniquitous system of employers' liability law. I do not know how fast we can go; no doubt those of us whose lives have been spent among workingmen, and who have daily been brought in contact with those who are suffering either from accidents directly or the dependents of those who have been killed, may grow impatient in our desire to secure a remedy, but we cannot go faster than the courts will let us go, and we cannot go faster than the Constitution of the United States will let us go, but we ought to go at least as fast as they will permit us to go. If some State will take the lead and adopt a comprehensive system of compensation, and put it up to the courts and have decisions rendered, we would then know just what we could do. In any event, gentlemen, I believe that the workingmen will not be at all satisfied either with the suggestion sometimes made of a contribution on their part or with any law that removes from the employer the incentive to prevent accidents. SHERMAN KINGSLEY (Chicago): Gentlemen, in my duties as superintendent of the United Charities of Chicago, I come in touch with a great many families where the breadwinner has been removed, and where the burden of supporting the family devolves upon the wife and the children. In this State, within the year, as you know, we have met with a very great disaster down at Cherry, where a large number of men were killed in a very spectacular manner. The press of this city and country was alive with the stories of that disaster for weeks. It was debated in our Legislature, it was talked about in university halls and preached about from the pulpits. I doubt if ever in the history of industrial accidents 267 men ever had as much written, said and thought and felt about themselves and their families as was the case down at Cherry. I was asked to read a paper at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections at St. Louis, my subject being: "Compensation from the Point of View of What a Relief Society Would Consider Adequate." I tried to get a number of accidents equal to that of the victims of Cherry; that is, accidents that happened one at a time in the commonplace fashion, where, instead of having the press interested in it for weeks, the man will get three lines in a paper in an obscure corner, saying that So-and-so had his head cut off or had suffered an accident which cost his life. I got from ten societies similar to the United Charities of Chicago, in ten of the largest cities of the country, something over one hundred accident cases, and I have a couple of charts which show the kind of compensation that was obtained by those one-at-a-time, obscure accidents, and then what happened in the case of the men down at Cherry, where they met their death so dramatically. One chart shows the compensation they received, either through court action or from the employer, and it shows what 50 families received where the man was killed in a one-at-a-time accident in ten of the large cities of this country. The second is a chart of 50 families in Cherry, and shows that they received $1800 apiece; while the 50 one-at-a-time families only received $8749, in amounts all the way from $3000 down to $7. I suppose that a damage suit of $10,000 or $15,000 does have some compelling effect upon an employer with reference to protective machinery, but I think that the greatest thing in the world that will happen in the way of preventing accidents is to make it dead sure that every accident will receive some just measure of compensation. Instead of having 50 accidents get $8749, if they come to $3000 apiece, making a total of $150,000, that fact will have a great deal more effect in preventing accidents than has the present plan. Now, I have another chart which shows the whole relief story of Cherry, and indicates the effect of public opinion upon the compensation received by the sufferers. The Red Cross Society, the Legislature and the whole community became interested in Cherry. The money contributed by the public, by the Legislature and by the community generally amounted to $87,240 odd dollars. In our one-at-a-time accidents something was done for the victims, of course; they were cared for in day nurseries, in orphan asylums, in hospitals and the county agents gave help and the charities gave some help, but not in any such amount as the Cherry sufferers received. Twenty-four of these one-at-a-time cases were cases where the children were taken out of school and put to work or to begging, or the family took in boarders, and in some instances the criminal courts had played their part. Whatever it was, it was a certain fixed amount. (Down in Cherry the amount contributed is to go to the families in monthly payments, spreading over some five years, and in amounts suited to the number of the children and the ages of the children in the family.) The deterioration in the income of the families, resulting from the one-at-a-time accidents, was 64 per cent. Notwithstanding the wife and the children did everything they could, the income in these families has deteriorated almost two-thirds. In one case, where there was permanent disability, a man was awarded in one court $22,500. The case was appealed from court to court during a number of years, and finally the man received absolutely nothing. Those are some of the general consequences, and I believe that in this matter of prevention nothing is going to have so wholesome and so certain an effect in the prevention of accidents as to have accidents cost money, and cost about what they ought to cost, and cost it with a certainty. You can see what happened in the case of these 50 families, where the accidents happened one at a time; those families only cost something like $8000, and some of that even, in fact, quite a large part of it, was a gift from the employer and not compensation. (A motion was adopted thanking Mr. Kingsley for his graphic presentation of the facts.) JOHN FLORA (Illinois): I see in this tentative "code" no provision for doing away with the defenses of the employers before the courts. The Chicago Federation of Labor, which I directly represent on the Illinois Commission, holds that any compensation bill in the State of Illinois is not worth the paper it is written on, unless we have a provision also doing away with the right of the employer to bring into the defense what is known in court decisions as assumption of risk, contributory negligence and the fellow-servant doctrine. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Let me suggest that further down in this bill the common law remedies for all industrial accidents covered by this bill are intended to be repealed. If they are repealed, that would dispose of your question. MR. FLORA: Very well. I want to say then in reference to this first section, that it appeals to me a great deal stronger than anything else. I happen to be a building trades man myself, and I want to say individually, as a member of the Illinois Commission, that I am in favor of a compensation law that will cover everybody. I do not favor taking out any class of industry and making that one class amenable to a certain law, and allowing another class to go without any protection whatever. I hold that the widow of a man who is killed in a non-hazardous occupation suffers just as much as the widow of a man who is killed in a hazardous occupation. I do not know how the constitution would affect this matter in this State. That, I presume, is something that the Illinois Commission would have to look up, but nevertheless I think it is a great deal better than the New York proposition. I never have been very much taken up with the idea of having two different bills in New York. I feel that they might have gone further and have made one bill that would cover every occupation. I hold with the rest of the representatives of the working people that the working people will never agree to surrender their right to go into court under the common law. MR. DAWSON (New York): I have not made up my mind at all as to this question, whether the right of the workingman who is injured, or of his family in the event of his death, to proceed under the existing law, should be taken away; whether he should be compelled to exercise an option and abide by it, or whether he should be permitted to proceed under the law through the courts, and in case he fails to establish that he has been injured by the employer's wrongful or negligent act, still be entitled to compensation under the compensation act. There are, however, some considerations that arise in my mind. In the first place, the tendency of the proposed legislation in this country has been to do away with certain of the defenses, even though a compensation act be adopted. An argument in favor of that has been that by doing away with these defenses the employers will be made very glad indeed to accept a compensation act. I think the impression is that the bill which was passed by the Ohio Legislature, and since vetoed by the Governor, was intended chiefly to influence public opinion there in favor of abandoning entirely the old method of dealing with industrial accidents. Certainly in New York there is no question but that the weakening of the defenses was directly for the purpose of getting the manufacturers to take advantage of the permissive act. As I understand it, a similar proposition is now being brought forward in Wisconsin. If, in spite of this, by any chance the fixed policy in this country should ultimately be the same as in Great Britain; namely, to preserve to workmen their rights under the common law and under statute law relating to employers' liability, either in an optional form or in a form which would still give the benefit under the workmen's compensation act, though defeated in the courts, it occurs to me that this weakening of defenses would be a peculiarly dangerous thing for us to do. The present situation in the United States is that the employers' liability theory, the negligence theory has, notwithstanding these defenses, in the main, been pushed just as far as the courts and the juries could push it, to cover many accidents. Notwithstanding that we chafe at these defenses, the courts and juries have gone just as far as they could go, on the theory that an employer was to be held liable _only_ for his own fault. This is due to a strong sense of natural justice and a desire to compensate as many as possible. It is safe to say that nine out of ten verdicts rendered in this country, and sustained by the higher courts when brought before them, are not cases where the actual negligence of the employer is clear at all, but instead it is reasoned out by precedents established by these same courts, under which employers have been held responsible; precedents which, of course, have been carried still further in the case of public liability; that is, to others than employes. If we pass a compensation law so that every injury is surely compensated, what resulted in Great Britain is what I should expect to find in this country if we do not weaken these defenses; that is, that after a compensation act is passed, the disposition of courts and juries will shift to the other side; namely, that instead of aiming to stretch the theory of employers' liability and negligence to the utmost limit in order to give verdict, they will tighten them by establishing new precedents until it will be nearly impossible to get a verdict for the negligence of the employer. This is true now in Great Britain unless an exceedingly clear case of actual personal negligence has been established, or such negligence on the part of those who have been appointed to perform the employers' duties in his business, that his agents' negligence is fairly attributable to him. It is by reason of that fact that the courts have gradually veered to the position, that the reservation of that right in Great Britain has done no harm. I say no harm advisedly, because I am told that the British insurance companies regard it as a quantity negligible in the computation of their rates. Under those circumstances should we not be particularly careful how we proceed about weakening defenses? And should not the manner in which we proceed be definitely based upon what we suppose will be the ultimate form of these laws; that is, whether the right to proceed under the employers' liability act will be wiped out entirely, whether it will be reserved as an option to be exercised only by abandoning the other right entirely, or whether, as in Great Britain, there would still remain the right when defeated, to claim under the compensation act. There are reasons which appeal to me very strongly why the British principle should be accepted, but I am not clear that I shall be of that opinion in the end. One of these reasons is: This compensation, if it is given under a compensation act, will be for the purpose of trying to see that all persons who are injured in the course of carrying on an industry are taken care of. It has a public purpose; namely, to prevent the piling up of the burden upon public and private charity, the very things we saw set forth in the chart that Mr. Kingsley exhibited a few minutes ago. Is there any reason why, when we have tried to make that provision for the inevitable result of industry, we should refuse to punish those rare cases of misconduct which mean that men have grossly trifled with the safety of their employes? I am not quite clear that there is any good reason. I am confident that an examination of the British decisions, since they put the first compensation act upon the statute books in 1907, would show that there have been very few cases, indeed, in which the employers have been held liable, where they ought not to have been actually punished for misconduct. There is one consideration, however, that does not appeal to me which has been brought forward in the argument here, and I wish to speak about it. It is that by reason of such punishment employers will be more careful. I am sorry to say that such does not appear to be true. All the evidence to the present time is that employers are most careless where there is nothing for which they are held responsible but negligence. They are enormously more careful when they are held for every accident that happens. Experience all over the world has shown this to be true, and I want to add one thing that is almost more important still; they are still more careful in countries where they are not even held individually responsible, but are only held responsible for the payment of insurance premiums. The greatest amount of prevention and the largest amount of care exercised by employers anywhere in the world is in those countries which have compulsory or obligatory insurance laws. The reason is very simple: nearly every employer does not think that a catastrophe, due to his negligence, will ever happen. But when you hold him under a compensation act for every accident, big or little, negligent or not, and accidents are happening every day, and there is a good deal of money being paid more or less continually, he will be much more careful. Again, when you introduce a compulsory insurance system, if his institution is not up to standard, he finds he is paying three times as big a rate of premium, perhaps, as another employer in the same business, and he does not wait for accidents to happen, but takes measures at once to prevent them, and so get a present and permanent benefit in a reduction of his rate. There has nothing been found yet which will cause so effective prevention of accidents as compulsory insurance; for it is, after all, the certainty that the want of it costs money that causes an employer to be more careful, and not the possibility that it may cost him a great deal more money or perhaps even ruin him. MR. HARPER: Further, as to the right of the Legislature to take away from the employe his right of action at common law, in most of the bills which have been suggested, it is provided that some method of arbitration shall be substituted for the ordinary action at law, and, in my judgment, where the nature of the injury and the amount of the compensation only, and not the question of the liability, is left to the arbitrators and taken away from the courts, the courts ought to sustain it. It might be wise, however, in all cases to provide for an appeal to a court of record. I want to ask the Chairman and the other attorneys here, especially to discuss a suggestion I desire to make in regard to limiting the right of the employe to bring such common law action and substituting in part the compensation system. The suggestion is this: Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, which has been in vogue for two or three hundred years, the employe was originally given the right of action against the employer, not only for the negligent acts of the employer himself, but also for the negligent acts of his servants and employes while exercising the duties of their employment. That was a judge-made privilege extended to the employe. It is not a constitutional right, and might we not take that power from him and substitute therefore a compensation system? That is, might we not provide in a compulsory compensation act that the employe, where the negligence is attributable not to the master himself, primarily, but to his servant or his employe, that his compensation in that case should be compulsory and the employe would not have a right to his action at common law. HENRY W. BULLOCK (Indiana): We do not have a Commission in Indiana. At the last meeting of the General Assembly I prepared on behalf of the State Federation of Labor a bill for the creation of a Commission, which, unfortunately, was smothered. We are fortunate, however, in Indiana, in having a Governor who personally is in favor of compensation, so we have that much of a start on the future. The question of employers' liability and workmen's compensation, I believe, has been more deeply studied by organized labor than any other class of people, and I frequently have been associated with them in the preparation of their legislative measures in Indiana, and I believe that I can express their sentiments as being in favor of compensation. I also believe that at this time they would be opposed to any system that would take from them their common law right to sue for damages, and they would probably favor a double law, such as they have in England. However, they might be induced to grant some concessions if the employers were to be reasonable, which I hope they will be. Thus far, however, there has been much opposition on the part of the employers, not only to measures for compensation, but to all safety measures. I think the question of safety is the larger proposition. One thing the trade unions have done, they have trained up competent workmen, and if the employers would be careful in the selection of their employes, that would do much to protect life and limb. In regard to this "workers' code," I know I speak the unanimous sentiment of the legislative forces of Indiana when I say that they do not intend the operation of an employers' liability law to include agricultural and domestic services, but that the question is whether the law can be constitutional without that. All classifications must be based upon some reason. It might be that this could be evaded, and the law could be drawn generally with a proviso excluding certain persons from its operation. Then no one could raise the constitutional question perhaps. The person within the operation of the law could not raise it because he would be affected, and the person excluded could not raise it because he would not be affected by it. It occurs to me that perhaps the rates of compensation named here are not quite adequate. Injured workmen, for instance, receive 60 per cent. during only five years. Thus the workingman not only gives 40 per cent. of his wages, but he gives it all after five years. I believe that the industry should bear the expense. As it stands, it makes the workingmen, who are usually young or middle-aged men, from 20 to 45 years of age on an average, and who have a long expectancy, contribute the largest share. As to whether or not we could constitutionally deny the workingman his right of action against a negligent employer I seriously doubt if that could be done, for why should the rule be different if the injury is caused by the employer and it falls upon the workingman, than when it falls upon a stranger? All persons should be liable for their carelessness and their negligence, and it occurs to me that there is not a reasonable basis for that classification. Negligence is a personal proposition with the employer, and for that reason, I think, there should be a right of action against the employer. Compensation is a matter of industry and occupation, and has no reference at all to carelessness or negligence, and for that reason the industry should bear the ordinary hazard, but the employer should bear that which is caused by his own negligence. This bill, as I have read it hurriedly, makes no provisions for the important feature of the certainty of securing compensation. It provides that these payments shall be strung out for a period of five years. How are we to know that the employers will remain solvent for five years? There should be some security for those payments if they are not made in a lump sum. It occurs to me also that this notice is a little bit strict. Ordinarily an employer knows when an injury occurs. The law in most of our States compels the employers to report, and yet if the injured person fails to report within a very limited time, his right of recovery is barred. That notice should be sent, provided the employer himself does not know of it, but if he himself has actual notice, then the employe's right to recovery should not be barred. In some one of the measures, I do not know which one now, it provides that there must be specific detail. That gives the employer the advantage of having the names of the witnesses and of all the details made by the employe, and it does not give the reciprocal advantage to the employe of getting a statement from the employer, when we all know that very often employers conceal witnesses and keep the correct statement of facts from the injured workman. Concerning Section 6, regarding boards of arbitration and awards, some constitutional question might arise. I am not sure that such boards might be called administrative, but, at any rate, we have a constitutional provision in our State that says boards of conciliation may be created, but not with power to act unless the parties submit themselves voluntarily. I seriously doubt, therefore, if you can have compulsory arbitration under our constitution. I would favor abolishing all of the common law defenses as to contributory negligence, assumed risk and so forth, with the hope of bringing the employers into a frame of mind to adopt this law, and to that end if you cannot get a constitutional law without it, the Legislature would have the right to prescribe a standard form of policy for liability insurance, and in that they might prescribe a form to insure the workmen. I believe if we do not have compensation, that the liability insurance company should be made a party to actions for damages; that the amounts should go to the injured parties rather than to the employers, as is the case over in England. They have a provision there that the employers may adopt some system of their own with the approval of the public authorities. The main argument of the employers at Minneapolis last year was that any increased liability would add a burden to the employers, and would cause the employes to become careless, and on investigation I find that perhaps there has been an increase in the number of accidents reported, which is due to the fact that the workmen report better when they are compensated, and that a larger number of industries have come in under the law. From the American Federation of Labor officers I find that their estimate is that the dangerous machinery that now runs at high speed is also the cause of the increased reports of non-serious accidents, and from an insurance company of Germany I find that accidents of a trivial nature have increased, while those of a fatal nature have decreased, and that the employers are penalized for their negligence. It seems to me that where there is a liability to penalize the employer for negligence it causes him to be more careful in protecting the lives of his workmen. And, it seems to me, in conclusion, that the right of the workingmen to receive damages should be maintained, but personally I think it should be used as little as possible. WALLACE INGALLS (Wisconsin): The Chairman and I have discussed the various fundamental features or principles which underlie the question of compulsory compensation under our law, and you will pardon me for any criticism, if I make any, of the right to enact an out-and-out compulsory system in any of the States of the Union, but this bill involves exactly that principle. While it is not so worded plainly in the first section, yet it means the same thing, because in the first section you characterize occupations without limit as dangerous occupations. When you do that, you put those occupations within what is called the police power of the country, and when you do that, then, of course, you can enact laws bearing directly on the subject. I think we ought not to forget in the discussion of this question that the underlying principles of our Government are different from those of any of the other countries which have these systems that we have been talking about. When our Government was founded it was founded on individual rights. At that time individual rights were unknown in the other countries, and technically speaking in the other countries they have not now got individual rights, while we have them here. In fact, our Government is based on them. One gentleman suggested that the employes did not wish to surrender their individual rights to go into the courts, which is the only place they have to go. I believe that is fundamental, and I think they would accord the same rights to the employer. But we must not lose sight of the fact that individual rights exist in this country, and that in the older countries, such as Germany and England, they do not have individual rights that you can insist upon and go into court upon. We are discussing a very important question, we are discussing a question whereby we can arbitrarily decide what course shall be granted to an individual without his day in court, whether it is an employer or an employe; that they shall take a certain amount of money fixed by arbitration for an injury, or for death, or whatever it may be. That is a serious question. Now, you can, of course, take away these defenses of the employer; there is no question about that. I am in sympathy with it, but under our laws and our system of government, I do not believe that any of us want to embark upon any dangerous system of jurisprudence, and I do not believe we want to invade individual rights anywhere. In Wisconsin, after a careful discussion of what we could and what we could not do, we presented a plan whereby these defenses are practically destroyed and the other features of the bill are optional. One phase of this subject has been the source of much discussion pro and con, and that is in regard to the matter of contribution. In Germany their system covers sickness, accidents, invalidity and old age, three different classes. There is no contribution for accidents proper. There is for old age and for sickness, and sickness includes the first thirteen weeks of the result of an accident. In England there is no contribution. Whoever will examine those two systems, and compare them, I think, will draw the conclusion that when you consider the subject of sickness and of invalidity, the question of mutuality must necessarily and naturally enter into it. But with purely accidental misfortunes, that is a different question, and to my mind the contribution has no place in it for this reason, if it is true that that should fall upon the industry, then it necessarily follows that the employe should not contribute. The success of the German system, as I view it, is based upon the mutuality of sickness, invalidity and old age, all three being interdependent and interwoven under one scheme, and the mutuality being in that system. That is what makes it so perfect. It is really a self-operating principle, and it is based upon the only true and correct principle that ever will be arrived at in considering a scheme of that kind. We cannot do that at present. When our system broadens, and we get to the point where we handle sickness and invalidity, then the mutual feature of it will come in and will be very wholesome, but as far as we have gone now, it is not possible to handle it. On the subject of litigation in continental countries under the liability laws, the statistics in England show that litigation has practically disappeared. They prefer to take the compensation. It is immediate and they get it at once, and they prefer that rather than going into long-drawn-out and expensive litigation. Of course, there is some litigation, but it is growing less and less continuously, and, as a matter of fact, most of the litigation there has been in connection with the construction of the law. AMOS T. SAUNDERS (Massachusetts): It seems to me as though the reading of this first section might defeat its true purpose. I understand it is based upon the theory that constitutionally we can impose certain remedies upon certain industries, because they are immediately dangerous. It is very obvious from the reading of this first section, following out that theory of law, that the man who drafted it had endeavored to say that every industry is a partly dangerous industry. Under this bill the servant girl in my kitchen who cuts her finger when she is cutting bread for breakfast, is entitled to recovery. It strikes me when you say everything is partly dangerous that you have landed about where you would have landed if you had not said that anything was particularly dangerous. That is, if I should attempt to say that every man in this room was a "Tom fool," as a comparison between the men in this room, I have not said anything, but when you say every industry in which there is an accident (and there is an accident in every industry) is a partly dangerous industry, and by saying that attempt to legislate concerning it because it is dangerous, we have simply piled up a number of words which, when the courts get to the construction of the bill they must disregard entirely. On the proposition that in England a man may sue, and, failing to recover, may get his compensation under the compensation act, it has been suggested that that will work no harm, and I judge it was sought to convey the idea that the result would be the same in this country. I believe, however, that when you say that you lose sight of one thing, and that is that in England it is practically impossible for an employe to get what a lawyer in this country who is trying cases for the plaintiff would call a decent verdict. The verdicts from the English juries are very materially smaller than the verdicts from American juries. Therefore, when the English employe comes to compare what he can get under the compensation act with what he can get under a verdict from a jury, he is satisfied with a very much smaller amount than the American would be. One of the chief reasons for the compensation act is to prevent the waste of money in expensive litigation. The employe only receives perhaps 17 to 25 per cent. of the money which the employer pays out, and the rest of it, so far as the employer and employe is concerned, is wasted. Therefore, if we should provide a system which would allow the employes all the remedies they now have, and then, if they should fail in their suits, allow them to secure their compensation under the compensation act, will we not be increasing litigation and, therefore, be providing a means to hinder the effect of this very act? In other words, would you not be doing away with the prevention of this tremendous waste in litigation? There has been considerable discussion as to a choice of remedies. I know in the Massachusetts Legislature, before the Judiciary Committee, the first question that was raised at the hearing this year and the year before was whether the employe should not be obliged to choose before his injury, so that he could make a wholly disinterested choice between the laws, and not be affected by his particular injury; that his choice should be between the system of compensation or the system of liability. No one has suggested a really workable method, but in Massachusetts, and, I think, in New England in its entirety, most of the actions which are brought by employes against employers are to-day brought to a very large extent under statutory remedies and not under the common law. I will assume that we will all agree that anything which the State has given to an employe by statute can be taken away by statute under the constitution, and it has seemed to me as though we could at least do this: That in providing a compensation act we could provide it as a substitute for our statutory act, and that would leave the employe his common law remedy and his compensation remedy. The fact that the common law remedy is not used now, from a lawyer's standpoint, at least, would force the employer and the employe, if he was going to bring an action, into a more or less unfamiliar proceeding under the old common law, and as between an unfamiliar common law procedure and a perfectly plain compensation act, it would seem that the natural course for both the employe and the employer would be to take the certain compensation act. I think the question which troubles Massachusetts more than anything else has been touched upon very little here to-day, and that is the effect upon interstate competitive industries. We can pass a law in each State which will apply to specially hazardous risks which are not competitive between the States, and while it might be inconvenient, and it may cause a great deal of trouble to start in with, the effect eventually is not an injury to any particular industry or any particular set of people, because if it is not a competitive industry the employer very quickly contributes the extra burden upon the public. But when you strike the competitive industries between States, when Massachusetts or any other State does pass a compensation act, we do not know what it will do until it is tried, and it may be a serious burden upon the manufacturers. We are in danger of placing that particular industry in such a position that it cannot compete with industries in surrounding States. It seems to me, therefore, that the vital question for this National Conference to discuss, and the one which would be the most effective and beneficial to all the different States, is what shall we do with our competitive industries. If we can all secure, approximately at the same time, at the end of a few years, and place upon the statute books of the various States practically the same scheme, then, even though it is not a perfect scheme, even though it should prove to be a burden upon the industry, that industry is not going to suffer, but the people who sell the various manufactured products will distribute that burden among themselves. That, it seems to me, is the practical question which should be discussed. I should like to have this National Conference discuss what we can do with those industries which are spread out over the country and which are competitive. I believe we must find some general solution of that problem before there can be successful compensation acts in any of the States. EDWIN R. WRIGHT (Illinois): There is one question I should like to have some light on from the members of the various Commissions here. There has been a good deal of discussion upon the elective or compulsory systems of arbitration, and also upon the question of the double or single liability, and I do not know of any better place to ask the question than right here. The American Federation of Labor sent out a letter bearing on the subject, and I was rather astonished to find the number of different lines of industry which the president of the American Federation of Labor and the officers wished to include in a compulsory law. I asked President Gompers the reason, and the matter over, and after hearing the discussion here to-day, he told me that he favored a compulsory measure. In thinking the injured person fails to report within a very limited time, his it presented a question to my mind as to why President Gompers was influenced in asking for a compulsory measure. After Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Mitchell and others spoke on the question, it seemed to me that this would be a point which we could discuss here with a great deal of advantage to ourselves. In England they have a double system. A man can go back after failing in the courts and receive his compensation, and the question that arose in my mind immediately was, what would he receive, and the answer to that is something like this: He would receive $3000, of which the attorney would immediately take $1000. Then if there was $1000 left after the court costs were paid, he would get that $1000, but the court costs might be $2000 or $3000. Then where would the double compensation be? In referring to the matter this morning, I suggested that it might be a matter of compromise as to whether there would be a single compensation or a double compensation, and I would like to ask some of the attorneys here what it costs to go through the Supreme Court, and if it is not the custom if a damage suit results in $4000 or $5000 damages to usually go through the Supreme Court and possibly come back to some of the lower courts and then go back to the Supreme Court again, and what that costs, and if it costs anything like $2000, what is going to be left of the double liability? What does the workman get? I went over the English tables and I found that a man really received more if he took his compensation than if he went through the courts, and that when he got greater compensation after going through the courts, he had to pay the court costs and his attorney. There was not very much left for him. MR. MITCHELL: The court in England fixes the attorney's compensation at a very low amount. MR. WRIGHT: But it does not here, and the court costs here amount to a great deal more than they do in England, so that you must make a comparison between the court costs in England and the court costs in America, aside from the delay in the courts, before you will fully understand the question. If a double liability is of any advantage to the employe, I want that double liability. If it is not going to be of any material advantage to the employe, and will merely pile up the expense account would not it be better to pile up the expense account in the first place, and have that go to the employe as an automatic proposition? I am not arguing on one side or the other, but I would like to know what the workingman is going to get when the thing is settled. I might go a little bit farther. We were shown some charts here this afternoon as to what the workmen receive in an ordinary accident. Those charts bore out exactly the statement I made this morning. The charts this afternoon show that the workman receives on an average something like $400, when he received anything. Now, is that right? Is the life of a workman only worth $400 on an average? Is that all the compensation he gets? It costs about $150 to bury a man and that leaves $250, and besides that you have the other expenses coming in. I am beginning to doubt whether the life of an able-bodied workman is worth anything at all. G. A. RANNEY (Illinois): I do not think the workman gets anything under the double compensation, but he takes the risk of a suit, and, I think, if he elects to take that risk, he should bear the loss if he loses. MR. INGALLS: I quite agree with Mr. Wright upon the practicability of the double liability. My observation is that the double liability is quite unimportant as a practical matter, because when you get into court it is the delay that is the most troublesome thing. The real expense in court is not so exorbitant. The charges of a lawyer to handle the case exceed the actual court charges many times. Even taking away the double liability will practically affect the workingman very little. Of course, there may be isolated cases where he ought to have that right, and where it ought to be preserved to him, but in drafting a general scheme, it has seemed to us necessary to preserve the double liability unless the employe agreed to waive it, if he could waive it. MR. BUCHANAN: In my opinion there would be very few cases of expensive litigation in the courts if we had a proper compensation law in this country. It has worked out that way in Great Britain, and from information I have I know that the trade unions there are discouraging action in the courts unless it is a clear case of wilful negligence on the part of the employer. I want to call the attention of the Conference to an abuse which we have here in Illinois, and which our Illinois Commission have probably looked up and understand. If they have not, they should. The Appellate Court here has the power to pass on findings of facts. There have been a great many personal injury cases reversed under this system of passing on findings of facts. This court was created in 1878, and given this power. Very few courts in the United States have it. I believe the United States Court does not claim to have that power. We desire that that power be taken away from them and that they have the right to pass on the law alone. Another thing that should be given thorough consideration is the financial liability of the employer. I believe that where an employer insures through a liability insurance company, that that insurance, whatever it is, should be attached when damages are secured by an injured employe. We have cases here where employers have no financial standing, and the result is that they have defaulted in the payment of damages, although they have been protected themselves by means of liability insurance. The injured workman cannot secure that insurance through the courts. That is something that should be remedied. (An informal discussion was then had as to a more specific program for the Saturday morning session. Chairman Mercer announced the following committee, of which the Chair, in accordance with Dr. Allport's motion, was _ex-officio_ member.) _Program Committee_--Dr. W. H. Allport, Chicago; Prof. John H. Gray, Minneapolis, Minn.; A. T. Saunders, Clinton, Mass. (Upon motion of Professor Gray an adjournment was then taken until 9.30 A. M., Saturday, June 11, 1910.) THIRD SESSION, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1910, 9.30 A. M. Chairman Mercer called the Conference to order at 9.30 o'clock, and announced that the Program Committee had submitted eight specific questions for discussion, the consideration of each question to be limited to twenty minutes, and the length of time of each speaker to five minutes. The further discussion of the Workers' Compensation Code was then taken up as follows: CHAIRMAN MERCER: The first question will be whether we want to cover all employments in this act, or simply the hazardous employments. MR. DAWSON (New York): In opening this discussion I am going to pass the legal question, because if it is necessary to limit the bill to hazardous employments, there are not two sides to the question. It would appear that it ought not to be necessary for us to repeat all of the baby experiments that have been made in other countries. In other words, having delayed nearly thirty years longer than Europe, why should we not begin where the European countries left off, instead of where they began. It may, however, be necessary for us to confine ourselves to certain classes of employment, but I do not think, personally, that those classes ought to be selected with strict reference to the question of their being hazardous. For instance, if it should transpire that the employers of domestic servants and the farmers are bitterly opposed to any system which will apply to them, it may be necessary to leave them out, but we ought, if possible, to cover all manufacturing establishments, all mercantile establishments and all transportation industries, and generally to proceed on broad lines. There is a practical objection to confining this sort of thing to the really more hazardous employments. It is this: The rates for employers' liability insurance are already very high in those industries, and they will probably be doubled or possibly tripled or even quadrupled. It would be difficult to imagine anything which would render workmen's compensation more densely unpopular than to apply the principle exclusively to the more dangerous manufacturing industries of a particular State. On the other hand, an increase in the rate payable by a dry goods merchant, for instance, might not amount to an advance on the payroll of more than one-half of 1 per cent. or 1 per cent., and, therefore, might not seriously place the employer at a disadvantage in competition with employers of other States. That is not true where the hazards of the occupation are very serious. You then have the situation that every manufacturer affected may be able to establish that he cannot carry on his business at all in competition with these other manufacturers if he is thus burdened. JAMES A. LOWELL (Massachusetts): This matter of how many trades shall be covered is a pretty serious one for Massachusetts, because I do not think a scheme in Massachusetts would work unless we covered practically all the trades. We have an employers' liability law in Massachusetts now which excepts agricultural employment, which is a small matter in Massachusetts, and domestic servants, and I should assume that those two exceptions would be made in any law which was passed, and incidentally that has been held to be a proper law. So I do not apprehend any difficulty on the constitutional part of it through leaving out those two classes of workers. But in Massachusetts by far the greater part of the industry there is in manufacturing, the lighter trades, and, I think, in order to get a law which would be of much service in Massachusetts, we would have to cover practically all industries, so we are up against the proposition there that we cannot do much along the line that has been followed in New York. The experience in England under the employers' liability law has been that the premium on insurance in mines is twice what it cost under their former laws. In hazardous risks, as Mr. Dawson has said, the rates are from three to four times higher, and in those lighter trades it is very much greater than that; it is six or eight times more than it was under the old laws, and the chances are that if we adopted a law in Massachusetts with anything like the scale there is in England, it would be six or seven or eight times as much for insurance as it is at the present time. So that is a very practical difficulty which we have to face in Massachusetts. As I said before, in order to have a law there that is to be of any value, you must practically cover all of the trades, and the only way you can do that, as far as I can see, is that you would have to have your scale of compensation under the law very low. I do not think that that would work out badly in Massachusetts, because most of the injuries which will be found in the factories will be minor injuries. There are not a great many very serious injuries in the cotton factories as compared with the mining and bridge-building industries, but there are a great many small injuries. If you put on some kind of a scale which would be relatively quite small, the result, it seems to me, would be that the workmen, as a whole, would be very much better off than they are now. As it is now, one man out of every twenty, we will say, or possibly one out of fifteen, will get a fairly good-sized amount, and all the other fourteen will not get anything. Putting it on a moderate scale in the cotton factories would give everybody something; probably not as much as we would like to give them, or as we perhaps should give them, but, I believe, the result would be much better than the present situation. For that reason on the point we are now discussing, I believe the thing for Massachusetts to do is to try and get some kind of a law which will cover practically all industries. CHARLES A. SUMNER (Missouri): I naturally would like to see the bill cover all industries, but the legal question arises, and unless we can get around it, as this tentative bill seems to succeed in doing, I do not know what we would do down in Missouri. Missouri is largely an agricultural State, and the Legislature is in the control very largely of the farmers and the representatives of the smaller cities in the agricultural districts. We have the initiative and referendum, however, and it occurred to me, in listening to the discussion here, that if it were the opinion of this Conference that it would be better to attempt to get a bill adopted which would include all trades, that it would be worth trying in Missouri, where the initiative and referendum are in existence. I believe that if a proper bill were put to the people direct, it would very likely get the support of the people in Missouri, particularly if it was a bill that the best judgment of this Conference had evolved. I believe, however, that we would prefer to have the bill include all trades. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Mr. Sumner, the farmers may have a considerable influence in the Legislature, but so have the other interests, and legislation is very largely a matter of trade anyway, when you get into the majorities. Don't you think that would work itself out all right and take care of the farmers? MR. SUMNER: As I understand politics in Missouri, the farmers there are strong partisans, and unless you can get your bill adopted by one party or the other, as a party measure, which I think would be very improbable down there, because our parties are very largely in the control of the corporate interests of the large cities, they would have something to say about the bills and the farmers' representatives would simply go with the party. Still, with the initiative and referendum the people and the labor unions down there are not relying very much on the Legislature any more. CHAIRMAN MERCER: If either party, or if both labor and capital wanted this proposition, then they would vote for it? MR. SUMNER: Yes. CHAIRMAN MERCER: So if the employers and employes should agree on what was a proper bill in your State, you would not have any special difficulty, after all, would you? MR. SUMNER: No, probably not. I should add that we have discussed this matter at the City Club in Kansas City, and the employers are just as much opposed to the present system as the employes. I was told by a State Senator last week that he has a bill now drawn up to be introduced at the next session of the Legislature, but I apprehend that the bill will not be acceptable to us. PROF. SEAGER (New York): It seems to me in this matter that we are between the devil and the deep sea. If we begin this legislation by taking in all trades, we have got to scale down our schedule of compensation. We have got to recognize the validity of the argument, that you cannot put too heavy a burden upon competitive industries in one State when they have not the same burden in other States. That means a low scale of compensation. That means it would be very hard to get wage-earners behind our proposal, and for those reasons I anticipate that the political obstacle to getting a bill passed that contains an adequate scale of compensation and applies to all industries is going to be serious in most of the States. I know it was our opinion in New York that such a bill could not be passed through the Legislature. The only certainty of getting a bill through the Legislature was limiting it to extra-hazardous trades and to trades that were non-competitive. That policy of course has this disadvantage: There is some doubt as to whether a classification along those lines will be upheld as reasonable by the courts, and I confess that we have some anxiety as to whether the bill we have induced the Legislature to pass will be held to be constitutional on that account. On the other hand, along that line it is possible politically to make a beginning, and I am inclined to think that it would be easier, if we can, to get the thing started for extra-hazardous industries and then to extend our definition of hazardous industries and gradually take them all in as the public is convinced that it is a good policy and a great improvement over the Employers' Liability Law. That would be easier, I believe, than to work along the other line of trying to take in all the trades at the outset. Starting on that line would involve a very low schedule of compensation and then trying to advance our schedule of compensation to what we would feel was adequate. CHAIRMAN MERCER: But how about the desirability of it in case you feel it could be done? PROF. SEAGER: Oh, I assume that we all agree that that is what we want if we can get it. CHARLES MCCARTHY (Wisconsin): In looking over the New York Bill, and after hearing the argument of Professor Seager, I cannot help saying something about this bugaboo of interstate competition. I have just returned from Germany and England, where I have been some months examining the workmen's compensation insurance scheme. You are now discussing the scope of the bill and I want to tell the delegates here that the idea here in America that we in Wisconsin cannot start this scheme because of competition from other States, has a parallel in the commissions in Europe. Europe is about as big as the United States and you have all these countries competing, one with another. You have severe competition between Germany and England, and you find Germany not only bearing the burden of accident insurance, of sickness insurance and invalidity insurance, but the German manufacturer actually adds out of his own pocket to what he has been required by law to pay, sometimes to the extent of fifty or sixty per cent. more, in bringing about many improvements in the conditions of the workingmen, and I state here that that is one of the basic conditions of German prosperity. I want to put that on the record here because I want the manufacturers of America to send representatives to Europe, and they will find that what I am saying is true; that the reason why Germany is driving English-made goods out of the market is because this very burden that they talk about is an asset and not a liability. Books have been written about this subject and I have had the honor of reading the advance sheets of the book by Dr. Frankel and Mr. Dawson, which has not yet been printed, but these books do not really show why Germany is beating England, notwithstanding this so-called "burden" upon the shoulders of the German manufacturer. Germany is passing from an agricultural country into a great manufacturing country. In doing so it is necessary for Germany to extend her manufactories out into the small towns. You all know what that means. Some of you from Massachusetts have seen the shoe factory leave Brockton to go out and get some cheaper help somewhere, and then it comes back to Boston, because in Boston they can get the skilled and intelligent help which must go into the product in order to make the community prosperous and to make the goods of that community sell. When a German manufacturer goes to a small town he says to the workman: "You come out to my town and live there. You will have your accident insurance, your old age pension and your sickness insurance, and besides that I am going to get a house for you out there, and a little plot of land, and I am going down in my pocket and add something to that invalidity insurance, and I am going to do something for tuberculosis prevention, and I am going to have a sanitary factory, and when you come out there you can settle down and marry and raise your children, and when they grow up I am going to put them into an industrial school after they have left the public school at the age of fourteen, and they can go to that industrial school until they are eighteen." Now all of these things go to make up an intelligent population in Germany, where the children grow up under the conditions of sanitation and education, and with the contentment that comes from the fact that a man knows he can settle down and marry and have children. The manufacturers in Germany realize that this is not a burden, but that it is the biggest asset they have in Germany. I wanted to point that out to you and have the delegates go back from here with the idea in their minds that there is more to be said upon this question of interstate competition than has been brought out as yet. England is in a desperate condition because Germany is cutting into the markets of England throughout the world. England had to adopt her Workmen's Compensation Act, and she adopted a compensation plan that Mr. Dawson knows is excellent, and it costs about four times what it does in Germany. I want to get it on the record that there are no adequate figures or facts presented as yet as to the difference between the mutual organizations of Germany and the private insurance organizations of England. I do not know why that is, but Mr. Mitchell said yesterday that the private insurance companies similar to those of England might prevent accidents. I want to warn you before you go back, that there is the greatest difference in the world between the mutual organizations in Germany in the safety and conditions of the workingman's life, as compared with the third party insurance in England. I have never found in England a private company having any inspection whatsoever of dangerous industries. I visited many factories and went into every insurance company in London and asked them what they did to prevent accidents, and they were doing practically nothing. I went into the sawmills in Germany and in England and compared the safety devices side by side, and I want to tell you that where the manufacturers in Germany combine under the law as they are compelled to do, they deal with their men with a hundred times greater humanity than under the conditions in England. I am sure of what I am saying and I am going on record. I want every manufacturer and employer to investigate what I am saying here. I say that you can get insurance by mutually organizing and having some provision in your bills for mutual organization of employers a great deal cheaper and with a great deal more regard for humane conditions than you can by the private proposition, unless you compel all insurance companies by some other statute to make inspections before they place their risk. I also want this suggestion to appear on the record. Some sort of provision should be made so that the private insurance companies will not knock out the old men on poorer risks. When they started in England they did knock out some of the old men in the employments, but now that thing has been settled. It ought to be put here in statutory form, because when you get the third party in here between the manufacturers and the employes, you are getting people who do not put their hearts into the thing. I know this will be a matter of controversy, but I want to offer it here. I want to tell you not to fear this bugaboo of interstate competition. Nobody wants to see the State of Wisconsin more prosperous than I do, and I am sure that if our Wisconsin manufacturers go forward and make that investment, they will put intelligence into the product and add a happiness to the people that will build up the State. If it were not so then the principle of tariff would be no good; if it were not so then China and Japan with cheap labor would have been beating us to-day; if it were not so slavery would have been the best thing for this country instead of the worst. MR. DAWSON: An investigation as to the cost of insurance in the various countries of Europe will be undertaken by the United States Bureau of Labor, as requested by this Conference at its session at Washington. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Gentlemen, is it not true that we have the best judgment of the great financial interests in this country to the effect that this interstate competition amounts to very little, and that that judgment is best evidenced by reason of the fact that nearly all of the big industries that are doing business both locally and throughout the United States are adopting a scheme that voluntarily places a greater burden upon their shoulders than the law has been providing? MR. INGALLS (Wisconsin): We have in Racine a perfect illustration of that. A very large concern there not only adopted the accident but the pension system as well, so that we do not fear anything of that kind. DOCTOR ALLPORT: It would seem to me that the question of whether we should attempt to adopt or recommend a tentative form of law or code of law in this matter is really a question of whether we have profited by the historical aspects of this subject. I think in a measure we are a little too much wedded to what people are wont to call the philosophy of individualism. Every State is passing laws of all kinds, and no State has any particular intention of following another State. The historical aspect of this matter with reference to interstate competition and with reference to the selection of certain trades has already been threshed out abroad, to the satisfaction of the European governments, trades people and manufacturers, and it would not be a bad idea perhaps if for two or three minutes we consider the historical aspects of this subject, as applied to England and to Germany. We all know the inception of this thing began in Germany, but they never formulated it until about 1883. Before that time, however, Gladstone in 1880 had been forced to make up some kind of a law for England which was passed in 1880 as the Employers' Liability Act. That was based on what is now known to be the crudest and most unsatisfactory of all principles--principles which are bound to be local and unsatisfactory and which do not cover the situation, and which give the workmen practically no remedy except before the court. That is the stage which this country has reached if it has reached any stage at all. Few of our States have reached a point where they have anything like a satisfactory Employers' Liability Act. That is the initial stage when the child first commences to walk. Germany went far beyond that. She saw the failure of the Gladstone Act, and went to the bottom of the matter by deciding to abolish entirely all matters of liability and put it altogether on another basis. Upon that basis European-Continental law has been modeled from that time to this; Germany always in advance but the other countries following as close as existing laws will permit. In 1890 Germany adopted practically an absolute act, and every State on the European continent has now followed the lead of Germany. The question that has come to us historically and in an evolutionary manner, is whether we should follow the lead of European governments in this matter and do as they have done, adopt the lead of Germany, who ignored entirely the matter of interstate competition and passed a law placing every trade under the Workmen's Compensation Act, or whether we should undertake to work out this matter for ourselves in the crude indefinite way in which England has worked it out. In England this matter of interstate competition came up. England worked for seventeen years under the Gladstone Employers' Liability Act, but finally Asquith and Chamberlain and a combination of the Liberal and Conservative parties, got together and formulated another act in 1897 which they called the first Workmen's Compensations. That act applied, as we attempt now to apply it in certain of our States, to certain limited trades and occupations. Prior to that time the various counties and organizations of Great Britain appointed committees which investigated these matters to decide whether they should pass a law to collect statistics and decide whether they should adopt a law including all of these trades or only a portion of them. They decided, in view of the uncertain character of the legislative elements in England, that they would apply it to a limited portion only of the trades, and so they passed the Chamberlain Act of 1896. But they soon saw not only the benefits that came to all of England from the application of the principle, but they saw that in order to satisfy the other workmen who demanded the same thing, that they must apply it to all of the trades, and so finally they passed the Asquith Act of 1906, which is now in operation, and applies practically to all of the trades in Great Britain. They were not so wedded to this unfortunate philosophy of ours which was the cause of our constitution, and I suppose which led America first to separate itself from England and which has dominated American life ever since--this philosophy of independence, this philosophy of individualism. If we cannot see the benefits that come to us from following the European systems, we will have to work one out ourselves. But in my judgment and in the judgment of a great many others more competent to speak authoritatively upon the subject than I am, it would seem as though it was the height of folly for us to ignore the example of Germany and twenty-two Continental Governments which have followed the lead of Germany. CHAIRMAN MERCER: I would like to hear some of the employers discuss this question. Would the employers feel that they were treated fairly if we singled out a few of the more hazardous industries and did not cover all industries in the same way, in proportion to the number of accidents? JOHN MITCHELL (New York): I think we must approach this subject as a practical proposition. I want to make this observation: If these bills include domestic and agricultural labor, we are not going to pass the bill. If we are going to work out a practical proposition with the hope of passing our bills, it seems to me we must exclude agricultural laborers and those employed in domestic service. I do not believe the farmers will favor this legislation if it affects them, and I think that the number of accidents occurring on farms is not sufficient to make their inclusion necessary for the success of the bill. My judgment is that we should start with men working in dangerous employments, and then perhaps with a few years' experience under a bill of that kind, we may decide to include the agricultural industry. The industries which need it most are the ones in which there are the greatest number of accidents. CHAIRMAN MERCER: What is the harm of reporting the bill complete to the Legislature, and then when it gets in there as a practical proposition, let them pass it, and if they can not, let them cut out such industries as they have to? MR. MITCHELL: The difficulty is, if the farmers are apparently justified, the men who represent the agricultural districts will vote against it, and the legislator who represents a manufacturing district and who personally might not feel hostile to the legislation, will vote against it, because he does not want to put the burden on the farmers. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Supposing some fellow offers an amendment striking out these industries which you would leave out in the first place, can they not pass the bill just the same? MR. MITCHELL: Yes, but I am getting at the best way to approach it. MR. HARPER (Illinois): The experience in Illinois on Commission bills has been that it is vastly better to have no opposition at all, and to eliminate all possibility of amendment if it is possible. In other words, if the Commission submits a bill to the Illinois Legislature, they are inclined to take it as it stands, especially if both sides interested in the matter are on the Commission, because they say, "Well, this matter has been agreed to and we have no special interest in it. If it is all right we will pass it." Hence, if we put something in that requires amendment, it is liable to stir up discord and dissension; and my personal opinion would be that it would be wise to avoid that if possible. On the subject of classification I think it would be wise to make a classification based upon the hazardous trades; not the non-competitive trades, but the hazardous trades, and make it inclusive and as broad as possible. Include in the hazardous trades the non-competitive trades, as they have done in New York, but do not start with any one especially, because our courts here have gone further on class legislation than anything else, and I think it would be dangerous for us here to include merely non-competitive trades and call them hazardous or extra-hazardous. In my judgment it would be much better to call them extra-hazardous and include in that list the non-competitive industries. EDWIN R. WRIGHT (Illinois): I wanted to suggest that it would of course be desirable to take in every occupation, but if we take in the farm labor and servants of Illinois, we cannot possibly secure the passage of this bill. If we burden our bill with too many classifications and too many occupations, the moment we get to Springfield, interested parties, the farmers to start with, would ask to have the farm labor stricken out, and when you once start the snowball rolling down the hill, you would strike the meat out of the bill and lose the confidence of the Legislature, and the moment you do that you lose the bill as a whole. It would not make any difference if nine-tenths of the bill were correct, you would have overshot the mark one-tenth and you would lose the entire bill because they would cut it all to pieces. We have a great many dangerous occupations in this State. A great many men are killed or seriously injured on railroads every day. Five men are either killed or injured in mines of Illinois every day, and the proportion keeps right up through the trades, so that it is pretty hard to say where the danger starts or stops, but must classify the different trades in this State if we hope to get anything at all. In comparing conditions here with conditions in foreign countries, you will have to take this question into consideration: In foreign countries, as I understand the situation, they raise the workers there, and if we raised the workers in this State we would soon arrive at the conclusion they have arrived at in England and Germany. Here we import the workmen ready-made and grown-up. We do not grow them in this country, and most of the men who are killed are foreign born, or a large percentage of them. If we fail in securing the compensation law, and it has got to take its regular course, we can get the same results through a different channel. Stop bringing in the men who are grown up, and raise them here, and you won't have the workers to kill, but you will have to conserve the workers in this State and in this nation. Out of 220 firms reporting in Illinois, there are over 200 accidents a month. MR. INGALLS (Wisconsin): The idea in this plan is to include the railroads and public service transportation company employes as a whole. Now, is it not wise to consider for a moment the distinction between those two classes of occupation? All the gentlemen here will agree perhaps that so far as railways are concerned, and public service corporations of that character, there isn't any question but what the Legislature or Congress can pass a compulsory compensation law. You do not have to classify either at all; any transportation company which gets its right to exist and to operate from the Legislature or Congress can be controlled by the Legislature or Congress with reference to compensation for its injured employes. That industry can positively be handled in that way. Congress has introduced and passed a resolution for the appointment of a Commission, which will consider that very subject. Those measures are to be made uniform; the State could readily agree upon a plan along that line, and it seems to me that with the subject handled with that idea in view you can pass, under our constitution, a compulsory compensation law for all railway employes. And those engaged in interstate commerce could be handled by Congress and thus make a uniform system. As to what occupations should be considered, none of us has considered in Wisconsin, so far as our committee is concerned, that we necessarily ought to include farm laborers or domestic servants. Of course our plan here is different and the discussion seems to relate to what classification we shall have under an absolute system, which is quite a different question from that in Wisconsin. I can readily see how the farmers and employers of domestic servants would be inclined to oppose a measure as strong and radical as to include all such employes. I agree with the other speakers that in presenting that matter to the Legislature you ought to present it as you think it will be sustained by the Legislature rather than to ask for things that you know yourselves you probably would not be able to get. In fact, I think it might be well to keep in mind, in discussing the occupations, what you can do positively and what there is a great deal of doubt about being able to do, on the theory of an absolute compulsory system. MR. RANNEY: When the International Harvester Company organized their industrial insurance plan they omitted all employes except those working in their mines, in their plant, and on their railroads. We have some 2500 men in our sales department and experts working out on farms who are not included in that plan, because we felt that going beyond the industries was rather a dangerous proposition. Hence, we included about 35,000 employes and excluded about 2500. MR. BLAINE (Wisconsin): I think that if there is any justification for this sort of legislation it is found in the fact that the industry or trade should bear the burden and not the workmen. I have contended also from the beginning that farm laborers and domestic servants should not be included. Farmers as they conduct their occupation in this country to-day do not have any control whatever over the price or distribution of their products, and hence they have no opportunity whatever to transfer the cost of industrial accidents to the consumer. They are not organized. If they were organized into a vast Society of Equity in every State of the Union I doubt not but what they could control and dictate who should pay the cost of this new burden, if it is going to be an additional burden. The other industries are organized. They cover vast areas of territory, and they know how to transfer the cost of production. The hazard, too, is greater in our industries than in our farming communities. I think, however, that under the Wisconsin plan we have taken care of the farmer, and I apprehend no danger whatever from that source, because he need not come under the plan unless he wants to. He will be independent of it. REUBEN MCKITRICK (Wisconsin): In an article written by Professor Farnam, statistics are given as to the comparative number of accidents in farming and agricultural pursuits and in the industries, and while I cannot state the figures in absolute terms at this moment, the percentage given is higher for laborers upon the farms than upon the railroads, for instance. That statement is borne out also in the accident rates for farm laborers as compared with the rates for men in general manufacturing industries throughout the State. The accident rates are higher for the farm laborers, and so if you are going to work on a basis of establishing a classification on account of the hazardous employment, it seems to me the farmer would have to be included. (In closing the discussion on Question 1, the following resolution was offered by Doctor Allport, but not voted upon, the unanimous consent to its adoption, required under the By-Laws, not being granted: "_Resolved_, That it is the sense of this Conference, that State Compensation Laws should be framed to cover all hazardous manufacturing industries, and that any manufacturing industry in which accidents occur shall be declared classified as hazardous. That this classification shall not include farm or domestic labor." Upon John Mitchell's motion, Commissioner Charles P. Neill, Mr. H. V. Mercer, Dr. John B. Andrews, Mr. M. M. Dawson, Dr. Lee K. Frankel and Dr. William H. Tolman were authorized to represent the Conference at the International Congress of Social Insurance to be held in September, at The Hague, and to extend on behalf of the association an invitation to the International Congress to meet in the United States in 1912.) CHAIRMAN MERCER: The second question is: Do you want the liability in whatever industries you cover to be an absolute liability; or do you want to make a law that will permit a contract to be made by the employer and employe? If nobody wants to be heard on that we will pass to the next question, because that is largely a constitutional question of what you _can_ do, and you all want to accomplish the same results, as far as you can. The third question is: Whether, in your judgment, we should have a double or a single liability, if we could get what we want. Do you want to repeal the common law and statutory remedies or do you want to add the compensation act and leave the others as they stand? JOHN FLORA (Illinois): As a member of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and knowing the views of that organization, I want to say that it is the unanimous desire of that portion of the workmen of the State of Illinois that we first have in the State of Illinois a law repealing the common law defenses of the assumption of risks, contributory negligence and the fellow-servant act. We hold, as a body of workmen, that no compensation law, I do not care how good you make it, will be worth the paper it is written on unless those defenses of the employer are taken away from him. Then we do not care whether it is elective or compulsory. If you take away the defenses of the employer along those lines, you can make an elective law, and he is compelled to accept it in order to escape the results of the statutory law. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Are you willing to repeal all the common law, not only the defenses, but the right to recover if the compensation plan covers the whole field? MR. FLORA: I am not at liberty to state that at the present time. I am careful in making my remarks, because I would first want to consult my constituents on any questions of that kind. I do know this, however, that the working people of Chicago do not want to give up the right of going under the law as it stands to-day and as they have it in England. We want the right, if we do not like the compensation, to go to court. As a matter of fact, I think it is rather a foolish idea that is entertained. If we can get a compensation law in this State as good, for instance, as the one that Wisconsin recommends, personally, I am going to write in my dying request that my wife shall not be fool enough to go to common law, but to take the compensation, because, I think, she will come out better in the end. I am gathering statistics in Cook County as to the accidents that have resulted in death, and I find in every case where they have gone to court they have received a great deal less than if they had settled with their employers. The largest amounts that have been recovered, after taking out the costs of a court procedure, have been less than what they would have received if they had settled with their employers in 150 cases that I have so far investigated. Therefore, I think, the idea that the working people have--that they want access to the courts under the law--is more of a bugaboo than anything else, and that after a good compensation law is passed we will have a great deal of trouble in our organization in trying to teach the people to take the compensation and stay out of the courts. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Is it not true that the laboring men think now that they ought to have both systems left open to them, because they are afraid they are being handed a "gold brick" by the compensation plan, if their right to recovery under the common law is taken away from them? MR. FLORA: Yes; if you have had many dealings with working people you will know that they are always afraid of a "gold brick." DR. MCCARTHY (Wisconsin): Do you not believe that after a discussion with the working people they will realize the situation and understand it better? I know in talking with the labor representatives up in Wisconsin for the last two or three years before the Legislature, that they are gradually beginning to understand what a compensation act is. I think the sentiment is changing among our labor people in Wisconsin, and I believe this winter they are going to accept the compensation act without asking for their common law rights. JOHN MITCHELL: I do not believe there should be any hesitancy in answering that question. The fact of the matter is that the working people want the right to sue in order to make the employers careful. We all know, of course, that under any compensation that is proposed here they are simply averaging up the compensation. That is to say, a man who is probably entitled to anything at all under any law we now have, gets something; and the man who is entitled to a great deal does not get so much. DR. MCCARTHY: Do you think it will make the employer more careful? MR. MITCHELL: Of course I do. I believe that if it cost an employer $20,000 to kill a man he would be careful. If it is expensive for an employer to kill men, he will protect them, but the great difficulty in this country is that it is not expensive to kill men. It is the judgment, I think, of nearly every one who has investigated this matter, that human life is entirely too cheap; it is not expensive enough for the employers who injure their workmen. DR. MCCARTHY: The employers only pay one rate, any way. It falls on the insurance companies. Why should the employers be more careful? MR. MITCHELL: Because their insurance rates are fixed by the number of accidents or the number of recoveries. I dare say in England the number of accidents is not as high as it is here. In fact, a representative of an English insurance company told me the other day that the British Government pays 30 cents per capita for mine inspection, and their total expenditure amounts to $6,000,000 annually. I dare say that while our population is double the population of Great Britain, that we do not pay in the whole United States $2,000,000 dollars a year in either factory or mining inspection, where as a little nation of 40,000,000 people is spending $6,000,000 annually. That is one reason, I think, why the accident rate is so much lower in England than it is in the United States. MR. PARKS (Massachusetts): I have heard a great deal about this double liability plan where the workman, failing to win his suit at common law, would be entitled to compensation under the compensation act. I believe in Mr. Mitchell's idea in regard to that, and I believe that is the idea of the majority of the workmen. The cry in Massachusetts is that they want something different from the present employers' liability act. I am not so enthusiastic a laboring man as to think that we are going to get the employers' liability act so amended that we will take all of that grievance away from the act. In fact, if we got all of the defenses taken away from the employer there would be no need of a compensation act. We have had that bill before the Massachusetts Legislature for a number of years, and we have not heard any great talk about workmen demanding this or that right under the employers' liability act. They have been asking for something to take the place of the employers' liability act. They want a workman's compensation act. I do not want to see this thing come up from the workmen themselves, because I think it is going to stop this workmen's compensation movement. If they continually rise and say that the workmen demand this and demand that it will mean that the workmen will get nothing. I have had considerable experience in the Massachusetts Legislature in agitating labor legislation, and, if I do say it, I think Massachusetts in recent years has put more remedial labor legislation on the statute books than probably any other State in the Union, with the possible exception of New York. I give way to New York, because we like to follow New York, but I cannot say that of the other States of the nation. Personally, I would like to see the workmen get all they possibly can get, but we cannot impose too many restrictions on the employers, and if we recommend in the different States the taking away of practically all the defenses of the employer under the employers' liability act, and at the same time recommend the workmen's compensation act, the whole thing will fall through and we will get nothing. I believe we ought to go easy and get something that we can put through. I am a believer in fixing up everything before you put the bill into the Legislature, and have some kind of an understanding between the contending parties, so that when your hearing comes up both sides are pretty nearly agreed on the same plan. Take away all opposition before you have your hearing, because the minute you start opposition you begin the death of the bill. It is a slow illness, but it means death. If we can bring about something that will not be too radical, that will not be too harsh on the employers, we will get something for the workmen. I believe, as Mr. Mitchell said, that the workman ought to have his right under the common law, but failing in that he should not be allowed to go to the compensation act. I do not believe in that; it is a nice thing, and I would like to see the workmen have it, but it is not fair to the other side. MR. BLAINE (Wisconsin): On this question of double liability I would suggest that the farmer under the Wisconsin plan will study this law and will learn the benefits of it, and either through mutual insurance companies, as they have mutual fire insurance companies to-day, or something of that sort, he will, no doubt, come under the law and be glad to do so, because it will be a positive benefit to him. The double liability is somewhat debatable. Under our plan we take away certain defenses. If we take away those defenses from the employer, and leave the employe the right to sue at common law, and also the right to compensation under the act in the event of failure to win his suit, I think we are doing something unfair toward the employer and something that the employe does not want. I do not believe that in Wisconsin the Federation of Labor would demand that sort of a measure. In fact, I am led to believe that they are now prepared to meet the committee upon a very reasonable ground as to the double compensation, and I do believe that while our bill provides that the right of election shall take place at the time of employment, that we will be able to meet the committee on the fair proposition that the right of election shall take place at the time of the accident, but that that right shall apply to accidents happening by reason of the negligence of the employer or through his failure to supply the proper safety appliances for his machines. MR. FLORA (Illinois): Of what value would a compensation law be to the workman in the State of Illinois particularly, where we have no employers' liability law, if the gate were left open for the insurance company or the mutual benefit company, or if the employer could bring in the old common law doctrine of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and so forth? What would prevent the employer or the insurance company, if we did not repeal those laws, from bringing those in and keeping the workingman out of his compensation under a compensation law? I would like to know what protection the working people would have in that case. I find also that too many labor representatives are too much imbued with the idea of protecting the other side. I believe in letting the other fellow take care of his own side. He is big enough to do it. MR. PARKS (Massachusetts): If they had a workman's compensation act in Illinois the workmen would draw whatever the compensation act said they should draw. MR. FLORA: Cannot they bring in the law of contributory negligence? MR. PARKS: No; not under the workmen's compensation act; you are entitled to so much, if an injury occurs, without regard to the liability. As to Mr. Flora's statement that there are too many labor representatives who want to look out for the other side, I find that you get more for the workmen by showing a little consideration for the other side than by being radical. MR. RANNEY (Illinois): In answer to Mr. Flora's question, I attended the National Manufacturers' Association meeting in New York and talked with about fifty or seventy-five large employers of labor, and there was not one of them that was in favor of a fair employers' liability law. But what they want to know is definitely what this is going to cost them. If they have got to be liable for every accident, they have got to know not only the expense under the compensation act, but the additional expense under an action at common law, which is an unknown quantity. I know that large employers in general are in favor of a fair compensation act, but I do not think they are in favor of double liability, because they will never know where they are. The laboring man quite properly wants to have a fair compensation act and wants a fair amount, but if he elects to go to common law, he should take that chance. Otherwise he will get a fair compensation without any legal action whatever. MR. INGALLS: Would a liberal rate be more preferable to the employers than a double liability? MR. RANNEY: I think it would. MR. INGALLS: Of course, if you can fix the rates all right it might go a long way toward covering the proposition. MR. RANNEY: I am not speaking for any employer, but I think that if a bill is adopted that is fair to both parties, that the employer should have some protection on that side. I am simply voicing what Mr. Mitchell said yesterday, that he was not in favor of the English act, which gives double liability. MR. MITCHELL: I am not in favor of double liability, but I am in favor of the alternative. MR. RANNEY: I do not think the employers would have any objection to an alternative, but they would not be in favor of a double liability where they might have to fight the case in court and then in the event of their winning the suit the workman could come in under the compensation act and get compensation. That does not seem to me to be fair. DR. MCCARTHY: Do you want the election before or after the accident? MR. MITCHELL: After. DR. MCCARTHY: If the employers' liability acts that have been passed were any good, or could be amended in any way to stop litigation, we would not be here. England tried for nearly a hundred years to modify the employers' liability act. The only thing we are here for is to knock out the everlasting cost of litigation, and the most perfect act that we can get will be the one that will knock out this expensive litigation. If a man is entitled to elect after he gets hurt there is going to be an awful confused state of affairs and the tendency, I believe, will be to increase litigation, because the temptation will be constantly before that man through the attorneys coming to him to go into litigation. MR. MITCHELL: In England there are less suits under the English employers' liability law than there were three or four years ago, and every year shows a less number. On the other hand, there are a great number under the compensation act. That demonstrates that in England, even with the double liability, the men are not suing under the employers' liability law. DR. ALLPORT (Illinois): I can give you the figures on the employers' liability law and workmen's compensation act for 1908, and that may perhaps enlighten the Conference in regard to the exact status of the act at this time. Out of 2065 deaths in trade accidents in 1908, only 524 out of those cases were made the basis of proceedings, or not much more than one-fourth of them, in the county courts, and only 12 suits were brought for damages under the employers' liability law. In other words, only 12 of those 524 suits took advantage of the old Gladstone act to bring a suit for damages under the double liability. PROF. F. S. DEIBLER: I think a great many of the suits that come up in England are suits to determine whether the accidents occurred in due course of employment. CHAIRMAN MERCER: I have a letter from Mr. Gillette that does not exactly come under this heading, but I think you may be glad to hear it at this time. It reads as follows: MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., June 9, 1910. _Mr. H. V. Mercer, City._ DEAR SIR: Our study abroad developed a few things that stand out so clearly that I should like to have you know them before you go to Chicago. They are matters that ought to be carefully safeguarded in legislation of this kind. First, the cost. Even after the act is most carefully drawn and the compensations are restricted to the utmost, the cost is bound, in my opinion, to be two or three times as great as under the present system. This means, of course, that the compensations must not exceed one-half wages in any event, and the death benefits must be limited as well as compensations for total disability. The payments to children must be graded according to the number, with an outside limit and there must be a waiting period without compensation at any rate not less than two weeks, and I think thirty days before benefits begin, and these benefits must not be retroactive in case the disability extends beyond the two weeks or the thirty days. In other words, every economy must be inserted and even then I believe the cost will be increased from two to two and one-half times. Then the doctor question wants to be carefully considered. France is having a serious time over the doctor question. It is the curse of their system, and they are also experiencing great difficulty with the matter in Germany and England. If the English law had been left the way Mr. Chamberlain intended it, so that an independent doctor could have been called in at the request of _either_ instead of both parties, it would have saved them all kinds of trouble. Then there is another matter that ought to be carefully considered, and that is the matter of discrimination against agent or employe physically imperfect. The situation in England to-day is beginning to force a physical examination of employes. Mr. Holmes of the Hosiery Workers' Federation stated to me that in his opinion there were 150,000 English workmen who could not obtain employment by reason of excessive age or physical imperfections. They are having a lot of difficulty in Germany over various questions arising out of their law. Over 17 per cent. of the claims get into litigation. This looks rather discouraging to us. Of course this arises largely from the fact that this litigation costs the workmen nothing. I should like to write a few hundred pages on this subject, but I haven't time. You might be interested to know that while in England the risks are practically all insured in private companies, the cost to the employer is less in England than it is in Germany, France or Austria. In France about 25 per cent. of the risks are not insured, and of the remainder about 60 per cent. are carried in private insurance, and 40 per cent. in mutual companies. The conditions and character of the workmen are so different over there from those existing in America that it is pretty hard to estimate the comparative costs if one of the foreign acts was transmitted to this country. Beside that the rates of wages are very much lower, although of course the benefits, being based on the wage rate, are nearly in proportion. The above estimate of cost of two and one-half times our existing cost is based on a contribution of 20 per cent. by the workmen. It looks as if the thing would have to resolve itself into a matter of some form of mutual insurance, both employer and employe contributing to the cost, or with a waiting period or else a longer waiting period, and a fund provided by the employers to take care of the accidents, the employes providing a fund to take care of sickness and temporary disabilities during the waiting period. I am now having my notes written up, and will soon have a table of the comparative costs in England, Germany, Belgium, Austria and France, and possibly Denmark and Sweden. Yours very truly, GEORGE M. GILLETTE. CHAIRMAN MERCER: I have not heard yet from Mr. McEwen. He is the labor commissioner, and I was in hopes that we would have a letter from him as well as this letter from Mr. Gillette. The next question is the proposition of compensation; that is, whether you will have a limited sum or a pension plan, or what you will have. WILLIAM H. MOULTON (Michigan): In the iron and copper mining region of Michigan for a great many years we have had a plan of payments to which the men and the employers have contributed equally. These payments have been made monthly to the men during disability, and in any event they should not be made at any longer intervals than once a month. These sums have continued for a year, and in case of death, a death benefit has been paid from this fund. The mining companies are very much interested in this compensation law. This is evidenced by the voluntary action of the harvester company and the United States Steel and some of our other independent companies. The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, which I represent, have been contributing in this way for a great many years at all of our mines. We employ now perhaps 3000 or 4000 men, and another thing which is of advantage to them is this: We found it was a common custom when a man was killed in a mine for the men to stop work until the day of the funeral, no matter whether our boats were lying idle waiting for cargoes or not. I think you will all agree with me that we generally get what we pay for, and if we expect a man to do something for us we expect to pay for it. Our proposition to the men was this: They stopped work out of sympathy for this man who had been killed. We suggested to them that it would be more an act of sympathy to follow out this plan, that they should continue at work until the day of the funeral and we would pay them for all the time they worked, and then if they took a half-day off for the funeral we would pay them for that half-day just as though they worked, but that this amount of money should be a contribution from them to the family of the man who had been killed. The last amount that I remember that was paid in that way was $298 which that family received in addition to the benefit fund. Our company also is paying to the widow and orphans the sum of $12 a month to the widow and $1 a month for each additional child under the age of 16 years, for a period of five years or until the widow remarries. This is done with the idea that by the time the children have reached the age of 21 they can support the family. We also endeavor to reduce accidents by frequent inspections of our mines and monthly reports, and periodical inspections also, and in case of any serious accident we have a committee who visits the scene of that accident, carefully inquires into the cause of it and makes a recommendation for the benefit of that mine and of all our other mines. I am sure I am voicing the opinion of all the Lake Superior region of the iron and copper mines when I say that we are heartily in favor of some plan of compensation for the workmen of our country which shall be a liberal one. MR. DAWSON (New York): Nearly every bill which has so far been framed has proceeded on the basis that it is necessary to limit the length of time for which the benefit is to be paid. That is to say, even though a workman has become totally and permanently disabled, the benefit is to be paid for three or four years, and then is to stop. This overcaution grows out of two things; one of them is that we are almost entirely thinking of this as a compensation scheme which the individual employer is going to pay for. It may be that our laws will be passed in that form; but, even if they are passed in that form, experience in every country in the world has demonstrated that almost all employers will be insured, and the loss will be paid by companies which can just as well continue payment so long as it is necessary for it to be continued, and charge premiums and set up reserves accordingly. It is my personal opinion that we ought not to frame our laws on the basis that employers as a class are actually going to pay these compensations directly. We should frame them with a view to their being insured, and that, therefore, this will not be an intolerable burden upon any individual employer unless he makes a fool of himself by neglecting to insure. The second reason is ignorance as to the cost. The additional cost when benefits are paid to the disabled as long as disability continues is extremely small. Relatively few persons who have been totally and permanently disabled are living after five years, but the need is greater than ever for those who are. In point of fact, it will add very little to the total cost to give the benefit throughout their disability. You may argue, on the other side, that because there are a few of them, we can as well cut them off; but a scheme that starts out to cure this evil--this economic flaw in our business system, and that, notwithstanding, turns loose a permanently disabled man after five years because he happens to be so unfortunate as still to live--is fundamentally shortsighted and should not be tolerated. I, therefore, earnestly urge those Commissions which have not yet prepared their bills, to make the benefit payable during the entire period of disability. MR. MCCARTHY (Wisconsin): On certain minor injuries, would you say that was true? MR. DAWSON: Not so true. My impression about minor injuries is that a careful study of the Austrian practice will be of great value. These benefits are not paid as an annuity at all unless the person is injured at least to the extent of 20 per cent. of his earning power. Smaller impairments are compensated by lump sums. Again, in the matter of widows and orphans there is a whole lot of feeling that you must cut them off at the end of three or four or five years. There is no occasion for that, and every reason why it should not be done. The additional cost of paying during widowhood and minority is not heavy; and you should again, in my judgment, take into account that you are expecting this business to be insured and should encourage its being insured, and encourage the employer to run the risk himself. Of course, in a very large plant, it is quite possible for an employer to insure himself, because he can have an average experience to judge from, but I am not referring to the exceptional case. JAMES A. LOWELL (Massachusetts): The practical difficulty which strikes me is this: In Massachusetts, and everywhere else, for that matter, we have a financial situation to face. I would say, and every man here would say, that it would be much better to have a pension for a person who needs to be pensioned; but we are brought up at once in the very beginning, and this thing comes right up and hits us in the face: How much is it going to cost? It is very well to say, as Mr. Dawson has said, that it won't cost much. Perhaps it won't, but the question is how much. It may be just the turning point in Massachusetts as to whether we can do it as a practical financial measure--to have a lump sum or a pension. I, personally, should be very much in favor of a pension. But there must be some way of ascertaining how much this pension is going to be. It appeals to me that as a practical measure in the beginning of this thing, that although we should like to be able to say to the man who is injured for life: "We will give you so much a month for the rest of your life"; that we cannot do it right off, because we do not know whether he will live five years or whether he will live twenty-five years. The difference between the amount which you will pay if he lives twenty-five and the amount you will pay if he lives five years may be just the difference between a possible scheme and an impossible scheme. The employer's trouble about this thing is the uncertainty. The amount of it is not so great an objection. It is not that the employer would say, "Well, if I have to pay $5000 for such-and-such a case I cannot do it. I can pay $2000, but I cannot pay $5000." The trouble is he does not know whether he is to pay $2000 or $15,000. That is the difficulty. It strikes me in starting your system here you have got to find something that is certain. If there is to be a pension you have got to put a limit of time on it so that it may be definite. If we were to pass a law for Massachusetts to-morrow, and contained in that law were those various pensions, we should not know anywhere near how we were coming out; and, I understand, and I will stand corrected on this if I am wrong, that they have not figured those accurately in either Germany or Austria or in England. The amount of the pensions which had to be paid was much greater than was calculated. If they had known at the start they were to pay this greater amount it would not have made so much difference because they could have arranged it, but they did not know it and, therefore, they are getting a higher amount put upon them than they thought they would, which is very unfortunate for a great many reasons. MR. DAWSON: There are reliable tables by means of which adequate premiums and reserves for annuities to the disabled and to widows and orphans can be computed. DR. ALLPORT: I have a copy here of the workmen's compensation act of 1906, the English act, and I think it might not be a bad idea to read you the provision in the English act covering this matter. Of course, the English act started out just as our act must start out if we start out on the basis of compensation. It must be based on a certain proportion of the wage of the individual. When we come to consider the matter of disability, the point that comes up is whether we shall pay a man for a total or permanent disability in a lump sum or whether we shall limit the time in which the payments shall be made. It seems to me as though that is purely an actuarial matter, and that it is something which will adjust itself if any law goes into effect. No employer in England carries his own insurance; it is all carried by some form of insurance, and so the insurance companies will have to work this matter out for themselves, and they are going to be able to do it. The better class of insurance companies have prospered under that class of insurance. The provision in the English law is, briefly, this: It provides for the payment of compensation for disability as long as the disability lasts, and in case of death it provides for payment to the children until they reach a workable age, and for the widow until she marries again. Then there is this provision: "Where any weekly payment has been continued for not less than six months, the liability therefor may, on application by or on behalf of the employer, be redeemed by the payment of a lump sum of such an amount as, where the incapacity is permanent, would, if invested in the purchase of an immediate life annuity from the National Debt Commissioners through the post-office savings bank, purchase an annuity for the workman equal to 75 per cent. of the annual value of the weekly payment, and as in any other case may be settled by arbitration under this act, and such lump sum may be ordered by the committee or arbitrator or judge of the county court to be invested or otherwise applied for the benefit of the person entitled thereto." These cases are put into the hands of the court and paid by the court and not by the attorneys, and it is left optional as to whether he will take a lump sum or an annuity. DR. MCCARTHY: Some of the county judges over there with whom I talked told me that they were doing everything possible to keep the lump sums from being paid, because they believe that is a bad practice. There is no agitation over there that I could find in either Germany or England for limiting the time that a man should receive compensation. They understand over there that it has got to fall upon somebody in the end, and you must remember that in Germany and in England, to a large extent, this is done to keep away from the necessity of caring for the poor, and all that sort of thing. You go to any insurance company over there and say, "I have so many people working in my factory under such conditions; what are your rates?" and they will give you the rates and take care of an injured man for the rest of his life. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It has seemed to me sometimes that it might be a good plan to provide for a lump sum settlement, subject to the approval of a court, in case a firm wanted to go out of business, or something of that kind. A corporation might want to dissolve, or the time of its charter might expire, and in that case what is it going to do? MR. DAWSON: It would go to an insurance company and purchase an annuity to cover it. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Suppose it is a big company that had been carrying its own risks? DR. MCCARTHY: That is an actuarial matter. If it is a mutual company in Germany, there has to be a reserve kept by those companies to provide for the possibility of their going out of business. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It seems to me we might now go to the question of whether we will administer our compensation law through the courts or through boards of arbitration. In New York I notice that they recommend staying under the courts in their present bill. PROF. SEAGER: The characteristics of the two bills that have passed in New York were explained yesterday, and I will try to avoid repeating what was said at that time. When it comes to the details of the plan that the New York Commission recommended, and which the Legislature has adopted, the reasons why we did this rather than that are almost trivial, because they were always practical reasons of expediency. We have a Commission of fourteen members, and eight of them were members of the Legislature; one of them was a farmer; several of them were lawyers, and two of them were employers, so they represented in a very broad way the different interests of the State. It would have been quite impossible to get that Commission to agree on a plan that would include the farmers. It was difficult to get the employers to agree on our plan. Taking up the details, however, we were very much impressed by the aspect of the case that Mr. Lowell spoke of a few minutes ago; that is, the uncertainty as to what it would cost and the opposition that developed against the measure because of that uncertainty. For that reason we felt that we ought to make the probable cost as definite as we could, and that meant requiring lump sum payments rather than continuous payments, limiting the period during which the continuous payments should be made in case of disability, and in other points making the measure precise and definite, when, from the point of view of the social interests of the community, it ought to be more vague and indefinite, that it might be adapted to the requirements of each special case. It was on those grounds of expediency, remembering all the time that this was the first step, that if the Legislature of New York passed these bills it would be the first State in this country to go in for any kind of workmen's compensation, and that every country which has adopted this policy has found it necessary to amend and modify as the result of experience, that the schedule which we finally agreed upon took the form that it did; that is, limiting the compensation in case of disability to not more than $10 a week, and to continue in case of a permanent disability for not more than eight years. In death cases not more in the aggregate than four years' wages, and not to exceed in any case $3000. That schedule has the advantage of being definite and of being one which enables the insurance actuary without much difficulty to name a rate, and, needless to say, we got such rates from the insurance company's representatives before we finally decided on that schedule. As to the administrative features of our bills, our difficulty was to devise a plan which would do away with litigation and at the same time be constitutional. We all of us recognized the merits of some scheme of arbitration as preferable to court procedure, and yet the more we looked into it, and the more we studied the complexities of our system in New York, the more we were impressed with the necessity of creating an entirely new system of jurisprudence, if we were going to have in that State a scheme of arbitration comparable to the English scheme of arbitration. For that reason we left that to future amendment of the bill, and left the judicial procedure very much as it is under the employers' liability law, believing that under a law requiring definite compensation, both employer and employe, for their own interests, would keep away from litigation, and would enter into voluntary arrangements for arbitration that would not require a resort to the courts. Resort to the courts may be taken by either side under these bills as before, but it is our confident belief that it will not be taken, and that this plan will very greatly reduce the litigation, and at the same time greatly increase the number of reasons these bills took the form which they have taken. MR. HARPER (Illinois): Do you provide that in case any question arises under the compensation plan, suit may be brought and the merits tried in an action at law? PROF. SEAGER: Yes. MR. HARPER: And you also provide, I believe, that no jury trial shall be permitted? PROF. SEAGER: No; such a provision was in the original bill, but was stricken out of the act. I am sorry that I am not a lawyer, and, therefore, cannot explain the point definitely, but the other provision was simply to make it possible to bring suit and recover a lump sum in case there was any default in the periodic payments required in cases of disability. That is, in case of default in the payments under this provision the employe or the dependent entitled to payment can immediately bring suit and collect a lump sum in damages. SENATOR SANBORN (Wisconsin): We have appreciated in Wisconsin all these troubles and oppositions you have been discussing here, and have been trying to find some way that we can put a law into operation in Wisconsin so that we can have some basis for improvement hereafter, realizing at the outset we were going to meet the opposition of the manufacturers if they did not know exactly what it would cost. If we were going to get their hearty support the rates would have to be so low that they would know it was not going to cost them any more than at the present time. On the other hand, we realized that the laboring man does not want to give up anything he has got, but wants more. That he is entitled to more than he is receiving under the law everybody, I think, will concede. The question was, how were we going to accomplish that and get for the laboring man all that he would get under the law. We realized that practically 60 per cent. of every dollar that was paid out by the employers for industrial accidents under the present system was wasted and did not go to the laboring man, and if we could bring about a system which would prevent anywhere near that great amount of waste, and turn that money over to the laboring man who was injured, we felt that we would be taking one great step in advance, and we are trying now to get a system by which that can be done. In fact, we want to do away entirely with court proceedings, if possible. The first step we propose to take in this regard is to change the law generally in our State, so that the manufacturer will feel that he must have relief. In order to reach that result we are going to make them all liable for the negligence of the fellow-servants and strike out the assumption of risk. We have practically agreed on that, and that leaves the only defense remaining for the employer, that of contributory negligence. That will reach a great many cases, and leave it so that the manufacturer will feel that he must have some relief. Our whole plan is optional. No employer and no employe is obliged to come under it, but if a manufacturer or an employer of labor wants to come under it, all he has to do is to file a declaration with the commissioner of labor, and he is under it. He is not under it definitely, because he can get out at the end of any year by serving notice sixty days in advance of his desire so to do. Then, as far as the laborer is concerned, the plan is that as a part of his contract of employment he waives his right to anything else except the compensation, and this law will fix his compensation. Then we follow that up by arbitration to settle all the disputes that may arise. The only question that can arise for the court to pass on is whether the arbitrators have exceeded their jurisdiction under the law, but all questions of fact are to be settled by the Board of Arbitration. If we had some criterion to follow, something that we could point to definitely as to just what would be the result to the employer and the laboring man, we would feel differently. But we feel that we can put this system into operation, and we feel further that the manufacturers and the laboring men in their present spirit will operate under it until we can arrive at something definite. We are endeavoring to make our schedule just as large as it can be made. Our schedule is indefinite and will undoubtedly be increased over what it is in the bill. In other words, we propose to do just as the railroads have always done, to put onto the traffic for the benefit of the laboring man every dollar it will bear, and get that money to the man who is injured with as little expense as is possible. That is what we are aiming to do, and we know of no other way to do it except by putting it under a voluntary system, so as to get away from the constitutional conditions that you meet everywhere. Under a compulsory system you cannot do that, but under an elective system you can. As to the expediency, we feel that our people will try it, and if it does not work it will not take any act of the Legislature to annul it. We can accomplish some results, and the time will come when we can have some figures perhaps to give conferences like this in their effort to ascertain what is best as the policy to be followed. We started out first with an insurance scheme connected with it, but we abandoned that and made up our minds to make it just as simple as we could, and to let the employer of labor have the widest possible scope to protect himself. If he does it through mutual insurance companies, well and good; if he does it through the other insurance companies, well and good; the idea being to hamper him as little as possible in that respect. All we want is to make it absolutely sure that when a man is injured he will receive his pay. That has been one of the troublesome questions; we have tried to make a provision, which is still tentative, by which the employe's claim shall be an absolute lien upon all the property of the employer. PROF. SEAGER: We have not previously provided for the expenses of this Conference or for the expenses of the next Conference we may hold. With that thought in view, I would like to move that the members of the Commissions and committees represented at this Conference be requested to use their best efforts to secure an appropriation from the funds of such Commissions and committees of $50 from each Commission and committee toward the expenses of our Conference. CHAIRMAN MERCER: Without any formal motion that will be taken as the sense of the meeting. MR. DAWSON: I move that when we adjourn, we adjourn to meet in St. Louis, and that the time be fixed between Christmas and New Year. The reason I make this suggestion is that there are to be other meetings at that time in St. Louis--the American Economic Association and the American Association for Labor Legislation, and also because by that time all the bills of these various Commissions will be ready, and we can have a final interchange of views before they go to their various Legislatures. I will add to that motion also that the Executive Committee be given power to change the date and place of the meeting if they deem it advisable. (The motion being seconded was adopted by a _vivâ voce_ vote.) DR. ALLPORT: It appears in the matter of making provisions of the kind we have been discussing that their constitutionality would depend on two aspects: First, that we take the view as suggested by Mr. Mercer, that it lies within the police power of the State to regulate this matter and so constitute all these employments as dangerous employments, or whether we shall put into the law something which looks like a joker. The particular point I have reference to is this: The specifications in Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Wisconsin tentative bill relative to waiver of the matters we have been discussing; that is, assumed risk and contributory negligence, fellow-servants, etc. The second bill recommended makes this provision: "The provisions of this act shall apply to any person, firm or corporation transacting business in this State who shall have elected to accept and operate under such provisions." That implies an election to accept the provisions of the act. In Section 4, however, is this provision: "Every person, firm or corporation engaged in business in this State that has an employe in his or its service shall be presumed to have accepted the provisions of this act. Every employe, as a part of his contract of hiring, shall be deemed to have accepted the provisions of this act unless at the time of such hiring he contracts in writing to the contrary, in which case the employer shall not be liable under the provisions of this act. Every employe whose contract of hiring is in force at the time his employer elects to provide compensation under this act, shall be deemed to have accepted the provisions thereof unless he files a notice in writing to the contrary with his employer within thirty days thereafter." I am not a lawyer myself, and I do not know what that means, but I would like to know from somebody who is posted in constitutional law as to whether that method of circumventing the usual provisions of the law is strictly in accordance with the rulings under our constitution. That is, whether a law can specify that we shall have the right of election under the law, making the provisions of the law specific, and then in the following section specify that unless they shall elect to the contrary they shall be supposed to be acting under the provisions of this law. That is the way in which Wisconsin has gone behind the constitutional part of the law. SENATOR SANBORN: The Legislature can always say what the fact is presumed to be, and the presumption is that every manufacturer will elect to accept this law. Whether they have or not is a presumption of fact, and we do not have to prove that. In other words, as a matter of course, we presume that every man has elected, but we do not have to say that he has elected. CHAIRMAN MERCER: It seems to me, gentlemen, in the course of these proceedings, that the first thing to be done is to prevent accidents. The second proposition is to compensate the injured for those accidents which you do not prevent. You cannot prevent by penal legislation; you cannot prevent by the assumption of damages of an uncertain quantity, because those things have already been tried and have failed. You can prevent accidents better, I think, by placing a certain, simple and rapid liability upon the industry which both sides shall partially bear, and which will compel both sides to understand that there is a financial risk upon them that will increase their cost absolutely if any accidents occur. I do not think any large proportion of that should be placed upon the laboring man, perhaps not over 15 or 20 per cent. The laboring man, however, is in a better position to determine whether or not a man is faking; he has his own channels of reaching him. He is in a better position to see that the machinery is protected, and to see that the rules are enforced in the factory, and he is the man who is in a position to see that a fair settlement is made if he has a financial interest in it, and not to say in an off-hand way, "Oh, well, the man has been hurt, give him $50." Besides that, when he has such a proposition as that and feels that it is not a subject of charity, but a business proposition, and a matter in which he has a right to help in the administration of it, he wants to administer it quickly and rapidly. It appears that the European countries which have adopted some such scheme as this have found it to be the most satisfactory. No man will believe that he will be injured in an accident. The moment a man starts in on the proposition of whether he himself is going to be injured, he becomes an unfit subject to ask for employment. He is not in a position to go to the employer and say, "You must guard that wheel," or "protect this machine." But if a situation is devised where one man can go to the other and say: "You are the employer and you must stand five-sixths of the cost of an accident, and we one-sixth, and you must protect these men; here is a man over here that will not live up to the rules, fire him. Here is a man that does not know his business. Do not let him work in this place. We have an interest in this matter. It is costing us money if he injures somebody, and we want these men protected." You can see what a different situation arises. The employer must take the word of the laboring man for that, because the laboring man is where he can see and know, and the employer is not in a similar position. The result of that is to increase the confidence in the laboring man, to increase the precautions taken to prevent accidents, and to increase the mutual respect and good feeling between the two men, if you place them both where they have a mutual and certain liability. As to what is a dangerous employment, as to whether or not you should cover some or all, I have no doubt that there is not a man in this country, a farmer, a mechanic, a laboring man, a doctor, a lawyer or any other professional man, but what is perfectly willing to have and desires to have a fair compensation law if he can know just what it is going to cost him, and just what his insurance will cost him, in order to avoid the present uncertainties and evils that flow from existing conditions. The case of domestic servants has been mentioned here. One of our judges in the federal court in our State had a servant break her leg on his back porch last year. He took her to the hospital and took care of her, but would not he rather have been paying three dollars a year for insurance for all the risks that might come to her in that industry? Would not you rather do that yourself? And besides that, from the humane standpoint, would not you rather that the poor girl should be placed in a position where she certainly will receive compensation in case of an accident which perhaps she or any one else could not have avoided, than to have her go on and lose her wages or else you pay them to her? Then you say you must not go to the farmer. I say to you that I believe that the farmers in this country would welcome such a proposition if they understood it. There is not a man, an employer or a laboring man, who, when you place the proposition before him in any such form as we are discussing it here, would sanction it off-hand. But there is not a man in this country that I have ever seen who has studied this question for any length of time, intelligently and carefully, but what believes that the more nearly you can get every industry into one certain, definite and simple liability the better off you are. Look at it as a business proposition--and it is a business proposition--it is an insurance risk and it ought to be left in such a way that the liability is direct. The first thing the business man undertakes to consider on this proposition is what will it cost me; can I afford it? Every time you put on a double liability, every time you leave a thing uncertain, you increase the risks to him and the cost to him in his business, and he so understands it, and that is something which you should give consideration. I do not believe there is a labor representative here, I do not believe there is a laborer in this country, who entirely understands the matter, who is mature in his judgment upon it and who has studied it and understands the whole situation, but who would be willing that you should repeal all of the statutory provisions now existing, repeal all of the common law, if you give him something which he knows is not a gold brick. If you simply say you must have this liability, it is not a question of contract, because that still leaves an uncertainty; but if you say, "You will be paid in accordance with a certain percentage of your wages if you have an accident in your business," everybody will then know just exactly where they stand on the proposition, because it is only a question of actuarial calculation to determine what the compensation is, and I think everybody would be willing to accept a law drafted in that form. It will cost the business men more, but the laborer is going to get more out of it, and it is good business for the business men. You cannot tell me, gentlemen, that all of the large financial institutions and corporations of this country that have voluntarily adopted this scheme in the last three years would have done so, if they had not come deliberately to the conclusion that, taking into consideration the humanitarian features of the case, and the mutual relations that exist between the employer and employe, that this is a step which naturally and logically will be profitably adopted in this country, and one of the most hopeful signs in the present economic situation is that labor and capital are dealing together on matters of that sort, and doing away with the strife and friction that has heretofore prevailed between them. With respect to the theory that should be followed in this legislation, we must understand that both employer and employe must be willing to stand some restrictions. Neither has more interest in its remote consequences than has the State. We cannot keep up the old system and add a new without leaving all the uncertainties and adding the burdens of certainty. We would leave the burdens of cost, the weight of a large part of the injustice, a considerable amount of the delay and most of the prejudicial feelings that now prevail with respect to the worst accidents and their final determination. There is no doubt but that it would be the worst cases where the remedy through the courts would be used in the present system. Penalties as such, criminal or civil in nature, ought not to be considered in this legislation where it does not rest upon the basis of fault; penalties never tend to good mutual feelings as between the parties. It is no time to stir up strife when both parties are willing to negotiate fairly upon this question. It is no time to heap unusual obligations when the employer and the State are willing to make a fair compulsory system. Neither is it any time to deprive the laborer of fair compensation; but it is the time to place a liability on a fair basis, comparable to the risk and the situation in other countries, and allow a simple, safe, quick remedy that is absolutely certain. To be certain, we must remove any idea of recovery as a penalty; we must prohibit the bar of recovery by any fault of the employe. Cases in which the employe would directly and voluntarily be at fault are so few that they would cost the employer and the public much less than the defense of the trials if we should undertake to introduce an element of fault as a defense. The theory of workers' compensation is to get away from fault, and it ought to be barred upon that side as well as the other. The bill under consideration in this program was meant to be a bill that would accomplish the purposes when more elaborately worked out that we all feel should be had. The title is made broader than an ordinary legislative act, so as to allow a system of law that would repeal all other laws on the question, and substitute this remedy for those which exist and add it where there is none. We, therefore use the term "code" in order to cover a system of law. See Johnson _vs._ Harrison, 47 Minn., 575; Central of Georgia Railway Company _vs._ State, 104 Ga., 31, Section 1. We have defined dangerous employment in this act with a view of covering every occupation which has accidents. This will give every person the opportunity to guard against the obligations that arise from injuries occurring in and growing out of the conduct of a business. It is for the Legislature first to determine whether or not this is a proper classification, and if there be reasonable basis for declaring the employment to be dangerous, the courts will follow the judgment of the Legislature, even though their own judgment might not accord with that of the Legislature. See Lochner _vs._ N. Y., 198 U. S., 45; Holden _vs._ Hardy, 169 U. S., 365. This definition of dangerous employment is studiously meant to be a broad one. It is not dependent upon classification of industries on the basis of manufacture, mining, railroading or other segregated employment. Its purpose is to so define dangerous employment that every employment which is, in fact, dangerous will be so defined exactly in proportion to the dangers that actually occur. Being a dangerous employment for each accident which it has, and not dangerous unless it has those accidents, the definition is especially equitable in two aspects. It induces those operating the same sort of employment to keep their accidents down; it makes those who have accidents liable exactly in proportion to the accidents which they have in fact. We have not used the term "accident" in the law because of the uncertain meaning of that term throughout the state and federal courts of this country. We find that this term in some instances has been construed in the popular sense; in some instances it has been construed to mean that which has happened without the fault or intent of any one. We fear great litigation as to what it would mean if the term "accident" should be used. The terms arising out of, and in the course of, such employment have been sufficiently defined by the English courts under their act that they will need no further definition here than the words themselves would indicate. Section 2: It is the intention of this act to make the employer liable to pay compensation, and it would be the purpose probably to make the employe liable to stand a small amount of the carrying charges as specified in this act when worked out. Some argument has been produced in this convention to the effect that it would be difficult to hold the employer in case he had no fault, but fault is not necessarily the basis of liability in such cases. See Chicago, R. I. and Pac. Ry. Co. _vs._ Zernieke, 183 U. S., 582. The man who put into operation the dangerous machinery of dangerous employment would be liable by reason of public necessity to be controlled under the elements of the police power for the protection of the general welfare. It has been intimated here that this rule would not apply except in the case of _quasi_ public corporations, but this is not the law. Relations otherwise private may become public under public necessity if the State decides that the public needs protection. See State _vs._ Wagener, 77 Minn., 483; Harbison _vs._ Knoxvill Iron Co., 183 U. S., 13. It has been urged that no man can have the right taken away from him to sue in the courts for injuries under such circumstances. Generally speaking, it is the rule that a party has no vested interests to a right of action at common law for a future injury. A tort action grows out of a breach of the duty which the State provides that one of its individuals owes to another, either by reason of the peculiar situation as between the parties, or by reason of a public burden which has a peculiar favor in it for the one who is injured. This direct liability the State has imposed by the implied adoption of the common law or by statute, both of which it has the power to repeal. It has repealed or has modified the common law or statutes every time it has imposed a new obligation or taken away an old obligation with respect to tort actions. See Martin _vs._ Pittsburg and L. E. R. Co., 103 U. S., 284; Holden _vs._ Hardy, 169 U. S., 366; Snead _vs._ Central of Georgia Ry. Co., 151 Fed., 608. With respect to the remedy, we think that the remedy provided here is the appropriate and proper one. It would be so if it were fire insurance. See Wild Rice Lbr. Co. _vs._ Royal Ins. Co., 99 Minn., 190. Such a law, leaving the general question of liability to be determined and simply providing a reasonable method of estimating and ascertaining the amount of the loss, is unquestionably valid in both this country and Europe. See Hamilton _vs._ The Liverpool and London Ins. Co., 136 U. S., 242, and cases therein cited. The fact that the liability is conditioned upon the application of a remedy as substantially provided in the act does not in any way affect the constitutionality if it is carried out as we suggest. The theory is that until the appraisal is made by the award provided there is no liability. See President, etc., V. and H. Canal Co. _vs._ Penn. Coal Co., 50 N. Y., 250; Wolff _vs._ Liverpool, L. and G. Ins. Co., 50 N. J. Law, 453; Hall _vs._ Norwalk Fire Ins. Co., 57 Conn., 105; Reed _vs._ Washington Ins. Co., 138 Mass., 572. It has been intimated that the employer might be forced by such law, when the employe could not be so forced. We fail to see the force of this argument. The reason why the employers cannot be forced, if it is done equally, is that it deprives them of their liberty secured by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution to contract with respect to their labor as they see fit upon the theory that the liberty of contract is a property right; but neither the right of property of the employe nor the employer stands above the general public good. The general welfare was one of the principal purposes given in the Preamble of the Federal Constitution as the reason for the making of that constitution. It has been consistently and persistently upheld by the courts whenever needed for the protection of public good; as long as government exists it always will be so upheld. It is an absolute and final necessity. With this right the Federal Constitution was never intended to interfere except in the few instances limited by the Fourteenth Amendment; except as specifically limited the State has as much power as a foreign nation upon this question, and that amendment does not prohibit the exercise of such power to the extent that it is necessary in dangerous employments. See Mayor, Alderman, etc., of N. Y. _vs._ Miln, 11 Peters, 102; Lochner _vs._ N. Y., 198 U. S., 45. Other cases cited _supra_. In this respect, too, we must not overlook the fact that the employer and the employe do not stand upon an equality in their negotiations with respect to dangerous employments. Stripped of political perplexities and personal prejudices and ambitions, the fact is, and must be recognized, that the fundamental reason for the interference by the State with respect to these matters rests upon the bare fact of the inequality of abilities of the respective parties to take care of their interests by reason of the peculiar situations. In the case of Harbison _vs._ Knoxville Iron Co., 53 S. W., 955, the Court said: "The Legislature, as it thought, found the employe at a disadvantage in this respect, and by this enactment undertook to place him and the employer more nearly upon an equality. This alone commends the act, and entitled it to a place on the statute book as a valid police regulation." The Supreme Court of the United States approved this opinion in Knoxville _vs._ Harbison, 183 U. S., 13. In respect to the length of hours, dangerous labor may be required, it was said by the Supreme Court in Holden _vs._ Hardy, 169 U. S., 366: "The Legislature has also recognized the fact, which the experience of Legislatures in many States has corroborated, that the proprietors of these establishments and their operatives do not stand upon an equality, but that their interests are, to a certain extent, conflicting." Then in the case of Narramore _vs._ Cleveland, etc., Ry. Co., 96 Fed., 298, a case involving the rights of railway employes to have switches blocked, while Judge Taft was sitting on the Circuit Court of Appeals, he used this language: "The only ground for passing such a statute is found in the inequality of terms upon which the railway company and its servants deal in regard to the dangers of their employment. The manifest legislative purpose was to protect the servant by positive law, because he had not previously shown himself capable of protecting himself by contract; and it would entirely defeat this purpose thus to permit the servant 'to contract the master out' of the statute." An employe cannot successfully say to a railway president, "Run your business carefully or I will quit." This is a new right and not necessarily triable by jury in State courts. Am. _vs._ Morrison, 22 Minn., 178. See Minor _vs._ Happersett, 21 Wall., 162. We might argue this legislation at length, but it seems useless at the present time. There is an agitation throughout this country, unequaled upon any other single subject, in favor of a fairer system of compensation to meet the necessities somewhat along the lines that foreign countries have done. No subject in this country has ever been studied more deliberately; no attempt has ever been made upon the part of all parties to approach a legislative subject in this country with less partisan feeling or more careful study. Employes have awakened to the conditions in a substantial way. Employers are willing that they should have something of a fairer and more substantial nature. The State needs it for its own protection as well as the protection of its members. Public sentiment is aroused, but it is being judiciously controlled. We might have pending in this country a civil war larger than the Civil War of the sixties was and not do as much injury at the present time as the industrial accidents. Fair people, therefore, are going to be willing to have laws that will tend first to prevent accidents, and, second, to fairly compensate for them, and to do it in such way as to be an inducement to both the employer and employe to prevent the accident. We want society protected also. No better time will ever come for a fairer legislative act upon this question than at the beginning. If the movement is uniform, and held in check long enough to be understood, there will be no difficulty about passing the laws. Every bad law injures the cause, every unfair law will prejudice it. The basis is the police power and the liberty of occupation, and contract can only be controlled where necessary; that is, in dangerous employments, but can be in all such employments. (This concluded the business to come before the Conference, and on motion of Joseph A. Parks, of Massachusetts, the meeting stood adjourned _sine die_.) APPENDIX BRIEF REPORT SECOND NATIONAL CONFERENCE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS WASHINGTON, JANUARY 20, 1910 The second meeting of the National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents was held in Washington, at the New Hotel Willard, on January 20, 1910. FORENOON SESSION. SECRETARY H. V. MERCER, Chairman of the Minnesota Commission, called the meeting to order at 10 A. M. He announced that in response to the following invitation which had been sent to governors, ninety-four delegates had been appointed from nineteen states: "Dear Sir: As you are no doubt aware, several of the States have created commissions and legislative committees to investigate the present Employers' Liability Laws and report plans for betterment along the line of Workmen's Compensation Acts. A conference of these commissions and committees was held at Atlantic City, on July 29th, to 31st last, a report of which is this day sent you under another cover. At that time it was resolved to hold a second conference, to be attended, if possible, by some person or persons designated by the Governor of each State. (See pages 277-9; 302-3, Atlantic City Report, supra.) It has been determined to hold this second conference at Washington on January 20th, immediately after the conference on Uniform Legislation, which has been called by the National Civic Federation, and to which we are informed the Governors of the various States have been requested to send representatives. You are respectfully urged to designate one or more persons specially qualified to take part in our second conference. In case you designate persons to represent the State at the Uniform Legislation conference we would suggest that you might designate one or more of the same persons to attend the conference on Workmen's Compensation. Enclosed is a brief account of the Atlantic City Meeting, which explains more at length the general purpose and scope of these conferences. We shall appreciate it if you will advise the Secretary at your earliest convenience as to the persons designated to attend this conference so that he may put himself in communication with them and arrange the details." On motion, Mr. Mercer, in the absence of Dr. Chas. P. Neill, was elected temporary chairman, and Professor Henry R. Seager was made secretary of the meeting. MR. MERCER: "Our executive committee did not formulate any regular program. We thought that the speeches ought to be limited to ten minutes and unless there is objection we will act upon that principle. We have drafted a short bill which we present here, not with an idea that it is correct, or that it is absolutely the bill that should be passed, but with a view of bringing up the different points for discussion. This matter has been discussed from the standpoint of theory sufficiently long and some of us think that we should get down to practical things." SENATOR J. MAYHEW WAINWRIGHT, Chairman of the New York Commission, described the preliminary work of that body (as outlined again by Miss Crystal Eastman, at the third meeting in Chicago [Page 13]). Senator Wainwright said, in part: "The great difficulty is to determine how one State can adopt any system of compensation before the other States, and to secure the information upon which may be based a precise conclusion as to what the increased cost to the employers would be. It seems to me that it is going to be very difficult to get at exactly what the effect upon the industries of the States any particular bill will have, until some measure is tried. We are warned not to be the pioneers in the field. That raises, it seems to me, a very great ethical question, for this is a serious matter, and involves basic justice. It seems to me that we should question whether so much importance should be given to the cost, unless we are sure the cost is going to be pretty nearly prohibitive. In other words, if the thing is right, and fundamentally just, hasn't somebody got to start it and make a beginning and take some little chance as to what its effect may be. Another difficult matter, of course, is to determine the effect upon the smaller employers of labor, and there, we can only judge from the foreign experience.... The only thing we can be absolutely certain of, is that the present system is unsatisfactory and that there should be a change. So far as our commission is concerned, we will not cease from our labor but will unremittingly direct all our efforts to this subject until we, in the State of New York, can arrive at a solution which our commission will feel is the right one."... COMMISSIONER CHARLES P. NEILL, of the United States Bureau of Labor, arrived at this time and assumed the chair. He said: "Gentlemen, I wish to apologize for my inability to get down here at the opening of the session. It has not been a want of interest in this subject that has delayed me, for there is probably no subject in which I have more interest than the one of employers' liability and workmen's compensation. For the last eight days we have been engaged in bringing about the adjustment of a controversy which required as a solution some form of workmen's compensation. We have been dealing with the representatives of switchmen in the railroad yards, and if there is any occupation in which more men are maimed and butchered, I do not know what it is. Discussion brought forth at almost every point the necessity of doing something in this country to put us on what we might call a half civilized basis for taking care of the derelicts of industry." (Applause). SENATOR A. W. SANBORN, Chairman of the Wisconsin Commission, was then introduced and he outlined the preliminary work of that Commission (in a statement similar to the report made at Chicago by Senator Blaine [Page 10]). Senator Sanborn also said: "As we look at it in Wisconsin, we are surrounded on three sides by very lively competitors in the manufacturing line; there is only a certain amount that we can load on our manufacturers and let them compete until we reach a bill that is uniform in the group of States in the Northwest. As one of our large manufacturers expressed it at one of our hearings, we are willing to pay twenty per cent. or twenty-five per cent. more than we are to-day, however, if you put it on a definite basis so that we know how much.... ... Now, I hope we can derive some benefit here by getting down to specific things. I think it is generally conceded by everybody that has paid any attention to the subject, that the time has arrived when something must be done; the present situation is absolutely intolerable, giving rise to great unrest, and people feel there is great injustice under the present system." PROFESSOR HENRY W. FARNAM, of New Haven, stated upon call, that the Connecticut Commission accomplished practically nothing. He then made an appeal for united action between the states for the purpose of securing greater care and greater uniformity in investigation and legislation. He offered the services of the American Association for Labor Legislation (of which he is president), in any endeavor that would bring about a better understanding between the different groups now interested in this question. MR. MAGNUS W. ALEXANDER, of Lynn, stated upon call, that there was at present no Commission in Massachusetts. MR. JOHN MITCHELL, of the New York Commission, in discussing a proposal to study costs of industrial insurance in Germany, said: "I think it is important, that we should understand that neither in purpose nor in action is it contemplated that a movement of this kind shall delay the efforts of the commission to reach conclusions. I quite agree with you that an investigation as to the costs and operation of the laws in Europe would be of advantage to us, but I quite well recognize that that is a slow process, and I think we cannot afford to wait for several years before we do something definite in this country. Now, I should like to say that I recognize very well how important it is to our industries that they be kept on a fairly competitive basis. I am not at all satisfied, however, that the establishment of a system of compensation, even in one of our states, would be a serious handicap to the employers of that state. I think that we ought to take into consideration the experience abroad. Now I do not know whether it is because of the compensation laws in Germany, or in spite of them but I do know that co-incident with the establishment of their insurance system, which is the most comprehensive of any in Europe, prosperity took a rise. The German Empire has forged ahead at an unprecedented rate since the establishment of their comprehensive system of insurance and compensation.... ... The relation of the various countries of Europe to each other is not unlike the relation of our own state governments. Competition between some of the continental countries is as keen as is competition between some of our states. I am not willing to agree either that increasing the cost of a product will necessarily put that product out of the running with the same product produced in another state. There are a good many other considerations entering into the matter: If better laws or better wages attract better workmen, then there is a compensation to an employer even though his wage-scale be higher or his cost greater than prevails in a competitive industry in another State. The best workmen are attracted to those industries and to those localities where conditions of employment are most satisfactory, and I dare say that every employer will agree that the best workman is to him the cheapest workman even though his wages be higher.... I feel, that our state would not suffer in the race for trade if we should establish a compensation system, and I believe that Minnesota would not suffer and I believe that Wisconsin would not suffer. We cannot afford in the United States to wait until all States, even though they be only competitive ones, are ready to adopt one system of compensation, any more than we ought to wait before we advance wages in one state until all the other states are ready to advance them, and we certainly do not do that. As a matter of fact there is scarcely an industry conducted in the State of Wisconsin, Minnesota, or New York, whose wage schedules are made at the same time, notwithstanding the fact that they have competitive industries. There are very few industries in this country whose wage rates and conditions of employment are regulated nationally; there are very few industries where organized workmen are employed that attempt to make wage scales on a national basis; true, there are some, such as coal mines and the railways, but in the machinery trade, in building construction, and in all the miscellaneous industries, the wage schedules are made local and without any special relation to the wage schedules of other states.... I, of course, am anxious that we shall have the very best information obtainable, and of course it is desirable that all the states should act together, but I think it is equally desirable that some of the states act quickly because it is an evil, and a growing evil, and it is more readily recognized now because we have been talking about it. The workingmen of the country are aware now of the conditions that prevail in other countries and we are very much dissatisfied with the conditions we now have. Employers themselves are going outside of the law to try and compensate workmen for injuries. Practically all of the large employers in the United States recognize and concede the inequity of the present law, by trying on their own account to draft some system to pay workmen more money wherever there exists a necessity for speedy relief. Now, I wanted to make those observations because I do not want to agree to a proposition here for an investigation of the conditions in Europe, if that investigation means, either in purpose or in effect, that we are going to wait the returns of that investigation before we get something that is substantial in America." (Applause). MR. C. B. CULBERTSON, of the Wisconsin Commission, said in brief: "The conditions in the United States are far different from what they are in Europe, and the testimony taken before our Commission shows that two industries standing side by side, being practically the same, having practically the same number of machines, with practically the same number of men employed, would have rates of which one would be half as great as the other, and would be fair in each case, because the accidents in the one concern were twice what they were in the other. Now this is going to be a very hard matter to get at if you wait to get these figures and then attempt to follow them. And a third point; I believe the employers in Wisconsin, as well as the laboring men, are ready for this proposition at this time, and I believe we are going to have it in Wisconsin at the next legislature. I do not think we are going to wait for any instructions from Europe or for any figures from there." At this point two resolutions which had been adopted at the Atlantic City meeting, in July 1909, were re-adopted,--requesting the U. S. Bureau of Labor to publish the foreign compensation laws in English, and to investigate the comparative cost to employers, of liability insurance under the American system, and workmen's compensation under the British and German systems. MR. MILES M. DAWSON, of New York City, said: "I agree with the Wisconsin, Minnesota and New York Commissions that if we are to get anything done this year, we should go ahead and do it without waiting, for these tables of cost are by no means absolutely necessary.... But the things which can be brought out by that information are not quite the same things you are apparently thinking about.... A thoroughly competent expert, who will know what he is after, can put that information in the hands of the Bureau of Labor for publication by September or October next, and there is no reason why the Minnesota legislature or the Wisconsin legislature should hold up its report for an indefinite length of time. I have known New York pretty well, and if the Commission in New York renders a report during the present session and it meets with the approval of most of the Commission in New York, there is no doubt in my mind but what something will be done in New York before the present legislature is over." DR. CHARLES MCCARTHY, of Wisconsin, said: "I am thoroughly in favor of getting the statistics from Europe and I fully realize what a job that is. I believe, however, there is a way of going ahead as Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Culbertson have suggested without getting the statistics. Perhaps we are trying to get too much at once upon the statute books. I would suggest that these industries might be classified as to the dangers which they incur, not necessarily the industries that are particularly dangerous, but a group of industries could be taken and the law applied to them, and a bill could be introduced in the three legislatures applying to those particular industries. The rates could be fixed in that law so reasonable that the manufacturers could not oppose the law, with a provision in the law that after investigation, or within a certain time, those rates would be increased in the future. Now, as an experimental thing, as a thing which all States could agree upon, that would not be hard to get and would not be hard to put upon our statute books. It would be an opening wedge, it could be tried before the courts and the principle determined by the courts and then applied within a few years to other industries of a dangerous nature. I do not think the process of statute law making is a process of getting all the statistics and facts from foreign countries; I think that it is the other way in America. Our statutes work out differently in the psychology of the working man, and I believe the way to do it in America is to get some particular group of industries that we know are dangerous and get three of the States to act together. I think the workmen will meet that half way, with the idea of increasing in the future. It is an entering wedge that all can agree upon." (Applause). MR. J. P. COTTON, counsel for the New York Commission: "If we ever come to workmen's compensation, there has to be back of it sometime an efficient insurance system and the data of the English experience on that is of the very highest importance.... I do not see any reason why, in non-competitive trades, any American state is not now ready to go ahead and establish a system of compensation at such a rate as will at least grant relief to the workmen. But that does not make any less important the collection of foreign figures in particular accident experience." DR. MCCARTHY: "How will it do to make a classification based upon actual statistics of deaths and accident rates and put it up to the courts? Suppose the courts do knock it down, then they will tell what we can do in the future. We don't want to be afraid of the veto of the courts, for in the end they will tell us what we can do. We have to go through that experience some time and we might as well begin with our best foot forward,--with the best case we can make." MR. GEORGE M. GILLETTE, of the Minnesota Commission: "... It seems to me that the question of cost on the one side and compensation on the other are so closely interrelated that it is absolutely impossible to consider the one without the other. If the other members of this Conference do not desire this information, I have no desire to press it; it has already been expressed by resolution in the minutes of the preceding Conference. Personally, however, I am going to investigate the costs and the working of these compensation acts abroad. I offer the following resolution: 'Resolved: That a committee of three be appointed by the Chair to confer with the Honorable Secretary of State to secure the coöperation of the Government, and its aid through our Consular and Diplomatic Service in obtaining information as to the workings of the foreign compensation acts and the criticisms which are made at the home of the various acts.'" The resolution was adopted, and John Mitchell, A. W. Sanborn and Geo. M. Gillette were appointed. MR. BERTRAM PIKE, of New Hampshire: "I would suggest in connection with getting the insurance rates from abroad, that we ascertain what has been the actual cost of the workmen's collective policies in the different industries and States in this country, because it will show almost absolutely what it costs to protect those men." MR. OWEN MILLER, of Missouri: "I think that suggestion is a good one." MR. WALLACE INGALLS, of Wisconsin: "The accident insurance companies know what injuries occur in the principal manufacturing industries. They have definite information." SENATOR HOWARD R. BAYNE, of the New York Commission: "Our Commission has adopted the plan of discussing tentative propositions in order to confine our attention to specific questions. I move that this Conference now direct its discussion to the consideration of whether the scheme of workmen's compensation in all cases of industrial accidents is industrially feasible at the present time." [The motion was carried.] MR. WILLIAM BROSMITH, counsel for the Travelers' Insurance Co., of Hartford: "I do not know that I am in a position to give you any advice as to the industrial feasibility of workmen's compensation. Personally, I am a strong believer in workmen's compensation." THE CHAIRMAN: "Do you believe that the insurance companies would be willing to place at the disposal of this conference, or any one, the actual experience they have had under collective insurance; in other words, would they be willing to allow statements to be taken from their figures showing precisely the number of accidents in any given occupation or the total number of people insured, the number of injured, the kind of injury, the time the injuries lasted, of course leaving out the question of how much was paid by the company?" MR. BROSMITH: "I can speak positively for one company. I know that we will be very glad indeed to furnish to the State Commissions the experience of our company on industrial accidents. I have offered already to do that for the New York State Commission. I have no right, of course, to speak for other companies, but I am confident, that all of them which write industrial accident insurance or which cover it in one form or another, will be glad indeed to furnish their experience. I do not believe that the value of statistics you gather abroad as to the practical working of workmen's compensation and insurance in foreign countries will be of much value, but I do believe that in our own country, where we have a vast mass of experience it will be of practical benefit. The company which I represent has been transacting accident insurance in this country for fifty years. We have written, I presume, millions of policies of accident insurance upon persons engaged in industrial occupation. We have that experience all tabulated and arranged and classified so as to show the injuries sustained in the different occupations, the injuries sustained at occupation, the injuries sustained foreign to occupation, the premiums charged and received in all of these years, the loss ratio and the accident ratio. I believe, the insurance companies in the United States could in a very short time know the exact amount paid by any employer of labor as a premium rate, or cost of insurance which would be necessary to protect the employer against the compensation which he in turn would be obliged to furnish to his employees. I believe that experience will be very valuable to the State Commissions and I know, that so far as the accident companies are concerned, when a scheme of compensation is perfected in any State, it is to that experience we will go in order to ascertain what we will charge the employer for the insurance protection. We will not go to the experience of any liability insurance. That may have a value, I presume it has, but it is not at all comparable to the value of experience in personal accident and health insurance, and particularly the experience of the companies which write industrial insurance. At the present time, the insurance company has the privilege of selecting its risk, and the benefit of that selection affects the premium charged. Today we may insure a thousand employees of the Pressed Steel Car Company, but we will select that one thousand; the ones who are of bad habits, careless, or of bad morals we decline to take. Under the workmen's compensation, however, we would have to insure all of the employees of a given industry, good, bad and indifferent. The fact that we would have to insure all of the risks in a given industry without selection, would have the effect of increasing the premium somewhat. However, under workmen's compensation I would assume that the injuries to be covered by the insurance would be only the injuries sustained in occupations, so that a very considerable percentage of the injuries now covered by general accident insurance, would be taken out of the insurance under workmen's compensation." PROF. SEAGER: "If we asked your company to name the thirty most hazardous industries carried on in New York State, it would not be a matter of difficulty?" MR. BROSMITH: "It certainly would not be difficult to give you the thirty most hazardous all over the country." MR. WILLIAM F. WELCH, of West Virginia: "Would the insurance companies, under a compensation act, require the rigid medical examination that is now required?" MR. BROSMITH: "No. There is no medical examination in accident insurance now." MR. MERCER: "I have prepared a bill that I thought would stimulate discussion, and I have had it printed in order that you might look it over." Mr. Mercer then explained briefly the provisions of his tentative bill, which, with modifications, was presented again at the Chicago meeting, and is printed on page 40. At one o'clock the meeting adjourned until 2.30 P. M. AFTERNOON SESSION. The Committee on Permanent Organization through its chairman, Prof. Seager, submitted a report, which was adopted,--providing: 1. That the members of the permanent Conference shall be the members of all State Commissions on the subject, one permanent representative to be appointed by the Governor of each State, and ten members at large to be elected at any regular meeting of the Conference; 2. That a permanent executive committee of fifteen members be appointed by the Committee on Permanent Organization; 3. That the Secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation be named as the Assistant Secretary of this Conference; 4. That the Conference meet in Chicago on June 10th, 1910. The sentiment of the Committee favored public meetings, but with privilege of voting limited to the members of the Conference. The Executive Committee was directed to draw up a suitable set of by-laws for submission at the Chicago meeting of the Conference. On motion, a committee consisting of Messrs. Seager, Mercer and Dawson was appointed to draw up a bill and submit it to the insurance companies for cost figures, and to furnish copies of the bill for distribution, at least twenty days in advance of the next meeting in Chicago. MR. M. L. SHIPMAN, of North Carolina, made a plea for more specific announcements concerning arrangements and place for meetings, in order that there might be less confusion on that account in the future. The Conference, after a temporary adjournment for the purpose of having a photograph taken, took up, section by section, the discussion of Mr. Mercer's tentative bill. Upon the question of the proper classification of hazardous employments it was practically agreed that any attempt to include agricultural laborers and domestic servants in a compensation measure, would probably result in failure. "You cannot pass a bill of that sort," declared Dr. McCarthy. "Anybody who has been around a legislature knows that the farmers, on questions of this sort, are way behind the laboring man or the manufacturer; they are full of prejudice and will fight a bill of that kind every time." The constitutional difficulties in New York were discussed by Senator Bayne who laid special stress upon: (1) the death limit clause; (2) the right of trial by jury; and the due process clause. "Some of us," said Senator Bayne, "have about concluded that the only way we can justify any compensation act for industrial accidents will be through the exercise of the police power of the State. And we think this principle lies at the bottom of the police power: that it is competent for the legislature to declare that a proposed remedy is based upon the police power, but it must in fact be dangerous to the health or public safety or welfare of the community. The mere fact that the legislature so declares it, does not make it so. It is subject to investigation by the courts, and if they find that it is reasonable then they will leave it to the legislature to declare the extent of authority under that police power with those limitations." In answer to these objections Mr. Mercer cited numerous court decisions (printed in pamphlet form by Mr. Mercer) which led him to feel more sanguine of what may be accomplished under our constitutions. In answer to Prof. Seager's question: "Is it probable that the court will take the view that a general workmen's compensation act is a reasonable exercise of the police power?" Mr. Mercer replied: "My understanding of that is that under the general theory where twenty-three of the most important foreign countries have passed legislation on the theory that there was a reasonable foundation for it, where six or seven of the forty-six states have passed laws requiring commissions to investigate this proposition, where men would meet at Atlantic City and discuss this subject as we did for two days, where the National Civic Federation devoted a day to it in New York, and where we devote a day to it here, where there is literature all over the country and every magazine has some article on the subject at the present time, and probably all of the corporations coming around to the view that we need certain legislation, I do not believe any court would say that there is any opposition to a reasonable discussion of the question, and that the legislature has not the right to declare it was a dangerous employment if we limit it to the industries that have hazards." Prof. Seager outlined the plan of "extra-hazardous" occupation classifications favored by the New York Commission and Dr. McCarthy pointed out the danger of too much definition. "My experience with bill-drafting is that in getting the most simple statement of a case, the less you say, the better." MR. JOHN LUNDRIGAN, of New York, gave it as his opinion that "any scheme of compensation that follows the job or the employment, instead of the individual, is wrong and will fail." He said he did not believe men engaged in hazardous occupations would be willing to waive their right to undertake to recover in the courts whenever it could be shown that the employer was negligent. [The stenographer who reported the remainder of this brief session lost his notes, and there is no further record]. INDEX SPEAKERS AND SUBJECTS _Alexander, M. W._, 127. _Allport, W. H._, 57, 89, 102, 108, 114. _Barry, James V._, 32. _Bayne, Howard R._, 131, 134. _Blaine, John J._, 10, 47, 48, 49, 94, 100. _Brosmith, William_, 131, 133. _Buchanan, Frank_, 58, 59, 61, 80. _Bullock, Henry W._, 71. _Business transacted_, 38, 39, 95, 96, 113, 114, 129, 130, 133, 134. _Classification of Hazardous Employments_, 44-50, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 67, 71, 74, 76, 82-95, 116, 119, 129, 133, 134. _Constitutionality_, 43, 49-53, 55, 57, 58, 70, 74, 77, 111, 114, 121-123, 130, 134, 135. _Contract vs. Absolute Liability_, 51, 52, 74. _Contributions by employees_, 72, 75, 104, 105. _Costs_, 88-89, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 111, 117, 126, 131. _Cotton, J. P._, 130. _Court Administration vs. Boards of Arbitration_, 70, 73, 109-113. _Culbertson, C. B._, 61, 128. _Dawson, Miles M._, 31, 39, 43, 44, 49, 67, 82, 89, 105, 106, 108, 109, 114, 129. _Deibler, F. S._, 102. _Double Liability_, 55, 59, 61-63, 67, 71, 76-78, 80, 96-104, 120. _Duncan, M. M._, 32. _Eastman, Crystal_, 13. _English System_, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 75, 76, 83, 87, 88, 90, 98, 101, 102, 103, 108. _Farnam, Henry W._, 32, 126. _Flora, John_, 66, 96, 97, 100, 101. _Freund, Ernst_, 26, 56. _German System_, 57, 58, 73, 75, 86, 87, 90, 103. _Gillette, George M._, 103, 130. _Gray, John H._, 59. _Harper, Samuel R._, 52, 70, 92, 111. _Hoffman, Frederick L._, 31. _Illinois Commission_, 22-27. _Ingalls, Wallace_, 74, 80, 89, 93, 101, 131. _Insurance Companies_, 68, 73, 81, 82, 83, 88, 98, 100, 103, 109, 132. _Interstate Competition_, 17, 59, 77, 86, 89, 125-128, 130. _Kingsley, Sherman_, 64. _Limited Compensation vs. Pension Plan_, 72, 104-109. _Litigation_, 75, 79, 80, 103, 110, 112. _Lowell, James A._, 27, 44, 45, 47, 83, 107. _Lundrigan, John_, 135. _Massachusetts Commission_, 27-31. _McCarthy, Charles_, 86, 97, 98, 102, 106, 109, 129, 130, 134. _McKitrick, Reuben_, 95. _Mercer, H. V._, 10, 26, 32, 33, 39, 43-50, 54, 58, 66, 82, 84, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92, 96, 97, 102, 104, 109, 114, 115, 124, 125, 133, 135. _Miller, Owen_, 131. _Minnesota Commission_, 33-38. _Mitchell, John_, 21, 30, 31, 61, 79, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 127. _Moulton, William H._, 104. _Neill, Charles P._, 126. _New Jersey Commission_, 31-32. _New York Commission_, 13-22. _Ohio Commission_, 32. _Parks, Joseph A._, 29, 31, 46, 55, 98, 100. _Pike, Bertram_, 131. _Ranney, G. A._, 80, 94, 101. _Repeal of Common Law and Statutory Remedies_, [See "Double Liability"]. _Sanborn, A. W._, 47, 51, 111, 115, 126. _Saunders, Amos T._, 75. _Seager, Henry R._, 19, 21, 38, 39, 46, 53, 54, 85, 86, 109, 111, 113, 132, 133, 135. _Shipman, M. L._, 134. _Smith, George W._, 20. _Starring, Mason B._, 22, 44. _Steele, H. Wirt_, 32. _Sumner, Charles A._, 84, 85. _Uniform Legislation_, 17, 59, 78, 94, 126. _Wainwright. J. Mayhew_, 125. _Welch, William F._, 133. _Wisconsin Commission_, 10-13. _Wright, Edwin R._, 23, 78, 79, 92, 93. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious typographical errors were repaired. P. 49: Words of Chairman Mercer--"although the judgment of the as laid down in Lockner"--apparent missing word is as in the original. P. 78: Words of Edwin Wright--"injured person fails to report within a very limited time, his it presented a question"--"his" is as in the original. P. 111: "the number of reasons these bills took the form which they have taken"--original read "sons" in place of "reasons." 
42589	----	PUBLISHERS' NOTE. At the suggestion of many members of labor organizations, the publishers of "HOMESTEAD" have decided to set apart five per cent. of the net profits derived from the sale of the work as the nucleus of a fund for the erection of a monument in commemoration of the battle of July 6, 1892. A suitable design shown in the engraving opposite page 288 has been chosen, and it is hoped that the workingmen of the United States will co-operate to secure the successful execution of the plan. Men and events of prominence in almost all other fields of human activity are immortalized by enduring testimonials; but organized labor has practically nothing to mark its achievements and serve as a reminder to future generations. A better beginning could not be made than with the heroes of Homestead, and it is especially fitting that the first impetus should be given in connection with this history. Such aid as it is in their power to lend to the formation of a Homestead Monument Association and the accomplishment of its object is cheerfully tendered by THE PUBLISHERS. HOMESTEAD. A Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie·Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. BY ARTHUR G. BURGOYNE. ILLUSTRATED. PITTSBURGH, PA. 1893. ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, 1893, BY D. S. MITCHELL, IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, AT WASHINGTON. PRESS OF RAWSTHORNE ENGRAVING AND PRINTING CO. PITTSBURGH. INTRODUCTION. The demand voiced by representative workingmen in the Pittsburgh district, not only on their own account but on that of their brethren the world over, for a correct and impartial history of the Homestead trouble, sufficiently explains the appearance of this volume. The importance of the theme requires no demonstration. Since labor first organized for its own protection it has passed through no period more prolific in soul-stirring events and significant developments than that extending from July to November, 1892, and including the lock-out at the Carnegie mills, the battle with 300 Pinkerton guards, the military occupation of Homestead, the trial of labor leaders on capital charges and the ultimate collapse of the Amalgamated lodges for lack of funds to continue the struggle against non-unionism. This was a conflict of far more than local interest. It was watched with anxiety by both friends and foes of organized labor on both sides of the Atlantic; it claimed the attention of leaders of thought in all departments of human activity; it stirred up the British House of Parliament and the United States Congress, agitated the newspaper press of both continents, became an issue in the election for President and is said to have contributed more largely to the defeat of Benjamin Harrison by Grover Cleveland than any other influence. The injection of partisan considerations into public discussion of the Homestead affair led naturally to a vast amount of misrepresentation, and even at this late day the causes and character of the struggle are widely misunderstood. It has been the mission of the author of this history to sift out the truth, to make clear the motives and methods of the disputants on both sides, and to recount in detail the events of the contest without sacrificing historic accuracy to romantic effect. Personal observations in the course of visits to the "seat of war" while hostilities were in progress, and subsequent conversations with the leaders has made the task a comparatively easy one. Little attempt is made to philosophize on the varying phases of the labor question as presented at Homestead. It is left largely to the reader to form his own deductions from the facts set forth and from the opinions of recognized authorities, not forgetting Mr. Carnegie himself, which are liberally cited. That through the perusal of "Homestead" new light may be borne in upon some of the many who persist in regarding the American workingman as a mere piece of mechanism, deservedly at the mercy of his employer, is the earnest hope of THE AUTHOR. PITTSBURGH, November 22, 1893. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. CAPITAL IN ITS STRONGHOLD. Homestead and Its Mills--The Rise and Progress of the Carnegie Firm--How The "Star Spangled Scotchman" Made His Fortune--He Labors For Years and Then Lapses Into Luxury--H. C. Frick's Career as Coke King and Iron Master--The Fine Art of Crushing Strikes--Carnegie and Frick Join Hands and the Latter Becomes the Master-Spirit--Condition of Organized Labor at Homestead 3-14 CHAPTER II. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. History and Methods of the Amalgamated Association--Operation of the Sliding Scale at Homestead--Superintendent Potter Makes Amicable Suggestions _a la_ Carnegie--An Ultimatum From Frick--He Threatens Non-Unionism and Fortifies the Mills--Lodges Hold a Sunday Morning Meeting--Burgess McLuckie's Bold Speech--"High Fences, Pinkerton Detectives, Thugs and Militia"--Political Exigencies Give Hope to the Workmen 15-26 CHAPTER III. LOCKED OUT. Frick's Allies--A Plan of General Assault on the Amalgamated Association Falls to the Ground--The Labor Question in Politics--Democrats Make Capital Out of Wage Reductions--Frick Confers With a Workmen's Committee and Rejects a Compromise--Mills Shut Down and Are Declared Non-Union--"Fort Frick"--Lodges Appoint an Advisory Committee--Guarding the Town 27-40 CHAPTER IV. THE PINKERTON GUARDS. Planning a Siege--History of the Pinkertons--Hatred of Organized Labor for Soldier Policemen--Frick's Cold-Blooded Letter--The Sheriff of Allegheny County is Enlisted in the Carnegie Forces--Millmen Dispose of a Sheriff's Posse--The Gathering of the Invaders--Departure of the Pinkerton Barges for Homestead 41-51 CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SHOT. On Board the Barges--Floating Barracks Equipped for Bloody Warfare--Up the Monongahela at Midnight--Homestead Gets Warning--Defenders at the Mill Landing--Frick's Army Repulsed With Heavy Loss--Hugh O'Donnell Takes Command of the Workmen--Sheriff McCleary's Appeal to the Governor--Frick Refuses to Interfere 52-64 CHAPTER VI. THE BOMBARDMENT. Cannonading the Barges--Silas Wain's Sad Death--The Little Bill Returns and Runs the Gauntlet--A Car of Fire Terrifies the Pinkertons and Drives Captain Rodgers to Flight--Amalgamated Officials Arrive--Dining Under Fire--Horrors in the Guardsmen's Quarters--The Killing of Detective Connors--Dynamite--Suicide on the Barges--Messages From Abroad--Congress Acts 65-77 CHAPTER VII. THE SURRENDER. Amalgamated Officials as Mediators--President Weihe Calls a Mass Meeting and Counsels Peace--Hugh O'Donnell's Speech--The Brave Young Leader Procures a Surrender--Pinkertons Run the Gauntlet--A Savage Mob Assails the Prisoners--Arrival of the Sheriff--The Frick Troop of Invaders Driven From the State 78-88 CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE BATTLE. Carnegie's Property Protected--Confidence Still Strong Among the Men--Homestead as a News Center--The Death-Roll--Burial of the Dead--Anarchists Get a Short Shrift--The Sheriff Fails Again--Interviewing the Governor--Martial Law in Sight--Proceedings in Congress--Opinions of Newspapers and Publicists--A Press Censorship Established at Homestead 89-101 CHAPTER IX. SOLDIERS TO THE FRONT. The Sheriff's Last Effort--Mr. Frick Issues a Statement and the Amalgamated Association Responds--Political and Industrial Organizations Indorse the Homestead Men--Interviewing Carnegie--Censorship of the Press--Governor Pattison Orders Out the National Guard--Strength of the Militia--Locked-Out Men Prepare to Welcome the Blue Coats--A Speech That Burgess McLuckie Never Delivered 102-115 CHAPTER X. CAMP McCLELLAN. Snowden's Sharp Tactics--The Taking of Homestead--Troops in Possession--Soldiers Repel Advances and the Fraternal Reception is Declared Off--O'Donnell's Committee at Headquarters--Suspicion and Resentment Abroad--The Little Bill Returns--Congressmen Hold an Investigation--Capital and Labor in Conflict on the Witness Stand--The Cost of Producing Steel Remains a Riddle 116-132 CHAPTER XI. THE FIRST ARRESTS. Bringing in the "Blacksheep"--Pittsburgh, Beaver Falls and Duquesne Men Come Out--An Alarm in Camp--The Governor Arrives--The Boycott as a Persuader--Politics to the Rescue--Murder Charged and Warrants Issued--McLuckie, O'Donnell and Ross Surrender and are Released on Bail--General Snowden's Disheartening Announcement 133-145 CHAPTER XII. THE SHOOTING OF FRICK. Berkman, a Russian Autonomist, Attempts the Life of the Carnegie Chairman--Mr. Frick's Bravery--"The Shooting Will in no Way Affect the Homestead Strike"--Militiaman Iams Cheers the Assassin and is Drummed Out of Camp--Public Indignation over the Iams Affair--Snowden, Hawkins, Streator and Neff Indicted--Workingmen Prosecute Carnegie Officials for Murder 146-158 CHAPTER XIII. BERKMAN AND IAMS. Frick's Assailant Railroaded to the Penitentiary--The Iams Trial--Hanging by the Thumbs Approved by a Jury--The Mills Filling Up--Sermons to Non-Unionists--Strikers Go Through the Plant--The Relief Fund--Gompers Arrives and Makes an Incendiary Speech--Pittsburgh and Mahoning Manufacturers Capitulate--William and Robert Pinkerton on the Defensive 159-173 CHAPTER XIV. POLITICIANS AT WORK. A Suppressed Congressional Report--Sympathy Strikes Prove a Failure--Gompers as a Boycott Wielder--The Slavs Weaken--Plans of the Republican National Committee--Smooth Mr. Milholland Enlists Hugh O'Donnell--Honest John McLuckie Refuses to be Muzzled--The Milholland Scheme Falls Through--Outbreaks at Homestead--The Search for Pinkerton Guns--Mr. Frick Revisits the Mill 174-188 CHAPTER XV. TREASON. Progress in the Mill--A Quartette of Aristocratic Non-Unionists--Sickness Breaks Out--More Arrests--Jack Clifford Suspected of Treachery, but is Held Without Bail for Murder--167 True Bills Returned--Supreme Justice Paxson in the Saddle--He Orders Arrests for Treason and is Generally Condemned--Snowden Favors the Gallows for Homesteaders--Judge Agnew on Treason--Paxson Instructs the Grand Jury and Pronounces the Homestead men Traitors--Carnegie in Scotland 189-208 CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST BREAK. More Prosecutions--The Soldiers Withdraw--A Non-Union Hotel Dynamited--Homestead Figures in Parades and Gives a Democratic Majority--Slavs Weakening--The _Local News_ Predicts Defeat--Gompers Again--Sheriff McCleary is Harassed and Increases His Corps of Deputies--Lawyer Jones in Trouble--Schwab Succeeds Potter as Superintendent--Homestead's Last Riot--Striker Roberts Hints at Defeat--Mechanics and Laborers Go Back to Work 209-225 CHAPTER XVII. CAPITULATION. The Last Mass Meeting--Strikers Surrender Unconditionally--Cost of the Homestead Dispute to Capital, Labor and the State--Few Old Hands Get Work and Poverty Stalks Abroad--Noble Service of Relief Committees--The Coming of Santa Claus--Congressional Investigations Wind Up Without Accomplishing anything--A Batch of Useless Reports--The Kearns Anti-Pinkerton Bill Becomes a Law in Pennsylvania 226-240 CHAPTER XVIII. THE FIRST TRIAL. Sylvester Critchlow Arraigned--Pinkertons on the Stand--The Prosecution Makes a Strong Showing--A Suspicious Carnegie Banquet--Attorneys Erwin and Argo to the Rescue--An Alibi for the Defense--John S. Robb Attacks Mr. Erwin--The "Northwestern Whirlwind's" Magnificent Oration--He Captures the Court and Confounds the Prosecution--"Not Guilty"--The Backbone of the Murder Charges Broken 241-260 CHAPTER XIX. WEAVING NEW TOILS. An Epidemic Investigated--Detectives Charge Poisoning and Arrests are Made--Gallagher and Davidson Turn Informers--Dempsey and Beatty are Indicted--Hearings and Trials--A Tangled Mass of Medical Testimony--Mr. Brennen's Little Hibernicism--Defendants are Convicted and Heavy Sentences Imposed--Gallagher Recants and Then Reconsiders--Clemency Refused by the Pardon Board 261-279 CHAPTER XX. THE DENOUEMENT. Clifford Tried For His Life--Alibi Testimony--Attorneys Erwin and Anderson Win New Laurels--"Not Guilty"--Hugh O'Donnell at the Bar--The Homestead Leader as a Reporter and Peacemaker--Weak Testimony for the Prosecution--Major Montooth Ridicules the District Attorney's Substitute--O'Donnell Acquitted--The Carnegie Lawyers Abandon the Field--Berkman's Accomplices Disposed Of 280-295 CONCLUSION 296-298 [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE.] CHAPTER I. [Illustration: CAPITAL IN ITS STRONGHOLD] HOMESTEAD AND ITS MILLS--THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CARNEGIE FIRM--HOW THE "STAR-SPANGLED SCOTCHMAN" MADE HIS FORTUNE--HE LABORS FOR YEARS AND THEN LAPSES INTO LUXURY--H. C. FRICK'S CAREER AS COKE KING AND IRON MASTER--THE FINE ART OF CRUSHING STRIKES--CARNEGIE AND FRICK JOIN HANDS AND THE LATTER BECOMES THE MASTER-SPIRIT--CONDITION OF ORGANIZED LABOR AT HOMESTEAD. In a bend of the south bank of the Monongahela River, eight miles from Pittsburgh, nestles the thriving town of Homestead, a place of about 12,000 inhabitants, built up by the wealth and enterprise of the Carnegie Steel Company and the thrift of the artisans employed by that great manufacturing corporation. Without the Carnegie mills there would be no Homestead. Like the mushroom towns that sprang up along the Northern Pacific Railroad while the line was in process of construction and that died out as fast as the base of operations was shifted, so Homestead sprang into being when the site now occupied by the town was picked out by Andrew Carnegie as a producing center, and so, too, if the Carnegie firm were to move its works to-morrow, would Homestead be blotted off the map, or, at best, reduced to the rank of an insignificant village. The interdependence of the works and the town is absolute. The mill property covers 600 acres, bordering on the river, and includes thirty-seven acres under roof. The products comprise boiler and armor plates, beams and structural iron of various kinds. The manufacture of armor-plate for the United States Navy is conducted on a scale of unparalleled magnitude. From the huge hydraulic cranes lifting and carrying from place to place a weight of 200 tons, yet operated easily by one man, down to the delicate machinery in the finishing department, the equipment of the armor-plate mill is a marvel of mechanical perfection. The great beam and structural mills, the Bessemer department and the bloom and billet mills are also magnificently equipped and are conducted on a mammoth scale, in comparison with which the operations of other American steel mills are almost insignificant. [Illustration] Railroad tracks gridiron the yards and nineteen locomotives are required for the transportation of material. The repair shops cut an important figure and an army of blacksmiths, roll-turners, carpenters, tinners and other mechanics is employed to keep every detail of the working equipment in perfect order. The plant is lighted throughout with electricity. Within easy reach of the mills are the offices of the mill superintendent and his corps of clerks, draughtsmen and engineers. Eight handsome residences, farther back from the yard, are occupied by the assistant managers. There is also a club house for the use of guests and officers. The foundation of this immense concern, representing a capital of many millions of dollars, and employing nearly 4,000 men, was laid in 1880, when, according to the census report, Homestead had a population of less than 600. The firm which has made all this possible, which, by virtue of intelligent effort and phenomenal accumulation and utilization of capital has called into being a full-fledged American town, with schools, churches, prosperous mercantile establishments, independent minor industries and a well-organized municipal government, is controlled by two men, whose names have, through the events to be recorded in this volume, been made familiar as household words the world over--Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. Andrew Carnegie is a self-made man, the son of a poor weaver of Dunfermline, Scotland. In 1845, the lad, then 12 years old, emigrated to the United States with his parents and settled in Pittsburgh. He was put to work tending a small stationary engine, and afterwards became a telegraph messenger boy and, in course of time, an operator. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company made him clerk to the superintendent of its Pittsburgh office and manager of its telegraph lines. About this time he met Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping-car, and took a share in his venture. The enterprise was profitable and yielded what may be considered the nucleus of Mr. Carnegie's wealth. Again the young man was promoted, securing the superintendency of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania road. His future was now assured if he chose to continue in the railroad business; but his tastes, or rather his keen foresight led him in another direction. In company with his brother Thomas and others he purchased an established rolling mill, and from this grew the most extensive and profitable system of iron and steel industries in the world. Mr. Carnegie has frequently challenged public notice by acts of philanthropy. He has given free baths and a free library to his native town of Dunfermline, a histological annex, known as the Carnegie laboratory to Bellevue Hospital, New York; a free library and music hall to Allegheny City; a free library and music hall, costing more than $1,000,000, to Pittsburgh; a free library to Edinburgh, Scotland, and similar donations to Braddock and other places where he has business interests. He has a fondness for literature, has written several books, of which "Triumphant Democracy; or Fifty Years' March of the Republic" is the most pretentious, and at one time controlled eighteen English newspapers in the Radical interest. Mr. Carnegie married late in life and has since maintained establishments in New York and at Cluny Castle, Scotland, rarely visiting his mills. Estimates of Andrew Carnegie's character vary widely. To those associated with him in business he is known as a firm and considerate friend, quick to discern ability and generous in rewarding it. As an employer of labor he bore a high reputation for liberality and sympathetic regard for the well-being of his employees until the occurrence of the trouble at Homestead in 1892. How far he was personally chargeable with responsibility for Mr. Frick's iron-handed policy in that affair has never been positively determined; but it is certain that the relentless spirit shown by Mr. Frick cost Mr. Carnegie much of his popularity. The connection of Henry Clay Frick with the Carnegie iron and steel industries, did not begin until Andrew Carnegie had reached the zenith of his success. Mr. Frick, however, had already carved his way to wealth along a different line, and was himself a millionaire. His success was gained in coke, and he came to be known as "the Coke King." Coke is indispensable to the manufacture of steel, but for a long time its production remained a separate industry. The Connellsville region, lying about fifty miles south of Pittsburgh, was occupied by a number of small producers, whose cut-throat mode of competition was highly advantageous to the steel men. Starting with small holdings, Mr. Frick gradually increased his territory and the number of his ovens until he obtained a practical monopoly of the Connellsville production and was able to dictate terms to consumers. He further strengthened his grip on the trade by investing heavily in coal lands and thus acquiring an unlimited source of supply for his ovens. Mr. Carnegie perceived the rich possibilities of a union between the steel and coke industries, and, in 1882, bought a half interest in the Frick Coke Company for $1,500,000. Six years later, on the death of one of his partners, he induced the coke king to enter the Carnegie Company, and the interests thus combined have since been, to all intents and purposes, a unit. The details of Mr. Frick's early career may be recited in very few words. He is the son of a farmer and was born at West Overton, Pa., in 1850. After gaining the rudiments of an education in the common schools of Fayette County, he began business life as a dry goods clerk in Mount Pleasant. Leaving the dry goods business he became book-keeper in his grandfather's distillery at Bradford. He lived economically and with the money which he saved out of his salary he embarked in the coke business with A. O. Tintsman and Joseph Rist. Although barely 21 years old, he was the senior partner of the firm, which began with an equipment of 300 acres of land and 50 ovens. The opening of the Mt. Pleasant and Broad Ford railroad imparted new life to the coke trade about this period and young Frick took advantage of the boom to add to his firm's plant. The firm also built the Henry Clay works of one hundred ovens on the Youghiogheny River near Broad Ford. In 1876 Mr. Frick bought out his partners and continued the business on his own account. In the following year a depression of trade placed the lease of the Valley coke works at his disposal. The young operator put Thomas Lynch in charge, and despite the dullness of the market, kept the works going every day in the year. In the fall of 1877 Mr. Frick took into partnership E. M. Ferguson, the owner of a plant of 70 ovens, and the new firm operated as H. C. Frick & Co. A year later the firm leased the Anchor works and the Mullen works near Mt. Pleasant and admitted Walton Ferguson as a partner. In 1879 the coke trade revived amazingly, prices advancing from a maximum of $1.15 a ton to $4 and $5 a ton. The Frick Company continued to extend its business until, in 1882, it controlled 3,000 acres of coal land and 1,026 coke ovens. Meanwhile Mr. Frick organized the Morewood Coke Company, limited, and built the Morewood works of 470 ovens, the largest works in the region. Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited, were admitted into the firm in January, 1882. The Frick corporation now pushed its operations with such vigor that, in 1890, according to a semi-official statement, it "owned and controlled 35,000 acres of coal land and 43 of the 80 plants in the region, aggregating 10,046 ovens, three water plants with a pumping capacity of 5,000,000 gallons daily, and 35 miles of railroad track and 1,200 railroad cars. 11,000 men were then employed by the company, and for the equipment of its plants it had 23 locomotives, 72 pairs of stationary engines, 172 steam boilers and 816 horses and mules." Mr. Frick had several serious strikes to contend with. His plan of campaign was always the same--to crush the strikers by main force and make no concessions. The Coal and Iron police, an organization of watchmen maintained under a state law, the drilled and armed watchmen of the Pinkerton detective agency, and the state militia were pressed into service as the occasion demanded, and the shedding of blood and sacrifice of human life resulted on more than one occasion. Mr. Frick's character need not be analyzed at this point. It will be illustrated clearly enough as our narrative progresses. The Homestead mill and the Frick coke works, vast as they are, constitute merely a fraction of the Carnegie Company's interests. In addition to these the Company owns the Edgar Thompson furnaces and the Edgar Thompson steel works at Bessemer, eleven miles from Pittsburgh on the Pennsylvania railroad; the Duquesne steel works, on the same side of the Monongahela river as the Homestead works; the Lucy Furnaces, Pittsburgh; the Keystone Bridge Works, Pittsburgh; the Upper and Lower Union Mills, Pittsburgh; the Beaver Falls mills at Beaver Falls, 32 miles from Pittsburgh on the P. & L. E. railroad; the Carnegie Natural Gas Company; the Scotia ore mines in Center County, Pa.; the American Manganese Company, and interests in several large ore companies in the Lake Superior region. About 13,000 persons are employed in the various concerns operated by the firm, and of these about 3,800 are engaged in the works at Homestead. In June 1892, Andrew Carnegie, while maintaining the controlling financial interest in the firm, transferred the managing authority to H. C. Frick. At that time the firm was reorganized, the separate enterprises which had previously been conducted under the names of Carnegie Bros. and Company, Carnegie, Phipps & Co., and other independent titles, being merged under the control of a single corporation known as the Carnegie Steel Company, Limited. H. C. Frick was made chairman, the other partners being Andrew Carnegie, Henry Phipps, Jr., George Lauder, H. M. Curry, W. L. Abbott, John G. A. Leishman, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Otis H. Childs and sundry minor stockholders whose interests were conferred upon them by Mr. Carnegie by way of promotion. The power of the firm in the iron and steel industries was now dictatorial. On the fiat of the Carnegie Company depended almost entirely the price of steel in the market. Rivalry was dwarfed and competition nullified. Rarely in the industrial history of the world has a similarly powerful monopoly been built up on no other foundation than the combination of brains and capital, with such indirect aid as the protective tariff system affords. Against this tremendous power,--a power equal to the control of 13,000 men and more than $25,000,000 of capital, the men of Homestead were destined to pit themselves in a life and death struggle; how destructive and hopeless a struggle will appear from the story told in these pages. The men of Homestead, on their side, had comparatively limited resources to count upon in a battle against such fearful odds. They reckoned, to begin with, upon that species of _esprit de corps_ which prevails among workingmen, especially those of the more intelligent class, and which is the solid ground under the feet of organized labor. Not that the 3,800 workmen in the Homestead mills had a complete and comprehensive organization. On the contrary, out of this number, not more than one thousand were enrolled in the eight lodges of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers maintained in the town. These were the workers known as "tonnage men," because the nature of their employment permitted the graduation of their wages on a scale determined by the price of billets per ton. Outside the lodges were the mechanics and laborers, working, for the most part, for daily wages. At the same time, the joint influence of fraternity and of confidence in the force of organization was deemed sufficient to inspire all the Homestead workers, in and out of the lodges, to make common cause in the event of a quarrel between the lodges and the Carnegie firm. Should this emergency arise, it was argued, the firm could not find enough non-union steelworkers in the United States to take the places of its army of employees, and as a consequence, if the men went out on strike, the mills would have to be shut down and the heavy loss resulting would force the firm to come to terms. With this impression ingrained in their minds, the men smiled confidently at the suggestion of a cut in wages, and tacitly defied the new chairman, Mr. Frick, to do his worst. That the new chairman was liable to make some disagreeable departure had to be admitted by the most confident. Dubious associations hung around the name of this man H. C. Frick. He had acquired unpleasant notoriety by reducing wages in the coke regions, and by crushing the labor insurrections which followed by the employment of Pinkerton detectives and even by calling in the state militia. There was no dilettantism or liberally-advertised philanthropy of the Carnegie stripe in Frick's composition. Everybody knew that. He was a man of blood and iron like Bismarck, so the workmen said; cared not a penny whether his underlings loved or hated him, and rather preferred an opportunity to crush--crush--crush intractable working folk under his heel than not. Was this man placed in power by Andrew Carnegie in order to carry out at Homestead what he had carried out in the coke regions; to challenge organized labor by the submission of conditions which it could not accept and, on its refusal, try the old game of crushing the unions under foot? Did Carnegie shrink from the task himself and pick out Frick as a willing and capable instrument? Such were the questions discussed in the lodge-room and in the privacy of the domestic circle at Homestead during the time which intervened between the re-organization of the Carnegie interests and the next annual signing of the wage scale. Whatever conclusions might be reached, there was one thing certain at all events, in the not too penetrating judgment of the unionists: Frick might reduce wages, and Frick might fight, but Frick could not repeat in conflict; with the 3,800 brawny and intelligent artisans at Homestead the comparatively easy victories which he had gained over his poor coke workers. So said they all, and they believed it, too, as firmly as if it were Holy Writ. The feeling of ownership had a place in the reasoning of these simple people. Many of them had bought and paid for their homes and were pillars of the borough government. Some were still paying for their dwellings--paying off the mortgages held by the Carnegie Company, which had been in the habit of helping those who cared to build, and which even did a regular banking business for the advantage of its employees. It was clearly impossible that men of substance, heads of families, solid citizens of a prosperous municipality could be rooted up, as it were, out of the soil in which they were so firmly planted and beaten to earth by the creature of their labor--for without labor, it was argued, capital would be impotent and valueless. In this mood, with suspicions as to the mission of Chairman Frick, but with impregnable confidence in themselves, the men prepared to settle the scale of wages, which was to be agreed upon in the spring of 1892 and to go into effect on July 1. They sought no advance in wages, but it was a foregone conclusion that, if wages were to be depressed, they would offer implacable resistance. There was calmness in all quarters at this time. No smoldering embers of dissatisfaction; no long nourished grievances were in existence to precipitate a sudden outbreak. Mr. Potter, the superintendent of the Homestead mill, calmly discharged his daily round of duties. Mr. Frick sat in his comfortable office in Pittsburgh, and calmly mapped out a plan of some, as yet, unheralded campaign. Mr. Carnegie calmly continued to hob-nob with European celebrities and to indulge his _penchant_ for the erection of free libraries. There was not a cloud the size of a man's hand to mar the serenity of the horizon that bounded the little world of the Carnegie interests. The gathering of the storm had not yet begun. CHAPTER II. [Illustration: THE GATHERING OF THE STORM] HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION--OPERATION OF THE SLIDING SCALE AT HOMESTEAD--SUPERINTENDENT POTTER MAKES AMICABLE SUGGESTIONS _a la_ CARNEGIE--AN ULTIMATUM FROM FRICK--HE THREATENS NON-UNIONISM AND FORTIFIES THE MILLS--LODGES HOLD A SUNDAY MORNING MEETING--BURGESS McLUCKIE'S BOLD SPEECH--"HIGH FENCES, PINKERTON DETECTIVES, THUGS AND MILITIA"--POLITICAL EXIGENCIES GIVE HOPE TO THE WORKMEN. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers is, with the possible exception of the Association of Window Glass Workers, the best generaled and most substantially organized labor organization in the United States. One of the fundamental principles in the doctrine of the association is to avoid and discourage strikes; and so closely has this article of faith been observed that the number of strikes officially ordered in the iron and steel industries has been small in comparison with the record of most other labor unions. The adjustment of wage scales by the association is largely the affair of the lodges. The equipment and requirements of different iron and steel mills vary considerably, and hence, each mill or kindred group of mills must have a separate scale, adjusted to its needs. It is incumbent on the lodges to report their respective scales to the association at large through the medium of an annual delegate convention. Should there be a dispute in any district, the convention passes upon the merits of the case and decides whether or not it shall be taken up by the association as a whole. If not, the usual mode of procedure is to notify the belligerent lodge or lodges to yield the disputed points. If, on the other hand, the association decides to intervene, the chief executive officers are authorized to act, and it becomes their duty to exhaust all fair means of bringing the recalcitrant mill-owners to terms, before countenancing a strike. An official order to strike commits the association to the payment of weekly benefits to the strikers. The president of the Amalgamated Association is always chosen with special reference to his capacity for cool, stable, conservative leadership. Mental brilliancy is not so much sought after in the man who is called upon to fill this responsible position, as level-headedness and inflexible nerve. William Weihe, who served as president during the troublous days of 1892, fully met these requirements. A giant in stature, slow and deliberate in speech and action, and never committing himself without being perfectly sure of his ground, Weihe was just the man to preserve the dignity and influence of the association when the spectres of riot and anarchy stalked abroad and organized labor, smarting from a thousand gaping wounds, threatened to break down the bulwarks of law and order and to sacrifice the good-will of its friends. At no time throughout a contest which set men's souls aflame from one end of the land to the other did President Weihe lose his self-possession or his ability to stand between the solid fabric of the association and those of its friends, who, in the rashness of the hour, would fain have involved it in the ruin which engulfed the lodges at Homestead. The Homestead scale was prepared early in the spring. In January, the superintendent of the mill, Mr. Potter sent for the joint committee of the local lodges and requested that the men prepare a scale. It was not the policy of the Carnegie firm, Mr. Potter said, to leave the way open for a strike. If there were differences of opinion between employer and employees, the proper method of settlement was by arbitration, and it was, therefore, advisable that the scale should be presented early, so as to leave ample time for an amicable adjustment of disputed points. For three years previous, the men had been working under what was known as a sliding scale, an expedient which at the time of its adoption was regarded as a sure preventive of strikes. This scale established as the basis on which wages were to be determined, the market price of steel billets, in the manufacture of which the Carnegie Company was extensively engaged. When the price of billets went up, wages were to go up correspondingly, and when the price of billets went down, wages were to be correspondingly lowered. $25 a ton was agreed upon as the minimum. If billets were quoted below that figure, there was to be no further depression of wages. In other words, the men and the firm were practically in partnership, increased profits to the latter meaning increased earnings to the former, unless the bottom fell out of the market, in which case it became the duty of the stronger partner to protect the weaker. The circumstances under which this equitable compact was made are of interest in so far as they exhibit the very different temper of the Carnegie Company towards its men in the past from that which marked its line of conduct after Mr. Frick was placed at the helm. In January, 1889, the men, who had been working under a yearly scale, quarreled with the firm over the terms proposed for the ensuing year and a strike was declared. William L. Abbott, a man of comparatively mild and liberal disposition, was then serving as chairman. Mr. Abbott undertook to break the strike, and when the men resorted to riotous conduct, called upon the sheriff of the county for aid. The sheriff, Dr. Alexander McCandless, an official who enjoyed great popularity, and possessed the courage and tact essential in such an emergency, went promptly to the scene with a force of deputies recruited for the occasion. At the first encounter with the mob, the deputies let their courage ooze out at their fingers' ends and fled from the town. The sheriff, nowise disheartened by the desertion of his forces, took the best possible means of ending the trouble by constituting himself a mediator between the Carnegie firm and the strikers. Through his efforts a conference was arranged, and peace was restored through the adoption of the famous sliding scale, with the understanding that it would hold good until June 30, 1892. Mr. Carnegie, then absent in Europe, professed to be much pleased with the amicable settlement arrived at and the incidental guarantee of peace for three years to come, and for the time being the names of Sheriff McCandless and William L. Abbott were surrounded with a halo of glory. When Superintendent Potter, in January, 1892, spoke to the men about a new scale, he gave no hint of the prospect that the firm contemplated sweeping away the beneficial arrangement which had so long governed their earnings. As already noted, Mr. Potter touched upon the subject of possible differences of opinion and of the firm's desire that such differences should be settled in a friendly way. The shadow of Mr. Frick loomed up gloomily in the background, it is true, but there was really no occasion to think of shadows when the genial Potter presented himself as the very embodiment of sunshine. The ideas put forth by this gentleman bore the special brand of Mr. Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie was on record as being opposed to the use of force in settling disputes between capital and labor. In 1886, he had written for the magazines on this question, and the liberality of his views had elicited general commendation. Thus he said in the _Forum_: "Peaceful settlement of differences should be reached through arbitration. I would lay it down as a maxim that there is no excuse for a strike or a lock-out until arbitration of differences has been offered by one party and refused by the other." Mr. Carnegie declared further, that "The right of the workingmen to combine and to form trades unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into association and conference with his fellows, and it must sooner or later be conceded." Manufacturers should "meet the men _more than halfway_" and "To expect that one dependent upon his daily wage for the necessaries of life will stand by peaceably and see a new man employed in his stead is to expect much." This was the gospel of Carnegie in 1886, and, the shadow of Frick to the contrary, notwithstanding, it was not singular that it should have been the gospel of Potter in January, 1892. It was, then, with a feeling of reasonable security that the men went to work upon their scale. This, when completed, differed little from that of the previous three years. It was presented to Mr. Potter in February, but, strange to say, did not seem to please that worthy exponent of the Carnegie idea of harmony. The joint committee of the lodges waited frequently upon the superintendent in the hope of reaching some definite conclusion, but the conferences were barren of results. At length, to the amazement of the men, the Carnegie firm officially promulgated a new sliding scale, based on billets at $26.50 per ton as a standard, but fixing as the minimum basis of wages, $22 per ton, instead of $25 as formerly. As the billet market was now abnormally depressed--a condition which, it was claimed by many, had been designedly brought about in order to give the Carnegie Company a pretext for wage reductions--it was apparent that a serious reduction in many departments of the mill would follow the acceptance of the firm's propositions. June 24 was fixed as the last day on which the men could accept as members of the Amalgamated Association. After that date, the firm would not consent to treat with them otherwise than as individuals. In short, Mr. Frick wanted it to be understood, definitely and finally, that, if his employees did not yield promptly and with a good grace, he would non-unionize the mill and abolish the right of self-protective organization, to which Mr. Carnegie, six years before, had feelingly referred as "sacred." [Illustration] There was a flavor of coke region discipline about the Frick ultimatum which was not calculated to promote good feeling at Homestead. Nor did it. The men who drove the sheriff's deputies out of Homestead in 1889 might yield to milder measures, but the crack of the whip was irritating. "Are we to be lashed into Mr. Frick's way of thinking?" men asked one another, and the very thought bred insurrection. If there was a calm now, it was the calm that preceded a hurricane. As if to accentuate the sentiment of disaffection among the Homestead people, Mr. Frick accompanied the issuance of his ultimatum with preparations of a warlike character. A large force of men was employed upon the construction of a solid board fence, three miles in extent, surrounding the property of the firm between the Pittsburgh, Virginia & Charleston railroad and the Monongahela river. All the workshops were included within this enclosure. The offices and stables, situated on the other side of the railroad, were similarly enclosed. An elevated wooden bridge connected the two enclosures. The fence was surmounted with strands of barbed wire, and perforated at intervals, as if for the convenience of sharpshooters stationed within, although Mr. Frick, in his testimony before a committee of Congress, averred that the holes were simply for the purpose of observation. High in the air, at the ends of the tall mill buildings, twelve-foot platforms were erected, on which were placed electric search-lights, designed to enable sentinels to keep watch at night over every part of the mill yard. There was a cold and sanguinary determination about these provisions which boded ill for the workmen. Clearly, the redoubtable tamer of the coke-workers had made up his mind to force a bloody conflict with organized labor, and the wage ultimatum was his defi. One of King John's barons could not equip his feudal castle with more elaborate offensiveness than this nineteenth century ironmaster displayed in fortifying his mill, with the apparent intention of making war--actual war with arms upon the men of Homestead. So it was that the men viewed the preparations at the mill. The supposition that Mr. Frick might regard their disposition as one of invincible stubbornness, sure to lead to deeds of violence, and that his fences, barbed wire, loopholes, platforms and search-lights might be pure measures of self-defense was not entertained for an instant. The fortification of the mill was a huge threat--a challenge--an insult. With this exhibition of brute force held up before them, the workmen deemed their manhood, as well as the life of their organization to be at stake. Come what might, they must now burn their boats behind them, as the firm had done, and refuse to recede an inch from their demands. While affairs were taking this ominous turn at Homestead, the annual convention of the Amalgamated Association met at Pittsburgh, the session opening on June 7. Of the stormy conditions under which the delegates came together and which caused their deliberations to be protracted for an unusual period, mention is reserved for another chapter. Suffice it to state here that the delegates from Homestead duly submitted their scale; that it received the indorsement of the association, and that the local lodges were empowered to persist in their demand for the retention of the rate of $25 a ton on billets as the minimum basis of tonnage men's wages. This made it optional with the local lodges to declare a strike, although it followed by implication only, and not of necessity, that the strike, if ordered, would receive the sanction and support of the association. Excitement in Homestead mounted rapidly to fever heat. The first concerted public demonstration on the part of the men was on Sunday, June 19, when the lodges held an open meeting in the opera house. Some of the leading officials of the association and many delegates to the Pittsburgh convention from other states were present. The gathering included almost the entire working force of the Homestead mill. William A. Carney, First Vice-President of the association acted as chairman. The speechmakers, for the most part, while exhorting the men to stand firm, counseled moderation and respect for the law. A young vice-president of the association, Jere Doherty, touched upon the place of the wage-worker in politics and the efficacy of the Homestead struggle as a test of the protection guaranteed to labor by the Republican party. The crowning address of the day was made by John McLuckie, the burgess of the town, a simple, earnest, straightforward man, whose rugged eloquence told more forcibly with the brawny multitude who heard him than if it had been couched in the language of a Cicero or a Demosthenes. Burgess McLuckie said: "What brings you here this morning? Is it idle curiosity, or is there a real, tangible reason beyond? The cause of this wage trouble is not generally understood. We were persuaded to vote the Republican ticket four years ago in order that our wages might be maintained. As soon as the election was over a widespread feeling on the part of the manufacturers towards a reduction of wages was exhibited all over the land. As soon as the McKinley bill was passed, the article in the production of which we work was the only article that suffered a reduction. It is Sunday morning, and we ought to be in church, but we are here to-day to see if we are going to live as white men in the future. The constitution of this country guarantees all men the right to live, but in order to live we must keep up a continuous struggle. This is the effect of legislation and nothing else. The McKinley bill reduced the tariff on the four-inch billet, and the reduction of our wages is the result. You men who voted the Republican ticket voted for high tariff and you get high fences, Pinkerton detectives, thugs and militia!" There was politics in this speech, but almost every member of a labor organization is a politician in a small way, and McLuckie's bill of indictment against the Republican party struck fairly home. It had been freely charged that, when the McKinley tariff bill was being prepared, Andrew Carnegie had waited on the conference committee which put the finishing touches to the measure and secured as a return for his generous contributions to the Republican campaign funds, a reduction in the duty on steel billets, this product being the single standard of wages in his Homestead works. As the Carnegie firm controlled the billet market, there was nothing to hinder a depression of prices, as a seeming consequence of a lower duty, and this was to serve as a cover for the new scale and the Frick ultimatum. The plausibility of this story, and the bluntness with which McLuckie, himself a poorly paid workman of the Carnegie Company, put the political duplicity involved before his fellow workmen exercised a telling effect. Particularly did the pointed allusion to "high fences, Pinkerton detectives, thugs and militia" carry weight in the estimation of the workingmen present at that Sunday morning meeting. Nor did it stop there, for within the next twenty-four hours this, the first public arraignment of the Republican party and the Carnegie Company jointly was flashed over the telegraph wires to newspapers in all parts of the United States, and the country at large began to realize that there were two ways of looking at the doctrine of "protection to American labor," and that the difference between them was on the eve of receiving an impressive demonstration. The temper of the people of Homestead after the meeting of the lodges, was, in spite of the scarcely concealed militant resolution harbored in the breasts of the men as individuals, moderate and orderly. There was still time, they reasoned, for Mr. Frick to withdraw his defiant ultimatum. Nearly two weeks remained until the new wage scale would be enforced. In the mean time there would be conferences. Possibly Mr. Carnegie might be heard from over the cable. Perhaps even the great men who were interested in proving that protection protects would use their influence to obviate the astounding object lesson which would be presented to the world if the Carnegie firm, at the noontide of its prosperity, should reduce the wages of its employees. If there was hope in this way of looking at the prospect, it was a forlorn hope, and the most sanguine of the tonnage men, who were the first to be affected by a change in the scale, could not consider it otherwise. The cloud was plain to be seen, but of the silver lining not a vestige was perceptible. So the men went to bed on that Sunday night with McLuckie's bold words ringing in their ears, and a strong conviction deep down in their hearts that a crash was coming, that somebody was destined to go under, and that, come what might, the victors of 1889 would not show the white feather. CHAPTER III. [Illustration: LOCKED OUT] FRICK'S ALLIES--A PLAN OF GENERAL ASSAULT ON THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION FALLS TO THE GROUND--THE LABOR QUESTION IN POLITICS--DEMOCRATS MAKE CAPITAL OUT OF WAGE REDUCTIONS--FRICK CONFERS WITH A WORKMEN'S COMMITTEE AND REJECTS A COMPROMISE--MILLS SHUT DOWN AND ARE DECLARED NON-UNION--"FORT FRICK"--LODGES APPOINT AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE. GUARDING THE TOWN. About the time of the assembling of the delegates to the convention of the Amalgamated Association, the Pittsburgh _Post_, a Democratic newspaper, printed an article in which it was alleged that the impending conflict at Homestead was to be precipitated not in the interest of the Carnegie Company alone, but in that of all the iron and steel manufacturers of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. Homestead, it was said, was chosen as a battle ground, (1) because of the ease with which the mill property could be equipped for offensive and defensive purposes; (2) because the ruin wrought in that town by a disastrous strike would be more sweeping and complete than could be effected anywhere else, and (3) because the Carnegie Company had the largest interests to serve and should, therefore, be willing to bear the brunt of the battle. If war was declared, and the lodges at Homestead were broken up, the other manufacturers were to follow the lead of the Carnegie Company, defy the Amalgamated Association and reduce the wages of their employees to an extent varying from 20 to 60 per cent. The _Post's_ story received little credence when it appeared, but later on the course of events gave it a strong coloring of probability. Mr. Frick proceeded to fortify the Homestead mills with every evidence of inviting a desperate conflict. At the same time, the other manufacturers commenced to show their hand, those of the Mahoning and Shenango Valley, a district located about fifty miles from Pittsburgh, taking the initiative by announcing a general reduction of wages ranging from 20 to 60 per cent. The Pittsburgh manufacturers avoided taking a distinctly aggressive stand, but gave out significant statements to the effect that the condition of the iron and steel market rendered it impossible for them to continue paying the rate of wages maintained during the previous year. These symptoms of depression in one of the most generously protected industries within a short time after the passage of the McKinley tariff bill afforded a prolific subject of commentary to the opponents of the high tariff system. Both political parties made their nominations for the presidency in the month of June, when the labor trouble was waxing warm, and it became only too plainly perceptible that, since the Republican party took its stand mainly on the benefit resulting to American labor from the protective tariff, Republicanism would be held answerable by the working classes for the proposed wage reductions in Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact the efficacy of the tariff as a wage-maintaining agency had been grossly overdrawn by stump orators and over-zealous partisan newspapers. For years it had been dinned into the ears of the workingman that it was his duty to vote for Republican candidates because the Republicans in Congress maintained the high protective tariff and the high protective tariff meant high wages. But now, at the opening of a presidential contest, the workingman was confronted with what seemed to be proof positive that the high tariff had lost its virtue, and when the Democratic press pointed to the astonishing spectacle of wage reductions ordered by the "pampered iron barons" of Pennsylvania, as illustrating that the protective system was a sham and a fraud, what wonder that organized labor was quick to accept the indictment as a just one! The Democratic national convention did not lose sight of the opportunity thus offered, and in the platform on which Grover Cleveland was nominated at Chicago perhaps the most telling plank was that which denounced the protective system as fraudulent and referred to the strikes in the iron trade as an immediate attestation of the failure of "McKinleyism." Meanwhile, newspapers friendly to President Harrison sought to dissuade the iron and steel manufacturers from making the threatened cut in wages and precipitating a general conflict with the operatives. In Pittsburgh, especially, a bitter discussion was carried on, the papers controlled by the manufacturers persistently asserting that the tariff has nothing to do with the making of wage scales and that a general wage reduction and consequent strikes during a presidential campaign could not be construed as reflecting upon the efficacy of the McKinley bill and the Republican party's pledges to American labor; while the Democratic and independent press subjected the manufacturers to merciless criticism. All this was full of encouragement to the workingmen. They felt that their cause was expanding from the dimensions of a mere local trouble to those of an affair of national importance, affecting the destinies of the dominant political parties. At Homestead, which had previously been a Republican stronghold, the Democratic propaganda found special favor. "If all else should fail us," thought the men, "we can, at least, have revenge at the polls in November." And they kept their word. It is not within the province of the writer of this narrative to analyze the peculiar aspect put upon the case of the workingmen by political agitators for campaign purposes. Merely the facts are stated here, leaving it to the reader to make his own deductions as to the justice or injustice of the assaults on the American system of protection to labor provoked by the seeming selfishness of tariff-enriched manufacturers. Suffice it to state that every shot told and that, if the whole truth were known, it would be found that political considerations went a long way to prevent the other manufacturers from joining Mr. Frick in a body and using their combined resources to destroy the Amalgamated Association and strip their employees of all means of self-defense. It will be seen that the position of the Homestead workers was greatly strengthened by the common danger. Homestead was not to be alone in its fight. The entire Amalgamated Association was threatened, and the spirit of mutual helpfulness was, therefore, powerfully stimulated at all points. The good old unionist principle, "One for all, and all for one," was bound to receive a full and magnificent exemplification. On June 15, the convention of the Amalgamated Association completed the general wage scale for iron mills and presented it to the manufacturers' committee. The manufacturers responded by producing a scale of their own, embodying extensive reductions. This was the beginning of a dispute, stubborn on both sides, which was kept up long after the final adjournment of the convention, that body assigning the duty of conferring with the manufacturers to a special wage committee. The consideration of the scales for steel mills, including that prepared by the Homestead lodges, was not completed by the convention until June 23. On that day, a committee, headed by William Roberts, one of the most intelligent of the Homestead mill workers, appeared at the offices of the Carnegie Company, on Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, and was escorted to Mr. H. C. Frick's private room. Mr. Frick, General Manager Potter, H. L. Childs and F. T. F. Lovejoy acted for the company in the conference which followed. Mr. Roberts, acting as spokesman for his colleagues, presented the Homestead scale as approved by the convention, and explained that the employees were prepared to concede several points, admitting, however, of no reduction exceeding 15 per cent, in any department. The men were willing even to reduce the minimum selling price of billets on which the rate of wages should be estimated to $24 per ton, but the firm insisted upon the $23 rate, which, as previously explained, signified a serious depression in wages. The conference, after a discussion lasting several hours, broke up without accomplishing anything. The following day, June 24, had been fixed by Mr. Frick as the last on which the Carnegie firm would treat with its employees as members of the Amalgamated Association. The day passed without a conference. It was believed, however, that, in view of the concessions which the men had stated their willingness to make, even though they refused to make the complete surrender which Mr. Frick demanded, the firm would consent to fresh conferences with the committee. Yet the fact that the firm, which had sufficient orders on hand to keep the mill busy for many months, was canceling these orders, coupled with the extraordinary preparations for warfare which were being made at the mills, cast a damper on the hopes of the men. There was hardly a ray of sunshine to brighten the gloomy outlook. [Illustration: HENRY CLAY FRICK.] On June 25, Mr. Lovejoy, secretary of the Carnegie Company, stated through the newspapers that the conferences were at an end, that the firm had decided to make the rate of $23 a ton on billets the basis of wages, and that this rate would be enforced without regard to the opinion of the Amalgamated Association. It was also the intention to change the time of fixing the wage schedule from June to January, so that if a strike or lock-out should occur, the hardships of the winter season would strengthen the company's hand. So, at least, the men interpreted the proposed change. Mr. Lovejoy's statement, although given out in an informal way, was generally accepted as meaning that the ax was forthwith to be let fall upon the neck of organized labor at Homestead, and that no human power could stay the hand of the executioner. Still all was quiet at Homestead. June 25 was Saturday and pay-day, but the day was marked by less activity and bustle than usual. The stores were not crowded, and little money was spent. In the face of trouble, the end of which it was impossible to foresee, men carefully put away the contents of their pay envelopes. The wolf might come to the door before long and resources had to be husbanded. Few cared for the little Saturday jollifications common at other times. Wherever a group of mill men came together, the one theme of discussion was the ultimatum of the firm, the prospect of a wholesale discharge of union men on July 1 and the meaning of the warlike equipment of the mill property. A new and significant name was devised for the Carnegie enclosure, with its ramparts, watch towers, search-lights and other suggestions of war, and flew from mouth to mouth with the rapidity of lightning. "FORT FRICK." An ill-omened name it was, bristling with offensive associations; but its propriety as a descriptive epithet could not be questioned. Who was to occupy the "fort?" Whose guns were to be used through those loopholes? "Pinkerton detectives," said some, and the rumor that an army of "Pinkertons" had been hired and might already be on its way to garrison the works and shed the blood of the men of Homestead found ready credence and deepened the feeling of resentment abroad in the town. Many were disposed to believe that Pinkerton scouts had arrived and were making things ready for the coming of the main guard. On Tuesday, June 28, the company ordered the armor-plate mill and the open-hearth department shut down, throwing 800 men out of employment. This was the beginning of the lock-out, for a lock-out it was, and not a strike, as has been very generally represented. A strike occurs when dissatisfied workingmen cease work of their own accord and refuse to return until the cause of dissatisfaction is removed. A lock-out originates with the employing individual or corporation, and consists in the refusal to let the employees work until they come to terms with the employer. As Mr. Frick took the initiative, the trouble at Homestead was distinctively a lock-out, although, if Mr. Frick had chosen, he could have permitted it to take the form of a strike. It made little difference in the end which of the contestants took the first aggressive step. Once the Frick ultimatum was promulgated, a struggle was inevitable, and if the firm had not thrown down the gauntlet, the men most assuredly would have forced the fighting on their own account. The night of June 28 witnessed strange scenes in Homestead. The pent-up feelings of the men now found vent unrestrainedly. Effigies of Frick and Potter were hung on telegraph poles. Denunciations of the firm and its policy were heard on every hand. Knots of angry men gathered outside the board fence that hedged the mill enclosure, peered through the loopholes at the watchmen on duty within and talked defiantly of what would happen if the methods that triumphed over the poor, disorganized serfs in the coke regions were to be tried upon four thousand sturdy and intelligent steelworkers. If an apostle of non-unionism had ventured upon the streets of Homestead that night he would have fared badly. [Illustration] The next morning, at the call of the officers of the local lodges, 3,000 steelworkers met in the opera house. The chairman of the executive committee stated to the meeting that, at a conference of committeemen representing the eight lodges, held on the preceding evening, it had been decided to submit the question of shutting down the mechanical department of the mills to the steelworkers _en masse_, irrespective of affiliation with the lodges, and that the decision thus arrived at should be binding on all. This report was approved and a motion was made that a committee be appointed to request the mechanics and day laborers to quit work at once. A workman asked if the watchmen were to be included, and another answered: "Three years ago the watchmen wanted to come out and now they _must_ come." The motion passed amid tremendous cheering. The chairman of the executive committee, resuming his address, refuted the report spread through the newspapers that six or seven hundred mechanics and day laborers had signed a scale arranged by the firm. A committee of this class of workmen, he said, had waited on General Manager Potter and had been thrust aside pending the settlement of the tonnage men's wages. After this, the mechanics and laborers had resolved to cast their lot with the Amalgamated Association, and had signified their decision to the lodges. William Roberts, chairman of the conference committee, which had waited on Mr. Frick by authority of the Amalgamated convention, took the platform and detailed the action of his committee. Mr. Roberts told of the committee's offer to concede a basis of $24 and of the firm's demand that the scale terminate on the last day of the year. "We wouldn't agree to this," he said, "and I now ask you had we any right to do so?" "No! No! No!" shouted 3,000 voices. The speaker described how, when the committee presented as its last and only demands that a $24 basis be adopted and that the scale expire on the last day of June, Mr. Frick jumped to his feet and exclaimed hotly: "Gentlemen, that ends all conferences between you and this firm." "So you see," Mr. Roberts went on to say, "This is not a strike. The firm put a snag in our road.... We filled our contract. Now the firm has laid the entire mill off one day ahead of time. Has it lived up to its contract?" Again 3,000 voices shouted "No," and the action of the wage conference committee was ratified without a dissenting voice. A resolution was offered providing that, in case any man left Homestead during the coming trouble without permission from the lodge officials, the men should refuse to work with him on his return. The chairman asked all who were in favor of the resolution to rise. Instantly every man in the hall sprang to his feet and the resolution was adopted with three cheers and a tiger, followed with hisses for H. C. Frick. A motion to appoint a press committee, consisting of one member from each of the eight lodges, was carried after a discussion as to unreliable reports. The membership of this committee was kept secret for the time being. A whirlwind of excitement was roused when a speaker told of a report that 200 non-union workmen were coming to Homestead disguised in the blue uniform of Pinkerton detectives. "Watch the depots," was the unanimous cry that followed this alarmist statement. When, after a session of two hours, the meeting adjourned, there remained not the least doubt as to the unity of feeling among all classes of workers in the town. Every man was ready to enter upon relentless strife, and if there was a coward or malingerer in any quarter, he wisely held his peace. After the general meeting, the eight lodges held a secret session, at which an advisory committee was appointed, with full power to direct the workmen's campaign. This body, which played the most important part in the tragic drama soon afterwards enacted, was composed of the following members: David H. Shannon, John McLuckie, David Lynch, Thomas J. Crawford, Hugh O'Donnell, Harry Bayne, Elmer E. Ball, Isaac Byers, Henry Bayard, T. W. Brown, George W. Champene, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Coyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis M. Cush, William McConeghy, Michael Cummings, William Combs, John Durkes, Patrick Fagan, W. S. Gaches, Nathan Harris, Reid Kennedy, John Miller, O. O. Searight, John Murray, M. H. Thompson, Martin Murray, Hugh Ross, William T. Roberts, George Rylands and George W. Sarver. Special committees were appointed to patrol the river stations and all entrances to the town. The patrols were directed to cover their beats night and day and report to the advisory committee. Arrangements were also made to have the river patrolled in skiffs, and the steamboat "Edna" was secured to aid in this service. Headquarters were established in a commodious public hall, with accommodations for telegraph operators, the committee being expected to maintain communication with all parts of the country, so as to obtain instant information of any movement of non-union men designed for service at Homestead. The liquor saloons were visited and the proprietors requested to use special precautions against the promotion of drunkenness and disorderly gatherings, under pain of being required to close their establishments. Eight effigies of Carnegie officials were cut down by the committee, and notice was given that persons outraging decency in this manner in the future would be disciplined. The burgess of the town, John McLuckie, was informed that he might call upon the Amalgamated Association for whatever number of men he might deem necessary to assist him in preserving the peace. In short, the government of Homestead had now passed absolutely into the hands of the advisory committee of the Amalgamated lodges, and the committee was determined to use its arbitrary authority for the preservation of order and decency and the protection of life and property as well as the exclusion from Homestead of non-union men, better known to the unionist as "scabs" or "black sheep." On July 2 the entire force of employees at the Carnegie mills was paid off and served with notices of discharge. With the exception of a slight altercation between General Manager Potter and some of the men who were guarding one of the gates of the mill there was no disorder. Secretary Lovejoy now made his final statement on behalf of the firm declaring the mill to be permanently non-unionized. "Hereafter," he said, "the Homestead steel works will be operated as a non-union mill. We shall not recognize the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in our dealings with the men. The mill will be an open one where all men may work regardless of their affiliation with a labor organization. There will be, no doubt, a scale of wages; but we shall deal with the men individually; not with any organization. Such a thing as a union will not be recognized. There will be no further conferences with the Amalgamated Association." The mammoth steel plant was now deserted, except by a few watchmen and the government steel inspectors, with whom the advisory committee did not interfere. The locked-out men were perfectly organized and ready to fight against any odds at a moment's notice. A report that strangers were on the way to Homestead along either of the railroads brought a battalion of stalwart fellows to the stations on the outskirts. Mr. Frick might as well have undertaken to storm Gibraltar as to introduce a force of non-unionists into the town. Meanwhile the convention of the Amalgamated Association had finished its business, elected new officers, including a successor to President Weihe in the person of Mahlon M. Garland, and left it to a committee to fight it out with the manufacturers. This the committee was doing with considerable success. The ominous turn which affairs were taking at Homestead, together with the endless reproaches heaped upon the graceless beneficiaries of the protective tariff by Mr. Harrison's campaign managers had a most discouraging effect on the manufacturers' committee and it was plain to be seen that the "fight all along the line," inaugurated a month before, was to end in a compromise favorable to the Amalgamated Association. Mr. Frick was left to do his own fighting, single-handed and alone. CHAPTER IV. [Illustration: THE PINKERTON GUARDS] PLANNING A SIEGE--HISTORY OF THE PINKERTONS--HATRED OF ORGANIZED LABOR FOR SOLDIER POLICEMEN--FRICK'S COLD-BLOODED LETTER--THE SHERIFF OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY IS ENLISTED IN THE CARNEGIE FORCES--MILLMEN DISPOSE OF A SHERIFF'S POSSE--THE GATHERING OF THE INVADERS--DEPARTURE OF THE PINKERTON BARGES FOR HOMESTEAD. While Mr. Frick's men were busily engaged in perfecting a martial organization and putting the government of the town of Homestead on a war footing, Mr. Frick himself was not idle. He did not waste any time in considering projects for immediately introducing non-union men into the mills, being well aware that, if men foolhardy enough to take the risk of "blacksheeping" at Homestead could be found, it would still be impracticable to get them past the picket lines of the locked-out steelworkers, and that, even if a force of non-unionists could be piloted into the mill their presence would be the signal for an attack by the union men and possibly for the destruction of the firm's property. Mr. Frick had another plan--a plan suggested by his successful encounters with the Connellsville coke-workers. He conceived the idea of garrisoning "Fort Frick" with a sufficient number of armed and disciplined Pinkerton guards to hold any attacking force at bay and later on to bring in non-union workmen under cover of the Pinkerton men's rifles. How long this project had been maturing in the mind of the Carnegie Company's chairman cannot be told. Certain it is that he had made up his mind to carry it out long before he met the wage conference committee for the last time, and that when, on June 23, he went through the form of a discussion with Mr. Roberts and Mr. Roberts' confreres, he had not the least notion of coming to any kind of an understanding other than that which might be brought about by force. Mr. Frick was too well acquainted with the estimation in which the Pinkerton men are held by the labor unions to underrate the import of his action, and can hardly have been ignorant of the fact that in bringing on these myrmidons, he was making doubly sure of sanguinary times at Homestead. A sketch of the personnel and methods of the "Pinkerton National Detective Agency," as it is styled by its chiefs, will make clear to the reader the reasons for the hatred and contempt entertained for this body by workingmen everywhere. The agency was founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, a young Scotchman, who had been brought into public notice at Elgin, Ill., by his success in ferreting out a counterfeiter. Allan Pinkerton's fame as a detective became national. He organized a war secret service, was trusted by Lincoln, whose life he once saved; by Grant and other national leaders in war times, and aroused continual interest by his strokes of skill and daring. The enterprise from which sprang the Pinkerton "standing army" of to-day was set on foot in a shabby little office in La Salle Street, Chicago, and there the headquarters of the agency still remain. Pinkerton detectives came into great request and were soon engaged in the unraveling of crimes and the hunting down of criminals all over the continent. Allan Pinkerton meanwhile discerned a fresh source of profit and turned it to account by hiring out his men as watchmen for banks and great commercial houses. The "Pinkerton Preventive Watch," composed of trained men, uniformed and armed, and acting independently of the municipal police, was established. The emblem adopted by the agency was a suggestive one. It consisted of an eye and the motto, "We never sleep." As old age came on Allan Pinkerton and his business kept growing, he turned over the work of supervision to his sons, William A. and Robert A. Robert was placed in charge of a branch bureau in New York and William remained in Chicago. Agencies with regular forces of men were established in Philadelphia, Boston, St. Paul, Kansas City and Denver. By communication with these centres, the chiefs could control, at a few days' notice, a force of 2,000 drilled men, and this could be expanded by drawing on the reserves registered on the books of the agency for service on demand, to 30,000, if necessary,--more men than are enrolled in the standing army of the United States. When a large number of recruits is needed, the Pinkertons usually advertise in the newspapers asking for able-bodied men of courage, but without stating for whose service. In New York, prospective recruits are brought to a building on lower Broadway where the Pinkertons have an armory, stocked with Winchester rifles, revolvers, policemen's clubs and uniforms. After the number of men needed is secured, the addresses of the eligible applicants for whom there are no places are taken and they are notified to hold themselves in readiness for a future call. Men who have served in the army or as policemen receive the preference. Pinkerton detectives have no real authority to make arrests. They are rarely sworn in as special constables or as deputy sheriffs and the uniform which they wear is merely for show. Of late years they have been employed very frequently to protect the property of great manufacturing corporations during strikes or lock-outs. This is, without exception, the most trying and perilous service which they have to undergo. The pay is good, however, the rate agreed upon for duty at Homestead, for example, being $5 a day for each man. In the great strike on the New York Central railroad, which cost the Vanderbilt corporation $2,000,000, the item for Pinkerton service was about $15,000. The guards were posted at danger points all along the line. Conflicts with the strikers were frequent, and, in many cases, the guards used their rifles with deadly effect. On August 17, 1890, they killed five persons, one a woman. So freely were the Pinkerton rifles brought into play during this trouble that the people of New York state became thoroughly aroused and forced the legislature to pass an anti-Pinkerton bill. The agency was responsible for the killing of a boy during a longshoremen's strike in Jersey and at Chicago during the Lake Shore railroad strike a man named Bagley fell a victim to Pinkerton lead. The guard who shot Bagley was spirited away and never brought to justice. Pinkerton guards have done duty in the miners' strikes in the Hocking Valley, at the H. C. Frick Company's mines in the Connellsville region and at Braidwood, Ill., as well as in all the great railroad strikes since 1877. In recent years, the conversion of the guards into an irresponsible military organization, with self-constituted authority to overawe striking workmen has provoked a feeling of intense hatred on the part of organized labor towards these soldier-policemen. Attempts to abolish the Pinkerton system by legislation have succeeded in only a few states, New York and New Jersey among the number, for the reason that the corporations which find use for armed mercenaries have sufficient wealth and influence to control legislative action. Congressman Thomas Watson, of Alabama, a representative of the Farmers' Alliance, introduced a bill in Congress making it illegal for private persons to maintain a "standing army" to usurp the police powers of the states, and made a strong plea for its passage, but the measure failed. The great industrial corporations have a hold upon the federal legislature too strong to be broken by the insistence of common people. As has already been told, the men of Homestead entertained a profound abhorrence of the Pinkertons and were resolved to push resistance to any extreme rather than permit themselves to be whipped into submission by armed hirelings. They had no knowledge of Mr. Frick's dealings with the agency, although their familiarity with the Frick policy in the coke regions, coupled with the equipment of the mill property for occupation by a garrison excited a well-defined suspicion of what was coming. Mr. Frick gave the final order for a supply of guards in a letter written to Robert A. Pinkerton, of New York, on June 25, the day after his meeting with the wage committee from the Amalgamated convention. The order was given in as matter-of-fact a manner as if the Carnegie chairman were bespeaking a supply of coke or pig-iron. "We will want 300 guards," he wrote, "for service at our Homestead mills as a measure of precaution against interference with our plan to start the operation of the works again on July 6, 1892." "These guards," Mr. Frick went on to direct, "should be assembled at Ashtabula, O., not later than the morning of July 5, when they may be taken by train to McKees Rocks, or some other point on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh, where they can be transferred to boats and landed within the enclosures of our premises at Homestead. We think absolute secresy essential in the movement of these men, so that no demonstration can be made while they are en route." As Mr. Frick acknowledged in his letter the receipt of "your favor of the 22d," it was evident that the negotiations with the Pinkerton agency had been pending for some time. Immediately after having despatched his order for a Pinkerton battalion, Mr. Frick sent for Captain Rodgers, of the towboat Little Bill, and directed him to fit up two barges with sleeping accommodations and provisions for 300 men, who were to be taken on board at some point not then determined, brought to the works at Homestead, and subsequently lodged and boarded on the barges. He also notified the sheriff of Allegheny county, William H. McCleary, through Messrs. Knox & Reed, attorneys for the Carnegie Company, that there would be a strike at Homestead and that 300 Pinkerton watchmen had been engaged, and requested the sheriff to deputize the entire force; that is to say, to appoint them police agents of the county. The sheriff maintained afterwards that, on the advice of his attorney, he had declined to deputize the Pinkerton men until they should be installed in the mill and had reserved the right to act at his discretion when that time came. Mr. Frick, on the other hand, declared on the witness stand that the sheriff consented to deputize the men and assigned his chief deputy to swear them in. The train was now laid; the fuse was lit, and all that remained to be done in the Carnegie camp was to wait for the explosion. To disarm suspicion on the other side, however, Mr. Frick, as the crisis approached, gave out information leading the public in general and the locked-out men in particular to believe that he meant to rely on the ordinary processes of law to protect him in the non-unionizing of his works. On the evening of July 4, after a conference with the other chief officers of the firm, he furnished a statement to the newspapers alleging that there was no trouble to be feared, that the men were weakening, a large number of them being anxious to get back to work, and that the plant would be placed in the hands of the county, the sheriff being requested to furnish enough deputies to ensure adequate protection. With all his firmness, the doughty chairman of the Carnegie Company dared not make a clean breast of his program. The way for the _coup de grace_ had to be cleared by strategy and dissimulation. The locked-out men celebrated Independence Day with due patriotic fervor. The force of guards was increased from 350 to 1,000, the picket system being expanded so as to form an outline five miles in extent, covering both sides of the river. In the afternoon an alarm was sent in to headquarters. Two men had been seen landing from a boat near the works and were taken for spies. Quick as a flash a thousand men rushed to the river bank and inclosed within a semi-circle of stalwart forms the place where the suspects had landed. It proved that the latter were merely honest citizens of the town returning from a picnic across the river, but the incident showed how effectually the men kept themselves on the _qui vive_, precluding the entry of an enemy at any point. When Sheriff McCleary reached his office in the Allegheny County court-house, on the morning of July 5, he found awaiting him a formal application from the Carnegie Company for the services of one hundred deputies at Homestead. The Sheriff was discomfited by the demand. His predecessor in office, Dr. McCandless, had been forced to engage in a long and irksome legal battle in order to recover from the Carnegie Company the money due for the service of deputies at Homestead in 1889, and the prospect of a fresh dispute over the pay of special officers was not inviting. So Mr. McCleary, who was gifted by nature with a strong tendency to evasiveness, returned an evasive answer, and conceived the idea of going to Homestead with his own office force of twelve men and making some sort of dignified showing pending the arrival of that army of Pinkertons, which he already knew to be moving on the devoted town. The Sheriff and his little posse proceeded accordingly to Homestead and were received by the men, if not with cordiality, at all events with decent consideration. A proclamation was issued embodying the usual warning against breaches of the peace. Then a phalanx of strong-limbed steel workers escorted the officers to the mill and pointed out that nobody was trespassing upon or damaging the Carnegie Company's fortified territory. The sheriff stated that, under the law, the company should be permitted to bring in whatever men it chose and to operate its own works. The men responded that neither the county authorities nor anyone else would be permitted to bring non-union men into the mill, and, having thus emphatically signified their purposes, escorted the sheriff and his followers--all of them more or less afflicted with nervousness--to the railroad station and saw the little party safely out of town. Had the sheriff been less evasive, less nervous, less of a politician and more of a man, there was still time for him to avert disaster. He, as chief police officer of the county, had been informed of the coming of Mr. Frick's hired army. He could not fail to be aware that a collision between the Pinkerton men and the 4,000 steelworkers was bound to come, that blood would run like water at Homestead, that demoralization and disgrace, and perhaps even heavy financial loss to the county would follow, and that, therefore, to remain supine in the face of all this, to let the crash come and not lift a finger to prevent it was literally a dereliction of duty. There was no obligation resting on this official to keep Mr. Frick's operations secret. On the contrary, he was under a strong moral obligation to prevent the execution of those operations at all hazards by giving them prompt publicity and enabling the exhaustion of all available legal means of stopping an invasion of the county by armed mercenaries of a class condemned by law in two neighboring states and bitterly hated by workingmen in every state of the Union. It did not appear to occur to the sheriff that the hiring of Pinkerton detectives was an offensive arraignment of himself as the county's chief executive officer. The one idea uppermost in his mind seemed to be to steer clear of the whole unpleasant business as far as he conveniently could and to trust to luck and the Pinkertons to pull Frick through somehow. Decidedly a weak and inefficient man, this sheriff. For the time being, he had abdicated in favor of Frick and the Pinkertons and it would not be his fault if the devil were not unchained. And now from a score of cities came the Pinkerton myrmidons to the headquarters at Chicago, few among them knowing or caring on what mission they were bound, as long as they got their daily rations and their daily pay, but all comprehending that blind obedience was the watchword. Captain F. H. Heinde had been detailed to take charge of the expedition, and under his guidance the men proceeded from Chicago to Youngstown, and thence to Bellevue, on the Fort Wayne railroad, opposite the Davis Island dam, arriving at this point at 10:30 o'clock on the evening of July 5. Early in the day, Mr. Frick had issued final orders to Captain Rodgers, directing him to tow his two barges down the Ohio River to the dam in time to meet the battalion of Pinkerton guards. Captain Rodgers duly carried out his orders. With the boats Little Bill and Tide, each having a barge in tow, he arrived at the dam at 10 P. M. There he was met by Colonel Joseph H. Gray, Sheriff McCleary's chief deputy, who had been dispatched by the sheriff to "keep the peace," if his own testimony and that of the sheriff are to be accepted, whereas, according to Mr. Frick's story, his real mission was to deputize the Pinkerton guards and thus render the county liable for the acts of these strangers. At 10:30 P. M., the trainload of guards arrived; the men embarked in the barges; the Little Bill and the Tide puffed away as cheerfully as if they were towing a pleasure party, and in the stillness of the beautiful July night the expedition moved slowly in the direction of Homestead. CHAPTER V. [Illustration: THE FIRST SHOT] ON BOARD THE BARGES--FLOATING BARRACKS EQUIPPED FOR BLOODY WARFARE--UP THE MONONGAHELA AT MIDNIGHT--HOMESTEAD GETS WARNING--DEFENDERS AT THE MILL LANDING--FRICK'S ARMY REPULSED WITH HEAVY LOSS--HUGH O'DONNEL TAKES COMMAND OF THE WORKMEN--SHERIFF McCLEARY'S APPEAL TO THE GOVERNOR--FRICK REFUSES TO INTERFERE. The barges on which Captain Heinde and his 300 men embarked were primitive specimens of the boat builders' art, previously used for the transportation of freight. Unlike the ordinary coal barge, these were roofed in, and, were it not for the flat roof, would have exactly resembled Noah's ark. They measured 125 feet long and 20 feet wide. One was known as the Iron Mountain; the other as the Monongahela. These floating barracks had been purchased a week before the time of the Pinkerton expedition by an agent of Mr. Frick's, and quietly fitted up at the landing-place of the Tide Coal Company, in Allegheny City. The Iron Mountain was equipped as a dormitory, several tiers of berths being constructed on both sides and furnished with bed clothes. Two rows of cots occupied the middle of the floor. The Monongahela was converted into a vast dining-room. Two rows of tables were placed in the middle and board seats were provided. In the stern was a commodious kitchen, with a full outfit of stoves and cooking utensils. An experienced steward and a corps of twenty waiters were employed. At the last moment a number of mysterious looking cases were put on board. These contained Winchester rifles and had been forwarded to the Carnegie Company by Adams Express. Watchmen at the landing met all inquiries with the explanation that the barges were intended for the transportation of laborers to the Beaver dam on the Ohio River. It has been said that most of the Pinkerton men had no idea of the nature of their mission. The fact is that only the officers of the expedition comprehended the gravity of the work in hand. However, when the men found themselves being conveyed up the river in the close quarters which the barges afforded to so large a number, many of them became uneasy, and, weary as they were after their long trip by rail, but few were able to close an eye. As the barges approached the mouth of the Monongahela River, the lights of the two great cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny illuminated the surface of the waters; but no midnight wayfarer who saw the Little Bill and the Tide, with their odd-looking tows, dreamt for an instant that within those coffin-like craft was the Frick army of invasion and that, within a few hours, those same craft would harbor terror, bloodshed and death. The two cities slept on, unconscious of the thunderbolt that was to fall at the dawning of the day. When the boats drew near the Smithfield Street bridge, which connects South Pittsburgh with the city proper, there were, however, keen eyes to note their coming. A scout from Homestead, who was one of a detail appointed to look out for suspicious movements along the Pittsburgh wharves under the cover of night, detected the ominous procession and, hurrying to a telegraph office, wired the warning to Homestead: "Watch the river. Steamer with barges left here." On receipt of this news, the advisory committee prepared to issue a general alarm at five minutes' notice. The belief at headquarters was that 100 special deputies were on the way to take charge of the mill under orders from the sheriff. With the exception of the disabling of the Tide, nothing occurred to mar the serenity of the invading force until near daylight. Up the Monongahela steamed the little tugs, the barges gliding stealthily in their wake. Captain Rodgers, somewhat inflated with the idea of his dignity as commodore of a war fleet, stood on the deck of the Little Bill and chatted with Pinkerton Detective J. H. Robinson, of Chicago. The Tide being disabled, the Little Bill had to "lock" both barges through at Lock No. 1, where a dam crosses the river. At 3 A. M. the barges reached the B. & O. railroad bridge at Glenwood. Day was breaking, but a heavy fog overhung the water, so that the barges were not visible from the shore; nor could the watchers on deck perceive what was going on a few hundred yards away on the Homestead side of the river. Yet, while the signs of danger were hidden from the eye, there were manifestations, the significance of which could not be misunderstood. The voices of men, women and children were heard breaking in harshly upon the stillness of the early morning. Scout called to scout almost loudly enough for their words to be caught by the listeners on the water. Captain Heinde, although a brave man, and used to dangerous situations, felt a sinking of the heart at this unmistakable proof that the secret of the expedition was no longer a secret and that if a landing was to be made at Homestead, it would have to be gained by fighting for it. A feeling of alarm seized upon the green hands among the guards. There was danger in the air, and numerous as they were, what chance was there for self-defense as long as they were cooped up within four walls? It took the utmost tact and firmness on the part of the experienced guards, who served as officers, to calm the anxious ones and lead them to believe that they would soon reach safe quarters on _terra firma_. About this time, a horseman riding at breakneck speed, dashed into the streets of Homestead giving the alarm as he sped along. In a few minutes the news that barges, supposed to be filled with deputies, were nearing the town had spread far and near and, with one accord, the people rushed to the river bank. Here, for two hours that seemed like weeks, thousands of men and women waited for the arrival of the enemy--a dangerous enemy, they felt sure, judging by the manner of his coming. As the barges drew nearer to Homestead, the noise on the shore grew louder and louder and soon the sharp crack of rifles rang out, giving a foretaste of what was in store for the unwelcome visitors. Whether these shots, which were fired before the Pinkertons attempted to land, were intended as signals or were aimed, in a random way, at the barges has never been determined. There is no doubt, however, that the firing from the bank stopped as soon as the Little Bill and its tow drew up opposite the mill landing. This landing was on the beach within the mill enclosure, Mr. Frick having had the wire-topped fence carried down to low-water mark, so as to shut off all access by land. Above the landing-place frowned a steep eminence largely composed of slag and other refuse from the mill. At this point, also, rise the piers of an iron bridge, over which the P., McK. & Y. railroad runs into the mill yard. This bridge is familiarly known at Homestead as the "Pemickey." No sooner did the waiting multitude on the river bank perceive that the occupants of the barges meant to put in at the Carnegie Company's landing-place than, with a roar of anger, strong men tore down the fence that barred their path, and ran to the spot where, had they delayed five minutes longer, the Pinkerton men would have disembarked in safety. Prior to this time the workmen had religiously refrained from trespassing upon the company's property. It had been their set purpose to avoid the odium which would attach to any act suggesting vandalism or arbitrary assaults upon property rights. But now was not the time to think of conservative methods. Who could tell what kind of invaders were in those ugly-looking barges? Were they deputies whom the sheriff sought to bring in like a thief in the night? Were they--and at this thought every man's blood boiled--a regiment of Pinkertons brought there to repeat the Pinkerton exploits of a few years before in the coke regions? [Illustration: RIVER ENTRANCE TO THE WORKS.] What were the odds, one way or the other? Whoever the visitors were, they came with every manifestation of an evil purpose, and was not self-preservation the first law of nature, applying as such to a Homestead steelworker in danger of losing his job and, perhaps, his home? So the fence went down, and the straight road from the river to the mill was blockaded by a band of resolute fellows that neither Pinkerton men nor sheriff's deputies could hope to overcome. The scene at this time within the barge Iron Mountain, which had been towed close to the shore, was one of wild confusion. The plan of a secret landing had been frustrated, and there was nothing for it now but a hand-to-hand conflict against terrible odds. The cases of rifles were broken open and these weapons and revolvers were hastily distributed among the men. About fifty men were armed with clubs. Captain John W. Cooper, of the New York and Philadelphia division, Captain Charles Norton, of the Chicago division, and Captain Heinde, who had general charge of the expedition, supervised these arrangements. When all were in readiness for battle, a gang-plank was shoved out and the three captains stepped forward, with Heinde in the van. Twenty of the rank and file appeared behind them on the bow of the boat. At this offensive move, the Homestead men, most of whom were armed, shouted a fierce warning. "Go back," they cried, "go back, or we'll not answer for your lives." There were blue uniforms among the group on the bow of the Iron Mountain, and these told their own story to the excited people on the shore. For a moment the Pinkerton men stood at bay. The scene before them was one to appal the bravest. On the beach several hundred men and women--for mothers, wives and sisters had joined in the mad rush to the landing-place--some of them half dressed, some carrying loaded guns, some with stones or clubs in their hands; in the distance hundreds more rushing to the defense; in the background a huge embankment intercepting the passage to the mills; behind them the river and the chance of saving themselves by flight. Retreat, however, would have been ruinous to the prestige of the Pinkerton agency besides resulting probably in throwing upon the agency the entire cost of the fruitless expedition, for Mr. Frick would hardly be willing to pay for services not even fairly begun. So the warning of the workmen was disregarded, and, with a word of command to his men, Captain Heinde pressed forward. Suddenly a shot was fired--whether from the barges or from the shore has always been a mystery. Captain Cooper turned instantly towards the barges and in a loud voice gave the order: "Fire!" A score of Winchester rifles were discharged into the crowd on the bank with deadly effect. Several of the workmen were seen to fall. The first blood had been shed and now the one thought of the men of Homestead was _vengeance_, merciless and complete, on the strangers who had come to shoot them down. The volley fired from the barges was repaid with interest, and when the smoke from the answering discharge cleared away it was seen that havoc had been wrought on the barges. Captain Heinde had been shot through the leg; J. W. Kline and another detective were mortally wounded and perhaps a dozen others on the Pinkerton side were wounded more or less severely. The Little Bill was fairly riddled with bullets, and Captain Rodgers, having taken the injured men off the barges, lost no time in steaming away from his uncomfortable quarters, leaving the Pinkertons to land, if they could, and if not, to remain where they were and make the best of a desperate situation. Both sides now withdrew, the workmen abandoning their exposed position, where they offered an easy target to the marksmen on the barges, and establishing themselves on the heights, while the Pinkertons retired into the barges and proceeded to prepare for renewed action by cutting loopholes in the sides of the craft. It would have been suicidal to attempt another sally. One of the last of the workingmen to leave was an intrepid fellow who had thrown himself, face down, upon the gang-plank just as Captain Heinde came out, and waited, with revolver cocked for the advance of the enemy. If the guards had landed, they would have done so over his body. The leadership of the Homestead defenders in this crisis devolved, by common consent, upon Hugh O'Donnell, a man who, in outward appearance, showed none of the customary attributes of a labor leader. A young, handsome individual he was, pale-faced and black-moustached, and rather slight of build. His attire suggested rather the man of fashion than the horny-handed individual generally accepted as the correct type of mill-worker. O'Donnell, however, was one of the superior class of workmen; enjoyed a comfortable income, and owned his own well-appointed residence, over which one of the plumpest and prettiest little wives in Homestead presided. Of the great influence exercised by this man over his fellow-workmen there could be no question. "Hughey," as they called him, was admired and looked up to. Fluent of speech and quick of action, he was the right man to take control on an occasion such as this. Associated with him in the government of the crowd that had come together haphazard to repel the Pinkertons were Hugh Ross and Jack Clifford, both pugnacious and the latter with a strong trace of the daredevil in his disposition. O'Donnell's first design was to drive the Pinkertons away without firing a shot, and if the latter had heeded his advice and desisted from the attempt to land, there would have been no sacrifice of life and limb. But once the attack was made, the young leader saw that it was useless to plead for peace, and devoted himself accordingly to the task of getting the women and children out of the way and removing the wounded, among whom were William Foy, Michael Murray, Andrew Soulier, John Kane and Harry Hughes. The workmen now occupied themselves with the construction of ramparts out of pig and scrap iron. Enough of these were piled up to accommodate scores of sharpshooters. Men armed with rifles also took positions at various points of vantage in the mill buildings and a desultory fire was kept up. At the same time armed men appeared on the other side of the river and began a fusillade on the barges. The non-combatants--men, women and children to the number of about 5,000--thronged the steep hills which rise above Homestead, whence they had an unobstructed view of what was taking place in the mill yard and on the river. A few venturesome spirits pulled out in skiffs and fired into the barges at close quarters. The Little Bill crossed to Port Perry, opposite Homestead, without further mishap. There is a B. & O. railroad station at that place, and there Captain Rodgers and Deputy Sheriff Gray put Captain Heinde and five other wounded Pinkertons on a city-bound train with instructions to have them taken to the West Penn and Homeopathic hospitals. The burgess of Homestead, honest John McLuckie, issued a proclamation ordering the liquor saloons to be closed and calling upon all good citizens to help him in preserving the peace. As the burgess was a staunch Amalgamated man and himself a sharer in the common tribulation, everybody understood, as a matter of course, that the preservation of the peace, from his point of view, consisted in a united effort to make short work of the Pinkertons. While these events were transpiring at the scene of action, the telegraph wires were carrying the news of the battle to all parts of the country. In Pittsburgh excitement rose to fever heat. Sheriff McCleary reached his office early and, having come to the conclusion that, where 300 Pinkerton men were worse than powerless, it was useless for him to think of interposing, sent a message to Governor Pattison, briefly detailing the situation at Homestead and the inability of the civil authorities to cope with it, and soliciting "instructions at once." The governor promptly answered as follows: "Local authorities must exhaust every means at their command for preservation of peace." The sheriff, who had been hoping that the militia would be ordered to his relief, was much discomfited by this plain intimation that, as chief peace officer of the county, he was expected to be up and doing instead of collapsing under fire. Being a prudent man, however, he took no risks, but remained in the safe seclusion of his office. At the Carnegie offices there were no signs of perturbation, although Mr. Frick and his associates were early informed of the bloody outcome of their scheme of invasion. President Weihe, of the Amalgamated Association, urged a conference with the men as the only expedient which might be successfully employed to stop the shedding of blood. The answer to this humane suggestion was characteristic. It was a flat refusal. "Our works are now in the hands of the sheriff," said Secretary Lovejoy, "and it is his official duty to protect the property from destruction or damage. If it is necessary in his judgment to call out troops, he is the proper authority to do so. Everything is in his hands." This, at a time when the sheriff was publicly announcing that he was powerless, and when the chances were a hundred to one that the entire force of Pinkertons would be destroyed like rats in a trap, betokened very clearly that the sacrifice of life was a trifle in the eyes of the Carnegie officials compared with the sacrifice of the non-unionist policy to which the firm had tied itself down. The Pinkertons might be killed to the last man, but the Frick ultimatum must stand. No doubt, the firm also considered that the worse the turn taken by affairs at Homestead, the stronger the probability that the militia would be ordered out, and that, with soldiers on the ground, there would be no trouble about bringing in non-unionists. There was, then, nothing to be looked for in the way of humane mediation at the hands of the firm, and nothing in the way of masterful intervention at the hands of the sheriff. Four thousand infuriated steelworkers and three hundred caged Pinkertons were to be left to fight out their deadly quarrel without let or hindrance. The dictates of law and humanity were alike suspended upon that July day--the most unfortunate day in the history of organized labor in the United States. [Illustration: THE BATTLE AT THE LANDING.] CHAPTER VI. [Illustration: THE BOMBARDMENT] CANNONADING THE BARGES--SILAS WAIN'S SAD DEATH--THE LITTLE BILL RETURNS AND RUNS THE GAUNTLET--A CAR OF FIRE TERRIFIES THE PINKERTONS AND DRIVES CAPTAIN RODGERS TO FLIGHT--AMALGAMATED OFFICIALS ARRIVE--DINING UNDER FIRE--HORRORS IN THE GUARDSMEN'S QUARTERS--THE KILLING OF DETECTIVE CONNORS--DYNAMITE--SUICIDE ON THE BARGES--MESSAGES FROM ABROAD--CONGRESS ACTS. While the heroes of the battle at the landing were building breastworks in the mill-yards and keeping up an intermittent fire on the enemy, a busy scene was in progress at the telegraph office in the advisory committee's headquarters. Here a temporary arsenal was established and rifles, shot guns and ammunition were distributed to volunteers eager to take a hand against Mr. Frick's emissaries. Soon a new terror was added to those already menacing the Pinkertons. The dull roar of a cannon was heard proceeding from the heights across the river, and, at the first shot, a huge gap was torn in the roof of the outer barge. Another shot flew wide of the barges and struck Silas Wain, a young steelworker who was standing in an exposed part of the mill yard, killing him instantly. Wain's sweetheart, a young English girl named Mary Jones, to whom he was to have been married in a few weeks, almost lost her reason when the news of her lover's death reached her, and was delirious for hours. In consequence of this unfortunate occurrence, the cannon that did the mischief--a twenty-pounder--was subsequently shipped across to the Homestead side. Another piece of ordnance, of smaller calibre, was taken from the quarters of the Homestead Grand Army post and mounted at the pump-house of the county poor farm, adjoining the mill-yard. Owing to the elevation of the position, however, and the inexperience of the men who were handling the guns, it was found impossible to get the range of the barges and both pieces were ultimately abandoned. [Illustration: BEHIND THE BARRICADES.] As the morning advanced, the workmen began to realize that some more effective means than rifle bullets must be resorted to in order to dispose of the barges and their obnoxious freight. The Pinkertons took care not to expose themselves, unless when one more venturesome than the rest undertook to make a reconnoissance and emerged on the bow of either barge. As this exploit invariably attracted a hail of bullets it was not frequently attempted. About 50 of the guards, all of them old hands in the Pinkerton service, kept up a regular fire through the loopholes cut in the sides of the barges, rendering it unsafe for a workman to show himself outside the furnace-stacks and piles of metal used as ramparts. George Rutter, an old and respected Amalgamated man and a member of the Grand Army, forfeited his life by taking chances on the accuracy of the Pinkerton men's marksmanship. He was shot in the thigh and died from the wound a few days later. John Morris, another mill-worker, and Henry Striegel, a young man who was on the field merely as a sympathizer, met the same fate. Striegel accidentally shot himself with his own gun, and was struck by shots from the barges after he fell. Shortly after 11 o'clock, the Little Bill steamed back towards the landing-place flying the Stars and Stripes, Captain Rodgers having conceived the idea that the mill men would not dare to fire on the national flag, despite its being hoisted above a hostile craft. The captain's mind was speedily disabused of this idea. Volley after volley was poured into the little steamer, smashing the glass in the pilot-house and making the splinters fly in all directions. The man at the wheel, Alexander McMichaels, had to abandon his post and rush below. John T. McCurry, who had been hired the day before as watchman on the boat, without being informed of the kind of service in prospect, was shot in the groin, and Captain Rodgers only saved his life by throwing himself on his face on the deck. According to the story told afterwards, the Captain had purposed connecting with the barges and releasing them from their perilous position, but was glad enough to run the gauntlet with his own boat without attempting to relieve others. The Little Bill arrived at a moment when the escape of the Pinkertons seemed hopeless. A body of desperate men had formed the design of burning the barges, and commenced by setting fire to a raft composed of timbers soaked with oil and floating it down the river. A groan of agony was sent forth from the unhappy wretches in the barges when this messenger of death was seen drifting towards them. Some of the men, driven to the verge of insanity by the suspense of the morning and the dread of death at any moment, proposed to desert the barges and try to swim to a place of safety. One of the captains put a quietus on the plan by threatening to blow out the brains of the first man who endeavored to desert his fellows in the face of danger which menaced all equally. The burning raft failed to accomplish its mission. The flames which shot up from it when it was launched were gradually extinguished by the water and, by the time it reached the barges, it was only a charred and blackened mass. Nowise discouraged by their failure, the men on shore turned their hand to a new plan of incendiarism. From the converting department of the mill down to the water's edge where the barges were moored runs a railroad switch, forming a steep incline. A car was run on to this switch and loaded with barrels of oil, lumber, waste and other combustibles. A torch was applied to the inflammable pile, and the car of fire, from which the flames mounted high in the air, was sent whirling down the incline. Thousands of eyes were fixed upon this spectacle. The Pinkertons gazed with blanched faces and trembling limbs, confident that their last hour had come. Far back on the hills, women and children watched what was being done and shouted their approval. The sharpshooters dropped their guns and looked on with bated breath. Surely that fiery monster, looking like a thing of life as it sped downward, would crash into the barges and do its work with infernal effectiveness. [Illustration: THE CAR OF FIRE.] But no. Great as was the momentum of the car, it came to a sudden stop when the wheels embedded themselves in the soft soil at the water's edge, and the workmen were again baffled. The Little Bill, which, in the absence of the wheelman, had been knocking about aimlessly between the barges and the shore, was the only sufferer. The little tug was badly scorched, and those on board had to labor like Trojans to preserve her from total destruction. After this crowning stroke of misfortune, Captain Rodgers decamped with all possible celerity, and went on down the river to Pittsburgh. His departure was a blow to the Pinkertons, who were hoping that the Little Bill might tow them out of danger. Now that the tug was gone, the last ray of hope vanished, and it seemed to be a question of only a short time until the expedition, already badly shattered, would be burnt up or blown up. The Little Bill's departure was the signal for renewed firing, which was maintained so vigorously that probably not less than 1,000 shots were fired within ten minutes. At this time the scenes in Homestead beggared description. The streets were filled with women, weeping, wailing and wringing their hands and begging for news of husbands, sons and brothers. Females were excluded from the mill yard, and very wisely, for if admitted they would only have hampered the fighting men and exposed their own lives without benefit to anyone. In some places, substantial citizens gathered and discussed plans for stopping the conflict, the only drawback to which was that not one of them was feasible. Elsewhere groups of belligerents canvassed projects for the killing of the Pinkertons in a body. And all this amid the crackling of rifle-shots and the din of a legion of angry voices. President-elect Garland and Vice-President Carney, of the Amalgamated Association, arrived early on the ground and were met with due honors by the local committee. Mr. Garland's well-known figure was recognized at once by the men. He was deeply affected by the gravity of the occasion and expressed regret that things had reached such a lamentable extremity. One of the leaders escorted the visiting officials to the front and let them ascertain, by personal observation, how little use there was in striving to mediate between the workmen and the Pinkertons, since every shot fired by the former was meant to avenge the death of their comrades. Vice-President Carney said openly that if Mr. Frick had consented to waive the demand to have the scale expire on the last day of the year, instead of the last day of June, the wage question might have been amicably settled and the present carnage avoided. At noon a telegram was received at the headquarters of the advisory board stating that the governor had refused to call out the militia and that the sheriff had started up the river with a squad of deputies. The gratification of the people over the governor's attitude was not a whit keener than their resolve to send the sheriff and his deputies to the right-about if it was proposed to clear the way for the introduction of the Pinkertons into the mill. However, nothing was further from Sheriff McCleary's mind than a visit to Homestead while the bullets were flying. The sheriff held a consultation with Judge Ewing, of the quarter sessions court, and with other gentlemen learned in the law, but without results other than those exhibited in an order to close the saloons in Homestead and Mifflin township, which was sent out at noon, and in a second message to the governor. The latter communication embodied an urgent plea for aid, recited the episodes of the early morning at Homestead, declared that there were "no means at my command to meet the emergency," and that any delay in ordering out troops might lead to further bloodshed and destruction of property. The governor made no response to this appeal. By noon, the men who were posted behind the ramparts in the yard of the Homestead mill were almost worn out with fatigue and hunger. Most of them had been up all night without tasting food, and the strain upon them had been enough to tax sorely the most robust physique. At 1 o'clock a relief expedition was organized and a squad of men carrying baskets of provisions made their way into the yard and by dodging behind furnace stacks and piles of iron managed to reach their suffering comrades without exposing themselves to the fire of the enemy. Cheers from the throng on the hills behind greeted this successful maneuver. The men on guard, after eating a hasty meal, tired and begrimed as they were, announced their intention of staying at their posts to the end. From time to time, the Pinkertons waved a flag of truce, but it was not respected any more than was the national flag hoisted on the Little Bill. Sentiment had no place in the calculations of the men who formed the garrison in the mill yard. The Pinkertons had made the attack; they had been warned off and refused to go when they had the chance, and they had fired upon the workmen and taken many lives. Therefore, they need expect no quarter. So the flags of truce were shot down one after another and as the display of these symbols made it necessary for one of the Pinkertons to expose himself in every instance, and exposure invariably meant being wounded, this recourse was soon dropped altogether. The horrors of the position of these men increased every hour. The atmosphere of the barges was stifling. The relentless rays of the July sun beat down upon the roofs of the craft and raised the temperature within beyond the limit of endurance. There was scarcely a breath of air to carry away the noxious exhalations from the lungs of the 300 men within and the fumes of smoke and powder. Bullets, bolts, scrap metal and other missiles struck the frail structures on every side and gave promise of demolishing them piecemeal before sunset. Occasionally a missile found its way through a loophole and brought down one of the guards. It was in this way that Thomas J. Connors, of New York, was killed. Connors was sitting under cover in the outer barge, with his head buried in his hands, when a rifle bullet whizzed through the open doorway of the barge and struck him in the right arm, severing the main artery. He died in a few hours. This man's death is a matter of special interest, since it was afterwards made the basis of indictments for murder lodged against several of the Homestead leaders. The wounded Pinkertons were waited upon and helped as far as the limited resources of the barges permitted by A. L. Wells, a young student of Bennett Medical College, Chicago. Wells had joined the expedition for the purpose of earning enough money during the vacation months to help him comfortably through his next year's course. He was a stout-hearted fellow and did his best to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates around him, many of whom lay groaning in agony on the floor, amid pools of blood. The young man fortunately escaped injury and stuck to his suffering companions to the last, unmindful of his own comfort. Even in that Pinkerton barge there was room for genuine heroism. Shortly after one o'clock, a council of war was held among the men behind the barricades, and a new plan was agreed upon for the quick destruction of the barges. Dynamite. [Illustration: THROWING DYNAMITE BOMBS.] Here was a sure destroyer; one that could be trusted to do the work which the burning raft and the car of fire had failed to do. A supply of stick dynamite was obtained and a dozen of the most reckless men in the yard opened up a bombardment of the barges with the deadly explosive. But somehow the sticks of dynamite proved little more effective than the means previously utilized. Most of them fell wide of the mark and the few which struck the barges did slight damage. Guardsman Wells, in telling the story of the fight afterwards, held that the first stick thrown tore a hole in the side of the barge Iron Mountain as easily as if the barge were made of paper. If so, this was the only instance in which the dynamite was really effective. The workmen, who felt confident that it would be easy to blow the barges to pieces, were greatly disappointed. It looked as if they might keep on firing lead and iron into the vessels forever without wiping out the enemy, while the importance of ending the battle before nightfall was plain to all of them. About this time, it is said, some of the Pinkertons, unable to endure the agony and suspense any longer, eluded the vigilance of their officers and committed suicide by drowning. Detective Atkinson, of New York City, made this statement in a Pittsburgh newspaper on the day after the battle: "When we saw that preparations were being made to burn the barges, I loaded my revolver and made up my mind to blow out my brains should the boat be set on fire. I am just as positive that not less than a dozen of our men committed suicide during the day as I am that I am standing here. I saw four jump into the water and sink and I have been told that several others made away with themselves in the same way." The proprietors of the Pinkerton agency professed subsequently to have examined their roster and accounted for all the missing men, and that, with one exception, there were no cases of suicide. Atkinson's story, however, was corroborated by others, and is given here as having, at least, a semblance of truth. The news received over the telegraph wires at the advisory committee's headquarters was not of a character to dampen the ardor of the Homestead defenders or lead them to dread the accounting to which somebody must be held after the score which they had to settle with the Pinkertons would be wiped out in blood. First came the information that the sheriff had thrown up his hands and that the governor declined to call out the militia. Then messages of sympathy and encouragement began pouring in, and, as these multiplied, the conviction impressed itself upon the men that they were fighting not only their own battle, for the salvation of themselves and their families, but the battle of organized labor as a whole, and that the eyes of workingmen all over the continent were upon them. Perhaps this was an extravagant conception, but it was substantially justified by the tone of the telegrams sent in from far and near, proffering aid and bidding the men of Homestead stand to their guns. Even from far-away Texas came the news that artillery would be shipped to Homestead to help the cause of labor. To many rough fellows, heroic in their way and easily misled by circumstances, it appeared more likely than not, that the killing of those two barge-loads of Pinkerton guards was but the first step in a conflict of national extent, which would wind up in the coming of an industrial millennium. Hardly a man among them imagined that the law would seek atonement for the death of Mr. Frick's hired invaders. One of the most significant bits of news that reached the men was that conveyed in a dispatch from Washington, D. C., to the effect that Representative Caminetti, of California, had introduced in Congress a resolution reciting the benefits conferred upon Andrew Carnegie by protective tariff legislation and calling for the appointment of a committee to investigate and report upon the cause of the Homestead lock-out and its sanguinary consequences. There were some cool-headed and conservative people in Homestead who tried to assemble a mass meeting for the purpose of taking measures to stop the shedding of blood and to have the Pinkerton barges removed and sent down the river. The pleas of these would-be peacemakers fell upon deaf ears. In fact, it became dangerous to suggest a cessation of hostilities within the hearing of those who had experienced their baptism of fire and felt that lust of bloodshed which is said to be latent in the breasts of most men. He who talked of meeting the "Pinkerton butchers" half way challenged suspicion as a coward or a traitor. CHAPTER VII. [Illustration: THE SURRENDER] AMALGAMATED OFFICIALS AS MEDIATORS--PRESIDENT WEIHE CALLS A MASS MEETING AND COUNSELS PEACE--HUGH O'DONNELL'S SPEECH--THE BRAVE YOUNG LEADER PROCURES A SURRENDER--PINKERTONS RUN THE GAUNTLET--A SAVAGE MOB ASSAILS THE PRISONERS--ARRIVAL OF THE SHERIFF--THE FRICK TROOP OF INVADERS DRIVEN FROM THE STATE. At three o'clock President William Weihe, of the Amalgamated Association, came up from Pittsburgh, bearing a commission from the Sheriff. He was accompanied by Assistant President-elect C. H. McEvay, of Youngstown, Ohio; Secretary Shaw, Charles Johns and other prominent officials and members of the association. President-elect Garland joined the party. The visitors, whose mission was one of mediation, arrived none too soon. The same indefatigable individuals who had experimented with the burning raft and the car of fire, had just turned their attention to pumping oil into the water and throwing heaps of burning waste upon it, expecting to set fire to the barges by this means. It was also determined to pump streams of oil upon the barges with the aid of the borough fire-engines and, having once thoroughly soaked the craft with the inflammable fluid, dynamite, the men thought, ought to do the rest. There was a lull in these proceedings when word was passed along the line that the Amalgamated officials desired to address the men. The mass-meeting, which a few citizens of the town had unsuccessfully sought to bring about was now gotten together in a short space of time and with no appreciable difficulty, for the men entertained a high regard for President Weihe and were anxious at heart to hear what advice he might have to tender them. The meeting was held in one of the mill buildings. Mr. Weihe addressed the crowd, explaining that he came by virtue of an agreement with the sheriff to propose that the Pinkertons be allowed to depart with the guarantee that they would not return. The barbarity of continuing the battle until it ended in an absolute massacre was enlarged upon, and it was pointed out that the workmen were already victorious and could afford to rest on their laurels and to avoid tarnishing the good name of Homestead by committing what the world would regard as an outrage upon humanity. Mr. Garland, who had mounted on a boiler as a rostrum, followed in an earnest appeal to the manhood of his hearers. "For God's sake, brethren, be reasonable" he cried. "These men have killed your comrades, but it can do no good to kill more of them. You have doubtless had two lives for one already." A roar of disapproval greeted this deliverance. "We'll have the lives of the rest of the villains," shouted a chorus of angry voices. "Let us blow them out of the water or burn them alive." "Order, order!" cried others, and the rebuke was reinforced by a display of clubs and brawny fists which had the effect of silencing the turbulent element for the time being. "If you permit these men to depart," Mr. Garland continued, "You will show to the world that you desire to maintain peace and good order along with your rights. Public opinion will still uphold you in your struggle." Again clamorous disapproval greeted the speaker. Cries of "Kill them!" "Burn them!" were heard on all sides, but there were also a few who shouted "Let them go!" Mr. McEvay spoke next. "This day," he said, "You have won a victory such as was never before known in the history of struggles between capital and labor." Tremendous cheering followed this diplomatic exordium. "But," the speaker resumed, "If you do not let these men go, the military will be sent here and you will lose all you have gained. We have no assurances, but we hope for a conference if peace is established. It is certain that, after this lesson, Pinkerton detectives will never come here again." Cheering was renewed when Mr. McEvay finished and the cries of "Let them go" increased in volume. [Illustration: HUGH O'DONNELL.] Mr. Weihe seized this opportunity to suggest that a steamer be allowed to come up the river and tow away the barges. "Will the Little Bill come after them?" somebody howled, and once more pandemonium broke loose. Mr. Weihe's promise that an unobjectionable boat would be secured had, however, a quieting effect, and the meeting dispersed leaving the impression in the minds of the officials that the Pinkertons could be released. The news of what had taken place in the meeting traveled quickly through the mill yard, reaching even the tireless laborers who had been throwing oil on the barges and who were now engaged in bombarding them with Roman candles, sky-rockets and other fireworks--surplus Fourth of July stock obtained from the stores. Hugh O'Donnell seized this opportunity to make another plea for peace. Grasping a small American flag, the intrepid young leader sprang upon a pile of iron and commanded the attention of perhaps a thousand men, who gathered eagerly around him. O'Donnell began his speech cautiously, discussing the situation in such a manner as to feel the pulse of his auditory and make sure that he had their sympathy. After having assured himself of his ground, he unfolded a plan for a pacific settlement, suggesting that a truce be arranged, and that the workmen take the initiative by displaying a white flag. "Show the white flag? Never," was the unanimous response. "If there is any white flag to be shown, it must fly from the boats." This brought O'Donnell to the point he wished to reach, "What will we do then?" he asked. "We will hold them in the boats until the Sheriff comes and we will have warrants sworn out for every man for murder. The Sheriff will then have to take them in charge," said one man, and, singularly enough, considering the mood in which the men had been a few minutes before, this comparatively mild proposal evoked a general shout of approval. O'Donnell, satisfied that a peaceable adjustment could now be effected, stepped down and went among the men strengthening the resolution which had just been taken. In the meantime the Pinkertons had been holding a final conference among themselves. A majority favored surrender and forced the captains, who were still doggedly bent upon holding out, to give in. Once more a white flag was hoisted on the Iron Mountain, and this time it was not shot down. At the sight of the flag, the workmen cheered and cries of "Victory!" "We have them now," "They surrender," rent the air. O'Donnell, accompanied by two other members of the advisory committee, ran down to the river bank and received the message of the detective who acted as spokesman. The purport of it was that the Pinkertons would surrender if protection from violence were assured to them. After a short parley, this was agreed to, although the howls and imprecations of an unruly mob which had thronged into the mill-yard boded ill for the fulfilment of the guarantee. O'Donnell had more than his own comrades to answer for. Throughout the afternoon thousands of outsiders--some of them millmen from South Pittsburgh, some roughs and toughs who relished the prospect of taking a hand in a fight of any kind, some Anarchists, aching for a chance to strike a blow at "Capital" and its representatives--had walked into Homestead over the railroad tracks and were now mingled with the steelworkers. These strangers, of course, were careless of consequences and indifferent to the restraining influence of O'Donnell and those associated with O'Donnell in ending the conflict. The women, too, were not to be relied upon. After being shut out of the battle-ground all day, it was questionable whether or not they could be held in check when the Pinkertons were placed at their mercy. It is well to bear these facts in mind in connection with the painful scene which is now to be depicted. The Pinkertons, despite O'Donnell's pledge of protection, seemed to lose all heart when the moment came to leave the barges. Nobody was willing to be the first to go on shore, and, as if seized by a panic, the helpless wretches huddled together behind benches and boxes and waited, in fear and trembling, for a summons from the other side. The workmen, however, were not slow to make themselves masters of the situation. Hundreds of them rushed down the bank, crossed the gang-plank and clambered into the barges. On the shore a tremendous crowd gathered, hooting and yelling, most of them carrying weapons of some kind. No wonder the Pinkertons blenched. They had to run the gauntlet, and if the experience before them was not destined to be almost as trying as that attributed to the victims of the gauntlet torture in tales of Indian life, it was not because the mob did not show all signs of thirsting for a fierce carnival of revenge. The crowd on the shore formed itself, as if by a preconcerted plan, into two lines, 600 yards long, between which the men from the barges had to pass. As the first of the Pinkertons emerged from the barge Iron Mountain, it was seen that he carried his Winchester rifle. "Disarm him," yelled the crowd, and directly every one of the guards was forced to lay down his arms. Then the Pinkertons came out, in a dilapidated looking string, walking, running or crawling as best they could. The first few passed through the lines without molestation beyond hoots, jeers and imprecations. Suddenly the fury of the mob broke out. A man struck a detective with his open hand. The example was contagious. Clubs and stones were used with demoniacal ferocity. Women, converted for the nonce into veritable furies, belabored Mr. Frick's janizaries with bludgeons, stoned them, kicked them and spat upon them. The hated Pinkerton uniforms were torn off and cast into the river. Cries for mercy were treated with derision. As a means of identification the Pinkertons had been compelled to uncover their heads, and thus offered an easy mark to their half-crazed assailants. "Men, for the love of God, have mercy on me," shrieked a gray-headed man, wounded and bleeding. Mercy! The time for that weakness had gone by. The suppliant was an accursed Pinkerton and again and again he was struck down and beaten before he reached the end of those terrible lines. One young fellow, on leaving the gang-plank, threw himself on his knees, burst into tears and begged to be spared. Kicks brought him to his feet again, and he had hardly risen when he was felled to the earth by a blood-stained club. The satchels and other small articles that the Pinkertons carried were snatched from them and destroyed. Only those who were seriously wounded were permitted to pass without being attacked. While this exhibition of barbarism was in progress, Hugh O'Donnell and a corps of aids, representing the advisory committee, made frantic efforts to shield the prisoners; but the mob, for the most part, owed no allegiance to the Amalgamated lodges, and set the officials at defiance. In fact, several of the men who made up the hastily-formed escort were themselves struck and reviled for their humanity. The Pinkertons were led through the streets to the rink, or opera-house, suffering indignities all the way. Even children threw mud and stones at them. Arrived at the rink, the entire posse was driven in like a herd of sheep. Guards were placed and members of the Amalgamated Association, assisted by physicians of the town, attended to the wounded. Entrance to the rink was not secured without serious trouble. A crowd of Hungarians gathered here to take vengeance for the death of one of their countrymen who had fallen in the early morning skirmish. Women were among them and incited the men to mischief. When the Pinkertons appeared, a brawny Hungarian seized one of them by the throat and struck him in the face, while a stoutly-built woman belabored him with a club. A guard, placed there by the advisory committee, leveled his gun at the Huns, and shouted "Stand back, or by ---- I'll shoot the next man or woman that raises a hand against them. We have promised to protect them and we'll do it, even if we have to use our guns." This declaration provoked a howl of rage and cries of "Kill the murderers." Instantly a dozen guns were leveled at the mob, and disaster might have followed, had not Burgess McLuckie come forward, commanded peace and assured the crowd that the Pinkertons would be locked up and held for murder. No further trouble was experienced in getting the bruised and battered prisoners into their temporary quarters. A sorrier sight than these men presented when they were assembled after the horrors of the day's fighting in the barges and of the march to the rink could not well be imagined. By actual count, one hundred and forty-three of the survivors were suffering from painful wounds or contusions, and those who had by extraordinary good luck, escaped with a whole skin, were half dead from fear and exhaustion. They were kept in the rink under guard until near midnight. In the interim a conference was held between the borough council and the workmen's committee, at which it was agreed to let the Sheriff come to Homestead and remove the Pinkertons, whose presence in the town was a standing incentive to disorder. The Sheriff was sent for accordingly and arrived on a special train at eleven o'clock in company with the chief executive officers of the Amalgamated Association and W. J. Brennen, solicitor for the association. The Pinkertons were hurried into the Sheriff's train as quickly as their condition would permit, locked securely in the cars, and brought to Pittsburgh, where, after a score of the most dangerously wounded men had been removed to the hospital, the train was switched quietly to a side-track in the Pennsylvania Railroad yards, there to remain until the authorities decided what should be done with the Carnegie Company's troublesome agents. An hour or two later, it was decided, after a consultation held by the Sheriff with his bondsman, Chris L. Magee, a gentleman prominent in Republican politics, and the railroad officials, that the men should be sent east, and they were accordingly taken out of town, without considering the demand for their arrest and indictment. This was, no doubt, the best thing that could be done under the circumstances, in view of the strong feeling against the Pinkertons among the working people of Pittsburgh. When the Pinkertons had been driven from the barges, both vessels were subjected to a thorough search. Among the articles brought to light was a roster containing 266 names, divided into squads of 20, each in command of a lieutenant. Notes in the book showed that some of the men had been on duty at Walston, Pa., at Cleveland and other points where strikes had occurred. The barges were for a time thronged with curious men, women and children. Somebody said "Burn them." Then the sight-seers fell back; a few stout fellows carried out the last boxes of Winchesters and ammunition; oil was thrown upon the boats; a torch was applied to each; and, in a few minutes, the Iron Mountain and the Monongahela were enveloped in flames. The delight of the on-lookers at this finale to the tragic events of the day knew no bounds. They cheered, clapped their hands and even danced with glee while the dry wood blazed and crackled, and two huge columns of smoke rose lazily towards the sky and formed clouds overhead. Not until the vessels had burned to the surface of the water and the last hissing embers disappeared beneath the placid bosom of the Monongahela did the enthusiasm abate. The removal of the Pinkertons allowed the men of Homestead to rest for the first time in forty-eight hours, and the town now lapsed into its normal condition of quietude. Pickets were posted as usual to guard against surprise, but, aside from these watchers, the whole population sought repose, and by dint of sheer exhaustion, slept as soundly as if, a few hours before, carnage had not reigned supreme. Whether the sheriff of Allegheny county slept or not is an open question. His last act before going to Homestead to remove the Pinkertons was to set his clerks at work making out notices to leading residents of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, calling upon them, as loyal citizens of the commonwealth, to report next morning for service as special deputies at Homestead. The list was made up largely of editors, bankers, wealthy merchants and others of a class not likely to respond with alacrity. The outlook for a campaign against the fighting men of Homestead with such an army was hardly of a kind to promote wholesome slumber. Mr. Frick, on whom the responsibility for the slaughter at Homestead was generally supposed to devolve, spent the night at his palatial residence in the East End, under the guardianship of private detectives. Late at night, Secretary Lovejoy furnished a statement to the press. The Carnegie Company, he claimed, had offered $10,000 to any steamboat captain or owner who would go up the river and tow the barges down, but could find no one willing to take the risk. The company now left everything to the sheriff, with whom, quoth the secretary, "we cannot interfere in the discharge of his duty." CHAPTER VIII. [Illustration: AFTER THE BATTLE] CARNEGIE'S PROPERTY PROTECTED--CONFIDENCE STILL STRONG AMONG THE MEN--HOMESTEAD AS A NEWS CENTER--THE DEATH-ROLL--BURIAL OF THE DEAD--ANARCHISTS GET A SHORT SHRIFT--THE SHERIFF FAILS AGAIN--INTERVIEWING THE GOVERNOR--MARTIAL LAW IN SIGHT--PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS--OPINIONS OF NEWSPAPERS AND PUBLICISTS--A PRESS CENSORSHIP ESTABLISHED AT HOMESTEAD. At three o'clock on the morning of July 7, a committee of picked men made a search of the Homestead works, keeping a sharp look-out for stray Pinkertons, spies or other interlopers. Nothing was discovered. Even the rats were scared away from the place, where empty cartridge shells, wadding and discarded weapons--mute evidences of the bloody work that had been done the day before--were scattered around in profusion. Having completed its round, the committee retired to headquarters and prepared an order requiring the watchmen, who had deserted their posts when the battle with the Pinkertons began, to resume the guardianship of the Carnegie Company's property. The men had guaranteed protection to the plant and showed by this step that they meant to keep their word. At an early hour all Homestead was stirring, and anxious crowds assembled at headquarters and other distributing centers of information to ascertain what the new day was likely to bring forth. For the most part, the feeling of self-confidence which had inspired the locked-out men was as strong now, when a reaction might have been expected to set in, as it was at any time previously. Rumors of the coming of a fresh detachment of Pinkertons put the men on their mettle, and it was apparent that a repetition of Mr. Frick's experiment would be worse than futile. Nobody gave serious thought to the likelihood of prosecutions to follow. The Pinkertons were invaders, whose purpose was to murder, and the workmen were legally justified in repelling them _vi et armis_. So the people reasoned, and this line of argument seemed, in their judgment, to be the only one that could present itself to any fair-minded and intelligent person. Even if it was wrong to kill and wound armed invaders, they believed it would be preposterous to think of arresting and imprisoning several thousand citizens. The extraordinary interest taken in affairs at Homestead by the world without was demonstrated by the fact that, within the twenty-four hours elapsing after the firing of the first shot on July 6, this usually quiet little town was transformed into the busiest and most prolific news center in the United States. An army of newspaper correspondents from all parts of the country found quarters in the hotels and took possession of the telegraph offices. The ten daily papers of Pittsburgh had variously from two to ten men on the ground. The New York _World_ headed the list of outsiders with five correspondents and a special artist. The New York _Herald_, _Sun_ and _Mail and Express_; the Chicago _Tribune_ and _Herald_; the Philadelphia _Press_ and _Times_; the Cleveland _Leader_ and _Press_, and the Baltimore _Sun_ and _World_ all dispatched bright, able "specials" to the scene of disturbance with that admirable promptitude which makes American journalism a world's wonder. The Postal and Western Union Telegraph Companies also proved fully equal to the emergency. The Postal Company placed a corps of operators in a large room in the building where the Amalgamated Association held its meetings, and the Western Union, in addition to its regular office, established an annex in a restaurant, where two expert operators were kept busy handling huge masses of "copy," intended to be put in type, perhaps a thousand miles away. The excellence and magnitude of the work done by the newspaper men and telegraph operators at Homestead from this time on were unprecedented. Reporters from Pittsburgh were on hand to meet the Pinkertons when a landing was attempted, fraternized with the firing parties behind the barricades while the battle was in progress, interviewed the Pinkertons as they emerged from the barges after the surrender, and withal seemed to lead a charmed life, for there is no record of injury to any of the "gentlemen of the press." The latitude enjoyed by the journalistic fraternity was owing chiefly to the influence of Hugh O'Donnell, who had himself been a newspaper correspondent in a small way and who realized besides the advisability of aiding the press to secure accurate details of the struggle, so that the motives and actions of the workmen should not be injuriously represented. The gallant young leader had his reward. In a single day, the newspapers made him world-famous. The making up of a list of the killed and wounded turned out to be a difficult matter. The Pinkertons had been hurried away, carrying many of their wounded with them and leaving not more than a dozen of their number in the Pittsburgh hospitals. At Homestead, there was a tendency to conceal the losses of the workingmen. How many of the latter were badly wounded has never been definitely ascertained. The official list of the dead, on both sides, as it appears on the books of the coroner of Allegheny County, is as follows: Detectives--J. W. Klein, Edward A. R. Speer and T. J. Connors. Workmen--Joseph Sotak, John E. Morris, Silas Wain, Thomas Weldon, Henry Striegel, George W. Rutter and Peter Farris. Speer, who was a Pinkerton lieutenant in Chicago, was shot in the leg and lingered at the Homeopathic Hospital, in Pittsburgh, until July 17, when death ended his sufferings. Rutter also survived until July 17. He fell at the first volley, having been shot in the thigh and abdomen. This man was a veteran of the Union army and one of the most respected millworkers in Homestead. He possessed courage above the ordinary and died rejoicing that he had been able to lay down his life for his fellow workmen. At two o'clock in the afternoon of July 7, the members of the Amalgamated lodges and of the various other local societies were marshaled in attendance at the funeral services of their dead brethren--John E. Morris, Silas Wain and Peter Farris. The funeral of Morris was under the supervision of the order of Odd Fellows, of which he was a valued member. Rev. J. J. McIlyar conducted services at the Fourth Avenue M. E. Church, and delivered an impassioned oration, embodying a recital of the untoward events which had made Homestead a place of mourning. "The millmen," he said, "were organized in an association that enabled them to obtain just and adequate remuneration for their services. The existence of this union of the men was threatened by a body of Pinkertons, employed by somebody for the purpose. This is what has put this blessed man in his coffin to-day; a perfect citizen; an intelligent man; a good husband who was never lacking in his duty; a brother who was devoted and loyal and who will surely find his reward." Rev. Mr. McIlyar told how easily the difficulty between the Carnegie firm and its employees might have been adjusted had arbitration been resorted to. "But," he added, "this town is bathed in tears to-day and it is all brought about by one man, who is less respected by the laboring people than any other employer in the country. There is no more sensibility in that man than in a toad." While the minister was speaking the sobs of Morris's broken-hearted widow interrupted his address, and her grief found a sympathetic echo in the hearts of all present. Crowds lined the route to the cemetery and watched with tear-dimmed eyes the passage of the funeral cortege. On the way the hearse that bore the remains of Peter Farris fell into line. After the last sad rites had been performed over the graves of Morris and Farris, another procession was formed and all that was mortal of Silas Wain was removed to its resting-place. Towards evening a stir was created by the appearance on the streets of a little band of anarchists from Allegheny City, who, like vultures attracted by the scent of prey, were drawn to the scene of trouble by the hope of fomenting still greater disorders. The unbidden guests proceeded to distribute incendiary circulars, setting forth that the mills were the rightful property of the workingmen and should be seized as such, and calling on the good people of Homestead to become anarchists and strike for liberty hand-in-hand with their "brothers." Two of the agitators were placed under arrest and confined in the lock-up. The rest were promptly shipped out of town with an admonition not to return. It caused the workmen much concern to suppose that they might be credited with anarchistic tendencies; and, as a consequence, a species of censorship was established over the newspaper correspondents, with a view to preventing the publication of reports describing the Homestead defenders as a set of cut-throats and desperadoes, whereas, they wished the whole world to know that they were honest men, fighting for bread for themselves and their wives and children. On the night of July 6, as has been told in the preceding chapter, Sheriff McCleary set his clerks to work on the issuing of notices to prominent citizens to report for service as deputies. The papers were delivered early in the morning, but the results were far from satisfactory. Some of the editors, bankers, merchants, manufacturers and political leaders addressed were too far advanced in years to be physically fit for active service, at least one of the number being over 80 years of age. Others had too wholesome a regard for their own safety to risk doing duty at Homestead and preferred being arrested and fined, if a penalty should be required. Only thirty-two men reported at the sheriffs office, and these were unarmed. The sheriff dismissed them with the remark that it was useless to go to Homestead with so small a force. Governor Pattison, however, was not moved by the representation that an appeal directed to persons who were not likely to undertake police duty under any circumstances exhausted the powers of the county government. He had already taxed the sheriff with shirking his duty and the course of events after the battle did not seem to have altered his opinion on this head. But the sheriff had made up his mind to incur no danger that he could avoid, and, therefore, remained all day in his office, leaving the local authorities of Homestead to preserve the peace if they could or would. The only important move which he made looking to the restoration of order was to call a conference in the evening to consider a proposition to introduce deputies into the Homestead works. At this meeting, C. L. Magee, John F. Cox, a Homestead attorney, Burgess John McLuckie, Hugh O'Donnell, President Weihe and President-elect Garland, of the Amalgamated Association, David Lynch, William Roberts, Jerry Doherty and James McCrory, also of the Amalgamated Association, were in attendance. As might have been expected no definite conclusion was reached, beyond what was embodied in the assurances tendered by the Amalgamated men that they would do their utmost in the interest of peace. The persistent refusal of the Carnegie Company to lift a hand for the prevention of another outbreak or to exhibit any trace of friendly consideration for its locked-out employees was an obstacle in the path of the peacemakers that could not well be overcome. A conference of militia officers at the Seventh Avenue Hotel, in which the sheriff was also a participant, excited considerable interest. The purpose of this consultation, it was understood, was to consider the facilities for getting the citizen-soldiery into the field on short notice, in case the governor should finally decide to order them out. Much uneasiness was felt in Homestead concerning the chances of military interference. The citizens were naturally averse to the quartering of troops in the town for an indefinite period. It was apparent that this was what Mr. Frick was aiming at. His own hired troop having failed, it was his desire, with the aid of Sheriff McCleary, to force the governor to call out the troops of the state and place them indirectly at the disposal of the Carnegie firm. With the militia at his back, the Carnegie Company's chairman counted on easily filling the mill with non-union men and breaking up the Amalgamated lodges. In order to prevent the execution of this design and to offset the sheriffs representations, leading citizens of Homestead telegraphed the governor requesting him to take no action until he had conferred with a committee which would immediately wait upon him at Harrisburg. The committee, which consisted of Attorney John F. Cox, Hugh O'Donnell, J. H. Williams, Dr. John Purman and G. W. Sarver, reached the executive chamber at 10:20 P. M. on July 8 and remained in conference with the governor until midnight. Messrs. Cox and O'Donnell made strong arguments against the calling out of the military, assuring the governor that order was restored in Homestead and that the sheriff would be allowed to take peaceable possession of the Carnegie property. Governor Pattison's reply was to the effect that insubordination would be checked if it took the whole military power of the state and of the nation; but, he added, the rights of all parties to the struggle would be maintained without regard to the merits or demerits of the business differences between them, and the military would be subordinated to the civil power. In short, without stating positively that he would call out the military, the governor sent the committee home with a pretty firm conviction that Sheriff McCleary's supineness had done its work and that, unless conditions altered amazingly, the troops would soon be on the ground. It was learned afterwards that the governor had sent an officer of the national guard to examine into the condition of things at Homestead and make an accurate report. The experiences of this individual, who, being a stranger, fell under suspicion and had some disagreeable encounters with the pickets and workmen's committees, were, no doubt, the real occasion of the governor's action; for it is certain that Sheriff McCleary's pleading telegrams had little weight at Harrisburg. In the meantime, the aspect of affairs at Homestead became, if anything, more warlike. After the burial of their dead comrades had been attended to, the men set about strengthening their defenses, so as to guard against any attack, whether from Pinkertons or others. The fence around the mill-yard was repaired; the picket lines were restored and reinforced and arms and ammunition were freely distributed. Scouts were sent out with instructions to post themselves in the railroad yards around Pittsburgh and at points along the river and to give the alarm at the approach of an invading party of any description. The military organization of the men was well-nigh perfect, and it was manifestly impossible that they could be surprised. But one alarm was given during the night. At 1 A. M. the ringing of bells and the blowing of whistles aroused the town, and the works were quickly surrounded by men carrying loaded rifles. When it was ascertained that the alarm was a false one, the crowd just as quickly dispersed and from a state of wild excitement the town lapsed back into peace and quietude. Much encouragement was given to the men by the interest taken in their cause not only by organized labor throughout the land but by some of the most noted men in public life. Congress entered into the discussion of the Homestead struggle with extraordinary zest. Representative Camminetti opened the ball in the lower house on July 6, and on the following day Mr. Palmer, of Illinois, made a fiery speech in the senate, declaring the Pinkerton invasion to be an insult to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that the coercion of wage-workers by an armed force was reprehensible and called for the sternest condemnation. Mr. Palmer maintained further that the workmen of Homestead, having built up the mills by their labor, had a right to insist upon, permanency of employment and reasonable compensation. Mr. Voorhees, of Indiana, argued that the Homestead troubles were the direct result of the Republican tariff system, by which the iron barons of Pennsylvania were heavily protected with a pretended understanding that the workingman would get his share of the benefits conferred. Mr. Carnegie, the speaker said, had done his part by sending an armed mob to shoot down his employees if they refused to serve for reduced wages or to abandon their jobs to others whose services could be had for less money. The Pinkertons had been killed by men acting in self-defense, and it was his only regret that Carnegie himself had not been at the head of that squad "instead of skulking in his castle in Scotland." Republican senators responded to these speeches, defending the protective tariff, but emphatically repudiating Pinkertonism. While these proceedings were going on in the senate, the house busied itself with arrangements to send a committee to Homestead, and several speakers also took occasion to denounce the employment of Pinkerton trained bands as contrary to the spirit of American institutions. The press of the country was almost a unit in deploring the harsh methods employed by the Carnegie Company and in demanding legislation prohibiting the maintainence of a Pinkerton "standing army" and its utilization in labor troubles. The New York _World_ suggested that the dispute at Homestead be settled by referring it to a board of arbitration, to be composed of Governor McKinley, of Ohio; Governor Pattison, of Pennsylvania, and Terence V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor. The New York _Sun_ stood alone among the Democratic papers in upholding Mr. Frick and the Pinkertons. General B. F. Butler, whose reputation as a constitutional lawyer gave special significance to his remarks, expressed the opinion that the Carnegie Company should be held legally responsible for the provocation of bloodshed, since it had prepared for riot and sent an armed expedition to precipitate it. In his judgment, the government should cause the Pinkerton forces to be disbanded. General Weaver, the nominee of the People's Party for president, pronounced the outbreak an illustration of the subjugation of the Republic to corporate despotism. "When Rome was near her fall," he said, "the wealthy barons had their braves. Our corporate barons have their Pinkertons.... The frightful condition of affairs in Pennsylvania will strike the whole country like an alarm bell at midnight." The newspapers containing these expressions were scanned with avidity by the locked-out men, and, at the same time the scrutiny exercised over the reporters was made all the more vigorous as it became apparent even to those of limited intelligence that Homestead was now the focus of world-wide observation, and that the judgment formed abroad depended entirely on the carefulness and veracity of the correspondents. Some of the latter protested hotly against what they regarded as unwarrantable interference with their work, but protests counted for nothing. Spies and impostors had slipped into town in the guise of newspaper men and the committeemen of the lodges deemed it necessary to supervise with the utmost vigor the work of those whose credentials were accepted, especially since the reporters were necessarily aware of the identity of the most active combatants and were in a position to betray secrets which might be used afterwards with fatal effect. Several correspondents who were suspected of making a questionable use of their opportunities were arrested and driven out of town, and those who were allowed to remain, had to wear badges provided for them by the committeemen. That there was reasonable foundation for these precautions was attested later on when it turned out that a few men who professed to represent reputable journals were in the pay of the Carnegie Company. One of these spies held credentials from a well known Chicago newspaper. CHAPTER IX. [Illustration: SOLDIERS TO THE FRONT.] THE SHERIFF'S LAST EFFORT--MR. FRICK ISSUES A STATEMENT AND THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION RESPONDS--POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS INDORSE THE HOMESTEAD MEN--INTERVIEWING CARNEGIE--CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS--GOVERNOR PATTISON ORDERS OUT THE NATIONAL GUARD--STRENGTH OF THE MILITIA--LOCKED-OUT MEN PREPARE TO WELCOME THE BLUE-COATS--A SPEECH THAT BURGESS McLUCKIE NEVER DELIVERED. With the exception of alarms caused by rumors that Pinkertons were coming in force, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 8, 9 and 10, were comparatively uneventful days at Homestead. On Friday morning Harris Striegel, a lad of 19, who had been among the first to fall, was buried with solemn ceremonies. In the afternoon a mass meeting was held at the rink, under the auspices of President Weihe and other officers of the Amalgamated Association. William J. Brennen, attorney for the Association, addressed the men, advising them to let the sheriff take possession of the works. If they refused to do this, he said, the militia would be ordered out, and then, if resistance should be offered, the troops would undoubtedly fire upon the citizens at a fearful cost of human life. Other speakers took the same ground as Mr. Brennen, and the disposition of the men seemed favorable to the admission of the sheriff and a posse of unarmed deputies. Nevertheless, the meeting adjourned without taking definite action. Sheriff McCleary arrived in the town shortly after the adjournment of the meeting and was met by Dr. Gladden and five business men. The sheriff said that at the conference held in his office the night before he had received from attorney Cox and Dr. Gladden a list of twenty business men of Homestead who would serve as deputies. Only six out of the twenty were on hand to serve. What was there for him to do but to go home again? A large crowd surrounded the speaker, listening to his remarks, and followed him wherever he went. One of the locked-out men, a turbulent individual, named Burke, accused the sheriff of double-dealing and abused him roundly. Mr. McCleary hastened to get out of his uncomfortable quarters and boarded the first train for Pittsburgh. The Amalgamated leaders devoted considerable time to the discussion among themselves of an interview given by Mr. Frick to the Philadelphia _Press_ and published simultaneously in the Pittsburgh morning papers. This deliverance conveyed a carefully prepared history of the trouble between the Carnegie firm and its workmen, justified every act of the former, condemned every act of the latter, and declared that the firm would never again recognize trades unions. The principal points in Mr. Frick's defense were these: 1.--That $23 a ton for billets was a reasonable minimum on which to base wages, and that its acceptance should follow from the fact that the introduction of new machinery into the mills, at great expense, had enabled the men to increase their output and consequently to increase their earnings. 2.--That the expiration of the sliding scale on June 30 was embarrassing, because, in order to make contracts for the year, the firm should be informed on January 1 of the rates of wages to be paid. 3.--That the improvements already referred to warranted a decrease in tonnage rates, and that, even allowing for this decrease, the tonnage men would make more money than they did when the sliding scale went into effect in 1889. 4.--That there was no question of starvation wages, since the reductions proposed would affect only 325 men out of 3,800[A], and would merely bring the wages of these men to an equality with those paid in other mills operated with union labor but not possessing the improved appliances of the Carnegie plant. [A] The event shows that Mr. Frick cannot have been sincere in this statement. Wages have been seriously depressed in almost all departments of the Homestead mill. 5.--That in the non-union mills operated by the Carnegie Company, good wages were paid and the employees were contented. An answer to Mr. Frick's statement was drawn up by the workmen and published on the following day. The arguments in rebuttal were briefly as follows: 1.--That, as the workingmen do not sell the product of their labor, they must, under a sliding scale, protect themselves by requiring a minimum basis of wage-rates, which should not fall so low as to involve the payment of extremely low wages. 2.--That the enjoyment of fair rates of wages by the non-union workmen at Braddock and Duquesne was due to the fixing of a standard by the Amalgamated Association, below which the wages of non-unionists could not decently be permitted to fall. 3.--That, in preparing the scale, the workmen had made full allowance for improved machinery, not forgetting that the improvements had displaced many men, and thus, in a manner, repaid the cost of the investment. If there had been a misunderstanding on this head, it could have been adjusted by fair discussion, but fair discussion was impossible with an employer who declined to confer. 4.--That, of the 3,800 men employed, all or nearly all were affected by one or the other of the changes proposed, to-wit: a reduction in the minimum, another reduction in the proportionate rate of pay (thus making a double reduction) and the termination of the scale on December 31, 1893, instead of June 30, 1894. In concluding their answer, the workmen said, "If argument and honest reasoning were substituted for the reserve and coldness of manner seen in the company's present attitude, there might be reason to expect an end of this deplorable state of affairs." On Saturday, the Democratic Committee of Allegheny County met in Pittsburgh at the call of its chairman, William J. Brennen, Esq., the attorney for the Amalgamated Association, and, after the completion of routine business, adopted, by an unanimous vote, resolutions sympathizing with the men of Homestead in their efforts to "maintain American and resist European pauper wages," condoling with the friends of those who had been "shot down by the hirelings of a greedy and arbitrary combination of capital" and denouncing Pinkertonism. These resolutions were presented by Jere Dougherty, of the Amalgamated Association. Resolutions of similar tenor were adopted by all the labor unions in Allegheny County, and thousands of lodges in other localities placed themselves on record to the same purpose and, in most cases, coupled their expressions of sympathy and endorsement with offers of financial support. The South Side Glassworkers' Union, of Pittsburgh, demanded that the city councils reject Andrew Carnegie's gift of $1,000,000 for a free library, since the library would be paid for by the reduction of workingmen's earnings. This home-thrust was repeated by scores of other unions in and around Pittsburgh, and, as a consequence, the councils let public business go to the wall and avoided holding a meeting until the excitement had simmered down. The fact is that, since the gift had been accepted, the money received and deposited to the order of a special commission, and some of it already spent, there was no way of returning it; but anyhow the councils did not venture on a discussion of the question, which must have led to a division on pro-Carnegie and anti-Carnegie lines. At Columbus, O., 2,000 workmen met in the statehouse yard and passed resolutions calling upon the Pennsylvania authorities and the United States Congress to exterminate the Pinkerton system. At Chicago, representatives of 20,000 men engaged in the building trades discussed the propriety of taking up arms and marching to the relief of Homestead. Even in England, the trades unions entered protest against the Carnegie methods and called upon Kier Hardie, a workingmen's representative in Parliament, to whose election expenses Andrew Carnegie had contributed £100, to return the amount forthwith. Mr. Hardie very promptly forwarded the money, not to Mr. Carnegie, but to the people of Homestead, who, he held, had a valid title to receive and use it. Three days elapsed after the battle at Homestead, before the English agents of the American press associations, who had been ordered to follow him up, were able to locate Mr. Carnegie and obtain an interview. Although regularly advised by cable of the progress of the troubles at his mills, he did not let the news interfere with his pleasures, but spent those three days on a coaching tour from Edinburgh to Kinloch, in Scotland. At Kinloch, he rented a shooting-box for eight weeks at a cost of $10,000. Here an American interviewer found him. According to the correspondent's statement, he was received by Mr. Carnegie in a "contemptuous and insulting" manner, as if the "intrusion upon his ducal magnificence" were a thing to be resented with the hauteur distinctively belonging to an American iron baron, who can afford to have castles and shooting-boxes in Europe. In response to a request for his opinion on the occurrences at Homestead, Mr. Carnegie said: "I am not willing to express an opinion. The men have chosen their course and I am powerless to change it. The handling of the case on the part of the company has my full approval and sanction. Further than this, I have no disposition to say anything." Possibly this brusque statement may have been prompted in a measure by the irritation resulting from the use of the deadly parallels at the little millionaire's expense in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, a marked copy of which lay upon a table in the reception hall of the lodge. On one side appeared a report of Mr. Carnegie's philantrophic talk at the opening of the free library at Aberdeen, where he was seconded by the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen, and on the other a tell-tale table of reduced wages at Homestead. The report of this interview with the high-priest of arbitration supplied a rich theme of comment to the locked-out men and it was well for Mr. Carnegie's dignity, that, just at this time, 3,000 miles separated him from his employees. Even at that distance, his ears must have tingled. On Saturday evening, the press committee of the Amalgamated lodges, of which Hugh O'Donnell was chairman, distributed official press badges to the newspaper correspondents whose credentials were approved, and the committee signified its purpose of keeping close watch on the work of these gentlemen and of expelling from the town anyone of the number who, either by a violation of confidence or by sending out false statements proved himself unworthy of toleration. The reporters proposed the appointment of a committee composed of two newspaper men, two workmen and a fifth member, selected by these four, to pass upon disputes as to news matter, but this proposition was dropped on the receipt of a guarantee from Hugh O'Donnell that the rights of the press would be respected. Throughout all these proceedings, the men acted in the belief that they were doing their best to maintain good order, and, although the committee which had been sent to Harrisburg returned without genuinely reassuring news, no one seemed to have the least idea that the military would be called out. However, the visit of the governor's agent, previously referred to, had already borne fruit when, on the morning of Sunday, July 10, Sheriff McCleary forwarded his final appeal for military aid. In this communication, the sheriff once more averred that his powers were exhausted, and that the civil authorities could not raise a force of deputies large enough to cope with the locked-out men, "Only a large military force," he added, "will enable me to control matters." At 10 o'clock on Sunday night the governor issued the following order: _George R. Snowden, Major-General Commanding N. G. P._: Put the division under arms and move at once, with ammunition, to the support of the sheriff of Allegheny County, at Homestead. Maintain the peace, protect all persons in their rights under the constitution and laws of the state. Communicate with me. ROBERT E. PATTISON, _Governor_. Sheriff McCleary was informed of this order and directed to communicate with General Snowden. Immediately on receipt of his instructions, General Snowden issued orders to the brigade commanders. General Robert P. Dechert, in command of the First Brigade, with headquarters at Philadelphia, was directed to concentrate his brigade in camp at Mt. Gretna, near Lebanon, in the eastern part of the state, by Monday afternoon, battery horsed, and taking three days' rations. General J. P. S. Gobin, of the Second Brigade, was ordered to concentrate his command at Lewiston, moving west. General John A. Wiley, of the Third Brigade, composed of regiments from Western Pennsylvania, was ordered to proceed with his command to a point on the Pennsylvania Railroad within easy reach of the Monongahela River. Within twelve hours from the time when Major General Snowden received the Governor's order the entire National Guard of Pennsylvania was on the march, fully equipped and ready for any kind of service. It was no makeshift army that thus took the field on a few hours' notice. General Sherman said at the Garfield inauguration that the Pennsylvania Militia were the best body of troops in the National Guard of the country and, if confirmation of the accuracy of his judgment were needed, the Homestead "campaign" furnished it in amplest measure. The Guard underwent a signal transformation after the Pittsburgh railroad riot of 1877. Prior to that time it was a loosely constituted, loosely governed organization, wholly unfitted for service in an emergency and serving principally as an agency for the distribution of military titles. The disastrous consequences of the movement against the Pittsburgh rioters, in which ignorance, incompetency and lack of concrete organization, in addition to causing the destruction of millions of dollars' worth of property came near bringing about the loss of many lives, opened the eyes of Major General Hartranft, then Governor of the state, and led him to formulate and carry into execution a plan of reorganization the success of which is seen to-day in the superiority of the Pennsylvania militia to any other body of troops in the United States outside the regular army. Under Governor Hartranft's direction the several divisions of the guard existing under the old order of things were merged in a single division of three brigades, composed of eighteen regiments of infantry, three troops of cavalry and three batteries of artillery. The maximum enrollment was limited to 8000 men. The regiments are recruited from all parts of the state and include all classes of citizens--farmers, mechanics, clerks, merchants and gentlemen of leisure. The mobilization of this great body of men was accomplished with a degree of celerity and effectiveness unknown since the civil war. When the regiments advanced on the morning of July 11, all had nearly their full complement of officers and men. In a single night, preparations for service, the duration and hardship of which could not be estimated, were completed, and 8000 soldiers stood unreservedly at the disposal of the commonwealth. The news that the soldiers were coming was received in Homestead without any perceptible feeling of alarm. It was understood by every one in the town that resistance to the power of the commonwealth was out of the question, and at the same time the idea went abroad that General Snowden and his men would confine themselves to the preservation of the peace and not aid Mr. Frick in the manning of the mill with non-unionists or the landing of another force of Pinkertons. There were, it is true, some hot-heads who disputed the justice of the Governor's action and canvassed the possibility of resisting the militia or of inducing the workingmen who bore arms for the state to make common cause with their brethren in the beleaguered town. The advisory committeemen, however, aided by other influential and intelligent citizens, were quick to suppress these disorderly symptoms and to emphasize the necessity of giving the soldiers a cordial and patriotic reception. At two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon a mass meeting of workingmen was held in the rink, with Hugh O'Donnell in the chair. Burgess McLuckie made a fervent address, counseling a friendly demeanor towards the soldiers and eulogizing the Governor. "This man Pattison," said the sturdy Burgess, "Is acting quietly and rightly. He understands our position. He does not cater to monopolies.... Your friends are about to come; the safest, the best people that can come. We don't want Pinkertons here. We want the militia.... I stand here to say that any man who insults the militia shall be taken to the river and ducked." Cheers and laughter followed this sally and a motion in favor of ducking in the river any man who insulted the militia was carried unanimously. John M. Carter, of the Baltimore _News_, who was fresh from an interview with the Governor, delivered a cheering speech, and other addresses of a prudent, common-sense tenor were made by members of the Amalgamated Association. The feeling of friendship for the militia became contagious. It was decided that the blue-coated visitors should be received in state. All the brass bands in town took to rehearsing music of a triumphal character, to the inspiring strains of which Homestead was to be amicably turned over to its "protectors." In one band room, when the question of appropriate tunes came up, the exhilaration of the hour brought forth some odd suggestions. A young man who proposed "See the Conquering Hero Comes" was summarily suppressed, and a like fate befell an individual who thought the "Rogues' March" might fit the occasion. "Hold the Fort." "Comrades," "Johnny Get Your Gun" and "The Bogie Man" were canvassed, but a compromise was not reached until some gentleman of equal tact and discretion suggested "Ta Ra Ra, Boom De Ay," which was accepted without a dissenting voice as the correct thing to express Homestead's new-born sentiments of hope and contentment. A reception committee, headed by Burgess McLuckie and Hugh O'Donnell, was designated to welcome the representatives of the state and it remained only for the latter to reciprocate in kind to convert the military occupation of the town into a love-feast. The Burgess issued a proclamation warning strangers to get out of town, directing the closing of drinking-places and enjoining women and children to keep off the streets. This duty performed, Honest John McLuckie immersed himself in the study of a speech, of specially artistic construction, intended for the edification of Major General Snowden and his staff on their entrance into Homestead, and warranted to inspire those dignitaries with a profound sense of the good-will and law-abiding spirit of the people of the town and their cheerful readiness to fraternize with the troops. Unfortunately this little _chef d'oeuvre_ was never delivered. Like the flower in Gray's "Elegy," it was "born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness," if not on desert air, at all events on the cold and irresponsive dead wall of military discipline. All other themes of interest had now sunk out of sight in the face of the great event of the hour--the converging of the militia regiments upon Homestead. Even the Pinkertons, the fear of whose return with reinforcements had endured over Sunday, were forgotten, and the entire community was on the tip-toe of expectation, not knowing at what moment the glitter of swords and bayonets and the clatter of horses' hoofs would herald the advent of the advance guard. Night fell and still no soldiers. General Snowden had taken care not to advertise the route of the troops nor the time of their arrival. It was his purpose to take the town by surprise and to occupy the positions selected in advance by an officer detailed to make a reconnoissance, before the people could be apprised of the nature and scope of his movements. The maneuvers were carried out with the desired secrecy, the newspaper men and telegraph operators along the lines of march being kept in the dark, despite their habitual alertness. So the Homestead folk went to bed without the opportunity of looking down the muzzles of any guns except their own and even these, together with the Winchesters taken from the Pinkertons as the lawful spoils of war, had been hidden from view, the occasion for their use having now finally departed. While the good people on the banks of the Monongahela slept the sleep of contentment, the soldiers of the First Brigade were stretched shivering on the open ground at Mt. Gretna, and General Snowden, with all of the Second and Third Brigades, except the regiments of the extreme West, was traveling as fast as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company could carry him towards the scene of disturbance. CHAPTER X. [Illustration: CAMP McCLELLAN] SNOWDEN'S SHARP TACTICS--THE TAKING OF HOMESTEAD--TROOPS IN POSSESSION--SOLDIERS REPEL ADVANCES AND THE FRATERNAL RECEPTION IS DECLARED OFF--O'DONNELL'S COMMITTEE AT HEADQUARTERS--SUSPICION AND RESENTMENT ABROAD--THE LITTLE BILL RETURNS--CONGRESSMEN HOLD AN INVESTIGATION--CAPITAL AND LABOR IN CONFLICT ON THE WITNESS STAND--THE COST OF PRODUCING STEEL REMAINS A RIDDLE. In pursuance of Gen. Snowden's plan to take Homestead by surprise, the Second and Third Brigades, instead of being massed as announced in the newspapers, at Brinton, a station on the Pennsylvania R. R. nearly opposite Homestead, came together at Radebaugh, a mile and a half west of Greensburg, and 28-1/2 miles distant from Pittsburgh. By 2.30 A. M. all the regiments had reached the rendezvous, and at 5 A. M. the order to advance was given and the troops moved towards Homestead, crossing the Monongahela river over the P. V. & C. bridge near Braddock. The Tenth and Fourteenth regiments, and a battery, were left on the Braddock side of the river with orders to occupy the hills above Port Perry, from which the guns would sweep the mill yards and the Homestead river front. The early morning hours were full of surprise for the people of Homestead. Look-outs were posted at all avenues of approach and anxious crowds hung around the telegraph offices. As it drew on towards 9 o'clock, a report was circulated that the troops were at Greensburg. Telegraphic inquiries dispatched to that place brought the response that they were not there. At 9.25 the operator at Greensburg sent this message: "No. 23 was wrecked above this place last night; tracks are blocked and troops are delayed." A bulletin conveying the news was pasted on the window of the telegraph office and elicited faint cheers from the crowd. Evidently several hours must yet elapse before the soldiers would arrive, and the interval was ample to rest and eat breakfast. But at the very moment when the Greensburg operator was ticking his message over the wires, a train pulled into Munhall station at the eastern end of the town, and from a parlor car in front a tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing the stars of a major-general, alighted, followed by six others in uniform and an individual in civilian's clothing. It was Major General Snowden, accompanied by his staff and Sheriff McCleary. Behind the general officers' train, which was made up of two cars, came another train of ten cars, from the windows of which bayonets and muzzles of guns protruded. Then came another train and another and still others, until 95 cars were drawn up in line, all bearing the same freight of guns and bayonets and lusty-looking fellows in the blue uniform of the National Guard. There were, perhaps, 200 men and boys at Munhall when the military trains came in. Some of them had been up all night and were but half awake. None of them had expected the soldiers to arrive at that depot. After the first surprise was over, half a dozen scouts, who had been posted by the advisory committee, ran towards the town shouting: "The troops! the troops!" The rest of the crowd pressed in around the staff officers' train and looked on with curious interest. General Snowden, fearing that there was trouble brewing, held a hasty consultation with his staff, and had the troops drawn up in line without a minute's loss of time. Company E of the Eighteenth regiment was selected for skirmish duty and marched along the tracks, clearing the crowd away. Then the whole regiment advanced, throwing out detachments of skirmishers as it went, and taking a straight course to the place of encampment. Shanty Hill, the position selected, lies north of the town and forms part of the Pittsburgh Poor Farm, which had been purchased by the Carnegie Company, but was still held by the city under a special arrangement. The hill slopes gently towards the base but develops midway into a rather steep ascent. A broad plateau extends back from the summit. A better position for military purposes could not have been found. The town and the mill yards stretched out below, covered within easy range by batteries on the heights, and no movement could occur on the streets without being detected from above. Before the scouts who ran to give warning of the presence of the soldiers had fairly begun to spread the alarm, the Eighteenth regiment had gained the summit of the hill and formed a line of battle. The Fifteenth regiment followed and formed a line of battle to the right of the Eighteenth, then came the Thirteenth, Twelfth, Fifth, Ninth and Seventh regiments, and within half an hour 4,000 men were drawn up in parallel lines of battle, overlooking the town, and ready, at the word of command, to turn 4,000 rifles on the crowds that, by this time had massed below. [Illustration] Meanwhile the surprised citizens of Homestead perceived another force of soldiers marching and counter-marching on the hill tops on the other side of the river, their bayonets and field pieces glittering in the morning sunlight. Homestead was beleaguered at all points. Without the firing of a shot or the semblance of a parley, the town, which a week before had been the scene of carnage, was captured, and its guardians were taken so completely by surprise that they scarcely realized what was occurring until the troops were in possession. General Snowden had proved himself an admirable tactician, and the swiftness and unerring precision with which he handled the large body of men under his control were universally applauded. The unexpected fashion in which the soldiers entered broke up all the plans that had been arranged for their reception. The Homestead bands remained mute; Burgess McLuckie's speech was relegated to oblivion, and the reception committee was nonplussed by the circumstance that the guests had made themselves at home without waiting for a formal reception. It appeared, in short, that the soldiers were so intent upon business that they had no time for sentiment and that the process of fraternizing was not to be so easy as the people had expected. If there was any doubt on this head it vanished when some of the workmen endeavored to make their way up Shanty Hill in order to mingle with the "boys in blue." Sentinels barred the way and informed those who sought to pass, that until further orders, no civilian would be allowed to go through the lines. So the townsfolk, including the committeemen of the Amalgamated lodges, had to content themselves with clustering at the foot of the hill and watching the manoeuvres of the troops from a distance. Shortly before noon a number of prominent citizens and leaders of the Amalgamated Association held a conference and appointed a committee to wait upon General Wiley (General Snowden's presence on the ground was not yet known), to tender the good wishes and co-operation of the Amalgamated Association and the people of Homestead, and to request that the military receive the workingmen in a body, accompanied by brass bands. The committeemen obtained access to the headquarters of the Third Brigade, but, on stating the nature of their mission to General Wiley, were referred by him to General Snowden, who had established his division headquarters at the Carnegie school house on Shanty Hill. Sheriff McCleary was found in conference with General Snowden. Captain Coon, an ex-militia officer and a representative citizen, spoke for the committee, informing the General of the desire of the Amalgamated Association and of the citizens generally to co-operate with the state authority in maintaining order. General Snowden checked the speaker with the statement that he did not recognize the Amalgamated Association or any authority other than that of the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Sheriff of Allegheny County. The best way in which the people of Homestead could co-operate with the state troops was, he said, by behaving themselves. Captain Coon undertook to renew the offer of assistance, but was cut short with the assurance that such offers could not be accepted. At this point, Hugh O'Donnell stepped forward and explained that what the people desired was to attest their cheerful submission to legal authority in contrast to their refusal to submit to illegal authority as represented by Mr. Frick's troop of Pinkertons. "The gentleman behind you is the one to whom you should submit," said General Snowden, with a wave of the hand towards Sheriff McCleary. "We have always submitted to his authority," said O'Donnell. "I beg your pardon," rejoined the General, "but you did not do so at the mill." O'Donnell made a gesture of dissent. "I leave it to the Sheriff if we have not submitted," he retorted. "No; you did not," replied the Sheriff. "You didn't allow my deputies to take charge of the works." Some further parley ensued, O'Donnell asserting that the committee represented, not the Amalgamated Association, but a citizens' mass meeting and General Snowden responding that he recognized no citizens but those of Allegheny County. "Then," said the former, "as citizens of Allegheny County we come to see you." "Then I'm glad to see you, gentlemen," was the General's rejoinder, "I am glad that our position here is welcomed by the citizens of Allegheny County." O'Donnell now proposed that the men of Homestead, with four brass bands, be permitted to pass in review before the troops, but met with a flat refusal, General Snowden stating that he was there on the business of the state and not to indulge in formalities. This concluded the interview and the committee withdrew in anything but a comfortable frame of mind. It was useless to talk now of welcoming the soldiers as friends any more than of resisting them as foes. They had come to do the duty imposed on them by the state with mechanical precision and indifference to the human conditions around them. As well think of fraternizing with the pieces of ordnance that glistened ominously on the hill top as with the icy Snowden and Snowden's 4,000 subordinates. This tall, courtly gentleman with the huge moustache and gold-rimmed glasses perched upon his classic nose, seemed to have not a grain of sentiment in his composition. He was the visible incarnation of the state's police powers, stern and inflexible, and it is not overstating the case to say that, before night, all Homestead secretly detested him. Sheriff McCleary, after quaking in his shoes for a week, fairly reveled in the sunshine of General Snowden's presence. With cannon to right of him, cannon to left of him, cannon in front of him and soldiers on all sides, the Sheriff became a new man and began to talk in a tone of authority which he had not previously ventured to assume. One remark attributed to him was that the men who took part in the fight with the Pinkertons would be prosecuted for riot and murder. When this ominous threat was bruited abroad, it created a sensation among the workmen. Most of the men, however, affected to regard it as mere buncombe. The participants in the affray were pledged to secresy, and, it was contended, if suits were to be entered at all, the whole population of Homestead would have to be made defendants. Still there was a growing feeling of uneasiness, especially since it was suspected, with good reason, as it proved afterward, that there were Pinkerton spies in town for the purpose of collecting evidence to be used in criminal prosecutions. The immediate result of the disquietude thus developed was to put a keener edge on the discontent inspired by the uncongenial behavior of the military. Men gathered in groups on the streets and indulged in bitter murmurings. "We have been deceived," they said, "deceived by the Governor; deceived unwittingly, but none the less effectually, by our own advisers. We have stood idly by and let the town be occupied by soldiers who come here, not as our protectors, but as the protectors of non-union men, for whom Frick is now scouring the country and who will be brought into the mill and installed in our places with the aid of the commonwealth. Then, if we undertake to resist the seizure of our jobs, we will be shot down like dogs. It is the story of the coke regions over again." As if to add fuel to the fire, the "Little Bill," the very name of which could not be mentioned by a Homesteader without a profane accompaniment, steamed up to the landing place adjoining the mill yard in all the glory of an official dispatch boat. One of General Snowden's first acts had been to charter the detested little tug for the use of the state, and Captain Rodgers, still smarting from the effects of his experience on July 6, was only too glad to obtain the chance of confronting his old enemies under circumstances which insured his safety. The return of the Little Bill had upon the locked-out men the effect that a red rag has upon a bull. Whatever hopes were based by the men of Homestead on the presence of sympathizers, workmen like themselves, in the ranks of the militia were quickly counteracted. It having come to the ears of Colonel Kreps, of the Fifteenth regiment, that some of his men had promised to hand over their guns to the steelworkers in the event of trouble caused by an attempt of the Carnegie Company to operate the mill, the Colonel caused the regiment to be drawn up in line, mentioned the report which he had heard and closed with the words--"Let any man be foolish enough to attempt anything of the kind and I will shoot him down in his tracks." After this, the militiamen put a bridle on their tongues and disaffection was not hinted at. Although martial law, in the strict sense of the term, was not declared at Homestead, General Snowden took the precaution of establishing a provost guard which made the rounds of the town and fulfilled the dual function of bringing disorderly stragglers into camp and repressing dangerous demonstrations among the townspeople. Burgess McLuckie's police were of little use and the saloonkeepers had disregarded the order to close their establishments, so that a close watch had to be kept to prevent drunkenness and disorder, particularly among the soldiery. Nothing was left undone to make Camp McClellan, as it was called, a model of disciplinary perfection. Just about the time when the National Guard was taking possession of Homestead, a special committee detailed by the National House of Representatives to investigate the trouble between the Carnegie Company and its employees, arrived in Pittsburgh. The committee consisted of W. C. Oates, of Alabama, chairman; W. H. Bynum, of Indiana; C. J. Boatner, of Louisiana; E. B. Taylor, of Ohio, and Case Broderick, of Kansas. Messrs. Taylor and Broderick were the only Republican members. The committee visited Homestead in the afternoon, and at 7.30 P. M. began the hearing of testimony. H. C. Frick was the first witness. In answer to leading questions he detailed the membership, resources and operations of the Carnegie Company, the wages paid at Homestead, the nature of the sliding scale and the events leading up to the lock-out. Judge Oates asked: "Not counting anything by way of interest on investment, what is the cost per ton of billets?" MR. FRICK.--I hardly think that is a fair question. I do not think you ought to ask me to go into that. COL. TAYLOR.--Would you object to informing us of the cost per ton of steel? Mr. Frick answered that he would. MR. BOATNER.--Don't feel disposed to give away the secrets of the trade, eh? To this the witness responded that the matter in question was a trade secret and must be respected as such. Mr. Frick was then questioned concerning his enlistment of Pinkerton guards. He had acted, he said, on the conviction, gathered from prior experience, that the sheriff was powerless. After June 24, the firm had decided to hire the guards at $5 a day per man, and to put new workmen into the mill. The witness read a copy of a letter which he had sent to Robert A. Pinkerton under date of June 25. The communication called for 300 guards to be used in enabling the starting of the Homestead mill on July 6, directed the massing of the force at Ashtabula, O. and advised "absolute secresy in the movement of these men, so that no demonstration can be made while they are in route." It concluded as follows: "As soon as your men are upon the premises, we will notify the sheriff and ask that they be deputized either at once or immediately upon an outbreak of such a character as to render such a step desirable." Mr. Frick was plied with interrogations concerning the Little Bill, the barges and the famous fence topped with barbed-wire, and Mr. Boatner asked particularly as to the "port-holes" in the latter. "They were made," the witness replied gravely, "for the purpose of looking out to see who might be on the outside." The examination of the Carnegie chairman was not completed when the committee adjourned, after a two hours' session, and on the resumption of the hearing next morning, he was again placed on the stand. Congressman Boatner opened the ball by endeavoring to ascertain whether or not there had been an agreement between Mr. Frick and the Pinkerton agency prior to June 25, a point on which it appeared, Mr. Frick's memory was defective. Neither could a direct answer be obtained as to the time when it was deemed advisable to arm the guards. The question of wages was taken up again, Mr. Frick stating that the rates at Homestead were higher than at any other mills, that the proposed reduction averaged 15 per cent. and yet the men would make still more money from month to month under the new terms than they made under the old. The examination of the Carnegie Chairman ended with the reading of a schedule of wages paid to tonnage men under the old scale. Captain Rodgers, of the Little Bill, was the next witness. He told the story of the arrival of the Pinkertons, the trip of the barges up the river and the fight at the mill landing substantially as it has been related in the preceding pages of this volume. Sheriff McCleary followed and was closely catechized as to his supposed official sponsorship for the Pinkertons. The Sheriff denied that he had promised to deputize the Pinkertons. Having been informed by Messrs. Knox & Reed, the Carnegie Company's attorneys, that the Pinkertons would be sent up and that a deputy would be needed to aid in preserving the peace, he had, he said, ordered Colonel Gray to go and that "if there was much opposition to their landing he should order the captain and the Pinkertons to come away." No amount of cross-examining could shake Mr. McCleary's assertion that the Pinkertons were not deputized and that Colonel Grey was not authorised to deputize them. President Weihe, of the Amalgamated Association, explained the sliding scale system, the propositions submitted by the Carnegie Company, and the workmen's reasons for rejecting those propositions. The reductions in wages resulting from the acceptance of the firm's terms would range, he said, from 10 to 30 per cent. As to improvements, the Association always made allowances for these, and no objection was offered if jobs were done away with. The change proposed in the scale-signing date would have set an example which other mills throughout the country would have been sure to follow. Mr. Weihe was asked to state his views on arbitration. He declined to speak for the Association, but gave it as his individual opinion that arbitration, whether compulsory or by voluntary tribunals was an unsatisfactory resort, the issue being almost invariably against the workingman. The trouble in estimating wages resided in the fact that the firms could not be persuaded to tell the exact cost of production. Hugh O'Donnell succeeded Mr. Weihe on the witness stand. He told of the organization of the advisory committee with himself as chairman and of the posting of guards outside the mill fence, who "were told not to use force." "Were they ordered to use violence to keep men out?" the witness was asked. "No sir, they were not. Their purpose was to keep all out by peaceable methods." O'Donnell described the attempt of the Pinkertons to land and his own efforts to check the bloodshed which followed. "I am sure," he said "the crowd near the water had no guns." "Who fired the first shot?" asked a committeeman. "I cannot say." "Do you know anything of the attempt to fire the barges with oil?" "I decline to answer." Resuming his story, O'Donnell recounted the incidents of the surrender and the terrible march to the rink. "The detectives," he said, "received most inhuman treatment, but our men did everything to protect them, as I can prove, and many received wounds on the trip to the town rink." Asked as to his wages, he replied that he earned $144 a month. His explanation of the antipathy of the laboring class to Pinkerton detectives was that, in the special case under consideration, the workmen looked upon the Pinkertons as "armed invaders and allies of capital," and also because "if the Pinkertons got possession they would aid the firm in bringing in non-union men." Burgess McLuckie testified to being an employe of the Carnegie firm, earning from $60 to $65 a month. He volunteered the statement that "there is a gigantic conspiracy somewhere, aided and abetted by legislation, to deprive the workingmen of their rights under the constitution of this government--those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and illustrated this assertion by referring to the reduction of the tariff on billets, the identical article on which the compensation of the Homestead men was based. Carnegie and McKinley, in his opinion, were fellow conspirators in this case. He characterized the Pinkertons as "lazy thugs employed by unscrupulous capitalists." Congressman Taylor interjected a remark as to the signs of prosperity in Homestead, and especially, the comfortable looking houses there. "Well," rejoined McLuckie, "let me ask you a question. Are those homes too good for workingmen to live in?" "Not half good enough," answered Mr. Taylor. "Thank you," said McLuckie. Everybody smiled at this little exchange of compliments. William Roberts, a member of the advisory committee, gave a very clear statement of the causes of dissension at Homestead. The wage reductions, he held, affected not the men who were making exceptionally high wages but many who for eight weeks had not averaged $1 a day. For instance, one man who, under the old scale made $2.23 a day would make under the new one offered by the firm only $1.32, while the heater who made $4.31 suffered no reduction. Mr. Roberts advocated compulsory arbitration. In answer to a question regarding the comparative rates of wages in the Homestead and other mills, he said: "In the American iron works, Carnegie's principal competitor, a roller is paid 70 cents per ton while at Homestead he is paid only 22 or 23 cents. A plate-mill roller at Homestead is paid 14 cents per ton, while at Jones & Loughlin's he is paid 72 cents. The product is similar, it goes into the same market and is used for the same purpose." Colonel James H. Gray, Sheriff McCleary's chief deputy, described the trip of the barges to Homestead, and corroborated the Sheriff's claims that the Pinkertons were not deputized and that orders had not been given to deputize them. He said positively that the Pinkertons did not fire a shot until they had to do so in self-defense. This concluded the second day's session of the committee. When the committee re-convened on the morning of July 14, John A. Potter, general superintendent of the Homestead mills, was the first witness summoned. Mr. Potter furnished data as to the equipment and capacity of the mills, but expressed ignorance as to the cost of producing a ton of steel. He assigned as the reason for reducing wages that the Carnegie firm was "ahead of competitors" and paying more than the owners of similar mills, and therefore thought it should have "some of the advantages." Mr. Potter had been on the Little Bill when the Pinkertons tried to land at Homestead, but had declined to take the responsibility of entering the mill yard by force. The remainder of the morning was occupied principally with the hearing of Homestead workmen who testified as to the effect of Mr. Frick's propositions upon their respective earnings, and of watchmen and others who had been connected with the Pinkerton's expedition and who described their various experiences. Mr. Frick was recalled and permitted to rebut some of the assertions made by the workingmen. To prove that his firm did not control the billet market he cited the fact that Jones & Laughlin's mill has a capacity of 1000 tons daily, while the output at Homestead is 800 tons daily. He again refused to give the labor cost of producing a ton of steel although Congressman Boatner twitted him with refusing to give the information "on which protective legislation is asked for." "I do not think we asked for the legislation," observed Mr. Frick. "You have been greatly misrepresented then," said Mr. Boatner grimly. Mr. Frick estimated the value of the Homestead plant at from $5,000,000 to $6,000,000, and stated that the capitalization of the Carnegie Company was considerably in excess of $25,000,000. Having heard all sides of the case, the committee closed its labors early in the afternoon and returned to Washington where congress awaited its report. CHAPTER XI. [Illustration: _THE_ FIRST ARRESTS] BRINGING IN THE "BLACKSHEEP"--PITTSBURGH, BEAVER FALLS AND DUQUESNE MEN COME OUT--AN ALARM IN CAMP--THE GOVERNOR ARRIVES--THE BOYCOTT AS A PERSUADER--POLITICS TO THE RESCUE--MURDER CHARGED AND WARRANTS ISSUED--McLUCKIE, O'DONNELL AND ROSS SURRENDER AND ARE RELEASED ON BAIL--GENERAL SNOWDEN'S DISHEARTENING ANNOUNCEMENT. The locked-out men were not mistaken in their belief that the Carnegie Company would take advantage of the presence of the military to bring non-union men into the mill. Troops were early detailed to garrison the mill yard, and a line of sentries was posted outside the fence, so that there could be no interference by the workmen either from the railroad or the river. The steamboat Tide was used as a special transport for non-unionists, the first squads of whom came over from Swissvale, on the Pennsylvania railroad, and were taken across the river under cover of Colonel Hawkins' guns. Agents of the firm were set to work in every large city procuring recruits, and while it was found rather difficult to tempt men to risk the desperate chances of a trip to Homestead to take the places of the conquerors of the Pinkertons, a small number were secured each day until, within a week after the first squad was brought in, nearly one hundred men were quartered within the mill enclosure. Hundreds of cots were provided for the accommodation of the new hands, and large quantities of food and other supplies were laid in. At the same time, the firm advertised for proposals to build 100 houses on the City Farm plan of lots at Munhall station, thus signifying its intention of establishing permanent quarters for those who were to take the places of the old employees. On Friday, July 15, for the first time since the lock-out began, smoke issued from the cupolas of the great steel plant. The furnaces were lit at last, and the news circulated rapidly throughout the town that the company was suspected of having smuggled in enough non-unionists to renew operations. An excited mob rushed pell-mell towards the mill yard, but was stopped short at the picket lines, where the guards, with levelled bayonets, barred progress. As a matter of fact there were but few steelworkers among the first hundred men brought in by the Tide. Fifteen of them were carpenters, who were engaged on a temporary lodging house between the machine pressing mill and the river, and a majority of the others were waiters, cooks, clerks and bosses. A final notice to the old employees was posted in Homestead on July 16. It set forth that "individual" applications for employment would be received by the general superintendent until 6 P. M., Thursday, July 21; that it was the company's desire to retain those of its former workmen who had not taken part in the disturbances, and that the positions of those who failed to comply with this notice would be given to non-union men. The locked-out men treated this manifesto with indifference, letting the prescribed period pass by without any sign of a desire to return to work on Mr. Frick's terms. Their sole reply was embodied in a circular issued July 22, wherein it was set forth that the workingmen of Homestead and the general public had a vested interest in the great industrial establishment built up by the labor of the one and indirectly sustained by tariff taxes paid by the other; that those interests would be asserted and defended in the courts and the halls of legislation and that the men rested their cause--"the cause of American liberty against anarchy on the one hand and despotism on the other, with the courts, the legislatures and the public conscience." On this same day a large force of non-union men reported at the Carnegie offices in Pittsburgh and were shipped to Homestead on the Tide, starting from the Monongahela wharf amid the jeers of a crowd of on-lookers. Similar trips were made every day thereafter, the safe arrival of the first batches of recruits having emboldened others. Once the ball was set rolling, the firm experienced little trouble in securing men. There is always an army of unemployed in the United States, and upon these as well as underpaid workers in various lines--clerks, struggling young professional men and others--who were tempted by the high wages said to be paid at Homestead the firm could and did draw freely. The Homestead leaders contended that it would be impossible to operate the mills without a force of expert steel workers, but Mr. Frick seemed to care little about skill as long as he could secure men able and willing to learn the work entrusted to them. The mills, it appeared, were to be a school in which an entirely new set of artisans were to be instructed, regardless of the losses that must be sustained in the process. [Illustration: BRINGING IN NON-UNIONISTS.] In the meantime trouble was brewing in other concerns operated by the Carnegie Company. Mr. Frick had already signed the scale at the Pittsburgh and Beaver Falls mills, and expected to accomplish at these plants much of the work which was suspended at Homestead. The workmen at both places, however, sympathized with their brethren at Homestead and decided accordingly to break their contract with the firm and go out on strike until the trouble at Homestead should be fairly adjusted. The Pittsburgh men, employed at the Upper and Lower Union Mills in Lawrenceville, went out on July 15 and the Beaver Falls men on the following day. The mill at Duquesne was non-union, but there, too, the spirit of resistance manifested itself and on July 19, the men took preliminary steps toward entering the Amalgamated Association so as to be in proper shape to strike. On July 20 the Duquesne lodges were permanently organized and on the 23d a strike was declared. Homestead was now, in a degree, under martial law, the power of the borough authorities being limited to the arrest of drunken and disorderly persons. Two companies of soldiers did guard duty on the streets and had orders to arrest any of Burgess McLuckie's special policemen found exceeding their duty. Life in Camp Black was anything but a bed of roses. Colonel Hawkins' command spent two days and nights on the hills above Port Perry without tents and suffered much from the inclemency of the weather, broiling heat alternating with rain that drenched the men to the skin. A storm blew down most of the tents on the second day of the encampment. The first alarm that brought the soldiers out occurred after midnight on July 15. Someone brought in word that the camp was to be attacked from the rear. Bugles were sounded, the drums beat to arms, and in a few minutes the Second and Third brigades were ready for action and threw out their skirmish lines, while the force of pickets was doubled. The alarm proved to be a false one; nevertheless the Sixteenth regiment was kept under arms until daybreak. It had been decided that the period of service at Homestead should take the place of the regular annual encampment of the National Guard, and Governor Pattison and his staff arrived accordingly on the 19th to conduct the annual inspection, to which a week's time was devoted. Some of the workmen supposed that the Governor might entertain the idea of mediating between the conflicting parties, but it was soon found that he harbored no such design. He visited the mills, inspected the scene of the battle with the Pinkertons and conversed informally with citizens of the town concerning the history of the trouble, but declined to interfere further, confining himself mainly to his official functions as Commander of the National Guard. Quarters were assigned to the Governor and his staff in three comfortable cottages belonging to the Carnegie Company, adjoining the Carnegie hotel on Eighth avenue, and opposite the main entrance to the steel works. General Snowden and his staff had been patronizing the hotel cuisine, previously sacred to the discriminating palates of the Carnegie officials. An odd incident temporarily deprived the General of this accommodation. One morning the head waiter, having formed the opinion that the troops were helping to take the bread out of the mouths of the workingmen, informed the proprietor that he could not be instrumental in conveying the staff of life to the mouths of "the enemy" and resigned on the spot. The head cook followed, and the under-waiters and cooks went out with their leaders. When the officers arrived for breakfast and found that there was nothing to eat, the air was made blue with profanity. The boycott was one which all the military force of the commonwealth was powerless to lift. After this, General Snowden had his meals prepared and served at headquarters by a colored cook drafted from one of the regiments. Young women who could be relied on not to indulge in a sympathetic strike were installed in the places of the cooks and waiters who had deserted from the hotel. While the workmen were somewhat dismayed by the signs of activity within the mill enclosure, feeling, as they did, that the thin end of the non-union wedge had already been inserted, they stoutly refused to admit that the firm could find enough skilled steelworkers in the country to operate the mill or could successfully utilize green hands in the intricate work which it had taken old employees, in many cases, years to learn. This argument seemed invincible and was used on every hand as confirming the supposition that the firm was merely making a pretense of manning and operating the mill, so as to discourage the old hands and provoke a stampede back to work. Such devices as this, the men said, would be futile. The Homestead workers were firmly bound together and there would be no deserters from their ranks. Mr. Frick might be able to get non-union laborers, helpers, blacksmiths, mechanics, carpenters and painters, but all these had to depend on the skilled labor of the men who made the steel. Without rollers, heaters, shearers, cutters and other trained workers, the mills could not start, and on these the Amalgamated Association had a solid hold and would maintain it. "Our weapon," said Hugh O'Donnell, "will be the boycott--the workingman's only effective weapon. While Carnegie is seeking to starve us into submission, we will endeavor to strike a blow at his every industry. The strikes at Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls, and the action of some of the carpenters' unions in refusing to work in buildings where Carnegie's structural material is used constitute the kind of assistance that we want." There was certainly abundant reason for anticipating a general boycott of the Carnegie Company's product. Labor unions in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere were holding meetings and pledging themselves to carry out the program outlined by O'Donnell and it was even reported that the railroad brotherhoods would interpose to prevent the transportation of freight to and from the various Carnegie plants. In any case there was no fear of actual suffering among the locked-out men for a long time to come. Under the rules of the Amalgamated Association, strike benefits would be paid out of the treasury of the order and an additional and comfortably large fund was created by the contributions which flowed into Homestead daily from every section of the country. There was also a strong conviction among the men that the Republican party leaders would come to the rescue. The political aspect of the wage dispute was explained in a previous chapter. This phase of the matter was taken up with fierce avidity by the Democratic press after the conflict of July 6, and the country rang with denunciations of a protective policy which protected the manufacturer only and left reduced wages and Pinkerton lead to the workingman as his share of tariff benefits. Genuine apprehension was felt among the Republican politicians, and Republican newspaper organs, seeing and dreading the disturbed condition of the labor world, hardly dared respond to the sneers of the opposition. The high tariff party had so long catered to the labor vote that the problem of meeting labor's demands with regard to Homestead was full of embarrassment, and it was evident that President Harrison's prospects of re-election were seriously threatened. The leaders at Homestead, knowing the dependence of the Carnegie Company on tariff legislation and believing that the fealty of Messrs. Carnegie and Frick to the Republican party would be an all-powerful consideration in a crisis wherein the presidency itself was at stake, sent Hugh O'Donnell to New York to confer secretly with General Clarkson and other ruling spirits in the Republican national committee. O'Donnell left on this mission on July 17. On the following day Mr. Frick played another trump card, the forcing out of the military having been the first of a hand which the implacable little chairman confidently asserted would turn out to be all trumps. Burgess John McLuckie was arrested on the charge of murder. And this was not all. The information, lodged before Alderman McMasters, of Pittsburgh, in pursuance of which the warrant for McLuckie's arrest was issued, included also the names of Hugh O'Donnell, Sylvester Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and Hugh Ross. F. T. F. Lovejoy, secretary of the Carnegie Company, was the prosecutor and he affirmed that the men named "did of their malice aforethought feloniously and riotously with force and arms and deadly weapons kill and murder one T. J. Connors then and there being in the peace of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." A second information charged the same persons with the murder of Silas Wain. Three constables were sent to Homestead to make the arrests. They applied to General Snowden for assistance, which was promptly furnished, two companies of infantry being detailed to their support. At the same time the patrols were increased and two regiments were kept under arms so as to be ready for any contingency. No trouble was experienced, however. The accused had been forewarned and all, with the exception of O'Donnell and McLuckie, had locked up their houses and gone into hiding. The doughty burgess, strong in the consciousness of his innocence, went to Pittsburgh at an early hour, surrendered himself at the alderman's office and was committed to jail. Before the prison gates closed upon him, he informed the newspaper representatives that the Amalgamated men, in turn, would make informations against Carnegie, Frick and Potter. "We will make this man Frick come down on his knees so hard that the sound will be heard in the farthest corner of civilization" was honest John's last observation as he was led into durance. Secretary Lovejoy also had something to say for the enlightenment of the public. "We have good cases against 1000 of these men," he said "and from now on from twelve to fifteen informations will be made every day. The laws of Pennsylvania are very broad on this subject. Persons who were on the premises at the time of the shooting are liable not only as accessories, but as principals." McLuckie spent only one night in jail, being released next morning on $10,000 bail after a brief hearing before Judge Magee in the county criminal court. He took the first train for Homestead and was received there with acclamations, the townspeople turning out _en masse_ to receive him. A procession was formed in his honor, and to the strains of "Home, Sweet Home," performed with unusual energy by the crack brass band of the town, the hero of the hour was escorted to the rink, where he made a speech of thanks to the people. Hugh O'Donnell no sooner heard that a warrant was out for his arrest than he suspended his operations in New York and returned to Homestead. Like McLuckie, he spared the constables the trouble of arresting him and, in company with Hugh Ross, proceeded to Pittsburgh with the intention of surrendering. The two men went directly into the criminal court and, without the aid of an attorney, presented themselves to Judge Magee. O'Donnell addressed the judge, explaining that he had not sought to evade the arrest and asking that the law take its course. The judge was non-plussed by the unprecedented behavior of the two workmen in thus walking calmly into what was, from their point of view, the "lion's den," but, after some questioning, advised them to surrender themselves at the office of Alderman McMasters. This they did, and within an hour, they were behind prison bars. Two days later Peter Allen and Nathan Foy were arrested at their homes and lodged in jail. An application for the admission of O'Donnell and his companions to bail was heard by Judge Magee on Saturday, July 23. Attorneys William J. Brennen and John F. Cox appeared for the defendants on behalf of the Amalgamated Association, and District Attorney Clarence Burleigh and D. F. Patterson, Esq. represented the prosecution. The testimony of a number of Pinkerton detectives, newspaper reporters, deputy sheriffs and others was taken, showing conclusively O'Donnell's leadership and his presence at the battle in the mill yard. The defence argued that O'Donnell's part in the "riot" was that of a peacemaker. Judge Magee reserved his decision until Monday, when he finally admitted the four prisoners to bail in the sum of $10,000 each, the case having "within its possibility a conviction of murder in the second degree." The succession of arrests had, of course, a depressing effect on the people of Homestead. A still more discouraging circumstance was General Snowden's announcement that the troops would be kept in Homestead until one side or the other should give in. As long as the troops remained the mill was so securely guarded that the question was not merely of providing against violence but of preventing the Amalgamated men from obtaining access to the non-unionists and bringing persuasion to bear upon them after the manner customary with labor organizations. General Snowden was denounced without stint for what the men construed as a desire on his part to play into the hands of the Carnegie Company. But the General did not seem to mind denunciations. The last attempt to subjugate him was made by the high constable of the borough on an occasion when a stray cow had paid the debt of nature within the lines of the encampment. The constable undertook to storm the enemy's works with a view to compelling the interment of the cow with the honors of war, but was seized and incarcerated over night in the guard house. With the fall of this functionary came the collapse of all that remained of civil authority in Homestead, and thereafter General Snowden's word was law. The advisory committee was sorely perplexed over the disposition to be made of the guns taken from the Pinkertons. The Attorney General of the state was addressed on the subject but declined to give advice, and it was doubtful that the guns could lawfully be retained as the "spoils of war." Ultimately the individual holders of the weapons settled the matter in their own way by hiding the trophies where prying detectives would be unable to find them. The death of George W. Rutter, at the Homeopathic hospital, Pittsburgh, on July 18 closed the list of fatalities on the side of the workingmen. Rutter remained in a delirium until the last, always imagining in his ravings that he was back on the bank of the Monongahela, fighting against the Pinkertons. He was buried at Verona, Pa., where his widow and children resided. CHAPTER XII. [Illustration: THE SHOOTING OF FRICK.] BERKMAN, A RUSSIAN AUTONOMIST, ATTEMPTS THE LIFE OF THE CARNEGIE CHAIRMAN--MR. FRICK'S BRAVERY--"THE SHOOTING WILL IN NO WAY AFFECT THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE"--MILITIAMAN IAMS CHEERS THE ASSASSIN AND IS DRUMMED OUT OF CAMP--PUBLIC INDIGNATION OVER THE IAMS AFFAIR--SNOWDEN, HAWKINS, STREATOR AND NEFF INDICTED--WORKINGMEN PROSECUTE CARNEGIE OFFICIALS FOR MURDER. "Frick is shot!" Such was the appalling announcement blazoned on bulletin boards, passed from mouth to mouth and hurried over the telegraph wires on the afternoon of Saturday, July 23, while O'Donnell and Ross were undergoing their preliminary hearing in the county court. The first question on every lip was, "Did a Homestead man do the shooting?" and great was the feeling of relief among the sympathizers of organized labor when it was learned that the would-be assassin, Alexander Berkman, was a Russian anarchist, and that his crime was prompted solely by the teachings of the infamous class of outlaws to which he belonged. Berkman came to the United States in 1886, fresh from the University of Odessa, where he had inbibed the principals of the Autonomists--extreme Anarchists who believe in redressing social wrongs by individual action. He became a compositor in the office of Johann Most's paper, _Die Freiheit_, wrote freely for Anarchistic publications and allied himself with the worst class of revolutionary plotters in the metropolis. The beginning of 1893 found him living with Emma Goldman, a Russian woman of some note as a speech maker among the Anarchists, and spending much of his time in the beer halls frequented by Anarchists and Nihilists. Berkman seemed to be consumed with a desire to shine in the eyes of his mistress and of the blatant, beer-sodden circle of which she was the star, by giving a practical exemplification of his fidelity to Autonomist doctrine. "Who is the worst enemy of society in America?" he asked himself, and when the Homestead trouble broke out, he imagined that his question was answered. Frick was the man--Frick, the oppressor of workmen, the representative of the power of wealth and of might antagonizing right. "Undoubtedly," thought Berkman, "this man is society's arch-enemy and a fit mark for the weapon of an Autonomist." So the misguided wretch made up his mind to murder the Carnegie chairman, and proceeded accordingly to Pittsburgh, armed for assassination. In company with Henry Bauer and Carl Knold, active anarchists of Allegheny City, Berkman inspected the _Chronicle-Telegraph_ building on Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, in which Mr. Frick's office is located, and mapped out a program of attack. Representing himself as an employment agent, who desired to confer with the Carnegie chairman regarding the furnishing of non-union labor, he experienced little trouble in obtaining access to Mr. Frick's private room. He made several visits before the day of the shooting, and was suspected by no one. The neatly-attired, slight, young man who appeared so anxious to help the firm in its endeavors to procure workmen was one of the last men who would be supposed to harbor murderous designs. At noon on the day set for the consummation of his plan, Berkman sent in his card to Mr. Frick, requesting an interview, but was referred to the clerk whose business it was to supervise the transportation of non-union men to Homestead. The clerk was out and Berkman was told to call again later. Shortly before two o'clock, Berkman returned and again asked to see Mr. Frick. He was informed that the Chairman was engaged. After waiting a few minutes in the hall outside the anteroom adjoining Mr. Frick's office, he came back once more, and finding nobody present but the office-boy, handed the lad his card and told him to take it in to the Chairman. The boy had hardly opened the door of Mr. Frick's office when Berkman rushed in, drew a revolver and opened fire. Mr. Frick, who was seated at his desk in conversation with Mr. Leishman, one of his partners, had his back turned to the intruder and offered an easy mark. Berkman fired three shots in quick succession, the first two lodging in Mr. Frick's neck, while the third struck the ceiling. The assassin attempted to fire a fourth time, but the cartridge failed to explode. He snapped the trigger several times and finding that the revolver would not work, threw it on the ground, and, pulling out a stiletto, advanced upon Mr. Frick, who, wounded as he was, had risen to his feet to defend himself. Twice Berkman plunged the stiletto into Mr. Frick's side and he was about to strike a third time when the wounded man, summoning up all the strength left to him, seized his assailant's arm and grappled with him in a fierce struggle for life. All this passed so rapidly that the clerks in the adjoining offices were unable to reach the scene of the encounter until the moment when Mr. Frick and Berkman clinched. When they entered, Berkman had the Chairman pressed against the large window looking out on Fifth avenue and was trying to release the hand that held the stiletto. Both men were covered with blood and a pool of blood was on the floor. On the street without, then thronged with Saturday afternoon promenaders, people stood transfixed with horror. Some shrieked helplessly. Some, with more presence of mind, ran to summon the police. The clerks quickly released Mr. Frick from the grasp of his assailant and placed him on a lounge. Berkman dashed out of the office, with several clerks in pursuit, and was caught in the elevator, given in charge of the police and removed to the Central Station in a patrol wagon. Dr. Litchfield, Mr. Frick's family physician, and a number of other medical men arrived promptly and took charge of the wounded man. Mr. Frick had not lost consciousness and was able to recognize and speak to the physicians. They wished to place him under the influence of chloroform while probing for the bullets, but he forbade this and submitted stoically to the operation, which lasted two hours. The extraordinary nerve of the man never left him. After the bullets had been extracted and his wounds bandaged, he conversed collectedly with visitors, signed several letters which had been written before the shooting and talked of being in condition to return to his office on Monday. Meanwhile an excited multitude thronged the street outside the Carnegie offices and defied the efforts of the police to disperse it. At 6 o'clock an ambulance drove up, but it was not used. The news that Mr. Frick was to be removed to his private residence at Homewood, in the East End, had spread among the people and the desire to catch a glimpse of him made the mob unmanageable. Not until 7.45 o'clock was the removal accomplished. At that hour the crowd was drawn away by driving an ambulance to the rear of the Carnegie offices. The vehicle was driven quickly back again, and Mr. Frick was placed in it and carried off while the coast was clear. Before being removed to his home, Mr. Frick sent this message to the reporters: "The shooting will in no way effect the Homestead strike." Dangerous as the Carnegie Chairman's injuries were, his recovery was rapid, and two weeks after his encounter with Berkman he was able to return to his office and resume full charge of the firm's affairs to which, while on his sick bed, he had still continued to give a considerable measure of attention. Berkman was taken to the county jail on Sunday night, there to await trial. He seemed indifferent to his fate and expressed regret that he had not succeeded in killing Frick. Bauer and Knold, his supposed accomplices, were locked up on the following day. A wagon load of Anarchist literature was seized at the house of Bauer, who acted as an agent for publications of this character. The effect of the shooting on public opinion was strongly marked. The press of Pittsburgh was unanimous in expressing sympathy for Mr. Frick, and in so doing, voiced the general sentiment of the people. At Homestead much regret was expressed, and the workmen seemed to feel that, although Berkman did not represent them or their cause, directly or indirectly, his cowardly act was certain to prejudice their interests. Undoubtedly the attempt to murder Mr. Frick served to hasten the defeat of the workingmen. The courage displayed by the Carnegie Chairman won him admiration in quarters where he had previously been condemned, and there were other circumstances which took the edge off the animosity generated by his harshness towards organized labor. During the crisis at Homestead, his young wife became a mother and, so powerfully did the events in which her husband was the central figure effect her that, for a time, she lay at the point of death. The child lived only a few days. Mr. Frick, it was said, in recognition of the fact that the New York _Sun_ was the only newspaper in the country which took up the cudgels in his behalf, intended to name the little one Charles A. Dana Frick, after the editor of that journal. These incidents conspired to soften the popular heart somewhat, although Mr. Frick did not abate in the least his hostility towards the Amalgamated men and his determination to break the back of unionism in the Carnegie mills at any cost. There was, however, one man in Allegheny county who neither sympathized with Frick nor scrupled to express his regret that Berkman's weapons failed to do their work. This man was W. L. Iams, a youth belonging to one of the best families in Greene County, who was serving in Company K, Tenth Regiment, under Colonel Hawkins. Iams was stretched on the grass outside Lieutenant Colonel J. B. Streator's tent, chatting with a group of comrades, when the news of the attempt on Frick's life was brought in. Acting on the impulse of the moment, and doubtless without measuring the significance of his words, the young man jumped to his feet and shouted "Three cheers for the man who shot Frick." Colonel Streator heard the remark and, stepping out of his tent, asked who had uttered it. Receiving no response, he ordered the regiment drawn up in line in the company streets, and, after condemning the language used by Iams as treasonable, demanded from one company after another the name of the offender. When he came to Company K, Iams stepped forward from the ranks and said "I did it." The Colonel asked him why. "Because I do not like Frick" was the answer. Iams was ordered to apologize before the regiment but refused, and was thereupon sent to the guard-house and subjected, without the benefit of a trial by court-martial, to the most degrading punishment known under military law. He was first strung up by the thumbs with notice that he would be cut down as soon as he apologized. Although suffering exquisite torture, the young man remained firm and declined to retract his words. After hanging for a quarter of an hour, he lost consciousness and the regimental surgeon, Dr. Neff, ordered him to be cut down. Iams was then placed in the guard-house until his case was reported to Colonel Hawkins, at the headquarters of the provisional brigade. The report was returned with the approval of Colonel Hawkins and General Snowden and an order from the latter that the man be disgraced and drummed out of camp. Colonel Streator executed these directions to the letter. Iams' head and face were half shaved; his uniform was exchanged for an old pair of overalls and a shirt and dilapidated hat to match, and in this wretched condition he was led out of camp to the tune of the "Rogues' March." His sentence carried with it permanent exclusion from the National Guard and disenfranchisement. Iams proceeded to Pittsburgh and, strange to say, became the lion of the hour. He announced his intention of prosecuting the officers concerned in his punishment and a score of attorneys volunteered their services as his counsel. Among these was Frank P. Iams, Esq., a cousin of the young man, who was engaged in practice at the Pittsburgh bar. Within twenty-four hours the Iams case became a National _cause celebre_. It was discussed everywhere from Maine to California. Military authorities waxed warm over it. Legal authorities squabbled over it. Professional publicists were interviewed concerning it. Editors made it the subject of tremendous publications. Pictures of Iams, hairless, mustacheless and defiant appeared in the illustrated weeklies. The Allegheny County Democrats, happening to have another convention on hand at this time, took the matter up in a political way, and as it happened that Colonel Streator was a well-known and popular Democratic club man, "confusion worse confounded" followed the endeavors of the workingmen in the convention to secure the passage of resolutions excoriating the "brutal and inhuman" conduct of Iams' superior officers. The preponderance of sentiment was everywhere against the officers. In inflicting a punishment so severe and unusual on a thoughtless youth, whose insubordinate conduct might have been otherwise chastised with equally good effect, and especially in denying him even a drumhead court-martial, they were held guilty of tyrannically exceeding their authority. Iams carried out his threat of prosecuting the officers and indictments were subsequently found against General Snowden, Colonel Hawkins, Colonel Streator and Surgeon Neff. The trial, however, resulted in the acquittal of the defendants, the judge and jury being satisfied that whether the punishment inflicted on Iams fitted the crime or not, military law permitted its infliction. After two weeks' service, the military force at Homestead was reduced to three regiments of infantry, a troop of cavalry and a battery, the retiring regiments breaking camp on July 27 and 28. Those that remained were booked for a term of service which was to end only when the Carnegie mills were in undisturbed operation, an order of things which was not to be finally established until more than two months later. Mr. Frick's illness did not stay the hand of Secretary Lovejoy, who continued to lodge informations against the participants in the affair of July 6. Pinkerton detectives and a few newspaper reporters who had been placed on the Carnegie Company's pay-roll furnished the secretary with the necessary testimony. The first of the workmen to be held without bail was Sylvester Critchlow, a daring fellow who had done active duty as a sharpshooter in the mill-yard. Samuel Stewart, a clerk in the mill, swore that he had seen Critchlow fire at the men in the barges, and on this evidence the defendant was held liable for first degree murder and committed to jail pending his trial. The workmen, for their part, proceeded to carry out their threat of prosecuting the Carnegie officials. Hugh Ross, himself under bail on the charge of murder, made information before Alderman King, of the South Side, Pittsburgh, charging that H. C. Frick, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Robert Pinkerton, William Pinkerton, J. A. Potter, G. A. Corey, J. G. A. Leishman, H. M. Curry, C. W. Bedell, Fred. Primer, W. H. Burt, Nevin McConnell, James Dovey, John Cooper and Fred. W. Hinde "did kill and murder John E. Morris, George W. Rutter, Silas Wain and Joseph Sotak." The arrest of Chairman Frick was to be deferred until he should recover from his wounds. As the Homestead men, for the most part, had been arrested at such times and under such circumstances as compelled them to spend a night in jail, before securing a hearing in court on their application for admission to bail, Ross made special efforts to have the Carnegie officials subjected to the same experience. This manoeuvre, however, was defeated. Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry, hearing that warrants were out for their arrest, went at once, in company with a formidable array of counsel, to the criminal court where Judge Ewing was sitting, and asked for admission to bail. Judge Ewing said he could not hear the applications until the defendants had appeared before an alderman and either waived examination or been held for court; but with a degree of courtesy probably never before exhibited in a criminal court he dispatched a messenger for Alderman King, permitted the defendants to waive a hearing and then went on to consider the question of bail. This was speedily disposed of. The Judge declined to consider the representations made by the attorneys of the Amalgamated Association as to the entrance into the case of the elements of first degree murder. There was no equality, he held, between the Carnegie officials and the men in the conflict of July 6. The former were exercising their rights; the latter were rioters and trespassers, whom it was proper to oppose with arms. He, therefore, would admit the defendants to bail in the sum of $10,000. Messrs. Dovey and McConnell, superintendents of departments in the Homestead mill, were arrested later and passed the night in jail. Superintendent Potter and G. A. Corey evaded the constables and presented themselves before Judge Ewing next morning. Alderman King was again brought into court and the four men were released on bail in the same manner as Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry. The court ordered also that Mr. Frick give $10,000 bail and that it be taken at his home. Judge Ewing was roundly denounced by the workingmen for the lengths to which he had gone to spare the Carnegie officials the humiliation which O'Donnell and his companions had been forced to endure. "Evidently," they said, "the judges are prejudiced against us and are bent upon discriminating in favor of our rich and influential antagonists." Another disquieting circumstance was the verdict arrived at by the coroner's jury in pursuance of the inquest held on the men who were killed in the Homestead conflict. In each instance the killing was charged to an "unlawful assembly," and the jury recommended that "said unlawful assembly be certified to the September sessions of the grand jury." On August 2, Attorney Brennen presented to court a petition signed by sixty-seven steelworkers of Pittsburgh and Homestead, praying that a license be issued for the establishment of a voluntary trade tribunal, in conformity with an act passed in 1883, to arbitrate differences in the steel trade. The acceptance of the terms of the act must be mutual between employers and employed. Mr. Brennen entertained hopes that the Carnegie firm, seeing the willingness of the men to submit to arbitration, might yet consent to this mode of adjustment. Secretary Lovejoy settled the matter definitely in the negative by the brief statement that "The question of recognizing the Amalgamated Association cannot be arbitrated." This was the last overture made to the firm on behalf of the workmen. The latter, however, continued to keep up their courage and maintained an almost unbroken front, desertions being few and far between. Mass meetings were held frequently and at these it was invariably agreed that the mill could not be operated with non-union men, that sooner or later the firm must yield to the pressure of circumstances and that, with the help received from the treasury of the Amalgamated Association and from other sources, the locked-out men could hold out, if necessary, for a year or more. There were some who foresaw the collapse of these castles in the air, but, rather than place themselves under the suspicion of lukewarmness, they held their peace. CHAPTER XIII. [Illustration: BERKMAN & IAMS] FRICK'S ASSAILANT RAILROADED TO THE PENITENTIARY--THE IAMS TRIAL--HANGING BY THE THUMBS APPROVED BY A JURY--THE MILLS FILLING UP--SERMONS TO NON-UNIONISTS--STRIKERS GO THROUGH THE PLANT--THE RELIEF FUND--GOMPERS ARRIVES AND MAKES AN INCENDIARY SPEECH--PITTSBURGH AND MAHONING MANUFACTURERS CAPITULATE--WILLIAM AND ROBERT PINKERTON ON THE DEFENSIVE. Anarchist Berkman received but a short shrift. He was placed on trial before Judge McClung on September 19, appearing at the bar without an attorney and without witnesses. His demeanor was cool and indifferent. District Attorney Burleigh presented six indictments, charging the prisoner with offenses ranging from felonious assault and battery down to carrying concealed weapons. Mr. Frick was placed on the stand and told the story of the shooting, and the blood-stained garments worn by the Carnegie chairman at the time of the attack were put in evidence. Corroborative testimony was furnished by Mr. Leishman and others. The prosecution having closed its case, Berkman asked to be permitted to testify in his own behalf. "I am not guilty," he said. "I have a defense." A German interpreter was assigned to assist him. The Anarchist's defense consisted of an inflammatory address covering forty pages of closely written foolscap. As rendered into English by the interpreter, sentence by sentence, it was almost unintelligible. It proved, however, to be a review of the "blood-stained register of America," beginning with the "murder" of John Brown, cropping out again in the execution of the Chicago Anarchists who were concerned in the Haymarket massacre, and culminating in the descent of the Pinkertons upon Homestead. The statement bristled with denunciations of capitalists as tyrants who oppress the workingmen, and the inference which it finally conveyed was that Berkman considered himself a martyr of the Chicago type whose exploits would serve to rivet the world's attention on the enormity of the Carnegie Company's crimes against labor. Strangely enough, it seemed not to dawn upon the mind of this young fanatic that he and his fellow preachers of anarchy could not possibly be mistaken as representing the element that toils for a subsistence, and that a martyr to the cause of beer, blood and idleness must necessarily be an object of contempt in the estimation alike of the classes and the masses. [Illustration: THE CONDEMNATION OF IAMS.] Judge McClung confined his charge to a few perfunctory remarks and the jury, without leaving the box, rendered a verdict of guilty on all six indictments. Sentence was then imposed on each indictment, the penalties aggregating 22 years imprisonment, twenty-one in the penitentiary and one in the work-house. The trial occupied just four hours, attesting that in this case at all events, justice ceased to travel with a leaden heel. The Iams episode was not so easily disposed of. Prosecutions were entered against Colonels Hawkins and Streator and Surgeon Grim on the charge of aggravated assault and battery, and the defendants were held under bonds for trial at the September term of court. The trial began on October 27, before Judge W. D. Porter, and continued for ten days. The proceedings were watched with special interest by military men, owing to the issue involved between civil and military law and the prospective establishment of important precedents. Colonel J. R. Braddocks, of the Pittsburgh bar, State Senator Edward E. Robbins, of Greensburg, and J. M. Braden and Albert Sprowls, of Washington, Pa., appeared as counsel for the defendants; and Frank P. Iams, a cousin of the disgraced militiaman, and John D. Watson, both of the Pittsburgh bar, conducted the prosecution. The defense opened the proceedings by demanding that the indictment be quashed on the ground that the punishment of Iams was commensurate with the enormity of his offense against good order and military discipline, that it conformed to military law, and that jurisdiction in the case properly belonged to a military tribunal. After some intricate controversy, Judge Porter denied the plea and ordered the trial to go on. Attorney Watson opened for the prosecution, giving a graphic recital of the torture to which the prosecutor, Iams, had been subjected. Iams himself was placed on the stand and related his experiences, a fair conception of which may be formed from the following extract from his testimony: "When I was first tied up I asked for a chew of tobacco. Soon I began to grow tired; my legs cramped; my head ached; my eyes felt as if they were being pushed from their sockets; the muscles in the back of my neck seemed as if they were being torn from the base of the skull. I suffered terrible agony. It seemed to me that I had been suspended in the air a week before being cut down. I saw Colonel Streator there. When I was cut down I was in a dazed condition; everything seemed blurred. The first thing I remember was when some one gave me some ammonia. I was lying on the ground; had a terrible headache. Some one gave me some whiskey. I remained in the guard tent all night." Attorney Braden endeavored to show on cross-examination that Iams had prearranged to misbehave in order to secure his discharge; that he had swallowed tobacco in order to make him sick while under punishment, and that he had admitted to a friend that the punishment did not hurt him much, but the lawyer failed to shake the young man's testimony. Before leaving the stand, Iams stated that if the defendants were convicted it was his intention to bring a civil suit against them for damages. Several members of Iams' company were called as witnesses and corroborated the details of the young man's story. John H. Gladden, an hospital nurse of the Tenth regiment, testified that he had seen Iams trussed up by the thumbs, but watched the proceedings only for ten minutes, as the sight sickened him. Private Kent swore that Colonel Streator, on hearing it rumored that Iams meant to shoot him on sight, said that he (Iams) "had better keep out of the way, or he would shoot him if he could hit at forty yards." Senator Robbins, whose interest in the case was sharpened by the fact that he was quartermaster-general of the Tenth regiment, opened for the defense. He denied that the case had the elements of an assault, questioned the severity of Iams' punishment, and warned the jury that the conviction of the defendants must be followed by the destruction of discipline in the National Guard. Deputy Sheriff Gray was brought forward by the prosecution to tell the story of the lock-out at Homestead, the exhaustion of the Sheriff's powers and the fate of the Pinkertons, so as to make clear the gravity of the conditions with which the military had to cope. The defense interposed a statement to the effect that the Governor had exceeded his authority in ordering out the troops, but this was overruled by the court. Colonel Streator's story did not materially conflict with that told by Iams. Colonel Hawkins testified that on the afternoon when Mr. Frick was attacked he received two communications by signal, one stating that Frick had been shot by a striker, the other that Frick was dead and that extraordinary precautions were necessary. He had thereupon ordered all commanders to be on the alert, to double their camp guards and to send out three extra patrols. While the camp was in this state Iams had proposed three cheers for the man who shot Frick. When Colonel Streator reported the affair, witness had said to him: "Colonel, you know your duty as a soldier." The situation was critical and prompt measures were needed. Robert W. Herbert, a newspaper reporter, said that Iams had told him of his intention to shoot Streator, and that in speaking of General Snowden, the young man had said, "I will get even with that four-eyed ---- ---- ---- on the hill." One of the hospital nurses swore that Iams had made himself sick with tobacco, and another that Iams had been drinking and wanted to be confined in the guard-house. Surgeon Grimm illustrated for the court's edification the knot, known as a close-hitch, by which the rope was fastened on Iams' thumbs, and described it as not being a severe kind of knot. Veterans of the civil war bore witness that the punishment suffered by Iams was in accordance with the usages of war and that it was mild considering the gravity of the offense. An amusing _lapsus linguae_ marked the evidence of Colonel Norman M. Smith, of the Eighteenth regiment. Here was the colloquy: ATTORNEY IAMS.--"You have hung men up by the thumbs in your regiment?" COLONEL SMITH.--"I have never had occasion, but if I had, I would _cheerfully_ do so--I mean, I would do so. I wish to strike out the word 'cheerfully.' That was a slip." Whereupon an expansive smile illumined every face in the court-room. The closing speech for the defense, delivered by Senator Robbins, was a fine forensic effort, bearing in the main on the absence of malice and the necessity of extraordinary punishment when soldiers mutiny in the field. Attorney Iams, in closing for the prosecution, compared his relative to the Savior on the cross, and averred that the only reason why the youth was not permitted to die while suspended by the thumbs was because the defendants "wanted him alive next morning in order that they could shave his head and drum him out of camp." Judge Porter charged squarely in favor of the defense, telling the jury that, "If Colonel Streator, in punishing Iams, was actuated only by upright motives in an effort as an officer to maintain order, he should not be punished." It took the jury twenty-one hours to arrive at a verdict. A few stood out for conviction on the charge of simple assault and battery, which had been ruled out by the court, and, to test the matter, an appeal was made to Judge Porter for instructions. The judge replied with a scathing rebuke. When the jurors next appeared they returned a verdict of acquittal, but directed that, in the aggravated assault and battery case, the costs be divided between Colonel Hawkins and Streator. While there was much sympathy for Iams, this finding was commonly regarded as a just one, in view of the supreme necessity of maintaining discipline in the military service and the wide latitude permitted by military usage in punishing delinquencies in the field. It is safe to say, however, that the harsh penalties imposed upon Iams will never again be resorted to in the National Guard of Pennsylvania without reference to a court-martial. While these events were in progress, the mills at Homestead were filling up rapidly with non-union men. The Tide kept up her daily trips, and the sight of brawny fellows with bundles, duly ticketed for "Fort Frick," became so common on the Monongahela wharf at Pittsburgh that people ceased to marvel at it and to curse and scoff at the blacksheep. By the first of August there were over 800 men at work, their board and lodging being provided within the mill enclosure. Regimental chaplains were secured to hold regular services on Sunday, with the assistance of a band which took the place of a choir. Chaplain Hays, of the Fifteenth regiment, preached the first sermon. His theme was "Saul of Tarsus," with which eminent biblical character he managed to connect Private Iams and the anarchists, denouncing both the latter as liberally as he praised the scriptural hero. After this sermon, the more illiterate of the non-unionists were firmly convinced that Saul of Tarsus was the leading non-unionist of his time besides being a regular martinet in military matters. Superintendent Potter now claimed openly that the strike was broken, that about forty of the firm's old employees had quietly returned to work and that a majority of the rest were ready and anxious to return. The advisory board met these assertions with an emphatic denial, crediting Mr. Potter with making a "gigantic bluff," as Vice Chairman Thomas Crawford put it, for the purpose of discouraging the strikers.[B] Mr. Potter, however, invited the advisory board to send a committee to inspect the mill and verify his representations. The invitation was accepted and four skilled steelworkers went through the plant and narrowly inspected the work going on in every department. At a mass meeting of the strikers, held on August 2, this committee reported that, while it was true that a large number of men were at work in the mill, little actual progress was being made, and that the consequent loss to the firm was heavy enough to justify the most sanguine expectations on the side of the Amalgamated Association. The chief officers of the Association were present when the report was made, and delivered speeches full of enthusiasm and confidence. Every man at the meeting pledged himself to stay out to the bitter end. [B] The term "strikers" is used here because, when the firm invited its employees to return to work, the lock-out ceased, and the union men were placed in the position of being on a strike. An attempt to "evangelize" the non-unionists was made by the distribution of circulars appealing to their manhood in the name of organized labor. These bills were dropped into the mill yard from trains passing over the Pemickey bridge and seemed to produce some effect, inasmuch as several of the non-unionists left the mill and accepted money from the Amalgamated Association to take them to their homes. Unfortunately the ease with which funds were obtained in this way led many of the worst characters in the mill, after being dismissed for laziness or misconduct, to make descents on the Association's treasury, backing up their demands with amazing tales of the difficulties experienced in trying to operate the mills with green hands, including accidents of the most appalling description. Many of these fictions crept into the newspapers and produced a sensation. The relief fund established for the benefit of the strikers was swelled daily by contributions from all parts of the United States and Canada, ranging in amount from one to twelve hundred dollars. Soliciting committees were sent into the coal and coke regions and elsewhere and met on every hand with a generous reception. An immense sum was needed to meet the daily demands of the army of the unemployed. The disbursing officers, however, husbanded their resources by refusing to give out cash. To those in need of assistance orders on the grocery stores for provisions were issued. The amounts given out in this way aggregated about $3,000 a day. President Samuel Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, with which the Amalgamated Association is affiliated, arrived in Pittsburgh, accompanied by the other executive officers of the Federation, on August 12 and settled down at once to the injection of new life into the Homestead campaign. On Saturday, the 14th, he addressed 1500 men in the Homestead rink, throwing a ferocious vigor into his remarks which verged on incendiarism. Of the assault on Mr. Frick he said: "I have been asked for my opinion of the attack on the life of Mr. Frick. I don't know why I should be asked to go out of my way to give Berkman an additional kick. I never heard of him until after he made his attack. The laws of Pennsylvania will take care of him. I do know, however, that I have heard of thousands of men being shot down by day and by night, each and every one of whom was a better man than this despot, Frick. Yet I have never been asked for my opinion of any of these cases." Mr. Gompers intimated that a boycott might be declared against the Carnegie Company, in spite of the decisions of the Pennsylvania courts construing boycotting as conspiracy, and he added that he would not fear to come personally within the borders of Pennsylvania and declare it. A highly encouraging event which took place at this time was the signing of the scale by the Pittsburgh iron manufacturers. The manufacturers' committee and the wage committee of the Amalgamated Association had been holding a succession of conferences, without approaching a settlement for a period of fully six weeks. Not until the second week in August did they arrive at an agreement. On the evening of the 11th the stubborn determination which characterized both sides was suddenly relaxed and the labor world was surprised with the announcement that the manufacturers had decided to sign the scale in consideration of a 10 per cent. reduction in the wages of finishers--the highest priced men employed in steel mills. They had originally demanded a reduction of puddlers' wages from $5.50 to $4.50 per ton. This the Association steadily resisted and with unquestionable justice. Even the _American Manufacturer_, the biased organ of the employers, was forced to admit editorially that the puddler, being a handicraftsman and in no wise affected by mechanical improvements, was not a proper subject for a wage reduction. Finding this demand hopelessly untenable, the manufacturers asked instead for a reduction in finishers' wages, and after fifteen useless conferences, suggested that the matter be referred for arbitration, as the Amalgamated committee had no power to act. The arbitration proposal was submitted to the lodges and overwhelmingly rejected, but the wage committee was authorized to act on a change in the finishers' scale. It was then decided to submit to the 10 per cent. reduction. The effect of this settlement was to give work at once to 40,000 idle men in the Pittsburgh district, and as the Mahoning Valley manufacturers and workmen quickly followed suit, the entire iron district of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio was relieved from a situation pregnant with disaster to employers and workmen alike. The finishers were the only disgruntled ones, and so keenly did they resent what they professed to regard as unjust discrimination against their interests that a number of them seceded from the Amalgamated Association and formed a union of their own. At Homestead the signing of the scale by the Manufacturers' Association was regarded as a capitulation to the power of organized labor which must force the Carnegie Company to abandon its individual fight. It was the belief that Mr. Frick had been chosen to bear the brunt of the general battle against the Amalgamated Association with the understanding that, if he won, all the mills in the Pittsburgh district would be made non-union; and the compromise agreed upon was accepted, therefore, as meaning that the other manufacturers had lost faith in Mr. Frick's ability to win, and that the Carnegie chairman himself could not rationally continue his fight, now that his brethren had fallen away from him. Subsequent events proved the baselessness of this supposition. It was merely one of many straws at which the Homestead men grasped eagerly in the face of the Carnegie firm's slow but sure fulfilment of its pledge to fill the mills with non-union workmen and rely solely thenceforward upon this class of labor. The making of informations and counter-informations founded on the Pinkerton affair went on uninterruptedly. Fred. Primer was the first of the Pinkertons to be placed under arrest. He was held for court by Alderman King on the strength of testimony showing that the first shot on July 6 was fired from the barges. Primer, attended by the attorneys for the Carnegie firm, was hurried before Judge Ewing, who promptly released him on his own recognizance, stating very plainly at the same time that whatever trouble occurred at Homestead was of the workmen's own making and that no one else should be held responsible for the consequences. The court also held Edward Burke in $10,000 bail on the charge of murder preferred by Secretary Lovejoy. Burke had already acquired some notoriety by an altercation with Sheriff McCleary on the occasion of the Sheriff's last visit to Homestead before the arrival of the troops. The reader has been informed of the inspiriting effect produced upon Sheriff McCleary by military protection. One of the first results thereof was the enlistment of a corps of deputies to take the place of the Homestead police, the latter officials being so thoroughly in sympathy with the strikers that they devoted their attention chiefly to the apprehension of non-union men who happened to stray out of the works. The sight of a non-unionist was always sufficient to incite an uproar and on several occasions riotous demonstrations were caused by the appearance on the streets of men who had the hardihood to leave the mill and walk abroad. The Sheriff kept adding to his force of deputies according as the military guard was reduced, until when the last of the troops left Homestead, there were enough civil officers employed to deal with any ordinary disorder. The congressional investigation which was begun at Pittsburgh was resumed at Washington on July 23. Robert and William Pinkerton appeared to testify, and a committee of the Knights of Labor, consisting of Messrs. Hayes, Wright and Devlin, was also present and submitted to the investigating committee a series of questions to be put to the witnesses. The Pinkerton brothers presented a written statement, giving a history of their agency and an account of its methods. They upheld the character of their employees for trustworthiness and reliability, denied that it was customary for their men to carry arms or that the men ever wantonly or recklessly fired a shot or used weapons without being sworn in as deputy sheriffs or otherwise properly authorized, and alleged that the men sent to Homestead were to have been deputized and that Colonel Gray was understood to be authorized to deputize them. When the sub-committee charged with the investigation came to sum up and prepare a report, it was found that the members were hopelessly divided, so that the work done, as far as it was likely to affect congressional action, might be considered as wasted. Some of the members, however, did not hesitate to give publicity to their individual views. Mr. Bynum held that if the Carnegie firm could legally bring in 300 Pinkerton guards, it would be equally justified in bringing in 10,000--that is to say, a full-sized army equipped to levy war. He spoke in very severe terms of Sheriff McCleary, describing him as a "poltroon," whose conduct during the riot was simply cowardly. The House judiciary committee later received a supplementary statement from the Pinkerton brothers, replying to attacks made upon Pinkertonism by Senator Vest and Grand Master Workman Powderly of the K. of L. In this document many crimes were charged to members of secret labor organizations, and it was claimed that the organizations themselves, instead of showing sincere solicitude for law and order, by disciplining and controlling the guilty ones, were disposed to applaud outrages committed in their name and to elevate the criminals, when caught, to the dignity of martyrs. "Notwithstanding the protestations of the leaders at Homestead," said the Messrs. Pinkerton in conclusion, "no reasonable man can for a moment doubt that if the troops and deputy sheriffs were withdrawn, the non-union men now working in the mills would be murdered, and for no offense, no wrong, no injury to anyone." [Illustration: PEMICKEY TRACK IN THE MILL YARD.] CHAPTER XIV. [Illustration: POLITICIANS AT WORK] A SUPPRESSED CONGRESSIONAL REPORT--SYMPATHY STRIKES PROVE A FAILURE--GOMPERS AS A BOYCOTT WIELDER--THE SLAVS WEAKEN--PLANS OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE--SMOOTH MR. MILHOLLAND ENLISTS HUGH O'DONNELL--HONEST JOHN McLUCKIE REFUSES TO BE MUZZLED--THE MILHOLLAND SCHEME FALLS THROUGH--OUTBREAKS AT HOMESTEAD--THE SEARCH FOR PINKERTON GUNS--MR. FRICK REVISITS THE MILL. For reasons which were never fully disclosed, the House committee on Homestead, which entrusted to Representative Oates the preparation of a report to the general judiciary committee, rejected the report when completed and decided to let the whole matter drift over to the next session of Congress. Mr. Oates found that the differences between the Carnegie Company and its men might have been adjusted, had Mr. Frick stated to the conference committee the "bottom facts" prompting the demand for a reduction of wages, but the officers of the company invited trouble by failing to exercise "patience, indulgence and solicitude," and that Mr. Frick, in particular, was "too stern, brusque and somewhat autocratic." He condemned the employment of Pinkertons and argued that the company might have prevented bloodshed by relying solely on the constituted authorities for protection, although he conceded the inefficiency of Sheriff McCleary. He condemned also as unlawful the action of the workmen in turning away the sheriff and in hanging in effigy Messrs. Frick and Potter, denied the right of the Amalgamated Association to bar non-union men out of employment, and held that the men of Homestead had no legal right to resist the Pinkerton invasion and were answerable accordingly to the Pennsylvania courts. In conclusion, Mr. Oates found that congress had no power to dispose of the questions involved. A satisfactory arbitration law could not be enacted and it was a debatable question whether or not congress could do anything to regulate or suppress Pinkertonism. On August 3, Vice-President Morton appointed a committee of senators, composed of Messrs. Gallinger, Pfeffer, Hansbrough, Felton, Sanders, White and Hill to investigate the Pinkerton corporation. Action by this body was deferred until after the Presidential election, the chairman being a stalwart Republican and averse to the opening of proceedings which might furnish campaign material to the Democrats. It was not long until the backbone of the sympathy strikes declared at the Carnegie mills at Lawrenceville, Duquesne and Beaver Falls showed signs of weakening. At Lawrenceville, the company took precautions similar to those taken at Homestead. An eight-foot board fence was built round the mill yard and no person was admitted without a pass from the superintendent. The strikers placed pickets on guard, but, despite their vigilance, several hundred non-union men were spirited in and on August 1, the plate mill was started. One hundred and fifty uniformed policemen and the entire force of city detectives were detailed, at the request of the firm, to protect the mill property at this time. After one day's service the majority of the officers were withdrawn, but enough were left on duty to guard all entrances and approaches to the mill. For the accommodation of the non-unionists, who dared not venture out, cots were set up in the carpenter shop, a rough-and-ready cuisine was improvised, and beer was brought in from the neighboring breweries. The force of "scab" employees increased rapidly, and in a short time, the watchers without began to lose heart and relax their vigilance. Nevertheless the Lawrenceville strike was prolonged for a year, or twice as long as the strike at Homestead, although the Lawrenceville men had signed a contract with the Carnegie Company and had no grievance of their own. When the strike was ultimately declared off, few of the men who went out were employed again by the firm and many of them found themselves reduced to poverty. The Duquesne strike was of short duration. The men had been hastily organized and the new-born spirit of unionism among them was not strong enough to inspire and maintain mutual confidence. A report that non-union men had been secured and that the mill would be started on August 4 caused a stampede, several hundred of the strikers discarding their allegiance to the Amalgamated Association and rushing pell-mell to the mill when it opened up, fearing that their jobs were slipping away from them, perhaps forever. Enraged at this defection, the strikers who held their ground, aided by a large body of men from Homestead, who had camped at Duquesne on the previous night, took possession of the mill gates and beat back those who were returning to work. Deputy sheriffs who were on the ground sent to General Wiley for assistance, which was promptly rendered, six companies of the Sixteenth Regiment being sent to the scene of disturbance on a work train. Eleven of the rioters were captured and taken to Pittsburgh, where they were held for a court trial. On the morning of August 8, the mill was again opened for work and the strikers, thoroughly disheartened, resumed their jobs in a body, every man, with the exception of those arrested for riot, getting his old place. The strike at Beaver Falls, where 900 men are employed, with a weekly pay-roll of $12,000, lasted four months. It was free from disorder, the mill being shut down from the time the strike was declared. The financial loss to the town was so heavy and affected the business people so severely that it was deemed useless to stay out, and, when the firm re-opened the mill, the three Amalgamated lodges formally abandoned the strike and marched back to work in a body. Sentiment at Homestead was kept warm by the unflagging efforts of the Amalgamated officials and of President Gompers, of the Federation of Labor. Mr. Gompers clung tenaciously to his idea of imposing a universal boycott upon Carnegie products, and the Homestead men accepted the suggestion with enthusiasm, believing that by this means the firm could be brought to its knees. Hugh O'Donnell was one of the most earnest advocates of the plan and stated through the press that it was bound to furnish a solution for the Homestead problem. As a preliminary step, the strikers issued a printed appeal to workingmen not to "work up the material shipped from the works of the Carnegie Steel Company during the present strike." At a conference of the general officers of the Federation with Mr. Weihe on August 12, the boycott plan was considered and finally negatived, probably because of the well-known attitude of the Allegheny County courts towards persons concerned in this form of conspiracy. As Mr. Gompers and his colleagues had been holding up the boycott as a panacea, their backdown was regarded with much disfavor by the strikers, but a few red-hot speeches at a mass meeting on the following day, including the famous address by Mr. Gompers, an extract from which appears in the preceding chapter, put the rank and file in good humor again. There are times when oratory covers a multitude of sins. Once out of range of the orator's power, however, the strikers had to meet and tacitly admit the force of some discouraging circumstances. Grumblings were heard even at the expense of Hugh O'Donnell and Burgess McLuckie. O'Donnell left Homestead mysteriously late in July and it was rumored that he had been detailed to confer with Republican leaders in the east with a view to bringing political pressure to bear on Messrs. Frick and Carnegie. The actual history of O'Donnell's mission is given here for the first time in print. It has already been explained that C. L. Magee, of Pittsburgh, in addition to being interested as a Republican leader in the settlement of the Homestead troubles, was still more profoundly concerned in the affair by reason of his being Sheriff McCleary's bondsman. Mr. Magee was well aware that attempts to influence either Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Frick were a waste of energy. The next best step, in his opinion, was to influence the men of Homestead themselves, and, above all, to put a stop to the speech-making of Burgess McLuckie and others in opposition to the McKinley bill, to "free trade in labor" and other sins charged to the account of the Republican party just when the Republican party was least able to stand assaults. In pursuance of this purpose he communicated with John L. Milholland, of New York, chairman of the Republican committee on industrial affairs, advising him to arrive at an understanding with O'Donnell and McLuckie. Milholland, recognizing the critical nature of the situation, at once proceeded to Homestead, and induced O'Donnell to accompany him to New York. The young Homesteader left without confiding his plans to anybody. A reporter of the _New York World_, however, recognized Milholland, discovered what was on foot and informed the _World_ by telegraph, whereupon the management of that journal detailed a special man to meet and shadow the travelers when they reached Philadelphia and also succeeded in placing a confidential agent in Milholland's office as stenographer, with instructions to watch developments in the Homestead affair. The upshot of the conference in New York, to which O'Donnell was a party, was that the young labor leader pledged himself to use his influence to silence the anti-tariff orators of Homestead, and particularly McLuckie, and the Republican National Committee, in return, guaranteed an early settlement of the wage trouble, to the satisfaction of the workingmen. On his return, O'Donnell told Hugh Dempsey, Master Workman of D. A. 3, K. of L., of his agreement and enlisted Dempsey's aid in bringing McLuckie to terms. Dempsey sought out the sturdy burgess, took him into the parlor of a hotel and laid the Milholland scheme before him. "It rests with you, John, to settle this whole trouble," said the Master Workman. "How so?" asked McLuckie. "Well," said the other, "All you need do is to write a few lines over your signature, stating that you have been misquoted and to quit making Democratic speeches, and the Republicans will give you anything you want and settle the wage question, besides." McLuckie's eyes blazed and his big fist came down on the table with a bang. "So," he said, "you want me not only to sacrifice my independence, but to write myself down a PUBLIC LIAR! If any other man made such a proposal to me, Hugh, I would knock him down." "Don't be unreasonable, John," the Master Workman argued. "Remember what is at stake. Remember that it is in your hands to stop misery and bloodshed and restore happiness to Homestead." "Yes, at the price of my own character," rejoined the big Burgess, hotly. "Say no more, Hugh. Come what may, I shall never denounce myself to the American people as a liar and a hypocrite." Here the conversation ended and the two men left the hotel. Just then Hugh O'Donnell came out of a hotel across the street, and seeing McLuckie and Dempsey hastened to join them. "What do you think he has been asking me to do?" said McLuckie, with a contemptuous glance at Dempsey, and then he recounted the interview at the hotel. O'Donnell laughed. "Why, John," he said, "it was I that asked Dempsey to talk to you. If you are as sensible a man as I take you to be, and are anxious to render real service to your friends here, you will do as the National Committee wants you to, and you'll never regret it." McLuckie answered with bitterness that O'Donnell was mistaken in him, that his manhood was not for sale to the politicians, and that he would treat as an enemy any man who met him with proposals the acceptance of which would place him in a dubious light before the American people. The endeavor to silence McLuckie and make him recant did not end here. The Burgess was warned by members of the Advisory Board that his anti-tariff talks were damaging the cause of the strikers; nevertheless he declined to put a bridle on his tongue and let slip no opportunity of speaking on the text, "Protection for the manufacturer and free trade in labor," with incidental references to the connection between high tariff, high fences and Pinkerton thugs. Shortly after the meeting with O'Donnell and Dempsey, President Weihe assigned O'Donnell and McLuckie to speak at a labor meeting in Boston. Funds for the trip were supplied by the Boston people and O'Donnell was the purse bearer. When the men arrived in New York, O'Donnell urged McLuckie to go with him to Milholland's office, but without success. After the Boston meeting a reporter of the _Boston Herald_ was detailed to accompany the men back to Homestead. Arriving in New York, O'Donnell again broached the subject of visiting Milholland, but McLuckie was obdurate. At this point, according to the Burgess' own story, O'Donnell left his two companions, promising to meet them at the depot in time to catch a morning train. McLuckie and the _Herald_ man were on hand, but O'Donnell failed to keep his appointment. The day wore on without any sign of O'Donnell's coming. Finally McLuckie informed the _Herald_ man that, as O'Donnell carried the purse, he was unable to pay his fare to Pittsburgh. The reporter advanced the necessary cash and they left New York without an inkling of the whereabouts of their missing companion. It was afterwards ascertained that O'Donnell had hunted up Milholland to notify him of the impossibility of dealing with McLuckie and had probably forgotten his fellow-travelers in the excitement attending his "con-fab" with the great manipulator of industrial affairs for political purposes. O'Donnell's course in these negotiations may be excused on the dual ground of inexperience in politics and a desire to benefit his townsmen by securing somehow a termination of the strike favorable to the wage-workers. He was dealing with sharp and not over-scrupulous practitioners, who dealt largely in promises and cared little about performance and less about any damage that might be sustained by O'Donnell himself, provided that their immediate aims were accomplished. The sole reward obtained by the young leader was seven months' confinement in the Allegheny County jail and abuse at the hands of rival leaders at Homestead. William Roberts was especially severe in his condemnation of both O'Donnell and McLuckie, crediting them with being partners in an unauthorized political move, which was sure to be barren of results. Mr. Roberts himself entered the employ of the Democratic National Committee as a stump speaker before the campaign was over, and remained an ardent low-tariff Democrat until the rejection of his application for a position in the Internal Revenue Collector's office at Pittsburgh convinced him of the error of his ways and led him to take the stump for protection. Smarting under the criticisms to which he was subjected, Hugh O'Donnell went before the advisory board demanding that he be supported by a vote of confidence or else be permitted to resign. McLuckie seconded the request for a vote of confidence, and O'Donnell received his vindication. The conduct of the Hungarian laborers caused the advisory board no little uneasiness. These unfortunates, always poorly paid, had, for the most part, no savings to fall back on and were quickly reduced to destitution. It was hard to expect them to starve for the sake of vindicating union principles, but at the same time it was looked upon as important to hold them in line with the other strikers, because a break, even among the lower class of workmen, would be very damaging to the union cause. The fear of a break among the Huns was a continual source of anxiety. Mr. Frick, having recovered in a remarkably short time from the effects of his wounds, returned to his duties on August 5. A few days later, Messrs. Potter and Childs appeared on the streets of Homestead for the first time since July 6. They were on their way to attend a magistrate's hearing and had to pass through a crowd of several hundred men at the headquarters of the mechanics and laborers. Both officials were cool and seemingly unconcerned. They were not molested in any way, the men merely gazing at them in silence as they passed. Although the Gompers boycott turned out to be only a flash in the pan, the boycotting spirit found a foothold even among the children in Homestead. An amusing illustration of precocity in this regard was furnished in the little chapel at Munhall station on the Sunday after Mr. Gompers' arrival. Mrs. Agnew, the wife of a foreman at work in the Carnegie mill, and her daughter had charge of a Sunday school in this modest place of worship. With the echoes of Mr. Gompers' speech still ringing in their ears, a number of sober-faced boys assembled as usual for instructions, but, before the exercises had fairly commenced, every lad present arose and solemnly marched out. One of the urchins, when questioned, said that he didn't propose to be "teached by der wife an' daughter of no blacksheep." Happily, as soon as the F. of L. issued a no-boycott manifesto, Sunday school took up again at Munhall and went on without further mishap. The life of the men at work in the mill was by no means a pleasant one. They were closely confined, not daring to go out, for some time after the mill was first manned, unless on Saturdays, when those who cared to go to Pittsburgh were taken down on the Tide and allowed to remain away over Sunday. By the middle of August about 200 non-unionists were lodged in the company houses near the mill under protection of the military. The first of these that undertook to bring in his household goods, found that even military aid was insufficient. A crowd of strikers met the teamster who was hauling the goods at the ferry-boat and threatened him with severe handling if he again ventured to haul the property of a blacksheep through the streets of Homestead. [Illustration: THE PEMICKEY BRIDGE.] The first and only real outcropping of trouble between the workmen and the militia arose from conflicts between the crews of freight trains passing over the Pemickey bridge and a detail of soldiers stationed on the obnoxious Little Bill. The soldiers reported that trainmen or strikers concealed on the trains had fired upon them and they were instructed, if again assailed, to return the fire. On the evening of August 18, wild excitement was caused by the noise of a fusillade on the river front of the mill yard. If the statement of the militiamen on board the Little Bill is true, five revolver shots were fired at the boat from a freight train, the first shot coming from the engine and the others from the cars. The fire was returned from the boat and when the train reached the other side of the river, the batallion stationed on the hill above the B. & O. railroad, under the command of Captain Fred Windsor, also opened fire, the rattle of musket balls against the freight cars sounding like the patter of a hail storm. The men in the mill were panic-stricken, believing that the events of July 6 were about to be duplicated, and there was also a hub-bub among the strikers, but the arrival of the provost marshal's guard quickly restored order. The conductor of the freight train stoutly affirmed that the shots which alarmed the soldiers on the Little Bill were merely torpedo explosions, and this was very probably the case, since it is in the last degree unlikely that a few men on a slowly moving freight would undertake to cope with a large number of soldiers on the boat and on shore. The soldiers were at all times consumed with anxiety to do some genuine fighting, and on this occasion the fire-eaters in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth regiments made no secret of their disappointment when they found that the incipient skirmish on the river was not to be followed by a "go" with the strikers. Two days previous to this affair, the provost guard, under Major Crawford, had a brush with the townspeople which came within an ace of developing into a pitched battle. Frank Tracey, a non-union laborer, was arrested for larceny, and four of his brother blacksheep were taken with him to Alderman Oeffner's office by the arresting officer. Tracy was committed to jail amid the cheers of a crowd which had gathered in and around the magistrate's office. When the four non-unionists came out, the mob surged around them and some of the more violent suggested lynching or a ducking in the river as fit treatment for the "scabs." Clubs and stones were picked up, and the situation began to look serious when Major Crawford appeared at the head of a squad of men, with fixed bayonets and guns at half cock, and forced the crowd to disperse. Some of the citizens derided the soldiers as "pale-faced boys," and a stout young woman shook her fist under the line of military noses and threatened to extinguish the entire National Guard. Nevertheless, the non-unionists were enabled to return to the mill in safety and the last murmurings of the tumult were silenced by policemen and deputy sheriffs after Major Crawford left the scene. Other outbreaks of similar character spurred to renewed vigilance the militia and the Sheriff's deputies, who had fallen into the habit of lounging and dozing in shady places, and within a few days after Major Crawford's collision with the mob, large numbers of non-union men succeeded in moving their goods from the ferry into the company houses without suffering molestation. Pinkerton detectives began a systematic search for guns on August 28, but without result. The Winchesters taken from the guards on the barges had been smuggled into a safe place of concealment where even the Pinkertonian eye that "never sleeps" was unable to discover them. On August 31, Mr. Frick visited the mill for the first time since the beginning of the wage trouble. He was accompanied by a detective, but needed no protection, as the strikers showed no disposition to grow wrathy over his presence. Mr. Frick made a complete inspection of the mill, pronounced the various departments to be in excellent working order and informed the reporters that the strike was a thing of the past. CHAPTER XV. [Illustration: TREASON] PROGRESS IN THE MILL--A QUARTET OF ARISTOCRATIC NON-UNIONISTS--SICKNESS BREAKS OUT--MORE ARRESTS--JACK CLIFFORD SUSPECTED OF TREACHERY, BUT IS HELD WITHOUT BAIL FOR MURDER--167 TRUE BILLS RETURNED--SUPREME JUSTICE PAXSON IN THE SADDLE--HE ORDERS ARRESTS FOR TREASON AND IS GENERALLY CONDEMNED--SNOWDEN FAVORS THE GALLOWS FOR HOMESTEADERS--JUDGE AGNEW ON TREASON--PAXSON INSTRUCTS THE GRAND JURY AND PRONOUNCES THE HOMESTEAD MEN TRAITORS--CARNEGIE IN SCOTLAND. During the month of August, the mill continued to fill up rapidly with non-union recruits. Among these there was an admixture of worthless characters, who went to Homestead only for the novelty of the thing or for the purpose of securing a few square meals and perhaps a little money from the Company without imposing any special tax on their energies. Men of this type rarely spent more than a day or two in the mill. Once their curiosity or rapacity was satisfied they deserted, threw themselves into the arms of the strikers, represented themselves as having been deluded by the firm's agents and in the majority of cases secured pecuniary aid from the Amalgamated Association. The strikers invariably welcomed desertions and did not always trouble themselves to inquire minutely into the circumstances prompting the sudden change of heart on the part of the deserters. The stories told by the latter to the advisory board eclipsed Munchausen's wildest flights, winding up, as a rule, with the assurance that, owing to bad treatment and breaches of faith regarding the wages to be paid, almost the entire corps of non-union men was preparing to quit work. The exodus of idlers and incapables did not, however, in any way impair the progress which Superintendent Potter and his new hands were making, despite the reports to the contrary circulated among the strikers. The force of employees increased rapidly and as the wages offered were considerably higher than the average earnings of clerks and young men just beginning a professional career, many representatives of those classes were attracted into the Carnegie Company's service. Among the persons of education and refinement thus enlisted were four once prominent brokers on the Pittsburgh oil exchange, Messrs. Linn L. Dilworth, C. D. Leslie, John McLaughlin and J. L. Agnew. Mr. Dilworth was set to work running an engine, Mr. Leslie became foreman of the cold saw department, and Mr. Agnew was placed in the armor-plate department. Mr. McLaughlin, who was at one time considered the "highest roller" on the Oil City and Pittsburgh floors, accommodated himself to the duties of a subordinate position at fair wages. The completion of the last piece of armor-plate for the government cruiser Monterey, on September 3, made it plain enough that the works were being operated in earnest and that the expectation that the firm would be unable to execute its contracts with the government, as long as green hands were employed, was destined to be defeated. In any case, there was a special clause in the government contracts providing for an extension of time in the event of labor troubles, so that the firm had nothing to fear from that quarter. The answer of the strikers when confronted with the circumstances was that the material turned out was necessarily defective and must be rejected by the government. This claim, however, was not substantiated. About this time sickness began to spread among the non-unionists. The Company physicians had their hands full and a large number of men had to be conveyed to the Pittsburgh hospitals. John McGeorge, a resident of Allegheny, was taken to his home and died there, and McGeorge's son, who had been working in the mill with his father, was also stricken down. The attending physician diagnosed the malady in these cases as typhoid fever and assigned as the cause the impurity of the water used for general consumption in the mill. At first the Company hushed up the rumors of the presence of what seemed to be an epidemic among the men, and it was not until many deaths had occurred that the matter was publicly ventilated. Of the mystery involved in this affair and the manner in which it was solved an account will be given in another chapter. Weekly mass meetings, at which the men were assured that the company was only "making a bluff" and that, sooner or later the old hands would have to be reinstated, the Amalgamated Association recognized and wages kept up to a decent figure, kept life in the strikers' organization for an astonishingly long time. The loyalty of the workingmen to one another and their cheerful confidence in the power of unionist principles and unionist methods to overcome all obstacles were almost sublime. General officers of the Amalgamated Association took part in all these assemblages and distinguished themselves by inculcating a spirit of moderation and respect for the law. Other orators gave full rein to opinions surcharged with bitterness and resentment, and Mr. Frick, the Sheriff and the Common pleas judges came in for many an unmerciful scoring. John Oldshue, leader of the Slavs, figured in every meeting, interpreting for the benefit of his countrymen and delivering exhortations on his own account. With the exception of an information for murder lodged against Edward Burke, who was already in jail on charges of riot and unlawful assemblage, Secretary Lovejoy's program of prosecutions remained untouched throughout the month of August. At the beginning of September, Mr. Lovejoy warmed up to his work again and caused warrants to be issued for the arrest of Hugh O'Donnell, Hugh Ross, Matthew Foy and William Foy for the murder of Detective John W. Klein. All the defendants were already under $10,000 bonds on the charge of killing T. J. Conners and Silas Wain, and the apparent design was to multiply the amount of bail until the resources of the union leaders were exhausted and confinement in jail could no longer be avoided. Matthew Foy was arrested at once. O'Donnell surrendered two weeks later, on his return from New York. Elmer E. Bales, Harry Bayne and Oscar Colflesh were also arrested on charges of riot and conspiracy. At the hearing on the conspiracy charge against Hugh O'Donnell, George W. Sarver, David Lynch, William T. Roberts and William McConegy, before Alderman McMasters, a sensation was created by the testimony of George S. Hotchkiss, an assistant superintendent in the employ of the Pinkerton agency. Hotchkiss swore that he had held several conferences with Jack Clifford, of the Homestead advisory board, and obtained from Clifford information incriminating O'Donnell and others. The nature of Clifford's revelations was not made known, objection to the admission of second-hand testimony being raised by attorney Brennen for the defense and sustained by the magistrate; but the report went out that Clifford had turned informer and caused consternation among the strikers. The members of the advisory board, however, defended their associate and explained that he had conferred with the Pinkerton man solely for the purpose of "pumping" him. Subsequent events bore out this assertion. The five men heard before 'Squire McMasters were held for a court trial. Shortly after O'Donnell and his companions had been disposed of, Clifford was arrested on a second charge of murder, preferred by the industrious Lovejoy, and committed to jail. He was also held for conspiracy, but gave bail on this charge. Next day his application for bail on the murder charge was brought before Judge Ewing, as was also that of Matthew Foy. Foy, against whom there was practically no evidence, was released on $10,000 bail. The testimony against Clifford, however, was very damaging. Captain John Cooper, of the Pinkerton agency, swore that when the Pinkerton barges approached the mill landing at Homestead, he saw Clifford among a crowd of strikers with a pistol in his hand, and heard him shout, "You ---- ---- ----, don't come ashore, or we'll kill all of you." Clifford, he said, was the man who approached the barges with a white flag and arranged for the surrender. Samuel Stewart, a clerk in the employ of the Carnegie Company, testified that he saw Clifford attach a fuse to a piece of dynamite fixed in an iron pipe and hurl this crude bomb at the barges, and that he noticed a revolver sticking out of the defendant's pocket. On the strength of this testimony, Clifford was committed for trial without bail. Judge Ewing refused to hear evidence as to who fired the first shot and said in his opinion: "The parties on the shore had no duties to perform except to go away, or as good citizens, to put down the crowd that this defendant, Clifford, was with. There is no question--there _can_ be no question--of self-defense about it. I say that we will not go into it, especially in this preliminary matter." On September 21, the grand jury returned true bills in all the Homestead cases presented to that body, 167 in number. The following is the list: Murder of Silas Wain--James Close, Charles Martz, George Diebold, ---- Sanderson, Edward McVay, Peter Allen, Sr., Jack Clifford, Matthew Foy, Hugh O'Donnell, John McLuckie, Sylvester Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and Hugh Ross. Murder of T. J. Conners--James Close, Charles Martz, George Diebold, ---- Sanderson, Edward McVay, Peter Allen, Sr., Jack Clifford, Matthew Foy, Hugh O'Donnell, John McLuckie, Sylvester Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and Hugh Ross. Murder of J. W. Kline--Jacob Stinner, Edward Burke, Jack Clifford, Hugh O'Donnell, Matthew Foy, William Foy and Hugh Ross. Aggravated Riot--Hugh O'Donnell, G. W. Brown, Thos. H. Baynes, Isaac Byers, Harry Buck, Mark E. Baldwin, M. Cush, Frank Clark, Isaac Critchlow, Thos. J. Crawford, John Corcoran, John Dally, John Dierken, Jas. Dunn, John Edwards, Thos. Godfrey, W. H. Gaches, Jas. S. Hall, U. S. Grant Hess, ---- Hennessey, Reid Kennedy, Thos. Kelly, Geo. W. Laughlin, H. H. Layman, Robt. G. Layman, Jack Lazear, Paddy McCool, David Maddigan, Owen Murphy, John McGovern, Wm. McLuckie, Punk, alias Pete McAllister, ---- McLaughlin, William Oeffner, Dennis O'Donnell, John Alonzo Prim, Jack Prease, P. J. Rorke, Richard Scott, David H. Shanian, Newton Sharpe, John Sullivan, Oden Shoemaker, ---- Taylor, George Holley or Wilkinson, Joseph Wayd, Peter Moran, Lewis Lewis, Patrick Fagan, W. H. Williams, Mike Naughton, Patrick Hayes "and certain other evil-disposed persons with force and arms, then and there, in manner and form aforesaid did make an aggravated riot, to the great terror and disturbance of all good citizens of the commonwealth, to the evil example of all others in like cases offending, contrary to the form of the act of the general assembly in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania." Aggravated Riot--Peter Allen, Joseph Akers, Thos. Antes, Oliver P. Antes, Charles L. Atwood, E. G. Bail, Harry Bickerton, Wm. Bakely, Jack Bridges, Samuel Burkett, Ed. Burke, James Close, Jack Clifford, Thos. Connelly, Sylvester Critchlow, Robert Dalton, George Diebold, Fred. Gunston, Anthony Flaherty, James Flannigan, Matthew Foy, David Inchico, Evan Jones, E. C. McVay, John Murray, Peter Nan, Hugh Ross, Benjamin Thomas, ---- Sanderson, H. Troutman, W. Edward Williams, Oliver C. Coon, W. Mansfield. Conspiracy--Hugh O'Donnell, Thos. N. Baynes, E. Bail, Isaac Byers, Wm. Bayard, G. W. Brown, Thos. J. Crawford, George Champeno, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Boyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis Cash, Oscar Colflesh, Wm. Conneghy, Mike Cummings, Wm. Combs, John Dierken, Pat Fagan, W. H. Gatches, Matthew Harris, Reed Kennedy, David Lynch, John Miller, O. S. Searight, John Murray, John McLuckie, Hugh Ross, Wm. T. Roberts, George Ryland, D. H. Hannon and George W. Sarver. Having exhausted its catalogue of murder, riot and conspiracy charges, obtained true bills against 167 strikers, and buried the leading spirits among the Homesteaders beneath an avalanche of bail bonds, Mr. Frick now proceeded to play what he considered to be his trump card. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, of which at this time Hon. Edward Paxson, a close friend of C. L. Magee, was Chief Justice, came to Pittsburgh to hold its annual session. It was deemed possible that the Homestead affair might come before this body in some shape, after the lower courts disposed of it, but to nobody aside from the members of the Carnegie Company and their attorneys did it occur that the superior judiciary would, of its own motion, undertake to deal with the labor trouble at first hand. This, however, was what Mr. Frick counted on as the culminating stroke which was to break the back of the Homestead strike. The step from the alderman's office to the supreme court room was one which probably no other individual or corporation in the state would have dreamt even of suggesting; but Mr. Frick managed to take it seemingly with as much ease as his secretary exhibited in getting a ward constable to lock up a few dozen of workingmen for riot or conspiracy. The blow fell on the morning of September 30. The Chief Justice and his six associates met in the supreme court chamber of the county court house and held an hour's conference, at the expiration of which Judge Paxson sent for District Attorney Clarence Burleigh, and P. C. Knox, Esq., principal counsel for the Carnegie Company. When these two gentlemen arrived another hour was spent in consultation. Judge Paxson then sent for County Detective Harry Beltzhoover, whom he instructed to subscribe to an information made before him (Paxson) and to arrest the persons named therein. The information was worded as follows: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, _versus_ David H. Shannon, John McLuckie, David Lynch, Thomas J. Crawford, Hugh O'Donnell, Harry Bayne, Elmer E. Ball, Isaac Byers, Henry Bayard, T. W. Brown, George Champene, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Coyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis M. Cush, William McConeghy, Michael Cummings, William Combs, John Durkes, Patrick Fagan, W. S. Gaches, Nathan Harris, Reid Kennedy, John Miller, O. O. Searight, John Murray, M. H. Thompson, Martin Murray, Hugh Ross, William T. Roberts, George Rylands and George W. Sarver. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, County of Allegheny. Before me, the subscriber, Edward H. Paxson, chief justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania and ex-officio justice of the court of oyer and terminer of Allegheny county, and a justice of the peace in and for the county of Allegheny, in the state of Pennsylvania, personally came Harry Beltzhoover, county detective, who upon oath administered according to law, deposeth and says that heretofore, to-wit, on or about the first day of July, A. D. 1892, the defendants above named, being inhabitants of and residents within the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and under protection of the laws of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and owing allegiance and fidelity to the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not weighing the duty of their said allegiance, but wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquility of the said commonwealth to disturb and stir, move and excite insurrection, rebellion and war against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania, did at the borough of Homestead, and in the township of Mifflin, both within the county of Allegheny and state of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere within the state of Pennsylvania and beyond the borders of the state, unlawfully, falsely, maliciously and traitorously compass, imagine and intend to raise and levy war, insurrection and rebellion against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in order to fulfil and bring into effect the said compassings, imaginations and intentions of them, the said defendants, afterward, to-wit, on the first day of July, A. D. 1892, and at divers other times at the borough of Homestead and in the township of Mifflin, with a great multitude of persons, numbering hundreds, armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, that is to say, with guns, revolvers, cannons, swords, knives, clubs and other warlike weapons, as well offensive as defensive, did then and there unlawfully, maliciously and traitorously join and assemble themselves together against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and then and there with force and arms did falsely and traitorously and in a hostile and warlike manner, array and dispose themselves against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania and did ordain, prepare and levy war against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the end that its constitution, laws and authority were defied, resisted and averted by the said defendants and their armed allies, contrary to the duty of allegiance and fidelity of the said defendants. All of which the deponent states upon information received and believed by him, and he therefore prays that a warrant may issue, and the aforesaid defendants may be arrested and held to answer this charge of treason against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The law under which the proceeding was brought is the Crimes act of 1860, under which the penalty for treason is fixed at a fine not exceeding $2,000 and imprisonment by separate and solitary confinement at labor, not exceeding twelve years. [Illustration: ONE OF THE TRAITORS.] It was announced that Judge Paxson would hear in person the application of any of the accused strikers for bail; that when the cases came before the grand jury he would instruct the jurymen as to what constitutes treason under the statutes of Pennsylvania, and that, if the cases should be brought to trial, he would sit on the bench in the court of oyer and terminer and try them himself. In short, Edward H. Paxson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, was master of the situation. The court of last resort had been by a Frickian turn of the wrist, converted into a court of preliminary resort, intermediate resort and all other known varieties of resort, and the strikers were led to understand accordingly that with Paxson armed to the teeth and ready to bring them to bay at all points, they might as well throw up the sponge at once and be done with it. Detectives Farrell and Mills, assisted by a half dozen deputy sheriffs, were detailed to capture the defendants named in Beltzhoover's information. The task was not an easy one, for most of the reputed "traitors," realizing the difficulty of procuring bail, went into hiding and their friends took care to throw the officers off the track. Five of the men--Thomas Crawford, George Rylands, T. W. Brown, W. H. Baird and John Dierken--were caught on Friday, the day on which the warrant for their arrest was issued. On Saturday, Attorneys Brennen and Cox went before Judge Paxson with a petition for the admission of the accused to bail. Messrs. Burleigh and Knox were called in, and, after a consultation, the Chief Justice made an order authorizing the release of any of the defendants on $10,000 bail at the discretion of any judge of the oyer and terminer court. Judges Kennedy and Porter heard the applications, but rejected the bondsmen offered except in the case of William Baird. Despite the supposedly sacred character of the supreme bench, criticism of Judge Paxson's extraordinary action was freely indulged in by the members of the Pittsburgh bar and reproduced in the public press. Hardly a voice was raised in commendation of the Chief Justice's arbitrary interference, and the consensus of legal opinion, as mirrored in the newspapers, was to the effect that the disturbance at Homestead, being a purely local affair and directed against a private corporation, could not be construed as treason against the state. The boldness with which this view of the case was stated by competent authorities gave much encouragement to the strikers, and at the regular weekly mass meeting, on Saturday, October 2, Vice-President Carney, of the Amalgamated Association, and other orators were emphatic in their claims that the treason charge was trumped up as a measure of intimidation and would fall to the ground if ever put to the test of a court trial. The strikers were, therefore, advised to stand their ground, and the Carnegie Company was warned that, when all the members of the advisory board were imprisoned, there would be other men to take their places, and that if all the men in Homestead were cast into jail the women would still be there to keep up the fight for the rights of organized labor. These sentiments were received with clamorous approval. No little surprise was created by the publication of a statement from Major-General Snowden setting forth that he was originally responsible for the treason prosecution. During his sojourn at Homestead in command of the militia, General Snowden said, he had suggested to the Carnegie attorneys, Messrs. Knox and Reed, that the advisory committee was guilty of treason. The lawyers pooh-poohed the idea, but evidently thought better of it, for three weeks prior to the issuance of warrants by Judge Paxson, Mr. Knox met the General in Philadelphia and asked his help in the preparation of briefs. General Snowden responded that it would hardly be wise for him, while serving as commander of the state forces, to appear as counsel for the Carnegie Company. When the brief was prepared, however, it was sent to him to be passed upon and received his indorsement. General Snowden did not hesitate to say for publication that, in his opinion, death would be rather a mild penalty for members of the advisory committee. Perhaps the most significant deliverance of the hour on the subject of the treason charge was that embodied in a letter written to the Pittsburgh _Commercial-Gazette_ by the veteran jurist, Hon. Daniel Agnew, ex-chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Judge Agnew declared that the Homestead affair was riot and not treason. "It is easy," he said, "to distinguish treason from riot. It lies in the purpose or intent of the traitor to overthrow the government or subvert the law or destroy an institution of the state. Riot is a breach or violation of law, but _without a purpose against the state_." Those of the Homestead men charged with treason, who were not already held for murder, managed, for the most part, to find bail. Many continued in hiding. Burgess McLuckie, tired of running after bondsmen, had betaken himself to Youngstown, O., and, acting on the advice of Attorney W. T. Anderson, of that city, refused to return without a requisition. Honest John was lionized by the Youngstown people, delighted them with his speeches about high tariff and high fences and could have found a body guard any time to defy the Carnegie Company, the Supreme Court, the militia and all the other powers in Pennsylvania. On the morning of Monday, October 10, the grand jury of Allegheny County assembled in the criminal court room, which was thronged with attorneys curious to watch the development of Judge Paxson's program. At 9.30 A. M., the Chief Justice entered accompanied by Judges Stowe, Kennedy, McClung and Porter, of the county courts, all of whom took seats on the bench while Judge Slagle sat with District Attorney Burleigh behind the clerk's desk. The gravity of the occasion was felt by everyone and dead silence prevailed as Judge Kennedy opened the day's proceedings with a few words to the jurors stating that, in view of the unusual nature of the treason cases, Judge Paxson had "kindly consented" to instruct the jury. The Chief Justice began his charge by explaining that his intervention was due to the supreme importance of furnishing an authoritative interpretation of the law in the Homestead cases and that he acted at the invitation of the county judges. He then entered upon a review of the conditions and events at Homestead. "The relation of employer and employee," he said, "is one of contract merely. Neither party has a right to coerce the other into the making of a contract to which the mind does not assent. The employer cannot compel his employee to work a day longer than he sees fit nor his contract calls for, nor for a wage that is unsatisfactory to him. It follows that the employee cannot compel his employer to give him work or to enter into a contract of hire, much less can he dictate the terms of employment. When the negotiations between the parties came to an end, the contract relations between them ceased. The men had no further demand upon the company, and they had no more interest or claim upon its property than has a domestic servant upon the household goods of his employer when he is discharged by the latter or when he voluntarily leaves his service, nor does it make any difference that a large number were discharged at one time; their aggregate rights rise no higher than their rights as individuals. The mutual right of the parties to contracts in regard to wages, and the character of the employment, whether by the piece or day, whether for ten hours or less, is as fixed and clear as any other right which we enjoy under the constitution and laws of this state. It is a right which belongs to every citizen, laborer or capitalist, and it is the plain duty of the state to protect them in the enjoyment of it." The organization and plan of campaign of the Advisory Committee were reviewed at length, its chief object being stated as "to deprive the company of the use of its property and to prevent it from operating its works by the aid of men who were not members of the Amalgamated Association." Then followed a narrative of the Sheriff's preliminary manoeuvres and of the Pinkerton expedition, as viewed from a strictly Paxsonian standpoint. After recounting the details of the battle at the mill landing, the surrender of the Pinkertons, and the occupation of Homestead by the military, the Chief Justice went on to say: "We can have some sympathy with a mob driven to desperation by hunger as in the days of the French Revolution, but we have none for men receiving exceptionally high wages in resisting the law and resorting to violence and bloodshed in the assertion of imaginary rights, and entailing such a vast expense upon the taxpayers of the commonwealth. It was not a cry for bread to feed their famishing lips, resulting in a sudden outrage, with good provocation; it was a deliberate attempt by men without authority to control others in the enjoyment of their rights. * * * It is much to be feared that there is a diseased state of public opinion growing up with regard to disturbances of this nature, and an erroneous view of the law bearing upon these questions has found lodgment in the public mind. This is evidenced by the accounts of portions of the press, and it finds expression in the assurances of demagogues who pander to popular prejudices and in the schemes of artful politicians." Proceeding to the law in the case, the Chief Justice held that when the Carnegie Company employed watchmen to guard its works, "it mattered not to the rioters, nor to the public, who they were, nor whence they came. It was an act of unlawful violence to prevent their landing on the property of the company. That unlawful violence amounted at least to a riot upon the part of all concerned in it. If life was taken in pursuance of a purpose to resist the landing of the men by violence, the offense was murder, and perhaps treason." The legal definition of treason was then read and its supposed application to the Homestead conflict pointed out as follows: "A mere mob, collected upon the impulse of the moment, without any definite object beyond the gratification of its sudden passions does not commit treason, although it destroys property and attacks human life. But when a large number of men arm and organize themselves by divisions and companies, appoint officers and engage in a common purpose to defy the law, to resist its officers, and to deprive any portion of their fellow citizens of the rights to which they are entitled under the constitution and laws, it is a levying of war against the state, and the offense is treason; much more so when the functions of the state government are usurped in a particular locality, the process of the commonwealth, and the lawful acts of its officers resisted and unlawful arrests made at the dictation of a body of men who have assumed the functions of a government in that locality; and it is a state of war when a business plant has to be surrounded by the army of the state for weeks to protect it from unlawful violence at the hands of men formerly employed in it. Where a body of men have organized for a treasonable purpose, every step which any one of them takes in part execution of their common purpose is an overt act of treason in levying war. Every member of such asserted government, whether it be an advisory committee, or by whatever name it is called, who has participated in such usurpation, who has joined in a common purpose of resistance to the law and a denial of the rights of other citizens, has committed treason against the state. While the definition of this offense is the designing or accomplishment of the overturning of the government of the state, such intention need not extend to every portion of its territory. It is sufficient if it be an overturning of it in a particular locality, and such intent may be inferred from the acts committed. If they be such that the authority of the state is overturned in a particular locality, and a usurped authority substituted in its place, the parties committing it must be presumed to have intended to do what they have actually done. It is a maxim of criminal law that a man must be presumed to have intended that which is the natural and probable consequence of his acts. Thus, if a man assaults another with a deadly weapon, or aims a blow at a vital part, the law presumes that he intended to take life. Aliens domiciled within the state, and who enjoy its protection, owe temporary allegiance to it and are answerable for treason." In conclusion, Judge Paxson said: "We have reached the point in the history of the state when there are but two roads left us to pursue; the one leads to order and good government, the other leads to anarchy. The great question which concerns the people of this country is the enforcement of the law and the preservation of order." While the events narrated in this chapter were in progress, while the workmen of Homestead were being taken to jail in batches and charge after charge heaped upon them, and while the Supreme Court of the state was engineering the last grand _coup_ by which the revival of an obsolete offense was to be made instrumental in winding up the strike at Homestead, Mr. Andrew Carnegie was busily at work reaping encomiums for his philanthropy, which at this particular time found vent in the donation of a memorial library to the town of Ayr, in Scotland. The corner-stone of this edifice was laid by Mrs. Carnegie two days after the treason warrants were issued at Pittsburgh. An address of thanks was made by the mayor, to which Mr. Carnegie replied, part of his remarks being as follows: "I feel more strongly bound than ever to devote the remaining years of my life less to aims ending in self and more to the service of others, using my surplus wealth and spare time in the manner most likely to produce the greatest good to the masses of the people. From these masses comes the wealth which is entrusted to the owner only as administrator." A few groans and cries about Homestead were all that reminded the audience which heard this generous-spirited speech that, at the very moment when Mr. Carnegie was speaking, the wealth-givers in his own employ were being hunted down as traitors, locked up in jail and supplanted by cheaper workmen. [Illustration: THE FERRY AT MUNHALL.] [Illustration: JOHN McLUCKIE.] CHAPTER XVI. [Illustration: THE FIRST BREAK] MORE PROSECUTIONS--THE SOLDIERS WITHDRAW--A NON-UNION HOTEL DYNAMITED--HOMESTEAD FIGURES IN PARADES AND GIVES A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY--SLAVS WEAKENING--THE "LOCAL NEWS" PREDICTS DEFEAT--GOMPERS AGAIN--SHERIFF McCLEARY IS HARASSED AND INCREASES HIS CORPS OF DEPUTIES--LAWYER JONES IN TROUBLE--SCHWAB SUCCEEDS POTTER AS SUPERINTENDENT--HOMESTEAD'S LAST RIOT--STRIKER ROBERTS HINTS AT DEFEAT--MECHANICS AND LABORERS GO BACK TO WORK. As an offset to the activity of Secretary Lovejoy, Burgess John McLuckie went before Alderman F. M. King on Wednesday, September 21, and lodged information for aggravated riot and conspiracy against H. C. Frick, George Lauder, Henry M. Curry, John G. A. Leishman, Otis Childs, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Lawrence C. Phipps, John A. Potter, G. A. Corey, J. F. Dovey, Nevin McConnell, William Pinkerton, Robert Pinkerton, John Cooper, C. W. Bedell, Fred Primer, W. H. Burt, Fred Heinde and others. In the information for conspiracy the defendants were charged with conspiring to "depress wages" and to incite riot by feloniously importing a force of armed men. No arrests were made on these informations. Blank bail bonds were signed by the Mellon banking firm and filled in by the defendants. Sheriff McCleary, while he no longer experienced trouble in procuring a sufficient number of deputies at $2.50 a day, to patrol every street in Homestead and enforce order when necessary, found it a hard matter to induce these emergency policemen to attend to their duties. Non-union men coming out of the mill at noon for dinner, were repeatedly assaulted, the intractable element among the strikers caring little for the presence of the sheriff's officers. Early in September, Mr. McCleary quietly investigated the methods of his underlings, and ascertained that many of them were simply taking a holiday at the county's expense. The force was then reorganized, the loafers being summarily discharged. It was only now that the sheriff's pent-up feelings found vent. He was utterly disgusted, he said, and had come to the conclusion that, even if the salary of the sheriff were increased to $15,000 a year, the man who sought the office would be an idiot. The show of authority which Mr. McCleary made had a visible effect and when the deputies bestirred themselves order was sufficiently restored, for the time being, to elicit from Provost Marshal Mechling the opinion that, if the sheriff kept on attending to business, the troops would be withdrawn within two weeks. Adjutant General Greenland was very severe on the sheriff, whose incompetency, he said, was productive of continual harassment to the troops. In General Greenland's opinion, it was in the sheriff's power, with twenty-five deputies under his personal direction, to keep the peace at Homestead and enable the militia to withdraw. The improvement in the work of the deputies had such a marked effect that, in the third week of September, the Fifteenth regiment was ordered home, and, on the last day of the month four companies of the Sixteenth regiment broke camp, leaving but four companies on the ground, one of which was posted on the hillside across the river from Homestead. Two weeks later, on October 13, the last of the militia received orders to leave, the first intimation of the good news being conveyed to the men when the band struck up "Home, Sweet Home" at the morning reveille. Tents were struck and baggage packed in short order, and at 10 A. M. the last vestige of the encampment was removed, and with a cheer that re-echoed among the hills the boys in blue marched to Munhall Station and were soon on the way to their homes in the oil country. The Homesteaders watched the departure without showing much feeling, although many of them, doubtless, experienced a consciousness of relief now that, after ninety-five days of military surveillance, the town was restored to the hands of the civil authorities. Henceforward the preservation of the peace was exclusively in the hands of the sheriff's deputies, thirty in number. An outrage which caused considerable indignation about this time was the attempt made by unknown desperadoes to blow up the Mansion House, a hotel situated at the corner of Fifth avenue and Amity street, in the most populous quarter of Homestead. The establishment was conducted by Mrs. Marron, a widow who had been induced to come from Pittsburgh in order to provide boarding for employees of the Carnegie firm. She secured 40 boarders from among the clerks and non-union steelworkers employed in the mill. On the night of October 6, when the occupants of the hotel were sleeping, an explosive of some kind was thrown through a window of the dining-room on the ground floor. The missile exploded with great force, tore a hole through the floor and penetrated the cellar. Beyond the wrecking of an empty room, however, no damage was done. Mrs. Marron naturally laid the blame for the occurrence on the strikers, but they stoutly disclaimed responsibility and contended that the damage had been done by a natural gas explosion and not by a bomb thrown with intent to kill and destroy. Another theory which found favor among the men was that some wily foe to organized labor had done the mischief in order to discredit the cause of the strikers and hasten the end of the strike by altering the drift of public sympathy. Mr. Frick offered $1,000 for the arrest of the supposed dynamiter and $100 additional was offered by the advisory committee, but the reward was never earned. The night of October 8 was made memorable by Homestead's share in the greatest Democratic parade held in Pittsburgh during the presidential campaign. Preparations for this event had been in progress for some time. In previous years Homestead had been a Republican stronghold, giving heavy majorities for high tariff candidates, but as has been signified in the preceding pages, political sentiment in the town had undergone a complete revulsion, and the men were determined to make this fact conspicuous in the Pittsburgh demonstration. Under the command of David Lynch and Charles Guessner, 600 of the strikers marched in the parade, and were greeted with cheers all along the route. When the Homestead men arrived opposite the court house, they halted and gave three rousing cheers for Hugh O'Donnell and others of their associates who were confined in the county jail. Passing down Fifth Avenue, the Carnegie offices were reached. Here the marchers gave vent to their feelings in a chorus of groans. Some of the transparencies carried in this notable procession spoke volumes for the influence of the Homestead trouble as a political factor. One bore a picture of a rooster and the inscription: "The cock will crow in '92 Over Fort Frick and its Pinkerton crew." On another appeared the query, "Who protects the 2,200 locked-out men in Lawrenceville?" and the response, "Ask McKinley," while on the reverse side was the defiant invitation: "Show us a man in a Pittsburgh mill Who had his wages raised by the McKinley bill." The maker of this couplet may have been weak in the matter of rhythm, but the deadliness of his low tariff logic challenged and received admiration from the crowd. Yet another legend worth noting was: "The Three (Dis) Graces--Protection for Carnegie, Persecution for his men and Pinkertons for support." At every glimpse of the mottoes quoted, the mob of on-lookers cheered lustily and it looked on that October night very much as though Pittsburgh, the headquarters of high tariff sentiment, had become suddenly inoculated with free-trade virus. There could be no mistaking the opinion of the crowd as to Mr. Frick and the Pinkertons. Evidently the friends of these worthies had accepted discretion as being the better part of valor and remained at home. The eclat with which the Homesteaders performed their part of the political display in Pittsburgh encouraged them to repeat the demonstration still more energetically in their own town. October 23 was fixed as the date on which the cession of Homestead to the Democracy was to be celebrated. On that evening the town was profusely decorated, Chinese lanterns, bunting, starry flags and red fire contributing to the picturesqueness of the scene. The parade, held in honor of Cleveland and Stevenson, was headed by the best known Republicans in the district, including such notables as Thomas J. Crawford, W. T. Roberts, Captain O. C. Coon and William Gaches. Prominent among the emblems carried was a live sheep painted black, beside which stood a man arrayed as a negro wench. On the float occupied by this group was the motto, "This is Protection." As the float moved along the street, men, women and children strained their lungs with the cry of "Carnegie's Blacksheep!" The success of the Homestead demonstration was the "last straw," and Republican missionaries visited the benighted town no more. The Hungarians continued to grow more and more restless as they saw the number of men in the mill increase and the chances of their getting back their jobs diminish correspondingly. All these foreigners belonged to the laboring class and it was especially hard for them to stand the strain of a long period of idleness. Arnold Frank, a representative of the race who continued in the employ of the Carnegie Company, devoted himself to quiet missionary work among his compatriots and took frequent occasion to inform the newspapers that a break in the ranks of the Slavs might be looked for at any time. Mr. Frank claimed to be the recipient of daily applications for jobs from Hungarian strikers and that these men were sick and tired of hardships endured for the benefit of an organization which did not even admit them to membership. Slav leaders, who were loyal to the Amalgamated Association, rebutted Mr. Frank's statements, alleging that their fellow-countrymen received their full share of strike benefits and were just as steadfast as any other class among the strikers. Another cause of disquietude was a sudden change of base on the part of the Homestead _Local News_, which was originally the mouth-piece of the advisory board. In its issue of October 15, the _News_ editorially reviewed the situation, setting forth that there were now over 2000 workmen in the mill, 200 of these being former Homestead employees, that recruits were daily being received and preparations being made to accommodate a large additional number of non-unionists; and that businessmen and intelligent members of the Amalgamated Association privately admitted that the battle was lost. In conclusion the article held these two conclusions to be indisputable: "First--The Carnegie Company is gradually succeeding. Second--The great Homestead strike is gradually dying out." The treachery of the _News_, as the men regarded it, provoked unbounded indignation among the strikers. Nevertheless the truth of the statement made by the paper was privately conceded by many Homestead people, and especially by the store-keepers, whose capacity for doing business on trust was being taxed to an extent threatening some of them with bankruptcy. The sympathies of these people were entirely with the Amalgamated Association; but, on the other hand, the prospect of heavy loss to themselves, in case the strike should be a failure, stared them in the face, and the apparent success of the Carnegie Company in manning its works boded ill for the prospect of their recouping themselves. One assertion made by the _News_, viz.: that 200 former Homestead employees had returned to work, was stigmatized as an absolute falsehood by the union leaders, who insisted that not one union man had forsaken his allegiance. Two days later, a quartet of unionists, including a heater, a mechanic, an engineer and a laborer, applied for and obtained work. This was the first break in the ranks of the strikers that was openly made and admitted at Amalgamated headquarters. A visit from Gompers at this time was a positive godsend. The pugnacious chief of the Federation arrived in state on October 21 and was met by a brass band and almost the entire population of the town. A procession was formed and the welcome visitor was escorted to the rink to the inspiring strains of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes." All representatives of the press, with the exception of the correspondent of the Pittsburgh _Leader_, were excluded from the meeting which followed, the preference given the _Leader_ being due to the reputation exclusively enjoyed by that journal for giving fair treatment to organized labor. Thomas Crawford presided over the assemblage. Mr. Gompers made a vigorous speech, in the course of which he said: "On a former occasion I explained the purpose underlying this contest, but a new feature has since developed. The militia has been withdrawn and the civil authority prevails. But we see the judges on the bench trying to distort the laws against the people of Homestead and against justice. Judge Paxson, holding the most honored position on the bench of this state, recently, in charging the grand jury regarding the men of Homestead, impressed upon their minds that these men were guilty of treason. When that charge was published in the press of the country it not only shocked the laboring men, their wives and children, but even the lawyers who could not or would not depend on his action. "I am not a lawyer, but I don't think it necessary to be one to know what constitutes treason and what patriotism. Shall patriotism be measured by the yard-stick of the Carnegie firm or be weighed as their pig iron? Is it because these men in those latter days like those in Boston harbor, declared they had some rights and dared maintain them that they shall be declared traitors? The men who lost their blood and limbs on the field of battle to maintain and preserve this country and knock off the shackles of millions of slaves can not be construed as traitors, Judge Paxson's charge notwithstanding. Now some of your men are in prison, others out on bail, but you are now out three and one-half months on strike with your ranks practically unbroken. I would not ask you to stand out one moment longer than your rights demanded, but are there not some acts of the Carnegie firm that show you that you are working in a winning cause? Because you are here in Homestead you don't know the great victory you have won. In all great lock-outs there are certain inconveniences to suffer and these must be endured, but if you were to end the struggle to-day you have won a victory. There are employers fair and unfair, and when they think of offering a reduction of wages to their employees in the future the fight you have waged will have some effect in the carrying out of this resolve. Don't you think your stand will have its effect on the workmen of this country? Not only here, but throughout the civilized globe, this fight will have its effect. The fraternity of the wage-workers of the civilized world is at hand. Be true to yourselves, one to the other, open and above board; and above all confer with those who are leading you and have your interest at stake and act with them jointly. No matter whether they may appear the enemies of our constitution or our country's institutions, it matters little. We propose to defend our country, its flag with its stars and stripes, in the face of those who would tear it down, for it represents our sovereign rights. We want to maintain the rights of the people and their manhood and we can only do this by organization--ready to stand by one another, ready to defend our constitution, the people of this country, the wage-workers and especially those of Homestead." President Sheehan and Vice-President Carney, of the Amalgamated Association and others followed with brief addresses, declaring the fight to be practically won by the strikers and exhorting them to stand firm to the end. The men were much encouraged by these exhortations and comforted themselves with the reflection that when so many competent authorities predicted victory, the expectation of defeat must be merely the chimera of a diseased imagination. Towards the end of October assaults on non-unionists became very frequent. Men were waylaid and beaten while going to and from work, and the non-union boarding houses were bombarded with bricks and stones. The attacking parties were seldom arrested, the deputies being rather disposed to keep under cover than to do aggressive detective work. A detail of coal and iron police was brought in to assist in quelling the disorders, but without improving the state of affairs to any perceptible extent, as many as six non-unionists being attacked with slung-shots and other weapons in a single evening, despite the vigilance of deputies and policemen combined. At length Sheriff McCleary, perceiving that a dangerous crisis was threatened, added 50 deputies to his force and thus succeeded in checking the tendency to lawlessness. Ninety-one of the non-union workmen were also sworn in as deputies. The sheriff attributed the spread of insubordination mainly to the influence of Hon. D. R. Jones, an attorney who had at one time been president of the Miners' Union and who had served two terms in the legislature. Mr. Jones was called in to defend James Holleran, who had resisted arrest for disorderly conduct and been aided by a number of strikers at whose hands the deputy sheriffs received rough usage. At the hearing, which was held before 'Squire Oeffner, Mr. Jones said that "the person under arrest and all others not only exercised a right but performed a sacred duty in resisting unless the officer had a warrant for the arrest." The defendant was held in $500 bail for court, but his friends construed Attorney Jones' remarks as exonerating Holleran and all others who undertook to resist a deputy venturing to make an arrest without a warrant. In this way, the sheriff contended, the disorderly element was incited to misconduct and Mr. Jones should be held responsible. Application was made before Judge McClung by the sheriff's attorney asking that Mr. Jones be summoned to explain his action in court. An order was made accordingly and Mr. Jones in response set up the defense that his utterances had been misrepresented and misunderstood and that he had not aimed at kindling disaffection and lawlessness. This explanation was accepted and the matter dismissed. The prevalence of disorder caused a meeting of protest to be held by the leading professional and businessmen of Homestead, and resolutions were adopted calling upon the sheriff, in case the trouble continued and he should be unable to suppress it, to apply to the Governor for aid. The members of the advisory board also condemned the disposition to defy the law and used their best efforts to put a stop to the misdeeds of the rougher element. William Gaches, treasurer of the strikers' organization, was kept busy, day in and day out, receiving and disbursing funds for the relief of the strikers, although as time wore on, the golden stream of contributions began to dwindle unpleasantly. A goodly lift was given to the relief fund by the celebration of "Homestead Day" in Chicago, on October 29, when each of the 90,000 union workmen in that city was expected to contribute a day's wages. The receipts from this source were estimated by the newspapers at $40,000. Even that sum, however, was only a stop-gap. A mint of money was needed to support the 4,000 idle men at Homestead, and, however generous the subscriptions from abroad, it was impossible that the enormous expense of maintaining this army of unemployed persons could be kept up much longer. Mr. Frick was a steady visitor to the works and made arrangements for elaborate improvements. He rather surprised the strikers by removing John A. Potter from the superintendency and substituting Charles M. Schwab, who had been serving as manager of the Braddock mill. As Mr. Schwab was known to be a genial and amiable gentleman, and Mr. Potter was the reverse of popular, the strikers formed the conclusion that the removal of the latter was intended to placate them, and perhaps to serve as a means of hastening desertions from the Amalgamated ranks. Mr. Potter lost nothing by the change, inasmuch as he was appointed chief mechanical engineer of the Carnegie Company, a transfer which was equivalent to a promotion. The first week of November was marked by a feeling of unusual uneasiness among the Amalgamated men. Dissatisfaction was rife among the mechanics and desertions from their ranks began to multiply rapidly. Superintendent Schwab labored industriously among the old hands, holding out extraordinary inducements to tempt back to work those whose superior skill rendered their services almost indispensable. The Federation officials sought to buoy the men up and revive the determined spirit which had been exhibited in the early stages of the conflict. Mr. Gompers taxed his powers of oratory to the utmost. William Weihe, Chris. Evans, David Lynch and others made stirring appeals; but all without avail. Disaffection had found a lodgment and it was too late now to prevent the stampede which every one felt was soon to come. Such was the condition of things when election day, November 8, was ushered in. The grand effort by which Homestead was to discard Republicanism as a rebuke to advocates of one-sided protection was to be the last combined effort of any kind that the workingmen of the devoted town were to make. Hugh O'Donnell, then confined in the county jail, was the only Homesteader of prominence that refused to go over to the Democracy. Hugh was, of course, debarred from voting, but he made up for this deprivation by sending out for publication a letter in which he said: "All the enemies of the locked-out men at Homestead are Democrats from Governor Pattison down, including General Snowden, Chief Justice Paxson, the New York _Sun_ and other Democratic papers." The election returns gave Homestead to the Democrats by an average majority of 137. David Lynch, who was a candidate for the legislature, received the highest vote, his majority being 300. The strikers were jubilant over the result and held high carnival on the day after election. On Sunday, November 14, Homestead saw its last riotous demonstration. The affair arose out of an altercation between two colored non-unionists and a striker. The striker knocked down one of the negroes and was joined in an instant by a crowd of men, women and children, eager to lend a hand. The negroes drew revolvers and fled, firing into the crowd as they ran. At City Farm Lane, six more negroes joined the fugitives, and the whole party ran to their boarding-house and barred themselves in. An angry mob surrounded the house, tore down the fence and was about to burn the place, when a posse of deputies and borough officers arrived and placed the negroes under arrest. While the prisoners were on their way to the lock-up they were assailed with stones and clubs, and it was only by drawing revolvers and threatening to fire that the deputies succeeded in protecting themselves and the poor wretches in their custody. The striker who was concerned in the beginning of the outbreak and one of his companions were also placed under arrest. These men, as well as most of the negroes, were pretty severely wounded. The usual Saturday afternoon meeting on November 13 was marked by symptoms indicating only too plainly that the end was near at hand. William T. Roberts, fresh from a campaigning tour in the East, made an address substantially conceding that the cause of unionism at Homestead was on its last legs. He spoke of the desertion of the finishers from the ranks of the Amalgamated Association as an assault on the integrity of organized labor inspired by the Carnegie people for the purpose of defeating the Homestead men and added, "In view of the confidence you have placed in me, I don't propose to come here and tell you that everything is rosy when it is not. If you think with this combined opposition in your own ranks you can fight it out to the end, I am with you." The men, being asked what they wished to do, shouted with one voice, "Fight it out to the end!" There were few among them, however, that did not comprehend the intent of Mr. Robert's words. The first doubt of ability to go on with the strike had been openly expressed by one of their own leaders and listened to without protest. This was the beginning of the end. Another circumstance showing that a crisis was at hand was the convocation of the advisory boards of Homestead, Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls at the Pittsburgh headquarters of the Amalgamated Association, to consider the question whether or not the strikes at those places should be declared off. It could not be ignored that enthusiasm was flagging, and the flow of contributions falling off to a degree that was positively perilous. The committeemen, nevertheless, could not nerve themselves to face the consequences of ordering a discontinuance. Had they done so the failure of the strikes would undoubtedly have been charged up to their account by the majority of their fellow-workmen, and they would be in the position of making a thankless sacrifice. The reader has already been informed of the manner in which the Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls strikes came to an end. At Homestead, the mechanics and laborers were the first to weaken. These men, to the number of about 2000, met on the morning of Thursday, November 18, and appointed a committee to wait upon the Amalgamated men and submit the proposition that the strike be declared off and the mechanics and laborers be released from further obligations. The Amalgamated men met in the evening, with President Weihe in the chair. The proposition of the mechanics and laborers was rejected by a vote of 106 to 75. A ballot was then taken on the advisability of continuing the strike and resulted in an affirmative decision by a vote of 224 to 129. A committee was appointed to notify the mechanics and laborers that they could act as they liked, but that the Amalgamated Association would not be responsible for their actions. Next morning the mechanics and laborers reconvened, received the report of the committee of the Amalgamated Association, and agreed unanimously to return to work, but under no circumstances to accept tonnage jobs, as by so doing they would trespass on the rights of the Amalgamated men. The meeting adjourned quickly, and the men proceeded at once to the mill and put in their applications for reinstatement. More than half of the mechanics were turned away, as the number of vacancies was limited, but the laborers were all put to work or assured of employment in a few days. So great was the rush of returning prodigals that two clerks were required to make out passes for the applicants. Chairman Frick was on hand to supervise the re-employment of the old men and enjoyed, in his undemonstrative way, the successful culmination of his plans to break up unionism in Homestead. CHAPTER XVII. [Illustration: CAPITULATION] THE LAST MASS MEETING--STRIKERS SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY--COST OF THE HOMESTEAD DISPUTE TO CAPITAL, LABOR AND THE STATE--FEW OLD HANDS GET WORK AND POVERTY STALKS ABROAD--NOBLE SERVICE OF RELIEF COMMITTEES--THE COMING OF SANTA CLAUS--CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS WIND UP WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING--A BATCH OF USELESS REPORTS--THE KEARNS ANTI-PINKERTON BILL BECOMES A LAW IN PENNSYLVANIA. The secession of the mechanics and laborers was all that was wanting to complete the discouragement of the tonnage men. The usual mass meeting was held in the rink on Saturday, November 20, but the leaders, perceiving that a crisis was imminent, decided to exclude all who were not members of the lodges and only about 500 strikers took part in the secret deliberations which followed. Addresses were made by Vice Presidents Lynch and Carney, of the Amalgamated Association. Thomas Crawford, Chairman of the Advisory Board, was not present, and the information was conveyed to the meeting that he had resigned in order to take a position in a mill at Uniontown, Pa., and that Richard Hotchkiss, Secretary of the board, had been appointed to fill the vacancy. The discussion turned mainly on the necessity, now self-evident, of abandoning the strike and declaring the Homestead mill open to union men. It was manifestly the sense of the meeting that this step should be taken, but the men recoiled from it, and, after a debate lasting four hours, action was deferred until the following day. It was a mournful little band that assembled in the rink on Sunday morning. In that memorable meeting-place which had again and again resounded with triumphant oratory and with the plaudits of sanguine multitudes, less than 300 dispirited men now came together to register the confirmation of their defeat. There were some who argued passionately against capitulation. To yield, they said, would be to hasten the disintegration of the Amalgamated Association. Better go naked and starve than sacrifice the principles on the vindication of which the men of Homestead had staked everything. But this reasoning was of no avail. A standing vote was taken on the question of declaring the mill open and the proposition was carried by 101 to 91. There was no outburst when the result was declared. The men sat and stared at one another for a few seconds, and then dropped out of the hall in twos and threes, some of them giving vent to their feelings in bitter denunciations of the action of the majority. The news caused little excitement through the town. It was no more than had been expected, and, for the most part, the people were glad of it, for it had long been understood that the continuance of the unequal struggle with the Carnegie Company meant an increased burden of debt and poverty. It was among the outside sympathizers that the keenest regret was felt over the failure of the strike. Messrs. Powderly, Devlin, Wright and other high officers of the K. of L. deplored the collapse, and here and there K. of L. men took occasion to lay the blame on the shoulders of Samuel Gompers and his associates in the management of the Federation. Hugh O'Donnell gave his opinion of the ending of the strike in the appended letter to the Pittsburgh _Leader_: "EDITOR LEADER:--In reply to your request for an expression of opinion concerning the action of the men at Homestead in declaring the strike off, I can say but little at the present time. Owing to the fact that, certain of my acts in that most memorable struggle are _sub judice_, I am not in a position to criticize the acts of my late associates. Great battles are rarely, if ever, fought as planned. The world has never witnessed before so much suffering and sacrifice for a cause. The action of the three thousand laborers and mechanics who came out with our men on pure principle alone is unexampled in the history of labor struggles. "But to the men in the Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls mills too much praise cannot be given. Their loyalty and steadfastness to the principles for which they were contending should never be forgotten. Out of consideration for them I regret that the Homestead struggle should have terminated in the manner in which it did. HUGH O'DONNELL. "Allegheny county jail, November 21." Secretary Lovejoy contented himself with assuring the newspapers that the surrender would have no effect on the cases of the strikers under arrest, as far as the Carnegie firm was concerned. On Monday the Advisory board disbanded and the dissolution of the workingmen's once great and powerful organization was complete. The battle for the preservation of the integrity of this body had been fought at a fearful cost. The outlay on the side of the Carnegie Company has never been made known, but it cannot have fallen short of $250,000. The workmen, in the course of twenty weeks of idleness, lost $850,000 in wages, and the expense to the state of maintaining the militia at Homestead was about $500,000. In round numbers then, the total cost of the strike to all parties involved, allowing for the pay of deputy sheriffs, the expense of court trials and the relief funds, may be set down at _two million dollars_, an enormous sum to be paid for the gratification of Mr. Frick's desire to get rid of unions and unionism. Inasmuch, however, as but a small portion of this amount came out of the coffers of the Carnegie Company, Mr. Frick had no reason to feel dissatisfied. His victory was in reality, a cheap one. Had he not precipitated a bloody conflict by shipping Pinkertons to Homestead and in this way secured the support of the entire military force of Pennsylvania, there is no telling how long the strike might have been continued and how heavy the loss that might have been inflicted on the firm by the stoppage of operations. [Illustration: DISCUSSING THE SURRENDER.] The last restraint having been removed, hundreds of men who had been active among the strikers now thronged the mill office and besieged the officials with applications for positions. Superintendent Schwab began receiving the applicants at 9 o'clock on Monday morning. At that hour about 500 men were in line. The men were admitted in groups of five and those who were not black-listed as dangerous rioters received permits authorizing them to file their applications with the superintendents of the various departments. The line of waiting ones kept constantly growing and it was not until 4 o'clock that Mr. Schwab and his assistants were enabled to wind up their labors. Unfortunately the number of vacancies was so small that but few of the old employees could be accommodated by the superintendents, and fully 2,500 men were left to keep the wolf from the door as best they could, without the assurance of early employment. The prospect confronting these unfortunates was disheartening in the extreme. Most of them were already embarrassed in consequence of their long idleness. Rent and taxes were unpaid, the endurance of grocers and butchers was exhausted, and with winter at hand and no money in sight to purchase the necessaries of life, what was to become of these destitute workingmen and their families? The Amalgamated Association came at once to the relief of its own members, a large number of whom were on the blacklist, by voting the payment of $6 a week to each as long as he should be out of employment. The ordinary financial resources of the lodges would not have justified this step, but contributions continued to come in and the special necessity for relief now exhibited was recognized by union workingmen everywhere. The events of the next two weeks after the strike was declared off showed but little brightening of the outlook. By actual count there were 2,715 men on the pay rolls of the mill on the day when the mechanics and laborers went back to work. Two weeks later there were 3,121 men employed in the works, from which showing it will be seen that out of 2,200 men who had applied for reinstatement only 406 obtained employment. Almost all of these were laborers. At the call of Burgess Hollingshead, successor to Honest John McLuckie, a meeting of citizens was held to consider plans for the relief of the many cases of absolute destitution reported in the town. Dr. Purman presided and J. H. Rose acted as secretary. David Lynch explained to those present that the Amalgamated men would take care of themselves, but that the suffering among those for whom the Association could not undertake to provide was intense and demanded prompt measures for its alleviation. A committee consisting of David Lynch, William Gaches and Harry Bayne was appointed to investigate the immediate needs of the people, and a fund was started on the spot by the subscription of $200 among the citizens in attendance. After a few days' work the sub-committee reported to the general committee, and on the strength of the information presented the following appeal was adopted: "There are 218 families in Homestead and vicinity in a state of destitution. This fact has been ascertained by a competent committee, consisting of three persons, appointed at a citizens' meeting held on Friday evening, December 2, 1892. The undersigned committee was appointed as a result of the above investigation to issue this appeal to the country, asking public aid in caring for these destitute families. The strike is over, but less than 800 of the 3,800 former workmen of the Carnegie Steel Company have as yet secured employment in the mill, and only a limited number elsewhere. It is highly improbable that this vast body of unemployed men will be able to secure work for many weeks to come. This means prolonged and increasing distress. The people of Homestead, although liberal in their contributions, are unable to provide for the demands of such general want. This call is an urgent one, and the public must assist us." The general relief committee perfected its organization by electing Burgess Hollingshead president, William Gaches, treasurer, and George Hadfield, secretary. Mr. Hollingshead was authorized to receive money contributions and turn them over to the treasurer, and to Mr. Hadfield was assigned the duty of receiving donations of food, fuel and clothing. One of the first subscriptions received was the sum of $25 from the employees of Kaufman Brothers of Philadelphia, transmitted by the city editor of the Philadelphia _Record_. Others poured in rapidly, the business people of Pittsburgh being especially liberal in their response to the demands upon them. The Building Trades council appointed a committee to take charge of the Pittsburgh donations, with Vice President Michael Sharran at the head. Mr. Sharran, assisted by Mr. D. S. Mitchell, labored with untiring activity and these two men were instrumental in securing thousands of dollars worth of supplies. Among the most liberal contributors was Mrs. J. M. Gusky, head of the great clothing firm of J. M. Gusky & Company, a lady noted for her charities and always foremost to respond in emergencies such as that occurring at Homestead. Kaufmann Brothers and Eisner & Philipps gave an immense quantity of clothing. W. M. Laird contributed a sufficient quantity of shoes for all claimants, and the large grocery and commission firms forwarded provisions of all kinds. The Pittsburgh _Press_ raised a fund of $2,500 in addition to supplies of clothing and other necessaries, and the _Dispatch_ collected over $700, to which was added $300 from the charitable people of Washington, D. C. As Christmas drew near, public sympathy was more and more keenly aroused in behalf of the Homestead sufferers. A few days before that holiday of holidays, the children in the Homestead public schools were instructed to write letters to Santa Claus, asking for whatever they most desired. Nearly all the letters contained requests for shoes and other necessaries. Many of them were published in the newspapers and spoke volumes for the unhappy condition of the poorer class of strikers and their families. Santa Claus was not missing, however, when the eventful morning came, nor were the other essentials of a merry Christmas conspicuous by their absence. One thousand turkeys came from the kind hearted workingmen of McKeesport and 300 from Mrs. Gusky, and the heart of every child was gladdened by the gift of a picture book and a box of candy from Kaufmann Bros. of Pittsburgh. The Homestead relief committee kept up its good work until the end of March, by which time the necessities of the people ceased to be pressing. A report was then published showing receipts amounting to $5,587.28, of which $4,926.79 had been expended in relieving distressed families. A committee of three was appointed to use the unexpended balance in relief work, and the general committee then dissolved, having excellently discharged its mission. Reference has already been made to the appointment of a committee of United States senators to investigate the Homestead affair and the postponement of action by Senator Gallinger, the Republican chairman of that committee, until after the presidential election. Within two weeks after election day, Senators Gallinger and Pfeffer began the inquiry at Chicago, where a hearing was given to Pinkerton agents and authorities on police methods, the latter submitting opinions on the best means of coping with labor disturbances. Chief of Police McClaughrey advocated the removal of the police force in great cities from the field of politics and placing municipal departments under a civil service system, and Marshal Hitchcock suggested the enactment of a law providing a severe penalty for refusing to serve on a _posse comitatus_. On November 23, Messrs. Gallinger and Pfeffer arrived in Pittsburgh. The other members of the committee, Messrs. Hansbrough, of North Dakota; Felton, of California; Sanders, of Montana; White, of Louisiana, and Hill, of New York, did not find it convenient to attend. The testimony taken was mainly a repetition of that given before the House Committee. Captain Rodgers repeated his tale of the adventures of the Little Bill; Superintendent Potter told of the innocence of the purpose entertained in the bringing in of the Pinkertonian Three Hundred; William Weihe explained how easily the trouble could have been adjusted if the Carnegie firm had desired an amicable settlement and condemned the facilities afforded for the importation of cheap labor in violation of the contract labor law; David Lynch and William G. Roberts testified to the peaceable disposition of the Homestead men prior to the Pinkerton invasion and their respect for the property rights of their employers; A. C. Robertson, a politician who had formerly been a glass blower, condemned arbitration, whether voluntary or compulsory, as a failure, and ex-Judge Thomas Mellon declared the employment of armed guards during strikes to be necessary because there is "too much politics" to permit of the proper enforcement of the law. After a visit to the Homestead mill, the committee proceeded directly to New York where the testimony of Robert A. Pinkerton and Captain Heinde was heard. The Pinkerton chief described the men sent to Homestead as model citizens. It had been agreed, he said, that the guards should be sworn in as deputy sheriffs. There had been no firing from the barges until after the captain was shot, and then only in sheer self-defense. Witness claimed that his agency had lost $15,000 by the Homestead affair, owing to the seizure of 225 rifles and other property, and the cost of caring for men hurt in the battle. He thought it doubtful that Mr. Carnegie would reimburse the agency. Being asked if he thought that the violence committed at Homestead was due to the strikers or to the rabble attracted there, he said: "I think it was committed by the strikers, their leaders and the advisory committee itself." Captain Heinde's evidence was merely a recital of the events of July 6. With his examination the investigation was concluded. The report of the committee, presented to the senate on February 11, 1893, denounced the employment of Pinkertons as "an utterly vicious system, responsible for much of the ill-feeling and bad blood displayed by the working classes," and suggested that if Mr. Frick had carried out the humane policy enunciated by Mr. Carnegie in his famous article in the _Forum_, the Homestead strike might have been avoided. At the same time, it declared that there was "no excuse for the scenes of disorder and terrorism for which the strikers were themselves responsible," and that "laboring men should learn the lesson that they cannot better their condition by violating the law or resisting lawful authority." The committee doubted the power of Congress to mend matters by legislation, and advised arbitration as the only middle ground on which employer and employe could meet without depreciating the rights of either. About this time the House committee on investigation of the Homestead strike awoke from its lethargy and Messrs. Ray and Broderick, the Republican members, handed in a minority report, condemning the employment of armed guards, but advising that legislation on this question be left to the several states. In the judgment of the minority of the committee the "present system of federal taxation" had nothing to do with the Homestead strike, which was in reality a struggle for supremacy between organized capital and organized labor. The majority report was presented shortly afterwards. It held that Mr. Frick should have united with the sheriff of Allegheny county, without regard to the inefficiency of that officer, in an appeal to the governor, instead of undertaking to crush the strikers on his own account; criticized the Amalgamated Association as a body the members of which were encouraged to become intemperate zealots, denied the right of the Homestead men to oppose the landing of the Pinkertons, and ended by suggesting that it be left to the several states to enact laws regulating Pinkertonism. Individual minority reports were presented as follows: By Mr. Broderick, advocating the passage of a compulsory arbitration law by the states. By Mr. Buchanan, of New Jersey, declaring the investigation to have acted as a boomerang against the Democrats in that it showed a high protective tariff to be productive of high wages. By Mr. Boatner, claiming that, under the clause of the constitution which authorizes the inter-state commerce law, inter-state carriers can be prevented from hiring Pinkertons. By Mr. Stockdale, of Mississippi, claiming that the Pinkertons were trespassers; and By Messrs. Bynum and Layton confessing their inability to find a remedy for conflicts between capital and labor. All the reports cited having been duly read and filed away by the two branches of Congress, the Homestead question was thereupon dropped by general consent and, its political utility having vanished, was heard of no more in the national legislature. The Pennsylvania legislature, which assembled in January, 1893, was obliged to meet the Pinkerton question squarely. All the members of the lower branch of that body--the House of Representatives--and one-half of the members of the senate came fresh from the people, having been chosen in the November elections, and a large proportion of them stood pledged to their constituents to aid in the passage of an anti-Pinkerton bill. Many measures of this character were introduced, but that upon which support was centered, by common consent, was a bill introduced by Representative John Kearns, of Pittsburgh, a gentleman in close touch with organized labor. The Kearns bill was entitled "An Act relative to the appointing of special deputies, marshals, detectives or policemen by sheriffs, mayors or other persons authorized by law to make such appointments, and by individuals, associations or corporations incorporated under the laws of this State or any other State of the United States, and making it a misdemeanor for persons to exercise the functions of an officer without authority." The bill underwent some vicissitudes, which delayed its passage until May, although introduced early in January and advanced on the House calendar through Mr. Kearns' energetic efforts. At one stage in its progress, a proviso was added requiring that any person appointed or deputized to perform the duties of special deputy, marshal, policeman or detective should be "of known good moral character and temperate habits" and should give bond in a considerable sum for the faithful performance of his duties. This provision was attacked because of its being presumably aimed at the low class of detectives employed by the Law and Order society of Pittsburgh, which was just then making war on Sunday newspapers and lobbying against a bill for the protection of journals publishing Sunday editions, and for this reason it was eliminated. The word "detectives" was stricken out of the title and, as it was feared that the bill might interfere with the appointment of regular policemen in municipalities, a special proviso to prevent such a result was added in the senate: As finally enacted into a law, signed by the governor, and placed upon the statute books, the measure reads as follows: SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That no sheriff of a county, mayor of a city, or other person authorized by law to appoint special deputies, marshals or policemen in this Commonwealth to preserve the public peace and prevent or quell public disturbances, and no individuals, association, company or corporation incorporated under the laws of this State or of any other State of the United States and doing business in this State, shall hereafter appoint or employ as such special deputy, marshal or policeman any person who shall not be a citizen of this Commonwealth. SECTION 2. That any person who shall in this Commonwealth without due authority pretend or hold himself out to any one as a deputy sheriff, marshal, policeman, constable or peace officer, shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor. SECTION 3. Any person or persons, company or association, or any person in the employ of such company or association violating any of the provisions of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or undergo an imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both or either at the discretion of the court. _Provided_, That if any company or association be convicted under this act it shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars. _Provided further_, That the provisions of this act shall not be construed as applying to policemen, constables or specials appointed by municipalities for municipal purposes. As long as the Kearns act stands--and it is safe to say that it is not likely ever to be repealed--the Pinkerton Detective Agency is effectually barred out of Pennsylvania. CHAPTER XVIII. [Illustration: THE FIRST TRIAL] SYLVESTER CRITCHLOW ARRAIGNED--PINKERTONS ON THE STAND--THE PROSECUTION MAKES A STRONG SHOWING--A SUSPICIOUS CARNEGIE BANQUET--ATTORNEYS ERWIN AND ARGO TO THE RESCUE--AN ALIBI FOR THE DEFENSE--JOHN S. ROBB ATTACKS MR. ERWIN--THE "NORTHWESTERN WHIRLWIND'S" MAGNIFICENT ORATION--HE CAPTURES THE COURT AND CONFOUNDS THE PROSECUTION--"NOT GUILTY"--THE BACKBONE OF THE MURDER CHARGES BROKEN. Sylvester Critchlow was the first of the Homestead men to be placed on trial in the Allegheny County Criminal Court, the charge against him being the murder of T. J. Connors. On the morning of November 18, 1892, Critchlow was arraigned before Judges Kennedy and McClung. A great crowd assembled in the court room, curious to observe the opening scenes in the memorable legal battle which was to ensue, but to the great disappointment of the throng, the judges ordered the room to be cleared of all except members of the bar, witnesses, jurors and reporters. The prisoner was perfectly cool and self possessed. His wife and mother sat near him, watching with womanly solicitude every step in the proceedings, the issue of which meant so much to both. The array of legal talent on both sides was formidable. The prosecution was in the hands of District Attorney Burleigh, assisted by Messrs. D. F. Patterson, John S. Robb, E. Y. Breck, P. C. Knox and Assistant District Attorney Harry Goehring. Counsel for the defense were: Messrs. W. W. Erwin and G. W. Argo, of St. Paul, Minn.; E. A. Montooth, Thomas M. Marshall, William J. Brennen and William Reardon, of Pittsburgh, and John F. Cox, of Homestead. Immediately upon the opening of court, Critchlow was ordered to stand up, and having heard the charge read, pleaded not guilty in a clear, firm tone of voice. Attorney Brennen asked to have the indictment quashed on the ground of an irregularity in the drawing of the grand jury panel. The motion was overruled, and the selection of jurors began, this process being conducted by Mr. Burleigh for the prosecution and Mr. Marshall for the defense. Within a few hours, the following "good men and true" were selected: Peter Roth, John Herron, James Marshall, Amos Mashey, Chris Wiggand, C. S. Eaton, Chris A. Sende, James M. Wright, D. J. Herlehy, W. A. Freyvogel, Burns Wadsworth and Louis Jackman. The District Attorney, in his opening speech, after having given the conventional explanation as to degrees of murder, asked the jury to avoid the impression that the case on trial was one of treason or was to be considered in connection with Homestead. "We are," he said, "simply trying Sylvester Critchlow for the murder of T. J. Connors, who was killed in the barges at Homestead on July 6. The barges were there lawfully and for a peaceable purpose.... We will show that Sylvester Critchlow was behind the barricade with a rifle, shooting down to the barges within easy range of Connors, and firing in a direction in which he would likely hit Connors." "You must also remember, gentlemen, that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the prosecutor and Sylvester Critchlow is the defendant. There is no private prosecutor here. The case will be prosecuted by public officials and no one else will be allowed to interfere. Other counsel may appear in the case, but they will be in subordination to the district attorney." Dr. McKennan, Superintendent W. A. Cowan, of the West Penn hospital and Rev. Father Leonard Lynch were the first witnesses examined. They testified to the death of Connors and the nature of his wound. Captain John W. Cooper, of the Pinkerton agency, followed with the familiar story of the river expedition and the battle at the landing. He also swore positively to the position of Connors at the time when he was shot and the hour at which he fell. Captain Cooper was subjected to a searching cross-examination by Mr. Brennen, but went through the ordeal without permitting himself to become confused. Mr. Brennen sought to show (1) that the witness was not of good moral character and (2) that Connors was accidentally shot by one of his own comrades. At one point the cross-examination ran as follows: MR. BRENNEN.--Were you not a "Hey Rube" for a circus for nine years? MR. BURLEIGH.--What in the name of common sense is a "Hey Rube?" JUDGE KENNEDY.--Yes, Mr. Brennen, we would like to know what you mean by a "Hey Rube." MR. BRENNEN.--I mean a circus fighter. The witness knows what I mean. WITNESS.--I was detailed by the Pinkerton agency to accompany the Barnum circus in the capacity of a detective. I was with the circus for nine years. W. H. Burt, also a Pinkerton detective, recounted the incidents of the fight at the landing and described the shooting of Connors as follows: "I knew T. J. Connors. He was on the boat. I saw him between 11 and 12 o'clock that day. That was before he was shot. He was near the bow of the boat. Three or four minutes later I saw two men picking him up. He had fallen about twenty-five feet from the bow of the boat. He was placed on a table and a medical student from Chicago, who had hired as a guard, bandaged the wound on Connors' arm." Detectives P. J. Connors and Joseph Malley gave evidence of similar tenor to that of the two preceding witnesses, and Captain Rodgers and Deputy Sheriff Gray repeated their well-worn story of the Little Bill. This stage of the proceedings was reached on the afternoon of Saturday, November 19, at the customary hour of adjournment. The court decided to hold a night session, and accordingly at 7 P. M. the examination of witnesses was resumed. J. M. Dickson, H. H. Hervey and J. H. Slocum, clerks in the employ of the Carnegie firm, swore that on the morning of July 6 they saw Critchlow with a gun in his hand going towards the mill gate. Each of them positively identified the prisoner. Charles Reese, a newspaper artist, being sworn, said that he saw Critchlow, with a gun in his hands, occupying an exposed position in the mill yard, near the pump house. Somebody had said to witness, "There is Critchlow. He is a regular dare devil." Mr. Brennen elicited from the witness the fact that he had attended a gathering of newspaper reporters called together by Capt. E. Y. Breck, attorney for the Carnegie firm, at the time when the Critchlow case was before the grand jury. This affair had created no little scandal when it occurred, some of the newspapers openly stating that Captain Breck had invited those whom he intended to use as witnesses to a banquet for the purpose of "coaching" them. Mr. Reese, however, denied that there had been a banquet or, that he had received any formal invitation from Captain Breck. Nevertheless, the evidence was regarded as establishing a reasonable presumption of the use of unfair methods by the prosecution. Isaac J. Jury, a constable residing in Homestead, swore that he saw Critchlow in the mill yard and advised him to get out, but that his warning was not heeded. The most damaging testimony of all was given by Samuel Stewart, a clerk, in the Homestead mill. He said: "I know Sylvester Critchlow; saw him near the Company office between 8 and 9 o'clock on the morning of July 6; next saw him back of the barricades, near the pump house on the river bank; he was kneeling back of the barricade, a gun in his hands; the gun projected through the barricade between the second and third beams; the barricade was built of steel 'I' beams; his gun was pointed toward the barges; the bows of the barges were nearest to the barricades; you could see into the boats from where Critchlow was kneeling; the door of the outer barge was open; I saw Critchlow fire once in the direction of the barge; saw him aim carefully and pull the trigger; I remained there about 20 minutes; Critchlow was there when I arrived, and was still there when I left; I cannot tell the kind of gun Critchlow had, except that it was a single barrel." On cross-examination witness stated that he also saw Anthony Flaherty, Joseph A. Hall and James Flannagan shoot from behind the barricade. He stuck firmly to his story in the face of Mr. Brennen's questioning. Stewart's examination ended the Saturday night session. When the trial was resumed on Monday morning, Detective Malley was again placed on the stand and swore to having seen Critchlow on the river bank with a gun in his hands and to have heard him called by name. Photographs of the burning barges, the barricades and the mill yard, taken by order of the Carnegie Company on July 6, were put in evidence, and here the commonwealth rested. Attorney George W. Argo made the opening speech for the defense. He explained that he and his colleague, Mr. Irwin, had been sent by the laboring element of the Northwest to assist in the defense of the Homestead men. "As far as I am concerned," he said, "I was not selected on account of any extraordinary ability, but because for years I have been in touch with labor. At one time I was a barge builder near this city. My parents resided in Washington County." In setting forth the reasons for demanding an acquittal, Mr. Argo enlarged upon the enlistment of armed men to invade Homestead "within two days of the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence" and, after describing the expedition of the Pinkertons went on to say: "These men were not laboring men. It was an invasion of armed men employed by a man named Frick; it was an assault upon this grand old commonwealth; it was an assault upon the state in which the Declaration of Independence was signed; this armed body of men who invaded this state and trampled upon the soil made sacred by the feet of Washington; these men were not under the command of any regular officer of this county; they were men who could not be sworn in as deputies or special officers. Under the evidence in this case these men made an attack upon the people of Homestead; there is not any evidence that Frick owned one dollar's worth of property in Homestead. These men sneaked in on a dark, foggy night; they were met, not by strikers, for there is no evidence that there was a strike, but by the good people of the town, who, when the armed foe attempted to land told the latter not to come ashore; begged of them not to interfere with their rights, begged of them not to attempt to land. Not a particle of evidence has been given that these foreign emissaries had any right there. The men, the peaceable citizens, attempted to defend their rights. A young man named Foy went down to the gang-plank to plead with the men not to come ashore. He was met by a lot of armed men. Becoming alarmed he turned to go back, when he slipped and fell across the plank. As he fell he was shot in the back by some one on the barges. That was the beginning of the terrible battle. It will appear in evidence in this case that the first shots were fired from the barges and not by the people on shore. We will show you that preparations had been made for this trouble one month before it occurred. We will show that a stockade or high fence had been built around the works, a fence like that built in the west to repel Indian attacks. This fence was full of portholes, and resembled the outer wall of a fort. There is no evidence that the people who were on the banks on the morning of the invasion were strikers. They were peaceable citizens of Homestead. Every man in that crowd had a right to defend himself with arms; the law gives to every man the right to defend himself, to defend his family; to defend his neighbors and his friends; this right is given every man by a power higher than the law of man. The people were attacked by an armed foe and they had the right to use weapons in self-defense. The evidence shows that the men on the barges were in command of officers whose names are known, who have testified in this case, yet your honorable district attorney has made no effort to bring these men to justice. Thus he becomes a defender of these armed invaders of your county." Mr. Argo further outlined the plan of defense as showing that the Critchlow who was seen behind the barricades was another Critchlow and that the prisoner was not present when Connors met his death. W. M. Erwin followed with a spirited address in which he said that the prosecution rested entirely on the theory that there had been a riot, which he characterized as a "doubly damned fiction." "Is there," he asked, "another such hard-hearted, villainous man within the limits of the land as this man Frick, whom we find hob-nobbing with the leaders of the Republic. This man Frick, whose name will be more notorious than that of the man who fired the Ephesian dome, did not apply to your courts or your legislature, but violated the agreement with his men, and assumed, like a tyrant, to act as arbiter; this most brutal tyrant of all tyrants tried to force his men to bow to his will by an armed force of invaders. Thus have these scoundrels defied the laws of the commonwealth. Carnegie bent the eternal laws of God and the poorer imitations by man. We will show that the defendants only tried to straighten these laws. If there is no Judas Iscariot among you, gentlemen of the jury, you will plant the flag of independence on your hills." Captain O. C. Coon, of Homestead, was the first witness called by the defense. He testified that he was at the mill landing when the Pinkerton barges arrived, and described the opening of the battle as follows: "When the plank was thrown out my attention was called to a man on the barge; he had a gun in his hand; there was a boy on the shore; he was tantalizing the man; the latter raised his gun to shoot the boy; I said to him: 'For God's sake don't shoot that boy, for he is only a boy.' I asked him if he was a deputy sheriff, he said no; I asked him if he was a guardsman, he said no; I then said 'you are a Pinkerton'; he replied that he was, and, holding up his gun, said his party was going to enter the mill in fifteen minutes; the boy on shore continued to call the man on the barge; the latter raised his gun and aimed at the boy, but someone pushed his gun down; when he raised it again he had it drawn on me; about that time a boy came running down to where we were, slipped and fell across the gang plank; a minute later there was a shot from the barge, and I heard afterward that the boy on the plank was shot in the side; the first shot fired after the landing was fired by either the second or third man on the plank; I do not know who he was; I went there to try and preserve order; I never saw Critchlow to know him until I saw him in court to-day." Charles Mansfield, of Homestead, effectually offset the evidence of Charles Reese. He swore that he had been in the mill yard and conversed with Reese. Asked as to the nature of the conversation, he said: "I was in a cupola with Mr. Reese. I saw a man named Critchlow go into the pump-house. I said to Reese, 'There goes Critchlow into the place where Morris was killed. He will be killed sure. You had better get a good sketch of him.'" MR. BRENNEN--"Was the man you pointed out to Reese the defendant?" "No, sir." "Who was the man?" "I do not wish to state." "Was his name Critchlow?" "It was." Numerous witnesses were then introduced to prove an alibi for the defendant. Samuel Rothrauff, J. Miller Colgan and J. J. Baird testified that they saw Critchlow in Braddock before 10 A. M. on July 6. Mrs. Bridget Coyle said that she saw him at 3 P. M. a mile distant from the mill on his way home. "There's no lie about it," exclaimed Mrs. Coyle, in answer to Attorney Patterson's questions, "but you're trying to make me tell a lie, and I wouldn't do it for all the money Carnegie has." Three witnesses corroborated Mrs. Coyle's statement and a half-dozen others accounted for Critchlow's movements in the evening. The taking of all this testimony occupied the court throughout a second night session. On Tuesday, the fourth day of the trial, the defendant testified in his own behalf, denying that he had been on the Carnegie Company's grounds at any time on the day of the battle. A light suit of clothes which he claimed to have worn on that day was exhibited as an offset to the evidence of witnesses for the prosecution who coincided in the statement that the Critchlow whom they had seen wore dark clothing. Critchlow's wife was sworn and said that at 4 P. M. on July 6, at which hour, it was alleged, defendant had been behind the barricades, he was at home sleeping. This closed the case for the defense. Only one witness was called by the commonwealth in rebuttal, and his evidence was valueless. Mr. Marshall, for the defense, submitted a number of points, among which was the contention that, when it is certain that one or more persons committed a crime, but it is uncertain which, all must be acquitted. Mr. D. F. Patterson responded for the prosecution, taking special exception to the plea against individual liability. Four hours were allowed to each side for the closing arguments. Mr. Robb, for the commonwealth, arraigned the defense in scathing language for seeking to belittle the laws of the commonwealth in the eyes of the jury. "There is, gentlemen," he said "some mysterious power that comes from the blue sky above the clouds that leads us away from the law; we have been told this by an attorney from the other side. Has it come to this, as we are told, that there is not law enough in Allegheny county or Pennsylvania for a plain cause? We have been told, but thank God those who made the statement are not citizens of our state, that we are all, from the man who sits on the supreme bench to the district attorney, corrupt. We have been told that in their cause there has been a mysterious, swimming atmosphere, something that would develop in this cause. But when you hear his honor you will know how plain is your duty and how plain is the law." And again: "The Carnegie company may have done wrong; we all do wrong, but is that any reason why our laws and our great flag, which was referred to so eloquently by the gentleman on the other side in his opening address should be trampled underfoot by rioters? My forefathers were not so high as the forefathers of the gentleman who addressed you yesterday; mine were only privates; his were away-up officers. But if I were not a better citizen of Allegheny county than to advise a jury to disregard its solemn oath I should hope that I should be stricken dead." Mr. Erwin, who, since the delivery of his fiery speech of Monday, had come to be known among the members of the bar as the "Northwestern Whirlwind," followed Mr. Robb. There was dead silence in the court-room when he began. Surely he would respond in kind to Mr. Robb's virulent attack on him! But no. The Westerner was too shrewd to let himself be drawn off into the mere by-ways of argument, and with but a passing contemptuous allusion to Mr. Robb's onslaught, he proceeded calmly and impressively with the discussion of the main issue. As one of the newspapers put it, "The strategy of the prosecution to lead into a by-path had failed, and he stuck to the high road and tramped defiantly along the highest part of it." After a few preparatory remarks, including his brief reference to Mr. Robb's speech, which he characterized as a "gauzy affair," Mr. Erwin plunged into his subject as follows: "Unhappily for you, and I think for the county, the propelling causes that led to the riots at Homestead are not shown in evidence. Under your oaths you cannot merely presume on them. I think that is unfortunate for the country, the state and the city. After the news of the battle flashed over the wires calm minds awaited the result of the investigation. That it has not been touched is a matter of sincere regret. You are now put in an iron vest by your oaths, and you can presume nothing except such presumptions as are legal and presumable. We of the defense are in no way responsible for this. A man has the right to rebut only the testimony addressed against him, and that is so strong that if you committed the murder you would not have a chance to prove I did it. And thus we are bound hand and foot, and our mouths are open to receive what the prosecution presents." Mr. Erwin defined indictments as mere accusations, and said that the law's presumption of innocence was as a shield on which the prosecution must pile evidence until the weight is so heavy that it breaks the prisoner down. The speaker referred to the important part that intuition plays in law cases, and said in that respect women often possessed it more acutely because they were nearer like the angels. Going further, he adverted to the exclusion of any evidence that there was a strike at Homestead or that Mr. Frick had hired an armed body there. The constitution, he said, still gives the people right to bear arms in their defense. "The cloven foot of the power that invoked this invasion of Pennsylvania has been hidden from you," continued he. "I know not whether accidentally, but it has been concealed. You know, though, that it was Frick, the blackest name there ever was; you know that Frick, whoever he may be, put on board the Little Bill arms and men for this invasion of Pennsylvania. "And, therefore, you are bound to presume that if the proceeding had a just excuse it should be shown, and the absence of it is favorable to the prisoner. What was there that even justified Frick in arming men like that? You do not know. I cannot but presume that it is so black he dare not show it in this open forum before the republic. The great question with you, gentlemen, is, under the evidence we have before us, was this battle at Homestead a riot or an authorized invasion? That's the first question. If you answer it was an invasion that's the end of it. It requires no proclamation of the governor to resist an invasion. I do not see how under the evidence you can see anything else than an invasion. I would like to have shown you what an irresponsible constabulary the Pinkertons are, but that is denied us." Mr. Erwin sarcastically said that Mr. Robb in his endeavor to carry them by storm became the personification of a rioter, and forgot to tell them that if Mr. Frick had not sent the Pinkertons to Homestead there would never have been a battle. There may have seemed a reason to Frick, but the state had not shown anything of that. People for self-aggrandizement may often do things that, if shown in court, might convict them of what they charge against others, and that is murder. "If you find there is no excuse for that invasion the people of Homestead should have pursued and shot the Pinkertons even at God's altar, and further still have gone across the line that separates the dead from life and shot them while they lay on the bosom of the prince of hell," shouted Erwin in a particularly passionate outburst that seemed to appal the court. "If there was no invasion, you must ask yourselves was the riot such as to make the people on the shore responsible for that tumult. Who were on those boats? Three hundred men from the slums of Philadelphia and Chicago, armed with 150 Winchesters, and revolvers and maces. And they were under captains and had waived their right to think for themselves; had sworn to obey their captain when he told them to kill the people at Homestead. This shows you the abandonment of individuality and concentration of power under one executive head; and that is the primary principle that constitutes war. Were the people on the mill shore who had fired on the Pinkertons down the river? Not one of them. Is there any evidence that the people on shore were responsible for that firing down on the shore? Not a particle. Perhaps the prosecution did not go into it for fear they might show that Frick was guilty of murder. The evidence has not been put to you to show that the people on shore were there to repel any but 'scabs.' If you cannot determine these points you should acquit the defendant." Mr. Erwin then went into an analysis of the testimony of the Pinkerton witnesses for the prosecution; and defined detectives as men who could not make a living at any honorable pursuit, and preferred to hunt men instead of serving the Almighty by working by the sweat of their brows. He said it was hardly possible the jury could like a human hyena. Had the Pinkertons been honorable men the district attorney would have shown the jury evidence of such and thus helped to strengthen their statements. The speaker justified burning oil and dynamite and anything else that could be thought of if used against the Pinkertons. There was no intent in the gathering of the crowd on shore; and, therefore, the individual up for justice could not be held guilty for what happened. Erwin held that if Critchlow was on the scene of battle he had a perfect right to be there. It was a point of law older than Rome, copied by Cicero, that when arms are used all political laws are set at naught. The resistance of the Homestead people was a "majestic" performance. Were not three hundred rifles cowed by eight behind the barricade? Stewart, "that magnificent volunteer witness," was a preposterous liar and a "squirt" who was eyeing the fighters. Here the orator asked his colleagues how long he had to speak and was told to go on without regard to time. Taking up a synopsis of the testimony he proceeded to analyze the statements of witnesses for the commonwealth with telling effect. His sarcastic commentaries set the court-room in a roar, even the tipstaves being so amused that they forgot to cry order until Judge Kennedy aroused them. The witnesses for the defense, Mr. Erwin said, were all reputable citizens of Homestead. He thought it impossible to construct a better alibi than had been proven for Critchlow. No machinations of testimony could make such an excellent alibi as the one presented. In view of it all, he could not look for any decision other than in favor of acquittal, even though the district attorney had so artfully presented the testimony as almost to compel the jury to decide for the commonwealth against their consciences. In conclusion the speaker pictured the misery that would be inflicted on Critchlow's family, if the bread winner were snatched away. "That is the greatest speech ever delivered in this court house," remarked the veteran, Thomas M. Marshall, when Mr. Erwin had finished. "I want to retire from the bar now, for I have been snuffed out." On Wednesday morning Mr. Marshall spoke. He laid much stress on the surreptitious entry of the Pinkertons and the assumption that somebody had authority to give these private hirelings orders to shoot. "The order from Captain Cooper and Captain Heinde to shoot entitled them to be shot," said the speaker vehemently. "When there is war," he continued, "the man that arrives first on the battlefield has the right to shoot first. But why did the Pinkertons come down upon Homestead like thieves in the night? Who is it that likes darkness? Why did not Mr. Frick say he was bringing these men here to protect his property and not to intimidate people? Why did they steal into Homestead with guns that shot sixteen times?" Mr. Marshall attacked the evidence for the prosecution, and especially the identification of Critchlow by the Pinkertons, who could only have seen the man once or twice, if they had seen him at all, and were, therefore, not qualified to swear to his identity. He held that the district attorney had no right to throw the weight of his talents and influence against the defendant. That officer's client was the commonwealth, and yet Mr. Robb spoke of "our clients" as if Frick and the commonwealth were identical. "I don't believe," said Mr. Marshall ironically, "that H. Clay Frick had anything to do with this prosecution, oh, no! I don't believe that anybody connected with the Carnegie Company had anything to do with the attempt to take away the lives of these Homestead men. And this man Lovejoy who made these informations, he had nothing to do with the Carnegie interests; oh, no! Love--joy! L-o-v-e-j-o-y! I don't say his name should be Loveblood; but I do say that there are several people in the Carnegie Company who should have their names changed." In concluding his address, Mr. Marshall said: "The real capitalist is the workingman, the producer, who has nothing but his paltry $3 a day, while the lordlings, the so-called manufacturers, walk abroad as social gods and revel in the luxury made by the sweat of the workingman's brow." District Attorney Burleigh, in his speech closing the case for the commonwealth, volunteered the statement that he was in the pay of no man but was there solely to plead for justice in the name of the commonwealth. He taxed the defense with relying mainly on artifice and meretricious oratory; scouted the idea that the Pinkertons were "invaders," and declared that Mr. Erwin's defense of the right "to shoot down on the very bosom of the prince of hell," three hundred men "caged like rats in those barges," was anarchy-red, rampant anarchy! Mr. Burleigh contended that the Carnegie Company in massing and attempting to land the Pinkertons with the permission of the Sheriff, acted within its legal rights. The landing had been attempted at night because it was desired to avoid a breach of the peace. The closing portion of the address was given up to an endeavor to discredit the testimony adduced to establish an alibi for the defendant. Judge Kennedy occupied only forty minutes in charging the jury. He held that a man mixing with a riotous crowd and not helping to quell the disturbance was as guilty as the active participants. The Carnegie Company had a lawful right to protect its property, even with Pinkerton detectives, no matter whence the guards came, and the people on the shore had no right to shoot down the men on the barges. After one hour's deliberation the jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty," to the surprise of the court and the delight of Critchlow's weeping wife, who remained near him to the last. The news of the acquittal spread rapidly, and at Homestead an enthusiastic crowd watched every train from Pittsburgh in the hope of meeting Critchlow with an appropriate demonstration. The people were disappointed, however, for the lion of the occasion was doomed to remain a caged lion, being remanded to jail on additional charges--two of murder, two of riot and one of conspiracy. At the same time the public made up its mind from the turn which affairs had taken in the Critchlow case that a conviction could not be secured against any of the Homestead men. The officials of the Amalgamated Association were jubilant and gave vent to their satisfaction by waiting in a body upon Attorney Erwin at the Monongahela House and formally congratulating him on the success which he had achieved President Garland acting as spokesman. On the Carnegie Company's side there was a corresponding feeling of disappointment and three months were allowed to elapse before the trial of the Homestead cases proper--that is to say, those based on the battle with the Pinkertons--was resumed. [Illustration: THE WORKMEN'S DISPATCH BOAT.] CHAPTER XIX. [Illustration: WEAVING NEW TOILS.] AN EPIDEMIC INVESTIGATED--DETECTIVES CHARGE POISONING AND ARRESTS ARE MADE--GALLAGHER AND DAVIDSON TURN INFORMERS--DEMPSEY AND BEATTY ARE INDICTED--HEARINGS AND TRIALS--A TANGLED MASS OF MEDICAL TESTIMONY--MR. BRENNEN'S LITTLE HIBERNICISM--DEFENDANTS ARE CONVICTED AND HEAVY SENTENCES IMPOSED--GALLAGHER RECANTS AND THEN RECONSIDERS--CLEMENCY REFUSED BY THE PARDON BOARD. The prevalence of disease among the non-union men in the Carnegie mill, and the alarming increase of mortality in the months of September and October were touched upon in an earlier chapter. It was not until December that the first intimation of the existence of a criminal cause for the species of epidemic which struck down man after man and baffled expert physicians and chemists reached the public. The Carnegie Company had concealed the truth as far as possible, endeavoring from the first to counteract the statements sent abroad by the Amalgamated Association to the effect that bad food, bad water, and bad sanitary arrangements were killing off the "blacksheep" like cattle stricken with a murrain. The malady was a virulent form of diarrhoea or cholera morbus, for which the medical men employed to treat the sufferers were unable to account. All sorts of remedial measures were tried by the firm. Only the purest food was used. Notices were posted warning the men not to drink from the water plugs ordinarily serving as a source of supply, and chemically pure water was provided. Still the plague did not abate. Suspecting foul play, the firm set Pinkerton detectives to work, distributing them among the cooks and waiters as assistants, and in this way evidence was secured of a wholesale poisoning conspiracy, and the identity of the conspirators was believed to be established by confessions obtained from two accessories. On December 5, J. H. Ford, a Pinkerton detective, made information before Alderman McMasters against Robert J. Beatty, a cook in the mill, on a charge of felonious assault and battery, in administering poison to the non-union men at Homestead. It was learned that Beatty was about to start for Cincinnati on the steamboat Nellie Hudson and an officer boarded the boat to apprehend him, but was not permitted to make the arrest. Beatty was subsequently arrested in Louisville and brought back to Pittsburgh on requisition papers issued by Governor Pattison. The confession on which the Carnegie Company based its charge against Beatty was made by Patrick Gallagher, a cook in restaurant No. 1 in the Homestead mill. Its publication, which followed immediately on the arrest of Beatty, caused a tremendous sensation, inasmuch as it named as the arch-conspirator, the designer and executive head of the plot, no less a personage than Hugh F. Dempsey, master workman of D. A. 3, K. of L. Gallagher deposed that late in August, he was approached by Beatty with a proposition to put in the tea and coffee made by him for the Carnegie Company's men, something which would render the men sick and unfit for work; that Beatty took him, in company with J. M. Davidson, to see Hugh F. Dempsey, who was to furnish the preparation to be used; that about the 7th or 8th of September affiant received from Dempsey a bottle containing a yellow powder, which, Dempsey said, contained three doses, each being sufficient for a pot of tea or coffee containing thirty gallons; that affiant used the powder with the result of making workmen sick and unable to work; that additional powders were given him by Dempsey and Beatty and administered by him to the workmen, and that affiant received for his services $3 from Beatty and $25 from Dempsey, with the assurance of $23.85 more from the latter. Despite the plausibility and coherency of the charges and the _prima facie_ evidence in support of them, the Amalgamated men unanimously set down this new move of the company as a scheme devised in order to prejudice their cause. It was urged, in particular, that the relations between the Association and the K. of L. were not such as to render it probable that Dempsey would jeopardize his liberty and perhaps his life by engaging in a villainous plot in the interest of the former. Dempsey himself stoutly denied the charges, and his denial was supported by Beatty. At the hearing before Alderman McMasters, Beatty was defended by William J. Brennen, Esq. Captain Breck appeared for the prosecution. J. M. Davidson was the first witness examined. A summary of his testimony is appended: "I am 50 years of age, reside in the Seventeenth ward, Pittsburgh, and have been a river cook nearly all my life. I have known Beatty two or three years. In the latter part of August, Patrick Gallagher and I met Beatty on Wood street, and Beatty recognized me as "Jimmy" Davidson. I have known Gallagher for fifteen years. It was understood that we were all to go to Homestead as cooks and that we were to take something with us to put in the food given the non-union men in order to make them sick and unfit for work. When we met Beatty he took us to the office of the K. of L., on Third Avenue. There we met Hugh Dempsey, who, I understand, is master workman for this district. I am not a member of the K. of L. While we were in the office, Gallagher and Dempsey did most of the talking. Beatty suggested that it would be well for us to dose the men at Homestead with croton oil. He said croton oil could be used safely; that we could carry bottles of it in our pockets and when we were at work in the cook-houses we could put it on our fingers and rub it on the inside of the soup bowls and coffee cups. I objected to the use of croton oil on the ground that it was a deadly drug, and I did not want to run the risk of killing any one. Dempsey said he could furnish us with powders that would do the work effectively and safely; that the powders had been used on non-union men in Chicago, and that by their use a strike had been broken in four days. He said that while it would make the men sick, it was not dangerous. Dempsey said that if we would go to Homestead and administer these powders he would guarantee us $50 each and our expenses. We did not get any powders from Dempsey that day. Gallagher, Beatty and myself then left Dempsey's office. We took a walk about town discussing our plans and the contract we had undertaken. Beatty told us that if we did the work well there would be a gold watch and chain in it for each of us in addition to the money we were to receive. I did not go to Homestead until September 30. Gallagher, who had been there for some time, left the day before I arrived. Two days later he returned and worked about the restaurant in the mill. Before Gallagher went to Homestead the first time we called on Mr. Dempsey. He gave us a small jar of some kind of powder. He said there was enough of the stuff in the jar for three powders, each one sufficient to 'fix' thirty gallons of tea or coffee. I suppose there was nine or ten teaspoonsful of the stuff in the bottle. Dempsey told Gallagher to divide it into three equal parts. This Gallagher took with him to Homestead. The day before I went to Homestead Beatty gave me some powders to deliver to Gallagher. This was in Dempsey's office, or K. of L. hall. I met Gallagher on the street and gave him the package. He opened it and told me there were nine powders in the package. The bottle containing some of the stuff was given to Gallagher by Dempsey in my presence. This was in K. of L. hall and Beatty was present. Gallagher was to use his own discretion whether he put it in the tea or coffee. I next saw Beatty about September 30. "Some time in September Gallagher came back, and Beatty and I went to the K. of L. hall. Dempsey asked him how the powders worked. He said successfully, and wanted more and Dempsey said he would get more. After I came back I again met Beatty. We talked about the success the powders had, and Beatty seemed pleased. I had quit work on October 15. About December 1, I met Beatty at Cavanaugh's saloon. Gallagher was with us and we then went to Gallagher's room, where we discussed the powders, and I asked Beatty what was in the powders. He said rhubarb and snuff and other things. He didn't say who furnished them. While we were talking he mentioned Lynch, Crawford and Dr. Purman. Gallagher presented his bill of expenses to Dempsey and he asked me where mine was, and I made it out and gave it to Dempsey. Dempsey said the money was exhausted and we would have to wait. Beatty said the powders didn't seem to be a success. Gallagher told Dempsey that the powders had been used in cook house No. 1. I saw Beatty again two weeks later on Wood street. We talked over Gallagher's success in administering the powders. Met him again a week later; that was after I had quit work in Homestead." On cross-examination witness said that Beatty gave him $2 and Dempsey $12. Mr. Brennen was unable to shake his testimony. Pinkerton Detective Ford deposed to having overheard a conversation carried on by Beatty, Gallagher and Davidson concerning the powders used at Homestead. Witness hired adjoining rooms for Gallagher and himself, and induced Gallagher to entertain the other two men in his quarters, he (Ford) furnishing liquor for the party. He kept a man stationed in the room next Gallagher's and received daily reports of what took place. On confronting Davidson with proof of his guilt, Davidson made a full confession. Louis Wolfe, of Anapolis, Md., said that he had served as steward of restaurants Nos 1, 4 and 5 in the Carnegie mill. Witness hired Gallagher as cook and had seen Beatty in the mill. On September 7, witness' wife came on from Anapolis and he invited thirty or forty friends to supper in honor of her arrival. Many of the guests were taken ill and Mrs. Wolfe suffered terribly from cramps and vomited a great deal. Her weight was soon reduced from 120 to 66 pounds. Witness himself fell ill and lost 38 pounds. J. O. Nesbitt swore that he had attended the supper given by Wolfe, fell ill immediately afterwards, was in bed five weeks and had not yet fully recovered. W. E. Bullock, pay roll clerk in the Carnegie office at Homestead, had also been at the supper, sickened, lost sixteen pounds in eight days and was still ailing. Mr. Brennen made a long argument for his client, alleging that the two informers were "miserable, contemptible rascals who had put up a job on an innocent man in order to shield themselves." The magistrate, however, believing a good _prima facie_ case to have been made out, held Beatty for court in $5,000 bail. As if to accentuate the force of the poisoning charge several more deaths from sickness contracted in the mill now occurred, the symptoms being identical in all cases. District Attorney Burleigh proceeded without loss of time against Dempsey and Davidson, the information against the men being lodged by County Detective Beltzhoover. Dempsey surrendered himself and was released on $2,500 bail. Gallagher, against whom an information had been made by William E. Griffith, one of the workmen who had been poisoned, was arrested and sent to jail in default of $5,000 bail. Davidson was also arrested, but was released on $3,000 bail. Hugh F. Dempsey was the first of the accused men to stand trial, being arraigned before Judge Stowe on January 12, 1893. The indictment against him contained four counts, 2 charging felonious assault and battery with intent to murder, and two felonious assault and battery with intent to "make sick." The defendant was represented by Messrs. Marshall, Montooth, Brennen and L. K. Porter. District Attorney Burleigh, Captain Breck and John S. Robb appeared for the Commonwealth. The jury selected was composed as follows: Harry T. Anderson, L. P. Boyer, Michael Brown, David Duff, Charles H. Kretzer and William G. Murray, all farmers; Daniel Bohannon, painter; Louis Blumenschein, gardener; David C. Brickell, gent; Alex. D. Guy, merchant; Edward Letzkus, clerk, and John H. Wilson, manufacturer. Captain Breck, in his opening speech, admitted that no man could be convicted of crime on the evidence of an accomplice, but promised to furnish ample testimony corroborative of the confessions made by Gallagher and Davidson. He laid special stress on the reports of the physicians who had treated the men supposed to have been poisoned at Homestead. A numerous array of witnesses was brought forward by the prosecution. Attorney L. K. Porter conducted most of the cross-examinations for the defense. Dr. Weible, surgeon for the Carnegie Company, submitted a tabulated report of the cases treated by him in the mill. Louis Wolfe repeated the testimony which he gave at the Beatty hearing. George W. Amy, Henry P. Thompson and Louis H. Craig, all of Chicora, Butler County, deposed to having worked in the Homestead mill and being stricken with disease, from which none of them had fully recovered. Dr. J. L. Campbell, of Chicora, had treated these men and described their symptoms, which, he said, he had ascribed to mineral poisoning. He was certain that antimony had been given. Stephen Loveless, of Butler, William H. Johnston, a watchman in the mill; Benjamin Weaver, a steelworker residing at Homestead, and Wilmot Herr, a watchman, deposed to having been attacked by the prevailing malady. Dr. McGeary, of Homestead, had treated William H. Johnston and was convinced that his patient suffered from arsenical poisoning. In his opinion, impure water, spoiled meat or climatic conditions could not have caused the sickness which occurred in the mill. Charles H. Smith, an engineer in the Carnegie works, said that he had fallen ill twice and lost 55 pounds. Three doctors were unable to restore his health fully. William E. Griffith, the man named in the indictment as the victim of the poisoning plot, said that he had been serving in restaurant No. 6 as head waiter. On September 11 or 12, after eating supper in the restaurant, he was seized with diarrhoea and vomiting and was then laid up for a week. On October 6, after drinking some coffee, witness took sick again. This time he was prostrated for eight weeks. Dr. A. P. Vogleman, of Homestead, had treated Griffith and thought that the patient might have been made ill by drinking bad water. Dr. McGeary (recalled) and Dr. E. W. Dean testified to the conditions attending the case of J. W. Van Winkle, who had died at the Homeopathic Hospital. They thought it safe to pronounce his death due to arsenical poisoning. Numerous other witnesses gave testimony similar to the foregoing, nearly a week being occupied in listening to the stories of those who had been poisoned and to the diagnoses learnedly set forth by medical men. On the fifth day of the trial, Gallagher, the informer, was placed on the witness stand and repeated the narrative embodied in his previously published confession, with some new embellishments. In describing his first interview with Dempsey, Gallagher said: "When we entered Dempsey's office a lady who was present retired; the door was then locked; we sat down; Beatty said to Dempsey: 'These are the two men;' we talked about the weather for a few minutes after which Dempsey said to me and Mr. Davidson: 'I suppose you know what we want?' We said we knew a little about it. Dempsey then said: 'Well, we want to get the men in the Homestead mill on the trot.' Beatty then spoke about using croton oil. Davidson and I said we wouldn't use it. Dempsey then spoke about breaking a street car strike in Chicago--the State street strike. He said powders had been used; that if we would use these powders in the Homestead mill it would make the men sick and that we could break the strike in about ten days." Gallagher also swore that Beatty's trip to Cincinnati was for the purpose of getting two more cooks to finish the poisoning job. Dempsey had subsequently shown him a dispatch from Cincinnati, which read, "Two good agents on the road." When witness went to work in the mill the second time two cooks came from Cincinnati. They were Tony Gilfoil and William Coleman. Witness took them to a hotel and paid their bills; but was warned by Dempsey not to let the new comers know of his (Dempsey's) connection with the plot. Gallagher further deposed that, after leaving the mill finally, he had, in the presence of Davidson, presented a bill to Dempsey, which the latter O.K'd. He had also signed a receipt for $25, which Dempsey gave him in the dispatcher's office of the Citizens' Traction Line. The bill marked "O.K." was identified and offered in evidence. Attorney Marshall subjected Gallagher to a trying cross-examination but without impairing his testimony. J. M. Davidson repeated in court the evidence given by him at the Beatty hearing. George W. Crail, dispatcher of the Citizens' Traction Line, corroborated Gallagher's statement as to the receipt of $25 from Dempsey. Dempsey, the witness claimed, came into his office and said: "Crail, if a man comes in here and asks if I left anything for him, give him this money." The death of L. B. Hebron from sickness contracted in the mill was attested by the mother and brother of the deceased, and Captain A. E. Hunt, of the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, then stated the result of an analysis of sick bed accumulations furnished him by Mrs. Hebron. The analysis showed the presence of croton oil and arsenic. J. D. Flynn, manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, produced a copy of a telegram sent to Dempsey from Cincinnati, on September 26. It read: "Send me $20; in a pinch; two good agents on the road.--BEATTY." It was shown by a messenger boy that the telegram was delivered to a man in Dempsey's office, who signed for it. Thomas M. Marshall, Esq., made the opening speech for the defense, the principal points set forth in which were, (1) That the sickness in the Homestead mill was merely incident to an epidemic from which soldiers and others outside the mill were suffering, and (2) That the men sent into the mill by Dempsey and paid for their services were detailed by Dempsey as scouts. Dr. George T. McCord, being sworn, stated that the conditions of life among the non-union men in the Homestead mill were very favorable to the development of diarrhoea, dysentery and kindred complaints. He had treated one man who was taken sick with diarrhoea in the mill and cured him. Dr. John Purman, of Homestead, told of the filthy condition of City Farm lane, and said he had under treatment numerous cases of diarrhoea and dysentery not incurred in the mill. Nine members of Battery B, Eighteenth regiment, N. G. P., swore that they were afflicted with precisely the same complaint that attacked the non-union workmen. Other witnesses testified as to the impurity of the water supply in the mill and the invariable prevalence of diarrhoea and kindred diseases among the millworkers during the hot season. E. W. Robertson, who occupied the cell next to Gallagher's in the county jail, said that Gallagher had told him that Dempsey was an innocent man. Hugh F. Dempsey, being sworn in his own defense, stated that he had employed Gallagher and Davidson, on Beatty's recommendation, to get work in the Homestead mill and report to him how things were running. Nothing had ever been said about putting poison in food, and witness knew nothing of a poison plot. The $25 paid by him to Gallagher was a loan. [Illustration: RELIEF COMMITTEE OF BUILDING TRADES, PITTSBURGH, PA.] On cross-examination, Dempsey stated that it was through the Knights of Labor in New York, who were striving to procure a settlement of the Homestead trouble, that he became interested in the affair. He gave a synopsis of one of Davidson's reports to him on the number of men employed and the output, and said that Gallagher made reports of like tenor. While Dempsey was giving his testimony, resolutions affirming implicit faith in his honesty and innocence of wrong-doing were being adopted by District Assembly No. 3, and on the evening of the same day he was reelected to the position of master workman by acclamation. This strong expression of confidence on the part of his fellow workmen might, it was thought, have some influence for good on the determination of Dempsey's case. With the exception of Prof. George Hay, a chemist, who swore that Captain Hunt could not possibly have discovered traces of croton oil in nine drops of oleaginous liquid, all the remaining witnesses for the defense were called to prove Dempsey's good character. Attorney L. K. Porter made the opening argument for the defense. He charged the prosecution with unfairness in having a chemical examination made without permitting the attendance of an expert on the part of the defense and dilated upon the reasons for presuming that an epidemic of stomach troubles would naturally occur in an establishment where 2,678 men were lodged and fed in close quarters and practically without outdoor exercise. The doctors disagreed and most of them had never treated poison cases. How could a man be convicted on such testimony? The men who claimed to have been poisoned had, for the most part, admitted that they had suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting before and why should it be surmised that the attacks which beset them in the mill arose from other than natural causes? The majority of the non-union men came from distant points and were liable to be affected by change of climate. Gallagher, Mr. Porter said, being a self-confessed accomplice, was unworthy of credit. He was a spy, procured by Pinkerton Detective Ford, and the fact that he was left at large for five weeks after his confession indicated in what a questionable relation he stood to the prime movers in the prosecution of Dempsey. Dempsey, the speaker said, was the honored choice of 600,000 men for the chieftanship of the K. of L. in the Pittsburgh district. He was a frank and generous man, to whose kind heart no one ever appealed in vain. Was it humanly probable that this man would have bribed Gallagher to poison men? Would he, if such had been his purpose, have conferred with Gallagher and have given him money in broad daylight? The issue was between Gallagher, the hired informer, and Dempsey, the honorable citizen, whom it was proposed to take away from his wife and home on the testimony of strangers without title to belief. Attorney Marshall followed his colleague with a telling analysis of the evidence for the commonwealth. He read from the report of the mill physician, Dr. Weible, figures showing that there was actually more sickness in the mill, in proportion to the number of men employed, before Gallagher went there than at any time afterwards. He also showed by Gallagher's testimony that on the day of the Wolfe family's supper, the coffee which Gallagher claimed to have dosed was all used up at dinner time and, as there was none left over, where, Mr. Marshall asked, did the poison come from by which the Wolfes' claimed to have been sickened. After commenting on the improbability of Dempsey's employing strangers to aid him in a poisoning plot, Mr. Marshall said in conclusion: "We ask you to put the stamp of your disapproval on these corruptionists and send Hugh Dempsey home to those who love him, a free man, with a character as spotless as it was before these two worthless, degraded creatures tried to ruin it." Mr. Robb closed for the prosecution. His strongest point consisted in ridiculing the idea that if Dempsey wanted reports on the operations of the mill he would have sent cooks instead of steelworkers to secure them. Judge Stowe charged the jury in a perfectly dispassionate and unbiased manner. This was on the morning of Friday, January 20, the seventh day of the trial. The jury remained out less than three hours and brought in a verdict of "Guilty as indicted." A demand for a new trial was promptly made and, pending the hearing of the application, Dempsey was liberated on $2,500 bail. On January 24, Robert W. Beatty was placed on trial, charged with "felonious assault in administering, or employing persons to administer, poison" to the non-union men in the Carnegie steel plant. The same counsel appeared on both sides that figured in the Dempsey case, with the exception of District Attorney Burleigh, whose place was taken by his assistant, Harry Goehring. William M. Erwin, the "Western Cyclone" also appeared in court and joined the attorneys for the defense. Captain Breck opened the case for the commonwealth by reading the testimony brought out on his side in the Dempsey case. There were 67,000 words of this matter and, before the reading was concluded, most of the Captain's auditors sank into a gentle slumber. The array of medical men and diarrhoea victims previously examined was then marshaled into court and re-examined and cross-examined for the benefit of the jury which was supposed not to be cognizant of the evidence submitted when Dempsey was on trial. Not until Charles McKinnie was put on the stand was an element of interest infused into the proceedings. McKinnie said that he was a riverman, knew Beatty well, and had been approached by the prisoner with a proposition to go to Homestead and dose the men with croton oil. He had refused to have anything to do with such contemptible work. The witness testified in a straightforward manner and made a visible impression on the jury. Gallagher and Davidson repeated their former testimony with some variations, Davidson in his efforts to shield himself managing to contradict Gallagher in many points. Charles C. Comstock swore that he had met Beatty in the mill and been advised by the latter to get out or the powders would fix him. Many other witnesses were called to bear testimony to having seen Beatty in the mill at various times. Attorney Brennen opened the case for the defense and at one point in his address amazed his auditory by stating his ability to prove, with reference to the supper at Wolfe's house, that "_the tea that was drank at this banquet was all consumed at the dinner the day before_." Mr. Brennen's slip of the tongue was much enjoyed. Undismayed by the effect of his inadvertent Hibernicism, the doughty little attorney proceeded to set forth the strong points of the case for the defendant, laying special emphasis on the declaration that there was nothing suspicious in the employment of cooks as detectives, inasmuch as the cookhouses were the most convenient headquarters for the kind of espionage which Dempsey had instituted. Many witnesses were called to testify to the occurrence among the soldiers of a similar epidemic to that which beset the non-union steelworkers, and to prove the bad character of Gallagher and Davidson. Borough officials from Homestead swore that City Farm lane, which is close to the Carnegie works, was in a filthy, disease-breeding condition and physicians corroborated this evidence and showed that much sickness resulted from this cause. Hugh F. Dempsey was summoned to the stand and told his story in about the same terms as were used by him when he testified on his own trial. He explained that nobody had authorized or requested him to send spies to Homestead. He had acted simply "in the interest of labor organizations." Professor Hay again rebutted Captain Hunt's claim of having detected traces of croton oil in material furnished him by the mother of L. B. Hebron, and Dr. C. C. Wiley, surgeon of the Eighteenth regiment, stated that the conditions at Homestead conduced strongly to the spread of diarrhoea, cholera morbus and kindred complaints. Robert J. Beatty, being sworn in his own defense, said that he had worked in the water house and pump house at the Carnegie mills for nearly a year prior to the lock-out. He was a member of Boxmakers' Lodge No. 52, K. of L. Witness denied all parts of the testimony of Gallagher and Davidson which tended to incriminate him. His telegram concerning "two good agents on the road," referred, he said, to two men supplied by a labor organization in Cincinnati, of whom he knew no more than this. He had received for expenses $33 from Dempsey and some money from David Lynch, Thomas Crawford and other Homestead men. The closing speeches on both sides and the judge's charge, being substantially identical with those delivered in the Dempsey case, need not be outlined here. The jury evidently had its mind made up before withdrawing. After only nine minutes' consideration, a verdict of "guilty as indicted" was agreed upon. A strong fight was made to secure a new trial for Dempsey, but without success, and on February 21, the convicted men were called up for sentence. Dempsey and Beatty were each sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in the penitentiary, and Gallagher and Davidson, who had pleaded guilty, were sentenced respectively to five and three years' imprisonment. Dempsey's attorneys took an appeal to the supreme court, which was negatived, and later applied for a pardon for their client on the strength of a recantation made by Gallagher, but subsequently repudiated by him. Gallagher made affidavit that the story told by him in court was false and that he had been suborned to commit perjury by detectives and others in the service of the Carnegie Company. Hardly was the ink on the affidavit dry, however, until this paragon of mendacity made a third "confession," reaffirming his original testimony. The pardon board denied the application on Dempsey's behalf, and the ex-master workman was thus deprived of his last hope and doomed to serve his full term in prison. [Illustration: OFFICES IN THE MILL YARD.] CHAPTER XX. [Illustration: The Denouement.] CLIFFORD TRIED FOR HIS LIFE--ALIBI TESTIMONY--ATTORNEYS ERWIN AND ANDERSON WIN NEW LAURELS--"NOT GUILTY"--HUGH O'DONNELL AT THE BAR--THE HOMESTEAD LEADER AS A REPORTER AND PEACEMAKER--WEAK TESTIMONY FOR THE PROSECUTION--MAJOR MONTOOTH RIDICULES THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S SUBSTITUTE--O'DONNELL ACQUITTED--THE CARNEGIE LAWYERS ABANDON THE FIELD--BERKMAN'S ACCOMPLICES DISPOSED OF. On February 2, 1893, Jack Clifford was put on trial before Judge Stowe, on an indictment charging him, jointly with Hugh Ross, Hugh O'Donnell, Burgess McLuckie and others, with the murder of Detective T. J. Connors. The counsel on both sides were the same that appeared in the Critchlow case, with the exception that W. S. Anderson, an eminent criminal lawyer of Youngstown, Ohio, was added to the side of the defense. The jury selected was as follows: John Erichson, J. L. Hammitt, Andrew Hepp, Jr., W. G. Bigham, Henry Lloyd, H. A. Price, John Stauffer, D. C. Mayer, Andrew Donnelly, T. C. Rafferty, John M. Hamilton and Patrick Kearney. Early in the proceedings, Judge Stowe served notice on the defense that he would not permit any line of argument or cross-examination tending to justify the killing of the Pinkertons. No matter who the invaders were or what their purpose, the court held, the killing was not justified. Mr. Erwin engaged in a tilt with the court over this ruling, citing the mode of procedure in the Critchlow case as precedent, but was summarily silenced. The testimony offered by the prosecution differed little from that given against Critchlow. Pinkerton detectives identified Clifford and swore to having seen him in the forefront of the crowd that gathered to prevent the landing of the Pinkerton forces in the mill yard. Clifford was armed with a pistol, they said, and was active in building barricades and later in arranging the surrender. It was he that waved the white flag from the river bank and, in company with O'Donnell and others, guaranteed protection to the Pinkertons, if they would lay down their arms and come on shore. He had also aided in caring for the wounded and getting them off the barges. George L. Johnson, a mill-worker, testified to having seen Clifford carry what appeared to him to be a powder canister in the direction of the brass cannon which was mounted in the gas house. Witness admitted that he had been employed by the Carnegie Company and had gone out on strike, but returned to work at his old job on July 5. He took no part in the fight with the Pinkertons, but was merely a spectator. This colloquy followed: MR. BRENNEN.--"You made no effort to stop it?" "No, sir." "You were there considerable time and did not attempt to spike the cannon? "No, sir; I did not." An objection to such cross-examination was raised by the prosecution and sustained by the court. MR. ERWIN.--"Your honor, I think if this witness did not withdraw from the scene of the disturbance he too was a rioter and an accomplice, and as such his evidence would have to be corroborated?" THE COURT.--"No, it would have been unhealthy for him to have interfered and the objection is overruled." Robert Pollock swore that he saw Clifford at the pump house throwing bottles filled with ignited oil at the barges, and also at the fire engine pumping oil through hose while other men were throwing lighted waste in the stream of oil flowing towards the barges. C. S. Capehart, a clerk, had seen Clifford throwing dynamite, and William J. Henderson had seen him distributing stick dynamite to men who walked to the bank and threw the missiles at the barges. As in the Critchlow trial, the defense set up for Clifford rested entirely on alibi testimony, his counsel undertaking to show that he was asleep and knew nothing of the fight until after Connors was shot, and that his part in the trouble of July 6 was confined to an attempt to save the Pinkertons at the risk of his own life. Captain O. C. Coon, Charles Mansfield, of the _Homestead Local News_, Andrew Soulier and others, stated that they had witnessed the opening of the conflict between the Pinkertons and the workmen and that Clifford was not among the combatants. Mrs. Annie Malloy, a widow residing in Mifflin township about two miles from the scene of the disturbance, swore that Clifford slept at her house on the night before July 6, and that she did not waken him until about 11.15 A. M. on that day. Her statements were corroborated by her daughters Maggie and Dora, the former of whom was said to be Clifford's sweetheart. Additional evidence sustaining the alibi was given by Mrs. Riley, with whom Clifford boarded, Constable Charles Stewart, President Garland, of the Amalgamated Association and P. H. McEvey, Vice-President of the Association. Determined efforts were made by Attorney Erwin to show by witnesses that the crowd which gathered on the river bank to meet the Pinkertons was there for a peaceable purpose and that the Pinkertons were the actual rioters, but the prosecution objected to testimony of this character and its objections were sustained. The closing speeches for the defense, delivered by Messrs. Erwin and Anderson, were masterpieces of forensic eloquence, and they were heard by a gathering such as has rarely assembled in a Pennsylvania court room. Legal practitioners, young and old, were there to watch the climax in this struggle of legal giants. Labor leaders sat side by side with capitalists. The classes and the masses were alike represented, and observed with equally keen interest the closing scene of the drama which, for all they knew, was to end in a tragedy. The prisoner himself was perhaps the coolest person in the throng. His nerve remained unshaken to the last. After Mr. Robb had made his address for the prosecution, in the course of which he characterized the battle at Homestead as "the most fanatical piece of barbarity ever witnessed," Mr. Erwin spoke. He said, in part: "At this time a grave responsibility rests upon me, for it now becomes my duty to address your conscience. It is a serious duty, your honor, (turning to the bench) to judge your fellow men's conscience. I am a stranger among you, but I do not fear your crowd, your array of lawyers or your judge, but I do fear my God. I am an officer of the court. I must obey it. I will obey it. I will walk in the line which it sets. We are here to try a citizen of Pennsylvania, born here, for taking the life of a man who, twenty-four hours after landing on your soil, was carried wounded from the boat with his smoking rifle in his hands. Your citizens ask me to ask you if you will believe these men who shot down McCoy and others of your citizens, or those self-confessed red-handed murderers. I stand here, and by the spirits of your dead citizens shot from your mills, I appeal to you for justice. I stand before a jury of Pennsylvania kings; there are no kings in Pennsylvania but the jury. There is no just adjudication but the jury box. It was the discovery of ages--to find some body wherein the conscience should be free. * * * * * "Now the duty of the commonwealth is plain in this case. It must convince your minds and your consciences that the defendant is guilty. Who says this Pennsylvania boy killed Connors? Nobody. They want to say and want you to say a great riot was in progress. I deny it. A riot is some act done by several persons unlawful in its character. I deny that there was any riot on the shore that day; the state does not prove that the defendant had a gun in his hand that day. They do try to prove by one witness that he had a revolver in his hand. The doctor testified that the wound that killed Connors was a rifle bullet. Then how can they accuse the defendant of the crime? They first (the state) must prove to you that there was a riot there that day and that Clifford was there, participating in that riotous proceeding, either aiding or abetting. They offer us Pinkertons--Pinkertons to a Pennsylvania jury, gentlemen--who came into this state with guns, who are murderers of your citizens, making their children orphans. One of the attorneys for the prosecution, in his fervid manner, stigmatized that gathering of Homestead people as anarchy. I say that invasion of the Pinkertons was the highest evidence of anarchy. You saw these little Carnegie clerks come here and testify that they had gone behind these barricades spying around, while bullets, as they say, were flying fast and furious. That is simply absurd. It would have been the highest act of bravery. It might be so, but it is not reasonable and I would stigmatize it as a lie. It is a tenet of the law that it is better that ninety-nine guilty persons should escape than that one innocent man should suffer. Will you believe the sheriff who would try to pull the wool over your eyes and endeavor to launch this defendant into eternity? Will you believe the testimony of the defendant or this red-handed Pinkerton? No, this is not a question between labor and capital, and it amused me to have the learned counsel on the other side assert it. It is claimed by the prosecution that Clifford was at the landing firing at these men when they landed; that there was a cessation for four hours after. I deny this, for witness after witness for the prosecution went upon the stand and swore to the contrary. What is the purpose of this move by the prosecution? It is simply a trick; a pure trick of the law to show that there was a cessation of firing which would permit the people of Homestead to withdraw. There was no cessation, but these Pinks poured out a continuous fire upon these defenseless people on the hillside from port-holes cut in the barges. Self-defense is a cardinal principle not depending upon the law of the state, but upon God. It does not depend upon man. Oh! how weak is that attempt of man to try to prove wrong that which God has implanted in every man. That old doctrine that a man must retreat from a man with a sword or a stone in order to preserve the peace, has been swept away by the introduction of the Winchester rifle. Can you show me a man who can retreat from a fire of 300 rifles? Just so long as you can show me that there is no possibility for them to escape from that deadly fire, just so long do I contend they had a right to return that fire. There is another point of the prosecution to prove as an evidence of riot the fact that these people were on the Carnegie property and were using vile language. I deny that this can be shown as riot." ATTORNEY BURLEIGH--We don't attempt to show it. MR. ERWIN--I don't know what you don't attempt to show. Attorney Erwin then read the law in definition of riot. Continuing he said: "There is no proof here that they were assembled as riotors; not the least scintilla of such a gathering. But on the other side I will show a riotous gathering." MR. BURLEIGH--We object. Your honor has already ruled against such proceedings. COURT--Yes. MR. ERWIN--I know your honor has, and I therefore offer an exception that you will not permit me to speak of it. I will not speak of it. As I understand, Justice is represented blindfolded, with a scale in her hand equally weighing in both pans and with a sword in her hand. It is a sad thing that one of her exponents should---- COURT--Stop that. I won't allow any such line of argument. MR. ERWIN--I am limited by the court and can't discuss the material necessary to be introduced in this case, but I will say that, through the objections of the district attorney, we have been denied a fair trial for our client. Attorney Anderson followed Mr. Erwin. After outlining the case in a few graphic words, he said: "Mr. Robb has attempted to tell you while he depicted that horrible act of the people on the bank that there was another side to that story. He forgot to tell you that a man from a foreign state raised and leveled his rifle and in spite of earnest pleadings shot a young man down. He forgot to tell you that not a shot was fired from the river bank until that young man lay weltering in his life blood. I will try to show you that the trouble did not come from the men on the shore, but from the men in the barges sent there. I want to see, and so do you, what the commonwealth of Pennsylvania wants to prove. It does not claim, because there is no evidence to prove it, that Jack Clifford fired that shot that killed Connors. Because Clifford was there they want to hold him responsible for an act committed by another party. Before they do it they must prove that he was acting and assisting those men to acts of violence. It matters not what was done after 12 o'clock. It matters not if he threw that dynamite or the can of powder. Because before that you must be convinced that Jack Clifford was there when Connors was shot. You might wonder at that; that it is not a crime to throw burning oil or dynamite, but the prosecution specifies a particular charge against Jack Clifford. They claim that he was on the bank of the river in the forenoon when Connors was killed. How have they proved it. Let us look at the forenoon. They prove it by three detectives and three persons residing around Homestead--but six witnesses; purely identification. Three of these men saw Clifford before that morning. It is well for the jury to consider these men and the prisoner. Men gathered from the slums of the cities of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia; men without employment, men without character, men who can be impeached by their testimony. Suppose a difficulty arose in Chicago and a person came here to employ a body of men to go there and suppress it, what sort of men would go there? Would a lawyer have the cinch? Oh, no. Would the banker leave his duties? Oh, no. Would the business man? Oh, no. But the idlers--the scrub of your city--would be the ones who would go. Then I say to you is this not sufficient to show the character of these people who invaded your state and are attempting to swear away the life of Jack Clifford? Upon whose testimony is this crime to be fixed upon Clifford? By three Pinkertons who, in the excitement of that battle and having never seen him before, swear that they saw him there. How do they prove it? By, as they say, a pink shirt on Clifford. Think of it, looking out in a crowd of 500 people and picking out a man with his coat buttoned up, could they be so collected in their thoughts as to distinguish him by a small portion of a pink shirt visible? I say they never did identify him there. But they did not fix this point of identification until brave Jack Clifford, in spite of the hail of bullets, went down and saved these men's lives. It was then, if at all, this pink shirt identification was fixed in their minds. These brave, true, honest men of your community with as keen perceptions as these Pinkertons, were in that boat, and yet they come on the stand and swear they did not see Clifford there. Captain Coon, who knew Clifford for years and was standing at the gangway watching what was going on, swears that Jack Clifford was not there. Then again, there is the old man Gray, a watchman at that mill, with an eye as keen as any Pinkerton's, who swears that Jack Clifford was not there that morning. Then, I say, is it just in this commonwealth where a man is on trial for his liberty and his life, that the testimony of reputable witnesses of your state is of no more weight than that of the Pinkertons? I know not what effect the testimony of these employees may have upon you; but I do know that the employer has held the lash over his employees and forced them to testify in their interest. I do not know whether it has been done in this case." Here the speaker discussed at length the testimony offered to establish an alibi for the prisoner and begged the jury to weigh carefully in the balance the statements of the opposing witnesses bearing on the subject. In conclusion he said: "The life and liberty of Jack Clifford are as dear to him as yours are to you. There may be some one who looks to him with an interest. There may be a gray-haired mother depending upon him, and there is no love like a mother's. That mother is waiting for your verdict. It is better that ninety-nine guilty escape than one innocent shall suffer. I ask at your hands justice for Jack Clifford. I ask it upon the oath you have sworn faithfully to fulfill and I ask it in the tears of his mother. Gentlemen, I leave Jack Clifford in your hands." Judge Stowe's charge was a plain statement of the law in the case, without the least tincture of bias one way or the other. The jury occupied less than two hours in deliberation and brought in a verdict of acquittal. Clifford was then remanded to jail to await trial on the other indictments found against him. [Illustration: PROPOSED MONUMENT TO THE HEROES OF HOMESTEAD.] The import of the verdict was unmistakable. It meant that, for the second time, the people of Allegheny County, speaking through their representatives in the jury box, refused to be governed by the letter of the law in the matter of punishing the men of Homestead as rioters and murderers, and that the continuance of the prosecutions would be a waste of time, energy and money. Such was the construction generally put upon it, and most probably the Carnegie Company and its counsel formed the same judgment. Nevertheless, the district attorney announced that every one of the Homestead cases would be brought to trial and as an earnest of sincerity, Hugh O'Donnell was brought forward to face a jury of his peers on February 13, the fifth day after Clifford's safe deliverance. The young leader looked pale and thin as a result of his imprisonment, but his eye was as clear and his voice as firm as on the day when he marshaled the fighting men at the barricades, and there was no sign of flinching in his demeanor as he stood up to enter his plea of "not guilty." The attorneys engaged in the case were the same that served in the preceding trials, excepting that Major E. A. Montooth and Mr. John F. Cox relieved the counsel who had previously taken the most active part for the defense. The following jurors were selected: Fred Vogel, William Richardson, Charles Beuchler, John Sproul, M. J. Byrne, Henry Brooker, A. C. Flood, Henry Eisenhauer, John McGann, John Geisler, Peter Stragen and William Dramble. The case for the prosecution differed little from that advanced against Clifford and Critchlow. Pinkerton detectives, sheriff's deputies, mill clerks and reporters repeated the old, old story of the events of July 6, while Mr. D. F. Patterson, who conducted the direct examination as a substitute for the district attorney, elicited from each statements showing O'Donnell's ostensible participation in the battle. The line of cross-examination pursued by the defense showed that the intention was to prove that O'Donnell was present at the battle as a newspaper correspondent, and that, when he interfered actively, it was in the capacity of a peacemaker. Several newspaper men testified that the defendant was known as a correspondent of the Tri-State News Bureau and of various daily papers, and that, in a spirit of professional fraternity, he had taken care of the reporters during the fight and secured for them a convenient headquarters of observation in the cupola of the mill. Only one out of a dozen reporters examined specifically incriminated O'Donnell, and the evidence of that one was vitiated by the knowledge that he had sold out to the Carnegie Company at the beginning of the Homestead trouble and had acted throughout as a spy. The prosecution could not have made a weaker showing, all things considered, and the work of the other side was, therefore, comparatively easy. Captain O. C. Coon, who accompanied O'Donnell to the river bank on the morning of July 6, was the star witness for the defense. O'Donnell, he said, went to the scene of the trouble for the express purpose of preventing bloodshed, and used every effort to check the combatants even to the extent of pushing angry men back from the water's edge after the firing had started. The witness had also seen O'Donnell, on the day after the surrender, rescue from the hands of a mob of strikers a poor wretch who was supposed to be a straggler from the Pinkerton forces. Dr. John Purman testified in the same strain. He swore that O'Donnell came to his office with three wounded men on the morning of July 6. A crowd gathered on the street without, and O'Donnell exhorted them to go peaceably to their homes and avoid going to the mill-yard. Later in the day, witness met O'Donnell on the street. A crowd surrounded the young leader, cursing him, and some one said, "You are a ---- of a leader, staying away from the mill." O'Donnell answered, "There are no leaders; everyone acts for himself. If you want to do me a favor you will stop this and go to your homes." Numerous other witnesses gave testimony corroborative of the assumption that the defendant had taken no part in the riot other than as a law-abiding citizen anxious to preserve the peace. O'Donnell's wife was placed on the stand, but her evidence was unimportant. After the attorneys for the defense had practically won their case, it was decided to let O'Donnell testify in his own behalf. There was some doubt about the prudence of this move, and that it was not without foundation was shown by the difficulty which O'Donnell experienced in escaping damaging admissions. In his direct examination by Mr. Brennen, O'Donnell told a straightforward and impressive story. He told of his residence of seven or eight years in Homestead, his newspaper correspondence and other personal matters, and then went on to describe, in graphic terms, his doings on the day of the riot. On that eventful morning, he said he had gone to the river bank, arriving just when the gang-plank was being run out from the barges. He begged the Pinkertons not to land and not to shoot, reminding them of the presence of women and children and the certainty of wholesale loss of life if violence should be resorted to. After the first skirmish, he had gone to the Postal Telegraph offices and notified the Mercy and South Side Hospitals to send ambulances. If he had had only a few minutes more time to gain the bow of the barges before the fighting began, not a shot would have been fired. In no manner had he aided or abetted the trouble which occurred that day, nor did he at any time encourage the use of violence in preventing the introduction of non-union men into the Homestead mill. Mr. Patterson, in his cross-examination, tried to extract from O'Donnell the admission that the workmen maintained an armed military organization, but was unsuccessful. He managed, however to force the defendant to name some of the men who were among the combatants on the river bank. Attorney Robb closed for the prosecution, in an address which was mainly devoted to picturing the trouble at Homestead as a revolution conducted by a band of assassins, thirsting for Pinkerton blood. He referred to Hugh O'Donnell as having been summoned by a whistle signal to "marshal his standing army and begin a battle to the death." Major Montooth closed for the defense. He contended that the substitution of Mr. Patterson, the attorney hired by the Carnegie Company, in the place of the public prosecutor was sufficient reason why Hugh O'Donnell should be acquitted. Mr. Robb interrupted to ask the court if this was good law. Judge Stowe answered in the negative. Nevertheless, the shaft had been too well aimed to miss its mark because of this interference, and the point made by Major Montooth was undoubtedly appreciated by the jury. Judge Stowe charged the jury briefly and to the same effect as in the Clifford case. The jurors stayed out from 7 o'clock in the evening until 9:30 o'clock on the next morning. When they filed into court there was nothing in their faces to indicate whether they brought good or bad news for the defendant. O'Donnell was quite cool and collected, nodding pleasantly to his wife and niece when he was brought in from the jail, and betraying no sign of emotion except a slight heaving of the chest at the moment when the foreman of the jury drew the sealed verdict from his pocket. "We find the prisoner not guilty," were the words that rang out upon the death-like stillness of the court-room--welcome words to almost everybody present. A murmur of approval was heard, but was hushed when the court officials rapped for order. The jury was dismissed without comment. Then O'Donnell, with tears of joy coursing down his cheeks, turned to his faithful wife and embraced her tenderly, while friends thronged around to proffer their congratulations. O'Donnell was recommitted to jail, pending a hearing on the remaining charges against him, but was shortly afterward released on bail. His was the last of the Homestead cases brought to trial. Realizing that it was impossible to obtain the conviction of any of the Homestead men, the attorneys for the Carnegie Company made overtures to their opponents which resulted in the dropping of all prosecutions on both sides. Ex-Burgess McLuckie protested vigorously against abandoning the case against H. C. Frick, in which he himself was the principal prosecutor, but his protest was overruled and, aside from the trials of Dempsey and Beatty, Homestead was heard of no more in the criminal court. The anarchists, Carl Knold and Henry Bauer, whose arrest in connection with Berkman's attempt on the life of Mr. Frick was mentioned in an earlier chapter, were brought to trial a few days before Hugh O'Donnell on indictments charging them with conspiracy and with being accessories to Berkman's crime. It was shown that Berkman was harbored by Knold at the residence of Paul Eckert, in Allegheny City, a rendezvous for anarchists; that the anarchist circulars distributed at Homestead were printed at Eckert's and taken to Homestead by Bauer and Knold, and that the two defendants had counseled and guided Berkman in his assault on the Carnegie chairman. Berkman was brought in from the penitentiary to testify, but proved a recalcitrant witness. The solitary sensational feature of the trial was a speech delivered by Colonel W. D. Moore, counsel for the defense, in which he lauded the doctrine of anarchy and traced its origin back to the Redeemer of Mankind. Judge Slagle, in his charge to the jury, expressed profound regret at the enunciation of such objectionable views by a member of the legal profession. Bauer and Knold were found guilty on both indictments and sentenced five years to the penitentiary. At the same time the rioters arrested at Duquesne during the strike at that place were sentenced to the work-house for terms ranging from two to six months. CONCLUSION. Although ignobly routed in the courts, the Carnegie Company lost not a foot of the ground gained at Homestead. On the contrary, it has since doubly re-inforced itself, for not only is the spirit of unionism stamped out among the employees of the firm, but fully three-fourths of the former union men are now working, most of them at their old jobs, without exhibiting a trace of the independence which was once their pride, or making any pretensions to a voice in the determination of their wages. The re-employment of so many of the old hands was one of the fruits of the substitution of Mr. Schwab for Mr. Potter as general superintendent. Mr. Potter, having received the non-union men who came in during the strike and guaranteed them permanent work, would have become a stumbling-block when the time arrived for treating with the defeated union men and was, therefore, removed just before the crisis came. Mr. Schwab was bound by no pledges of his own and refused to recognize those made by his predecessor. Hence but a short time elapsed after the collapse of the strike until most of the green hands were discharged and their places filled by ex-strikers, whose experience rendered their services almost indispensable. The active leaders of the strike were, of course, excluded from the amnesty, and few of them have since been able to secure employment at their trade. They are the victims of a form of ostracism; blacklisted as dangerous agitators in every steel and iron mill in the country. Hugh O'Donnell left Homestead to travel as manager of a concert company and subsequently became connected with a weekly journal published in Chicago. Honest John McLuckie tried his hand in sundry small ventures, lectured a little, took the stump in the campaign of November, '93, and otherwise managed to keep his head above water, but always under the handicap of a lost cause and the diversion of energy from the familiar pursuits of a lifetime into new and untried fields. William T. Roberts turned his attention exclusively to speechmaking and politics. Thomas Crawford worked for a time for the Uniontown Steel Company, and on the suspension of that firm, went into business with Jack Clifford alternately as politician and book agent. David Lynch obtained a position as agent for a liquor firm. Hugh Ross visited his birth-place in Scotland and has been idle since his return. William H. Gaches carried on a successful business enterprise in Chicago during the World's Fair, but has since been idle. Eddie Burke, known as "Rioter Burke," was stricken with an affection of the eyes which prevented his working even if he could have found a place. The Amalgamated Association, at the '93 convention, voted an appropriation sufficient to pay for his treatment at an eastern hospital. Of the Amalgamated lodges in Homestead nothing remains but the charters which have never been surrendered, and under which a reorganization may be effected if the men should hereafter find themselves in a condition to return to union principles and practice. There is, however, nothing to indicate a future revival of the old-time order of things. If there are grievances to be suffered the men must simply be contented to suffer them in silence rather than invite a repetition of the calamitous consequences of their first and only encounter with Chairman Frick. Of the rates of wages now paid, no more is known by outsiders than that they are even lower than was contemplated by the firm when the lock-out was ordered and that they promise to fall lower still. The firm refuses to publish its scale rates on the pretext that, by so doing, it would be playing into the hands of competitors. Rival manufacturers have endeavored to secure the Homestead schedules and so, too, has the Amalgamated Association, but without success. The Amalgamated officials made their last fruitless effort in this direction during the scale-making period in June, 1893. As an additional protection against surprises of any description, the fortifications of the Homestead mills have been strengthened and no one can enter otherwise than through the offices, from which a bridge leads to the workshops. Mr. Frick is evidently determined to be always ready, hereafter, for battles, sieges or stolen marches. There is one means of defense, however, which, having weighed it in the balance and found it wanting, the Carnegie chairman is not likely to try a second time. He will never again undertake to capture his own territory with a posse of Pinkerton Guards. EVERY WISE HOUSEWIFE SHOULD USE CAMELLIA, QUEEN OF FLOUR. The BEST BREAD BAKER in the WORLD. WILLOW GROVE BREWERY, MICHAEL ENZ, PROP. WEINER EXPORT, LAGER BEER, ALE AND PORTER EXPORT BOTTLED BEER A SPECIALTY. TELEPHONE 5571. BENNETT P. O., ALLEGHENY CO., PA. ROBERT WINTER, LONDON EXPRESS CO. PROMPT SERVICE DAY OR NIGHT. Main Office, 178 Grant Avenue, Allegheny, Pa. T. D. CASEY & CO. WHOLESALE DEALERS IN PURE OLD MONONGAHELA RYE WHISKIES, 971 Liberty St., PITTSBURGH, PA. Transcriber's Notes: Simple typographical errors were corrected. Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. This book uses both "secrecy" and "secresy", "employe" and "employee", "fulfil" and "fulfill". 
41703	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). WOMEN IN MODERN INDUSTRY * * * * * "What is woman but an enemy of friendship, an unavoidable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable affliction, a constantly flowing source of tears, a wicked work of nature covered with a shining varnish?"--SAINT CHRYSOSTOM. "And wo in winter tyme with wakying a-nyghtes, To rise to the ruel to rock the cradel, Both to kard and to kembe, to clouten and to wasche, To rubbe and to rely, russhes to pilie That reuthe is to rede othere in ryme shewe The wo of these women that wonyeth in Cotes."[1] LANGLAND: _Piers Ploughman_, x. 77. "Two justices of the peace, the mayor or other head officer of any city (etc.) and two aldermen ... may appoint any such woman as is of the age of 12 years and under the age of 40 years and unmarried and forth of service ... to be retained or serve by the year, week or day for such wages and in such reasonable sort as they shall think meet; and if any such woman shall refuse so to serve, then it shall be lawful for the said justices (etc.) to commit such woman to ward until she shall be bounden to serve."--_Statute of Labourers_, 1563. "Every woman spinner's wage shall be such as, following her labour duly and painfully, she may make it account to."--JUSTICES OF WILTSHIRE: _Assessment of Wages_, 1604. "Sometimes one feels that one dare not contemplate too closely the life of our working women, it is such a grave reproach."--Miss ANNA TRACEY, _Factory Inspector_, 1913. "The State has trampled on its subjects for 'ends of State'; it has neglected them; it is beginning to act consciously for them.... The progressive enrichment of human life and the remedy of its ills is not a private affair. It is a public charge. Indeed it is the one and noblest field of corporate action. The perception of that truth gives rise to the new art of social politics."--B. KIRKMAN GRAY. * * * * * WOMEN IN MODERN INDUSTRY by B. L. HUTCHINS Author of "Conflicting Ideals" and (with Mrs. Spencer, D.Sc.) "A History of Factory Legislation" With a Chapter Contributed by J. J. Mallon London G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1915 PREFACE. It may be well to give a brief explanation of the scheme of the present work. Part I. was complete in its present form, save for unimportant corrections, before the summer of 1914. The outbreak of war necessitated some delay in publication, after which it became evident that some modification in the scheme and plan of the book must be made. The question was, whether to revise the work already accomplished so as to bring it more in tune with the tremendous events that are fresh in all our minds. For various reasons I decided not to do this, but to leave the earlier chapters as they stood, save for bringing a few figures up to date, and to treat of the effects of the war in a separate chapter. I was influenced in taking this course by the idea that even if the portions written in happy ignorance of approaching trouble should now appear out of date and out of focus, yet future students of social history might find a special interest in the fact that the passages in question describe the situation of women workers as it appeared almost immediately before the great upheaval. Moreover, Chapter IVA. contained a section on German women in Trade Unions. I had no material to re-write this section; I did not wish to omit it. The course that seemed best was to leave it precisely as it stood, and the same plan has been adopted with all the pre-war chapters. The main plan of the book is to give a sketch or outline of the position of working women, with special reference to the effects of the industrial revolution on her employment, taking "industrial revolution" in its broader sense, not as an event of the late eighteenth century, but as a continuous process still actively at work. I have aimed at description rather than theory. Some of the current theories about women's position are of great interest, and I make no pretence to an attitude of detachment in regard to them, but it certainly appears to me that we need more facts and knowledge before theory can be based on a sure foundation. Here and there I have drawn my own conclusions from what I saw and heard, but these conclusions are mostly provisional, and may well be modified in the light of clearer knowledge. I am fully conscious of an inadequacy of treatment and of certain defects in form. Women's industry is a smaller subject than men's, but it is even more complicated and difficult. There are considerable omissions in my book. I have not, for instance, discussed, save quite incidentally, the subject of the industrial employment of married women or the subject of domestic service, omissions which are partly due to my knowledge that studies of these questions were in process of preparation by hands more capable than mine. There are other omissions which are partly due to the lack or unsatisfactory nature of the material. A standard history of the Industrial Revolution does not yet exist (Monsieur Mantoux's valuable book covers only the earlier period), and the necessary information has to be collected from miscellaneous sources. In dealing with the effects of war, my treatment is necessarily most imperfect. The situation throughout the autumn, winter, and spring 1914-15, was a continually shifting one, and to represent it faithfully is a most difficult task. Nor can we for years expect to gauge the changes involved. With all our efforts to see and take stock of the social and economic effects of war, we who watch and try to understand the social meanings of the most terrible convulsion in history probably do not perceive the most significant reactions. That the position of industrial women must be considerably modified we cannot doubt; but the modifications that strike the imagination most forcibly now, such as the transference of women to new trades, may possibly not appear the most important in twenty or thirty years' time. Even so, perhaps, a contemporary sketch of the needs of working women; of the success or failure of our social machinery to supply and keep pace with those needs at a time of such tremendous stress and tension, may not be altogether without interest. I have to express my great indebtedness to Mr. Mallon, Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, who has given me the benefit of his unrivalled knowledge and experience in a chapter on women's wages. I have also to thank Miss Mabel Lawrence, who for a short time assisted me in the study of women in Unions, and both then and afterwards contributed many helpful suggestions to the work she shared with me. To the Labour Department I am indebted for kind and much appreciated permission to use its library; to Miss Elspeth Carr for drawing my attention to the "Petition of the Poor Spinners," an interesting document which will be found in the Appendix; and to many Trade Union secretaries and others for their kindness in allowing me to interview them and presenting me with documents. Miss Mary Macarthur generously loaned a whole series of the Trade Union League Reports, which were of the greatest service in tracing the early history of the League. I regret that Mr. Tawney's book on Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Trades; Messrs. Bland, Brown, and Tawney's valuable collection of documents on economic history; and the collection of letters from working women, entitled "Maternity," all came into my hands too late for me to make as much use of them as I should have liked to do. B. L. H. HAMPSTEAD, _September 1915_. CONTENTS PAGE PART I CHAPTER I SKETCH OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 1 CHAPTER II WOMEN AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 31 CHAPTER III STATISTICS OF THE LIFE AND EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN 75 CHAPTER IV WOMEN IN TRADE UNIONS 92 CHAPTER IVA WOMEN IN UNIONS--_continued_ 154 CHAPTER V SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I. 178 PART II CHAPTER VI WOMEN'S WAGES IN THE WAGE CENSUS OF 1906 213 CHAPTER VII THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN 239 APPENDIX TO CHAPTERS II., IV., AND VII. 267 AUTHORITIES 299 INDEX 305 INTRODUCTORY Little attention has been given until quite recent times to the position of the woman worker and the special problems concerning her industrial and commercial employment. The historical material relating to the share of women in industry is extremely scanty. Women in mediaeval times must have done a very large share of the total work necessary for carrying on social existence, but the work of men was more specialised, more differentiated, more picturesque. It thus claimed and obtained a larger share of the historian's attention. The introduction of machinery in the eighteenth century effected great changes, and for the first time the reactions of the work on the workers began to be considered. Women and children who had previously been employed in their own homes or in small workshops were now collected in factories, drilled to work in large numbers together. The work was not at first very different, but the environment was enormously altered. The question of the child in industry at first occupied attention almost to the exclusion of women. But the one led naturally to the other. The woman in industry could no longer be ignored: she had become an economic force. The position of the industrial woman in modern times is closely related, one way or another, to the industrial revolution, but the relation cannot be stated in any short or easy formula. The reaction of modern methods on woman's labour is highly complex and assumes many forms. The pressure on the woman worker which causes her to be employed for long hours, low wages, in bad conditions, and with extreme insecurity of employment, is frequently supposed to be due to the development of industry on a larger scale. It is, in my view, due rather to the survival of social conditions of the past in an age when an enormous increase in productive power has transformed the conditions of production. New institutions and new social conditions are needed to suit the change in the conditions of production. It is not the change in the material environment which is to blame, so much as the failure of organised society so far to understand and control the material changes. The capitalist employer organised industry on the basis of a "reserve of labour," and on the principle of employing the cheapest workers he could get, not out of original sin, or because he was so very much worse than other people, but simply because it was the only way he knew of, and no one was there to indicate an alternative course--much less compel him to take it. Much more guilty than the cotton-spinners or dock companies were the wealthy governing classes, who permitted the conditions of work to be made inhuman, and yet trampled on the one flower the people had plucked from their desolation--the joy of union and fellowship; who allowed a system of casual labour to become established, and then prated about the bad habits and irregularity which were the results of their own folly. Organised society had hardly begun to understand the needs and implications of the industrial revolution until quite late in the nineteenth century, and the failure of statesmanlike foresight has been especially disastrous to women, because of their closer relationship to the family. There is no economic necessity under present circumstances for women to work so long, so hard, and for such low wages as they do; on the contrary, we know now that it is bad economy that they should be so employed. But the subordinate position of the girl and the woman in the family, the lack of a tradition of association with her fellows, has reacted unfavourably on her economic capacity in the world of competitive trade. She is preponderantly an immature worker; she expects, quite reasonably, humanly and naturally, to marry. Whether her expectation is or is not destined to be fulfilled, it constitutes an element of impermanence in her occupational career which reacts unfavourably on her earnings and conditions of employment. The tradition of obedience, docility and isolation in the family make it hard for the young girl-worker to assert her claims effectively; both her ignorance and her tradition of modesty make it difficult for her to voice the requirements of decent living, some of the most essential of which are taboo--not to be spoken of to a social superior or an individual of the opposite sex. The whole circumstances of her life make her employment an uncertain matter, contingent upon all sorts of outside circumstances, which have little or nothing to do with her own industrial capacity. In youth, marriage may at any time take her out of the economic struggle and render wage-earning superfluous and unnecessary. On the other hand, the sudden pressure of necessity, bereavement, or sickness or unemployment of husband or bread-winning relative, may throw a woman unexpectedly on the labour market. It is a special feature of women's employment that, unlike the work of men, who for the most part have to labour from early youth to some more or less advanced age, women's work is subject to considerable interruption, and is contingent on family circumstances, whence it comes about that women may not always need paid work, but when they do they often want it so badly that they are ready to take anything they can get. The woman worker also is more susceptible to class influences than are her male social equals, and charity and philanthropy often tend in some degree to corrupt the loyalty and divert the interest of working women from their own class. These are some of the reasons why associations for mutual protection and assistance have been so slow in making way among women workers. The protection of the State, though valuable as far as it goes, has been inadequate: how inadequate can be seen in the Reports of the Women Factory Inspectors, who, in spite of their insufficient numbers, take so large a share in the administration of the Factory Act. Their Reports, however, do not reach a large circle. The Insurance Act has been the means of a more startling propaganda. The results following the working of this Act shew that although women are longer lived than men, they have considerably more sickness. The claims of women for sick benefit had been underestimated, and many local insurance societies became nearly insolvent in consequence. A cry of malingering was raised in various quarters, and we were asked to believe that excessive claims could be prevented by stricter and more careful administration. This solution of the problem, however, is quite inadequate to explain the facts. There may have been some malingering, but it has occurred chiefly in cases where the earnings of the workers were so low as to be scarcely above the sickness benefit provided by the Act, or even below it. In other cases the excess claims were due to the fact that medical advice and treatment was a luxury the women had previously been unable to afford even when they greatly needed it; or to the fact that they had previously continued to go to work when unfit for the exertion, and now at last found themselves able to afford a few days' rest and nursing; or, finally, to the unhealthy conditions in which they were compelled to live and work. As Miss Macarthur stated before the Departmental Committee on Sickness Benefit Claims, "Low wages, and all that low wages involve in the way of poor food, poor housing, insufficient warmth, lack of rest and of air, and so forth, necessarily predispose to disease; and although such persons may, at the time of entering into insurance, have been, so far as they knew, in a perfectly normal state of health, their normal state is one with no reserve of health and strength to resist disease." Excessive claims may or may not, the witness went on to show, be associated with extremely low wages. Thus the cotton trade, which is the best paid of any great industry largely employing women, nevertheless shows a high proportion of claims. Miss Macarthur made an urgent recommendation (in which the present writer begs to concur), that when any sweeping accusation of malingering is brought against a class of insured persons, medical enquiry should be made into the conditions under which those women work. If the conditions that produce excessive claims were once clearly known and realised, it is the convinced opinion of the present writer that those conditions would be changed by the pressure of public opinion, not so much out of sentiment or pity--though sentiment and pity are badly needed--but out of a clear perception of the senseless folly and loss that are involved in the present state of things. Year by year, and week by week, the capitalist system is allowed to use up the lives of our women and girls, taking toll of their health and strength, of their nerves and energy, of their capacity, their future, and the future of their children after them. And all this, not for any purpose; not as it is with the soldier, who dies that something greater than himself may live; for no purpose whatever, except perhaps saving the trouble of thought. So far as wealth is the object of work, it is practically certain that the national wealth, or indeed the output of war material, would be much greater if it were produced under more humane and more reasonable conditions, with a scientific disposition of hours of work and the use of appropriate means for keeping up the workers' health and strength. A preliminary and most important step, it should be said, would be a considerable reinforcement of the staff of women factory inspectors. Nor do conditions of work alone make up the burden of the heavy debt against society for the treatment of women workers. Housing conditions, though no doubt greatly improved, especially in towns, are often extremely bad, and largely responsible for the permanent ill-health suffered by so many married women in the working class, by the non-wage-earning group, perhaps not much less than by the industrial woman-worker.[2] Two other questions occur in this connection, both of great importance. First, the question of the relation of the employment of the young girl to her health after marriage--a subject which appears to have received little scientific attention. Only a minority of women are employed at any one time, but a large majority of young girls are employed, and it follows that the majority of older women _must have been employed_ in those critical years of girlhood and young womanhood, which have so great an influence on the constitution and character for the future. The conditions and kind of employment from this point of view would afford material for a volume in itself, but the subject needs medical knowledge for its satisfactory handling, and a laywoman can but indicate it and pass on. Second, the need of making medical advice and treatment more accessible. This would involve the removal of restrictions and obstacles which, however necessary under a scheme of Health Insurance, appear in practice to rob that scheme of at least half its right to be considered as a National Provision for the health of women.[3] It will appear in the following pages that I see little reason to believe in any decline and fall of women from a golden age in which they did only work which was "suitable," and that in the bosoms of their families. The records of the domestic system that have come down to us are no doubt picturesque enough, but the cases which have been preserved in history or fiction were probably the aristocracy of industry, under which were the very poor, of whom we know little. There must also have been a class of single women wage-earners who were probably even more easy to exploit in old times than they are now, the opportunities for domestic service being much more limited and worse paid. The working woman does not appear to me to be sliding downwards into the "chaos of low-class industries," rather is she painfully, though perhaps for the most part unconsciously, working her way upwards out of a more or less servile condition of poverty and ignorance into a relatively civilised state, existing at present in a merely rudimentary form. She has attained at least to the position of earning her own living and controlling her own earnings, such as they are. She has statutory rights against her employer, and a certain measure of administrative protection in enforcing them. The right to a living wage, fair conditions of work, and a voice in the collective control over industry are not yet fully recognised, but are being claimed more and more articulately, and can less and less be silenced and put aside. The woman wage-earner indeed appears in many ways socially in advance of the middle and upper class woman, who is still so often economically a mere parasite. Woman's work may still be chaotic, but the chaos, we venture to hope, indicates the throes of a new social birth, not the disintegration of decay. Among much that is sad, tragic and disgraceful in the industrial exploitation of women, there is emerging this fact, fraught with deepest consolation: the woman herself is beginning to think. Nothing else at long last can really help her; nothing else can save us all. There are now an increasing number of women workers who do not sink their whole energies in the petty and personal, or restrict their aims to the earning and spending what they need for themselves and those more or less dependent on them. They are able to appreciate the newer wants of society, the claim for more leisure and amenity of life, for a share in the heritage of England's thought and achievements, for better social care of children, for the development of a finer and deeper communal consciousness. This is the new spirit that is beginning to dawn in women. CHAPTER I. SKETCH OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. The traces of women in economic and industrial history are unmistakable, but the record of their work is so scattered, casual, and incoherent that it is difficult to derive a connected story therefrom. We know enough, however, to disprove the old misconception that women's industrial work is a phenomenon beginning with the nineteenth century. It seems indeed not unlikely that textile industry, perhaps also agriculture and the taming of the smaller domestic animals, were originated by women, their dawning intelligence being stimulated to activity by the needs of children. Professor Karl Pearson in his interesting essay, _Woman as Witch_, shows that many of the folklore ceremonies connected with witchcraft associate the witch with symbols of agriculture, the pitchfork, and the plough, as well as with the broom and spindle, and are probably the fossil survivals, from a remote past, of a culture in which the activities of the women were relatively more prominent than they are now. The witch is a degraded form of the old priestess, cunning in the knowledge of herbs and medicine, and preserving in spells and incantations such wisdom as early civilisation possessed. In Thüringen, Holda or Holla is a goddess of spinning and punishes idle persons. Only a century ago the women used to sing songs to Holla as they dressed their flax. In Swabia a broom is carried in procession on Twelfth Night, in honour of the goddess Berchta. The "wild women" or spirits associated with wells or springs are frequently represented in legends as spinning; they come to weddings and spin, and their worship is closely connected with the distaff as a symbol. Women are also the first architects; the hut in widely different parts of the world--among Kaffirs, Fuegians, Polynesians, Kamtchatdals--is built by women. Women are everywhere the primitive agriculturists, and work in the fields of Europe to-day. Women seem to have originated pottery, while men usually ornamented and improved it. Woman "was at first, and is now, the universal cook, preserving food from decomposition and doubling the longevity of man. Of the bones at last she fabricates her needles and charms.... From the grasses around her cabin she constructs the floor-mat, the mattress and the screen, the wallet, the sail. She is the mother of all spinners, weavers, upholsterers, sail-makers." The evidence of anthropology thus hardly bears out the assertion frequently made (recently, _e.g._, by Dr. Lionel Tayler in _The Nature of Woman_) that woman does not originate. A much more telling demonstration of the superiority of man in handicraft would be to show that when he takes over a woman's idea he usually brings it to greater technical perfection than she has done. "Men, liberated more or less from the tasks of hunting and fighting, gradually took up the occupations of women, specialised them and developed them in an extraordinary degree.... Maternity favours an undifferentiated condition of the various avocations that are grouped around it; it is possible that habits of war produced a sense of the advantages of specialised and subordinated work. In any case the fact itself is undoubted and it has had immense results on civilisation." Man has infinitely surpassed woman in technical skill, scientific adaptation, and fertility of invention; yet the rude beginnings of culture and civilisation, of the crafts that have so largely made us what we are, were probably due to the effort and initiative of primitive woman, engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with the rude and hostile forces of her environment, to satisfy the needs of her offspring and herself. I do not propose, however, to enter into a discussion of the position of primitive woman, alluring as such a task might be from some points of view. When we come to times nearer our own and of which written record survives, it is remarkable that the further back we go the more completely women appear to be in possession of textile industry. The materials are disappointing: there is little that can serve to explain fully the industrial position of women or to make us realise the conditions of their employment. But as to the fact there can be no doubt. Nor can it be questioned that women were largely employed in other industries also. The women of the industrial classes have always worked, and worked hard. It is only in quite modern times, so far as I can discover, that the question, whether some kinds of work were not too hard for women, has been raised at all. _Servants in Husbandry._--It is quite plain that women have always done a large share of field work. The Statute of Labourers, 23 Edw. III. 1349, imposed upon women equally with men the obligation of giving service when required, unless they were over sixty, exercised a craft or trade, or were possessed of means or land of their own, or already engaged in service, and also of taking only such wages as had been given previous to the Black Death and the resulting scarcity of labour. In 1388, the statute 12 Richard II. c. 3, 4 and 5, forbids any servant, man or woman, to depart out of the place in which he or she is employed, at the end of the year's service, without a letter patent, and limits a woman labourer's wages to six shillings per annum. It also enacts that "he or she which use to labour at the plough" shall continue at the same work and not be put to a "mystery or handicraft." In 1444 the statute 23 Henry VI. c. 13 fixes the wages of a woman servant in husbandry at ten shillings per annum with clothing worth four shillings and food. In harvest a woman labourer was to have two pence a day and food, "and such as be worthy of less shall take less." Thorold Rogers says that in the thirteenth century women were employed in outdoor work, and especially as assistants to thatchers. He thinks that, "estimated proportionately, their services were not badly paid," but that, allowing for the different value of money, women got about as much for outdoor work as women employed on farms get now. After the Plague, however, the wages paid women as thatchers' helps were doubled, and before the end of the fifteenth century were increased by 125 per cent. A statute of 1495 fixed the wages of women labourers and other labourers at the same amount, viz. 2-1/2d. a day, or 4-1/2d. if without board. At a later period, 1546-1582, according to Thorold Rogers, some accounts of harvest work from Oxford show women paid the same as men. In the sixteenth century the Statute of Apprentices, 5 Eliz. c. 4, gave power to justices to compel women between twelve years old and forty to be retained and serve by the year, week, or day, "for such wages and in such reasonable sort and manner as they shall think meet," and a woman who refused thus to serve might be imprisoned. _Textiles. Wool and Linen._--No trace remains in history of the inventor of the loom, but no historical record remains of a time without some means of producing a texture by means of intertwining a loose thread across a fixed warp. Any such device, however rude, must involve a degree of culture much above mere savagery, and probably resulted from a long process of groping effort and invention. From this dim background hand-spinning and weaving emerge in tradition and history as the customary work of women, the type of their activity, and the norm of their duty and morals. The old Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and German words for loom are certainly very ancient, and Pictet derives the word _wife_ from the occupation of weaving. In the Northern Mythology the three stars in the Belt of Orion were called Frigga Rock, or Frigga's Distaff, which in the days of Christianity was changed to Maria Rock, rock being an old word for distaff. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, and embroidering were special features of Anglo-Saxon industry, and were entirely confined to women. King Alfred in his will distinguished between the spear-half and spindle-half of his family; and in an old illustration of the Scripture, Adam is shown receiving the spade and Eve the distaff, after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This traditional distinction between the duties of the sexes was continued even to the grave, a spear or a spindle, according to sex, being often found buried with the dead in Anglo-Saxon tombs. In the Church of East Meon, Hants, there is a curious old font with a sculptured representation of the same incident: Eve, it has been observed, stalks away with head erect, plying her spindle and distaff, while Adam, receiving a spade from the Angel, looks submissive and abased. In an old play entitled _Corpus Christi_, formerly performed before the Grey or Franciscan Friars, Adam is made to say to Eve: And wyff, to spinne now must thou fynde Our naked bodyes in cloth to wynde. The distaff or rock could on occasion serve the purpose of a weapon of offence or defence. In the _Digby Mysteries_ a woman brandishes her distaff, exclaiming: What! shall a woman with a Rocke drive thee away! In the _Winter's Tale_ Hermione exclaims: We'll thwack him thence with distaffs (Act I., Sc. ii.). Spinning and weaving were in old times regarded as specially virtuous occupations. Deloney quotes an old song which brings out this idea with much _naïveté_: Had Helen then sat carding wool, Whose beauteous face did breed such strife, She had not been Sir Paris' trull Nor cause so many lose their life. Or had King Priam's wanton son Been making quills with sweet content He had not then his friends undone When he to Greece a-gadding went. The cedar trees endure more storms Than little shrubs that sprout on hie, The weaver lives more void of harm Than princes of great dignity. There is also a little French poem quoted and translated by Wright, which runs thus: Much ought woman to be held dear, By her is everybody clothed. Well know I that woman spins and manufactures The cloths with which we dress and cover ourselves, And gold tissues, and cloth of silk; And therefore say I, wherever I may be, To all who shall hear this story, That they say no ill of womankind. Spinning and weaving, as ordinarily carried on in the mediaeval home, were, Mr. Andrews thinks, backward, wasteful, and comparatively unskilled in technique. It is uncertain exactly at what period the spinning-wheel came into existence--certainly before the sixteenth century, and it may be a good deal earlier; but doubtless the use of the distaff lingered on in country places and among older-fashioned people long after the wheel was in use in the centres of the trades. Thus Aubrey speaks of nuns using wheels, and adds, "In the old time they used to spin with rocks; in Somersetshire they use them still." Yet weaving among the Anglo-Saxons had been carried to a considerable degree of excellence in the cities and monasteries. Mr. Warden says that even before the end of the seventh century the art of weaving had attained remarkable perfection in England, and he quotes from a book by Bishop Aldhelm, written about 680, describing "webs woven with shuttles, filled with threads of purple and many other colours, flying from side to side, and forming a variety of figures and images in different compartments with admirable art." These beautiful handiworks were executed by ladies of high rank and great piety, and were designed for ornaments to the churches or for vestments to the clergy. St. Theodore of Canterbury thought it necessary to forbid women to work on Sunday either in weaving or cleaning the vestments or sewing them, or in carding wool, or beating flax, or in washing garments, or in shearing the sheep, or in any such occupations. Tapestry, cloth of gold, and other woven fabrics of great beauty and fineness, besides embroidery, were produced in convents, which in the Middle Ages were the chief centres of culture for women. So much was this the case indeed, that the spiritual advisers of the nuns at times became uneasy, and exhorted them to give more time to devotion and less to weaving and knitting "vainglorious garments of many colours." In that curious book of advice to nuns, the _Ancren Riwle_, composed in the twelfth century, the writer showed the same spirit, and opposed the making of purses and other articles of silk with ornamental work. He also dissuaded women from trafficking with the products of the conventual estates. These injunctions seem to indicate that women were showing some degree of mental and artistic activity and initiative. Royal ladies worked at spinning and weaving, and Piers Plowman tells the lovely ladies who asked him for work, to spin wool and flax, make cloth for the poor and naked, and teach their daughters to do the same. It is evident from old accounts that a good deal of weaving was done outside by the piece for these great households, and of course spinning and weaving were largely carried on in cottages as a bye-industry in conjunction with agriculture. Bücher gives a very interesting account of spinning as an opportunity for social intercourse among primitive peoples. In Thibet, he says, there is a spinning-room in each village; the young people, men and girls, meet and spin and smoke together. Spinning in groups or parties is known to have obtained also in Germany in olden times, and girls who now meet to make lace together in the same sociable way still say that they "go spinning." Spinning-rooms exist in Russia. In Yorkshire spinning seems to have been done socially in the open air, in fine weather, down to the eve of the industrial revolution. Spinning was one of the first works in which young girls were instructed, and thus spinster has become the legal designation of an unmarried woman, not that she always gave up spinning at marriage, but because it was looked upon as the young unmarried woman's chief occupation. Old manuscripts also show women weaving at the loom, illustrations of which can be found in the interesting works of Thomas Wright. In 1372 a Yorkshire woman spinner was summoned for taking "too much wages, contrary to the Statute of Artificers." In 1437 John Notyngham, a rich grocer of Bury St. Edmunds, bequeathed to one of his daughters a spinning-wheel and a pair of cards (cards or carpayanum, an implement which is stated in the _Promptorum Parvulorum_ to be especially a woman's instrument). In 1418 Agnes Stebbard in the same town bequeathed to two of her maids a pair of wool-combs each, one combing-stick, one wheel, and one pair of cards. An illuminated MS. of the well-known French _Boccace des Nobles Femmes_ has a most interesting illustration showing a queen and two maidens; one maiden is spinning with a distaff, another combing wool, the queen sits at the loom weaving. Women often appear in old records as combers, carders, and spinners. Chaucer says rather cynically: Deceit, weeping, spinning God hath given To women kindly, whiles that they may liven. And of the wife of Bath: Of clothmaking she had such an haunt She passed them of Ipres and of Gaunt. The distaff lingered on for spinning flax. As late as 1757 an English poet writes: And many yet adhere To the ancient distaff at the bosom fixed, Casting the whirling spindle as they walk; At home or in the sheep fold or the mart, Alike the work proceeds. Walter of Henley says: "In March is time to sow flax and hemp, for I have heard old housewives say that better is March hards than April flax, the reason appeareth, but how it should be sown, weeded, pulled, repealed, watered, washen, dried, beaten, braked, tawed, heckled, spun, wound, wrapped and woven, it needeth not for me to show, for they be wise enough, and thereof may they make sheets, bordclothes (_sic_), towels, shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries, and therefore let thy distaff be always ready for a pastime, that thou be not idle. And undoubted a woman cannot get her living honestly with spinning on the distaff, but it stoppeth a gap and must needs be had." Further on, in reference to wool (probably spun by wheel?), he draws the opposite conclusion: "It is convenient for a husband to have sheep of his own, for many causes, and then may his wife have part of the wool, to make her husband and herself some clothes.... And if she have no wool of her own she may take wool to spin of cloth-makers, and by that means she may have a convenient living, an many times to do other works." Irish women were noted for their skill in dressing hemp and flax and making linen and woollen cloth. Sir William Temple said, in 1681, that no women were apter to spin flax well than the Irish, who, "labouring little in any kind with their hands have their fingers more supple and soft than other women of poorer condition among us." In the old Shuttleworth Accounts, reprinted by the Chetham Society, there are minute directions to the housewife on the management and manipulation of her wool. "It is the office of a husbandman at the shearing of the sheep to bestow upon the housewife such a competent proportion of wool as shall be convenient for the clothing of his family; which wool, as soon as she hath received it, she shall open, and with a pair of shears cut away all the coarse locks, pitch, brands, tarred locks, and other feltrings, and lay them by themselves for coarse coverlets and the like. The rest she is to break in pieces and tease, lock by lock, with her hands open, and so divide the wool as not any part may be feltered or close together, but all open and loose. Then such of the wool as she intends to spin white she shall put by itself and the rest she shall weigh up and divide into several quantities, according to the proportion of the web she intends to make, and put every one of them into particular lays of netting, with tallies of wool fixed into them with privy marks thereon, for the weight, colour, and knowledge of the wool, when the first colour is altered. Then she shall if she please send them to the dyer to be dyed after her own fancy," or dye them herself (recipes for which are given). "After your wool is mixed, oiled and trimmed (carded), you shall then spin it upon great wool wheels, according to the order of good housewifery; the action whereof must be got by practice, and not by relation; only this you shall be carefull, to draw your thread according to nature and goodness of your wool, not according to your particular desire; for if you draw a fine thread from wool which is of a coarse staple, it will want substance ... so, if you draw a coarse thread from fine wool, it will then be much overthick ... to the disgrace of good housewifery and loss of much cloth." _Weaving and Spinning as a Woman's Trade._--The employments carried on by women in the household may have yielded money occasionally, as we have seen from some of the foregoing quotations, but the work appears in these excerpts to have been carried on rather as a bye-industry, as a means of utilising surplus produce, than as a recognised trade for gain or profit. Did women carry on the manufacture of woollen goods definitely as a craft or trade? The evidence on this head is not very clear. A statute of Edward III.[4] expressly exempts women from the ordinance, then in force, that men should not follow more than one craft. "It is ordained that Artificers Handicraft people hold them every one to one Mystery, which he will choose between this and the said feast of Candlemas; and Two of every craft shall be chosen to survey, that none use other craft than the same which he hath chosen.... But the intent of the King and of his Council is, that Women, that is to say, Brewers, Bakers, Carders and Spinners, and Workers as well of Wool as of Linen Cloth and of Silk, Brawdesters and Breakers of Wool and all other that do use and work all Handy Works may freely use and work as they have done before this time, without any impeachment or being restrained by this Ordinance." The meaning of this ordinance is rather obscure, but the greater liberty conferred on women would seem to imply that they were not carrying on the trades mentioned as organised workers competing with men, but that they performed the various useful works mentioned at odd times, incidentally to the work of the household. Miss Abram says women were sometimes cloth-makers (see 4 Edw. IV. c. 1), and often women cloth-makers, combers, carders, and spinners are mentioned in the Parliamentary Rolls. There were women amongst the tailors of Salisbury, and amongst the yeoman tailors of London, also among the dyers of Bristol and the drapers of London. Women might join the Merchant Gild of Totnes, and some belonged to the Gild Merchant of Lyons. There appear to have been women members of the Weavers' Company of London in Henry VIII.'s time. Again at Bristol, in documents dating from the fourteenth century, we find mention of the "brethren and sistern" of the Weavers' Gild. In the next century, in the first year of Edward IV., complaint was, however, made that many able-bodied weavers were out of work, in consequence of the employment of women at the weaver's craft, both at home and hired out. It was ordered that henceforward any one setting, putting, or hiring his wife, daughter, or maid "to such occupation of weaving in the loom with himself or with any other person of the said craft, within the said town of Bristol" should upon proof be fined 6s. 8d., half to go to the Chamber of Bristol and half to the Craft. This regulation was not, however, to apply to any weaver's wife so employed at the time it was made, but the said woman might continue to work at the loom as before. Professor Unwin quotes a rule of the Clothworkers of London, in the second year of Edward VI., imposing a fine of 20 pence on any member employing even his own wife and daughter in his shop. At Hull, in 1490, women were forbidden working at the weaver's trade. But in 1564 the proviso was introduced that a widow might work at her husband's trade so long as she continued a widow and observed the orders of the company. The London Weavers clearly recognised women members, for they enacted that "no man or woman of the said craft shall entice any man's servant from him." But another rule prohibited taking a woman as apprentice. The statutes of the Weavers of Edinburgh in the sixteenth century provided that no woman be allowed to have looms of her own, _unless_ she be a freeman's wife. Probably it was felt in practice to be impossible to prevent a woman helping her husband, or carrying on his trade after his death, although there was evidently a desire to keep women out of the craft as much as possible. By the seventeenth century Gervase Markham writes as if women did no weaving at all. "Now after your cloth is thus warped and delivered up into the hands of the Weaver, the Housewife hath finished her labour, for in the weaving, walking, and dressing thereof she can challenge no property more than to entreat them severally to discharge their duties with a good conscience." At Norwich, in 1511, the Ordinance of Weavers forbade women to weave worsted, "for that they be not of sufficient power to work the same worsteds as they ought to be wrought." Records of rates of pay to journeymen weavers, tuckers, fullers, etc., 1651,[5] ignore women as textile workers altogether; the only women mentioned in this assessment are agricultural workers and domestic servants. Nevertheless, old accounts of the seventeenth century do show payments to women, not only for spinning, but for weaving and "walking" woollen cloth, and we can only conclude that while the progress of technical improvements had made weaving largely a men's trade, it was yet also carried on by women to a considerable extent. _Apprenticeship._--It seems appropriate here to give some little space to the subject of apprenticeship. Miss Dunlop points out, in her recent valuable work on that subject, that the opposition of some of the gilds to women's work was not hostility to women as women, so much as distrust of the untrained, unqualified worker. "At Salisbury the barber-surgeons agitated against unskilled women who medelled in the trade." "In the Girdlers' Company the officers forbade their members to employ foreigners and maids, not out of any animosity to the women, but because unscrupulous workmen had been underselling their fellows by employing cheap labour." At Hull, as we have seen, the employment of women was forbidden, but so was the employment of aliens. According to Miss Dunlop, the great difficulty in the way of women was the onerousness of domestic work, which prevented girls undertaking apprenticeship to a skilled craft. It appears that women and girls were largely employed as assistants to the husband or father, and that the requirement of apprenticeship by the Elizabethan Statute did not check the practice, as it was so widespread and so convenient that the law was difficult to enforce. It is exceptional, Miss Dunlop remarks, to find a gild forbidding the practice, and in point of fact, the services of his wife and daughter were usually the only cheap casual labour a man could get. Apprentice labour was cheap, but could not be obtained for short periods at a sudden pressure. "Girl labour, therefore, had a peculiar value, and we may suppose that more girls worked at crafts and manufactures than would have been the case if they had been obliged to serve an apprenticeship." There was no systematic training and technical teaching of girls as there was of boys, though in some cases they were apprenticed and served their time, and in others, though unapprenticed, they may have been as carefully taught. "But apprenticeship played no part in the life of girls as a whole: they missed the general education which it afforded, and their training tended to be casual and irregular": on the other hand, their lives gained something in variety from the change of passing from household to industrial work and _vice versa_. The system must, however, have tended to keep women in an inferior and subordinate position. "For although they worked hard and the total amount of their labour has contributed largely to our industrial development, it was only exceptionally that they attained to the standing of employers and industrial leaders." The exceptions are rather interesting; it is evident that London was broad-minded in its delimitation of the woman's sphere of activity and there were many instances of girls being apprenticed. There were also women who, though unapprenticed, had the right of working on their own account, and this, though never very common, was not so unusual as to arouse comment or surprise. These were mostly widows who carried on the work of their deceased husbands; others were the daughters of freemen who claimed as such to be admitted to the gild or company, basing their claims on rights of patrimony. This taking up of independent work by no means implied that the women had themselves served apprenticeship in youth; it seems merely to have meant the inheritance of the goodwill and privileges along with the craftsman's shop. In the Carpenters' Company Mary Wiltshire and Ann Callcutt took up their freedom by right of patrimony, and there are other instances. _The Development of Capitalistic Industry._--The growth and development of a capitalistic system of industry can be traced from the fifteenth century, and forms one of the most interesting and dramatic episodes in economic history. It is, however, not very easy to determine in what way the change influenced women's employment. The more prosperous among the weavers gradually developed into clothiers, employing many hands, but the majority tended to become mere wage-earners. A petition of weavers in 1539 stated that the clothiers had their own looms and weavers and fullers in their own houses, so that the master weavers were rendered destitute. "For the rich men the clothiers be concluded and agreed among themselves to hold and pay one price for weaving, which price is too little to sustain households upon, working night and day, holy-day and work-day, and many weavers are therefore reduced to the position of servants." The Petition of Suffolk Clothiers, 1575, says that the custom of their country is "to carry our wool out ... and put it to sundry spinners who have in their houses divers and sundry children and servants that do card and spin the same wool." In the north of England also large clothiers employing many hands were to be found as early as 1520. The subsequent development of the industry, Professor Unwin tells us, took place in a very marked degree in those districts which were exempt from the operation of the statutes forbidding clothiers to set up outside market-towns. In other parts of the country the struggle was acute. "The protection of industry from all competition was the first and last word of the crafts. To employers and dealers the monopoly of trade chiefly meant their own monopoly of production and sale, while the wage-earner's predominant anxiety was to keep surplus labour out of the craft, lest the regular worker might be deprived of his comfortable certainty of subsistence." There was, however, a great expansion of trade and industry going on, and labour was needed. The master who had accumulated a little capital perhaps moved out to the valleys of Yorkshire or Gloucestershire in search of water-power for his fulling mills or finer wool for his weavers, or forsook the manufacturing town for some rural district where labour was plentiful and he could escape the heavy municipal dues which his business could ill afford to pay. The ordinances of Worcester, for instance, contain regulations intended to prevent the masters giving out wool to the weavers in other parts so long as there were people enough in the city to do the work, "in the hindering of the poor commonalty of the same." The struggle between these two forms of industry, the craft carried on in the towns and the dispersed industry under a more definitely capitalistic organisation in the country, went on for centuries. From the earliest years of the reign of Henry VIII. to the accession of Elizabeth, a constantly increasing amount of legislation was devoted to the protection of the town manufacture against the competition of the country. This legislation was interpreted by Froude as a genuine endeavour to protect a highly skilled, highly organised industry of independent craftsmen against the evils of capitalism, but the closer researches of Professor Unwin show that this is idealism; the craftsmen were merely pawns in the hands of town merchants who dreaded to see some of the trade pass into the hands of a new class of country capitalists. This is an historical controversy too difficult to follow closely here; what we have to note is the part played by women in the change. We may as well admit that women's work during this industrial transition appears mostly as part of the problem of cheap unorganised labour. "The spinners seem never to have had any organisation, and were liable to oppression by their employers, not only through low wages, but through payment in kind, and the exaction of arbitrary fines." Irregularity of employment was another trouble: in the play of _King Henry VIII._ the clothiers were shown making increased taxation a pretext for dismissing hands. The clothiers all, not able to maintain The many to them 'longing, have put off The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers. To compensate their masters' greed and extortion they had recourse to petty dishonesties on their own part, and were frequently accused of keeping back part of the wool given out, or of making up the weight by the addition of oil or other moisture to the yarn. In 1593 a Bill was presented to Parliament which imposed penalties on frauds in spinning and weaving, but also pointed out that the workers were partly driven to fraud "for lack of sufficient wages and allowance," and proposed to raise the wages of spinners and weavers by one-third.[6] This Bill (which may be regarded as a kind of ancestor of Mr. Winston Churchill's Trade Boards Act, 1909) failed to pass. In the seventeenth century the rates of spinners' wages appear very low, even measured by contemporary standards. Mr. Hamilton has reproduced the wages assessed at Quarter Sessions by the Justices of Exeter in 1654. Weavers were to have 2-1/2d. a day with food or 8d. without. It is difficult to guess whether these weavers were supposed to be men or women; the rates fixed are less than those for husbandry labourers (which were fixed at 3d. and 10d.), but rather more than those for women haymakers, which were 2d. and 6d. Spinsters, however, were to have "not above" 6d. a week with food or 1s. 4d. without. In 1713 at the same place spinsters were to have not above 1s. a week, or 2s. 6d. if without board, which again compares very unfavourably with the other rates mentioned. It is difficult to understand the extreme lowness of these rates of pay to spinsters, unless on the assumption that they were intended to apply to servants actually living and working in the clothiers' houses; or that spinning was supposed not to occupy a woman's whole time, which no doubt was often the case. But the rates fixed on that assumption should of course have been piece rates. Altogether Mr. Hamilton's research here raises more questions than it can settle. No doubt the Poor Law helped in some degree to depress wages, for another form taken by this many-sided industry of wool was that of relief work under the Poor Law. Spinning was the main resource of those whose duty under the Poor Law was to find work for the unemployed, and in institutions such as Christ's Hospital, Ipswich, children were set to card and spin from their earliest years. Such instances might be multiplied indefinitely. A charitable workhouse in Bishopsgate used to give out wool and flax every Monday morning to be spun at home to "such poor people as desire it and are skilful in spinning thereof."[7] Nevertheless we do occasionally get glimpses of women as an important factor in industry. For instance, in Edward VI.'s time, there had been an attempt to require clothiers to be apprenticed. This law was repealed in the first year of Queen Mary, with the remark that "the perfect and principal ground of cloth making is the true sorting of wools, and the experience thereof consisteth only in women, as clothiers' wives and their women servants and not in apprentices." A still more remarkable development of female employment, perhaps, was the beginning of the factory system in the sixteenth century. These were chiefly in the west of England industry, and in Wiltshire. Leland in his _Itinerary_ mentions a man called Stumpe who had actually taken possession of the ancient Abbey of Malmesbury and filled it with looms, employing many hands. A still more celebrated instance was the factory of John Winchcomb, a prudent man who married his master's widow and had a fine business at Newbury, described in a ballad which shows him employing 200 men weaving, each with a boy helper, and 100 women carding wool: And in a chamber close beside Two hundred maydens did abide In petticoats of stammel red And milk-white kerchiefs on their head. * * * * * These pretty maids did never lin But in that place all day did spin. In 1567 the Weaver's Gild of Bristol prohibited its members from underselling one another in the prices of their work, and also forbade them to allow their wives to go for any work to clothiers' houses, which at least implies that there was some demand for their labour. Now, although the growth of capital may have seriously affected the position of the male craftsmen, as Professor Unwin tells us, and reduced them to be mere wage-earners, it seems not impossible that the economic position of women may have been improved by the opportunity of work for wages outside the home. Women had worked for the use and consumption of their own households, and, as wives of craftsmen, they had worked as helpers with their husbands. The new organisation of work by a capitalist employer opened up the possibility to women and girls of earning wages for themselves. The additional earnings of wife and children even if very small make a great difference in the comfort of a labourer's family. It is likely enough, indeed it is evident that their work was often grievously exploited, and the reduction of the craftsman to the position of a mere wage-earner may have diminished the spending power of the family. Of all this we know little or nothing definitely, but it seems probable that the supersession of handicraft by a quasi-capitalistic form of organisation affected women less adversely than men. In the eighteenth century, the palmy days of the domestic system, some women in the industrial centres were earning what were considered very good wages. Arthur Young says of the cloth trade round Leeds: "Some women earn by weaving as much as the men." Of Norwich he says: "The earnings of manufacturers (_i.e._ hand-workers) are various, but in general high," the men on an average earning 5s. a week, and many women earning as much.[8] It must be also remembered that each weaver kept several spinners employed, so that unless his family could supply him, he might easily be forced to have recourse to the services of women workers outside. Mr. Townsend Warner quotes an estimate that 25 weavers might require the services of 250 spinners to keep them fully supplied with yarn. Mantoux thinks this excessive, though it has to be remembered, as Mr. Townsend Warner points out, that the spinners usually did not give their whole time. Again, the description of the organisation of the trade, end of eighteenth century, quoted by Bonwick, conveys the impression that women, in some cases at all events, were taking a responsible part. I went to York, to buy wool, and at that time it averaged about 1s. per pound. I then came home, sorted and combed it myself. After being combed, it was oiled and closed, that is, the long end of the wool and the short end were put together to form a skein. It took a number of skeins to make a top, each top making exactly a pound. Then I took it to hand-spinners 20 or 30 miles distant. The mother or head of the family plucked the tops into pieces the length of the wool, and gave it to the different branches of the family to spin, who could spin about 9 or 10 hanks per day; for the spinning I gave one half penny per hank, and sometimes 1/2d. for every 24 hanks over. Another interesting account is given by Bamford: Farms were most cultivated for the production of milk, butter and cheese.... The farming was mostly of that kind which was soonest and most easily performed, and it was done by the husband and other males of the family, whilst the wife and daughters and maid servants, if there were any of the latter, attended to the churning, cheese-making, and household work, and when that was finished, they busied themselves in carding, slubbing, and spinning of wool and cotton, as well as forming it into warps for the loom. The husband and sons would next, at times when farm labour did not call them abroad, size the warp, dry it, and beam it in the loom, and either they or the females, whichever happened to be least otherwise employed, would weave the warp down. A farmer would generally have 3 or 4 looms in his house. Of course it is not to be inferred that the women thus employed were always free to control or spend their own earnings; in law they undoubtedly were not, if married. The domestic system so picturesquely described by Defoe (in his _Tour_), under which the family worked together, each, from the oldest to the youngest, doing his or her part, no doubt often involved a quite patriarchal distribution and control of the resulting earnings. Still the mention of women as separate and individual earners that occurs often in eighteenth-century works on the subject must indicate that they were attaining a greater measure of individual recognition and self-determination than formerly.[9] It is interesting also to notice that the cloth industry was sometimes carried on socially in the eighteenth century. Bradford Dale was covered with weavers and spinners, and the women and children of Allerton, Thornton, and other villages in the valley, used to flock on sunny days with their spinning wheels to some favourite pleasant spot, and work in company.[10] _Frame-Work Knitting._--The frame-work knitting trade has many points of resemblance with the woollen weaving trade. Hand-knitting, we are told by Felkin, was not introduced till the sixteenth century. It became extremely popular and was pursued by women in every class of life from the palace to the cottage. A kind of frame or hand-machine was invented in the seventeenth century by Lee. It is said that Lee invented this machine in a spirit of revenge and bitterness against a young lady he had fallen in love with, who was so intent on her knitting that she could never give him her attention when he made love to her. From watching her at work he acquired a mastery of the mesh or stitch, and anger at her being so engrossed with her employment impelled him to make a machine that would deprive her of her work. The frame-work knitters were incorporated under Charles II., and the company made rather drastic rules, trying to exclude women from apprenticeship, though they might become members on widowhood, as in so many of the old guilds. Frame-work knitting also gave employment to women and children in seaming up the hose. In the eighteenth century the trade became sweated and underpaid. The hours of work were as much as fifteen a day. Women, however, were paid at the same rates per piece, and were subject to the same deductions, and some of them were good hands and could earn as much as men. _Silk._--The broad difference between linen and woollen on the one hand, and silk and cotton on the other, is that the two former, so ancient that their origins are lost to history, arose as household industries at the very early stage of civilisation in which the family is self-sufficient, or nearly so, providing for its own needs and consumption by the work of its own members; the two latter, on the contrary, appear chiefly as trades carried on not for use but for payment, and are also sharply differentiated from the more ancient industries by the fact that the raw materials--silk and cotton--are not indigenous to these islands, but have to be imported. In the manufacture of silk, women early appear as independent producers and manufacturers, for in the fifteenth century they were sufficiently organised to be able collectively to petition Parliament for measures to check the importation of ribbons and wrought silk, and on their behalf was passed an Act (1455) 33 Hen. VI. c. 5, which states that "it is shewed ... by the grievous complaint of the silk women and spinners of the mystery and occupation of silk-working, within the city of London, how that divers Lombards and other strangers, imagining to destroy the said mystery and all such virtuous occupations of women in the said realm, to enrich themselves and to increase them and such occupations in other strange lands, have brought and daily go about to bring into the said realm such silk so made, wrought, twined, ribbands and chains falsely and deceitfully wrought, all manner girdels and other things concerning the said mystery and occupation, in no manner wise bringing any good silk unwrought, as they were wont to bring heretofore, to the final destruction of the said mysteries and occupations, unless it be the more hastily remedied by the King's Majesty." The importation of silk, ribbons, etc., was forthwith prohibited, and we find similar prohibitions in 3 Edw. IV. c. 3 and c. 4, 22 Edw. IV. c. 3, 1 Rich. III. c. 10, and 1 Hen. VII. c. 9. Henry VII. dealt with several silk women for ribands, fringes, and so forth, as recorded in his accounts. A statute of Charles II. 14 Ch. II. c. 15 says many women in London were employed in working silk. The manufacture of silk was introduced into Derbyshire at the beginning of the eighteenth century. John Lombe's silk mill was the first textile mill at work in that county. A rather considerable manufacture of piece silks and silk ribbons and braid grew up in Derby and Glossop, a large proportion of women and girls being employed. The numbers of operatives in this industry increased up to the census of 1851 and 1861, when about 6000 operatives were employed, after which it began to go down, reaching the low figure of 662 in the county in 1901; in 1911, 442. In Macclesfield silk-throwing mills were erected in 1756, the manufacture of silk goods and mohair buttons having been already carried on for centuries. The silk throwsters of Macclesfield for many years worked for Spitalfields and supplied them with thrown silk through the London manufacturers. In 1776, it is recorded, the wages paid to the millmen and stewards were 7s. a week, the women doublers 3s. 6d., children 6d. to 1s. The manufacture of broad silk was established at Macclesfield in 1790. We know by inference that many women must have been employed, but information is unfortunately scanty in regard to the social conditions of this trade, so specially adapted to industrial women. It is evident, however, that women kept their place in it, for the apprenticeship rules laid before the Committee on Ribbon Weavers in 1818 expressly included women, both as apprentices and journeywomen. The inherent delicacy of many of the processes, and the fact that silk as a luxury trade is especially susceptible to changes of fashion, have retarded the use of machinery and preserved the finer fabrics as an artistic handicraft. But this, in itself a development to be welcomed, must also indicate that capital and labour can be more advantageously employed in the industries that have evolved more fully on modern lines, for the silk trade is undoubtedly declining in England. _Other Industries._--If information respecting the traditional employments of women in the linen and woollen trades is sparse and unsatisfactory, much more is it difficult to trace out their conditions in other industries of a less "womanly" character. Yet even in such callings it is sufficiently evident that women were employed. Traill's _Social England_ tells us of women making ropes as early as the thirteenth century. Women are known to have worked in the Derbyshire lead mines, _temp._ Edward II. They washed and cleaned the ore at 1d. a day, and were assisted by four girls at 3/4d. a day, men being employed at the same time at 1-1/2d. a day. Mr. Lapsley, in his account of a fifteenth-century ironworks, records that two women, wives of the smith and foreman respectively, performed miscellaneous tasks, from breaking up the iron-stone to blowing the bellows. In 1652 a Parliamentary commission found that many of the surface workers employed in dressing the ore (_i.e._ freeing it from the earth and spar with which it was mixed) were women and children. An _Account of Mines_, dated 1707, tells us that vast numbers of poor people at that time were employed in "working of mines, the very women and children employed therein, as well as the men, especially in the mines of lead." Women worked in coal-mining at Winterton, "for lack of men," in 1581, and with children were employed in the "great coal-works and workhouses" started by Sir Humphrey Mackworth at Neath. They evidently worked underground, as several deaths of women in mine explosions are recorded. In 1770 Arthur Young found women working in lead mines and earning as much as 1s. a day, a man earning 1s. 3d. In Birmingham trades, especially the making of buttons and other small articles, women were employed as far back as we can find any records. At Burslem, Young found women working in the potteries, earning 5s. to 8s. a week. Near Bristol he found women and girls employed in a copper works for melting copper ore, and making the metal into pins, pans, etc. At Gloucester he found great numbers of women working in the pin manufacture. In the Sheffield plated ware trade he found girls working, but does not mention women. Of the Sheffield trades generally he says that women and girls earn very good wages, "much more than by spinning wool in any part of the kingdom." It is unfortunate that we have, so far, very little information in regard to women's work in non-textile trades previous to the industrial revolution. It is tolerably safe to infer that the above scattered hints indicate a state of things neither new nor exceptional. There can be little doubt that women constantly worked in these trades, either assisting the head of the family, or as a wage-worker for an outside employer. But we know so little that we cannot attempt to enlarge on the subject. CHAPTER II. WOMEN AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. He! an die Arbeit! Alle von hinnen! Hurtig hinab! Aus den neuen Schachten schafft mir das Gold! Euch grüsst die Geissel, grabt ihr nicht rasch! Das keiner mir müssig bürge mir Mime, sonst birgt er sich schwer meines Armes Schwunge: * * * Zögert ihr noch? Zaudert wohl gar? Zittre und zage, gezähmtes Heer! WAGNER, _Das Rheingold_. The cotton trade is the industry most conspicuously identified with the series of complex changes that we call the Industrial Revolution. Its history before that period is comparatively unimportant; we have therefore left it over from the previous chapter to the present. Cottons are mentioned as a Manchester trade in the sixteenth century, but it seems probable that these were really a coarse kind of woollen stuff, and not cotton at all. Cotton wool had, it is true, been imported from the East for some time, but was used only for candle wicks and such small articles, not for cloth. In the Poor Law of Elizabeth, cotton is not included among the articles that might be provided by overseers to "set the poor on work." The first authoritative mention of the cotton manufacture of Manchester occurs in Lewis Roberts' _Treasure of Traffike_. It appears from this tract, which was published in 1641, that the Levant Company used to bring cotton wool to London, which was afterwards taken to Manchester and worked up into "fustians, vermilions, dimities, and other such stuffs." The manufacture had therefore become an established fact by the middle of the seventeenth century, but its growth was not rapid for some time. Owing to the rudeness of the spinning implements used fine yarn could not be spun and fine goods could not be woven. In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, however, Manchester and the cotton manufacture began to increase very markedly in size and activity, and the resulting demand for yarn served to stimulate the invention of machinery. "The weaver was continually pressing upon the spinner. The processes of spinning and weaving were generally performed in the same cottage, but the weaver's own family could not supply him with a sufficient quantity of weft, and he had with much pains to collect it from neighbouring spinsters. Thus his time was wasted, and he was often subjected to high demands for an article on which, as the demand exceeded the supply, the spinner could put her own price." Guest says it was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day, and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon or a gown was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner. The difficulty was intensified in 1738 by Kay's invention of the fly-shuttle, which enabled the weaver to do twice as much work with a given effort, and consequently of course to use up yarn in a similar proportion. John Hargreaves, a Blackburn weaver, contrived a spinning machine which multiplied eightfold the productive power of one spinner, and was, moreover, simple enough to be worked by a child. Subsequent developments and improvements were effected by Paul Wyatt and Arkwright, and the latter being a good business man, unlike some other inventors, made money out of his ideas. The changes effected in rural social life by the industrial revolution are excellently described by W. Radcliffe. In the year 1770, when Radcliffe was a boy nine or ten years old, his native township of Mellor, in Derbyshire, only fourteen miles from Manchester, was occupied by between fifty and sixty farmers; rents did not usually exceed 10s. per statute acre, and of these fifty or sixty farmers, there were only six or seven who paid their rents directly from the produce of their land; all the rest made it partly in some branch of trade, such as spinning and weaving woollen, linen, or cotton. The cottagers were employed entirely in this manner, except at harvest time. The father would earn 8s. to 10s. 6d. at his loom, and his sons perhaps 6s. or 8s. each per week; but the "great sheet-anchor of all cottages and small farms," according to Radcliffe, was the profit on labour at the handwheel. It took six to eight hands to prepare and spin yarn sufficient to keep one weaver occupied, and a demand was thus created for the labour of every person, from young children to the aged, supposing they could see and move their hands. The better class of cottagers and even small farmers also used spinning to make up their rents and help support their families respectably. From the year 1770 to 1788 a complete change was effected in the textile trade, cotton being largely used in substitution for wool and linen. The hand-wheels were mostly thrown into lumber-rooms, and the yarn was all spun on common jennies. In weaving no great change took place in these eighteen years, save the increasing use of the fly-shuttle and the change from woollen and linen to cotton. But the mule twist was introduced about 1788, and the enormous variety of new yarns now in vogue, for the production of every kind of clothing--from the finest book-muslin or lace to the heaviest fustian--added to the demand for weaving, and put all hands in request. The old loom shops being insufficient, every lumber-room, even old barns, cart-houses, and out-buildings of every description were repaired, windows having been broken through the old blank walls, and all were fitted up for weaving. New weavers' cottages with loom-shops also rose up in every direction, and were immediately occupied. It is said that families at this period used to bring home 40s., 60s., 80s., 100s., or even 120s. a week. The operative weavers were in a condition of prosperity never before experienced by them. Every man had a watch in his pocket, women could dress as they pleased, and as Radcliffe records, "the church was crowded to excess every Sunday." Handsome furniture, china, and plated ware, were acquired by these well-to-do families, and many had a cow and a meadow. This prosperity was, however, ephemeral in duration. With the increased complexity and elaboration of machinery, a change came. The profitableness of the trade brought in larger capital, and led to the erection of mills, with water power as the motive force. In such buildings as these machinery could be set up, and labour could be drilled, organised and subdivided, so as to produce a far greater return on the invested capital than in the weavers' shops. These mills were built in places at some distance from towns, and often in valleys and glens for the sake of water-power; they were, however, kept as near towns as possible for the sake of markets and means of transport. The first mills were exclusively devoted to carding and spinning. The gradual increase of this system soon influenced the prosperity of the domestic manufacturer--his profits quickly fell, workmen being readily found to superintend the mill labour at a rate of wages, high, it is true, but yet comparatively much lower than the recently inflated value of home labour. The introduction of steam-power considerably hastened the evolution of the factory industry. The power-loom was invented, or rather its invention was initiated, or suggested, not by a manufacturer, or even by any one conversant with textile work, but by a Kentish clergyman, named Cartwright. He heard of Arkwright's spinning machinery in 1784 from some Manchester men whom he met, apparently quite by chance, at Matlock. One of these remarked that the machines which had just been perfected would produce so much cotton that no hands could ever be found to weave it. Cartwright replied that in that case Arkwright must invent a weaving mill. The Manchester men all declared this to be impossible, and gave Cartwright all sorts of technical reasons for their belief. He, however, went home and rapidly thought out a rude contrivance which he employed a carpenter and smith to make under his orders, got a weaver to put in a warp, and found that the thing worked, though in a rough and unwieldy manner. Unfortunately, like so many inventors, he had little or no business ability. His first factory was a failure. He made a second attempt, in 1791, and erected considerable buildings. By this time the weavers were already up in arms. Cartwright received threatening letters, and the factory was burnt. Nevertheless, the change was progressing, and where one failed, others were destined to succeed. Several weaving factories were started in Scotland, at the end of the century, and in 1803 Horrocks put up some iron automatic looms at Stockport, which were soon copied in other towns of Lancashire. The power-loom, however, was still imperfect in detail, and did not come into general use until about 1833. The downfall of prices in weaving, which for the workers concerned was as tragic as it was astonishing, can be seen in a table in "Social and Economic History," _Victoria County History, Lancashire_, vol. ii. p. 327. Miss Alice Law gives the prices for the whole series of years 1814-1833; as the work is fairly accessible I reproduce only samples, which show the trend sufficiently well. PRICES FOR WEAVING ONE PIECE OF SECOND OR THIRD 74 CALICO. +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | 1814. | 1820. | 1821. | 1833. | |--------------------------|---------|---------|---------|---------| | |_s._ _d._|_s._ _d._|_s._ _d._|_s._ _d._| |Average price per piece. | 6 6 | 2 11 | 3 2 | 1 4 | |Average weekly sum a | | | | | | good weaver could earn | 26 0 | 11 8 | 12 7 | 5 4 | |Sum a family of 6, 3 being| | | | | | weavers, could earn. | 52 0 | 23 4 | 28 3-3/4| 12 0 | |Indispensable weekly | | | | | | expenses for repair of | | | | | | looms, fuel, light. | 5 3 | 5 3 | 5 3 | 4 3 | |Sum remaining to six | | | | | | persons for food and | | | | | | clothing per week. | 46 9 | 18 1 | 23 0-3/4| 7 9 | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Subjected to the competition of power-looms, the hand-weavers were compelled either to desert their employment and seek factory work, as in fact the younger, more capable and energetic of them actually did, or to reduce their rates of pay, which in time reached the point of starvation. It is extremely difficult to find much definite information as to the condition of industrial women in this period. The technical changes, commercial and political controversies, the startling growth of wealth, and the conflicts of labour and capital that made up the more striking and dramatic side of the industrial revolution have naturally impressed the imagination of historians. Little attention has been given to the state of women at this time. It is by inference from known facts rather than by actual documentary evidence that we can arrive at an estimate of the effects on women of these extraordinary changes. A certain proportion of women, no doubt a very small one, must certainly have arrived at wealth and prosperity through the rapid accession of fortune achieved by some of the weavers and yeomen farmers, who became employers on a large scale. This is scarcely the place to treat of this subject, though it is by no means destitute of interest.[11] There were, further, women who distinctly benefited by the improved wages of men in certain industries, when the spending power of the family was increased by the new methods. This was the case temporarily in the weaving trade during the period of expansion through cheaper yarn noted above; Dr. Cunningham says that "the improved rates for weaving rendered the women and children independent, and unwilling to 'rival a wooden jenny.'"[12] Baines also tells us at a later date, that where a spinner is assisted by his own children in the mill, "his income is so large that he can live more generously, clothe himself and his family better than many of the lower class of tradesmen, and though improvidence and misconduct too often ruin the happiness of these families, yet there are thousands of spinners in the cotton districts who eat meat every day, wear broad cloth on the Sunday, dress their wives and children well, furnish their houses with mahogany and carpets, subscribe to publications, and pass through life with much of humble respectability."[13] The effects of the industrial revolution on women other than the two classes just indicated are more complicated. In the first place, the rural labouring class suffered considerably from the loss of by-industries, which in some districts had been a great help in eking out the wages of the head of the family. _Decay of Hand-Spinning._--In regard to this subject the facts are fairly well known. Towards the end of the eighteenth century spinning ceased to be remunerative, even as a by-industry. As the work became more specialised, as the machines came more and more into use, it became more and more difficult for a mere home industry to compete with work done under capitalistic conditions. Numbers of families, previously independent, became unable to support themselves without help from the rates. Sir Frederick Eden gives some concrete cases. At Halifax he notes that "many poor women who earned a bare subsistence by spinning, are now in a very wretched condition." He ascribes this to the influence of the war in reducing the price of weaving and spinning, but no doubt the competition of the machine industry was already an important factor. At Leeds, where the new methods had been largely introduced, the workers were better off. In another place he gives some instances of workers at Kendal where the earnings of a whole family, the father weaving and the wife and elder children weaving, spinning, or knitting, were insufficient to maintain them without the aid of the Poor Law. In an article in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (May 1834, p. 531), the writer remarks, as if noticing a new phenomenon, that the families of labourers are now dependent on the men's labours or nearly so; and adds rather brutally "they [the families] hang as a dead weight upon the rates for want of employment." The loss of these by-industries as a supplementary source of income was no doubt one of several causes that impelled the drift of labour from the country to the town. It is also worth noting that the women lost, not only their earnings, but something in variety of work and in manual training. _The Hand-Loom Weaver's Wife._--More miserable still was the fate of those hand-weavers who found the piece-rates of their work constantly sagging downwards, and were unable or unwilling to find another trade. It appears that there was a kind of reciprocal movement going on between the spinners and weavers during the transition, which is of interest as illustrating the kind of skill and intelligence that was required. The weavers, who had been enjoying a period of such unusual prosperity and might be expected therefore to have more knowledge of the progress of trade and to be possessed at least of some small capital, not infrequently abandoned the loom, purchased machinery for spinning, and gradually rose more and more into the position of an employer or trader rather than a mere craftsman. On the other hand, the spinner of the poorer sort, being unable to keep pace with the growing expense of the improved and ever more elaborate machinery, not infrequently threw aside the wheel and took to weaving, as the easier solution of the immediate problem of subsistence for a hand-worker who had neither capital nor business ability to enable him to succeed in the new conditions of the struggle. Thus the ranks of the hand-weavers tended to be swollen by the failures of other industries and depleted of the most capable men, and as Mantoux notes, "the fall in weavers' wages actually preceded the introduction of machinery for weaving." From 1793 the reduction of weavers' rates was constant. The weaving of a piece of velvet, paid at £4 in 1792, brought the worker only £2 : 15s. in 1794, £2 in 1796, £1 : 16s. in 1800. At the same time the quantity in a piece was increased. This violent depreciation of hand-work was caused at first by surplus labour, and was subsequently aggravated by machinism. The workers who were most capable cast in their lot with the new system and the new methods. But the misery of the slower, older, less energetic worker was terrible. In the Coventry ribbon trade wages were lowered by the employment of young people as half-pay apprentices, who were taken on for two, three or five years, and bound by an unstamped indenture or agreement. These were principally girls; the boys, for the sake of the elective franchise, were generally bound for seven years. It was stated before Peel's Committee in 1816, by the Town Clerk of Coventry (p. 4), that in 1812, the demand for labour being very great, numbers of girls had been induced to leave their situations, for the sake of the higher wages in the ribbon trade. The boom collapsed, and many of them came upon the poor rates, or, as it was alleged, on the streets. Weavers' earnings were reduced by one half. Another witness, a master manufacturer, saw in the system a transition to the factory system, and prophesied that if the half-pay apprentice system were not done away with, it would "cut up the trade wholly, so that there will be no such thing as a journeyman weaver to be found.... We shall all build large manufactories to contain from fifty to a hundred looms or upwards, and we must all have these half-pay apprentices, and the journeymen will all be reduced, and they must come to us and work for so much a week or go to the parish." The effects of industrial change are felt by women directly as members of the family; the impoverishment of the male wage-earner whose occupation is taken away by technical developments means the anguished struggle of the wife and mother to keep her children from starving. The wife could often earn nearly as much as her husband, and the intensest dislike to the factory could not stand against those hard economic facts. The Select Committee on Handloom Weavers, 1834, took evidence from disconsolate broken-hearted men, who showed that their earnings were utterly inadequate for family subsistence and must needs be supplemented by the wives working in factories. One poor Irishman said that he and his little daughter of nine between them minded the baby of fifteen months. Another weaver, a man of his acquaintance, must have starved if he had not had a wife to go out to work for him. The bitterness of the position was accentuated by the fact that the weaver's traditions and associations were bound up with the domestic system, and in no class probably was factory work for women more unwelcome. The change was resented as a break-up of family life. Hargreaves' spinning jenny, Cartwright's combing machine, Jacquard's loom, to mention no others, were at different times destroyed by an angry mob. With desperate energy the unions long opposed the introduction of women workers. What drove the men to these hopeless struggles was the lowering of wages that they discerned to be the probable, nay, certain result of both changes. The tragedy of the man who loses his work, or finds its value suddenly shrunken by no fault of his own, is as poignant as any in history. It means not only his own loss and suffering, but the degradation of his standard of life and the break-up of his home. It is not simply man against woman, but man _plus_ the wife and children he loves against the outside irresponsible woman (as he conceives her) whose interests are nothing to him. _The Factory._--The great inventions were not, as we so often are apt to imagine them, the effort of a single brain, of "a great man" in the Carlylean sense. Mechanical progress, in its early stages at all events, is often the result of the intelligence of innumerable workers, brought to bear on all kinds of practical difficulties, and mechanical problems. Thus one of the many attempts at a spinning machine was set up in a warehouse in Birmingham in 1741; the machine was set in motion by two asses walking round an axis, and ten or a dozen girls were employed in superintending and assisting the operation! This highly picturesque arrangement proved unworkable and was given up as a failure. Again, at a later date, the first spinning machines that came into general use by the country people of Lancashire were small affairs, and the awkward position required to work them was, as Aikin tells us, "discouraging to grown-up people, who saw with surprise children from nine to twelve years of age manage them with dexterity." In these cases and others like them, we still call the work spinning, because the result is the same as from hand-spinning, viz. yarn; but in reality the process is new, the work is a rearrangement of human activity, rather than a transfer. We may very well admit, in the light of present day knowledge, that the transfer of the occupation from the home to the outside factory or workshop was by no means an unqualified loss, was indeed a social advance. The discomfort of using a small and restricted home as a work place, the litter and confusion that are almost inevitable, not to mention the depression of being always in the midst of one's working environment, are such as can hardly be realised by those who have not given attention to industrial matters. But this was not the aspect that the poor weavers themselves could see, or could possibly be expected to see. The break-up of the customary home life endeared to them by long habit and association was only a less misfortune than their increasing destitution. The family ceased to be an industrial unit. The factory demanded "hands." The machines caused a complete shifting of processes of work, a shifting which, I need hardly say, is going on even up to the present time. Much work that had previously been regarded as skilled and difficult, demanding technical training and apprenticeship, became light and easy, within the powers of a child, a young girl, or a woman. On the other hand, work that had been done in every cottage, now was handed over to a skilled male operative, working with all the help capital and elaborate machinery could give him. The effects of the factory system were the subject of much keen and even violent controversy during the first half of the nineteenth century. During the first two or three decades child-labour was the most prominent question; women's labour appears to have been very much taken for granted (Robert Owen, for instance, says little about it) and it became a subject of controversy only about the time of the passing of the first effective Factory Act, in 1833. Baines, Ure, and the elder Cooke Taylor, may be mentioned among those who took an extremely optimistic view of factory industry and devoted much energy and ingenuity to proving it to be innocuous, or even beneficial to health, and on the other hand were P. Gaskell, John Fielden, Philip Grant, and others, who violently attacked it. Even in modern times Schultze-Gävernitz and Allen Clarke have presented us with carefully considered views almost equally divergent. The modern reader, who tries to reconcile opinions so extraordinarily antagonistic may well feel bewildered and despair of arriving at any coherent statement. How are we to account for the fact, for instance, that the development of the factory, with its female labour and machinery, was viewed with the utmost hostility by the workers, and yet on the other hand that the rural labourers streamed into the towns to apply for work in factories, and could seldom or never be induced to go back again? How are we to account for the extraordinarily different views of men of the same period, intelligent, kind-hearted, and with fair opportunities of judging the facts of social life? I am far from expecting to solve these questions entirely, but a few considerations may be helpful. In the first place we have to remember that the change brought about by the great industry and the factory system was so far-reaching and so complex that it was impossible for any one human brain at once to grasp the whole. Thus it happened that one set of facts would appeal strongly to one observer, and another set, equally strongly, to another observer. Each would overlook what to the other was of the greatest importance. Political sentiment also counted for a good deal, the landed interest (mostly Tories) being extremely keen-sighted to any wrongdoing of the manufacturers and their friends (mostly Liberal), while these last were not slow to reciprocate with equally faithful criticism. By taking the optimists alone, or the reformers alone, we get a consistent but inadequate view of industrial conditions. By combining them we arrive at a contradictory, unsatisfactory picture, which may, however, be somewhat nearer the truth than either can give us alone. It is also necessary to bear in mind the unspoken assumptions, the background, so to speak, existing in any writer's brain. It would make a great difference in a man's view of social conditions in 1825, say, if he was mentally contrasting them with the terrible scarcity and poverty that prevailed at the turn of the century, or if his recollections were mainly occupied with that bright period of prosperity enjoyed by the weavers some years earlier, a prosperity brief indeed, but lasting long enough to make a profound impression on the minds of those who shared in or witnessed it. Another consideration which is of use in clearing up the chaos of historical evidence on these questions, is the immense variety in conditions from one factory to another. This is the case even at the present day, when the Factory Act requires a certain minimum of decency and comfort. The factory inspectors record the extraordinary difference still existing in these respects, and, as a personal experience, the present writer well remembers the extreme contrast between two match factories visited some years ago at a very short interval; the one crowded, gloomy, with weary, exhausted, slatternly-looking girls doing perilous work in a foul atmosphere; the other with ample space, light, and ventilation, the workers cleanly dressed, and supplied with the best appliances known to make the work safe and harmless. Such an experience is some guide in helping the modern student to comprehend more or less why Fielden wrote of _The Curse of the Factory System_, while Ure could maintain: "The fine spinning mills at Manchester ... in the beauty, delicacy and ingenuity of the machines have no parallel among the works of man nor _in the orderly arrangement_, and the value of the products." There is no doubt that the early factories were often run by men who, whatever their energy, thrift, and ability for business, did not mostly possess the qualities necessary to a man who is to have the control, during at least half the week, of a crowd of workers, many of them women and children. Men like Owen and Arkwright were working out a technique and a tradition, not only for the mechanical side, but for the human side of this new business of employment on a large scale. But not all employers were Owens or even Arkwrights. P. Gaskell writes: "Many of the first successful manufacturers were men who had their origin in the rank of mere operatives, or who had sprung from the extinct class of yeomen.... The celerity with which some of these individuals accumulated wealth in the early times of steam spinning and weaving, is proof that they were men of quick views, great energy of character, and possessing no small share of sagacity ... but they were men of very limited general information--men who saw and knew little of anything beyond the demand for their twist or cloth, and the speediest and best modes for their production. They were, however, from their acquired station, men who exercised very considerable influence upon the hordes of workmen who became dependent upon them." Here Gaskell has brought out a point which is singularly ignored by the writers of what may be called the optimistic school. We may fully agree with these last in their contention that the working class benefited by the increased production, higher wages, and cheapened goods secured by the factory system, or "great industry," as it is called. But they overlook the point of the immense power that system put into the hands of individual masters, over the lives, and moral and physical health of workers. For the whole day long, and sometimes for the night also, the operative was in the factory; the temperature of the air he breathed, the hours he worked, the sanitary and other conditions of his work were settled by those in control of the works, who were not responsible in any way to any external supervising authority for the conditions of employment, save to the very limited extent required by the early Factory Acts, which were ineffectively administered. In a curious passage the elder Cooke Taylor, who was in many ways a most careful and intelligent observer, shows how completely he fails to grasp the position: A factory is an establishment where several workmen are collected together for the purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper conveniences for labour than they could procure individually at their homes; for producing results by their combined efforts, which they could not accomplish separately.... The principle of a factory is that each labourer, working separately, is controlled by some associating principle, which directs his producing powers to effecting a common result, which it is the object of all collectively to attain. Factories are therefore a result of the universal tendency to association which is inherent in our nature, and by the development of which every advance in human improvement and human happiness has been gained. Every sentence here is true; but the combined effect is not true. Taylor ingenuously omits one important fact. The "associating principle" is the employer working for his own hand, and the "common result" is that employer's profit. Marx saw that the subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of machines, and the bringing together of individuals of both sexes and all ages gave rise to a system of elaborate discipline, dividing the workers into operatives and overlookers, into "private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army." But it is not necessary to call in the rather suspect authority of Marx. Richards, the Factory Inspector, who by no means took a sentimental view of mill work, had written quite candidly: A steam engine in the hands of an interested or avaricious master is a relentless power, to which old and young are equally bound to submit. Their position in these mills is that of thraldom; fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen hours per day, is exhausting to the strength of all, yet none dare quit the occupation, from the dread of losing work altogether. Industry is thus in bonds; unprotected children are equally bound to the same drudgery.[14] This cast-iron regularity of the factory system was felt as a terrible hardship, especially in the case of women, and often amounted to actual slavery. Wholesale accusations were brought against the factory system as being in itself immoral and a cause of depravity. Southey said of the factory children, that: The moral atmosphere wherein they live and move and have their being is as noxious to the soul, as the foul and tainted air which they inhale is to their bodily constitution.... What shall we say then of a system which ... debases all who are engaged in it?... It is a wen, a fungous excrescence from the body politic. Here we may as well admit that the agitators, though possibly right in their facts, did not represent them in a true perspective. Perhaps the worst feature of working-class life at this time was the scandalous state of housing. The manufacturing towns had grown up rapidly to meet a sudden demand. The progress of enclosing, the decay of home industry, and the call of capital for labour in towns had caused a considerable displacement of population. The immigrants had to find house-room in the outskirts of what had but lately been mere villages. Sanitary science was backward, and municipal government was decadent and could not cope with the rush to the towns. The immigrant population and the existing social conditions were of a type favourable to a rapid increase in numbers, economic independence at an early age not unnaturally tending towards unduly early marriage and irresponsibility of character. Dr. Aikin writes: As Manchester may bear comparison with the metropolis itself in the rapidity with which whole new streets have been raised, and in its extension on every side toward the surrounding country; so it unfortunately vies with, or exceeds the metropolis, in the closeness with which the poor are crowded in offensive, dark, damp, and incommodious habitations, a too fertile source of disease.[15] There is abundant evidence of equally bad conditions in other towns. Such circumstances are inevitably demoralising, and they served to give the impression that the factory population, as such, was extraordinarily wild and wicked. But these particular evils were not specially due to the factory system. In the matter of sanitation and housing there can be little doubt that the rural population was no better, perhaps even worse cared-for than the urban or industrial, the main difference of course being that neglect of cleanliness and elementary methods of sewage disposal are less immediate and disastrous evils among a sparse and scattered population than they are in towns. Much has been written and spoken about the evils of factory life in withdrawing the mother from the home, and causing neglect of children and infants. Yet even this, an evil which no one would desire to minimise, is not peculiar to factory towns. A report on the state of the Agricultural Population says that: Even when they have been taught to read and write, the women of the agricultural labouring class (viz. in Wilts, Devon, and Dorset), are in a state of ignorance affecting the daily welfare and comfort of their families. Ignorance of the commonest things, needlework, cooking, and other matters of domestic economy, is described as universally prevalent.... A girl brought up in a cottage until she marries is generally ignorant of nearly everything she ought to be acquainted with for the comfortable and economic management of a cottage ... a young woman goes into the fields to labour, with which ends all chance of improving her position; she marries and brings up her daughters in the same ignorance, and their lives are a repetition of her own. Material progress had completely outdistanced the social side of civilisation. It was easy to see that old-fashioned restrictions on commerce needed to be swept away, as a trammel and a hindrance; but where was the constructive effort and initiative to shape the new fabric of society that should supply the people's needs? It was the misfortune of the factory system that it took its sudden start at a moment when the entire energies of the British legislature were preoccupied with the emergencies of the French Revolution.... The foundations on which it reposes were laid in obscurity and its early combinations developed without attracting the notice of statesmen or philosophers.... There thus crept into unnoticed existence a closely condensed population, under modifying influences the least understood, for whose education, religious wants, legislative and municipal protection, no care was taken and for whose physical necessities the more forethought was requisite, from the very rapidity with which men were attracted to these new centres. To such causes may be referred the incivilisation and immorality of the overcrowded manufacturing towns.[16] It is curious to compare the criminal neglect here indicated with the self-complacency of the governing classes of this country, and the immense claims for admiration and respect often put forth on account of their control of home and local administration. In this tremendous crisis in the social life of the country, the complex changes of the industrial revolution, the classes in power sat by, apathetic and uninterested, taking little or no pains to cope with the problem, or interfered merely with harsh or even cruel repression of the workers' efforts to combine for self-defence. Although Dr. Percival and Dr. Ferrier had drawn attention to the disease and unhealthy conditions existing in factories as far back as 1784 and 1796, it was not until 1833 that a Factory Act was passed containing any administrative provisions that could be deemed effective. Public health measures came later still. Much as the industrial employers were abused by the landowners, it is a fact that reforms and ameliorative projects were started originally by the former. Sir Robert Peel, who owned cotton factories, was the pioneer of factory legislation, and Robert Owen gave the impetus to industrial reform by the humanity and ability that characterised his management of his own mill, and the generosity of his treatment of his own employees. _The Woman Wage-Earner._--The initiation of the factory system undoubtedly fixed and defined the position of the woman wage-earner. For good or for evil, the factory system transformed the nature of much industrial work, rendering it indefinitely heterogeneous, and incidentally opening up new channels for the employment, first, unfortunately, of children, afterwards of women. In the case of spinning, the division of work between men and women was attended with considerable complications, and it appears that the masters confidently expected to employ women in greater proportions than was actually feasible. A comparison of the evidence by masters and men respectively given before the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery throws some interesting sidelights on the question, though it does not make it absolutely clear. Dunlop, a Glasgow master, had frequent disputes with the "combination" as the union was then called. He built a new mill with machinery which he hoped would make it unnecessary to employ men at all. In a few years he was, however, again employing men as before, and his account of the matter was that this change of front was due to the violence of the men's unions. Two of the operative leaders, however, came up at a later stage to protest against Dunlop's version. They showed that the persistent violence attributed to the men really narrowed down to a single case of assault some years before, when there was not sufficient evidence to commit the men accused. They denied the alleged opposition to women's employment and declared that there was absolutely no connexion between the outrage complained of and the substitution of men for women, which had in fact been effected by Dunlop's sons during his absence in America, and was due to the fact that the women could not do as much or as good work on the spinning machines as men could. Dunlop also had given an exaggerated account of the wages paid, making no allowance for stoppage and breakdown of machinery, which were frequent. A few years later we find some interesting evidence as to the efforts of further developments in spinning machinery. A Mr. Graham told the Select Committee on Manufactures and Commerce that he was introducing self-acting mules, and did not yet know whether women could be adapted to their use, but hoped to get rid of "all the spinners who are making exorbitant wages," and employ piecers only, giving one of the piecers a small increase in wages. He was also employing a number of women upon a different description of wheels, and others in throstle spinning. According to him the women got about 18s. a week, a statement which it would probably be wise to discount. Being asked whether the self-acting mules or the spinning by women would be cheapest, he replied that it was hoped the spinning by self-acting mules would be cheapest, as even the women were combining and giving trouble. In 1838, Doherty, a labour man, showed that although women were allowed to spin in Manchester, "whole mills of them," the number was being reduced, the physical strength of women being insufficient to work the larger wheels which had come into use. It is useful to obtain some idea of the views of the employing class at a time of such complex changes, and it seems evident that some at least were almost taken off their feet by the exciting prospects opening out to them, and hoped to dispense very largely with skilled male labour, or even with adult labour altogether. At the present time though there have been great developments in machinery, spinning is the one large department of the cotton industry in which men still exceed women in numbers. The employment of women in ring-spinning is increasing, but there are special counts which can only be done on the mule, which is beyond the woman's strength and skill. Between 1901 and 1911 male cotton-spinners increased in numbers 31 per cent, female 60 per cent. The totals were in 1911 respectively 84,000 and 55,000. The introduction of the power-loom was a very important event in the history of women's employment. Even in 1840 a woman working a power-loom could do "twice as much" as a man with a hand-loom, and the assistant commissioner who made this observation added the prophecy that in another generation women only would be employed, save a few men for the necessary superintendence and care of the machinery. "There will be no weavers as a class; the work will be done by the wives of agricultural labourers or different mechanics." Gaskell, a writer who gave much thought and consideration to the problems before his eyes, and saw a good deal more than many of his contemporaries, also thought that machinery would soon reach a point at which "automata" would have done away with the need of adult workmen. He says, however, on another page, that "since steam-weaving became general the number of adults engaged in the mills has been progressively advancing inasmuch as very young children are not competent to take charge of steam-looms. The individuals employed at them are chiefly girls and young women, from sixteen to twenty-two." Gaskell attributed the employment of women in factories, not so much to their taking less wages, as to their being more docile and submissive than men. Out of 800 weavers employed in one establishment, and which was ... composed indiscriminately, of men, women, and children--the one whose earnings were the most considerable, was a girl of sixteen.... The mode of payment ... is payment for work done--piece-work as it is called.... Thus this active child is put upon more than a par with the most robust adult; is in fact placed in a situation decidedly advantageous compared to him.... Workmen above a certain age are difficult to manage.... Men who come late into the trade, learn much more slowly than children ... and as all are paid alike, so much per pound, or yard, it follows that these men ... are not more efficient labourers than girls and boys, and much less manageable.... Adult male labour having been found difficult to manage and not more productive--its place has, in a great measure, been supplied by children and women; and hence the outcry which has been raised with regard to infant labour, in its moral and physical bearings. This passage, involved as it is in thought and expression, is not without interest as a reflection of the mind of that time, painfully working out contemporary problems. Gaskell confuses women's labour with child labour, and it is difficult to discover from this book that he has ever given any thought to the former problem at all. The family for him is the social unit, and women are classed with children as beings for whom the family as a matter of course provides. He omits from consideration the woman thrown upon her own exertions, and the grown-up girl, who, even if living at home, must earn. It is not difficult to find other instances of similar _naïveté_; thus in the supplementary Report on Child Labour in Factories, it was gravely suggested that it may be wrong to be much concerned because women's wages are low. Nature effects her own purpose wisely and more effectually than could be done by the wisest of men. The low price of female labour makes it the most profitable as well as the most agreeable occupation for a female to superintend her own domestic establishment, and her low wages do not tempt her to abandon the care of her own children. Here again, there is apparently no perception of the case of the woman, who, by sheer economic necessity, is forced to work, whether for herself alone, or for her children also. It is hardly necessary to remark that the estimate quoted above, according to which the girl weaving on a power-loom could do twice as much as a man on a hand-loom, has since been enormously exceeded. Schultz-Gävernitz in 1895 thought that a power-loom weaver accomplished about as much as forty good hand-weavers, and no doubt even this estimate is now out of date. Partly for technical, partly for other reasons, the woman's presence in the factory is now much more taken for granted. The girl who is to be a weaver begins work usually at twelve years old, the minimum age permitted by law, and may spend six weeks with a relation or friends learning the ways. She thus becomes a "tenter" or "helper," and fetches the weft, carries away the finished goods, sweeps and cleans. At thirteen or fourteen she may have two looms to mind, and will earn about 12s. a week. At sixteen she will be promoted to three looms, and later on to four, beyond which women seldom go; a man sometimes minds six looms, but needs a helper for this extra strain. The work needs considerable skill and attention. Often a four-loom weaver will be turning out four different kinds of cloth on the four looms. It is also fatiguing, as she is on her feet the whole ten hours of her legal day, sometimes, unfortunately, lengthened by the objectionable practice known as "time-cribbing," which means that ten or even fifteen minutes are taken from the legal meal times, and added to the working hours. It takes some years to become an efficient weaver, and the drain on the weaver's strength and vitality is considerable. Where steaming is used, colds and rheumatism are very prevalent. It is noticed by the weavers that the sickness rate is lower in times of bad trade, and indeed slack seasons are regarded as times for much-needed recuperation. Women, although they equal or here and there even excel men in skill and quickness, fail in staying power. Many get fagged out by three o'clock in the afternoon. The great increase in speed is also a factor in sickness. Weavers are now said to be doing as much work in a day as in a day and a half twelve or thirteen years ago, and the wages have increased, but not proportionately. The work involves not only physical, but mental strain, and many cases of nervous break-down and anaemia are known to occur among weavers. It should not be forgotten that many women and girls have domestic work to do after their day's work in the mill is over, and the high standard of comfort and "house pride" in Lancashire makes this a considerable addition. Another large class of women cotton operatives are the card-room workers, officially described as "card-and blowing-room operatives." In this department men and women do different work. The men do the more dangerous, more unhealthy, and also the better paid work. Women's work also is dangerous, and unhealthy from the dust and cotton fibre that pervade the atmosphere. An agitation is on foot to have a dust-extractor fixed to every carding-engine. The operatives suffer chiefly from excessive speed and pressure. They are continually pressed to keep the machines going, and not to stop them even for necessary cleaning, and I am assured by a card-room operative that in the card-room the highest percentage of accidents for the week occurs on Friday, when the principal weekly cleaning takes place, and the lowest on Monday, when cleaning is not required; also that the highest percentage of accidents during the day occurs on an average between 10 A.M. and 12 noon, when the dirtiest parts of the machinery are usually wiped over. The chief cause of these accidents is cleaning while the machinery is in motion. The present rate of speed produces extreme exhaustion in the workers, and some consider that card-room work is altogether too hard for women, and not suitable to their physical capacity. It is said to be done entirely by men in America. The male weaver is by no means extinct, as the prophets we have quoted seemed to expect. Cotton-weaving offers the very unusual, perhaps unique example of a large occupation employing both man and woman, and on equal terms. The earnings of the male weaver are, however, very inferior to those of the spinner, and he cannot unaided support a family without being considerably straitened, according to the Lancashire standard. But, in point of fact, a weaver when he marries usually marries a woman who is also working at a mill, and if she is a weaver her earnings are very likely as good as his. In this industry women attain to very nearly as great skill and dexterity as do men; in some branches even greater. In Lancashire the standard of working-class life and comfort is high, and a woman whose husband is a weaver will not brook that her next-door neighbour, whose husband may be a spinner or machine-maker, should dress their children better, or have better window-curtains than she can. She continues to work at her own trade, and the two incomes are combined until the woman is temporarily prevented working at the mill. An interval of some months may be taken off by a weaver for the birth of her baby, but she will return to the mill afterwards, and again after a second; at the third or fourth child she usually retires from industry. Later on the children begin earning. Thus the male weaver's most difficult and troubled times are when his children are quite young, his wife temporarily incapacitated, and his earnings their sole support. When both husband and wife are earning, their means are good relatively to their standard; and again as the young people grow up, the combined income of the family may be even ample. The young children whose mother is absent at work are looked after in the day-time by a grandmother, or by a neighbour who is paid for the work. It was stated, half-ironically, perhaps, before the Labour Commission that there was a "standard list for this sort of business." Opinions differ as to whether the children are or are not neglected under this system. There is, however, evidence to show that many Lancashire women, at least among those who are relatively well paid, are good mothers and good housekeepers even though they work their ten hours a day. They go to work because their standard of life is high, and they cannot live up to it without working. _The Industrial Revolution in Non-Textile Trades._--This subject, though sociologically of great interest, cannot here be treated at length; it must suffice to indicate a few points in regard to women, trusting that some later writer will some day paint for England a finished picture on the scale of Miss Butler's fine study "Women and the Trades," of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. The factory system has now invaded one manufacturing industry after another, and the use of power and division of work in numerous processes have opened a considerable amount of employment to women. There have been two lines of development; on the one hand, occupations have been opened for women in trades with which previously they had nothing, or very little to do; on the other hand, industries hitherto almost entirely in the hands of women, and carried on chiefly in homes or small workrooms or shops, such as dressmaking, the making of underclothing, laundry work and so on, have been to some extent changed in character, and have in part become factory industries of the modern type. In 1843 the sub-commissioner who investigated Birmingham industries for the Children's Employment Commission, was struck by the extent of women's and children's employment. Very large numbers of children were employed in a great variety of manufacturing processes, and women's labour was being substituted for men's in many branches. In all trades there were at the same time complaints of want of employment and urgent distress, involving large numbers of mechanics. Mr. Grainger saw women employed in laborious work, such as stamping buttons and brass nails, and notching the heads of screws, and considered these to be unfit occupations for women. In screw manufactories the women and girls constituted 80 to 90 per cent of the whole number employed. A considerable number of girls, fourteen and upwards, were employed in warehouses packing the goods, giving in and taking out work. Non-textile industries were as yet quite unregulated, and many of the reports made to this commissioner indicate very bad conditions as to health and morals. The sanitary conditions were atrocious, except where the employers were specially conscientious and gave attention to the subject; there was little protection against accident, and child-labour was permitted at very early years. Most of the abuses noted had to do either with insanitary conditions or with child-labour. The women and girls are described as having been often twisted or injured by premature employment, and as being totally without education. One witness who gave evidence considered that the lack of education was more disastrous for girls than for boys. In 1864 the Children's Employment Commission found that the number and size of large factories had grown since 1841, and the number of women in the Birmingham district employed in metal manufactures was estimated at 10,000. In 1866, when the British Association visited Birmingham, Mr. S. Timmins prepared a series of reports on local industries, the index of which gives no less than thirty-six references to women, which is some indication how widely they were employed. In the steel pen trade, for instance, which had developed from a small trade in hand-made pens, costing several shillings each, into a large factory industry, numbers of girls and women were employed, and a comparatively small proportion of men. In 1866, there were estimated to be 360 men, 2050 women and girls employed in Birmingham pen-works. Women were employed extensively in the light chain trade, also in lacquering in the brass trade, and in many other occupations. Successive censuses show very rapid increases in the employment of women in the metal trades generally, though, of course, they bear a much lower proportion to men in these trades taken as a whole than in the textile trades. Similar developments are taking place in food and tobacco trades, soap, chemicals, paper and stationery. The boot and shoe trade is a good example of the rapid opening-out of opportunities for women's employment. At the time of the Labour Commission (1893) it was noted that Bristol factories were mostly not up to date or efficient. Since that time there has been a rapid extension of factory work for women, and the methods in the boot and shoe trade have been revolutionised by the introduction of the power sewing-machine, and by production on a large scale. The new factories in or near Bristol have lofty rooms, modern improved sanitary and warming apparatus, and the best are carefully arranged with a view to maintaining the health and efficiency of the workers. In 1903 a committee of the Economic Section of the British Association found in Sheffield that machinery had been displacing file cutlery made by hand for fifteen years past, and some women were already finding employment on the lighter machines. In Coventry the cycle industry employed an increasing number of women; watchmaking was becoming a factory industry, and the proportion of women to men had increased rapidly. Women are even employed in some processes subsidiary to engineering, such as core-making. But it should be remembered that these openings for women do not necessarily mean permanent loss of work for men, though some temporary loss there no doubt very often is. The rearrangement of industry and the subdivision of processes mean that new processes are appropriated to women; and it is likely enough that among factory operatives women are, and will be, an increasing proportion. But therewith must come an increasing demand for men's labour in mining, smelting and forging metal, and in other branches into which women are unlikely to intrude. In the clothing trades the industrial revolution has made some way, and is doubtless going to make still more way, but it is unlikely that the older-fashioned methods of tailoring and dressmaking can ever be superseded as completely as was the hand-loom weaving in the cotton trade. Dress is a matter of individual taste and fancy, and much as the factory-made clothing and dressmaking has improved in the last ten or twenty years, it is unlikely ever to supply the market entirely. Stay-making is a rapidly developing factory industry at Bristol, Ipswich and elsewhere. In underclothing and children's clothing also the factory system is making considerable advances. It is startling to see babies' frocks or pinafores made on inhuman machines moved by power, with rows of fixed needles whisking over the elaborate tucks; but if the resulting article be both good and cheap, and the women operatives paid much better than they would be for the same number of hours' needlework, sentimental objections are perhaps out of place. In such factories as I have been permitted to visit, mostly non-textile, I have noticed that men and women are usually doing, not the same, but different kinds of work, and that the work done by women seems to fall roughly into three classes. My classification is probably quite unscientific, and indicates merely a certain social order perceived or conceived by an observer ignorant of the technical side of manufacturing and chiefly interested in the social or sociological aspect. In the first place, there is usually some amount of rough hard work in the preparing and collecting of the material, or the transporting it from one part of the factory to another. Such work is exemplified by the rag-cutting in paper-mills, fruit-picking in jam factories, the sorting soiled clothes in laundries, the carrying of loads from one room to another, and such odd jobs. I incline to think that the arrangements made for dealing with this class of work are a very fair index to the character and ability of the employer. In good paper-mills, for instance, though nothing could make rag-cutting an attractive job, its objectionable features are mitigated by a preliminary cleansing of the rags, and by good ventilation in the work. In ill-managed factories of various kinds the carrying of heavy loads is left to the women workers' unaided strength, and is a most unpleasing sight to those who do not care to see their sisters acting as beasts of burden, not to mention that heavy weight-carrying is often highly injurious, provoking internal trouble. In the case of trays of boiling fruit, jam, etc., it may lead to horrible accidents. In well-managed factories this carrying of loads is arranged for by mechanical means or a strong porter is retained for the purpose. The second class of work noticed as being done by women is work done on machines with or without power, and this includes a whole host of employments and an endless variety of problems. Machine tending, press-work, stamp-work, metal-cutting, printing, various processes of brass work, pen-making, machine ironing in laundries, the making of "hollow ware" or tin pots and buckets of various kinds; such are a few of the kinds of work that occur to me. Many of them have the interesting characteristic of forming a kind of borderland or marginal region where men and women, by exception, do the same kinds of work. It is in these kinds of work that difficulties occur in imperfectly organised trades; it is here that the employer is constantly pushing the women workers a little further on and the male workers a little further off; it is here that controversies rage over what is "suitable to women," and that recriminations pass between trade unions and enterprising employers. These kinds of work may be very hard, or very easy, they may need skill and afford some measure of technical interest, or they may be merely dull and monotonous, efficiency being measured merely by speed; they may be badly paid, but on the other hand they include some of the best paid of women's industrial occupations. They are in a continual state of flux, responding to every technical advance, and change in methods; they represent the industrial revolution at its tensest and most critical point. And to conclude, it is here that organisation for women is most necessary and desirable in the interests of all classes. The third kind of work noted by the detached observer is more difficult to define in a word; it consists in the finishing and preparing goods for sale, and in the various kinds of work known as warehouse work. As a separate class it results mainly from the increasing size of firms and the quantity of work done. Paper-sorting or overlooking in paper-mills is typical of this class of work; it consists in separating faulty sheets of paper from those that are good, and is done at great speed by girls who have a quick eye and a light touch. It is said to be work that men entirely fail in, not having sufficiently sensitive finger-tips. In nearly all factories there is a great deal of this kind of work, monotonous no doubt, but usually clean in character, and less hard and involving considerably less strain than either of the two former classes of work. In confectionery or stationery works, for instance, to mention two only, troops of girls are seen busily engaged at great speed in making up neat little packets of the finished article, usually with an advertisement or a picture put inside. In china or glass works girls may be employed wrapping the goods in paper, and similar jobs are found in many classes of work. In a well-known factory in East London where food for pet animals is made or prepared, I was told some years ago that no girls at all had been employed until recently, when about forty were taken on for the work of doing up the finished article in neat packets for sale. It is noticeable that the girls who are thus employed are usually of a social grade superior to the two former classes, though they by no means always earn better wages. They are very frequently the daughters of artisans earning good wages, and expect to marry in their own class and leave work. The women employed in the second class of work indicated, viz. chiefly on or about the machines, are on the whole more enterprising, and more likely to join unions. These again are socially superior to No. 1. No. 1 class, those who do the rough hard kind of work, are mainly employed for the sake of cheapness, are often married women, and are probably doing much the same kinds of work that were done by women in those trades before the transformation of industry by machinery. (This is merely an inference of mine, and can scarcely be proved, but it seems likely to be true.) The more perfectly the industry develops and becomes organised, the more machinery is used and different processes are adapted to utilise different classes of skilled effort, the less need will there be for class No. 1 work to be done at all. It should be noted before we leave this subject that No. 2 class work is especially liable to change and modification, which means change in the demand for labour, and often means a demand for a different class of labour, or a different kind of skill. There are some who think pessimistically that improved machinery must mean a demand for a lower grade of skill. No doubt it often _has_ meant that, and still does in instances. But it is far from being universally true. As the hand-press is exchanged for the power-press, the demand occurs for a worker sufficiently careful and responsible to be trusted with the new and more valuable machinery. Again, when a group of processes needing little skill is taken over by an automatic machine that performs the whole complex of operations, several unskilled workers will be displaced by one of a higher grade. The new automatic looms worked by electric power are, I am told, involving the employment of a class of young women superior in general intelligence and education to the typical weaver, though not necessarily so in manual skill. _Conclusion._--Frau Braun sees in the machine the main cause of the development of woman's industrial employment.[17] A more recent writer, Mrs. Schreiner, takes exactly the opposite view: The changes ... which we sum up under the compendious term "modern civilisation," have tended to rob woman, not merely in part, but almost wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social labour; and where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and compensatory fields. It is this fact which constitutes our modern "Woman's Labour Problem." Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we, and we alone clothe our peoples.[18] It is a striking instance of the extraordinary complexity of modern industry that two distinguished writers like Frau Braun and Mrs. Schreiner, both holding advanced views on the feminist question, should thus come to opposite conclusions as to the influence of the machine. In a sense, the opposition is more apparent than real. Mrs. Schreiner is thinking of production for use by the woman at home, and there is no question that production for use is being superseded by production for exchange. Frau Braun, in the passage quoted, is writing of wage-earning employment. There can be little question that the evolution of machinery has favoured woman's employment. Woman has no chance against man where sheer strength is needed; but when mechanical power takes the place of human muscle, when the hard part is done by the machine, then the child, the girl, or the woman is introduced. The progressive restriction of child-labour has also favoured women, so that over the period covered by the factory statistics, the percentage of women and girls employed has increased in a very remarkable way. It is possible to exaggerate the extent of the change made by the industrial revolution in taking women out of the home. We must remember that domestic service, the traditional and long-standing occupation of women, is always carried on away from the home of the worker, and does in fact (as it usually involves residence) divide the worker from her family far more completely than ordinary day work. The instances given in Chapter I. also show that not only agriculture, but various other industries, afforded employment to women, long before the industrial revolution, in ways that must have involved "going out to work." To the working classes it was nothing new to see women work, and, in point of fact, we do not find even the employment of married women exciting much attention or disapproval at the outset of the factory system. In the non-domestic industries the question of the wife taking work for wages was probably then, as mainly it still is, a poverty question. The irregular employment, sickness or incapacity of the male bread-winner that result in earnings insufficient for family maintenance, occurred probably with no less frequency in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than now, and these are causes that at all times drive married women to work, if they can get work to do. The class that felt it most keenly as an evil and a wrong, were the hand-loom weavers whose earnings were so depressed that they could not maintain their families, and found at the same time that the labour of their wives and daughters was more in demand than their own. Where the industry had been carried on by the family working together, and, for a time at least, had been sufficiently lucrative to afford a comparatively high standard of comfort, the disintegration of this particular type of organisation was, not unnaturally, resented as an outrage on humanity. The iron regularity of the factory system, the economic pressure that kept the workers toiling as long as the engines could run, the fixation of hours, were cruel hardships to a class that had formed its habits and traditions in the small self-contained workshop, and made continuous employment a terrible strain on the married woman. As the home centres round the woman, the problem for the working woman has been, and is, one of enormous difficulty, involving considerable restatement of her traditional codes and customs. Whatever may have been the social misery and disorder brought about by the industrial revolution, one striking result was an increase in the earning power of women. Proof in detail of this statement will be given in Chapter VI.; for the present it will suffice to point to the fact. The machine, replacing muscular power and increasing the productivity of industry, does undoubtedly aid the woman in quest of self-dependence. In the era of the great industry she has become to an increasing extent an independent wage-earner. Low as the standard of women's wages is, there is ample proof that it is on the whole higher under the factory system than under other methods, and as a general rule the larger and more highly organised factory pays higher wages than the smaller, less well-equipped. The cotton industry, which took the lead in introducing the factory system, and is in England by far the most highly organised and efficiently managed among trades in which women predominate, has shown a remarkable rise of wages through the last century, and is now the only large industry in which the average wage of women is comparatively high. Another point is that factory dressmaking, which has developed in comparatively recent years, already shows a higher average wage than the older-fashioned dressmaking carried on in small establishments, and a much smaller percentage of workers paid under 10s. a week. Monsieur Aftalion, in a monograph comparing factory and home work in the French clothing trade, finds wages markedly higher under the factory system. Yet another instance is offered by Italy, where women's wages are miserably low, yet they are noticeably higher in big factories than in small. The development of the single young woman's position through the factory system has been obscured by the abuses incidental to that system, which were due more or less to historical causes outside industry. The absence of any system of control over industrial and sanitary conditions undoubtedly left many factories to become centres of disease, overwork and moral corruption, and the victims of this misgovernment and neglect are a reproach that can never be wiped out. On the other hand, later experience has shown that decent conditions of work are easier to secure in factories than in small work places, owing to greater publicity and facility for inspection. The very fact of the size of the factory, its economic importance, and its almost dramatic significance for social life, caused attention to be drawn to, and wrath to be excited by, evil conditions in the factory, which would have been little noticed in ordinary small work places. The initiation of the "great industry" resulted in a kind of searchlight being turned on to the dark places of poverty. State interference had to be undertaken, although in flat opposition to the dominant economics of the day, and the better sort of masters were impelled by shame or worthier motives to get rid of the stigma that clung to factory employment. Now the girl-worker has profited by this movement in a quite remarkable degree. Domestic service is no longer her only outlook, and the conditions of domestic service have probably considerably improved in consequence. Her employment is no longer bound up with personal dependence on her own family, or personal servitude in her employer's. The wage contract, though not, we may hope, the final or ideal stage in the evolution of woman's economic position, is an advance from her servile state in the mediaeval working class, or parasitic dependence on the family. The transition thus endows her with greater freedom to dispose of or deny herself in marriage, and is an important step towards higher racial ideals and development. Grievously exploited as her employment has been and still is, the evolution of the woman wage-earner, her gradual achievement of economic individuality and independence, in however limited a degree, is certainly one of the most interesting social facts of the time. The remarkable intelligence and ability of Lancashire working people was noticed by Mrs. Gaskell in _Mary Barton_, as long ago as 1848. And to this day the Co-operative Movement and the Trade Union Movement flourish among Lancashire women as they do not anywhere else. The Workers' Educational Association draws many of its best students from these women who toil their ten hours in the mill and use their brains for study in the evening after work is over. CHAPTER III. STATISTICS OF THE LIFE AND EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. No very detailed or elaborate statistics will be here employed, the aim of this chapter being merely to draw attention to certain broad facts or relations disclosed by the Census and the Registrar-General's Report. _The Surplus of Women._--It is a well-known fact that in this country women exceed men in numbers. The surplus increased slightly but steadily from 1851 to 1901, and remained almost stationary from 1901 to 1911. In 1901 and 1911 there were in every 1000 persons 484 males and 516 females. The excess of females varies at different ages. The number of boys born exceeds the number of girls in a proportion not far from 4 per cent, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But boy infants run greater risks at birth and appear to be altogether more susceptible to adverse influences, for their death-rate is usually higher up to 3, 4 or 5 years old. The age-group 5 to 10 varies from time to time; in 1901-1910 the average mortality of girls was the higher: in 1912 the average mortality of boys was very slightly higher. From 10 to 15 the female death-rate is higher than the male. The age-group 15 to 20 shows very curious variations in the relative mortality of males and females. From 1894 onwards the males of that group have had a higher mortality than the females, whereas previous to that date the female mortality was the higher, in all years of which we have a record save two--1876 and 1890. The Registrar-General can suggest no explanation of this phenomenon.[19] It may be remarked, however, that girls generally now obtain more opportunity for fresh air and physical exercise than in former years, which may account for some of their comparative improvement in this respect; also that in the industrial districts a great improvement has taken place in the administration of the Factory Act since the appointment of women inspectors and the general raising of the standard after the Act of 1891, and girls may naturally be supposed to have profited more by this improved administration than have youths of the other sex, who are not included under the Act when over 18 years, and in many cases pass into industries unregulated by law. The following table shows the death-rates per 1000 of male and female persons in England and Wales, 1913, and the ratio of male per cent of female mortality at age periods, as calculated by the Registrar-General. DEATH-RATES AT AGES, 1913. +----------------------------------+ |Ages.| M. | F. |Ratio M. per| | | | | 100 F. | |-----|-------|-------|------------| | 0-1| 120 | 96 | 125 | | 0-5| 39·2 | 32·2 | 122 | | 5- | 3·1 | 3·1 | 100 | | 10- | 1·9 | 2·0 | 95 | | 15- | 2·7 | 2·5 | 108 | | 20- | 3·5 | 3·0 | 117 | | 25- | 4·6 | 3·8 | 121 | | 35- | 8·0 | 6·5 | 123 | | 45- | 15·0 | 11·5 | 130 | | 55- | 30·7 | 23·0 | 133 | | 65- | 64·5 | 51·1 | 126 | | 75- | 140·4 | 117·5 | 119 | | 85- | 266·8 | 241·0 | 111 | |-----|-------|-------|------------| |Total| 14·7 | 12·8 | 115 | +----------------------------------+ As might be expected from these figures, the Census shows that males are in excess of females in very early life, but are gradually overtaken, and in later years especially men are considerably outnumbered by women. The disproportion of women is mainly due to their lower death-rate, but also in part to the fact that so many men go abroad for professional or commercial avocations. Some of these are accompanied by wives or sisters, but a large proportion go alone. The disproportion of women is more marked in town districts than in rural ones. This may be partly due to the lower infant death-rate in the country, for a high rate of infant mortality on an average affects more boys than girls. But no doubt the large demand for young women's labour in factories and as domestic servants is another cause of the surplus of women in towns. In rural districts there is a surplus of males over females up to the age of 25. The disproportion of women does not show any marked tendency to increase except among the elderly, the preponderance becoming increasingly marked towards old age. It would overload this chapter too much to give figures illustrating the changes in the last half century; those who wish to make themselves acquainted with the matter can refer to the very full and interesting tables given near the end of Vol. VII. of the Census, 1911. _Marriage._--The preponderance of young women, though not very considerable in figures, is, however, in fact a more effective restriction of marriage than might be expected, because women are by custom more likely to marry young than men, and thus the numbers of marriageable young women at any given date exceed the corresponding numbers of men in a proportion higher than the actual surplus of young women in particular age-groups. The old-fashioned optimistic assumption that women will all get married and be provided for by their husbands, cannot be maintained. It is possible, however, to be needlessly pessimistic on this head, as in a certain weekly journal which recently proclaimed that "two out of every three women die old maids." If we are to regard marriage as an occupation (an idea with which, on the whole, I disagree), it is still the most important and extensively followed occupation for women. In 1911 over 6-1/2 millions of women in England and Wales were married, or rather more than one-half the female population over 15; and considerably more than one-half of our women get married some time or other. In middle life, say from 35 to 55, three-fourths of all women are married. In early life a large proportion are single; in later life a large proportion are widows. Or we might put it in another way. From the age of 20 to 35, only two out of every four women are married, nearly all the rest being still single, and a very small proportion widowed; from 35 to 55, three in every four women are married; over 55, less than two in every four are married, most of the others having become widows. The proportion of women married has increased since the previous Census, but has decreased slightly at all ages under 45. The following table displays the proportion married and widowed per cent of the different age-groups. +-------------------------------------+ | Ages. | Single.| Married.| Widowed.| |--------|--------|---------|---------| | 15-20 | 99 | 1 | 0 | | 20-25 | 76 | 24 | 0 | | 25-35 | 36 | 62 | 1 | | 35-45 | 20 | 75 | 5 | | 45-55 | 16 | 71 | 13 | | 55-65 | 13 | 59 | 28 | | 65- | 12 | 31 | 57 | | | | | | |All ages| 39 | 51 | 10 | +-------------------------------------+ If the figures were drawn in curves, it would be seen that the proportion of single women falls rapidly from youth onwards, and is quite small in old age; that the proportion married rises rapidly at first, remaining high for 20 or 30 years, and falls again, forming a broad mound-shaped curve; while the proportion widowed rises all the way to old age. It will be seen that, even on the assumption that all wives are provided for by their husbands, which is by no means universally true, a very large proportion of women before 35 and after 55 are not thus provided for, and that an unknown but not inconsiderable proportion never marry at all. In the case of the educated middle class, as Miss Collet pointed out in 1892, the surplus of women over men is considerably above the average, and consequently the prospect of marriage is less in this than in the working class. "Granted an equal number of males and females between the ages of 18 and 30, we have not therefore in English society an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late marriage is the rule with men--that is, wherever there is a high standard of comfort--the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a district where boy and girl marriages are very common, everybody can be married and be more or less miserable ever after: but in the upper middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus of marriageable women over marriageable men."[20] In some quarters the adoption of professions, even of the teaching profession, by women, is opposed on the ground that women are thereby drawn away from marriage and home-making. It is difficult to understand how such an objection can be seriously raised in face of the facts of social life. The adoption of occupations by women may in a few cases indicate a preference for independence and single blessedness; but it is much more often due to economic necessity. It is perfectly plain that not all women can be maintained by men, even if this were desirable. The women who have evolved a theory of "economic independence" are few compared with the many who have economic self-dependence forced upon them. Human nature is far too strong to make it credible that any large number of women will deliberately decline the prospect of husband, home and children of their own for the sake of teaching little girls arithmetic or inspecting insanitary conditions in slums. If a woman has to choose between marrying a man she cares for and earning her own bread, I am sentimental enough to believe that nearly all women would choose the former. The choices of real life are seldom quite so simple. When a woman has to choose between an uncongenial marriage and fairly well-paid work, it is quite likely that nowadays she frequently chooses the latter. In former days the choice might easily have been among the alternatives of the uncongenial marriage, the charity, willing or unwilling, of friends and relations, and sheer starvation, not to mention that even the bitter relief of the uncongenial marriage, usually available in fiction, is not always forthcoming in real life. The case grows clearer every year, that women need training and opportunity to be able to support themselves, though not all women will do so throughout life. _Occupation._--If we have any doubt of the fact that there is still "a deal of human nature" in girls and women, we have only to compare the Census statistics of occupation and marriage. We have already seen that the numbers married increase up to 45. As the number married increases the number occupied rapidly falls off. The percentage of women and girls over 15 who are occupied was, in 1911, 35.5; an increase of 1.0 since 1901. This does not, however, mean that only a little more than one-third of all women enter upon a trade or occupation. In point of fact a very large proportion are workers in early youth, as the following tables show. In order to illustrate the relation of occupation to marriage, we place the two sets of figures side by side. +---------------------------------------+ | |Percentage|Percentage| | | Occupied.| Married. | |-----------------|----------|----------| |Girls aged 10-13 | 1·0 | .. | | " 13-14 | 11·3 | .. | | " 14-15 | 38·7 | .. | | " 15-16 | 57·6 | } | | " 16-17 | 66·8 | } | | " 17-18 | 71·9 | } 1·2 | | " 18-19 | 74·3 | } | | " 19-20 | 73·4 | } | |Women aged 20-25 | 62·0 | 24·1 | | " 25-35 | 33·8 | 63·2 | | " 35-45 | 24·1 | 75·3 | | " 45-55 | 23·1 | 70·9 | | " 55-65 | 20·4 | 58·4 | | " 65- | 11·5 | 31·3 | +---------------------------------------+ The highest percentage of employment therefore occurs at the age of 18. The next table shows the proportions of workers in age-groups. WOMEN AND GIRL WORKERS OVER TEN YEARS OLD. +--------------------------------------+ | | Number. |Per cent of Total.| |-------|-----------|------------------| | 10-15 | 182,493 | 3·8 | | 15-20 | 1,156,851 | 23·9 | | 20-25 | 1,037,321 | 21·5 | | 25-35 | 1,057,275 | 21·9 | | 35-45 | 604,769 | 12·5 | | 45-55 | 422,464 | 8·7 | | 55- | 369,561 | 7·7 | | |-----------|------------------| | | 4,830,734 | 100·0 | +--------------------------------------+ Over 49 per cent of the total are under 25, and are therefore in ordinary speech more commonly termed girl than women workers. The rise in the proportion married compared with the drop in the proportion occupied as age advances, indicates how strong the hold and attraction of the family is upon women. Conditions in factories are undoubtedly improved; many a girl of 20 or 22, perhaps earning 18s. a week, with her club, her classes, her friends, and an occasional outing, has by no means a "bad time." On the other hand, the life of the married woman in the working class is often extremely hard, taking into account the large amount of work done by them at home, cooking, cleaning, washing, mending and making of clothes, in the North also baking of bread, tendance of children and of the sick, over and above and all but simultaneously with the bringing of babies into the world. Moreover, the working girl is not under illusions as to the facts of life, as her better-off contemporary still is to some extent. Taking all this into consideration, the Census results shown above form an illuminating testimony to the strength of the fundamental human instincts. The distribution of women in occupations illustrates both the deeply rooted conservatism of women and, at the same time, the modifying tendency of modern industry. The largest groups of women's trades are still their traditional activities of household work, the manufacture of stuffs, and the making of stuffs into clothes. Two-thirds of the women occupied are thus employed. +------------------------------------------------------+ | | Number. | Per cent of | | | |Total occupied.| |----------------------------|---------|---------------| |Domestic offices and service| | | | (including laundry) |1,734,040| 35·9 | |Textiles | 746,154| 15·5 | |Dress | 755,964| 15·6 | +------------------------------------------------------+ It is convenient to picture to oneself the female working population as three great groups: the domestic group, the textile and clothing group, and the other miscellaneous occupations, which also form about one-third of the total. Now, while it is true that the two former groups, the traditional or conservative occupations of women, are still the largest, they are not, with the exception of textiles, increasing as fast as population, whereas some of the newer occupations, the non-textile industrial processes that have been transformed by machinery and brought within the capacity of women, are, though much smaller in numbers, increasing at a rapid rate. The following table shows the change from 1901 to 1911 in the most important industrial groups including women. It should be read bearing in mind that the increase of the female population over 10 in the same period is 12·6 per cent. ENGLAND AND WALES, 1901-1911. +------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Numbers. | | | Occupations of Women |-------------------|Percentage| | and Girls. | 1901. | 1911. | Change. | |-----------------------------|---------|---------|----------| |Domestic offices and service |1,690,722|1,734,040| +2·6 | |Textiles | 663,222| 746,154| +12·5 | |Dress | 710,961| 755,964| +6·3 | |Dressmakers | 340,582| 339,240| -0·4 | |Tailoresses | 117,640| 127,115| +8·1 | |Food, drink, and lodging | 299,518| 474,683| +58·5 | |Paper, books, and stationery | 90,900| 121,309| +33·5 | |Metals, machines, etc. | 63,016| 101,050| +60·4 | |Increase of female population| | | | | over 10 | .. | .. | +12·6 | +------------------------------------------------------------+ But even with the occupations I have dubbed "conservative," or traditional, modern methods are transforming the nature of the work done by women. The statistical changes in the so-called domestic group are an interesting illustration of the changes we can see going on in the world around us. Note especially the tendency towards a more developed social life outside the home indicated by the large percentage increase in club service, hotel and eating-house service; the tendency to supersede amateur by expert nursing, shown in the large increase in hospital and institutional service; and the slight but perceptible tendency for household work to lose its domestic character. Not only do the charwomen show an increase much larger than that of the group total, while the domestic indoor servant has decreased, but a new sub-heading, "day servants," has had to be introduced. The laundry is fast becoming a regular factory industry, and shows a decrease in numbers, no doubt due to the introduction of machinery and labour-saving appliances. CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN CERTAIN DOMESTIC OCCUPATIONS. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | Numbers. | | | | | | | Occupation. |--------------------|Percentage| | | | | Change. | | | 1901. | 1911. | | | | | | | |-------------------------------|---------|----------|----------| |Hotel, eating-house, etc. | 45,711| 63,368 | +38·6 | |Other domestic indoor servants}|1,285,072|1,271,990}| +0·8 | |Day girls }| | 24,001}| | |College, club, etc. | 1,680| 3,347 | +99·2 | |Hospital, institution, etc. | 26,341| 41,639 | +58·1 | |Caretakers | 13,314| 18,633 | +39·95 | |Cooks, not domestic | 8,615| 13,538 | +57·1 | |Charwomen | 111,841| 126,061 | +12·7 | |Laundry | 196,141| 167,052 | -14·8 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Textiles, which as a whole have increased exactly in proportion to population, show a great variety in movement. The following shows the movement in the numerically more important groups. +-------------------------------------------------------+ | | Numbers. | Percentage | | |-------------------| Change. | | | 1901. | 1911. | | |----------------------|---------|---------|------------| |Cotton-- | | | | | Card-room operatives| 46,135 | 55,488 | +20·3 | | Spinning | 34,553 | 55,448 | +60·5 | | Winding, warping | 64,742 | 59,171 | -8·6 | | Weaving | 175,158 | 190,922 | +9·0 | |Wool-- | | | | | Spinning | 35,782 | 45,310 | +26·6 | | Weaving | 67,067 | 67,499 | +0·6 | |Hosiery | 34,481 | 41,431 | +20·2 | |Lace | 23,807 | 25,822 | +8·5 | +-------------------------------------------------------+ In "Dress" the most noticeable feature is that in a decade of rapidly increasing wealth and certainly of no diminution in the feminine tendency to adornment and display, the numbers of dressmakers decreased by a few hundreds. Tailoresses, on the other hand, increased considerably more than the increase in the whole group, and "Dealers" also show a large increase. The Census unfortunately throws very little light so far on the development of the various factory industries for making clothes, and the Factory Department statistics are now so considerably out of date as to be of little value. In default of further information we may guess that a very considerable economy of methods has been effected in the making of women's clothes by the introduction of machinery and the factory system, and that some of the large mass of customers of moderate incomes are tending to desert the old-fashioned working dressmakers and buy ready-made clothes, which have noticeably improved in style and quality in recent years. But the older-fashioned methods probably hold the larger part of the field, even now. The increasing employment of women in metal trades is certainly a very remarkable feature of the present Census, the numbers having jumped up from 63,000 to 101,000 in ten years. The cycle and motor manufactures, which employed less than 3000 women in 1901, employed not far short of 7000 in 1911. Nearly all the small groups and subdivisions of metal work show an increase of female employment. For instance, women employed in electrical apparatus-making increased from 2490 in 1901 to over 9000 in 1911. The whole subject is one of great interest, as illustrating the progress of the industrial revolution in the trades affected, but is impossible to treat here at length. _The Reaction of Status on Industry._--In spite of the increased range of occupations open to women, it must be added that the position of woman is a highly insecure one, and that she is considerably handicapped by the reaction of status on occupation. We have seen that while most women work for wages in early life, their work is usually not permanent, but is abandoned on marriage, precisely at the time of life when the greatest economic efficiency may be looked for. On the other hand, the superior longevity of women and the greater risks to which men are exposed, leave many women widows and unprovided for in middle or even early life. Some women are unfortunate in marriage, the husband turning out idle, incompetent, of feeble health or bad habits, and in such circumstances women may need to return to their work after some years' cessation. But factory industries and indeed nearly all women's occupations make a greater demand for the young than for the middle-aged or old. Wages are supposed to be based upon a single woman's requirements. Even if the destitute widow or the deserted wife can succeed in obtaining fairly well-paid work, there emerges the difficulty of looking after her home and children simultaneously with doing work for wages. The ordinary view of the subject is that a woman need not be paid as much as a man, because her requirements are less, and she is likely to be partially maintained by others. The question of wages will be discussed in a later chapter, but it may here be pointed out that the facts revealed by the Census show that the status of women is a very heavy handicap to their economic position. Normally, women leave their occupation about the time when they might otherwise expect to attain their greatest efficiency, and those who return to work in later years are under the disadvantage of having spent their best years in work which by no means helps their professional or industrial efficiency, though it may be of the greatest social usefulness. If a woman cannot expect to be paid more than the commercial value of her work when she has children entirely dependent on her, it seems inconsistent that she should be expected to take less than the value of her work when she is partially maintained at home; surely the wiser course would be to strive to raise the standard of remuneration so as to benefit those who have the heavier obligations. The same kind of thoughtless inconsistency is seen in dealing with the problem of married women's work. Many observers of social life are struck by the fact that it is sad and in some cases even disastrous for a woman to go out to work and leave her infant children unprotected and untended. The proposal is constantly forthcoming to prohibit married women's employment. But many persons, even those who dislike the employment of married women, think that when a woman is left a widow, the best thing is to take her children away from her and get her into service.[21] In point of fact, the young children of a widow need quite as much care and attention as those who have a father living; and neither a married woman nor a widow can give her children that care and attention if she is without the means of subsistence. The pressure on widows to seek employment, whatever their home ties, is seen with tragic pathos even in the bald figures of the Census. +-----------------------------------------------------+ | |Single.|Married.|Widowed.|Total.| |--------------------|-------|--------|--------|------| |Percentage of women | | | | | | and girls occupied| 54·5 | 10·26 | 30·1 | 32·5 | +-----------------------------------------------------+ Although widows in the very nature of the case are older on an average than married women, although the whole tendency of modern industry is towards the employment of the young, yet the percentage of widows occupied is three times as great as the percentage of married who are occupied. There are no short and easy paths to the solution of the difficulties of woman, but those who uphold such measures as the prohibition of employment to married women, are bound to consider, firstly, how the prohibition should be applied in cases where the male head of the family is not competent or sufficiently able-bodied to support it; secondly, whether the children of widows can flourish on neglect any better than the children who have a living father, and, if not, why it is more desirable for the widow than for the married woman to go to work outside her home and away from her children. _Conclusion._--The following points summarise the results obtained from a study of the statistics in regard to women, supplemented by facts of common knowledge. Women outnumber men, especially in later life. Not all women can marry. A large majority of girls and a small minority of adult women work for wages. A large majority of women marry some time or other. The majority of young women leave work when they marry. Some women depend upon their own exertions throughout life, and some of them have dependents. Some women, after being maintained for a period by their husbands, are forced again to seek work for wages; and many of these have dependents. CHAPTER IV. WOMEN IN TRADE UNIONS. _Early Efforts at Organisation._--It is probably not worth while to spend a great deal of time in the endeavour to decide what part women played in the earlier developments of trade unionism, very little information being so far obtainable. It seems, however, not unlikely that some of the loose organisations of frame-work knitters, woollen weavers, etc., that existed in the eighteenth century and later, may have included women members, as the Manchester Small-Ware Weavers certainly did in 1756, and Professor Chapman tells us that women were among the members of the Manchester Spinners' Society of 1795. At Leicester there appears to have been an informal organisation of hand-spinners, called "the sisterhood," who in 1788 stirred up their male friends and acquaintances to riot as a demonstration against the newly introduced machines.[22] We find some women organised in the unions that sprang up after the repeal of the Anti-Combination Act in 1824. The West Riding Fancy Union was open to women as well as men, and although the General Association of Weavers in Scotland expressly excluded female apprentices from membership it added the proviso, "except those belonging to the weaver's own family." In December the Lancashire Cotton Spinners called a conference at Ramsey, Isle of Man, to consider the question of a national organisation. The immediate motive of the conference was the failure of a disastrous six months' strike at Hyde, near Manchester, which convinced the leaders that no local unions could succeed against a combination of employers. At the Ramsey Conference, after nearly a week's discussion, it was agreed to establish a "Grand General Union of the United Kingdom," which was to be subject to an annual delegates' meeting and three national committees. The Union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the women and girls being urged to form separate organisations. The General Union lasted less than two years.[23] A few years later, in 1833, an attempt which met with limited success was made by Glasgow spinners to procure the same rates of pay for women as for men, in spite of the masters' protest that the former did not turn out so much or so good a quality of work as the latter. No doubt the men's action was taken chiefly in their own interests. Many of the male operatives objected altogether to the employment of women as spinners and for a time hindered it in Glasgow, though shortly after the great strike of 1837 as many women were spinning there as men. In Manchester women were spinning in 1838, and, indeed, had done so from early times. One regrets to note that they acted as strike-breakers (along with five out of thirty-three male spinners) in a mill belonging to Mr. Houldsworth, as the latter reported in evidence to the Committee on Combinations of Workmen. A representative of the Spinners' Association, Glasgow, J. M'Nish, gave some rather interesting evidence before the same Committee. He said it was not the object of the association that the employment of women should cease, although they were "not fond of seeing women at such a severe employment," but it was their object to prevent the women from being "paid at an under rate of wages, if possible." Although the women spinners were not members of the association, they were in the habit of appealing to it for advice in the complicated business of reckoning up their rates of pay, and the association had occasionally advised them to strike for an advance.[24] Some years later women were to be found among the members of the Spinners' Unions in Lancashire. Objections were raised to their employment on the grounds of health and decency, as the spinning-rooms were excessively hot and work had to be done in the lightest possible attire. Probably the strongest objection was the danger to wages and to the customary standard of life through women's employment. The feeling was that women would not resist the encroachment of the masters, that their customary wage was low, and that many of them were partially supported at home, consequently that when men and women were employed together on the same kind of work, the wages of men must fall. The hand-loom weavers of Glasgow would not admit adult women to their society, though many were in fact working; and the warpers discouraged women warpers. In 1833, however, the Glasgow women power-loom weavers are said to have had a union under the direction of the male operatives.[25] The great outburst of unionism in 1833-34 fostered by Owen, the formation of a "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union" did not leave the women untouched. A delegates' meeting was held in February 1834 at which it was resolved that the new body should take the form of a federation of separate trade lodges, usually of members of one trade, but with provision for "miscellaneous lodges," in places where the numbers were small, and even for "female miscellaneous lodges." Within a few weeks or months this union obtained an extraordinary growth and expansion. About half a million members must have joined, including tens of thousands of farm labourers and women, and members of the most diverse and heterogeneous classes of industry. Among the women members we hear of lodges for tailoresses, milliners and miscellaneous workers. Some women gardeners and others were prominent in riots at Oldham. At Derby women and children joined with the men in refusing to abandon the union and were locked out by their employers. The Grand National endeavoured to find means to support them and find employment, but the struggle, though protracted for months, ended in the complete triumph of the employers. The Grand National did not long survive. In some of the strikes and disturbances that took place in the following years there is clear evidence that women took part, but very little can be ascertained as to their inclusion in unions beyond the bare fact that the Cotton Power-Loom Weavers' Union, as is generally stated, has always had women members. In cotton weaving the skill of women is almost equal to men's, in some cases even superior; and as the power-loom came more and more into use, women were more and more employed, as we have seen. The men had thus in their industry an object lesson of the desirability of association and combination in the interests of both sexes. A Weavers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland was formed in 1840 on the occasion of the Stockport strike. But the establishment of unions on a sound basis was a little later, about the middle of the century. _Cotton Weavers._--Numerous strikes occurred in Lancashire about the middle of the nineteenth century, and several unions of cotton weavers formed in those years are still in existence. The first sound organisation of power-loom weavers was established at Blackburn in 1854, but the Padiham Society and the Radcliffe Society can trace their existence back to 1850. The organisation of cotton weavers thenceforward proceeded rapidly. The Chorley weavers date from 1855, the Accrington Society from 1856, Darwen and Ramsbottom from 1857, Preston, 1858, Great Harwood and Oldham and District, 1859. The East Lancashire Amalgamated Society was also formed in 1859, and was afterwards known as the North-East Lancashire Amalgamated Society. For many years, however, contributions were too small to admit of forming an adequate reserve, and before 1878 the unions were not really effective. A number of local strikes about that date led the Union officials to perceive that higher contributions were necessary for concerted action, and cases of victimising of officials brought home the need for larger Unions with officials who could be placed beyond the risk of victimisation. The new demands made upon the workers no doubt caused some dismay. Some members were lost at first, but most of these returned after a few months. In course of time the weavers have built up an organisation which as far as women are concerned is without parallel in this country. The Weavers' Amalgamation was formed in 1884. It includes 38 districts in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and one or two in Derbyshire, with nearly 200,000 members, the majority being women. In one or two districts political forces have favoured the growth of rival Unions outside the Amalgamation, and these also include a large proportion of women. This division in the weavers' camp is greatly to be regretted, but the rival societies do not appear so far to have done any great harm to the great Amalgamation, whose lead they usually follow, save in political matters, and from whose influence they, of course, indirectly benefit considerably, though they pay no contributions to its funds. Piece rates in textile trades are extremely complicated. The lists and exceptions are indeed so technical in their nature that many of the operatives themselves do not understand them, and it is quite possible that some employers do not fully grasp the working of the lists. The weaving operation begins when the warp, or the longitudinal threads of the piece to be woven, has been fixed in position on the loom. The threads used for the warp are what in spinning are called "twist." These long threads, or "ends" as they are sometimes called, when placed on the loom pass through the openings of the "reed," a sheet of metal cut like a comb into spaces of the width required for the special coarseness or fineness of the material to be woven. The twist also passes through loops known as "healds." Thus the first element to be taken into account is the thickness of the threads of the warp, the number of threads going to make up an inch of width, and the total width of the piece to be woven. The work of the loom is to throw across the warp the cross threads or "weft." These threads are carried in the shuttle which flies to and fro and passes over and under the warp threads alternately, or at such angles and intervals as are provided for by the arrangement of the warp in the "healds" and "reed." The weft or cross threads are termed "picks." Thus the second element in determining the price is the fineness and closeness of the weft. The fineness is determined by the number of counts of the yarn. The closeness may be determined by counting the number of threads or picks in a given length actually woven, or by a calculation based upon the mechanical action of the machine. In many cases the number of picks can be easily settled by counting, but in almost every instance the most exact method is by calculation, based upon the sizes and divisions of the wheels and of the "beam" in the loom. The "beam" is the bar or pole round which the cloth is rolled in process of weaving. The third element is the total length woven, and a fourth is the nature and quality of the material used. This latter is an especially important element in price. The smaller the openings in the "reed" through which the threads pass, the finer and closer the crossing of the weft, the greater in number and more delicate are the threads to be watched by the weaver, and the greater is the liability to breakage of threads. Closer attention and greater dexterity are needed in the weaving of fine than of coarse materials, but on the other hand the weaving of the coarser yarns may mean harder physical labour though not requiring so much skill. The harder work is paid for at an increased rate, though less wages may be earned by the operative. The weavers' work is to fetch the cops of weft (unless they have tenters or assistants to do the fetching and carrying), keep the shuttles full, and repair broken threads. The standard upon which the uniform list is based is calculated on the capacity of an ordinary loom, forty-five inches in the reed space, weaving according to certain particulars given in the list, which are somewhat too technical to set down here. The standard conditions are in practice varied in every conceivable way, and exceptions of every kind have to be provided for by making additions and deductions per cent. There are also subsidiary lists for special kinds and qualities, and local lists for special characters of goods made in certain districts. To find the price of weaving the various allowances have to be deducted or added one by one. A minute fraction of a penny per yard may make a perceptible difference in a weaver's earnings. These lists are a comparatively modern development, and date from the time of the labour troubles mentioned above. In 1853 the Blackburn Society prepared a list of uniform prices for weavers as a basis for a permanent agreement. This list was based upon prices previously paid at the various mills in the town, on an average of a month's earnings. The Blackburn list was in operation till 1892, and was the most important of all the lists regulating weavers' wages. It was then, with many others, replaced by the uniform list, which is now generally recognised throughout Lancashire, but rates for some subsidiary processes are still regulated by local lists. The complication of these lists has necessitated a high degree of specialised skill in the secretaries, who must possess practical and intimate experience of the work and a competent knowledge of arithmetic for elaborate calculations. Subjects of complaint and suspected miscalculations can be referred to the secretary, who immediately inquires into the matter. If he considers the complaint justified or the calculations incorrect, he visits the mill and puts the case before the employer. The matter can very likely be settled amicably, as in point of fact these matters often are, but if dispute occurs, it is referred first to the local association, and may be settled by negotiation. In case of failure there is a machinery needless to detail here by which meetings of employer and employed can be arranged through successively higher grades of representative authority, until in the last resort, if all attempts at settlement fail, a strike is called. The impressive feature about all this negotiation from our present point of view is that the whole strength of the Union, the brains and time and care of the secretary, can be invoked for the protection of the woman, the youthful or childish worker, as much as for the adult skilled worker at a craft. Cases of wrongful withholding of earnings, as for instance unfair fines, can be taken into the County Courts. In at least one district the secretary has successfully asserted the right to visit the mill and inspect cloth, when the employer claims deductions. The cotton weavers' secretaries have in fact to play a part not unlike that of the solicitor in other social grades. They have to look after their clients' interests, protect them from fraud and injury, and advise them in cases of doubt as to their legal rights and position. A fertile source of trouble is in bad cotton. Most of us have probably laughed over the story of the pious weaver in the cotton famine who prayed for supplies of raw material, "but, O Lord, not Surats!" The matter is far from amusing to the workers themselves. Every breakage of a thread means that their wages are stopped by so much, and defective material means that they have to work harder and with more harass and interruption, and accomplish less in the time. If inferior material is persistently supplied, the cotton-workers consider themselves entitled to an increase of 5 per cent or 7-1/2 per cent on earnings, and it is the secretaries' duty to get it for them. It is perhaps worth while to note the peculiar sense given in Lancashire speech to the expression "bad work." In Lancashire "bad work" means bad cotton, and is actually so used in the terms of an agreement between employer and employed as a subject for compensation to the worker. Constant anxious care is needed to safeguard the payment of wages. A Weavers' Local Association advises their members that "whenever the earned wages of a female or young person is being detained for being absent or leaving work, except to the amount of damage their employer has sustained in consequence, such a young person should at once lay their case before the Committee."[26] Even at the present time it is not unknown for a girl to be fined to the amount of a whole week's earnings, but, as my informant added, such a case is now rare. As a rule the Trade Union Secretary will be appealed to, will take the steps necessary, and the fine will be returned or considerably reduced. Any one who is used to considering the case of the girl and women worker in the unorganised trades of London or other great towns, any one who has read in the Women Factory Inspectors' Reports of the difficulty of enforcing the Truck Act and of the special proneness of the woman worker to be oppressed and cheated out of what is morally or even legally her due, will appreciate at once the extraordinary difference between her position and that of the cotton weaver who is backed up by her Association, and has an expert adviser to appeal to. The position of women (and of course of other members also) has been greatly improved since the early days of power-loom weaving by the greater financial strength and security of the Unions. The history of the Burnley weavers is instructive on this point. The Union dates from about 1870, and started with a few hundred members on penny contributions. Numbers, however, increased, in spite of some troubles and persecution from individuals of the employing class. In 1878, Lancashire, as we have seen, was involved in a great industrial struggle. The Burnley Society, on its penny contributions, was unable adequately to sustain its members through the crisis, and only survived the crisis after a very severe strain. It was decided to adopt a sliding scale of payments and higher contributions, with the result that a good reserve was established, and benefits were granted on a higher scale. Considerable sums are paid not only in this, but in other Unions for breakdown or stoppage of work from various causes, such as fire, accident, or failure of trade, stoppage of machinery for repairs, dissolution of partnership, etc. The weavers give benefit to members losing work through scarcity of cotton, or waiting for wefts or warps. Whether it is altogether wise from the tactical point of view for trade associations to devote so much of their funds to provident purposes of this nature is not a question I propose to discuss; the relevant point is the economic security given to the worker. The following shows the contributions graded according to benefit, and the benefit accruing either for strikes brought on by the Society's action, or for stoppage of work at the mill. CHORLEY WEAVERS. Weekly Payments. Benefits. 1d. per week (Tenters). 1/6 per week. 3d. " 7/6 " 4d. " 11/ " 5d. " 13/6 " 6d. " 16/ " The Weavers' Unions do not, as a rule, pay sick or maternity benefit save under the Insurance Act. On the other hand, funeral benefit appears to be the invariable custom, and disablement through accident also entitles members to benefit. A penny per member per week is paid to the Amalgamation towards a Central Strike Fund, the remainder of the contributions being in the hands of the local branch. * * * * * The unusual strength of this Union, combining men and women in a single organisation, seems to be due in the first place to the increasing local concentration of the industry. In towns where many large mills are placed near together the ease and rapidity with which a secretary can call a meeting is surprising. In the second place, it must be remembered that the organisation of women has been of great importance to the men, the women forming the majority of the workers. It has been worth the men's while to consider the women, and so far at least as the economic position is concerned, they have done it with considerable effectiveness. The organisation is utterly dependent on the membership and solidarity of women, and it has successfully safeguarded their economic interests, but it has been built up mainly by the initiative and under the control of a minority of men. As a general rule, in spite of the exceptional success of the Weavers' Unions in retaining the continued membership of women, the fact remains that it is still unusual for women to be actively interested in the work of organisation. As a general rule the women rarely attend meetings unless they have a special grievance to be removed, and they seldom nominate one of themselves for the Committee. There are places where no woman has ever been nominated at all. This is a subject of regret and surprise, not only to the secretaries, but to those women here and there who are themselves keenly interested. These would fain see women representatives on the Committee, and some proportion of women acting as secretaries and collectors. Such women feel strongly that "we need the two points of view," and it is disheartening and incomprehensible to them to find that they cannot get their women friends to turn up at meetings and support the nomination of a woman. There appears to be little ground for the supposition that men would object to share their Committee labours with women, and even if they did, it is obvious that in an industry where women predominate, the latter could have no difficulty in packing the Committee with their own representatives. In all these weavers' Unions the women have precisely the same rights and privileges as men. All positions are open to women, and women command a majority of votes. It is not the men's fault that the management so often is mainly left in their hands. If we enquire as to the reasons for this apathy among women-workers, a great many can be given. One is the danger of victimisation, which may fall very hardly on collectors and Committee members. Another is the fatigue of the long day in the mill, the natural desire for a little amusement, or the amount of house-work to be done. Lancashire women are "house-proud" to an extraordinary degree, and cannot be satisfied without a high standard of comfort in such matters as cleanliness, food, and furniture. All this means work, and though the high wages current in the cotton towns might seem to make it possible to pay for household help, such help is not very easy to come by. Domestic service has hitherto been demanded only by a limited class in the community, because very few outside that class could afford to pay for it. A highly paid industry like the cotton trade makes servants scarce, and anything like a general demand for domestic help on a broad democratic scale could not possibly be satisfied as things are now. Even help in washing is not easily had. So the Lancashire woman or girl contrives to work her ten hours in the mill, and come back to a second day's work in the evening, with such assistance as may be given by the older members of the family. Lancashire is really suffering from the service question in an acute form, so acute that it is taken for granted it cannot be answered. A surprising part of the matter is that a class of women so intelligent, so industrious, and comparatively so well-paid, should not ere this have made a concerted demand for better labour-saving devices in their houses. But after all the domestic difficulty does not explain the whole problem of woman's apathy and indifference in Trade Unions. Supposing the meeting occurs only once a quarter, as in some places, house-work cannot be an insuperable obstacle to attendance at such rare intervals. One weaver told me she had been "bread-winner, nurse, and cleaner" at home, and yet had found time to attend meetings. Probably the real explanation of the attitude of women generally towards the Union is to be found in their education and outlook. Lloyd Jones, in his life of Robert Owen, explained the failure of the early co-operative societies by the fact that at that time the working-class had no habit of association. The old forms had gone; the new had been legally suppressed. Under the changed conditions of modern life the working-class has had to evolve a new set of social habits and a new code of social duty. The habit of association has developed more slowly among women than among men, because to some extent it does undeniably come in conflict with the traditional moralities of women. To a great many women the idea of home duty means duty within the home; they are only beginning to find out by slow degrees that their home is largely dependent for its very existence on outside impersonal forces about which it is incumbent on the home-maker to know something, even if she has to go outside to get knowledge. The Weavers' Secretary, even in Lancashire, still finds that "females are a deal more arduous to organise than males"; he supposes, because "they've been brought up to be different." They cost more in collecting expenses, and the propensity of girls to get married, to leave work or change their occupation is a constant source of anxiety. "They are always on the move," and perpetual watchfulness is needed to enrol the young ones as they enter the mill. Tact and diplomacy are expended in inducing the women-workers to keep an eye on the younger members, to bring them in as early in their industrial careers as possible. Even such homely arguments as "it saves your money from stamps," are not disdained in the effort to persuade the women to use their own personal influence to keep the flame alive. Small commissions are given to a member of a Union who brings in a new member. But without commissions women do a good deal of recruiting in the mills. The Lancashire cotton Unions do not run themselves; their efficiency is very largely the result of constant watchfulness and patient effort on the part of the officials, backed up by the pluck, tenacity, and high standard of comfort of the Lancashire woman herself. A strong feeling, however, is now arising that there is a need for organisation of women within the Union, to induce them to come out more, to take more pains to understand the civic machinery of life which so largely controls their work, their livelihood, and the possibilities of health and strength both for themselves and their children. There is always a splendid remnant in Lancashire who feel themselves to be citizens; but a more general movement seems now to be beginning. This movement is partly due to economic changes in the distribution of the industry. Some mills nowadays employ scarcely any men. Such are mills or sheds for ring-winding, cop-winding, reeling and beaming, occupations exclusively appropriated to women. In such mills there will be a man employed as overlooker, and a mechanic to repair or look after the machines, and there is or should be a man or strong lad to carry the "skips," But the industry itself is here carried on by women, and in such cases women often develop powers hitherto latent for undertaking the Committee work and management of the Union. The same thing happens in districts where the demand for male labour in other occupations is sufficiently urgent to draw men away from weaving altogether. At Wigan the Committee is wholly staffed by women. At Stockport all but the president, secretary, and one member are women. At Oldham about half the Committee are women. In the largest centres of the industry things are moving more slowly. In one very large and important Union the first woman representative has recently been elected to the Committee. At Blackburn two places on the Committee are now appropriated to the winders and warpers, who are all women; this has the effect of reserving two places exclusively for women. Here also the practice obtains of appointing a worker in each mill as a representative of the Union, to keep the secretary in touch with what is going on, and about twenty women, chosen chiefly from the winders, now fill the post of mill representative. The Insurance Act also has had the indirect effect of bringing in a certain number of women as sick visitors or pay stewards. Women are thus gradually being drawn forward, with results that indicate that custom is to blame for their previous isolation, rather than any inherent incapacity or unwillingness on their part. There is a good deal that men might do to meet the women half-way. The secretary may regretfully remark that the women members make no use of the handsome institute and comfortable rooms that are at the disposal of all members of a Union, but the women complain privately that there is no room appropriated to their use. This is felt as a difficulty by women, while it is unnoticed and unconsidered by men. However heartily one may agree that men and women would be better for the opportunities of social intercourse such as an institute provides, however much one may wish to see women making use of its amenities yet, as a beginning, perhaps always, it would obviously be advisable to set apart for them a sitting-room of their own. Women would like to go in to look at the papers and so on, but are deterred by the idea that they are not expected, or not wanted, or that their appearance may cause surprise in the minds of their male colleagues. "They did stare a bit, but they weren't a bit disagreeable," one woman weaver remarked after having valiantly entered her own institute and read her own magazines. Pioneers may do these doughty deeds; the average young woman, even in Lancashire, is singularly shy in some ways, however much the reverse she may appear in others. There is no doubt that social life in England suffers from the unwholesome segregation of women from the affairs of the community. They are too much cut off from the interests of men, most of which ought rather to be the interests of human beings. The beginnings of better things are now being made, but comradeship and consideration on both sides are needed. A movement for shorter hours is going on in the Cotton Operatives' Unions, and has been sympathetically regarded for many years by the Women Factory Inspectors, who realise the intensity of the work in cotton factories as few outsiders can do. The actual operations of joining threads, removing cops, replacing shuttles and so forth are not in themselves very laborious. The strain occurs in the long hours the women are at work, most of them having to stand all the time, and the close attention that has to be given. Every broken thread means _pro tanto_ a stoppage of wages, and eyes and fingers have to be constantly on the alert to see and do instantly what is necessary. All this time, in most cases, the women are on their feet; all this time, in many cases, breathing an unnaturally heated air, sickened by the disagreeable smell of the oil and size, the ceaseless din of machinery in their ears, dust and fluff continually ready to invade the system. In recent years the increased speed has enormously increased the strain of work. It would seem that here is a clear case for shorter hours by law, but strange to say in practice some women are found to be rather nervous about such a measure. I know one highly intelligent girl who fears that shorter hours may mean increased speed, and thinks that that would be "more than flesh and blood could bear." Others fear a loss in earnings. These fears, however, are not shared by all, and after considerable discussion with different persons, I incline to hope that they are not justified. It is, of course, true that in the cotton trade conditions are very different from those in certain trades where shorter hours have resulted in an actual increase of output. The machinery is of enormous value, and is already speeded up to such an extent that no great increase of output on the present machines seems possible or thinkable. On the other hand, there might quite possibly be a very much smaller deficit on shorter hours than the uninitiated would expect. One result would probably be a greater regularity of output through the day. Girls will own that they literally cannot keep going all the time, that they are forced to relax at intervals, and they add; "if we had shorter hours we should be able to work right through." There are masters who think the early morning hours' work is hardly worth the trouble. The Trade Union secretaries with many years' knowledge and experience of the working of the Factory Acts behind them, do not fear any permanent reduction of wages. A forty-eight hours' week, or an eight hours' day would quite likely result in diminished earnings for the first few weeks or months. But given time to work itself out, it would regularise production and tend to smooth out alternatives of "glut" and slack time. A second probable result would be some increase in piece rates, and the workers would in no wise be worse off. No doubt this change will meet with considerable resistance, but judging by past history, it will probably not cause any permanent injury to the interests of either labour or capital. _Winders._--Winding is the process of running the yarn off the spinner's cop on to a "winder's bobbin." There are two processes, "cop-winding" and "ring-winding," the latter being a comparatively new process. The winders, though included usually in the same unions with weavers, are far less strongly organised. Neither process has as yet a uniform list, but the cop-winders have lists which cover large areas. The ring-winders are still less protected, and as a result they are underpaid. Increasing discontent among the winders at Blackburn lately caused a demand for direct representation on the Committee. The position is curious, there being a woman winder and a warper now serving on the Committee while the weavers, a larger and better paid body of women, are represented only by men. Winding is said to be harder and worse paid than weaving, and "driving" has been introduced in recent years. "If there is one operative who earns the money she receives it is the winder."[27] Nevertheless, there are some women who cannot stand the strain of weaving, and take to winding. Further enquiry into this apparent inconsistency elicited the fact that winding, although hard and monotonous work with its continual removing cops and joining threads, is in some ways a less continuous, unremitting strain than weaving.[28] Winders do not often work on Saturday morning, and they may occasionally have short intervals of rest. They also have the chance of promotion to be a warper, a post which admits of much more sitting down than either of the other two, and is consequently coveted. The defective organisation of the winders appears to be due to the absence of men among the ranks. The close community of interests which produced the exceptional success of the Weavers' Union has been lacking, and the winders appear to have been overlooked. Faults in quality or mistakes made in the spinning-room are often credited to the winder, beamer or reeler. It is, however, constantly pointed out in the reports of the Amalgamation that they have the remedy in their own hands, and should organise more strongly to get the advantages enjoyed by the weavers. The recent awakening at Blackburn, indicated above, is a most hopeful sign. At Stockport also, the secretary is making a special effort to organise the winders, and at Padiham it has recently been proposed to give them special representation on the Committee as at Blackburn. _Card-room Operatives._--Unions of card- and blowing-room operatives began to accept women members about 1870, or a little later. Women are now organised in the same Union with men, and form about 90 per cent of the workers. The work forms part of the process of preparing cotton for spinning, and is heavy and dangerous in character. The conditions under which, and the purposes for which, benefit is granted resemble those of the weavers' Unions. The organisation of card-room operatives was greatly improved from 1885 to 1890 or 1894, and may be now considered to have reached a condition of comparative permanence and stability. The usual complaint is, however, made that women are apathetic and take little interest in Union affairs. This state of things is keenly regretted by the secretary, who would gladly see women members on the Committee. The difficulties in effective organisation of industries with so large a proportion of young and irresponsible workers are seen in a recent report of a card-room operatives' society. "Ring-room doffers are about the most difficult class we have to deal with in the matter of keeping them organised, and we can only assume, as most of them are young persons, that it is mostly their parents who are to blame for this apparent carelessness. So we appeal to the parents of this class of operative to take a keener interest in the welfare of those for whom they are responsible, and would remind them that the writer of this article well remembers the time when this class of operative was looked upon as well paid at 5s. 2d. per week, while at the present time the lowest wage paid to our knowledge is 9s. 3d., an advance of 4s. 1d. per week. Surely the few coppers required could easily be spared from this advance, and the benefits returnable are as good an investment as it is possible to find." Card-room operatives have usually been regarded as socially somewhat inferior to the weavers, the work being more arduous and done in more dangerous conditions and the women usually of a rougher class. It seems, however, probable that this condition is changing. Card-room work is becoming more popular as comparatively good wages come at an earlier age than in weaving. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of effective organisation to this class of workers. In its absence the large proportion of women can be taken advantage of to lower conditions of work all round. Closer co-operation with Unions of other classes of workers might be very useful, especially on the question of speeding up. The card-room operatives are speeded and "rushed," working under high pressure, and at the same time the winder, beamer and warper complain of bad cotton, and the weaver strikes on account of the same grievance. Surely the remedy is obvious. Ring-spinners are often included in the same Union with card-room operatives, and quite recently a special effort has been made to improve the organisation of ring-room workers. A "universal list" was obtained in 1912.[29] _Other Workers._--Outside the cotton operatives there are a comparatively small number of women organised with men in Unions of varying strength and effectiveness. As regards linen and jute there is a Union at Dundee which includes over 5000 women, but appears to have made little progress in numbers in quite recent years. The secretary states that the majority of women in the jute trade have very little conception of what Trade Unionism really means, but that the same applies also to many of the men. He considers that the women's outlook has become broadened within recent years. There are some women now serving on the Committee, and the women generally are reported to take a "fair amount of interest" in the work of the society. The other Unions belonging to this industry are scattered over Ireland and Scotland. Wool and worsted is backward in organisation, both for men and women. The Union at Huddersfield includes 4000 women, but a correspondent writes that the General Union, which has branches in all the important textile centres of the West Riding, in actual strength is scarcely one in ten of its possible membership. The apathy of the women, in the Huddersfield district at all events, cannot be due to poverty, for the subscriptions are low while the women's average wage is high. Nor is it due to the temporary nature of women's work, for in this district many continue work after marriage. The Yorkshire women are said by one correspondent to take little interest in public affairs in any way; by another, "not as much as they should, but more than they used to do. It's a big work organising and keeping women in. Marriage, flightiness, lack of vision, lack of help and encouragement from fathers and brothers all tend to make it hard. The lower the wages, the harder the task of making them into Unionists." The difficulty of organising them is great, and outside Huddersfield they are extremely badly paid--so badly, indeed, that in our correspondent's opinion the trade needs to be scheduled under the Trade Boards Act. At Bradford considerable efforts have been made from time to time to get the women into the Union, but these have failed; and even during the last boom, due to the flourishing state of trade and to the Insurance Act, very little progress has been made. The Clothing Unions are making rapid progress, including nearly 10,000 women in 1912, and the Trade Boards will assist the movement. In Leeds there has been some natural indignation at the low minimum fixed, which has impelled to organisation. The Unions follow the Lancashire pattern in organising women along with men. The standard rate for women in the Amalgamated Society of Clothiers operatives at Leeds is 4d. an hour, which is held to be achieved if the piece rates yield as much to 70 per cent of any section or grade of work. In the Boot and Shoe Unions a considerable percentage increase was registered for 1910 to 1912, and the numbers reached 8720 in the latter year. Printing offers some of the most difficult problems connected with the organisation of women.[30] Men in these trades have undeniably offered serious obstacles to the inclusion of women. In 1886 a Conference of Typographical Societies of the United Kingdom and of the Continent, held in London, being "of the opinion that women are not physically capable of performing the duties of a compositor," resolved to recommend their admission to societies upon the same conditions as journeymen, to be paid strictly the same rate. This resolution was adopted by the London Society of Compositors, and it became practically impossible for a woman to join the society, as women could not keep up to the standard and efficiency of men. One woman joined in 1892, but subsequently left. The women were practically excluded from the Compositors' Union by the fixing of equal rates of pay. This was not so much discrimination against women because they were women, as a demonstration against the black-leg competition of the unskilled against the skilled. It is stated that women compositors are regarded as so inferior to men that only among employers in a small way of business, working with small capital, where low wages constitute an advantage sufficient to counter-poise the lack of technical skill, can they find employment. In 1894 a militant Union of women was organised, and struck for increased wages and improved conditions, the women going out to show their sympathy with the men, who had been locked out. In recognition of the women's sympathy the men gave some help and support to this Union, which, however, after increasing to 350 began to decline. It was subsequently recognised as a branch of the Printers, Stationers, and Warehousemen. In the cigar trade, as in printing, it has to be owned that women came in "not for doing more, but for asking less." Their labour was at first employed chiefly for the less skilled branches, a small number only being employed in skilled work; but in both divisions they worked for a lower rate than men. It was not until 1887 that a Union for women was established. They still, unfortunately, continued to undersell men, until at last the men, who at first were hostile to their female competitors, saw that it was hopeless to try and keep them out, and that for their own sakes amalgamation was the wiser course. The adjustment of the wage-scale was a problem of some delicacy. To raise the scale of women's wages to the same as men's would probably have meant driving the women from the trade; to leave them on the lower scale would mean that women would contrive to undersell men. It was finally decided to take the highest existing rates of pay for women as the basis of the women's Union rates. After the Amalgamation had been achieved, women's wages rose 25 per cent, and the recognised policy of the Union was to make advantageous terms with each employer opening a new factory. Women are not, on the whole, such valuable workers as are men; they are slower, and often do not remain very long in the trade.[31] Lower rates of pay, as long as they are not permitted to fall indefinitely, are a distinct advantage to women in getting and keeping employment. The numbers in Unions in food and tobacco were only 2000 in 1910, and have since fallen slightly. There are also a good many small Unions of women only, some of which are affiliated to the Women's Trade Union League. The numbers of women organised in the trades especially their own, such as dressmaking, the needle trades, and domestic work, are disappointingly small. It has to be remembered, however, that such occupations as these are still for the most part carried on either in the employers' or the workers' homes. The factory system has begun to make some way in dressmaking, but not to a considerable extent. It is not surprising that the workers in these industries are behind the factory workers in learning the lesson of combination for mutual help and protection. Unions in the lower grade industries, which till lately have been unorganised, will be treated in a later section. _The Women's Trade Union League._--The Society now known as the Women's Trade Union League was founded mainly by the efforts of a remarkable woman named Emma Smith, afterwards Mrs. Paterson (1848-1886). She was the daughter of a schoolmaster and became the wife of a cabinet-maker. Her life from the age of eighteen was devoted to endeavours on behalf of the working class and especially of women. Being a woman of natural ability and remarkable concentration of purpose, she succeeded in starting pioneer work of a difficult and unusual kind. She was secretary for five years to the Workmen's Club and Institute Union, and afterwards secretary to the Women's Suffrage Association. She was the first woman admitted to the Trade Union Congress, and attended its meetings from 1875 until 1886, with the exception only of one year, in which her husband's last illness prevented her attendance. Although the name of the League has been altered, and its policy considerably widened and in some measure modified, it is pleasant to note that it still keeps up a continuity of tradition with Mrs. Paterson's Protective and Provident League. Her portrait, as foundress, hangs upon the office wall, and the annual Reports are numbered continuously from the start in 1875. Sick benefit was the main feature of the propaganda initiated by the League in its early years. The first society formed was for women employed in the printing trade. The need of a provident fund had been badly felt by these women during a trade depression three years previously, and there was no provision for the admission of women as members of the men's societies, even if women's wages had been (as they were not) sufficient to pay the necessary subscription to the men's society. Mr. King, Secretary of the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, however, promised to support and assist the efforts to organise women in this trade. The appeal for a separate organisation of women met with a ready response. Some hundreds of women employed in folding, sewing, and other branches of the bookbinding trade, attended the first meeting, held in August 1875; a provisional committee was formed, and in October the society was formally established with a subscription of 2d. per week, and an entrance fee of 1s. Its history, however, was uneventful. It refused to join with men in making demands upon the employers, and its representatives at Trade Union Congresses and elsewhere were imbued with Mrs. Paterson's prejudice against the Factory Act, and resisted legal restrictions upon labour. Employers have been known to urge the formation of "a good women's Union," on the ground that the fair-minded employer was detrimentally affected by the "gross inequalities of price" that existed. The backwardness and narrow views of the Women's Union were resented by the men, and in the time of the eight hours agitation, 1891-1894, would not take part, and there was considerable ill-feeling between the two sections. This society was mainly a benefit club, and the same remark holds good of other early societies established by the Women's Protective and Provident League, which included societies for dressmakers, hat-makers, upholsterers, and shirt- and collar-makers. The foundress, although a woman of unusual energy and initiative, whose efforts for the uplifting of women-workers should not be forgotten, was in some degree hampered by the narrow individualism characteristic of what may be designated as the Right Wing of the Women's Rights Movement. She was an opponent of factory legislation for grown women, and did not lead the Unions under her control to attempt any concerted measures for improving the conditions of their work. The first Report of the League indicates her attitude in the remarks which she reports (evidently with sympathy) from a Conference held in April 1875: "It was agreed" (viz. at this Conference) "that any further reduction of hours, if accompanied by a reduction of wages, _as it probably would be if brought about by legislation_, would be objectionable." (Italics added.) In the same Report (pp. 14-15) the writer, doubtless Mrs. Paterson herself, sums up the advantages to be obtained for women through union. The League is to be a "centre of combined efforts" to "improve the industrial and social position of ... women"; it is "to acquire information which will enable friends of the working classes to give a more precise direction than at present to their offers of sympathy and help. _Without interfering with the natural course of trade_, the Societies will furnish machinery for regulating the supply of labour...." (Italics added.) "The object of the League is to promote an _entente cordiale_ between the labourer, the employer, and the consumer; and revision of the contract between the labourer and employer is only recommended in those cases in which its terms appear unreasonable and unjust to the dispassionate third party, who pays the final price for the manufactured goods and is certainly not interested in adding artificially to their cost." No direct action for raising wages is suggested. Delegates from three Women's Societies--shirt-makers, bookbinders, and upholsterers--were admitted to the 8th Annual Trade Union Congress, held at Glasgow, October 1875.[32] At the meeting of the T.U. Council in 1879, five women representing Unions were not only present but took an active part in the proceedings, successfully moving a resolution for additional factory inspectors, and for the appointment as such of women as well as men. In 1877, the Amalgamated Society of Tailors having been asked by one of its branches to resist the increasing employment of women in that trade, resolved instead that the work of women should be recognised, and the women organised and properly paid. The League was asked to co-operate in forming a Union, and a Tailoresses' Union was subsequently formed. At Brighton a Union of Laundresses was formed. Various other societies were formed in these early years, many of which are now defunct. Mrs. Paterson died in 1886, at the sadly early age of thirty-eight. During the years following, the policy of the League was enlarged and developed in a very considerable degree. Miss Clementina Black was secretary for a few years, and her second Report (1888) contains interesting remarks on the position of women: "All inquiry tends to show more and more that disorganised labour is absolutely helpless; good wages, lessened hours, better general conditions, and, on the whole, better workmanship prevail in the trades that are most completely organised. It also tends to show the injury done to men and women alike by the payment to women of unfairly low wages.... Even in employments in which the work can be done by women at least as well as by men, the wages of women are greatly inferior to those of men. And in those branches in which superior efficiency is shown by the male workers, the inferiority of the wages of the female employees is altogether out of proportion to the difference in the character of the work done by the two sexes. From this cause--the payment of unfairly low wages to women simply because they are women--arises a desire on the part of grasping employers to reduce the wage-standard by engaging women in preference to men, while in many cases the conditions of female employment are onerous and oppressive to an extent which involves the greatest danger to health." In 1889 the representation of the Society of Women Bookbinders at the Trade Union Congress, held at Dundee, moved a resolution in favour of the appointment of women factory inspectors, which was adopted. In the same year, at the International Workers' Congress, held in Paris, the representative of the London Women's Trade Council, Miss Edith Simcox, moved the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the representatives of all nationalities: "That the Workmen's Party in all countries should pledge itself to promote the formation of trade organisations among the workers of both sexes." The policy of the League in regard to legislation was broadened. The protection of women through the instrumentality of the Factory Act was no longer resisted, but was recognised as a powerful force for good, to be aided in its administration and developed whenever possible. The League also indicated by the adoption of the title "Trade Union League," and by gradually dropping the former style, "Protective and Provident," that it was inaugurating a more active policy. As a matter of tactics the League officials when appealed to for help in labour difficulties among women-workers, always endeavour _first_ to get the matter settled by negotiation; but direct action is now by no means excluded from their programme, and strikes have been called in recent years, sometimes with considerable success. The W.T.U.L. is not a Union: it has no strike fund and pays no benefits. It is an organisation to promote, foster, and develop the formation of Unions among women. Any Union of women, or Union in which women members are enrolled, can be affiliated to the W.T.U.L. All secretaries of affiliated London Unions are _ex-officio_ members of the League Committee, on which also are a certain number of members elected at the Annual Meeting. The W.T.U.L. also enjoys the services of an Advisory Committee of leading Trade Unionists, who are present at the Annual Meeting. The officials of the League are a Chairman, a Secretary, two Official Organisers, and an Honorary Treasurer. The League acts as the agent of women Trade Unionists in making representations to Government authorities or Parliamentary Committees in regard to the legislation required. Abuses or grievances in particular industries are brought forward in the House of Commons by members who are in touch with the League. Complaints of breaches of the Factory and Workshop Acts can be sent to the League, and are investigated by its officials and forwarded to the proper department. A legal advice department also forms part of the League's functions, and deals with such matters as the assessment of compensation, disputes with Insurance Companies, deductions from wages, non-payment of wages, wrongful dismissal, claims for wages in lieu of notice, and such cases. A few instances, culled from recent Reports, will give an idea of the range and complexity of these cases. A worker in a sweet-factory was injured by the strap of the motor falling on her head, and suffered from shock and chorea. The employers were foreign, and it was with special difficulty that they were got to admit that the accident had even happened. Being threatened with proceedings, the matter was referred to their Insurance Company, who eventually paid the full wages during incapacity. In the slack season seven dressmakers' hands, some of whom had been three years in employment, were dismissed without notice. The League's adviser applied for a week's wage in lieu of notice for each worker. After some correspondence the money owing was handed over. This last case is a sample of many similar ones, and points to the urgent need of organisation in the dressmaking trade. A syrup boiler in a jam-factory slipped on the boards which, owing to imperfect drainage, were slippery with syrup, and fractured her left arm. Compensation was paid at the rate of 5s. 6d. a week. The League has always been singularly successful in attracting the sympathy, interest, and service of able and gifted helpers, both men and women. It has been also happy in securing active co-operation with many Trade Unions, and also with societies such as the British Section of the International Association for Labour Legislation, and the Anti-Sweating League, with both of which it is closely connected in work and sympathy. No less than 170 societies--societies, that is to say, constituted wholly or partly of women members--are now affiliated to the League. The most recent activities of the League have been a campaign of instruction and organisation to explain the provisions of the Insurance Act, and a special effort of propaganda and organisation among the workers in some of the low-grade and ill-paid industries now coming under the Trade Boards Act. A comparison of the list of affiliated societies now appended to the League's Report with the societies first enrolled shows not only, as would be expected, a considerable widening of the field, but also a change in character. Whereas the societies first formed were of women only, and in London, nearly all the societies at present enrolled are mixed, and most of them are not London societies at all. The great textile societies, the weavers, winders, beamers, twisters, and drawers, card-room operatives, and so forth, form the great majority of organised women; and in these, women are organised either together with, or in close connection with, men. Some of the largest are many years older than the League, but have affiliated in comparatively recent years. There are also a vast number of Unions of miscellaneous trades--tobacco, food, tailoring, etc.; and even societies mainly masculine are affiliated, such as the London Dock and General Workers' Union (including sixty women in 1910). Many Trade Unions consisting wholly of men make donations to the League as a recognition of the importance of its work in organising women. In Manchester there are two societies to promote the organisation of women-workers, which are doing excellent educational work in fostering the habit or tradition of association among workers in miscellaneous trades, many of which are totally unorganised and grievously underpaid. If we compare these Manchester societies with the policy of the Women's Trade Union League in London, a certain difference of outlook is perceptible. The Manchester societies prefer organising women by and for themselves; the Women's Trade Union League is in touch with the larger Labour Movement and favours joint organisation wherever possible. _The Movement among Unorganised Workers._--The "New Unionism for Women," if we may so term it, first attracted public attention in July 1888, when a few scattered paragraphs found their way even into the dignified columns of the _Times_. There was a strike among the match-girls in the East End. Meetings were held, and next came the inevitable letters from the employers, representing the admirable condition of their factory, the desire of terrorised workers to return to work, the responsibility of "agitators" for the strike. Then a small Committee of Inquiry was started, its headquarters being at Toynbee Hall, and this Committee reported that it found the girls' complaints to be largely justified. The piece rates had been cut down on the introduction of machinery more than in proportion to the saving of labour per unit produced. Vexatious charges for brushes and excessive fines were imposed without reckoning or explanation. The wages ranged upwards from 4s.--4s. to 6s. predominantly--and never exceeded 13s. Such were the charges, among others which were considered to be substantiated by the investigations of the four social workers, who showed their impartiality by the careful letter in which they reproduced the explanations and defence of the employers. The Toynbee Hall Committee in its third letter characterised the relation of employer and employed in this factory to be deplorable, and the wages paid as so small as to be insufficient to maintain a decent existence. On the 16th, the _Times_ had a small paragraph describing the strike as being "the result of the class-war which the body of Socialists have brought into action." Subsequently the London Trades Council took up the match-girls' cause, distributed strike pay to the amount of £150 among 650 boys, girls, and women, and formed a Committee of the girls to co-operate with the London Trades Council. The employers agreed to receive a deputation. On Wednesday 18th July, the strike was declared to be at an end, after the meeting of the first deputation from the L.T.C. and the match-girls' representatives with the directors. The directors agreed to abolish fines and the deductions complained of, to recognise an organised Trade Union among the employees in order that grievances might be represented straight to the heads instead of through the foreman, and to reinstate the workers concerned in the strike. The extraordinary success of this strike appears to have been due to the unusual steadiness and unity of the girls themselves, to the able and tactful generalship of Mrs. Besant, and largely also, of course, to the support of the London Trades Council. As a result of this strike a Match-makers' Union was formed, and seems to have lasted until 1903; but it subsequently disappears from the Women's Trade Union League Reports, and is known no more. About the time of the great Dock Strike, 1889, a concerted effort to organise East End women-workers was made by Miss Clementina Black, Mrs. Amie Hicks, and Miss Clara James. Mrs. Hicks had been in the habit of meeting some of the women rope-makers in connexion with the parochial work of St. Augustine's Church, and had observed that many of them had bandaged hands and were suffering from injuries resulting from machinery accidents. Inquiries made by her brought to light the fact that the women's wages were only about 8s. to 10s. Disputes were frequent in the trade. Mrs. Hicks determined to open her campaign of organisation with the rope-makers, although she was warned that she would find them a rough, wild and even desperate class of women. Nothing daunted, she called on several, and invited them to a meeting. The supposed viragos said they were afraid, and Mrs. Hicks advised them to come all together. A room was hired, and about 90 to 100 women walked there in a body, a proceeding which greatly alarmed the inhabitants, some of whom fled into their houses and barred the doors. The meeting, however was successful. Nearly all the women signed their names as members of a Union, and Mrs. Hicks became their secretary, a post which she retained for ten years. It is recorded that not one of the original members was lost to the Union otherwise than by death, and that not one of them ever "said a rough word" to their secretary. Mrs. Hicks and Miss James, after making urgent representations, were admitted to give evidence before the Labour Commission, which apparently had not originally contemplated hearing women witnesses at all. Mrs. Hicks was able to show that the conditions of the work were most unhealthy, the air being full of dust, and no appliance provided to lay it. In some works even elementary sanitary requirements were not provided. Cases were known of the women being locked in the factory, and in at least one instance a fire occurred which was fatal to the unfortunate women locked in. In spite of these shocking conditions, however, many women refused to join the Union for fear of victimisation and dismissal. As Mrs. Hicks put it, the condition of the women was so bad in East London that an employer had only to say he wanted some work done, fix his own rate of pay, and he would always find women glad to take it. Miss Clara James also gave evidence in regard to the Confectioners' Trade Union. The Union was very weak in numbers, the women being afraid to join, several, including the witness, having been dismissed for joining a Union. In one factory six girls who had acted as collectors for the Union were dismissed one after another, although the Union had never acted offensively or used threats to the employer. In this trade the workers were subjected to very bad sanitary conditions, rotting fruit, syrup, etc., being left a week or more in proximity to the workrooms. Wages were stated at from 7s. to 9s., 12s. being the highest and very unusual, but even these low rates were subject to deductions and fines, and workers might be dismissed without notice. In both these trades it will be evident at once that the great need for women workers was to combine and stand together, but owing to their poverty and dread of dismissal this was precisely what it was most difficult for them to do. The frequent disputes mentioned by both witnesses are, however, a sign that the traditional docility of the woman-worker was even then beginning to give place to a more militant spirit. In other industries there have been many signs of activity in more recent years. In October 1906 the ammunition workers at Edmonton struck against a reduction of wages, and the matter being referred to arbitration, was compromised in a manner fairly favourable to the workers, and other concessions were subsequently secured. A Union was formed as a branch of the National Federation of Women Workers, and this Union is still in active existence. Members are entitled to strike pay and also have a sick benefit fund in addition to the Insurance Act benefit, and a thrift section. The secretary is a convinced believer in the value of organisation to women, and thinks that women are beginning to appreciate it themselves far more than formerly. In 1907 Miss Macarthur succeeded in reorganising the Cradley Heath chain-makers, whose Union, always feeble, had all but flickered out. The making of small chains is an industry largely carried on by women in homes or tiny workshops, and although the district does an enormous trade in the world market, this had not prevented the local industry becoming almost a proverb for sweating. The reorganisation of the Union, however, was effected in the nick of time. The society was affiliated to the National Federation of Women Workers, an association which has been formed in co-operation with the W.T.U.L., to bring together the women in those industries where no organisation already exists for them to join. In 1909 the Trade Boards Act was passed, and the making of small chains was one of the group of sweated trades first included under the Act. The organisation which had already been started was now of great service in facilitating the administration of the Act, the Women's Union being able to choose the persons who should represent it on the Board. Subsequently when the Board of Trade called a meeting to elect workers' representatives, the candidates chosen by the Union were voted for by the women with practical unanimity, and as the work of the Board progressed it was possible at each stage to consult the workers and obtain their approval for the action taken by their representatives in their name. In the absence of effective organisation this would have been much more difficult. The history of the first determination of the chain-makers' Board forms one of the most singular passages in industrial history. The Board, constituted half of employers and half of employed, having got to work, found itself compelled to fix a minimum wage which amounted to an increase in many cases of 100 per cent, or even more. The previous wages had been about 5s. or 6s., and the minimum wages per week, after allowing for necessary outlay on forge and fuel, was fixed at 11s. 3d. Poor enough, we may say. But so great an improvement was this to the workers themselves that their comment is said to have been: "It is too good to be true." The change did not take effect without considerable difficulties. The Trade Boards Act provides that three months' notice of the prices fixed by the Board shall be given, during which period complaints and objections may be made either by workers or employers. At Cradley this waiting period was abused by some of the employers to a considerable extent. Many of them began to make chains for stock, and trade being dull at the time they were able to accumulate heavy reserves. Thus the workers were faced with the probability of a period of unemployment and starvation, in addition to which a number of employers issued agreements which they asked the women to sign, contracting out of the minimum wage for a further period of six months. This was not contrary to the letter of the law, but was terribly bitter to the poor workers, whose hopes, so near fulfilment, seemed likely again to be long postponed. They came out on strike, and were supported by the National Federation of Women Workers, in conjunction with the Trade Union League and the Anti-Sweating League. A meeting was arranged between the workers' representatives and the Manufacturers' Association, at which the latter body undertook to recommend its members to pay the minimum rate so long as the workers continued financial support to those women who refused to work for less than the rates. This practically of course amounted to a request from the employers that the workers' Trade Union should protect them against non-associated employees. It has been remarked that this agreement is probably unique in the annals of Trade Unionism. After long consideration the workers agreed. An appeal for support was made to the public, and met with so good a response that the women were able to fight to a finish and returned to work victorious. Every employer in the district finally signed the white list, and more recently the Board has been able to improve upon its first award. The organisation has so far been maintained. Thus a real improvement has been achieved in the conditions of one of the most interesting, even picturesque of our industries, though unfortunately also one of the most downtrodden and oppressed. No one who has ever visited Cradley can forget it. The impression produced is ineffaceable. So much grime and dirt set in the midst of beautiful moors and hills--so much human skill and industry left neglected, despised and underpaid. The small chains are made by women who work in tiny sheds, sometimes alone, sometimes with two or three others. Each is equipped with a bellows on the left of the forge, worked by the left hand, a forge, anvil, hammer, pincers, and one or two other tools. The chains are forged link by link by sheer manual skill; there is no mechanical aid whatever, and we understand that machines for chain-making have been tried, but have never yet been successful. The operation is extremely ingenious and dextrous, and where the women keep to the lighter kind of chains there would be little objection to the work, if done for reasonable hours and good pay. It is carried on under shelter, almost in the open air, and is by no means as drearily monotonous as many kinds of factory work. On the other hand, in practice the women are often liable to do work too heavy for them, and the children are said to run serious risks of injury by fire. At the time of the present writer's visit, now about ten years ago, these poor women were paid on an average about 5s. 6d. a week, and were working long hours to get their necessary food. Most have achieved considerable increases under the combined influence of organisation and the Trade Board, and probably 11s. or 12s. is now about the average, while some are getting half as much again. When the strike was over there was a substantial remainder left over from the money subscribed to help the strikers. The chain-makers did not divide the money among themselves, but built a workers' Institute. Surely the dawn of such a spirit as this in the minds of these hard-pressed people is something for England to be proud of. In August 1911 came a great uprising of underpaid workers, and among them the women. The events of that month are still fresh in our memories; perhaps their full significance will only be seen when the history of these crowded years comes to be written. The tropical heat and sunshine of that summer seemed to evoke new hopes and new desires in a class of workers usually only too well described as "cheap and docile." The strike of transport workers set going a movement which caught even the women. In Bermondsey almost every factory employing women was emptied. Fifteen thousand women came out spontaneously, and the National Federation of Women Workers had the busiest fortnight known in its whole history of seven years. Among the industries thus unwontedly disturbed were the jam-making, confectionery, capsule-making, tin box-making, cocoa-making, and some others. In some of the factories the lives led by these girls are almost indescribable. Many of them work ten and a half hours a day, pushed and urged to utmost speed, carrying caldrons of boiling jam on slippery floors, standing five hours at a time, and all this often for about 8s. a week, out of which at least 6s. would be necessary for board and lodging and fares. Most of them regarded the conditions of their lives as in the main perfectly inevitable, came out on strike to ask only 6d. or 1s. more wages and a quarter of an hour for tea, and could not formulate any more ambitious demands. An appeal for public support was issued, and met with a satisfactory response. The strike in several instances had an even surprisingly good result. In one factory wages were raised from 11s. to 13s.; in others there was 1s. rise all round; in others of 2s. or 2s. 6d., even in some cases of 4s. In one case a graduated scale with a fixed minimum of 4s. 7d. for beginners at fourteen years old, increasing up to 12s. 4d. at eighteen, was arranged. One may hope that the moral effect of such an uprising is not wholly lost, even if the resulting organisations are not stable; the employer has had his reminder, as a satirical observer said in August 1911, "of the importance of labour as a factor in production." * * * * * Many women were enrolled in new branches of the National Federation of Women Workers. Not all of these branches survive, but there was some revival of Unionism in the winter, 1913-14, and many of the workers who struck in 1911 will be included under the new Trade Boards. Perhaps even more remarkable was the prolonged strike of the hollow-ware workers in 1912. Hollow-ware, it may not be superfluous to remark, is the making and enamelling of tin vessels of various kinds. This was once a trade in which British makers held the continental markets almost without rivalry; it was then chiefly confined to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Bilston. But small masters moved out into the country in search of cheaper labour, and settled themselves at Lye and Cradley, outside the area protected by the men's Unions. In 1906 the Unions endeavoured to improve conditions for the underpaid workers, and drew up a piece-work list of minimum rates applicable to all the centres of the trade. But they had not strength to fight for the list, and wages went down and down. As one consequence, the quality of the work had deteriorated, shoddy goods were sent abroad, and foreign competitors improved upon them.[33] This in turn was used as an excuse for further driving down wages. The hollow-ware trade, like chain manufacture, employs women as well as men. In 1912 many of these women were working for a penny an hour, tinkering and soldering buckets, kettles, pots and pans from early morning until night; at the week-end taking home 6s. for their living. It should also be remembered that some processes, especially the making of bright frying-pans, entail serious risk of lead-poisoning. Galvanised buckets are dipped in baths of acid, and the fumes are almost blinding, and stop the breath of an unaccustomed visitor. The work done by women is hard enough. But they did not take much notice of the hardness or of the risk of industrial disease. Their preoccupation was a more serious one: how to get their bread. Wages were rarely more than 7s. a week, and in 1912 a considerate and attentive visitor found their minds concentrated on the great possibility of raising this to--12s.? 14s.? 15s.? What the hollow-ware workers of Lye and Cradley had set their minds on was merely 10s. a week, and to attain this comparative affluence they were ready to come out weeks and weeks on end. As a result of conferences between representatives of the National Federation of Women Workers and twenty of the principal employers, during the summer 1912, it was decided to demand a minimum wage of 10s. for a fifty-four-hour week. Not, of course, that the officials considered this a fair or adequate wage, but because they hoped it would give the women a starting-point from which they could advance in the future, and because, wretched as it seemed, it did in fact represent a considerable increase for some of the women. The best employers yielded at once, but several refused to adopt the terms proposed. In October 840 men handed in their notices for a 10 per cent increase of wages and a fifty-four-hour week. Twelve firms conceded these terms at once, leaving 600 men still on strike against thirty-three firms. As a result many women-workers were asked to do men's work, and it seemed not unlikely that the men might be thus defeated. The National Federation of Women Workers decided to call out the women to demand a 10s. minimum, and at the same time support the men in their demands. All the women called out received strike benefit. There was, however, another body of women and girls, whose work stopped automatically because of the strike, and these were not entitled to any strike pay. A public appeal was therefore issued by the _Daily Citizen_ and also by the Women's Trade Union League, and the response evoked was sufficient to tide the workers over the crisis. The struggle ended with complete victory for the workers, and as an indirect but most important result, the trade was scheduled for inclusion in the Revisional Order under the Trade Boards Act. In the North also the last two or three years have witnessed increased activity in the organisation of underpaid trades. In the flax industry the strike of a few general labourers employed in a certain mill resulted in the locking out of 650 women flax-workers. Although the preparing and spinning of flax is a skilled industry, the highest wage paid in the mill to spinners was 11s. including bonus, reelers occasionally rising to 13s., and the common earnings of the other workers were from 7s. 6d. to 9s. Several small strikes had taken place, but the women being unorganised and without funds were repeatedly compelled to return to work on the old terms. By the efforts of the Women's Trade Union Council of Manchester a Union was now formed, and a demand made for an increase of 2s. all round. With the help of public sympathy and financial support the women were able to stand out, and after a lock-out of nearly three weeks a settlement was arrived at under which the women got an increase of 1s. all round and the bonus was rearranged more favourably for the workers. The whole of the women involved in this dispute joined the Union. A dispute in another flax mill was much more prolonged, and lasted for over sixteen weeks. It was eventually arranged by the intervention of the Board of Trade, and some concessions were obtained by the workers. In both these disputes the men and women stood together. There is perhaps no feature so hopeful in this "new unionism" of women, as the fact that women are beginning to refuse to be used as the instruments for undercutting rates and injuring the position of men. Many other such efforts might be recorded did space permit. Many of them do not unfortunately lead to stable forms of association. The difficulties are enormous, the danger of victimisation by the employers is great, and in the case of unskilled workers their places, as they know so well, are easily filled from outside. A correspondent writes to me that "fear is the root cause of lack of organisation." The odds against them are so great, the hindrances to organisation and solidarity so tremendous, that the instances recorded in which these low-grade workers do find heart to stand together, putting sex jealousy and sex rivalry behind them, disregarding their immediate needs for the larger hope, are all the more significant. Several of the labourers' Unions now admit women, notably the Gas-Workers' and General Labourers' Union and the Workers' Union. _The National Federation of Women Workers._--The most important Union for women among the ill-defined, less skilled classes of workers is the National Federation of Women Workers, which owes its existence mainly to the initiative and fostering care of the Women's Trade Union League. The form of organisation preferred by the Women's Trade Union League in the twentieth century is that men and women should wherever possible organise together. This is the case with the firmly-established Lancashire weavers and card-room operatives and with the progressive Shop Assistants' Union. In the numerous trades, however, in which no Union for women exists, a new effort and a new rallying centre have been found necessary. The National Federation of Women Workers was formed in 1906 for the purpose of organising women in miscellaneous trades not already organised. It has made considerable progress in its few years of existence, and has a number of branches in provincial and suburban places. The National Federation is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress and to the General Federation of Trade Unions, and insured in this last for strike pay at the rate of 5s. per week per member. The branches are organised in different trades, have local committees and local autonomy to a certain extent. Each branch retains control of one-sixth of the member's entrance fee and contribution, together with any voluntary contributions that may be raised for its own purposes. The remainder of the funds go to a Central Management Fund from which all strike and lock-out money is provided, and a Central Provident Fund. Branches may not strike without the permission of the Executive Council. The National Federation of Women Workers has an Insurance Section in which about 22,000 women were enrolled in 1913. At the time of writing a special effort is being made for the organisation of women in those industries to which the Trade Boards Act has recently been extended. _Women's Unions in America._--In America women are fewer in numbers in the Trade Union movement, but they have occupied a more prominent place in it there than in our own country. The American labour movement may roughly be dated from the year 1825. In that year the tailoresses of New York formed a Union and went on strike, and from that time to the present women wage-earners have constantly formed Unions and agitated for better pay and conditions of work. The first women to enter factory employment were native Americans, largely New England girls, the daughters of farmers, girls who would naturally be more independent and have a higher standard of comfort than the factory hand in old countries. Several important strikes occurred among the cotton-mill girls at Dover, New Hampshire, in 1828 and again in 1834, and also at Lowell in 1834 and 1836. It does not appear that these strikes resulted in any stable combinations. Subsequently, between 1840 and 1860, a number of labour reform associations were organised, chiefly among textile mill girls, but including also representatives of various clothing trades. These societies organised a number of successful strikes, increased wages, shortened the working day, and also carried on a successful agitation for protective legislation. The leader of the Lowell Union, Sarah Bagley, had worked for ten years in New England cotton mills. She was the most prominent woman labour leader of the period, and in 1845 became president of the Lowell Female Labour Reform Association, which succeeded in obtaining thousands of operatives' signatures to a petition for the ten hours' day. The Female Industrial Association was organised in New York, 1845, a Union not confined to any one trade but including representatives from tailoresses, sempstresses, crimpers, book-folders and stitchers, etc. Between 1860 and 1880 local branches were formed and temporary advantages gained here and there by women cigar-makers, tailoresses and sempstresses, umbrella sewers, cap-makers, textile workers, laundresses and others. Women cigar-makers especially, who were at first brought into the trade in large numbers as strike breakers, after a struggle were organised either as members of men's Unions or in societies of their own, and once organised "were as faithful to the principles of unionism as men." The Umbrella Sewers' Union of New York gave Mrs. Paterson, then visiting America, the idea of starting the movement for women's Unions in London. The women shoemakers formed a national Union of their own, called the Daughters of St. Crispin. In this period there was little organisation among the women of the textile mills, and the native American girls were to some extent ousted by immigrants having a lower standard of life. There were, however, a number of ill-organised strikes which for the most part failed. In the war time the tailoresses and sempstresses, already suffering the double pressure of long hours and low wages, had their condition aggravated by the competition of the wives and widows of soldiers, who, left alone and thrown into distress, were obliged to swell the market for sewing work as the nearest field for unskilled workers. Efforts, however, were made to form Trade Unions among the sewing women; many of these were short-lived and unsuccessful. The growing tendency among men to realise the importance of organising women is seen in a resolution passed by a meeting of tailors in June 1865: RESOLVED that each and every member will make every effort necessary to induce the female operatives of the trade to join this association, inasmuch as thereby the best protection is secured for workers as well as for the female operatives. In 1869 the International Typographical Union admitted women to equal membership, after years of opposition, to the entrance of women into the printing trade. In 1873 and onwards Trade Unionism among women, as among workers generally, suffered from the trade depression of those years. During this period, however, a number of eight-hour leagues were formed, both of men and women members, who found in the short-time idea a significant and vital measure of reform. The Boston League (1869) was the first to admit women. In this and other similar societies they served as officers and on committees. A remarkable organisation of female weavers was formed in Fall River in January 1875. The Male Weavers' Union had voted to accept a reduction of 10 per cent; but the women called a meeting of their own, excluding all men excepting reporters, and voted to strike against the reduction. The male weavers, encouraged by their action, decided to join the movement. Three thousand two hundred and fifteen strikers, male and female, were supported by the Unions, and the strike was successful. Work was resumed late in March. From 1880 the organisation of women again progressed in the labour movement of the Knights of Labour. For the first time in American Labour history women found themselves encouraged to line up with men on equal terms in a large general organisation. They could also form their own Unions in alliance with the Knights of Labour, and almost every considerable branch of women's industry was represented in these organisations, the most prominent being the Daughters of St. Crispin (shoe-workers). The first women's assembly under the Knights of Labour was held in September 1881. From its first institution this association had realised the necessity of including women. The preamble to this constitution, adopted by the first national convention of the Knights of Labour in January 1878, included on this subject two significant provisions. One called for the prohibition of the employment of children in workshops, mines and factories before attaining their fourteenth year. The other gave as one of the principal objects of the order: "To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." And the founder of the Order, at the second national convention in 1879, asked for the formulation of an emphatic utterance on the subject of equal pay for equal work. "Perfected machinery," he said, "persistently seeks cheap labour and is supplied mainly by women and children. Adult male labour is thus crowded out of employ, and swells the ranks of the unemployed, or at least the underpaid." The women not only demanded better wages but appealed for protective legislation. The numbers increased steadily till May 1886, when twenty-seven local branches, entirely composed of women, were added in a month. But a decline set in, and in the next following six years, the whole strength of female Unionism under the Knights of Labour disappeared. It had probably never exceeded 50,000.[34] The policy of labour organisations generally has, however, considerably developed in regard to the affiliation and membership of women. The General Federation of Trade Unions, which formerly had been indifferent or hostile to women-workers, had come to recognise even in the 'eighties that women occupied a permanent place in industry, and that it was both necessary and desirable that they should be organised. The position was summarised in an article in the _Detroit Free Press_.[35] _An Equal Chance._ Woman is now fairly established in the labour-market as the rival of man. Whether this is the normal condition of things is a point doubted by some political economists; but whether it be so or not, it is likely to remain the order of things practically for generations to come. This being so it must be accepted, and every fair-minded person must wish her to have an equal chance in the competition. A woman supporting her mother and little brothers and sisters is a very common spectacle; and the fact that Professor Somebody regards her as abnormal does not make her bread and butter any cheaper. She is entitled to at least as much sympathy as the man who supports a wife and children. For his charge, it must always be remembered, is voluntary--he took it on himself. She could not help her responsibilities; he assumed his of his own accord. It is therefore quite just that she should have an equal chance. In more recent years the growth of industry and the increasing use of mechanical power has constantly tended towards larger utilisation of women's labour. The American Federation's declared policy is to unite the labouring classes irrespective of colour, sex, nationality, or creed. Unionism among working women has been promoted, women delegates have been appointed to serve at the Convention, and local Unions of women have been directly affiliated. Many national Unions, of course, are not directly concerned with female labour, and a small number entirely forbid the admission of women. Of these are the barbers, watch-case engravers, and switchmen. Moulders do not admit women, and penalise members who give instruction to female workers in any branch. Core-making, for instance, employs some women, and the Union seeks to restrict or minimise it. The operative potters, upholsterers, and paper-makers admit women in certain branches but not in others. The upholsterers admit them only as seamstresses. But in all trades making these restrictions the number of women employed is small, and the effect of the restrictions is probably insignificant. Other Unions encourage the organisation of women-workers. In some of these men predominate, as in the printers, cigar-makers, boot- and shoe-makers, and women compete only in the lighter and less-skilled branches. In others women predominate, as among the garment workers, textile workers, laundry, glove, hat and cap workers. Some Unions make special concessions to women, _e.g._ a smaller registration and dues, in order to induce them to join. The motive for these concessions is clear, as the proportion of women to men in these industries is much higher than the same proportion in the Union. In San Francisco the steam laundry workers have been organised with considerable success. Down to 1900 the condition of these women was extremely bad. "Living in" was the prevailing custom. The food and accommodation were wretched in the extreme, the hours inhumanly long, sometimes from 6 A.M. to midnight, wages eight to ten dollars a month for workers living in, ten to twenty-five for other workers. An agitation was started to give publicity to these facts, and an ordinance was passed to prohibit work in laundries on Sundays or after 7 P.M. The ordinance was not observed, however, and the girls formed a committee and complained to the press. It was proposed to form a Union. Three hundred men employed in the industry applied for a charter to the Laundry Workers' International Union. The men did not wish to include girls as members, but the International would not give the charter if women were excluded. On the other hand, the women were timid and afraid of victimisation. One girl with more courage or more initiative than the others, however, was chosen to be organiser, and carried on her work secretly for about sixteen weeks with extraordinary energy and effectiveness. Suddenly it came out that a majority of employees in every laundry had joined the Union. They had refrained from declaring themselves until they had a large and influential membership, and then came out with a formal demand for shorter hours, higher wages, and a change of system. Public sympathy was aroused, and by April 1901 the conditions in the San Francisco laundries were revolutionised. Boarding was abolished, wages were increased, hours shortened to ten daily, with nine holidays a year. In more recent years these capable organisers have succeeded in obtaining the eight hours day by successive reductions of the working time. In the same city an interesting case is recorded in which the girls in a cracker (or biscuit) factory struck against over-pressure. The packers, who had to receive and pack the crackers automatically fed into the bins by machinery, found the work speeded up to such a degree that they could not cope with it. Their complaints were received with apparent respect and attention, but after a short interval the same speeding-up occurred again. With some difficulty, many of the girls being Italian and speaking little English, a Union was formed and affiliated to the Labour Council, whose representative then approached the employers. The matter was settled by arranging to have extra hands so as to meet the extra work occasioned by speeding, and an arrangement was also made to allow each girl ten minutes' interval for rest both in the morning and afternoon spell. The Industrial Workers of the World, a Labour Society with a revolutionary programme, has a large membership of unskilled workers, in textile and other industries. It doubtless includes many women, for women took part in a conflict with the city government of Spokane, Washington, over the question of free speech, the city having attempted to prevent street meetings. The workers were successful, but not without a severe struggle, in the course of which 500 men and women went to jail, many of whom adopted the hunger-strike. In the great strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912, a remarkably spontaneous effort was made by the Polish women-weavers at the Everett mill. The hours of work had been reduced by legislation from 56 to 54 per week, and the employees demanded that the same money should be paid to them as before the change. In the Everett mill about 80 per cent of the weavers were Poles. In one of the weave-rooms the Polish weavers, almost all women, stopped their looms after receiving their money on January 11, and tried to persuade the workers in some other sections of the mill to come out with them.[36] The story of this strike shows that women are fully capable of feeling the wave of class-consciousness that brings about the development of what is called "New Unionism"; but probably the difficulty of their taking a serious part in control and management is even greater than in craft Unions. Information is, however, very scanty as to the relation of women to the I.W.W., which in its literature is quite as prone as the more aristocratic craft Union to ignore the part taken by women in organisation. In 1908, when the Bureau of Labour made its enquiry into the conditions of women wage-earners in the U.S.A., the number of Unions containing ten or more female members was 546, and the number of female members was only 63,989, estimated at only 2 per cent of the total membership of the Unions. The largest group of women Unionists are those engaged in the making of or working at men's garments; these number over 17,000. The textile workers came next with 6000; the boot and shoe workers, hat and cap workers, and tobacco workers form three groups of over 5000 each. This census, however, was taken at a most unfavourable moment, when many Unions were suffering from the trade depression of the previous autumn and winter. It is also true that the numbers in actual membership are not a complete measure of the numbers under the direct influence and guidance of the Unions. It has been found that the numbers of women ready to come out on strike and enrol themselves in Unions or enforce a particular demand at a particular moment are considerably in excess of the number normally enlisted. At the same time there is little use in denying that, speaking generally, the results attained by women's organisations, after eighty or ninety years of effort, are disappointing. Women's Unions in America have been markedly ephemeral in character, usually organised in time of strikes, and frequently disappearing after the settlement of the conflict that brought them into being. A great obstacle to the organisation of women is no doubt the temporary character of their employment. The mass of women-workers are young, the great majority being under twenty-five. The difficulty of organising a body of young, heedless, and impatient persons is evident, especially in the case of girls and women who do not usually consider themselves permanently in industry. In the words of the Commissioner: To the organiser of women into Trade Unions is furnished all of the common obstacles familiar to the organiser of male wage-earners, including short-sighted individual self-interest, ignorance, poverty, indifference, and lack of co-operative training. But to the organisers of women is added another and most disconcerting problem. When men marry they usually become more definitely attached to the trade and to the community and to their labour Union. Women as a rule drop out of the trade and out of the Union when marriage takes them out of the struggle for economic independence. Another great difficulty is the opposition of the employers. "Employers commonly and most strenuously object to a Union among the women they employ." When once an organisation has attained any size, strength, or significance, the employers almost always set themselves to break it up, and have usually succeeded. In Boston, for instance, a Union of some 800 members was broken up by the posting of a notice by the firm that its employees must either join its own employers' Union or quit work. Some employers look upon female labour as the natural resource in case of a strike, as see the case quoted by Miss Abbott (_Women in Industry_, p. 206). There are reasons why employers object even more strongly to Unions among women than among men. In a number of cases production is mainly carried on by women and girls, only a few men being required to do work requiring special strength and skill. In such instances the employers do not particularly object to the organisation of their few men, whom, as skilled workers, they would anyhow have to pay fairly well. But when it comes to organising women and demanding for them higher wages and shorter hours, the matter is much more serious. The present unsatisfactory condition of women's Unions is, however, only what might be expected in the early years of such a movement. Men's Unions have all gone through a similar period of weak beginnings, and in America there are special difficulties arising from the presence of masses of unskilled or semi-skilled workers of different races and tongues, and varying in their traditions and standard of life. There is much encouragement to be derived from the fact that the leaders in men's Unions, both national and local, now have more faith than formerly in Unionism for women. The American Federation of Labour calls upon its members to aid and encourage with all the means at their command the organisation of women and girls, "so that they may learn the stern fact that if they desire to achieve any improvement in their condition it must be through their own self-assertion in the local Union." From 1903 onward every Convention has favoured the appointment of women organisers. Women also are developing a greater sense of comradeship with their fellows and of solidarity with the Labour Movement generally. As we have seen, there are now few Unions which discriminate against women in their constitutions, and the universal Trade Union rule is "equal pay for equal work for men and women." Even the special condition of this instability in industry, the temporary nature of women's work, which is so great an obstacle to organisation, is thought to be changing. Within the last thirty or forty years, changes in industrial and commercial methods have opened up numerous lines of activity to women, in addition to the factory work, sewing and domestic service, which used to be her main field: "marriage is coming to be looked upon less and less as a woman's sole career, and at the same time the attitude in regard to wage-earning after marriage is changing. The tendency of these movements is to create an atmosphere of permanency and professionalism for woman as a wage-earner, especially among women in the better-paid occupations, which in time may markedly change her attitude toward industrial life." Such a change of outlook and habits of mind must doubtless be slow, but there are signs that it is in progress on both sides of the Atlantic. The future of Unionism for women is therefore not without hope, however unsatisfactory the immediate prospect may be. Miss Matthews, the writer of an interesting study of women's Unions in San Francisco, sums up her observations on the subject as follows: Experience in contesting for their rights in Union seems to have developed leaders among the Trade Union women. Wages, hours, and shop conditions have all shown the impress of the influence exerted by the organised action of the workers. But if wages, hours, and shop conditions did not enter into the question at all, still Trade Unionism among women would show its results in a higher moral tone made possible by the security which comes from the knowledge that there are friends who will protest in time of trouble and offer hope for better days; it would display its influence in a more awakened and trained intelligence; it would make evident its effort in a happier attitude towards the day's work, arising from the fact that the worker herself has studied her industry and has participated in determining the conditions under which she earns her livelihood. In 1903-4 a Women's Trade Union League, on the lines of the organisation of the same name in England, was formed, and is doing excellent work to promote solidarity and union among women-workers. CHAPTER IVA. WOMEN IN UNIONS (_continued_). _Women's Unions in Germany._[37]--In Germany the obstacles have been far greater than in England. The relative prevalence of "Hausindustrie" and the greater poverty stood in the way of women's organisation, and until a few years back the law did not allow women to join political societies. Women were not, it is true, prohibited from joining Trade Unions, but the line between political and trade societies is not in practice always easy to draw, and full membership of Unions has thus been often hindered. The first Women's Unions were started in the early 'seventies of the last century, by middle-class women who were also in the forefront of the battle for the Suffrage. The authorities dissolved the societies. Women-workers did not long maintain the alliance with the "Women's Rights" Party. An independent organisation was formed, which greatly exceeded the previous efforts in numbers and significance. The immediate impulse to the formation of this Union was given by the proposal of the Government to put a duty on sewing-thread, which would have been a great burden on the needle-women who had to provide the thread. Three societies were formed, the first being the "Verein zur Vertretung der Interessen der Arbeiterinnen," which was followed by the "Nordverein der Berliner Arbeiterinnen" and the "Fachverein der Mäntelnäherinnen," both of which were founded and controlled by working women. Investigations of the wages and conditions of working women were undertaken by these societies, in consequence of which a debate in the Reichstag took place, followed by an official enquiry into the wages of the women-workers in the manufacture of underclothing and ready-made garments, which only confirmed the conclusion already reached by private enquiry. The Truck Act was made more stringent, in response to the working women's movement, but as a secondary result all the societies were dissolved and the leaders prosecuted. The authorities were taking fright at the increase in the Socialist vote and in the membership of Trade Unions; and the Reichstag, under the tutelage of Bismarck, in 1878 passed the notorious Anti-Socialist Law, under which not only Socialist societies but even Trade Unions were harassed and suppressed. During the twelve years in which the law was in force, however, propaganda work was still carried on with heroic courage and perseverance, and the solidarity and class-consciousness of the workers, both men and women, was developed and strengthened by their natural indignation against the persecution suffered. The men's attitude towards the women-workers, which had been formerly reactionary and sometimes hostile, gradually changed, partly because of the energy and courage the women had shown, partly through a growing recognition, which was intensified by the enormous increase in women industrial workers shown in the Census Report, 1895, that exclusion of women from the men's Unions could only exasperate industrial competition in its worst form. In 1890 a Conference was held at Berlin at which the Central Commission of German Trade Unions was founded, and its attitude towards women was indicated by the fact that a woman was a member of its Committee. Measures were taken that in the committees of societies which excluded women from membership, resolutions should be proposed for an alteration of rules, and in most cases these were adopted. Under their guidance an agitation was set on foot to induce women to join Unions. Into this agitation the women organisers put an energy, patience, and self-sacrifice that is beyond praise. Now the German Free Unions ("freie Gewerkschaften") are not identified with any political propaganda, and cannot legally spend money for political purposes if they have members under eighteen. But in practice they are largely led and controlled by members of the Social Democratic Party, and thus it has happened that working women, who were forced to abandon their own societies and to join forces with the general Labour Movement, are now largely under the influence and identified with the movement for social democracy. It is incorrect to speak of the Unions as "Social Democratic Unions," and yet in fact the two forces do work in harmony. In the Labour Movement women found their natural allies. Their co-operation secured men against "blackleg" competition, and on the other hand the social democrats have worked for women. In 1877 they petitioned for improvements in the working conditions of women, and in 1890, that women should have votes for the industrial councils that were then under consideration. Bebel's _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_ appeared about this time, and made a profound sensation. In this work the relations of the social question with the woman question were analysed. "Nothing but economic freedom for woman," said Bebel, "could complete her political and social emancipation." In 1908 some of the remaining obstacles that impeded women from taking part in political and trade societies were done away with by the Federal Association law. The outstanding fact at the present time is the enormous relative increase in the numbers of women Unionists. Frau Gnauck gives the numbers in 1905 as 50,000 in the "Free" or social democratic Unions, 10,000 in the Christian. The figures for 1912, from the _German Statistical Year-Book_, will be found at the end of the section.[38] It will be observed that although, as with us, the largest group of organised women is in the textile trades, the members are more generally distributed, and the non-textile Unions show larger numbers, both absolutely and relatively, than is the case in England. The centralised Unions undoubtedly owe their origin chiefly to the Social Democratic exertions, and are strongly class-conscious. They, however, favour the view that it is the duty of the State to protect the workers by legislation from excessive exploitation, and that it is the main business of the Unions to achieve as far as possible immediate improvements in wages and labour conditions. The comparative ease with which new Unions have been built up and existing Unions amalgamated is very largely due to Social Democratic influence. Before Trade Unions existed to any extent worth mentioning, Lassalle's campaign for united action had taught the workers that the engineer and his helper, the bricklayer and his labourer, were of one class and had one supreme interest in common; that there was only one working class, and varieties of calling and degrees of skill were not the proper basis of organisation even for trade ends. The ideal no doubt is one great Union of all workers, regardless of occupation. This is in practice unattainable; but the Germans, in whom class-consciousness is so strong, are reducing the Unions to the smallest possible number, and are also linked closely together by means of the General Commission. The General Commission of Trade Unions has its office in Berlin. It publishes a weekly journal called a _Korrespondenzblatt_, containing information of value to Trade Unionists and students of Trade Unionism. Connected with the Commission is a secretariat for women, the work of which is to promote organisation among women-workers. Still more recently it has been arranged that each Union with any appreciable membership of women should have a woman organiser. The rapid increase among women members is an indication of the increasing interest taken by the women themselves. Considerable diversity in the scale of contributions is one characteristic--young persons, as well as women, being admitted members along with adult males. It is evident that the German form of organisation is much better calculated to catch the weaker and less-skilled classes of workers than is the more aristocratic and old-fashioned craft Union of our own country. The Germans hold that the organisation of the unskilled labourer is as important as that of the mechanic, and their great industrial combinations include all men- and women-workers within the field of operations, irrespective of their particular grade of skill. Endeavours are made to enrol all workers in big effective organisations, and the success of these tactics has been most significant. While in Germany two and a half million workers are organised in forty-eight centralised Unions, all affiliated to the General Commission as the national centre, in England there are more than a thousand separate Unions with about the same total membership. In England barely one million Unionists out of the two and a half belong to the General Federation. These facts are not without bearing on the position of women-workers. English working men complain of the competition of women; the moral is, organise the women. Another important field of Trade Union activity is in the education of their members. There is a Trade Union School at Berlin supported entirely by Trade Union funds and managed by Trade Unionists. Care is also taken that members of Unions should be politically educated to understand their rights and duties as citizens. Women-workers in all the "freie Gewerkschaften" enjoy the same privileges as men, and are eligible for all boards or elected bodies of their respective Unions. There are as yet, however, only two Unions in Germany which have a woman president, and the majority on the executives of the other Unions are men. This is not due to opposition by men, or to rules impeding the appointment of women on these bodies, but rather to the indifference of many women-workers, who, as in England, fail to interest themselves in the affairs of their Unions. This lack of enthusiasm on the part of women is ascribed to their position in the home and to the difficulty that they have in combining household work with wage-work, and at the same time retaining any leisure or energy to concern themselves with Union matters. Contributions and benefits are usually somewhat lower than in the case of men, because women's earnings are usually less. Five national Unions have, however, adopted the principle of equal scales for men and women. In these cases the amount of contribution varies according to the wages earned, and benefits are graduated to prevent the risk of women becoming a greater burden on the funds than men. It is a patent fact that the number of organised women-workers is very small when compared with men in the same organisation, but the relative increase is great, and the spirit of association is said to be gaining a strong hold on women. The fact that so many German women continue work after marriage is said to be one cause of the increasing interest taken in Unions, their position as wage-earners being not merely a temporary one, to be abandoned in a few years' time. The "Christian" Trade Unions contain no very large numbers of women compared to the "free" societies. They were also considerably later in coming into existence, and appear, though ostensibly non-political, to be largely due to reactionary political influences, and organised in opposition to the Socialist party. The Home Workers' Union is mainly philanthropic and controlled by ladies. The Christian Unions have enemies on both sides, as they are naturally regarded with considerable suspicion by the "Free" or "Central" Unions, but nevertheless are also disapproved of by the authorities of the Catholic Church. The Christian Unions started with the aim of being inter-denominational ("interkonfessionelle"), including Protestants as well as Catholics, and a considerable degree of sympathy with labour was combined with their mainly reactionary propaganda; they even considered strikes a possible and ultimate resource, although they desired to avoid them. In many cases, pressed forward perhaps by the rank and file, they have co-operated with the "Free" Unions, who are so much stronger in numbers and finance than themselves. These tendencies excited the displeasure of the strict Catholic body, and not only the German Bishops, but the Pope himself, have shown hostility to the Christian Unions, which have thus been rent by internal dissensions. Catholic Unions of a strictly denominational type have been formed in opposition to the inter-denominational Christian Unions, and though the former are of little importance as organisations, they no doubt have some effect in weakening the body from which they have branched off. However that may be, the numbers in the Christian Unions, though showing a considerable percentage increase, are insignificant compared to the large "Free" Unions. In quite recent years the Christian Unions have lent themselves to strike-breaking and are becoming discredited in the labour world. The Hirsch-Duncker Unions have only a very small number of women members, and are of little importance for the women's labour movement. These Unions were founded and are partly controlled by middle-class Liberals. It may be interesting here briefly to compare the views of two distinguished German women writers on the question of Trade Unionism for women. Frau Braun, writing in 1901, says that the development of the great industry is the force that impelled men to combine successfully together, but industrially women are about a century behind men, and before they can be successfully organised, home-work must be repressed in every form, and women's work must develop into factory industry much more completely than it has yet done. Home-work tends to perpetuate the dependence of women, enabling the home-keeping wife or daughter to carry on a bye-industry, and is therefore an evil. Again, the poverty of women is a great obstacle to their organisation. Economic history shows that well-paid workers organise more quickly and effectively than those who are isolated, oppressed and degraded. Women-workers most urgently need to be enlightened, but this cannot happen until they have been lifted out of the intense pressure of physical need; they must be given time to read, to follow the news of the day, to get beyond the horizon of their own four walls. This cannot be attained by Trade Union action alone. Legislative measures must be taken for the relief of the women-workers. English history shows that Lancashire women weavers before the Factory Act were as incapable of organisation, as easy a prey to the exploiter of their work, as the majority of women-workers are to-day. It was only after the law had restricted their hours of work that they began to organise in Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies. In Frau Braun's opinion women-workers will lose more than they gain by adopting the style of the women's movement in the bourgeois sense. Save where absolutely necessary, organisation for women only is a source of weakness to the women-workers' movement. The numerous societies for women-workers' education, the independent Socialist women's congresses, and especially the women's Unions promoted by the advocates of "women's rights," all these are dangerous. A working woman's movement fully conscious of its aims and principles will permit this class of organisation only in the case of Unions for trades exclusively feminine, or of educational clubs or institutes when no other is accessible to women-workers. In principle they should all be avoided, for they can only confuse the issue, and exaggerate the one-sided feminist point of view which leaves out of account the class solidarity of workers and women-workers, the indispensable condition of any successful effort by the proletariat. And it follows from this point of view that co-operation with the bourgeois woman's movement should be refused, whether in the form of admission to "bourgeois" women's societies or the inclusion of "bourgeois" advocates of women's rights in women-workers' societies. Both England and France, Frau Braun thinks, offer examples of the reactionary effect of such co-operation; the numberless work-girls' clubs, holiday homes and the like, managed by ladies of the upper and middle classes in England are one cause of the political backwardness of the English working women. Co-operation is too apt to degenerate into tutelage. The German women's movement has steadily refused any co-operation with the bourgeois movement, because it recognises the complete divergence of principle lying at the back of the two movements, and the difference of standpoint as well as of aim. Not that every Socialist is sound on the woman question! Far from it. Frau Braun recognises that in many a Social democrat there lurks the old reactionary philistine feeling about woman: "Tout pour la femme, mais rien avec elle." The increase of women's employment has considerably shaken this conviction in the Trade Unions, because the organisation of women is seen more and more to be a condition of their very existence. But more than this, they need to recognise the vast importance of educating, enlightening the working woman, binding her closer and closer to the Socialist cause. Women have the future destiny of men in their hands. They mould and shape the character of the children. If Socialism can gain the women, it will have the future with it. To bring the women into closer community with the labour movement, to translate their paper equality into living fact, is no fantastic dream; it is part of the obligation of the modern "knights of labour" in the interest of themselves and their cause. Frau E. Gnauck-Kühne writes in sympathy with the Catholic Unions of the older type, viz. the "Interkonfessionelle." Like Frau Braun, she greatly prefers organisation for working women along with men to separate Unions. Separate organisations, she remarks, require double staff, double expenses of book-keeping, finance and secretarial arrangements, and are more costly, not to mention that the women's wages are so low, the contributions they can make are so small that a sound and effective Union of women only is scarcely possible. Frau Gnauck lays stress on the psychological difficulties of organising women. For ages men have been accustomed to work in common, to subject themselves to discipline; their work brings them into relation with their fellows of the same calling, with their equals. The traditional work of women, on the contrary, has kept them in isolation; the private household was, and is still, a little world in itself, and in this world the woman has no peers--she has as housewife no relation to other housewives, and there is nothing to connect her work at home with the outside world or public matters. She is very slow to perceive the advantages of new methods, labour-saving devices, co-operation and so forth, which might so greatly lessen domestic toil if intelligently applied. With a certain sly humour Frau Gnauck points out that the housewife has no expert criticism to undergo, for her husband is often out the whole day, and understands nothing of housekeeping or the care of children if he were at home. The housewife as worker (not, be it observed, as wife) is in the position of an absolute ruler; she has no one's opinion to consider but her own, no inspection or control to regard; she is a law unto herself. This habit of mind is not calculated to fit woman for combined action; rather does it tend to promote individualism and a lack of discipline, which hinders concerted effort in small things or in great. This is not to deny that many women are capable of the greatest devotion and sacrifice, even to the point of self-annihilation. The loftiest courage for personal action and self-sacrifice, as Frau Gnauck keenly remarks, is nevertheless in its way an emphasis of individual will and action, a heightening of self, even though for unselfish ends. Concerted action demands a surrender of individuality, the power to find oneself in the ranks with one's equals. Men are better trained for this kind of corporate action than women normally are. The older women are too much burdened, and continually oppressed with the thought of meeting the week's expenses, the young ones are indifferent because they expect to get married. Frau Gnauck, however, refuses to despair even of organising the woman-worker. We must, she says, put ourselves in her place; we must realise that as no man can see over his horizon, we must bring something that the woman worker _can_ see over her horizon, something that will strike her imagination, something that will build a bridge from her over to those large ideas, "class-interest," "general good," which so far she has neither time, spirit, nor money enough to understand. She must be drawn at first by the prospect of some small but concrete improvement in her own condition, which will make it seem worth while to give the time and money that the Union wants. Appeal to the feeling all women have for a home of their own. Explain to them in simple language that the Union would prevent underbidding and undercutting, and thus raise men's wages. More men could marry on these higher wages, married women need not go to work, and both the single woman and the married would benefit. Frau Gnauck is in agreement with Frau Braun as to the advisability of common organisation, for if the women cannot join the men's Unions, they are helpless, and if they form a Union of their own, they will probably be too weak to avoid being played off against the men. She takes, on the other hand, a much more favourable view than Frau Braun of the various philanthropic clubs and societies formed by women of a superior class. These organisations do not of course do anything to improve the economic position, they cannot in any way take the place of Trade Unions, but they provide a kind of preparatory stage, a training in association, an opportunity for discussion, and in the present circumstances, with the isolated condition in which working women and girls so often have to live, all these experiences are a means of development and an educational help to more serious organisation later on. This is borne out by Dr. Erdmann,[39] who, whilst opposed to the Catholic Unions as reactionary, admits that even in these Unions the workers soon begin to feel the need of Trade Union organisations, and often end by joining the Socialist Union. NUMBERS OF WOMEN IN UNIONS--GERMANY. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Largest Occupation Groups. | Number.| Per cent of Total.| |---------------------------------|--------|-------------------| | FREIE GEWERKSCHAFTEN. | | | | (Total women, 216,462.) | | | |Textile workers | 53,363 | 24·6 | |Metal | 26,848 | 12·4 | |Factory workers | 25,146 | 11·6 | |Tobacco | 17,918 | 8·2 | |Bookbinders | 15,979 | 7·4 | | CHRISTIAN UNIONS. | | | | (Total women, 28,008.) | | | |Textile workers | 12,811 | 45·7 | |Home workers | 8,188 | 29·2 | |Tobacco | 3,088 | 11·0 | | HIRSCH-DUNCKER UNIONS. | | | | (Total women, 4950.) | | | |Textile workers | 1,880 | 38·0 | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ _The Outlook._--It will be seen from the preceding chapter and section that a general view of women in Unions presents a somewhat ambiguous and contradictory picture. In one industry, cotton, there are in England two large Unions of remarkable strength and effectiveness, in which women are organised with men, and form a majority of the Union. The women cotton weavers and card-room operatives form nearly 70 per cent of all the organised women. In the other textile industries, in the clothing trades, and some others, a comparatively small number of women are organised, either with men, or in branches closely in touch with the men's Unions, but these Unions are of various degrees of strength, and in no case include a large proportion of the women employed. There are also some women organised in Unions of general labourers and workers, and their numbers have increased rapidly in the last few years, but are not as yet considerable. We also find many small Unions of women only in various occupations, but it is a curious fact that women have so far evolved very little organisation in their most characteristic occupations such as domestic service, nursing, dressmaking and millinery. Unions of some kind in these occupations are not unknown, but they are quite inconsiderable in comparison with the numbers employed. Yet the strategic position of the workers in some of these occupations is in some respects strong. A fairly well-organised strike of London milliners in the first week in May, or of hotel servants and waitresses along the south coast, say about the last week in July, would probably be irresistible. The same applies to women in certain factory processes when the work is a monopoly of women and cannot be done by men's fingers. Paper-sorting is a typical instance; a paper-sorters' strike just before the Christmas present season might be highly effective. In such occupations as these, nevertheless, Unionism is mostly conspicuous by its absence. There is little use in denying that there are special difficulties in the way of the organisation of women. The old difficulty of the hostility of men Unionists is largely a thing of the past, but many others remain. There are difficulties from hostility and indifference on the part of the employers; long hours of work; family ties and duties; educational deficiencies among working women themselves, and the intellectual and moral effects that result from ignorance. An immense difficulty is the low rate of wages characteristic of so many women's employments, which makes it impossible in most cases to pay contributions sufficient for adequate benefit during a strike. Competition is another difficulty, especially in low-grade and unspecialised trades, where places can easily be filled. There is the constant dread among workers of this class and low-grade home workers that, if they attempt any resistance, some other woman will go behind them and take the work for still less wages. Even collecting contributions is often a considerable difficulty; if it is done at the factory it may subject the collector to disfavour and victimisation; if not, the labour is very considerable. Another great difficulty in organising women is the prospect of marriage. A girl looks upon her industrial career as merely a transition stage to getting married and having a home of her own. This need not in itself hinder her being a "good trade unionist," for after all the industrial career of a girl, beginning at twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, may well be eight or ten years long, even if she marries young, but it no doubt does tend to deflect her energies and sentiment from Unionism. The prospect of marriage, which to a young man is a steadying influence, making for thrift and for the strengthening of his class by solidarity and corporate action, is to a young girl a distraction from industrial efficiency, an element of uncertainty and disturbance. Again, the position of women renders them especially amenable to social influences. Social differences between different grades of workers keep them apart from one another and make combination difficult. Women are more susceptible than men to the influence of their social superiors. In the past, and even in the present, though less than formerly, no doubt, the influence of upper class women has been and is used against the Trade Union spirit. Charity and philanthropy have tended to counterbalance the forces that have been drawing the working class together. Miss Collet found in investigating for the Labour Commission that the homes and hostels for the working girls run by religious and benevolent societies had an atmosphere unfavourable to Trade Unionism, and influenced the girls to look coldly on agitation for improved material conditions. Lack of public spirit is, in short, the great difficulty with women. Their economic position, their training and education, the influence of the classes considered superior, above all perhaps the pressure of custom and tradition, all these have combined to prevent or postpone corporate action and class solidarity. Must we admit that women are inherently incapable of organisation, which by a kind of miracle or chance has been achieved successfully in one district and in one industry only? A further consideration of the Board of Trade figures gives a rather different complexion to the matter. In the building, mining, metal and transport trades there are practically no women unionists, but with the exception of metal there are only a very few women employed in these trades at all. In the other non-textile trades the proportion of women organised is very small, and the proportion of organised women to organised men is also small. But it happens that in most of these trades the women employed are also few compared with the men, and the men themselves are not strongly organised. In the woollen and worsted trade organisation is not strong for either sex. In cotton alone do we get a really strong organisation of both men and women. It begins to dawn upon us at this point that the weak organisation of women is after all part and parcel of the general problem of organisation in those trades. No doubt it is an extremer and specially difficult form of the problem. But on the whole, with the exception of the metal trades, it holds good that where women are employed together with men, they are strongly organised where men are strongly organised, weak where men are weak. Even in metal trades the exceptions are more apparent than real. The strong Unions are in branches of work that women do not do; and a glance down the list of those metal workers who make the small wares and fittings in which women's employment is increasing does not reveal any great strength of male Unionism, except perhaps in the brass-workers, who exceeded 7000 in 1910. Directly we realise this intimate connexion of women's unionism with the Labour Movement as a whole, a light is thrown on many puzzling discrepancies. In the case of women there have been in the last forty years or so two tendencies at work. One is towards the sporadic growth of small unco-ordinated Unions of women only. Financially weak and in some cases governed by a retrograde policy, numbers of such Unions spring up and die down again. A few achieve some measure of success, and occasionally a very small Union will show a very considerable degree of persistence and vitality without perceptible increase of numbers. Occasionally such Unions are competing with mixed Unions in the same occupation, each of course regarding the other as the intruder. It matters very little who is to be blamed for the overlapping. The only important thing is to recognise that such tactics mean playing into the enemy's hands, with disastrous results for labour. Apart from such unfortunate instances, it would be foolish to deny that the small Unions of women only have provisionally at least a considerable usefulness. The women must be roped in somehow, and even the most precarious organisation may have a distinct educational value in evoking in its members the germ of a sense of class-solidarity and membership with their fellows. I am almost tempted to say that any force that brings women consciously into association with aims higher than petty and personal ones is ultimately for good, however destructive it may seem to be in some of its manifestations. The other tendency is towards the organisation of women either jointly with men or in close connexion with men's Unions. In these cases there have been many failures and some successes. The question of adjustment is highly complicated, and cannot be settled on broad lines as with the cotton weavers. "Equal pay for equal work" is not a ready-made solution for all difficulties, for the work is very often not equal at all. In most cases it is absolutely distinct, and in many there is a troublesome margin where the work of men and women is very nearly the same but not quite. The men often regard women as unscrupulous competitors, and though they have mostly abandoned the old policy of excluding women, they are apt to try and organise them from their own point of view, without regard to the women's special interests. Rough measures of this kind only give a further impulse to schism, confusion and bitterness. At present undeniably there is here and there a good deal of ill-feeling, especially in districts like Manchester or Liverpool, with a number of ill-organised, ill-paid trades, and competing unco-ordinated Unions. If Trade Unionism is to be effective, if membership is to be co-extensive with the trade and compulsory, as in the future we hope it will, there is no question that better methods are needed, greater centralisation, a more carefully thought-out policy, to avoid the present waste and competition. It is not so much a change of heart as a coherent policy that is needed. The organisation of women has been taken up merely where it was obviously and pressingly needful, in order to safeguard the interests of the men immediately concerned. In the case of the cotton weavers, an altogether special and peculiar class, the problem was comparatively simple. It was of vital importance to the men to get the women in, and on the other hand, the men could do for the women a great deal which at that stage of social development and opinion the women could not possibly have done for themselves. The cotton weavers exhibit an interlocking of interests, so patent and unmistakable that it was not only perceived but acted upon. The card-room operatives lagged behind for a time, the organisation of women being not quite so evident and apparent a necessity, but they have now almost overtaken the weavers. In other industries the problem is more complicated and has taken much longer to grasp. Take the interesting and suggestive industry of paper-making. How is the strongly organised, highly-paid paper-maker to realise that it matters very much that women should be organised in his trade? His daughter may earn pocket-money at paper-sorting, but merely as a temporary employment. She will marry a respectable artisan and abandon work on marriage. The rag-cutters, on the other hand, belong to an altogether different class, being usually wives or widows of labourers. There is not enough class feeling to bind together such different groups. It is true enough that the problem of labour is a problem of class-solidarity, and that the women must in no wise be left out. "Whoever can help to strengthen Trade Unionism among women workers will be conferring a benefit on more than the women themselves."[40] But the depth and truth of this statement is by no means fully realised, and in many cases women have little chance of being organised by the men of their own trade. As Mr. Cole has told us, the weakness of British labour is the lack of central control and direction. Outside the special case of the skilled workers in cotton, the organisation of women becomes more and more a question, not of craft, but of class. This is seen in the different form and type of organisation demanded by the "new unionism." The cotton weavers need in their secretary before all things the closest and minutest acquaintance with the technical mysteries of the craft. The secretary of a modern labour Union including all sorts of heterogeneous workers cannot possibly possess intimate technical knowledge of each. Personality, power of speech, the force and warmth of character that can draw together oppressed and neglected workers and make them feel themselves one, these are the elementary gifts needed to start a workers' Union, whether of men, women, or both together. But also if such a body is to be kept together and do effective work, it is especially in the "new unionism" that the need of central control and direction is felt. A national policy must take into consideration the needs of women and harmonise their interests with those of men. The success of the Women's Trade Union League is very largely due, not merely to the personality of its leaders, though no doubt that has been a considerable asset, but to the fact that it has a national policy and a definite aim. Frau Braun eleven years ago saw that the labour woman ran some danger of being caught into the feminist movement and withdrawn from her natural place as an integral part of the Labour Movement itself. It is to be hoped that she has followed English social history in the interval with sufficient closeness to be aware of the far-sighted statesmanship shown by the leaders of the Trade Union League in avoiding such a pitfall. However unsatisfactory and inadequate the organisation of women has been and still is, a review of the situation does not suggest any inherent incapacity of women for corporate action. In the cotton weavers' societies, although the main responsibility for organisation has rested on men's shoulders, yet the women and girls have consistently paid contributions amounting now to a relatively high figure, and they have constantly aided in the work of recruiting new members. Experience is now showing that in certain districts where the industry is becoming more and more a woman's trade, the women have not been lacking in capacity to take over the work of managing the Union's affairs. The absence of women from the Committee of so many weavers' Unions at the present day is due to inertia and long surviving habit rather than to any real incapacity. In the recent ballot on the question of political action, the enormous proportion of votes recorded shows that a large proportion of women must have used the vote. In many of the small women's societies in Manchester a working woman is the secretary. In certain cases local Unions of women have been successful, notably the Liverpool upholstresses, the Edmonton ammunition workers and some others. The working woman is in fact beginning to show powers, hitherto unsuspected, of social work and political action. The Insurance Act has demanded women officials as "Sick Visitors" and "Pay Stewards," and the new duties thrown on the secretaries and committee by that Act are likely to bring about an increasing demand for the participation of women. The rapidly increasing numbers of women in the Shop Assistants' Union, the movement for a minimum wage in the co-operative factories, the increasing number of women in general labour Unions, all these are hopeful signs of a movement towards unity. The milliner and dressmaker in small establishments and the domestic servant will probably be the last to feel the rising wave. Even of these we need not despair. With the development of postal facilities, easy transit and opportunities for social intercourse, such as we may foresee occurring in the near future, there may be a considerable development of class-consciousness even among the workers among whom it is now most lacking, while the Women's Co-operative Guild and the Women's Labour League, in their turn, are finding a way for the association of non-wage-earning women in the working class. FEMALE MEMBERSHIP OF TRADE UNIONS, 1913. +----------------------------------------------------+ | | |Per cent| |Occupation |Numbers.| of | | | | Total. | |----------------------------------|--------|--------| |Textile-- | | | | Cotton preparing | 53,317| 14·9 | | Cotton spinning | 1,857| 0·5 | | Cotton weaving | 155,910| 43·8 | | Wool and worsted | 7,738| 2·2 | | Linen and jute | 20,689| 5·8 | | Silk | 4,247| 1·2 | | Hosiery, etc. | 4,070| 1·1 | |Textile printing, etc | 9,453| 2·6 | | |--------|--------| | Total | 257,281| 72·1 | |Non-Textile-- | | | | Boot and shoe | 9,282| 2·6 | | Hat and cap | 3,750| 1·1 | | Tailoring | 9,798| 2·7 | | Printing | 5,893| 1·7 | | Pottery | 2,600| 0·7 | | Tobacco | 2,060| 0·6 | | Shop assistants | 24,255| 6·8 | | Other trades | 8,742| 2·4 | | General labour | 23,677| 6·6 | | Employment of Public Authorities| 9,625| 2·7 | | |--------|--------| | Total | 99,682| 27·9 | | |--------|--------| | Grand Total | 356,963| 100·0 | +----------------------------------------------------+ CHAPTER V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I.[41] _Changes effected by the Industrial Revolution._--We have seen that the industrial employment of women developed partly out of their miscellaneous activities as members of a family, partly out of their employment as domestic servants, partly out of the work given out from well-to-do households to their poorer neighbours. Weaving and spinning, the most typical and general employments of women, were carried on by them as assistants to the husband or father, or as servants lending a hand to their masters' trade, or were done direct for customers. In the last case, the work might be done either for the use of the manor or some other well-to-do household, or in the case of spinning and winding, the product might be sold to weavers directly or through a middleman. To a more limited extent, the same kind of conditions probably applied to work other than textile. The women acted as subordinate helpers or assistants, whether in the family or out of it. In the former case they were probably not paid but took their share of the family maintenance; in the latter they were earners. When the circumstances of the trade were favourable, _e.g._ when the demand for yarn exceeded the supply, women-workers may have earned very fair wages; but on the whole it appears that they were in an unfavourable position in selling their labour. The fact of working for nothing, as many did in the home, would not promote a high standard of remuneration, and the women who took in work from the manor or other wealthy households would probably be expected to regard employment as a favour.[42] When the industrial revolution came, and the man with capital found himself in the exciting position of being able to obtain large returns from his newly-devised plant and machinery, the women and children were there waiting to be employed. Enormous profits were made out of the cheap labour of women and girls. The only alternative occupation of any extent was domestic service, then an overstocked and under-paid trade. The women and girls, accustomed to work at home, were not aware how greatly their productive power had increased, and had no means of justifying claims to an increased share of the produce, even if they had known how to make them. Many, as we have seen in Chapter II., were reduced to terrible poverty through the failure of work to the hand-loom weavers, and were ready to take any work they could get to eke out the family living. _The Survival of Previous Standards and Conditions._--The development of the great industry, the use of machinery and the concentration of capital, came at a time when the working class was peculiarly helpless to help itself, and the governing class was unable or unwilling to initiate any adequate social reform. The Enclosure Acts had weakened the spirit and independence of the agricultural working-class and increased destitution and pauperism, while wages were kept down through the operation of the allowance system under the Old Poor Law. Local depopulation in rural districts sent numbers of needy labourers, strong, industrious, and inured to small earnings, to swell the industrial population of towns.[43] But the crowning cruelty, the extremest folly, was the prohibition to combine. The special characteristic of the industrial revolution was the association of operatives under one roof, performing co-ordinated tasks under one control to produce a given result. Now this new method of associated labour was not only immensely more productive, but it also potentially held advantages for the workers. It brought them together, it gave them a common interest, it brought all sorts of social and civic possibilities within their reach. But to realise these possibilities it was essential that they should be able to join together, to take stock of the bewildering new situation which confronted them, to achieve some kind of corporate consciousness. This was denied them under various pains and penalties. Yet the State did not for a long time itself take action to give the factory class the protection they were forbidden to seek for themselves. The effect was that while the workers were bound, the employers were free or were restricted only to the very slight extent of the regulations of the early factory acts, and could impose very much such conditions of work as they pleased. What those conditions were has been reiterated often enough. Work far into the night, or even both night and day; sanitation of the rudest and most defective kind where it was not absent altogether; industrial disease from dust, fluff and dirt, or from damp floors and steaming atmosphere; workrooms overheated or dismally cold; wages low, and subject to oppressive fines and fraudulent deductions,--such, and worse, is the dreary recital of the treatment meted out to the workers. The introduction of power machines was not _per se_ the cause of these evils. Women had been accustomed to do the work that no one else wanted to do. The servile position of the woman-worker, the absence of combination among the operative class, and the lack of State or Municipal control over the conditions of industry and housing, all combined to provide "cheap and docile workers" for the factory system. And no doubt the factory system took full advantage of the opportunity. Capital inevitably seeks cheap labour. The governing class had carefully and deliberately provided that labour should be cheap. _What the Factory Act has done._--The awakening class-consciousness of the factory workers in Lancashire and Yorkshire led to agitation and petitions for a restriction of the hours of work. Leaving out of account the earlier Factory Acts, which were ill-devised and weak, the first effective regulation was the Factory Act of 1833. This Act was timid in the regulations imposed, which were too elastic to effect very much, but in the providing for the appointment of a staff of factory inspectors it asserted the right and duty of the State to control the conditions of industry, and also indirectly secured that the Government should be kept in possession of the facts. Only young persons under eighteen were included under this Act, but in 1844 women also were included, and in 1847 and 1850 the working day was restricted to ten hours, and the period of employment was carefully defined to prevent evasion. In 1864 some dangerous trades were brought within the scope of the Acts, which had previously included textile and allied industries only, and in 1867 other non-textile industries and workshops were added. In 1878 a consolidating Act was passed to bring the employment of women and young workers under one comprehensive scheme. The plan of the Act of 1878 was retained in the Act of 1901, but a considerable number of new regulations, especially in regard to health and safety, were included. In 1893 a step of great importance for working women was taken, in the appointment of women factory inspectors. It does not come within the scope of this volume to describe the history of factory regulations and control, but we may here ask ourselves the question, How much has been done for the women in industry by the State? What is the present position of the woman-worker? In the first place, we note that sanitary conditions in factories and workshops are greatly improved and conditions as to health are more considered than was formerly the custom. This is not entirely due to the regulations of the Factory Act, but partly to the progress of public health generally, and to the development of scientific knowledge and humaner ideals of social life and manners. It is true that we are only at the beginning of this movement, and much remains to be done, as any one can satisfy himself by getting into touch with industrial workers, or by studying the Factory Inspectors' Reports, but it can hardly be doubted that the woman-worker of to-day has a very different, a very much more civilised industrial environment than had her mother or her grandmother. The appointment of women inspectors counts for a great deal here, for in earlier times the needs of women-workers were not considered, or if considered were not known with any accuracy. In the second place we note that there has been a considerable development of special precautions for dangerous trades, and that in one instance of a dangerous substance, viz. white phosphorus, its use has even been prohibited, and the terrible disease known as "phossy jaw," formerly the bane of match-makers, has been stamped out. In regard to certain sweated industries measures have been taken to regulate wages through the instrumentality of the Trade Boards, and, as it appears, with a considerable measure of success. _Present Position of the Woman-Worker._--Otherwise it is strange to notice how very little the position of the woman-worker has been improved in recent years. She is still liable to toil her ten hours daily, just as her grandmother did, for five days in the week, though on Saturdays the hours have been somewhat curtailed. In non-textile factories ten and a half hours are permitted, though in many of the industries concerned a shorter day has become customary, whether through Trade Union pressure or a recognition on the employers' part that long hours "do not pay." Ten hours, or ten and a half, with the necessary pauses for meal-times, involve working "round the clock," which is still the recognised period of employment even for young persons of fourteen and over. The five hours' spell of continuous work is still permitted in non-textile factories and workshops, although the inspectors have long been convinced that it is too long for health and energy, and Miss Squire reports that it is now condemned by all concerned with scientific management. In certain trades overtime is permitted, and the result is that girls and women may be employed fourteen hours a day, and if the employer takes his full advantage of it, as occasionally he does, the inspector can do nothing, the proceedings being perfectly legal.[44] While the hours of work have been but very little shortened since 1874, the strain of work has been considerably increased, as we have seen, through the increased speed at which the machines are run. This is especially the case in the cotton trade, though it occurs in other factory industries. The demand upon the worker is much greater than formerly, and the reduction of hours has by no means kept pace with the increased strain. The backwardness of the Factory Act in these and some other matters is almost inconceivable. So important a matter as the lighting of work-places is still outside the scope of regulation. The nervous strain and serious risk to eyesight involved by doing work requiring close and accurate visual attention in a bad light need hardly be emphasised. The inspectors receive many complaints of badly-adjusted or otherwise defective artificial lighting of work-places, but have no weapon to use but persuasion, which happily is in some cases successfully invoked. Another serious factor in the working woman's position is the weakness of the Truck Act, especially in regard to fines and deductions. Deductions, _e.g._ for spoilt work, are sometimes made on a scale altogether out of proportion to the weekly wages, and fines for being a few minutes late, or for trivial offences of various kinds, are often oppressive to a degree which can only be described as preposterous when compared with the value of the worker's time and attention measured in the payments they receive. In some cases convictions and fines are secured, and in other cases, even in some which are outside the law, the inspectors are able to obtain the adoption of reforms by employers, but many hard cases remain unredressed owing to the difficulty of interpreting the Acts. All along the line our social legislation has been characterised by timidity and procrastination. Dr. Thomas Percival's statement of the case for State interference in factories (1796) was left for six years without notice from the Central Government, and the first Factory Act, 1802, was applied to apprentices only at a time when the apprenticeship system was falling into disuse. Later on, in response to the high-souled agitation of Sadler, Oastler, and Lord Ashley (afterwards Shaftesbury), after years of hesitation and vacillation, various inadequate measures were taken, but never quite the right thing at the right moment, never designed as part of a far-sighted policy that would recreate English industrial life and make it worth living--as it might be made--for the toilers of field and factory, workshop and mine. This weakness and backwardness in the policy of the Home Department is no doubt largely due to the covetousness of the capitalist and the control he is able to exercise on politics. It should be remembered, however, that the capitalist, or rather the capitalist employer, does not present an unbroken front. In point of fact the best manufacturers do not oppose social legislation. They understand the need of a common rule, and the regulations of the Factory Acts have usually been modelled on the existing practice of the better kind of employer. Labour legislation is weakened and kept back by several causes other than the greed of employers. Among these may be mentioned the cumbersome and out-of-date procedure of the House of Commons, and the interminable delays that dog the progress of non-Governmental measures, even when these have the approval of all parties. Other causes are to be found in the class selfishness of the upper strata of society, their indifference to the needs of the people, their ignorance of the whole conditions of the industrial population's life. With bright exceptions, such as the late Lord Shaftesbury and some now living whose names will occur to the reader, not only the aristocracy and the very rich, but the conservative middle-class, the dwellers in suburbs and watering-places, cling to the idea of a servile class. They object to industrial regulations which give the workers statutory rights amongst their employers; they object to increasing the amenity of factory life and diminishing the supply of domestic servants. Labour legislation remains backward and undeveloped for want of the support of an enlightened public opinion. _The Strain of Modern Industry._--With the ill effects of the present system it is impossible for a non-medical writer to deal fully, but no one can have any talk with a doctor or a sick visitor under the Insurance Committee in a big industrial town without hearing terrible facts about the injury to women from the persistent standing at work. It seems likely also that these injuries are not only due to overstrain among women after marriage and before and after confinement, but result in part from the fatigue endured by adolescent girls. Parents are too anxious to send children to work, and girls of fourteen and upwards are sometimes working in competition with boys, and suffer from trying to do as much. Pressure is put on girls to work three looms or even four, before they are really equal to the effort. It may, of course, be admitted that some of this strain and drive is self-inflicted. It is part of the admirable tenacity, self-reliance, and high standard of life of Lancashire women that they are keen about their earnings, and I have been told of girls who will return to the shed during meal-hours, or even go to work at 5.30 in summer-time, busying themselves in sweeping or making ready for work before the engine starts. These practices are illegal, and the employers often protect themselves by putting up a notice that any woman or young worker found in the shed out of working hours will be dismissed, or by sending an employee to clear the shed at the proper hour. Nevertheless in many cases the employer has a certain moral responsibility for these evasions of the law, although they appear to indicate perversity on the worker's part. Girls and women are indirectly set to compete one with another, and with boys and men. There is a constant pressure on the weaker to keep pace with the stronger, the immature or old with the worker in the full flower of strength. The overlooker usually receives a small percentage on all the earnings of all the weavers, and has therefore an incentive to keep them at full tension, and the overlooker's average is again criticised by the manager. Lancashire people are remarkably articulate and also quick in apprehension, and the sarcasms launched at girls who, on pay-day, have earned less than the average are pointed enough to be well understood. The whole system is like an elaborate mechanism to extract the last unit of effort from each worker, and dismissal hangs always over the head of the slower and less competent worker. In the Factory Inspectors' Report for 1913 Miss Tracey tells how children lose their colour and their youthful energy in the drudgery of their daily toil, how the girls fall asleep at their work and grow old and worn before their time. "Sometimes one feels that one dare not contemplate too closely the life of our working women, it is such a grave reproach." I have myself been seriously assured that cases of suicide result from the difficulty of maintaining at once the quantity and quality of work under such conditions. Anaemia is a frequent result of overstrain, not to mention the constant colds and rheumatism due to overheated rooms. The sickness among women from these and other worse evils alluded to above have become apparent for the first time through the serious strain put on sick benefit funds in the first year of the Insurance Act. At one very important centre of the cotton trade, out of 8056 members 2800 received sick benefit in the first twelve months. The Insurance Act, whatever its defects, has at all events given many poor women the chance to take a little rest and nursing that they sorely needed and could not afford. The sneer of "malingering" is easily raised, but it is doubtful whether real malingering has much to do with it. The conditions of industry, greatly improved as they are from the sanitary point of view, are certainly increasing the kind of strain that women are constitutionally least able to bear. The industrial efficiency in the young girl that she and her employer are often so proud of may be paid for later in painful illness and incapacity. Mr. Arthur Greenwood quotes medical opinion to the effect that the industrial strain to which several generations of women in the textile districts have now been subjected is responsible not only for serious disease, but even for sterility among women.[45] So far the subject of the declining birth-rate has been discussed chiefly as a theme for homilies on the "selfishness" of women, who, it is alleged, prefer ease and comfort to unrestricted child-bearing. If Mr. Greenwood is right, the cause, in part at all events, is the force of capitalistic competition feeding on the very life of the people. Surely the subject needs medical study and investigation of a more searching kind than it has yet received. _The Exclusion of Women: A Counsel of Despair._--In view of the tremendous strain incidental to certain kinds of industrial work, as at present organised, there occurs the difficult problem, what kind of work women are to do. In the case of work underground in mines, and also of a few industrial processes specially injurious to women, the State has exercised the right to exclude women altogether, and however undesirable such legislative exclusion may be in the abstract, there can be little doubt that it was justified in the cases referred to, the evils being flagrant and the women concerned as yet unorganised and with no means of demanding adequate regulations for their own safety. There are even those who doubt whether woman should take part in manufacturing industry at all, and hope that ultimately she may disappear from it altogether. Those who take this view should clear their minds as to what exactly they mean by industry. They probably do not wish to exclude women from those occupations which are almost a feminine monopoly, such as dressmaking, needlework and household work. But to restrict any class of workers to a narrow range of occupations undoubtedly has a very depressing effect on their wages. We may also note that improvements in the position and conditions of the woman-worker have begun always outside, not inside; in the factory before the workshop; in the workshop before the home; in industry before needlework. The Wage Census of 1907 shows that women's wages are higher in the great industry than in the smaller and more old-fashioned establishment. State regulation of factory work in the first half of the nineteenth century led to enquiries into the condition of needlewomen and others, who, as the Children's Employment Commission showed, were in worse case than factory workers. The factory industry, it was immediately recognised, was more amenable to control either by the State or by Unionism, or both, than was the home worker, or the worker in small workshops. Through the factory, in spite of its many abuses, women have attained not only an improvement in their economic circumstances, but also the experience of comradeship and even of a citizenship which, although incomplete, is very real as far as it goes. Women have undoubtedly gained on the whole by the widening of their sphere of employment. But women cannot possibly do all kinds of industrial work, and to leave the matter unregulated either by law or by Trade Union action is to leave too much to the discretion of the employer, with whom profit is naturally the first consideration. If the matter is fought out between the employer and the men's Unions, the women's interests are not sufficiently considered. Some years ago at Birmingham the question was being disputed whether women should or should not polish brass in brass-works. The Trade Union pronounced polishing to be filthy and exhausting work, and degrading to women, and declared the employers only wanted to set women on it for the sake of cheapness. The employers on the other hand said the Union only opposed the employment of women because they wanted to keep women out of the trade as much as possible. Probably motives were mixed on both sides. Such disputes not infrequently arise in manufacturing industry, and the middle-class person arriving on the scene is very apt to take a one-sided view. If he is a mildly reactionary, conservative, sentimental person, he probably wants women to be prevented from doing anything that looks uncomfortable and happens to be under his eyes at the moment. If he (or particularly if she) happens to be burning with enthusiasm for the rights of women as individuals and scornful of old-fashioned proprieties and traditions, he (or she) will most likely jump to the conclusion that the objections raised to the employment of women in the particular process are merely sex-prejudice and sex-domination. Neither the sentimentalist nor the individualist, however, sees the full bearing of the situation. In this connection an article by Mr. Haslam[46] may be studied with advantage as being eminently thoughtful and fair-minded. In the Lancashire cotton trade a peculiarly complicated instance of the woman question occurs in mule-spinning. In this, the best paid and most highly skilled process in the industry, a shortage of boy labour has somehow to be met. The proportion of helpers or "piecers" needed is much larger than the proportion of boys who can hope to find a permanent occupation in mule-spinning. With advancing education, aided, no doubt, by recent good trade and demand for labour in the trades, boys and their parents have become increasingly aware of the disadvantages of "piecing" as a trade, and as a result the deficiency of juvenile labour threatens to become acute. An obvious solution is to introduce girls as piecers, which, as it happens, is not a new idea but the revival of an old one. Girls were formerly employed to some extent at piecing, but were prohibited by the Union twenty-six or twenty-seven years ago, so far as the important centres of cotton-spinning are concerned. The prohibition was removed some years later, but for a long time women showed no inclination to return to this work. Only in quite recent years, with the increasing shortage of boy-labour, have women and girls been induced to go back to the mule-spinning room. Now women never become mule-spinners; the Union will not allow it. A peculiar feature of the occupation is that the operative spinners themselves, who employ and pay their piecers, are thus interested in obtaining a supply of cheap labour, just as any capitalist employer is, or supposes himself to be. They consistently oppose women becoming spinners, usually alleging physical and moral objections to this occupation, but are willing to allow them to become piecers in order to supply the deficiency of boy-labour, and to lessen the prejudice against piecing as a "blind-alley" occupation for boys. Now, as Mr. Haslam points out, the employment of women as piecers is both physically and morally quite as objectionable as their working as spinners.[47] Indeed, granting for the sake of argument that women should be employed in the mule-spinning room at all, by far the least objectionable arrangement would be for them to work two together on a pair of mules, which would diminish the physical strain and obviate the moral dangers which arise from the present plan of subordination to a male spinner in an unhealthy environment. In this case women need organisation and combination to protect their interests from the operative spinners, who are virtually their employers, almost as much as a labouring class needs to be protected from capitalist employers. And, as Mr. Haslam shows in his weighty and temperate statement, it is quite true that there are very great and serious objections to female employment in this trade. The heat, the costume, the attitudes necessitated by this work, all render it a dangerous occupation for girls to work at in company with men. Mr. Haslam gives painful evidence in support of this statement, for which readers can be referred to his article. The moral of the whole story is by no means that unrestricted freedom of employment for women is the way of salvation. Rather is it that women must not only organise but must take a conscious part in the work of directing their organisation. At present they are too often the shuttlecock between the opposing interests of the employer and the men's Union. It is not that the Trade Union is always wrong in wanting to keep the women out; or that the employer (whether capitalist or operative) is always right in wanting to take the women on. The point is that each party in these disputes is usually influenced mainly by his own interests and easily persuades himself that what is best for him is best also for the woman-worker concerned. The hardest and most unhealthy work may be done by women without a protest from men's Unions if it does not bring women evidently into competition with men. Nothing can clear up the situation but the enlightenment and better organisation of women themselves. They must learn not to take their cue implicitly from the employer or from the men's Union--certainly not from the teaching of women of another class. They must learn--they are fast learning--to think for themselves and to see their needs in relation to society as a whole, to become articulate and take part in the control of their organisation. It is quite likely that when they do so they will not adopt the ideal of complete freedom of competition. I remember some years ago hearing a lecture on the subject of the mining industry given to a society of women of advanced views, the lecturer, a professional woman, taking the line that women should not have been excluded from work underground in mines, as they were by the Act of 1842, and that the evils of such work had been exaggerated. Some little time afterwards an experienced woman cotton-operative was invited to address the same society, and incidentally remarked in the course of her lecture that card-room work was "not fit for women to do." The contrast was instructive, especially taking into consideration that card-room work in the twentieth century, whatever its objections, cannot be nearly as dangerous and injurious as underground work in mines was in 1842. Legislative exclusion of women from dangerous and unhealthy occupations, is, we may admit, an undesirable remedy from many points of view--especially perhaps because it affords too easy relief to the conscience of the employer, who may take refuge in the idea that he need not trouble to improve conditions if he employs only men. It is better to make the conditions of industry fit for women than to drive women out of industry; better to strengthen the organisation of women and give them a voice in deciding what processes are or are not suitable to them than to increase the competition for home work. It seems, however, highly improbable, from what one knows of the working woman's point of view and outlook, that as she becomes able to voice her wishes she will favour an indiscriminate levelling of sex-restrictions in industry; on the contrary, it seems likely that as she becomes more articulate and has more voice and influence in the organisation she belongs to, she will favour regulations of a fairly stringent nature in regard to the processes within an industry which may be carried on by women. Many of the observations that have been made on industrial women in recent or comparatively recent years show that although at times they are driven by stress of need to compete with men or to do work beyond their strength, yet that they regard themselves mainly from the point of view of the family and believe that to keep up the standard of men's wages is as important as to raise their own.[48] _The Middle-Class Woman's Movement._--There is, however, a complication between the labour woman's movement and the woman's movement for enfranchisement and freedom of opportunity generally, and great care is necessary to avoid confusing the issues. The labour woman's movement is a class movement in which solidarity between man and woman is all important. The women's rights movement aims at obtaining full citizenship for women; that is to say, not only the Suffrage but the entrance to professions, the entrance without special impediments to local governing bodies and, generally, the abolition of belated and childish restrictions that hinder the development of personality and social usefulness. Now these two movements are not in principle opposed, and there is no reason why the same women should not take part in both, as in fact many do. The opposition consists rather in a difference of origin and history. The labour movement is born of the economic changes induced by the industrial revolution, and tends towards a socialistic solution of the problem. The women's rights movement is the outcome of middle-class changes, especially the decreasing prospect of marriage, which, together with the absence of training and opportunity for work, has produced a situation of extreme difficulty. The middle-class woman's agitation was inevitably influenced by the ideals of her class, a class largely engaged in competitive business of one kind or another. Equality of opportunity, permission to compete with men and try their luck in open market, was what the women of this type demanded, with considerable justification, and with admirable courage. The working woman, on the other hand, the victim of that very unrestricted competition which her better-off sister was demanding, before all things needed improved wages and conditions of work, for which State protection and combination with men were essential.[49] There is, however, no fundamental opposition between these movements. Just as the working classes are striving through Syndicalism to express a rising discontent, not only with the economic conditions of their work, but also with the fact that they have no voice in its regulation and control, so women are striving, not only for political freedom and economic betterment, but for a voice in the collective control of society. Women have, until very lately, been left out from the arrangement even of matters which most vitally concern them and their children. The following incident in the history of the Factory Department will illustrate this fact. In 1879 the then Chief Inspector of Factories, Sir Alexander Redgrave, discussed in his annual report a tentative suggestion for the appointment of women inspectors that some person or persons unnamed had put forward. With the utmost kindliness and gentleness he negatived the proposal altogether, first on the assumption that the inspection of factories was work impossible for women and "incompatible with (their) gentle and home-loving character"; secondly, on the ground that in regard to the sanitary conditions in which women were employed "it was seldom necessary to put a single question to a female," and consequently there was no need to appoint women inspectors.[50] Thirteen years later came the Labour Commission. At that time it was unheard of for women to be appointed on Commissions, even when the subject was one in which women were most chiefly concerned. It is said, and I see no reason to doubt the statement, that the Labour Commission of 1892 did not at first intend even to hear evidence from women witnesses as to conditions in which women were employed. Having yielded to the urgency of two women who were working hard at the organisation of sweated workers in the East End and demanded to be heard, the Commission, as an afterthought, appointed women Assistant Commissioners, whose researches and reports subsequently led to the appointment of women Factory Inspectors--sixty years after the first appointments of men. Anyone who is likely to read this book will probably be already aware that women factory inspectors had no sooner been appointed than they very speedily were informed of flagrant sanitary defects in factories and workshops which had been suffered to continue simply because no woman official had been in existence, and men, with the best intentions, did not know what to look or ask for. The exclusion of women had involved in this case not merely a narrowing of the field of opportunity for professional women--a comparatively small matter--but a scandalous neglect of the elementary decencies of life for millions of women and girls in the working-class. It is unnecessary here to do more than remind my readers that until lately women were excluded also from local governing bodies which control the health, education, and conditions of life and work of women and children. Men are not alone to blame for this state of affairs. If women have long been excluded from posts in which their services were greatly needed, it is very largely because of the ideals set up by the women themselves. The wretched education given to girls in the Victorian era, the egotistic passion for refinement which made it a reproach even to allude to the grosser facts of life, much more to the perils and dangers run by women in a lower class, all this was due quite as much to the influence of women as of men. It was not surprising that men of the upper classes, accustomed by their mothers and wives to believe that for women ignorance and innocence were one, and that no painful reality must ever be mentioned before them or come near to sully their refinement, should recoil from the idea of trusting them with difficult duties and responsible work. It is to the few pioneer women like Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, and others who came out and braved reproach--from women as well as men--that we owe the introduction of worthier social ideals. _The New Spirit among Women._--As the women's movement draws towards the labour movement, as it is now so rapidly doing, it tends to lose the narrow individualism derived from the middle-class ideals of the last century. Mere freedom to compete is seen to be a small thing in comparison with opportunity to develop. The appeal for fuller opportunity is now stimulated less by the desire merely to do the same things that men do, more by the perception that the whole social life must be impoverished until we get the women's point of view expressed and recognised in the functions of national life. On the other hand, the women Unionists, who have long been taxed with apathy and lack of interest in their trade organisation, are drawing from the women's movement a new inspiration and enthusiasm. Observers in Lancashire tell you that there is a new spirit stirring among the women. They are no longer so contented to have the Union efficiently managed for them by men; they want to take a conscious part in the work of organisation themselves. The same movement is visible in the plucky and self-sacrificing efforts for solidarity made by the workers in trades hitherto unorganised; and, at the other end of the social scale, in the deep discontent with the life of parasitic dependence which has been so powerfully expressed in the _Life of Florence Nightingale_, and in Lady Constance Lytton's book on _Prisons and Prisoners_. _The Potential Changes the Industrial Revolution carries with it._--We have endeavoured to analyse the changes effected in the position of women by the industrial revolution. Social changes, however, take a long time to work themselves out, and many features in the position of the woman-worker at the present day, as we have seen, are the result not so much of the industrial revolution as of the status and economic position of women in earlier times, and still more of the neglect of the governing classes to take the measures necessary for the protection of the people in passing through that prolonged crisis which may be roughly dated from 1760 to 1830. Let us now try as far as possible to free our minds from the influence of these disturbing factors and ask ourselves what are the potential changes in the position of the working woman effected by the industrial revolution, and what improvement, if any, she might expect to achieve if those changes could work themselves out more completely than social reaction and hindrances have yet permitted them to do. Let us, in short, pass from the consideration of What Is to the contemplation of What Might Be. 1. _By the use of mechanical power, the need for muscular strength is diminished, and greater possibilities are opened up to the weaker classes of workers._--We are accustomed to view this change with disfavour, because it often takes the form of displacing men's labour and lowering men's wages. But that is mainly because we see things in terms of unorganised labour. With proper organisation we should not see women taking men's work at less than men's wages; we should see both men and women doing the work to which their special aptitudes are most appropriate, each paid for their special skill. We should not see women dragging heavy weights or doing laborious kinds of work which are dangerous and unsuitable to them; we should see them using their special gifts and special kinds of skill, and paid accordingly. There is no reason, save custom and lack of organisation, why a nursery-maid should be paid less than a coal-miner. He is not one whit more capable of taking her place than she is of taking his. For generations we have been accustomed to assume that any girl can be a nursery-maid (which is far from being the truth), and from force of habit we consider the miner has to be well paid because his occupation demands a degree of strength and endurance which is comparatively rare, and also because he has the sense to combine and unfortunately the nursery-maid so far has not. The factory system is doing a great deal for women, directly by widening the field of occupation open to them, and indirectly by heightening the value of special aptitudes, some of which are peculiar to women. When mechanical power is used, strength is no longer the prime qualification for work, and the special powers of the girl-worker come into play. The factory system, also, by its immensely increased productivity, is altering the old views of what is profitable, and a new science of social economics is evolving which would have been unthinkable under the old regime. In Miss Josephine Goldmark's recent most interesting book, _Fatigue and Efficiency_, she has gathered together the results of many experiments made by employers to ascertain the effects of shorter hours. There is practical unanimity in the results of these experiments. Obviously there must be a limit to the degree in which shortening hours of work would increase the output, but no one appears yet to have reached that limit. In the Factory Inspectors' Report for 1912 many cases are mentioned where employers have voluntarily reduced hours of work and find that they, as well as their work-people are benefited by the change. In one case of a large firm which had formerly worked from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. it was arranged to cease at 7, a decrease of a whole hour, which necessitated engaging extra hands, but at the end of the year it was found that the annual cost of production was slightly diminished and the output considerably increased. Others expressed an opinion that 8 to 6.30 was "quite long enough," and that if these hours were exceeded the work suffered next morning. The same may be said in regard to other improvements in working conditions, such as ventilation, cleanliness, the provision of baths, refectories, medical aid, means of recreation; those who have taken such measures have found themselves rewarded by increased output. Even from the commercial standpoint we do not appear to have nearly exhausted the possibilities of betterment. There can be little doubt, judging from existing means of information, that if the whole of the industry of the country were run on shorter hours, higher wages, and greatly improved hygienic conditions, it would be very much more productive than it is. From the social point of view such betterment is greatly needed, especially in the case of the young of both sexes, whose health is most easily impaired by over-strain, and who are destined to be the workers, parents, and citizens of the next generation. 2. _Status._--A still more important result of the industrial revolution is _the changed status of the wage-earner_. Here it appears to me that women have profited more than men. Broadly speaking, men, whatever their ultimate gain in wages, lost in status through the industrial revolution. The prospect of rising to be masters in their own trade, though not universal, was certainly very much greater under the domestic system of working with small capital than under the modern system of large concentrated capital. In this respect women did not lose in anything like the same proportion as did men, because they had very much less to lose. The number of women who could rise to be employers on their own account must have been small. No doubt a larger number lost the prospect of industrial partnership with their husbands in the joint management of a small business. But for women wage-earners the industrial revolution does mean a certain advance in status. The woman-worker in the great industry sells her work per piece or per hour, not her whole life and personality. I shall perhaps be told indignantly that the poor woman in a low-class factory or laundry is as veritable a drudge as the most oppressed serf of mediaeval times, and I do not attempt to deny it. But we are here discussing potential changes, not the actual conditions now in force. The drudgery performed by women under the great industry is of the nature of a survival, and results from the fact that women can still be got to work in such ways for very low wages. These conditions are largely the heritage of the past and can be changed and humanised whenever the women themselves or society acting collectively makes a sufficiently strong demand. Nor must it be forgotten that in modern industry women have a further advantage in being paid their own wages instead of being merely remunerated collectively in the family, as was often the case formerly. Modern industry thus holds for the woman-worker the possibility of a more dignified and self-respecting position than the domestic system of the near past. 3. _The Possibilities of State Control._--We next note that _the industrial revolution has led to State control_, and that the Factory Act, whatever its defects in detail and its inadequacy to meet the situation, has greatly improved the status of the woman-worker by giving her _statutory rights against the employer_. This aspect has often been overlooked by leaders of the women's rights movement, who at one time tended to regard factory legislation as putting the woman in a childish and undignified position. But the true inwardness of the Factory Act is the assertion that workers are _persons_, with rights and needs that are sufficiently important to override commercial requirements. It has not only aided the progress of industrial betterment, but it has taught women that they are of significance and importance to the State, and has brought them out of the position of mere servility. A great deal more may be effected in the future when the governing class attain to more enlightened views of civics and economics, and when the women themselves become politically and socially conscious of what they want. 4. _Association. The factory system has also made it possible for women to strengthen their position by association and combination._--Such association affords women the best opportunity they have ever yet had of attaining economic independence on honourable conditions. And it is interesting to note that just as women are now awakening to social consciousness, and beginning to feel themselves members of a larger whole, so the Trade Unions are now reaching out to issues broader than the mere economic struggle, and are beginning to give more attention to social care for life and health. In the past the Unions have very largely taken what might be termed a juristic view of their functions. They have been concerned mainly with wage-questions, with the prevention of fraud through "truck," oppressive fines and unfair deductions; they have penalised backwardness in the improvement of machinery. As the management of a cotton mill concentrates on extorting the last unit of effort from the workers, so the Unions in the past have very largely concentrated on securing that the workers at any rate got their share of the results. But in more recent years the Unions are beginning to see that this, though good, is not enough. Industrial efficiency may be too dearly bought if it involves a loss of health, character, or personality, and recent reports of the cotton Unions show that the officials are increasingly aware of the seriousness of this matter from the point of view of health. _E.g._, the heavy rate of sickness among women-workers disclosed by the working of the Insurance Act has turned the attention of the Weavers' Amalgamation towards the insanitary conditions in which even now so many operatives do their work. "Fresh air, which is such an essential to health, is a bad thing for the cotton industry; what is wanted is damp air, and calico is more important than men and women. When they are not well they can come on the Insurance Act. We want to talk less about malingering and more about insanitary conditions, which is the real cause of excessive claims."[51] Just as the woman's movement is widening its vision to understand the needs of labour, so the Unions now are widening theirs to understand the claims of life and health. The officials are already alive, if unfortunately the Lancashire parents are not, to the evils of the half-time system. And the co-operation of women in the active work of the Union will strengthen this conviction. _The Future Organisation of Women._--As women come more and more into conscious citizenship they will, as Professor Pearson prophesied twenty years ago, demand a more comprehensive policy of social welfare. We may expect in the future that the care of adolescence and the care of maternity will be considered more closely than it ever has been; also that such social provision for maternity as may be made will be linked up with the working life of women, so that marriage shall not be penalised by requiring women against their will to leave work when they marry, and on the other hand, that the home-loving woman of domestic tastes shall not be forced, as now so often happens, to leave her children and painfully earn their bread outside her home. One of the great obstacles in the way of attaining such measures of reform has been, not only the comparative lack of organisation of women-workers but the difficulty of adapting existing organisations, devised for the trade purposes of the workers at a single industrial process, to these broader social purposes. The majority, as we have seen, in Chapter III., leave work on marriage, and the problem results, how to bridge the "cleft"[52] in the woman's career and give her an abiding interest in organisation. How, the old-fashioned craft organiser asks with a mild despair, how is he to organise reckless young people for whom work is a meanwhile employment, who go and get married and upset all his calculations? How are women, whose work is temporary, to be given a permanent interest in their association? For some women, no doubt, their work _is_ a life-work, but it is most unlikely it will ever be so for the majority. Mr. Wells's idea, shared with the late William James, of a kind of conscription of the young people to do socially necessary work for a few short years has a curious applicability to women. There are certain distinct stages in a woman's life which the exigencies of the present commercial society fit very badly. One can foresee a society arranged to do more justice to human needs and aptitudes in which girls might enter certain employments as a transition stage in their careers; then marry and adopt home-making and child-tending as their occupation for a period; then, when domestic claims slackened off in urgency, devote their experience and knowledge of life to administrative work, social, educational, or for public health. Other women with a strong leaning to a special skilled occupation might prefer to carry it on continuously. Different types of organisation will be needed for different types of work. If the craft Union cannot fit all types of male workers, much less can it fit all women. Trade Unionism as we have known it mostly presupposed a permanent craft or occupation, and one of the great troubles of Trade Unions for women is that so many women do not aspire to a permanent occupation. The "clearing-house" type of Union suggested by Mr. Cole to accommodate workers who follow an occupation now in one industry, now in another, might possibly be adapted to meet the needs of women. Perhaps a time will come when the Unions that include the "woman-worker" will be linked up with societies like the Women's Labour League or the Women's Co-operative Guild, whose membership consists mainly of "working women," that is to say of women of the industrial classes who are not themselves earners. These speculations may seem to run ahead of the industrial world we now know. But all around us the Trade Unions are federating into larger and larger bodies, and when these great organisations have attained to that central control and direction they have been feeling after for generations, they will certainly discover that it is essential for them to develop a considerable degree of interdependence between the Trade Unions and consumers' co-operation. Therewith they can hardly fail to grasp the latent possibilities of the membership of women. The woman is much less an earner, much more a consumer and spender than is the man; she is more interested in life than in work, in wealth for use than in wealth for power. She suffers as a consumer and a spender both when prices go up and when wages go down. It is difficult to believe that the working classes will not before long develop some effective organisation to protect themselves against the exploitation that is accountable, in part at least, for both processes. Mrs. Billington Greig's masterly study of the exploitation of the unorganised consumer is a demonstration of the need of awakening some collective conscience in a specially inert and inarticulate class, and Miss Margaretta Hicks is making most valuable experiments in the practical work of organising women as consumers. The supposed apathy and lack of public spirit in women has been largely due to the lack of any visible organic connection between their industrial life as earners and their domestic life as spenders and home-makers. Probably the future of the organisation of women will depend on the degree in which this connexion can be made vital and effective. PART II CHAPTER VI. WOMEN'S WAGES IN THE WAGE CENSUS OF 1906. BY J. J. MALLON. Until a few years ago no statistics comprehensive in character relating to women's wages were available. In 1906, however, the Board of Trade took "census" of the wages and hours of labour of the persons employed in all the industries of the country, and the result has been a series of volumes which, though becoming rapidly out-of-date, nevertheless throw much light on the general level of wages in various trades and occupations. The enquiry made by the Board of Trade was a voluntary enquiry: that is to say, it was left to the public spirit and general amiability of the employer to make a return or not as he pleased. There was no penalty for failure to furnish information. The response to the Board of Trade efforts was not, however, unsatisfactory, and returns were forthcoming, roughly speaking, in respect of nearly half the wage-earners employed in the different industries. Unfortunately, however, the fact that the authorities were dependent for their information on the goodwill of the employers has probably given the statistics a certain bias. The schedules supplied were somewhat forbidding in appearance, and often troublesome to fill in, and it may fairly be surmised that it was the good rather than the bad employers who put themselves to the trouble of complying with the official request. Hence of all the workers employed in the United Kingdom it was probably those who were more fortunately placed in regard to whom we now have statistics. The condition of those working for employers who thought that the less said about their wages-sheets the better, still remains obscure. The statistics upon which comments are now offered may therefore convey a more favourable impression than the facts, if fully known, would justify, especially when it is remembered that 1906, the year of the census, was one of good trade. On the other hand, it needs to be borne in mind that since the enquiry was made, the level of wages in many trades is known to have been raised. The Earnings and Hours of Labour Enquiry, as it was officially called, was directed primarily to ascertaining for each of the principal occupations in the various trades what were _the usual earnings or wages of a worker employed for full time in an ordinary week_, the last pay week in September being the particular week suggested subject to the employer's view as to its normality. With a view to supplementing or checking the details of actual earnings in a particular week, information was also sought with respect to the _total_ wages paid in an ordinary pay week in each month, and also with respect to the total wages paid in the year. From this last-mentioned body of information it is possible to deduce some tentative conclusions in regard to the extent to which the industry suffers from seasonal variations. This matter will be further considered below. It is, however, mainly the information in regard to full-time earnings in an ordinary week with which it is proposed to deal. Statistics, it may safely be assumed, are abhorred of the general reader; but they are the alphabet of social study and cannot be dispensed with, and certain tables must now be introduced showing the relative wage level for women in a number of important industries. It should be noted that the abstract "woman" who is dealt with in the statistics is a female person of eighteen years of age or over. She may be, though is not likely to be, a new recruit or learner. She may, on the other hand, be very old and infirm, though here again the probabilities are against it. In all cases, however, she works full time, which roughly we may regard as being about fifty to fifty-two hours a week. The following table shows the average weekly full-time earnings of women employed in the principal textile industries. In addition to the average, which may of course be a compound of a great many widely differing conditions, the proportion or percentage of women whose earnings fall within certain limits is also shown.[53] TABLE A +-----------------------------------------------------+ | | Percentage numbers of | | | | women working full time | | | | in the last pay-week of | | | | September 1906, whose | | | | earnings fell within the| | | Industry. | undermentioned limits. | Average | | |-------------------------|earnings for| | |Under| 10s. and |15s. and| full time. | | | 10s.|under 15s.| over. | | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| | | | | | s. d. | |All textiles | 13·3| 38·8 | 47·9 | 15 5 | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Cotton | 3·0| 20·9 | 76·1 | 18 8 | |Hosiery | 14·5| 44·4 | 41·1 | 14 3 | |Wool, worsted | 10·7| 55·6 | 33·7 | 13 10 | |Lace | 18·1| 49·3 | 32·6 | 13 5 | |Jute | 6·2| 66·4 | 27·4 | 13 5 | |Silk | 38·9| 47·8 | 13·3 | 11 2 | |Linen | 41·7| 49·1 | 9·2 | 10 9 | +-----------------------------------------------------+ The cotton industry stands out conspicuously as showing a relatively high level of earnings, and we find in marked contrast to the other trades in this group that only 3 per cent of the women earned less than 10s. a week. The results coincide of course with popular impression, it being well known that the mill lasses of Lancashire are the best paid--probably because the best organised--large group of women workers in the country. The woollen and worsted industry, like the cotton, is localised, being confined mainly to Yorkshire, though the woollen industry of the lowlands of Scotland is also important. In this trade the results are much less satisfactory, the average being 13s. 10d., and considerably more than half the total number employed earning less than 15s. It may be noted, however, that in one town, Huddersfield, where women and men are engaged largely on the same work, the average, 17s. 1d., is considerably higher than that for the United Kingdom. Hosiery is also strongly localised, the majority of the workpeople being employed in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and certain neighbouring parts of Derbyshire. It will be seen that in order of average earnings this industry stands next to, though a good distance from, cotton, the average being 14s. 3d. The best-paid centre is Leicester itself, where the average is 16s. 2d. Even in this relatively highly paid trade, however, more than half of the women earned less than 15s., and it should be noted that this result applies to factory workers only. In the hosiery trade a considerable amount of homework is also carried on, and though statistics are not at present available, it may safely be assumed that earnings in the homework section of the trade are less than in the factory section. At the bottom of the list is the linen industry. The average here is only 10s. 9d.; less than one-tenth of the women employed earned more than 15s., while between one-third and one-half earned less than 10s. The industry, as is well known, is centred mainly in the North of Ireland, but is also carried on to a considerable extent in Scotland and to a small extent in England. The figures for Ireland, however, are not markedly lower than those for the other districts. It is true that for the whole of Ireland outside Belfast the average is only 9s. 9d., but the figure for Belfast itself, namely 10s. 10d., coincides with that for England. The manufacture of jute is carried on almost entirely in the neighbourhood of Dundee. The average is therefore a local average. The other industries require no special comment. The second large group of trades, important from the point of view of women's employment, is the clothing industry. Although the averages in this group do not show the extremes of the textile group, the industry is nevertheless one in which a great variety of skill and remuneration prevails. The following are the statistics, certain of the smaller trades such as silk and felt hat-making and leather glove-making being omitted for the sake of brevity:-- TABLE B +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Percentage numbers of | | | | women working full time | | | | in the last pay-week of | | | | September 1906, whose | | | | earnings fell within the| | | Industry. | undermentioned limits. | Average | | |-------------------------|earnings for| | |Under| 10s. and |15s. and| full time. | | | 10s.|under 15s.| over. | | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| | | | | | s. d. | | All clothing | 21·6| 45·1 | 33·3 | 13 6 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Dress, millinery, etc. | | | | | | (factory). | 12·6| 39·5 | 47·9 | 15 5 | |Tailoring (bespoke) | 15·4| 42·4 | 42·2 | 14 2 | |Dress, millinery, etc. | | | | | | (workshop) | 28·0| 36·2 | 35·8 | 13 10 | |Shirt, blouse, | | | | | | underclothing, etc. | 22·2| 46·0 | 31·8 | 13 4 | |Boot and shoe (ready-made) | 12·4| 58·9 | 28·7 | 13 1 | |Tailoring (ready-made) | 24·0| 46·6 | 29·4 | 12 11 | |Laundry (factory) | 20·5| 52·0 | 27·5 | 12 10 | |Corsets (factory) | 28·8| 48·3 | 22·9 | 12 2 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ It will be seen that the dress, millinery and mantle-making group is divided into two according to whether the place of manufacture is a workshop or factory. For this purpose a workshop means a place where mechanical power is not used, and a factory a place where such power is used. The distinction also roughly corresponds to the difference between ordered or bespoke and ready-made garments, ordered garments being made principally in workshops, and ready-made garments principally though not so exclusively in factories. This being the case it may perhaps be surprising that the average for the workshop section, namely 13s. 10d., is so appreciably below that for the factory section, namely 15s. 5d., and the statistics in this respect serve to indicate that the introduction of mechanical power and other labour-saving devices into industry by no means implies that from the point of view of wages the workers employed will be any worse off. The workshop section of the dress, etc., trade is almost entirely a woman's trade, the number of men and boys being insignificant. Within the trade itself a considerable range of earnings exists. Fitters and cutters form the aristocracy of the profession, but one which is recruited from the humbler ranks. The average earnings for the United Kingdom of those who "lived out" amounted to 33s. 5d., and of those who "lived in" 27s. 9d. The practice of "living in" and being provided with full board and lodging, or at any rate being provided with partial board, is a feature of this section of the trade, some 2500 women and girls out of 40,000 included in the returns being noted as receiving payment in kind in addition to their cash wages. Another feature of the trade is the relatively large number of apprentices or learners who received no wages at all, 8·7 per cent of the women and girls in the dressmaking trade, 43 per cent of the milliners, and 17 per cent of the mantle-makers being so returned. These, of course, would be mostly under eighteen years of age, and their inclusion in the statistics would not affect the average given in the table for women. Considering the general level of earnings which the statistics disclose, one can only conjecture that, as in certain men's professions, the existence of a few well-paid posts exercises an attraction to enter the trade, the strength of which is out of all proportion to the chance of obtaining one of these prizes. Factory dressmaking is at present a relatively small but at the same time rapidly-growing group. Being confined mainly to the production of ready-made clothes the process of cutting is capable of being standardised and systematised in such a way that the degree of skill required is much less than that looked for in the highly-paid cutter and fitter of the "made-to-order" workshop. The other processes also tend to conform to a certain uniform standard of skill. Hence the range of earnings is much less wide than in the workshop section of the trade, though as before noted the general level is higher. It should also be observed that while time-work is the usual method adopted in the workshops, payment by piece is very common in factories, and the detailed statistics furnished in the official report make it clear that this method gives the diligent and rapid worker a distinct advantage. It is worth noting that the group showing the highest earnings is that of hand or foot machinists on piece work. In the dress and costume section the average was 16s. 2d., and in the mantle section 17s. 8d., as compared with 15s. 5d. for all women. Statistics also indicate that the fluctuations of employment are much less extreme in the factory than in the workshop section of the trade, and on the whole, therefore, it is probably not a matter for regret that the factory-made article is tending to displace that of the workshop. That the process of displacement is rapid is indicated by the fact that while, according to returns made in connection with the Factory and Workshop Acts, the employment of women in dress, millinery and mantle-making factories increased by 16 per cent between 1904 and 1907, the numbers employed in workshops diminished by 7 per cent. The change from the one system to the other does not always imply a change of workers or even of premises. The introduction of an electric motor to drive some of the sewing-machines is sufficient to alter the denomination of an establishment from workshop to factory; though at the same time it is probable that such an innovation would not take place unless some alteration in the general method or organisation of work were also contemplated. The tailoring trade has many points of contact with the dress and mantle-making trade which has just been reviewed. It too is divided with some sharpness into a made-to-order or bespoke, and a ready-made section. The distinction does not imply perhaps quite so clear a division between factories and workshops, though in this trade also it may be taken as broadly true that the bespoke is the workshop and the ready-made is the factory section. In this connection one interesting point of contrast is presented by the statistics, for it will be seen that while, as before noted, the factory section of the dress and mantle-making trade showed a higher general level of earnings than the workshop section, the reverse is true of the tailoring trade. This is probably due principally to two facts. The first is that while the work in the bespoke shop is usually skilled, it does not necessitate any exceptionally well-paid work such as that done by cutters and trimmers in the dressmaking establishment. The cutting and other highly-skilled work is done by men, so that women enter the trade without the inducement afforded by the chance, however small, of rising to 35s., £2, or even £3 a week which is offered by the dressmaking workshop. It is probable, moreover, that the small dress and mantle-making shop enjoys a certain reputation of "gentility" which is less marked in the tailoring establishment, and finds its equivalent in higher wages. The second fact is that the processes of simplification and subdivision which broadly are the characteristics of factory as distinct from workshop methods can be carried further in the manufacture of men's suits than in that of ladies' dresses and costumes, so that the general level of skill requisite to the factory worker is somewhat lower in the one case than in the other. We thus find that while the average in tailoring workshops is 14s. 2d. as compared with 13s. 10d. in dressmaking shops, the average in tailoring factories is 12s. 11d. as compared with 15s. 5d. in dressmaking factories. Since the statistics were compiled minimum rates have been fixed under the Trade Boards Act to apply to the ready-made and wholesale bespoke sections of the tailoring trade, and there is no doubt that with the minimum rate of 3-1/4d.[54] an hour, fixed for Great Britain, statistics relating to the present time would show a marked improvement on those relating to 1906, since a _minimum_ rate of 3-1/4d. probably implies in most cases an average rate of 3-1/2d. or even 3-3/4d. Moreover, on the testimony of employers themselves the introduction of a minimum rate has had a stimulating effect on the trade, bringing about on the part of employers a vigilance and alacrity to make improvements in organisation, which have had an effect on the efficiency of the workers and consequently on their earnings, so that in many cases the Trade Board minimum has become merely a historical landmark left behind on a road of steady progress. So far as the 1906 figures are concerned it will be seen that the average for the United Kingdom in the bespoke section was 14s. 2d. The detailed statistics show that London was the highest-paid district, with 16s. 2d., and Ireland the lowest, with 12s. As ladies' costume-making has points of contact with men's tailoring, so the tailoring trade merges almost imperceptibly through various gradations of linen and cotton jackets, overalls, etc., into the shirt-making trade, and this again is closely combined, and, indeed, for statistical purposes forms one group with the manufacture of blouses and underclothing. The shirt, blouse and underclothing trade has become a factory trade to a much more marked extent than either dressmaking or tailoring. By tradition shirt-making is the sweated trade _par excellence_. But, as in many other instances, tradition has outlived the fact, the statistics showing that while the average earnings, 13s. 4d., are low absolutely, the trade is nearer the top than the bottom of the clothing trade list, notwithstanding the fact that the manufacture of shirts is combined for the purpose of the statistics with that of articles, such as baby linen, in respect of which the wages are almost certainly much lower than those for men's shirts. It should be noted, however, that the wages of home-workers are nowhere included in the statistics. The boot and shoe trade, unlike most of the others in the clothing group, is mainly a man's trade, considerably more than half of the total number employed being males. Women are employed chiefly as machinists or upper closers, or as fitters in both cases, being concerned with the manufacture of the top or upper. The trade is carried on in many centres, the principal being, perhaps, Leicester, Northampton, Kettering, Bristol, Norwich, Leeds, and Glasgow. The highest earnings of women are recorded for Manchester, the average being 17s. 6d., and the lowest for Norwich, where the average is only 10s. 6d. It is worth noting that the high average for women in Manchester is combined with a relatively low average for men, namely, 27s. 8d. The laundry trade gives employment to a large number of women, the Factory Returns for 1907 showing that 61,802 were employed in laundries using mechanical power, and 26,012 in laundries where such power was not used. For the whole of the United Kingdom the averages for power and for hand laundries were practically the same, being 12s. 10d. in the one case and 12s. 9d. in the other. In the case of power laundries Ireland is at the bottom of the list with an average of 10s. 4d., and the best-paid districts, namely, London, show an average of only 13s. 6d. A recent attempt to bring the power laundry industry within the scope of the Trade Boards Act has failed, the employers opposing the Provisional Order mainly on the ground of certain alleged technical defects of definition. Of other trades in which women are largely employed the following selection may be made forming a somewhat miscellaneous group. TABLE C +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Percentage number of | | | | women working full time | | | | whose earnings in the | | | | last pay-week of | | | Industries. | September 1906 fell | | | | within the | | | | undermentioned limits. | Average | | |-------------------------|earnings for| | |Under| 10s. and |15s. and| full time. | | | 10s.|under 15s.| over. | | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |All paper, printing, etc., | | | | s. d. | | trades | 26·5| 52·2 | 21·3 | 12 2 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Bookbinding | 19·3| 55·4 | 25·3 | 12 10 | |Printing | 28·0| 49·2 | 22·8 | 12 3 | |Cardboard, canvas, etc., | | | | | | box manufacture | 24·7| 55·1 | 20·2 | 12 3 | |Paper stationery manufacture| 30·4| 49·5 | 20·1 | 11 11 | |Paper manufacture | 25·9| 55·8 | 18·3 | 11 11 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |All pottery, brick, glass, | | | | | | and chemical | 31·0| 49·7 | 19·3 | 11 10 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Explosives | 32·3| 35·0 | 32·7 | 13 1 | |Soap and candle | 24·3| 50·5 | 25·2 | 12 5 | |Porcelain, china, and | | | | | | earthenware | 29·0| 50·0 | 21·0 | 11 11 | |Brick, tile, pipe, etc. | 25·7| 64·4 | 9·9 | 11 5 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |All food, drink, and tobacco| 37·8| 44·2 | 18·0 | 11 5 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Tobacco, cigar, cigarette, | | | | | | and snuff | 31·1| 46·0 | 22·9 | 12 0 | |Cocoa, chocolate, and sugar | | | | | | confectionery | 40·5| 37·2 | 22·3 | 11 9 | |Preserved food, jam, pickle,| | | | | | sauce, etc. | 44·4| 43·0 | 12·6 | 10 11 | |Biscuit making | 33·6| 53·5 | 12·9 | 10 10 | |Aerated water, etc., | | | | | | manufacture and general | | | | | | bottling | 54·8| 42·7 | 2·5 | 9 7 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Miscellaneous | .. | .. | .. | 12 4 | |----------------------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Umbrella, parasol, and | | | | | | stick making | 10·1| 38·5 | 51·4 | 15 7 | |Portmanteau, bag, purse, and| | | | | | miscellaneous leather | | | | | | manufacture | 20·3| 56·3 | 23·4 | 12 8 | |India-rubber, gutta-percha, | | | | | | etc. | 14·7| 68·3 | 17·0 | 12 8 | |Saddlery, harness, and whip | | | | | | manufacture | 37·5| 55·7 | 6·8 | 10 7 | |Brush and broom | 47·0| 42·5 | 10·5 | 10 6 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Of the above trades, cardboard box-making, sugar confectionery, jam-making, and food preserving come within the scope of the Trade Boards Act, and for these occupations minimum wages have been fixed. The jam and food preserving trade showed in 1906 the low average for women of 10s. 11d., 45 per cent of the women employed earning less than 10s. and over 26 per cent less than 9s. for a full week. This trade is also remarkable for heavy seasonal fluctuations. By whatever standard the average weekly earnings of women in the trades which have been noted are judged, the outstanding conclusion is that they are generally low to a degree which suggests a serious social problem. Averages of less than 13s. are frequent in all three Tables which have been presented, and the reader should be again reminded that these averages are for women over eighteen years of age working a _full_ week. Girls and also women working short time have been excluded. For the sake of brevity, details have not been given in many cases of the percentages of women earning wages between certain stated limits. But it needs to be recognised that an average suggests wages which are below as well as above that figure. Generally it may be stated that where an average is given, from 40 to 50 per cent of the women employed earn wages at less, and in many cases at very much less than the average. Various attempts have been made to calculate the minimum sum required by a woman living independently of relatives to maintain herself in decency and with a meagre degree of comfort. The estimates point to a sum of from 14s. 6d. to 15s. a week as the minimum requirement, and this assumes that the worker possesses knowledge, which she has probably in fact had no chance to acquire, of how best to spend her money and satisfy her wants in the order not of her own immediate desires, but of their social importance. At present prices the minimum would be 17s. or 18s. In the light of this estimate we may note that in the clothing trade group, for example, 25·9 per cent of those returned earned less than 10s. per week, and applying this percentage to the total number as shown by the Factory Returns to have been employed in this particular industry in 1907, namely, 432,668, we arrive at the conclusion that no fewer than 111,681 women were in receipt of wages which, measured by a not very exacting standard, were grossly inadequate. The figures with which we have been dealing are, however, those for a week of full time. No allowance has been made for sickness or holidays, and what is more important, short time or slackness. Almost every trade fluctuates throughout the year, and in many cases this fluctuation is considerable. For example, in the Dress, Millinery (workshop) Section the wages paid in the month of August were only 78 per cent of the monthly average, or, for London alone, 66 per cent. Though short time in one month is partially offset by overtime in another, there is but little doubt that in most trades and in most years the balance comes out on the wrong side, and, properly studied, the Wage Census volumes reveal the fact that unemployment and short time are important factors when considering women's wages from the point of view of the maintenance of decent conditions of living. In many respects the wages for a full-time week which we have so far been considering are indeed an artificial figure. High weekly wages in a trade where there is much slackness may obviously be less than the equivalent of low wages in a trade where conditions are steadier. If we are to consider wages in relation to the needs of the worker, therefore, it is the year rather than the week which should be taken as the unit. For many reasons, however, earnings _per year_ are extremely difficult to determine, and nothing more than an approximation is practicable. Dr. Bowley's[55] method is to compare the full-time weekly wage multiplied by fifty-two with the total wage bill for the year, divided by the number employed in the busiest week: that is, the week when it may be assumed that all persons dependent on the trade will be employed except those who are prevented by ill-health. Supposing, for example, the total wages bill in a certain trade were £400,000, and the number of persons employed in the busiest week were 16,000. The average amount per person per year would be £25 as compared with, say, £29 : 5s., which represents 52 times an assumed full-time weekly wage of 11s. 3d. We can thus say in this supposititious case that the yearly earnings of the workers in fact equal only 52 � 25/29-1/4, or 44 weeks at the full-time weekly wages. Owing to certain gaps in the statistical information these results are subject to certain qualifications of a nature somewhat too technical to enlarge upon in such a book as this. They may be accepted, however, as substantially establishing the fact that overtime does not in general counterbalance short time and slackness, and that in the foregoing review of earnings on the basis of a full-time week we have been dealing with figures which are distinctly rosier than the facts warrant. THE MOVEMENT AND TENDENCIES OF WOMEN'S WAGES A retrospect of women's wages based on such data as are available confirms the view that, low as is the present level, the movement is nevertheless in an upward direction. In the cotton trade, employing more than half the women in all textile trades, women's wages have risen continuously throughout the period of which we have information. Mr. G. H. Wood, F.S.S., who has made the movement of wages his special study, estimates that taking the general level of women's wages in 1860 as 100, the level in 1840 would be expressed by 75 and in 1900 by 160, so that in the period of sixty years covered by these figures women's rates of wages would appear to have increased by more than 100 per cent. Though perhaps not so considerable, a similar movement has occurred in other trades, and it is interesting to note that in Mr. Wood's view women's wages have risen relatively more than men's. Unfortunately, however, the statistics which are available, and on which his conclusion is based, do not include the great clothing and dressmaking industry which, from the point of view of women's employment, is so important. An enquiry on the lines of the 1906 Census was indeed attempted in the year 1886, but the results are meagre. It may be noted, however, that comparison of the results with those for 1906 tends to show that in some branches of the clothing trades wages declined. This fall in the rate of wages, if such a conclusion is justified, is, however, probably to be regarded as an exception to the general tendency as exhibited in the cotton and certain other trades. The occupation of women in many fields of employment with which they are still principally associated, such as spinning and the making of clothes, is probably as ancient as the industries themselves. The employment of women as wage-earners in such work is, however, comparatively recent. As a member of a family, or as a servant or retainer, woman has worked for generations in many tasks which formerly were, but now, with the increased specialisation of industry, have ceased to be, part of the ordinary routine of domestic activity. From this condition it was an easy transition to the frequent employment of women to assist in their master's craft, or in the deliberate production for sale of a surplus of articles beyond what were required for family needs. It was probably not until the factory system developed, however, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, that women were employed to any considerable extent as wage-earners in industry, and even when they were so employed there was an intermediate stage in which it was not unusual for the father or head of the family to appropriate their earnings and apply them as he pleased. Gaskell lamented the fact that the custom was creeping in of paying individual wages to women and children, thinking that it would break family ties. Though it still sometimes happens that members of a family work together in mills, Gaskell's fears were undoubtedly justified. Family ties, however, are of many kinds, and it is probably not correct to assume that the disintegration of the family as a producing or industrial unit indicates a relaxation of these emotions of affection, loyalty, and responsibility which spring to mind when the family is regarded in its social and ethical relationships. The fact must, moreover, be noted as bearing directly upon the chief problem of women's wages that although the family as a producing unit is no longer of considerable importance, as a spending unit it exercises a fundamental influence on the industrial system. From the point of view of food, lodging, medicine, and other items of expenditure, a person is more interested as a rule in the collective income of the family group to which he belongs than in his own individual contribution. Many mining districts in which men can earn large wages show a low wage level for women, while in such a district as Hebden Bridge, where, as the phrase goes, it pays a man better to have daughters than sons, the opposite condition prevails. In both cases the wages are influenced, broadly speaking, by the standard of comfort of the family rather than by that of the individual. If it were the invariable rule for a worker to belong to a family group, and if families were uniform as regards the number and sex distribution of their members, there would be no great cause to regret the influence of the collective family budget upon wages. But conditions are not uniform, and in districts or trades in which the wage level is largely affected by the presence of women whose fathers and brothers are relatively well-to-do, the position of a woman living alone in lodgings is apt to be a hard one. Where a father earns enough to maintain his family in reasonable comfort, the daughters going to work in a factory may be willing to accept wages no more than sufficient to provide them with clothes and pocket-money, but quite inadequate to afford their workmate who is living independently a sufficient livelihood. These considerations are closely connected with the question whether, in estimating what is a fair wage for a woman, we should proceed on the basis of a woman living alone in lodgings, or whether we should admit as a proper consideration the fact that in many cases the woman would live with her parents and family, and would have the advantage, if not of assistance from them, at least of that economy in expenditure which the family group represents. Statistics as to the number of women who live independently are difficult to obtain, and it is doubtful whether such women form the majority of those employed. It may be granted, however, that in certain districts and certain trades the proportion is small, and in these cases it might be asked whether we should not ignore the type which is exceptional and consider the wages paid on the basis of actual rather than hypothetical needs. This, it may be argued, is already done in the case of children or young persons, in connection with whom the question is never asked whether the wages paid are sufficient to maintain them independently. The answer appears to be clear, though it brings us up against certain moral considerations. It may be true that the women in a certain industry or town, in spite of low wages, are all in fact well nourished and comfortable, members as they are of families which as families are well-to-do. Great as may be the respect which kinship deserves, it is submitted, however, that no normal woman should be compelled by economic exigencies to live with persons towards whom she has not voluntarily undertaken responsibilities, and that the freedom which economic independence implies is a right to which every woman willing to work may properly lay claim. Even, therefore, though we dismiss from consideration the great number of women who have no choice but to live entirely on their own earnings, there are still grounds on which the position can be maintained that the single woman living alone with reasonable frugality is the proper test by which, from the point of view of what is right and desirable, wages should be measured. It should be noted, moreover, that the issue is not solely between women who live alone and women who are partly supported by their families. There are also the women who have dependents. According to the 1911 population Census over one-fifth[56] of occupied women were not single, but married or widowed, and many of these doubtless have children to support. The Fabian Women's Group enquiry showed that about half the women workers canvassed had dependents. The Labour Commission of the United States, in course of investigating the condition of women and child wage-earners, found that in a group of 300 families 43 per cent of the family income was contributed by unmarried women over sixteen.[57] Again, Miss Louise Bosworth, in a study of _The Living Wage of Women Workers_, published in 1911, found that "the girls working for pin-money were negligible factors." So far from girl workers being mostly supported at home, it appears that in many cases the earnings of the single daughter or sister living with her family, small as they are, are an important element in the family income. It has been shown in the previous section that even in the relatively well-paid women's trades there are large numbers of adult women in receipt of wages which are scarcely compatible with mere physical existence, much less a decent and comfortable life. Men's wages, even in low-paid trades, are usually sufficient to enable a man who has not undertaken family responsibilities--which after all are entirely voluntary--to obtain a sufficiency of food and warmth. The remuneration of working-class women are in the majority of cases, however, barely adequate to satisfy this austere standard. We naturally ask, therefore, why this difference should exist. The occupations in which men and women are indifferently employed are relatively few in number. Even where men and women are employed side by side in the same trade they are usually engaged on different processes. The points where overlapping occurs are, however, sufficiently numerous to enable us to make the generalisation that in those industrial processes in which both men and women are employed the efficiency or output of the man is greater than that of the woman worker. In other words, the man is _worth_ more, and his higher wages are an expression of this fact. Even where the man's dexterity or skill is no greater than that of the woman's his wages still tend to be greater. Usually if an employer can get both men and women workers he is prepared to pay somewhat more to a man even though the man's output per hour is no greater than that of a woman. Put bluntly, a male worker is less bother than is a female worker. A female staff is always to some extent an anxiety and a source of trouble to an employer in a way that a male staff is not, and to many employers it has the great defect of being less able to cope with sudden rushes of work. Men are, after all, made of harder stuff than women, and only in the grossest cases do we ever give a thought to men being overworked. With women, however, not only the Factory Act, but also decent feeling requires an employer to be vigilant to see that undue strain is not placed on them. The greater remuneration of men in those occupations where both men and women are employed on the same processes is then due to the fact that the men are preferred to women, and employers are accordingly willing to pay more to get them. Such occupations, however, probably form the exception rather than the rule, and we have to consider the cases where there is apparently no sex competition whatever. The nursery-maid wheels the baby's perambulator on the pavement; the mechanic drives his motor van in the road. They do not compete for employment in any sense. Generally, indeed, custom has indicated with a fair degree of preciseness what are men's occupations and what are women's. Why, then, in distinctively women's occupations should the wages paid be lower than men's? The answer is not easy, but the key to the problem is to be found in the broad statement that the field of employment of women is much more restricted than that of men. Hence the competition of women for employment reduces their general wage level to a lower point than that of men, or, as an economist would put it, the marginal uses of female labour are inferior to those of male labour. What is needed, therefore, is an enlargement of the sphere in which women can find employment; not, be it noted, an increase merely in the number of occupations, but in the _kinds_ of occupations. Pursuit of this end will no doubt raise questions regarding the displacement of male labour, but it is fortunate that in many cases woman's claim would be most strenuously contested in respect of those occupations which are least suited to her, and which she ought not to enter. The need of discrimination must be emphasised. An excursion to the black country should convince even the most ardent feminist that at the present time tasks are permitted to women which from every point of view--their dirtiness, their arduousness, and the strain which they impose on certain muscles--are entirely unsuitable. It would be folly to increase the number of such tasks. Attention should be directed to those occupations in which womanly characteristics would have their value, and in which a woman would not be physically at a disadvantage. It is to be hoped that public sentiment would then be the ally rather than the enemy of the movement. The displacement of male typists by female typists, and the larger employment of women in clerical occupations, and as shop assistants, to say nothing of the introduction of women officials in the sphere of local and central government, undoubtedly represent an advance in the right direction. Paradoxical as it may seem, an effective means of enlarging the field of women's activities might be found in the awakening of public feeling against employments which are unsuitable. The process of analysis and comparison which is implied by criticism of such employments would undoubtedly indicate directions in which women's work could be utilised more satisfactorily. This is a consideration of paramount importance in view of the opportunities and necessities to which the present war has given and will give rise. It is for those who influence public opinion to see that in the readjustment of the economic relationship between men and women reasonable discrimination is exercised. The prohibition of the employment of women on unsuitable work, combined with educational effort which would make women capable of better and more responsible work, would give women-workers access to many kinds of employment from which they are practically excluded at present. Much that is unsatisfactory and regrettable in industrial life is the result of sheer inertia and drift, and many an employer would find new and cleaner and more remunerative methods of employing women if stimulated by the law and encouraged by an ability on the part of the women to respond to new methods. The principle of the Factory Acts, and of the minimum wage, requiring a minimum of safety or comfort and of remuneration, should be reinforced and strengthened not merely for the sake of its face value--great though it is--but also for the sake of its stimulating effect on the management of businesses and its consequent tendency to increase remuneration. At the same time an attempt should be made to encourage in girls some sense of craftsmanship and loyalty to their callings, so that their organisation in trade unions or guilds would become possible. With a few exceptions collective bargaining and the collective maintenance of a standard of remuneration are, as regards women's employment, merely sporadic and intermittent. It is the young woman, the irresponsible immature untrained amateur worker, without an industrial tradition to guide her, who is the despair of organised labour. The irresponsibility and indifference to organisation which she displays are, as often as not, due to the fact that her employment may not afford a decent livelihood, and that she is forced to look forward to and seek marriage as the only way out of an impossible life. But it is also true to say that her inadequate wages are due to her irresponsibility and indifference. There is inextricable confusion between cause and effect--a vicious circle which can only be broken by patient methods of training, helped by the initial impulse of a legal minimum wage and a legally prescribed standard of general conditions. CHAPTER VII[58] THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN _The Shock of War._--The great European War broke out in the summer of 1914. The shock was felt at once by trade and industry. July ended in scenes of widespread trouble and dismay. The Stock Exchange closed, and the August Bank Holiday was prolonged for nearly a week. Many failures occurred, and there was at first a general lack of confidence and credit. Energetic measures were promptly taken by the Government to restore a sense of security, and unemployment among men during the ensuing year was much less than had been anticipated. Unemployment among women was for a time very severe. For this unfavourable position of women there are several reasons. In the first place, any surplus of male labour was met at once by a corresponding new demand for recruits and the drafting of many hundreds of thousands of young men into the army, aided by the rush of employment in Government factories and workshops, served to correct the dislocation of the male labour market. Women were unfortunate in that the cotton trade, by far the largest staple industry in which a majority of the employees are women, was also the trade to suffer the greatest injury by the war. _The Cotton Trade._--Employment had begun to be slack some time previously, and the cutting off of the German market was naturally a considerable blow. Exact statistics are almost impossible to obtain, as the numbers of looms stopped or working short time varied from week to week; but figures collected for the week ending October 3 show that between 58,000 and 59,000 members of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association were out of work, and over 30,000 were on short time. At Burnley, over half the looms were stopped; at Preston, over a third. In November, when things had greatly improved, about 36 per cent of the looms were still standing idle. The amount of short time, or "under-employment," was also very considerable, as is shown by the fact that the reduction in earnings exceeded the reduction in numbers employed. The following table is taken from the _Labour Gazette_, December 1914, and shows the state of employment in the principal centres of the cotton trade. The figures include men as well as women; but as women predominate in the industry, they may be considered as a fair index to the women's position. WEEK ENDING NOVEMBER 28, 1914, COMPARED WITH SAME MONTH IN PREVIOUS YEAR. +-------------------------------------------------+ | |Decrease per cent in| | Districts. | Numbers | Amount of| | |Employed.| Earnings.| |----------------------------|---------|----------| |Ashton | 17·6 | 26·2 | |Stockport, Glossop, and Hyde| 11·6 | 22·0 | |Oldham | 8·4 | 17·5 | |Bolton | 2·6 | 13·5 | |Bury, Rochdale, etc. | 7·4 | 17·7 | |Manchester | 3·3 | 15·5 | |Preston and Chorley | 14·6 | 31·7 | |Blackburn, etc. | 18·0 | 40·9 | |Burnley, etc. | 4·3 | 47·6 | |Other Lancashire towns | 15·4 | 32·0 | |Yorkshire towns | 13·0 | 20·1 | |Other districts | 11·2 | 20·6 | | |---------|----------| | Total | 12·1 | 27·1 | +-------------------------------------------------+ In all these districts women would be affected much the same as men, and would be out of work in about the same proportion, but as women form a majority of the occupation, a much larger number of women were in distress and were without any resource comparable to that open to the men of recruiting age. In these circumstances the funds of the Unions suffered a terrible strain. The workers' organisations were faced with the dilemma whether to pay stoppage benefit to members with a generous hand, in which case they ran the risk of depleting their funds and losing the strength necessary for effective protection of the standard of life; or, on the other hand, to guard their reserve for the future and leave many of their members to suffer distress with the inevitable result of loss of health and efficiency. As the winter 1914-15 wore onwards unemployment in the cotton trade gradually became less acute, but for several months the suffering of the operatives must have been considerable. _Some other Trades._--In London the position was of course extremely unlike that of Lancashire, but we again find the women suffering heavily, and (but for comparatively a few) without the support and assistance of a union. At the first news of war, dressmakers, actresses, typists, secretaries, and the followers of small "luxury trades" (toilet specialities, manicuring, and the like) were thrown out of work in large numbers. Not only in London, but in the country at large, the following trades were greatly depressed: dressmaking, millinery, blouse-making, fancy boot and shoe-making, the umbrella trade, cycle and carriage making, the jewellery trade, furniture making, china and glass trades. In some cases the general dislocation was intensified by a shortage of material due to war: the closing of the Baltic cut off supplies of flax from Russia, on which our linen trade largely depends. The closing of the North Sea to fishers stopped the curing of herrings, which normally employs thousands of women, and both the chemical and confectionery trades suffered from the stoppage of imports from Germany. The Board of Trade's Report on the State of Employment in October 1914 gave the reduction of women's employment in London as 10·5 per cent in September, 7·0 per cent in October. But this estimate was for all industries taken together, some of which were in a state of "boom" owing to the war, and it is certain that the occupations referred to above must have suffered much more heavily than the average. Many girls spent weeks in the heart-sickening and exhausting search for employment. In November the dressmaking, mantle-making, and shirt- and collar-making were in a worse condition than in the previous month, although trade generally had improved. _The Woollen and Clothing Trades._--In these trades the war brought a veritable "tidal-wave" of prosperity. The industrial centres of our Allies were to a considerable extent in the hands of the enemy; thus, not only new clothes for our regular troops and reserves, and uniforms for the new armies that were shortly recruited, but also those for the troops of our Allies were called for in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The woollen towns of this district became the busiest places in the world, and orders overflowed into Scotland and the somewhat decayed but still celebrated clothing region of the West of England. The first expedient to cope with the enormous pressure of orders was to relax the Factory Act. In normal times no overtime is allowed in textile industries to workers under the operation of the Act (viz. women, girls under eighteen, boys under eighteen, and children), and employment is limited to ten hours a day. In view of the tremendous issues involved, permission was given to employ women and young persons for two hours' overtime. The results, as it turned out, soon showed, however, that overtime is bad economy, for the number of accidents increased greatly in the period of greatest pressure, and averaged one a day in the December quarter, and the secretary of the Union also reported that the period during which these very long hours were worked coincided with a remarkable increase of illness among the operatives involved. Probably one-third more cases were on the Approved Societies' books during December than in September and October.[59] Although the women rose most pluckily to the occasion and did their heavy task cheerfully in the consciousness of supplying their country's need, it is certain that many were taxed beyond their strength, and in January 1915 the overtime permitted was reduced to nine hours weekly. The women, when they complained, complained not of overwork but of insufficient pay. An increase of 1-1/2d. per hour during overtime was asked, and considering the strain involved, seems a far from excessive demand; but the trade is unfortunately much less well organised than the cotton trade, and female workers--73 per cent of the whole--could not in most districts enforce this claim. Khaki is more trying to the operatives than some other kinds of cloth to which they are better accustomed, and it is more difficult to weave. Even with overtime work the women did not earn much more than they would working usual hours on ordinary cloth. The wages paid appear to have been, as so often is the case with women's work, chaotic. Many employers honourably paid a fair or recognised price; others took advantage of the weakness of the workers to pay rates not far from sweating prices. In the clothing trade the Government was conscientiously paying handsome rates to contractors for the making of uniforms, but without effectively enforcing the payment of fair wages to labour by the contractors. Hence even the Trade Board minimum--a low standard, especially considering the rise of prices--was successfully evaded by some firms.[60] _Maladjustment and Readjustment._--The question may well be asked, why women should suffer unemployment in war-time at all. War produces an urgent demand for a great deal of the work women are best fitted to do, such as nursing, the making of clothes and underclothes, the manufacture of food stuffs and provisions on a large scale, the organisation of commissariat and hospitals, the collection and overlooking of stores. In point of fact, the requirements of the troops, as we have seen, provided increased employment for some women, though probably not for nearly as many as those who suffered from the shrinkage of ordinary trade at the beginning of the winter; later on the demand became so great that there was an actual scarcity of women workers in many trades. One strange feature of those autumn months of 1914 was that while recruits were continually to be seen marching in plain clothes, without a uniform, numbers of London tailors and tailoresses were without employment. Many of the recruits were also, at first at all events, unprovided with needful elementary comforts, and amateurs were continually pressed to work at shirts and knitting for them. Women employed in the manufacture of stuffs or clothing for the troops or in certain processes of the manufacture of armaments or appurtenances were overworked, while other women were totally or partially out of work. The characteristic immobility of labour was perhaps never more clearly seen. It may be admitted of course that a wholesale transference of workers from the area of slump to the area of boom would never be possible all at once. The machines necessary for special work will not at first be forthcoming in numbers sufficient to meet a demand suddenly increased in so enormous a proportion. Then, again, a new demand for labour is usually a demand predominantly for young workers, and the older women thrown out of work may find it very difficult to adapt themselves to new requirements. Skill and practice in the handling of machines are necessary; machines differ very greatly. A dressmaker cannot, off-hand, be set to make cartridges or even uniforms. In some branches of industry a high degree of specialised skill may be a positive disadvantage in acquiring the methods of an allied but lower skilled trade; _e.g._ it has been found that tailors and tailoresses who have become expert in the handwork still largely used for the best "bespoke" work, the aristocracy of the trade, cannot easily adapt themselves to the modern "team work" tailoring, in which division of labour and the use of machinery play a considerable part; they may even impair their own special skill by attempting it.[61] In some processes a delicate sensitiveness of finger is a first essential for the work, and the operatives dare not take up any rough work which might impair this delicacy, their stock-in-trade and capital. Again, the difference of wage-levels in different industries is a cause of immobility of labour. Lancashire cotton workers might have adapted themselves without much difficulty to the processes of the Yorkshire woollen trade, but they could not have accepted the rates current in an imperfectly organised trade, and there would have been obvious difficulty in paying imported workers at a scale higher than those enjoyed by the local operatives. A good deal of dovetailing, however, can be done to bring the work to the workers or the workers to the work, and much more could have been done if the Local Government Board had taken the question of unemployment more seriously in the years preceding the war. But the local bodies were uninstructed, and in many cases had little idea of anything better than doles. In spite of the funds collected, there can be little doubt that much suffering, especially among women, was neglected and let alone, and the irregular payment of separation allowances at the beginning of the war added to the distress. Voluntary effort, it needs hardly saying, was instantly ready to do its best to meet the occasion. The Suffrage Societies, in especial, did splendid work in improvising employment bureaux and relief workrooms for the sufferers. A special fund and committee were also formed, under the style of the Central Committee for Women's Employment, to find new channels of employment for women. This Committee was presided over by the Queen, and was aided in its labours by specialists highly versed in industrial conditions, and its efforts for adjustment are full of interest. The primary aim of this Committee was to equalise employment in factories and workshops. The problem was how to achieve the adaptation, as far as possible, of unemployed firms and workers to new and urgent national needs. It had been supposed that only certain special firms could make army clothing, and that the numerous women and girls thrown out of work in ordinary wholesale tailoring would be unable to do unaccustomed work. A business adviser of the Committee suggested to the War Office authorities some simplifications in the make of military greatcoats and uniforms. The experiment was tried, with the result that many thousand great-coats and uniforms were made by firms which under the dominance of red tape must have stopped work. In the shirt-making, also, much unemployment occurred at first, and the Committee gave information to firms not previously employed by Government that they could apply for contracts. Carpet-yarn factories were utilised for the supply of yarn to satisfy the enormous demand created by the war. Numbers of orders for shirts, socks, and belts were placed in dressmakers' workrooms, and carried out by women whose normal occupation had failed them. Another field of this Committee's work was to stimulate the introduction of new trades and open new fields of work for women wage-earners. This is a difficult undertaking at a time when spending power must be much curtailed, but it may be destined to have good results in happier times, and in any case any widening of the field of employment for women, any development of their technical skill, is much to be welcomed.[62] Besides these deeply interesting attempts at regulating and adjusting the market for skilled labour, there remains the vast army of the unskilled. Here we had during the first winter of war the influence of a new idea working, the perception that something better than relief work, something infinitely better than charity, was possible. In some of the workrooms started by voluntary effort orders were obtained for underlinen, toys, etc. On a small scale there need be no great objection to this if the educational factor were prominent, but it is necessary to point out that no real adjustment of the labour market is effected by inducing ladies to make purchases in a workroom that they might otherwise have made in an ordinary shop, the employees of those shops probably themselves suffering from shortage of employment. The workrooms started under the Central Committee for this class of workers adopted the plan of setting them to make useful articles, not for sale but for distribution among the poor, such as layettes for infants and clothing for necessitous mothers, also to the mending or remodelling of old clothes, the manufacture of cradles from banana crates, and so forth. In most workrooms a good meal was provided in the middle of the day, and some of the women were instructed in its cooking and service. The leading idea of workrooms on these lines is that temporarily the workers should be taken off the labour market altogether, that they should be paid not wages but relief, and that the relief should be robbed of its degrading associations by being combined with a system of training the women to do something they could not do before, or at all events to do it better than before. The requirement of attendance at the workroom (usually for forty hours weekly) was a guarantee of genuine need. This method of dealing with the problem of distress is probably as satisfactory as any that could be devised off-hand, though the workrooms did not escape criticism on the score of attracting girls away from "normal employment."[63] This is no doubt possible, the scale of women's wages in "normal employment" being still unfortunately so low. Ten shillings a week would not attract workers away from decently paid work done under decent conditions. The criticisms, however, point to the desirability of such arrangements being carefully co-ordinated to avoid overlapping, especially with the technical training provided by the Education Authority. Although the working of the plan was good as far as it went, it went unfortunately only a little way. By the first week in November a couple of dozen centres of employment had been started, and perhaps 1 per cent of the unemployed women had been provided with work in the workrooms.[64] There were besides uncounted thousands whose work and wages were reduced to a mere fraction of what they had previously been. Had the local authorities been already educated by the Local Government Board to take a broader view of their responsibilities and more scientific measures in discharging them, a great deal more of the ground might have been effectively covered. It is to be hoped that if similar measures are needed after the war, as seems likely to be the case, the experience of 1914-15 will bear fruit. _The New Demand for Women's Labour._--With the continuance of war an unexpected situation gradually shaped itself. The clothing and accoutrement of the great army that was speedily recruited, as well as urgently-needed supplies for France, and for Russia, so far as they could be transported thither, created a huge demand for labour, and by December the shortage of skilled labour was a serious problem. More especially was this the case with the munitions group of trades, which became the largest and busiest of all. With some lack of foresight too many men from these industries had been allowed to enlist, and eventually some were even brought back from the front. Thousands of women poured into armament making; factories have been adapted to meet the new demands; trade union rules and legislative requirements have been considerably relaxed; women to a limited extent are replacing men. These are some of the outstanding features of a situation which is already bewildering in its complexity. The shortage of skilled workers which has formed and still forms so serious a difficulty in supplying the army, is due not only to the enlistment of skilled men, but also to the tendency which the past thirty years or so have unfortunately shown to be increasing, for the displacement of the skilled by the unskilled worker. The ignorance of parents and the attraction of the "blind alley" occupations for the children of poor homes, where every shilling counts, combined with the organisation of business primarily for profit and the inadequacy of social safeguards in this matter, have created a difficult position. The lack of training and experience is, however, much more general among women than among men, and has formed a serious obstacle to their employment. The replacement of men by women in manufacturing industry has thus been less than might have been expected. Women have to a considerable extent replaced men in commercial and clerical work, in some occupations in and about railway stations, also as shop assistants, lift-attendants, etc. There are even suggestions that the underground railway service of London might be entirely staffed with women; but up to the time of writing this has occurred only to a limited extent. There has of course been an enormous increase in women's employment, but a large part of the war demand is for goods on the manufacture of which women normally predominate, as clothing, food-stuffs, etc. Another large part of the demand is for work on such processes as the filling of shells, and is now swollen to an unparalleled degree. What has happened has been that subdivision of processes and grading of labour have been introduced, as well as mechanical adjustments to facilitate the employment of women. As usually happens when women are introduced to a new trade or branch of a trade, the work is more or less changed in character. No doubt the pressure of war conditions has had the effect that women are now performing processes that were previously supposed to be beyond their strength or skill or both, especially in leather, engineering, and the wool and worsted trades. The line of demarcation between men's and women's occupations is drawn higher up. But women have not to any great extent replaced men in the skilled mechanical trades, the immediate and insurmountable obstacle to such replacement being their lack of skill and training. In certain trades, however, where women have been given opportunity and facilities to undertake work involving judgment and skill, they have, aided by the stimulus of patriotism, shown both intelligence and initiative, revealed unexpected powers on processes hitherto performed by men, and done work "of which any mechanic might be proud" (see report mentioned below; compare the _Engineer_, Aug. 20, 1915). The lack of training therefore may perhaps explain the very small results that have so far followed from the appeal to women to register for war-work, made by the Government in March 1915. As to the origin of this appeal, little is definitely known. It may have been intended as a recognition of the efforts and sacrifices already made by women during the war. It may have been, as some suggest, probably not without foundation, that the measure was instigated by the Farmers' Union, in the hope of getting cheap labour on the land instead of raising the wages of men. The women's organisations were not consulted, and even the Central Committee on Women's Employment, then anxiously engaged in reviewing and where possible adjusting the dislocation of women's employment, had, we believe, no previous notice of the appeal. A very small proportion only of the women who registered were called upon to work within the next few months; only three or four thousand out of 80,000. This small result is said to be due to the fact that only a very small proportion were capable of the skilled jobs awaiting them.[65] In great part the new demand for labour has been met by the overflow from other industries, though it has been supplemented by the addition of voluntary workers of the class usually termed "unoccupied," that is to say, not working for wages. There are obvious risks in bringing women from the upper and middle classes into a labour market the conditions of which are usually much against working-women; on the other hand, such an arrangement as was made, _e.g._ that amateurs should train so as to replace ordinary working women for the week-end, seems an admirable device to use the superfluous energies of the leisured so as to give the workers time for rest and recuperation. Another problem arising out of the present extension of women's employment relates to the enormous strain imposed upon the women and the inadequate pay they have in many cases received. We have touched on this point above in connection with the wool and worsted trades. Incidentally these conditions show that the unorganised state of women prevents their taking full advantage of the labour market even when the position is strategically in their favour. In some of the processes on which women have been introduced the skill required is quite considerable, and the output varies, depending greatly on the worker's health and strength. High speed cannot be maintained without proper intervals of rest; prolonged fatigue reduces capacity. The prime conditions for a persistently high output are a scientific adjustment of hours of work, adequate food, ventilation, and necessary comforts. These facts in the twentieth century are not unknown, but in war-time they were practically ignored. Many of the women on war-work were grievously overworked, and though praised for their patriotism in working overtime, did not receive wages sufficient to afford them the extra nourishment and comforts they should have had. In some cases, especially if doing men's work, they were highly paid; in others the pay was not only below the standard of a man, but was inadequate to maintain the physical endurance required. The patriotic feelings of women-workers were shamefully exploited, and the state of mind revealed by persons who should have known better was deplorable. In one case of a prosecution by the Home Office the magistrate refused to convict, although a girl under eighteen had been employed twenty-four hours without a break, after which she met with an accident. Yet another problem arises out of the substitution of women for men. We have seen reason to suppose that this is taking place less extensively than is supposed, but it undeniably occurs, and may assume much greater proportions before the war is over. Are women who replace men to be paid merely the wages that women of the same grade of skill usually are paid? In that case they will be undercutting men, and preparing a position of extreme difficulty after the war. Or are the women to be paid the same wages as the men they replace? They certainly should, wherever the work is the same. As we have seen, in many cases the women do not do exactly the same work as men, and indeed in the interests of their health and efficiency it is often highly desirable they should not do quite the same. It may be quite easy, _e.g._, for a woman to cut off yards of cloth to sell across the counter, but it may happen that the man she replaces not only did this but also at intervals handled heavy bales of goods which are beyond her strength. In such cases as this a rearrangement of work with due regard to relative strength is desirable, and a rigid equality of wages should not be insisted on. Organisation of all women-workers employed to replace men is become a more pressing need than ever, to ensure first that women should not be paid less than men merely because they are women; second, that women should not have work thrust upon them that is an injurious strain on their constitutions; third, that the future interests of the men now serving in the field should not be disregarded. The point insisted on in Chapter IV., that women need not only to be enrolled in Unions but to have a voice in the management and control where they are organised along with men, has been made plainer than ever. So strongly was this felt at Manchester that a special committee was formed for the protection of women's interests in munition work, and for co-operation with the interested trade unions in any movement towards the organisation of the women. A special campaign for the organisation of munition workers was initiated and carried on by the National Federation of Women Workers. _The Results the War may have._--It is impossible as yet to estimate what effects the war will ultimately have in modifying the position of women. The surplus of women, in itself a source of much social ill, will be increased; the young girls of to-day have a diminished prospect of marriage. At the same time the spending power of the community must almost certainly be curtailed, and apart from military requirements there will be a less demand for women's work in many occupations. Thus at the very time that women will need more than ever to be self-dependent, their opportunities of self-dependence will be narrowed. Another aspect, a more hopeful one, is that the scarcity of men may improve the position of women and lead to their being entrusted with posts, not necessarily identical with those of men, but more responsible and more dignified than those women have usually filled. Objections of a merely conventional nature are likely to disappear. It seems also possible that the present shifting of women's employment out of the luxury trades that ebb and flow according to fashion and idle caprice, into Government service and trades vitally necessary to national existence, may remain after the war, only that women's energies may then, as we hope, be turned once again to save life rather than destroy it. There are signs that a deeper and more intimate consciousness of society as a whole may operate in favour of women. The recruiting campaign, for instance, may induce certain reflections. Between 1891 and 1900, 781,475 male infants died under a year old in England and Wales alone, making an average death-rate of 168 per thousand births. If even the very mild measures for the improvement of sanitation and the care of infants and nursing mothers that have been adopted in recent years had been customary twenty years ago, we should have now in England some hundreds of thousands more lads of recruiting age or approaching it than are actually here, and many of those who survived the high death-rate of those years would have escaped damage in early years and be stronger and finer men than they are. If we now adopted much more generous measures to the same end, we could probably save some hundreds of thousands more to serve their country in twenty years' time. And all this would cost an infinitesimal sum in comparison with what is now being poured forth to make these young men as strong and fit for the field as possible. The militarists, if they were consistent, would realise that at the back of the army stands another army--the army of the poor working women, underfed, overworked, badly housed, and insufficiently clad. The patriots, if they were more clear-sighted in regard to their own desires, would spend a great deal more time and energy in demanding, for the sake of military efficiency, that the conditions under which the nation's babies are brought into the world and the mother nursed and nourished should be changed in a quite revolutionary manner. Some of us may not love this style of argument; the view of men as "food for powder" and women as mere feeders of the army may seem an ignoble one. Those who hold such views will, however, have to consider their implications more closely. It was a curious coincidence, perhaps even not a wholly fortuitous one (who can say?), that in the very week preceding our declaration of war, when Europe was already resounding with the tramp of armed men and the rumble of artillery wheels, the Local Government Board should have issued its first memoranda on the subject of Maternity and Child Welfare. These circulars, addressed to County Councils and Sanitary Authorities, advocated a considerable extension of the work of Public Health Departments in the direction of medical advice and treatment for pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants, and an extensive development of the system of home-visiting of women and infant children already in existence in some places. Parliament has already voted a grant to the extent of 50 per cent of the cost in aid of local schemes for Maternity and Child Welfare. The immediate appeal of the War Relief Fund and the difficulties of its administration have, no doubt, combined with the inertia characteristic of many local authorities to efface any very bold initiative on the more fundamental but less clamant questions raised in the Local Government Board memorandum. Still, the fact remains that the needs of the woman and the young child have been at last recognised as vital, however inadequate the means taken to meet them have so far been. These needs will be urged by Women's Societies and by labour organisations, and the war will have the effect of bringing them into stronger relief as time goes on, and may supply the impetus for a still more drastic scheme, on the lines advocated by the Women's Co-operative Guild.[66] It is now recognised, or is coming to be recognised, that it is not alone the soldier who serves his country in war; the great part played by industry in building up the nation's life is equally vital. "Industry and commerce," writes Mr. Arthur Greenwood, "are not primarily intended as a field for exploitation and profit, but are essential national services in as true a sense as the Army and Navy." Such a recognition should have its effect in raising the woman's position, the special economic weakness of which is, that her value to the community is greater than any that can be measured in pounds, shillings, and pence, while nevertheless she, like others in a competitive society, is compelled to measure herself by competitive standards. During the war industrial women have been working day and night to supply military and naval requisites, taking their part in national defence as truly as if they could themselves aid in slaughtering the enemy, and not without considerable overstrain and damage to their own health and strength. Others, again, have spent their time and strength toiling to make good the deficiencies in Government organisation, not only for the relief of distress and unemployment, but even for the needs of recruits themselves. Working women in their homes bear a disproportionately heavy share of the burden of trouble and anxiety caused by the rise of prices in the necessaries of life. Vast numbers of women have offered up their sons and brothers in battle; hundreds of thousands have lost their employment and been reduced to poverty and distress. The efforts and sacrifices made by women cannot have passed wholly unnoticed by the Government, and we may hope that some real development of the position of woman, especially of the working woman, will follow the hoped-for settlement of this terrible crisis. Even the thoughtless sentimentality of the well-to-do leisured woman has been touched to finer issues. Impelled to "do something" for the soldiers, she turned instinctively to the traditional or primeval occupations of women, and wanted to make shirts, etc., with her own hands. She was, however, here confronted with the new idea that the needs of the unemployed working woman must be considered. In the autumn it was suggested those who could afford new clothes should order some to stimulate employment. In the spring and early summer, on the contrary, the utmost economy was advocated, capital being scarce. The most irresponsible class in the community were thus asked to realise themselves as members of society, to understand that philanthropy was not merely an opportunity for them to save their own souls, that even their personal expenditure was not a merely private matter, but that both must be considered in relation to the needs of the commonweal.[67] _Constructive Measures._--The experience of the war should certainly lead to some better-thought-out method of dealing with times of stress and unemployment than has ever yet been in operation, especially with regard to women. It would be beyond the scope of this volume to draw up such a scheme in detail, but some points may be indicated. The need of better training has become plain. To raise the upper limit of school attendance is urgent, if education is to be worthy of the name. A better all-round training at school would give girls more choice of occupation, and would not leave them so much at the hazard of one particular process or trade. Develop a girl's intelligence, train her hand and eye, and she will be helped to master the technical difficulties of whatever occupation she may wish to follow or work she may need to do. For older girls special technical and domestic courses may be most valuable, especially if taught in such a manner as to occupy the mind and increase the capacity, and not as mere mechanical routine. It was noted during the boom of work for the army that girls who had been trained in a trade school could adapt themselves more readily to a new and unaccustomed process than could those who had only ordinary workshop training. As a further development of the education question the experience of 1914-15 should lead to the provision of increased facilities for physical exercise in the open air (and time to use them) for young people of both sexes. In the first winter of war we were all amazed at the change effected by a few months' training and fresh air, at the fine well-set-up young men who had lately been weedy clerks and pale-faced operatives. It may perhaps dawn upon us after the war that if the country can afford to satisfy the elementary needs of healthy life in young men when they stand a good chance of dying for her, it might be worth while to do something of the same kind for those who are to live for her and make her future. Perhaps eventually even the physical health and soundness of girls may be held to justify some provision for exercise in the open air. In the second place, the local authorities should at times of stress offer all the useful employment they possibly can find to women at fair rates of wages. The more genuine employment a municipal body can find for women in time of need the better, whether by anticipating work that would normally be wanted a few months later or by increasing the efficiency of special services, such as the educational or health services, district nursing, cleansing and sweeping of schools and other buildings. Why not organise a grand "spring cleaning" of neglected homes, with domestic help to aid the overtaxed mothers of families? Special investigation of particular industrial or sanitary conditions as to which information was needed might well be carried out at times when educated women of the secretarial and clerical professions are unemployed. It is evident that we need a better scheme of Employment Bureaux for women. There should be a centre of information and a clearing-house where workers, found superfluous in their previous occupation, could be drafted into such new ones as they were capable and willing to undertake, and this might possibly be worked in conjunction with a system of training. The comparative success of the work hurriedly improvised, and with many difficulties, by the Central Committee on Women's Employment, is a clear indication that some similar organisation on a larger scale, say a National Advisory Council, linked up with the Labour Exchanges and representative of women's organisations, might be infinitely valuable. Another constructive movement that seems to be gaining ground is that for the organisation of women as consumers. At the end of Chapter V., written early in 1914, I ventured to prophesy that some such form of association would be needed as a complement to the work of organising industrial women-workers. In June 1915 a number of women's societies were engaged in forming an association to take measures to counteract the war scarcity and increase the supply of food, to extend agricultural and horticultural training for women, to improve the feeding of children in schools, to establish cost-price restaurants for the poor, and to urge the Government to form an Advisory Committee to deal with the whole subject and take steps to control the rise of prices, such a committee to include representatives of women householders.[68] Such an association may have great results, directly in the attainment of the objects set forth, indirectly in the stimulating of public spirit and a sense of citizenship among women. There is, however, little ground for hoping that the war will of itself lead to social measures of reconstruction or to the development of a better-organised state, whether in regard to women or in regard to labour generally. Some can find spiritual comfort and sustenance in the idea that by fighting German militarism we are destroying tyranny and despotism among ourselves. On the contrary, it may be that in fighting we are impelled to use as a weapon and may be giving a new lease of life to precisely those tendencies, those forces in our own social life which we are opposing among the Germans for all we are worth. Class domination, the rule of the strongest, and the idealisation of brute force are not peculiar to Germany, although unquestionably, as we have been driven to see, they have there reached an extraordinary exuberance. But the same tendencies are here, and we may be sure democracy will not come of itself, merely as a result of the war. War inevitably means for the time the predominance of man over woman, the predominance of the soldier over the industrial, the predominance of reaction over democracy. It is significant that the stress of war was quickly seized as a pretext for suspending the protection of industrial workers by the State, and for relaxing the Education Acts which normally interpose some hindrance to the exploitation of children by the capitalist employer. The clamour for compulsion and the shameless underpayment of women in some branches of war work are signs of the same reaction. Yet in the long run the apparently weaker elements of society are as vitally necessary as the stronger, and to ignore or silence their needs is to strike at the heart of life. The problems offered by the great war, gigantic and staggering as they are, are not so different in kind from, though vaster in degree and more appalling than, the problem of the industrial revolution itself. Each is a problem of the development of material civilisation, which has (we know it now too poignantly) far outdistanced the growth of civilisation on its social and spiritual side. Each includes the question whether man is to be the master or the slave of the mechanic powers his own genius has evoked. Neither can ever be solved without the conscious co-operation of Woman and Labour, failing which we must for ever fall short of the highest possibilities of our race. "If Great Britain is to lead the way in promoting a new spirit between the nations, she needs a new spirit also in the whole range of her corporate life. For what Britain stands for in the world is, in the long run, what Britain is, and when thousands are dying for her it is more than ever the duty of all of us to try to make her worthier of their devotion."[69] CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT DURING THE WAR 1914-1915. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | I. _Contraction of Employment of Women and Girls. | | Board of Trade Figures._ | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Reduction in Numbers as compared with July 1914. | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Sept 1914. | Oct. | Dec. | Feb. 1915. | |-----------------|--------------|------------|-----------------| | 8·4 | 6·2 | 3·2 | 1·5 | |===============================================================| | II. _Cotton Trade. All Work-people, Women predominating._ | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | | Reduction of Employment | Reduction of Earnings | | |per cent of previous year. |per cent of previous year. | | 1914. |---------------------------|---------------------------| | | Lancashire and | Burnley. | Lancashire and | Burnley. | | | Cheshire. | | Cheshire. | | |-------|----------------|----------|----------------|----------| | Aug. | 42·1 | 46·0 | 60·9 | 70·7 | | Oct. | 18·3 | 32·6 | 37·1 | 57·7 | | Dec. | 9·7 | 19·3 | 20·8 | 38·5 | | Feb. | 6·3 | 9·3 | 9·0 | 11·4 | | April | 6·7 | 10·4 | 4·9 | 4·7 | | June | 6·9 | 6·7 | 5·8 | 6·5 | |===============================================================| | III. _Percentage Increase or Decrease compared with | | same Month in Previous Year._ | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | | Sept. | Nov. | Jan. |March. | May. | | | 1914. | | 1915. | | | |-----------------------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------| |London Dressmakers, | | | | | | | chiefly West End | -11·6 | -14·9 | -14·7 | -15·4 | -13·2 | |Court ditto | -17·3 | -33·2 | -37·2 | -28·1 | -23·3 | |Mantle, costume, etc., | | | | | | | makers | -15·3 | -7·6 | -11·2 | - 2·5 | + 0·6 | |Shirt and collar makers| -11·7 | 11·8 | -10·2 | - 1·5 | - 2·1 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ APPENDIX TO CHAPTERS II. AND IV. DOCUMENTS AND EXTRACTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE POSITION OF WOMEN DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. _Thoughts on the Use of Machines in the Cotton Manufacture._ By a Friend of the Poor. Manchester Reference Library, 677, 1, B. 12. (Barnes, 1780.) "What a prodigious difference have our machines made in the gain of the females of the family! Formerly the chief support of a poor family arose from the loom. The wife could get comparatively but little on her single spindle. But for some years a good spinner has been able to get as much as or more than a weaver. For this reason many weavers have become spinners, and by this means such quantities of cotton warps, twists, wefts, etc., have been poured into the country that our trade has taken a new turn. All the spinners in the country could not possibly have produced so much as this, as are now wanted in a small part of our manufacture. If it were true that a weaver gets less, yet, as his wife gets more, his family does not suffer. But the fact is that the gains of an industrious family have been upon the average much greater than they were before these inventions." Page 16. "When I look upon our machines, with a regard to the _Poor_, and as _their friend and well-wisher_, my heart glows with gratitude and pleasure on their account, in the full hope that, by means of them, our manufactures will _continue_, and be _extended_ and _improved_, from age to age. _Perhaps_, e'er long, our manufacture may be _chiefly of cotton_. _Linen_ may be almost _laid aside_. Suppose, for instance, _common yearn_ could be brought to market, made with _cotton warps_. What a sale might we expect! _Such goods_ would have the demand of _all the world_. Nor is this at all unlikely to be the case, in some future time. Already cotton yarn has been offered to sale, as I am very credibly informed, _almost_, if not _entirely_, as cheap as linen yarn, of the _same length_. _Germany_ and _Ireland_ then _have_ reason to be alarmed at our machines. Their yarn manufactures may suffer severely. But surely this will be the highest advantage to us, by increasing the quantity of _labour_ amongst ourselves and keeping so much _money_ at home. _Perhaps_, by new improvements, we may vie with the _East India_ goods in fineness and beauty. And then--what a prospect would open upon us! But you say all this is a mere _perhaps_. It is so. And I only offer it as such. But, I ask, is it more _unlikely_ than our present improvements were, _twenty years ago_? I believe not. Some tradesmen thought the cotton manufacture at its _highest pitch then_. It was _then_ but in its infancy. Perhaps it is so yet. Human ingenuity, when spurred on by proper rewards, _may leave_ whatever has been done _already_ at a vast distance. We may have goods brought to market, _cheaper, finer, better_. The necessary consequence of this will be, the demand _will increase_ and all the world become our _customers_. If we can _undersell_ all the world, we may have the _custom_ of all the world. Merchants are alike all the world over. They will go to the _cheapest market_. What a pleasing thought is this! But in order to do this it is necessary to _encourage_ our machines, and to keep them as much as possible to _ourselves_." Description of Interior of a Cotton Mill, in _A Short Essay for the Service of the Proprietors of Cotton Mills and the Persons Employed in Them_. Manchester, 1784. (M/c Library, 28269/4.) (Quotes instances of jail fever from overcrowding, etc.) Page 9. "The Cotton Mills are large buildings, but so constructed as to employ the greatest possible number of persons. That no room may be lost, the several stories are built as low as possible. Most of the rooms are crowded with machines, about which it is necessary to employ a considerable quantity of oil in order to facilitate their motion. From the nature of the manufacture, a great deal of cotton dust is constantly flying about, which, adhering to the oil and heated by the friction, occasions a strange and disagreeable smell. The number of people who work in the mill must certainly be proportioned to the size of it. In a large one I am informed there are several hundreds.... The manufacturers, in many instances, constantly labour day and night.[70] Of course a great number of candles must be used, and scarce any opportunity for ventilation afforded. From hence it is evident that there is a considerable effluvia constantly arising from the bodies of a large number of persons (well or in a degree indisposed, just as it happens), from the oil and cotton dust, and from the candles used in the night, without any considerable supply of fresh air. There are indeed trifling casements, sometimes opened and sometimes not; but totally insufficient to subserve any valuable purpose.... What consequences must we expect from so many pernicious circumstances? What are the consequences which have actually proceeded from them? As we have already observed, it is well known that there has been a contagious disorder in a cotton mill in the neighbourhood of Manchester which has been fatal to many, and infected more.... Most of the patients that were ill, having been asked where they caught the fever, either replied that they caught it themselves at the cotton mill or were infected by others that had. Several were asked what kind of labour they followed who were first seized with the disorder. They all replied, they were the people that worked in the cotton mill." Leicester, 1788. British Museum Tracts, B. 544 (10). Humble Petition of the Poor Spinners, which on a very moderate calculation consist of Eighteen Thousand, Five Hundred, employed in the Town and Country aforesaid, Sheweth, that the business of _Spinning_, in all its branches, hath ever been, time out of mind, the peculiar employment of women; insomuch that every single woman is called in law a _Spinster_; to which employment your Petitioners have been brought up, and by which they have hitherto earned their maintenance. That this employment above all others is suited to the condition and circumstances of the _Female Poor_; inasmuch as not only single women, but married ones also, can be employed in it consistently with the necessary cares of their families; for, the business being carried on in their own houses, they can at any time leave it when the care of their families requires their attendance, and can re-assume the work when family duty permits it; nay, they can, in many instances, carry on their work and perform their domestic duty at the same time; particularly in the case of attending a sick husband or child, or an aged parent. That the children of the poor can also be employed in this occupation more or less, according to their age and strength, which is not only a great help to the maintenance of the family, but inures their children to habits of industry. * * * * * It is therefore with great concern your Petitioners see that this antient employment is likely to be taken from them--an employment so consistent with civil liberty, so full of domestic comfort, and so favourable to a religious course of life. This we apprehend will be the consequences of so many spinning mills, now erecting after the model of the cotton mills. The work of the poor will be done by these engines, and they left without employment. The proprietors of the spinning mills do indeed tell your Petitioners that their children shall be employed after the manner of the children at the cotton mills. Your Petitioners have enquired what that manner is; and with grief of heart they find that a vast number of poor children are crowded together in an unhealthy place, have no time allowed them for recreation and exercise, are kept to work for ten or twelve hours together, and that in the night-time as well as by day; hereby they become cripples and emaciated beyond measure. That no care is taken of their morals, as your Petitioners can learn; though these very children are the means by which their masters are raised to wealth and honours too; for we have heard that a certain great _mill-monger_ is newly _created_ a knight though he was not _born_ a gentleman. * * * * * The adventurers are turning their cotton mills into jersey mills, and new ones are daily erecting; and our masters show what their expectations are by undervaluing our work and beating down our wages.[71] 1800. Broadsheet, pp. 942, 72, L. 15 (M/c Library). (This broadsheet records the resolutions carried at a special meeting of merchants, manufacturers, and cotton spinners held at Manchester, May 2, 1800, to consider proceedings of meetings recently held for the purpose of getting Parliament to put a duty on exportation of cotton twist.) Resolved--1. That cotton spinning is a manufacture of the first importance to this country. That it gives employment to a considerable part of the national capital and to a very large portion of the poor of this county and of several other counties, the chief part consisting of women and children who, by means of this manufacture, are rendered highly useful to the community at large instead of _being a burthen on it, as they would be if not employed in cotton mills_ (italics added). Broadsheet in Manchester Library (n. d.). (Purports to be by an old weaver, deprecating attacks on machinery.) "If machinery is destroyed, how are your children to be employed, who now, at an age in which children in other countries gain nothing, can support themselves? Yes, and not only this, but can earn as much, or even more, than a hardworking man in other countries, where there are not these improvements? It is thus that our poor are enabled to marry early and support a family, as the children, instead of being a deadweight upon their parents, can more than do for themselves. So great, indeed, have been our comforts from the demand for our cheap manufactures and the plenty of employ, that people have flocked into Lancashire from all parts of the kingdom by thousands, tens of thousands, aye, and hundreds of thousands too. * * * * * "If they (machines) are destroyed, how then are you to find support for yourselves and your families? Where will your children of seven, eight, or nine years old find employment and money to contribute to the comforts of all? Will our barren moors support them?" From Alfred's _History of the Factory Movement_, vol. i. p. 16. When the first factories were erected, it was soon discovered that there was in the minds of the parents a strong repugnance to the employment thus provided for children: the native domestic labourers, being then able amply to provide for their children, rejected the tempting offers of the mill-owners, the parents preferring to rear their children in their own homes, and to train them to their own handicrafts. For a long period it was by the working people themselves considered to be disgraceful to any father who allowed his child to enter the factory--nay, in the homely words of that day, as will be remembered by the old men of the present age, "that parent made himself the town's talk"--and the unfortunate girl so given up by her parents in after life found the door of household employment closed against her--"Because she had been a factory girl." It was not until the condition of portions of the working class had been reduced that it became the custom with working men to eke out the means of their subsistence by sending their children to the mills. Until that sad and calamitous custom prevailed, the factories in England were worked by "stranger-children," gathered together from the workhouse. Under the operation of the factories' apprentice system parish apprentices were sent, without remorse or enquiry, from the workhouses in England, to be "used up" as the "cheapest raw material in the market." This inhuman conduct was systematically practised; the mill-owners communicated with the overseer of the poor, and when the demand and supply had been arranged to the satisfaction of both the contracting parties, a day was fixed for the examination of "the little children" to be inspected by the mill-owner, or his agent, previous to which the authorities of the workhouse had filled the minds of their wards with the notion that by entering the mills they would become ladies and gentlemen.... It sometimes happened that traffickers contracted with the overseers, removing their juvenile victims to Manchester, or other towns, on their arrival; if not previously assigned, they were deposited sometimes in dark cellars, where the merchant dealing in them brought his customers; the mill-owners, by the light of lanthorns, being enabled to examine the children, their limbs and stature having undergone the necessary scrutiny, the bargain was struck, and the poor innocents were conveyed to the mills. The general treatment of those apprentices depended entirely on the will of their masters; in very many instances their labour was limited only by exhaustion after many modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force continued action; their food was stinted, coarse, and unwholesome. In "brisk times" the beds (such as they were) were never cool, the mills were worked night and day, and as soon as one set of children rose for labour the other set retired for rest. We dare not trust ourselves to write all we know on this subject, much less all we feel.... The moral nature of the traffic between parish authorities and the buyers of pauper children, may be judged from the fact that in some cases one idiot was accepted with twenty sane children.... In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, have little fingers and little feet been kept in ceaseless action, forced into unnatural activity by blows from the heavy hands and feet of the merciless overlooker, and the infliction of bodily pain by instruments of punishment invented by the sharpened ingenuity of insatiable selfishness.... Some of the helpless victims ... nightly prayed that death would come to their relief; weary of prayer, some there were who deliberately accomplished their own destruction. The annals of Litten Mill afford an instance of this kind. "Palfrey the smith had the task of riveting irons upon any of the apprentices whom the master ordered, and these were much like the irons usually put upon felons. Even young women, if suspected of intending to run away, had irons riveted upon their ankles, and reaching by long links and rings up to the hips, and in these they were compelled to walk to and from the mill and to sleep. Robert Blincoe asserts that he has known many girls served in this manner. A handsome-looking girl, about the age of twenty years, who came from the neighbourhood of Cromford, whose name was Phoebe Day, being driven to desperation by ill-treatment, took the opportunity one dinner-time, when she was alone and supposed no one saw her, to take off her shoes and throw herself into the dam at the end of the bridge, next the apprentice-house. Some one passing along and seeing a pair of shoes stopped. The poor girl had sunk once, and just as she rose above the water he seized her by the hair.... She was nearly gone, and it was with some difficulty her life was saved. When Mr. Needham heard of this, and being afraid the example might be contagious, he ordered James Durant, a journeyman spinner, who had been apprenticed there, to take her away to her relations at Cromford, and thus she escaped." The Factory System. _Enquiry into the State of the Manufacturing Population._ London, 1831. Page 12. "As a second cause of the unhealthiness of manufacturing towns we place the severe and unremitting labour. Cotton factories (which are the best in this particular) begin to work at half-past five or six in the morning and cease at half-past seven or eight at night. An interval of half an hour or forty minutes is allowed for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and generally half an hour for tea, leaving about twelve hours a day clear labour. The work of spinners and stretchers (men) is among the most laborious that exist, and is exceeded, perhaps, by that of mowing alone, and few mowers, we believe, think of continuing their labour for twelve hours without intermission.... The labour of the other classes of hands employed in factories, as carders, rovers, piecers, and weavers, consists not so much in their actual manual exertion, which is very moderate, as in the constant attention which they are required to keep up and the intolerable fatigue of standing for so great a length of time. We know that incessant walking for twenty-four hours was considered one of the most intolerable tortures to which witches in former times were subjected, for the purpose of compelling them to own their guilt, and that few of them could hold out for twelve; and the fatigue of standing for twelve hours, without being permitted to lean or sit down, must be scarcely less extreme. Accordingly, some sink under it, and many more have their constitutions permanently weakened and undermined. "III. The third cause we shall assign is perhaps even more efficient than the last. The air in almost all factories is more or less unwholesome. Many of the rooms are obliged to be kept at a certain temperature (say 65 degrees Fahrenheit) for the purpose of manufacture, and from the speed of the machinery, the general want of direct communication with the external atmosphere, and from artificial heat, they often exceed the temperature.... But in addition to mere heat, the rooms are often ill-ventilated, the air is filled with the effluvia of oil, and with emanations from the uncleanly persons of a large number of individuals; and, from the want of free ventilation, the air is very imperfectly oxygenated and has occasionally a most overpowering smell.[72] In a word, the hands employed in these large manufactories breathe foul air for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, and we know that few things have so specific and injurious an action on the digestive organs as the inhalation of impure air, and this fact alone would be almost sufficient to account for the prevalence of stomachic complaints in districts where manufactories abound. "The small particles of cotton and dust with which the air in most rooms of factories is impregnated not infrequently lay the foundation of distressing and fatal diseases. When inhaled, they are a source of great pulmonary irritation, which, if it continues long, induces a species of chronic bronchitis, which, not rarely, degenerates into tubercular consumption.... "IV. The fourth cause of the ill-health which prevails among the manufacturing population may be traced to the injurious influence which the weakened and vitiated constitution of the women has upon their children.[73] They are often employed in factories some years after their marriage, and during this pregnancy, and up to the very period of their confinement, which all who have attended to the physiology of the subject know must send their offspring into the world with a debilitated and unhealthy frame which the circumstances of their infancy are ill-calculated to remove; and hence, when these children begin to work themselves they are prepared at once to succumb to the evil influences by which they are surrounded." At page 27. "We hope we shall not greatly offend the prejudices either of political economists or practical tradesmen when we state our firm conviction, that a reduction in the hours of labour is _most important_ to the health of the manufacturing population, _and absolutely necessary_ to any general and material amelioration in their moral and intellectual condition.... It will be urged in opposition that all legislative interference in commercial concerns is, _prima facie_, objectionable, and involves the admission of a dangerous and impolitic principle. That legislative interference is in itself an evil we deeply feel and readily admit; but it is an evil like many others which necessity and policy may justify, and which humanity and justice may imperiously demand. Legislative interference is objectionable only where it is injudicious or uncalled for. It will also be objected, and with more sound reason, that a reduction of the hours of labour would cause a corresponding reduction in the quantity produced, and consequently in the wages of the workmen; and would also diminish our power of competing with other manufacturing nations in foreign market, and thus, by permanently injuring our trade, would be productive of greater evils to the labouring classes than those we are endeavouring to remove. This objection, though very reasonable, we think is considerably overstated. That 'a reduction of the hours of labour would cause a _corresponding_ reduction in the quantity produced' we entirely deny. What _would_ be the actual loss consequent upon a reduction of the hours it is impossible to state with any certainty, but it is probable that if factories were to work ten hours instead of twelve the loss in the quantity produced would not be one-sixth, but only about one-twelfth, and in Mule Spinning perhaps scarcely even so much. We _know_ that in some cases when the mills only worked four days in the week, they have often produced five days' quantity, and the men earned five days' wages. That this would be the case to a considerable extent every one must be aware; as all men will be able to work much harder for ten hours than they can for twelve. The objection above mentioned we consider to be much over-stated; and we are convinced that the _loss_ incurred would only amount to a _part_ of the reduction. And we think that _all_ loss to the masters might be prevented, and the necessity of a _real_ reduction of wages obviated, were all duties on raw materials, and those taxes which greatly raise the price of provisions, abolished by the legislature. It is principally the shackles and drawbacks to which the Cotton Manufacture is subjected which renders it so difficult, and as some think so impracticable, to adopt a measure without which all extensive and general Plans for improving and regenerating our manufacturing poor must approach the limits of impossibility. At present (in the cotton trade at least, which is already restricted by law) the hours of work generally extend from half-past five or six in the morning till half-past seven or eight at night, with about two hours' intermission, making in all about twelve hours of clear labour. This we would reduce to _ten_ hours (if such a measure should be rendered practicable and safe by a removal of all taxes on manufactures and provisions); and we again express our conviction, after regarding the subject in every possible point of view, that till this measure is adopted all plans and exertions for ameliorating the moral and domestic condition of the manufacturing labourer can only obtain a very partial and temporary sphere of operation. We say this with confidence, because in every project of the kind which we have been enabled to form, in every attempt for this purpose which our personal acquaintance and habitual intercourse with the people could suggest, we have been met and defeated by the long hours (absorbing in fact the whole of the efficient day) which the operative is compelled to remain at his employment. When he returns home at night, the sensorial power is worn out with intense fatigue; he has no energy left to exert in any useful object, or any domestic duty; he is fit only for sleep or sensual indulgence, the only alternatives of employment which his leisure knows; he has no moral elasticity to enable him to resist the seductions of appetite or sloth, no heart for regulating his household, superintending his family concerns, or enforcing economy in his domestic arrangements; no power or capability of exertion to rise above his circumstances or better his condition. He has no time to be wise, no leisure to be good; he is sunken, debilitated, depressed, emasculated, unnerved for effort, incapable of virtue, unfit for everything but the regular, hopeless, desponding, degrading variety of laborious vegetation or shameless intemperance. Relieve him in this particular, shorten his hours of labour, and he will find himself possessed of sufficient leisure to make it an object with him to spend that leisure well; he will not be so thoroughly enervated with his day's employment; he will not feel so imperious a necessity for stimulating liquors; he will examine more closely, and regulate more carefully, his domestic arrangements, and what is more than all, he will become a soil which the religious philanthropist may have some chance of labouring with advantage. We do not say that a reduction in the hours of labour would do everything; but we are sure that little can be done without it." Arthur Arnold. _Cotton Famine._ 1864. (Describing factory work.) Page 56. "In these days of automaton machinery there are many moments in every hour when the varied and immense production of a cotton factory would continue though 95 per cent of the hands were suddenly withdrawn. The work is exciting but not laborious. It quickens the eye and the action of the brain to watch a thousand threads, being obliged to dart upon and repair any that break, lest even a single spindle should be idle; and it strengthens the brain to do this with bodily labour which is exercising but not exhausting. It polishes the mental faculties to work in continued contact with hundreds of others, in a discipline necessarily so severe and regular as that of a cotton factory. The bodily system becomes feverishly quickened by thus working in a high and moist temperature. Even the rattle of the machinery contributes to preserve the brain of the operative from that emptiness which so fatally contracts its power." THE SURAT WEAVER'S SONG From Edwin Waugh's _Factory Folk_, p. 238. By Samuel Laycock. Confound it! aw ne'er wur so woven afore; My back's welly broken, mi fingers are sore; Aw've bin stannin' an' workin' among this Surat Till aw'm very neer gettin' as blint as a bat. Aw wish aw wur fur eneagh off, eawt o' th' road, For o' weaving this rubbitch aw'm gettin' reet sto'd; Aw've nowt i' this world to lie deawn on but straw, For aw've nobbut eight shillen' this fortnit to draw. Oh dear! if yon Yankees could nobbut just see Heaw they're clemmin' an' starvin' poor weavers like me, Aw think they'd soon settle their bother an' strive To send us some cotton to keep us alive. There's theawsan's o' folk, jist i' th' best o' their days, Wi' traces of want plainly sin i' their face; An' a future afore 'em as dreary as dark, For when th' cotton gets done we's be o' eawt o' wark. We've bin patient an' quiet as long as we con; Th' bits of things we had by us are welly o' gone; Mi clogs an' mi shoon are both gitten worn eawt, An mi halliday cloaths are o' gawn "up th' speawt"! Mony a toime i' mi days aw've sin things lookin' feaw But never as awkard as what they are neaw; If there is'nt some help for us factory folk soon, Aw'm sure 'at we's o' be knock'd reet eawt o' tune. Darwen Weavers. Report, March 1911, _The Driving Evil_. During the last few months we have experienced a decided improvement in the demand for cotton goods, and which has naturally provided fuller employment for those employed in the weaving branch. We regret, however, to state that this improvement has brought with it that curse of our industry--the driving evil. We still have a number of employers who resort to any artifice in order to exact the last ounce of effort out of their work-people. Very little regard appears to be paid to the possibility that the health of the operatives may be endangered by the process; nor is much consideration given to the difficulties that they have to contend with in the shape of inferior material in the loom and the higher standard of quality demanded in the warehouse. Indeed the only thing that seems to be of any importance is the average, and woe be to the unlucky individuals whose earnings fall below it. The weak and the strong are set in competition one with another, with the inevitable result that the weaker or less efficient work-people resort to such practices as working during the meal-hour, etc., in their efforts to keep up the unequal race, whilst on the top of all is the dread of what may happen after making up time. When the earnings of an overlooker's set fall below the amount required by the management, pressure is brought to bear on the over-looker, and in turn they (_sic_) are expected to put more pressure on the weaver to increase the output. The methods of speeding-up the weaver are varied. Sometimes a hint is conveyed by a distinctive mark on their wage-tickets, in other cases the weavers are spoken to about their earnings, not always in the best manner or in the choicest language. This is far from being an ideal state of things for young persons or persons of a sensitive nature to be employed in, and has in the past been responsible for some of the tragedies that are a blot on the record of the cotton industry. We think it is high time that a number of employers should give this matter their careful consideration, and look upon their work-people as human beings and not as mere machines to be worked at the utmost speed. We hope that an early improvement will be made at some of the local concerns, otherwise there is every probability of serious trouble. EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS OF THE PRINCIPAL LADY INSPECTOR OF FACTORIES, AND SOME OF HER COLLEAGUES, ILLUSTRATING THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE WOMAN WORKER.[74] 1. _Women and Girls show more Courage in voicing their Needs._ While we can see a great number and variety of deplorable contraventions of the actual requirements and spirit of the law and an amount of apparently preventable suffering and overstrain and injury to life, limb, and health that is grievous to dwell upon (except for action in the way of removal), we can see also, most clearly, signs of improvement and the promise of much more. The promise lies in the fact that the movement to secure better conditions is not confined to any one class or group. The women and girls at last begin to press their claims for a better life than the one they have, not only by increasing appeals to Inspectors to put the law in motion, but also by criticism of the limitations of the law and by signs of fresh courage in organising and voicing their needs to the employers. Employers are initiating reforms not only as outstanding individuals and firms, but are beginning to do so at last by associated action and effort. Without these two responsive sides of the movement the best efforts of social reformers and legislators would end but poorly. As strikingly illustrating the need of betterment, I would point not only to the instances of excessively long hours inside and outside the factories, insanitary conditions; lack of seats, mess-rooms; accidents and unfenced machinery; employment of young workers in operating and clothing dangerous machines; in excessively heavy weight carrying, but behind, and through, and over all, to the undermining influence for the real health of the nation in the grinding methods of payment and deductions from payment of women and girls. Even of industrial poisoning Miss Whitlock says: "Poverty with its attendant worry and lack of nourishment appeared to be a predisposing cause in many cases, and the youth of many of the workers affected was noticeable," and when a woman heavily laden and worn asks, "Is it right I should have to do this kind of work and only have 8s. a week?" the Inspector can only listen and report. The sinister instances of use of homework after the legal factory day to reduce piece rates, of new deductions covering cost of employers' contributions under the Insurance Act, of old-standing large non-payments for work done to punish small unpunctualities in arrival at the factory, and of fine added to entire loss of a hardly-earned week's wage for alleged damage, are only outstanding illustrations of an extensive pressure on women's wages that prevents them from developing their full natural vitality. In every direction the testimony of the Inspectors to the value of the spirit of the industrial girl or woman is the same. Of a girl of seventeen, partially scalped, Miss Martindale says: "Her pluck and bravery were noteworthy, in fact these qualities show themselves in a remarkable degree in working girls when they meet a severe physical shock"; of another, whose hand had to be amputated after vain attempts to save it, she says that the girl mastered her disappointment, and in two or three days after the operation began to practise writing with her left hand, and in a month had become almost as proficient in writing as with the right hand. The value they attach to inspection is obvious from what follows in this report, and is shrewdly summed up in a remark overheard by a Senior Lady Inspector in a northern mill: "Yon's a Lady Inspector, nay, but it's time we had one." 2. _A Factory Worker's Letter._ _Miss Slocock._--The complaints outside the Acts received during the year have been interesting, and they often indicate in a remarkable way the workers' needs and the omissions of present legislation. Irish workers express themselves graphically and exceedingly well in writing, and the following letter is a typical one: "Dear Madam, I am sure you will think it presumption on the part of a factory worker to write to you however as pen and paper refuses nothing I venture to write you this annonamos letter. When you come to inspect a factory, does it ever strike you to look around and see if any of these weary women and girls have a seat to sit down on. I am a winder myself I have worked in a great many factories for the last 30 years one looks on their workshop just like their home why should we be denied a seat I suppose you think our work very light so it is we have no extra heavy lifts we have mettle cups that I suppose they would be 2 lb. weight or more we are pushing these up continually the whole thing is tedious just look around you and you will see some winders have not so much as a lean for their backs. I hope Dear Lady you see to this. You would never think of putting a servant to work in a kitchen without a chair in it, she would not stick it, the winders are an uncomplaining lot if you asked them would they like to be provided with seats they would smile and say they were all right, it would look to them like making complaints behind backs but don't ask us but think about us and do something for us and our children will rise up and call you blessed. I hold that rest is essential to Good Health." 3. _Lighting._ _Principal._--An increasing number of complaints is received with regard to defective natural lighting and badly adjusted or otherwise defective artificial lighting. The Inspectors do what they can to secure improvements, though, as the matter is outside the Factory Act, in general no contravention notice or other official action is as yet practicable. Two bad cases concerning women compositors in different parts of the kingdom are specially reported; in both artificial lighting was required during the greater part of the day, and in only one of these instances is a remedy being supplied by removal to better premises. In the other case, when the women learned that lighting is still outside the Factory Act so far as their case is concerned, they exclaimed to the Senior Lady Inspector, Miss Squire, "but this is the most important thing of all to us." _Miss Squire._--Badly adjusted light which hurts the eyes was found in boot factories, where out of nine visited in one town four had the sewing-machine rooms provided with ordinary fish-tail burners on a jointed bracket at every machine--these, unshaded, were on a level with the workers' eyes and close to the face. The girls complained that the light was poor and had a smarting effect upon the eyes. The adaptation of artificial lighting to the requirements of the work receives in general very little attention, but I find that a desire for some guidance in the matter is growing among employers and managers. One difficulty is that of procuring any shade for the large metal filament electric lamps now so largely used. The glare of these in the eyes of machine operatives in all classes of factories is a troublesome accompaniment of the work, and one finds much makeshift screening by workers where such individual effort is permitted. 4. _Sanitary Accommodation._ _Principal._--It is impossible to modify in any general way the adverse description of the existing state of matters as regards actual provision of sanitary conveniences for women and girls in factory industries which I found it necessary to give in last Annual Report, and to that statement I must refer again and again until there is real and complete reform. The women Inspectors have nearly doubled their efforts to raise the standard somewhat in factories, and notices about them to local sanitary authorities have risen from 538 in 1912 to 1029 in 1913, in addition to 146 notices with regard to workshops. Direct contravention notices to occupiers numbered 249, while complaints from workers numbered 170, some of them being very strong in regard to the unsuitability of the conveniences provided. The one important area in which a decided improvement is reported is the potteries area, where members of this branch have been steadily at work for many years, but on the whole the Midlands and the Lancashire Divisions have still most work to be done in this direction, for in the former Miss Martindale reports that 381 of the notices to sanitary authorities touched this one matter, and in the latter Miss Tracey reports similarly 308 notices. _Miss Tracey._--The outstanding defect of all others in this north-west division is the sanitary accommodation provided for women. It is impossible to describe in a public paper how low the standard has been and still is, in many places, where in other respects the conditions are not only not noticeably bad, but are quite good.... Absence of doors and screens, uncleanliness and insanitary conditions can all be remedied by the sanitary authority, and in the large towns at any rate notices of these matters have received prompt attention, but there still remains the question of unsuitability of position. Many examples might be given. In a waterproof factory four or five girls were employed in an "overflow" workroom of a larger factory, and worked in an upper room; in the lower room about a dozen men and youths were at work. To reach the sanitary convenience it is necessary for the girls to walk across the men's room and through a narrow space between rows of machines at which the men are sitting, and the wall at the far end of which the sanitary convenience is situated.... There is no doubt that glass panels in doors, commoner still, no doors, no bolts, no provision for privacy is all calculated to "prevent waste of time," and it is a pathetic comment on employment that there should be this improper supervision and control of decent and respectable women. That they do sometimes stay longer than is actually necessary in these places is of course a fact well known to me, but to my thinking it only shows how great the strain is on women and girls that they should desire rest so obtained. When one thinks of the perpetual striving, the work which must never slacken, the noise which never ceases and of the legs which are weary with constant standing, of the heads which ache, because the noise is so great no voice can be heard above the din, one can understand that to sit on the floor for a few moments' talk, as I have often seen, is a rest which under even such horrid circumstances is better than nothing. Proper conveniences and the supervision of a nice woman would do away with all the drawbacks which employers foresee in complying with the standard laid down in the Order of the Secretary of State so long ago as 1903. 5. _Fire Escapes._ _Miss Tracey._--In one factory I visited to see an escape recently put up at the instance of the local authority, and I found quite a good iron staircase and platform. This was reached by a window which had been made to open in such a way that it completely blocked the staircase and gave but a tiny space even on the platform, and the aid of the local officer was again invoked. Miss Stevenson reports that in the newer cotton mills a proper outside iron staircase with a handrail is to be found, but the construction of the older fire escapes shows a great lack of common sense. In the first place, the narrow, almost perpendicular ladder without a handrail is peculiarly unsuited for the use of women. The openings from the platform to the ladders are exceedingly small, and the exit window is generally 3 to 4 feet above the floor level, no steps or footholds being provided. To increase the difficulty the exit window is sometimes made to swing out across the platform, cutting off access to the downward ladder. In two cases the ladder, and in one case a horizontal iron pipe also, ran right across the window, rendering egress impossible except to the slender. In both cases the next window was free from obstruction. _Miss Taylor._--Sometimes as many as 100 persons are employed on each floor of a high building, so that if the outside staircase had to be used those in the upper floors would, as they descended, meet the occupants of the lower floors crowding on to the landings. I have never been to a factory where they had such a fire drill as might obviate the possibility of overcrowding on these escapes. The women flatly, and I think, rightly, decline to attempt the descent, on the plea that they do not wish to incur the danger of it until it is absolutely necessary. I have sometimes been told by the managers of the factories that they themselves would never reach the bottom safely if they attempted to go down. Such escapes are to be found on quite 50 per cent of the cotton mills in Lancashire, and as they were put up on the authority of the sanitary authority it is difficult to get rid of them, but one cannot help thinking that there may be very serious loss of life if the circumstances of a fire should be such that the workers were obliged to resort to these outside escapes. 6. _Lead Poisoning._ _Miss Tracey._--I spent many days in visiting the cases which had been certified, and in visiting other cases of illness which were not directly certified, as due to lead. I visited these workers at their homes and found them in different stages of illness and convalescence. Their pluck will always remain fixed in my mind; although many of them were unable to put into words the sufferings they had gone through, yet not one of them but was eagerly wishing to be well enough to go back to work. When, as is so common now, women are accused of malingering, I often wish that complainants would accompany me on my investigation of cases of accident or poisoning at the workers' homes, for I know that, like me, these people would return in a humbled frame of mind, recognising courage and endurance under circumstances which would break many of us. Without these home visits it would have been impossible to gauge the extent and severity of the outbreak of illness. 7. _Hours of Work and Overtime._ _Miss Tracey._--Often we receive complaint of the burden of the long twelve hours' day, and the strain it is to start work at 6 A.M. A well-known man in a Lancashire town was telling me only the other day about how he would wake in the morning to the clatter of the girls' and women's clogs as they went past his house at half-past five in the dark on their way to the mills. He had exceptional opportunity of judging of the effect of the long day's work, and he told me how bonny children known to him lost their colour and their youthful energy in the hard drudgery of this daily toil. How the girls would fall asleep at their work, and how they grew worn and old before their time. We see it for ourselves, and the women tell us about it. Sometimes one feels that one dare not contemplate too closely the life of our working women, it is such a grave reproach. I went to a woman's house to investigate what appeared a simple, almost commonplace, accident. She was a middle-aged, single woman, living alone. Six weeks before my visit she had fainted at her work, and in falling (she was a hand gas ironer) she had pulled the iron on her hand, that and the metal tube had severely burnt both arm and hand. She was quite incapacitated. She told me she left home at 5.15, walked 2-1/2 miles to the factory, stood the whole day at her work, and at 6, sometimes later, started to walk home again, and then had to prepare her meal, mend and do her housework. This case is only typical of thousands of women workers. She got her 7s. 6d. insurance money, and that was all. She made no effort to enlist my sympathy, but just stated the facts quite simply. Her case is not so bad as many, for in addition to their own needs, a married woman or a widow with children has also to see to the needs of the family, meals, washing and mending, and the hundred and one other duties that are required to keep a home going. In Scotland Miss Vines says that the largest proportion of complaints relates to excessive hours of employment, while on investigation they are found sometimes to be within the legal limits, and "there is no doubt that the working of the full permissible period of employment does sometimes entail an intolerable strain on the workers." _Miss Meiklejohn._--There has again been in West London a marked decrease in the overtime reported this year. The opinion seems to be that systematic overtime in the season does not really help forward the work, and that the extension should be used, as was intended, in an emergency only. There is a tendency to shorten the ordinary working hours, as well as to work as little overtime as possible. 8. _Employment of Women before and after Childbirth._ There can be little doubt that provision of maternity benefit under the Insurance Act has materially lightened the burden of compliance with the limit of women for four weeks after childbirth before they may return to industrial employment. Complaints of breach of s. 61 have dropped to eight in 1913, and complaints (outside the scope of the section) of employment just before confinement have dropped to one. Even in Dundee, where this evil of heavy employment of child-bearing women has been probably the worst in the kingdom, an improvement of the situation is seen. _Miss Vines._--I visited a group of twelve jute-mill working mothers within a month after their confinement and found that only one of them had returned to work, nine of the mothers were married and experiencing the good effects of the Insurance Act benefit. The unmarried women were, of course, getting less benefit, and were not so well off; one of them worked as a jute spinner in a jute mill till 6 P.M. on the night her baby was born. 9. _Truck Act._ _Principal._--The illustrations sent me of the mass of work done in 1913 under the modern part of the law relating to truck are too numerous to be reproduced here. Typical instances must be selected from different industrial centres for the main points of (_a_) disciplinary fines, (_b_) deductions or payments for damage, short weight, etc., (_c_) deductions or payments for power, materials or anything supplied in relation to labour of the worker; abuses of the "bonus" system may be connected with (_a_) or (_b_). The main features of these illustrations are the poverty of the workers, the rigidity and poverty of mind that controls workers by such methods, and the need for fresh and living ideas to sweep away all these defective, obsolete ways of control. _Disciplinary Fines._ _Miss Tracey._--I had a long struggle with the occupier of a large laundry in Lancashire over fines for coming late. The work started at 6, and it was said that only three minutes (supposed to be five), were allowed as grace. The weekly wages were phenomenally small, but no work was demanded on Saturdays unless under exceptional circumstances. If a girl came to the laundry after the gate was closed (three minutes after 6 A.M.), she was shut out till after breakfast, a fine was inflicted for late attendance, and if this happened more than once, one-sixth of the total wage was deducted for Saturday, although no work was required. I found these fines to amount to as much as 1s. 8d. out of a wage of 4s. 6d., and other sums in proportion. This iniquitous custom had been followed for twenty years, and I was assured that it was a case of "adjustment of wages" and did not come under the Truck Act. However, my view eventually prevailed; certain sums were repaid and the whole system done away with, without bringing the case into Court. In other respects, the laundry was a good one, and no work on Saturday is an arrangement that is of great benefit to young and old workers alike. The plan now adopted is that a girl consistently unpunctual during the week will be required to come in on Saturday morning to do a few hours' work--this plan has worked so well that no one, when I last visited, had been in the laundry on Saturday at all. _Miss Slocock._--(1) Two girls, aged respectively eighteen and nineteen, employed as cutters, were fined £2 : 14s. and 11s. 2d. for cutting some handkerchiefs badly and damaging the cloth. The deductions were made at the rate of 1s. per week, and at the time of my visit, each worker had already had 10s. 6d. deducted from her wages. Proceedings were considered, but the employer, directly his attention was drawn to the matter, refunded 5s. 6d. to one worker and agreed not to make any further deduction from the other, so that one girl paid 5s. for damage amounting to 11s. 2d. and the other 10s. 6d. for damage amounting to £2 : 14s. These amounts, 11s. 2d. and £2 : 14s. represented exactly the whole loss to the firm caused by the damaged work, and the employer thought that he was acting legally so long as the deductions did not exceed that amount. The fact that the Truck Act specifically draws attention to this limitation is constantly brought to my notice, and used as an excuse for putting the whole cost of any damage on the workers. The average gross weekly wage earned by these workers for the eleven weeks during which deductions were being made was 8s. 1d. and 10s. 10-1/2d. respectively. (2) Two workers employed as shirt machinists were told they would both be fined 5s. for spoiling two shirts each by mixing the cloth. The difference in the cloth was so slight that I could hardly distinguish it in daylight, and the workers had machined the shirts by artificial light. The contract under which these deductions were made provided that the cost price of the material damaged should not be exceeded; the firm admitted that the cost price of the material was not more than 1s. 6d. each shirt, and a fine of 2s. 6d. from each worker (1s. 3d. for each shirt) was ultimately imposed. _Miss Escreet._--Many instances of deductions for damage have touched the borderland where non-payment of wages for work done badly approximates to a deduction of payment in respect of bad work. Action in such cases is very difficult--when sums like 5s. 5d. and 3s. are deducted from wages of 10s. 7d. and 13s. 4d. in a weaving shed and metal factory respectively, there is no question that the workers look rightly for the protection of the Truck Acts, which were surely framed to control this very kind of arbitrary handling of hardly earned wage. Enquiry into these cases invariably brings to light other considerations than the mere fact of damaged work. Some managers find it difficult to realise that bad work is bound to be a feature attendant on pressure for great output, especially if the workers are inexperienced and ill-taught, or if the piece-work rates are so low that the workers cannot afford to use care, and are obliged to trust to luck and a lenient "passer." 10. _Lenience of Magistrates to Employer._ _Principal._--We have to occasionally reckon with Benches who consider a few shillings' penalty, or even 1d. penalty, sufficient punishment for excessive overtime employment of girls, or with others who are reluctant to convict, or punish with more than cost of proceedings, law-breaking employers who are shown to have been thoroughly instructed in the law they have neglected to obey. It is in my belief an open question whether the tender treatment of the Probation of Offenders Act was ever designed to apply to the case of fully responsible adults officially supplied by abstracts with the knowledge and understanding of an industrial code which is intended to protect the weakest workers. (_A Leaflet issued from a Trade Union Office_) -------- & DISTRICT WEAVERS, WINDERS, WARPERS & REELERS' ASSOCIATION. (Branch of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association) OFFICES: TEXTILE HALL, --------. WINDERS AND THE BARBER KNOTTER.[75] A Few Facts for Non-Union Winders. Have you ever considered what it costs you through not joining your Trade Union? Study the following facts: Many winders have five per cent. deducted each week from their wages for using the "Barber" Knotter. Five per cent. on 15s. per week is 9d. 9d. per week is £1 17s. 6d. for every 50 weeks you work. If you work with one of these knotters for three years your employer has been paid =more= than the original cost; but they continue to stop the five per cent. and the knotter still belongs to the employer. If you work at a mill ten years and pay five per cent. all the time you cannot take the knotter with you when you leave. Think about it. You pay for it three or four times over, but it doesn't belong to you. =Oh, no!= We ask you to pay =5d.= to your Trade Union so that we can =stop your employer from keeping 9d. out of your wages=. If you would rather pay 9d. to your employers than 5d. to your Trade Union you have =LESS SENSE= than we thought you had. "But," you say, "we can earn more money with a knotter." Quite true, but you are paid on "=production=," so if you get more money it is only because you turn more work off, and in turning more work off your Employers get a Greater Production but they make =YOU= pay for it. The knotter enables you to piece up at a quicker rate; this saves time. It enables you to make smaller knots, thus making better work. The two combined makes Quantity and Quality. The employers get =both= and make you pay for it. We say to you that it is no part of your duty to pay for improved machinery. If it is beneficial to the employers to improve any part of any machine they'll do it without consulting you, but we hold that if by doing this they get a greater and better production then they ought to =ADVANCE= your wages and not deduct five per cent. from them. Think! Think! Think! View the matter over in your own minds. Reason the matter from your own point of view. If you are satisfied with the present system, well, =DON'T GRUMBLE=. If you're not, =What are you going to do to stop it?= Have you a remedy? If so, what is it? If you haven't, =WE HAVE!= Organisation is the only solution! Trade Unionism will solve the problem for you, but You'll have to pay and not pout! " " act " shout! Pay 5d. and keep the 9d.! Fight and don't Funk. DON'T HESITATE--AGITATE! If you have eyes--SEE! If you have ears--HEAR! JOIN THE UNION! Bring your grievances to the Officials! But join--Delay is Dangerous--Join at once! --------, Secretary. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII. RESOLUTIONS SUBMITTED BY THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN WORKERS TO THE TRADE UNION CONGRESS, 1915. "(_a_) That all women who register for war service should immediately join the appropriate trade union in the trade for which they are volunteering service, and that membership of such organisation should be the condition of their employment for war service, and that those trade unions which exclude women be urged to admit women as members. "(_b_) That where a woman is doing the same work as a man she should receive the same rate of pay, and that the principle of equal pay for equal work should be rigidly maintained." MANCHESTER AND DISTRICT WOMEN'S WAR INTERESTS COMMITTEE. The Committee was formed as a result of the Joint action of the Women's Emergency Corps and the Manchester and District Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. Representatives were invited from the Women's organisations ... and the trade unions interested in women in munition works. The Gasworkers and the Workers' Union also asked for representation and were accepted. The Committee carried through an investigation of women in munition works, and discovered that 12s. to 15s. was the standard wage, which was lower than the standard, or usual women's rates in the district, which were about £1. It was therefore proposed that the Committee work for a minimum wage for women in munition works, and the programme, of which a copy is enclosed, was drawn up. This was presented to the Trade Union section of the Lancashire No. 1 Armaments Output Committee and received their hearty support. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers recognised the National Federation of Women Workers as the organisation to take in women munition workers, and the local secretaries were instructed to co-operate with this body wherever a branch exists. There being no branch in the Manchester area the Amalgamated Society of Engineers recognised the Women's War Interests Committee as the representative women's organisation. Great help has been given to the Committee by their officials. The Committee does not itself undertake to organise the women, but passed a resolution to the effect that it would co-operate with any movement towards organisation of the women which is undertaken as a result of joint agreement with the interested trade unions. * * * * * The following proposals have been agreed upon by the Committee for the employment of women in ammunition works, to form the basis of representations to the Ministry of Munitions:-- _Wages._--That a guaranteed minimum of £1 per week of 48 hours should be paid to every adult woman worker (over 18 years) employed on munitions. Piecework rates, irrespective of class of labour employed, should remain unaltered. _Hours._--That a three-shift system of 8 hours is preferable to continuous overtime for women. No woman should be employed on night work for more than two weeks out of six. _Conditions._--That ample canteen provision be provided, this to be obligatory where night work is in operation. AUTHORITIES. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. PEARSON, KARL. Woman as Witch, in the Chances of Death, vol. ii.; and Sex Relations in Germany, in the Ethic of Freethought, p. 402. MASON, OTIS. In the American Antiquarian, Jan. 1889, p. 6. ELLIS, HAVELOCK. Man and Woman. Fourth Edition. Introduction and chap. xiv. RECLUS, E. Primitive Folk, pp. 57-8. Contemporary Science Series. 1891. FRAZER, J. G. The Magic Art, ii. 204. MAN, E. H. Journal of the Anthropological Institute. August 1893. SERVANTS IN HUSBANDRY. THOROLD, ROGERS. History of Agriculture and Prices, i. pp. 273-274, and iv. 495. Compare Bland, Brown, and Tawney, English Economic History, p. 347, for approximation between men's and women's wages. EDEN, SIR FREDERICK. State of the Poor, iii. lxxxix. TEXTILES: WOOL AND LINEN. SCHMOLLER. Strassbürger Tücher- und Weberzunft, p. 354. Archaeologia. Vol. xxxvii. pp. 91 and 93; vol. x. Plates XX., XXI., and XXII. ANDREWS. Old English Manor, p. 272. DELONEY. Jack of Newbury, p. 59. WRIGHT, T. Womankind of Western Europe, pp. 59, 177-8. AUBREY. History of Wiltshire. Quoted in Archaeologia xxxvii. p. 95. WARDEN, A. The Linen Trade. Longman, 1867. (2nd ed.), pp. 355-6. ROCK, D. Textile Fabrics, p. 11. 1876. ECKENSTEIN, LINA. Women under Monasticism. Ancren Riwle. Reprinted in the King's Classics, p. 317. B�CHER. Industrial Evolution. Translated by S. M. Wickett, pp. 265-7. JAMES, JOHN. History of Worsted, p. 289. Victoria County History. Yorkshire, ii. p. 43. WRIGHT, T. Homes of Other Days, p. 434. CHAUCER. Wife of Bath's Prologue. BEARD, C. Industrial Revolution, p. 25. FITZHERBERT. Book of Husbandry. 1574. Edited by Skeat, par. 146. TEMPLE, SIR W. Quoted in Cunningham's Growth of Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, p. 370. (Ed. 1907.) Shuttleworth Accounts, Chetham Society, vol. xlvi. p. 1002. MARKHAM, G. The English Housewife, pp. 167, 172. (Ed. 1637.) WEAVING AND SPINNING AS A WOMAN'S TRADE. ABRAM, A. Social England in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 133-4. Ancient Book of the Weavers' Company. (Facsimile in the British Museum Library.) FOX AND TAYLOR. Weavers' Gild of Bristol, p. 38. UNWIN, G. Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, p. 229. LAMBERT. Two Thousand Years of Gild Life, pp. 206-10. THOMSON, D. The Weaver's Craft, p. 22. Records of the City of Norwich, ii. p. 378. For Rates of Pay to Weavers, etc., see a volume of tracts in the British Museum Library, numbered 1851, c. 101. Howard Accounts. Published by the Roxburgh Club, vol. li. MARKHAM, G. The English Housewife, pp. 174-5. (Ed. 1637.) DUNLOP AND DENMAN. English Apprenticeship and Child Labour, chap. ix. DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISTIC INDUSTRY. UNWIN, G. In the Victoria County History, Suffolk, ii. pp. 258-9. BAINES, E. History of Cotton Manufacture, p. 91. GREEN, MRS. ALICE. Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. p. 100. Ordinances of Worcester. Edited by Toulmin Smith. Early English Text Society. HAMILTON. History of Quarter Sessions, pp. 164, 273. LEONARD. Early English Poor Relief. ASHLEY, W. J. English Economic History, Part II., chapter on the Woollen Industry. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Northern Tour, vol. i. p. 137. Second edition. 1770. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Tour in East of England, ii. pp. 75, 81. WARNER, TOWNSEND. In Traill's Social England, vol. v. p. 149. MANTOUX. La Révolution industrielle, p. 36. BONWICK. Romance of the Wool Trade, p. 435. Lancashire Worthies, i. p. 307. WEBER, MARIANNE. Ehefrau und Mutter, Tübingen, 1907, p. 252. SILK. CAMPBELL, W. Materials for History of the Reign of Henry VII., pp. 13, 15, 168, 170, etc. Victoria County History, Derby, ii. p. 372. OTHER INDUSTRIES. TRAILL. Social England, vol. i. p. 658. LAPSLEY, G. T. "Account Roll of a Fifteenth-Century Ironmaster," in the English Historical Review, vol. xiv., July 1899, p. 51. Victoria County History. Derbyshire, pp. 328-9, 332, 343. Some Account of Mines. British Museum, 444, a 49, p. 62. GALLOWAY. Annals of Coal Mining, pp. 91, 232, 234, 354 _passim_. Case of Sir H. Mackworth. British Museum, 522, m. 12 (2). Case of the Mine Adventurers in the same volume, No. 26. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Northern Tour, vol. ii. pp. 189, 254-5. Second Edition. 1770. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Six Weeks' Tour, pp. 150, 109. 1768. CHAPTER II. THE COTTON INDUSTRY. BAINES, EDWARD. History of the Cotton Manufacture, 1836, pp. 97, 100, 115, 116 n., 446. GUEST. History of the Cotton Manufacture. RADCLIFFE, W. Origin of the New System of Manufacture, 1828, p. 59, etc. GASKELL, P. Manufacturing Population of England, 1833, pp. 42, 43, 60. BEARD, C. A. The Industrial Revolution. MANTOUX. La Révolution industrielle, pp. 208-11. ELLISON, T. The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 1886. LAW, ALICE. Social and Economic History, in the Victoria County History, Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 327. CHAPMAN, S. J. The Lancashire Cotton Industry. CUNNINGHAM, W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, p. 654. (Ed. 1907.) THE DECAY OF HANDSPINNING. EDEN, SIR FREDERICK. State of the Poor, vol. iii. pp. 768, 821, 847. THE HANDLOOM WEAVER'S WIFE. GASKELL, P. Manufacturing Population, p. 40. MANTOUX. La Révolution industrielle, pp. 442-3. Report of Committee on Ribbon-Weavers, 1818, vol. ix. p. 124. Report on Handloom Weavers, 1834, vol. x. Evidence of Brennan. THE FACTORY. TUCKETT, J. D. History of the Labouring Population, pp. 208-9. AIKIN, J. Country Round Manchester, pp. 167, 192. URE. Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 312-3. GASKELL, P. Manufacturing Population of England, chap. i. TAYLOR, W. COOKE. Factories and the Factory System, 1844, pp. 1, 45-6. FIELDEN, J. Curse of the Factory System, 1836, p. 43. Assistant Poor Law Commissioners. Report on Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 25. Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xii. GASKELL, MRS. Mary Barton. THE WOMAN WAGE-EARNER. Report on Artizans and Machinery. Parliamentary Papers, 1824, vol. v. Evidence of Dunlop and Holdsworth, compare evidence of M'Dougal and William Smith. Report on Manufactures and Commerce. Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. vi. p. 323. Report on Combinations of Workmen. Parliamentary Papers, 1838, viii. q. 3527-31. Report on Handloom Weavers, 1840, vol. xxiii. p. 307. GASKELL, P. Artizans and Machinery, pp. 143, 331. GASKELL, P. Manufacturing Population of England, pp. 186-8. Report on Employment of Children in Factories. Parliamentary Papers, 1834, xix. p. 297. SCHULTZE-G�VERNITZ. The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent. Translated by O. S. Hall. 1895. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN NON-TEXTILE TRADES. Children's Employment Commission. 1843. Reports on Birmingham District. Children's Employment Commission. Parliamentary Papers. 1864, vol. xxii.; Third Report, p. x. TIMMINS, S. Resources of Birmingham and the Hardware District. 1866. Labour Commission. Reports on Employment of Women, by Miss Orme, Miss Collet, Miss Abraham, and Miss Irwin. Parliamentary Papers, 1893-94, vol. xxxvii. British Association, 1902-1903. Reports to the Economic Section by the Committee on the Legal Regulation of Women's Labour. CHAPTER IV. WOMEN IN UNIONS. Report on Combination Laws. Parliamentary Papers, 1825, vol. iv. Appendices 6, 10, 16. Board of Trade. Seventeenth Report on Trade Unions, 1912. Board of Trade. Sixteenth Labour Abstract, 1915. Articles of the Manchester Small Ware Weavers, printed at Manchester, 1756. (Manchester Library.) WEBB, SIDNEY AND BEATRICE. History of Trade Unionism, pp. 104-5, 121-3, etc. CHAPMAN, S. J. History of the Lancashire Cotton Industry, pp. 213-5, etc. Report on Standard Piece Rates of Wages in the U.K. Parliamentary Papers, 1900, vol. lxxxii. Reports of the Women's Trade Union League, 1874 to present time. (34 Mecklenburgh Square.) Women in the Printing Trades. Edited by J. Ramsay MacDonald. 1904. Report by Miss Busbey on Women's Unions in Great Britain. Bulletin of the Labour Department, U.S.A. No. 83. Labour Commission. Evidence of Mrs. Hicks and Miss James. Parliamentary Papers, 1892, vol. xxxv. Reports of the National Federation of Women Workers. (34 Mecklenburgh Square.) Also reports of trade union and other societies and information given privately. _America._--History of Women in Trade Unions. Vol x. of Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners in the U.S. Admission to American Trade Unions. By F. Wolfe, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1912. Women in Trade Unions in San Francisco. L. R. Matthews University of California Publications in Economics, vol. iii 1913. Making Both Ends Meet. Clark and Wyatt. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Chaps. ii. and v. The World of Labour. G. D. H. Cole. Bell, 1913. Chap. v. Report on Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912. CHAPTER IVA. WOMEN IN UNIONS (_continued_). _Germany._--BRAUN, LILY. Die Frauenfrage, 1901. GNAUCK-K�HNE, ELISABETH. Die Arbeiterinnenfrage. M. Gladbach, 1905. SANDERS, W. STEPHEN. Industrial Organisation in Germany. Special supplement to the _New Statesman_, October 18, 1913. The Organisation of Women Workers in Germany. Special Report to the International Women's Trade Union League of America. Submitted by the Women Workers' Secretariat of the General Commission of Trade Unions of Germany. Berlin, 1913. ERDMANN, A. Church and Trade Unions in Germany. Published by the General Commission of Trade Unions in Germany. Berlin, 1913. CHAPTER VII. EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT. Reports of the Board of Trade on the State of Employment in the United Kingdom in October and December 1914, and February 1915. Interim Report of the Central Committee on Employment of Women. The Labour Gazette. Labour in War-Time. By G. D. H. Cole. Bell, 1915. Report on Outlets for Labour after the War by a Committee appointed by Section F of the British Association. Manchester Meeting. 1915. Articles in the _New Statesman_, _Common Cause_, _Englishwoman_, _Economic Journal_, etc. INDEX Abbott, Edith, 151 Abram, Annie, 13 Accidents, 59, 125, 129 Accounts of Hen. VII., 27 of seventeenth century, 15 Shuttleworth, 11 Accrington, 96 Adam and Eve, 6 Adaptation of industry in war-time, 248 Administration of the Factory Act, 53, 181-2, 243, 255, 282-93 Adolescence, care of, 206 Aftalion, 72 Agricultural population, report on, 51 Aikin, 43, 50 Aldhelm, 7 Alfred, King, 5 Amalgamated Society of Clothiers, 116 Amalgamation, the, 112 America, 60 Women's Unions in, _section_, 141 Ammunition workers' strike, 130-31 Anaemia, 188 _Ancren Riwle_, 8 Andrews, 7 Anglo-Saxon industry, 5, 7 Anthropology, 2 Anti-Combination Act, repeal of, 92 Anti-Socialist Law, 155 Anti-Sweating League, 125, 133 Apathy of the governing class, 52 Apathy of women, 104-7, 113, 115, 209 Apprentices, factory, 273 Apprenticeship, _section_, 15 Architects, the first, 2 Arkwright, 33, 35, 36, 47 Artizans and Machinery, Select Committee on, 53 Ashley, afterwards Shaftesbury, Lord, 185 Asses, machines worked by, 43 Assistance in craft industries by women and girls, 16 Association, _section_, 205 _Athenaeum_, 52 _n._ Attacks on the factory system, 49-51 Attraction of the family, 83 Aubrey, 7 Backwardness of the Factory Act, 184 Bad conditions in factories, 135, 181, 273, 286 Bagley, Sarah, 142 Baines, E., 38, 44 Bamford, 24 Barber knotter, the, 294 Barry, Leonora, 145 Beam, the, 98 Beamers, 126 Beaming, 107 Bebel, 156 Berchta, 2 Berlin, 158, 159 Bermondsey, 135 Besant, Mrs., 128 Betterment, 202 Bill to raise wages, 1593, 20 Bilston, 136 Birmingham, 43, 62, 136 trades, 29 Bishopsgate, workhouse in, 21 Black, Clementina, 122, 128 Blackburn, 33, 96, 111, 112, 113 society, 99 Black Death, 4 Bondfield, Margaret, 259 _n._ Bonwick, 23 Bookbinders, Society of, 120 Boot and shoe trade, 63-4 Unions, 116, 150 Boston, 151 Bosworth, Louise, 234 Bourgeois women's movement, 162, 163 Bowley, A. L., 228 Bradford, 116 Bradford Dale, 25 Brass work, 66 polishing, 191 Braun, Frau Lily, 69, 161-4, 175 Brighton, 122 Bristol, 14, 29, 63, 64, 65, 224 Weavers' Gild of, 22 Britain, Great, what she stands for, 265 British Association, 64 Bücher, 9 Bureau of Labour, enquiry by, 149 Burnley weavers, 102 Burslem, 29 Butler, Elizabeth, 61 Butler, Josephine, 199 Button-making, 29 Cadbury, E., 195 _n._ Capitalist employer, the, 185-6 Card-room operatives, 59, _section_, 113, 126, 168 Carpenters' Company, 17 Carrying loads, 65, 66 Cartwright, 35, 42 Catholic Unions, 161, 164 Causes of lack of organisation, 115, 139, 151 Census, Chap. III. Central Commission of German Trade Unions, 156 Central Committee on Women's Employment, 247 Central Strike Fund, 103 Centralisation needed, 173 Chain-makers, 131 Board, first determination of, 132 Changes effected by industrial revolution, _section_, 178 Chapman, Sydney J., 92 Charles II., 26 Chaucer, 10 Chemicals, 63 Child labour in factories, 272 report on, 57 Childbirth, employment after, 290 Children and machines, 43, 272 exploitation of, 264 Children's clothes, 65 Employment Commission, 62, 63 Chorley weavers, 96, 103 Christian Trade Unions, 160 Churchill, Winston, 20 Cigar trade, 117, 118 Citizenship for women, 190, 196 Civil conditions, statistics of, 79 Clarke, Allen, 45 Class differences and class solidarity, 174 interest, 166 selfishness, 186 Cleft, the, 207 Clothing trades, 64 Unions, 116 wages in, 218 Clothworkers, 14 Clubs for working women, 166 Coal-mining, women in, 29 Cole, G. D. H., 174, 208 Collectors, 105 Collet, Clara, 80, 170 Combination among rich clothiers, 17, 18 of Workers, Committee on, 94 Committees of Weavers' Union, 108, 176 Competing Unions, 172, 173 Competition between men and women, 66 for employment, 169 Complexity of weavers' lists, 99 Compositors, 116, 117 Compositors' Union, 117 Comradeship among women, 190 Confectioners' Union, 130 Confectionery works, 67 Constructive measures, _section_, 260 Consumers, women as, 208, 263 Consumers' co-operation, 208 Co-operation with bourgeois movement to be avoided, 163 Co-operative Guild, Women's, 208 Copper works, 29 Cop-winding, 107 Core-making, 64, 146 Corporate action, 175 women untrained for, 165 Cotton, bad, 101, 114 _Cotton Factory Times_, 145 _n._ Cotton trade, 31 _et seq._, _section_, 240, 268-82 Cotton weavers, _section_, 96, 168, 173 male, 60 Cotton-weaving, 58 Courtney, Janet, 263 _n._ Coventry, 64 ribbon trade, 41 Cracker factory, strike in, 148 Cradley, 133-4, 136 Cradley Heath chain-makers, 131 Craft Unions, 149, 158, 207-8 Cunningham, W., D.D., 38 _Curse of the Factory System_, 47 Cycle industry, 64 Darwen and Ramsbottom, 96 Death-rates, 77 of male infants, 257 Deaths of women in mine explosions, 29 Decay of hand-spinning, _section_, 39 Decline of domestic manufacture, 35 Decrease of employment in wartime, statistics of, 241, 266 Deductions, 292 Deficiencies, educational, 169 Defoe, Daniel, 24 Delays in labour legislation, causes of, 186 Deloney, 6 Dependents on women-workers, 145-6, 233-4 Derby, 27, 95 Derbyshire, 29, 97 _Detroit Free Press_, 145 Development of capitalistic industry, _section_, 17 Development of women's employment, 61 Devon, 51 Devotion and self-sacrifice of women, 165 Difficulties in organising women, 115, 139, 151, 154, 164, 169 _Digby Mysteries_, 6 Dismissal without notice, 125 Disproportion of women, 77 Distaff, the, Chap. I., _section_ Textiles, 5 Divergent views on factory system, 45 Division among the weavers, 97 Dock and General Workers' Union, 126 Dock Strike, 128 Doherty, 55 Domestic workers, statistics of, 84, 86 little organisation among, 168 Dorset, 51 Dover, New Hampshire, strikes at, 141 Drawers, 126 Dressmakers, little organisation among, 168 Dressmaking, 64, 65, 87, 118 factory, _d.-m._, 72, 220 Drudgery a survival, 203-4 Dundee, 115 Dunlop, Jocelyn, 15, 16 Dust-extractor, 59 Dust in rope-works, 129 Early civilisation, 1-3 Early factories, conditions in, 50, 52, 181 Early manufactures, characteristics of, 47 Earning power of women, 71-2 Earnings and Hours Enquiry, 214 Earnings in 1770, 33 of women, Chap. VI. insufficient for health, 229 East End workers, 128 East Lancashire Amalgamated Society, 96 East London, 130 East Meon, Church of, 6 Economic Independence, 80 Economic Section of British Association, 64, 253 _n._ Economic self-dependence, 81 Eden, Sir F., 39 Edmonton, ammunition workers at, 130-31 Education by Trade Unions, 159 Educational deficiencies, 169 Edward VI., 21 Effects, moral, of Trade Unions among women, 153 Effects of the War on the employment of women, Chap. VII. Egotistic refinement, 198 Eight-hour Leagues, 143 Elements of Statistics, 228 Elizabeth, 19 Employers oppose Unionism, 151 Engineering, 64 Enlightenment of women, 194 Ephemeral character of Women's Unions, 150 Equal chance, an, 145 Equal pay for equal work, 144, 152, 172, 255 Equal rates of pay for women, 93 Equality of opportunity, 196 Erdmann, Dr., 167 Essex, 25 _n._ Exclusion of women, _section_, 189 from local governing bodies, 198 Exeter, Justices of, 20 Expansion of trade, 18 Experience in sorting wool, 21 Fachverein der Mäntelnäherinnen, 155 Factory, the, _section_, 43 Factory Act, the first, 185 of 1833, 45, 181 of 1844, 1847, 1850, 1864, 1867, 1878, 1901, 182 prejudice against the, 120 what it has done, _section_, 181 Factory system, beginning of, 21, 22 disliked, 42 Fall of prices in weaving, 26, 37, 39 Fall River, strike at, 143-4 Family, attraction of the, 83 women working in the, 178 Fatigue, 202 Federation of Trade Unions, 208 American, 145, 146, 152 Felkin, 25 Female Industrial Association, 142 Female Membership of Trade Unions, 177 Feminist movement, 175 Ferrier, Dr., 52 Fielden, John, 45, 47 File cutlery, 64 Fines, unfair, 100-102, 127-8 Finishing goods, 67 Fire-escapes, 287 Five hours' spell, 183 Flax, 10, 11, 242 industry, strike in the, 138 Fly-shuttle, invention of, 33 Folklore ceremonies, 1 Food trades, 63 Frame-work knitting, _section_, 25 Free Unions, German, 156, 160 Freedom of employment, unrestricted, 193 Frigga's Distaff or Rock, 5 Fruit-picking, 65 Fuegians, 2 Future organisation of women, _section_, 206 Garment workers, 150 Gaskell, Mrs., 74 Gaskell, P., 38 _n._, 45, 47, 48, 56, 231 Gas-Workers' and General Labourers' Union, 140, 174 _n._ General Federation of Trade Unions, 140 _Gentlemen's Magazine_, 39 German Statistical Year-Book, 157 Germany, Women's Unions in, _section_, 154 Girls untrained, 16 Girl-workers, 73 Glasgow, 94, 122, 224 spinners, 93 Glossop, 27 Gloucester, 30 Gloucestershire, 18 Gnauck-Kühne, Elizabeth, 157, 164-166, 207 _n._ Goldmark, Josephine, 202 Governing class, 52, 179, 181 Graham, 54 Grand General Union, 93 Grand National Union, 95 Grant, P., 45 Greenwood, Arthur, 189 Greig, Mrs. Billington, 209 Grey or Franciscan Friars, 6 Guest, 32 Guild, Women's Co-operative, 176-177 Habit of association, lack of, 106 Half-pay apprentices, 41 Halifax, 39 Hamilton, A., 20 Hammond, J. L. and B, 180 _n._ Hand-loom Weavers, Committee on, 42 Hand-loom weaver's wife, _section_, 40 Hand-wheels thrown aside, 34 Hargreaves, J., 33, 42 Haslam, J., 191, 192, 193 Hat and cap workers, 150 Healds, 98 Hebden Bridge, 231 Henley, Walter of, 10 Henry VII., accounts of, 27 _Henry VIII._, 19 Hicks, Mrs. Amie, 128, 129, 130 Hicks, Margaretta, 209 Hirsch-Duncker Unions, 161 Holda or Holla, 2 Hollow-ware workers, strike of, 136-138 Home, work in the, 44 Home Workers' Union, 160 Horrocks, 36 Hostility of employers to Unions, 139, 151, 169 Hotel servants and waitresses, 168 Houldsworth, 93 Hours of work, 183-4, 277, 289 Housewife preparing wool, 11, 14-15 position of the, 165 Housing in towns, 50 Huddersfield, 115 Hull, 14, 15 Husbandry, servants in, _section_, 3 Hutchins, B. L., 197 _n._, 207 _n._ Hyde, 93 Ideals of Victorian era, 198-9 Ignorance of domestic work, 51 Importation of silk, 26 Improvements in working conditions, 190, 202 Increase of women in metal trades, 63 Increase of women-workers in Germany, 155 Industrial change, effects of, 42 revolution, Chap. II. Industrial Workers of the World, 148 "Industry in bonds," 49 Inequality of wages, 123 Influence of Unions on conditions, 153 Injury from prolonged standing, 186, 187 Insanitary conditions in confectioners' workrooms, 130 Inspection of factories impossible for women, 197 Inspectors, factory, 181 women appointed as, 182 Instability of status, 152 Insurance Act, 103, 108, 116, 126, 131, 176, 188, 205 Interdenominational Unions, 161 Interests, interlocking of, 173 "Interkonfessionelle" Unions, 164 International Association for Labour Legislation, 125 International Typographical Union, 143 International Workers' Congress, 123 Inventions, 43 Ipswich, 65 Christ's Hospital at, 21 Ireland, 224 Irons on apprentices, 274 Ironworks, a fifteenth-century, 29 Isolation of women, 164-5 Jacquard's loom, 42 Jam-making, 135 James, Clara, 128, 130 James, John, 25 _n._ James, William, 207 Jones, Lloyd, 106 Kaffirs, 2 Kamtchatdals, 2 Kay, 33 Kendal, 39 Kettering, 224 King, Mr., 120 Knights of Labour, 144, 145 Knitting-machine, 25 _Korrespondenzblatt_, 158 Labour, an important factor in production, 136 Labour Commission, 61, 63, 129, 170, 197, 198 Labour League, Women's, 177, 208 Labour legislation, weakness of and delays in, 186 Labour movement, 127 Labourers, Statute of, 4 Lacquering, 63 Lancashire, 61, 74, 96, 97, 102 cotton spinners of, 93 Lapsley, 29 Lassalle, 158 Laundresses, Union of, 122 Laundry Workers' International Union, 147 Law, Alice, 36 Lawrence, Mass., 149 Lead mines, women in, 29 poisoning, 288 Lee, inventor of knitting-machine, 25 Leeds, 23, 39, 116, 224 Leicester, 92, 224 Leland's _Itinerary_, 21 Lenience of Magistrate, 293 Levant Company, 32 Lighting of work-places, 184, 284 Linen and jute, 115, 242 List prices, 99, 100, 114 Liverpool, 173 Locked in factory, 129-30 Lombe, John, 27 London, 126, 242 milliners, 168 Trades Council, 128 London weavers, 13, 14 Women's Trades Council, 123 Loom, the, 5 Low wages of women, consolation for, 57 Lowell, Female Labour Reform Association at, 142 strikes at, 141 Union, 142 Lye, 136, 137 Lytton, Lady Constance, 200 Macarthur, Mary, xv, 131 Macclesfield, 28 MacDonald, J. R., 195 _n._ Machine work, 66 Machinery and skill, 68-9 and women's employment, 69-70 Mackworth, Sir H., 29 Maladjustment and Readjustment, _section_, 245 Male Weavers' Union, 143-4 Malingering, xv, 188 Malmesbury Abbey, 21-2 Manchester, 31, 32, 47, 50, 55, 93, 126, 173, 176, 224 societies, 126-7 spinners, 92 Women's Trade Union Council, 139 Women's War Interests Committee, 256, 296 Mantoux, 23, 41 Manufactures and Commerce, Select Committee on, 54 Markham, Gervase, 14 Marriage, _section_, 78 and organisation, 151 decreasing prospect of, 196, 256 prospect of, its effects on young men and women, 151, 169-70 Married women's work, 89-91 Marx, Karl, 49 Mary, Queen, 21 Match factories, 47 workers, 183 makers' Union, 128 Match-girls' strike, 127-8 Material progress, 51, 265 Maternity benefit, 103, 259 _n._ and child welfare, 258 care of, 206 Matheson, M. C., 195 _n._ Matthews, Miss, 153 Mechanical power, 200-201 progress, 43 Mellor, 33 Men and women, division of work between, 53 numbers of, in cotton spinning, 55 organised together, 166, 168 Metal trades, increase of women's employment in, 63 Metal-cutting, 66 Middle-class women's movement, _section_, 195 _Mines_, an _Account of_, 29 Minimum, principle of the, 237-8 requirements, 227 Monopoly of trade in clothing, 18 Moral atmosphere of factories, 50 effects of Unionism, 153 Mortality, 76, 77 Movement of women's wages, _section_, 229 Mule-spinning, 191-2 Mundella, A. J., 250 _n._ Munitions work, 251-2 National Federation of Women Workers, 131, 133, _section_, 140, 296 _Nature of Woman_, 2 Neath, 29 Needlewomen, 154 Nelson and District Weavers' Association, 101 _n._ New demand for women's labour, _section_, 250 New England cotton mills, 142 New spirit among women, _section_, 199 New Unionism, 127, 149, 174 New York, 141, 142 Nightingale, Florence, 199, 200 Non-textile trades, 28-30 industrial revolution in, _section_, 61 Nordverein der Berliner Arbeiterinnen, 155 Northampton, 224 N.E. Lancashire Amalgamated Society, 96 Norwich, 23, 224 Oakeshott, G., 118 _n._ Oastler, Thomas, 185 Occupational statistics, 81-8 Oldham, 95 and district, 96 Opposition of landowners to Liberals, 46 to factory legislation, 121-3 to women's employment, 42, 43, 93, 94 Oppression by employers, 19 Ordinances of Worcester, 18 Organisation, early efforts at, _section_, 92 in different trades, 171 of German Unions, 157-60 of women, need for, 107, 255 of women, together with men, 172 of young persons, difficulty of, 113 Outlook, the, _section_, 167 Overcrowding in towns, 52 Overstrain, 110 in cotton industry, 59, 281, 287 Overtime, 184, 289 Owen, Robert, 44, 47, 53, 95, 106 Padiham, 96, 113 Paper and stationery, 63 Paper-sorting or overlooking, 67, 168 Paris, 123 Paterson, Emma, 119-22 Pay-stewards, 176 Pearson, Karl, 1, 206 Peel, the elder, 53 Peel's Committee (1816), 41 Pen trade, 63 Percival, Dr. Thomas, 52, 185 Personality in Union officials, 174 Petition against importation of silk, 26, 27 of weavers, 17 Philanthropy, 163, 166 Phosphorus, white, prohibition of, 183 Phossy jaw, 183 Picks, 98 Pictet, 5 Piece rates, 97-102 Piecers to replace spinners, 54 women as, 192 Piers Plowman, 8 Pin manufacture, 30 Pittsburgh, U.S.A., 61 Plague, the, 4 Plated ware trade, 30 Policy, a coherent, 173 Polish women weavers, strike of, 149 Polynesians, 2 Poor Law, its effect on wages, 21 of Elizabeth, 32 Possibilities of modern industry, 204 of State control, _section_, 204 Potential changes of the industrial revolution, _section_, 200 Potteries, 29 Potters, 146 Power sewing-machine, 63 Power-loom, 35 introduction of the, 55 Premature employment, effects of, 62 Preparing material, 65 Present position of the woman worker, _section_, 183 Press-work, 66 Preston, 96 Primitive industries, 2, 3 Printing, 66, 116 Professional women, scope for, 263 _n._ Professions for women, 80 Prohibition to combine, 80 of women's employment, 14 Proportion of women in Unions, 147 Prosperity of spinners, 38 Protective and Provident League, 119-24 Psychological difficulties in organising women, 164 Public spirit, lack of, 170 Queen, the, 247 Radcliffe Society, 96 Radcliffe, William, 33 Rag-cutting, 65 Ramsay, Isle of Man, 93 Reaction in war-time, 264 Reciprocal movement between spinners and weavers, 40 Reed, 97 Reeling, 107 Reforms started by industrial employers, 53 Registrar-General, 75, 76 Relative wages of men and women, 231-6 Replacement of men by women, 55-56, 252, 255 Results the War may have, _section_, 256 Richards, factory inspector, 49 Rights and privileges of women, 105 Ring-room doffers, 113 Ring-spinners, 114 Ring-winders, 111 Ring-winding, 107 Roberts, Lewis, 32 Rock, Maria, 5 Rogers, Thorold, 4, 5 Rope-makers, 129 Sadler, M. T., 185 St. Crispin, Daughters of, 142, 144 San Francisco, 147, 153 Sanitary conditions in non-textile trades, 62 Sanitation in town and country, 50, 51 Schreiner, Olive, 69 Schultze-Gävernitz, 44, 157 Screw manufactories, 62 Seamstresses, 146 Segregation of women from affairs, 109 Sewing women, 143 Shaftesbury, Lord, 185, 186 Shakespeare quoted, 19, 25 _n._ Shann, G., 195 _n._ Sheffield, 64 plated ware trade, 30 Shifting of industrial processes, 44 Shirt-making, 223 Shock of War, _section_, 239 Shop Assistants' Union, 140, 176 Shortage of women's labour, 245 Shorter hours, effects of, 202 movement for, 109-10 Shuttleworth Accounts, 11 Shyness of women, 109 Sick benefit, 119, 131, 188 Sick visitors, 108, 176 Sickness Benefit Claims, Committee on, xv Silk, _section_, 26 Simcox, Edith, 123 Sisterhood, the, 92, 271 _n._ Slater, G., 180 _n._ Small-ware weavers, 92 Snowden, Keighley, 136 _n._ Soap, 63 "Social and Economic History," 36 Social Democratic Party, 156 _Social England_, 29 Social influences, 163, 166, 170 Social strata in the factory, 67 Socialism and women, 163-4 Solidarity between men and women, 196 Sorting clothes in laundries, 65 Southey, 50 "Spear-half," 5 Speeding up, 58-9, 110, 281 Spell of work, 183 "Spindle-half," 5 Spinning, a family occupation, 24 by young women, 9 for the unemployed, 21 jennies, 34, 42 machine invented by Hargreaves, 33 parties, 9 Squire, Miss Rose, 184 Stages in the woman's career, 207 Standard of life in Lancashire, 60, 105, 107, 187 of immigrants, 142 Standing, effects of persistent, 186, 275 Statistics of domestic workers, 84, 86 of German women in Unions, 167 of textile workers, 87 of unemployment in war-time, 241, 266 of wages, Chap. VI. of women in Unions, 177 of women's life and employment, Chap. III. Statutory rights of workers, 186, 204 Stay-making, 65 Steam laundry workers, 147 Steam power, introduction of, 35 Stockport, 36, 108, 113 strike at, 96 Strain of modern industry, _section_, 186 of work, 184, 281 Strike-breakers, 93 Strikes, _see various industries_ in 1911, 135 Struggle of the crafts, 19 Stumpe, 21 Suffolk clothiers, petition of, 18 Surats, 101, 280 Surplus of women, _section_, 75 Survival of previous standards and conditions, _section_, 179 Swabia, 2 Syndicalism, 197 Tailoresses, increase of, 87 Union of, 122 Tailoring, 64, 221 Tailors, Amalgamated Society of, 122 Tapestry, 8 Tayler, Dr. L., 2 Taylor, Cooke, the elder, 48, 49, 52 _n._ Temple, Sir William, 11 Textile work, as adjunct to farming, 24, 33 societies, 126 workers, 150 workers, statistics of, 87 workers, wages of, 216 Textiles, _section_, 5 Theodore, St., 8 Thüringen, 2 _Times_, the, 127, 128 Timidity of social legislation, 185 Timmins, S., 63 Tobacco, 63 workers in, 127 Toynbee Hall, 127 Tracey, Anna, 188 Trade Boards Act, 1909, 20, 116, 126, 131, 132, 138, 183, 224, 226, 245 Trade Union Congress, 119, 120, 122, 123 Traill's _Social England_, 29 Transformation of some womanly trades, 61-2 _Treasure of Traffike_, 32 Truck Act, 184-5, 290 in Germany, 155 Twisters, 126 Typographical Societies, 116 Umbrella Sewers' Union, 142 Underclothing, 65 Underground, women working, 194 Unemployment and short time, 228 Unemployment among women in war-time, 240-43 Unions, women in, Chaps. IV. and IV.A U.S.A., Labour Commission of, 234 Unorganised trades, 102, 126 Unorganised workers, movement among, _section_, 127, 256 Unsuitable work, 194, 236 Unwin, Professor, 14, 18, 19, 22 Upholsterers, 146 Ure, 44, 47 Variety of conditions, 46, 47 Ventilation, 276 Verein zur Vertretung der Interessen der Arbeiterinnen, 155 Victimisation, 96, 97, 105, 139, 169 Wage census, 1906, Chap. VI. Wage contract, 73 Wages in seventeenth century, 20 in miscellaneous trades, 225-6 of women, Chap. VI. raised in low-class industries, 135 Wagner, R., quoted, 31 War, effects of, on employment of women, Chap. VII. War, the, results it may have, _section_, 256 Warden, 7 Warehouse work, 67 Warner, Townsend, 23 Warping, 112 Watch-making, 64 Water-power, 18 Weavers' Amalgamation, 97, 103, 205 Weavers become clothiers, 17 become wage-earners, 17 Weavers' Committees, 104-7, 108 Company, 13 Gild, 13 secretaries, 101-2, 104, 106 Union, 96, 111, 126 Weavers in Scotland, General Association of, 92 of Edinburgh, 14 Weaving as a woman's trade, _section_, 12 Weaving, operation of, 97-8 Webb's _History of Trade Unionism_, 93 _n._ Weft, 98 Wells, H. G., 207 West Riding Fancy Union, 92 What is and what might be, 200 What the Factory Act has done, _section_, 181 Wider views of Union officials, 205 Widows, employment of, 90-91 carry on husbands' business, 17 Wigan, 108 Wilson, Mrs. C. M., 23 _n._ Wiltshire, 21, 51 Winders, 111, 126, 294 _Winter's Tale_, 6 Winterton, 29 Witch, the, 1 Woman wage-earner, _section_, 53, and Chap. VI. "Women and the Trades," 61 Women bakers, carders, brewers, spinners, workers of wool, etc., 13 bookbinders, 123 chain-makers, 134 Women exempt from craft restriction, 12 Women, an important factor in industry, 21 as individual earners, 25 as subordinate helpers, 178 Women Factory Inspectors, xiv, 109, 182, 183, 282-93 appointment of, opposed, 197 reinforcement of, needed, xvi Women in an inferior position, 16 in industrial transition, 19 in the great industry, 203 Women only, Unions of, 118, 162, 171-2 Women weavers displacing men, 13 Women's employment, Central Committee on, 247 Women's movement and the labour movement, 199 Women's Rights Party in Germany, 154 Women's secretariat in German Commission of Trade Unions, 158 Women's Trade Union League, 118, _section_, 119, 175 Women's Trade Union League in America, 153 Women's wages, Chap. VI. Wood, G. H., 229 Wool and worsted, 115 Wool, _section textiles_, 5 Woollen and clothing trades, _section_, 243 Work done by women, three classes of, 65 Work done for wages outside the home, 22, 23 Workers' Educational Association, 74 Workers' Union, 140 Workrooms for unemployed women, 249 Workshop and factory, wages in, compared, 219 _Worsted, History of_, 25 _n._ Wright, Thomas, 7, 9 Wyatt, Paul, 33 Yarn, demand for, 32, 248 York, 23 Yorkshire, 18, 97 women, 115 Young, Arthur, 23, 29 Zimmern, A. E., 265 _n._ THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [1] _I.e._ Cots or cottages. [2] Departmental Committee on Sickness Benefit Claims, Evidence 40446, Bondfield. [3] _Ibid._ 40462, Bondfield. [4] 37 Edw. III. c. 6, quoted in Cunningham's _Growth of Industry and Commerce_, I. 353 _n._ (5th ed.). [5] See a volume of tracts at the British Museum numbered 1851, c. 10. [6] S.P. Dom. Eliz. 1593, vol. 244. Reprinted in _English Economic History_, Bland, Brown and Tanney, p. 336. [7] Cf. a report of a workhouse in 1701 (catalogued as 816. m. 15. 48 in the Brit. Mus. Library), where ten poor women were employed to teach the children to spin. [8] _Tour in East of England_, vol. ii. pp. 75, 81. I am indebted to Mrs. C. M. Wilson for drawing my attention to these passages and for suggesting the remarks immediately following. [9] Defoe in his _Plan of English Commerce_ says that after the great plague in France and the peace in Spain the run for goods was so great in England, and the prices so high that poor women in Essex could earn 1s. or 1s. 6d. a day by spinning, and the farmers could hardly get dairymaids. This was, however, only for a time; demand slackened, and the spinners were reduced to misery. [10] James, _History of Worsted_, p. 289. This pleasant custom may remind us of lines in Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_, i. 4: "The spinsters and the knitters in the sun And the free maids that weave their thread with bones." [11] Philip Gaskell, who was, however, so prejudiced against the factory system that his views must be taken with caution, says that the wives of manufacturers who had risen from poverty to affluence were "an epitome of everything that is odious in manners," their only redeeming point being a profuse hospitality, which however, Grant attributes to "a sense of vain-glory."--_Manufacturing Population_, p. 60. [12] _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, _Modern Times_, p. 654 (ed. 1907). [13] _History of Cotton Manufacture_, p. 446. [14] Factory Inspector's Report dated August 1835, quoted in Fielden's _Curse of the Factory System_, 1836, p. 43. [15] _Country round Manchester_, p. 192. Compare Mrs. Gaskell's descriptions in _Mary Barton_, fifty years later, for a very similar account. [16] _Athenaeum_, August 20 (probably 1842), quoted in W. C. Taylor, _Factories and the Factory System_, pp. 3, 4, London, 1842. [17] L. Braun, _Die Frauenfrage_, p. 209. Cf. E. Gnauck-Kühne, _Die Arbeiterinnenfrage_ 23. [18] _Woman and Labour_, p. 50. [19] Registrar-General's Report for 1912, p. xxxvii. [20] "Prospects of Marriage for Women," by Clara Collet, _Nineteenth Century_, April 1892, reprinted in _Educated Working Women_, P. S. King, 1902. [21] The servant-keeping class often shows a tendency to regard social questions mainly from the point of view of maintaining the supply of domestic servants. [22] See Appendix, p. 270. [23] Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, pp. 104-5. [24] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1838, viii. _qq._ 360, 1341-2. [25] "Select Committee on Manufactures," _Parliamentary Papers_, 1833, vol. vi. p. 323, _q._ 5412-3. [26] _Rules of the Nelson and District Power-Loom Weavers' Association_, 1904, p. 13, "Advice to Members, etc." [27] Report of N.C. Amalgamation, June 1906. [28] Evidence is not unanimous on this point. [29] Report of S.E. Lancashire Provincial Association, Dec. 1912. [30] See _Women in the Printing Trade_ (edited by J. R. MacDonald) for an excellent study of the whole circumstances and conditions of the trade. [31] G. Oakeshott, "Women in the Cigar Trade in London," in the _Economic Journal_, 1900, p. 562. [32] Second Report of the W.T.U.L. [33] In Mr. Keighley Snowden's words, from which this account is taken (_Daily Citizen_, 12, xi. 1912): "If foreign competition at last threatens us, it is in consequence of this heartless folly." [34] Space does not permit us to give a full account of the efforts for co-operative action for social purposes made by working women at this period, or of the interesting study of social conditions made by Leonora Barry, the investigator of women's work under the Knights of Labour. See Report on Women's Unions, Chapter IVA. [35] Quoted in the _Cotton Factory Times_, September 18, 1885. [36] Report of the Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., p. 63. [37] This chapter was written before the outbreak of war. [38] It is a curious reflection on the tardiness of our Government statistical work, that figures for German Trade Unions are here actually accessible for a more recent date than those of English Unions. [Written early in 1914.] [39] A. Erdmann, _Church and Trade Union in Germany_, 1913. [40] Report of Gas-workers' and General Labourers' Association, March 1897. [41] This chapter was written before the outbreak of war. [42] Many worthy folk to this day even show by the use of the phrase "_giving_ employment" that they suppose themselves to be conferring a benefit on persons who work for them, irrespective of wages paid, and it is unlikely that our ancestors were more enlightened on this point than ourselves. [43] G. Slater, _English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields_, Constable, 1907, p. 266. Compare Hammond, J. L. and B, _The Village Labourer_, chap. v. [44] See, _e.g._, the cases mentioned in the Factory Inspectors' Report for 1912, p. 142, and compare the case reported by Miss Vines in the Report for 1913, p. 97. In a Christmas-card factory the women were being employed two days a week from 8 to 8, three days a week from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M., and Saturdays 8 to 4. "The whole staff of workers and foremen looked absolutely worn out." [45] _School Child in Industry_, by A. Greenwood, p. 7. Workers' Educational Association, Manchester, price 1d. [46] See the _Englishwoman_ for June 1914. [47] The work of a "big piecer" is practically identical with that of a spinner, only that responsibility rests with the latter. [48] See Cadbury Matheson and Shann, _Women's Work and Wages_, p. 212; Macdonald, _Women in the Printing Trades_, p. 53. [49] See in Chapter IVA. pp. 162-3. Frau Lily Braun's views on the subject. [50] See an article by the present writer in the _Englishwoman_, April 1911. [51] Northern Counties Amalgamation of Weavers, etc. Report for July 1913. [52] I owe the suggestion of a "cleft" (_Spalte_) in the woman-worker's career to Madame E. Gnauck-Kühne, who developed it in her book, _Die deutsche Frau_. Compare "Statistics of Women's Life and Employment," _Journal of the Statistical Society_, 1909. [53] Earnings and Hours Enquiry: Textile Industries, Cd. 4545, 1909; Clothing Trades, Cd. 4844, 1909. [54] Raised to 3-1/2d. on 19th July 1915. [55] _Elements of Statistics_, 2nd edition, pp. 37, 38, and 39. [56] 1,091,202 out of a total of 4,830,734. [57] _Women's Industrial News_, July 1912, p. 56; compare _The War, Women and Unemployment_, published by the Fabian Society. [58] This chapter was prepared during the first year and the early part of the second year of war. It is necessarily incomplete, as war is still raging; but it is hoped that a brief summary of the position of women-workers in war time, and of the expedients adopted to ease and improve it, may not be without interest. [59] Article by G. H. Carter, _Economic Journal_, March 1915; see also Notes in the _Women's Trades Union League Review_, January 1915. [60] Article by Jas. Haslam, _Englishwoman_, March 1915, and information given privately. [61] See article by C. Black in the _Common Cause_, February 12, 1915. [62] _Westminster Gazette_, October 16, 1914. [63] See a letter by Mr. A. J. Mundella, L.C.C., in the _School Child_ for December 1914. [64] _New Statesman_, November 7, 1914. [65] _Report on Outlets for Labour after the War_, British Association, Section F., Manchester, 1915. [66] See _The National Care of Maternity_, by Margaret Bondfield, published by the Women's Co-operative Guild. The proposals include the administration of Maternity Benefit by the Public Health authorities in lieu of the approved societies, the raising of maternity benefit to £5, and other changes. [67] B. Kirkman Gray, _History of Philanthropy_. [68] _Daily News and Leader_, June 24, 1915. It may be remarked here parenthetically, though not strictly germane to the subject, that not only the local authorities, but the Departments, even the War Office itself, might utilise the services of professional women more freely than they do, with great advantage to themselves. Women have among other things a very sharp eye for the detection of fraud and corruption. It was to the initiative and energy of one woman that the greatest improvements in the organisation of the Army Hospital Service in the nineteenth century were due. It is admitted that no change in the administration of the Factory Department has been so fruitful for good as the appointment of women factory inspectors. Why, then, are not professional women called in to aid in the organisation of commissariat, the inspection of clothing stores, the "housekeeping" of the Army, especially in the case of the needs of raw recruits? Incalculable waste, diversified here and there by actual lack of food, is reported from the camps. The help of expert women might here be of enormous value, and not only avoid waste, but ensure the provision of more wholesome food and more comfortable clothing. Some valuable hints on this subject are to be derived from an article by Mrs. Janet Courtney in the _Fortnightly Review_, February 1915, "The War and Women's Employment." [69] _The War and Democracy._ Introduction by A. E. Zimmern, p. 14. London, 1914. [70] It should be observed that the first proprietors of some cotton mills, alarmed by the consequences of obliging their servants to work incessantly, have shut up their mills in the night. [71] A certain manufacturer of worsted threatened a sister of ours, whom he employed, that he would send all his jersey to be spun at the mill; and further insulted her with the pretended superiority of that work. She having more spirit than discretion, stirred up the sisterhood, and they stirred up all the men they could influence (not a few) to go and destroy the mills erected in and near Leicester, and this is the origin of the late riots there. [72] It is, however, important to mention that cotton mills are materially improved of late years in most of these particulars, and that in some mills they exist in a much less degree than others, which shows them not to be essential and inherent. [73] It is a curious circumstance, and one which amply merits attentive consideration, that the fecundity of females employed in manufactories seems to be considerably diminished by their occupation and habits; for not only are their families generally smaller than those of agricultural labourers, but their children are born at more distant intervals. Thus the average interval which elapses between the birth of each child in the former case is two years and one month, as we have found upon minute enquiry, while, in country districts, we believe, it seldom exceeds eighteen months. The causes of these facts we have at present no space to enlarge upon. [74] The extracts are slightly compressed in transcription. [75] The barber knotter is a small appliance worn on the hand to assist the work of winding. BOOKS ON SOCIAL QUESTIONS MATERNITY LETTERS FROM WORKING WOMEN _Collected by the Women's Co-operative Guild_ WITH A PREFACE BY THE RT. HON. HERBERT SAMUEL, M.P. This book is the outcome of an extensive enquiry into the conditions of motherhood among the working-classes. Here working women tell their own stories, and their letters form an impressive indication of the urgency of the problem, especially at the present time, when the preservation of the infant life of the nation is of the utmost importance. _2s. 6d. net_ THE FUTURE OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT BY MRS. H. M. SWANWICK, M.A. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MRS. FAWCETT _2s. 6d. net_ "Mrs. Swanwick's exposition of the claims of women is clear, bright, forcible, well-informed and fairly reasoned. It is more likely to persuade doubters than any other statement that has yet appeared."--Mr. J. A. HOBSON in the _Manchester Guardian_. MARRIED WOMEN'S WORK _Being the Report of an Enquiry undertaken by the Women's Industrial Council_ EDITED BY CLEMENTINA BLACK This volume contains the report of an investigation organized by the Women's Industrial Council, into the work for money of wives and widows. The facts have been collected mainly by means of personal visits, and the various sections have been written by different persons, quite independently. The aggregate result is a picture, unquestionably faithful, of life as led in thousands of working-class homes in this country. ROUND ABOUT A POUND A WEEK BY MRS. PEMBER REEVES _2s. 6d. net_ "If any one wants to know how the poor live to-day, he will find it in Mrs. Pember Reeves' little book. Here there is no sensation, no melodrama, no bitter cry. It is not outcast London that we are shown, but ordinary London, resolutely respectable; not 'the Submerged Tenth,' but somewhere about the half."--_Nation._ LIVELIHOOD AND POVERTY _A Study in the Economic Conditions of Working-Class Households in Northampton, Warrington, Stanley and Reading_ BY A. L. BOWLEY, SC.D., AND A. R. BURNETT-HURST, B.SC. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY R. H. TAWNEY, B.A. _3s. 6d. net_ "Had this book appeared at any other time than in the midst of a great European war one can well imagine the sensation that it would have created, and rightly created. Every newspaper would have had leading articles upon it, and different schools of thought would greedily have seized upon it and used its facts to draw their own particular moral from the conditions of poverty and low wages revealed in such well-known towns as Reading, Warrington and Northampton."--_Westminster Gazette._ THE FEEDING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN BY M. E. BULKLEY _3s. 6d. net_ "The first comprehensive description of one of the most momentous social experiments of modern times."--_Economic Review._ "An admirable statement of the history and present position of the problem."--_New Statesman._ STUDIES IN THE MINIMUM WAGE _MINIMUM RATES IN THE CHAIN-MAKING INDUSTRY_ BY R. H. TAWNEY, B.A. DIRECTOR OF THE "RATAN TATA FOUNDATION," UNIVERSITY OF LONDON _1s. 6d. net_ _MINIMUM RATES IN THE TAILORING INDUSTRY_ BY R. H. TAWNEY, B.A. _3s. 6d. net_ TOYNBEE HALL AND THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT BY DR. WERNER PICHT _2s. 6d. net_ The first scientific account--historical and critical--of the English Settlement Movement, with special reference to the "Mother of Settlements," Toynbee Hall. An attempt is made to explain the special difficulties of the Movement, which are increasingly felt now, after thirty years of existence, and to suggest how they might be overcome. Details of each Settlement in the United Kingdom are given in an appendix. G. BELL & SONS, LTD. YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
44396	----	CHILD LABOR IN CITY STREETS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO CHILD LABOR IN CITY STREETS BY EDWARD N. CLOPPER, PH.D. SECRETARY OF NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE FOR MISSISSIPPI VALLEY New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1913 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1912. Reprinted January, 1913. NORWOOD PRESS J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Transcriber's Notes: Text originally marked up as bold is surrounded by =, text in italics by _, text in different font with ~. All footnotes can be found after the chapter "Conclusion", before the Bibliography. Obvious printer's errors have been remedied, a list of all other changes can be found at the end of the document. PREFACE This volume is devoted to the discussion of a neglected form of child labor. Just why the newsboy, bootblack and peddler should have been ignored in the general movement for child welfare is hard to understand. Perhaps it is due to "the illusion of the near." Street workers have always been far more conspicuous than any other child laborers, and it seems that this very proximity has been their misfortune. If we could have focused our attention upon them as we did upon children in factories, they would have been banished from the streets long ago. But they were too close to us. We could not get a comprehensive view and saw only what we happened to want at the moment--their paltry little stock in trade. Now that we are getting a broader sense of social responsibility, we are beginning to realize how blind and inconsiderate we have been in our treatment of them. The first five chapters of the book review present conditions and discuss causes, the next two deal with effects, and the final ones are concerned with the remedy. The scope has been made as broad as possible. All forms of street work that engage any considerable number of children have been described at length, and opinions and findings of others have been freely quoted. I have attempted to show the bad results of the policy of _laissez-faire_ as applied to this problem. Simply because these little boys and girls have been ministering to its wants, the public has given them scarcely a passing thought. It has been so convenient to have a newspaper or a shoe brush thrust at one, it has not occurred to us that, for the sake of the children, such work would better be done by other means. Although good examples have been set by European cities, we have not introduced any innovations to clear the streets of working children. The free rein at present given to child labor in our city streets is productive of nothing but harmful results, and it is high time that a determined stand was taken for the rights of children so exposed. A few feeble efforts at regulation have been made in some parts of this country, but this is an evil that requires prohibition rather than regulation. There is no valid reason why just as efficient service in streets could not be rendered by adults. Certainly it would be far more suitable and humane to reserve such work for old men and women who need outdoor life and are physically unable to earn their living in other ways. We could buy our newspaper from a crippled adult at a stand just as easily as we get it now from an urchin who shivers on the street corner. It is only a question of habit, and we ought to be glad of the change for the good of all concerned. E. N. C. Cincinnati, 1912. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PROBLEM OF THE STREET-WORKING CHILD--PUBLIC APATHY--RELATION TO OTHER PROBLEMS 1 II. EXTENT TO WHICH CHILDREN ENGAGE IN STREET ACTIVITIES IN AMERICA AND EUROPE 24 III. NEWSPAPER SELLERS 52 IV. BOOTBLACKS, PEDDLERS AND MARKET CHILDREN 83 V. MESSENGERS, ERRAND AND DELIVERY CHILDREN 101 VI. EFFECTS OF STREET WORK UPON CHILDREN 128 VII. RELATION OF STREET WORK TO DELINQUENCY 159 VIII. THE STRUGGLE FOR REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES 189 IX. DEVELOPMENT OF STREET TRADES REGULATION IN EUROPE 214 CONCLUSION 243 BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 APPENDICES 255 INDEX 277 CHILD LABOR IN CITY STREETS CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF THE STREET-WORKING CHILD--PUBLIC APATHY--RELATION TO OTHER PROBLEMS The efforts which have so far been made in the United States to solve the child labor problem have been directed almost exclusively toward improvement of conditions in mines and manufacturing and mercantile establishments. This singling out of one phase of the problem for correction was due to the uneducated state of public opinion which made necessary a long and determined campaign along one line, vividly portraying the wrongs of children in this one form of exploitation, before general interest could be aroused. Within very recent years this campaign has met with signal success, and many states have granted a goodly measure of protection to the children of their working classes as far as the factory, the store and the mine are concerned. The time has now come for attention to be directed toward the premature employment of children in work other than that connected with mining and manufacturing, for there are other phases of this problem which involve large numbers of children and which, up to the present, have received but little thought from students of labor conditions. The three most important of these other phases are the employment of children in agricultural work, in home industries and in street occupations. This volume will deal with the last-named phase--with the economic activities of children in the streets and public places of our cities, their effects and the remedies they demand. The street occupations in which children commonly engage are: newspaper selling, peddling, bootblacking, messenger service, delivery service, running errands and the tending of market stands. The first three are known as street "trades," owing to the popular fallacy that the children who follow them are little "merchants," and are therefore entitled to the dignity of separate classification. Careful usage would confine this term to newsboys, peddlers and bootblacks who work independently of any employer. Many children are employed by other persons to sell newspapers, peddle goods and polish shoes, and such children technically are street traders no more than those who run errands, carry messages or deliver parcels. Consequently the term "street trades" is limited in its application, and by no means embraces all the economic activities of children in our streets and public places. Wisconsin has written into her laws a definition of street trading, declaring that it is "any business or occupation in which any street, alley, court, square or other public place is used for the sale, display or offering for sale of any articles, goods or merchandise."[1] This covers neither bootblacking nor the delivery of newspapers. In Great Britain the expression "street trading" has been officially defined as including: "the hawking of newspapers, matches, flowers, and other articles; playing, singing, or performing for profit; plying for hire in carrying luggage or messages; shoe blacking, or any other like occupations carried on in streets or public places."[2] Street traders and street employees may be classified by occupation as follows:-- STREET TRADERS STREET EMPLOYEES (WORKING FOR THEMSELVES) (WORKING FOR OTHERS) Newspaper sellers Newspaper sellers (on salary) Peddlers (on salary) Peddlers Bootblacks (in stands) Market stand tenders Bootblacks (on street) Messengers Errand children Delivery children This classification is based upon the well-known economic distinction between profits and wages. It is unfortunate that this distinction has been applied to juvenile street workers, for it has operated to the great disadvantage of the "traders." This class has been practically ignored in the general movement for child welfare, on the ground that these little laborers were in business for themselves, and therefore should not be disturbed. Recently the conviction has been dawning upon observant people that, in the case of young children at least, the effects of work on an independent basis, particularly in city streets, are just as bad and perhaps even worse than work under the direction of employers. The mute appeal of the street-working child for protection has at last reached the heart of the welfare movement, and the first feeble efforts in his behalf are now being put forth, regardless of whether he toils for profits or for wages. This alleged distinction between street trading and street employment should be clearly understood, as any movement designed to remedy present conditions must be sufficiently comprehensive to avoid the great mistake of protecting one class and ignoring the other. On the one hand there is said to be an army of little independent "merchants" conducting business affairs of their own, while on the other there is an array of juvenile employees performing the tasks set them by their masters. For purposes of regulation this distinction is hairsplitting, narrow-minded and unjust, as it has been made to defeat in part the beneficent aim of the great campaign for child welfare, but nevertheless it must be reckoned with. Children under fourteen years of age at work in factories and mines are often properly called "slaves," and their plight is regarded with pity coupled with a clarion cry for their emancipation. But tiny workers in the streets are referred to approvingly as "little merchants" and are freely patronized even by the avowed friends of children, who thereby contribute their moral support toward continuing these conditions and maintaining this absurd fiction of our merchant babyhood. As an instance of this remarkable attitude, there was proudly printed in the Pittsburgh _Gazette-Times_ of April 11, 1910, the picture of a four-year-old child who had been a newsboy in an Ohio town since the age of _thirty months_, and this was described as a most worthy achievement! That the term "child labor," whose meaning has so long been popularly restricted to the employment of children in factories, mills, mines and stores, is properly applicable to the activities of children in all kinds of work for profit, is now virtually recognized by a few states which prohibit employment of children under fourteen years of age "in any gainful occupation." But unfortunately the courts have rigidly construed the word "employ" to mean the purchasing of the services of one person by another, hence newsboys, peddlers, bootblacks and others who work on their own account, do not enjoy the protection of such a statute because they are not "employed." Under this interpretation a fatal loophole is afforded through which thousands of boys and girls escape the spirit of the law which seeks to prevent their _labor_ rather than their mere employment. It is for this reason that, in states having otherwise excellent provisions for the conservation of childhood, we see little children freely exploiting themselves on city streets. This situation has been calmly accepted without protest by the general public, for, while the people condemn child labor in factories, they tolerate and even approve of it on the street. They labor under the delusion that merely because a few of our successful business men were newsboys in the past, these little "merchants" of the street are receiving valuable training in business methods and will later develop into leaders in the affairs of men. A glaring example of this attitude was given by a monthly magazine[3] which fondly referred to newsboys as "the enterprising young merchants from whose ranks will be recruited the coming statesmen, soldiers, financiers, merchants and manufacturers of our land." It is extremely unfortunate that this narrow conception has prevailed, as it raises the tremendous obstacle of popular prejudice which must be broken down before these child street workers can receive their share of justice at the hands of the law. The only fair and logical method of approach toward a solution of the child labor problem in all its phases is to take high ground and view the subject broadly in the light of what is for the best interests of children in general. The state recognizes the need of an intelligent citizenship and accordingly provides a system of public schools, requiring the attendance of all children up to the age of fourteen years. In order that nothing shall interfere with the operation of this plan for general education, the state forbids the employment of children of school age. In respect of both these mandates, the state has really assumed the guardianship of the child; it has accepted the principle that the child is the ward of the state and has based its action on this principle. A guardian should be ever mindful of the welfare of his wards, and so, to be consistent, the state should carefully shield its children from all forms of exploitation as well as from other abuses. However, in the matter of the regulation of child labor, a curious anomaly has arisen--no one may employ a child under fourteen years in a _factory_ for even one hour a day without being liable to prosecution for disobeying the law of the state, because such work might interfere with the child's growth and education; all of which is right and indorsed by public opinion, but--merely because a child is working independently of any employer, he is allowed to sell newspapers, peddle chewing gum and black boots for any number of hours, providing he attends school during school hours! Could anything be more inconsistent? To this extent the state, as a guardian, has neglected the welfare of its ward. This lack of consideration for street workers was emphasized in a British government report a number of years ago. Referring to the statutory provisions for preventing overwork by children in factories, workshops and mines, the report declared: "But the labour of children for wages outside these cases is totally unregulated, although many of them work longer than the factory hours allowed for children of the same age, and are at the same time undergoing compulsory educational training, which makes a considerable demand on their energies. We think this is inconsistent. In the interests of their health and education, it seems only reasonable that remedies which have proved so valuable in the case of factory children should in some form be extended to cover the whole field of child labour."[4] To insure a good yield, a field requires cultivation as well as planting; to effect a cure, a patient requires nursing as well as prescription. So with the aim of the state--to insure a strong, intelligent citizenship, its children must be cared for, as well as provided with schools. If a patient is not nursed while the physician is absent, his treatment is of little avail; if children are not protected out of school hours, the purpose of the school is defeated. No manufacturer would allow his machinery to run, unwatched, outside regular work hours, for he knows how disastrous would be the consequences; yet this is precisely what the state is doing by ignoring the activities of children in our city streets--the delicate machinery of their minds and bodies is allowed to run wild out of schools hours, and the state seems to think nothing will happen! These thoughts impel us to the conclusion that the state must watch over the child at least until he has reached the age limit for school attendance, and in the matter of labor regulation its care must not be confined to the prevention of one form of exploitation while other forms, equally injurious, are permitted to flourish unchecked. Legislation regulating street trading by children in this country is now in the stage corresponding to that of the English factory acts in the early part of the nineteenth century,--the first meager restrictions are being tried. Several of the street occupations, viz. messenger service, delivery service and errand running, are ordinarily included among those prohibited to children under fourteen years by state child labor laws, because to engage in such work children have to be employed by other persons. These occupations are covered by the provision common to such laws which forbids employment of such children "in the distribution or transmission of merchandise or messages." The street "trades" of newspaper selling, peddling and bootblacking are, as yet, almost untouched by legislation in the United States, for there exist only a very few state laws and city ordinances relative to this matter, and these of the most primitive kind. The public does not yet realize the injustice of permitting young children to engage, uncontrolled, in the various street-trading activities. It was slow to appreciate the dangers involved in the unrestricted employment of children in factories, mills and mines, but when the awakening finally came, the demand for reform was insistent. This gradual development of a sentiment favoring regulation characterizes also the problem of street employment; the present stage is that of calm indifference, ruffled only by occasional misgivings. Even this is an encouraging sign, inasmuch as the factory agitation passed through the same experience, and emerged triumphant, crystallized in statute form. It is hard to understand how the public conscience can reconcile itself to the chasm between the age limit of fourteen years for messenger service and freedom from all restraint in newspaper selling--both essentially street occupations. Child labor laws are framed in accordance with public sentiment, hence the people by legislative omission practically indorse street trading by little children while condemning their employment in other kinds of work. Thus the state virtually assumes the untenable position that it is right to allow a child of tender years to labor in the streets as a newsboy without any oversight or care whatever, and that it is wrong for him to work in the same field as a messenger, or an errand boy, or a delivery boy, although such occupations are subject to some degree of supervision by older persons. In other words, it is held that little children are capable of self-control in some street occupations, but not able to withstand the dangers of other similar street work, even under the control of adults! After having described the conditions prevailing in Philadelphia among newsboys, Mr. Scott Nearing says: "There are many causes leading up to this condition. Beneath all others lies the fundamental one--the lack of public sentiment in favor of protecting these children. Closely allied to this is another almost equally strong--the lack of public knowledge of the true state of affairs."[5] The Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit pointed out the fact that street trades are quite untouched by child labor legislation in the city and also in the state, declaring that in Illinois a boy or girl too young to be permitted to do any other work may haunt the newspaper offices, the five-cent shows, the theaters and saloons, selling chewing gum and newspapers at all hours of the night.[6] Among the arguments advanced in support of the unsuccessful effort to secure legislation on street trading in Illinois in 1911 was the following: "Each boy or girl street trader is a merchant in his or her own right, and therefore before the law is not considered a wage earner, although there is merely a fine-spun distinction between the child who secures _wages_ as the result of his work and one who obtains his reward in the form of _profits_. The effect on the child of work performed under unsuitable conditions, at unsuitable hours and demanding the exercise of his faculties in unchildish ways, is in no wise determined by the form in which his earnings are calculated. That the results of street trading are wholly bad in the case of both boys and girls is universally recognized."[7] Miss Jane Addams has deplored this situation in a public statement: "A newsboy is a merchant and does not come within the child labor regulations of Illinois. The city of Chicago is a little careless, if not recreant, toward the children who are not reached by the operation of the state law."[8] Even in the few localities where regulation of street trading has been attempted, the delusion that there is some essential difference between child labor in factories and child labor in streets persists in the legislation itself. The latter form of exploitation is assumed to merit a wider latitude for its activity, hence it is hedged about by much less stringent rules. Attention is invited to this inconsistency by the report of a recent investigation in New York City: "We have in New York 4148 children between 14 and 16 years employed in factories with their daily hours of labor limited from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., while in mercantile establishments there are 1645 more of similar age limit, none of whom can work before 8 in the morning or after 7 in the evening. But on the streets of New York City we have approximately 4500 boys licensed (to say nothing of the little fellows too young to be licensed) to sell newspapers. That means 4500 legalized to work at this particular trade from 6 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock in the evening (save during the school year, when they are supposed to attend school from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M.) any day and every day, seven days to the week if they so desire to do."[9] _Broader Aspects of the Problem_ Let us consider the matter from another point of view and discuss the opportunities for constructive work rather than confine our attention to the need of the merely negative remedy of restrictive legislation. The street is painted as a black monster by some social workers, who can discern nothing but evil in it. Nevertheless the street is closely woven into the life of every city dweller, for his contact with it is daily and continuous. If it is all evil, it ought to be abolished; as this is impossible, we must study it to see what it really is and what needs to be done with it. It is the medium by which people are brought into closer touch with one another, where they meet and converse, where they pass in transit, where they rub elbows with all the elements making up their little world, where they absorb the principles of democracy,--for the street is a great leveler. Dr. Delos F. Wilcox, in speaking to the subject "What is Philadelphia Doing to Protect Her Citizens in the Street?" recently said: "The street is the symbol of democracy, of equal opportunity, the channel of the common life, the thing that makes the city.... I fancy that the civic renaissance which must surely come, ... will never get very far until we have awakened to a realization of the dignity of the street--the common street where the city's children play, through which the milk wagon drives, where the young men are educated, along which the currents of the city's life flow unceasingly."[10] An English writer has expressed a similar thought: "We have spoken of the street as a dangerous environment from which we would gladly rescue the children if we could, and so it undoubtedly is in so far as it supplants the influence of the home, tends to nullify that of the school and lets the boys and girls run wild just when they most need to be tamed.... It is, in fact, so strange a mixture of good and evil, so complex an influence in the growth of boy and girl, of youth and man, among our great city population, that it is necessary to attempt to analyze it a little more exactly. It is for the majority the medium in which the social conscience is formed, and through which it makes its power felt. In it the all-powerful agents of progress, example, imitation, the spread of ideas and the discussion of good and evil are incessantly at work."[11] It is only natural that such a general agency for communication should have been abused. Its popularity alone would inevitably lead to such a result, with no restrictions imposed upon street intercourse. The very popularity of the games of billiards, pool and cards and of dancing led to their abuse and consequent disrepute in the eyes of many persons who were blinded to their intrinsic worth as diversions, by the abuses to which they were subjected. The marked success attending the proper use of all these amusements in social settlements and parish houses stimulates the imagination as to what might be accomplished with the street if its abuses also were eliminated. It is of course absurd to pass judgment summarily upon the street, for the street can exert no influence of itself; the evil issues from its abuse by those who frequent it, and it is this abuse that should be suppressed. This immediately raises the question as to what constitutes this abuse. We must bear in mind that the real purpose of the street is to serve as a means of communication, a passageway for the transit of passengers and commerce. It was never intended for a playground, nor a field for child labor, nor a resort for idlers, nor a depository for garbage, nor a place for beggars to mulct the public. These fungous growths from civic neglect ought to be cut away. "A place for everything and everything in its place" would be an efficacious even if old-fashioned remedy: playgrounds for the children, workshops for the idlers, reduction plants for the garbage and asylums for the beggars. With these reforms effected and carefully maintained, the street would soon become much more wholesome and attractive. These considerations have been advanced to indicate the intimate relation which exists between the problem of the child street worker and many other problems with which social workers are now struggling. Child labor in city streets must be abolished, but at the same time coöperation with other movements is necessary before a satisfactory solution of the problem can be assured. For example, it would be a short-sighted policy to prohibit young children from selling goods in home market stands without reporting to the housing authorities cases in which large families live in one or two filthy rooms, displaying and selling their wares in the doorway and from the window. Our Italian citizens are not committing race suicide, but in spite of their numerous progeny they crowd together in extremely limited space, combining their home life with the customary business of selling fruit. Their young children assist in tending the stands on market days and nights or sit on the sidewalk selling baskets to passers-by; at closing time their goods are often stored in the same room that serves for sleeping quarters, cots being brought out from some dark hiding place. In such circumstances the mere prevention of child labor is not sufficient--the housing conditions also should be remedied so as to give the children a more suitable place in which to play, study and sleep, a better home in which to use their leisure. Again, a movement to prohibit street work by children should give impetus to that which seeks to make the public school a social center, and especially to that for public vacation schools. Many of the homes of city children very largely lack the element of attractiveness which is so essential in holding children under the influence of their parents, and this want must be filled as far as possible by making the school an instrument not merely for instruction, but also for the entertainment and socializing of the entire neighborhood. Again, the regulating of street trading should be undertaken jointly with the movement to supply adequate playground facilities. Playgrounds are not a municipal luxury, but a necessary. Children must have some suitable place for recreation. It is not a function of the street to furnish the space for play, and as children cannot and should not be kept at home all the time, it follows that ground must be set apart for the purpose. On these points a British report says: "We have no doubt that insanitary homes and immoral surroundings, with the want of any open spaces where the children could enjoy healthy exercise and recreation, are strong factors in determining towards evil courses in the cases of the children of the poor."[12] The need for more playgrounds in Chicago was partially supplied by having one block in a congested district closed to traffic during August, 1911, so that children could play there without risking their lives, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening. In providing this emergency playground, Chicago has set an example that will undoubtedly be imitated by other cities. In this way the abolition of child labor in city streets would result in benefit not only to the children, but to the entire community as well. It would promote a general civic awakening that would make each town and city a better place to live in, a better home for our citizens of the future. CHAPTER II EXTENT TO WHICH CHILDREN ENGAGE IN STREET ACTIVITIES IN AMERICA AND EUROPE There are no reliable figures either official or unofficial showing the number of children engaged in street activities in any city of the United States or in the country at large. The figures given by the United States Census of 1900 are so inadequate that they can hardly mislead any one endowed with ordinary powers of observation. It solemnly declares that in that year there was a grand total of 6904 newspaper carriers and newsboys, both adults and children, in the entire United States, of whom 69 were females.[13] In all probability there was a greater number at that time in some of our larger cities alone. In the group called "other persons in trade and transportation" only 3557 children ten to fifteen years of age are reported, although this group embraces nine specified occupations, of which that of the newsboy is only one. Besides these, many other occupations (in which 63 per cent of the total number of persons reported are engaged) are not specified.[14] Consequently the number of newsboys ten to fifteen years old reported by the enumerators for the entire country must have been ridiculously small. Again, the total number of bootblacks ten years of age and upwards in the country was reported as 8230, they being included in the group called "other domestic and personal service." Only 2953 children ten to fifteen years of age were reported in this group, which includes five specified occupations, of which that of the bootblacks is only one, and many others (in which 67 per cent of the total number of persons reported are engaged) which are not specified.[15] The inadequacy of these figures to convey any idea whatsoever as to the extent of child labor in street occupations in this country is painfully apparent; they are quoted here merely to show the poverty of statistics on this subject. Their inaccuracy is practically conceded by the report itself in the following words: "The limitations connected with the taking of a great national census preclude proper care upon the question of child employment. There is great uncertainty as to the accuracy of a mass of information of this character taken by enumerators and special agents, who either do not appreciate the importance of the investigation or find it impracticable to devote the time to the inquiry necessary to secure good results."[16] There is reason to hope for more reliable data from the 1910 census; but unfortunately the figures will probably not be available until 1913. The enumerators employed by the Federal government for the Census of 1910, were instructed to make an entry in the occupation column of the population schedule for every person enumerated, giving the exact occupation if employed, writing the word "none" if unemployed, or the words "own income" if living upon an independent income. It was stated positively that the occupation followed by a child of any age was just as important for census purposes as the occupation followed by a man, and that it should never be taken for granted without inquiry that a child had no occupation.[17] However, upon inquiry by enumerators at the time of the census taking as to the occupation of children, many parents undoubtedly replied in the negative, even though their children may have been devoting several hours daily outside of school to street work, under the impression that this was not an occupation. Consequently it is safe to assume that the figures for street-working children in the United States according to the Census of 1910 when published will be under the true number. Nevertheless, they can hardly fail to reflect conditions far better than did the figures for 1900. _Chicago_ It is only from the reports of occasional and very limited local investigations that material as to the actual state of affairs can be obtained. Social workers of Chicago had a bill introduced into the Illinois legislature at its session of 1911, providing that boys under ten years and girls under sixteen years should be prohibited from selling anything in city streets, and some material was gathered to be used in support of this measure. In connection with what has already been said in Chapter I, it is interesting to note that although the provisions of this bill were very mild, and strong efforts were put forth by social workers to secure its passage, it was not allowed to become a law largely because of the absence of public opinion and partly because of the opposition by newspaper publishers and others who were afraid that their interests might suffer through the granting of protection to such little children. In one of the schools of Chicago, pupils were found to be trading in the streets in addition to attending school in the following percentages:-- 65 per cent of 5th grade children 35 per cent of 4th grade children 15 per cent of 2d grade children 12 per cent of 1st grade children (Figures for 3d grade were not given.) All of these children were attending school twenty-five hours a week, and many cases of excessive work out of school hours were found. Some allowance should be made for possible exaggeration on the part of these children, but nevertheless it is certain that many of them were working to an injurious extent. The hours given were as follows:-- 1 boy over 50 hours 4 boys over 40 hours 5 boys over 35 hours 7 boys over 30 hours 18 boys over 20 hours Their average earnings per week were found to be as follows:[18]-- 5th grade children $1.18 4th grade children .85 3d grade children .60 2d grade children .43 1st grade children .36 In referring to the weekly income of the children from this source, the Handbook of the Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit declared that it was "a pitiable sum to compensate for the physical weariness and moral risk attending street trades in a large city. School reports show that street trades, when carried on by young children, lead to truancy, low vitality, dullness and the breaking down of parental control. Since the children are on the streets at all hours, careless habits are developed which often lead to moral ruin to both boys and girls."[19] An instance was related wherein the teacher of a fifth grade in a Chicago school asked those of her pupils who worked for money to raise their hands. In the class of 38 pupils, 26 acknowledged that they were little breadwinners! One boy said he worked ten hours a day besides attending school; others had less striking records, spending from twenty to forty hours a week selling chewing gum and newspapers, blacking boots and pursuing the various other street occupations which the Illinois law leaves open to children of all ages.[20] Referring to the economic and home conditions surrounding young children in Chicago and the many phases of danger to their moral well-being, the Vice Commission of that city reported that its agents had found small boys selling newspapers in segregated districts and that one night an investigator had counted twenty newsboys from eleven years upwards so engaged at midnight and after. Besides these newsboys, many little boys and girls were found peddling chewing gum near disorderly saloons where prostitutes were soliciting. Numerous examples of employment in vicious environment are cited, principally of the peddling of newspapers and chewing gum by young children at all hours of the night in the "red light" districts, about saloons and museums of anatomy. Even in the rear rooms of saloons, boys were seen offering their wares and heard to join in obscene conversation with the patrons of these resorts.[21] A folder published in Chicago by the advocates of street-trade regulation calls attention to these conditions, and states, with regard to little newsgirls who sell papers in the vice regions: "It is not surprising if some of them, becoming so familiar with the practices of the district, take up the profession of the neighborhood. The Juvenile Protective Association reports one little girl who entered the life of a professional prostitute at the age of fourteen, after having sold newspapers for years in the district."[22] Another element of this problem, seldom considered, is described also in this folder--the vagrants, who constitute a large and growing class deserving the attention of both city and citizen. "Three classes of persons, who add little to the general circulation, while detracting much from the tone of the business and working a real injury to themselves, are engaged in selling newspapers; these are the small boy, the semi-vagrant boy, and the young girl. The business of selling newspapers in Chicago is so systematized that the 'vagrant' cannot prosper, and yet the 'vagrant' is in our midst. He can be found on State Street at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night with one newspaper under his arm--not attempting to sell it, but using it as a bait to beg from the passers-by. He can be found in the _American_ news alley, sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred strong, sleeping on bags, under boxes, or on the floor of the newspaper restaurant. With this boy, and with all those who are obviously too young to be permitted to engage in street trading, it is our duty to deal if we are to preserve the attitude the American city takes toward the dependent child." NATIONALITIES OF BOSTON CHILD STREET TRADERS ====================================+======+========== PLACE OF BIRTH |NUMBER|PERCENTAGE ------------------------------------+------+---------- { Boston 1,556 | | America { Elsewhere in Mass. 171 | 1860 | 70. { Other states 133 | | Russia | 473 | 17.5 Italy | 161 | 6. Other foreign countries | 162 | 6. Not given | 8 | .5 |----- | ------ | 2664 | 100.0 ====================================+======+========== _Boston_ In Boston, during the year 1910, there were issued to newsboys, peddlers and bootblacks from eleven to thirteen years of age inclusive, 2664 licenses. Of these nearly all (2525) were issued to newsboys, while 114 were issued to bootblacks and 25 to peddlers. Of these license holders 904 were eleven years old, 900 were twelve years old, and 860 were thirteen years old. It is interesting to note that nearly three fourths of these children were born in the United States; the table on page 33 shows their distribution among nationalities. _New York City_ The actual number of children engaged in street activities at any given time is less than the number of licenses issued during the year, inasmuch as not all such children persist in pursuing this work, many of them working only a few weeks, while a few never enter upon the tasks which they have been licensed to perform. This is borne out by the experience of investigators in New York City; the report of a study made there recently says: "We are told by the department of education issuing newsboy badges that 4500 boys have these badges, yet when we secured the addresses of some of these from their application cards ... we found that not 30 per cent of the 100 cases investigated lived at listed addresses. Many such were bogus numbers, open lots, factories, wharves, and in some cases the middle of East River would wash over the house number given. When we did find a correct address, the children so located in six cases out of ten were not following the trade. In some instances they never sold papers, obtaining badges simply because other boys were applying for them, and after receiving a badge tucked it away in a drawer or maybe sold it or gave it away."[23] _Cincinnati_ In Cincinnati from June to December, 1909, 1951 boys from ten to thirteen years of age were licensed to sell newspapers, this number being about 15 per cent of the total number of boys of these ages in the city. Their distribution according to age was as follows:-- 10 years 424 11 years 466 12 years 539 13 years 522 ---- Total 1951 The Cincinnati figures do not include bootblacks, peddlers or market children, as no licenses were issued for such occupations, although they are specifically covered by the municipal ordinance regulating street trades. The above data were available only because there has been some attempt in Boston, New York and Cincinnati to restrict the employment of children in street occupations; as in the great majority of cities and states there is absolutely no regulation of this kind, there are of course no figures to indicate conditions. _The Padrone System_ In almost every city of the United States having a population of more than 10,000, there is to be found the padrone system, which is operated principally in the interests of the bootblacking business which the Greeks control. The peddling of flowers, fruit and vegetables in Chicago and New York is partly subject to the same methods. The labor supply furnished by this system for peddling and bootblacking consists generally of children from twelve to seventeen years of age.[24] The Immigration Commission states in its report that there are several thousand shoe-shining establishments in the United States operated by Greeks who employ boys as bootblacks, and that with few exceptions they are under the padrone system.[25] A few boys under sixteen years of age are employed under the Greek padrone system as flower vendors, and these are found chiefly in New York City. They are hired by florists to sell flowers in the streets and public places--largely old stock that cannot be handled in the shops. These boys usually live in good quarters, are well fed and receive their board and from $50 to $100 a year in wages. When not engaged in peddling, they deliver flowers ordered at the shops. The boys employed by the padrones to peddle candy, fruit and vegetables usually live in basements or in filthy rooms; here they are crowded two, three and sometimes four in one bed, with windows shut tight so as to avoid catching cold. The fruit and vegetables still on hand are stored for the night in these bedrooms and in the kitchen. In each peddling company there are usually three or four wagons and from four to eight boys.[26] _Minor Street Occupations_ There are a few so-called street trades in which a relatively small number of children are engaged which so far have not been mentioned in this volume. These are the leading of blind persons and the accompanying of beggars in general, little children being found valuable for such work because they help to excite the sympathy of passers-by. A few children also are employed as lamplighters to go about towns lighting street lamps in the evening and extinguishing them in the early morning. A class of street boys who have as yet received no name in this country, but in England are called "touts," haunt the neighborhood of railroad depots and lie in wait for passengers with hand baggage, offering to carry it to the train for a small fee. Some children are used as singers or performers upon musical instruments, but this is in reality only another form of begging. The writer found one instance of a young boy who was employed by the public library of one of our large cities to gather up overdue books about the city and to collect the fines imposed for failure to return the same. Very frequently in the course of his work this boy had to enter houses of prostitution, as the inmates are steady patrons of the public library, reading light literature, and are quite negligent in the matter of returning the books within the prescribed time. Immediately upon the librarian's learning of the situation, he was relieved of this duty, and a man was detailed to perform the task. Such special occupations as these do not constitute a real factor in the problem because of the small number of children involved, and hence they are omitted from consideration. _Conditions in Great Britain_ Turning to Europe we find much more information on this subject. In Great Britain the House of Commons in 1898 ordered an inquiry to be made into the extent of child labor among public school pupils, and the education department sent schedules to the 20,022 public elementary schools in England and Wales for the purpose of determining the facts. A little more than half of the schools returned the schedules blank, stating that no children were employed; this introduced a large element of error into the return, as many of the schoolmasters misunderstood the meaning of the schedules, and consequently quite a number of children who should have been included were omitted from the total. The 9433 schedules which were filled and returned showed that 144,026 children (about three fourths boys and one fourth girls) were in attendance full time at the public elementary schools of England and Wales and known to be employed for profit outside of school hours. The ages of these children reported as employed were as follows:[27]-- Under 7 years 131 7 years 1,120 8 years 4,211 9 years 11,027 10 years 22,131 11 years 36,775 12 years 47,471 13 years 18,556 14 and over 1,787 Not given 817 ------- Total 144,026 The standards or school grades in which these working children were enrolled and the total enrollment for the year ended August 31, 1898, were as follows:[28]-- ==========================+============ | TOTAL WORKING CHILDREN | ENROLLMENT --------------------------+----------- No Standard 329 | 1st standard 3,890 | 2,875,088 2d standard 11,686 | 723,582 3d standard 24,624 | 679,096 4th standard 36,907 | 590,850 5th standard 37,315 | 421,728 6th standard 21,975 | 212,546 7th standard 6,382 | 66,442 Ex-7 standard 382 | 7,534 Not stated 536 | ------- | --------- Total 144,026 | 5,576,866 ==========================+============ The occupations followed by these children were divided into three main groups, and each of these groups was further divided into three classes. These divisions and the number of children in each were as follows:[29]-- =======================+=======================+========================= | | DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT, PIECEWORK, CHIEFLY | TIME-WORK, CHIEFLY | GIRLS ONLY, WITH ONE BOYS | BOYS | OR TWO EXCEPTIONS -----------------------+-----------------------+------------------------- Selling | In shops or | Minding babies 11,585 newspapers 15,182 | running | | errands for | Other housework, Hawking goods 2,435 | shopkeepers 76,173 | including | | laundry work, Sports, taking | Agricultural | etc. 9,254 dinners, | occupations 6,115 | knocking-up, | | Needlework and etc. 8,627 | Boot and knife | like occupations 4,019 | cleaning, etc. | | (house boys) 10,636 | =======================+=======================+========================= The return revealed a surprising variety of occupations followed by these children--about 200 different kinds in all. HOURS PER WEEK NUMBER OF CHILDREN Under 10 39,355 10-20 60,268 21-30 27,008 31-40 9,778 41-50 2,390 51-60 576 61-70 142 71-80 59 Over 81 16 Not stated 4,434 ------- Total 144,026 The number of hours per week devoted by these children to the various employments will be found in the above table; it should be remembered that these hours were given to work in addition to the time spent at school.[30] It was recognized that the figures given by this parliamentary return did not represent the real situation, but nevertheless its revelations were sufficiently startling to show the need of further investigation. Accordingly in 1901 there was appointed an interdepartmental committee which after careful study reported that the figures in the parliamentary return were well within the actual numbers, but that the facts it contained were substantially correct.[31] This committee estimated the total number of children who were both in attendance at school and in paid employments in England and Wales at 300,000;[32] it declared that cases of excessive employment were "sufficiently numerous to leave no doubt that a substantial number of children are being worked to an injurious extent."[33] Referring to the amount of time devoted by the children to gainful employment outside of school, the committee reported, "On a review of the evidence we consider it is proved that in England and Wales a substantial number of children, amounting probably to 50,000, are being worked more than twenty hours a week in addition to twenty-seven and one-half hours at school, that a considerable proportion of this number are being worked to thirty or forty and some even to fifty hours a week, and that the effect of this work is in many cases detrimental to their health, their morals and their education, besides being often so unremitting as to deprive them of all reasonable opportunity for recreation. For an evil so serious, existing on so large a scale, we think that some remedy ought to be found."[34] The committee estimated the total number of children selling newspapers and in street hawking at 25,000.[35] With reference to conditions in Edinburgh, an English writer says, "Of the 1406 children employed out of school hours in Edinburgh, 307 are ten years of age or under. Four of them are six years old, and eleven are seven years of age. We hear of boys working seventeen hours (from 7 A.M. to 12 P.M.) on Saturday. For children to work twelve, thirteen and fourteen hours on Saturday is quite common. The average wage seems to be three farthings an hour, but one hears of children who are paid one shilling and sixpence for thirty-eight hours of toil."[36] In New South Wales boys are permitted to trade on the streets at the age of ten years, and up to fourteen years may engage in such work between the hours of 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. except while the schools are in session; after they are fourteen years old they may trade between 6 A.M. and 10 P.M. Such children are licensed, and during the six months ending March 31, 1910, 714 licenses were issued, 72 per cent of them being to children under fourteen years of age; 92 per cent of these children were engaged in hawking newspapers, the others being scattered through such occupations as peddling flowers, fruit and vegetables, fish, fancy goods, matches, bottles, pies and milk.[37] _Conditions in Germany_ In December, 1897, the German Imperial Chancellor, referring to the incomplete census returns as to child labor, requested the governments to furnish him with information as to the total number of children under fourteen employed in labor other than factory labor, agricultural employment and domestic service, and the kinds of work done. In this circular he said: "But, above all, where the kind of occupation is unsuitable for children, where the work continues too long, where it takes place at unseasonable times and in unsuitable places, child labor gives rise to serious consideration; in such cases it is not only dangerous to the health and morality of the children, but school discipline is impaired and compulsory education becomes illusory. For children cannot possibly give the necessary attention to their lessons when they are tired out and when they have been working hard in unhealthful rooms until late at night. I need only instance employment in skittle alleys late in the evening, in the delivery of newspapers in the early morning and the employment of children in many branches of home industry. The most recent researches undertaken in different localities show that the employment of children in labor demands earnest attention in the interests of the rising generation."[38] Inquiries extending over almost the whole German Empire were accordingly made by the different states from January to April, 1898. It was found that 544,283 children under fourteen years were employed in labor other than factory labor, agricultural employment and domestic service. This was 6.53 per cent of the total number of children of school age (8,334,919). With regard to the effects of such work, this German report says: "As the children who carry around small wares, sell flowers, etc., go from one inn to another, they are exposed to evil influences, and are liable to contract at an early age, bad habits of smoking, lying, drinking.... The delivery of newspapers is a particularly great strain on the children, as it occupies them both before and after school hours." Seven divisions of these children were made according to occupation, four of them relating to street work. Under the heading _Handel_ were included children in many kinds of work, among them hawking fruit, milk, bread, brooms, flowers, newspapers, etc.; under _Austragedienste_ were included only the delivery and carrying around of bread, milk, vegetables, beer, papers, books, advertisements, circulars, bills, coals, wood, boots and shoes, washing, clothes, etc.; under _Gewöhnliche Laufdienste_ were included only errand boys and messengers; under _Sonstige gewerbliche Thätigkeit_ were included, among other occupations, blacking boots, leading the blind, street singers and players, etc. ========================+========+========+=========+=========+============ | | | SEX NOT | | | BOYS | GIRLS | STATED | TOTAL | PERCENTAGE ------------------------+--------+--------+---------+---------+------------ Handel (retail trade) | 7,507 | 4,540 | 5,576 | 17,623 | 3.31 | | | | | Austragedienste | | | | | (delivery service) | 67,188 | 36,966 | 31,676 | 135,830 | 25.52 | | | | | Gewöhnliche Laufdienste | | | | | (general messenger | | | | | service) | 23,321 | 2,134 | 10,454 | 35,909 | 6.75 | | | | | Sonstige gewerbliche | | | | | Thätigkeit (other forms | | | | | of labor) | 6,281 | 2,387 | 3,119 | 11,787 | 2.21 ========================+========+========+=========+=========+============ _Conditions in Austria_ The Austrian Ministry of Commerce began an investigation of actual conditions in Austria late in 1907 in response to the agitation for a new law that would regulate child labor not only in factories, but also in home industries, in commerce, and even in agriculture. In his Report on Child Labor Legislation in Europe, Mr. C. W. A. Veditz refers to the findings of this investigation in a number of the provinces. In Bohemia, of 676 children in trade and transportation, but still attending school, 169 were engaged in peddling and huckstering; in delivering goods and going errands 1554 children were employed, being generally hired to deliver bread, milk, meats, groceries, newspapers, books, telegrams, circulars--in fact, all manner of goods.[39] In the province of Upper Austria children are paid from two to seven crowns (40.6 cents to $1.42) a month for delivering newspapers daily, while in the duchy of Salzburg the pay varies from twenty to fifty hellers (4 to 10 cents) a day for delivering bread or newspapers. In the province of Lower Austria, "referring now to the other main occupations in which school children are employed outside of industry proper, the report [of the investigation] shows that ... those working in trade and transportation usually help wait on customers in their parents' stores; a number, however, sell flowers, shoe laces, etc., or huckster bread, butter and eggs, or carry passengers' baggage to and from railway stations. Most of those put down as delivering goods are engaged in delivering bread, milk, newspapers and washing."[40] Children who sell flowers, bread or cigars in Vienna earn one to two crowns (20.3 to 40.6 cents) a day during the week, and on Sundays as much as three crowns (60.9) cents. "The children employed [in Lower Austria] to deliver goods and run errands are also usually employed by non-relatives and receive wages in money. Those who deliver milk, and who work one half to one hour a day, generally receive twenty hellers to one crown (4 to 20.3 cents) weekly; in exceptional cases two crowns (40.6 cents), and in some instances only food and old clothes. For delivering bread and pastry, wages are reported as thirty hellers (6 cents) a week and some meals, or fifty hellers to two crowns (10 to 40.6 cents) a week without meals; in exceptional cases, 10 per cent of the receipts. For delivering papers, which requires one to two hours a day, children receive two to ten crowns (40.6 cents to $2.03) a month. For delivering of washing, thirty hellers (6 cents) for a two-hours' trip, or sixty hellers to two crowns (12 to 40.6 cents) a week. Children who carry dinner to mill laborers, requiring one half to one hour daily, get eighty hellers to five crowns (16 cents to $1.02) a month. Messengers for stores, hotels, etc., get a tip of two to ten hellers (.4 to 2 cents) per errand, or, if employed regularly, twenty hellers to one crown (4 to 20.3 cents) a week."[41] "The delivery of milk, pastry, newspapers, etc., in which many children are employed in Vienna and other large cities, does not cause frequent absences, but is responsible for tardy arrival at school in the morning and for the fatigue that reduces attention and prevents mental alertness."[42] CHAPTER III NEWSPAPER SELLERS By far the majority of the children in street occupations are engaged in the sale or delivery of newspapers. The newsboy predominates to such an extent that he is taken as a matter of course. As Mrs. Florence Kelley says, "For more than one generation, it has been almost invariably assumed that there must be little newsboys." Ever since he became an institution of our city life, the public has been pleased to regard him admiringly as an energetic salesman of penetrating mind and keen sense of humor. There seems to be a tacit indorsement of the newsboy as such. Ordinarily there are five classes of newsboys to be found in all large cities--(1) the corner boys, (2) those who sell for corner boys on salary, (3) others who sell for them on commission, (4) those who sell for themselves, and (5) those with delivery routes. The bulk of the business is handled by the first three of these classes, which are always associated together and found on the busy corners of the downtown sections of all our cities. The choice localities for the sale of newspapers, namely, the corners in the downtown sections where thousands of pedestrians are daily passing, come under the control of individuals by virtue of long tenure or by purchase, and their title to these corners is not disputed largely on account of the support they receive from the circulation managers of the newspapers. In former years the proprietorship of the corner was settled by a fight, but now it undergoes change of ownership by the formal transfer of location, fixtures and goodwill in accordance with the most approved legal practice. In Chicago a system of routes has been established by the newspapers which send wagons out with the different editions published each day to supply the men who control the delivery and sale of newspapers in the various districts. These route men employ boys to deliver for them to regular customers and also to sell on street corners on a commission basis. In Boston, ex-newsboys known as "Canada Points" are employed by the publishers at a fixed salary to distribute the editions by wholesale among the twenty odd places in the city from which the street sellers are supplied. _Ages, Earnings and Character of the Work_ The following individual cases will serve to illustrate the various forms this business takes. One nineteen-year-old boy paid $65 for his corner in Cincinnati about five years ago; he now earns from $4 to $5 a day clear and would not sell the location for many times its cost. He works there from 11 A.M. to 6.30 P.M. on week days, starting an hour earlier on Saturdays, while on Sundays he delivers the morning newspapers over a route to regular customers. Two boys of about twelve years of age work for him, to one of whom he pays 25 cents a day and to the other 30 cents a day; their duties are to hawk the different editions and to dispose of as many copies as possible by hopping the street cars and offering the papers to pedestrians from 3.45 to 6.30 P.M. daily on week days. If they do not hustle and make a large number of sales, they lose their job. A corner in another part of the city is "owned" by a thirteen-year-old boy who earns about 80 cents a day clear for himself in eight hours, and on Saturdays in nine hours. He has two boys working for him on commission, to whom he pays one cent for every four papers sold; they average about 15 cents a day apiece for three hours' work. When questioned, these commission boys admitted that they could make more money if working for themselves, but in that case would have to work until all the copies they had bought were sold, while on the commission plan they did not have to shoulder so much responsibility. Regulations made by the circulation managers of newspapers concerning the return of unsold copies greatly affect the newsboys' business. Naturally these regulations are made with an eye to extending the circulation. Corner boys are allowed to return only one copy out of every ten bought, being reimbursed by the office for its cost. Consequently they urge their newsboy employees and commission workers to put forth every effort to dispose of the supply purchased. The independent sellers are never permitted to return any unsold copies, except in the case of certain energetic boys who can be relied upon to work hard in any event. These are known as "hustlers," and owing to their having won the confidence of the circulation manager they are granted the special privilege of returning at cost all copies they have been unable to sell. In Boston, beginners are often on a commission basis; "in this way they secure the advice and protection of the more experienced while serving their apprenticeship. These _strikers_, as they are called, keep one cent for every four collected; few of them earn more than 25 cents a day, while many of them earn less than 10."[43] An eleven-year-old Jewish boy who has been a newsboy for several years now controls a comparatively quiet corner in Cincinnati, where he nets from 40 to 50 cents a day, working about three hours. This boy's father and mother are both living. Submission to older persons is natural among children, and an interesting instance of tyranny over small boys by adults was found in the case of a newspaper employee who works inside the plant and employs several young boys to sell newspapers on the streets for him. These boys together earn about $1.30 when working about seven hours, but only half of this amount goes into their pockets, the other half being paid to their "employer." In New York City certain busy sections having points of strategic value are under the control of men who employ small boys to do the real work for a mere pittance, usually the price of admission to a moving-picture show. However, under certain circumstances, these little fellows often display a sturdy spirit of independence. An amusing instance is innocently recorded by an old wartime report of a newsboys' home: "It had been decided to give the boys a free dinner on Sundays, on condition that they attend the Sunday School; but last Sunday they desired the Matron to say that they were able and willing to pay for the dinner."[44] Independent newsboys must not stand in the territory controlled by another; they must select some uncontrolled spot, or else run about hither and yon, selling where they can. Under the unwritten law of this business a boy who chances to sell in another's territory must give the corner boy the money and receive a newspaper in exchange; this results the same as if the corner boy himself had made the sale. The earnings of these independent boys range from 15 to 65 cents daily out of school hours, while on Saturdays they make from $1 to $1.50 working from 11 A.M. to 6.30 P.M. An eleven-year-old lad who has been a newsboy for three years, selling on his own account, disposes of most of his copies in saloons located in the middle of a busy square, earning from 50 cents to $1.25 a day even when attending school. His mother and father are both living. Another example of this class is a sixteen-year-old boy who devotes all his time to the trade, his net income averaging about $7.50 per week. His attitude toward regular work is both interesting and significant; he hopes to get a better job, but says that although he has hunted for one, so little is offered for what he can do ($2 to $3 per week) that it would hardly suffice for spending money. Discussing this difference between factory wages and street-trading profits, an English report says: "Working from 11 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M., with intervals for gambling, newsboys over 14 years old can make from 10_s._ to 14_s._ a week if they have an ordinary share of alertness. In a factory or foundry, working from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., a boy earns about 13_s._ a week. The comparison needs no comment. The excitement of their career tends to make them more and more reluctant to work steadily.... Many newsboys protest that they want more permanent work, but they rarely keep it when it is found for them."[45] The life of the streets lacks the discipline involved in steady work and fixed earnings. As an example of the route boy there is a fourteen-year-old lad in Cincinnati who has a list of fifty customers to whom he delivers newspapers regularly, earning in this way 25 cents daily, delivering after school hours. He declares that he finds it much easier to work on a route than to sell on the corners or at random. The morning papers employ a man as circulation manager for the residence districts who controls all the corners in those sections. When a corner becomes vacant, he assigns a youth to it. These older boys are not to sell their corners nor to dispose of them in any way, nor are they allowed to have any one working for them; they must "hop" all the street cars passing their corners and are expected to put forth every effort to accomplish a great number of sales. They get their supply of copies at the branch office at 5 A.M., hurrying then to their corners, where they remain until nearly noon, averaging in this time from $2 to $3 per day clear. Nearly all of the afternoon papers sold in the residence districts are delivered by route boys; after having gone over their routes, some of these boys go to the busier localities and sell the sporting extra during the baseball season until about seven o'clock. _Environment_ Strong emphasis was laid upon the evils of street trading by the New York Child Welfare Exhibit of 1911, the Committee on Work and Wages declaring that "The ordinary newsboy is surrounded by influences that are extremely bad, because (1) of the desultory nature of his work; (2) of the character of street life; and (3) of the lack of discipline or restraint in this work. The occupation is characterized by 'rush hours,' during which the boy will work himself into exhaustion trying to keep pace with his trade, and long hours in which there is little or nothing to do, during which the boy has unlimited opportunities to make such use of the street freedom as he sees fit. During these light hours newsboys congregate in the streets and commit many acts of vandalism. They learn all forms of petty theft and usually are accomplished in most of the vices of the street. In building up their routes, the boys often include places of the most degrading and detrimental character. On the economic side, the loss is due to failure of the occupation to furnish any training for industrial careers."[46] The irregularity of newsboys' meals and the questionable character of their food form one of the worst features of street work and are a real menace to health. Many newsboys are in the habit of eating hurriedly at lunch counters at intervals during the day and night, while some snatch free lunches in saloons. In New York City their diet has been found to consist chiefly of "such hostile ingredients as frankfürters, mince pies, doughnuts, ham sandwiches, cakes and 'sinkers'."[47] The use of stimulants is common, and the demand for them is to be expected because of the nervous strain of the work. Liquor is not consumed to any appreciable extent by street-trading children, but coffee is a favorite beverage. In the largest cities, where "night gangs" are found, from four to six bowls of coffee are usually taken every evening. Tobacco is used in great quantities and in all its forms; many boys even appease their hunger for the time by smoking cigarettes, and the smallest "newsies" are addicted to the habit. Evidence that this is not a recent development among street workers is found in a report made nearly a quarter of a century ago, which, with reference to newsboys, says "many of them soon spend their gains in pool rooms, low places of amusement and for the poisonous cigarette."[48] An English report on the street traders of Manchester says: "Drunkenness is rare among these boys ... they are in many ways attractive; but the closer our acquaintance grows with them the more overwhelming does this propensity to gambling appear. Indeed, it may reasonably be said that the whole career of the street trader is one long game of chance.... They tend to become more and more unwilling to work hard; they are the creatures of accident and lose the power of foresight; they never form habits of thrift; and their word can be taken only by those who have learnt how to interpret it."[49] There are tricks in newspaper selling as well as in other trades, and children are not slow to learn them. A careful observer cannot fail to note that certain newsboys seem always to be without change. Their patrons are generally in a hurry and willingly sacrifice the change from a nickel, even priding themselves on their unselfishness in thus helping to relieve the supposed poverty of the newsboys. As a matter of fact, such an act does real harm, for it arouses the cupidity of boys and leads them to believe that honesty is not the best policy. The temptation for newsboys to develop into "short change artists" is an ever present one, for the bustle of the street creates a most favorable condition for the practice of such frauds. Yet in spite of the many temptations which assail them, numbers of newsboys are scrupulously exact in the matter of making change, even under the most trying circumstances. Another common form of deceit, used to play upon the sympathy of passers-by, is practiced after nightfall by boys of all ages in offering a solitary newspaper for sale and crying in plaintive tone, "Please, mister, buy my last paper?" A kind-hearted person readily falls a victim to this ruse, and as soon as he has passed by, the newsboy draws another copy from his hidden supply and repeats his importuning. Commenting on these features of street trading, Dr. Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner of Labor, has said: "Unless the child is cast in the mold of heroic virtue, the newsboy trade is a training in either knavery or mendicancy. Nowhere else are the wits so sharpened to look for the unfair advantage, nowhere else is the unfortunate lesson so early learned that dishonesty and trickery are more profitable than honesty, and that sympathy coins more pennies than does industry."[50] _Hours_ Work at unseasonable hours is most disastrous in its effects upon growing children, and the newspaper trade is one that engages the labor of boys in our larger cities at all hours of the night. This fact is not generally known. A prominent social worker recently said: "I was astounded to find the other day that my newspaper comes to me in Chicago every morning because two little boys, one twelve and the other thirteen, get it at half-past two at night. These little boys, who go to school, carry papers around so that we get them in the morning at four o'clock all the year around. They are working for a man with whom we contract for our newspapers. I was quite shocked in St. Louis twice this fall (1908) to find a girl five or six years of age selling newspapers near the railroad station in the worst part of town after dark. We hear a great deal of sentimental talk about newsboys' societies doing so much for newsboys, but they do not seem to care anything for work of this kind."[51] In passing it may be remarked that in the city of Toledo there is an active association organized for the benefit of newsboys, which openly encourages street work by boys of from eight to seventeen years. The manager insists that such work affords the means of alleviating the poverty in the families of these boys, but upon inquiry it was found that he had never heard of the provision for the financial relief of such cases of child labor, which is made by the Ohio law, and which had been, at the time, most successfully administered for three years by the Board of Education of his own city. The Chicago newspapers have their Sunday editions distributed on Saturday night, consequently the newsboys are up all night so as to assure prompt service to patrons. In the absence of public opinion in the matter, this abuse flourishes unrestricted, and the children's health is sacrificed to meet the demand for news. Agents of the Chicago Vice Commission reported having seen boys from ten to fifteen years of age selling morning papers at midnight Saturday in the evil districts of the city.[52] The early rising of newsboys to deliver the morning week-day editions also contributes to the breaking down of their health. The old adage is a mockery in their case. There is abundant testimony relative to the evil effects of such untimely work. "Children who go to school and sell papers get up so early in the morning that they are so stupid during the day they cannot do anything. That was clearly demonstrated to me during my experience in teaching school."[53] Another teacher said: "I have had instances in school where children have gone to sleep over their tasks because they got up at two or three o'clock in the morning to put out city lights and to sell papers. In those instances we wanted the parents to take the children away from their work. Where they would not do it, we prosecuted them for contributing to the delinquency of their children."[54] The delivery of newspapers by young boys in the strictly residence sections of cities appears to be unobjectionable, yet even this simple work should be under restriction as to hours, because otherwise the boys would continue to rise at unseemly hours of the night in order to reach the branch offices in time to get the newspapers fresh from the press. In fact, every phase of street work should be under control. Dr. Harold E. Jones, medical inspector of schools to the Essex County Council, has testified that among the most injurious forms of labor performed by boys is the early morning delivery of newspapers and milk.[55] In his Report on Child Labor Legislation in Europe, Mr. C. W. A. Veditz states, "Delivering milk before school in the morning must be condemned, because it fatigues the children so that they become, to say the least, intellectually less receptive."[56] In his article on "The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia,"[57] Mr. Scott Nearing gives a graphic account of conditions in the City of Brotherly Love. Although this description was written some years ago, local social workers find that the same conditions still obtain, as there is neither law nor ordinance to bring about a change. In this city the closing of the theaters at eleven o'clock marks the beginning of Saturday night's work. The last editions of the evening newspapers are offered at this time, often as a cloak for begging. After the theater, the restaurant patrons are available as customers until midnight. Then the morning papers begin to come from the press, and the newsboys abandon their begging and gambling and rush to the offices for their supplies. A load of forty pounds is often carried by the smallest newsboys, hurrying along the streets in the early morning hours. The cream of the business is done at this time, for most of the purchasers are more or less intoxicated and therefore inclined to be generous with tips and indifferent as to change; sometimes a newsboy takes in as much money on Saturday night and Sunday morning as during the entire remainder of the week. In relating his experiences, Mr. Nearing says, "On one night we saw fifteen boys in a group just as the policeman was chasing them out of Chinatown at half-past three Sunday morning; the youngest boy was clearly not over ten and the oldest was barely sixteen." At this hour the officers of the law interfere and quell the revels of the district. The open gratings in sidewalks through which warm air comes from basements, are then sought, and here the boys pass the time dozing until dawn, when they go abroad again to cry the Sunday papers. _Home Conditions--Poverty_ One of the reasons why the public is so indulgent toward the street worker is that it takes for granted that the child is making a manly effort to support a widowed mother and several starving little brothers and sisters. Mrs. Florence Kelley calls this "perverted reasoning" and scores the public which "unhesitatingly places the burden of the decrepit adult's maintenance upon the slender shoulders of the child."[58] Poverty has been made an excuse for child labor from time immemorial by those who profit by the system. Newspapers are not an exception to the rule; the newsboys extend their circulation and incidentally give them free advertising in the streets--hence they see nothing but good in the newsboys' work and fight lustily to defend what they claim to be the mainstay of the widows. That this popular impression and appealing argument are false and without justification has been shown by students of the problem everywhere. The following table gives the family condition of Cincinnati newsboys:-- Both parents dead 12 Father dead 239 Mother dead 69 Both parents living 1432 ---- Total 1752 Through a special inquiry it was found that in only 363 cases out of this total were the earnings of the children really needed. These 1752 children, ten to thirteen years of age, were licensed from July to December, 1909; their distribution as to age was as follows:-- 10 years 303 11 years 348 12 years 564 13 years 537 ---- Total 1752 Upon investigation of the home conditions of several hundred newsboys in New York City it was declared that "in the majority of cases parents are not dependent on the boys' earnings. The poverty plea--that boys must sell papers to help widowed mothers or disabled fathers--is, for the most part, gross exaggeration."[59] Concerning a study of Chicago newsboys, Myron E. Adams says, "A careful investigation of the records of the Charity Organization Society shows that of the 1000 newsboys investigated, the names of but sixteen families are found, and of these ... only four received direct help, such as coal, clothing or food."[60] Mr. Scott Nearing says: "In many cases the boys want to go on the streets in order to have the pocket money which this life affords, and the ignorant or indifferent parents make no objections, but take the street life as a matter of course. Sometimes, though not nearly as often as is generally supposed, there is real need for the selling."[61] The British interdepartmental committee appointed in 1901 to inquire into the employment of school children, denounced the tolerance of street trading on the ground of necessity: "We think that in framing regulations with regard to child labour and school attendance ... the poverty of the child or its parents ought not to be made a test of the right to labour.... We do not think it is needed; we think that all children should have liberty to work as much and in such ways as is good for them and no more."[62] Another argument in favor of street trading advanced by those who are interested in maintaining present conditions, is that it affords a splendid training for a business career because of the competition that rages among the boys. This is doubtless true, as far as it goes, but the great difficulty is that street trading leads nowhere. It is a blind alley that sooner or later leaves its followers helpless against the solid wall of skilled labor's competition. An occupation that fits a boy for _nothing_ and is devoid of _prospects_, is a curse rather than a blessing in this day of specialization. In spite of the division of labor so elaborately realized to-day, a boy or girl who enters any of the regular industries has at least a fighting chance for acquiring a trade. If the child is honest, capable and diligent he will be promoted to a better position in time if misfortune does not overtake him. The trapper boy in a coal mine is in a fair way to become a miner. The lad who works in a machine shop has the opportunity to make a machinist of himself. The girl who begins as a wrapper in a dry goods shop may become a saleswoman, and then possibly a buyer for her department. Yet in most states children may not enter upon such work until they have reached the age of fourteen years, while some states prohibit boys under sixteen years from being employed in mines or in connection with dangerous machinery either in machine shops or elsewhere. Bitter experience has taught us that these restrictions are right and just, and we now have no hesitancy in barring young children from such employment, regardless of the training it affords. Why, then, do we exempt many forms of street work from the operation of the law? Why do we allow little children to work at any age, both night and day, as newsboys, bootblacks and peddlers in the essentially dangerous environment of the street? Such employment offers but a gloomy future--the useless life of the casual worker. There is no better position to which it leads, no chance for the discovery and development of ability, no reward for good service. It seems incredible that we have been so engrossed with throwing safeguards about the children in regular industries that we have altogether neglected the street worker, for the arguments against child labor in factories, mills, mines and retail shops apply with even greater force to the work of children in our city streets. _Better Substitutes_ There is no reason why newsboys should not be replaced as the medium for the sale and delivery of newspapers by old men, cripples, the tuberculous and those otherwise incapacitated for regular work. In London, the _Westminster Gazette_, the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Evening Standard_ and the _Globe_ (all penny papers) are sold in the streets by old men; the _Westminster Gazette_ pays them a wage of 1_s._ for selling eighteen copies and after having disposed of this number they are given a commission of 8_d._ a quire of twenty-six copies, a few men selling from six to eight quires a day. This newspaper has followed this method for many years, and its general manager declares that it is the most satisfactory system that they have been able to evolve. Boys have no sense of responsibility, while old men cling to their posts very faithfully. He admitted that the _Westminster Gazette_ employed some boys as carriers and that the whole subject lay somewhat heavily on his conscience because, "practically speaking, these boys have no future ... a few of them may become cyclists carrying the newspapers ... in a few years their usefulness as cyclists has gone ... then they simply drift away, we don't know where, but we do know that they drift to places like Salvation Army Shelters, etc. How they earn their living is always one of the mysteries of London.... But they have learned nothing from us, nothing that gives them any usefulness for any other occupation.... The great majority become casual labourers dependent entirely on casual work.... It is a life in which very little is gained, although one would suppose that the open air would be of great benefit. But one must remember the insufficient food that these street traders have, and the bad conditions of living and the irregular hours. Many of these boys, of course, are up all hours of the night.... It is quite as bad for a boy in the long run to be engaged as a carrier distributor as for him to sell newspapers in the street. There is no possible argument for the system except that one's competitors do it, and that so long as they do it we must do the same.... We get practically all our men from Salvation Army and Church Army Shelters. There is an abundant supply.... The ordinary man whom we employ is over fifty years of age and runs up to about seventy years.... I think if the police would give us every facility for introducing kiosks it would be a great improvement upon the present system. If boys were prohibited from selling newspapers altogether on the streets, it would automatically send the public to the kiosk; ... the public get into the habit of getting the newspapers from the boys."[63] It should be remembered in connection with the above statements that the _Westminster Gazette_ is a penny paper, and its manager was of opinion that the half-penny papers could not afford to employ men because they depended largely for their circulation upon the persistence of newsboys in thrusting copies upon the attention of people in the streets; he believed that the use of old men would curtail their circulation because men are not so active as boys. On the other hand, news agents protested against the competition of street traders and maintained that they alone were fully able to meet the demands of the public. The departmental committee of 1910 reported: "There can, we think, be little doubt that an active child is an effective agent in promoting the circulation of half-penny papers, and that if the employment of children were forbidden, newspapers would have to rely upon facilities of a more staid and less mobile character. But we see no reason to think that purchasers of newspapers need be put to any inconvenience, since the news agents would be in a position considerably to extend their business, and it might reasonably be expected that the system of employing old men as salesmen would also be developed. It appears to us economically unjustifiable to use children to their own detriment for work which can be done by other means."[64] Referring to the great possibilities for good involved in confining the sale and delivery of newspapers to adults who need outdoor work and are unable to provide for themselves in other ways, the Secretary of the New York Child Labor Committee says: "Where such cities as Paris and Berlin do entirely without newsboys--corner stands taking their places--it would seem that the least that can be done in American cities is to adopt some adequate system of regulation. In this connection, the opportunity presented in newspaper selling to give work to the aged and handicapped--who otherwise would have to be supported by private charity--should not be overlooked."[65] _The Newsboys' Court_ In an effort to control to some extent the tendency of newsboys to become delinquent and to imbue them with a sense of personal responsibility, an interesting experiment in juvenile suffrage and jurisprudence has been undertaken in Boston. During the year 1909, about three hundred newsboys were taken before the juvenile court of that city charged with violation of the local license rules. As the docket of this court was crowded, these newsboy cases were necessarily delayed, and as a result of this situation the boys conceived the idea of establishing a newsboys' court which should have jurisdiction in all cases of failure to observe the rules governing their trade. The following year a petition was presented to the Boston School Committee which was favorably acted upon by that body, and accordingly on the regular election day of that year the newsboys cast their ballots to select three juvenile judges of the court. These three boys, together with two adults appointed by the School Committee, compose the court. Election of these boy judges is held annually, and all licensed newsboys who attend the public schools are qualified electors. The court is empowered to investigate and report its findings with recommendations to the School Committee in all cases of infraction of the newsboy rules. Under the Massachusetts law the School Committee is authorized to regulate street trading by children under fourteen years of age, hence the newsboys are subject to purely local supervision. The supervisor of licensed minors, also an appointee of the School Committee, can, in his discretion, take complaints in his department before the newsboys' court instead of the juvenile court. The newsboy judges are paid fifty cents for their attendance at each official session of the court. The charges made before the Trial Board, as the Boston newsboys' court is called, range from selling without a badge or after eight o'clock in the evening or on street cars, to bad conduct, irregular school attendance, gambling or smoking. The disposition of these cases varies from reprimands and warnings to probation or suspension of license for a definite period, or complete revocation of license.[66] _Summary_ Although the work of selling newspapers has been, to some extent, subdivided and systematized by circulation managers, it has so many features highly objectionable for children that a radical departure from present methods of handling this business should be taken. We know that the work of the newsboy lacks the oversight and discipline of adults, that it exposes the children to the varied physical dangers lurking in the streets, that the early and late hours cause fatigue, that the opportunities for bad companionship are frequent, that irregularity of meals and use of stimulants tend to weaken their constitutions, that it offers no chance for promotion and leads nowhere. We know further that the presence of the newsboy in our streets cannot be justified on the ground of poverty. It has been demonstrated in other countries that children are not essential to the sale and delivery of newspapers; in fact, it has been shown that selling at stands and the use of men instead of children in the streets are both feasible and satisfactory. Why cannot such practices be introduced into the United States? There can be but little doubt as to the advisability of this step, but the innovation will certainly not be made voluntarily by the newspapers. The law must force the issue by prohibiting street work by children. CHAPTER IV BOOTBLACKS, PEDDLERS AND MARKET CHILDREN _Bootblacks_ The itinerant bootblack is gradually disappearing from our cities, but he is still found in Boston, Buffalo, New York City and a few other places. He is being supplanted by the worker at stands, which are conducted almost invariably by Greeks. As a result of this change the bootblacking business will soon cease to be a street occupation; it is discussed here because of the abuses it involves and because it is unregulated in many states, owing to its omission from the list of employments covered by child labor laws. _The Padrone System_ The New York-New Jersey Committee of the North American Civic League for Immigrants reports that: "The condition of Greek boys and young men in such occupations as pushcart peddling, shoe-shining parlors and the flower trade is one of servitude and peonage. It has been found that many boys apparently from fourteen to eighteen years of age arrive here alone, stating that they are eighteen years old, but in reality less than this, and that they are going to relatives. They have been found working in the shoe-shining parlors seven days a week from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. and living with the 'boss' in groups varying from five to twenty-five under unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and irregularity of meals wholly undesirable for young boys. They are isolated from learning English or from American contact, and receive for their work from $7 to $15 a month and board and lodging. The majority of the flower peddlers have been unable to obtain permits, with the result that the boys who work for them are arrested for violating the law. Boys who have been in the country from three months to a year state they have been arrested several times--their first experience in this country--and are already hardened so that they think nothing of paying fines."[67] The bootblack business is the chief industry to which the Greek padrone system is applied. The United States Immigration Commission found[68] that boys employed as bootblacks live in extremely unwholesome quarters. Wherever the room is large enough, several beds are gathered together with three and sometimes four boys sleeping in each bed. In some places the boys merely roll themselves up in blankets and sleep on the floor. The bootblacking stands are opened for business about 6 o'clock in the morning, consequently the boys are obliged to rise about an hour earlier, and wherever their sleeping quarters are located at considerable distance from the stands, they have to get up as early as 4.30. Arrived at the stands, they remain working until 9.30 or 10 at night in cities, and on Saturday and Sunday nights the closing hour is usually later. The boys eat their lunch in the rear of the establishment, this meal consisting generally of bread and olives or cheese. Supper is eaten after the boys reach "home," and after having eaten it they retire without removing their clothes. Even after their excessively long work day, two of the boys are required to wash the dirty rags used for polishing the shoes daily so they can be used the next day. These boys are compelled to work every day in the year without vacation. The Immigration Commission found that they are under constant espionage, as at every stand the padrone places relatives who both work for him and act as spies on the other boys. Their employer instructs them to make false statements to questions asked by outsiders relative to their ages or conditions of work; many padrones also censor the letters written by the boys to their parents or others and examine all incoming mail, so as to forestall any efforts made by outsiders to induce the boys to leave for other places. The majority of them cannot read or write their own language, and are unable to secure any education in this country because of their long work hours. According to the Immigration Commission their mental development is perceptibly arrested by the physical fatigue they suffer as a result of their long-sustained work without recreation. They receive no good advice, nor do they hear anything that would tend to elevate them morally. The Commission does not hesitate to brand these conditions as deplorable; it declares that the ravages on the constitutions of these boys laboring in shoe-shining establishments under this system are appalling. It attributes these effects to the following causes: long hours, close confinement to their work in poorly ventilated places, unsanitary living conditions, unhealthful manner of sleeping, excessive stooping required by their work, inadequate nourishment due to the "economy" of the padrones who furnish the food, the microbe-laden dust from shoes, the inhaling of injurious chemicals from the polish they use, the filthy condition of their bodies resulting from their failure to bathe and the lack of proper clothing for the winter season. The Greek Consul General at Chicago, himself a physician, in a letter to the Immigration Inspector of that city under date of November 16, 1910, declared that as a result of his experience in examining and treating boy bootblacks he was convinced that all boys under eighteen years of age who labor for a few years in shoe-shining establishments, develop serious chronic stomachic and hepatic troubles which predispose them to pulmonary disease; he further declared that because of the conditions under which they work the majority of them ultimately contract tuberculosis, and that in his opinion it would be more humane and infinitely better for young Greeks to be denied admission into the United States than to be permitted to land if they are intended for such employment. Similar statements are made by other Greek physicians of Chicago. The importation of Greek boys for use as bootblacks in the United States started about 1895, when the Greeks began to secure their monopoly of the industry by taking it away from the Italians and the Negroes, confining it, however, to stands or booths. Most of the early padrones have become financially independent. Their success attracted other Greeks to this industry, and in a short time almost every American city with a population of more than 10,000 had bootblack stands operated by them. Thus the traffic in Greek boys began to flourish. The Bureau of Immigration helped to have a number of padrones indicted and convicted for offenses against the conspiracy statute and the Immigration Act, and these prosecutions made the importers very careful as to their manner of procedure. They now bring the boys here through the instrumentality of relatives in Greece in such a way that the padrones are almost beyond the reach of our criminal statutes. In some cases it has been found that on leaving Greece for this country the boys are told to report to a saloon keeper in Chicago or in some other western city, hence they do not know their final destination. The saloon keeper has his instructions from the padrones and acts as their distributing agent. Padrones who operate in places distant from ports of entry easily avoid detection in this way. In most cases these padrones derive an income from each boy of from $100 to as high as $500 a year. The Commission explains this as follows: The wages paid by the padrones now to Greek boys in shoe-shining establishments range from $80 to $250 per year, the average wages being from $120 to $180 per year. The boys are bound by agreement to turn their tips over to their padrones: in most cases as soon as the tipping patron has departed the boy deposits his tip in the register, while in other places tips are put into a separate box to which the padrone holds the key. In smaller cities and even in the poorest locations each boy's tips may exceed the sum of 50 cents per day, while in large cities they average higher. The Greek padrone, therefore, receives in return from tips alone nearly double the amount of wages paid. By deducting the wages and the annual boarding expenses for each boy--an expenditure seldom exceeding the sum of $40 per year--there is still a sum left to the padrone to pay him for the privilege of allowing the boy to work in his place. In other words, from the total amount of tips--money that belongs to the boy by right--the padrone is enabled to pay the boy's annual wages and still have a respectable sum left, all this independently of the legitimate profits of his business. Relatives of the padrones in Greece often pay the steamship passage of boys with the understanding that they are to go to the United States and serve the padrone for one year to reimburse him for the passage money advanced. A mortgage is placed on the property of the boys' father as security, purporting that the father is to receive in cash an amount equal to the wages commonly paid to Greek bootblacks for one year in the United States, but as a matter of fact a steamship ticket and $12 or $15 in money are all that is given. The cash is to serve as "show money" to help secure admission to this country past the immigration officers at the ports of entry. Advertising is systematically carried on throughout all the provinces of Greece with a view to exciting the interest of the parents so that they will send their boys to the United States, and no efforts are spared in letting it become known that there is a great demand here for boy labor at the bootblack stands. The padrones themselves even go to Greece every two or three years, and while there manage to become godfathers to the children of many families; this relationship gives them great influence, and through it they are able to secure many boys for their service. Concerning the prevention of these abuses, the report says: "In the investigations conducted by the Bureau of Immigration many conferences were held with United States attorneys in various jurisdictions with the view of instituting proceedings against padrones, if possible, under the peonage statutes. The attorneys generally agreed that under the evidence submitted to them those laboring in shoe-shining establishments are peons, but as the elements of indebtedness and physical compulsion to work out the indebtedness are missing, peonage laws cannot apply. "Our immigration laws as now on the statute books provide specifically for the exclusion of boys under sixteen years of age only when not accompanied by one or both of their parents. This provision cannot apply to those boys that come in company with their parents, nor to those who have their parents in the United States, nor to such as successfully deceive immigration officers by posing as the sons of immigrants in whose charge they come. If held for special inspection at the ports of entry, these aliens can only be excluded if it appears that they are destined to an occupation unsuited to their tender years. In the absence of any such evidence, the boards of inquiry generally admit. Once landed, it becomes a hard matter to trace them and almost impossible to secure evidence in the majority of cases, for the boys understand that they will be punished by deportation. This knowledge makes them persistent in withholding any information as to the manner of their entry into the United States."[69] Quite recently a young Greek bootblack who was working at a stand in an Indianapolis office building confessed to a truant officer that he was twelve years old, whereupon the chief truant officer of the city went to the place, but on his arrival the boy had changed his mind and declared that he was fourteen years old, and every one connected with the stand supported the statement. Nevertheless the chief truant officer proceeded with the case and found that the boy had been in this country only about six months, his parents being still in Greece. An older brother had a position as a railroad porter but did not stay with the little fellow even on the few occasions he was in the city. The boy lived at the home of the proprietor of the stand, whose relationship to him was a combination of employer and guardian. This man operated four stands in the city, and his dozen or more other employees all lived at the same place. The chief truant officer charged the man with having worked the boy from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. seven days in the week, which was admitted before the Juvenile Court by the defendant, who also volunteered the information that the boy worked until 11 P.M. on holidays and on Saturdays. Of course the boy was being kept out of school. In its issue of August 12, 1911, the _Survey_ published a letter from a correspondent concerning a case of peonage among bootblacks in the city of Rochester, N.Y. This particular case was of a pale, thin, under-sized Greek lad who worked at a large stand in a local office building. He explained that he worked every day in the week from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M., including Sundays, and that on Saturdays the hours were lengthened to 11 P.M., adding that he had not been absent from his stand one day in four years except at one time when he was sick in the hospital. A letter which was written by a Greek in Syracuse, N.Y., on May 4, 1911, to the editor of the Syracuse _Post-Standard_ was printed in the same magazine.[70] This letter recites the wrongs of the bootblacks and is reproduced below because of its value as one of the rare protests which come from the victims of the system:-- "Before I came to this country from Greece, I heard that this country is free, but I don't think so. It is free for the Americans, not for the shoe shiners. In this city are too many shoe shiners' stands, and the boys which work there--they work fifteen hours a day, and Sunday, and almost eighteen on Saturdays. They make only from $12 to $18 a month and board, but we don't have any good board neither, but our patrons give us bread, tea and a piece of cheese for dinner, supper, but no breakfast. We don't have any time to go to the church, not in school, and without them we won't be good citizens. They won't let us read newspapers, because they are afraid if we learn something we will quit, but we can't quit because we can't speak English, and we can't find another job. Now I don't mean the boys working in the barber shops. They make $10 to $18 a week, and they don't work as hard as we do. We wish to work as they do. We want the public and Mr. Mayor to cut the hours from fifteen to ten, not Sundays, because we want time for school, and weekly work, not monthly. I think I wrote enough." _Peddlers and Market Children_ The licensed peddlers of Boston are under orders not to engage little children to sell for them with or without compensation. "These peddlers have hitherto crowded the markets of this city by inviting children to help them in the business, frequently for no other compensation than the offal of their pushcarts or stands."[71] The peddling of chewing gum is a common form of street occupation for children. In reality it is merely begging in disguise. The Chicago Vice Commission reports that its agents found boys under fourteen years of age selling gum late at night in the segregated districts of the city. At intervals of from two to three hours their investigators returned to the same neighborhood and found these little children still engaged in this very questionable form of work. One agent reported having seen two little girls of about eleven years in the company of a small boy of about eight years selling chewing gum in front of a saloon in the vice district between nine and ten o'clock at night.[72] The following table gives the sex, age, nationality, standing in school, orphanage and occupation of seventeen children found by one person in a single trip through the markets of Cincinnati:-- ====+=====+====+=====+===========+==========+==========+============== | | | | | FATHER | MOTHER | | | | | | LIVING | LIVING | | | | | +-----+----+-----+----+-------------- BOYS|GIRLS|AGE |GRADE|NATIONALITY| YES | NO | YES | NO | SELLING ----+-----+----+-----+-----------+-----+----+-----+----+-------------- 1 | | 9 | 2d | Italian | 1 | | 1 | | baskets 1 | | 10 | 4th | American | 1 | | 1 | | fruit 1 | | 10 | 3d | German | | 1 | 1 | | vegetables 1 | | 10 | 2d | Italian | | 1 | 1 | | fruit | 1 | 10 | 4th | Italian | 1 | | 1 | | fruit | 1 | 10 | 3d | Italian | | 1 | 1 | | baskets 1 | | 11 | 4th | Italian | | 1 | 1 | | fruit 1 | | 11 | 3d | Italian | 1 | | 1 | | baskets | 1 | 11 | 6th | German | 1 | | | 1 | vegetables 1 | | 12 | 4th | American | 1 | | 1 | | vegetables 1 | | 12 | 3d | American | 1 | | | 1 | baskets 1 | | 12 | 4th | American | 1 | | 1 | | sassafras 1 | | 12 | 6th | Italian | 1 | | 1 | | fruit 1 | | 13 | 5th | Italian | 1 | | 1 | | baskets 1 | | 14 | 3d | American | 1 | | 1 | | sassafras 1 | | 14 | 8th | American | 1 | | 1 | | vegetables | 1 | 14 | 4th | Italian | | 1 | 1 | | fruit ====+=====+====+=====+===========+=====+====+=====+====+============== Of these seventeen children nine were Italians, six were Americans, two were Germans. Five of the children, all of whom except one were Italian, were engaged in selling baskets to the passers-by in markets. Six of the children, all of whom except one were Italian, were selling fruit. Six of the children were selling vegetables and herbs, all of them being Americans and Germans. The occupational characteristics of these different peoples are shown by their children, the Italians predominating in the sale of fruit, the Germans in the sale of the products of their market gardens, the Americans, all of whom were boys, in the sale of the herbs they had gathered or the vegetables cultivated on their home farms. Of these seventeen children nine were in their normal grades at school, while eight were backward and none ahead of their proper grades. This large percentage of retardation is due principally to the lack of time for preparation of school lessons on the part of these children, as much of their afternoons and evenings is taken up either with the work of selling in the markets or with the work of assisting with the garden duties at home. Of the eight backward children, four were Italians and four were Americans. One of the backward Italian girls was fourteen years of age and had left school three weeks prior to the inquiry; she was the oldest of six children; her father was dead, and she was working for her mother in their fruit store selling the fruit from early morning until midnight every day in the week except Sunday. As she was the oldest child in the family, it is of course easily seen that her retardation in school was largely due to her having been kept at work in the shop during the afternoons and evenings while she was still attending school. An American boy, who, although twelve years of age, was only in the third grade at school, was employed by his parents to sell baskets in the market, in spite of the fact that his father had a store and was fully able to support the child properly. This boy was found, as were many other such children, selling baskets in the market at eleven o'clock at night after having been there since early in the morning. A thirteen-year-old Italian boy was only in the fifth grade; he was selling baskets in one market in the morning and in another market during the afternoon and evening; both of his parents were living, and his father had a "city job." There were six children in the family, two of whom were older and employed. The entire family of eight persons occupied two rooms. It is noteworthy that the fathers of twelve of the children were living, only five being dead; while the mothers of fifteen were living, only two being dead. Not a single child was a full orphan. In the great majority of cases it was not necessary for these children to work so prematurely. CHAPTER V MESSENGERS, ERRAND AND DELIVERY CHILDREN Accustomed to seeing messenger boys engaged during the day in the unobjectionable task of delivering telegrams to residences and business offices, one is likely to regard this service as an occupation quite suitable for children and to give it no further thought. However, the character of the work done by the messenger boy changes radically after nine or ten o'clock at night. At that hour most legitimate business has ceased, and the evil phases of city life begin to manifest themselves. From that time on until nearly dawn the messenger's work is largely in connection with the vicious features of city life. The ignorance of the general public as to the evil influences surrounding the night messenger service is strikingly illustrated by what one Indiana boy told an investigator; he declared that if his father knew what kind of work he was doing, a strap would be laid across his back and he would be compelled to abandon it. But the father did not know; he thought his boy was simply delivering telegrams. The delivery of telegrams forms but a small part of the boy's work at night, because few messages are dispatched after business hours. Instead, calls are sent to the office for messengers to go on errands. The boys wait upon the characters of the underworld and perform a surprising variety of simple tasks; they carry notes to and from the inmates of houses of prostitution and their patrons, take lunches, chop suey and chile con carne to bawdyhouse women, procure liquor after the closing hour, purchase opium, cocaine and other drugs, go to drug stores for prostitutes to get medicines and articles used in their trade, and perform other tasks that oblige them to cultivate their acquaintance with the worst side of human nature. One instance was found in which the boy was required to clean up the room of a prostitute and to make her bed. The uniform or cap of the messenger boy is a badge of secrecy and enables him to get liquor at illegal hours or to procure opium and other drugs where plain citizens would be refused; hence these boys are thrown into associations of the lowest kind, night after night, and come to regard these evil conditions as normal phases of life. Usually the brightest boys on the night force become the favorites of the prostitutes; the women take a fancy to particular boys because of their personal attractiveness and show them many favors, so that the most promising boys in this work are the ones most liable to suffer complete moral degradation. Messenger service not only gives boys the opportunity to learn what life is at night in "tenderloin" districts, but the character of the work actually _forces_ them into contact with the vilest conditions and subjects them to the fearful influences always exerted by such associations. Some believe that this evil could be prevented by forbidding the office to allow messenger boys to go on such errands, but this is not practicable for two reasons: first, because an essential feature of the messenger service is secrecy--the office does not inquire into the nature of the errand to be performed, and even if it did so, a false statement could easily be made by the patron over the telephone; and second, it would be necessary to send a detective along with the boy on each trip to see that he observed the rules. Boys are eager to run errands for prostitutes for various reasons, one being the extra income assured, as these women give tips with liberal hand. Like other street occupations, the messenger service is a blind alley; it leads nowhere. A very few boys are promoted to the position of check boy in the telegraph office, and fewer still have an opportunity to learn telegraphy. Some of the boys become cab drivers because they have familiarized themselves with the city streets; others become saloon keepers because they have become well acquainted with this method of making a livelihood; some are attracted by the life of "ease" which opens before them and enter into agreement with prostitutes, upon whose earnings they subsist; others have the courage to get away from these influences and secure work as office boys or in some other line entirely different from the messenger service. A considerable number of the inmates of state reform schools were formerly messenger boys, indicating that this service is one of the roads to delinquency. As the immoral influences surrounding this work are especially active among youths, the age limit for such employment at night should be made high enough to prevent their being so exposed. New York State was first to declare that if this work is to be done at night it must be done by men, and has fixed the age limit at twenty-one years. The late Judge Stubbs, of the Indianapolis Juvenile Court, speaking before the Conference of Juvenile Court Officers held in that city in November, 1910, said that messenger boys, and newsboys who sell papers in the downtown streets, were the boys most frequently charged with delinquency before his court, and declared that twenty-one years was low enough as an age limit for night messenger service. Other temptations assail the messenger boy in his work, and are frequently yielded to. The old practice of raising the amount of charges on the envelope of a telegram is notorious and is still an ever present problem to the companies. When a boy has been detected in this petty crime and is questioned about it, he too often adds to the one misdeed the other equally grievous one of lying, whereupon his dismissal usually follows. Under the direction of the writer an investigation of the night messenger service was made in 1910 in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, the following cases being typical of the conditions found in all cities. In one of the larger towns of Indiana, a fourteen-year-old messenger boy was interviewed one night by an agent of the National Child Labor Committee who had called up the telegraph office by telephone requesting that a messenger be sent to him. Early in the course of conversation, of his own volition, the boy referred to houses of prostitution. Upon being asked what he knew about such places, he replied: "Too much--I am there half the night. You see they call for messengers to run errands for them. Sometimes I get them drinks, opium, medicines from drug stores or anything they want. No matter what they ask us to do--it's our business to go ahead and do it." The boy led the agent to a disreputable negro district and described his activities in this region. "No night passes without my making a dollar down here," said he. "The niggers are great smokers of opium, and I get it for them; they give me a little jar, and I have it filled up for them. It costs them $1.50, and I usually get the change from $2." The agent feigned doubt so as to elicit more information, whereupon the boy offered to get some opium if he were given a tip. The agent gave the boy one dollar and told him he might keep the change; in ten minutes he returned with a card of opium which was subsequently analyzed in a laboratory and found to be the kind ordinarily prepared for smoking purposes. This experience was repeated again and again by agents of the National Child Labor Committee in different cities and proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that these young boys are forced into familiarity with the most degrading conditions. Another fourteen-year-old messenger boy in the same town told the agent that there were but few business calls at night, and that nearly all of their work was in connection with houses of prostitution. This boy spoke of the money he received in tips from inmates and patrons of these houses, of his receiving liquor and cigarettes from them, and remarked, "I do not have to do this work, but I like it; this job is too good to give up; I'm learning a lot of things." This little fellow described some extremely revolting scenes of which he had been witness in these houses, and upon being asked whether his manager was aware of the kind of places he was called to, he replied, "Sure he does, for he gets the message over the telephone, then he calls one of the boys and sends him to the house." Another messenger in the same city, who was seventeen years old and had been in this service for four years, working daily until half past two in the morning, said, in talking about the use of drugs by prostitutes, "When they are so full of dope that they don't know what to do, they call up for a messenger, and sometimes I have had them send me out to a drug store for paris green; they want to kill themselves, they are crazy with opium; of course I take their money and never show up again." This boy also bought a small package of opium for the agent. He declared that he knew every house of prostitution in the city and was well acquainted with their proprietresses. To prove this, he wrote out a list of fourteen such places, putting down the streets and numbers at once from memory. These were subsequently referred to persons familiar with the city and verified. It is very distressing to read the testimony of a fourteen-year-old messenger boy of another city who had been thrown by his work so much in contact with evil conditions that he had come to regard these as normal. Although only fourteen years of age, he had lost all faith in womankind. In walking through the segregated district with the agent, this boy called out in advance the number of each house of prostitution, thus showing his familiarity with the whole region. In his childish, schoolboy hand, he wrote on a slip of paper a list of the bawdyhouses, putting down very promptly from memory the names of the proprietresses, the names of the streets and numbers of the houses. Another fourteen-year-old messenger boy in this city related many disgusting details of his experiences in the service at night--of prostitutes smoking, cursing and sprawling on the floor dead drunk. He stated that he had never smoked before he became a messenger, but that when he saw the women using tobacco in all the houses, he thought there could be no harm in it. "If ladies do it, why shouldn't I? So I began, and now I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I get twenty for a nickel and smoke all night. If I didn't, I suppose I'd fall asleep. I once lit a cigarette from an opium pipe in one of the houses--but no more opium for me." When asked whether his manager knew that he was sent to these houses, he replied: "Sure he does, he's the one that sends us; if we don't go, we get fired. He knows all the women, too, because he jokes with them over the telephone when they call up for a boy." A fifteen-year-old night messenger, when asked what he did with the money he received as tips, replied: "Last week I lost a dollar in a crap game, and I go to moving-picture shows during the day and buy different things; I suppose if my people knew the kind of work I was doing, I would get a thick leather strap over my back. They have an idea that the messenger business is just taking telegrams to reputable people. There are very few business calls at night at our office; almost all of them come from houses of prostitution. This is going to be a very busy week with us because a convention starts to-morrow, and the delegates will want us to take them to the houses." Another Hoosier messenger was only sixteen years of age, although he had been in the service of one company for four years and had previously been discharged from another company for having defrauded a patron. This lad was a typical boy of the street; his features were drawn, black lines were below his eyes, and his walk could be described best as a drag. "I know every single house of prostitution in this city," said he. "I have been in every one. I get drinks in most of them, and many a time I was drunk for a whole day in some woman's room." This boy, having been in the service several years, spoke of the ravages dissipation had wrought on the women of the underworld. He had known many of them when they were just starting in their life of shame, and remarked their rapid decline. Voluntarily he spoke of the venereal diseases from which he had suffered. He said that he had been discharged from his first job as a messenger for having defrauded patrons. To illustrate how the scheme worked, he said: "A woman wanted me to carry a package to some place and asked me what it would cost; I said one dollar, and she said she wouldn't pay it because it was too much. I told her to speak to the manager and gave her the telephone number where my pal was waiting for the call. She asked him whether he was the manager, and he said, 'Yes'; then she asked how much the charge was, and he answered one dollar. Then I went on the errand, and we split the difference. Somehow the manager got wise, and out we went." This boy's conversation was a continuous flow of vulgarity. When the agent mentioned gambling, the boy drew from his pocket two sets of dice and said they were "ready at any time to do business. When the first of the month comes around, I am generally short or ahead $5. I lost $8 once. When I have no ready cash, I play on account of my salary." An eighteen-year-old messenger said: "I have been in this business here for five years, and a night never passes that I don't go to a house of prostitution; that's our main business at night. They could not afford to have a messenger service in this town at night if it were not for the red light district. We have to do all their work, because they trust us." This boy spoke of the venereal diseases other boys in the service had, and admitted that he had contracted them twice himself. Another eighteen-year-old messenger boy, who has been in the service four years and is afflicted with an exceptionally bad venereal infection, said among other things, "There are lots of messengers who are kept by women. The boys work only for appearances. I knew two messengers who worked with me who were kept by two prostitutes for a year, then they gave up the job at the same time and took the prostitutes to Chicago, where the women worked for them. One of these boys is only about nineteen years old now. You don't learn anything in the messenger business except to knock down (overcharge a patron) and to go around with prostitutes and gamblers. It kills a fellow. I know, because I went down the line, and I'm coming out the wrong end." When asked why he didn't quit the job, he replied: "You don't suppose I want to work for $3 or $4 a week? I'm used to making pretty good money and having a good time." He said that he made from $40 to $75 a month according to the tips he received, and spent it as fast as he got it. Most of it went in gambling. A fourteen-year-old messenger boy in another city who works from 6 P.M. to 7 A.M., in speaking of the use of whisky in houses of prostitution, said: "We get it for them; the saloons know the messengers, and we stand in with them; the more a house sends for whisky the better they stand in with the saloon keeper. If the proprietress gets locked up, she will always be bailed out by the saloon keeper, but if she don't buy enough stuff from him, he will refuse to do it. When a proprietress is put in jail, the cops ring up for a messenger from the station house, and they send me to the cell where the woman is, and she always gives me a note to take to the saloon keeper and he goes down and gets her out." This boy said his manager knew the kind of places he visited, but was not in the office all night. During the late hours of the night the telegraph operator and the clerk were left in charge, and the boy remarked that they had told him to try to get a woman into the office if he found one on the street, and related instances in which this had been done. He was paid a salary of $22 a month. Another fourteen-year-old messenger in this town is paid $17 a month salary and makes $10 or $12 a month in tips. A thirteen-year-old messenger in another city, after having related some of his experiences in the segregated district, said: "I tell you, it's mighty dirty work for a boy to be in, but I suppose a fellow has to learn these things somehow, and I may as well learn them in the messenger service as in any other way. I smoke perique so I can sleep in the daytime." A fourteen-year-old messenger in the same city, employed from noon to midnight, had been in the service only one week when interviewed by the agent; among other things he said: "All the last week I have been doing nothing but go to the red light district. I didn't know what this messenger business was until I got into it, and I am going to quit just as soon as I see a little more of that kind of thing." In a certain Indiana city there was found a "kid line" messenger service, so called because the proprietor was a mere boy who was formerly in the service of another messenger company. He had two day boys, but at night answered the calls himself. He was fourteen years old and told the agent that he had lived in the "red light" district more than at his home on account of the number of calls he had to answer there, but of course this was exaggeration intended to convey the fact that most of his business was with that region. When he entered into business for himself, he went to all the prostitutes in the "red light" district and told them that he was commencing on his own account and that he wanted them to be his customers. "I get a good deal of their business. I get it because I know how to treat them. I can get them beer on Sunday and can sneak it into their houses. I know all the women and can introduce you to any of them, and can get you any amount of beer or whisky that you want. When I was working for the---- messenger company there was another boy on the force who tried to take all the good calls; he divided his tips with the manager, so he was sent to all the houses where good tips were given. There was one prostitute who liked me pretty well and gave me ten or fifteen cents for myself every time I went to her house. I started to answer a call there one night, and the other boy ran after me. We got to the place at the same time and had a fight in the hall; the men and women in the place gathered around us and offered to give us two dollars each if we would scrap for them, so we started right in, and before I was through with him he had two black eyes and his face was bleeding, then he pulled out a knife, but they took it away from him, and the next day I was fired. There is a young girl in one of the houses who is a chambermaid and wants me to live with her, and maybe I will but I'm afraid my mother will get wise." The fifteen-year-old messenger of another office showed the agent the list of about one hundred calls sent in the previous night, nearly every one of which came from the "red light" district. After weighing such evidence we can readily comprehend the justice of the opinion rendered by Dr. Charles P. Neill in the following words: "The newsboys' service is demoralizing, but the messenger service is debauching.... And, saddest of all, this service appeals strongly to the children. The prurient curiosity of the developing boy would itself incline him to like these calls to houses of prostitution, but they quickly learn also that women who live in these sections are more generous with their earnings in the way of tips than are the people in the more respectable sections of the city.... It can be said that all the boys who go into the messenger service do not go to the bad, but it can be said with equal truth that it ruins children by the dozens, and that if any boy comes out of this service without having suffered moral shipwreck he can thank the mercy of God for it, and not the protecting arm of the community that stands idly by and makes no attempt to save him from temptation."[73] In 1908 Congress passed a child labor law for the District of Columbia which provided, among other restrictions, that no messenger boy under sixteen years should be employed between 7 P.M. and 6 A.M.,--_sixteen years_, the beginning of the period of adolescence, when boys have the greatest need of protection from the vices running riot in cities! The Chicago Vice Commission devotes several pages of its report to a recital of the experiences of messenger boys in connection with their work in the segregated districts. One of the telegraph companies maintains a branch office close to one of these districts, where eight boys from fifteen to eighteen years of age are employed as messengers. These boys are called upon to work at all hours of the day and night, their tasks being the same as those of the messengers in other cities. A number of specific instances of the wretched environment into which these boys are thrown, are given. One of them who works from midnight until 10 A.M. was sent by a prostitute to a drug store for a package of cocaine hydrochloride, for which he paid $5.78, receiving $1 from the prostitute as a tip for the service. Another messenger was sent out on a similar errand by another prostitute two weeks later and purchased for her a hypodermic needle for a syringe; he was charged $2 for this needle, the cost to the druggist being 19 cents. A few days later a boy was called by another prostitute who confided to him that she had discontinued the use of messenger boys for purchasing "dope" because she found that they talked too much and could not be trusted, adding that she now had a newsboy, who sold papers at a near-by corner, buy the cocaine for her. A woman who lives in an apartment house and is the owner and proprietor of houses of prostitution in the restricted district, is in the habit of sending in an order for cocaine to a druggist, who calls a messenger boy to deliver it to her residence. This messenger opened one of the packages and, suspecting that it was cocaine, sniffed a little of it himself. He confessed that he had done this quite often since, and it appeared that he had derived a good deal of pleasure from it. The same messenger is sent about three times monthly by a certain man to a Chinaman, from whom he buys a package of opium for $4. On returning from one of these trips he watched the man open the package, take a quantity of the stuff, roll it and heat it, but at this point the messenger was told to leave the room. Another messenger boy has been employed at this particular branch office for more than three years, although he is now only seventeen years old; his earnings average about $10 per week, including tips. He is of small stature, not mentally bright and at present is afflicted with syphilis of three months' duration. Another messenger is a boy of foreign parentage, only fifteen years of age, who said he had recently been called quite often to a certain house of prostitution where an inmate gave him a box with a note to a druggist; the contents cost $1.75, but upon returning to the woman he would declare that he had paid $2.50, thus obtaining 75 cents on false pretenses, and in addition a tip of half a dollar. On one of his trips for this prostitute he had opened the note and found that it was a requisition for cocaine; on returning he placed some of the contents upon his tongue, but did not like the sensation and never repeated it. He is in the habit of picking up discarded cigarettes and smoking them. In spite of his age, he knows the name of nearly every prostitute in this district and can recognize these women at sight; he stated that whenever he entered a house of prostitution they would nearly always kiss him, and at different times he had had sores on his lips. Another boy who was attending high school was employed as a messenger in the downtown district during Christmas week of 1910. He was sent to deliver a message in a house of prostitution, and the girl who received it offered to cohabit with him free of charge as a Christmas present, stating that it was customary to do this for messenger boys on Christmas Day.[74] A number of other messengers told of similar experiences, stating that they were often called to houses of prostitution to perform small personal services for the inmates. As to regulation of the service, a police order was issued in Chicago in April, 1910, to the effect that no messenger or delivery boy under eighteen years was to be allowed in the segregated districts at any time. In arguing against the further restriction of the night messenger service, the telegraph companies and other interested organizations insist that the majority of these boys are working to support their widowed mothers or incapacitated fathers; a recent government report says, in referring to the table of families in which there are messengers and errand and office boys ten to fourteen years of age, classified by percentage of older breadwinners, for Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington, "These statistics point to the conclusion that the greater part of the families now furnishing children from ten to thirteen years of age and fourteen years for the occupation of messengers and errand and office boys are by no means either entirely or largely dependent upon the earnings of such children for the family support."[75] The restriction advocated does not contemplate the prohibition of this work to boys of fourteen years and upwards in the _daytime_; its object is to shield the youths from the vile associations necessarily connected with this work at _night_. _Night Service by Men--Not by Boys_ Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy of the National Child Labor Committee, in speaking of the study of the night messenger service undertaken by this organization, says: "The evidence collected justified the committee in cooperating with its affiliated organizations to secure legislation, and, counting on the _moral interest of the public_ to promote the effort, we made the question one for practical and immediate decision. Results apparently justify the policy chosen. A bill was unanimously passed by the legislature of New York State [in 1910], excluding any person under twenty-one years of age from this occupation between ten o'clock at night and five o'clock in the morning." Massachusetts in 1911 forbade the employment of messengers under twenty-one years of age between the hours of 10 P.M. and 5 A.M., except by newspaper offices. Utah fixed the same age limit for this work in cities of first and second classes between 9 P.M. and 5 A.M. New Jersey did likewise as to cities of the first class, fixing the age limit at eighteen years for smaller places, the prohibited hours being from 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. Wisconsin also passed a law in 1911, prohibiting the employment of any one under twenty-one years of age as a messenger between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. in cities of the first, second and third classes. Ohio, in 1910, fixed the age limit for messenger service between 9 P.M. and 6 A.M. at eighteen years. Michigan now prohibits the employment of messengers under eighteen years between 10 P.M. and 5 A.M., as do also New Hampshire, Oregon, Tennessee and California. Other states having the advanced type of child labor law prohibit the employment of children under fourteen years in the messenger service during the day and under sixteen years at night. The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming do not yet provide any age limit for this work. The evil effects of the messenger service have also been noted in Great Britain. A schoolmaster of Edinburgh says, "Insolence, coarse intonation, swearing, lying, pilfering and lewdness are the chief products of message going by boys."[76] A London health officer has testified as follows: "There is a very large employment of boy labour now, boys employed as messengers and errand boys, which teaches them nothing useful for their future life; and when they have outgrown the age at which they can be employed in this way, the risk of drifting into the ranks of the unskilled labourer is a very large one."[77] "The government post office telegraph messengers are not employed unless they have passed the seventh standard at school and each candidate has to provide a satisfactory certificate of health from his own medical attendant. A boy of fourteen must also be over four feet eight inches in height. The minimum starting wage in London is seven shillings a week, rising by a shilling a week annually to eleven shillings. On reaching the age of sixteen the boy has to pass a further examination in order to qualify for retention. The various _private_ telegraph companies offer much the same terms, though in some cases they are able to get boys slightly cheaper, as the qualifying standard is not such a high one. It is only during the rare periods when the supply of boy labour is more plentiful than usual that the private telegraph companies will refuse a boy on account of his size. The varied nature of the work they are called upon to perform is an undoubted attraction in the eyes of many.... That it is bad for them morally is less open to doubt. Even when they are more actively employed the most that they can hope to learn is a very small amount of discipline. A more serious point is the future of the boys when they cease to be messengers."[78] "It is well to point out that the commonest of these occupations, that of errand boy or messenger boy, is seldom a desirable one, quite apart from the fact that it generally leads nowhere. It lacks almost necessarily what the boy most needs--the compulsory training of the habit of disciplined effort."[79] As Mrs. Florence Kelley says, "The test of the work, however, should be not whether boys can do it, but what it does to boys."[80] CHAPTER VI EFFECTS OF STREET WORK UPON CHILDREN All the evil effects of street work upon children observed by students of the problem have been here divided into three groups, under the headings of physical, moral, and material deterioration. It must be understood that this is a summary of such effects and that while the influences of the street are unquestionably bad, any one child exposed to them is not likely to suffer to the full extent suggested below. However, deterioration in one form or another is invariably noted in children who have been engaged in street work for any length of time, and this is sufficient proof of the undesirability of such employment for our boys and girls. EFFECTS OF STREET WORK ON CHILDREN Material { Form distaste for regular employment. Deterioration { Small chance of acquiring a trade. { Drift into large class of casual workers. { Night work. { Excessive fatigue. { Exposure to bad weather. Physical { Irregularity of sleep and meals. Deterioration { Use of stimulants--cigarettes, coffee, liquor. { Disease through contact with vices. { Encouragement to truancy. { Independence and defiance of parental control. Moral { Weakness cultivated by formation of bad habits. Deterioration { Form liking for petty excitements of street. { Opportunities to become delinquent. { Large percentage of recruits to criminal population. These are the insidious influences permeating street work and rampant in all our cities. They are minimized and even denied by certain ignorant or interested parties who base their assertions upon the fact that prominent men of to-day were once newsboys or bootblacks, and therefore jump to the conclusion that their success is due to the training received in this way when young. The truth is more likely to be that such individuals have succeeded, not because of this early training, but in spite of it. Boys of exceptionally strong character will force themselves out of such an environment unscathed, but the great majority of children have not sufficient mental and moral stamina to withstand these influences. The minority will take care of itself under any circumstances,--it is with the weaker majority that we must deal. The problem is an urgent one, but generally ignored, for, as Myron E. Adams says, the public sees the street worker at his best and neglects him at his worst. The charge that in street work a child has small chance of acquiring a suitable trade is one of the worst counts in the indictment. Street work leads to nothing else; the various occupations are so many industrial pitfalls, and the children who get into them must sooner or later struggle out and begin over again at some other line of work, if they would succeed. "These children (street traders) furnish a very large proportion of recruits to the criminal population. Those who do not graduate into crime form a liking for the petty excitements of the street and a distaste for regular employment. They lack skill and perseverance, shun the monotony of a permanent job, and as they grow older either follow itinerant and questionable trades or become ill-paid and inefficient casual laborers. Therefore these young people are a source of waste to society rather than of profit."[81] The large percentage of former newsboys among the inmates of boys' reformatories recently induced an active social worker to send an inquiry to the superintendents of such institutions and to juvenile court judges in different parts of the country relative to the effect of newspaper selling on schoolboys. The statements received in reply are set forth in a leaflet which was published in 1910.[82] These officials are practically unanimous in condemning street trading by boys, declaring that newsboys are generally stupid and almost always morally defiled; that the pittance they earn is bought at great sacrifice; that the spending of their earnings without supervision is the worst thing that can befall them; that the life leads to gambling, dishonesty and spendthrift habits; that it is a dead-end occupation leading to nothing; that it abounds in evil temptations; that the boys are comparatively idle and see and hear the worst that is to be seen and heard on the street; that the work subjects boys to bad influences before they are strong enough to resist them; that delinquency results from their enforced association with all classes of boys; and concluding that every possible protection should be thrown about the young boy. Some of these officers gave due consideration to the advantages of street trading, and one made the naïve statement that newspaper selling was not a bad business for a boy who could withstand its temptations. Although the law of New York State provides a modicum of regulation for street trading, nevertheless it has not been effective because of extremely indifferent enforcement. Like almost all other street-trading laws in the United States, it places the age limit at the ridiculous age of ten years. A movement was started recently in Buffalo to remedy the situation, and the following statement was published:-- "During the past year we have sought to discover, not by theorizing, but by uncovering the facts, what is the effect of street work on the boy. School records of 230 Buffalo newsboys were secured. Eighteen per cent were reported as truants; 23 per cent stood poor or very poor in attendance and deportment. Twenty-eight per cent stood poor or very poor in scholarship, while only 15 per cent of the other children in the same schools failed in their work. An investigation at the truant school showed that 46.6 per cent of the boys there had been engaged in the street trades. On the basis of these facts and studies made in connection with the schools, juvenile courts and reformatories elsewhere, we hope to secure legislation raising the age below which boys may not engage in the street trades to twelve years, and making it illegal for boys under fourteen to sell after 8 P.M. We are also striving to secure better enforcement of this law in Buffalo and other cities."[83] This folder also states that circular letters were sent to all Buffalo school principals asking about the effect on scholarship of the early morning delivery of newspapers by their pupils, and also to physicians inquiring about the effect of such work on physical development. The hours for such newspaper delivery were from 4.30 A.M. to 7 A.M. Eight principals and six physicians denounced such work to every one who favored it. Referring to the occupational history of reformatory inmates, a recent report for New York City says: "The parental school (school for truants) statistics show that 80 out of its 230 inmates were newsboys, while 60 per cent of the entire number have been street traders. The Catholic Protectorate, full of Italians (noted as street traders), gives us a record of 469 or 80 per cent out of their 590 boys interviewed, who have followed the street profession, and 295 or 50 per cent had been newsboys selling over three months. The New York Juvenile Asylum gives us 31 per cent of its inmates as newsboys and 60 per cent as street traders. The House of Refuge repeats the same story: 63 per cent of those committed to that institution had been street traders, of whom 32 per cent were newsboys. If 63 per cent of the House of Refuge inmates have been street traders, and if the majority of such have begun their so-called criminal careers, which end invariably in the state penitentiary, why do we permit children to trade on our streets?"[84] Another American writer says: "Whatever the cause, the effect on the newsboy is always the same. He lives on the streets at night in an atmosphere of crime and criminals, and he takes in vice and evil with the air he breathes. If he grows into manhood and escapes the tuberculosis which seizes so many of these boys of the street, the things that he has learned as a professional newsboy lead in one direction,--toward crime and things criminal. The professional newsboy is the embryo criminal."[85] The dangers to the morals of children are particularly emphasized by those who have given this subject any attention. Mr. John Spargo says: "Nor is it only in factories that these grosser forms of immorality flourish. They are even more prevalent among the children of the street trades,--newsboys, bootblacks, messengers and the like. The proportion of newsboys who suffer from venereal diseases is alarmingly great. The superintendent of the John Worthy School of Chicago, Mr. Sloan, asserts that 'one third of all the newsboys who come to the John Worthy School have venereal diseases and that 10 per cent of the remaining newsboys at present in the Bridewell are, according to the physician's diagnosis, suffering from similar diseases.' The newsboys who come to the school are, according to Mr. Sloan, on an average of one third below the ordinary standard of physical development, a condition which will be readily understood by those who know the ways of the newsboys of our great cities--their irregular habits, scant feeding, sexual excesses, secret vices, sleeping in hallways, basements, stables and quiet corners. With such a low physical standard the ravages of venereal diseases are tremendously increased."[86] The economic aspect of this work is magnified by most people beyond its true proportion; the earnings of street-working children are not needed by their families in most cases, and even in those instances where their poverty demands such relief it is wrong to purchase it at the price paid in evil training and bad effects of every kind. Commenting on this point the chief truant officer for Indianapolis says: "A large number of truants are recruited from that large unrestricted class whose members are to be found competing with one another on our street corners from early until late. The pennies which many of them earn are a material aid in replenishing the depleted resources of some of our homes. Yet, it is a question whether such child laborers will not in the future bequeath to society an abundant reward of human wreckage which may be traced to such traffic and its many temptations."[87] As to the bad judgment of parents in seeking the premature earnings of their children, a Chicago physician says: "The average newsboy, if he works 365 days a year, does not earn over a hundred dollars; if he becomes delinquent it costs the state at least two hundred dollars a year to care for him. When we remember that twelve out of every one hundred boys between ten and sixteen become delinquent, and that over 60 per cent of these boys come from street trades, it does not take long for a business man to figure out that it is rather poor economy to let a ten-year-old boy go into at least this field of labor.... From an economic standpoint the family that sends out a ten-year-old boy to sell papers loses a great deal more in actual money from the boy's lack of future earning capacity than the boy can possibly earn by his youthful efforts. In other words, this sort of labor from an economic standpoint is an absurdity."[88] In its splendid report on street trading, the British departmental committee of 1910 stated: "We learnt that much of this money, so readily made, is spent with equal dispatch. The children spend it on sweets and cigarettes, and in attending music halls, and in very many cases only a portion, if any, of the daily earnings is taken home.... In many towns the traders are drawn from the poorest of homes, but numerous witnesses have emphatically stated that their experience leads them to think that cases where real benefits accrue to the home are rare."[89] The lack of proper training during childhood almost invariably brings about a tragedy in the lives of working people. The premature employment of children at any kind of labor which interferes with their education and their training in work for which they are fitted is most disastrous in its effects and far outweighs in future misery the little income thus secured in childhood. A careful student of the working class declares: "Many bright and capable men and women in this neighborhood [Greenwich Village, New York City] would undoubtedly have been able to occupy high positions in the industrial world if they had not been _forced into unskilled work when young_."[90] With reference to the effects of street trading an English writer says: "It is difficult to imagine a life which could be worse for a young boy. Apart from the moral dangers, it is a means of earning a livelihood which perhaps more than any other is subject to the most violent fluctuations. But the uncertainty of the income is a trifling evil by comparison with the certainty of the bad moral effects of street trading on boys and youths. The life of the street trader is a continual gamble, unredeemed by any steady work; it is undisciplined and casual, and exposed to all the temptations of the street at its worst. The great majority of the boys who sell papers drift away into crime or idleness or some form of living by their wits."[91] The same writer also declares: "Few things could have a worse effect than this street trading on those engaged in it. It initiates them into the mysteries of the beggar's whine and breeds in them the craving for an irregular, undisciplined method of life."[92] And the editor of these English studies adds: "It is part of the street-bred child's precocity that he acquires a too early acquaintance with matters which as a child he ought not to know at all. His language and conversation often reveal a familiarity with vice which would be terrible were it not so superficial."[93] Speaking of immorality in the narrow sense of the word, the same writer says: "We do not believe that immorality of this kind is universal among the boys and girls of the labouring classes, nor do we believe that the town youth is any worse than his brother and sister of the country. Coarseness and impurity are not the distinguishing mark of any one class or any one place. We question whether comparison of sins and self-indulgence would work out at all to the disadvantage of the town labouring class as a whole. It must be remembered that one commonplace factor, the glaring publicity of the street, is all on the side of the town youth's virtue. The street has its safeguards as well as its dangers."[94] With reference to the blind alley character of street work, another English writer avers: "As in London, the labours of the school children [in Manchester] are in no wise apprenticeship or preparation for their future lives. The grocer's little errand boy will be discharged when he grows bigger and needs higher wages; the chemist's runner is not in training to become a chemist. The three farthings an hour on the one hand, and the physical, moral and intellectual degeneration on the other, are all that the little ones here, as elsewhere, get out of toil from which many a grown man would shrink."[95] Another English student of labor conditions declares: "Teachers--together with magistrates, police authorities, ministers of religion and social workers--are practically unanimous in condemning street trading as an employment of children of school age. In this occupation children deteriorate rapidly from the physical, mental and moral point of view."[96] Still another writer says: "One great evil which results from this life of street trading in childhood is the fact that it is fatal to industrial efficiency in after life."[97] The testimony of Sir Lauder Brunton, M.D., given in 1904, on the occasion of the inquiry into physical deterioration in Great Britain, is to the point, in spite of the fact that the committee directing the inquiry stated that "The impressions gathered from the great majority of the witnesses examined do not support the belief that there is any general progressive deterioration."[98] Sir Lauder Brunton's testimony was as follows: "The causes of deficient physique are very numerous ... it is very likely that in order to eke out the scanty earnings of the father and mother the child is sent, out of school hours, to earn a penny or two, and so it comes to school wearied out in body by having had to work early in the morning, exhausted by not having had food, and then is sent to learn. Well, it cannot learn."[99] Later the same witness testified, "One of the very worst causes [of physical deterioration] is that children in actual attendance at school, work before and after schooltime."[100] In a special inquiry into the physical effects of work upon 600 boys of school age made in 1905 by Dr. Charles J. Thomas, assistant health officer to the London County Council's education department, it was found that many of the children suffered from nervous strain, heart disease and deformities as a result of prolonged labor. Of the 600 boys, 134 were shop boys, 63 were milk boys, 87 were newsboys and the others were scattered among various employments. It was found that work during the dinner hour and also the long work-day on Saturday were particularly harmful. As to fatigue among the newsboys, of those working 20 hours or less, 60 per cent were affected; of those working between 20 and 30 hours, 70 per cent; while of those working more than 30 hours per week, 91 per cent showed fatigue. As to anæmia, among the newsboys, of those working 20 hours or less it appeared among only 19 per cent; but of those working 20 to 30 hours, 30 per cent showed it; while of those working over 30 hours per week, 73 per cent were afflicted in this way. As to nerve strain, of those working 20 hours or less 16 per cent were suffering from it; of those working 20 to 30 hours, 35 per cent; while of those working over 30 hours, 37 per cent showed nerve strain. As to deformities, none were noted among boys working less than 20 hours a week, but 10 per cent of those working 20 to 30 hours or more were found to be afflicted. All elementary schoolboys showed deformities to the extent of 8 per cent, but of those engaged in different kinds of work from 20 to 30 hours a week, 21 per cent showed deformities. Flatfoot was found to be the chief deformity produced by newspaper selling, this being caused by the boys' having to be on their feet too much.[101] One of the most decisive blows delivered against street work by children in Great Britain was the statement of Thomas Burke of the Liverpool City Council, a son of working people, who had lived in a crowded city street for twenty years, had attended a public elementary school until fourteen years of age, where the number of child street traders was very large, and had become convinced that "work after school hours was decidedly injurious to health and character." Referring to the material condition of his street-trading acquaintances, he said: "Almost all the boys sent out to work after school hours from the school referred to have failed in the battle of life. Not one is a member of any of the regular trades, while all who were sent to trade in the streets have gone down to the depths of social misery if not degradation ... a great proportion of those who did not work after school hours, or frequent the streets as newspaper sellers, occupy respectable positions in the city."[102] Miss Ina Tyler of the St. Louis School of Social Economy in a study of St. Louis newsboys made in 1910, found that of 50 newsboys under 11 years of age, 43 gambled, 42 went to cheap shows and 23 used tobacco; while of 100 newsboys 11 to 16 years of age, 86 gambled, 92 went to cheap shows and 76 used tobacco.[103] Among the conclusions of the British interdepartmental committee of 1901 is the following: "Street hawking is not injurious to the health if the hours are not long, and the work is not done late at night; but its moral effects are far worse than the physical, and this employment in the center of many large towns makes the streets hotbeds for the corruption of children who learn to drink, to gamble and to use vile language, while girls are exposed to even worse things."[104] The British departmental committee of 1910 declared: "In the case of both boys and girls the effect of this occupation on future prospects cannot be anything but thoroughly bad, except, possibly, in casual and exceptional cases. We learn that many boys who sell while at school manage to obtain other work upon becoming fourteen, but for those who remain in the street the tendency is to develop into loafers and 'corner boys.' The period between fourteen and sixteen is a critical time in a boy's life. Street trading provides him with no training; he gets no discipline, he is not occupied the whole of his time; for a few years he makes more money and makes it more easily than in an office or a workshop, and he is exposed to a variety of actively evil influences."[105] An important division of the study of street-working children concerns their standing in the schools. In New York City a few figures are available through a study recently made there. The distribution of 200 newsboys under fourteen years of age among the school grades is shown in the following table:[106]-- ======================================================== | GRADES | | AGES +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ SPECIAL |TOTALS | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | | ------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---------+------- 7 | 2 | | | | | | | | | 2 8 | | 3 | 2 | | | | | | | 5 9 | | 1 | 6 | 1 | | | | | | 8 10 | | | 6 | 3 | 3 | | | | | 12 11 | | 5 | 7 |10 | 7 | 4 | 1 | | 2 | 36 12 | | 1 | 1 |19 |21 | 9 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 62 13 | | | |15 |10 |23 |17 | 7 | 3 | 75 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---------+------- Totals| 2 |10 |22 |48 |41 |36 |25 | 8 | 8 | 200 ======================================================== Applying the rule that in order to be normal a child must enter the first grade at the age of either six or seven years and progress with enough regularity to enable him to attend the eighth grade at the age of either thirteen or fourteen, it is found that of the 177 newsboys ten to thirteen years of age inclusive, 118 are backward, 57 are normal and 2 are beyond their grades. This is shown in the following table:-- ============================================== AGES |BACKWARD | NORMAL | AHEAD | TOTAL -----------+---------+--------+-------+------- 10 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 12 11 | 22 | 11 | 1 | 34 12 | 42 | 16 | 1 | 59 13 | 48 | 24 | 0 | 72 +---------+--------+-------+------- Totals | 118 | 57 | 2 | 177 Percentages| 67% | 32% | 1% | 100% =============================================== This table shows that of the 177 newsboys ten to thirteen years of age, 67 per cent are backward and 32 per cent are normal, while only 1 per cent are ahead of their grades. Boys of these ages are subject to the restrictions prescribed by the state law as to hours, and it is probable that the percentage of retardation would have been even greater if work at night had not been to some extent prevented. A report of New York City conditions made in 1907, before the newsboy law was enforced, says: "The shrewd, bright-eyed, sharp-witted lad is stupid and sleepy in the schoolroom; 295 newsboys compared with non-working boys in the same class were found to fall below the average in proficiency. They were also usually older than their classmates, that is, backward in their grades."[107] Referring to Manchester newsboys above the age of fourteen years, an English report[108] says: "They are not stupid, or even markedly backward, judged by school standards.... As they grow older they sink to a lower level, both morally and economically--in fact, little better than loafers, without aspiration, and content with the squalor of the common lodging-houses in which they live, if only they have enough money for their drink and their gambling." Concerning the younger newsboys the same report continues: "Those who are the children of extremely poor, and often worthless parents, are often upon the streets selling their papers during school hours, and their attendance at the schools, in spite of prosecution of their parents, is so irregular that they make very little progress. These boys take to the streets permanently for their livelihood; a few of them continue, after the age of fourteen, to earn their living by selling newspapers, but most of them sink into less satisfactory kinds of occupation." In connection with these statements it should be remembered that they portray conditions existing prior to the adoption in 1902 of local rules on street trading. With reference to the alleged cleverness of street Arabs, a British observer draws this distinction: "Street-trading children are more cunning than other children, but not more intelligent."[109] In St. Louis there was no regulation until the Missouri law of 1911 was passed; and in 1910 Miss Ina Tyler, in a study of 106 newsboys of that city, found the following conditions:-- NUMBER BELOW NORMAL YEARS SCHOOL GRADE 10 10 out of 16 62% 11 12 out of 16 75% 12 16 out of 28 57% 13 25 out of 33 75% 14 11 out of 13 84% -- --- --- 74 106 70% These figures were copied by the writer from charts displayed at the child labor exhibit of the National Conference of Charities and Correction in St. Louis in 1910, but efforts to ascertain the method of determining these percentages were unavailing. Therefore they cannot be compared with the figures in the preceding tables, because it is by no means certain that the standard ages for normal school standing were adopted in the compilation of this table. In Toledo, Ohio, there is no regulation governing street work by children, although a local association makes an effort to look after the welfare of newsboys. In October, 1911, the writer visited the four public common school buildings nearest the business district of this city and found 287 children in attendance who were regularly engaged in some form of street work out of school hours. The great majority of them were newsboys. The distribution of these children according to age and grade is given below:-- AGES ===================================================================== Grade | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Totals ------+---+---+---+---+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------- 1 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 1 | | | | | | | 23 2 | | | 7 |12 | 8 | 2 | 3 | | 2 | | | | 34 3 | | | 1 | 5 | 8 | 22 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 1 | | | 51 4 | | | | 3 | 7 | 17 | 9 | 11 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 58 5 | | | | | | 8 | 10 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 4 | | 44 6 | | | | | | | 7 | 7 | 16 | 3 | 4 | | 37 7 | | | | | | | 1 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 25 8 | | | | | | | | | 5 | 7 | 3 | | 15 ------+---+---+---+---+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------- Totals| 1 | 8 | 13| 24| 27| 50 | 34 | 40 | 45 | 27 | 15 | 3 | 287 ===================================================================== Adopting the same method for determining retardation as in the case of the New York figures, we find that of these 287 street-working school children of Toledo, 55 per cent are backward, 43 per cent are normal and 2 per cent are ahead of their grades. Or, selecting the children ten to thirteen years of age, as was done with the New York figures, we have the following results:-- ========================================================= AGES | BACKWARD | NORMAL | AHEAD | TOTAL -----------+-------------+----------+----------+--------- 10 | 25 | 25 | | 50 11 | 16 | 17 | 1 | 34 12 | 28 | 12 | | 40 13 | 34 | 11 | | 45 Totals | 103 | 65 | 1 | 169 -----------+-------------+----------+----------+--------- Percentages| 61% | 38% | 1% | 100% ========================================================= These percentages show that conditions in Toledo are only slightly better than in New York City. This is surprising because of the great difference in the working conditions of the two cities, the metropolitan street children being subjected to far greater nervous strain because of the more congested population and heavier street traffic. RETARDED CHILDREN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS (TOLEDO), 1910-1911 _Grades_ | FIRST +-+-------------- | |NORMAL AGE 6-7 | | | SECOND | +-+-------------- | | |NORMAL AGE 7-8 | | | | | THIRD | | +-+-------------- | | | |NORMAL AGE 8-9 | | | | | | | FOURTH | | | +-+-------------- | | | | |NORMAL AGE 7-8 | | | | | | | | | FIFTH | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 10-11 | | | | | | | | | | | SIXTH | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 11-12 | | | | | | | | | | | | | SEVENTH | | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 12-13 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | EIGHTH | | | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 13-14 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |PER CENT OF | | | | | | | | |ALL RETARDATIONS | | | | | | | | +-----+---------- V V V V V V V V V ==========+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======+====== | | | | | | | | | TOTAL ----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+------ Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 1 year | 325| 449| 500| 483| 528| 507| 366| 209| 3,367| 53.5 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 2 years | 91| 170| 215| 346| 384| 324| 194| 72| 1,796| 28.5 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 3 years | 33| 53| 101| 152| 219| 119| 33| 17| 727| 11.5 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 4 or more | 16| 42| 74| 131| 105| 19| 3| 5| 395| 6.2 years | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Total | | | | | | | | | | retarded | 465| 714| 890|1112|1236| 969| 596| 303| 6,285| | | | | | | | | | | Enrollment| | | | | | | | | | each grade|3114|2680|2548|2400|2209|1856|1284| 901|16,992| | | | | | | | | | | Per cent | | | | | | | | | | each grade|14.9|26.6|34.8|46.3|55.9|52.2|46.4|33.6| 36.9| ==========+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======+======= RETARDED STREET WORKERS IN FOUR TOLEDO COMMON SCHOOLS, OCTOBER, 1911 _Grades_ | FIRST +-+-------------- | |NORMAL AGE 6-7 | | | SECOND | +-+-------------- | | |NORMAL AGE 7-8 | | | | | THIRD | | +-+-------------- | | | |NORMAL AGE 8-9 | | | | | | | FOURTH | | | +-+-------------- | | | | |NORMAL AGE 7-8 | | | | | | | | | FIFTH | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 10-11 | | | | | | | | | | | SIXTH | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 11-12 | | | | | | | | | | | | | SEVENTH | | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 12-13 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | EIGHTH | | | | | | | +-+---------------- | | | | | | | | |NORMAL AGE 13-14 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |PER CENT OF | | | | | | | | |ALL RETARDATIONS | | | | | | | | +-----+---------- V V V V V V V V V ==========+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======+====== | | | | | | | | |TOTAL | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+------ Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 1 year | 4| 8| 22| 9| 10| 16| 9| 3| 81| 51.6 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 2 years | 4| 2| 4| 11| 7| 3| 3| | 34| 21.7 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 3 years | 1| 3| 7| 6| 5| 4| 1| | 27| 17.2 | | | | | | | | | | Retarded | | | | | | | | | | 4 or more | | 2| 4| 5| 4| | | | 15| 9.5 | | | | | | | | | | Total | | | | | | | | | | retarded | 9| 15| 37| 31| 26| 23| 13| 3| 157| | | | | | | | | | | Enrollment| 23| 34| 51| 58| 44| 37| 25| 15| 287| street | | | | | | | | | | workers | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Per cent |39.1|44.1|72.5|53.4| 59|62.1| 52| 20| 54.7| ==========+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======+======= A comparison between the table given in the report of the Toledo Board of Education for 1911 showing the total number of retarded children in the elementary schools, and a similar table compiled from the figures for the street-trading children in four Toledo schools given on pages 154 and 155, is most significant. The retardation among the total number of pupils enrolled is to be found on page 154.[110] The corresponding figures for the 287 street-trading children in the four schools are to be found on page 155. It is especially noteworthy that the percentage of retardation among the street workers is very much greater than among the total number of pupils, in every grade except the eighth, while for all the grades it is 17.8 per cent greater. This becomes all the more significant when it is remembered that the figures for the total enrollment include the street workers; hence the excess of retardation among the latter makes the showing of the former worse than if they were excluded, and consequently the comparison on page 155 does not appear to be as unfavorable to the street workers as it is in reality. On consideration of the figures in the tables on pages 154 and 155, the conclusion is inevitable that street work greatly promotes the retardation of school children. There are, of course, other factors which contribute to bring about this condition of backwardness, such as poverty, malnutrition and mental deficiency, but there can be no doubt that the evil effects of street work are in large measure responsible for the poor showing made in the schools by the children who follow such occupations. The many quotations in this chapter from authoritative sources with reference to the harmful effects of street work upon children constitute a most severe indictment. Students of labor conditions, specialists and official committees bitterly denounce the practice of permitting children to trade in city streets, and cite the consequences of such neglect. Material, physical and moral deterioration are strikingly apparent in most children who have followed street careers and been exposed to their bad environment for any length of time. We have provided splendid facilities for the correction of our delinquent children through the medium of juvenile courts, state reformatories and the probation system, but surely it would be wise to provide at the same time an ounce of prevention in addition to this pound of cure. Social workers have returned a true bill against street work by children. What will the verdict of the people be? CHAPTER VII RELATION OF STREET WORK TO DELINQUENCY The most convincing proof so far adduced to show that delinquency is a common result of street work is set forth in the volume on "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment,"[111] being part of the Report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, prepared under the direction of Dr. Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner of Labor, in response to an act of Congress in 1907 authorizing the study. The object of this official inquiry into the subject of juvenile delinquency was to discover what connection exists between delinquency and occupation or non-occupation, giving due consideration to other factors such as the character of the child's family, its home and environment. This study is based upon the records of the juvenile courts of Indianapolis, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Newark, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, showing cases of delinquency of children sixteen years of age or younger coming before these courts during the year 1907-1908. The total number of delinquents included in the study is 4839, of whom 2767 had at some time been employed and 2072 had never been employed. The entire number of offenses recorded for all the delinquents was 8797, the working children being responsible for 5471 offenses, or 62.2 per cent, while the non-working children were responsible for 3326 offenses, of 37.8 per cent. This shows that most juvenile offenses are committed by working children. The ages of the children committing the offenses recorded, ranged from six to sixteen years, and the report adds, "When it is remembered that a majority, and presumably a large majority, of all the children between these ages are not working, this preponderance of offenses among the workers assumes impressive proportions."[112] With reference to the character of the offenses it was found that the working children inclined to the more serious kinds. Recidivists were found to be far more numerous among the workers than among the non-workers. Summing up the results of the discussion to this point the report says: "It is found that the working children contribute to the ranks of delinquency a slightly larger number and a much larger proportion than do the non-workers, that this excess appears in offenses of every kind, whether trivial or serious, and among recidivists even more markedly than among first offenders."[113] With reference to the connection between recidivism and street work the report says: "The proportion of recidivism is also large among those who are working while attending school, and the numbers here are very much larger than one would wish to see. Some part of the recidivism here is undoubtedly due to the kind of occupations which a child can carry on while attending school. Selling newspapers and blacking shoes, acting as errand or delivery boy, peddling and working about amusement resorts account for over two-thirds of these boys (478 of the 664 are in one or another of these pursuits). These are all occupations in which the chances of going wrong are numerous, involving as they usually do night work, irregular hours, dubious or actively harmful associations and frequent temptations to dishonesty. In addition, something may perhaps be attributed to the overstrain due to the attempt to combine school and work. When a child of 13, a bootblack, is 'often on the street to 12 P.M.,' or when a boy one year older works six hours daily outside of school time, 'often at night,' as a telegraph messenger, it is evident that his school work is not the only thing which is likely to suffer from the excessive strain upon the immature strength, and from the character of his occupation."[114] While reflecting on the excess of working children among the delinquents, one may be inclined to attribute this to bad home influences; but the report shows that only one-fifth of the workers as opposed to nearly one-third of the non-workers come from distinctly bad homes, while from fair and good homes the proportion is approximately 76 per cent to 65 per cent. Consequently, the working child goes wrong more frequently than the non-working child in spite of his more favorable home surroundings.[115] Of the total number of delinquent boys, both working and non-working, under twelve years of age, 22.4 per cent were workers, while of those twelve to thirteen years old, 42.4 per cent were workers, and of those fourteen to sixteen years old, 80.8 per cent were workers. As comparatively few children under twelve years are at work, the fact that more than one-fifth of the delinquent boys in this age group are working children "becomes exceedingly significant." Of all children twelve to thirteen years of age, the great majority are not employed because of the fourteen-year age limit prevailing in all the states studied except Maryland; hence the larger proportion of working offenders cannot be explained by the influences of age. The increase of working delinquents above fourteen years is to be expected, because so many children go to work on reaching that age. Remembering that the proportionate excess of workers varies from two to nine times the ratio of non-workers, it is evident that this excess cannot be explained by a corresponding excess of orphanage, foreign parentage, bad home conditions or unfavorable age. As the report says, "It seems rather difficult to escape the conclusion that being at work has something to do with their going wrong."[116] The strongest argument against street work by children is to be found in the following table[117] of occupations pursued by the largest number of delinquents and giving the percentage of total delinquents engaged in each. As the report says, the following classification shows that the largest number of delinquent boys were found in those occupations in which the nature of the employment does not permit of supervision--namely, newspaper selling, errand running, delivery service and messenger service. Boys engaged in these occupations, together with bootblacks and peddlers, all work under conditions "which bring them into continual temptations to dishonesty and to other offenses."[118] ==================================================================== | PER CENT | |PER CENT BOYS | OF | GIRLS | OF | TOTAL | | TOTAL Industry or Occupation |DELINQUENT|Industry or Occupation|DELINQUENT | BOYS | | GIRLS -----------------------+----------+----------------------+---------- Newsboys | 21.83 | Domestic service: | Errand boys | 17.80 | Servant in private | Drivers and helpers, | | house | 32.18 wagon | 7.30 | In hotel, restaurant | Stores and markets | 4.23 | or boarding house | 5.44 Messengers, telegraph | 2.59 | Home workers | 16.33 Iron and steel | | Total in domestic |---------- Iron and steel | 1.84 | service | 53.95 Textiles, hosiery and | | | knit goods | 1.84 | Textiles, hosiery and| Bootblacks | 1.77 | knit goods | 12.36 Peddlers | 1.71 | Stores and markets | 5.44 Building trades | 1.64 | Clothing makers | 4.95 Theater | 1.57 | Candy and | Office boys | 1.43 | confectionery | 4.45 Glass | 1.30 | Laundry | 1.98 ==================================================================== The offenses with which the boys were charged are divided in the report into sixteen classes. The messenger service furnishes the largest proportionate number of offenders charged with "assault and battery" and "immoral conduct"; the delivery service those charged with "burglary"; bootblacking those charged with "craps and gambling," "incorrigibility and truancy"; peddling those with "larceny and runaway," and "vagrancy or runaway." The report calls attention to the greater tendency of messengers to immorality, and remarks that it is easy to see a connection between bootblacking and the offenses in which bootblacks lead. The report continues: "It is worthy to note that neither the newsboys nor errand boys, both following pursuits looked upon with disfavor, are found as contributing a _leading_ proportion of any one offense. They seem to maintain what might be called a high general level of delinquency rather than to lead in any particular direction, errand boys being found in fourteen and newsboys in fifteen of the sixteen separate offense groups."[119] For the purpose of clearly defining the connection between occupation and delinquency, and determining whether the delinquency inheres in the occupation or in the conditions under which it is carried on, there were selected six kinds of employments which are generally looked upon by social workers as morally unsafe for children, and a comparison was made of conditions as to the parentage, home surroundings, etc., prevailing among the workers in these occupations, the working delinquents generally, and the whole body of delinquents, both working and non-working. Of the delinquent boys under twelve years engaged in these six groups of employments (delivery and errand boys, newsboys and bootblacks, office boys, street vendors, telegraph messengers and in amusement resorts), nearly three-fourths were found to be newsboys and bootblacks. As four-fifths of the working delinquents under twelve years of age in all occupations are found in these six groups, it is evident that this class is largely responsible for the employment of young boys, and "comparing these figures with those for the working delinquents in all occupations we find that 58.6 per cent, or nearly three-fifths of all the working delinquents up to twelve, come from among the newsboys."[120] It was found that 54.6 per cent of all the working delinquents had both parents living, while newsboys and bootblacks, street vendors and telegraph messengers were found to be more fortunate in this respect than the great mass of working delinquents, even surpassing the whole body of delinquents, working and non-working. As the report says, "One so frequently hears of the newsboy who has no one but himself to look to that it is rather a surprise to find that the orphaned or deserted child appears among them only about half as often relatively as among the whole group of workers."[121] Of the delinquent delivery and errand boys, 78.9 per cent were found to have fair or good homes, of the newsboys and bootblacks 75.8 per cent, of the street vendors 65 per cent, and of the telegraph messengers 78.9 per cent, and in this connection the report declares, "Certainly the predominance of these selected occupations among the employments of delinquents cannot be explained by the home conditions of the children entering them."[122] The findings with respect to the messenger service fully corroborate the charges brought against it by the National Child Labor Committee. The report says: "Turning to the messengers, it is seen that they are in every respect above the average of favorable conditions. Moreover, it is well known that boys taking up this work must be bright and quick; there is no room in it for the dull and mentally weak. Plainly, then, in this case the occupation, not the kind of children who enter it, must be held responsible for its position among the pursuits from which delinquents come ... the chief charges brought against it are that the irregular work and night employment tend to break down health, that the opportunities for overcharge and for appropriating packages or parts of their contents lead to dishonesty, and that the places to which the boy is sent familiarize him with all forms of vice and tend to lead him into immorality."[123] Referring again to the messenger service, the report says: "The unfortunate effects of the inherent conditions of the work are, however, manifest. Its irregularity, the lack of any supervision during a considerable part of the time, the associations of the street and of the places to which messengers are sent, and the frequency of night work with all its demoralizing features, afford an explanation of the impatience of restraint, the reckless yielding to impulse shown in the large percentage of incorrigibility and disorderly conduct. A glance at the main table shows that the two offenses next in order are assault and battery and malicious mischief, both of which indicate the same traits. On the whole, there seems abundant reason for considering that the messenger service deserves its bad name."[124] With reference to errand and delivery boys, the report finds that as the level of favorable conditions keeps so near to the average, it seems necessary to attribute the number of delinquents furnished by this class more to the conditions of the work than to the kind of children taking it up. The occupational influences of amusement resorts, street vending and newspaper selling "are notoriously bad, but a partial explanation of the number of delinquents they furnish is unquestionably in the kind of children who enter them. It is a case of action and reaction. These occupations are easily taken up by immature children, with little or no education and no preliminary training. Such children are least likely to resist evil influences, most likely to yield to all that is bad in their environment."[125] Having shown that a connection can be traced between certain occupations and the number and kind of offenses committed by the children working in them, the report next determines to what extent a direct connection can be traced between occupation and offense. If a working child commits an offense, first, during working hours, second, in some place to which his work calls him, and third, against some person with whom his work brings him in contact, a connection may be said to exist between the misdemeanor and the employment. The report insists that either all three of the connection elements must be present, or else the offense must be very clearly the outcome of conditions related to the work, before a connection can be asserted; and it reminds the reader that the number of connection cases shown represents an understatement, probably to a considerable degree, of the real situation. The number of boy delinquents in occupations which show more than five cases of delinquency chargeable to occupation was found to be 308; of these, 100 were errand or delivery boys, 129 were newsboys, 16 were drivers or helpers, 13 were street vendors and 10 were messengers. The number of boy delinquents working at time of last offense and the number whose offenses show a connection with the occupation are compared, by occupation, in the following table,[126] p. 173. "Among the errand and delivery boys the percentage (of connection cases) is large and the connection close. Larceny accounts for over nine-tenths of these cases, the larceny usually being from the employer when the boy was sent out with goods, though in some cases it was from the house to which the boy was sent. It will be remembered that in respect to parental and home condition, age, etc., the delinquent errand boys came very close to the average, and their antecedents gave no reason to expect they would go wrong so numerously. That fact, together with the large proportion of connection cases, seems to indicate that the occupation is distinctly a dangerous one morally."[130] ========================+=============+======================== | | BOY DELINQUENTS WHOSE | | OFFENSES SHOW A | BOY | CONNECTION WITH | DELINQUENTS | OCCUPATION | WORKING AT +--------+--------------- OCCUPATION OR INDUSTRY | TIME OF | | Per Cent | LAST | | of Boy | OFFENSE | Number | Delinquents | | | in Occupation | | | Working ------------------------+-------------+--------+--------------- In amusement resorts | 40[127] | 7 | 17.5 Domestic service | 50[128] | 14 | 28.0 Driver or helper | 107 | 16 | 14.9 Errand or delivery boys | 261 | 100 | 38.3 Iron and steel workers | 27 | 7 | 25.9 Messengers | 38 | 10 | 26.3 Newsboys and bootblacks | 346[129] | 129 | 37.2 Street vendors | 25 | 13 | 52.0 Stores and markets | 62 | 12 | 19.3 ========================+=============+========+=============== As the various forms of immorality are practiced in secret, the report truly says that the evils which are most associated with a messenger's life could hardly appear in these studies. "A trace of them is found in the case of one boy sentenced for larceny. After his arrest it was found that he was a confirmed user of cocaine, having acquired the habit in the disreputable houses to which his work took him. Perhaps something of the same kind is indicated by the fact that one of the few cases of drunkenness occurring among working delinquents came, as a connection case, from this small group of messengers. For the most part, however, the connection offenses (by messengers) were some form of dishonesty, usually appropriating parcels sent out for delivery, though in some cases collecting charges on prepaid packages was added to this."[131] The newsboys almost equal the errand boys in their percentage of connection cases, though their offenses have a much wider range; in fact, the connection cases for newsboys include a greater variety of offenses than any other occupation studied. Beggary appears for the first time, there being two cases, in both of which the selling of papers was a mere pretext, enabling the boys to approach passers-by. Street vendors were found to show the highest percentage of connection cases, larceny being the leading offense. The report concludes: "It is a striking fact that in spite of the incompleteness of the data, a direct connection between the occupation and the offense has been found to exist in the cases of practically one-fourth of the boys employed at the time of their latest offense. It is also a striking fact that while the delinquent boys working at the time of their latest offense were scattered through more than fifty occupations, over six-sevenths of the connection cases are found among those working in street occupations, and that more than three-fifths come from two groups of workers--the errand or delivery boys, and the newsboys and bootblacks. It is also significant that the connection cases form so large a percentage of the total cases among the street traders, the messengers, and the errand or delivery boys, their proportion ranging from over one-fourth to over one-half, according to the occupation."[132] In considering the effect of night work upon the morals of children, the report says, "The messengers and newsboys show both large numbers and large percentages of night work, thus giving additional ground for the general opinion as to the undesirable character of their work"; and again, "In the following occupations the cases of night work are more numerous than they should be in proportion to the number ever employed in these pursuits: bootblacks, bowling alley and pool room, glass, hotel, messengers, newsboys and theaters and other amusement resorts."[133] More than one-fourth of the working boy delinquents were found to be attending day school. More than half of these pupils were newsboys and bootblacks. It was found that the more youthful the worker, the stronger is his tendency toward irregular attendance at school. Eighty-three boy delinquents were devoting eleven or more hours per day to work, and of these, 31 were errand or delivery boys, 7 were hucksters or peddlers, 6 were messengers and 2 were newsboys or bootblacks. "For both sexes, the workers show a greater tendency than the non-workers to go wrong, even where home and neighborhood surroundings appear favorable, but this tendency is not so marked among the girls as among the boys."[134] This report of the government investigation furnishes most conclusive evidence as to the evil character of street trading in general. It bears out the description so aptly made by a recent writer: "The streets are the proverbial schools of vice and crime. If the factory is the Scylla, the street is the Charybdis."[135] Another American writer has lately declared: "A prolific cause of juvenile delinquency is the influence of the street trades on the working boy. No other form of work has such demoralizing consequences.... These boys are brought into the juvenile court, and their misdemeanors are often so great that reformatory treatment is necessary for them. Accordingly they represent a large proportion of the boys in the different institutions. The demoralization produced by the street trades affects others than those engaged in such trades, but the latter are the chief sufferers; therefore the importance of legislation which will shut off this source of infection."[136] A Chicago physician took occasion to look into the records of the juvenile court of that city in 1909, and found that the first 100 boys and 25 girls examined that year were representative of the 2500 delinquents brought into the court during the preceding year. Not less than 57 of these boys had been engaged in street work--43 as newsboys, 12 as errand boys and messengers and 2 as peddlers. Only 13 out of the entire number had never been employed. Sixty of them were physically subnormal; the general physical condition of the girls was found to be much better than that of the boys of the same age, although 40 per cent of the girls were suffering from acquired venereal disease.[137] In the autumn of 1910 there were 647 boys confined in the Indiana state reformatory, which is known as the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield. Of this number 219, or 33.8 per cent, had formerly been engaged in street work. To determine the relative delinquency of street workers and boys who have never pursued such occupations, it would be necessary to compare these 219 delinquents with the total number of street workers in Indiana and also to compare the total number of inmates who had never followed street occupations with the total number of boys within the same age limits in Indiana. A comparison of the two percentages would be illuminating, but is impossible because it is not known how many street workers there are in the state. However, it is safe to assume that the number of street-working boys in Indiana is much less than one third of the total number of boys. If we accept this as true, then the figures indicate that street work promotes delinquency, because one third of all the delinquents in the state reformatory had been so engaged. The frequent assertion that, merely because a large percentage of the inmates of correctional institutions were at some time engaged in street work, such employment is therefore responsible for their delinquency, cannot be accepted alone as proof of the injurious character of this class of occupations, as it is not known how long each offender was engaged in such work, nor are the other causes contributing to the delinquency of each boy properly considered or even known. This defect is avoided in the government's Report on Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment, which, with reference to the common practice of jumping at conclusions in this way, says, "This appears to show that selling newspapers is a morally dangerous occupation, but the danger cannot be measured, since it is not known what proportion of the working children are newsboys, or what proportion of the newsboys never come to grief."[138] The following tables are of interest as showing in detail the facts as to Indiana's delinquent boy street workers, who are confined in the state reformatory:-- STREET WORKERS IN INDIANA BOYS' SCHOOL, 1910 _Table A. Distribution among Street Occupations_ ==============+============+=====+======+=====+========+======+===== COMMITTED FOR | MESSENGERS |NEWS-|BOOT- |PEDD-|DELIVERY|CAB |TOTAL | |BOYS |BLACKS|LERS |BOYS |DRIVER| +-----+------+ | | | | | | Day |Night | | | | | | --------------+-----+------+-----+------+-----+--------+------+----- Larceny | 3 | 22 | 88 | 3 | 6 | 3 | | 125 Incorrigi- | | | | | | | | bility | | 5 | 30 | 1 | 3 | | 1 | 40 Truancy | | 2 | 27 | | 3 | | | 32 Assault | | | | | | | | and battery | | 2 | 5 | 1 | | | | 8 Burglary | | 1 | | | | 2 | | 3 Forgery | | 2 | | | | | | 2 Manslaughter | | | 1 | | | | | 1 Other charges | 1 | 2 | 5 | | | | | 8 --------------+-----+------+-----+------+-----+--------+------+----- Totals | 4 | 36 | 156 | 5 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 219 ==============+=====+======+=====+======+=====+========+======+===== _Table B. Ages when at Work at these Occupations_ ==================+=======+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======== | UNDER | | | | | | | | | 10 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | TOTALS ------------------+-------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-------- Day messengers | | | | 1 | 1 | 2 | | | 4 Night messengers | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 12 | 11 | 3 | | 36 Newsboys | 29 | 29 | 28 | 36 | 19 | 14 | 1 | | 156 Bootblacks | 3 | | 1 | | 1 | | | | 5 Peddlers | 1 | 4 | | 2 | 3 | 1 | | 1 | 12 Delivery boys | | 2 | | 1 | 1 | | | 1 | 5 Cab drivers | | | | | 1 | | | | 1 ------------------+-------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-------- Totals | 34 | 37 | 31 | 45 | 38 | 28 | 4 | 2 | 219 ==================+=======+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======== _Table C. Ages at Time of Commitment_ ================+=======+===+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====== | UNDER | | | | | | | | | | COMMITTED FOR | 9 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | Total ----------------+-------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ Larceny | 1 | 2 | 8 | 16 | 16 | 24 | 28 | 19 | 10 | 1 | 125 Incorrigibility | | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | | 40 Truancy | | 2 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 1 | | 32 Assault and | | | | | | | | | | | battery | | | | | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | | | 8 Burglary | | | | | | | 2 | | | 1 | 3 Forgery | | | | | | | 1 | 1 | | | 2 Manslaughter | | | | | | | 1 | | | | 1 Other charges | | | | | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | | | 8 ----------------+-------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------ Totals | 1 | 5 | 15 | 26 | 26 | 40 | 52 | 33 | 19 | 2 | 219 ================+=======+===+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====== _Table D. Nationality and Orphanage of Street Workers_ OCCUPATIONS +--------------------------------------- Day messengers | +--------------------------------- Night messengers | | +--------------------------- Newsboys | | | +--------------------- Bootblacks | | | | +--------------- Peddlers | | | | | +--------- Delivery boys | | | | | | +--- Cab driver | | | | | | | V V V V V V V Totals ===============+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= AMERICAN | 3 | 25 | 69 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 110 NEGRO | | 5 | 59 | 1 | 2 | 3 | | 70 GERMAN | | 3 | 13 | | 1 | | | 17 IRISH | | 1 | 8 | | 1 | | | 10 POLISH | 1 | 1 | 3 | | 1 | | | 6 FRENCH | | | 2 | | 1 | | | 3 SCOTCH | | 1 | | | | | | 1 ITALIAN | | | 1 | | | | | 1 JEWISH | | | 1 | | | | | 1 ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- FATHER | Yes | 4 | 30 | 107 | 5 | 7 | 4 | | 157 LIVING | No | | 6 | 49 | | 5 | 1 | 1 | 62 ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- MOTHER | Yes | 3 | 30 | 119 | 5 | 11 | 5 | 1 | 174 LIVING | No | 1 | 6 | 37 | | 1 | | | 45 =========+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= _Table E. Hours and Earnings of Street Workers_ (In only 91 cases were the hours given, and earnings in only 116 cases.) OCCUPATIONS +-------------------------------- Day messengers | +--------------------------- Night messengers | | +---------------------- Newsboys | | | +----------------- Bootblacks | | | | +------------ Peddlers | | | | | +------- Delivery boys | | | | | | +-- Cab driver | | | | | | | V V V V V V V Totals ====================+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======= HOURS | | | | | | | | Day | | | | | | | | All | 3 | | 29 | 5 | 11 | 5 | | 53 Morning | | | 10 | | | | | 10 Afternoon | | | 11 | | | | | 11 --------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+------- Night | | | | | | | | All | | 6 | 1 | | | | | 7 Before midnight | | 2 | 4 | | 1 | | 1 | 8 After midnight | | 1 | 1 | | | | | 2 Totals | 3 | 9 | 56 | 5 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 91 ====================+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======= DAILY EARNINGS | | | | | | | | Under 50 cents | 1 | | 47 | 1 | 6 | | | 55 50-75 cents | 1 | 8 | 23 | 3 | 3 | 3 | | 41 75 cents-$1.00 | 1 | 4 | 5 | | 3 | 2 | 1 | 16 $1.25-$1.50 | | 1 | 3 | | | | | 4 Totals | 3 | 13 | 78 | 4 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 116 ====================+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+======= _Table F. Non-Street Workers in Indiana Boys' School, 1910_ COMMITTED FOR +--------------------------------- Larceny | +--------------------------- Truancy | | +--------------------- Incorrigibility | | | +--------------- Burglary | | | | +--------- Assault and battery | | | | | +--- Other charges | | | | | | V V V V V V Totals ===============+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= AMERICAN | 156 | 66 | 53 | 5 | 2 | 11 | 293 NEGRO | 40 | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 65 GERMAN | 12 | 4 | 4 | | 1 | 2 | 23 IRISH | 7 | 3 | 5 | | 1 | 1 | 17 POLISH | 10 | 3 | 3 | | | | 16 ENGLISH | 3 | | 1 | 1 | | | 5 JEWISH | 1 | | 1 | | | | 2 SWEDISH | | | 1 | | | | 1 FRENCH | 2 | | | | | | 2 MEXICAN | 1 | | | | | | 1 ITALIAN | 1 | | | 1 | | | 2 HUNGARIAN | 1 | | | | | | 1 ---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- TOTALS | 234 | 86 | 75 | 8 | 6 | 19 | 428 ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- FATHER | Yes | 168 | 62 | 44 | 6 | 3 | 15 | 298 LIVING | No | 66 | 24 | 31 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 130 ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- MOTHER | Yes | 182 | 62 | 50 | 7 | 5 | 17 | 323 LIVING | No | 52 | 24 | 25 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 105 =========+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= _Table G. Non-Street Workers in Indiana Boys' School, 1910_ COMMITTED FOR +--------------------------------- Larceny | +--------------------------- Truancy | | +--------------------- Incorrigibility | | | +--------------- Burglary | | | | +--------- Assault and battery | | | | | +--- Other charges AGES AT | | | | | | COMMITMENT V V V V V V Totals ===========+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= UNDER 9 | 9 | 7 | 1 | | | 2 | 19 9 | 7 | 10 | 7 | | | 3 | 27 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 1 | | 2 | 27 11 | 20 | 10 | 9 | 2 | | 3 | 44 12 | 25 | 17 | 8 | | | 1 | 51 13 | 33 | 14 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 61 14 | 46 | 10 | 14 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 73 15 | 47 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 66 16 | 28 | 3 | 12 | | 1 | | 44 17 | 9 | | 2 | | | 3 | 14 OVER 17 | | | | 1 | 1 | | 2 -----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------- TOTALS | 234 | 86 | 75 | 8 | 6 | 19 | 428 ===========+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+======= _Table H. Behavior in Institution_ =========+================+==================== | STREET WORKERS | NON-STREET WORKERS ---------+----------------+-------------------- Good | 39 or 18% | 95 or 22% Average | 175 or 80% | 321 or 75% Bad | 5 or 2% | 12 or 3% ---------+----------------+-------------------- Totals | 219 | 428 =========+================+==================== By far the largest number of street-working delinquents had been newsboys, these being followed by messengers, peddlers, bootblacks and delivery boys in the order given. From a hasty glance at these tables one might conclude that street workers are not so liable to become delinquent as those who never follow street occupations, because of the smaller number of the former; but it should be remembered that the ratio of street-working inmates to the entire number of street-working boys in Indiana is much greater than the ratio of the other inmates to the whole body of non-street-working children in the state. In comparing Tables C and G it is seen that the street workers and the non-street workers were committed for practically the same offenses, and that their distribution according to offense does not vary widely. It is significant that a much smaller proportion of the street workers were committed to the institution under the age of ten years, than of the non-street workers, indicating that street occupations (which are not usually entered upon before the age of ten years), if followed for a year or two, contribute largely to the promotion of delinquency. From a comparison of Tables D and F it will be observed that the prevalence of delinquency among the street workers cannot be explained on the ground of orphanage, as only 28 per cent were fatherless and 21 per cent motherless, while of the non-street workers 30 per cent were fatherless and 25 per cent were motherless. This indicates (1) that street work in the great majority of cases is not made necessary by orphanage, and (2) that street work causes delinquency in spite of good home conditions so far as the presence of both parents contributes to the making of a good home. Furthermore, it will be noted in Table E that nearly half of the children for whom figures on income could be obtained earned less than fifty cents per day--a small return on the heavy investment in the risk of health and character. The difference in behavior at the institution between the street workers and the others is shown in Table H to be almost negligible, the latter making a slightly better showing. An English writer says: "There is no difficulty in understanding how street trading and newspaper selling lead to gambling. We are told by those who are best able to judge, that of the young thieves and prostitutes in the city of Manchester, 47 per cent had begun as street hawkers. For the younger boys and girls such an occupation, especially at night, turns the streets into nurseries of crime. The newspaper sellers are not exposed to quite the same dangers, but they are nearly all gamblers. They gamble on anything and everything, from the horse races reported hour by hour in the papers they sell, to the numbers on the passing cabs, and they end by gambling with their lives."[139] CHAPTER VIII THE STRUGGLE FOR REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES The economic activities of children in city streets, commonly called street trades, are not specifically covered by the provisions of child labor laws except in the District of Columbia and the states of Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. The laws of many other states as well as of those mentioned, however, prohibit children under fourteen years of age from being employed or permitted to work in the distribution or transmission of merchandise or messages. If newspapers are merchandise, then children under fourteen years would not be allowed to deliver newspapers under the provision just stated. This raises a nice question as to what is included in the term "merchandise." That there is any distinction between newspapers and merchandise is practically denied by the street-trades laws of Utah and New Hampshire which provide that children under certain ages shall not sell "newspapers, magazines, periodicals or _other_ merchandise in any street or public place"; the question of delivery, however, is left open by these laws. The Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, in the case of District of Columbia _vs._ Reider, sustained the juvenile court of the District in its decision that newspapers are not merchandise and consequently that children under fourteen years of age engaged in delivering newspapers are not affected by the law.[140] The judge of the trial court stated in his opinion, "No one will seriously contend that the nature of the employment in the case at bar is at all harmful to the child." The case at bar was the prosecution of a route agent for a morning newspaper on account of having employed a minor under fourteen years of age to deliver newspapers. This opinion is typical of the misplaced sympathy so commonly bestowed upon these young "merchants" of the street. In the case cited, the court permitted itself to be drawn aside into an interpretation of the letter of the law instead of viewing the matter in the light of its spirit. The purpose of such a law is to _prevent the labor_ of children, not to distinguish between closely related forms of labor. Its object is to afford protection, not to provoke discussion of purely technical points. The _labor_ of delivering merchandise does not differ in any respect from the _labor_ of delivering newspapers (the possibly greater weight of merchandise does not alter the case, inasmuch as it is usually carried about in wagons); and as the child labor law of the District of Columbia forbids the delivery of merchandise by children under fourteen years at any time, it follows that the delivery of newspapers by such children should not be allowed, because the intent of the law is to protect them from the probable consequences of such work. Moreover, the District of Columbia law prohibits children under sixteen years from delivering merchandise before six o'clock in the morning; yet, under the interpretation given by the juvenile court, it is perfectly proper for a child even under the age of _fourteen_ years to perform the _labor_ of delivery before that hour, provided he handles newspapers instead of packages. The inconsistency of this is only too apparent. The spirit of the law is lost sight of in the close interpretation of its wording. This is one of the obstacles always encountered in the movement for child labor reform after prohibitory legislation has been enacted. American legislation on street trading still clings persistently and pathetically to the theory that uncontrolled labor is much better for children than labor under the supervision of adults, and consequently authorizes very young children to do certain kinds of work in the streets on their own responsibility, while forbidding them to work at other street occupations even under the control of older and more experienced persons. This official incongruity must ultimately be rescinded and replaced by more rational and comprehensive legislation. The fallacy of permitting such a distinction on the ground that the child is an independent "merchant" in the one case and an employee in the other, must also be abandoned in favor of a more enlightened policy. _Present Laws and Ordinances_ The following table shows all the laws and ordinances governing street trading by children in existence in the United States in 1911. The city council of Detroit passed an ordinance in 1877 which forbids newsboys and bootblacks to ply their trades in the streets without a permit from the mayor. No age limit is fixed, no distinction is made between the sexes and no hours are specified. Applicants for the permit are customarily referred to the chief truant officer for approval, and as a rule permits are not issued to boys under ten years of age or to girls. An annual license fee of ten cents is charged, and the license holder is supplied with a numbered badge which must be worn conspicuously. Owing to its manifest weakness, this ordinance is of little avail. It will be observed from the following table that the common age limit for boys in street trading is ten years. When we pause to reflect on the import of this, it is hard to realize that intelligent American communities actually tolerate such an absurdly meager restriction; yet the movement for reform has progressed even this far in only a very small part of the country--in most places there is no restriction whatever! Some day, and that not in the very remote future, we shall look back upon the authorized exploitation of the present period with the same degree of incredulity with which we now regard the horrors of child labor in England during the early part of the nineteenth century. STATE LAWS ============+===========+==========+=======+=============+================= STATES | AGE LIMIT | LICENSES | HOURS | ENFORCEMENT | PENALTIES ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Colorado, |Girls, 10; | | |Factory |$5-$100 fine for 1911 |any work | | |inspectors |first offense, |in streets | | | |$100-$200 fine or | | | | |imprisonment 90 | | | | |days for 2d | | | | |offense for | | | | |employers. $5-$25 | | | | |fine for parents ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- District of |Boys, 10; |Boys, |6 A.M. |Factory |Left to Columbia, |Girls, 16; |10-15 |10 P.M.|inspectors |discretion of 1908 |bootblack- | | | |juvenile court |ing, | | | | |selling | | | | |anything | | | | ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Missouri, |Boys, 10; | | |Factory |Max. fine $100 or 1911 |girls, 16; | | |inspectors |max. imprisonment |selling | | | |one year, for |anything | | | |child ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Nevada, 1911|Boys, 10; | | | |Child dealt with |girls, 10; | | | |as delinquent |selling | | | | |anything | | | | ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- New Hamp- |Boys, 10; | | |Factory |$5-$200 fine or shire, 1911 |girls, 16; | | |inspectors; |imprisonment |publica- | | |truant |10-30 days, for |tions or | | |officers |employers and |other mdse.| | | |parents |Boys, 10; | | | | |girls, 10; | | | | |bootblack- | | | | |ing | | | | ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- New York, |Boys, 10; |Boys, |6 A.M. |Police and |Dealt with accor- 1903 |girls, 16; |10-13 |10 P.M.|truant |ding to law |publica- | | |officers | |tions | | | | ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Oklahoma, |Girls, 16; | | |Commissioner |$10-$50 fine or 1909 |publica- | | |of Labor |imprisonment |tions | | | |10-30 days for | | | | |child ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Utah, 1911, |Boys, 12; |Boys, |Not | |$25-$200 fine or 1st& 2d |girls 16; |12-15 |after | |imprisonment class |publica- | |9 P.M. | |10-30 days, for cities |tions or | | | |employers and |other mdse.| | | |parents |Boys, 12; |Boys, | | | |girls, 12; |12-15 | | | |bootblack- |Girls, | | | |ing |12-15 | | | ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Wisconsin, |Boys, 12; |Boys, |5 A.M. |Factory |$25-$100 fine or 1909, as |girls, 18; |12-15 |6.30 |inspectors |imprisonment 10- amended |publica- | | P.M., | |60 days for pa- 1911, 1st |tions. | |winter | |rents permitting, class |Boys, 14; | |7.30 | |and others em- cities |girls, 18, | | P.M., | |ploying, child |all others | |summer;| |under 16 to | | |publi- | |peddle without | | |cations| |permit. Same for | | | | |newspapers allow- | | | | |ing boys under | | | | |16 about office | | | | |between 9 A.M. | | | | |and 3 P.M. on | | | | |school days ------------+-----------+----------+-------+-------------+----------------- Massachu- |Mayor and aldermen or selectmen may make re-|Max. fine $10 for setts, 1902 |gulations of bootblacking and sale of news- |child; max. fine as amended, |papers, merchandise, etc; may prohibit such |$200 or max. 1910 |sale or trades; or may require license to be|imprisonment 6 |obtained from them. School committees in |months for parent |cities have these powers as to children |allowing, person |under 14 years. |employing, or | |any one furnish- | |ing articles to, | |a child to sell ============+============================================+================= CITY ORDINANCES ==========+===============+==========+=========+=============+============= CITIES | AGE LIMIT | LICENSES | HOURS | ENFORCEMENT | PENALTIES ----------+---------------+----------+---------+-------------+------------- Boston, | Boys, 11; | Boys, | 6 A.M. | Supervisor |Revocation 1902, by | girls, 14; | 11-13 | 8 P.M., | of licensed |of license school | bootblacking, | | winter | minors, |and fine as committee | selling | | 9 P.M., | police and |stated for | anything | | summer | truant |Massachusetts | | | | officers | ----------+---------------+----------+---------+-------------+------------- Cincin- | Boys, 10; | Boys, | 6 A.M. | Police, |Fine $1-$5 nati, 1909| girls, 16; | 10-13 | 8 P.M. | truant and |for child | bootblacking, | | | probation | | selling | | | officers | | anything | | | | ----------+---------------+----------+---------+-------------+------------- Hartford, | Boys, 10; | Boys, | Not | |Revocation 1910 | girls, 10; | 10-13 | during | |of license | selling | Girls, | school | |by school | anything | 10-13 | hours | |superinten- | | | or | |dent | | | after 8 | | | | | P.M. | | ----------+---------------+----------+---------+-------------+------------- Newark, | Boys, 10; | Boys, | Not | Police and |Child placed 1904 | girls, 16; | 10-13 | between | truant |on probation | newspapers | | 9 A.M. | officers |or committed | | | and 3 | |to Newark | | | P.M. | |City Home at | | | nor | |expense of | | | after | |parent | | | 10 P.M. | | ==========+===============+==========+=========+=============+============= In an attempt to minimize the bad effects of street trading most of the communities which have enacted laws or ordinances on the subject provide for the issuance of licenses to boys, and in some cases also to girls, in the belief that in this way the work of the children can best be brought under some degree of control. However, this is merely temporizing, although it affords an opportunity to gather facts and undoubtedly marks a step toward a better solution of the problem. This is brought out clearly by a recent British report on street trading: "Our general impression, gathered in towns in which by-laws had been made, was that, though in exceptional cases much good had resulted from their adoption, on the whole this method of dealing with what we have come to consider an unquestionable evil, has not proved adequate or satisfactory. In many instances it has been pointed out to us that a system of licensing and badging is but a method of legalizing what is indisputably an evil, and that a set of by-laws, however rigorously enforced, can at best only modify the difficulties of the position."[141] The social workers of Chicago, keenly alive to the menace of the situation, bewail the lack of protection for street workers in the following words: "The child labor law and the compulsory school law and the juvenile court law form the body of protective legislation which has been developing in behalf of the children of Illinois during the past twenty years. By none of the three, however, except in so far as street trading by a child under ten is counted an element in dependency, is the street-trading child safeguarded against parental neglect or greed, the vicious sights and sounds of the city street and the demoralizing habit of irregular employment."[142] _Opposition to Regulation_ The opposition to bringing the street trades under some degree of restriction has come, as might be expected, from very interested sources. In Illinois the newspaper publishers figured prominently in the movement to prevent the passage of the street-trades measure introduced in the legislature of that state at its session of 1911. This has not always been the case, however, as the circulation managers of the five leading daily newspapers of St. Louis wrote letters to the legislature of Missouri favoring the passage of that section of the child labor bill of 1911, which provided that boys under ten years and girls under sixteen years should not sell anything in any street or public place within the state. This provision was enacted into law, but it is safe to say that if the rational age limit of sixteen years for boys had been advocated instead of ten years, the newspapers would have been most active in opposing this section. In Cincinnati the circulation managers of the newspapers most affected by the street-trades ordinance passed by the City Council in 1909 agreed to its provisions before the measure was submitted to the Council, and consequently it passed without opposition. In New Haven and Hartford repeated attempts have been made to secure regulation of street trading by means of city ordinances, and at two sessions of the state legislature bills have been introduced which provided for such restriction, but all these efforts have been persistently fought by a leading newspaper of Hartford in which city it has always been customary to have girls as well as boys selling newspapers on the street. In 1910, a city ordinance was passed in Hartford providing that boys and girls under ten years should be prohibited from trading in the streets and that between the ages of ten and fourteen years they should be licensed and not allowed to sell after 8 P.M. The newsgirls were not banished from the street because it was held that they were "a pretty good sort of girl after all," and that so long as it could not be proved that they were _demoralized_ by the work, they should be permitted to go on with it. In other words, the city clings to the fine old American policy of delaying action until some calamity makes it necessary. The objections offered by interested parties to the by-laws drafted by the London County Council at a hearing held in 1906, show that the law of self preservation operates in England as in other quarters of the Earth. News agents, employing little boys to deliver newspapers, declared that conditions were not bad; that the work was healthful; that the wages were a great help to poor parents; that they could not afford to employ older boys; that the lads should be allowed to begin at 6 A.M. and work not more than ten hours a day outside of school with a maximum weekly limit of twenty-five hours; that to prohibit the delivery of newspapers before 7 A.M. and after 7 P.M. would be a great injustice to the trade; that boys wouldn't stay in bed even if 7 A.M. were fixed as the hour for beginning work; that such work does not interfere with schooling; that the boys are well looked after; in short, that the by-laws would ruin them and bring starvation to the children. One news agent in declaiming against the hours fixed for the delivery of newspapers, insisted that the restriction would throw boys out of employment and send them to trade in the streets with their undesirable associations, apparently unmindful of the fact that delivery boys themselves worked in that environment. The dairymen were horrified at the limit placed on hours, urging that the little boys in their employ should begin to deliver milk at 5 A.M., as early work was beneficial and the wages useful to poor parents. Shopkeepers denounced the by-laws as too drastic, because they would prevent such light work as errand running at noon and casual employment in the evening after 7, resulting in hardship to both parents and children; one acknowledged that if he were prevented from employing cheap labor his business would suffer; another said that he employed a boy at noon and also from 5.30 to 9 P.M., the work being light and the parents satisfied, and that the training was good for boys. A fruiterer actually declared that the limit of eight hours on Saturday would make a boy valueless to him; another said he employed a boy for one hour in the morning, from 6 to 9 in the evening, and also on Saturday morning and evening, in running errands, and that the work was not heavy; another employed boys after school from 6 to 9.30 P.M., insisting that the work was good for them, as it kept them from the street and gave them an insight into business habits.[143] It should be remembered that all this work was performed by the children in addition to attending school both morning and afternoon. The testimony given before the British Interdepartmental Committee of 1901 by the secretary of an association representing many thousand retail shopkeepers, would be amusing if it were not so sinister. He presented the subject of child labor in a most favorable aspect, declaring that the wages were needed on account of poverty in the families; that the work was light and had a _very beneficial_ effect on health because it was done in the open air; that good meals were given in addition to cash wages and were _very beneficial_; that the effect on the boys' character was _very beneficial_, as the work cultivated businesslike habits and kept the boys from running the streets, frequently affording promotion to the higher grades of shopkeeping.[144] Another British Committee, investigating conditions in Ireland, reported, "We found but one witness (a newspaper manager of Belfast) to testify that the present conditions of selling papers in the street were satisfactory and cannot be improved; and that instead of tending to demoralize, they have the opposite effect."[145] _Ways and Means of Regulating Street Work_ As to the control of street trading by children there are two methods by which the desired end may be approached. First, a mutual agreement as to self-imposed restrictions among the managers of all the business interests in connection with which children work on the streets. This method, however, can be dismissed from consideration at once on account of its impracticability. Street work embraces many different kinds of commercial activity, and as one manager is the competitor of all others in the same line of business and is free to adopt such lawful means of placing his wares on the market as he sees fit, it would be clearly impossible to force any one into such an agreement against his will. Moreover, new competitors may enter the field at any time who would not be bound by the agreement of the others, and consequently this would soon be broken by the force of competition following the intrusion of these new parties. Second, regulation by constituted legislative authority. This is the more feasible method, and such regulation may be obtained from either of two sources--the municipality or the state. There is a question as to which of the two is the better for the purpose. Regulation by the state has the advantage of making the provisions apply uniformly to all cities within its borders and is obtained by no more effort than is required to get an ordinance through the Council of a single municipality. On the other hand, the municipal ordinance has the advantage of being secured by residents of the community who are intelligently concerned in the local problem and who will therefore take an active interest in having its provisions enforced. However, the good features of both these methods are united in the English plan, a modification of which has been adopted by Massachusetts. According to this plan the state fixes a minimum amount of restriction and authorizes local authorities, including boards of education, to increase the scope of restriction, and provides penalties for violation of the same. As to the degree of regulation, an ultra-conservative measure would prohibit boys under ten and girls under sixteen years from selling anything at any time in the streets or public places of cities, while the age limit for boys is raised to fourteen years for night work. The issuance of licenses to boys ten to fourteen years of age who wish to engage in street trading is the usual accompaniment of such restriction, and while ordinarily of little avail, it could be made of some assistance to truant and probation officers in their efforts to enforce the compulsory education and delinquency laws. The age limit for boys has been advanced to eleven years by the School Committee of Boston, and to twelve years for newsboys and fourteen years for other street workers by the state of Wisconsin. But all efforts to secure such regulation should be based upon the principle that street trading is an undesirable form of labor for children, and consequently should be subject to at least the same restrictions as other forms of child labor. _Probable Course of Regulation in Future_ American child labor laws usually contain a provision to the effect that no child under sixteen years shall engage in any employment that may be considered dangerous to its life or limb or where its health may be injured or morals depraved. This is sonorous, but ineffective,--the particular kinds of improper work should be specified. In this list of undesirable forms of labor, street work should be included. Great Britain has had far more experience in the matter of regulating the work of children than any state of this country, and, in the light of all this experience, her departmental committee of 1910 has emphatically declared that street trading by boys under seventeen and girls under eighteen years should be absolutely prohibited. This should be our ideal in America. Commenting on the banishment of young girls from the streets of New York City, Mrs. Florence Kelley says, "If the law against street selling and peddling by girls to the age of sixteen years can be thus effectively enforced in a city in which the depths of poverty among the immigrants are so frightful as they are in New York, there is no reason for assuming that it is impossible to prohibit efficiently street selling by boys."[146] Girls under eighteen years should never be allowed to go out in the streets for commercial purposes, no matter how innocent these purposes may be in themselves. One of the most important features of the movement in America should be the absolute prohibition of such work by minors under eighteen years at night; this is urged because it is in harmony with the provisions of our most advanced child labor laws and is fully justified because of the evil character of the influences rampant in cities after dark, and because such night work affords children a constant opportunity to cultivate their acquaintance with, if not to know for the first time, conditions from which every effort should be made to isolate them. For night messenger service the age limit should be twenty-one years. The enforcement of such regulation as is now provided by the few states and cities which have given this subject any attention, is variously intrusted to factory inspectors, police, truant and probation officers, but in Boston the school committee has delivered this task into the hands of one man who is known as the supervisor of licensed minors. The Boston plan for enforcement seems to have given better results than the common system of intrusting the enforcement to officers already overburdened with other duties, but it is clearly impossible for one officer to handle the situation unaided in a large city--the plan would be considerably improved by the appointment of several assistants. "The licensing by the Boston School Committee of minors of school age to trade in the streets of Boston came about through an act of legislature in 1902. The need of supervision of minors licensed under this act became very apparent, as their numbers increased and their street influences reacting on their school life became better understood. To meet this need a supervisor of licensed minors was appointed whose duties are to secure the strict enforcement of the law, regulations governing the various forms of street work of children of school age, also to have general supervision of the details of the licensing department."[147] Human nature in children is not in the least unlike human nature in adults. Just as we need an interstate commerce commission backed by the federal government to supervise the large business affairs of men, so do we need a supervisor of children's commercial activities in city streets, clothed with authority by the municipal government. The Boston plan is now being advocated for New York City: "In the street trades the Committee recommends that the principle of supervision of licensed minors, as practised for a number of years in Boston, be adopted, and that an office be created in the Department of Education that shall have supervisory control of all minors engaged in street trades. It recommends furthermore that the minimum age limit for licensing boys be raised from ten to fourteen years, and that the legal limit for selling at night be reduced from 10 to 8, to correspond more nearly with the provisions of labor legislation dealing with children in factories."[148] The first attempt to control the situation in New York City was intrusted to the police, but the results were not satisfactory, as they looked upon the matter with indifference. Subsequently the truant officers also were charged with this duty, and in 1908 four men were assigned to give their entire attention to this work between 3 P.M. and 11 P.M., and at present eight men are so engaged, but no very marked improvement is noticeable. In Rochester the enforcement of the state law was brought about through the efforts of the women of that city; both business women and shoppers were asked to consider themselves members of a vigilance committee and to notify the board of education and the police department by telephone whenever any violations of the law were observed upon the streets. Within five days so many complaints had been received that both the superintendent of schools and the president of the board of education arranged a meeting at which their attention was invited to the widespread disregard of the law. As a result, steps were taken at once to insure enforcement, and finally the board of education appointed one truant officer, and the commissioner of police detailed a policeman especially for the work of reporting violations. In addition to providing an improved method of enforcement, efforts have been made in Boston to deal more effectively with the difficult problem of keeping street traders out of saloons, the licensing board having issued an order to all holders of liquor licenses to prohibit minors from loitering upon the licensed premises, more especially newsboys and messenger boys. The efforts of the school committee to regulate street trading in Boston have been further supplemented by organizing a Newsboys' Republic, which is described as follows: "Perhaps the most important result of supervision so far has been the gradual introduction of a plan for self government among the licensed newsboys through the so-called Boston School Newsboys' Association. This association is pledged to the enforcement of the license rules and the suppression of smoking, gambling and other street vices, more or less common among the street boys of certain neighborhoods. The association is run by the boys themselves, through officers of their own choosing, consisting of one newsboy captain and two lieutenants for each school district; also a chief captain and general secretary and an executive board of seven elected from the ranks of the captains. The general duties of the captains and lieutenants are, first, to see that all licensed newsboys of their respective school districts live up to their license rules, and the principles of the association. Secondly, to see that all boys not licensed shall not interfere with or in any way hurt the business of the licensed newsboys. These duties are performed through weekly inspections on the street, supplemented by monthly inspection at schools, at which time branch meetings of all the boys in each district are frequently held."[149] CHAPTER IX DEVELOPMENT OF STREET TRADES REGULATION IN EUROPE _Great Britain_ Attention was called to the problem of street trading by children in England for the first time, in a comprehensive way, in 1897. A few close observers of social conditions noticed that the situation was so grave as to demand an immediate remedy, and accordingly, upon their initiative, an organization was effected for the purpose of studying the subject. This organization took the form of a private association known as the Committee on Wage-Earning Children. The committee conferred with the officers of the board of education and succeeded in arousing their interest to the extent of securing a promise for the collection of a return from the elementary schools of England and Wales concerning the labor of public school pupils, their ages, and other relevant information. In 1898, the House of Commons ordered this inquiry to be made, and in June of that year copies of a schedule were sent by the educational department to all the public elementary schools in England and Wales. Many schoolmasters misunderstood the meaning of this schedule and failed to report the children of their schools who were actually engaged in various forms of work outside of school hours. Only about half of the schedules were filled and returned, but these showed that 144,026 children were following some kind of gainful occupation in addition to attending school. Many schoolmasters reported pitiable cases of child exploitation, as, for example, the following: "Boys helping milkmen are up at 5 o'clock in the morning, whilst those selling papers are about the streets to a very late hour at night. During lessons many fall off to sleep, and if not asleep the effort to keep awake is truly painful both to boy and teacher. The educational time, as a consequence, is materially wasted."[150] "These are sad cases, viz. one boy (aged eleven, in Standard III) works daily, as a grocer's errand boy, for 1_s._ 6_d._ a week, from 8 to 9 A.M., from 12 to 1.30 P.M., and from 4.30 to 7.30 P.M. On Saturday from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M. Another boy, aged ten in Standard III, works also as a grocer's errand boy for 1_s._ 6_d._ per week, from 8.30 to 9 A.M., from 12 to 1.30 and from 5 to 8 P.M., and on Saturday from 8.30 A.M. to 11 P.M." And all this in addition to twenty-seven and one half hours of school every week! A boy who works for 56-3/4 hours a week, selling papers, is employed as follows: "Monday to Friday, from 7 A.M. to 8.45 A.M., from 12 to 1 P.M., and from 4 to 10 P.M., and on Saturday from 7 A.M., to 10 A.M., from 12 to 2 P.M. and from 3 to 11 P.M." "This is a very bad case: called at 2 and 3 o'clock A.M., the boy (aged eight) is so tired that he is obliged to go to bed again, and is often absent from school, and made to work in the evening as well."[151] Many schoolmasters also testified to the need of a remedy; one of these wrote on the schedule: "May I be allowed to express my gratitude to the education department for making this inquiry, and express the hope that the department will be able to frame some regulation to meet and relieve the onerous conditions under which many of the young have to gain education. Without exaggeration I can truthfully assert that there are to-day in our national and board schools thousands of little white slaves."[152] Nothing more came of the movement until January, 1901, when the Secretary of State for the Home Department appointed an interdepartmental committee "to inquire into the question of the employment of children during school age, and to report what alterations are desirable in the laws relating to child labour and school attendance and in the administration of these laws." After making careful investigation this committee declared: "In the case of street-trading children very strong powers of regulation are required. These children are exposed to the worst influences; they enter public houses to ply their trade, they are kept up late at night and exposed to inclement weather, and the precarious nature of their trade disinclines them to steady work, and encourages them to dissipate their earnings in gambling ... there should be power to prohibit street trading by children; to make regulations as to the age and sex of street traders, and the days and hours on which they may ply their trade; to grant licenses to those permitted to trade and to require the wearing of badges or uniforms; to forbid street traders to enter public houses or to importune or obstruct passengers; and generally to control their conduct and to cope with the evil in every reasonable way."[153] The committee further reported: "Our main recommendation is that the overworking of children in those occupations which are still unregulated by law should be prevented by giving to the county and borough councils a power to make labour by-laws; ... further we suggest that the gaps that may be left by local by-laws should be filled up by a general prohibition of night labour by children and of labour manifestly injurious to health."[154] This committee reported that the number of children in England and Wales attending school and also in paid employment was far greater than as reported by the parliamentary return, estimating that the total number was no less than 300,000 in 1898.[155] One of the witnesses before this committee was a London truant officer of eighteen years' experience, who testified that every month he met with hundreds of cases of milk boys who "go to work at 5 A.M. and knock off at 8.30 and get to school at 9.45. At twelve they return to work, and after school at 4.30 they go again and wash up. The latest hour they work is about 8 P.M. I have frequently seen these children fast asleep in school. It is a common thing to see children of tender age outside the different theatres trying to sell newspapers at 11 o'clock at night. The percentage of cases in which this work is necessary is very small; it simply means that a little more money is spent in the public houses."[156] The report of this committee contains a great mass of testimony from persons in many walks of life, nearly all of whom declared that street trading by children is bad and should be regulated. They differentiated between the hawking of articles in the streets and their delivery for employers, and one of the witnesses from Liverpool testified that the local regulation of street trading by children in that city did not apply to bootblacks nor to boys who carried parcels because they were not selling anything.[157] In 1902, an interdepartmental committee was appointed to study the subject in Ireland, and in its report stated: "The principal dangers to which they [street traders] are exposed are those arising from late hours in the streets, truancy, insufficient clothing, entering licensed premises to find sale for their goods, obstructing, annoying or importuning passengers, begging, fighting with other children, playing football or other games in the streets, using bad language, playing pitch and toss (a gambling game), smoking--all of which are matters of common observation, and have been testified to by many of the witnesses. In our opinion these evils can be lessened, if not entirely removed, by the simple system of regulation, licenses and badges."[158] The direct result of the reports of these committees was the passage by Parliament of the Employment of Children Act, 1903. Section 3 of this act provides, first, that no child under eleven years shall engage in street trading; second, no child under fourteen years shall be employed between 9 P.M. and 6 A.M.; third, no factory or workshop half-timer shall be employed in any other occupation; fourth, no child under fourteen years shall handle heavy weights likely to result in injury; fifth, no child under fourteen years shall engage in any injurious employment. Sections 1 and 2 of this act give to local authorities power to make by-laws regulating the employment of children. The provisions of Section 2 concerning street trading are in substance as follows: any local authority may make by-laws with respect to street trading by persons under the age of sixteen years and may prohibit such street trading subject to age, sex or the holding of a license; may regulate the conditions on which such licenses may be granted and revoked; may determine the days and hours during which and the places at which such street trading may be carried on; may require such street traders to wear badges and may regulate generally the conduct of such street traders; provided that the right to trade shall not be made subject to any conditions having reference to the poverty or general bad character of the person applying for this right, and provided also that the local authority shall have special regard to the desirability of preventing the employment of girls under sixteen years in streets and public places. Section 2 b of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1904, imposes a penalty upon _adults_ who cause, procure or allow boys under fourteen or girls under sixteen to trade in the streets between 9 P.M. and 6 A.M. An official report made in 1907 gives the names of all counties, boroughs and urban districts in Great Britain which had up to that time made by-laws to regulate street trading by children. In England and Wales, 2 counties, 60 cities and boroughs and 4 urban districts had done so; in Scotland, 3 burghs and the school board districts of 11 burghs and 12 parishes; and in Ireland, 4 cities and boroughs and 1 urban district had made such by-laws.[159] By 1910, out of 74 county boroughs in England and Wales, not less than 50 had made street-trading by-laws, and these included most of the larger places; but out of 191 smaller boroughs and smaller urban districts only 41 had done so; while among 62 administrative counties only 3 had made by-laws. In addition to these, 4 county boroughs and 2 of the smaller boroughs had made street-trading by-laws under local acts. In Scotland, of the 33 county councils empowered to make by-laws, not one had done so by 1910; while of 56 burghs only 3 had passed by-laws; of 979 school boards only 27 had made such regulations. Edinburgh passed by-laws under a private act. In Ireland, out of 33 county councils not one had made by-laws; of the 43 councils of urban districts with a population of over 5000, only 5 had passed regulations. In 1909 the Secretary of State for the Home Department appointed a departmental committee to inquire into the operation of the Employment of Children Act, 1903, and to consider whether any and what further legislative regulation or restriction was required in respect of street trading and other employments dealt with in that act. This committee confined its report, which was submitted in 1910, to the subject of street trading; and its great contribution to the cause of child welfare is its recommendation that street trading should be _prohibited_ rather than regulated. The statute of 1903 prohibits all work by children under the age of eleven years, and its restrictions on street employment by children above that limit, out of school hours, are prohibitions of _night_ work after nine o'clock, consequently a child above the age of eleven years who engages in street trading is restrained, during the day, only by such by-laws as may have been adopted by the local authority. The committee found that even in communities where by-laws had been adopted they were not always observed, and also that where no by-laws had been passed the minimum statutory restrictions were frequently ignored. The report declared that: "A considerable amount of street trading is still done by children under eleven. Special censuses taken in Edinburgh revealed the fact that children as young as seven were trading in the streets. The great bulk of the evidence received in and from Scotland points to the conclusion that the Act [of 1903] has been almost a dead-letter in that country.... Infringements of the Act in Ireland are no less common. In Waterford newspapers are sold by children of nine years old up to 11 P.M. and later."[160] The issuance of licenses and badges was denounced as giving the stamp of official approval to what is recognized as an evil, the adoption of by-laws resulting merely in a partial improvement of conditions even when rigorously enforced. After having devoted several months to the inquiry, during which evidence was gathered in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, Birmingham and Liverpool in addition to receiving the testimony of witnesses from Sheffield, Nottingham, Bolton and other centers, the committee made this very noteworthy and significant declaration: "We have come to the conclusion ... that the effect of street trading upon the character of those who engage in it is only too frequently disastrous. The youthful street trader is exposed to many of the worst of moral risks; he associates with, and acquires the habits of, the frequenters of the kerbstone and the gutter. If a match seller, he is likely to become a beggar--if a newspaper seller, a gambler; the evidence before us was extraordinarily strong as to the extent to which begging prevails among the boy vendors of evening papers. There was an almost equally strong body of testimony to the effect that, at any rate in crowded centres of population, street trading tends to produce a dislike or disability for more regular employment; the child finds that for a few years money is easily earned without discipline or special skill; and the occupation is one which sharpens the wits without developing the intelligence. It leads to nothing practically, and in no way helps him to a future career. There can be no doubt that large numbers of those who were once street traders drift into vagrancy and crime.... Much evidence was given to the effect that the practice of street trading, even though only carried on in the intervals of school attendance, tends to produce a restless disposition, and a dislike of restraint which makes children unwilling to settle down to any regular employment. So far as girls are concerned, there must be added to the above evils an unquestionable danger to morals in the narrower sense. The evidence presented to us on this point was unanimous and most emphatic. Again and again persons specially qualified to speak, assured us that, when a girl took up street trading, she almost invariably was taking a first step toward a life of immorality. The statement that the temptations are great, and the children practically defenseless, needs no amplification. An occupation entailing such perils is indisputably unfit for girls."[161] The need for _prohibition_ of street trading was realized by this committee, the change being urged in the following epoch-making statement: "After carefully considering the operation of the by-laws adopted since 1903, and comparing the present state of affairs with that existing before the passing of the act, we have come to the conclusion that the difficulties of the situation cannot be said to have been met, or any substantial contribution to a solution of the problem made, by the existing law and the machinery set up for its enforcement. Regulation, however well organized and complete, will not turn a wasteful and uneconomic use of the energies of children into a system which is beneficial to the community. Consequently we feel that we have no choice but to recommend the complete statutory prohibition of street trading either by boys or by girls up to a specific age. In the case of boys we feel that it would be wise to name an age which would render it likely that they would have had full opportunities of taking to regular work before they could legally trade in the streets. We think the most suitable age would be seventeen, which gives an interval of three or four years after the ordinary time of leaving an elementary school.... So far as girls are concerned, we feel that the arguments in favor of prohibiting trading increase rather than diminish in force as the age of the traders advances. The entire body of testimony laid before us has forced upon us the conclusion that street trading by girls is entirely indefensible, and that no system of regulation is sufficient to rid the employment of its risks and objections. On the other hand, we have not been able to discover any trace of hardship having resulted in any of those towns in which by-laws have prohibited trading by girls, or have restricted the ages during which trading is permitted. We think that the age of prohibition should be higher for girls than for boys, and, while we feel that it should, in any event, not be less than eighteen, we should be willing to see it fixed as high as twenty-one."[162] As to the administration of the law, the committee declared that this should be delivered into the hands of the education authorities who could charge the regular truant officers with the work of enforcement or employ special officers for the purpose. The placing of responsibility upon the parents of child offenders was indorsed, but the committee criticised administrators because of the small penalties imposed as fines, the amounts being easily covered by the earnings of the traders, and hence an increase of the maximum fine was recommended. A minority report was submitted by four members of this committee who declined to support the recommendation of the majority that street trading should be immediately and universally prohibited in the case of boys up to the age of seventeen. These members held that the cause of street trading should first be removed by organizing employment bureaus for children, by giving the children the benefit of vocational direction, and by promoting industrial education for boys both while attending the elementary schools and after. _Liverpool_ As to local efforts to regulate the street-trading evil, the first steps were taken in Liverpool. In this city the condition of child street traders was particularly bad; half of them were girls, and the stock in trade was usually newspapers and matches--the children were dirty, ragged and running the streets at all hours of the night, the apparent trade in newspapers and other articles being frequently used to cover up much worse things; in fact, many of the girls were practically prostitutes. Quite a number of these children were nothing more or less than beggars, and deliberately appeared in ragged clothing for the purpose of exciting sympathy. A local association undertook to supply them with clothing, but many refused this aid "because it would interfere with their trade." Commenting on similar practices among the street traders of Dublin, Sir Lambert H. Ormsby, M.D., said in 1904: "They sell other things besides ... matches principally. Of course the selling of matches is merely a means of evading being taken up by the police for begging. The matches are only humbug; they do not want to sell them ... they do it for begging purposes."[163] In 1897 the Liverpool Watch Committee appointed a subcommittee to consider the question of children trading in streets, and this subcommittee reported that: "The practice is attended, first, with injury to the health of the children; second, with interference with the education of such as are of school age; third, with danger to the moral welfare of the children inasmuch as the practice frequently leads to street gambling, begging, sleeping out and other undesirable practices, and in some cases to crime." They were of opinion--in which the inspector of reformatories concurred--that much of the money earned by the children went to indulge the vicious and intemperate propensities of parents and guardians. By the Liverpool Corporation Act, 1898, Parliament gave the city power to regulate street trading by children, and accordingly the following provisions were made by the city council: (1) no licenses to any child under eleven; (2) boys eleven to thirteen and girls eleven to fifteen inclusive, to be licensed if not mentally or physically deficient, with consent of parent or guardian; (3) licenses good one year; (4) badges also to be issued; (5) no charge for license or badge; (6) licenses may be revoked by Watch Committee for cause; (7) no licensed child to trade after 9 P.M., nor unless decently clothed, nor without badge, nor in streets during school hours unless exempted from school attendance, and no licensed child may alter or dispose of badge, or enter public houses to trade, or importune passengers. These regulations took effect May 31, 1899, and marked the formal beginning of the movement against street trading by children. In 1901 the Liverpool subcommittee reported that it was "of opinion that the application of the powers conferred by the Act has had the effect of greatly reducing the number of children trading in the streets, especially during school hours and late in the evenings, and of improving the condition, appearance, and behaviour of those children who still engage in street trading." This subcommittee recommended raising the boys' age limit for licenses from fourteen to sixteen years, and was inclined to advise the total prohibition of street trading by girls.[164] _London_ Under the powers conferred on local authorities by the Employment of Children Act 1903, the London County Council framed in February, 1905, a set of by-laws, the provisions of which seemed quite innocuous. Nevertheless a considerable outcry was raised by persons whom they would affect, and thereupon the Secretary of State withheld his confirmation and authorized Mr. Chester Jones to hold an inquiry at which complaints could be heard as well as arguments in favor of the by-laws. This inquiry was held in June and July of 1905, and schoolmasters, attendance officers, police inspectors, news agents and others testified. Mr. Jones held that it was his duty "to endeavour to discover where the line should be drawn, and that it was not open to argument either that child labour should entirely be prohibited or that it should be unregulated."[165] In his report Mr. Jones took up each by-law separately and discussed it, recommending that it be either confirmed or rejected in accordance with his findings. He also drafted a set of by-laws and submitted them with the recommendation that they be adopted instead of the ones originally passed by the London County Council. Referring to these, he says: "An important respect in which my suggested by-laws differ from the County Council by-laws is in differentiating between employment in connection with street stalls and other forms of street trading. It seemed to be the general opinion [of witnesses] that the former employment, being under the supervision of some adult person, probably the parent, is not so harmful in its effects on the morals of the child as the latter, and it must be remembered that the main objection to street trading was on the ground rather of its affecting the morality than the health and education of the children."[166] The regulations drafted by Mr. Jones were not even so drastic as those proposed by the London County Council, and in recommending milder restrictions Mr. Jones says: "A set of by-laws should not err upon the side of overstringency, nor should they be in advance of public opinion; the first, because taking a step more or less in the dark might cause hardships impossible to avoid, and the second, because any by-laws of this sort, being most difficult of enforcement, will certainly be evaded unless backed up by the weight of public opinion."[167] The County Council, however, did not follow Mr. Jones's recommendations in their entirety, but adopted a more stringent set of by-laws which were put in force in October, 1906. In December, 1909, the County Council again amended the by-laws, and an inquiry relative to these changes was held by Mr. Stanley Owen Buckmaster in October, 1910. Mr. Buckmaster recommended a number of changes of minor importance which were adopted by the Council, and accordingly the new by-laws were adopted and took effect on June 3, 1911. This set of by-laws will be found in the Appendix, page 264. The most significant feature which they present is the raising of the age limit for boys to fourteen years and for girls to sixteen years without exemption. The old by-laws prohibited street trading by children under sixteen years between the hours of 9 P.M. and 6 A.M., and this provision was retained in the new by-laws, applying, however, only to boys, inasmuch as girls under that age are prohibited from trading in the streets at any time. These London by-laws on street trading are identical with the provisions of the most advanced American child labor laws on factory employment, and consequently they blaze the way for the application of these provisions in the United States to street trading as well as to employment in factories, mills and mines. _Manchester_ Although the British departmental committee of 1910 was not favorably impressed by the results of regulation as a cure for the evils of street trading, nevertheless it gave due credit to the city of Manchester for what had been accomplished there under the license system. Referring to this city, the report says: "In Manchester such good results as can be arrived at by the method of regulation were, perhaps, more apparent than anywhere else. In that city the entire evidence testified to the fact that the regulation of street trading is very highly organized; a special staff of selected, plain-clothes officers, giving their whole time to the work, knowing the traders personally, visiting the homes, advising the parents, clothing the children and apparently exerting a most beneficial influence. All that can be done through the instrument of regulation seems to be done there, the various authorities working together to that end."[168] An English writer says that regulation in Manchester "has greatly improved the conditions of the newspaper boys and others who earned their living by hawking goods in the streets. It is something to the good at any rate that a boy should be compelled to be decently dressed and so avoid the obvious temptation of appealing to the sympathies of the public by the picturesque raggedness of his clothing. At the same time one cannot help feeling that halfway legislation of this sort is only playing with the problem and that the only really satisfactory law would be one which prohibited street trading by children altogether."[169] _New South Wales_ The British Colony of New South Wales has adopted some mild restrictions under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, and the president of the State Children Relief Board for New South Wales states in his report for the year ending April 5, 1910, that "the Board is not favorably impressed with the principle of street trading by juveniles, realizing that even under the most careful administration children, when once licensed to engage in street trading, are exposed to great temptations." _Canada_ The province of Manitoba, Canada, forbids children under twelve years from trading in the streets at any time; licenses are issued to boys twelve to sixteen years old, who are not allowed to sell after 9 P.M. Some boys have been denied licenses because of their poor school record, others because of lack of proof as to age, others on account of not being physically qualified, and still others because there was no need for their earning money in this way. The licensed boys are kept under supervision; their attendance at school is watched; and if they persist in selling after 9 P.M. or disobey instructions, their licenses are revoked.[170] _Germany_ The Industrial Code of Germany prohibits children under fourteen years from offering goods for sale on public roads, streets or places, and peddling them from house to house. In localities in which such sale or peddling is customary, the local police authorities may permit it for certain periods of time not exceeding a total of four weeks in any calendar year. "Under this provision there was considerable street trading, especially in the larger cities. In Berlin, for instance, during the weeks preceding Christmas, numerous children under fourteen were thus employed. Protests against the practice were made by the Consumers' League and similar organizations, and resulted in the passage of a police regulation, for its restriction; and in 1909 a further step was taken by providing that no exceptions of this sort be thereafter permitted, so that now the employment of children under fourteen years of age in street trading is absolutely forbidden in Berlin."[171] The Industrial Code forbids children under twelve years to deliver goods or perform other errands except for their own parents. Children over twelve years may so engage for not more than three hours daily between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M., but not before morning school nor during the noon recess nor until one hour after school has closed in the afternoon; on Sundays and holidays such children may do this work only for two hours between 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., but not during the principal church service or the half hour preceding it. Such children must first obtain the _Arbeitskarte_ from the local police authority, which is issued upon request of the child's legal representative. Employers must notify the police authority in advance of the employment of such children. _France_ The labor of children in France is regulated by the law of November 2, 1892, as amended by the act of March 30, 1900. This law applies to factories, workshops, mines and quarries, exempting home industries, agricultural work and purely mercantile establishments.[172] The work of children in city streets is not even mentioned. New legislation has recently been proposed to regulate the employment of minors under 18 years of age and of women in the sale of merchandise from stands and tables on sidewalks outside of bazaars and large stores. According to its provisions, the work of such persons would be prohibited for more than two hours at a time and for more than six hours a day, while seats and heating facilities would have to be supplied the same as for employees inside the large establishments.[173] In Paris, newspapers are sold almost exclusively at kiosks on street corners, presided over by middle-aged women. CONCLUSION Many years ago Macaulay declared, "Intense labor, beginning too early in life, continued too long every day, stunting the growth of the mind, leaving no time for healthful exercise, no time for intellectual culture, must impair all those high qualities that have made our country great. Your overworked boys will become a feeble and ignoble race of men, the parents of a more feeble progeny; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the laborer will injuriously affect those very interests to which his physical and moral interests have been sacrificed. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it to some people preëminently vigorous in body and in mind." To-day these words seem to us a veritable prophecy--but we must not forget that they apply to America no less than to England. If our civilization is to continue and to improve with time, every child must have a proper opportunity to grow under conditions as nearly normal as possible; we must secure to the children their birthright--the right to play and to dream, the right to healthful sleep, the right to education and training, the right to grow into manhood and into womanhood with cleanness and strength both of body and of mind, the right of a chance to become useful citizens of the future. Eternal vigilance is the price of protection for childhood, and while "Women and children first" is a rigid law of the sea, "Children first" is the fundamental law both of Nature and civilization. FOOTNOTES: [1] Wisconsin Statutes, Section 1728 p., Laws of 1911. [2] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 71. Cf. also Great Britain--Employment of Children Act, 1903, Section 13. [3] _The Newsboy_, Pittsburgh, April, 1909. [4] Great Britain--Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, pp. 18, 19. [5] Scott Nearing, "The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia," _Charities and The Commons_, February 2, 1906. [6] "The Child in the City," Handbook of Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, p. 25. [7] "A Plea to Take the Small Boy and Girl from the City Streets," a folder issued by Chicago Board of Education and a committee representing local organizations, 1911. [8] Pamphlet 114 of National Child Labor Committee, p. 8. [9] Elizabeth C. Watson, "New York Newsboys and their Work," 1911. [10] _The Survey_, April 22, 1911, p. 138. [11] "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities (England)," edited by E. J. Urwick, 1904, p. 296. [12] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, p. vii. [13] Twelfth Census of United States, Vol. II, Population, Part II, p. 506. [14] Twelfth Census of United States, Special Reports, Occupations, 1904, pp. xxiv, cxxxiii. [15] _Idem_, pp. xxiii, cxxxiii. [16] Twelfth Census of United States, 1900, Vol. VII, p. cxxv. [17] Instructions to Enumerators, Thirteenth Census of the United States, pp. 32-34. [18] These tables were copied from charts displayed at the Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit, May, 1911. [19] "The Child in the City," Handbook of the Child Welfare Exhibit, Chicago, May 11-25, 1911, p. 25. [20] _Idem_, p. 25. [21] "The Social Evil in Chicago," by the Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, pp. 241-242. [22] "A Plea to take the Small Boy and the Girl from the City Streets," by the Chicago Board of Education and a committee representing local organizations, 1911. [23] Elizabeth C. Watson, "New York Newsboys and their Work," 1911. [24] Abstract of Immigration Commission's Report on the Greek Padrone System in the United States, 1911, p. 9. [25] A more detailed presentation of this matter will be found in Chapter IV. [26] Immigration Commission's Report, p. 9. [27] Elementary Schools (Children working for Wages), House of Commons Papers, 1899, No. 205, p. 17. [28] _Idem_, p. 21. [29] _Idem_, p. 17. [30] Elementary Schools (Children working for Wages), House of Commons Papers, 1899, No. 205, p. 25. [31] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, p. 8. [32] _Idem_, p. 9. [33] _Idem_, p. 10. [34] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, p. 18. [35] _Idem_, p. 16. [36] Robert H. Sherard, "Child Slaves of Britain," 1905, p. 178. [37] Report of President of State Children Relief Board of New South Wales for year ending April 5, 1910, pp. 39-40. [38] Vierteljahrshefte des Kaiserlichen Statistischen Amts, 1900, Heft III, p. 97. See also Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, App. 3, p. 294. [39] Bulletin 89 of United States Bureau of Labor, 1910, p. 84. [40] Bulletin 89 of United States Bureau of Labor, 1910, p. 56. [41] _Idem_, p. 63. [42] _Idem_, p. 65. [43] _The Hustler_, organ of Boston Newsboys' Club, February, 1911. [44] Report of the Newsboys' Home Association of Washington, D.C., 1863-1864, p. 7. [45] "The Education, Earnings and Social Condition of Boys Engaged in Street Trading in Manchester," by E. T. Campagnac and C. E. B. Russell; Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, App. 45, pp. 456-457. [46] Handbook of New York Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, p. 33. [47] "Child Labor on the Street," _The Newsboy_, leaflet of New York Child Labor Committee, 1907. [48] Report of Newsboys' and Children's Aid Society of Washington, D.C., 1889, p. 10. [49] "The Education, Earnings and Social Condition of Boys Engaged in Street Trading in Manchester," by Campagnac and Russell, 1901. [50] Child Labor at the National Capital, an address delivered in Washington, December, 1905, Pamphlet 23 of National Child Labor Committee. [51] Mary E. McDowell, Pamphlet 114 of National Child Labor Committee, pp. 6-7. [52] "The Social Evil in Chicago" by the Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, p. 242. [53] Miss Todd, Pamphlet 114 of National Child Labor Committee, p. 12. [54] National Child Labor Committee, Pamphlet 114, p. 12. [55] Great Britain, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910, Q. 9724. [56] Bulletin 89 of United States Bureau of Labor, 1910, p. 46. [57] _Charities and The Commons_, February 2, 1906. [58] "Some Ethical Gains through Legislation," 1905, p. 12. [59] "Child Labor on the Street," _The Newsboy_, leaflet of New York Child Labor Committee, 1907. [60] "Children in American Street Trades," 1905, Pamphlet 14 of National Child Labor Committee. [61] _Charities and The Commons_, February 2, 1906. [62] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, p. 23. [63] Great Britain, Minutes of Evidence Taken before Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910, Q. 1837 _et seq._ [64] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 13. [65] George A. Hall, "The Newsboy," in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1911, p. 102. [66] School Document, No. 14, 1910, Boston Public Schools, pp. 42-44. [67] Report of New York-New Jersey Committee of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, December, 1909-March, 1911, pp. 33-34. [68] Abstract of Immigration Commission's Report on the Greek Padrone System in United States, 1911, p. 10. [69] Abstract of Report on Greek Padrone System in United States, by Immigration Commission, 1911, p. 22. [70] _Survey_, Vol. XXVI, p. 591. [71] School Document, No. 10, 1910, Boston Public Schools, p. 133. [72] "The Social Evil in Chicago," by the Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, p. 242. [73] "Child Labor at the National Capital," an address delivered in Washington, December, 1905, Pamphlet 23 of National Child Labor Committee. [74] "The Social Evil in Chicago," by the Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, p. 244. [75] Bulletin 69 of Bureau of Census, "Child Labor in the United States," 1907, p. 170. [76] Robert H. Sherard, "Child Slaves of Britain," p. 179. [77] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, Vol. II, Q. 10,440. [78] J. G. Cloete, "The Boy and his Work" in "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities," edited by E. J. Urwick (England), 1904, p. 121. [79] E. J. Urwick, "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities" (England), 1904, p. 305. [80] "Some Ethical Gains through Legislation," 1905, p. 15. [81] Victor S. Clark, "Women and Child Wage Earners in Great Britain," Bulletin 80, United States Bureau of Labor, p. 28. [82] "Newsboy Life--What Superintendents of Reformatories and Others think about its Effects," Leaflet No. 32 of National Child Labor Committee, 1910. [83] "Buffalo Child Labor Problems," folder issued by New York Child Labor Committee, 1911, p. 3. [84] Elizabeth C. Watson, "New York Newsboys and their Work," 1911. [85] Scott Nearing, "The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia," _Charities and The Commons_, February 2, 1906. [86] John Spargo, "Bitter Cry of the Children," 1906, p. 184. [87] James L. Fieser, "Causes of Truancy," Indiana Bulletin of Charities and Correction, June, 1910, p. 227. [88] James A. Britton, M.D., "Child Labor and the Juvenile Court," Pamphlet 95 of National Child Labor Committee, 1909. [89] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 12. [90] Mrs. Louise B. More, "Wage-Earners' Budgets," 1907, p. 148. [91] J. G. Cloete, "The Boy and his Work" in "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities (England)," edited by E. J. Urwick, 1904, p. 131. [92] _Idem_, p. 135. [93] E. J. Urwick, "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities," 1904, p. 307. [94] _Idem_, p. 309. [95] Robert H. Sherard, "Child Slaves of Britain," 1905, pp. 179-180. [96] Constance Smith, Report on the Employment of Children in the United Kingdom, 1909, p. 11. [97] Margaret Alden, M.D., "Child Life and Labour," 1908, p. 118. [98] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, Vol. I, paragraph 68. [99] _Idem_, Vol. II, Q. 2453. [100] _Idem_, Vol. II, Q. 2479. [101] Great Britain, Minutes of Evidence taken before Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910, Q. 9503 _et seq._ [102] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, App. 39, p. 418. [103] Copied from Charts in Child Labor Exhibit at National Conference of Charities and Correction, St. Louis, May, 1910. [104] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, p. 11. [105] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910, p. 12. [106] Elizabeth C. Watson, "New York Newsboys and their Work," 1911. [107] "Child Labor on the Street," leaflet of New York Child Labor Committee, _The Newsboy_, 1907. [108] "The Education, Earnings and Social Condition of Boys Engaged in Street Trading in Manchester," by Campagnac and Russell, 1901. [109] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, Q. 3862. [110] Report of the Board of Education of the Toledo City School District, 1910-1911, p. 141. [111] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session. [112] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 39. [113] _Idem_, p. 42. [114] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 44. [115] _Idem_, p. 59. [116] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 62. [117] _Idem_, p. 69. [118] _Idem_, p. 71. [119] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 73. [120] _Idem_, p. 84. [121] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 86. [122] _Idem_, p. 87. [123] _Idem_, p. 90. [124] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 91. [125] _Idem_, p. 92. [126] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 105. [127] Includes 17 in bowling alleys and pool rooms and 23 in theaters and other places of amusement. [128] Includes 2 in boarding houses, 26 home workers (precise character of work not specified), 10 in restaurants, and 12 in private families. [129] Includes 26 bootblacks and 320 newsboys. [130] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 106. [131] _Idem_, pp. 106-107. [132] "Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment," Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 108. [133] _Idem_, pp. 116-117. [134] _Idem_, p. 134. [135] Davis Wasgatt Clark, "American Child and Moloch of To-day," 1907, p. 40. [136] George B. Mangold, "Child Problems," 1910, p. 232. [137] James A. Britton, M.D., "Child Labor and the Juvenile Court," Pamphlet 95 of National Child Labor Committee, 1909. [138] Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States, 1911, p. 22. [139] E. J. Urwick, "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities (England)," 1904, p. 304. [140] Bulletin 81, United States Bureau of Labor, p. 416. [141] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 9. [142] "A Plea to take the Small Boy and the Girl from the City Streets," by the Chicago Board of Education and a committee representing local organizations, 1911. [143] Report on Bylaws made by London County Council under Employment of Children Act, 1903, by Chester Jones, 1906, pp. 24-27. [144] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, App. 33, p. 403. [145] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, p. vii. [146] "Street Trades," in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1911, p. 108. [147] School Document No. 15, 1909, Boston Public Schools, pp. 34-35. [148] Committee on Work and Wages, Handbook of New York Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, p. 33. [149] School Document No. 15, 1909, Boston Public Schools, p. 36. [150] Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages), House of Commons Paper, 1899, No. 205, p. 14. [151] Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages), House of Commons Paper, 1899, No. 205, pp. 26-27. [152] _Idem_, p. 16. [153] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, pp. 20-21. [154] _Idem_, p. 24. [155] _Idem_, p. 9. [156] _Idem_, Q. 1123. [157] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, Q. 7203. [158] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, p. 6. [159] Great Britain, Return of Local Authorities which have made By-laws under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1907. [160] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 7. [161] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 11. [162] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 13. [163] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, Vol. II, Q. 12757-12759. [164] Great Britain, Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, App. 37, pp. 415-416. [165] Report on the By-laws made by the London County Council under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, by Chester Jones, 1906, p. 5. [166] _Idem_, p. 16. [167] _Idem_, p. 15. [168] Great Britain, Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, submitted in 1910, p. 9. [169] J. G. Cloete, "The Boy and his Work" in "Studies of Boy Life in our Cities," 1904, p. 131. [170] "Citizens in the Making," Annual Report of Superintendent of Neglected Children for Province of Manitoba, Canada, 1910, pp. 31-34. [171] C. W. A. Veditz, "Child Labor Legislation in Europe," in Bulletin 89 of United States Bureau of Labor, 1910, p. 242. [172] Henry Ferrette, "Manuel de législation industrielle," 1909, p. 149. [173] Daily Consular and Trade Reports, 14th Year, No. 106, p. 566. BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS ADAMS, MYRON E., _Children in American Street Trades_, in Proceedings of First Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1905, pp. 25-46. ---- _Municipal Regulations of Street Trades_, in Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1904, Vol. XXXI, pp. 294-300. ALDEN, MARGARET, _Child Life and Labour_. BRITTON, JAMES A., _Child Labor and the Juvenile Court_, in Proceedings of Fifth Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1909, p. 111. BROWN, EMMA E., _Child Toilers of Boston Streets_. _Buffalo Child Labor Problems_, folder issued by New York Child Labor Committee, 1911. CAMPAGNAC AND RUSSELL, _Education, Earnings and Social Condition of Boys Engaged in Street Trading in Manchester_, Board of Education Special Reports on Educational Subjects, 1902, Vol. VIII, pp. 653-670. _Child Labor in Germany Outside of Factories_, in Report of United States Commissioner of Education, 1900-1901, Vol. I, pp. 54-80. _Child Labor on the Street--The Newsboy_, leaflet of New York Child Labor Committee, 1907. _Child Labor in the United States_, Bulletin 69 of Bureau of Census, 1907. CLARK, DAVIS W., _American Child and Moloch of To-day_, 1907, p. 40. CLARK, VICTOR S., _Woman and Child Wage Earners in Great Britain_, in Bulletin 80 of United States Bureau of Labor, January, 1909. CLOETE, J. G., _The Boy and his Work_, in _Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities_, edited by E. J. Urwick, 1904, pp. 129-133. CLOPPER, EDWARD N., _Children on the Streets of Cincinnati_, in Proceedings of Fourth Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1908, pp. 113-123. ---- _Child Labor in Street Trades_, in Proceedings of Sixth Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1910, pp. 137-144. CONANT, RICHARD K., _Street Trades and Reformatories_, in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1911, pp. 105-107. _Employment of Children Act_, 1903, Great Britain, in J. N. Larned's _History for Ready Reference_, 1910, Vol. VII, p. 87. DAVIS, PHILIP, _Child Life on the Street_, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1909. FIESER, JAMES L., _Causes of Truancy_, in Indiana Bulletin of Charities and Correction, June, 1910, p. 227. FLEISHER, ALEXANDER, _The Newsboys of Milwaukee_, in Fifteenth Biennial Report, Part III, of Wisconsin Bureau of Labor, 1911-1912, pp. 61-96. GIBBS, S. P., _Problem of Boy Work_. GREAT BRITAIN, Elementary Schools (Children Working for Wages), Parliament Sessional Papers 1899, Vol. 75. ---- Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901. ---- Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902. ---- Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, Vol. II, Q. 2453-2479, 10,440, 12,757. ---- Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Partial Exemption from School Attendance. ---- Report of Departmental Committee on Employment of Children Act, 1903, 1910. ---- Report on By-laws made by London County Council under Employment of Children Act, 1903, by Chester Jones, 1906. ---- Report of Education Committee of London County Council, March 21, 1911, pp. 690-696. Report of President of State Children Relief Board of New South Wales for year ending April 5, 1910, pp. 39-40. Citizens in the Making, Annual Report of Superintendent of Neglected Children for Province of Manitoba, Canada, 1910, pp. 31-34. _Greek Padrone System in United States_, Abstract of Immigration Commission's Report on, 1911. GUNCKEL, J. E., _Boyville_, 1905. HALL, GEORGE A., _The Newsboy_, in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1911, pp. 100-102. HENDERSON, CHARLES R., _Street Trading of Children_, in his _Preventive Agencies and Methods_, 1910, Vol. III, pp. 97-100. _Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment_, Vol. VIII of Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in United States, Senate Document 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session. KELLEY, FLORENCE, _Children in Street Trades_ and _Telegraph and Messenger Boys_, in her _Some Ethical Gains through Legislation_, 1905, pp. 11-26. ---- _Street Trades_, in Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1911, pp. 108-110. MANGOLD, GEORGE B., _Child Problems_, 1910, p. 232. NEILL, CHARLES P., _Child Labor at the National Capital_, in Proceedings of Second Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1905, pp. 17-20. _New York Child Welfare Exhibit, Handbook of_, 1911, p. 33. _Newsboys' Home Association of Washington, D.C., Report of_, 1863-1864. _Newsboy Law_, in Handbook of Child Labor Legislation, 1908, National Consumers' League, p. 63. _Newsboys' and Children's Aid Society of Washington, D.C._, 1889. _Newsboy Life--What Superintendents of Reformatories and Others Think about its Effects_, Leaflet 32 of National Child Labor Committee, 1910. North American Civic League for Immigrants, Report of New York-New Jersey Committee, December, 1909-March, 1911, pp. 33-34. PEACOCK, ROBERT, _Employment of Children with Special Reference to Street Trading_, in Proceedings of Third International Congress for Welfare and Protection of Children, 1902, pp. 191-202. _Plea to Take the Small Boy and Girl from the City Streets_, a folder issued by Chicago Board of Education and a committee representing local organizations, 1911. _Problems of Street Trading_, in Proceedings of Fifth Annual Meeting of National Child Labor Committee, 1909, pp. 230-240. _Saving the Barren Years_, in The Child in the City, Handbook of Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, pp. 25-27. School Document No. 14, 1910, Boston Public Schools, pp. 41-44. School Document No. 10, 1910, Boston Public Schools, pp. 132-138. School Document No. 15, 1909, Boston Public Schools, pp. 34-37. SCOTT, LEROY, _The Voice of the Street_. SHERARD, ROBERT H., _Child Slaves of Britain_. SMITH, CONSTANCE, _Report on Employment of Children in United Kingdom_. _The Social Evil in Chicago_, Report of Chicago Vice Commission, 1911, pp. 241-245. SPARGO, JOHN, _Street Trades_ in his _Bitter Cry of the Children_, 1906, pp. 184-188, 258-259. STELZLE, CHARLES, _The Boy of the Street_, New York, 1904, pp. 7, 41. URWICK, E. J., editor of _Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities_ (England), 1904. VEDITZ, C. W. A., _Child Labor Legislation in Europe_, Bulletin 89 of United States Bureau of Labor, July, 1910. WATSON, ELIZABETH C., _New York Newsboys and their Work_, 1911. WHITIN, E. S., _Child Labor: Street Trades_, in his _Factory Legislation in Maine_, 1908, pp. 137-138. WILLIAMS, M., _The Street Boy: Who He is and What to do with Him_, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1903. WILLIAMSON, E. E., _The Street Arab_, in Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1898, Vol. XXV, pp. 358-361. MAGAZINE ARTICLES Child Labor, by Florence Kelley, _Twentieth Century_, 1911, Vol. V, pp. 30-34. Child Laborers of the Street--The New York Bills, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. X, pp. 205-206. Child Labor and the Night Messenger Service, by Owen R. Lovejoy, _The Survey_, Vol. XXIV, pp. 311-317. Child Street Trades in London, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. X, pp. 149-150. Children as Wage Earners--Street Sellers, _Fortnightly Review_, 1903, Vol. LXXIX, pp. 921-922. Committee on Wage-earning Children--Third Annual Report, _Economic Review_, 1904, Vol. XIV, pp. 208-211. Convalescent Men for Newsboys, _The Survey_, 1910, Vol. XXV, p. 809. Enforcing the Newsboy Law in New York and Newark, by J. K. Paulding, _Charities and Commons_, 1905, Vol. XIV, pp. 836-837. Ethics of the Newsboy, by A. Saxby, _Western_, Vol. CLVIII, pp. 575-578. The Greek Bootblack, by Leola Benedict Terhune, _The Survey_, 1911, Vol. XXVI, pp. 852-854. The Greek Boy Who Shines Shoes, _The Survey_, 1911, Vol. XXVI, p. 591. Hartford Regulates Child Street Trades, _The Survey_, 1910, Vol. XXV, p. 511. Industrial Democracy: A Newsboys' Labor Union and What It Thinks of a College Education, by R. W. Bruère, _Outlook_, 1906, Vol. LXXXIV, pp. 878-883. John E. Gunckel of Toledo: the Newsboys' Evangelist, by A. E. Winship, _World To-day_, 1908, Vol. XV, pp. 1169-1173. De Kid Wot Works at Night, by William Hard, _Everybody's_, 1908, Vol. XVIII, pp. 25-37. Milwaukee Regulates Its Street Trades--Other Wisconsin Child Labor Advances, _Survey_, 1909, Vol. XXII, p. 589. New Jersey Children in Street Trades by E. B. Butler, _Charities and Commons_, 1907, Vol. XVII, pp. 1062-1064. New Rules for Street Trades in Boston, with a Comparison of Regulations in Liverpool, _Charities and Commons_, 1909, Vol. XXI, pp. 953-954. New York's Newsboy Lodging House, _Charities and Commons_, 1908, Vol. XXI, pp. 147-148. New York's Newsboys Licensed, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. XI, pp. 188-189. The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia, by Scott Nearing, _Charities and Commons_, 1907, Vol. XVII, pp. 778-784. The Newsboy Breadwinner Story, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. XI, pp. 482, 568. Newsboy Wanderers are Tramps in the Making, by Ernest Poole, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. X, pp. 160-162. Newsboys Elect Their Own Judge, _Survey_, 1910, Vol. XXV, p. 312. Night Messenger Service, by Owen R. Lovejoy, _Survey_, Vol. XXV, p. 504. The Press and its Newsboys, by John Ihlder, _World To-day_, 1907, Vol. XIII, pp. 737-739. Sale of Goods on Sidewalks (in France), Daily Consular and Trade Reports, 14th Year, No. 106, p. 566. School Children as Wage Earners, by E. F. Hogg, _Nineteenth Century_, 1897, Vol. XLII, pp. 235-244. School Children as Wage Earners--Street Trading in Liverpool, by J. E. Gorst, _Nineteenth Century_, 1899, Vol. XLVI, p. 16. Street Children, by Benjamin Waugh, _Contemporary Review_, 1888, Vol. LIII, pp. 825-835. Street Labor and Juvenile Delinquency, by Josephine C. Goldmark, _Political Science Quarterly_, 1904, Vol. XIX, pp. 417-438. Street Trades and Delinquency, _Survey_, 1911, Vol. XXVI, p. 285. The Street-trading Children of Liverpool, by Thomas Burke, _Contemporary Review_, 1900, Vol. LXXVIII, pp. 720-726. Street Trading by Children (Bradford, England), Daily Consular and Trade Reports, 14th Year, No. 89, p. 246. Two O'clock Sunday Morning, by Scott Nearing, _The Independent_, 1912, Vol. LXXII, No. 3297, pp. 288-289. A Western Newspaper and its Newsboys, by W. B. Forbush, _Charities and Commons_, 1907, Vol. XIX, pp. 798-802. Waifs of the Street, by Ernest Poole, _McClure's_, Vol. XXI, pp. 40-48. What Boston Has Done in Regulating the Street Trades for Children, by Pauline Goldmark, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. X, pp. 159-160. What of the Newsboy of the Second Cities? Investigations carried on in Buffalo, _Charities and Commons_, 1903, Vol. X, pp. 368-371. APPENDICES APPENDIX A LAWS The law of Wisconsin relative to street trading, as amended in 1911, is given below in its entirety, because it is the most advanced law of its kind in the United States. _Wisconsin_ SECTION 1728 p. The term "street trade," as used in this act, shall mean any business or occupation in which any street, alley, court, square or other public place is used for the sale, display or offering for sale of any articles, goods or merchandise. No boy under the age of twelve years, and no girl under the age of eighteen years, shall in any city of the first class distribute, sell or expose or offer for sale newspapers, magazines or periodicals in any street or public place. SECTION 1728 q. No boy under fourteen years of age, shall, in any city of the first class, work at any time, or be employed or permitted to work at any time, as a bootblack or in any other street trade, or shall sell or offer any goods or merchandise for sale or distribute hand bills or circulars or any other articles, except newspapers, magazines or periodicals as hereinafter provided. SECTION 1728 r. No girl under eighteen years of age shall, in any city of the first class, work at any time, or be employed or permitted to work at any time, as a bootblack or at any other street trades or in the sale or distribution of hand bills or circulars or any other articles upon the street or from house to house. SECTION 1728 s. No boy under sixteen years of age shall, in any city of the first class, distribute, sell or expose or offer for sale any newspapers, magazines or periodicals in any street or public place or work as a bootblack, or in any other street or public trade or sell or offer for sale or distribute any hand bills or other articles, unless he complies with all the legal requirements concerning school attendance, and unless a permit and badge, as hereinafter provided, shall have been issued to him by the state factory inspector. No such permit and badge shall be issued until the officer issuing the same shall have received an application in writing therefor, signed by the parent or guardian or other person having the custody of the child, desiring such permit and badge, and until such officer shall have received, examined and placed on file the written statement of the principal or chief executive officer of the public, private or parochial school, which the said child is attending, stating that such child is an attendant at such school with the grade such child shall have attained, and provided that no such permit and badge shall be issued, unless such officer issuing it is satisfied that such child is mentally and physically able to do such work besides his regular school work as required by law. SECTION 1728 t. Before any such permit is issued, the state factory inspector shall demand and be furnished with proof of such child's age by the production of a verified baptismal certificate or a duly attested birth certificate, or, in case such certificates cannot be secured, by the record of age stated in the first school enrollment of such child. Whenever it appears that a permit was obtained by wrong or false statements as to any child's age, the officer who granted such permit shall forthwith revoke the same. After having received, examined and placed on file such papers, the officer shall issue to the child a permit and badge. The principal or chief executive officer of schools, in which children under fourteen years of age are pupils, shall keep a complete list of all children in their school to whom a permit and badge has been issued, as herein provided. SECTION 1728 u. Such permit shall state the place and date of birth of the child, the name and address of its parents, guardian, custodian or next friend, as the case may be, and describe the color of hair and eyes, the height and weight and any distinguishing facial marks of such child, and shall further state that the papers required by the preceding section have been duly examined and filed; and that the child named in such permit has appeared before the officer issuing the permit. The badge furnished by the officer issuing the permit shall bear on its face a number corresponding to the number of the permit, and the name of the child. Every such permit, and every such badge on its reverse side, shall be signed in the presence of the officer issuing the same by the child in whose name it is issued. Provided, that in case of carrier boys working on salary for newspaper publishers delivering papers, a card of identification shall be issued to such carriers by the factory inspector, which they shall carry on their person, and exhibit to any officer authorized under this act, who may accost them for a disclosure of their right to serve as such carriers. SECTION 1728 v. The badge provided for herein shall be such as the state factory inspector shall designate, and shall be worn conspicuously in sight at all times in such position as may be designated by the said factory inspector by such child while so working. No child to whom such permit and badge or identification card are issued shall transfer the same to any other person. SECTION 1728 w. No boy under fourteen years of age shall, in any city of the first class, sell, expose or offer for sale any newspapers, magazines or periodicals after the hour of six-thirty o'clock in the evening, between the first day of October and the first day of April, nor after seven-thirty o'clock in the evening between the first day of April and the first day of October, or before five o'clock in the morning; and no child under sixteen years of age shall distribute, sell, expose or offer for sale any newspapers, magazines or periodicals or shall work as a bootblack or in any street or public trades or distribute hand bills or shall be employed or permitted to work in the distribution or sale or exposing or offering for sale of any newspapers, magazines or periodicals or as a bootblack or in other street or public trades or in the distribution of hand bills during the hours when the public schools of the city where such child shall reside are in session. Provided, that any boy between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years, who is complying and shall continue to comply with all the legal requirements concerning school attendance, and who is mentally and physically able to do such delivery besides his regular school work, shall be authorized to deliver newspapers between the hours of four and six in the morning. SECTION 1728 x. The commissioner of labor or any factory inspector acting under his direction shall enforce the provisions of this law, and he is hereby vested with all powers requisite therefor. SECTION 1728 y. The permit of any child, who in any city of the first class distributes, sells or offers for sale any newspapers, magazines or periodicals in any street or public place or works as a bootblack or in any other street trade, or sells or offers for sale or distributes any hand bills or other articles in violation of the provisions of this act, or who becomes delinquent or fails to comply with all the legal requirements concerning school attendances shall forthwith be revoked for a period of six months and his badge taken from said child. The refusal of any child to surrender such permit, and the distribution, sale or offering for sale of newspapers, magazines or periodicals or any goods or merchandise, or the working by such child as a bootblack or in any other street or public trade, or in distributing hand bills or other articles, after notice, by any officer authorized to grant permits under this law of the revocation of such permit and a demand for the return of the badge, shall be deemed a violation of this act. The permit of said child may also be revoked by the officer who issued such permit, and the badge taken from such child, upon the complaint of any police officer or other attendance officer or probation officer of a juvenile court, and such child shall surrender his permit and badge upon the demand of any police officer, truancy or other attendance officer or probation officer of a juvenile court or other officer charged with the duty of enforcing this act. In case of a second violation of this act by any child, he shall be brought before the juvenile court, if there shall be any juvenile court in the city where such child resides, or, if not, before any court or magistrate having jurisdiction of offenses committed by minors and be dealt with according to law. SECTION 1728 z. Any parent or other person who employs a minor under the age of sixteen years in peddling without a license or who, having the care or custody of such minor, suffers or permits the child to engage in such employment, or to violate sections 1728 p to 1728 za, inclusive, shall be punished by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars nor less than twenty-five dollars, or by commitment to the county jail for not more than sixty days or less than ten days. SECTION 1728 za. Providing that no badge shall be issued for a boy selling papers between the ages of twelve and sixteen years by the state factory inspector, except upon certificate of the principal of either public, parochial or other private school attended by said boy, stating and setting forth that said boy is a regular attendant upon said school. No boy under the age of sixteen years shall be permitted by any newspaper publisher or printer or persons having for sale newspapers or periodicals of any character, to loiter or remain around any salesroom, assembly room, circulation room or office for the sale of newspapers, between the hours of nine in the forenoon and three in the afternoon, on days when school is in session. Any newspaper publisher, printer, circulation agent or seller of newspapers shall upon conviction for permitting newsboys to loiter or hang around any assembly room, circulation room, salesroom or office where papers are distributed or sold, shall be punished by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars nor less than twenty-five dollars, or by commitment to the county jail for not more than sixty days or less than ten days. _London, England_ BY-LAWS ADOPTED BY THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL AND PUT IN FORCE ON JUNE 3, 1911 By-laws 1-9 concern the employment of children generally. 10. No girl under the age of 16 years shall be employed in or carry on street trading. 11. No boy under the age of 14 years shall be employed in or carry on street trading. 12. No boy under the age of 16 years shall be employed in or carry on street trading before 6 in the morning or after 9 in the evening. 13. No boy under the age of 16 years shall at any time be employed in or carry on street trading unless (1) He is exempt from school attendance, and (2) He first procures a badge from the London County Council, which he shall wear whilst engaged in street trading on the upper part of the right arm in such a manner as to be conspicuous. The badge shall be deemed to be a license to trade, and may be withheld or withdrawn for such period as the London County Council think fit in any of the following cases-- (_a_) If the boy has, after the issue of the badge to him, been convicted of any offense. (_b_) If it is proved to the satisfaction of the London County Council that the boy has used his badge for the purpose of begging or receiving alms, or for any immoral purpose, or for the purpose of imposition, or for any other improper purpose. (_c_) If the boy fails to notify the London County Council within one week of any change in his place of residence. (_d_) If the boy commits a breach of any of the conditions under which such badge is issued; such conditions to be stated on such badge or delivered to the boy in writing. 14. A boy to whom a badge has been issued by the London County Council shall in no way alter, lend, sell, pawn, transfer, or otherwise dispose of, or wilfully deface, or injure such badge, which shall remain the property of the London County Council, and he shall, on receiving notice in writing from the London County Council (which may be served by post) that the badge has been withdrawn, deliver up the same forthwith to the London County Council. 15. A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street trading, shall not enter any premises used for public entertainment or licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor for consumption on the premises for the purpose of trading. 16. A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street trading, shall not annoy any person by importuning. 17. Nothing in these by-laws contained shall restrict the employment of children in the occupations specified in section 3 (_a_) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1904, further than such employment is already restricted by statute. APPENDIX B TWO TYPES OF NEWSBOY BADGES. [Illustration: BADGE USED IN CINCINNATI.] [Illustration: BADGE USED IN BOSTON.] APPENDIX C CARDS FOR INVESTIGATIONS The cards used in the inquiries into the newsboy situations of Philadelphia and Milwaukee are reproduced here, in the hope that they will be of use in furnishing suggestions to any organization or individual who contemplates making such an investigation elsewhere. It will be observed that these cards are practically confined to questions affecting newsboys only, and would have to be considerably amplified, if intended for use in a general study of street work by children. Cards used by Boston School Committee for Issuance of Licenses ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ APPLICATION FOR A LICENSE To the School Committee of the City of Boston: I hereby apply for a license for my son as NEWSBOY--PEDLER--BOOTBLACK. SIGNATURE OF PARENT I promise to see that he lives up to the license rules. ________________ SIGNATURE OF BOY I promise to live up to the license rules. ________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCHOOL RECORD OF BOY TO BE FILLED OUT BY THE TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL ---------------------+-------------------+------------------------------- PLACE OF BIRTH | DATE OF BIRTH | RESIDENCE | | -------+-------------+-------------------+------------------------------- GRADE | SCHOLARSHIP | PHYSICAL DEFECT? | SIGNATURE OF TEACHER | | | -------+-------------+-------------------+------------------------------- I hereby certify that this Boy's attendance is______ His conduct is_____ SIGNATURE OF PRINCIPAL SCHOOL ____________________________________ _____________________________ GRANTED WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE: __________________________ SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (CARD RETURNED TO SCHOOL FOR FILE) LICENSED MINORS _________ ________________________________________ No.________________________ Birth date Teacher Grade School Badge given Expires and must be returned ========================================================================= READ AND COPY LICENSE RULES OF THE BOSTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE _________ No boy can get a license unless he is eleven years of age and able to understand and COPY the following: A LICENSED NEWSBOY MUST MUST NOT 1. Must ATTEND school regularly. | 6. Must not sell before 6 A.M. 2. Must be "GOOD" in conduct. | 7. Must not sell after 8 P.M. 3. Must have no UNLICENSED | (9 P.M. in baseball season.) boy help him. | 8. Must not sell in SCHOOL HOURS. 4. Must keep the badge TO | 9. Must not sell on CARS. HIMSELF. | 10. Must not sell without wearing 5. Must RETURN his badge to the | the badge IN PLAIN SIGHT Superintendent of Schools | ALL THE TIME. when ordered to do so. | Any boy who breaks any of the above rules is liable to have his license revoked or go to court and pay a maximum fine of TEN dollars. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Form of Application for License used in Hartford, Conn. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~City of Hartford~ TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS:-- I hereby make application for a Street-Sales Permit for ______________________________________________________________________ Born in ______________________________________________________________ Age ______________ Sex _______________ Complexion ____________________ Eyes _____________ Hair ______________ Figure ________________________ Living at_________________________________________ Street ____________ If such license is granted I agree that it shall be for this child and for no other. ________________________________________ Parent, Guardian, Next Friend Hartford, ____________________________ =School Information= ______________________________________________________________________ Living at _______________________________________ _Street_____________ is pupil in this School, is regular in attendance, and is a suitable child to have a Street-Sales Permit. ________________________________ Principal. __________________________________ Teacher. __________________________________ School. The age, sex, complexion, eyes, hair, and figure, should be as described above. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Form used in Obtaining Information before the Issuing of a Badge in Province of Manitoba, Canada. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LICENSED NEWSBOY No. __________________ Date _________________________________ Child's name _____________________________________ Age _______________ Father's name ____________________________ Address ___________________ Mother's name ________________________________________________________ Father's occupation __________________________________________________ School and Grade _____________________________________________________ Principal's name _____________________________________________________ Church __________________ Clergyman __________________________________ Address ______________________________________________________________ Is child of apparently normal development? ___________________________ What proof has been given that he is over twelve years of age? _______ ______________________________________________________________________ Why do parents want him to sell papers? ______________________________ Can child read? ______________________________________________________ Can child write? _____________________________________________________ Has badge been granted? _____________ No. of badge ___________________ If badge has not been granted, state why _____________________________ _____________________________________________ _Superintendent Neglected Children, Province of Manitoba._ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sample of Card used in Investigation of Street Trades in Philadelphia ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Name_______________________________Address_______________________________ Age_______________sells__________________________at______________________ From________to________every day. Works from________to________on Saturday. How long in street trades_____________Income________________per__________ Parents living_____lives at home_______contributes_______per_____to home. If not living at home where does boy reside? Lodging house___ Furnished room___ Some relative___$__per___paid for board. Does boy gamble__drink__smoke___ Habit acquired prior to engaging in street trades________________________ Does vendor save part earnings___________________________________________ Where and with whom does boy spend non-working hours_____________________ At what hour does newsboy reach home_____Has boy a route (exclusive)_____ General health of boy____________________________________________________ Schooling________________________________________________________________ Is selling boy's own choice______________________________________________ How many nights so far this summer has boy stayed out all night__where___ Investigator________________________________Date_________________________ =Philadelphia Investigation Card= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sample of Card used in Investigation of Newsboys in Milwaukee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NAME ADDRESS CITY +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | I. FAMILY | +======================+=================+=============+==================+ |Name of {Guardian} | Nationality: | Religion: | Occupation: | |person he {Parent } | | | | |lives with{ } | | | | +--------------------+-+------+--------+-+-------+-----+------------------+ |Number in Family: |Mother |Father | Total |Number contributing | | | | |Children | to family support | +--------------------+--------+--------+---------+------------------------+ |Age of Boy, yr. mo. |Number of years |Papers handled Daily Sunday *| | | selling papers | Weekly | +--------------------+-----------------+----------------------------------+ |Sells papers as Employer Employee of Individual *| +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Sells at (street) | +---------------------------------------------------------+---------------+ |Sells: Morning Afternoon Evening After 9 P.M. *|Permit Number *| | |Has none | +------------------+--------------------------+-----------+---------------+ |Does he come |Where else does he eat? | How often (elsewhere) | |home for supper? | | per week? | +------------------+--------------------------+---------------------------+ |Arrives home |P.M. Saturday nights |Leaves to {deliver} A.M.*| |P.M. week nights | | {sell } | +------------------+---------------+----------+-+-------------------------+ |Does he stay out How often |Shoot |Go into {Saloons } | |all night? per week? |"craps"? | {Tenderloin} | +-----------------------+-----------------------+-------------------------+ |Does he like |Family require |Why is he working? | |the work? |his working? | | +=======================+=======================+=========================+ | II. SCHOOL | +==============================+==========================================+ |School attended: | Location: | +-------------------------+----+----------+-------------------------------+ |Informant: | Grade: | Years in school: | +-------------------------+---------------+-------------------------------+ |Boy's standing in Good Fair Poor *| Conduct: Good Fair Poor *| |school work: Poor | | +------------------+----------------------+-------------------------------+ |Is Boy drowsy? |Is school work injured by selling papers? Yes No *| +------------------+--------------+--------------------+------------------+ |Attendance: Regular Irregular *|Number of days |Absences excused | | |absent last month: | | +---------------------------------+--------------------+------------------+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Reverse Side of Milwaukee Newsboy Investigation Card ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ +--------------------------------------------++---------------------------+ | III. INCOME (AMOUNT RECEIVED BY || | | FAMILY CASHIER) ||IV. TO BE OBTAINED FROM BOY| +----------------------------------+---------+| | |SOURCE OCCUPATION PER NO. WEEKS| TOTAL || | | WEEK PER YEAR |PER YEAR || | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Newsboy | | ||What does boy $ | | | | ||earn per week? | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Other Children | | ||How much given $ | | | | ||to family? | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Father | | ||Why is he selling papers? | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Mother | | || | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Rents | | || | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Lodgers | | || | |(outside of family) | | || | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Other | | || | |Sources | | || | +----------------------------------+------+--++---------------------------+ |Total | | || | +==================================+======+==++===========================+ |Remarks--Housing: || INSTRUCTIONS | | || | | || It is necessary to get | | ||answers to all questions, | | ||as there are a | +--------------------------------------------++comparatively small number | | ||of cases being | | ||investigated. | | || Divisions I and III are to| | ||be obtained from the | | ||family. | +--------------------------------------------++ Division II from school | |Cleanliness: ||principal or teacher. | | || Division IV from the boy | | ||himself, away from his | | ||family, if possible. | | || Only boys under 14 are to | +--------------------------------------------++considered. | |Other: || If parent is dead, cross | | ||out line two, over. | | || * Use check ([X]) to mark | | ||what answer is. | | || If there are several | | ||answers, check each. | +--------------------------------------------++---------------------------+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ INDEX Addams, Jane, on Illinois child labor law, 15. Age limit (_see_ Laws and Ordinances), 194-196. Austria, investigation of 1907, 49-51. Begging, 38, 69, 96, 220. Berlin regulations, 240. Bootblacks, 83, 93. Ages, 84. Delinquency, 165. Diseases, 87, 88. Earnings, 84, 89, 95. Environment, 86, 87. Home conditions, 85. Hours, 84, 85, 94, 95. Padrone System, report by Immigration Commission, 86-92. Report by North American Civic League for Immigrants, 83, 84. Boston, license statistics, 33. Regulations of street work, 196. Boston Newsboys' Court, 79-81. Boston Newsboys' Republic, 212. Buffalo conditions, report on, 132, 133. Canada, 238. Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit, 14, 29. Chicago statistics of local studies, 28, 29. Chicago Vice Commission's report, 30, 67, 96, 118. Child Welfare Exhibit, 14. Chicago, 29. New York, 60. Cincinnati, license statistics, 35, 71. Market children, 97. Newsboy conditions, 54. Regulations of street work, 196. Delinquency, relation to street work, report of Dr. Charles P. Neill, 159. Chicago juvenile court records, 178. Connection between occupation and offense, 171. Records of Indiana Boys' School, 179-187. Delivery Service, 68, 161-174. Detroit, regulations of street work, 193. Edinburgh, conditions in, 44, 125, 224. Effects of street work, classified, 128. In Buffalo, 132, 133. In physical deterioration, 142-145. Opinions of superintendents of reformatories, 131, 132. Employment distinguished from independent work, 2, 192. Enforcement of regulations, 132, 208, 211. Errand running, 202. Delinquency, 161-174. France, regulations, 241. Germany, inquiry of 1898, 45-48. Regulations, 239. Girls as newspaper sellers, 31, 65, 200. Great Britain, Departmental Committee of 1910, 76, 138, 147, 197, 223, 237. Employment of Children Act, 1903, 221. Interdepartmental Committee of 1901, 43, 73, 145, 203, 217. Interdepartmental Committee of 1902 on Ireland, 150, 294, 220. Interdepartmental Committee of 1904 on Physical Deterioration, 125, 142. Parliamentary return of 1899, 39-42, 215. Hartford, regulations of street work, 196. Housing problem's relation to street trading, 20. Illinois, effort to regulate street trading, 14, 198. Immigration Commission, report on Padrone System, 36, 86-92. Ireland, report of Interdepartmental Committee of 1902, 150, 204, 220. Kelley, Florence, on street trading, 52, 70, 127, 207. Laws, table of state, 194. Licenses for street work required, 197, 209. License statistics, of Boston, 33. Of Cincinnati, 35, 71. Of New York, 16, 34. Liverpool, conditions, 230. Regulations, 232. London County Council bylaws, 233-236, 264. Lovejoy, Owen R., on messenger service, 123. Manchester regulations, 236. Market children, 21, 96. Ages, 97. Earnings, 96. Home conditions, 99, 100. Hours, 99. Nationalities, 97, 98. Orphanage, 100. Retardation, 98, 99. Merchandise, distinction between newspapers and, 189. Messenger boys, 101. Ages, 106-117. Character of work, 101-104. Chicago Vice Commission's report, 118-121. Delinquency, 104, 165, 169. Diseases, 111, 112, 113. Earnings, 106, 112, 113, 114. Environment, 102, 103. Hours, 108, 113, 115, 119. Investigation in Ohio Valley, 106-117. Lack of prospects, 104, 126. Poverty as excuse for work, 122. Use of men instead of boys, 105, 123-125. Nationality of street workers, 33, 97. Nearing, Scott, conditions in Philadelphia, 69, 135. Neill, Charles P., on newsboys' work, 64. On messenger service, 117. Report on Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment, 159. Newark, regulations of street work, 196. New York, report of newsboy investigation, 16, 34, 148. Child Welfare Exhibit, 60. Regulations of street work, 195. Newsboys, ages, 54-60. Associations, 66. Character of work, 56-58. Classified, 52. Delinquency, 165. Diseases, 136. Earnings compared with factory wages, 58. Environment, 60, 135. Home conditions, 70-72. Hours, 65-70. Irregularity of meals, 61. Orphanage, 71, 168. Retardation, 147-156. Substitutes, 75-79. Tricks of the trade, 63-64. Newsboys' Court of Boston, 79-81. Newsboys' Republic of Boston, 212. New South Wales, license statistics, 45. Regulations, 45, 238. Newspapers, as merchandise, 189. Attitude toward regulation, 28, 199. Night work, of messengers, 101, 169. Of newsboys, 65-70. Ordinances, table of city, 196. Padrone System, report, of Immigration Commission, 36, 86-92. North American Civic League for Immigrants, 83, 84. Peddlers, findings of Chicago Vice Commission, 96. Cincinnati statistics, 97. Delinquency, 165. Immigration Commission's report, 36. Philadelphia conditions, 69. Playgrounds, 22. Poverty as an excuse for street work, 70-73, 136-138. Prohibition, of night work, 208. Of street work by children, 224, 227. Regulation, by municipality or state, 205. Degree of, 193, 206. In future, 207. Unsatisfactory, 228. Retardation in school of street workers, 98, 147-156. Rochester, method of enforcement, 211. St. Louis statistics, 146, 151. School, as social center, 21. Retardation of street workers, 98, 147-156. Scotland, conditions, 44, 225. Spargo, John, on effects of street work, 135. Statistics, of U.S. Census, 24, 25. Austria, 49-51. Boston, 33. Chicago, 28, 29. Cincinnati, 35, 71. Germany, 45-48. Great Britain, 40-44, 143-145. New York, 16, 34, 148. Street as a social agent, 17. Street employments, distinction between, 5. Street occupations, of minor importance, 38. Classified, 4. Contrasted with regular work, 73, 139. Street trading defined, 3. Neglected in legislation, 7, 12, 192. Street trading problem related to other problems, 20. Toledo, retardation of street workers, 152-156. Vagrants, Chicago report on, 32. Vice Commission of Chicago, report, 30, 67, 96, 118. Wisconsin, law, 257. The following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. NOTABLE WORKS BY MISS JANE ADDAMS A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.10_ It is almost unnecessary to call attention to the importance of a new book by Jane Addams. As a servant of the public good Miss Addams, both through her work at Hull-House and through her writings, has made for herself a name all over the world. She does not view things from a standpoint of destructive criticism, but rather from that of constructive, her aim being always to better the conditions in the particular field which she is considering. In "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil," she considers sanely and frankly questions which civilized society has always had confronting it and in all probability always will. Something of her attitude of mind and of her purpose in writing this book as well as a glimpse of the character of the volume may be seen from the following paragraph taken from her preface: "'A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil' was written, not from the point of view of the expert, but because of my own need for a counter-knowledge to a bewildering mass of information which came to me through the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago. The reports which its twenty field officers daily brought to its main office adjoining Hull-House became to me a revelation of the dangers incident to city conditions and of the allurements which are designedly placed around many young girls in order to draw them into an evil life." * * * * * "Miss Addams's volume is painful reading, but we heartily wish that it might be read and pondered by every man and woman who to-day, in smug complacency, treat with indifference and contempt the great struggle for social purity."--_The Nation._ "As an educational weapon, incalculably valuable. A torch with which every thinking citizen should be armed for a crusade against the dark-covered evil at which it is aimed."--_The Continent._ The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets _12mo, cloth, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_ A protest against the practice of every large city of turning over to commercialism practically all the provisions for public recreation, leaving it possible for private greed to starve or demoralize the nature of youth. * * * * * "Few persons in this country are better qualified to speak with authority on any subject connected with the betterment of the poor than is Jane Addams."--_New York Herald._ "The book should be in the hands of every preacher and laborer for humanity. I wish that parents might make it a text-book."--Rev. MADISON C. PETER in _The New Orleans Daily News_. "It is brimming full of the mother sentiment of love and yearning, and also shows such sanity, such breadth and tolerance of mind, and such philosophic penetration into the inner meanings of outward phenomena as to make it a book which no one who cares seriously about its subject can afford to miss."--_New York Times._ Newer Ideals of Peace _12mo, cloth, leather back, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_ "A clean and consistent setting forth of the utility of labor as against the waste of war, and an exposition of the alteration of standards that must ensue when labor and the spirit of militarism are relegated to their right places in the minds of men.... Back of it lies illimitable sympathy, immeasurable pity, a spirit as free as that of St. Francis, a sense of social order and fitness that Marcus Aurelius might have found similar to his own."--_Chicago Tribune._ The editor of _Collier's_ writes: "To us it seems the most comprehensive talk yet given about how to help humanity in America to-day." "It is given to but few people to have the rare combination of power of insight and of interpretation possessed by Miss Addams. The present book shows the same fresh virile thought, and the happy expression which has characterized her work.... There is nothing of namby-pamby sentimentalism in Miss Addams's idea of the peace movement. The volume is most inspiring and deserves wide recognition."--_Annals of the American Academy._ "No brief summary can do justice to Miss Addams's grasp of the facts, her insight into their meaning, her incisive estimate of the strength and weakness alike of practical politicians and spasmodic reformers, her sensible suggestions as to woman's place in our municipal housekeeping, her buoyant yet practical optimism."--_Examiner._ Democracy and Social Ethics _Half leather, ix + 281 pages, 12mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_ "The result of actual experience in hand-to-hand contact with social problems.... No more truthful description, for example, of the 'boss' as he thrives to-day in our great cities has ever been written than is contained in Miss Addams's chapter on 'Political Reform.' ... The same thing may be said of the book in regard to the presentation of social and economic facts."--_Review of Reviews._ "The book is startling, stimulating, and intelligent."--_Philadelphia Ledger._ Twenty Years at Hull-House _Ill., dec. cloth, 8vo, $2.50 net; by mail, $2.68_ Jane Addams's work at Hull-House is known throughout the civilized world. In the present volume she tells of her endeavors and of their success--of the beginning of Hull-House, of its growth and its present influence. For every one at all interested in the improvement of our cities, in the moral education of those who are forced to spend much of their time on the streets or in cheap places of amusement--"Twenty Years at Hull-House" is a volume of more than ordinary interest and value. * * * * * "The personality of Jane Addams is one of the finest achievements of that idea of democracy, service, and freedom for which America means to stand before the world."--_N. Y. Times._ "The story of the beginnings of this remarkable undertaking (Hull-House), the problems that were faced and conquered in the early days, the unsuspected resources that were developed among the crowded city population of foreign birth, and the efforts continuously made for the betterment of labor legislation in the State of Illinois, are all set forth with simplicity and directness. On the whole it is a wonderful record of accomplishment, full of suggestion to social reformers the world over."--_Review of Reviews._ "Who reads this book lightly misses a great opportunity."--_Bellman._ "The story is one of singular interest and has a strange affinity with the stories of other great moral and spiritual leaders of humanity."--_Bookman._ On City Government _The American City_ By DELOS F. WILCOX, Ph.D. "In the 'American City' Dr. Wilcox ... has written a book that every thoughtful citizen should read. The problems of the street, the tenement, public utilities, civic education, the three deadly vices, municipal revenue and municipal debt, with all their related and subsidiary problems, are clearly and fully considered."--_Pittsburgh Gazette._ _6 + 423 pages, 12mo, cloth, leather back, $1.25 net. Citizens' Library_ Great American Cities _Their Problems and Their Government_ By DELOS F. WILCOX, Chief of the Bureau of Franchises, of the Public Service Commission for the first District, New York A detailed account of present conditions in the half-dozen largest cities of the country, including Chicago. _Half leather, 12mo, $1.25 net_ On Industrial Legislation _Some Ethical Gains through Legislation_ By MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY The book has grown out of the author's experience as Chief Inspector of Factories in Illinois from 1893 to 1897, as Secretary of the National Consumers' League from 1899 till now, and chiefly as a resident at Hull-House, and later at the Nurses' Settlement, New York. _Cloth, leather back, 341 pages, 12mo, $1.25 net. Citizens' Library_ On Charitable Effort _How to Help_ By MARY CONYNGTON, of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington Not only is the professional charity worker often in need of advice as to the best methods of investigation, administration, etc., but the non-professional worker, with his zeal unrestrained by special training, is even more emphatically in need of such guidance as this sound and competent book gives. _New edition, cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net_ The Development of Thrift By MARY W. BROWN, Secretary of the Henry Watson Children's Aid Society, Baltimore "An excellent little Manual, a study of various agencies, their scope and their educating influences for thrift. It abounds in suggestions of value."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._ _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net_ Friendly Visiting among the Poor By MARY E. RICHMOND, General Secretary of the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore "A small book full of inspiration, yet intensely practical."--CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON. _Cloth, 16mo, $1.00 net_ The Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children By HOMER FOLKS, Ex-Commissioner of Public Charities, New York City CONTENTS.--Conditions prevalent at the opening of the Nineteenth Century; Public Care of Destitute Children, 1801-1875; Private Charities for Destitute Children, 1801-1875; Removal of Children from Almshouse; The State School and Placing Out System; The County Children's Home System; The System of Public Support in Private Institutions; The Boarding Out and Placing Out System; Laws and Societies for the Rescue of Neglected Children; Private Charities for Destitute and Neglected Children, 1875-1900; Delinquent Children; Present Tendencies. _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net_ Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy By JOSEPH LEE, Vice-President of the Massachusetts Civic League CONTENTS.--Essence and Limitations of the Subject; Before 1860; Savings and Loans; The Home; Health and Building Laws, Model Tenements; The Setting of the Home; Vacation Schools; Playgrounds for Small Children; Baths and Gymnasiums; Playgrounds for Big Boys; Model Playgrounds; Outings; Boys' Clubs; Industrial Training; For Grown People; Conclusion. _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net_ * * * * * THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Transcriber's Notes: The following changes have been made to the text: - In the table introduced as "Street traders and street employees may be classified by occupation as follows:--" Newspaper sellers was written as one word once. - In the table detailing the occupation of children in Germany, introduced as "Seven divisions of these children were made according to occupation ..." the word Austragedienste was wrongly hyphenated. - In the TABLE E. HOURS AND EARNINGS OF STREET WORKERS a header "OCCUPATIONS" was missing (compared to TABLE D before), and was added. - In Footnote [172] the title of Mr. Ferrette's work was misspelled as "Manuel de Lègislation Industrielle", and was changed to "Manuel de législation industrielle" in accordance with its original title. - In the Index entry "Great Britain ... Interdepartmental Committee of 1902 on Ireland ..." the reference to page 294 was changed to page 204. The following changes have been made to the formatting and layout: - Tables D to G in Chapter VII, and some tables in Annex C were changed in layout to enable readability in plain text. - In "Reverse Side of Milwaukee Newsboy Investigation Card": Original uses check mark, rendered here as [X]. 
4529	----	BIOGRAPHIES OF WORKING MEN by GRANT ALLEN, B.A. 1884 CONTENTS. I. THOMAS TELFORD, STONEMASON II. GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-MAN III. JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR IV. WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN V. JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, PAINTER VI. JAMES GARFIELD, CANAL BOY VII. THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER PREFACE. My acknowledgments are due to Dr. Smiles's "Lives of the Engineers," "Life of the Stephensons," and "Life of a Scotch Naturalist;" to Lady Eastlake's "Life of Gibson;" to Mr. Holden's "Life of Sir William Herschel;" to M. Seusier's "J. F. Millet, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres;" and to Mr. Thayer's "Life of President Garfield;" from which most of the facts here narrated have been derived. G.A. BIOGRAPHIES OF WORKING MEN. I. THOMAS TELFORD, STONEMASON. High up among the heather-clad hills which form the broad dividing barrier between England and Scotland, the little river Esk brawls and bickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides and brown peat mosses, forming altogether some of the gloomiest and most forbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain. Almost the entire bulk of the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr is composed of just such solemn desolate upland wolds, with only a few stray farms or solitary cottages sprinkled at wide distances over their bare bleak surface, and with scarcely any sign of life in any part save the little villages which cluster here and there at long intervals around some stern and simple Scottish church. Yet the hardy people who inhabit this wild and chilly moorland country may well be considered to rank among the best raw material of society in the whole of Britain; for from the peasant homes of these southern Scotch Highlands have come forth, among a host of scarcely less distinguished natives, three men, at least, who deserve to take their place in the very front line of British thinkers or workers--Thomas Telford, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle. By origin, all three alike belonged in the very strictest sense to the working classes; and the story of each is full of lessons or of warnings for every one of us: but that of Telford is perhaps the most encouraging and the most remarkable of all, as showing how much may be accomplished by energy and perseverance, even under the most absolutely adverse and difficult circumstances. Near the upper end of Eskdale, in the tiny village of Westerkirk, a young shepherd's wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August, 1757. Her husband, John Telford, was employed in tending sheep on a neighbouring farm, and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage close by, with mud walls and rudely thatched roof, such as in southern England even the humblest agricultural labourer would scarcely consent willingly to inhabit. Before the child was three months old, his father died; and Janet Telford was left alone in the world with her unweaned baby. But in remote country districts, neighbours are often more neighbourly than in great towns; and a poor widow can manage to eke out a livelihood for herself with an occasional lift from the helping hands of friendly fellow-villagers. Janet Telford had nothing to live upon save her own ten fingers; but they were handy enough, after the sturdy Scotch fashion, and they earned some sort of livelihood in a humble way for herself and her fatherless boy. The farmers about found her work on their farms at haymaking or milking, and their wives took the child home with them while its mother was busy labouring in the harvest fields. Amid such small beginnings did the greatest of English engineers before the railway era receive his first hard lessons in the art of life. After her husband's death, the poor widow removed from her old cottage to a still more tiny hut, which she shared with a neighbour--a very small hut, with a single door for both families; and here young Tam Telford spent most of his boyhood in the quiet honourable poverty of the uncomplaining rural poor. As soon as he was big enough to herd sheep, he was turned out upon the hillside in summer like any other ragged country laddie, and in winter he tended cows, receiving for wages only his food and money enough to cover the cost of his scanty clothing. He went to school, too; how, nobody now knows: but he DID go, to the parish school of Westerkirk, and there he learnt with a will, in the winter months, though he had to spend the summer on the more profitable task of working in the fields. To a steady earnest boy like young Tam Telford, however, it makes all the difference in the world that he should have been to school, no matter how simply. Those twenty-six letters of the alphabet, once fairly learnt, are the key, after all, to all the book-learning in the whole world. Without them, the shepherd-boy might remain an ignorant, unprogressive shepherd all his life long, even his undeniable native energy using itself up on nothing better than a wattled hurdle or a thatched roof; with them, the path is open before him which led Tam Telford at last to the Menai Bridge And Westminster Abbey. When Tam had gradually eaten his way through enough thin oatmeal porridge (with very little milk, we fear) to make him into a hearty lad of fifteen, it began to be high time for him to choose himself a final profession in life, such as he was able. And here already the born tastes of the boy began to show themselves: for he had no liking for the homely shepherd's trade; he felt a natural desire for a chisel and a hammer--the engineer was there already in the grain--and he was accordingly apprenticed to a stonemason in the little town of Lochmaben, beyond the purple hills to eastward. But his master was a hard man; he had small mercy for the raw lad; and after trying to manage with him for a few months, Tam gave it up, took the law into his own hands, and ran away. Probably the provocation was severe, for in after-life Telford always showed himself duly respectful to constituted authority; and we know that petty self-made master-workmen are often apt to be excessively severe to their own hired helpers, and especially to helpless lads or young apprentices. At any rate, Tam wouldn't go back; and in the end, a well-to-do cousin, who had risen to the proud position of steward at the great hall of the parish, succeeded in getting another mason at Langholm, the little capital of Eskdale, to take over the runaway for the remainder of the term of his indentures. At Langholm, a Scotch country town of the quietest and sleepiest description, Tam Telford passed the next eight years of his uneventful early life, first as an apprentice, and afterwards as a journeyman mason of the humblest type. He had a good mother, and he was a good son. On Saturday nights he generally managed to walk over to the cottage at Westerkirk, and accompany the poor widow to the Sunday services at the parish kirk. As long as she lived, indeed, he never forgot her; and one of the first tasks he set himself when he was out of his indentures was to cut a neat headstone with a simple but beautiful inscription for the grave of that shepherd father whom he had practically never seen. At Langholm, an old maiden lady, Miss Pasley, interested herself kindly in Janet Telford's rising boy. She lent him what of all things the eager lad most needed--books; and the young mason applied himself to them in all his spare moments with the vigorous ardour and perseverance of healthy youth. The books he read were not merely those which bore directly or indirectly upon his own craft: if they had been, Tam Telford might have remained nothing more than a journeyman mason all the days of his life. It is a great mistake, even from the point of view of mere worldly success, for a young man to read or learn only what "pays" in his particular calling; the more he reads and learns, the more will he find that seemingly useless things "pay" in the end, and that what apparently pays least, often really pays most in the long run. This is not the only or the best reason why every man should aim at the highest possible cultivation of his own talents, be they what they may; but it is in itself a very good reason, and it is a sufficient answer for those who would deter us from study of any high kind on the ground that it "does no good." Telford found in after-life that his early acquaintance with sound English literature did do him a great deal of good: it opened and expanded his mind; it trained his intelligence; it stored his brain with images and ideas which were ever after to him a source of unmitigated delight and unalloyed pleasure. He read whenever he had nothing else to do. He read Milton with especial delight; and he also read the verses that his fellow-countryman, Rob Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman, was then just beginning to speak straight to the heart of every aspiring Scotch peasant lad. With these things Tam Telford filled the upper stories of his brain quite as much as with the trade details of his own particular useful handicraft; and the result soon showed that therein Tam Telford had not acted uncannily or unwisely. Nor did he read only; he wrote too--verses, not very good, nor yet very bad, but well expressed, in fairly well chosen language, and with due regard to the nice laws of metre and of grammar, which is in itself a great point. Writing verse is an occupation at which only very few even among men of literary education ever really succeed; and nine-tenths of published verse is mere mediocre twaddle, quite unworthy of being put into the dignity of print. Yet Telford did well for all that in trying his hand, with but poor result, at this most difficult and dangerous of all the arts. His rhymes were worth nothing as rhymes; but they were worth a great deal as discipline and training: they helped to form the man, and that in itself is always something. Most men who have in them the power to do any great thing pass in early life through a verse-making stage. The verses never come to much; but they leave their stamp behind them; and the man is all the better in the end for having thus taught himself the restraint, the command of language, the careful choice of expressions, the exercise of deliberate pains in composition, which even bad verse-making necessarily implies. It is a common mistake of near-sighted minds to look only at the immediate results of things, without considering their remoter effects. When Tam Telford, stonemason of Langholm, began at twenty-two years of age to pen poetical epistles to Robert Burns, most of his fellow-workmen doubtless thought he was giving himself up to very foolish and nonsensical practices; but he was really helping to educate Thomas Telford, engineer of the Holyhead Road and the Caledonian Canal, for all his future usefulness and greatness. As soon as Tam was out of his indentures, he began work as a journeyman mason at Langholm on his own account, at the not very magnificent wages of eighteenpence a day. That isn't much; but at any rate it is an independence. Besides building many houses in his own town, Tam made here his first small beginning in the matter of roads and highways, by helping to build a bridge over the Esk at Langholm. He was very proud of his part in this bridge, and to the end of his life he often referred to it as his first serious engineering work. Many of the stones still bear his private mark, hewn with the tool into their solid surface, with honest workmanship which helps to explain his later success. But the young mason was beginning to discover that Eskdale was hardly a wide enough field for his budding ambition. He could carve the most careful headstones; he could cut the most ornamental copings for doors or windows; he could even build a bridge across the roaring flooded Esk; but he wanted to see a little of the great world, and learn how men and masons went about their work in the busy centres of the world's activity. So, like a patriotic Scotchman that he was, he betook himself straight to Edinburgh, tramping it on foot, of course, for railways did not yet exist, and coaches were not for the use of such as young Thomas Telford. He arrived in the grey old capital of Scotland in the very nick of time. The Old Town, a tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards, surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which lies beyond a broad valley on the opposite hillside, and contains numerous streets of solid and handsome stone houses, such as are hardly to be found in any other town in Britain, except perhaps Bath and Aberdeen. Edinburgh is always, indeed, an interesting place for an enthusiastic lover of building, be he architect or stonemason; for instead of being built of brick like London and so many other English centres, it is built partly of a fine hard local sandstone and partly of basaltic greenstone; and besides its old churches and palaces, many of the public buildings are particularly striking and beautiful architectural works. But just at the moment when young Telford walked wearily into Edinburgh at the end of his long tramp, there was plenty for a stout strong mason to do in the long straight stone fronts of the rising New Town. For two years, he worked away patiently at his trade in "the grey metropolis of the North;" and he took advantage of the special opportunities the place afforded him to learn drawing, and to make minute sketches in detail of Holyrood Palace, Heriot's Hospital, Roslyn Chapel, and all the other principal old buildings' in which the neighbourhood of the capital is particularly rich. So anxious, indeed, was the young mason to perfect himself by the study of the very best models in his own craft, that when at the end of two years he walked back to revisit his good mother in Eskdale, he took the opportunity of making drawings of Melrose Abbey, the most exquisite and graceful building that the artistic stone-cutters of the Middle Ages have handed down to our time in all Scotland. This visit to Eskdale was really Telford's last farewell to his old home, before setting out on a journey which was to form the turning-point in his own history, and in the history of British engineering as well. In Scotch phrase, he was going south. And after taking leave of his mother (not quite for the last time) he went south in good earnest, doing this journey on horseback; for his cousin the steward had lent him a horse to make his way southward like a gentleman. Telford turned where all enterprising young Scotchmen of his time always turned: towards the unknown world of London--that world teeming with so many possibilities of brilliant success or of miserable squalid failure. It was the year 1782, and the young man was just twenty-five. No sooner had he reached the great city than he began looking about him for suitable work. He had a letter of introduction to the architect of Somerset House, whose ornamental fronts were just then being erected, facing the Strand and the river; and Telford was able to get a place at once on the job as a hewer of the finer architectural details, for which both his taste and experience well fitted him. He spent some two years in London at this humble post as a stone-cutter; but already he began to aspire to something better. He earned first-class mason's wages now, and saved whatever he did not need for daily expenses. In this respect, the improvidence of his English fellow-workmen struck the cautious young Scotchman very greatly. They lived, he said, from week to week entirely; any time beyond a week seemed unfortunately to lie altogether outside the range of their limited comprehension. At the end of two years in London, Telford's skill and study began to bear good fruit. His next engagement was one which raised him for the first time in his life above the rank of a mere journeyman mason. The honest workman had attracted the attention of competent judges. He obtained employment as foreman of works of some important buildings in Portsmouth Dockyard. A proud man indeed was Thomas Telford at this change of fortune, and very proudly he wrote to his old friends in Eskdale, with almost boyish delight, about the trust reposed in him by the commissioners and officers, and the pains he was taking with the task entrusted to him. For he was above all things a good workman, and like all good workmen he felt a pride and an interest in all the jobs he took in hand. His sense of responsibility and his sensitiveness, indeed, were almost too great at times for his own personal comfort. Things WILL go wrong now and then, even with the greatest care; well-planned undertakings will not always pay, and the best engineering does not necessarily succeed in earning a dividend; but whenever such mishaps occurred to his employers, Telford felt the disappointment much too keenly, as though he himself had been to blame for their miscalculations or over-sanguine hopes. Still, it is a good thing to put one's heart in one's work, and so much Thomas Telford certainly did. About this time, too, the rising young mason began to feel that he must get a little more accurate scientific knowledge. The period for general study had now passed by, and the period for special trade reading had set in. This was well. A lad cannot do better than lay a good foundation of general knowledge and general literature during the period when he is engaged in forming his mind: a young man once fairly launched in life may safely confine himself for a time to the studies that bear directly upon his own special chosen subject. The thing that Telford began closely to investigate was--lime. Now, lime makes mortar; and without lime, accordingly, you can have no mason. But to know anything really about lime, Telford found he must read some chemistry; and to know anything really about chemistry he must work at it hard and unremittingly. A strict attention to one's own business, understood in this very broad and liberal manner, is certainly no bad thing for any struggling handicraftsman, whatever his trade or profession may happen to be. In 1786, when Telford was nearly thirty, a piece of unexpected good luck fell to his lot. And yet it was not so much good luck as due recognition of his sterling qualities by a wealthy and appreciative person. Long before, while he was still in Eskdale, one Mr. Pulteney, a man of social importance, who had a large house in the bleak northern valley, had asked his advice about the repairs of his own mansion. We may be sure that Telford did his work on that occasion carefully and well; for now, when Mr. Pulteney wished to restore the ruins of Shrewsbury Castle as a dwelling-house, he sought out the young mason who had attended to his Scotch property, and asked him to superintend the proposed alterations in his Shropshire castle. Nor was that all: by Mr. Pulteney's influence, Telford was shortly afterwards appointed to be county surveyor of public works, having under his care all the roads, bridges, gaols, and public buildings in the whole of Shropshire. Thus the Eskdale shepherd-boy rose at last from the rank of a working mason, and attained the well-earned dignity of an engineer and a professional man. Telford had now a fair opportunity of showing the real stuff of which he was made. Those, of course, were the days when railroads had not yet been dreamt of; when even roads were few and bad; when communications generally were still in a very disorderly and unorganized condition. It is Telford's special glory that he reformed and altered this whole state of things; he reduced the roads of half Britain to system and order; he made the finest highways and bridges then ever constructed; and by his magnificent engineering works, especially his aqueducts, he paved the way unconsciously but surely for the future railways. If it had not been for such great undertakings as Telford's Holyhead Road, which familiarized men's minds with costly engineering operations, it is probable that projectors would long have stood aghast at the alarming expense of a nearly level iron road running through tall hills and over broad rivers the whole way from London to Manchester. At first, Telford's work as county surveyor lay mostly in very small things indeed--mere repairs of sidepaths or bridges, which gave him little opportunity to develop his full talents as a born engineer. But in time, being found faithful in small things, his employers, the county magistrates, began to consult him more and more on matters of comparative importance. First, it was a bridge to be built across the Severn; then a church to be planned at Shrewsbury, and next, a second church in Coalbrookdale. If he was thus to be made suddenly into an architect, Telford thought, almost without being consulted in the matter, he must certainly set out to study architecture. So, with characteristic vigour, he went to work to visit London, Worcester, Gloucester, Bath, and Oxford, at each place taking care to learn whatever was to be learned in the practice of his new art. Fortunately, however, for Telford and for England, it was not architecture in the strict sense that he was finally to practise as a real profession. Another accident, as thoughtless people might call it, led him to adopt engineering in the end as the path in life he elected to follow. In 1793, he was appointed engineer to the projected Ellesmere Canal. In the days before railways, such a canal as this was an engineering work of the very first importance. It was to connect the Mersey, the Dee, and the Severn, and it passed over ground which rendered necessary some immense aqueducts on a scale never before attempted by British engineers. Even in our own time, every traveller by the Great Western line between Chester and Shrewsbury must have observed on his right two magnificent ranges as high arches, which are as noticeable now as ever for their boldness, their magnitude, and their exquisite construction. The first of these mighty archways is the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct which carries the Ellesmere Canal across the wide valley of the Dee, known as the Vale of Llangollen; the second is the Chirk aqueduct, which takes it over the lesser glen of a minor tributary, the Ceriog. Both these beautiful works were designed and carried out entirely by Telford. They differ from many other great modern engineering achievements in the fact that, instead of spoiling the lovely mountain scenery into whose midst they have been thrown, they actually harmonize with it and heighten its natural beauty. Both works, however, are splendid feats, regarded merely as efforts of practical skill; and the larger one is particularly memorable for the peculiarity that the trough for the water and the elegant parapet at the side are both entirely composed of iron. Nowadays, of course, there would be nothing remarkable in the use of such a material for such a purpose; but Telford was the first engineer to see the value of iron in this respect, and the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct was one of the earliest works in which he applied the new material to these unwonted uses. Such a step is all the more remarkable, because Telford's own education had lain entirely in what may fairly be called the "stone age" of English engineering; while his natural predilections as a stonemason might certainly have made him rather overlook the value of the novel material. But Telford was a man who could rise superior to such little accidents of habit or training; and as a matter of fact there is no other engineer to whom the rise of the present "iron age" in engineering work is more directly and immediately to be attributed than to himself. Meanwhile, the Eskdale pioneer did not forget his mother. For years he had constantly written to her, in PRINT HAND, so that the letters might be more easily read by her aged eyes; he had sent her money in full proportion to his means; and he had taken every possible care to let her declining years be as comfortable as his altered circumstances could readily make them. And now, in the midst of this great and responsible work, he found time to "run down" to Eskdale (very different "running down" from that which we ourselves can do by the London and North Western Railway), to see his aged mother once more before she died. What a meeting that must have been, between the poor old widow of the Eskdale shepherd, and her successful son, the county surveyor of Shropshire, and engineer of the great and important Ellesmere Canal! While Telford was working busily upon his wonderful canal, he had many other schemes to carry out of hardly less importance, in connection with his appointment as county surveyor. His beautiful iron bridge across the Severn at Buildwas was another application of his favourite metal to the needs of the new world that was gradually growing up in industrial England; and so satisfied was he with the result of his experiment (for though not absolutely the first, it was one of the first iron bridges ever built) that he proposed another magnificent idea, which unfortunately was never carried into execution. Old London Bridge had begun to get a trifle shaky; and instead of rebuilding it, Telford wished to span the whole river by a single iron arch, whose splendid dimensions would have formed one of the most remarkable engineering triumphs ever invented. The scheme, for some good reason, doubtless, was not adopted; but it is impossible to look at Telford's grand drawing of the proposed bridge--a single bold arch, curving across the Thames from side to side, with the dome of St. Paul's rising majestically above it--without a feeling of regret that such a noble piece of theoretical architecture was never realized in actual fact. Telford had now come to be regarded as the great practical authority upon all that concerned roads or communications; and he was reaping the due money-reward of his diligence and skill. Every day he was called upon to design new bridges and other important structures in all parts of the kingdom, but more especially in Scotland and on the Welsh border. Many of the most picturesque bridges in Britain, which every tourist has admired, often without inquiring or thinking of the hand that planned them, were designed by his inventive brain. The exquisite stone arch which links the two banks of the lesser Scotch Dee in its gorge at Tongueland is one of the most picturesque; for Telford was a bit of an artist at heart, and, unlike too many modern railway constructors, he always endeavoured to make his bridges and aqueducts beautify rather than spoil the scenery in whose midst they stood. Especially was he called in to lay out the great system of roads by which the Scotch Highlands, then so lately reclaimed from a state of comparative barbarism, were laid open for the great development they have since undergone. In the earlier part of the century, it is true, a few central highways had been run through the very heart of that great solid block of mountains; but these were purely military roads, to enable the king's soldiers more easily to march against the revolted clans, and they had hardly more connection with the life of the country than the bare military posts, like Fort William and Fort Augustus, which guarded their ends, had to do with the ordinary life of a commercial town. Meanwhile, however, the Highlands had begun gradually to settle down; and Telford's roads were intended for the far higher and better purpose of opening out the interior of northern Scotland to the humanizing influences of trade and industry. Fully to describe the great work which the mature engineer constructed in the Highland region, would take up more space than could be allotted to such a subject anywhere save in a complete industrial history of roads and travelling in modern Britain. It must suffice to say that when Telford took the matter in hand, the vast block of country north and west of the Great Glen of Caledonia (which divides the Highlands in two between Inverness and Ben Nevis)--a block comprising the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Cromarty, and half Inverness--had literally nothing within it worthy of being called a road. Wheeled carts or carriages were almost unknown, and all burdens were conveyed on pack-horses, or, worse still, on the broad backs of Highland lassies. The people lived in small scattered villages, and communications from one to another were well-nigh impossible. Telford set to work to give the country, not a road or two, but a main system of roads. First, he bridged the broad river Tay at Dunkeld, so as to allow of a direct route straight into the very jaws of the Highlands. Then, he also bridged over the Beauly at Inverness, so as to connect the opposite sides of the Great Glen with one another. Next, he laid out a number of trunk lines, running through the country on both banks, to the very north of Caithness, and the very west of the Isle of Skye. Whoever to this day travels on the main thoroughfares in the greater Scottish Islands--in Arran, Islay, Jura, Mull; or in the wild peninsula of Morvern, and the Land of Lorne; or through the rugged regions of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, where the railway has not yet penetrated,--travels throughout on Telford's roads. The number of large bridges and other great engineering masterpieces on this network of roads is enormous; among the most famous and the most beautiful, are the exquisite single arch which spans the Spey just beside the lofty rearing rocks of Craig Ellachie, and the bridge across the Dee, beneath the purple heather-clad braes of Ballater. Altogether, on Telford's Highland roads alone, there are no fewer than twelve hundred bridges. Nor were these the only important labours by which Telford ministered to the comfort and well-being of his Scotch fellow-countrymen. Scotland's debt to the Eskdale stonemason is indeed deep and lasting. While on land, he improved her communications by his great lines of roads, which did on a smaller scale for the Highland valleys what railways have since done for the whole of the civilized world; he also laboured to improve her means of transit at sea by constructing a series of harbours along that bare and inhospitable eastern coast, once almost a desert, but now teeming with great towns and prosperous industries. It was Telford who formed the harbour of Wick, which has since grown from a miserable fishing village into a large town, the capital of the North Sea herring fisheries. It was he who enlarged the petty port of Peterhead into the chief station of the flourishing whaling trade. It was he who secured prosperity for Fraserburgh, and Banff, and many other less important centres; while even Dundee and Aberdeen, the chief commercial cities of the east coast, owe to him a large part of their present extraordinary wealth and industry. When one thinks how large a number of human beings have been benefited by Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is impossible not to envy a great engineer his almost unlimited power of permanent usefulness to unborn thousands of his fellow-creatures. As a canal-maker, Telford was hardly less successful than as a constructor of roads and harbours. It is true, his greatest work in this direction was in one sense a failure. He was employed by Government for many years as the engineer of the Caledonian Canal, which runs up the Great Glen of Caledonia, connecting the line of lakes whose basins occupy that deep hollow in the Highland ranges, and so avoiding the difficult and dangerous sea voyage round the stormy northern capes of Caithness. Unfortunately, though the canal as an engineering work proved to be of the most successful character, it has never succeeded as a commercial undertaking. It was built just at the exact moment when steamboats were on the point of revolutionizing ocean traffic; and so, though in itself a magnificent and lordly undertaking, it failed to satisfy the sanguine hopes of its projectors. But though Telford felt most bitterly the unavoidable ill success of this great scheme, he might well have comforted himself by the good results of his canal-building elsewhere. He went to Sweden to lay out the Gotha Canal, which still forms the main high-road of commerce between Stockholm and the sea; while in England itself some of his works in this direction--such as the improvements on the Birmingham Canal, with its immense tunnel--may fairly be considered as the direct precursors of the great railway efforts of the succeeding generation. The most remarkable of all Telford's designs, however, and the one which most immediately paved the way for the railway system, was his magnificent Holyhead Road. This wonderful highway he carried through the very midst of the Welsh mountains, at a comparatively level height for its whole distance, in order to form a main road from London to Ireland. On this road occurs Telford's masterpiece of engineering, the Menai suspension bridge, long regarded as one of the wonders of the world, and still one of the most beautiful suspension bridges in all Europe. Hardly less admirable, however, in its own way is the other suspension bridge which he erected at Conway, to carry his road across the mouth of the estuary, beside the grey old castle, with which its charming design harmonizes so well. Even now it is impossible to drive or walk along this famous and picturesque highway without being struck at every turn by the splendid engineering triumphs which it displays throughout its entire length. The contrast, indeed, between the noble grandeur of Telford's bridges, and the works on the neighbouring railways, is by no means flattering in every respect to our too exclusively practical modern civilization. Telford was now growing an old man. The Menai bridge was begun in 1819 and finished in 1826, when he was sixty-eight years of age; and though he still continued to practise his profession, and to design many valuable bridges, drainage cuts, and other small jobs, that great undertaking was the last masterpiece of his long and useful life. His later days were passed in deserved honour and comparative opulence; for though never an avaricious man, and always anxious to rate his services at their lowest worth, he had gathered together a considerable fortune by the way, almost without seeking it. To the last, his happy cheerful disposition enabled him to go on labouring at the numerous schemes by which he hoped to benefit the world of workers; and so much cheerfulness was surely well earned by a man who could himself look back upon so good a record of work done for the welfare of humanity. At last, on the 2nd of September, 1834, his quiet and valuable life came gently to a close, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and few of the men who sleep within that great national temple more richly deserve the honour than the Westerkirk shepherd-boy. For Thomas Telford's life was not merely one of worldly success; it was still more pre-eminently one of noble ends and public usefulness. Many working men have raised themselves by their own exertions to a position of wealth and dignity far surpassing his; few indeed have conferred so many benefits upon untold thousands of their fellow-men. It is impossible, even now, to travel in any part of England, Wales, or Scotland, without coming across innumerable memorials of Telford's great and useful life; impossible to read the full record of his labours without finding that numberless structures we have long admired for their beauty or utility, owe their origin to the honourable, upright, hardworking, thorough-going, journeyman mason of the quiet little Eskdale village. Whether we go into the drained fens of Lincolnshire, or traverse the broad roads of the rugged Snowdon region; whether we turn to St. Katharine's Docks in London, or to the wide quays of Dundee and those of Aberdeen; whether we sail beneath the Menai suspension bridge at Bangor, or drive over the lofty arches that rise sheer from the precipitous river gorge at Cartland, we meet everywhere the lasting traces of that inventive and ingenious brain. And yet, what lad could ever have started in the world under apparently more hopeless circumstances than widow Janet Telford's penniless orphan shepherd-boy Tam, in the bleakest and most remote of all the lonely border valleys of southern Scotland? II. GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-MAN. Any time about the year 1786, a stranger in the streets of the grimy colliery village of Wylam, near Newcastle, might have passed by without notice a ragged, barefooted, chubby child of five years old, Geordie Stephenson by name, playing merrily in the gutter and looking to the outward eye in no way different from any of the other colliers' children who loitered about him. Nevertheless, that ragged boy was yet destined in after-life to alter the whole face of England and the world by those wonderful railways, which he more than any other man was instrumental in first constructing; and the story of his life may rank perhaps as one of the most marvellous in the whole marvellous history of able and successful British working men. George Stephenson was born in June, 1781, the son of a fireman who tended the pumping engine of the neighbouring colliery, and one of a penniless family of six children. So poor was his father, indeed, that the whole household lived in a single room, with bare floor and mud wall; and little Geordie grew up in his own unkempt fashion without any schooling whatever, not even knowing A from B when he was a big lad of seventeen. At an age when he ought to have been learning his letters, he was bird's-nesting in the fields or running errands to the Wylam shops; and as soon as he was old enough to earn a few pence by light work, he was set to tend cows at the magnificent wages of twopence a day, in the village of Dewley Burn, close by, to which his father had then removed. It might have seemed at first as though the future railway engineer was going to settle down quietly to the useful but uneventful life of an agricultural labourer; for from tending cows he proceeded in due time (with a splendid advance of twopence) to leading the horses at the plough, spudding thistles, and hoeing turnips on his employer's farm. But the native bent of a powerful mind usually shows itself very early; and even during the days when Geordie was still stumbling across the freshly ploughed clods or driving the cows to pasture with a bunch of hazel twigs, his taste for mechanics already made itself felt in a very marked and practical fashion. During all his leisure time, the future engineer and his chum Bill Thirlwall occupied themselves with making clay models of engines, and fitting up a winding machine with corks and twine like those which lifted the colliery baskets. Though Geordie Stephenson didn't go to school at the village teacher's, he was teaching himself in his own way by close observation and keen comprehension of all the machines and engines he could come across. Naturally, to such a boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow his own inclinations in the direction of mechanical labour. Besides, was he not earning the grand sum of sixpence a day as picker, increased to eightpence a little later on, when he rose to the more responsible and serious work of driving the gin-horse? A proud day indeed it was for him when, at fourteen, he was finally permitted to aid his father in firing the colliery engine; though he was still such a very small boy that he used to run away and hide when the owner went his rounds of inspection, for fear he should be thought too little to earn his untold wealth of a shilling a day in such a grown-up occupation. Humbler beginnings were never any man's who lived to become the honoured guest, not of kings and princes only, but of the truly greatest and noblest in the land. A coal-miner's life is often a very shifting one; for the coal in particular collieries gets worked out from time to time; and he has to remove, accordingly, to fresh quarters, wherever employment happens to be found. This was very much the case with George Stephenson and his family; all of them being obliged to remove several times over during his childish days in search of new openings. Shortly after Geordie had attained to the responsible position of assistant fireman, his father was compelled, by the closing of Dewley Burn mine, to get a fresh situation hard by at Newburn. George accompanied him, and found employment as full fireman at a small working, whose little engine he undertook to manage in partnership with a mate, each of them tending the fire night and day by twelve-hour shifts. Two years later, his wages were raised to twelve shillings a week, a sure mark of his diligent and honest work; so that George was not far wrong in remarking to a fellow-workman at the time that he now considered himself a made man for life. During all this time, George Stephenson never for a moment ceased to study and endeavour to understand the working of every part in the engine that he tended. He was not satisfied, as too many workmen are, with merely learning the routine work of his own trade; with merely knowing that he must turn such and such a tap or valve in order to produce such and such a desired result: he wanted to see for himself how and why the engine did this or that, what was the use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser--in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction. He took it to pieces for cleaning whenever it was needful; he made working models of it after his old childish pattern; he even ventured to tinker it up when out of order on his own responsibility. Thus he learnt at last something of the theory of the steam-engine, and learnt also by the way a great deal about the general principles of mechanical science. Still, even now, incredible as it seems, the future father of railways couldn't yet read; and he found this terrible drawback told fatally against his further progress. Whenever he wanted to learn something that he didn't quite understand, he was always referred for information to a Book. Oh, those books; those mysterious, unattainable, incomprehensible books; how they must have bothered and worried poor intelligent and aspiring but still painfully ignorant young George Stephenson! Though he was already trying singularly valuable experiments in his own way, he hadn't yet even begun to learn his letters. Under these circumstances, George Stephenson, eager and anxious for further knowledge, took a really heroic resolution. He wasn't ashamed to go to school. Though now a full workman on his own account, about eighteen years old, he began to attend the night school at the neighbouring village of Walbottle, where he took lessons in reading three evenings every week. It is a great thing when a man is not ashamed to learn. Many men are; they consider themselves so immensely wise that they look upon it as an impertinence in anybody to try to tell them anything they don't know already. Truly wise or truly great men--men with the capability in them for doing anything worthy in their generation--never feel this false and foolish shame. They know that most other people know some things in some directions which they do not, and they are glad to be instructed in them whenever opportunity offers. This wisdom George Stephenson possessed in sufficient degree to make him feel more ashamed of his ignorance than of the steps necessary in order to conquer it. Being a diligent and willing scholar, he soon learnt to read, and by the time he was nineteen he had learnt how to write also. At arithmetic, a science closely allied to his native mechanical bent, he was particularly apt, and beat all the other scholars at the village night school. This resolute effort at education was the real turning-point in George Stephenson's remarkable career, the first step on the ladder whose topmost rung led him so high that he himself must almost have felt giddy at the unwonted elevation. Shortly after, young Stephenson gained yet another promotion in being raised to the rank of brakesman, whose duty it was to slacken the engine when the full baskets of coal reached the top of the shaft. This was a more serious and responsible post than any he had yet filled, and one for which only the best and steadiest workmen were ever selected. His wages now amounted to a pound a week, a very large sum in those days for a skilled working-man. Meanwhile, George, like most other young men, had fallen in love. His sweetheart, Fanny Henderson, was servant at the small farmhouse where he had taken lodgings since leaving his father's home; and though but little is known about her (for she unhappily died before George had begun to rise to fame and fortune), what little we do know seems to show that she was in every respect a fitting wife for the active young brakesman, and a fitting mother for his equally celebrated son, Robert Stephenson. Fired by the honourable desire to marry Fanny, with a proper regard for prudence, George set himself to work to learn cobbling in his spare moments; and so successfully did he cobble the worn shoes of his fellow-colliers after working hours, that before long he contrived to save a whole guinea out of his humble earnings. That guinea was the first step towards an enormous fortune; a fortune, too, all accumulated by steady toil and constant useful labour for the ultimate benefit of his fellow-men. To make a fortune is the smallest and least noble of all possible personal ambitions; but to save the first guinea which leads us on at last to independence and modest comfort is indeed an important turning-point in every prudent man's career. Geordie Stephenson was so justly proud of his achievement in this respect that he told a friend in confidence he might now consider himself a rich man. By the time George was twenty-one, he had saved up enough by constant care to feel that he might safely embark on the sea of housekeeping. He was able to take a small cottage lodging for himself and Fanny, at Willington Quay, near his work at the moment, and to furnish it with the simple comfort which was all that their existing needs demanded. He married Fanny on the 28th of November, 1802; and the young couple proceeded at once to their new home. Here George laboured harder than ever, as became the head of a family. He was no more ashamed of odd jobs than he had been of learning the alphabet. He worked overtime at emptying ballast from ships; he continued to cobble, to cut lasts, and even to try his hand at regular shoemaking; furthermore, he actually acquired the art of mending clocks, a matter which lay strictly in his own line, and he thus earned a tidy penny at odd hours by doctoring all the rusty or wheezy old timepieces of all his neighbours. Nor did he neglect his mechanical education meanwhile for he was always at work upon various devices for inventing a perpetual motion machine. Now, perpetual motion is the most foolish will-o'-the-wisp that ever engaged a sane man's attention: the thing has been proved to be impossible from every conceivable point of view, and the attempt to achieve it, if pursued to the last point, can only end in disappointment if not in ruin. Still, for all that, the work George Stephenson spent upon this unpractical object did really help to give him an insight into mechanical science which proved very useful to him at a later date. He didn't discover perpetual motion, but he did invent at last the real means for making the locomotive engine a practical power in the matter of travelling. A year later, George's only son Robert was born; and from that moment the history of those two able and useful lives is almost inseparable. During the whole of George Stephenson's long upward struggle, and during the hard battle he had afterwards to fight on behalf of his grand design of railways, he met with truer sympathy, appreciation, and comfort from his brave and gifted son than from any other person whatsoever. Unhappily, his pleasure and delight in the up-bringing of his boy was soon to be clouded for a while by the one great bereavement of an otherwise singularly placid and happy existence. Some two years after her marriage, Fanny Stephenson died, as yet a mere girl, leaving her lonely husband to take care of their baby boy alone and unaided. Grief for this irretrievable loss drove the young widower away for a while from his accustomed field of work among the Tyneside coal-pits; he accepted an invitation to go to Montrose in Scotland, to overlook the working of a large engine in some important spinning-works. He remained in this situation for one year only; but during that time he managed to give clear evidence of his native mechanical insight by curing a defect in the pumps which supplied water to his engine, and which had hitherto defied the best endeavours of the local engineers. The young father was not unmindful, either, of his duty to his boy, whom he had left behind with his grandfather on Tyneside; for he saved so large a sum as 28 pounds during his engagement, which he carried back with him in his pocket on his return to England. A sad disappointment awaited him when at last he arrived at home. Old Robert Stephenson, the father, had met with an accident during George's absence which made him quite blind, and incapacitated him for further work. Helpless and poor, he had no resource to save him from the workhouse except George; but George acted towards him exactly as all men who have in them a possibility of any good thing always do act under similar circumstances. He spent 15 pounds of his hard-earned savings to pay the debts the poor blind old engine-man had necessarily contracted during his absence, and he took a comfortable cottage for his father and mother at Killingworth, where he had worked before his removal to Scotland, and where he now once more obtained employment, still as a brakesman. In that cottage this good and brave son supported his aged parents till their death, in all the simple luxury that his small means would then permit him. That, however, was not the end of George's misfortunes. Shortly after, he was drawn by lot as a militiaman; and according to the law of that time (for this was in 1807, during the very height of the wars against Napoleon) he must either serve in person or else pay heavily to secure a substitute. George chose regretfully the latter course--the only one open to him if he wished still to support his parents and his infant son. But in order to do so, he had to pay away the whole remainder of his carefully hoarded savings, and even to borrow 6 pounds to make up the payment for the substitute. It must have seemed very hard to him to do this, and many men would have sunk under the blow, become hopeless, or taken to careless rowdy drinking habits. George Stephenson felt it bitterly, and gave way for a while to a natural despondency; he would hardly have been human if he had not; but still, he lived over it, and in the end worked on again with fuller resolution and vigour than ever. For several years Geordie, as his fellow-colliers affectionately called him, continued to live on at one or other of the Killingworth collieries. In a short time, he entered into a small contract with his employers for "brakeing" the engines; and in the course of this contract, he invented certain improvements in the matter of saving wear and tear of ropes, which were both profitable to himself and also in some small degree pointed the way toward his future plans for the construction of railways. It is true, the two subjects have not, apparently, much in common; but they are connected in this way, that both proceed upon the principle of reducing the friction to the smallest possible quantity. It was this principle that Stephenson was gradually learning to appreciate more and more at its proper value; and it was this which finally led him to the very summit of a great and pre-eminently useful profession. The great advantage, indeed, of a level railway over an up-and-down ordinary road is simply that in the railway the resistance and friction are almost entirely got rid of. It was in 1810, when Stephenson was twenty-nine, that his first experiment in serious engineering was made. A coal-pit had been sunk at Killingworth, and a rude steam-engine of that time had been set to pump the water out of its shaft; but, somehow, the engine made no headway against the rising springs at the bottom of the mine. For nearly a year the engine worked away in vain, till at last, one Saturday afternoon, Geordie Stephenson went over to examine her. "Well, George," said a pitman, standing by, "what do you think of her?" "Man," said George, boldly, "I could alter her and make her draw. In a week I could let you all go the bottom." The pitman reported this confident speech of the young brakesman to the manager; and the manager, at his wits' end for a remedy, determined to let this fellow Stephenson try his hand at her. After all, if he did no good, he would be much like all the others; and anyhow he seemed to have confidence in himself, which, if well grounded, is always a good thing. George's confidence WAS well grounded. It was not the confidence of ignorance, but that of knowledge. He UNDERSTOOD the engine now, and he saw at once the root of the evil. He picked the engine to pieces, altered it to suit the requirements of the case, and set it to work to pump without delay. Sure enough, he kept his word; and within the week, the mine was dry, and the men were sent to the bottom. This was a grand job for George's future. The manager, a Mr. Dodds, not only gave him ten pounds at once as a present, in acknowledgment of his practical skill, but also appointed him engine-man of the new pit, another rise in the social scale as well as in the matter of wages. Dodds kept him in mind for the future, too; and a couple of years later, on a vacancy occurring, he promoted the promising hand to be engine-wright of all the collieries under his management, at a salary of 100 pounds a year. When a man's income comes to be reckoned by the year, rather than by the week or month, it is a sign that he is growing into a person of importance. George had now a horse to ride upon, on his visits of inspection to the various engines; and his work was rather one of mechanical engineering than of mere ordinary labouring handicraft. The next few years of George Stephenson's life were mainly taken up in providing for the education of his boy Robert. He had been a good son, and he was now a good father. Feeling acutely how much he himself had suffered, and how many years he had been put back, by his own want of a good sound rudimentary education, he determined that Robert should not suffer from a similar cause. Indeed, George Stephenson's splendid abilities were kept in the background far too long, owing to his early want of regular instruction. So the good father worked hard to send his boy to school; not to the village teacher's only, but to a school for gentlemen's sons at Newcastle. By mending clocks and watches in spare moments, and by rigid economy in all unnecessary expenses (especially beer), Stephenson had again gathered together a little hoard, which mounted up this time to a hundred guineas. A hundred guineas is a fortune and a capital to a working man. He was therefore rich enough, not only to send little Robert to school, but even to buy him a donkey, on which the boy made the journey every day from Killingworth to Newcastle. This was in 1815, when George was thirty-four, and Robert twelve. Perhaps no man who ever climbed so high as George Stephenson, had ever reached so little of the way at so comparatively late an age. For in spite of his undoubted success, viewed from the point of view of his origin and early prospects, he was as yet after all nothing more than the common engine-wright of the Killingworth collieries--a long way off as yet from the distinguished father of the railway system. George Stephenson's connection with the locomotive, however, was even now beginning. Already, in 1816, he and his boy had tried a somewhat higher flight of mechanical and scientific skill than usual, in the construction of a sun-dial, which involves a considerable amount of careful mathematical work; and now George found that the subject of locomotive engines was being forced by circumstances upon his attention. From the moment he was appointed engine-wright of the Killingworth collieries, he began to think about all possible means of hauling coal at cheaper rates from the pit's mouth to the shipping place on the river. For that humble object alone--an object that lay wholly within the line of his own special business--did the great railway projector set out upon his investigations into the possibilities of the locomotive. Indeed, in its earliest origin, the locomotive was almost entirely connected with coals and mining; its application to passenger traffic on the large scale was quite a later and secondary consideration. It was only by accident, so to speak, that the true capabilities of railways were finally discovered in the actual course of their practical employment. George Stephenson was not the first person to construct either a locomotive or a tramway. Both were already in use, in more or less rude forms, at several collieries. But he WAS the first person to bring the two to such a pitch of perfection, that what had been at first a mere clumsy mining contrivance, became developed into a smooth and easy iron highway for the rapid and convenient conveyance of goods and passengers over immense distances. Of course, this great invention, like all other great inventions, was not the work of one day or one man. Many previous heads had helped to prepare the way for George Stephenson; and George Stephenson himself had been working at the subject for many years before he even reached the first stage of realized endeavour. As early as 1814 he constructed his first locomotive at Killingworth colliery; it was not until 1822 that he laid the first rail of his first large line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Stephenson's earliest important improvement in the locomotive consisted in his invention of what is called the steam-blast, by which the steam is made to increase the draught of the fire, and so largely add to the effectiveness of the engine. It was this invention that enabled him at last to make the railway into the great carrier of the world, and to begin the greatest social and commercial upheaval that has ever occurred in the whole history of the human race. Meanwhile, however, George was not entirely occupied with the consideration of his growing engine. He had the clocks and watches to mend; he had Robert's schooling to look after; and he had another practical matter even nearer home than the locomotive on which to exercise his inventive genius. One day, in 1814, the main gallery of the colliery caught fire. Stephenson at once descended into the burning pit, with a chosen band of volunteers, who displayed the usual heroic courage of colliers in going to the rescue of their comrades; and, at the risk of their lives, these brave men bricked up the burning portion, and so, by excluding the air, put out the dangerous fire. Still, even so, several of the workmen had been suffocated, and one of the pitmen asked Geordie in dismay whether nothing could be done to prevent such terrible disasters in future. "The price of coal-mining now," he said, "is pitmen's lives." Stephenson promised to think the matter over; and he did think it over with good effect. The result of his thought was the apparatus still affectionately known to the pitmen as "the Geordie lamp." It is a lamp so constructed that the flame cannot pass out into the air outside, and so cause explosions in the dangerous fire-damp which is always liable to occur abundantly in the galleries of coal mines. By this invention alone George Stephenson's name and memory might have been kept green for ever; for his lamp has been the means of saving thousands of lives from a sudden, a terrible, and a pitiful death. Most accidents that now occur in mines are due to the neglect of ordinary precautions, and to the perverse habit of carrying a naked lighted candle in the hand (contrary to regulations) instead of a carefully guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than before the invention of the Geordie lamp. Curiously enough, at the very time when George Stephenson was busy inventing his lamp at Killingworth, Sir Humphrey Davy was working at just the same matter in London; and the two lamps, though a little different in minor points of construction, are practically the same in general principle. Now, Sir Humphrey was then the great fashionable natural philosopher of the day, the favourite of London society, and the popular lecturer of the Royal Institution. His friends thought it a monstrous idea that his splendid life-saving apparatus should have been independently devised by "an engine-wright of Killingworth of the name of Stephenson--a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry." This sounds very odd reading at the present day, when the engine-wright of the name of Stephenson has altered the whole face of the world, while Davy is chiefly remembered as a meritorious and able chemist; but at the time, Stephenson's claim to the invention met with little courtesy from the great public of London, where a meeting was held on purpose to denounce his right to the credit of the invention. What the coal-owners and colliers of the North Country thought about the matter was sufficiently shown by their subscription of 1000 pounds, as a Stephenson testimonial fund. With part of the money, a silver tankard was presented to the deserving engine-wright, while the remainder of the sum was handed over to him in ready cash. A very acceptable present it was, and one which George Stephenson remembered with pride down to his dying day. The Geordie lamp continues in use to the present moment in the Tyneside collieries with excellent effect. For some years more, Mr. Stephenson (he is now fairly entitled to that respectable prefix) went on still further experimenting on the question of locomotives and railways. He was now beginning to learn that much unnecessary wear and tear arose on the short lines of rail down from the pit's mouths to the loading-places on the river by the inequalities and roughnesses of the joints; and he invented a method of overlapping the rails which quite got over this source of loss--loss of speed, loss of power, and loss of material at once. It was in 1819 that he laid down his first considerable piece of road, the Hetton railway. The owners of a colliery at the village of Hetton, in Durham, determined to replace their waggon road by a locomotive line; and they invited the now locally famous Killingworth engine-wright to act as their engineer. Stephenson gladly undertook the post; and he laid down a railway of eight miles in length, on the larger part of which the trucks were to be drawn by "the iron horse," as people now began to style the altered and improved locomotive. The Hetton railway was opened in 1822, and the assembled crowd were delighted at beholding a single engine draw seventeen loaded trucks after it, at the extraordinary rate of four miles an hour--nearly as fast as a man could walk. Whence it may be gathered that Stephenson's ideas upon the question of speed were still on a very humble scale indeed. Before the Hetton railway was opened, however, George Stephenson had shown one more proof of his excellence as a father by sending his boy Robert, now nineteen, to Edinburgh University. It was a serious expense for a man who was even now, after all, hardly more than a working man of the superior grade; but George Stephenson was well repaid for the sacrifice he thus made on behalf of his only son. He lived to see him the greatest practical engineer of his own time, and to feel that his success was in large measure due to the wider and more accurate scientific training the lad had received from his Edinburgh teachers. In 1819 George married again, his second wife being the daughter of a farmer at Black Callerton. The work which finally secured the position of George Stephenson and of his dearly loved locomotive was the Stockton and Darlington railway. Like all the other early railways, it was originally projected simply as a mineral line. Darlington lies in the centre of a rich inland mining district; but the impossibility of getting the coal carried to the sea by cart or donkey, long prevented the opening up of its immense natural wealth. At last, as early as 1817, Edward Pease and a few other enterprising Darlington Quakers determined to build a line of railway from the mining region to Stockton, on the river Tees, where the coal could be loaded into sea-going ships. It was a very long line, compared to any railway that had yet been constructed; but it was still only to be worked by horse-power--to be, in fact, what we now call a tramway, rather than a railway in the modern sense. However, while the plan was still undecided, George Stephenson, who had heard about the proposed scheme, went over to Darlington one day, and boldly asked to see Mr. Pease. The good Quaker received him kindly, and listened to his arguments in favour of the locomotive. "Come over to Killingworth some day and see my engine at work," said Stephenson, confidently; "and if you do you will never think of horses again." Mr. Pease, with Quaker caution, came and looked. George put the engine through its paces, and showed off its marvellous capabilities to such good effect that Edward Pease was immediately converted. Henceforth, he became a decided advocate of locomotives, and greatly aided by his wealth and influence in securing their final triumph. Not only that, but Mr. Pease also aided Stephenson in carrying out a design which George had long had upon his mind--the establishment of a regular locomotive factory, where the work of engine-making for this particular purpose might be carried on with all the necessary finish and accuracy. George himself put into the concern his precious 1000 pounds, not one penny of which he had yet touched; while Pease and a friend advanced as much between them. A factory was forthwith started at Newcastle on a small scale, and the hardworking engine-wright found himself now fully advanced to the commercial dignity of Stephenson and Co. With the gradual growth of railways, that humble Newcastle factory grew gradually into one of the largest and wealthiest manufacturing establishments in all England. Meanwhile, Stephenson was eagerly pushing on the survey of the Stockton and Darlington railway, all the more gladly now that he knew it was to be worked by means of his own adopted child, the beloved locomotive. He worked at his line early and late; he took the sights with the spirit-level with his own eye; he was determined to make it a model railway. It was a long and heavy work, for railway surveying was then a new art, and the appliances were all fresh and experimental; but in the end, Stephenson brought it to a happy conclusion, and struck at once the death-blow of the old road-travelling system. The line was opened successfully in 1825, and the engine started off on the inaugural ceremony with a magnificent train of thirty-eight vehicles. "Such was its velocity," says a newspaper of the day, "that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour." The success of the Stockton and Darlington railway was so immense and unexpected, the number of passengers who went by it was so great, and the quantity of coal carried for shipment so far beyond anything the projectors themselves could have anticipated, that a desire soon began to be felt for similar works in other places. There are no two towns in England which absolutely need a railway communication from one to the other so much as Liverpool and Manchester. The first is the great port of entry for cotton, the second is the great centre of its manufacture. The Bridgewater canal had helped for a time to make up for the want of water communication between those two closely connected towns; but as trade developed, the canal became too small for the demands upon it, and the need for an additional means of intercourse was deeply felt. A committee was formed to build a railway in this busy district, and after a short time George Stephenson was engaged to superintend its construction. A long and severe fight was fought over the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and it was at first doubtful whether the scheme would ever be carried out. Many great landowners were strongly opposed to it, and tried their best to keep the bill for authorizing it from passing through Parliament. Stephenson himself was compelled to appear in London as a witness before a parliamentary committee, and was closely cross-examined as to the possibilities of his plan. In those days, even after the success of the Stockton and Darlington line, his views about the future of railways were still regarded by most sober persons as ridiculously wild and enthusiastic; while the notion that trains might be made to travel twice as fast as stage-coaches, was scouted as the most palpable and ridiculous delusion. One of the members of the committee pressed Stephenson very hard with questions. "Suppose," he said, "a cow were to get upon the line, and the engine were to come into collision with it; wouldn't that be very awkward, now?" George looked up at him with a merry twinkle of the eye, and answered in his broad North Country dialect, "Oo, ay, very awkward for the COO." In spite of all Stephenson's earnestness and mother wit, however, Parliament refused to pass the bill (in 1825), and for the moment the engineer's vexation was bitter to behold. He and his friends plucked up heart, however; they were fighting the winning battle against prejudice and obstruction, and they were sure to conquer in the long run. The line was resurveyed by other engineers; the lands of the hostile owners were avoided; the causes of offence were dexterously smoothed down; and after another hard fight, in 1826, the bill authorizing the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester railway was finally passed. The board at once appointed Stephenson engineer for constructing the line, at a salary of 1000 pounds a year. George might now fairly consider himself entitled to the honours of an Esquire. The line was a difficult one to construct; but George Stephenson set about it with the skill and knowledge acquired during many years of slow experience; and he performed it with distinguished success. He was now forty-four; and he had had more to do with the laying down of rails than any other man then living. The great difficulty of the Liverpool and Manchester line lay in the fact that it had to traverse a vast shaking bog or morass, Chat Moss, which the best engineers had emphatically declared it would be impossible to cross. George Stephenson, however, had a plan for making the impossible possible. He simply floated his line on a broad bottom, like a ship, on the top of the quaking quagmire; and proceeded to lay down his rails on this seemingly fragile support without further scruple. It answered admirably, and still answers to the present day. The other works on the railway, especially the cuttings, were such as might well have appalled the boldest heart in those experimental ages of railway enterprise. It is easy enough for us now to undertake tunnelling great hills or filling up wide valleys with long ranges of viaduct, because the thing has been done so often, and the prospect of earning a fair return on the money sunk can be calculated with so high a degree of reasonable probability. But it required no little faith for George Stephenson and his backers to drive a level road, for the first time, through solid rocks and over trembling morasses, the whole way from Liverpool to Manchester. He persevered, however, and in 1830, after four years' toilsome and ceaseless labour, during which he had worked far-harder than the sturdiest navvy on the line, his railway was finally opened for regular traffic. Before the completion of the railway, George Stephenson had taken part in a great contest for the best locomotive at Liverpool, a prize of 500 pounds having been offered by the company to the successful competitor. Stephenson sent in his improved model, the Rocket, constructed after plans of his own and his son Robert's, and it gained the prize against all its rivals, travelling at what was then considered the incredible rate of 35 miles an hour. It was thus satisfactorily settled that the locomotive was the best power for drawing carriages on railways, and George Stephenson's long battle was thus at last practically won. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway was an era in the history of the world. From the moment that great undertaking was complete, there could no longer be any doubt about the utility and desirability of railways, and all opposition died away almost at once. New lines began immediately to be laid out, and in an incredibly short time the face of England was scarred by the main trunks in that network of iron roads with which its whole surface is now so closely covered. The enormous development of the railway system benefited the Stephenson family in more than one way. Robert Stephenson became the engineer of the vast series of lines now known as the London and North Western; and the increased demand for locomotives caused George Stephenson's small factory at Newcastle to blossom out suddenly into an immense and flourishing manufacturing concern. The rest of George Stephenson's life is one long story of unbroken success. In 1831, the year after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, George, being now fifty, began to think of settling down in a more permanent home. His son Robert, who was surveying the Leicester and Swannington railway, observed on an estate called Snibston, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, what to his experienced geological eye looked like the probable indications of coal beneath the surface. He wrote to his father about it, and as the estate was at the time for sale, George, now a comparatively wealthy man, bought it up on his son's recommendation. He also pitched his home close by at Alton Grange, and began to sink shafts in search of coal. He found it in due time; and thus, in addition to his Newcastle works, he became a flourishing colliery proprietor. It is pleasing to note that Stephenson, unlike too many other self-made men, always treated his workmen with the greatest kindness and consideration, erecting admirable cottages for their accommodation, and providing them with church, chapel, and schools for their religious and social education. While living at Alton Grange, Stephenson was engaged in laying out several new lines in the middle and north of England, especially the Grand Junction and the Midland, both of which he constructed with great boldness and practical skill. As he grew older and more famous, he began to mix in the truly best society of England; his acquaintance being sought by all the most eminent men in literature, science, and political life. Though but an uneducated working man by origin, George Stephenson had so improved his mind by constant thought and expansive self-education, that he was able to meet these able and distinguished friends of his later days on terms of perfect intellectual and social equality. To the last, however, he never forgot his older and poorer friends, nor was he ever ashamed of their acquaintance. A pleasant trait is narrated by his genial biographer, Dr. Smiles, who notices that on one occasion he stopped to speak to one of his wealthy acquaintances in a fine carriage, and then turned to shake hands with the coachman on the box, whom he had known and respected in his earlier days. He enjoyed, too, the rare pleasure of feeling his greatness recognized in his own time: and once, when he went over to Brussels on a visit to the king of the Belgians, he was pleased and surprised, as the royal party entered the ball-room at the Town Hall, to hear a general murmur among the guests of "Which is Stephenson?" George Stephenson continued to live for sixteen years, first at Alton Grange, and afterwards at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, in comfort and opulence; growing big pines and melons, keeping birds and dogs, and indulging himself towards the end in the well-earned repose to which his useful and laborious life fully entitled him. At last, on the 12th of August, 1848, he died suddenly of intermittent fever, in his sixty-seventh year, and was peacefully buried in Chesterfield church. Probably no one man who ever lived did so much to change and renovate the whole aspect of human life as George Stephenson; and, unlike many other authors of great revolutions, he lived long enough to see the full result of his splendid labours in the girdling of England by his iron roads. A grand and simple man, he worked honestly and steadfastly throughout his days, and he found his reward in the unprecedented benefits which his locomotive was even then conferring upon his fellow-men. It is indeed wonderful to think how very different is the England in which we live to-day, from that in which we might possibly have been living were it not for the barefooted little collier boy who made clay models of engines at Wylam, and who grew at last into the great and famous engineer of the marvellous Liverpool and Manchester railway. The main characteristic of George Stephenson was perseverance; and it was that perseverance that enabled him at last to carry out his magnificent schemes in the face of so much bitter and violent opposition. III. JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR. In most cases, the working man who raises himself to wealth and position, does so by means of trade, which is usually the natural outgrowth of his own special handicraft or calling. If he attains, not only to riches, but to distinction as well, it is in general by mechanical talent, the direction of the mind being naturally biased by the course of one's own ordinary occupations. England has been exceptionally rich in great engineers and inventive geniuses of such humble origin--working men who have introduced great improvements in manufactures or communications; and our modern English civilization has been immensely influenced by the lives of these able and successful mechanical toilers. From Brindley, the constructor of the earliest great canal, to Joseph Gillott, the inventor of the very steel pen with which this book is written; from Arkwright the barber who fashioned the first spinning-machine, to Crompton the weaver, whose mule gave rise to the mighty Manchester cotton trade; from Newcomen, who made the first rough attempt at a steam-engine, to Stephenson, who sent the iron horse from end to end of the land,--the chief mechanical improvements in the country have almost all been due to the energy, intelligence, and skill of our labouring population. The English mind is intensely practical, and the English working man, for the last two centuries at least, has been mainly distinguished for his great mechanical aptitude, bursting out, here and there, in exceptional persons, under the form of exceedingly high inventive genius. At our very doors, however, there is a small nation of largely different blood and of wholly different speech from our own; a nation forming a part of our own kingdom, even more closely than the Scotch or the Irish, and yet in some respects further from us in mind and habit of life than either; a nation marked rather by the poetical and artistic, than by the mechanical and practical temperament--the ancient and noble Welsh people. It would hardly be reasonable to expect from the Welsh exactly the same kind of success in life which we often find in English workmen; the aims and ideals of the two races are so distinct, and it must be frankly confessed the advantage is not always on the side of the Englishman. The Welsh peasants, living among their own romantic hills and valleys, speaking their own soft and exquisite language, treasuring their own plaintive and melodious poetry, have grown up with an intense love for beauty and the beautiful closely intwined into the very warp and woof of their inmost natures. They have almost always a natural refinement of manner and delicacy of speech which is unfortunately too often wanting amongst our rougher English labouring classes, especially in large towns. They are intensely musical, producing a very large proportion of the best English singers and composers. They are fond of literature, for which they have generally some natural capacity, and in which they exercise themselves to an extent unknown, probably, among people of their class in any other country. At the local meetings of bards (as they call themselves) in Wales, it is not at all uncommon to hear that the first prize for Welsh poetry has been carried off by a shepherd, and the first prize for Welsh prose composition by a domestic servant. In short, the susceptibilities of the race run rather toward art and imagination, than toward mere moneymaking and practical ingenuity. John Gibson, sculptor, of Rome, as he loved to call himself, was a remarkable embodiment, in many ways, of this self-respecting, artistic, ideal Welsh peasant temperament. In a little village near Conway, in North Wales, there lived at the end of the last century a petty labouring market gardener of the name of Gibson, who knew and spoke no other tongue than his native Welsh. In 1790, his wife gave birth to a son whom they christened John, and who grew up, a workman's child, under the shadow of the great castle, and among the exquisite scenery of the placid land-locked Conway river. John Gibson's parents, like the mass of labouring Welsh people, were honest, God-fearing folk, with a great earnestness of principle, a profound love of truth, and a hatred of all mean or dirty actions. They brought up the boy in these respects in the way he should go; and when he was old he indeed did not depart from them. Throughout his life, John Gibson was remarkable for his calm, earnest, straightforward simplicity, a simplicity which seemed almost childish to those who could not understand so grand and uncommon and noble a nature as his. From his babyhood, almost, the love of art was innate in the boy; and when he was only seven years old, he began to draw upon a slate a scene that particularly pleased him--a line of geese sailing upon the smooth glassy surface of a neighbouring pond. He drew them as an ordinary child almost always does draw--one goose after another, in profile, as though they were in procession, without any attempt at grouping or perspective in any way. His mother praised the first attempt, saying to him in Welsh, "Indeed, Jack, this is very like the geese;" and Jack, encouraged by her praise, decided immediately to try again. But not being an ordinary child, he determined this time to do better; he drew the geese one behind the other as one generally sees them in actual nature. His mother then asked him to draw a horse; and "after gazing long and often upon one," he says, "I at last ventured to commit him to the slate." When he had done so, the good mother was even more delighted. So, to try his childish art, she asked him to put a rider on the horse's back. Jack went out once more, "carefully watched men on horseback," and then returning, made his sketch accordingly. In this childish reminiscence one can see already the first workings of that spirit which made Gibson afterwards into the greatest sculptor of all Europe. He didn't try even then to draw horse or man by mere guesswork; he went out and studied the subject at first hand. There are in that single trait two great elements of success in no matter what line of life--supreme carefulness, and perfect honesty of workmanship. When Jack was nine years old, his father determined to emigrate to America, and for that purpose went to Liverpool to embark for the United States. But when he had got as far as the docks, Mrs. Gibson, good soul, frightened at the bigness of the ships (a queer cause of alarm), refused plumply ever to put her foot on one of them. So her husband, a dutiful man with a full sense of his wife's government upon him, consented unwillingly to stop in Liverpool, where he settled down to work again as a gardener. Hitherto, Jack and his brothers had spoken nothing but Welsh; but at Liverpool he was put to school, and soon learned to express himself correctly and easily in English. Liverpool was a very different place for young Jack Gibson from Conway: there were no hills and valleys there, to be sure, but there were shops--such shops! all full of the most beautiful and highly coloured prints and caricatures, after the fashion of the days when George IV. was still Prince Regent. All his spare time he now gave up to diligently copying the drawings which he saw spread out in tempting array before him in the shop-windows. Flattening his little nose against the glass panes, he used to look long and patiently at a single figure, till he had got every detail of its execution fixed firmly on his mind's eye; and then he would go home hastily and sketch it out at once while the picture was still quite fresh in his vivid memory. Afterwards he would return to the shop-window, and correct his copy by the original till it was completely finished. No doubt the boy did all this purely for his own amusement; but at the same time he was quite unconsciously teaching himself to draw under a very careful and accurate master--himself. Already, however, he found his paintings had patrons, for he sold them when finished to the other boys; and once he got as much as sixpence for a coloured picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps--"the largest sum," he says brightly in his memoirs long after, "I had yet received for a work of art." Opportunities always arise for those who know how to use them. Little Jack Gibson used to buy his paper and colours at a stationer's in Liverpool, who one day said to him kindly, "My lad, you're a constant customer here: I suppose you're a painter." "Yes, sir," Jack answered, with childish self-complacency, "I do paint." The stationer, who had himself studied at the Royal Academy, asked him to bring his pictures on view; and when Jack did so, his new friend, Mr. Tourmeau, was so much pleased with them that he lent the boy drawings to copy, and showed him how to draw for himself from plaster casts. These first amateur lessons must have given the direction to all Gibson's later life: for when the time came for him to choose a trade, he was not set to till the ground like his father, but was employed at once on comparatively artistic and intelligent handicraft. Jack was fourteen when his father apprenticed him to a firm of cabinet-makers. For the first year, he worked away contentedly at legs and mouldings; but as soon as he had learnt the rudiments of the trade he persuaded his masters to change his indentures, and let him take the more suitable employment of carving woodwork for ornamental furniture. He must have been a good workman and a promising boy, one may be sure, or his masters would never have countenanced such a revolutionary proceeding on the part of a raw apprentice. Young Gibson was delighted with his new occupation, and pursued it so eagerly that he carved even during his leisure hours from plaster casts. But after another year, as ill-luck or good fortune would have it, he happened to come across a London marble-cutter, who had come down to Liverpool to carve flowers in marble for a local firm. The boy was enchanted with his freer and more artistic work; when the marble-cutter took him over a big yard, and showed him the process of modelling and cutting, he began to feel a deep contempt for his own stiff and lifeless occupation of woodcarving. Inspired with the desire to learn this higher craft, he bought some clay, took it home, and moulded it for himself after all the casts he could lay his hands on. Mr. Francis, the proprietor of the marble works, had a German workman in his employ of the name of Luge, who used to model small figures, chiefly, no doubt, for monumental purposes. Young Gibson borrowed a head of Bacchus that Luge had composed, and made a copy of it himself in clay. Mr. Francis was well pleased with this early attempt, and also with a clever head of Mercury in marble, which Gibson carved in his spare moments. The more the lad saw of clay and marble, the greater grew his distaste for mere woodwork. At last, he determined to ask Mr. Francis to buy out his indentures from the cabinet-makers, and let him finish his apprenticeship as a sculptor. But unfortunately the cabinet-makers found Gibson too useful a person to be got rid of so easily: they said he was the most industrious lad they had ever had; and so his very virtues seemed as it were to turn against him. Not so, really: Mr. Francis thought so well of the boy that he offered the masters 70 pounds to be quit of their bargain; and in the end, Gibson himself having made a very firm stand in the matter, he was released from his indentures and handed over finally to Mr. Francis and a sculptor's life. And now the eager boy was at last "truly happy." He had to model all day long, and he worked away at it with a will. Shortly after he went to Mr. Francis's yard, a visitor came upon business, a magnificent-looking old man, with snowy hair and Roman features. It was William Roscoe, the great Liverpool banker, himself a poor boy who had risen, and who had found time not only to build up for himself an enormous fortune, but also to become thoroughly well acquainted with literature and art by the way. Mr. Roscoe had written biographies of Lorenzo de Medici, the great Florentine, and of Leo X., the art-loving pope; and throughout his whole life he was always deeply interested in painting and sculpture and everything that related to them. He was a philanthropist, too, who had borne his part bravely in the great struggle for the abolition of the slave trade; and to befriend a struggling lad of genius like John Gibson was the very thing that was nearest and dearest to his benevolent heart. Mr. Francis showed Roscoe the boy's drawings and models; and Roscoe's appreciative eye saw in them at once the visible promise of great things to be. He had come to order a chimney-piece for his library at Allerton, where his important historical works were all composed; and he determined that the clever boy should have a chief hand in its production. A few days later he returned again with a valuable old Italian print. "I want you to make a bas-relief in baked clay," he said to Gibson, "from this print for the centres of my mantelpiece." Gibson was overjoyed. The print was taken from a fresco of Raphael's in the Vatican at Rome, and Gibson's work was to reproduce it in clay in low relief, as a sculpture picture. He did so entirely to his new patron's satisfaction, and this his first serious work is now duly preserved in the Liverpool Institution which Mr. Roscoe had been mainly instrumental in founding. Roscoe had a splendid collection of prints and drawings at Allerton; and he invited the clever Welsh lad over there frequently, and allowed him to study them all to his heart's content. To a lad like John Gibson, such an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo was a great and pure delight. Before he was nineteen, he began to think of a big picture which he hoped to paint some day; and he carried it out as well as he was able in his own self-taught fashion. For as yet, it must be remembered, Gibson had had no regular artistic instruction: there was none such, indeed, to be had at all in Liverpool in his day; and there was no real art going on in the town in any way. Mr. Francis, his master, was no artist; nor was there anybody at the works who could teach him: for as soon as Mr. Francis found out the full measure of Gibson's abilities, he dismissed his German artist Luge, and put the clever boy entirely in his place. At this time, Gibson was only receiving six shillings a week as wages; but Mr. Francis got good prices for many of his works, and was not ashamed even to put his own name upon the promising lad's artistic performances. Mr. Roscoe did not merely encourage the young sculptor; he set him also on the right road for ultimate success. He urged Gibson to study anatomy, without which no sculpture worthy of the name is possible. Gibson gladly complied, for he knew that Michael Angelo had been a great anatomist, and Michael was just at that moment the budding sculptor's idol and ideal. But how could he learn? A certain Dr. Vose was then giving lectures on anatomy to young surgeons at Liverpool, and on Roscoe's recommendation he kindly admitted the eager student gratis to his dissecting-room. Gibson dissected there with a will in all his spare moments, and as he put his mind into the work he soon became well versed in the construction of the human body. From the day that Gibson arrived at man's estate, the great dream of his life was to go to Rome. For Rome is to art what London is to industry--the metropolis in its own way of the entire earth. But travelling in 1810 cost a vast deal of money; and the poor Liverpool marble-cutter (for as yet he was really nothing more) could hardly hope to earn the immense sum that such an expedition would necessarily cost him. So for six years more he went on working at Liverpool in his own native untaught fashion, doing his best to perfect himself, but feeling sadly the lack of training and competition. One of the last works he executed while still in Mr. Francis's service was a chimney-piece for Sir John Gladstone, father of the future premier. Sir John was so pleased with the execution, that he gave the young workman ten pounds as a present. But in spite of occasional encouragement like this, Gibson felt himself at Liverpool, as he says, "chained down by the leg, and panting for liberation." In 1817, when he was just twenty-seven, he determined to set off to London. He took with him good introductions from Mr. Roscoe to Mr. Brougham (afterwards Lord Chancellor), to Christie, the big picture-dealer, and to several other influential people. Later on, Roscoe recommended him to still more important leaders in the world of art--Flaxman the great sculptor, Benjamin West, the Quaker painter and President of the Royal Academy, and others of like magnitude. Mr. Watson Taylor, a wealthy art patron, gave Gibson employment, and was anxious that he should stop in London. But Gibson wanted more than employment; he wanted to LEARN, to perfect himself, to become great in his art. He could do that nowhere but at Rome, and to Rome therefore he was determined to go. Mr. Taylor still begged him to wait a little. "Go to Rome I will," Gibson answered boldly, "even if I have to go there on foot." He was not quite reduced to this heroic measure, however, for his Liverpool friends made up a purse of 150 pounds for him (we may be sure it was repaid later on); and with that comparatively large sum in his pocket the young stone-cutter started off gaily on his continental tour, from which he was not to return for twenty-seven years. He drove from Paris to Rome, sharing a carriage with a Scotch gentleman; and when he arrived in the Pope's city (as it then was) he knew absolutely not a single word of Italian, or of any other language on earth save Welsh and English. In those days, Canova, the great Venetian sculptor, was the head of artistic society in Rome; and as ALL society in Rome is more or less artistic, he might almost be said to have led the whole life of the great and lively city. Indeed, the position of such a man in Italy resembles far more that of a duke in England than of an artist as we here are accustomed to think of him. Gibson had letters of introduction to this prince of sculptors from his London friends; and when he went to present them, he found Canova in his studio, surrounded by his numerous scholars and admirers. The Liverpool stone-cutter had brought a few of his drawings with him, and Canova examined them with great attention. Instinctively he recognized the touch of genius. When he had looked at them keenly for a few minutes, he turned kindly to the trembling young man, and said at once, "Come to me alone next week, for I want to have a talk with you." On the appointed day, Gibson, quivering with excitement; presented himself once more at the great master's studio. Canova was surrounded as before by artists and visitors; but in a short time he took Gibson into a room by himself, and began to speak with him in his very broken English. Many artists came to Rome, he said, with very small means, and that perhaps might be Gibson's case. "Let me have the gratification, then," he went on, "of assisting you to prosecute your studies. I am rich. I am anxious to be of use to you. Let me forward you in your art as long as you stay in Rome." Gibson replied, with many stammerings, that he hoped his slender means would suffice for his personal needs, but that if Canova would only condescend to give him instruction, to make him his pupil, to let him model in his studio, he would be eternally grateful. Canova was one of the most noble and lovable of men. He acceded at once to Gibson's request, and Gibson never forgot his kind and fatherly assistance. "Dear generous master," the Welsh sculptor wrote many years after, when Canova had long passed away, "I see you before me now. I hear your soft Venetian dialect, and your kindly words inspiring my efforts and gently correcting my defects. My heart still swells with grateful recollection of you." Canova told his new pupil to devote a few days first to seeing the sights of Rome; but Gibson was impatient to begin at once. "I shall be at your studio to-morrow morning," the ardent Welshman said; and he kept his word. Canova, pleased with so much earnestness and promptitude, set him to work forthwith upon a clay model from his own statue of the Pugilist. Gibson went to the task with a will, moulding the clay as best he could into shape; but he still knew so little of the technical ways of regular sculptors that he tried to model this work from the clay alone, though its pose was such that it could not possibly hold together without an iron framework. Canova saw his error and smiled, but let him go on so that he might learn his business by experience. In a day or two the whole thing, of course, collapsed by its own weight; and then Canova called in a blacksmith and showed the eager beginner how the mechanical skeleton was formed with iron bars, and interlacing crosses of wood and wire. This was quite a new idea to Gibson, who had modelled hitherto only in his own self-taught fashion with moist clay, letting it support its own weight as best it might. Another pupil then fleshed out the iron skeleton with clay, and roughly shaped it to the required figure, so that it stood as firm as a rock for Gibson to work upon. The new hand turned to vigorously once more; and, in spite of his seeming rawness, finished the copy so well that Canova admitted him at once to the Academy to model from life. At this Academy Canova himself, who loved art far more than money, used to attend twice a week to give instruction to students without receiving any remuneration whatsoever. It is of such noble men as this that the world of art is largely made up--that world which we too-practical English have always undervalued or even despised. Gibson's student period at Rome under Canova was a very happy episode in a uniformly happy and beautiful life. His only trouble was that he had not been able to come there earlier. Singularly free from every taint of envy (like all the great sculptors of his time), he could not help regretting when he saw other men turning out work of such great excellence while he was still only a learner. "When I observed the power and experience of youths much younger than myself," he says in his generous appreciative fashion, "their masterly manner of sketching in the figure, and their excellent imitation of nature, my spirits fell many degrees, and I felt humbled and unhappy." He need not have done so, for the man who thus distrusts his own work is always the truest workman; it is only fools or poor creatures who are pleased and self-satisfied with their own first bungling efforts. But the great enjoyment of Rome to Gibson consisted in the free artistic society which he found there. At Liverpool, he had felt almost isolated; there was hardly anybody with whom he could talk on an equality about his artistic interests; nobody but himself cared about the things that pleased and engrossed his earnest soul the most. But at Rome, there was a great society of artists; every man's studio was open to his friends and fellow-workers; and a lively running fire of criticism went on everywhere about all new works completed or in progress. He was fortunate, too, in the exact moment of his residence: Rome then contained at once, besides himself, the two truest sculptors of the present century, Canova the Venetian, and Thorwaldsen the Dane. Both these great masters were singularly free from jealousy, rivalry, or vanity. In their perfect disinterestedness and simplicity of character they closely resembled Gibson himself. The ardent and pure-minded young Welshman, who kept himself so unspotted from the world in his utter devotion to his chosen art, could not fail to derive an elevated happiness from his daily intercourse with these two noble and sympathetic souls. After Gibson had been for some time in Canova's studio, his illustrious master told him that the sooner he took to modelling a life-size figure of his own invention, the better. So Gibson hired a studio (with what means he does not tell us in his short sketch of his own life) close to Canova's, so that the great Venetian was able to drop in from time to time and assist him with his criticism and judgment. How delightful is the friendly communion of work implied in all this graceful artistic Roman life! How different from the keen competition and jealous rivalry which too often distinguishes our busy money-getting English existence! In 1819, two years after Gibson's arrival at Rome, he began to model his Mars and Cupid, a more than life-size group, on which he worked patiently and lovingly for many months. When it was nearly finished, one day a knock came at the studio door. After the knock, a handsome young man entered, and announced himself brusquely as the Duke of Devonshire. "Canova sent me," he said, "to see what you were doing." Gibson wasn't much accustomed to dukes in those days--he grew more familiar with them later on--and we may be sure the poor young artist's heart beat a little more fiercely than usual when the stranger asked him the price of his Mars and Cupid in marble. The sculptor had never yet sold a statue, and didn't know how much he ought to ask; but after a few minutes' consideration he said, "Five hundred pounds. But, perhaps," he added timidly, "I have said too much." "Oh no," the duke answered, "not at all too much;" and he forthwith ordered (or, as sculptors prefer to say, commissioned) the statue to be executed for him in marble. Gibson was delighted, and ran over at once to tell Canova, thinking he had done a splendid stroke of business. Canova shared his pleasure, till the young man came to the price; then the older sculptor's face fell ominously. "Five hundred pounds!" he cried in dismay; "why, it won't cover the cost of marble and workmanship." And so indeed it turned out; for when the work was finished, it had stood Gibson in 520 pounds for marble and expenses, and left him twenty pounds out of pocket in the end. So he got less than nothing after all for his many months of thought and labour over clay and marble alike. Discouraging as this beginning must have proved, it was nevertheless in reality the first important step in a splendid and successful career. It is something to have sold your first statue, even if you sell it at a disadvantage. In 1821 Gibson modelled a group of Pysche and the Zephyrs. That winter Sir George Beaumont, himself a distinguished amateur artist, and a great patron of art, came to Rome; and Canova sent him to see the young Welshman's new composition. Sir George asked the price, and Gibson, this time more cautious, asked for time to prepare an estimate, and finally named 700 pounds. To his joy, Sir George immediately ordered it, and also introduced many wealthy connoisseurs to the rising sculptor's studio. That same winter, also, the Duke of Devonshire came again, and commissioned a bas-relief in marble (which is now at Chatsworth House, with many other of Gibson's works), at a paying price, too, which was a great point for the young man's scanty exchequer. Unfortunately, Gibson has not left us any notice of how he managed to make both ends meet during this long adult student period at Rome. Information on that point would indeed be very interesting; but so absorbed was the eager Welshman always in his art, that he seldom tells us anything at all about such mere practical every-day matters as bread and butter. To say the truth, he cared but little about them. Probably he had lived in a very simple penurious style during his whole studenthood, taking his meals at a cafe or eating-house, and centering all his affection and ideas upon his beloved studio. But now wealth and fame began to crowd in upon him, almost without the seeking. Visitors to Rome began to frequent the Welshman's rooms, and the death of "the great and good Canova," which occurred in 1822, while depriving Gibson of a dearly loved friend, left him, as it were, that great master's successor. Towards him and Thorwaldsen, indeed, Gibson always cherished a most filial regard. "May I not be proud," he writes long after, "to have known such men, to have conversed with them, watched all their proceedings, heard all their great sentiments on art? Is it not a pleasure to be so deeply in their debt for instruction?" And now the flood of visitors who used to flock to Canova's studio began to transfer their interest to Gibson's. Commission after commission was offered him, and he began to make money faster than he could use it. His life had always been simple and frugal--the life of a working man with high aims and grand ideals: he hardly knew now how to alter it. People who did not understand Gibson used to say in his later days that he loved money, because he made much and spent little. Those who knew him better say rather that he worked much for the love of art, and couldn't find much to do with his money when he had earned it. He was singularly indifferent to gain; he cared not what he eat or drank; he spent little on clothes, and nothing on entertainments; but he paid his workmen liberally or even lavishly; he allowed one of his brothers more than he ever spent upon himself, and he treated the other with uniform kindness and generosity. The fact is, Gibson didn't understand money, and when it poured in upon him in large sums, he simply left it in the hands of friends, who paid him a very small percentage on it, and whom he always regarded as being very kind to take care of the troublesome stuff on his account. In matters of art, Gibson was a great master; in matters of business, he was hardly more than a simple-minded child. Sometimes queer incidents occurred at Gibson's studio from the curious ignorance of our countrymen generally on the subject of art. One day, a distinguished and wealthy Welsh gentleman called on the sculptor, and said that, as a fellow Welshman, he was anxious to give him a commission. As he spoke, he cast an admiring eye on Gibson's group of Psyche borne by the Winds. Gibson was pleased with his admiration, but rather taken aback when the old gentleman said blandly, "If you were to take away the Psyche and put a dial in the place, it'd make a capital design for a clock." Much later, the first Duke of Wellington called upon him at Rome and ordered a statue of Pandora, in an attitude which he described. Gibson at once saw that the Duke's idea was a bad one, and told him so. By-and-by, on a visit to England, Gibson waited on the duke, and submitted photographs of the work he had modelled. "But, Mr. Gibson," said the old soldier, looking at them curiously, "you haven't followed my idea." "No," answered the sculptor, "I have followed MY OWN." "You are very stubborn," said Wellington. "Duke," answered the sturdy sculptor, "I am a Welshman, and all the world knows that we are a stubborn race." The Iron Duke ought to have been delighted to find another man as unbending as himself, but he wasn't; and in the end he refused the figure, which Gibson sold instead to Lady Marian Alford. For twenty-seven years Gibson remained at Rome, working assiduously at his art, and rising gradually but surely to the very first place among then living sculptors. His studio now became the great centre of all fashionable visitors to Rome. Still, he made no effort to get rich, though he got rich without wishing it; he worked on merely for art's sake, not for money. He would not do as many sculptors do, keep several copies in marble of his more popular statues for sale; he preferred to devote all his time to new works. "Gibson was always absorbed in one subject," says Lady Eastlake, "and that was the particular work or part of a work--were it but the turn of a corner of drapery--which was then under his modelling hands. Time was nothing to him; he was long and fastidious." His favourite pupil, Miss Hosmer, once expressed regret to him that she had been so long about a piece of work on which she was engaged. "Always try to do the best you can," Gibson answered. "Never mind how long you are upon a work--no. No one will ask how long you have been, except fools. You don't care what fools think." During his long life at Rome, he was much cheered by the presence and assistance of his younger brother, Mr. Ben, as he always called him, who was also a sculptor, though of far less merit than John Gibson himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in whom the family genius had degenerated into mere eccentricity, never did anything for his own livelihood, but lived always upon John Gibson's generous bounty. In John's wealthy days, he and Mr. Ben used to escape every summer from the heat and dust of Rome--which is unendurable in July and August--to the delightfully cool air and magnificent mountain scenery of the Tyrol. "I cannot tell you how well I am," he writes on one of these charming visits, "and so is Mr. Ben. Every morning we take our walks in the woods here. I feel as if I were new modelled." Another passage in one of these summer tourist letters well deserves to be copied here, as it shows the artist's point of view of labours like Telford's and Stephenson's. "From Bormio," he says, "the famous road begins which passes over the Stelvio into the Tyrol; the highest carriage-road in the world. We began the ascent early in the morning. It is magnificent and wonderful. Man shows his talents, his power over great difficulties, in the construction of these roads. Behold the cunning little workman--he comes, he explores, and he says, 'Yes, I will send a carriage and horses over these mighty mountains;' and, by Jove, you are drawn up among the eternal snows. I am a great admirer of these roads." In 1844 Gibson paid his first visit to England, a very different England indeed to the one he had left twenty-seven years earlier. His Liverpool friends, now thoroughly proud of their stone-cutter, insisted upon giving him a public banquet. Glasgow followed the same example; and the simple-minded sculptor, unaccustomed to such honours, hardly knew how to bear his blushes decorously upon him. During this visit, he received a command to execute a statue of the queen. Gibson was at first quite disconcerted at such an awful summons. "I don't know how to behave to queens," he said. "Treat her like a lady," said a friend; and Gibson, following the advice, found it sufficiently answered all the necessities of the situation. But when he went to arrange with the Prince Consort about the statue, he was rather puzzled what he should do about measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the fashionable gown of the day, or men in swallow-tail coats and high collars. Another work which Gibson designed during this visit possesses for us a singular and exceptional interest. It was a statue of George Stephenson, to be erected at Liverpool. Thus, by a curious coincidence, the Liverpool stone-cutter was set to immortalize the features and figure of the Killingworth engine-man. Did those two great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter, know one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder? Perhaps not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of union between them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired Stephenson, just as he had admired the Stelvio road. "I will endeavour to give him a look capable of action and energy," he said; "but he must be contemplative, grave, simple. He is a good subject. I wish to make him look like an Archimedes." If Gibson admired Stephenson, however, he did not wholly admire Stephenson's railways. The England he had left was the England of mail-coaches. In Italy, he had learnt to travel by carriage, after the fashion of the country; but these new whizzing locomotives, with their time-tables, and their precision, and their inscrutable mysteries of shunts and junctions, were quite too much for his simple, childish, old-world habits. He had a knack of getting out too soon or too late, which often led him into great confusion. Once, when he wanted to go to Chichester, he found himself landed at Portsmouth, and only discovered his mistake when, on asking the way to the cathedral, he was told there was no cathedral in the town at all. Another story of how he tried to reach Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's place, is best told in his own words. "The train soon stopped at a small station, and, seeing some people get out, I also descended; when, in a moment, the train moved on--faster and faster--and left me standing on the platform. I walked a few paces backward and forward in disagreeable meditation. 'I wish to Heaven,' thought I to myself, 'that I was on my way back to Rome with a postboy.' Then I observed a policeman darting his eyes upon me, as if he would look me through. Said I to the fellow, 'Where is that cursed train gone to? It's off with my luggage and here am I.' The man asked me the name of the place where I took my ticket. 'I don't remember,' said I. 'How should I know the name of any of these places?--it's as long as my arm. I've got it written down somewhere.' 'Pray, sir,' said the man, after a little pause, 'are you a foreigner?' 'No,' I replied, 'I am not a foreigner; I'm a sculptor.'" The consequence of this almost childish carelessness was that Gibson had always to be accompanied on his long journeys either by a friend or a courier. While Mr. Ben lived, he usually took his brother in charge to some extent; and the relation between them was mutual, for while John Gibson found the sculpture, Mr. Ben found the learning, so that Gibson used often to call him "my classical dictionary." In 1847, however, Mr. Ben was taken ill. He got a bad cold, and would have no doctor, take no medicine. "I consider Mr. Ben," his brother writes, "as one of the most amiable of human beings--too good for this world--but he will take no care against colds, and when ill he is a stubborn animal." That summer Gibson went again to England, and when, he came back found Mr. Ben no better. For four years the younger brother lingered on, and in 1851 died suddenly from the effects of a fall in walking. Gibson was thus left quite alone, but for his pupil Miss Hosmer, who became to him more than a daughter. During his later years Gibson took largely to tinting his statues--colouring them faintly with flesh-tones and other hues like nature; and this practice he advocated with all the strength of his single-minded nature. All visitors to the great Exhibition of 1862 will remember his beautiful tinted Venus, which occupied the place of honour in a light temple erected for the purpose by another distinguished artistic Welshman, Mr. Owen Jones, who did much towards raising the standard of taste in the English people. In January, 1866, John Gibson had a stroke of paralysis, from which he never recovered. He died within the month, and was buried in the English cemetery at Rome. Both his brothers had died before him; and he left the whole of his considerable fortune to the Royal Academy in England. An immense number of his works are in the possession of the Academy, and are on view there throughout the year. John Gibson's life is very different in many respects from that of most other great working men whose story is told in this volume. Undoubtedly, he was deficient in several of those rugged and stern qualities to which English working men have oftenest owed their final success. But there was in him a simple grandeur of character, a purity of soul, and an earnestness of aim which raised him at once far above the heads of most among those who would have been the readiest to laugh at and ridicule him. Besides his exquisite taste, his severe love of beauty, and his marvellous power of expressing the highest ideals of pure form, he had one thing which linked him to all the other great men whose lives we have here recounted--his steadfast and unconquerable personal energy. In one sense it may be said that he was not a practical man; and yet in another and higher sense, what could possibly be more practical than this accomplished resolve of the poor Liverpool stone-cutter to overcome all obstacles, to go to, Rome, and to make himself into a great sculptor? It is indeed a pity that in writing for Englishmen of the present day such a life should even seem for a moment to stand in need of a practical apology. For purity, for guilelessness, for exquisite appreciation of the true purpose of sculpture as the highest embodiment of beauty of form, John Gibson's art stands unsurpassed in all the annals of modern statuary. IV. WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN. Old Isaac Herschel, the oboe-player of the King's Guard in Hanover, had served with his regiment for many years in the chilly climate of North Germany, and was left at last broken down in health and spirits by the many hardships of several severe European campaigns. Isaac Herschel was a man of tastes and education above his position; but he had married a person in some respects quite unfitted for him. His good wife, Anna, though an excellent housekeeper and an estimable woman in her way, had never even learned to write; and when the pair finally settled down to old age in Hanover, they were hampered by the cares of a large family of ten children. Respectable poverty in Germany is even more pressing than in England; the decent poor are accustomed to more frugal fare and greater privations than with us; and the domestic life of the Herschel family circle must needs have been of the most careful and penurious description. Still, Isaac Herschel dearly loved his art, and in it he found many amends and consolations for the sordid shifts and troubles of a straitened German household. All his spare time was given to music, and in his later days he was enabled to find sufficient pupils to eke out his little income with comparative comfort. William Herschel, the great astronomer (born in 1738), was the fourth child of his mother, and with his brothers he was brought up at the garrison school in Hanover, together with the sons of the other common soldiers. There he learned, not only the three R's, but also a little French and English. Still, the boy was not content with these ordinary studies; in his own playtime he took lessons in Latin and mathematics privately with the regimental schoolmaster. The young Herschels, indeed, were exceptionally fortunate in the possession of an excellent and intelligent father, who was able to direct their minds into channels which few people of their position in life have the opportunity of entering. Isaac Herschel was partly of Jewish descent, and he inherited in a marked degree two very striking Jewish gifts--a turn for music, and a turn for philosophy. The Jews are probably the oldest civilized race now remaining on earth; and their musical faculties have been continuously exercised from a time long before the days of David, so that now they produce undoubtedly a far larger proportion of musicians and composers than any other class of the population whatsoever. They are also deeply interested in the same profound theological and philosophical problems which were discussed with so much acuteness and freedom in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subtle argument of Job and his friends. There has never been a time when the Jewish mind has not exercised itself profoundly on these deep and difficult questions; and the Hanover bandsman inherited from his Jewish ancestry an unusual interest in similar philosophical subjects. Thus, while the little ones were sleeping in the same common room at night, William and his father were often heard discussing the ideas of such abstruse thinkers as Newton and Leibnitz, whose names must have sounded strange indeed to the ordinary frequenters of the Hanover barracks. On such occasions good dame Herschel was often compelled to interpose between them, lest the loudness of their logic should wake the younger children in the crib hard by. William, however, possessed yet another gift, which he is less likely to have derived from the Jewish side of the house. He and his brother Alexander were both distinguished by a natural taste for mechanics, and early gave proof of their learning by turning neat globes with the equator and ecliptic accurately engraved upon them, or by making model instruments for their own amusement out of bits of pasteboard. Thus, in early opportunities and educational advantages, the young Herschels certainly started in life far better equipped than most working men's sons; and, considering their father's doubtful position, it may seem at first sight rather a stretch of language to describe him as a working man at all. Nevertheless, when one remembers the humble grade of military bandsmen in Germany, even at the present day, and the fact that most of the Herschel family remained in that grade during all their lives, it is clear that William Herschel's life may be fairly included within the scope of the present series. "In my fifteenth year," he says himself, "I enlisted in military service," and he evidently looked upon his enlistment in exactly the same light as that of any ordinary soldier. England and Hanover were, of course, very closely connected together at the middle of the last century. The king moved about a great deal from one country to the other; and in 1755 the regiment of Hanoverian Guards was ordered on service to England for a year. William Herschel, then seventeen years of age, and already a member of the band, went together with his father; and it was in this modest capacity that he first made acquaintance with the land where he was afterwards to attain the dignity of knighthood and the post of the king's astronomer. He played the oboe, like his father before him, and no doubt underwent the usual severe military discipline of that age of stiff stocks and stern punishments. His pay was very scanty, and out of it he only saved enough to carry home one memento of his English experiences. That memento was in itself a sufficient mark of the stuff from which young Herschel was compounded. It was a copy of "Locke on the Human Understanding." Now, Locke's famous work, oftener named than read, is a very tough and serious bit of philosophical exposition; and a boy of seventeen who buys such a book out of his meagre earnings as a military bandsman is pretty sure not to end his life within the four dismal bare walls of the barrack. It is indeed a curious picture to imagine young William Herschel, among a group of rough and boisterous German soldiers, discussing high mathematical problems with his father, or sitting down quietly in a corner to read "Locke on the Human Understanding." In 1757, during the Seven Years' War, Herschel was sent with his regiment to serve in the campaign of Rossbach against the French. He was not physically strong, and the hardships of active service told terribly upon the still growing lad. His parents were alarmed at his appearance when he returned, and were very anxious to "remove" him from the service. That, however, was by no means an easy matter for them to accomplish. They had no money to buy his discharge, and so, not to call the transaction by any other than its true name, William Herschel was forced to run away from the army. We must not judge too harshly of this desertion, for the times were hard, and the lives of men in Herschel's position were valued at very little by the constituted authorities. Long after, it is said, when Herschel had distinguished himself by the discovery of the planet Uranus, a pardon for this high military offence was duly handed to him by the king in person on the occasion of his first presentation. George III. was not a particularly wise or brilliant man; but even he had sense enough to perceive that William Herschel could serve the country far better by mapping out the stars of heaven than by playing the oboe to the royal regiment of Hanoverian Guards. William was nineteen when he ran away. His good mother packed his boxes for him with such necessaries as she could manage, and sent them after him to Hamburg; but, to the boy's intense disgust, she forgot to send the copy of "Locke on the Human Understanding." What a sturdy deserter we have here, to be sure! "She, dear woman," he says plaintively, "knew no other wants than good linen and clothing!" So William Herschel the oboe-player started off alone to earn his living as best he might in the great world of England. It is strange he should have chosen that, of all European countries; for there alone he was liable to be arrested as a deserter: but perhaps his twelvemonth's stay in London may have given him a sense of being at home amongst us which he would have lacked in any other part of Europe. At any rate, hither he came, and for the next three years picked up a livelihood, we know not how, as many other excellent German bandsmen have done before and since him. Our information about his early life is very meagre, and at this period we lose sight of him for a while altogether. About the year 1760, however, we catch another incidental glimpse of the young musician in his adopted country. By that time, he had found himself once more a regular post as oboist to the Durham militia, then quartered for its muster at Pontefract. A certain Dr. Miller, an organist at Doncaster, was dining one evening at the officers' mess; when his host happened to speak to him in high praise of a young German they had in their band, who was really, he said, a most remarkable and spirited performer. Dr. Miller asked to see (or rather hear) this clever musician; so Herschel was called up, and made to go through a solo for the visitor's gratification. The organist was surprised at his admirable execution, and asked him on what terms he was engaged to the Durham militia. "Only from month to month," Herschel answered. "Then leave them at the end of your month," said Miller, "and come to live with me. I'm a single man; I think we can manage together; and I'm sure I can get you a better situation." Herschel frankly accepted the offer so kindly made, and seems to have lived for much of the next five years with Miller in his little two-roomed cottage at Doncaster. Here he took pupils and performed in the orchestra at public concerts, always in a very quiet and modest fashion. He also lived for part of the time with a Mr. Bulman at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in William Herschel's character that to the end he was constantly engaged in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less energetic or less fortunate members of his own family. During these years, Herschel also seems to have given much attention to the organ, which enabled him to make his next step in life in 1765, when he was appointed organist at Halifax. Now, there is a great social difference between the position of an oboe-player in a band and a church organist; and it was through his organ-playing that Herschel was finally enabled to leave his needy hand-to-mouth life in Yorkshire. A year later, he obtained the post of organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath, an engagement which gave him new opportunities of turning his mind to the studies for which he possessed a very marked natural inclination. Bath was in those days not only the most fashionable watering-place in England, but almost the only fashionable watering-place in the whole kingdom. It was, to a certain extent, all that Brighton, Scarborough, Buxton, and Harrogate are to-day, and something more. In our own time, when railways and steamboats have so altered the face of the world, the most wealthy and fashionable English society resorts a great deal to continental pleasure towns like Cannes, Nice, Florence, Vichy, Baden, Ems, and Homburg; but in the eighteenth century it resorted almost exclusively to Bath. The Octagon Chapel was in one sense the centre of life in Bath; and through his connection with it, Herschel was thrown into a far more intelligent and learned society than that which he had left behind him in still rural Yorkshire. New books came early to Bath, and were read and discussed in the reading-rooms; famous men and women came there, and contributed largely to the intellectual life of the place; the theatre was the finest out of London; the Assembly Rooms were famous as the greatest resort of wit and culture in the whole kingdom. Herschel here was far more in his element than in the barracks of Hanover, or in the little two-roomed cottage at rustic Doncaster. He worked very hard indeed, and his work soon brought him comfort and comparative wealth. Besides his chapel services, and his later engagement in the orchestra of the Assembly Rooms, he had often as many as thirty-eight private pupils in music every week; and he also composed a few pieces, which were published in London with some modest success. Still, in spite of all these numerous occupations, the eager young German found a little leisure time to devote to self-education; so much so that, after a fatiguing day of fourteen or sixteen hours spent in playing the organ and teaching, he would "unbend his mind" by studying the higher mathematics, or give himself a lesson in Greek and Italian. At the same time; he was also working away at a line of study, seemingly useless to him, but in which he was afterwards to earn so great and deserved a reputation. Among the books he read during this Bath period were Smith's "Optics" and Lalande's "Astronomy." Throughout all his own later writings, the influence of these two books, thoroughly mastered by constant study in the intervals of his Bath music lessons, makes itself everywhere distinctly felt. Meanwhile, the family at Hanover had not been flourishing quite so greatly as the son William was evidently doing in wealthy England. During all those years, the young man had never forgotten to keep up a close correspondence with his people in Germany. Already, in 1764, during his Yorkshire days, William Herschel had managed out of his Savings as an oboe-player to make a short trip to his old home; and his sister Carolina, afterwards his chief assistant in his astronomical labours, notes with pleasure the delight she felt in having her beloved brother with her once more, though she, poor girl, being cook to the household apparently, could only enjoy his society when she was not employed "in the drudgery of the scullery." A year later, when William had returned to England again, and had just received his appointment as organist at Halifax, his father, Isaac, had a stroke of paralysis which ended his violin-playing for ever, and forced him to rely thenceforth upon copying music for a precarious livelihood. In 1767 he died, and poor Carolina saw before her in prospect nothing but a life of that domestic drudgery which she so disliked. "I could not bear the idea of being turned into a housemaid," she says; and she thought that if only she could take a few lessons in music and fancy work she might get "a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel, like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father could do was to indulge me sometimes with a short lesson on the violin when my mother was either in good humour or out of the way. It was her certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his country, and my eldest brother would not have looked so high, if they had had a little less learning." Poor, purblind, well-meaning, obstructive old dame Herschel! what a boon to the world that children like yours are sometimes seized with this incomprehensible fancy for "looking too high"! Nevertheless, Carolina managed by rising early to take a few lessons at daybreak from a young woman whose parents lived in the same cottage with hers; and so she got through a little work before the regular daily business of the family began at seven. Imagine her delight then, just as the difficulties after her father's death are making that housemaid's place seem almost inevitable, when she gets a letter from William at Bath, asking her to come over to England and join him at that gay and fashionable city. He would try to prepare her for singing at his concerts; but if after two years' trial she didn't succeed, he would take her back again to Hanover himself. In 1772, indeed, William in person came over to fetch her, and thenceforth the brother and sister worked unceasingly together in all their undertakings to the day of the great astronomer's death. About this time Herschel had been reading Ferguson's "Astronomy," and felt very desirous of seeing for himself the objects in the heavens, invisible to the naked eye, of which he there found descriptions. For this purpose he must of course have a telescope. But how to obtain one? that was the question. There was a small two-and-a-half foot instrument on hire at one of the shops at Bath; and the ambitious organist borrowed this poor little glass for a time, not merely to look through, but to use as a model for constructing one on his own account. Buying was impossible, of course, for telescopes cost much money: but making would not be difficult for a determined mind. He had always been of a mechanical turn, and he was now fired with a desire to build himself a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long. He sent to London for the lenses, which could not be bought at Bath; and Carolina amused herself by making a pasteboard tube to fit them in her leisure hours. It was long before he reached twenty feet, indeed: his first effort was a seven-foot, attained only "after many continuous determined trials." The amateur pasteboard frame did not fully answer Herschel's expectations, so he was obliged to go in grudgingly for the expense of a tin tube. The reflecting mirror which he ought to have had proved too dear for his still slender purse, and he thus had to forego it with much regret. But he found a man at Bath who had once been in the mirror-polishing line; and he bought from him for a bargain all his rubbish of patterns, tools, unfinished mirrors and so forth, with which he proceeded to experiment on the manufacture of a proper telescope. In the summer, when the season was over, and all the great people had left Bath, the house, as Carolina says ruefully, "was turned into a workshop." William's younger brother Alexander was busy putting up a big lathe in a bedroom, grinding glasses and turning eyepieces; while in the drawing-room itself, sacred to William's aristocratic pupils, a carpenter, sad to relate, was engaged in making a tube and putting up stands for the future telescopes. Sad goings on, indeed, in the family of a respectable music-master and organist! Many a good solid shopkeeper in Bath must no doubt have shaken his grey head solemnly as he passed the door, and muttered to himself that that young German singer fellow was clearly going on the road to ruin with his foolish good-for-nothing star-gazing. In 1774, when William Herschel was thirty six, he had at last constructed himself a seven-foot telescope, and began for the first time in his life to view the heavens in a systematic manner. From this he advanced to a ten-foot, and then to one of twenty, for he meant to see stars that no astronomer had ever yet dreamt of beholding. It was comparatively late in life to begin, but Herschel had laid a solid foundation already and he was enabled therefore to do an immense deal in the second half of those threescore years and ten which are the allotted average life of man, but which he himself really overstepped by fourteen winters. As he said long afterwards with his modest manner to the poet Campbell, "I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two millions of years to reach this earth." That would have been a grand thing for any man to be able truthfully to say under any circumstances: it was a marvellous thing for a man who had laboured under all the original disadvantages of Herschel--a man who began life as a penniless German bandsman, and up to the age of thirty-six had never even looked through a telescope. At this time, Herschel was engaged in playing the harpsichord in the orchestra of the theatre; and it was during the interval between the acts that he made his first general survey of the heavens. The moment his part was finished, he would rush out to gaze through his telescope; and in these short periods he managed to observe all the visible stars of what are called the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes. Henceforth he went on building telescope after telescope, each one better than the last; and now all his glasses were ground and polished either by his own hand or by his brother Alexander's. Carolina meanwhile took her part in the workshop; but as she had also to sing at the oratorios, and her awkward German manners might shock the sensitive nerves of the Bath aristocrats, she took two lessons a week for a whole twelvemonth (she tells us in her delightfully straightforward fashion) "from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing mistress, to drill me for a gentlewoman." Poor Carolina, there she was mistaken: Miss Fleming could make her into no gentlewoman, for she was born one already, and nothing proves it more than the perfect absence of false shame with which in her memoirs she tells us all these graphic little details of their early humble days. While they were thus working at Bath an incident occurred which is worth mentioning because it shows the very different directions in which the presence or the want of steady persistence may lead the various members of the very self-same family. William received a letter from his widowed mother at Hanover to say, in deep distress, that Dietrich, the youngest brother, had run away from home, it was supposed for the purpose of going to India, "with a young idler no older than himself." Forthwith, the budding astronomer left the lathe where he was busy turning an eye-piece from a cocoa-nut shell, and, like a good son and brother as he always was, hurried off to Holland and thence to Hanover. No Dietrich was anywhere to be found. But while he was away, Carolina at Bath received a letter from Dietrich himself, to tell her ruefully he was "laid up very ill" at a waterside tavern in Wapping--not the nicest or most savoury East End sailor-suburb of London. Alexander immediately took the coach to town, put the prodigal into a decent lodging, nursed him carefully for a fortnight, and then took him down with him in triumph to the family home at Bath. There brother William found him safe and sound on his return, under the sisterly care of good Carolina. A pretty dance he had led the two earnest and industrious astronomers; but they seem always to have treated this black sheep of the family with uniform kindness, and long afterwards Sir William remembered him favourably in his last will. In 1779 and the succeeding years the three Herschels were engaged during all their spare time in measuring the heights of about one hundred mountains in the moon, which William gauged by three different methods. In the same year, he made an acquaintance of some importance to him, as forming his first introduction to the wider world of science in London and elsewhere. Dr. Watson, a Fellow of the Royal Society, happened, to see him working at his telescope; and this led to a visit from the electrician to the amateur astronomer. Dr. Watson was just then engaged in getting up a Philosophical Society at Bath (a far rarer institution at that time in a provincial town than now), and he invited William Herschel to join it. Here Herschel learned for the first time to mix with those who were more nearly his intellectual equals, and to measure his strength against other men's. It was in 1781 that Herschel made the great discovery which immediately established his fame as an astronomer, and enabled him to turn from conducting concerts to the far higher work of professionally observing the stars. On the night of Tuesday, March 13th, Herschel was engaged in his usual systematic survey of the sky, a bit at a time, when his telescope lighted among a group of small fixed stars upon what he at first imagined to be a new comet. It proved to be no comet, however, but a true planet--a veritable world, revolving like our own in a nearly circular path around the sun as centre, though far more remote from it than the most distant planet then known, Saturn. Herschel called his new world the Georgium Sidus (King George's star) in honour of the reigning monarch; but it has since been known as Uranus. Astronomers all over Europe were soon apprised of this wonderful discovery, and the path of the freshly found planet was computed by calculation, its distance from the sun being settled at nineteen times that of our own earth. In order faintly to understand the importance attached at the time to Herschel's observation of this very remote and seemingly petty world, we must remember that up to that date all the planets which circle round our own sun had been familiarly known to everybody from time immemorial. To suggest that there was yet another world belonging to our system outside the path of the furthest known planet would have seemed to most people like pure folly. Since then, we have grown quite accustomed to the discovery of a fresh small world or two every year, and we have even had another large planet (Neptune), still more remote than Herschel's Uranus, added to the list of known orbs in our own solar system. But in Herschel's day, nobody had ever heard of a new planet being discovered since the beginning of all things. A hundred years before, an Italian astronomer, it is true, had found out four small moons revolving round Saturn, besides the big moon then already known; but for a whole century, everybody believed that the solar system was now quite fully explored, and that nothing fresh could be discovered about it. Hence Herschel's observation produced a very different effect from, say, the discovery of the two moons which revolve round Mars, in our own day. Even people who felt no interest in astronomy were aroused to attention. Mr. Herschel's new planet became the talk of the town and the subject of much admiring discussion in the London newspapers. Strange, indeed, that an amateur astronomer of Bath, a mere German music-master, should have hit upon a planet which escaped the sight even of the king's own Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Of course there were not people wanting who ascribed this wonderful discovery of Herschel's to pure chance. If he hadn't just happened to turn his telescope in that particular direction on that particular night, he wouldn't have seen this Georgium Sidus they made such a fuss about at all. Quite so. And if he hadn't built a twenty-foot telescope for himself, he wouldn't have turned it anywhere at any time. But Herschel himself knew better. "This was by no means the result of chance," he said; "but a simple consequence of the position of the planet on that particular evening, since it occupied precisely that spot in the heavens which came in the order of the minute observations that I had previously mapped out for myself. Had I not seen it just when I did, I must inevitably have come upon it soon after, since my telescope was so perfect that I was able to distinguish it from a fixed star in the first minute of observation." Indeed, when once Herschel's twenty-foot telescope was made, he could not well have failed in the long run to discover Uranus, as his own description of his method clearly shows. "When I had carefully and thoroughly perfected the great instrument in all its parts," he says, "I made a systematic use of it in my observation of the heaven, first forming a determination never to pass by any, the smallest, portion of them without due investigation. This habit, persisted in, led to the discovery of the new planet (Georgium Sidus)." As well might one say that a skilled mining surveyor, digging for coal, came upon the seam by chance, as ascribe to chance the necessary result of such a careful and methodical scrutiny as this. Before the year was out, the ingenious Mr. Herschel of Bath was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was also presented with the Copley gold medal. From this moment all the distinguished people in Bath were anxious to be introduced to the philosophical music-master; and, indeed, they intruded so much upon his time that the daily music lessons were now often interrupted. He was soon, however, to give up lessons for ever, and devote himself to his more congenial and natural work in astronomy. In May, 1782, he went up to London, to be formally admitted to his Fellowship of the Royal Society. There he stayed so long that poor Carolina was quite frightened. It was "double the time which my brother could safely be absent from his scholars." The connection would be broken up, and the astronomy would be the ruin of the family. (A little of good old dame Herschel's housewifely leaven here, perhaps.) But William's letters from London to "Dear Lina" must soon have quieted her womanly fears. William had actually been presented to the king, and "met with a very gracious reception." He had explained the solar system to the king and queen, and his telescope was to be put up first at Greenwich and then at Richmond. The Greenwich authorities were delighted with his instrument; they have seen what Herschel calls "MY fine double stars" with it. "All my papers are printing," he tells Lina with pardonable pride, "and are allowed to be very valuable." But he himself is far from satisfied as yet with the results of his work. Evidently no small successes in the field of knowledge will do for William Herschel. "Among opticians and astronomers," he writes to Lina, "nothing now is talked of but WHAT THEY CALL my great discoveries. Alas! this shows how far they are behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are called GREAT. Let me but get at it again! I will make such telescopes and see such things!" Well, well, William Herschel, in that last sentence we get the very keynote of true greatness and true genius. But must he go back quietly to Bath and the toils of teaching? "An intolerable waste of time," he thought it. The king happily relieved him from this intolerable waste. He offered Herschel a salary of 200 pounds a year if he would come and live at Datchet, and devote himself entirely to astronomical observations. It was by no means a munificent sum for a king to offer for such labour; but Herschel gladly accepted it, as it would enable him to give up the interruption of teaching, and spend all his time on his beloved astronomy. His Bath friend, Sir William Watson, exclaimed when he heard of it, "Never bought monarch honour so cheap." Herschel was forty-three when he removed to Datchet, and from that day forth he lived almost entirely in his observatory, wholly given up to his astronomical pursuits. Even when he had to go to London to read his papers before the Royal Society, he chose a moonlight night (when the stars would be mostly invisible), so that it might not interfere with his regular labours. Poor Carolina was horrified at the house at Datchet, which seemed terribly desolate and poor, even to her modest German ideas; but William declared his willingness to live permanently and cheerfully upon "eggs and bacon" now that he was at last free to do nothing on earth but observe the heavens. Night after night he and Carolina worked together at their silent task--he noting the small features with his big telescope, she "sweeping for comets" with a smaller glass or "finder." Herschel could have had no more useful or devoted assistant than his sister, who idolized him with all her heart. Alexander, too, came to stay with them during the slack months at Bath, and then the whole strength of the family was bent together on their labour of love in gauging the heavens. But what use was it all? Why should they wish to go star-gazing? Well, if a man cannot see for himself what use it was, nobody else can put the answer into him, any more than they could put into him a love for nature, or for beauty, or for art, or for music, if he had it not to start with. What is the good of a great picture, a splendid oratorio, a grand poem? To the man who does not care for them, nothing; to the man who loves them, infinite. It is just the same with science. The use of knowledge to a mind like Herschel's is the mere possession of it. With such as he, it is a love, an object of desire, a thing to be sought after for its town sake; and the mere act of finding it is in itself purely delightful. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." So, to such a man as Herschel, that peaceful astronomer life at Datchet was indeed, in the truest sense of those much-abused words, "success in life." If you had asked some vulgar-minded neighbour of the great Sir William in his later days whether the astronomer had been a successful man or not, he would doubtless have answered, after his kind, "Certainly. He has been made a knight, has lands in two counties, and has saved 35,000 pounds." But if you had asked William Herschel himself, he would probably have said, with his usual mixture of earnestness and humility, "Yes, I have been a very fortunate man in life. I have discovered Uranus, and I have gauged all the depths of heaven, as none before ever gauged them, with my own great telescope." Still, those who cannot sympathize with the pure love of knowledge for its own sake--one of the highest and noblest of human aims--should remember that astronomy is also of immense practical importance to mankind, and especially to navigation and commerce. Unless great astronomical calculations were correctly performed at Greenwich and elsewhere, it would be impossible for any ship or steamer to sail with safety from England to Australia or America. Every defect in our astronomical knowledge helps to wreck our vessels on doubtful coasts; every advance helps to save the lives of many sailors and the cargoes of many merchants. It is this practical utility of astronomy that justifies the spending of national money on observatories and transits of Venus, and it is the best apology for an astronomer's life to those who do not appreciate the use of knowledge for its own beauty. At Datchet, Herschel not only made several large telescopes for sale, for which he obtained large prices, but he also got a grant of 2000 pounds from the king to aid him in constructing his huge forty-foot instrument. It was here, too, in 1783, that Herschel married. His wife was a widow lady of scientific tastes like his own, and she was possessed of considerable means, which enabled him henceforth to lay aside all anxiety on the score of money. They had but one child, a son, afterwards Sir John Herschel, almost as great an astronomer as his father had been before him. In 1785, the family moved to Clay Hall, in Old Windsor, and in 1786 to Slough, where Herschel lived for the remainder of his long life. How completely his whole soul was bound up in his work is shown in the curious fact recorded for us by Carolina Herschel. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping the sky with the great glass till daylight; and by the next evening the telescope stood ready for observations once more in the new home at Slough. To follow Herschel through the remainder of his life would be merely to give a long catalogue of his endless observations and discoveries among the stars. Such a catalogue would be interesting only to astronomers; yet it would truly give the main facts of Herschel's existence in his happy home at Slough. Honoured by the world, dearly loved in his own family, and engrossed with a passionate affection for his chosen science, the great astronomer and philosopher grew grey in peace under his own roof, in the course of a singularly placid and gentle old age. In 1802 he laid before the Royal Society a list of five thousand new stars, star-clusters, or other heavenly bodies which he had discovered, and which formed the great body of his personal additions to astronomical knowledge. The University of Oxford made him Doctor of Laws, and very late in life he was knighted by the king--a too tardy acknowledgment of his immense services to science. To the very last, however, he worked on with a will; and, indeed, it is one of the great charms of scientific interest that it thus enables a man to keep his faculties on the alert to an advanced old age. In 1819, when Herschel was more than eighty, he writes to his sister a short note--"Lina, there is a great comet. I want you to assist me. Come to dine and spend the day here. If you can come soon after one o'clock, we shall have time to prepare maps and telescopes. I saw its situation last night. It has a long tail." How delightful to find such a living interest in life at the age of eighty! On the 25th of August, 1822, this truly great and simple man passed away, in his eighty-fifth year. It has been possible here only to sketch out the chief personal points in his career, without dwelling much upon the scientific importance of his later life-long labours; but it must suffice to say briefly upon this point that Herschel's work was no mere mechanical star-finding; it was the most profoundly philosophical astronomical work ever performed, except perhaps Newton's and Laplace's. Among astronomers proper there has been none distinguished by such breadth of grasp, such wide conceptions, and such perfect clearness of view as the self-taught oboe-player of Hanover. V. JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, PAINTER. There is no part of France so singularly like England, both in the aspect of the country itself and in the features and character of the inhabitants, as Normandy. The wooded hills and dales, the frequent copses and apple orchards, the numerous thriving towns and villages, the towers and steeples half hidden among the trees, recall at every step the very similar scenery of our own beautiful and fruitful Devonshire. And as the land is, so are the people. Ages ago, about the same time that the Anglo-Saxon invaders first settled down in England, a band of similar English pirates, from the old common English home by the cranberry marshes of the Baltic, drove their long ships upon the long rocky peninsula of the Cotentin, which juts out, like a French Cornwall, from the mainland of Normandy up to the steep cliffs and beetling crags of busy Cherbourg. There they built themselves little hamlets and villages of true English type, whose very names to this day remind one of their ancient Saxon origin. Later on, the Danes or Northmen conquered the country, which they called after their own name, Normandy, that is to say, the Northmen's land. Mixing with the early Saxon or English settlers, and with the still more primitive Celtic inhabitants, the Northmen founded a race extremely like that which now inhabits our own country. To this day, the Norman peasants of the Cotentin retain many marks of their origin and their half-forgotten kinship with the English race. While other Frenchmen are generally dark and thick-set, the Norman is, as a rule, a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed man, not unlike in build to our Yarmouth fisherman, or our Kentish labourers. In body and mind, there is something about him even now which makes him seem more nearly akin to us than the true Frenchmen who inhabit almost all the rest of France. In the village of Gruchy, near Greville, in this wild and beautiful region of the Cotentin, there lived at the beginning of the present century a sturdy peasant family of the name of Millet. The father of the family was one of the petty village landholders so common in France; a labourer who owned and tilled his own tiny patch of farm, with the aid of his wife and children. We have now no class in England exactly answering to the French peasant proprietors, who form so large and important an element in the population just across the Channel. The small landholder in France belongs by position to about the same level as our own agricultural labourer, and in many ways is content with a style of dress and a mode of living against which English labourers would certainly protest with horror. And yet, he is a proprietor, with a proprietor's sense of the dignity of his position, and an ardent love of his own little much-subdivided corner of agricultural land. On this he spends all his energies, and however many children he may have, he will try to make a livelihood for all by their united labour out of the soil, rather than let one of them go to seek his fortune by any other means in the great cities. Thus the ground is often tilled up to an almost ridiculous extent, the entire labour of the family being sometimes expended in cultivating, manuring, weeding, and tending a patch of land perhaps hardly an acre in size. It is quite touching to see the care and solicitude with which these toilsome peasants will laboriously lay out their bit of garden with fruits or vegetables, making every line almost mathematically regular, planting every pea at a measured distance, or putting a smooth flat pebble under every strawberry on the evenly ridged-up vines. It is only in the very last resort that the peasant proprietor will consent to let one of his daughters go out to service, or send one of his sons adrift to seek his fortune as an artisan in the big, unknown, outer world. Millet the elder, however, had nine children, which is an unusually large number for a French peasant family (where the women ordinarily marry late in life); and his little son Jean Francois (the second child and eldest boy), though set to weed and hoe upon the wee farm in his boyhood, was destined by his father for some other life than that of a tiller of the soil. He was born in the year before Waterloo--1814--and was brought up on his father's plot of land, in the hard rough way to which peasant children in France are always accustomed. Bronzed by sun and rain, poorly clad, and ill-fed, he acquired as a lad, from the open air and the toilsome life he led, a vigour of constitution which enabled him to bear up against the numerous hardships and struggles of his later days. "A Norman Peasant," he loved to call himself always, with a certain proud humility; and happily he had the rude health of one all his life long. Hard as he worked, little Francois' time was not entirely taken up with attending to the fields or garden. He was a studious boy, and learned not only to read and write in French, but also to try some higher flights, rare indeed for a lad of his position. His family possessed remarkable qualities as French peasants go; and one of his great-uncles, a man of admirable strength of character, a priest in the days of the great Revolution, had braved the godless republicans of his time, and though deprived of his cure, and compelled to labour for his livelihood in the fields, had yet guided the plough in his priestly garments. His grandmother first taught him his letters; and when she had instructed him to the length of reading any French book that was put before him, the village priest took him in hand. In France, the priest comes often from the peasant class, and remains in social position a member of that class as long as he lives. But he always possesses a fair knowledge of Latin, the language in which all his religious services are conducted; and this knowledge serves as a key to much that his unlearned parishioners could never dream of knowing. Young Millet's parish priest taught him as much Latin as he knew himself; and so the boy was not only able to read the Bible in the Latin or Vulgate translation, but also to make acquaintance with the works of Virgil and several others of the great Roman poets. He read, too, the beautiful "Confessions" of St. Augustine, and the "Lives of the Saints," which he found in his father's scanty library, as well as the works of the great French preachers, Bossuet and Fenelon. Such early acquaintance with these and many other masterpieces of higher literature, we may be sure, helped greatly to mould the lad's mind into that grand and sober shape which it finally acquired. Jean Francois' love of art was first aroused by the pictures in an old illustrated Bible which belonged to his father, and which he was permitted to look at on Sundays and festivals. The child admired these pictures immensely, and asked leave to be permitted to copy them. The only time he could find for the purpose, however, was that of the mid-day rest or siesta. It is the custom in France, as in Southern Europe generally, for labourers to cease from work for an hour or so in the middle of the day; and during this "tired man's holiday," young Millet, instead of resting, used to take out his pencil and paper, and try his hand at reproducing the pictures in the big Bible. His father was not without an undeveloped taste for art. "See," he would say, looking into some beautiful combe or glen on the hillside--"see that little cottage half buried in the trees; how beautiful it is! I think it ought to be drawn so--;" and then he would make a rough sketch of it on some scrap of paper. At times he would model things with a bit of clay, or cut the outline of a flower or an animal with his knife on a flat piece of wood. This unexercised talent Francois inherited in a still greater degree. As time went on, he progressed to making little drawings on his own account; and we may be sure the priest and all the good wives of Gruchy had quite settled in their own minds before long that Jean Francois Millet's hands would be able in time to paint quite a beautiful altar-piece for the village church. By-and-by, when the time came for Francois to choose a trade, he being then a big lad of about nineteen, it was suggested to his father that young Millet might really make a regular painter--that is to say, an artist. In France, the general tastes of the people are far more artistic than with us; and the number of painters who find work for their brushes in Paris is something immensely greater than the number in our own smoky, money-making London. So there was nothing very remarkable, from a French point of view, in the idea of the young peasant turning for a livelihood to the profession of an artist. But Millet's father was a sober and austere man, a person of great dignity and solemnity, who decided to put his son's powers to the test in a very regular and critical fashion. He had often watched Francois drawing, and he thought well of the boy's work. If he had a real talent for painting, a painter he should be; if not, he must take to some other craft, where he would have the chance of making himself a decent livelihood. So he told Francois to prepare a couple of drawings, which he would submit to the judgment of M. Mouchel, a local painter at Cherbourg, the nearest large town, and capital of the department. Francois duly prepared the drawings, and Millet the elder went with his, son to submit them in proper form for M. Mouchel's opinion. Happily, M. Mouchel had judgment enough to see at a glance that the drawings possessed remarkable merit. "You must be playing me a trick," he said; "that lad could never have made these drawings." "I saw him do them with my own eyes," answered the father warmly. "Then," said Mouchel, "all I can say is this: he has in him the making of a great painter." He accepted Millet as his pupil; and the young man set off for Cherbourg accordingly, to study with care and diligence under his new master. Cherbourg, though not yet at that time a great naval port, as it afterwards became, was a busy harbour and fishing town, where the young artist saw a great deal of a kind of life with which he possessed an immense sympathy. The hard work of the fishermen putting out to sea on stormy evenings, or toiling with their nets ashore after a sleepless night, made a living picture which stamped itself deeply on his receptive mind. A man of the people himself, born to toil and inured to it from babyhood, this constant scene of toiling and struggling humanity touched the deepest chord in his whole nature, so that some of the most beautiful and noble of his early pictures are really reminiscences of his first student days at Cherbourg. But after he had spent a year in Mouchel's studio, sad news came to him from Gruchy. His father was dying, and Francois was only just in time to see him before he passed away. If the family was to be kept together at all, Francois must return from his easel and palette, and take once more to guiding the plough. With that earnest resolution which never forsook him, Millet decided to accept the inevitable. He went back home once more, and gave up his longings for art in order to till the ground for his fatherless sisters. Luckily, however, his friends at Gruchy succeeded after awhile in sending him back again to Cherbourg, where he began to study under another master, Langlois, and to have hopes once more for his artistic future, now that he was free at last to pursue it in his own way. At this time, he read a great deal--Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Byron, Goethe's "Faust," Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand; in fact, all the great works he could lay his hands upon. Peasant as he was, he gave himself, half unconsciously, a noble education. Very soon, it became apparent that the Cherbourg masters could do nothing more for him, and that, if he really wished to perfect himself in art, he must go to Paris. In France, the national interest felt in painting is far greater and more general than in England. Nothing is commoner than for towns or departments to grant pensions (or as we should call them, scholarships) to promising lads who wish to study art in Paris. Young Millet had attracted so much attention at Cherbourg, that the Council General of the Department of the Manche voted him a present of six hundred francs (about 24 pounds) to start him on the way; and the town of Cherbourg promised him an annual grant of four hundred francs more (about 16 pounds). So up to Paris Millet went, and there was duly enrolled as a student at the Government "School of Fine-Arts." Those student days in Paris were days of hunger and cold, very often, which Millet bore with the steady endurance of a Norman peasant boy. But they were also days of something worse to him--of effort misdirected, and of constant struggling against a system for which he was not fitted. In fact, Millet was an original genius, whereas the teachers at the School of Fine Arts were careful and methodical rule-of-thumb martinets. They wished to train Millet into the ordinary pattern, which he could not follow; and in the end, he left the school, and attached himself to the studio of Paul Delaroche, then the greatest painter of historical pictures in all Paris. But even Delaroche, though an artist of deep feeling and power, did not fully understand his young Norman pupil. He himself used to paint historical pictures in the grand style, full of richness and beauty; but his subjects were almost always chosen from the lives of kings or queens, and treated with corresponding calmness and dignity. "The Young Princes in the Tower," "The Execution of Marie Antoinette," "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," "Cromwell viewing the Body of Charles I."--these were the kind of pictures on which Delaroche loved to employ himself. Millet, on the other hand, though also full of dignity and pathos, together with an earnestness far surpassing Delaroche's, did not care for these lofty subjects. It was the dignity and pathos of labour that moved him most; the silent, weary, noble lives of the uncomplaining peasants, amongst whom his own days had been mostly passed. Delaroche could not make him out at all; he was such a curious, incomprehensible, odd young fellow! "There, go your own way, if you will," the great master said to him at last; "for my part, I can make nothing of you." So, shortly after, Millet and his friend Marolle set up a studio for themselves in the Rue de l'Est in Paris. The precise occasion of their going was this. Millet was anxious to obtain the Grand Prize of Rome annually offered to the younger artists, and Delaroche definitely told him that his own influence would be used on behalf of another pupil. After this, the young Norman felt that he could do better by following out his own genius in his own fashion. At the Rue de l'Est, he continued to study hard, but he also devoted a large part of his time to painting cheap portraits--what artists call "pot-boilers;" mere hasty works dashed off anyhow to earn his daily livelihood. For these pictures he got about ten to fifteen francs apiece,--in English money from eight to twelve shillings. They were painted in a theatrical style, which Millet himself detested--all pink cheeks, and red lips, and blue satin, and lace collars; whereas his own natural style was one of great austerity and a certain earnest sombreness the exact reverse of the common Parisian taste to which he ministered. However, he had to please his patrons--and, like a sensible man, he went on producing these cheap daubs to any extent required, for a living, while he endeavoured to perfect himself meanwhile for the higher art he was meditating for the future. In the great galleries of the Louvre at Paris he found abundant models which he could study in the works of the old masters; and there, poring over Michael Angelo and Mantegna, he could recompense himself a little in his spare hours for the time he was obliged to waste on pinky-white faces and taffeta gowns. To an artist by nature there is nothing harder than working perforce against the bent of one's own innate and instinctive feelings. In 1840, Millet found his life in Paris still so hard that he seemed for a time inclined to give up the attempt, and returned to Greville, where he painted a marine subject of the sort that was dearest to his heart--a group of sailors mending a sail. Shortly after, however, he was back in Paris--the record of these years of hard struggle is not very clear--with his wife, a Cherbourg girl whom he had imprudently married while still barely able to support himself in the utmost poverty. It was not till 1844 that the hard-working painter at last achieved his first success. It was with a picture of a milkwoman, one of his own favourite peasant subjects; and the poetry and sympathy which he had thrown into so commonplace a theme attracted the attention of many critics among the cultivated Parisian world of art. The "Milkwoman" was exhibited at the Salon (the great annual exhibition of works of art in Paris, like that of the Royal Academy in London, but on a far larger scale); and several good judges of art began immediately to inquire, "Who is Jean Francois Millet?" Hunting his address out, a party of friendly critics presented themselves at his lodgings, only to learn that Madame Millet had just died, and that her husband, half in despair, had gone back again once more to his native Norman hills and valleys. But Millet was the last man on earth to sit down quietly with his hands folded, waiting for something or other to turn up. At Cherbourg, he set to work once more, no doubt painting more "pot-boilers" for the respectable shopkeepers of the neighbourhood--complacent portraits, perhaps, of a stout gentleman with a large watch-chain fully displayed, and of a stout lady in a black silk dress and with a vacant smile; and by hook or by crook he managed to scrape together a few hundred francs, with which once more he might return to Paris. But before he did so, he married again, this time more wisely. His wife, Catharine Lemaire, was a brave and good woman, who knew how to appreciate her husband, and to second him well in all his further struggles and endeavours. They went for a while to Havre, where Millet, in despair of getting better work, and not ashamed of doing anything honest to pay his way, actually took to painting sign-boards. In this way he saved money enough to make a fresh start in Paris. There, he continued his hard battle against the taste of the time; for French art was then dominated by the influence of men like Delaroche, or like Delacroix and Horace Vernet, who had accustomed the public to pictures of a very lofty, a very romantic, or a very fiery sort; and there were few indeed who cared for stern and sympathetic delineations of the French peasant's unlovely life of unremitting toil, such as Millet loved to set before them. Yet, in spite of discouragement, he did well to follow out this inner prompting of his own soul; for in that direction he could do his best work--and the best work is always the best worth doing in the long run. There are some minds, of which Franklin's is a good type, so versatile and so shifty that they can turn with advantage to any opening that chances to offer, no matter in what direction; and such minds do right in seizing every opportunity, wherever it occurs. But there are other minds, of which Gibson and Millet are excellent examples, naturally restricted to certain definite lines of thought or work; and such minds do right in persistently following up their own native talent, and refusing to be led aside by circumstances into any less natural or less promising channel. While living in Paris at this time, Millet painted several of his favourite peasant pictures, amongst others "The Workman's Monday," which is a sort of parallel in painting to Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" in poetry. Indeed, there is a great deal in Millet which strongly reminds one at every step of Burns. Both were born of the agricultural labouring class; both remained peasants at heart, in feelings and sympathies, all their lives long; neither was ashamed of his origin, even in the days of his greatest fame; painter and poet alike loved best to choose their themes from the simple life of the poor whose trials and hardships they knew so well by bitter experience; and in each case they succeeded best in touching the hearts of others when they did not travel outside their own natural range of subjects. Only (if Scotchmen will allow one to say so) there was in Millet a far deeper vein of moral earnestness than in Burns; he was more profoundly impressed by the dignity and nobility of labour; in his tender sympathy there was a touch of solemn grandeur which was wanting in the too genial and easy-going Ayrshire ploughman. In 1848, the year of revolutions, Millet painted his famous picture of "The Winnower," since considered as one of his finest works. Yet for a long time, though the critics praised it, it could not find a purchaser; till at last M. Ledru Rollin, a well-known politician, bought it for what Millet considered the capital price of five hundred francs (about 20 pounds). It would now fetch a simply fabulous price, if offered for sale. Soon after this comparative success Millet decided to leave Paris, where the surroundings indeed were little fitted to a man of his peculiarly rural and domestic tastes. He would go where he might see the living models of his peasant friends for ever before him; where he could watch them leaning over the plough pressed deep into the earth; cutting the faggots with stout arms in the thick-grown copses; driving the cattle home at milking time with weary feet, along the endless, straight white high-roads of the French rural districts. At the same time, he must be within easy reach of Paris; for though he had almost made up his mind not to exhibit any more at the Salon--people didn't care to see his reapers or his fishermen--he must still manage to keep himself within call of possible purchasers; and for this purpose he selected the little village of Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. The woods of Fontainebleau stand to Paris in somewhat the same relation that Windsor Great Park stands to London; only, the scenery is more forest-like, and the trees are big and antique looking. By the outskirts of this great wood stands the pretty hamlet of Barbizon, a single long street of small peasant cottages, built with the usual French rural disregard of beauty or cleanliness. At the top of the street, in a little three-roomed house, the painter and his wife settled down quietly; and here they lived for twenty-seven years, long after Millet's name had grown to be famous in the history of contemporary French painting. An English critic, who visited the spot in the days of Millet's greatest celebrity, was astonished to find the painter, whom he had come to see, strolling about the village in rustic clothes, and even wearing the sabots or wooden shoes which are in France the social mark of the working classes, much as the smock-frock used once to be in the remoter country districts of England. Perhaps this was a little bit of affectation on Millet's part--a sort of proud declaration of the fact that in spite of fame and honours he still insisted upon counting himself a simple peasant; but if so, it was, after all, a very pretty and harmless affectation indeed. Better to see a man sticking pertinaciously to his wooden shoes, than turning his back upon old friends and old associations in the days of his worldly prosperity. At Barbizon Millet's life moved on so quietly that there is nothing to record in it almost, save a long list of pictures painted, and a gradual growth, not in popularity (for THAT Millet never really attained at all), but in the esteem of the best judges, which of course brought with it at last, first ease, then comfort, and finally comparative riches. Millet was able now to paint such subjects as pleased him best, and he threw himself into his work with all the fervour of his intensely earnest and poetical nature. Whatever might be the subject which he undertook, he knew how to handle it so that it became instinct with his own fine feeling for the life he saw around him. In 1852 he painted his "Man spreading Manure." In itself, that is not a very exalted or beautiful occupation; but what Millet saw in it was the man, not the manure--the toiling, sorrowing, human fellow-being, whose labour and whose spirit he knew so well how to appreciate. And in this view of the subject he makes us all at once sympathize. Other pictures of this period are such as "The Gleaners," "The Reapers," "A Peasant grafting a Tree," "The Potato Planters," and so forth. These were very different subjects indeed from the dignified kings and queens painted by Delaroche, or the fiery battle-pieces of Delacroix but they touch a chord in our souls which those great painters fail to strike, and his treatment of them is always truthful, tender, melancholy, and exquisite. Bit by bit, French artistic opinion began to recognize the real greatness of the retiring painter at Barbizon. He came to be looked upon as a true artist, and his pictures sold every year for increasingly large prices. Still, he had not been officially recognized; and in France, where everything, even to art and the theatre, is under governmental regulation, this want of official countenance is always severely felt. At last, in 1867, Millet was awarded the medal of the first class, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The latter distinction carries with it the right to wear that little tag of ribbon on the coat which all Frenchmen prize so highly; for to be "decorated," as it is called, is in France a spur to ambition of something the same sort as a knighthood or a peerage in England, though of course it lies within the reach of a far greater number of citizens. There is something to our ideas rather absurd in the notion of bestowing such a tag of ribbon on a man of Millet's aims and occupations; but all honours are honours just according to the estimation of the man who receives them and the society in which he lives; and Millet no doubt prized his admission to the Legion of Honour all the more because it had been so long delayed and so little truckled for. To the end of his days, Millet never left his beloved Barbizon. He stopped there, wandering about the fields, watching peasants at work, imprinting their images firmly upon his eye and brain, and then going home again to put the figures he had thus observed upon his vivid canvas. For, strange to say, unlike almost every other great painter, Millet never painted from a model. Instead of getting a man or woman to sit for him in the pose he required, he would go out into the meadows and look at the men and women at their actual daily occupations; and so keen and acute was his power of observation, and so retentive was his inner eye, that he could then recall almost every detail of action or manner as clearly as if he had the original present in his studio before him. As a rule, such a practice is not to be recommended to any one who wishes to draw with even moderate accuracy; constant study of the actual object, and frequent comparison by glancing from object to copy, are absolutely necessary for forming a correct draughtsman. But Millet knew his own way best; and how wonderfully minute and painstaking must his survey have been when it enabled him to reproduce the picture of a person afterwards in every detail of dress or movement. He did not paint very fast. He preferred doing good work to much work--an almost invariable trait of all the best workmen. During the thirty-one years that he worked independently, he produced only eighty pictures--not more, on an average, than two or three a year. Compared with the rate at which most successful artists cover canvas to sell, this was very slow. But then, Millet did not paint mainly to sell; he painted to satisfy his own strict ideas of what constituted the highest art. His pictures are usually very simple in their theme; take, for example, his "Angelus," painted at the height of his fame, in 1867. A man and a woman are working in the fields--two poor, simple-minded, weather-beaten, devout French peasants. It is nightfall; the bell called the "Angelus" rings out from the church steeple, and the two poor souls, resting for a moment from their labours, devote a few seconds to the silent prayers enjoined by their church. That is all; and yet in that one picture the sorrows, the toils, and the consolations of the needy French peasantry are summed up in a single glimpse of a pair of working and praying partners. Millet died somewhat suddenly in 1875. Strong and hearty as he was, even the sturdy health of the Norman peasant had been undermined by the long hardships of his early struggles, and his constitution gave way at last with comparative rapidity. Still, he had lived long enough to see his fame established, to enjoy ten years of ease and honour, and to find his work cordially admired by all those for whose admiration he could have cared to make an effort. After his death, the pictures and unfinished sketches in his studio were sold for 321,000 francs, a little less than 13,000 pounds. The peasant boy of Greville had at last conquered all the difficulties which obstructed his path, and had fought his own way to fame and dignity. And in so fighting, he had steadily resisted the temptation to pander to the low and coarse taste in art of the men by whom he was surrounded. In spite of cold, and hunger, and poverty, he had gone on trying to put upon his canvas the purer, truer, and higher ideas with which his own beautiful soul was profoundly animated. In that endeavour he nobly succeeded. While too many contemporary French pictures are vicious and sensual in tone and feeling, every one of Millet's pictures is a sermon in colour--a thing to make us sympathize more deeply with our kind, and to send us away, saddened perhaps, yet ennobled and purified. VI. JAMES GARFIELD, CANAL BOY. At the present time, the neighbourhood of Cleveland, Ohio, the busiest town along the southern shore of Lake Erie, may fairly rank as one of the richest agricultural districts in all America. But when Abram Garfield settled down in the township of Orange in 1830, it was one of the wildest and most unpeopled woodland regions in the whole of the United States. Pioneers from the older states had only just begun to make little clearings for themselves in the unbroken forest; and land was still so cheap that Abram Garfield was able to buy himself a tract of fifty acres for no more than 20 pounds. His brother-in-law's family removed there with him; and the whole strength of the two households was immediately employed in building a rough log hut for their common accommodation, where both the Garfields and the Boyntons lived together during the early days of their occupation. The hut consisted of a mere square box, made by piling logs on top of one another, the spaces between being filled with mud, while the roof was formed of loose stone slabs. Huts of that sort are everywhere common among the isolation of the American backwoods; and isolated indeed they were, for the Garfields' nearest neighbours, when they first set up house, lived as far as seven miles away, across the uncleared forest. When Abram Garfield came to this lonely lodge in the primaeval woodlands, he had one son and one daughter. In 1831, the year after his removal to his new home, a second boy was born into the family, whom his father named James Abram. Before the baby was eighteen months old, the father died, and was buried alone, after the only possible fashion among such solitary settlers, in a corner of the wheat field which he himself had cleared of its stumps. A widow's life is always a hard one, but in such a country and under such conditions it is even harder and more lonely than elsewhere. Mrs. Garfield's eldest boy, Thomas, was only eleven years old; and with the aid of this one ineffectual helper, she managed herself to carry on the farm for many years. Only those who know the hard toil of a raw American township can have any idea what that really means. A farmer's work in America is not like a farmer's work in England. The man who occupies the soil is there at once his own landlord and his own labourer; and he has to contend with nature as nobody in England has had to contend with it for the last five centuries at least. He finds the land covered with trees, which he has first to fell and sell as timber; then he must dig or burn out the stumps; clear the plot of boulders and large stones; drain it, fence it, plough it, and harrow it; build barns for the produce and sheds for the cows; in short, MAKE his farm, instead of merely TAKING it. This is labour from which many strong men shrink in dismay, especially those who have come out fresh from a civilized and fully occupied land. For a woman and a boy, it is a task that seems almost above their utmost powers. Nevertheless, Mrs. Garfield and her son did not fail under it. With her own hands, the mother split up the young trees info rude triangular rails to make the rough snake fences of the country--mere zigzags of wood laid one bit above the other; while the lad worked away bravely at sowing fall and spring wheat, hoeing Indian corn, and building a little barn for the harvest before the arrival of the long cold Ohio winter. To such a family did the future President originally belong; and with them he must have shared those strong qualities of perseverance and industry which more than anything else at length secured his ultimate success in life. For James Garfield's history differs greatly in one point from that of most other famous working men, whose stories have been told in this volume. There is no reason to believe that he was a man of exceptional or commanding intellect. On the contrary, his mental powers appear to have been of a very respectable but quite ordinary and commonplace order. It was not by brilliant genius that James Garfield made his way up in life; it was rather by hard work, unceasing energy, high principle, and generous enthusiasm for the cause of others. Some of the greatest geniuses among working men, such as Burns, Tannahill, and Chatterton, though they achieved fame, and though they have enriched the world with many touching and beautiful works, must be considered to have missed success in life, so far as their own happiness was concerned, by their unsteadiness, want of self-control, or lack of fixed principle. Garfield, on the other hand, was not a genius; but by his sterling good qualities he nevertheless achieved what cannot but be regarded as a true success, and left an honourable name behind him in the history of his country. However poor an American township may be, it is seldom too poor to afford its children a moderate and humble education. While James Garfield was still very young, the settlers in the neighbourhood decided to import a schoolmaster, whom they "boarded about" between them, after a fashion very common in rural western districts. The school-house was only a log hut; the master was a lad of twenty; and the textbooks were of the very meagrest sort. But at least James Garfield was thus enabled to read and write, which after all is the great first step on the road to all possible promotion. The raw, uncouth Yankee lad who taught the Ohio boys, slept at Widow Garfield's, with Thomas and James; and the sons of the neighbouring settlers worked on the farm during the summer months, but took lessons when the long ice and snow of winter along the lake shore put a stop almost entirely for the time to their usual labours. James continued at school till he was twelve years old, and then, his brother Thomas (being by that time twenty-one) went away by agreement still further west to Michigan, leaving young Jim to take his place upon the little farm. The fences were all completed, by this time; the barn was built, the ground was fairly brought under cultivation, and it required comparatively little labour to keep the land cropped after the rough fashion which amply satisfies American pioneers, with no rent to pay, and only their bare living to make out of the soil. Thomas was going to fell trees in Michigan, to clear land there for a farmer; and he proposed to use his earnings (when he got them) for the purpose of building a "frame house" (that is to say, a house built of planks) instead of the existing log hut. It must be added, in fairness, that hard as were the circumstances under which the young Garfields lived, they were yet lucky in their situation in a new country, where wages were high, and where the struggle for life is far less severe or competitive than in old settled lands like France and England. Thomas, in fact; would get boarded for nothing in Michigan, and so would be able easily to save almost all his high wages for the purpose of building the frame house. So James had to take to the farm in summer, while in the winter he began to work as a sort of amateur carpenter in a small way. As yet he had lived entirely in the backwoods, and had never seen a town or even a village; but his education in practical work had begun from his very babyhood, and he was handy after the usual fashion of American or colonial boys--ready to turn his hand to anything that happened to present itself. In new countries, where everybody has not got neighbours and workmen within call, such rough-and-ready handiness is far more common than in old England. The one carpenter of the neighbourhood asked James to help him, on the proud day when Tom brought back his earnings from Michigan, and set about the building of the frame house, for which he had already collected the unhewn timber. From that first beginning, by the time he was thirteen, James was promoted to assist in building a barn; and he might have taken permanently to a carpenter's life, had it not been that his boyish passion for reading had inspired him with an equal passion for going to sea. He had read Marryatt's novels and other sailor tales--what boy has not?--and he was fired with the usual childish desire to embark upon that wonderful life of chasing buccaneers, fighting pirates, capturing prizes, or hunting hidden treasure, which is a lad's brilliantly coloured fancy picture of an everyday sailor's wet, cold, cheerless occupation. At last, when James was about fifteen, his longing for the sea grew so strong that his mother, by way of a compromise, allowed him to go and try his luck with the Lake Erie captains at Cleveland. Shipping on the great lakes, where one can see neither bank from the middle of the wide blue sheet of water, and where wrecks are unhappily as painfully frequent as on our own coasts, was quite sufficiently like going to sea to suit the adventurous young backwoodsman to the top of his bent. But when he got to Cleveland, a fortunate disappointment awaited him. The Cleveland captains declined his services in such vigorous seafaring language (not unmixed with many unnecessary oaths), that he was glad enough to give up the idea of sailoring, and take a place as driver of a canal boat from Cleveland to Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, the boat being under the charge of one of his own cousins. Copper ore was then largely mined on Lake Superior, where it is very abundant, carried by ship to Cleveland, down the chain of lakes, and there transferred to canal boats, which took it on to Pittsburg, the centre of a great coal and manufacturing district in Pennsylvania, to be smelted and employed in various local arts. Young Garfield stuck for a little while to the canal business. He plodded along wearily upon the bank, driving his still wearier horse before him, and carrying ore down to Pittsburg with such grace as he best might; but it didn't somehow quite come up to his fancy picture of the seaman's life. It was dull and monotonous, and he didn't care for it much. In genuine American language, "he didn't find it up to sample." The sea might be very well in its way; but a canal was a very different matter indeed. So after a fair trial, James finally gave the business up, and returned to his mother on the little homestead, ill and tired with his long tramping. While he was at home, the schoolmaster of the place, who saw that the lad had abilities, was never tired of urging him to go to school, and do himself justice by getting himself a first-rate education, or at least as good a one as could be obtained in America. James was ready enough to take this advice, if the means were forthcoming; but how was he to do so? "Oh, that's easy enough," said young Bates, the master. "You'll only have to work out of hours as a carpenter, take odd jobs in your vacations, live plainly, and there you are." In England there are few schools where such a plan would be practicable; but in rough-and-ready America, where self-help is no disgrace, there are many, and they are all well attended. In the neighbouring town of Chester, a petty Baptist sect had started a young school which they named Geauga Seminary (there are no plain schools in America--they are all "academies" or "institutes"); and to this simple place young Garfield went, to learn and work as best he might for his own advancement. A very strange figure he must then have cut, indeed; for a person who saw him at the time described him as wearing a pair of trousers he had long outworn, rough cow-hide boots, a waistcoat much too short for him, and a thread-bare coat, with sleeves that only reached a little below the elbows. Of such stuff as that, with a stout heart and an eager brain, the budding presidents of the United States are sometimes made. James soon found himself humble lodgings at an old woman's in Chester, and he also found himself a stray place at a carpenter's shop in the town, where he was able to do three hours' work out of school time every day, besides giving up the whole of his Saturday holiday to regular labour. It was hard work, this schooling and carpentering side by side; but James throve upon it; and at the end of the first term he was not only able to pay all his bill for board and lodging, but also to carry home a few dollars in his pocket by way of savings. James stopped three years at the "seminary" at Chester; and in the holidays he employed himself by teaching in the little township schools among the country districts. There is generally an opening for young students to earn a little at such times by instructing younger boys than themselves in reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the surrounding farmers, who want schooling for their boys, are glad enough to take the master in on the "boarding round" system, for the sake of his usefulness in overlooking the lads in the preparation of their home lessons. It is a simple patriarchal life, very different from anything we know in England; and though Ohio was by this time a far more settled and populated place than when Abram Garfield first went there, it was still quite possible to manage in this extremely primitive and family fashion. The fact is, though luxuries were comparatively unknown, food was cheap and abundant; and a young teacher who was willing to put his heart into his work could easily earn more than enough to live upon in rough comfort. Sometimes the school-house was a mere log hut, like that in which young Garfield had been born; but, at any rate, it was work to do, and food to eat, and that alone was a great thing for a lad who meant to make his own way in the world by his own exertions. Near the end of his third year at Chester, James met, quite accidentally, with a young man who had come from a little embryo "college," of the sort so common in rising American towns, at a place called Hiram in Ohio. American schools are almost as remarkable as American towns for the oddity and ugliness of their names; and this "college" was known by the queer and meaningless title of the "Eclectic Institute." It was conducted by an obscure sect who dub themselves "The Disciples' Church," to which young Garfield's father and mother had both belonged. His casual acquaintance urged upon him strongly the desirability of attending the institute; and James, who had already begun to learn Latin, and wished to learn more, was easily persuaded to try this particular school rather than any other. In August, 1851, James Garfield, then aged nearly twenty, presented himself at the "Eclectic Institute," in the farm-labourer's clothes which were his only existing raiment. He asked to see the "president" of the school, and told him plainly that he wished to come there for education, but that he was poor, and if he came, he must work for his living. "What can you do?" asked the president. "Sweep the floors, light the fires, ring the bell, and make myself generally useful," answered the young backwoodsman. The president, pleased with his eagerness, promised to try him for a fortnight; and at the end of the fortnight, Garfield had earned his teaching so well that he was excused from all further fees during the remainder of his stay at the little institute. His post was by no mean an easy one, for he was servant-of-all-work as well as student; but he cared very little for that as long as he could gain the means for self-improvement. Hiram was a small town, as ugly as its name. Twelve miles from a railway, a mere agricultural centre, of the rough back-country sort, all brand new and dreary looking, with a couple of wooden churches, half a dozen wooden shops, two new intersecting streets with wooden sidewalks, and that was all. The "institute" was a square brick block, planted incongruously in the middle of an Indian-corn plantation; and the students were the sons and daughters of the surrounding farmers, for (as in most western schools) both sexes were here educated together. But the place suited Garfield far better than an older and more dignified university would have done. The other students knew no more than he did, so that he did not feel himself at a disadvantage; they were dressed almost as plainly as himself; and during the time he was at Hiram he worked away with a will at Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, so as to qualify himself for a better place hereafter. Meanwhile, the local carpenter gave him plenty of planing to do, with which he managed to pay his way; and as he had to rise before five every morning to ring the first bell, he was under no danger of oversleeping himself. By 1853, he had made so much progress in his studies that he was admitted as a sort of pupil teacher, giving instruction himself in the English department and in rudimentary Greek and Latin, while he went on with his own studies with the aid of the other teachers. James had now learnt as much as the little "Eclectic Institute" could possibly teach him, and he began to think of going to some better college in the older-settled and more cultivated eastern states, where he might get an education somewhat higher than was afforded him by the raw "seminaries" and "academies" of his native Ohio. True, his own sect, the "Disciples' Church," had got up a petty university of their own, "Bethany College"--such self-styled colleges swarm all over the United States; but James didn't much care for the idea of going to it. "I was brought up among the Disciples," he said; "I have mixed chiefly among them; I know little of other people; it will enlarge my views and give me more liberal feelings if a try a college elsewhere, conducted otherwise; if I see a little of the rest of the world." Moreover, those were stirring times in the States. The slavery question was beginning to come uppermost. The men of the free states in the north and west were beginning to say among themselves that they would no longer tolerate that terrible blot upon American freedom--the enslavement of four million negroes in the cotton-growing south. James Garfield felt all his soul stirred within him by this great national problem--the greatest that any modern nation has ever had to solve for itself. Now, his own sect, the Disciples, and their college, Bethany, were strongly tinctured with a leaning in favour of slavery, which young James Garfield utterly detested. So he made up his mind to having nothing to do with the accursed thing, but to go east to some New England college, where he would mix among men of culture, and where he would probably find more congenial feelings on the slavery question. Before deciding, he wrote to three eastern colleges, amongst others to Yale, the only American university which by its buildings and surroundings can lay any claim to compare, even at a long distance, in beauty and associations, with the least among European universities. The three colleges gave him nearly similar answers; but one of them, in addition to the formal statement of terms and so forth, added the short kindly sentence, "If you come here, we shall be glad to do what we can for you." It was only a small polite phrase; but it took the heart of the rough western boy. If other things were about the same, he said, he would go to the college which offered him, as it were, a friendly grasp of the hand. He had saved a little money at Hiram; and he proposed now to go on working for his living, as he had hitherto done, side by side with his regular studies. But his brother, who was always kind and thoughtful to him, would not hear of this. Thomas had prospered meanwhile in his own small way, and he insisted upon lending James such a sum as would cover his necessary expenses for two years at an eastern university. James insured his life for the amount, so that Thomas might not be a loser by his brotherly generosity in case of his death before repayment could be made; and then, with the money safe in his pocket, he started off for his chosen goal, the Williams College, in one of the most beautiful and hilly parts of Massachusetts. During the three years that Garfield was at this place, he studied hard and regularly, so much so that at one time his brain showed symptoms of giving way under the constant strain. In the vacations, he took a trip into Vermont, a romantic mountain state, where he opened a writing school at a little country village; and another into the New York State, where he engaged himself in a similar way at a small town on the banks of the lovely Hudson river. At college, in spite of his rough western dress and manners, he earned for himself the reputation of a thoroughly good fellow. Indeed, geniality and warmth of manner, qualities always much prized by the social American people, were very marked traits throughout of Garfield's character, and no doubt helped him greatly in after life in, rising to the high summit which he finally reached. It was here, too, that he first openly identified himself with the anti-slavery party, which was then engaged in fighting out the important question whether any new slave states should be admitted to the Union. Charles Sumner, the real grand central figure of that noble struggle, was at that moment thundering in Congress against the iniquitous extension of the slave-holding area, and was employing all his magnificent powers to assail the abominable Fugitive Slave Bill, for the return of runaway negroes, who escaped north, into the hands of their angry masters. The American colleges are always big debating societies, where questions of politics are regularly argued out among the students; and Garfield put himself at the head of the anti-slavery movement at his own little university. He spoke upon the subject frequently before the assembled students, and gained himself a considerable reputation, not only as a zealous advocate of the rights of the negro, but also as an eloquent orator and a powerful argumentative debater. In 1856, Garfield took his degree at Williams College, and had now finished his formal education. By that time, he was a fair though not a great scholar, competently read in the Greek and Latin literatures, and with a good knowledge of French and German. He was now nearly twenty-five years old; and his experience was large and varied enough to make him already into a man of the world. He had been farmer, carpenter, canal driver, and student; he had seen the primitive life of the forest, and the more civilized society of the Atlantic shore; he had taught in schools in many states; he had supported himself for years by his own labours; and now, at an age when many young men are, as a rule, only just beginning life on their own account, he had practically raised himself from his own class into the class of educated and cultivated gentlemen. As soon as he had taken his degree, his old friends, the trustees of the "Eclectic Institute" at Hiram, proud of their former sweeper and bell-ringer, called him back at a good salary as teacher of Greek and Latin. It was then just ten years since he had toiled wearily along the tow-path of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. As a teacher, Garfield seems to have been eminently successful. His genial character and good-natured way of explaining things made him a favourite at once with the rough western lads he had to teach, who would perhaps have thought a more formal teacher stiff and stuckup. Garfield was one of themselves; he knew their ways and their manners; he could make allowances for their awkwardness and bluntness of speech; he could adopt towards them the exact tone which put them at home at once with their easy-going instructor. Certainly, he inspired all his pupils with an immense love and devotion for him; and it is less easy to inspire those feelings in a sturdy Ohio farmer than in most other varieties of the essentially affectionate human species. From 1857 to 1861, Garfield remained at Hiram, teaching and working very hard. His salary, though a good one for the time and place, was still humble according to our English notions; but it sufficed for his needs; and as yet it would have seemed hardly credible that in only twenty years the Ohio schoolmaster would rise to be President of the United States. Indeed, it is only in America, that country of peculiarly unencumbered political action, where every kind of talent is most rapidly recognized and utilized, that this particular form of swift promotion is really possible. But while Garfield was still at his Institute, he was taking a vigorous part in local politics, especially on the slavery question. Whenever there was a political meeting at Hiram, the young schoolmaster was always called upon to take the anti-slavery side; and he delivered himself so effectively upon this favourite topic that he began to be looked upon as a rising political character. In America, politics are less confined to any one class than in Europe; and there would be nothing unusual in the selection of a schoolmaster who could talk to a seat in the local or general legislature. The practice of paying members makes it possible for comparatively poor men to offer themselves as candidates; and politics are thus a career, in the sense of a livelihood, far more than in any other country. In 1858, Garfield married a lady who had been a fellow-student of his in earlier days, and to whom he had been long engaged. In the succeeding year, he got an invitation which greatly pleased and flattered him. The authorities at Williams College asked him to deliver the "Master's Oration" at their annual festival; an unusual compliment to pay to so young a man, and one who had so recently taken his degree. It was the first opportunity he had ever had for a pleasure-trip, and taking his young wife with him (proud indeed, we may be sure, at this earliest honour of his life, the precursor of so many more) he went to Massachusetts by a somewhat roundabout but very picturesque route, down the Great Lakes, through the Thousand Islands, over the St. Lawrence rapids, and on to Quebec, the only town in America which from its old-world look can lay claim to the sort of beauty which so many ancient European cities abundantly possess. He delivered his address with much applause, and returned to his Ohio home well satisfied with this pleasant outing. Immediately on his return, the speech-making schoolmaster was met by a very sudden and unexpected request that he would allow himself to be nominated for the State legislature. Every state of the Union has its own separate little legislative body, consisting of two houses; and it was to the upper of these, the Senate of Ohio, that James Garfield was asked to become a candidate. The schoolmaster consented; and as those were times of very great excitement, when the South was threatening to secede if a President hostile to the slave-owning interest was elected, the contest was fought out almost entirely along those particular lines. Garfield was returned as senator by a large majority, and took his seat in the Ohio Senate in January, 1860. There, his voice was always raised against slavery, and he was recognized at once as one of the ablest speakers in the whole legislature. In 1861, the great storm burst over the States. In the preceding November, Abraham Lincoln had been elected President. Lincoln was himself, like Garfield, a self-made man, who had risen from the very same pioneer labourer class;--a wood-cutter and rail-splitter in the backwoods of Illinois, he had become a common boatman on the Mississippi, and had there improved his mind by reading eagerly in all his spare moments. With one of those rapid rises so commonly made by self-taught lads in America, he had pushed his way into the Illinois legislature by the time he was twenty-five, and qualified himself to practise as a barrister at Springfield. His shrewd original talents had raised him with wonderful quickness into the front ranks of his own party; and when the question between the North and South rose into the region of practical politics, Lincoln was selected by the republicans (the antislavery group) as their candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This selection was a very significant one in several ways; Lincoln was a very strong opponent of slavery, and his candidature showed the southern slave-owners that if the Republicans were successful in the contest, a vigorous move against the slave-holding oligarchy would at once be made. But it was also significant in the fact that Lincoln was a western man; it was a sign that the farmers and grangers of the agricultural west were beginning to wake up politically and throw themselves into the full current of American State affairs. On both these grounds, Lincoln's nomination must have been deeply interesting to Garfield, whose own life had been so closely similar, and who was destined, twenty years later, to follow him to the same goal. Lincoln was duly elected, and the southern states began to secede. The firing upon Fort Sumter by the South Carolina secessionists was the first blow struck in that terrible war. Every man who was privileged to live in America at that time (like the present writer) cannot recall without a glow of recollection the memory of the wild eagerness with which the North answered that note of defiance, and went forth with overpowering faith and eagerness to fight the good fight on behalf of human freedom. Such a spontaneous outburst of the enthusiasm of humanity has never been known, before or since. President Lincoln immediately called for a supply of seventy-five thousand men. In the Ohio Senate, his message was read amid tumultuous applause; and the moment the sound of the cheers died away, Garfield, as natural spokesman of the republican party, sprang to his feet, and moved in a short and impassioned speech that the state of Ohio should contribute twenty thousand men and three million dollars as its share in the general preparations. The motion was immediately carried with the wildest demonstrations of fervour, and Ohio, with all the rest of the North, rose like one man to put down by the strong hand the hideous traffic in human flesh and blood. During those fiery and feverish days, every citizen of the loyal states felt himself to be, in reserve at least, a possible soldier. It was necessary to raise, drill, and render effective in an incredibly short time a large army; and it would have been impossible to do so had it not been for the eager enthusiasm with which civilians of every sort enlisted, and threw themselves into their military duties with almost incredible devotion. Garfield felt that he must bear his own part in the struggle by fighting it out, not in the Senate but on the field; and his first move was to obtain a large quantity of arms from the arsenal in the doubtfully loyal state of Missouri. In this mission he was completely successful; and he was next employed to raise and organize two new regiments of Ohio infantry. Garfield, of course, knew absolutely nothing of military matters at that time; but it was not a moment to stand upon questions of precedence or experience; the born organizers came naturally to the front, and Garfield was one of them. Indeed, the faculty for organization seems innate in the American people, so that when it became necessary to raise and equip so large a body of men at a few weeks' notice, the task was undertaken offhand by lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, and schoolmasters, without a minute's hesitation, and was performed on the whole with distinguished success. When Garfield had organized his regiments, the Governor asked him to accept the post of colonel to one of them. But Garfield at first mistrusted his own powers in this direction. How should he, who had hitherto been poring chiefly over the odes of Horace (his favourite poet), now take so suddenly to leading a thousand men into actual battle? He would accept only a subordinate position, he said, if a regular officer of the United States army, trained at the great military academy at West Point, was placed in command. So the Governor told him to go among his own farmer friends in his native district, and recruit a third regiment, promising to find him a West Point man as colonel, if one was available. Garfield accepted the post of lieutenant-colonel, raised the 42nd Ohio regiment, chiefly among his own old pupils at Hiram, and set off for the seat of operations. At the last moment the Governor failed to find a regular officer to lead these raw recruits, every available man being already occupied, and Garfield found himself, against his will, compelled to undertake the responsible task of commanding the regiment. He accepted the task thus thrust upon him, and as if by magic transformed himself at once from a schoolmaster into an able soldier. In less than one month, Colonel Garfield took his raw troops into action in the battle of Middle Creek, and drove the Confederate General Marshall, with far larger numbers, out of his intrenchments, compelling him to retreat into Virginia. This timely victory did much to secure the northern advance along the line of the Mississippi. During the whole of the succeeding campaign Garfield handled his regiment with such native skill and marked success that the Government appointed him Brigadier-General for his bravery and military talent. In spite of all his early disadvantages, he had been the youngest member of the Ohio Senate, and now he was the youngest general in the whole American army. Shortly after, the important victory of Chickamauga was gained almost entirely by the energy and sagacity of General Garfield. For this service, he was raised one degree in dignity, receiving his commission as Major-General. He served altogether only two years and three months in the army. But while Garfield was at the head of his victorious troops in Kentucky, his friends in Ohio were arranging, without his consent or knowledge, to call him away to a very different sphere of work. They nominated Garfield as their candidate for the United States House of Representatives at Washington. The General himself was unwilling to accede to their request, when it reached him. He thought he could serve the country better in the field than in Congress. Besides, he was still a comparatively poor man. His salary as Major-General was double that of a member of the House; and for his wife's and children's sake he hesitated to accept the lesser position. Had he continued in the army to the end of the war, he would doubtless have risen to the very highest honours of that stirring epoch. But President Lincoln was very anxious that Garfield should come into the Congress, where his presence would greatly strengthen the President's hands; and with a generous self-denial which well bespeaks his thorough loyalty, Garfield gave up his military post and accepted a place in the House of Representatives. He took his seat in December, 1863. For seventeen years, General Garfield sat in the general legislature of the United States as one of the members for Ohio. During all that time, he distinguished himself most honourably as the fearless advocate of honest government, and the pronounced enemy of those underhand dodges and wire-pulling machinery which are too often the disgrace of American politics. He was opposed to all corruption and chicanery, especially to the bad system of rewarding political supporters with places under Government, which has long been the chief blot upon American republican institutions. As a person of stalwart honesty and singleness of purpose, he made himself respected by both sides alike. Politically speaking, different men will judge very differently of Garfield's acts in the House of Representatives. Englishmen especially cannot fail to remark that his attitude towards ourselves was almost always one of latent hostility; but it is impossible for anybody to deny that his conduct was uniformly guided by high principle, and a constant deference to what he regarded as the right course of action. In 1880, when General Garfield had already risen to be the acknowledged leader of the House of Representatives, his Ohio supporters put him in nomination for the upper chamber, the Senate. They wished Garfield to come down to the state capital and canvas for support; but this the General would not hear of. "I never asked for any place yet," he said, "except the post of bell-ringer and general sweeper at the Hiram Institute, and I won't ask for one now." But at least, his friends urged, he would be on the spot to encourage and confer with his partisans. No, Garfield answered; if they wished to elect him they must elect him in his absence; he would avoid all appearance, even, of angling for office. The result was that all the other candidates withdrew, and Garfield was elected by acclamation. After the election he went down to Ohio and delivered a speech to his constituents, a part of which strikingly illustrates the courage and independence of the backwoods schoolmaster. "During the twenty years that I have been in public life," he said, "almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my conviction, at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name was Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation I should have bad companionship." Only one higher honour could now fall to the lot of a citizen of the United States. The presidency was the single post to which Garfield's ambition could still aspire. That honour came upon him, like all the others, without his seeking; and it came, too, quite unexpectedly. Five months later, in the summer of 1880, the National Republican Convention met to select a candidate for their party at the forthcoming presidential election. Every four years, before the election, each party thus meets to decide upon the man to whom its votes will be given at the final choice. After one or two ineffectual attempts to secure unanimity in favour of other and more prominent politicians, the Convention with one accord chose James Garfield for its candidate--a nomination which was quite as great a surprise to Garfield himself as to all the rest of the world. He was elected President of the United States in November, 1880. It was a marvellous rise for the poor canal boy, the struggling student, the obscure schoolmaster, thus to find himself placed at the head of one among the greatest nations of the earth. He was still less than fifty, and he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of a happy, useful, and honourable life. Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel that Garfield's death was other than a noble and enviable one. He was cut off suddenly in the very moment of his brightest success, before the cares and disappointments of office had begun to dim the pleasure of his first unexpected triumph. He died a martyr to a good and honest cause, and his death-bed was cheered and alleviated by the hushed sorrow and sympathy of an entire nation--one might almost truthfully add, of the whole civilized world. From the first, President Garfield set his face sternly against the bad practice of rewarding political adherents by allowing them to nominate officials in the public service--a species of covert corruption sanctioned by long usage in the United States. This honest and independent conduct raised up for him at once a host of enemies among his own party. The talk which they indulged in against the President produced a deep effect upon a half-crazy and wildly egotistic French-Canadian of the name of Guiteau, who had emigrated to the States and become an American citizen. General Garfield had arranged a trip to New England in the summer of 1881, to attend the annual festival at his old school, the Williams College, Massachusetts; and for that purpose he left the White House (the President's official residence at Washington) on July 2. As he stood in the station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway, arm in arm with Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State, Guiteau approached him casually, and, drawing out a pistol, fired two shots in rapid succession, one of which took effect on the President above the third rib. The assassin was at once secured, and the wounded President was carried back carefully to the White House. Almost everybody who reads this book will remember the long suspense, while the President lay stretched upon his bed for weeks and weeks together, with all Europe and America watching anxiously for any sign of recovery, and sympathizing deeply with the wounded statesman and his devoted wife. Every effort that was possible was made to save him, but the wound was past all surgical skill. After lingering long with the stored-up force of a good constitution, James Garfield passed away at last of blood-poisoning, more deeply regretted perhaps than any other man whom the present generation can remember. It is only in America that precisely such a success as Garfield's is possible for people who spring, as he did, from the midst of the people. In old-settled and wealthy countries we must be content, at best, with slower and less lofty promotion. But the lesson of Garfield's life is not for America only, but for the whole world of workers everywhere. The same qualities which procured his success there will produce a different, but still a solid success, anywhere else. As Garfield himself fittingly put it, with his usual keen American common sense, "There is no more common thought among young people than the foolish one, that by-and-by something will turn up by which they will suddenly achieve fame or fortune. No, young gentlemen; things don't turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up." VII. THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER. It is the object of this volume to set forth the lives of working men who through industry, perseverance, and high principle have raised themselves by their own exertions from humble beginnings. Raised themselves! Yes; but to what? Not merely, let us hope, to wealth and position, not merely to worldly respect and high office, but to some conspicuous field of real usefulness to their fellow men. Those whose lives we have hitherto examined did so raise themselves by their own strenuous energy and self-education. Either, like Garfield and Franklin, they served the State zealously in peace or war; or else, like Stephenson and Telford, they improved human life by their inventions and engineering works; or, again, like Herschel and Fraunhofer, they added to the wide field of scientific knowledge; or finally, like Millet and Gibson, they beautified the world with their noble and inspiring artistic productions. But in every one of these cases, the men whose lives we have been here considering did actually rise, sooner or later, from the class of labourers into some other class socially and monetarily superior to it. Though they did great good in other ways to others, they did still as a matter of fact succeed themselves in quitting the rank in which they were born, and rising to some other rank more or less completely above it. Now, it will be clear to everybody that so long as our present social arrangements exist, it must be impossible for the vast mass of labouring men ever to do anything of the sort. It is to be desired, indeed, that every labouring man should by industry and thrift secure independence in the end for himself and his family; but however much that may be the case, it will still rest certain that the vast mass of men will necessarily remain workers to the last; and that no attempt to raise individual working men above their own class into the professional or mercantile classes can ever greatly benefit the working masses as a whole. What is most of all desirable is that the condition, the aims, and the tastes of working men, as working men, should be raised and bettered; that without necessarily going outside their own ranks, they should become more prudent, more thrifty, better educated, and wider-minded than many of their predecessors have been in the past. Under such circumstances, it is surely well to set before ourselves some examples of working men who, while still remaining members of their own class, have in the truest and best sense "raised themselves" so as to attain the respect and admiration of others whether their equals or superiors in the artificial scale. Dr. Smiles, who has done much to illustrate the history of the picked men among the labouring orders, has chosen two or three lives of such a sort for investigation, and from them we may select a single one as an example of a working man's career rendered conspicuous by qualities other than those that usually secure external success. Thomas Edward, associate of the Linnean Society, though a Scotchman all his life long, was accidentally born (so to speak) at Gosport, near Portsmouth, on Christmas Day, 1814. His father was in the Fifeshire militia, and in those warlike days, when almost all the regulars were on the Continent, fighting Napoleon, militia regiments used to be ordered about the country from one place to another, to watch the coast or mount guard over the French prisoners, in the most unaccountable fashion. So it happened, oddly enough, that Thomas Edward, a Scotchman of the Scotch, was born close under the big forts of Portsmouth harbour. After Waterloo, however, the Fifeshire regiment was sent home again; and the militia being before long disbanded, John Edward, our hero's father, went to live at Aberdeen, where he plied his poor trade of a hand-loom linen weaver for many years. It was on the green at Aberdeen, surrounded by small labourers' cottages, that Thomas Edward passed his early days. From his babyhood, almost, the boy had a strong love for all the beasties he saw everywhere around him; a fondness for birds and animals, and a habit of taming them which can seldom be acquired, but which seems with some people to come instinctively by nature. While Tam was still quite a child, he loved to wander by himself out into the country, along the green banks of the Dee, or among the tidal islands at the mouth of the river, overgrown by waving seaweeds, and fringed with great white bunches of blossoming scurvy-grass. He loved to hunt for crabs and sea-anemones beside the ebbing channels, or to watch the jelly-fish left high and dry upon the shore by the retreating water. Already, in his simple way, the little ragged bare-footed Scotch laddie was at heart a born naturalist. Very soon, Tam was not content with looking at the "venomous beasts," as the neighbours called them, but he must needs begin to bring them home, and set up a small aquarium and zoological garden on his own account. All was fish that came to Tam's net: tadpoles, newts, and stickleback from the ponds, beetles from the dung-heaps, green crabs from the sea-shore--nay, even in time such larger prizes as hedgehogs, moles, and nestfuls of birds. Nothing delighted him so much as to be out in the fields, hunting for and taming these his natural pets. Unfortunately, Tam's father and mother did not share the boy's passion for nature, and instead of encouraging him in pursuing his inborn taste, they scolded him and punished him bitterly for bringing home the nasty creatures. But nothing could win away Tam from the love of the beasties; and in the end, he had his own way, and lived all his life, as he himself afterwards beautifully put it, "a fool to nature." Too often, unhappily, fathers and mothers thus try to check the best impulses in their children, under mistaken notions of right, and especially is this the case in many instances as regards the love of nature. Children are constantly chidden for taking an interest in the beautiful works of creation, and so have their first intelligent inquiries and aspirations chilled at once; when a little care and sympathy would get rid of the unpleasantness of having white mice or lizards crawling about the house, without putting a stop to the young beginner's longing for more knowledge of the wonderful and beautiful world in whose midst he lives. When Tam was nearly five years old, he was sent to school, chiefly no doubt to get him out of the way; but Scotch schools for the children of the working classes were in those days very rough hard places, where the taws or leather strap was still regarded as the chief instrument of education. Little Edward was not a child to be restrained by that particular form of discipline; and after he had had two or three serious tussles with his instructors, he was at last so cruelly beaten by one of his masters that he refused to return, and his parents, who were themselves by no means lacking in old Scotch severity, upheld him in his determination. He had picked up reading by this time, and now for a while he was left alone to hunt about to his heart's content among his favourite fields and meadows. But by the time he was six years old, he felt he ought to be going to work, brave little mortal that he was; and as his father and mother thought so too, the poor wee mite was sent to join his elder brother in working at a tobacco factory in the town, at the wages of fourteen-pence a week. So, for the next two years, little Tam waited upon a spinner (as the workers are called) and began life in earnest as a working man. At the end of two years, however, the brothers heard that better wages were being given, a couple of miles away, at Grandholm, up the river Don. So off the lads tramped, one fast-day (a recognized Scotch institution), to ask the manager of the Grandholm factory if he could give them employment. They told nobody of their intention, but trudged away on their own account; and when they came back and told their parents what they had done, the father was not very well satisfied with the proposal, because he thought it too far for so small a boy as Tam to walk every day to and from his work. Tam, however, was very anxious to go, not only on account of the increased wages, but also (though this was a secret) because of the beautiful woods and crags round Grandholm, through which he hoped to wander during the short dinner hour. In the end, John Edward gave way, and the boys were allowed to follow their own fancy in going to the new factory. It was very hard work; the hours were from six in the morning till eight at night, for there was no Factory Act then to guard the interest of helpless children; so the boys had to be up at four in the morning, and were seldom home again till nine at night. In winter, the snow lies long and deep on those chilly Aberdeenshire roads, and the east winds from the German Ocean blow cold and cutting up the narrow valley of the Don; and it was dreary work toiling along them in the dark of morning or of night in bleak and cheerless December weather. Still, Tam liked it on the whole extremely well. His wages were now three shillings a week; and then, twice a day in summer, there was the beautiful walk to and fro along the leafy high-road. "People may say of factories what they please," Edward wrote much later, "but I liked this factory. It was a happy time for me whilst I remained there. The woods were easy of access during our meal-hours. What lots of nests! What insects, wild flowers, and plants, the like of which I had never seen before." The boy revelled in the beauty of the birds and beasts he saw here, and he retained a delightful recollection of them throughout his whole after life. This happy time, however, was not to last for ever. When young Edward was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night. Tam's master, one Charles Begg, was a drunken London workman, who had wandered gradually north; a good shoemaker, but a quarrelsome, rowdy fellow, loving nothing on earth so much as a round with his fists on the slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned fast--for he was not slothful in business--he would have learned faster, no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he would first beat Tam, and then proceed upstairs to beat his wife. For three years young Edward lived under this intolerable tyranny, till he could stand it no longer. At last, Begg beat and ill-treated him so terribly that Tam refused outright to complete his apprenticeship. Begg was afraid to compel him to do so--doubtless fearing to expose his ill-usage of the lad. So Tam went to a new master, a kindly man, with whom he worked in future far more happily. The boy now began to make himself a little botanical garden in the back yard of his mother's house--a piece of waste ground covered with rubbish, such as one often sees behind the poorer class of cottages in towns. Tam determined to alter all that, so he piled up all the stones into a small rockery, dug up the plot, manured it, and filled it with wild and garden flowers. The wild flowers, of course, he found in the woods and hedgerows around him; but the cultivated kinds he got in a very ingenious fashion, by visiting all the rubbish heaps of the neighbourhood, on which garden refuse was usually piled. A good many roots and plants can generally be found in such places, and by digging them up, Tam was soon able to make himself a number of bright and lively beds. Such self-help in natural history always lay very much in Edward's way. At the same time, young Edward was now beginning to feel the desire for knowing something more about the beasts and birds of which he was so fond. He used to go in all his spare moments among the shops in the town, to look at the pictures in the windows, especially the pictures of animals; and though his earnings were still small, he bought a book whenever he was able to afford one. In those days, cheap papers for the people were only just beginning to come into existence; and Tam, who was now eighteen, bought the first number of the Penny Magazine, an excellent journal of that time, which he liked so much that he continued to take in the succeeding numbers. Some of the papers in it were about natural history, and these, of course, particularly delighted the young man's heart. He also bought the Weekly Visitor, which he read through over and over again. In 1831, when Tam was still eighteen, he enlisted in the Aberdeenshire militia, and during his brief period of service an amusing circumstance occurred which well displays the almost irresistible character of Edward's love of nature. While he was drilling with the awkward squad one morning, a butterfly of a kind that he had never seen before happened to flit in front of him as he stood in the ranks. It was a beautiful large brown butterfly, and Edward was so fascinated by its appearance that he entirely forgot, in a moment, where he was and what he was doing. Without a second's thought, he darted wildly out of the ranks, and rushed after the butterfly, cap in hand. It led him a pretty chase, over sandhills and shore, for five minutes. He was just on the point of catching it at last, when he suddenly felt a heavy hand laid upon his shoulder, and looking round, he saw the corporal of the company and several soldiers come to arrest him. Such a serious offence against military discipline might have cost him dear indeed, for corporals have little sympathy with butterfly hunting; but luckily for Edward, as he was crossing the parade ground under arrest, he happened to meet an officer walking with some ladies. The officer asked the nature of his offence, and when the ladies heard what it was they were so much interested in such a strange creature as a butterfly-loving militiaman, that they interceded for him, and finally begged him off his expected punishment. The story shows us what sort of stuff Edward was really made of. He felt so deep an interest in all the beautiful living creatures around him for their own sake, that he could hardly restrain his feelings even under the most untoward circumstances. When Edward was twenty, he removed from Aberdeen to Banff where he worked as a journeyman for a new master. The hours were very long, but by taking advantage of the summer evenings, he was still able to hunt for his beloved birds, caterpillars, and butterflies. Still, the low wages in the trade discouraged him much, and he almost made up his mind to save money and emigrate to America. But one small accident alone prevented him from carrying out this purpose. Like a good many other young men, the naturalist shoemaker fell in love. Not only so, but his falling in love took practical shape a little later in his getting married; and at twenty-three, the lonely butterfly hunter brought back a suitable young wife to his little home. The marriage was a very happy one. Mrs. Edward not only loved her husband deeply, but showed him sympathy in his favourite pursuits, and knew how to appreciate his sterling worth. Long afterwards she said, that though many of her neighbours could not understand her husband's strange behaviour, she had always felt how much better it was to have one who spent his spare time on the study of nature than one who spent it on the public-house. As soon as Edward got a home of his own, he began to make a regular collection of all the animals and plants in Banffshire. This was a difficult thing for him to do, for he knew little of books, and had access to very few, so that he couldn't even find out the names of all the creatures he caught and preserved. But, though he didn't always know what they were called, he did know their natures and habits and all about them; and such first-hand knowledge in natural history is really the rarest and the most valuable of all. He saw little of his fellow-workmen. They were usually a drunken, careless lot; Edward was sober and thoughtful, and had other things to think of than those that they cared to talk about with one another. But he went out much into the fields, with invincible determination, having made up his mind that he would get to know all about the plants and beasties, however much the knowledge might cost him. For this object, he bought a rusty old gun for four-and-sixpence, and invested in a few boxes and bottles for catching insects. His working hours were from six in the morning till nine at night, and for that long day he always worked hard to support his wife, and (when they came) his children. He had therefore only the night hours between nine and six to do all his collecting. Any other man, almost, would have given up the attempt as hopeless; but Edward resolved never to waste a single moment or a single penny, and by care and indomitable energy he succeeded in making his wished-for collection. Sometimes he was out tramping the whole night; sometimes he slept anyhow, under a hedge or haystack; sometimes he took up temporary quarters in a barn, an outhouse, or a ruined castle. But night after night he went on collecting, whenever he was able; and he watched the habits and manners of the fox, the badger, the otter, the weasel, the stoat, the pole-cat, and many other regular night-roamers as no one else, in all probability, had ever before watched them in the whole world. Sometimes he suffered terrible disappointments, due directly or indirectly to his great poverty. Once, he took all his cases of insects, containing nine hundred and sixteen specimens, and representing the work of four years, up to his garret to keep them there till he was able to glaze them. When he came to take them down again he found to his horror that rats had got at the boxes, eaten almost every insect in the whole collection, and left nothing behind but the bare pins, with a few scattered legs, wings, and bodies, sticking amongst them. Most men would have been so disgusted with this miserable end to so much labour, that they would have given up moth hunting for ever. But Edward was made of different stuff. He went to work again as zealously as ever, and in four years more, he had got most of the beetles, flies, and chafers as carefully collected as before. By the year 1845, Edward had gathered together about two thousand specimens of beasts, birds, and insects found in the neighbourhood of his own town of Banff. He made the cases to hold them himself, and did it so neatly that, in the case of his shells, each kind had even a separate little compartment all of its own. And now he unfortunately began to think of making money by exhibiting his small museum. If only he could get a few pounds to help him in buying books, materials, perhaps even a microscope, to help him in prosecuting his scientific work, what a magnificent thing that would be for him! Filled with this grand idea, he took a room in the Trades Hall at Banff, and exhibited his collection during a local fair. A good many people came to see it, and the Banff paper congratulated the poor shoemaker on his energy in gathering together such a museum of curiosities "without aid, and under discouraging circumstances which few would have successfully encountered." He was so far lucky in this first venture that he covered his expenses and was able even to put away a little money for future needs. Encouraged by this small triumph, the unwearied naturalist set to work during the next year, and added several new attractions to his little show. At the succeeding fair he again exhibited, and made still more money out of his speculation. Unhappily, the petty success thus secured led him to hope he might do even better by moving his collection to Aberdeen. To Aberdeen, accordingly, Edward went. He took a shop in the great gay thoroughfare of that cold northern city--Union Street--and prepared to receive the world at large, and to get the money for the longed-for books and the much-desired microscope. Now, Aberdeen is a big, busy, bustling town; it has plenty of amusements and recreations; it has two colleges and many learned men of its own; and the people did not care to come and see the working shoemaker's poor small collection. If he had been a president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, now--some learned knight or baronet come down by special train from London--the Aberdeen doctors and professors might have rushed to hear his address; or if he had been a famous music-hall singer or an imitation negro minstrel, the public at large might have flocked to be amused and degraded by his parrot-like buffoonery; but as he was only a working shoemaker from Banff, with a heaven-born instinct for watching and discovering all the strange beasts and birds of Scotland, and the ways and thoughts of them, why, of course, respectable Aberdeen, high or low, would have nothing in particular to say to him. Day after day went by, and hardly anybody came, till at last poor Edward's heart sank terribly within him. Even the few who did come were loth to believe that a working shoemaker could ever have gathered together such a large collection by his own exertions. "Do you mean to say," said one of the Aberdeen physicians to Edward, "that you've maintained your wife and family by working at your trade, all the while that you've been making this collection?" "Yes, I do," Edward answered. "Oh, nonsense!" the doctor said. "How is it possible you could have done that?" "By never losing a single minute or part of a minute," was the brave reply, "that I could by any means improve." It is wonderful indeed that when once Edward had begun to attract anybody's attention at all, he and his exhibition should ever have been allowed to pass so unnoticed in a great, rich, learned city like Aberdeen. But it only shows how very hard it is for unassuming merit to push its way; for the Aberdeen people still went unheeding past the shop in Union Street, till Edward at last began to fear and tremble as to how he should ever meet the expenses of the exhibition. After the show had been open four weeks, one black Friday came when Edward never took a penny the whole day. As he sat there alone and despondent in the empty room, the postman brought him a letter. It was from his master at Banff. "Return immediately," it said, "or you will be discharged." What on earth could he do? He couldn't remove his collection; he couldn't pay his debt. A few more days passed, and he saw no way out of it. At last, in blank despair, he offered the whole collection for sale. A gentleman proposed to pay him the paltry sum of 20 pounds 10s. for the entire lot, the slow accumulations of ten long years. It was a miserable and totally inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has seldom been written. How he ever recovered from such a downfall to all his hopes and expectations is extraordinary. But the man had a wonderful power of bearing up against adverse circumstances; and when, after six weeks' absence, he returned to Banff, ruined and dispirited, he set to work once more, as best he might, at the old, old trade of shoemaking. He was obliged to leave his wife and children in Aberdeen, and to tramp himself on foot to Banff, so that he might earn the necessary money to bring them back; for the cash he had got for the collection had all gone in paying expenses. It is almost too sad to relate; and no wonder poor Edward felt crushed indeed when he got back once more to his lonely shoemaker's bench and fireless fireside. He was very lonely until his wife and children came. But when the carrier generously brought them back free (with that kindliness which the poor so often show to the poor), and the home was occupied once more, and the fire lighted, he felt as if life might still be worth living, at least for his wife and children. So he went back to his trade as heartily as he might, and worked at it well and successfully. For it is to be noted, that though Thomas Edward was so assiduous a naturalist and collector, he was the best hand, too, at making first-class shoes in all Banff. The good workman is generally the best man at whatever he undertakes. Certainly the best man is almost always a good workman at his own trade. But of course he made no more natural history collections? Not a bit of it. Once a naturalist, always a naturalist. Edward set to work once more, nothing daunted, and by next spring he was out everywhere with his gun, exactly as before, replacing the sold collection as fast as ever his hand was able. By this time Edward began to make a few good friends. Several magistrates for the county signed a paper for him, stating that they knew him to be a naturalist, and no poacher; and on presenting this paper to the gamekeepers, he was generally allowed to pursue his researches wherever he liked, and shoot any birds or animals he needed for his new museum. Soon after his return from Aberdeen, too, he made the acquaintance of a neighbouring Scotch minister, Mr. Smith of Monquhitter, who proved a very kind and useful friend to him. Mr. Smith was a brother naturalist, and he had books--those precious books--which he lent Edward freely; and there for the first time the shoemaker zoologist learned the scientific names of many among the birds and animals with whose lives and habits he had been so long familiar. Another thing the good minister did for his shoemaker friend: he constantly begged him to write to scientific journals the results of his observations in natural history. At first Edward was very timid; he didn't like to appear in print; thought his grammar and style wouldn't be good enough; fought shy of the proposal altogether. But at last Edward made up his mind to contribute a few notes to the Banffshire Journal, and from that he went on slowly to other papers, until at last he came to be one of the most valued occasional writers for several of the leading scientific periodicals in England. Unfortunately, science doesn't pay. All this work was done for love only; and Edward's only reward was the pleasure he himself derived from thus jotting down the facts he had observed about the beautiful creatures he loved so well. Soon Mr. Smith induced the indefatigable shoemaker to send a few papers on the birds and beasts to the Zoologist. Readers began to perceive that these contributions were sent by a man of the right sort--a man who didn't merely read what other men had said about the creatures in books, but who watched their ways on his own account, and knew all about their habits and manners in their own homes. Other friends now began to interest themselves in him; and Edward obtained at last, what to a man of his tastes must have been almost as much as money or position--the society of people who could appreciate him, and could sympathize in all that interested him. Mr. Smith in particular always treated him, says Dr. Smiles, "as one intelligent man treats another." The paltry distinctions of artificial rank were all forgotten between them, and the two naturalists talked together with endless interest about all those lovely creatures that surround us every one on every side, but that so very few people comparatively have ever eyes to see or hearts to understand. It was a very great loss to Edward when Mr. Smith died, in 1854. In the year 1858 the untiring shoemaker had gathered his third and last collection, the finest and best of all. By this time he had become an expert stuffer of birds, and a good preserver of fish and flowers. But his health was now beginning to fail. He was forty-four, and he had used his constitution very severely, going out at nights in cold and wet, and cheating himself of sleep during the natural hours of rest and recuperation. Happily, during all these years, he had resisted the advice of his Scotch labouring friends, to take out whisky with him on his nightly excursions. He never took a drop of it, at home or abroad. If he had done so, he himself believed, he could not have stood the cold, the damp, and the exposure in the way he did. His food was chiefly oatmeal-cake; his drink was water. "Sometimes, when I could afford it," he says, "my wife boiled an egg or two, and these were my only luxuries." He had a large family, and the task of providing for them was quite enough for his slender means, without leaving much margin for beer or whisky. But the best constitution won't stand privation and exposure for ever. By-and-by Edward fell ill, and had a fever. He was ill for a month, and when he came round again the doctor told him that he must at once give up his nightly wandering. This was a real and serious blow to poor Edward; it was asking him to give up his one real pleasure and interest in life. All the happiest moments he had ever known were those which he had spent in the woods and fields, or among the lonely mountains with the falcons, and the herons, and the pine-martens, and the ermines. All this delightful life he was now told he must abandon for ever. Nor was that all. Illness costs money. While a man is earning nothing, he is running up a doctor's bill. Edward now saw that he must at last fall back upon his savings bank, as he rightly called it--his loved and cherished collection of Banffshire animals. He had to draw upon it heavily. Forty cases of birds were sold; and Edward now knew that he would never be able to replace the specimens he had parted with. Still, his endless patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his remaining energy, and in which he was to do better work for science than in all the rest--the sea. This new field he began to cultivate in a novel and ingenious way. He got together all the old broken pails, pots, pans, and kettles he could find in the neighbourhood, filled them with straw or bits of rag, and then sank them with a heavy stone into the rocky pools that abound along that weather-beaten coast. A rope was tied to one end, by which he could raise them again; and once a month he used to go his rounds to visit these very primitive but effectual sea-traps. Lots of living things had meanwhile congregated in the safe nests thus provided for them, and Edward sorted them all over, taking home with him all the newer or more valuable specimens. In this way he was enabled to make several additions to our knowledge of the living things that inhabit the sea off the north-east coast of Scotland. The fishermen also helped him not a little, by giving him many rare kinds of fish or refuse from their nets, which he duly examined and classified. As a rule, the hardy men who go on the smacks have a profound contempt for natural history, and will not be tempted, even by offers of money, to assist those whom they consider as half-daft gentlefolk in what seems to them a perfectly useless and almost childish amusement. But it was different with Tam Edward, the strange shoemaker whom they all knew so well; if HE wanted fish or rubbish for his neat collection in the home-made glass cases, why, of course he could have them, and welcome. So they brought him rare sand-suckers, and blue-striped wrasse, and saury pike, and gigantic cuttle-fish, four feet long, to his heart's content. Edward's daughters were now also old enough to help him in his scientific studies. They used to watch for the clearing of the nets, and pick out of the refuse whatever they thought would interest or please their father. But the fish themselves were Edward's greatest helpers and assistants. As Dr. Smiles quaintly puts it, they were the best of all possible dredgers. His daughters used to secure him as many stomachs as possible, and from their contents he picked out an immense number of beautiful and valuable specimens. The bill of fare of the cod alone comprised an incredible variety of small crabs, shells, shrimps, sea-mice, star-fish, jelly-fish, sea anemones, eggs, and zoophytes. All these went to swell Edward's new collection of marine animals. To identify and name so many small and little-known creatures was a very difficult task for the poor shoemaker, with so few books, and no opportunities for visiting museums and learned societies. But his industry and ingenuity managed to surmount all obstacles. Naturalists everywhere are very willing to aid and instruct one another; especially are the highest authorities almost always eager to give every help and encouragement in their power to local amateurs. Edward used to wait till he had collected a batch of specimens of a single class or order, and then he would send them by post to learned men in different parts of the country, who named them for him, and sent them back with some information as to their proper place in the classification of the group to which they belonged. Mr. Spence Bate of Plymouth is the greatest living authority on crustaceans, such as the lobsters, shrimps, sea-fleas, and hermit crabs; and to him Edward sent all the queer crawling things of that description that he found in his original sea-traps. Mr. Couch, of Polperro in Cornwall, was equally versed in the true backboned fishes; and to him Edward sent any doubtful midges, or gurnards, or gobies, or whiffs. So numerous are the animals and plants of the sea-shore, even in the north of Scotland alone, that if one were to make a complete list of all Edward's finds it would occupy an entire book almost as large as this volume. Naturalists now began to help Edward in another way, the way that he most needed, by kind presents of books, especially their own writings--a kind of gift which cost them nothing, but was worth to him a very great deal. Mr. Newman, the editor of the Zoologist paper, was one of his most useful correspondents, and gave him several excellent books on natural history. Mr. Bate made him a still more coveted present--a microscope, with which he could examine several minute animals, too small to be looked at by the naked eye. The same good friend also gave him a little pocket-lens (or magnifying glass) for use on the sea-shore. As Edward went on, his knowledge increased rapidly, and his discoveries fully kept pace with it. The wretchedly paid Banff shoemaker was now corresponding familiarly with half the most eminent men of science in the kingdom, and was a valued contributor to all the most important scientific journals. Several new animals which he had discovered were named in his honour, and frequent references were made to him in printed works of the first importance. It occurred to Mr. Couch and Mr. Bate, therefore, both of whom were greatly indebted to the working-man naturalist for specimens and information, that Edward ought to be elected a member of some leading scientific society. There is no such body of greater distinction in the world of science than the Linnean Society; and of this learned institution Edward was duly elected an associate in 1866. The honour was one which he had richly deserved, and which no doubt he fully appreciated. And yet he was nothing more even now than a working shoemaker, who was earning not more but less wages even than he once used to do. He had brought up a large family honestly and respectably; he had paid his way without running into debt; his children were all growing up; and he had acquired a wide reputation among naturalists as a thoroughly trustworthy observer and an original worker in many different fields of botany and zoology. But his wages were now only eight shillings a week, and his science had brought him, as many people would say, only the barren honour of being an associate of the Linnean Society, or the respected friend of many among the noblest and greatest men of his country. He began life as a shoemaker, and he remained a shoemaker to the end. "Had I pursued money," he said, "with half the ardour and perseverance that I have pursued nature, I have no hesitation in saying that by this time I should have been a rich man." In 1876, Dr. Smiles, the historian of so many truly great working men, attracted by Edward's remarkable and self-sacrificing life, determined to write the good shoemaker's biography while he was still alive. Edward himself gave Dr. Smiles full particulars as to his early days and his later struggles; and that information the genial biographer wove into a delightful book, from which all the facts here related have been borrowed. The "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" attracted an immense deal of attention when it was first published, and led many people, scientific or otherwise, to feel a deep interest in the man who had thus made himself poor for the love of nature. The result was such a spontaneous expression of generous feeling towards Edward that he was enabled to pass the evening of his days not only in honour, but also in substantial ease and comfort. And shall we call such a life as this a failure? Shall we speak of it carelessly as unsuccessful? Surely not. Edward had lived his life happily, usefully, and nobly; he had attained the end he set before himself; he had conquered all his difficulties by his indomitable resolution; and he lived to see his just reward in the respect and admiration of all those whose good opinion was worth the having. If he had toiled and moiled all the best days of his life, at some work, perhaps, which did not even benefit in any way his fellow-men; if he had given up all his time to enriching himself anyhow, by fair means or foul; if he had gathered up a great business by crushing out competition and absorbing to himself the honest livelihood of a dozen other men; if he had speculated in stocks and shares, and piled up at last a vast fortune by doubtful transactions, all the world would have said, in its unthinking fashion, that Mr. Edward was a wonderfully successful man. But success in life does not consist in that only, if in that at all. Edward lived for an aim, and that aim he amply attained. He never neglected his home duties or his regular work; but in his stray moments he found time to amass an amount of knowledge which rendered him the intellectual equal of men whose opportunities and education had been far more fortunate than his own. The pleasure he found in his work was the real reward that science gave him. All his life long he had that pleasure: he saw the fields grow green in spring, the birds build nests in early summer, the insects flit before his eyes on autumn evenings, the stoat and hare put on their snow-white coat to his delight in winter weather. And shall we say that the riches he thus beheld spread ever before him were any less real or less satisfying to a soul like his than the mere worldly wealth that other men labour and strive for? Oh no. Thomas Edward was one of those who work for higher and better ends than outward show, and verily he had his reward. The monument raised up to that simple and earnest working shoemaker in the "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" is one of which any scientific worker in the whole world might well be proud. In his old age, he had the meed of public encouragement and public recognition, the one thing that the world at large can add to a scientific worker's happiness; and his name will be long remembered hereafter, when those of more pretentious but less useful labourers are altogether forgotten. How many men whom the world calls successful might gladly have 
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A Descriptive Study of Tailoresses and Boxmakers. By V. DE VESSELITSKY. With an Introduction by R. H. TAWNEY. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. EXPENDITURE AND WASTE. A Study in War-Time. By V. DE VESSELITSKY. Crown 8vo. 8d. net. LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. GUILDS IN THE MIDDLE AGES BY GEORGES RENARD TRANSLATED BY DOROTHY TERRY AND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. D. H. COLE [Illustration] LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1918 PREFACE This short book is the first part of a larger work by M. Georges Renard, the well-known French economic writer. The second part of the original deals with the modern Trade Union movement, and the part here reproduced is complete in itself. G. D. H. COLE. _October 1918._ CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION. By G. D. H. Cole ix CHAPTER I ORIGIN AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 1 CHAPTER II THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GUILDS 6 1. Various types.--2. The simple Guild and the complex Guild.--3. The half-democratic Guild.--4. The apprentice.--5. The _compagnon_.--6. Women in the Guilds.--7. The capitalistic Guild. CHAPTER III THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GUILDS 27 CHAPTER IV THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GUILDS 32 1. Economic aim.--2. Social and moral aim; the fraternity.--3. Political aim. Classification of the Guilds; their internal disputes. CHAPTER V THE MERITS AND DEFECTS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM 68 CHAPTER VI EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 73 1. Change in economic conditions. The extension of the markets and large-scale production; division of producers into classes; _compagnonnage_.--2. Change in intellectual conditions. The Renaissance. The Reformation.--3. Change in political conditions. The central authority is driven to interfere: (_a_) through political interest; (_b_) through fiscal interest; (_c_) through public interest. CHAPTER VII INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 107 1. Division at the heart of the Guilds: (_a_) separation of the members; (_b_) subjection of inferiors to superiors.--2. Division between the Craft Guilds.--3. Vexatious regulations. CHAPTER VIII THE DEATH OF THE GUILDS 116 1. Their suppression in the different countries of Europe. They become the victims of: (_a_) "great" commerce and "great" industry; (_b_) the law of the reduction of effort; (_c_) science; (_d_) fashion; (_e_) new economic theories.--2. Action against them in England, France, and other European countries.--3. Survivals, and attempts to restore the Guilds. AUTHOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 137 EDITOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 140 INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION It is a curious gap in our economic literature that no simple introductory study of Mediaeval Guilds has yet been published in England. The subject is, of course, dealt with in passing in every text-book of economic history, and there have been several admirable studies of particular aspects of Mediaeval Guild organization, particularly of the period of its decay; but no one has yet attempted to write a short account of the system as a whole, such as might serve as a text-book for those who desire to get a general knowledge of the industrial system of the Middle Ages. This is all the more remarkable, because to an increasing extent in recent years men's thoughts have turned back to the Mediaeval Guilds in their search for solutions of present-day industrial problems. Nor is this tendency entirely new, though it has recently assumed a new form. The earlier Trade Unions often sought to establish their direct descent from the Guilds of the Middle Ages: one of the most ambitious projects of the Owenite period in British Trade Unionism was the "Builders' Guild" of 1834; and, a generation later, William Morris, and to a less extent John Ruskin, constantly strove to carry men's minds back to the industrial order which passed away with the first beginnings of modern capitalism. Moreover, in our own times, an even more determined attempt is being made to apply the lessons of the Middle Ages to modern industrial problems. Mr. A. J. Penty's _The Restoration of the Guild System_, published in 1907, began this movement, which was then taken up and transformed into the constructive theory of National Guilds, first by Mr. A. R. Orage and Mr. S. G. Hobson in the _New Age_, and later by the writers and speakers of the National Guilds League. A substantial literature, all of which assumes at least a general acquaintance with mediaeval conditions, has grown up around this movement; but so far no National Guildsman has attempted to write the history of the Mediaeval Guilds, or even to explain at all clearly their relation to the system which he sets out to advocate. Until this very necessary work is executed, the present translation of M. Renard's study of Mediaeval Guilds should fill a useful place. Indeed, in some ways, M. Renard has the advantage. He is not a National Guildsman, but a moderate French Socialist of the political school, and he therefore presents the history of the Guilds without a preconceived bias in their favour. It is no small part of the value of M. Renard's study that he brings out the defects of the mediaeval system quite as clearly as its merits. It must be clearly stated at the outset that the value which a study of Mediaeval Guilds possesses for the modern world is not based on any historical continuity. The value lies rather in the very discontinuity of economic history, in the sharp break which modern industrialism has made with the past. Historians of Labour combination have often pointed out that the Trade Unions of the modern world are not in any sense descended from the Guilds of the Middle Ages, and have no direct or genealogical connection with them. This is true, and the connection which has sometimes been assumed has been shown to be quite imaginary. But it does not follow that, because there is no historical connection, there is not a spiritual connection, a common motive present in both forms of association. This connection, indeed, is now beginning to be widely understood. As the Trade Union movement develops in power and intelligence, it inevitably stretches out its hands towards the control of industry. The Trade Union, no doubt, begins as a mere bargaining body, "a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving their conditions of employment"; but it cannot grow to its full stature without becoming far more than this, without claiming for itself and its members the right to control production. At first this claim may be almost unconscious; but out of it grows a conscious theory of Trade Union purpose. The Syndicalist movement, native to France, but spreading the influence of its ideas over the whole industrialized world, the Industrial Unionist movement, the American equivalent of Syndicalism, and our own doctrine of National Guilds, or Guild Socialism, are all conscious attempts to build a policy upon the half-conscious tendencies of Trade Union action. In all these the claim is made in varying forms that the workers themselves shall control in the common interest the industries in which they are engaged. In one of these theories at least there is a conscious retrospection to the Middle Ages. National Guildsmen are seeking to formulate for modern industrial Society a principle of industrial self-government analogous to that which was embodied in the Mediaeval Guilds. They do not idealize the Middle Ages; but they realize that the old Guild system did embody a great and valuable principle which the modern world has forgotten. They are not setting out to restore the Middle Ages; but they are setting out to find a democratic form of industrial autonomy which will spring from the principle which inspired the economic system of mediaeval Europe. Mediaeval Guilds assumed many different forms under the varying circumstances of their origin--in Holland and Italy, France and England, Scotland and Germany. But, underlying all their different manifestations, a fundamental identity of principle can be found; for, in all, the direct control of industry was in the hands of the associated producers. The relations of the Guilds to other forms of association differed widely from time to time and from place to place. In some cases the Guilds dominated and almost constituted the State or the municipal authority; in others, the power of the State and the municipality were freely exercised to keep them under control. But, whatever their exact relationship to other social powers, their essential character persisted. It was an axiom of mediaeval industry that direct management and control should be in the hands of the producers under a system of regulation in the common interest. With these general observations in mind, we can now proceed to look more closely at the actual form which mediaeval organization assumed, particularly in this country. M. Renard naturally has the Continental, and especially the French, examples mainly in mind. We must therefore in this introduction dwell particularly upon the conditions which prevailed in mediaeval England. It was in the Middle Ages that, for the first time, both the English national State and English industry assumed definite shapes and forms of organization, and entered into more or less defined and constant relationships. Concerning their organization, and, still more, concerning the actual, and substantial relations between them, there are many points of obscurity which may never be cleared up; but, apart from special obscurities, the main structure of mediaeval economic life is clearly known. Just as, in the manorial system, agriculture assumed a clear and definite relationship to the feudal State, so, with the rise of town life and the beginnings of an industrial system, the Mediaeval Guilds found a defined sphere and function in the structure of Society and a defined relation to the mediaeval State. It is always necessary, in considering the economic life of the Middle Ages, to bear in mind the relatively tiny place which industry occupied in Society. England, and indeed every country, was predominantly agricultural; and England differed from the more advanced Continental countries in that she was long an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods. This is the main reason why the Mediaeval Guild system never reached, in this country, anything like the power or dimensions to which it attained in Flanders, in Italy, and in parts of Germany. But, even if English Guilds were less perfect specimens, they nevertheless illustrated essentially the same tendencies; and the economic structure of mediaeval England was essentially the same as that which prevailed throughout civilized Europe. It is indeed a structure which, at one period or another, has existed over practically the whole of the civilized world. Industry was carried on under a system of enterprise at once public and private, associative and individual. The unit of production was the workshop of the individual master-craftsman; but the craftsman held his position as a master only by virtue of full membership in his Craft Guild. He was not free to adopt any methods of production or any scale of production he might choose; he was subjected to an elaborate regulation of both the quantity and the quality of his products, of the price which he should charge to the consumer, and of his relations to his journeymen and apprentices. He worked within a clearly defined code of rules which had the object at once of safeguarding the independence, equality and prosperity of the craftsmen, of keeping broad the highway of promotion from apprentice to journeyman and from journeyman to master, and also of preserving the integrity and well-being of the craft by guarding the consumer against exploitation and shoddy goods. The Guild was thus internally a self-regulating unit laying down the conditions under which production was to be carried on, and occupying a recognized status in the community based on the performance of certain communal functions. It was not, however, wholly independent or self-contained; it had intimate relations with other Guilds, with the municipal authority of the town in which it was situated, and, in increasing measure, with the national State within whose area it lay. There is about these relations, with which we are here primarily concerned, a considerably greater obscurity than about the main structure of industrial organization. In particular, one of the most obscure chapters in English industrial history is that which deals with the relation between the Craft Guilds of which we have been speaking and the municipal authorities. In the great days of the Guild system the industrial market was almost entirely local. Long-distance or overseas trade existed only in a few commodities, and, in this country, these were almost entirely raw materials or easily portable luxuries. England was, as we have seen, an agricultural country, and the nascent industry of the towns existed only to supply a limited range of commodities within a restricted local market. While these conditions remained in being, organization developed in each town separately, and industry came hardly at all into touch with the national State. Then, gradually, the market widened and the demand for manufactured commodities increased. As this happened, industry began to overflow the boundaries set to it by the purely local Guild organization. Foreign trade, and to a less extent internal exchange, increased in variety and amount; and a distinct class of traders, separated from the craftsmen-producers, grew steadily in power and prominence. New industries, moreover, and rival methods of industrial organization began to grow up outside the towns and to challenge the supremacy of the Guilds; while, in the Guilds themselves, the system of regulation began to break down, and inequality of wealth and social consideration among the Guildsmen destroyed the democratic basis of the earlier Guild organization. These developments coincided in time with a big growth in the power and organization of the national State, a growth based largely on the imposition of a common justice and the establishment of a common security. This made possible, while the parallel economic developments made necessary, a national economic policy; and the State, beginning with the woollen industry, then after agriculture of by far the greatest national and international importance, began to develop a policy of economic intervention. The State had intervened in agriculture after the Black Death; even earlier it had begun its long series of interventions in connection with the woollen industry; in 1381 the first Navigation Act was passed; and during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries complicated codes of industrial regulation by the State became the rule and practice of English statecraft. We have then to distinguish already two periods in which the State assumed differing relations to mediaeval industrial organization. In the earlier days of the Guild system industry was local in character, and the Guilds came into relations primarily with the municipal authority, and only occasionally with the State, even when the Guild charter was obtained directly from the Crown. In the second period, when the Guild system was already at the beginning of its long period of disintegration, the State was developing a comprehensive economic policy which covered every aspect of industrial organization. Let us look rather more closely at the first of these two periods, the period of the rise and predominance of Guild organization; and let us repeat our question as to the relations which existed between the Guilds and the State or municipal authority. The first form of Guild organization in this country was undoubtedly that of the "Guild Merchant," a general organization including both trading and manufacturing elements, and deriving special privileges for its trade by virtue of a Charter secured directly from the Crown. Here, then, is our first clear relation. The Guild Merchant derived, if not its organization, at any rate its privileges and authority, from the direct grant of the State. In practice the principal power thus acquired was the right to trade throughout the kingdom. The relations of the Guild Merchant to the municipal authorities are far more obscure. It used to be maintained that they were identical; but this view has been clearly disproved. We cannot, however, trace many signs of the active intervention of the municipality in the affairs of the Guild Merchant, though it is clear that the jurisdiction of the City authorities remained, in form at least, unaffected by the creation of a Guild Merchant. The Guilds Merchant reached their zenith in the twelfth century. Thereafter, as trade and industry grew in extent and complexity, the general organization of all merchants and master-craftsmen in a single body gave way to a system of Craft Guilds, each representing as a rule a single craft or "mistery." Some of these Guilds were predominantly Guilds of traders, some of producers; while some included both trading and producing elements. By the fourteenth century the Guilds Merchant had everywhere disappeared, and the Craft Guilds were in possession of the field. Thus came into being the organization of industry generally known as the "Mediaeval Guild system." What, then, were the relations of these Craft Guilds to the municipalities and to the State? They arose, we have seen, out of the ashes of the Guild Merchant. Often they were definitely created and fostered by the municipal authorities. The borough claimed the right of regulating production and trade in the interest of its burgesses, the right to uphold quality of product and fair dealing, to punish offenders, and in the last resort to fix both the prices of commodities and the remuneration of journeymen and apprentices. The greater part of these functions was actually exercised by the Crafts themselves, which, as we have seen, made their own regulations for the ordering of trade and production; but the city authorities always maintained and asserted a right of intervention in the affairs of the Guilds whenever the well-being and good service of the consumer were involved; and this right was frequently exercised in the case of the Guilds which organized the supply of food and drink. Neither the limits of Guild authority nor the limits of municipal intervention were accurately or uniformly defined. In practice the system oscillated from the one side to the other. Sometimes the Guilds asserted and maintained a comparative immunity from municipal regulation, and sometimes a recalcitrant Guild was brought to book by a strong-handed municipal authority. The poise and balance between the parties was in many cases made the more even because both alike often derived their authority from a special Charter granted by the Crown. Indeed, one of the regular resorts of the Craft Guild, in its battle for independence from outside control, was to get from the Crown a definite Charter of incorporation, granting to the Guild the widest range of powers that it was able to secure. The Guild was essentially a local organization, and, in placing it in its relation to the municipal authority, we are describing it in its essential economic character. Its relation to the national State, like that of the municipality itself, was far more occasional and incidental, and, apart from one or two broad issues of policy connected mainly with the woollen industry, the interest of the national State in the towns, and therefore in industrial organization, was primarily financial. The protection of the consumer was a very minor motive; the stimulation of urban industry had hardly become a general object of policy systematically pursued; and the granting of Charters, whether to town or to Guild, was far less a matter of economic policy than an obvious device for raising the wind. Charters were always most plentiful when the Crown was most in need of money. The period of merely occasional intervention in industry by the State lasted down to the time of Elizabeth, when for the first time the State undertook a comprehensive system of industrial regulation. This, however, no longer meant the exclusive dominance of financial considerations, although the need for raising money was always very present to the minds of Elizabeth and her ministers. The new policy was primarily political in motive rather than economic, and was directed on the one side to the fostering and development of trade, and on the other to the conservation of the man-power of the nation. The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers, passed in 1563, laid down elaborate provisions both for regulating the flow of labour into various classes of occupations and for prescribing the conditions under which the work was to be carried on. Attention in modern times has been mainly directed to the clauses dealing with wages; but the principle of the Act was very much wider than any mere regulation of wages. It rested upon the principle of compulsory labour for all who were not in possession of independent means; and its basis was the obligation upon every one who could not show cause to the contrary to labour on the land. At the same time it aimed at protecting the supply of labour for the urban industries, and, still more, at giving to urban industry an advantage against the growing competition of the country-side. In short, it incorporated a general scheme for the redistribution of the national man-power in accordance with a definite conception of national policy. This distribution was accomplished mainly by an elaborate code of regulations for apprenticeship, parts of which lived on right into the nineteenth century. With this regulation of trade and commerce went also a regulation of wages. As in the case of the Statute of Labourers, the object was primarily that of preventing the labourer from earning more than his customary standard, allowing for variations in the cost of living. The rates of wages which the Justices of the Peace were ordered to fix were thus primarily _maxima_, and the Act contained stringent penalties against those who obtained, or paid, more than these _maxima_. In some cases, however, if rarely, the rates laid down were also _minima_, and employers were fined for paying less. This was, however, clearly exceptional, and a special declaratory Act passed under James I., which clearly empowered the justices to fix binding minimum rates, shows that there had been legal doubt about it. In any case the general tendency of the Tudor legislation is clear. It aimed at establishing and enforcing by law the existing social structure, at standardizing the relations between the classes, and at putting them all in their places under the direction of the sovereign State. In short, the Tudor system represents, in the most complete form possible, the State regulation of private industry. While these measures were being taken by the State, the Guild system was in decay. As wealth grew and accumulated, the tendencies towards oligarchy within the Guilds and exclusiveness in relation to outsiders grew more and more marked. Among the Guildsmen wide social distinctions appeared, and the master-craftsman before long found himself, in relation to the rich trader or large-scale manufacturer, very much in the position of a labourer in relation to his employer. The richer Guilds, especially those connected with trade, sought by the limitation of entry and the exaction of high entrance fees and dues after entry, to keep the Guild "select" and establish an oligarchy in its government. At the same time the growth of new industries which had never come under Guild regulation, and the grant by the Crown of special privileges to individual monopolists and patentees, contributed to the downfall of the old system. Where the Guilds did not die, they were transformed into exclusive and privileged companies which in no sense carried on the mediaeval tradition. Especially in the later stages of Guild development, and with growing intensity as they drew nearer to decay and dissolution, struggles raged in many of the Guilds and between Guild and Guild among the diverse elements of which they had come to be composed. M. Renard speaks of struggles in the Guilds of Florence between the more and less capitalistic and powerful elements, and Mr. George Unwin, in his book on _Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_, has presented a picture of similar struggles in the Guilds of England. These conflicts, however various in some respects, assumed mainly the form of a constant struggle for supremacy between the craftsmen-producers who were typical of the great days of the Guilds and the trading or merchant class which was gradually extending its control over production as well as sale. Gradually, as capital accumulated in the hands of the traders, the rift between them and the master-craftsmen widened and, gradually too, the master-craftsmen lost their independence and their status as free producers. Not only the marketing of the goods which they produced, but also the essential raw materials of their crafts, passed under the control of the traders, either by the operation of economic forces alone, or by the purchase of some valuable concession or monopoly from the Crown. Moreover, where the actual producer retained his power, he did so by a transformation of function. Gradually, he turned into a capitalist trader and lost all unity of interest and outlook with the working craftsman. We need not here follow the Guild system through its later stages of decay and dissolution. Where the Guilds did not die they shrank up as a rule into capitalistic and oligarchical associations. Step by step, power within the Guild was taken away from the ordinary Guild member by the creation of privileged orders, access to which was possible only to "men of substance." This process of oligarchization can be traced very clearly in Mr. George Unwin's admirable history of the Guilds and Companies of London. No doubt its coming was more obvious in London than in smaller industrial centres; but the essential features of the change were everywhere substantially the same. The constant attacks on patents and monopolies in the later years of the reign of Elizabeth and under the Stuarts were, in part, attacks upon the privileges granted to mere courtiers and adventurers; but when monopoly came their way, the undemocratic Guilds and Livery Companies were to the full as forward in abusing their powers as the merest of adventurers who found or bought the royal favour. From the time of the Stuarts, at least, the Guild system had ceased to count at all as a method of industrial organization. It is doubtful whether, even in their greatest days, the Guilds ever included the whole personnel of the trades and industries which they controlled, and it is certain that, as the tendency towards oligarchy became manifest in them, they included a steadily decreasing proportion of those whose work they claimed to regulate. Moreover, even of those whom they included, a steadily decreasing number retained any control over their policy. This decay of the Guilds, however, is not of primary importance for those who seek to learn lessons from their experience. If we would judge them and learn from them, we must study them as they were in the time of their greatest prosperity and power, before the coming of capitalistic conditions had broken their democracy in pieces and destroyed their essential character. Viewed in this aspect, the Guild system was essentially a balance, made the easier to maintain because it was not so much a balance of powers between different groups of persons with widely divergent interests as a balance between the same persons grouped in different ways, for the performance of different social functions. The municipal authority was, as a rule, largely dominated by the Guilds; and in turn the Guilds were largely dominated by the civic spirit. The distinction between producer and consumer was important; but it was not so much a distinction between opposing social classes as between friendly and complementary forms of social organization. In proportion as this was not the case, the balance on which the Guild system rested tended to break down; but the occasion of its breakdown was not the irreconcilable opposition of producer and consumer, but the struggles within the Guilds themselves between traders and craftsmen, or between exclusive and democratic tendencies. The mediaeval organization of industry, then, was based upon the twin ideas of function and balance. It was an organization designed for an almost self-contained local type of Society, and before the coming of national and international economy it broke down and fell to pieces. As a local system of organization it reached its greatest perfection in those countries in which town life was strongest and national government weakest (_e.g._ in the Hanse towns of Germany; in Italy, and in Flanders). In this country the towns never possessed the strength or the independence necessary for the perfect development of the Guild system; but even so all the essential principles of the Guilds were operative. The period since the breakdown of the Guilds has been a period of national and international economy. From the point of view of economic organization, it falls into two contrasted halves--a period of State supremacy in which the State assumed the supreme direction of industrial affairs, and a period of State abdication in the nineteenth century, during which there was no collective organization, and economic matters were left to the free play of economic forces working in a _milieu_ of competition. Positively, these two periods stand to each other in sharp contrast; negatively there is a point of close resemblance between them. In neither was there any functional organization co-ordinating and expressing the economic life of the nation. In the first period the State regulated industry as a universal and sovereign authority; in the second period nobody at all was allowed to regulate industry, which was supposed to regulate itself by a sort of pre-ordained harmony of economic law. In both periods the purely economic organizations directed to the performance of specific functions which were characteristic of mediaeval organization had disappeared, or at all events had ceased to be the vital regulating authorities in industrial affairs. Local functional organizations had ceased to be adequate to the task of control; national functional organizations had not yet come into being, or, at all events, had not yet secured recognition. To-day we stand at the beginning of a new period of economic history. The Trade Union movement, created mainly as a weapon of defence, is beginning to challenge capitalist control of industry, and to suggest the possibility of a new form of functional organization adapted to the international economy of the modern world. Already in Russia chaotic but heroic experiments in workers' control are taking place, and, in every country, the minds of the workers are turning to the idea of control over industry as the one escape from the tyranny of capitalism and the wage system. It is, then, of the first importance that, in framing the functional democracy of twentieth-century industry, we should cast back our minds to the functional industrial democracy of the Middle Ages, in order that we may learn what we can from its successes and its failures, and, even more, gain living inspiration from what is good and enduring in the spirit which inspired the men who lived in it and under it. G. D. H. COLE. _November 1918._ CHAPTER I ORIGIN AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 1. The origin of guilds has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, and two opposing theories have been advanced. According to the first theory they were the persistence of earlier institutions; but what were these institutions? Some say that, more particularly in the south of France, they were of Roman and Byzantine origin, and were derived from those _collegia_ of the poorer classes (_tenuiorum_) which, in the last centuries of the Empire, chiefly concerned themselves with the provision of funerals; or, again, from the _scholae_, official and compulsory groups, which, keeping the name of the hall in which their councils assembled, prolonged their existence till about the year 1000. According to others they were, particularly in the north, of German origin, and were derived from associations resembling artificial families, the members of which mingled their blood and exchanged vows to help each other under certain definite circumstances; or again, they may have descended in a straight line from the _ministeriales_, the feudal servitors who, in every royal or feudal domain of any extent, were grouped according to their trade, under the authority of a _panetier_,[1] a _bouteillier_,[2] a head farrier, or a chief herdsman. According to others again, the Church, that great international association, had, by the example of its monastic orders and religious brotherhoods, given the laity lessons and examples of which they were not slow to take advantage. According to the opposite theory, each guild was a separate creation, born, as it were, by spontaneous generation, and had no connection with the past. Associations (_gildae_), _scholae_, colleges--all had been killed by the hostility of the central power before they had had time to mature fully. They were children of the necessity which compelled the weak to unite for mutual defence in order to remedy the disorders and abuses of which they were the victims. They were the result of the great associative movement, which, working by turns on political and economic lines, first gave birth to the communes, and so created a social environment in which they could live and develop. The craftsmen, drawn together into one street or quarter by a similar trade or occupation, the tanners by the river, or the dockers by the port, acquired for themselves in the towns which had won more or less freedom the right to combine and to make their own regulations.[3] As is nearly always the case, there is a kernel of truth in each of these opposing theories. Certainly it is hardly likely that the germs or the wreckage of trade associations, existing in the _collegia_, the _scholae_, the associations, the groups in royal, feudal, or ecclesiastical domains, should have totally disappeared, to reappear almost immediately. Why so many deaths followed by so many resurrections? The provision trades in particular do not appear to have ceased to be regulated and organized. If, as Fustel de Coulanges says, "history is the science of becoming," it must here acknowledge that guilds already existed potentially in society. It may even be added that in certain cases, it was to the interest of count or bishop to encourage their formation; for, as he demanded compulsory payment in kind or in money, it was to his advantage to have a responsible collective body to deal with. It is certain, too, that religious society, with its labouring or weaving monks (the Benedictines or Umiliate for instance), with its bodies of bridge-building brothers, with its lay brotherhoods, was also tending to encourage the spirit of association. But it is none the less true that these organisms,--if not exactly formless, at any rate incomplete, unstable, with little cohesion, and created with non-commercial aims,--could not, without the influence of favourable surroundings, have transformed themselves into guilds possessing statutes, magistrates, political jurisdiction, and often political rights. It was necessary that they should find, in Europe, social conditions in which the need for union, felt by the mass of the population, could act on their weakness and decadence like an invigorating wind, infusing new life into them. It was necessary that they should find in the town[4] which sheltered them, a little independent centre, which would permit the seeds of the future, which they held, to grow and bear fruit unchecked. It may then be concluded that there was, if not a definite persistence of that which had already existed, at least a survival out of the wreckage, or a development of germs, which, thanks to the surrounding conditions, underwent a complete metamorphosis. 2. What we have just said explains both how it was that the guilds were not confined to any small region, and why they were not of equal importance in all the countries in which they were established. They are to be met with in the whole of the Christian West, in Italy as well as in France, in Germany as well as in England. They were introduced simultaneously with town life in the countries of the north. There is sufficient authority for believing that the system which they represent predominated in those days in the three worlds which disputed the coasts and the supremacy of the Mediterranean--the Roman Catholic, the Byzantine, and the Mohammedan. Thus there reigned in the basin of that great inland sea a sort of unity of economic organization. This unity, however, did not exclude variety. The guilds were more alive and more powerful as the towns were more free. Consequently it was in Flanders, in Italy, in the "Imperial Towns," in the trading ports, wherever, in fact, the central authority was weak or distant, that they received the strongest impetus. They prospered more brilliantly in the Italian Republics than at Rome under the shadow of the Holy See. In France, as in England, they had to reckon with a jealous and suspicious royalty which has ever proved a bad neighbour to liberty. The more commercial, the more industrial the town, the more numerous and full of life were the guilds; it was at Bruges or at Ghent, at Florence or at Milan, at Strasburg or at Barcelona, that they attained the height of their greatness; at all points, that is, where trade was already cosmopolitan, and where the woollen industry, which was in those days the most advanced, had the fullest measure of freedom and activity. CHAPTER II THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GUILDS 1. It is sometimes imagined that the guilds united all the merchants and all the craftsmen of one region. This is a mistake. At first those who lived in the country, with rare exceptions,[5] did not belong to them: certain towns, Lyons for instance, knew nothing of this method of organization, and even in those towns where it was in existence, there were trades which remained outside, and there were also isolated workers who shunned it--home-workers, who voluntarily or involuntarily kept themselves apart from it.[6] Guilds, then, were always privileged bodies, an aristocracy of labour. It is also imagined that they were voluntary organizations of a uniform type. There is the classic division into three degrees or grades. Just as under the feudal system, a man became successively page, esquire, and knight, and it was necessary, in order to rise from one stage of the hierarchy to the next, to complete a certain time of service and of military education, so in the guild organization, he was first an apprentice for one or more years, then a journeyman (_garçon_, _valet_, _compagnon_, _serviteur_), working under the orders of others for an indeterminate period, and finally, a master, established on his own account and vested with full rights. Just as the knight, after he had given proof of having finished his instruction, had still, before putting on his golden spurs, to go through a religious and symbolic service which included the purifying bath, the oath, and the communion, so the master, after having proved his capabilities by examination or by the production of a piece of fine craftsmanship, took the oath, communicated, and fraternized with his fellows at a solemn banquet. But this quasi-automatic promotion from rank to rank was in fact far from being as regular as has been imagined. It was not unusual for one of the three grades, that of _compagnon_, to be passed over, for the apprentice to rise directly to the rank of master, and for the formalities of admission to be reduced to a minimum for one who had the good luck to be a master's son. From the earliest times mastership tended to become hereditary, as did the life fiefs held by barons and earls. Nor on the other hand was it rare for a _compagnon_ to find himself for life at that grade without the possibility of rising higher. Moreover, the famous divisions never existed, except in certain trades. The truth is that guild organization, even within the walls of a single town, presented several different types. It might be _simple_, or _complex_; it might be either half democratic or capitalistic in structure. 2. It was simple when it included only one trade, and this was fairly often the case. It was complex when it was composed of several juxtaposed or superimposed groups. In this case it was a federation of craft guilds, each keeping its individual life, its own statutes, and its own officers, but all united in a larger body of which they became members. This was the name which at Florence was borne by those lesser bodies of which the whole was composed.[7] The whole was called an _Arte_, and just as the _membri_ could themselves be subdivided, so the _Arte_ might be defined as a union of unions. The Middle Age was not an age of equality. Usually among the groups united under a central government there was one which predominated, which held fuller corporate rights; the others, regarded as inferiors, only enjoyed a greater or smaller part of such rights. Some did not enjoy the privilege of co-operating in the election of the federal magistrates, to whom none the less they owed obedience; others were not allowed to carry the banners, towards which they nevertheless had to contribute their share. Take, for example, the _Arte dei medici, speziali, e merciai_, at Florence, which included, as may be seen, three _membri_--doctors, apothecaries, and haberdashers. This seems a heterogeneous assemblage, but the first two are easily accounted for; and if the connection is less clear between the last and these two, it may be found in the fact that the haberdashers, like the great shops of our own day, sold some of everything, and consequently kept in their shops those foreign drugs and spices of which the _speziali_ were the usual depositaries.[8] The complication is here increased because the _speziali_, among whom Dante was enrolled, included as subordinate _membri_ the painters combined with the colour merchants, while the saddlers were coupled with the haberdashers.[9] It will easily be understood how troubled must have been the life of associations formed of such diverse elements. There was in each an endless succession of internal struggles in the attempt to maintain between the varying elements an equilibrium which was necessarily unstable. Each "member," according to the number of its adherents, or according to the social standing which it claimed, or which was accorded to it by public opinion, fought for the mastery; but as in the course of years their relative importance was constantly modified, the constitution of the whole body was for ever changing. No fixed principle regulated its ceaseless mobility, or set on a solid basis the organization of its compact but rival groups, of which one or another was ever tempted to imagine itself sacrificed. 3. The guild, when simple, was usually half democratic. Being a bourgeois growth developing in feudal surroundings, it rested, like the feudal system itself, on two closely connected principles--hierarchy and equality. It included several superposed grades, while at the same time it assured identical rights to everybody included in any one of those grades. Masters, journeymen, and apprentices were ranked one above another, but those of the same grade were equals. Inequality could be, theoretically at least, only temporary, since the master had once been a journeyman, the journeyman was a prospective master, and the apprentice in his turn would climb to the top of the ladder. This state of things, however, was only to be met with in the building trades, in "small" industry and "small" commerce--the most numerous it is true, but not the most powerful. There alone was almost realized the idyllic picture of the workman working in the workshop beside his master, sharing his life, eating at his table, his partner in joys and sorrows, joining him in processions and at public ceremonies, until the day when he himself should rise to be a master. 4. It is convenient to begin with the lowest grade and work upwards. The apprentice was, as may be imagined, the object of a somewhat keen solicitude. Apprenticeship, in "small" industry, with which it was intimately associated, was the means of maintaining that professional skill on which the guild prided itself. The apprentice was a child whom his parents or guardians wished to be taught a trade as soon as he was ten or twelve years of age, although there was no fixed age limit. A master was found who would take him. Every instructor must be a master: he must also be of good life and character, endowed with patience, and approved of by the officers of the guild. If he were recognized as capable of carrying out his duties, the two parties bound themselves by a contract, often verbal, often also made before a notary. This fixed the length of the apprenticeship, which varied greatly in different trades; for it might cover from one to six, eight, ten, or twelve years; sometimes it stipulated for a time of probation--usually a fortnight--during which time either side could cancel the agreement. The apprenticeship was not free of expense, at any rate to begin with, and the child's guardians paid an annual fee in corn, bread, or money. In return, the child received his lodging, food, clothes, washing, and light, and was supervised and taught in the master's house. Certain contracts contain special clauses: one states that the family will supply clothes and boots; another, that the apprentice shall receive a fixed salary after a certain time; another provides for the circumstances under which the engagement may be cancelled.[10] The apprentice had certain obligations, which sometimes, in spite of his youth, he solemnly swore to keep (the oath has never been so much used as in the Middle Ages). He promised to be industrious and obedient, and to work for no other master. The master, on his side, promised to teach him the secrets of his craft, to treat him "well and decently in sickness as in health," and certain contracts add, "provided that the illness does not last longer than a month." Naturally these duties carried with them certain rights. The master might correct and beat the apprentice, provided that he did it himself; a contract drawn up with a rope-maker in Florence says, "short of drawing blood." It often happened that the apprentice, sick of work or in a fit of ill-temper, ran away from his master; a limit was then fixed for his return, and his place was kept for him during his absence, which sometimes lasted quite a long time (it has been known to continue as long as twenty-six weeks). If he returned within the time limit he was punished but taken back; but if he indulged in three such escapades he was dismissed, his parents had to indemnify the master, and the truant was not allowed to go back to the craft which he had abandoned. However, an enquiry was held to decide whether the master had abused his rights, and the officers of the guild or the civil authority, as the case might be, set at liberty any apprentice who had been unkindly or inhumanly treated. We find a master prosecuted for having beaten and kicked an apprentice to death; a mistress indicted for having forced into evil living a young girl who had been entrusted to her care. In such a case the apprentice was removed from his unworthy master and put into safer hands. Sometimes it happened that the master was attacked by a long and serious illness, or that through trouble and poverty he could no longer carry out his agreement. A custom, however, sprang up which threatened to wreck the system. This was the practice of buying for money so many years or months of service, thus establishing a privilege to the detriment of professional knowledge and to the advantage of the well-to-do. A sum of money took the place of actual instruction received, and some apprentices at the end of two years, others only at the end of four, obtained their final certificate which allowed them to aspire to mastership. Attention should be called to the fact that there are many statutes which limit the number of apprentices. What was the motive of this limitation? The reason which was usually put foremost--namely, the difficulty one master would have in completing the technical education of many pupils--does not seem to have been always the most serious. Perhaps a reduction was insisted on by the journeymen, for it was usually to the interest of the masters to have a great many apprentices, and to keep them for a long time at that stage. They were so many helpers to whom little or nothing was paid, although the work exacted of them nearly equalled that of the journeymen. Therefore we must not be astonished if the latter looked unfavourably on these young competitors who lowered the price of labour. The poor apprentices were thus between the devil and the deep sea. They suffered from the jealousy of the journeymen as well as from the greed of the masters, who cut down their allowance of food, and by keeping them unreasonably long prevented them from earning a decent living. The literature of the times,[11] when it deigns to notice them, leaves us to infer that their existence was not a particularly happy one; nevertheless it is only right to add that their lot cannot be compared with that of the wretched children who, in the opening years of the era of machinery, were introduced in large numbers into the great modern industries. 5. The journeymen (also called _valets_, _compagnons_, _serviteurs_, _massips_, _locatifs_, _garçons_, etc.) were either future masters or else workmen for life, unable to set up for themselves because they lacked the indispensable "wherewithal," as certain statutes crudely express it. Their time of apprenticeship over, they remained with the master with whom they had lived; or else, especially in the building trades, having perfected themselves by travel, they went to the market for disengaged hands[12] and offered their services. They were hired in certain places where the unemployed of all trades assembled. They were required to give proof that they were free of all other engagements, and to present certificates, not only of capability, but of good conduct, signed by their last master. Thieves, murderers, and outlaws, and even "dreamers" and slackers, stood no chance of being engaged, while those who, though unmarried, took a woman about with them, or who had contracted debts at the inns, were avoided. They were required to be decently clothed, not only out of consideration for their clients, but also because they had to live and work all day in the master's house. The master, when he was satisfied with the references given, and when he had assured himself that he was not defrauding another master who had more need of hands than himself, could engage the workman. The contract which bound them was often verbal, but there was a certain solemnity attaching to it; for the workman had to swear on the Gospels and by the saints that he would work in compliance with the rules of the craft. The engagement was of very varying duration; it might be entered into for a year, a month, a week, or a day. The workman who left before the time agreed upon might be seized, forced to go back to the workshop, and punished by a fine. If the master wished to dismiss the workman before the date arranged, he had first to state his reasons for so doing before a mixed assembly composed of masters and journeymen. A mutual indemnity seems to have been the rule, whether the workman abandoned the work he had begun, or whether the master prematurely dismissed the man he had hired.[13] The journeyman had to work in his master's workshop, and it was exceptional for him to go alone to a client (in which case he was duly authorized by the master), or to finish an urgent piece of work at home. The length of the working day was regulated by the daylight. Lighting was in those days so imperfect that night work was forbidden, as nothing fine or highly finished could be done by the dim light of candles. This rule could never be broken except in certain crafts--by the founders, for example, whose work could not be interrupted without serious loss--or by those who worked for the king, the bishop, or the lord.[14] The rest worked from sunrise to sunset, an arrangement which made summer and winter days curiously unequal. Some neighbouring clock marked the beginning and end of the day, and a few rests amounting to about an hour and a half broke its length. All this was very indefinite, and disputes were frequent as to the time for entering or leaving the workshop. The Paris workmen often complained of being kept too late, and of the danger of being obliged to go home in the dark at the mercy of thieves and footpads. It was necessary for the royal provost to issue a decree before the difficulty was overcome. The workers, however, reaped the benefit of the many holidays which starred the calendar and brought a little brightness into the grey monotony of the days. The Sunday holiday was scrupulously observed without interfering with the Saturday afternoon, when work stopped earlier, or the religious festivals which often fell on a week day. It has been calculated[15] that the days thus officially kept as holidays amounted to at least thirty, and it may be safely said that work was less continuous then than nowadays. To leave work voluntarily at normal times was strictly forbidden, and the police took up and imprisoned any idlers or vagabonds found wandering in the towns. But even in those days Monday was often taken as an unauthorized holiday. Certain crafts had their regular dead season:[16] thus at Paris among the bucklers (makers of brass buckles) the _valets_ were dismissed during the month of August; but such holidays, probably unpaid, were rare, as was also the arrangement to be found among the weavers at Lunéville, which limited the amount of work a journeyman might do in a day. For various reasons it is difficult to state precisely what wages were paid; there are very few documents; the price of labour varied very much in different crafts and at different periods; the buying power of money at any given time is a difficult matter to determine;[17] and finally, it was the custom to pay a workman partly with money and partly in kind. It must not be forgotten too that a man ate with his master, a decided economy on the one hand, and on the other a guarantee that he was decently fed. Sometimes he received an ell of cloth, a suit of clothes, or a pair of shoes.[18] It has been stated that his wages (which were paid weekly or fortnightly) were, in the thirteenth century, enough for him to live on decently.[19] It has been possible to reconstruct the earnings and expenditure of a fuller at Léon in the year 1280; the inventory of a soap-maker of Bruges of about the same date[20] has been published; it has been estimated that in those days the daily wage of a _compagnon_ at Aix-la-Chapelle was worth two geese, and his weekly wage a sheep; comparisons have been made, and it has been concluded that a workman earned more in Flanders than in Paris, more in Paris than in the provinces. All this seems likely enough; but I should not dare to generalize from such problematic calculations. I limit myself to stating that historians are almost unanimous in holding that, taking into consideration that less was spent on food, rent, and furniture, and above all on intellectual needs (because both the demands were less and the prices lower), it was easier for a workman's family to make both ends meet in those days than it is now. It is at any rate certain that a journeyman's salary was sometimes guaranteed to him; this is shown by an article of the regulations in force among the tailors of Montpellier, dated July 3, 1323: "If a master does one of his workmen a wrong in connection with the wages due to him, that master must be held to give satisfaction to the said workman, according to the judgment of the other masters; and, if he does not do this, no workman may henceforward work with him until he is acquitted; and, in case of non-payment, he must give and hand over to the relief fund of the guild ten 'deniers tournois' [of Tours]." On the whole, then, in spite of the varying conditions in the Middle Ages, it is not too much to say that, materially, the position of the journeyman was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the workman of to-day. It was also better morally. He sometimes assisted in the drawing up and execution of the laws of the community; he was his master's companion in ideas, beliefs, education, tastes. Above all, there was the possibility of rising one day to the same social level. Certainly one paid and the other was paid, and that alone was enough to set up a barrier between the two. But where "small" industry predominated, there was not as yet a violent and lasting struggle between two diametrically opposed classes. Nevertheless, from this time onwards, an ever-increasing strife and discord may be traced. First the privileges accorded to the sons of masters tended to close the guilds and to keep the workmen in the position of wage-earners; this gave rise to serious dissatisfaction. Besides this, the masters were not always just, as even their statutes prove. Those of the tailors of Montpellier, which we have just quoted, decreed that the workshops of every master who had defrauded a workman of his wages should be boycotted. These injustices therefore must have occurred, since trouble was taken to repress them. Still more acute was the dissatisfaction in towns where the rudiments of "great" industry existed. Strikes broke out, with a spice of violence. In 1280 the cloth-workers of Provins rose and killed the mayor;[21] at Ypres, at the same date, there was a similar revolt for a similar reason, viz. the attempt to impose on the workmen too long a working day. At Chalon, the king of France had to intervene to regulate the hours of labour. Already the question of combination was discussed, and the masters did their best to prevent it. At Rheims in 1292 a decision by arbitration prohibited alliances whether of _compagnons_ against masters or of masters against _compagnons_. This already displays the spirit of the famous law which was to be voted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791.[22] In the year 1280, in the _Coutume de Beauvoisis_ by the jurist Beaumanoir, the combination of workmen is clearly defined as an offence[23]--"any alliance against the common profit, when any class of persons pledge themselves, undertake, or covenant not to work at so low a wage as before, and so raise their wages on their own authority, agree not to work for less, and combine to put constraint or threats on the _compagnons_ who will not enter their alliance." The attempt to raise wages by combination was condemned under the pretext that it would make everything dearer, and was punished by the lord by fine and imprisonment. One can see in these and other symptoms signs of the coming storm. The workmen protested against the importation of foreign workers as lowering the price of labour, and made them submit to an entrance fee. They attempted to secure a monopoly of work, just as the masters attempted to secure the monopoly of this or that manufacture. Thus amongst the nail-makers of Paris[24] it was forbidden to hire a _compagnon_ from elsewhere, as long as one belonging to the district was left in the market. Even in the religious brotherhoods, which usually united master and workman at the same altar, a division occurred, and in certain crafts the journeymen formed separate brotherhoods: the working bakers of Toulouse, the working shoemakers of Paris, set up their brotherhoods in opposition to the corresponding societies of masters, and this shows that the dim consciousness of the possession of distinct interests and rights was waking within them.[25] 6. Finally we should take into account the condition of the masters in the lesser guilds where the workshop remained small, intimate, and homely, but these we shall constantly meet with again when we come to study the life and purpose of the guilds, since it was they who made the statutes and administered them. For the present it is enough to mention that women were not excluded from guild life. It would be a mistake to imagine that the woman of the Middle Ages was confined to her home, and was ignorant of the difficulties of a worker's life. In those days she had an economic independence, such as is hardly to be met with in our own times. In many countries she possessed, for instance, the power to dispose of her property without her husband's permission. It is therefore natural that there should be women's guilds organized and administered like those of the men. They existed in exclusively feminine crafts: fifteen of them were to be found in Paris alone towards the end of the thirteenth century, in the dressmaking industry and among the silk-workers and gold-thread workers especially. There were also the mixed crafts--that is, crafts followed both by men and women--which in Paris numbered about eighty. In them a master's widow had the right to carry on her husband's workshop after his death. This right was often disputed. Thus in 1263 the bakers of Pontoise attempted to take it from the women, under the pretext that they were not strong enough to knead the bread with their own hands; their claims, however, were dismissed by an ordinance of the _Parlement_. Another decree preserved to the widows this right even when they were remarried to a man not of the craft. Nevertheless, in many towns, above all in those where entry into a guild conferred political rights and imposed military duties, the women could not become masters. Condemned to remain labourers, working at home, and for this reason isolated, they appear to have been paid lower wages than the workmen; and certain documents show them seeking in prostitution a supplement to their meagre wages, or appropriating some of the raw silk entrusted to them to wind and spin. But other documents show them as benefiting by humane measures which the workwomen of to-day might envy them. They were forbidden to work in the craft of "Saracen" carpet-making, because of the danger of injuring themselves during pregnancy. This protective legislation dates from the year 1290: for them, as for children, exhausting and killing days of work were yet to come.[26] All the same, one can see the tendency to keep them in an inferior position for life, and, taken along with the strikes and revolts, the first appearances of which amongst weavers, fullers, and cloth-workers we have already mentioned, this clearly shows that, side by side with the half-democratic guilds which were the humblest, there existed others of a very different type. 7. Directly we go on to study the great commercial and industrial guilds profound inequalities appear. Nor do these disappear with time; whether we deal with the bankers' or with the drapers' guilds, we find that their organization is already founded on the capitalist system. The masters, often grouped together in companies, are great personages, rich tradesmen, influential politicians, separated from those they employ by a deep and permanent gulf. The river merchants of Paris, the Flemish and German Hanse, the English Guild Merchants, and the _Arte di Calimala_ in the commune of Florence,[27] may be taken as types of the great commercial guilds. They were the first to succeed in making their power felt, and represent, first by right of priority, and later by right of wealth, all that existed in the way of business, the _Universitas mercatorum_, and they long retained an uncontested supremacy. Not only the whole body, but the heads of the houses or societies dependent on them, had numberless subordinates, destined for the most part to remain subordinates--cashiers, book-keepers, porters, brokers, carriers, agents, messengers. These paid agents--often sent abroad to the depots, branch houses, bonded warehouses, _fondouks_, owned collectively or individually by the wholesale merchants whose servants they were--were always under the strictest regulations. Take, for instance, the prohibition to marry which the Hanseatic League imposed on the young employees whom it planted like soldiers in the countries with which it traded. Nor was the Florentine _Arte di Calimala_, so called after the ill-famed street in which its rich and sombre shops were situated, any more lenient to those of its agents who, especially in France, were set to watch over its interests. The merchants of the Calimala--buyers, finishers, and retailers of fine cloth, money-changers too, and great business magnates, constantly acting as mediums of communication between the West and the East--were far from treating their indispensable but untrustworthy subordinates in a spirit of brotherhood. They looked on them with suspicion as inferiors. They complain of their "unbridled malice";[28] they reproach them, and probably not without reason, with making their fortunes at the expense of the firms which paid them. It was decided that in the case of a dispute as to wages, if nothing had been arranged in writing, the master could settle the matter at will without being bound by precedent or by anything he had paid in a similar case. If the employee was unlucky enough to return to Florence much richer than he left it, he was at once spied upon, information was lodged against him, and an inquiry instituted by the consuls of the guild; after which he was summoned to appear and made to disgorge and restore his unlawful profits. If he could not explain the origin of his surplus gains, he was treated as a bankrupt, his name and effigy were posted up, and the town authority was appealed to that he might be tortured till a confession of theft or fraud was forced from him; he was then banished from the Commune. Thus we see exasperated masters dealing severely with dishonest servants: capital ruling labour without tact or consideration. The autocratic and capitalistic character of the great industrial guilds is even more striking.[29] The woollen industry offers the most remarkable instances. The manufacture of cloth (which was the principal article of export to the Levantine markets) was the most advanced and the most active industry of the Middle Ages, with its appliances already half mechanical, supplying distant customers scattered all over the world. It was the prelude to that intensity of production in modern times which is the result of international commerce. The wholesale cloth merchants no longer worked with their own hands; they confined themselves to giving orders and superintending everything; they supplied the initiative; they were the prime movers in the weaving trades which depended on their orders; they regulated the quantity and quality of production; they raised the price of raw material, and the workmen's wages; they often provided the appliances for work; they undertook the sale and distribution of goods, taking the risks, but also the profits. Already they were capitalists, fulfilling all the functions of captains of industry. What became, then, of the intimate and cordial relations between masters, journeymen, and apprentices? The guilds began to assume a character unlike anything which could exist among the clothiers or blacksmiths for instance. This new state of affairs suddenly arose at Florence in the _Arte della Lana_. At some periods of its existence this guild had a membership of 20,000 to 30,000, but it was like a pyramid, with a very large base, numerous tiers, and a very small apex. At the summit were the masters, who were recruited entirely from among the rich families and formed a solid alliance for the defence of their own interests. Forced to guard against the perils which threatened their business on every hand--the difficulty of transport, a foreign country closed to them by war or by a tariff, the jealousy of rival towns--they tried to recoup themselves by employing cheap labour, and, remembering the maxim "divide and rule," they ranked the workmen they employed in different degrees of dependence and poverty. Some classes of workers, such as dyers and retailers, were affiliated to the _arte_ under the name of inferior _membri_. True, they were allowed certain advantages, a shadow of autonomy, and liberty of association, but at the same time they were kept under strict rules and under the vow to obey officers nominated by the masters alone. Thus the dyers were not allowed to work on their own account, and were subject to heavy fines if the goods entrusted to them suffered the slightest damage; the rate of wages was fixed, but not the date of payment, which was invariably delayed. On a lower tier came the weavers and the male and female spinners; both classes were isolated home-workers under the system of domestic manufacture, which is highly unfavourable to combination and therefore to the independence of the workers. The weavers, whether proprietors or lessees of their trade, could not set up without the permission of the masters who held the monopoly of wool, on whom they therefore became entirely dependent. They were pieceworkers and had no guaranteed schedule of prices. The spinners lived for the most part in the country, and this country labour served, as usual, to lower the rate of wages in the towns; perhaps this was why the Florentine tradesmen favoured the abolition of serfdom, for the reason that its abolition took the peasants from the land and left them free but without property, thus forcing them to hire themselves out, and so creating a reserve army for the needs of industry. The masters invented a curious method of keeping the women weavers in their power. Every year the consuls obtained pastoral letters from the bishops of Fiesole and Florence, which, at Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, and All Saints, were read in the villages from the bishop's throne. In these letters the careless spinner who wasted the wool which had been entrusted to her was threatened with ecclesiastical censure and even with excommunication if she repeated the offence. An excellent idea indeed, to use the thunderbolts of the Church for the benefit of the great manufacturers! On a lower tier again we find the washers, beaters, and carders of wool, the fullers and the soapboilers, who formed the lowest grade of the labouring classes--a true industrial proletariat,--wage-earners already living under the régime of modern manufacture. They were crowded together in large workshops, subjected to a rigorous discipline, compelled to come and go at the sound of the bell, paid at the will of the masters--and always in silver or copper, or in small coin which was often debased,--supervised by foremen, and placed under the authority of an external official who was a sort of industrial magistrate or policeman chosen by the consuls of the _arte_ and empowered to inflict fines, discharges, and punishments, and even imprisonment and torture. In addition, these tools or subjects of the guilds were absolutely forbidden to combine, to act in concert, to assemble together, or even to emigrate. They were the victims of an almost perfect system of slavery. This short sketch shows how necessary it is to discriminate between the various types of guilds. But, however much they differed in their inner characteristics, they shared many points of resemblance which we must now proceed to examine. CHAPTER III THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GUILDS The administration of the guilds was everywhere almost uniform. The guild was a voluntary association of men carrying on the same trade or allied trades and pledging themselves by oath to defend their common interests. It demanded of those who, in virtue of their mastership, wished to belong to it, proofs of capability, morality, orthodoxy, political loyalty, and often the regular payment of a contribution. Once enrolled, a member could not leave without first publicly announcing his intention to do so, and discharging any debts owing to the guild. He could be expelled for any serious breach of its regulations or of the laws of the state. The association thus constituted was autonomous; it was a moral and legal person; it could possess wealth in lands, houses, money, or bonds; it could contract, bargain, bind itself, appear in court through representatives whom it nominated (syndics, proctors, etc.). It had its guild halls, which were decorated with its coats-of-arms. It had its banner, funds, seal, and archives. It was, then, within the limits of its jurisdiction, self-governing. Its constitution was semi-democratic in the sense that the masters of whom it was composed were looked on as possessing equal rights. The legislative power was in the hands of the General Assembly, which made, or at least sanctioned, the statutes and the revisions of the rules, and it is remarkable that from one end of Europe to the other identical formulae on more than one point are found; the words relating to the subject of prohibition, for example: "Let none presume or be so bold as to...."[30] No act of any importance pledging the whole guild could be carried through without the advice and ratification of the assembly. The interests involved were, however, so complex, the business of such daily occurrence, that it would have been impossible to convoke the assembly on every occasion; it therefore became necessary to create an organ of government, an executive, and at the same time a judicial, power--in other words, to nominate officers to act in the name of the guild. The method of nomination varied in every age and region. In most cases the election was made directly by the masters alone, or indirectly by electors whom they nominated; sometimes, but rarely, the inferior _members_ of the complex guilds, journeymen of the simple guilds, took part, and a certain number of those elected belonged to their group. In other cases the nomination depended on the lord or on some one to whom he had delegated his authority; in others it was held by the municipal magistrates, as at Toulouse; and in others again the resigning officials nominated their successors or filled vacancies as they occurred. In Italy there were complicated systems in imitation of those in use for the communal magistracies. The candidates' names were proposed, and accepted or rejected by acclamation or by secret ballots; those approved were written on tickets which were placed in sealed and padlocked bags. In this way a supply of candidates was provided for several years, and whenever necessary, a child or a priest drew at hazard one of the names for each post.[31] This curious combination of chance and of popular choice was often to be met with in the Italian Republics. At Arras, in the butchers' guild, as many balls of wax as there were masters present were placed in an urn. The words "Jésus-Marie" were inscribed on one of the balls, and the man who drew it became head of the guild. In course of time the right to office was restricted by an age limit, by a longer or shorter period of matriculation, and even by wealth or social standing. Thus, among the old-clothes dealers of Florence no one who cried his goods in the streets, and among the bakers, no one who carried bread from house to house on his back or on his head, could be elected rector. The officials thus nominated (and none could escape the duty which fell to him) were sometimes quite numerous; the _Arte di Calimala_ at Florence had four consuls, a treasurer or _camérier_, a cashier, a syndic, and a proctor, not to mention two notaries and other subordinate officers whom the consuls chose with the assistance of a general council, and of a special council of the guild. The heads or chiefs were called in the south of France, _consuls_, _recteurs_, _bailes_, _surposés_, etc.; those in the north were called _gardes_, _eswards_, _jurés_, _prud'hommes_, _maïeurs de bannières_, etc. In certain texts one comes across "bachelor" masons and carpenters, curious titles given to ex-officers, who, though they had resigned their headship, might still have some official duties.[32] These officers were usually not long in power--sometimes only a few months, and practically never longer than a year; their duties ended with a statement of accounts which carried with it ineligibility to re-election for a certain time. There was always a fear of creating magisterial dynasties which might perpetuate themselves at will, and of encouraging the development of cliques; for these reasons several members of a family or business house were not allowed to sit on the guild committee simultaneously. The reason why so much trouble was taken to divide the responsibilities was because they conferred considerable power and entailed a great deal of absorbing work. The heads of the guilds, by whatever name they were called, took an oath that they would first and foremost see that the rules were carried out--no easy matter. In this respect they had legal powers, and they not only acted as arbiters in the quarrels which arose among the members, but also in the conflicts which in the great merchant guilds might arise in the course of trade even with foreigners: disputes over weights and measures, bankruptcies, frauds, reprisals, etc. They were, in fact, public officials, and their consular tribunals were to become in time the organs of the Commune. In the industrial guilds they had to watch over production, inspect the articles of manufacture in the workshops, to make sure that they were in conformity with the prescribed rules. In cases of delinquency they had the right to seize and burn the goods and to inflict a fine on the offenders. In some places it was their duty to protect the apprentices, to examine the candidates for mastership, and to provide the necessary funds for the pious works which were under the control of the community. At Florence the _Arte di Calimala_ had the care of the monastery of San Miniato, the baptistery of St. Jean, and the hospital of St. Eusèbe; the _Arte della Lana_ took charge of the building and decoration of the dome. In short, everything which could contribute to the welfare and reputation of the guild was under the jurisdiction of the heads, who, controlled by their colleagues, had thus an extensive sphere of activity. The consuls of the Calimala had among their duties the maintenance of roads and hostels, and even the safe conduct of Florentine travellers in a district extending as far as the fairs of Champagne and St. Gilles. But it will be easier to judge of the multiplicity of duties which the guilds demanded of their officers if their aims are more closely studied, and this will best be done by carefully investigating their guiding principles as shown in their statutes. CHAPTER IV THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GUILDS The guilds appear to have had three essential aims: an _economic_ aim, a _social and moral_ aim, and a _political_ aim. 1. The economic aim comes first in time and importance. The guild was first and foremost a fighting organization for the defence of the trade interests of those who belonged to it. It was jealous both of the welfare and of the honour of the craft--two things intimately connected; for it realized that good reputation is one of the conditions of good business. Naturally the first means to suggest itself for the attainment of this double ideal was the regulation of _production_ and _sale_. With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an official guarantee to the consumer. Hence the many articles contained in the statutes in which they boast of their good faith,[33] or make a point of emphasizing the honesty of their trade dealings; hence their complicated regulations, often so misunderstood by historians, for the prevention of bad work; hence the minute instructions prescribing the number of vats into which the Florentine dyer was to dip his materials and the quantity and quality of the colouring matters he was to employ; the size of the meshes in the nets which the Roman fisherman was to cast into the Tiber;[34] the length of the pieces of linen to be woven by the Parisian spinner, regulated by that of the tablecloths which covered the table of "good King Philip";[35] or the colour and size of the garments which the silk workers of Constantinople were to make.[36] In pursuance of the same principle, and on the authority of the Statutes--intervention on the part of the public authorities not being required--it was strictly forbidden, under penalty of a fine or of expulsion, to sell damaged meat, bad fish, rotten eggs,[37] or pigs which had been fed by a barber-surgeon who might have fattened them on the blood of sick people.[38] The dyers pledged themselves to use nothing but fast colours, furriers to use only skins which had not been previously used, mattress-makers never to employ wool coming from hospitals. The tailor who spoilt a garment or kept a piece of cloth entrusted to him was made to pay back his client and was punished by his fellows. In Maine a butcher might not display a piece of beef on his stall unless two witnesses could testify to having seen the animal brought in alive.[39] If by any chance an article passed through the hands of two craft guilds, delegates from each had to assure themselves that the rules of both had been faithfully observed.[40] The guild prided itself on letting nothing leave its shops but finished products, perfect of their kind; it examined and stamped every article, and further required that it should bear a special trade-mark stating where it was made and its just price.[41] At Ypres, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the pieces of cloth thus officially accepted numbered 8000 a year. Nor was this all; like Caesar's wife, the guild must be above suspicion; not only fraud, but the very appearance of fraud was rigorously excluded, all that might deceive the buyer was forbidden. In Florence jewellers might not use sham stones, even if they declared them to be such;[42] in Paris it was forbidden to make glass jewels in imitation of real stones, or to put a leaf of metal under an emerald to give it an artificial brilliance;[43] plated and lined goods were not allowed, as they might be mistaken for solid gold or silver.[44] Once when a goldsmith, thinking no harm, had made a bowl of this kind, it was decided, after deliberation, to sell it secretly, and he was cautioned never to make another. Sale was as carefully watched over as production. Not only had the weights and measures to be verified and controlled in conformity with carefully preserved standards, but at Florence, for instance, the "iron ruler" of the _Calimala_ was the standard for measuring woollen materials, and there were besides minute directions for measuring; there were prescribed methods for measuring a piece of cloth, or for filling a bushel with onions by placing the arms round the edge in order to add to the contents and ensure good measure.[45] In "great" commerce the guild regulated the conditions which made a bargain valid, the duty of paying the _denier à Dieu_, and the earnest-money, the regular term for completing payment, the rate of discount, and the transparent methods of avoiding the ban placed on interest by the Church,[46] the methods of book-keeping, etc. By means of these Statutes commerce was eventually to emerge armed with full rights; and as the failure of one member to fulfil his undertakings might compromise all the others, we can understand, even if we cannot approve, the severity of the penalties inflicted on a bankrupt, the posting up of his name and effigy, his expulsion from the guild, his imprisonment and occasionally his banishment from the city. One serious result of this constant and perfectly legitimate effort to assure the success of the guild was that it produced a strong desire to reduce, or if possible do away with, competition. The Middle Ages did not understand rights except under the form of privileges, and the guild always tended to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the craft which it carried on in a city. It even tried to exclude neighbouring towns from the market, and this was the secret of the desperate struggles which set at enmity Bruges and Ghent, Siena, Pisa, and Florence, Genoa and Venice, etc. There is ample proof of this exclusive spirit. At first the guilds tried to keep their processes secret, just as to-day a nation makes a mystery of its new submarine or explosive. Woe to him who betrayed the secret which gave the guild its superiority over the others! He was punished by his fellows and by the law. The merchants of the Calimala swore not to reveal what was said in the Councils of the guild. Florence owed part of her wealth to the fact that for long she alone knew the secret of making gold and silver brocade. A tragic example of what it might cost to be indiscreet may be found in a Venetian law of 1454: "If a workman carry into another country any art or craft to the detriment of the Republic, he will be ordered to return; if he disobeys, his nearest relatives will be imprisoned, in order that the solidarity of the family may persuade him to return; if he persists in his disobedience, secret measures will be taken to have him killed wherever he may be." The following is an example of the jealous care with which the guild tried to prevent any encroachment on its domain: in Paris the guild of the bird fanciers attempted, though unsuccessfully, to prevent citizens from setting on eggs canaries which they had caged, as it injured the trade of the guild.[47] It may well be imagined that guilds so jealous of their prerogatives did not make it easy for merchants and workmen coming in from outside. In the free towns (i.e. towns in which industry was organised) a master's licence obtained in a neighbouring, or even a sister, town, was invalid, just as to-day the diploma of doctor of medicine gained in one country does not carry with it the right to practise in another. To open a shop, it was necessary to have served an apprenticeship in that city; or at the very least it was necessary to have learnt the trade for the same number of years demanded of the apprentices in that district. The merchants who came from other parts, not like birds of passage to disappear with the fairs, but to settle down and establish themselves in a country, were subject to the same dues as the citizens, but did not share with them the franchise and might not join their guilds. They formed colonies and attempted to obtain, or even bought permission to reside and trade; but they ran the risk of being arrested or turned out at any moment, especially if they were money-lenders, as, for instance, the Lombards, who both in France and England many a time suffered from these intermittent persecutions. Outsiders, even though in many cases they had originally come from the district, were hampered by all sorts of restraints and obligations. In short, the town market was usually reserved for the citizens of the town, and the policy of the guilds (with occasional exceptions on the part of the great commercial guilds) was to shut the door to all foreign goods which they could produce themselves. Even within the city walls it was their ambition to ruin, or to force into their ranks, free lances of the same trade;[48] and although the word "boycott" was not then invented, the thing itself already existed, and was practised when necessary. This tendency to preserve craft monopoly led to other practices, and we find each guild jealously guarding its particular province against all intruders. Doubtless in those days an article was as a rule wholly produced in a single workshop, but it sometimes happened that an article had to pass through the hands of more than one craft guild; this was the case with cloth, leather, and arms. Sometimes, again, a craft which began by being simple became so complex that its very development forced it to split up. Thus we find in some large towns that the wine merchants were subdivided into five classes: wholesale merchants; _hôteliers_ (hotel-keepers), who lodged and catered; _cabaretiers_ (inn-keepers), who served food and drink; _taverniers_ (publicans), who served drink only; and _marchands à pot_ (bottlers), who retailed wine to be taken away. It followed that the dividing line between guild and guild was often very doubtful, and this situation was continually giving rise to differences, quarrels, and lawsuits, some of which lasted for centuries. In one case[49] we find a currier, who had taken to tanning, forced to choose between the two trades; in another we find goldsmiths forbidden to encroach on the business of money-changing. Interminable disputes dragged on between the tailors, who sold new clothes, and the sellers of old clothes,[50] and the courts laboured for years and years to fix the exact moment at which a new suit became an old one! The harness makers quarrelled with the saddlers; the sword polishers with the sword-pommel makers; the bakers with the confectioners; the cooks with the mustard makers; the woollen merchants with the fullers; the leather-dressers with the shamoy-dressers; the dealers in geese with the poulterers, etc, etc.[51] When it was not a question of the right of manufacture, they quarrelled over the best pitches. At Paris the money-changers of the Pont-au-Change complained that the approach to their shop was obstructed by the birdsellers, and tried to force them to settle elsewhere. The wheelwrights established in the Rue de la Charronnerie (it might have happened yesterday) compelled the clothes-sellers to move about with their hand-barrows, instead of taking up their station in their neighbourhood. These ever-recurring legal disputes were inherent in the guild system and could only disappear with the system itself. Lastly, this competition for monopolies made itself felt in the very heart of each guild. It led directly to rigorous limitation of the number of masters. If, in fact, all those who were qualified to receive mastership had been left free to set up, those who first held the privilege would have risked being lost in the crowd of newcomers. This explains why even here they sought to reduce competition to a minimum. Only six barbers were allowed in Limoges, and when one of them died, his successor was elected after a competitive examination. At Angers the head of the guild only created new master butchers every seven years, and even then it was necessary to obtain the consent of the other masters.[52] In certain towns when a family in possession of a craft died out, its house of business and appliances reverted to the guild, which indemnified the heirs.[53] It was an expense, but it meant one competitor the less. Is it to be wondered at that mastership in many crafts gradually became hereditary? It was only necessary to push the principle a little further. If we consult the _Book of Crafts_ drawn up by �tienne Boileau from 1261 to 1270 by order of Louis IX., we read in the Statutes of the napery weavers of Paris: "No one may be master weaver except the son of a master." Thus, from the thirteenth century, guild organization, in the pursuit of its economic ends, closed its ranks and tended to become a narrow oligarchy. 2. The second ruling idea of the Guild Statutes was the pursuit of moral and social aims; it desired to establish between the masters of which it was composed honest competition--"fair play." It desired to prevent the great from crushing the small, the rich from ruining the poor, and, in order to succeed, it tried to make advantages and charges equal for all. Its motto so far was: Solidarity. Thus, every member was forbidden to buy up raw material for his own profit. If the arrival of fresh fish, hay, wine, wheat, or leather was announced, no one might forestall the others and buy cheaply to sell dearly; all should profit equally by the natural course of events. When a merchant treated with a seller who had come into the town, any of his fellows who happened to come in at the moment when the earnest-money was paid and the striking of hands in ratification of the bargain took place, had the right to claim a share in the transaction and to obtain the goods in question at the same price.[54] Sometimes, in order to avoid abuses, anything which had come within the city walls was divided into portions and the distribution made in the presence of an official (_prud'homme_), who saw that the allocation was just, that is to say, in proportion to the needs of each shop or workshop.[55] Often the maximum amount which an individual might acquire was strictly laid down. At Rome a mattress maker might not buy more than a thousand pounds of horse hair at a time, nor a shoemaker more than twenty skins. To make assurance doubly sure, the community, when it was rich, undertook to do the buying for its members. At Florence the _Arte della Lana_ became the middleman;[56] it bought wholesale the wool, kermes, alum, and oil, which it distributed according to a uniform tariff amongst its members, in proportion to their requirements; it possessed, in its own name, warehouses, shops, wash-houses, and dyeing-houses, which were used by all. Thus it came to carry out transactions to the loss of the common funds but to the profit of all the master woollen merchants. It even helped the masters with any available funds by financing them. Again, at its own expense, it introduced new manufactures or called in foreign workmen. Later on it even possessed its own ships for the transport of the merchandise which it imported or exported. It acted like a trust or cartel. Still with a view to equalizing matters between masters, the cornering of the supply of labour was forbidden, and not only was it forbidden to tempt away a rival's workmen by the offer of a higher wage,[57] but as a rule a man might not keep more apprentices than others, and the spirit of equality was carried to such lengths on this point that at Paris,[58] among the leather-dressers, no master who employed three or more workmen might refuse to give up one of them to any fellow-master who had in hand a pressing piece of work and only one, or no, _valet_ to execute it. For the same reason a workman might not complete work begun by another man and taken away from him. Even the doctors at Florence might not undertake the cure of a patient who had already been attended by a colleague; but this rule was repealed, no doubt because it was dangerous to the patients.[59] Again, it was forbidden to monopolize customers, to invite into your own shop the people who had stopped before a neighbour's display of goods, to call in the passers-by, or to send a piece of cloth on approbation to a customer's house.[60] All individual advertisement was looked on as tending to the detriment of others. The Florentine innkeeper who gave wine or food to a stranger with the object of attracting him to his hostelry was liable to a fine.[61] Equally open to punishment was the merchant who obtained possession of another man's shop by offering the landlord a higher rent. Any bonus offered to a buyer was considered an unlawful and dishonest bait. The formation within the guild of a separate league for the sale of goods at a rebate was prohibited; prices, conditions of payment, the rate of discount, and the hours of labour in the workshops were the same for all members. Privileges and charges had to be the same for all masters, even when the masters were women. One feels that there was a desire to unite the masters into one large family. So true was this that, in commercial matters, not only was father responsible for son, brother for brother, and uncle for nephew, not only were the ties of unity strengthened at regular intervals by guild feasts and banquets, but the ordinary dryness of the statutes was redeemed by rules of real brotherhood. The merchant or craftsman found in his craft guild security in times of trouble, monetary help in times of poverty, and medical assistance in case of illness. At Florence the carpenters and masons had their own hospital. When a member died, shops were shut, every one attended his funeral, and masses were said for his soul. In short, within a single guild all rivals were also _confrères_ in the full and beautiful sense which the word has now lost. These rules of brotherhood were often accompanied by moral and religious rules; the guild watched over the good conduct and good name of its members. To be proconsul in the _Arte_ of judges and lawyers at Florence, a man had to be respected for his piety, his good reputation, his pure life, and proven honesty; he must be faithful and devoted to the Holy Roman Church, sound in body and mind, and born in lawful wedlock. To be received as a master, it was necessary almost everywhere to make a profession of the Catholic faith and to take the oath, in order that heretics such as the Patarini and Albigenses might be kept out. Punishments were inflicted on blasphemers, players of games of chance, and even usurers. It was obligatory to stop work on Sundays and holidays, and to take part with great pomp and banners unfurled in the feasts of the patron saint of the town and of the guild, not to mention a host of other saints of whom a list was given. The statutes often begin by enumerating the alms it was thought necessary to bestow on certain monasteries and works of mercy and instruction which they promised to support out of their funds.[62] But in these works the guild was often duplicated and supplemented by another institution connected with it--the fraternity. The fraternity appears to have been anterior to the trade association in some places;[63] but whether older or younger it remained closely united with it. Born in the shadow of the sanctuary, it had aims that were fundamentally religious and charitable; it was always under the tutelage of a saint, who, on account of some incident taken from his mortal life, became the patron of the corresponding trade. Thus, St. �loi was patron of the goldsmiths, St. Vincent of the vinegrowers, St. Fiacre of the gardeners, St. Blaise of the masons, St. Crespin of the shoemakers, St. Julien of the village fiddlers, etc. Every fraternity had its appointed church, and, in this church, a chapel dedicated to its heavenly protector, in which candles or lamps were kept burning. It celebrated an annual festival which generally ended with a merry feast or "_frairie_," as it was still called in the days of La Fontaine.[64] It joined in processions and shared in the election of church-wardens. Apart from the obligatory assistance at certain offices and at the funerals of its members, the fraternity owned a _chest_, that is to say, a fund maintained out of the subscriptions and voluntary donations of the members, as well as by the fines which they incurred. Of these funds, collected from various sources, part was given to the poor, to the hospitals, and to the expenses of worship. Thus at Rennes the fraternity of bakers ordained that in every batch of bread one loaf of fair size should be set apart, called the _tourteau-Dieu_, which brings to mind the portion for God or the poor which it was the custom to reserve when the king's cakes were distributed. In Alsace, again, in the bakers' fraternities, strict by-laws regulated the treatment of the sick in hospital;[65] they were to be given confession, communion, a clean bed, and with every meal a jug of wine, sufficient bread, a good basin of soup, meat, eggs, or fish; and all were to be treated alike. The chest served also for supplying dowries to the poor girls of the fraternity, which, it will be seen, very much resembled a friendly society, but which, in addition, sometimes took upon itself powers of arbitration, as in the case of the furriers of Lyons.[66] Sometimes the fraternity coincided with the guild--that is, all the members of the latter, including the journeymen, took part in it; more often, however, it was merely an affiliated institution, and membership was optional. It is curious to find that it was not looked on with much favour by the higher ecclesiastics or by royalty,[67] perhaps because, not having the defence of trade interests as its object, it attempted to dictate in Church matters and was concerned with politics; perhaps also because it increased the number of guild banquets which easily degenerated into orgies and brawls. This leads us to the relation between the guilds and the public authorities, and to the part which they played in the political life of the Middle Ages. 3. The guilds necessarily came into relation with the authorities; they were far from being absolutely sovereign communities, unrelated to the society around them. They retained ties of dependence which reminded them that their emancipation was both recent and incomplete. In the first place it must not be forgotten that in most cases they had extorted or bought from the lord their earliest privileges. According to the feudal conception, the right to work was a concession which he granted or refused at will, and it followed that he kept the prerogatives of supervising and regulating the guilds, whose existence he sanctioned and protected. Thus at Rouen, towards the end of the twelfth century, Henry II., King of England and Duke of Normandy, sanctioned an association founded by the tanners, with its customs and monopolies, giving as his reason for so doing, the services which this industry rendered him. At �tampes, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Philip Augustus of France made known "to all those, present and future, who should read these letters" that he permitted the weavers of linen and napery to organize as they chose, and that he exempted them from all obligations towards himself, except the payment of the market toll, military service, and a fine in case of bloodshed.[68] He did this, he said, for the love of God, which does not mean that he did it gratis; for in return for their freedom these craftsmen had to pay the king twenty pounds a year. The lords maintained their authority everywhere by exacting payment for the favours they granted. They did not, however, always exercise this authority directly, but often delegated it to their great officers. The Parisian guilds were under the orders of the provost of Paris, who was the king's agent and police magistrate; and traces are to be found of the time when craftsmen, living on the lands of the lord, were grouped under the direction of a headman nominated by him. In those days the nobles, who divided between themselves the domestic services of his house, naturally kept a firm hand over the craftsmen whose duties were allied to their own. Thus at Troyes, capital of the Court of Champagne, the bakers were under his _grand panetier_, the tapestry-makers and _huchiers_ under his _grand chambrier_, the saddlers under the constable, etc., and a similar organization was to be found in every feudal court. At Rome, every guild had at its head a cardinal, who was its protector and superintendent. But by degrees the power of these dignitaries became nominal, till it was reduced to being merely honorary and lucrative. They contented themselves with the revenues brought in by their duties, and with certain privileges attached to them. They gave or sold the rights which their titles conferred on them, to some private individual, usually to the master of the guild, who, under the name of "master of the craft," really held the power. In the free communities and in the free towns which had become collective lordships the control, superintendence, and direction of the crafts passed, by a natural transference of power, to the municipal magistrates. There were thus (and nothing was more common in the Middle Ages than these ill-defined situations) rivalries and struggles for jurisdiction between the various authorities, from which the guilds were never free.[69] The very fact that they had to reckon with neighbouring and superior powers taught them to understand that the possession of political rights was a means of defending their economic interests, an indispensable condition in the guidance of public affairs to their own advantage. Accordingly, directly the towns freed themselves, the guilds joined forces with all the lower classes against lay or ecclesiastical feudalism. They took an honourable part in the insurrection of the Communes, and took their share also in the spoils of victory. They won important liberties, and as each guild formed a sort of little city in which the members discussed, deliberated, and voted, a miniature republic in which they received their civic education, they quickly acquired an important place in the struggle of parties and brought their influence to bear on the government. But the complexity of the situation demands a double distinction. The political influence of the guilds varied according to two main factors, the degree of independence of the towns in which they existed, and the nature of the crafts of which they were composed. With regard to freedom, the towns ranged between two extremes. There were those in which a power external to the burgesses (king, lord, pope, bishop, abbot) remained full of life, active, and capable of making itself respected. Such was the case in France, in England, and for a long time in Rome. There were others, on the contrary, in which the burgesses almost eliminated every element foreign to their class; in which they absorbed the wealth and jurisdiction of the bishop; in which they subdued the nobles and forced them either to give up interfering or to become plebeians by joining the guilds; in which they created real republics with their own constitution, budget, army, and mint, all the dangers and all the prerogatives of practically complete sovereignty. Such was the case in Florence, Venice, Ghent, Strasburg, and in the imperial towns, which had nothing to fear from the impotent or distant phantoms who claimed to be the successors to Caesar and Charlemagne. If they lived under the domination of an energetic and neighbouring power, the guilds only took a secondary place, and this is perhaps the reason why it has been possible for the greater number of French historians to leave them in the background; but they became powers of the first order if they developed in surroundings where their expansion was not interfered with. Let us begin by considering them in those places where they were held firmly in check. The authority which weighed on them was exerted in several directions at which we will glance. In the first place, this authority attempted to regulate the conditions of labour, to fix its hours and its price. It forbade work on certain days, though it is true that it consented to many exceptions. At Rome, where religious festivals were naturally very numerous, the Pope authorized the wine-sellers and innkeepers to serve travellers, though not inhabitants of the town, on such days; the farriers to shoe horses on condition that they did not make new shoes; the barbers to dress wounds but not to shave; the grocers and fruiterers to open their shops without displaying their goods; the butchers to hang their meat, so long as it was covered up; the shopkeepers in general to leave the doors of their shops half open for the sake of ventilation.[70] In other words, trade was allowed _sub rosa_. The intervention of the lord in these matters was so habitual that it caused no surprise. John II. of France, in his famous ordinance of 1355, proclaimed in 227 articles a maximum tariff for merchants' goods and the wages of the workmen. The Statute of Labourers in England in 1349 had similar objects. The authorities interfered also in judicial matters. When there was a dispute between two guilds (and this, unfortunately, was of frequent occurrence) the case came under the jurisdiction of the lordly, communal, or royal tribunal; in Paris the matter went before the king's provost, and in case of appeal, to the _Parlement_. But if the trade was held in fee, _i.e._ if it was under the protection of a master who held it in fee, it was he who settled the difference. Thus long wars were waged between barbers and surgeons; at first united in one body, they wished later on to be separated; but the surgeons wanted to keep the monopoly of surgical operations, and against this the barbers protested. Now the head of the trade was the king's barber and first _valet de chambre_; and in 1372 he inspired an ordinance, which reserved to the barbers the right to "administer plaisters, unguents, and other medicines suitable and necessary for curing and healing all manner of boils, swellings, abscesses, and open wounds." This, however, did not prevent the quarrel from lasting several centuries longer.[71] There were many other causes which led to lawsuits.[72] The guild might go to law with individuals over the possession of a house or a field, or have difficulties with the tax-collector. Often, too, the causes of dispute lay within itself and arose between officers and masters, who claimed to have been unjustly accused of wrong-doing. In all these cases it was invariably the rule to apply to the head of the craft or to the representatives of the competent authority (provost or seneschal). In fiscal matters, the guild had obligations from which it could not escape. In the first place, the right to work, collectively and individually, had to be paid for. The first article of the statutes of the napery-weavers of Paris was couched in those terms: "No man may be napery-weaver at Paris unless he buys the right from the king." By the application of the same principle the community had to pay a royalty to get its statutes approved, although this did not always exempt a member from having to pay down a sum in advance for permission to open a shop or hang out a sign.[73] Usually the _tonlieu_ and the _hauban_ were paid to the lord, though it must be clearly understood that the king and town might take his place; the _tonlieu_, which was paid in money, was a sum levied on the sale of merchandise in proportion to the amount sold; the _hauban_, which was a payment in kind,[74] exempted those who paid it from the other charges falling on the craft; it seems to have been a privilege which could be bought, or at least a sort of mutual contract or exchange between payer and paid. But the lord, apart from what he thus put straight into his coffers, levied other indirect charges on commerce and industry. If he had granted to a guild (the river merchants, for example) the river tolls, he reserved the right of free passage for everything destined for his own use. He kept for himself a certain number of lucrative monopolies.[75] He had, in the fairs and markets which he alone could authorize, the right of first choice and purchase. He demanded payment for his stamp on the weights and measures; he taxed everything which entered or left his territory; he claimed duties on the weight of goods, and on the inspection of goods and of inns. Often these rights of lordship were transferred by him to one of his officers, whose services he remunerated in this way. One curious example will suffice.[76] The Paris executioner was a great personage in those days; he walked the streets clothed in red and yellow, and was exceedingly busy, for he had to keep the gibbet at Mont Lançon supplied with humanity--and it had room for twenty-four victims; not to mention the pillories, where the minor offenders were exhibited, and the scaffolds on which the worst criminals were executed. To recompense him for his grim services he had been accorded important privileges, amongst others the right of _havage_; that is to say, of every load of grain taken to the corn market he claimed as much as could be held in the hollow of the hand or in a wooden spoon of the same capacity. Besides this, he collected a toll on the Petit-Pont, duties on the sale of fish and watercress, on the hire of the fish stalls surrounding the pillory, and a fine of twopence-halfpenny per head on pigs found straying in the streets. These were by no means all the charges imposed on the guilds. They had further to guarantee certain public services. To the building guilds was assigned the provision of safeguards against fire; to the doctors' and barber-surgeons' guilds, the care of the sick poor and of the hospitals; to all, or nearly all, the assessment of certain taxes, the policing of the streets, and sometimes the defence of the ramparts. In Paris, where the nights were as unsafe as they were ill-lit, every guild in turn furnished, according to its importance, a certain number of men to patrol the streets and keep guard, from the ringing of curfew to the break of day, when the sergeant of the Châtelet sounded the end of the watch. The same custom was to be found in most of the free towns. A few guilds only were exempt from keeping guard, either on account of their finances or because it was considered that they had to render other services. Such, for example, were the goldsmiths, archers, haberdashers, judges, doctors, professors, etc. On the other hand, some guilds were under special regulations, _e.g._ the provision guilds. The fear of scarcity, owing to the frequency of bad harvests or war and also to the permanent difficulty of communication and transport, was a perpetual menace to the towns. Their policy in this matter was nearly always that of a besieged city. The consequent legislation was, above all, communal, and was inspired by two fundamental principles: first, that on the Commune devolved the duty of seeing that the inhabitants were healthy and well fed; secondly, that the Commune, when it was short of money, had a convenient resource in the taxation of the necessaries of daily life. Thus the Commune wanted, above all, an abundance of cheap provisions; it was anxious to avoid food crises which are generally the precursors of riots and even revolutions; and, without theorizing (nobody troubled much about theories in those days) they practised what a historian has called a sort of "municipal socialism."[77] The Commune did not confine itself to checking the exportation of cattle or of wheat by strict prohibitions, to encouraging imports by giving bonuses, and forbidding speculations and monopolies under pain of severe punishments; it instituted the public control of grain, owned its own mills and ovens, filled public granaries at harvest time, and emptied them when prices were high; and it did all this with no idea of gain, but in order that the poor should not be condemned to die of hunger when times were bad. Sometimes the Commune owned fisheries and fish-markets (Rome); it often held the monopoly of salt (Florence); sometimes it forbade a family to keep more wine in the cellar than was needed, in order that the possibility of using it should not be confined to the rich. It was with this object in view that in the town of Pistoria it was decreed that every owner of sheep should supply at least twenty lambs from every hundred sheep, and in the district of Florence, that every peasant should plant so many fruit trees to the acre. When the Commune did not go so far as to take on itself the supply of actual necessaries, it achieved the same end through the medium of the provision trades. This is why the millers were the objects of endless regulations intended to protect from fraud those who gave them their grain to grind. This is why the bakers were subjected to a municipal tariff, were closely watched, and were sometimes obliged to put up with the competition of outside bakers. This is why the merchants sold vegetables, fruits, oil, and wine at prices fixed by special magistrates. Besides this perfectly legitimate endeavour to guarantee the necessaries of life to every one as far as possible, there was the very similar and no less justifiable attempt to guarantee the good quality of provisions exposed for sale. The _talmelier_, or baker, might not offer for sale bread that was badly baked or rat-eaten.[78] Provisions for market were submitted to a daily and rigorous examination. The butchers at Poitiers had to undergo a physical and moral examination to make sure that they were neither scrofulous, nor scurfy, nor foul of breath, and that they were not under excommunication. There was the curious office of the _langueyeurs de porc_, who had to examine pigs' tongues to see if they showed any signs of measles or leprosy. Hygiene, little studied in those days, gave birth to several precautionary measures. Indeed, it was necessary to study it when epidemics were abroad, and epidemics were both frequent and deadly. The private slaughter-houses, and still more those of the Butchers' Guild, were periodically inspected and moved out of the towns into the suburbs. The numerous rules and dues which were imposed on this rich guild, which, with its slaughterers and knackers, formed a formidable and powerful company, appear to have been balanced by considerable privileges. At Paris, for instance, the Grande Boucherie, as it was called, possessed a monopoly extending to the suburbs, by which the masters, reduced to a small number who succeeded one another from father to son, had the sole right of selling or buying live animals or meat, as well as sea and fresh-water fish. The constant relations between the craft guilds and the authorities gave them a place of their own; but, besides this, they led to the creation of guilds of an entirely official character. The guilds of the measurers (_mesureurs_ and _jaugeurs_), who verified the capacity of earthenware jars, barrels, bushels, etc., or of the criers (_crieurs_), who cried in the streets the contents of their jugs--wine for instance--and offered them to the passers-by to taste,[79] were in fact combinations of government officials. These trades were peculiar in this respect, that those who plied them were in receipt of a salary out of their official takings, and that they might not exceed a certain number; and also that they held a monopoly, since every one was obliged to employ them. Through them we can pass to the second aspect of the communal or lordly legislation which regulated the provision trades, viz. the fiscal aspect. It was no longer in the interests of the consumer that the Commune kept, for instance, the monopoly of salt, buying as cheaply and selling as dearly as possible. It was for its own benefit that it instituted customs, dues, and tolls, levied on food-stuffs, which therefore fell more heavily on the poor than on the rich; their variation was simple--when the poorer classes had their way the dues went down, when the rich were in power they went up. Things are just the same nowadays, in spite of the fine phrases with which the fluctuations of commercial policy in great states are disguised. But since, in speaking of guilds, we have been led to speak of social classes, we must now describe their classification in those centres where the system was most fully developed,--that is where guilds, instead of being subjects, were ruling powers. It naturally follows that their relations with the authorities were greatly modified in the towns in which they created, or were themselves, the authorities. Such was the case at Florence, where, from the year 1293, twenty-one _Arti_ or unions of craft guilds nominated the Priors and the other supreme magistrates of the city; at Strasburg, where, during the fourteenth century, the City Council was formed from the delegates of twenty-five _Zünfte_, having the same constitution as the Arti of Florence; at Ghent, where at about the time of James van Artevelde the three _members_[80] of the State were formed by the weavers, the fullers, and the "small" crafts; at Boulogne, Siena, Bruges, Zurich, Liége, Spire, Worms, Ulm, Mayence, Augsburg, Cologne, etc.; where within sixty years similar revolutions occurred, putting the power into the hands of the guilds. In those days the guilds were the units for elections, for the militia, and for taxation; they judged their dependents without appeal; they expelled, or reduced to the rank of passive citizens, those who were not inscribed on their registers; they decided questions of taxation, peace, and war, and directed the policy of their town, whose internal and even external history is essentially one with their own. In these little corporate republics, the principal question became that of deciding how the different groups of guilds should apportion the government among themselves. But first, on what principle were the guilds classified? Was it according to the vital importance of the needs they existed to supply? This would seem reasonable enough, but apparently it was nothing of the kind, or else the provision trades would have been in the first rank. _Primum vivere_, said the old adage, and to live it is necessary to eat and drink, more necessary even than to be housed and clothed, and to trade, and certainly more necessary than to draw up notaries' deeds or go to law. Now the crafts which provided for the inner man, for Messer Gaster, as Rabelais calls him (butchers, wine merchants, bakers), were almost everywhere placed in the second or third rank; the only exceptions were the grocer-druggists, and it will be seen why this was so. We must look elsewhere, then, for the reasons which determined the order of social importance assigned to the guilds by public opinion in the Middle Ages. It appears that this classification was based on three different principles which I will call the _aristocratic_, the _plutocratic_, and the _historical_; that is to say, the status of a profession seems to have depended on whether it was more or less _honourable_, _lucrative_, or _ancient_.[81] The place of honour was reserved for those crafts in which brainwork took precedence over manual work. They were regarded as more honourable evidently because, in the dualistic conception which governed Christian societies, spirit was placed above matter, the intellectual above the animal part of man. It was for this reason that the professions which demanded brainwork alone were called from that time onwards "liberal," as opposed to manual labour which was called "servile," an expression which the Catholic Church has piously preserved to our own days. At Montpellier, Boulogne, Paris, wherever universities existed (which were themselves in effect "guilds" or corporations, and were practically federations of advanced schools, as we see from their jurisdiction, their statutes, their dependents and agents whom they possessed in the parchment makers and booksellers, and in the title of rector which their head shared with many other officers elected by the guilds), the professors of the different Faculties enjoyed very extensive privileges, and had the proud right of walking, like the nobles, on the wall side of the pavement. At Florence, where the division of the guilds into _greater_, _intermediate_, and _lesser_ bore witness to their hierarchy before all the world, as there was no university, the judges and notaries took precedence; the judges, who were doctors of law, styled themselves _Messer_, like the knights; the notaries called themselves simply _ser_, but this served to distinguish them from the commoners. The proconsul, or head of the corporation, went out robed in scarlet, and was always escorted by two gold-laced apparitors. In the first rank, too, were the doctors, but the barber-surgeons, simply because they performed operations, were relegated to a lower status; artists, in spite of being often ranked among craftsmen, gradually obtained social recognition. Although architects were ranked with carpenters, and image makers and sculptors were often ranked with stonecutters, in many places the goldsmiths, who included chasers, moulders, enamellers, and statuaries, took a high rank. At Paris they were classed among the _Six Guilds_, which, when the king, the queen, or the papal legate made a solemn entry into the city, enjoyed the coveted honour of carrying the blue canopy under which the august personage advanced. At Florence they belonged--as a sub-order it is true--to the _speziali_ (apothecaries), which also included the painters and colour-merchants. While the artists, when they were ranked among the great guilds, only took a secondary and subsidiary position, the bankers, money-changers, wholesale traders, the great manufacturers (woollen merchants, haberdashers, or furriers) lorded it over the others with their wealth and splendour. This was, moreover, to a certain extent, homage rendered to brains and education. The exchange and the bank, where it was necessary to make rapid and complicated calculations, to transact business at a distance, and to do accounts in differing coinages (and sometimes, even, without coin), demanded varied knowledge and a certain mental agility. Wholesale commerce, which henceforward became international, involved the power of taking long views, quickness in grasping a situation, general aptitude, and, in fact, qualities of mind and character which are not given to all.[82] The apothecaries had an advantage in that they sold spices which had come from distant lands. The trade in luxuries (furs and silks) was also concerned with foreign articles and took for granted a certain _savoir-faire_. "Great" industry, for its part, demanded of those who carried it on, a talent for setting in motion, directing, and co-ordinating the complicated machinery of affairs or of men, and this gift of organization is far from common. However, it is easy to see that in the priority accorded to the great industrial and commercial guilds, the second of the principles we have mentioned was at work, namely, that a craft was considered more or less honourable according to the wealth it yielded. Did the goldsmiths owe the respect which was shown them more to their artistic skill than to the fact that they were in the habit of handling jewels and precious metals? It would be difficult to say. But it is very certain that the bankers, money-changers, manufacturers of cloth and silk, the dealers in furs and in spices, and the haberdashers, who sold everything, would not have been among the most favoured, if they had not also been among the most wealthy. Thanks to the crowns, ducats, and florins at their command, they could indulge in a sumptuous style of living and rival in luxury the lords of the land. Like the latter they were in command of troops of men; in their way they were captains; they united the prestige of power with that of wealth. It was undoubtedly for this reason that the butchers, who had numerous assistants working under their orders and who made considerable profits, sometimes managed in Paris to be included among the _Six Guilds_, and at Florence headed the list of Intermediate Guilds. It was for a similar reason that in the same town the innkeepers and the stone and wood merchants, classed among the Lesser Guilds, were called _grosse_;[83] while the small tavern-keepers and those who retailed wood were not considered worthy of such a distinction. The third principle--the historical--was active in its turn. The later crafts, recently specialized, suffered from the competition of work done in the home from which they were imperfectly separated. If the butchers did not succeed in taking their place definitely among the Six Guilds of Paris, or in becoming affiliated to the Greater Guilds of Florence, it is probably because, for many years, the people were their own butchers, and the fatted pig or calf was killed at home; in other words because their field of action was an integral part of domestic industry. The same may be said of bakers and bread-makers; many peasants had their own oven in which they baked their bread,[84] and they held stubbornly to this right which they sometimes insisted on having solemnly recognized. There is no need for further explanations to make us understand why the bakers and bread-makers at Florence came last on the list of the twenty-one official guilds. It is useless to attribute their comparative disrepute[85] to the supposed ease with which they could defraud their clients in the weight and quality of the bread they sold. Unfortunately, the same suspicions might have been applied to many others. Can it be forgotten that, at Rome, the fishmongers were compelled to use scales with holes in them like skimmers, so that the water could run off and not add weight unfairly! Thus on account of one or another of these three principles, "small" crafts and "small" commerce were far from attaining the level to which the great guilds rose; and in those days the organized world of labour was divided, sometimes into three groups, as at Florence, Perpignan,[86] or Ghent, sometimes into two, as at Zurich, and sometimes into a greater number. It is impossible to go into the details of the prolonged struggles between these unequal groups, of their efforts to maintain the balance among themselves, or to rule one over another, or of the alternate victories and defeats which they sustained. Nearly two centuries--from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth--are filled with the unrest caused by these quarrels which broke out in two or three hundred towns at once, and which, in view of the absence of dependable information concerning them, appear at a distance utterly chaotic. All we can do is to indicate the development which followed.[87] Immediately upon the victory of the lower classes over lay and ecclesiastical feudalism--the first act accomplished by the communal revolution--the power passed to the rich burgesses. Aristocracy of money naturally succeeded aristocracy of birth. This plutocracy was represented by the great merchant guilds, whose rise was soon followed by that of the great industrial guilds, destined in some cases to supplant them, but more often to remain their faithful allies. At Florence, the _Arte di Calimala_ which included bankers and finishers and sellers of foreign cloth, was at first the most important of all; it was later dethroned by the _Arte della Lana_, composed of cloth manufacturers, but both were included in the federation of the Greater Guilds, which kept in its own hands the direction of affairs. At Brussels and at Louvain seven families long furnished the aldermen; at Ghent thirty-nine _nouveaux riches_, and at Amiens an oligarchy of several families, monopolized the direction of communal affairs. Everywhere wool-merchants, money-changers, and goldsmiths became important in proportion to their wealth, not to their numbers. At Beauvais of thirteen "peers" who constituted the municipal administration seven were nominated by one guild--that of the money-changers; the other twenty-one guilds nominated six. In short, what happened in the free towns was what usually happens in such a case, namely what happened in France in the nineteenth century. The victorious bourgeoisie wanted to keep to themselves the spoils of victory; they attempted to keep the lower classes--their allies of yesterday--in a precarious and subordinate position, and not only excluded them from the magistracy, but stamped all politics with a strongly plutocratic character. They sold to or reserved for themselves all lucrative posts; they administered the finances according to their own ideas without giving any account of their actions; they multiplied wars to kill inconvenient competition, or to open up new outlets for their commerce. As all this entailed enormous expense they resorted to loans which brought in high and steady interest, and to taxes on objects of daily consumption--reactionary taxes which demanded an equal sum, and therefore an unequal sacrifice, from rich and poor. They despised and oppressed the small craftsmen and the small retailers; they tried to limit or to suppress their right to combine or hold public meetings, and of course they were still harder on all that labouring population which was not admitted to the guilds, or which at least was only admitted in a subject capacity. We have already seen (Chapter II. 7) how they organized the first form of capitalist supremacy. The second act of the revolution now began. The town population divided itself into two separate groups, which soon became two opposing parties: the rich and the poor; the _fat_ and the _lean_; the great and the small; the good and the bad, as the chroniclers, who usually belonged to the leisured class, said with a certain savage naïveté. The crafts which claimed to be honourable were set in opposition to those which were considered low and inferior, and were supported and urged on by the masses, who, without rights or possessions, lived from day to day by hiring out their labour. The fight was complicated by the capricious intervention of the nobles or clergy who, sometimes by a natural affinity, joined the aristocracy of wealth; sometimes, in the desire to get the better of the great burgesses who kept them out of the government, allied themselves to the lower classes and made the balance turn in their favour. At certain times (this also is a law of history) the lower classes, in despair at never getting anything out of a selfish and implacable bourgeoisie, put their confidence in some soldier of fortune, some ephemeral dictator, some "tyrant" in the Greek sense, who defeated their enemies and secured them a little well-being and consideration. On other occasions it was the rich burgesses who, frightened by the claims of the people, called on some foreign or military power to reduce the populace to order. Thus, by separate roads, the republics and towns were travelling towards monarchy. Before they reached this point, however, the "small" crafts had their days of supremacy, which were characterized by a peaceful policy, fiscal reforms, and the effort to make taxation just through the progressive taxation of incomes. They raised with themselves, out of the darkness and degradation into which they had fallen, the ragged and barefooted labourers (carders, porters, _blue-nails_, as the Flemish labouring classes were called in derision), proletarians, wage-slaves, who in their turn desired political rights, a legal status in the city, a rank among the guilds, a share in the direction of the Commune. In the year 1378 this movement seems to have been at its height.[88] A wave of revolution passed over Europe at that time, and at Florence as at Ghent, at Siena as at Rouen, in Paris as in London, for several years, months, and sometimes weeks, Ciompi, Chaperons blancs, Maillotins, etc., made the ruling classes tremble for fear of union on the part of all this riff-raff. As a Flemish chronicler expresses it: "An extraordinary thing was to be seen in those days; the common people gained the supremacy." Their victory was short-lived. All the conservative forces combined against the intruders. The attempt, not to destroy but to reform and enlarge guild administration, to make the whole world of labour enter into it, was shown to be powerless; perhaps because the workmen and men of the "small" crafts did not clearly perceive what could give them freedom, or know how to unite into a cohesive body; perhaps, also, because the idea of hierarchy was still too strongly rooted in society; finally, perhaps because there was a fundamental contradiction between the administration of the closed guilds which stood for privilege, and the ideas of equality which tried to force an entrance into them. Whatever may have been the cause, from this culmination they descended again towards their starting-point, the supremacy of money and of the great commercial and industrial guilds which no longer allowed their power to be shared by the Lesser Guilds. However, they stopped half-way. The preponderance was not restored either to the prelates or to the lords, neither did it remain with the lower classes. It was too late for the great, too early for the small. It remained and was consolidated in the hands of two powers, each of which relied on the other--the middle classes and the monarchy, the latter being represented in the great states by royalty and elsewhere by princes who might be _condottieri_ or upstart bankers. Florence went to sleep under the enervating and corrupt rule of the Medicis. An ever-narrowing merchant oligarchy governed Genoa, Venice, and the towns of the Teutonic Hanse. Flanders was quiet under the authority of the Dukes of Burgundy and of its opulent guilds, to which craftsmen were no longer admitted. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century the great epoch of the free towns was over, and the glory of the guilds went with them. Nevertheless, while their restless and busy life lasted they had their days of greatness, heroism, and glory. Sometimes, as at Courtrai, they gained victories over armoured knighthood. They did better. In the neighbourhood of their cities they built roads, canals, and seaports. Within the city walls they gave a splendid impetus to architecture. They built monumental halls like those of Bruges, fountains, hospitals, and public promenades; they erected churches which were popular palaces, town halls which were carved like fine lace and flanked by towers and belfries from which the Tocsin called the citizens to arms or to the assembly. They had pride and patriotism, and also desired to honour the profession which was for each of them a state within the state. They contended for the honour of giving a picture, a statue, or a tabernacle to the buildings which thus became the incarnation of the soul of a whole people. The traveller who visits Florence admires the bas-reliefs half-way up the Campanile attributed to Giotto, which represent the origin of arts and crafts in the earliest ages of mankind; it is the stamp and blazonry of the working classes on their common work. Guilds have passed away, as all human institutions must pass, imperfect and frail in their very nature; but before their passing they realized a great part of their high ideal, which, in its many aspects, I have tried to make plain. CHAPTER V THE MERITS AND DEFECTS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM We are now in a position to estimate the merits and defects of the guilds before they fell into decadence and decrepitude. It is necessary to consider separately the two types of guilds which we have described; for although they had characteristics in common, they present more differences than resemblances. Let us see, then, how each acted on production and sale, and on producers and sellers. The guild system in the "small" crafts was at once a guarantee of, and a check on, production and sale. It endeavoured to insure and guard the consumer against adulteration, falsification, and dishonesty; to stamp goods with the character of finish, solidity, and relative perfection, thus giving to them something personal and therefore artistic; to keep within reasonable limits the profits of the manufacturer, who was also the merchant. On the other hand, the manufacturer only dealt with small quantities, was content with a very restricted clientèle, and aimed at nothing beyond the local market without much chance of either making a fortune or being ruined. Production thus had but little vigour, and what was more serious still, its plasticity was interfered with. The statutes which regulated it resembled feudal castles, which protected but imprisoned those whom they sheltered. The manufacturer, hampered by the restrictions which surrounded him, could make no progress. Industry, bound down by directions which were too precise, too detailed, too authoritative, could not adapt itself to the many caprices of fashion or to the changes of taste which are the very life of human civilizations; its forms were set, its methods petrified. Invention could not have free play; it was accused of outraging healthy tradition; it was considered dangerous to set out to create anything new. In Florence in 1286[89] a cooper complained of being boycotted by his guild because in making his barrels he bent his staves by means of water, which was, he said, an advantage to all who bought them. At Paris[90] it was forbidden to mould seals with letters engraved on them; apparently the counterfeiting of seals and coins was feared. Who knows, however, whether this prohibition did not retard by a hundred years the invention of printing, to which--when a method of making them movable had been discovered--these engraved letters gave birth? With regard to producers and sellers, we may go back to the simile of the strong castle. An instrument of defence for those who were within the guild easily degenerated into one of tyranny for those who were without. It was the centre of an ardent and exclusive corporate spirit. It resolved all the individual egoisms of its members into a great collective egoism. It is only necessary to recall the quarrels with neighbouring guilds, and the hostility shown towards workers who were not enrolled. To the masters of which it was composed it ensured at least a modest and honest livelihood, the just remuneration of labour, or, one might almost say, to use a modern formula, the whole product of labour. It even assured a refuge against misery and distress, the certainty of assistance in times of trouble, illness, old age, or misfortune. The fishermen of Arles were bound to give one another mutual assistance in stormy weather;[91] in Paris among the goldsmiths one shop remained open every Sunday,[92] and the money from the sales was divided among the needy of the town and the widows and sick of the guild. Fines were often used in this way. The guild sometimes even gave to the travelling workman who found himself at the end of his resources the means of going in search of work elsewhere. The guild secured to its members other advantages no less coveted: a good position in public processions and ceremonies when state dress was worn, or even at the melancholy solemnities of the public executions;[93] at Lyons, at the time of the feast of St. John, two furriers with lighted torches paraded to the church door, mounted on two white mules, and at the entrance were received by the cross and the canons.[94] But more than all this, the guild was not only a great family for those who belonged to it, it was a little self-contained city, a diminutive commune which the members administered at will, and thereby prepared themselves for civic life and its duties; it was a training-ground for independent, well-informed, active citizens, who, with their parliamentary traditions, republican sentiments, and democratic hopes, formed, with their fellow-craftsmen of other crafts, a proud, practical, and courageous middle-class, as anxious to defend their town from outsiders as to beautify and adorn it. Journeymen and apprentices shared in these honourable privileges, and did not suffer unduly from the inequality imposed on them, tempered as it was by simplicity of manners and by the thought that it was only temporary. The guilds of "great" commerce and of "great" industry also had their fine sense of honour, their complicated regulations, their exclusive spirit. But what distinguished them was the fact that their capital was large and that they dealt with a vast market; consequently, while the former were busy with exchange and transport, traversed land and sea with their convoys, and constituted themselves the carriers and brokers of the world, the latter intensified production; they possessed workshops which for those days were very large, and, in order to lower their general expenses, were interested in new inventions, and willingly adopted mechanical methods; at Florence, for example, metallic carders, which were still prohibited in Great Britain in 1765, were already in use under the guild system. Banking, commercial and maritime law, the science of finance, the art of production on a large scale and of securing international relations certainly owe a great deal to these merchants and manufacturers, who were the precursors of modern capitalists. The members of these powerful guilds amassed enormous fortunes, built themselves superb palaces, became counsellors and money-lenders to kings, towns, or popes. Sometimes they were too adventurous in their speculations and their bankruptcies made a wide stir. Accustomed to affairs of the highest importance and to court intrigues, they became diplomats, clever politicians, who willingly took their share in government; nor was it by chance that the first man in France who tried to reform the kingdom according to the views of the Third Estate was �tienne Marcel, provost of the richest Parisian guild. Often, however, these great burgesses were of an aristocratic spirit. In the city they opposed the rise of the lower classes, and, in their magnificent palaces, princes in fact before they were princes in name, as the Medicis became, they gradually extinguished around them the love of liberty and of republican virtues. At the same time they broke up that solidarity which was the very soul of the primitive guilds; they created a social system which perpetuated riches above and poverty below; they enslaved and cruelly exploited the clerks and workers they employed, their attitude towards whom was no longer that of masters towards journeymen or _compagnons_, but that of lords towards dependents. In a word, they broke from the conditions which no longer sufficed for the realization of their ambitions, and they were preparing, indeed they were already developing, an organization of labour which anticipated the future. They were the agents of that profound change which slowly brought about the death of the guilds. CHAPTER VI EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY A body of institutions, like a living body, begins by passing through a period of formation, growth, and consolidation, after which decay inevitably follows; it becomes feeble, disintegrates, decomposes, and finally dissolves. Death is thus presented as the natural term of life with its constant wear and tear, as the necessary end of the spontaneous development peculiar to living beings. But it is also determined by the pressure of outside forces, by the action of environment. Thus the guild system held within itself elements of dissolution, and at the same time met with destructive forces from without; it declined and decayed under the combined influences of internal and external causes. It seems fitting to begin with the external causes, since these were the most important. In an unchanging environment living beings could exist for long unchanged, but the changes ever at work without hasten changes within, from the very fact that the organism is itself at work. Thus it was that the guilds were first of all affected by the profound changes going on around them. The sphere in which they had to work was both extended and modified. We must follow out the consequences of both these changes. 1. _The Extension of the Market and its Results._--The fifteenth century saw the formation of the great States in Europe. France, which felt herself to be a nation when she was trampled under foot by the English, was the first to become a unity, and for several centuries drew her power and her greatness from the start which she thus gained. Spain was concentrated under the authority of Ferdinand and Isabella. England, worn out after a terrible civil war, found rest under the Tudor dynasty. In Germany, which was still very divided, the Hanseatic League included twenty-four cities. Even in Italy the restless republics, ever jealous of their independence, were absorbed into larger territories and placed under a common supremacy. Everywhere the endless subdivision of the Middle Ages gave place to larger groupings, possessing fuller life and wider interests. Hence a new situation arose for the cities; among those which in every state had up till now been on an equal footing one rose to be the capital, the others, with diminished prestige and importance, were only secondary centres. They also ceased to be islets where the people lived lives apart; from henceforward they formed an integral part of a whole which surrounded them and no longer allowed of a proud isolation; they could no longer treat their neighbours as foreigners or enemies; they found themselves bound together by the necessity of obeying the same laws and the same sovereign. It followed that _city economy_, becoming narrow and exclusive, grew difficult and by degrees impossible.[95] It was replaced by _national economy_. This meant that the commercial market, instead of being confined to the inhabitants of a town and its suburbs, included henceforth the province, the duchy, and by degrees the whole kingdom. Above all, it meant that the central power no longer legislated for people enclosed within a small area, but that it attempted to unify over the whole surface of a considerably enlarged territory the official language, moneys, weights and measures, as well as the regulations of industry and the judicial forms; that it suppressed as far as possible the tolls which obstructed the roads and rivers; that it carried back to the frontier the barriers which had been set up on the boundaries of every little domain; that for a localizing spirit it substituted the desire to reconcile the interests of the different regions between which it played the part of arbitrator and peacemaker. Doubtless the economic policy adopted by the great States did not sensibly differ from that practised in the towns. A system does not disappear without bequeathing traditions and customs to its successor. National economy copied the methods of city economy. When Colbert, for instance, tried to realize for France the ideal of self-sufficiency, when for this reason he wanted to sell as much as possible and buy as little as possible abroad, to create industries which were lacking, to prevent those which existed from leaving the country, to encourage the export of manufactured goods while watching over their proper manufacture, and to hinder the import of similar goods by barricading the country with customs tariffs, he was only taking up once more and making general an old system formerly tried by Florence or Venice and adopted later by kings and ministers in France and England, by Henry IV. and notably by Richelieu. This mercantile system has been christened Colbertism, and the name will serve provided that it is known that Colbert was not its father but its godfather. Nevertheless, in spite of the continuity of the principles which guide great governors, the mere fact that the enlarged area in which the guilds operated contained several towns whose jealousy might be measured by their rights, was a terrible blow for the guilds; each town with its narrow boundaries, finding itself completely out of harmony with the world in which it was condemned to live, had to adapt itself to the new conditions or die. Not only, however, had the internal markets grown larger, the external market had also extended enormously, and it was no longer for the spices and gems of the Levant alone that ships and caravans set out. In the South, Vasco da Gama had discovered the route to the Indies; in the West, Christopher Columbus, while seeking those same Indies, had come upon America; in the North, Russia and Scandinavia had proved to be magnificent fields for traders to exploit. Africa, which as yet no one had dared to penetrate, was approached and the existence of Oceania suspected. Europe, in revenge for old invasions, overflowed in her turn into other continents; she expanded into distant colonies; the sun no longer set on her possessions. The first result was a rearrangement of commercial routes, a formidable rush to the West. The Mediterranean basin, cut off from the East by the Turks, ceased to be the meeting-place of nations and the universal centre of commerce. Genoa and Florence, the mothers and glorious victims of Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, began to decay, and the very source of their wealth was assailed by the discoveries of their children. Beneath the trappings of gold and silk that yet covered them there was left only the melancholy glory of their dying prosperity. Venice the rich, Venice the beautiful, slumbering in the fever-laden air of her canals from which the life was ebbing, slowly died in her gorgeous setting of palaces and churches and degenerated into a city of dreams, luxury, and pleasure, where the leisured and the gay came to seek the shadow of a great past and the splendours of a half-oriental civilization. Many cities, like Pisa or Siena, deserved with Bruges to be called "the dead," cut off from the ocean by the encroaching sands and from liberty by the Spanish lords of Flanders. How could the guilds hope to escape from the consequences of misfortunes which struck at their very roots? An even graver menace threatened them. To take advantage of the new outlets, to satisfy a clientèle henceforth scattered over the most diverse countries, it was necessary to produce more, and to produce more it was necessary to produce in a different way. Production was transformed to meet the needs of trade. Capitalism, which had hitherto been confined to a few towns, received an impetus and developed with unexpected vigour. "Great" commerce, which spread over an immense area, created exchanges and banks, and great financial institutions for the circulation of capital; it formed great companies which undertook to exploit the resources of new countries; it accelerated transport and built up in the press a valuable instrument for the spread of information and for advertisement. In its use of credit it no longer encountered the displeasure of the Church, which, together with civil law, became reconciled to loans on interest and recognized the practice as long as the rate was moderate. Its coffers, filled with the gold and silver of the galleons which came from Mexico and Peru, gave Europe a hint of a hitherto unsuspected danger--the glut of money. Capital, too, which had accumulated in the landlords' and merchants' chests, took a leading part in business activities by reason of its power to command; it became a moving force. Henceforward, as we have already seen in the case of the woollen merchants, three functions, hitherto united in the person of the small craftsman of the towns, became separated: those of the _merchant_, who bought raw material and sold finished goods; of the _manufacturer_, who possessed the appliances of labour; and of the _workman_, who wrought with his own hands. Three classes of men answer to this specialization at the present day: the _traders_, who are not producers, but act as middlemen between producer and consumer, deciding what shall be produced and concerning themselves solely with buying and selling; the _industrial capitalists_, who, at the tradesmen's orders, direct the transformation of the raw materials entrusted to them, in workshops and with machinery which are their property; finally the _workmen_, who, mere wage-earners, carry out manual or mechanical work as they are told. These three classes of men have different interests. The big merchants, with their bold speculations, are impatient of anything which hinders circulation: town dues, customs, tolls, differences of coinage, weights and measures, all regulations, everything, in fact, which tends to isolate towns and countries. When Louis XI. convoked the States General in 1484, the town deputies expressed themselves in favour of the freedom of trade, which now felt strong enough to stand alone. When Henry IV., on the advice of Montchrestian and Laffemas, wanted to secure French markets to the French by increasing customs tariffs, all the guilds consulted declared themselves in favour of the project, with the exception of the mercers--"sellers of everything, makers of nothing," as they were called--thus plainly expressing the hostility of wholesale trade to the exclusive policy which had been pursued by the towns. The great traders represented a revolutionary tendency with regard to the guild system; they were its constant enemies; they ended by being its destroyers. The manufacturers, for their part, were not averse to being protected against foreign competition; they were indeed inclined to ask for this protection. Like the guilds, they had a predilection for privilege and monopoly, but were not in agreement with them on some essential points. In order to produce much and profitably they were in need of cheap and abundant labour. Ignoring the rules of apprenticeship, they hired foreigners, peasants, women, and children; in the sixteenth century, in the town of Norwich, which from being agricultural had become industrial, children of six were employed in the factories.[96] When they did not crowd the workers together in enormous workshops, they resorted to what sometimes goes by the equivocal name of "the domestic system," which I prefer to call "scattered manufacture." In the towns they employed men and women, who, working in their own homes, were sheltered from inquisitive eyes. Such workers were found in the suburban and country districts, in any places which were beyond the ordinary jurisdiction of wardenship and mastership. Or again, they employed labour in the hospitals, orphanages, or work-rooms of religious orders, which had escaped from the jealous supervision of the guilds. In Picardy, at certain periods, the weaver workmen thus scattered among the villages numbered 10,000.[97] The same thing was to be found in Brittany,[98] Normandy, and Dauphiny, in the manufacture of linen and hemp; in Velay in that of lace; in Auvergne in that of trimmings; in the Rhone valley in that of silk. In England the peasants, driven from home, impoverished, eaten out by sheep, deprived of their means of livelihood by the enclosure of huge pasture lands to which they might no longer take their cattle, provided a wonderful reserve army for industrial magnates in search of labour.[99] The town artisans fought with desperation against the blows struck at town monopolies by these new departures.[100] Opposition--significant but utterly useless--was offered on every hand to the new demands of large-scale production. Risings against foreign workers, like those at Norwich; the many attempts to limit the number of apprentices; the English law of 1555 known as the Weavers' Act, which forbade a master to own or hire out more than a certain number of looms; and the innumerable lawsuits in France brought by guilds to check the disastrous competition of peasant labour were all illustrations of this opposition. Another necessity of large-scale production, involving still greater consequences, was mechanical labour. "Great" industry demanded the division--even the disintegration--of labour. The product, before it is finished, passes through the hands of various craft groups. It undergoes a series of processes which follow one another and are interdependent, and of which each is carried out by specially trained workers. This was the case in the manufacture of wool from the thirteenth century. The wool had to be washed, beaten, carded, combed, oiled, spun, woven, fulled; then the cloth had to be stretched, dyed, dressed, and folded. It is a well-known fact that if each class of work is entrusted to a special class of workers, manufacture costs less both in money and in time. But it must be added that this disintegration of the whole process into a succession of operations leads straight to the mechanical system.[101] The simple and monotonous tasks performed under this system of subdivision by the different classes of workers owe their automatic and half-mechanical character to the uniformity of the movements they demand. It needed very little to complete the technical revolution already begun and to make hands of wood or metal accomplish what had been done by human hands. A machine may be described as a more or less complicate engine, which, by means of an animate or inanimate motive force, executes movements which hitherto have been performed by the human hand. The weaving loom and the spinning wheel were already rudimentary machines. The Middle Ages knew, under the name of "mills," more complicate appliances, of which many date from the Alexandrine period, which was to Graeco-Roman antiquity what the nineteenth century is to modern times--the era of science and machinery. Water- or wind-mills, mills for grinding flour, for crushing nuts or olives, for raising water; iron mills; mills for fulling cloth, for making paper, sugar, silk stuffs--all these expensive appliances were in use, and gradually spread over Europe during the period which brought to a close and immediately followed the Middle Ages. Thus old industries changed their method, and new industries were from the start modelled on the new system. Printing may be quoted as an example; the printing press, with its movable letters, took the place of writing--the work of human fingers. It may be said of it that it was born mechanical, and if we ask why it killed the slow industry of the old copyists who protested in vain, we need only look at the unexpected results it achieved. The identity of the copies produced; the speed, which allowed demands hitherto forced to wait months and years to be met in a few days, and which gave, so to speak, wings to thought; and the unheard-of cheapness, which reduced the price of a Bible from 600 to 60 crowns and even less (things which evidently could not be obtained without the co-operation of the Prince of Darkness, as was proved by the red characters which flamed at the head of the chapters), such were the diabolical but invaluable advantages which in less than half a century assured the triumph and the rapid spread of the new invention. If we remember the thousand-and-one prohibitions with which the guild statutes bristled--the prohibition to mould seals with engraved letters, the regulations which in every craft prevented all change and consequently all improvement in manufacture, it is easy to understand how "great" industry, without deliberate effort, but by its very development, overthrew the economic order which had reigned in the Middle Ages. The guilds, moreover, with the best intentions in the world, fought against innovations which seemed to them abominations. In England in the year 1555 the _gig-mill_, a mechanical appliance, was forbidden by law.[102] The first English coaches, called "flying coaches," were attacked and censured[103] because they threatened to injure the art of riding and the manufacture of saddles and spurs, and because, being too cold in winter and too hot in summer, they were bad for the health of travellers; but, above all, because, on account of their extreme speed, they would be dangerous. The public authorities were begged to limit them to thirty miles a day (rather less than the distance a fast train covers to-day in an hour); and later, in France, when the _turgotines_ were instituted, which shortened by half the length of a journey, an abbot added the strange complaint that, by going so fast, they deprived the passenger of the means of hearing mass.[104] "Great" commerce and "great" industry, however, continued to develop in the direction they had originally taken, and finally overcame the old-fashioned timidity of the guilds, which were gradually reduced to defending the interests of the small crafts. The great merchant guilds were predominant at first; the Lord Mayor of London was chosen from the city guilds, and the guild of the river merchants gave to Paris its coat-of-arms and motto and was an embryonic form of the municipal councils which followed later. As time went on, however, they disappeared or separated themselves from the organized crafts. At Paris, the Hanse of the river merchants does not figure among the _six guilds_ which head the list, although they did not actually lose their privileges till the year 1672. In London,[105] the city guilds slowly ceased to have any connection with the crafts whose names they bore. The great capitalists, whether bankers, merchants, or great manufacturers, voluntarily formed themselves into a separate group and, as far as possible, cut themselves clear of the trammels of the guild system. Meantime, under the system of large-scale production, the workers were either subjected to the guilds as we have seen them at Florence in the _Arte della Lana_,[106] or else, if they were not enrolled, were treated by their individual masters in such a way as to keep them permanently in a precarious and subordinate position. Whether they worked crowded together in great workshops--where, owing to their numbers, they were under severe discipline--or at home, in which case their isolation only brought them, under the appearance of liberty, harder conditions, they soon saw that, with the rarest possible exceptions, they were destined to be wage-earners for life. They no longer had the hope, the ambition, even the idea of one day owning the factory in which they laboured, or the business which every week paid its thousands of workers. The divorce was complete between the manual worker and the instruments of production, and, in consequence, between the men who were the servants of these expensive appliances and the master-manufacturers who owned them. Masters and workmen, henceforth separated by their present and their future, by their education, their manner of life, and their aspirations, formed two classes, united as yet, in that both were interested in the intensity of industrial activity, but opposed, in that the one wished to keep the other in subjection and to sweat out of him as much work as possible, as cheaply as possible. It is from this time, and still only in "great" industry, that a working class can be spoken of. For a long time it was fairly small; but the self-consciousness it was acquiring was shown by the strikes, the combinations, and the attempts at union which were common in England from the sixteenth century; by combinations which were already national, like that of the papermakers in France at the end of the seventeenth century; by the popular songs in which the discontent of the workmen was expressed in bitter complaints or biting irony.[107] The energy and diplomacy displayed in the sixteenth century by the master printers of Lyons and Paris in preventing their workmen from striking (_fair le tric_, which was the name given in those days to concerted abstention from work[108]) is well known; so is the song sung in England by the wool workers[109] towards the end of the seventeenth century, the title of which is curious. The master is supposed to speak. THE CLOTHIER'S DELIGHT; OR, THE RICH MEN'S JOY, AND THE POOR MEN'S SORROW Wherein is expressed the craftiness and subtility of Many Clothiers in England, by beating down their Workmen's Wages. Combers, weavers, and spinners, for little gains, Doth earn their money, by taking of hard pains. _To the tune of_ "Jenny, come tae me," etc., "Paddington's Pound," or "Monk hath confounded," etc. Of all sorts of callings that in England be, There is none that liveth so gallant as we; Our trading maintains us as brave as a knight, We live at our pleasure, and take our delight; We heapeth up riches and treasure great store, Which we get by griping and grinding the poor. And this is a way for to fill up our purse, Although we do get it with many a curse. Throughout the whole kingdom, in country and town, There is no danger of our trade going down, So long as the Comber can work with his comb, And also the Weaver weave with his lomb; The Tucker and Spinner that spins all the year, We will make them to earn their wages full dear. And this is the way, etc. In former ages we us'd to give, So that our work-folks like farmers did live; But the times are altered, we will make them know All we can for to bring them under our bow; We will make to work hard for sixpence a day, Though a shilling they deserve if they had their just pay. And this is the way, etc. and so on, for twelve stanzas. From now onwards can be found all those motives for disagreement with which the "social question," as it has developed and grown more bitter, has made us familiar;--increase of hours of work, lowering of wages by the employment of apprentices, women, and children; reductions of the sums agreed upon by means of fines, payment in kind,[110] and other tricks; draconian regulations; harsh foremen; the binding of the workers to the workshop, as the serfs were to the soil, by money advances which they could never repay. Events follow their usual course: the story is one of struggles, prosecutions, appeals to the law, and finally, when no more can be said, battles with folded arms and closed factories--strikes by workmen or employers. There follow riots in which machinery is wrecked and attacks are sometimes made upon the masters themselves. Repression ensues; the carrying of arms is forbidden, the rights of combination and public meeting denied at pain of death. And, in reply to these measures, the workers retaliate by emigration, by secret societies, by recourse to force which may damp down the fire but cannot prevent it from smouldering till in time it bursts out afresh. The guilds and their statutes were of but feeble assistance in calming these conflicts. The greater part of the workers in the great industries did not belong to them. Worse still, the guild system itself suffered from the startling inequality which separated its great manufacturers from their employees. Between rich masters and small masters, between the sons of masters and the poor journeymen, the gulf ever widened, and an institution was soon to reveal the growing friction. I have already spoken of the separate societies, now of long standing, governed by journeymen (_compagnons_); but _compagnonnage_, united to these ancient associations by more than one tie, had a more extensive influence. Its origins are obscure.[111] It is hardly found before the beginning of the fifteenth century, and developed particularly in Central Europe, France, the Low Countries, and in Germany. It seems to be allied to freemasonry in its origins, but was distinguished by an activity peculiar to itself. Freemasonry, as far as it is possible to pierce the mists which envelop its early history, was essentially a federation of building trades. It took its birth from the bands of workmen who had their _raison d'être_ in the construction of those vast cathedrals whose harmonious proportions are certainly the most perfect legacy left to us by the Middle Ages. The aim of the association was to keep in order the crowds of half-nomadic labourers, who for half a century or more would establish themselves in a town; to transmit from one generation to the next the secrets of the craft; to act as arbitrator in the quarrels which might arise among this restless population. Born in the shadow of the sanctuary, it was naturally mystic and religious in character; it claimed to go back to the Templars, or even to the builders of Solomon's Temple; it was the child of an age which delighted in mystery and occult knowledge, and it imposed on its members a complicated initiation, formidable tests, signs of recognition, and pass-words. Created for men who sometimes transferred their labour and their plans from one end of Europe to the other, it scattered its lodges over different lands; it was international, and in this differed profoundly from the guilds. But with this exception, it took its place within the existing order of things, accepted the hierarchy of the guild system, and had its three degrees--_i.e._ included apprentices, journeymen, and masters. It was a mixed institution as much and even more bourgeois than working-class. _Compagnonnage_, too, covered many craft-guilds, of which the most important were closely connected with building (carpenters, stone-cutters, joiners) or with the clothing trades. It had its mystic legends, its symbolic rites in which baptism and communion figured, its claims to a long genealogy, its tests, pass-words, and strange ceremonies, in fact the whole armoury of a society which believes secrecy to be of vital importance. It was a league for mutual and fraternal assistance, which spread over many countries and undertook to procure for its travelling members moral support, lodging, travel-money, and, above all, work. But it differed from the guilds and from freemasonry in that no masters were admitted. It concerned itself exclusively with obtaining work for _compagnons_, and with looking after their professional interests. It thus emphasized the separation which had taken place between masters and workers. It was feared as an instrument of war, suspected on account of its secret methods by the public authorities which persecuted it, and by the Church which accused it of disseminating heretical ideas and condemned it in 1655 by the voice of the Faculty of Theology at Paris; it was also exposed to the attacks of the guilds. Nevertheless it survived all this, and was strong enough to organize strikes, and to black-list the firms which did not accept its conditions, and even the towns in which it was persecuted.[112] Of course its strength and power of emancipation must not be exaggerated. _Compagnonnage_ remained bound by the customs and liable to the vices of the guild system. If it escaped from the restraining spirit it did not escape from the corporate spirit; it jealously closed its ranks, and would only admit certain crafts; it was divided into hostile rites or _devoirs_ which took for patrons Solomon, Maître Jacques, or Père Soubise. Violence was frequent (_topage_ for instance), and bloody battles for the monopoly of work in a particular town often took place. Besides, it only included a privileged minority who ill-treated and despised not only those who were outside their ranks but even those who aspired to enter them. It was on the whole a fighting league, and imposed conditions on certain masters; but it was far from being a combination of the whole of the working classes against the masters. Centuries were yet to pass before the development of "great" industry, by constantly increasing the number employed, by turning the suburbs of great cities and the black country into seething human anthills, forced all these multitudes of workers, in spite of wide differences of occupation, to unite into a great army. As has been said, the division of society into guilds is vertical; it only becomes horizontal when the conditions common to the great army of wage-earners blot out all differences of craft and origin. 2. _The change in intellectual conditions. The Renaissance and the Reformation._--We have summed up the effects produced on the guilds by the enlargement of the environment in which they developed. This environment, however, changed not only in extent but also in character. Without going into the details of the changes they passed through, we can see that three great events stand out in the history of Europe from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, and it is impossible that they should have failed to react on the system we are studying; these are the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the increase in the powers of the State. The great intellectual revolution which has been named the Renaissance was at first a return to Greek and Roman antiquity. Literary men and scholars, filled with adoration for a glorious past, abandoned their mother tongue for that of the great dead, imitated Virgil, Cicero, Demosthenes, swore by Jupiter and Mercury, insisted, like Montaigne, on being given the title of Roman citizens, or like Erasmus, Ramus, or Melanchthon, took neo-classical names. They restored ancient methods of thought and action; they wove conspiracies in imitation of Brutus; they dated their letters by the Calends and the Ides; they became pagans once more in appearance and sometimes in reality; in opposition to Christianity--the religion of sadness, resignation, poverty, and of the struggle against the flesh and passion--they re-established love, pleasure, beauty, and the joy of life. They wakened from their long slumber the old systems of philosophy, and as disciples not only of Aristotle, but of Plato, Epicurus, and Diogenes, they became accustomed to coquetting with every kind of doctrine and often acquired an elegant dilettantism. These new conceptions, which demanded a knowledge of languages requiring long study at college, could only be held by an _élite_. To have the right of initiation into the ancient authors it was necessary to belong to the leisured classes; it took time to read and re-read them in order to extract the "marrow within." In a word, the Renaissance was fundamentally aristocratic. Most of its classical scholars and poets profess disdain and hatred of the ignorant masses. Rien ne me plaist que ce qui peut desplaire Au jugement du rude populaire cries one of the brilliant satellites of our Pléiade.[113] It follows logically that the education it instituted and which was founded on the study of Greek and Latin drew a clear line of demarcation between the children thus brought up, who were destined to hold the highest social positions, and the others doomed to inferior tasks and studies. It will therefore be understood that the Renaissance influenced the condition of the workers. It swelled the tide which was carrying society towards class division; it helped to separate still further the tradesman and the manual worker; and above all it separated the artist and the craftsman, those twin brothers, who till then had shared the same life and the same ideals. The artist was no longer the interpreter of the thought of a whole people, but, working for the rich and powerful bankers or princes, who required him to reproduce archaic forms and consequently demanded of him a certain amount of education, he left the ranks of the people, rose to wealth, to the ranks of the upper middle classes, and figured at court; he and his fellows grouped themselves into special brotherhoods such as that of St. Luke at Rome, and before long formed academies inaccessible to the vulgar. Compare the life of Raphael with that of Giotto. In these days, the craftsman remained a working man, lost in the crowd, watching from afar and from his lowly station his successful comrade, who no longer recognized the poor relation he had left behind. Separations of this kind abound in almost every direction. In the Middle Ages grocers and apothecaries, barbers and surgeons, were classed together. But in the sixteenth century the apothecary, on his admission to mastership, had to reply in Latin, and henceforth he no longer considered the spice merchant his equal. So in France, from the year 1514, the bond between the two professions was broken. The historian can easily prove that this separation of art and craft was often harmful to both; that art, isolated from the warm heart of the people, became conventional, cold, stiff, and artificial; that craft, relegated to a lower position, no longer sought for beauty, and was condemned to express itself in inferior, routine work; but, taking the guilds alone, this separation certainly weakened the mediaeval system. Deprived of members whose gifts were their glory, they lost in power as in prestige. In spite of all this, and although the Renaissance is from some points of view a retrogression towards social conditions which had long disappeared, it was more than this; it was the awakening of the spirit of initiative; it was a forward impulse, a bold step in advance. It was not limited to a mere renewal of relations with classical antiquity; it stimulated inventive effort, and taught men to think for themselves once more, to open their eyes and to observe. It thus gave a strong impetus to science. The age is rich in many-sided geniuses and seekers after truth, who widened the field of human knowledge and power in every direction. It saw the birth of those universalists, Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo, who may be likened to trees, which, by the mysterious process of grafting, bear twenty different kinds of fruit. In short, the Renaissance was a setting free of intelligence, a breaking forth of truths, which, thanks to printing, spread all over the world and became a lasting possession. It is true, indeed, that mankind, like the Wandering Jew, is always moving forward, and never comes completely to a standstill. Man moves ceaselessly because he is alive. But after the great creative movement which is the glory of modern times, his progress is more apparent, surer, and more rapid. From this time must be dated a permanent alliance between science and industry, exemplified in that heroic potter, Bernard Palissy, who spent his life and fortune in rediscovering the secret of certain enamelled pottery. The pity is that this alliance, so fruitful in new methods, in the exploitation of new materials and new products, was formed at the expense of the guilds; for the innovations which it rendered necessary were the death of their rules governing manufacture. Everything contributed, as we can see, to the break-up of the organization of labour which they embodied. The same may be said of the Reformation, the religious renaissance, which was both a development of and a reaction from its fellow. It could hardly be expected that a revolution which rent Western Christianity asunder should spare the unity of the craft guilds. True, it did not act in the same way: by making the reading of the Bible obligatory it encouraged the education of the people, and in this way it raised the craftsman. It found, and not without reason, its first adherents among workmen,--Saxon miners, carders from the town of Meaux; it turned towards democracy, towards theories of equality. Those who carried it to extremes, like the Anabaptists of Münster, pictured a government in which all the guilds, great and small, should be made equal; their ideal was to turn all organized crafts, superior and inferior, into a sort of public service; to establish a kind of Biblical communism. Their leader and prophet was John of Leyden, an aged working tailor.[114] If this was only a passing birth-throe of Protestantism at least the guilds took a large share in the great movements which shook Holland and England. It really seems that the Reformation brought a renewal of vigour and activity to those states in which it triumphed. But in many countries the fight between the two faiths was so fierce that many cities were devastated and ruined by it. In Germany, after the Thirty Years' War, Magdeburg, Wurtzburg, Heidelberg, Spire, and Mannheim were simply heaps of ruins, almost deserted. The Teutonic Hanse which had been so powerful was a wreck; the Protestant and Catholic towns had broken the union in which their strength lay. In a hundred places, since it was admitted that the religion of the prince was law for his subjects (_cujus regio, hujus religio_) whole bodies of people and industries moved away; workmen and masters went in search of refuge among their co-religionists. The guild system was profoundly disturbed by this; the new-comers, when they were too numerous, were not always very warmly welcomed by their brothers in God, and even when they were received, they practically forced their way into a closed system which they strained to breaking. In places where the population remained divided between the two creeds, or where, more from indifference to, than respect for, the beliefs of others, they made a lame attempt at tolerance, it was extremely difficult to get men of the two sects to live together in the same body. Just as the Jews had been excluded from the guilds in the Middle Ages, so now the Protestants were kept out. In France, from the time of Richelieu, fifty years before the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, the professions of a doctor, apothecary, grocer, and many others were forbidden to them.[115] Then came the great exodus of 1685, which scattered the French Huguenots over every place in Europe where they had friends, and planted colonies of refugees in Switzerland, England, Holland, Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden. "They carried commerce away with them," says Jurieu, one of their pastors; and _commerce_ in the language of those days included what we call industry. The fact is that they naturalized abroad many manufactures which had hitherto been unknown. England alone learnt from them the arts of silk-making, Gobelins tapestry-making, and sail-making. What then became of the guilds which remained in France, of the monopoly at which they aimed, and of the secrecy which was one of their methods of securing it? It was a terrible blow for them when, as at Abbeville, 80 families out of 160 left the country, or 1600 out of 2200, as happened at the election of Amiens.[116] How, thus mutilated, could they stand against the foreign competition of which their own members had become the most formidable allies? 3. _The change in political conditions._--Changes in political conditions affected the guilds even more than intellectual and religious changes. Europe, in spite of waves of revolt, passed through a period in which great powers prevailed. The State, which was becoming centralized, increased its prerogatives and complacently interfered in economic matters. The motives which determined its intervention were sometimes a purely _political_ interest, sometimes a _fiscal_ interest, sometimes a _public_ or _national_ interest. (_a_) The political interest of Sovereigns is to subdue rival powers within their territories. For this reason they first attacked the liberties of any cities where the spirit was bad, that is to say, as a King of Prussia said later, _frondeur_, intractable, or restless. In Spain their _fueros_ were taken from them; in France, town liberties decreased, till they were almost entirely destroyed by Richelieu and Louis XIV. In Germany, the number of free Hanseatic cities dropped from eighty to three. The Italian republics fell one by one under the domination of a monarch, and, though Venice survived, she had concentrated her government in the hands of three State judges, magistrates as autocratic and irresponsible as kings. In the Low Countries, Bruges lost all jurisdiction over her suburbs in 1435, and Ghent lost the power in 1451, and also the right to nominate the aldermen. Liége, like her neighbour Dinant, was destroyed, crushed, reduced to nothing. In the following century Antwerp, suspected of sympathy with the Reformation, lived under the Spanish yoke, pillaged and down-trodden. Municipal and guild life were so closely united that it was impossible to strike at one without injuring the other. In the city of Liége, the thirty-two crafts and the _perron_ which was the emblem of its independence were taken away at a single stroke. At Florence, no sooner had the Medicis become Dukes of Tuscany than the Constitution of the _Arte_ was altered in such a way as to make it impossible for them to exercise any influence in the direction of public affairs. In England,[117] the king and Parliament agreed in forbidding the guilds to make ordinances without the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Crown Treasurer, or to fix the price of goods, and aimed at supplanting them in supervising the quality of products. The Statute of Labourers in 1563, in the reign of Elizabeth, gave to justices of the peace, that is to say, to magistrates who were not craftsmen, the right of fixing workmen's wages. In France, Philip the Beautiful ill-treated the confraternities and found no difficulty in modifying the rules of the Parisian industries.[118] The Crown, however, differentiated between the guilds: at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the doctor of theology, John Gerson, lays down in the clearest terms the alliance between the Crown and the rich burgesses: "All the harm," he says, "arises from the fact that the king and the good burgesses have been put under servitude by the outrageous enterprise of men of small standing.... God has permitted it in order that we may know the difference between royal domination and that of any people whatever: for that which is royal is general and should be gentle: that of the low-born is a tyrannical domination which destroys itself."[119] In accordance with this principle, royalty was tactful in its dealings with the great guilds, and willingly bestowed on them honorary privileges. Francis I. not only confirmed to the Six Guilds, which formed the merchant aristocracy of the capital, the precedence which they enjoyed at solemn functions, but of the thirty-six wardens of these Greater Guilds as they would have been called at Florence, he formed a High Council of Parisian industry. Even with the others, the Crown proceeded gently at first. It desired to absorb, and not to suppress. It realized what an advantage it would be if these independent institutions, still under the influence of their feudal origin, could be transformed into State institutions, protected and obedient! It was with this end in view that Henry III. decided that their organization, hitherto local, should be extended throughout the whole kingdom, to the scattered villages as well as to the towns. The city (urban) guild was therefore converted into a national organism, and the guild was made compulsory at the same time that it was put under tutelage. This unification, which placed it under the direct supervision of royal agents, was, however, only to operate on paper. It encountered the displeasure of the craft guilds; worse still, it was in opposition to the first principle of the whole system. The ordinance allowed the inhabitants of the suburbs to follow their craft within the cities, and the inhabitants of one town to settle in any other, with the exception of Paris[120]--a last concession to an ancient tradition. It was something quite new for craftsmen to possess equal rights and for crafts to be organized like those of Paris throughout the whole of France; but it was only in accordance with the general trend of French civilization. This sudden enlargement of the guild system, however, was practically its death, and there were many who from this time did not hesitate to say so openly.[121] The edict, renewed by Henry IV. in 1597, was next extended to include merchants, and was completed by the abolition of the _king of the mercers_, who still exercised a certain amount of authority in the fairs; for even so trumpery a king made the king at the Louvre uneasy! The Crown was the less willing to give up its ideas of realizing unity in the industrial domain in that it mistrusted the small crafts; it bore in mind the fact that, formerly, when the Holy League tried to create a sort of intermunicipal federal Republic, the masters' and journeymen's confraternities eagerly joined in the attempt. It did not forget that, in the time of the Fronde, the guilds were credited with having had the repeal of the privileges granted to the great merchants and the prohibition to import silks into the kingdom inserted in the peace treaty forced on the Regent by his rebel subjects. Little by little it reduced the authority remaining to them. It was tenacious in carrying into every sphere the form of organization at which it aimed. It made further attempts in 1673 and 1691; between the first date and the second the guilds officially constituted and classified rose from 60 to 127, and what clearly shows the meaning of this administrative classification is the fact that it nominated, or threatened the nomination of, the headmen by officers of the Crown. A very inadequate idea, however, of the encroachments of royal authority will be gained if the solemn publication of edicts alone is remembered, and the daily, incessant attempt of its agents to restrict the jurisdiction both of local and of guild authorities is ignored. No doubt a good deal of the economic jurisdiction formerly exercised by the town magistrates still existed. Contraventions of regulations, and struggles between producers and consumers, between employers and employees, and between allied and rival crafts, were under municipal jurisdiction.[122] The right of pronouncing judgment on such points as falsifications, the observance of religious festivals, the price of merchandise and the rate of wages, was still left to the municipality by Colbert. Naturally its powers were greater or less according as the town was royal, seigneurial, or communal. But it was not unusual for it to retain the right of collecting taxes, and of nominating supervisors who controlled crafts; for it to create masterships and organize charity workshops which changed into regular factories; or to withhold the monopoly granted to the guilds. It is none the less true that communal jurisdiction grew less year by year. Attention must be drawn to the fact that the craft guilds sometimes passed it by and of their own accord applied to the central authority for intervention. Thus, questions of provisions, public health, monopoly, speculation, regulations for the prevention of fraud, and the protection of apprentices, one by one came under the jurisdiction of _parlements_, ministers, governors, and of their delegates. Colbert, in his general rules for manufacture which date from 1666 to 1669, codifies, in the name of the State, the minute directions contained in the guild statutes on questions of apportionment, bad work, etc. At the end of the seventeenth century, then, the guilds still existed, but had been subjugated and deprived of their principal rights. Behind the solid front which they still presented were ruin, desolation, and decay. (_b_) It is probable that the Crown in France allowed them to live and decline in peace because they supplied an easy method of directing commerce and industry; but it was also because they were fruitful sources of production. The Crown often disguised with fine phrases the _fiscal interest_ which inspired it; it is, however, easily discoverable in three different forms. Sometimes it confirmed, strengthened, and extended the monopoly of the guilds and made them pay for the favour; sometimes it sold to outsiders privileges which encroached on and compromised this monopoly; and finally, it sometimes threatened them, and only withdrew threats in return for ready money. The great ordinance of 1581 and the special edict of taxes of 1673 may be taken as examples of the first method. In 1581 the strengthening of the organization of the guilds by purging them of certain abuses and irregularities was the pretext cited; the king spoke and appeared to act as the great national justice of the peace; but the real object of the measure, which extended to the kingdom a system hitherto localized, may well have been the filling of the royal treasury into which fell a part of the matriculation fees paid by each new master. In 1673 trouble was no longer taken to find a pretext; the work was done by a financial edict, that is, by the establishment of a method of taxation. The guilds themselves encouraged these calls on their funds; indeed, in 1636, when France was in danger of invasion, they offered their wealth and their services for the defence of the kingdom. The second means, which consisted in creating privileges for which the guilds paid and by which the king's coffers were filled, was invented by Louis XI., who in 1461 instituted _letters of mastership_, which exempted those who bought them from the examination of capability and the expenses which the ordinary reception entailed. Soon the kings introduced irregularities into the masters' guilds on every possible occasion.[123] The blow could not miss its aim. If none were found to take these licences, the guilds hastened to buy them up to prevent the intrusion of new competitors. In vain they attempted to protest; the procedure became habitual and legal. The great ordinance of 1581 stated that the king would dispose of three letters of mastership in every town and every craft. This led to a third procedure. The guild was vulnerable at many points, in its revenues and in its autonomy, as well as in its monopolies. If a pretence was made of attacking its weak spots, it would pay in order to be spared. It clung to the right of electing its own officers. Now Francis I. had already introduced among them royal officers who had naturally bought their office. At the end of the seventeenth century the Crown, being short of money, renewed this expedient on a large scale. In 1691 it declared its intention of replacing all the officers and syndics by agents of its own nomination, and the guilds had immediately to raise three hundred thousand pounds to avert the calamity which threatened them. It was thus that the Jews and Lombards had formerly liberated themselves. In 1694 the king took it into his head to institute auditors and examiners to control their accounts; another sacrifice of four hundred thousand pounds was demanded before these were removed. In this way from year to year posts were created and bought up. In 1711 the pressure brought to bear was even stronger and more direct; the admission of new masters was forbidden, and they were created by royal authority without the assent of the guilds. The guilds gave everything that was demanded of them, everything at least that was in their power; they borrowed, got into debt, became involved and were on the verge of bankruptcy; just as the communes had formerly succumbed under the weight of the too heavy burdens imposed on them by the Crown. (_c_) The Crown was not always actuated by such personally interested motives; it sometimes happened that it was moved by nobler inspirations in its relations with the craft guilds, and studied the general interest when it restricted their exorbitant privileges. In order to develop public assistance with little expense, those who participated in works of charity were recompensed by being exonerated from corporate obligations. In 1553 an edict conferred mastership on all craftsmen who consented to teach their craft to the children of the Hospital of the Trinity, and the hospital itself thus became a factory working against the guilds. Several hospitals were in a similar position. In the seventeenth century, however, it was with a different aim,--the development of national industry,--that the Crown deliberately created factories not under guild rule. Henry IV., in order to naturalize in France the silk industry, which diverted from the kingdom seven to eight thousand gold crowns annually, planted mulberry trees, and brought in Italian workmen on whom he lavished money and monopolies, and who were exempted from taxation, in order that they might teach the art of weaving these valuable stuffs. In 1607 he installed, in the great gallery at the Louvre, a colony of foreign craftsmen--a sort of industrial school of art where apprentices were trained--who might establish themselves anywhere in the kingdom without waiting to become masters. He thus launched the industry of luxury and attempted to organize, over the heads of the guilds, that which was most distasteful to them,--innovation, while their domain was still further restricted by the special conditions granted to merchants who followed the Court and became tradesmen by appointment to princes and to the most brilliant of the nobility. Colbert built up into a system what Henry IV. had practised, and great factories rose at his command. These were of two kinds: first, _royal factories_ properly so called--State establishments, in which all expenses were borne by the Treasury; the director was nominated by the king, and the privilege which they enjoyed was in perpetuity (the soap works of Beauvais, Aubusson, the naval workshops in the ports, etc.). Others, also called "royal factories," were, in spite of this ambiguous name, private enterprises; they enjoyed important privileges, such as exemption from taxes, subsidies, or titles of nobility for those who directed them; but they were only temporary, and the company, with a private individual at its head, was worked at its own risk and peril. I will only quote one example, the cloth factory of the Van Robais at Abbeville. No matter what their methods of administration, for the guilds they were so many formidable competitors, and it is easy to imagine the futile complaints and remonstrances of which they were the object. (_d_) We have described in detail the policy of the French Crown with regard to the craft guilds, partly because this book is written in France and for the French, but also because it developed with remarkable logic and continuity. In neighbouring countries, however, what happened was, if not exactly the same, at least similar. In England, when we study the encroachments of the central authority, we find that, in spite of the Commons, who represented the commercial class, the kings authorized foreign merchants to reside in the ports where originally they had to sell their cargoes wholesale within forty days, and that in 1335 they were allowed to trade freely throughout the kingdom.[124] We find three Parliaments in turn making laws to impose certain industrial methods on the whole country, and many acts of legislation are to be found regulating "the size and weight of pieces of stuff, the methods of stretching and dyeing, the preparation of wool by means of certain ingredients the use of which was allowed or forbidden, the finishing of cloth, folding and packing, etc."[125] A whole army of officials was needed to see that these complicated laws,--which from being guild laws became national laws,--were not broken. In 1563 the Statute of Labourers codified in this way, in the name of the State, rules for apprenticeship and for other matters which had hitherto been in force among the craft guilds. At Florence, from the year 1580, under the rule of the Medicis, who had become sovereign princes, the statutes of the Guild of Silk or Por Santa Maria,--hitherto the most important Guild,--were reconstituted, and governors, whose jurisdiction extended over the whole of Tuscany, were set up beside the consuls. These were still elected by the masters, but if one of the chosen magistrates were not approved (_la grazia_) by His Serene Highness, that was enough to disqualify him. From this time no subject could be brought up for debate in the assemblies of the _Arte_ unless it had first been submitted to the said Serene Highness, who could either allow it to be introduced or could stop its passage.[126] In 1583 His Highness took upon himself to unite two ancient guilds (Fabbricanti and Por San Piero); he had the seal of the new guild remade, and the statutes, which even fixed the salaries of the officers, reconstituted. By degrees the consuls ceased to be chosen from _Arti_ over which they nominally presided; they became personages who assumed honorary titles, and the actual power was in the hands of "deputies" (to-day we should call them delegates) nominated by the prince;[127] the organization of crafts became purely bureaucratic and the ancient _Calimala_ a mere charitable body. Wherever tribunals and chambers of commerce or technical schools were formed, wherever foreign craftsmen were called in and welcomed, there it may be said that the doom of the guilds was sealed. CHAPTER VII INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY The guilds could only have been successful in their resistance to all these menaces if they had possessed plasticity, flexibility in adapting themselves, a desire for reformation, an eagerness to fall in with every new demand society might make, a spirit of continuity, unity, and justice,--in fact, such a combination of strong and great qualities as is rarely to be met with in the history of human institutions. We shall find that, instead of this, they allowed their inherent faults and failings, which we have already discovered in germ, to develop at the very height of their prosperity. It will be seen at a glance that three things grew up in their midst: _a lack of solidarity between those who occupied the various degrees of the hierarchy_; _divisions between the different craft guilds_; _and a narrow traditionalism which could not even ensure the good quality of products_. Let us trace the disastrous effects of these three dissolvent forces. I. _Division in the heart of the Guilds._--(_a_) In principle there existed in the guild a hierarchy which justified its own existence. It was founded on age and election. On the one hand, an inequality which time corrected every day and finally did away with. Adolescence was the age of apprenticeship; early manhood that of the journeyman; maturity that of mastership; and a man's earnings, independence, and power increased not only with the years, but according to his talent and capabilities. On the other hand--and here we have a still more provisional inequality--the elected officers received for a few months only, a power which they exercised under strict control, and then went modestly back into the ranks. This order of things, however, was soon upset by the growing domination of hereditary power and of wealth. The masters, anxious to secure a life of ease for their posterity, and filled with a sort of dynastic ambition, made the acquisition of mastership more and more difficult for those who had not the good luck to be their sons, nephews, or sons-in-law. Even in the Middle Ages they had given way to the influence of domestic affection, but, as modern times draw nearer, the circle of the privileged narrows. Those who were connected with the family by any tie received all the favours; periods of apprenticeship, rights and expenses of admissions, were reduced or done away with; technical proofs of ability degenerated into a simple formality which could be passed through at home. For every one else, old obligations were not only maintained but added to; expenses increased to such an extent that in France the Crown intervened more than once to prevent their rise;[128] crying injustices served as a pretext for the great ordinance of 1581; candidates were taken advantage of and made to give banquets, even when they had been refused admission; the tests became more and more complicated, cost more and more, and were often conducted with revolting partiality. As if this were not enough, the guilds arbitrarily reduced the number of masterships, some of them refusing to admit new masters for ten years, while others definitely decided only to admit the sons of masters. From the sixteenth century, the butchers in Paris, Poitiers, and other places quite frankly decreed that mastership was to be hereditary among them. The same narrowing down applied to the attainment of magistracies. The duties of wardens and officers tended to be perpetuated in certain families: the electoral lists were weeded out in such a way as only to include the oldest masters. Sometimes even the officers nominated their successors, and this gave them the opportunity of forming a permanent oligarchy which divided the honours among its members. One step more in the same direction would have been enough to make them in turn hereditary. The influence of money was combined with this family favouritism, counteracting it at times, but usually backing it up. None could be master unless he were rich, for the cost of admission, in the eighteenth century in France, rose to 1500 and 1800 francs. At the end of the seventeenth century, in the same country, the guilds which were in debt themselves sold letters of mastership to the highest bidder or contracted debts with their richest members, and even put up the wardenships for sale. (_b_) These measures, which, through the fault of the guilds themselves, falsified the normal action of their statutes, were accompanied by an increasingly strict subjection of inferiors to superiors. The journeymen were treated with growing severity. Not only were they forbidden as heretofore to set up for themselves, but their condition was certainly worse in the seventeenth century than in the thirteenth. The working day, which averaged twelve hours, was prolonged to sixteen during the lighter months. Holidays, reduced in number by the Reformation, were in turn reduced by the Catholics. La Fontaine's cobbler, who worked on his own account, complained of M. le curé who De quelque nouveau saint charge toujours son prône. But the journeyman, who had no reason to dislike so many holidays; was not pleased to find their number decreasing in the following century. The increase in the nominal wages was not enough to compensate for the rise in the price of provisions and rent; the value of gold and silver had gone down considerably since the influx of precious metals which the New World had poured over Europe. More than this, at the very time when cheap labour was increasing through the employment of peasants, women, and children, the jealous persistence of the masters in barring entrance into the higher grade to those among their workmen who possessed the necessary capabilities made the price of hired labour fall still lower. _Compagnonnage_ acted as a check on these causes of depression, but it was quite insufficient, and was hampered in many ways. This ever-deepening separation between masters and journeymen was followed by separations between the masters themselves. In certain guilds they became divided into the _young_, _modern_, _old_, and _bachelor masters_--these last ex-officers,--each section possessing different rights. The officers abused their rights to visit, search, seize, and fine; the regulations were so difficult to carry out literally, that it was always possible to discover some weak point in them by means of which a rival could be annoyed. Money could also be made at his expense if the delinquent would and could pay to be let off. The officers thus created a monopoly within a monopoly--and, if we may judge by the enquiries and lawsuits to which it gave rise,[129] an extremely profitable monopoly. In 1684 the officers of the cloth-of-gold and silk workers were convicted of having taken £72 for authorizing a breach of the rules. It may well be imagined what a source of angry discontent were those breaches of trust, and it will be seen to what an extent the guild system had been discredited by the very persons whose mission it was to see it loyally carried out. 2. _Division between the craft guilds._--One is sometimes tempted to say that the guild system had no worse enemies than the guilds themselves, so much bitterness did they display in their quarrels and recriminations. Town fought with town, and in spite of the efforts made by the central authority to unite them they had no idea whatever of agreeing or combining among themselves. Every one has heard of the interminable disputes which dragged on between the Hanses of Paris and Rouen concerning the navigation of the Seine.[130] Each had, within its own region, the monopoly of the transport industry, one from the bridge of Charenton to that of Nantes, the other, from the latter point to the mouth of the river. The fight between the two powerful companies lasted several hundred years, till at last the day arrived when the two monopolies were impartially suppressed by the Crown. In each town, as the line drawn between two crafts was often vague and purely conventional, the guilds were more rivals than allied neighbours. Lawsuits resulted which, on account of their length and the expense of legal proceedings, were absolutely ruinous to both parties. They are mentioned at Poitiers, which was at law for a century.[131] At Paris, the lawsuit between the wine-merchants and the Six Guilds lasted a hundred and fifty years. The founders within a few years[132] entered into actions "against the edge-tool makers to prevent them from making fire-dogs; against the needle and awl makers to contest their right of selling thimbles other than those of Paris; against the gilders to claim from them the exclusive right of founding, working up, and repairing copper goods; against the makers of weights and measures to claim equal rights with them in selling half-pound weights;[133] against the pin-makers, makers of kitchen utensils, button-makers, and sculptors." In England, the bow-makers might not make arrows, and the right was reserved to a special class of arrow-makers. Legal expenses for the Paris guilds alone amounted to nearly a thousand a year towards the middle of the eighteenth century. From a sense of _esprit de corps_, however, they persisted in wasting their substance, to the benefit of the legal profession which made enormous profits, and they defied royal edicts which attempted to restrain their zeal in litigation. They were far from putting into practice the motto of the Six Guilds, _Vincit concordia fratrum_; far from realizing that solidarity which was the very object of the guild system. 3. _Vexatious regulations._--The guilds were not only jealous of each other but also devoid of economic initiative. This was on account of the privileges they held. As each one possessed a monopoly, they were inclined to go to sleep in the little closed domain which belonged to them. How could they be expected to go in search of improvements, when they were so slow in adopting them? St. Routine was their common patron. The application of a new method might promise larger profits or lessen the cost of production; but it was certain to entail expense, risk, and effort. It seemed to them easier to shut themselves behind a wall like the Great Wall of China. Every innovation encountered their determined opposition. A few instances chosen from among a thousand will suffice to prove their obstinate conservatism. I will take one from Great Britain.[134] "In 1765, on the eve of those great inventions which were entirely to transform working appliances, it was forbidden, under penalty of a fine, to substitute metal carders for the teazles still in use in the greater number of the branches of the textile industry." I will take two other instances from France; at Poitiers[135] the cap-makers greeted the advent of loom-made stockings with marked disfavour, and at Paris the disputes between Erard, the maker of clavecins, and the musical-instrument makers are well known. This exaggerated respect for tradition was also the result of the change which had taken place in the internal government of the guilds. Their direction had passed into the hands of the old members, who, no doubt, possessed the experience of age, but had also that fear of everything new so common to those of advanced years. Like so many other closed and static bodies, the guilds were faithful to the past, hostile to the future, and were to find themselves without resources and defenceless when they had to meet the cold but tonic breath of that competition, which is no doubt cruel for the weak and death to ill-timed enterprise, but which is also stimulating to human activity and an encouragement to the progress of industrial and commercial technique. Would that their tyrannical regulations had succeeded in guaranteeing honest exchange and good quality of production! In this respect, however, they no longer exercised the least control. Antoine de Montchrestien in the time of Henry IV. denounced the deceptions of commerce and industry.[136] In England from the fourteenth century damp spices, second-hand furs, and sheep-skins passing as buck-skin were on the market, and in the woollen trade the principle arose that it is for the buyer to take his own precautions.[137] Henceforth the statutes were broken by the very people who had made them and sworn to keep them. Men were found practising several professions, cornering raw materials and carrying on clandestine sales below the fixed tariffs; illegal practices for securing clients or for enticing away a colleague's workmen became common. Over and over again the officers and wardens of a craft had to inflict severe punishments, but in many cases they were themselves guilty supervisors in need of supervision! Their frauds often merited the condemnation they received. Thus, through their own failings, quite as much as through the action of unfavourable surroundings, the guild system dwindled away, till, near the end of the seventeenth century, it was little more than one of those worn-out institutions which live on from force of habit; institutions which one hesitates to help in destroying, because it is difficult to know how they can be replaced, but so weak and tottering that they are at the mercy of the first shock. The eighteenth century was to give them their _coup de grâce_. CHAPTER VIII THE DEATH OF THE GUILDS 1. _Their suppression in European Countries._--(_a_) The eighteenth century, the first half of which was an age of analysis, criticism, and social satire, was in its second half a time of innovation and invention, bold in its theory and practice, eager to correct and reform social organization in accordance with an ideal of justice born of reason. It was therefore both destructive and constructive. In its first years it saw the beginning of a new economic phase. A revolution, as serious as that caused by the discovery of America and the sea-route to the Indies, began to operate in the world. As usual, it was commerce which, by its vast extension, broke the bounds within which society had been circumscribed. It was conscious of its importance and dignity. Voltaire sang the praises of the merchant "who enriched the country, and from his office gives orders to Surata and Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the world." Sedaine, in the _Philosophe sans le Savoir_, calls the merchant "the man of universe," and compares the traders to so many "threads of silk which bind together the nations and lead them back to peace by the needs of commerce." In 1760 Turgot proposed to ennoble the great traders, and great lords were not above going into business. The Duke of La Force was a wholesale grocer. On the sea there was the continual coming and going of vessels which ploughed the oceans, ransacked the archipelagoes, and opened up yet another continent, Australia, to European conquest: on land, improved means of communication and transport trebled the passenger and goods traffic. England at that time had her "canal fever": in France the wonderful network of roads was the admiration of all strangers. In all civilized nations the enterprise of Banks, Bourses, great Companies and Chambers of Commerce resulted in such a circulation of money and boldness of enterprise as had never been seen. All this necessitated an intensity of production hitherto unknown, and the invention of new methods. It was now necessary to create and supply the demands of consumers who were no longer confined to the limits of a State, however large it might be, but scattered over the face of the globe; who no longer numbered a few hundred thousands, but amounted to dozens or hundreds of millions. In short, markets began to expand to the very ends of the earth, and the period of international economics set in. In this commercial expansion, European capitalism played the chief part, and, in Europe, England held the chief place. Mistress of the sea and of a colonial empire of which India and North America were the most valuable possessions, she became enormously rich; France and Holland followed, but some distance behind. We already know the natural tendencies of "great" commerce: it dislikes all barriers and hindrances to its activity. It always had been and was once more inimical to the system of the closed market so dear to the small craft guilds. Its ideal was free trade. So true is this that in France, in 1654,[138] the Six Guilds strongly protested against the taxes which struck at the importation of goods made outside the kingdom; moreover the liberal movement against the guilds emanated from the merchant aristocracy, and Gournay, its exponent in France, held the title of director of commerce. "Great" industry developed with unprecedented strength under the same impetus. The aged tree, in which the sap was still rising, suddenly put forth vigorous branches. In England, engineering and coal-mining are prime necessaries to its life, and the cotton industry imported from the Indies attracted many thousands of workers in a few years and kept them permanently employed. This industrial revolution took place both in those vast enterprises in which the ancient hierarchy of apprentices, journeymen, and masters became meaningless--since a handful of masters possessed the capital and appliances, while the mass of workmen possessed nothing:--and in those new enterprises which, like the manufacture of cotton fabrics, owed to their recent origin the fact that they had never been under the old guild system. The guilds themselves could not but suffer from the extraordinary growth which took place beside but outside their system. Three forces in especial worked against them--three forces which led to invention, to the transformation of technique, and so to the overthrow of traditional rules: these were, the desire to save labour--a desire which dominates all human activity,--science, and fashion. (_b_) At first, masters and workmen were agreed on one point--the reduction of effort which was imposed on them, and which meant reduction of expenses for the former, and reduction of labour for the latter. Workmen and workwomen had suffered from the imperfection of the tools they had used, and from the craft which they carried on; for generations they had contracted diseases and infirmities which were a trade-mark; the silk workers of Lyons for instance were recognized by their bent knees. Having seen their parents and grandparents die in hospital, tired and worn out before their time, they eagerly sought for means whereby they could save themselves, their children, and their comrades, from dangerous and exhausting work. They thought out and tried ingenious methods for lightening their tasks. The first inventors of improvements were thus workers, familiar with the machines which were their daily companions. From the time when the cotton industry became mechanical in England we can follow the rivalry--the struggle for speed which for half a century went on between spinning and weaving, each in turn getting ahead of and then being passed by the other;[139] it was a duel between inventors who were simple workmen and happened to be mechanics. In France, Vaucanson and Jacquard did the same thing for silk in Lyons, where labour was less regulated than elsewhere. They were encouraged and led by their masters and sometimes by the State; but they were unfortunate in unexpectedly encountering the hostility of the silk workers whom they thought to help. This was because (and there is nothing which more clearly demonstrates the faults in the organization of labour) the introduction of all new machinery, while it operates in favour of the master by advancing the speed of production, throws on the streets a certain number of workmen who are no longer wanted, and who, while waiting for increased production to give them back their means of livelihood, fall a prey to famine and misery. Montesquieu wrote on this subject:[140] "If an article is of a fairly low price, and one which equally suits him who buys it and the workman who has made it, machines which would simplify its manufacture, that is to say diminish the number of workmen, would be injurious; and if water-mills were not everywhere established, I should not believe them to be as useful as people say, because they throw innumerable hands out of work...." This explains the curious spectacle offered by the world of labour in the eighteenth century; the masters in "great" industry, like the wholesale traders, were the revolutionaries; their workmen, like the guilds, were the reactionaries. (_c_) Science, however, was not long in coming to the rescue of the inventors who had risen from the working class. The scientists, whose function it is to increase human knowledge and the power of men over nature, gave proof in their turn of creative imagination; they captured and tamed hitherto unused or rebel forces: steam, subdued and enslaved, became the magician which began by giving movement to bands, wheels, hands of steel and iron, carriages and boats, and ended by carrying on every sort of craft. It could spin, weave, screw, rivet, plane, full, lift up, saw, cut off, glean, thresh corn, etc. Chemistry and physics were by no means inferior to mechanical science; they composed and decomposed bodies, transformed and melted them one into another, created new ones by bold combinations, produced heat, light, and energy. What weight had the old regulations in view of this transformation of methods and appliances? Who could uphold them? The guilds in defending them were like men with spades who should try to stop a train going at full speed. (_d_) Fashion acts in the same manner, for the word is synonymous with change. It is a power in every country, but particularly where there is smart, worldly society. The guilds learnt this to their cost in a matter which was the talk of the court for years. In France an edict, inspired by them, had prohibited the use of printed cottons which came from India. They might be seized anywhere, even on people who were wearing them. But it was an absurd notion to try to check by force the changes of taste, when women, who love novelty in dress as much as they often do in matters of belief and custom, took it into their heads to wear a material which pleased them! The Marquise of Nesles appeared openly in the gardens of the Tuileries, dressed in Indian cotton. They dared not arrest her! Other Court ladies did as she had done, and, after a long struggle, printed cottons won the day; they were installed at the very gates of Paris, and made the fortune of Oberkampf their manufacturer, and were well known under the name of "toiles de Jouy"! (_e_) While the defences behind which the guilds had taken refuge were thus battered down, a crusade against them was begun by public opinion. Economists and philosophers united in attacking their principles in the name of liberty and equality, two ideas which roused much enthusiasm in the world at that time. The guilds were denounced as opposed to the general interest of producers in that they stood for privilege and exclusiveness and prevented numbers of people, who could neither enter them nor set up beside them, from earning an honest livelihood. They were condemned as being contrary to the general interests of consumers; for, burdened with enormous debts, wasting their money in festivals, feasts, and legal expenses, condemned to laborious methods of manufacture through their inability to improve them, they were yet able by means of their monopolies to keep up prices and to make unduly large profits, without even being capable of satisfying their clients if they expressed the smallest desire to have something out of the ordinary. The physiocrats had another grievance against the guilds: they were opposed to them because they diverted capital from the cultivation of the land, in which, according to them, it would have been used to much greater advantage. By degrees, among the two peoples which led the European thought of the time--Great Britain and France,--these accusations were condensed into a formula which was the death-warrant of the guilds: _Laissez-faire! Laissez-passer!_ At Edinburgh in 1776 Adam Smith's famous work appeared, and was looked on as the Gospel of the new doctrine. In 1775 there appeared in Paris a posthumous work by President Bigot of Sainte-Croix, entitled _An Essay on the Freedom of Commerce and Industry_. 2. It was in England, the country in which regulation was then weakest and where it had not touched great cities like Manchester and Birmingham,[141] where "great" commerce and "great" industry made the strongest and most rapid advances, that these theories most quickly triumphed, born as they were of surrounding realities. But, in accordance with the English custom, there was no violent rupture with the past, no solemn repudiation of theories hitherto followed, no complete and sudden abolition of the guild system. The change in economic organization came by a series of small local and partial measures. The Statute of Labourers had in 1563 unified and codified the rules of the Middle Ages; these were not wholly repealed, but, in 1728,[142] the master hat-makers, dyers, and cotton printers demanded of Parliament (and obtained their demand fifty years later) that they should be exempt from obeying the rules as to the number of apprentices, who might be replaced by men hands. In 1753 the statutes of the stocking-makers were abolished as "injurious and vexatious to the manufacturers" and "hurtful to the trade," as "against all reason and opposed to the liberty of English subjects." In vain the workers sometimes united with the small masters, and sought behind these crumbling shelters protection against the ills inflicted on them by the development of "great" industry and of machinery; in vain they hoped for the application of the law which entrusted to the justices of the peace the duty of fixing their wages; in vain they made enormous sacrifices to get their rights established in legal documents.[143] From the year 1756 the weavers of napery were abandoned to their fate by the House of Commons. After a period of hesitation and self-contradiction, "governmental nihilism" became under similar circumstances the policy of Parliament. But it was still more than half a century before the statute of 1563, which had survived from a former age, disappeared under the blows struck at it by the "great" tradesmen; it was suspended, then abolished for the wool industry in 1809, and finally done away with in 1814. Almost at the same date, in 1813, the right of fixing the wages of labour was taken away from justices of the peace. Of the economic legislation of the Middle Ages, there still remained the laws which prohibited workers from forming any sort of combination, and decided that in every dispute the word of a master should be accepted before that of a servant; but of the guilds nothing was left but atrophied and lifeless bodies, which were little more than memories, or names often given to what were far from being professional associations. In France, where there is a love of unity, logic, and harmony, things developed differently. Guild monopolies continued, it is true, by means of bribery; but their domain was narrowed by the creation of the Sèvres factory and the Royal Printing Press, and by the working of many mines at the expense of the State. In 1762 all industrial privileges were limited to fifteen years, a serious menace directed against privileges which had been held to be perpetual. In the same year the freedom of rural industry was proclaimed; in 1763 that of the leather trade, and in 1765 that of wholesale trade for commons as well as nobles. The corn trade, in spite of the fear of monopoly, profited by a similar liberty for a short time (1763). Simultaneously, the guilds were stripped, and their doors thrown open. In 1755 it was decided that foreign journeymen might be hired in every town in the kingdom except Paris, Lyons, Lille, and Rouen. In 1767 the doors were opened wide to foreigners and Jews--competitors as much hated as feared. In the same year the invasion was completed by a large number of letters of mastership which gave every craft in Paris twelve new masters, and every craft in the provinces from eight to two, while the purchase of these licences by the Six Guilds was not authorized even if a larger sum were offered. Monopoly was therefore extended, not destroyed. But such a solution was merely a compromise, and things developed in the direction of suppression pure and simple. It was Turgot, as every one knows, who took upon himself to do away with wardenships and masterships. A disciple of both Gournay and Quesnay, he condemned them in the name of industry and agriculture, and in the interests of consumers and producers. The famous edict of March 1776, which he signed as minister of Louis XVI., declared that they were abolished throughout the kingdom with four exceptions: the _wig-makers_, who held posts sold to them by the State itself; the _printer-booksellers_, the supervision of whom was kept by the authorities for political reasons; the _goldsmiths_, because the sale of precious metals was under special legislation; and the _apothecaries_, as the control of their trade was considered necessary for public health. The property of the guilds was sold and the proceeds, together with the funds in hand, were used for wiping out their debts. The confraternities were done away with at the same time, and their wealth handed over to the bishops. All associations of masters or journeymen were prohibited. Such an edict, completely revolutionizing the organization of labour, could not pass without obstruction and resistance. The Parlement, as defender of the ancient traditions of France, only registered it under protest and at the express wish of the king; the Six Guilds were defended by the writings of a man whose name will for ever have a sinister sound--Dr. Guillotin. The unrest was intense; the freedom of the corn trade served as a pretext, if not a real cause, for riots known as the "flour war." Turgot had made a St. Bartholomew of privileges, therefore all the privileged combined against him. The king said to him, "Only you and I love the people, M. Turgot." Some days after, the king dismissed him, and, on August 28, the edict was repealed. Wardens and masters were reestablished, first in Paris and a little later in the other towns. But so decayed a system as this could not suffer even the most passing effacement with impunity. At first it did not reappear in its entirety and the number of free crafts remained considerably larger. It could only live at all by reforming itself, so the rights and expenses of reception were reduced by half, two-thirds, or sometimes even three-quarters; kindred crafts were fused and the practice of several crafts at once authorized; women were admitted to mastership in men's communities and _vice versa_; foreigners, too, could now aspire to mastership. But the original narrowness persisted; a new inequality sprang up between _masters_ and _fellows_; the rules for maintaining internal discipline and the domestic authority of the employers over the workmen became, not less, but more rigorous; the journeymen were still forbidden to have common funds, to assemble without permission, or to be together more than three at a time; to carry arms, to concern themselves with the hiring of labour, to leave work unfinished, or to present themselves without a letter of discharge from their last master. A strike could always be punished as a desertion of work. A maximum wage was always fixed as well as the time allowed for the mid-day meal. The regulations for manufacture, however, became less strict; under Necker's ministry, the manufacturer might choose whether he would conform to them or not. If he did, he had the right to have his goods stamped, and stuffs so made were distinguished by a special selvage; other products received the "stamp of freedom." The commercial treaty, concluded with England in 1786, severely tried the system already so weakened. The guilds suddenly found themselves exposed at many points to foreign competition, and complained bitterly when the convocation of the States-General gave France the opportunity of expressing her opinion, along with other more important subjects, on the existence of the guilds. The debate reports of 1789 betray a certain indecision on the matter; the two privileged classes--nobles and clergy--when they were not indifferent to the whole question, leant towards suppression; the Third Estate--for the election of which the small crafts had not received equal treatment with "great" commerce, the liberal professions, and the rich bourgeoisie--were divided almost equally, one half favouring the abolition, the other the reformation, which implied the retention, of the system. Apparently at first the latter carried the day. On the night of August 4, 1789, the reformation of masterships was one of the numerous motions voted with enthusiasm. But less than two years later, in March 1791, in a bill for the taxation of licences, the mover, Dallard, had the following article (number 8), inserted: From April 1 next, inclusive, every citizen will be free to carry on whatever profession or trade seems good to him, after having procured and paid for a licence. This meant the end of masterships and wardenships. An indemnity was to be allowed the masters for the money they had spent, and to the wigmakers and to the barbers for the posts they had bought. With no fuss, almost without discussion, and without finding any one to defend them in the Assembly, the guilds ceased to be after an existence which had lasted for many centuries. In June of the same year, a new law was destined to stifle any inclination they might have shown to come to life again. The pretext given for condemning them to their fate was the formation of societies of workers with the object of raising wages. Chapelier, affirming that it was the duty of the State to assist the infirm and find work for those who needed it in order to live, protested against every association which claimed to substitute a collective contract for the individual contract between master and workers.[144] Article 2 of the law in question reads: Citizens of the same condition or profession, middlemen, those who keep open shops, workmen and _compagnons_ of whatever art, may not, when they find themselves together, nominate president, secretary or syndic, keep registers, pass resolutions, make regulations for what they claim to be their common interests, or bind themselves by agreements leading to the concerted refusal or to the granting only at a certain price, of the help of their industry and labours. According to a phrase taken from a petition addressed by the master-builders to the municipality of Paris, the above resolutions and agreements, if they ever happened to be made, had to be declared "unconstitutional, opposed to liberty and to the declaration of the rights of Man"; the authors, instigators, and signatories of these acts or writings were to pay a fine of £500 each, and to be deprived for a year of their rights of active citizenship. Severer penalties were provided in all cases of threat and unlawful assembly. Thus pure reaction, excessive and impracticable, set in against trade combination; compulsory isolation was established under the false name of freedom of work, and in consequence the weak were abandoned to the mercy of the strong, and the poor to the mercy of the rich; the individual, naked and unarmed, was put face to face with the individual armed at every point; in the economic domain a mere agglomeration was substituted for any kind of organization. But besides being the culminating point of a long evolution, this reaction was the starting-point of a new development which created the modern Labour Movement. We must next take a rapid survey of Europe and see what was the fate of the guilds in other countries. In Holland, where they had never been very strong, they counted for nothing after 1766. In Tuscany, from 1759 to 1766, a great inquiry was held into the state of the _Arti_, and following on the information obtained, the Archduke Peter-Leopold brought about, by means of decrees, a reform which was revolutionary in character. On February 3, 1770, he abolished enrolment fees throughout the duchy, with the exception of two or three small territories like that of Livurnia, and decided that, in order to ply a trade, it should be enough henceforth to be inscribed once and for all on a general register. In consideration of a fee of £2 at most, a man might, if he wanted to, follow more than one calling or open several shops. The only exceptions were the doctors, apothecaries, and goldsmiths, who were still subject to special obligations, and silk manufacturers, who kept a few ancient privileges. On February 17 of that year all the guild tribunals were abolished and all their powers vested in a _Chamber of Commerce, Arts, and Manufactures_, which had not only legal rights but also the duty of watching over the economic interests of the country, encouraging and assisting poor craftsmen, and administering the estates formerly held by the guilds which had thus been wiped out at a stroke of the pen. The clauses are curious and confirm what we have said concerning the action of princes. The Archduke expresses his wish that "such matters shall be regulated by a single authority, on fixed and uniform principles directed to the universal good of the State." The bakers were no longer compelled to make loaves of a fixed weight; the merchants were exempted from paying for weights and measures which they hardly ever used but which they were forced to possess.[145] The glorious guilds of Florence had lived for centuries and were to leave their mark behind them for a long time to come; it was only in 1907 that the winding-up of the property which had belonged to the _Arte della Lana_ was concluded. In Lombardy, from 1771 onwards, under the rule of the Empress Maria Theresa, a similar reform took place; in 1786 it was Sicily's turn; throughout the rest of Italy, all that remained of the ancient guild system disappeared under the French domination and the Napoleonic Code. The same thing happened in Belgium, where, after the decree of 17 Brumaire, Year IV., nothing was left but shadowy guilds, such as that of St. Arnoldus at Bruges, or the "Nations" at Antwerp.[146] In Germany the guild system was more tenacious and was only to disappear, in certain States, when German unity was almost realized. The Code of the Confederation of Northern Germany declared for its abolition in all the countries under its jurisdiction. 3. The guilds, then, were long in dying, and in addition to a few survivals,[147] there were even some attempts made here and there to revive them during the nineteenth century. In France, from the days of the Consulate and of the Empire, professional guilds (notaries, lawyers, solicitors, law-court officers, stockbrokers, etc.) were formed and still exist. The practice of more than one profession--such as medicine, dispensing, printing--remained under the control of the public authority. Butchers and bakers, under new regulations, remained in this state till 1858 and 1863. In 1805, three hundred wine-sellers demanded, without success, the restoration of the old craft guilds and of their own in particular. Under the Restoration, which undertook the task of restoring institutions which the storms of the Revolution had destroyed, other petitions of the same nature found a few partisans in the "_Chambre Introuvable_" and in some of the General Councils;[148] but although "the small" crafts were in favour of this return to the past, "great" trade, which had been hostile to wardenships and masterships, was strongly opposed to it. The Chamber of Commerce of Paris and the bankers were among the first to fight and defeat these ideas. It is among Catholics especially that such ideas have been awakened; inspired by sincere pity for the misery of the working classes who have been so long without protection, they have often been filled with the desire to create an organization for the propagation of social peace between masters and workers. During the reign of Louis-Philippe, Buchez, Villeneuve Bargemont, La Farelle, and Buret tried to bring the guild idea to life again. In 1848 it publicly reappeared for a short time, when the provisional government received hundreds of deputations classed according to their trades, and Louis Blanc nominated, according to craft guilds, delegates for the Commission of the Luxembourg, and when _compagnonnage_ paraded its beribboned canes and splendid works of art in the processions of the republican festivals; but it was already modified; masters and workmen formed separate groups. More recently, in 1891, it has been advocated in eloquent but vague terms by Pope Leo XIII., and Catholic circles, founded by M. de Mun, have tried to put it into practice. But it has always encountered obstacles which have arrested its progress. First there have been disagreements between those who favour the idea. Should the guild be optional or compulsory, open or closed? What share should masters and workmen take in it? Should it aim only at mutual assistance, or should it be competent to act in disputes between members? On the one hand there were those who were afraid of reviving the tyrannical monopoly of the old wardenships and on the other those who were afraid of forming, without meaning to do so, the framework for a socialistic organization of labour. All this was enough to paralyse those who might have been willing to join. But there was an even greater difficulty; though some of the great employers, those of the Val des Bois for example, supported the cause, the working classes, not unreasonably, stood aloof, uneasy and defiant. They dreaded any sort of patronage in which the heads would bombard them with pious exhortations and hold up to them the dismal virtue of resignation; they remembered M. Claudio Jannet's confession that he looked to Christianity "to solve the social question by inspiring masters with the spirit of justice and charity, and by making the less-favoured classes _accept their lot_." They could not forget that the Holy Father had written that the guilds should have "religion for their guide," and they thought they had a foretaste of the fate in store for them, in the statutes of association of the printer-bookseller-bookbinders of Paris in the new model (1879): "_Art._ III. To belong a man must be a Catholic. _Art._ IV. Must bind himself not to work, or employ another on Sunday. _Art._ V. To print no irreligious book." In short, they were afraid of putting themselves under the yoke of the confessional and of losing their liberty of thought, and they looked on an institution from which were excluded in advance all who did not hold a certificate of orthodoxy, as too much resembling the Middle Ages, and as an anachronism in a society where rights are equal for all citizens irrespective of religion. A few theorists[149] no doubt prided themselves on enlarging this narrow conception; but the compulsory guilds, open and federated, which they dreamed of instituting, were so different from the old guilds that there was really nothing in common except the name. It was in Austria, in surroundings less cut off from the past than in France, that guilds more resembling the original type awoke to an appearance of life.[150] Created by law in 1883, they have set before themselves some of the aims of the _Arti_ of Florence, viz. the safeguarding of the honour of the trade and, to this end, the regulation of apprenticeship; the foundation or assistance of institutions for technical instruction; the exaction of a preliminary examination from any one who wishes to set up as a craftsman or merchant; the buying of raw material at the expense of the community; the provision of arbitrators to settle trade differences, and the insurance of members against sickness, etc. They even try, as in old times, to secure the legal monopoly of a craft and to forbid hawking, etc. They remind one very much of what I have called the _capitalistic guilds_ of the Middle Ages, and those of great commerce and "great" industry, with the sole difference that they are compulsory for all who carry on the same trade. (See p. 28.) All the authority, in fact, is in the hands of the masters, and although they are reminded of their duties towards the workers, the latter are subordinate, can only present petitions, and are only allowed to decide as to the administration of benefit funds. It is more than doubtful whether this reproduction of the most hierarchical form of the ancient guilds has much chance of spreading at a time when ideas of equality have made such headway and when the working classes are strong enough to refuse meekly to submit to the conditions employers lay down. It must also be remembered that "great" industry, for and by whom this method was formerly designed, is excepted from Austrian legislation, which forces it on the "small" trades, to which this renewal of the regulations of the old statutes seems to be a great hindrance. Imitation of this system, which is itself only a more or less successful imitation, has so far not gone farther than Hungary and Germany (the _Innungen_). In Belgium, Switzerland, and even in France, Christian associations are to be found on the same model. They always include two groups which never assimilate; masters and workmen who have separate representation and pay unequal subscriptions. The principle is always Charity, the devotion of one class to another, no doubt an honourable sentiment, but one with which is mingled a protective spirit it seems impossible to do away with. For Pope Leo XIII. himself, in his Encyclical of May 16, 1891, states that, in civilized society, it is impossible that every one shall rise to the same level, and that, in consequence, there will always be rich and poor. "Just as, in the human body, the members, in spite of their diversity, adapt themselves so marvellously to each other as to form a perfectly proportioned whole, which may be called symmetrical, so, in society, the _two classes_ are destined by nature to unite in harmony, and to maintain together a perfect balance." Life and experience, however, would seem to prove the opposite. The only thing to be gained by these attempts to return to a time that has disappeared for ever is the combination of crafts--a necessity which seeks to-day, as it has always done, its legitimate satisfaction. But new methods of production and sale demand new forms of organization of sellers and producers, and have brought us to the system, evolved by those concerned, spontaneously, without prejudiced or preconceived theories, by the direct force of circumstances--the system of _Trade Unionism_, which has succeeded the guild system as the defender of trade interests. AUTHOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY Arte dei medici, speziali e merciai. (State Archives of Florence.) Arte di Calimala. (Statutes, edition Filippi Giovanni, Torino, 1889. Gr. 8vo.) Arte di Por Santa Maria. Statutes, Archives of Florence, and for all the other _Arti_. ASHLEY (W. J.). Economic History. BODIN (JEAN). De la République. (Paris, 1576-1578. Folio.) BOISSONNADE (P.). Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou, depuis le XI^e siècle jusqu'à la Révolution. (Paris, H. Champion, 1900. 2 vols. 8vo.) BONOLIS. Rivista italiana per le scienze giuridiche. (Vol. xxvii. fasc. i. and ii.) BOUGLE (G.). Essais sur le régime des castes. (Paris, F. Alcan, 1908. Travaux de l'année sociologique. 8vo.) BOURGEOIS (A.). Les Métiers de Blois. (2 vols. 1895.) BRISSON (PIERRE). Histoire du travail et des travailleurs. (Paris, Delagrave, no date. 16mo.) BUCHER (KARL). �tudes d'histoire et d'économie politique. (Paris, F. Alcan, 1901. 8vo.) CANTINI. Legislazione toscana. CUNNINGHAM (W.). Outlines of English Industrial History (with E. A. MacArthur). (Cambridge, 1895. 8vo.) DAVIDSOHN (ROBERT). 1. Geschichte von Florenz. 2. Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz. (Berlin, E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1896-1908. 4 vols. 8vo.) DEJOB (CHARLES). Le Marchand de vin dans les vieilles communes de l'Italie. (Paris, Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Libraire, brochure. 8vo. 1907.) DOREN (ALFRED). 1. Entwicklung und Organisation der Florentiner Zünfte. (1897, Leipzig, in Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, by Schmoller.) 2. Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftgeschichte. (Stuttgart, 1901. 8vo.). DRAP� (ALPH.). Recherches sur l'histoire des corps d'arts et métiers en Roussillon sous l'ancien régime. (Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 1898. 8vo.) FAGNIEZ (GUSTAVE). Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France. (2 vols., Paris, Alph. Picard et fils, 1898-1901. 8vo.) FILIPPI (GIOVANNI). See _Arte di Calimala_. FLACH (J.). Les Origines de l'ancienne France. (Larose, 1893-1904. 3 vols. 8vo.) FRANKLIN. 1. La Vie privée d'autrefois. Comment on devenait patron. (Paris, Plon, 1889. 12mo.) 2. La Vie privée d'autrefois. La Cuisine. (Paris, Plon, 1888. 12mo.) GERMAIN-MARTIN. 1. La Grande Industrie sous le règne de Louis XIV. 2. La Grande Industrie sous le règne de Louis XV. 3. Les Associations ouvrières au XVIII^e siècle. (Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 1899 and 1900. Gr. 8vo.) GODART (JUSTIN). L'Ouvrier en soie (1st volume). (Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 1899. 8vo.) HARTMANN (MORITZ). Zur Wirtschaftgeschichte Italiens im fruher Mittelalter. (Gotha, 1904.) HAUSER (HENRI). 1. Ouvriers du temps passé. (Paris, F. Alcan, 1898. 8vo.) 2. Les Compagnonnages d'arts et métiers à Dijon aux XVII^e et XVIII^e siècles (with his pupils). (Paris, A. Picard et fils, 1907. 8vo.) 3. Les Pouvoirs publics et l'organisation du travail dans l'ancienne France. (Revue d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine, 1907-1908.) HAYEM (H.). Domaines respectifs de l'association et de la société. (Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 1907. 8vo.) LACROIX (PAUL). Moeurs, usages et costumes au moyen âge et à l'époque de la Renaissance. (Paris, Firmin-Didot et C^ie, 1878. 8vo.) LAMPRECHT. Deutsche Wirtschaftsleben im Mittelalter. (Leipzig, Dürr, 1886. 4 vols. 8vo.) LA SORSA. 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Brussels, 1900.) RENARD (GEORGES). 1. Les Corporations de Florence au XIII^e siècle. (Revue du Mois, September 1908.) 2. Les Banquiers florentins en France au XIII^e siècle. (Revue �conomique Internationale, November 1908.) 3. La Révolution sociale au XIV^e siècle. (Revue Internationale de l'Enseignement, January 1909.) RICHARD (GASTON). La Femme dans l'histoire. (Paris, O. Doin et fils, 1909. 18mo.) RODOCANACHI. Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l'Empire romain. (2 vols. in folio, Paris, Alf. Picard et fils, 1893.) SAND (GEORGE). Le Compagnon du tour de France, novel. SCHMOLLER. Die Strassburger Tucher- und Weberzunft: Urkunden und Darstellung. (Strasbourg, 1899.) SOLMI (ARRIGO). Le Assoziazioni in Italia avanti le origini del Comune. (Modena, 1898.) TAMASSIA (NINO). Chiesa e popolo. (Modena, 1901.) VANDERKINDERE. Le Siècle des Artevelde. (Brussels, 1879. 8vo.) WEBB (BEATRICE AND SIDNEY). History of Trade Unionism. (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.) 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Six Centuries of Work and Wages. 1890. 10s. 6d. (remainders 4s. 6d.). ROUND (J. H.). The Commune of London. 1899. SALZMANN (L. F.). English Industries of the Middle Ages. 1913. 6s. 6d. SMITH (TOULMIN). English Gilds, with an Introduction by Professor Brentano (Early English Text Society). STALEY (EDGECOMBE). Guilds of Florence. *UNWIN (GEORGE). The Gilds and Companies of London. 1908. 7s. 6d. *Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 1904. 7s. 6d. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Panetier_, one charged with the distribution of bread in big establishments. [2] _Bouteillier_, an official for the inspection and superintendence of wine in a royal household. [3] A short study and a detailed bibliography of the origin of guilds will be found in M. Martin-Saint-Léon's _Histoire des corporations de métier_, book i., 2nd edition. We recommend it to the reader, but do not ourselves accept all the author's opinions. As, however, he chiefly gives the German, English, and French sources of information, we add a list of Italian works, or works concerning Italy, which deal with the same subject, classifying them according to the theories they adopt. The theory of the separate creation of each guild is defended by M. Arrigo Solmi (_Le Assoziazioni in Italia avanti le origini del Commune_, 1898), but since then the works and criticisms of Messrs. Robert Davidsohn, Alfred Doren, Hartmann, and Bonolis have deprived his arguments of all that was strongest and most original in them. M. Solmi, in an article in the _Rivista Italiana di Sociologia_, ix. 1 (Roma, 1905), entitled "Sulla storia economica d'Italia nel medio evo," himself recognized that the persistence of certain ancient institutions and the division of labour in the great royal or feudal domains appear to have played an important part in the organization of crafts. M. Nino Tamassia has specially emphasized, amongst other causes, the part played by the influence of religious congregations and fraternities. [4] The origin of the cities having been so different (see J. Flach, _Les Origines de l'ancienne France_), the causes which predominate in each must have been equally diverse. [5] The _Arte dei Fabbri_, for instance, extended over all the suburbs of Florence. [6] In France, for example, a long war was fought between the guilds and those whom they called _chambrelans_. [7] A similar organization existed at Strasburg. The _Zunft_ (guild) included several _Antwerke_, see Schmoller, _Die Strassburger Tücher und Weberzunft Urkunden und Darstellung_. [8] R. Davidsohn, _Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz_. [9] A. Doren, _Entwicklung und Organisation der Florentiner Zünfte_; G. Renard, _La Révolution sociale au XIV^e siècle_. [10] The following may be consulted on this subject: Davidsohn, _Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz_, vol. iii. p. 221; Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 277; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. ii. pp. 170, 190, 201. [11] H. Hauser, _Ouvriers du temps passé_, p. 40. [12] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 84, 86, 291; Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois_, p. 78; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 309. [13] Hauser, _Ouvriers du temps passé_, pp. 59-76; Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation en Poitou, etc._, pp. 53, 64, 68; Martín-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 89 ; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 268. [14] E. Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, pp. 1, 321; Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 117; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 231, 245, 282. [15] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 121. [16] Hauser, _Ouvriers du temps passé_, p. 62; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 36, 220. [17] Avenel, _Histoire économique de la propriété, des salaires, des denrées et tous les prix en général_, passim. [18] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou, depuis le XI^me siècle jusqu'à la Révolution_, vol. ii. p. 150. [19] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 135, 291, 294. [20] Vanderkindere, _Le Siècle des Artevelde_, p. 132; E. Levasseur, vol. i. p. 315, note. [21] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 280. [22] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 290. [23] Quotation from Beugnot's edition, p. 429. [24] _Le Livre des métiers_, xxv. p. 65. [25] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 1, 245; E. Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, vol. i. p. 312. [26] Consult the following for information concerning the legal and economic status of women: Gaston Richard, _Les Femmes dans l'histoire_, p. 282; Hauser, _Ouvriers du temps passé_, pp. 142-160; Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 259-261, 277, 310, vol. ii. p. 204. [27] Consult W. J. Ashley's _Economic History_, concerning _guildae_ and _hanses_. A bibliography will be found in vol. i. See also �mile Worms. [28] _Statutes of the Arte di Calimala_ (book ii. art. 23). [29] For information on this subject consult A. Doren and Davidsohn for Florence; Pirenne for Flanders; Schmoller and Lamprecht for Germany. [30] It is certain that in Great States the statutes of the different towns were connected, and it is probable that they were so in the period preceding the formation of Great States. [31] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 266 and 290; Rodocanachi, _Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l'Empire romain_, p. lix. [32] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. ii. p. 189. [33] _Statutes of the Calimala_, bk. ii. art. 35 and 44. [34] Rodocanachi, _Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l'Empire Romain_. [35] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. ii. p. 59. [36] Justin Godart, _L'Ouvrier en soie_, p. 88, note. [37] Rodocanachi, p. xcii. [38] Brisson, _Histoire du travail et des travailleurs_, p. 23. [39] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 275. [40] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 1, 274. [41] _Statuts de Calimala._ [42] La Sorsa, _Gli statuti degli orefici e sellai fiorentini al principio del secolo xiv._ [43] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. ii. pp. 71, 149. [44] Brisson, _Histoire du travail et des travailleurs_, p. 22. [45] Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois_, p. 25. [46] Georges Renard, _Les Banquiers florentins en France au XIII^me siècle_. [47] Paul Lacroix, _Moeurs, usages et costumes du moyen âge et à l'époque de la Renaissance_, pp. 234 and 430. [48] _Statutes of the Calimala_, bk. iii. art. 20-22. [49] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, pp. 11, 190-200. [50] Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, vol. i. p. 335. [51] Brisson, _Histoire du travail et des travailleurs_, p. 19; Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation de travail en Poitou_, vol. i. p. 287. [52] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 271-274. [53] Paul Lacroix, _Moeurs, usages et costumes au moyen âge et à l'époque de la Renaissance_, p. 317. [54] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 113. [55] Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois_, vol. i. pp. 66-67; Rodocanachi, _Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome_, p. lxxxviii. [56] A. Doren, _Entwicklung und Organisation der Florentiner Zünfte_. [57] Rodocanachi, _Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l'Empire romain_, p. cxii. [58] Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois_, p. 67. [59] _Statutes of the Arte dei medici, speziali e merciai_. [60] _Statutes of the Arte di Calimala_. [61] Charles Dejob, _Le Marchand de vin dans les vieilles communes de l'Italie_, p. 14. [62] See the statutes of the _Arte di Calimala_, and of the _Arte di Por Santa Maria_. [63] E. Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, vol. i. pp. 293-298. [64] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 146. [65] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 273, 287. [66] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 40, 52, 93. [67] _Ibid._ [68] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 89, 112. [69] Consult Rodocanachi and Boissonnade on this subject. [70] Rodocanachi, _Les Corporations ouvrières à Rome depuis la chute de l'Empire Romain_, p. xxv. [71] Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, vol. i. pp. 561. [72] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 110. [73] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou_, etc., vol. ii. p. 276; Bourgeois, _Les Métiers de Blois_, passim. [74] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. pp. 145, 250. [75] Boissonnade, vol. ii. p. 276. [76] Paul Lacroix, _Moeurs, usages, et costumes au moyen âge et à l'époque de la Renaissance_, p. 442. [77] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation en Poitou_, etc., vol. ii. p. 293. [78] Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789_, vol. i. p. 343; Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation en Poitou_, etc., vol. i. p. 172. [79] Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois. La cuisine_, p. 230. [80] The word as here used must not be confused with its meaning in connection with the Florentine Guilds, see p. 8. [81] The _number_ of members composing a guild also contributed to its social status; but this was a factor of very much less importance. [82] Ribot, _Essai sur l'imagination créatrice_, p. 234; Tarde, _Psychologie économique_, bk. i. chap. v. §§ iv. v. [83] A. Doren, _Studien aus der florentiner Wirthschaftgeschichte_. [84] Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières_, etc., vol. i. p. 343. [85] Perrens, _Histoire de Florence_, vol. vi. chap. v. [86] The inhabitants of Perpignan were classed in three _mains_ (major, middle, and minor). See Drapé. [87] Ach. Luchaire, _Les Communes françaises à l'époque des capétiens directs_, pp. 207-215. [88] Georges Renard, _Revue économique internationale_, Jan. 1909, article entitled "La révolution sociale au XIV^e siècle." [89] Davidsohn, _Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz_, vol. iii. [90] _Livre des métiers_, p. 1. [91] Fagniez, _Documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France_, vol. i. p. 75. [92] Franklin, _La Vie privée d'autrefois, comment on devenait patron_, p. 70; Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 275. [93] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou_, etc., vol. ii. p. 250. [94] Fagniez, vol. i. p. 115. [95] Karl Bücher, _�tudes d'histoire et d'économie politique_, passim. [96] Macaulay, _History of England_ (Everyman), vol. i. p. 323. [97] Germain-Martin, _La Grande Industrie sous le règne de Louis XIV_, p. 232. [98] E. Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières_, etc., vol. i. p. 590. [99] Thomas More, _Utopia_. [100] Ashley. [101] André Liesse, _Le Travail_. [102] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 41. [103] Macaulay, _History of England_ (Everyman), vol. i. p. 292. [104] Germain-Martin, _La Grande Industrie sous le règne de Louis XV_. [105] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 13. [106] Page 24. Their position was the same in the _Arte della seta_. [107] Macaulay, _History of England_ (Everyman), vol. i. p. 323, note. [108] Hauser, _Ouvriers du temps passé_, chap. x. [109] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_, p. 55. [The song is quoted in full in J. Burnley's _Wool and Wool-combing_, pp. 161 ff.--EDITOR.] [110] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_. [111] See Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières_, etc., chap. vi.; Hauser, _Les Compagnonnages d'arts et métiers_, etc., p. 8 and _passim_; Martin-Saint-Léon, _Le Compagnonnage_. [112] Hauser, _Les Compagnonnage d'arts et métiers à Dijon au XVII^me et XVIII^me siècles_, p. 168. [113] Du Bellay; see also Grévin, prologue to _La Trésorière_. [114] Jules Zeller, _Histoire d'Allemagne_. [115] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou_, vol. ii. pp. 354-357. [116] Germain-Martin. [117] Ashley. [118] Fagniez, _Corporations et syndicats_, p. 23. [119] Quoted by Michelet, _Histoire de France_, vol. v. p. 312. [120] Levasseur, vol. ii. p. 138. [121] J. Bodin, _De la République_, bk. iii. chap. viii. [122] See Boissonnade, vol. ii. pp. 360, 465; Bourgeois, vol. ii. p. 243. The master saddlers of Blois (1593) asked the king to grant them statutes "similar to those of Tours and other free towns of this kingdom." [123] They even formed guilds, as, for instance, the dressmakers' guild, which owed its existence to Colbert. [124] Ashley, _Economic History_, vol. ii. p. 13. [125] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_, p. 65. [126] _Cantini, Legislazione toscana_, x. chap. xxix. and xxx. [127] Misul, _Le Arti Fiorentini_, passim. [128] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou, depuis le XI^me siècle jusqu'à la Révolution_, vol. ii. p. 79. [129] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 348. [130] Pigeonneau, _Histoire du Commerce de la France_, vol. i. p. 180. [131] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou, depuis le XI^me siècle jusqu'à la Révolution_, vol. ii. p. 123. [132] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 358. [133] "Poids de marc"; _marc_, ancient weight of eight ounces (Larousse). [134] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_, p. 67. [135] Boissonnade, vol. ii. p. 430. [136] Boissonnade, _Essai sur l'organisation du travail en Poitou_, etc., vol. ii. pp. 120, 488. [137] W. J. Ashley. [138] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 312. [139] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_, pp. 195-208. [140] Montesquieu, bk. xxiii. chap. xv. [141] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, p. 523. [142] Mantoux, _La Révolution industrielle au XVIII^me siècle_, pp. 472, 487. [143] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 44. [144] For the whole of the preceding consult Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, pp. 511, 516; Hayem, _Domaines respectifs de l'association et de la société_, p. 23; Jaurès, _La Constituante_, pp. 600-630. [145] Misul, _Le Arti Fiorentine; La Camera di Commerzio_. [146] E. Vandervelde, _Enquéte sur les associations professionnelles d'artisans et ouvriers en Belgique_, vol. i. [147] J. Paul-Boncour in _Le Fédéralisme économique_, p. 14, gives a list of the guilds which survive in France. [148] On this subject see Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, bk. vii.; and Paul Louis, _Histoire du mouvement syndical en France_, p. 67. [149] Martin-Saint-Léon, _Histoire des corporations de métier_, bk. vii. chap. iii., "The Guilds of the Future." [150] Hubert-Valleroux, Les _Associations ouvrières et les associations patronales_, p. 130; Altmann, _Le Régime corporatif des métiers en Autriche et en Allemagne au XIX^me siècle_. Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Letters preceded by a ^caret appeared as superscripts to the end of the word. OE ligatures have been expanded. 
42275	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) [Transcriber's note: Underscores have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts. Original spelling variants have not been standardized. In the tables, _s._ or s. was used for Shillings; and _d._ or d. for Pence. "It should also be noted that slight errors of a few farthings in the additions have crept into the totals of some of the columns, but as they do not affect the accuracy of the wage figures the Appendix has been copied exactly as it was published." (Appendix VI.)] WOMEN IN THE PRINTING TRADES: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. EDITED BY J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, WITH A PREFACE BY PROFESSOR F. Y. EDGEWORTH. INVESTIGATORS: MRS. J. L. HAMMOND, MRS. H. OAKESHOTT, MISS A. BLACK, MISS A. HARRISON, MISS IRWIN, and Others. LONDON: P. S. KING & SON, ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 1904. PREFACE. My only qualification for writing this preface is the circumstance that, as a representative of the Royal Economic Society, I attended the meetings of the Committee appointed to direct and conduct the investigations of which the results are summarised in the following pages. From what I saw and heard at those meetings I received the impression that the evidence here recorded was collected with great diligence and sifted with great care. It seems to constitute a solid contribution to a department of political economy which has perhaps not received as much attention as it deserves. Among the aspects of women's work on which some new light has been thrown, is the question why women in return for the same or a not very different amount of work should often receive very much less wages. It is a question which not only in its bearing on social life is of the highest practical importance, but also from a more abstract point of view is of considerable theoretical interest, so far as it seems to present the paradox of _entrepreneurs_ paying at very different rates for factors of production which are not so different in efficiency. The question as stated has some resemblance to the well-known demand for an explanation which Charles II. preferred to the Royal Society: there occurs the preliminary question whether the circumstance to be explained exists. The alleged disproportion between the remuneration of men and women is indeed sometimes only apparent, or at least appears to be greater than it is really. Often, however, it is real and great where it is not apparent. On the one hand, in many cases in which at first sight women seem to be doing the same work as men for less pay, it is found on careful inquiry, that they are not doing the same work. "The same work nominally is not always the same work actually," as the Editor reminds us (Chapter IV. par. 1). "Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little things about the machine which women do not do." In this and other ways men afford to the employer a greater "net advantageousness," as Mr. Sidney Webb puts it in his valuable study on the "Alleged Differences in the Wages paid to Men and to Women for similar Work" (_Economic Journal_, Vol. I. pp. 635 _et seq._). The examples of this phenomenon adduced by Mr. Webb, and in the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, are supplemented by these records. To instance one of the less obvious ways in which a difference in net advantageousness makes itself felt, employers say: "It does not pay to train women: they would leave us before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men." At the same time it is to be noticed in many of these cases that though the work of women is less efficient, it is not so inferior as their pay. For instance, a Manchester employer "estimated that a woman was two-thirds as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a man, and she was paid 15_s._ or 20_s._ to his 33_s._," (p. 47, note). In other cases the difference between the remuneration of men and women for similar work is not obvious because they work in different branches of industry. For example, only five instances of women being employed as lithographic artists are on record (Chapter IV. par. 1). Other branches of the printing trade are as exclusively women's work. Such data afford no direct and exact comparison between the remuneration of the two classes in relation to the work done by them respectively. As Mr. Webb concludes, the inferiority of women's wages cannot be gathered "from a comparison of the rates for identical work, for few such cases exist, but rather from a comparison of the standards of remuneration in men's and women's occupations respectively." "Looked at in this light," he continues, "it seems probable that women's work is usually less highly paid than work of equivalent difficulty and productivity done by men." As Mrs. Fawcett points out in an important supplement to Mr. Webb's article (_Economic Journal_, Vol. II. p. 174), women are crowded into classes of industry which are less remunerative than those open to men. Recognising the fact of different remuneration for the same amount of work, we have next to consider the causes. It is evident that the sort of explanation offered by Adam Smith for difference of wages in different employments will not avail much in the case with which we are dealing. The lower remuneration of women is not brought about by way of compensation for the greater "agreeableness" or other pleasurable incident or perquisite of their tasks. Possibly we might refer to this head, as well as to others, the circumstance that women having in prospect the hopes of domestic life are likely to take less interest in their trade than men do who cast in their lot for life, if this difference in future prospects is attended with a difference in the effort of attention given to work in the present. But doubtless the explanation is to be found chiefly not in compensation produced by the levelling action of competition, but in the absence of competition between men and women--in the existence of monopoly whether natural or artificial, to use Mill's distinction (_Political Economy_, Vol. II. Chapter XIV.), together with custom and what Mill calls "the unintended effect of general social regulations." A natural monopoly is constituted by the superior strength of man, the occasional exercise of which, as just noticed, entitles him to some superiority of pay for work which at first sight may appear almost identical with that of women. The experience recorded in the following pages does not afford any expectation that this kind of superiority tends to vanish. "There is an almost unanimous chorus of opinion that women's work as compositors is so inferior to men's that it does not pay in the long run" (Chapter IV.). Speaking of the physiological differences between men and women in relation to their work, the Editor concludes that "when all false emphasis and exaggeration have been removed a considerable residuum of difference must remain." Custom and the somewhat capricious sense of decorum counts for more than might have been expected in restricting women to certain industries, and accordingly, on the principle emphasised by Mrs. Fawcett, depressing their wages. "I know my place, and I'm not going to take men's work from them," said a female operative to an employer who wanted her to varnish books (Chapter IV.). "Why, that is men's work, and we shouldn't think of doing it," was the answer given by forewomen and others to the question why they did not turn their hands to simple and easy processes which were being done by men (Chapter V.). Among artificial monopolies must be placed that which is constituted by legislation. The Factory Laws, of which a lucid summary is given (Chapter VI. § 1), impose certain conditions on the work of women which, it may be supposed and has been asserted, place them at a sensible disadvantage in their competition with men, who are free from those restrictions. But the evidence now collected goes to prove that the disadvantage occasioned to women in their competition with men by the Factory Acts is not appreciable; thus confirming the conclusions obtained by the Committee which the British Association appointed to consider this very question (Report, 1903). The evidence of the large majority of employers in the printing trade is in favour of the Acts; the evidence of employees is almost unanimous. Of a hundred and three employers "not half-a-dozen remembered dismissing women in consequence of the new enactment" (Chapter VI. § 2). Of a hundred and three employers, who expressed an opinion, twenty-six stated that in their opinion legislation had not affected women's labour at all, sixty considered it to have been beneficial, and seventeen looked on all legislation as grandmotherly and ridiculous (p. 82). The opinion of the employers is much influenced by the experience that "after overtime the next day's work suffers." The still stronger feeling of the workers in favour of the Factory Acts is partly based on the same fact: "Long hours," said one, "don't do any good, for they mean that you work less next day: if you work all night, then you are so tired that you have to take a day off; you have gained nothing" (p. 86). Upon the whole the moderate conclusion appears to be that "except in a few small houses the employment of women as compositors has not been affected by the Factory Acts" (p. 75). What little evidence there is to the contrary is exhibited by the Editor with creditable candour (p. 80). It is admitted that a "slight residuum of night work" may have been transferred to male hands. Trades unionism forms another species of "artificial monopoly," the organisation of men in the printing trades being much stronger than that of women. The difference is partly accounted for by the fact, already noticed in other connections, that woman having an eye to marriage is not equally wedded to her trade. Some frankly admit that "marriage is sure to come along, and then they will work in factories and workshops no longer" (p. 42). Whatever the cause, it appears from the Editor's historical retrospect that women's unions have not flourished in the trades under consideration. All attempts to organise women in the printing trade proper, as distinguished from the bookbinding industry, have failed. Even the Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding, though organised by Mrs. Emma Paterson, seems to have had only a moderate success. Thus the men unionists have had their way in arranging that their standard wage should not be lowered by the influx of cheap labour offered by women. Some unions indeed admit women on equal terms with men, with less advantage to the former than might have been expected. A regulation of this sort adopted by the London Society of Compositors is followed by the result that "it is practically impossible for any woman to join the society" (p. 28). At Perth a few years ago, when women began to be employed on general bookwork and setting up newspaper copy, the men's union decided that the women must either be paid the same rates as the men or be got rid of altogether (p. 46). One general result of such _primâ facie_ equalitarian regulations is probably to promote that crowding of women into less remunerative occupations which was above noticed as a cardinal fact of the situation. It is for this reason apparently that Mrs. Fawcett does not welcome the principle that "women's wages should be the same as men's for the same work." "To encourage women under all circumstances to claim the same wages as men for the same work would be to exclude from work altogether all those women who were industrially less efficient than men" (see the article by Mrs. Fawcett referred to in the _Economic Journal_, Vol. III. p. 366, and compare her article in that Journal, Vol. II. p. 174, already cited). Of course it may be argued that, in view of the circumstance that women workers are often subsidised by men and of other incidents of family life, to permit the unrestricted competition of men with women would tend to lower the remuneration and degrade the character of labour as a whole. Without expressing an opinion on this matter, seeking to explain rather than to justify the cardinal fact that the industrial competition between men and women is very imperfect, one may suggest that it is favoured by another element of monopoly. The employer in a large business has some of the powers proper to monopoly. As Professor Marshall says (in a somewhat different connection) "a man who employs a thousand others is in himself an absolutely rigid combination to the extent of one thousand units in the labour market." This consideration may render it easier to understand how it is possible for certain employers to give effect to the dispositions which are attributed to them in the following passages: "Conservative notions about women's sphere, and chivalrous prejudices about protecting them, influence certain employers in determining what work they _ought_ to do" (p. 52). "A rigid sense of propriety based on a certain amount of good reason, seems to determine many employers to separate male from female departments" (p. 53). A notice of this subject would be inadequate without reference to the relation between the use of machinery and the competition of women against men. In some cases the cheapness of women's work averts the introduction of machinery. "One investigator whilst being taken over certain large printing works was shown women folding one of the illustrated weekly papers. Folding machines were standing idle in the department, and she was told that these were used by the men when folding had to be done at times when the Factory Law prohibited women's labour" (p. 98). A well-known bookbinder said: "If women would take a fair price for work done it would not be necessary to employ machinery." In the Warrington newspaper offices the cheapness of women's labour makes it unnecessary to introduce linotypes (pp. 46 and 98). On the other hand, in the case of bookbinding, the employment of machinery makes it possible for the less skilled and lower-paid women to do work formerly done by men (p. 48). But the relations are not in general so simple. Rather, as the Editor remarks, "what really happens is an all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a rearrangement of the subdivision of labour" (p. 48). The cheerful assumption proper to abstract economics, that labour displaced by the introduction of machinery can turn to some other employment, is seldom, it is to be feared, so perfectly realised as in the case of the bookbinders below mentioned (p. 48, note): "There was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine came in, but though profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and 'backers' they had more 'lining up' and other work to do in consequence, so nobody was turned off." So far I have adverted to only one of the problems which are elucidated by this investigation. A sense of proportion might require that I should dwell on other topics of great interest such as home work and the work of married women, the technique of the industries connected with printing which the Editor has described minutely, and the statistics relating to women's wages, in the treatment of which a master hand, that of Mr. A. L. Bowley, may be recognised. But I must not go on like the chairman who with a lengthy opening address detains an audience eager to hear the principal speaker. I will only in conclusion express the hope that the Committee which has obtained such useful results may be enabled to prosecute further investigations with like diligence. F. Y. EDGEWORTH. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION xv I. I. THE TRADES DESCRIBED 1 II. WOMEN IN THE TRADES 17 III. WOMEN'S WORK AND ORGANISATION 24 IV. MEN AND WOMEN AS WORKERS 44 V. INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 55 VI. LEGISLATION 69 VII. WOMEN AND MACHINERY 94 VIII. HOME WORK 99 IX. MARRIED AND UNMARRIED 102 X. WAGES 113 II.--APPENDICES. I. POINTS UPON WHICH ENQUIRIES WERE MADE 139 II. DESCRIPTIONS OF CERTAIN TYPICAL FIRMS 141 III. GENERAL GLASGOW REPORT 170 IV. WOMEN IN THE PRINTING TRADES IN BIRMINGHAM 179 V. TABLES OF INDIVIDUAL EARNINGS FOR CONSECUTIVE WEEKS THROUGH LENGTHENED PERIODS 184 VI. MR. DUNNING'S STATEMENT OF WAGES, 1849 199 VII. TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF MALES AND FEMALES ENGAGED IN THESE TRADES AT VARIOUS AGES IN 1901 203 INDEX 205 INTRODUCTION. The investigation upon which this book is based was undertaken by the Women's Industrial Council; the Royal Statistical Society, the Royal Economic Society, and the Hutchinson Trustees consenting to be represented on the Committee responsible for the work. Upon this Committee, the Women's Industrial Council was represented by Miss A. Black, Miss C. Black, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Stephen N. Fox, and Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald; the Royal Statistical Society by Mr. J. A. Baines; the Royal Economic Society by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth, and the Hutchinson Trustees by Mr. A. L. Bowley. Mrs. Hogg also represented the Women's Industrial Council up to her death in 1900. The Committee takes this opportunity of thanking the Hutchinson Trustees for their liberal financial assistance, and of expressing its appreciation of the services so carefully and enthusiastically performed by the investigators, especially those of Mrs. Hammond, who is mainly responsible for the work done in London; of Mrs. Oakeshott, who assisted Mrs. Hammond; of Mrs. Muirhead, who supplied information about Birmingham; of Miss Harrison, who investigated Bristol and the South-West, and Leeds and district; and of Miss Irwin and Mr. Jones, who were in charge of the Scottish enquiries. To the many employers, Trade Union secretaries, and others who were so willing to give assistance to the investigators, the Committee also desires to express its gratitude. Whoever has had experience in collecting and sifting such evidence as is dealt with in this investigation knows how difficult it is to arrive at proper values and just conclusions. And women's trades seem to offer special difficulties of this kind. There are no Trade Union conditions, no general trade rules, no uniformity in apprenticeships, so far as the woman worker is concerned, and the variations in conditions are most striking, even between neighbouring employers drawing their supply of labour from practically the same district, though perhaps not from the same social strata. That difference in strata is in some cases a predominating factor in women's employment, and it everywhere confuses economic and industrial considerations. When to this irregularity of conditions is added a reticence as to "one's personal affairs," due partly to women's lack of the sense that their position is of public interest, and also partly to an unwillingness shown by many employers to disclose the facts of cheap labour, it can readily be seen that the Committee had to exercise the greatest care in its work. When the investigation was begun there was an idea that it should be the commencement of an enquiry into women's labour in every trade of any importance, but whether that will be carried on or not will now depend on the reception of this volume and on what further financial assistance is forthcoming. The group of trades selected for first treatment shows neither an overwhelming preponderance of women nor a very marked increase in the employment of women. But it illustrates in a specially normal way the main problems of women's labour under ordinary modern conditions. Upon one important point this group does not throw much light. The employment of Women in the Printing Trades does not show to any satisfactory extent the family influence of married and unmarried women wage earners. What information the Committee was able to gather is dealt with in its proper place, but careful enquiries will have to be made in the highly-organised factory industries before that wealth of fact can be obtained from which conclusions can be drawn, with details properly filled in, regarding the influence of women's earnings upon family incomes. In other respects these trades have yielded most interesting information. They illustrate the industrial mind and capacity of women in the different aspects of training, rates of pay, competition with men, influence of machinery, effect of legislation, and so on. These subjects are dealt with under separate chapters, and though it has been the chief aim of the Committee to present well-sifted and reliable facts, it has stated some conclusions which are most obvious, and which appear to be necessary, if bare figures and dry industrial data are to carry any sociological enlightenment. The volume is therefore offered not as a mere description of industrial organisation, but as a study in sociology which indicates a path ahead as well as points out where we stand at the moment. Miss Clementina Black is responsible for the description of the Trades, Mr. A. L. Bowley for the Chapter on Wages, and Mr. Stephen Fox for the legal and historical part of that on Legislation. For the rest, the Editor is responsible. CHAPTER I. _THE TRADES DESCRIBED._ The trades covered by this enquiry include a great number of processes, some brief account of which is necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be comprehensible. It will, perhaps, be the easiest way to follow the stages by which paper is converted into books and to return afterwards to such accessory matters as envelope making, relief stamping, lithography, etc. _Paper-making._--Paper-making is carried on mainly in the counties of Kent, Lancashire, Buckingham, Yorkshire, Fife, Lanark, Aberdeen and Midlothian, but mills are found scattered over the country where water is favourable to the manufacture.[1] In London, there is one mill only, and not more than thirteen women are employed in it. Of these the majority are occupied in sorting esparto grass, and throwing it by means of pitchforks into machines where the abundant dust is shaken out, and from which the grass is carried on moving bands to the vats where it is boiled into pulp. A few older married women are engaged in cutting rags, removing buttons, etc.; but at the present day paper is but rarely made from rags, and the rags so used are generally sorted and cut by machinery. This is an instance in which machinery has undoubtedly superseded the work of women; but, perhaps, few persons will regret that an occupation so uninviting as the cutting up of old rags should be undertaken rather by a machine than by a human being. With the later processes in the manufacture of paper--the boiling, mixing, bleaching, and refining--women have nothing to do; but a few women are employed in "counting" the sheets of paper before they leave the mill. [Footnote 1: _The Directory of Paper-makers_ for 1903 gives the following number of paper mills as being situated in the following counties:--Bucks, 16; Devon, 10; Durham, 9; Kent, 30; Lancashire, 44; Yorkshire, 27; Edinburgh, 17; Lanark, 9; Stirling, 8; Fife, 7; Aberdeen, 5; Dublin, 6.] The work of the women, who are time-workers at from 8_s._ to 10_s._ a week, requires no training. The working day begins at 6 a.m., an earlier hour than that of any other factory or shop dealt with in this enquiry. The machinery is kept in constant action, double shifts of men being employed, and when it becomes necessary to feed the machines with grass at night men do the work performed in the day by women. _Letter-press Printing._--The primary business of the "compositor" is to "set-up type," _i.e._, to arrange the separate movable types in required order for printing successive lines of words. These lines are then arranged in frames called _chases_, each of which containing the types is known as a _forme_; the _formes_ are "locked up," that is, made firm by wooden or metal wedges called _quoins_, and are then carried to the press for a proof impression. The printed page passes on in the shape of proof to the "corrector," and from him to the author, and is then returned in order that corresponding alterations may be made in the placing of the type. Finally, when the whole corrected impression has been printed off, comes the "distributing"--the removal of the types from their places and re-sorting into the proper divisions in the "case." Were books the only form of printed matter, this description would cover the whole business of the compositor, but there are also handbills and newspapers--to say nothing of lithographic printing, which will be dealt with farther on. The printing of handbills, etc., and the printing of newspapers, require, each in its own way, a high degree of skill and experience, to which women, the vast majority of whom leave the trade comparatively young, seldom attain. In the provinces, however, a few women are engaged upon the printing of weekly or bi-weekly newspapers; and in London, one establishment has been visited in which women regularly do "jobbing" or "display work"--terms which cover the printing of advertisements, posters, handbills, etc.--while at least two other firms employ each one girl upon such work. "None of the other workers," it is reported, "seem to care to learn." The difference between skilful and unskilful work in this department is far greater than an uninitiated person might suppose; and the attractiveness of a poster, advertisement or invitation card depends very largely upon the way in which the type is spaced. In all printing houses employing women compositors, setting up, correcting, and distributing are done by women; in the Women's Printing Society women regularly "impose," that is, divide up the long galleys of type into pages and place the pages so that they may follow in proper order when the sheet is folded, and in another firm a woman was found who could impose; but as a general rule the "imposing" is the work of the man or men employed to lock-up and carry about the heavy formes. No instance has been found in which this latter work, which in some cases is extremely heavy, is done by women. _Bookbinding._--This trade covers at least two main divisions, and one of these is minutely subdivided into a great variety of processes. The first process is, in all cases, that of folding. All printed matter occupying more than a single page has to be so folded as to bring the pages into consecutive order, and this process is essentially the same whether the printed sheet be that of a book, a pamphlet, a magazine, or a newspaper. From the trade point of view, however, there is a distinction between the folding of matter intended to be bound up in a real book cover (book-folding) and matter which is not to be bound (printers' folding). As a general rule--liable, however, to many exceptions--book-folding is performed in a binder's shop and printers' folding in a printing house, whence the names. But many printers now have a regular binding department, and periodical or pamphlet work is on the other hand often folded in the workshop of the publisher's binder. The line of demarcation is therefore no very distinct one. Prospectus work is _par excellence_ printers' folding, and so are such weekly papers as are still folded by hand. Book-folding is done by women, of whom in theory nearly all, and in practice many, are regularly employed. The process is practically identical in both cases. Printers' folding is carried on in large firms chiefly by a regular staff; but in times of pressure "job hands" or "grass hands" are called in; and in smaller workplaces job hands do the whole of the work. Great sheets of matter, fresh from the press, are distributed in thousands to the workers to be folded either by hand or by machine. In the latter case, the woman merely feeds the machine, taking care to lay the sheet in exactly the right place. In the former, she becomes practically a machine herself, so monotonous is the occupation. The sheet is folded once, twice, three, or even four times, as the case may be, on a fixed plan, and sometimes has to be cut with a long knife as well as folded. The various sheets of a book having been folded, the process of _gathering_ follows. Each folder has received a fixed number (probably a thousand) copies of the same sheet, and when she has finished folding the gatherer places the sheets in piles of each "signature," _e.g._ the index letter which one observes on the first page of each sheet in a book, in regular order on a long table. She then walks up and down the side of this table collecting one copy of each sheet and so forming a complete book. The collection thus made passes from the gatherer to the _collator_, who runs over it, noting by means of the printer's "signature" that all the sheets are in order, and placing her mark on the book, thereby becoming responsible for its accuracy. In the case of illustrated books the process of _placing_ comes at this stage. The plates to be inserted are "fanned out"--_i.e._, laid out in fan shape--each receives a narrow strip of paste at the back and is placed next, and stuck to, its proper page. This placing is sometimes done by the collator, sometimes by a separate hand. The whole process of collating is often omitted in the case of pamphlets and small work, and the sheets then pass straight from the folder to the stitcher or sewer. Of _sewing_ or _stitching_ there are many varieties. The threads of hand-sewn books generally pass through three bands of tape kept taut by being attached at one end to the table at which the worker sits and at the other to a horizontal bar above. Sometimes the book will have been prepared by the sawing of grooves in the back to receive the sewing. This sawing is done by men. Stitching machines vary greatly. The simplest kind merely inserts the unpleasant "staple-binder" of wire that is so large a factor in the rapid decomposition of cheap books. In these machines, one variety of which uses thread and knots it, the pamphlet or other work in hand is placed at a particular place in a kind of trough; the operator presses a treadle and the wire is mechanically passed through and pressed flat. Other machines of a more complicated sort will sew with thread upon tapes. In this case one girl is required to superintend and a younger assistant to cut apart the books which are delivered by the machine fixed at intervals upon a long continuous tape. Such machines are worked by power and set going by the pressure of a treadle. Pamphlets or newspapers having neither "cover" nor "wrapper" are now finished--unless, indeed, _inserts_ or _insets_ are to be placed between the pages. These are those unattached advertisements which fall out upon the reader's knee on a first opening, and thereby certainly succeed in catching his attention, though not perhaps his approval. Magazines or paper-covered books are sometimes "wrappered" by women, a simple process consisting of glueing the back of each book and clapping on the cover. Bound books have end-papers added to them by women, who also paste down the projecting tapes to the fly-pages. At this stage the book passes into the hands of men to be touched no more by women, except perhaps in a few subsidiary processes. But since much debate has taken place over the allotment to men and women of other parts of the work, it becomes necessary to give a cursory glance at the further stages of a book's progress. On leaving the women's hands the book--now no longer a collection of loose sheets but an entity--is placed in a machine to be "nipped," that is, to have the back pressed; then the edges are cut smooth in a "guillotine"; the back is glued upon muslin and rounded, and a groove is made, by hand or machine, at each side of the back, so that the cover may lie flat; this is called "backing," the covering boards and cloth are cut out and pasted together; the design and lettering are stamped upon them in the "blocking-room"; the books are "pasted down," that is, are fixed into their covers by means of pasting down the end leaves, and are "built up" in a large press. If the designs and lettering of the cover are to be gilded, the gold-leaf is laid on by hand according to the stamped-out pattern, which is then restamped, and any gold-leaf not firmly adhering is rubbed off with an old stocking. The stocking is burned in a crucible, and the precious remainder of the gold collected again. "Gold laying-on" is done by women; and the workers engaged in this task do nothing else. Much dexterity is needed, the gold-leaf being apt to break or blow away at the slightest breath. One investigator describes as "seeming almost marvellous" the skill with which this difficult material is laid in exactly the right place by means of a knife. Women also "open-up," _i.e._, look through the books ready to be sent out to see that there are no flaws. Such is the life-history of the ordinary book as it comes from the publisher, but "publishers' binding" is not the only section of the binding trade, and is indeed regarded by the workers as "decidedly inferior" to "leather-work," which is emphatically distinguished as "bookbinding." Leather-binding is employed mainly for rebinding. It forms, as may be supposed, a comparatively small part of the whole trade, and is practically confined to three large firms in the West End, a few small places, and separate rooms in some general binding establishments. The chief difference of method lies in the better fixing together of back and cover, the "bound" book being laced into the cover, and in the presence of a "head-band," at top and bottom of the back. Books to be re-bound are picked to pieces by women and cleaned from glue, etc., re-folded, if necessary, collated, and after being rolled flat (by a man) are sewn at a hand press. Repairs to torn pages or plates and the removal of stains are also done by women. This last process demands great care and skill, "foxed" pages requiring to be dipped into a preparation of acid which destroys not only the objectionable stain but also the body of the paper, so that the leaf has to be newly sized and strengthened, and naturally needs very tender handling throughout this whole course of treatment. The best head-bands, too, are made by women by hand, but the head-bands of cheaper books--when they exist at all--are machine-made. Head-band makers form a special and extremely small class of workers. A third branch of the trade is "vellum-binding," a name which covers the binding of all ledgers, account books, and bank books, whether bound in vellum or no. The workers engaged in this branch form a separate group, are rarely found on the premises of regular bookbinders, and work chiefly in a separate department in printing houses. The employments of women in vellum-binding are much the same as in publishers' binding; they fold and sew much in the usual manner, the only marked difference arising in the case of large day-books, etc., which are elaborately hand-sewn in frames, each section of the book having a separate guard of linen. It is difficult to draw lines of demarcation between the various workers whose occupations have now been described. In large workplaces a worker will probably be kept at one minute process; the folder will do nothing but fold, the sewer will only sew, the collator only collate, and the inserter only insert. Some forewomen, however, think it better to give the women a change of employment. Gold layers-on and openers-up are always entirely apart from folders and sewers, but collators begin with folding and sewing, and in small houses sometimes combine one or both these processes with collating. The divisions of work between men and women are not made upon any discernible principle of fitness, and except in the case of folding and sewing, which have belonged to women from time immemorial, the various processes began in the hands of men and have been gradually taken up by women. This gradual encroachment has been generally resented and often resisted by the men, and in May, 1893, an elaborate agreement was drawn up by the Bookbinding Trade Section of the London Chamber of Commerce representing the masters, and the secretaries of the men's unions representing the men working in the trade. The women workers were not represented or consulted. The agreement is as follows:-- LONDON SOCIETIES OF JOURNEYMEN BOOKBINDERS. _London Consolidated Society; Bookbinders' and Machine Rulers' Consolidated Union, London Branch; Society of Day-working Bookbinders._ That this meeting of representatives of the Bookbinding Section of the London Chamber of Commerce, with representatives of the Journeymen Bookbinders' Trade Societies, deeming it desirable that a definition of bookbinding should be agreed upon for the delimitation of work to be paid for at recognised rates, hereby agrees that the following divisions or sub-divisions of labour be for the future recognised as the work of bookbinders or apprentices, taking the book from the time of leaving the women after sewing, except wrappering, which is unaffected by this agreement:-- Forwarding, and the following sub-divisions of bookbinding: Nipping, knocking down, or pressing. Cutting books or magazines. Colouring edges of books (where done indoors). Cutting leather, except corners, and backs for flush work from sheep and roan. Cutting cloth. Cutting hollows and linings. Cutting boards. Bevelling boards. Case making. Pasting down and building up. Flush work throughout. Finishing throughout. Assistant finishing throughout. Blocking throughout. Circuit and box work. (Bible trade.) PROVIDED:--That the representatives of the journeymen agree that they will not make it a grievance if female or unskilled labour is placed upon:-- The rolling, pressing before sewing, sawing up, or papering of outboard work. The laying on, washing up, or cleaning off of cloth work. The varnishing of cloth or Bible work. The paper mounts and pictures on cloth cases. Taking work out of the press after pasting down, and opening up. The carrying of loads of work about the workshop. Further, that the representatives of the journeymen will not object to the introduction of unskilled labour upon cloth cutting, if the recognised rate of wages of 32_s._ per 48 hours be paid after a probationary period of twelve months, in which the novice may learn the work. Owing to the difficulties of drafting a clause affecting the laying on in such a manner as to lay down a line of demarcation between cloth and leather work, it is hereby agreed to leave the subject of laying on _in statu quo_, upon the understanding that it shall not be the policy of the Trade Societies to interfere, except in the case of innovations upon existing custom.[2] This agreement not to be construed to the prejudice of the existing holders of situations. Adopted by the Bookbinding Trade Section of the London Chamber of Commerce at its annual meeting on 7th May, 1893. JOHN DIPROSE, _Chairman_. Ratified by the executives of the hereunder-mentioned Societies on May 30th, 1893, and signed on their behalf. HENRY R. KING, _Secretary, London Consolidated Society_. WILLIAM BOCKETT, _Secretary, Day Working Bookbinders' Society_. THOMAS E. POWELL, _Secretary, Bookbinders and Machine Rulers' Consolidated Union_ (_London Branch_). [Footnote 2: This clause has been interpreted by the award given in March, 1903, by Mr. C. J. Stewart, the arbitrator appointed by the Board of Trade to settle a dispute in the trade regarding wages, hours, apprentices and piece work. The 6th clause in that award is as follows:--"That the right or practice existing with regard to female labour employed on wrappering and for laying on gold in case work, cloth or leather, or other material, in certain workshops in the trade, shall be made to apply to all workshops in the trade, it being agreed by the employers that no man exclusively employed in gold laying-on shall lose his employment by reason of the employment of women on such work."] Closely connected with vellum-binding are the processes of machine-ruling, numbering, paging and perforating. _Machine-ruling_ is the process by which lines are ruled for ledgers, invoices, etc. The machine employed resembles a hand-loom in appearance, and is in effect a framework in which pens are fixed at the required distances. Ink is conveyed into these from a pad of thick flannel above, and the page to be ruled lies on a broad band below. The re-inking of the flannel is in some cases effected by means of a reservoir and tap supplying a regulated flow, in others the ink is laid on from bowls of red or blue colour by means of a brush. Machines worked by a handle still survive in a few places, but as a general rule the machine is driven by power and the operator merely superintends, correcting the machine if it goes wrong, setting the pens and regulating the supply of ink. The newest machines require the services of neither "feeders" nor "wetters," and the simple old picturesque accessories, the cords, the wooden frame, the bowls of colour, are disappearing. Women are employed in some houses to feed the machines, which is purely mechanical work; our investigators found four establishments in London in which women can rise to the higher position of "minder," and one other in which they are allowed to damp the flannel and partially "mind." _Numbering_ is the process by which consecutive figures are stamped upon cheques, bills, receipts, tickets, or other loose sheets. A machine worked by hand is employed, the number types changing automatically. The attention of the worker is required on three points only: the paper must be placed so as to bring the number into the right position; the machine must not be allowed to skip numbers at a jump--as it is inclined to do; and whenever an additional figure becomes necessary, a certain change must be made. The handle of the machine works up and down, and the process is different from that of stamping, to be described later. There are no power machines for numbering. Numbering is said to try the eyes, and the working of a machine handle is considered bad for girls who have any weakness of the chest. _Paging_ is the process by which numbers are printed upon the pages of a bound volume. As in numbering, a change has to be made at each "100"; and there is need of further care to avoid missing pages. Where these are thin or interleaved with tissue paper omissions are very easily made. _Perforating_ is done by machines generally worked by power, but sometimes by treadle, with one foot; and this treadle work was described by a woman constantly employed at it as excessively hard work. _Lithography._--The work of women and girls in lithography seems to be confined to the feeding of machines. In London the introduction of female labour is comparatively recent, dating from about six or seven years ago, but in the provinces women have been employed for more than thirty years. Employers are, for some reason or another, not very ready to give information about this branch of work; but some of the investigators engaged in this enquiry have succeeded in seeing the process. A girl stands on a high platform putting sheets into the proper place in the machine until she has completed the job. A long interval may follow in which she may sew, knit or read. The noise of the machine is incessant, and the work hard, monotonous and mechanical, but if done under proper conditions not necessarily unhealthy. Many working-places in London, however, where space is so valuable, are partly underground, dark and ill-ventilated, and in these the ceaseless whirring noise and the smell of the ink grow unendurably trying. Workers in such places are rough and of low social standing. Most men working in the general stationery trades, and some employers who do not employ women, condemn the doing of this work by women, and since the women have superseded not men but boys, the views of the workmen are not those of trade rivals. Girls are said to be in various ways better workers than boys--cleaner-handed, more careful and accurate, less disposed to meddle with the machinery, and therefore less liable to accidents; above all, quieter, more docile, and less apt to strike. The men employed in lithography look favourably on the employment of girls, because no girl attempts to rise into the higher grades and "pick up" the trade without apprenticeship. Girls do not, and boys as feeders do, "constitute a danger to the Society." Moreover, a trade that offers only so uncertain a chance of rising is generally disapproved for a boy. The objection to the employment for girls is that they work among men--an objection which may be a very grave one indeed, or a comparatively slight one, according to the character of the foreman and the management of the workshop. It may be noted that respectable working-class parents almost always consider this objection serious. A few women are reported to be employed as lithographic artists, but no one has been seen in the course of this enquiry. Minor stationery trades are envelope-making, black bordering, plain and relief stamping. _Envelope-making_ has several subdivisions. The paper is first cut to shape in machines worked by men, then passed to women to be "cemented," _i.e._, to be gummed upon the flaps, folded or "creased," and stuck together. Finally the envelopes are packed by women. Cementing and folding are reckoned distinct trades. One cementer explained to an investigator, however, that she described herself as a folder, "for people are so ignorant that if you say you are a cementer they think you have something to do with the pavement." Cementing may be done by hand or by machine, and the workers are not interchangeable. The hand-worker spreads out the envelopes in the shape of a fan, and passes her brush over all the flaps at once. The machine-cementer puts 500 or 1,000 envelopes into a small machine, which grips them and drips gum upon their flaps. The worker extricates the envelopes one by one, and spreads them out to dry. A more complex machine is being introduced which performs the various processes for itself, requiring one girl to feed and one to take-off. The flaps being dry, the envelopes are taken in bundles to the _folders_, who first "crease" them--that is, fold in the sides--then "gum" them with a brush at the required points, and fasten them. This process can also be performed by a machine, and the operator in that case merely feeds the machine with the cemented paper, and the envelope is delivered made. The envelopes are then handed on to the "packers," who count them and make them up into packets, and the packets into parcels. Except the original cutting, still done by men, all these processes have always been executed by women. The trade of _black bordering_ is carried on by women who seldom or never perform any other process. Black bordering is usually done by hand. The worker spreads out a number of sheets, cards or envelopes, in such a manner as to expose only a certain width of border, and over this exposed portion she passes a brush. Of course, only two edges of each sheet, etc., can be laid ready at one time, and each object has to be "laid out" a second time after drying. "It is marvellous to see the speed and dexterity with which the women do the 'laying-out.' They gather up a large number of sheets, lay them on the board and fan them out with a piece of wood used for the purpose, showing the most astounding accuracy of eye in leaving just the right width exposed. Sometimes the 'laying out' is done by a machine, and only the blacking by hand." This trade--a steady one on the whole--has, unlike nearly all the other stationery trades, been more prosperous owing to the South African war--a grim little example of the way in which large public events eddy away into undreamed of backwaters! Men now never do black bordering, but are reported to have done so once. Machinery is now being more widely introduced. _Plain, Relief and Cameo Stamping._--Under these heads are included all the various processes by which crests, monograms, addresses, etc., are embossed upon notepaper, cards, programmes, or private Christmas cards. The trade has increased enormously of late years, and a new process has been introduced which renders it possible to employ the printing press. This, however, is only worth while when the order to be executed is a very large one; and most stamping is done by hand machines, a die being fixed into the machine and impressed by tightly screwing down. The machine is worked (like an ordinary copying press) by a horizontal bar, having a ball at each end, and swung from right to left. The lighter machines can be worked by one hand; the heavier require two, and are found fatiguing. Some are so heavy that they can only be worked by men. Practice is necessary in order to get the stamp in exactly the right place, and, in relief or cameo work, in order to mix the colours, which are rubbed on the die, to precisely the right thickness. Plain stamping--the easiest process--is that in which letters, a coat of arms, or a trade mark, are raised but not coloured; in relief stamping the raised surface is coloured; and in cameo stamping (of which the registered letter envelope is an example) a white device stands out from a coloured background. When two or more colours are employed considerable care, skill, and patience are needed. This work, in two or more colours, is called _illuminating_; in one branch of it--the highest--gold and silver are employed on a coloured surface, and here women are not employed. _Show-card Mounting._--Card mounting is a distinct trade, and is almost entirely in female hands. Almanacs, advertisements, and texts for hanging up, all belong to the province of the card mounter, whose main business is to unite the picture and cardboard that arrive separately in her workshop. The board is first cut either by a man at a cutting machine--or "guillotine"--or occasionally by a girl at a rotary machine adjustable to different gauges; then "lined," by having paper pasted over the back and edges. Inferior work is not lined. Finally, the picture or print is pasted on the card, the backs of three or four pictures being pasted at once, and each in succession being applied to its own card. Some means of hanging up is still needed, and various methods are in use. Sometimes eyelets are inserted into a punched hole by means of a small machine which a girl works by hand. Sometimes the edge is bound with a strip of tin, having loops attached to it; in this case the tin strips are cut by men, and applied by hand machines, again worked by girls. Sometimes, as in the case of maps, charts, and large diagrams, a wooden rod is fixed at the top, this fixing being done by girls. The trade is not, it will readily be perceived, one that demands great skill, practice or intelligence, and the majority of the workers are very young. Still, a certain degree of experience is necessary, since the application of either too much or too little paste results in a "blister," and blistered work is spoiled. One investigator was shown a lot of 500 cards, the estimated value of which was 6_d._ each, no less than 385 of which had thus been spoiled and rendered quite useless. The workers stand at their work and report that it exhausts them. It used, till about twenty-eight years ago, to be done by men; but the trade was at that time a much smaller one. Night work, when considered necessary, is still done by men. A little laying-on of gold is done in connection with card mounting. The process has been described already under bookbinding. The Christmas card industry (which may be considered as a variety of show-card mounting) serves to exemplify one of the anomalies of the Factory Act. These cards may be sorted, packed, etc., to any hours of the night, because mere packing is not regarded as manufacture; but if a "bow of ribbon" is to be affixed to each card, the process becomes "preparation for sale," and the regulations of the Act apply.[3] [Footnote 3: Cf. pp. 76,77.] _Typefounding._--Typefounding is a small, ancient and conservative trade into which women have only crept during the last few years. In London there are only about eight typefoundries proper, and in these labour is elaborately subdivided, every workman performing but one process. Recently, however, some large printing houses have begun to cast their own type, and in these the few men employed perform all the processes, or, to use their own term, "do the work through," thus, curiously enough, reverting to an earlier stage in the development of the trade. Women are employed in the large foundries, where they perform certain subsidiary parts of the work. Each type when it comes from the machine wherein it has been cast has a little superfluous bit of thin metal, known as a "break" on its end or "foot." These bits are broken off by girls, the "foot" of the type being pressed against a table and the "break" snapped off. No great skill is required, but quickness only comes with practice. The type is also "set-up"--_i.e._, put in rows in a long stick or "galley"--by girls; here, again, nothing is needed beyond a certain manual dexterity. Sometimes another stage, "rubbing," intervenes between the "breaking" and the "setting-up." Rubbing is merely the smoothing off on a flat grindstone of any roughness that may be left by the machine round the "face" end of the type. In one case, in London, one or two women were once employed in rubbing, but none appear to be so engaged at present, and the newer appliances have made rubbing unnecessary. "Dressing," the final process through which the type passes, is said to be in some places performed by women; but no such instances have been found in London in the course of this investigation. The dresser receives the lines or sticks of type, polishes the sides, measures their length and breadth with a delicate spanner, "nicks" the foot of each type, and finally "picks over" the type--that is, scans the row of "faces" through a magnifying glass, and rejects any on which the letters are not absolutely truly placed. One large London firm, employing many girls, has a different process. The types are cast in long lines and have to be divided, no breaking or setting-up being required. As one of the workers said, "This is not a trade; just any one can do it!" Girls began to do "breaking" and "setting-up" in London about thirteen years ago. There were then but thirteen so employed. During the last few years their numbers have increased, and it is estimated that those now employed number from 100 to 150. One firm is known to employ fifty and another forty. They have superseded boys, and were mainly introduced because boys were difficult to get. The chances of rising being small for boys, they were disinclined to enter the trade. The chances for girls are _nil_, but this consideration does not weigh much with girls belonging to the class that supplies workers to typefounding. The female workers are all young, and at present no married women seem to be employed, a fact which may perhaps be due to the comparatively recent entrance of women into the trade. The occupation has a special feature of unhealthiness--the danger of lead-poisoning; and the Factory Act, recognising this, prohibits women, young persons or children, from taking a meal upon the premises where typefounding is carried on. As in other lead industries, much depends on the care and cleanliness of the worker. To eat with hands lead-blackened by some hours of "breaking-off" is to run considerable risk of lead-poisoning. It is suggested that girls, being more fastidious than boys upon such points, may possibly suffer less frequently from the dangers involved in the industry of typefounding. CHAPTER II. _WOMEN IN THE TRADES._ [Sidenote: Census figures.] Before 1841 the census occupation tables do not state the numbers employed in the detailed trades, and even in that year we find either that no separate return was made for some of the industries with which this volume deals, or that no women were employed at all. Presumably, therefore, previous statistics would not have shown that women were employed in these industries to any appreciable extent. The following tables show the employment of women in England and Wales and Scotland in the Printing and Kindred Trades according to the census returns from 1841 to 1901. The figures must be used with caution, as they include employers as well as employed (an error, however, which is immaterial in the case of women workers). Subsidiary helpers are also classified with those actually entitled to be regarded as members of the trade, and the tables do not discriminate sufficiently between the various subdivisions of occupations. These last two errors considerably affect the figures relating to women. In the bookbinding section, for instance,[4] the figures are altogether misleading, since by far the greater number of women included as bookbinders are really paper and book-folders, and are no more entitled to the name bookbinder than a bricklayer's labourer is to that of bricklayer. [Footnote 4: Since 1881 in the Scottish returns.] ENGLAND AND WALES. Males. Females. _Census 1841. (Employers and Employed included.)_ Booksellers, bookbinders, etc. 8,873 2,035 Printers 15,582 161 Lithographers, etc. 667 12 Paper manufacture 4,375 1,287 Paper rulers 113 16 Paper stainers 1,243 92 Type founders 629 6 Vellum binders 131 3 _Census 1851._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 5,501 } 3,926 Printers, etc 23,568 } Lithographers (Great Britain) 1,984 6 Paper manufacture 6,123 4,686 Paper stainers 2,001 Not enumerated. _Census 1861._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 6,556 5,364 Printers 30,171 419 Lithographers, etc. 3,588 -- Paper manufacture 7,746 5,611 Machine rulers 564 54 Envelope makers 179 860 Paper stainers 1,556 399 Type founders 863 11 _Census 1871._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 7,917 7,557 Printers 44,073 741 Lithographers, etc 3,785 Not enumerated. Paper manufacture 10,142 6,630 Envelope makers Not enumerated. 1,477 Paper stainers 1,311 448 _Census 1881._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 9,505 10,592 Printers 59,088 2,202 Lithographers, etc 6,009 147 Paper manufacture 10,352 8,277 Envelope makers 175 1,933 Paper stainers 1,822 445 Type cutters and founders 1,137 32 +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | _Census | Employ- | Employ- | Working | Others | TOTAL. | | 1891._ | ers. | ed. | on | not | | | | | | Own | Speci- | | | | | | Account. | fied. | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Book- | M. 615 | 10,038 | 355 | 479 | 11,487 | | binders | F. 72 | 13,401 | 74 | 702 | 14,249 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Printers | M. 3,979 | 73,288 | 1,052 | 3,640 | 81,959 | | | F. 158 | 4,133 | 32 | 204 | 4,527 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Litho- | M. 499 | 7,486 | 359 | 292 | 8,636 | | graphers, | F. 9 | 309 | 7 | 24 | 349 | | etc. | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 396 | 11,081 | 97 | 440 | 12,014 | | manu- | F. 12 | 7,598 | 29 | 390 | 8,029 | | facture | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Envelope | M. 9 | 260 | 6 | 14 | 289 | | makers | F. 2 | 2,339 | 13 | 104 | 2,458 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 135 | 1,861 | 60 | 78 | 2,134 | | stainers | F. 10 | 370 | 7 | 16 | 403 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Type | M. 35 | 1,204 | 23 | 52 | 1,314 | | cutters | F. 1 | 49 | 0 | 5 | 55 | | and | | | | | | | founders | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | _Census | Employ- | Employ- | Working | Others | TOTAL. | | 1901._ | ers. | ed. | on | not | | | | | | Own | Speci- | | | | | | Account. | fied. | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Book- | M. 554 | 11,609 | 388 | 113 | 12,664 | | binders | F. 46 | 18,933 | 82 | 162 | 19,223 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Printers | M. 4,805 | 89,306 | 1,603 | 774 | 96,488 | | | F. 117 | 9,463 | 48 | 65 | 9,693 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Litho- | M. 496 | 9,648 | 445 | 93 | 10,682 | | graphers, | F. 7 | 1,015 | 14 | 7 | 1,043 | | etc. | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 337 | 14,920 | 47 | 55 | 15,359 | | manu- | F. 11 | 8,815 | 7 | 18 | 8,851 | | facture | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Envelope | M. 14 | 352 | 1 | 3 | 370 | | makers | F. 6 | 3,113 | 1 | 23 | 3,143 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 45 | 1,928 | 34 | 25 | 2,032 | | stainers | F. 2 | 280 | 1 | 4 | 287 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Type | M. 35 | 1,223 | 15 | 14 | 1,287 | | cutters | F. 0 | 181 | 0 | 2 | 183 | | and | | | | | | | founders | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Sta- | M. 352 | 3,910 | 91 | 28 | 4,381 | | tionary | F. 24 | 4,615 | 12 | 47 | 4,698 | | manu- | | | | | | | facture | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ SCOTLAND. Males. Females. _Census 1841. (Employers and Employed included.)_ Booksellers, etc. 2,164 283 Printers 2,446 21 Lithographers, etc. 234 1 Paper manufacture 732 738 Paper rulers 61 8 Paper stainers 31 1 Type founders 292 -- _Census 1851._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 1,09 } 710 Printers, etc. 3,526 } Paper manufacture 1,265 2,159 Paper stainers 49 Not enumerated. _Census 1861._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 1,174 100 Printers 4,400 70 Lithographers, etc. 1,101 2 Engravers 651 6 Bookfolders 2 1,094 Machine rulers 171 18 Paper manufacture 1,648 2,773 Envelope makers 5 309 Paper stainers 77 -- Type founders 434 -- _Census 1871._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 1,293 174 Printers 5,476 113 Lithographers, etc. 1,125 36 Print and map colourers 192 57 Bookfolders -- 1,646 Paper manufacture 2,770 3,504 Envelope makers 7 412 Paper rulers 214 100 Paper stainers 110 50 Type founders 496 -- _Census 1881._ (_Employers and Employed included._) Bookbinders 1,433 2,587(a) Printers 6,936 839 Lithographers, etc. 1,269 153 Map and print colourers and sellers 50 41 Paper rulers 188 115 Paper manufacture 3,363 4,612 Envelope makers 32 580 Paper stainers 34 97 Type cutters and founders 471 71 (a) Bookfolders are included here. +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | _Census | Employ- | Employ- | Working | Not | TOTAL. | | 1891._ | ers. | ed. | on | Speci- | | | | | | Own | fied. | | | | | | Account. | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Book- |M. 68 | 1,413 | 13 | 22 | 1,516 | | binders |F. 3 | 2,865 | 3 | 18 | 2,889 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Printers |M. 322 | 8,367 | 69 | 84 | 8,842 | | |F. 5 | 1,417 | 1 | 7 | 1,430 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Litho |M. 109 | 1,516 | 22 | 10 | 1,657 | | graphers, |F. -- | 397 | 1 | 2 | 400 | | etc. | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper |M. 10 | 315 | 1 | 13 | 339 | | rulers |F. 1 | 192 | -- | 4 | 197 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper |M. 107 | 4,332 | 21 | 51 | 4,511 | | manu- |F. 3 | 4,546 | 4 | 66 | 4,619 | | facture | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Envelope |M. 3 | 33 | 2 | -- | 38 | | makers |F. -- | 698 | 1 | -- | 699 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper |M. 6 | 113 | 1 | -- | 120 | | stainers |F. -- | 28 | -- | -- | 28 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Type |M. 9 | 496 | 3 | 4 | 512 | | cutters |F. -- | 75 | -- | -- | 75 | | and | | | | | | | founders | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | _Census | Employ- | Employ- | Working | Not | TOTAL. | | 1901._ | ers. | ed. | on | Speci- | | | | | | Own | fied. | | | | | | Account. | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Book | M. 67 | 1,422 | 16 | -- | 1,505 | | binders | F. 4 | 3,522 | 4 | -- | 3,530 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Printers | M. 378 | 9,643 | 54 | 2 | 10,077 | | | F. 7 | 2,852 | 1 | -- | 2,860 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Litho | M. 87 | 1,640 | 25 | -- | 1,752 | | graphers, | F. 2 | 728 | 1 | -- | 731 | | etc. | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 103 | 4,860 | 6 | 1 | 5,000 | | manu- | F. 2 | 4,653 | -- | -- | 4,655 | | facture | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Envelope | M. 4 | 53 | -- | -- | 57 | | makers | F. 1 | 895 | -- | -- | 896 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Paper | M. 1 | 120 | 1 | -- | 122 | | stainers | F. -- | 52 | 1 | -- | 53 | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Type | M. 6 | 419 | 5 | -- | 430 | | cutters | F. -- | 53 | -- | -- | 53 | | and | | | | | | | founders | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ | Sta- | M. 22 | 95 | 1 | -- | 118 | | tionery | F. 1 | 492 | 3 | -- | 496 | | manu- | | | | | | | facture | | | | | | +-----------+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+ [Sidenote: Chief Factory Inspector's figures.] In 1896 the Home Office began to publish as an appendix to the Chief Factory Inspector's Report a series of figures of occupation which were exceedingly valuable for purposes of comparison, and in time would have been the best existing statistical index of industrial movements. Unfortunately these figures have not been published since 1899; but for the years that they were issued, those relating to the printing trades were as follows:-- FACTORY INSPECTOR'S REPORTS. _Paper, Printing, Stationery, Etc. (Includes all the industries under this section.)_ Total Total Male Female Male. Female. over 18. over 18. 1895 Factories 159,987 63,626 123,895 42,904 Workshops 3,355 4,692 2,224 3,073 ------- ------ ------- ------ Total 163,342 68,318 126,119 45,977 1896 Factories 169,500 68,769 131,166 45,632 Workshops 4,508 5,919 3,152 3,898 ------- ------ ------- ------ Total 174,008 74,688 134,318 49,530 1897 Factories 171,151 69,898 134,221 45,479 Workshops 4,458 6,305 3,192 4,192 ------- ------ ------- ------ Total 175,609 76,203 137,413 49,671 1898-99(a) 173,964 72,833 137,504 46,681 SOME DETAILS OF ABOVE. Total Total Male Female Male. Female. over 18. over 18. _Paper-making._ 1895 Factories 21,263 11,008 18,271 8,935 1896 " 22,091 11,744 18,777 9,403 1897 " 22,174 11,309 19,086 9,138 1898-99(a) " 22,340 11,506 19,158 9,197 _Bookbinding._ 1895 Factories 11,791 16,098 9,304 10,802 1896 " 13,300 17,159 10,580 11,498 1897 " 14,661 20,877 11,705 13,985 1898-99(a) " 14,893 22,555 12,046 14,653 _Letter-press Printing._ 1895 Factories 104,162 19,974 80,232 12,699 1896 " 104,860 20,634 80,719 12,732 1897 " 100,629 14,473 79,124 8,725 1898-99(a) " 102,800 13,348 81,598 8,283 _Lithography, Engraving and Photography._ 1895 Factories 12,789 4,516 9,024 2,735 Workshops 2,226 1,425 1,494 943 1896 Factories 14,854 5,252 10,572 3,076 Workshops 3,116 2,146 2,224 1,437 1897 Factories 17,960 6,278 12,867 3,451 Workshops 2,794 2,115 2,076 1,477 1898-99(a) Factories 17,737 6,457 12,727 3,522 _Machine Ruling._ 1895 Factories 664 482 408 170 Workshops 233 134 97 45 1896 Factories 981 599 594 197 Workshops 269 168 135 59 1897 Factories 1,764 1,414 1,115 538 Workshops 322 166 163 57 1898-99(a) Factories 2,062 1,571 1,328 534 _Paper Staining, Colouring and Enamelling._ 1895 Factories 4,254 983 2,916 540 Workshops 102 28 74 16 1896 Factories 4,468 1,065 3,114 577 Workshops 138 70 111 42 1897 Factories 4,795 1,368 3,395 784 Workshops 40 66 33 38 1898-99(a) Factories 4,874 1,320 3,529 746 _Envelope Making._ 1897 Factories 1,203 4,156 8 96 2,865 Workshops 37 292 25 191 1898-99(a) Factories 1,405 4,996 1,030 3,313 (a) Factories only. These figures must not be compared with the census returns as they relate only to those establishments making reports to the Factory Inspectors under the Factory and Workshop Law. CHAPTER III. _WOMEN'S WORK AND ORGANISATION._ [Sidenote: Women as Compositors. Historical.] The subdivision of labour which has broken up the original printing "profession" into a score or so of different trades, each minutely subdivided in turn, has been the chief cause of the employment of women in this industry in modern times, although it appears that nuns were engaged as compositors at the Ripoli Monastery Press in Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century,[5] within half a century of the introduction of printing. Only very exceptional women could obtain a footing in a profession which embraced typefounding, ink-making, press-carpentry, composing, folding, and bookbinding. The United States, where, in so many respects, women have stepped in advance of European conditions, boasts of Jenny Hirsch, who carried on a printer's business in Boston about 1690, and during the next two centuries women printers were common in the thirteen States. It was a woman, Mary Catherine Goddard, who printed the first issue of the "Declaration of Independence." The years of the French Revolution also seem to be marked by the number of women engaged in the printing trade, whether owing to the general emancipating impulses of the time or to the increased demand for compositors, is not quite clear. The amiable and eccentric Thomas Beddoes, moved by the interest he took in social affairs, and inspired by the emancipatory movement of his time, had been struck with the opening which the printing trades seemed to offer to women, and gave his "Alexander's Expedition"[6] to a woman of his village, Madely, to set up. "I know not," he wrote in the Advertisement to the book, "if women be commonly engaged in printing, but their nimble and delicate fingers seem extremely well adapted to the office of compositor, and it will be readily granted that employment for females is amongst the greatest _desiderata_ of society." In England, however, the labour of women outside their homes continued to be extremely limited, and the printing trades were confined to men. During the eighteenth century women seem to have been employed in folding and sewing book and news sheets, but they did not come into the trade in any considerable numbers until the nineteenth century was half spent. This was very largely owing to the heavy nature of the work and the long apprenticeship necessary to master the varied details of the craft. The Provincial Typographical Society's first constitution, issued in 1849, shows that at so recent a date the typographical apprentice had to learn "printing and bookbinding" or "printing and stationery."[7] The printing press used in 1800 was practically the same as that used by Gutenberg in 1450. [Footnote 5: _Printers' Register_, August 6th, 1878, quoting _Journal für Buchdruckerkunst_.] [Footnote 6: Published in 1792.] [Footnote 7: Typographical Association: "Fifty Years' Record," p. 4.] The enormous advance in the printing trades owing to the abolition of the stamp duties and the paper tax, together with the spread of education and improvement in the facilities for publishing, with their resulting large demand for printed matter, speedily revolutionised these trades and led to the introduction of the great machines. Pressmen became differentiated from compositors, "minders" from layers-on or takers-off, jobbers from book-hands, folders from makers-up; whilst bookbinding finally became a separate trade altogether. Some of these separate processes, needing but little skill and requiring no apprenticeship, involving no heavy labour and no responsibility, offered openings for women. [Sidenote: Conflict between men and women.] One of the earliest references to women made by the Typographical Association occurs in 1860, when the Executive of the Union mentioned them in its half-yearly report. Printing houses were then closed to Union members on account of the employment of women. The Typographical Society's _Monthly Circular_ for August, 1865, for instance, states that a Bacup newspaper office was closed to members of the Typographical Union, owing to the employment of female labour. The exact form of employment is not given. Again, in the report for June, 1866, the Executive of the Union refers to having trouble with an employer who tried to employ female labour, but who had failed "to get suitable applicants of the gentle sex." In 1886 it was agreed that women should be admitted to both the Typographical Association and the London Society of Compositors on the same terms as men, but only one woman has availed herself of this resolution.[8] [Footnote 8: She joined the London Society of Compositors on August 30th, 1892, but she has now ceased to be a member.] [Sidenote: Printing Trades and the Women's Movement.] At this point, the movement for the emancipation of women contributes an interesting chapter to the history of these trades. The printing trades were regarded by a few of the leading spirits in the agitation for "Women's Rights" as being well adapted to women's skill and _physique_, and in 1860 Miss Emily Faithfull not only started the Victoria Press, in which women alone were to be employed, but directed the attention of women generally to the openings afforded them by this group of trades. "The compositor trades," the _Englishwoman's Journal_ (June, 1860) said, "should be in the hands of women only." Miss Faithfull's experiments produced some considerable flutter amongst men. At first, the men looked down upon them with the contempt of traditional superiority; women compositors were "to die off like birds in winter" (_cf._ _Printers' Journal_, August 5th, 1867, where a correspondent stated that "the day is far distant when such labour can hope to supersede our own"); but some trepidation was speedily caused when it was found that women's shops were undercutting men's, and an alarmist article in the _Printers' Register_ of February 6th, 1869, states that "the exertions of the advocates of female labour in the printing business have resulted in the establishment of a printing office where printing can be done on lower terms than those usually charged." That year Miss Faithfull was engaged in her libel action against Mr. Grant for calling her an atheist, and the _Publishers' Circular_ furiously attacked her work. By-and-by, however, the controversy died down. Miss Faithfull's several attempts[9] to establish permanently a printing establishment bore fruit in the still existing Women's Printing Society, started in 1874. [Footnote 9: 1860, 1869, 1873; in 1869 another Women's Printing Office was started as a means of finding employment for educated ladies: _Printers' Register_, January 6th, 1869.] As an industrial factor, however, the "Women's Movement" has been altogether secondary, and women have been induced to enter the trades under review mainly because the subdivision of labour and the application of mechanical power had created simple processes; because they were willing to accept low wages; and because, unlike the men, who were members of Unions, they made no efforts to interfere in the management of the works. [Sidenote: The London experience.] Partly owing to the nature of the work done and partly to the power of the London Society of Compositors, no systematic attempt seems to have been made generally to introduce women compositors into London houses since 1878, and it is of some significance to note that most of the London firms which employed women compositors between 1873 and 1878--the period when the attempt was most actively made--have since disappeared, owing to bad equipment and the inferior character of their trade. But the opposition to women lingered on after the attempts to introduce them more generally had ceased. In 1879 the London Society of Compositors decided that none of their members should finish work set up by women, and the firm of Messrs. Smyth and Yerworth was struck by the men's Union.[10] [Footnote 10: It is interesting to note that in these days also the women only set up the type and the men "made it up."] Commenting on this trouble, the _Standard_, in a leading article (October 8th, 1879) cynically remarked: "What women ask is not to be allowed to compete with men, which the more sensible among them know to be impossible, but to be allowed the chance of a small livelihood by doing the work of men a little cheaper than men care to do it. This is underselling of course, but it is difficult to see why, when all is said and done, men should object to be undersold by their own wives and daughters." "_Capital and Labour_," as quoted by the _Victoria Magazine_,[11] put the case for the women thus: "This work is much more remunerative, and far less toilsome and irritating than the occupation of the average nursery governess, and we anticipate that, with proper arrangements, there will be a large addition to the number of women compositors. The reasons assigned against their employment in this capacity seem to be the outcome of pedantry, prejudice, and jealousy; and no trade rules can be permitted to interpose obstacles to the attainment of such a desirable object as furnishing occupation to a number of females who are qualified by deftness of hand and mental capacity to earn in it an honourable livelihood. What would one of the men, who chose to leave Messrs. Smyth and Yerworth at the behest of the Union, say, if having a daughter of his own to assist him in his occupations, she were to be compelled to sit idle while he was made to employ a male assistant at high wages? Yet these men, though intelligent, capable, and industrious, deliberately throw themselves out of work, and become for the time paupers of their Union, because it will not permit them to assist in perfecting any processes which have been begun by women. This is the way in which men run their heads against a brick wall." [Footnote 11: November, 1879.] In December, 1882, the _Printers' Register_ published the following notice: "In a West End office, objection having been made to the introduction of female labour, and an undue number of turnovers, a strike appeared imminent, but the Committee of the Society succeeded in settling the dispute to the satisfaction of both sides." The question does not appear to have troubled the London Society again, but in 1886, a Conference of the Typographical Societies of the United Kingdom and Continent, held in London (October 21st-23rd), resolved: "That while strongly of opinion that women are not physically capable of performing the duties of a compositor, this Conference recommends their admission to membership of the various Typographical Unions, upon the same conditions as journeymen, provided always the females are paid strictly in accordance with scale." This resolution was subsequently adopted by the London Society of Compositors as noted above, and is at present in force, with the result that it is practically impossible for any woman to join the Society.[12] [Footnote 12: A curious point in connection with the work being sent out of London is that except in the case of Edinburgh the greater cheapness of the work outside London is not due so much to cheaper labour as to lower rent, etc. Several firms out in the country in England where there is no question of a Union preventing them, have tried to introduce women, but with very little success. This is put down as lack of intelligence in the women. No doubt a girl who has had only a village elementary education is not the best material out of which to make a good compositor, and the wages offered are not high enough to tempt town bred girls to undergo the tedium of country life.] [Sidenote: Provincial experience.] The Scottish compositors are organised in the Scottish Typographical Association, which has no women members. Women, particularly in Edinburgh and Perth, and to a smaller extent in Aberdeen, have been employed to defeat the ends of the Society.[13] [Footnote 13: See p. 45.] The few attempts made to organise women in the printing trades have failed. Women have been introduced into these trades at times of trouble with the men's Unions, and are consequently not likely to form organisations of their own. Their work has been so precarious and so largely confined to the mechanical and lower grades of labour,[14] that they have had no incentive to aspire to high standards of wages or other industrial conditions. The women employed in the actual printing processes do not seem to have regarded their work as their permanent means of livelihood to the same extent as folders, for instance, have done, and have been less interested, consequently, in improving their trade conditions; and, finally, the men's Societies, for various reasons, some well-founded and some groundless, have regarded women printers as a form of cheap labour--"undercutters"--and have looked upon them as dangerous intruders. [Footnote 14: _Cf._ pp. 64-68.] When, however, we turn to the organisation of women in the trades dealing with printed matter, especially folding and bookbinding, we find much greater collective activity and closer co-operation both amongst themselves and with the men. Their Trade Union record is still but scanty, nevertheless, the frequent and persistent efforts of women to act jointly, without establishing a permanent organisation, form one of the characteristic features of the trade. This apparently is almost entirely due to the fact that women's labour in bookbinding, _e.g._, in folding, was accepted by the men, and that in all workshop matters women were the fellow-workers and not the rivals of the men. This distinction between printing and bookbinding is most marked and requires to be emphasised. [Sidenote: Organisation amongst bookbinders.] The bookbinders' organisation sprang up in 1779-80, as most organisations then did, from friendly meetings in certain houses of call. It was at first known as "The Friends." In 1786, the working day was from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., with certain breaks for meals, giving, perhaps, an actual working time of twelve and a half hours per day. But in March of that year, a Conference of the sections decided to ask for a reduction of an hour per day, and their petition was followed by the discharge of workmen.[15] The employers then went further, and in May, 1786, indicted twenty-four of the ringleaders for conspiracy. In a manifesto to the public, the men complained that their wages were only from 15_s._ to 18_s._ per week, rising in a few cases to a guinea, and proceeded to charge the employers with having "with vindictive rage forced into the sweet retreats of domestic felicity" wives who were employed in the trade. This action on the part of the employers was not prompted, however, by an objection to women, for, according to the testimony of Mr. W. M. Hall,[16] one of the men indicted, an attempt was made to supply the book market as a temporary makeshift during the dispute with the imperfect work of women. He says, "I cannot remember the exact time of striking the women. This I remember, it was on account of them and the apprentices doing books in boards, by the booksellers consenting to take them so for a time, I was appointed to strike Black Jock's[17] women. I went at one o'clock to see Maria, his forewoman, who used to dine in the shop, she being single. I told her she must inform the other women of the injury they were doing us by continuing at work. If they were willing to serve our interest and leave their work, they should receive their wages for doing nothing. If we gained our cause, they should be sure of employ, and the advantage of the hour also. Coming downstairs, I met Mr. McKinley. "'Well, Mr. Hall, are you coming to work again directly?' "'Sir, if you will grant the hour----' "'Come in here,' he says, going into his dining-room, and setting down a large square bottle of Hollands to give me a glass, taking one himself and pouring out another. Pat, pat, pat! came our ladies downstairs. 'What is all this about?' I was glad to make my escape. The six or seven women were all subpoenaed against me on the trial." [Footnote 15: In the Report of the Committee on Trades' Societies published in 1860 by the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Mr. Dunning tells the history of the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders. pp. 93-104.] [Footnote 16: _The Finishers' Friendly Circular_, May, 1846, No. 4.] [Footnote 17: An employer named John McKinley.] The narrative of this famous struggle--one of the most important in the history of Trade Unionism, involving persecution, imprisonment, and death--contains no further records of the part played by women in it, but Mr. Hall's reminiscence indicates how they behaved. The men were successful, and in 1794, the working day was again reduced, so that it lasted from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Presumably the women shared in these advantages, and also in that of an afternoon tea half-hour, which was theirs exclusively until 1806, when the men, during a period of active trade and overtime, demanded the same privilege. James Watson, in his "Recollections,"[18] hints that the kind indulgence of the women to the men, permitted in some shops, made the afternoon tea half-hour a general demand. "Their kind friends, the ladies, while preparing for their own comfort, neglected not those of their less fortunate companions, but contrived by making their tea to accommodate them as much as possible, and the men, if not immediately under the eye of their employer, would seat themselves on the end of their presses for ten minutes or so and thus partake of it." A strike to secure the half-hour was unsuccessful, but the men gradually won their point. Mr. Watson tells how, after the strike, it happened that he was being engaged by one of the opposing masters. The master, "being pressed upon the point, damned the half-hour, but said I might come in and do as I liked. I accordingly accepted the situation, and at tea-time, when I prepared to sit down, I expected to be supported by the men of the shop who were well aware of my intention, but not one of them would move. I was thus placed in an awkward position, and could only turn to my good friends, the ladies, to countenance my proceedings, who kindly invited me to their tea table." In about a month, Mr. Watson informs us, every man in the place was following his example.[19] [Footnote 18: _British Bookmaker_, June, 1892.] [Footnote 19: The friendly conduct of "the ladies" was long remembered in the trade, and was celebrated as late as 1847 in a song:-- "What we enjoy we dearly bought, And nobly they the battle fought, Who--though the ladies' aid they sought, Would--right or wrong--have tea. _Chorus_ "Then let us all our voices raise, And loudly chant to-night in praise Of those who gained in byegone days, The time we have for tea."] [Sidenote: The Bible Society controversy.] The struggle which the bookbinders fought with most pertinacity was, however, that which they waged against the Religious Societies--particularly the British and Foreign Bible Society--when attempting to cheapen the production of religious literature by means which, the bookbinders contended, involved unreasonably low rates of pay. In this struggle women played a prominent part. It broke out as early as 1825 when the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge reduced its prices and the master bookbinders working for it reduced wages. The strike which followed collapsed for want of funds. In 1833 the contest was resumed with the British and Foreign Bible Society. That year the five houses then employed by the Society reduced wages, and it appears that when the dispute was about to be settled by both sides accepting a compromise, a representative of the Bible Society instructed the masters to hold out. The men appealed to the Society, but were told that it could not intervene. No definite settlement was ever arrived at. The first petition which the men addressed to the Society in 1833 made special reference to the condition of the women workers. "Your memorialists beg leave to state," they wrote, "that there are a number of females (about 200) employed in binding the books of your Society, the whole of whose wages have been reduced in consequence of the late alteration in the prices of these books. Their wages were before very low. Your memorialists respectfully submit that the making it more difficult, and in some cases impossible, for females to earn an honest subsistence, by their labour, is in the same proportion to give potency to the seducers of female virtue." Reply and counter-reply were made, and the Society was heartily attacked by the Union with texts from Scripture and reflections on applied Christianity. In the defence which the Society issued in 1834, it is stated that its binders informed it that "competent and industrious men in our employ earn on an average 6_d._ an hour or 30_s._ weekly when in constant work; and women in the same description from 8_s._ to 10_s._ and upwards." Mr. Dunning, the Union Secretary, replied that he could prove that the scale given was an "entire falsehood," and published a second "Address to the Religious Public," in which the wages paid by the principal firm were given, the average for thirteen men working out at a small fraction over a guinea per week, and of twenty-four women at 5_s._ 11_d._ per week. In 1843 the dispute was allowed to end, when the five firms promised to pay the women on timework at rates between 7_s._ 6_d._ and 15_s._ per week, and to work them only ten hours per day. In 1845 the Society decided to give all its binding to one firm, the proprietress of which was Miss Watkins, and four years later the most famous dispute of the series broke out. The "controversy," as it is called in the bookbinders' records, opened by an appeal addressed to the Society on August 17th, 1849, by the journeymen bookbinders of London and Westminster, in which it was alleged that Miss Watkins had returned to piecework, and that the wages she was paying to women averaged only 5_s._ 6_d._ to 6_s._ per week for a longer day than ten hours. Learners were taken on and were discharged so soon as they were entitled to increases in wages, and a rule was said to be in operation by which, so soon as a woman worker was qualified to be paid more than 7_s._ a week, she was discharged. "Exorbitant" fines were also imposed. "Females," remarks the appeal, "often have not the power to plead their own cause in such matters, and being helpless in many respects where their wages are concerned, they are trodden down until a state of things such as described in the 'Song of the Shirt' appals the mind with the enormity of their injuries, their suffering, and their moral condition." The appeal contained the following table, showing the difference in wages paid to women working for the Bible Society and those working for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Bible Society for Promoting Society. Christian Knowledge. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 5 0 Pearl Bibles, per 100 vols. 7 6 5 1½ Ruby " " 7 0 6 10½ Large Pica Bibles, " 8 4 6 8 Small " " " 8 4 One of the grievances specially mentioned in this appeal was that women were not allowed hot water, except between 4 and 4.30 p.m., and were then charged 1_d._ per week for it. Immediately (August 22nd, 1849) after the issue of the "Appeal" the women employed by Miss Watkins were asked to sign a statement that they were perfectly satisfied with their pay and conditions. Several signed, not knowing the purport of the paper; others refused. On the advice of the men's Union a counter-statement was drawn up and signed, and sent in to the Bible Society, and on finding that the forewoman who had taken their part, together with the active promoters of the counter-petition, were to be discharged, the women left work, and demanded:-- 1. That prices should be raised to the standard paid by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 2. That fines should be abolished. 3. That they should have access to cold water as well as hot for tea. 4. That after the learners then employed had completed their apprenticeship, not more than twenty learners should be employed at one time. About a hundred women had come out, and the men's Union organised a relief fund.[20] [Footnote 20: It may not be amiss to copy a few sentences from Mr. Dunning's obituary notice in the _Bookbinder's Trade Circular_, January 21st, 1862, of the women's leader, Mary E. Zugg, an early and humble worker in women's organisations. "Nothing could exceed the temper, moderation and firmness she displayed. Possessing great energy, strong sense and great acuteness of perception, detecting at a glance pretence from reality, she was not what was termed a strong-minded woman, commanding great respect and but little affection, for her goodness of heart and great regard for the feelings and welfare of others endeared her to all." She died at the age of thirty-three of consumption on November 13th, 1861, and is buried in Bow Cemetery.] Miss Watkins replied, denying every charge made by Mr. Dunning, and giving 10_s._ as the earnings for a week of sixty hours. The Union replied by asking that a deputation should be allowed to inspect the wages books of the firm. It claimed to be in possession of the rates of wages paid to ninety-seven folders and sewers for three weeks in August, and gave the average as 6_s._ 2½_d._ for a sixty-hours' week, and in other respects it supported its original charges. The _Times_ of January 25th, 1850, contains in its advertisement columns the report of a Committee of the Southwark Auxiliary of the Bible Society, which examined Miss Watkins' books, and it supported her statements. The women earned from 9_s._ to 14_s._ per week. But Mr. Dunning was not silenced, and on March 25th he issued a long pamphlet, the last of the "controversy" for the time. In it, it is stated that the committee of investigation had been deceived so as to mistake wages paid for ten days as though they were paid for a week, and a table of wages for three weeks in September and October, for the week ending July 28th, 1849, and for the four weeks preceding the strike, was printed.[21] The wage average of the periods was from 5_s._ 9½_d._ to 6_s._ 4½_d._ per week of sixty hours. [Footnote 21: See p. 184.] The agitation failed. The women either found work elsewhere, or went back under the conditions against which they had struck. Mr. Dunning could only say that the dispute had arrested a downward tendency in prices and wages. The dispute cost the men's Union £146. This was spent mostly in printing and postage, but it included grants amounting to £22 given to the separate Women's Committee, which had collected an additional fund of £650 to aid the strikers. The finishers had strongly opposed the support which the Union had given to the women, and their section, to the number of 150, was finally expelled from the Union. But whilst this unusual harmony existed between the men's Union and the women workers, no serious attempt had been made to organise the women permanently, either as members of the men's Society, or in one of their own. In 1833, in an address to the London journeymen bookbinders, a Mr. Benjamin Teasdale, of Manchester, advised the formation of a women's Society, but nothing appears to have been done. In 1855 they were allowed to borrow books from the men's library on the payment of 6_d._ a quarter. It is impossible to ascertain how far the agreement between men and masters for a nine hours' day in 1872 really affected women, as a considerable proportion of them had been working only for nine hours before the agreement was made. [Sidenote: The Society of Women employed in Bookbinding.] Not till 1874 was there a determined and successful attempt made to organise women bookbinders into a Union. On September 12th of that year "the first Society formed for women," the Society of Women employed in Bookbinding, was formed by Mrs. Emma Paterson, the pioneer of women's Trade Unions in England,[22] and in the following year Mrs. Paterson was sent as its delegate to the Trade Union Congress meeting in Glasgow. This was the first time that a woman had appeared at these parliaments of Trade Unionism, which had been held annually since 1868. From the commencement the relations between the men's and the women's Societies were most cordial, and at the first annual meeting of the latter Mrs. Paterson read a letter she had received "some years ago" from Mr. Dunning, in which he advised "the formation of Trades' Societies for women." The cordial greetings extended to the new Society by its brother organisation did not meet it everywhere. A congratulatory resolution was moved at the London Trades' Council, and though it received the support of the veteran George Odger, it was met with considerable opposition. Women's labour was cheap labour, and many of the delegates to the Trades' Council could not get beyond that fact. [Footnote 22: Mrs. Paterson was born in London on April 5th, 1848, and was the daughter of H. Smith, headmaster of St. George's, Hanover Square, parish school. In 1867 she became assistant secretary to the Club and Institute Union, and in 1872 secretary to the Women's Suffrage Association. Next year she married Thomas Paterson, a cabinet-maker and wood carver. With him she visited America where she saw the Female Umbrella Makers' Union at work. On her return to London in 1874 she formed the Women's Protective and Provident League, the membership of which was mainly middle class, though its object was to promote Trade Unionism amongst women. She died December 1st, 1886, and was buried in the Paddington Cemetery. See art. _Dictionary of National Biography_.] It is unnecessary to detail the somewhat uneventful career of the Union. Mrs. Paterson, at the end of eighteen months, was succeeded by Miss Eleanor Whyte, who still occupies the position of secretary.[23] The membership began at 66 and reached 275--of whom only 200 were financial members--at the end of the first year. From that time till now the membership has been exceedingly variable, and no full and reliable records seem to exist. But from the disconnected information which is at our disposal, it would appear that the two most successful years of the Society were 1876 (when 63 new members were enrolled), and 1890 (when 67 were enrolled). In 1870 the membership was given at 210; in 1884 at 200; in 1891 at 240; in 1901 at 270; the period of depression from 1883 to 1889 seems to have tried the Society very severely. [Footnote 23: December, 1903.] The objects of this Society are stated to be: "To maintain and protect the rights and privileges of the trade and to grant relief to such members as may be out of work, or afflicted with illness." The subscription is 2_d._ per week, and an entrance fee of 1_s._ is imposed. It can hardly be expected that a Society whose membership has probably never exceeded 270, could have much fighting force. But agitation has never been the policy of the Society. It has refused to join with the men in making demands upon the employers; its representatives at Trade Union Congresses and elsewhere have steadily resisted legal restrictions upon labour; it has not shown itself anxious to seize what the men regarded as opportunities to make itself felt.[24] [Footnote 24: In 1891 the women's Society refused to support the men's in agitating for an eight-hours' day. In 1875 Mrs. Paterson said at the Trade Union Congress that "the more they pressed for additional legislation the greater obstacles they threw in the way of working women. She should rather say let them suffer a little longer the evils of overwork and long hours." The Union's representatives, however, have always pressed for women factory inspectors, and on this matter Mrs. Paterson was for a good many years a voice crying in the wilderness.] Perhaps the Union has been too willing to make requests to good employers for better conditions, and too timorous in helping to level up the general conditions of the trade. Employers have not been hostile. Mr. B. Collins, the publisher, for instance, presided over the annual meeting for 1891, and Mr. Longmans and other publishers have done the same in other years. "I know an employer," says a writer in the _British Bookmaker_ of September, 1891, "who will give £100 to see a good women's Union established. Why? Because if it could be done, its effect upon other employers would remove the gross inequalities of prices that at present exist to his detriment." But this Union has never reached that point of strength when it could bring pressure to bear on the trade for the mutual advantage of the good employer and the woman worker. As a consequence, the good relations between the men and the women in the trade have not always been maintained, and there was considerable ill-feeling between the two sections during the eight hours' agitation from 1891 to 1894.[25] [Footnote 25: It should be noted, however, that the sentiment amongst the women as a whole was friendly during the eight hours' agitation, although the Society was taking no part in it officially. A writer in the _British Bookmaker_ for December, 1891, tells how all the women in the lacing department of Messrs. Waterlow's (Hill Street) struck on a certain job, and how "at another place as I stood with the pickets outside, about five o'clock one cold afternoon, I saw something descending from an upper storey and found it was a quart of hot tea for the benumbed men on duty below, lowered out by a string from the women's shop."] At the present moment this Society is regarded by both men and women mainly as a benefit club. In this respect it has been most successful and has paid with excellent regularity. [Sidenote: The Book-folders' Union.] An attempt was made in 1892 to start another Union for women engaged in folding in printing houses. The sponsor of the new Society was the Printers' and Stationers' Warehousemen's and Cutters' Union. It is a significant fact, and one which throws a great deal of light upon the very little which one section of workers knows even of those working at their elbow, that the organisers of the new Union were quite unaware of the existence of the Women Bookbinders' Society. The new Society, which called itself the Book-folders' Union, was started during the flood of Trade Union sentiment which followed the London Dock Strike in 1889, and its membership grew rapidly. Within five months of its formation it is said to have numbered 500,[26] and later on the figure of 700 was quoted. A popular employer, Mrs. Bond, had been elected secretary, and an assistant was appointed at a wage of 18_s._ per week. This new Union was determined to be as active as the older one had been inactive. It demanded a minimum wage of 15_s._, time-and-a-quarter pay for overtime, and "no apprentices." It also demanded exemption from the nightwork prohibition clauses of the Factory and Workshop Acts. But the Union was doomed to an early and ignominious end. During the absence of the secretary the finances became hopelessly involved, and a deficit in cash decided the members to close the whole matter.[27] [Footnote 26: _Women's Trade Union Journal_, January 15th, 1893.] [Footnote 27: The fact that all definite recollection of this Union is passing away, and that for the above information we have had to rely upon the memory of two ladies who were indirectly interested in it, throws some light upon the carelessness in industrial matters of the woman worker. No minutes nor other documents can be found. "The person who had them, married," and that was taken to have settled the matter.] The Society would not even formally amalgamate with the older Society, partly owing to differences in method, and partly to its disgust with its failure and disgrace. [Sidenote: National Book-folders and Kindred Trades Union.] One more attempt to found a fighting women's Union was made in 1894 by the Printing and Kindred Trades Federation. All women employed in the Printing and Kindred Trades were to be eligible for membership. The attempt arose out of two disputes. In one, the women employed by a certain firm had successfully struck for an increase of wages and against certain conditions of labour; in the second, women had come out to show their sympathy with some locked-out men.[28] In recognition of the women's "courage and loyalty" the men promoted the Union. In a month or two its membership stood at 100, and by March 1896, 350 members had joined. The membership at the end of 1902 was 150, mostly book-folders, and the following points are prominent in the Union's demands:-- 1. To obtain and maintain the recognised minimum scale of pay for every member; 2. To reduce hours of labour; 3. To regulate the relations between employers and employed. [Footnote 28: It is interesting to note that whilst the cheapness of women's work as compositors in Edinburgh seems to have attracted a certain class of work from London, the men's success in keeping up wages in the London bookbinding trade does not seem to have driven bookbinding into the provinces. There are one or two bookbinding firms in the provinces and in Scotland which employ girls, but mainly upon diary and account book work, the book trade being practically untouched. _Cf._ f.n., 28-29.] It had no sick benefits, but paid £5 at death, and offered strike pay on condition that the strike was sanctioned by the committee. The reserve fund in 1902 was under £100. In 1903 the Society approached the Printers' and Stationers' Warehousemen praying to be recognised as a branch of that Union. A ballot of the men was taken, when 700 voted that the request be granted and 334 that it be not. The Women's Society has therefore ceased to exist as a separate organisation. [Sidenote: The Manchester Society.] A Manchester Society,[29] "The Manchester and Salford Society of Women Employed in the Bookbinding and Printing Trades" has gained some definite success in increasing wages during its six years of existence. In its third Annual Report, 1899, it is stated that in May, 1898, the Society began an attempt to increase wages to a 10_s._ minimum after a three or four years' apprenticeship, that as a consequence the wages of forty girls were raised in September from 9_s._ to 10_s._, and that subsequently thirty others received the shilling advance. In its next Report, 1899-1900, it states, without giving the number of girls affected, that "they now all receive 11_s._ and 12_s._ per week, where, prior to joining the Union, they earned 9_s._ and 10_s._ per week." Next year the membership was 165, and the last issued Report, 1902, whilst stating that "a slight increase of membership" had taken place during the year, gives no figures. "Losses through marriage and other circumstances," the 1901 Report says, "have been great," and the Society is kept going mainly by the devotion of one or two persons.[30] [Footnote 29: The existing Society is the second attempt to organise the women in these trades in Manchester.] [Footnote 30: The last balance sheet gives at a glance the position of this Society, and indicates its activities:-- BALANCE SHEET FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL 30th, 1902.-- _Income._ £ _s._ _d._ To balance from April 30th, 1901 114 0 4½ " contributions 72 3 3 " Bank interest 2 9 11 ---------------- £188 13 6½ ================ _Expenditure._ £ _s._ _d._ By sick pay 29 10 0 " out-of-work pay 17 1 8 " printing 2 15 9 " postages 0 8 6 " secretary's salary 5 12 6 " collector's commission 1 9 9 " grant to Women's Trades Council 2 0 0 " grant to treasurer 0 5 0 " auditing accounts 0 4 0 " deputation expenses 0 2 0 ---- -- ---- 59 9 2 " cash in Bank on April 30th, 1902 125 2 5 " cash in hands of secretary 4 1 11½ ---------------- £188 13 6½] ================ Attempts have been made to organise women elsewhere as, for instance, in Edinburgh, where a Union of women compositors existed for a year; also in Birmingham, where ten years ago a Union was formed specially to include the machine-rulers who had been introduced about ten years previously. But the movements have failed. Such is the record of the organisation of women in the trades with which we are dealing. It is almost exclusively confined to London and Manchester, and in London, out of 19,000 women connected with bookbinding, most of whom are book and paper-folders, certainly not more than 500 are organised. In 1901, in the seven Men's Unions covering these trades there were 41,907 members, whilst the total membership of the Women's Unions was well under 1,000. [Sidenote: Maintaining standards without organisation.] Our enquiries have discovered, however, the existence of a kind of loose organisation of majority-rule and custom in some firms. Standards of prices and conditions are thus kept up. It must not be forgotten that where men and women work together all concessions won by the men's Unions are shared by women, as for instance, when the Typographical Association of Scotland secured a fifty hours' week for Aberdeen compositors. This is an interesting feature of feminine methods. In one house we came across two collating-rooms, one of which was staffed by older hands, who stood upon their dignity and would not accept inferior work or tolerate reductions in wages. The other room was conducted after the methods of the ordinary employer of cheap women's labour; the workpeople were careless and casual and the room had no traditions and no industrial "public opinion." This force of opinion, which assumes almost the nature of caste, is most strongly developed amongst job hands. These women manage to keep up a comparatively high standard of pay, and we have discovered the most unusual circumstance that in one or two instances the wages of job women have been cut down to the Union rates. We have been told on most trustworthy authority that the unwritten laws of these job hands are sometimes enforced upon recalcitrant work-women by "a hiding." [Sidenote: Organisation in the miscellaneous trades.] As regards organisation in the more miscellaneous trades included in our investigation, little has to be said. A few card mounters once joined the Women's Printing and Kindred Trades Union after a strike, but soon fell away, and a Union started in 1890, of which little information can now be obtained, included some envelope makers: but by 1893 it, too, seems to have died. No attempt has been made to organise women engaged in the preparation of materials for printing either in London or the provinces. [Sidenote: The attitude of employers.] The attitude of employers and employed to Trade Unions at the present moment is most varied. Naturally, a good many employers are in no mood to encourage Unions, because they do not know what might happen if the women's organisations became as strong as the men's. But, on the other hand, a considerable number of employers working under fair conditions and doing a trade of good quality, would welcome combination. It would help them against their cutting competitors, and they do not object to meet the reasonable demands of their women. In thirty-four cases employers were not aware of the existence of a Union at all. Fourteen forewomen knew about a Union, eleven denied its existence.[31] In no instance in London was a non-Union woman bookbinder discovered who knew of the existence of both the Unions, though the majority of the women knew of the existence of one or the other. [Footnote 31: It is important to note in connection with this point that the power of a forewoman over women is generally more unquestioned than that of a foreman over men.] [Sidenote: The women's attitude.] We were anxious to find out why they did not join. Some spoke with scorn of the older Union because it was only a benefit Society; others said, "No use in joining; you get nothing out of it;" others thought it dangerous; others suspected all Unions; others frankly admitted that marriage was sure to come along, and then they would work in factories and workshops no longer. An eloquent commentary upon this sentiment is to be found in the figures extracted from the Factory Inspector's Annual Reports and printed in Chapter II. When one works out from these tables the proportion between the males of over 18 years of age and the total number of males employed in the various trades and compares it with that of the females, it will be found that a comparatively excessive percentage of the latter are under 18 years of age. The same point is brought out with more emphasis and detail in Appendix VII. The women do not, in fact, feel it necessary to organise themselves, and a manager of a Co-operative Printing Works, where membership of a Union is compulsory upon women, informed us that they grumble when they are made to join and surrender their membership as soon as they can. The notes of some of the conversations reported are valuable indications of the mind of the woman wage-earner in this respect. We can only say in conclusion that, in the first place, women do not take that strenuous interest in their labour conditions which is essential to successful organisation. In the second place, it appears that, except at occasional times of dispute, their work is so well marked off from that of men, that the men's Unions in these trades are coming more and more to the conclusion that it does not pay them to organise the women. In the third place, we have been surprised to find that the great majority of employers and of their women employées assume that wages are fixed and that any effort to alter them by organisation will be doomed to failure.[32] Our investigators have been given instance after instance of both increase and reduction in wages, but the general tenor of conversation is a pessimist and listless view that whatever _is_, is fixed. [Footnote 32: _Cf._ p. 90.] CHAPTER IV. _MEN AND WOMEN AS WORKERS._ [Sidenote: Do women displace men?] One of the most important questions relating to women as workers is the exact relationship between their work and that of men, _i.e._, how far they are rivals in competition and how far they are helpers in co-operation. In some of these trades, such as that of the lithographic artists, this question has never arisen, because women have rarely entered the trade. Only five instances of women working as lithographic artists are known to the head of St. Bride's Institute. But that men and women have been rivals from time to time is placed beyond doubt, although it must always be remembered that the same work nominally is not always the same work actually.[33] [Footnote 33: Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little things about the machine which women do not do. In one instance it was reported that a firm with a London and a country house, employed women in the latter to do binding done by men in the former. On enquiry it was found that the heavy work was done in London and the light work in the country. An interesting case in point is reported by a Scottish investigator. "Stated that in another workshop a man had been displaced at a paper-ruling machine and two girls taken on instead. I took special note of this case when visiting the workshop in question later. There were two girls employed at the machine, but they appeared to be working along with the manager of that department, who was supervising it." But there is work, such as the minding of platen machines which men do in London but which women do in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.] Gold laying for cloth binding has, within the last quarter of a century, become the work of women who have taken the place of old "finishers" in some bookbinding firms,[34] and at Dunstable women are reported as doing binding throughout. Women are employed as compositors much more frequently in the provinces than in London. In Edinburgh and Aberdeen, for instance, women are reported as being engaged in every process, except making-up and the heavy work of carrying type, in which men alone are employed. Type-setting and distribution of type are often done by women in Scotland. In some of the Edinburgh printing establishments women do practically the same work as men. The extensive employment of women during the compositors' strike in Edinburgh in 1872 to secure a fifty-one hours' working week[35] was the result of the determination of the employers to defeat the Typographical Association, and at least one firm in London tried the same policy during the bookbinders' strike for an eight-hours' day in 1902 though apparently with no success. The enthusiasts for the introduction of women into the printing trades had for some time been trying to get a hold upon Edinburgh printing offices, but had failed until the strike of 1872. An enterprising employer then trained some girls from the Merchant Company's Schools--a better class of girls whom we find described sometimes as "stickit teachers"--to compose. The results were satisfactory, and the example was speedily followed. The strike failed and the displacement of men continued. [Footnote 34: Reporting to their members in May, 1903, the Wages Committee of the London Society of Journeymen Bookbinders (Third Report) state regarding the award just given on certain points of dispute between the Unions and the Employers: "The right of employment of women in laying-on of gold has also been awarded against us, notwithstanding that no part of the proceedings evoked more strenuous opposition from your representatives. The hands of your delegates were weakened by the fact that the practice already existed: in some cases had crept in, and in others been extended unawares; yet they strove to preserve the right of the workman, whilst willing and anxious that the supercession of the workwoman, where she had been introduced, should be gradual and considerate.--The argument for the employers is that the employment of women on the class of gold laying-on indicated, will enable them fairly to compete in other fields, and will tend to increase men's work instead of to reduce it. This view, the arbitrator adopted."] [Footnote 35: So also in Aberdeen. "About a dozen years ago during a dispute about apprentices, seventeen men and three or five boys went out, and girls were then taken on."] [Sidenote: The Perth dispute.] Something similar happened in Perth, where twenty-five years ago four girls were taken into the newspaper department of the offices of the _Perthshire Advertiser_. About seven years ago they were introduced into a commercial printing office, and a year later the _Perthshire Constitutional_ began to employ them on general bookwork and setting-up newspaper copy, the proprietor claiming that he had the same right as the other offices to have cheap female labour. Thus the practice threatened to spread throughout the other commercial printing offices, and the men's Union thought it was time to bestir itself. It decided that the women must either be paid the same rates as the men or be got rid of altogether. This ultimatum was sent to the employers. The _Constitutional_ complied with the demands of the Union and dismissed its women workers. The _Advertiser_ at first proposed gradually to replace the girls by men in the commercial department, but to continue to run the newspaper department by female labour. The proprietor contended that this would not give him an unfair advantage over the other firms, as they employed linotype machines. The Union then decided to strike, and took thirty men out of the _Advertiser_ office. Four remained in, and some other non-Union men were also engaged. The office continues to work under this system. [Sidenote: Value of women's work.] There has also been trouble in Grimsby (1899), owing to the employment of women on a bi-weekly newspaper, at Redhill (1898-1900), and at Reading (1902). Other places where the Typographical Association report women to be employed are, Louth (Lincolnshire), Aylesbury, Beccles, Fakenham, Warrington,[36] etc.; whilst in Birmingham the experiment was tried about 1890, but has been abandoned. They are also employed at Bungay, but in decreasing numbers, because their proofs require so much more correcting than the men's that the valuable time thus lost is not compensated for by the cheapness of their labour. The same is true of Edinburgh, where their wages have fallen from a rate of 1_s._ 6_d._ to 1_s._ per average page. In Leicester a firm tried to employ women in distributing type at low rates of pay, but a protest from the local executive of the Typographical Association led immediately to the experiment being discontinued. There is an almost unanimous chorus of opinion that women's work as compositors is so inferior to men's that it does not pay in the long run. From the days of Miss Faithfull's experiments, the men have been able to boast that women could not touch them at the case. In Aberdeen the unwillingness of boys to submit to a long apprenticeship and the fear of parents that the linotype has spoiled the typographical trade, are said to be the main reasons necessitating the employment of women compositors. [Footnote 36: Women were introduced into Warrington newspaper offices early in the decade beginning with 1880. They have been found to be quicker than men in plain setting-up and simple straightforward work. They do not stay very long--the eldest girl compositor employed, when our investigator called, being only twenty-five. They are not employed in locking the formes; nor curiously enough are they employed in the machine-room to feed the printing presses, though they are so engaged in Manchester. The women compositors are paid one-third of the men's rate. Here it was definitely stated that the cheapness of women's labour made it unnecessary to introduce linotypes.] [Sidenote: The men's view.] Men in these trades have never looked upon women competitors with a friendly eye, the reason being that so many branches are just on the margin line of those occupations which are so light and easily picked up that women can supplant men in them altogether.[37] The Typographical Association for over a quarter of a century has had to carry on a constant struggle with the employers in order to protect the journeymen printers against three forms of cheap labour--apprentices, unskilled men and women.[38] Employers in a small way of business, maintaining establishments on little capital, where efficiency is not high, employ women on work done in larger and better equipped establishments exclusively by men. Here there is rivalry and competition, and women are preferred mainly because they accept lower wages, and because they are not members of Unions;[39] and their lack of technical skill is not found to be a sufficient counterpoise to these advantages. But in these places an inferior kind of work is done, and if men were employed they would either have to accept wages below the generally enforced scale, or the whole character of the work and organisation of the business would have to be changed. [Footnote 37: It is interesting to note that an official of the Lithographic Printers' Society, entitled to explain the attitude of the Union, stated, "The Lithographic Society distinctly encourages girls; when boys feed the machines they are apt to pick up too much and want to become litho-printers before going through the apprenticeship. The women, not desiring to become litho-printers, are better from the Society's point of view."] [Footnote 38: This is the real opposition which the men offer to women. In Perth and Bungay, for instance, the women put in a bill at the end of each week, worked out on the men's scale of rates. The cashier then divides the total by two and pays the women accordingly. In Edinburgh women's piece rates for composing average about two-thirds those of men. At Warrington, women do machine-ruling for prices ranging from 15_s._ to 20_s._, whilst men are paid 32_s._ for the same work. A more definite statement is made by a Manchester employer. He estimated that a woman was two-thirds as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a man, and she was paid 15_s._ or 20_s._ to his 33_s._ A further example of this is given in connection with a Scottish firm executing Government work. "As the Government insists upon the men's Union price being paid, the work is being done by men, although in the ordinary way it would have been done by women." "But they would never allow the women," said our informant of her employers, "to make such big money as that."] [Footnote 39: This is why the Typographical Association offers a steady resistance to the employment of women. It does not object to them as women, but as forms of cheap and unskilled labour.] [Sidenote: Apparent rivalry.] In the better equipped houses, where women are employed on work generally done by men, as in composing, only parts of a compositor's duty are performed by women, and the heavier or the more technical duties, such as carrying about the formes or imposing, are done as a rule by boys or men.[40] So that here the rivalry is but partial, and, moreover, the employment of women does not always pay. It appears that in some cases, particularly in bookbinding, the application of machinery[41] makes it possible for the less skilled and lower paid women to do work formerly done by men, so that men regard women _plus_ the machine as their competitor. On the other hand machines have displaced women and have made new openings for men, as in the case of one of the most recently introduced folding machines which feeds itself. But the re-organisation of the workshop which follows the introduction of the machine cannot be regarded merely as a substitution of men's labour by women's or the opposite, for what really happens is an all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a re-arrangement of the subdivision of labour.[42] Men are transferred from one kind of work to another, owing mainly to a change in the volume of production; women are introduced not so much to take men's places as to fill places created by the re-organisation of work; youths also find a footing more often at the expense of women than of men. At certain points the machine simplifies processes and abolishes the need of paying for skill in the worker; at others it makes skill (sometimes, perhaps, a new kind of skill) more necessary; at one point it abolishes the need of paying for strength, at another it makes a new opening for strength. Thus the displacement which occurs, and the competition set up are often more apparent than real. [Footnote 40: As a type of the reports from firms employing women compositors, the following from Edinburgh firms may be summarised: Seven girls are employed on each machine (monotype), five on the keyboards and two correcting proofs. A man is kept for every ten or twelve girls, his work being to "make up" the girls' work. Another firm employs a man to attend to every three monotype machines used, for the purpose of keeping things going. Another says it employs two men compositors and one labourer for thirty-eight girls.] [Footnote 41: Machinery has also tended to increase the employment of women in stamping and embossing.] [Footnote 42: An official of a Bookbinders' Union states: "In A works there was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine came in; profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and 'backers,' but they had more 'lining-up' and other work to do in consequence, so nobody was turned off."] [Sidenote: A miscellaneous survey.] In the more miscellaneous trades over which this enquiry ranged a considerable mass of evidence points to the displacement of men by women. General statements to this effect are common in the evidence of both employers and employed. In firm A. it is alleged that women do the same work in card mounting as used to be done by men, and are paid 2_s._ for work which used to be paid for at 10_s._ Paging and numbering used to be men's work, but is now almost exclusively done by women. Plain relief stamping and black bordering have also drifted into the hands of women, whilst in various directions, such as the making and binding of cases, wrappering, or feeding printing and particularly lithographic machines, women are beginning to encroach upon men. These displacements are very often only local. Manchester has one experience; Edinburgh another. Leeds was agitated because women were displacing men on a French ruling machine, whilst elsewhere no similar move was taking place. But it must be emphasised again that in many of these instances careful enquiry shows that when men were employed they did something that the women do not now do,[43] and that the employment of women was owing to an increased volume of trade, when new machinery or some other change had made a greater subdivision of labour possible and profitable. In some cases girls displace boys for no other reason than that boys cannot be found to do the work; this was the case in Manchester some ten years ago, when girls took the place of boys in letterpress work. [Footnote 43: An Edinburgh employer put that in this way: "If women were paid the same rates as men they would have to pay for their overseers and assistants."] [Sidenote: Conclusions.] Generally, the results of our investigations show the following summary of the advantages and disadvantages of women's labour to the employer, and their employment in preference to men depends upon how far in any given case or under any given circumstances the balance of these advantages and disadvantages is on the side of the women--or, it must also be said, how far the employer is bound by conservative use and wont so as to be protected against any impulse to employ the best organisation for the efficient conduct of his business. The advantages of the woman worker are:-- 1. That she will accept low wages; she usually works for about half the men's wages. 2. That she is not a member of a Union, and is, therefore, more amenable to the will of the employer as the absolute rule of the workshop. 3. That she is a steady[44] worker (much emphasis must not be placed upon this, as the contrary is also alleged), and nimble at mechanical processes, such as folding and collecting sheets. [Footnote 44: "In Mr. W----'s youth, men used to do all the card mounting. Women were introduced for it about twenty-nine years ago. They were brought in because the men drank so and kept away." But later on the same informant said that he had to introduce a varnishing machine because women "kept away so."] 4. That she will do odd jobs which lead to nothing.[45] [Footnote 45: Birmingham boys, for instance, would not feed printing machines, because it "leads to nothing," so girls were employed. _Cf._ Aberdeen, p. 47, etc.] Her disadvantages are:-- 1. That she has less technical skill than a man, and is not so useful all round. 2. That she has less strength at work and has more broken time owing to bad health and, especially should she be married, domestic duties, and that her output is not so great as that of a man.[46] [Footnote 46: An employer with considerable experience both of men and women in the printing trade in Scotland, says, "given a certain area of floor space for men and women, on the former would probably be produced half more than on the latter."] 3. That she is more liable to leave work just when she is getting most useful; or, expressing this in a general way, that there are more changes in a crowd of women workers than in a crowd of men workers. 4. That employers object to mixed departments.[47] [Footnote 47: 1, 2, and 4, together lead London employers to conclude that an extension of women's employment is impossible, because it would mean larger workshops in proportion to the numbers employed, and consequently ruinous rents.] One interesting point must be noted in connection with these conclusions. In London, where women mainly work on the more unskilled and irregular processes, it is often difficult to see what industrial influence they are exerting. In Edinburgh or Aberdeen that is not so much the case. And one thing which is observable in these places is that the employment of women of itself leads to those minute subdivisions of labour characteristic of machine industry. "There are more subdivisions of labour amongst women than amongst men in the printing trade. For example, one girl will set-up the type, another will "brass-out" (put in heads and finish it), or two may sometimes be employed in finishing it."[48] [Footnote 48: So in bookbinding. A Dundee manager of a general binding establishment, says: "The subdivision of labour system has certainly favoured the increased employment of women in the trade."] Cheap, mechanical and light work consequently tends to be done by women, whilst the men enjoy almost undisputed possession of the rest. The woman worker, for instance, competes with the man in binding the cheap light note-book, whilst she rarely interferes with him in binding heavy ledgers.[49] On the other hand, in some of the more mechanical departments, such as examining sheets of paper by touch, she attains a wonderful dexterity. [Footnote 49: The following report from Aberdeen gives an interesting account of the subdivision of labour in a firm which has introduced women for cloth-case making: "The department where girls are beginning to encroach on men is in cloth-case work, that is, making the cases and putting them on. In the higher reaches of the trade the women do not show themselves to be so skilful. As yet the men's Unions have not shown much active opposition to women's work in this branch, provided always that one man is set to work with every five girls employed on it. The making of a 'case' is divided into five sections and illustrates the modern development of the division of labour system. 1st girl glues. 2nd girl lays on boards. Man cuts corners. 3rd girl turns in ends. 4th girl turns in fore-edge. 5th girl (young) puts it through rolling machine."] We have also to note how very effectively conservative notions about women's sphere and chivalrous prejudices about protecting them, influence certain employers in determining what work they _ought_ to do. [Sidenote: Technical training.] We have endeavoured to ascertain how far technical training would increase the pressure of competition between men and women, but in the present rudimentary state of such training there are few data to guide us to any very positive conclusion. It is difficult, however, to see how in these trades the technical training of women would threaten men, except perhaps in the artistic branches. The use of the various mechanical type-setting machines has already led to some displacement of labour, and though the _technique_ of setting and spacing might be taught to women in trade classes, the greater regularity of the male worker, and his remaining longer at the trade must always, in so skilled an industry as this, give him advantages over his female competitor. Nor would classes for women in bookbinding injure men bookbinders. For in this as in other trades women are not handicapped only by a want of skill, and if they attended classes, presumably they would be taught chiefly the arts and crafts side of bookbinding, and thus be led into branches of the trade at present undeveloped. [Sidenote: "Use and wont."] Moreover, a curious fact has to be kept in mind. Women workers are so lethargic that they are largely governed by use and wont. No remark is more frequent in the investigators' reports, than one to this effect, "That is men's work. Why? We do not know, but it _is_ men's work, and we do not think about it." In some instances this use and wont is based on experience; in others, as in the backwardness of London employers in putting women to feed lithographic machines, its rational explanation is not obvious.[50] In this respect the women themselves are very "loyal." "Once the employer wanted her," writes an investigator, "to varnish books, and offered her 5_s._ a book: she has a steady hand and could have done it quite well. It meant following a delicate zig-zag pattern with a paint brush. She refused indignantly, and said, 'I know my place and I'm not going to take men's work from them.'" And, again, a rigid sense of propriety, based on a certain amount of good reason, seems to determine many employers to separate male from female departments without further question.[51] [Footnote 50: Except perhaps, as has been suggested, that the premises where lithographic work is done are generally so unsuitable for the employment of women.] [Footnote 51: A similar division exists in women's work; certain kinds are done by women of an inferior social grade, _e.g._, machine-feeding, and these are strictly kept at arm's length by women working in different departments in the same factory.] [Sidenote: Girls _v._ Women.] So much is heard of women as rivals of men that we forget that women themselves are often preyed upon by still cheaper rivals, and the real value of technical training for women seems to lie in the fact that such training might protect them against these. Owing to the unskilled nature of their work, however, even technical education can afford to them only an unsatisfactory security against younger and cheaper persons. One of the investigators, for instance, reports:-- "It is the regular custom in A.'s now to have little girls at 3_s._ and 4_s._ a week doing work which women at 11_s._ and 12_s._ ought to do. They put a little girl beside a regular hand, and as soon as the little one masters the work [show-card mounting is being reported upon], they discharge the big one. When the little one asks for a rise, they give her 6_d._ or 1_s._ more, and when she wants still more, she goes." Figures follow showing that just under one-ninth of the women employed in this department at A.'s are "old hands." Then the report proceeds: "A. discharged about forty hands on the plea of slackness a little while ago, and then put up bills for learners." The investigators found that amongst the employées there was a very widespread opinion that "the learners always get all the best work," and that one of the regular features of the trade is, that it employs a large fluctuating number of learners, whilst a smaller number of skilled hands are kept in tolerably regular work.[52] [Footnote 52: This, however, is not a problem special to women's work, but is one of general industrial conditions, although it is marked with special distinctness in the case of women.] The old hands occasionally object to teach the young ones, but nothing comes of their opposition to a system by which they are compelled to train their own executioners. CHAPTER V. _INDUSTRIAL TRAINING._ 1. THE TRAINING. [Sidenote: How girls are taught.] At the present moment such training as is given generally begins in the workshops so soon as the girl has left school.[53] Girls are, in the best houses, employed on the recommendation of workers already there. Much of the work, such as folding, is merely a matter of mechanical quickness and accuracy, and after a few weeks' practice the girl is as useful as she is ever likely to have an opportunity to be. A great deal of the work women do in stationery factories (such as stamping, black bordering, numbering pages) is of a routine nature, and this work is generally paid by the piece. For such departments, no premium is asked as a rule.[54] Sometimes the beginner is paid a small wage--2_s._ 6_d._ or thereabouts--to encourage her at first. Sometimes she works a few weeks for nothing.[55] Sometimes she has to pay a tuition fee to the woman under whose charge she is put. Sometimes this woman gives her a small sum as a gift in respect of the help she renders. Some firms make the training period fairly long, in order that it may be impossible for the lower class of girls to accept the conditions of employment. By-and-by the learner is paid half of what she earns, and finally she is put on regular piecework, her advancement depending on her nimbleness. If she is in a large house she is only taught one process, but if quick, and employed in a smaller house, she may be taught several. In almost every instance she is put upon piecework as soon as possible after she begins. In an overwhelming number of cases the beginners are simply placed beside a regular hand, and pick up their skill by watching the old hand and then turning and doing it themselves. The girl who "picked up vellum-sewing and wire-stitching" whilst engaged as a folder, and she who was transferred from tie-making to stitching and folding, are types. The phrase "serving her time" survives, but the apprenticeship which is indicated hardly now exists. [Footnote 53: "A boy learns nothing after fifteen, a girl after fourteen," is the way one employer puts it.] [Footnote 54: Very few premiums are reported upon. In one case it was said that £10 were asked as a premium in relief stamping, but the informant admitted that the sum varied; in another well-known stationery firm a premium of £2 is asked for, but is returned with 5 per cent. interest at the end of three years. The premiums of £50 or £100 charged by certain bookbinding teachers are of course quite special.] [Footnote 55: LEADING LONDON HIGH-CLASS STATIONERY FIRM:--_Paging Department._--Girls come for a few months for nothing, _i.e._ six months, no premium. They go on getting quicker. _Lithographic Department._ Girls come in and pick it up: show one another how to do it. _Vellum-binding Department._ Girls come for three years and are paid 5_s._ per week. LEADING EDUCATIONAL SUPPLY FIRM: _Copybook and similar Work._ "Has several little girls running about on errands for a few shillings a week, and if any of them seem promising they are helped on. Training nothing like what it used to be; girls learn only one branch." LARGE LONDON PRINTING FIRM:--_Vellum-sewing Department._ "Regular apprenticeship still the system here." Three years given as the period for training and during this time no wages are paid. Girls come straight from school. _Folding, etc., Department._ "No regular apprenticeship. Girls come in and pick it up; if quick they are taught other branches, like numbering, relief stamping, etc." LONDON STATIONERY FIRM: _Envelope Folding and Hand-cementing Department._ "Girls are put under an experienced party to whom they pay 10_s._ For six weeks, they receive nothing. For next six weeks they receive half earnings, then they are put on piecework." _Black Bordering._ "A regular hand teaches and gets any benefit of the work during six months in return for the time she wastes in teaching." This practice is also adopted in some firms in envelope folding by hand. LONDON PUBLISHING FIRM: _Bookbinding Department._ "System of indenture has just been revived because it was found that otherwise the firm had no hold over the girls, so that the quick ones as soon as they had learnt went off elsewhere as full earners." Indenture for two years. An ex-forewoman in bookbinding, who knew the London trade well, stated that much less trouble is taken with learners now than formerly. In her own case she was apprenticed without indentures for two years, and learned "all the branches right through," old work included. Another forewoman in work stated she was in training for four years: two years at bookbinding, one year at vellum work, and one year at stationery.] Of the firms about which we have information for bookwork and printers' folding, seven require a three years' training; twenty, two years; thirty-three, one and a half years; nineteen, one year; two, fifteen months; and seven, periods under a year. Eleven firms have no settled apprenticeship time, advancement depending entirely on the quickness of the learner. In places where gold laying-on is done the same time is usually served as for the other branches, _i.e._, from a few weeks to three years. In the case of vellum work, seven firms require three years; eight, two years; three, one and a half years; one, one and a half to two years; two, six months; and eight, no settled time. In some of these firms, however, a genuine attempt to teach apprentices is made;[56] and in at least one large and well-known London house the system of indenture has been revived, owing to the difficulty which was experienced in retaining girls after they became competent. On the other hand, several well-known firms have ceased to employ learners because they are too troublesome, and depend upon women trained elsewhere. But we have found that in only a very few cases is the beginner, whether an apprentice or not, thoroughly taught every process of her trade. She is generally put to one process and kept at it, so that the mechanical dexterity she may acquire is in no sense genuine trade skill.[57] This distinction between trade skill and mechanical dexterity in one process must be kept in mind as a fundamental consideration in every problem concerning the woman wage-earner. [Footnote 56: Apprenticeship is still common in vellum-sewing where skill and intelligence are required, and in places where women are doing more than supplementary work, _e.g._ Edinburgh, a regular period of training varying from two to four years is agreed upon. Apprenticeship seems to be most common in Scotland. In London our investigation into vellum work, printers' folding, and bookwork only discovered seven indentured women apprentices, two of these being engaged in vellum work. Curiously enough in paper-staining firms, although the processes are practically unskilled, indentures are signed for two years; the girl receives 4_s._ a week for the first year and a portion of her piece earnings for the second year. At the end of two years she is a full wage-earner and is paid by piece rates. What her earnings are it is difficult to discover; 12_s._ 6_d._ was given as an average, but this is probably too high. It is reported that she may make 6_d._ in less than an hour when the colours are mixed and she is finishing a job, whereas next day she will spend the whole morning before she earns her 6_d._] [Footnote 57: _E.g._, one of the large stationery firms in London reports regarding machine ruling: "Girls come in and feed the machinery, and afterwards rise to wet the flannel. They never mind the machines, _e.g._, arrange pens and so on." Another interesting note is, "Men nearly always do illuminating, _e.g._, stamping crests, etc., in more than one colour, on notepaper, as the process requires more skill than women possess. If the women did it, the ladies would not like their notepaper." An employer defended the employment of women on the grounds of his own experience of one woman who "had been working at a secret process for years, and there is no fear of the secret being betrayed as she is without understanding or interest for the machine."] The question of how much a girl learns during her time is a vital one. Much depends on the forewoman. As one of the workers put it, "How much you learn depends on the forelady, and whether she takes a fancy to you; some girls will have a turn at everything, others only learn sewing or folding. Dress makes a great difference; the poorer you are, the less chance you have of getting on." The obverse of this from the forewoman's point of view is that "girls if quick are taught all branches, but with some girls it is all you can do to teach them one." It seems the general opinion amongst all the older hands that the "training is not what it used to be;" and, certainly, the few instances we have come across of women who can do bookwork, vellum work, and also stationery work, are amongst the older hands. The complaint, however, that the trade was not properly taught, occurs in the evidence given to the Commission of 1843, when it seemed to be one of the principal grievances complained of. Masters, it was said by one worker, often took girls, pretended to teach them, and discharged them at the end of their time, when they had to go elsewhere to learn. Three girls gave evidence that they were tricked into serving from three to eight months for nothing, and came away no wiser. At another shop the employer expatiated on the thoroughness of the training offered by him; but seven of his journeywomen, aged nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen, declared indignantly that they had not learnt their business thoroughly, and would never have gone to him if they had known his methods. The truth apparently is that in 1843, as to-day, some firms are better for apprentices than others, and that a generation ago a good firm doing general work offered better opportunities for training than good firms conducted under up-to-date conditions can now give. The following table shows the changes that have been made in the conditions of apprenticeship by certain leading London firms. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | TABLE SHOWING CHANGES IN PERIOD, ETC., OF TRAINING | | IN PARTICULAR FIRMS IN LONDON.[58] | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | | Period | Premium | Wages (per week) | | | | and | during | | | | Indentures. | Apprenticeship. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 1. STATIONER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 1867 Commission | 2 years | -- | -- | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 25 years ago | 2 years | No premium | 12 months no pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 15 years ago | 1½ | No premium, | 6 months no pay, | | | years | no | 12 months half | | | | indentures | pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present | 1½ | | 6 months 2_s._, 12 | | time[58] | years | | months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 2. STATIONER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 20 years ago | 2 years | No premium, | 1 year no pay, 1 | | | | no | year half pay. | +-------------------+---------+ indentures +--------------------+ | Till recently | 1 year | | 6 months no pay, | | | | | 6 months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 15 | | 6 months 2_s._, 9 | | | months | | months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 3. PUBLISHER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | Till recently | 2 years | No premium, | 6 months 1_s._, | | | | no | 6 months 2_s._ | | | | indentures | 6_d._, | | | | | 6 months 4_s._, | | | | | 6 months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 1½ | | 6 months 2_s._ | | | years | | 6_d._, | | | | | 6 months 4_s._, 6 | | | | | months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 4. BOOKBINDER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 21 years ago | 3 years | No premium, | 6 months 1_s._, 12 | | | | no | months 3_s._, 18 | | | | indentures | months 6_s._ | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 1½ | | 6 months 1_s._, 12 | | | years | | months 3_s._ | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 5. PRINTER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 25 years ago | 3 years | No premium, | 18 months 2_s._, | | | | no | 18 months half | | | | indentures | pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 1½ | | 1 month no pay, | | | years | | 5 month 2_s._, | | | | | 12 months half | | | | | pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 6. STATIONER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 40 years ago | 2 years | No premium, | 12 months half | | | | no | pay, 12 months | | | | indentures | three-quarter | | | | | pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 1½ | | 12 months half | | | years | | pay, 6 months | | | | | three-quarter | | | | | pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 7. PUBLISHER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 30 years ago | 2 years | No premium, | No pay part, | | | | no | 2_s._ 6_d._ | | | | indentures | remainder. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 2 years | | Half pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 8. BOOKBINDER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 20 years ago | 1½ | No | 1 year 1_s._, | | | years | information | 6 months half pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | At present time | 2 years | No premium; | 12 months 3_s._, | | | | no | 12 months 4_s._ | | | | indentures | | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 9. PUBLISHER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 22 years ago | 1 year | No premium; | 3 months no pay, | | | | no | 9 months 1_s._ | +-------------------+---------+ indentures +--------------------+ | At present time | 2 years | | 6 months 2_s._, | | | | | 18 months half | | | | | pay. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 10. PRINTER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 25 years ago | 1 year | No premium; | 1 year | | | | no | no pay. | +-------------------+---------+ indentures +--------------------+ | At present time | 1 year | | 6 months 1_s._, | | | | | 6 months 2_s._ | | | | | or 3_s._ | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 11. BOOKBINDER'S. | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ | 10 years ago | 1½ | No premium; | 6 months | | | years | no | no pay, | | | | indentures | 1 year half pay. | +-------------------+---------+ +--------------------+ | At present time | 1½ | | 9 months 2_s._ | | | years | | 6_d._, | | | | | 9 months 5_s._ | +-------------------+---------+-------------+--------------------+ [Footnote 58: This information was procured in 1901.] The important point, however, is not so much the nominal length of apprenticeship, but the fact that the work which an "apprentice" now does is less educative than it was, and that wage-earning considerations now enter at an earlier stage into the apprentice's thoughts. [Sidenote: The learner as workwoman.] The low wages paid to learners offer great temptations to employers to set these extra cheap workgirls upon certain "fat" kinds of work. Some kinds of work, _e.g._, gathering, have thus come to be regarded as learners' perquisites, and in one extreme instance a worker made as much money when a learner on half pay as she did subsequently on whole pay.[59] [Footnote 59: These figures from typical houses showing proportions of learners and journeywomen are interesting:-- Workers. Learners. A. 75 14 B. 87 19 C. 7 3 D. 8 3 E. 12 11 F. 26 20 These houses are engaged in various kinds of bookbinding and printing.] In several cases we have been able to trace the exact amount gained by the employer:-- 1. A. in the last sixteen weeks of her half-pay period made £3 18_s._ 6_d._, an average of 4_s._ 10¾ _d._ per week. For the next sixteen weeks, when a full hand, her average was 9_s._ 8_d._ 2. B. in twenty-three weeks before she became a full hand made £4 9_s._ 10_d._, or an average of 3_s._ 10¾ _d._ per week. During the next twenty-three weeks her average was 7_s._ 0½_d._, a few pence less than double. 3. C. in fifty-one weeks made £15 5_s._ 4½_d._, practically 6_s._ per week; if on full wage, her average would have been 11_s._ 11½_d._ 4. D. in thirty-seven weeks made £10 19_s._ 5½_d._, practically 6_s._ per week; if on full wage her average would have been 11_s._ 10½_d._ 5. E. in forty-seven weeks made £14 9_s._ 4½_d._, or 6_s._ 2_d._ per week; if on full pay her average would have been 12_s._ 3¾ _d._ 6. F. in forty-three weeks made £12 12_s._ 3_d._, 5_s._ 1½_d._ per week; if on full pay her earnings would have been 11_s._ 8¾ _d._ It is obvious that when a worker is sufficiently expert to make an average of 11_s._ or 12_s._ on full pay, it is a great temptation to save on the bills by giving her as much work as possible at half-price. The employer looks upon this profit as the return made to him for teaching the girl, or, to speak more correctly, for allowing her to pick up the trade in his shop. It really means that a heavy premium is being paid in instalments. Possibly, when small fixed wages are paid, the employer's profits are even higher, but in that case the learner has not that temptation to sacrifice quality to quantity, and to be content with "slapdash" work which is the inevitable consequence of a piecework system worked under such conditions, and which is specially injurious to the young hands. [Sidenote: Compositors.] The training given to women compositors varies very much. As is well known, boys are apprenticed to this trade for seven years at wages which usually begin at 8_s._ a week, and rise 2_s._ a year. In some cases, however, a proportion of their piece-rate earning is given in addition. When Miss Faithfull started the Victoria Press, girls were indentured for four years, and paid a premium of ten guineas. During the first six months they received nothing; for the remaining three and a half years they were given two-third piece rates. By 1869, when Mr. Head was running the business, this system had been changed. In an article in the _Printers' Register_ for October 6th, 1869, we read that at the Victoria Press, apprenticeship, "a relic of the ignorance and shortsightedness of our forefathers, which is maintained in our own day chiefly by the prejudices of Trades Unions, is entirely abolished. Girls begin to earn at once," with the consequence that the work is much better. The Women's Printing Society started with an apprenticeship of three or four years, the wages rising from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 10_s._ At the present time the training varies in different houses, from one where the girls are regularly indentured for four years, pay a premium of £5, and receive 4_s._ for the first year and 5_s._, 6_s._, 7_s._ a week in the ensuing years, to one where, with a premium of three guineas, the training lasts for three months only, and the worker is put on piecework after that period. Two women compositors who had served for four years gave it as their opinion that two years were sufficient to learn; during the remaining years "you are expected to do as much as a full hand and get only half wages." It is obvious, however, that much depends on the amount of work taught, and the complaint is reiterated over and over again that girls will only learn the easy, plain work: "they want to make money at once." [Sidenote: Women and technical classes.] Enquiries were addressed to the Secretaries of Technical Education Committees in every town in the kingdom where the printing and kindred trades are of any importance, asking-- "1. Whether, in connection with your technical and other schools, any provision is made for the training of women in the bookbinding or in any of the printing or stationery trades; "2. Whether the classes have been attended by any numbers of women; and "3. Whether you have received at any time from employers statements showing the effect of such classes upon these trades?" Seventeen replied that no provisions were made, six that the matter was under consideration, but only in one case was it stated that classes had been opened, and then the women had not taken advantage of them. The London County Council Technical Education Board has had only one application (to which it could not accede [60]) from a woman who desired to attend bookbinding classes. [Footnote 60: The woman was an amateur who had no connection with the trade, and the Board refused admission on that ground. See this Board's Special Report on Technical Instruction of Women.] This shows that in these trades the school, so far as women are concerned, has not yet been brought into contact with the workshop. Nominally the classes are open to women actually engaged in the trade, but women do not attend. This seems to be partly owing to the attitude of the men, and partly owing to the lack of interest on the part of the woman worker in the few facilities afforded to her by Technical Education Committees. The Home Arts and Crafts Association and kindred movements have taught women amateurs bookbinding and leather work in a good many centres, but this training has had no general industrial effect. The Association for the Employment of Women has offered facilities for the training of women in working the linotype, but it has met with but scanty response. "It is work which needed more skill," said one employer, "than women possessed."[61] [Footnote 61: We have heard since this was written that women are employed on linotype machines in a prosperous provincial newspaper and general printing office.] Here again we have had evidence of the most conclusive nature to show that the work of women is special in its simplicity, and that the craftswoman is hardly to be found anywhere. And they seem to have accepted the position, and make no attempt to move out of it.[62] [Footnote 62: This note is typical of a good many which occur in the reports of the investigators. "There are two girls now on the black-bordering machine whom the forewoman has offered to teach to place out by hand, but they won't learn it; it is too much trouble."] 2. WHY WOMEN DO NOT TRAIN. Some explanation is required for the fact that women have so little ambition to become skilled, especially seeing that their lack of technical knowledge and their willingness to remain at work which is merely mechanical, _i.e._, folding, etc., explain their low wages, casual employment, and careless organisation. [Sidenote: Marriage as an industrial influence.] The physiological differences between men and women have sociological results. These differences have no doubt been exaggerated and emphasised by traditions of propriety, and the change of opinion indicated generally by the expression, "the woman movement," has done a great deal to bring down those differences to their natural proportions and relations. If certain claims of equality, such as women's suffrage, were generally accepted, men and women might tend to occupy a much more equal industrial status. But when all false emphasis and exaggeration have been removed, a considerable residuum of difference must remain. The special status of the married woman will no doubt survive all readjustment of traditional modes of thought, and will tend to withdraw her mind from the steady pursuit of industrial efficiency, because she will never consider wage earning to be her special task in the world. That has tempted her hitherto to steer off from the currents in the mid-stream of industrial life, and float upon those that flow more sluggishly by the margin. Hence she has entered industry, not with expectations of long employment, but with hopes of a speedy release, and she has therefore been in haste to earn money at once, and unwilling to sink capital (either in time or money) in making herself efficient. She is found in the more mechanical and more easily acquired branches of work, and also in those which provide no future for men,[63] and her willingness to take low wages has been her great protection against competing machinery. She has preferred to remain incompetent. "Out of twenty-six girls," is the report from the manager of a well-known firm for high-class artistic bookbinding, "not one could he trust as a forewoman." [Footnote 63: An interesting illustration of this is afforded by the recent employment of women in typefounding in London. London has not been a place where women were much employed in this industry. For twenty or thirty years girls have been employed in Edinburgh typefoundries, at certain processes through which the type, when cast, has to go, but they have been introduced only within the last year or two in London, to take the place of boys who could not be got because the work offers no very satisfactory prospects for them, and because the introduction of the linotype and mono-type threatens the future of the typefounding industry. _Cf._ Aberdeen, p. 47, Manchester and Birmingham, p. 50.] [Sidenote: The lack of openings and ambition.] Moreover, this enquiry has shown that there is but little chance for women in these trades to improve themselves. Openings for responsible employment are few, and the ambition of the woman is not stirred by the possibility of material improvement as the reward of skill and industry. When responsible places become vacant, it is sometimes difficult to get women to consent to fill them. They seem to have little of that divine discontent which is the mainspring of progress. "They never ask for a rise as a man would, ... though after a time when they are useful, the firm would be quite willing to give one." "He finds that girls want to earn a certain wage. As a rule they will not take less, and they don't trouble to earn more." A Manchester correspondent reports: "There is very little chance of rising, and no particular desire for it, on the part of the ordinary girl, whose main aspirations are otherwise directed." Reporting generally on her enquiries, an investigator writes: "The progressive young woman, eager to show that she is man's equal and can do man's work, seems to be a product of the middle classes. I never met girls with ambitions of that sort among the employees I talked with. On the other hand, I have met with cutting reproofs from forewomen and others in the bookbinding houses when I tried, in my innocence, to find out why they did not turn their hands to simple and easy processes which were being done by men. 'Why, that is man's work, and we shouldn't think of doing it!' is the usual answer given with a toss of the head and a tone insinuating that there is a certain indelicacy in the question." Another investigator reports: "In a paper-staining department an attempt was once made to have a forewoman instead of a foreman over the girls, but she was not successful in watching the colours and had to be replaced by a man. The employer in consequence came to the conclusion that such a feat was beyond a woman's power, and the workers themselves are of the same opinion and scorn the idea of a forewoman." [Sidenote: Sex reputation.] Women in slowly increasing numbers seem to be settling down to a thorough industrial training, but except when they start businesses of their own, the general reputation of woman as workers, especially their liability to marry and leave, must permanently handicap the most efficient in search of employment. Even the woman who has paid a premium of £50 or £100 for thorough instruction in the art of bookbinding is warned that "a worker cannot be taken on anywhere, but has to set up on her own account," and even then she often does not enter the regular open competitive market, but attaches certain customers to herself, owing to her special work. The exceptional woman will always have to bear the burden of the average woman. The questions put to employers upon this point received very emphatic replies: "It does not pay us to train women," they said in some form or another; "We only want them for simple processes such as folding, and if we tried to make them skilled in more complicated work they would leave us before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men." [Sidenote: Physique, hours, etc.] The low standard of women's living also diminishes their stamina and strength, and though in the course of this enquiry we have not discovered any very serious complaint that women were irregular at their work owing to ill-health (a common complaint against women in offices), yet the drawback has been mentioned. Moreover, it must be noted that when a girl's work in the workshop is finished she has often to go home to commence a new round of domestic tasks from which a boy is exempted. This aggravates the seriousness of her long hours of mechanical work as a wage-earner, and increases the difficulties placed in her way should she desire to attend evening technical classes. The directors of several educational institutions and the teachers of technical classes for women have strongly urged this point upon us. We have to face the fact that, for various reasons, in modern industrial society there is of necessity a tendency to specialise the work of men and women and centre the one in the workshop and the other in the home, and to incline women to take a place in industry second to their male relations. Hence, in the workshop women have hitherto been adjuncts to machines; they have taken up simple mechanical processes, and have shown little interest in complete series of industrial operations. They have picked up the arts, but have shunned the sciences. The factory and the workshop have been to them the scenes of "meanwhile" employment. [Sidenote: Gentility in trade.] In such circumstances one is not surprised to find such considerations as conventional gentility determining the branches of trade taken up by the women. The printing trades generally do not attract the most genteel girls, but there are grades within them. One informant says, "In Manchester, up to 1870, to be a folder was looked upon as being next door to being on the streets;" but now folders look down upon feeders. "Folding and sewing girls look down on the machine girls tremendously, and would not sit at the same table with them for anything." Perhaps the manager who said in a shocked tone of voice that "The women never care to talk of the Sunday's sermon" was hypercritical, but undoubtedly certain sections of these trades are staffed by rather rough specimens of women. Then again, a folder, despised herself by those above her, is reported to "look down upon the litho and bronzing girls. They are of the very lowest class (she says), with hardly a shoe on their feet. They are on quite a different floor and have nothing to do with the folders." Or again, for reasons of gentility, girls prefer to become book-folders, where the hours are longer and the pay lower, rather than to become paper-bag makers. The distinction between these various sections is not similar to that between skilled and unskilled labour. The simple explanation is that amongst women engaged in industry convention is particularly potent in determining what trades are desirable and proper and what are not, so that when certain employments acquire a reputation for gentility, the others will be filled by a goodly proportion of unassorted girls, and will ultimately acquire characteristics which appear to justify the feminine prejudices against them. It has been suggested that these notions of gentility have, as a matter of fact, a deeper significance, and that the favoured trades are the lighter ones. To some extent this is true. The heavier employments are staffed by a rougher class of women. But, as in the case of the Manchester folders cited above, fashions change, and we must recognise that reputation for gentility is a very important factor in determining the distribution of character amongst the trades. This appears to be the main reason why high wages do not always attract the better class of girls to certain kinds of employment, and also why there is a reluctance on the part of many self-respecting girls to enter a course of industrial training. CHAPTER VI. _LEGISLATION._ 1. THE LAW. The printing and allied trades were not brought within the scope of legislation until Mr. Walpole's Factory Acts' Extension Act of 1867. [Sidenote: Conditions of employment, 1866.] The Commission on Children's Employment in 1866[64] first disclosed the fact that substantial abuses prevailed throughout the printing and kindred trades. Long hours, frequent nightwork, Sunday labour, irregularities regarding meal times, and insanitary conditions--such, roughly speaking, were the hardships which made it desirable to bring them under State supervision. Mr. Lord, who took an active part on these Commissions, said that the general state of printing houses in London was very bad; not only were the composing rooms generally overcrowded and ill-ventilated, but even machine rooms were often extremely dirty, close and unhealthy. He cites the case of a machine room, where the roof was so low that a hole was cut in the ceiling for the head of the boy who was "laying-on" to go through. "The heat of steam printing," says he, "is very deleterious in close cellars, such as many places in this town are." [Footnote 64: Children's Employment Commission, 1862-1866 (Report V.).] Speaking of the factories of wholesale stationers, the same witness says, "Many of the workrooms are ill-ventilated and overcrowded. The cubical contents of one large room measured by me were 136 ft. per head; those of another only 87 ft. per head." With regard to hours, the Commissioners report: "These ordinary hours (viz., 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for females, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. for men and boys) are from time to time exceeded to the extent of one or two hours, and sometimes more. In the case of those who bind for publishing houses the four or five winter months are the busy season, and the six weeks immediately preceding Christmas those of the greatest pressure; at one such place work often continued from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in those six weeks. The 'push' of 'magazine day' also affects this trade as it does the printer, keeping the workpeople for several days at the end of each month until 10 or 11 p.m., and on rare occasions till 1 or 2 a.m. The case of railway guides is even worse than that of magazines, for females sometimes have to work the whole night through till 6 a.m., returning to work at 10 on the same morning, and when the first of a month is on a Monday, work the whole of the preceding Sunday. On Sunday, April 30th this year, at one place twenty females worked from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and after a rest of two hours went on again through the night. Even girls of thirteen had worked in the same week once from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., and twice from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Another rather older (fourteen and a half) worked on one day from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on the preceding day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. A boy aged fourteen had worked two or three times in a week from 7 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m. and three Sundays through." "With paper-box makers," the Commissioners say, "it is not uncommon to make two or even three hours overtime (this after a day of from 9 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m.). For two months in spring and six weeks in autumn fourteen hours is the usual length of a female's working day. At one place females over fifteen are said to work constantly in the busy time from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and in some places till 1 or 2 a.m., especially with 'little men' working at home with their family and two or three girls to help. These are instances of London work, but in Manchester the hours are even longer. One girl worked, at sixteen years old, night after night in succession, from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.; the younger ones there worked from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.; at another place the same witness had frequently worked from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Another, at nine years old, worked from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. generally; she said that the older ones worked a good deal later than that. Some young women had worked on three or four occasions all the night through." "Boys of fourteen and fifteen employed at making cardboard, have in some cases worked from 8 a.m. till 10 or 11 p.m. twice a week for four or five weeks running, but that is not general in the trade. Girls of that age have worked at making paper bags nearly every night for a similar period, till 10 or 11 p.m. from 8 a.m., and were very much tired by it. As paper-box making is all handwork and paid for by the piece, it is not uncommon for work to go on in the meal hours--'they please themselves.'" The following was the experience of one girl which she gave before the Commissioners. "I am thirteen; I have been here twelve months. Some of the girls worked all night last month for two nights together. I call 'till 4 in the morning' all night. We generally work one night till 4 a.m., and three or four nights till 12. My mother thought all night hurt me and so would not let me go on, but I work till 12. Last month I worked five times in the night till 12. It is only in that week; we get very tired towards the end of it." With regard to the moral conditions of the workers the Commissioners reported: "The indiscriminate mixing of the sexes which still prevails in many workrooms is generally condemned. The evil of such a practice is especially conspicuous where they are late and irregular in their hours. The bad language and conduct of the boys is made the subject of very strong comment by two witnesses, who go so far as to say that there is a marked deterioration in this respect during the last ten years." Again, "The younger children were in many cases unable to read. The evil of late and irregular work in letting women loose on the streets at all hours of the night is justly censured by an employer as necessarily leading to great immorality." [Sidenote: Legislation, 1867.] In consequence of the Report of the Commissioners, the Factory Act Extension Act, 1867, was passed. It applied specifically to any premises where paper manufacture, letter-press printing and bookbinding were carried on; and generally to any premises where fifty or more people were employed in any manufacturing process. The hours allowed for women and young persons were from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with intervals amounting to one and a half hours for meals; on Saturday, work had to cease at 2 p.m. By way of exception, women employed in bookbinding could work fourteen hours a day, provided that their total hours did not exceed sixty per week. To those trades, such as litho-printing, that did not come under the above Act, was applied the Workshops Regulation Act of the same year, the provisions of which resembled, though they did not coincide with those of the foregoing enactment. The same aggregate number of hours per day and week was established, but more elasticity was permitted in workshops, women and young persons being allowed to work in them for the hours specified at any time between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., and until 4 p.m. on Saturdays. [Sidenote: Factory and Workshop Act, 1878.] The discrepancies in the regulations applying to different classes of work were productive of a good deal of inconvenience, and after the Commission of 1876 came the Factory and Workshop Act, 1878, having as its object the consolidation and amendment of the existing statutes with a view to rendering their administration more even and secure. The main provisions of the law as it now affects the printing and kindred trades were laid down, although since that date there have been various additions and amendments. By this Act a distinction was drawn between factories and workshops, the chief difference being that, in the former, machinery propelled by steam, water, or other mechanical power must be in use; while in the latter, no such agency must be employed. Certain classes of works, however, apart from all question of mechanical power, were defined as factories and not workshops. Under these came paper-staining works, foundries (including typefoundries), except premises in which such process was carried on by not more than five persons, and as subsidiary to the repair or completion of some other work--paper mills, letter-press printing works, and bookbinding establishments. [Sidenote: Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.] As regards hours of work and overtime, slight modifications have been effected by legislation subsequent to the year 1878, and the present state of the law as laid down in the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, is as follows:--The regular hours for women and young persons except Saturday, are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with an allowance of one and a half hours for meals, one hour of such meal-time being before 3 p.m. On Saturday the period of employment may be 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., or 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with not less than half-an-hour for meals. But where a woman or young person has not been actually employed for more than eight hours on any day in a week, and notice of this has been affixed in the factory or workshop and served on the inspector, she may be at work on Saturday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an interval of not less than two hours for meals. There are various special restrictions and exceptions applying to different classes of work. No protected person may take a meal or remain during meal-time in any part of a factory or workshop where typefounding is carried on, or where dry powder or dust is used in litho-printing, playing-card making, paper-staining, almanac-making, paper-colouring and enamelling. In certain industries, including printing, bookbinding, machine ruling and envelope making, women may work three days a week, and for thirty days during the year, two hours overtime, provided that such employment ceases at 10 p.m., and that they have two hours for meals. But this limit of overtime applies to the factory or workshop as a whole, and not to the overtime of individual workers. 2. ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL EFFECTS OF LEGISLATION. The foregoing brief summary of the law has naturally preceded the question as to how far legislation has affected women in these particular trades. When restrictions are imposed upon the labour of any class of wage-earners, their economic position must be altered for good or evil, unless the trade can so adjust itself as to meet exactly the requirements of these restrictions. If the worker is of great importance, an effort will be made to adapt the trade to the novel conditions; if another class of workers or machinery, free from all restrictions, can be as easily used, it is probable that the labour affected will be ousted. [Sidenote: Has legislation displaced women?] Is there, then, evidence to show that any material displacement of women or girls in these trades followed the enforcement of factory legislation? Instances of dismissal must obviously be sought for soon after the Act of 1867, as the employer then knew on what terms he engaged his staff, and, except in a few cases where deliberate evasions of the law might be attempted, the effect of legislation would be to deter him from employing women, rather than lead him to dismiss them. Owing to the lapse of time, it is difficult to find out from those in the trade the immediate consequences of this Act, nor does the Commission of 1876 give much assistance. Of 103 employers questioned by us, not half a dozen remembered dismissing women in consequence of the new enactment. One employer turned off ten or twelve women "folders" and introduced machinery, alleging as his reason the want of elasticity in the Factory Act. His ordinary hours were from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but on certain days in the week it was necessary to begin work at 6 a.m. He made arrangements that the total number of hours should not exceed those sanctioned by the Act, but the variation was not allowed. If his women began work at 6 a.m. on any day, his hours had to be regularly 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., except in the case of thirty nights in the year when overtime was permitted. As this did not suit his business, he dismissed the women and had recourse to folding machines. Personally he gained, as the machinery proved an economy, but it told hardly on the women, whom otherwise he would have kept on as they were old hands. Another employer told a similar tale regarding the introduction of folding machinery, but stated that he had been obliged to dispense with female operatives by reason of the strict enforcement of the regulations regarding overtime only. In both these cases it is clear that the state of the trade was such that it required only a very slight disability on the part of the worker to make it worth while for the employer to use machinery. Quite apart from any effect of legislation the machine was destined to supplant manual labour; its advent was merely accelerated by the Act. Its first introduction caused isolated cases of hardship, but its ultimate results were beneficial. Thus at the present day women and girls are largely employed upon the very machines which once seemed to threaten their industrial existence. [Sidenote: The case of women compositors.] In the _Economic Journal_ of 1899 an interesting paper by Miss Bradby and Miss A. Black discusses the position of women compositors in Edinburgh, and deals with the subject of legislation. After an exhaustive investigation, no single instance was discovered of the displacement of a woman by a man owing to the Factory Acts. The chief contention of those who oppose special factory legislation on the ground that it limits the usefulness of women compositors is, that women are not employed on newspaper work, and they give the legal prohibition of nightwork for women as the reason. Careful enquiry has shown that reason to be purely imaginary. Women are not employed on evening papers, though the factory law does not stand in their way. In the provinces women set-up one or two weekly or bi-weekly journals, the firms employing them preferring them solely on the ground of cheapness. Experience shows that women are not suited for newspaper work, unless the paper does not appear more frequently than, say, twice a week, and if the factory code disappeared to-morrow, morning daily newspapers would afford to women compositors no fresh openings. [Sidenote: Have their opportunities been limited?] As regards the further point whether more women would be employed if they were unprotected by law, the views of representative employers and managers of labour are here set forth. Out of thirty-five,[65] twenty-eight were emphatic in their assurance that the Factory Acts did not affect the question. Seven, on the other hand, were inclined to think otherwise. Of these, five were unable to say that they really would employ more women if freed from restrictions, but two of them thought that "there might be something in it," though the point had "never occurred to them before." Only three of them were of the opinion emphatically that legislation was certainly one amongst the obstacles to the employment of women. [Footnote 65: These are the firms interviewed by Miss Bradby and Miss A. Black as above.] When, on the other hand, we turn to the opinions of those acquainted with the conditions of the trade, either as workers (chiefly women) or Trade Union officials, we find practical unanimity. The eighteen persons[66] of this description questioned were strong in their declarations that the employment of women was not affected by the Factory Acts. To most of them, indeed, the idea of any harmful connection between the two was novel and ridiculous. This of course proves nothing; but if legislation had, to any considerable extent, hampered the work of women, the women themselves would doubtless have become aware of it. [Footnote 66: Compositors only.] The evidence available leads to the conclusion that, except in a few small houses, the employment of women as compositors has not been affected by the Factory Acts. [Sidenote: Legislation and home work.] The earlier stages during which the protection conferred by the Legislature was enforced, were marked by attempts on the part of certain employers to evade the spirit of the law by means of home work.[67] [Footnote 67: See pp. 99-101.] One example of this practice was given by the Rev. H. W. Blunt in his evidence before the Commission of 1876. He says that much work was sent to be completed after factory hours. For instance, in one book-folding firm which had occasional rushes of work, a girl was employed till 11 p.m. on the Monday before Christmas. She was then told with the other girls that they must take home 1,000 quarto sheets to fold by the morning. Several did so, but she refused, because her mother was on the point of death, and the doctor said there must not be a light in the room. She was consequently dismissed at once. Mr. Blunt says further that religious "weeklies," the sheets of which came off the press at 12 o'clock at night, were sent out to be folded by 8 a.m. They were taken away in perambulators, children being employed to do this every week. [Sidenote: Work sent to "folding houses."] Another immediate result of legislation was the expedient of sending out work to "folding houses" which did not come within the definition of a factory or workshop. Such places may be premises belonging to a factory and yet separate from it. Mr. Henderson, of the Factory Department, in giving evidence before the Commission of 1876, says: "Some years ago I came across Messrs. X., where newspapers were folded wholesale by steam machinery, and I thought it was a factory. Messrs. X. resisted the idea. Boys were employed at irregular hours, but the Crown officers decided that it was not a factory." Christmas card packing and sorting are in the same position. Miss Deane, a lady factory inspector, who made a special investigation into the conditions of the Christmas card industry as recently as 1899, points out that many of the workplaces are outside the operation of the Act. In the Report on Factories and Workshops for 1899, she says: "A large number of Christmas cards, almanacs, etc., are made in Germany and are sent to England, where girls are employed in sorting and repacking and arranging them, for the purpose of being sold wholesale. Such places, unless attached to some factory or workshop, being unregulated by the Act, the girls are without the protection afforded by the law regarding length of hours, meal-times, etc. It was impossible not to be struck by the difference between the conditions found in one such place and those found in the large airy sorting rooms of a publishing factory close by--yet the girls in the stuffy workroom of the former were without the protection given by the law in the latter workplace. A curious instance arose in connection with one such place where about forty girls had been employed in packing and sorting for illegal hours. The occupier took to employing some of them in affixing a minute bow of ribbon to the cards, and during this temporary employment all the girls could claim and were accorded the protection of the Factory Acts. Excessive hours in hitherto unsuspected workrooms were also found to be worked in the processes of adapting and preparing bonbons for sale. In some cases, baskets, boxes and bags, were trimmed for the reception of these articles, in others they were merely selected and arranged in patterns in fancy boxes subsequently tied up with ribbon. In the first case clearly, and in the last also probably, the definition of workshop under the Act applies. Instructions were given and better conditions have gained the day." Speaking of these unregulated workplaces, in the same report, Miss Deane remarks: "In the course of some inspections after midnight last winter near the City, I came across several of these workplaces where women, girls and children, were then at work under deplorable conditions--dirty rooms, foul, gassy air, and overcrowding. In one of them I was met by the observation that 'I might come in if I liked, but I could do nothing there.'" The experience of two of our investigators corroborates the above statement. One of them says: "At about 2.45 a.m. we went to see newspapers folded by women in the City. It was done in an old tumble-down room opposite a printing shop. We peeped in through a chink in the shutters--it was a boiling night, and the shutters were closed--and we could see a man carrying in a load of paper from time to time. When we entered we found four women streaming with perspiration in the foul hot atmosphere, folding away at the ... _News_. They were quite friendly and communicative, and told us they came every Thursday night about 11 p.m. and stayed till they had done. They were paid three times as much as day-workers and did no regular work in the daytime. Before beginning work they had a cup of tea. They said they liked the work and were glad that the Factory Act could not stop them; the police had been round to them and also two young ladies, but nothing had happened; and they considered that they were quite old enough to do nightwork if they liked." Folding houses are growing fewer in number owing, no doubt, to the fact that rent is so high in the City and space so valuable, that it is not worth while to erect them separate from a factory. Viewed also with dislike by factory inspectors as a means of evading the law, their tenure of life is not likely to be long. [Sidenote: Nightwork.] Employers admit that the effect of the Factory Acts has been to make them reduce nightwork. In criticising the Act before the Commission of 1876, Mr. Bell, of the firm of Darton, Bell and Thomas, bookbinders, says: "The Factory Act of 1867 has been a boon to employers and employed, because it has enabled us to put pressure on customers. Now we can say to the public 'We can't go beyond certain hours,' and, therefore, work not new has to be sent in earlier." Mr. Darton, of the same firm, adds: "We have persuaded booksellers to give out stock work in June and July instead of September or October, and so begin the work earlier and avoid nightwork." This stimulus is undoubtedly good, and these views are echoed by other employers. The whole question of how far the practical prohibition of overtime for women has limited the volume of work available for them, and thus diminished their aggregate wages, needs very careful consideration, as mistaken conclusions may easily be formed. The matter was carefully considered by a Committee of the Economic Section of the British Association, appointed in 1901, to enquire into the effect of special legislation on women, and the following extracts from its final report[68] are of some interest:-- "A very important, perhaps from the economic point of view the most important, effect of legislation has been to spread the period of work more uniformly through the week, month, and year than had been the case before regulation" (p. 5). "The tendency to put off giving orders to the last moment is easily checked when the customer can be met with a universal legal prohibition" (p. 7). "Restriction is met by adaptation of manufacture or rearrangement of numbers employed and time at which work is done, women being still employed at the work" (p. 13). "Except for a few complaints as to the abolition of the possibility of payment for overtime, which, as has been pointed out, by no means prove any loss of earnings ... the Committee have no record ... of any loss of wages or earnings traceable to the [Factory] Acts" (p. 25). [Footnote 68: Presented at Southport in 1903.] Thus, it will be seen that the loss of overtime is not necessarily a loss of work, but a re-distribution (and an economical one, too) of the times at which work is done, and does not therefore mean a loss in income, but a steadying and regulation of income. Nevertheless, before the re-organisation which has been consequent on Factory legislation, overtime and nightwork were necessary in order to turn out a certain volume of trade by a certain number of workpeople, and the influence of restrictive legislation has been shown in the following directions:-- 1st. An increase in the class of workers called "job hands"; 2nd. An enlargement of the permanent staff; 3rd. A rearrangement of the employment of male and female labour. The third of these changes we have found to be practically imperceptible, whilst the second has affected women most beneficially. [Sidenote: The job hand.] On the margin of casual and regular labour the job hand stands--the reserve battalion of this section of the labour army. She is generally a married woman, and commonly the wife of a faulty husband. She does not want regular work, and only desires to earn a certain limited wage. When she goes to a factory in search of work, she has to wait idle for hour upon hour, but she generally stays at home until summoned by her forewoman. Certain kinds of cheap seasonal work as, for instance, penny almanacs, are almost exclusively done by her,[69] and she is commonly employed either periodically, _e.g._, for weekly papers and monthly magazines, or casually, _e.g._, prospectus work, for rushes. A notice in certain public-houses, or information supplied to certain known agents, brings her to the place where she is wanted. [Footnote 69: "The majority of the almanac makers are married women who stay at home from February to July": Leeds.] Job hands existed before 1867, but at that time they did not hold quite the same position in the trade as they do now. They were the _hands_ who went to different firms for two or three nights a month to help in a recognised rush of work which occurred regularly. In the Commissioners' Report for 1876, mention is made several times of job hands who were employed quite regularly for definite pieces of work at definite times during the month. Firms publishing certain weekly papers were in the habit of employing women in folding during the early hours of the morning before distributing the papers to the newsagents. Firms which printed monthly magazines needed women to fold all night for two or three nights or more at the end of each month. Such employment naturally came to an end as soon as the Act of 1867 came into operation; but the job hand only changed her hours. It became necessary during rushes of work to call in extra hands, in order to comply with the clauses of the Act, and many firms solved the difficulty by employing job hands during the day instead of at night, for a few days to meet the emergency.[70] This work was generally taken up by married women who had served in the trade before marriage, and who were glad to get a few days' employment from time to time. [Footnote 70: But this is not the invariable rule. A manager of a firm dealing largely in magazines and periodical issues says: "The effect of legal restrictions on our business is to make women work hard for two weeks and slacken off for two weeks. There is no thought of giving the work to men, or of sending it home, or of employing job hands."] [Sidenote: Increase of permanent staff.] The second method of solving the difficulty--by employing a larger permanent staff--involves the erection of more extensive premises, and can only be adopted by firms whose financial position enables them to meet a considerable outlay. It is probably the best means for ensuring that work shall be done efficiently for the employer, and conducted under the most favourable conditions for the employed. [Sidenote: Nightwork and overtime.] But there still remains a slight residuum of nightwork which has to be done by men. To this extent, and to this extent only, can restriction be said to have hindered the employment of women. We have tried to ascertain how much this really means to the women workers. Thirty-three firms stated that work of the same character as that performed by women in the daytime was sometimes given out to men at night. We cannot, however, assume that the work is always given to men on account of legal restrictions, and it does not follow that the abolition of such restrictions would induce all masters to introduce women for nightwork. Several of them, indeed, emphatically deny that they would adopt this practice; and in some instances we have been told that it was not observed in the best firms before the law prohibited it, _e.g._, "Mr. A. remembers the time before the Act of 1867 (he has been in the trade since 1851). He could have worked women at night, but never would because of questions of morality." These statements are, however, only part of the case, because nightwork is generally overtime, and we must consider how far employers care to practise it. There seems to be an almost unanimous opinion against overtime, and any mention of factory legislation appears to suggest overtime at once to both employers and employed. Experience has driven it home to them that overtime is a most uneconomical method of work;[71] and as there does not appear to be any demand for women's labour at night except occasionally as overtime, the factory law in this respect is only a protection to the employée engaged by the employer who is still experimenting with this unproductive use of labour. [Footnote 71: "When the factory (now a large provincial lithographer's, almanac maker's, etc.), was a small one, and it employed only a few hands, they used to work a great deal of overtime. They used all the time they were allowed by the Factory Acts and sometimes tried to get in more. But now they do not find it pays to work overtime."--It is of some importance to note that a responsible spokesman for the men engaged in London houses informed one of our investigators that when men are put on at night to fold "they take it easy, and six men do in two hours what two women do in two hours. They don't bother to walk up and down gathering, but sit at it in a row, and hand sheets on from one to the other."] [Sidenote: Testimony of employers.] Some employers, like Mr. Bell,[72] admit candidly enough that legislation enables them to be more humane (and humanity in this respect pays) than they could otherwise afford to be. The Act is "a great relief," such an employer has said. "Legislation is an excellent thing; existing hours are quite long enough. If a person has not done her work by the time they are up, she never will do it." "The Factory Acts are a very good thing," another has said. "Long hours diminish the output"; or again: "Factory legislation is a capital thing; I only wish it could be extended to men." "Women are not so strong as men, and therefore the law rightly steps in." "I think it would be very inadvisable to employ women at night. I think legislation a very good thing. Overtime is not really worth it." "Legislation is a very good thing. I don't believe in long hours. Employers are often shortsighted and think that workers are like machines--the longer you work them the more they do, but this is not really the case; if they work from 9 to 7 they have done as much as they are good for." "The good done by the Factory Acts has quite outweighed any evils or hardships." Another employer remarked: "I shouldn't like my own daughter to do it, and I don't see why other women should do so. I should think it a very bad thing for women to go home in the early hours of the morning." On hearing that restrictions were objected to on the score that they hindered the employment of women, he replied scathingly that it was rubbish, but that "ladies must have something to talk about." [Footnote 72: _Cf._ p. 78.] From this it is evident that protection is viewed favourably by many employers, on the specific ground that it prevents systematic overtime. On the whole, they are of the opinion that nightwork is harmful to women, and that after overtime the next day's work suffers. Some are doubtful whether they would employ women at night even if the law permitted it. Nightwork, they assert, is unfit for women, not merely on account of the harm to health, but because of the insult and temptation to which they are exposed in going home. Whether these views would have been held so generally before the passing of the Factory Acts it is not possible to say; probably the results have justified the Act, and experience has provided moral reasons for legal limitations. * * * * * Such in the main is the attitude of employers towards legislation. Of 103 who expressed an opinion, twenty-six stated that legislation had not affected women's labour at all, sixty considered it to have been beneficial, and seventeen looked on all legislation as grandmotherly and ridiculous--one among these thinking that legislation was all very well, and much needed in the City, but that Southwark should be free from interference. The attitude of those employers who objected to interference was expressed generally in some such way as that it was "unnecessary" for their trade at least, even if desirable for others. Pressed to explain what "unnecessary" meant, they said that women could take care of themselves; that protection was all very well for young girls, but when women arrived at the age of forty or fifty they could do what they liked; that it was hard on women that they should not be allowed to work day and night as well; that women could stand overtime just as well as men; and, finally, that legislation pressed very severely on the employer, who had to use the more expensive medium for doing nightwork, viz., men. Such is the attitude of these employers, and it is fairly well expressed in the following quotation from _The Stationery Trades' Journal_, September, 1880:-- "We report in another column a case in which Messrs. Pardon & Co. were summoned for an offence under the Factory Acts. Four women were employed during the night to fold a periodical which is printed by Messrs. P. The youngest of the four women was a married woman of thirty-five, whose husband is unable to work, and she, like the rest, prized the job because it afforded the means of earning a little extra money for the support of her family. Under the pretence of protecting these women, the law steps in and says: 'Your families may starve or go to the workhouse, but you shall not work overtime or go beyond the limits prescribed by the Act. You cannot be trusted with the care of your own health. You may fast as much as you like; it will do you good and help your children to grow up stalwart men and women--but you shall not endanger your health by working too many hours at a time.' This in substance is what the law does for women. As regards the employment of children and young persons, the Act is no doubt beneficial, but surely women of thirty-five and forty do not need the same legislative protection as children. A great deal of sentimental nonsense is written and spoken by benevolent busybodies without practical knowledge of the subjects with which they meddle; and one of the results is the application of the Factory Acts to women who are old enough to judge for themselves. In the case alluded to there was more real benevolence in providing work for women than in limiting their hours of employment." As a contrast to these opinions, the views on overtime expressed in the Factory Inspector's Report for 1899 are worth noting:-- "The prohibition of overtime for young persons imposed by Section 14 of the Factory Act of 1895 has, in my opinion, proved to be the most beneficial clause of that Act. It has, moreover, been carried out without any serious interference with trade and without causing much difficulty to the inspectors. "The further restriction in the same clause of the overtime employment of women by reducing the number of times on which it may be worked in any twelve months from forty-eight to thirty was also a step in the right direction. If overtime were abolished altogether except for preserving perishable articles, the season trades would soon accommodate themselves to doing without overtime in the same way that the cotton, woollen, linen and silk manufacturing trades have done, for they also are season trades." [Sidenote: Opinion of employées.] Among the older workers in the trade are men and women who remember conditions before the passing of the 1867 Act, and the experience of some of them and the comparison they make between work done before and after the Act is worthy of note. A. used to work till 10 every night when she first entered the trade. She was glad when the Act was passed to get home early, and never liked working late. B. used to work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. regularly, including Saturdays. Frequently she had to work till 10 or 12 and sometimes to begin at 5 a.m. The "young governor" used to take her and some of the other girls home at night as they were afraid to go alone. She disliked overtime, was tired out at the end of a day's work, and thought the other women were too, and she had often noticed how badly the work was done after eight or nine hours at it. Later on, as a forewoman, she noticed that the girls after overtime always loafed about the next day and did not work well. Some women liked overtime, but she noticed it was always those who spent the extra money earned on drink. She did not think that work had gone from the women in consequence of factory legislation, but thought that married women were employed for a little while during a rush of work where before the regular hands were kept working late. She remembered how tiresome it was for the married women to get home in time to fetch their babies from the _crêches_ when the hours were from 8 to 8. C. has often heard her mother-in-law say that as a girl she constantly worked all night and then had to work just the same the next day. She used to consider that to get home at 7 on Saturday was early, and now every young lady looks forward to her Saturday afternoon. Workpeople have a much better time than they used to. There were no proper meal hours. She used to get "just a snack between her work." D. remembers that when they were busy they had to work all night and all the day before and the next day too. They used to work on Sundays and were given a glass of gin. She never knew anyone who wanted to do nightwork, and thinks eight and a half hours quite long enough for anyone to work, especially when there is housework, too, when one gets home. E. remembers the time when he was a boy and women were kept at work all night; he remembers shops where they worked regularly all night after working all day, for two or three times a week. F. a bookbinder, remembers women who worked all night frequently. They were very poor, very rough, and of very low moral standing. "Some of the women who worked could hardly be said to belong to their sex." Respectable girls would not come for such low wages, and also because they had to go home alone through the streets. After the Factory Acts the moral tone and respectability increased greatly; wages were no lower and there were fewer hours of work.[73] [Footnote 73: This is an interesting comment on the relation between low wages and long hours on the one hand and character on the other.] G. says, "We used to have to come in at 6 in the morning and work till 10 or 11 at night, and then be told to come back again at 6 next day. I often used to faint; it took all my strength away." She considers the Factory Act an unmixed blessing. H., before the Factory Act, has worked from 9 to 7, 8, 9, or 10. Often as a learner she stayed till 11 or 12, and once till 12 several nights running. Once she remembers being turned out in a thunderstorm at midnight, and how frightened she was. Occasionally she worked all night; they used to be given coffee at 2 a.m. Once or twice she worked from 9 a.m. one day to 2 p.m. next day; "Excitement keeps you up." They were allowed to sing at their work and be as merry as they could; "We didn't count it much of a hardship." Some women after leaving the factory would go and work all night in printing houses; one woman would leave at tea-time and go to spend the night at the "Athenæum" until 7 a.m. After the Factory Act no one might stay beyond 10 without special permission. Once she did work all night; they put out the lights in the front and worked at the back. The only result of the Factory Acts that she could see was that employers had to have larger premises and employ more hands, instead of working a small staff hard. J. says "I entered the trade in 1863 when I was thirteen. Boys and porters came at 6 a.m.; journeymen at 8 a.m. (sixty hours a week); women at 8 or 9 a.m. All had to stay as long as they were wanted, _i.e._, till 10 or 11. Boys were frequently kept till 11 p.m. I was never kept all night. Conditions have improved for both sexes, men's owing to Trade Unionism, women's to factory laws." [Sidenote: The opinions of forewomen.] The testimony of the forewomen is to the same effect. A. a forewoman, used to work often till 10, 11, or 12 at night, sometimes all night. Sometimes she was obliged to keep her girls all night when there was work that had to be finished, but usually she gave them a rest the next day. She thinks it a very good thing that they should not be allowed to work all night; the work is piecework and long hours don't do any good, for they mean that you work less next day: if you work all night, then you are so tired that you have to take a day off; you have gained nothing. She used to find that so herself. B. a forewoman, thought the Factory Acts a very good thing. Girls grumbled if they had to stop till 8, and she never heard of any of them wanting to stay longer. "If you work till 8 for many weeks you get used up; there is no change in your life, and as soon as you get home you have to go to bed, you are so tired." C. is a forewoman. As a girl she used to work from 8.30 a.m. to 9 or 10 at night every day from September to Christmas. She had to stay till 2 a.m. one night and come again just the same next day; she had to work from 3 a.m. one Good Friday morning and sometimes had to come to work at 1 on Sunday mornings. This nightwork was only occasional, but she thinks it a very good thing that it has been stopped; she never found it pay; the girls were so tired the next day. Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when overtime is worked the piece workers do not make more as a rule, for they get so tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day. This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who have to put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any particular system of getting work done answers. [Sidenote: Exceptions.] Among the younger women--the girls who have had no experience of conditions before 1867, the opinion about overtime is not so unanimous. Some few like what little overtime is allowed to them and say they would not mind more. One such worker was met, just arrived home from her factory late one Saturday afternoon. She had been working overtime as a consequence of the Queen's death--the envelope makers and black borderers were all working late just then. It was a bleak and wet afternoon, and she came in in high spirits, evidently regarding all life as a joke, and frankly confessing that factory life especially was a joke, particularly when they had overtime. "It is 'larks' working late, and the governor he up and spoke to us so nice. He says, 'Girls, you won't mind doing a bit of overtime for the sake of our dear Queen?' and we says 'No.' _I_ shouldn't mind doing overtime every day of the week. I like the factory and should hate to be out of it." A few such girls there are who are in excellent health, like the work and don't find it monotonous, and, above all, enjoy the larger life that they meet in a factory just as girls in another social scale enjoy public school or college life. It is these who revel in their day's work and are not tired at the end of it, but how in actual fact they would like longer hours or systematic overtime it is impossible to say. It is probably the rarity of it, the stimulus and excitement of working against time for once in a way, the being put on their mettle by the "governor" himself, that make the enjoyment. We must also remember that the younger hands are those who take the most anti-social views of work and care least about industrial conditions. But even by these few, when the idea of all night work is suggested, it is scouted with horror. On the whole, the view adopted is that when you have done your day's work, you have done enough. A worker in the stationers' trade assured us that overtime means a doctor's bill, so you don't really make anything by it. The experience of two women who had tried nightwork illegally was also instructive. [Sidenote: Overtime experience.] A. an apparently strong woman was once offered a night job when she was hard up, and thought that it would be a "lark" to take it. She went in about 8 a.m. on Friday and worked on with intervals for meals till 3 p.m. on Saturday, being paid piece rates for the day hours and 6_s._ for the work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. She was utterly done up in consequence of this work and lost more money next week than she made by the whole job. B. once worked all night in a City shop for 5_s._ and got no good out of it, for she was so done up that she could not work at all next day, and very little the day after. Three girls working at the same factory, and speaking of conditions there, said that when they were busy after 9.30 p.m. men were put on to do the card mounting. These girls ridiculed the idea that they disliked this or wanted to stay. "You feel quite done for by 9 o'clock. Girls sometimes cry, they get so tired in the evening." None of the three had ever heard of any girls who objected to the Factory Acts. "The little ones do not mind overtime so much because they get 3_d._ an hour the same as the full hands, but the full hands do mind. Overtime, _i.e._, till 4 p.m., on Saturdays is not so bad because you ain't so worn out." C. thinks it a very good thing that women may not work at night--"hours are quite long enough as it is--you feel quite done up after working from 8 a.m. to 9.30 p.m." D. is very much opposed to the idea of women working at night; she hears that in some places they work till 9 p.m. and thinks that dreadful. She has never heard anyone grumble that they cannot work longer, and scoffed at the idea. She herself hates overtime. E.'s views are that if you've had work from 9 to 7 that is quite as much as you can do properly. She never likes her daughters to work overtime, because it only tires them out. It is sometimes rather provoking when a job comes in late after you've been sitting idle and you have to leave it, but thinks that it is better on the whole. Some women wouldn't mind working "all the hours that God gives," but it is very selfish of them. Most can't stand it. If she had to be at the factory by 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., she never did any more work, because she was so tired. So the instances could be multiplied. There is no mistaking the note of relief that runs through the experiences of the workers who have worked both before and after 1867. Forewomen, employers and factory inspectors, who are in the position of the "lookers-on at the game," from different standpoints are nearly unanimous in agreeing that protective legislation is beneficial. The thirty-three firms, the authorities of which are returned as having stated that they give men at night work done by women during the day, consist for the most part of printing houses, and the work done by women was folding. The result produced by legislation is that men do the folding at night and on Saturday afternoons, when there is a press of business, but in one or two cases, a regular staff of night workers is employed. As the men are slower workers than the women, and charge a far higher price for their labour, it is to the employer's interest to reduce nightwork to a minimum. Prospectuses, however, and weekly newspapers have to be folded during the night, and this must fall to the men's lot. In two firms, men occasionally do relief stamping for Christmas cards when there is a great press of work, and in one firm they do card mounting. In none of the above firms is there any question of employing men instead of women in the daytime. In one of the remaining two--a printing house--the manager said that perhaps he might have more women for folding; and in another the employer distinctly said that he would employ women for feeding his printing machines were it not for the limitations on their hours, which renders it impossible to keep them when a press of work comes in. These few cases can scarcely claim to constitute a serious hindrance to women's employment; nor, in view of the chorus of gratitude for factory legislation, can they be regarded as a serious indictment against that legislation. * * * * * [Sidenote: Has legislation affected wages?] On the question as to whether the restrictions of the Factory Acts have affected wages, it is almost impossible to obtain any trustworthy information. In briefly touching on it, we must be careful to distinguish between the rate of wages and the sum total earned. There seems an entire lack of evidence that the _rate_ of wages has been affected, although the sum total of women's earnings collectively and individually is obviously lowered, when some of their work is given to men. But even then the mere deprivation of the chance of working unlimited overtime is an altogether exaggerated measure of the loss in wages. A human being differs from a machine, for, even when the work done is mechanical, an interval of leisure and rest is essential, after a certain point, before the output can be continued. Experience has abundantly proved that for the regular worker overtime does not pay, and is also a wasteful expedient from the point of view of the employer. The Factory Commission of 1866 published evidence that may be accepted as reliable regarding the wages paid in the trade before legislation intervened. Mention is made in the Report of one firm of printers who employed four girls for folding and stitching, three of whom, under thirteen years of age, earned from 2_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._; the fourth, a sort of overlooker, earned 12_s._ Another firm of printers paid the younger girls 4_s._ to 5_s._ a week; the older ones 8_s._ and 10_s._ The women employed by a third firm earned at least 14_s._ a week and 3_d._ an hour overtime. In a fourth a young girl earned 9_s._ 10½_d._ for fifty-three hours, another 12_s._ 10¾ _d._ for forty-eight hours, another 13_s._ for fifty-seven hours, and the journeywoman 17_s._ 6_d._ for sixty hours. In a firm where women made envelopes, one girl working from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, and till 3 p.m. on Saturdays, said she could earn 10_s._ 6_d._, and a journeywoman earned from 10_s._ to 12_s._ Women making envelopes for another firm earned 9_s._ or 10_s._ a week. Paper-box makers earned, on an average, 9_s._ or 10_s._, some made 15_s._ or more. In another firm they earned 7_s._ or 8_s._ up to 25_s._ on piecework. Timeworkers earned 12_s._ or 14_s._; young girls earned 2_s._ 6_d._ These wages are very much the same as those paid to-day, and the hours then were undoubtedly longer.[74] Nor must it be assumed that wages would have risen more satisfactorily had there been no Factory Acts. Had there been any tendency for wages to rise which the Factory Law was retarding, that tendency would have shown itself in a marked way during the intervals between each Act, but no such thing is observable, as Mr. Wood's figures in the footnote indicate. Moreover, taken all together, the evidence gathered by this investigation proves that neither the demand for improvement nor the organisation to make that demand effective exists in the case of the woman worker. On the other hand, there is no evidence to show that legislation has improved wages, except in so far as it has reduced hours without apparently having lowered rates. [Footnote 74: _Cf._ "The Course of Women's Wages during the Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. H. Wood, printed as an Appendix to "A History of Factory Legislation," by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, where the following figures are given as the estimated average weekly earnings of women and girls in the printing trade: 1840, 6_s._ 3_d._; 1850, 6_s._ 6_d._; 1860, 7_s._ 5_d._; 1866, 7_s._ 10_d._; 1870, 8_s._ 6_d._; 1883, 8_s._ 9_d._; 1886, 8_s._ 9_d._; 1891, 9_s._ 10_d._; 1895, 9_s._ 10_d._; 1900, 10_s._ 1_d._] On the whole there seems to be no ground for considering that special legislation for women in this trade has materially injured the value of their labour. There is nothing to show that their wages have decreased, that legislation has acted as a drag upon their income, or that they have lost employment to any appreciable extent. * * * * * [Sidenote: Want of elasticity in the law.] A lack of elasticity in the law seems to be the greatest complaint of the employers. On the face of it, it looks like a piece of senseless red-tape that, because it is usually preferable to an employer to open his factory between the hours of 8 to 8, he may not when it is more convenient to him, open it between 6 and 6 or 7.30 and 7.30. It seems absurd that it was an illegal act of an employer to allow two young women to begin work at 6 a.m. and work till 8 p.m., whereas it would have been quite legal if they had begun work at 8 a.m. and worked till 10 p.m., due notice having been given to the Home Office.[75] [Footnote 75: _Stationery Trades' Journal_, 1898.] Mr. Henderson, as above quoted, gives it as his opinion that "a wide limit of law is necessary for printing offices where women may not work after 8 p.m. or before 6 a.m. Hours for adult women other than at present should be allowed by the Secretary of State, as for instance the folders of weeklies." Again, it is felt that a greater freedom is needed with regard to overtime. Mr. Vaughan, the Factory Inspector for North London, in the Factories and Workshops Report for 1899 says: "I find in some trades, _e.g._, Christmas cards, great dissatisfaction at the curtailment of overtime from five to three nights a week, when the busy season lasts only for a month or so; the allowance of thirty nights a year is not required, but an allowance of more nights during these few weeks would be an enormous assistance. The temptation in such cases to work more nights a week than are allowed is universally great." It appears to be a great hardship that women who have not been working by day may not upon occasions work by night, and both employers and employées are unanimous in demanding that the law should recognise this distinction. There is a great difference between retaining an ordinary worker through the night, or for more than a certain number of hours per week, and drafting in a fresh set of workers to do work by night at stated periods in the month or at times of emergency. Whether or not the law can be made sufficiently elastic to allow of greater freedom with regard to period of employment, overtime, and nightwork, raises difficult questions. No doubt it would be an advantage both to employées and employers, if the law could be made so elastic, but the difficulty of effective inspection would be so great as to outweigh any possible advantage. The early history of factory legislation and its working shows clearly that the intention of the Act was defeated because employers could so easily evade its clauses. At present it is known to a factory inspector that a factory that opens at 6 always opens at 6 and closes at 6, unless notice has been given that overtime is being worked; if, however, an employer were free to open his factory at 6 or 7 or 8, as occasion demanded, and close accordingly, the difficulty of administration would obviously be greatly increased. The same point arises with regard to nightworkers. It is quite impossible to know among a staff of nightworkers, who has been working all day and who are _bonâ fide_ job hands. Such cases as the following, which was the cause of a prosecution, would occur far more frequently. "Twenty-four girls who were employed at a neighbouring printing and bookbinding firm, worked for twelve hours at that firm on Friday, November 20th. They then went straight to the Carlyle Press, and worked all night, going back to their regular work at the other firm at 8 the next morning. The forewoman employed by the latter firm said that she did not know these girls had been working all day, or she would not have admitted them."[76] [Footnote 76: _Printers' Register_, January 12th, 1892.] It must be remembered that so far as the class of job hands is concerned, they owe their present position in a large measure to factory legislation. By utilising them, the employer has been able to meet a sudden press of work, and yet to comply with the provisions of the law, so that, without the legislation of which they now complain, many of them would not have found employment. Moreover, job hands are not numerous when compared with regular workers, and the provisions in the Factory Acts which seem to bear hardly on casual labour have rightly been passed in the interest of the permanent staff. To accede to the demand for greater elasticity is to suppose a higher code of morals on the part both of employers and of employed than experience justifies, and it would also render necessary a far more elaborate and irritating system of inspection than at present exists. The efficiency of modern factory industry depends very greatly upon automatic working--upon its standardisation of conditions, and the existing factory law with its inelastic provisions is, in reality, a great aid in maintaining those conditions of efficiency. Now and again an employer complains of some hard experience, and forgets that a departure from rigid rule would destroy the certainty which he feels that the law is treating him exactly as it is his competitors. Such a feeling of security is essential to business enterprise. CHAPTER VII. _WOMEN AND MACHINERY._ There is a general opinion amongst the women workers themselves that the introduction of machinery has ruined these trades for them. But we have found that certain opinions prevail, not because they have stood the test of investigation, but because they are passed round, and have never been subjected to enquiry. We have already referred to the question in a general way.[77] [Footnote 77: P. 48.] [Sidenote: Effect of machinery.] The impression of workers that machinery is displacing them, must be received with a great deal of reserve as they rarely take long or broad views. Mechanical aid is very imperfect in most of these trades, and in book folding, envelope making, black bordering, etc., its use has hitherto been greatly restricted owing to the nature of the work. The census figures, moreover, seem to be pretty conclusive that, taking the trade as a whole, machinery cannot have had such a very destructive influence upon women's employment.[78] [Footnote 78: An old-established publisher commits himself to the statement that machinery has increased women's work by 20 per cent. The manager of a leading Scottish paper and stationery firm stated, with reference to envelope making: "The use of machinery is always extending; but only in the direction of increasing the output; there has been no displacing of workers; the result has been rather to increase their employment."] The following statement by a Trade Union official is at once the most emphatic and most detailed of a considerable mass of information on this subject:-- "Folding and stitching machines have largely superseded female labour and men's labour too. _E.g._, A. (a certain weekly paper), if folded, etc., by hand, would employ thirty hands--now it is all done by machinery. B. (another similar paper) by hand would employ 100 girls and, say, twenty or thirty men--now no girl touches it except just to insert 'things,' _e.g._, advertisements, and men merely pack it; machinery does the rest. Even wrapping is done by machinery--one machine with one man does the work of eight men. At X. (a well-known London firm) ten folding machines do the work of 100 girls." As a matter of fact the papers referred to have been created by the cheap work of machines, and no labour has been displaced by their employment. They have rather increased the demand for labour. But the statement shows the efficiency of machinery worked under the best conditions. Another statement by a woman worker, typical of many others, is as follows: "Machinery is ruining the trade, and workers are being turned off; thirty were turned off a few months ago, and twenty more will have to go soon." This applies to a certain well-known London firm of bookbinders, and it is curiously corroborated by other investigators who found in other firms traces of the women discharged from this one. The firm's own statement, however, was that they had to turn away "ten hands (young ones), the other day, because of the introduction of folding machines"; but this information was received five months before the woman employed quoted above was seen.[79] [Footnote 79: An Edinburgh firm states that one folding machine can be managed by two girls and it does the work of eight women hand-folders. The firm does not state if it turned away hands, but it considered that there is too great a strain placed upon girls in watching this machine constantly, so their work is varied.] [Sidenote: Displacement.] That there is some displacement, either directly or by the substitution of younger workpeople, cannot be gainsaid with reference to particular processes. The class most affected is the sewers. The evidence in support of their displacement places it beyond dispute, and though the increased facility for sewing has created an extra demand for folding, and some sewers have turned to folding in consequence, this class as a whole has suffered by machinery. Folders have been less affected. The way in which the displacement is brought about is of some interest. We have, to begin with, the general apparent inability of women to manage machines, and we find that the folding machine has tended to reintroduce men to aid in work which for many years has been exclusively women's.[80] Here we have a case of men and machinery doing women's work. On the other hand, the sewing machine does not appear to have had that tendency, the only explanation apparently being that convention determines that in these trades sewing machines and women go together. Sewing machines are domestic implements in men's eyes. It is very curious that it should be so, but we are driven to that as the only possible explanation of well-observed facts. In this instance machines alone displace women. [Footnote 80: The manager of a firm with an extensive business in popular periodical literature says: "Folding, which was all hand work and women's work, is now largely done by machines managed by men. Wrapping, of which the same was true, is also largely done by machines which are managed by men.... If the machine is large and complicated, men will replace women, if it is small and simple, women will replace men."] No process--excepting the few rare instances in the typographical trade--seems to have been opened up to women in consequence of the introduction of machinery; and, on the other hand, the instances where young persons, either boys or girls, have been put to women's work owing to the introduction of machinery are very rare. So all that has happened has been that machines have somewhat changed the character of women's work, and their chief effect, beyond the displacement of sewers, has been to prevent the taking on of some learners who otherwise might have been employed in certain branches of these trades. Conclusions can be arrived at with more accuracy in respect of the paper-colouring and enamelling processes. Paper colouring and enamelling hardly exists as a separate trade now. Paper is coloured or enamelled, as a rule, in the mill where it is made, and the processes are carried out by machinery. This trade, then, affords a definite instance of the replacement of women's work by machinery, handwork being now a rare survival. In one firm where forty-five women were formerly employed twelve now work. The process of colouring by hand is very simple. The sheet of paper to be coloured is placed in front of the woman who wets it over with the required colour by means of a long thin brush like a whitewash brush, which she dips into a bowl. She then takes another round brush, about 10 ins. in diameter, and brushes over the whole surface, so that the colour shall lie quite evenly. The process is now complete, and the sheet of paper is taken up and hung on a line to dry. Enamelling is done in precisely the same way, enamel, instead of colour, being applied. These hand processes apparently survive in the case of small quantities of paper which it is not worth while to colour or enamel by machine. Those who have seen the process cannot regret the abolition of hand labour. The work is rough and dirty; the workers and the walls are all splashed over with the colour, the result being picturesque, but not healthy. When dry powder or dust is used in the process, meals may not be taken on the premises. The work does not attract a high grade of workers; they are of the job-hand type, friendly, rough and ready, and by no means tidy or "genteel." Paper colouring and enamelling was once a man's trade but women replaced men for the same reason that machinery has now replaced women, _i.e._, cheapness. Machine ruling has also been slightly affected. One of the investigators reports of an Edinburgh factory: "In this factory I was shown a ruling machine which was provided with an automatic feeder, in the form of two indiarubber wheels, which drew each sheet of paper into the machine with great exactness. The machine, after ruling one side, turned the paper and ruled the other without any adjustment by hand being necessary. After being set, this machine required only the occasional supervision of one man operative. It was estimated that its output equalled that of twelve persons on the old machines, whilst on some work of a simple kind which was merely to be run through, it might replace the work of thirty." [Sidenote: Cheap labour and mechanical appliances.] In these circumstances it is hardly to be expected that much evidence could have been collected leading to very definite conclusions regarding how far the cheapness of women's labour retarded the introduction of machinery, and the efficient organisation of these industries. With the large up-to-date employers, the fact that women's labour is cheap counts for little in face of the fact that machinery is rapid, and enables them on a small area and with a productive capital charge, to turn out large volumes of produce. "When we see a good machine," said one of these employers, "we try it, and we do not think of the cheapness or dearness of the labour it may displace." But with small employers, and with those producing for a lower class or special market, considerations of wages do enter greatly into calculations of the utility of a new machine, and to some slight extent the cheapness of women's labour has retarded the application of machinery in these trades. One investigator states of a large West End stationer:--"Undoubtedly he would put up steam folding and stamping machines if women's labour were not so cheap." A printer who prints some of the best-known weekly papers and reviews is reported to have said:--"Taking it broadly, the cheapness of men's or women's work undoubtedly tends to retard the introduction of machinery." But the most striking proof of the connection between cheap labour and handwork is given by one investigator who, whilst being taken over certain large printing works was shown women folding one of the illustrated weekly papers. Folding machines were standing idle in the department, and she was told that these were used by the men when folding had to be done at times when the Factory Law prohibited women's labour.[81] Another employer stated that he had introduced folding machines as a consequence of the legal restrictions placed upon women's labour, whilst another well-known bookbinder said:--"If women would take a fair price for work done it would not be necessary to employ machinery." [Footnote 81: _Cf._ pp 80, 81, etc.] A large printer of magazines reports: "The saving in cost, and therefore the inducement to put in machinery, is much less if higher wages are paid for men doing the work." The scarcity of women's labour, we are told, induced a Manchester printing firm to adopt folding machines; whilst, on the other hand, the cheapness of women's labour has kept linotypes out of Warrington composing rooms. CHAPTER VIII. _HOME WORK._ [Sidenote: Census figures.] The table of occupations compiled from the census of 1901 for the first time indicates the number of home workers. For these trades the figures for women are as follows: +----------------+----------------------------------+-----------+ | _Census | ENGLAND AND WALES. | | | 1901._ +------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | | Unmarried. | Married or | Total. | Total for | | | | Widowed. | | Scotland. | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper | 9 | 10 | 19 | 0 | | manufacture | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | | stainers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Stationery | 37 | 25 | 62 | 0 | | manufacture | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Envelope | 27 | 42 | 69 | 4 | | makers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper box (a) | 524 | 1,153 | 1,677 | 36 | | and paper bag | | | | | | makers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Other workers | 54 | 52 | 106 | 2 | | in paper, | | | | | | etc. | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Printers | 73 | 46 | 119 | 2 | | [? folders] | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Lithographers, | 18 | 12 | 30 | 0 | | copper | | | | | | and steel | | | | | | plate | | | | | | printers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Bookbinders | 129 | 145 | 274 | 9 | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Typecutter | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ (a) Paper box making was not investigated. It is always difficult to trace out the home worker, and the information we obtained was collected through communication with School Board officers, Charity Organisation Society secretaries, district nurses, sanitary inspectors, and workpeople. The groups of trades investigated are mainly factory and workshop trades, and are becoming more so. Home work is not so prevalent in them as it used to be, and it is now somewhat difficult to trace its effects in its present decayed importance. [Sidenote: Home work drawbacks.] There used to be a good deal of home work in these trades, but the growth of large firms and the introduction of machinery[82] have discouraged it.[83] The material is very heavy and sometimes costly, and has to be carefully handled. It is therefore difficult to move from workshop to dwelling-place; and when handled in kitchens or other living rooms it runs a great risk of being stained and spoiled. The home workers find some of their own material, _e.g._, paste and brushes for bag making, and they save light and rent for employers; but, on the other hand, they are apt "to send back their work with the mark of teacups upon it," or spoiled in some other way, and it is difficult to get them to return it punctually. So in these trades, home work really does not pay. [Footnote 82: This seems to be specially the case in the provinces.] [Footnote 83: One of the home workers (also workshop worker) visited said, "Home work is given less and less and is difficult to get now. Only three work at it--old hands--and they are going to stop it altogether, perhaps." Another investigator reports of machine-ruling in Scotland: "Two elderly women who worked a paper-ruling machine in their kitchen. They had been at the work for thirty years, having been taught by their father, and have carried on the business since his death. The father had a good business, and they can make their living by it, but say the work has sadly fallen off. They get enough orders to keep them going, and when very busy employ a girl occasionally to help them. 'It is useless to try to compete with the new machines they have nowadays. What used to be given to us at 2_s._ 6_d._, can now be turned out by the machines for 1_s._ 6_d._ We couldn't afford to do it at those rates.'" _Cf._ Appendix V.] The Trade Unions prohibit home work when they are able to detect it. There is, generally, a healthy feeling opposed to this method of employment, and firms deny practising it. [Sidenote: Home work processes.] Home work is now mainly confined to book and paper folding, sewing printed matter, black bordering and folding envelopes, making paper bags, and designing and painting Christmas cards which is done at home not so much because employers encourage it, but because it is undertaken by a class of women indisposed to enter a workshop. The folding is mostly of cheap printed matter like popular almanacs and other street literature. Also, a good deal of folding thin paper Bibles and prayer books is done at home. Some paper staining is also done in living rooms by workpeople, but the practice is less common than it was. "One paper colourer, a married woman, whom we saw, told us that her mother worked at the trade before her at home, and when she herself was a baby her cradle was rocked on the colouring board. 'Many was the night' that she sat up as a child helping her mother to do the work. She certainly throve on it and seemed immensely proud of her industrial career." [Sidenote: The home worker.] What home work is still done is given mainly to women employed in the workshop during the day, and is therefore illegal.[84] In addition, women who have married whilst working in certain firms, or widows of men who have been workmen in these trades, keep up old connections by occasional--if not systematic--home work. But as it hardly pays the employer to avail himself regularly of domestic workers, the work now done at home is chiefly given out to meet a temporary pressure of demand, and would practically disappear if these exceptional pressures did not take place. [Footnote 84: The wording of the section (31 (2)) of the Act, however, makes it difficult to enforce.] [Sidenote: Paper-bag making.] The making of paper bags is, of this group of trades, most extensively and systematically practised as a home industry. This is particularly the case in the neighbourhood of busy street markets, such as are found in South London. The work is mostly done by married women of a rough class, as a supplement to their husbands' wages.[85] Reporting upon one such worker an investigator says: "Mrs. ---- is one of nine daughters, and seven are paper-bag makers. All her cousins, aunts and relations-in-law have taken it up.... A niece of hers was consumptive and could not earn her living, but she was fond of dress. Mrs. ---- taught her paper-bag making and she soon earned 8_s._ or 9_s._ a week." The profit which yielded this income is stated to be 6_d._ or 7_d._ per thousand bags. Many women who occasionally work at paper-bag making only do so to earn a particular sum of money of which they are in need--say 10_s._ When that is earned they cease work. Such is the casual nature of the employment and the disorganised state of the labour employed in it. [Footnote 85: "In nearly all the cases that Mrs. ---- (an employing bag maker in the Borough) knows there are bad husbands. Mrs. ---- is in the trade herself to supplement her husband's earnings because she has nine children and he cannot earn enough to keep them in comfort."] [Sidenote: The homes.] The practically unanimous report of the investigators is that these home workers' home conditions are of the very worst. "A very squalid and evil-smelling slum:" "Very poor and miserable house shared by others," are typical descriptions of the dwellings to which the home work investigations led us. CHAPTER IX. _THE MARRIED AND THE UNMARRIED._ The investigators tried to obtain information bearing upon the interesting and important question of the influence of the married and the unmarried woman worker on industry, on the home, and on the family income. But the difficulty of following up statements and testing their accuracy has been so great and some of the factors in the problem so elusive under the conditions of the trades investigated, that conclusions are stated with considerable reserve. The custom in the trades under review undoubtedly is that married women should not work in them; and, as a rule, only widowhood, or a bad or sickly husband, or a slack time, brings a woman back to them after marriage.[86] Sometimes, however, she comes back, because it is too dull at home.[87] This is more generally the case in the provinces than in London, where certain job departments, especially certain kinds of folding, are filled by rather a rough class of women, amongst whom the proportion of married is exceptionally high. Throughout the reports sent in, it is most interesting to note how strongly the sense of feminine respectability opposes their fellow workwomen working after marriage, "unless they have been unfortunate in their husbands."[88] [Footnote 86: For statistics see Appendix VII.] [Footnote 87: A woman worker says, "They come back after they have married, because a girl who has been accustomed to make 18_s._ for herself is not comfortable when she marries a man on £2 a week who is accustomed to have that for himself, so she comes back to make extra money."] [Footnote 88: So also it is interesting to note the lingering shadow of chivalry in this connection. "Mr. ----," said one of the girls, "never will take married women, but then he is always _such_ a gentleman."] The average age of the women regularly employed is low,[89] because as a rule girls leave at marriage. The investigators generally report that the age in workrooms appears to be mainly between eighteen and twenty-three. The report that "Four girls here out of thirty or forty are over eighteen" (Leeds bookbinder's), is typical of many others. This fact alone has an enormous influence on women's wages and makes it necessary to be very careful in drawing conclusions under the headings dealt with in this chapter. [Footnote 89: A manager of a provincial printing establishment estimated that twelve years was the maximum workshop life of average girls.] [Sidenote: Wages and expenditure.] An attempt has been made to discover how far the earnings of women workers in these trades are only supplementary to family income, and how far the family worker is entirely dependent upon them for her livelihood. On the whole (but with important exceptions) they appear to be supplementary. In cases, certain fixed weekly payments are made for board and lodging to the relatives who are heads of the households, but these payments are not enforced in times of unemployment and are reduced when work is slack. Even when being made in full they do not always represent the actual cost of accommodation and living. It is becoming less and less common, it seems, for the wives of idle and improvident husbands to eke out their household income by casual or seasonal work, but the practice is still followed and in London prevails to a relatively considerable extent. In such cases the women do not work for mere pocket-money, nor again, do their wages cover the full cost of their living. "Miss ---- lives at home and her parents are evidently in comfortable circumstances," runs one report of a book-folder. "I went into the best parlour, where there was a piano--also a high hat in the corner!" The following gives a somewhat fuller picture of these workers:--"Mrs. ---- is a widow and has no children. She looks about sixty and is probably about fifty. She lives on the top floor in model dwellings (three rooms, for which she pays 5_s._ 9_d._) Her husband died in 1891 of consumption, and she does not know what she would have done had she not been made forewoman (in a book-folding room). She does not see how a pieceworker can support herself. She must live at home. Most of the girls working under her live at home and give their mothers 7_s._ a week, keeping the rest for themselves. She was doing some washing and mangling when I called. A little girl comes to help clean, but otherwise she does everything for herself." A fairly large employer in London stated that his "girls are living with their parents and work for pocket-money." Another "would think that about half lived at home." One woman stated, "A bit of extra money comes in handy. It is nice for a woman to put a little by--you cannot expect her to save out of her husband's money"; another said: "A woman ought never to let her husband know what she earns--if she is foolish enough to do that, he at once becomes lazy and extravagant. A woman should only work after marriage either to save a little money, or to help a sick or delicate husband." A well-known London general stationery dealer reports: "Some of the women employed are the wives of the porters and packers, but in the majority of cases the husbands are worthless, and the earnings of the women are the chief support of the household." In one case reported upon, a girl, working in a Bible and prayer-book house, having to support herself, could not do it, and began pilfering prayer-books to make both ends meet. She was turned away as a thief. For the purpose of throwing light upon the problems with which this chapter deals, particulars have been obtained from one firm in London where eighty-six women are employed. The married women are described as follows:-- 1. A widow. 2. Has a husband, a bookbinder in good work, but they are extravagant. 3. Has a husband in work. 4. A widow. 5. A widow with a daughter to support. 6. A widow. 7. Has a husband in work. Has been summoned for boys not attending school. 8. Has a husband who drinks. Looks after her children and goes home at dinner time. 9. A widow with recalcitrant boy. 10. Has a husband in work. 11. Has a husband irregularly employed. Very poor and slatternly. 12. Has a husband who drinks. Of the unmarried workers, one learned the trade when on in years because, owing to a misfortune, she had to bring up her brothers and sisters. She was very slow and her earnings only averaged about 7_s._ per week. Two support themselves. The others live at home and pay 6_s._ or 7_s._ per week, or hand over everything they make, and receive back small sums for pocket-money. A report from another well-known firm of bookbinders in London states that in a room of ten women, five support themselves. In some instances it is noted that married women have to receive charitable aid in looking after their children when they themselves go to work. Of a large printing firm it is said, "Most of the girls at ... don't seem to mind if they make money or not. They couldn't possibly keep themselves on what they earned." This was the statement of a girl working with the firm and erred in being too absolute; but an examination of the wage returns showed that, somewhat modified and limited, it was true. A manager of a co-operative bookbinding establishment estimated that, from his experience, not more than 25 per cent. of the girls working in that trade, regarded their wages as the only means by which they supported themselves. The forewoman of a large stationery department stated that only three out of twenty girls under her had to depend on their own wages. The conclusion of a report submitted by an official of the Typographical Association in Coventry may be taken as being true of the provinces generally. "The females for the most part are young girls, with a sprinkling of experienced and older hands who leave when about entering married life." Evidently it is a very common thing for such workers to pay so much into a common purse from which general family expenses are drawn, and into which the individual contributions vary with the state of trade. The industrial effect of these conditions is obvious. The women keep no vigilant eye upon wages which are fixed rather by use and wont than by competitive pressure. Employers have rarely[90] to offer high pay as an inducement to women to enter these trades, and, consequently, there is always a downward drag upon wages, and although the women spasmodically interest themselves in their conditions, they feel so little dependence on wages that they can never be taught to make that steady upward pressure which would improve the organisation of these trades and yield more return for labour. Hence, the low rate of wages obtainable by those who have to maintain themselves is kept down almost solely by the circumstance that such a large proportion of the women employed remain part of families and share in general family income. It should be noted that it is often the policy of employers to be "careful only to take respectable young girls who live with their parents." The economic influence of this "respectable" standard is obvious. [Footnote 90: The establishment of a laundry in the vicinity of a well-known provincial firm of printers resulted in an increase of wages in the shape of a guarantee that no wages should be paid under 6_s._ per week.] [Sidenote: Influence on family income.] On the question whether an extensive prevalence of "supplementary earnings" tends to reduce the wages paid to other members of the family, our investigations in these trades threw no light. Only in one case, where a husband and wife were questioned, was the opinion stated that, "Now that women go into trades so much, a man and a woman together only make as much as a man used to." The question is one which can be answered only by investigation in other trades, the circumstances of which are more favourable for its elucidation. [Sidenote: Wages rates and married women.] What little influence the married woman has upon wages seems to be to raise and not to lower them. That is the unanimous opinion of the forewomen in London, and they know best.[91] [Footnote 91: The following are extracts from the opinions of forewomen on this point:-- "They don't lower rates; they want more." "They don't lower rates of pay; it is rather the reverse, for they are most troublesome about the price; _e.g._, the other day a married woman, a new hand, made four or five girls refuse to do some sewing at the price quoted, so they and she sat idle and wasted their time till the forewoman saw what she could do for them. She (the forewoman) pointed out to the girls how foolish it was to waste their time like that, and they said that they wouldn't have done it by themselves." "So far from working for less if they don't get enough, they say--'Thank you' and walk off." "They are the first to grumble; they don't think it worth coming unless they can make something good." "Married women are more trouble than the unmarried; they are at the bottom of any agitation, and won't come if you are slack, for they wouldn't get enough to pay for washing." "They are more independent than single workers, and teach the others to stand out." "They think it a favour to do your work." "They won't work for less, for they generally have more than themselves to keep." A forewoman of a book-folding department in a large firm said that though not employing married women on her regular staff, she had had some experience of them as job hands, and found that they would not do ordinary work at ordinary rates, it not being worth their while. "They have not got to earn money, as they have husbands to fall back upon." To this should be added the testimony of one thoughtful observer, who has considered the question during a long experience in the trade. He has never come across a case where married women have lowered the rate of pay; on the other hand, the elder women often complain that the young girls who are living at home don't mind having ¼_d._ or ½_d._ cut off. See also the Report on Home Work, published by the Women's Industrial Council, 19, Buckingham Street, Strand, 6_d._, for further details confirming this view.] In a good many instances, the married women complained that the unmarried ones accepted reductions, and at a Conference held at Manchester in connection with this investigation, the opinion was unanimously expressed that married women do not lower wages, but, "on the contrary, the casuals grumble most and get most."[92] "I know of a case," writes a Plymouth correspondent, "where a married woman would not work for less than 15_s._, which she obtained and retained for a year or two." Out of a batch of ninety employers who had definite opinions upon the influence of married women upon the standard of wages, seventy-seven said they did not lower it, and thirteen that they did. The married woman is more able than the unmarried girl to appreciate the relation between wages and living expenses, and when she returns to the workshop, it is as a worker who accepts the life of the wage earner as a final fact and not as a mere interval between school and marriage. [Footnote 92: The casually employed sometimes give trouble owing to unpunctuality, and several employers have complained against married women on this ground. But the investigation as a whole does not show the complaint to be at all general.] The married woman is more independent and disinclined to accept low rates when offered, and she is generally chosen to go on deputations making complaints to employers. A Trade Union official said that theoretically the married woman ought to reduce wages, but that he was bound to say that his experience in the trade taught him that she did not. She has acquired the right to grumble, and she is put down in a considerable proportion of the reports as the centre from which general discontent in the workrooms emanates. Many employers object to her in consequence. She seems to regard herself as a permanent worker when she is a widow, and generally remains for a considerable time--twenty or thirty years--with her employers without thinking of changing. She is not so "particular" as her unmarried co-worker, and does not give herself so many "airs." She cleans litho-rollers without "turning up her nose." She is, in short, part and parcel of the fellowship of wage earners; her unmarried sister is not. She is more rarely found in the provinces than in London in these trades. Leeds and Bradford, and Bristol and the surrounding district may be taken as typical, and the reports of the investigators who visited these towns are quoted in full below on this point. [Sidenote: The employment of married women. (a) London.] In London, several firms refuse to employ married women as regular hands. In some cases this is a policy of the forewoman only, and not a rule of the firm. In others the head of the firm is responsible for the order. The motives vary. Some refuse on principle, holding that husbands should support their wives; _e.g._, "She won't countenance husbands living on their wives' earnings and idling themselves"; or, again, that it is "hard on single girls," or undesirable to have married women working amongst unmarried girls, because, "They spoil a shop by talking about all sorts of things." Other employers refuse to have them because they are too irregular--"You can't get them in in time"; others because "one has no hold over them," or because "they are tiresome, being so cocky." "Out of seventy-five girls," runs one of our reports, "he had none married till recently, when he failed to get enough unmarried. Dislikes having them because influence bad."[93] [Footnote 93: Reasons given for not employing married women, taken from a batch of London reports:-- (1) Irregular. (2) Principle. (3) Principle. (4) Principle. (5) No hold. (6) Chance. (7) Principle. (8) Chance. (9) Irregular. (10) Irregular. (11) Principle. (12) Moral principle. (13) Moral principle. (14) Principle (?). (15) Principle (?). (16) Expediency. (17) Principle. (18) Principle. (19) Principle. (20) Principle. (21) Principle. (22) Rule. (23) Rule. (24) Rule. (25) Expediency. (26) Principle. (27) Principle. (28) Principle. (29) Principle. (30) Principle. (31) Irregular.] As a rule, however, there is a certain number of married women on the staff, and all houses who have recourse to job hands in busy seasons must, on occasions, have married women on their premises, though they may object to employ them as regular workers. The exact proportion of married to unmarried women in these trades is impossible to judge. Accuracy could only be obtained by taking a census of each shop. Estimates vary. A forewoman of experience calculated that more than half were married. A Trade Union secretary and an experienced worker estimated that about half were married, whilst of the job hands taken separately, more than three-fourths were married women. Another Union official, however, reckoned that, taking the trades as a whole, there were four unmarried to one married; taking job hands separately, two were married to one unmarried. Most of those conversant with the trade are careful to give no figures, "a large proportion" are married, or a "good few," and so on, are the common expressions. All, however, agree that the largest proportion of married to unmarried is found amongst the job hands; that, in fact, the majority of that class of workers have husbands. A few instances of the proportion amongst the regular staff in houses taken at random are given below. In most cases, it was impossible to obtain any figures, but the following may be taken to be types:-- A. _Printing._--12 married out of 86. B. _Printing and Magazine Binding._--Half the staff. C. _Printing._--2 regular hands unmarried, 1 married taken on when busy. D. _Envelopes, etc._--5 girls, 2 married. E. _Binding._--3 married out of 20. F. _Card Mounting, etc._--2 married out of 30. G. _Binding._--3 married in machine room out of 60; 1 in perforating department. H. _Stationery._--9 married out of 20. J. _Printing._--1 married out of 10. K. _Binding._--2 married out of 30. L. _Printing and Magazine Work._--5 married out of 100. M. _Printing._--1 or 2 out of 56. N. _Printing._--2 out of 128. (In most departments won't take them.) These houses show a much lower percentage of married workers than anyone hazarded at a guess. [Sidenote: (b) Bristol and district.] "Seventeen houses in Bristol, employing about 1,170 women, have no married hands. In three of these, it is the rule that girls must leave on marriage, because the employer or the forewoman dislikes having married women, either 'because they are not such good workers after they have got the breakfast for their husbands and children, and seen to the house, and are not then much good for work in a factory,' or else because of a feeling that it is wrong to take married women from home duties. "In eight houses, employing about 1,200 women, there is no rule against employing married women, and a few are employed. The exact proportions were impossible to ascertain, but mostly box-makers. Employed. Married. A. 100 Most leave when married, but a few good workers kept on. B. 6 Two. C. 5 One or two. D. 30 A very few kept on. E. 2 Both married. F. 18 One married. G. 40 Generally leave; a few kept on. H. 1,000 A good many married. "So few married women are employed in these trades in Bristol that it is impossible to find any evidence of their influence on rates of pay, and the generalisations as to the quality of married women's work are made on very little information. One employer (B.) declared that married women are better workers because they do not go out unless they have good-for-nothing husbands and _have_ to be the breadwinners, a remark corroborated by G., who assigned the same reason for their superiority, adding that married women make 2_s._ or 3_s._ a week more at piecework than the unmarried, and seem more anxious to get on. C. regards them as steadier than girls: "They take life more seriously." "In two houses in Gloucester with twenty-two and fifty-five girls, there are no married women. 'They don't want to stay.' "In Frome, a leading printing establishment employs 130 girls, but none are married. There is a rule against employing married women. It is regarded as immoral to do so--'It means that the husband spends the extra money in beer.' "In Stroud, amongst thirty girls, none were married. "In Bath, in a firm employing forty girls, a few were married, but none whose husbands were in work. 'That would be considered _infra dig_.' [Sidenote: (c) Leeds and Bradford.] "Married women are rarely employed in these trades in Leeds. Out of seventeen houses visited, only three had married women as regular workers. One of these is an account-book maker's, where a few out of the thirty hands are married; another is a wallpaper manufacturer's, where no difference is made when girls marry, and the third is a paper-bag house, where a few out of the thirty women employed are married. In the remaining fourteen houses, comprising about 930 girls, no married women work. It is a custom recognised by masters and workers alike that women leave on marriage, so that the industrial career of these workers stops usually at twenty-two or twenty-three. In two houses old hands who have married are taken on for occasional rushes of work. "This dearth of married women in these trades seems strange in a town where married women's work is such a common feature in the mills, but is accounted for by the fact that the girls employed in the printing trades belong to a comparatively comfortable class, marry in their own class, and are not expected to be breadwinners. One employer suggests that the work requires more regularity than can be expected from a married woman, but this does not seem to be a serious difficulty in London. "Bradford conditions are practically the same. Seven firms have no married women, one has one married out of 100 workers, and this is an exception, married women not being employed as a rule. As in Leeds, the hands who have married come in to help when there is a rush of work. One manager remarked that, if the girls think they are not going to marry they leave for the mills, where pay is higher." * * * * * [Sidenote: The moral influence of the married worker.] There seems to be a pretty widespread objection to the moral influence of married women in the workshop. "Mr. ---- objects to the employment of married women. He dislikes the way they talk to the unmarried girls.... Lately he has been obliged to employ them as he could not get enough unmarried women." [Sidenote: Family health.] As regards the effect of work in these trades on family life, again the evidence is sparse, but so far as it is clear it tends to show that the employment of women makes little difference to the ordinary state of things. The work is not unhealthy, and the woman worker does not do much of the heavy tasks, such as lifting formes, using presses, and so on. The instances where she does this are rare, and the men have always, in this respect, turned their chivalrous instincts to industrial purpose and to protect their own interests. One investigator reports that a girl suffers from weak knees on account of long spells of standing at a machine for making envelopes, and that a vellum-folder complains of having to lift heavy weights. Another reports against "powdering" in book-binding; and employment in typefoundries, where girls handle type, is dangerous, since it may lead to lead-poisoning. Another says that bronzing, even when the bronzing machine is used and the precautions specified by the Factory Act are taken, is unhealthy. A case is given of a woman permanently injured by the excessive strain of working a guillotine cutting machine. The bookbinders have always been ready to point out that certain parts of their work are too heavy for women, and the compositors have done the same. The latter also show that consumption is a trade disease amongst them, and recently have defended their attempts to exclude women from working the linotype on the ground that the fumes and gases which are generated by its typefounding arrangement are injurious to health. They also maintain that standing for long periods at a stretch is injurious to women, but in at least one large printing firm in the provinces women were seen by our investigators setting type whilst sitting on stools in front of the case. The conditions of some wallpaper factories seem to be unhealthy, partly owing to the hot air, the smell, and some of the material used, especially the arsenic. Some reports state that the constant "standing about" necessary in these trades gives headaches and produces anæmia. What valid objection there is against married women leaving their homes and children for long periods at a time during the day, must of course be added to this, in common with all other kinds of continuous work in which married women engage, but there is no special danger to life or health in these industries from which the coming generation may suffer. CHAPTER X. _WAGES._ We have succeeded in getting the authentic records of wages from about eighteen firms in London, representing every branch of work in connection with printing, binding, and despatch, and employing together 1,000 hands--more in busy, less in slack weeks. We have also less detailed information about some half-dozen other firms. These studied together and apart will no doubt give a correct general impression of the amount and variability of wages paid, but circumstances have made it very difficult to group them so as to give a simple bird's-eye view of the whole. These circumstances are partly due to the very great differences between the class of work done by the various firms, and the difficulty of tabulating the workers under a few definite heads; partly to the difficulty of collecting records. Our investigators were recommended:-- i. To get complete wage sheets for as many weeks as their time and the courtesy of the manager allowed, making the record as complete as possible for 1899, and extending their researches back as far as the books existed, choosing the wage sheets of one week in every month. ii. To trace individual workers through as long a period as possible, choosing workers who would best illustrate all the various conditions of employment. iii. To note any other information. As regards i., we have the wage sheets for some 470 separate weeks, in addition to the complete lists of two very small firms for one and four years respectively; ii., the complete earnings of about 130 hands for periods varying from one to fourteen years. Owing to the fact that it was impossible to get the complete lists through 1899 for many firms, and that the periods of slackness and full work were not the same in different places, it proved very difficult to handle the wage lists. At last the plan was adopted of getting complete lists of one busy week, one typical week, and one slack week in 1899, leaving the employers to choose the weeks, unless our investigators could make a complete record. In the following analysis we have endeavoured to bring out the salient features of the statistics of each firm separately, and we have then grouped together all the typical weeks, either chosen by the employer or selected by us from the series; and it is believed that this grouping gives an adequate idea of the wages at a time which the trade regards as ordinary. The earnings of the 130 individual hands is a very valuable and, it may be, almost unique record. Many interesting facts are brought out by their study, and the records should have a place in sociological literature apart from their interest in the present connection. It has been necessary to make a technical use of averages in collating and tabulating the material, and we offer the following explanations. Where the word "average" is used without qualification, it is the ordinary arithmetic average, obtained by dividing the total by the number of payees. This is the best for general quantitative measurements. In most cases the median and quartiles and sometimes the dispersions have been calculated. They may be explained as follows. Suppose the wages of, say, sixty persons to be arranged in ascending order, _e.g._, 5_s._, 5_s._ 3_d._, 6_s._, 6_s._ 1_d._ ... 11_s._ 9_d._, 12_s._, 12_s._ 6_d._, then the wage _halfway_ up the list is the _median_ wage; thus, there are as many individuals above the median as below it. The wages halfway from the ends to the median (_i.e._, fifteenth and forty-fifth from bottom), are the _quartiles_, so that between the quartiles half the wages are grouped. Thus, if the median and quartiles in the above list were 7_s._ 6_d._, 10_s._ 6_d._, 12_s._ 6_d._, there would be fifteen earning less than 7_s._ 6_d._, fifteen more than 12_s._ 6_d._, thirty between 7_s._ 6_d._ and 12_s._ 6_d._, thirty below and thirty above 10_s._ 6_d._ For a single measurement of the grouping of the wages about their median, the distance between it and the quartiles is significant: in this example 3_s._ and 2_s._ are these distances. The more convenient way of stating this is to express half the distance between the quartiles (2_s._ 6_d._) as a fraction of their average 10_s._, which is generally very nearly the median. This fraction (¼ or ·25) we call the _dispersion_, and it enables us to study the changing character of a group in a very simple and efficient manner. I.--STATISTICAL VIEW OF THE VARIOUS FIRMS. FIRM A. _Information obtained._--Wages of thirty-six hands tabulated week by week through 1899. Total amount paid in wages and total number employed each week, 1885-1899. The whole wages sheet for one week in July and one week in November for each of these fifteen years. A. is a firm employing from fifty to one hundred and ten women and girls as folders, stitchers and sewers. The number employed has changed gradually; in 1885-7 there were about a hundred: from 1888 to 1894 the number continually diminished to sixty, and after a brief spurt in the autumn of 1894 to one hundred and fifteen and a rapid fall, has from 1895 to 1899 gradually risen from fifty to ninety. Through the fifteen years which the statistics cover, 1885-1899, the _annual_ average (roughly calculated) has fluctuated within the narrow limits of 8_s._ 9_d._ and 10_s._ 6_d._; it was above 10_s._ in 1888, 1889, 1897, 1898, 1899; below 9_s._ in 1886 and 1894. This average includes the learners. But when examined more minutely it is seen that the fluctuations week by week and month by month are very rapid. Briefly, there is a change of about 4_s._ in four-weekly cycles. Thus in November, 1899, the averages for the five weeks were 10_s._, 11_s._ 2_d._, 13_s._ 9_d._, 13_s._ 10_d._, 12_s._ In November the wages are much higher than in July, and evidently more regular in character; the number earning near the average is also greater. Thus the "dispersion" in November is generally about ·2 (the quartiles and median being, for example, 12_s._, 15_s._, 18_s._); while in July it is generally about ·4 (_e.g._, 3_s._ 9_d._, 6_s._ 3_d._, 8_s._ 9_d._). Again, it seems quite doubtful each year whether there will be any July wages worth the name; the median in four weeks selected each year in July changes from 2_s._ 11_d._ to 8_s._ 2_d._; while that for selected weeks in November is from 10_s._ 8_d._ to 17_s._ 11_d._, a smaller proportionate variation. The majority are piece workers. The following table shows the wages in two weeks (slack and busy) in 1899. The figures are probably typical of similar weeks in previous years. +-------------------+------------+------------+ | FIRM A. | July 14th, | Nov. 29th, | | | 1899. | 1899. | | From to | Numbers | Numbers | | _s.__d._ _s.__d._ | earning. | earning. | +-------------------+------------+------------+ | 24 0 26 0 | 1 | 2 | | 22 0 24 0 | 0 | 5 | | 20 0 22 0 | 1 | 12 | | 18 0 20 0 | 0 | 9 | | 16 0 18 0 | 2 | 5 | | 14 0 16 0 | 4 | 14 | | 12 0 14 0 | 5 | 10 | | 10 0 12 0 | 4 | 11 | | 8 0 10 0 | 11 | 1 | | 6 0 8 0 | 17 | 2 | | 4 0 6 0 | 11 | 2 | | 2 0 4 0 | 6 | 2 | | -- -- 2 0 | 1 | 1 | +-------------------+------------+------------+ July 14th, 1899: Median, 7_s._; Quartiles, 5_s._ 8_d._, 9_s._ 11_d._; Dispersion, ·27. Nov. 29th, 1899: Median, 14_s._ 6_d._; Quartiles, 11_s._ 10_d._, 19_s._; Dispersion, ·23. +-------+-----------------------------------+ | FIRM | Average | | A. | Wage. | | +-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | 1st | 2nd | Year. | | | Six | Six | | | | Months. | Months. | | +-------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | 1885 | 8 11 | 9 2 | 9 1 | | 1886 | 8 4 | 9 5 | 8 10 | | 1887 | 8 8 | 9 5 | 9 0 | | 1888 | 8 0 | 10 7 | 9 4 | | 1889 | 9 5 | 10 11 | 10 1 | | 1890 | 10 4 | 10 10 | 10 6 | | 1891 | 9 0 | 10 1 | 9 6 | | 1892 | 8 4 | 9 8 | 9 0 | | 1893 | 9 4 | 8 8 | 9 0 | | 1894 | 8 2 | 9 8 | 8 11 | | 1895 | 8 5 | 10 4 | 9 4 | | 1896 | 9 5 | 10 0 | 9 8 | | 1897 | 9 10 | 10 11 | 10 4 | | 1898 | 10 6 | 10 1 | 10 4 | | 1899 | 9 11 | 10 4 | 10 1 | +-------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ +-------+-----------+-----------+ | FIRM | Median | | A. | Wage. | | +-----------+-----------+ | | Week | Week | | | in | in | | | July. | Nov. | +-------+-----------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | 1885 | 8 2 | 15 2 | | 1886 | 4 5 | 17 0 | | 1887 | 5 5 | 14 7 | | 1888 | 8 9 | 14 6 | | 1889 | 9 3 | 17 2 | | 1890 | 6 7 | 17 11 | | 1891 | 6 6 | 16 10 | | 1892 | 7 0 | 15 4 | | 1893 | 6 2 | 10 8 | | 1894 | 3 0 | 13 11 | | 1895 | 5 4 | 14 4 | | 1896 | 5 7 | 11 8 | | 1897 | 6 7 | 15 0 | | 1898 | 4 7 | 11 4 | | 1899 | 7 0 | 13 3 | +-------+-----------+-----------+ For the 15 years: 1st six months, 9_s._; 2nd six months, 10_s._; year, 9_s._ 6_d._ FIRM B. _Information obtained._--Wages of five hands tabulated week by week, for years 1886-99, 1887-99, 1896-99, 1898-99, 1899, respectively. Monthly earnings and half-yearly bonus for all regular hands, 1888-99. Weekly wages of all hands throughout eighteen months in the years 1886-96 and 1899, three weeks in 1877 and two in 1898. This firm employs folders, stitchers, and sewers.--The number of permanent hands employed increased with slight variations from two in 1886 to twelve in 1899. Jobbers are occasionally employed, sometimes as many as there are permanent hands. Considering the regular hands and choosing each year a wage earner near the median for that year, we have the following table. +--------+-----------+-----------+------------------+ | FIRM | Total | Bonus. | Average Earnings | | B. | Wages | | per week, | | | in Year. | | including bonus. | +--------+-----------+-----------+------------------+ | | £ _s._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | 1887 | 18 0 (a) | 10 6 | 14 3 | | 1888 | 39 6 | 21 8 | 15 6 | | 1889 | 38 16 | 20 4 | 15 4 | | 1890 | 36 6 | 16 6 | 14 4 | | 1891 | 39 0 | 18 9 | 15 4 | | 1892 | 39 12 | 20 0 | 15 7 | | 1893 | 38 8 | 24 0 | 15 2 | | 1894 | 40 3 | 15 0 | 15 9 | | 1895 | 37 10 | 19 0 | 14 10 | | 1896 | 40 7 | 20 0 | 15 9 | | 1897 | 37 11 | 19 6 | 14 10 | | 1898 | 40 7 | 20 0 | 15 11 | | 1899 | 29 11 (b) | 14 9 | 15 6 | +--------+-----------------------+------------------+ (a) half-year (b) 9 months In a typical week, January 5th-12th, 1899, the wages were: Full workers, average, 16_s._ 2_d._ 1 at 21_s._ 5 between 16_s._ and 17_s._ 4 " 15_s._ and 16_s._ 1 at 14_s._ 10_d._ 1 " 12_s._ 9_d._ Learners in their third year, 2 at 10_s._ 6_d._ " " second " 1 " 5_s._ 9 jobbers, average 5_s._ 5_d._ 1 at 7_s._ 2_d._ 4 between 5_s._ and 7_s._ 4 less than 5_s._ Average, for all except learners, 11_s._ 7_d._ FIRM C. _Information obtained._--Complete list of wages for first week in every month, from January, 1897, to February, 1900. Full lists in five weeks described as "slack," "busy," or "typical." The wages of fifteen hands tabulated, most of them throughout 1897-99. The work is divided into four departments:-- Binders, from twenty-nine to thirty-eight hands. The median wage fluctuated in the three years between 11_s._ and 17_s._, excluding holiday weeks; 13_s._ is the general average. About six are on time wages. In the warehouse, where Government folding is done, five hands are employed. The median wage of this group fluctuated in 1897 between 16_s._ and 27_s._, being low at the end of 1897. In 1898 and 1899 it was a little steadier, averaging about 21_s._ (piece rates). In the envelope room, where folding and relief stamping is done, seven to thirteen hands are employed. The median wage is very variable, fluctuating from 9_s._ to 16_s._, and averaging about 12_s._, chiefly time wages. Machine ruling is done by from four to eleven girls. Their median wage was nearly steady at 6_s._ in 1897 and 1898, and rose regularly to 8_s._ in 1899. Nominally these were time wages. The following table shows detailed wages in five selected weeks (learners excluded). +------------------+--------------------------+-------+---------+ | FIRM C. | Typical Weeks. | Busy | Slack | | | | Week. | Week. | | +--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ | | Nov., | Feb., | Nov., | Dec., | March, | | | 1898. | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ | Binders-- | No. | No. | No. | No. | No. | | Above 20_s._ | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | | 18_s._ to 20_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 5 | 3 | 9 | 13 | 1 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 7 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 0 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 7 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 2 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 8 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 14 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 9 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ | Envelope Room-- | | | | | | | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ | Machine Ruling-- | | | | | | | 8_s._ to 9_s._ | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 0 | | 7_s._ " 8_s._ | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 6_s._ " 7_s._ | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | | 5_s._ " 6_s._ | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 7 | | 4_s._ " 5_s._ | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | | 3_s._ " 4_s._ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | | 2_s._ " 3_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ | Warehouse | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | | Earnings. | 22 4 | 24 1 | 27 9 | 28 0 | 21 6 | | | 22 1 | 24 1 | 26 10 | 26 10 | 20 8 | | | 22 1 | 23 3 | 26 4 | 26 3 | 20 8 | | | 20 5 | 22 1 | 24 6 | 24 9 | 19 3 | | | 12 7 | 20 10 | 11 3 | 24 0 | 15 6 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ FIRM D. _Information obtained._--Complete lists of wages in all weeks in 1899. Wages of thirty-one hands tabulated week by week through 1899. The lists are made up in five divisions. 1. Sixty-five to seventy-eight employed in sewing, folding and collating (of whom eleven to seventeen are learners). Excluding Bank Holiday weeks and learners, the average wage fluctuates only between 10_s._ and 13_s._ 9_d._ Average for 1st half, 12_s._; 2nd half, 11_s._ 6_d._; year, 11_s._ 9_d._ 2. Eighty to ninety (including sixteen to twenty-three learners), collating and sewing. Average from 10_s._ 7_d._ to 16_s._ 3_d._ Average for 1st half, 13_s._ 5_d._; 2nd half, 13_s._ 2_d._; year, 13_s._ 3_d._ 3. Eighty-three to ninety-two (including thirteen to thirty learners), folding. Average from 10_s._ 6_d._ to 16_s._ 5_d._ Average for 1st half, 13_s._; 2nd half, 13_s._; year, 13_s._ 4. Layers-on, about six. Average fluctuates from 12_s._ to 24_s._ 8_d._; 1st half, 15_s._ 7_d._; 2nd half, 16_s._ 11_d._; year, 16_s._ 3_d._ 5. Lookers-over, four or six. Fluctuates from 11_s._ 8_d._ to 15_s._ 10_d._ Average for year, 13_s._ 8_d._ The following table shows detailed wages in five selected weeks. +------------------+-----------------+-----------------+--------+ | FIRM D. | Slack Weeks. | Typical Weeks. | Busy. | | +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ | | Feb. | Feb. | June | Oct. | Dec. | | | 24th, | 23rd, | 30th, | 13th, | 8th, | | | 1899. | 1900. | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ | Above 24_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 16 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 6 | 3 | 11 | 10 | 33 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 23 | 20 | 26 | 40 | 36 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 45 | 58 | 51 | 52 | 59 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 40 | 44 | 45 | 38 | 17 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 35 | 32 | 26 | 24 | 19 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 24 | 19 | 15 | 24 | 17 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 15 | 15 | 6 | 18 | 7 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 9 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 0 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ | | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | | Median | 12 9 | 13 4 | 14 0 | 13 8 | 14 10 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ | Quartiles | 15 0 | 14 9 | 15 6 | 16 0 | 18 0 | | | 10 0 | 10 4 | 11 4 | 10 6 | 13 4 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ | Dispersion | ·20 | ·17 | ·18 | ·20 | ·15 | +------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ FIRM E. _Information obtained._--Complete wage list for one week each month from August, 1894, to December, 1899. Wages of eight hands tabulated, five through the whole period. Folding, stitching and sewing are done. Number employed was nearly regular, but increased from forty to sixty, and fell back to fifty. The median fluctuates rapidly and greatly, but shows a gradual rise from 13_s._ (with fluctuations down to 8_s._ and up to 16_s._) to 16_s._ (with fluctuations down to 10_s._ and up to 19_s._). The "dispersion" has changed little, and was about ·15. The following weeks (table p. 121) show the general run of wages. +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | FIRM E. | Feb. | July, | Nov. | Feb. | | | 1895. | 1895. | 1895. | 1899. | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Above 24_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 1 | 5 | 3 | 0 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 4 | 10 | 10 | 3 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 8 | 17 | 18 | 4 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 13 | 8 | 14 | 12 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 9 | 7 | 7 | 19 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 4 | 5 | 2 | 10 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | | Median | 11 4 | 12 7 | 12 5 | 9 10 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Quartiles | 12 11 | 14 7 | 14 4 | 10 11 | | | 9 8 | 10 8 | 10 7 | 8 4 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Dispersion | ·14 | ·16 | ·14 | ·13 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | FIRM E. | July, | Nov. | Dec. | A Slack | | | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | Week, | | | | | | 1900. | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Above 24_s._ | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 5 | 9 | 4 | 1 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 9 | 9 | 13 | 2 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 12 | 8 | 7 | 0 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 7 | 10 | 9 | 3 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 9 | 6 | 7 | 9 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 3 | 0 | 4 | 12 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 0 | 1 | 3 | 13 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | | Median | 16 5 | 17 8 | 16 3 | 10 3 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Quartiles | 18 7 | 20 1 | 18 10 | 12 0 | | | 13 5 | 15 5 | 13 9 | 8 4 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Dispersion | ·16 | ·13 | ·16 | ·17 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ FIRM F. _Information obtained._--Wages for all hands each week in 1896, and until March, 1900. So few are employed that no average can be given, and the wages are treated later under individual hands. Also a small bookbinding firm. 1. A quick folder; wages generally from 12_s._ to 16_s._, but fluctuations down to 5_s._ and up to 20_s._ 2. A quick sewer; very fluctuating, about 10_s._ 3. A collator at 3¼_d._ per hour; 12_s._, with fluctuations. FIRM G. _Information obtained._--List of wages paid in 2nd week in each month, 1896, February, 1900, and four other weeks. Wages of fourteen hands; six throughout the period. All Departments. _Weeks Selected at Beginning and End of Data._ +------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ | FIRM G. | 1896. | | +--------------+--------------+--------------+ | | Feb. | July | Nov. | | | 8th. | 11th. | 14th. | | +----+---------+----+---------+----+---------+ | | -- | Machine | -- | Machine | -- | Machine | | | | Rulers. | | Rulers. | | Rulers. | +------------------+----+---------+----+---------+----+---------+ | Above 24_s._ | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 | | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | | 18_s._ to 20_s._ | 4 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 0 | | 16_s._ to 18_s._ | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 9 | 0 | | 14_s._ to 16_s._ | 7 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 9 | 0 | | 12_s._ to 14_s._ | 3 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 0 | | 10_s._ to 12_s._ | 10 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 8_s._ to 10_s._ | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 0 | | 6_s._ to 8_s._ | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 2 | | 4_s._ to 6_s._ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 4 | | 2_s._ to 4_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+----+---------+----+---------+----+---------+ | (Apprentices excluded.) | +------------------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+ | Median (without | 14s. | -- | 15s. | -- | 16s. | -- | | rulers). | 8d. | | | | 6d. | | +------------------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+ | FIRM G. | 1899. | | +--------------+--------------+--------------+ | | July | Nov. | Dec. | | | 8th. | 11th. | 9th. | | +--------------+----+---------+----+---------+ | | -- | Machine | -- | Machine | -- | Machine | | | | Rulers. | | Rulers. | | Rulers. | +------------------+----+---------+----+---------+----+---------+ | Above 24_s._ | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 10 | 0 | 13 | 0 | 12 | 0 | | 18_s._ to 20_s._ | 6 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 11 | 0 | | 16_s._ to 18_s._ | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 0 | | 14_s._ to 16_s._ | 2 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 8 | 0 | | 12_s._ to 14_s._ | 9 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 0 | | 10_s._ to 12_s._ | 13 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 8_s._ to 10_s._ | 3 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 7 | 3 | | 6_s._ to 8_s._ | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 7 | | 4_s._ to 6_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 2_s._ to 4_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+----+---------+----+---------+----+---------+ | (Apprentices excluded.) | +------------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+-------+ | Median (without | 14s. | -- | 16s. | -- | 18s. | | | rulers). | | | 6d. | | 2d. | | +------------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+-------+ _Machine Ruling._--Four to nine hands, generally seven to nine. Time wages. Median moves slowly and steadily from 6_s._ to 7_s._ during 1896-99. _Stamping._--Four, increasing to twelve hands, sometimes sixteen. The low wages are time (presumably learners); the rest piece. Time hands are excluded in the medians here, and in binding and despatch. Median is sometimes fluctuating, but not far from 12_s._ or 13_s._ for long. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 1896 1st half-year 14 3 2nd half-year 11 0 1897 " " 13 0 " " 13 0 1898 " " 12 4 " " 11 11 1899 " " 12 6 " " 11 11 1900 " " 14 2 (two months) _Binding room_, including despatch, till middle of 1897, when numbers fell from forty to twenty. The despatch room, beginning with twenty, increased to thirty hands. Binding--median varies from 11_s._ to 17_s._ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 1896 1st half-year 14 1 2nd half-year 16 1 1897 " " 14 8 " " 15 4 1898 " " 15 0 " " 14 4 1899 " " 14 2 " " 13 11 1900 " " 14 2 (two months) Despatch--median steadier and rising. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 1897 1st half-year -- -- 2nd half-year 15 0 1898 " " 17 6 " " 18 11 1899 " " 19 4 " " 20 9 1900 " " 16 3 (two months) FIRM H. _Information obtained._--Wage list, 3rd week in every month, 1895-98. Every week in 1899, and eight special weeks. Wages of three hands tabulated throughout period. Work done.--Printers' folding, sewing, magazines. No bookbinding. Twenty-four to thirty-eight hands. Median very variable; _e.g._, July, 1899, 14_s._ 2_d._, 16_s._ 6_d._, 13_s._ 7_d._, 15_s._ 10_d._ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 1895 1st half-year 11 5 2nd half-year 13 3 1896 " " 13 10 " " 12 4 1897 " " 12 11 " " 10 2 1898 " " 11 5 " " 16 0 1899 " " 13 1 " " 14 1 General trend to 13_s._ +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | FIRM | Feb. | Aug. | Jan. | March | Oct. | Aug. | Sept. | Apr. | | H. | 15th | 16th | 24th | 9th | 7th | 25th | 15th | 6th | | | 1895 | 1895 | 1898 | 1898 | 1898 | 1899 | 1899 | 1900 | | | | | (a) | (b) | (c) | (a) | (c) | (b) | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | 23s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 22s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 20s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 21s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | 19s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | | 18s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | | 17s. | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 4 | | 16s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | | 15s. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | 14s. | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 1 | | 13s. | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | | 12s. | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 | | 11s. | 6 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 10s. | 4 | 4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | 9s. | 4 | 9 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | | 8s. | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | | 7s. | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | 6s. | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | 5s. | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | | | | | (d) | | | | | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | 4s. | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | 3s. | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ | Me- | 11s. | 9s. | 10s. | 15s. | 17s. | 9s. | 14s. | 17s. | | dian | | 4d. | 3d. | 6d. | | 3d. | 7d. | 2d. | +------+------+------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------+ (a) Slack. (b) Typical. (c) Busy. (d) 3 learners FIRM I. Publishers and bookbinders. No printers' folding. _Information obtained._--Wage lists: 2nd week in each month, October, 1898, to March, 1900. Total wages every week to March, 1900. Wages of nine hands tabulated throughout. +----+-------------+------+-----------------------------+------+ | FIRM | + I. +-------------+------+-----------------------------+------+ | | Median | Quarterly Averages | | | varies | (excluding Bank Holiday). | | | from +------+-----------------------------+------+ | | _s._ _d._ | 1898 | 1899 | 1900 | +----+-------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------+ | C. | 11 0 - 21 4 | 20 2 | 19 3 | 16 9 | 13 4 | 20 8 | 17 3 | +----+-------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------+ | S. | 7 0 - 15 6 | 14 0 | 12 8 | 9 10 | 8 6 | 13 6 | 13 0 | +----+-------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------+ | F. | 8 3 - 14 2 | 13 2 | 13 0 | 8 11 | 10 0 | 12 2 | 10 5 | +----+-------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------+ | T. | 13 0 - 16 4 | 15 8 | 15 11 | 13 6 | 13 4 | 15 0 | 14 0 | +----+-------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------+ 48 hours: no record of overtime. C. = Collators (18 to 23) S. = Sewers (27 to 40) F. = Folders (53 to 91) T. = Time workers putting in plates (17 to 22) +------------------+------+-------+------+------+------+ | FIRM I. | Nov. | March | July | Nov. | Feb. | | | 11th | 10th | 14th | 10th | 9th | | | 1898 | 1899 | 1899 | 1899 | 1900 | +------------------+------+-------+------+------+------+ | 32_s._ to 34_s._ | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | | 30_s._ " 32_s._ | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | | 28_s._ " 30_s._ | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | | 26_s._ " 28_s._ | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 24_s._ " 26_s._ | 5 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 1 | | 22_s._ " 24_s._ | 2 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 2 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 11 | 9 | 1 | 10 | 3 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 14 | 16 | 0 | 11 | 3 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 20 | 16 | 2 | 14 | 14 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 25 | 22 | 10 | 13 | 15 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 22 | 28 | 18 | 30 | 32 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 24 | 32 | 20 | 25 | 24 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 14 | 17 | 27 | 6 | 15 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 7 | 5 | 30 | 4 | 11 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 3 | 3 | 18 | 1 | 5 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 4 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | | 0_s._ " 2_s._ | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+------+-------+------+------+------+ The total wage bill was:-- 1898. £ 1899. £ 1899. £ 1900. £ Oct. 462 Jan. 428 July 245 Jan. 330 Nov. 483 Feb. 471 Aug. 263 Feb. 346 Dec. 430 March 569(a) Sept. 502(a) March 408(a) -- April 305 Oct. 417 -- -- May 302 Nov. 403 -- -- June 383(a) Dec. 420(a) -- (a) Five weeks. £ Total in 4th quarter, 1898 1375 " 1st " 1899 1468 " 2nd " " 990 " 3rd " " 1010 " 4th " " 1240 " 1st " 1900 1084 FIRM J. A firm undertaking magazine work. _Information obtained._--General statement of ordinary wages. Wages in three selected weeks. Bookfolding, stitching, wrapping, etc. (magazine work). Work is regular for three weeks; none in the fourth. +------------------+-------+---------+------------------+--------+ | FIRM J. | Wages of all Employed. | + +-------+---------+------------------+--------+ | | Slack | Typical | -- | Busy | | | (a) | (b) | | (c) | +------------------+-------+---------+--+---------------+--------+ | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 0 | 1 | 34_s._ to 36_s._ | 2 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 0 | 0 | 32_s._ " 34_s._ | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 0 | 2 | 30_s._ " 32_s._ | 3 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 0 | 4 | 28_s._ " 30_s._ | 0 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 0 | 4 | 26_s._ " 28_s._ | 3 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 0 | 1 | 24_s._ " 26_s._ | 1 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 3 | 1 | 22_s._ " 24_s._ | 0 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 4 | 1 | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 3 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 6 | 0 | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 1 | +------------------+-------+---------+------------------+--------+ | | s. d. | s. d. | | s. d. | | Median | 8 0 | 15 9 | -- | 26 4 | | Average | 8 4 | 15 7 | -- | 25 11 | +------------------+-------+---------+------------------+--------+ (a) Slack Week, Feb. 8th, 1901. (b) Typical Week, Feb. 15th, 1901. (c) Busy Week, March 1st, 1901. FIRM K. A publisher's bookbinder. _Information obtained._--Wage sheet for three selected weeks in 1898-9. A week as slack as the slack week here given, was only experienced two or three times. +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | FIRM K. | Typical. | Busy. | Slack. | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | | Av. | Av. | Av. | | | No. _s._ _d._ | No. _s._ _d._ | No. _s._ _d._ | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Folders | 46 13 1 | 55 15 8 | 43 8 7 | | (piece) | | | | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Sewing | 8 22 2 | 8 31 1 | 8 11 7 | | machinists | | | | | (piece) | | | | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Collators | 3 26 10 | 3 27 2 | 5 14 5 | | (time) | | | | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Layers-on | 4 14 0 | 4 19 7 | 3 16 11 | | (piece) | | | | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Learners | 2 4 1½ | 2 8 7 | 2 3 7 | +------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | FIRM K. | Typical. | Busy. | Slack. | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | 36_s._ to 38_s._ | 1 | 0 | 0 | | 34_s._ " 36_s._ | 0 | 1 | 0 | | 32_s._ " 34_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 30_s._ " 32_s._ | 0 | 7 | 1 | | 28_s._ " 30_s._ | 1 | 1 | 0 | | 26_s._ " 28_s._ | 1 | 1 | 0 | | 24_s._ " 26_s._ | 0 | 1 | 1 | | 22_s._ " 24_s._ | 1 | 2 | 0 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 9 | 4 | 0 | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | 18_s._ to 20_s._ | 3 | 13 | 2 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 6 | 8 | 3 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 7 | 14 | 4 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 11 | 10 | 2 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 13 | 7 | 15 | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | 8_s._ to 10_s._ | 3 | 1 | 16 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 3 | 0 | 9 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 1 | 0 | 4 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 1 | 0 | 2 | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | Median | 13 3 | 16 10 | 9 6 | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ | Quartiles | 19 1 | 19 10½ | 11 1 | | | 11 1 | 13 10½ | 7 10 | +-------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+ FIRM L. Compositors. _Information obtained_: Complete wages of the six hands employed through 1900. No. 1 has been in the trade two and a half years. In 1900 she was away seven weeks (three, slack trade; two, holidays; two, ill); in the remaining forty-five weeks her wages fluctuated between 5_s._ and 18_s._ 3_d._, reached a total of £28 15_s._ 9_d._, making an average of 11_s._ 1_d._ weekly through the year, or 12_s._ 7_d._ per week employed. No. 2 lost four weeks in 1900 through slack trade. In the remaining forty-eight weeks her wages fluctuated between 5_s._ 6_d._ and 23_s._; reached a total of £40 4_s._ 11_d._, making an average of 15_s._ 6_d._ weekly through the year. No. 3 made £52 9_s._, working fifty-one weeks at £1 per week, making 29_s._ overtime, and taking one week's holiday; average, 20_s._ 2_d._ weekly for the year. No. 4 made £37 16_s._ in forty-four weeks, lost five weeks through slack trade, and took three weeks' holiday; average, 14_s._ 6_d._ weekly for the year. No. 5 made £39 1_s._ 9_d._ in forty-six weeks, lost four weeks through slack trade, was ill one week and took one week's holiday; average, 15_s._ weekly for the year. No. 6 made £22 1_s._ 6_d._ in forty-eight weeks, lost three weeks through slack trade, was ill for one week. She was unsuccessful in her work, and only averaged 8_s._ 4_d._ a week through the year. FIRM M. A press warehouse. _Information obtained._--Wage list in three selected weeks. +-----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+ | FIRM M. | Week | Week | Week | | | Ending | Ending | Ending | | | Feb. | Nov. | July | | | 9th, | 24th, | 21st, | | | 1900. | 1899. | 1899. | | | Average | Average | Average | | | wage. | wage. | wage. | +-----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+ | | No. s. d. | No. s. d. | No. s. d. | | Time workers | 36 15 0 | 37 15 6 | 31 13 5 | | Folders (piece) | 41 13 3 | 50 14 5 | 31 11 10 | | Sewers " | 7 14 7 | 7 13 6 | 12 9 1 | | Apprentices | 11 4 1 | 11 4 2 | 5 4 4 | +-----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+ +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | FIRM M. | Feb. | Nov. | July | | | 9th, | 24th, | 21st, | | | 1900. | 1899. | 1899. | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | Above 26_s._ | 1 | 1 | 0 | | 24_s._ to 26_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | | 22_s._ " 24_s._ | 0 | 1 | 0 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 1 | 5 | 2 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 3 | 6 | 1 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 14 | 19 | 1 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 25 | 22 | 19 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 16 | 18 | 20 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 12 | 15 | 15 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 8 | 4 | 3 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 3 | 3 | 3 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 0 | 0 | 5 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 1 | 0 | 4 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | Median | 14 3 | 14 9 | 12 9 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | Quartiles | 15 9 | 17 0 | 14 9 | | | 10 9 | 12 2 | 11 1 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ | Dispersion | ·19 | ·16 | ·14 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+ (Excluding Apprentices.) FIRM N. Bookbinders. _Information obtained._--Complete wage sheets for three selected weeks. Folders, piece; collators, time. +-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ | FIRM N. | Dec. | Oct. | Aug. | | | 15th, | 6th, | 18th, | | | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | | | Busy | Typical | Slack | | | Week. | Week. | Week. | | | Average | Average | Average | | | wage. | wage. | wage. | +-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ | | No. s. d. | No. s. d. | No. s. d. | | Collators | 18 15 7 | 17 11 3 | 18 11 0 | | Folders | 20 13 9 | 12 11 10 | 9 9 0 | | Learners | 16 4 6 | 5 4 1 | 7 2 9 | +-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ 1 Sewing Machinist, 23_s._ 9_d._ +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | FIRM N. | Dec. | Oct. | Aug. | | | 15th, | 6th, | 18th, | | | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | | | Busy | Typical | Slack | | | Week. | Week. | Week. | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 4 | 1 | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 3 | 1 | 1 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 10 | 1 | 0 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 10 | 6 | 3 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 1 | 10 | 5 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 4 | 6 | 10 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 2 | 3 | 1 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 2 | 1 | 3 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 0 | 1 | 3 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 2 | 0 | 1 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | Median | 15 8 | 12 9 | 11 3 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | Quartiles | 16 6 | 14 6 | 12 9 | | | 11 10 | 11 0 | 8 0 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | Dispersion | ·16 | ·16 | ·21 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ (Excluding Learners.) FIRM O. _Information obtained._--Wage lists in three selected weeks, probably in first half of 1900. Five hands. +-----------+---------------+--------------+--------------+ | FIRM O. | Typical Week. | Busy. | Slack. | +-----------+---------------+--------------+--------------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | Folder | 17 6 | 20 0 | 12 6 | | Stitcher | 21 0 | 26 0 | 15 0 | | Sewer | 12 0 | 15 0 | 8 6 | | Laying-on | 12 0 | 15 0 | 11 0 | | Learner | 5 0 | 5 0 | 5 0 | +-----------+---------------+--------------+--------------+ FIRM P. _Information obtained._--Wage lists in three selected weeks. Wages of twelve selected workers in these weeks. +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | FIRM P. | Aug. | Dec. | Dec. | | | 11th, | 15th, | 22nd, | | | 1899. | 1899. | 1899. | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | 1 at | 1 at | 1 at | | | 27_s._ | 28_s._ | 30_s._ | | | 4_d._ | 2_d._ | 8_d._ | | | | | | | Above 24_s._ | 0 | 2 | 0 | | 22_s._ to 24_s._ | 0 | 0 | 2 | | 20_s._ " 22_s._ | 0 | 1 | 12 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 0 | 13 | 24 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 8 | 23 | 21 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 17 | 30 | 21 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 26 | 20 | 13 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 24 | 9 | 9 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 10 | 7 | 1 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 3 | 0 | 1 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 1 | 0 | 0 | | | -- | --- | --- | | | 90 | 106 | 105 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | | Median | 15 0 | 15 3 | 16 8 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | Quartiles | 14 0 | 17 2 | 19 2 | | | 10 8 | 13 0 | 14 3 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | Dispersion | ·11 | ·14 | ·15 | +------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ FIRM Q. _Information obtained._--Wage lists in eleven selected weeks. Work done--machine ruling in its higher branches, usually done by men; also paging and numbering (see table, p. 131). +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | FIRM Q. | 1890. | 1891. | 1897. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | Nov. 8th. | May 9th. | May 14th. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 3 | 3 | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 2 | 2 | 3 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 9 | 6 | 4 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 9 | 8 | 11 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 15 | 14 | 12 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 5 | 7 | 6 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 6 | 9 | 6 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 6 | 8 | 10 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 8 | 8 | 6 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 5 | 6 | 1 | | 0_s._ " 2_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | 68 | 71 | 59 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Median | 12 6 | 11 3 | 12 2 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Quartiles | 15 4 | 14 3 | 14 6 | | | 7 4 | 7 0 | 7 7 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Dispersion | ·3 | ·3 | ·3 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | FIRM Q. | 1897. | 1898. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | Nov. 12th. | May 13th. | Nov. 11th. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 0 | 3 | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 2 | 4 | 2 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 6 | 5 | 7 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 10 | 8 | 10 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 12 | 13 | 12 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 6 | 4 | 5 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 7 | 8 | 8 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 7 | 4 | 4 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 3 | 2 | 4 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 3 | 5 | 6 | | 0_s._ " 2_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | 56 | 56 | 58 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | | | | | Median | 12 4 | 12 10 | 12 4 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Quartiles | 14 9 | 15 6 | 15 0 | | | 8 2 | 8 9 | 8 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Dispersion | ·3 | ·28 | ·3 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | FIRM Q. | 1899. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | Feb. 10th. | May 12th. | Aug. 11th. | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 4 | 3 | 2 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 6 | 8 | 1 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 10 | 6 | 4 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 11 | 9 | 6 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 6 | 10 | 10 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 3 | 5 | 8 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 4 | 5 | 6 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 7 | 9 | 4 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 7 | 2 | 8 | | 0_s._ " 2_s._ | 0 | 0 | 1 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | 58 | 57 | 50 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Median | 12 0 | 11 4 | 9 6 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Quartiles | 15 0 | 15 0 | 13 0 | | | 6 0 | 7 3 | 6 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | Dispersion | ·4 | ·35 | ·37 | +------------------+------------+-----------+------------+ | FIRM Q. | 1899. | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | | Nov. 10th. | Dec. 8th. | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | 20_s._ to 22_s._ | 0 | 1 | | 18_s._ " 20_s._ | 2 | 2 | | 16_s._ " 18_s._ | 10 | 9 | | 14_s._ " 16_s._ | 9 | 10 | | 12_s._ " 14_s._ | 7 | 10 | | 10_s._ " 12_s._ | 5 | 7 | | 8_s._ " 10_s._ | 7 | 4 | | 6_s._ " 8_s._ | 5 | 6 | | 4_s._ " 6_s._ | 6 | 14 | | 2_s._ " 4_s._ | 8 | 1 | | 0_s._ " 2_s._ | 0 | 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | | 59 | 64 | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | | _s._ _d._ | _s._ _d._ | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | Median | 10 0 | 12 0 | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | Quartiles | 15 4 | 15 2 | | | 6 4 | 6 4 | +------------------+------------+-----------+ | Dispersion | ·41 | ·35 | +------------------+------------+-----------+ * * * * * Additional information from other firms, 1900-1901:-- FIRM R. Bookbinders. Folders and sewers, 14_s._, 15_s._; head banders, 15_s._; forty-eight hours weekly all the year. FIRM S. Eleven numberers; median, 17_s._ 8_d._ FIRM T. Printing works. Piece workers make 5_d._ an hour; time workers, 5½_d._ Four compositors: average, busy week, 23_s._ 2_d._; typical, 19_s._ 11_d._; slack, 18_s._ 9_d._ FIRM U. Vellum sewers, 12_s._ to 13_s._ all the year round; numerical printers, average week, 15_s._ to 16_s._; slack week, 10_s._ FIRM V. No. Median. Quartiles. Folders (piece work): _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ Slack week 38 12 1 9 6 16 0 Typical week 44 15 6 15 6 20 9 Busy week 38 20 1 17 10 20 0 Counters (time workers). Stitchers. 1 Packer. No. Median. No. Median. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ Slack Week 16 10 0 9 9 9 19 1 Typical Week 14 11 6 9 11 7 20 0 Busy week 14 11 7 9 11 2 20 0 In this case there is very little to choose between the weeks entered as "typical" and "busy" by the employer. FIRM W. Two compositors make, at 5½_d._ an hour, 22_s._ or 23_s._ nearly every week in the year. * * * * * The inclusion of the eighty-four workers, of whom we have sufficient details in firms R. to W., would affect the figures on p. 133 below very slightly, raising the median and upper quartile 2_d._, and increasing the proportion between 18_s._ and 22_s._ to 13½ per cent. of the whole instead of 12¼ per cent. II.--GENERAL GROUPING OF WAGES. The material is not sufficiently complete or homogeneous to allow any complete account of wages at any date; but the tables now given (supplemented occasionally by the raw material) allow us to offer an estimate of the grouping in a typical week of 1899, supposing each firm to be paying typical wages in one and the same week. This method is rough, and will not support any fine calculations to be based on it; but at the same time it affords a view, sufficiently accurate for most purposes, of the general trend and distribution of wages. All classes of workers, except apprentices and learners, are included. AN ESTIMATE OF WAGES IN A TYPICAL WEEK IN 1899 OF 1,001 WORKERS IN ALL BRANCHES. Less 2_s._ 4_s._ 6_s._ 8_s._ 10_s._ than to to to to to 2_s._ 4_s._ 6_s._ 8_s._ 10_s._ 12_s._ 1 17 41 68 92 131 12_s._ 14_s._ 16_s._ 18_s._ 20_s._ 22_s._ Above to to to to to to 24_s._ 14_s._ 16_s._ 18_s._ 20_s._ 22_s._ 24_s._ 174 177 131 72 55 17 25 Of those above 24_s._: 24_s._ 26_s._ 28_s._ 30_s._ 32_s._ 36_s._ to to to to to to 26_s._ 28_s._ 30_s._ 32_s._ 34_s._ 38_s._ 11 6 4 1 2 1 These figures are so similar in many respects to those which generally arise when a large group of trades are massed together, that they afford strong evidence that they make a fair sample. Remembering the roughness of the hypothesis, and not assuming that these wages multiplied by fifty-two give annual earnings, we find, in a week which the employers regard as typical, the following: Average, 13_s._ 8_d._; median, 13_s._ 8_d._; quartiles, 10_s._ 6_d._, 16_s._ 10_d._; dispersion .23. Thus, half the wage earners obtain between 10_s._ 6_d._ and 16_s._ 10_d._; and 80 per cent. obtain from 7_s._ 4_d._ to 20_s._ There is some doubt as to who are and who should properly be included at both ends of the series. At the lower end, no doubt, some learners have been included, and some piece workers excluded, for in a typical week there would certainly be some cases where the wages were abnormally low. On the other hand, in the large number above 24_s._, no doubt many above the status of the ordinary worker are included, and some are definitely stated to be forewomen. If we omit all above 24_s._, we have: Average, 13_s._ 4_d._; median, 13_s._ 7_d._; quartiles, 10_s._ 5_d._, 16_s._ 6_d._ The difference in these averages is not significant. The table is best written in percentage. 2_s._ 4_s._ 6_s._ 8_s._ 10_s._ 12_s._ to to to to to to 4_s._ 6_s._ 8_s._ 10_s._ 12_s._ 14_s._ 2 4 7 9 13 17 14_s._ 16_s._ 18_s._ 20_s._ 22_s._ to to to to to Above 16_s._ 18_s._ 20_s._ 22_s._ 24_s._ 24_s._ 18 13 7 5½ 2 2½ per cent. earning. Note, that if these wages were repeated week by week through the year the average worker would make about £35. III.--CHANGE OF WAGES BETWEEN 1885 AND 1900. Where wages are continually fluctuating week by week and month by month, while, in addition, there are depressions and inflations affecting various groups of workers for one or two years, it is a matter of very great statistical difficulty to determine whether wages have on the whole been stationary, rising, or falling. Even if we had a complete account year by year these difficulties would remain; but as it is we are dependent on the records of only seven firms--good, bad, or indifferent--since 1885, 1887, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898, respectively. No amount of further research would make such records more than very insufficient, for it is very rarely that the figures are preserved for any length of time. What changes there are may very likely be due to peculiarities of a particular firm, to its success, or to changes in character of work, and only in case of agreement in all the figures could we generalise. Our conclusions, then, will be chiefly negative. There is no sufficient evidence that wages in 1899 are above or below wages about 1895, 1890 or 1885; the only difference appears to be due to individual busy or slack years. In the two cases (C. and G.) where machine rulers are separated their wages have risen from 6_s._ to 8_s._ in 1897-99. As regards the years 1896-99, there is no general agreement as to any two years, but the figures are consistent with a slight general improvement from 1895 to 1900. There is nothing in the figures to show that the course of wages in Firm A. given above is different from that in the trade in general, while there is just a little evidence that it is the same. We therefore repeat the annual average wage in that firm:-- 1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889. 9_s._ 1_d._ 8_s._ 10_d._ 9_s._ 9_s._ 4_d._ 10_s._ 1_d._ 1890. 1891-2. 1892-3. 1894. 1895. 10_s._ 6_d._ 9_s._ 6_d._ 9_s._ 8_s._ 11_d._ 9_s._ 4_d._ 1896. 1897-8. 1899. 9_s._ 8_d._ 10_s._ 4_d._ 10_s._ 1_d._ IV.--WAGES IN DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS. The occupations are so involved, and the arrangements differ so much from firm to firm, that it is impracticable to state a definite wage for any occupation, and the wages are so diverse that it is useless to speak of an average wage. The table on p. 135 gives a general view of the wages of those hands who can be labelled with some exactness, and it is seen that the facts are so complex that they cannot be summarised in a few words. The wages included are the actual weekly averages (total annual receipts divided by fifty-two) in 1899, except where they are otherwise distinguished. +--------------+-------------------------------------------------+ | WAGES IN | Numbers whose average weekly wages were | | DIFFERENT | _s._ | | OCCUPATIONS. +---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | | | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 20 | | | | > | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to |Above| | | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 22 | 22 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | BOOKBINDING | | | | | | | | | | | | HOUSES | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Handfolders | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Folders | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | who were | | | | | | | | | | | | also sewing | | | | | | | | | | | | machinists, | | | | | | | | | | | | gatherers, | | | | | | | | | | | | placers, | | | | | | | | | | | | or sewers | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Handsewers, | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | | or collators | | | | | | | | | | | | and | | | | | | | | | | | | gatherers | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ >6 = Under 6 +--------------+-----------+ | WAGES IN | Median. | | DIFFERENT | | | OCCUPATIONS. | | +--------------+-----------+ | BOOKBINDING | _s._ _d._ | | HOUSES | | +--------------+-----------+ | Handfolders | 13 4 | +--------------+-----------+ | Folders | 12 6 | | who were | | | also sewing | | | machinists, | | | gatherers, | | | placers, | | | or sewers | | +--------------+-----------+ | Handsewers, | 15 0 | | or | | | collators | | | and | | | gatherers | | +--------------+-----------+ +--------------+-------------------------------------------+-----+ | WAGES IN | Numbers whose average weekly wages were | | | DIFFERENT | _s._ | | | OCCUPATIONS. +---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | | | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 20 | | | | - | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to |Above| | | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 22 | 22 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | PRINTING | | | | | | | | | | | | HOUSES: | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Folders who | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 12 | 3 | 6 | | were also | | | | | | | | | | | | sewers | | | | | | | | | | | | or stitchers | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Folders in | 9 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 5 | | typical | | | | | | | | | | | | week, 1901 | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Gatherers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Inserters | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Numberers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Counters in | 0 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | | typical | | | | | | | | | | | | week, 1901 | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Stitchers | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ | Compositors | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 2 | +--------------+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+ +--------------+----------+ | WAGES IN | Median. | | DIFFERENT | | | OCCUPATIONS. | | +--------------+----------+ | PRINTING | _s._ _d._| | HOUSES: | | +--------------+----------+ | Folders | 18 6 | | who were | | | also sewers | Maximum | | or stitchers | 26 10 | +--------------+----------+ | Folders in | 15 6 | | typical | | | week, 1901 | | +--------------+----------+ | Gatherers | 18 0 | +--------------+----------+ | Inserters | -- | +--------------+----------+ | Numberers | 17 8 | +--------------+----------+ | Counters in | 11 7 | | typical | | | week, 1901 | | +--------------+----------+ | Stitchers | 11 6 | +--------------+----------+ | Compositors | 18 6 | +--------------+----------+ [Illustration: Firm D.--Wages Week by Week in 1899. 1. _Looker-over_ (_time_, 14_s._ 6_d._). 3. _Folder and Sewer (piece)._ Firm G.--1896. _Dispatch (piece)._] V.--EARNINGS OF INDIVIDUALS. Out of the 130 lists we have, showing the actual earnings week by week of individuals for periods of one to fifteen years, thirty-nine have been selected, twenty-six of which are tabulated on the following pages (Appendix VI.), and twelve of which are represented in the following diagrams. These have been selected as illustrating the various classes of workers and of work. The most noticeable characteristic of the diagrams is the frequency and violence of the fluctuations, and the same is found in a study of the original figures throughout. A few time hands (Appendix VI.; diagram C), are nearly regular; only one shows perfectly regular earnings; many fluctuate as rapidly as the piece workers (Appendix VI.; diagram D. 2), and on the sheets we have several actual records of lost time and overtime, showing how these changes arise; others show a steady increase with slight movements (Appendix VI.; diagram A. 4). The four Bank Holiday seasons are marked on most of the diagrams and wage lists. The most interesting, novel, and important feature of these lists is the light thrown on the very obscure relation (obscure in all branches of industry) between "nominal," "average," or "typical" wages and actual annual earnings; there are in existence very few actual records of individuals' earnings over a series of years for any workers in the United Kingdom. The workers included in the list are among the more regular ones, who succeed in keeping their place month after month. Though the wages vary so greatly week by week, yet when we come to take the average over any period greater than, say, two months, we find there is but little variation. Thus, in the example from Firm B. in diagram, the quarterly average is between 16_s._ and 17_s._ for nine years, except for absence in two quarters, and the annual average is still more regular. The great bulk of the regular workers (folders and the like) make a sum between £30 and £40 every year, and between £7 and £11 every quarter. In view of this result, periodic pressure becomes relatively unimportant for the regular hands. There is no season in the industry as a whole shown in the wage lists. The different firms and different workers have in many cases their regular times of pressure like bank clerks and schoolmasters; these times are sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly. In other cases no rule is to be discovered. The most important effect of this irregular pressure is in the number of jobbers employed. VI.--JOBBERS. Jobbers usually come in at the busy season and make good money. As they go from house to house, it is impossible to get a full account of any particular jobber's earnings. Jobbers are frequently employed in Firm B, and in many cases the highest wage earned is by a jobber. Thus in the last week of April, 1895, out of thirty workers, fifteen were jobbers; the eleven highest sums were earned by them, five being over £1. VII.--TIME AND PIECE RATES. The distinction between time rates and piece rates is not vital; the method of payment seems to be accidental, and the custom varies from house to house. Machine rulers seem generally to have time rates, and these are among the lowest earners, while some of the best paid permanent hands are also time. On looking through the lists of individuals' earnings, it is seen that time earnings are sometimes quite as variable as piece earnings, for hours worked fluctuate continually. In other cases the time payment is much more regular, showing fluctuations only at holidays. APPENDIX I.--POINTS UPON WHICH ENQUIRIES WERE MADE. 1.--TRAINING. (_a_) Method, Indentures or not. (_b_) Length. (_c_) Age when it begins. (_d_) Premiums. (_e_) Wages during training. Comparison between length of training in vogue now and formerly, to be obtained where possible. 2.--WAGES (_Forms appended_). Wages throughout the factory or workshop for two or three slack and two or three busy weeks to be obtained where possible, and for a few ordinary hands throughout the year. 3.--CONDITIONS OF WORK. (_a_) Describe the nature of the work, and subdivisions. (_b_) Is it a season trade? (_c_) Is it healthy? Is there a special trade disease? (_d_) Is much strength or intelligence needed? (_e_) Is dangerous machinery used? (_f_) Average hours per week; meal hours. (_g_) Is there a chance of rising? If so, to what position? 4.--ORGANISATION. What attempts have been made to organise women, and with what success? Attitude towards, and knowledge about, Women's Unions? 5.--MARRIED AND UNMARRIED WORKERS. How long do women remain in the trade? Proportion of married to unmarried. Are there signs of married women lowering rates of pay? Comparison between married and unmarried as workers. 6.--SEPARATE FACTORY LEGISLATION. (A.) Economic effects:-- (_a_) Instances of women being turned off owing to Factory Legislation. (_b_) Do the restrictions imposed by the Factory Acts hinder the employment of women? (_c_) How far do these restrictions influence wages? (_d_) How far has legislation diverted the industry from or to, factory, workshop, or home? (B.) Contrast between conditions of work before and after Act of 1867. 7.--MEN AND WOMEN. Instances where either sex replaces the other, and the reasons for it in each case. Relative wages when men and women do the same work. If women's wage is lower, why is it? Attitude of Men's Unions towards female labour. 8.--WOMEN AND MACHINERY. How far has machinery increased or diminished women's work? How far does the cheapness of women's work tend to retard the introduction of machinery? 9.--HOME WORK. In which branches is this done, and to what extent? Plant required. Rates of pay compared with work done inside. Why, from the point of view of the home worker in each case, is home work done? 10.--INFLUENCE OF WOMEN'S WAGES ON THE FAMILY INCOME. Occupation of husband. Amount contributed towards home expenses. APPENDIX II.--DESCRIPTION OF CERTAIN TYPICAL FIRMS. 1. A.,[94] _A well-known Printing Firm in London. Employée's Information._ [Footnote 94: Index letters by which reference is made to the firm in the body of the volume, except in the chapter on wages.] WORK.--Folding, sewing, numbering, etc. REGULARITY.--The work is not seasonal, at any rate at A. HEALTH.--Numbering is very bad for a weak chest and makes one's head ache as well. Girls with weak chests cannot stand it. Folding, however, is not unhealthy unless the hours are too long. HOURS.--At B. they are 48 per week; but at A. they are 53½, distributed as follows:--Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.; Thursday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea being allowed each full working day. GENERAL.--The sanitary arrangements are very bad at A., and lavatories open straight out of workrooms, and are in very bad condition. One does not use them unless she wants to get a fever. The company is very mixed. "You can tell that it is rather a low place, because the girls wear curlers and nothing is said. When one works at B. she has to take out curlers before she comes. You can always tell the sort of place when the girls wear curlers." 2. _A well-known Printing Firm in London. Forewoman's Information._ WORK.--6 or 7 girls are employed at machine ruling, and a few at vellum sewing and folding. REGULARITY.--The girls are kept on all the year round. HOURS.--The hours are from 8 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea. PROSPECTS.--Might rise to forewomen, but that not common. GENERAL.--Work girls have nothing to complain of now; they are always very well looked after. 3. S., _Small Printing Firm in London. Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--16 girls and 1 man (who is an engineer) are employed, S. helping himself. Upstairs there are 2 men "blocking," and 2 girls powdering for them. The girls do all the printing, _e.g._, the informant can set up the type, lock it into the frame, make ready, and then feed the platen machine--which alone is used in this firm. Informant can also clean the machine. She also does "bronzing," _i.e._, dusting-on bronze with a pad. The girls powdering upstairs do nothing else. A few younger girls fold circulars. REGULARITY.--Work is steady, and they are always busy. HEALTH.--Bronzing is most unhealthy. ----'s colour has all gone since she was put on to it a few weeks ago. "You are supposed to have milk to drink, but you never get more than half a cupful at the end of the day, when it is too late. The inspector has been round and has asked about the milk, but of course the manager said that milk was always given." (Informant looked very ill.) She had to stay away from work all the previous Thursday, and lost a shilling in consequence. Her father and mother say she must leave the work or she will die. "You see, they lost a brother of mine at twenty-three and a sister at thirteen, and they don't want me to go off too." The powdering done by the girls in the blocking room is very unhealthy. None of them can stand it long. They get ill and go off elsewhere. It brings on consumption. Feeding machines is very tiring. One girl works the cutting machine, which is unfit for a woman and very dangerous. A girl who worked it lost her finger and was six weeks in hospital, but the firm paid her well not to tell. The printing machines are dangerous, for you often get your fingers caught; it comes back quicker than you expect. HOURS.--The hours are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with one hour for dinner and a quarter of an hour for tea; on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., with half an hour for a meal. They never get away at 6 though, not till 6.30 or later, for there are the machines to be cleaned and things to be cleared up. GENERAL.--Mr. S. sometimes comes round and talks as if he were the kindest of employers. "He'll say, 'Take care of your head, there, dear.' It makes you sick to hear him. If he'd give better wages it would be more to the point." 4. Q., _Job Printing Firm in London. Visit to Works._ WORK.--I went through the works and saw 10 extra young girls sticking on pockets for stamps on to an appeal sheet of ...; one girl feeding a platen machine which was gumming instead of printing; 4 or 5 upstairs in the regular folding room folding.... REGULARITY.--Q. has only 4 or 5 regular hands, and when there is a rush of work, he takes on job hands. "You put up a bill and can easily get 100 if you want them." He dislikes the custom, but does not see how it is to be obviated in the printing trade. "You suddenly have 75,000 circulars to do, and you don't know when the next order will be." HOURS.--The hours are from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner, ten minutes for lunch and ten minutes for tea. Girls prefer this to half an hour for tea and leaving at 7. On Saturdays the hours are from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., no meal time being allowed. The married women, however, rarely come till 9 a.m. 5. L., _Printing, etc., Firm in London. Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--200 girls are employed at L.'s. Informant does folding now, used to do sewing by machine. REGULARITY.--The work is regular, "but you never know when the work is coming in. They are always busy with the ... guides at the end of the month, and two or three job hands come in." HEALTH.--She has always found the occupation healthy. PROSPECTS.--None; is slow herself. She has worked at L.'s six years, and has never known of anyone becoming a forelady. DANGERS.--She has never had an accident, and was working on a machine for five years. HOURS.--The hours are from 8.30 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., with an hour for dinner (from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.), and half an hour for tea (4 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.) and from 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Sometimes they are let off early if there is no work. But some girls go and lark about in the street, and then the manager scolds the forelady and she will not let the others go. She never takes a holiday except Bank Holidays. GENERAL.--Only talks to a few of the girls, but they are quite a nice set. 6. T., _Weekly Newspaper Firm in London. Visit to Works._ WORK.--Folding, gathering, collating, sewing (all sewing by machinery), or stabbing with wire, insetting, wrappering (glue pot), feeding folding machines. REGULARITY.--It is more or less regular, but there is the regular weekly and monthly work, so there is less fluctuation than in "binding houses." Tuesday to Friday are busy days, and the forewoman employs some married women who come in as long as they are wanted. DANGERS.--One stitching machine is dangerous, the forewoman said; the folded sheet has to be pushed along with the hand and there is the _chance_ of the hand being caught. HOURS.--The hours are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., occasionally till 8; one hour being allowed for dinner and half an hour for tea. PROSPECTS.--The girls may rise to forewomen and a sort of deputy-forewoman, chosen by forewoman, to overlook certain rooms. The girls are not, as a rule, at all eager for the responsibility. 7. _Large Bookbinding Firm in London._ (A.) _Manager's Information._ WORK.--Folding, sewing, collating, placing plates, laying-on gold, etc. REGULARITY.--The work is partly seasonal. They are busy in the winter time, and work to limits allowed by the Factory Acts; they are slack in the summer, and may even have no work for three weeks or so at a time. DANGERS.--They have only had two accidents. One was with an ordinary sewing machine; the other was with a Bremner machine, when a little girl was setting it up. She caught her finger in it, but was not away from work a fortnight. HOURS.--They work 48 hours per week, allowing one and a half hours for meals per day, _i.e._, from 8 a.m. to 12, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and from 4.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.; on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 12. This really comes to 49 hours a week if the girls are punctual, but he reckons 48 hours because they are not punctual. PROSPECTS.--Only a chance of rising to forewomen. (B.) _Forewoman's Evidence._ REGULARITY.--It is a season trade and they are just beginning to be slack (March) in Miss X.'s shop where the new work is done. HEALTH.--Miss X. "had been through it all," and thought folding dreadfully tiring. There is nothing specially unhealthy about it. HOURS.--The hours are supposed to be 49 a week, but if there is any work they do not keep to that. A 48 hours' week only means that the time workers get paid extra. Miss X. worked in a place where they were supposed to have 51 hours a week but rarely made more than 40. The firm make their girls stay as little as possible when there is no work, but this is very different to most places, as the workpeople are studied here. (C.) _Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--In E., Bible work and new or cloth work are quite separate, and there are separate hands for each. She did folding for the Bible work herself. HEALTH.--The work is not very healthy. "Sitting all day is bad for you," but there is no special disease. Bible work is light work, as much of it is on India paper; new work is much heavier. HOURS.--The hours are from 8.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with an hour for dinner and half an hour for tea, but when busy they work till 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. This happens about thirty times a year. They are allowed to go home if there is not work. [There is a very nice set of girls at the Bible work; they are particular there about whom they take, and it is a very good house to be in.] GENERAL.--It is rather dull and tiring working because they are not supposed to talk to each other at Bible work. 8. _Printing and Stationery Firm in London. General Information._ TRAINING. In the Book-folding and Vellum Sewing Department the girls have an agreement to serve two years. _Age At Beginning._--Fourteen. _Premium._--None. _Wages._--6 months at 1_s._, 6 months at 2_s._ 6_d._, 6 months at 5_s._, and 6 months at 7_s._ 6_d._ per week. IN THE NUMBERING, RELIEF STAMPING, ETC., PACKING Department there are no indentures or regular system of apprenticeship but girls are expected to serve about two years. _Age At Beginning._--Fourteen. _Premium._--None. _Wages._--Girls start at 1_s._ per week, for, say, three months, then get three-quarter earnings. Very few are trained in this firm, they take on workers who have learnt elsewhere. How many branches learners are taught seems to depend on chance. Some old hands do all the processes, some only one. MACHINE RULING.--In this department there is no system. Little girls come and feed at 5_s._ and 7_s._ per week. When they have been at it a year or two they are drafted off to other departments. LITHOGRAPHIC WORK.--There is no regular training in this department. It only takes about two weeks to learn the work done by girls here. NOTEPAPER FOLDING requires no training. "Why! you could pick it up in a week or two." WAGES.--The firm does much work for public bodies, and so has to pay "fair" wages. The manager did not seem to know whether this applied to women's work too, but evidently it does. DEPARTMENT I.--NUMBERING, ETC.--The manager gave wages as 11_s._ to 16_s._ per week, some being paid on time and some on piece work. The foreman considered 14_s._ to be about the average. The following girls were questioned:-- One packer got 12_s._ (time wages) per week. Another packer got 13_s._ (time wages) per week. One piece relief stamper got about 13_s._ (piece work) per week. Another piece relief stamper got about 16_s._ (piece work) per week. One numberer got 15_s._ (piece work) per week. DEPARTMENT II.--LITHOGRAPHIC FEEDING.--Here girls start at 6_s._ and rise up to 14_s._ (time wages). DEPARTMENT III.--MACHINE RULING.--In this department all wages are for time work. Quite little girls receive 4_s._ or 5_s._ up to 7_s._ per week. They are drafted off when they want higher wages than that. There were, however, two older ones in the room who were folding and counting the ruled foolscap paper at 14_s._ per week. DEPARTMENT IV.--BOOK-FOLDING, ETC.--Out of the 45 girls employed in this department, 10 were on time work, and were being paid from 13_s._ to 16_s._ per week. The piece workers, according to the forewoman, were making from 13_s._ to 16_s._ per week, taking all the year round. Some were making over 20_s._ per week. DEPARTMENT V.--VELLUM WORK.--All 15 girls employed here were on time work. They got 11_s._ per week when first out of their time; 12_s._ after two years. None were receiving over 12_s._, except one who "makes up" at 13_s._ a week. These wages were given by the forewoman. The manager seemed surprised that they were not higher, and remarked that they were lower than in the book-folding department. The forewoman said that in most places the vellum workers got more than book workers, but this firm had arranged otherwise. DEPARTMENT VI.--The girls FOLDING NOTEPAPER in the warehouse were getting 13_s._ or 14_s._ (time wages) per week. WORK.--Department I.--NUMBERING, RELIEF STAMPING, PERFORATING, PACKING, AND GUMMING going on. The numbering and the stamping are different trades, done by different girls, but most of them can do packing as well, though in some cases they learn packing only. They can mostly do perforating and gumming, odds and ends too. Some were folding postal forms. Special envelope orders are done here. About 35 girls were employed. There was one man doing the illuminating required and working at a rather heavy press. There was also a good number of youths doing numbering. I tried vainly to find out what they were paid. The manager and the foreman said that they were not doing the same work; it was the same except that a name was stamped on as well as a number (it was on money orders). Two girls were also doing this, but I was assured that that was only "by accident." Two or three boys were perforating and stamping. DEPARTMENT II.--LITHO PRINTING. Girls were feeding machines and washing rollers. About 12 girls were employed. DEPARTMENT III.--MACHINE RULING. Little girls were feeding the ruling machines, and a few older ones were counting and folding the foolscap paper; 18 girls were employed. DEPARTMENT IV.--BOOKBINDING AND SEWING. All sorts of folding, sewing and stitching (by machine mostly), eyeletting, etc., etc., were being carried on, and about 45 girls were employed. DEPARTMENT V.--VELLUM WORK. Sewing, folding, etc., for account books and ledgers was being done; 15 girls were employed, also one girl "laying-on" for cloth work, and two or three running errands. DEPARTMENT VI.--In the WAREHOUSE were three girls folding notepaper. REGULARITY.--Work here is constant all the year round. The forewoman in the book-folding department said they only had in job hands about twice a year. HOURS.--The firm works about 54 hours per week, _i.e._, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one hour for dinner, half an hour for tea, and ten minutes for lunch. On Saturdays they work from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. OVERTIME.--It was very difficult to get anything definite about overtime pay. The manager first said that they all got 6_d._ an hour overtime. Then he said that piece workers were simply paid at piece rates. The forewoman in the book-folding department said that time hands got 4_d._ an hour overtime. In the vellum work they never had any overtime. These extra payments seem to be irregularly made. PROSPECTS.--The girls can rise to forewoman's position, here or elsewhere. Vellum work forewoman mentioned that two of her young ladies had become forewomen elsewhere. ORGANISATION.--The manager knew that a Women's Union existed, but thought it was more of a Benefit Society than anything else. He assured me that the problem of the organisation of women's labour was the problem in trade, and seemed vaguely to regret that women were so helpless and ready to be cut down. MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--The manager estimated twelve years as the average period that a woman remained in the trade. He fancied that there were a good many married women here; but when we went round and asked the different heads of departments we found that the only married ones were 2 in the litho department, _i.e._, 2 out of 12 in that department, _i.e._, 2 out of about 128 employed altogether. In the other departments the forewomen or foremen did not care to have them because they were so irregular. "You can never count on them." Two widows were employed in the book-folding department. The head of the litho department had only lately found out that two of his employees were married--one had run away from her husband, the other's husband was a stone polisher and she had to come out to keep the house going. The manager was very decided that undoubtedly married women's work tended to lower wages. They only want a little to supplement their husbands' earnings. He explained afterwards that his remarks applied more to the provinces than to London. He thought that the thing to aim at in improving the industrial position of women was the abolition of the married woman worker. How this could be done he could not say. The forewoman of the book-folding and sewing department, who had had some experience of married jobbers, said that they would not do ordinary work at ordinary rates, as they did not consider it worth their while. They had not _got_ to earn any money, as they had husbands to fall back upon. The manager said that in the litho department the single girls thought it _infra dig._ to wash the rollers, but the married women "made no bones about it." LEGISLATION.--In no case had women been turned away because of restrictive legislation. A certain amount of folding and stitching has to be done by men at night, and he would say that about 2 or 3 men were employed at this for about one hour five nights in the week. Sometimes the folding was not ready till 11 p.m., and the men had to hang about before. The manager thought that the chief grievance of the Factory Acts was that if only one woman in a department was employed overtime, one of the thirty legal nights was thereby used up. The manager thought that it was forty-eight nights you might work overtime, and seemed surprised on looking up the notices to find that it was thirty only. He approved of Factory Legislation on the whole, and thought that women had benefited by it. Personally, he would like to see all overtime abolished by law for men and women. Men worked worse next day when they had had to sit up at night. Public bodies were the worst offenders in the matter, "They have no consciences." The forewoman of the folding and sewing, where overtime was worked, said that her girls disliked overtime very much; and she did not think it worth while working them, as they could do less work next day in consequence. She had much rather that the men did it at night. She and the manager agreed that in places where women did not make a decent wage by working ordinary hours they might want to work at night. As to the effect Factory Legislation had upon the diverting of work from the home to the workshop, or _vice versâ_, the manager thought that the tendency had been for work to come in to the factory. There used to be much more home work. MEN AND WOMEN.--According to the manager, there is a hard and fast line drawn by the various Societies in London as to what a woman may or may not do. In _Bookbinding_ of all descriptions she is practically confined to folding and sewing. She may not touch a glue brush or do any putting of paper books or magazines into paper covers. In the provinces, on the other hand, the rules of the Consolidated Societies are different. A woman may do flush binding (_i.e._, books whose covers are cut on a level with the leaves and which have no "turnings in") up and foolscap size, two quires. Hence women do diaries, etc. In certain works at Tonbridge women are set to do this. _Litter-press Printing._--This firm had never tried female compositors. They had 100 men. If they tried to introduce women, all the men would go out and "you'd have a hornet's nest." The idea of paying women at the same rate as men struck them as ridiculous. "They would never be worth as much because they stay such a little time." They might some day try women compositors in their country establishment. _Feeding Printing Machines._--They might not employ women on platen machines because of the Union, but were going to try them on smallish letter-press machines. The Union had no objection to that. _Machine Ruling._--The firm only had little girls for feeding. The foreman remarked that at R.'s, "over the water," they had women to do most of their ruling, but did not seem to think that it would be worth while to train a woman for it. At first he said that the Men's Union would object, then said that he thought they would not; only he would have to give the woman the same pay as a man, "and fancy giving a woman 32_s._ a week!" This was uttered in a tone of supreme contempt. The manager remarked that he supposed it would not matter paying the woman the same if she did as much work, but the foreman smiled superior to the idea. WOMEN AND MACHINERY.--The manager thought that the output of printed matter had increased so enormously since the introduction of machinery that more hands than ever were employed. The forewoman of the folding and sewing department said that it seemed as if there must be fewer employed, and yet she had never turned any off. HOME WORK.--No home work is given out by the firm. Since so much was done by machinery it was not worth while to send work out. INFLUENCE ON FAMILY INCOME.--The manager and forewoman and foreman said that none of the girls were working for pocket-money. Most lived at home and helped their parents; some who had no parents lived with relatives. GENERAL.--The premises were rather nice and the people looked superior and friendly. There was a great gulf fixed between the litho girls and the others. The latter look down tremendously on these former and would not think of speaking to them. They are a much lower set to look at and their language is reported not to be choice. Many of them were arrayed in curlers, whilst none of the girls in other departments wore these decorations. The vellum sewers were said by their forewoman to be "a nice family party." 9. _Lithographic Firm. General Information._ GENERAL.--I saw the manager; he was "very much on the spot," friendly and communicative, and took me all over the works and was quite interested in showing different processes. He said he had to look sharp after his workers, and so they often thought him a bully. WORK.--Chief work done is lithography, but there is also a certain amount of letter-press work. Engraving and stationery orders are given out in sub-contract. TRAINING.--In the binding room, _i.e._, where folding is done, there are no learners now, but they need to have one or two. These apprentices were taken on from fourteen years of age without premiums, and were kept two or three years according to ability. They were paid a few shillings to begin with, and, if good at their work, they rose gradually. If slow and stupid, they got nothing. The forewoman said she did not care to take learners now; "they are more trouble than they are worth." In the litho room the firm never had apprentices. The new hands come in and begin "taking-off" for about 8_s._ By-and-by, according to their nimbleness, they are elevated to "layers-on." In card mounting there is no training. It is picked up in a few months, and new hands start at about 8_s._ per week, time wages. WAGES.--_Binding Room._--The staff (12 girls) are all on time work, the extra hands are paid piece work. Time wages range from 12_s._ to 14_s._ I was shown last week's wages, and they ranged from 7_s._ to 15_s._, the forewoman having £1 2_s._ 6_d._; 7_s._ to 8_s._ was the predominant figure. Job hands on piece "make as much as 15_s._ in a full week," I was informed, but the wage book that week showed they had only made about 7_s._ or 8_s._ For overtime, time and a quarter is paid to all time workers, ordinary rates to piece workers. _Litho Work._--All wages in this department are time wages, and vary from 8_s._ to 12_s._ or 14_s._ In the wages book the predominant figure was 7_s._; there were two 5_s._ and some 8_s._, and up to 12_s._ When bronzing the workers appeared to get 1_s._ extra. _Card Mounting._--All time wages paid here, and they were said to range from 8_s._ to 12_s._ In the wages book, however, 6_s._ and 7_s._ were the predominant figures. Some were as low as 5_s._, and there were a few girls who had drawn 8_s._ NO. EMPLOYED.--There were about 200 employees, of whom one-third were women. The number fluctuated, I was told. _Litho Artists' Work._--8 or 9 men were employed on this, but no women on the premises. The firm often accepted sketches from lady artists living outside, some of whom could even work on stone. _Litho Machine Work._--Girls are employed feeding litho machines, and they have about 30 when busy. When I was there only about 12 were engaged. When bronzing by hand is wanted these girls are set to it (13 were doing it last week). In the same room is _Card Mounting._--There were only 3 girls at that, but sometimes there are as many as 12 or 13. This consists of pasting the advertisement, almanac, etc., on to a piece of cardboard, varnishing it, eyeletting it, tying the bits of cord through (the 3 girls were doing that), and sometimes putting gelatine over the surface--a minor trade, at which they get better paid. The same girls do occasional work in the _cutting_ room; not at the big guillotines, but (_a_) at feeding a machine which cuts the strips down or blocks into bent shapes like a small almanac of ----'s mustard which I saw; (_b_) at putting shapes on to huge piles of sheets of advertisements and labels, which are then pressed into the sheets by a heavy top weight being brought down by steam. They were doing some big "flies," on to which a string was to be put, so that they could be whirled round and buzz. _Binding Room._--There were only about 12 girls employed, but there was room for 100, and they have them in at a press of work. They do folding by hand in this firm for certain newspapers and all sorts of advertisements. Wire stitching is also done. They were folding various things, packing up labels, and so on, when I was there. REGULARITY.--The firm's trade fluctuates, but by no regular fixed seasons; they are always busy before Christmas. HEALTH.--I was told that it was quite a mistake to think bronzing unhealthy. The manager stated he had known men at it for months at a time without any evil effects. They sometimes imagined themselves ill, but he had never known of a single case of real illness. They grumble at doing it, and pretend that they are afraid of it because then they get extra money (1_s._ extra a week). They really object to it because it is bad for clothes--as you get covered with dust--and uncomfortable to be all powdered with gold. He had a machine below on which most work was done, except when there was a great press. Messrs. ---- gave him out so many thousand to do; he could not do them fast enough with only one machine, and it was not worth while having more than one as he had not work enough ordinarily. No dust escaped from the machine. As a proof of the healthiness of bronzing he said that he stood for three or four hours in the middle of it all, "keeping them to their work" (which they want), and got all covered over with the dust himself. "You wouldn't get a manager doing that himself if it were unhealthy." He always gave his bronzers one pint of milk a day to drink, he stated with pride. The other work, folding, card mounting, etc., was all quite healthy. Indeed, work was unhealthy more on account of bad ventilation than of any circumstance belonging to itself; he always had the window open and a board put across the bottom, 6 ins. high, on the most approved plan. The workpeople grumbled very much and tried to paste up every crevice with brown paper, but they could not shut it. They objected to the incandescent burners which he put in, for they liked the heat of the gas and missed it. DANGERS.--Occasionally girls catch their skirts in wheels and so on, but there are never any "bad accidents." "With people of that class it is 'funk' more than pain that they suffer; they will turn as white as anything from just a little flesh wound with a cog-wheel." The Factory Inspectors were very fussy about fencing machinery, he thought. He told me long stories about men's carelessness and how the boys would sit on the edge of the lift. He fined them 2_s._ 6_d._ for it. HOURS.--The hours are about 54 a week, from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner. The women are allowed by the forewomen to have lunch in the middle of the morning and tea in the afternoon, and when the men are industrious the manager has no objection to their taking "snacks." If it is an idler, he objects. When busy, the work continues till 8 p.m. He had not used special exemption once the last year. PROSPECTS.--There are no prospects except for the girls in the binding room. The present forewoman ("a jewel") had been with the firm for thirty years; one or two others whom she had trained could take her place. ORGANISATION.--He had no knowledge of any Women's Unions covering the women employed here. This is a Society house in every branch for the men, but the manager said, "Trades Unionism is all humbug," and he would like to do away with it altogether, if possible; but it is so strong in London that if you want to get good men you must be a Society house. MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--He employed 2 or 3 married women amongst litho feeders. The firm ask no questions, but he said he knew most of the workers. A lot of the job hands were married, but none of the regular hands in binding room. LEGISLATION.--In manager's opinion legislation had not in any way injured the position of women workers. It did not affect him at all. He never employed men to fold at night, because it would not pay. Occasionally, when the litho machines had to be kept working late, he had to draft in men from other departments to feed them, and he could understand that a small printer, without different departments, would find it awkward. He would not himself have the place open at night with girls working in it. He would not take the responsibility of that; they would "lark about, etc." He thought it all to the women's advantage that they must not work at night. The intentions of the Factory Acts are good, and he approved of them in principle, but there was a lot of humbug about them and the L.C.C. regulations,[95] _e.g._, making him have six basins for lavatory for his workers. They never used more than two, preferring to follow each other, and they broke the others, and then round came the inspector and said you must have six. [Footnote 95: This is allowed to stand as an indication of the frequent misunderstandings our investigators met with regarding the L.C.C. This body appeared to be charged with everything that caused irritation.] The L.C.C. put a premium on burglary by making it compulsory to have a way out on to the roof. The Factory Inspector was not a practical man, and ordered a great deal of unnecessary fencing of machinery. He told me how one night he kept the girls late without giving notice (the work came in unexpectedly), and sat by the telephone so as to send up notice to the forewoman if the inspector came. It was not the Factory Acts which kept women from being compositors. MEN AND WOMEN.--Women did litho artists' work at home, and there was no reason why they should not be quite as good at it as men. It was paid by the merits of the sketch. _Feeding Litho Machines._--He used to have boys, and a few years ago introduced girls. They were much better at it, cleaner, quieter, and more careful to place the paper exactly than boys. He still had boys for _feeding letter-press machines_--why, he did not quite know, except that it was the custom; then, having thought about it, he said further, that it was because less care was needed. Girls were no cheaper than the boys were, and were introduced solely on account of being better workers. He had no women compositors, and employed only 12 men, and he did not see how he could work the two together, though he did not see why women should not do all the setting-up and the display work, though they could not lift the formes. He did not think the Union objected. It never had been the custom though. He never had women to work _cutting machines_. The men would object. Women never rose to mind the _printing litho machines_; he did not think they could do it. He had only one _platen machine_, worked and fed by a boy; but in some places, where cheap things were done by this machine, _e.g._, paper bags, girls attended to it. Men used to do _folding_ in his youth, and they still did _stationers' folding_, notepaper, etc., in some houses. HOME WORK.--The firm gave out a certain amount of folding when there was a press of work. The forewoman knew of old hands and others who could do it at home. He considered that to be quite a convenient arrangement. INFLUENCE ON FAMILY INCOME.--Many of the job hands were married women, who liked to come out occasionally for a few extra shillings. Others were single girls, who preferred to be paid by the piece, and go about from house to house, making as much as time workers for shorter hours. 10. _Paper Colouring and Enamelling Firm in London, also engaged in Showcard Mounting and Varnishing and Book-edge Gilding. Employer's and Manager's Information._ Both were very communicative. The former, after repeated questions from me as to how things were done, took me over the whole place, intending only to show me the varnishing, and finally letting me see everything. He is a working-class master who has risen. His father had a small business, and he has made it a big one. It is one of the biggest firms in the trade. TRAINING.--_Card Mounting._--The firm indentures apprentices, who agree to stay three or four years. They are taken on at fourteen years of age, and are paid 4_s._ a week for the first year, and then receive a portion of their piece work earnings, varying according to efficiency, from one-fourth, one-half, three-fourths, two-thirds, and so on, according to skill. They come for a month first to see if they suit. _Paper Colouring and Enamelling._--In this department apprentices are also indentured for two years. They are taken on at fourteen, and are paid 4_s._ a week first year, then a portion of their piece earnings as above. _Varnishing and Sizing._--No training is given for this. Girls must be tall, or they are no use. Any girl will be "good at it" after three weeks. The employer remarked that parents could not afford to pay a premium. It was very provoking when girls went off after four years, when a lot of trouble had been spent in teaching them. I was shown some cards which a girl, who was supposed to be competent, had spoilt by pasting the sheet on so that there was a blister; 385 out of 500 were similarly spoilt, and they cost 6_d._ each, he said. WAGES.--_Card Mounting and Paper Colouring._--Piece work rates are paid here, with overtime at the same rate. It is difficult to give an average. One girl would make 25_s._, while another girl would only make 7_s._ at the same work in the same time. After consideration, the head gave it as his opinion that 12_s._ 6_d._ a week would be what the ordinary girl would earn, taking the whole year round, slack with busy times. They were kept on all the year at this firm. Sometimes a girl would make as much as 28_s._ It was further stated that a girl might make 6_d._ in less than an hour at night, when the colours were mixed and she was finishing a job, whereas it might take her a whole morning to earn the 6_d._ next day. A quick girl could do 1,000 eyelets in an hour, eyeletting being paid at 10_d._ per 1,000. _Varnishing and Sizing._--Piece work wages are paid here, with overtime at same rates. Wages are reckoned by the lump sum for the gross work done, and divided equally amongst all the hands. The division is made by the firm, not the workers. We asked one girl what she took last week, and she said 14_s._; but my guide said that the average would not be so high for the year, say 12_s._ WORK.--There are four separate departments or businesses here, in three of which the work is done by women. _Varnishing and Sizing_, where 16 girls are employed. The calendars, advertisements, and so on, to be varnished are placed in a pile on a table underneath the long webbing band, and a girl sits there and feeds. They are caught up and passed round rollers, and are sized or varnished as the case may be. Another girl stands facing the machine, seeing that they pass round all right. They are then carried over the top of the top roller along the webbing band, which stretches the full length of the room, till they come to the drum at the end, round which the band passes on its return journey. There girls take them off and place them in racks, the bottom one of which is on a small trolley. When a big pile of racks (about 5½ ft. high) is filled the girls wheel it off, lift up a door, and push it into a big cupboard which takes up all the middle of the room, and above which is a fan. There they are left to dry, and when dry the girls wheel them out again and take out the sheets. There were two rooms in which this was being done, with about 8 girls in each. There was also a third room at the side, where they make up odds and ends, _e.g._, make up packets of "Happy Families," fold odd papers, eyelet a few things, and so on. There was only 1 girl in this; sometimes there are several. When a girl comes in first she does this work. _Card Mounting._--About 30 or 40 girls were employed at this. This consists in putting the advertisements, calendars, and so on, on to the big sheets of cardboard and finishing them off. There are various different processes. The board has to be cut, and this is done either by a man or a girl who feeds the rotary cutting machine. The sheet of card is "lined," _i.e._, the back pasted on, and edges pasted over if required. Then the picture (or calendar) that is to go on it is pasted down, the girls covering the backs of about four pictures (or calendars), and then pressing them down one after another. For some work eyelets are then punched, and in the best work the edges are bevelled by a little machine consisting of a wheel in a trough, along which the edge is pushed. In the case of a good deal of School Board work there is a narrow band of tin or brass at the top which finishes it off, and out of which comes a brass loop by which to hang it up. The men cut the brass into slips, and the girls work about five hand machines, the principle of which is that you put in your map (_e.g._), put the tin or brass slip of metal in the right position, pull down a handle, lift it up, and the work comes out with the metal band pressed down on each side and the loop fixed in the middle. For other work, such as big maps, charts, diagrams, and so on, wooden rods are used as rollers, etc., and the work of fastening is done by girls. _Paper Colouring and Enamelling by Hand._--Only 12 women were engaged upon this work--a considerable decrease. The sheet of paper to be coloured is placed in front of the girl, who then wets it over with the colour (black when I saw it) by means of a brush like a whitewash brush (the manager said that they were whitewash brushes with the handles taken off), which she dips into a bowl. She then takes another round brush, about 10 ins. in diameter, and brushes over the whole surface, so that the colour lies quite evenly. The sheet of paper is then hung, as it were, on to a clothes line to dry. These lines stretch over the room. Enamelling is done in identically the same way, only it is enamel, not colour, which is put on. Enamelled paper is the very shiny coloured paper used for end pages of books, for covering confectionery and similar boxes, etc. Marbling is never done by this firm. All the coloured paper is in plain colours, marbling being a quite different process. _Book-edge Gilding._--Only men are employed in this. REGULARITY.--The _card mounting_ department is specially busy before Christmas with calendars, almanacs, etc., but advertisement cards are turned out all the year. _Paper colouring_ comes in rushes, but is not a seasonal trade. _Varnishing_ is sometimes busier at one time than at another, but it is not seasonal. The work of this firm is such that no job hands are employed. HEALTH.--_Paper Colouring and Enamelling._--Mr. ---- called down one woman who had worked there fourteen years, and her mother before her. She looked very strong and healthy. The other girls were not so robust looking as she, but did not look _ill_. One was sitting in one of the colouring rooms during the dinner hour, her hands all coated over with paint, eating bread and butter. Mr. ---- rebuked her and told her that she ought to wash her hands, and that he was always telling her to do so, but she did not obey, and went on eating stolidly. The colouring girls were all splashed over, and so were the walls. The rooms were close and dirty. Work was done standing. _Card Mounting._--The rooms were close and dirty, and the work seemed tiring. _Varnishing and Sizing._--The smell and heat were enough to knock one down when one first went in, though one ceased to notice it after a bit. There are hot pipes connected with the machine to dry the papers. The place looked very dirty, and my guide showed me how the dust all stuck to any varnish about, so that the racks, if left out for a day, got covered with flue. The girls did not look strikingly unhealthy. They have to drag heavy loads about. One or two looked a bit pale. QUALIFICATIONS.--I should judge that strength was required for all three departments, as girls are standing all day. Only tall girls are taken in the varnishing room; short ones would be no good for moving about the racks. The head said that no great intelligence was wanted for any department, but a good deal of "perseverance" for card mounting and paper colouring. If girls are careless at card mounting they spoil the whole thing. DANGERS.--The only machinery was the varnishing machine, and the firm had never had any accident with it, and there seemed no reason why there should be any. If girls are careless they are dismissed. The employer considered the Compensation Act to be very unfair: "If a girl slips on your iron staircase because her shoelace was undone, you have to pay her." HOURS.--The hours worked are from 9 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea; on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. On a board a notice was put up stating that work begins as follows: 9 a.m. for women, 8 a.m. for boys, 7 a.m. for men. PROSPECTS.--There is 1 girl in the _varnishing_ department who gets "a trifle more than the others," owing to her skill. In _card mounting_ there are no prospects. A foreman manages the _paper colouring_ department, so that there is no chance of the women becoming forewomen. The firm once tried a forewoman, but she was not a success. She could not match the colours properly, etc. Mr. ---- and the robust worker seemed to think such a thing beyond a woman's power (especially the latter, who scorned the idea of a forewoman). ORGANISATION.--The head did not know if there was a Union or not. "They do not give us any trouble." MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--Only 1 or 2 married women were employed by the firm, and they were confined to the colouring department. One married woman had been there fourteen years. LEGISLATION.--My informant did not consider that legislation had injured the woman worker at all, but had benefited her by lessening her hours of labour. Legislation was very hard on him, however, especially in the paper colouring and varnishing work. "A customer comes in with some work at 1 o'clock on a Saturday. You say you cannot do it till Monday. 'Well,' he says, 'I shall get it done elsewhere.' People working at home are found to do it, and as they have not got the machinery or appliances it means that they work at it all Sunday, and make their little children of nine or ten work too, whereas the grown women may not work an hour longer in factories." Mr. ---- evidently feels bitterly about this. It would not pay to keep men on this kind of work. He would like more than thirty days a year exemption for overtime. Besides, the girls would often like to make a few shillings extra overtime. This was corroborated by the paper-staining girl. MEN AND WOMEN.--In the head's youth men used to do all the card mounting; women were introduced for it about twenty-eight years ago. They were brought in because the men drank so and kept away from work. Men used to do paper colouring and varnishing, too, and were replaced by women for the same reason. The Unions gave no trouble about this. No women were employed in book-edge gilding by this firm. Mr. ---- and an old man employee said that some people got their wives to help lay-on the gold and so on, but it did not come to much. MACHINERY.--_Paper colouring and enamelling_ machinery has diminished women's work _considerably_. The head used to have 45 women at it--two whole floors--and now only has 11. It is done by machinery elsewhere. A certain amount is still done by hand, and must always be, as it is not worth while putting anything under five reams on a machine. _Varnishing._--The head invented the present machines because the women kept away so. There used to be many more women in the trade. _Card Mounting._--No machines are employed for this. Girls can feed the rotary cutting machine, but it is generally done by a man. HOME WORK.--No work is sent out from here. A good deal of paper colouring and of varnishing is done by people in their own homes (see under "Legislation"). FAMILY INCOME.--Very little information on this subject could be had here. One girl in the varnishing room was pointed out to me, dressed in black, whose father had recently died. She was the eldest of eleven, and was "keen on picking up an extra shilling or two." GENERAL.--The whole place was dirty, and there was hardly a vacant inch to squeeze past in. Mr. ----, however, did not seem a bad sort of man; the girls did not seem in the least in awe of him. All the girls looked of the regular factory girl type, sloppy and dirty, and with their hair in curlers or curl papers. Mrs. ----, the paper stainer, who came down to talk to me, seemed a friendly, rough-and-ready, low-class woman. Her mother worked in the trade, and when she herself was a baby her cradle was rocked on the colouring board, and "many is the night" that she sat up all night as a child helping her mother at home. She seemed to have thriven on it, and to be immensely proud of her industrial career. 11. _Bookbinding Firm, West End. London. Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--Trade in the West End is quite different to that in City firms. This employée picked to pieces and sewed. REGULARITY.--Hers was not a seasonal trade. She was busy all the year round, but in January and July there was a special press, owing to the number of magazine volumes then being bound. HOURS.--She worked 48 per week, the length of the ordinary day being from 8.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. PROSPECTS.--She had never known anyone who rose to be a forewoman, but supposed some did rise. Girls from West End shops could not be City forewomen because they knew nothing about machines, and in all advertisements for forewomen knowledge of sewing machines was put as a necessary qualification. GENERAL.--I asked why their hours were so much shorter than dressmakers, and have come to the conclusion that it was because the men had got an eight-hours' day. She said this class of workers in City shops is lower than in these West End places, and yet in the City workplaces the best industrial training is given. 12. _Bookbinding Firm in London. Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--Works at a large place about five minutes' walk away (not the same place where she learned). There are four rooms of women. N. M. works in a room on the third floor, where there are 80 women under two forewomen, sisters. In this room folding, stitching, gathering and sewing (hand) is done. In the fourth room there are 12 girls doing machine sewing. The two lower floor rooms each have about 10 or 12 girls. In one of them laying-on of gold is done. She herself does stitching, folding and gathering, hardly ever sewing. REGULARITY.--Orders are very slack sometimes, especially just now (August). There had been a great deal of sitting idle, and they had only been making 6_s._ or 7_s._ per week. They did not like to go "out to grass" for fear of losing work if it should chance to come in. It was difficult to get off for a holiday. Sometimes they were told at 1 p.m. that they could go home. HEALTH.--_Gold laying-on_ was unhealthy. The dust got on the chest. _Folding_ and _Sewing_ were very tiring, because "you are sitting in one position all day." _Gathering_ is the most pleasant, because you walk about and get a little exercise that way. PROSPECTS.--There is not much chance of rising. The forewoman and under-forewoman are sisters, and stay on and on. If one of them were to give up, her successor would be taken from the time workers. The piece workers might rise to be time workers, if they cared. 13. _Bookbinding Firm in London. Employée's Evidence._ WORK.--This informant was engaged at gold laying-on exclusively, but was originally a folder and sewer. REGULARITY.--In this firm it is a seasonal trade, and slack sometimes as well. She left M. because of slackness. HEALTH.--It is not very healthy. Layers-on cannot have the windows open because of the draught blowing the gold about, also the gas used for "blocking" overheats the rooms. Girls sometimes faint three or four times a day, and get anæmic. After working overtime at ----'s would often stagger in the streets. "You have to drink a lot of tea to keep you up." HOURS.--48 a week is about the normal working time, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea, as at M., and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays; or else from 8.30 a.m. to 6 p.m., as at N., with one hour for dinner, and 8.30 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturdays. She preferred 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., because then she got a tea half-hour. "One got so faint going on till 6.30 p.m. from 2 p.m." At O. there was a great deal of overtime; not at M. PROSPECTS.--She could have been a sort of forewoman at sixteen over 6 other girls at P., but an older hand persuaded her not to; and being ignorant of the ways of the world she agreed not to, and then the older hand became forewoman herself! That was her only chance of promotion. 14. J., _Bookbinding Firm in London. Employée's Evidence and Visit to Works_. WORK.--Folding, numbering, perforating, sewing. The regular staff do all, but the firm take in job hands for folding only, when busy. REGULARITY.--The regular hands are kept on all the year round. HOURS.--The hours worked average 54 a week, from 8.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. My informant said they were "obliged by the Factory Act[96] to have half an hour for lunch from 11 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., but they did not take more than a quarter of an hour, or else they ate whilst working;" dinner from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., and tea from 5 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. On Saturdays the hours are 8.30 a.m. to 2 p.m., with 11 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. for lunch. [Footnote 96: This, of course, is incorrect.] PROSPECTS.--The girls may rise to forewomen. One who had just risen quickly to that position was going off to be married. GENERAL.--They can cook food on the premises at this firm. 15. B., _Stationery Firm in London. Visit to Works_. WORK.--About 150 to 200 women are employed. (1) Hand folding and cementing of envelopes (includes putting band round packet). (2) Machine folding and cementing of envelopes (includes putting band round packet). (3) Black bordering. (4) Stamping, plain and relief. (5) Printing of addresses for circulars, etc. (small machines). (6) Packing twelve packets in long packets and sample packing. (7) Vellum sewing (folding, sewing, and looking over). (8) Perforating (in same room). (9) Machine ruling. The number of women at each process in the part of factory seen were as follows:-- (1) About 27, (2) 30, (3) 1, (4) 4 stamping, (5) about 8, (6) 3 and 1 sample packer (probably many more), (7) 4 sewing, 1 looking over, 2 hanging about, (8) 1, (9) 4. There are 42 other workers who are all older hands. The girls employed in (1) are a superior grade to those in (2) and will not mix at all. Wages about the same. (3), (4), (5), (6), (7) and (8) are more or less same grade as (1); (9) are lower than (2). REGULARITY.--The work here is steady all the year round. HEALTH.--All the girls are healthy, and the work is quite healthy. HOURS.--They work 51 hours per week. PROSPECTS.--Envelope hand folders can rise to be cementers or forewomen (envelope hand folders being themselves a superior class to machine folders or machine rulers); packers can rise to be sample packers. 16. R., _Stationery Firm (Christmas Cards, etc.) in London. Visit to Works_. WORK.--There are three departments:-- (1) _Relief Stamping_, with 20 regular hands. These girls work the presses, which are of the newest kind, and some of which are very heavy. They do monograms and all sorts of designs on menus, wedding cards, Christmas cards, ball cards, etc., and stamp in gold, silver, or colours. (2) _Hand Painting_, with 21 regular hands. This means filling in stamped-out or printed designs of various kinds of cards with colour, _e.g._, figures of soldiers, flowers, and so on. (3) _Packing Department_, with about 12 regular hands. They do up the cards in packets, fold and gum special wedding envelopes, paste pictures on to cards, tie the little ribbon bows on cards, and do all the many little processes required for finishing this kind of work. REGULARITY.--The work of this firm is very seasonal. The busy time is for about three months before Christmas, but they are specially rushed for the six weeks before Christmas. The regular hands are kept on all the year round, but about 25 or 30 extra are employed for the packing room for six weeks before Christmas. In the other departments they get a few married hands just to come in and help. They are now (July) preparing books of Christmas cards, but the orders for private Christmas cards do not come in till November and December. The girls who work in the packing room pack scents, etc., at other times of the year. HEALTH.--The work is quite healthy and the girls all appeared to be healthy. The premises were light and airy. Two of the relief stamping presses _looked_ very heavy indeed, and the forewoman said that they were really men's work. The girls working them always had the same machines, and did not look ill, though they said that it was very tiring. MACHINERY.--Machinery has not displaced women in this firm. HOURS.--For _stamping and packing_ the hours are from 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. with three-quarters of an hour for dinner and a quarter of an hour for tea; on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., with half an hour for lunch. For _painting_ they are from 9 a.m. to 5.45 p.m., with the same meal hour; on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The hours of painters had been shortened about a year ago, and it was found that they did just as much work. For the six weeks before Christmas they regularly work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with as much overtime as is allowed, _i.e._, three nights a week. PROSPECTS.--They may rise to forewomen; _e.g._, the forewoman over the stampers came as an ordinary hand. GENERAL.--There is a dining room, and every girl can pay 3_s._ a week and get dinner of meat and pudding and tea every day. This covers all expenses, wages of cook, gas for stove, all utensils, etc. Last year there was money over, so they had free meals for a week. 17. G., _Large Stationery Firm in London. Visit to Works_. WORK.--About 60 girls are employed. _Stationery and Printing_ with following divisions:--(1) Plain cameo and relief stamping (about 25 girls), (2) illuminating, _i.e._, putting on the colour by hand (2 girls), (3) envelope folding and cementing (9 girls), (4) packing, including cleaning (girls in each department), (5) folding notepaper (saw 3 little girls doing this), (6) feeding printing machines, big and small, and lithographic machines (about 6 girls), (7) various odd jobs, _e.g._, cutting visiting cards to proper size, (8) feeding ruling machine (1 girl). REGULARITY.--This firm's trade is regular. They are busy all the year round, though perhaps they are busiest at Christmas. The bulk of their orders come from the country though. HEALTH.--The little printing and lithographic girls looked anything but healthy. MACHINERY.--Machines have not displaced women. There was nothing dangerous about the machinery used, though the small printing machine which 1 girl was feeding _might_ be dangerous. HOURS.--The hours worked are from 8.30 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea; on Saturdays, from 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. They work overtime at Christmas. PROSPECTS.--Girls in (4) may rise to (1), and those in (1) to (2). 18. K., _Stationery Firm in London. Visit to Works_. WORK.--_Numbering and Perforating_; girls also dust and clean up after blocking. REGULARITY.--The work in this firm is regular, "as they work for the trade." SKILL.--Intelligence is required for numbering, or else valuable material is spoilt, _e.g._, the other day a girl, who was six months out of her time, never changed when she came to the 1,000 and so spoilt the work, as one figure came out darker. Three numbers are harder to do than two or four. The firm had tried to take two girls from the blocking work and teach them numbering, but it was no good, they were not intelligent enough. HOURS.--The hours worked are from 9 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner, ten minutes for lunch, and ten minutes for tea; on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PROSPECTS.--The girls can rise to be forewomen. 19. I., _Stationery and Stamping Firm in London. Employee's Evidence_. WORK.--Stamping, plain and relief, including tradesmen's cards, notepaper, Christmas cards, etc. REGULARITY.--The work here is regular, because they work for the trade. SKILL.--The girls need arm strength. Artistic taste is also required. Some never make good stampers on account of deficiency in taste. MACHINERY.--Machinery has not displaced women. HOURS.--The hours worked are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea; on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PROSPECTS.--Girls may rise to forewomen. "There is a little girl of fifteen now, who has only been here a year, and the other day Mr. I. (who does not say things when he does not mean them) told her that she would rise to be forewoman one day. She is very good at her work and knows how things should look." GENERAL.--The girls are very comfortable here. They have a room to themselves upstairs, and a dining room and a stove to cook on. 20. F., _Stationery Firm in London. Employee's Evidence_. WORK.--(1) Envelope folding, which includes creasing, gumming, and shuffling. (2) Envelope cementing. (3) Plain stamping. (4) Relief stamping. (5) Looking over and packing. REGULARITY.--Slack times vary in different houses. "You never can tell," but summer, as a rule, is slack. Last summer there was very little work all July and August at C. and D. and F. She made only 8_d._ or 9_d._ a day sometimes. HOURS.--At C. and D. the hours worked are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one and a-half hours for meals; at E., from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with one and a-half hours for meals on Monday and Tuesday; from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one and a-half hours for meals on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. MACHINERY.--Machinery has not taken work from women. GENERAL.--She remarked that G. was "a dreadful place." The girls cried because there was no work. 21. X., _Stamping Firm in London. Employee's Evidence_. WORK.--There are about 100 girls in the _stamping_ room, about 30 of whom pack up the work in boxes, etc. In some places the stampers have to pack their own work. There is also _envelope work_, etc., done on the firm, but my informant knew nothing of this. Some girls did the hand illuminating, _i.e._, colouring part of a design that has been stamped. REGULARITY.--The trade is seasonal, and is slack in the summer and busy in winter. SKILL.--"You have to be strong to stand the stamping," she said. She herself had to give it up after she had been a learner for two years, and take to packing. Her health gave way; she got very anæmic, and could not stand the strain. Most of the packers were girls who could not stand stamping. They had one very heavy press with big dies, and tried a girl on it, but she got injured internally, so a man was put on it. At R. she heard they had heavy presses. She said she knew of two girls who went there, and both injured themselves. She thinks they had to go to the hospital. The best paying work was done on the big presses. However, many girls stood the stamping all right. Strength is absolutely necessary. HOURS.--The hours worked are from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one and a-half hours off for meals; on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. When busy they work regularly from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and three nights a week to 9.30 p.m. 22 and 23. U. and V., _Two Stamping Firms in London. Employee's Evidence_. WORK.--My informant did plain stamping, but never learnt relief work. She once tried it, but did not get on with it. At U. there were only 5 stampers, at V. quite 30. REGULARITY.--At U. work came in rushes, and they were always either very busy or else very slack; at V. work was steady all the year. HEALTH.--My informant herself had grown rather crooked, and had to leave off work. She did not know of any other girls similarly affected though, nor did she consider it unhealthy. A good many were anæmic. She thought that now she has had a rest she might be able to stand it better. The big dies were the bad ones, and were tiring. HOURS.--At U. the hours were from 9.15 a.m. to 7 p.m., with one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea; at V. from 9.15 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., but at V. one could work till 7 or 7.30 p.m., if one cared. At U. they were then working till 8 p.m. (December). She had never worked later than 9, and that very rarely. PROSPECTS.--She thought that the chance of rising to forewoman was exceedingly remote. GENERAL.--Both U. and V. were very nice and respectable shops, and particular about whom they took on. At U. there was a dining room, and things more comfortable than at V. 24. Y., _Machine Ruling Firm in London. Visit to Works_. WORK.--There are _two departments_. (1) Top floor: _Machine ruling_. (2) Ground floor: _Perforating_, _numbering_, _and paging._ (1) The following is the general principle of the ruling machine: There is a band about 1 yd. wide which goes round and round in a large ellipse (one flat side of the ellipse is about 3½ yds. long). Upon this band the sheets of paper are placed by the girls, and by it they are drawn under a row of pens set at the required intervals for the lines. They are then carried up and round by the revolutions of the band--being held in their places by string which revolves with the band--and fall out of the machine with the ink dry. A good many machines are fitted with a second row of pens which rules the underneath side of the paper as well as the upper. The pens are fed by a piece of flannel which is kept soaked by a regular flow of ink from a vessel fitted with a small tap. These machines are worked by power. They used to be worked by hand. (2) _Perforating_ is done by a machine worked by a treadle. A good many foreign and colonial postage stamps are done here. _Numbering_ of loose pages, cheques, receipts, etc., is done by a machine with a handle which has to be pulled down by hand. _Paging_, which is for made-up books, is done by a machine worked by a treadle. REGULARITY.--The summer is a slack season in this trade as a rule. The firm are especially slack just now (August) as there are no orders from South Africa. HEALTH.--The upper floor was exceedingly, almost insupportably, stuffy. The ground floor was fairly airy. The under-forewoman said that working the treadle for paging was very hard work. "It always upset her inside," so she had to give it up. SKILL.--Strength is required for paging. DANGER.--They had just had an accident with the perforating machine. The bands upstairs were dangerous to long hair. One girl had her hair caught and was carried right up to the ceiling. The band was loose and slipped off the wheel, so she was let down again with no great injury. PROSPECTS.--The girls may rise to forewoman; the machine rulers may rise to wet the flannels. 25. _Paper Bag Making in London. Employee's Evidence._ WORK.--(1) Cake bags, (2) tea bags, (3) sugar bags. These are different classes of work and some hands can do only one class. The girls do their own cutting except for the very heavy work, which men do. As a rule, the piece-rate girls make the bag right through from the sheet, _i.e._, cut the paper, lay it out and paste. Tea bags are made on a tin. There were 150 girls working in the room. REGULARITY.--The work is irregular, but if a girl can do all kinds it is better for her. "There is always some work, but sometimes you may sit idle doing needlework most of the day." HEALTH.--"It is very bad for you standing all day long," said my informant. "Girls come in looking lively and healthy, but they soon get run down." The standing and the used-up air are bad, the latter especially in the winter-time when the gas is alight. She herself has lost her health. MACHINERY.--Machinery had not displaced women. HOURS.--The hours are from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with one hour for dinner, ten minutes for lunch, and twenty minutes for tea; on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The girls have to be in by 8.15 or they are locked out for the morning. When at overtime they work from 8 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. PROSPECTS.--The forewoman was at the bench once. GENERAL.--"On the floor below," said my informant, "are litho girls--not the sort whom you _could_ speak to. That is a very bad trade." 26. _Printer's and Bookbinder's Firm in Leeds. Employer's Information._ I was shown over the factory. The rooms are all very large and lofty. Electric instead of steam power is used, and so the factory is far less noisy and cooler than most printing works. _One hundred and twenty girls_ of a very superior class are employed. The conditions under which work is carried on here are evidently very good. They print large advertisement posters, time-tables, magazines, novels, and make account books, cheque books, etc. TRAINING.--Girls begin by feeding ruling machines, packing, etc., and the length of their "apprenticeship" depends entirely upon the girls themselves. They are put on piece work as soon as they are fit for it; they are taken on about fourteen without premium, and their wages begin at 4_s._ 6_d._ or, sometimes, 5_s._, and rise by degrees till they are paid piece work rates. WAGES.--_Folding and Sewing_ (piece work).--The pay ranges about 10_s._, 12_s._, 16_s._, up to 25_s._ per week. _Laying-on of Gold-leaf and Blockers_ (piece work) yields 18_s._ to 20_s._ per week. Girls who put _paper covers_ on to cheap novels, etc., earn about 20_s._ _Layers-on_ (_Letter-press and Litho_) are paid time wages and receive 8_s._, 10_s._, and 12_s._ per week. The employer says he has known three sisters take home £4 a week for several months in succession. He thinks it pays well to give high wages. HOURS.--The hours are 52½ per week: from 7.30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with dinner from 12.30 p.m. to 1.30 p.m.; on Saturdays, 7.30 a.m. till 12.30 p.m.; but overtime is worked thirty days in the year. Piece workers receive no extra pay; time workers get time and a quarter. WORK.--_Folding_ is done chiefly by hand. There is one machine, but that is self-feeding and a man minds it. _Sewing_ is done by hand and by machinery. _Perforating_ is done by a machine worked by power, which has simply to be fed. Several girls were employed putting the wrappers on to 6_d._ novels, while others were pasting cloth on to cardboard for school exercise books. Little girls were feeding the ruling machine, punching labels, eyeletting and packing. Girls were also engaged in gold laying-on and blocking, but none were employed at this when I was there. In the litho and letter-press printing rooms a large number of very respectable girls, about eighteen years of age, were employed as layers-on. They were feeding large as well as small machines. REGULARITY.--The girls are employed all the year round, but they are busier in the autumn and winter (from September to May). They are also very busy the last week in each month. _Occasionally_, in June and July, they only work half-time, but this does not happen often. HEALTH.--The work is very healthy. Before they had electric power the employer had seen girls fall down and faint when "laying-on" at night when the gas was lit and the room hot. Now that they have electric power and electric light such a thing never happens. DANGER.--The use of electric power does away with the need of belting shafts, etc. There is simply a small motor on the ground. ORGANISATION.--There is no organisation amongst the women, though the men are all Unionists. MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--Girls all leave when they get married. Occasionally, when they are busy, an old hand who has got married comes back, but 99 per cent. are unmarried. The employer did not know whether they had any married women there then. FACTORY LEGISLATION.--Factory legislation has in no way limited the usefulness of women. Girls do not mind working overtime when they can make a little extra by it, but the employer said "overtime does not pay anybody." _E.g._, when layers-on worked overtime they were paid time and a quarter, and it did not pay to give that extra money. The restriction of overtime to thirty days a year worked out very inconveniently for the masters, but this employer thought the factory legislation was a very good thing on the whole. One direct result of factory legislation here has been the introduction of a self-feeding folding machine worked by electric power, which they use when they are busy instead of getting in extra hands or working overtime. When not busy this machine stands idle, and the folding is done by hand. Another result of factory legislation is that they have to employ more hands than they otherwise would, and so girls sometimes have to work short time. MEN AND WOMEN.--The employer said there was a clearly drawn line between men's work and women's work. The Union made a great point of keeping women out of what they consider to be men's work, and there would be a "row" amongst them if women were put on, but I found out later on that girls do the laying-on and _gold blocking_ for the backs of books, etc. The employer said he put them on to that about three years ago. At first the men made a fuss about it, but it passed over. His reason for putting girls on was that it was light work quite suitable for a girl. Only skilled girls did it. They would get perhaps 12_s._ 6_d._, time wage, while they were learning, and then go on to piece work and earn 18_s._ or 20_s._ a week. A man's wage for the same work would be a minimum of 32_s._ a week (time), as that is the Trade Union minimum, and the Trade Unionists generally get something above the minimum. This firm was the first in Leeds to introduce girls as layers-on for letter-press and litho machines. That was about twenty years ago. The reason was that it was impossible to apprentice the number of boys required. The Trade Union regulation about the proportion of apprentices to journeymen is very strictly enforced, and it was not fair to employ boys and simply turn them off when they got older; so girls were employed, and now the majority of layers-on are girls. They do the work, on the whole, better than boys, and they are steadier. MACHINERY.--Machinery is continually being introduced and more women are being employed in spite of the fact that the machines do work so much more quickly. Production is made cheaper and so the demand is greater. HOME WORK.--No home work is given out. _Relief Stamping Firms. General Summary._ We have information about twenty-one houses where women are employed at stamping (covering over 300 women). TRAINING.--Out of these nine have a regular system of training, four do not take apprentices, having found them more trouble than they were worth; three have no settled system, while three refused to furnish information on the subject. In four cases indentures were signed, and there were two cases of premiums, in one of which £2 was paid, to be returned with 5 per cent. interest after three years; in the other, £10--with variations. "It varies with the girl," we were told. "Sometimes girls with very respectable parents like to pay a premium, in other cases it is waived." In eight out of the nine houses where there is a regular system of training, the girls serve an apprenticeship varying from two to three years. They begin by a few shillings pocket-money and go on to receive a part of what they make at piece work rates. In one house they gave from two weeks to two months for nothing, during which time their earnings went to the forewoman who taught them. The following are some of the systems of payment during training:-- (1) 1st year (employed in warehouse), 3_s._; 2nd year, half earnings, piece, with 4_s._ per month pocket-money; 3rd year, three-quarter earnings, with 4_s._ per month pocket-money. (2) 1st year, 5_s._; 2nd year, 6_s._ 6_d._; 3rd year, 8_s._ (3) 2_s._ 6_d._ for first 6 months; rising 1_s._ every 3 months, till 8_s._ 6_d._ is reached. (4) Start at 2_s._ 6_d._; rise to 10_s._ during training. (5) 1st year, half earnings; 2nd year, three-quarter earnings. (6) 3_s._ or 4_s._ first 6 months; 5_s._ second 6 months; then 6_s._ for 2nd year. (7) Pay £2 premium. Put on piece work almost at once and receive what they make. Premiums returned with 5 per cent. interest after 3 years. (8) 3 months, nothing; 3 months, 2_s._ per week; next 3 months, 3_s._; next, 4_s._; so on till 8_s._ One forewoman considered that three years' training was much too long, and stated that there was a tendency in certain houses to do work cheap by means of apprentices. She said that the girls in such houses get disheartened and sick of work, and when they were out of their time it was no use staying on, for all the work got given to the learners. Some learners are quite quick by the end of three weeks. We often found that when a girl came in to learn stamping she was set to run about the warehouse or to do gumming for the first year. This, it was urged by one employer, was done purely from humane motives. Since the girls were often delicate when they came in, it was far better for them to do odd jobs for a year than to be stuck down at once at some sedentary occupation. Learners are taken at thirteen or fourteen years of age. Sometimes they are left to "pick things up." Sometimes they are taught by a forewoman or experienced hand. The relief stamper belongs to the upper class of factory girl. REGULARITY.--Trade is tolerably steady. A few weeks in summer are generally slack, and where there is Christmas card work the six weeks before Christmas are extremely busy. HEALTH.--We were told almost unanimously that stamping was healthy work, and undoubtedly, where the presses are light, it is so. Some of the presses, however, are very heavy, and the girls who work them acknowledged that the work was extremely tiring. Most houses have men to work their heaviest presses. We heard of three cases in two different houses of internal strain to girls working at these presses, and we heard of one house where the girls in the packing room were recruited from those who could not stand the stamping. SKILL.--Skill is required for illuminating. PROSPECTS.--In some cases it is possible to rise to forewoman, or from plain to relief and cameo stamping and occasionally illuminating. WAGES.--Wages vary from 13_s._ to 25_s._ or 30_s._, mostly piece work. Some of the piece work rates were 9_d._ per 1,000 impressions, 2_d._ per 1,000 plain (2,000 can be done per hour); 10_d._ per ream one die (takes two hours to do one ream), 1_s._ 8_d._ per 1,000 impressions. MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--Very few relief stampers are married. In some houses married women are not allowed, in some they "come back to oblige" at busy times. In one house only we heard "that many stampers marry, though they might as well not, as they come back to work." DISPLACEMENT.--Men used to do relief stamping, but women, owing to the cheapness of their labour, have superseded them in all but the heaviest work. For the heavy presses men are still employed, "but it is a poor trade for them." In some houses they do illuminating, as for this the women are found not to possess sufficient skill and patience. One large house employs 4 men for a superior sort of relief stamping--gold and silver on a coloured surface. The crest or monogram has to be stamped in plain first, then coloured, then stamped with the gold or silver by the men. This last process requires great skill and accuracy and care, for if it is crooked by a hair's breadth the thing is spoilt. Girls are stated not to be accurate and careful enough for this work, although they are employed for the simpler sort of gold stamping. Where heavy hand machines have come in they have ousted women. One employer considered that if stamping machines worked by steam came in women would be employed on them. In one house, however, where there was machine stamping, it was done by men. We were told by a large employer that there is now a new machine in the market which may supersede female labour. It colours the surface first and then embosses it out. Another new machine requires a feeder only, as the die is coloured, rubbed and stamped down by machinery. _Job Hands. Interview with Agent._ Miss R., like Mrs. B. before her, apparently acts as a sort of bureau-keeper for job hands; sometimes she has work in to do herself and keeps a certain staff, at other times she gets a notice to say that W. has got a big job and wants so many hands; she collects them, sends postcards all round, and goes and works herself too. Very few of her job hands would touch magazine work; they usually work at prospectuses. Mrs. B. used to do all the work for the ---- Societies. There were hundreds of job hands, how many she cannot tell at all. REGULARITY.--The work is quite uncertain. "You never know when there will be work; but July and August are usually the slack months, but this year (1900-01) it has been slack all the year. Job hands, however, do what they like when there is not work, whereas constant hands have to come in and wait whether there is work or not." HEALTH.--It is hard work, but there is nothing unhealthy about it. GENERAL.--She spoke with pitying contempt of the "constant" hands and their low prices and the long hours they worked. APPENDIX III.--GENERAL GLASGOW REPORT. (A.) _Letterpress Printing. Machine Feeding and Flying._ Girls are employed to "feed" the machines and to "take off" the impressed sheet. A girl will learn "taking off," or "flying," in a couple of days; but except in the old-fashioned and smaller jobbing-shops flying is now done entirely by machinery. Machine feeding is not so easy and simple a process as it seems. The girls stand and perform the same movement repeatedly, each time giving to the sheet the precise swing required to send it accurately into the grips. The work requires little intelligence, and the extent to which it can be characterised as exhausting depends partly on the speed of the machine, but chiefly on the length of the "run." Three methods of treating the girls may be distinguished. In some shops where there are very long runs, perhaps extending to a couple of weeks, as in the case of the printing of low-priced Bibles, the work is tiring. At the close of a long run the machines have to be prepared afresh, and the girls enjoy a spell for a day or two. This leisure they are sometimes inclined to abuse by interrupting the work of others with conversation, and consequently attempts are being made to employ them on other machines during the interval. This innovation the girls are resisting. In other shops the fatiguing nature of a long run is mitigated by removing the girl to another machine with a different movement, but the "right" of a girl to be so moved about and rested is not recognised; it is simply a matter for the consideration of the foreman. To allow the claim to frequent shifting might prove inconvenient in times of pressure. Lastly, in establishments where the bulk of the work involves short runs, as, for example, in printing the official matter of a municipality or a college, the necessity for frequently preparing the machines affords considerable leisure to the feeders. These intervals explain the groups of girls often to be seen chatting and knitting in odd corners of the machine-room. Some of these shops recognise the right of a girl to feed and keep clean "her own machine" and no other. Where this is the case a girl may be employed feeding for no longer than a quarter of the normal working week of fifty-two and a half hours owing to the shortness of the runs and the length of time spent in re-adjustment. The work is dirty but not dangerous, as all machinery is well-fenced, and accidents are of very rare occurrence. The day's work usually starts at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m., with meal hours at 9 and at 2 o'clock and half an hour for tea when engaged on overtime. Saturday's shift is from 6.15 a.m. until 10 a.m. Girls are paid 5_s._, in a few shops 6_s._, a week as beginners. They get their first rise in three months, and are gradually advanced to an average wage of 10_s._, while an expert feeder may earn 11_s._, or at the outside 12_s._, a week. When girls find that they can feed well after a comparatively short time in a shop and that they are getting only 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week they commonly seek and obtain the average wage elsewhere. Managers fancy "it would not do" to advance a girl abruptly from 6_s._ to 10_s._ a week in the same shop, but do not blame the girls for leaving. "It is human nature." Girls are taken on at any age after fourteen, and stay on till they are married or until they are called away to domestic duties. Some remain on after marriage, but not more than 1 or 2 per cent. A few come back as widows. Married and unmarried as workers are "six of one and half a dozen of the other," remarked an employer of both, while another thought married women "less regular" in attendance. There are no signs of married women lowering rates of pay. "Time and a half" is the overtime rate. Women workers who do not get paid overtime when they work beyond the normal day get paid over the holidays, but not otherwise. There are no fines. There is no trade organisation among the machine feeders, and as the various unions of the men are not directly affected they do not interfere. In some firms feeding has been done by girls for a quarter of a century; in others they have been introduced only within the last five or six years. Boys were rough, irregular, scarce, and wanted higher pay. The girls, although they also are drawn from a rough class, are steadier, cleaner, and more economical in the use of material than boys. Besides, there are more of them. There was no inducement for boys to continue at such work, so they have been drafted into certain forms of unskilled, but fairly well paid, labour, such as is offered by the Post Office or bread factories. In some districts they go to the shipyards to assist riveters, and are able to earn straight away twice the wages they would obtain in a printing shop. As overtime by girls is restricted by legislation, young men (over 18) are kept for feeding in one large jobbing-shop where there are often seasons of great pressure (_e.g._, in the printing of penny monthly diaries and time-tables) and where "rushes" and overtime are inevitable. These young men would not be thus employed but for the restrictions of the Factory Acts, as the manager, for reasons stated above, much prefers girls for feeding. While all modern machines are fitted with self-fliers, not one of the many attempts to provide automatic feeders has proved quite satisfactory. For long runs such feeders as have been designed may serve fairly well, but in shops with much jobbing and many short runs too much time would be spent in adjusting the feeder to the particular job. The sole advantages of a mechanical feeder are that it neither "takes ill" nor "goes on strike." Meanwhile it is imperfect and expensive, and the supply of cheap female labour abundant. (B.) _Lithographic Printing. Machine Feeding._ What has been said of feeders under letterpress printing is generally true of feeders in the lithographic branch. The only difference seems to be one of social position. Girls employed in feeding lithographic machines are "higher,"[97] "less filthy in talk," etc. They form the intermediate class, of which the girls in the bookbinding and warehouse departments are at the top. In one shop where all three classes are employed, the manager remarked that these caste distinctions were "clean cut," and obvious to the most casual observer. [Footnote 97: They are supposed to be lower in London, Manchester, etc.--[Ed.]] (C.) _Letterpress Printing. Type-setting._ The employment of women as compositors is a "vexed question." In two shops only are they so employed in Glasgow, and both are on the black list of the local trade union. Inasmuch as the conditions which obtain in these shops differ in important respects, they are here described separately. Firm No. 1 introduced women as compositors some nine or ten years ago, when a dispute with the union ensued. It now employs about a dozen women at the cases. Girls are taken on at any age after fourteen. In three months' time they are able to set up type in "solid dig," _i.e._, newspaper or book matter, consisting of solid uniform paragraphs. Three girls who have spent about eight years with this firm are declared to be "good at displaying," and "more competent than the ordinary journeyman." Beginners get 6_s._ a week during the first year, and in the third year are put on piecework rates. There are no indentures. Capable women compositors may earn 24_s._ a week, while their average earnings may be put at 22_s._ a week, and they never sink below a pound. Young workers make an average of 18_s._ a week or thereabouts. The normal week is one of fifty-one hours, made up as follows:-- 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on four days. 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. A compositor sometimes acts as "clicker," _i.e._, checks the amount of piecework, but this is usually done by a clerk. No married women are employed. Overtime is paid time and a half, and women are fined a penny for being late. Firm No. 2 employed at one time about two dozen girls in the composing-rooms. They were engaged solely on solid newspaper work, and never in the higher branches of the trade, such as "displaying." Seats were provided for them. They worked a forty-eight hour week for a "stab" wage of 15_s._ or 16_s._, and had three weeks' holiday, off and on, for which they were paid. Further, they were never turned away in slack time. But the experiment was not altogether a success, and by to-day the two dozen have dwindled down to two, who set for newspapers and get 16_s._ a week. The reasons assigned for the gradual reversion to the employment of men are as follows:-- (_a_) Irregularity of the women's attendance at work. (_b_) Their shorter hours. (_c_) Marriage. (_d_) The introduction of the Linotype machine, of which there are three in this establishment. This was urged as the most important cause of the change back to men. Of the work in general, it may be said that some intelligence is needed, that no dangerous machinery is used, and that the health of the workers depends largely on the character of the workroom. The special trade disease is that to which men are similarly subject, viz., "consumption" in some of its many forms. In Glasgow the Typographical Association has strenuously, and, with the above exceptions, successfully, resisted the introduction of women into the composing-room. The attitude taken up by the men may be summarised as follows: No objection would be offered to the employment of women at the case provided that they served the usual seven years' apprenticeship at the same rates as male apprentices, and then on its completion were paid the full standard wage. "Underpaid female labour is equally unjust to the legitimate employer and employee." To allow women unrestricted access to the composing-rooms would probably lead in time, not only to the reduction of the men's wages, but to the undermining of the trade itself. The various branches of the trade which now demand many years of apprenticeship before they are completely mastered by one man would be split up and distributed among a number of highly-specialized workers. Women would be employed for separate departments, and by being continuously kept at one job or branch would become expert therein, but would have no knowledge of the trade as a whole. The employers, on the other hand, are aggrieved that, while the union prevents women from acting as compositors in Glasgow, the same trade society allows them to work in Edinburgh. The result of the present arrangement is to divert a certain class of trade, viz., "solid dig," or book work, from other centres to Edinburgh. The cause of this is to be found in the non-employment of women compositors in Glasgow, and is not, as sometimes suggested, due to the superiority of Edinburgh printing. In answer to the claim of the union to equal pay for equal work for women and men, it is urged by the masters:-- (1) Women when employed as compositors at piecework rates get the best, _i.e._, the simplest jobs. They are put to do what boys would be at when half through their apprenticeship. They are kept always at pretty much the same kind of work, and thus become very skilful at it. Boys, on the other hand, would claim to be shifted on to the higher branches of the trade. (2) The man who now does the solid type-setting, which the employer wishes to see a woman do, is paid higher than a woman would or should be, because he is liable to be called on at any moment to undertake the more complex operations of his craft, while a woman is not. In other words, the man is paid for potential ability. (3) If women were taken on freely to do solid setting, it is not at all likely that they would seriously aspire to the higher stages of the compositor's craft. (_a_) Partly for physical reasons. Women are not fitted to handle the heavy formes. (_b_) Partly because they could not be relied upon to go through a full course of training. They would be continually leaving in the middle or at the end of it, and employers, therefore, would not take the trouble to train them. "The pick of the girls get married. The qualities which make a girl smart and successful at her work would similarly make for her success in the marriage market." (4) The cheaper type-setting of women is needed in order to compete successfully with the Linotype machine. There is no doubt that to a certain extent the comparatively low price of women's labour tends to retard the introduction of machinery. (D.) _Bookbinding._ In the bookbinding trade girls fold, put in plates and illustrations, collate, sew by hand and by machine. Sewing used all to be done by hand, but machines were introduced some fifteen years ago. In the case of primers and stitched books girls do all except print the covers. They make cloth cases as distinct from leather cases. Girls also lay the gold leaf on covers, which are subsequently stamped by machines operated by men. For at least half a century women have worked in these branches, but while in earlier days they learnt a variety of operations the tendency now is to keep them to a special process or machine. Hence a smart girl can pick up her task in a week. The old custom of a four years' apprenticeship still survives. Girls start at fourteen, or at thirteen if they have passed the fifth standard. The initial wage is still in some shops 3_s._ a week, but there is a decided upward tendency, which in one case was found to reach 4_s._ 6_d._ for beginners. On the termination of the apprenticeship an average wage of 10_s._ a week is paid, but in the exceptional case referred to above the average was given as 12_s._ 6_d._, while 15_s._ is earned by expert pagers, coverers, and perforators who have been in the employment of the firm for some time. A chargewoman gets about 15_s._ a week, while the principal forewoman in a firm employing nearly 300 girls in its bookbinding branch is paid a guinea per week. Folders and hand-sewers are paid piecework rates in the large shops, but not in the smaller ones. To the casual visitor these pieceworkers exhibit a remarkable swiftness and accuracy, and the work must involve no small physical strain. Although the girls engaged in folding and the allied processes are as a rule of higher intelligence than mill girls and machine feeders and drawn from different social strata, there are many who come, frail and under-fed, from very poor homes. To these especially the early hour at which the day's work begins is a hardship. On a Glasgow winter's morning to start work at 6.15 on a hurried bite of bread and margarine, with the distant prospect of more bread and margarine three hours later, leads logically to "broken time." There has been some slight tendency towards beginning at 8 o'clock and stopping on Saturdays at 1, but two of the largest firms still adhere to 6.15 a.m. and finish on Saturdays at 10 a.m. The manager of one of these characterised the system as a "relic of barbarism," and said he had tried to alter the hour to 8 o'clock, but the men vigorously opposed the change and the scheme had to be dropped. As matters now stand, and owing to the great irregularity of the attendance during the week, work has often to go on from 11 till 2 on Saturdays. Otherwise in this establishment overtime is systematically avoided, the manager maintaining that the normal week of 52½ hours is quite exhausting enough for the girls. When, as at seasons of unusual pressure, overtime is reluctantly resorted to, it is paid time-and-a-quarter, as in the case of men. The busy season lasts from August to March, but the girls are hardly affected, and have plenty of work round the year. In another large firm, where much railway printing is done, the conditions differ somewhat. The hours are as follows:-- 6.30 a.m. to 9 a.m. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays till 1 p.m. There are small fines for spoilt work, but the money goes to the Workers' Benevolent Fund. These fines do not amount to more than sixpence per head per annum. Overtime is worked to the full limit. It is paid at a higher rate, but not at the same proportionally higher rate as men. Girls are never suspended in slack seasons, but are put on time wages of 13_s._ or 14_s._ a week for the best workers. The employment of married women is regarded as exceptional, but all large firms have a small number of such--3 or 4 per cent., perhaps. The usual practice is for girls to come from school and remain on until they get married or leave for some domestic purposes. Some come back as widows or when living apart from their husbands. Some firms boast a considerable number of workers who have been employed for very long periods, ranging from 15 to 30 years and upwards. There are no signs of married women lowering the rates of pay. It is customary for those who return after a long absence to do so at the old wages. Efforts have been made from time to time to organise the women into unions, but they have invariably proved disappointing. Indirectly the women have gained by the successful efforts of the men to shorten the hours of toil. Generally speaking the attitude of the men's unions is not so much one of hostility as of indifference to women's work, except where it threatens to encroach on the men's preserves. There is no positive agreement as to the line of demarcation; it is determined tacitly by use and wont. The men profess to see a tendency among employers to extend the field of female labour. This extension of woman's sphere they deprecate as likely to lead to the lowering of men's wages. Just as men are never employed in folding in the bookbinding department of a publishing firm, so certain processes are invariably never done by women. As a rule men do the heavier and more complicated work, while women do that which is preparatory or supplementary. In jobbing-shops where odd volumes come in to be bound in various styles women are unsuitable, and men do the work right through; but in large publishing houses where orders run into thousands women specialise on particular processes. Women's work is apt to be extended where there are large quantities involved and where the work can be sub-divided. While women perform many of these sub-divisions quite as skilfully as men, they do not exhibit a like concentration of effort, and are more inclined to scamp. Opinions differ as to the amount of homework done nowadays. The plant required is just a folder--a piece of bone. There is no doubt that to some extent folding is still done at home by the older girls who have _during the day been employed in the factory_. One employer admitted that on "not more than three or at most four nights in the year" do girls take work home from his shop. The cause is set down to the impatience of the public. Everybody wants his order executed immediately. Rates paid for homework are, if anything, a shade less than those paid for work done in the factory. While such work increases the total earnings this is not the main motive for undertaking it. A good deal of it is forced, and due to the urgency of the public demand. During very busy months some firms have a great deal of folding done as _outwork_ by widows and married women _not_ now employed in the factory during the day. But this practice is declining. Twopence per 1,000 extra is paid by one firm, _i.e._, 10_d._ as against 8_d._, for this outwork to compensate for lack of facilities in the home. Despite the great number of sewing and folding machines introduced in recent years there are probably more women employed at the trade than ever. There is more work. The small shops tend to retain women's labour. Their jobs are so small in amount and varied in character that it would not pay them to introduce machinery. Further, in the large shops, folding machines have not always proved satisfactory. Doubtless, had men been engaged in folding during the last fifty years, employers would ere this have perfected a folding machine, but the cheapness of women's labour takes away some of the incentive to invention. Sometimes the introduction of a machine reduces women's work in one department and increases it in another. Take as an example the wire-stitching machine used in the production of tens of thousands of penny pocket time-tables and diaries. If the diary is not out during the first three days of the month it may as well not appear at all. There is a short selling time during which sales are keen. Without the device of the stitching machine the only way in which large quantities of such ephemeral publications could be placed quickly on the market would be by the employment of a very large staff of women. But the big and rapid output possible by means of the machine, although it reduces the work of women stitchers, brings increased work to the women folders. (E.) _Machine Ruling._ Girls who start as feeders are sometimes promoted to the supervision of simple ruling machines. Men look upon this with disfavour, as it used to be considered their work. One firm is said to have only two men now employed where there were once forty, and the two that remain are tenters, who supervise the girls and the machines. Machine ruling is paid at time rates. Wages rank as high as 17_s._ a week, where men formerly got 28_s._ For more complex machines girls would need to be specially trained, but managers think they could easily be prepared, as intelligence rather than strength is necessary. The girls themselves believe they would succeed if given a chance. (F.) _Type and Stereotype Founding._ No type founding is done in Glasgow, and no women are employed here in stereotype founding. Such work is considered unsuitable for women, and there seems no likelihood of their taking it up. (G.) _Paper Staining._ This work has always been done by women. There is no formal apprenticeship, but it takes a couple of years before the girls are thoroughly initiated. They are taken on at thirteen or fourteen at a wage of 4_s._ a week, paid 5_s._ at the end of the first year and 6_s._ at the end of the second. Afterwards their wages range from 12_s._ to 14_s._, with an average of about 12_s._ 6_d._ per week. There is no piecework and no fines are exacted. The working hours are 56 per week, distributed as follows:-- 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Work is plentiful all the year round. No dangerous machinery is used, and there is no special trade disease. The girls remain on till they get married. They are drawn from the "better sort" of working-class families, and some were reported as coming to the factory on cycles. They have no trade organisation, and there do not seem to have been any attempts on the part of the girls to supplant men in the allied processes. No machinery has yet been devised capable of doing the work of the girls. (H.) _Paper-box Making._ Girls come from school and begin by dabbling about the shop and running messages. Presently they become "spreaders," and in two or three years' time "coverers," the highest position open to them. The cutting of the paper and cardboard is done by machines, which men operate. The material thus prepared to the required sizes is passed on to the girls to be glued up into boxes. The girls use no machinery, and stand to their work at benches. At the height of summer, and despite the gluey atmosphere of the workrooms, the girls have the usual reluctance to open windows. Wages start at 3_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._ Spreaders are paid from 5_s._ 6_d._, to 7_s._ 6_d._; coverers, 10_s._ and 11_s._ Hours vary from shop to shop. Some begin at 8 and finish at 6.30 (Saturdays, 12.30), with a meal hour at 1 o'clock. Others allow an hour and a quarter for dinner, so as to enable girls to get home. The week is then arranged as follows: 7 a.m. to 9.15 a.m. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 3.15 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Saturdays, 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (I.) _Pattern-book Making._ This trade consists in making pattern-books for travellers, and is usually found in close alliance with box-making. Girls get 4_s._ to start, and rise to 13_s._ a week. The hours in one factory visited were found to be as follows:-- 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. 2 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. without a break. APPENDIX IV.--WOMEN IN THE PRINTING TRADES IN BIRMINGHAM. FIFTEEN firms were visited. No women compositors were found in the chief printing businesses visited in Birmingham. The wife of the manager of one factory said that ten years ago in non-society places there had been a very few women compositors in Birmingham. They took 15_s._, as compared to 33_s._ taken by the men compositors for the same work. It is now fifteen years since the informant left the trade, and she believes that at present none exist in Birmingham. She imagines that it is the strength of the Compositors' Union which has driven them out. Only one owner of a printing business considered that factory legislation was detrimental to the interests of women in the printing trade. He says that he keeps a number of youths where he would otherwise employ women, as in stress of trade overwork has to be done, including Sunday work, _e.g._, at the time of the great cycle boom. He tried to get permission for the women to work on Sunday, but could not. Another manager considered that the Compositors' Union spoilt the chance of women workers in the printing trade. He himself, if it were not for the Union, would like to train girl compositors. No other printer expressed this opinion. All said that, on the whole, men were better in the compositors' room, as they could be set on any job, and the pressure of women would necessitate much rearrangement. MACHINE RULING. _Training and Wages._--_Machine Ruling_ is the only process for which training can be said to exist. In some houses women are still articled or apprenticed to this branch, but in many they simply learn their trade as they can, from the foreman or forewoman. They generally begin as machine feeders of the ruling machine. The secretary of the Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers gave the information that women had been first employed as machine rulers about twenty years ago. He himself had learnt his trade under a woman who was head of the whole department. The final wage of a woman machine ruler is 17_s._ to 20_s._ In one case a female ruler was taking 22_s._, but I was told that was because she was a relative of the employer. The minimum wage of a man belonging to the Union is 32_s._ I was informed, however, that the man always worked a heavier machine, generally made the pens, was responsible for the good condition of all the machines, and that his output was always in advance of that of a woman. _Men and Women._--In six businesses (the largest in Birmingham visited) the proportion of women machine rulers is about three to one man. An attempt was made about eight years ago to organise the women machine rulers in Birmingham, but met with no response. The secretary of the men's union informs me, "The reason why the attempt failed is probably that they have little to complain of. The wages vary from 4_s._ to 5_s._ per week for beginners, to £1 per week of fifty-two hours." TABLE PROCESSES. All _table processes_, such as folding, knocking-up, gumming, numbering, paging, interlaying, etc., are done by women. The average wage varies from 8_s._ to about 12_s._ 6_d._ Numbering seems to be about the best. Three numberers had taken 15_s._, but the average maximum was between 11_s._ and 12_s._ 6_d._ ENVELOPE MAKING. _Training._--A beginner is given a teacher, that is, a more experienced worker, for six weeks. The teacher gets the profits of the beginner's work, and the beginner is paid about 4_s._ per week. All the work in the establishment was piecework, with the exception of the new Scotch folding machine, which turns out 25,000 envelopes per day, as against 2,000 done by hand. The day wage is 12_s._ per week. _Sub-divisions._--Envelope folders take 7_s._ to 15_s._ The smallest envelopes are 6_d._ per 1,000, the largest 1_s._ 10_d._ _Average wage_ for folding is 10_s._ to 12_s._ _Stamping_, 7_s._ to 10_s._ _Stitching_, 8_s._ to 10_s._ _Gumming_, 10_s._ to 14_s._ _General Remarks._--Envelope making is not a seasonal trade. _Hours._--Maximum, 49½ per week. 8.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., winter. 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., summer. One week's holiday in August. One week's holiday at Christmas. COLOUR PRINTING. Colour Printing takes about six months to learn well. _Wages._--10_s._ to 12_s._ for a woman. A man employed on a heavier machine took 20_s._ The forewoman takes 14_s._ BOOKBINDING. By the rules of the Machine Rulers' and Bookbinders' Consolidated Union women may only bind paper pamphlets. They are not allowed to bind regular books. They may book-stitch with thread or wire, glue, fold, bronze, and gild. PAPER-BAG MAKING. _Business No. 1._ _Conditions._--Cap bag-making is all piecework, except for beginners, who start at 4_s._ In fifteen months, manager says they should be able to earn 10_s._ per week by piecework. _Average Wage._--13_s._ to 15_s._ Manager considered that in heavy cap bag-making 19_s._ was top wage ever taken by an extra good hand in extra busy time. Eighteen girls were employed in cap bag-making. A rougher class of girls were employed in the sugar bag department, which is heavier work. The wages were higher for this heavier work. The average wage approached 15_s._ The bag-stringing machine was the only machinery employed in this business. It was worked by a foreman and forewoman. No married women were employed. The clerks were all women, taking 20_s._ per week. The manager preferred them to men because they were content with that wage as a maximum. _Outwork_ given to old workers under known conditions, as since the bags are for the grocery trade it is important to know home conditions. Same price as for inworkers, but outworkers found their own paste and brushes, etc. _Hours._--8 a.m. to 7 p.m., 1 hour dinner, 20 minutes tea. Saturday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. _Remarks._--The contrast between this business and the business next door (see following case) was very striking as regards relation between manager and employees. _Business No. 2._ Girls are employed here in bag-making and table processes. The employer considered that the girls could average 9_s._ to 10_s._ He gave the highest wage for machine laying-on, which begins at 7_s._ and goes up to 12_s._ and 13_s._ This wage was given because of the danger of the process (I think the machine was the "Arab," which in union houses women may not work "because of the danger"). Manager believed a good many of his hands were married women. He did not care whether they were married or not. The forewoman and the girl in the warehouse were each taking 11_s._ _Homework._--Given out in busy times to whoever applied, without further precautions. Manager thought no outworker took more than 4_s._ to 5_s._ per week. _Hours._--8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. Fifty-two and a half hours per week regular time. Just now (December) they were working ten hours per day. August slackest month. Manager generally turned off hands then. Manager spoke of difficulty of getting workers--he could not get boys to feed the machines, for example, because it led to nothing. Manager said he "conducted his business on purely business principles" and got his work done as cheaply as he could. MACHINE FEEDING. This is the lowest work in letterpress printing. Girls are employed largely as feeders, and are replacing boys. The managers said that the work was not liked by boys, as leading to nothing, and it was difficult to get them. The wages for a machine feeder are 4_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ 6_d._ initial wage, which rises to 8_s._ 6_d._ or 9_s._ In the best workshops we were told that the firm tried to find better work for machine feeders when they had been some time with them and had proved themselves capable and steady. Other firms did not know what became of machine feeders when they grew dissatisfied with the small wage paid to them. _Employment of Married Women._ It is curious to notice how few married women there are in the printing trade in Birmingham compared to the pen trade, for example. A better class of girl seems to go into the printing trade, coming from better homes than women employed in the hardware trades. It is very exceptional for a girl who marries a skilled artisan in Birmingham to continue her work, and in these trades girls appear to belong more to the skilled artisan class. Several employers refuse married women; one employer told me that he never had had an application for work from a married woman. Only one employer was indifferent as to whether he employed married women, and did not know whether his hands were married or not. _Women and Machinery._ It was very difficult to ascertain whether the machinery introduced meant dismissal of hands. In one business, for example, the thread sewing machine introduced 12 months ago did the work of 12 girls. The machinist was taking 12_s._ per week in place of 12 girls at 10_s._ to 12_s._ 6_d._ The manager said that they had not dismissed any thread sewers when this machine was introduced, but had absorbed them in other processes. They would, however, engage no more girls as thread sewers. The new Scotch folding machine for envelopes, which turns out 25,000 per day against 2,000 done by hand, also was _said_ not to have been productive of dismissals.[98] [Footnote 98: The only actual cases of dismissal of workers owing to introduction of machinery which I can ascertain is that of the new grinding machines for pens. The employer, who has invented the machine, told me he meant to dismiss about half his grinders and supply their places with girls fresh from school, as very little skill will be needed to work the machine. I hear that the largest pen business has ordered sixty of these machines, but I have not yet ascertained what effect it will have on that business. The employer in the first business mentioned spoke of the grinders as the most indocile of his workers, and as many of them belonged to the Penworkers' Union, he hoped that the machine would help in annihilating the union. In two businesses I was told that the cheapness of women labour retarded the introduction of thread sewing machines, etc.] _Continuity of Employment in Printing Trade._ The printing trade in Birmingham is slackest in August and September. The busiest times are November, December, and towards Easter time. In the best businesses the hands are asked to take half-holiday in turns in slack times, or short hours are worked, but the managers appeared to make every effort to keep the workers employed as far as possible, and in no cases actually to dismiss hands. In the worst businesses dismissal in slack times is common. _Overtime and the Factory Laws._ Only one employer considered that the factory laws against overtime militated against women's employment. All spoke of their endeavour to reduce overtime, owing to the fact that their union men asked one and a half and twice usual rate. No employer acknowledged that women were ever kept overtime, although, from the account of one worker, apparently this does sometimes occur. All concurred that the cheapness of women's work compared to men's outweighed any inconvenience arising from special legislation for women and young persons. In no case was the cheapness of women's work attributed to legislation, but to absence of unionism and different standards of life for men and women, and inferiority of physical strength and mental ingenuity, and also to custom. APPENDIX V. The following tables of wages paid to the workwomen as described, form, we believe, a unique record in wages statistics. The occupations and the nature of the wages, _e.g._, time or piece, are as follows:-- 1. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 2. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 3. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 4. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 5. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 6. Hand Folder in Bookbinding House (Time). 7. Learner. Folder in Bookbinding House (Piece). 8. Folder and Gatherer in Bookbinding House (Piece). 9. Hand Sewer in Bookbinding House (Piece). 10. Hand Sewer in Bookbinding House (Piece). 11. Machine Sewer in Bookbinding House (Piece). 12. Learner. Sewing and Collating in Bookbinding House (Piece). 13. Folding, Sewing and Collating in Bookbinding House (Time). 14. Collating and Sewing in Bookbinding House (Piece). 15. Plate hand in Bookbinding House (Time). 16. Plate hand in Bookbinding House (Time). 17. Layer on of Gold in Bookbinding House (Piece). 18. Printers' Binding (Piece). 19. Printers' Binding (Time). 20. Printers' Binding (Time). 21. Printers' Binding (Piece). 22. Printers' Binding (Piece). 23. Printers' Binding (Piece). 24. Hand Folder in Printers' Warehouse (Piece). 25. Envelope Packer (Time). 26. Machine Ruler (Time). +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 41 | 14 10 | 3 | 16 1½ | 20 | 11 8½ | 37 | 11 10 | | 42 | 15 2½ | 4 | 14 5 | 21 | 7 8½ | 38 | 12 9 | | 43 | 15 7½ | 5 | 14 11½ | 22 | 11 11½ | 39 | 12 9½ | | 44 | 15 7½ | 6 | 15 7½ | 23 | 9 1 | 40 | 14 2 | | 45 | 15 0 | 7 | 15 0½ | 24 | 8 10 | 41 | 14 2½ | | 46 | 15 7 | 8 | 15 1½ | 25 | 11 10½ | 42 | 13 7 | | 47 | 15 5 | 9 | 15 6 | 26 | 6 4½ | 43 | 14 0½ | | 48 | 15 0 | 10 | 14 10 | 27 | 6 2½ | 44 | 14 1 | | 49 | 14 7½ | 11 | 13 2½ | 28 | 9 9 | 45 | 14 0 | | 50 | 16 1½ | 12 | 12 0 | 29 | 8 7½ | 46 | 13 6 | | 51 | 16 4½ | 13 | 10 10½ | 30 | 11 3½ | 47 | 9 3½ | | 52 | 7 11½ | 14 | 5 4 | 31 | -- | 48 | 7 1½ | | | | 15 | 11 2 | 32 | 4 0½ | 49 | 13 1 | | 1899 | | 16 | 9 2½ | 33 | 10 9½ | 50 | 11 2 | | Week | | 17 | 9 8½ | 34 | 12 7 | 51 | 8 10 | | 1 | 10 10½ | 18 | 8 2 | 35 | 12 1 | 52 | 6 2 | | 2 | 14 4 | 19 | 10 3½ | 36 | 12 5 | | | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 2. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Quick Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week.| s. d. | | 1 | 7 9½ | 14 | 16 2 | 27 | 7 1 | 40 | 13 3 | | 2 | 9 1 | 15 | 12 10 | 28 | 9 8½ | 41 | 12 8 | | 3 | 16 9½ | 16 | 20 10 | 29 | 13 0 | 42 | 15 2½ | | 4 | 19 6 | 17 | 17 5 | 30 | 12 9 | 43 | 14 0 | | 5 | 14 0 | 18 | 10 8 | 31 | 12 0 | 44 | 11 6½ | | 6 | 12 3 | 19 | 9 7 | 32 | 5 11 | 45 | 16 2½ | | 7 | 13 9 | 20 | 26 2 | 33 | 14 7 | 46 | 17 5 | | 8 | 18 5 | 21 | 17 4 | 34 | 21 3 | 47 | 18 9 | | 9 | 11 4 | 22 | 15 0½ | 35 | 16 9 | 48 | 15 0 | | 10 | 7 7 | 23 | 10 3 | 36 | 15 8 | 49 | -- | | 11 | 14 4½ | 24 | 11 7½ | 37(a)| -- | 50 | -- | | 12 | 15 6 | 25 | 13 9½ | 38 | 13 8 | 51 | -- | | 13 | 15 5 | 26 | 9 1½ | 39 | 15 4 | 52 | -- | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | (a) Missing from wage sheets. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 3. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates_--_Quick Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 25 0 | 14 | 6 1½ | 27 | 25 11 | 40 | 21 0 | | 2 | 22 3 | 15 | 25 6 | 28 | 25 8½ | 41 | 23 0½ | | 3 | 20 3 | 16 | 19 0½ | 29 | 16 11 | 42 | 22 10½ | | 4 | 23 7 | 17 | 23 10 | 30 | 16 8 | 43 | 22 1 | | 5 | 19 11 | 18 | 24 2 | 31 | 8 4 | 44 | 20 6 | | 6 | 26 10 | 19 | 28 1 | 32 | 6 2 | 45 | 17 0½ | | 7 | 21 6 | 20 | 22 4 | 33 | 21 6½ | 46 | 26 6 | | 8 | 14 6 | 21 | 14 2 | 34 | 22 1 | 47 | 20 8½ | | 9 | 23 5½ | 22 | 22 3 | 35 | 19 11 | 48 | 21 3 | | 10 | 25 11 | 23 | 23 4½ | 36 | 19 9 | 49 | 28 9 | | 11 | 25 3 | 24 | 25 10½ | 37 | 20 2 | 50 | 24 10½ | | 12 | 23 0 | 25 | 22 11 | 38 | 20 0 | 51 | 23 4 | | 13 | 17 9 | 26 | 25 0 | 39 | 20 8 | 52 | -- | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 4. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Typical Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 16 9 | 14 | 6 8 | 27 | 16 1½ | 40 | 12 7 | | 2 | 14 9½ | 15 | 13 6 | 28 | 17 3 | 41 | 15 10½ | | 3 | 14 5 | 16 | 11 6 | 29 | 16 0 | 42 | 18 0 | | 4 | 15 1 | 17 | 19 5 | 30 | 14 8 | 43 | 22 10½ | | 5 | 15 0 | 18 | 20 3 | 31 | 15 10 | 44 | 19 3 | | 6 | 14 9 | 19 | 13 8 | 32 | 3 9 | 45 | 15 6 | | 7 | 15 8 | 20 | 13 10 | 33 | 10 10 | 46 | 16 5½ | | 8 | 11 11½ | 21 | 11 2½ | 34 | 16 10 | 47 | 16 3 | | 9 | 16 9½ | 22 | 19 1 | 35 | 17 10 | 48 | 17 4 | | 10 | 16 1 | 23 | 17 7½ | 36 | 14 11 | 49 | 19 2½ | | 11 | 15 2 | 24 | 15 6 | 37 | 11 11 | 50 | 15 6 | | 12 | 15 6 | 25 | 18 3 | 38 | 11 8 | 51 | 15 4½ | | 13 | 9 3 | 26 | 18 0½ | 39 | 15 0½ | 52 | 4 4 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 5. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Slow Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 3 4½ | 14 | 3 0 | 27 | 8 8 | 40 | 7 10 | | 2 | 5 10 | 15 | 7 2½ | 28 | 9 7 | 41 | 8 5 | | 3 | 7 1 | 16 | 7 5½ | 29 | 8 3 | 42 | 10 0 | | 4 | 7 6 | 17 | 9 7 | 30 | 7 3 | 43 | 10 0 | | 5 | 7 4 | 18 | 11 8 | 31 | 8 10 | 44 | 10 7½ | | 6 | 7 8 | 19 | 7 7 | 32 | 6 3½ | 45 | 7 7 | | 7 | 7 9 | 20 | 8 1 | 33 | 11 0½ | 46 | 8 1 | | 8 | 6 5½ | 21 | 5 6½ | 34 | 8 10 | 47 | 9 0 | | 9 | 8 7 | 22 | 10 0 | 35 | 9 7 | 48 | 9 0 | | 10 | 7 8 | 23 | 8 1 | 36 | 2 5½ | 49 | 11 1 | | 11 | 7 8 | 24 | 8 10 | 37 | -- | 50 | 8 10 | | 12 | 6 11½ | 25 | 8 9 | 38 | 3 9 | 51 | 10 9 | | 13 | 5 9½ | 26 | 8 11½ | 39 | 5 7 | 52 | 2 3 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 6. HAND FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Time Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | This worker was paid 18_s._ per week steadily throughout | | the year 1899. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 7. LEARNER. FOLDER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Up to week 8 receives Fixed Sum, afterwards | | Half Earnings at Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 2 0 | 14 | 3 1½ | 27 | 7 8 | 40 | 6 0½ | | 2 | 2 0 | 15 | 6 1 | 28 | 5 2½ | 41 | 7 3½ | | 3 | 2 0 | 16 | 5 8½ | 29 | 5 4½ | 42 | 6 0½ | | 4 | 2 0 | 17 | 6 9½ | 30 | 4 11 | 43 | 6 9½ | | 5 | 2 0 | 18 | 7 7 | 31 | 4 10 | 44 | 8 0½ | | 6 | 2 0 | 19 | 7 2 | 32 | 3 10 | 45 | 6 4 | | 7 | 2 0 | 20 | 6 4½ | 33 | 6 10½ | 46 | 6 4½ | | 8 | 2 0 | 21 | 3 9½ | 34 | 2 2 | 47 | 6 2 | | 9 | 6 6 | 22 | 6 9½ | 35 | -- | 48 | 6 0½ | | 10 | 7 7 | 23 | 6 11½ | 36 | 4 2 | 49 | 7 4 | | 11 | 5 9½ | 24 | 6 5½ | 37 | 6 2½ | 50 | 6 3½ | | 12 | 6 1½ | 25 | 5 9½ | 38 | 6 1½ | 51 | 7 1 | | 13 | 4 9 | 26 | 6 2 | 39 | 5 8 | 52 | 1 10 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 8. FOLDER AND GATHERER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 7 5½ | 14 | 5 9 | 27 | 4 3 | 40 | 14 0 | | 2 | 16 4 | 15 | 11 3½ | 28 | 9 1½ | 41 | 13 1 | | 3 | 10 1 | 16 | 21 2 | 29 | 13 5 | 42 | 16 7 | | 4 | 18 7 | 17 | 20 0 | 30 | 17 7 | 43 | 14 3 | | 5 | 14 9 | 18 | 12 8½ | 31 | 7 0 | 44 | 13 5 | | 6 | 11 8½ | 19 | 12 5 | 32 | 9 1 | 45 | 14 1 | | 7 | 13 9 | 20 | 27 11 | 33 | 15 4 | 46 | 19 10 | | 8 | 19 11½ | 21 | 15 7½ | 34 | 18 8 | 47 | 21 11 | | 9 | 13 3 | 22 | 15 11 | 35 | 17 9 | 48 | 18 2½ | | 10 | 4 3 | 23 | 9 5 | 36 | 6 11 | 49 | 11 1½ | | 11 | 14 6 | 24 | 14 5 | 37(a) | -- | 50 | 14 7½ | | 12 | 17 7 | 25 | 12 1 | 38 | 8 0 | 51 | 8 9½ | | 13 | 19 7½ | 26 | 14 3½ | 39 | 19 3½ | 52 | 8 6 | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | (a) Week missing from wage sheets. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | 9. HAND SEWER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | _Piece Rates--Slow Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | 1 | 3 3½ | 8 | 12 2½ | 15 | 8 10 | 22 | 10 5½ | | 2 | 5 10 | 9 | 10 8½ | 16 | -- | 23 | 7 5 | | 3 | 9 10 | 10 | 7 6 | 17 | 11 5 | 24 | 8 6½ | | 4 | 10 1 | 11 | 9 3 | 18 | 5 5 | 25 | -- | | 5 | 11 9 | 12 | 8 5 | 19 | 6 0½ | 26 | 5 5 | | 6 | 8 4 | 13 | 10 3 | 20 | 13 1½ | 27 | 1 7(a) | | 7 | 8 10½ | 14 | 6 11 | 21 | 9 9½ | | | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | (a) She left after this. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 10. HAND SEWER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Quick Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 5 10½ | 14 | 12 0 | 27 | -- | 40 | 10 8 | | 2 | -- | 15 | 13 4 | 28 | -- | 41 | 12 3½ | | 3 | 15 8½ | 16 | 20 6 | 29 | 14 3 | 42 | 10 3 | | 4 | 14 3 | 17 | 20 3 | 30 | 13 11 | 43 | 12 5 | | 5 | 16 11 | 18 | 4 11 | 31 | 10 6 | 44 | 14 3 | | 6 | 14 8½ | 19 | 6 5 | 32 | 6 8 | 45 | 13 11 | | 7 | 13 4 | 20 | 19 6 | 33 | 14 7 | 46 | 16 1 | | 8 | 18 6 | 21 | 14 6 | 34 | 18 10 | 47 | 16 10½ | | 9 | 16 4 | 22 | 14 3 | 35 | 19 4 | 48 | 13 8 | | 10 | 10 7 | 23 | 10 1½ | 36 | 17 4 | 49 | 15 7 | | 11 | 14 (a) | 24 | 12 3½ | 37(b) | -- | 50 | 13 6 | | 12 | 10 7½ | 25 | 16 1½ | 38 | 16 11 | 51 | 12 5 | | 13 | 16 3½ | 26 | 1 5½ | 39 | 14 7 | 52 | 4 10 | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | (a) 5-12 | | (b) Missing from wage sheets. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 11. MACHINE SEWER IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 17 3½ | 14 | 8 10 | 27 | 18 1 | 40 | 20 2½ | | 2 | 15 0 | 15 | 16 6 | 28 | 20 1 | 41 | 18 8 | | 3 | 15 7½ | 16 | 16 6 | 29 | 14 0 | 42 | 20 7½ | | 4 | 15 4 | 17 | 17 10 | 30 | -- | 43 | 17 11½ | | 5 | 15 7½ | 18 | 19 3 | 31 | 12 2 | 44 | 19 5½ | | 6 | 16 7 | 19 | 16 8 | 32 | 11 2½ | 45 | 17 10 | | 7 | 16 3 | 20 | 16 10 | 33 | 18 11 | 46 | 21 9 | | 8 | 16 9½ | 21 | 10 8 | 34 | 18 9 | 47 | 20 5 | | 9 | 18 5½ | 22 | 18 2½ | 35 | 15 2 | 48 | 23 3 | | 10 | 17 5½ | 23 | 16 9 | 36 | 14 0½ | 49 | 23 5 | | 11 | 19 9 | 24 | 13 6 | 37 | 22 2 | 50 | 18 4½ | | 12 | 16 3 | 25 | 10 4 | 38 | 18 7 | 51 | 20 1½ | | 13 | 13 0 | 26 | 17 8 | 39 | 18 1 | 52 | 6 5½ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 12. LEARNER. SEWING AND COLLATING IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Receives Half Earnings at Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | -- | 14 | 8 10½ | 27 | 2 6 | 40 | 3 3½ | | 2 | 4 2½ | 15 | 5 1 | 28 | 3 7 | 41 | 5 5½ | | 3 | 5 0½ | 16 | 5 5 | 29 | 4 8½ | 42 | 7 4 | | 4 | 5 1½ | 17 | 6 4 | 30 | 4 6½ | 43 | 7 2 | | 5 | 8 10 | 18 | 6 7½ | 31 | 7 2 | 44 | 8 5 | | 6 | 2 10 | 19 | 4 6 | 32 | 7 5 | 45 | 4 5 | | 7 | 4 6 | 20 | 4 10½ | 33 | 8 8 | 46 | 4 10½ | | 8 | 4 9½ | 21 | 5 4 | 34 | 7 7½ | 47 | 7 0½ | | 9 | 6 0½ | 22 | 5 8½ | 35 | 7 1½ | 48 | 6 8 | | 10 | 5 0½ | 23 | 4 0 | 36 | 7 1 | 49 | 10 9½ | | 11 | 5 7½ | 24 | 9 2½ | 37 | 7 6 | 50 | 6 4½ | | 12 | 5 0½ | 25 | 7 9 | 38 | 9 10½ | 51 | 5 2½ | | 13 | 6 6½ | 26 | 3 4 | 39 | 8 1 | 52 | 1 9½ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 13. FOLDING, SEWING, COLLATING IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Time Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 41 | 19 8 | 7 | 19 8 | 28 | 15 6 | 49 | 18 3 | | 42 | 19 4½ | 8 | 19 4 | 29 | 17 4 | 50 | 18 7½ | | 43 | 19 6 | 9 | 19 10 | 30 | 15 6 | 51 | 19 6 | | 44 | 19 8 | 10 | 19 4 | 31 | 15 6 | 52 | 11 2 | | 45 | 20 0 | 11 | 17 6 | 32 | 10 2 | | | | 46 | 19 10 | 12 | 18 10 | 33 | -- | 1900 | | | 47 | 19 6 | 13 | 14 0 | 34 | 14 2 | Week | | | 48 | 20 4 | 14 | 9 2 | 35 | 17 2 | 1 | 20 2 | | 49 | 19 10 | 15 | 16 6 | 36 | 17 4 | 2 | 18 5 | | 50 | 19 8 | 16 | 16 0 | 37 | 17 2 | 3 | 17 0 | | 51 | 19 8 | 17 | 16 4 | 38 | 17 6 | 4 | 16 8 | | 52 | 11 8 | 18 | 16 2 | 39 | 18 8 | 5 | 17 11 | | | | 19 | 16 4 | 40 | 18 8 | 6 | 17 6½ | | 1899 | | 20 | 16 4 | 41 | 19 2 | 7 | 18 1 | | Week | | 21 | 10 4 | 42 | 19 8 | 8 | 12 10½ | | 1 | 19 10 | 22 | 16 4 | 43 | 20 11 | 9 | 11 6 | | 2 | 19 10 | 23 | 15 6 | 44 | 20 11 | 10 | 13 4½ | | 3 | 19 8 | 24 | 15 4 | 45 | 20 9 | 11 | 15 9½ | | 4 | 19 8 | 25 | 16 4 | 46 | 19 4 | 12 | 15 9 | | 5 | 19 6 | 26 | 15 4 | 47 | 19 8 | 13 | 11 6 | | 6 | 19 10 | 27 | 12 6 | 48 | 19 6 | | | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 14. COLLATOR AND SEWER. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Quick Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 20 3 | 14 | 10 5 | 27 | 18 7 | 40 | 18 2 | | 2 | 18 9 | 15 | 15 3½ | 28 | 18 3½ | 41 | 18 3½ | | 3 | 18 9 | 16 | 18 2 | 29 | 15 4½ | 42 | 18 11 | | 4 | 18 4½ | 17 | 20 8½ | 30 | 16 4 | 43 | 21 3 | | 5 | 18 10 | 18 | 22 1 | 31 | 15 11 | 44 | 21 7½ | | 6 | 20 1 | 19 | 19 10½ | 32 | 9 10 | 45 | 18 10 | | 7 | 18 11 | 20 | 18 11 | 33 | 19 6 | 46 | 18 9 | | 8 | 19 1½ | 21 | 12 9 | 34 | 17 7½ | 47 | 18 0½ | | 9 | 21 6 | 22 | 20 0 | 35 | 16 0½ | 48 | 19 9½ | | 10 | 20 4 | 23 | 18 9 | 36 | 17 6½ | 49 | 22 4 | | 11 | 19 10½ | 24 | 17 5 | 37 | 18 0 | 50 | 19 5 | | 12 | 19 1½ | 25 | 17 11 | 38 | 17 10 | 51 | 19 6 | | 13 | 14 4 | 26 | 19 1½ | 39 | 17 4 | 52 | 6 3½ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | 15. PLATE HAND IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | _Time Rates, 13_s._ for 54 hours till October, then 14_s._ | | Overtime, 3_d._ an hour._ | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 12 8 | 14 | 7 11 | 27 | 11 4 | 40 | 13 7½ | | 2 | 12 5 | 15 | 13 9 | 28 | 12 8 | 41 | 12 8 | | 3 | 12 8 | 16 | 14 4½ | 29 | 13 7½ | 42 | 14 10½ | | 4 | 12 8 | 17 | 13 6 | 30 | 13 0 | 43 | 13 9 | | 5 | 12 10½ | 18 | 13 0 | 31 | 13 0 | 44 | 13 10½ | | 6 | 12 6½ | 19 | 13 0 | 32 | 8 2 | 45 | 13 7½ | | 7 | 12 9 | 20 | 14 4½ | 33 | 12 9½ | 46 | 14 7½ | | 8 | 12 10½ | 21 | 9 1½ | 34 | 13 0 | 47 | 18 6 | | 9 | 12 10½ | 22 | 14 6 | 35 | 13 6 | 48 | 15 3 | | 10 | 13 0 | 23 | 10 9 | 36 | -- | 49 | 13 6 | | 11 | 13 0 | 24 | 12 10½ | 37(a) | -- | 50 | 13 6 | | 12 | 12 9 | 25 | 13 4½ | 38 | 13 0 | 51 | 13 10½ | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | (a) Missing from wage sheets. +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 16. PLATE HAND IN BOOKBINDING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | _Time Rates_, 16_s._ _for 54 hours. Overtime_, 3½_d._ _per | | hour for first 3 hours_, 4_d._ _per hour afterwards._ | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 14 8 | 14 | 9 10 | 27 | 13 9½ | 40 | 15 8 | | 2 | 14 7 | 15 | 16 5½ | 28 | 15 5 | 41 | 15 8½ | | 3 | 14 8 | 16 | 18 0½ | 29 | 15 8½ | 42 | 15 7 | | 4 | 15 1½ | 17 | 17 0½ | 30 | 15 5 | 43 | 15 10½ | | 5 | 15 5 | 18 | 15 7 | 31 | 15 7 | 44 | 16 2 | | 6 | 14 10 | 19 | 15 0 | 32 | 10 3½ | 45 | 15 3 | | 7 | 14 8 | 20 | 19 2½ | 33 | 15 7 | 46 | 17 2½ | | 8 | 13 4½ | 21 | 10 11 | 34 | 16 0 | 47 | 18 10½ | | 9 | 15 1½ | 22 | 17 4½ | 35 | 16 10½ | 48 | 16 10½ | | 10 | 14 3½ | 23 | 15 7 | 36 | 18 10½ | 49 | 15 10½ | | 11 | 14 8½ | 24 | 15 5 | 37(a) | -- | 50 | 15 7 | | 12 | 14 8½ | 25 | 16 10½ | 38 | 16 3½ | 51 | 15 5 | | 13 | 15 7 | 26 | 15 10½ | 39 | 16 3½ | 52 | 9 11 | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ | (a) Missing from wage sheets. | +------+--------+------+--------+-------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 17. LAYER-ON OF GOLD. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 22 0 | 14 | 8 4 | 27 | 9 7½ | 40 | 20 11½ | | 2 | 19 3 | 15 | 18 1 | 28 | 19 11 | 41 | 20 5 | | 3 | 17 8 | 16 | 15 8 | 29 | 7 6½ | 42 | 16 11½ | | 4 | 17 6 | 17 | 10 0 | 30 | 9 9 | 43 | 17 10½ | | 5 | 19 11 | 18 | 1 4 | 31 | 19 5 | 44 | 15 1½ | | 6 | 17 10½ | 19 | -- | 32 | 16 9½ | 45 | 13 9 | | 7 | 15 10 | 20 | -- | 33 | 18 8 | 46 | 15 1½ | | 8 | 11 8 | 21 | -- | 34 | 24 6½ | 47 | 11 7½ | | 9 | 22 0 | 22 | 11 3½ | 35 | 18 7 | 48 | 18 8 | | 10 | 18 8 | 23 | 20 11 | 36 | 5 3½ | 49 | 14 10 | | 11 | 22 1 | 24 | 16 6 | 37 | 18 2 | 50 | 9 7½ | | 12 | 19 3 | 25 | 16 9½ | 38 | 26 3 | 51 | 11 8 | | 13 | 15 10 | 26 | 12 4½ | 39 | 15 1 | 52 | 4 1½ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 18. BINDING DEPARTMENT IN PRINTING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Quick Worker._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1898 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 18 1 | 14 | 16 8 | 27 | 21 1 | 40 | 19 5 | | 2 | 17 5 | 15 | 15 7 | 28 | 21 11 | 41 | 14 7 | | 3 | 17 3 | 16 | 21 0 | 29 | 25 1 | 42 | 13 5 | | 4 | 12 3 | 17 | 18 11 | 30 | 24 5 | 43 | 19 5 | | 5 | 14 4 | 18 | 16 9 | 31 | -- | 44 | 17 1 | | 6 | 19 8 | 19 | 21 1 | 32 | -- | 45 | 13 4 | | 7 | 17 11 | 20 | 21 3 | 33 | 23 7 | 46 | 17 8 | | 8 | 18 9 | 21 | 21 5 | 34 | 24 1 | 47 | 18 0 | | 9 | 20 1 | 22 | 17 8 | 35 | 25 1 | 48 | 18 5 | | 10 | 18 11 | 23 | 23 3 | 36 | 24 2 | 49 | 20 10 | | 11 | 20 7 | 24 | 27 2 | 37 | 21 5 | 50 | 19 8 | | 12 | 20 10 | 25 | 26 8 | 38 | 21 9 | 51 | 18 1 | | 13 | 20 2 | 26 | 23 11 | 39 | 19 11 | 52 | 12 5 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 19. BINDING DEPARTMENT IN PRINTING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Time Worker at_ 16_s._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 1 | 14 5 | 14 | 12 5 | 27 | 16 0 | 40 | 15 7 | | 2 | 17 4 | 15 | 13 11 | 28 | 13 4 | 41 | 14 7 | | 3 | 15 10 | 16 | 16 11 | 29 | 14 0 | 42 | 15 7 | | 4 | 15 3 | 17 | 15 7 | 30 | 18 3 | 43 | 15 5 | | 5 | 16 0 | 18 | 16 3 | 31 | 16 3 | 44 | 15 7 | | 6 | 2 5 | 19 | 15 7 | 32 | -- | 45 | 15 9 | | 7 | -- | 20 | 15 5 | 33 | 15 5 | 46 | 15 9 | | 8 | 14 11 | 21 | 10 1 | 34 | 15 5 | 47 | 16 8 | | 9 | 15 2 | 22 | 16 0 | 35 | 14 3 | 48 | 17 11 | | 10 | 15 1 | 23 | 16 0 | 36 | 16 6 | 49 | 16 8 | | 11 | 14 10 | 24 | 16 8 | 37 | 15 1 | 50 | 17 11 | | 12 | 15 4 | 25 | 17 1 | 38 | -- | 51 | 16 3 | | 13 | 11 0 | 26 | 15 7 | 39 | 10 1 | 52 | 10 2 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+-------+------+--------+------+----------+------+-------+ | 20. QUARTERLY AVERAGES OF A TIME WORKER--PRINTERS' FOLDING | | AND SEWING, &c. | +------+-------+------+---------+------+---------+------+-------+ | | s. d. | | s. d. | | s. d. | | s. d. | | 1886 | 14 1 | 1890 | 14 4 | 1893 | 13 10 | 1896 | 15 10 | | | | " | 14 8 | " | 16 0 | | | | 1887 | 15 3 | " | 11 0 | | | 1897 | 17 4 | | " | 14 4 | " | 4 5(a) | 1894 | 16 0 | " | 16 0 | | " | 14 1 | | | " | 15 8 | " | 16 7 | | " | 14 3 | 1891 | 14 4 | " | 17 3 | " | 16 4 | | | | " | 15 3 | " | 16 11 | | | | 1888 | 15 6 | " | 14 11 | | | 1898 | 16 6 | | " | 14 8 | " | 16 11 | 1895 | 16 10 | " | 15 11 | | " | 13 11 | | | " | 15 6 | " | 15 9 | | " | 14 3 | 1892 | 15 0 | " | 10 0(b) | " | 19 3 | | | | " | 15 2 | " | 16 0 | | | | 1889 | 15 11 | " | 15 7 | | | 1899 | 19 10 | | " | 14 0 | " | 16 6 | 1896 | 18 6 | " | 18 9 | | " | 14 2 | | | " | 15 0 | " | 18 8 | | " | 15 9 | 1893 | 15 4 | " | 17 8 | " | 18 10 | | | | " | 15 8 | | | | | +------+-------+------+---------+------+---------+------+-------+ | (a) Absent 9 weeks. | | (b) Absent 4 weeks. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+---------+------+-------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 21. PIECE HAND IN BINDING DEPARTMENT OF PRINTERS AND | | STATIONERS. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1895 | | 1896 | | 1897 | | 1897 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 44 | 15 2 | 21 | 16 1 | 1 | 13 10 | 33 | -- | | 45 | 18 0½ | 22 | 9 10½ | 2 | 14 1½ | 34 | -- | | 46 | 14 6½ | 23 | 13 0 | 3 | 17 3½ | 35 | 14 4 | | 47 | 18 5½ | 24 | 16 1 | 4 | 17 1½ | 36 | 14 1½ | | 48 | 17 4 | 25 | 11 8½ | 5 | 15 4 | 37 | 17 8½ | | 49 | 16 4½ | 26 | 15 9½ | 6 | 11 9 | 38 | 18 0½ | | 50 | 13 9 | 27 | 13 7 | 7 | 16 2½ | 39 | 14 7 | | 51 | 15 5½ | 28 | 16 1½ | 8 | 18 7½ | 40 | 14 8 | | 52 | 7 9 | 29 | 6 5½ | 9 | 15 4½ | 41 | 16 0 | | | | 30 | 17 6 | 10 | 20 1½ | 42 | 16 7½ | | 1896 | | 31 | 19 4 | 11 | 15 2½ | 43 | 16 6½ | | Week | s. d. | 32 | 13 3½ | 12 | 16 0½ | 44 | 18 2 | | 1 | 7 2½ | 33 | -- | 13 | 15 5 | 45 | 20 5½ | | 2 | 14 2 | 34 | -- | 14 | 16 4½ | 46 | 19 11 | | 3 | 12 9½ | 35 | 15 4 | 15 | 15 0½ | 47 | 19 0½ | | 4 | 13 0½ | 36 | 18 2½ | 16 | 15 5 | 48 | 17 2½ | | 5 | 19 0½ | 37 | 16 9 | 17 | 12 8½ | 49 | 17 9½ | | 6 | 18 1 | 38 | 17 0 | 18 | 17 6 | 50 | 20 1 | | 7 | 14 5 | 39 | 17 0 | 19 | 18 8 | 51 | 20 6½ | | 8 | 14 2½ | 40 | 15 10 | 20 | 19 1 | 52 | 20 2 | | 9 | 14 10 | 41 | 16 10 | 21 | 18 1 | | | | 10 | 17 5 | 42 | 19 2 | 22 | 18 4½ | 1898 | | | 11 | 17 5 | 43 | 15 4½ | 23 | 14 2 | Week | s. d. | | 12 | 13 7½ | 44 | 16 1½ | 24 | 9 0½ | 1 | -- | | 13 | 17 1½ | 45 | 16 4 | 25 | 7 2 | 2 | -- | | 14 | 14 0½ | 46 | 18 2 | 26 | 13 9 | 3 | -- | | 15 | 11 2½ | 47 | 17 4½ | 27 | 15 6 | 4 | -- | | 16 | 15 2 | 48 | 14 0½ | 28 | 11 11 | 5 | -- | | 17 | 17 3 | 49 | 14 2 | 29 | 15 1½ | 6 | -- | | 18 | 17 1 | 50 | 15 2½ | 30 | 18 8½ | 7 | -- | | 19 | 19 4½ | 51 | 15 4 | 31 | 14 2 | 8 | -- | | 20 | 11 9½ | 52 | 13 0 | 32 | 10 5 | 9 | -- | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1899 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | | 10 | -- | 39 | 14 3 | 12 | 17 2 | 41 | 15 4 | | 11 | -- | 40 | 13 9½ | 13 | 15 5 | 42 | 14 7½ | | 12 | -- | 41 | 14 5½ | 14 | 11 2½ | 43 | 19 10½ | | 13 | -- | 42 | 14 9 | 15 | 15 8½ | 44 | 18 9 | | 14 | 17 2½ | 43 | 16 9 | 16 | 17 9 | 45 | 19 1 | | 15 | 16 0½ | 44 | 14 11 | 17 | 18 3 | 46 | 19 6 | | 16 | 12 3½ | 45 | 19 1 | 18 | 18 6 | 47 | 21 2 | | 17 | 13 1½ | 46 | 18 2 | 19 | 18 6 | 48 | 18 6 | | 18 | 14 0½ | 47 | 20 3½ | 20 | 16 1 | 49 | 16 9½ | | 19 | 18 8½ | 48 | 20 3 | 21 | 12 7 | 50 | 18 0½ | | 20 | 20 3½ | 49 | 20 6 | 22 | 16 5 | 51 | 19 9 | | 21 | 20 3½ | 50 | 18 2 | 23 | 18 2 | 52 | 11 10½ | | 22 | 20 3½ | 51 | 16 1½ | 24 | 11 10½ | | | | 23 | 16 6 | 52 | 18 1 | 25 | 15 6 | 1900 | | | 24 | 17 9 | 53 | 10 2 | 26 | 20 2 | Week | s. d. | | 25 | 19 1 | | | 27 | 15 8½ | 1 | 17 9½ | | 26 | 20 3½ | 1899 | | 28 | 15 11 | 2 | 19 2½ | | 27 | 20 4½ | Week | s. d. | 29 | 11 1½ | 3 | 18 3 | | 28 | 15 8 | 1 | 20 1½ | 30 | 14 9 | 4 | 18 5 | | 29 | 14 1 | 2 | 18 1 | 31 | 17 1½ | 5 | 16 9½ | | 30 | 16 5½ | 3 | 18 7½ | 32 | 16 5 | 6 | 20 5 | | 31 | 20 3 | 4 | 19 5 | 33 | -- | 7 | 20 1 | | 32 | 14 8½ | 5 | 20 2 | 34 | -- | 8 | 19 0 | | 33 | -- | 6 | 16 7 | 35 | 17 9½ | 9 | 19 1½ | | 34 | -- | 7 | 18 4 | 36 | 16 4 | 10 | 19 5½ | | 35 | 15 10½ | 8 | 18 5½ | 37 | 17 10 | 11 | 20 5 | | 36 | 19 0½ | 9 | 17 6 | 38 | 18 0 | 12 | 19 2 | | 37 | 14 6 | 10 | 14 6 | 39 | 20 0 | 13 | 16 5½ | | 38 | 15 3 | 11 | 16 2½ | 40 | 17 2 | 14 | 20 2 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 22. HAND FOLDER AND SEWER IN PRINTING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | | Half- | | Half- | | Full- | | Full- | | | pay | | pay | | pay | | pay | | 1895 | Earner | 1895 | Earner | 1895 | Earner | 1896 | Earner | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 7 | 2 5½ | 25 | 3 9½ | 42 | 16 3 | 5 | 12 1 | | 8 | 3 5½ | 26 | 5 0½ | 43 | 14 3 | 6 | 17 8 | | 9 | 3 9 | 27 | 7 4 | 44 | 12 3½ | 7 | 10 0 | | 10 | 4 10 | 28 | 2 9½ | 45 | 14 4 | 8 | 10 2 | | 11 | 3 9 | 29 | 3 5½ | 46 | 15 4 | 9 | 14 5 | | 12 | 5 4½ | 30 | 5 8½ | 47 | 14 4 | 10 | 14 3 | | 13 | 6 8 | 31 | 6 5 | 48 | 16 5 | 11 | 8 3 | | 14 | 5 8 | 32 | 3 3½ | 49 | 15 4 | 12 | 11 8½ | | 15 | 2 4 | 33 | 2 0 | 50 | 12 6½ | 13 | 10 1 | | 16 | 2 7 | 34 | 3 9½ | 51 | 13 9 | 14 | 12 7 | | 17 | 5 11 | 35 | 5 1 | 52 | 8 1 | 15 | 5 6 | | 18 | 6 11½ | 36 | 7 6 | | | 16 | 9 0 | | 19 | 6 7½ | 37 | 3 3 | 1896 | | 17 | 14 7 | | 20 | 3 4 | 38 | 3 3½ | Week | s. d. | 18 | 14 8 | | 21 | 2 8½ | 39 | 5 10 | 1 | 12 4 | 19 | 17 10 | | 22 | 5 6 | 40 | 6 0 | 2 | 9 8 | 20 | 18 6 | | 23 | 4 11½ | 41 | 5 3 | 3 | 12 7 | 21 | 7 3 | | 24 | 6 6½ | | | 4 | 9 8 | 22 | 9 11 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | | Full- | | Full- | | Full- | | Full- | | | pay | | pay | | pay | | pay | | 1896 | Earner | 1897 | Earner | 1898 | Earner | 1899 | Earner | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 23 | 15 1½ | 21 | 14 6½ | 18 | 16 10½ | 15 | 17 9 | | 24 | 10 4 | 22 | 16 3 | 19 | 17 9½ | 16 | 18 3 | | 25 | 13 8 | 23 | 19 11 | 20 | 15 10 | 17 | 14 5 | | 26 | 10 0½ | 24 | 15 10 | 21 | 11 6½ | 18 | 18 3 | | 27 | 9 4 | 25 | 14 2½ | 22 | 15 6 | 19 | 19 5 | | 28 | 12 5 | 26 | 13 2 | 23 | 10 2 | 20 | 15 2 | | 29 | 5 8 | 27 | 16 1½ | 24 | 8 11 | 21 | 5 5½ | | 30 | 7 0 | 28 | 12 10 | 25 | 12 5½ | 22 | 12 9 | | 31 | 11 2 | 29 | 9 2 | 26 | 18 0 | 23 | 19 11 | | 32 | 13 9 | 30 | 9 9½ | 27 | 17 4½ | 24 | 22 2½ | | 33 | 18 9½ | 31 | 6 4 | 28 | 8 6 | 25 | 18 4 | | 34 | 9 0 | 32 | 12 9 | 29 | 15 8½ | 26 | 20 7 | | 35 | 9 8 | 33 | -- | 30 | 9 7 | 27 | 18 1½ | | 36 | 13 3 | 34 | -- | 31 | 15 11 | 28 | 19 9½ | | 37 | 11 2½ | 35 | -- | 32 | 17 10½ | 29 | 17 1 | | 38 | 11 8 | 36 | 13 5½ | 33 | -- | 30 | 20 0 | | 39 | -- | 37 | 8 0 | 34 | -- | 31 | 16 6 | | 40 | 4 5 | 38 | 6 8 | 35 | 15 5½ | 32 | 13 10 | | 41 | 18 3½ | 39 | 7 0 | 36 | 19 3 | 33 | 22 8 | | 42 | 10 11½ | 40 | 11 2½ | 37 | 18 4 | 34 | 9 5½ | | 43 | 10 1 | 41 | 15 2 | 38 | 18 7 | 35 | -- | | 44 | 16 6½ | 42 | 9 9 | 39 | 19 3 | 36 | 14 0½ | | 45 | 14 0 | 43 | 10 4 | 40 | 23 5 | 37 | 20 3½ | | 46 | 14 8 | 44 | 10 2½ | 41 | 18 8½ | 38 | 19 2 | | 47 | 3 6½ | 45 | 16 4½ | 42 | 18 5 | 39 | 15 9 | | 48 | 12 4 | 46 | 16 10½ | 43 | 12 0 | 40 | 18 6 | | 49 | 12 3½ | 47 | 15 10 | 44 | 16 9 | 41 | 20 0½ | | 50 | 13 5 | 48 | 17 6 | 45 | 20 3 | 42 | 18 11 | | 51 | 13 10 | 49 | 9 1½ | 46 | 18 5 | 43 | 17 2 | | 52 | 7 7 | 50 | 15 8 | 47 | 15 11½ | 44 | 20 5 | | | | 51 | 11 6 | 48 | 17 9½ | 45 | 18 4 | | 1897 | | 52 | 8 8½ | 49 | 19 0 | 46 | 19 7½ | | Week | s. d. | 53 | 7 8 | 50 | 18 9½ | 47 | 18 5 | | 1 | 10 3 | | | 51 | 14 5 | 48 | 19 9 | | 2 | 14 1 | 1898 | | 52 | 12 3 | 49 | 20 0 | | 3 | 7 4½ | Week | s. d. | | | 50 | 19 3½ | | 4 | 6 4½ | 1 | 17 11 | 1899 | | 51 | 16 6 | | 5 | 10 6 | 2 | 5 0 | Week | s. d. | 52 | 9 6½ | | 6 | 15 4 | 3 | 7 6 | 1 | 19 1½ | | | | 7 | 16 9 | 4 | 10 5½ | 2 | 19 10 | 1900 | | | 8 | 15 2 | 5 | 16 7 | 3 | 17 11½ | Week | s. d. | | 9 | 14 7 | 6 | 12 8 | 4 | 8 8 | 1 | 14 10 | | 10 | 14 7 | 7 | 11 7 | 5 | 15 2 | 2 | 19 0½ | | 11 | 15 3 | 8 | 12 11 | 6 | 19 8½ | 3 | 20 9½ | | 12 | 18 0 | 9 | 16 0 | 7 | 16 9 | 4 | 19 6½ | | 13 | 12 0 | 10 | 17 5 | 8 | 8 9 | 5 | 18 6 | | 14 | 12 9½ | 11 | 18 0 | 9 | 11 7½ | 6 | 22 4 | | 15 | 15 1 | 12 | 16 2 | 10 | 17 7 | 7 | 21 7 | | 16 | 8 5 | 13 | 13 3½ | 11 | 17 5 | 8 | 22 0 | | 17 | 9 7 | 14 | 16 8 | 12 | 15 0½ | 9 | 18 9 | | 18 | 11 4 | 15 | 9 10 | 13 | 12 9 | 10 | 17 5½ | | 19 | 18 11½ | 16 | -- | 14 | 14 0 | 11 | 15 3 | | 20 | 10 3 | 17 | 13 3½ | | | | | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 23. FOLDER AND SEWER IN BINDING DEPARTMENT OF PRINTING HOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates--Slow Hand._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 19 | 6 8 | 33 | 6 2 | 47 | 3 3 | 6 | 6 2 | | 20 | 7 11 | 34 | 9 1 | 48 | 8 9 | 7 | 5 9 | | 21 | 7 11 | 35 | 8 3 | 49 | 8 3 | 8 | 7 11 | | 22 | 7 6 | 36 | 8 0 | 50 | 10 9 | 9 | 8 3 | | 23 | 8 7 | 37 | 8 10 | 51 | 11 8 | 10 | 7 10 | | 24 | 8 10 | 38 | 8 3 | 52 | 4 10 | 11 | 11 8 | | 25 | 6 0 | 39 | 8 11 | | | 12 | 10 11 | | 26 | 7 1 | 40 | 7 11 | 1899 | | 13 | 7 0 | | 27 | 8 1 | 41 | 5 1 | Week | s. d. | 14 | 4 2 | | 28 | 6 6 | 42 | 4 6 | 1 | 7 9 | 15 | 7 10 | | 29 | 8 2 | 43 | 2 10 | 2 | 8 4 | 16 | 7 6 | | 30 | 7 5 | 44 | 6 2 | 3 | 5 11 | 17 | 9 11 | | 31 | 5 9 | 45 | 6 0 | 4 | 8 6 | 18 | 4 5 | | 32 | 9 5 | 46 | 1 10 | 5 | 8 1 | | | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 24. HAND FOLDER IN PRINTERS' WAREHOUSE. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Piece Rates._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d .| Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 19 1 | 14 | 15 10 | 27 | 29 0 | 40 | 14 7 | | 2 | 22 2 | 15 | 16 4 | 28 | 26 4 | 41 | 20 1 | | 3 | 20 2 | 16 | 20 7 | 29 | 19 8 | 42 | 18 11 | | 4 | 17 10 | 17 | 22 1 | 30 | 29 2 | 43 | 21 7 | | 5 | 22 6 | 18 | 23 4 | 31 | 18 10 | 44 | 22 1 | | 6 | 19 0 | 19 | 29 9 | 32 | 19 7 | 45 | 20 2 | | 7 | 22 4 | 20 | 27 2 | 33 | 22 3 | 46 | 18 7 | | 8 | 21 9 | 21 | 27 4 | 34 | 19 6 | 47 | 18 5 | | 9 | 19 6 | 22 | 20 11 | 35 | 19 11 | 48 | 21 3 | | 10 | 20 10 | 23 | 27 6 | 36 | 19 4 | 49 | 24 9 | | 11 | 19 5 | 24 | 20 1 | 37 | 19 10 | 50 | 27 0 | | 12 | 19 6 | 25 | 21 7 | 38 | 20 5 | 51 | 21 7 | | 13 | 23 10 | 26 | 24 1 | 39 | -- | 52 | 15 5 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 25. ENVELOPE PACKER. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | _Time Work_, 14_s._ | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1898 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | Week | s. d. | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ | 1 | 13 8 | 14 | 9 10 | 27 | 13 5 | 40 | 13 0 | | 2 | 13 8 | 15 | 11 4 | 28 | 13 8 | 41 | 14 0 | | 3 | 13 8 | 16 | 13 8 | 29 | 12 5 | 42 | 14 0 | | 4 | 13 2 | 17 | 13 9 | 30 | 14 6 | 43 | 14 0 | | 5 | 13 9 | 18 | 13 9 | 31 | 11 6 | 44 | 13 10 | | 6 | 13 8 | 19 | 13 10 | 32 | 13 10 | 45 | 13 10 | | 7 | 13 8 | 20 | 13 10 | 33 | 13 9 | 46 | 14 0 | | 8 | 13 8 | 21 | 11 2 | 34 | 13 3 | 47 | 14 0 | | 9 | 13 9 | 22 | 11 4 | 35 | 13 10 | 48 | 13 10 | | 10 | 13 9 | 23 | 13 11 | 36 | 14 0 | 49 | 13 9 | | 11 | 13 8 | 24 | 13 9 | 37 | 14 0 | 50 | 13 9 | | 12 | 13 9 | 25 | 12 5 | 38 | 14 0 | 51 | 13 9 | | 13 | 13 11 | 26 | 13 9 | 39 | 9 1 | 52 | 8 9 | +------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+------+--------+ +------+-------------+------+-------------+------+-------------+ | 26. MACHINE RULER. | +------+-------------+------+-------------+------+-------------+ | The figures in brackets to the left of the wage give | | the nominal time wage. | +------+-------------+------+-------------+------+-------------+ | 1897 | | 1898 | | 1899 | | | Week | s. d. s. d. | Week | s. d. s. d. | Week | s. d. s. d. | | 1 | (4 6) 3 4 | 1 | (6 6) 5 10 | 1 | (7 6) 1 2 | | 2 | " 4 9 | 2 | " 6 5 | 2 | " 6 8 | | 3 | " 4 6 | 3 | " 6 4 | 3 | " 6 0 | | 4 | " 4 6 | 4 | (7 0) 6 10 | 4 | " 7 3 | | 5 | " 4 6 | 5 | " 6 11 | 5 | " 7 5 | | 6 | (5 0) 5 0 | 6 | " 7 0 | 6 | " 7 6 | | 7 | " 4 11 | 7 | " 6 9 | 7 | " 6 2 | | 8 | " 5 0 | 8 | " 7 0 | 8 | " 7 8 | | 9 | " 3 4 | 9 | " 6 10 | 9 | " 7 6 | | 10 | (5 6) 5 6 | 10 | " 5 1 | 10 | " 6 11 | | 11 | " 5 6 | 11 | " 6 11 | 11 | " 7 5 | | 12 | " 5 6 | 12 | " 6 10 | 12 | " 7 6 | | 13 | " 5 6 | 13 | " 6 11 | 13 | " 5 5 | | 14 | " 5 6 | 14 | " 5 1 | 14 | " 6 1 | | 15 | " 5 6 | 15 | " 4 2 | 15 | " 7 9 | | 16 | " 4 0 | 16 | " 6 11 | 16 | " 7 10 | | 17 | " 4 7 | 17 | " 6 10 | 17 | " 7 9 | | 18 | " 5 0 | 18 | " 6 10 | 18 | " 7 7 | | 19 | " 5 5 | 19 | (7 6) 7 5 | 19 | " 7 10 | | 20 | " 5 6 | 20 | " 7 4 | 20 | " 7 9 | | 21 | " 5 5 | 21 | " 7 5 | 21 | " 6 0 | | 22 | " 5 4 | 22 | " 5 11 | 22 | " 7 4 | | 23 | " 5 5 | 23 | " 7 11 | 23 | " 7 5 | | 24 | " 4 8 | 24 | " 8 0 | 24 | " 7 5 | | 25 | " 5 5 | 25 | " 7 4 | 25 | " 7 3 | | 26 | " 4 6 | 26 | " 7 6 | 26 | " 5 7 | | 27 | (6 0) 5 11 | 27 | " 7 3 | 27 | " 6 6 | | 28 | " 6 0 | 28 | " 5 10 | 28 | (8 0) 6 5 | | 29 | " 5 11 | 29 | " 7 5 | 29 | " 7 10 | | 30 | " 5 11 | 30 | " 7 9 | 30 | " 7 11 | | 31 | " 5 10 | 31 | " 5 1 | 31 | " - -- | | 32 | " 3 11 | 32 | " 6 6 | 32 | " 6 0 | | 33 | " 4 10 | 33 | " 7 2 | 33 | " 7 10 | | 34 | " 5 5 | 34 | " 7 6 | 34 | " 7 11 | | 35 | " 5 2 | 35 | " 7 6 | 35 | " 8 3 | | 36 | " 5 10 | 36 | " 7 6 | 36 | " 7 9 | | 37 | " 5 11 | 37 | " 7 5 | 37 | " 7 10 | | 38 | " 5 10 | 38 | " 6 8 | 38 | " 7 10 | | 39 | " 6 0 | 39 | " 5 8 | 39 | " 7 8 | | 40 | " 5 10 | 40 | " 7 5 | 40 | " 7 9 | | 41 | " 5 11 | 41 | " 7 4 | 41 | " 7 9 | | 42 | " 6 0 | 42 | " 7 5 | 42 | " 8 2 | | 43 | " 5 10 | 43 | " 7 6 | 43 | " 8 0 | | 44 | " 5 11 | 44 | " 6 10 | 44 | " 8 1 | | 45 | (6 6) 6 4 | 45 | " 7 3 | 45 | " 7 11 | | 46 | " 6 2 | 46 | " 6 9 | 46 | " 8 0 | | 47 | " 6 5 | 47 | " 7 5 | 47 | " 8 2 | | 48 | " 6 5 | 48 | " 6 8 | 48 | " 8 5 | | 49 | " 6 4 | 49 | " 7 4 | 49 | " 8 3 | | 50 | " 6 4 | 50 | " 7 4 | 50 | " 8 1 | | 51 | " 6 3 | 51 | " 7 6 | 51 | " 8 2 | | 52 | " 4 0 | 52 | " 4 6 | 52 | " 5 0 | +------+-------------+------+-------------+------+-------------+ APPENDIX VI. In view of the importance of the preservation of authentic wages figures we reprint the Appendix published in 1849 by Mr. Dunning to his "Reply to a Letter from the Committee of the Southwark Auxiliary Bible Society, &c.," as under:-- No. I. +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | EARNINGS ON THE PREMISES. | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | _Piece Workers._ | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | 1845. | Sept. 6th. | Sept 13th. | Oct. 11th. | | | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Ashford | 0 6 8 | 0 6 8½ | 0 6 4 | | Aggersbury | -- | -- | 0 7 10 | | Blichenden | 0 7 5¾ | 0 7 1½ | 0 7 7 | | Burkitt, | 0 5 2¾ | 0 4 3¾ | 0 4 10½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Brown, | 0 6 9 | 0 7 1 | 0 6 5¼ | | M. A. | | | | | Berridge | -- | -- | 0 5 7¼ | | Bozankae | 0 1 8½ | 0 4 8 | 0 4 0½ | | Betherston | 0 0 9½ | -- | -- | | Carpenter, | 0 4 5¾ | -- | 0 4 3½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Carpenter, | 0 7 0 | 0 7 9¾ | 0 6 6¾ | | M. P. | | | | | Cooper, | 0 5 4½ | 0 5 0½ | 0 4 8 | | Ann | | | | | Diggles | 0 7 4¾ | 0 7 9½ | 0 7 3 | | Day, Mary | 0 7 2 | 0 6 11½ | 0 7 3¾ | | Elliott, | 0 4 9 | -- | -- | | E. | | | | | Facey | 0 1 7½ | 0 4 3¼ | 0 6 4½ | | Hart, E. | -- | 0 6 2 | 0 5 0½ | | Joyce, | 0 7 7 | 0 7 8¼ | -- | | M. A. | | | | | Leggatt, | -- | -- | 0 3 5½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Pepper | 0 7 10¼ | 0 8 5½ | 0 8 11¼ | | Rogers, E. | 0 6 6½ | 0 6 4½ | 0 6 7¼ | | Richardson | 0 8 1¼ | 0 7 8¼ | 0 8 4 | | Spencer | -- | -- | 0 4 10 | | Satchell, | 0 6 0½ | 0 5 11¼ | 0 5 9¼ | | A. E. | | | | | Such, E. | -- | -- | 0 6 10 | | Smith, | 0 3 1½ | 0 7 8½ | -- | | Mrs. | | | | | Speak, | 0 6 2½ | 0 7 10¾ | 0 8 5¼ | | Mrs. | | | | | Touse, | 0 4 10 | 0 5 0¾ | 0 4 9½ | | M. A. | | | | | Wilkins, | 0 12 2 | 0 11 0¼ | 0 12 3¼ | | A. | | | | | Wilkins, | 0 7 0½ | 0 7 9¾ | 0 8 11¼ | | E. | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | | £6 15 11 | £7 3 7 | £8 3 5 | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | _Time Workers._ | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | 1845. | Sept. 6th. | Sept. 13th. | Oct. 11th. | | | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Osborne, | 0 11 6 | 0 10 6 | 0 10 0 | | C. (10_s._ | | | | | per week) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Burrows, | 0 12 0 | 0 12 11½ | 0 12 0 | | E. (12_s._ | | | | | per week) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Aurnett | 0 14 2 | 0 12 7 | 0 11 10 | | (12_s._ | | | | | per week) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Holloway | 0 4 4 | 0 4 0 | 0 3 10 | | (learner) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Dew (7_s._ | 0 8 1½ | 0 7 9½ | 0 7 7 | | 6_d._ | | | | | per week) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Bocking | 0 3 0 | 0 3 0 | 0 3 0 | | (learner) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Routledge | 0 9 4 | -- | -- | | (4 days' | | | | | work) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Emery, A. | -- | 0 1 0 | 0 1 0 | | (learner) | | | | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Mills. M. | -- | -- | 0 10 0 | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | | £3 2 5½ | £2 11 10 | £2 19 3 | +------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | WOMEN WHO WORKED AT THEIR OWN HOMES. | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | 1845. | Sept 6th. | Sept. 13th. | Oct. 11th. | | | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Atchiller, | 0 8 1 | -- | -- | | S. | | | | | Anstead, | -- | 0 8 1 | 0 7 8 | | Mrs. | | | | | Aldred | -- | -- | 0 7 1 | | Bruce, C. | 0 4 11¼ | -- | 0 4 3½ | | Bullmore | 0 5 9 | 0 3 7¼ | 0 3 8½ | | Birch, | 0 8 6½ | 0 8 9 | 0 16 7¾ | | Mrs.(a) | | | | | Bell, Mrs. | -- | -- | 0 2 2 | | Burton, S. | -- | -- | 0 6 4¼ | | Clarke, M. | -- | -- | 0 4 8½ | | Cauline, | 0 10 3¾ | 0 7 10 | 0 11 0½ | | E. | | | | | Cox, Mrs. | 0 6 5½ | 0 5 1 | -- | | Collier, | -- | 0 3 8½ | -- | | A. | | | | | Fothergill | -- | 0 2 11 | -- | | Fisher | -- | -- | 0 7 0 | | Foster, | -- | -- | 0 2 1 | | Mrs. | | | | | Green, | 0 7 8½ | 0 4 0 | 0 5 6¾ | | Mrs. | | | | | Gulliers | 0 11 3¼ | 0 7 7¾ | 0 4 5½ | | Glover, | -- | 0 9 3¾ | 0 3 5 | | M. A. | | | | | Haydram, | -- | -- | 0 2 6 | | Mrs. | | | | | Hayes, | 0 9 1¾ | 0 8 9½ | 0 9 4½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Hartopp | 0 4 1 | 0 3 5¼ | -- | | Hearn, | -- | 0 3 8 | 0 2 8¾ | | Mrs. | | | | | Humphreys, | -- | 0 6 9¾ | 0 6 4¼ | | Mrs. | | | | | Hobdell | -- | 0 6 7½ | 0 3 7¾ | | Hatfield | -- | -- | 0 5 2¾ | | Hall, Mrs. | -- | -- | 0 6 10½ | | Joyce, | -- | -- | 0 8 9½ | | M. A. | | | | | Knight, | 0 9 1 | 0 9 1¼ | 0 7 8 | | H.(a) | | | | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Carried | £4 5 4½ | £4 19 4½ | £6 19 4¼ | | forward | | | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | 1845. | Sept 6th. | Sept. 13th. | Oct. 11th. | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | Brought | £4 5 4½ |£4 19 4½ | £6 19 4¼ | | forward | | | | | Knight, E. | 0 6 1¼ | 0 6 6½ | 0 3 11 | | Kelly, | -- | -- | 0 7 1¾ | | or Skelly, | | | | | Mrs. | | | | | Lawrance, | 0 4 10 | 0 4 4¼ | 0 6 10½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Latham | 0 5 3 | 0 3 10¼ | 0 1 8 | | McDaniell | -- | -- | 0 5 1½ | | Matthews | 0 7 3½ | 0 5 0¼ | 0 7 3½ | | Mills, Mrs. | 0 8 9¾ | 0 7 7½ | 0 4 2½ | | Mozer, E. | 0 6 8¼ | 0 5 0½ | 0 6 2½ | | Margetts | -- | 0 7 2½ | 0 5 5¼ | | Mayes | -- | 0 1 6½ | 0 5 5 | | Moseley | -- | 0 0 9½ | -- | | Neascomp | 0 6 8 | -- | -- | | Norris, | -- | -- | 0 7 8 | | M. A. | | | | | Nichols, | -- | -- | 0 1 7½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Pottiee | -- | -- | 0 4 6½ | | Parker, | 0 3 0½ | 0 3 11¾ | 0 4 10½ | | Mrs. | | | | | Pool | 0 2 4½ | -- | -- | | Potter, E. | 0 5 7½ | 0 5 7¾ | 0 7 0¼ | | Pontifex, | -- | 0 6 6¾ | 0 7 7½ | | A. | | | | | Pearce, C. | -- | 0 5 1½ | -- | | Rumball, | 0 12 1¼ | 0 11 2 | 0 7 9½ | | Mrs.(a) | | | | | Rudge | -- | 0 6 8½ | 0 4 8½ | | Ross, Mrs. | -- | -- | 0 1 7½ | | Scott, Mrs. | -- | -- | 0 4 0 | | Sleap | -- | -- | 0 2 2¾ | | Slater | 0 10 5¼ | 0 11 3¼ | 0 6 4½ | | Sharp, C. | -- | -- | 0 3 1½ | | Such, E. | 0 9 4 | 0 4 7½ | -- | | Smout, M. | -- | 0 4 3¾ | 0 5 1 | | Sumner, | 0 10 1½ | 0 8 2 | 0 7 2¾ | | Mrs. | | | | | Tucker, | 0 4 10 | 0 3 4½ | -- | | Mrs. | | | | | Truscoat, | 0 5 6½ | 0 3 10½ | -- | | A. | | | | | Tattersall | -- | -- | 0 8 4¾ | | Todd | -- | -- | 0 7 5¾ | | Wichelam | -- | -- | 0 3 0½ | | West, Mrs. | 0 4 2½ | 0 4 1½ | 0 2 11¾ | | Weedon | -- | 0 3 5 | 0 5 3¼ | | Williams, | -- | -- | 0 3 7¼ | | Eliz. | | | | | Williams, | -- | -- | 0 4 8½ | | Eleanor | | | | | Woods, Mrs. | -- | -- | 0 5 11¾ | | Wacey | -- | -- | 0 1 5¼ | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | | £9 18 7¾ | £11 3 8½ | £15 11 0¾ | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ | (a) Bills marked thus were for work done by more than one | | person. | +-------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+ No. II. The following names are a transcript, as far as it extends, of the Wages' Book of July 28th, 1849:-- FOLDERS. _s._ _d._ Stone 6 10¼ Carroll 6 10 Donald 7 6½ Fenning 10 1¾ Nalty 6 0 Zugg 9 8 Read 5 6¼ Thomson 5 3¾ Frazier 4 7 Parker 7 2 Philpots, Mrs. (2 weeks) 9 1 Salter 7 1 Routledge 10 2¾ Giles 7 11½ Name not known 8 7½ Hodnett 7 10½ Measor 6 6 Moss 7 1½ Smith 3 2¼ York 6 6¼ Ainsworth 6 5 Smith 5 10 Surridge 5 0¾ Read 5 11¼ Hone 6 11¾ Stroud (2 weeks) 14 11¼ Pritlove 6 1½ Jolly 7 10¾ Thomas 6 10½ Olpin 8 7¾ Brown 7 0½ Desaper 7 0¾ Harlow 3 11¼ Glynn 7 0¾ Haywood 7 5¾ Cooper 6 1 Charles 7 11¾ Gauntry 5 5½ Leat 4 4½ Beattie 7 2½ Lockwood 8 7½ Burton 5 9¾ Cook 6 11¼ Spall 5 0¼ Name not known 6 2½ Shay 6 10 Hockley 8 4¼ Hodson 4 2 Coghan 3 9½ Charles 4 9¼ Donovan 6 6¼ Newham 3 9½ Brown, O. 7 9¾ Cleaver 6 9¾ Mallison 6 8 Chelsom 3 8¼ Griffiths 6 4½ Timlett 7 0 Guyon 5 4¾ Johnson 5 4 Smith 5 7 Daniells 3 4 Paris 5 10½ Rawlings 7 11½ Long 3 11¼ Macintosh 5 7 Cracknell 5 4 Old 7 2 SEWERS. _s._ _d._ Clarke 5 9½ Trimnell 8 3¾ Abbott 7 0¾ Hawkins 5 7½ Hubbard 5 3¾ Deacles 6 6 Norcutt 6 3¼ _Time Workers._ _s._ _d._ Mrs. Brinton (Lewis) 15 9 Mary Shea 7 6 Mary Carpenter 9 0 Anne Cooper 8 10½ E. Manvill 10 11 Hardy 10 11 Norris 9 1 Aldred 8 11 Collis 8 11 Hayes 10 0 Kinder 10 11 Wilkins 10 0 Joyce 7 3 Dew 7 3 M. Joyce 7 4½ No. III. +----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | FOLDERS' WAGES FOR THE FOUR WEEKS BEFORE THE DISPUTE. | +----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | Aug. | Aug. | Aug. | Aug. | | | 4th. | 11th. | 18th. | 23rd. | | | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | +----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | M. E. Zugg | 0 10 6¼ | 0 8 3¼ | 0 9 8 | 0 7 1¾ | | A. Harlow | -- | -- | -- | 0 3 11½ | | M. A. Long | 0 8 4 | 0 8 6 | 0 7 11 | 0 5 0 | | S. Olpin | 0 8 3¾ | 0 7 6½ | 0 8 9 | 0 5 11 | | M. Fowler | 0 6 0 | 0 5 11 | 0 6 1 | 0 2 7½ | | M. Morris | -- | -- | -- | 0 5 1 | | M. Beatie | 0 7 4 | 0 7 0 | 0 7 0½ | 0 3 2 | | M. Parker | 0 8 0¼ | 0 8 4 | 0 7 9 | 0 5 9 | | M. A. Jolly | 0 9 3½ | 0 8 9 | 0 7 5 | 0 5 3 | | M. Thomas | 0 8 3 | 0 7 1 | 0 6 10½ | 0 4 5½ | | E. Carroll | 0 6 7 | 0 6 4½ | 0 6 7 | 0 4 6 | | M. Sheay | 0 6 9 | 0 6 1¾ | 0 6 5 | 0 2 11½ | | H. Donovan | 0 6 4 | 0 6 1¾ | 0 7 0¼ | 0 4 0 | | E. Hone | 0 8 4 | 0 7 3¼ | 0 6 11¾ | 0 4 11½ | | S. Moss | 0 6 6 | 0 7 0 | 0 6 10 | 0 7 1½ | | E. Hainsworth | 0 7 0 | 0 7 7 | 0 8 3 | 0 4 3 | | E. Timlett | 0 7 0 | 0 6 11½ | 0 7 2 | 0 6 11½ | | M. Cracknell | 0 6 0 | 0 5 9 | 0 5 6 | 0 6 0 | | C. Guyon | 0 6 4 | 0 7 0 | 0 7 2 | 0 1 11 | | Mrs. Philpot | 0 4 2 | 0 4 0 | 0 4 6 | 0 2 8 | | P. Measor | 0 7 8 | 0 6 11 | 0 6 5 | 0 5 10½ | | M. Cooke | 0 6 1 | 0 4 6 | 0 6 4 | 0 1 4 | | M. Stone | 0 6 4 | 0 6 6 | 0 6 10 | 0 3 6¾ | | M. Cleaver | 0 6 4¾ | 0 6 7 | 0 6 6 | 0 4 0 | | M. E. Reide | 0 6 3½ | 0 6 8½ | 0 6 4 | 0 4 0 | | M. Foweraker | 0 9 11 | 0 12 0 | 0 8 7¾ | 0 5 11 | | A. Hodnett | 0 8 6 | 0 9 6 | 0 7 4 | 0 5 0½ | | M. Smith | 0 6 7½ | 0 6 4 | 0 6 6 | 0 2 10½ | | A. Smith | 0 7 2 | 0 5 4 | 0 6 2½ | 0 1 9¾ | | M. Frazier | 0 6 5 | 0 4 3 | 0 4 6½ | 0 4 3½ | | M. Roach | 0 6 3 | 0 4 2 | 0 5 9 | 0 3 3 | | C. Mallison | 0 5 6 | 0 5 0 | 0 5 9 | 0 3 2½ | | S. Macintosh | 0 4 4 | 0 5 0 | 0 4 11 | 0 2 0½ | | B. J. Salter | 0 9 6 | 0 9 0¼ | 0 8 1½ | 0 6 1¾ | | M. J. Smith | 0 7 0¼ | 0 6 11½ | 0 5 6 | 0 3 0 | | E. Daniels | 0 5 3½ | 0 4 6¼ | 0 3 6¾ | 0 1 11½ | | M. Brown | 0 7 0¼ | 0 6 0¾ | 0 5 6 | 0 3 2¼ | | E. Rallians | 0 7 3½ | 0 7 6¼ | 0 7 0 | 0 5 0 | | W. Reide | 0 8 4 | 0 8 1¼ | 0 7 7¾ | 0 5 0 | | M. A. Lockwood | 0 5 0¾ | 0 8 1½ | 0 7 1½ | 0 6 8 | | E. Spall | 0 7 5¾ | 0 6 1 | 0 5 6 | 0 4 0 | | J. Griffith | -- | 0 4 8½ | 0 4 3 | 0 2 8½ | | M. Thomson | 0 6 9 | 0 6 3½ | 0 6 4 | 0 4 1½ | | L. Farris | 0 4 6½ | 0 5 1 | 0 3 4 | 0 1 9½ | | M. Glyn | 0 7 0 | 0 6 7½ | 0 6 9 | 0 3 10½ | | L. Yorke | 0 6 4 | 0 6 0¼ | 0 6 3 | 0 4 1 | | C. Brown | 0 8 3½ | 0 8 0 | 0 7 0½ | 0 4 10½ | | M. Fenning | 0 8 7 | 0 8 3½ | 0 8 0 | 0 6 4½ | | E. Burton | 0 7 0 | 0 6 3½ | 0 6 0 | 0 5 2½ | +----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ | | £16 4 6¾ | £15 18 2½ | £15 7 10½ | £10 7 3½ | +----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ +---------------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+ | SEWERS' WAGES FOR THE FOUR WEEKS BEFORE THE DISPUTE. | +---------------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+ | -- | Aug. | Aug. | Aug. | Aug. | | | 4th. | 11th. | 18th. |23rd. | | | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | £ _s. d._ | +---------------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+ | M. Richardson | 0 6 4 | 0 6 10 | 0 7 1½ | 0 4 9 | | M. Touse | 0 5 10 | 0 6 0 | 0 5 11 | 0 4 6 | | E. Hawkins | -- | -- | -- | 0 4 8¼ | | A. Hanson | 0 6 0¼ | 0 5 10 | 0 5 11 | 0 5 1 | | M. Clements | 0 6 0 | 0 6 3 | 0 6 1 | 0 4 7½ | | L. Thomson | 0 6 4½ | 0 6 10 | 0 7 4½ | 0 5 2 | | E. Webb | 0 7 7 | 0 7 3 | 0 8 3 | 0 8 0 | | E. Wigmore | 0 6 10½ | 0 7 0 | 0 7 2½ | 0 4 8½ | | H. Gammon | 0 7 0 | 0 6 6 | 0 6 0 | 0 2 6 | | A. Butcher | 0 10 0 | 0 10 4 | 0 10 10 | 0 9 7½ | | E. Taylor | 0 7 0 | 0 7 6 | 0 7 1½ | 0 2 0 | | M. Wheatley | 0 7 2 | 0 6 5 | 0 7 0 | 0 5 11 | | E. Harris | -- | 0 5 0 | 0 5 4½ | 0 3 1¾ | | J. Williams | 0 7 3 | 0 7 0 | 0 7 1 | 0 2 6 | | H. Hutchinson | 0 6 9 | 0 6 9¼ | 0 6 2½ | 0 5 2½ | | E. Ashford | 0 7 0 | 0 7 6 | 0 7 10 | 0 8 1 | | R. Howell | 0 8 8 | 0 6 8 | 0 6 4 | 0 4 2½ | | M. Hubbard | 0 7 0 | 0 6 10 | 0 6 6 | 0 5 0½ | | M. Abbott | 0 8 0 | 0 8 4 | 0 8 1 | 0 6 8 | | M. Akerman | 0 8 0 | 0 8 6 | 0 8 6 | 0 7 2 | | A. Hall | 0 7 4 | 0 7 2 | 0 7 0 | 0 5 6 | | E. Ellis | 0 3 11 | 0 4 5 | 0 5 6 | 0 1 6 | | M. Gildbody | 0 7 1 | 0 7 4 | 0 7 6 | 0 3 6 | | M. Mack | 0 10 7 | 0 10 1 | 0 10 4 | 0 9 10 | | E. Potter | 0 7 6 | 0 7 0 | 0 7 4 | 0 6 6 | | C. Collier | 0 9 0 | 0 8 6 | 0 7 9 | 0 7 0 | | M. Smiley | 0 5 2 | 0 4 10 | 0 5 0 | 0 4 3 | | A. Clarke | 0 7 0 | 0 5 3 | 0 6 1 | 0 4 5 | | B. Mealoney | 0 6 8½ | 0 7 0 | 0 6 0 | 0 4 6 | | M. A. | 0 7 0 | 0 7 5 | 0 8 3 | 0 6 6 | | Sullivan | | | | | | M. Diggles | 0 6 6½ | 0 6 5½ | 0 6 3 | 0 6 1 | | J. Purvey | 0 6 0 | 0 6 1¾ | 0 6 3 | 0 5 6½ | | M. Reding | 0 9 9½ | 0 9 2 | 0 9 4 | 0 8 2½ | | L. Tattersall | 0 6 10 | 0 7 0 | 0 6 6 | 0 7 0 | | E. Treacher | 0 5 3½ | 0 5 6 | 0 5 2½ | 0 3 8½ | | M. Davis | 0 9 1½ | 0 9 0 | 0 9 7 | 0 7 0¼ | | E. Griffiths | 0 7 5 | 0 7 3½ | 0 7 0 | 0 7 0½ | | M. Clarke | 0 8 10½ | 0 9 3½ | 0 9 0 | 0 7 1½ | | M. Perkins | 0 7 3½ | 0 6 10 | 0 7 7½ | 0 5 0½ | | E. Marshall | 0 7 0 | 0 6 1½ | 0 6 6 | 0 4 8½ | | G. Trimnell | 0 6 2½ | 0 5 5¾ | 0 4 2½ | 0 2 11 | | H. Night | 0 6 1½ | 0 5 10½ | 0 6 0 | 0 4 3 | | M. Norcott | 0 5 10 | 0 6 0¼ | 0 6 0 | 0 6 5½ | | M. Goldwin | 0 6 3½ | 0 6 6¾ | 0 6 5 | 0 5 4½ | | E. Ainyouns | 0 6 5½ | 0 6 0 | 0 5 3 | 0 4 1 | | M. Newnham | 0 6 0 | 0 6 1½ | 0 6 0 | 0 5 8 | | M. Rodgers | 0 7 0 | 0 6 10½ | 0 7 0 | 0 6 0½ | | C. Greentree | 0 7 0½ | 0 7 0 | 0 7 5 | 0 4 11 | | J. Greenaway | 0 7 5¾ | 0 8 6 | 0 7 0 | 0 3 11 | | E. Carrington | 0 7 1½ | 0 7 7¼ | 0 7 6 | 0 5 11½ | | S. Greenaway | 0 6 2½ | 0 6 1½ | 0 6 6 | 0 4 3 | | M. Key | 0 7 6 | 0 7 0 | 0 5 2 | 0 5 9¼ | | S. Williams | 0 8 4 | 0 5 1½ | 0 7 1 | 0 6 0¼ | +---------------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+ | | £18 1 10¾ | £17 18 9½ | £17 19 11¼ | £14 4 2¼ | +---------------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+ These tables are also valuable on account of the light they throw upon the organisation of the bookbinding trade in the middle of last century. It will be seen for instance that the week indicated by "October 11" in Table I was a specially busy week, and that in consequence the payments made to the home workers were much above those made for September 6th or 13th. Under September 6th, twenty-eight home workers were engaged, and next week thirty-nine, but under October 11th the number had risen to fifty-seven. It is also worthy of note that E. Such was an indoor worker under October 11th, but a home worker during the other two weeks, whilst M. A. Joyce worked at home in the third week, but in the workshop during the other two. This condition of disorganisation has now fortunately almost disappeared from the trade. It should also be noted that slight errors of a few farthings in the additions have crept into the totals of some of the columns, but as they do not affect the accuracy of the wage figures the Appendix has been copied exactly as it was published. APPENDIX VII.--TABLE FROM CENSUS, 1901 Table from census, 1901, stating the number of males and females employed in the trades enumerated at various ages in England and Wales, and showing that the number of females employed between 15 and 20 is nearly twice as great as at any other age. +------------------------------------------------------------+ | PAPER MANUFACTURE. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 163 | -- | 163 | 335 | | 14 - | 378 | -- | 378 | 616 | | 15 - | 2,995 | 15 | 3,010 | 3,079 | | 20 - | 1,814 | 224 | 2,038 | 2,328 | | 25 - | 856 | 504 | 1,360 | 3,583 | | 35 - | 301 | 564 | 865 | 2,504 | | 45 - | 124 | 446 | 570 | 1,690 | | 55 - | 56 | 289 | 345 | 897 | | 65 - | 15 | 95 | 110 | 277 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 3 | 9 | 12 | 50 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 6,705 | 2,146 | 8,851 | 15,359 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | PAPER STAINERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 19 | -- | 19 | 57 | | 14 - | 21 | -- | 21 | 90 | | 15 - | 97 | 1 | 98 | 396 | | 20 - | 41 | 5 | 46 | 290 | | 25 - | 22 | 18 | 40 | 520 | | 35 - | 7 | 21 | 28 | 365 | | 45 - | 4 | 19 | 23 | 202 | | 55 - | 1 | 7 | 8 | 81 | | 65 - | 0 | 3 | 3 | 28 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 212 | 75 | 287 | 2,032 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | STATIONERY MANUFACTURE. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 84 | -- | 84 | 36 | | 14 - | 297 | -- | 297 | 107 | | 15 - | 1,921 | 1 | 1,922 | 811 | | 20 - | 1,237 | 41 | 1,278 | 709 | | 25 - | 603 | 107 | 710 | 1,209 | | 35 - | 185 | 56 | 241 | 732 | | 45 - | 55 | 54 | 109 | 483 | | 55 - | 15 | 28 | 43 | 217 | | 65 - | 2 | 10 | 12 | 65 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 2 | 2 | 12 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 4,399 | 299 | 4,698 | 4,381 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | ENVELOPE MAKERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 103 | -- | 103 | 5 | | 14 - | 254 | -- | 254 | 13 | | 15 - | 1,276 | -- | 1,276 | 72 | | 20 - | 654 | 26 | 680 | 62 | | 25 - | 339 | 98 | 437 | 84 | | 35 - | 99 | 98 | 197 | 76 | | 45 - | 41 | 74 | 115 | 33 | | 55 - | 22 | 36 | 58 | 18 | | 65 - | 7 | 16 | 23 | 7 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 2,795 | 348 | 3,143 | 370 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | PAPER BOX AND BAG MAKERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 780 | -- | 780 | 144 | | 14 - | 1,727 | -- | 1,727 | 192 | | 15 - | 10,062 | 51 | 10,113 | 784 | | 20 - | 5,342 | 628 | 5,970 | 476 | | 25 - | 2,304 | 1,339 | 3,643 | 714 | | 35 - | 547 | 1,094 | 1,641 | 481 | | 45 - | 171 | 724 | 895 | 304 | | 55 - | 58 | 271 | 329 | 144 | | 65 - | 9 | 91 | 100 | 65 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 11 | 11 | 6 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 21,000 | 4,209 | 25,209 | 3,310 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | OTHER WORKERS IN PAPER, &c. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 88 | -- | 88 | 107 | | 14 - | 168 | -- | 168 | 138 | | 15 - | 1,139 | 4 | 1,143 | 676 | | 20 - | 687 | 36 | 723 | 516 | | 25 - | 330 | 87 | 417 | 1,097 | | 35 - | 73 | 63 | 136 | 796 | | 45 - | 24 | 53 | 77 | 617 | | 55 - | 8 | 25 | 33 | 381 | | 65 - | 0 | 11 | 11 | 169 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 2 | 1 | 3 | 31 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 2,519 | 280 | 2,799 | 4,528 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | PRINTERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 394 | -- | 394 | 1,309 | | 14 - | 988 | -- | 988 | 3,362 | | 15 - | 4,898 | 7 | 4,905 | 18,692 | | 20 - | 1,999 | 76 | 2,075 | 15,360 | | 25 - | 730 | 120 | 850 | 26,051 | | 35 - | 146 | 112 | 258 | 16,155 | | 45 - | 42 | 65 | 107 | 9,514 | | 55 - | 21 | 56 | 77 | 4,584 | | 65 - | 4 | 23 | 27 | 1,256 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 1 | 11 | 12 | 205 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 9,223 | 470 | 9,693 | 96,488 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | LITHOGRAPHERS, COPPER AND STEEL PLATE PRINTERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 35 | -- | 35 | 97 | | 14 - | 97 | -- | 97 | 243 | | 15 - | 518 | 4 | 522 | 1,721 | | 20 - | 198 | 21 | 219 | 1,616 | | 25 - | 91 | 20 | 111 | 2,966 | | 35 - | 19 | 12 | 31 | 2,022 | | 45 - | 5 | 12 | 17 | 1,170 | | 55 - | 3 | 7 | 10 | 616 | | 65 - | 0 | 1 | 1 | 214 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 966 | 77 | 1,043 | 10,682 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | BOOKBINDERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 364 | -- | 364 | 108 | | 14 - | 1,204 | -- | 1,204 | 311 | | 15 - | 7,623 | 20 | 7,643 | 2,107 | | 20 - | 4,310 | 222 | 4,532 | 1,933 | | 25 - | 2,190 | 653 | 2,843 | 3,146 | | 35 - | 647 | 692 | 1,339 | 2,340 | | 45 - | 291 | 525 | 816 | 1,575 | | 55 - | 101 | 250 | 351 | 811 | | 65 - | 30 | 83 | 113 | 281 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 7 | 11 | 18 | 52 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 16,767 | 2,456 | 19,223 | 12,664 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | TYPE CUTTERS AND FOUNDERS. | +-----------+-------------------------------------+----------+ | | Females. | | | Age. +------------+-----------+------------+ Males. | | | | Married | | | | | Unmarried. | or | Total. | | | | | Widow'd | | | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | 10 - | 8 | -- | 8 | 17 | | 14 - | 31 | -- | 31 | 32 | | 15 - | 97 | -- | 97 | 237 | | 20 - | 30 | -- | 30 | 187 | | 25 - | 11 | 2 | 13 | 345 | | 35 - | 1 | 1 | 2 | 216 | | 45 - | 1 | 0 | 1 | 141 | | 55 - | 1 | 0 | 1 | 75 | | 65 - | 0 | 0 | 0 | 35 | | 75 and | | | | | | upwards | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ | Total | 180 | 3 | 183 | 1,287 | +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+----------+ INDEX. Ages of Workers, 203 Apprenticeship, 55-62 Bible Society Controversies, 32-36 Birmingham, Trades in, 179-183 Blackbordering Described, 12 Bond, Mrs., 38 Bookbinders' Agreement, 7-9 Bookbinders and Tea Half-hour, 31 Bookbinding Described, 3 Bookfolders' Union, 38 Bookfolding, 3 Census Figures, 17-21, 203 Character in Relation to Work, 11, 67, 85 (footnote), 111 Children's Employment Commission, 1862-66 ... 69-71 Compositors, Women: Apprenticeship, 62 Birmingham, 179 Edinburgh, 29, 45, 47 (footnote), 48 (footnote), 49 (footnote), 74 Glasgow, 172 Historical, 24-25 Legislation, 74, 75 London, 27-28 Miscellaneous Places, 46 Perth, 29, 45-46, 47 Work done by, 46, 47 Conditions of Employment, 1866 ... 69-71 Dining Arrangements at Works, 161 Employers and Women's Unions, 37, 42 Envelope-making Described, 11 Factory Law. _See_ Legislation. Family Health and Women's Work, 112 _See also_ Health Family Life and Women Workers, 67, 102-106 "Folding-houses," 76-78 Gentility, 67 Girls _v._ Women, 53, 96 Glasgow, Trades in, 170-178 Health, 10, 11, 16, 66, 88-89, 112 _See also Sections under_ Typical Firms, 141-169 Home-work, 99-101, 152, 157, 176, 181 Nos. Employed, 21, 99 and Legislation, 75-76 and Machinery, 99, 148 and Organisation, 202 Hours in Glasgow, 171, 172, 175, 177, 178 Hours in Birmingham, 180, 181, 183 _See also Sections under_ Typical Firms, 141-169 Illuminating Described, 13 Job Hands, 3, 79, 137, 169 Wages, 137 Legislation: Conditions before Legislation, 69-71, 84-86 Economic and Industrial Effects, 73-93, 147, 151, 166, 171, 179, 183 Employers' Opinions, 81-84, 91-93 Employees' Opinions, 84-86, 87 Forewomen's Opinions, 86 Home-work, 75-76, 101 Limitation of Employment, 75, 89 Machinery, 73-74 Married Women, 84 Nightwork, 71, 78, 80, 81, 82, 89, 152 Provisions of the Law, 71-73 Wages, 79, 90, 91 Want of Elasticity, 91-93 Women Compositors, 74 _See also_ Overtime. Letterpress Printing Described, 2 Lithography Described, 10 Health, 10 London Society of Compositors and Women, 26, 27-28 London Trades Council and Women, 36 Machine-ruling Described, 9 Machinery: Effect of Women's Labour upon, 46 (footnote), 97, 98 Effect on Women's Employment, 1, 48, 94-98, 148, 157, 160, 161, 162, 165, 167, 169, 173, 182 Folding, 48, 94, 95, 182 Home Work, 99 Machine-ruling, 97 Paper colouring, 96 Re-introduction of Men's Labour, 95, 173 Sewing, 95 Stamping, 48 (footnote) Typography, 96, 173 Manchester and Salford Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding, 40 Marriage as an Industrial Influence, 64, 67 Married Women as Workers, 84, 102, 106-112, 147, 151, 166, 168, 171, 175, 182 Family Health, 112 In Birmingham, 182 In Bristol, 110 In Leeds and Bradford, 111 In London, 108-109 Moral Influence, 111 Nos. Employed, 203 Wages, 106-108, 171, 175 Men and Women, 11, 44-52 As Competitors, 12, 14, 45, 49-52, 156, 168, 173 Bookbinders, 36, 38, 44 (footnote), 51, 175 Compositors, 25, 26, 45, 173-174 Division of Work between, 7-9, 11, 148, 152, 166, 175, 180 Effect of Machinery, 95, 96 (footnote) Machine Rulers, 177 Men's View, 47, 173-174 Methods of Work, 81 (footnote) Nightwork, 79, 88, 89 Paper Colouring, 97 Relative Skill, 46-47, 50, 52, 58 National Bookfolders' Union, 39 Nightwork, 14, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84-86, 88, 89 _See also_ Overtime. Numbering Described, 10 Organisation of Women: Bookbinders, 30-41 Compositors, 29, 41 Miscellaneous Trades, 41-42, 180 Women's Views upon, 42 Overtime, 78-79, 81, 82, 84-89, 146, 183 And Wages, 78, 87, 88 _See also_ Nightwork. Paging Described, 10 Paper-bag Making, 101 Paper Making Described, 1 Paterson, Mrs. Emma, 36 Perforating Described, 10 Perth Dispute, 45 Piece Rates of Wages, 137 Premiums, 55, 56, 59-60, 62 Printers' Folding Described, 3 Prospects, _See Sections under_ Typical Firms, 141-169 Regularity of Employment, 183 _See also Sections under_ Typical Firms, 141-169 Scottish Typographical Association, 29, 45, 173 Show Card Mounting Described, 13 Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding, 36-38 Stamping, Plain, etc., Described, 12 Technical Classes, 63, 66 Training for Women, 52, 53 Time and Piece Wages, 137 Trade Union Congress, Women at, 36, 37 Trade Unionism and Women: Attitude of Bookbinders, 30-32 Conflicts with Compositors, 25-30, 179 _See also_ Organisation of Women Training for Women, 55-68, 144, 149, 153, 165, 167, 170, 179, 180 Lack of and Marriage Prospects, 64 Typefounding Described, 14 Typical Firms, Conditions in, 141-169 Typographical Association, 25, 26, 47 Scottish, 29, 45, 173 "Use and Wont" in Women's Work, 52 Wages, 113-137 Birmingham, 179, 180, 181, 182 Bookbinders' (1834-50), 33-35, 196-202 Earnings of Individuals, 136-137, 184-195 Effect of Legislation upon, 79, 90 1840-1890 ... 91 (footnote) 1866 ... 90 1885-1900 ... 134 Glasgow, 171, 172, 174-175, 176, 177, 178 How far Supplementary, 103-106 Kept up Without Unions, 41 Learners, 55-62 Married Women's Influence upon, 106-108, 171, 175 Men's and Women's, 47 (footnote) Time and Piece Rates, 137 Why Low, 46, 50-51, 105 Women _v._ Boys, 15, 47, 50 Women's Competitors, 11 _See also_ Men and Women; Women _v._ Boys; Girls _v._ Women. Women Compositors. _See_ Compositors, Women. Women Workers, Number, 17-23, 203 Ages of, 203 Ambition, 11, 64, 65, 66 Domestic Sphere Predominant, 67 Gentility, 67 Irregularity, 50, 66 Women's Work, Characteristics of, 51, 63-64 
46104	----	THE GIRL IN INDUSTRY "The adolescent stage of life has long seemed to me one of the most fascinating of all themes, more worthy, perhaps, than anything in the world of reverence, most inviting study, and in most crying need of a service we do not yet understand how to render aright." G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, I. xix. THE GIRL IN INDUSTRY BY D. J. COLLIER WITH A FOREWORD AND INTRODUCTION BY B. L. HUTCHINS AUTHOR OF "WOMEN IN MODERN INDUSTRY" [Illustration] LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1918 CONTENTS PAGE Foreword. B. L. Hutchins v Introduction. B. L. Hutchins ix Part I. Investigation. D. J. Collier 1 Part II. Recommendations. D. J. Collier 49 Table I. 55 Table II. 56 FOREWORD The problem of the adolescent at work is a very complex one; not only the economic, but also the educational, physiological, and biological reactions of industrial work have to be considered. The present work does not attempt anything like a comprehensive discussion of the subject; it is merely a small contribution to existing knowledge of the facts in regard to one section only: the physiological effects of industrial work on growing girls. The young, it is often said, are the nation's capital. If by this we merely mean that they are the force by which the material goods of the future will be produced, our view of life is inadequate and rather brutal, but if the words are given a higher and more spiritual sense they become full of significance. Youth is the future: from among the young of to-day the parents, citizens, leaders, prophets, artists of the next generation will arise. Work at this age should be considered not only for the shillings it will immediately produce, but partly for its effects on the worker's productive power later on, partly for its effects on character, physique, mind. Dr. Stanley Hall says of modern industry: "Not only have the forms of labour been radically changed within a generation or two, but the basal activities that shaped the body of primitive man have been suddenly swept away by the new methods of modern industry.... Work is rigidly bound to fixed hours, uniform standards, stints and piece-products, and instead of a finished article, each individual now achieves a part of a single process, and knows little of those that precede or follow. Machinery has relieved the large basal muscles and laid more stress upon fine and exact movements that involve nerve strain.... Personal interest in, and the old native sense of responsibility for results, ownership and use of the finished products, which have been the inspiration and soul of work in the past, are in more and more fields gone."[1] The conditions of much work undoubtedly tend to become mechanical, deadening, and soul-destroying. A strong impression seems to haunt the minds of some who are intimately in touch with working-class conditions that adolescent labour is excessive in amount, and that the resulting fatigue may be cumulative in its effects and injurious to the continuance of the race. Thus in 1904 Miss Anderson and her colleagues of the Factory Department, being invited to report on the subject of married women's work, found themselves impelled to the consideration of the previous life-conditions of the women, and stated: "It is the employment of women from _girlhood_, all through married life and through child-bearing that impresses itself on the mind. It is useless for any not familiar with the conditions of mill life to pronounce any opinion ... they have no conception of the stress and strain."[2] More recently Mr. Arthur Greenwood in a pamphlet (_The Schoolchild in Industry_, published by the Workers' Educational Association, Manchester, 1914) states that the fatigue and prolonged standing characteristic of some factory industries produce serious disease in girls and young women, "and, in the opinion of many doctors, sterility." The same impression may be found occasionally among Sick Visitors and the like, who work among these women. Whether there is a scientific basis for the belief it is impossible to say; there is not at present sufficient information. The investigation embodied in the present volume was undertaken in the hope that it would yield some information as to the vitally important subject of the biological effects of early employment, or, in other words, the reaction on the woman and her offspring of industrial employment in the adolescent years. No statistical data have, however, been obtained on this point; probably none such could be obtained within the limits of a small inquiry directed and financed by private persons. Even in regard to the effects of industrial work on the health of girls, without special regard to ulterior effects, there is at present very little scientific information. I welcome Miss Collier's report, therefore, as a pioneer effort; it is limited in scope and matter by the nature of the undertaking, but I know that she has spared no pains in collecting her facts, and has set them out without prejudice or bias. Her experience has suggested to us the desirability of a form of inquiry which is probably beyond the resources of most private inquirers, but might well be undertaken either by a Government department or by some public fund for sociological research. Some years ago, statistics of the anthropometrical measurements of school children in certain districts were published.[3] These figures were obtained from elementary school records in rural and industrial districts, and the results were valuable and instructive. Such a survey of young people, aged 14 to 18, might usefully include not only those in industry, but also those attending secondary schools, who in certain districts belong to much the same social grade, and often come from the same families. Thus the material for a valid comparison would be available, and the results, under scientific medical guidance, might be of first-rate social importance. Possibly also some light might be thrown upon the subject by investigating the previous occupational histories, from the onset of puberty onwards, of patients in maternity hospitals, and tabulating the results with the nature of the confinement, whether normal, difficult, or complicated. In conclusion, Miss Collier and I wish here to offer our best thanks to the many friends who kindly allowed themselves to be interviewed, and gave the help and information necessary for carrying out the inquiry. INTRODUCTION _Numbers Employed._--The whole number of girls employed from 10 to 21 years of age amounted in 1911 to over a million and a half, or about 40 per cent of the total female population of that age. If, however, we restrict ourselves to the adolescent girls at the ages 14 and under 18, we find that the total number employed amounted to nearly 794,800, or 58·6 per cent of the whole. The 41·4 per cent unoccupied include girls of the class in which women do not work for money, girls studying who intend to follow a profession or occupation, and some girls of the higher industrial classes who attend school one, two, or three years beyond the elementary school age. There must also be in this group some proportion of working-class girls who are kept at home to help their mothers, and a small number of invalids and imbeciles who are incapable of work. Of the 794,800 girls occupied, it is interesting to note that 30·5 per cent had entered service (including hotel service, but not including laundry and washing service). If we take the whole domestic group which includes laundry and charing as well as service, we find it takes up 34·8 of the total girls employed. Considering how much complaint is frequently made of the unwillingness of girls to enter these ancient and traditional paths, it is worth noting that one girl in every three actually does so, and the girls who stay at home to help their mothers, if we knew their numbers, would bring this proportion up a good deal higher. The textile trades employ 16·8 of our occupied girls, and the various dress trades 19·2. We thus find nearly 71 per cent of occupied girls are engaged in the occupations constantly associated with their sex and regarded as "womanly," although in modern times nearly all textile and a considerable proportion of the dress and laundry trades are organised on factory lines. The other 29 per cent are dispersed over the clerical, artistic, and other professions, and in miscellaneous factory industries. The proportion of girls employed varies from one place to another; it is highest in districts where there is a well-marked industry, especially where textile factories absorb a large proportion of female labour. Table II. shows the proportion of girls in a few selected districts. In industrial districts the proportion of domestic servants is very low, and the figures bring home to us the fact that in certain districts a large proportion of the female population spends the transition from childhood to adult life in the mill. It is, however, useless to spend much time over these figures, which have become completely out of date through the war. No details for young workers are obtainable in official statistics, but the increase in numbers of females employed in industry since the outbreak of war was estimated in July 1917 at 23·7, while the increase in professional and other occupations, including transport, was 82 per cent. The total increase in industry, commerce, and government service of various kinds amounted to over 1,420,000, or 42·5 per cent.[4] It is probable that the increase among girls of 14 to 18 was at least no less than among female workers generally. The net increase in numbers must also be only an imperfect indication of the enormous changes within the employed group. The Munitions group, the metal trades, all the textile and other trades that produce the clothing and other accoutrement of soldiers, the supply of food and comforts for the army, all these industries have expanded considerably and have drawn recruits not only from the unoccupied but from the domestic workers, and from many other less indispensable occupations. Women and girls have also taken the places of men and boys in many civilian occupations. _The Factory Act._--During the war the regulations of the Factory Act have been considerably relaxed or suspended. The strain of industry on the immature, however, though undoubtedly intensified by the war, was already a matter of anxious consideration before 1914. Even in times of peace the Factory Act vouchsafes to the adolescent worker a meagre and inadequate protection. As regards hours of work, "young persons," _i.e._ such as are between 14 and 18, and also such as though only 13 have obtained a school attendance certificate, are placed on a level, but for some trifling exceptions, with adult women. The hours of work for both classes are the same, viz.: 10 hours in textile factories, 10-1/2 in non-textile factories and workshops, plus meal times. It is thus legal for a girl of 13, a mere child, as most people would call her, to be at work "all round the clock," or, including meal times, for full 12 hours. On Saturday there is a half-holiday. The only difference in regard to hours is that in certain industries women are permitted overtime, which is prohibited to young persons. _Medical Inspection._--There is, however, a provision special to workers under 16, which is of interest, and that is the requirement of a certificate by the certifying factory surgeon that the young person is physically fit for the proposed employment. The surgeon has power to reject boys and girls for work he considers unsuitable to them, and he may also make certain qualifications or conditions as to the kind of work on which the boy or girl should be employed. It is evident that here we have a provision with great possibilities of good for young people. The unfortunate side of the matter is that the certifying surgeon is not concerned with the care of the child; he is merely remunerated by the employer to fulfil a legal formality. Within a few years the Women Factory Inspectors have, however, taken the matter up and initiated action in the interests of rejected children. The system has been shown to be most unsatisfactory. No certificates are required for other than factory industries, so that in many cases rejected children go to some employment which may be more harmful than the one for which they have been rejected, or may even be admitted by one factory surgeon into the very occupation for which another had disqualified them. Equally serious is the absence of any system of medical advice or treatment for the cases in which physical defect or disease has been notified. For these and other reasons it is highly desirable that the factory medical service, so far as it relates to juveniles, should be absorbed in the School Medical Service, which for nearly ten years has been doing such good work in the detection and to some extent the treatment of pathological conditions among school children. This body is far better placed than the certifying surgeons, as the whole of the elementary school population passes under its hands. Medical inspection could then become a condition of all employment, instead of, as at present, factory employment merely, and suitable arrangements could be made without much difficulty for medical care and treatment where necessary. It would be likely, also, that the school doctors would take a more enlightened view of factory conditions and the needs of adolescence than the certifying surgeons, and would have the Education Authority at their backs in urging the importance of healthful conditions on the employer in the factory.[5] _The Industrial Conditions needed for the Young._--In regard to girls the importance of adapting conditions of work to the needs of the immature woman is a matter of thought and care, of details intelligently combined into a coherent whole. Given suitable arrangements it need by no means be assumed that the factory is inherently injurious to women and girls. Several persons whose views have been included in the following report even thought that factory life was beneficial in some respects. Dr. Louis Starr also says: "While there is no question of the evils of child-labour, more of the young suffer from too little than too much use of the muscles. Where harm comes the blame should not be put upon the mere work, but upon the unhealthy surroundings, bad work-rooms, long hours, great monotony, over-specialisation and excessive use of the accessory and neglect of the fundamental muscles."[6] The principle of economic individualism has been definitely thrown over by all but a few invincible doctrinaires, and it is coming to be recognised that the shoe must fit the human foot and not the foot be cut down to suit the shoe. We are beginning, greatly daring, to foresee a time when directors of industry will be required to revise their schemes of management or even to construct new ones, not merely to avoid injury to workers, but with the view of promoting their healthy mental and physical development. Hours of work must be considerably shortened for young workers, rest pauses must be introduced to minimise fatigue, time must be allowed for physical exercise, education, and recreation, and the whole surroundings of work modified with a regard for the personality of the workers. The question of speed is of special importance in regard to young girls. In America, where speed and strain have been and still are extreme, it is beginning to be recognised by the most enlightened employers that it is useless to urge the human organisation beyond the power of endurance. In some cases speeds have been reduced to get the best results.[7] Detailed study is necessary in order to adapt the work to the capabilities of the workers. In Miss Collier's reports several interesting notes will be found on the desirability of picking strong girls for certain kinds of work: on the need of seats, and specially of the right kind of seats, and other points. When a new Factory Act comes under consideration, as we hope it may after the war, the needs of youthful workers will be the point that most urgently requires emphasis and re-statement, and I venture to hope that the then Home Secretary will take account of Miss Collier's investigation. The war has shown us the extraordinary elasticity of productive power in modern times. In response to an urgent national need, material production has been stretched to a point that would have been incredible a few years ago. This is surely an indication that--apart from the present need for enormous quantities of war-material--production can satisfy the bodily wants of men and yield a surplus for the higher needs of civilised communities without excessive toil, certainly without overtaxing the young and immature. Further, much evidence collected both before and during the war indicates that overwork is relatively unproductive compared with work for reasonable hours. All this shows that we can, if we wish, decide to be the master of the machine and not its slave. The knowledge and the power are there: let not the will be lacking. INVESTIGATION Little attention has been given until quite recent times to the effects of industrial work on the health and physique of adolescent girls. Child labour has been the subject of much discussion, and medical investigations have shown the detrimental influence exerted by wage-earning employment on the plastic organism of the growing child. It is recognised that with children bodily work often produces a greater degree of fatigue both mental and physical than does mental work of equal duration. The various legal restrictions limiting the hours and controlling the conditions of the labour of children, although inadequate in extent and sometimes only permissive in character, are evidence of a realisation that the well-being of the child is of more importance than its immediate commercial utility. This recognition of the necessity of guarding against overstrain during the critical early years does not, however, extend to the period of adolescence. The restrictions of the hours of work and the conditions of employment of young persons of both sexes differ but slightly from those applying to adult women. This failure to appreciate the special problems of adolescence is the more remarkable in that medical evidence has shown that young children grow and develop despite great hardships, while adolescence is more dependent upon favouring conditions in the environment, disturbances of which more easily retard development and effectively injure the still growing body. "In late adolescence contrasted with earlier life there is more variation in growth, much greater liability to retrogression, and increased susceptibility to outside influences, unfavourable surroundings, and conditions more readily causing arrest of growth and preventing perfect maturity."[8] In the evidence before the Physical Deterioration Committee in 1904, Dr. Eichholz[9] emphasised the need of close attention to the physical condition of young girls who take up industrial work between the ages of 14 and 18, for the conditions under which they work, rest, and eat doubtless account for the rapid falling off in physique which so frequently accompanies the transition from school to work. And the summary of that Committee states: "The period of adolescence is responsible for much waste of human material and for the entrance upon maturity of permanently damaged and ineffective persons of both sexes. The plasticity of the human organisation, the power it possesses of yielding rapidly towards degenerative or recuperative influences appears to terminate at 18." This sketch of the conditions and circumstances of the girl in industry was undertaken as a contribution to the study of the effects of industrial employment on the health and physique of the female population of the country, and it was hoped that in the course of the investigation some light would be thrown on the question of the relation of the employment of the young girl to her health after marriage. Only a minority of women are normally employed at any time, but as an examination of the figures in Table I. shows, a large majority of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are employed, and of these more than one-half work in manufactures, over two-thirds of the factory and workshop girls being absorbed in the textile and clothing trades. It follows from this that the majority of women have been employed during the critical years of adolescence which have so great an influence on the physical constitution of later years. As it was impossible in a private inquiry, such as this, to cover a wide range, certain industries which seemed to offer the best scope for the investigation were selected and subjected to as detailed an examination as was possible. The entrance of large numbers of girls and young women into the industries connected with the manufacture of munitions suggested Birmingham and Coventry as fruitful fields of inquiry, and the increase in welfare supervision with appointment of matrons and nurses in charge of surgeries and rest-rooms seemed to indicate that the required information would be easily obtained, while the abnormal conditions prevailing in these industries offered a favourable ground for investigation in that they afforded unusual opportunities of studying the effects of excessive hours of work, night work, and other variations in hours and conditions of employment. In addition to collecting evidence from a number of these supervisors in the factories, I endeavoured to find out from social workers, in touch with girls outside the factory, how far the abnormal conditions due to the pressure of war work are affecting the general health of girls. It is only natural that patriotic zeal and a desire to earn good money on piece-rates may mask any possible evil influences that long hours and increased speeding up may exert, so that the evidence from those in charge of girls in the factories, if considered alone, might not disclose the true state of affairs. Since it was impossible to get statistical evidence as to output, accidents, and actual industrial fatigue, I interviewed secretaries of Girls' Clubs and Care Committee workers connected with the Birmingham Juvenile Advisory Boards, who were in touch with girls between the ages of 14 and 16. I saw also a number of medical men and women with panel practices in industrial districts. The certifying surgeons were not able to give me any information, as they deal only with young persons who are commencing their industrial careers. But it is from the textile trades that the great mass of the evidence is derived. The cotton industry of Lancashire and the wool and worsted industries of the West Riding of Yorkshire, built up as they are on the labour of children and young persons, offered a much wider field than the non-textile trades, and here, where the girls join their Trade Union directly they are working full time, there is much more class consciousness and reflection upon industrial conditions. Consequently evidence as to these industries, together with that of the clothing trade, is derived mainly from the Trade Union officials, particularly from the Sick Visitors of the Insurance sections, and from meetings of operatives called together for the purpose by the Trade Union secretary. In the course of the inquiry I visited a number of mills, both spinning and manufacturing, and thus gathered a good deal of information from employers, managers, and overlookers. A certain number of doctors were also visited, and some of these supplied much valuable evidence, but it must be remarked here that many doctors, possibly from stress of work, fail to note the relation between occupation and disease except in extreme and obvious cases, particularly in towns where one main industry occupies a large proportion of the inhabitants, and where one imagines deductions as to occupational disease and tendencies to disease could be most easily made. In addition to the engineering and textile trades I have collected evidence from a few miscellaneous industries in the various towns I have visited, generally from "good" employers, who have made some study of industrial fatigue or whose interest in the welfare of their employees had directed their attention to some of the problems under discussion. The evidence from the clothing trade was collected at Hebden Bridge and from various other towns where wholesale tailoring is merely a subsidiary industry. The conditions in Hebden Bridge due to the ever-present shortage of female labour make these clothing operatives the aristocrats of their trade, so that the general results of industrial work here had to be correlated with the evidence from the clothing trade in other towns. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS _Hours._--The evidence to be considered under this heading is concerned with various factors: the total number of hours worked each week, the length of the spells, and the number and length of the pauses for rest and meals, as well as the time of employment, _i.e._ day or night work. At the time when the inquiry was initiated (October 1916), practically all the munition factories in Birmingham were working a 60-hour week, and only in a very few cases had three 8-hour shifts been tried. This was due mainly to the difficulty of securing sufficient male labour for setting tools, etc., and also to the fact that there was already some difficulty in getting enough female workers. Similarly in Coventry the total weekly hours ranged between 55 and 60, though at one factory visited girls under 18 worked only 47 hours, and those over 18 worked 53 hours. The evidence of Welfare supervisors and nurses in charge of rest-rooms went to show that these long hours had not exerted the bad effect that had been expected. Various witnesses stated that "no signs of undue fatigue had been observed," "no increased sickness since the hours had been lengthened," "the strain of the long hours is considerable, but actual breakdowns are rare." Another witness is "quite astounded" at the good standard of health after a long period of 55-hour weeks. One witness, a medical woman who had examined the girls at a factory working 10 hours and more per day for six and sometimes seven days per week, found no marked deterioration when she examined them again at the end of six months. But she stated emphatically that the good food now obtainable because of the better wages was largely responsible for this result. It must be remembered that in pre-war times the average wage for girls on simple engineering processes in Birmingham and district was about 8s. to 10s. per week, while now they would get 16s. to 30s., and it must be concluded that some of the girls under discussion were now adequately nourished for the first time in their lives. Again, the results of this particular inquiry must be taken as representing the survival of the fittest, as many of the girls examined the first time the doctor visited the factory had left, possibly because of ill-health, before the second visit. Nearly all the witnesses quoted above insisted that the high standard of health that prevailed was due mainly to better living and increased care, which did much to mitigate the possible evil effects of the long hours. One matron pointed out that girls who are earning good wages and who are therefore financially independent, get far better care and attention at home than if they are not earning, and this prevents breakdowns. There is, however, another side to this optimistic picture, and this is presented by some of the doctors interviewed and by Girls' Club secretaries and Care Committee workers. One woman doctor stated that there is much increased sickness--anaemia, gastric disturbances, etc., among girls working long hours. Another doctor declared that the fatigue resulting from long hours of labour frequently leads to acute anaemia and then to irregular menstruation, and he said that the greater part of the work was not too heavy and not entirely unsuitable for girls, but that the hours were so long as not to allow time to recover from fatigue. The secretaries of Clubs and Care Committees were unanimous in their condemnation of the present system of long hours. They say the girls they come across are thoroughly worn out, "languid and lacking in vitality," "pale and nervous," and "incapable of taking an interest in anything." The fatigue seemed to affect them mentally more than physically; thus the worker at one Club said that the girls working long hours, _i.e._ about 60 per week, were quite incapable of brainwork, so all classes, even needlework, had to be stopped, but they could stand the most strenuous drill and gymnastic work for two evenings a week and did not want to stop when the Club closed: the constrained nature of their work, generally tending automatic machines, seemed to increase their restlessness, and they are glad to work it off in any occupation involving movement. In case this point, which others corroborated, seems to contradict the view that the long hours made the girls lethargic and apathetic, it must be mentioned that this same witness said that when any girls were working 1-1/2 hours over their 10 hours, they were fagged physically as well as mentally and would not have the energy to drill, etc., but would just sit and watch the others. As a general rule the girls do not complain of the long hours, and very few cases of complete breakdown are recorded. This is attributed to the higher standard of living made possible by the increased wages and to the fact that many girls have been lost sight of since the pressure of work has become so great. The evidence from a few miscellaneous industries, drawn as it is from the experience of a few "good" employers, is of a very different nature. Here the hours worked seldom, if ever, exceed 9 per day, and in some instances experiments had been tried with an 8-hour day with satisfactory results to both health and output. It must be remembered that most of the work done by girls in these miscellaneous factories is of an intensely monotonous nature--packing and sorting finished goods, "taking off" on printing machines, making cardboard boxes or tin canisters, but, at the same time, the work is very light and easy and is learnt in a day or so, although some weeks may elapse before the maximum speed is attained. The only danger in these light automatic processes is the temptation, often encouraged by the employer, of excessive speeding up, but to this I will refer later. As a general rule, the evidence from this group goes to show that the standard of health among girls working 8 or 9 hours a day is quite satisfactory, and the sickness rates are very low. How far these good results are due to the shortness of the working-day compared with that of the munition and textile industries, and how far to the various "welfare" provisions, such as special attention to delicate girls, supply of hot drinks in the middle of the morning and afternoon spells, gymnastic classes during work hours and so on, it is difficult to say. It is interesting to note that one employer reported that the addition of two hours' overtime to a 9-hour day for three days a week caused excessive fatigue after a few months, so that the overtime was stopped, but after a month the pressure of work was so great that they had to return to it, and now they find that this excessive fatigue is avoided, or, rather, fatigue so extreme as to diminish output is avoided by working every fourth week without overtime. Turning now to the textile industry, particularly the cotton trade of Lancashire with its 55-1/2-hour week and its 6 A.M. start, we find opinion somewhat divided. A certain number of employers and their representatives declared that the hours worked exert no detrimental effect on young girls, and that the time lost through sickness is very slight. But these statements are outweighed by the evidence of most of the inside managers and some of the employers interviewed. One of the latter firmly believed that the present working hours are too long for young girls, and had often noticed how they fell off in health. Another states that young workers find the long hours very tiring and that a shorter working-day, which would be an advantage for all, is almost a necessity for young girls, although he has no exact evidence that the hours worked are actually detrimental. But the heaviest indictment against the 10-hour day comes from the Trade Union representatives. Many of these declare that the girls are utterly worn out at the end of the day and are generally incapable of any serious work, which accounts for the small proportion of girls who attend Workers' Educational Association and other evening classes. The strain of most of the work in cotton factories, both on the preparing and on the manufacturing sides, is considerable, and the competition to increase output is very great. Girls and women are indirectly set to emulate one another and to compete with men and boys. Some observers say that the girls are tired out by 4.30 P.M., and that if the hours were reduced the output would be more regular, as at the present time girls are unconsciously forced to "slack." The Sick Visitors of one of the large Weavers' Unions in north-east Lancashire state that "shorter hours are far more important for the well-being of the weaver than either weavers or manufacturers realise," and they point out that the girls look much brighter and better when they are away from work with minor ailments, and certainly the sickness returns show that fewer are ill when "short time" is general as in the latter half of 1914. This is confirmed by the experience of other Unions. The weaving master in one of the technical schools, who had been a working weaver for years, was convinced that the hours are too long for all operatives, but especially for growing girls, and he said, "One has only to live in a household of weavers to notice the extreme weariness and lassitude with which they sink into chairs as soon as they get home in the evening." As a proof of the evil effects of the long working-day my attention was frequently drawn to the physical differences between the girls attending the secondary schools and those who work in the mills. In the majority of cases, particularly in north-east Lancashire, both groups come from the same class and from the same type of home, but the former are tall, well-built, and rosy-cheeked, while the latter are often short, always thin, and generally pale and anaemic. The comparison between the different effects of weaving and winding is instructive. The latter process is of itself more tiring and monotonous, and the strain is continuous; yet winders are said to be in better health and to be much more cheerful and energetic out of work hours. This apparent inconsistency is explained by the fact that the winders seldom work a full week; they frequently start after breakfast, and generally "play" on Saturday and one other morning every week. One witness emphasised her conviction that the long hours were mainly responsible for the very prevalent ill-health of girls and of older women by declaring that no reform of factory conditions can be effective until the hours are shortened. The medical witnesses were also unanimous in their belief that the long hours of confinement in the close atmosphere of the mill is the cause of much of the ill-health that is prevalent among girls about 16 and 17. The fatigue resulting from the hours of labour weakens their resistance to disease, and they are liable to fall victims to any epidemics, while anaemia, gastric and menstrual disturbances are very frequent about this age. The worsted industry told the same tale. Many of the employers interviewed were in favour of a shorter working-day, as the younger operatives get very tired at 4.30 P.M. and work suffers, while a Trade Union representative declared that the hours are exceedingly fatiguing for all female workers, particularly for growing girls, who, unlike the men and boys, practically in all cases have domestic work when the factory day is over. The majority of the employers in the clothing trade had never given any consideration to the effects of the hours on the health of their operatives. Consequently they were vehement in declaring that a 52-hour week exerted no injurious influences. On the other hand, the Sick Visitors of the local branches of the United Garment Workers' Union were confident that the 9-1/2-hour day in the confined atmosphere of the factory was particularly harmful for young girls, and they pointed out that the sickness returns were always lower during slack time and during strikes, while other witnesses, although unable to make any definite statement on the effects of the hours worked, said that very few girls at the clothing factories have much energy for Continuation and Workers' Educational Classes after their full day's work. In non-textile factories 5-hour spells are very common. All the doctors interviewed spoke very strongly against this practice. It is noteworthy that far more accidents are reported as occurring in the 5-hour spells than in shorter periods, and the general opinion is that the spell is too long for health and efficiency. In many munition factories short breaks for ten or fifteen minutes have been instituted in the 5-hour spells, and trolleys from the canteens are sent round with cheap refreshments. The benefit derived from this system is everywhere acknowledged, and the wonder is that so few experiments with rest pauses have been tried. The 4-1/2-hour spell also comes in for much criticism, and some observers say that the girls are thoroughly fatigued at the end of the time, while the Welfare supervisor at one works goes so far as to say that the last half-hour even of a 4-hour spell drags so heavily with the younger workers that a 3-1/2-hour spell would be a distinct advantage both to health and to output. The continuous 4-1/2-hour spell allowed by the Factory Acts for the textile industry is seldom adopted in either the cotton or worsted trades, the most usual hours being 6 A.M. to 8 A.M., 8.30 A.M. to 12.30 P.M., and 1.30 P.M. to 5.30 P.M. Very little attention has been paid to the effects of the 4-hour spells as such, and though many observers say that girls are thoroughly fatigued by 3.30 or 4.30 P.M., this seems to be due mainly to the total number of hours already worked rather than to the fatiguing influence of the individual spell. With regard to the early morning start characteristic of these industries, opinion was sharply divided. Some employers and Trade Union representatives declared that no ill-effects resulted, while others were most insistent that the work before breakfast was the cause of much illness and discomfort. Whilst it is impossible to dogmatise in the face of these conflicting statements, especially in view of the fact that neither side can produce scientific evidence in its defence, so that the statements are probably the result of social and domestic considerations, it may be assumed that the early start is harmful in the cold winter months, but that it does not of itself exert any injurious influence in the summer. Night work for juvenile workers is now almost universally condemned. The effects of such work are more marked than with adult workers, the nervous strain is considerable, and lassitude and weariness invariably accompany the night shift. This results in spite of the fact that girls are reported to sleep well during the day, unlike the older women, whose domestic concerns frequently prevent sleep in the daytime. Some witnesses from Birmingham and Coventry report that night-work was still (November 1916) common for juvenile workers. Where Welfare Workers are in charge, however, they endeavour to restrict it to girls over 16, though even with these the fatigue is considerable, as sleep is frequently broken by the mother waking the girl to partake of the family mid-day meal. Evidence as to the relative merits of long and short periods of night-work are so conflicting that it is impossible to draw any conclusions, and as the question is receiving considerable attention from the Health of Munition Workers' Committee, it was not made the subject of special investigation. Some explanation of the conflict of evidence recorded under this section of the inquiry may be found in the outlook of the witnesses interviewed. Where increased output and commercial profit were the chief concern, so long as few actual breakdowns occurred the witness would report no unfavourable results from long hours of labour, while those whose main interest lay with the well-being of the worker would notice any falling off in health with long hours and would report accordingly. It is obvious that no definite conclusions as to the immediate or ultimate effect of long hours can be made from evidence of this nature. In the second part of this report suggestions will be made as to the lines on which more scientific inquiry should be conducted in order to determine the exact effects of varying hours of industrial work on the physical organisation of adolescent girls. _Protracted Standing and Opportunity for Rest._--Evidence as to the provision of seats in munition factories is, on the whole, very encouraging. Most workshops have stools or seats for use during the short pauses which occur whilst waiting for materials or for the setting of tools, and where possible younger girls are put on work that can be done sitting down, whilst Welfare supervisors are generally ready to recommend that delicate girls be transferred from work which involves protracted standing to processes which allow occasional or even continued sitting-down, and foremen are nearly always willing to fall in with the Welfare Workers' suggestions. Only in a few cases have there been difficulties in securing seats: where men have been formerly employed the foremen are sometimes prejudiced against allowing girls to sit down, but they are soon convinced of the wisdom of making this concession. With certain processes prolonged standing is inevitable, but evidence as to resulting injury was not forthcoming in Birmingham or Coventry. None of the doctors interviewed was able to make any statement regarding the effects of a continued standing posture, as no cases of injury that could be attributed to this cause had come to their notice. Some of the Welfare supervisors stated that girls got very tired at first but soon got used to the permanent standing, and that no serious or lasting injuries resulted, though in a few cases girls not used to industrial work would get flat-footed or would suffer from swollen feet. While varicose veins are rare in young girls, every witness brought into contact with older married women was impressed by the apparent inevitability of this trouble in later years, but it is impossible to gather how far work during adolescence is responsible. Evidence as to the effects of standing on the menstrual function will be discussed later. From the evidence received it seems probable that only a small proportion, and these perhaps the more delicate, are troubled by prolonged standing, but attention may be drawn to the evidence of one large factory where 50 per cent of all new workers leave before the end of six months, and of these 30 per cent declare that they find the standing so fatiguing that they cannot remain at the work. In most of the processes of the cotton and worsted industries chances of resting are exceedingly rare. Girls carrying laps[10] from the blowing-room to the cards, can-tenters and drawing-frame minders in the card-room, and winders and weavers, seldom, if ever, get an opportunity to sit down. Girls on the slubber, intermediate, and roving frames, and those in the ring-room of the cotton trade and the spinning-rooms of the worsted industry, are in a better position in that a few minutes' rest is sometimes possible, and some managers and overlookers believe that these girls are less tired and show a better sickness record than the former group. Even where the nature of the work allows occasional periods of rest, seats are scarcely ever provided, so that the girls seldom sit down unless the waste-boxes or the skips are in a suitable position so that they can see down their frames to note if the work is proceeding all right. Many of the witnesses stated complacently that the girls soon got used to the prolonged standing, but doctors noted that prolapsed wombs were not uncommon in young women between 20 and 30, though some felt that the number of cases were not sufficient to warrant any conclusions. Sick Visitors also reported that prolapse was not unusual, and that most girls found the long hours of standing very fatiguing. Cases of prolapse are sometimes reported amongst young married women who have not worked after marriage and who have had every care after child-birth, which seems to point to an adverse influence exerted during adolescence. Sometimes girls complain bitterly of the lack of opportunity for even a few minutes' rest, and the Sick Visitors say that conditions of work which do not allow a girl to snatch even a short respite during a 10-hour day do not give her a chance to get over any constitutional delicacy. As a general rule, however, the girls make no complaints, but older women find the continued standing very tiring, and many witnesses believe that this is due to the cumulative strain of long years, while some declare that the anaemia prevalent among young textile workers is largely due to the weakened condition brought about by long hours of standing. Reference may be made here to the necessity for attention to the type of seat provided, particularly in entirely sedentary occupations, as in the clothing trade and in many of the processes of such industries as biscuit-making, soap-manufacturing, etc. Witnesses from the clothing trade laid great stress on the fact that sitting all day on a small hard stool was extremely fatiguing for growing girls, as it gave no support to their backs, and the Welfare Worker of a large soap-works, after trying one of the stools in her own office, is having them all replaced by chairs with suitable backs in those departments where the work is mainly sedentary. _Weight-carrying and Heavy Work._--As far as one can gather from the rather scanty evidence available under this heading, girls under 16 in munition works are seldom engaged on work involving heavy lifting and carrying. The majority of young girls are feeding automatic machines and working power presses, and all materials are brought and taken away by special labourers. Many girls over 16 have been substituted for men workers, but it is exceedingly difficult to gauge the effect which such work is exerting on their health. Overlookers and Welfare supervisors declare that tall strong girls are chosen for heavy processes and that very few injuries result, while a girl can be transferred to lighter work if the heavy work is too fatiguing. One doctor related how she had just concluded the examination of 200 women and girls engaged on heavy capstan lathes and had discovered no injurious effects, but she pointed out that they were all from the Black Country, where women and girls have been doing heavy work for several generations, and their physique was undoubtedly superior to that of the average industrial girl worker. Another doctor stated that the carrying of weights over 50 lbs. is exceedingly injurious to adolescent girls, as it causes the heart to beat too quickly, so that after a time the beat is continuously rapid and anaemia sets in. This effect is seldom, if ever, noticed in girls over 20. On the other hand, uterine injuries are practically unknown in young girls and hernia is very rare. In one large works the girls who are transferred to men's work of lifting and carrying goods are selected by the gymnasium mistress and wear gymnastic costumes to facilitate their movements, and the works doctor reports that there have been no ill effects beyond a few cases of sprained ankles and wrists. By an agreement between the Master Cotton Spinners and the Card and Blowing Room Amalgamation, which was signed in February 1917, women and girls are allowed to break off laps from openers and scutchers provided they do not exceed 45 lbs. in weight, and also to fetch these from the blowing-room on lap-trams and put them on the cards. In Leigh, Wigan, and other districts where Trade Unionism is weak, girls have been employed at this work for a long time prior to the agreement, and the laps are seldom moved on lap-trams but are carried on the girl's shoulder. Some overlookers said that they had always tried to get tall strong girls for lap-carrying, as the laps, though seldom very heavy--average weight 32-42 lbs.--are very cumbersome to manipulate, and that such girls never experienced any difficulty in carrying the laps. Where this care is not exercised (and it is to be feared that in the majority of cases no regard is paid to the girl's capacity for the work) difficulty in manipulating the bulky lap may be experienced by small girls. Can-tenting on the cards is an easy or fatiguing occupation according as the cans are made of fibre or of tin. When the latter are in use girls get very tired, as they are continually dragging the cans, three or four at a time, from the cards to the drawing-frames, which are often some distance away. The secretary of one branch of the Card Room Amalgamation expressed the opinion that the use of fibre-cans ought to be compulsory, as the improvement in physical condition when these are introduced is quite remarkable. But in view of the fact that whenever cans are being renewed fibre ones invariably replace the old-fashioned tin cans, legislation seems unnecessary, and in many places where tin cans are still in use trams are used to convey them to the drawing-frames. At the present time girls are frequently seen dragging skips of cops and bobbins from one room to another or on to the hoist. In well-managed mills the skips are moved on lines, or else are furnished with wheels, but sometimes cases are reported of girls getting ruptured through pulling skips without wheels up sloping floors. In most weaving sheds--cotton and worsted--the weavers' work is to fetch the tins of weft, keep the shuttles full, repair broken threads, and carry the finished pieces or cuts to the warehouse. The actual process of weaving does not involve any heavy work, and fetching the cops of weft is only fatiguing when heavy tins have to be brought from the cellars, which is not usual. But the dangerous element in the work is the occasional necessity of altering the weights, which are placed by the overlooker on levers at the back of the loom, to maintain the required tension of the warp. Many witnesses, Trade Union officials, doctors, overlookers, employers, and technical schoolmasters bore testimony to the risk of internal strain and hernia which attends the manipulation of these weighted levers. A broad loom for the manufacture of cotton sheetings or worsted cloths may have two or three 56-lb. weights on both levers, while for lighter fabrics two 32-lb. weights on each side are quite common. In most sheds the space between the looms is so restricted that the weavers have to move the weights in the position of maximum disadvantage. As a matter of fact the actual number of cases of rupture and other injuries is very small. Many witnesses said it was a cause of perennial amazement to them that this should be so, but some Sick Visitors and Trade Union secretaries said that not all the cases came to their official notice, as girls are often too reticent to claim compensation for internal injuries. Other witnesses recorded their conviction that the effect of the risk was seen better in the gradual strain and the deterioration in health than in the few cases where actual injury results. It must be remarked here that men weavers are often willing to help women and girls with this lifting of the weights, but as a general rule the girls are too independent to ask for the help, and the competition and speeding up are so intense that they will not take up the time of a fellow-weaver. There are a number of patent weighting motions on the market whose object is to dispense with heavy weights, a 9-lb. weight being sufficient for any ordinary warp, so that a young person can roll back the yarn on the beam after unweaving or pulling back equally with the strongest man. Many witnesses considered that legislation ought to be introduced making such contrivances compulsory, and it is interesting to note that some employers who had tried these patents on a few looms intend to introduce them altogether when the war is over, and some have found that by selling the old weights they have been able to install patent weighting motions at a very small cost per loom. Carrying finished pieces to the warehouse is an advantage to the weavers in so far as it breaks the monotony of the work, but where the cloth is heavy it is very tiring, particularly for short weavers, as lifting the bundle over the loom-end in the narrow alley is exceedingly fatiguing. In the worsted industry most pieces weigh 100 lbs., and two girls are said to carry one piece to the warehouse. Cotton goods seldom reach this weight, but in many districts the trade is becoming heavier, and 60 lbs. is not unusual, and girls will carry such a piece without any help. Most witnesses insisted that cut carriers ought to be employed, as they are in a few places, where heavy cloth and broad pieces are woven; even though few cases of serious injury can be attributed to this cause, girls at work on heavy goods and broad looms are "off sick" more frequently than other weavers. _Peculiar Movements._--The points to be considered under this heading were included in the investigation as it was felt that movements involving continued use of one foot, while the full weight rested on the other, as in working a treadle, or frequent stretching might exert a harmful effect during adolescence, whilst they might be quite innocuous for adults. The evidence, however, is too scanty to warrant any conclusion, as work of this character is much less general than formerly. On some of the machines used in engineering girls have either to work a foot lever continuously or to start and stop the motion, but where Welfare Workers and nurses are in charge they frequently arrange that girls be transferred to other work after a time, so they have nothing to report as to the effects of the work. The doctor at one large factory considers that such work causes trouble with womb and bowels and may lead to prolapse, and that it is likely to weaken the abdominal muscles, but she had no definite evidence from girls under her supervision as she had insisted some time previously that girls should only do pedal work on alternate days, so that now they are engaged on another process in the same room every other day. She was, however, able to report that, previous to the enforcement of this arrangement, many girls working treadle machines would go home during their menstrual periods, and now very few feel the need to do this. In some of the card-room processes, particularly on the intermediate frames, also in the ring spinning-room, and at worsted spinning, short girls have much stretching to reach the top rows of bobbins, but though this is tiring no special injurious effects are recorded. The difficulties of stretching movements are further intensified in the case of preparation work on drawing-boxes in the worsted industry, as girls have to lift large bobbins weighing about 28 to 30 lbs. into creels above their heads; but though some witnesses declared that this was very tiring, no evidence as to actual effects could be secured. A Trade Union delegate mentioned that some girls on this work have broken down completely, and have been forbidden by their doctors to return to the work--the effect showing itself in a rapid deterioration in general health rather than in actual injury. Further inquiry, however, brought out the fact that the majority of workers on this process are over 20 years of age, and are therefore outside the scope of this investigation. _Sanitary Conditions._--Reports as to sanitary accommodation in factories are generally satisfactory, thanks to the untiring efforts of the Women Factory Inspectors. In Birmingham, with its multiplicity of small workshops, however, conditions, to put it mildly, are not always ideal. As one doctor remarked, "Things are not so bad as to allow closing down of workrooms, but the sanitary arrangements often fall short of a reasonable standard of decency, though the competition with large firms is having a salutary effect." The only complaints that were brought to my notice referred to inadequate ventilation and lighting and the objectionable system of "timing." The former is generally remedied with the advent of the Welfare supervisor, the latter complaint appears to be quite general in Coventry and is the cause of much discomfort and annoyance. Where a large number of girls are employed the temptation to remain away from the workshop for long periods, playing in the lavatories, appears to be very general among younger girls. One cannot help feeling that the difficulty can be overcome by arranging for a woman attendant to take charge of lavatories and cloak-rooms, rather than by a system which runs counter to all decent instincts. Welfare Workers report that where such attendants are employed the behaviour of young girls seldom gives cause for complaint. In a few factories the attendants in charge of the lavatories supply sanitary towels at 1d. or 1/2d. each, a practice which might be universally adopted. The sanitary arrangements in textile mills are not always adequate, though few are reported as actually unsatisfactory. Pail closets are, however, still present in a fair proportion of the older mills. The chief complaint, particularly in reference to the needs of adolescent girls, concerns the position of the closets; in most mills the male and female conveniences are next to each other, and witnesses report that young girls are frequently too shy to make use of them, especially in weaving-sheds where the doors of the closets are in view of all. Much unnecessary suffering therefore results, and girls sometimes turn ill from this cause. These witnesses recommend that the sanitary conveniences be placed outside the sheds, and that male and female accommodation be in different parts of the mills. It may be noted in passing that this difficulty was only represented in north-east Lancashire, where the social position of the operatives is generally somewhat superior to those of other districts, and where reticence in such matters is more likely to be intensified. Lighting and ventilation of closets is frequently faulty, and stress must be laid on the necessity for washing facilities, generally entirely lacking in textile factories. _Meals._--Attention has been drawn in the section devoted to hours to the value of good feeding in mitigating the injurious effects of long hours of labour. It must be remembered that the evidence from the engineering industry was collected towards the end of 1916, so that the reports refer to the period before the increase in food prices had balanced the rise in wages. It seems to be fairly established that where good wages are earned adequate food is eaten, though one or two observers reported that girls are still eating unsuitable food, with the result that gastric troubles are common. As a general rule, however, particularly where canteens have been set up, good meat dinners are eaten, and the girls appear to be well nourished. Welfare Workers report on the improvement in health which follows the opening of canteens, and they note especially how anaemia is reduced. Inquiries by club secretaries and the experience of district nurses who visit working-class households show that improved feeding invariably follows an increase in wages. As one witness says, "If they have the money they eat good food, and once in the habit they do not easily fall back." This is encouraging in face of the widespread belief that girls are careless about their food and willingly live on tea and bread. The only complaints concern the lack of variety in the food provided in the canteens. One Welfare supervisor lays great stress on the value of a long dinner-hour, and she attributes the absence of digestive troubles at her factory to the hour and a half allowed at midday.[11] One witness pointed out that when work starts at 8 A.M. many girls get no breakfast, and when dinner-time comes at 12 or 12.30 they do not feel able to eat ordinary food and take only bread and tea, or something "tasty," but not nourishing. This point should be borne in mind when the arrangement of hours is under discussion, especially in view of the suggestion of one doctor who thought that the ideal working-day when long hours are necessary for output, would be from 7 A.M. to 12 and 1 P.M. to 6 P.M., with ten minutes break for tea, etc., in the middle of each spell. His reason for opposing an earlier start with a breakfast interval at 8 o'clock depended on the fact that the earlier spell (6 A.M.-8 A.M.) would probably be worked fasting, which he considered to be very injurious. How much more harmful then must be a whole morning's work with only a very light refreshment at the interval. The Sick Visitor of the United Garment Workers' Union at Hebden Bridge also draws attention to the difficulty of obtaining an adequate breakfast at 7 o'clock in time for the 7.30 A.M. start general at Hebden Bridge, and she attributes the prevalent trouble of indigestion to this cause. In the textile industries such amenities as dining-rooms are practically unknown. A benevolent employer here and there, or a Co-operative Wholesale Society, may provide a canteen, but such examples are exceedingly rare. In south-east Lancashire most operatives who work at a distance from their homes arrange with a family in the neighbourhood of the mill to provide them with hot water for tea, and possibly to cook some food for them, for breakfast and dinner. Those who do not do this take their meals in the mill, and as seats are non-existent they have to sit on skips or on the floor. When one realises the atmospheric conditions of most mills, the heat, the damp resulting from steaming, to say nothing of the smell from oil and size, one cannot imagine a worse arrangement. In north Lancashire conditions are somewhat better in that most mills provide hot water for tea at a charge of 1d. or 2d. per week, and a certain few provide ovens for heating food, but here again the meals have to be taken in the vitiated atmosphere of the mill. Practically all operatives remain at the mill for their breakfast, but the majority go home to dinner. The standard of living is high, but too much carbo-hydrate and too little protein food is general; bread and tea, chips and fish (mostly batter), and cakes and pasties, and potato pie with very little meat, form the staple diet. Doctors especially remark on this, and they attribute the distaste for nourishing food to the long hours of confinement in the close atmosphere of the mill. Industrial employment of the mothers is also held to be responsible for faulty feeding, and when the mother leaves the mill to look after the needs of a large family the taste for unsuitable food is settled, and the diet continues as before. GENERAL EFFECTS OF INDUSTRY ON PHYSICAL CONDITION In addition to the influence of these special considerations on the health of girls in factory employment, certain ailments and forms of physical disability which may not of themselves be immediately incapacitating may be induced by the general unfavourable environment of industrial life Amongst such disorders may be classed: 1. Anaemia. 2. Gastric disorders. 3. Nervous affections. 4. Disturbances of menstrual function. Growing girls are particularly liable to these disorders, so that their extent was made the subject of special inquiry. _Anaemia._--The absence of an absolute standard and complete lack of statistical information render the evidence under this heading vague and inconclusive. Most of the Welfare Workers in the various munition factories visited stated that very few girls suffer from anaemia; two or three stated that many girls were anaemic when they started their industrial life, but that after a short time, thanks, as they believed, to better feeding and a regular life, the disorder passed off. On the other hand, the doctors and club workers interviewed were confident that the long hours worked were increasing the proportion of anaemic girls. One doctor, when recording the prevalence of anaemia among industrially employed girls, attributed it to the fatigue following inadequate rest, coupled in many cases with excessive menstruation, due similarly to the fatigue of long hours. There was considerable divergence of opinion as to the age incidence of anaemia, some observers stating that the period immediately following the taking up of employment, 14 to 16, showed the worst record, whilst others found the years 16 to 20 were responsible for most of the anaemia. It is interesting to note that some of the Coventry witnesses found anaemia much reduced since the War, no doubt as a result of the better feeding, and one Welfare Worker stated that only those girls who were found to be eating insufficient food or who came from long distances without breakfast suffered in this way. The textile industry presents a more uniform picture, and there is much evidence to show that a large proportion of the girls employed in the cotton and the worsted trades suffer excessively from this disorder. Some observers state that many girls are anaemic about the age of 12 when they start work, and then again between 18 and 22; others declare that most girls suffer from anaemia at some time between the ages of 13 and 18. As far as the actual sickness returns of the Trade Union Insurance Societies are concerned, it appears that anaemia is more frequent after 21 than before, but these refer to anaemia of such severity that absence from work is necessary, and the Sick Visitors say that many girls under 21 suffer from anaemia for lengthy periods without medical attention or sickness pay. Doctors are inclined to attribute the excessive anaemia to the fatigue of long hours of labour in a close atmosphere, continued standing, insufficient sleep due to the early morning start, and faulty feeding. The sedentary nature of the clothing industry renders the girls very liable to anaemia, and though the employers frequently deny this, the evidence from the Trade Union Secretaries and the Sick Visitors with their actual record of cases outweighs the observations of the employers. Witnesses from girls' clubs and evening classes often state that the clothing trade is responsible for a higher proportion of anaemic girls than any other industry. _Gastric Disorders._--Most witnesses report that indigestion and other gastric disorders are general among girls, though it is often noted that men and older women suffer more frequently from these complaints. Seldom is the actual work held to be responsible. Girls working with powder in munition factories or where the smell of oil is disagreeable appear to be more liable than others, and weavers who are taller than the average--only a small proportion--find the constant bending over the loom aggravates a tendency to indigestion, but beyond these few cases faulty and irregular feeding seems to be the main cause for the prevalent gastric troubles. It is interesting to note that hygiene and physiology classes are doing much to inculcate sound notions of diet, which, taken in conjunction with increased wages and easy accessibility of food in canteens, are doing much to prevent gastric disorders. Irregular and hurried feeding depends mainly on the arrangement of hours of labour, and can only be overcome when these are based on more rational lines. One Welfare Worker records a very small proportion of digestive troubles, and this she attributes to the hour and a half allowed for the midday meal.[12] Where work starts at 7.30, as in the clothing trade at Hebden Bridge, many girls take only a cup of tea or a piece of bread before commencing work, and then have to wait until 12.30 before they can get a proper meal. Doctors point out how the long hours of labour in the close atmosphere of mills and factories engender a poor appetite, so that nourishing food becomes distasteful, and tea and confectionery frequently form the staple diet, with disastrous results to the digestive functions. _Headaches._--Headaches appear to be extremely common amongst girls in all the industries reviewed, the reasons advanced to account for this being variously the noise of machinery, the smell of oil and size, inadequate ventilation, and eye-strain consequent on close attention to the work. Ventilation is notoriously bad in those factories where previously only men were employed, but new and large factories, particularly where there is a Welfare Worker, show much improvement, and under such conditions headaches are said to be rare. Defective eyesight is a frequent cause of headaches, and here again a careful Welfare supervisor can do much good by advising a visit to the optician or eye hospital. Clothing operatives are especially liable to eye-strain, and care in lighting arrangements is very necessary. Mending in the worsted industry is also trying for the eyes. In one large mill visited a superior woman overlooker was in charge of the mending and burling, and she was careful to vary the work so that the tedious pieces did not always come to the same girls. By this means, and by the use of eye-shades to keep off the glare of the light, she finds headaches can be largely prevented. It is to be feared that such care is not general in the industry, as a Trade Union representative reports that headaches are very common. _Nervous Disorders._--The evidence here is extremely scanty. One doctor drew attention to the danger of automatism. When very monotonous and restricted movements are employed, a whole room of girls may become nervous and hysterical. He has known this to occur in the making of nails, where the difference between the various processes is so slight that the monotony cannot be obviated by periodically transferring the girls to different kinds of work. Two other witnesses drew attention to the effect of piece-work at high pressure in causing a tendency to hysteria and other nerve disorders, and doffing in the worsted spinning rooms is said to be responsible for the noisy excitability which is so marked among the younger boys and girls. The more common experience, however, is the absence of nervous disorders among industrially employed girls. Various doctors in Lancashire and Welfare Workers and others in Birmingham and Coventry commented on this, and recorded their conviction that the social influences at work, cheerful companionship and an increased interest in life, are powerful antidotes to possible nervous afflictions. _Menstrual Disorders._--As far as can be ascertained from an inquiry based on the general experiences of persons in touch with girls either inside or outside the factory, the extent of menstrual disorders appears to be much slighter than is generally supposed. In most of the non-textile industries reviewed, opportunities for sitting down were fairly general, and here painful or excessive menstruation was exceedingly rare. Nurses in charge of rest-rooms and surgeries report that only a small proportion of girls are troubled in any way, and those who make use of the rest-rooms during their periods are always the same ones each month, so it may be presumed that these are constitutionally delicate, and that the work is not responsible for their disorder. Doctors declare that if the general health is good, industrial work for a reasonable number of hours has no ill-effects, but, on the contrary, the active movements involved are a positive advantage. When, however, the hours worked are so long as to cause extreme fatigue, excessive and painful menstruation frequently results. Nurses and Welfare Workers notice that many girls of 14 have not commenced their menstrual periods when they start work, and they point out that the active life and the chance of good nourishment which wage-earning ensures has a good effect in bringing on normal periods. Some witnesses report that girls who have no opportunity of sitting down suffer much pain during menstruation and get very fatigued, but the evidence on this point was not unanimous. Evidence from the textile industry is not so satisfactory. As was pointed out when the provision of seats was under discussion, cotton and worsted factories are lamentably behind other industries in this respect, and as hours are uniformly 10 per day and the pressure of work generally very considerable, it is not surprising that menstrual disorders are reported more frequently than in non-textile trades. It must also be remembered that the large majority of textile operatives start work at 12 or 13 years of age, just at the onset of puberty, while in other industries 14 is the general school-leaving age. Many girls find the long hours of continued standing very tiring during menstruation, and as these factors conduce to anaemia, failure of the menses and dysmenorrhoea are more common than in other industries. Most witnesses laid stress on the need for seats and rest-rooms in textile factories as a means of preventing painful menstruation; in many mills girls are not even allowed to snatch a few minutes' rest by sitting on the waste-boxes or on straps slung between their looms, and they frequently experience difficulty in getting permission to go home when feeling unwell unless they can get a substitute. Two men overlookers drew attention to the advantage which results when the foremen and overlookers are married, as they are then more sympathetic about periodical lost-time and are more willing to allow girls to go home at the half-day. But the doctors interviewed are unable to attribute any permanent menstrual disorders or resultant injuries to these causes, and they are inclined to believe that the active life of the mill is a help rather than a hindrance to the menstrual function. REALISATION OF THE NEEDS OF ADOLESCENTS Any realisation of the particular problems and needs of adolescents by attempts to fit work to their physical capacity is so rare that the few cases where such provisions are made stand out in marked contrast. In munition and other factories where Welfare Workers are in charge, efforts are generally made to limit overtime and night work to those over 18, but at the time the inquiry was made in Birmingham and Coventry girls over 16 were in most cases expected to take their turn at night work with the older workers, while in some factories, after the first few weeks' probationary period is over, old and young alike have to work on the alternate night and day shifts, although it is now generally acknowledged that night work is more detrimental for young than for adult workers. At one of the larger factories visited, girls under 16 always stop work at 6 P.M. after a 9-3/4-hour day, while those over 16 work another hour, and when overtime is being worked, another two hours. At another factory all the girls under 18 were engaged on light sedentary work for 42 hours per week, while the heavy work on presses and capstan lathes was done by girls and women over 18 for 53 hours. In some works the majority of the younger workers are on light work, such as "examining," and in others the foremen are willing to transfer girls from work they find specially fatiguing, on the recommendation of the Welfare Worker. This, however, is not general, and few foremen exercise care in the selection of girls for heavy processes. As one witness pointed out, girls are chosen for their bright and intelligent appearance, with little attention to physical capacity. In the cotton industry the position is even worse. Girls entering the mill at 12 as half-timers or at 13 for full time are expected to conform in every way to factory life. Voluntary reduction of hours by employers for younger workers is completely unknown, and instead of suiting the work to the capacity of young workers, the girls have to adapt themselves to the requirements of their work. As soon as a girl has her own looms--at the present time weavers are on two looms at 13, and frequently on four at 14 or 15--the manager expects her to produce the average output every week, and the strain to do this is responsible for much deterioration in health. The competition between weavers is encouraged by overlookers and managers, and no effort is ever made to teach girls to conserve their energies. In the worsted industry the majority of the younger workers are employed in the spinning rooms, first as doffers and then as spinners, which one witness describes as the hardest process in the industry. Few girls remain at spinning after they are 18, as the money earned here seldom exceeds 18s. per week, but it is during the critical years of adolescence that they are engaged on this exceedingly fatiguing work, and no effort is made to reduce the burden of their employment. In the clothing trade of Hebden Bridge the Trade Union officials report that the younger workers are not subjected to heavy pressure of work, and are able to take their ease at the workshops if they so desire, the peculiar circumstances of the trade here preventing any attempt to speed them up by threat of dismissal. In one or two factories learners and young operatives work in a separate room in charge of women overlookers, and in most cases these supervisors are careful about the health of their charges and prevent them working at an excessive pace. THE TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO FACTORY LIFE In reviewing the effects of the transition from school to factory life it must be remembered that the evidence from the non-textile industries refers to girls who are over 14 years of age, while in the textile towns the large majority of the children start work either as half-timers at 12 or as full timers at 13. The general trend of the evidence shows that the taking up of non-textile employment is attended by a considerable falling-off in health. Most girls become thinner and lose their colour and vitality during their first six months at the factory, and those working long hours become "like machines, able to keep on without breakdown, but lose all their normal interests." This, however, appears to pass off after a time, and their health and vitality return. Some witnesses had noticed that the usual manifestations of lessened vitality and anaemia were not so general as in pre-war days, and this is naturally attributed to the better feeding and consideration obtainable at the present time. My attention was drawn several times to the desirability of increased care during the critical years of early adolescence through an extension of the medical service under the National Insurance Act to all industrially employed persons. Some Welfare Workers found that constant attention was needed to prevent a widespread deterioration in health during the first period of employment, and their efforts were frequently hampered by lack of facilities for medical attention. Some witnesses, notably those from the Hebden Bridge clothing trade, as well as from some of the miscellaneous trades investigated, state that girls are put to easier and lighter work when they first leave school and that they take their ease at it, so that no falling-off in health accompanies the transition stage, but a deterioration in physique with increased sickness shows itself at 16 or 17, when they begin to work at a high pressure. The special problem of half-time labour in the cotton and worsted industries, dealing as it does with the employment of children as distinct from adolescents, does not concern us here, so that we will review only the taking up of full-time employment at 13. Where girls come straight from 6 hours' work at school to the full working-day of 10 hours the change involves a considerable strain, even when, as tenters and learners, they are not worked hard. Opinions vary as to the stress of work during the first few months of employment, some witnesses declaring that the children take their ease at first. This may be the case when they are earning a time-wage as back-tenters in the card room or as tenters in the weaving shed, provided they are working for kindly, considerate persons, but where they are put on piece-work the more general opinion is that the anxiety for earnings is as strong an incentive to young as to adult workers, and that all alike work at top speed. These witnesses lay stress on the inevitable deterioration which sets in at this time, and they attribute it mainly to the strain of factory life coming at the same time as the onset of puberty. This opinion is reinforced by the examples often quoted of girls who have not taken up industrial work until 15 or 16; these soon settle down without any falling-off in health. The comparison between girls who go to the mills at 13 and those who go to the secondary schools is even more striking. In most of the cotton towns, particularly in north-east Lancashire, the majority of the pupils at the secondary schools are drawn from the same class and come from the same type of homes as the girls who go to the mills, so that the different circumstances of their lives after they leave the elementary schools must be responsible for the differences in health and physique which are so marked at this period. Many witnesses were of the opinion that the certifying factory surgeons are not careful enough in excluding girls from the factories, so that many delicate girls work at the mills who might grow out of their weakness in a more favourable environment. If the surgeons were able to postpone admission to the factory for varying periods much deterioration might be avoided. SPECIAL PROBLEMS _Girls in the Mule Rooms._--The shortage of boy labour in the spinning branch of the cotton industry has led during recent years to a revival of the old custom of employing women and girls in the mule rooms. In strongly organised districts this means that girls are being engaged as piecers in increasing numbers, while where Trade Union organisation is weak, outside the great spinning areas, as in Wigan, they are frequently acting as mule minders. As might be expected, the influence of war conditions has been to intensify this shortage of boy labour and to increase the number of female piecers, so that the Bolton Operative Cotton Spinners' Association finds that no fewer than 1163 additional girl piecers have been brought into the mule rooms in their district since the outbreak of war, making a total of 3315. The increase will be proportional in Oldham and district. In this inquiry the evidence as to the effects of such work was drawn entirely from non-medical sources, as it was impossible to get definite medical experience of the problem. Consequently the conclusions are more general than exact. Many employers and overlookers and some Trade Union witnesses were firmly of the opinion that mule-room work exerted no injurious influence on the health of girls, but it must be noted that these witnesses were drawn entirely from Wigan and Leigh, where the proximity of coal-mines with the attraction of higher wages absorbs most of the available boy labour, so that the shortage has been acute for some years, and the witnesses have got so accustomed to the presence of girls in the mule rooms that they can see nothing against it. All the more striking, therefore, is the testimony of some overlookers in these districts who declared that the work made girls thin, weak-chested, and anaemic. The temperature of the mule room frequently exceeds 90°F. and girls and men work in very scanty clothing, and the liability to colds on leaving the overheated atmosphere is very marked. Girls are on their feet the whole day, with no opportunity for rest, and by the end of the day they have walked many miles. One witness said that girls get very tired, but that no permanent ill-effects are noticed; but he advocated that rest-rooms be provided in order to prevent undue fatigue. More than one mule-room overlooker declared that no daughter of his should ever work in the spinning room, and the opposition to such work was based on physical as well as on moral grounds. One manager pointed out that "wiping down" the mule is particularly "nasty work" for girls: every two hours or so the little piecer has to run down the mule under the ends and clean with both hands as she runs, and this has to be done with great speed, as the spinners object to the mules being stopped for more than a minute or so. A small meeting of mule-room women workers, joint minders, and piecers whom I interviewed were very resentful that their work should be considered harmful, probably from fear of losing their employment, so it was difficult to get any definite evidence. The only reform for which they pressed dealt with the provision of cloak-rooms where men and women work together. As mentioned above, the heat is so intense that very little clothing is worn--men wear a pair of linen drawers and a shirt, the women and girls frequently only a skirt and blouse; and they dress and undress in sight of one another. The moral effects of mule-room work are outside the scope of this investigation, but attention must be drawn in passing to the undesirable position occasioned by the heat, the scanty clothing, the attitudes necessary for the work, and the subordination of women and girls to the male minders in an unhealthy atmosphere. In Wigan, where women minders or joiner-minders are the rule, these moral objections seldom occur. Witnesses from mills that do not employ girls in mule-room work were very insistent on the objectionable moral and physical effects of such work, agreeing with Mr. James Haslam that it makes girls "sallow and tired, crooked in limbs, bloodless and dyspeptic."[13] _Speeding up._--We have already referred to the driving effect of piece-work on simple automatic processes, but it is difficult to deduce any definite conclusions from the evidence of the non-textile industries. Thus some Welfare Workers and employers say that the girls take full advantage of the liberty allowed them, and are frequently to be seen wandering into other rooms and workshops for conversations with their friends. This seems to contradict the view that anxiety to earn a good wage causes excessive speeding up, but other witnesses find that the incentive to increase output which piece-wages provide is so strong that girls will not make use of rest-pauses when these are allowed, and sometimes consequently become exceedingly nervous. The pace is set by the quickest workers, and the effort to keep up is very wearying to weaker and slower girls, who will not sit down or rest even when seats are provided. Some interesting observations were made by the director of a factory employing about a thousand female workers. He has found that continuous piece-work on simple processes has a cramping mental effect, so that the girls become perfect machines. Thus young women who have been in the works for about six years will not face the responsibility of an overlooker's position, and seem to have no interests outside their output and their wages. On the other hand, a small proportion of the workers do not work at top speed if they can get a moderate wage which seems to supply their ordinary needs. Some girls previously earning 16s. per week on piece-work are still getting the same money, although they now get 3s. or 4s. war bonus, plus their piece-earnings. Speeding up of the machinery in the cotton industry has been very marked during recent years. In each department unremitting attention is necessary if even a moderate wage is desired. The standard of comfort is higher in Lancashire than in any other industrial district, and a good family income is considered essential. Consequently children and young persons are just as keen on their output as adult workers. Some witnesses pointed out that doffers and back-tenters and other beginners who are paid a time-wage are saved from the excessive speeding up which results from piece-wages, and that they get time to sit down and rest in the intervals of doffing, etc. But any one who has watched the gang of doffers passing from frame to frame in the ring spinning rooms of the cotton industry or at fly or cap spinning in the worsted trade will be inclined to disagree with this view; and indeed the textile master at the technical schools of one of the West Riding worsted centres said that doffing was done at top speed amid deafening noise, so that the work was more fatiguing than any other occupation in the mill. Weavers and winders suffer from increased speed as much as the card- and spinning-room workers. Attention has been drawn to the spirit of competition which managers and overlookers encourage between weaver and weaver. Boys and girls, men and women, are indirectly set to emulate each other. Some witnesses believe that women and girls work at higher pressure than men and boys, and since the former invariably have domestic work when the factory day is over, the strain is considerably increased. At the present time girls are given responsible work before they are equal for it. Teachers frequently find half-time scholars, who have not been at the mill more than a couple of months, announcing that they were working "for sick," that is, minding the looms for a weaver who is away ill. Such girls will get two looms of their own before they are on full time, and at 14 they have four looms under their charge. It was no uncommon thing in north-east Lancashire to find that girls have been working their mother's four looms for some months while the mothers are minding the soldier father's six looms. In some cases girls of 16 have six looms, and Sick Visitors report that cases of heart trouble, anaemia, and general weakness are most common at the present time amongst these girls; "the possible lasting effects of this severe strain are terrible to contemplate." The Sick Visitors of another Union say that the falling-off in health which is marked in adolescent workers, shows itself most when the girl is put on to three looms. Even in normal times girls mind three looms at 16, and the strain is considerable. These witnesses believe that the average girl should not be in charge of three looms until she is 18, and that 21 is soon enough for four looms. In this connection the evidence of one large mill where the quality of the weaving is above the average is particularly instructive. The manager reported that the standard of health was extremely satisfactory, and he pointed out that girls are not allowed to take three or four looms until they are strong and capable enough to manage them, and he had found by experience that it is seldom advisable to put them on the full number of looms until 17 or 18. RECOMMENDATIONS The greater part of the evidence considered in this report was based on opinions derived from personal observations with very little scientific and no statistical groundwork. The complete report leaves us with a fairly accurate picture of the conditions under which a large proportion of the adolescent workers of the country are employed, with some general notions as to how these conditions react on their health and physique. Exact conclusions as to the particular effects of the conditions of labour cannot be obtained, as no records dealing with the health of girls in factories are in existence. The impossibility of securing scientific and reliable data was apparent at an early stage of the inquiry, but it was felt that by reviewing the conditions of adolescent labour and by noting general tendencies the way might be cleared for further investigation on a more scientific basis. It is now generally recognised that "fatigue has a larger share in the promotion and permission of disease than any other causal condition," and as adolescents need a sufficient reserve of energy to maintain growth as well as health, it is obvious that conditions of work that exert no injurious effect on adults may be unduly fatiguing for juvenile workers with their twofold need. Consequently the best criterion for judging the effects of industry on the health of adolescent girls will be based on observations as to the incidence of fatigue with different industrial occupations. The presence of fatigue among girl workers has been frequently noted in the course of the investigation, but in every case the evidence is deduced merely from the observations of those in contact with the girls or from the testimony of the girls themselves. Physiological research has conclusively proved that subjective sensations are not a measure or even an early sign of fatigue, and that real or objective fatigue is shown and is measurable only by the diminished capacity for performing the act that caused it. Considerable attention has been devoted to the subject of industrial fatigue during recent years, and various tests for the detection of latent fatigue have been employed. Measurement of the output of work gives the most direct test of fatigue provided allowance is made for all variable factors except the worker's changing capacity. In addition, the observation of certain secondary symptoms supplies a useful index to the degree of fatigue which work induces. Lack of co-ordination, one of the earliest manifestations of nervous fatigue, results in increased accidents. The accident rate in factories tends to be 25 to 55 per cent higher for boys and girls than for men and women. In 1912 there were 4914 accidents to female young persons in factories and workshops.[14] Much light might be thrown on the presence of fatigue amongst industrially employed girls by records of the accident rates in factories, corrected with reference to the hours and conditions of labour and to the speed of work as shown by the output curves. Laboratory tests for the detection of accumulated fatigue have not sufficiently justified the trouble they involve, but observations as to complex reaction time with letter or colour tests, determination of acuity of auditory and visual sensations, and records of the systolic blood-pressure may be found to serve as an index to the incidence of fatigue when other methods are not applicable. There is no need to amplify these points. It only remains to suggest that inquiry on such lines be applied to groups of adolescent workers to discover the extent to which industrial fatigue may be under-mining the health and physique of growing girls. It was stated above that the absence of accurate data in the shape of records of the health of industrially employed girls made it impossible to arrive at any exact estimate of the effects of such work, but the sickness returns of industrial Insurance Societies must have been accumulating a vast mass of evidence as to the particular ailments and diseases to which employed girls are especially liable, so that an examination of these records may be extremely enlightening. The secretary of the Insurance Section of the Northern Counties Weavers' Amalgamation informed us that at the present time the sickness returns of this Association are not tabulated according to ages, but that such tables could be obtained from the local Unions and a complete estimate made if the need be proved. One Weavers' Society, the Nelson and District Weavers' Insurance Society, No. 1882, which is outside the Amalgamation, does indeed tabulate its records according to ages, but the total number of women and girls in this society reaches only 5982, so that far-reaching conclusions cannot be drawn from its experience. Unfortunately not all the members of the Trade Union are in the Insurance section of their Society for the National Insurance Benefit, but many belong to such Approved Societies as the Prudential, the Blackburn Unity, etc., so that evidence from these sources cannot be regarded as entirely conclusive. Nevertheless, were such data available for purposes of comparison between one industry and another, considerable evidence as to the particular effects of different industries might be obtained. During adolescence the plasticity of the human organism makes it more easily affected by external factors. Chief among the external influences which may disturb normal development are the attitudes, postures, and movements which industrial work involves. If these are cramped and constrained the healthy action of the heart and lungs and their natural development may be retarded, while if excessive muscular strain, such as that resulting from heavy lifting or prolonged standing, is experienced, active injury to vital organs may be brought about, and similarly these factors and the demands which excessive fatigue due to long hours, etc., makes on the growing organism may result in stunted growth and abnormal development. Information on these lines can only be obtained by detailed anthropometric and medical examination, and would have to be carried out on a large scale if the datum is to be of any value. But the material so collected would be the most reliable index of the effect of industry on health and physique, and if comparison be made between industrially employed and unoccupied girls by examination of different groups the final results would be invaluable. Such an inquiry might be carried out by medical women and anthropometric investigators in specific industries throughout the country. The exact conditions of the work, number of hours worked, etc., would have to be observed, and a record made of the history as well as the present physical condition of each girl examined. If groups of girls aged between 14 and 20 from different industries are thus examined, comparison can be made by similar examination amongst girls attending secondary schools. In districts like north-east Lancashire, where the pupils of the secondary schools are drawn from the same class and from the same type of home as the majority of the operatives, the exact influence of industrial work will be more accurately gauged than where the home environment differs in the two groups. An inquiry based on methods such as these would be of vast national importance. What is needed is exact scientific information available for the guidance of those responsible for the organisation of adolescent labour, and, more important still, as a basis for new regulations controlling the extent and conditions of this labour. TABLE I Occupations of Girls in England and Wales, according to Census of 1911 00's omitted in Employed Columns Key: A: Employed. B: Per cent. +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | |14 years.|15 years.|16 years.|17 years.|18 years.| | TRADES. +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | | A B | A B | A B | A B | A B | +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |Manufacture-- | | | | | | | Textiles | 312 9·1| 343 10·3| 352 10·4| 357 10·6| 356 10·5| | Dress | 251 7·3| 383 11·5| 425 12·6| 414 12·3| 405 11·9| | Other | 234 6·7| 328 9·7| 366 10·7| 381 11·2| 386 11·3| | | | | | | | |Domestic, Hotel and | | | | | | |Restaurant Service-- | | | | | | | Private Indoor and | | | | | | | Other Domestic | 367 10·7| 598 17·8| 733 21·8| 810 24·1| 855 25·1| | Hotel and Restaurant,| | | | | | | etc., Service | 16 ·5| 35 1· | 57 1·7| 76 2·3| 93 2·7| | Commercial | 89 2·6| 168 5· | 225 6·7| 257 7·7| 275 8·1| | Other | 63 1·8| 78 2·3| 95 2·8| 125 3·7| 160 4·7| +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |Total Occupied |1332 38·7|1933 57·6|2253 66·7|2420 71·9|2530 74·3| +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |Total Unoccupied |2111 61·3|1424 42·4|1121 33·3| 946 28·1| 874 25·7| +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |Total |3443 100 |3357 100 |3374 100 |3366 100 |3404 100 | +----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ [Extracted from _The Present Position of the Juvenile Labour Problem_, by F. Keeling.] TABLE II Proportion per 1000 Girls engaged in Occupations in certain Districts, England and Wales, 1911[15] +------------------+-------------------------------------------------+ | | AGES. | | +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | |14 Years.|15 Years.|16 Years.|17 Years.|18 Years.| +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |England and Wales | 387 | 576 | 668 | 719 | 743 | | | | | | | | |Lancashire | 651 | 751 | 801 | 826 | 837 | | | | | | | | |Blackburn | 841 | 905 | 925 | 931 | 934 | |Burnley | 872 | 899 | 932 | 940 | 938 | |Oldham | 843 | 890 | 910 | 926 | 923 | |Preston | 784 | 887 | 906 | 930 | 916 | |Rochdale | 853 | 904 | 910 | 932 | 932 | | | | | | | | |London | 365 | 625 | 737 | 795 | 820 | | | | | | | | |Birmingham | 643 | 812 | 867 | 890 | 894 | |Bradford | 790 | 858 | 881 | 895 | 896 | |Leeds | 673 | 768 | 815 | 831 | 835 | |Sheffield | 435 | 595 | 660 | 699 | 714 | +------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ _Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Adolescence_, vol. i. 167. [2] _Report on Physical Deterioration_, 1904, p. 123. [3] _Health and Physique of School Children_, by Arthur Greenwood. P. S. King, London, 1913, 1s. net. [4] _Labour Gazette_, November 1917. [5] See _The Present Position of the Juvenile Labour Problem_, by Frederic Keeling, 1914, 2d.; compare the same author's _Child Labour in the United Kingdom_, P. S. King, 1914. [6] Starr, _The Adolescent Period_, p. 15. [7] Tarbell, _New Ideals in Business_, p. 211. [8] Starr, _The Adolescent Period_. [9] _Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, Report_, 1904. [10] A lap is a thick layer of cotton fibre wound on a roller in early stage of preparation. [11] See below, p. 33. [12] Cf. the evidence of the British Mission on the output of munitions in France in December 1915, who note the advantage to health accruing from the long dinner hour, generally one and a half hours, and often two hours. (Cd. 8187 of 1916, p. 7.) [13] "Lancashire Women as Cotton-Piecers," _Englishwoman_, June 1914. [14] Keeling, _op. cit._ p. 7. [15] Census, Summary Tables, p. 242. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Minor punctuation errors repaired. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ Table I has had the the original headings "Employed." and "Per cent." replaced with "A" and "B" to enable the table to fit within the 75-column limit of an ASCII etext. Footnote 11 "See below, p. 33." refers to footnote 12. 
46121	----	[Illustration: HENRY FORD] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HENRY FORD'S OWN STORY How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power That Goes With Many Millions Yet Never Lost Touch With Humanity _AS TOLD TO_ ROSE WILDER LANE [Illustration] ELLIS O. JONES FOREST HILLS NEW YORK CITY 1917 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE BULLETIN COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ELLIS O. JONES All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FOREWORD BY ROSE WILDER LANE Fifty-two years ago[1] a few farmers' families near Greenfield, Michigan, heard that there was another baby at the Fords'--a boy. Mother and son were doing well. They were going to name the boy Henry. Twenty-six years later a little neighborhood on the edge of Detroit was amused to hear that the man Ford who had just built the little white house on the corner had a notion that he could invent something. He was always puttering away in the old shed back of the house. Sometimes he worked all night there. The neighbors saw the light burning through the cracks. Twelve years ago half a dozen men in Detroit were actually driving the Ford automobile about the streets. Ford had started a small factory, with a dozen mechanics, and was buying material. It was freely predicted that the venture would never come to much. _Last year--January, 1914--America was startled by an announcement from the Ford factory that ten million dollars would be divided among the eighteen thousand employees as their share of the company's profits. Henry Ford was a multimillionaire, and America regarded him with awe._ Mankind must have its hero. The demand for him is more insistent than hunger, more inexorable than cold or fear. Before a race builds houses or prepares food with its hands, it creates in its mind that demigod, that superman, standing on a higher plane than the rest of humanity, more admirable, more powerful than the others. We must have him as a symbol of something greater than ourselves, to keep alive in us that faith in life which is threatened by our own experience of living. He is at once our greatest solace and our worst enemy. We cling to him as a child clings to a guiding hand, unable to walk without it, and never able to walk alone until it is let go. Every advance of democracy destroys our old hero, and hastily we build up another. When science has exorcised Jove, and real estate promoters have subdivided the Olympian heights, we desert the old altars to kneel before thrones. When our kings have been cast down from their high places by our inconsistent struggles for liberty, we cannot leave those high places empty. We found a government on the bold declaration, "All men are born free and equal," but we do not believe it. Out of the material at hand we must create again our great ones. So, with the growth of Big Business during the last quarter of a century, we have built up the modern myth of the Big Business Man. Our imaginations are intrigued by the spectacle of his rise from our ranks. Yesterday he was a farmer's son, an office boy, a peddler of Armenian laces. To-day he is a demigod. Is our country threatened with financial ruin? At a midnight conference of his dependents, hastily called, he speaks one word. We are saved. Does a foreign nation, fighting for its life, ask our help? He endorses the loan. We contemplate him with awe. In one lifetime he has made himself a world power; in twenty years he has made a hundred million dollars, we say. He is a Big Business Man. _Our tendency was immediately to put Henry Ford in that class. He does not belong to it. He is not a Big Business Man; he is a big man in business._ It is not strange, with this belief of millions of persons that the men who have been at the head of our great business development are greater than ordinary men, that most of them believe it themselves and act on that assumption. Henry Ford does not. His greatness lies in that. With millions piling upon millions in our hands, most of us would lose our viewpoint. He has kept his--a plain mechanic's outlook on life and human relations. He sees men all as parts of a great machine, in which every waste motion, every broken or inefficient part means a loss to the whole. _"Money doesn't do me any good," he says. "I can't spend it on myself. Money has no value, anyway. It is merely a transmitter, like electricity. I try to keep it moving as fast as I can, for the best interests of everybody concerned. A man can't afford to look out for himself at the expense of any one else, because anything that hurts the other man is bound to hurt you in the end, the same way."_ The story of Henry Ford is the story of his coming to that conclusion, and of his building up an annual business of one hundred and fifty million dollars based upon it. ----- Footnote 1: July 30, 1863. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS FOREWORD I. ONE SUMMER'S DAY II. MENDING A WATCH III. THE FIRST JOB IV. AN EXACTING ROUTINE V. GETTING THE MACHINE IDEA VI. BACK TO THE FARM VII. THE ROAD TO HYMEN VIII. MAKING A FARM EFFICIENT IX. THE LURE OF THE MACHINE SHOPS X. "WHY NOT USE GASOLINE?" XI. BACK TO DETROIT XII. LEARNING ABOUT ELECTRICITY XIII. EIGHT HOURS, BUT NOT FOR HIMSELF XIV. STRUGGLING WITH THE FIRST CAR XV. A RIDE IN THE RAIN XVI. ENTER COFFEE JIM XVII. ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS XVIII. WINNING A RACE XIX. RAISING CAPITAL XX. CLINGING TO A PRINCIPLE XXI. EARLY MANUFACTURING TRIALS XXII. AUTOMOBILES FOR THE MASSES XXIII. FIGHTING THE SELDON PATENT XXIV. "THE GREATEST GOOD TO THE GREATEST NUMBER" XXV. FIVE DOLLARS A DAY MINIMUM XXVI. MAKING IT PAY XXVII. THE IMPORTANCE OF A JOB XXVIII. A GREAT EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION XXIX. THE EUROPEAN WAR XXX. THE BEST PREPAREDNESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HENRY FORD'S OWN STORY CHAPTER I ONE SUMMER'S DAY It was a hot, sultry day in the last of July, one of those Eastern summer days when the air presses heavily down on the stifling country fields, and in every farmyard the chickens scratch deep on the shady side of buildings, looking for cool earth to lie upon, panting. "This weather won't hold long," William Ford said that morning, giving the big bay a friendly slap and fastening the trace as she stepped over. "We'd better get the hay under cover before night." There was no sign of a cloud in the bright, hot sky, but none of the hired men disputed him. William Ford was a good farmer, thrifty and weather-wise. Every field of his 300-acre farm was well cared for, yielding richly every year; his cattle were fat and sleek, his big red barns the best filled in the neighborhood. He was not the man to let ten acres of good timothy-and-clover hay get caught in a summer shower and spoil. They put the big hay-rack on the wagon, threw in the stone water jugs, filled with cool water from the well near the kitchen door, and drove out to the meadow. One imagines them working there, lifting great forksful of the clover-scented hay, tossing them into the rack, where, on the rising mound, the youngest man was kept busy shifting and settling them with his fork. Grasshoppers whirred up from the winrows of the dried grass when they were disturbed, and quails called from the fence corners. Now and then the men stopped to wipe the sweat from their foreheads and to take long swallows from the water jugs, hidden, for coolness, under a mound of hay. Then, with a look at the sky, they took up their forks. William Ford worked with the others, doing a good day's task with the best of them, and proud of it. He was the owner, and they were the hired men, but on a Michigan farm the measure of a man is the part he takes in man's work. In the cities, where men work against men, let them build up artificial distinctions; on the farm the fight is against nature, and men stand shoulder to shoulder in it. A dark cloud was coming up in the northwest, and every man's muscles leaped to the need for getting in the hay. Suddenly they heard a clang from the great bell, hung high on a post in the home dooryard, and used only for calling in the men at dinnertime or for some emergency alarm. Every man stopped. It was only 10 o'clock. Then they saw a fluttering apron at the barnyard gate, and William Ford dropped his fork. "I'll go. Get in the hay!" he called back, already running over the stubble in long strides. The men stared a minute longer and then turned back to work, a little more slowly this time, with the boss gone. A few minutes later they stopped again to watch him riding out of the home yard and down the road, urging the little gray mare to a run. "Going for Doc Hall," they surmised. They got in a few more loads of hay before the rain came, spattering in big drops on their straw hats and making a pleasant rustling on the thirsty meadows. Then they climbed into the half-filled rack and drove down to the big barn. They sat idly there in the dimness, watching through the wide doors the gray slant of the rain. The doctor had come; one of the men unhitched his horse and led it into a stall, while another pulled the light cart under the shed. Dinner time came and passed. There was no call from the house, and they did not go in. Once in a while they laughed nervously, and remarked that it was a shame they did not save the last three loads of hay. Good hay, too, ran a full four tons to the acre. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon the rain changed to a light drizzle and the clouds broke. Later William Ford came out of the house and crossed the soppy yard. He was grinning a little. It was all right, he said--a boy. I believe they had up a jug of sweet cider from the cellar in honor of the occasion. I know that when they apologetically mentioned the spoiled hay he laughed heartily and asked what they supposed he cared about the hay. "What're you going to call him, Ford?" one of the men asked him as they stood around the cider jug, wiping their lips on the backs of their hands. "The wife's named him already--Henry," he said. "Well, he'll have his share of one of the finest farms in Michigan one of these days," they said, and while William Ford said nothing he must have looked over his green rolling acres with a pardonable pride, reflecting that the new boy-baby need never want for anything in reason. Henry was the second son of William Ford and Mary Litogot Ford, his energetic, wholesome Holland Dutch wife. While he was still in pinafores, tumbling about the house or making daring excursions into the barnyard, the stronghold of the dreadful turkey gobbler, his sister, Margaret, was born, and Henry had barely been promoted to real trousers, at the age of four, when another brother arrived. Four babies, to be bathed, clothed, taught, loved and guarded from all the childish disasters to be encountered about the farm, might well be thought enough to fill any woman's mind and hands, but there were a thousand additional tasks for the mistress of that large household. There was milk to skim, butter and cheese to make, poultry and garden to be tended, patchwork quilts to sew, and later to fasten into the quilting frames and stitch by hand in herringbone or fan patterns. The hired hands must be fed--twenty or thirty of them in harvesting time; pickles, jams, jellies, sweet cider, vinegar must be made and stored away on the cellar shelves. When the hogs were killed in the fall there were sausages, head-cheese, pickled pigs' feet to prepare, hams and shoulders to be soaked in brine and smoked; onions, peppers, popcorn to be braided in long strips and hung in the attic; while every day bread, cake and pies must be baked, and the house kept in that "apple-pie order" so dear to the pride of the Michigan farmers' women-folk. All these tasks Mary Ford did, or superintended, efficiently, looking to the ways of her household with all the care and pride her husband had in managing the farm. She found time, too, to be neighborly, to visit her friends, care for one of them who fell ill, help any one in the little community who needed it. And always she watched over the health and manners of the children. In this environment Henry grew. He was energetic, interested in everything, from the first. His misadventures in conquering the turkey gobbler would fill a chapter. When he was a little older one of the hired men would put him on the back of a big farm horse and let him ride around the barnyard, or perhaps he was allowed to carry a spiced drink of vinegar and water to the men working in the harvest field. He learned every corner of the hay-mow, and had a serious interview with his father over the matter of sliding down the straw-stacks. In the winters, wrapped in a knit muffler, with mittens of his mother's making on his hands, he played in the snow or spent whole afternoons sliding on the ice with his brothers. Best of all he liked the "shop," where the blacksmith work for the farm was done and the sharpening of tools. When the weather was bad outside his father or one of the men lighted the charcoal in the forge and Henry might pull the bellows till the fire glowed and the iron buried in it shone white-hot. Then the sparks flew from the anvil while the great hammer clanged on the metal, shaping it, and Henry begged to be allowed to try it himself, just once. In time he was given a small hammer of his own. So the years passed until Henry was 11 years old, and then a momentous event occurred--small enough in itself, but to this day one of the keenest memories of his childhood. CHAPTER II MENDING A WATCH This first memorable event of Henry Ford's childhood occurred on a Sunday in the spring of his eleventh year. In that well-regulated household Sunday, as a matter of course, was a day of stiffly starched, dressed-up propriety for the children, and of custom-enforced idleness for the elders. In the morning the fat driving horses, brushed till their glossy coats shone in the sun, were hitched to the two-seated carriage, and the family drove to church. William and Mary Ford were Episcopalians, and Henry was reared in that faith, although both then and later he showed little enthusiasm for church-going. Sitting through the long service in the stuffy little church, uncomfortably conscious of his Sunday-best garments, sternly forbidden to "fidget," while outside were all the sights and sounds of a country spring must have seemed a wanton waste of time to small Henry. To this day he has not greatly changed that opinion. "Religion, like everything else, is a thing that should be kept working," he says. "I see no use in spending a great deal of time learning about heaven and hell. In my opinion, a man makes his own heaven and hell and carries it around with him. Both of them are states of mind." On this particular Sunday morning Henry was more than usually rebellious. It was the first week he had been allowed to leave off his shoes and stockings for the summer, and Henry had all a country boy's ardor for "going barefoot." To cramp his joyously liberated toes again into stuffy, leather shoes seemed to him an outrage. He resented his white collar, too, and the immaculate little suit his mother cautioned him to keep clean. He was not sullen about it. He merely remarked frankly that he hated their old Sunday, anyhow, and wished never to see another. Mother and father and the four children set out for church as usual. At the hitching posts, where William Ford tied the horses before going in to the church, they met their neighbors, the Bennetts. Will Bennett, a youngster about Henry's age, hailed him from the other carriage. "Hi, Hen! C'm'ere! I got something you ain't got!" Henry scrambled out over the wheel and hurried to see what it might be. It was a watch, a real watch, as large and shiny as his father's. Henry looked at it with awed admiration, and then with envy. It was Will's own watch; his grandfather had given it to him. On a strict, cross-your-heart promise to give it back, Henry was allowed to take it in his hands. Then he cheered up somewhat. "That ain't much!" he scornfully remarked. "It ain't runnin'!" At the same moment a dazzling idea occurred to him. He had always wanted to see the insides of a watch. "I bet I c'n fix it for you," he declared. A few minutes later, when Mary Ford looked for Henry, he was nowhere to be found. Will was also missing. When, after services, they had not appeared, the parents became worried. They searched. Inquiries and explorations failed to reveal the boys. They were in the Bennetts' farm "shop," busy with the watch. Having no screw-driver small enough, Henry made one by filing a shingle nail. Then he set to work and took out every screw in the mechanism. The works came out of the case, to the accompaniment of an agonized protest from Will; the cogs fell apart, the springs unwound. Altogether it was a beautiful disorder, enough to delight any small boy. "Now look what you've went and done!" cried Will, torn between natural emotion over the disaster to his watch and admiration of Henry's daring. "Well, you SAID you was goin' ta put it together," he reminded that experimenter many times in the next few hours. Dinner time came, and Will, recalling the fried chicken, dumplings, puddings, cakes, of the Sunday dinner, grew more than restless, but Henry held him there by the sheer force of his enthusiasm. The afternoon wore along, and he was still investigating those fascinating gears and springs. When at last outraged parental authority descended upon the boys, Henry's Sunday clothes were a wreck, his hands and face were grimy, but he had correctly replaced most of the screws, and he passionately declared that if they would only leave him alone he would have the watch running in no time. Family discipline was strict in those days. Undoubtedly Henry was punished, but he does not recall that now. What he does remember vividly is the passion for investigating clocks and watches that followed. In a few months he had taken apart and put together every timepiece on the place, excepting only his father's watch. "Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," he says. But the knowledge he acquired was more than useful to him later, when at sixteen he faced the problem of making his own living in Detroit. In those days farm life had no great appeal for him. There were plenty of chores to be done by an active boy of 12 on that farm, where every bit of energy was put to some useful purpose. He drove up the cows at night, kept the kitchen wood-box filled, helped to hitch and unhitch the horses, learned to milk and chop kindling. He recalls that his principal objection to such work was that it was always interrupting some interesting occupation he had discovered for himself in the shop. He liked to handle tools, to make something. The chores were an endless repetition of the same task, with no concrete object created. In the winter he went to the district school, walking two miles and back every day through the snow, and enjoying it. He did not care for school especially, although he got fair marks in his studies, and was given to helping other boys "get their problems." Arithmetic was easy for him. His mind was already developing its mechanical trend. "I always stood well with the teacher," he says with a twinkle. "I found things ran more smoothly that way." He was not the boy to create unnecessary friction in his human relations, finding it as wasteful of energy there as it would have been in any of the mechanical contrivances he made. He "got along pretty well" with every one, until the time came to fight, and then he fought, hard and quick. Under his leadership, for he was popular with the other boys, the Greenfield school saw strange things done. Henry liked to play as well as any boy, but somehow in his thrifty ancestry there had been developed a strong desire to have something to show for time spent. Swimming, skating and the like were all very well until he had thoroughly learned them, but why keep on after that? Henry wanted to do something else then. And as for spending a whole afternoon batting a ball around, that seemed to him a foolish occupation. Accordingly, he constructed a working forge in the schoolyard, and he and his crowd spent every recess and noon during one autumn working at it. There, with the aid of a blow-pipe, they melted every bottle and bit of broken glass they could find and recast them into strange shapes. It was Henry, too, who devised the plan of damming the creek that ran near the schoolhouse, and by organizing the other boys into regular gangs, with a subforeman for each, accomplished the task so thoroughly and quickly that he had flooded two acres of potatoes before an outraged farmer knew what was happening. But these occupations, absorbing enough for the time being, did not fill his imagination. Henry already dreamed of bigger things. He meant, some day, to be a locomotive engineer. When he saw the big, black engines roaring across the Michigan farm lands, under their plumes of smoke, and when he caught a glimpse of the sooty man in overalls at the throttle, he felt an ambitious longing. Some day----! It was on the whole a busy, happy childhood, spent for the most part out of doors. Henry grew freckled, sunburned the skin from his nose and neck in the swimming pool, scratched his bare legs on blackberry briars. He learned how to drive horses, how to handle a hay fork or a hoe, how to sharpen and repair the farm tools. The "shop" was the most interesting part of the farm to him; it was there he invented and manufactured a device for opening and closing the farm gates without getting down from the wagon. Then, when he was 14, an event occurred which undoubtedly changed the course of his life. Mary Ford died. CHAPTER III THE FIRST JOB When Mary Ford died the heart of the home went with her. "The house was like a watch without a mainspring," her son says. William Ford did his best, but it must have been a pathetic attempt, that effort of the big, hardworking farmer to take a mother's place to the four children. For a time a married aunt came in and managed the household, but she was needed in her own home and soon went back to it. Then Margaret, Henry's youngest sister, took charge, and tried to keep the house in order and superintend the work of "hired girls" older than herself. She was "capable"--that good New England word so much more expressive than "efficient"--but no one could take Mary Ford's place in that home. There was now nothing to hold Henry on the farm. He had learned how to do the farm work, and the little attraction it had had for him was gone; thereafter every task was merely a repetition. His father did not need his help; there were always the hired men. I suppose any need William Ford may have felt for the companionship of his second son was unexpressed. In matters of emotion the family is not demonstrative. The boy had exhausted the possibilities of the farm shop. His last work in it was the building of a small steam-engine. For this, helped partly by pictures, partly by his boyish ingenuity, he made his own patterns, his own castings, did his own machine work. His material was bits of old iron, pieces of wagon tires, stray teeth from harrows--anything and everything from the scrap pile in the shop which he could utilize in any imaginable way. When the engine was finished Henry mounted it on an improvised chassis which he had cut down from an old farm wagon, attached it by a direct drive to a wheel on one side, something like a locomotive connecting-rod, and capped the whole with a whistle which could be heard for miles. When he had completed the job he looked at the result with some natural pride. Sitting at the throttle, tooting the ear-splitting whistle, he charged up and down the meadow lot at nearly ten miles an hour, frightening every cow on the place. But after all his work, for some reason the engine did not please him long. Possibly the lack of enthusiasm with which it was received disappointed him. In the technical journals which he read eagerly during his sixteenth winter, he learned about the big iron works of Detroit, saw pictures of machines he longed to handle. Early the next spring, when the snow had melted, and every breeze that blew across the fields was an invitation to begin something new, Henry started to school as usual one morning, and did not return. Detroit is only a few miles from Greenfield. Henry made the journey on the train that morning, and while his family supposed him at school and the teacher was marking a matter-of-fact "absent" after his name, he had already set about his independent career. He had made several trips to Detroit in the past, but this time the city looked very different to him. It had worn a holiday appearance before, but now it seemed stern and busy--a little too busy, perhaps, to waste much attention on a country boy of sixteen looking for a job. Nevertheless, he whistled cheerfully enough to himself, and started briskly through the crowds. He knew what he wanted, and he was going straight for it. "I always knew I would get what I went after," he says. "I don't recall having any very great doubts or fears." At that time the shop of James Flower and Company, manufacturers of steam engines and steam engine appliances, was one of Detroit's largest factories. Over one hundred men were employed there, and their output was one to be pointed to with pride by boastful citizens. Henry Ford's nerves, healthy and steady as they were, tingled with excitement when he entered the place. He had read of it, and had even seen a picture of it, but now he beheld for himself its size and the great number of machines and men. This was something big, he said to himself. After a moment he asked a man working near where he could find the foreman. "Over there--the big fellow in the red shirt," the man replied. Henry hurried over and asked for a job. The foreman looked at him and saw a slight, wiry country boy who wanted work. There was nothing remarkable about him, one supposes. The foreman did not perceive immediately, after one look into his steady eye, that this was no ordinary lad, as foremen so frequently do in fiction. Instead, he looked Henry over, asked him a question or two, remembered that a big order had just come in and he was short of hands. "Well, come to work to-morrow. I'll see what you can do," he said. "Pay you two and a half a week." "All right, sir," Henry responded promptly, but the foreman had already turned his back and forgotten him. Henry, almost doubtful of his good fortune, hurried away before the foreman should change his mind. Outside in the sunshine he pushed his cap on the back of his head, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, jingling the silver in one of them, and walked down the street, whistling. The world looked like a good place to him. No more farming for Henry Ford. He was a machinist now, with a job in the James Flower shops. Before him there unrolled a bright future. He was ambitious; he did not intend always to remain a mechanic. One day when he had learned all there was to know about the making of steam engines, he intended to drive one himself. He would be a locomotive engineer, nothing less. Meantime there were practical questions of food and shelter to consider immediately and he was not the boy to waste time in speculations for the future when there was anything to be done. He counted his money. Almost four dollars, and a prospect of two and a half every week. Then he set out to find a boarding house. Two dollars and a half a week, not a large living income, even in 1878. Henry walked a long time looking for a landlady who would consent to board a healthy sixteen-year-old mechanic for that sum. It was late that afternoon before he found one who, after some hesitation, agreed to do it. Then he looked at the small, dirty room she showed him, at her untidy, slatternly person, and decided that he would not live there. He came out into the street again. Henry was facing the big problem. How was he to live on an income too small? Apparently his mind went, with the precision of a machine, directly to the answer. "When your reasonable expenses exceed your income, increase your income." Simple. He knew that after he had finished his day's work at the shops there would be a margin of several hours a day left to him. He would have to turn them into money. That was all. He returned to a clean boarding house he had visited earlier in the day, paid three dollars and a half in advance for one week's board, and ate a hearty supper. Then he went to bed. CHAPTER IV AN EXACTING ROUTINE Meantime back in Greenfield there was a flurry of excitement and not a little worry. Henry did not return from school in time to help with the chores. When supper time came and went without his appearing Margaret was sure some terrible accident had occurred. A hired man was sent to make inquiries. He returned with the news that Henry had not been in school. Then William Ford himself hitched up and drove about the neighborhood looking for the boy. With characteristic reserve and independence Henry had taken no one into his confidence, but late that night his father returned with information that he had been seen taking the train for Detroit. William Ford knew his son. When he found that Henry had left of his own accord he told Margaret dryly that the boy could take care of himself and there was nothing to worry about. However, after two days had gone by without any word from Henry his father went up to Detroit to look for him. Those two days had been full of interest for Henry. He found that his hours in the machine shop were from seven in the morning to six at night, with no idle moments in any of them. He helped at the forges, made castings, assembled parts. He was happy. There were no chores or school to interrupt his absorption in machinery. Every hour he learned something new about steam engines. When the closing whistle blew and the men dropped their tools he was sorry to quit. Still, there was that extra dollar a week to be made somehow. As soon as he had finished supper the first night he hurried out to look for an evening job. It never occurred to him to work at anything other than machinery. He was a machine "fan," just as some boys are baseball fans; he liked mechanical problems. A batting average never interested him, but "making things go"--there was real fun in that. Machine shops were not open at night, but he recalled his experiments with the luckless family clock. He hunted up a jeweler and asked him for night work. Then he hunted up another, and another. None of them needed an assistant. When the jewelers' shops closed that night he went back to his boarding-house. He spent another day at work in the James Flower shops. He spent another night looking for work with a jeweler. The third day, late in the afternoon, his father found him. Knowing Henry's interests, William Ford had begun his search by inquiring for the boy in Detroit's machine shops. He spoke to the foreman and took Henry outside. There was an argument. William Ford, backed by the force of parental authority, declared sternly that the place for Henry was in school. Henry, with two days' experience in a real iron works, hotly declared that he'd never go back to school, not if he was licked for it. "What's the good of the old school, anyhow? I want to learn to make steam engines," he said. In the end William Ford saw the futility of argument. He must have been an unusually reasonable father, for the time and place. It would have been a simple matter to lead Henry home by the ear and keep him there until he ran away again, and in 1878 most Michigan fathers in his situation would have done it. "Well, you know where your home is any time you want to come back to it," he said finally, and went back to the farm. Henry was now definitely on his own resources. With urgent need for that extra dollar a week weighing more heavily on his mind every day, he spent his evenings searching for night work. Before the time arrived to pay his second week's board he had found a jeweler who was willing to pay him two dollars a week for four hours' work every night. The arrangement left Henry with a dollar a week for spending money. This was embarrassing riches. "I never did figure out how to spend the whole of that dollar," he says. "I really had no use for it. My board and lodging were paid and the clothes I had were good enough for the shop. I never have known what to do with money after my expenses were paid--can't squander it on myself without hurting myself, and nobody wants to do that. Money is the most useless thing in the world, anyhow." His life now settled into a routine eminently satisfactory to him--a routine that lasted for nine months. From seven in the morning to six at night in the machine shop, from seven to eleven in the evening at work with a microscope, repairing and assembling watches, then home to bed for a good six hours' sleep, and back to work again. Day followed day, exactly alike, except that every one of them taught him something about machines--either steam engines or watches. He went to bed, rose, ate, worked on a regular schedule, following the same route--the shortest one--from the boarding-house to the shops, to the jeweler's, back to the boarding-house again. Before long he found that he could spend a part of his dollar profitably in buying technical journals--French, English, German magazines dealing with mechanics. He read these in his room after returning from the jeweler's. Few boys of sixteen could endure a routine so exacting in its demands on strength and endurance without destroying their health, but Henry Ford had the one trait common to all men of achievement--an apparently inexhaustible energy. His active, out-of-door boyhood had stored up physical reserves of it; his one direct interest gave him his mental supply. He wanted to learn about machines; that was all he wanted. He was never distracted by other impulses or tastes. "Recreation? No, I had no recreation; I didn't want it," he says. "What's the value of recreation, anyhow? It's just waste time. I got my fun out of my work." He was obsessed by his one idea. In a few months he had mastered all the intricate details of building steam engines. The mammoth shop of James Flower & Co., with its great force of a hundred mechanics, became familiar to him; it shrank from the huge proportions it had at first assumed in his eyes. He began to see imperfections in its system and to be annoyed by them. "See here," he said one day to the man who worked beside him. "Nothing's ever made twice alike in this place. We waste a lot of time and material assembling these engines. That piston rod'll have to be made over; it won't fit the cylinder." "Oh, well, I guess we do the best we can," the other man said. "It won't take long to fit it." It was the happy-go-lucky method of factories in the seventies. Men were shifted from job to job to suit the whim of the foreman or the exigencies of a rush order. Parts were cast, recast, filed down to fit other parts. Scrap iron accumulated in the corners of the shop. A piece of work was abandoned half finished in order to make up time on another order, delayed by some accident. By to-day's standards it was a veritable helter-skelter, from which the finished machines somehow emerged, at a fearful cost in wasted time and labor. When Henry was switched from one piece of work to another, taken from his job to help some other workman, or sent to get a needed tool that was missing, he knew that his time was being wasted. His thrifty instincts resented it. With his mind full of pictures of smoothly running, exactly adjusted machines, he knew there was something wrong with the way the iron-works was managed. He was growing dissatisfied with his job. CHAPTER V GETTING THE MACHINE IDEA When Henry had been with the James Flower Company nine months his wages were increased. He received three dollars a week. He was not greatly impressed. He had not been working for the money; he wanted to learn more about machines. As far as he was concerned, the advantages of the iron-works were nearly exhausted. He had had in turn nearly every job in the place, which had been a good education for him, but the methods which had allowed it annoyed him more every day. He began to think the foreman rather a stupid fellow, with slipshod, inefficient ideas. As a matter of fact, the shop was a very good one for those days. It turned out good machines, and did it with no more waste than was customary. Efficiency experts, waste-motion experiments, mass production--in a word, the machine idea applied to human beings was unheard of then. Henry knew there was something wrong. He did not like to work there any longer. Two weeks after the additional fifty cents had been added to his pay envelope he left the James Flower Company. He had got a job with the Drydock Engine works, manufacturers of marine machinery. His pay was two dollars and a half a week. To the few men who knew him he probably seemed a discontented boy who did not know when he was well off. If any of them took the trouble to advise him, they probably said he would do better to stay with a good thing while he had it than to change around aimlessly. He was far from being a boy who needed that advice. Without knowing it, he had found the one thing he was to follow all his life--not machines merely, but the machine idea. He went to work for the drydock company because he liked its organization. By this time he was a little more than 17 years old; an active, wiry young man, his muscles hard and his hands calloused from work. After nearly a year of complete absorption in mechanical problems, his natural liking for human companionship began to assert itself. At the drydock works he found a group of young men like himself, hard-working, fun-loving young mechanics. In a few weeks he was popular with them. They were a clean, energetic lot, clear-thinking and ambitious, as most mechanics are. After the day's work was finished they rushed through the wide doors into the street, with a whoop of delight in the outdoor air, jostling each other, playing practical jokes, enjoying a little rough horseplay among themselves. In the evenings they wandered about the streets in couples, arms carelessly thrown over each other's shoulders, commenting on things they saw. They learned every inch of the water front; tried each other out in wrestling and boxing. Eager young fellows, grasping at life with both hands, wanting all of it, and wanting it right then--naturally enough they smoked, drank, experimented with love-making, turned night into day in a joyous carouse now and then. But before long Henry Ford was a leader among them, as he had been among the boys in the Greenfield school, and again he diverted the energy of his followers into his own channels. Pursuits that had interested them seemed to him a waste of time and strength. He did not smoke--his tentative attempt with hay-cigarettes in his boyhood had discouraged that permanently--he did not drink, and girls seemed to him unutterably stupid. "I have never tasted liquor in my life," he says. "I'd as soon think of taking any other poison." Undoubtedly his opinion is right, but one is inclined to doubt the accuracy of his memory. In those early days in Detroit he must have experimented at least once with the effects of liquor on the human system; probably once would have been sufficient. Besides, about that time he developed an interest so strong that it not only absorbed his own attention, but carried that of his friends along with it. He bought a watch. It had taken him only a few months to master his task in the drydock works so thoroughly that his wages were raised. Later they were raised again. Then he was getting five dollars a week, more than enough to pay his expenses, without night work. He left the jeweler's shop, but he brought with him a watch, the first he had ever owned. Immediately he took it to pieces. When its scattered parts lay on a table before him he looked at them and marveled. He had paid three dollars for the watch, and he could not figure out any reason why it should have cost so much. "It ran," he says. "It had some kind of a dark composition case, and it weighed a good deal, and it went along all right--never lost or gained more than a certain amount in any given day. "But there wasn't anything about that watch that should have cost three dollars. Nothing but a lot of plain parts, made out of cheap metal. I could have made one like it for one dollar, or even less. But it cost me three. The only way I could figure it out was that there was a lot of waste somewhere." Then he remembered the methods of production at the James Flower Company. He reasoned that probably that watch factory had turned out only a few hundred of that design, and then tried something else--alarm clocks, perhaps. The parts had been made by the dozen, some of them had probably been filed down by hand, to make them fit. Then he got the great idea. A factory--a gigantic factory, running with the precision of a machine, turning out watches by the thousands and tens of thousands--watches all exactly alike, every part cut by an exact die. He talked it over with the boys at the drydock works. He was enthusiastic. He showed them that a watch could be made for less than half a dollar by his plan. He juggled figures of thousands of dollars as though they were pennies. The size of the sums did not stagger him, because money was never concrete to him--it was merely rows of figures--but to the young fellows who listened his talk was dazzling. They joined enthusiastically in the scheme. Then their evenings became merely so much time to spend up in Ford's room, figuring estimates and discussing plans. The watch could be made for thirty-seven cents, provided machinery turned it out by tens of thousands. Henry Ford visualized the factory--a factory devoted to one thing, the making of ONE watch--specialized, concentrated, with no waste energy. Those eager young men planned the whole thing from furnaces to assembling rooms. They figured the cost of material by the hundred tons, estimated the exact proportions each metal required; they planned an output of 2,000 watches daily as the point at which cost of production would be cheapest. They would sell the watch for fifty cents, and guarantee it for one year. Two thousand watches at a profit of thirteen cents each--$260 daily profit! They were dazzled. "We needn't stop there--we can increase that output when we get started," Henry Ford declared. "Organization will do it. Lack of organization keeps prices up, for its cost must be charged in on the selling price; and high prices keep sales down. We will work it the other way; low prices, increased sales, increased output, lower prices. It works in a circle. Listen to this----" He held them, listening, while he talked and figured, eliminating waste here and cutting expenses there, until the landlady came up and knocked at the door, asking if they meant to stay up all night. It took time to get his ideas translated into concrete, exact figures. He worked over them for nearly a year, holding the enthusiasm of his friends at fever heat all that time. Finally he made drawings for the machines he planned and cut dies for making the different parts of the watch. His plan was complete--a gigantic machine, taking in bars of steel at one end, and turning out completed watches at the other--hundreds of thousands of cheap watches, all alike--the Ford watch! "I tell you there's a fortune in it--a fortune!" the young fellows in the scheme exclaimed to each other. "All we need now is the capital," Ford decided at last. He was turning his mind to the problem of getting it, when he received a letter from his sister Margaret. His father had been injured in an accident; his older brother was ill. Couldn't he come home for a while? They needed him. CHAPTER VI BACK TO THE FARM The letter from home must have come like a dash of cold water on Henry's enthusiastic plans. He had been thinking in the future, planning, rearranging, adjusting the years just ahead. It has always been his instinct to do just that. "You can't run anything on precedents if you want to make a success," he says to-day. "We should be guiding our future by the present, instead of being guided in the present by the past." Suddenly the past had come into his calculations. Henry spent a dark day or two over that letter--the universal struggle between the claims of the older generation and the desires of the younger one. There was never any real question as to the outcome. The machine-idea has been the controlling factor in his life, but it has never been stronger than his human sympathies. It is in adjusting them to each other, in making human sympathies a working business policy, that he has made his real success. Of course at that time he did not see such a possibility. It was a clear-cut struggle between two opposing forces; on one side the splendid future just ahead, on the other his father's need of him. He went home. He intended at the time to stay only until his father was well again--perhaps for a month or so, surely not longer than one summer. The plans for the watch factory were not abandoned, they were only laid aside temporarily. It would be possible to run up to Detroit for a day or two now and then, and keep on working on plans for getting together the necessary capital. But no business on earth is harder to leave than the business of running a farm. When Henry reached home he found a dozen fields needing immediate action. The corn had been neglected, already weeds were springing up between the rows; in the house his father was fretting because the hired hands were not feeding the cows properly, and they were giving less milk. The clover was going to seed, while the hogs looked hungrily at it through the fence because there was no one to see that their noses were ringed and the gates opened. Some of the plows and harrows had been left in the fields, where they were rusting in the summer sun and rain. There was plenty of work for Henry. At first from day to day, then from week to week, he put off the trip to Detroit. He worked in the fields with the men, plowing, planting, harvesting, setting the pace for the others to follow, as an owner must do on a farm. He was learning, so thoroughly that he never forgot it, the art of managing men without losing the democratic feeling of being one of them. In the mornings he was up before daylight, and out to the barn-yard. He fed the horses, watched that the milking was thoroughly done, and gave orders for the day's work. Then the great bell clanged once, and he and all the men hurried into the house, where, sitting at one long table in the kitchen, they ate the breakfast Margaret and the hired girls brought to them, piping hot from the stove. After that they scattered, driving down the farm lanes to the fields, while the sun rose, and the meadows, sparkling with dew, scented the air with clover. The sun rose higher, pouring its heat down upon them as they worked, and a shrill, whirring noise rose from all the tiny insects in the grass, a note like the voice of the heat. Coats and vests came off, and were tossed in the fence corners; sleeves were rolled up, shirts opened wide at the neck. "Whew! it's hot!" said Henry, stopping to wipe the sweat from his face. "Where's the water jug? Jim, what say you run and bring it up? Let's have a drink before we go on." So they worked through the mornings, stopping gladly enough when the great bell clanged out the welcome news that Margaret and the girls had prepared the huge dinner their appetites demanded. In the afternoons Henry, on the little gray mare, rode to the far fields for a diplomatic, authoritative word with the men plowing there, or perhaps he went a little farther, and bargained with the next neighbor for a likely looking yearling heifer. Then back at night to the big farm-yard, where the cows must be milked, the horses watered, fed and everything made comfortable and safe for the night. It was a very different life from that in the machine shop, and Henry Ford thought, when he pored over his mechanic journals by the sitting-room lamp in the evenings, that he was wasting precious time. But he was learning a great many things he would find useful later. Margaret Ford was by this time a healthy, attractive young woman, with all the affairs of the household and dairy well in hand. The social affairs of the community began to center around her. In the evenings the young men of the neighborhood rode over to propose picnics and hay-rides; after church on Sundays a dozen young people would come trooping out to the farm with her, and Margaret would put a white apron over her best dress and serve a big country dinner. They had a rollicking time in the grassy front yards afterwards, or out in the orchard when the plums were ripe. Late in the afternoon they separated somehow into pairs, as young people will do, and walked the three miles to church for the evening services. It may be imagined that the girls of the neighborhood were interested when Henry appeared in church again, now a good-looking young man of twenty-one, back from the city. The social popularity of the Ford place must have increased considerably. On this point Ford is discreetly silent, but it does not require any great effort of fancy to see him as he must have looked then, through the eyes of the Greenfield girls, an alert, muscular fellow, with a droll humor and a whimsical smile. Moreover, the driver of the finest horses in the neighborhood, and one of the heirs to the big farm. However, he is outspoken enough about his own attitude. He did not care for girls. Like most men with a real interest, he kept for a long time the small boy opinion of them. "Girls?--huh! What are they good for?" He was interested in machines. He wanted to get back to Detroit, where he could take up again his plans for that mammoth watch factory. In a few weeks he had brought the farm up to its former running order, the crops were doing well and the hired men had learned that there was a boss at the head of affairs. Henry had a little more time to spend in the shop. He found in one corner of it the absurd steam engine he had built five years before, and one day he started it up and ran it around the yard. It was a weird-looking affair, the high wagon wheels warped and wobbly, the hybrid engine on top sputtering and wheezing and rattling, but none the less running, in a cloud of smoke and sparks. He had a hearty laugh at it and abandoned it. His father grew better slowly, but week by week Henry was approaching the time when he could return to the work he liked. Late summer came with all the work of getting in the crops. The harvest crew arrived from the next farm, twenty men of them, and Henry was busy in the fields from morning to night. When, late in October, the last work of the summer was done and the fields lay bare and brown, waiting for the snow, Margaret Ford gave a great harvest supper with a quilting bee in the afternoon and corn husking in the evening. All the neighbors came from miles around. The big barns were crowded with their horses and rows of them were tied under the sheds. In the house the quilting frames were spread in the big attic, and all afternoon the women sewed and talked. In the evening the men arrived and then the long supper table was spread with Margaret's cooking--hams, sausages, fried chickens, a whole roast pig, pans of beans and succotash, huge loaves of home-made bread, pats of butter, cheese, cakes, pies, puddings, doughnuts, pitchers of milk and cider--good things which disappeared fast enough before the plying knives and forks, in bursts of laughter, while jokes were called from end to end of the table and young couples blushed under the chaffing of their neighbors. Clara Bryant was one of the guests. Her father was a prosperous farmer who lived eight miles from the Ford place and Henry had scarcely seen her that summer. That night they sat side by side and he noticed the red in her cheeks and the way she laughed. After supper there was corn husking in the big barn, where each young man tried to find the red ears that gave him permission to kiss one of the girls, and still later they danced on the floor of the hay-barn while the fiddler called the figures of the old square dances and the lanterns cast a flickering light on the dusty mounds of hay. The next week Henry might have returned to Detroit and to the waiting project of the watch factory, but he did not. He thought of Clara Bryant and realized that his prejudice against girls was unreasonable. CHAPTER VII THE ROAD TO HYMEN With William Ford's complete recovery and the coming of the long, half-idle winter of the country there was no apparent reason why Henry Ford should not return to his work in the machine shops. The plans for the watch factory, never wholly abandoned, might be carried out. But Henry stayed at home on the farm. Gradually it became apparent to the neighborhood that Ford's boy had got over his liking for city life. Farmers remarked to each other, while they sat in their granaries husking corn, that Henry had come to his senses and knew when he was well off; he'd have his share in as good a farm as any man could want some day; there was no need for him to get out and hustle in Detroit. Probably there were moments when Henry himself shared the prevailing opinion; his interest in mechanics was as great as ever, but--there was Clara Bryant. He made a few trips to Detroit, with an intention which seemed to him earnest enough to revive the plans for the watch factory, but the thought of her was always tugging at his mind, urging him to come back to Greenfield. His efforts came to nothing, and he soon lost interest in them. He was in his early twenties then. His ambition had not yet centered about a definite purpose, and already it had met the worst enemy of ambition--love. It was a choice between his work and the girl. The girl won, and ten million fifty-cent Ford watches were lost to the world. "I've decided not to go back to Detroit," Henry announced to the family at breakfast one day. "I thought you'd come around to seeing it that way," his father said. "You can do better here in the long run than you can in the city. If you want to take care of the stock I'll let one of the men go and pay you his wages this winter." "All right," Henry said. His work as a machinist seemed to all of them only an episode, now definitely ended. He settled into the work of the farm as though he had never left it. Rising in the cold, lamp-lit mornings while the window panes showed only a square of darkness, sparkling with frost crystals, he built up the kitchen fire for Margaret. Then, with a lantern in his hand and milk pails clanking on his arm, plowed his way through the snow to the barns. A red streak was showing in the eastern horizon; buildings and fences, covered with snow, showed odd shapes in the gray dawn; his breath hung like smoke on the frosty air. Inside the barns the animals stirred; a horse stamped; a cow rose lumberingly; old Rover barked when he heard Henry's hand on the door fastening. Henry hung his lantern on a nail and set to work. He pitched down hay and huge forksful of straw; he measured out rations of bran and corn and oats; he milked the cows, stopping before he carried the brimming pails to the house to pour out some of the warm, sweet smelling milk for Rover and the cats. Back in the kitchen Margaret had set the table for breakfast. She was standing at the stove frying sausages and turning corn cakes. The other boys came tramping in from poultry yards and hog pens. They took turns at the tin washbasin set on a bench on the back porch, and then in to breakfast with hearty appetites. Afterward they husked corn in the big granaries, or shelled it, ready to take to mill; they cleaned the barn stalls, whitewashed the hen houses, sorted the apples in the cellar. In the shop Henry worked at the farm tools, sharpening the plows, refitting the harrows with teeth, oiling and cleaning the mowing machines. After supper, when he had finished the day's work, milked the cows again, filled the racks in the calves' yard with hay, spread deep beds of straw for the horses, seen that everything was snug and comfortable about the big barns, he saddled the little bay and rode six miles to the Bryant farm. It was a courtship which did not run any too smoothly. Henry was not the only Greenfield farmer's son who admired Clara Bryant, and she was minded to divide her favor evenly among them until some indefinite time in the future, when, as she said, "she would see." Often enough Henry found another horse tied to the hitching post, and another young man inside the house making himself agreeable to Clara. Then, welcomed heartily enough by her big, jovial father, he would spend the evening talking politics with him while Clara and his rival popped corn or roasted apples on the hearth. But Henry built that winter a light sleigh, painted red, balanced on cushiony springs, slipping over the snow on smooth steel runners. No girl in Greenfield could have resisted the offer of a ride in it. In the evenings when the moon was full Clara and Henry, warmly wrapped in fur robes, flashed down the snowy roads in a chime of sleighbells. The fields sparkled white on either hand, here and there lights gleamed from farm houses. Then the sleigh slipped into the woods, still and dark, except where the topmost branches shone silver in the moonlight, and the road stretched ahead like a path of white velvet. Their passing made no sound on the soft snow. There were skating parties, too, where Henry and Clara, mittened hand in hand, swept over the ice in long, smooth flight, their skates ringing. Or it happened that Henry stood warming his hands at the bank and watched Clara skating away with some one else, and thought bitter things. Somewhere, between farm work and courtship, he found time to keep up with his mechanics' trade journals, for his interest in machinery was still strong, but he planned nothing new at this time. All his constructive imagination was diverted into another channel. More than the loss of the Ford watches is chargeable to that laughing, rosy country girl who could not make up her mind to choose between her suitors. The winter passed and Henry, torn between two interests, had accomplished little with either. Spring and the spring work came, plowing, harrowing, sowing, planting. From long before dawn until the deepening twilight hid the fields Henry was hard at work. Until the pressure of farm work was over he could see Clara only on Sundays. Then summer arrived, with picnics and the old custom of bringing a crowd of young people out from church for Sunday dinner at the Fords'. Now and then there were excursions up to Detroit for an outing on the lake. By the end of that summer it was generally accepted among the Greenfield young folks that Henry Ford was "going with" Clara Bryant. But she must still have been elusive, for another winter passed with nothing definitely decided. The third spring of Henry's stay on the farm arrived. Henry went over his bank account, a respectable sum, made up of his earnings on the farm and a few ventures in cattle buying and selling. "Well, father," he said one day, "I guess I'll be getting married." "All right," his father said. "She's a good, capable girl, I guess. I'll give you that south forty, and you can have lumber enough from the timber lot to build a house when you get ready." Apparently Henry had made up his mind to settle the matter. No doubt, behind the ardor he showed Clara there was an unconscious feeling that he had spent enough time in courtship; he was impatient to get back to his other interests, to have again an orderly, smooth routine of life, with margins of time for machinery. In April he and Clara went up to Detroit and were married. A couple of weeks later they returned to Greenfield, Clara with plans for the new house on the south forty already sketched in a tablet in her suitcase; Henry with a bundle of mechanics' trade journals, and the responsibility of caring for a wife. "A wife helps a man more than any one else," he says to-day. And adds, with his whimsical twinkle, "she criticizes him more." CHAPTER VIII MAKING A FARM EFFICIENT The young couple went first to the Fords' place, where the big roomy house easily spared rooms for them, and Margaret and her father gave them a hearty welcome. Clara, having brought her belongings from her old home, put on her big work-apron and helped Margaret in the kitchen and dairy. Henry was out in the fields early, working hard to get the crops planted. Driving the plowshare deep into the rich, black loam, holding it steady while the furrow rolled back under his feet, he whistled to himself. He was contented. The farm work was well in hand; his forty would bring in an ample income from the first year; in the house his rosy little wife was busy making the best butter in the whole neighborhood. He revolved in his mind vague plans for making a better plow than the one he was handling; he remembered noticing in his latest English magazine an article covering the very principle he would use. In the evening, after the last of the chores was done, he settled himself at the table in the sitting-room, moved the big lamp nearer and opened the magazine. But Clara was busy correcting the plans for the new house; she must have the lamp light, too. Henry moved the lamp back. "Would you have the kitchen here, or here? This way I could have windows on three sides, but the other way I'd have a larger pantry," said Clara, stopping to chew her pencil. "Fix it exactly to suit yourself. It's your house, and I'll build it just as you say," Henry replied, turning a page. "But I want your advice--and I can't see how to get this back porch in without making the bedrooms too small," Clara complained. "I want this house just so--and if I put the chimney where I want it to come in the kitchen, it will be in the wrong end of the sitting-room, best I can do. Oh, let those horrid papers alone, and help me out!" Henry let the horrid papers alone and bent his head over the problems of porch and pantry and fireplace. When the pressure of spring work was over, he set to work a gang of men, cutting down selected trees in the timber lot and hauling them down to the little sawmill which belonged to his father. There he sawed them into boards of the lengths and sizes he needed and stocked them in neat piles to season and dry. From the shorter pieces of timber he split "shakes," or homemade shingles, and stacked them, log-cabin fashion. He was preparing to build his first house. It rose little by little through that summer. Henry built it himself, helped by one of the hired men. It was a good, substantial, Middle-Western home, 32 � 32 feet and containing seven rooms and a roomy attic. In the evenings, after supper, dishwashing and the chores at the barn were finished, he and Clara strolled over in the twilight to inspect the day's progress. They climbed together over the loose boards which made temporary floors, looked at the skeleton partitions of studding, planned where the stoves should be set and what kind of paper should be chosen for the walls. Then they walked around the outside, imagined with pride how well the house would look when the siding was on and painted white, and planned where the flower beds should be in the front yard. "Let's be getting on back," said Henry. "I saw an article in that French magazine that came to-day about a Frenchman who invented some kind of a carriage that runs by itself, without horses--sort of a steam engine to pull it." "Did you?" said Clara. "How interesting! Oh, look! The moon's coming up." They loitered back through the clover fields, sweet smelling in the dew, climbed over the stile into the apple orchard, where the leaves were silver and black in the moonlight, and so came slowly home. Margaret had cut a watermelon, cooled in a basket in the well, and all the family sat on the back porch eating it. Long after midnight, when every one else was sound asleep, the lamp was burning in the sitting-room, and Henry was reading that article about the horseless carriage. The idea fascinated him. The new house was finished late in the fall. Clara had made a trip to Detroit to purchase furniture, and all summer she had been working on patchwork quilts and crocheted tidies. When everything was ready, the sitting-room bright with new carpet and shining varnished furniture, the new range installed in the kitchen, the cellar stocked with apples, vegetables, canned fruits, Henry and Clara moved into their own home. They were proud of it. "It's a fine place yet, as good as anybody could want," Henry Ford says now. "We still have it, and we like to go down there in the summers and stay awhile. All the furniture is there, exactly as it was then. I wouldn't ask any better place to live." It must have been a happy time for both of them. They had a comfortable home, plenty to eat and wear, they were surrounded by friends. There was a simple neighborly spirit, a true democracy, in that little country community. There were no very poor families there; no very rich ones; every one had plenty, and wanted no more. Henry's hired men ate at the table with him, slept under the same roof, called him "Hen" as a matter of course, just as he called them "Hi" and "Dave." They worked together to plant, care for and harvest the crops. Their interests were the same, and if at the end of the year Henry had a more improved farm to show for the year's work, it was the only difference between them. He had lived no better, spent no more, than the others. It was in those years that he laid the foundation for his philosophy of life. He found that the work of the farm progressed faster and produced more when every one worked together with a good will, each doing his own share and doing it well. He found that men, like horses, did their best when they were well fed, contented and not overworked. He saw that one unruly horse, or one surly, lazy man, delayed the work of the whole farm, hindered all the others. "The only plan that will work out well in the long run is a plan that is best for every one concerned," he decided. "Hurting the other fellow is bound to hurt me sooner or later." He was a good farmer. His mechanical, orderly mind arranged the work so that it was done smoothly, and on time, without overworking any one or leaving any one idle. His thrifty instincts saved labor and time just as they saved the barn manure to spread on the fields, or planned for the turning in of the last crop of clover to enrich the soil. His granaries were well filled in the fall, his stock was sleek and fat, fetching top prices. Clara kept the house running smoothly, the pantry filled with good, simple food, the cellar shelves stocked with preserves and jams for winter. In the evenings Henry got out his mechanics' journals and pored over them, while Clara sewed or mended. He found now and then a mention of the horseless carriage. "That looks to me like a good idea. If I was in Detroit now, where I could get a good machine shop, I believe I could do something along that line myself," he said. "Probably you could," his wife replied, rocking comfortably. "But what's the use? We've got everything here we need." "Yes; but I'd just like to try what I could do," Henry said restlessly. A few days later he inspected his farm shop and announced that he was going up to Detroit for a day to get some materials. CHAPTER IX THE LURE OF THE MACHINE SHOPS It was an unconscious subterfuge, that statement of Henry Ford's that he was going up to Detroit to get material. He knew what he wanted; sitting by the red-covered table in his own dining and sitting room some evening after Clara had cleared away the supper dishes he could have written out his order, article by article, exactly what he needed, and two days later it would have arrived by express. But Henry wanted to get back to Detroit. He was tired of the farm. Those years of quiet, comfortable country living among his Greenfield neighbors were almost finished. They had given him his viewpoint on human relations, they had saved his character, in the formative period, from the distorting pressure of the struggle of man against man in the city. They had been, from the standpoint of Henry Ford, the man, perhaps the most valuable years in his life. At that time he saw in them only an endless repetition of tasks which had no great appeal for him, a recurring cycle of sowing, tilling, harvesting. He thought he was accomplishing nothing. A little more money in the bank, a few more acres added to the farm--that was all, and it did not interest him. Money never did. His passion was machinery. So he gave his orders to the hired man, pocketed a list of things to buy for Clara, and caught the early train to Detroit that morning with a feeling of keen anticipation. He meant to spend one whole day in machine shops. From the station in Detroit he hurried direct to the James Flower Iron Works. The broad, busy streets, jammed with carriages and drays, the crowds of hurrying people, did not hold his attention for a moment, but when he came into the noisy, dirty turmoil of the machine shop he was in his element again. He took in a dozen details at a glance. Scarcely a change had been made since he had first seen the place years before when he was a boy of sixteen looking for a job. The old foreman was gone and one of the men who had worked beside Henry in those days was in charge. "Well, hello there, Ford!" he said heartily. "What're you doing these days? Not looking for a job, are you?" "No, I'm farming now," Ford replied. "Just thought I'd drop in and have a look around." Together they wandered over the works, and the foreman, shouting to make himself heard in the clanging, pounding uproar, pointed out here and there a new device, an improved valve, a different gearing. Ford saw it all with interest, he was wider awake, more alive than he had been for months. When he was leaving the shop some time later he had a sudden expansive impulse which broke through his customary reticence. "I'm thinking of building an engine myself," he said. "A little one, to use on the farm. I figure I can work something out that will take the place of some of my horses." The foreman looked at Ford in amazement. It is hard to realize now how astounding such an idea must have seemed to him. Here was a man who proposed to take a locomotive into his cornfield and set it to plowing! The wild impossibility of the plan would have staggered any reasonable person. The foreman decided that this was one of Ford's quiet jokes. He laughed appreciatively. "Great idea!" he applauded. "All you'll need then'll be a machine to give milk, and you'll have the farm complete. Well, come around any time, glad to see you." Ford made the rounds of Detroit's machine shops that day, but he did not mention his idea again. It was gradually shaping itself in his mind, in part a revival of his boyish plan for that first steam engine he had built of scraps from his father's shop, in part adapted from the article he had read about the horseless carriage. He was obliged to keep enough horses to handle the work of the farm when it was heaviest; in the slack season and during the winter the extra animals were necessarily idle, wasting food and barn space, and waste of any kind was an irritation to his methodical mind. It seemed to him that a machine could be built which would do a great part of the horses' work in the fields and cost nothing while not in use. That the undertaking was revolutionary, visionary, probably ridiculous to other people, did not deter him; he thought he could do it, and that was enough. "Precedents and prejudice are the worst things in this world," he says to-day. "Every generation has its own problem; it ought to find its own solutions. There is no use in our living if we can't do things better than our fathers did." That belief had been steadily growing in him while his inherited thrift and his machine-ideas improved on the farming methods of Greenfield; it crystallized into a creed when his old friend laughed at his idea of replacing horses with a machine. He had visited the shops which interested him, ordered the material he wanted, and was on his way to the station to take the train home when he remembered the shopping list Mrs. Ford had given him, and her repeated injunctions to attend to it "the very first thing he did." With the usual exclamation of a husband saved by a sudden thought on the very brink of domestic catastrophe, Henry Ford turned and hurried back to make those purchases. Aided by a sympathetic clerk at the ribbon counter, he completed them satisfactorily, and came out of the store, laden with bundles, just at the moment that Detroit's pride, a new steam-propelled fire engine, came puffing around the corner. It was going at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, with impressive clatter and clang, pouring clouds of black smoke from the stack. Detroit's citizens crowded the sidewalks to view it as it went by. Henry Ford, gripping his bundles, stood on the curb and looked at it. Here was his first chance to see a steam engine built to run without a prepared roadbed and rails. It was the original of one of those pictures we sometimes see now with a smile, murmuring, "How quaint!" A huge round boiler, standing high in the back, supplied fully half its bulk. Ford made a hasty calculation of the probable weight of water it carried, in proportion to its power. The result appalled him. He thoughtfully watched the engine until it was out of sight. Then he resumed his way home. On the train he sat in deep thought, now and then figuring a little on the back of an old envelope. "I couldn't get that steam engine out of my mind," he says. "What an awful waste of power! The weight of the water in that boiler bothered me for weeks." CHAPTER X "WHY NOT USE GASOLINE?" One sympathizes with young Mrs. Ford during the weeks that followed. In two years of marriage she had learned to understand her husband's interests and moods fairly well; she had adjusted herself with fewer domestic discords than usual to the simple demands of his good-humored, methodical temperament. She had begun to settle into a pleasant, accustomed routine of managing her house and poultry yard, preparing the meals, washing the dishes, spending the evenings sewing, while Henry read his mechanics' journals on the other side of the lamp. Now everything changed. Henry had returned from that trip to Detroit with something on his mind. In reply to her anxious inquiries he told her not to bother, he was all right--a statement that had the usual effect of confirming her fears. She was sure something terrible had occurred, some overwhelming business catastrophe--and Henry was keeping it from her. From the kitchen window she saw him sitting idly on the horse-block in the middle of the forenoon, twisting a straw in his fingers and frowning intently at the side of the barn. Sometimes after supper, instead of settling quietly down with his papers, he walked up and down, up and down, the sitting-room, with his hands behind his back and that same frown on his forehead. At last she could endure it no longer. She begged him to tell her the worst. He replied, surprised, that it was a steam engine--he couldn't figure out the ratio of power to weight satisfactorily. The blame thing bothered him. "Oh, is that all?" Mrs. Ford said indignantly. "Well, I wouldn't bother about it if I were you. What does an old steam engine matter, anyhow? Come and sit down and forget about it." It was the one thing Ford could not do. His mind, once started on the project of building an engine to use on the farm, remained obstinately at work on the details. He spent weeks considering them one by one, thinking out adaptations, new devices, in an effort to overcome the difficulty. Still he could not see how to construct a cheap engine which would pull across his soft fields, carry the necessary weight of water, and still develop enough free power to be useful. He was still struggling with the problem three months after his trip to Detroit. "I declare to goodness, I don't know what's got into you, Henry. You act like a man in a dream half the time," the wife said, worried. "You aren't coming down with a fever, are you?" "I should say not!" Henry replied hastily, with visions of brewed snakeroot and wormwood. "I feel fine. Where's the milk pail?" He took it and his lantern and hurried out to the barn, but even while he sat on the three-legged stool, his practiced hands sending streams of warm milk foaming into the pail, his mind returned to that problem of the steam engine. He was sure a machine could be made to do the work of horses; he was confident that he could make it if he persisted long enough. The trouble was the weight of the water. He must have it to make steam; he must have steam to develop power, and the whole power was required to haul the water. It looked like an inexorable circle. He went over it again, looking for the weak spot in the reasoning--and suddenly he saw it. Steam was not necessary. Why not use gasoline? The thought opened a door into unknown possibilities. Up to that time, as far as he knew, no one had ever dreamed of a self-propelling gasoline engine. A thousand obstacles rose immediately before his mind--the gearing, the drive, the construction of the engine itself--a dazzling array of problems to be faced and solved. Difficulties innumerable stood in the way of his carrying out the idea--difficulties apparently so insurmountable that ninety-nine men in a hundred would have abandoned the idea as impossible after one glance at them. Henry Ford was the hundredth man. They were mechanical difficulties, and he loved mechanics. He was eager for the struggle with them. "It seemed to take me a year to finish the chores, so I could sit down some place and figure it out," he says. He finished the milking, fed the waiting circle of gleaming-eyed cats, flashed his lantern down the rows of stalls to be sure the horses were well fed and comfortable, fastened the barn doors and hastened into the house with the milk. Every moment seemed wasted until he could reach the quiet sitting-room, spread paper and pencils in the lamplight and begin to work out some of those problems. He had never disliked the chores so much. From that time his distaste for farm work grew. Nature would not delay her orderly cycle because Henry Ford wanted to spend his days in the little farm shop. Weeds sprang up and must be cut, crops ripened and must be harvested, morning came with a hundred imperative demands on his time and strength, and night brought the chores. All the farm tasks were to Ford only vexing obstacles in his way to his real work, and they kept him from it till late at night. Then, when all Greenfield was asleep, and Mrs. Ford, after a long struggle to keep awake, had gone yawning to bed, he sat alone and worked over the problem of his gasoline engine. He ransacked the piles of mechanics' journals for suggestions; where they failed him he tried to think his way ahead without help. While he worked through the night, in a stillness broken only by the crowing of a rooster in some distant farmyard and the sputtering of the lamp, the possibilities of his idea gradually grew in his mind. He was not an imaginative man--the details of the engine absorbed most of his attention--but now and then as the night wore on toward morning he had a dim understanding of the possibilities of horseless transportation. He thought what it might mean to the world if every man had a machine to carry him and his goods over the country at a speed of twenty or even twenty-five miles an hour. It was a fantastic vision, he admitted, but he set his teeth and declared that it was not an impossible one. Sometimes he worked all night. Usually weariness overcame him in the small hours and he was forced to stop and go through another day's work on the farm before he could get back to his real interests again. If the farm was to prosper he must give it his attention every day. The margin of time it allowed for his work on the gasoline engine plans was far too little. By the end of that summer he had made up his mind that he could not spare his time for the farm. He told his wife that he had decided to lease it to his brother and move to Detroit. "My goodness, Henry, what for? We're doing well here; I'm sure you're going ahead faster than any one in the neighborhood," she said in astonishment. "I want to get back to work in the machine shops. I can't do any work on my gasoline engine here. Even if I had the time I haven't the equipment," he explained. "Well, I must say. Here we've worked hard, and got a comfortable home, and a fine farm, that pays more every year, and sixteen head of good stock--and you're going to leave it all for a gasoline engine that isn't even built. I don't see what you're thinking of," said poor Mrs. Ford, confronted thus suddenly with the prospect of giving up all her accustomed ways, her old friends, her big house with its stock of linens and its cellar filled with good things. "You can't begin to make as much in the city as you do here," she argued reasonably. "And suppose the engine doesn't work, after all?" "It'll work, all right. I'm going to keep at it till it does," Ford said. CHAPTER XI BACK TO DETROIT Mrs. Ford's opinion was now shared by the whole Greenfield neighborhood as soon as it learned Ford's intention of leaving his fine, paying farm and moving to Detroit to work in a machine shop. "You had this notion once before, you know, when you were a youngster," his father reminded him. "I thought you'd made up your mind to stay here, where you can make a good living and have some peace and comfort." He listened to his son's explanation of the possibilities in a self-propelling gasoline engine and he shook his head. "I guess you can build it if anybody can, but you can't ever tell about these inventions. Looks to me you'd better stick to a good farm, where you're your own boss, and there's always plenty in the cupboard whatever happens, instead of going off to a city job. You may build that contrivance of yours and then again you may not, and look how you'll be living in the meantime." But Henry was firm, with a determination which is called obstinacy when it goes with failure and great will power when it is coupled with success. He was going to the city. That settled it. After her first protest Mrs. Ford accepted the situation and set herself with what philosophy she might to packing her linen and wrapping the furniture. She had no great interest in the gasoline engine--machinery in general was to her merely something greasy and whirring, to hold her skirts away from--but if Henry was going to Detroit, of course she was going, too, and she might as well be cheerful about it. The rosy, teasing country girl who had kept Henry Ford from his beloved machines nearly five years before by her laughing refusal to choose between her suitors, had developed into a cheerful, capable little housewife--the kind of woman whose place is in the home because there she does her best work. She could never invent a gasoline engine, but she was an ideal person to take care of Henry Ford while he did it, to keep the house clean and comfortable, cook good meals, cheer him a bit when he was depressed and never have "nerves." She went briskly to work and in no time she had packed away the thousand articles that meant home to her and they stood wrapped, crated, labeled, ready to move to Detroit. Meantime Ford had arranged for the lease of the farm and for the storage of the furniture until he should have found a house in the city. Mrs. Ford was going there with him, and they would live in a boarding house until he got a job. On the last morning when he picked up the telescope bags, ready to start to the station, his wife went over to the house for the last time to see that everything was snug and safe to leave. Then she came into the parlor where he was waiting and looked around the bare room stripped of its bright Brussels carpets, lace curtains and shiny furniture. "Well, we'll come back some day, won't we," she said, "when the gasoline engine is built?" She had spoken for the first time a phrase they were to repeat frequently, with every accent of expectation, hope, discouragement and irony, during the next ten years, "When the gasoline engine is built!" A crowd of their friends gathered at the station to say good-by. With an intention of being tactful, they avoided any mention of Henry's purpose in leaving Greenfield. "Sorry to lose you, Ford. Hope you'll be coming back before long," they said, and he knew the neighborhood had learned of his intention to invent something and thought him suddenly become a fool. As soon as they reached Detroit and found a boarding house where he could leave his wife he started out to get a job. He wanted one where he could learn something about electricity. So far his knowledge of it was purely theoretical, gained from reading and thinking. Electric lights had come to Detroit since he left it; the Edison Electric Lighting and Power Company had established three power stations there. He asked nothing better than a chance to work in one of them. Charles Gilbert, manager of the plants, was having a hard time that morning. By one of those freaks of Fate which must be left out of any fiction plot because they are too improbable, two of his engines had chosen that day to break down simultaneously. One of the engineers who had been responsible had been summarily discharged; the others were working on the engine in the main plant, and one of the sub-stations was entirely out of commission, with no prospect of getting to work on it until the next day. Into this situation Henry Ford walked, and asked for a job. "He looked to me like any tramp engineer," Charles Gilbert says to-day. "A young fellow, not very husky-looking--more of a slight, wiry build. You wouldn't have noticed him at all in a crowd. He talked like a steady, capable fellow, but if he had come in on any other day I'd have said we couldn't use him. As it was, I thought I might as well give him a chance." He listened to Ford--looked him over. "Know anything about steam engines?" he asked him. Ford said he did. "Well, the engine at sub-station A quit this morning. I got a couple of mechanics working on it, but they don't seem to be doing much. Get out there and see what you can do, and let me know." "All right, sir," Ford replied, and went. It was then about ten in the morning. Gilbert, busy with the troubles in the main plant, heard no more from sub-station A until 6 o'clock that evening. Then a small boy arrived with a message: "Engine running O. K.--Ford." Gilbert went out to the sub-station. The engine, in perfect order, was roaring in the basement. On the first floor the dynamos were going at full speed. His worries with sub-station A were over. He went down to the engine and found Ford busy with an oil can. "Want the job of night engineer here?" Gilbert asked him. "Pays forty-five a month." "Go to work right now if you say so," Ford assured him. "All right. I'll have another man here to relieve you at six in the morning. Come down to the office some time to-morrow and I'll put your name on the payroll." In one day Ford had got the very opportunity he wanted--a job where he could study electricity at first hand. An hour later Mrs. Ford, who had spent the day drearily unpacking trunks and putting the telescope bags under the bed in a hopeless attempt to make a boarding-house bedroom homelike, received an enthusiastic note. "Got fine job already. Working all night. Go to bed and don't worry. Everything is settled splendidly.--Henry." He had forgotten to mention that his wages were forty-five dollars a month. CHAPTER XII LEARNING ABOUT ELECTRICITY Forty-five dollars a month and a twelve-hour-a-day job--for these Henry Ford had traded his big, pleasant home, with its assured comfort and plenty, and his place as one of the most prosperous and respected men in Greenfield. The change would have been a calamity to most men. Henry Ford was happy. The new job gave him a chance to work with machinery, an opportunity to learn all about electricity. His contentment, as he went whistling about his work after Gilbert left, would have seemed pure insanity to the average person. Forty-five dollars a month! "You see, I never did bother much about money," he says. "My wages were enough for food and shelter, and that was all I wanted. Money matters always seemed to sort of take care of themselves, some way. It's always that way. If a man is working at something he likes, he's bound to work hard at it, and then the money comes. Worrying about money is about the worst thing a man can do--it takes his mind off his work." His philosophy apparently justified itself. In the months that followed sub-station A had no more breakdowns. Now and then Manager Gilbert inquired how the new man was getting along. "A wizard at machinery--had some trouble with the dynamo last night, and he had it fixed in no time," he heard. Or, "Say, where'd you get him? He knows more about this plant than the man that built it." Ford himself was not in evidence. The manager, quitting work at about the time Ford arrived at the sub-station for the night shift, did not see him again until one day at the end of three months the engine at the main plant stopped. The engineer in charge looked at it and shook his head. "Can't do anything with it till to-morrow," he said. "We'll have to take it down." It was late in the afternoon, and the engine was needed to keep Detroit lighted that night. Gilbert, remembering the reports of the new man, sent for Ford. He came and fixed the engine. It was all in the day's work, as far as he was concerned. He went back to sub-station A and forgot the incident. He does not remember it now. Gilbert remembered it, but he did not go out of his way to pay any attention to Ford. He simply forgot about the mechanical work of sub-station A. He knew Ford would take care of it. A manager spends his time and thought on the poor workmen; a good man he leaves alone. When Ford had been with the Edison Company six months, drawing his forty-five dollars regularly and handing it to Mrs. Ford to pay the landlady, he knew the Edison plants from the basements up. He had become enthusiastic over electrical problems. In his idle time, after his twelve hours' work at the sub-station, he was planning the batteries and spark-plugs for his gasoline engine. About that time a shift in the force left vacant the place of manager of the mechanical department. Gilbert sent for Ford. "Think you can handle the job?" he asked him. "Yes, I can handle it," Ford said. Gilbert gave him the job. When he drew his pay at the end of the month he found he was getting $150. "Now," he said to himself, "I've got to have a place of my own, where I can work on my gasoline engine at night." "Now we can have a home of our own, and get away from this awful boarding-house," Mrs. Ford exclaimed, when he told her the news, and he, contrasting the supper he had just eaten with memories of her excellent cooking, heartily agreed. Besides, it seemed to him that paying rent was wasting money. He proposed to buy a lot and build on it. They talked it over, walking up and down Detroit's wide, tree-shaded streets in the evening. Next morning early Mrs. Ford put on her hat and went down to the real estate offices. Before night two hustling young city-lot salesmen had interviewed Ford at the Edison plant, and when he came home that night another one was waiting on the boarding-house steps. That week was a busy one. Ford worked from six in the morning to six at night in the Edison plant, hurried home to find Mrs. Ford waiting, bright-eyed with eagerness to tell him of the lots she had seen that day, and before he had finished his supper he was snatched away from it to hear an enthusiastic salesman describe still other bargains in Detroit real estate. Impatient to be at work on his drawings for the gasoline engine, he was taken from end to end of the city to inspect homesites. He was experiencing that agony of all workers, being obliged to spend so much time preparing a place to work that there was none left for the work. "This thing has to stop," he said in desperation to his wife one evening. "I've been inquiring around a little, and I think the best place to buy is out on Edison avenue. Put on your hat and we'll go out and decide on one of those lots we saw last Saturday." They went out and looked them over. On one of the lots was an old shed. Ford examined it. "If this place suits you, we'll take it," he said. "This shed will make a shop without much fixing. I'll build the gasoline engine here." Mrs. Ford looked about at the scattered little houses and bare lots. It was spring; the grass was beginning to sprout, and the smell of the damp earth and the feeling of space reminded her of the country. She liked it. "All right, let's buy this one," she said. A few days later they signed the contract. The lot cost seven hundred dollars, fifty dollars down and the rest in monthly payments. Ford drew from the savings bank two hundred dollars, his bank balance at the time he left the farm, and bought lumber. After that he spent his evenings building the house. While he hammered and sawed Mrs. Ford was at work in the yard. She set out rose bushes, planted a vegetable garden behind the shed. The neighboring women came over to get acquainted, and asked her to come in some time and bring her sewing as soon as she got settled. After those six months in a dreary boarding house it must have been pleasant to her to see the beginnings of a home and a friendly circle again. "This seems to be a nice neighborhood; I think we're going to enjoy it here," she said later to her husband, holding the lantern while he nailed down the floors, long after dark. "That's good--glad you like it," he answered. "I wish the place was finished, so I could get to work." Meantime, at the Edison plant, he was making his first experiments in applying his machine-idea to the managing of men. CHAPTER XIII EIGHT HOURS, BUT NOT FOR HIMSELF When Henry Ford became manager of the mechanical department the workmen in the Edison plants were working twelve-hour shifts as a matter of course. In those days the theory of practically all employers was that men, like the rest of their equipment, should be worked to the limit of their strength. "We had about forty men on the regular list and four or five substitutes who were kept busy filling in for the regular men who were sick or tired out," he said. "I hadn't been in charge long before it struck me there was something wrong. If our machines had broken down as often as our men did anybody would have known we weren't handling them right. "No good engineer will run a machine at the limit of its power and speed for very long. It hurts the machine. It isn't sentimentalism to take care of the machine; it's plain common sense and efficiency. It isn't sentimentalism to look out for the interests of the men. "The sooner people get over the idea that there's a difference between ideals of brotherhood and practical common sense the sooner we'll do away with waste and friction of all kinds and have a world that's run right. The only trouble now is that people haven't the courage to put their ideals to work. They say, 'Oh, of course, theoretically we believe in them--but they aren't practical!' What's the use of believing in anything that isn't practical? If it's any good at all it's practical. The whole progress of the world has been made by men who went to work and used their impractical theories. "Well, I figured over the situation quite a while and I found out that by putting the substitutes on the regular list and shifting the men around a little I could give them all an eight-hour day without increasing the pay roll. I did it. "Yes, there was a howl from the stockholders when they heard about it. Nobody had ever tried it before; they thought I was going to turn everything upside down and ruin the business. But the work was going along better than before. The men felt more like work, and they pitched in to show they appreciated being treated right. We had fewer breakdowns after that; everything went better. "After the thing was done it was easy enough to prove that it paid, and the stockholders quieted down after one or two complaints. "As a matter of fact, I don't believe in any hours for work. A man ought to work as long as he wants to, and he ought to enjoy his work so much that he wants to work as long as he can. It's only monotonous, grinding work that needs an eight-hour day. When a man is creating something, working to get results, twelve or fourteen hours a day doesn't hurt him." Ford put this theory into practice as apparently he had done with all his theories. He himself worked more than fourteen hours a day. From 6 to 6 he worked in the Edison plant, for his eight-hour régime did not apply to himself. Then he hastened home to the little house on Edison avenue, ate supper and hurried out to his improvised workshop in the old shed. He turned on the big electric lights and there in the glare lay materials for his self-propelling gasoline engine--his real work, which at last he could begin! Until late at night the neighbors heard the sound of his tools and saw the glare of light through the cracks. "The Smiths are giving a party to-night--I suppose we can't go?" Mrs. Ford said one evening, wistfully. "Oh, well--when the gasoline engine is finished--how long do you think it's going to take?" "I don't know--I'm working on the cylinder now. I'll have to have a larger bore to get the speed--and then there'll be the transmission." Ford stopped speaking and was lost in the problems. He finished supper abstractedly and pushed back his chair. "Oh, about the party. Too bad. I hope you don't mind much. When I get the gasoline engine finished," he said apologetically, and hurried out to work on it. In a few minutes he was absorbed with the cylinder. He had found that day a piece of pipe, thrown into the scrap heap at the Edison plant, and it had struck him at once that it would do for his cylinder, and that using it would save him the time and work of making one. He brought it home, cut it to the right length and set it in the first Ford engine. Meantime, in the house Mrs. Ford cleared away the supper dishes, took out her sewing and settled down with a sigh. The neighbors were going by to the Smiths' party. She could hear them laughing and calling to each other on the sidewalk outside. In the shed her husband was filing something; the rasp of the file on the metal sounded plainly. After all, she thought, she might as well give up the idea of parties. She couldn't give one herself; she knew Henry would refuse to leave his hateful engine even for one evening. She was very homesick for Greenfield. The months went by. Ford worked all day at the Edison plant, half the night in his own shop. The men he met in his work had taken to looking at him half in amusement, half in good-humored contempt. He was a "crank," they said. Some of the younger ones would laugh and tap their foreheads when he had gone past them. One night he came home and found Mrs. Ford crying. The neighbors were saying that he was crazy, she sobbed. She'd told Mrs. Lessing just exactly what she thought of her, too, and she'd never speak to her again! But, oh, wouldn't he ever get that horrid engine finished so they could live like other people? It all hurt. No man was ever friendlier, or enjoyed more the feeling of comradeship with other men than Ford. But it was a choice between that and his automobile. He went on with his routine of work, fourteen or sixteen hours of it every day, and he drew more into himself, became more reserved with every month that passed. If any man ever followed Emerson's doctrine of self-reliance, giving up friends and family in his devotion to his own work, that man was Henry Ford in those days. There was nothing dramatic about it--just an obscure machinist with an idea, willing to give up social pleasures, restful domestic evenings, the good opinion of his neighbors, and work hard in an old shed behind his common little house. Only an ordinary man turning his back on everything most of us want, for an "impractical" theory. That was all. He continued to work for two years. He built the engine slowly, thinking out every step in advance, drawing every casting before he made it, struggling for months over the problem of the electrical wiring and spark. Sometimes he worked all night. "Sick? No, I never was sick," he says. "It isn't overworking that breaks men down; it's overplaying and overeating. I never ate too much, and I felt all right, no matter how long I worked. Of course, sometimes I was pretty tired." One day he called his wife out to the shed. The little engine, set up on blocks, was humming away, its flywheel a blur in the air. The high-speed revolutions that made the automobile possible were an accomplished fact. "Oh, Henry! It's done! You've finished it!" she said happily. "No, that's just the beginning. Now I've got to figure out the transmission, the steering gear and a--a lot of things," he replied. CHAPTER XIV STRUGGLING WITH THE FIRST CAR Ford was now a man of nearly 30, an insignificant, unimportant unit in the business world of Detroit, merely one of the subordinate managers in the Edison plant. Seeing him on his way home from work, a slender, stooping, poorly dressed man, the firm set of his lips hidden by the sandy mustache he wore then, and his blue eyes already surrounded by a network of tired wrinkles, men probably looked at him half-pityingly, and said: "There's a man who will never get anywhere." He had his farm, unprofitable since he had left it, a small home partly paid for, and the little gas engine, to show for fourteen years of hard work. Probably he received more than one letter from his father and brothers in Greenfield, urging him to come back to the farm, where he and his wife might live comfortably among their old friends, and he need not work so hard. It would have seemed a wise move. But with the completion of the little one-cylinder, high-speed engine, Ford was more than ever possessed by his idea. He brought one or two of the men from the Edison shop to see it. They watched it whirring away on its pedestal of blocks, they examined its large cylinder, its short-stroke piston, noted its power, and looked at Ford with some increased respect. But most of them were nevertheless doubtful of the success of the automobile. The idea of a horseless carriage in general use still seemed to them fantastic. "Well, looks like you could make it go," they conceded. "But it's going to be pretty expensive to run. Not many people'll want to buy it. And where will you get the capital to manufacture it?" "I'm making it cheap. I'm going to make it cheap enough so every man in this country can have one before I'm through," Ford said. Already his belief that "a thing isn't any good unless it's good for everybody" was taking form. He did not intend to make a few high-priced toys for wealthy men; he planned to make something useful for thousands of men like himself, who were wasting money in keeping idle horses, as he had done on the farm. He still meant to make a farm tractor, as soon as he had worked out the principle of a self-propelling machine. As to the capital, he believed that question would take care of itself when the time came. His job was to make the machine, and he did not waste time telling himself that there was no chance for a poor man. The problem of transmitting the power of the engine to the wheels now engrossed his attention. He brought home materials for a light buggy frame and built it. Four old bicycle wheels were repaired, fitted with heavy rims and large pneumatic tires, and placed on the axles. The question then was how to attach the engine. To us, familiar with automobiles, it seems simple enough, but when Ford stood in the old shed, looking at the buggy frame and then at the little engine, he was attempting a feat that had never been accomplished. Always before, carriages had been pulled. Naturally enough his first thought was to apply the power of the engine to the front wheels. Then how should he steer? What mechanism should he use, powerful enough to turn the hind wheels, against the pull of the engine, and flexible enough to respond quickly and make a sharp turn? Then there was the problem of the throttle, and the gears. The machine must be able to go more slowly, or to pick up speed again, without shutting off the power. The driver must be able, when necessary, to throw off the power entirely, and to apply it quickly again, without stopping the engine. All these vexing questions, and many minor ones, were to be solved, and always there was the big question of simplicity. The machine must be cheap. "I'm building this thing so it will be useful," Ford said once while he was in the thick of his perplexities. "There isn't any object in working at it unless it will be useful, and it won't be useful unless it's cheap enough so common people can have it, and do their work with it." The essential democracy of the man spoke then. It is the distinctly American viewpoint of the man who for years had fought sun and wind and weather, tearing his food and shelter from the stubborn grasp of the soil, and who now struggles with mechanical obstacles, determined in spite of them to make something for practical use. His standards of value were not beauty or ease of luxury. He wanted to make a machine that would do the greatest possible quantity of good, hard work. His third winter in the house on Edison avenue arrived, and still the automobile was not completed. When he went out to work in the old shed after supper he lighted a fire in the rusty heating stove, set up in a corner, and often Mrs. Ford came out and sat on a box, watching while he fitted parts together or tried different transmission devices. He had settled finally on a leather belt, passing over the flywheel and connecting with the rear axle. A pulley arrangement, controlled by a lever, tightened or loosened this belt, thus increasing or decreasing the speed of the automobile. That broad strip of leather, inclosed, running from the engine on the rear axle to the pulley under the front seat, was the parent of the planetary system of transmission. Ford worked on it all winter. It was a lonely time for Mrs. Ford, for the general attitude of the neighborhood toward her husband had roused her good country temper, and she "refused to have anything to do with people who talked like that." She knew Henry was perfectly sane, a better husband than most of them had, too, and anyhow it was none of their business how Henry spent his time, and if they didn't like, they could lump it. Nevertheless, as the winter days followed each other in an apparently endless procession, she grew moody. The baby was coming, and she was homesick for Greenfield and the big, comfortable country home, with friends running in and out, and the sound of sleighbells jingling past on the road outside. She put the little house to rights in the morning, and faced a long, lonely day. She sewed a while, wandered about the rooms, looking out on the dreary little street, with its scattered houses and dirty trampled snow, yawned, and counted the hours till her husband would come home for supper. When he came, she had the house warm and bright, the table set, hot biscuits browning in the oven. She dished up the food, poured the tea, brought the hot plates. They sat down to eat and talk, and the minutes seemed to fly. Before she had said half she had stored up through the day, before Henry had more than begun to talk, he pushed back his plate, drank his tea, and said: "Well, I must be getting to work." Then he went out to the shed and forgot her in the absorbing interest of the automobile. "Oh, when is it going to be finished!" she said one night, after she had been sitting for a long time in silence, watching him at work on it. She began the sentence cheerfully, but she caught her breath at the end and began to cry. "I c-can't help it, I'm sorry. I w-want to go home to Greenfield!" she said. Ford was testing the steering gear. He dropped his tools in surprise, and went over to comfort her. "There, there!" he said, I suppose patting her back clumsily, in the awkward way of a man unaccustomed to quieting a sobbing woman. "It's done now. It's practically done now. It just needs a little more----" She interrupted him. She said his horrid old engine was always "just needing a little more." She said she wanted him to take her back to Greenfield. Wouldn't he please, just for a little while, take her home to Greenfield? CHAPTER XV A RIDE IN THE RAIN Tears, almost hysterics, from the woman who for seven years had been the quiet, cheerful little wife, humming to herself while she did the housework--it was more than startling, it was terrifying. Ford realized then, probably for the first time, how much the making of the automobile had cost her. He quieted her as well as he could, and promised that he would take her back to Greenfield. He would give up his job at the Edison plant and move to the farm to live, since she cared so much about it, he said. His work on the machine could wait. He took her into the house and made her a cup of hot tea. When she was sitting comfortably warming her feet at the heating stove and sipping the tea, he said he would just run out and fasten the shed door for the night. The machine was almost finished. A few more screws, a tightening of the leather belt, the placing of the steering lever, and it would be complete. He had spent four years of hard work, and harder thought, on its building--delayed first by his poverty, then by the building of the house, and always held back for twelve hours out of every day by his work at the Edison plant. Now he would have to put it aside again, to spend precious days and weeks disposing of his equity in the house, moving, settling in Greenfield, struggling with new hired men, beginning again the grind of managing a farm. It was only another delay, he said doggedly to himself; he would make the machine run yet. In the meantime he could not resist taking up his tools and working on it, just a minute or so. The engine was in place, the gears adjusted. He tightened the leather belt and tested the pulley again. Then he set the rear axle on blocks of wood, lifting the wheels from the ground and started the engine. The cough of the cylinder quickened into a staccato bark, the flywheel blurred with speed. Then Ford tightened the pulley, the broad leather belt took hold. The rear wheels spun. She was running! It remained only to test the machine in actual going on the ground. Ford went to work on the steering gear. He had thought it all out before, he had made all the parts. Now he must put them together, fit them into place and test them. He forgot about his wife, waiting in the house; he did not notice that the fire in the stove was getting low and the hour was growing late. He bent every thought and energy to placing the steering gear. At midnight he was still working. At 1 o'clock he had the front wheels blocked up and was testing the steering lever. It needed some changes. At 2 o'clock they were finished. He started the engine again and it missed fire. Something was wrong with the spark. At 3 o'clock, grimy, hollow-cheeked, absorbed, he was hard at work when he felt a hand on his arm and heard his wife say, "Henry!" "My dear, what's the matter? I'm coming in right away. Why, you're all wet!" he exclaimed, seeing her dripping shawl. "It's raining hard. Didn't you know it?" she said. "You shouldn't have come out; I thought you were going right to bed," he answered. "Well, I couldn't sleep very well. I got to thinking--Henry, we mustn't go back to the farm. It was just a notion of mine. I guess I was tired, or something. I've changed my mind. We'd better stay right here till you get the machine finished." He laughed. "Well, little woman, I guess that won't be so very long. It's finished right now," he said. "You wait a minute and you'll see me running it." She stood and watched, more excited than he, while he started the engine again, nailed a couple of old boards together for a seat and opened wide the shed doors. The rain was falling in torrents and underfoot the light snow had turned to thin slush on the frozen ground. It was very dark. He pushed the machine into the yard and hung a lantern over the dashboard for a headlight. Inside the shed Mrs. Ford, in a voice shaking with excitement, begged him to wait until morning, but he did not listen. The engine and steering gear were protected from the rain and no discomfort could have equaled for him the disappointment of another delay. The time had come when he could prove his theories. He would not waste one minute of it. The engine was already running. He stepped into the car, sat down, and slowly, carefully, tightened the pulley. Then, in the first Ford automobile, he rode away from the old shed. When he felt the machine moving under him he tightened his grasp on the steering lever. Suddenly the light of the lantern showed him a dozen things he had never noticed in the yard before. The clothes-pole loomed menacingly before him, a pile of flower pots seemed to grow out of all proportion to its ordinary size. The machine wobbled unsteadily, while he desperately struggled to drive it in a straight line. He turned it from the flower pots, jerked it back in time to avoid running into the fence, and headed straight for the clothes-pole. It seemed to jump at him. At the last minute he thought of the pulley. He loosened the leather belt, the engine spun wildly, the car stopped. Henry Ford got out, breathing hard, and pushed the machine around the clothes-pole. "You see, I not only had to make the machine, but I had to get into it and learn how to steer it while it was running," he says. It occurred to him that he would like a good wide space for the job. After he had rescued the machine from the clothes-pole he turned it toward the street. Chug-chugging away, he passed the house, drove over the gravel sidewalk, and turned down Edison avenue. The scattered houses were dark and silent; every one was asleep. The little machine, rattling and coughing, proceeded through the thin slush in jerks and jumps, doing valiantly with its one cylinder. Perched on the rough board seat, Henry Ford battled with the steering lever, while on the sidewalk Mrs. Ford, wrapped in her shawl, anxiously kept pace with them. It was not difficult to do, for the car was not breaking any future speed limits. At the end of the first block Ford turned the car successfully, and rode down the side street, zig-zagging widely from side to side in his effort to drive straight ahead. Fortunately, Detroit's streets are wide. When he had passed the second block he began to wonder how to turn and drive back. At the end of the third block he solved the difficulty. He stopped the car, jumped out, lifted it around, and headed it for home. By this time the engine was missing again, but it continued gallantly to jerk and push the light car forward until Ford had reached his own yard. Then he stopped it, pushed the machine into the shed, and turned to Mrs. Ford. "Well, it runs all right. Guess I'll have some breakfast and go to bed," he said, and Mrs. Ford hurried in to make coffee. "How did I feel? Why, I felt tired," he explains now. "I went to bed and slept all next day. I knew my real work with the car had just begun. I had to get capital somehow, start a factory, get people interested--everything. Besides, I saw a chance for a lot of improvements in that car." CHAPTER XVI ENTER COFFEE JIM Probably the disposition to rest on our laurels is more than anything else responsible for the mediocrity of the individual and the slow progress of the race. Having accomplished something, most of us spend some time in admiring it and ourselves. It is characteristic of big men that past achievements do not hold their interest; they are concerned only with their efforts to accomplish still more in the future. Henry Ford had built an automobile. His four years' work had been successful, and that little machine, scarcely larger than a bicycle, with its pulley-clutch, puffing little one-cylinder engine, and crude steering apparatus, stood for an epoch in human progress. He might be pardoned if he had spent a month or two in self-congratulation, in driving the car up and down Detroit's streets and enjoying the comments of the men who had laughed at him so long. But apparently it did not occur to him. He saw already a number of possible improvements in the little machine. He was as indifferent to the praise of other men as he had been to their ridicule. After that one day of rest he resumed almost the old routine. When a few men at the Edison plant laughingly inquired how he was getting along with the great invention he remarked quietly that the machine was running; he had been riding in it already. Then at 6 o'clock he hurried home and out to the shed for the usual evening's work. He was trying to plan an engine which would give more power; incidentally in his odd moments he was working to improve the steering apparatus. One imagines the incredulity, the amazement, that followed his quiet statement that the thing was actually running. The men at the plant began to drop around at the Ford place to look at it. They came doubtfully, prepared either to laugh or to be convinced. After they had examined the engine and looked over the transmission and steering gear they went away still hesitating between two conclusions. "It works, all right," they said. "There's no question the blamed thing runs. How do you suppose he ever happened to stumble onto the idea? But where's he going to get the capital to manufacture it? After all, there won't be much of a market--a few rich fellows'll buy it, probably, for the novelty. After all, you can't make a machine that will do the work of horses to any great extent." Some of them took a different view. They became enthusiastic. "My Lord, Ford, there's millions in this thing. Millions!" they said. "You ought to get out and organize a company--a big company. Incorporate and sell stock and make a clean-up right away. And then build a machine like a phaeton, with big leather cushions and carriage lamps and a lot of enamel finish--why, there are hundreds of men that could afford to pay two or three thousand dollars for one of 'em. You could make a hundred per cent profit--two hundred per cent." Ford listened to all of them and said little. He was busy improving the machine; it did not suit him yet; he felt he could make it much more powerful and efficient with a little more work. Meantime he revolved in his mind plans for putting it on the market. Those plans included always one fundamental point. He was resolved to make the automobile cheap. "I've got a machine here that saves time and work and money," he said. "The more people who have it the more it will save. There's no object in building it so only a few rich men can own one. It isn't the rich men who need it; it's the common folks like me." News of the amazing machine to be seen in the old shed behind the little house on Edison street spread rapidly. About this time news dispatches carried word of two other automobiles built in this country. A man named Duryea of Springfield, Ill., and another named Haynes, in Kokomo, Ind., had been working on the same idea. A reporter found Ford at work on his engine, interviewed him and wrote a story for a Detroit paper. One or two wealthy men hunted Ford up and talked about furnishing the capital to manufacture the machine. They saw, as some of Ford's friends had done, an opportunity to float a big company, sell stock, and build a high-priced car. Ford considered these offers for a time. Building an automobile had been only half of his idea; building it cheap had been the other half, and he would not abandon it. He figured it out in dollars and cents; two hundred per cent on a small quantity of cars, or a smaller profit on a larger quantity. He showed that the most sound basis for the company was the manufacture of a large number of machines, at a profit sufficient merely to keep enlarging the plant and building more machines. The idea did not appeal to the men who were eager for large immediate profits for themselves. In the end the men with money dropped the matter. Ford was obstinate, but he was a small man with no capital, merely a crank who had hit by accident on a good idea; he would come around all right in time, they concluded. Ford continued to work at the Edison plant and spend his evenings trying to improve his machine. He had taken Mrs. Ford to Greenfield, where she would stay with her mother until the baby was born. After that one hysterical outburst on the night the automobile was finished, she had returned to her cheerful acceptance of his interest in the car. Indeed, she herself had become enthusiastic about its possibilities. "You stay right here and keep your job with the Edison people," she said. "I'll be perfectly all right with mother, and maybe by the time I come back you'll have a company organized and a whole factory going, who knows? Only, mind you don't work too late at night, and promise you'll eat your meals regular." Ford promised, but when he returned to the dark little house at night and faced the task of building a fire and cooking supper for himself it seemed to him a bigger job than building the automobile had been. He heated some coffee on the gasoline stove, burned some bread into a semblance of toast, and scrambled a few eggs. Then he spread a newspaper on the kitchen table, set the frying-pan on it, and managed to make a meal. Naturally about midnight he grew hungry. He came into the kitchen, looked at the cold, greasy frying-pan, still setting on the kitchen table, remembered that he was out of bread, and thought of an all-night lunch wagon that stood near substation A, where sometimes he bought a cup of coffee when he was working there. The automobile stood waiting in the shed; he told himself that he wanted to test the steering gear again, anyway. He went out, started the engine, climbed in and chug-chugged away through the silent, deserted streets to the lunch wagon. Coffee Jim, loafing among his pans and mounds of hamburg steak, was astonished to see the queer little machine, jerking and coughing its way toward him. He remembered Ford, and while he sliced the onions and cut the bread for Ford's midnight luncheon they talked about the automobile. Afterward Coffee Jim examined it in detail and marveled. When Ford took him for a little ride in it he became enthusiastic. Soon it was part of Ford's routine to drive the little car to the lunch wagon at midnight, have a cup of coffee and a hot sandwich and a chat with Coffee Jim. They became friends. It was one of those accidental relationships which have great consequences. A hundred thousand Ford automobiles to-day owe their existence largely to that chance friendship between Ford and Coffee Jim. CHAPTER XVII ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS If Ford had been unduly elated over his success in making an automobile the years that followed that night ride in the rain would have been one succession of heart-breaking disappointments. Men with money enough to build a factory were not seeking business ventures in the nineties. Money was scarce, and growing more so. The few financiers who might have taken up Ford's invention, floated a big issue of common stock, and sold the cars at a profit of two or three hundred per cent, saw no advantage in furnishing the Capital to start a small plant on Ford's plan. He himself was close pressed for money. Payments on the little house, with their interest, the cost of his wife's illness and of providing for the new baby, his own living expenses, took the greater part of his salary. The situation would have been disheartening to most men. Ford set his teeth and kept on working. The one-cylinder engine bothered him. It did not give him the power he wanted. After he had worked with it for a time he took it down, cut another section from the piece of pipe and made another cylinder. The two-cylinder result was somewhat better, but still the little car jerked along over the ground and did not satisfy him. He fell back into the old routine--twelve hours at the Edison plant, home to supper and out to the shed to work the evening through on the machine. Mrs. Ford was in charge of the house again, busy keeping it neat and bright, nursing the baby, making his little dresses, washing and ironing, keeping down the grocer's bills. Meantime other men, with machines no better than Ford's, were starting factories and manufacturing automobiles. Once in a while on his way home from work Ford saw one on the street--a horseless carriage, shining with black enamel, upholstered with deep leather cushions, ornamented with elaborate brass carriage lamps. Usually they were driven by steam engines. They were a curiosity in Detroit's streets, a luxury which only the very rich might afford. Crowds gathered to look at them. Ford must have seen them with some bitterness, but apparently he was not greatly discouraged. "I didn't worry much. I knew I could put my idea through somehow," he says. "I tell you, no matter how things may look, any project that's founded on the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number will win in the end. It's bound to." He went home, ate the supper Mrs. Ford had waiting and doggedly resumed work in the old shed. The chronicle of those years from the standpoint of an onlooker would be merely a wearisome record of the machine shop--a detailed record of pistons, number of revolutions per minute, experiments in spark-timing. Only the knowledge of their result, or Ford's own story of his hopes, disappointments, mental struggles, would make them interesting. That part of his story Ford will not dwell upon. "I kept on working another eight years," he says quietly. Eight years! Some time during them he saw what was needed. Heretofore the crank shaft had made a complete revolution on a single power impulse. Ford perceived that two impulses, properly placed, would increase both the power and the smoothness of the running. The result of that quiet eight years' work was the first practical two-cylinder opposed engine mounted on a motor car. In the little shed, working alone through the long evenings, while his neighbors rested and visited on their front porches, and his wife sang the baby to sleep in the house, he built the four-cycle engine that made the gasoline automobile a possibility. In the spring of 1901 he finished it, mounted it on the old car which he had made nine years before of discarded bicycle wheels and rough boards, and drove it out of the shed. It was nearly midnight of a quiet star-lit spring night. The lights in near-by houses had gone out long before; in his own home Mrs. Ford and the boy were sleeping soundly. Ford turned the car down Edison avenue and put on full power. The engine responded beautifully. The car raced down the avenue, under the branches of the trees whose buds were swelling with spring sap, while the wind lifted Ford's hair and blew hard against his face. It was pleasant, after the long hours in the shed. The steady throb of the motor, the car's even progress, were delightful. "By George! I'll just ride down and show this to Coffee Jim," said Ford. His circle of acquaintances in Detroit was small; his long hours of work prevented his cultivating them. At the Edison plant his pleasant but rather retiring manner had won only a casual friendliness from the men. This friendliness that had grown since his success with the motor had replaced their derision with respect, but still it was far from intimate companionship. He knew no one with money. He was still a poor man, working for wages, with only his brain and hands for equipment. Nearly thirteen years of hard work had produced his motor car, but he had very little money and no financial backing for its manufacture. His closest friend was Coffee Jim. Coffee Jim examined the car with interest that night. He left his lunch wagon and took a short ride in it. He listened while Ford explained its mechanical principle. "You've got a winner there, all right," he said heartily. "All you need is capital." Ford agreed with him. He had been revolving in his mind plans for getting it; when he left Coffee Jim at his lunch wagon and rode slowly home he continued to think about it. That morning he drove to the Edison plant in the car, and on his way home at night he made a detour through Detroit's principal streets. He wanted people to talk about the car, and they did. Every one in Detroit heard more or less about it in the months that followed. Meantime Ford took a few days' leave from the Edison plant now and then and personally made efforts to interest financiers in its manufacture. He interviewed his banker and most of the big business men of the city, outlined his plan for a factory, demonstrated the car. Every one showed some interest, but Ford did not get the money. Late that fall he discussed the situation with Coffee Jim one night. "I've got the car and I've got the right idea," he said. "It's bound to win in time. The trouble is these men can't get an idea until they see it worked out with their own eyes. What I need is some spectacular exhibition of the car. If I could enter her in the races next year she'd stand a chance to win over anything there'll be in the field--then these men would fall over themselves to back me." "Well, can't you do it?" Coffee Jim inquired. Ford shook his head. "Cost too much," he said. "I've laid off work a lot this summer, trying to get capital, and the boy's been sick. I'd have to buy a new car for the racing. I might rake up money enough for material, but I couldn't make the car in time, working evenings, and I can't afford to give up my job and spend my whole time on it." CHAPTER XVIII WINNING A RACE Coffee Jim pondered the situation. He knew Ford thoroughly; he believed in the car. To win the Grosse Point races would give Ford his chance--a chance he was missing for lack of money. Coffee Jim thought of his own bank account, which had been growing for years, nickel by nickel, dime by dime, from the profits on fried-ham sandwiches and hamburger and onions. "See here, Ford," he said suddenly: "I'll take a chance. I'll back you. You go on, quit your job, build that car and race her. I'll put up the money." Ford accepted the offer without hesitation. He believed in the car. Coffee Jim waved aside Ford's suggestion of securing the loan by his personal note, or by a mortgage on the little house. "Take the money; that's all right. Pay it back when you can. Your word's good enough for me," he said. He believed in Ford. It was a demonstration of the practical value of friendship--a pure sentiment which had come unexpectedly to the rescue when all material means had failed. Hard work, real ability, business sagacity, had been unable to give Ford the start which his friendship with the owner of the little lunch wagon had brought him. It was one of those experiences which helped to form Ford's business philosophy, that philosophy which sounds so impractical and has proved so successful. "Any man who considers everything from the standpoint of the most good to the most people will never want for anything," he says. "No, I don't mean mental influence, or psychic attraction, or anything like that. I mean plain common sense. That's the attitude that makes friends--all kinds of friends, everywhere, some that you never even hear about--and friends bring all the rest." He took Coffee Jim's money, gave up his job at the Edison plant, and went to work on the little racer. "It seemed pretty good to be able to work all day on the car, as well as the evenings," he says. He took down the engine and entirely rebuilt it, substituting the best of material for the makeshifts he had been obliged to use. He spent long hours designing a racing body, figuring out problems of air-resistance and weight. Eight months of careful thought and work went into that car. At last, in the early summer of 1902, it was finished. At 4 o'clock one morning, business being over at the lunch wagon, he and Coffee Jim took it out for a trial. It ran like the wind. Down the quiet, vacant streets of Detroit, in the gray chill of early morning, they raced at a speed that made the houses on either side blur into a gray haze. Coffee Jim clung breathlessly to the mechanic's seat, while Ford bent over the steering lever and gave her more power, and still more power. "Holy Moses, she sure does run!" Coffee Jim gasped, when the car slowed down smoothly and stopped. "You'll win that race sure as shooting." "Yes, she's a good little car," Ford said, looking it over critically. "She's a pretty good little car." He stood looking at it, his hands in his pockets. "I've got an idea for a four-cylinder motor that will beat her, though," he said. "It's too late to build it now; we'll have to put this one in the race. But I'll make a car yet that'll beat this as much as this beats a bicycle." It was not a boast; it was a simple statement of fact. The little racer was finished, thoroughly well done; he spent no more thought on it. Already his mind was reaching ahead, planning a better one. It may be imagined with what anxiety the Fords awaited the day of the races. Ford was to be his own driver, and Mrs. Ford's dread of losing the race was mixed with fear for his safety if there should be an accident. She had seen the car in the tryout, and its speed terrified her, though Ford assured her, with masculine clumsiness, that even greater speed had been made in previous races. Alexander Winton of Cleveland, then the track champion of the country, had beaten it more than once. On the racetrack, Ford said, he was confident he could do better. Later there was a quiet tryout on the racetrack that showed Ford he was right, though he kept secret the exact time he had made. On the day of the races enormous crowds gathered at the Grosse Point tracks. It was the first automobile track meeting ever held in Michigan, and excitement ran high. Alexander Winton was there, confident and smiling in his car, which had broken so many records. The crowds cheered him wildly. Ford, quiet and perhaps a little white with the tension, drove his car out on the tracks, was greeted with a few uncertain cheers. "Who's that?" people said. "Oh, that's a Detroit man--let's see, what is his name? Ford--never heard of him before. Funny little car, isn't it?" "Maybe he's been put in to fill out. He's the only man against Winton in the free-for-all. They couldn't get a real car to race Winton." "Hi, there's Cooper! Cooper! Rah!" The crowd got to its feet and cheered Tom Cooper, the bicycle champion, who strolled on to the field and chatted with Winton. Ford was outside it all. He had been too busy working on his car, had had too little money, to be on intimate terms with the big men of the automobile business, or to become friendly with champions. One supposes he wasted no regrets on the situation. He had his car, the concrete form of his mechanical ideas. The time had come to test their value. If they were right he would win the race; if they were wrong he would go back to his shed and work out better ones. He examined the car again, looked to the gasoline and oil, and was ready. Coffee Jim, slapping him on the shoulder, said, "All right, Ford, go to it!" and hurried up to his seat in the grandstand, where Mrs. Ford and the boy were already sitting, tense with excitement and apprehension. Winton waved his cap in a last response to the roar from the crowd, pulled it down tight and settled back into his seat. The signal came. Ford, bending over his steering lever, threw on the power and felt the car jump forward. The race was on. It happened thirteen years ago, but there are still people in Detroit who talk of that race. They describe the start, the enthusiasm for Winton, the surprise of the crowd when the little car, driven by nobody knew whom, hung on grimly just behind the champion, to the end of the first stretch, through the second stretch, well on to the third. Winton's car shot ahead then. The crowd cheered him madly. Then the roar died down in amazement. The little car, with a burst of speed, overtook the champion, and the two cars shot past the grandstand side by side and sped into the second lap. Into the silence came a yell from Coffee Jim: "Ford! Yah, Ford! Go it, go it, go it! Ford!" The crowd went crazy. No one knew clearly what was happening. "Ford! Ford! Winton! He's ahead! Go it, go it! Winton! Come on, come on! Look at 'em! Look at 'em! Ford!" they yelled. Then the two cars swept into the final stretch abreast; the crowd, wild with excitement, hoarse, disheveled, was standing on the seats, roaring, "Come on, come on, come on! Ford! Ford!" Every detail of that race must still be distinct in Ford's mind, but he sums them all in one concise sentence: "It was SOME race. I won it." CHAPTER XIX RAISING CAPITAL Ford sat in his little car, white, shaken, dusty--the track champion of this country. He was surrounded by a small crowd of automobile enthusiasts, promoters, bicycle champions, all eager to meet and talk with the unknown man who had taken the honors away from Winton. Among them was Tom Cooper. Grasping Ford's hand, he looked with interest at the slightly built, thin-cheeked man who had won the race, and said: "Bully work, the way you handled her on that last turn. Whose car is it?" "Mine," said Ford. "I mean"--Cooper looked at the lines of the car--"I mean, whose engine did you use?" "It's my engine--I made it," Ford replied. "The deuce you did!" Cooper exclaimed. "Well, I must say you did a good job. I'd like to look it over some time." "Sure; come out to my house any time. Glad to show it to you," said Ford cordially. It was the beginning of an association which was to be highly profitable to both of them. Other men of national prominence in the world of sports greeted Ford enthusiastically as one of themselves, while the crowd in the grandstand still cheered spasmodically. Reporters hurried up with camera men, and Ford stepped back into the little car and posed somewhat sheepishly for his first newspaper pictures. Men who had formerly passed him on the street with a careless nod, now stopped him, clapped him on the shoulder and talked like old friends. He was beyond question the hero of the day. He took it all in a matter-of-fact manner; his car had done no more than he had expected all along, and it was the car, not himself, which filled his mind. He hoped that the publicity would bring him the necessary capital to start his factory. Within a week he received offers from wealthy men of Detroit. The local papers had printed pictures of Ford, his car and the old shed where it had been built, with long accounts of his years of work and his efforts to organize a company. Detroit had been awakened to the fact that there was a real opportunity for men with vision and sufficient capital to carry it out. But without exception these men insisted on one thing--absolute control of the company to be organized. From their standpoint that proviso was reasonable enough. If they furnished the money and Ford merely the idea, of course they should keep not only the larger share of the profits, but entire control of the venture as well. Without their money, they argued, his idea was valueless. On the other hand, in spite of his eight years of struggle for lack of capital, Ford still maintained that the idea was the really valuable part of the combination. He insisted on controlling the organization which was to manufacture his cars. While he had been working alone in the little shed at night, he had thought out his plan for a factory, mentally picturing its methods, its organization, the handling of material from the raw iron to the finished cars, fully assembled, rolling away in an endless line. He had figured costs to the fraction of a cent; planned methods of arranging the work, standardizing the product, eliminating waste and friction at every possible point. Now that the car was finished, the factory plan took its place in his mind. He did not intend to abandon it until he had made it a reality. He was going to build that factory, as he had built his engine, in spite of any obstacles or opposition. To do it, he must control the company's policies. It was a deadlock. To the man with money it seemed sheer insanity to put control of a business venture into the hands of an obstinate mechanic who had happened to hit on an idea for an automobile engine. Ford would not dispose of his patents on any other condition. In a short time the discussions were dropped, and he was where he had been before the track meeting. That spectacular race, however, had brought him many acquaintances, and many of them developed into close friends. James Couzens, a small hardware merchant of Detroit, was one of them, and C. H. Wills, a mechanical draughtsman, was another. With Tom Cooper, the bicycle champion, they spent many evenings in the old shed, or on the front steps of the Ford house, discussing projects for the Ford factory. Couzens, who had a talent for business affairs, formed a plan for interesting a small group of other merchants like himself and financing Ford. He brought negotiations to a certain point and found himself confronted again by their demand for control of the company. "We must do something that'll show them that they've got to have you on your own terms--something big--startling--to stir them up," he reported. "How about winning another race?" Cooper suggested. "They're pulling one off in Ohio this fall." "No, it must be right here, so I can take my men out and let them see it," Couzens objected. "It takes a lot to jar any money loose from those fellows." "I could enter at the Grosse Point tracks next spring," Ford said. "But it wouldn't show them any more than they've already seen, if I race the same car. I can't afford to build another one." He was still in debt to Coffee Jim for the cost of his first racer. Coffee Jim, professing himself satisfied with the results of the race--doubtless he had judiciously placed some bets on it--had left Detroit in the meantime, but Ford nevertheless counted the loan among his liabilities. "Think you can beat that car?" Cooper inquired. "I know I can," Ford replied quietly. "Then you go to it and build her. I'll back the scheme," Cooper said. It was another debt on Ford's shoulders, but he accepted it and immediately began to work on another racer. With the intention of startling Couzens's group of sedate business men, he obeyed Cooper's injunction to "build her big--the roof's the limit." The result was certainly startling. Four enormous cylinders gave that engine eighty horsepower. When it was finished and Cooper and Ford took it out one night for a trial, people started from their sleep for blocks about the Ford house. The noise of the engine could be heard miles. Flames flashed from the motor. In the massive framework was one seat. Cooper stood thunderstruck while Ford got in and grasped the tiller. "Good Lord, how fast do you figure she'll do?" he asked. "Don't know," Ford replied. He put on the power, there was a mighty roar, a burst of flame, and Cooper stood alone on the curb. Far down the street he saw the car thundering away. A few minutes later it came roaring back and stopped. Ford sat in it, white. "How far did you go?" Cooper asked. Ford told him. "Do you mean to say she makes a speed like that?" Cooper ejaculated, aghast. "She'll make better than that. I didn't dare to give her full power," Ford replied. He climbed out and stood beside Cooper, and the two looked at the car in awe. "See here, I hope you don't think I'll drive that thing in the races," Cooper said after a time. "I wouldn't do it for a gold mine. You'll have to do it." "I should say not!" Ford retorted. "I won't take the responsibility of driving her at full speed to win every race that was ever run. Cooper, if that car ever gets really started it will kill somebody, sure." CHAPTER XX CLINGING TO A PRINCIPLE Ford and Cooper regarded the juggernaut car for some time in meditative silence. "Well, I guess you've built a real racer there, all right," Cooper said admiringly. "Yes, it looks as if I had," Ford answered. "The question is, what good is it? Is there a man on earth who'd try to drive it?" "Well, I've got some nerve myself, and I don't want to," Cooper admitted. He walked around the car and then looked again at the engine. "How fast would the darn thing go, I wonder?" he said. "Get in and try her," Ford suggested. Cooper climbed in, Ford cranked the engine, and again sleeping Detroit jumped from its bed. The car leaped and shot down the avenue. When it roared back again Cooper stopped it in the middle of the street. "That settles it for me," he said. "She must have made forty miles an hour, and she wasn't half running, at that. I won't take her out on the track." They confronted the situation gloomily. Couzens was depending on the success of the car at the races to bring his men in line for the organization of a company; here was the car, built at the cost of months of work and some hundreds of Cooper's money, and it developed such speed that it was not safe to enter it for the race. Suddenly Cooper had an idea. "See here! I know a man--if there's a man on earth who would take that car out he's the one!" he said. "He isn't afraid of anything under the shining sun--a bicycle rider I raced against in Denver. Oldfield's his name--Barney Oldfield." "Never heard of him," said Ford. "But if you think he would drive this car let's get hold of him. Where is he?" "He ought to be in Salt Lake now," Cooper answered. "I'll wire him." The message went to Oldfield that night. Couzens was told of the situation, and the three men waited anxiously for a telegram from Salt Lake. It came late the next day, asking some further questions about the car and stating that Oldfield had never driven an automobile. Cooper wired again. The track meeting was to be held the next month. Time was short. Oldfield, if he came, would have to learn every detail of handling the machine. Even with an experienced man, the danger of driving that car in the races was great. Cooper and Ford haunted the telegraph offices. At last the final reply came. Oldfield would drive the car. He would arrive on the 1st of June, exactly one week before the date of the race. It was a busy week. Ford and Cooper bent every energy to teaching Oldfield how to drive the car. They crammed his mind with a mass of facts about the motor, the factor of safety in making quick turns, the way to handle the steering lever. On the day before the races he took the car out on the tracks and made one circuit safely, holding it down to slow speed. "I can handle her all right. I'll let her out to-morrow," he reported. The day of the track meeting dawned. Ford and Cooper, tense with anxiety, went over the car thoroughly and coached Oldfield for the last time. Couzens, hiding his nervousness under a bland, confident manner, gathered his group of business men and took them into the grandstand. The free-for-all was called. Half a dozen cars were entered. When they had found their places in the field Barney Oldfield settled himself in his seat, firmly grasped the two-handed tiller which steered the mighty car, and remarked, "Well, this chariot may kill me, but they'll say afterward that I was going some when the car went over the bank." Ford cranked the engine, and the race was on. Oldfield, his long hair snapping in the wind, shot from the midst of the astounded field like a bullet. He did not dare look around; he merely clung to the tiller and gave that car all the power it had. At the end of the first half mile he was far in the lead and gaining fast. The crowd, astounded, hysterical with excitement, saw him streak past the grandstand a quarter of a mile ahead of the nearest car following. On the second lap he still gained. Grasping the tiller, never for a second relaxing that terrific speed, he spun around the course again, driving as if the field was at his heels. He roared in at the finish, a full half mile ahead of the nearest car, in a three-mile race. News of the feat went around the world, and in one day Ford was hailed as a mechanical genius. Couzens brought the group of business men down to the track, and before Oldfield was out of the car they had made an appointment to meet Ford next day and form a company. The race had convinced them. "Some people can't see a thing unless it is written in letters a mile high and then illustrated with a diagram," Ford says meditatively. During the following week a company was formed, and Ford was made vice-president, general manager, superintendent, master mechanic and designer. He held a small block of stock and was paid a salary of $150 a month, the same amount he had drawn while working for the Edison company. He was satisfied. The salary was plenty for his needs; apparently he waved that subject aside as of little importance. At last, he thought, he had an opportunity to put into practice his plans for manufacturing, to build up an organization which was to be as much a Ford factor as his car was a Ford car. The machine idea was to be its basis. The old idea for the fifty-cent watch factory, altered and improved by years of consideration, was at last to be carried out. He planned a system of smooth, economical efficiency, producing enormous numbers of cheap, standardized cars, and he began work on it with all the enthusiasm he had felt when he first began building his car. But almost immediately there was friction between him and the men who furnished the capital. They insisted on his designing not cheaper cars, but more luxurious ones. They demanded that his saving in reduced costs of production should be added to their profits, not deducted from the price of the car. They were shrewd, successful business men, and they intended to run their factory on business lines. "I prefer not to talk about that year," Ford says to-day. "Those men were right, according to their lights. I suppose, anyway, some of them are still building a fairly successful car in the $3,000 to $4,000 class, and I don't want to criticize other men in the automobile field. "The trouble was that they couldn't see things my way. They could not understand that the thing that is best for the greatest number of people is bound to win in the end. They said I was impractical, that notions like that would hurt business. They said ideals were all very well, but they wouldn't work. I did not know anything about business, they said. There was an immediate profit of 200 per cent in selling a high-priced car; why take the risk of building forty cheap cars at 5 per cent profit? They said common people would not buy automobiles anyway. "I thought the more people who had a good thing the better. My car was going to be cheap, so the man that needed it most could afford to buy it. I kept on designing cheaper cars. They objected. Finally it came to a point where I had to give up my idea or get out of the company. Of course I got out." Over thirty years old, with a wife and child to support, and no capital, Henry Ford, still maintaining that policy of "the greatest good to the greatest number" must win in the end, left the company which had given him an opportunity to be a rich man and announced that somehow he would manufacture his own car in his own way. CHAPTER XXI EARLY MANUFACTURING TRIALS Again Henry Ford's talent for friendliness helped him. Wills, who had been working with Ford as a draughtsman, came with him into the new company. He had a few hundred dollars, which he was willing to stake on Ford's ability. Couzens, who had helped organize the first company, came also, and turned his business talents to the task of raising capital to start the new concern. While he was struggling with the problems of organization, Henry Ford rented an old shack on Mack avenue, moved his tools from the old shed, and, with a couple of machinists to help him, began building his cheap cars. News of his venture spread in Detroit. The cars sold before they were built. Men found their way to the crude shop, talked to Ford in his greasy overalls, and paid down deposits on cars for future delivery. Often these deposits helped to buy material for the same cars they purchased. Ford was working on a narrow margin. Every dollar which could be squeezed from the week's earnings after expenses were paid went directly into more material for more cars. At first his machinists went home at the end of their regular hours; then Ford worked alone far into the night, building engines. Before long the men became vitally interested in Ford's success and returned after supper to help him. Meantime a few men had been found who were willing to buy stock in the new company. It was capitalized at $100,000, of which $15,000 was paid in. Then Ford set to work in earnest. The force was increased to nearly forty men, and Wills became manager of the mechanical department. Carloads of material were ordered, on sixty days' time, every pound of iron or inch of wire calculated with the utmost nicety so that each shipment would be sufficient to build a certain number of completed cars without the waste of ten cents' worth of material. Then Ford and Couzens set out to sell the cars before payment for the material came due. Ford set a price of $900 a car, an amount which he figured would cover the cost of material, wages and overhead and leave a margin for buying more material. A thousand anxieties now filled his days and nights. Fifteen thousand dollars was very little money for his plant; wages alone would eat it up in ten weeks. The raw material must be made into cars, sold, and the money collected, before it could be paid for. Many times a check from a buyer won the race with the bill from the foundry by a margin of hours. Often on pay day Ford faced the prospect of being unable to pay the men until he should have sold a shipment of cars not yet built. But the cars sold. Their simplicity of construction, their power, above all their cheapness, in a day when automobiles almost without exception sold for $2,500 to $4,000, brought buyers. In a few weeks orders came from Cleveland for them; shortly afterward a dealer in Chicago wrote for an agency there. Still the success of the venture depended from week to week on a thousand chances. Ford, with his genius for factory management, reduced the waste of material or labor to the smallest minimum. He worked on new designs for simpler, cheaper motors. He figured orders for material. His own living expenses were cut to the bone--every cent of profit on sales went into the factory. Nearly a thousand cars were sold that year, but with the beginning of winter sales decreased, almost stopped. The factory must be kept running, in order to have cars for the spring trade. Close figuring would enable them to keep it open, but an early, brisk market would be necessary to save the company in the spring. In this emergency Ford recalled the great advertising value of racing. He had designed a four-cylinder car to be put on the market the following year. If he could make a spectacular demonstration of four-cylinder construction as compared with the old motors, the success of his spring sales would be assured. Ford announced that in November he would try for the world's speed record in a four-cylinder car of his own construction. The old machine in which Barney Oldfield had made his debut as an automobile driver was brought out and overhauled. The body was rebuilt, so that in form it was much like the racing cars of to-day. Ford himself remodeled the motor. The test was to be made on the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair. The course was surveyed. On the appointed day, with Ford himself as driver, the motor car appeared for its second trial. A stiff wind was blowing over the ice. The surface of the lake, apparently smooth, was in reality seamed with slight crevices and roughened with frozen snow. Ford, muffled in a fur coat, with a fur cap pulled down over his ears, went over it anxiously, noting mentally the worst spots. Then he cranked the car, settled himself in the seat and nodded to the starter. The signal came, Ford threw on the power and was off. The car, striking the ice fissure, leaped into the air, two wheels at a time. Ford, clinging to the tiller, was almost thrown from his seat. Zig-zagging wildly, bouncing like a ball, the machine shot over the ice. Twice it almost upset, but Ford, struggling to keep the course, never shut down the power. He finished the mile in 39-1/5 seconds, beating the world's record by seven seconds. The success of next year's sales was certain. The following day when Ford reached the factory, Wills met him with an anxious face. It was pay day and there was no money. "We didn't bother you about it last week because you were so busy with the race," Wills said. "We thought up to the last minute that the check from Chicago would come. It was due two days ago. We wired yesterday and got no answer. Mr. Couzens left this morning on the early train to find out what is wrong. You know how it is; the men want their money for over Christmas. The ---- Company wants men and they're offering more money than we can pay. I'm afraid our men will quit, and if they do and we can't get out the Cincinnati order next week----" Ford knew that to raise more money from the stockholders would be impossible. They had gone in as deeply as they could. To sacrifice a block of his own stock would be to lose control of the company, and besides it would be difficult to sell it. The company was still struggling for existence; it had paid no dividends, and other automobile manufacturers were already paying the enormous profits that led in the next few years to wild, disastrous expansion in the automobile business. The Ford company had no marketable assets--nothing but the rented building, the equipment and a few unfilled orders. "Well, if we pull through the men will have to do it," said Ford. "I'll tell them about it." That evening when the day's work was over and the men came to the office to get their pay they found Ford standing in the doorway. He said he had something to tell them. When they had all gathered in a group--nearly a hundred by this time--he stood on a chair so that all of them could hear what he had to say, and told them the exact situation. "Now, men, we can pull through all right if you'll help out now," he concluded. "You know the kind of car we're selling, and the price, and you know what the new one did yesterday. We can get through the winter on our unfinished orders if we never get that Chicago check. Next year we'll have a big business. But it all depends on you. If you quit now we're done for. What about it, will you stay?" "Sure, Mr. Ford." "You bet we will, old man!" "We're with you; don't you forget it!" they said. Before they left the plant most of them came up to assure him personally that they would stand by the Ford company. Next day they all arrived promptly for work, and during the week they broke all previous records in the number of cars turned out. "War between capital and labor is just like any other kind of war," Henry Ford says to-day. "It happens because people do not understand each other. The boss ought to show his books to his employees, let them see what he's working for. They're just as intelligent as he is, and if he needs help they'll turn in and work twenty-four hours a day, if they have to, to keep the business going. More than that, they'll use their heads for him. They'll help him in hundreds of ways he never would think of. "The only trouble is that people make a distinction between practical things and spiritual qualities. I tell you, loyalty, and friendliness, and helping the other man along are the only really valuable things in this world, and they bring all the 'practical' advantages along with them every time. If every one of us had the courage to believe that, and act on it, war and waste and misery of all kinds would be wiped out over night." CHAPTER XXII AUTOMOBILES FOR THE MASSES In a short time Couzens returned from Chicago, bringing not only the delayed check, but several orders as well, which he had obtained largely because of the astounding record made by the Ford car in its race over the ice on Lake St. Clair. The Ford company was not yet firmly established, but prospects were bright. America was awaking to the possibilities of the automobile, not merely as a machine for spectacular exhibitions of daring and skill at track meetings, or as the plaything of wealthy men, but as a practical time and labor-saver for the average person. The automobile industry rose almost overnight. Orders poured into the offices of companies already organized; new companies were formed by dozens, capitalized at millions of dollars. Fly-by-night concerns sprang up like mushrooms, flooded the country with stock-selling schemes, established factories where parts of motor cars, bought elsewhere, were assembled. Fortunes were made and lost and made again. Almost every day saw new cars on the market. Every one wanted an automobile. It was a luxury, it appealed to our longing to have something just a little better than our neighbors could afford. At the same time its obvious usefulness was an argument which overcame economy. The comic supplements, those faithful reflectors of American life in terms of the ridiculous, played with every variation of the theme, "He mortgaged the home to buy an automobile." Amid this mounting excitement, in spite of millions to be made by building a car bigger, finer, more beautiful and luxurious than those of his competitors, Henry Ford still clung firmly to his idea. He seems to have been, at that time, the only automobile manufacturer who realized that the automobile supplied a real need of the average man, and that the average man is a hard-working, frugal individual, used to living without those things he must mortgage his home to get. "The automobile of those days was like a steam yacht," Ford says. "It was built for only a few people. Now anything that is good for only a few people is really no good. It's got to be good for everybody or in the end it will not survive." Radical philosophy, that. You might hear it from a street corner orator, one of that dissatisfied multitude which will insist, in spite of all the good things we have in this country, that merely because those things are not good for them they are not good. There is something of Marx in such a statement, something of George Washington, even something of Christianity. No wonder men were astounded by the notion that success could be founded on a theory like that. "It's plain common sense, I tell you," Ford insisted, and in spite of good advice, in spite of sound business reasoning, that obstinate man went on in his own way and acted on that belief. The Ford cars were cheap. Already underpriced nearly a thousand dollars in comparison with other cars, they were to be sold still cheaper, Ford insisted. Every cent he could save in construction, in factory management, in shrewd buying of material was deducted from the selling price. The cars sold. Orders accumulated faster than they could be filled in the shop on Mack avenue. The profits went back into the factory. More men were added to the pay-roll, more machinery was installed, and still the orders came and the output could not keep up with them. Mrs. Ford could afford to buy her own hats instead of making them, to get a new set of furniture for the parlor, to purchase as many gloves and shoes as she wanted. She did these things; she even talked of getting a hired girl to do the cooking. But Ford himself made little change in his way of living. He had always dressed warmly and comfortably, eaten when he was hungry, slept soundly enough on an ordinary bed. He saw no way to increase his comforts by spending more money on himself. "More than enough money to keep him comfortable is no use to a man," he says. "You can't squander money on yourself without hurting yourself. Money's only a lubricant to keep business going." He continued to work hard, designing simpler, cheaper cars, struggling with business difficulties as they arose, planning a new factory. Most of all he was interested in the new factory. The success of his four-cylinder car provided money enough to warrant building it at last. A small tract of land on Piquette avenue was bought and Ford prepared to move from the rented Mack avenue place. The watch-factory dream was finally to be realized. Henry Ford declared that by a large equipment of special machinery and a sympathetic organization of the work, cars could be produced at a hitherto unheard-of price. He planned to the smallest detail, to the most minute fraction of space, time, labor, the production of those cars. Every part was to be machined to exact size. No supplementary fitting in the assembling room was to be necessary. From the time the raw iron entered one end of the factory till the finished car rolled away from the other end, there was not to be a moment's delay, a wasted motion. The various parts, all alike to the fraction of an inch, were to fit together with automatic precision. And Ford announced that he would produce 10,000 cars in a single year. The manufacturing world was stunned by the announcement. Then it laughed. Very few people believed that Ford would go far with such a radical departure from all accepted practice. But the new building was finished, Ford installed his machinery according to his plans, and when the wheels began to turn the world learned a new lesson in efficiency. Still Ford's success in the automobile field was not easily won. As a poor, hard-working mechanic, he had fought weariness and poverty and ridicule, to build his motor car; as an unknown inventor, still poor, he had struggled for a foothold in the business world and got it; now he was in for a long, expensive legal battle before he should be able to feel secure in his success. The Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, a combination of seventy-three of the biggest motor car companies, brought suit against the Ford company to recover tremendous sums of money because of Ford's alleged violation of the Seldon patent. Seldon held a basic patent covering the use of the gasoline engine as motive power in self-propelled vehicles. When automobiles began to be put on the market, he claimed his right under that patent to a royalty on all such vehicles. Other automobile manufacturers almost without exception acceded to his claim and operated under a lease from him, adding the royalty to the selling price. Henry Ford balked. He had been running a self-propelled gasoline engine long before Seldon had applied for his patent; furthermore, the royalties interfered with the long-cherished dream of cheapening his cars. He flatly refused to make the payments. The lessees of the Seldon rights, perceiving in Ford a dangerous adversary in the automobile field, who would become still more dangerous if he succeeded in eliminating the royalty payments from his manufacturing costs, immediately began to fight him with all the millions at their command. CHAPTER XXIII FIGHTING THE SELDON PATENT By sheer force of an idea, backed only by hard work, Henry Ford had established a new principle in mechanics; he had created new methods in the manufacturing world--methods substantially those which prevail in manufacturing to-day; now he entered the legal field. His fight on the Seldon patent--a fight that lasted nearly ten years--was a sensation not only in the automobile world, but among lawyers everywhere. The intricacies of the case baffled the jurists before whom it was tried. Time and again decisions adverse to Ford were handed down. Each time Ford came back again, more determined than before, carried the contest to a higher court and fought the battle over again. On one side the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers was struggling to save patent rights for which they had paid vast sums of money, to maintain high prices for automobiles, and to protect their combination of manufacturing interests. On the other, Ford was fighting to release the industry from paying tribute to a patent which he believed unsound, to smash the combination of manufacturers, and to keep down his own factory costs so that he could make a still cheaper car. With the first adverse decision, the A. L. A. M. carried the fight into the newspapers. Most of us can recall the days when from coast to coast the newspapers of America blossomed with page advertisements warning people against buying Ford cars, asserting that every owner of a Ford car was liable to prosecution for damages under the Seldon patent rights. Those were chaotic years in the industry. The hysteria which followed the huge profit-making of the first companies, checked only temporarily by the panic of 1907-8, mounted again in a rising wave of excitement. Dozens of companies sprang up, sold stock, assembled a few cars, and went down in ruin. Buyers of their cars were left stranded with automobiles for which they could not get new parts. It was asserted that the Ford Motor Company, unable to pay the enormous sums accruing if the Seldon patent was upheld, would be one of the companies to fail. Buyers were urged to play safe by purchasing a recognized car--a car made by the licensed manufacturers. Ford, already involved in a business fight against the association and its millions, thus found himself in danger of losing the confidence of the public. The story of those years is one which cannot be adequately told. Ford was working harder than he had ever done while he was building his first car in the old shed. He was one of the first men at the factory every morning, and long after Detroit was asleep he was still hard at work, conferring with lawyers, discussing with Couzens the latest disaster that threatened, struggling with business problems, meeting emergencies in the selling field, and always planning to better the factory management and to lower the price and increase the efficiency of the car. The car sold. Ford had built it for common men, for the vast body of America's middle-class people, and it was cheap enough to be within their reach. Ford knew that if he could keep their confidence he could win in the end. He met the attack of the A. L. A. M. by printing huge advertisements guaranteeing purchasers of his cars from prosecution under the Seldon patents, and backed his guarantee by the bond of a New York security company. Then he appealed the patent case and kept on fighting. In 1908 the farmer boy who had started out twenty years before with nothing but his bare hands and an idea found himself at the head of one of America's largest business organizations. That year his factory made and sold 6,398 cars. Every machine sold increased his liabilities in case he lost the patent fight, but the business was now on a firm foundation. Agencies had been established in all parts of the world, orders came pouring in. Profits were rolling up. Ford found his net earnings increasing faster than he could possibly put them back into the business. At the end of that year he and Couzens sat in their offices going over the balance sheets of the company. The size of the bank balance was most satisfactory. The factory was running to the limit of its capacity, orders were waiting. Prospects were bright for the following season. Ford leaned back in his chair. "Well, I guess we're out of the woods, all right," he said. He put his hands in his pockets and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Remember that time in the Mack avenue place," he began, "when that Chicago check didn't come in, and we couldn't pay the men?" "I should say I do! And the day we got the first order from Cleveland. Remember how you worked in the shop yourself to get it out?" "And you hustled out and got material on sixty days' time? And the boys worked all night, and we had to wait till the money came from Cleveland before we could give them their overtime? That was a great bunch of men we had then." They began to talk them over. Most of them were managers of departments now; one was handling the sales force, another had developed into a driver and won many trophies and broken many records with the Ford car; Wills was superintendent of the factory. "I tell you, Couzens, you and I have been at the head of the concern, and we've done some big things together, but if it hadn't been for the men we'd be a long way from where we are to-day," Ford said at last. "Now we have some money we don't need for the business, we ought to divide with them. Let's do it." "I'm with you!" Couzens said heartily, and reached for his pencil. Eagerly as two boys, they sat there for another hour figuring. They began with checks for the men they remembered, men who had been with them in the first days of the company, men who had done some special thing which won their notice, men who were making good records in the shops or on the sales force. But there seemed no place to draw the line. "After all, every man who's working for us is helping," Ford decided. "Let's give every one of them a Christmas present." Couzens agreed. "We'll have the clerical department figure it out. The men who have been with us longest the most, and so on down to the last errand boy that's been with us a year. What do you say?" Ford said yes with enthusiasm, and so it was settled. That year every employee of the company received an extra check in his December pay envelope. Ford had reached a point in his business life where he must stop and consider what he should do with the money his work had brought him, and those extra checks were the first result. For twenty years Ford had spent all his energy, all his time and thought in one thing--his work. If he had divided his interests, if he had allowed a liking for amusement, ease, finer clothes, admiration, to hinder his work in the old shed, he would never have built his car. If he had cared more for personal pleasure and applause than he did for his idea, he would have allowed his factory plan to be altered, twisted out of shape and forgotten when he first found capital to manufacture the car. But from the day he left his farm till now he has subordinated everything else to his machine idea. He applied it first to an engine, then to a factory. He fought through innumerable difficulties to make those ideas into realities. He destroyed old conceptions of mechanics and of factory management. He built up a great financial success. Now he found himself with a new problem to face--the problem of a great fortune piling up in his hands. CHAPTER XXIV "THE GREATEST GOOD TO THE GREATEST NUMBER" The response to that first Christmas gift from the Ford company to its employees was another proof of Ford's theory that friendliness pays. In the following month the production of cars broke all January records. Salesmen, with a new feeling of loyalty to the firm, increased their efforts, worked with greater enthusiasm and their orders jumped. The fight with the association still raged in the courts and in the newspapers, but the factory wheels were turning faster than ever before. More cars were pouring out, more people were buying. That year the Ford organization made and sold 10,607 cars. Ford had made good his prophecy that the new factory would produce 10,000 cars in one year. The phenomenal growth of his business had begun. His own fortune was doubling and doubling again. America had produced another self-made millionaire. Ford himself believes that any one who will pay the price he has paid can make a financial success as great. "Poverty doesn't hold a man down," he says. "Money doesn't amount to anything--it has no real value whatever. Any young man who has a good idea and works hard enough will succeed; money will come to him. What do I mean by a good idea? I mean an idea that will work out for the best interests of every one--an idea for something that will benefit the world. That's the kind of an idea the world wants." This country has produced hundreds of men whose lives prove this statement--men who have built railroads, telephones, telegraph systems, great merchandising organizations. These men have subordinated every personal pleasure to their work. They have exhausted their minds and bodies, driven themselves mercilessly, used every ounce of energy and ability, and won. The tragedy for them and for our country is that in winning the fight most of them have lost their perspective on it. They themselves have become absorbed by the machine they have built up. The money they have amassed usually means very little to them, but business is their passion. With millions upon millions piling up to their credit, they continue to hold down wages, to protect their profits, to keep the business running as it has always run. That business has been built only because fundamentally it was for "the greatest good to the greatest number," but in the long fight they have lost sight of that fact. Let a new project arise which is for the general good and "it will hurt business!" they cry in alarm. Ford kept his viewpoint. Partly because of his years on the farm, where he worked shoulder to shoulder with other men and learned essential democracy; partly because most of his work had been in mechanics rather than in business, but most of all because he is a simple, straight-thinking man, the tremendous Ford organization did not absorb him. He had applied his machine idea first to an engine, then to a factory; in time he was to apply it to society as a whole. "That Christmas present of ours is paying better dividends than any money we ever spent," he said to Couzens with a grin. "First thing we know, the men'll be paying us back more than we gave them. Look here." He spread on Couzens' desk a double handful of letters from the men. "They like it," he said soberly. "Some of them say they were worrying about Christmas bills, and so on. Those checks took a load off their minds, and they're pitching in and working hard to show they appreciate it. I guess in the long run anything that is good for the men is good for the company." In the months that followed he continued to turn over in his mind various ideas which occurred to him, based on that principle. The Ford employees and agents now numbered tens of thousands. They were scattered all over the earth, from Bombay to Nova Scotia, Switzerland, Peru, Bermuda, Africa, Alaska, India--everywhere were workers, helping Ford. Black men in turbans, yellow men in embroidered robes, men of all races and languages, speaking, thinking, living in ways incomprehensible to that quiet man who sat in his office in Detroit, were part of the vast machine out of which his millions poured. He thought it over--that great machine. He knew machines. He knew that the smallest part of one was as necessary as the largest, that every nut and screw was indispensable to the success of the whole. And while he brooded over the mighty machine his genius had created, the thought slowly formed itself in his mind that those multiplying millions of his were the weak spot in the organization. Those millions represented energy, and through him they were draining out of the machine, accumulating in a useless, idle store. Some way they must be put back. "Everybody helps me," he said. "If I'm going to do my part I must help everybody!" A new problem filled his mind. How should he put his money back into that smooth, efficient organization in such a way as to help all parts of it without disorganizing it? It was now a part of the business system of the world, founded on financial and social principles which underlie all society. It was no small matter to alter it. Meantime, there were immediate practical necessities to be met. His business had far outgrown the Piquette avenue plant. A new factory must be built. He bought a tract of 276 acres in the northern part of Detroit and began to plan the construction of his present factory, a number of huge buildings covering more than forty-seven acres. In this mammoth plant Ford had at last the opportunity, unhampered by any want of capital, to put into operation his old ideas of factory management. Here 1800 men were to work, quickly, efficiently, without the loss of a moment or a motion, all of them integral parts of one great machine. Each department makes one part of the Ford car, complete, from raw material to the finished product, and every part is carried swiftly and directly, by gravity, to the assembling room. But Ford's new idea also began to express itself here. He meant to consider not only the efficiency but the happiness and comfort of his men. The walls were made of plate glass, so that every part of the workrooms were light and well ventilated. One whole department, employing 500 men, was established to do nothing but sweep floors, wash windows, look after sanitary conditions generally. The floors are scrubbed every week with hot water and alkali. Twenty-five men are employed constantly in painting the walls and ceilings, keeping everything fresh and clean. That winter the Christmas checks went again to all the employees. Ford was still working out a real plan by which his millions could help; meantime, he divided his profits in this makeshift fashion. The following year the company moved to its new quarters. In that atmosphere of light and comfort the men worked better than ever before. Production broke another record--38,528 cars in one year were made and sold. "And the automobile world is waiting to hear the next announcement from Henry Ford," said a trade journal at that time. "Whether or not he has another sensation in store is the livest topic of discussion in Detroit manufacturing circles--nay, even throughout the world." Henry Ford was preparing another sensation, but this time it was to be in a larger field. He had startled the world, first, with a motor car, next with a factory. Now he was thinking of broad economic problems. CHAPTER XXV FIVE DOLLARS A DAY MINIMUM The Seldon patent fight had continued through all the early years of Ford's struggle to establish himself in business. At last it was settled. Ford won it. The whole industry was freed from an oppressive tax and his long fight was over. Immediately, of course, other cars came into the low-priced field. Other manufacturers, tardily following Ford, began the downward pressure in prices which now makes it possible for thousands of persons with only moderate means to own automobiles. For the first time Ford faced competition in his own price class. Innumerable business problems confronted the farmer-mechanic, from the time he opened his office doors in the early morning until the last workman had left the plant and only his light was burning. Business men came, financiers, salesmen, lawyers, designers. Every day for two hours he conferred with his superintendents and foremen in the main factory. Every detail of the business was under his supervision. A smaller man or a less simple one, would have been absorbed by the sheer mass of work. Ford settled every problem by his own simple rule, "Do what is fundamentally best for everybody. It will work out for our interests in the end." And always he was pondering the big problem of putting back into active use the millions that were accumulating to his credit. Every year the price was lowered on his cars, following his original policy of making the automobile cheap. Still the sales increased by leaps and bounds, and his margin of profit on each car mounted into a greater total. "The whole system is wrong," he says. "People have the wrong idea of money. They think it is valuable in itself. They try to get all they can, and they've built up a system where one man has too much and another not enough. As long as that system is working there does not seem any way to even things up. But I made up my mind to do what I could. "Money valuable? I tell you, gold is the least valuable metal in the world. Edison says it is no good at all, it is too soft to make a single useful article. Suppose there was only one loaf of bread in the world, would all the money on earth buy it from the man who had it? Money itself is nothing, absolutely nothing. It is only valuable as a transmitter, a method of handling things that are valuable. The minute one man gets more of it than he can use to buy the real things he needs, the surplus is sheer waste. It is stored-up energy that is no good to anybody. "Every bit of energy that is wasted that way hurts the whole world, and in the end it hurts the man who has it as much as it hurts anybody. Look here, you make a machine to do something useful, don't you? Well, then, if it is built so that it keeps wasting energy, doesn't the whole machine wear itself out without doing half as much as it should? Isn't that last energy bad for every part of the machine? Well, that is the way the world is running now. The whole system is wrong." A very little thought brings almost any of us to that conclusion, especially if the thinker is one whose surplus money is all in the other man's bank account; but Ford held to that thought, as few of us would, with the surplus millions in his own hands. Furthermore, he proposed not merely to think, but to act on that thought. He is not a man to act hastily. Before he made his engine he worked out the drawings. Before he distributed his money he selected 200 men from the workers in his shop and sent them out to learn all they could of the living conditions of the other thousands. They worked for a year, and at the end of that time Ford, going carefully over their reports, saw plainly where his surplus money should go. Over 4,000 of the 18,000 men working in the Ford plant were living in dire poverty, in unspeakable home conditions. Families were huddled into tenements, where in wet weather water stood on the floor. Wives were ill, uncared for; babies were dressed in rags. Another 5,000 men in his employ were living in conditions which could only be called "fair." Only 364 out of 18,000 owned their own homes. Yet the employees in the Ford shops were above the average of factory workingmen. They were paid the regular scale of wages, not overworked, and their surroundings at the plant were sanitary and pleasant. In those terrible figures Ford was seeing merely the ordinary, accustomed result of the wasted energy represented in those idle millions of dollars. He went over them thoroughly, noting that the scale of living grew steadily better as the salaries increased, observing that the most wretched class was mainly composed of foreign workmen, ignorant, unskilled labor, most of them unable to speak English. He figured, thought, drew his own conclusions. He had been studying relief plans, methods of factory management in Germany, welfare work of all kinds. When he had finished his consideration of those reports he threw overboard all the plans other people had made and announced his own. "Every man who works for me is going to get enough for a comfortable living," he said. "If an able-bodied man can't earn that, he's either lazy or ignorant. If he's lazy, he's sick. We'll have a hospital. If he's ignorant, he wants to learn. We'll have a school. Meantime, figure out in the accounting bureau a scale of profit-sharing that will make every man's earnings at least five dollars a day. The man that gets the smallest wages gets the biggest share of the profits. He needs it most." On January 12, 1914, Ford more than satisfied the expectant manufacturers of the world. He launched into the industrial world a most startling bombshell. "Five dollars a day for every workman in the Ford factory!" "He's crazy!" other manufacturers said, aghast. "Why, those dirty, ignorant foreigners don't earn half that! You can't run a business that way!" "That man Ford will upset the whole industrial situation. What is he trying to do, anyhow?" they demanded when every Detroit factory workman grew restless. The news spread rapidly. Everywhere workers dropped their tools and hurried to the Ford factory. Five dollars a day! When Ford reached the factory in the morning of the second day after his announcement, he found Woodward avenue crowded with men waiting to get a job in the shops. An hour later the crowds had jammed into a mob, which massed outside the buildings and spread far into adjoining streets, pushing, struggling, fighting to get closer to the doors. It was not safe to open them. That mass of humanity, pushed from behind, would have wrecked the offices. The manager of the employment department opened a window and shouted to the frantic crowd that there were no jobs, but the sound of his voice was lost in the roar that greeted him. He shut the window and telephoned the police department for reserves. Still the crowds increased every moment by new groups of men wildly eager to get a job which would pay them a comfortable living. Ford looked down at them from his window. "Can't you make them understand we haven't any jobs?" he asked the employment manager. The man, disheveled, breathing hard, and hoarse with his efforts to make his voice heard, shook his head. "The police are coming," he said. "Then there'll be somebody hurt," Ford predicted. "We can't have that. Get the fire hose and turn it on the crowd. That will do the business." A moment later a solid two-inch stream of water shot from the doors of the Ford factory. It swept the struggling men half off their feet; knocked the breath from their bodies; left them gasping, startled, dripping. They scattered. In a few moments the white stream from the hose was sweeping back and forth over a widening space bare of men. When the police arrived the crowd was so dispersed that the men in uniform marched easily through it without using their clubs. For a week a special force of policemen guarded the Ford factory, turning back heartsick men, disappointed in their hope of a comfortable living wage. It was a graphic illustration of the harm done the whole machine by the loss of energy stored in money, held idle in the hands of a few men. CHAPTER XXVI MAKING IT PAY "When I saw thousands of men in Detroit alone fighting like wild animals for a chance at a decent living wage it brought home to me the tremendous economic waste in our system of doing business," Ford said. "Every man in those crowds must go back to a job--if he found one at all--that did not give him a chance to do his best work because it did not pay him enough to keep him healthy and happy. "I made up my mind to put my project through, to prove to the men who are running big industries that my plan pays. I wanted employers to see that when every man has all the money he needs for comfort and happiness it will be better for everybody. I wanted to prove that the policy of trying to get everything good for yourself really hurts you in the end." He paused and smiled his slow, whimsical smile. "Well, I guess I proved it," he said. Six weeks after the plan went into effect in his factory a comparison was made between the production for January, 1914, and January, 1913. In 1913, with 16,000 men working on the actual production of cars for ten hours a day, 16,000 cars were made and shipped. Under the new plan 15,800 men working eight hours a day made and shipped 26,000 cars. Again Ford had shown the value of that intangible, "impractical" thing--a spirit of friendliness and good will. On the ebb tide of the enthusiasm which had stirred this country at the announcement of his profit-sharing plan a thousand skeptical opinions arose. "Oh, he's doing it just for the advertising." "He knew, right enough, that he would make more money in the end by this scheme--he's no philanthropist." Ford wanted his new plan known; he wanted employers everywhere to see what he was doing, how he did it, and what the effects would be. He did expect the factory to run better, to produce more cars. If it had not done so his plan would have been a failure. "Do the thing that is best for everybody and it will be best for you in the end." That was his creed. He hoped to prove its truth so that no one would doubt it. Nor is Ford a philanthropist, with the ordinary implications that follow that word. He is a hard-headed, practical man, who has made a success in invention, in organization, in the building of a great business. His contribution to the world is a practical contribution. His message is a practical message. "This whole world is like a machine--every part is as important as every other part. We should all work together, not against each other. Anything that is good for all the parts of the machine is good for each one of them. "Or look at it as a human body. The welfare of one part is dependent on all the other parts. Once in a while a little group of cells get together and takes to growing on its own account, not paying any attention to the rest. That is a cancer. In the end what it takes from the rest of the body causes the death of the whole organism. What do those independent, selfish cells get out of it? "I tell you, selfishness, trying to get ahead of the other fellow, trying to take away from other people, is the worst policy a man can follow. It is not a 'practical' viewpoint on life. Any man who is a success is a success because his work has helped other men, whether he realizes it or not. The more he helps other men the more successful every one will be, and he will get his share." Putting his profit-sharing plan into effect was not a simple matter of writing the checks. He had to educate not only other employers, but his own men as well. They must be taught the proper way to use money, so that it would not be a detriment to themselves or a menace to society in general. On the other hand, Ford did not believe in the factory systems in use abroad. He did not mean to give each of his workmen a model cottage, with a model flower garden in front and a model laundry in the rear, and say to them: "Look at the flowers, but do not pick them; it will spoil my landscape effect. Look at the lawn, but do not cut it; I have workmen for that." He meant to place no restraints on the personal liberty of the men. He believed that every man, if given the opportunity, would make himself a good, substantial citizen, industrious, thrifty and helpful to others. He meant his plan to prove that theory also. It has been rumored that the extra share of profits was given with "a string to it." That is not so. There was no single thing a man must have to do to entitle him to his share. He need not own a home, start a bank account, support a family, or even measure up to a standard of work in the shops. Manhood and thrift were the only requisites, and the company stood ready to help any man attain those. The first obstacle was the fact that 55 per cent. of the men did not speak English. Investigators visiting their miserable homes were obliged to speak through interpreters. A school was started where they might learn English, and the response was touching. More than a thousand men enrolled immediately, and when the plan was discussed in the shops 200 American workmen volunteered to help in teaching, so thoroughly had the Ford spirit of helpfulness pervaded the factory. The paid teachers were dismissed, and now those 200 men, on their own time, are helping their fellow-employees to learn the language of their new country. Shortly after the newspapers had carried far and wide the news of Ford's revolutionary theories a man knocked late one night at the door of the manager's home. "Will you give me a job?" he asked. "Why, I don't know who you are," the manager replied. "I'm the worst man in Detroit," said the caller defiantly. "I'm fifty-four years old, and I've done thirty-two years in Jackson prison. I'm a bad actor, and everybody knows it. I can't get a job. The only person that ever played me true is my wife, and I ain't going to have her taking in washing to support me. If you want to give me a job, all right. If you don't I'm going back to Jackson prison for good. There's one man yet I want to get, and I'll get him." Somewhat nonplussed by the situation the manager invited the man in, talked to him a bit, and called up Ford. "Sure, give him a chance," Ford's voice came over the wire. "He's a man, isn't he? He's entitled to as good a chance as any other man." The ex-convict was given a job in the shops. For a couple of months his work was poor. The foreman reported it to the manager. The manager wrote a letter, telling the man to brace up, there was plenty of good stuff in him if he would take an interest in the work and do his best. The next morning he came into the manager's office with his wife, so broken up he could hardly hold his voice steady. "That letter's the finest thing, outside of what my wife has done, that I've ever had happen to me," he said. "I want to stick here, I'll do the best I know how. I'll work my hands off. Show me how to do my work better." A couple of months later he came into the office and took a small roll of bills out of his pocket. "Say," he said, shifting from one foot to the other, and running his fingers around the brim of the hat in his hands, "I wonder if you'd tell me how to get into a bank and leave this? And what bank? I'm wise how to get in and take it out, but I ain't up to putting it in without some advice." To-day that man is living in his own home which he is paying for on the installment plan, and he is one of the best workers in Detroit, a good, steady man. His chance appearance resulted in Ford's policy of employing convicts wherever his investigators come across them. Nearly a hundred ex-criminals, many of them on parole, are working in his shops to-day, and he considers them among his best men. "No policy is any good if it cannot go into a community and take every one in it, young, old, good, bad, sick, well, and make them all happier, more useful and more prosperous," he says. "Every human being that lives is part of the big machine, and you can't draw any lines between parts of a machine. They're all important. You can't make a good machine by making only one part of it good." This belief led to his establishing a unique labor clearing-house in his administration building--a department that makes it next to impossible for any man employed in the organization to lose his job. CHAPTER XXVII THE IMPORTANCE OF A JOB That surging mob of men outside this factory during the week following the announcement of his profit-sharing plan had impressed indelibly on Ford's mind the tremendous importance of a job. "A workingman's job is his life," he says. "No one man should have the right ever to send another man home to his family out of work. Think what it means to that man, sitting there at the supper table, looking at his wife and children, and not knowing whether or not he will be able to keep them fed and clothed. "A normal, healthy man wants to work. He has to work to live right. Nobody should be able to take his work away from him. In my factory every man shall keep his job as long as he wants it." Impractical? The idea seems fantastic in its impracticality. What, keep every man--lazy, stupid, impudent, dishonest, as he may be--every man in a force of 18,000 workmen, on the payroll as long as he wants to stay? Surely, if there is any point at which ideals of human brotherhood end and coldblooded business methods begin, this should be that point. But Ford, obstinate in his determination to care for the interests of every one, declared that this policy should stand. As a part of his new plan, he installed the labor clearing house as part of his employment department. Now when a foreman discharges a man, that man is not sent out of the factory. He goes with a written slip from the foreman to the labor clearing house. There he is questioned. What is wrong? Is he ill? Does he dislike his work? What are his real interests? In the end he is transferred to another department which seems more suited to his taste and abilities. If he proves unsatisfactory there, he returns again to the clearing house. Again his case is discussed, again he is given another chance in still another department. Meantime the employment managers take an active interest in him, in his health, his home conditions, his friends. He is made to feel that he has friends in the management who are eager to help him make the right start to the right kind of life. Perhaps he is ill. Then he is sent to the company hospital, given medical care and a leave of absence until he is well enough to resume work. Over 200 cases of tuberculosis in various stages were discovered among Ford's employees when his hospital was established. These men presented a peculiar problem. Most of them were still able to work, all of them must continue working to support families. Yet, if their cases were neglected it meant not only their own deaths, but spreading infection in the factory. The business world has never attempted to solve the problem of these men. Waste from the great machine, they are thrown carelessly out, unable because of that tell-tale cough to get another job, left to shift for themselves in a world which thinks it does not need them. Ford established a "heat-treating department" especially for them. When the surgeons discover a case of incipient tuberculosis in the Ford factory, they transfer the man to this department, where the air, filtered, dried and heated, is scientifically better for their disease than the mountain climate of Denver. Here the men are given light jobs which they can handle, and paid their regular salaries until they are cured and able to return to their former places in the shops. "It's better for everybody when a man stays at work, instead of laying off," Ford says. "I don't care what's wrong with him, whether he's a misfit in his department, or stupid, or sick. There's always some way to keep him doing useful work. And as long as he is doing that it's better for the man and for the company, and for the world. "And yet there are men in business to-day who install systems to prevent the waste of a piece of paper or a stamp, and let the human labor in their plants go to waste wholesale. Yes, and they sat up and said I was a sentimental idiot when I put in my system of taking care of the men in my place. They said it would not pay. Well, let them look over the books of the Ford factory and see how it paid--how it paid all of us." Five months after Ford's new plans had gone into effect his welfare workers made a second survey. Eleven hundred men had moved to better homes. Bank deposits had increased 205 per cent. Twice as many men owned their own homes. More than two million dollars' worth of Detroit real estate had passed into the hands of Ford employees, who were paying for it on the installment plan. Among the 18,000 workmen only 140 still lived in conditions which could be called "bad" in the reports. And the output of Ford automobiles had increased over 20 per cent. That year, with an eight-hour day in force, and $10,000,000 divided in extra profits among the men, the factory produced over 100,000 more cars than it had produced during the preceding year, under the old conditions. Cold figures had proved to the business world the "practical" value of "sentimental theories." Ford's policy had not only done away with the labor problem, it had also shown the way to solve the employers' problems. "The heart of the struggle between capital and labor is the idea of employer and employee," he says. "There ought not to be employers and workmen--just workmen. They're two parts of the same machine. It's absurd to have a machine in which one part tries to foil another. "My job at the plant is to design the cars and keep the departments working in harmony. I'm a workman. I'm not trying to slip anything over on the other factors in the machine. How would that help the plant? "There's trouble between labor and capital. Well, the solution is not through one side getting the other by the neck and squeezing. No, sir; that isn't a solution; that is ruin for both. It means that later the other side is going to recover and try to get on top again, and there'll be constant fighting and jarring where there ought to be harmony and adjustment. "The only solution is to GET TOGETHER. It can't come only by the demands of labor. It can't come only by the advantages of capital. It's got to come by both recognizing their interest and getting together. "That's the solution of all the problems in the world, as I see it. Let people realize that they're all bound together, all parts of one machine, and that nothing that hurts one group of people will fail in the end to come back and hurt all the people." So, at the end of thirty-seven years of work, Henry Ford sat in his office on his fifty-second birthday and looked out on a community of nearly 20,000 persons, working efficiently and happily together, working for him and for themselves, well paid, contented. He thought of the world, covered with the network of his agencies, crossed and recrossed with the tracks of his cars. He had run counter to every prompting of "practical business judgment" all his life--he had left the farm, built his engine, left the moneyed men who would not let him build a cheap car, started his own plant on insufficient capital, built up his business, established his profit-sharing scheme--all against every dictate of established practice. He had acted from the first on that one fundamental principle, "Do the thing that means the most good to the most people." His car, his factory, his workmen, his sixty millions of dollars, answered conclusively the objection, "I know it's the right thing, theoretically--but it isn't practical." Thinking of these things on that bright summer day in 1914, Ford decided that there remained only one more thing he could do. CHAPTER XXVIII A GREAT EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION It happened that on Ford's fifty-second birthday a commission from the French Chamber of Commerce arrived in Detroit, having crossed the Atlantic to inspect the Ford factories. They viewed 276 acres of manufacturing activity; the largest power plant in the world, developing 45,000 horse-power from gas-steam engines designed by Ford engineers; the enormous forty-ton cranes; 6,000 machines in operation in one great room, using fifty miles of leather belting; nine mono-rail cars, each with two-ton hoists, which carry materials--in short, the innumerable details of that mammoth plant. Then they inspected the hospitals, the rest rooms, noted the daylight construction of the whole plant, the ventilating system which changes the air completely every ten minutes, the labor-saving devices, the "safety-first" equipment. At last they returned to Henry Ford's office, with notebooks full of figures and information to be taken to the manufacturers of France. They thanked Ford for his courtesy and assured him that they comprehended every detail of his policies save one. "We find, sir," said the spokesman, courteously, "that last year you had more orders than you could fill. Is it not so?" "Yes, that is correct," replied Ford. "But with the increased output this year we hope to catch up." "And yet, is it not so that this spring you lowered the price of your car fifty dollars?" "Yes, that is true," said Ford. "But, sir, we cannot understand--is it then true that you reduce your prices when already you have more orders than you can fill? This seems strange to us, indeed. Why should a manufacturer do that?" "Well," Ford answered, "I and my family already have all the money we can possibly use. We don't need any more. And I think an automobile is a good thing. I think every man should be able to own one. I want to keep lowering the price until my car is within the reach of every one in America. You see, that is all I know how to do for my country." Unconsciously, he was voicing the new patriotism--the ideal to which he was to give the rest of his life. He said it simply, a little awkwardly, but the French commission, awed by the greatness of this Detroit manufacturer, returned and reported his statement to the French people as the biggest thing they had found in America. Yet this viewpoint was the natural outcome of his life. A simple man, seeing things simply, he had arrived at a place of tremendous power in America. He had come to a time when he need no longer work at his engine or his factory organization. He had leisure to survey his country and its problems, to apply to them his machine idea. And he saw in America a great machine, made up of countless human parts--a machine which should work evenly, efficiently, harmoniously, for the production and just distribution of food, shelter, clothes, all the necessities of a simple and comfortable life. His part, as he saw it, was to make and distribute automobiles. He meant to do his part in the best way he knew how, hoping by his success to hasten the time when every one would follow his example, and all the terrible friction and waste of our present system would be stopped. This was his only interest in life. A farmer-boy mechanic, who had left school at sixteen, who had lived all his life among machines, interested in practical things, he saw no value in anything which did not promote the material well-being of the people. Art--music, painting, literature, architecture--luxuries, super-refinements of living, these things seemed useless to him. "Education? Come to Detroit and I'll show you the biggest school in the world," he says. "Every man there is learning and going ahead all the time. They're realizing that their interests are the same as their employer's, that he is the men's trustee, that he is only one of the workmen with a job of his own, and that his job, like the jobs of the others, has to be run for the good of the whole plant. He would fire a man who took away from the other men for his own advantage. That spirit would harm the works. Similarly, the men would have a right to fire him if he took away from them for his personal benefit. "The men in my plant are learning these things. They're leading the way for the workers of this country. They are going to show other workers, just as I hope to show other employers, that things should be run for the most good for the most people. That's the education we need. "This education outside of industry that we have to-day is just the perpetuation of tradition and convention. It's a good deal of a joke and a good deal of waste motion. To my mind, the usefulness of a school ends when it has taught a man to read and write and figure, and has brought out his capacity for being interested in his line. After that, let the man or boy get after what he is interested in, and get after it with all his might, and keep going ahead--that is school. "If those young fellows who are learning chemistry in colleges were enough interested in chemistry they would learn it the way I did, in my little back shed of nights. I would not give a plugged nickel for all the higher education and all the art in the world." This, then, was Henry Ford at 52. A slender, slightly stooped man, with hollow cheeks, thin, firm, humorous lips, gray hair; a man with sixty odd millions of dollars; used to hard work all his life, and liking it. A man who on a single idea had built up a tremendous organization, so systematized that it ran by itself, requiring little supervision. In some way he must use his driving energy, in some way he must spend his millions, and his nature demanded that he do it along the line of that idea which had dominated his whole life--the machine idea of humanity, the idea of the greatest good to the greatest number. That summer, for the first time, he found himself with leisure. He was not imperatively needed at the plant. He and Mrs. Ford spent some time in Greenfield, where he enlarged the old farm by purchasing nearly four thousand acres of land adjoining it. He himself spent some time on the problems of organizing the work on those acres. He and his wife lived in the house where they had begun their married life, and where, with their old furniture and their old friends, they reconstructed the life of thirty years before. Ford returned to Detroit with a working model for a cheap farm-tractor which he intends to put on the market soon. He worked out the designs and dropped them into the roaring cogs of his organization which presently produced some dozens of the tractors. These were sent down to the farm and put to work. In due course, caught up again by the Ford organization, the tractors will begin to pour out in an endless stream and Ford will have done for farm work what he did for passenger traffic. But he realized that those occupations did not absorb his whole energy. Unconsciously he was seeking something bigger even than his factories, than his business operations, to which he could devote his mind--something to which he could apply his ruling idea, something for which he could fight. The terrible 4th of August, 1914, which brought misery, ruin, desolation to Europe and panic to the whole world, gave him his opportunity. CHAPTER XXIX THE EUROPEAN WAR War! The news caught at the heart of the world, and stopped it. For a time the whole business structure of every nation on earth trembled, threatened to crumble into ruin, under this weight, to which it had been building from the beginning. Greed, grasping selfishness, a policy of "each man for himself, against other men," these are the foundations on which nations have built up their commercial, social, industrial success. These are the things which always have led, and always will lead, to war, to the destruction of those structures they have built. Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, England, Japan, Turkey, Italy--one by one they crashed down into the general wreck. Everything good that the centuries had made was buried in the debris. The world rocked under the shock. Here in America we read the reports in dazed incredulity. It could not be possible, it could not be possible, we said to each other with white lips--in this age, now, to-day-- For, living as most of us do, on the surface of things, among our friends, in an atmosphere of kindliness and helpfulness, we had been cheerfully unconcerned about the foundations of our economic and industrial life. In the winter there are thousands of unemployed men--we try to give each one a bowl of soup, a place to sleep. Our street corners are unpleasantly infested with beggars--we pass an ordinance, arrest them for vagrancy, feed them a few days and order them to leave town. The city is full of criminals--what are the police doing? we inquire testily. We build another prison, erect another gallows. We are like an architect who, seeing threatening cracks in the walls of the building, would hurriedly fill them with putty and add another story. Henry Ford read the news from Europe. He saw there a purposeless, useless and waste of everything valuable. He saw a machine, wrongly built for centuries so that each part would work against all the other parts, suddenly set in motion and wrecking itself. It was a repetition, on a larger scale, of a catastrophe with which he had been familiar in the business world. How many companies in his own field had been organized in the early days of the industry, had gone into business with the one purpose of getting all they could from every one, workers, stockholders, buyers--and had gone down in ruin! Only those companies which had been built on some basis of fair service had succeeded, and these had done so in proportion to their real value to others. Whether or not this principle is recognized by those who profit from it, it is the fundamental principle on which business success is built. "The trouble is that people do not see that," said Ford. "A man goes into business from purely selfish motives; he works for himself, and against every one else, as far as he can. But only so far as his grasping selfishness really works out in benefit to other people he succeeds. If he knew that, if he went to work deliberately to help other people, he would do more good, and at the same time he would make a bigger success for himself. "But instead of that, he gets more and more selfish. When he has got a lot of money, and becomes a real power, he uses his power selfishly. He thinks it is his grasping policy that has made him successful. Why, everything I ever did selfishly in my life has come back like a boomerang and hurt me more than it hurt any one else, and the same way with everything I have done to help others. It helps me in the end every time. It is bound to. As long as a machine runs, anything that is really good for one part is good for the whole machine. "Look at those fighting nations. Every one of them is hurting itself as much as it hurts the enemy. Their success was founded on the fact that they have helped each other. England got her dyes and her tools and her toys from Germany; Germany got her wheat from Russia, and her fruits and olives from Italy; Turkey got her ships from England. They were all helping each other. Their real interests--the comfort and happiness of their people--were all one interest. "Left to themselves, the real German people would never fight the French people, never in the world. No more than Iowa would fight Michigan. Race differences? They do not exist in sufficient degree to make men fight, and they are disappearing every day. See how the races mix in America! I have fifty-three nationalities, speaking more than one hundred different languages and dialects, in my shops, and they never have any trouble. They realize that their interests are all the same. "What is the root of the whole question? The real interests of all men are the same--work, food and shelter, and happiness. When they all work together for those, every one will have plenty. "What do people fight for? Does fighting make more jobs, better homes, more to eat? No. People fight because they are taught that the only way to get these things is to take them from some one else. The common people, the people who lose most by fighting, don't know what they are fighting for. They fight because they are told to. What do they get out of it? Disgust, shame, grief, wounds, death, ruin, starvation. War is the most hideous waste in the world." In the first terrible months of the war the American people, in horror, echoed that opinion. With the spectacle of half the world in bloody ruins before our eyes, we recoiled. We thanked God that our country remained sane. We saw a vision of America, after the madness had passed, helping to bind up the wounds of Europe, helping to make a permanent peace which should bring the people of the earth together in one fraternity. By degrees that feeling began to change. We want peace. Are there a hundred men among our hundred million who will say they want war for war's sake? We want peace--but---- We have begun to ask that old question, "Is it practical?" That vision of the people of the world working together, increasing their own happiness and comfort by helping to make happiness and comfort for each other--it is a beautiful theory, but is it not a bit sentimental? a bit visionary? just a little too good to be true? "Here is a world where war happens," we say. "If a war should happen to us what would we do? Let us begin to prepare for war. Let us take war into our calculations. Let us be practical." And Henry Ford, reading the papers, listening to the talk of the men in the streets, saw the object lesson of his great organization disregarded. He heard again the objection which had met every step of his life. "It is a good idea, but it is theoretical. It is not practical. It will not work. Things never have done that way." He saw this country, already wasting incalculable human energy, destroying innumerable lives daily, because of a "practical" system of organization, preparing to drain off still more energy, still greater wealth, in preparation for a still more terrible waste. The dearest principle of his life, the principle whose truth he had proven through a life of hard work, was in danger of being swept away and forgotten. CHAPTER XXX THE BEST PREPAREDNESS Henry Ford saw that the meaning of his work was about to be lost. He was in for the greatest fight of his life. He counted his resources. The mammoth factory was still running to capacity, the farm tractors, which would mean so much in increased production of food, in greater comforts for millions of farmers, were almost ready to be put on the market. His plan for profit-sharing with the buyers of his cars had recently been announced. Three hundred thousand men in this country would have, during 1915, an actual proof in dollars and cents of the practical value of coöperation, of Ford's principle that "helping the other fellow will help you." Those men would share with him the profit which would add still more millions to his credit. Ford had these things; he had also a tremendous fortune at his command. He cast about for ways of using that fortune in this fight, and again the uselessness of money was impressed upon him. "Money is of no real value whatever," he says. "What can I do with it now? I cannot pay a man enough to make him change his real opinions. The only real resource this country has now is the intelligence of our people. They must think right, they must know the true principles on which to build a great, strong nation. "They must hold firm to the big, true things, and realize--some way they must be MADE to realize--that they are practical, that ideals are the only practical things in this world. "It is to everybody's interest to do right. Not in the next world, nor in a spiritual way only, but in good, hard dollars-and-cents business value. "Let's be practical. Suppose we do prepare for war? Suppose we do take the energies of our young men and spend them in training for war. Our country needs the whole energy of every man in productive work, work that will make more food, more clothing, better houses. But suppose we turn that energy from real uses, train it to destroy, instead of to create? Suppose we have half a million young men ready to fight? What weapons shall we give them? "Shall we give them guns? They will be out of date. Shall we give them poisonous gases, or disease germs, or shall we invent something even more horrible? As fast as we make these things, other nations will make worse ones. "Shall we turn our factories into munition plants? Shall we build dreadnoughts? The submarine destroys them. Shall we build submarines? Other nations will make submarine-destroyers. Shall we build submarine-destroyers? Other nations will build war-aeroplanes to destroy them. We must make something worse than the aeroplanes, and something worse still, and then something still more horrible, bidding senselessly up and up and up, spending millions on millions, trying to outdo other nations which are trying to outdo us. "For if we begin to prepare for war we must not stop. We can not stop. I read articles in the magazines saying that we might as well have no navy at all as the one we have; that we might as well have no army as the army we have, if this country should be invaded. Yet we have already spent millions on that army and that navy. Let us spend millions more, and more millions, and more, and still, unless we keep on spending more than any other nation can spend, we might as well have no army or navy at all. "And yet there are people who think that to begin such a course is 'practical,' is good common sense! "I tell you, the only real strength of a nation is the spirit of its people. The only real, practical value in the world is the spirit of the people of the world. There were animals on the earth ages ago who could kill a hundred men with one sweep of a paw, but they are gone, and we survive. Why? Because men have minds, because they use their minds in doing useful things, making food, and clothes, and shelters. "A few hundred years ago no man was safe on the street alone at night. No woman was safe unless she had a man with her who was strong enough to kill other men. We have changed all that. How? By force? No, because we have learned in a small degree that there are things better than force. We have learned that to look out for the interests of every one in our community is best for us in the end. "Let us realize that to think of the welfare of the whole world is best for each one of us. We do not carry a gun so that if we meet an Englishman on the street and he attacks us we can kill him. We know he does not want to kill us. "We know that the real people of the whole world do not want war. We do not want war. There are only a few people who think they want war--the politicians, the rulers, the Big Business men, who think they can profit by it. War injures everybody else, and in the end it injures them, too. "The way to handle the war question is not to waste more and more human energy in getting ready to hurt the other fellow. We must get down to the foundations; we must realize that the interests of all the people are one, and that what hurts one hurts us all. "We must know that, and we must have the courage to act on it. A nation of a hundred million people, of all nationalities and races, we must work together, each of us doing what he can for the best good of the whole. Then we can show Europe, when at last her crippled people drag themselves back to their ruined homes, that a policy of peace and hopefulness does pay, that it is practical. "We can show them that we do mean to help them. They will believe it, if we do not say it behind a gun. "If we carry a gun, we must depend on the gun to save our nation. We must frankly say that we believe in force and nothing else. We must admit that human brotherhood and ideals of mutual good will and helpfulness are secondary to power and willingness to commit murder; that only a murderer at heart can afford to have them. We must abandon every principle on which our country was founded, every inch of progress we have made since men were frankly beasts. "But if our country is not to go down as all nations have gone before her, depending on force and destroyed by force, we must build on a firm foundation. We must build on our finest, biggest instincts. We must go fearlessly ahead, not looking back, and put our faith in the things which endure, and which have grown stronger through every century of history. "Democracy, every man's right to comfort and plenty and happiness, human brotherhood, mutual helpfulness--these are the real, practical things. These are the things on which we can build, surely and firmly. These are the things which will last. These are the things which will pay. "I have proved them over and over again in my own life. Other men, so far as they have trusted them, have proved them. America has built on them the richest, most successful nation in the world to-day. Just so far as we continue to trust them, to build on them, we will continue to be prosperous and successful. "I know this. If my life has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that. I will spend every ounce of energy I have, every hour of my life, in the effort to prove it to other people. Only so far as we all believe it, only so far as we all use our strength and our abilities, not to hurt, but to help, other peoples, will we help ourselves." This is the end of my story, and the beginning of Henry Ford's biggest fight. THE END 
46977	----	available by (Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 46977-h.htm or 46977-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46977/46977-h/46977-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46977/46977-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/rationalwagessys00atkirich A RATIONAL WAGES SYSTEM Some Notes on the Method of Paying the Worker a Reward for Efficiency in Addition to Wages by HENRY ATKINSON Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers: Engineer Expert to the Mixed Tribunal, Cairo London G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1917 PREFACE The question of scientific management, or the replacement of guesswork by a common-sense study of the principles in economical and efficient production, has not received the consideration it deserves in this country; but one effect of the war has been to show the possibilities of increasing production by a scientific study of factory methods. I believe that a much greater amount of interest will be taken in the subject in future, and the fact that co-operation between the management and the workers is the first essential to success cannot be too strongly emphasised. From my own personal experience of its installation in England, I can only say that, when approached broad-mindedly by both sides, the workers have nothing to fear and, indeed, everything to gain by it. This description by Mr. Atkinson should prove very useful in bringing the principles of one branch of scientific management, that branch which most nearly affects the workers, to the notice of all concerned in efficiency methods, and it is to be hoped that it will prepare the way for a better understanding between employer and worker. H. W. ALLINGHAM, M.I.MECH.E. INTRODUCTORY It is universally admitted that the war will bring about great changes in industry. The readjustment of financial affairs, the greatly increased taxation, the displacement of labour due to the employment of men now at the front, the dilution of labour by the employment of women, the development of new industries and the modification of present ones in order to meet new markets, changes in the old methods of manufacturing and trading, will all add to the difficulties of the situation. Some of the greatest of these difficulties will be in connection with Labour, and the trade-unions will be faced with problems the solution of which will tax their ingenuity and statecraft to the utmost. Already one predominant assertion is being made, and will be made with greater insistence when the war is over--namely, that it will be necessary to make wealth as quickly as possible in order to make good the disastrous losses incurred by the war, and that this can only be done by increased production with low labour costs. This haste to make wealth will induce many employers to endeavour to retain war conditions when there is no longer any need for them. They will try to "dilute" Labour permanently by employing women; they will endeavour to lower permanently the age at which children may leave school; they will lower wages where possible; and they will refuse to carry out their promises to reinstate the men who volunteered at the beginning of the war. Everything, indeed, points to a renewal of the old wage war with all its absurdities, tyrannies, and slanders, its starvation and misery, its strikes and lockouts, its waste and blundering. Anything that _can_ be done to avoid or to ameliorate this state of things _should_ be done; and if it can be shown that a method exists for keeping up wages while at the same time lowering the labour costs, serious attention should be given to it, and its advantages and defects should be carefully studied. Low wages are not the same thing as low labour costs, for a greater production with low labour costs may be obtained by paying high rather than low wages if proper management and organisation be exercised. The Reward System described herein is part of a method (that part which affects the worker) whereby this result has been obtained. It is based on paying the worker for efficient workmanship, and during the past twenty years it has been adopted in a large number of American factories and in a few (a very few) British ones. It has such a sound basis that it should meet with the favour of both worker and employer, and the writer is of opinion that some of the more serious difficulties between Capital and Labour may be solved by its adoption. Many papers have been read on the subject in America, and some books have been written about it; but, so far as the writer knows, no simple description has been attempted, and certainly none that appeals to the person chiefly concerned, the worker himself. The subject may be considered from the point of view of the nation, the employer, the trade-union, or the worker. The following is an attempt to show the worker how it affects him and how he benefits by it. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v INTRODUCTORY vii PART I GENERAL PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I. DIFFERENT METHODS OF PAYMENT OF WAGES 1 (_a_) Day Work 2 (_b_) Piece Work 6 (_c_) Profit Sharing 8 (_d_) Co-partnership 11 (_e_) Co-operation 13 (_f_) Bonus Systems 15 (_g_) The Reward System 16 II. WAGES AND EFFICIENCY REWARD 18 (_a_) The Reward System 18 (_b_) The Basis of Reward Payment 24 (_c_) Special Reward for High Efficiency 30 (_d_) The Classification of Work 31 (_e_) Reward derived from Increased Production 32 (_f_) Safeguards 33 (_g_) Attention to Service Details 35 (_h_) Loss of Skill due to the Reward System 40 III. WAGES AND PROGRESS 43 (_a_) Antagonism between Employer and Worker 43 (_b_) Trade-Unions and the Reward System 45 (_c_) Scientific Management and the Reward System 47 (_d_) The Future of Labour 50 (_e_) The Actual and the Ideal 56 PART II AN APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES TO A PARTICULAR CASE IV. WORK AND REWARD 67 (_a_) Routing the Work 68 (_b_) The Time Study 70 (_c_) Fixing Standard Time 73 (_d_) The Instruction Card 79 (_e_) Spoiled Work 79 (_f_) Allowances 81 (_g_) Efficiency Calculation 83 PART III EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAMS SHOWING DIFFERENT METHODS OF REWARD PAYMENT V. REWARD AND EFFICIENCY 86 (_a_) Reward System No. 1 90 (_b_) Reward System No. 2 92 (_c_) Reward System No. 3 94 (_d_) Reward System No. 4 96 (_e_) The Taylor System 98 (_f_) The Gantt System 100 (_g_) The Emerson System 102 (_h_) The Rowan System 104 (_i_) Day Rate 107 (_j_) Piece Work 107 (_k_) The Ford System 109 Appendix: A FLOATING WAGE RATE 111 A RATIONAL WAGES SYSTEM PART I GENERAL PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I DIFFERENT METHODS OF PAYMENT OF WAGES The war has brought the question of efficiency and efficiency methods to the front very prominently, and there is a consensus of opinion that it will be necessary to adopt them very widely if we are to retain our present commercial and national position in the world. The object of such methods is to obtain increased production. It is well known that the worker can produce far more than he does, but from his point of view there is no particular reason why he should attempt to do so under ordinary working conditions. The circumstances are altered entirely if increased production results in higher wages with better conditions of work, and if the worker does not get too tired or suffer any injury to his health in the process. The Reward System described herein satisfies these conditions, but before giving the description it will be well to examine briefly the existing methods of wage payment and point out their advantages and disadvantages. (_a_) DAY WORK. This is the commonest method of wage payment in the United Kingdom at the present time. For every hour worked, the worker gets so many pence--10d., 11d., 1s. an hour, or whatever it may be. As wages are paid weekly, it is usual to reckon them at so many shillings per week. In any factory, nearly all the men who work at the same kind and class of labour get approximately the same wage. In union shops they do all get exactly the same wage. Before the days of the trade-unions each man was paid according to his skill, as nearly as possible; a good workman received more wages than a poor one. But the trade-unions have stopped that as far as they can. In any one trade all workers, good, bad, and indifferent, are now paid the same wages. The day work system, although in a great many cases it cannot be avoided, is extremely unsatisfactory. On the one hand, the employer endeavours to get all he can out of the worker while paying him the least possible wages. Speaking generally, the employer looks upon the worker as a necessary evil, and treats him accordingly. The worker must produce as much as possible and receive as low wages as possible. No consideration is given to the question of what wages will buy. On the other hand, the worker retaliates by doing just as much work as will enable him to keep his job, and no more. Many workers spend as much energy and time in avoiding work as they do in executing it, and it is absolutely necessary for the employer to have a foreman hustling round all the time to see that a reasonable amount of work is done. In order to equalise the conditions for all workers, the unions have fixed a standard rate of wages for all men working at any one particular trade. This means that both good and bad workers receive the same rate of pay. Such an arrangement is quite unfair both to the good worker and to the employer, and it gives the employer a very sound reason for opposing the unions on all possible occasions. But it is worse for the good worker than for the employer, because it affects him in several ways. When two workers are at work side by side, one a good worker and the other a slacker, it is galling for the good man to know that the slacker gets the same wages as himself. It tends to make the good man indifferent to his work, and it needs a good deal of moral courage and great force of character for a man to keep on doing his best under such circumstances, especially when one remembers the great excess of slackers over good men, and how easy it is to find a good excuse for slacking. The extraordinary thing is that a man's union compels him to slack even if he has no desire to do so. His fellow-unionists keep a watchful eye on a good man, and if he is producing more than a certain quantity he is told to ease up. There is no possible excuse for this attitude, and it has done more to discredit the unions than any other thing. It saps the good worker's morality, and reduces the whole ethics of Labour and wage payment to the lowest possible standard. Apart from the question of antagonism between the employer and the worker, there is one factor missing, a factor that is all-important even in the best type of day work and under the best conditions. It is that the best method of doing the work is never known. One man has one idea, another man has another; one man has his own method, another man has a different method; one man has a certain knack of using the special tools required for a particular job, another man has only a general knowledge of their use; one man has done the job many times and knows the short-cuts, another man is new to the job and goes slowly; one man tackles the job haphazard, another spends time in considering the best way of doing it; one man believes that one form of tool is the best for certain metals, another man believes in a different form; one man thinks a job should be done in this way, another man thinks it should be done that way; one shop practice is to do a job in such a manner and on such machines, another shop will do it in a different way on a different type of machine. And so it goes on.... All the time the foreman is hovering around, urging the men, praising one man for his speed in order to get him to work quickly all the time, but more generally bullying the slow man into working a bit faster. And he settles all matters in an arbitrary manner, which means the job must be done his way, right or wrong! It cannot be helped. When a worker starts a job, he does not know just what speed his machine must run at for that job. True, experience is a good guide, but it means trying a speed before he can be certain. And trying a speed means a certain amount of care and watchfulness; then it probably means making adjustments of speed and tool. This means stoppages, readjustments, retrials, and an all-round loss of time and efficiency. Now, is the man a better workman for all this? If it proved eventually that all men became of the same opinion as regards speeds, forms of tools, and methods of working, and if all men became highly efficient, one could at least say that the result justified the method, in spite of the enormous waste of time and talk and temper. But, as a matter of fact, one rarely gets two workmen of the same opinion or of the same proficiency, and a man never turns out as much work as he is capable of. Added to all this is the deadening monotony of the daily round of toil with no variation, no release from the fixed hours, no inducement to do one's best, no chance of getting any extra pay unless by occasional overtime. Theoretically, day work is the fairest method, because if a man does his best he ought to get the same wages as any other man, no matter what his production may be; but in practice this is impossible, hence one is driven to the conclusion that day work, as it is practised at present, stands condemned, and ought to be limited to such jobs and working conditions where it is impossible to apply other methods. (_b_) PIECE WORK. Piece work has one great advantage over day work--namely, the worker is paid in exact proportion to his production. But that is the only advantage. If work could be correctly priced according to the amount which a conscientious average man could do, and that price always held good, piece work would have the additional advantages that both worker and employer would know the conditions were fair, and the worker would work diligently and be paid proportionally to his skill and production. Under ordinary piece work conditions, however, such an arrangement is impossible, and the objections to piece work are, if anything, greater than the objections to day work, because of the necessary dishonesty on the part of both worker and employer. The average employer will not believe what an enormous difference there is in the quantity of work which different men are capable of producing. He is under the impression that, within small limits, any man can produce the same amount of work as any other man in a given time. This is entirely wrong. Investigations have proved that some good men can produce three times as much as an average man, the quality of work being quite as good. Applying this fact to piece work, one sees at once how serious differences may arise. A job is priced at, say, 1s. An average man whose rate is 40s. a week will earn about 50s. a week on that job by diligent work. Then a really first-class man comes along and earns 80s. What follows? "If Smith can earn 80s., it is evident that the price is too high and the other workers are slacking!" That is the natural argument of the employer, and down comes the rate. Cutting rates is one of the most frequent sources of trouble on piece work, but it cannot be avoided. The worker knows that the rates will be cut, and therefore two methods of defence are open to him: First, he always works slowly on a job until it has been priced. In this way a good price is obtained, a price which enables the slowest worker to earn his wages--and a bit above--easily. Second, the worker takes care not to earn too much. It is arranged between the men how much each ought to take on a certain job, and the arrangement made is carried out. This is, of course, dishonest, but it is necessary. For suppose a good worker comes on the job and does his best, the price comes down to everybody, and the average man cannot earn his wages. The good man is therefore compelled to be dishonest to his employer or unfair to his fellow-worker. And, again, in piece work all prices are arbitrary. Even if one shop gives a reasonable price, other shops in the same line of business find it out, and put on a lower price in order to reduce works costs and thereby lower prices to customers, which means snatching the trade from the good shop. Thus, the circumstances of the old-fashioned piece work method and the dishonesty of both parties to it lead to misunderstandings and dissatisfaction. (_c_) PROFIT SHARING. There are various methods of increasing earnings by profit sharing. The employer, from motives which may be good or bad from the standpoint of the worker, desires to present the worker with a certain proportion of the net profit. In some cases the motive is entirely for the worker's good; in others it is for the purpose of getting the worker to stay with the firm, and to make his interest so large that he dare not be independent in case he should lose his profit. This means that the employer is no longer troubled with strikes and labour disturbances. However, it is the effects that concern us here, and not the motives. Under profit sharing the profit is paid out or credited to the worker every six or twelve months, and one must be employed for a certain length of time before one comes under the scheme. So that it holds out little incentive to efficiency until the worker has been with the firm for some years; until then his interest is so small that only the naturally thrifty workers are interested in it. All profit-sharing firms base their hopes of increased efficiency on the incentive given to the worker by an anticipation of profit; the payment of wages is by day work or piece work, and these have the defects already mentioned. There is no direct and immediate incentive. The slacker gets the same reward as the good man, and there is nothing to prevent piece rates being cut just as in an ordinary shop. Profit sharing is undoubtedly a splendid thing in principle, but it tends to make a man drop his trade-union and takes away his independence. It also means a rigid selection of workers, only the ones who look ahead being automatically chosen. Already they must be men of thrifty disposition, men who look forward to being employed in one factory all their lives, otherwise they would not be chosen. They are not necessarily the best men; indeed, they cannot be the best men because only a wide experience of different factories and methods produces the best men. But they are essentially steady men, and this is the kind of man most employers prefer, because they are the least likely to cause trouble when rates are cut or wages reduced. It is usually pointed out that, if a rate has to be cut, the worker gets it back again in the form of profit. This system certainly tends to get rid of the slacker--the worst form of slacker, that is--and there are circumstances under which it would prove of great value. The fact of there being so few profit-sharing firms tends to show that profit sharing is not a method which appeals generally to both employer and worker. The following is a profit-sharing scheme adopted by a large firm of engineers in March, 1916, and therefore embodies the most modern conditions: "1. Before any profits are divided with the employees, the shareholders shall receive 8 per cent. per annum. "2. When the above 8 per cent. has been paid to the shareholders in any calendar year, all cash dividends subsequently declared in that year will be divided between the shareholders on the amount of their stock interest and the employees on the amount of the salary or wages received by them during the twelve months ending June 30 of that year, as follows: (A) Employees who have been continuously in the service of the company for at least two years prior to July 1 will receive dividends at the same rate as the shareholders. (B) Employees who have been continuously in the service of the company for more than one year and less than two years prior to July 1 will get three-quarters of that rate. (C) Employees who have served continuously for less than one year will get one-half the rate of the shareholders. (D) Dividends that have accrued will be distributed to employees once a year in December. "3. No person will be entitled to a share of these dividends unless a _bona-fide_ employee of the company at the time of their distribution, except that employees laid off owing to lack of work or sickness will be entitled to the dividends accruing in any year on the wages earned by them during the twelve months prior to June 30 of that year. "4. Employees voluntarily leaving the service of the company or dismissed or discharged will forfeit their right to any accrued dividends. "5. Any employee who may receive a commission from the company or any share in profits other than the profits shared in this plan, except through dividends of stock, if a shareholder, shall thereby be rendered ineligible to receive dividends under this plan. "6. All employees except those entered in the three preceding sections shall be eligible to share in the profits under this plan. "7. The above plan for division of profit is absolutely voluntary on the part of the company, and is in no sense a contract. The right is therefore reserved by the directors to make at any time such changes in the plan as they may consider desirable for the best interests of the organisation. The fact that any employee is receiving the dividends in this profit-sharing plan shall not deprive the company of the right at any time to discharge the employee, and thereby terminate his participation under the plan, nor shall any employee acquire any right thereunder to any accounting by the company concerning its business or profits." (_d_) CO-PARTNERSHIP. This is another method of inducing the worker to become more efficient. It is frequently allied to profit sharing. The firm allows its workers to subscribe for shares, and the workers thereby have a direct interest in the success of the firm. The idea is that the harder they work the more profit there will be, and the more dividend on the shares which they hold. Of course, no worker, especially if he has a family, can subscribe for shares out of his wages. What usually happens is that the firm sets aside a certain portion of its profit, after paying a dividend on its shares, and allows the worker to share this profit. But he gets no money, the profit being paid in shares. For instance, if a worker's share of the profit at the end of twelve months be £10, he gets £10 worth of shares. Then, when the next dividend is declared, he gets the dividend on his £10 worth of shares. If there is a 5 per cent. dividend, he gets 10s. as his interest for the year or whatever the period of time may be. He is not allowed to subscribe for shares until he has been with the firm a certain length of time, and, in some cases, if he leaves he loses his shares. If he dies, his widow gets the dividend on the shares until she dies, when the shares go back to the firm. In other cases the shares bear a fixed rate of interest, say 4 per cent., and also an additional dividend if there is any profit after dividends on other classes of shares reach a certain percentage. In yet other cases a worker becomes absolute owner of his shares, and can dispose of them by will or if he leaves the firm, but such cases are rare. Of course, where shares are purchased by deducting the price of the shares from wages they are the absolute property of the worker. The objections to profit sharing may be applied to co-partnership, together with the additional one that the worker does not get profit, but only interest on shares; and as he can never become a large shareholder, the extra benefit is not very great. He is rendered quite dependent on the firm--even more so than the profit sharer--and can exert no pressure if conditions are unsatisfactory. The fact that conditions are usually satisfactory in places where co-partnership is practised does not make the principle a good one. Certainly, sometimes the shareholding workers have the option of electing a director, and this places some responsibility on the worker, which is a good thing and gives him a real interest in the affairs of the firm; but such cases are uncommon, and even then there are so many other directors that the workers' representative has no voice in determining the policy of the firm; he only voices the workers' interests. (_e_) CO-OPERATION. Co-operation hardly comes into methods of wage payment, but we will just glance at it. It means that a number of workers unite to buy in large quantities the commodities they require, and to distribute them at the least expense. By these means they buy cheaply, and there is no non-productive middle man to make a profit. The great success of co-operative methods has resulted in the co-operative societies manufacturing certain commodities for themselves, as well as buying and selling. Having amassed a large capital, and being certain of their market, they have every opportunity of putting their workers under excellent working conditions. As employers, however, the co-operative societies are exactly on the level of other employees--no better and no worse. They do not even adopt bonus or profit-sharing schemes except in one instance, and the same labour disadvantages occur here as in the case of any ordinary private firm. Co-operation is strictly limited in its field of action. The buying power of the society's members enables the society to know just what goods and what quantity of goods are necessary, and they can go ahead with certainty. But a co-operative engineering works where all the capital is subscribed by the workers is a practical impossibility. In the first place, the number of workers in proportion to the amount of capital required in an engineering works is very small, and no group of ordinary workers could subscribe to start a factory and keep it going. In the second place, even if a factory could be started, the competition of the open market would throttle it in its birth. The keen buying and selling and manufacturing need highly educated and highly skilled men. Capable men are to be found in the ranks of the workers, but men with the necessary technical and commercial knowledge to run a large competitive engineering concern are extremely rare among them. Outside men would have to be engaged for such work and for the theoretical side of the business. This means high salaries, which the worker capitalist would object to; and it also takes the management out of the hands of the worker, and thereby destroys the whole basis of co-operation. It would be quite easy for an engineering business to grow out of a co-operative society's need of machinery of various kinds, but it is quite a different thing when one enters the open market. In the two or three cases where co-operation, apart from the large co-operative societies, is in practice, it will be found that the business has in the first place been built up privately, and the capital has afterwards been gradually transferred to the workers. There is no instance of workers getting together and clubbing their savings, and so starting a competitive business and earning their living thereby. (_f_) BONUS SYSTEMS. There are many bonus systems, and here again the advantages depend largely on the moral principles of the employer who adopts them. It does not follow that because an employer gives a bonus on work done that the conditions of work in his factory are good. Even with the best bonus system prices may be cut and conditions may become unbearable. Indeed, the adoption of a bonus system is often an excuse for driving and tyranny. They have one advantage over profit sharing and co-partnership: they do not interfere with the independence of the worker. I refer, of course, to those systems which have no connection with profit sharing or co-partnership, but where the bonus consists of a weekly payment for excess production above a specified minimum. A bonus system is based on a piece price or on individual or collective output in a certain time. It is therefore an offshoot of piece work, but it has a guaranteed minimum wage attached to it. Whatever happens, the worker gets his guaranteed minimum, and if he produces more work than is allowed for in that minimum he gets a fixed bonus at the end of the week or month. It differs from profit sharing in that it depends on quantity of work done and not on profit made. Bonus is often given to men working under a subcontractor. The subcontractor guarantees to turn out a certain job in a certain time, and in order to induce the men to accomplish this result he offers a bonus if the job is done to time. There is no protection whatever against cutting times or rates, and conditions generally are the same as those already mentioned. (_g_) THE REWARD SYSTEM. The Reward System (this is the name given to the system for the purpose of this description) is different to all the foregoing methods. The worker is paid the ordinary standard rate of wages for his attendance at the factory, and this attendance implies the production of a certain minimum quantity of work. If he produces more than that quantity, he is paid additional wages in proportion to the work done. If a certain standard quantity of work be produced, the standard being considerably in excess of the minimum, the proportionate additional wages, or reward, amounts to at least 25 per cent. of the day rate--that is, of the trade-union rate. Also, an equal opportunity of reaching the standard quantity is given to all workers, inasmuch as the work is carefully studied, standardised, and recorded, and instructions are given to the worker showing him just how to produce the standard quantity. The standard quantity is within the reach of all diligent workers. This system is described in the following pages. CHAPTER II WAGES AND EFFICIENCY REWARD (_a_) THE REWARD SYSTEM. The rational study of work and the worker shows the following principles to be essential when general and continuous efficiency is the end in view: 1. The greatest efficiency is obtained when the worker is most contented. 2. There is a limit to endurance, and efficiency cannot be maintained if this limit be exceeded. 3. The working environment must be agreeable. 4. The nature of the work must be considered in determining the working hours and conditions. 5. There must be no penalties or price cutting. 6. Suggestions must be encouraged and suitable rewards given for those which are acted upon. 7. There must be an incentive to efficiency, which should take the form of an addition to wages when a certain minimum of production is exceeded. 8. Work must be carefully studied in detail so as to discover conditions which give every worker the same opportunity of reaching a high efficiency. 9. Earnings in excess of the day rate should be in proportion to efficiency. 10. The generally accepted day rate of wages must be absolutely guaranteed to the worker, no matter what his efficiency. All this is not pampering the worker or making concessions to him. The hard fact remains that it is only by adopting these principles that the greatest efficiency can be obtained--viz., greater production of a better quality of work for the same or less expenditure in wages and works costs. That it also gives the worker more income, better health, less fatigue, greater contentment, are happy circumstances that make for a rational and equable understanding between employer and worker with a maximum of benefit to both sides, that entail no sacrifice of principle on either side, and enable us to look forward to a national efficiency which will be the achievement and the pride of every class of which the State is composed. But under what circumstances can these principles be put into practice? As they evolved out of the methodical and patient study of production and the application of common-sense ideas to labour and its ways, we have not far to seek. The recorded results have been unified into a system which has been and which may be applied to all sorts and conditions of labour; this system, so far as it directly affects the worker, is denoted herein by the short expression, the Reward System. It is a method whereby a worker is paid according to his efficiency. There is a guaranteed minimum which is equal to his ordinary wage; after that, the greater his efficiency the more he is paid. In order that he may have every opportunity of reaching a high efficiency without undue strain or discomfort during his work, every detail of the work, the machines, and the conditions, receives consideration. He is not left to do the job in the best way he can think of, with any tools he may consider suitable. Before he starts any job under the Reward System, both the job and the machine on which it must be done have been studied and timed; the best tools for the purpose have been selected; the right speeds have been chosen; the correct depth and speed of cut have been decided upon, and so on. Also the comfort of the worker has received attention, and if he can do the work better sitting than standing, a chair is provided. All this means that, as far as possible, the job is equalised for every worker who is put on it, and every job is put on a time and condition basis, which results in every worker having an equal opportunity. It is therefore quite clear that, as conditions are the same for every worker, the amount of work done, and in consequence the amount of reward earned, depends entirely on the energy and ability of the worker himself. The above is, of course, only a statement, and the worker will want to know just how the right times and conditions are arrived at, and what assurance he has that conditions will not be altered once they are fixed. Here we will consider the general principles; an example with fuller detail is given in Part II. First, all the details of the work to be done, the material of which it is to be made, the method of manufacture, are carefully considered by the design and planning departments of the factory. The particulars of the job, together with a drawing, if necessary, are handed to the time study engineer in order that he may see the finished and unfinished sizes, the quality of material, the machine and tools to be used, etc. The position of time study engineer is one of the most onerous and responsible in the whole field of the scientific study of work and the worker. He should be a man of considerable skill and experience; he must be thoroughly practical, and should have had a shop training in addition to his scientific studies; he should be able to divide the work up into elements suitable for the machine on which the work has to be done, and to suggest improvements in the methods of performing it; he must be able to see that the work is carried out in the most expeditious way; he should be well educated apart from his engineering training, and should have a knowledge of hygiene, physiology, and psychology, in order that he may understand the effect of work on different workers, the causes and prevention of fatigue, and what surroundings are best for the health and happiness of the worker. Such a man should be chosen with the greatest care, as so much depends on his engineering ability, his sympathetic judgment, and his broad outlook on the question of production from the point of view of both worker and employer. And, in consequence, his standing in the firm should be correspondingly high, if he is to fulfil his duties satisfactorily to himself and to those with whom he is associated--worker, trade-union, and employer. When the job goes into the shops, a few of the articles are passed through each operation in order that the worker may become familiar with it. This also enables the time study engineer to see that tools and speeds are satisfactory and to cut out useless motions. A special time study is then made of each detail or element of the work from the time it comes to the worker to the time it leaves him. Every change that occurs--for instance, when the machine is stopped or another tool is brought into position--is the end of one element and the beginning of another, and each element is timed and recorded. For this work a good average worker is chosen, and he is paid time and a quarter during the study. The reason for this separation into elements and the careful timing of each is in order to find out exactly what time each element should take. These are averaged out when a certain number have been timed, and the average is assumed to be the correct time for each element. Then the average times of all the elements are added, and this gives the time of the operation which that particular worker is engaged upon. In this manner the best method is found, and one that puts all workers on exactly the same basis, which is the essence of the system. It is not claimed that the time study is perfect and that the records obtained are absolutely exact. Even with the greatest care errors will creep in and the times will be incorrect. This especially is the case with hand work. Again, the skill of the worker increases very considerably, and he himself finds quicker methods of doing the work. All that is claimed for the time study method is that the dividing up of the operation into elements, and timing them as carefully as possible and eliminating all unnecessary movements, gives the nearest approach to perfection of rate setting yet discovered; there is a bed-rock character about it that is not found in any other system. The time thus obtained is considered to be the fastest time in which the operation can be done. Actually, it is not the fastest time for two reasons, one being that any time so obtained may be improved on when the worker becomes thoroughly used to the job, and the other being that a good _average_ worker is chosen for the time study, and therefore a first-class man can improve on the time obtained. But it is _considered_ to be the fastest time, and we will call it the "base time." It is quite evident that this cannot be reached regularly by every worker, and this is taken into consideration when determining the standard time. To obtain the standard time--namely, the time in which the work is _expected_ to be done--an allowance is made on the base time. This allowance depends on the nature of the work, greater allowances being made for jobs that necessitate a good deal of handling than for jobs that are nearly all cutting, because cutting is independent of the worker. (_b_) THE BASIS OF REWARD PAYMENT. This standard time is the basis of the Reward System, and is therefore the most important time. It is so fixed in relation to base time that every worker put on that work should be able to reach it. If he does so, he is said to have reached an efficiency of 100 per cent. A worker who reaches continuously 100 per cent. is a high efficiency man. This efficiency should always be reached by a worker who follows the instructions and works diligently. Reward begins, however, considerably before this point is reached, because it may be necessary for a worker to be on a job some time before he reaches a high efficiency. Again, sometimes one worker is naturally slower than another, and although his work is good he can reach 100 per cent. efficiency only by special effort. There would be little encouragement if reward did not begin until the worker had reached the 100 per cent. point. For these reasons, and as an incentive to every man to become as highly efficient as possible, reward begins when the worker reaches 75 per cent. efficiency. (This particular figure of 75 per cent. is taken to illustrate the method, and because it is frequently used as the reward point. Any percentage may be used, and several methods are given in Part III.) This means that a time addition of 33-1/3 per cent. is made to the standard time or standard production in order to obtain a new figure, which is called "reward time" or "reward production," because it is the point where reward begins. The following are three brief examples showing the working out of the reward earned: I. II. Base time 12 hours 8 hours Standard time (= base + 25%) 15 " 10 " Reward time (= standard + 33-1/3%) 20 " 13·3 " Time taken 16-1/2 " 8·5 " Time saved 3-1/2 " 4·8 " Rate per hour 9d. 9d. Reward 3-1/2 � 9 = 2s. 8d. 4·8 � 9 = 3s. 7d. Reward, week of 48 hours 7s. 9d. 20s. 2d. Weekly day wage 36s. 0d. 36s. 0d. Total earnings 43s. 9d. 56s. 2d. Efficiency 91% 117·5% III. Base quantity 40 per hour Standard quantity (= base - 10%) 36 " Reward quantity (= standard - 25%) 27 " Time worked 6 hours Quantity produced 220 Reward quantity for 6 hours 162 Excess quantity 58 Reward at 27 for 6d. 1s. Reward for week of 48 hours 8s. Weekly day wage 24s. Total earnings 32s. Efficiency 102% The two first examples are on a time basis, and the third on a quantity basis. These are worked out in detail in Part II. The first thing that strikes one when these figures are examined is that wages are considerably increased. In view of this increase the worker will want to know more about the conditions under which the work is done, and whether such earnings can be maintained continuously without special effort. The reply is that such earnings not only can be, but are being, made regularly, and the workers have a greater degree of comfort in their work than they have under usual working conditions. This is because of the time study method. Every detail of the work is carefully studied, as has been explained, and everything that will aid the worker to increase his output has been provided. The work is brought to the machine and taken away by labourers, the tools are all specially designed and exactly suited to the work. Instruction cards are given to the worker, so that he can see exactly what he has to do, how he has to do it, and the time he should do it in. If he can do the work sitting better than standing, a chair or stool is provided. In fact, everything is done to assist the worker to reach a high efficiency, as this means greater production besides greater reward. The Reward System is, clearly, far better than either day work or piece work. The time study shows what is the best time in which a good average worker can do the job. A trustworthy worker and one who appreciates the time study principle must be selected for the study. If this were not done, a false time might be obtained, and this would lead to doubts as to whether the times of other jobs were correct. This is a difficulty that hardly ever arises, because the worker knows that he is being fairly dealt with, and there is nothing to be gained by getting a false time. Times once obtained are never altered so long as the conditions remain the same. Some exceptionally good workmen can make large rewards every week, and it is to the firm's benefit that they should do so. Suppose the price was lowered because of this high reward. The general efficiency of all the workers would fall immediately, and the dissatisfaction with the alteration in price and with the firm's attitude would result in serious loss to all concerned. The following is an example of what happens under an ordinary bonus scheme when times are reduced: -------------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------------------------- | | | | | _Works Costs at 2s. | | | | | per Hour, including |_Time |_Time |_Time |_Reward| Labour._ |allowed._|taken._|saved._| at | | | | | 10d._ +-------------------------- | | | | |_Cost._|_Reward._|_Total._ +---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+-------- | Hours. | Hours.| Hours.| s. d. | s. d.| s. d. | s. d. Original time| 5 | 4 | 1 | 10 | 8 0 | 10 | 8 10 Cut to | 4 | 3-1/2 | 1/2 | 5 | 7 0 | 5 | 7 5 " | 3-1/2 | 3 | 1/2 | 5 | 6 0 | 5 | 6 5 " | 3 | 7 | -- | -- | 14 0 | -- | 14 0 Increased to | 4 | 7 | -- | -- | 14 0 | -- | 14 0 " " | 5 | 3-1/2 | 1-1/2 | 1 3 | 7 0 | 1 3 | 8 3 Cut to | 4-1/2 | 7 | -- | -- | 14 0 | -- | 14 0 -------------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+-------- In this case the original piece time allowed for the work was five hours, this being an estimate based on the time taken when working under day work. The men were paid at the rate of 10d. per hour, and the works costs, including labour, amounted to 2s. per hour. Bonus was paid on the time saved. The workers completed the job in four hours, a reduction of one hour on the time set, and thereby earned a bonus of 10d. The time was cut to four hours, and the work was done in three and a half hours, the workers earning a bonus of 5d. It was then cut to three and half hours, and the workers completed the job in three hours. Again the time was cut, but the patience of the workers had reached its limit, and the time taken was seven hours, with a correspondingly increased works cost. The time was immediately increased to four hours, but with no effect. On increasing the time to the original five hours the workers completed the job in three and a half hours, and earned a very good bonus. Once again the time was cut, with the result that the workers' suspicion was aroused, and the time promptly jumped to seven hours. The workers had learned their lesson! Neither worker nor employer can be satisfied with such a result, and mutual suspicion is the natural outcome. Yet all rates must be juggled with in this manner in the absence of a method whereby the time may be accurately determined. It follows that, in the first place, the firm will not cut prices, and, in the second, that the first-class worker may earn the highest reward in his power, with the knowledge that he is not injuring the welfare of his fellow-workers in any way. Now, suppose for some reason a worker takes longer than reward time to do a job, or suppose he produces less than reward quantity. It only means that he gets no reward. His day wages, 36s. or 24s. a week, or whatever it may be, are absolutely guaranteed. Whatever happens, his day wage is not interfered with. It must be kept in mind always that--_Day wages are for attendance; reward, is for efficiency._ The two things are distinct, and it is advisable to pay wages and reward earnings at different times. The firm must see to it that when the worker is in the works he earns his day wage, and in this respect the day wage standard is equivalent to reward production or reward time. If the worker does less than these he is not earning his wage, although he gets it, and such a case calls for the immediate attention of the firm as well as of the worker. Let us sum up the foregoing points: 1. The time study gives all the workers the same opportunity of earning reward. 2. Reward is paid for all production above a certain minimum. 3. Reward begins at such a production that everyone should be able to earn some reward. 4. The standard production is so calculated that all workers should reach it by diligence and careful attention to the instructions. 5. No matter how large a worker's reward may be, prices cannot be cut. 6. The worker is safeguarded by the conditions of the system. 7. The day wage is guaranteed even if the production be less than the reward point. 8. As reward is proportional to profit (the higher the reward the greater the efficiency, and the greater the efficiency the greater the firm's profit), the worker is encouraged to earn high reward. This can only be done by good conditions and freedom from fatigue, and therefore the comfort of the worker is assured by the principles of the system. (_c_) SPECIAL REWARD FOR HIGH EFFICIENCY. Besides the reward described in the foregoing explanation, special reward is given to all high efficiency workers--that is, to those who reach 100 per cent. efficiency all through the week. This special reward takes the form of paying the worker a bonus either in the form of a sum of money or an additional percentage on the standard time. If the worker's efficiency reaches 100 per cent. or more for any one week, and the hours on reward are, say, forty or more, a cash reward of 1s. or 2s., or other suitable amount depending on the status, etc., of the worker, is given in addition to the reward earned by production. It is necessary to base this special reward on the number of hours worked; otherwise, if the worker happened to be only an hour or so on reward during the week, and his efficiency for that hour was 100 per cent., he would get the special reward, and this would be absurd as well as being unfair to workers who had been on reward all the week. In the other case, when the worker reaches 100 per cent. efficiency on any one job, no matter how long it takes, his reward for that job jumps 5 per cent. or 10 per cent., or whatever special proportion be decided upon. If the reward point be 75 per cent., then at 100 per cent. efficiency the reward is 33-1/3 per cent. of the job rate. To this would be added, say, 5 per cent., thus making the reward 38-1/3 per cent. of the job rate. (_d_) THE CLASSIFICATION OF WORK. A very important matter in connection with the Reward System is that of deciding the right kind of worker for the different classes of work. For work requiring much skill and close application, or work which requires skilled handling, the highest class of worker is necessary and the job rates will be high. For work which is automatic or semi-automatic, boys or girls may be employed. For work such as rough drilling or heavy unskilled handling, men who have no special skill or training may be suitable. But the point where one grade of labour merges into another is not easily defined and needs very careful consideration. The circumstances of different trades vary so greatly that it is impossible to apply any rules in such general notes as these. It must be left to the employer, the workers, and their trade-unions, to settle these grades between them, and from the trade practice there should not be much difficulty. One thing stands out--namely, the worker who has a continuously high efficiency in any grade is easily distinguishable, and would be selected to pass into a higher grade with higher wages when opportunity occurred. (_e_) REWARD DERIVED FROM INCREASED PRODUCTION. It may be asked how it is that a firm can afford to begin paying reward when a job is done in twenty hours, while the time study shows that the same job can be done in twelve hours? The reply is, First, that under ordinary day work the waste of time on the job is so great that the job would certainly take longer than twenty hours; second, that by giving reward there is a decided incentive for the worker to do the work in a shorter time; third, that twelve hours is the shortest possible time with a good average worker working under the most favourable conditions, and this happens so seldom that it may be considered accidental, though it is necessary to observe these conditions when making a time study in order to find an absolute basis on which to pay reward; fourth, for every hour saved on the job the overhead charges are reduced proportionally, and this lowers the works cost. If a job takes twenty-four hours under day work, it is clear that, if the same job be done in nineteen hours, some reward may be allowed, while if it be done in fifteen hours an extra bonus may be given. The training in efficiency habits of work is also very valuable, and means economy all round. A man not used to these habits may expend twice as much energy and produce half as much work as an efficient man. (_f_) SAFEGUARDS. The time study is in itself an absolute safeguard against cutting times. It is quite impossible for a job to be done in less than a certain time by an average worker after all the elements have been studied and tested. So long as the elements do not change, the times must hold good, and a new study will confirm this if any doubt arises. So that if the workers are all taking high rewards it is clear proof that they are of high efficiency. Suppose a firm cuts the time with the object of getting more profit. One result is shown on p. 27. Another result is that the good workers will leave, because efficient men can always get good jobs elsewhere. As a matter of fact, however, rates are practically never cut. It does not pay to cut rates, because if efficient men leave, and only inefficient men are left, the firm loses heavily, and their own time studies together with the general efficiency of the workers show how valuable their men are. This is why the time study is a decided safeguard against cutting rates. One method of rate revision sometimes occurs. When a job is found to be rated too highly from some cause or other, and the worker is taking excessive reward on that job, a change is made in the conditions of the work and the job is restudied. Two reasons are given for this procedure: first, that it is unfair to the other men for one man to be taking exceptionally heavy reward, and, second, under the new conditions the job is still on exactly the same basis as all other jobs in the factory, and standard efficiency with its proportionate reward can be made just as easily as in other cases. There is another safeguard. The relation between standard and reward times is so arranged that when a worker reaches standard he gets at least 25 per cent. of the job rate. This is an accepted principle, and must be conceded always. It is an irreducible minimum in connection with the Reward System. It may be said that, however much the principle is accepted, it does not follow that the employer will stick to it. But he must! If he does not do so, what is the alternative? Either he gives less than 25 per cent. reward or he gives none until the standard time is reached. In the first case, if he gives less than 25 per cent., reward is not worth working for, and the worker will not trouble about it, thereby rendering the whole system useless. If the worker gets no reward until standard time is reached, the effort required by the men is so great in order to get reward that it is not worth it, and the men do not try for it. So that this principle must be accepted by the employer whether he likes it or not, if the system is to be a success. It is not to the interest of the employer to treat the worker badly. Firms with brains and foresight enough to adopt time study methods are not going to spoil the whole business by getting the workers up against them. It is more to the firm's interest than to the worker's to get a continuously high efficiency; that is why time study and reward methods were introduced by the employers, and not by the workers. (_g_) ATTENTION TO SERVICE DETAILS. It must be clearly understood that the Reward System does not pretend to be by any means a solution of all the difficulties between employer and worker. Without mutual good-will no system will work satisfactorily. What is claimed for the Reward System is that it provides a basis upon which a good understanding and a mutual interest in increased production can be built up and maintained. The time study shows beyond argument the very quickest time in which a job can be done by an average man with the means at his disposal. If this is followed up by a rational organisation, the Reward System will be entirely successful. But if an employer endeavours to foist the time study and Reward System on an existing rule-of-thumb organisation, it will undoubtedly fail, and will cause deep suspicion in the mind of the worker as well as being wholly unsatisfactory to the employer. It will be looked upon as an endeavour to get more out of the worker without an adequate return, and this, as a matter of fact, is just what it will be. One thing is certain: No employer will adopt the Reward System unless he sees clearly that it is to his direct financial benefit, and there is no reason why he should. He, on his part, would be foolish to take on an increased responsibility without adequate return. It follows, therefore, that the system is part of the rational organisation of production, and it cannot be properly carried on without such organisation. Even when such a system is adopted, there are ample opportunities for letting things slide and for unfair conditions to creep in. This is why the worker should understand the system, because then only will he be able to assert his position and see that conditions are fair. The following are some of the things to watch out for: Time study must not be used for speeding up day workers. There is a tendency to do this when it is found that a job can be done in half the time, but it must be remembered that conditions are quite different and the incentive is lacking. The remedy is to put all workers on reward as far as possible, and to adopt a profit-sharing or other scheme to stimulate day workers. Overstrain and fatigue must be carefully guarded against. This means, as a rule, guarding the worker against himself. He wishes to earn as much reward as he can, but if he feels tired out at the end of the day he is doing too much, and he will wonder why his efficiency drops. One part of the system is to consider fatigue, and to make an allowance on the base time to cover necessary rests during the day. Cutting the rates need hardly be mentioned, because it is very bad policy on the part of the employer, and always means loss of efficiency and hence loss of profit. The question of keeping machinery in order and bringing up supplies is one that the worker must watch. It is no use trying to reach a standard time when one gets let down by lack of attention on the part of other people. It is true that a day time allowance may be given, but this is not altogether satisfactory. It means that reward cannot be earned for the day time period, and, besides that, there is a possibility of not receiving the allowance. It is possible, also, that the superintendent may refuse allowances, and so dissatisfaction results. Day time allowances and allowances for exceptional conditions (such as bad metal), which increase the machine time, are open to abuse. If a worker reach 99·5 per cent. efficiency or thereabouts, it is quite possible that an unfair allowance of an hour, or even half an hour, on the job will put him over the 100 per cent. efficiency mark, and his reward rate would be considerably increased. With regard to bringing up supplies and attending to slight machine breakdowns--broken belts, for instance--the labourer or other person responsible should be put on reward, his reward being in proportion to the average reward of the workers he serves. The worker must see that proper allowances are made for bad work which he is not responsible for. For instance, if he is on small parts on an automatic machine, and the inspector throws out several pieces as spoiled, it may be the fault of a bad adjustment which the worker cannot help. It is the worker's duty to stop his machine and draw attention to the fault; but if it can only be found on close inspection in the inspection room, and if it consists of, say, a capstan becoming loose, it may be impossible for the worker to detect the fault while the work is in process, and it is no fault of his. The proper counting of the quantity of work done is a point that must be insisted on. On large work it is simple enough, but on small parts that are counted by weighing it is easy to make serious mistakes. Proper check must be kept on the gears used for a particular job. On automatic machinery a change of gear is frequently necessary, and if the change is not properly recorded it may mean that cycle time--the time of all the elements done by the machine on that part--is quite wrong, and an efficiency much too high or too low is the result. Reward is reckoned either on each job taken by itself or on the net result of the week's work. The former is better for the worker, but it is not always fair to the employer, because there is a tendency for the worker to take it easy on difficult jobs where there is little chance of earning reward. With an exact time study and close attention to instructions, such cases, theoretically, should never occur; but they do, because it is impossible to get every job on exactly the same basis, and the worker after a little experience knows what jobs are easy and what are difficult. In some shops the experiment of deducting inefficiency from efficiency has been tried. That is, suppose a worker was 10 per cent. below reward efficiency one week, then that 10 per cent. has been deducted from his efficiency the following week before reward has been allowed. Result: Disaster! The fairest way is to take the balance of efficiency on the week's work, and if a particular job is a bad one from the worker's point of view, he can always draw attention to it. Another important matter is that of determining the class of work which is to go to the worker. Automatic work will go to comparatively unskilled workers, but the dividing line between classes of work is sometimes a very fine one. Skilled handwork must be given to the skilled worker, of course; but it is impossible to lay down any rules in this connection, and the worker must keep his eyes open, and either draw attention to doubtful cases or consult his trade-union. The greatest difficulty is in fixing the allowance on the base time in order to obtain standard time. It is easy to fix it so that the worker cannot reach standard time, and that means a loss of efficiency and of reward. This is essentially a point for trade-union interference, and it is here that the supreme value of the time study is best appreciated. Most of the foregoing items are in connection with the practical working of the system, and it is to the interests of both employer and worker that all such interferences with production should be prevented. Each trade will have its special loopholes where miscalculations can creep in, and the worker must watch for these and have them corrected immediately they are discovered. (_h_) LOSS OF SKILL DUE TO THE REWARD SYSTEM It is sometimes stated that under time study methods a man cannot attain the same skill as a day work man, and that he loses what skill he had if he becomes a "team" worker. Let us consider this contention. Suppose a man leaves a "reward" shop and goes to work in a day work shop; is he any less efficient under day work because of his training under the Reward System? Now, in the first place, he has been trained and used to care and diligence, to working to definite instructions. Is that any disadvantage to him? It is clear that such an experience is a distinct advantage. But has he the same knowledge and adaptability and initiative as the older-fashioned worker? Can he tackle a difficult job with the same chance of success? Well, what difficulties has he to face? It does not follow that because he has been working to instructions he remains in ignorance of the essential factors of his trade. On the contrary, instructions scientifically worked out give him far more knowledge than if he is compelled to work them out for himself. The men who work out these instructions are highly paid men who have all the advantages of a shop training and a scientific engineering education combined, and this is an expensive and arduous business. If a man prove a failure, one may be sure he will not be allowed to continue planning out such instructions as we are discussing. Therefore one must assume that the men who make out the instructions have studied every element of the case. The brains of these men are in the methods and instructions used by the workman, and if the latter is worth his salt he will soon know far more than the old rule-of-thumb man. If the worker is a man of ordinary common sense, he cannot help but take notice of the ways in which jobs are done; of the best and most satisfactory tools, both shape and material; of proper speeds and proper depths of cut for roughing and finishing; and many other details that are constantly before him. "But this system converts the workman into a mere machine, and already his work is too dull and mechanical!" That has been said, but not by anyone who understands the system or who has had direct experience of it. That work under _present_ conditions is often dull and mechanical is only too true. One of the reasons why this Reward System is so attractive to the worker is because it removes these conditions. When a man knows he is being paid for efficiency, the work immediately ceases to be dull; as soon as a man is interested in producing as much work as he can, that work immediately ceases to be mechanical. Some jobs will always be mechanical and dull, and the only thing to do in such cases is to change the worker at frequent periods. The conditions under which the Reward System is run must be agreeable, because it means a loss of efficiency if they are not; and when a man is working under agreeable conditions, when he knows he gets a reward for his efficiency, when he knows that rates cannot be cut, when he knows he is doing no injury to his fellow-workers by earning big rewards, he is happier at his work, he takes greater interest in it, he comes to it with a certain degree of pleasure, and he leaves it with far less fatigue and with greater contentment than under any other system. One can say with certainty that a man who is a good workman under any other system will be a better workman under the Reward System. A bad workman will be bad under any system, but such a one can "find himself" much more certainly under the Reward System than under any other. In many cases, too, a very moderate workman will find some one particular job where he can do good work and earn good money. He will want to stay on that job, of course, and if he keeps up his efficiency the employer will agree that he shall stay on it. There is one remarkable thing that no other method of wage payment shares--namely, it is to the direct and immediate benefit of both worker and employer that the greatest efficiency be obtained. CHAPTER III WAGES AND PROGRESS (_a_) ANTAGONISM BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND WORKER. Let us try to see straight on this point. First as to the relations between them. The employer wants to get as much profit as he can, and, as wages are usually a large and a plastic item in his expenditure, he always tries to cut down that item either by lowering wages or by getting more work produced for the same wages. "Low labour cost" is the continual cry of the employer. Next, the average worker wants as much wages as he can get for as little work as possible. He thinks that the less work he does the more there is for somebody else, and it suits his nature to go easy. "High wages and short hours" is the cry of the worker. Is there anything to choose between them? Only the fact that, as the employer's profits are so high and the worker's wages are so low, there ought to be a better distribution of the wealth produced. Morally there is nothing to choose between them, because each is trying to rob the other. They cannot help it. Neither is to blame altogether; it is the fault of the present industrial conditions. Under these conditions the employer cannot give to the worker a fair share of the wealth produced. To have a factory it is necessary to have capital. That capital has been obtained from the surplus wealth produced by the worker. The worker cannot work without the capital necessary to provide the tools to work with and the material on which to work. Interest must be paid on capital in order that the employer may live, and in order to accumulate more capital, because there are more workers coming into being every year, and they will want work and there must be capital to provide the means necessary for that work. And so the vicious circle goes on. It is not the fault of the employer; it is not the fault of the worker. It is, I repeat, the fault of the system. Take any worker from his work and place him in charge of a factory with a large capital, and ask him to run the business in competition with other businesses; he would soon find how keen a man must be in order to keep the business going successfully. Suppose the profits fell off, what would our worker-employer do? Cut down wages, of course! There is no getting away from it, and we must look the conditions squarely in the face and blame neither employer nor worker overmuch. Now, here is where the Reward System scores. The employer gets "low labour costs"; the worker gets "high wages and shorter hours," with good conditions and greater comfort added. I am quite convinced that there will be less antagonism between them under the Reward System than under any other. It keeps both up to the mark, and it means a mutual dependence on each other and a mutual interest in high and efficient production. An employer who pays wages under the Reward System soon finds that he has adjusted his whole establishment and sales policy on this basis. If he goes back to day work or piece work, the labour costs go up instantly. So he must stick to the system: it pays him to stick to it. Yet he dare not make things too harsh for the worker; if he tries to do so, down comes efficiency. And the essential items that make for efficiency are reasonable hours, pleasant conditions of labour, and a reward in proportion to that efficiency. (_b_) TRADE-UNIONS AND THE REWARD SYSTEM. The trade-unions must be properly organised to meet the new conditions. The trained engineers of the unions should be thoroughly up to date in their knowledge of all the branches of the trade. In connection with engineering workshops, they should be acquainted with the latest practice in all kinds of machines and tools, tool steels, methods of cutting, and everything else bearing on the working of metals. Such a trained engineer is worth a good deal to the union, and he should be paid highly. The saving to the union cannot be adequately calculated. In many cases an exhaustive inquiry into conditions of work would often prevent an expensive strike or would smooth out difficulties that tended towards a strike. Such a man should be paid anything from £500 to £1,000 a year. This sounds a lot, but it is absolutely essential for the unions to be in a position to let the employer see that they know as much about the business as he does--perhaps a bit more--and they cannot get the sort of man they need for less. The trade-union must also see that time studies are properly made. This will be no part of the union's duty until disputes arise. If there is a general complaint from any shop that time studies are unsatisfactory, the trade-union engineer should be sent to the factory to study one or two representative jobs. He will do this side by side with the employer's engineer, and he must allow the firm to choose the worker (who would, of course, be a union man), so that there can be no complaint of unfairness and no accusation can be made that the union desires to impose conditions on the employer. A comparison between the times thus obtained and the firm's standard times will show at once whether the complaint is well founded. The allowances on the fastest time in order to obtain standard time is a matter more open to arrangement. It is, in fact, one of the most vital matters in connection with the time study system, and one where the most unfairness will take place. But an approximate check may be obtained because the handling times of each element of the job can be totalled and the cutting times totalled, and according to the circumstances of the case the allowances can be arranged. The relation between reward and standard times is a simple matter. It is only necessary to see that reward when standard efficiency is reached is at least 25 per cent. of the day wage. That is to say, if wages are 20s., the reward when the work reaches standard efficiency should be 5s.; if wages are 30s., reward should be 7s. 6d.; if wages are 40s., it should be 10s. (_c_) SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND THE REWARD SYSTEM. This Reward System, when based on time study, is a part of what is called "scientific management," and cannot be carried on without proper departments for standardising products and methods of production, planning and routing the work, attending to tool repair and replacement, examining and maintaining machine tools and driving gear, keeping stores and stocks, inspecting the product, costing production accurately, preventing waste, keeping the sales and publicity department up to a high standard, and watching every phase of the work so as to keep everything up to a high pitch of efficiency. All this does not directly concern the worker. His chief interest lies in whether his conditions of work are improved, whether he suffers less fatigue, whether he gets more wages, whether he does his fellow-worker no injury in earning high rewards If he is satisfied on these points, then all the rest does not concern him. Now, scientific management is not some fanciful suggestion that the worker may accept if it pleases him, and refuse if it doesn't. It is here already, and the war will cause an enormous increase in the number of firms adopting it. And where scientific management is introduced, efficiency in production follows--that is what it is for. The point is, is the worker going to accept it and its consequences, understanding it, seizing its good points, rejoicing in increased efficiency, increased wages, and increased opportunities of a satisfactory life which these things provide, or is he going to resent it and try to fight it as his fathers fought against the introduction of machinery? If he chooses the latter course, it means bitter antagonism, suspicion, Labour troubles, instability of employment, low wages, loss of earnings, and the whole of the intellectual forces of the country will be against him, because the conditions after the war will demand industrial peace if we are to maintain the commercial position we had before the war. And in the end it will only mean a sullen acceptance of defeat. Would it not be better for the worker to get a clear understanding of the system, welcome it for its advantages, and reserve all his strength and power to adjust and preserve the bases upon which the payment of labour depends in the various trades of the country? It is quite true that the worker will work harder and will produce considerably more; it is equally true that prices will be reduced in consequence, and therefore more men will be required to make more articles for the increased demand that is bound to follow the reduction in price. In the long run, the system will mean employing more men than would be employed under present methods, and they will be men of high efficiency, and on the average of a better class, such men as will greatly increase our national assets, and such as will maintain our reputation in the markets of the world for the excellence and durability of our manufactures. In the clash of interests that will prevail for a time when the war is over, the worker will have to decide whether to be the controller of his own destinies or whether to become servile. Much depends on the attitude of the skilled worker towards the capitalist. The burden of debt left by the war _must_ be shouldered, and both interest and repayment of loans must come from somewhere. Unless the worker is to be ground to the dust, he must assert himself; but he will be utterly ignored if a selfish and stubborn attitude be adopted, and he will be driven by stress of the nation's adversity to accept what is offered to him by the more far-seeing and powerful members of the State. This means losing all the freedom that he fought for in the great war, and it will put back the worker's progress for an indefinite number of years. Let him follow up the great sacrifices he has made during the war by an intelligent understanding of the altered conditions, and the worker will take an honoured place in the affairs of the State and share its responsibilities and its benefits. If he is to take that place--and no man has a better right to it--if he is to have a voice in the councils of the nation that will compel attention and respect, will it come by antagonism to progress and indifference to the general welfare, or by organisation and efficiency? The reply is obvious. The organisation is the duty of the trade-unions, and the Reward System is a method of providing the efficiency. These will compel the worker to take a greater interest in his surroundings and in the way he is governed. He will resent inefficiency in civic and national matters when he realises how he suffers from its consequences and what perils it brings upon him. And it must always be remembered that the worker will owe nothing to the employer in attaining this position; there will be no paternalism or "giving shares for nothing" about it. It will be clean, honest hard work and endeavour, and the employer will not only be giving nothing away, but will actually profit by it. And while each benefits by the efficiency of the other, the State will benefit by both. (_d_) THE FUTURE OF LABOUR. How will this time study and Reward System affect the position of the worker? This is a very serious problem. It is evident that a transmutation of labour is taking place and will proceed more rapidly after the war. Workers on the whole are becoming less skilled as craftsmen, and machine attendants are taking the place of hand-skilled men. it is quite impossible to stop this change. But what cannot be avoided may possibly be controlled, and the trade-unions should endeavour to direct these economic changes rather than to obstruct what is inevitable. Handicrafts can never wholly cease to exist, but the skilled fitter, and more especially the skilled turner, finds machinery and methods of using machinery encroaching more and more on his particular domain. An unskilled man is given three or four weeks' tuition, and then, if he shows sufficient intelligence, he is put on a machine with an instruction card. The setter-up sets up the machine and gives advice and surveillance, and the man is henceforth a tradesman, getting full wages for that class of work. The systemisation of production thus means a great increase in the average skill of the workers as a whole. There are about 4,000,000 skilled workers who are members of trade-unions at the present time, and this number will be greatly increased if the machine attendants of the near future are absorbed by the unions. If the trade-unions are to control the organisation of Labour, this new class of semi-skilled workers must be absorbed either in one of the older unions, such as the A.S.E., or else a new union must be formed for its accommodation. The former would be by far the better arrangement. At any rate, it will be fatal to allow this growing class to be at the mercy of the employers. Such a state of affairs will mean not only the exploitation of the new class, but the destruction of the old, because the more intelligent men of the new class will be selected and trained to take the place of trade-union men. This is a natural process, and is not aimed at the destruction of the unions. The general result will be to transfer craftsmanship from the craftsman to the standards book. Then the instruction card will be made out from the standards book and handed to the machine attendant, who will work to it, and will earn something in excess of his weekly wages according to his diligence and care in working to the instructions. A new profession will result--indeed, has already resulted--one that will employ many intelligent people: I refer to the profession of the rational industry organiser. It will mean, further, a great increase in the clerical staffs of firms who adopt these systems. Yet, again, it means a new trade, the trade of inspector, a trade especially suitable for women on account of the lightness of the work and the delicate handling of the gauges. And, above all else, it means a great increase of production per man, with a consequent lowering of prices. Now, a lowering of prices always means a greater demand, which in its turn means more workers. Speaking generally, any article made in very large quantities is sold to a great number of people, which means that it is sold largely to the working class. Therefore the reduction in price of an article tends to be to the advantage of the workers--it would be more correct to say the better-paid workers. But now we come to the vital point in connection with all industry and industrial systems--namely, the ultimate advantage or disadvantage to the workers as a class. The employer will, of course, endeavour to reduce wages, because the semi-skilled labourer need not be paid so highly as the fully skilled craftsman. It is impossible to say what the trade-unions will do--whether they will accept the situation and adopt sliding scales of wages for different classes of labour, or whether they will insist on the same wages being paid to all union members. Of course, semi-skilled labour would be engaged almost always on repetition work--work, that is, which lends itself excellently to the Reward System. This system means, as I have shown, an addition to the day rate of wages, and therefore the unions might arrange for a lower wage to be paid to semi-skilled workers, and rely on individual efficiency to bring wages approximately up to the union rate. In such a case it would be necessary for the unions to see that at "standard efficiency" the wages received were at least equal to the day rate for skilled men, and that the tasks were set in such a manner that this efficiency could be reached without excessive strain. Skilled men would get the ordinary union rate, and if put on reward their individual efficiency would bring the earnings to considerably more than the highest earnings of semi-skilled workers. This arrangement should be a satisfactory compromise between the employer and the worker, but it can only be brought about by the Reward System, or some similar method, and under trade-union control. Unless such a compromise is attempted, industry will soon be in a state of economic warfare, and the division of the workers into skilled and semi-skilled camps will be disastrous. If the trade-unions lose control over labour-not only skilled, but semi-skilled labour also--the natural tendency will be for the employers to coerce and intimidate the workers into accepting lower and still lower wages. Our tremendous war indebtedness will provide the excuse, and a "free labour market" will contribute to the success of this reduction. There is a certain level of necessity to which wages always tend. If wages are high, they tend to be reduced; if they are low, they tend to increase. The tendency to reduction is due to the endeavour of the employer to lower costs, and the acceptance, under pressure, of a lower wage by the worker so long as the wage does not fall below the limit of absolute necessity. The tendency to increase is due to the discontent of the worker when wages are below the necessity level, this leading to strikes, slacking, and inefficiency, which compel the employer to raise wages in order to avoid excessive loss. I am speaking here of skilled labour, where there is always more or less of a demand for workers. In the case of unskilled labour, where the supply is always considerably in excess of the demand, wages are always below the necessity level. There is a constant "regression towards mediocrity," to use Galton's phrase--in other words, a constant tendency towards the average. It is because this average at present is an average of _necessity_ instead of an average of _reasonable comfort_ that Labour troubles recur so frequently; the slightest variation in the price of necessary articles immediately affects the purchasing power of wages. It is evident to all unbiased persons that no one can be efficient without a certain minimum income based on comfort; a minimum based on necessity means inefficiency, because no worker can be really efficient when haunted by the constant fear of debt and misery and starvation. And it is also evident that this minimum of comfort cannot be based on the money a man receives as wages, but on what he needs. What constitutes need is open to argument, but there are certain items of necessity which are beyond dispute. No matter where a person lives, he needs a good roof over his head, food to eat, clothes to wear, fuel, household necessities, and a surplus for emergencies. The cost of living differs in various parts of the United Kingdom, and therefore there should be a scale of wages for each district, based on the purchasing power of wages in that district. This is recognised by the trade-unions, and in consequence union wages are higher in London than in provincial towns. In each district the amount of wages should be based on the price of perishable articles--food, fuel, household necessities--in that district.[1] It is an easy matter to record the prices of these necessities: and if an annual revision of wages be made, the employer cannot complain about excessive increases, because between one year and another prices do not vary sufficiently to cause any great difference, and all manufacturers would be affected the same way. [1] What is necessary in the way of food, clothes, fuel, household articles, rent, etc., in order to keep an average family in reasonable comfort can easily be determined. I have worked this out in detail, but it is hardly a subject for these notes. Fixed items, such as rent, should be revised every five years or so. Such an arrangement would mean basing wages on what may be termed "reasonable comfort" instead of on necessity. This alteration of the basis of wage calculation, together with the payment of a reward for efficiency, would have a remarkable effect in lessening the difficulties between Capital and Labour, and would make for a permanent and progressive industrial peace. (_e_) THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL. Whenever scientific management is criticised, there seems to be a tendency to avoid a comparison between the conditions of work under scientific management and other _existing_ conditions. The comparison generally drawn is between scientific management and some non-existent, more or less ideal, condition imagined by the critic. But we have to deal with immediate practical problems; with prevailing conditions; with a non-producing investing society which is constantly seeking profits; with masters who are in open or veiled antagonism to the workers; with workers who have no chance of obtaining a real education, and whose minds are so confused by the contradictory statements made in the Press--their only means of becoming acquainted with the broader aspects of citizenship--that they can rarely exercise a balanced judgment on any subject. Any scheme of work and wages must take into account these things as well as the present-day desires and ambitions of the average worker, if it is to be of any real use or if it is to assist the worker, consciously or unconsciously, towards the attainment of what are considered better things. The worker cares more for money than for anything else. In this he is singularly like most other people. The æsthetic nature of his surroundings when at work make little appeal to him, and no appeal at all if two or three shillings a week are in the balance against it. He does not know how his health improves and his efficiency increases when he is in pleasant surroundings, and he will have no hesitation in leaving a pleasant factory for a dismal one if he receives a slight increase in wages by doing so. Certain employers--Rowntree, Cadbury, Lever, for instance--after becoming wealthy, try to improve the condition of their workers. Increased efficiency is not their aim so much as making the lives of their workers pleasant and happy. But it is impossible for all firms to be wealthy, and there are few even among the wealthy who care how their workers live; hence the multitude of repellent workshops up and down the land. Scientific management, however, starts in at the beginning with pleasant conditions because it pays to have them. It is frankly utilitarian, and if slavery in a dark house resulted in greater efficiency, then that method would be adopted. But since it _does_ mean healthier and happier conditions, and more wages and greater opportunities for a fuller life, why cling to worse conditions while dreaming of some vague future state which is utterly outside present practical possibilities? That Capital is necessary is evident to everyone. Whether the capitalist is necessary is open to argument, but we must accept him for the present whether we like it or not. And, accepting him, we must acknowledge that he has certain rights and privileges--rights and privileges which so many of us are seeking for ourselves; for instance, the right to control his capital, to increase it by any legitimate means, to dispose of it in any way he chooses. One of the ways of increasing capital is by lowering the cost of production and thereby gaining a wider market. Better organisation and the introduction of automatic machinery enable the capitalist to do this. He risks his capital in the hope of greater returns, and no one can deny him the right to better his organisation, to use his brains and energy and wealth to attain this end. One of the most striking and successful methods of organisation is this of scientific management, of which the Reward System is a part. To oppose the system, to oppose the introduction of machinery, is not to make things better. If one could say we will not have efficient management, we will not have automatic machinery, the case would be different; but this system and this machinery were being introduced before the war, and the installation of automatic machinery has been increased enormously since the war began. This class of machinery has come to stay, and, now that the urgency of war work has forced engineers to realise their possibilities, they are looking forward to the application of automatic machines to thousands of jobs that were previously done on general machines. Now, automatic machinery is the same under any system of management or wage payment. The same amount of manual skill is required, and the same amount of mental application. But whereas day work means constant close supervision by the foreman, and piece work means mutual dishonesty, the Reward System means a keen interest in both the quality and quantity of the work produced. Under what system can work on automatic machines be made pleasant? The usual reply of the idealist is to draw a comparison between handicrafts and automatic machinery, dwelling on the skill and interest and beauty of the one and the deadening monotony of the other. But when a man is compelled to take up a handicraft for the sake of a living--and this always _was_ the case--there is not so much difference between being compelled to work on an automatic machine and being compelled, for example, to throw a shuttle through the frame of a hand loom, which is but a man-driven machine, after all. And, to be fair, the comparison should be completed, and the comparative luxury enjoyed by present workers set against the bare, cheerless existence of the artisan of the Middle Ages. It is assumed that the craftsman of those days had a tremendous pride in his work, but it is to be doubted whether he was really so proud all the time of the work whereby he earned a miserable pittance. How many of those workers would gladly have given up their beloved crafts and tended automatic machinery if they could have obtained the conditions of the present day by doing so! The conditions obtaining in the Ford motor factories at present show what influences and governs the actions of the worker. Mr. Henry Ford put into practice a bonus scheme which included all workers who had certain qualifications. For some time after this became known the Ford Company received over one thousand letters a day from workers desiring employment. The conditions of the work did not weigh with them at all, but, Mr. Ford being what he is, the conditions were, of course, excellent. This gave the Ford Company the pick of the workers of the United States. As far as can be ascertained, there is great satisfaction among the Ford workers, and it is considered a privilege to get a situation with the Ford Company. Now, an essential feature of the work in this firm is team work. The work is split up into small elements arranged so that, as the work is passed from one worker to another, the least time is taken on each element. Repetition work is the order of the day, and even the man whose work for over three years was to give two turns to No. 16 nut did not leave because the work was too monotonous. The fact remains that, as a rule, workers do not object to monotony so long as they are well paid for the work, and there does not appear to be any increase of idiocy in the Ford shops owing to the dulness and once-and-for-ever nature of the work. To produce work by handicraft means a life of unremitting toil for the craftsman, and even then the cost of the finished article is so great, if the worker is to get but a very moderate return, that only the wealthy could buy it. This postulates a wealthy class which is diametrically opposed to the principles of the idealist. The craftsman would have neither leisure nor opportunity for the study and appreciation of finer things, and in the end it means poverty, and poverty means ignorance and misery.[2] [2] Since writing this paragraph I have found the following statement in Mr. Graham Wallas's book, "The Great Society" (p. 347): "It is true that Morris, for all his greatness, never faced the fact that we cannot both eat our cake and have it; cannot use slow methods of production, and also turn out without overwork large quantities of consumable wealth. Once, while I listened to him lecturing, I made a rough calculation that the citizens of his commonwealth, in order to produce by the methods he advocated the quantity of beautiful and delicious things which they were to enjoy, would have to work about two hundred hours a week. It was only the same fact looked at from another point of view which made it impossible for any of Morris's workmen, or, indeed, for anyone at all whose income was near the present English average, to buy the products either of Morris's workshop at Merton or of his Kelmscott Press. There is no more pitiful tragedy than that of the many followers of Tolstoy, who, without Tolstoy's genius or inherited wealth, were slowly worn down by sheer want in the struggle to live the peasant life which he preached." We must accept the fact that wealth is the product of machinery or of some worse form of slavery, and, for my part, I prefer it to be produced by machinery. Besides all this, machinery is here, and to do without it is absolutely impossible--as impossible as it is for a highly developed organism to revert to its primitive state. Where shall we draw the line and say, We will have no more machinery than we have at present? We cannot do so; it is manifestly impossible. Where, then, shall we draw the line and say, This work must be done by hand and not by machine; this work must be done on a general machine and not on an automatic; this work must be done by a single man and not by a team of men; this work must be done under this or that old-fashioned system and not under a well-organised system? These lines can never be drawn. Progress, by its very nature, will crush whatever opposes it, even though it has no intention of doing so. And it is not desirable to oppose progress if we desire to live and develop. As automatic machinery is the extreme end of one line of progress, so it is undesirable to sweep it away, even if it were possible. Now, automatic machinery means cheap production, and this means more wealth. More wealth ought to mean more leisure for everybody. In order to make the best use of leisure, better education, real education, is needed--education in reasoning, in science, in civics, in art, in economics, in freedom. The trade-unions are not educational; it is no part of their programme. The workers depend on their opponents for their education. Instead of curtailing wealth, the trade-unions should endeavour to control the production and distribution of it, to divert it so that it will benefit the workers, in order that both leisure and education may be theirs. Under any conceivable system, the man who has the energy and initiative of the man who at present becomes a capitalist would always be a more important and better paid or better rewarded man than the worker. But he would be a leader and not a driver, and whatever he possessed would be looked upon by those who worked under him as a natural and righteous return for his ability. I merely mention this because trade-union control is no menace to the progress and success of the man of ability. Finally, let me say that, if we must have cheap production, if we must have better organisation and make more and more use of machinery, if we must increase each man's output in order to meet the financial necessities of the immediate future, what method shall we adopt? Is it to be day work or piece work? Is it to be co-partnership or profit sharing that tend to rob a man of his liberty and turn him into a miniature capitalist? Or is it by such a method as this Reward System, whereby a man retains his full liberty, where his work is made more interesting, where he does no harm to his fellow-workers by earning high wages, where his trade-union is his stand-by? These are the ways, the practical available ways, that confront the worker. It is easy to imagine pleasanter ways, but the devil drives and we have to decide now. The trade-unions would be wise to give close attention to the Reward System and that greater organisation of which it is a part. With trade-union support it will become one of the most satisfactory solutions of the differences between worker and employer; without trade-union support no system will be satisfactory. It is not efficiency for efficiency's sake that is the issue. Efficiency is only a means to an end, to the end that the worker eventually may be in a position to exercise some control over the making and distribution of wealth. Present conditions drive him farther and farther from that end, and only education, better conditions of living, a certain amount of leisure, and a desire to undertake responsibility, will enable him to achieve it. Following on that will come the realisation of what efficiency would mean applied to the general production and distribution of commodities, to education, to the affairs of State, and with that comes the desire to control, and after that, again--well, perhaps Idealist will begin to see daylight! These notes are not concerned with the essential rightness or otherwise of this or any other system of wage payment, or of the wages system itself, or of the Capitalist System. These are matters altogether outside the subject. These notes are only written because the writer considers the Reward System, when properly carried out, to be the best of several existing methods of payment for work done; and as this particular method will be adopted more and more, and as it undoubtedly leads to greater production and is to the direct and immediate advantage of the worker, those concerned with the welfare of the worker ought to consider the system in all its bearings, and not hurriedly condemn it because it is new, because it is American, and because it increases the productivity of the worker. If there is any practical scheme that can be immediately adopted and will appeal as strongly to both worker and employer, by all means let us have it and abolish existing methods of wage payment altogether. PART II AN APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES TO A PARTICULAR CASE CHAPTER IV WORK AND REWARD The following is a description of one particular method of the time study and reward payment following out the principles described in Part I. This particular case is one which has been introduced into two engineering factories in England. It must be understood that the methods described are not necessarily those which apply in all factories. Only the basic principles have been described in Part I., and only one particular method of application is described in Part II. Almost every shop will have its special details, its individuality, and different trades will differ widely in the carrying out of the principles. Manufacturing machinery, laying bricks, sewing shirts, shaving, etc., cannot all be brought under one exact scheme. But all must have time study and reward payment in proportion to efficiency as a foundation on which to build a superstructure of sound economical business management with satisfactory labour conditions. There will be an occasional repetition of points dwelt upon in Part I., but this is in order that the detailed description will be complete in itself. (_a_) ROUTING THE WORK. When an order is received for a certain quantity of any article, the first thing to do is to make a drawing of the article, and, following on that, all the operations to be done on it are studied in the drawing office. The kind of metal is decided on; which operation must be done first and which next; which machine each operation must be done on; how many operations can be done on one machine and with one setting up of the article; which tools to use; how fast the machines must run; what speed and depth of cut is best; what cutting compound to use, etc. Then a time study is made of the job as it goes through the various operations on each machine. It depends on the nature of the work how this study is made. On automatic machines the output depends largely on the speeds of the machines and the moving of the turret, and these can be calculated from the countershaft speeds, the gears, and the cams. On other work, however, where each job has to be set up and taken down, and where tools have to be brought into position by hand, it is necessary to watch all the processes and movements carefully, so as to discover the best and quickest way of doing it. On hand work it is the same, but there is more scope for motion study--that is, moving the job and working on it with the least number of movements. A good average worker is chosen, and is paid time and a quarter during the study. After the job has been done a few times in order that the worker may become familiar with it, to see that the tools and speeds are satisfactory, and to cut out useless motions, the time study is made, every detail being observed carefully. The reason for separating the job into its details or elements is in order to see that each detail receives careful attention, for only in this way can the best method of doing the job be found. The essence of the system is that the best methods shall be found for all the details, and the record thus obtained puts all the workers on the same basis. It must be particularly noted that the time study is not for the purpose of driving the worker. The study of the job is really a process study, and method after method is tried until the best way of doing the work has been determined. Then, and then only, the time is taken--not for purpose of driving to get a shorter time, but to record the actual time in which the work has been done under certain special conditions. The process study, together with the time recording, form what is called the "time study," which is a permanent record of all the circumstances under which the job has been done, _including_ the time taken, so that when the job has to be repeated all the conditions are known accurately and immediately. This should be borne in mind both by the worker and the employer. (_b_) THE TIME STUDY. A time study sheet is filled in with the general information connected with the job, and also a dimensioned sketch of the article in the finished condition. (If necessary, a sketch or the dimensions of the article before machining are also given.) Methods of tool setting are given, and also description and details of fixing any jigs, carriers, clamps, etc. Each element of the operation, from picking it up and putting it on the machine bed to taking it off when finished, is put in a column in sequence on the left side of the sheet. Even an element which requires only a few seconds to perform is entered separately. There are several columns for entering the times of the elements, one column for each complete operation. The time study engineer stands where he may see every motion of the machine and every movement of the hand. The stop-watch is mounted on the same board as the time study sheet, so that they can be held in one hand while the times are jotted down with the other. The watch is set to 0, and the figure is entered against the first element. When the operation begins, the watch is started, and at the end of the first element the time is noted and set down. The watch is not stopped, and therefore each element time consists of the watch reading of the last element subtracted from the reading of the element under consideration. For instance: TIME STUDY READING. -----------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+------- Element. | 1st Timing. | 2nd Timing. | 3rd Timing. | ---+-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+Average No.| Name. |Reading| Time |Reading| Time |Reading| Time | Time | |(Mins.)|(Mins.)|(Mins.)|(Mins.)|(Mins.)|(Mins.)|(Mins.) ---+-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | | 0·00 | | 0·00 | | 0·00 | | 1 | Set up +-------+ 3·40 +-------+ 3·20 +-------+ 3·36 | 3·32 | | | | | | | | |-------------+ 3·40 +-------+ 3·20 +-------+ 3·36 +-------+ | | | | | | | | 2 | Turn face +-------+ 2·70 +-------+ 3·00 +-------+ 2·88 + 2·86 | | | | | | | | +-------------+ 6·10 +-------+ 6·20 +-------+ 6·24 +-------+ | | | | | | | | 3 | Turn radius +-------+ 1·10 +-------+ 0·90 +-------+ 1·06 | 1·02 | | | | | | | | +-------------+ 7·20 +-------+ 7·10 +-------+ 7·30 +-------+ | Turn | | | | | | | 4 | Periphery +-------+ 1·00 +-------+ 1·20 +-------+ 1·12 | 1·11 | | | | | | | | +-------------+ 8·20 +-------+ 8·30 +-------+ 8·42 +-------+ | | | | | | | | 5 | Bore +-------+ 2·30 +-------+ 2·80 +-------+ 2·61 | 2·57 | | | | | | | | |-------------+ 10·50 +-------+ 11·10 +-------+ 11·03 +-------+ | | | | | | | | 6 | Tap +-------+ 1·80 +-------+ 2·10 +-------+ 1·93 | 1·94 | | | | | | | | +-------------+ 12·30 +-------+ 13·20 +-------+ 12·96 +-------+ | | | | | | | | 7 | Take down +-------+ 0·40 +-------+ 0·35 +-------+ 0·34 | 0·30 | | | | | | | | +-------------+ 12·70 +-------+ 13·55 +-------+ 13·30 +-------+ | | | | | | | | | +-------+ +-------+ +-------+ +------ |Total (mins.)| 12·70 | | 13·55 | | 13·30 | | 13·18 ---+-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------ It will be seen that the watch is not stopped until the end of the complete operation, and therefore the last reading indicates how long the operation has taken; it is the sum of all the elements. If anything happens which is not a part of the operation--for instance, if a tool needs replacing owing to accident or becoming dull too quickly, or if a belt breaks--the watch is stopped, and when the operation begins again it is started and goes on from the point where it stopped. During the timing, observations are made to determine whether any part of the operation may be done in a quicker or easier way, or whether any element is taking longer than it ought to do. It must be particularly noted that there is a distinct difference between time study and time recording. Any job, the slowest or fastest in the whole factory, may be time-recorded by merely observing the time with a stop-watch, but this is not a time _study_. When several sets of figures have been obtained, the number of sets depending on the circumstances, the timing part of the study is over. The figures are now examined. The time of each element is obtained as described in the example. In noticing the times of any one element, times which are much less or much greater than the others are eliminated, and the average of the remaining times is taken. Then all these averages are added together, and the average time of the complete operation is thus obtained. This time is considered to be the fastest time in which the operation can be done. It is not actually the fastest for two reasons. One is that any time so obtained may be improved on when the worker becomes thoroughly used to the job, and the other is that a good _average_ worker is chosen for the time study; therefore a first-class man can improve on the time obtained. But it is considered to be the fastest time, and we will call it the base time. Now, this time has been obtained under exceptional circumstances. When a man is working on a time study job--that is, with the knowledge that he is on trial, so to speak, and with the time study engineer timing and observing every detail and motion--he works faster than usual. There is no opportunity for little breaks, or rests, or breathing spaces; it is hard slogging all the time. The time study engineer does not intend it to be so, but by the nature of the circumstances that is what happens, and no man can keep this up for long. It is quite evident, therefore, that this time cannot be reached regularly by every worker, and this is taken into consideration when determining the standard time--_i.e._, the time in which the job should be done by the average worker. To obtain the standard time an allowance is made on the base time. This allowance depends on the nature of the work, a higher allowance being made for jobs that need a good deal of handling than for jobs that are nearly all cutting, because cutting is independent of the worker. The way to arrive at the allowance is to examine the recorded figures, and add together all the cutting times and then all the handling times. An allowance of about 10 per cent. is usually given on the cutting times, and from 15 per cent. to 50 per cent., or even more, on handling times. The cutting times depend on the machinery, and that is why a smaller allowance is given for them. (_c_) FIXING STANDARD TIME. This standard time is the basis of the Reward System, and is therefore the most important time. It is so fixed in relation to base time that every worker put on that work should be able to reach it after a little practice. If he does so, he is said to have reached an efficiency of 100 per cent. A worker who reaches continuously 100 per cent. is a high efficiency man. This efficiency should always be reached by a worker who follows the instructions and works diligently. Reward begins, however, considerably before this point is reached, because it may be necessary for a worker to be on a job some time before he reaches a high efficiency. Again, sometimes one worker is naturally slower than another; and although his work is good, he can reach 100 per cent. efficiency only by special effort. There would be little encouragement if reward did not begin until the worker had reached 100 per cent. efficiency. For these reasons, and as an incentive to every man to become as highly efficient as possible, reward begins when the worker reaches 75 per cent. efficiency. This means that an allowance of 33-1/3 per cent. is given on the standard time or standard production, and this new figure is called "reward time" or "reward production" because it is the point where reward begins. The following examples will make the matter clearer: Let us assume that the time in which the job can be done is found by the time study to be 12 hours; this is the base time, and can be reached or even exceeded under favourable circumstances, because in the first place it has already been reached during the time study, and in the second place the worker on the time study was a good _average_ man, so that a _first-class_ man should be able to do the job in quicker time. Now, suppose the job needs a good deal of handling. In such a case the time will be increased by, say, 25 per cent. in order to obtain the standard time; 25 per cent. of 12 hours is 3 hours, so that the standard time is 12 + 3 = 15 hours. Therefore, if the worker does the job in 15 hours, he has reached 100 per cent. efficiency, which is the point to be aimed at. It should always be attained by every worker who follows the instructions accurately and works diligently, while a good worker should always be able to do it in less time. The point when reward begins is arrived at by adding 33-1/3 per cent. to the standard time--that is, 15 hours with 33-1/3 per cent. of 15 hours added; 33-1/3 per cent. of 15 is 5, and 15 + 5 = 20 hours. Reward is earned, therefore, when the job is done in anything less than 20 hours. It will be seen that, while it is quite possible to do the job in 12 hours or even less, yet if the job be done in anything under 20 hours reward is earned. What amount of reward? Well, suppose the job rate is 36s. This means that the job is given to a worker whose day wage is about 36s. per week. This is 9d. an hour on a 48-hour week. Suppose the work is done in 16-1/2 hours. As the standard time is 15 hours, the job has taken longer than standard time; it is 1-1/2 hours longer than standard. But, as the reward time is 20 hours, it has been done in 3-1/2 hours less than reward time; in other words, 3-1/2 hours have been saved on the job. The worker gets paid for all the time he saves = 3-1/2 hours at 9d. per hour; total reward 2s. 7-1/2d. So that for his 16-1/2 hours' work he gets his day wage of 9d. per hour (= 12s. 4-1/2d.) + a reward of 2s. 7-1/2d.--that is, 15s. in all. In other words, he earns 11d. per hour instead of 9d. per hour. His efficiency is 91 per cent., but efficiency calculation will be mentioned later. Let us now examine another case, a small part job. We will assume that the time study shows a production of 40 of these small parts per hour. We have now shifted from times to quantities. The base quantity is 40 per hour, that number being the greatest number produced by a good average worker in 1 hour under favourable circumstances. The standard quantity will, of course, be less than this, and, as such work would probably be done on an automatic machine with practically no hand work, an allowance of 10 per cent. is made on the base quantity in order to obtain the standard quantity. Ten per cent. of 40 is 4; therefore the standard quantity is 40-4 = 36. This is the quantity the worker ought to produce continuously if he is diligent and attends to the machine properly. As before, reward begins at an earlier point than standard. That is to say, if a smaller quantity than 36 be produced reward is earned, but a certain minimum quantity must be produced before reward begins. This minimum quantity is called "reward production," and begins at 75 per cent. of the standard production. (36 � 75)/100 = 27·0, and this is the reward production for one hour, reward being paid on any excess above this. Let us assume that a worker is 6 hours on this work, and in that time produces 220 pieces. The reward quantity is 27 per hour, and for the 6 hours is 27 � 6 = 162. The job rate is, say, 24s., because this work would be done by unskilled or partially skilled labour. This is 6d. per hour, and if the worker produces 27 or less pieces per hour that is what he receives. If he produces more than 27 per hour, he gets paid at the rate of 6d. per 27 for the excess, this being equivalent to being paid for all the time saved. The production in 6 hours is 220; the reward quantity for that time is 162, and the standard quantity 216. It is seen that efficiency in this case is over 100 per cent., because 220 is 4 more than standard. Reward is paid on 220-162 = 58, and payment is made at the rate of 6d. for each 27. If we divide 58 by 27, and multiply the result by 6d., this will give the amount of reward--namely, 1s. This is the reward for 6 hours' work, and is 2d. per hour, so that the worker gets 8d. per hour instead of 6d. Efficiency is about 102 per cent. The following shows these examples in tabular form: I. Base time 12 hours Standard time 15 " Reward time 20 " Time taken 16-1/2 " Time saved 3-1/2 " Job rate per hour 9d. Reward 3-1/2 � 9 = 2s. 8d. Total reward for week if reward is earned at same rate all the week (namely, 48 hours) 7s. 9d. Total earnings .. .. .. 36s. + 7s. 9d. = 43s. 9d. II. Base quantity 40 per hour Standard quantity 36 " Reward quantity 27 " Time worked 6 hours Quantity produced 220 Reward quantity for 6 hours 162 Excess quantity 58 Reward at 27 for 6d. 1s. Total reward for week if reward is earned at same rate all the week (namely, 48 hours) 8s. Total earnings 24s. + 8s. = 32s. The foregoing examples are of average workers. The following is an example of what a good worker can do, and, as the method of calculation is given above, a tabular statement is all that is necessary: III. Base time 8 hours Standard time (base + 25%) 10 " Reward time (standard + 33-1/3%) 13·3 " Time taken 8·5 " Time saved 13·3 - 8·5 = 4·8 " Job rate per hour 9d. Reward 9 x 4·8= 3s. 7d. Total reward for week if reward is earned all week at same rate 20s. 2d. Total earnings 36s + 20s. 2d. = 56s. 2d. Efficiency 117·5% The result is not an exceptional one. (_d_) THE INSTRUCTION CARD. After the time study has been made, an instruction card is made out for the job. On this card all the particulars are given--how to do the job, the sequence of operations, the tools to be used, the base, standard and reward times or productions, the job rate, and any other necessary information. It is by acting in accordance with the instructions on the card that the worker can reach standard time regularly, and the foreman or setter-up and the superintendent are always ready to assist the worker in every way to attain this result. If the operator finds he cannot reach standard time by diligent work and following the instructions, he should always inform the superintendent, in order that the matter may be investigated. (_e_) SPOILED WORK. The question of spoiled work must be taken into account. It is almost impossible for all the work produced to pass inspection. Machines may not work quite right; tools become dull; material is not always the same; workers sometimes get careless. How is this spoiled work to be dealt with? It would be quite unfair to make the worker responsible for bad work which was due to no fault of his. It would be equally unfair for him to get paid for bad work which was due to his own carelessness or neglect. When work is inspected, and some of it found to be bad, it is not difficult as a rule to find where the fault for this bad work lies. If it is due to bad material or bad machining, the question arises of how far the worker is to blame. He should stop his machine and call the attention of the foreman to any fault of tools or material. If too deep a cut be taken, or if a part be badly worked by hand tools, this is the worker's fault. Work which is spoiled by the worker or by his neglect is deducted from his gross production, and his reward is reduced accordingly. It is quite possible that, if a large amount of bad work be produced, and the worker's total production be not very high, the amount to be deducted is greater than the amount of reward. In such a case nothing is deducted from his day wage, and nothing is held over to be deducted from reward earned in a later week. For instance, suppose a worker receives a day wage of 36s. per week. Then suppose his total production would bring him a reward of 10s., but that deductions on account of spoiled work amounted to 8s. His wages for that week would be 36s. + 10s. = 46s.--less 8s. = 38s. net. Now, if reward due to total production was 6s., and spoiled work amounted to 10s., then if spoiled work were deducted in full he would get 36s. + 6s. =42s.--less 10s. = 32s. net (namely, 4s. less than his day wage). But this is never done. He gets his full 36s., and the 4s. is cancelled altogether. Each week is taken entirely by itself, and the day wage for the week is always guaranteed, whatever happens in connection with the work or the reward. If any of the spoiled work be rectifiable, this does not interfere with the deduction. It means that, in order to make the article pass inspection, more work, more inspection, and more supervision, must be done on it. (_f_) ALLOWANCES. It happens quite frequently that stoppages occur during the progress of the work. For instance, the worker may have to wait for material; the driving belt may need tightening; tools may need changing at odd times not recorded in the instructions; metal may be hard or bad, thereby necessitating a reduction in speed--and so on. All these things result in a reduction in the quantity of articles produced, and none of them is due to the fault of the operator. In such cases the worker either clocks off or receives a day time allowance. He clocks off when his machine is actually stopped for fifteen minutes or more at one time. If he has several short stoppages, the foreman adds the times together and writes a day time allowance for the whole on the worker's operation card. If it be necessary to reduce the speed of the machine on account of hard metal, bad material, tools not tempered correctly, or anything that tends to lower production without actually stopping the machine, a day time allowance is made and written on the operation card; or in some cases the standard time is increased, thus giving a longer time in which to do the job. Clocking and day time allowances mean that this time is deducted from the time on reward. For example, suppose the machine is stopped for 1 hour during a job that has the standard time of 7 hours, and suppose the time from start to finish is 8-1/2 hours. The 1 hour is subtracted from the 8-1/2 and is paid for at day rate, the time for the job being calculated to be 7-1/2 hours. If during the week there are day time allowances of 7 hours, then there are 41 reward hours and 7 day time hours. The effect of making day time allowances is to increase the reward, as will be seen from the following example: Assume that during 20 hours 500 small pieces are produced, and that the machine stops 4 hours out of the 20. If the production be spread over the whole 20 hours and reward production be 24 per hour, the reward quantity is 20 � 24 = 480. Reward is therefore paid on 500-480 = 20 pieces. If the 4 hours be deducted, the net time on reward is 16 hours, not 20, and the reward quantity for the 16 hours is 16 � 24 = 384. Reward is paid on 500-384 = 116 pieces, instead of 20. Let the job rate be 8d. per hour. Then, as the reward production is 24 per hour, this means that the worker receives 8d. for each 24 pieces; the reward on 20 pieces at 24 for 8d. = 6-1/2d., while the reward on 116 pieces = 3s. 3d. This shows how important it is to get the proper day time allowances. The 4 hours are, of course, paid for at the worker's day rate. (_g_) EFFICIENCY CALCULATION. Efficiency is the percentage ratio between the time it takes to do the job and the standard time. Or, if we are dealing with quantities, the percentage ratio between the quantity actually produced in a certain time and the standard quantity which ought to be produced in that time. The standard time or standard quantity is considered to be 100 per cent. efficiency, as we have seen. If the standard time for a job be 12 hours, and the worker does it in 12 hours, his efficiency is 12/12 � 100 = 100 per cent. Suppose he does the job in less than 12 hours, then it is quite clear that his efficiency is more than 100 per cent. Say he does it in 10 hours; his efficiency is (12 � 100)/10 = 120 per cent. If he takes longer than standard time, his efficiency is less than 100 per cent. Say he does it in 15 hours; his efficiency is (12 � 100)/15 = 80 per cent. Reward time is 12 + 33-1/3 per cent. of 12 = 12 + 4 = 16 hours. Suppose the worker takes the reward time of 16 hours to do the job; his efficiency is (12 � 100)/16 = 75 per cent. This efficiency is the ratio between reward time and standard time, and that is why we say the efficiency point for reward is 75 per cent. RULE I.--In order to calculate efficiency on a time basis, the standard time must be multiplied by 100 and the result divided by the actual time. In dealing with small parts, the basis is the standard _quantity_ per hour--in other words, the quantity which ought to be produced in one hour in order to reach 100 per cent. efficiency. If the standard quantity per hour be 20, and the worker is on the job 8-1/2 hours, then the standard quantity for that time is 20 � 8-1/2 = 170. If the worker produces 170, his efficiency is (170 � 100)/170 = 100 per cent. Suppose he produces 200 in the time, then his efficiency is more than 100 per cent., because he has produced more than the standard quantity. His efficiency is (200 � 100)/170 = 117·5 per cent. If, on the other hand, he produces less than 170, say 150, his efficiency is (150 � 100)/170 = 88·25 per cent. RULE II.--In calculating efficiency by this method, it is evident that the quantity produced in a certain time must be multiplied by 100 and divided by the standard quantity for that time. If a definite number of articles are to be machined, the whole quantity may be looked upon as a single job. For instance, suppose there are 3,000 pieces to be produced, and standard quantity is 150 per hour. Then the _standard time_ for the whole quantity is 3000/150 = 20 hours. _Reward time_ will be 20 + 33-1/3 per cent. of 20 = 20 + 6-2/3 = 26-2/3 hours. Efficiency may now be worked out by the first method. Efficiencies are, of course, calculated on the _net time_--that is, on the total time of the job after day time and other allowances have been deducted. PART III EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAMS SHOWING DIFFERENT METHODS OF REWARD PAYMENT CHAPTER V REWARD AND EFFICIENCY In order to illustrate the general principles of the Reward System, an individual case was taken and one particular relation between reward and standard times was selected--namely, 75 per cent. The sewing on of buttons, the laying of bricks, ploughing, shipbuilding, etc., would have served just as well, and the same general results would have been obtained. The relation between reward and standard times has given rise to much discussion and experiment, and the relation selected in Part II. is one that appeals most strongly to the worker as he gets paid for all the time he saves. If reward begins earlier and the worker gets a proportion of the time he saves instead of the whole, reward at standard time should be just the same, or nearly so. It only means that the worker has a better chance of getting a higher reward when he is below the 100 per cent. line, and a smaller one when he is above it. The following diagrams show the relation between reward and efficiency according to the principal methods in use at the present time, some of them being used in the same factory for different classes of work. A complete diagram is illustrated on p. 88, but, for convenience, only a portion of this is used in most of the other diagrams. It must be noted that reward at standard time must be never less than 25 per cent. of the job rate, while 30 per cent. to 35 per cent. is fairer. In order to find the amount of reward at any efficiency, read off the efficiency on the bottom line, run a pencil along the line corresponding to this efficiency until it touches the graph, then run the pencil along horizontally until it reaches the vertical scale. Read off the percentage of reward on the vertical scale. It will be seen at once that any efficiency below the reward point means that no reward is earned, but that there is no reduction of day wages. (The Taylor and Gantt methods are exceptions to this rule.) The diagram on p. 88 is a descriptive one. The first column shows wages plus reward on a wage basis of 8d. per hour. The second column shows wages plus reward on a wage basis of 10d. per hour. The third column shows the proportion of the reward to the day wage for any efficiency, the day wage being considered 100 per cent. The efficiencies are shown along the bottom line, and the 100 per cent. efficiency line is dotted. [Illustration: DESCRIPTIVE DIAGRAM] Two methods of wage payment are plotted on this diagram, the full line being Reward System No. 1, and the dotted line the Taylor System. For convenience the following diagrams are enlarged: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and the Emerson diagrams consist of the rectangle ABCD, and the Taylor and Gantt diagrams consist of the rectangle EFGH. The Rowan diagram is to the same scale as the Taylor and Gantt diagrams. The relation between the vertical and horizontal scales has also been altered to make the readings clearer. (_a_) REWARD SYSTEM NO. 1. In this method, reward begins at 62·5 per cent., and half the time saved is paid for until standard time is reached. At that point and above it two-thirds of the time saved is paid for. Reward begins early, and increases definitely until standard time is reached. Then there is a considerable jump, and after that the reward goes on regularly at a higher rate than before. This method is, in the opinion of the writer, the best of all reward payments, and carries out the spirit of reward principles better than any other. The worker gets some reward, however little, and there is a direct incentive to reach 100 per cent. efficiency owing to the rapid increase of reward at that point. If he gets nothing, then he either feels ashamed of his laziness, or, what is more likely, he inquires into the reason why he has received no reward. This is just what the employer wants, as it discovers inefficiencies in connection with machinery or supplies or with other processes or routines. At the same time, an inaccurate time study neither penalises the worker too much on the one hand, nor causes excessive reward on the other. Yet again, the worker always gets his day rate even though his efficiency falls below the reward point. It is eminently suitable for both employer and worker. [Illustration: N^o. 1] (_b_) REWARD SYSTEM NO. 2. In this case the reward consists of payment for half the time saved, and reaches 30 per cent. increase on the wage rate at 100 per cent. efficiency. It is suitable for many classes of work, and neither worker nor employer suffer too much in the event of an inaccurate time study. Reward begins early and is a direct incentive to efficiency, but there is not the same urge towards the 100 per cent. line as in the case of System No. 1. Usually there is an extra bonus given, say 5 per cent., to those reaching standard time, and this takes the form of a lump sum, so that the angle of the line of increase is not interfered with. [Illustration: N^o. 2] (_c_) REWARD SYSTEM NO. 3. Reward in this case begins at 80 per cent. efficiency and all the time saved is paid for. It is a method suitable for high-class workers and necessitates a very accurate time study. It needs a decided effort to get reward, but once reward begins it increases rapidly. An inaccurate time study means either little or no reward if the inaccuracy results in increasing the difficulty of the job; while if it makes the job easy, then excessive rewards are earned. There is usually an extra bonus of 10 per cent. when standard time is reached. The system is suitable for automatic work where there cannot be a great variation in efficiency, and where the operations are to a large extent taken out of the hands of the worker. This method of payment is now adopted by Mr. Allingham after conference with trade-union officials, as it gives the worker the whole of the time saved. [Illustration: N^o. 3] (_d_) REWARD SYSTEM NO. 4. This is a diagram illustrating the example given in the foregoing description of the reward system. Reward begins at 75 per cent. efficiency, and when standard efficiency is reached the proportion of reward to job rate is 33-1/3 per cent. At this point a bonus of 5 per cent. is given, and the line of reward above this point is parallel to the line below it, but 5 per cent. higher. All the time saved is paid for, and from this point of view it is more satisfactory to the worker. Diagrams 1 to 4 are similar in principle to the Halsey bonus method, the vital difference being that Halsey bases his standard time on the average time taken under ordinary day or piece work conditions instead of on a time study. [Illustration: N^o. 4] (_e_) THE TAYLOR SYSTEM. This is the system advocated by Mr. Taylor, the originator of scientific management, and hence of the Reward System. A certain piece rate is paid until standard time is reached. At that point there is a jump to another higher rate, say from 10d. to 14d., a jump of 40 per cent. The worker gets this increase for all the work done, and the increased rate is paid on the rest of the work. The worker makes strenuous efforts to reach 100 per cent. efficiency because of the great increase, and also because he suffers directly when he fails to obtain it. The task set is so high that only highly skilled and rapid workers can reach it, but the reward is also high. A good man can earn as much as from 60 per cent. to 100 per cent. of his wages. The system is one that weeds out the inefficient and the moderately efficient. It is only satisfactory to highly skilled men, the élite of the workers, and its use is therefore limited as most men will not work under it. Its greatest fault is that it penalises the worker too much for inefficiency. A man who regularly attains 90 per cent. efficiency would be considered a fair worker in most shops, but under this system he would not only receive no reward, but he would only receive 90 per cent. of his day wages. The rate must jump at least 40 per cent. at 100 per cent. efficiency, otherwise the method is not so advantageous as some of the other methods, while it is much more difficult to earn reward. [Illustration: TAYLOR] (_f_) The Gantt System. This method is very similar to the Taylor System, except that the worker is not penalised so much if he fails to reach standard time. A large increase in the piece rate is given when 100 per cent. efficiency is reached. For all time taken in excess of standard the worker gets three-quarters of his wage rate instead of the whole of it. As an example, suppose the standard time of a job be 10 hours and the worker takes 12 hours. He is paid full-day rate on 10 hours, and three-quarters the day rate on 2 hours. At 10d. per hour this amounts to-- d. 10 hours at 10d. = 100 2 " " 7-1/2d. = 15 ---- 115 for 12 hours' pay, which is equal to 9-1/2d. per hour. The efficiency is (10/12) � 100 = 83·3 per cent. The sloping line below the day rate line shows the hourly rate at various efficiencies. After 100 per cent. efficiency is reached, the reward is just the same as in the Taylor System. The advantage of this system over the Taylor System is that the loss for inefficiency is not heavy, yet it is enough to make the worker endeavour to reach standard time. This, again, is a method only suitable for highly skilled workers. [Illustration: GANTT] (_g_) THE EMERSON SYSTEM. In order to arrive at a gradually increasing bonus line, Mr. Emerson took a point on the wage line at 66·6 per cent. efficiency, and another on the 100 per cent. efficiency line at 20 per cent. bonus. The bonuses between these two efficiencies were then arranged so that for each 1 per cent. increase in efficiency the bonus increased in greater proportion. The resulting diagram is a curve which is approximately a parabola. Beyond 20 per cent. efficiency the worker gets paid for all time saved. By this method reward begins fairly early, so that all workers should be able to get some reward. It progresses very slowly from 66·6 per cent., and at 80 per cent. is about 3-1/4 per cent. of the wage rate. Then it increases more quickly, and at 90 per cent. efficiency it is 10 per cent. of the wage rate, at 95 per cent. efficiency it is about 15 per cent., and at 100 per cent. efficiency it is 20 per cent. One thing must be noticed: The reward above 100 per cent. efficiency is based on standard time, and not on reward time. This means that the worker gets a bonus of 20 per cent. on the time worked, and in addition to that the full rate of wages for the time he saves above standard time. As an example, take a job with a standard time of 20 hours: [Illustration: EMERSON] _Case I._ Suppose job done in 22 hours. Efficiency 91 per cent. Bonus (see diagram) 10 " 10 per cent. of 22 hours 2·2 hours. Reward: 2·2 hours at 10d. 22 pence. Wages: 22 hours at 10d. 220 " Total payment for 22 hours 242 " Hourly rate for job (wages + reward) 11 " _Case II._ Suppose job done in 18 hours. Efficiency 111 per cent. 20 per cent. on 18 hours 3·6 hours. Time saved (20-18) 2·0 " Reward: 5·6 hours at 10d. 56 pence. Wages: 18 hours at 10d. 180 " Total payment for 18 hours 236 " Hourly rate for job (wages + reward) 13·1 " This method enables the worker to get reward at a comparatively low efficiency. The reward is not much to begin with, but it is enough to induce the worker to try and get a higher efficiency. When standard time is reached, the reward is not enough, but beyond that it increases rapidly. (_h_) THE ROWAN SYSTEM. This method differs from all others in the variation of reward earned. It is extremely simple in calculation, as the worker gets 10 per cent. increase in wages for every 10 per cent. of time saved. He cannot save more than, say, 99 per cent. of the time on the job, because when 100 per cent. is saved it means that the job is done in no time at all. [Illustration: N^o. 1] [Illustration: N^o. 2] Suppose the time allowed is 10 hours. If it be done in 5 hours, 50 per cent. of the time has been saved, and the worker gets 50 per cent. increase of wages for the 5 hours he has worked. If the job be done in over 10 hours, day wage, say 10d. per hour, is paid for all the time taken. If done in 9 hours, 11d. per hour is paid; if in 8 hours, 1s. per hour; if in 7 hours, 13d. per hour; and so on. The efficiency is the standard time (time allowed) divided by the time taken. If a line be plotted of efficiencies and rates-paid, the line is not a straight one, as in other cases, but a curve as shown in the diagram. Reward rises rapidly at first, but it gets less and less as efficiency increases, which is in direct opposition to reward principles. The method has little to recommend it except the simplicity of reckoning the reward payment. It will be seen that the employer cannot possibly overpay the worker, no matter what his efficiency. No. 1 is the ordinary diagram, 100 per cent. efficiency being the point where bonus begins. This point is based on an estimated time, not on a time study. No. 2 is a diagram drawn to compare the Rowan System with the Reward System. Assuming that the worker under the Rowan System will usually earn 20 per cent. in excess of his day wages, this has been used to determine the 100 per cent. efficiency line, and the curve has been drawn as before. (_i_) DAY RATE. The thick horizontal line marks the day rate of payment for work done. It is the same at all efficiencies, and there is no inducement whatever for a worker to increase his efficiency. Under such conditions the average worker will only do enough work to enable him to keep his job, and will resist all attempts to find out whether the work may be done more efficiently. (_j_) PIECE WORK. The straight piece work system means that the worker gets so much for each piece produced no matter how long it takes to produce it. Therefore the faster the work is done the more money is earned. Efficiency is based on the quantity a worker ought to do in order to earn the standard rate of wages. Assuming he gets 10d. an hour, then the payment for the work done ought to equal 10d. when working at the normal rate--namely, 100 per cent. efficiency. If less than this is earned, efficiency falls below 100 per cent.; if more is earned, efficiency is over 100 per cent. The sloping line shows the earnings per hour at different efficiencies. There is no scientific basis on which to determine the proper time of the job, and there is great inequality in the prices of different jobs, some being easy, some very difficult. For the disadvantages of the system, see p. 6. [Illustration: DAY WORK. PIECE WORK. FORD SYSTEM.] (_k_) THE FORD SYSTEM. The Ford System is illustrated in the diagram on p. 108. The amount received by the worker is the same no matter what his efficiency may be, but wages are 50 per cent. higher than the standard day rate. For this reason the firm adopting this system has a far greater choice of workers than other firms, all the best labour gravitating to the firm. The worker is, of course, expected to submit to the conditions prevailing in the factory, and to do the work allotted to him in the stated time and with the degree of accuracy stipulated. Needless to say, the amount of work expected is far greater than under ordinary day work conditions. This system has two serious disadvantages, the first being that it is of extremely limited application, and the second that it necessitates an exceptionally high degree of organisation if it is to be satisfactory. With regard to the first point, the system depends entirely on paying wages considerably higher than the average of the district or country in which the factory is situated. This high wages inducement gives the firm the pick of the workers and holds the men to their positions. It is obvious that only one or two firms in each trade can do this. If the system became general, it would mean that wages would be increased all round and that men need no longer be afraid of being discharged. They could leave and get equally high wages elsewhere. Under such circumstances all the advantages of the system would disappear, and wages would be reduced all round until some firm began again. Dealing with the second point, production will not be increased, or will be increased very little, if the men are left to themselves, and therefore a high degree of organisation is necessary. It means time study, planning, constant improvement in methods and machines, and all those incidentals described herein under Reward System, but with an overhanging threat of dismissal that is absent from the Reward System. The firm must have a standard product if the system is to be economically successful, and each man must do one job only and do it in the manner indicated. Team work is the essence of the system. It is quite impossible to obtain any beneficial result from the Ford System if applied to an average factory. Men cannot produce anything approaching their maximum capacity unless the work is thoroughly well organised, and waste of time, labour, and material, eliminated. And no matter how much the men desire to be worthy of the increased wages, they cannot be blamed if the organisation fails. The only incentive to high production is, of course, the threat of dismissal. If the Ford System is to be successful, therefore-- 1. The organisation must be as keen as, or even keener than, that of the Reward System. 2. The firm must have a highly specialised business. 3. Efficiency must be maintained under threat of dismissal. 4. The system must be adopted by only one or two firms in each trade. Where these conditions prevail the system should be highly successful. APPENDIX A FLOATING WAGE RATE The following suggestion for a floating wage rate would prove a perpetual automatic incentive to continuously high efficiency. It consists of a variation of, say, 6s. per week in the wage rate of every class of worker, the lowest wages in the class being the trade-union rate, and the highest wages being 6s. above the trade-union rate. Every quarter-day each worker who reaches an average efficiency of, say, 95 per cent. or over during the previous three months for a minimum number of reward hours worked, say 500, will receive automatically an increase of 1s. per week in his wages for the next three months. If he keeps up this efficiency for eighteen months he will reach the highest wage rate. The wages of every worker who fails to reach an average efficiency of, say, 85 per cent. during the previous three months will automatically drop 1s. per week until he is on the lowest rate. Under these conditions a worker on the lowest rate will try to reach a higher one, and if he is on a higher rate he will always try to maintain his efficiency. A drop in efficiency means a direct loss to the worker, and the worker would probably complain of the conditions of his work. If other workers can keep up their efficiencies on the same jobs, the complaint is groundless; while if other workers cannot keep their efficiencies, it is obvious that something is wrong, and the conditions will be investigated. The variation of the wages being automatic, no one can complain of unfairness. The advantage of making the change every three months instead of a longer period would mean that every worker would take a live interest in his continuous efficiency, and would not be content with a good week one week and a medium week the next. And, again, a good man who dropped down owing to unforeseen circumstances would only be down for three months, while a medium worker would always respond to the incentive, and when he reached another step up he would make great efforts not to go down again. There would be an automatic selection of the best men, and favouritism would be reduced to almost nothing. A foreman could not prevent a man getting the increase when his efficiency proved that he had earned it, and he could not push on an inferior man because of personal friendship. Should a high wage man leave, then he would have to come back on the lowest wage rate if he wanted to come back. This would induce men to keep their situations. Should a man be discharged, the same thing would happen. But a high wage man is of far more value to a firm than a low wage man, and he would not be discharged unless discharged permanently for some fault. If a firm thought to lower wages by discharging all the high efficiency men, and then take them on again at a lower wage, that firm would immediately lose caste, and no high efficiency man would work there. A high efficiency man can get a job anywhere. This floating wage rate would be quite apart from the question of reward, and the job rates for reward work would be the same for all workers no matter what their wage rate was. BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious errors were corrected. Page 46: accordng changed to according Page 55: unbiassed changed to unbiased Page 59: introdution changed to introduction Page 111: efficiences changed to efficiencies 
52959	----	Women's Wages "Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." Women's Wages BY WILLIAM SMART, M.A. LECTURER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY IN QUEEN MARGARET COLLEGE AND IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINCENT STREET PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY 1892 A paper read before the PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW, 9th Dec., 1891. WOMEN'S WAGES. It is not necessary to prove that women's wages are, as a rule, much under those of men. In the textile trades of Great Britain, which constitute the largest department of women's work, the average of women's wages is probably--in Scotland it is certainly--about ten shillings per week. This labour is not by any means unskilled, as anyone who has ever seen a spinning or weaving factory knows. Twenty shillings per week, however, is a low average for a man possessing any degree of skill whatever. In a paper read before the British Association at Cardiff, Mr. Sidney Webb gave some valuable statistics on the subject. Women workers he divides into four classes--manual labourers, routine mental workers, artistic workers, and intellectual workers. The two latter classes may be dismissed in a word. Sex has little to do in determining the wages of their work. A novelist, a poet, a writer of any sort, is under no disadvantage that she is a woman, while in many departments of artistic work women have an obvious advantage. But in the third class, that of routine mental workers, Mr. Webb finds that women's earnings are invariably less than men's. In the Post Office and Telegraph Departments, in the Savings Banks, and in the Government offices generally, where women do precisely similar work with men, and are sometimes, as in ledger work, acknowledged to do it better, they invariably earn much less. The largest experiment yet made in this direction is that of the Prudential Life Assurance Office, which began in 1872 to substitute women clerks for the lower grades of men clerks. There are now 243 ladies employed in routine clerical work, which they are said to do more efficiently than men. The salaries run thus:--£32 for the first year, £42 for the second, £52 for the third, and £60 on promotion--probably half of what men might be expected to accept. In Glasgow lady typists and shorthand writers are offering their services from 9.30 till 5, with one hour for dinner, for £25. In the teaching profession women almost invariably receive lower remuneration than men. The Education Department Report of 1888-90 gives the average wage of teachers throughout England and Wales as £119 for men and £75 for women. Similarly low salaries are found under the London School Board, in the Secondary Schools, and in girls' schools generally as compared with boys' schools. The exception noted by Mr. Webb is interesting and, I think, suggestive. In the United States, where women teachers often alternate with men in the same school, the salaries of women are habitually lower. But in the State of Wyoming, where women have a vote, the salaries are equal. Coming now to the manual workers, Mr. Webb takes the statistics furnished by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labour in 1884. These give the average of 17,430 employés in 110 establishments in Great Britain, and 35,902 employés in 210 establishments in Massachusetts, representing in both cases 24 different manufacturing industries. The women's wages show a proportion of one-third to two-thirds the amount earned by men, the nearest approach to equality being in textiles--cotton goods, hosiery, and carpetings in Great Britain, woollen and worsted goods in Massachusetts. Without going further into statistics, I think we may assume the fact of a great disparity between men's and women's wages, and go on to ask the reason of it. If we put the question in general terms, Why is a woman's wage less than that of a man? there are some answers that spring to the lips of everyone. First, it is said that it is a mere question of supply and demand. Second, that women are not usually the sole bread-winners in the family to which they belong. Third, that their standard of living is lower than that of men. Fourth, that their work is not so good as that of men. Fifth, that the commodities made by women have, generally, a less value in the market. There is truth in all these answers, but I propose to show that each of them is at best a half truth, raising as many questions as it settles. The first answer given is that women's wages are low because of the equation of supply and demand. Only certain branches of industry are open to women. In these there is a great number of women competing for employment. They are free to take work or refuse it. But over the industrial community there are found enough women willing to take the low wage which employers find they can offer, and free competition determines the level. If two women run after one employer, wages will fall; if two employers run after one woman, wages will rise. Those who think this answer an easy and satisfactory one must be unaware of the unsettling of many problems since Mill's day. Mill had no less than three laws of value--that of the Equation of Supply and Demand, that of Cost of Production, and that of Differential Cost of Production. The former law, he said, applied to goods of which the quantity was naturally, or artificially, or temporarily, limited, and it was, besides, the sole determinant of the value of labour. But then Mill was assuming a definite Wage Fund--a fixed portion of the circulating capital of the country predestined for the payment of wages. This definite sum, and no more, was to employ all the workers, however many they might be. If, then, wages fell, the reason was obvious--there were too many workers. Wherever Mill touches on low wages we have a sermon on the evils of over-population, and his favourite explanation did not fail him here. "Where employers take full advantage of competition, the low wages of women are a proof that the employments are overstocked." But this is logical only if "overstocking" is the sole possible cause of low wages--which might be doubted even under a Wage Fund theory. But the Wage Fund is now one of the antiquities of political economy. Since Jevons we have looked for the measure of value in marginal utility; for the value of productive goods in their marginal utility as instruments of production; and for the value of labour in the value of its products, and not in any predetermined fund divided out among a variable number of workers by the action of supply and demand. And where invention is constantly widening and strengthening our power over natural resources and increasing the productiveness of labour, the presumption is against the idea that over-population is even a strong factor in modern wages. There is, indeed, no formula in political economy on which the modern economist looks with more suspicion than that of Supply and Demand. The operation of supply and demand as determining market price is, of course, perfectly definite; but to say that any concrete price is fixed by the equation of supply and demand is a mere statement of an observed fact which says little, unless one knows and defines accurately what is involved in the "supply," what is involved in the "demand," and how those two factors stand related to each other. The price of railway stock to-day is determined by supply and demand; the price of a man's labour, whether unattached or working under restriction of the Trade Union, is determined by supply and demand; the earnings of the poor soul who sells her body on the streets are determined by supply and demand. What does this formula tell us unless we know the complex phenomena which determine the supply of railways and the demand for transit, the supply of labourers and the demand for work, the supply of hapless women and the demand for human souls? To say, then, that women's wages are low because there are enough women who take the low wage, is little more than to say that wages are low because people are paid low wages. We have still to ask: What are the factors, or influences, or motives, that make women take a wage below that of men, and what are the factors that make employers offer the low wage? Apart from the general insufficiency of this first answer, it is enough to remember that the determination of wage by this mechanical equation of supply and demand could be tolerable only under absolutely free competition, which would involve perfect mobility of labour. But labour has this unique characteristic among all commodities that, physically, it is not mobile; historically, it has never been mobile; and ethically, it should not be mobile. A man's labour is--and should be--his life, not the mere instrument of providing a living; and, therefore, in the question of wages it is impossible to ignore the ethical consideration. Civilised society could not hold together if the workman and workwoman could only get their fair share of the world's boundless wealth by changing their trade, their residence, or their country, as a higher wage offered itself. The second reason given is that, women not being as a rule the sole bread-winners of the family, their wage is auxiliary to that of its head; the woman's wage is, as it were, "found" money in the household purse. Underlying this statement is an assumption which is at least questionable. It is that the economic or wage-earning unit is the _family_. This is an old-time idea which, however beautiful and desirable, is a little out of place in the conditions to which the factory system has brought us. Once-a-day it was recognised that children had a far greater claim on the persons who brought them into the world than we now allow. It was thought that the one wage should be earned by the head of the house, and should be large enough to maintain the wife and daughters without outside work, and to educate and apprentice the sons till they were able to hive off for themselves. Any money earned by the junior members of the family was, in this case, supplementary, and determined by a different law. Perhaps in time we may come back to this view. Mr. Frederic Harrison is sanguine that we shall. But meantime the factory system has changed all that, and it is scarcely worth while looking for laws of wage in a condition of family life which does not now obtain. Putting aside the objections that many married women are not members of a family, and that many married women and widows are the sole bread-winners of the family, it is perhaps sufficient to point out that this answer would not be taken as explaining or justifying a low wage among what we call the "better classes." It would not be counted an excuse or reason for a publisher asking a lady novelist to accept a lower price for her books, or for a patient offering a lower fee to a lady doctor. If the sex of the author, artist, musician, doctor, intellectual or artistic worker generally, has nothing to do with her remuneration, why should sex determine the wage of the factory girl? More clearly does this objection emerge when we consider the third answer. It is said that the inferiority of women's wage is owing to their standard of living being less than that of men. It is true that a woman, as a rule, eats less, drinks less, and smokes less. Tea to her is, unfortunately, both meat and drink, and it would be counted extravagance in a working woman if she took to eating twopence worth of sweets a day as balancing the man's half ounce of tobacco. But I am afraid a woman's standard of life differs from a man's rather in its items than in its cost. I have yet to learn that her standard of dress is less than ours, and I am quite sure she takes more medicines, and spends more on doctors' bills. As in the former case, we change our view according as we look at different classes. Among the "upper" classes, as we call them, the woman's standard of life is very much higher than that of the man. It is only because the poor seamstress, when put to it, will live on a shilling a-day, while a man will become a tramp or go to the workhouse first, that we say the woman requires less. In a word, it is not that the physical and mental needs of woman are less than the physical and mental needs of man, but that many women, for some reason or other, can be got to accept a wage that will only keep them alive. If so, the answer, translated, simply runs: women's wages are less than men's because, for some reason, women accept less. It is to be noted, however, as very significant of the popular ideas about wage, that the second and third answers just given account for the standard of women's wages by the _wants_ of the worker. A woman's wage is low because she does not _require_ a high wage, whether it be because her father partly supports her, or because her maintenance does not require so much. Now it may be said in passing that it is quite against our modern ideas to represent wage as regulated by wants. Under a socialistic régime, indeed, the wages of all might be thrown into a common purse, and divided out according to the wants and necessities of each; but under an individualist régime, like the present, what the worker _is_ is nothing, what the worker _does_ is everything. To assess the value of goods by the cost to the human life which makes them is to take ground on which the world is not prepared to follow the economist whatever it may say to the moralist. It is not the cost in killed and wounded that decides the battle. To the purchaser it is indifferent whether the cloth he buys wore out the fingers and heart of a woman, or only took a little tear and wear out of a machine. The one question he asks is: How will the cloth wear? _Caveat venditor._ If a man-worker, then, is supposed to get a high wage when he produces much, a low wage when he produces little, why should a woman's wage be determined by another principle? We cannot hunt with the individualist hounds and run with the socialist hare. The next two reasons, accordingly, put the low wages of women on quite different and more scientific ground, namely, that of the work they produce. Of these the fourth says that women's work is not so good as men's. As a statement of fact this is probably true. It is no disparagement to the sex to acknowledge that, if women are necessarily off work several days in the year because of little ailments common to them, if they are insufficiently nourished relatively to their needs, or are naturally more delicate than men, their wage at the week's end will be less than that paid to the average man who scarcely knows what a headache means. Or, if the woman is compelled by law to leave the factory at six, while the man can stay and work overtime; or, if she is driven to the street for an hour at meal-time, while the man can gulp his tea within the walls and get back to his work half-an-hour earlier; we can see that the wage of the man will be higher by the time and the overtime he works. Similarly, if it requires not only skill but strength to work a heavy loom; or, if a man can do two jobs, the one alternative to the other; or, if he can "set" and "point" his tools as well as work his machine, while a woman has to go to the mechanic's shop for these things; in cases like these--and they are, of course, very many--we require no answer to our question. It is simply a case of better wages for better work--better in quantity, or in quality, or, at least, in advantage to the employer. That is to say, if men and women are working side by side at the same trades, and under similar conditions, it requires little explanation to say why the wages of men should be 20s. and the wages of women, say, 15s. If this were all, the inferiority of women's wage would not be primarily a question of sex at all; it would be very much a question of unskilled labour as compared with skilled labour. Women would get lower wages than men for the same reason as the dock labourer gets lower wages than the artisan, and the artisan than the physician. The world might suffer nothing in pocket by adopting the principle--which, however, I am afraid is yet far from general acceptance--of Equal Wages for Equal Work, whatever the sex of the worker. And here it is that Mr. Sydney Webb deserves thanks for having accented a fact which we all indeed knew, but of which few of us saw the bearing. It is that men and women do not, as a rule, produce similar work alongside of each other, and that any argument which compares the wages of both sexes, without taking account of this fact, quite misses the mark. To recur to the facts adduced by Mr. Webb: it seems to be impossible, he says, to discover any but a few instances in which men and women do precisely similar work in the same place and at the same epoch. In the tailoring trade, for instance, men do one class of garment, women another. In the cigar trade women make the lower-priced goods. So in all the Birmingham trades. In paper mills men do the heavier, women the lighter work. In cotton spinning, the mule tenders, called, _par excellence_, "spinners," are men, while women take all the preparatory processes. But there is one exceptional trade where this does not hold. "Weaving," says Mr. Webb, "appears to be nearly always paid at equal rates to men and women, whatever the material or locality." This seems to hold as regards the weaving industry generally, from the hand-loom weavers of Ireland to the carpet weavers of our own country; and it extends also to other countries, as, for instance, to the cotton and silk weaving in France. That is to say, as I understand, that the piece-work rate is the same, although in special cases strength may give the man an advantage in handling heavy looms. But what is most remarkable is that, over the great weaving district of Lancashire, not only are the rates of piece-work the same, but men and women do exactly the same work side by side in the same sheds, practically under the same Factory Act restrictions, and earn equal wages, namely, an average from 17s. 11d. in Carlisle to 21s. 4d. in Burnley. This, however, is distinctly and notably an exception. Women compositors, for instance, in London, receive uniformly lower piece-work rates for exactly similar work; for the same work the union man gets 8½d., the non-union man 7½d., and the woman only 5½d. As an exception, however, we shall have reason to recur to the Lancashire weavers later. We thus come naturally to the fifth answer given to our question. It points to the fact that the kind of commodities made by women, or in women's trades, have, generally, a less value in the market--they are "cheap" goods. Even as a mere statement of fact this proposition is very loose. What are cheap goods? In the absence of any absolute standard of value, goods can be called cheap only as comparing present prices with prices of similar goods in the past, or in consideration of their cost of production as compared with other goods. If the former is meant, all modern manufactured goods are cheap, and this would not explain the lower wage of one sex. If the latter, it is prejudging the whole question. But to make this statement an explanation, and suggest that cheap prices are the cause of low wages, is surely to turn the causal connection the wrong way about; for the value of goods such as we are speaking of depends, according to the recognised theory, on cost of production, and of this cost of production wages is a large part. It is true that the connection between prices and wages is one on which economic science is somewhat slow to speak. We may not now be so confident as Mill was when he put the proposition "high prices make high wages" among common erroneous notions. And we may not be prepared to say with him that the effect of prices on wages is only indirect, through increased profits adding to capital. But we are not prepared, I think, to go in face of all our old faith, and declare that the _prices_ of goods determine their cost of production! But as a fallacy is not usually put in a bald form, we must consider the concrete case in which it is assumed. Let us take an industry--say a branch of the textile trade--where labour constitutes a great part of the costs of production. Suppose that for many years low prices have ruled for the particular class of goods made. Any attempt to raise wages here meets with an obvious criticism. It seems most plausible to say: It is the wants of the people which have established this demand. The present price is all the consumers can or will pay, and the low wage is all that these prices can afford. This is probably quite true. Once the prices are down, it is difficult to see how wages can be higher. But what brought down the prices? Is it ever the case that the world of consumers, practically, go to the workers and ask them to accept low wages on the ground that they can only afford low prices? Experience does not bear this out. So far as I know, the initiative of reducing prices, as a rule, comes from the producers, not from the public. The history of prices of most commodities of large use is something like this. They are at first dear, and only a small circle of consumers can afford them. As the production becomes organised, and capital brings more and more appliances to bear on the manufacture, the goods become cheaper, and a wider circle of demand is found. But below each circle of actual demand there are endless and widening circles of potential demand ready to take any particular commodity if it can be had cheaper. Thus, as, up to a certain point, large production is cheap production, there is always an inducement to the manufacturer and merchant to produce more cheaply. If they can reduce prices, and get down to a lower circle of consumers, it is well known in practical experience that the increase of trade which follows is out of all proportion to the degree of the reduction of price. But when this movement has gone on for some time, and goods have become very cheap, the demand has a way of appearing imperative, especially if these goods have entered into the standard of comfort of great classes. The goods become "necessary;" the low prices meet a "natural" demand; and these prices are just enough to yield an average profit to the employer--for profit must have its average, or capital, as we are often warned, will fly the country. This is all quite true. The fallacy emerges only when it is suggested that the low prices are the cause of low wages. Here there are two possibilities: (1) All the reduction of cost may have been effected by perfecting machinery, organising production, and bringing producer and consumer together--that is to say, all the cheapening may have come from the side of capital. In this case there is no room for laying low wages at the door of cheapened prices. Or (2) as wages constitute one of the chief costs in all production--in the United States, for instance, they make up on an average a quarter of the manufacturing cost--they may have been reduced along with the capital expenses, and the low prices be partly due to these low wages. What this does prove is, of course, that it was the reduction of wages, among other things, that made the reduction of prices possible. But what it was proposed to prove was the converse proposition, that the low prices made the low wages! To put it, then, in the plausible way, that the reduced prices "do not allow" of higher wages, is simply a very pretty specimen of the argument known to the vulgar as "putting the cart before the horse." What, however, we may very well learn from the wide acceptance of this view is that it is a very difficult thing to raise wages once they are down; and it may suggest that employers have some responsibility in reducing, and the public some responsibility in giving excuse for them being reduced. Thus we seem to be still without an adequate answer to the question: Why is a woman's wage less than that of a man? But the last answer, unsatisfactory as it is in itself, seems to me to have a value in something further that it suggests. It seems to draw attention to a notable fact, and to point the way to a new formulation of the whole question. The fact is this, that women are in almost exclusive possession of certain branches of trade, and that, in these branches, the commodities made are recognised by public opinion as being "cheap." The observation of most of us must confirm Mr. Webb's conclusion, that there are certain trades where men do not compete with women; indeed, that there is a well marked relegation of women-workers towards certain ill-paid trades; while, at the same time, there is as well marked a movement of men towards the better-paid trades. If this is so, the difference of wages between men and women takes a new and definite aspect. It is not a difference of wage between workers of various degrees of efficiency. It is very much a question of difference of wage between two non-competing groups, and of groups where the levels of wage are determined by a different law. The question is not: Why are men and women employed in equal work at unequal wages? but, Why are men and women employed in different groups of employment? and, comparing these two groups, Why is the wage level of skilled female labour lower even than that of unskilled male labour? The reasons may be found in observing a course of events constantly under our eyes. There are always certain trades where women are still competing more or less directly with men. In these, women are under certain disabilities of sex which make their work less remunerative or less profitable to their employers. They are, as I said, physically weaker; subject to little ailments which make them less regular in attendance; more liable to distraction of purpose; perhaps worse educated; and, probably, more slipshod in their methods. They get less wages because, either in quantity or quality or both, their work is not so good. This competition of the women tends to drag down wages for both sexes, and, as a consequence, men hive off to trades where there is more opportunity, or retain certain better-paid branches within trades, and certain trades or branches of trades are left to women. Whenever this is the case the women lose the advantage of competing with workers who will not accept wages under a certain level. Their disabilities, thus become cumulative, are taken advantage of by unthinking or unscrupulous employers, and all other employers are forced to follow. If tailors and tailoresses are working side by side making coats and vests indifferently, it is not difficult to understand why the men may earn 20s. to the women's 15s. But if, in time, the men get all the coats, and the women all the vests, we have a good reason why the women's wage goes down to 10s., while the men's remains at 20s. Or equally common is another course of events. A certain industry, we shall suppose, has been worked exclusively by men. By a "happy" invention machinery is introduced which can be tended perfectly well by women. For a little time the dead weight of custom will probably retain men to tend these machines, and the wage will certainly not fall below the average wage of men generally, which we shall, for simplicity's sake, put down at 20s. But, either gradually or as result perhaps of a dispute or strike on the part of the men, women are introduced to tend the machines. Does their pay bear any proportion to that of the men they replace? It is quite certain that the women's remuneration will not be determined by the 20s. wage which they displace, but will be fixed at something like 10s. If we ask why, the only answer given is that 10s. is the "customary wage" for women. People who have no practical experience are apt to think that economists are theorising in speaking of "customary" wage. It will be said that the steady replacing of hand labour by machinery, and of old machines by improved machines, breaks up the continuity of wages, and weakens the element of custom. A simple illustration from a trade I know very well will show how far this is true. In the cotton thread trade, spooling--that is, winding the thread on the small bobbin familiar to every work-basket--was for many years done by women sitting at single machines not unlike sewing machines, filling one spool at a time. The customary wage was sixpence per gross of 200-yard spools; a good worker could spool at least four gross per day, and make twelve shillings a week. As in all industries, machinery was gradually introduced by which cunning arrangements of mechanism did the greater part of the work; instead of turning out one spool at a time the girl now watched the machine turning out six, or nine, or twelve spools. When these machines were introduced, how were the wages determined? For a few weeks the girls were put on day wages, and when the machines were in good working order, and the average production per machine had been ascertained, the piece-work rate was fixed so as to allow of the girl making the same average wage as she did before. That is to say, if the new machine turned out in the same time six gross for every one gross turned out by the hand machine, the price of labour per gross was reduced from sixpence to one penny, and the wage continued at the customary level. So far as sacrifice or skill goes, there was no reason why the worker should get more, as, on the whole, it required less skill and attention to turn out the six gross than it did to turn out the one. Thus it is, I believe, over all the textile manufactures, with the exception, perhaps, of weaving. The introduction of new processes displaces labour, but the labour left does not get higher wages. This, then, is the first conclusion I would come to: that in more cases than we would believe the wage of women-workers is a "customary wage," fixed at a time when the world was poorer, and capital was more powerful. This conclusion is, I think, strengthened by the case which, at first sight, would seem to refute it. The great outstanding exception to low wages in women's industries is, as before noted, in the Lancashire weaving. There, not only are the rates of piece-work the same, but men and women do exactly the same work side by side, practically under the same Factory Act restrictions, and earn equal wages, namely, an average of from 17s. 1d. in Carlisle to 21s. 4d. in Burnley. But there is an exceptional circumstance in their case. It is that the women are in the same strong Trade Union with the men, and under the same obligations to the Union, and that any attempt to reduce the wages of the one sex would be resisted with the whole strength of both. But what if this Union were to break down? It is as certain as anything based on experience can be that in a few weeks, or even days, it would be possible for the employers to reduce the wages of the women-workers; that, rather than lose their work, women would consent to the reduction; that, as they accepted lower wages, men would drop off to other industries, and would cease to compete for the same work; and that, in a comparatively short time, power-loom weaving would be left, like its sister cotton-spinning, to women-workers exclusively, and wages fall to the general level of women's wage. For what we are apt to forget is the constant inducement before the employer to reduce women's wages. There are two ways in which a manufacturer can add to his profits. One is by getting up his prices, the other by reducing his costs. In the present state of competition we know what the chance of getting up prices is, unless there is some element of monopoly in the case, and even then it generally requires a combination or syndicate of makers. But the employer is always looking out for ways of reducing cost. Theoretically, the most obvious way of all is by reducing wages. In men's trades, where reductions of wage are jealously watched, employers think twice, however, before they try that particular reduction of cost. In many factories, again, women's wages are purely customary, and employers would not think of touching them. But in the factories where wages are customary and almost fixed, the wages are also _low_. If the customary wages in cotton-spinning were 16s. a week instead of 10s., I venture to think that employers, in times of keen competition, would be inclined to try a reduction. I mean that, if the customary level of women's wages is 10s., the reason why it does not go lower is chiefly because it cannot. And here, I think, we are at the root of the matter. In looking over the field of factory industries, in order to arrive at an average of women's wages, it has struck me that the variations from the average of 10s. a week are comparatively small. This is not an average made up from widely different wage-bills, and from widely varying individual wages, but from pay sheets that show small amounts of variation on one side or other. This definiteness of average wage seems to me most explicable on the supposition that women's wages are very near the only quite definite level that political economy has ever pointed out, the level of subsistence. There are two ways, known to theory, of determining wage. In a progressive society, where wealth is rapidly increasing, the tendency will be towards payments by _results_, that is to say, by value of product. Product being in this case the result of the co-operation of land, labour, and capital, the problem is to find the share in that product which is economically due to labour--that is to say, the share "attributable" to the efficacy of labour. In a poor or backward society, again, where labour and capital are struggling with an unfriendly environment, and the return to industry is still uncertain, the risk and the chances of speculation in the return are left to the only class who can take risks, the capitalists. England long ago passed from the latter to the former description of society, and of her increased wealth the men-workers have obtained, we may suppose, something like a share corresponding to the increased value of the joint product. But, owing to want of organisation of women-workers, it is yet possible to pay women by the other standard--namely, according to their _wants_--and to keep them at the same level of wage as they were content to take half-a-century ago. It seems to me, in fact, that while men's wages, unless in the case of unskilled workers, are determined ultimately by the value of product which is economically "attributable" to their work, women's wages are determined by the older and harsher law. "The wages, at least of single women," said Mill, "must be equal to their support, but need not be more than equal to it; the minimum in their case is the pittance absolutely required for the sustenance of one human being.... The _ne plus ultra_ of low wages, therefore (except during some transitory crisis, or in some decaying employment), can hardly occur in any occupation which the person employed has to live by, except the occupations of women." But, indeed, it is a lower depth to which women's wages have fallen than the "sustenance of one human being." There may be persons that think 10s. a week is sufficient to keep a grown-up factory girl, living by herself, in healthy and decent life. It certainly is true that in many cases it has to serve till she accepts the release of marriage; but surely the marriage of the English girl, factory or otherwise, is a matter too serious to have the escape from a miserable wage added to its attractions. It is sufficiently obvious that this level of wage was never determined by sustenance, but by the competition of the "single woman" with married women and widows who will take any wage rather than see their children starve, with girls sent into the factory to add their few pence per week to the earnings of the head of the house, and with children. If this is so, what are the remedies? They are, briefly, organisation and enlightenment of the public conscience. First, organisation is necessary to protect women against employers and against themselves--the one no less than the other. The true enemies of the workers' organisations are, on the one hand, the grasping employer, and, on the other, the "blackleg" worker. By the grasping employer I mean the employer who really wishes to make a gain at the expense of the people whom he employs; it is easy to see why he dislikes the trade union. But the good employer--if he could only lift his horizon a little--would see that he requires the help of the trade union, inasmuch as he cannot keep up the wages if the workers do not assist him. The best, the most amiable and just manufacturer, must sell his goods at the same prices as his rivals. If these rivals, by securing low-priced labour, can reduce the prices of their goods, he is almost forced to reduce his wages. Consequently, if the trade unions could prevent low-priced labour being offered they would most materially assist the great majority of employers--for I am sanguine enough to believe that most employers are anxious to pay their workers as high a wage as they can. But the best employers are helpless to remedy the evils of a class of workers who are hopelessly at war among themselves, and ready to take each a lower wage than the other. Where a girl, coming out of a comfortable home, is willing to take ten shillings a week because to her it is "pocket money;" where the mother of five will take eight shillings because her husband is out of work and she is the sole bread-winner; where the mother of ten will accept six shillings because she has so many mouths to feed; where the girl just in her teens will take four shillings because she is a little girl--where all these different women, with different motives, are competing against each other for equal work, there is no remedy but the severe one of _preventing_ these poor souls from dragging down the wage of each other. If women are ever to get a fair day's wage on the ground of a fair day's _work_, as distinguished from the wage determined by a woman's necessity, it will only be by the old remedy of combination and the protection of the average working woman against the more helpless members of her own sex. But, second, enlightenment of the public conscience must supplement organisation. It should not be difficult to convince educated people that women's work should be paid on the same principle as that of men--that is to say, according to their product, and not according to their wants; and to make them pay, or insist on the worker being paid, equal wages for equal work. But the point on which enlightenment does seem very much needed is that of the supposed necessity for low wages. I do not know how there could be any such necessity unless it was the case that labour and capital, like land in some countries, had entered on the stage of decreasing returns, and had, moreover, gone so far on that down grade that the additional returns grew more slowly than population--and no one has even suggested such an idea. I have already tried to point out the fallacy that low prices explain low wages. It is, however, perhaps advisable to note that they do not even, to any great extent, condone, much less justify them. Probably we are all familiar with an argument like this: Consider, it is said, the great fact that calico is twopence a yard. Every woman in England may now be clad in cotton fabrics which, a century ago, were beyond the purchasing power of a queen. Beware how women are encouraged to ask and to stand for higher wages, or calico will again be put beyond the reach of any but queens. I confess I never heard this caution without remembering Carlyle's indignant reply:--"We cannot have prosperous cotton trades at the expense of keeping the Devil a partner in them." The weakness of it will become obvious if we carry the matter a little further and argue that if we can succeed in reducing women's wages still more, say, to 5s. per week, we shall have a considerable reduction in calico, and bring it within the reach of still poorer people. It is Dickens, I think, who speaks of a horse that was fed on a system which would have reduced his cost of upkeep to a straw a day, and would, no doubt, have made him a very rampageous animal at that if, unfortunately, the horse had not died! The idea that cheapness of goods makes up for everything in the workers' circumstances is, perhaps, the most deplorable of current fallacies. It is no less than that of mistaking the whole end and aim of industry. The goal of economic effort is not accumulation of wealth, but the support of wealthy human beings--not "goods," as Aristotle told us long ago, but the "good life." True economical cheapening of production is cheapening of natural powers _outside_ of man--not cheap labour, but cheap machinery, cheap organisation, cheap transit. This is a kind of cheapening of product which can go on indefinitely. From the dawn of civilisation man has been turning a hostile or indifferent environment into a rich and friendly one. For ages, indeed, constant war hindered this conquest of nature. It is only in this century that comparative peace among nations has allowed the majority of men to give all their time and thought to the economical life, and even yet the locusts of standing armies eat up great part of our harvest field. But the changes which have been made on the earth, as we know it, the natural resources of matter and force now under our control, the complex and sensitive organisation which knits the world together, all point to possibilities of wealth beyond the wildest dreams of last century. There is some fatal leak in our industrial system if every child in Great Britain this year is not the heir of a richer heritage, at least of richer possibilities, than the child of last year. If our fathers a generation ago earned 20s. by day labouring, we should be earning 40s. by day labouring; or, if we are still earning only 20s., the 20s. now should buy what 40s. did then. Now, as this suggests, there are two lines which the economical progress of the workers may take--that of advancing wages or that of cheapening products. Which of these is preferable? Without entering on any more discussion, two considerations may show that there is no comparison between the two, so far as the workers are concerned. First, the ideal condition of average human life is a condition of well-paid wage earning; of steady assured labour, which does not strain or stress, and is crowned visibly by the fruit of its own exertion. There is nothing more depressing to the thoughtful economist than the waste, positive and negative, which comes of disorganised labour; where the working man and his wage are the sport of speculation, and the period of high wages and overtime is succeeded by periods when the worker is thrown on the streets to learn the bad lesson of spare time without culture, and of leisure without rest. It is of small comfort to the working man that the manufacturer and merchant share the bad time with him, and that stocks are thrown on the market at "ruinous sacrifices." In vain is the cheap sale advertised in sight of the penniless buyer. Second, while from one point of view it is all the same whether a worker's wage is raised from 20s. to 40s. a week, or whether everything he buys is reduced by 50 per cent., the balance of advantage is not so simple as this. If the wages are raised the worker alone gets the benefit. If commodities are reduced in price those who consume them--namely, the whole community--get the benefit. If, by reducing Tom's wages, you reduce the price of commodities which Tom, Dick, and Harry buy, Tom divides the economic advantage, such as it is, with Dick and Harry. Thus reduction of wages is never fully compensated by reduction of prices. The seigniorage of current commodities is borne, not by the community but by the workers. Thus, I repeat that, while the fact that wider circles of population get the advantage of cheap goods is some mitigation of the evil, it is no justification of it. There is no reason why products should reach wider and wider circles, except that the cheap products are a gain to the wider circles. And if this gain tends to be outweighed by the evils of reduced wages, calico at twopence a yard may be too cheap. But if there is still some question whether, economically, it is justifiable and advisable to organise workers to ask higher wages, and to educate the public conscience to pay them, it may be settled, as regards women at least, by this simple consideration. Wealth in Great Britain, according to Mr. Giffen, increases annually by 3 per cent., while population increases by only 1·3 per cent. That is to say, wealth increases more than twice as fast as population. In the light of this statistic it _cannot_ be economically necessary that women's remuneration for labour should remain at the subsistence level. If this was a fair wage fifty years ago, it cannot be so now. 
5887	----	Copyright (C) 2007 by Lidija Rangelovska. Please see the corresponding RTF file for this eBook. RTF is Rich Text Format, and is readable in nearly any modern word processing program. 
59674	----	No. 8. State Charities Aid Association, 52 EAST 20TH STREET. HOMES OF THE LONDON POOR BY MISS OCTAVIA HILL. REPRINTED FROM THE "FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW" AND "MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE," BY PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. Price, 25 Cents. TO BE OBTAINED AT THE OFFICE OF THE ASSOCIATION. NEW YORK. 1875. In reprinting the following articles, by Miss Octavia Hill, of London, it is not proposed that the system described is, in all its details, applicable to this country. The conditions of poverty in America and in England differ widely. The Municipal forms of Government there are very unlike our own. But the broad truths of humanity are the same everywhere, and the principles which underlie Miss Hill's efforts, those of helping the poor towards self-support and self-respect; of bringing to their aid an unwearied patience, a true sympathy, and a large hope; of loving them and trusting them; above all, of realizing that they and we are children of One Father; these principles are applicable to all countries and to every people. LOUISA LEE SCHUYLER, President, State Charities Aid Association. NEW YORK, _April 14, 1875_. COTTAGE PROPERTY IN LONDON. _November 1, 1866._ The subject of dwellings for the poor is attracting so much attention, that an account of a small attempt to improve them may be interesting to many readers, especially as the plan adopted is one which has answered pecuniarily, and which, while it might be undertaken by private individuals without much risk, would bring them into close and healthy communication with their hard-working neighbors. Two years ago I first had an opportunity of carrying out the plan I had long contemplated, that of obtaining possession of houses to be let in weekly tenements to the poor. That the spiritual elevation of a large class depended to a considerable extent on sanitary reform was, I considered proved, but I was equally certain that sanitary improvement itself depended upon educational work among grown-up people; that they must be urged to rouse themselves from the lethargy and indolent habits into which they have fallen, and freed from all that hinders them from doing so. I further believed that any lady who would help them to obtain things, the need of which they felt themselves, and would sympathize with them in their desire for such, would soon find them eager to learn her view of what was best for them; that whether this was so or not, her duty was to keep alive their own best hopes and intentions, which come at rare intervals, but fade too often for want of encouragement. I desired to be in a condition to free a few poor people from the tyranny and influence of a low class of landlords and landladies; from the corrupting effect of continual forced communication with very degraded fellow-lodgers; from the heavy incubus of accumulated dirt: that so the never-dying hope which I find characteristic of the poor might have leave to spring, and with it such energy as might help them to help themselves. I had not great ideas of what must be done for them, my strongest endeavors were to be used to rouse habits of industry and effort, without which they must finally sink--with which they might render themselves independent of me except as a friend and leader. The plan was one which depended on just governing more than on helping. The first point was to secure such power as would enable me to insist on some essential sanitary arrangements. I laid the plan before Mr. Ruskin, who entered into it most warmly. He at once came forward with all the money necessary, and took the whole risk of the undertaking upon himself. He showed me, however, that it would be far more useful if it could be made to pay; that a working man ought to be able to pay for his own house; that the outlay upon it ought, therefore, to yield a fair percentage on the capital invested. Thus empowered and directed, I purchased three houses in my own immediate neighborhood. They were leasehold, subject to a small ground-rent. The unexpired term of the lease was for fifty-six years; this we purchased for £750. We spent £78 additional in making a large room at the back of my own house, where I could meet the tenants from time to time. The plan has now been in operation about a year and a half; the financial result is that the scheme has paid five per cent. interest on all the capital,[1] has repaid £48 of the capital; sets of two rooms have been let for little more than the rent of one, the houses have been kept in repair, all expenses have been met for taxes, ground-rent, and insurance. In this case there is no expense for collecting rents, as I do it myself, finding it most important work; but in all the estimates I put aside the usual percentage for it, in case hereafter I may require help, and also to prove practically that it can be afforded in other cases. It should be observed that well-built houses were chosen, but they were in a dreadful state of dirt and neglect. The repairs required were mainly of a superficial and slight character: slight in regard to expense--vital as to health and comfort. The place swarmed with vermin; the papers, black with dirt, hung in long strips from the walls; the drains were stopped, the water supply out of order. All these things were put in order, but no new appliances of any kind were added, as we had determined that our tenants should wait for these until they had proved themselves capable of taking care of them. A regular sum is set aside for repairs, and this is equally divided between the three houses; if any of it remains, after breakage and damage have been repaired, at the end of the quarter, each tenant decides in turn in what way the surplus shall be spent, so as to add to the comfort of the house. This plan has worked admirably; the loss from carelessness has decreased to an amazing extent, and the lodgers prize the little comforts which they have waited for, and seem in a measure to have earned by their care, much more than those bought with more lavish expenditure. The bad debts during the whole time that the plan has been in operation have only amounted to £2 11_s._ 3_d._ Extreme punctuality and diligence in collecting rents, and a strict determination that they shall be paid regularly, have accomplished this; as a proof of which it is curious to observe that £1 3_s._ 3_d._ of the bad debts, accumulated during two months that I was away in the country. I have tried to remember, when it seemed hardest that the fulfillment of their duties was the best education for the tenants in every way. It has given them a dignity and glad feeling of honorable behavior which has much more than compensated for the apparent harshness of the rule. Nothing has impressed me more than the people's perception of an underlying current of sympathy through all dealings that have seemed harsh. Somehow, love and care have made themselves felt. It is also wonderful that they should prize as they do the evenness of the law that is over them. They are accustomed to alternate violence of passion and toleration of vice. They expected a greater toleration, ignorant indulgence, and frequent almsgiving; but in spite of this have recognized as a blessing a rule which is very strict, but the demands of which they know, and a government that is true in word and deed. The plan of substituting a lady for a resident landlady of the same class as her tenants is not wholly gain. The lady will probably have subtler sympathy and clearer comprehension of their needs, but she cannot give the same minute supervision that a resident landlady can. Unhappily, the advantage of such a change is, however, at present unquestionable. The influence of the majority of the lower class of people who sub-let to the poor is almost wholly injurious. That tenants should be given up to the dominion of those whose word is given and broken almost as a matter of course, whose habits and standards are very low, whose passions are violent, who have neither large hope nor clear sight, nor even sympathy, is very sad. It seems to me that a greater power is in the hands of landlords and landladies than of school-teachers--power either of life or death, physical and spiritual. It is not an unimportant question who shall wield it. There are dreadful instances in which sin is really tolerated and shared; where the lodger who will drink most with his landlord is most favored, and many a debt overlooked, to compensate for which the price of rooms is raised; and thus the steady and sober pay more rent to make up for losses caused by the unprincipled. But take this as an example of entirely careless rule: The owner of some cottage property in London, a small undertaker by trade, living some little distance from his property, and for the most part confining his dealings with it to a somewhat fruitless endeavor to collect the rents on a Sunday morning, in discussing the value of the property with me, said very straightforwardly, "Yes, miss; of course there are plenty of bad debts. It's not the rents I look to, but the deaths I get out of the houses." The man didn't mean for a moment that he knew that the state of the houses brought him a plentiful harvest of deaths, though I knew it, and heard the truth ringing with awful irony through his words; but he did mean that his entire thought was of his profits--that those dependent souls and bodies were to him as nothing. Consider under such a rule what deadly quarrels spring up and deepen and widen between families compelled to live very near one another, to use many things in common, whose uneducated minds brood over and over the same slight offenses, when there is no one either compulsorily to separate them, or to say some soothing word of reconciliation before the quarrel grows too serious. I have received a letter from an Irish tenant actually boasting that he "would have taken a more manly way of settling a dispute," but that his neighbor "showed the white feather and retired." I have seen that man's whole face light up and break into a smile when I suggested that a little willing kindness would be a more manly way still. And I have known him and his aunt, though boiling over with rage all the time, use steady self-control in not quarreling for a whole month, because they knew it would spoil my holiday! Finally, they shook hands and made peace, and lived in peace many months, and, indeed, are living so now. I could have formed no idea of the docility of the people, nor of their gratitude for small things. They are easily governed by firmness, which they respect much. I have always made a point of carefully recognizing their own rights; but if a strong conviction is clearly expressed they readily adopt it, and they often accept a different idea from any they have previously desired, if it is set before them. One tenant--a silent, strong, uncringing woman, living with her seven children and her husband in one room--was certain "there were many things she could get for the children to eat which would do them more good than another room." I was perfectly silent. A half-pleading, half-asserting voice said: "Don't you see I'm right, miss?" "No," I said; "indeed I do not. I have been brought up to know the value of abundant good air, but of course you must do as you think best--only I am sorry." Not a word more passed; but in a few weeks a second room was again to let, and the woman volunteered: "She thought she'd better strive to get the rent; good air was very important, wasn't it?" Again: a man wouldn't send his children to school. Dirty, neglected, and unhappy, they destroyed many things in the house. I urged, to no purpose, that they should be sent. At last I gave him notice to leave because he refused to send them, and because he had taken three children to sleep in the room I had let for his own family only. The man was both angry and obstinate. I quietly went on with proceedings for getting rid of him. He knew I meant what I said, and he requested an interview. He owed no rent, he urged. "No," I replied, "you know what a point I make of that; but it isn't quite the only thing I insist on. I cannot allow anything so wrong as this neglect of the children and overcrowding to continue where I have the power to prevent it." He "knew what it was just this year to fuss about the cholera, and then nobody'd care how many slep in a room; but he wasn't a coward to be frightened at the cholera, not he! And as to being bound, he wouldn't be bound--no, not to his own master that paid him wage; and it wasn't likely he would to me, when he paid rent reg'lar. The room was his; he took it, and if he paid rent he could do as he liked in it." "Very well," I said; "and the house is mine; I take it, and I must do what I think right in it; and I say that most landladies won't take in children at all, and we all know it is a good deal of loss and trouble; but I'll risk these gladly if you will do what you can to teach the children to be good, and careful, and industrious; and if not, you know the rule, and you must go. If you prefer liberty, and dirt, and mess, take them; but if you choose to agree to live under as good a rule as I can make it, you can stay. You have your choice." Put in the light of a bargain, the man was willing enough. Well, he'd not "do anything contrairy, without telling me, about lodgers; and as to the children, he thought he could turn himself, and send them a bit, now his work was better." With the great want of rooms there is in this neighborhood it did not seem right to expel families, however large, inhabiting one room. Whenever from any cause a room was vacant, and a large family occupied an adjoining one, I have endeavored to induce them to rent the two. To incoming tenants I do not let what seems decidedly insufficient accommodation. We have been able to let two rooms for four shillings and sixpence, whereas the tenants were in many cases paying four shillings for one. At first they considered it quite an unnecessary expenditure to pay more rent for a second room, however small the additional sum might be. They have gradually learnt to feel the comfort of having two rooms, and pay willingly for them.[2] The pecuniary success of the plan has been due to two causes. First, to the absence of middlemen; and secondly, to great strictness about punctual payment of rent. At this moment not one tenant in any of the houses owes any rent, and during the whole time, as I have said, the bad debts have been exceedingly small. The law respecting such tenancies seems very simple, and when once the method of proceeding is understood, the whole business is easily managed; and I must say most seriously that I believe it to be better to pay legal expenses for getting rid of tenants than to lose by arrears of rent,--better for the whole tone of the households, kinder to the tenants. The rule should be clearly understood, and the people will respect themselves for having obeyed it. The commencement of proceedings which are known to be genuine and not a mere threat is usually sufficient to obtain payment of arrears: in one case only has an ejectment for rent been necessary. The great want of rooms gives the possessors of such property immense power over their lodgers. Let them see to it that they use it righteously. The fluctuations of work cause to respectable tenants the main difficulties in paying their rent. I have tried to help them in two ways. First, by inducing them to save: this they have done steadily, and each autumn has found them with a small fund accumulated, which has enabled them to meet the difficulties of the time when families are out of town. In the second place, I have done what I could to employ my tenants in slack seasons. I carefully set aside any work they can do for times of scarcity, and I try so to equalize in this small circle the irregularity of work, which must be more or less pernicious, and which the childishness of the poor makes doubly so. They have strangely little power of looking forward; a result is to them as nothing if it will not be perceptible till next quarter! This is very curious to me, especially as seen in connection with that large hope to which I have alluded, and which often makes me think that if I could I would carve over the houses the motto, "Spem, etiam illi habent, quibus nihil aliud restat." Another beautiful trait in their character is their trust; it has been quite marvelous to find how great and how ready this is. In no single case have I met with suspicion or with anything but entire confidence. It is needless to say that there have been many minor difficulties and disappointments. Each separate person, who has failed to rise and meet the help that would have been so gladly given has been a distinct loss to me; for somehow the sense of relation to them has been a very real one, and a feeling of interest and responsibility has been very strong even where there was least that was lovely or lovable in the particular character. When they have not had sufficient energy or self-control to choose the sometimes hard path that has seemed the only right one, it would have been hard to part from them, except for a hope that others would be able to lead them where I have failed. Two distinct kinds of work depend entirely on one another if they are to bear their full fruit. There is, firstly, the simple fulfillment of a landlady's bounden duties, and uniform demand of the fulfillment of those of the tenants. We have felt ourselves bound by laws which must be obeyed, however hard obedience might often be. Then, secondly, there is the individual friendship which has grown up from intimate knowledge, and from a sense of dependence and protection. Such knowledge gives power to see the real position of families; to suggest in time the inevitable result of certain habits; to urge such measures as shall secure the education of the children and their establishment in life; to keep alive the germs of energy; to waken the gentler thought; to refuse resolutely to give any help but such as rouses self-help; to cherish the smallest lingering gleam of self-respect; and, finally, to be near with strong help should the hour of trial fall suddenly and heavily, and to give it with the hand and heart of a real old friend, who has filled many relations besides that of almsgiver, who has long ago given far more than material help, and has thus earned the right to give this lesser help even to the most independent spirits. The relation will finally depend on the human spirits that enter into it; like all others, it may be pernicious or helpful. It is simply a large field of labor where the laborers are few. It has this advantage over many beneficent works--that it calls out a sense of duty, and demands energetic right-doing among the poor themselves, and so purifies and stimulates them. If any of my poorer friends chance to see this, I hope they will not think I have spoken too exclusively of what we can do for them. I have dwelt on this side of the question because it is the one we are mainly bound to consider; it is for them to think how they can help us. But I must add in gratitude that I have much to thank them for. Their energy and hope amid overwhelming difficulties have made me ashamed of my own laziness and despair. I have seen the inevitable result of faults and omissions of mine that I had never sufficiently weighed. Their patience and thankfulness are a glad cause of admiration to me continually. I trust that our relation to one another may grow better and nearer for many years. OCTAVIA HILL. FOOTNOTES: [1] It should be remembered that 5 per cent. interest in England on house property, is equivalent to at least 8 per cent. in the United States.--Ed. [2] It is not possible to form any comparison between the rent of rooms in London and New York, the circumstances of the two cities being so different; but the point to be observed is that by a very small increase of rent the amount of accommodation may be doubled. ORGANIZED WORK AMONG THE POOR. SUGGESTIONS FOUNDED ON FOUR YEARS' MANAGEMENT OF A LONDON COURT. _July, 1869._ Further organization in our mode of dealing with the poor is now generally agreed to be necessary, but there is another truth less dwelt upon, yet on the due recognition of which success equally depends. I feel most deeply that the disciplining of our immense poor population must be effected by individual influence; and that this power can change it from a mob of paupers and semi-paupers into a body of self-dependent workers. It is my opinion, further, that although such influence may be brought to bear upon them in very various ways, it may be exercised in a very remarkable manner by persons undertaking the oversight and management of such houses as the poor habitually lodge in. In support of this opinion I subjoin an account of what has been actually achieved in two very poor courts in London. About four years ago I was put in possession of three houses in one of the worst courts of Marylebone. Six other houses were bought subsequently. All were crowded with inmates. The first thing to be done was to put them in decent tenantable order. The set last purchased was a row of cottages facing a bit of desolate ground, occupied with wretched, dilapidated cow-sheds, manure heaps, old timber, and rubbish of every description. The houses were in a most deplorable condition: the plaster was dropping from the walls: on one staircase a pail was placed to catch the rain that fell through the roof. All the staircases were perfectly dark; the banisters were gone, having been burnt as firewood by tenants. The grates, with large holes in them, were falling forward into the rooms. The washhouse, full of lumber belonging to the landlord, was locked up; thus the inhabitants had to wash clothes, as well as to cook, eat, and sleep, in their small rooms. The dust-bin, standing in the front of the houses, was accessible to the whole neighborhood, and boys often dragged from it quantities of unseemly objects, and spread them over the court. The state of the drainage was in keeping with everything else. The pavement of the back-yard was all broken up, and great puddles stood in it, so that the damp crept up the outer walls. One large but dirty water-butt received the water laid on for the houses: it leaked, and for such as did not fill their jugs when the water came in, or who had no jugs to fill, there was no water. The former landlord's reply to one of the tenants who asked him to have an iron hoop put round the butt to prevent leakage, was, that "if he didn't like it" (_i. e._ things as they were) "he might leave." The man to whom this was spoken--by far the best tenant in the place--is now with us, and often gives his spare time to making his room more comfortable, knowing that he will be retained if he behaves well. This landlord was a tradesman in a small way of business--not a cruel man, except in so far as variableness of dealing is cruelty; but he was a man without capital to spend on improvements, and lost an immense percentage of his rent by bad debts. I went over the houses with him the last day he collected his rents there, that he might introduce me to the people as the owner of the property. He took a man with him, whom, as he confided to me, he wished to pass off upon the people as a broker.[3] It was evident that, whether they saw through this deceit or not, they had no experience which led them to believe he intended to carry into effect the threats he uttered. The arrears of rent were enormous. I had been informed that the honest habitually pay for the dishonest, the owner relying upon their payments to compensate for all losses; but I was amazed to find to what an extent this was the case. Six, seven, or eight weeks' rent were due from most tenants, and in some cases very much more; whereas, since I took possession of the houses (of which I collect the rents each week myself) I have _never_ allowed a second week's rent to become due. I think no one who has not experienced it can fully realize the almost awed sense of joy with which one enters upon such a possession as that above described, conscious of having the power to set it, even partially, in order. Hopes, indeed, there are which one dare scarcely hope; but at once one has power to say, "Break out a window there in that dark corner; let God's light and air in;" or, "Trap that foul drain, and shut the poisonous miasma out;" and one has moral power to say, by deeds which speak louder than words, "Where God gives me authority, this, which you in your own hearts know to be wrong, shall not go on. I would not set my conviction, however strong it might be, against your judgment of right; but when you are doing what I know your own conscience condemns, I, now that I have the power, will enforce right; but first I will try whether I cannot _lead_ you, yourselves, to arise and cast out the sin--helping your wavering and sorely tried will by mine, which is untempted." As soon as I entered into possession, each family had an opportunity offered of doing better: those who would not pay, or who led clearly immoral lives, were ejected. The rooms they vacated were cleansed; the tenants who showed signs of improvement moved into them, and thus, in turn, an opportunity was obtained for having each room distempered and painted. The drains were put in order, a large slate cistern was fixed, the wash-house was cleared of its lumber, and thrown open on stated days to each tenant in turn. The roof, the plaster, the woodwork were repaired; the staircase-walls were distempered; new grates were fixed; the layers of paper and rag (black with age) were torn from the windows, and glass was put in; out of 192 panes, only 8 were found unbroken. The yard and footpath were paved. The rooms, as a rule, were re-let at the same prices at which they had been let before; but tenants with large families were counseled to take two rooms, and for these much less was charged than if let singly: this plan I continue to pursue. In-coming tenants are not allowed to take a decidedly insufficient quantity of room, and no sub-letting is permitted. The elder girls are employed three times a week in scrubbing the passages in the houses, for the cleaning of which the landlady is responsible. For this work they are paid, and by it they learn habits of cleanliness. It is, of course, within the authority of the landlady also to insist on cleanliness of wash-houses, yards, staircases, and staircase-windows; and even to remonstrate concerning the rooms themselves if they are habitually dirty. The pecuniary result has been very satisfactory. Five per cent. interest has been paid on all the capital invested. A fund for the repayment of capital is accumulating. A liberal allowance has been made for repairs; and here I may speak of the means adopted for making the tenants careful about breakage and waste. The sum allowed yearly for repairs is fixed for each house, and if it has not all been spent in restoring and replacing, the surplus is used for providing such additional appliances as the tenants themselves desire. It is therefore to their interest to keep the expenditure for repairs as low as possible; and instead of committing the wanton damage common among tenants of their class, they are careful to avoid injury, and very helpful in finding economical methods of restoring what is broken or worn out, often doing little repairs of their own accord. From the proceeds of the rent, also, interest has been paid on the capital spent in building a large room where the tenants can assemble. Classes are held there--for boys, twice weekly; for girls, once; a singing class has just been established. A large work-class for married women and elder girls meets once a week. A glad sight it is--the large room filled with the eager, merry faces of the girls, from which those of the older, careworn women catch a reflected light. It is a good time for quiet talk with them as we work, and many a neighborly feeling is called out among the women as they sit together on the same bench, lend one another cotton or needles, are served by the same hand, and look to the same person for direction. The babies are a great bond of union; I have known the very women who not long before had been literally fighting, sit at the work-class busily and earnestly comparing notes of their babies' respective history. That a consciousness of corporate life is developed in them is shown by the not infrequent use of the expression "One of us." Among the arrangements conducive to comfort and health I may mention, that instead of the clothes being hung as formerly out of front windows down against the wall, where they could not be properly purified, the piece of ground in front of the houses is used as a drying-ground during school hours. The same place is appropriated as a playground, not only for my younger tenants, but for the children from the neighboring courts. It is a space walled round, where they can play in safety. Hitherto, games at trap, bat and ball, swinging, skipping, and singing a few Kinder-Garten songs with movements in unison, have been the main diversions. But I have just established drill for the boys, and a drum and fife band. Unhappily, the mere business connected with the working of the houses has occupied so much time, that the playground has been somewhat neglected; yet it is a most important part of the work. The evils of the streets and courts are too evident to need explanation. In the playground are gathered together children habitually dirty, quarrelsome, and violent. They come wholly ignorant of games, and have hardly self-control enough to play at any which have an object or require effort. Mere senseless, endless repetition is at best their diversion. Often the games are only repetitions of questionable sentences. For instance, what is to be said of a game the whole of which consists in singing: "Here comes my father all down the hill, all down the hill," (over and over again) and replying, "We won't get up for his ugly face--ugly face" (repeated _ad libitum_)? Then come the mother, the sister, the brother, to whom the same words are addressed. Finally, the lover comes, to whom the greeting is, "We will get up for his pretty face." This was, perhaps, the best game the children knew, yet, in as far as it had any meaning or influence, it must be bad. Compare it, or the wild, lawless fighting or gambling, with a game at trap, arranged with ordered companions, definite object, and progressive skill. The moral influence depends, however, on having ladies who will go to the playground, teach games, act as umpires, know and care for the children. These I hope to find more and more. Until now, except at rare intervals, the playground has been mainly useful for the fresh air it affords to the children who are huddled together by night in small rooms, in the surrounding courts. The more respectable parents keep them indoors, even in the day-time, after school-hours, to prevent their meeting with bad companions. Mr. Ruskin, to whom the whole undertaking owes its existence, has had trees planted in the playground, and creepers against the houses. In May, we have a May-pole or a throne covered with flowers for the May-queen and her attendants. The sweet luxuriance of the spring-flowers is more enjoyed in that court than would readily be believed. Some months after the first festival the children were seen sticking a few faded flowers into a crevice in the wall, saying, they wanted to make it "like it was the day we had the May-pole." I have tried, as far as opportunity has permitted, to develop the love of beauty among my tenants. The poor of London need joy and beauty in their lives. There is no more true and eternal law to be recognized about them than that which Mr. Dickens shows in "Hard Times"--the fact that every man has an imagination which needs development and satisfaction. Mr. Slearey's speech, "People mutht be amoothed, Thquire," is often recalled to my mind in dealing with the poor. They work hard; their lives are monotonous; they seek low places of amusement; they break out into lawless "sprees." Almost all amusements--singing, dancing, acting, expeditions into the country, eating and drinking--are liable to abuse; no rules are subtle enough to prevent their leading to harm. But if a lady can know the individuals, and ask them as her invited guests to any of these, an innate sense of honor and respect preserves the tone through the whole company. Indeed, there can hardly be a more proudly thankful moment than that, when we see these many people to whom life is dull and full of anxiety, gathered together around us for holy, happy Christmas festivities, or going out to some fair and quiet spot in the bright summer time, bound to one another by the sense of common relationship, preserved unconsciously from wrong by the presence of those whom they love and who love them. Such intervals of bright joy are easily arranged by friends for friends; but if strangers are invited _en masse_, it is difficult to keep any of these recreations innocent. All these ways of meeting are invaluable as binding us together; still, they would avail little were it not for the work by which we are connected--for the individual care each member of the little circle receives. Week by week, when the rents are collected, an opportunity of seeing each family separately occurs. There are a multitude of matters to attend to: first, there is the mere outside business--rent to be received, requests from the tenant respecting repairs to be considered: sometimes decisions touching the behavior of other tenants to be made, sometimes rebukes for untidiness to be administered. Then come the sad or joyful remarks about health or work, the little histories of the week. Sometimes grave questions arise about important changes in the life of the family--shall a daughter go to service? or shall the sick child be sent to a hospital? etc. Sometimes violent quarrels must be allayed. Much may be done in this way, so ready is the response in these affectionate natures to those whom they trust and love. For instance: two women among my tenants fought; one received a dreadful kick, the other had hair torn from her head. They were parted by a lad who lived in the house. The women occupied adjoining rooms, they met in the passages, they used the same yard and wash-house, endless were the opportunities of collision while they were engaged with each other. For ten days I saw them repeatedly: I could in no way reconcile them--words of rage and recrimination were all that they uttered; while the hair, which had been carefully preserved by the victim, was continually exhibited to me as a sufficient justification for lasting anger. One was a cold, hard, self-satisfied, well-to-do woman; the other a nervous, affectionate, passionate, very poor Irishwoman. Now it happened that in speaking to the latter one evening, I mentioned my own grief at the quarrel: a look of extreme pain came over her face; it was a new idea to her that I should care. That, and no sense of the wrong of indulging an evil passion, touched her. The warm-hearted creature at once promised to shake hands with her adversary; but she had already taken out a summons against the other for assault, and did not consider she could afford to make up the quarrel, because it implied losing the two shillings the summons had cost. I told her the loss was a mere nothing to her if weighed in the balance with peace, but that I would willingly pay it. It only needed that one of the combatants should make the first step towards reconciliation for the other (who, indeed, rather dreaded answering the summons) to meet her half-way. They are good neighbors now of some months' standing. A little speech which shows the character of the Irishwoman is worth recording. Acknowledging to me that she was very passionate, she said: "My husband never takes my part when I'm in my tanthrums, and I'm that mad with him; but, bless you, I love him all the better afterwards; he knows well enough it would only make me worse." I may here observe that the above-mentioned two shillings is the only money I ever had to give to either woman. It is on such infinitesimally small actions that the success of the whole work rests. My tenants are mostly of a class far below that of mechanics. They are, indeed, of the very poor. And yet, although the gifts they have received have been next to nothing, none of the families who have passed under my care during the whole four years have continued in what is called "distress," except such as have been unwilling to exert themselves. Those who will not exert the necessary self-control cannot avail themselves of the means of livelihood held out to them. But, for those who are willing, some small assistance in the form of work has, from time to time, been provided--not much, but sufficient to keep them from want or despair. The following will serve as an instance of the sort of help given, and its proportion to the results. Alice, a single woman, of perhaps fifty-five years, lodged with a man and his wife--the three in one room--just before I obtained full possession of the houses. Alice, not being able to pay her rent, was turned into the street, where Mrs. S. (my playground superintendent) met her, crying dreadfully. It was Saturday, and I had left town till Monday. Alice had neither furniture to pawn, nor friends to help her; the workhouse alone lay before her. Mrs. S. knew that I esteemed her as a sober, respectable, industrious woman, and therefore she ventured to express to Alice's landlord the belief that I would not let him lose money if he would let her go back to her lodging till Monday, when I should return home, thus risking for me a possible loss of fourpence--not very ruinous to me, and a sum not impossible for Alice to repay in the future. I gave Alice two days' needlework, then found her employment in tending a bed-ridden cottager in the country, whose daughter (in service) paid for the nursing. Five weeks she was there, working and saving her money. On her return I lent her what more she required to buy furniture, and she then took a little room direct from me. Too blind to do much household work, but able to sew almost mechanically, she just earns her daily bread by making sailors' shirts! but her little home is her own, and she loves it dearly; and, having tided over that time of trial, Alice can live--has paid all her debts, too, and is more grateful than she would have been for many gifts. At one time I had a room to let which was ninepence a week cheaper than the one she occupied. I proposed to her to take it; it had, however, a different aspect, getting less of the southern and western sunlight. Alice hesitated long, and asked _me_ to decide, which I declined to do; for, as I told her, her moving would suit my arrangements rather better. She, hearing that, wished to move; but I begged her to make her decision wholly irrespective of my plans. At last she said, very wistfully: "Well, you see, miss, it's between ninepence and the sun." Sadly enough, ninepence had to outweigh the sun. My tenants are, of course, encouraged to save their money. It should, however, be remarked, that I have never succeeded in getting them to save for old age. The utmost I have achieved is that they lay by sufficient either to pay rent in times of scarcity, to provide clothes for girls going to service, or boots, or furniture, or even to avail themselves of opportunities of advancement which must be closed to them if they had not a little reserve fund to meet expenses of the change. One great advantage arising from the management of the houses is, that they form a test-place, in which people may prove themselves worthy of higher situations. Not a few of the tenants have been persons who had sunk below the stratum where once they were known, and some of these, simply by proving their character, have been enabled to regain their former stations. One man, twenty years ago, had been a gentleman's servant, had saved money, gone into business, married, failed, and then found himself out of the groove of work. When I made his acquaintance he was earning a miserable pittance for his wife and seven unhealthy children, and all the nine souls were suffering and sinking unknown. After watching and proving him for three years I was able to recommend him to a gentleman in the country, where now the whole family are profiting by having six rooms instead of one, fresh air, and regular wages. But it is far easier to be helpful than to have patience and self-control sufficient, when the times come, for seeing suffering and not relieving it. And yet the main tone of action must be severe. There is much of rebuke and repression needed, although a deep and silent under-current of sympathy and pity may flow beneath. If the rent is not ready, notice to quit must be served. The money is then almost always paid, when the notice is, of course, withdrawn. Besides this in inexorable demand for rent (never to be relaxed without entailing cumulative evil on the defaulter, and setting a bad example, too readily followed by others) there must be a perpetual crusade carried on against small evils--very wearing sometimes. It is necessary to believe that in thus setting in order certain spots on God's earth, still more in presenting to a few of His children a somewhat higher standard of right, we are doing His work, and that he will not permit us to lose sight of His large laws, but will rather make them evident to us through the small details. The resolution to watch pain which cannot be radically relieved except by the sufferer himself is most difficult to maintain. Yet it is wholly necessary in certain cases not to help. Where a man persistently refuses to exert himself, external help is worse than useless. By withholding gifts we say to him in action more mournful than words: "You will not do better. I was ready--I will be ready whenever you come to yourself; but until then you must pursue your own course." This attitude has often to be taken; but it usually proves a summons to a more energetic spirit, producing nobler effort in great matters, just as the notice to quit arouses resolution and self-denial in pecuniary concerns. Coming together so much as we do for business with mutual duties, for recreation with common joy, each separate want or fault having been dealt with as it arose, it will be readily understood that in such a crisis as that which periodically occurs in the East End of London, instead of being unprepared, I feel myself somewhat like an officer at the head of a well-controlled little regiment, or, more accurately, like a country proprietor with a moderate number of well-ordered tenants. For, firstly, my people are numbered; not merely counted, but known, man, woman, and child. I have seen their self-denying efforts to pay rent in time of trouble, or their reckless extravagance in seasons of abundance; their patient labor, or their failure to use the self-control necessary to the performance of the more remunerative kinds of work; their efforts to keep their children at school, or their selfish, lazy way of living on their children's earnings. Could any one, going suddenly among even so small a number as these thirty-four families--however much penetration and zeal he might possess--know so accurately as I what kind of assistance would be really helpful, and not corrupting? And if positive gifts must be resorted to, who can give them with so little pain to the proud spirit, so little risk of undermining the feeble one, as the friend of old standing?--the friend, moreover, who has rigorously exacted the fulfillment of their duty in punctual payment of rent; towards whom, therefore, they might feel that they had done what they could while strength lasted, and need not surely be ashamed to receive a little bread in time of terrible want? But it ought hardly ever to come to an actual doling out of bread or alms of any kind. During the winter of 1867-68, while the newspapers were ringing with appeals in consequence of the distress prevalent in the metropolis, being on the Continent, and unable to organize more satisfactory schemes of assistance, I wrote to the ladies who were superintending the houses for me, to suggest that a small fund (which had accumulated from the rents, after defraying expenses and paying interest) should be distributed in gifts to any of the families who might be in great poverty. The answer was that there were none requiring such help. Now, how did this come to pass? Simply through the operation of the various influences above described. The tenants never having been allowed to involve themselves in debt for rent (now and then being supplied with employment to enable them to pay it), they were free from one of the greatest drags upon a poor family, and had, moreover, in times of prosperity been able really to save. It is but too often the case that, even when prosperous times come, working people cannot lay by, because then they have to pay off arrears of rent. The elder girls, too, were either in service or quite ready to go; and so steady, tidy, and respectable as to be able to fill good situations. This was owing, in many cases, to a word or two spoken long before, urging their longer attendance at school, or to their having had a few happy and innocent amusements provided for them, which had satisfied their natural craving for recreation, and had prevented their breaking loose in search of it. Health had been secured by an abundance of air, light, and water. Even among this very lowest class of people, I had found individuals whom I could draft from my lodging-houses into resident situations (transplanting them thus at once into a higher grade), simply because I was able to say, "I know them to be honest, I know them to be clean." Think of what this mere fact of _being known_ is to the poor! You may say, perhaps, "This is very well as far as you and your small knot of tenants are concerned, but how does it help us to deal with the vast masses of poor in our great towns?" I reply, "Are not the great masses made up of many small knots? Are not the great towns divisible into small districts? Are there not people who would gladly come forward to undertake the systematic supervision of some house or houses, if they could get authority from the owner? And why should there not be some way of registering such supervision, so that, bit by bit, as more volunteers should come forward, the whole metropolis might be mapped out, all the blocks fitting in like little bits of mosaic to form one connected whole?" The success of the plan does not depend entirely upon the houses being the property of the superintendent. I would urge people, if possible, to purchase the houses of which they undertake the charge; but if they cannot, they may yet do a valuable little bit of work by registering a distinct declaration that they will supervise such and such a house, or row, or street; that if they have to relinquish the work, they will say so; that if it becomes too much for them, they will ask for help; that any one desiring information about the families dwelling in the houses they manage may apply to them. It is well known that the societies at work among the poor are so numerous, and labor so independently of each other, that, at present, many sets of people may administer relief to a given family in one day, and perhaps not one go near them again for a long interval; yet each society may be quite systematic in its own field of operation. It seems to me, that though each society might like to go its own way (and, perhaps, to supply wants which the house-overseer might think it best to leave unsupplied), they might at least feel it an advantage to know of a recognized authority, from whom particulars could be learned respecting relief already given, and the history of the families in question. Any persons accustomed to visit among the poor in a large district, would, I believe, when confining themselves to a much smaller one, be led, if not to very unexpected conclusions, at least to very curious problems. In dealing with a large number of cases the urgency is so great, one passes over the most difficult questions to work where sight is clear; and one is apt to forget Sissy Jupe's quick sympathetic perception that percentage signifies literally nothing to the friends of the special sufferer, who surely is not worth less than a sparrow. The individual case, if we cared enough for it, would often give us the key to many. Whoever will limit his gaze to a few persons, and try to solve the problems of their lives--planning, for instance, definitely, how he, even with superior advantages of education, self-control, and knowledge, could bring up a given family on given wages, allowing the smallest amount conceivably sufficient for food, rent, clothes, fuel, and the rest--he may find it in most cases a much more difficult thing than he had ever thought, and sometimes may be an impossibility. It may lead to strange self-questioning about wages. Again, if people will watch carefully the different effect of self-help and of alms, how the latter, like the out-door relief system under the old Poor-Law, tends to lower wages, undermines the providence of the poor, it may make them put some searching questions to themselves upon the wisdom of backing up wages with gifts. Then they may begin to consider practically whether in their own small sphere they can form no schemes of help, which shall be life-giving, stimulating hope, energy, foresight, self-denial, and choice of right rather than wrong expenditure. They may earnestly strive to discover plans of help which shall free them from the oppressive responsibility of deciding whether aid is deserved--a question often complicated inextricably with another, namely, whether at a given moment there is a probability of reformation. All of us have felt the impossibility of deciding either question fairly, yet we have been convinced that gifts coming at the wrong time are often deadly. Earnest workers feel a heavy weight on their hearts and consciences from the conviction that the old command "Judge not" is a divine one, and yet that the distribution of alms irrespective of character is fatal. These difficulties lead to variable action, which is particularly disastrous with the poor. But there are plans which cultivate the qualities wherein they are habitually wanting, namely, self-control, energy, prudence, and industry; and such plans, if we will do our part, may be ready at any moment for even the least deserving, and for those who have fallen lowest. Further details as to modes of help must vary infinitely with circumstances and character. But I may mention a few laws which become clearer and clearer to me as I work. It is best strictly to enforce fulfillment of all such duties as payment of rent, etc. It is far better to give work than either money or goods. It is most helpful of all to strengthen by sympathy and counsel the energetic effort which shall bear fruit in time to come. It is essential to remember that each man has his own view of his life, and must be free to fulfill it; that in many ways he is a far better judge of it than we, as he has lived through and felt what we have only seen. Our work is rather to bring him to the point of considering, and to the spirit of judging rightly, than to consider or judge for him. The poor of London (as of all large towns) need the development of every power which can open to them noble sources of joy. FOOTNOTE: [3] The ultimate step taken to enforce payment of rent is to send in a broker to distrain. BLANK COURT; OR, LANDLORDS AND TENANTS. _October, 1871._ Three ladies were standing, not long ago, in a poor and dingy court in London, when a group of dirty-faced urchins exclaimed, in a tone, partly of impudence and partly of fun: "What a lot o' landladies, this morning!" The words set me thinking, for I felt that the boys' mirth was excited, not only by the number of landladies (or of ladies acting as such), but also, probably, by the contrast between these ladies and the landladies they usually saw. For the landlady to the London poor is too often a struggling, cheated, much-worried, long-suffering woman; soured by constant dealing with untrustworthy people; embittered by loss; a prey to the worst lodgers, whom she allows to fall into debt, and is afraid to turn out, lest she should lose the amount they owe her; without spirit or education to enable her to devise improvements, or capital to execute them--never able, in short, to use the power given her by her position to bring order into the lives of her tenants: being, indeed, too frequently entirely under their control. There is a numerous class of landladies worse even than this--bullying, violent, passionate, revengeful, and cowardly. They alternately cajole and threaten, but rarely intend to carry out either their promises or their threats. Severe without principle, weakly indulgent towards evil, given to lying and swearing, too covetous to be drunken, yet indulgent to any lodger who will "treat" them; their influence is incalculably mischievous. Ought this to be the idea suggested by the word "landlady" to the poor of our cities? The old word "landlord" is a proud one to many an English gentleman, who holds dominion over the neat cottage, with its well-stocked garden; over the comfortable farm-house; over broad, sloping parks, and rich farm-lands. It is a delight to him to keep thus fair the part of the earth over which it has been given him to rule. And, as to his people, he would think it shameful to receive the rents from his well-managed estates in the country, year by year, without some slight recognition of his tenantry--at least on birthdays or at Christmas. But where are the owners, or lords, or ladies, of most courts like that in which I stood with my two fellow-workers? Who holds dominion there? Who heads the tenants there? If any among the nobly born, or better educated, own them, do they bear the mark of their hands? And if they do _not_ own them, might they not do so? There are in those courts as loyal English hearts as ever loved or reverenced the squire in the village, only they have been so forgotten. Dark under the level ground, in kitchens damp with foulest moisture, there they huddle in multitudes, and no one loves or raises them. It must not be thought that the over-worked clergymen and missionaries, heroic as they often are, can do all that might be done for them. They count their flock by thousands, and these people want watching one by one. The clergy have no control over these places, nor have they half the power of directing labor to useful ends, which those might have who owned the houses, and were constantly brought into direct contact with the people. How this relation of landlord and tenant might be established in some of the lowest districts of London, and with what results, I am about to describe by relating what has been done in the last two years in Blank Court. I have already, in these pages,[4] given an account of my former efforts to establish this relation on a healthy footing in another London court; of the details of my plan of action; and of its success. I am not, therefore, in what follows, putting forth anything new in its main idea, but am simply insisting on principles of the truth of which every day's experience only makes me the more deeply assured, and recounting the history of an attempt to spread those principles to a class still lower than that alluded to in my former paper. It was near the end of 1869 that I first heard that a good many houses in Blank Court were to be disposed of. Eventually, in the course of that year, six ten-roomed houses were bought by the Countess of Ducie, and five more by another lady, and placed partially under my care. I was especially glad to obtain some influence here, as I knew this place to be one of the worst in Marylebone; its inhabitants were mainly costermongers and small hawkers, and were almost the poorest class of those amongst our population who have any settled home, the next grade below them being vagrants who sleep in common lodging-houses; and I knew that its moral standing was equally low. Its reputation had long been familiar to me; for when unruly and hopeless tenants were sent away from other houses in the district, I had often heard that they had gone to Blank Court, the tone in which it was said implying that they had now sunk to the lowest depths of degradation. A lawyer friend had also said to me, on hearing that it was proposed to buy houses there, "Blank Court! why, that is the place one is always noticing in the police reports for its rows." Yet its outward appearance would not have led a casual observer to guess its real character. Blank Court is not far from Cavendish Square, and daily in the season, scores of carriages, with their gayly dressed occupants, pass the end of it. Should such look down it, they would little divine its inner life. Seen from the outside, and in the daytime, it is a quiet-looking place, the houses a moderate size, and the space between them tolerably wide. It has no roadway, but is nicely enough paved, and old furniture stands out for sale on the pavement, in front of the few shops. But if any one had entered those houses with me two years ago, he would have seen enough to surprise and horrify him. In many of the houses the dustbins were utterly unapproachable, and cabbage-leaves, stale fish, and every sort of dirt were lying in the passages and on the stairs; in some the back kitchen had been used as a dustbin, but had not been emptied for years, and the dust filtered through into the front kitchens, which were the sole living and sleeping rooms of some families; in some, the kitchen stairs were many inches thick with dirt, which was so hardened that a shovel had to be used to get it off; in some there was hardly any water to be had; the wood was eaten away, and broken away; windows were smashed; and the rain was coming through the roofs. At night it was still worse; and during the first winter I had to collect the rents chiefly then, as the inhabitants, being principally costermongers, were out nearly all day, and they were afraid to entrust their rent to their neighbors. It was then that I saw the houses in their most dreadful aspect. I well remember wet, foggy, Monday nights, when I turned down the dingy court, past the brilliantly-lighted public-house at the corner, past the old furniture outside the shops, and dived into the dark, yawning, passage ways. The front doors stood open day and night, and as I felt my way down the kitchen stairs, broken, and rounded by the hardened mud upon them, the foul smells which the heavy, foggy air would not allow to rise, met me as I descended, and the plaster rattled down with a hollow sound as I groped along. It was truly appalling to think that there were human beings who lived habitually in such an atmosphere, with such surroundings. Sometimes I had to open the kitchen door myself, after knocking several times in vain, when a woman, quite drunk, would be lying on the floor on some black mass which served as a bed; sometimes, in answer to my knocks, a half-drunken man would swear, and thrust the rent-money out to me through a chink of the door, placing his foot against it, so as to prevent it from opening wide enough to admit me. Always it would be shut again without a light being offered to guide me up the pitch-dark stairs. Such was Blank Court in the winter of 1869. Truly, a wild, lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over. On what principles was I to rule these people? On the same that I had already tried, and tried with success, in other places, and which I may sum up as the two following: firstly, to demand a strict fulfillment of their duties to me,--one of the chief of which would be the punctual payment of rent; and secondly, to endeavor to be so unfailingly just and patient, that they should learn to trust the rule that was over them. With regard to details, I would make a few improvements at once--such, for example, as the laying on of water and repairing of dustbins, but, for the most part, improvements should be made only by degrees, as the people became more capable of valuing and not abusing them. I would have the rooms distempered, and thoroughly cleansed, as they became vacant, and then they should be offered to the more cleanly of the tenants. I would have such repairs as were not immediately needed, used as a means of giving work to the men in times of distress. I would draft the occupants of the underground kitchens into the upstair rooms, and would ultimately convert the kitchens into bath-rooms and wash-houses. I would have the landlady's portion of the house--_i. e._ the stairs and passages--at once repaired and distempered, and they should be regularly scrubbed, and, as far as possible, made models of cleanliness, for I knew, from former experience, that the example of this would, in time, silently spread itself to the rooms themselves, and that payment for this work would give me some hold over the elder girls. I would collect savings personally, not trust to their being taken to distant banks or saving clubs. And finally, I knew that I should learn to feel these people as my friends, and so should instinctively feel the same respect for their privacy and their independence, and should treat them with the same courtesy that I should show towards any other personal friends. There would be no interference, no entering their rooms uninvited, no offer of money or the necessaries of life. But when occasion presented itself, I should give them any help I could, such as I might offer without insult to other friends--sympathy in their distresses; advice, help, and counsel in their difficulties; introductions that might be of use to them; means of education; visits to the country; a lent book when not able to work; a bunch of flowers brought on purpose; an invitation to any entertainment, in a room built at the back of my own house, which would be likely to give them pleasure. I am convinced that one of the evils of much that is done for the poor springs from the want of delicacy felt, and courtesy shown, towards them, and that we cannot beneficially help them in any spirit different to that in which we help those who are better off. The help may differ in amount, because their needs are greater. It should not differ in kind. To sum up: my endeavors in ruling these people should be to maintain perfect strictness in our business relations, perfect respectfulness in our personal relations. These principles of government and plans of action were not theoretical: they had not been _thought out_ in the study, but had been _worked out_ in the course of practical dealings with individual cases. And though I am able thus to formulate them, I want it understood that they are essentially living, that they are not mere dead rules, but principles the application of which is varying from day to day. I can say, for example, "It is our plan to keep some repairs as employment for men out of work;" but it needs the true instinct to apply this plan beneficially--the time to give the work, its kind, its amount, above all the mode of offering it, have to be felt out fresh on each fresh occasion, and the circumstances and characters vary so that each case is new. The practical carrying out in Blank Court of these various plans of action involved, as may readily be imagined, a great deal of personal supervision. Hence the "lot o' landladies" which excited the attention of the street boys. Several ladies, whether owners of houses or not, have worked there energetically with me since the property was bought; and when I use the word "we," I would have it understood to apply to these ladies and myself: it is often upon them that much of the detail of the work devolves. But to proceed with the history of Blank Court. Our first step on obtaining possession was to call on all the inhabitants to establish our claim to receive rents. We accepted or refused the people as tenants, made their acquaintance, and learnt all they might be disposed to tell us about themselves and their families. We came upon strange scenes sometimes. In one room a handsome, black, tangle-haired, ragged boy and girl, of about nine and ten, with wild dark eyes, were always to be found, sometimes squatting near the fire, watching a great black pot, sometimes amusing themselves with cutting paper into strips with scissors. It was difficult to extract a word: the money and dirty rent-book were generally pushed to us in silence. No grown person was ever to be seen. For months I never saw these children in the open air. Often they would lie in bed all day long; and I believe they were too ignorant and indolent to care to leave the house except at night, when the boy, as we afterwards found, would creep like a cat along the roofs of the outbuildings to steal lumps of coal from a neighboring shed. At one room we had to call again and again, always finding the door locked. At last, after weeks of vain effort, I found the woman who owned the room at home. She was sitting on the floor at tea with another woman, the tea being served on an inverted hamper. I sat down on an opposite hamper, which was the only other piece of furniture in the room, and told her I was sorry that I had never been able to make her acquaintance before. To which she replied, with rather a grand air and a merry twinkle in her eye, that she had been "unavoidably absent:" in other words, some weeks in prison,--not a rare occurrence for her. When we set about our repairs and alterations, there was much that was discouraging. The better class of people in the court were hopeless of any permanent improvement. When one of the tenants of the shops saw that we were sending workmen into the empty rooms, he said considerately, "I'll tell you what it is, Miss, it'll cost you a lot o' money to repair them places, and it's no good. The women's 'eads 'll be druv through the door panels again in no time, and the place is good enough for such cattle as them there." But we were not to be deterred. On the other hand, we were not to be hurried in our action by threats. These were not wanting. For no sooner did the tenants see the workmen about than they seemed to think that if they only clamored enough they would get their own rooms put to rights. Nothing had been done for years. Now, they thought, was their opportunity. More than one woman locked me in her room with her, the better to rave and storm. She would shake the rent in her pocket to tempt me with the sound of the money, and roar out "that never a farthing of it would she pay till her grate was set," or her floor was mended, as the case might be. Perfect silence would make her voice drop lower and lower, until at last she would stop, wondering that no violent answers were hurled back at her, and a pause would ensue. I felt that promises would be little believed in, and, besides, I wished to feel free to do as much, and only as much, as seemed best to me; so that my plan was to trust to my deeds to speak for themselves, and inspire confidence as time went on. In such a pause, therefore, I once said to a handsome, gypsy-like Irishwoman, "How long have you lived here?" "More than four years," she replied, her voice swelling again at the remembrance of her wrongs; "and always was a good tenant, and paid my way, and never a thing done! And my grate, etc., etc., etc." "And how long have I had the houses?" "Well, I suppose since Monday week," in a gruff but somewhat mollified tone. "Very well, Mrs. L----, just think over quietly what has been done in the houses since then; and if you like to leave and think you can suit yourself better, I am glad you should make yourself comfortable. Meantime, of course, while you stay, you pay rent. I will call for it this evening if it doesn't suit you to pay now. Good morning." Almost immediately after the purchase of the houses, we had the accumulated refuse of years carted away, the pavement in the yards and front areas were repaired, dustbins cleared, the drains put in order, and water supplied. Such improvements as these are tolerably unspoilable, but for any of a more destructible nature it was better to wait. The importance of advancing slowly, and of gaining some hold over the people as a necessary accompaniment to any real improvement in their dwellings, was perpetually apparent. Their habits were so degraded that we had to work a change in these before they would make any proper use of the improved surroundings we were prepared to give them. We had locks torn off, windows broken, drains stopped, dustbins misused in every possible manner, even pipes broken, and water-taps wrenched away. This was sometimes the result of carelessness, and deeply-rooted habit of dirt and untidiness; sometimes the damage was willful. Our remedy was to watch the right moment for furnishing these appliances, to persevere in supplying them, and to get the people by degrees to work with us for their preservation. I have learned to know that people are ashamed to abuse a place they find cared for. They will add dirt to dirt till a place is pestilential, but the more they find done for it, the more they will respect it, till at last order and cleanliness prevail. It is this feeling of theirs, coupled with the fact that they do not like those whom they have learned to love, and whose standard is higher than their own, to see things which would grieve them, which has enabled us to accomplish nearly every reform of outward things that we have achieved; so that the surest way to have any place kept clean is to go through it often yourself. First I go at regular times, and then they clean to receive me, and have the pleasure of preparing for me, and seeing my satisfaction; then I go at unexpected times to raise them to the power of having it always clean. Our plan of removing the inhabitants of the miserable underground kitchens to rooms in the upper parts of the houses, did not, strange as it may seem, meet with any approbation at first. They had been so long in the semidarkness that they felt it an effort to move. One woman, in particular, I remember, pleaded hard with me to let her stop, saying, "My bits of things won't look _anything_ if you bring them to the light." By degrees, however, we effected the change. I mentioned in my summary of our plan of operations, our custom of using some of the necessary, yet not immediately wanted repairs, as a means of affording work to the tenants in slack times. I lay great stress upon this. Though the men are not mechanics, there are many rough jobs of plastering, distempering, glazing, or sweeping away and removing rubbish which they can do. When, therefore, a tenant is out of work, instead of reducing his energy by any gifts of money, we simply, whenever the funds at our disposal allow it, employ him in restoring and purifying the houses. And what a difference five shillings worth of work in a bad week will make to a family! The father, instead of idling listlessly at the corner of the street, sets busily and happily to work, prepares the whitewash, mends the plaster, distempers the room; the wife bethinks herself of having a turn-out of musty corners or drawers, untouched, maybe, for months, of cleaning her windows, perhaps even of putting up a clean blind; and thus a sense of decency, the hope of beginning afresh and doing better, comes like new life into the home. The same cheering and encouraging sort of influence, though in a less degree, is exercised by our plan of having a little band of scrubbers. We have each passage scrubbed twice a week by one of the elder girls. The sixpence thus earned is a stimulus, and they often take an extreme interest in the work itself. One little girl was so proud of her first cleaning that she stood two hours watching her passage lest the boys, whom she considered as the natural enemies of order and cleanliness, should spoil it before I came to see it. And one woman remarked to her neighbor how nice the stairs looked. "They haven't been cleaned," she added, "since ever I came into this house." She had been there six years! The effect of these clean passages frequently spreads to the rooms, as the dark line of demarkation between the cleaned passage and the still dirty room arouses the attention, and begins to trouble the minds, of its inmates. Gradually, then, these various modes of dealing with our little realm began to tell. Gradually the people began to trust us; and gradually the houses were improved. The sense of quiet power and sympathy soon made itself felt, and less and less was there any sign of rudeness or violence towards ourselves. Even before the first winter was over many a one would hurry to light us up the stairs, and instead of my having the rent-book and money thrust to me through the half-open door, and being kept from possible entrance by a firmly planted foot, my reception would be, "Oh, can't you come in, Miss, and sit down for a bit?" Little by little the houses were renovated, the grates reset, the holes in the floors repaired, the cracking, dirty plaster replaced by a clean smooth surface, the heaps of rubbish removed, and we progressed towards order. Amongst the many benefits which the possession of the houses enables us to confer on the people, perhaps one of the most important is our power of saving them from neighbors who would render their lives miserable. It is a most merciful thing to protect the poor from the pain of living in the next room to drunken, disorderly people. "I am dying," said an old woman to me the other day: "I wish you would put me where I can't hear S---- beating his wife. Her screams are awful. And B----, too, he do come in so drunk. Let me go over the way to No. 30." Our success depends on duly arranging the inmates: not too many children in any one house, so as to overcrowd it; not too few, so as to overcrowd another; not two bad people side by side, or they drink together; not a terribly bad person beside a very respectable one. Occasionally we come upon people whose lives are so good and sincere, it is only by such services and the sense of our friendship, that we can help them at all; in all important things they do not need our teaching, while we may learn much from them. In one of the underground kitchens, I found an old woman who had been living there for twelve years. In spite of every obstacle, and in the midst of such surroundings as I have described, she was spotlessly clean and had done the very best for the wretched place: the broken bars of the grate she had bound in their places with little bits of wire; the great rents in the wall, one of which went right through to the open air, she had stuffed with rags, the jagged ends of which she had actually taken the trouble to trim neatly with scissors; she had papered the walls, and as they were so damp that the paste was perpetually losing its hold, she patiently fastened up the long strips of paper fresh every week. With all this work for it she had naturally become so fond of her little home that it nearly broke her heart to think of leaving it. So we determined not to tear her away from it. After a time, however, the force of our former arguments told upon her, and suddenly, one day, she volunteered to move. She has kept her new room, as one would expect, in a state of neatness and order that is quite perfect. She has since been growing less and less able to work, but she has always paid her rent, she has never asked for help, nor would she even accept the small boon of my lending her some money until she could give the due notice which would enable her to draw out her own savings from the bank where she had placed them. She has lived thirty-five years in London, a single woman depending entirely on herself, without parish allowance or other aid, and has had strength to keep up her standard of cleanliness and independence, and a spirit of patient trustfulness that is unfailing. Her life on earth is nearly over; she is now confined to her bed, for the most part quite alone, without even a bell to summon aid: yet there she lies in her snow-white bed as quietly as a little child settling itself to sleep, talking sometimes with a little pride of her long life's work, sometimes with tenderness of her old days in Ireland long ago, and saying gently that she does not wish to be better; she wants to go "home." Even in the extremity of her loneliness only a small mind could pity her. It is a life to watch with reverence and admiration. We can rarely speak of the depths of the hearts we learn to know or the lives we see in the course of our work. The people are our friends. But sometimes, when such as this old woman seem to have passed beyond us all and to have entered into a quiet we cannot break, we may just glance at a life which, in its simplicity and faithfulness, might make the best of us ashamed. Since we began our work in the court there has been a marked improvement in many of the people. I may just say, as examples, that the passionate Irish tenant who locked me into her room did not leave us, but has settled down happily, and has shown me more than one act of confidence and kindly feeling; that the old woman whose "bits o' things" would look nothing if brought upstairs, after having been long in a light room, has now asked for a larger one, having freed herself from a debt which cramped her resources, and has begun to save; and that the two dark-eyed children were ultimately won over to trust in us. Their mother--a most degraded woman--when she at last appeared, proved to be living a very disreputable life, and the only hope for the children was to get them away from her influence. My first triumph was in getting the girl to exert herself enough to become one of our scrubbers, and finally, a year ago, we were able to persuade her to go to a little industrial school in the country, where she has since been joined by a sister of hers, who turned up subsequently to my first visits. Unfortunately the mother absconded, taking the boy with her, while we were still hoping to get him sent away to a training-school also; but, even in the short time that he remained with us, I had got some hold over him. By dint of making an agreement with him that I would myself fetch him at eight one morning, and help him to prepare his toilet so as to be fit for the nearest ragged school, I got him to begin learning; and when once the ice was broken, he went frequently of his own accord. Opportunities for helping people at some important crisis of their lives not unfrequently present themselves. For instance, soon after we came into possession of Blank Court, I once or twice received rent from a young girl, whom I generally found sitting sadly in a nearly bare room, holding in her arms a little baby. She looked so young that I thought at first the baby must be her sister, but it turned out to be her own child. Her husband seemed a mere boy, and was, in fact, only nineteen. One day, when the rent was not forthcoming, I learnt their story. It appeared that an aunt had promised the lad a sovereign to set him up as a costermonger, if he married the girl; but he had not bargained for prepayment, and the promise was not fulfilled. This marriage-portion, which was to have procured them a stock of herrings, had never been forthcoming. This seemed an occasion upon which a small loan might be of the utmost use. I accordingly lent them the much-needed sovereign (which they have since punctually repaid), and thus saved the young couple from being driven to the workhouse, and gave them a small start in life. To show further the various opportunities afforded us by our footing with the people, I will describe one of our weekly collections of savings. On Saturday evenings, about eight o'clock, the tenants know that we are to be found in the "club room" (one of the former shops of the court, and now used by us for a men's club, and for boys' and girls' evening classes, as well as for this purpose of collecting savings), and that they may come to us there if they like, either for business or a friendly chat. Picture a low, rather long room, one of my assistants and myself sitting in state, with pen and ink and bags for money, at a deal table under a flaring gas jet; the door, which leads straight into the court, standing wide open. A bright red blind, drawn down over the broad window, prevents the passers-by from gazing in there, but, round the open door, there are gathered a set of wild, dirty faces looking in upon us. Such a semicircle they make, as the strong gas-light falls upon them! They are mostly children with disheveled hair, and ragged, uncared-for clothes; but, above them, now and then one sees the haggard face of a woman hurrying to make her Saturday evening purchases, or the vacant stare of some half-drunken man. The grown-up people who stop to look in are usually strangers, for those who know us generally come in to us. "Well! they've give it this time, anyhow," one woman will exclaim, sitting down on a bench near us, so engrossed in the question of whether she obtains a parish allowance that she thinks "they" can mean no one but the Board of Guardians, and "it" nothing but the much-desired allowance. "Yes, I thought I'd come in and tell you," she will go on; "I went up Tuesday--" And then will follow the whole story. "Well, and how do you find yourself, Miss?" a big Irish laborer in a flannel jacket will say, entering afterwards; "I just come in to say I shall be knocked off Monday; finished our job across the park: and if so be there's any little thing in whitewashing to do, why, I'll be glad to do it." "Presently," we reply, nodding to a thin, slight woman at the door. She has not spoken, but we know the meaning of that beseeching look. She wants us to go up and get her husband's rent from him before he goes out to spend more of it in drink. The eager, watchful eyes of one of our little scrubbers next attract attention; there she stands, with her savings' card in her hand, waiting till we enter the sixpence she has earned from us during the week. "How much have I got?" she says, eying the written sixpences with delight, "because mother says, please, I'm to draw out next Saturday; she's going to buy me a pair of boots." "Take two shillings on the card and four shillings rent," a proudly happy woman will say, as she lays down a piece of bright gold, a rare sight this in the court, but her husband has been in regular work for some little time. "Please, Miss," says another woman, "will you see and do something for Jane? She's that masterful since her father died, I can't do nothing with her, and she'll do no good in this court. Do see and get her a place somewheres away." A man will enter now: "I'll leave you my rent to-night, Miss, instead o' Monday, please; it'll be safer with you than with me." A pale woman comes next, in great sorrow. Her husband, she tells us, has been arrested without cause. We believe this to be true; the man has always paid his way honestly, worked industriously, and lived decently. So my assistant goes round to the police-station at once to bail him, while I remain to collect the savings. "Did he seem grateful?" I say to her on her return. "He took it very quietly," is her answer; "he seemed to feel it quite natural that we should help him." Such are some of the scenes on our Savings' evenings; such some of the services we are called upon to render; such the kind of footing we are on with our tenants. An evening such as this assuredly shows that our footing has somewhat changed since those spent in Blank Court during the first winter. My readers will not imagine that I mean to imply that there are not still depths of evil remaining in Blank Court. It would be impossible for such a place as I described it as being originally, to be raised in two years to a satisfactory condition. But, what I do contend is, that we have worked some very real reforms, and seen some very real results. I feel that it is in a very great degree a question of time, and that, now that we have got hold of the hearts of the people, the court is sure to improve steadily. It will pay as good a percentage to its owners and will benefit its tenants as much as any of the other properties under my management have done. This court contains two out of eight properties on which the same plans have been tried, and all of them are increasingly prosperous. The first two were purchased by Mr. Ruskin. It appears to me then to be proved by practical experience, that when we can induce the rich to undertake the duties of landlord in poor neighborhoods, and insure a sufficient amount of the wise, personal supervision of educated and sympathetic people acting as their representatives, we achieve results which are not attainable in any other way. It is true that there are Dwellings' Improvement Societies, and the good these societies do is incalculable; I should be the last to underrate it. But it is almost impossible that any society could do much for such places as Blank Court, because it is there not so much a question of dealing with houses alone, as of dealing with houses in connection with their influence on the character and habits of the people who inhabit them. If any society had come there and put those houses into a state of perfect repair at once, it would have been of little use, because its work would have been undone again by the bad habits and carelessness of the people. If improvements were made on a large scale, and the people remained untouched, all would soon return to its former condition. You cannot deal with the people and their houses separately. The principle on which the whole work rests, is that the inhabitants and their surroundings must be improved together. It has never yet failed to succeed. Finally, I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in large towns, to consider the power they thus hold in their hands, and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of that power. When they have to delegate it to others, let them take care to whom they commit it; and let them beware lest, through the widely prevailing system of sub-letting, this power ultimately abide with those who have neither the will nor the knowledge which would enable them to use it beneficially;--with such as the London landladies described at the beginning of this paper. The management of details will seldom remain with the large owners, but they may choose trustworthy representatives, and retain at least as much control over their tenants, and as much interest in them, as is done by good landlords in the country. And I would ask those who do _not_ hold such property to consider whether they might not, by possessing themselves of some, confer lasting benefits on their poorer neighbors? In these pages I have dwelt mainly on the way our management affects the people, as I have given elsewhere[5] my experiences as to financial matters and details of practical management. But I may here urge one thing on those about to undertake to deal with such property, the extreme importance of enforcing the punctual payment of rents. This principle is a vital one. Firstly, because it strikes one blow at the credit system, that curse of the poor; secondly, because it prevents large losses from bad debts, and prevents the tenant from believing that he will be suffered to remain, whatever his conduct may be, resting that belief on his knowledge of the large sum that would be lost were he turned out; and, thirdly, because the mere fact that the man is kept up to his duty is a help to him, and increases his self-respect and hope of doing better. I would also say to those who, in the carrying out of such an undertaking, are brought into immediate contact with the tenants, that its success will depend most of all on their giving sympathy to the tenants, and awakening confidence in them; but it will depend also in a great degree on their power of bestowing concentrated attention on small details. For the work is one of detail. Looking back over the years as they pass, one sees a progress that is _not_ small; but day after day the work is one of such small things, that if one did not look beyond and through them they would be trying. Locks to be mended, notices to be served, the missing shilling of the week's rent to be called for three or four times, petty quarrels to be settled, small rebukes to be spoken, the same remonstrances to be made again and again. But it is on these things and their faithful execution that the life of the whole matter depends, and by which steady progress is insured. It is the small things of the world that color the lives of those around us, and it is on persistent efforts to reform these that progress depends; and we may rest assured that they who see with greater eyes than ours have a due estimate of the service, and that if we did but perceive the mighty principles underlying these tiny things we should rather feel awed that we are entrusted with them at all, than scornful and impatient that they are no larger. What are we that we should ask for more than that God should let us work for Him among the tangible things which He created to be fair, and the human spirits which He redeemed to be pure? From time to time He lifts a vail and shows us, even while we struggle with imperfections here below, that towards which we are working--shows us how, by governing and ordering the tangible things one by one, we may make of this earth a fair dwelling-place. And far better still, how by cherishing human beings He will let us help Him in His work of building up temples meet for Him to dwell in--faint images of that best temple of all, which He promised that He would raise up on the third day, though men might destroy it. OCTAVIA HILL. FOOTNOTES: [4] _Macmillan's Magazine_ for July, 1869. [5] Cottage Property in London.--_Fortnightly Review_, Nov. 1, 1866. Organized Work amongst the Poor.--_Macmillan's Magazine_, July, 1869. THE WORK OF VOLUNTEERS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF CHARITY. It is clear to those who are watching the work closely, and must even be apparent to those less conversant with the subject, that a great and growing conviction is abroad that our charitable efforts need concentrating, systematizing, and uniting. There are many signs that this conviction is bearing practical fruit. All the thirty Poor-Law districts into which London is divided are now provided with committees for organizing charitable relief. The formation of these committees has led gentlemen specially interested in the subject to come forward in various parts of London as candidates for the office of guardians; several such candidates have been elected in St. George's, Kensington, Marylebone, and other parishes. Nor is the movement confined to London. Charity Organization Societies, or others of a kindred nature, have been established in most of the large towns of England and Scotland. Conversation, newspapers, conferences, all bear witness how very generally it is now that something ought to be done to improve our system of charitable relief, some co-operation secured between Poor-Law and charity, and some efficient means adopted to render alms less pauperizing than they have hitherto been. It is becoming clear to the public that there is a right and a wrong, a wise and an unwise charity. Those who have the interests of the poor at heart are learning, more and more, to consult experienced people before taking any direct steps towards trying to help those who apply to them for aid; those who wish to give money beginning to entrust it to enlightened committees, instead of endeavoring to distribute it themselves. It becomes almost needless now to charge on the evils of "overlapping,"--that is, of various charitable agencies covering the same ground whilst ignorant of each other's proceedings; or to dwell on the cruelty of the utter want of system which has hitherto prevailed,--to point to poor families assisted by three or four agencies at times when they needed help least, and others neglected by all at times when they needed it most. It would not be difficult to give examples of these evils, and to show that they are inseparable from the condition of large towns wherever nothing is done to secure unity of action amongst those who are trying to assist the poor. Much has been done. The evils of overlapping, on the one hand, and of neglect on the other, are being swept away wherever organization committees, with their machinery for thorough investigation, and relief societies, with their power to assist, are in existence. By means of this system of inquiry into the merits of cases a great degree of uniformity in dealing with them is secured; no relief is given without due consideration, no poor person who chooses to apply can fail to have a hearing for his case, and similar needs will meet with a similar response. All this is no small gain. But now a new danger seems to me to be arising; a danger lest, rushing from one extreme to another, we should leave to committees, with their systems of rules, the whole work of charity, and deprive this great organizing movement of all aid from what I may call the personal element. The value of this element seems to me to be inestimable. Charity owes all its graciousness to the sense of its coming from a real friend. We want to bring the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, more and more into direct communication. We want to enlist the thought, knowledge, sympathy, foresight, and gentleness of the educated in the service of the poor, and must beware of raising up barriers of committees between those who should meet face to face. There is beyond all doubt in almost every town a great amount of volunteer work to be had, which, were it organized and concentrated, would achieve infinitely more than its best efforts can now accomplish. There is always, however, a difficulty in calculating to any great extent on volunteer work, inasmuch as it is apt to be disconnected, desultory, and untrained. It is true that where an energetic body of visitors is gathered together under able and vigilant guidance--where their districts are small, their visits frequent, their written records simple and complete, and gaps in their ranks quickly filled up, so that their work is not intermittent--they form a powerful agency for good. Such societies are usually the first to see the importance of putting themselves into communication with other charitable bodies; and when they do this, little improvement in the machinery is requisite. But it is also sadly true that the work of a number of earnest and devoted volunteers is thrown away because their districts are too large, their duties indefinite, and their work unconnected with that of others laboring according to any definite plan. Several things, then, appear to me to be evident--(1), that if the poor are to be raised to a permanently better condition, they must be dealt with as individuals and by individuals; (2), that for this hundreds of workers are necessary; and (3), that this multitude of helpers is to be found amongst volunteers--whose aid, as we arrange things at present, is to a great extent lost. The problem to be solved, therefore, is how to collect our volunteers into a harmonious whole--the action of each being free, yet systematized; and how thus to administer relief through the united agency of corporate bodies and private individuals; how, in fact, to secure all the personal intercourse and friendliness, all the real sympathy, all the graciousness of individual effort, without losing the advantage of having relief voted by a central committee, and according to definite principles. The way in which this problem has been dealt with in one small district of London will be seen in the following pages. Every district will, no doubt, have to deal with the question in a somewhat different way, which must be determined by its special circumstances; but the subjoined sketch of a plan now in operation is given because it is always easier to see how a scheme will work when it comes before us as an actual fact, with a definite place and history, than when its bare principles only are laid down. The working of the plan is not yet by any means perfect. There are many flaws still to be remedied, many breaks still to be filled up. It might, perhaps, have been better to delay writing about it till the working was made more complete, had it not been that the plan has been successful so far, and that it promises to be increasingly so. Besides, this seems the time when an account of a practical scheme for using individual work in conjunction with that of committees may be of real value. The need of some such scheme is felt with regard to the Poor Law. The Poor Law authorities have lately called the attention of Boards of Guardians to the success of the Elberfield system, which depends on the careful and systematic inquiries of a large number of volunteer visitors. The Macclesfield Board of Guardians has already invited volunteers to aid it under the name of Assistant Guardians. The same want is felt with regard to charity. On all sides we hear of people willing to give their time if only they could be sure of doing good. They are dissatisfied, they say, with district visiting, which creates so much discontent and poverty, and does so little lasting good; they want to know of some way in which their efforts may fit in with more organized work. In the district in which the following plan has been tried the poorer inhabitants have for years been accustomed to make their applications for relief daily, between nine and ten o'clock, at a house situated in the center of the parish. The mode of administering relief has been changed, but the house is still used for the reception of applications. The names are taken down, and one of the blank forms used by the Charity Organization Society[6] is filled up with the account given by the applicant of himself and his circumstances. The form will then contain a statement of the names and ages, occupation, and earnings of every member of the applicant's family, his present and his previous address, the parish relief he receives (if any), the name of the club or benefit society to which he belongs (if there be such), the particular help he asks for, and the ground of the application. The form is immediately forwarded to the Charity Organization Society, who thoroughly investigate the information it contains by means of a paid officer. It is returned with its statements either verified or contradicted, and now shows, in addition to what it contained before, the report of the relieving officer, that of the minister of any denomination with which the applicant is connected, and his character as given by his previous landlord and other references. On the day when the application is first made, and the Charity Organization Society apprised of it, a post-card or other message is sent to the visitor of the street or court where the applicant resides. This informs her of the application, and also that she is expected to send in on the ensuing Friday any information regarding the case which she may already have, or may learn from a visit paid during the week. She at the same time gives her advice as to the best way of dealing with the application. The Relief Committee (of the constitution of which we will speak presently) meets every Friday evening. They have before them not only the valuable information of the Charity Organization Society, gathered, sifted, and examined by their paid officer and representative Committee, but also the detailed account of a volunteer, who brings to bear on the case a fresher and more personal sympathy than a paid agent ordinarily possesses, who has much more patience to listen to, and probably more patience to elicit the little facts on which so much may depend. Any one will appreciate the value of this who has had experience of the difficulty of obtaining the evidence of uneducated people, women more especially; they are nervously confused, they cannot understand what are the real points of the case, nor state them clearly; often the most important fact of all comes out apparently quite by accident in the middle of a long sentence after the terror of being questioned has worn off. Thus the reports sent in, even by young or inexperienced visitors, bring forward facts which might never have come to the knowledge of the committee, while the reports of more practiced visitors are of still greater value, and not unfrequently suggest far more efficient ways of helping poor families than could have been otherwise devised. The applicant himself comes before the committee. He can thus explain his prospects, clear up any apparent discrepancy of statement, talk over any new plan proposed by visitor or committee, and receive, without delay, the answer to his application. Whatever grant is sanctioned, however, or whatever plan of action is suggested, the visitor is entrusted with the management of it, so that where money is given it reaches those helped through a kind friend; and where some plan is recommended, it is tried under the friendly and watchful eyes of one who, owing to the advantages of education, should be wiser in many ways than the applicant. Her power, at any rate, is of a different kind, and may fill in his deficiencies. The province of the Charity Organization Society is that of investigation only;[7] while the province of the Relief Committee, before whom all the collected information is placed, and before whom the applicant appears, is that of final decision or relief. It dispenses the funds of the district, receiving money from people of all denominations, and administering help to all denominations without distinction. It is composed of two clergymen, one doctor, one schoolmaster, three tradesmen. In order to secure the attendance of men occupied during the day, this committee meets in the evening. One lady, the referee of the Charity Organization, always attends as a medium of communication between the visitors, committee, and Charity Organization Society. Any visitors can attend who wish, but in general they find it more convenient to report by letter. Unless the referee has much time, one paid worker is needed to carry out the work well. In the district just described the former almoner is employed, who has great knowledge of the people. She attends the committee, and her information is found to be most valuable. It is a great advantage to have some one always on the spot. She receives applications, and at once sends notice of them to the visitors and Charity Organization Society. She communicates to the visitors the decision of the committee, pays them money which is voted for applicants living in their districts, and keeps the accounts. In cases of emergency she visits, but her main object ought always to be to bring the visitors in well to their work. Such is an outline of the plan adopted as regards its main features. Dry and formal as it may appear in print, I think that any one who reflects will see how the most intimate, loving, friendly way of reaching the poor through the efforts of kind visitors (each of whom visits chiefly amongst those she knows best) has been secured, whilst any danger of confusion has been avoided, and the chance of overlapping has been reduced to a minimum. A few specimens of the kind of cases which may come before the Parish Committee, and of the mode in which they would be dealt with, are here subjoined. An old woman enters the room. She gives an anxious, nervous glance at the members of the committee who are sitting round the table. She is asked to take a seat and to answer the questions, which are as kindly put to her as possible. Soon, however, she becomes hopelessly confused, and in her long, rambling tale contradicts herself over and over again. It seems to be impossible to discover any reason for her actions--why she lives in so dear a room, why she persistently hides some facts. But reference is made to a note sent by the lady-visitor to the committee. She, in a quiet, friendly talk has found out all the old woman's tale. The committee are thus able to understand why she clings to the room she has lived in for so long, though the rent is high; why she works to keep a lodger, when she might live as cheaply alone; why she refuses to tell the names of those who help her. All is cleared up; and since her relations seem to be doing their duty, and the parish making the largest allowance which the guardians think it right to give outside the workhouse, a pension of two shillings a week is granted her for three months. The visitor will pay this pension, and in her weekly visit the friendship will grow. She, unconsciously, perhaps, will supervise the home, and at the end of three months, when the old woman will appear again to have her pension renewed, she will be able to tell of a life which has become quieter and happier. Or perhaps a younger woman applies. She will tell how illness and misfortune have reduced herself and her husband to poverty. He has at length gone into the workhouse infirmary, where, possibly, he may linger on for months or years, and she has come to ask for help for herself. The committee see that the only result of a gift would be to destroy her power of self-help and tempt her to lean on the uncertain aid of others, while if they helped her adequately the tax on their own funds would be large, and she would be kept in idleness and prevented from fitting herself for future work. She pleads for a little temporary employment, but they tell her that as she has no children to need her care, she had better at once take a place as domestic servant. She says she is not strong enough for hard work. They elicit, however, that she is a good needlewoman, and therefore advise her to seek a place as young lady's maid, or wardrobe-keeper in a school. Her reply is, "Thank you, but I'd rather muddle on." The committee is no doubt right: its decision will help her to face her future, and to see that it is best now, while she is not old, to find an occupation by which she can permanently support herself. Yet she cannot see it at present in this light, it comes to her too suddenly. In spite of the gentle considerateness of the members of the committee, it must be hard for her to face her fate, receive as it were the verdict, "No more home," from a company of people she never saw before. The decision must seem stern. But that night a letter will be dispatched to the lady who has charge of the district where she lives, telling her the committee's decision; the visitor will gently talk to her, advise her, perhaps find a situation for her; when she has resolved to take one, the visitor will herself write to the committee asking for a grant for an advertisement, or for clothes. Others apply to whom the committee recommend a course which seems hard. A little sick child must be sent away into the country. The father of a family must go to a Convalescent Hospital. The large and expensive room must be given up by the old couple whose wages are falling lower and lower. The kitchen, the dampness of which is sapping the children's strength, must be left; the idle son must be made to work. The advice of the committee is generally refused, but they need not despair. They know that in a day or two the visitor will call--she will tell the mother how kind are those who care for sick children, and will gradually persuade her to send her little one out of the hot, close air which is killing it. She will tell the man how much better it would be to get thoroughly strong than to work on in his weak state; she will stir him up by thoughts of the bright grounds which surround the Convalescent Hospital: and soon she will come to the committee for the offered letter. Going day by day she will break down the apathy and carelessness which has allowed a high rent or an unhealthy situation so long to cripple the strength of the family. She will tell of better and cheaper rooms, she will appeal to both love and prudence, and by kind words to-day and by stern refusals to-morrow give help till they so far help themselves as to move. She will go to visit those who are bitterly resenting the decision of the committee not to help so long as the strong son remains idle or children are kept away from school. She will speak gently and simply of the blessedness of duties; she will tell of the kindness which has seen so far that it would make the idle industrious, the careless careful, the ignorant wise. Perhaps she will find and talk to the idler or the truants, and them she will induce to go with some of their playmates to school, him she will stir up to apply for the work of which the committee told him. Thus the visitor in her visits will persuade and rouse the people to the action that the committee saw to be good, but were powerless to enforce. Then there are those who suffer poverty quietly and shrink from making any appeal. These the visitor finds out and sends to the committee for their advice and help. Spirited and hard-working women, high-class working men whose illness has been so long that the club money has ceased, will thus be brought to the notice of the committee, who will go patiently into each case. The woman will probably be offered some work; and though she has a hard life at home, children to care for, and occasional mangling to do, she will make an effort to accept the offer; some means of cure or some quiet work will be proposed to the sick man, or it may be thought well to grant him a regular sum weekly for a time. In all the cases the knowledge of the committee will be brought to bear on the poverty of the striving family that the visitor has discovered. The visitor, however, may not always appear to advocate assistance; sometimes she comes to discourage it. People will apply whose tale seems good. A man wants work; a girl wants clothes to go to a place. At first it appears as if they would make good use of help. The visitor's report soon gives another aspect to the case. She will tell how on such a date the man had lost his work through drink, or how the help so often received had been misused; it is clear to the committee now that such a man can only learn by being left to himself, and though he cringingly begs for work, it is refused. The visitor will also tell how the girl has been frequently helped to clothes of which she had made no good use, how situation after situation had been carelessly lost, how weak parents and idle companions had always been ready to back her up in bad ways. The committee are thus able to see that now she must be taught to earn her clothes gradually. So only will she learn her responsibilities and reap the natural reward of labor. It will be seen from the foregoing illustrations that the endeavor of the committee and of those at work under them is to give help that shall be adequate, and as far as possible, permanently beneficial. They feel themselves bound, even though the applicant be deserving, to refuse aid which could be a mere temporary stop-gap and confer no lasting benefit, and their aim is in every case to rouse the spirit of independence and self-help. It will also have been observed how very valuable an element in the working of the scheme the visitor forms; that she is not only a channel through which useful information reaches the committee, but is, in almost every instance, their actual agent in carrying out the plans of help adopted. I must, however, say something further as to the importance of the appointment of some lady or gentleman acting as _Referee_; that is, as a center for all the volunteers working as visitors. For if volunteer work is to form a useful part of our scheme of dealing with the people, we must accept those as workers whose work is necessarily intermittent. This must be done in order that we may secure a sufficient number of workers, and not waste, but gather in and use all the overflowing sympathy which is such a blessing to giver and receiver. With our volunteers, home claims must and should come first; and it is precisely those whose claims are deepest, and whose family life is the noblest, who have the most precious influence in the homes of the poor. But if the work is to be valuable, we must find some way to bind together broken scraps of time, and thus give it continuity in spite of changes and breaks. One great means of doing this is to have a living center. This should be secured in the referee. The referee in the district here described was appointed in the first instance by the District Committee of the Charity Organization Society; she was subsequently asked to attend the Relief Committee, and has since been recognized by the Guardians and the sub-committee of the School Board as the representative of all the visitors throughout the district: the guardians kindly send to her, after their weekly meetings, notes of every decision arrived at as to applications for relief; these are immediately passed on by her to the visitor of the particular court where the applicant resides. The School Board has withdrawn its paid agent and entrusted to her and the staff of visitors working in concert with her the working of the compulsory clauses of the Education Act. She thus acts as a connecting link between all the various agencies at work in the parish. It is evident that catastrophe would ensue if public bodies such as the guardians or School Board attempted to deal directly with such a crude, changeful, and untrained body as our volunteers necessarily form; but, communicating with them through the referee, they can use their aid and find it valuable. The existence of a referee is a help to the visitors in various ways. She receives applications from all volunteers, introduces them to the clergy and others who need workers, or enrolls them as visitors under the Charity Organization Society in unvisited courts, if such there be. She has nothing to do with their work, so far as it is denominational, but takes note of it so far as it deals with visible help. She introduces temporary or permanent substitutes when visitors are absent from town, or ill, or unable from any other cause to continue their work; so that the threads of it are never broken. She is able to give, in a much more detailed and personal way than any corporate body could do, information as to sources of relief, societies available for special cases, as to what visitors of other denominations are doing, and what help the Poor Law will give. For example: "Can anything be done about Mrs. H----?" a new visitor will ask; "her room is fearfully dirty, and she is so infirm now that she cannot keep it clean. She would be better off in the workhouse." "I will communicate with the guardians, and no doubt the relieving officer will visit and report," the referee will answer. Or another volunteer will ask, "Can you tell me exactly what the law is now as to compulsory attendance at school? There are several bad cases of neglect in my court--what should I do about them?" Or another: "No. 7 in ---- Street is in a most unhealthy state; can nothing be done?" "Yes, certainly," the referee will say; "if the drains are really, as you think, not trapped, the landlord can be compelled to do it. Write to the Inspector of Nuisances, and ask him to look into it. He is always most attentive to a request of this kind." Sometimes the suggestion will come from the referee. "Would you," she will say to some of the ladies, "make a list of the unvaccinated children in your streets, and tell the mothers how and when most easily to get the neglect remedied? They only want a little spurring up." Such is the work the ladies find, and the kind of help the referee can give. Another most important means of securing unity of action is afforded by the written records which the committee make it a point that the visitors should keep--and should keep according to one fixed and definite plan. Each court has its own separate district book; each applicant has his separate page, where the detail regarding him and his family can be found at once. The reports of the relieving officer, of the clergyman, and of any references the applicant may have given, are all found in a condensed form on this same page. An entry is made of every kind of material help given, summed up in a money column each month; and the visitor is also expected to record every month the principal events which have happened in the family. One line only is allowed for this. This rule is made because MS. records become useless if they are voluminous; the chief events only are required and must be carefully selected. The book is sent in once a month to the referee. The privacy of the poor is not infringed by the use of these records, since the books remain exclusively in the hands of the visitor and referee, and it rests with the visitor to report to the committee only that which she deems essential to the right decision of a case. And, moreover, nothing of a private nature--nothing which could imply a breach of confidence--ought ever to be entered in the books at all. The advantages of thus keeping district books are very great. It is of course not unusual for those who visit amongst the poor to keep written records of one kind or another. But if they are kept in various forms and the information is not tabulated so as to be readily comprehended by fellow-workers, half their value is lost. To be available for general use, it is all-important that the books throughout a parish should be _uniform_, and the information contained in them _complete_ and _condensed_. They should be arranged so as to bring to a focus all the information obtained through the Charity Organization Society. Now it too often happens that they contain only notes of such facts as have come under the visitor's personal observation, and are kept by each visitor according to a different plan. The work itself is an always growing one, as the system does not stop at mere relief, but uses its machinery to carry out every plan of helpfulness that can be devised. The visitors find that the work opens out as they themselves increase in power. Then the question arises how the pressing, useful things, which so urgently need doing, can possibly be got through. "I see more to do in my district the longer I work there," one lady said to the referee, not long ago; "the more I learn, the more the work increases. I see numberless helpful things I could do if only I had time. May I divide my district? I don't know which part of it I can make up my mind to give up; there are people I should grieve to lose sight of in every part of it, yet I cannot manage all that I now see ought to be done." "Do not divide your district," the referee replied; "the Committees, Guardians, School Board, and I myself cannot easily treat with still smaller divisions than that into separate courts or streets. Let me introduce you to one of the younger volunteers whom you may associate with you in the work. She is too young to visit alone, or to judge what is wise in difficult cases, but she will write your monthly reports, will be a friendly messenger to pay pensions, will call to ask if children are at school, and report to the School Board, will collect savings and keep accounts of them, will write about admissions to Convalescent Homes or Industrial Schools, will give notice of classes and entertainments, and register the window plants before our flower shows. In short, she will form a friendly link between you and the people, will save your time, and be herself trained to take the lead hereafter. Mr. R., too, offered help in the evening, if you want him to establish that Co-operative Store, to keep some life in the Working Men's Club, or to collect savings in the court on a Saturday night; and Mrs. S. offers help in money for special cases of want which the committee can hardly take up, or for some of our excursions to the country this summer. In fact, if you will associate other workers with you, instead of still further subdividing the district, it will be much the best." And so the work grows, and the various help gets more and more woven into one whole. Much has been written of late on the subject of Sisterhoods and of "Homes," where those who wish to devote themselves to the service of the poor can live together, consecrating their whole life to the work. I must here express my conviction that we want very much more the influence that emanates not from "a Home," but from "homes." One looks with reverence on the devotion of those who, leaving domestic life, are ready to sacrifice all in the cause of the poor, and give up time, health, and strength in the effort to diminish the great mass of sin and sorrow that is in the world. I have seen faces shining like St. Stephen's with sight of heaven beyond the pain and sin. I have seen shoulders bent as St. Christopher's might have been--better in angels' sight than upright ones. I have seen hair turned gray by sorrow shared with others. And before such, one bends with reverence. But I am sure we ought to desire to have as workers, joyful, strong, many-sided natures, and that the poor, tenderly as they may cling to those who, as it were, cast in their lots amongst them, are better for the bright visits of those who are strong, happy, and sympathetic. "Send me," said one day a poor woman, who did not even know the visitor's name, "the lady with the sweet smile and the bright golden hair." The work amongst the poor is, in short, better done by those who do less of it, or rather, who gain strength and brightness in other ways. I hope for a return to the old fellowship between rich and poor; to a solemn sense of relationship; to quiet life side by side; to men and women coming out from bright, good, simple homes, to see, teach, and learn from the poor; returning to gather fresh strength from home warmth and love, and seeing in their own homes something of the spirit which should pervade all. I believe that educated people would come forward if once they saw how they could be really useful, and without neglecting nearer claims. Let us reflect that hundreds of workers are wanted; that if they are to preserve their vigor they must not be over-worked; and that each of us who might help and holds back not only leaves work undone, but injures, to a certain extent, the work of others. Let each of us not attempt too much, but take some one little bit of work, and, doing it simply, thoroughly, and lovingly, wait patiently for the gradual spread of good, and leave to professional workers to deal for the present with the great mass of evil around. To recapitulate, then, let me say that I think the operations of the Charity Organization Society have been wholly beneficial so far, but that it will have to secure more extended personal influence between rich and poor if it is to be permanently successful. As a society it is doing its work; it is contending for justice and order; it has urged us not to corrupt our fellow-citizens; it has instituted inquiries in support of truth; it has responsible officers; it is an upholder of method, and it will help us to be swift, just, and sure in our gifts. But it can never be a more living educational body than the law is. The society can never be a vital, loving, living force; it can never wake up enthusiasm, nor gently lead wanderers, nor stir by unexpected mercy, nor strengthen by repeated words of guidance. The ground once cleared by it, the work remains for individuals to carry on. OCTAVIA HILL. FOOTNOTES: [6] N. B.--To save confusion, the District Committee of the Charity Organization Society is throughout this paper spoken of as the Charity Organization Society. This seemed the simplest way to distinguish it from the Relief Committee. [7] "The Charity Organization Society" is the short title of "The Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity," which was established in London in 1869. It was formed with the intention of remedying acknowledged abuses in the administration of charitable relief; and also to repress the profitable trade of mendicity, pursued by many who had no claim upon the public for support. The society does not confine its operations to these two branches, but aims at improving the condition of the poor, by enabling them to help themselves rather than by giving them alms. It has, accordingly, originated inquiry into the causes of distress and poverty, and has issued reports upon night refuges, soup-kitchens, crêches or public day nurseries, dispensaries, district visiting, systematic inquiry into the cases of applicants for relief and employment, and kindred subjects. The affairs of the society are managed by a central council, holding periodical meetings, and which consists of some of the most influential citizens of London. The chairman and Hon. secretary of each district committee are ex-officio members of the council. There are at present thirty-five of these district committees, or branches, covering nearly the whole area of the metropolis, with its population of quite three millions. Each district committee has its permanent office. In some districts there are two such offices, with a small staff of paid officials; but nearly all the work is done by volunteers. The expenses of the central society are covered by special subscriptions. This fund is entirely distinct from the maintenance funds of the different district committees. The districts are divided into smaller sub-districts or sub-divisions, usually following the existing legal boundaries; and the co-operation of the resident clergy, of all denominations, is always invited, as well as that of all existing charitable relief agencies. The sub-district in which Miss Octavia Hill has done such a remarkable work is that of St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, a portion of the very large parish and Poor Law district of St. Marylebone, London. Co-operation has here been secured between four agencies engaged in the administration of charitable relief. These are the Board of Guardians of the Poor, answering to our City Commissioners of Charities or County Superintendents of the Poor; the St. Marylebone District Committee of the Charity Organization Society; the Relief Committee, and the District Visitors. Miss Hill acts as Referee for all. She is the medium of communication through which each agency knows what the other is doing, thus enabling it to deal intelligently with each case of distress which comes before it. The visitors also obtain information for the School Board.--ED. RELIEF--OFFICIAL AND VOLUNTEER AGENCIES IN ADMINISTERING. _10th January, 1874._ SIR: In accordance with your request, I beg to furnish an account of the system now in operation in a part of the parish of Marylebone, which aims at establishing a complete combination of official and volunteer agencies in dealing with Poor Law cases. The attention of Poor-Law reformers has been much directed of late years to the administration of out-door relief in Elberfeld. The success of the system pursued there is no longer doubtful. It has been in operation for years; and the report presented to the Local Government Board by their inspector, after his visit, has proved how powerful it is in diminishing pauperism. In the first place, it is shown that the employment of numerous volunteer visitors has there formed a check on imposture, such as our relieving officers, owing to the size of their districts, cannot possibly supply; and secondly, that it has been found possible to adopt there much more radical measures for removing poverty than are here adopted. The poor are divided into groups, each group consisting of a few families, and each cluster of families is committed to the special care and supervision of an intelligent visitor, who goes in and out among them, making himself acquainted with their daily lives, their past history, their present resources and circumstances. This being so, an account of an organization based on the same principles, and existing in our own country, gains an interest which it otherwise would not possess, and claims attention, though it covers a small area only, though it is tentative, and has not as yet been in operation more than one year. If the scheme succeeds and spreads, we may fairly hope much from it. It is as yet in its infancy, and no formal opinion as to its working has been pronounced by the Marylebone Board of Guardians; but individual members of that Board have expressed their warm approval, the clerk and the relieving officer appear much pleased with the plan, and at present there are no signs of failure, nor does any modification even appear necessary. I proceed, therefore, to give an account of the system as at present in operation, and will show afterwards its resemblance to the Elberfeld plan, its chief difference from it, and the reason such marked difference is necessary here and now. At the end of 1872 it came under the notice of the Guardians of St. Marylebone that there existed in a part of their parish--the division known as St. Mary's, Bryanston Square,--a body of district visitors differing in some measure from any to be found in other parts of London. Their special training was due to the fact that soon after the Charity Organization Society was founded, the rector of St. Mary's had determined to reform his system of distributing the funds entrusted to him for charitable purposes, whilst still using the district visitors as his agents. To this end he made over the whole of these funds to a small committee, the St. Mary's Relief Committee, composed of men of various classes, who had given special attention to the wise administration of aid to the poor. Every applicant for help throughout St. Mary's had henceforth to appear before this committee, who were guided in their decision as to his case both by a report from the Marylebone branch of the Charity Organization Society, and by one from the visitor in whose district he resided. Thus a thorough and efficient inquiry was secured. They also aimed at making relief more adequate than formerly; refusing small grants, which would only give temporary and illusory aid, and endeavoring, by means of employment, emigration, loans to enable people to start afresh in life, and so on, to give real and permanent assistance. This committee I was asked to join, as, having a seat on the Marylebone Charity Organization Society, I could form a personal link between the inquiring and the relieving bodies, in addition to the written link which the report on each case afforded. I was also asked to act as referee, that is, to communicate the decisions of the committee to the visitor, who was requested to dispense the aid voted or inform the applicant of the reason of its refusal. In this capacity of referee, I formed a sort of center for the district visitors; it became my duty to give advice when asked, and to instruct new or inexperienced visitors in the nature of their duties and the principles they were expected to adopt. Each visitor had to keep a book, in which the name of every applicant was entered, together with the information obtained about him through the local branch of the Charity Organization Society. An account of all money given to him by any charitable agency, and a short notice from month to month of the events in his family were also entered. Each book contained the facts relating to residents in one court or street only, and was always in the hands of the visitor of that court, temporary or permanent; an alphabetical index enabled her to turn at once to the account of any given family. The result of this system was to train a body of visitors in judicious and organized modes of work. The light thrown upon cases of applicants by the Charity Organization Society, the advantages afforded by practical work under an experienced committee, and the power of watching individual cases of distress through a long period of their history (a power which small districts and written records materially increase), were all important elements in the education of these visitors. When this system had been in operation two or three years, it became clear that these volunteer visitors might be valuable to the relieving officer, if they could be brought into communication with him, and that a mass of information had been collected in their district-books, which might be of service to the Guardians if it could be made available at the right moment. But the attempt to bring them into direct communication with any official would have been open to many objections. Confusions might arise when visitors were absent; new visitors would occasionally have to be appointed, and to have their work explained to them. No relieving officer would have time to undertake this duty, nor even to communicate with so large and fluctuating a body as that formed by these volunteers. The Guardians, therefore, resolved to recognize one of these volunteers as representing the whole body. The referee would be a connecting link between themselves and the visitors, and through her only, all communications would pass. I was asked to fill this position with relation to the Guardians, for one reason, because I was already a member both of the Relief Committee before mentioned, and the committee of the Charity Organization Society, and the recognized medium of communication between these two bodies. After the combination of volunteer and official agency had thus been arranged, which was in the winter of 1872-3, the Guardians directed the relieving officer who is in charge of the St. Mary's Poor Law District, to send me daily a list containing the name of each applicant from that district, with his address, ages of family, and nature of application.[8] I send out the information at once to the visitor in whose court the applicant resides, with a blank form[9] on which she may report any facts bearing on the character and circumstances of the family, which appear to her to be such as the Poor Law authorities ought to know. She can report by giving a summary of the information contained in her district-book, and return the form at once, or she can re-visit the applicant and give later information in addition if she deems it necessary. She sends her report to me, and I forward it to the relieving officer, who uses it as he may see fit. In many instances it gives information which the relieving officer might not otherwise possess, as, for instance, that an applicant is in receipt of money paid by the visitor, or known by her to be paid by local charity. In other cases the report gives clues for further investigation by him, as where it mentions the existence of grown-up sons and daughters who may be able to give help.[10] After the weekly meeting of the board, I am informed of the decision arrived at in each case, by a list sent to me similar to that furnished to every Guardian. These particulars I send to the visitors of the courts where applicants reside, and they are entered in the several district-books. The average number of applicants in the Poor Law District of St. Mary's is forty-five weekly, and the number of visitors engaged in the work is thirty-five. The number of visitors has doubled during the last year, so that we have subdivided all the larger courts and streets. Additional clergymen are coming into active co-operation with us, and some few gentlemen have come forward to act as visitors. These may all be considered hopeful signs that the movement is gaining ground. It will be seen from this outline, that in St. Mary's district there are four agencies employed in the endeavor to administer relief to the necessitous in the wisest and most really helpful way: the Guardians, with their relieving officer, the Charity Organization Society, the Relief Committee, and the District Visitors. These four agencies are connected and brought into efficient co-operation by the referee, who directs and superintends the visitors, attends the meetings of the Charity Organization Society, and of the Relief Committee, and is the medium through which the Board of Guardians acquire information otherwise inaccessible to them. The immediate direct effect of the adoption of this system upon the Poor Law cases may be slight; it may be that the information supplied by the district visitors does not in many instances modify the decisions of the Board; but this is the least part of the work. If the visitors really learn their duties, and apprehend the spirit of the system they have undertaken to carry out, it is impossible to measure the effect which the work may have in diminishing pauperism and inducing more provident habits of life among our laboring classes; and thus, along with other advantages, reducing the heavy burden of the poor-rates. The connection with the Poor Law system is calculated to be of great advantage to the visitors. They will learn something of its working; they will be enabled to use with much greater effect and with much greater frequency the lever which distaste for the "House" puts into their hands; and knowing that while the workhouse exists even the idle and improvident and reckless need not starve, they will be encouraged to refuse to such persons the pauperizing doles of a merely impulsive charity, in the belief that such refusal will probably benefit the individual, and will certainly in the long run benefit the class. The plan described resembles the one in operation at Elberfeld, inasmuch as it is based on the same principle; sub-division of work among a large number of volunteer visitors, grouped under recognized though unpaid leaders. As in Elberfeld, we have not sought to enlist visitors who can give their whole time to the work. We want those living in their own homes, surrounded by their own interests and connections, and who can bring individual sympathy and thought to bear on a very few families. A large number of visitors are needed, and we could not obtain them if those only were eligible who could give a large amount of time to the work. Even more intimate knowledge of individual families is secured in Marylebone than we have any evidence of in the case of Elberfeld, because here in their own small districts the visitors undertake duties for other bodies as well as for the Guardians. Our volunteers are constantly in the courts, on business connected with the local charities, with the Charity Organization Society, and also with the School Board: and though I must not here enlarge on the particular form of their work for these different bodies, I may point out that the entire truth is better elicited by those who come into communication with the poor in various ways: facts concealed from them in one capacity being revealed to them in another. For example, the desire on the part of parents to represent the ages of children to the Poor Law visitor as young enough to receive parochial relief, is counteracted by their desire to represent them to the school board visitor as old enough to exempt them from attendance at school. The important difference between the Elberfeld and Marylebone systems is that, whereas in Elberfeld the volunteers themselves decide on the parochial relief, our volunteers have no such authority committed to them. It would be a fundamental change of the gravest nature to throw any share of such responsibility on the visitor, and would be a change not only disastrous, until the visitors have more experience, but in my opinion probably unadvisable even in the future. The large discretionary power exercised by Guardians under our English Poor Law (which contrasts with the very definite scale for out-door relief in use at Elberfeld) would make it an additional difficulty to place the decisions as to grants in the hands of visitors. In fact, in every case, so that only the evidence brought before him be sufficient, it is easier for a judge or arbitrator to deal in a uniform manner with cases which come before him when he is not brought into close communication with those whom his decision affects. So that the division of duty in Marylebone, where the visitor brings information and the Guardians vote relief, appears to be the right one. It is, moreover, a real help to the visitor in maintaining a satisfactory footing among the people under her charge, for them to know that, though she will listen to and represent their claims for relief, the absolute award of it does not rest with her. I may perhaps here point out that there is one small addition to the system, which, though it would be of no direct advantage to the Poor Law authorities, would be of great service to those who are administering the local charities. I have already mentioned that the Guardians send to me as referee an official weekly report of the cases decided by them; but the grounds of their decision are not given, and often they may be such as would, if known to us, influence grants from the charities. If the Guardians saw no objection to allowing one or two representative volunteers to be present at their weekly meetings, this information would reach us fully and regularly. It would also afford guidance to the visitors if we could know to what extent the information furnished by them to the relieving officer is received and acted upon. There is one further addition to the scheme which has been suggested. It has been said that it might be well to empower the volunteers to pay the regular out-door relief of the aged at their own homes, instead of compelling them, as at present, to gather at the workhouse door to receive it. As to the advantages of this plan I have as yet come to no decision. On the one hand, it is a gain that the poor should not be obliged to congregate for relief, which has a pauperizing effect upon them; and moreover the weekly visitation of the home would form a regular method of inspection. On the other hand, as I have I stated above, the less the visitor is contemplated as an almoner, the more independent and satisfactory are her relations likely to be with her people,--and I fear the distinction between bringing and giving relief would not be very clear to recipients. In conclusion, I may say that the system described above, would, when perfectly carried out, ensure that out-door relief should be confined to the deserving, and that drunken and idle people should be offered the workhouse only. Thus far our volunteer workers are fully aware of the objects for which they are associated together. But I am myself satisfied that the scheme is capable of a far deeper influence on the condition of the poor, when the volunteers shall rise to the perception that, in dealing with poverty, they must aim at prevention rather than at cure; at saving those under their influence from sinking to the Poor-law Level, rather than merely obtaining relief for them when they have reached that low point. Few of my fellow-workers have as yet grasped the idea that their best success would be to develop the resources of the poor themselves, instead of letting them come upon the rates, or continue upon them. I think they rarely set before themselves the desire to find some employment, at hand or far off, which may support the young widow and her children before she has tasted parish bread. I think they rarely press upon the old woman the duty of first trying if the successful son cannot support her, or the daughters in service unite to do so. They have not yet watched the poor closely enough to see that this would be in reality the truest kindness. They forget the dignity of self-maintenance, they forget the blessing of drawing the bonds of relationship closer, and dwell only upon the fact that the applicant is deserving--see only the comfort or relief which the parish allowance would secure. How far they can raise the people by degrees above the degrading need of charitable or Poor Law relief, to be energetic, self-reliant, provident, and industrious, will depend upon the height of their own hope, the patience of their own labor, the moral courage which will teach them to prefer being helpful to being popular, and finally to the temper and spirit of their own homes and lives. For, say what we may, if our upper class were to become extravagant, improvident, and showy, it would be aped by those below it, even though as surely it would be despised. And if we desire to be the leaders of our poor into the ways of happy prosperity, we must order our homes in exactly the same spirit as theirs must be ordered, in simplicity, industry, and providence. I have, etc. OCTAVIA HILL. _To the Right Honorable_ _James Stansfeld, M. P._ FOOTNOTES: [8] A copy of the form is appended to this letter. [9] A copy of this form filled in with a specimen report is also appended. [10] To prevent serious consequences in urgent cases, the relieving officer is authorized to give relief without awaiting the visitor's report. He is also bound to verify any statements which appear to require it. His responsibility to the Board is thus not weakened, while the information upon which he acts is more complete. Even when the information does not reach him until after temporary relief has been administered, it is still valuable for his future guidance. 
60959	----	available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 60959-h.htm or 60959-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60959/60959-h/60959-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60959/60959-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/cu31924083851547 Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by plus signs is in bold face (+bold+). JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND * * * * * * _SOUTH AFRICAN HOTELS_ PORT ELIZABETH (ALGOA BAY) Palmerston Hotel Terminus Road, PORT ELIZABETH Close to Station and Jetty _Best brands of_ ... _WINES, SPIRITS and CIGARS...._ Porters meet all Trains H. HEAD, Proprietor CAPE TOWN. Princess Royal Hotel Corner of Long and Riebeek Sts., _Two Minutes from Railway Station_. CAPE TOWN. Newly Erected Superior Furnished Bedrooms. Fine Balcony Views of Table Bay and Mountain. Excellent Billiard Table (Thurston's Best). Good Attendance. Perfect Sanitary Arrangements. _SPECIAL TERMS FOR RESIDENT BOARDERS._ Visitors from England Up-Country will find Accommodation Unequalled. _S. S. PALMER, Proprietor._ EAST LONDON Hotel National EAST LONDON The most centrally situated Hotel - - in Town - - A First-class, Up-to-date Family and Commercial Hotel Large airy Rooms. Excellent Cuisine. Good Stabling and Billiard Room _Best Wines and Cigars only stocked_ CHAS. COLLINS, Proprietor BLOEMFONTEIN (O.R.C.) _Replete with every Comfort._ EXCELLENT CUISINE. FAMILY AND COMMERCIAL. Polley's Hotel MARKET SQUARE, BLOEMFONTEIN. Perfect Sanitation. Porters meet all trains. Under the personal supervision of the Proprietor, _A. E. POLLEY_. * * * * * * [Illustration: A NEW FORM OF TORTURE. _Frontispiece_] JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND by an English Eye Witness With Introduction by Dr. John Clifford, M.A., Ll.B. And Frontispiece and Four Illustrations London R. A. Everett & Son 10 & 12 Garrick Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 1905 [All rights reserved] Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bread Street Hill, E.C., and Bungay, Suffolk. _INTRODUCTION BY DR. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A., LL.B._ _I have read the following account of the importation of Chinese coolies into South Africa with the keenest pain and sorrow. It is an authentic story of one of the foulest tragedies in our British annals; the witness of one who has seen the facts for himself._ _It is an indictment packed with sifted evidence, written with knowledge; but also with the indignation of the patriot and of the humanitarian, against wrongs wantonly inflicted upon our fellow-men and sanctioned by the Parliament of the Empire. The "balance of evil" is overwhelmingly proved. It is an economic blunder. It is another blood-stained page in the history of the inhumanity of man to man. It violates the domestic and the social ideals. It is a blight upon our Empire; and, chiefest of all, it is inevitably and overwhelmingly immoral; productive of vices and crimes that cannot be named without shame and wrath._ _And yet these foreigners who sell men for gold are declaring that this system must remain "undisturbed." Never! It must go. It is building the Empire on the blood of souls. It is not a "necessity." It is a wanton iniquity. It is not "freedom"; and it is shuffling of the meanest kind to say that it is not "slavery." Let Britishers realize their responsibility and bring to a speedy and final end this return to barbarism!_ _JOHN CLIFFORD._ _The Publishers beg to thank the Editor of the 'Morning Leader' for permission to use the Illustrations contained in this volume._ CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. ENSLAVING THE RAND 13 II. 'AVE, CROESUS, MORITURI TE SALUTANT' 27 III. THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND 46 IV. THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM 77 V. THE YELLOW TRAIL 98 VI. THE EFFECT OF CHINESE LABOUR. PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES 110 JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND CHAPTER I ENSLAVING THE RAND In the following pages I have made no reference to the founder of the Christian faith. There is a particular form of blasphemy current in Great Britain which ascribes to the highest and noblest Christian motives actions which are prompted by the meanest passions of cupidity and self-interest. Any shadow is good enough for the criminal to creep into in the hope of escaping detection; but blasphemy is not too hard a word to express the attitude of those advocates and supporters of Chinese slavery in the Rand who actually creep under the shadow of the Cross itself for moral protection. With reservations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has blessed the movement, having satisfied himself, with an ease somewhat extraordinary, that it was all above-board and moral. The Bishop of Bristol has commended it. The Rev. T. J. Darragh, Rector of St. Mary's Church, Johannesburg, saw in it nothing but an opportunity to teach the doctrines of Christianity to the heathen. "I am much attracted by the possibility of evangelistic work among those people under very favourable conditions, and I hope to see many of them sent back to their country good practising Christians. It will be a glorious opportunity for the Church." Almost it would seem that the logical conclusion of this estimable priest was that all the heathen nations of Asia should be packed into Lord Selborne's loose-boxes and carted over to Johannesburg in order that the evangelistic genius of the Rector of St. Mary's might have full scope, and countless souls be added to the fold of Christ, so long as their duties of digging gold for German Jews at a shilling a day were not interfered with. As these advocates and supporters of Chinese labour have convinced themselves that the Ordinance, so far from being opposed to the principles of Christianity, is likely to be of use in spreading the doctrine of love, I realize that it would be hopeless to attempt to prove to them that the importation of Chinese to the Rand finds no support in the doctrines promulgated in the four Gospels. Indeed, to expect spiritual ideals on the Rand is too ridiculous for words. The man who searches the Bible for a text to suit his line of argument might perhaps find one for the Rand lords from the Old Testament, and preaching from the sentence that "silver was counted as naught in the days of Solomon" might argue that all practices were justifiable to bring about a state of affairs which apparently had the Divine approval. The ideal of the Rand is money. All imperial, social and religious considerations have no weight with the masters of the gold mines. Their object is to get gold, and to get it as cheaply as they can, and with this in view they realize that they must obtain two things--1. Political control of the Transvaal; 2. Slave labour. To attain the first, all Englishmen, with their democratic ideas of liberty and freedom, must be kept out of the country. This first object attained, the introduction of slave labour would be extremely simple. How they achieved their object is the history of South Africa for the last eight years. As long ago as 1897, when mines were booming and vast fortunes were being made, the leaders of the mining industry suddenly realized by a simple arithmetical calculation that more money could be made if their workmen were paid less. Representations were made to President Kruger, a Government Commission was appointed, and the possibility of reducing the wages of Kaffir workmen was discussed in all its bearings. Mr. George Albu, who was then the chairman of the Chamber of Mines, pointed out that 2s. 3d. a shift was being paid to the Kaffirs, and that this could be reduced to 1s. 6d. a shift for skilled labour and 1s. or less for unskilled labour. When he was asked how this could be accomplished, he replied, "By simply telling the boys that their wages are reduced." Mr. Albu, however, declared that a much better state of affairs would be brought about if a law was passed compelling the Kaffir to do a certain amount of work per annum, though he admitted that nowhere in the world was there a law enabling any particular industry to obtain forced labour. President Kruger's Government--accounted corrupt and irradical in those days, but now regarded by comparison throughout the Transvaal and Orange River Colony by both English and Dutchmen alike as most benevolent and beneficent--refused to sanction a system which would not only have been in opposition to the Conventions with Great Britain of 1852, 1854, and 1884, but would have been opposed to the spirit of humanity that should exist among all civilized communities. Then came the war. The Boer Government was swept away. Two hundred and fifty millions and 21,000 English lives was the price exacted for planting the Union Jack in Pretoria and Bloemfontein. During the war the magnates, with a persistence worthy of a better cause, kept before them those objects which I have enumerated. The consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields reported to a meeting of mining representatives at Cape Town that dividends could be increased by two and a half millions by reducing Kaffir wages, and it was agreed that on the opening of the mines Kaffirs' wages should be reduced by 33 per cent. When peace came it was found that the Kaffirs were not prepared to work on these terms. They had grown rich during the war, and in the independence of their new-found wealth they refused to be treated as so much human machinery. It was bad enough for them to work at their original wages in the Rand mines, without their consenting to such a large reduction in their wages. The rate of mortality in the Rand mines was seventy per thousand per annum; the rate of mortality in the De Beers mines was only thirty per thousand per annum. The De Beers never had any difficulty in obtaining what native labour they required, because they treated their men well, looked after their interests, did not sweat them, and admitted that a black man, although black, was still a man. But even under these circumstances, had the magnates of the Rand offered the scale of wages that pertained before the war, they would have found black labour in abundance. But even with a black man a minimum of 30s. and a maximum of 35s. a month with food is hardly tempting enough to draw him from his kraal. The alternative of white labour was, of course, never seriously considered. The mere Englishman who had fought for the country was not to be allowed to settle in the country or to work in the country. The Angots, the Beits, the Ecksteins, the Hanaus, the Kuchenmeisters, the Rosenheims, the Schencks, the Taubs, the Wernhers, and the rest of the gentlemen delighting in similar grand old English names were determined not to permit it. The foolish Englishman would want to vote; would have ideas about personal liberty and personal freedom; would have ridiculous notions about Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; would, in short, think that the nation that had spilt its blood and spent its money for the Rand was entitled to a vote in its management. With almost unparalleled insolence the Rand lords frankly declared that the introduction of English labour would place the control of the country in the hands of Englishmen, and would lead to that trail of the serpent, the formation of labour unions. It was to meet with this that two hundred and fifty millions was spent by the English people, 25,000 died, 25,000 were permanently maimed. That white labour could be used, and be used profitably, was proved beyond a doubt. Even when the higher wages were taken into account, it was found that in the cyanide works of the gold mines the Kaffirs' cost per ton was 5s. 3d., against the Whites' 4s. 9d. In developing and stopping actual work of the mining underground, the Kaffirs cost 4s. 8d. and the Whites 4s. 2d. per ton. It was only in the machine drill work that the Kaffirs proved slightly cheaper than the Whites. There Kaffir labour worked out at 6s. 4d. per ton, white labour at 6s. 9d.; a difference of 5d. per ton, so small a difference as to be almost a negligible quantity. It was not until later that any pretence was put forward that white labour could not be employed. The real reason, and the reason frankly admitted, was the fear of the political power they would possess. Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell, general manager of the Village Main Reef, worked his mine upon a system of joint black and white labour, and the mine returned a dividend of 35 per cent. for the year 1903 and 20 per cent. for the first half of 1904. In the report upon the working of this mine it was declared that the efficiency of the mine was increasing, and the output greater, while the working cost was lower. This was proof conclusive that white labour could be employed in the mines if the magnates wished to employ it. That they did not wish to employ it is proved beyond the shadow of doubt by a letter from the late Mr. Percy Tarbutt, of St. Swithin's Lane, to Mr. Cresswell-- "DEAR MR. CRESSWELL,--With reference to your trial of white labour for surface work on the mines, I have consulted the Consolidated Goldfields people, and one of the members of the board of the Village Main Reef has consulted Messrs. Wernher, Beit & Co., and the feeling seems to be of fear that, having a large number of white men employed on the Rand in the position of labourers, the same troubles will arise as are now prevalent in the Australian colonies, viz. that the combination of the labour classes will become so strong as to be able, more or less, to dictate not only on the question of wages, but also on political questions, by the power of their votes when a representative Government is established." Foiled in their attempt to get cheap black labour, threatened with an inundation of Englishmen, the cosmopolitan Rand lords tried to obtain the slaves they required from Central Africa. This was not a success. It was admitted by a speaker at a commercial meeting in Johannesburg in July 1903 that various experiments had been tried to get native labour, and that the best results had been obtained at the Robinson Deep, which paid 25 per cent. dividend. "They imported 316 natives from Central Africa only three weeks ago. So far only eight had died--(laughter)--but there were 150 in the hospital, and by the end of the month the whole will be in hospital. (Hear, hear.) They were coming in at the rate of thirty a day. These men cost £30 a head, and were not worth a 'bob' a head when they arrived. (Cheers.)" What were the mine lords to do? If only they were allowed they were quite prepared to employ slaves. Their amazing reduction in wages had not induced the Kaffir to come to the Rand. In the words of the native chief the natives did not like to go to Johannesburg, "because they went there to die." The majority at the Labour Commission had proved that if good wages and treatment were extended to the Kaffirs, hosts of natives would flock to the mines. But the Rand lords cared nothing about kindness, and they were determined to reduce wages. It was at this juncture that the question of Chinese indentured labour was seriously mooted. The black men were tired of being carted about in trucks, and herded like cattle, and beaten and maimed for life without any chance of compensation. It was said that the Chinaman was docile and tractable, and would work for practically nothing, with extremely little food, for as many hours as he might be requested. Chinese labour, therefore, it was decided to obtain. But the Rand lords had to proceed with guile. They did this country the credit to believe that any hasty determination to import thousands of Chinamen would have met with an outburst of popular indignation against which they could not have hoped to have stood firm. Forming a pretty accurate estimate of the leading passions that guide men's minds they determined to appeal to the cupidity of the Englishman at home. Their press began to pour forth a torrent of sobs over the lamentable decay of the gold industry in the Transvaal. The country was ruined, they said; the industry had gone to pieces. For ridiculous considerations of hypocritical morality the Rand, for which Great Britain had sacrificed so much, was to be made bankrupt. In a word, it was bankruptcy--or Chinese. They found many powerful supporters in this country. The trail of their wealth was on a section of the press, and that section echoed whatever principles it might please the cosmopolitan gentlemen of Johannesburg to give voice to. Even now one can recall the despairing moans of leader writers over the ruin that had overtaken the Transvaal. This was in June 1903. Somewhat unexpectedly Lord Milner at this juncture refused to echo the gloomy forebodings of the Witwatersrand Chamber of Mines; in fact, his tone was joyously optimistic. "The production of gold," he said, "even now is greater than in 1895 or 1896, when the Transvaal really was, and had been for some time, the marvel of the world in the matter of gold production. The world progresses; but whatever was fabulous wealth years ago is not abject poverty to-day. Not only that, but the rate of production is steadily increasing." What he said was quite right. The output of gold in the district of Johannesburg in 1900 was 237,000 ozs., and there were 59,400 Kaffirs employed. But for six months the agitation continued. It was put forward as a theory that the only chance for the Transvaal was to employ Chinese labour. The supporters of the Rand lords hailed the theory with delight, as if it was something new, something that they had never imagined before. Clearly this was the direction in which prosperity lay. They must have Chinese labour. Then shares would go up, dividends would become enormous, and everybody would be wealthy and happy. The Transvaal would be something like a Mohammedan heaven, with Great Britain as an annexe. White men were to pour out to the colonies--not to labour on the mines, for that work was only fit for Chinamen; besides, white men it was said could not do it--and the Rand was to be prosperous and life was to be a veritable bed of roses. Was England to be denied the fruits of her victory? For what had the war been waged if the Transvaal was to be left a barren, unproductive corner of the Empire? Were the fruits of victory to be Dead Sea apples? By such arguments did they appeal to the British public. The dummy figure of despair and ruin that they had set up served a very useful purpose. It frightened the monied classes into the belief that their investments were not secure. It frightened the patriots into thinking that the war had been waged in vain. Few people troubled to make inquiries as to whether the statement of the Rand's impending ruin was true or not. There certainly was a slump in Kaffir shares. This was held to be indicative of the state of the gold industry. It apparently did not occur to anybody that just as Kaffir shares were made to fluctuate during the war--when the mines were not being worked--so they could be made to slump if only the Rand lords wished. In six months they convinced the majority of the House of Commons, they convinced the Government, and they even made Lord Milner eat his own words. His dispatches began to take on a garb of gloom. In August they were of the mitigated grief shade; in September the shade darkened; in October it was more than half mourning; in November it had become black; in December it was as black as the Egyptian plague. His lordship talked of crises; of what would happen unless some noble, national sacrifice was made to save the sinking ship. Chinese labour was the only cure for the deplorable condition of the gold industry in the Transvaal! Meanwhile, a Labour Commission had been appointed, a mission consisting of ten persons, eight of whom were known to be in favour of the introduction of Asiatic labour. This Commission was authorized to find out whether a scarcity of Kaffir or white labour existed, but was forbidden to answer the question which was in the minds of all, whether it would be proper or desirable to introduce Chinese labour. The agitation proved successful, and it was decided to import Chinese labour. The grave disasters attendant on the impending crisis Lord Milner insisted in his dispatches in December 1903 had to be met. It is curious, of course, to compare the statement of Lord Milner in December 1903 with his statement in June 1903. In June the output of gold was 237,000 ozs., and according to Lord Milner everything was satisfactory. The production of gold, in his own words, was greater than in 1895 or 1896. Six months later, in December, the output was 286,000 ozs., an increase of 49,000 ozs. Yet, according to Lord Milner, the prosperity of the gold industry was in inverse proportion to the output of gold! Two hundred and thirty-seven thousand ounces per month was prosperity in June; 286,000 ozs. in December was grave disaster, and the rest of it. Moreover, in those golden days of June 1903 there were 59,400 Kaffir labourers working on the mines. In that dark, cheerless December, when the output of gold had increased 49,000 ozs., and the gold industry was rapidly sinking back into the pit of gloom and disaster, the number of labourers employed was 68,800, being an increase of 9400--or 15 per cent. Moreover, in this terrible, deplorable month the production of gold was greater than it had ever been before, except during that period between the beginning of 1898 and the commencement of the war. As to the question of labour, the production per labourer per month in December 1903 was 4 ozs. of gold. In 1899 it was only 3·4 ozs.; that is to say, it had been increased by the use of machinery by one-seventh, so that six labourers in December 1903 were equal to seven labourers in the golden period before the war. Actually, therefore, those 68,800 labourers were doing the work of 80,262 labourers, and were doing it at wages 33 per cent. less than they were before the war. But this was not prosperity. The dividends were not large enough. The report of the consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields still rang in the ear of the Rand lords. "Cut down the wages 33 per cent. and you will add two and a half millions to the dividends." An unlimited number of Kaffirs would not come to the mines under these conditions; they would not submit to bad wages as well as bad treatment. White men would combine to manage the country and to take the political power out of the hands of the Rand lords. "If we could replace 20,000 workers by 100,000 unskilled whites," said one of the directors, "they would simply hold the government of the country in the hollow of their hand; and without any disparagement to the British labourer, I prefer to see the more intellectual section of the community at the helm." Hence the gloomy picture painted of the gold industry in that December 1903. Hence the slump in the Kaffir market. Hence that cry that native labour would not come and that whites could not do the work. Hence that more ominous cry that Chinese labourers must be employed. The Transvaal was not to be for Englishmen. It was to be governed by the intellectual genius of Mr. Rudd and his bevy of German Jews and non-British Gentiles. Even if white labour was economically possible the Rand lords did not want it. It _was_ possible--it _was_ economical. But they wanted labour that would be _voteless_ and _subservient_! CHAPTER II 'AVE, CROESUS, MORITURI TE SALUTANT' "The problem is a very urgent problem. The necessity of going forward is an urgent and vital necessity in the economical condition of the country. I will tell the House why in a sentence. The mines are 30,000 natives short of the number engaged in the pre-war period." These were the words subsequently used by Mr. Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary. The matter _was_ urgent. Already protests were pouring in from every part of the Empire. Imperial meetings, white league meetings, anti-slavery meetings, political meetings--all the machinery, in short, of protest and obstruction was being got under weigh, and to the Rand lords it seemed as if the ideal of slavery for which they had struggled so long and so hard was to be denied them at the last hour. The anguish of Sir Lancelot when a vision of the Holy Grail was denied him after all his trials and tribulations was not greater or more poignant than the trepidation of the mine owners. It became, indeed, a very urgent problem for them, for unless they could bring the matter to a head, not even the strongest Government of the century could hope to withstand the popular will when once it was organized sufficiently to voice its petition loudly enough. But of economical necessities there were none. It was natural after such a devastating war that some time should elapse before the mines could get into full working order and attain that wonderful output of gold which prevailed immediately before the outbreak of hostilities. The progress of the gold industry after the war had to be gradual; but so far from it being depressed or showing signs of being stagnant, it had, as I have already shown, increased enormously. Already it was within measurable distance of the output of the pre-war period. The economical necessity was not the necessity of importing cheap labour, but the necessity of paying a proper wage to the Kaffir and of treating him well. Already Dr. Jameson, who in no sense was a partisan opponent of the Rand capitalists, had declared in November 1903 that the De Beers Company would not employ Chinamen--that they had plenty of labour, white and black, because they treated their people well. But the Rand mine owners not only did not pay their Kaffirs a proper wage, but meted out to them such treatment that the death-rate among them had increased since 1902 to an extent which, to express it in mild terms, was appalling. I quote the figures below-- NATIVE MORTALITY ON MINES IN JOHANNESBURG, KRUGERSDORP, BOKSBURG, GERMISTON, AND SPRINGS. Period: November 1902--July 1903. No. of Death-rate During the Month. Natives No. of per 1000 Employed. Deaths. per annum. November 1902 46,710 247 63·4 December " 48,542 324 80·90 January 1903 49,761 253 61·01 February " 55,288 207 44·9 March " 57,022 235 49·4 April " 62,265 269 51·8 May " 65,371 431 79·1 June " 68,819 492 85·7 July " 70,474 627 106·7 Average number of natives employed per month 58,250 Average number of deaths per month 343 Average death-rate per 1000 per annum per month 70·6 This was the economical necessity that should have occupied the attention of his Majesty's Government, and not the question of introducing Chinese indentured labour into the colony. That the mine owners have successfully baulked in the past all inquiry as to their treatment of natives is proved conclusively by the fact that even these statistics did not draw forth a commission from the Government to inquire into such a terrible state of affairs. Instead of the question being, "Why is it Kaffirs die at the rate of seventy per thousand per month?" the problem they set themselves was how to provide an alternative to these quick-dying wage-wanting niggers. Attempts had been made to procure coolie labour from India, and Lord Curzon never did a greater or a nobler thing than when he refused the sanction of his Government to such a step. Mr. Chamberlain said in the Commons that Lord Curzon should have been overruled; an inexplicable remark from a man who had had the courage to say to the miners that it was better they should be governed from Downing Street than from Park Lane. In December 1903 General Ben Viljeon informed a labour commissioner that a petty chief had told him recently that if he sent 100 boys to the Rand only 66 returned, and some of them had scurvy. It was not wonderful, therefore, that black labour was scarce; but it was wonderful that his Majesty's Government did not take steps to put an end to a state of things which they must have known to be terrible, instead of merely substituting for the ill-used, underpaid, criminally-treated but free labouring Kaffirs Chinamen who were to be nothing better than slaves. But the drawing up of the draft Ordinance went forward. It was hurried on at an incredible rate. Until the last minute it was kept back from Parliament, and the Blue-book dealing with the alleged necessities for introducing yellow labour was only placed in the hands of the members of the House of Commons a few days before Mr. Herbert Samuel moved his famous amendment to the King's Address--"It is highly inexpedient that sanction should be given to any Ordinance permitting the introduction of indentured Chinese labourers into the Transvaal Colony until the approval of the colonists has been formally ascertained." At one end of the cable sat Lord Milner, pricked on by the Rand lords, at the other end sat the Colonial Secretary, anxious to be fair, anxious to be humane, anxious to do nothing contrary to the historic principles of British rule, but bemused by the clamour of the Transvaal, and seeing in the protests against the Ordinance only party moves and party partisanship. The clamour for the Ordinance increased day by day. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had managed to extract a pledge from the Government, by which Lord Milner was instructed to introduce into the Ordinance a clause suspending its operation pending further instructions from home. But it was pointed out that the matter was of such great urgency that his Majesty's Government could not undertake to postpone their decision longer than the termination of the debate on the Address. As a matter of fact, they had already made up their minds. It was stated that if a colony desired Chinese labour it was not for the Imperial Parliament to interfere. To have done so would have been contrary to the traditions of Imperial Government. But when Mr. Herbert Samuel asked that the Ordinance should not be permitted until the approval of the colonists in the Transvaal had been formally obtained by the natural expedient of a referendum, Lord Milner asserted that to hold a referendum was impossible--it would occupy too much time, that at any rate it was an expedient unknown in any part of the British Empire. As a matter of fact, a referendum has been put in practice in South Australia, in New Zealand, in New South Wales, and was used more recently to decide upon the important question of the Australian Commonwealth. That it would have occupied six months to take such a referendum, during which period the gold of the Transvaal would have vanished, everybody would have refused to work, and the Kaffir market would have been blotted out, was preposterous. Yet, at the moment when Lord Milner made this statement, a census of the colony was taken, which only occupied seven weeks. It is not unreasonable to assume that such a referendum would have occupied more than a month. All the arguments of the Opposition were in vain against such plausibility. It was useless to point out that while the educated Chinese were good citizens, the bitter experience of Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand proved conclusively that the uneducated Chinamen, wherever they went, were vicious, immoral and unclean, hated by the white man, loathed and feared by every decent white woman. The Government admitted the danger of allowing 50,000 Chinamen to be planted down in a colony without any restrictions. Their introduction was a regrettable necessity; and so it was proposed to keep them in compounds, to round them up every night like sheep, to make them liable to heavy penalties if they wandered abroad without a permit. This was the only way, they declared, in which these necessary evils could be used. Of the necessity of utilizing the evil at all they were convinced, and no argument succeeded in shaking their faith. It was pointed out to them that this would be semi-slavery, if not indeed actual slavery. The Chinaman was not to be employed in any position but that of a miner; he could not improve his position; he could not give notice to one employer and go to another. He could never leave the compound without permission. If he struck work he could be imprisoned. He was bound to reside on the premises of his employer, in charge of a manager appointed for the purpose. Permission to leave these premises might or might not be granted; but in any case he could never be absent for more than forty-eight hours at a time. If he escaped, he could be tracked down, arrested without a warrant and imprisoned by a magistrate, while anybody who harboured or concealed him was fined £50, or imprisoned in default of payment. The Ordinance was without parallel in the Empire. Because the Chinese were competitors, because they were a moral and social danger, the supporters of the Ordinance were compelled to devise some system under which it could become law in the Transvaal, and by which they could yet prevent any one of the Chinamen brought in being able at any time to leave his employment and turn to other and more profitable undertakings. Only a casuist could call this anything else but slavery. One of our most unsuccessful ministers tried to find a parallel between this system and the life of our soldiers--a parallel so bright and so pleasing that no one, I think, has yet attempted to spoil the bloom of this flower of grim humour by disclosing its absurdity. The Transvaal Government had, in fact, gone to the statute books of the slave states of America for a model for their Ordinance. It was soon seen and realized that any attempt to negative the Ordinance must prove abortive. All that the Opposition could do was to render it as innocuous as possible, and to secure as many guarantees as they could for the proper moral and physical treatment of the unfortunate Chinamen. They extracted pledges and promises galore, most of which have been completely broken. On March 21, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton, after stating that the average Kaffir wage was 50s. for thirty days' work, made this statement in the House of Commons--"Chinamen would receive in the Transvaal at least 2s. a day. I stand here and give the House my assurance that the Chinese will receive at least the amount I have specified." At that time, when this well-meaning pledge was made, the Kaffir was only receiving 33s. per month. But even had he been receiving 50s. a month, which Mr. Lyttelton in his ignorance imagined, was it at all likely that the Rand owner would pay the Chinaman 2s. a day, or 60s. a month, that is to say, 10s. a month more than they were presumably paying the Kaffirs? Of course, the mine magnates were not going to pay the Chinaman more than the 33s. they were paying the Kaffir. Mr. Lyttelton's pledge was summarily disposed of by Lord Milner and the mine owners. After at first insisting on a minimum of 1s. a day instead of 2s., Lord Milner finally made this plausible promise, that if within six months the average pay was not more than 50s. for thirty days' work, the minimum should be raised from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a day. Mr. Lyttelton's maximum of 2s. a day was thus reduced to a possible minimum of 1s. 6d. a day. Another delightful pledge was also given. It seemed almost indeed as if the Transvaal Government were continually advising Lord Milner to cable, saying, "Promise anything in heaven or earth, but let's get this Ordinance through." With somewhat unusual consideration, the opinion of the Chinese Government had been asked on the subject. Speaking through their ambassador, the Chinese Government insisted that the immigrant should have free access to the courts of justice to obtain redress for injury to his personal property. On March 10, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton stated that the Chinese labourers would have the same right of access to the courts as all the other subjects of his Majesty's dominions. Any subject of his Majesty's dominions has the right to appear before a court when he has any grievance. That is the right of all subjects of his Majesty's dominions. The Chinaman, according to Mr. Lyttelton, was to have the same right. As a matter of fact, he has no right of access to the courts, except by leave of an inspector. Again, Mr. Lyttelton declared, when the Chinese Government raised the point of flogging, that there was no power in the Ordinance to impose flogging. There was not at that time. But four months later, on July 28, an Ordinance was assented to by which the resident magistrate had the right to flog in cases where the conviction was a conviction of robbery, in cases of any statutory offence for which flogging could be only given for the second conviction, in cases of assault of a grave character or intended to do serious bodily harm, or, indeed, to commit any offence. I shall deal later in detail with the punishments that have been inflicted on the yellow slaves that work in their slavery under the Union Jack. It is at present only my object to outline the policy of promising anything and making all sorts of preposterous pledges in order that the clamours of the Rand lords might be gratified. In Johannesburg they knew well that if once indentured labour was agreed to in principle, it would be easy to make what alterations they wished in the spirit or the letter of the Ordinance. In February 1904 Mr. Lyttelton stated with regard to the importation of women with the Chinese--"We are advised in this matter by men of the most experience in the whole Empire on the subject of Chinese labour. We are advised that the coolies would not go without their womenfolk. Manifestly it would be wrong that they should go without their womenfolk if they were desirous of taking them with them." To quiet the lethargic conscience of that adept courtier, his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was declared that the interests of public morality demanded that the Chinamen should be accompanied by their wives, and that this was one of the essential conditions of the Ordinance. It was pointed out at the time that once the mine owners had 5000 indentured labourers, they would not take upon themselves the burden of supporting their wives, with an average of three children apiece. It would mean 250,000 women and children. And it is almost inconceivable that even Mr. Lyttelton could have imagined that the cosmopolitan proprietors of the Transvaal would have taken upon themselves the superintendence of human beings utterly incapable of dragging gold from the earth. As a matter of fact, Chinese have never taken their wives into foreign countries, and therefore the moral question, which so concerned Dr. Davidson for one brief day, was not settled. As a matter of fact, it was stated at the beginning of this year by the Colonial Secretary that while 4895 wives were registered as accompanying their husbands, only two women and twelve children had actually been brought over! It was stated by Mr. Lyttelton, at the same time as he satisfied the conscience of the most Reverend Primate, that the Chinaman would be so well fed and so lightly worked that in the interests of morality it was physically necessary that he should be accompanied by his wife. In explaining the fact that only two women and twelve children had accompanied the thirty or forty thousand Chinamen up to the beginning of 1905, the Colonial Secretary remarked in effect that this fact would not lead to immorality, because the Chinaman's food was so frugal and his work was so steady that he would be almost physically incapable of those passions which are a source of so much trouble, of so much crime, of so much happiness, and of so much beneficence to the white man, the black man, the red man, and the brown man. Life under the Rand lords, in short, was practically emasculating, and therefore immorality was impossible. I shall deal with this subject later on. For the present I will point out that this was the fourth pledge that had been given in the House of Commons, only to be broken, not, I admit, by Mr. Lyttelton and the Government, but by their masters, the mine owners on the Rand. The Opposition steadily opposed the Government in the House. Major Seely and Mr. Winston Churchill left the Conservative Party, Major Seely resigning his seat to test the temper of his constituents in the Isle of Wight on this very subject. The electors in the Isle of Wight were of no uncertain temper. They returned Major Seely to the House, thereby proving, as all subsequent by-elections have proved, that the Chinese Labour Ordinance is bitterly opposed by the vast majority of freedom-loving Britons. It had been the custom during the war to submit very largely to the opinion of the colonies. In fact, the influence of colonial opinion had partly directed the policy of the Government for several years. Mr. Chamberlain constantly submitted to it, before, during, and after the war. He had based his bold venture of Tariff Reform on this very opinion. It was because the colonies would think this or would say that, that the British workman was to submit to a tax upon corn, a tax upon clothes, a tax upon everything else. It was reasonable to expect, therefore, that on such an important Imperial question, touching the welfare of a colony, to possess which the whole of the Empire had risen in arms, and men had poured from the snows of Canada and the rolling plains of the Bush, the opinions of the Five Nations would have been consulted. But even if the Government did not submit to this recognition of their services, to this acceptance of a common Imperial interest, it was only natural to have supposed that they would have at least taken into account the advice of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, who had experienced the evils of Chinese immigration. I have travelled all over the Orange River Colony, Natal, Cape Colony, and the Transvaal, and the colonial people and the Dutch were all unanimously against the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand. I have never yet met one person in favour of the Ordinance. And since the Ordinance became law, and the yellow slaves began their work at the mines, nearly every person I have met in South Africa has openly regretted the war, and declared that they preferred the days of Paul Kruger, whose Government may have been corrupt, but was at any rate based on the principle that it is the duty of a white government to look after the moral and social welfare of its white subjects. Mr. Chamberlain himself declared that there was considerable indignation expressed throughout South Africa at the proposal to introduce Chinese labour, and that a vast majority of the people throughout South Africa were bitterly opposed to the Ordinance. The colonies were not slow in sending passionate protests to the Colonial Office against the Ordinance. Mr. Seddon wired--"My Government desire to protest against the proposal to introduce Chinese labour into South Africa. They foresee that great dangers, racial, social and political, would inevitably be introduced by Chinese influx, however stringent the conditions of introduction and employment may be." Mr. Deakin, the Premier of Australia, declared that Australia had been told that the war was a miners' war, but not for Chinese miners; a war for the franchise, but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had been told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia. Cape Colony, which was more intimately concerned with the welfare of the Transvaal than any other portion of the Empire, passed a resolution in the Cape Parliament, "That this House, taking cognizance of the resolution passed at the recent Conference held at Bloemfontein on the subject of the qualified approval of the importation of Asiatic labour, desires to express its strong opposition to any such importation as prejudicial to the interests of all classes of people in South Africa." This last resolution had been sent to the Government as long before as July 1903, when the first steps were being taken to pave the way for yellow slavery. But of all these protests the Government took no notice whatever. They met all questions with a statement that the Transvaal was to be allowed to decide on its own internal affairs; and when the Opposition demanded that the opinion of the Transvaal should be taken, so that these principles could be carried into effect, they replied that a referendum, the only means of ascertaining this opinion, would take six months, during which time the Transvaal would be ruined. Never was the logic of any of the characters in _Alice in Wonderland_ so unanswerable. In the Transvaal itself loud and indignant protests were made against the proposal. But the Rand lords asserted their supremacy with ruthless severity. The _Transvaal Leader_, the _Transvaal Advertiser_, and the Johannesburg _Star_ all opposed the introduction of Asiatic labour. Their respective editors, Mr. R. J. Pakeman, Mr. J. Scoble, and Mr. Monypenny, were compelled to resign because they refused to sacrifice their opinions for their proprietors. Some idea of the pressure that was brought to bear, may be seen in the valedictory editorial which Mr. Monypenny wrote on retiring from the editorship of the Johannesburg _Star_:-- "To the policy of Chinese immigration, to which the Chamber of Mines has decided to devote its energies, the present editor of the _Star_ remains resolutely opposed, and declines in any way to identify himself with such an experiment. To the ideal of a white South Africa, which, to whatever qualifications it may necessarily be subject, is something very different from the ideal of a Chinese South Africa, he resolutely clings, with perfect faith that whatever its enemies may do to-day that ideal will inevitably prevail. But as the financial houses which control the mining industry of the Transvaal have for the present enrolled themselves among its enemies the present editor of the _Star_ withdraws." It is not difficult to read between the lines here and see the determination of the mining magnates to crush every opposition to their will. Mr. Cresswell, who had stood out for white labour on the Village Main Reef mine, and had proved conclusively that white labour could be employed at a profit greater than that at which black labour was employed, was compelled to resign his general managership. Mr. Wybergh, Commissioner of Mines, and for long a distinguished servant of the Government, had dared to protest against Chinese serfdom, and was forced also to resign. Every day it became more clear that the Transvaal was to be no place for an Englishman. The white man's blood and the white man's treasure may have been spent to win it for the one-time flag of freedom, but the Englishman was not to make his home or earn his living upon the land. "We want no white proletariat," Lord Milner had said. But the magnates did not stop at merely coercing the press. Indignation meetings were held at Cape Town and Kimberley, and they employed men to break them up at 15s. per head. At a meeting at Johannesburg, held by the African Labour League, it was arranged that a proposal should be put to the vote deploring the importation of Asiatics, and protesting against the action of the Government, and demanding a referendum in the colony. At this meeting several men were present, paid by a certain Mr. B. of Johannesburg to create a disturbance. Their efforts were so successful, they shouted so long "You want the Chinese," that the meeting became an uproar, and the speakers were unable to be heard. But all protests were unavailing and futile. All opposition was considered as a party move. The cry of "Yellow slavery" was attributed to shameless Radical tactics. The Liberal Party, it was said, would stoop to anything with which to besmirch the fair name of the Conservative Party. The Ordinance passed the House after having been debated at length. It has since been altered in some of its most important details, thereby emphasizing the fact that in permitting the question to be debated in the House the Government only regarded the discussion as a sham. But even in the Conservative Party there were men whose consciences pricked them over the Ordinance. One old respected member, who has recently died, declared privately on the day that the vote was taken that for the first time in his life he had voted against his conscience, at the urgent instance of the Conservative whips. He for one realized, when it was too late, that the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand was--as Mr. Asquith lately remarked at Leven--"a most gigantic and short-sighted blunder." CHAPTER III THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND "It must be admitted that the lot of the Chinese labourer does not promise to be very gay or very happy from our point of view" (extract from _The Times_). Experience has shown that it is not economical to employ Chinese under the only conditions in which public opinion will allow them to be used, that is, under semi-servile conditions. This was the experience of all other parts of the Empire, but it was the last thing to have any weight with the mine owners. Their one idea of economy was to get labour cheap. If you deduct 33 to 40 per cent. from the money that has to be paid in wages, that 33 to 40 per cent. is money saved--is money which will go to swell the dividends to an amount, so it had been estimated, of two and a half millions. The simplicity of this calculation should have given them pause. Financiers, at least, should be aware that nothing is so untrustworthy as the abstract profit and loss account. Men who had used figures to such good advantage should have understood that while on paper the difference between the price paid to the Chinese and the price paid to the white or black labourer was profit, in actual practice it would prove nothing of the sort. The mine owners have learnt this lesson by now. They have discovered that Chinese labour is an economical failure. But in the summer of 1904 they were all eagerness for the coming of the yellow man. To their imaginations these men were to be nothing better than slaves. They were to work as long as they wanted them to work at prices which they would settle themselves. Craftily-concocted laws enabled them to bring the same sort of brutal pressure to bear upon the yellow man as the slave owner of old brought upon the black man. He could be fined, flogged, driven, coerced by all means to tear the gold from the bowels of the earth at whatever rate the masters might wish. They had treated the black men pretty much as they liked. But the black men had the knack of dying in thousands under such treatment (thereby, as I have already noted, affording hearty amusement for gatherings of the Chamber of Mines), or of throwing up their work and going back to their native kraals. The Rand lord had not had complete control of the black man. Foolish people at home, influenced by what Lord Milner once called Exeter Hall sentiments, had insisted that the black man must possess those personal rights of liberty and freedom which, until recently, were given to all races who paid allegiance to the Sovereign of the British Dominions beyond the Seas. For the first time the mine owner was to have forty to fifty thousand men who were to live under strict surveillance in a sort of prison yard, who were to be absolutely at his mercy and at his will, who were to work every day of the week, Sundays included--the evangelizing enterprise of the Rector of St. Mary's, Johannesburg, did not seem to have run to indoctrinating the Rand lords or their slaves with the principles of the Fourth Commandment--who were to be forced into doing whatsoever their masters wished by all sorts of ingenious punishments and penalties. They of course forgot the all-important factor in this dream of theirs that a Chinaman will willingly consent to an arrangement which, as _The Times_ admitted, would make their lot neither very gay nor very happy. But none the less this was the spirit in which the Chinaman was recruited in China and first treated on his arrival. Quite the most frivolous of all the pledges given by Mr. Lyttelton on behalf of the Rand lords, was one in which he solemnly declared that to every Chinese labourer recruited from his native land the Ordinance would be carefully explained by the recruiting officer. I do not recollect that the House of Commons was moved to an outburst of Olympian mirth at this most ridiculous statement. If I recollect aright, the statement was received with that solemn British expression of approval, "Hear, hear!" "The Ordinance," said Mr. Lyttelton, "will be explained carefully to each labourer before he consents to embark for South Africa." Now, the Ordinance is a long and complicated document. It would be impossible to explain it to the most intelligent Chinaman in under an hour. Actually, it would probably take him a whole day to completely understand the sort of life he was going to lead on the Rand. For one man to explain the Ordinance to 40,000 of them would have taken about nine years. At the recruiting offices established in China for the purpose of obtaining these yellow slaves, it would have taken at least three years to make all the forty to fifty thousand Chinamen still working on the Rand to thoroughly understand the Ordinance. This was a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, which one would have thought must have occurred to the minds of the Government, but if it did occur to them they kept it in the background with due solemnity. Seeing that the recruiting and sending over to South Africa of more than 40,000 Chinamen occupied less than a year, it is clear that this pretence of allowing the Chinaman to enter upon his engagement with the Rand lords with his eyes open was a pretence, and nothing else. But even if the simplest arithmetical calculation failed to convince the Government, their knowledge of human nature should have made them realize the absurdity of imagining that the recruiting of these men would be carried out on such principles. The recruiter, whether for the Army, or for any other purpose, is very much like a barrister with a brief. He has only to see one side of the argument; he has to close his mind firmly to all considerations other than the fact that it is his duty to get men for the particular purpose for which he is recruiting. Whoever found the recruiting-sergeant telling an embryo Tommy Atkins about the hardships of a life in the Army, of the punishments to which he renders himself liable, of the powers of a court-martial, and the like? He only tells him of the splendid chance he has of serving his King and country; of his handsome uniform; of the influence of that uniform on the female breast, and the like. I have met men who have recruited in South Africa for the Philippines, who have recruited in England for revolutionary committees for some of the South American republics, and I know that the one picture that these men do not paint to their recruits is the picture of their possible hardships. If the white recruiter acts like this to men of his own colour, how was he likely to act towards men of a different colour whom centuries of traditional prejudice led him to regard with contempt and dislike? I am convinced that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Chinamen at present working on the Rand neither knew then nor know now the exact terms on which they were brought from their homes. Again, it is well known that the Chinaman has a hereditary dislike to forfeiting his freedom of action. However bad his Government may be, he has the same instinct for freedom as the white man in Great Britain. All the best authorities on China agree that he would never of his own free-will have consented to bind himself to the Rand lords on the terms set forth in the Ordinance. What happened, of course, was that the Chinese local authorities, when asked to assist in the recruiting of men for the Rand, made out a list of all the wastrels, semi-criminals and hooligans who kept their Governments in a state of anarchy and unrest, and forced these men to indenture themselves. In fact, the situation on the Rand is very much as if we had emptied our prisons and turned out all our thieves, murderers and hooligans loose on the veld. One cannot blame the Chinese Government for so acting. It is a proof rather that that ancient empire still retains, amidst a great deal that is bad and corrupt, a spirit of elementary justice. It would have been criminal to have sent Chinese citizens to the Transvaal. It was quite another matter to send batches of criminals. The ease with which men were recruited and shipped to the Transvaal seemed to confirm the Rand lords in their delusion that at last they had got hold of people who would increase their dividends for them without demanding rights and privileges. _The Times_ had called them masculine machinery. Lord Selborne had said that they would be crammed in loose-boxes and taken over. When at first the long procession of pigtails and blue shirts appeared at Johannesburg they certainly seemed to be so much masculine machinery, so much cattle to be crammed into cattle-trucks at one port and unshipped at another. But all delusions or illusions were soon destroyed. It was found that the Chinaman actually thought for himself; that he had a sense of fair play, and that he was not prepared to work like a horse for a shilling or so a day. The compounds in which these yellow slaves were herded together are pieces of land in close proximity to the mine, surrounded by a high fence, guarded by armed police. They look exactly what in fact they are--prisons, and nothing else. Hospitals have been erected in each of the compounds, and an ample supply of gods have been procured for the Chinamen, possibly as a set-off to the evangelistical zeal of the Rector of St. Mary's, for there is no knowing what a Chinaman might do if he became thoroughly inculcated with the doctrines of love and mercy which were preached in the Sermon on the Mount. The compound in other respects is very like a village. No one can go into this village unless he has got some special business or has obtained a permit. These restrictions serve a double purpose. They prevent the possibility of a white man or a white woman being insulted by the slaves, and also put a check upon that inquiry into the treatment of the yellow men which the Rand lords are moving heaven and earth to baulk. The huts in which labourers live are identical with those made for Kaffirs. They hold one or two, as the case may be. The labourers have to work day and night in shifts of eight hours. When it is time for a batch of labourers to begin their shift, they are herded together and marched off to the mine, care being taken to keep them quite apart from the Kaffirs and whites. At the pit mouth they are driven into the cage and dropped down into the bowels of the earth. When the cage is opened the Chinaman is driven out, and if he show some hesitation about leaving the cage, he is kicked out as if he were an animal. At least, that is the treatment to which they were at first subjected. Now, however, their treatment in the mine is hardly so severe. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that the Chinaman now does his share of the "kicking." For example, on September 23 last, the Chinese at the Lancaster Mine attempted to murder the skipman by placing a beam in the path of the descending skip--a collision with which, as a writer in the _Daily Mail_ lately pointed out, "would have sent the skip a drop of a thousand feet." The obstruction was noticed. When the skipman got out he was assaulted, but managed to escape. The white overseer at first felt that instinctive fear of and dislike for the Chinaman that is peculiar to all Englishmen. He was one man against hundreds. In the majority of cases he had been bitterly opposed to the introduction of Chinese labour. He realized by the restrictions that had been placed by the Ordinance on the Chinamen that they were feared, and, in turn, he feared them himself. It was his duty to see that they worked. It was his duty to make them work. Unable to speak their language, instinctively disliking them, he used the only means of asserting his authority which came to his hands: that was generally a boot or a crowbar. Physical fear is the power by which nearly all primitive communities are ruled. The white races look upon the Chinamen as belonging to a primitive community, forgetting that they are the children of a civilization thousands of years older than any that exists in Europe. The white man soon dropped trying to rule by force. The Chinaman showed him that he feared blows as little as he feared death. If he didn't want to work he wouldn't work, and showed that fear was not the basis of Chinese morals. Once in the mine the docile, tractable Chinaman of the Rand lords' dream did just as he liked, and continues to do just as he likes. When he leaves the compound he, perhaps, takes with him half a loaf of bread. When he feels hungry, he stops work, coils himself upon the ground, and takes his meal. Let the language of the white man be as terrible as he is capable of, let him rain blows upon the Chinaman's back, the Chinaman takes no notice, but continues his meal. When he has finished his bread he rolls a cigarette, and smokes in calm and indifferent quietness. If the Englishman remonstrates with him, John Chinaman replies, "Me get one little shilling. Me do plenttee work for me pay." And he speaks the truth. He does quite enough work for a shilling a day. There is a wide difference between what he considers sufficient work and what the Rand lords consider sufficient. There is the increase of two and a half millions which the cosmopolitan mine owner hopes to make by using the Chinaman as a slave, and which he never will make either with the Chinaman or the black man. He does his best, however. The idea that this heathen, whom he has brought over with so much difficulty, in the face of so much opposition, should actually refuse to work like a machine, but should have ideas about the time when he wants to eat, and should even demand a few minutes' quiet smoke after eating, drives him almost to the point of insanity. It is almost as bad as those white workmen, who have a mania for forming trade unions and require fair wages for fair work. In the face of this Chinese intractableness while working in the mines, the Rand lords have urged on the white overseers to force the Chinese to do their work. When the overseer points out that if he resorts to violence his life will not be worth a moment's purchase, he is met with the reply that it is his duty to see that the Chinaman does his work, and if he cannot do that they must find somebody else to take his place. Under this threat of dismissal, the overseer has had only one resource. He has had to raise up a race feud, from which he stands apart. The Kaffirs already hate the yellow man, realizing that they have deprived them of their work. The white overseer has fomented this racial animosity. When the Chinaman has proved recalcitrant and disobedient, when he has refused to do more than a certain quantity of work, the overseer turns the black man on to him to force him once again to his task. The result is bloodshed and murder of black men and Chinamen. It is the old problem of leading a horse to the water and trying to make him drink. The Chinaman has been dragged from his native land in the face of the opposition of the whole Empire to increase the dividend paying. But he won't hurry, he won't work too hard, and in the mine he will do, as I have said, exactly as he pleases. All illusions as to the Chinaman's capacity for hard work have vanished. Even Mr. S. B. Joel--one of the Rand lords--practically admitted as much in his speech at the annual meeting of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company on November 23. With much reluctance, as may be imagined, the light-hearted "Solly" admitted that "the Chinese had not yet proved quite so suitable for underground work as natives"--but, lest this statement might affect the market price of the shares, the chairman of "Johnnies" expressed the hope that they would attain greater efficiency. No--the Chinaman does not work hard. It is true that he takes his employment seriously, and that what he does he will do well and with a certain efficiency. But he is not the masculine machinery or the cattle of Lord Selborne's imagination. He has enough intelligence to realize that he is the man who is wanted, and acts accordingly. If he works for a shilling a day he will only do a shilling's worth of work. He knows that he must be employed; nobody else can be got to do his job, and he acts, in fact, just as the Rand lords feared the white labourer would act. He won't be bullied into doing any more work than he wants to do. True, he forms no trade unions such as the white men form, but there is among all the Chinese a much more powerful weapon of opposition than the trade unions. Every Chinaman has his secret society, and these societies act together as one man. If the society decides to stop work, they stop work, and neither the fear of death nor the most callous or brutal treatment can move them from their purpose. He hates the white man with the same intensity as the white man hates him. If he can get the white man into any difficulty he will do so. His ingenuity for creating trouble is worthy of a better cause. With a sort of diabolical foresight he realizes exactly the complaints that will be showered upon the overseer's head by the masters of the mines. If the output falls, he knows that there will be trouble for the white man, so he stops work. He squats down and smokes cigarettes, realizing that by so doing he will be laying up a store of trouble for the overseer. To show how much the Chinaman is now the master of the situation on the Rand I may quote the following instance--On the night of October 24, the Chinese at the Jumpers Deep Mine refused to work until two of their compatriots, who had been arrested for an infringement of the mining regulations, were released. Every artifice was resorted to to get the stubborn Chinamen to resume their toil, but in vain. Eventually, the Government superintendent of the Chinese, acting under recently-extended powers, had forty of the head men arrested. Twenty of these were afterwards sentenced, some to two and others to three months' hard labour--sentences which probably moved to quiet mirth the parties most concerned, who could do that sort of punishment "on their head," so to speak. It has been said, of course, that the miners along the reef have always worked against the Chinese. It is not to be wondered at if they have. Nobody could reasonably blame them--except the Rand lords. But so far from this being true, the white miners have done their best to work with them. Even the chairman of the Chamber of Mines has confessed that the innumerable riots that have occurred down in the mines were not the result of the white men's machinations. The white man does his best, but under circumstances without parallel in the history of labour. He works always with the certain knowledge that at any moment he may be killed. To him the yellow terror is not a myth or the dream of fiction writers. He knows what it means. It is present with him every hour of his work. Down the mine in the stopes a white man has under him thirty or forty Chinese. If any grievance, real or imaginary, arose, the Chinese could turn round and take his life. He has no protection whatever. He has to stand by and listen as best he can to the insults heaped upon him by the children of the Celestial Empire; and insults heaped not only upon him but upon his womenfolk. He has to see that the work is done efficiently, or he is dismissed from his employment. But there is little wonder that his anger or fear gets the better of his discretion. It is bad enough that Chinamen are doing the work that should be done by white men, but it becomes even a greater scandal when the white men, who sacrificed so much blood and treasure for the Transvaal, should be insulted by these yellow slaves. The low-class Chinaman is probably the most bestial and degrading brute on this earth. He is intelligent enough, but his mind is as vile and unwholesome as a sewer. The bestial insults which he heaps upon the white overseers, and, indeed, upon every white man that he comes across, three years ago would not have been tolerated in any quarter of the British Empire. It is tolerated to-day in the Transvaal by the sanction of German Jews and un-British Gentiles. Lord Selborne, when the matter was brought to his notice, declared--"No wonder a white miner who has had such language said to him would fail to have roused within him feelings which would take a certain natural direction of satisfying themselves. But where has the Chinaman learnt this kind of language? he did not come here knowing it." Lord Selborne's implication was, of course, that the Englishmen, in their conversation in the presence of Chinamen, were accustomed to use this bestial talk. I don't pretend that the conversation of miners is always savoury. I am sure that the method of conversation in vogue in some of the Yorkshire and Lancashire factories would scandalize decent, quiet-living people, but such language on the part of the British workman is the result of his inability to express himself properly. What he says is said for emphasis. He does not, like a more educated man, add vigour to his conversation by making use of the endless variations of his mother tongue; he simply peppers his talk with epithets which in no way are used in their original meaning. If they were used in their original meaning, if the British workman really meant what he said, all the deadly sins in thought or in practice would be committed millions and millions of times a day. But the Chinaman is noted for his taste for all the most bestial vices which the imagination of man has ever conceived. What the miner may say in a coarse moment the Chinaman will commit without any hesitation. Lord Selborne asked where the Chinamen learnt this kind of language, and added that they did not come to the Transvaal knowing it. If Lord Selborne visited some of the treaty ports in China he would soon become aware that the Chinaman has added to his taste for committing all the vile and bestial vices, a knowledge of how to express these vices in all the vile and bestial language of Europe. As most of the criminal classes are to be found within the fringe of European civilization, and as, moreover, the Chinese Government has drafted, with a certain grim humour, a large number of the criminal classes into the Transvaal, I think the question as to where the Chinaman learnt his bestial language is answered equally as well as the statement, that he did not come to the Transvaal knowing it, is contradicted. This is the state of affairs in the mines themselves. But if these yellow slaves are intractable in the mines, they are even more intractable in the compounds. What they want to do that they will do, and not all the prisons and ingeniously-compiled penal laws can prevent them. They soon realized that if they wished they could be masters of the Rand. They foresaw that the Rand lord would be chary of using force, would hesitate to put into execution his slave-owning ideals, for fear of public opinion at home; that is to say, to put them into full force. But the Rand lords were not the type of men who would be chary of impressing upon the Chinamen in secret the full meaning of their position on the Rand. As it is the case in the mines, so is it the case in the compounds. The white man not only hates the yellow man, but fears him. He knows that at any moment he may be murdered, and with this fear in his heart has resorted to all sorts of brutality. The Chinamen can be flogged by law for almost any act. The Ordinance says that a Chinaman cannot leave the compound without a permit, and prescribes his life for him on absolute machine-like lines. The amended Ordinance of July 1904 says that he can be flogged in cases of assault with intent to commit any offence. Of course, an assault with intent to commit any offence might consist in hustling his neighbours in an attempt to escape from his compound, in pushing against the white overseer, in refusing to work. In short, the law was so ingeniously amended that the Chinaman could be flogged for anything. But the law was really not needed. The manager of the Croesus Mine admitted that when he considered a Chinaman wrong he had flogged him; that it might be against the law to flog him, but he had done so, and would continue to do so. And he was not only flogged for disobeying the regulations under which--knowingly, it is said--he had indentured himself, but for refusing to work. An Ordinance might substitute corporal punishment for imprisonment in the case of misdemeanours on the part of the Chinaman and so escape the title of slavery; but to force a man to work by corporal punishment is nothing but the essence of slavery. And yet these yellow men have been whipped to their work again and again. But flogging is no new thing on the Rand, nor is it confined to the Chinaman. The native knows the sjambok of the Rand lord well enough. "I well recollect," says Mr. Douglas Blackburn (lately assistant editor of the defunct Johannesburg _Daily Express_), writing to _The Times_ on November 4,--"I well recollect seventy-two boys being flogged before breakfast one morning in Krugersdorp gaol for the crime of refusing to work for £2 per month, after being promised £5 by the labour agent." While these facts are well known in Johannesburg, while there are many people who openly admit that they have thrashed the coolie, or ordered him to be thrashed for refusing to do sufficient work, the Rand papers, which are absolutely under the control of the mine owners, denied again and again that flogging took place. It was only Mr. Lyttelton's announcement that flogging must cease that at last compelled them to admit that flogging had taken place. Mr. Lyttelton had himself denied on several occasions that the Chinaman was flogged, and his command therefore that flogging must cease was quite as amazing to the members of the House of Commons as it was to the Rand lords. To anybody who has witnessed the development of Chinese slavery on the Rand, it is almost incomprehensible that there should be any people at home who deliberately refuse to believe that the Chinaman has been treated otherwise than as a human being, made in the image of God, with the rights that belong to all men of justice and freedom. The subject is as openly discussed, and regarded as a matter of fact on the Rand, as the Lord Mayor's Show. I cannot do better than quote from the now famous letters of Mr. Frank C. Boland to the _Morning Leader_. These letters show the development of yellow slavery in a nutshell, show how from flogging the yellow man to his work the Rand lords finally resorted to torture:-- "At the Nourse Deep severe punishment was meted out. Every boy who did not drill his thirty-six inches per shift was liable to be, and actually was, whipped, unless he were ill, and could show that it was a physical impossibility for him to do a day's work. A sjambok was used; it was laid on relentlessly by Chinese policemen, the part of the body selected being the muscles and tendons at the back of the thighs. Even the sight of blood did not matter. The policeman would go right on to the last stroke. Having been thus punished, the coolie would walk away; but after sitting down for a time the bruised tendons would refuse to work. Many of the coolies were sent to hospital to recover. "At a later date at this mine strips of rubber were substituted for a sjambok. This rubber, while causing very sharp pain, does not cut. "After a time the mine officials found that the coolies were not maintaining the monthly increase, and the management urged the Chinese controller to 'do something.' He refused to thrash the coolies unless they had committed some crime; and being informed by the manager that his policy would not suit, he gave two months' notice of his resignation. "Meanwhile, the management issued instructions, because of advice from England, that flogging should be stopped as far as possible, but asking that other forms of punishment should be substituted. "Thereupon certain forms of torture well known in the Far East were adopted. One of these was to strip erring coolies absolutely naked, and leave them tied by their pigtails to a stake in the compound for two or three hours. The other coolies would gather round and laugh and jeer at their countrymen, who stood shivering in the intense cold. "A more refined form of torture was to bind a coolie's left wrist with a piece of fine rope, which was then put through a ring in a beam about nine feet from the ground. This rope was then made taut, so that the unhappy coolie, with his left arm pulled up perpendicularly, had to stand on his tip-toes. In this position he was kept, as a rule, for two hours, during which time, if he tried to get down on his heels, he must dangle in the air, hanging from the left wrist. "Every mine has its lock-up for malingerers, deserters, and others. At the Witwatersrand the coolies are handcuffed over a horizontal beam. "The floor is of concrete, and they may sit down, but the beam is so far from the floor that it is impossible for any but exceptionally tall men to sit while handcuffed. They must therefore squat, and for a change raise themselves in a semi-standing posture. [Illustration: INSTEAD OF FLOGGING.] "When released, these prisoners stagger about until they regain the use of their legs; then they take their skoff and go below to work. "With the abolition of flogging, compound managers are now inventing other forms of punishment. In future, also, there will be an extensive system of fines, and food will be withheld. "Meanwhile, with all these methods of punishment, the coolies are still turbulent. Last Monday practically every boy on the Nourse Deep--seventy-five in all--was sent to gaol for seven days. This step is certain to foment trouble in the near future." It was this sort of inquisition that Great Britain had set up at the point of her bayonets. Well might the Australian Government say in their letter of protest--"Australia has been told that the war was a miners' war but not for Chinese miners, a war for the franchise but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had to be told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia." It would, indeed, have made a very different appeal to the British public. Would there have been so much killing of Kruger with our mouths had we known that a white proletariat would not be wanted--in Lord Milner's words--that the white labourer was not to be allowed into the Transvaal because his trade unions would shackle the enterprise of the Rand lords; that yellow slaves would have to be introduced in the disguise of indentured labour; that these labourers would be whipped and tortured into doing their work? Had they known that on the Witwatersrand the average number of Chinamen flogged daily for one month was forty-two--Sundays included--would there have been so much Rule Britannia and music-hall Jingoism? It is quite true, of course, that had the British people accepted the principle of importing Chinese labour into the Transvaal it would be quite fair to blame, as Lord Salisbury was always so fond of blaming, the system for the cruelty that inevitably followed. But the British public have never accepted the principle of importing Chinese labourers into the Transvaal. They have always been deliberately opposed to it, as has every part of the British Empire. They are not to blame, therefore, for the state of affairs on the Rand. As to the insane flogging administered for an offence, it cannot be better described than by giving another quotation from Mr. Boland's letter to the _Morning Leader_. Here is the method of procedure:-- "A coolie is reported either by a white shift boss or by a head-man for an offence. He is called into the compound manager's office, charged, and given a fair trial (except where the compound manager does not know the Chinese language, and has to trust to his yellow interpreter). Then the sentence is passed by the compound manager--ten, fifteen, or twenty strokes, according to the crime. The coolie, with a Chinese policeman on either side of him, is taken away about ten paces. Then he stops, and at the word of a policeman drops his pantaloons, and falls flat on his face and at full length on the floor. One policeman holds his feet together; another, with both hands pressed firmly on the back of his head, looks after that end of his body. Then the flagellator, with a strip of thick leather on the end of a three-foot wooden handle, lays on the punishment, severely or lightly, as instructed. Should the prisoner struggle after the first few strokes, another policeman plants a foot in the middle of his back until the full dose has been administered. [Illustration: LAYING ON THE PUNISHMENT.] "In another form of flogging practised, a short bamboo was used. The coolie would strip to the waist and go down on his knees with his head on the floor. His castigator would then squat beside him, and strike him across the shoulders with lightning rapidity. The blows, though apparently light, always fell on the one spot, and raised a large red weal before cutting the flesh. During the first quarter of this year no fewer than fifty-six coolies were whipped, after 8 p.m. one evening, at the Witwatersrand Mine, the dose varying from five to fifteen strokes." In Mr. Douglas Blackburn's letter to _The Times_, from which I quoted just now, we are told that much of the resultant mischief was due to the incompetence and mismanagement of the men in charge of the compound. "I assert unequivocally," he says, "that most of the white interpreters and compound managers had not a working acquaintance with the Chinese language, and, therefore, frequently misunderstood the complaints and requests made to them by the coolies.... This is no place for detail, but the following incident, which occurred in my presence, may be accepted as typical and illustrative. A compound manager was examining the passes of a number of coolies. When we left the compound we were followed by two Chinamen who shouted and gesticulated violently, and clutched at the arm of the manager. I could see that he failed to understand them, for he shouted wildly in return, exhibited signs of great alarm, and eventually knocked them both down, called the guard, had the pair locked up, and later in the day he flogged them for insubordination. Next day he confided to me that he was in fault. He had inadvertently put the passes into his pocket and misinterpreted the clamouring request for their return into threats against himself. That manager is now seeking another engagement." The twenty thousand soldiers who went to their death fighting what they imagined was for their country, might well, instead of singing "God save the King" and the like, have marched to the battle-fields of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony crying, like the old gladiators, "Ave, Croesus, morituri te salutant." [Illustration: CUTTING THE FLESH.] CHAPTER IV THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM When Mr. Lyttelton said that flogging must cease, flogging ceased on the Rand, and the Oriental methods of torture were adopted instead. But even this penal system--reminding one so strongly of the days of Stephen, when the wretched, tortured peasantry openly said that Christ and His saints slept, for Pity had veiled her face and Mercy had forgotten--had to be practised with great secrecy owing to the force of public opinion at home. These methods were, however, unavailing to check the growing insolence and insubordination of the Chinese slaves. No better idea of the condition of the Rand during the last few months can be gathered than from the new Ordinance, which was drafted at the beginning of last October. This Ordinance took the power of punishing the Chinese coolies from the hands of the resident magistrates and placed it in the hands of the inspectors, thereby giving the welfare of the Chinese slaves solely and entirely into the mercy of the Rand lords. Before, an attempt had been made to cloak the slave Ordinance with a pretence of law and justice as conceived by the British public. But the draft Ordinance of August put an end to this piece of hypocrisy. The superintendents and the inspectors of the Chinese, for all practical purposes the servants of the mine owners, were to be not only the judge and the jury, but the plaintiff. It conferred on the superintendents and inspectors jurisdiction, in respect of offences against the Ordinance, of a resident magistrate. Clause I states--"This power will be granted provided such offences are committed under the Ordinance and within the area of any mine or mine compound where such labourer resides. The fines to be inflicted in the case of conviction will be the same as those imposed by the magistrates under the existing laws, and on conviction the labourer's employer will be notified, and the amount of the fine will be deducted from the labourer's wages and paid over for the benefit of the Colonial Treasury." Another clause states that--"For the purpose of confining prisoners awaiting trial, it is provided that the employers of labourers shall erect a lock-up on their properties, which lock-up shall be deemed to be a jail." Again, in the event of labourers on the mines organizing a conspiracy, refusing to work, creating a disturbance, intimidating or molesting any person on the mine, the superintendent or inspector is empowered to impose a collective fine on the labourers. Insomuch as this new Ordinance once and for all destroys the myth with which Rand lords endeavoured to surround their slave-owning ideals, I consider it to be a decided improvement upon the original Ordinance, with its innumerable pleasures and pretences for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Chinamen. That unfortunate and much-deluded man the Colonial Secretary, once declared in the House of Commons that the Chinaman would have just as free access to a court of justice as any British subject. He certainly now-a-days possesses free access to a court, if not to a court of justice. Access is so easy to it that the court actually follows him wherever he goes, watches him while he works in the mine, watches him while he is in the compound, and is ready to punish and fine him, or to lock him up in the compound prison, without any of those old-fashioned formalities which, while they may embody the machinery of justice, are at least guarantees of its purity and disinterestedness. It would of course be very interesting to know how many of these fines have ever reached the Colonial Treasury. Armed with such extraordinary powers as these, it is highly probable that the Rand lords imposed through their superintendents and inspectors unlimited fines which, instead of benefiting the Colonial Revenue, merely reduced the wage bill. The last clause which I have quoted contains the phrase "organizing a conspiracy." A conspiracy, of course, is anything in the nature of a trade union. I don't say that this new Ordinance was not justified. I think it was fully justified. No efficiency can be obtained by half measures. The ablest political trimmers are incapable of serving both God and Mammon. If God is out of the question, a whole-hearted worship of Mammon is really better. In short, it would have been far more in the interests of the Transvaal if the Rand lords had from the first gone the whole hog and insisted on having Chinese slaves in name as well as in fact. The state of affairs in August last wanted extraordinary legislation. But, of course, this must not be held to justify Chinese labour. That was criminal. But once the principle of Chinese labour had been accepted by the Government on behalf of an unwilling and protesting nation, I fail to see how the unfortunate remnants of British subjects in the Transvaal could be properly protected without these measures. I don't see how, when once the Chinese had been brought into the country, the brutalities that have been committed could have been avoided. I think the superintendent and the inspector and the overseer should have the right to shoot men down in cold blood. I think the compounds should be surrounded by artillery. I think all the ideals of Russian autocratic rule should be brought to bear upon these men. The awful brutality with which they have been treated is justified. The superintendent, the inspector and the overseer should be forced to make a special study of the methods adopted by Hawkins and Magree. The British Government wanted Chinese labour to be introduced into the Transvaal, and if they had been efficient and sensible they should have accumulated in their Ordinance the wisdom of all the slave-owning traditions of centuries. But from an unbiassed perusal of the Rand press one would have imagined that all these extraordinary measures were unjustified. The statements that the Chinese were committing outrages, were insolent, were bestial, which have from time to time appeared in the British press, were referred to by the Rand press as "more Chinese lies," "Chinese canards," and such headings. They persistently impressed upon their readers that the Chinese were leading an industrious, idyllic life, that they were treated with kindness and humanity by the overseers, that no happier community ever existed on the face of the earth than the 40,000 odd Chinamen in their compounds on the Rand. Of course, they only kept up this pretence for a time. It was impossible for long to pretend to be a newspaper at all and yet deny facts which were personally known to the majority of their readers. The object of this extraordinary legislation was, of course, that the Chinese preferred to go to prison rather than pay fines. At the beginning of August there were more than one thousand Chinamen in jail undergoing various terms of imprisonment, rather than deduct from their shilling a day, the amounts they were called upon to pay for disobeying the laws laid down in the Ordinance. The amended Ordinance now forced them to pay by withholding from them a portion of their wage equal to the amount of the fine. It has been found useless, in fact, to pretend that other than a reign of terror pertains in the Transvaal. The Chinamen have broken loose, and only their prompt deportation can prevent a very grave crisis. Neither fines nor floggings have any terror for them, and from their earliest years they have been accustomed to regard death without a semblance of fear. I will relate some of the more notorious instances in which these yellow slaves have figured in the last year. The list includes, murder, rape, robbery with violence, and that class of criminal assault with which we deal in England under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. While working in the mines the Chinaman does exactly what he pleases. The overseers dare not interfere. Their policy of putting the black man on to the yellow man has resulted in murder. The Chinaman has a short way with any white or black man who tries to interfere with his sense of liberty. He kills the man. Every Chinaman belongs to a secret society, and when he has determined to kill a white or a black man he reports his decision to the society. He knows that the deed which he meditates will be rewarded by his own death: but for this he cares nothing. All his preparations are made beforehand. His secret society probably consists of from four to five thousand members. All these members contribute something like sixpence a-piece to make up a sum, say of £100. When this amount is collected, it is sent over to his wife and family in China. Having thus made all the necessary provision for his wife and children, the Chinaman perpetrates the deed. He is then arrested, sentenced and hanged. And he meets his end with a stoical indifference, quite content that he has secured his revenge and set his worldly affairs in order. In the face of such sentiments compulsion is futile. On Wednesday, September 13, a gang of Chinese coolies working at the Geldenhuis Deep Mine decided to take a holiday. The management of the mine were instructed to offer them extra pay if they would work. They refused, and took their holiday. They promised, however, that they would start their first shift at midnight on the following Sunday, September 17. When midnight on Sunday, September 17, arrived, they determined to keep their holiday up. The compound manager endeavoured to use force. The Chinese met force by force. The police were called in. The riot at that juncture had reached a most alarming state. The police were ordered to fire: they obeyed, killing one Chinaman and wounding another; but not before the compound manager had been attacked and somewhat seriously injured. Finally the Chinamen were driven to their work. On the same Sunday the utter uselessness of the compound system was proved. One hundred Chinamen bolted from the French Rand Mine. Somebody, it is supposed, had spread among them the report that the Boers were enlisting coolies at £4 a month to fight the English. In vain has the number of police in the Witwatersrand district been increased. Gangs of deserters are wandering about the country murdering and looting. "Last night," wrote a young South African policeman to his parents in England, "I captured six Chinamen who had run away from the mines. They are giving a lot of trouble--5000 of them started rioting last week, and 100 foot police and 200 South African Constabulary had to go to stop them, and a nice old job we had. They threw broken bottles and stones when we charged them. Some of our fellows were very badly cut. The Chinamen also made dynamite bombs and threw them at us, and we had to shoot into the crowd to drive them back. We aimed low and wounded a good many of them. They are nasty devils to tackle, and always show fight when there are a lot of them together. The six I captured were trekking across the veld. I chased them on horseback and they ran on top of a kopje and commenced to roll rocks down. I managed to get a shot at one with my revolver: the bullet struck him on the wrist. Then they all put up their hands and surrendered. I managed to get some niggers working in the mealie patch to escort them back to our camp. The niggers were very proud of themselves. When they passed through the other native kraals I think if I had not been there the Kaffirs would have assegaied them. They hate the Chinamen like poison." These are the sort of incidents that occur daily. All the measures taken by the Government and the mine owners to prevent desertion have proved ineffective. The country around the Witwatersrand Mines has taken upon itself the aspect of the whole of the colony during the late war. Mounted constables with loaded revolvers organize drives. The whole district is patrolled, and every effort is made to bring back the deserters to the compounds. But as soon as one lot has returned another escapes. Every day you may see a mounted policeman riding down towards the law courts, followed by a string of Chinese deserters. The Johannesburger lives in a daily state of terror. He rarely meets a Chinaman without immediately seeking the protection of the police and insisting on an inquiry being held then and there, as to whether the man has a permit to be at large in the Golden City. Writing on October 2, the Johannesburg correspondent--one L. E. N.--of a London morning paper gives a graphic account of the wonderful City of Gold at that date. "Gold of the value of over £20,000,000 a year," he says, "is extracted from that stretch of dusty upland called The Reef.... But look closer. The white workers on the mines carry revolvers; the police are armed with ball cartridge and bayonet; camped yonder at Auckland Park is a mobile column of mounted men ready to move against an enemy at a moment's notice; the country folk on the other side of the swelling rise are armed to the teeth, and live at night in barricaded and fortified houses." What a beautiful commentary on life as it is lived--under the British flag--in the commercial and political hub of the great sub-continent! The Boers, who through their political organization the Het Volk have refused to take any active part in the management of the country, determined with a sort of grim humour, since the British sought to destroy the corrupt Government of their late President, they shall be allowed to mismanage the country as they will, have been led to break their political silence to petition the Government for more protection. At a meeting held at Krugersdoorp at the beginning of October, they decided to forward a resolution to the Imperial Government requesting that the importation of Chinese coolies should be discontinued, and those already in the country should be repatriated. Regret was further expressed at the danger to life and property, and it was pointed out that the policy of not allowing the Boers to carry firearms prevented them from properly protecting the lives of their families. [Illustration: GOOD SPORT.] General Botha did not exaggerate the dangers which resulted from the importation of Chinamen, and he voiced the common sentiment of Boer and Briton when he asked that a Commission should be appointed to investigate the treatment of the Chinese coolies, and ascertain the cause of the disturbances. The mine owners' press informed the public that there are very few cases of desertion; that when any number of Chinamen do desert the South African Constabulary deal with them efficiently. They are hunted down, rounded up, and brought in by their pigtails for trial. At the trial they are convicted, or were before the amendment of the Ordinance in August last, and locked up. Any one going through the Transvaal will see hundreds of these Chinese convicts working in large batches on the roads. White men are placed in charge of these convicts, and when the repairing and macadamizing of the roads is not done to their liking, the Chinamen are flogged, and flogged in the open. They are subjected to every kind of brutal treatment; and it is probable that almost as many desert from the convict prisons as desert from the slave compounds. In "C" Court, Johannesburg, on October 3 (or 4, I am not sure of the exact date), before Mr. Schuurman, several Chinese labourers were prosecuted for wandering from the mines in which they were employed, without possessing the necessary permission. They all pleaded guilty, and were fined £1 each. When asked what excuse they had to offer, three of them said they were homesick, and were on their way to China; two others stated that they had only gone for a short walk, and were close to the mine when arrested. The policeman, however, declared they were twenty-five miles from the mine. A few of the accused stated that they were ill-treated, and consequently deserted. The magistrate sapiently advised them that in such a case, instead of absconding, they should complain to the representative of the Labour Importation Association when he called at the mine. Under the new regulations, sixty-five Chinamen, including an alleged professional robber, were arrested on October 18. A Johannesburg correspondent describes them as "a band of 450 coolies of bad character." What has Lieut.-Colonel W. Dalrymple, the Rand mining man who lately at Tunbridge Wells denounced the "infamous lies" which were circulated in this country about the Chinese labour question--what, I repeat, has Lieut.-Colonel Dalrymple to say to _that_? From the same telegram I learn that the measures which are now being taken to prevent desertions are proving effective. The roll-call of October 8--I am now quoting the immaculate Reuter--"showed 278 absentees, and during the following week 245 were captured and brought back to work. Last night," adds the correspondent, meaning the night of October 17, "nine coolies attempted to raid a homestead in the Krugersdoorp district. The farmer fired through a window, and shot one Chinaman dead; the others fled." I commend these statements, together with those quoted hereafter, to the earnest attention of the editor of a certain yellow-covered weekly journal, devoted to the interests of South Africa--the organ of the Rand lords in London--which persistently pooh-poohs the "yellow slavery" cry. Meanwhile gangs of escaped Chinamen are wandering over the country spreading terror everywhere. The Boer farmer goes to bed at night in his lonely farmhouse on the veld as if he were still at war with Great Britain. Long hidden rifles are brought out from the hay-ricks and other hiding-places and got ready. Windows are boarded up, doors are double locked. Every preparation is made to warn off the ever expected attack of the yellow desperadoes. At the beginning of October two homesteads in the Boksburg district were attacked by a party of Chinese, who attempted to gain an entrance by breaking in the back doors and windows. In both cases, however, the farmers had made every preparation for such an attack, and fired on the marauders, one of whom was wounded in the chest and another in the abdomen. The remainder made off. A similar outrage occurred in the middle of November. A lonely farmhouse near Germiston, occupied by an Englishman and his wife, was attacked by a band of Chinese, who were armed with crowbars and stones. The farmer opened fire, seriously wounding one of the Chinamen in the jaw, and the rest decamped without entering. The injured man was captured, but the whereabouts and identity of the others were not discovered. In Johannesburg the talk is of nothing but murders and assaults by gangs of ten or fourteen escaped labourers. House after house away on the veld has been broken into and looted, and the inhabitants murdered if they showed any signs of resistance; they have indeed in some cases been murdered without showing any sign of resistance at all. Quite recently the Legislative Council of the Transvaal has re-amended for about the tenth time the Ordinance. It has proposed to offer £1 a head for the recapture of these yellow hooligans, an amendment which would have placed the very much-bepatched Ordinance on a level with the laws that prevailed in the Southern States of America before the abolition of slavery. It is charged, however, with that strange spirit of hypocrisy which has characterized all the proceedings of the Rand lords into a reimbursement to the capturer of his out-of-pocket expenses. This of course is only another way of offering £1 for every recaptured Chinaman, for it may be taken for granted that the capturer's expenses will always include the wear and tear of horseflesh and moral damages and other matters which can only be estimated in the abstract. According to the schedule of fees payable in respect of the capture of Chinese deserters, which was published early in October, they ranged from 1s. per mile for one or two arrests to 3s. for eight or more. Here is a letter from another member of the South African Constabulary to his people at home which emphasizes the state of affairs which exist at present on the Rand. "The Chinese have been causing a lot of trouble. There was a whole family murdered about a month ago. Several places have been broken into. Last Sunday there was a storekeeper murdered about ten miles from where I am staying. We have orders on no account to go out on patrol without a revolver. The people are seeking police protection, and are frightened out of their wits. I believe it is as much as a South African Constabulary man's life is worth to be seen at some places on the Rand in uniform. I am determined that if I meet any Chinamen, and they show fight, I will shoot the first one dead." This is the spirit abroad--a spirit which every right-minded man must regard as the inevitable result of the criminal action of the Government in sanctioning the Chinese Labour Ordinance. Here is another case which has never been reported in the press:-- At Germiston railway station twelve Chinamen were waiting on the platform for a train. A white woman happened to pass by, and as she passed the Chinamen hurled some bestial insult at her. One of the railway officials immediately called a policeman, who tried to take the offending Chinaman into custody. He was promptly knocked down. Three more policemen were hurried to the scene. These met with like treatment, and even when two other comrades came to their assistance they were utterly unable to effect the arrest. After twenty minutes' violent fighting, during which the gang of Chinamen were absolutely unhurt, six policemen were taken on stretchers to the hospital. Here are two or three more instances taken at random from the "Butcher's Bill" of a Johannesburg correspondent, whose letter appeared in the _Daily Mail_ a few weeks ago:-- "_Sept. 5._--Chinese attack Kaffirs in the Lancaster Mine. They throw one Kaffir in front of a train of ore, so that he is cut to pieces. A second Kaffir dies of his injuries. "_Sept. 8._--Homestead at Rand Klipfontein attacked and looted, and £150 in money taken. The Chinese try to fire the house by throwing a fire-ball through the window. "_Sept. 16._--Band of Chinese rush a Kaffir kraal at Wilgespruit, on the West Rand. Native woman's head nearly severed. Chinese armed with knives 2 feet 6 inches long, made by a Sheffield firm. "_Sept. 18._--Riot Geldenhuis Deep. Compound manager assaulted. Mounted police attacked by 1500 coolies armed with drills, stones, bottles, etc., and forced to fire their revolvers. One Chinaman killed and a number wounded." And so on and so forth. One more instance to show to what length the Chinamen will go. A gang of the breed employed at the Van Ryn Mine, where there had previously been a number of disturbances, struck work and attacked the whites underground. A white man pulled the signal cord, and police, galloping up, descended the shaft and saved the whites. The ringleaders were arrested, and, adds the correspondent somewhat ingenuously--"This phase of attacks underground is disquieting." From the adjacent colony of Natal, too, come words of complaint about Chinese stragglers; and it is significant in this connection that "over a thousand rifles" were issued to the farmers in the Transvaal at the end of September last. These are facts which Mr. Reyersbach, of Messrs. H. Eckstein & Co., would be well advised to put in his pipe and ponder. Of course the immediate cause which leads to the Chinese committing the above-recorded acts of violence is the result of bad treatment. The murder of Mr. Joubert in the Bronkhorst Spruit Mine--for which, on November 20, four Chinamen were executed in Pretoria jail--who received some fifty stabs before succumbing, was due to starvation. The men wanted to find food. They were not allowed to eat apparently, and so, maddened by ill-treatment, overwork, and starvation, they committed murder. Perhaps the most tragic part of the whole business is that one cannot completely blame them for such an awful act. They have grown to hate the white man. It is small wonder. There are now nearly 50,000 Chinamen on the Rand, and in the breasts of all these men there seems to have been imbued a hatred and detestation of the white man. It seems almost as if these slaves considered it fair game to commit any outrage, however brutal, on white men and white women whenever the opportunity occurs. They are treated outrageously themselves. They get little justice from magistrates, so it is small wonder that they are indulging themselves in a sort of blood carnival of revenge. Discussing this question the other day with a representative of the London journal _South Africa_, Dr. Corstorphine seriously declared that the difficulties attendant on the Chinese labour question had been magnified out of all proportion to the main facts. "We must expect to find a few black sheep amongst the Chinese," sagely observed the doctor. Ye gods!--a _few_. It would be interesting to know what constitutes a "few" in the mind of the worthy geologist. Dr. Corstorphine would probably indignantly deny the existence of yellow slavery on the Rand. But possibly he would admit its existence under another name, just as Sir Edward Grey did at Alnwick the other night. Addressing his constituents, Sir Edward said he had never said that the working of the mines by the Chinese in South Africa was slavery; but the question he would put to those who said it was not, would be--"Was it _Freedom_?" That is a question that I would put to Dr. Corstorphine, Mr. Fricker, Mr. E. P. Mathers, and others of their kidney. If Chinese labour on the Rand isn't slavery, what is it--is it _Freedom_? I pause for a reply. CHAPTER V THE YELLOW TRAIL The mark of the yellow man is upon the Rand. He has set his seal upon the country, and it is to be seen in a hundred things. Johannesburg was never an exactly heavenly place. A gold centre attracts all the evil passions of men--draws to it, like the lodestone draws the needle--every species of adventurer and world vagabond. President Kruger knew how to deal with the cosmopolitan hordes that thronged the streets of the "Gold-Reef City." He put a check upon the importation of undesirables, and always remembered before all things that the Transvaal belonged to the Boer people and not to the cosmopolitan. The British Government might well have taken a leaf from his book. But they have failed to do so. Instead of making the interests of the Briton paramount, they have deliberately allowed the Rand to be overrun by every type of Continental adventurer. So Johannesburg, up to the summer of 1904, was never exactly peopled by a moral, law-abiding population. The fierceness of competition, the keenness to make money rapidly, seems to electrify the sunny atmosphere of the Rand, and to produce a community that knows no law. But since the summer of 1904 the Rand has suffered a change which at one time was thought impossible; it has changed for the worse. To the wild life in the mining city has been added the degrading vices of the Orient. The Chinaman has brought with him all the worst vices of life in a treaty port. Opium dens and gambling hells, in spite of the most careful police surveillance, have sprung up. The yellow man has made his name a terror. He has murdered, raped, robbed, and committed every offence against law and morality. He has literally terrorized--and still terrorizes--the Rand. The plutocrat Jew walks the familiar streets in a state of trepidation; the Boer farmer sleeps with a rifle by his side, and his farm house is surrounded by spring guns and alarums. The life of no white man is safe, and the honour of no white woman. "The Chinese reign of terror continues on the Rand," cabled the Durban correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_ on November 1. "The latest outrage is that perpetrated by a gang of coolies, who attacked a house at Benoni, injuring its occupant, Mr. Vaughan, and wounding his wife with a razor. They ransacked the house and stole the plate." These are some of the men whose praises were sung by Sir George Farrar at a political meeting at the Nigel--and whose work as miners, he declared, had proved "a great success." A "great success," perhaps, for the Rand lords, but at what a terrible cost to the community of the Witwatersrand! The _South African News_ of Cape Town has rendered yeoman service to the cause of those who are opposed--and their name is legion!--to the Chinese labour question. The ridiculous contentions of the Rand lords have been exposed again and again by the Cape Town journal, whose fearlessness in grappling with the subject has been in marked contrast to the majority of its contemporaries in the sub-continent, and has earned, as it has deserved, the thanks of the thinking portion of the community. Commenting on October 4 on the continuance of the reign of terror on the Rand, "as it was bound to continue," the _South African News_ puts the case with unmistakable plainness;--"Unless the Chinese are confined in such a way as the mine-owners themselves consider fairly describable as slavery, they are a menace to the public. Probably slavery would mean further outrages; it is clear that torture of various kinds has been allowed on the Rand, and it is far less clear that this is not the real cause of some of the excesses which have shocked South Africa. Either we must have slavery and exasperation, or we must have our people exposed to the danger of murder, outrage and robbery; or we must demand the expulsion of the Chinese, and the turning down of a disgraceful page in South African and English history which has brought good to no one, and only serves as another indication of the strength to which avarice will lead men in attempting to bend nature into the service of their own greed." It was understood that the only conditions under which Chinese labour could be introduced to the Rand was a system by which they were kept apart, under lock and key, from the rest of the population. But this system has broken down. Hordes of Chinese, as I have shown, are running over the country. The utter futility of the compound system is proved by the fact that as many as thirteen Chinese laundries have been broken up by the police in one week, only for others to take their place. It was recognized by the Government that the Chinaman must not be allowed to be a competitor. This was one of the reasons of herding him with his fellows like cattle in a pen. But the Chinaman broke loose. With Asiatic unconcern he sets all the rules of the Ordinance at defiance, and calmly sets up a laundry in the town, caters for custom, carries on his business just as if he were a free man and not a yellow serf, until some frightened cosmopolitan sees him in the streets, and in a state of fear demands that the nearest policeman shall see whether the creature has a permit or not. John Chinaman, who, of course, has no permit, is thereupon arrested, his laundry business comes to an abrupt close, and he starts once again his task of gold grubbing for a shilling a day. The amended Ordinance of August last contained this clause-- "It is provided that labourers being in possession of gum, opium, extract of opium, poppies, etc., shall be liable to a fine on conviction of £20, or in lieu thereof of imprisonment for three months, with or without hard labour." This ominous clause was rendered necessary by the steadily increasing growth of opium dens. Twelve months before, some few weeks after the arrival of the first batch of Chinamen, the Government had passed what was known as the Poison Ordinance. The object of this Ordinance was to regulate the sale of opium. It provided that only registered chemists and druggists might sell opium, and that every package of the drug must be labelled with the word "Poison." Of course, this was ridiculously inadequate, and it was soon found that more stringent measures must be taken. It was decreed, therefore, that opium could only be sold to persons known to the seller, and on an entry being made in the poison-book. These further restrictions were found perfectly futile. The sale of opium increased enormously. At a meeting of the Transvaal Pharmacy Board, the secretary of the board read his report on the poison-books of the chemists in Johannesburg. It transpired that an examination of the books of one chemist had disclosed the following sales of opium on various dates in July and August last--336 lbs., 18 lbs., 28 lbs., 7 lbs., 31 lbs., 48 lbs. All this had been sold to Chinamen for smoking purposes. One lot was said to have been sold under a medical certificate, but the doctor concerned denied all knowledge of such certificate. The chairman of the board said, that while it was gratifying to know that only three out of sixty-eight pharmacies along the Rand carried on traffic in opium, the ugly fact remained that two of these chemists had imported during August two tons of Persian opium for smoking purposes, and an examination of their books disclosed that only a few pounds were unsold. In vain have the authorities attempted to put an end to this drug habit. Recommendations have been made by the Pharmacy Board that any chemist secretly supplying the Chinese with drugs should be sent to prison, without the option of a fine. As if one evil were producing another evil, it has been proved that not only are the Chinamen demoralizing the Rand, but the Rand is demoralizing the Chinamen. The majority of the Chinese labourers have been drawn from the north of the Celestial Empire, where very little opium is used, on account of the poverty of the people. The comparatively large salaries which these labourers are now receiving enables them to indulge their inherited taste for the drug to their hearts' content. But in addition to this sale of opium by chemists on the Rand, opium dens have sprung up all over the place. As soon as the police stamp them out in one quarter they reappear in another. They are accompanied, of course, by the usual gambling hells. These, too, the police endeavour to suppress. All the money that they find is impounded; heavy fines are exacted. But instead of decreasing they increase. The most dangerous vice of the Orient is thus thriving luxuriantly upon the favourable soil of the Rand. One cannot blame the Chinaman for drugging himself. It is difficult even to blame him for the outrages that he commits. The opium habit, of course, is a step towards other habits. If the Chinaman merely went to the opium dens in his off hours, drugged himself, slept his celestial sleep, and then returned to his labours prepared to work as hard as any cart-horse, the Rand lords would be the last persons to forbid him these indulgences. But the opium habit is demoralizing and degrading. It excites passions almost beyond control. I have already pointed out that Mr. Lyttelton promised in the House of Commons that the Chinaman should be allowed to take his womenfolk with him if he wished, and a great point was made of the fact that the morality of the Chinamen would be well looked after. No risks were to be taken. The Archbishop of Canterbury had to be satisfied upon the point before he made his regrettable necessity speech--"Show me that it brings about or implies the encouragement of immorality in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word, and, I am almost ashamed to say anything so obvious, I should not call the so-called necessity worth a single moment's consideration. In such a case there could be but one answer given by any honest man. The thing is wrong, and please God it shall not take place." The Most Reverend Primate should be satisfied by now that the system deliberately set up in the Transvaal has brought about and encouraged immorality. The Chinaman is always a frugal feeder, yet the strength of his passions is notorious. There is no necessity to go back into the past moral history of the Chinese race to contradict this statement. Gangs of escaped labourers have attacked farm houses on the veld, and where they have found no men, or where the men have been overpowered, they have committed all the most bestial assaults known upon the women and children. One white woman was known to have been found raped, and dead. It is not safe for any decent or respectable white woman to go near a Chinaman. The way he looks at her is sufficient to raise the most murderous thoughts in the mind of any white man present. A deputation of miners asked Lord Selborne for protection against the Chinamen, stating that the way in which they spoke to and looked at white women was intolerable, and pointed out further that, unless steps were taken to protect the white population, the most horrible crimes would be committed. That warning has proved true. Lord Milner has called the sentiment, which has arisen in the breasts of nearly all Britons, of loathing for the introduction of Chinamen into the Rand, Exeter Hall sentiment. It possibly is the sentiment of Exeter Hall, but it is to be hoped it is the sentiment also of all decent people who believe in virtue and morality, and who still cherish a fine chivalrous ideal of woman. The Government have again and again declared that the protest of the Opposition in the House of Commons was dictated purely by party considerations--that Chinese labour was a good stalking horse. That people really were concerned about the welfare of Chinamen on the Rand they refused to believe. As a matter of fact it is really the Government that are blinded by partisanship; they see everything through a false medium. What they do not see falsely in the Transvaal they do not see at all. For it cannot be that they really are in favour of retaining on the Rand 50,000 Chinamen who commit the most loathsome outrages on the white population. It is almost passing belief that they should blind themselves to the fact that the womenfolk of the Transvaal are absolutely unprovided with any adequate protection against these hordes of Chinamen. Every day, as has been shown, desertions grow more numerous, and with every Chinaman that escapes the terror increases. No steps have been taken for the protection of his morals. Not even the most human elementary step of letting him bring with him his wife has been taken. And but few steps have been taken to protect the white population. The most ordinary commonplace foresight has been wanting. The carnival of lust and blood now going on in the Transvaal could have been prevented. It was bad enough to introduce Chinese labour at all into the Transvaal. The case becomes more damnable when they are introduced without those restrictions which had been promised. "I am opposed," said Herbert Spencer, "to the importation of Chinese labour, because if it occurs one of two things must happen. Either the Chinese must mix with the nation, in which case you get a bad hybrid, and yet if they do not mix they must occupy a position of slavery." The British Government, at the dictation of the Rand lords, attempted to make the Chinaman occupy a position of slavery, failed to completely establish this system, and is allowing the Chinamen to mix with the population. Thus we shall have in the Transvaal the two evils which Herbert Spencer raised his voice against. We have already slavery; we shall certainly have a bad hybrid population. The degrading influence of the Chinaman is shown in Johannesburg. White women are actually marrying them. They are even mixing with the black races. The Transvaal was bad enough before, when merely thronged with the scouring of Europe. But it will be a thousand times worse before the last Chinaman is repatriated. In a morning paper of November 2 I read that Mr. Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary, in a letter to Mr. George Renwick, M.P., defends the action of the Government in regard to the employment of Chinese labour. He refers to the demand for it in the South African colonies, and says--"The opinion to which we came was based upon evidence taken from many sources. That it was correct is borne out by the fact that we have received not a single petition from the Transvaal for the revocation of the Ordinance." Let not Mr. Lyttelton lay such flattering unction to his soul. If it be true, as he states, that the Imperial Government have so far not received a single petition from the other side against the Chinamen, he need only _wacht een beitje_--wait a bit--as they say in South Africa. The petitions will follow. By and by they will be thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. Does Mr. Lyttelton never read the daily papers? Is he unaware, for instance, that at a special meeting held at Krugersdoorp on October 10, a resolution was carried praying that an end might be put to the importation of Chinese, and that the Chinamen now on the Rand might be sent back immediately after the expiration of their contracts? Does he pretend to be ignorant of the fact that it was announced at the time that this resolution would be sent to the Imperial Government through Lord Selborne? I cannot believe it. Let Mr. Lyttelton note that the correspondent from whose message I quote, significantly added--"_If this way of protesting has no result, it is intended to send a deputation to England to discuss matters regarding the Chinese question._" Verily, it would seem that nothing short of a measure of the kind will stir the conscience of Christian England to an appreciation of the intolerable state of affairs now being endured in South Africa by those whose lot is cast in proximity to the yellow man! CHAPTER VI THE EFFECT OF CHINESE LABOUR. PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES The introduction of Chinese indentured labour to the Transvaal has been a complete failure--(1) Financially, (2) Socially, (3) Politically. The slave-owning ideals of the Rand lords has made the Transvaal a hell. It has not even made it a paying hell. Every security connected with the Rand industry has decreased enormously. It is estimated that the loss of capital runs to many millions of pounds sterling. It cannot be said in excuse that this is the result of general commercial depression throughout the Empire, for almost every other kind of security, except Consols, has considerably appreciated in value. Certainly the record monthly output of gold has long been passed. More gold has been produced each month than was ever produced before, even during the pre-war period. But these record outputs mean nothing. Even at 1s. 6d. a day the Chinese labourer has been proved to be an expensive luxury. He costs nearly 50 per cent. more than the Kaffir. The expenses of nearly every mine where Chinese labour has been employed have gone up; the expenses of every mine where Kaffir labour is employed have gone down. Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell had something pertinent to say on this topic in the admirable address on the Chinese labour question which he delivered the other day at Potchefstroom. Dealing with the argument that white labour was prohibitively expensive, and that in order to work low-grade mines coolies must be employed, the indefatigable fighter of the yellow man observed-- "I have picked out at random a number of mines, and I find that the mine showing the best results, the only one showing other than very bad results with coolies, is the Van Ryn Mine. This mine in the June quarter of 1904 was working at a cost of 24s. 5d. per ton, and milled 30,000 tons in that quarter; they were then using native and, I believe, no unskilled whites at all. A year before that they were milling 24,500 tons, at a cost of 28s. 2d. per ton, with 1,000 natives. In the June quarter of 1905 it worked at a cost of 21s. per ton, and milled 60,000 tons. In that quarter it was using some 2,000 coolies." Here is an instructive list which was compiled by the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on September 8 last:-- MINES WITH CHINESE LABOUR EXPENSES GOING UP June 1905. Avge., 1904. s. d. s. d. Durban Roodepoort Deep 28 2 27 5 Geldenhuis Deep 22 11 19 1 Glen Deep 24 0 20 8 Nourse Deep 28 9 26 7 Rose Deep 21 9 17 2 Jumpers Deep 27 9 23 0 MINES WITH KAFFIR LABOUR EXPENSES GOING DOWN June 1905. Avge., 1904. s. d. s. d. Ferreira Deep 21 7 26 5 Crown Deep 19 3 20 2 Langlaagte Deep 22 2 20 9 Ever since the beginning of the war, we seem to have been watching in a bewitched trance for the coming of the boom. Some people described Johannesburg as the enchanted city waiting for the spell to be removed for the boom to come. It has never come; and it never will come as long as Chinamen are employed to do the work that can be done by Kaffirs or white men. When the incurable idleness of the Chinaman and his cost of keep is added to that 1s. 6d. a day, he is dearer than the black man or the white man. The Rand lord was anxious to procure cheap labour and subservient labour. The white man could not be employed because he would have held the management of the country in the hollow of his hand, have formed trade unions, and insisted on proper wages and proper treatment. Enough black men, if time had been given, would have worked at the mines even at the reduced wages paid by the Rand lords. On this point, too, Mr. Cresswell, from whose Potchefstroom speech I quoted just now, had something instructive to say. In dissecting the official records, he observed-- "They show that between June 1904 and the end of last August--the last month for which statistics are available--the number of natives on the producing mines of the Rand had increased by 19,000, or an average increase of 1,355 a month. Does any man here for a minute really believe that if no Chinese had come here at all the gentlemen controlling the mines would not have done exactly the same from June 1904 to August 1905, as they did from June 1903 to June 1904? Does any one believe that in the latter period, as in the former period, they would not have managed to bring an average of a hundred more stamps into operation, and into the producing mines, for every 1,085 natives at least that they added to their force of native labour? If they had merely added on 100 stamps for every 1,085 natives, as they did up to June 1904, do you know how many stamps would have been working in August 1905? They would have had 6,503 stamps at work. Do you know how many they actually had at work? They had 6,845 stamps at work, or a paltry 342 stamps more than if no Chinese had ever been imported!" But the Kaffir could not be forced to work. There was nothing to prevent him from throwing up his employment when he had earned sufficient money and was returning to his kraal. The only chance, therefore, so the Rand lords argued, of acquiring the voteless and subservient labour that they wanted, was to get Chinese labour. The Chinaman is certainly voteless, but he has proved far from subservient--far less subservient than a Kaffir. Belonging to a more intelligent race, the child of an old though dormant civilization, he has known exactly how to deal with his masters. Of the gold extracted from the mines so much goes to wages and so much goes to dividends; the wages are spent in the country, the dividends are spent in Europe. Raise wages and you will render South Africa prosperous; lower wages and you will denude South Africa. The Chinese policy of so-called economy has ruined the small trader, and turned the main stream of South African gold to Park Lane, Paris and Berlin, with a thin stream to China. This country, which has given so much for the Transvaal, has benefited least by the gold mines. The Kaffir does nearly 50 per cent. more work than the Chinese coolie, and Mr. Cresswell has proved that for the actual work of mining it is better to employ a white man than a Kaffir. These are not fanciful deductions, but indisputable facts proved finally and conclusively. For almost two decades now the gold fields of South Africa have been the most potent force in English society, a force more for evil than for good. It is probable that we have lost more money in wars which are the direct result of the gold fever than we have ever made from the gold mines. If we were to estimate the cost of maintaining a large military force in South Africa, the financial effect of the unrest which existed in the pre-war period, the serious effect of the Jameson Raid on the money market, the £250,000,000 that we spent on the war, the millions that we have spent since in the work of repatriation, if we were to compare these figures with the amount of wealth extracted from the Rand, and made a simple profit and loss account, it is highly probable that we should find ourselves very considerably out of pocket. And yet, as if hypnotized by the glamour of gold, we continue to treat the mine owners as if they were some particularly favoured class. We continue to submit to their dictation, which has proved so ruinous in the past, and we deliberately disregard the voices of the whole Empire in their favour. Such a policy is neither good sense nor good business. The introduction of Chinese labour into the Rand on the top of all these grave financial and economical failures cannot be distinguished for a moment from madness. It would seem, indeed, that we were deliberately bent on destroying the Empire for the sake of the Jewish and un-British houses in Johannesburg. "He whom the gods intend to destroy they first make mad," is an ancient proverb, which seems strangely applicable to those gentlemen who are responsible for the management of our vast Empire. They say here in Britain that the stories of gangs of murderers roaming over the Transvaal are so many political fairy-tales, the result of party feeling, the usual bait for the hustings, the stalking-horse to bring into office one set of men and to throw out of office the other. They say that the objection of the British public to Chinese labour is a matter of hypocritical sentiment; that they really have none of those fine ideals which they pretend to; that they have no passion for liberty and freedom and the rights of man. Is not the Chinaman better off than he is in his own country? Such casuistry would justify the beating to death with the knout in this country of a black criminal, because in his own country capital punishment was carried out by the more cruel process of burying him alive in an ant-heap to be eaten by the ants in the heat of the African sun. It has brought terror and fear into the Transvaal. And terror and fear breed passions and vices which are a danger to every social community. It emphasizes the cruelty and cunning in a man's nature. It destroys in him that kindliness and sympathy--those "virtues of the heart," as Dickens used to call them--which in spite of all are still noble and fine sentiments to cherish. Professor James Simpson, of New College, Edinburgh, who lately visited South Africa with the British Association, takes the view, I see, that ere long the more evilly-disposed among the Chinese will have been worked out of their ranks, and the whole body will settle down to "strenuous, if automatic, labour." It is devoutly to be hoped that such will be the case, but up to the present there is nothing to indicate that it will be so. On the contrary, everything points to the fact that the Chinaman, emboldened by his successful efforts at checkmating the representatives of law and order, will perpetrate fresh outrages with increased impunity, and that the last phase of the yellow terror will be worse than the first. I had just written the foregoing when, happening to pick up an evening paper, the following Reuter message from Johannesburg, dated November 3, caught my eye:-- "CHINESE SECRET SOCIETY ON THE RAND. "_Johannesburg_, November 3. "Evidence given at the trial here of some Chinamen charged with being concerned in the disturbance at the New Modderfontein Mine, disclosed the existence of an organized secret society among the Chinese called the 'Red Door,' the object of which is the committal of crime. The members, who are all of bad character, are sworn to render each other assistance. The authorities are breaking up the society and repatriating the ringleaders." What has His Grace of Canterbury to say to this? I have seen in a recent election in England a poster evidently intended as a counterblast to the posters issued by the Opposition. It is a poster, in which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is addressing an English miner, while in the distance two happy Chinamen grin pleasantly in the clean, well-laid-out mine. Says Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in effect, "My dear man, these men are robbing you of your labour." "Not at all," replies the white miner, "for every batch of these yellow men one white man is employed." This is intended as a defence of the statement made by Lord Milner on March 20, 1904, who then stated that he was prepared to stake his reputation on the estimate that for every 10,000 coloured labourers introduced there would be in three years' time 10,000 more whites in the country. In effect, the implication underlying this statement was, of course, that for every yellow man introduced, one white man would come into the country and find employment. Six months later--on September 5, 1904--the Colonial Secretary replied as follows, to a correspondent who wrote asking him whether it would be now advisable for a man to go out to the Transvaal. "Mr. Lyttelton," so ran the answer, "would certainly not advise any one to go out without a definite prospect of employment." So far from 50,000 white men finding employment in the Transvaal since the introduction of 50,000 Chinamen, the proportion is thousands below this number, and not even the poverty-stricken state of Poplar or West Ham can compare with the impecuniosity to be met with at every street corner of the Gold Reef City. There are thousands of men in South Africa who have been lured there by the prospects of the Rand in a daily state of destitution. The streets of Johannesburg are crowded with unemployed. The evil seeds of poverty and destitution have been scattered throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. Business in Durban is in a parlous condition. In Cape Town there are thousands of absolutely destitute men, women, and children who have to be provided for weekly out of funds now almost exhausted. Night after night these unfortunate wretches are compelled to sleep on the mountain slopes, whether it be winter or summer, and quite recently a man was found on one of the seats in the Public Gardens in such a state of starvation--for he had tasted nothing for five whole days--that he died an hour and a half after. This is the boasted prosperity which was to have come to the country through the introduction of Chinese labour. And yet Mr. Balfour writes to Mr. Herbert Samuel on November 22--_vide_ the correspondence in _The Times_--that he can see "nothing in the condition of things to induce the Government to reverse a policy which was recommended by an overwhelming majority in the Transvaal Legislative Council, with the approval of the great bulk of the white population."(!) Many attempts have been made to justify the pledge made by Lord Milner, that for every 10,000 introduced, 10,000 white men would find employment. This is a side of the question which was admirably put by Lord Coleridge in May last:-- The Government's policy seems to be that of the mine owner, or rather to serve that of the mine owner--to get labour as cheaply as possible, and, above all, to keep out the white man for fear he should grow independent. Mr. Lyttelton, speaking at Exeter on May 5, said:-- "The result of the introduction of Chinamen has been that 3000 white men are employed on the mines in addition to those that were employed before the introduction of that labour, and the result is that, in round figures, £500,000 has been received by British artisans." And so on. That is a completely misleading statement. I say, and I think I shall show, that the employment of Chinese has led to a decrease in the amount of white labour employed. Take the year from June 1903 to June 1904. The proportion of white men to Kaffirs during those twelve months remained practically stationary, at one in six, in round figures. On March 31, 1905, which is the date of the last Return we have, there were 105,184 Kaffirs working in the mines, and at the proportion of one-sixth there would have been 17,530 white men. But the number of white men employed at that date was only 16,235. Following that proportion, if the Chinese had not arrived we should have had at least 1300 or 1400 more white men employed than there are now. In addition to that there are over 34,000 Chinese employed not represented by a single white man, and Lord Milner does not hold out any hope that the proportion of white men to coloured labourers will in future be greater than one in fourteen. Crime and outrage are all that this degrading policy of Chinese slavery has brought to the country. There is an old text that says, "Be sure your sins will find you out." But rarely does it happen within the space of a year and a half, that a national crime meets with its reward. Immediately after the war one could not say that the Transvaal was peopled by a happy, industrious community, but it was a veritable heaven compared with the Transvaal of 1905; a veritable paradise of plenty. This has been the social effect of the importation of Chinese labour. The political effect is quite as serious. It has been said that the ultimate object of our rule in South Africa is the federation of all the states of South Africa into one commonwealth. It was the dream of Cecil Rhodes that South Africa should take her place among the commonwealths of the Empire. A constitution, such as exists in Australia at the present moment, was to be given to South Africa. The states of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal--all free, self-governing units--were to be welded together into one great self-governing Imperial unit. The introduction of Chinese labour in the Transvaal has rendered this impossible. Until these Chinamen are repatriated there will be no commonwealth for South Africa. In the first place, one of the essentials for such a federation would be that each state should be a self-governing colony. The mine owner knows, and the Government of Great Britain must know by now, that once self-government is given to the Transvaal, Chinese slavery would be at an end. Therefore the mine owners, who really "boss" the Transvaal, would take care to suppress any agitation in favour of self-government. As they refused the referendum so will they refuse the Boer and the Briton the right of free constitution. Hence the granting of responsible government to the Transvaal is deferred, and hence the federation of South Africa is postponed indefinitely. Again, Cape Colony would never consent to the federation of the Transvaal unless the Chinese labourers were repatriated. They have stated their opinion in no uncertain language. They would have no desire to enter into a partnership arrangement with a community which was hampered with such a grave social problem as Chinese labour. The Transvaal has done harm enough to Cape Colony, without adding this last straw to the load of evil which the gold mines of the Rand have bred for her. This is one of the Imperial political disasters resulting immediately from the importation of Chinese labour. There is another Imperial consideration even more serious. No one can read the protests sent to the Colonial Office by the great self-governing colonies that fought in the war, without realizing the gravity with which such a breaking away from the traditions of the Empire has been received by these colonies. Had we known it was to be war for the Chinese miners, the appeal made to Australia for men and arms would have had a very different effect. This is the substance of Australia's protest. Sentiment is a thing easily destroyed. Not even the Government, I think, can realize the indignation felt in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand by the Indentured Labour Ordinance. It should have been the policy of the Imperial Government to foster the tie that binds all the units of the Empire together. Mr. Chamberlain has voiced this opinion times out of number; our Imperial bards have sung it. The Government, which has always boasted that it was more Imperial than the Opposition, more wrapped up in the honour and the greatness of the Empire, has made this sentiment a commonplace in every election speech. And yet they have done more to destroy this bond than any other party in the state. Again, some attention should have been paid to the Dutch problem in the Transvaal. No attention was paid to it. We hear little now of the war. The Transvaal might have been ruled from the beginning by the British Government. Now and again the English papers mention casually the once familiar name of General Botha as having addressed the Het Volk. But the Dutch problem is never considered at all in England by the great men of the people. And yet it is a very vital and important question. Next to the native question it is, perhaps, the most vital question with which South Africa has to deal. Throughout South Africa the Boers are to-day the most thrifty, the most industrious, and almost the most agricultural section of the community. Of their ability in war we have had a long experience. Of their courage and patriotism we gained a knowledge at a great cost. They outnumber the English population in the Transvaal and Cape Colony. And South Africa will never be absolutely secured to the British Empire until the proportion of Boers to the total white population is reduced. It should have been the object of the Government, immediately after the war, to pack the Transvaal with Englishmen, to act as a counterbalance to the Boer population. This would have been a dangerous experience if there was no excuse for introducing such a large number of Englishmen. But the excuse was to hand. A splendid opportunity of reducing the population of the Boers to the total white population occurred at the re-opening of the mines. Increased use of white labour in the mines would have given to the Transvaal that preponderating majority of Britons which the safety of the Empire demands. The home Government did not take that opportunity, and South Africa has been left in exactly the same dangerous condition as she was after the war. Instead of performing this obvious duty to the country, the Government listened to the objections of the mine owners to swarming the country with white labour, upon the grounds that they would prove a disturbing element socially and politically, and agreed to the importation of the Chinamen. There is yet another grave political aspect of this deplorable problem. As the British people are apt to forget that the Boers outnumber the Britons in the Transvaal, so they forget, when considering the problem of South Africa, that there is a vast population of natives within our territory. These black tribes are utterly demoralized, and, it is recognized, by the war of the white man against the white man, and certain causes which could not have been foreseen, have increased the unrest and lawlessness. From Lagos to the Cape the same story has been told for the last two years: that the black man is growing restive under the white man's rule, that the white man is losing rapidly that superstitious authority which up till then he had always carried with him. The cause of this is the utter failure of the Germans to bring the war in Damaraland to a successful conclusion. The continued successes scored by the Hereroes have undoubtedly set aflame the ambitions of the black tribes throughout the south-west coast and inland. In some cases it has been fomented and worked up by Mahommedan and Ethiopian missionaries. In addition to these disturbing elements the death of Lerothodi, the paramount chief of Basutoland, has increased the natives' restlessness. The spectacle of Chinese bands roaming the country, looting farms, killing white men and raping white women has added to these symptoms of native disaffection. A rising among the Basutos--which more likely than not would be followed by a general rising of natives throughout Swaziland, Zululand and the Transvaal--would engage all our strength to suppress. We should have to make use of the constabulary which is now with great difficulty keeping under control the Chinese labourers. It is not hard to imagine the terrible state of affairs that would result from such a rising. While we suppress the black man the Chinaman would be left unguarded and unpoliced free to desert and to commit outrages. Indeed, should the Chinaman rise with the black man the safety of both Briton and Boer would be in the gravest jeopardy. These are the deplorable risks which are being run by maintaining in the Transvaal some 50,000 Chinamen. Financially the Chinamen have been a failure, a very grave failure. Socially their importation has proved disastrous. Instead of bringing wealth they have brought stagnation. Instead of bringing employment for the white man they have brought destitution and abject poverty. In introducing them it was recognized that some system must be devised by which they could be prevented from mixing with the population. That system has failed utterly and completely. They were to have brought wealth; they were to have brought employment for the white man. All they have brought is chaos. All they have done is to increase the output of gold at a cost which has decreased instead of increasing the mining companies' dividends. They have spread a terror throughout the length and breadth of the Transvaal. Economically and socially the policy proposed by the mine owners and forced upon the Government has proved deplorable. Their introduction has been a grave Imperial error which has aroused in the great self-governing Colonies anger and indignation. It has already loosened the bonds which the common danger of war had tightened. Their continued stay in South Africa, and the continued introduction of more coolies has given rise to the possibility of danger that is awful to contemplate. The rising of the black man would leave the policing of nearly 50,000 Chinamen in the hands of a few white men. It is not too much to say that no greater sin against the ideals of the British people, no more vicious and ruinous policy, has ever been adopted. THE END _Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ MUSIC FOR THE CHILDREN! _NOW READY, BOOKS 1 to 12, of_ "Our Little Folks' Nursery Rhymes" _FOR VOICE AND PIANO_, Each containing Words and Music (old notation and tonic sol-fa), of +Seven Nursery Rhymes+, and Thirty New Pictures (20 pp. with coloured wrapper). Price 1d. each. By Post 1½d. each. 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8666	----	[Note: According to the Social Security Administration website, this pamphlet was published in 1936.] Security in Your Old Age Social Security Board Washington, D.C. To Employees of Industrial and Business Establishments FACTORIES--SHOPS--MINES--MILLS--STORES OFFICES AND OTHER PLACES OF BUSINESS Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States Government will set up a Social Security account for you, if you are eligible. To understand your obligations, rights, arid benefits you should read the following general explanation. There is now a law in this country which will give about 26 million working people something to live on when they are old and have stopped working. This law, which gives other benefits, too, was passed last year by Congress and is called the Social Security Act. Under this law the United States Government will send checks every month to retired workers, both men and women, after they have passed their 65th birthday and have met a few simple requirements of the law. WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU This means that if you work in some factory, shop, mine, mill, J. store, office, or almost any other kind of business or industry, you will be earning benefits that will come to you later on. From the time you are 65 years old, or more, and stop working, you will get a Government check every month of your life, if you have worked some time,(one day or more) in each of any 5 years after 1936, and have earned during that time a total of $2,000 or more. The checks will come to you as a right. You will get them regardless of the amount of property or income you may have. They are what the law calls "Old-Age Benefits" under the Social Security Act. If you prefer to keep on working after you are 65, the monthly checks from the Government will begin coming to you whenever you decide to retire. The Amount of Your Checks How much you will get when you are 65 years old will depend entirely on how much you earn in wages from your industrial or business employment between January 1, 1937, and your 65th birthday. A man or woman who gets good wages and has a steady job most of his or her life can get as much as $85 a month for life after age 65. The least you can get in monthly benefits, if you come under the law at all, is $10 a month. IF YOU ARE NOW YOUNG Suppose you are making $25 a week and are young enough now to go on working for 40 years. If you make an average of $25 a week for 52 weeks in each year, your check when you are 65 years old will be $53 a month for the rest of your life. If you make $50 a week, you will get $74.50 a month for the rest of you life after age 65. IF YOU ARE NOW MIDDLE-AGED But suppose you are about 55 years old now and have 10 years to work before you are 65. Suppose you make only $15 a week on the average. When you stop work at age 65 you will get a check for $19 each month for the rest of your life. If you make $25 a week for 10 years, you will get a little over $23 a month from the Government as long as you live after your 65th birthday. IF YOU SHOULD DIE BEFORE AGE 65 If you should die before you begin to get your monthly checks, your family will get a payment in cash, amounting to 3-½ cents on every dollar of wages you have earned after 1936. If, for example, you should die at age 64, and if you had earned $25 a week for 10 years before that time, your family would receive $455. On the other hand, if you have not worked enough to get the regular monthly checks by the time you are 65, you will get a lump sum, or if you should die your family or estate would get a lump sum. The amount of this, too, will be 3-½ cents on every dollar of wages you earn after 1936. Taxes The same law that provides these old-age benefits for you and other workers, sets up certain new taxes to be paid to the United States Government. These taxes are collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the U. S. Treasury Department, and inquiries concerning them should be addressed to that bureau. The law also creates an "Old-Age Reserve Account" in the United States Treasury, and Congress is authorized to put into this reserve account each year enough money to provide for the monthly payments you and other workers are to receive when you are 65. YOUR PART OF THE TAX The taxes called for in this law will be paid both by your employer and by you. For the next 3 years you will pay maybe 15 cents a week, maybe 25 cents a week, maybe 30 cents or more, according to what you earn. That is to say, during the next 3 years, beginning January 1, 1937, you will pay 1 cent for every dollar you earn, and at the same time your employer will pay 1 cent for every dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. Twenty-six million other workers and their employers will be paying at the same time. After the first 3 years--that is to say, beginning in 1940--you will, pay, and your employer will pay, 1-½ cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. This will be the tax for 3 years, and then, beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. After that, you and your employer will each pay half a cent more for 3 years, and finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay. YOUR EMPLOYER'S PART OF THE TAX The Government will collect both of these taxes from your employer. Your part of the tax will be taken out of your pay. The Government will collect from your employer an equal amount out of his own funds. This will go on just the same if you go to work for another employer, so long as you work in a factory, shop, mine, mill, office, store, or other such place of business. (Wages earned in employment as farm workers, domestic workers in private homes, Government workers, and on a few other kinds of jobs are not subject to this tax.) OLD-AGE RESERVE ACCOUNT Meanwhile, the Old-Age Reserve fund in the United States Treasury is drawing interest, and the Government guarantees it will never earn less than 3 percent. This means that 3 cents will be added to every dollar in the fund each year. Maybe your employer has an old-age pension plan for his employees. If so, the Government's old-age benefit plan will not have to interfere with that. The employer can fit his plan into the Government plan. What you get from the Government plan will always be more than you have paid in taxes and usually more than you can get for yourself by putting away the same amount of money each week in some other way. Note.--"Wages" and "employment" wherever used in the foregoing mean wages and employment as defined in the Social Security Act. WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION If you want more information, write to the Social Security Board, Washington, D.C., or get in touch with one of the following offices: Region I--Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut: Social Security Board 120 Boylston Street Boston, Mass. Region II--New York: Social Security Board 45 Broadway New York, N.Y. Region III--New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware: Social Security Board Widener Building Juniper and Chestnut Streets Philadelphia, Pa. Region IV--Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and District of Columbia: Social Security Board National Theatre Building Washington, D. C. Region V--Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan: Social Security Board Bulkley Building 1501 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio Region VI--Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin: Social Security Board 211 West Wacker Drive Chicago, 111. Region VII--Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina: Social Security Board 1829 First Avenue North Birmingham, Ala. Region VIII--Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska: Social Security Board New Post Office Building Minneapolis, Minn. Region IX--Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma: Social Security Board Dierks Building 1006 Grand Avenue Kansas City, Mo. Region X--Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico: Social Security Board Smith-Young Tower Building San Antonio, Tex. Region XI--Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming: Social Security Board Patterson Building 1706 Welton Street Denver, Colo. Region XII--California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada: Social Security Board Humboldt Bank Building 785 Market Street San Francisco, Calif. INFORMATIONAL. SERVICE CIRCULAR No. 9 U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
39095	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note: Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been silently corrected. MONOPOLIES AND THE PEOPLE. BY D. C. CLOUD, MUSCATINE. "THE ENUMERATION IN THE CONSTITUTION OF CERTAIN RIGHTS SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE." "THE POWERS NOT DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE CONSTITUTION, NOR PROHIBITED BY IT TO THE STATES, ARE RESERVED TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY, OR TO THE PEOPLE." --Articles IX. and X. of the Constitution of the United States. DAVENPORT, IOWA: DAY, EGBERT, & FIDLAR. 1873. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873. By D. C. CLOUD, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO THE Patrons of Husbandry, WHO HAVE BECOME THE PIONEER CORPS IN THE EFFORTS BEING MADE TO REFORM THE ABUSES NOW OPPRESSING THE COUNTRY, AND WHO ARE EARNESTLY AND EFFICIENTLY LABORING FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE, WITH THE HOPE THAT IT MAY AID THEM IN THEIR PATRIOTIC WORK, THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. TO THE READER. For two years past the author has awaited the auspicious moment for presenting to the public his views upon the oppressions and abuses practiced by corporations and combinations of men who were apparently getting a controlling influence over the commerce, finances, and government of the country. Recent action on the part of the people has convinced him that his opportunity has come, and he embraces it. He has aimed to present a true history of the operations of the different monopolies. Since he began the preparation of his work, some events have taken place not noticed by him. Oakes Ames and James Brooks, two prominent characters among railroad men, and whom he has had occasion to name, have died. Some changes in the laws of congress have been made affecting the interests of corporations. The law requiring the secretary of the treasury to retain but one-half of the earnings from the government of the Pacific roads to apply on the interest due to government on subsidy bonds, has been repealed, and he may now retain and apply the whole amount. Suit has also been brought against the Union Pacific company because of its dishonest practices. On the whole, however, combinations of corporations, and other rings and organizations, at war with the best interests of the people, have acquired new strength and more power within the last few months. The reader will notice the fact, that while the author has quoted liberally from the statutes and resolves of congress to show the great privileges and powers conferred upon railroad companies, and familiarized the reader with their financial and other transactions for a clear understanding of their manner of doing business, he has not pretended to give a full history; satisfying himself with such chapters as would place before the public the true character of these monopolies. The author has sought to present truthful statements of matters in connection with the various _interests_ now so hostile to the _rights_ of the people, and he believes he has embodied the facts as they exist. D. C. C. MUSCATINE, Iowa, July 28, 1873. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGES. A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, 15-18 CHAPTER II. THE PACIFIC RAILROAD INIQUITY, 19-28 CHAPTER III. THE MONOPOLISTS "HELP THEMSELVES," 29-39 CHAPTER IV. HOW CONGRESS BETRAYED THE PEOPLE, 40-48 CHAPTER V. CONGRESS BECOME A STOCK EXCHANGE, 49-55 CHAPTER VI. HOW THE LAND GRANT RAILROADS "DEVELOPE" A COUNTRY, 56-62 CHAPTER VII. THE CREDIT MOBILIER AND A VILLAINOUS CONTRACT, 63-80 CHAPTER VIII. HAS CONGRESS THE POWER, UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, TO CREATE OR ENDOW PRIVATE CORPORATIONS? 81-91 CHAPTER IX. STATE RIGHTS AT THE BAR OF A CORRUPT CONGRESS, 92-98 CHAPTER X. AN UNSETTLED ACCOUNT--A GUILTY DIRECTORY, 99-105 CHAPTER XI. SOLE PURPOSES OF TAXATION, 106-111 CHAPTER XII. THE RIGHT OF EMINENT DOMAIN--UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF MUNICIPAL AID TO RAILROADS, 112-122 CHAPTER XIII. THE FATAL POLICY OF MORTGAGING CITIES AND COUNTIES FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF RAILROADS, 123-129 CHAPTER XIV. THE IMPOVERISHING TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM--THE WAREHOUSE CONSPIRACY, 130-137 CHAPTER XV. A NEW AND FALSE PRINCIPLE IN HYDRAULICS--WATERED STOCK--ITS UNLAWFUL PROFITS THE SOURCE OF EXTORTIONATE TARIFFS--THE FAST DISPATCH SWINDLE, 138-146 CHAPTER XVI. A PRIVILEGED CLASS--THE MONOPOLISTS RELIEVED OF THE BURDENS OF TAXATION--AN OUTRAGE UPON REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT, 147-151 CHAPTER XVII. THE STRONG GRASP OF CONSOLIDATED CAPITAL UPON AMERICAN LEGISLATION--BEECHER ON "REFORMATION OR REVOLUTION"--HISTORY OF RAILWAY LEGISLATION IN IOWA, 152-168 CHAPTER XVIII. THE "TRAIL OF THE SERPENT" IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT, 169-179 CHAPTER XIX. THE MONOPOLISTS AT THE DOOR OF THE WHITEHOUSE, 180-185 CHAPTER XX. THE UNITED STATES TREASURY THE VASSAL OF WALL STREET--STOCK "OPERATIONS" EXPLAINED, 186-197 CHAPTER XXI. HOW WALL STREET BUILDS RAILROADS--A HOT-BED OF CORRUPTION, 198-201 CHAPTER XXII. THE SUPREME BENCH INVADED--ITS DECISIONS REVIEWED, 202-222 CHAPTER XXIII. BANK MONOPOLISTS--THEIR CONTROL OF THE CURRENCY--A BANKRUPT FINANCIAL POLICY, 223-230 CHAPTER XXIV. OUR TARIFF POLICY--DOES "PROTECTION" PROTECT? 231-239 CHAPTER XXV. PATENT RIGHTS, AND THEIR ABUSES, 240-246 CONCLUSION. REFORMATION OR REVOLUTION--A RADICAL CHANGE DEMANDED IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS--CONCLUSIONS OF THE AUTHOR, 247-326 APPENDIX. CHAPTER I. LEGAL TENDER DECISIONS, 329 CHAPTER II. DISSENTING OPINION OF CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE, 330-345 CHAPTER III. DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE CLIFFORD, 346-386 CHAPTER IV. DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE FIELD, 387-430 CHAPTER V. GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF RAILROADS, 431-453 CHAPTER VI. THE INFLUENCE OF MONOPOLIES UPON LABOR, 454-462 ERRATA. Page 125, third line from top, for "Then" read _These_. 153, second line from bottom, for "Gould Jay" read _Jay Gould_. 202, fourth line from top, for "jealous" read _zealous_. 238, eleventh line from top, for "1862" read 1872. 257, second line from bottom, for "to" read _by_. 272, fifteenth line from bottom, for "ultro" read _retro_. MONOPOLIES AND THE PEOPLE. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. In treating of the topics discussed in this work, the author addresses himself to the task with no partisan bias. His purpose is to draw aside the veil, and let the facts speak for themselves. He writes, as he believes, in the performance of duty. Serious dangers are threatening the people. There is a power in the land, possessing elements destructive not only of the industrial and producing public, but of the very form and spirit of republican government. It will be the aim of the author to show forth the progress and present attitude of this power in its relations with the people, and to suggest, if not to advocate, such measures of relief and protection as the exigency demands. It is a fact to be admitted by every candid thinker, that of late years, corporations, rings, and single speculators have, by united and persistent efforts, obtained control of the government; that their interests are guarded and protected by the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the government, both state and national. The men who are thus combined in opposition to the people, do not belong to any one political division; they are found in all parties; they are firmly united for the purpose of grasping power; of controlling the government in their own interest; of fastening upon the people oppressive monopolies, and of enriching themselves at the expense of the public. To accomplish these ends they procure donations of land, money subsidies, protective tariffs, continue a depreciated currency, and by arbitrary rules and by-laws of their own, hold the whole people at their mercy. To such an extent have these monopolies been fostered and protected, that at the present time the farmer pays in freights, taxes, and duties, at least one-half of his farm products for their support. A silent or passive acquiescence in, and submission to, these abuses and oppressions, have given a controlling strength and power to monopolies that cannot now be overcome without a united, long, and hard struggle. These evils cannot be corrected, nor the rights of the people restored, save by concerted action on their part, not only in securing proper legislation, but in asserting and maintaining in their business, at elections, and in the courts, their rights as free and independent citizens of the United States. The taxing of the people for the purpose of aiding private enterprises, the donation of the public land, or of the public money, to individuals, or companies, or the enactment of laws by which the people are compelled to pay a part of their hard-earned substance to aid private parties in accumulating wealth, are oppressions not to be tolerated in a republic. Yet it is true that we are now taxed for the purpose of paying the interest on many millions of money given or loaned to railroad corporations; that we pay large duties on goods for the benefit of wealthy manufacturers; that extortionate rates are exacted for transportation of products to market; that we are taxed to build railroads for private owners, and these things are all pronounced legal and constitutional, not because they are so, but because these private interests have become so powerful that they control the country. The _antiquated_ idea that the government was instituted by the people, and for the people, has become entirely obsolete, and the new doctrine has obtained that the whole duty of the government is to foster, protect, and support monopolies, and that these monopolies own the people. In no country of the civilized world are the people more directly connected with all the questions affecting their well being, than they are in the United States. It follows that all should be familiar with such measures as tend to fix and establish the general policy of the government, not only in respect to its general administration, but especially in those matters that directly or indirectly give to corporations, associations, companies, or individuals, exclusive grants, donations, or privileges, detrimental to the interests of those who are not of the "favored few." A republican government can only exist when it is controlled by the people, and administered in their interest. When special, or class legislation, for the benefit of certain limited interests, or in favor of certain parties, becomes the rule of action in the administration of either the state or national government, accompanied by grants of land, money, or taxes, to be returned to the government by levies made upon the people without their consent, that government ceases to be republican. In our country, with its vast extent of territory, its diverse interests, and variety of products, and manufactures, it is but natural for different localities and interests to ask governmental aid; nor is it always an abuse of power for the government to give this aid. In some instances it is the duty of the government to use its power and the public money in matters that in some degree, at least, are in their nature local; such, for instance, as the improvement of rivers, harbors, &c. In these cases it is not an abuse of power, but a legitimate exercise of the delegated authority for the benefit of the people. But there is another species of legislation, approved by the executive and judicial departments of the general government, and endorsed and supported by the legislatures and courts of many of our states, that is in its operation anti-republican and oppressive to the people. We refer to the current special legislation in favor of railroad corporations, our protective tariff, and the banking system, and financial policy of the government. No one will accuse the author of indulging in a partisan view of these matters. The history of our country shows that men of all parties have sought for and obtained special grants and privileges. Our aim is to direct the attention of the reader to some of the facts connected with, and resulting from, special legislation on the above named subjects, and show their effect upon the people generally. The assertion that the government is now committed to the policy of donating the public lands to railroad corporations may be thought untrue, yet if we look through the acts of congress for the last few years we will find that more than two hundred million acres have been donated to such corporations, and from the number of bills asking for further grants introduced during the last congress these donations have but just begun. It will not be claimed that the people asked for these grants, or that the necessities of the government demanded them. Nor will it be contended that the people derive any direct benefit from them. On the contrary, the lands and the roads are owned and controlled by private corporations, and not even the government can use these roads for purposes of transportation without compensation. Now, these lands do not belong to the government, but to the people. Those persons filling the different departments of government are but the agents or servants of the people, and have no more right to give the public lands to railroad corporations than to tax the people and donate the money received as taxes to these companies. The policy is bad and oppressive in its effects. If one owns lands and employs an agent to sell it at a given price per acre, this agent has no right to convey one-half of it to himself and friends, and mark up the remaining half to a double price, and leave it on the owner's hands. This is what congress has done with the public lands, and in every instance the grants or donations have been made to aid monopolies, corporations, and powerful companies, who disregard the interests of the public, and use their power and these immense gifts for the purpose of securing further grants by corrupting legislators, judges, and executive officers. If we scale their efforts at corruption by their apparent success, they have not always failed. The interests of these monopolies are adverse to those of the people. The privileges granted them are taken from the people. The wealth of the nation, held by the government in trust for the people, has been and is now being misapplied by the people's trustees, and given to these anti-republican monopolies, and unless something is done to arrest this species of dishonest and unconstitutional legislation, it is only a question of time, and that time not distant, when this government, called republican, will deny to the common people those _unalienable rights_ guaranteed to them by the constitution. How is it now? Discriminations are made against the public in favor of these monopolies in payment of taxes, in special legislation for their benefit, and the aid and protection afforded them by the courts. Corporations and joint stock companies should have such legislation and judicial aid afforded them as is necessary to give them a legal being, and place them on an equal plane with individuals, and no more. All privileges, immunities, and favors granted to them, beyond such as are necessary for the above enumerated purposes, are in conflict with the spirit and genius of our government. The granting of exclusive privileges to individuals or companies tends to build up an aristocracy of wealth, to array capital against labor, and to divide the people into classes. While we have no titled aristocracy in this country, under the fostering care of the government an aristocracy of wealth has sprung up among us, more despotic in its nature than exists in the old world. It holds in its grasp the labor of the country; it compels the whole people to pay tribute to it; it is constantly asking, claiming, and receiving additional strength at the expense of the people. So great has its power become throughout the country as to alarm all who have considered the subject. For the purpose of self-protection, the laboring community throughout the country are banding together to resist this monopoly. The Patrons of Husbandry are moving in the same direction, all feeling assured that no time must be lost, and that the welfare of the country, the perpetuity of our free institutions, and the privilege of owning and enjoying the fruits of thrift and labor, without giving at least one-half of them to support these monopolies, demand prompt, united, and efficient action. We propose discussing the different matter referred to in the following order:-- I. Donations of land and government subsidies, and their effect upon the people and the country. II. The oppressions practiced, and unjust discriminations made by railroad companies in the transportation, shipping, and storage of freights. III. The unjust system of taxation and discrimination made by legislatures and congress in favor of railroad companies. IV. The financial policy of the government, and the aid afforded by it to corporations and monopolies. V. The tendency of the courts of the country to uphold special or class legislation in favor of monopolies and corporations, at the sacrifice of the interests and rights of the people. VI. The banking system of the country with its useless burdens imposed upon the public. VII. The policy of protective tariff, and its effect upon the people and the interests of the country. VIII. The evils incident to the patent laws of the country. IX. The author will present his views respecting the means to be used for redressing the grievances considered by him. In treating of these different subjects, it will be our design to cite and quote such acts of congress, of the state legislatures, and decisions of the courts as will sustain the views presented, in order that the reader may fully understand how these giant monopolies are in fact aided and supported by the government; and we shall try to demonstrate that the only way to arrest and correct these evils is by united and persistent action on the part of the industrial and farming communities, and that the remedy for all improper legislation for, and governmental aid to, these monopolies is in the hands and under the control of the people. CHAPTER I. A PRELIMINARY SURVEY. Nothing in this country has contributed so much to the subversion of our republican institutions as Land Grants made by congress to railroad corporations, and congressional legislation in their favor. The policy has opened a wide field for reckless speculation and corrupt legislation. It has reversed the old rule, that "the people are sovereign," and has given to "the favored few" the absolute control of the nation. The reckless giving of lands to railroad corporations, by congress, is without excuse, or even apology. When grants were first made to states, it was pretended that railroads could not be built without this aid. Subsequent developments exploded this idea. Take Iowa as an example: In 1856 four leading railroads crossing the state from east to west, received grants of lands sufficient to pay at least one-half of the entire cost of their construction across the state, yet they were not built until long years after the grants were made, nor were they constructed as rapidly as roads built exclusively by private enterprise and private capital. The effect of the grants was to retard the settlement and development of the wealth and resources of the state, by demanding from those who wished to settle upon the lands so granted, an extortionate, or at least a greatly appreciated price therefor. It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to arrive at the conclusion that but for these grants the population and wealth of Iowa (the taxable wealth) would be quite one-fourth greater now. The grant of lands to certain railroad companies in Iowa reach eight thousand acres per mile; this, at $1.25 per acre, amounts to $10,000. per mile; much more than one-half of the actual entire cost of their construction. Yet, as a matter-of-fact, some, if not all, of them became insolvent, and either before, or soon after their completion, their roads were sold to other parties--the original companies becoming bankrupt. But while the companies became bankrupt, the officers and few stockholders who controlled the corporation retired with immense wealth. These are the men who, at the inception of the land grant system of building railroads, inaugurated the theory which has since been practiced, that all lands thus granted were to be treated as donations to the men who controlled the roads receiving the grants. The result has been demoralizing. It has opened a field to adventurers, stock jobbers, and unscrupulous men, who have gone to the national capital and organized themselves into squads, rings, and companies, for the purpose of robbing the people. Not unfrequently the men elected by the people to look after their interests in congress, have themselves become leaders and partners in these raids upon the public treasurer; and so powerful are these organizations that all the departments of government have yielded to them, and the rule, with but few exceptions, is, to plunder the treasury upon all occasions, and for every conceivable object. But as these matters will be treated in detail in the following pages, we dismiss them for the present. The rule has been, with few exceptions, in granting lands, to provide that the railroad company shall select alternate sections; that the residue shall be for sale at $2.50 per acre; that it shall not be subject to settlement under the pre-emption or homestead law. By these provisions, those persons who enter the remaining alternate sections, pay back to government the value of the lands donated to the railroad company. This plan of aiding monopolies is at variance with every principal of right and justice. The people themselves are the governing power. They are the government. Those who fill the various offices are not rulers, but agents and servants of the people. The public lands are the property of the people, and these agents or servants representing them in congress have no more right to give these lands to corporations than to vote a part of each citizen's private fortune to the same corporations. When, in addition to these grants, embracing territory eight or ten times larger than the state of Iowa, large subsidies of money are also voted to accompany the lands, the people should become alarmed, and, if possible, arrest such abuses. Every acre of land given to railroad companies is a direct robbery of the people, and the fact that whenever a grant is made the people are required to make good the amount taken from them by paying a double price for the moiety that is left to them, but adds insult to injury. The citizen who wishes to live upon and improve his quarter section, instead of claiming it as a homestead, or even purchasing it at the government price of $1.25 per acre, must pay $2.50 per acre before he will be permitted to occupy it. Nor is this all; he must be taxed to pay the interest on the subsidy bonds issued to the same companies that have received the grants of land, and all the benefit he derives from these unjust burdens imposed upon him, is the privilege of traveling upon railroads, or of shipping his produce over them, after he has paid to their officers whatever sum they choose to demand for the privilege. To show more fully the extent to which the people are being plundered under the plea of assisting railroads in their efforts to develope the country, we desire to direct the reader's attention to some of the acts of congress covering "railroad legislation." Let us, for an example, take the Union and Central Pacific railroad, beginning at Council Bluffs and terminating at San Francisco. The charter for this road was granted in 1862, at a time when the country was at war; when it would be natural to presume that the government had no surplus capital, and when reason and common prudence demanded strict integrity and rigid economy in every department. In chartering the company, all idea of economy, integrity, or even _common honesty_ seems to have been abandoned. The demand for the road as a national necessity in time of war, for direct communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states, and the immense cost of the road, with its great length, were the arguments used in favor of liberal aid. All these reasons were plausible--perhaps valid. They were seized upon, and the action of congress besought in the premises by a ring that was formed for the purpose of making immense fortunes out of the enterprise. A noticeable feature in the matter is, that members of congress, in the senate and house, as soon as the act was passed granting the charter, became large stockholders and managers in the corporations. The aid granted by congress to this company was sufficient, if honestly applied, to construct a double track road the entire distance, and leave a large margin for distribution among the stockholders. The act of congress granting the charter, with subsequent amendments, opened a wide field for plunder, and the way the corporators availed themselves of their opportunity shows that they had determined to plunder the people of the last available dollar. A reference to this act and amendments, as published by congress, will fully sustain all we have asserted. Selecting the charter of this road as an apt illustration of all others receiving aid from government, we ask the reader's attention to some of its more remarkable features. CHAPTER II. THE PACIFIC RAILROAD INIQUITY. On the first day of July, A. D. 1862, the charter of the Union Pacific railroad was passed. It contains, among others, the following provisions, to-wit:-- "SECTION 2. That the right of way through the public lands be, and the same is hereby, granted to said company for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and the right, power, and authority, are hereby given to said company to take from the public lands adjacent to the line of said road, earth, stone, timber, and other materials, for the construction thereof. Said right of way is granted to said railroad to the extent of two hundred feet in width on each side of said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including, all necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops, and depots, machine shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables, and water stations." The right of way was reduced to one hundred feet for each side of the railroad, by act of congress of July 2, 1864, and the right to take material for the construction of the road was limited to ten miles on each side thereof, by the same act. By this section the company is allowed to take from the public lands all the material needed in the construction of the road; to strip the lands, and leave them naked for the people. The real value of the lands is given to the company; the refuse left for the American people. A part of the third section reads as follows:-- "That there be, and is hereby, granted to the said company, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and to secure the safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores thereon, every alternate section of land, designated by odd numbers, to the amount of five alternate sections per mile, on each side of said road, on the line thereof, and within the limits of ten miles on each side of said road, not sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of, by the United States, and to which a pre-emption or homestead claim may not have attached at the time the line of said road is definitely fixed. Provided, that all mineral lands shall be exempted from the operation of this act; but when it shall contain timber, the timber is hereby granted to said company." By the act of congress of July 2, 1864, this act was so amended as to grant ten alternate sections on each side of the road, and to grant to the company the iron and coal found within ten miles of the road. The reader will notice the reasons given for this grant. 1st. To aid in the construction of the road; a legitimate reason. 2d. _To secure the safe and speedy transportation of the mail, troops, munitions of war_, &c. Twenty sections of land per mile are given to the company for the purpose of securing the safe and speedy transportation of troops, and above enumerated articles. It has been said that a poor reason is better than no reason. Of all poor reasons given for an act, this appears to be one of the weakest. The reader will not be able to discover its force. As we progress, we will find that from its inception this Pacific railroad charter, and amendments, were "conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity;" that, in its provisions and grants, it presents a state of facts which stamps the whole scheme as a base fraud upon the public, planned by men who were seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their country; and that congress, either from inattention to the interests of the people, or because the spoils were to be divided, granted the company the precise charter that was to enable it to plunder the public without hindrance. That we may not be regarded as treating the subject captiously, let us concede that the reason given was a good one, and that the grant of lands would give security to the transportation of the mails; still the thought presents itself that a grant of lands to the value of $15,500 per mile would be ample aid for the people to give to this company, in the construction of its road. It is not a government work, owned by the public, operated and controlled by the government. It is a private enterprise, and while all persons see the necessity of a railroad connection between the Atlantic and Pacific states, but few will indorse the policy of the government giving to this private company more aid in lands and money than the entire cost of the road, or more than it would have cost if built by private capital. And when it is found that this large grant is made without any equivalent, that not even the mails, troops, or munitions of war, can be transported over the road without the payment of just such rates as this private corporation chooses to charge, the conclusion is inevitable that the good, not of the public, but of the corporation, was the controlling motive in affording it aid; that the untold millions of subsidy bonds, and vast tracts of land wrongfully taken from the public, and given to this company, was but placing the interests of the whole people, in their social and business intercourse across the continent, at the mercy of a soulless corporation. The donations we have already noticed are the "right of way;" the right to take all building material within ten miles of the road, and the grant of twenty sections of land per mile. But this is not all. Section five of the act provides: "That for the purposes herein mentioned, the secretary of the treasury shall, upon the certificate, in writing, of said commissioners, of the completion and equipment of forty consecutive miles of said railroad and telegraph line, in accordance with the provisions of this act, issue to said company bonds of the United States of one thousand dollars each, payable in thirty years after date, bearing six per centum per annum interest (said interest payable semi-annually) which interest may be paid in United States treasury notes, or in any other money or currency which the United States have, or shall, declare lawful money, and legal tender, to the amount of sixteen of said bonds per mile; and to secure the repayment to the United States, as hereinafter provided, of the amount of said bonds so issued and delivered to said company, together with all interest thereon which shall have been paid by the United States, the issue of said bonds and delivery to the company shall _ipse facto_ constitute a first mortgage on the whole line of the railroad and telegraph, together with the rolling stock, fixtures, and property of every kind and description, and in consideration of which said bonds may have been issued." As we shall hereafter see, this section was amended by act of July 2d, 1864, so as to allow the company to issue its own bonds to the same amount per mile issued by the government, and to subrogate the government bonds to those issued by the company, thus making the bonds issued by the company the first mortgage bonds. Section six provides for the transmission of messages by telegraph, and the transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, supplies, and public stores for the government, giving it the preference at all times, "at fair and reasonable rates of compensation, and not to exceed the amount paid by private parties for the same kind of service." Section eleven reads as follows:-- "That for three hundred miles of said road, most mountainous and difficult of construction, to-wit: One hundred and fifty miles westwardly from the eastern base of the Rocky mountains, and one hundred and fifty miles eastwardly from the western base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, said points to be fixed by the president of the United States, the bonds to be issued in aid of the construction thereof shall treble the number per mile hereinbefore provided, and the same shall be issued, and the lands herein granted be set apart, upon the construction of every twenty miles thereof, upon certificate of the commissioners as aforesaid, that twenty consecutive miles of the same are completed; and between the sections last named, of one hundred and fifty miles each, the bonds to be issued to aid in the construction thereof shall be double the number per mile first mentioned, and the same shall be issued, and the lands herein granted be set apart, upon the construction of every twenty miles thereof, upon the certificate of the commissioners as aforesaid, that twenty consecutive miles of the same are completed; provided that no more than fifty thousand of said bonds shall be issued under this act to aid in constructing the main line of said railroad and telegraph." This vast amount of bonds was issued to the main line of the road, which, as will be seen by an examination of the first section of the act, terminates at the western boundary of Nevada territory. This company, under its charter, gets $50,000,000 in bonds; its charter does not authorize it to construct the whole road to the Pacific, but to the western boundary of Nevada, where it meets the Central Pacific railroad, built by a company chartered by the legislature of California. Fifty millions in bonds, with the privilege of subrogating the security for their payment to a like amount issued by the company as first mortgage bonds on the road, with the grant of lands above named, the right of way, and the right to all building material within ten miles of the line of the road; this is deemed a fair provision for one company. In order that no charge of selfishness, or want of charity, should be brought against congress, it next turned its attention to other companies. Perhaps it was thought promotive of the interest of this corporate power, now controlling the government, that there should be unity of action and purpose; that its strength should be so great, and its ramifications so extensive, that neither private persons nor the public would dare to resist its demands. The necessity for a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific states was not the only consideration influencing the law-making power of the country. This fact is clearly apparent from the provisions of the charter, for numerous branch or spike roads are included in the charter, and provided for in the land grants and subsidy bonds. Let us look at the "Central Pacific railroad company," of California. This company received its charter from that state, was duly organized, and as we are informed, was at work on its road when the charter was granted by congress to the "Union Pacific." But congress, not to show partiality, in the ninth section of the charter of the Union Pacific, provides for the Central Pacific as follows:-- "The Central Pacific railroad company, of California, a corporation existing under the laws of California, is hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph line from the Pacific coast, at or near San Francisco, or the navigable waters of the Sacramento river, to the eastern boundary of California, upon the same terms and conditions, in all respects, as are contained in this act for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line first mentioned, and to meet and connect with the first mentioned railroad and telegraph line on the eastern boundary of California." Here is a company building its road exclusively in a single state, under a charter derived from a state having the exclusive control of its own affairs, and not subject to the legislation of congress, or the administration of the general government, like the territories; yet congress, that it may aid a great monopoly, assumes control of the matter, reaches out its hand laden with the people's land, and the people's money, and says to this California company: "If you will unite with and become a part of this giant monopoly we are creating to crush the people, and will accept the provisions of this act and render fealty to the general government as the 'higher power,' we will give you twenty sections of land, and subsidy bonds to the amount of sixteen thousand dollars per mile, with the privilege of issuing your own first mortgage bonds for an additional sixteen thousand dollars per mile for every mile of road you build in the state of California." Of course this California company accepts this tempting offer, and in addition to the fifty thousand of subsidy bonds for sixteen thousand dollars each to the Union Pacific, an additional sixteen thousand dollars per mile is issued to the Central Pacific, all of which, as we will show, principal and interest, will in the end come out of the pockets of the people. The uniting of these two companies, and the completion of their roads and telegraph lines, afforded to the country and the government (provided in all cases they paid to the companies the amounts they charged therefor) a road for the purpose of travel, and transportation of freights, and secured a _"safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores thereon,"_ and if the construction of the road was aided for that purpose, it would seem to have been accomplished, and as a matter of justice to the public, no further burdens should have been imposed upon the public. Two companies had been provided for at the people's expense, and all that was demanded for the prosecution of the public business had been effected. But there was danger that other through lines of railroad might be constructed across the territories that might become rivals of this giant monopoly. The Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad company were across the state of Missouri, looking to the west. The Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western company were preparing for action. A road was crossing Minnesota and Iowa to strike the Missouri river at Sioux City. Any or all of these roads might become rivals. To prevent such a catastrophe, and to retain for all time to come an absolute and exclusive monopoly, these companies must be absorbed, or at least rendered harmless. To assist this scheme, congress is called upon for further aid from the public lands and treasury. The response is all that could be desired. It gave the final blow to competition, and left the people powerless in the grasp of this, the greatest monopoly in the country. A monopoly created by the servants of the people, and enriched with spoils taken from the people, in violation of every principle of right and justice, had been created by act of Congress, and to insure it the absolute control of the country, anything promising competition must be absorbed. To accomplish this object, the same act, section nine, provides: "That the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western railroad company, of Kansas, is hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph from the Missouri river, at the mouth of the Kansas river, on the south side, so as to connect with the Pacific railroad of Missouri to the aforesaid point, on the one-hundredth meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, as herein provided, upon the same terms and conditions in all respects as are provided in this act for the construction of the railroad and telegraph line first mentioned, and to meet and connect with the same at the meridian of longitude aforesaid; and in case the general line or route of the road from the Missouri river to the Rocky mountains should be so located as to require a departure northwardly from the proposed line of said Kansas railroad before it reaches the meridian of longitude aforesaid, the location of said Kansas road shall be made so as to conform thereto; and said railroad through Kansas shall be so located between the mouth of Kansas river as aforesaid, and the aforesaid point, on the hundredth degree of longitude, that the several railroads from Missouri and Iowa herein authorized to connect with the same can make connection within the limits prescribed by this act, provided the same can be done without deviating from the general direction of the whole line to the Pacific coast." It will be seen that one of the rival lines is given a premium of lands and bonds to intersect with the Union Pacific near the east end thereof; it becomes, for a consideration, a part of this great monopoly, and abandons all idea of competition. Section ten provides for a union or consolidation of the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western, and the Hannibal & St. Joseph companies; and section thirteen provides: "That the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad company, of Missouri, may extend its road from St. Joseph, via Atchison, to connect and unite with the road through Kansas, upon filing its assent to the provisions of this act, upon the same terms and conditions in all respects, for one hundred miles in length next to the Missouri river, as are provided in this act for the construction of the railroad and telegraph line first mentioned, and may for this purpose use any railroad charter which has been or may be granted by the legislature of Kansas." The section also provides for connecting this road with the main line. This company promised to be a rival, but when congress is appealed to, $1,600,000 in subsidy bonds, and two thousand sections of land are given it as its share of the spoils, provided it will accept this trifle as an inducement to combine its interest with this great corporation. This disposes of all rivals south of Omaha. True the people have paid dearly for it. They, through their servants in congress, have enriched a lot of unscrupulous men, banded together for the purpose of plundering the public, and given to these corporations the power to oppress the people for all time to come; but as it affords a safe means of transporting the mails, &c., for a consideration which the people must pay as the services are rendered, the public should not complain. Congress thought the matter so important as to require the gift of vast sums of the public moneys, and princely donations out of the public domain, and as our legislators acted for the people, and the companies have built their roads, the public must submit. But there was danger that the roads crossing Iowa and Minnesota might compete with the Union Pacific. Sioux City was an objective point on the Missouri river. West of that city, across the then territory of Nebraska, a road could be constructed at comparatively small cost. This line might become a rival, and it also must be absorbed. To effect this object, the following provision was made a part of the fourteenth section of this act: "And whenever there shall be a line of railroad completed through Minnesota or Iowa to Sioux City, then the said Pacific railroad company is hereby authorized and required to construct a railroad and telegraph line from said Sioux City, upon the most direct and practicable route, to a point on, and so as to connect with, the branch railroad and telegraph line in this section hereinbefore mentioned, or with the said Union Pacific railroad, said point of junction to be fixed by the president of the United States, not farther west than the one-hundredth meridian of longitude aforesaid, and on the same terms and conditions as provided in this act for the construction of the Union Pacific railroad, as aforesaid, to complete the same at the rate of one hundred miles per year." The amendment made to this part of the act in 1864, to which we shall refer in another chapter, materially changes its provisions; and as we examine these provisions, we will discover that all the unjust donations made of the public lands and moneys are exceeded in this amendment. Now, if the reader will take a map on which the railroads are marked, he will discover that from Leavenworth to Sioux City all the railroads running west are concentrated into one line, after leaving the one-hundredth degree of longitude--the Burlington & Missouri railroad company being made by the act of 1864 a part of the same great monopoly. By the exclusive franchises and imperial wealth conferred upon it by congress, this great corporation is given control, absolute control of the business interests of the great west. This grand system of railroads looks well on the map, and lends color to the plea that the wants of the public and of the government justified this large outlay of money and lands; but an inspection of the act chartering the companies, consolidating them, and by law giving them unlimited control of the interests of the public, will convince the impartial reader that the interests of the companies, rather than the needs of the government, or the welfare of the people, controlled the action of congress. Grants of lands and exclusive privileges have been made to other corporations, as also to states, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of railroads; but our aim being to combat the policy itself, as involving gross injustice and oppression, and to show its effects upon the public, we have selected the Union Pacific and its branches as the best illustration of the action of congress in making these grants, and the companies owning this road and its branches as a fair sample of the class of professed benefactors of the people. CHAPTER III. THE MONOPOLISTS "HELP THEMSELVES." The Pacific companies are such a deep mine of iniquity, we must sink our shaft somewhat deeper if we would see the true quality of the corruption. In order to fully comprehend the injustice done to the people, it will be necessary to examine the further legislation of congress in their favor. A perusal of the act from which we have quoted will convince the reader that these companies received all that was necessary for the successful completion and operation of their road, and its numerous branches, and to enable them to extort from the government and the people all that the most grasping and avaricious could desire. But, like Oliver Twist, they still asked "for more," and they got it; not in more lands and money, but in being relieved, by act of congress, from the restrictions and duties imposed upon them by their charter. The act of congress chartering the Union Pacific railroad, and its numerous branches, was amended by the act of July 2, 1864, in many particulars, to some of which we have already referred. The fourth section amends the third section of the original charter by increasing the number of sections of land granted per mile to said road, from ten to twenty, and allowing the selection of the lands to be made within twenty miles of the line of the road, instead of ten, as provided in the original charter; and also provides that the secretary of the interior shall withdraw from sale and pre-emption all the land within twenty-five miles of the line of the road, until the company has selected its twenty sections. The original charter limited the withdrawal to fifteen miles. The amendment also qualified the term "mineral lands," contained in the original act, so as to except from the lands reserved by the government all coal and iron lands; thus enabling the company to select coal and iron lands to the full amount of twenty sections per mile, giving to said railroad company, or companies, a monopoly of the coal trade in a country where coal is, and will continue to be, the greatest desideratum; and the same section gives the company the right to use, in fact grants to the company, all the timber found on each side of the road within ten miles thereof. The company can, under its charter, take all the timber from the land it does not select, and then take its twenty sections in coal lands, when they can be found. This it has done, and in addition, bought of the government other large tracts of coal land; not in the name of the company, perhaps, but in the name of the individual stockholders. By this means, all who settle along the line, in the vicinity of this Union Pacific road, are placed in the power of this great corporation, and must pay it for fuel and transportation whatever sum may be demanded, because the charter does not restrict the company in the matter of charges for transportation. Section seventeen of the original charter provided that twenty-five per centum of the subsidy bonds should be retained by the government until the entire line of the road was completed. Section seven, of the act of July 2, 1864, repealed this provision. Other amendments are made for the benefit of the corporation, as to time and manner of payment; but as it is not our intention to examine all of its provisions in detail, we pass to the tenth section. By the original charter, the subsidy bonds issued to the company were to be and remain first mortgage bonds upon the road and property of the company, the company paying six per cent interest (payable semi-annually) on said bonds, and the principal in thirty years. The tenth section of the amendment reads as follows:-- "That section five of said act be so modified and amended that the Union Pacific railroad company, the Central Pacific railroad company, and any other companies authorized to participate in the construction of said road, may, on the completion of each section of said road, as provided in this act, and the act to which this act is an amendment, issue their first mortgage bonds on their respective railroad and telegraph lines, to an amount not exceeding the bonds of the United States, and of even tenor, time of maturity, rate and character of interest, with the bonds authorized to be issued to said railroad companies, respectively. And the lien of the United States bonds shall be subordinate to that of the bonds of any or either of said companies, hereby authorized to be issued on their respective roads, property, and equipments, except as to the sixth section of said act, to which this is an amendment, relating to the transmission of dispatches, and the transportation of mails, troops, munitions of war, supplies, and public stores, for the United States." By this amendment, the public money appropriated to private corporations, to the amount of about $65,000,000, for which security had been taken, on all the property of the companies, was left in the hands of the companies without any security; or, in other words, the servants of the people made an absolute gift of this great sum of money. The history of the country, in connection with railroad corporations, demonstrates the fact that these corporations by "watering" their stock, and other characteristic management, show, if they so desire it, no margin from the business of their roads. They permit the interest on their bonds to accumulate, until a foreclosure and sale on first mortgage bonds are necessary, and then, under a new name, but with the same persons as stockholders, the road is bought in and becomes profitable. In this case the amount of $65,000,000, and the accrued interest must be first paid, or the property of the corporation must be sold, and the public money advanced by the government will be lost. Even at the present time (as we shall show hereafter) the people are paying the interest on these subsidy bonds, and the only security they have for its repayment is the _honor_ of the company; for all precedents prove that as a rule second mortgage bonds, when a large sum of first mortgage bonds is to be paid, are of no real value. Sections fifteen and sixteen provide for a division of earnings, and a consolidation of the various companies. Sections eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, provide for the admission of the Burlington & Missouri river railroad company as a branch of the Union Pacific, with a grant of land in Nebraska. But the greatest outrage upon the rights and interests of the people, in this Pacific railroad law, will be found in the seventeenth section of this amendment. By the original act, the Union Pacific company was required to construct a branch, road from Sioux City (on the most direct and practicable route) to some point on its road to be fixed by the president of the United States (but not beyond the one-hundredth parallel) when a railroad should be constructed through Minnesota or Iowa to Sioux City. This new road was to unite with and form a part of the great monopoly, and was to receive the same amount of lands, and subsidy bonds, per mile, as the main line received. The building of this road from Sioux City west, to a proper point of connection with the main line, would have cost but little, comparatively, because of the favorable character of the country through which it would pass. For some reason, unknown to the public, it was decided to make a change in respect to this branch, not only as to its location, but also as to the company whose _duty_ it should be to build it. To effect this object, this seventeenth section contains the following provisions:-- "That so much of section fourteen of said act as relates to a branch from Sioux City, be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows: That whenever a line of railroad shall be completed through the state of Iowa, or Minnesota, to Sioux City, such company now organized, or as may be hereafter organized, under the laws of Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota, or Nebraska, as the president of the United States, by its request, may designate, or approve for the purpose, shall construct and operate a line of railroad and telegraph from Sioux City, upon the most direct and practicable route to such point on, and so as to connect with, the Iowa branch of the Union Pacific railroad, as such company may select, and on the same terms and conditions as are provided in this act, and the act to which this is an amendment, for the construction of said Union Pacific railroad and telegraph line, and branches; and said company shall complete the same at the rate of fifty miles per year. Provided, that said Union Pacific railroad company shall be, and is hereby, released from the construction of said branch. And said company constructing said branch shall not be entitled to receive, in bonds, an amount larger than the said Union Pacific railroad company would be entitled to receive if it had constructed the branch under this act, and the act to which this is an amendment; but said company shall be entitled to receive alternate sections of land for ten miles in width on each side of the same, along the whole length of said branch; and provided further, that if a railroad shall not be completed to Sioux City, across Iowa or Minnesota, within eighteen months from the date of this act, then said company designated by the president as aforesaid, may commence and complete the construction of said branch, as contemplated by the provisions of this act. Provided, however, that if the company so designated by the president as aforesaid, shall not complete the said branch from Sioux City to the Pacific railroad within ten years from the passage of this act, then, and in that case, all of the railroad that shall have been constructed by said company, shall be forfeited to, and become the property of, the United States." Now if the reader will take a late map, having the lines of railroads upon it, he will discover that a road from Sioux City to Columbus, in Nebraska, would be about one hundred miles in length, on a line running nearly west; and at this latter point it would intersect and unite with the Iowa branch of the Union Pacific; or a line running southwest for a less distance would unite with the Union Pacific at Fremont, in Nebraska. In the original charter it was contemplated to occupy one of these lines, and, in fact, a branch road was commenced from Sioux City to Fremont. The directors of this branch and the Union Pacific are in part the same, to-wit: Oakes Ames, of Boston, and G. M. Dodge, of Iowa. It would seem that this road, running southwest to Fremont, and there uniting with the Pacific, would afford all necessary facilities for securing the transportation of the mails, troops, &c., and that upon no pretext whatever could another grant of land and subsidy bonds be asked. Yet congress thought otherwise, and in the section last quoted authorized any company organized under the laws of Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota, or Nebraska, that might be designated by the president of the United States, on application to him for that purpose, to construct a railroad to unite with the Union Pacific, leaving it with the new company to fix the point at which it would so unite, but requiring it to commence at Sioux City. Taking advantage of this act, two companies, the Sioux City & Missouri Valley, and the Chicago & Northwestern, constructed a line of road from Sioux City to Council Bluffs, there to unite with the Pacific; the Sioux City & Missouri Valley constructing the road from Sioux City to Missouri Valley, and the Chicago & Northwestern from Missouri Valley to Council Bluffs. This line of road was constructed ostensibly as a part of the Pacific road. It is presumed to run west. Look at the map and you will see that from Sioux City to Council Bluffs, instead of going west, it runs on a line east of south, to the extent of thirty miles, Council Bluffs being thirty miles east of Sioux City. The company constructing this last named road received from the government a grant of one hundred sections of land per each mile, and $16,000 in subsidy bonds for each mile of road. This road runs along the east side of the Missouri river, and in truth, is of no use as a route for the transportation of mails, troops, &c., unless the government prefers to use the longest, least expeditious, and most expensive line of road. Indeed, it seems to be a road that is under the especial care and protection of congress. It is called in the Railroad Manual, "The Sioux City & Pacific Railroad." It was a "nice and fat" job. It has one feature not often found in these railroad jobs carried through congress. It appears to have been gotten up for the benefit of congressmen. After repeated efforts to learn who were the incorporators of this company, we addressed a letter to the secretary of state of Iowa, and received the following answer:-- DES MOINES, December 7, 1872. DEAR SIR:--In answer to yours of the 6th inst., I will say that there is no line of railroad from Sioux City to Council Bluffs, run as one road, or by one company. The Sioux City and Pacific railroad runs from Sioux City to Missouri Valley, and the Chicago and Northwestern (Cedar Rapids and Missouri River) from Missouri Valley to Council Bluffs. The corporators of the Sioux City and Pacific company were L. B. Crocker, M. K. Jessup, James F. Wilson, A. W. Hubbard, Chas. A. Lombard, Frank Schuchardt, W. B. Allison, and John I. Blair. Yours truly, ED. WRIGHT, _Secretary of State_. Among the present directors are to be found the names of Oakes Ames, John I. Blair, D. C. Blair, and G. M. Dodge. Ames was a member of the late congress, and G. M. Dodge is an ex-member. Among the directors of the Cedar Rapids & Missouri river company appear the names of John B. Alley, and James F. Wilson, who were members of congress when the act of July, 1864, was passed, amending the charter of the Union Pacific, and making the large grants to the company designated by the president to build the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific railroad. Wm. B. Allison has been a member of congress almost continuously from 1860 to the present time. This Sioux City branch seems to have been a special favorite with certain congressmen. It received the lion's share of lands, getting five times as many sections per mile as the main lines, and this, too, for the purpose of building a railroad running east of south, instead of west--the direction of the main line--following the course of the Missouri river on the east side thereof for the entire length of this branch, and crossing on the bridge to the Nebraska shore at Omaha. In addition to the road from Sioux City to Omaha, and for the purpose of getting all the land and money possible out of the government, the conspirators organized another company, under the laws of Nebraska, to-wit: The Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley company, and built a road running from Missouri Valley to Fremont, in Nebraska--about fifty miles,--and these two roads, from Sioux City to Missouri Valley, and from Missouri Valley to Fremont, are now called the Sioux City & Pacific. We do not know who were the incorporators of the Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley company, but we find among the present directors, John I. Blair, D. C. Blair, and ex-congressman John B. Alley. The two companies are consolidated. The grant of one hundred sections of land, and bonds to the amount of $16,000 per mile, with the privilege of issuing first mortgage bonds to the amount of $16,000 per mile, altogether comprise one of the most remunerative jobs ever conceived and consummated by incorporating, stockholding and "direct"-ing congressmen in the companies receiving the aid. When it is remembered that the actual cost of the construction of the road was less than $30,000 per mile (as shown by the _Railroad Manual_), and that it is of no value to the government because of its course, save for carrying local mails (its entire earnings for government transportation being less than $1,000 per annum), it will not be uncharitable to conclude that this _fat_ little slice of the Pacific railroad job was put through congress, and nursed and petted by government for the exclusive benefit of congressmen, their friends and relatives. We do not deny the right to congressmen to become and remain stockholders and directors in railroad corporations, but we do deny their right to vote lands and money to companies in which they are stockholders and directors. They are elected to represent the people, to attend to and protect the public interests. When they form themselves into companies and vote the lands and moneys of the people to themselves, they violate their trust, and instead of protecting the people, plunder them, and divide the spoils. To give these unjust practices some color of right, or in some manner to excuse themselves for thus appropriating the wealth of the country and dividing it with their friends, they assert in the laws thus enacted that it is done to aid in the construction of railroads, and "to secure the safe and speedy transmission of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and government supplies," &c. It is no part of the duties of congressmen to construct railroads, nor are the people under obligations to furnish them the means for that purpose. When members of congress form themselves into private companies, and to procure the means for prosecuting their private enterprises, agree to divide among themselves a part of the money and property belonging to the public, because the position they occupy enables them to do so, they manifest the same disregard for the rights of others, and the same disregard of law that is shown by the class of men who follow theft and robbery for a livelihood. But let us follow still further the course of this Pacific railroad company. It would occupy too much space, and weary the reader were we to state in detail all the acts of congress passed in aid of this gigantic combination. In speaking of the Pacific railroad we are apt to look upon it as simply a line of road extending from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean; to consider its great length; the character of the country through which it passes; the sparse settlements; the necessity for direct and speedy communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states, and we yield a ready assent to the action of congress in voting lands and subsidy bonds for its construction. But when we find that the charters of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies, and their various amendments, together with the several acts of congress making many other companies branches of the Pacific road, virtually consolidates all the railroads between the cities of St. Louis and St. Paul on the Mississippi river, and all the railroads running west from Chicago, into one vast corporation, uniting all in one track from Fort Kearney to the Pacific ocean, the people will begin to realize that while they thought congress was appropriating lands and moneys solely for the purpose of opening a highway across the territories, it was in fact aiding a combination of men and corporations in their attempt to control the commerce of the great west; and when we further learn that this great railroad interest is already virtually consolidated, and that the whole people are placed at the mercy of this great monopoly, we see at a glance the extent of the power vested in it by act of congress. Among the railroad companies that are included in this combination are the following: Chicago & Northwestern; Iowa Falls & Sioux City; Cedar Rapids & Missouri River; Leavenworth, Atchinson, & Northwestern; Kansas Pacific; Union Pacific; Burlington & Missouri River; Sioux City & Pacific; Missouri River; Chicago, Iowa, & Nebraska; Hannibal & St. Joseph; and the St. Paul and Sioux City. Most of the above roads received grants of lands; some of them received subsidy bonds, ostensibly for the public benefit, but in reality for the purpose of combining in one the interests of all these combinations. Whatever may have been the intention of congress in granting exclusive privileges to these companies and permitting them to unite, the effect has been to fasten upon the great west a monopoly, that for all time to come will be an instrument of oppression. With its vast power and wealth it can but control the fortune of the laboring and producing classes inhabiting the richest portion of our common country. The further fact that this great corporate power is the particular pet of congressmen, and that among its directors and stockholders are members and ex-members of congress, render the hope of any change in favor of the people remote, if at all attainable. If the reader is desirous of learning who are the directors and managers of the Pacific railroad and branches, he has only to consult _Poor's Railroad Manual_ for 1872-3. He will find among the present directors the men who, in congress, voted the lands and subsidies to the companies in which they are now directors, and also, that some of these directors are now holding the office of congressmen and of United State's senators. By the acts of congress granting and amending the charters of the Pacific railroad companies and branches, it is made the duty of the president of the United States to appoint five directors, "who shall be denominated directors on the part of the government," and these acts forbid such directors being stockholders in said Pacific railroad companies. It is made the duty of these government directors to exercise a general supervision of the Pacific road and branches, and to report its condition from time to time to the secretary of the interior. In contemplation of law they are to have no pecuniary interest in the companies or in the roads. The present government directors are B. F. Wade, of Ohio; Hiram Price, and J. F. Wilson, of Iowa; J. C. S. Harrison, of Indiana; and D. S. Ruddock, of Connecticut. By act of congress of June 2d, 1864, the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River railroad was authorized to connect with the Iowa branch of the Union Pacific road, and sections fifteen and sixteen of the acts of July 2d, 1864, place all roads connecting with the Union Pacific on an equality as to charges for freights and passengers, and permits them to consolidate if they elect so to do. The Cedar Rapids & Missouri River company has leased its road to the Chicago & Northwestern company, and it is operated in connection with the Union Pacific, uniting with it at Council Bluffs, and it virtually becomes a branch of the Union Pacific road. The reader can look over the list of directors, as shown in the _Railroad Manual_ before referred to, and learn if any of the government directors of the Union Pacific are directors in the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River company. The reports made of the cost, condition, and other matters connected with Pacific railroad enterprises, disclose such utter disregard of the rights and interests of the people, and such a gross betrayal of the public good for the benefit of a ring (in part a congressional ring) as to leave it without precedent. The fact that the men who formed this ring have become a powerful moneyed aristocracy, able by their votes and influence in congress to convert the public lands and money to their own use, and are now boldly taxing the people with the interest on the money appropriated to build up these oppressive monopolies, should arouse the country to a sense of its imminent peril. CHAPTER IV. HOW CONGRESS BETRAYED THE PEOPLE. In order to fully realize the great power of what is known as the Pacific railroad companies, it will be necessary to look at the Central Pacific company, and its control of the transportation of freights and passengers from the Pacific country. This company, organized under the laws of California, was, by acts of congress of July 1st, 1862, admitted into the grand combination known as the Pacific roads, and granted equal privileges with the Union Pacific and branches. The Central Pacific extends from the Pacific ocean to Ogden, a distance of eight hundred and eighty-one miles. The acts of congress of April 4th, 1864, and July 2d, 1864, granted to this company additional privileges and powers, including the right of consolidating with all the companies on the Pacific coast. In 1870 the following companies, to-wit: The Western Pacific railroad company; the San Francisco, Oakland, & Alameda railroad company; the San Joaquin railroad company; the California & Oregon railroad companies were consolidated. The state of California at that date had but one thousand and thirteen miles of road within its borders. Of this number of miles, about one-half became a part of the Central Pacific, by the consolidation as above stated. All the roads pointing towards the east were combined in this one great corporation, forming a solid body, with one common and general object and interest, viz: a monopoly of the travel and traffic with the eastern states. And congress, by appropriating lands and subsidy bonds, and granting exclusive rights and privileges to this monster monopoly, has given it the key not only to the overland commerce of the country, but also to the commerce of our country with other nations upon the Pacific ocean. This giant monopoly, by the aid of congress, has obtained the absolute control of the best interests of the whole people for all time to come--a control that is now being used, and will continue to be used, to enrich its own members and stockholders by oppressive levies for transportation over its roads. To fully comprehend the cost to the country of these munificent gifts by congress to the Union and Central Pacific corporations, let us examine the expense somewhat in detail. First. A grant is made of all the material needed in the construction of the roads, found within ten miles of the line of said roads. Second. A grant of thirty-five million acres of the public lands, amounting, at $1.25 per acre, to $43,750,000. This vast amount of land is taken from the people and given to companies by congressmen who in some instances are members of the companies, and receive their _pro rata_ share of the grants. Third. Aid voted by congress in shape of subsidy bonds, $65,000,000, payable in thirty years, with six per cent per annum. The theory was that the companies would pay the interest as it matured (semi-annually) and eventually the principal. But that this was not the intent of the companies, nor of congress, is apparent from the different acts regulating the matter, and as the case stands, the government is actually paying the interest and collecting the amount from the people in tariffs and excise taxes. The payment of the amount of these bonds, with the interest according to their terms, will require about $200,000,000. This amount, or nearly all of it, will be paid by the people, and not by the companies. The report of the secretary of the treasury shows that the amount of interest annually due on these subsidy bonds is $3,875,000, of which the Pacific railroad companies have paid about $750,000, and the government the balance, say $3,125,000. The original charter of the companies provided that the charges for carrying done for the government should be credited to the companies in liquidation of these bonds, and also that five per cent of the net earnings of the road should be applied to the same object. The secretary of the treasury of the United States insisted that these companies should be bound by this provision of their charters, refused to pay them their earnings for government services, and also demanded the five per cent, under the law. The companies refused to pay the five per cent of their net earnings, and demanded pay for transportation. If we remember that congress had already so amended the charters of these companies as to permit them to issue $65,000,000 of their own bonds as "first mortgage bonds," and provided that the subsidy bonds obtained from government should be subordinate or junior to the bonds issued by the companies, and also bear in mind that these amendments also provided that whenever twenty miles of road was completed the patent for twenty sections of land per mile was to issue to the companies, so that when the roads were completed they would have title to all their lands, we will see good reasons for the stand taken by the United States secretary of the treasury. The security which the United States had for the payment of the principal and interest of the bonds, under the charter, was destroyed by subsequent legislation, and unless the secretary could retain the amounts due from government for transportation, and collect the five per cent, the whole amount of the subsidy bonds, would be lost to the government and the people. The facts of the case being well known to congress, who are supposed to be the representatives of the people, and to legislate in their interest and for their benefit, it would hardly be supposed that an act would pass both branches, and receive the approval of the president, compelling the secretary of the treasury to yield to the demands of these corporations. Honest legislation, and a decent regard for the public welfare, would seem to forbid any attempt on the part of any one of the departments of the government to aid the companies in their dishonest endeavor to avoid the provisions of a charter which had been enacted for their special benefit. And when it is remembered that at the time the application was made to congress (March, 1871) certain members were stockholders and directors in these same companies, one would not think it possible that an act could be passed relieving the companies from these requirements of their charters, or only possible because of the practice being so long established for congressmen to appropriate public lands and moneys to their own use, that they had arrived at the point where they deemed the property and money of the government lawful plunder, and that their first duty was to provide for the rings and corporations in which they had a personal interest. It seems to have required some strategy for the friends of these corporations to grant them the aid they asked. Afraid to take issue with the secretary of the treasury, and unwilling to hazard the success of their scheme by an attempt to pass an act for the _relief_ of these railroad companies independently of any other measure, to insure the safe passage of the legislation and its approval by the president, congress, by an amendment, tacked it to the army appropriation bill (which passed March 3d, 1871), secured the relief asked for. Section nine of the army appropriation bill reads as follows: "That, in accordance with the fifth section of the act approved July 2, 1864, entitled 'An act to amend an act to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, and to secure the same for postal, military, and other purposes, approved July 1, 1862,' the secretary of the treasury is hereby directed to pay over in money to the Pacific railroad companies mentioned in said act, and performing services for the United States, one-half of the compensation, at the rate provided by law for such services heretofore or hereafter to be rendered: _Provided_, that this section shall not be construed to affect the legal rights of the government or the obligations of the companies, except as herein specifically provided." This act was approved by the president, and the question at issue between the secretary of the treasury and the companies was settled by congress in favor of the latter--absolutely relieving them from the payment of any part of the $65,000,000 of subsidy bonds, except such sums as may be paid by allowing the government to retain one-half of the earnings of the roads for carrying mails, etc., which sums, as shown by the companies themselves, amount to less than one-fourth of the annual interest accruing on the bonds. The people must pay all the balance, principal and interest. These companies have received, in lands and bonds, from the general government, about $109,000,000, to aid in the construction of their roads, and all that government receives in return is one-half of the fare levied on government transportation over these roads, "at the price fixed by law." The only provision as to price is, that after having donated to the companies sufficient to pay the entire cost of the construction of the roads, government shall pay such reasonable prices as may be agreed upon, not exceeding the rate the companies charge to other parties. When we say "the entire cost," we do not mean the full cost claimed by the companies, for it is not policy for them to make a correct showing in this matter; we mean the real actual cost. We cannot find a statement of the cost of the Union Pacific, and do not know what the company claim to be its cost per mile, or the aggregate cost. The Central Pacific puts the cost of its roads at $120,000,000, or about $136,000 per mile. It shows a paid-up capital stock of $54,000,000, and a funded debt of about $82,000,000, making its indebtedness about $16,000,000 more than the entire cost of its road, including rolling stock and equipments. Making a liberal margin for the value of these last named items, and allowing the Central Pacific to cost nearly double the ordinary cost of other roads, and the reader must conclude that there has been, in this case, a watering of stock and an excessive issue of bonds for the benefit of the company and at the expense of the people. The statement of the capital stock and funded debt of the Union Pacific shows about the same condition for its road as to indebtedness; but the estimated cost of the road is not given. For proof that we are not mistaken in our estimated cost of these roads, and that the companies have received from the government a sum more than sufficient to defray the entire expense of their construction, we turn to reports of the cost of railroads generally, in the country, made by men who are in sympathy with our present railroad system. These men say that the cost of railroads in this country, from their first introduction, is about $50,000 per mile, and that those constructed recently will average about $30,000 per mile. We are apt to think that the cost of the Pacific roads would exceed that of most other roads. Such is not the fact. On the contrary, taking the entire road into consideration, the line was more favorable than any other in the country. It is thus described in the Railroad Manual, before referred to:-- "The route for the eastern portion of the line is up the valley of the Platte, which has a course nearly due east from the base of the mountains. Till these are reached, this valley presents, probably, the finest line ever adopted for such a work for an equal distance. It is not only straight, but its slope is very nearly uniform towards the Missouri, at the rate of about ten feet to the mile. The soil on the greater part of the line forms an admirable road bed. The road, after leaving the mountains, has very few affluents, the only constructed bridges for the distance being one over the Loup Fork and the North Platte. The base of the mountains is assumed to be at Cheyenne, five hundred and seventeen miles from the Missouri river. This part is elevated six thousand and sixty-two feet above the sea, and five thousand and ninety-five feet above Omaha. From Cheyenne to the summit of the mountains, which is elevated eight thousand two hundred and forty-two feet above the sea, the distance is thirty-two miles. The grades for reaching the summit do not exceed eighty feet to the mile. The elevation of the vast plain from which the Rocky mountains arise, is so great, that the mountains, when they are reached, present no obstacles so formidable as those offered by the Allegheny ranges to several lines of railroads which cross them. * * * The line of the railroad up the eastern slope of the Rocky mountains is not so difficult as those upon which several great works have been constructed in the eastern states. After crossing the eastern crest of the mountains, the line traverses an elevated table land for about four hundred miles, to the western crest of the mountains, which forms the eastern rim of the Salt Lake basin, and which has an elevation of seven thousand five hundred and fifty feet above the sea. Upon this elevated table land is a succession of extensive plains, which present great facility for the construction of the road. The whole line is a very favorable one, when its immense length is considered. More than one-half of it is practically level, while the mountain ranges are surmounted by grades not in any case exceeding those now worked upon some of our most successful roads." The description of the line of the Central Pacific, or western six hundred and sixty-seven miles, from Ogden to Sacramento, will not vary much from that given of the Union Pacific. It is not quite so favorable. Taking the character of the route as given, with the facilities for building the road, and it is not probable that the actual cost of construction averaged more than $30,000 per mile, or $57,000,000 for the whole line. Taking the highest rate, as given, viz: $50,000, and apply it to the whole road, the entire cost would be $94,000,000. To aid in the construction of this road, the government issued subsidy bonds at the rate of $48,000 per mile for three hundred miles, $32,000 per mile for nine hundred and four miles, and $16,000 per mile for the balance of the main road and branches. The funded debt of the companies owning and operating the road (not including the debts of the branches), after deducting the amount of bonds they received from the government, to-wit: $65,000,000, is, as shown by their own report, $93,000,000. How much their floating debt amounts to we cannot tell. The stock on their road cannot cover one-tenth of the amount of their debts. The companies report a paid up capital stock of $91,028,190. The statement of account would be about as follows:-- CREDIT ACCOUNT. Paid up capital $91,028,190 Bonds from government 65,000,000 Funded debt 93,000,000 ------------ Total invested $249,028,190 CONTRA. Actual cost of construction $94,000,000 ------------ Balance $155,028,190 Deduct, for 37,500,000 acres of land at $1.25 per acre 46,875,000 ------------ Balance against road $108,153,190 Thus, after placing the land received from the government to the credit of the road, still a small balance of more than $108,000,000 has disappeared, and the companies are not able to pay the interest on the government bonds. The reports of these companies show, for the year 1871, that the net earnings of their roads (over and above all expenses, including taxes, repairs, damages to property and persons, cost of snow sheds, and all other items of expense) amounted to about $9,000,000, and yet, because these companies asked it, congress released them from the payment of the interest on the subsidy bonds. The conclusion to be drawn from the facts of the case, as they develop themselves, is, that these Pacific railroad companies have used the federal offices, and the public moneys, and lands, for enriching themselves; that a company of men, in congress, and out of it, have combined and confederated together for the purpose of robbing the people, and controlling the government. We have selected the Union and Central Pacific companies for illustrations, and attempted to state the facts in their case, not because of any exception that they present to the general rule, but to show the manner in which the people are duped and defrauded by congressmen voting government aid to railroad companies, under the pretext of developing the country, and the equally false necessity of providing speedy and secure transportation for the mails, troops, supplies, and munitions of war. One peculiar feature about the whole matter is, that congressmen have deemed it necessary for the accomplishment of their object, to become personally interested in their own legislation by subscribing stock, and becoming directors in the companies to which they voted these aids. We can name congressmen who, if they were not stockholders in these Pacific roads, at the time the bonds and lands were voted, certainly were stockholders and directors when these companies were relieved from the payment of the interest on the bonds issued to them by the government, to-wit: Oakes Ames and James Brooks. How many more held stock we cannot tell; but the fact that members were stockholders and directors must have been known to the different departments, for, under the charter of these companies, the directors, and especially the government directors, are required to report in detail the condition of the companies, and the names of the directors once each year to the secretary of the interior, at Washington. If the reader would know the extent of congressional legislation in favor of the rings, and combinations of men, plundering the people, he need only look over the different acts of congress passed directly for their benefit during the last twelve years. He will arise from their perusal feeling that the chief duty of the government is to foster, protect, and enrich these rings at the expense of the people. These Pacific companies are required, by their charters, to construct telegraph lines along the route of their roads, and to transmit messages for the government at such rates as they charge other parties. The appropriations by congress show that $40,000 have been voted annually to pay for telegraphic dispatches, between the Atlantic and Pacific, but there is nothing to show that any such sum was due from the government for telegraphing. Among the appropriations is an item for the mileage of the government engineer for travel, from Cincinnati to Omaha, and from Omaha to Washington, and thence to New York; but the charters of the companies required _them_ to pay the expenses incurred on account of the services of persons appointed by the president to inspect these roads. Indeed, the action of congress is such as to induce the belief, that these roads, if not owned by the general government, are owned by congress, or congressmen, and that it is perfectly legitimate and proper for government to pay the cost of their construction, and of the telegraph lines, and also their running expenses. The energy and zeal manifested by congress, in aid of these corporations, and the great number and variety of acts passed for their benefit, demonstrate the fact that while the representatives of the people assemble at Washington ostensibly to legislate for the public generally, they devote their time to legislation for their own benefit, and that of the numerous corporations and companies of which they are members. CHAPTER V. CONGRESS BECOME A STOCK EXCHANGE. In scanning the names of the directors of the railroad corporations which have received large grants of lands, subsidies, and special and exclusive privileges, we find many ex-members of congress in whose terms of service these grants were voted. We also find members of congress who were directors at the time their relief and aid bills were passed. We find one member who is now a director in three of the companies receiving the largest sums from government, and which are considered the best of all, because of the opportunity they present to _enterprising_ men of legislative and financial ability; and in order that proper provision should be made for his kindred, one of the brothers of this same congressman is a director in five of these land grant subsidy corporations. These jobs are "nice and fat," made so by the unjust legislation of congress, and being "nice and fat," the division and distribution of the spoils is made among these congressmen and their friends. The practice of voting the money and lands of the public to these corporations has become so common that it is considered legitimate to bribe or buy the votes and influence of certain congressmen in favor of certain grants. Large bribes have been offered, and perhaps accepted for these purposes. So common is the practice of lobbying these jobs through congress that it excites but little attention save in extraordinary cases, and elicits but little comment. The power and corrupting influence of these corporations have grown to such proportions that they and their friends in congress can disregard and defy public opinion, and compel all the departments of the government to yield to their demands. They plunder the people with impunity. They have transformed the government; while we are in name a republic, and theoretically the people govern, we are in fact an oligarchy, and corporations rule the country. If the reader has followed us thus far he will have seen that while the idea of public necessity has been put prominently forth as the excuse for the great donations made to railroad companies, and the apology for the special privileges granted to them, in fact, the real object has been to create by special charter a privileged class with facilities to amass fortunes, and by the power granted to this class of perpetual succession and exclusive right under the law, to compel the whole people to pay tribute to it. This power is so great at this time, that it controls the whole commerce of the country, and as we will hereafter demonstrate, it controls not only the financial, but also the judicial department, and reigns supreme in the general politics of the country. Looking at these charters the thought is presented to the mind, and the idea is incorporated in the charter, that the people of the whole country are petitioning congress to grant aid to these companies for the purpose of developing the country; that by a spontaneous movement on the part of the whole people congress is called upon to incorporate these different companies, and to grant lands and money to aid in the different enterprises as they are presented. To give color to this idea, the names of men from most of the states and territories are included among the incorporators, some fifteen or twenty of whom are named as provisional directors who are to hold their places until the first regular meeting of the company, and the election of officers. Congress fixes the time and place of meeting and the notice to be given to the stockholders, and to carry out the idea that it is to be a company in which all can participate, the charter provides that any person can subscribe stock and become a stockholder who desires to do so. In fact though, no petitions have been presented to congress, nor do any considerable number of the persons named as corporators know of the organization, or that their names have been used; nor is it intended that they should know; the fifteen or twenty interested parties who have formed their plan for a raid upon the treasury, are the only ones, besides their particular friends in congress, who are supposed to know anything about it. These fifteen or twenty men who have gotten up the scheme, meet and elect themselves directors, and are then ready for action. Having obtained their charters, and organized under them, the work of robbing the people begins. With their friends, and some of their directors in Congress, they have been able thus far to obtain all they have demanded. There is no authority for the assumption that the chartering of these companies is in obedience to the wish of the people, either expressed or implied. On the contrary, this action of congress has uniformly been in opposition to public opinion, and indeed it has excited popular remonstrance. None but the few who wish to get their hands into the public treasury have asked the interference of congress, or desired the government to aid in these enterprises. So great is their anxiety to aid in the development of the country that substantially the same companies undertake to construct all the roads for which congress will grant sufficient aid. All these railroad schemes which have received the special attention of congress were planned by a set of unscrupulous men, who combined to plunder the treasury. The system of aiding in the construction of railroads by grants of land was inaugurated in 1850, by grants to the Illinois Central, and did not develop itself fully until 1862, when the plan of obtaining charters from congress, connected with grants of land and subsidies, was systematically adopted. Since the latter date, the practice has increased with fearful rapidity, and within the last four or five years it has assumed such immense proportions as to threaten the entire subversion of the government. The greatest raid made upon congress for these grants and special charter privileges during any one term was at the session closing March 4th, 1868. When it is remembered that the public business did not require these roads, and that the people had not asked congress to aid in their construction, it seems incredible that in the fortieth congress representatives and senators should have introduced more than _one hundred and fifty bills and resolutions_ to aid railroad companies. Yet such is the fact. A gentleman who spent much time in Washington, and examined into this matter writes as follows: "The latest developments show that in the grandeur and number of their schemes of spoil and plunder, the congressional rings of railroad jobbers throw into the shade all other rings of the lengthy catalogue of confederate treasury robbers. * * * One hundred and fifty-nine railroad bills and resolutions have been introduced in the fortieth congress, and twice as many more are in preparation in the lobby; one hundred millions of acres of the public lands, and two hundred millions of United States bonds would not supply the demands of these cormorants. In other words, this stupendous budget of railway jobs would require sops and subsidies in lands and bonds, which, reduced to a money valuation, would swell up to the magnificent figure of half of the national debt!" He continues: "Among the jobs of this schedule is the Atchison & Pike's Peak railroad company, or Union Pacific Central branch, which, after having received government sops to the extent of six millions, puts in for seven millions more. Next comes the Denver Pacific and Telegraph company, which, having feathered its nest to the tune of _thirty-two millions_, puts in for a little more, and this company is reported to be a mere gang of speculators without any known legal organization whatever--a set of mythical John Does and Richard Roes, who cannot be found when called for. Next, we have the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western railroad, now known as the Union Pacific, eastern division, chartered by the Kansas territorial legislature in 1855, subsidized with Delaware Indian Reserve lands in 1861, and then in 1862, by a rider on the Pacific railroad law, granted sixteen thousand dollars per mile in United States bonds and every alternate section of land within a certain limit on each side of the line of the road, and the privilege of a first mortgage (by subsequent amendment) to secure bonds issued by the company to the amount of sixteen thousand dollars per mile. It further appears that a clique of seceders from the old company illegally formed a new company, and having by force of arms taken possession of the road, are pocketing the spoils which legally belong to the old company. All this, too, with the consent of the president, the secretary of the treasury, and congress. From another source we learn that some half dozen Pacific branch or main stem railroads, northern and southern, are on the anvil, involving lands and bonds by tens and twenties and hundreds of millions; that Senator Pomeroy of Kansas, has seven of these jobs on the docket; Senator Ramsey of Minnesota, four; Senator Conners of California, five; and Senator Harlan of Iowa, four. Senator Pomeroy, however, distances all competitors in the number and extent of his jobs, for as it appears, they include a line from Kansas to Mexico, three bills for roads from Fort Scott to Santa Fe, in Texas, a South Carolina road through the Sea Island cotton section, two or three lines from the Mississippi river through to Texas, and a little private Atchison Pacific--one of the nicest and fattest speculations ever worked through. Is not this a magnificent budget, and is not the audacity of these railroad jobs and jobbers positively sublime?" We do not vouch for the entire accuracy of the statements above quoted, but we know that much contained in them is absolutely true. If the congressional committee now investigating the alleged Credit Mobilier frauds, perform their duty honestly and faithfully, we will probably learn that the John Does and Richard Roes referred to, were Ames, Alley, and other distinguished persons in congress and out of it. An _expose_ by this committee of the sum total voted to this eastern division of the Union Pacific, and the actual cost of the road and telegraph lines, would show a large margin for division, a goodly portion of which found its way into the pockets of members of congress. Can it be claimed that the needs of government required these large subsidies of lands and money? Had the people requested congress to make these grants? Has the development of this country returned to the people a tithe of the wealth thus recklessly given away by congress? The people are now groaning under the burdens imposed upon them by reckless or dishonest legislation at Washington. We might well stop and inquire, from what source the power for this kind of legislation is derived. Mr. Washburn of Illinois, now United States minister at Paris, in a speech in congress, in the winter of 1868, seems to have comprehended the situation, and in opposition to the system of plundering the public treasury spoke as follows: "With the unreconstructed states admitted into the Union, with full and equal protection for all men, in all of the states, and with manhood suffrage secured by legislation or constitutional amendments, the minds of the people will turn to questions of finance, of taxes, of economy, of decreased expenditures, and honest and enlightened legislation--to questions of tariff, and to questions of railroads, telegraphs, and express monopolies which are sucking the very life-blood of the people--to the administration of the revenue laws and to the robberies and plunderings of the treasury by dishonest office holders. Already the eyes of the people of this country are upon congress. I may say they are upon the republican majority in congress, for that majority is now responsible before the country for the legislation of congress. It can make and unmake laws in defiance of executive vetoes. The republican party triumphed because it was pledged to honesty and economy, to the upholding of public faith and credit, and to the faithful execution of the laws. * * * The condition of the country, the vast public debt, the weight of taxation, the depreciated and fluctuating currency, the enormous expenditure of public money, mal-administration of the government, the extortion of monopolies press upon our attention with most crushing force. The people elected General Grant to the presidency, not only on account of the great and inestimable services he had rendered the country, in subduing the rebellion, not only on account of his devotion to the great principles of the republican party, but because they believed him to be emphatically an honest man, and an enlightened statesman who would faithfully administer the laws without fear, favor, or affection. The time has come when we are imperatively called upon to take a new departure. Added to the other terrible evils brought upon the country by the war for the suppression of the great rebellion, in the demoralization incident to all great wars, and to the expenditure of vast and unheard of amounts of public money; to the giving out of immense contracts, by which sudden and vast fortunes were made; the inflation of the currency, which engendered speculation, profligacy, extravagance, and corruption, by the intense desire to get suddenly rich out of the government and without labor, and the inventions and schemes generally to get money out of the treasury for the benefit of individuals without regard to the interest of the government. While the restless and unpausing energies of a patriotic and incorruptible people were devoted to the salvation of their government, and were pouring out their blood and treasure in its defence, there was a vast army of the base, the venal, and unpatriotic who rushed to take advantage of the misfortune of their country, and to plunder its treasury. The statute books are loaded with legislation which will impose burdens on future generations. Public land enough to make empires has been voted to private railroad corporations; subsidies of untold millions of bonds, for the same purposes, have become a charge upon the people, while the fetters of vast monopolies have been fastened closer and still closer upon the public. It is time that the representatives of the people were admonished that they are the servants of the people, and are paid by the people; that their constituents have confided to them the great trust of guarding their rights and protecting their interests; that their position and their power is to be used for the benefit of the people whom they represent, and not for their own benefit, and the benefit of the lobbyists, the gamblers, and the speculators who have come to Washington to make a raid upon the treasury." The above shows the light in which Mr. Washburn, four years ago, viewed the matters of which we are now treating. Since the delivery of that speech act after act has been passed by congress in favor of these corporations, giving them greater privileges, releasing them from their obligations to government, discharging their liability to government for many millions of money, and to accomplish this, imposing upon the people additional burdens and taxes for which no equivalent has been or even will be given. The determination to plunder the government and people, seems to control not only the adventurers who go to Washington to lobby their schemes through congress, but also congressmen themselves, who become chiefs among this class of money and land grabbers. They vote to the corporations, of which they are a part, large sums in money and lands, and then use the means thus obtained for the purpose of bribing and corrupting their fellow members in favor of other and larger robberies. CHAPTER VI. HOW THE LAND GRANT RAILROADS "DEVELOPE" A COUNTRY. The ostensible object in granting lands to railroad companies was to aid new and undeveloped portions of the country in procuring necessary railroad facilities for communication with the rest of the world; and to assist, by donations of alternate sections, in their development and settlement. Whether these ends have been achieved is a matter of doubt. It is scarcely to be hoped that the people will ever be reimbursed for the vast extent of lands, and large amount of bonds, which have been so recklessly lavished upon so many railroad companies. When the proposition to grant lands to railroad companies was brought before congress, the right to donate them to private corporations was not admitted; the right of the states to have control of the lands was not questioned. Recognizing this latter right, the lands were granted to the states for the purpose of aiding in the construction of certain roads within their borders. It was not until 1862 that congress came to the front, created private railroad corporations, and endowed them with lands and money. Nor did these corporations commence their wholesale raid upon the public treasury until after congress went into the business of creating railroad companies. Is it true that the country has been benefited in proportion to the grants made? Are the people richer because of these grants? Has the country, as a general rule, been more rapidly settled and improved by this railroad legislation? We are aware that the idea is commonly entertained that the people receive an equivalent for these railroad grants in the increased facilities for travel and transportation of freights. Were it true that the roads receiving grants of land were more speedily constructed, or that transportation over them was less expensive, then we would admit that the benefits derived would in some degree be an equivalent for the aid afforded them. To ascertain the facts let us see how this legislation has affected the west, taking Iowa and Kansas as illustrations. In the first place, for every acre of land given to railroads in these states the people have paid $1.25; inasmuch as they are charged $2.50 for the reserved alternate sections. Taking the land granted in Iowa, the amount charged to the people of this state is $9,009,841, or, taking the grants already certified to, the people are charged with $4,387,303. This sum, amounting to about $4.00 per head, has been taken from the people of Iowa and given to railroad companies, and must be charged against the benefits received. The construction of about eleven hundred miles of railroad in Iowa was aided by land grants. The cost, at $30,000 per mile, would be less than $33,000,000. The amount the people are obliged to pay into the public treasury for the _reserved sections_, in making up the account should be charged to the land grant roads, as also the increased price they are compelled to pay the companies for the donated lands, which range from $5.00 to $50.00 per acre; and this, too, of lands that under the general laws they could have entered at $1.25 per acre. The amount taken from the people who settle in and improve the state and develop its resources, which they must pay to the government and these railroad companies before getting title to their lands, is about $25,000,000 more than would have been demanded of them but for these land grants. What have they received in return? The companies in Iowa receiving grants of land have not extended their lines across the state more rapidly than companies receiving no grants. In fact, roads built entirely with private means have been constructed more rapidly than these land grant roads. The companies receiving the grants did not keep pace with the settlement of the country; the people, as pioneers, were always in advance of the roads. It was only when the population of the country was sufficient to afford a paying business that the roads were extended. The excuse paraded by congress for making these grants was that the companies would advance their roads so as to draw after them an agricultural population. This has not been done. On the contrary, the lands outside of the boundaries of the railroad grants were the first settled, and the most rapidly developed. Has the result been different in Kansas? The number of miles of railroad in this state in 1870 was about seventeen hundred, of which nearly one thousand received grants of land, and the Kansas Pacific company $6,303,000 in subsidy bonds. Companies constructing these roads received land grants to the amount of 5,420,000 acres. At $1.25 per acre the grants amount to $6,775,000. This sum is charged upon the reserved sections as in Iowa, and must be paid by the people of Kansas. Add to this the $6,303,000 subsidy bonds, and the Kansas railroads have cost the people of that state and the public treasury $13,000,000, outside of the immense local aid voted to them by the different cities, towns and counties. The population of this state in 1860 was 107,206. In 1870 it was 362,872. Saying nothing about the increased prices to be paid to the railroad companies for the lands granted to them, or the large amount of subsidy bonds, and leaving out the immense amounts of local aid afforded to the different railroads, and the sum to be charged to the railroads for the extra price of the reserved sections is about $20.00 per head for the entire population. Looking at the facts as they are developed we conclude that the people have not been benefited by these grants of lands, that railroad companies are the only parties benefited, that the people are not richer because of these grants, but, on the contrary, they would have made money by giving to the railroad companies the actual cost of the roads. Has the country been more rapidly settled and improved by reason of this special legislation? The leading idea advanced in favor of grants to railroad companies has been their necessity in developing the new states and territories. We are pointed to the new states of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Nevada, and the territories of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, and referred to the fact that these states have a population of 2,874,000, and 9,000 miles of railroad; and from this exhibit an argument is deduced in favor of these grants. The theory is that the population has followed the roads. Is this theory correct? In 1850 Iowa had a population of 676,913, and in 1870 a population of 1,191,729. In 1860 there were 655 miles of railroad, about three-fourths of which had received grants of land. In 1870 the number of miles of railroad had increased to 2,668. Of this increase not more than one-third was aided by land grants, private enterprise having constructed at least two-thirds of it; and the same kind of enterprise is still at work, and since 1870 has increased the number of miles to 3,250. The land grants were nearly all made to Iowa in 1856, yet the energetic and rapid building of roads was not shown until after the close of the war, nor until the people had advanced beyond the roads, and their necessities demanded them. Kansas in 1860 had a population of 107,209; In 1870 it had increased to 364,400. Prior to 1864 it had no railroads. In 1870 it had 1,501 miles, all of which, save forty miles, was built in four years. Nearly all of the Kansas roads were aided by grants, and some of them by subsidy bonds. In 1870 there was one mile of railroad in Kansas for every 242 inhabitants. To construct these roads in Kansas, counties, cities, and towns have taxed themselves by vote to the amount of $4,400,000, or about $9.00 to each inhabitant. This debt must be charged to the railroad account, and a similarly voted indebtedness in Iowa to the amount of about $6,000,000. The valuation of property in Iowa in 1860 was $205,166,000, and in 1870 $302,515,000. Thus while the population of the state had nearly doubled, and the lines of railroad had more than quadrupled, the valuation had increased less than fifty per cent, and at least one-half of this increase was in the value of railroads. Deducting from the increased valuation of property in Kansas the value of railroads there, and about the same state of facts appears. The figures in these two states will show, that so far from the donations of land and money adding to their wealth the reverse is true. And this position is supported by the exhibit of other states. In Pennsylvania the population has increased since 1860, 600,000. The mileage of railroads has nearly doubled in this time, and the valuation of property has increased from $719,253,000 to $1,318,236,000. In that state, where no government aid has been voted to railroads, the wealth of the state has nearly doubled, while in the same time in the state of Iowa it has not increased fifty per cent, land grants included. The population of Nebraska has increased from 7,000 to 42,000 in the last decade. This state has 593 miles of railroad, or one mile of railroad to each seventy of its population, nearly all aided by grants. California had a population in 1860 of 380,000. In 1870 it had increased to 560,000. Colorado in the last decade increased from 34,000 to 40,000. In this territory there are 392 miles of railroad, all built by grants of lands and bonds. Of course the roads through the territories are the Pacific roads, but as the states and territories were both cited as illustrations of the wisdom of congress in making grants to companies for the construction of railroads, we have examined the matter somewhat in detail to show the weakness of the argument. If we take the census of 1860 and that of 1870, and observe the increase in population, wealth, and railroad building, we will discover that the laws of trade, of supply, and demand have controlled the whole matter, and that the growth of the country has not been increased because of these grants from government. In all cases where the construction of railroads has approached the frontier line of settlement, it has drawn but little population after it, aside from the employes of the road. The real pioneer immigration, that which opens and improves the country, is doing now what it has done for the last generation, moving steadily to the west, followed and surrounded by railroad sharks and jobbers, who, after getting all they can from government, prey upon the people; and the people of the new states, instead of being blessed with the means of adding to their wealth, find themselves burdened with debt and taxes, fastened upon them by the construction of railroads, many of which are of doubtful utility. As a necessary consequence of the railroad taxes upon their lands, and the excessive charges imposed for the transportation of their produce, their farms do not appreciate in value, and the anticipated rapid increase in population and wealth of the locality is not realized. From a view of the whole situation, regarding the benefits accruing to the people from these grants to railroad companies, with what the people have paid for them, the withholding of these railroad lands from market, and the high prices charged per acre by the companies, together with the unjust privileges granted to these corporations, we conclude that the people of the new states and territories have not received an equivalent for the grants made to railroad companies. We are aware that a different opinion prevails, and that our conclusions will be controverted; but when it is remembered that thousands of people have left Iowa, or, coming from the east, have refused to settle in Iowa, because of the fact that lands could only be had by purchase from railroad companies at extravagant prices, and that for this reason vast tracts of Iowa lands are yet unimproved which would now be settled upon and cultivated had they not thus been withdrawn from the market, it must be admitted that Iowa would have had a greater population, and greater wealth, had her railroad companies received no land grants. And what is true of Iowa is also true, as a general rule, of other states and territories. Perhaps an exception exists in the far western territories, whose gold and silver mines are in themselves an exception to the general rule, and where agriculture has but few followers. The advocates of the railroad land grant and subsidy bond system for the settlement of a country have the following to say in its favor. We quote from the _Railroad Manual_ before referred to: "One of the most remarkable things connected with the progress of this country is the construction of railroads in advance even of the lines of settlement of our people. Such result is largely due to the grants made by government of lands for the encouragement of these works. Never was a policy more wise or more beneficent." No instances can be shown where railroads have been built in advance of the line of settlement, save when the objective point could only be reached by passing over an unsettled country, as in the case of the road from the Atlantic to the Pacific states. In all other cases, railroad companies have awaited the settlement and development of the country, and followed, not led, our pioneer corps. Of the wisdom and beneficence of these grants the people can judge from their acquaintance with the workings of the system, and the wholesale robberies and frauds practiced by the companies, to some of which we have already referred. Again the author says: "The government has been greatly the gainer in a pecuniary point of view, as it was enabled to sell the land reserved at twice the established rate." It is not clearly seen how this _gain_ is made. The people, who are the government, give away one-half of their lands, and then pay into their treasury just money enough for the remaining half to make up the value of the lands they have given away. The only gain the government has made (and this is not a pecuniary one) is the reflection that the men who have received these large grants have become rich, while the people have been deprived of their lands at the original price; they must pay for one-half of them a double price, and for the residue just what they can buy it for from the corporations to whom their servants have donated it. This author says: "That the public has reaped the advantage of the construction of some ten thousand miles of railroads, that otherwise would not have been built." Is this true? In Iowa the land-grant roads were not built as fast as other roads having no grants, and the companies finally completed them because they were about to lose their lands by longer delay. And in other states and territories some of these land grant roads are dragging their slow length along, and are being constructed only as fast as the lines are settled with a sufficient number of inhabitants to make the business of the roads profitable. After showing that in certain states and territories there is now one mile of railroad for each three hundred inhabitants, the author adds: "This is certainly a most wonderful exhibit, and is one no other nation can display, and which in our case has only been secured by the wise, benevolent policy of our government, which in this way did more to give remunerative employment to the poorer classes than any other legislation could adopt." It is certainly a "_most wonderful exhibit_." It is one that "_no other nation can display_;" but its wisdom and benevolence are matters of grave doubt. If we add to this "wonderful exhibit" the $65,000,000 stolen from the people by corrupt men and interested legislation, with the $3,126,000 annual interest that the whole people are taxed to pay, because the Pacific railroad companies and the congressional Credit Mobilier have wrongfully appropriated this vast sum to their own use, it presents truly "a _most_ wonderful exhibit," without a parallel in any country in the world, but its wisdom and benevolence are certainly wanting. CHAPTER VII. THE CREDIT MOBILIER, AND A VILLAINOUS CONTRACT. We now approach one of the grandest schemes for defrauding a people ever conceived in the breast of the speculator. Before considering the Credit Mobilier, and to show the utter rottenness of the policy of affording congressional aid to railroads, indulge us in a brief re-survey of the subsidy bonds issued to the Pacific railroad corporations. We may concede that at the date of the original charter of these companies, there were no congressman interested in the grand scheme, and that it was planned by outside combinations. The charter received various amendments, with additional aids and privileges after members of congress had became interested; these amendments were made while directors of, and contractors for, these Pacific roads were occupying seats in congress. Whether or not they voted for these amendments does not appear, but it is certain they did not oppose them. As we have already shown, the aid voted by congress was ample to build and equip these roads, taking the statements of the Railroad Manual upon the character of the country through which they pass, and the average cost of railroads, as the basis for our conclusion. The companies could have built the roads without using the capital stock they reported as paid up. The Union Pacific has made no public exhibit of the cost of its portion of the roads, and from this fact we are at liberty to infer that an honest exhibit would present a bad look. Facts enough have been disclosed to prove that the stockholders and directors of the Union Pacific company had formed a combination for the purpose of defrauding the government and the people. The letting of the contract for the construction of its division of the roads presents one of the most perfect combinations for private speculation at the expense of the public that was ever planned or executed. When this division was completed, according to the statements of the company it was indebted in the sum of $112,911,512. The cost of the whole line of road, at the highest price per mile given, to-wit, $50,000, would amount to less than one-half of the reported indebtedness of the company, including the paid-up capital reported as $37,000,000. To show what was done with the subsidy bonds issued to this company, we must look at the contract made by the directors with Oakes Ames for the construction of six hundred and sixty-seven miles of the road, and the subsequent transfer of this contract to the Credit Mobilier of America. Let us remember that, in addition to the bonds issued by government to the amount of $16,000 per mile for a part of the road, $32,000 per mile for a part, and $48,000 per mile for a part, congress, by a subsequent amendment to the charter, allowed the company to issue its own bonds, for a like amount per mile, as first mortgage bonds, and that at the time of making the contract now under consideration, the directors of the company, and of the Credit Mobilier were the same persons, some of whom were at that time and since members of congress. With these facts before us, we can see the reason for the excess of the debts over the cost of the road, as well as for many of the peculiar features of this singular contract. The executive committee of the company was composed of the following named persons: Oliver Ames (brother of Oakes Ames, contractor and member of congress), C. S. Bushnell, Springer Harbaugh, and Thomas C. Durant. The seven directors of the company who were made trustees, and who signed the transfer of the contract to the Credit Mobilier, were Thomas C. Durant, Oliver Ames, John B. Alley (a member of congress), Sidney Dillon, C. S. Bushnell, H. S. McComb, and Benjamin E. Bates; and the president of the Credit Mobilier was Sidney Dillon. The grant of lands and bonds was made to the railroad company, as well as the right to issue their first mortgage bonds. All of the contracting parties were directors in the railroad company, and in the Credit Mobilier. As a body they controlled the whole matter. If a desire to protect the best interests of the company, and to deal honestly with the public had actuated these men, and not a determination to plunder the public, no reason can be shown for this strange contract; but if it was the intent of a combination of men to defraud the public and the government, then the contract and its assignments can easily be accounted for. All of the stockholders of the company, at the time the contract was made with Oakes Ames, by indorsement on the back of their certificates of stock, appointed the above named seven trustees, irrevocably to represent their stock at all business meetings and elections of directors, during the existence of the Ames contract. The following is a correct copy of the contract and assignments: THE "OAKES AMES CONTRACT."--ITS ASSIGNMENTS TO THE CREDIT MOBILIER. Agreement made this 16th day of August, 1867, between the Union Pacific railroad company, party of the first part, and Oakes Ames, party of the second part, witnesseth: That the party of the first part agrees to let and contract, and the party of the second part agrees to contract, as follows, to-wit: _First._ The party of the second part agrees and binds himself, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns to build and equip the following named portions of the railroad and telegraph line of the party of the first part, commencing at the one-hundredth meridian of longitude, upon the following terms and conditions, to-wit: 1. One hundred miles at and for the rate of $42,000 per mile. 2. One hundred and sixty-seven miles at and for the rate of $45,000 per mile. 3. One hundred miles at and for the rate of $96,000 per mile. 4. One hundred miles at and for the rate of $80,000 per mile. 5. One hundred miles at and for the rate of $90,000 per mile. 6. One hundred miles at and for the rate of $96,000 per mile. _Second._ At least three hundred and fifty miles shall be, if possible, completed and ready for acceptance before the first day of January, 1868, provided the Union Pacific railroad company transport the material. The whole to be constructed in a good and workmanlike manner, upon the same general plan and specifications as adopted east of the one-hundredth meridian of longitude. The party of the second part shall erect all such necessary depots, machine shops, machinery, tanks, turn tables, and provide all necessary machinery and rolling stock at a cost of not less than $7,500 per mile, in cash, and shall construct all such necessary side tracks as may be required by the party of the first party, not exceeding six per cent of the length of the road constructed, and to be constructed under this contract. The kind of timber used for ties and in the bridges and in its preparation, shall be such as from time to time may be ordered or prescribed by the general agent, or the company, under the rules and regulations and standard as recommended by the secretary of the interior, of the date of February--, 1866. _Third._ Whenever one of the above named sections of the road shall be finished, to the satisfaction and the acceptance of the government commissioners, the same shall be delivered into the possession of the party of the first part, and upon such portions of the road, as well as on that part east of the one-hundredth meridian now completed, the party of the first part shall transport, without delay, all men and material to be used in construction at a price to be agreed upon by the party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns, and the general agent, but not less than cost to the party of the first part. _Fourth._ The party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns, shall have the right to enter upon all lands belonging to the company, or upon which the company may have any rights, and take therefrom any material used in the construction of the road, and may have the right to change the grade and curvature within the limits of the provisions of the act of congress for the temporary purpose of hastening the completion of the road; but the estimated cost of reducing the same to grade and curvatures, as established by the chief engineer, or as approved from time to time by the company, shall be deducted and retained by the party of the first part, until such grade and curvature is so reduced. _Fifth._ The party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, is to receive from the company and enjoy the benefits of all existing contracts, and shall assure all such contracts and all liabilities of the company accrued or arising therefrom for work done or to be done, and material furnished or to be furnished, for or on account of the road west of the one-hundredth meridian, crediting, however, the party of the first part on this contract all moneys heretofore paid or expended on account thereof. _Sixth._ The party of the second part, for himself, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, stipulates and agrees that the work shall be prosecuted and completed with energy and all possible speed, so as to complete the same at the earliest practicable day, it being understood that the speed of construction and time of completion is the essence of this contract, and at the same time the road to be a first-class road, with equipments; and if the same, in the opinion of the chief engineer, is not so prosecuted, both as regards quality and dispatch, that then the said party of the first part shall and may, through its general agent or other officer detailed for that purpose, take charge of said work and carry the same on at proper cost and expense of the party of the second part. _Seventh._ The grading, bridging, and superstructure to be completed under the supervision of the general agent of the company, to the satisfaction of the chief engineer, and to be of the same character as to the workmanship and materials as in the construction of the road east of the one-hundredth meridian. It is, however, understood that all iron hereafter purchased or contracted for, shall be of the weight of not less than fifty-six pounds to the yard, and to be fish bar joints. _Eighth._ All the expenses of the engineering are to be charged and paid by the party of the second part, except the pay and salary of the chief engineer and consulting engineer, and their immediate assistants, and the expenses of the general survey of the route. _Ninth._ The depot buildings, machine shops, water tanks, and also bridges shall be of the most approved pattern, and they, as well as the kind of masonry and other material used, shall be previously approved by the general agent and chief engineer of the company, and all tunnels shall be arched with brick or stone, when necessary for the protection of the same. _Tenth._ Payments to be made as the work progresses, upon the estimates of the chief engineer, in making which the engineer shall deduct from each section its proportion of the cost of equipment not then furnished, station buildings, superstructure, and cost of telegraph, but all materials delivered or in transit for the account of the company may be estimated for. _Eleventh._ Payments hereon shall be made to the party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, in cash; but if the government bonds received by the company cannot be converted into money at their par value net, and the first mortgage bonds of the company at ninety cents on the dollar net, then the said party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns shall be charged thereon the difference between the amount realized and the above-named rates; provided the first mortgage bonds are not sold for less than eighty cents on the dollar, and if there shall not be realized from the sale of such bonds an amount sufficient to pay the party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, for work, as stipulated in this contract, and according to the terms thereof, then such deficiency shall from time to time be subscribed by said party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, to the capital stock of said company, and proceeds of such subscriptions shall be paid to said party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, on this contract. _Twelfth._ On the first one hundred miles on this contract, there shall be added to the equipment now provided for and intended to apply on this section as follows, viz: Six locomotives, fifty box cars, four passenger cars, two baggage cars, and a proportionate amount of equipment of like character be supplied to the second section of one hundred miles, after the same is completed. _Thirteenth._ The amount provided to be expended for equipment, station buildings, &c., shall be expended under the direction of the party of the first part, and in such proportion for cars, locomotives, machine shops, station buildings, &c., and at such points as they may determine; the party of the first part to have the full benefit of such expenditures without profit to the contractor, or they may, in their option, purchase the equipment and expend any portion of said amount provided at any point on the road where they may deem the same most advantageous to the company, whether on the section on which said reservation occurs or not. _Fourteenth._ The telegraph line is included herein under the term "railroad," and is to be constructed in the same manner and with similar materials as in the line east of the one-hundredth meridian. The said parties hereto, in consideration of the premises and of their covenants herein, do mutually agree, severally, to perform and fulfil their several and respective agreements above written. This contract having been submitted to the executive committee by resolution of the board of directors, August 16, 1867, and we having examined the details of the same, recommend its execution by the proper officers of the company with the Hon. Oakes Ames, the party named as the second part. OLIVER AMES, C. S. BUSHNELL, SPRINGER HARBAUGH, THOMAS C. DURANT. _Executive Committee Union Pacific Railroad Company._ _Resolved_, the foregoing contract between the Union Pacific railroad company and Oakes Ames, referred to the executive committee by a resolution of the board, August 16, 1867, to settle the details, be approved, and that the proper officers of the company be instructed to execute the same, subject, however, to the written approval of the stockholders of the company, as understood by the board of directors when the same was voted upon. _Resolved_, that the option to extend this contract to Salt Lake be referred to the board, with recommendation that said option be accepted. ASSIGNMENT OF CONTRACT TO SEVEN TRUSTEES. Memorandum of agreement, in triplicate, made this 15th day of October, 1867, between Oakes Ames of North Easton, Massachusetts, party of the first part, Thomas C. Durant, of the city of New York; Oliver Ames, of North Easton, Massachusetts; John B. Alley, of Lynn, Massachusetts; Sidney Dillon, of the city of New York; Cornelius S. Bushnell, of New Haven, Connecticut; Henry S. McComb, of Wilmington, Delaware, and Benjamin E. Bates, of Boston, Massachusetts, parties of the second part, and the Credit Mobilier of America, party of the third part. That whereas, the party of the first part has undertaken a certain large contract for the construction of certain portion therein named of the railroad and telegraph line of the Union Pacific railroad company over the plains and through and over the Rocky mountains, which will require a very large and hazardous outlay of capital, which capital he is desirous to be assured of raising, at such times, and in such sums as will enable him to complete and perform the said contract according to its terms and conditions. And whereas, the Credit Mobilier of America, the party of the third part, a corporation duly established by law, is empowered by charter to advance and loan money in aid of such enterprises, and can control large amounts of capital for such purposes, and is willing to loan to said party of the first part such sums as may be found necessary to complete said contract, provided sufficient assurance may be made to said party of the third part therein, that said sums shall be duly expended in the work of completing said railroad and telegraph line, and that the payments for the faithful performance of said contract by said railroad company shall be held and applied to reimburse said party of the third part for their loans and advances, together with a reasonable interest for the use of the money so loaned and advanced. And whereas, said party of the third part fully believes that said contract, if honestly and faithfully executed, will be both profitable and advantageous to the parties performing the same, and therefore willing to guarantee the performance and execution of the same for a reasonable commission to be paid therefor. And whereas, both parties of the first and third parts have confidence and reliance in the integrity, business capacity, and ability of the several persons named as parties of the second part hereto, and confidently believe that said persons have large interests as well in the Union Pacific railroad company as in the Credit Mobiler of America, they will execute and perform the said contract, and faithfully hold the proceeds thereof to the just use and benefit of the parties entitled thereto. Therefore, it is agreed by and between the said parties of the first, second, and third parts hereto as follows; that is to say: That said Oakes Ames, party of the first part hereto, hereby, for and in consideration of $1.00 lawful money of the United States, to him duly paid by the party of the second part, and for divers other good and valuable considerations herein, thereunto moving, doth hereby assign, set over, and transfer unto the said Thomas C. Durant, Oliver Ames, John B. Alley, Sidney Dillon, Cornelius S. Bushnell, Henry S. McComb, and Benjamin E. Bates, parties of the second part, all the right, title, and interest of, in, and to, the said certain contract heretofore made and executed by and between the Union Pacific railroad company and the said Oakes Ames, bearing date the 16th day of August, 1867, for the construction of portions of the railroad and telegraph line of said railroad company, to which contract reference is herein made for them, the said parties of the second part, to have, and to hold the same to them and their survivors and successors forever in trust. Nevertheless, upon the following trusts and conditions and limitations, to-wit:-- 1. That they, the said parties of the second part, shall perform all the terms and conditions of said contract so assigned in all respects which in and by the terms and conditions thereof is undertaken and assumed and agreed to be done and performed by the said party of the first part herein named. 2. That they, the said parties of the second part, shall hold all the avails and proceeds of the said contract, and therefrom shall reimburse themselves and the party of the third part hereto, all moneys advanced and expended by them, or either of them, in executing or performing the said contract, with interest and commission thereon as hereinafter provided. 3. Out of the said avails and proceeds to pay unto the parties of the second part a reasonable sum as compensation for their service, as such trustees, for executing and performing the terms and conditions of this agreement, which compensation shall not exceed $3,000 per annum to each and every one of the parties of the second part. 4. To hold all the rest and residue of the said proceeds and avails for the use and benefit of such of the several persons holding and owning shares in the capital stock of the Credit Mobilier of America on the day of the date hereof, in proportion to the number of shares which said stockholders now severally hold and own, and for the use and benefit of such of the assignees and holders of such shares of stock at the times herein set forth, for the distribution of said residue and remainder of said avails and proceeds, who shall comply with the provisions, conditions, and limitations herein contained, which are on their part to be complied with. 5. To pay over on or before the first Wednesday of June and September each year, or within thirty days thereafter, his just share and proportion of the residue and remainder of the said proceeds and avails as shall be justly estimated by the said trustees to have been made and earned as net profit on said contract, during the preceding six months, to each shareholder only in said Credit Mobilier of America, who being a stockholder in the Union Pacific railroad shall have made and executed his power of attorney or proxy, irrevocable, to said several parties of the second part, their survivors and successors, empowering them, the said parties of the second part, to vote upon at least six-tenths of all the stock owned by said shareholders of the Credit Mobilier of America, in the capital stock of the Union Pacific railroad company, on the day of the date hereof, and six-tenths of any stock in said Union Pacific railroad company he may have received a dividend, or otherwise, because or by virtue of having been a stockholder in said Credit Mobilier of America, or which may appertain to any shares in said Union Pacific railroad company, which had been so assigned to him at the time or times of the distribution of the said profits as herein provided; and this trust is made and declared upon the express condition and limitation that it shall not enure in any manner or degree to the use or benefit of any stockholder of the Credit Mobilier of America who shall neglect or refuse to execute and deliver unto the said parties of the second part his proxy or power of attorney, in the manner and for the purpose hereinbefore provided, or who shall in any way, or by any proceeding, knowingly hinder, delay, or interfere with any execution or performance of the trust and conditions herein declared and set forth. And the above transfer and conveyance of said contract is made upon these further trusts and conditions, to-wit:-- 1. The said parties of the second part, their survivors and successors, trustees as aforesaid, in all their acts and doings in the execution and performance of said contract, and in the execution of their several trusts and conditions herein set forth, shall act by the concurrent assent of four of their number, expressed in writing, or by yea and nay vote, at a meeting of said trustees, either or both of which shall be recorded in a book of proceedings of said trustees, kept for the purpose by their secretary, and not otherwise. 2. Said parties of the second part shall keep an office in the city of New York for the transaction of the business incidental to said trust. Meetings of said trustees may be held on call of the secretary on request of any two of their number; such call may be made personally or by mail. 3. The said trustees shall appoint a competent person as secretary, who shall keep a faithful record of all their acts, proceedings, and contracts, in books to be provided for that purpose, and shall cause to be kept suitable books of accounts and vouchers of all their business transactions, which books shall at all times be open to the inspection of any of said trustees. 4. The said trustees shall cause a monthly statement to be made, showing the amount due from the Union Pacific railroad company on account of work done or equipment or material furnished under the contract, according to the estimates of the engineer of the Union Pacific railroad company, as provided in said contract, a copy of which statement shall be furnished to the Credit Mobilier of America. And the above transfer and conveyance of said contract is made upon the further trust and condition:-- 1. That in case of death, declination, disability, by reason of sickness or absence from the country for the space of six months, or neglect to fulfil the duties and obligations of said trust for the same time by either of said trustees, the remaining or surviving trustees may declare the place of said trustee to be vacant, and to fill such vacancy by vote in manner aforesaid. 2. That in case any one of said trustees shall wilfully neglect or evade the performance of his duties as such trustee, or shall wilfully attempt to hinder, delay, obstruct, or interfere with the execution or performance of said contract, or the due execution or performance of said trust and conditions, according to the true intent thereof, or shall appropriate to his own use or benefit any money or other valuable thing belonging or appertaining to said trust, fund, or property, he shall not be entitled further to act as such trustee, or to receive any of the benefits of said trusts, either as shareholder in said Credit Mobilier of America, or otherwise. The parties of the second part do hereby accept the said trust, and agree faithfully to execute and perform the same according to the terms, conditions, and limitations herein set forth. The party of the third part, in consideration of the premises, hereby agree to advance, as upon a loan, to the said parties of the second part, their survivors and successors, all such sums of money, and at such times as maybe necessary, to enable said trustees, economically and promptly, to execute and perform the conditions of said contract, upon the call of said parties of the second part, their survivors and successors, such sums never to exceed in the whole the amount provided for in said contract, to be paid by the Union Pacific railroad company, for the execution and performance thereof, and to receive therefor interest at the rate of seven per cent per annum, payable semi-annually, on each sum so advanced, until the same are repaid. And said party of the third part do further agree, for the consideration aforesaid, and for an amount equal to two and one-half per cent on the amount to be by them advanced, to be paid to them as commission, to, and do hereby guarantee unto, the parties of the first part and second part, the due performance and execution of the said contract, according to its terms and conditions, and do indemnify and hold harmless the said parties of the first and second part of and from all cost, liability, loss or damage to them, or either of them, arising from or on account of said contract, and to the faithful performance of the agreement, contracts, and conditions herein above specified to be done and performed by each. And this conveyance and transfer is made upon the further trust and condition. That the trustees shall adjust and pay over to the Credit Mobilier of America such portion of the net profits of the work done and material furnished on the first one hundred miles west of the one-hundredth meridian, as was done and performed prior to January 1, 1867. In witness whereof, the party of the first part, the several parties of the second part, in their own proper persons, have hereunto set their hands and seals, and the party of the third part has caused these presents to be executed by its president, attested by its secretary with the seal of the said company, on the day and year above written. OAKES AMES, THOMAS C. DURANT, OLIVER AMES, JOHN B. ALLEY, SIDNEY DILLON, CORNELIUS S. BUSHNELL, H. S. MCCOMB, BENJAMIN E. BATES. Signed, sealed, and delivered in presence of CLARK BELL. The Credit Mobilier of America, by its president, SIDNEY DILLON. Attest: BENJAMIN F. HAM, _Assistant Secretary_. The first noticeable feature of this instrument is that the directors of the company contract with one of their own body to build six hundred and sixty-seven miles of its road. Second, that they agree to pay to one of their own body nearly double the actual cost of the work. Aside from these facts, nothing striking appears in the contract. It is dated August 16, 1867. It was approved by the directors, and on the 15th of October following, only two months after its execution, it was assigned to the seven trustees for the consideration of one dollar and diverse other good and valuable considerations. These trustees agree to perform Oakes Ames' contract, but upon consideration that they shall hold all the avails and proceeds of the contract, reimburse themselves and the Credit Mobilier for all money expended on said contract, with interest and commission, and reserve to each of themselves $3,000 per year for services. The trustees are to hold all of the residue for the several persons possessing and owning stock in the Credit Mobilier, or to their assigns, but upon condition that all stockholders in the Pacific railroad company, who own stock in the Credit Mobilier, shall give an irrevocable proxy for their railroad stock to the trustees named in the agreement. The Credit Mobilier is to advance at seven per cent the money necessary for the prosecution of the work, and for a commission of two and one-half per cent, agrees to save harmless the parties of the first and second part from all loss or damages to them, or either of them, arising from, or on account of, said contract. The contracting parties are all stockholders and directors in the railroad company, and in the Credit Mobilier (whatever that may be) they are trustees for themselves. They loan to themselves the money they receive as a grant from government (voted to the railroad corporation while a part of their own members were members of congress); they pay themselves seven per cent interest for loaning to themselves their own money; also, two and one-half per cent commission for furnishing this money, donated by government, to themselves, besides $3,000 per year, each to themselves for their services in this most extraordinary transaction. In order to have funds with which to compensate themselves, they issue the first mortgage bonds on the road of the Union Pacific company to the amount of many millions, and then ask congress to relieve them from interest on the bonds received from government; and congress, composed in part of the persons signing the above quoted contract and assignment, relieves the company from $3,125,000 per year, for thirty years, and taxes the people with this vast sum, because the government requires "a _more safe and speedy_ transmission of the mails, troops, &c., across the territories to the Pacific coast." We have nothing to do with the financial operations of this company, only as far as the people are affected by them. Bearing in mind that the eight persons concerned in and signing this contract and assignment, were all directors of the Union Pacific railroad company; that four of them were the executive committee; that one of them was the contractor, and all of them stockholders in the Credit Mobilier, probably at that time constituting that entire corporation; and that seven of them were trustees for some persons, company, or corporation, or what appears still more probable, for themselves, and Oakes Ames, the contractor, and we can account for the wholesale robbery of the people, perpetrated by these eight men with the aid of congress, as above shown. But how the five non-stockholding directors, appointed by the president, who are presumed to act for the government and its interest, could have been ignorant of the whole matter, is not so easily understood. The act of congress of July 2, 1864, section 13, provides: "That at least one of said government directors shall be placed on each of the standing committees of said company, and at least one on every special committee that may be appointed. The government directors SHALL from time to time report to the secretary of the interior, in answer to inquiries he may make of them touching the condition, management, and progress of the work, and shall communicate to the secretary of the interior, at the same time, such information as should be in the possession of the department. They shall, as often as may be necessary for a full knowledge of the condition and management of the line, visit all portions of the line of road, whether built or surveyed, and while absent from home, attending to their duties as directors, shall be paid their actual traveling expenses, and be allowed and paid such reasonable compensation for their time actually employed as the board of directors may decide." If these government directors and the company observed the law, then one of them was on the executive committee of the Union Pacific company and must have known of this fraudulent contract and its assignment. If no one of them was placed on the executive committee, then in the discharge of their duty they should have reported the facts to the secretary of the interior. One of two inferences is irresistible. 1st. That they were ignorant of what it was their duty to know, or 2nd. That they were unfaithful to the public trust confided in them. Follow us a little further into this Credit Mobilier organization. It was first organized in Pennsylvania as the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency for the buying and selling of railroad bonds, advancing loans to railroads and contractors, and to do almost any kind of business except banking. The charter was granted in 1860, to Duff Green and some fifteen others, but included none of the Credit Mobilier company. In 1864 (the corporation having done nothing up to this time) the secretary of the company, supposing Duff Green (the president) to be dead, sold out the charter to George Francis Train, Thos. C. Durant, Oakes Ames, Oliver Ames, and others, and Train baptized it with the new name of, "The Credit Mobilier of America;" and then George Francis seems to have disappeared. It does not appear that any considerable amount of the capital stock was ever paid in (the whole capital stock being $5,000,000;) perhaps just sufficient to legalize their operations, to-wit, $25,000. The first business done, of which there is any record, was a contract made by the directors of the Union Pacific company with one Hoxie, of Iowa, for building 247 miles of the road, at what price per mile we cannot learn. It was not intended that Hoxie should build this road, but, as the directors of the company could not contract with themselves, it was arranged to contract with Hoxie, and then to set the Credit Mobilier to "running," and divide the spoils. With the consent of the executive committee of the company, Hoxie assigned his contract to the Credit Mobilier. The first mortgage bonds of the company were sold and sufficient realized to build forty miles of road in 1865, and in 1866 to complete the Hoxie contract. From the subsidy bonds received from government, or from some other and unknown source, the Credit Mobilier, in the year 1867, reported a paid-up capital stock of $3,750,000, and were ready for extensive operations. In pursuance of the plan formed by the executive committee of the railroad company and the owners and directors of the Credit Mobilier, the contract with Oakes Ames herein copied was made, and then assigned. The Credit Mobilier was so used as to _do good_. It was "placed where it would do the most good." It does not appear that this corporation had any considerable financial transactions, or did any particular business save in connection with the Pacific road; yet it proved to the holders the most prolific stock of any on record. The Ames contract was assigned to Sidney Dillon, and others, trustees, on the 15th of October, 1867. It declared dividends as follows: Dec. 12, 1867, Union Pacific R. R. bonds, valued at $2,700,000 Jan. 3, 1868, " " " " " 637,500 June 17, 1868, " " " " " 525,000 June 17, 1868, cash 2,250,000 July 8, 1868, " 1,125,000 ---------- Total of dividends in seven months $7,237,500 In addition to the above, another dividend was declared July 3d, 1868, of $2,390,625 in bonds, which were pronounced bogus, or worthless. It is thus seen that the directors of the Pacific railroad company, who were also the Credit Mobilier--trustees for themselves, and some of them members of congress--by the aid of congressional legislation, and the fiction of the Credit Mobilier, contracted with themselves, agreeing to pay themselves extravagant prices for building their own road, and getting their pay as a donation from the public treasury, and were able in seven months to declare dividends to themselves of nearly two hundred per cent upon the reported paid up capital, which capital was also obtained from government. If the reader has followed us in the statements we have made relative to the land and bond subsidies granted to the Pacific railroad companies, he will not wonder that the indebtedness of these companies, after the completion of the roads, and after the receipt from government of more than their entire cost, nearly doubles the amount necessary to build them, had honesty and economy been used in their construction. We might pursue this subject further, but we think enough has been shown to convince the impartial reader, that whatever the pretence for making these grants, the real object has been to enrich unscrupulous and dishonest men at the expense of the public; and that this corrupting power has become so great that those who occupy high and responsible places in the government have become partners in these wholesale robberies of the people. This conclusion becomes irresistible when we find members of congress voting government aid to railroad companies in which they are stockholders and directors at the time the aid is voted. CHAPTER VIII. HAS CONGRESS THE POWER, UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, TO CREATE OR ENDOW PRIVATE CORPORATIONS? To answer this question intelligently, we must examine the powers granted to the United States, as well as the rights, powers, and relative duties of the state governments. The state governments are supreme in all matters affecting the public and the people, save in those which, by the expressed provisions of the constitution, are delegated to, or conferred upon, the general government. The powers thus delegated to the general government are all of a public character, such as states individually could not control or execute, and such as were deemed essential to our national existence. All privileges, rights, and powers, not deemed essential to the successful administration of the national government, were reserved to the states and to the people. It follows that the general government is one of limited powers; that while it is supreme in all matters delegated to it by the constitution, and while in its several departments it can exercise all such implied powers as are necessary for the complete execution of those expressly delegated, neither the executive, legislative, nor judicial departments can assume the exercise of powers not conferred upon them by the express provisions of the constitution; and that while the state governments can exercise all powers not expressly prohibited in their constitutions, because of their general sovereign character, the general government is limited to such as are expressly granted. If these propositions are correct, then the general government has no authority for creating private corporations. We are aware that congress has assumed the negative of these propositions, and has granted charters to some of the most gigantic corporations of the country, under which charters they have organized and are doing business in states which, according to our interpretation of the constitution, as above stated, should have the absolute control of such companies. We shall attempt to demonstrate that the acts of congress granting charters to railroad and other private corporations are usurpations of power, in conflict with the provisions of the constitution, destructive of the rights of the people and of republican government. What are the powers delegated to the general government by the constitution in questions of this character? Article I. Section 8, contains, among others, the following, as some of the powers conferred upon congress: "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;" "To establish post offices and post roads;" "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof." The same section gives congress power to provide for organizing the army, &c.; and, in time of war, extraordinary powers, controlled only by the necessities of the case, are vested in congress. If congress have power under the constitution to charter private corporations, it must be derived from, or contained in, the provisions above quoted. Article IX. of the constitution reads as follows: "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." And Section 10 reads as follows: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." And the framers of the constitution it would seem, for the purpose of making the line of demarcation between the powers of the states and the general government still more plain and definite, provided as follows: Article IV., Section 2: "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." We think that the above quotations from the constitution (and we have quoted all having any relation to the question we are discussing) prove conclusively that the powers conferred upon congress by the constitution are limited; that while within the scope of the delegated powers its action is supreme, there is inherent in it no general power to legislate upon subjects not named in the constitution, or not included by necessary implication. On the contrary, all the powers not expressly given are reserved to the states or to the people. Is the authority to charter private corporations necessarily included in the delegated power to regulate commerce among the several states, or to establish post roads? We think not. What do we understand by the word "Commerce?" Webster defines it as follows: "1st. _In a general sense_, an interchange or mutual change of goods, wares, productions, or property of any kind between nations or individuals, either by barter, or by purchase and sale; trade; traffic. Commerce is _foreign, or inland_. Foreign commerce is the trade which one nation carries on with another; inland commerce, or inland trade, is the trade in the exchange of commodities between citizens of the same nation or state. 2d. Intercourse between individuals; interchange of work, business, civilities, or amusements; mutual dealings in life." And again: "To traffic; to carry on trade." In the absence of any definition given to it in the constitution, we must accept the above general definition of its meaning as being the sense in which it is used in the constitution. Respecting trade with foreign nations or the Indian tribes, it can only relate to the interchange of commodities, or purchase or sale of articles of traffic. As incidental to this power, congress can prescribe rules for the regulation of navigation upon the high seas, including police regulations on board of vessels, because the oceans are the common or public highways of all nations, and each nation navigating the same is bound to protect not only its commerce, but its citizens or subjects. Nations hold commerce with nations across and upon the high seas, the citizens and subjects of each being protected by their own government. This commerce with foreign nations is not regulated by grants of private charters, but by acts of congress is open to all alike, save where, for the encouragement of certain branches of trade, certain bounties or privileges have been granted to particular parties for a specified time. But all such grants have been to parties navigating the high seas. The control of navigable streams within the United States does not depend alone upon the powers given to congress to regulate the commerce of the country, but depends also upon the further power vesting in the general government exclusive maritime jurisdiction. If we concede that the power to regulate commerce among the several states gives congress the exclusive right to regulate the commerce carried on upon our rivers, it would not follow that the power to charter railway companies is conferred. Navigable streams are _public highways_, open to the travel of all. No man, set of men, or corporations, can claim the exclusive right to navigate these rivers, nor could congress grant such exclusive right. The duty of protecting the rights of the citizen, and of making river transportation safe, and of protecting the rights of property, demand that the national, and not the state legislature, should be supreme in this particular jurisdiction, and hence this branch of commerce is placed in the custody of the nation. But keeping in mind the definition of the word, "Commerce," let us see what is meant by the term as applied to dealings between the states. We insist that it has no reference to the construction of roads, railroads, canals, or any other ways upon which commerce might be carried, or over which articles of trade or traffic might pass, but that it refers only to the dealing of the people of one state with another; that while the people of each state are under the supreme control of their state authority, all the privileges enjoyed by the citizens of any one of the states as to residence or traffic with the citizens of another state, are to be the same. No distinction can be made, and for the purpose of carrying out this provision of the constitution, and preventing the levy of tariffs or taxes by one state upon the citizens of another state, and for the purpose of guaranteeing to all citizens of the United States immunity from these unjust discriminations, the power to regulate commerce among the states was delegated to congress. Nor does it follow, that, for the purpose of regulating commerce among the states, congress can grant exclusive privileges and monopolies in any business not confided to one state. When the constitution was adopted, each state was independent; each had all the powers and prerogatives of a nation; each was supreme within its geographical limits; each might prescribe its own rules in relation to immigrants, and to trade and traffic with other states; it might discriminate in favor of its own citizens; it might impose tariffs on foreign imports, and deal with its sister states as with foreign nations. To prevent this, and to secure to all citizens of the United States equal privileges and immunities in all parts of the United States, the provisions of the constitution we have quoted were adopted. While the independence of the states was recognized and preserved, the power to regulate commerce, among them, was delegated to congress; not the power to withdraw from the state its right to legislate upon the subject of commerce among its own citizens, or the right to protect its own citizens in their dealings with the citizens of other states; but simply providing that no discriminations should be made on account of residence, and establishing equal rights and privileges of all citizens of the United States in all the states, free from discriminations sought to be enforced under local or state statutes and regulations. Should any one state attempt to deny to the people of another state the privileges guaranteed by the constitution, then it would be the plain duty of congress to interfere and "_regulate commerce_" between these states. But while a general national law might constitutionally be enacted upon this subject, it certainly cannot be claimed, that upon the pretext of regulating commerce among the states, congress can charter railroad companies, or any other companies organized for pecuniary profit. Nor can this power be claimed under the constitutional provision for the establishment of post offices and post roads. We admit that the grant of this power carries with it all such as are incidental; that by implication it includes within its terms the carrying and distribution of the mails, and all other matter necessarily connected therewith; and that congress might build, own, and control post roads, so far as the same might be found necessary for the transportation of the mails over the territory belonging to the United States, and to provide for the use of public roads for government purposes. Public highways are free to all. Over these highways, whether on land or water, congress can provide for the transportation of the mails, troops, army stores, munitions of war, and other public property. These highways are at all times open to the public. But while this is true, it does not follow that the government of the United States can take the absolute control of these public highways, and, by act of congress, deny the states a control over those within their borders respectively. The location and establishment of public roads within a state is a part of the local or police regulation, and while these roads are free to the passage of all, they are, by the provisions of the constitution and the universally accepted custom of the country, recognized as being under the exclusive control of the states within which they are situated. The fact that congress never has taken the control of the public roads of the country is a full recognition of the exclusive right of the states to control them. Then how can it be claimed that congress, under the constitution, possesses the power to charter railroad companies? Until within the last few years, no attempt was made to grant charters to railroad companies by the general government, nor indeed were charters granted for any purpose save in relation to the financial departments, as in the case of United States banks, fiscal agencies, &c., which were chartered for the public benefit, and not as private institutions. We are not positive that the constitutionality of these railroad charters has been determined by the courts of the United States, but we are aware of the fact that congress has deemed it necessary, in almost every instance where charters have been granted and aid voted, to declare, and place upon the record as a part of the charter, the reasons for granting it. The following are the reasons assigned in some of the charters, to-wit: In the charter of the Union Pacific railroad company--"For the purpose of aiding in the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and to secure _the safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores thereon_." In the charter of the Northern Pacific railroad company: "For the purpose of aiding in the construction of said railroad and telegraph line to the Pacific coast, and to secure _the safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores_." In all other cases the above quoted statement of cause is inserted in the charters, as though the right or authority to make these grants was so doubtful that it became necessary in every case to state the reason for the grant. If the present necessities of the government demand such special legislation, then the same reasons existed from the organization of our government; and if congress possesses the power under the constitution to make these grants, and to assume the absolute control of public or private roads through the states, then from the adoption of that constitution congress could have taken the absolute control of all the public roads in all the states of the Union. Before railroads were constructed, all overland transportation of mails, troops, munitions of war, &c., was over the public highways--highways that were and still are under the exclusive control of the states in which they lie. Over these public roads and such private ways as maybe selected, government has a right to transport the mails, troops, and public property, and no state has the right to prohibit or restrict this right. Still, no power is given by the constitution, nor is there any implied, under which congress can, under the plea of rendering more safe and speedy the transportation of mails, troops, &c., grant exclusive charters and privileges to private corporations. In the nature of things, as our government is organized, the right to charter and control all corporations organized for pecuniary profit remains with the states. This power has never been delegated to the general government, nor prohibited to the states, or people. There can be no doubt upon this point, when we remember that the general government is limited to the delegated powers; and that it is supreme only in those matters which are delegated to and vested in it by the constitution. This position is fully sustained by the adjudication of the supreme court of the United States. In Marshall, on the federal constitution, page 164, we find the following: "This government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent to have required to be enforced by all those arguments which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge. That principal is now universally admitted." Again, on page 301, the author says: "In our complex system presenting the rare and difficult scheme of one general government whose action extends over the whole, but which possesses only certain enumerated powers and of numerous state governments, which retain and exercise all powers not delegated to the union, contests respecting power must arise. Were it otherwise, the measures taken by the respective governments to execute their acknowledged powers would often be of the same description, and might sometimes interfere. This, however, does not prove that the one is exercising, or has the right to exercise, the power of the other." As to the power of congress to create corporations, an argument has been drawn in its favor from the provision of the constitution, which declares that congress shall have the power of making "all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department thereof." The question before the court arose out of the attempt of the state of Maryland to tax the United States bank, a corporation chartered by congress. In this case the power was upheld on the ground that the bank was necessary in the administration of the finances of the government, that being one of the matters vested in or delegated to the general government, the power to charter the bank was incidental to the granted power. But on the question of the power of congress to create corporations, Mr. Marshall says, page 167: "The creation of a corporation, it is said, appertains to sovereignty. This is admitted. But to what portion of sovereignty does it appertain? Does it belong to one more than another? In America the powers of sovereignty are divided between the government of the Union, and those of the states. They are each sovereign with respect to the objects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other. We cannot comprehend that train of reasoning which would maintain that the extent of power granted by the people is to be ascertained, not by the nature and terms of the grant, but by its date. Some state constitutions were formed before, some since that of the United States. We cannot believe that their relation to each other is in any degree dependent upon this circumstance. Their respective powers must, we think, be precisely the same as if they had been formed at the same time. Had they been formed at the same time, and had the people conferred on the general government the power contained in the constitution and on the states the whole residium of power, would it have been asserted that the government of the union was not sovereign with respect to those objects which were entrusted to it, in relation to which its laws were declared to be supreme? If this could have been asserted, we cannot well comprehend the process of reasoning which maintains that a power appertaining to sovereignty cannot be connected with that vast portion of it which is granted to the general government, so far as it is calculated to subserve the legitimate objects of that government. The power of creating a corporation, though appertaining to sovereignty, is not like the power of making war, or levying taxes, or of regulating commerce, a great substantive and independent power which cannot be implied as incidental to other powers, or used as a means of executing them. It is never the end for which other powers are exercised, but the means by which these objects are accomplished. No contributions are made to charity for the sake of an incorporation, but a corporation is created to administer the charity. No seminary of learning is instituted in order to be incorporated, but the corporate character is conferred to subserve the purposes of education. No city was ever built with the sole object of being incorporated, but it is incorporated as the best means of being well governed. The power of creating a corporation is never used for its own sake, but for the purpose of effecting something else. No sufficient reason is therefore perceived why it may not pass as incidental to those powers which are expressly given, if it be the direct mode of executing them." Taking the above definition of corporations, and their use, in the administration of the government, we can have no difficulty in distinguishing the cases in which congress can grant charters to any company or association. It is only when some of the delegated powers require the aid of corporate acts in their administration, that the right exists in congress to grant charters, as incidental to the grants. The grants of charters to railroad companies cannot be claimed as incidental to any express delegation of power to the general government. If railroads are private property, they cannot be chartered or controlled by congress. If they are to be taken and treated as public highways, then they are as exclusively under and subject to the control of the respective state governments, as common highways. The state legislatures have exclusive control of them in either case. If they are treated as private corporations, then under the rights reserved to the states, as well as by long usage, their exclusive control is retained by the states. If they are public roads, the same local or state laws apply to them as to all other public roads. Admit that congress has the right to grant charters for railroads, then it follows that it can control them. Admit that they are public roads, and that they are to be taken and treated as common highways, and congress at once assumes the local and police regulations of all the public roads in all of the United States. To this doctrine we cannot subscribe, but insist that the exclusive power to charter and control railroad corporations remains with the people to be exercised by and under the exclusive control of the state governments. Nor can congress, rightfully, under the constitution, charter railroad corporations in the territories. The power vested in congress "to dispose of and make all needful rules respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States," does not authorize the creation of private monopolies. When territorial governments are formed, they are clothed with many of the attributes of sovereignty. These governments are at liberty to legislate and to provide for the well-being of the people, and subject to the provisions of their "organic law," have the complete control of local and police regulations. They can construct highways, erect public buildings, impose taxes, grant charters, including charters to railroad companies. That territorial governments can charter railroad companies, and that general government has so acknowledged is proven by the acts of congress in donating lands and bonds to companies chartered by territorial legislation. This was done in the case of the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western railroad company, chartered by the territorial legislature of Kansas; and other instances are common. The power to grant charters cannot vest in the states, and territorial governments, and at the same time exist in the general government, for the reason that the supreme power must exist in one or the other. If this were not so, one government could destroy what the other had created. The privileges acquired by a corporation under the one could be entirely annulled by the other. Private rights would be subject to the adjudication of two separate and distinct tribunals, created and sustained by distinct governments, the one claiming to be supreme, because the right to exercise the power had been granted to it, and the other denying such grant, and because of this denial claiming the power as still remaining with the state government. This course would be destructive of the rights of the people, as well as of our system of government. Concede to congress the right to charter railroad companies, and there is no limit to the monopolies that can be forced upon the people of the whole country. Land companies, loan, and interest companies, manufacturing companies, and in short all conceivable projects of speculation can obtain charters from congress, and our government becomes entirely personal in character, without restraint or constitutional limit. The assumption by congress of the power to create private corporations is a fatal stab at our system of government, destructive of state rights, and a wanton violation of the constitution. CHAPTER IX. STATE RIGHTS AT THE BAR OF A CORRUPT CONGRESS. None of the subjects of legislation have tended to destroy constitutional safeguards and debase public morals so much as congressional legislation, with its grants of land and bonds, and other special benefits in favor of railroad corporations. This species of legislation has well nigh destroyed republican institutions. While our government is republican in name it is in fact controlled by an oligarchy. The whole government has become a prey to the class of corporations above named, and is administered in their interest. Their influence controls the legislative department, the courts of the country, and its finances. This is a sweeping assertion, but who will deny it. Further, the very men who by their votes in congress have created these monopolies, have themselves in many instances received pecuniary consideration for their votes, either in corporate stock, or direct payment. This last assertion is now (January 9, 1873) being supported by results arrived at by committees appointed to investigate charges of corruption made against members of both branches of congress. Having assumed the right to grant charters and aid to these corporations in violation of the constitution, it was but one step further in the same direction for congress to enact other unconstitutional laws, regulating and combining railroads receiving their charters from state legislatures, laws which enable these roads to so combine their operations as to control the entire interests of the country. These acts are numerous in the published laws of congress. We will refer to some of them, and direct the reader to the following, of a general nature: On the 15th of June, 1866, congress passed the following unconstitutional act in the interest and for the benefit of railroad corporations: See Second Brightley's Digest, page 528, "That every railroad company in the United States, whose road is operated by steam, its successors and assigns, be and is hereby authorized to carry upon and over its road, boats, bridges, and ferries, all passengers, troops, government supplies, mails, freight, and property, on their way from one state to another state, and to receive compensation therefor, and to connect with roads of other states so as to form continuous lines for the transportation of the same to the place of destination. Provided, that this act shall not affect any stipulations between the government of the United States, and any railroad company for transportation and fares without compensation, nor impair or change the conditions imposed by the terms of the acts granting lands to any such company to aid in the construction of its road, nor shall it be construed to authorize any railroad company to build any new road, or connection with any other road without authority from the state in which said railroad, or connection, may be proposed." Commenting upon this extraordinary statute, the editor says: "In the preamble to this extraordinary assumption of power, on the part of the federal congress, they prefer to base their authority for it on the power to regulate commerce among the several states, to establish post-roads, and to raise and support armies. But it has been decided that the constitutional power to establish post-roads is confined to such as are regularly laid out under state authority; the government of the United States cannot construct a post-road within a state of the Union without its consent. The post-roads of the United States are the property of the states through which they pass. The United States have the mere right of transit over them for the purpose of carrying the mails; the government could not have an injunction to prevent the destruction of a mail-road." Citing the case of the Cleveland, Painesville, & Ashtabula railroad company _vs_. The Franklin canal company, in the circuit court of the United States, the editor adds: "Congress certainly can confer no rights on a railroad company incorporated by a state government, which are withheld from it by the charter of its creator." The above quoted act assumes that congress has full power to regulate the connection of railroads in the different states, as well as the carrying trade upon the same. It strips the several state governments of all power to interfere, and in case of any controversy takes from the state courts the power to determine the rights of the respective parties; the act of congress could be pleaded, and, as a necessary consequence, the United States courts would have exclusive jurisdiction. It cannot be claimed that this act can be supported under any express delegation of power to the general government, nor can it be supported as being incidental to any express grant. It is an usurpation not warranted or sustained by any part of the constitution. This one section quoted, destroys the right of any state of the Union, or of two or more of them, to legislate upon the subject of uniting or connecting railroads meeting on the lines dividing them, and also takes from the states the right to regulate the carrying trade within their own respective borders. Congress had no more authority under the constitution to enact this law, than to provide by statute for the construction of public highways when they meet upon the line dividing states, or to provide for the passage of teams from one state to another, and the transportation of freights over the common highways within or across a state. The whole power under the constitution is reserved to the states. Prior to the creation of these great railroad monopolies by congress, an attempt at such legislation would have been deemed unconstitutional, but as soon as the whole affairs of government passed into the hands of the few, and when the protection of their interests demanded it, the act was passed, and has remained upon the statute book as one of the laws of the land. This act is about the only one that openly and broadly covers the whole ground, and assumes to regulate the internal affairs of the states, but there are numerous acts passed in relation to land grants and the companies chartered by congress, which have the same effect. In some cases the absolute control of roads constructed under charters obtained from state legislatures, or under state laws, has been taken from the states by acts of congress, and placed under the jurisdiction of the general government. In most instances where this has been done, members of congress, or their near relatives, were large owners of stock in the companies to be benefited by the act. To speak more plainly, the acts granting special privileges to particular companies, and placing them under the jurisdiction of the federal government, were passed for the benefit of congressmen and others in high official position. Let us examine some of these acts. Among the stockholders and directors of the Union Pacific and its branches, there are found at least eight persons who were members of congress at the date of the act of congress creating the corporation, and also at the date of the material amendments to the charter. Some of these congressmen are still stockholders and directors, and were directors when congress released these companies from payment of interest on the bonds they had received from the government. Another land grant company having congressmen among its stockholders and directors, is the Leavenworth, Lawrence, & Galveston; also, the Iowa Falls & Sioux City; also, the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River; also, the Burlington & Missouri River; also, the Atlantic & Pacific; also, the New Orleans, Mobile, & Texas; also, the Northern Pacific; also, Sioux City & Pacific; also, the Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley. The number might be extended, but enough is given to sustain our charge. Most of the above named companies were organized under state laws, or received their charters from state or territorial legislatures. For the purpose of consummating certain speculative ends, congress has treated with contempt state laws and state authority. Where charters have been granted under state authority, and the companies were rightfully under the control of the states within which their roads were located, acts like the following have been passed by congress: "That the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western railroad company, of Kansas, are hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river, at the mouth of the Kansas river, on the south side thereof so as to connect with the Pacific railroad of Missouri;" and then follow the details for constructing and operating the road, and placing it under the control of the general government. In the case of the Central Pacific company, chartered by the state of California, congress passed the following act:-- "The Central Pacific railroad company of California, a corporation existing under the laws of the state of California, are hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph line from the Pacific coast, at or near San Francisco, or the navigable waters of the Sacramento river, to the eastern boundary of California." Substantially the same provision is found for most of the corporations above named, and in all those cases, the authority to construct the road is followed by a provision for aid by the general government. It might be pertinent to inquire why it became necessary for congress to assume the control of railroads already chartered under state authority. It cannot be claimed that the states acted without authority in granting the charter; nor can the authority of the general government to take from the states the control of railroads within their border, be supported by any grant of power contained in the constitution. On the contrary, the power is reserved to the states, and its exercise is denied to the general government. It cannot be urged that the interests of the people are subserved by this assumption of power; on the contrary, these acts of congress take from the public its rights reserved by the constitution. But one answer can be given, _these acts were passed for the promotion of selfish and corrupt ends_. In support of this, we need only state the fact, that in almost every instance where congress has attempted to re-charter companies organized under state authority, and granted them aid, members of congress who were members at the date of the passage of the acts, were stockholders, and not unfrequently directors. Some congressmen who have been members for the last ten or twelve years, are stockholders in several of the companies, and at least one member of congress of twelve years standing is now a director in at least three companies that received grants of land, one of them getting large amounts of subsidy bonds, for all of which he voted, and for which, as often as occasion served, he has used his vote and influence in procuring additional privileges. We do not claim that every member of congress is interested in railroads; but we do assert that there are many senators and representatives who are personally interested, and that the proportion is so great that whenever it is desirable to have legislation it can be obtained without difficulty. To prove that the chartering and endowing of railroad companies is one of the principal occupations of the national legislature, we have only to look through the acts of congress the last two or three sessions. At the first session of the forty-second congress fourteen railroad bills were passed, some of them conferring grants to companies yet in embryo, having no being save upon paper, but presenting "great expectations" to our congressmen, who combine the business of granting charters and building railroads, and who find no indelicacy in becoming stockholders and directors in the corporations to which they, as congressmen, have voted lands and money. Some of these roads, under the acts of congress, present great inducements for investments, and in due time will receive proper attention. The effect of this species of legislation has been most baneful. The national congress, once the most pure and patriotic body in the world, has become the headquarters of all the unscrupulous men of the nation. It is under the control of dishonest and reckless men. Elections to seats in that body have become of such value, that to secure them men do not hesitate to pay more than the salary for the entire term. Nor do candidates always pay their own money. It is often furnished by rings and interests which require special legislation. It is now well understood that senators and representatives are in the market like other commodities. The purchase is made either in large donations of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, or more from single corporations, or by shares, stock or bonds in companies chartered by congress, and afterwards fostered and protected by congressmen. So common has this practice become that it is not now considered disreputable. What in former years would have been deemed bribery and corruption are now nothing but fair business transactions. We recall a case which illustrates the purity of former legislation compared with what we see in our own day. Some thirty years ago, certain parties desired a charter for a denominational college. A Rev. Mr. Strong was appointed to visit the capital and interest the legislature in behalf of the charter. He was introduced to a Mr. Cushing, to whom he presented his case, and whom he sought to interest in favor of the grant. The grant of the charter was likely to meet with opposition, and to remove certain objections, Mr. Strong was anxious to have Mr. Cushing examine into the matter fully, and as an inducement for making such an examination he was told that the friends of the measure would compensate him liberally for the time he might spend in such examination. This Mr. Cushing interpreted as an offer to bribe a member of a legislative body, and he felt bound to resist it. Accordingly he laid the matter before the house. That body by unanimous vote, ordered the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Mr. Strong, and bring him to the bar of the house. After an investigation into the truth of the charge, Mr. S. was found guilty and publicly reprimanded by the speaker. This happened before legislators had learned to speculate upon their official position. It was in simple times, when those elected to office supposed their first duty was to serve their country, and when it was an irrecoverable disgrace to receive a bribe. It was at a time when our law-makers had too much self-respect to purchase their election with tens of thousands of dollars, and then reimburse themselves by taking stock in, and dividends from, giant corporations chartered and created by themselves. How is it now? Let the facts answer. Class or personal legislation, for special combinations, or in certain interests, is the rule, and legislation for the benefit of the whole people is the exception to that rule. Congressmen, to secure an election, expend large sums of money, and when elected their first care is to _get even_. To accomplish their purpose, they resort to unconstitutional legislation, such as granting exclusive privileges or jobs to individuals, for which indirect pecuniary consideration is received. But this alone would not suffice to reimburse them for their great outlay. The greatest source of profit to congressmen has been, and unless it is checked, will continue to be, found in railroad legislation. CHAPTER X. AN UNSETTLED ACCOUNT--A GUILTY DIRECTORY. We now invite the attention of the reader to the account as it now stands with the subsidy bonds voted by congressmen to companies in which many who voted were stockholders and directors. As the law stood prior to April, 1871, all railroad companies that had received government lands were required to pay the interest once in six months as it accrued. This interest had not been paid, and the secretary of the treasury withheld, to apply on the accrued interest, the amount earned by the different companies by the transportation of the mails, troops, &c., for government. Congress, composed in part of stockholders and directors in these same companies, passed a law ordering the secretary to pay in money to the different companies one-half of the amount thus earned, and left it optional with the companies to pay, or not to pay the interest on their bonds. This they have not done, and the interest account of these companies with the government stands about as follows:-- Central Pacific, paid $ 527,025 Bal. due $5,841,351 Kansas Pacific, " 973,905 " " 995,448 Union Pacific, " 2,181,989 " " 4,779,763 Central Branch, U. P., " 15,839 " " 477,969 Western Pacific, " 9,350 " " 358,329 Sioux City & Pacific, " 826 " " 388,780 Making the total amount of payments the sum of $3,708,935, and the amount that these companies owe government, as the accrued interest on subsidy bonds, $12,861,640. This is the amount due in July, 1872. Add the interest accruing since that date and these companies owe the government not less than $16,000,000 interest on their bonds. This amount, as well as future interest, and the principal of the bonds was at one time secured to the government; but when congressmen and their friends get a controlling interest in the companies, they procured the passage of an act, supported by their own votes, which destroyed the security held by the government, and relieved the companies of the payment of this large amount of interest, thereby compelling the people to pay it, while the stockholders, including some of the same congressmen who had voted in favor of the act, received dividends on their stock and on their _Credit Mobilier_ stock to the amount of two and three hundred per cent; thus, by the abuse of the power vested in themselves as members of congress, compelling the people to pay the interest the companies should have paid, and pocketing in the shape of dividends the money so dishonestly obtained. If we needed any further proof to establish the fact that these Pacific railroads were in fact congressional jobs, that members of congress were looking to their own interests rather than to the interests of the people, we need but glance at the interest account of the Sioux City & Pacific company. The excuse pleaded of the "necessities of government," will not avail in this instance. While the interest account of this company is about $400,000, the account for the transportation of troops, mails, &c., over its road, amounts to the sum of $1,642, one-half of which has been applied on the interest account of the company, and the other half, under the act of congress, has been paid by the secretary of the treasury to the company. The conclusion is irresistible, that the personal interest of congressmen, rather than the wants of the public, has controlled their action. Connect with the incorporation of railroad companies, and special legislation in their favor, the legislation in favor of "Indian rings," "whisky rings," "patent right combinations," and the numerous other kinds of special legislation, with the advantages presented to legislators to make personal gain from all these sources, and we can well understand why men are willing to spend such large sums to secure an election to the United States senate, or house of representatives. The baneful effects of the modern code of political morality are not seen in the legislative department of the government only. The same disregard of the rights of the people, and a determination to protect and aid combinations in their efforts toward self-aggrandizement, made at a sacrifice of those principles which are supposed to govern all persons holding places of trust, honor, or confidence, seem to influence to a great degree those holding high position in other departments of the government. The acts of congress chartering the Pacific railroad companies make it the duty of the president of the United States to appoint five government directors for these roads. Under the statutes these directors cannot own stock in the companies, nor have in them any personal interest whatever. They are supposed to be free from any bias for or against the companies: but they are appointed to represent the government, and to guard against and report to the secretary of the interior all abuses on the part of the companies, and at such times as they are required to so report, to also make such suggestions as in their opinion shall best subserve the interests of the public. It is made their duty to personally inspect the roads, during their building and after their completion. At least two of these government directors must have a place on all important committees appointed by the companies for the management and prosecution of their business. Any dishonesty on the part of the companies in letting contracts for the construction of their roads, or any misapplication of the grants made by congress, must have been known to these five government directors, or some of them, if they had properly discharged the duties imposed upon them by law. The formation of an inside ring, under the title of "The Credit Mobilier of America," composed entirely of the directors and stockholders of the Union Pacific company, the letting of the contract for the construction of the road to one of the directors of the railroad company, who was also a director in the Credit Mobilier (and a member of congress), at more than double its actual cost, the transfer of this contract to certain trustees who were directors in both companies, in the manner stated in a preceding chapter of this work, and the declaration of large dividends on the stock of the companies at a time when the work on the road was barely begun, and before any dividends could possibly have been earned,--all these facts must have been known to the government directors, and concealed by them from the government. When it is remembered that some of these government directors were members of congress at the date of the passage of the acts chartering the roads, there is but little question that the same influences controlling them in voting these large subsidies to the companies also controlled them as government directors in their supervision of the roads. This conclusion is strengthened on seeing that some of them became owners of stock in the Credit Mobilier. The same corrupting influences have been felt in other departments of the government. The abuses practiced in the collection of customs by the officers at the different ports of entry, as shown at the recent investigations made by authority of congress, are but the natural sequence of the questionable course of the legislative department. The great frauds practiced by parties having contracts for furnishing supplies to the Indian tribes are traceable to the same source. This assumption by congress of the power to grant charters to private monopolies, its unconstitutional interference in matters reserved to state control, its determination to foster these gigantic corporations by princely grants, with the corruption incident to these selfish and greedy combinations, are the direct cause of the dishonesty prevailing everywhere among our public officers, and besides other rank growth have led to the imposition of burdens upon the people, oppressive to the last degree. The controlling purpose of a large portion of those elected or appointed to government offices seems to be to accumulate wealth without regard to the propriety or honesty of the means employed. In their eagerness to benefit themselves, all consideration for the public good, or respect for their obligations as sworn servants of the people, are of secondary importance. They accept office from purely selfish motives, and enter upon their duties with the same object in view animating those who embark in trade, manufactures, or commerce, viz: private gain. Seemingly viewing the offices they hold as being their own private property, they use them as the banker uses his money--for purposes of speculation. Not unfrequently they permit themselves to be bought and sold, like any other articles of merchandise. While we do not claim that all public officers were pure prior to the legislative creation of the monopolies we have been examining, we do claim that previous to that sad departure, honesty was the rule, and not the exception. It was when congress entered upon the business of chartering railroad companies, donating public lands to them, and voting them money from the public treasury, that the rule changed; and when, in addition, congressmen became principal owners and directors in these companies, while still retaining their seats in congress, they placed themselves upon the record as unfaithful to their trust, and struck a blow at public morality which will be fatal to our popular government, unless resisted by the whole moral power of the nation. And here we might well pause, and ask, what security have the people for the continuance of republican government? These gigantic corporations are in their nature anti-republican; they tend to a centralization of power; they compel the people to submit to their demands; they are under the protection of congress, under whose special legislation they are permitted to disregard state laws; their ramifications extend throughout the country; their artifices and money control the votes of the people; they elect their friends to both the senate and house; they organize and send strong bodies of men to the lobby of congress and state legislatures, well supplied with money to obtain the passage of laws in their interest, and to prevent such legislation as would be detrimental to them, and in favor of the people; they have their friends and emissaries in every department of the government, and throughout the country, and they exercise a controlling influence not only at Washington, but at almost all the seats of state government. The offices filled by appointment of the executive and confirmation of the senate, are too often the agencies of this same influence. We would not be understood as saying that the president acts corruptly in these appointments; we mean that the influences that secure many of the presidential nominations are the same as used by these corporations in the election of _their_ senators and representatives. The appointment of judges of the supreme court of the United States has, in at least two instances, within the last few years, been made through the influence and in the interest of these monopolies. These corporations are also represented in the cabinet. It is well understood that the removal of Attorney General Ackerman, and the appointment of his successor, was done by these corporate influences. The fact that the secretary of the interior, to whom reports should have been regularly made of the progress and condition of the Pacific railroad, was silent, while private fortunes were being fraudulently taken from the public treasury, proves that he also was under the same influence. It can be accepted as an established fact, that all the departments of the government are to a great extent controlled by corporations and combinations of speculators whose interests are adverse to those of the people, and the result is, that statutes are enacted, executive offices appointed, and decisions of court rendered in the favor of these powerful classes, while the rights guaranteed to the people by the constitution are disregarded. The influence of corporations is also powerful in the administration of state governments. While no such gigantic monopolies as the Pacific railroad have been organized in any state yet, either by special charters granted by state legislatures, or under general incorporation laws, railroad corporations in large numbers have been organized, and by combining their influence, have obtained control of most of the state governments; they have been granted special and exclusive privileges, and by the use of money and patronage have been able to control state conventions, state legislatures, and state courts. As a logical result, the people are taxed, while railroad companies are practically free from taxation; subsidies to corporations are authorized and declared to be constitutional, and the people are obliged to submit to rates of charges for transportation of freight that amount to a confiscation of the farm products of the country. We need not enter into a history of state grants to railroad companies, for it is familiar to all; the same corrupt practices incident to national, attend state, legislation. In many instances, corporations have organized under state statutes, or obtained special charters from state legislatures, located their roads, procured local aid, and then obtained from congress land grants for their roads, and have thus become powerful in the states where they are located, while other companies have built their roads exclusively with the means afforded by local aid voted under state laws, and loans of money or sale of bonds; but in every instance so planning and contriving that the entire road shall pass into the exclusive control of a select few, leaving to those who furnished the local aid no rights or privileges in connection with the company, or the road, save that of paying extortionate freights and burdensome taxes. CHAPTER XI. THE SOLE PURPOSES OF TAXATION. Taxes can only be levied, and collected, for public purposes; but all the property of the country can be taxed to its entire value, when the public good requires it. The exigency demanding high rates of taxation is left to the determination of the legislatures of the states, and of the general government. No taxes can be legally levied or collected save for the support of the government, state and national, and subject to the restrictions incorporated in the constitution. All other taxes imposed upon the people are unconstitutional, illegal, and oppressive, and should be declared absolutely void. Direct taxation, for the support of the general government, has never been practiced in time of peace. The usual method for raising a sufficient revenue for its support has been by duties, or tariff imposed by acts of congress upon imports. This has always been deemed the best method for raising the revenue necessary for the support of the government. The powers and duties of the general government are limited and restricted by the constitution of the United States; and as its legislative, executive, and judicial powers are thus limited, it follows that its power to impose taxes upon the people is limited in the same manner, and that it can tax for no purpose save for defraying the expenses of its different departments in the exercise of the powers delegated by the federal constitution. This conceded, all that can be claimed by those who administer the affairs of the nation, unless they transcend the constitutional limit, is conceded. The power to appropriate the lands or money of the public to private parties or corporations not being found in the constitution, nor implied in any of the granted powers, all such appropriations are usurpations; they are donations of the people's money and property to private corporations and individuals in violation of the constitutional restrictions; and no authority is vested in congress to tax the people, either directly or indirectly, for the purpose of making return of the money and property thus wrongfully taken from them. A private corporation is not a public necessity; its franchises are private property, and even if the United States owned the whole of its stock, and took the entire control of its business, it could not become a public corporation, for the reason that congress does not possess the power, under the constitution, to create private corporations. The fact that the United States owned the stock and controlled the corporation would not impart to it any of the attributes of sovereignty, but in so far as the general government was interested in the corporation, it would be treated as any other private party, and would be amenable to the same law and subject to the same jurisdiction as private parties or individuals. If the action of the general government can confer none of the attributes of sovereignty upon a private corporation--if it has no constitutional authority to donate lands or money to railroad companies--how can it lawfully collect taxes from the people, either by direct levies, or in duties upon articles of commerce, for the purpose of re-imbursing the government for the lands donated to corporations, or to pay either the principal or interest on the bonds given to these corporations? As well might congress levy a direct tax upon the property of the people for the purpose of donating to a private party sufficient means to build a residence; there is not found in the constitution any warrant for either of such levies. Both alike are unwarranted usurpations of power, not to be justified under any grant of power from the people to the federal government. To admit that the congress of the United States possesses the power to tax the people for any purpose save for the support of the general government, is to admit that the constitution is elastic, subject to any congressional construction, and liable to be used as an instrument for promoting personal and private ends. Congress had no power to vote subsidy bonds to railroad corporations, as we have already shown; nor could it release these corporations from the payment of these bonds, and the interest as it accrues, and collect the amount from the people in duties on imports, or in any other kind of taxes. No such power was ever delegated to the general government by the people. This power cannot be found in any part of the constitution. While this is true, the people are now taxed annually to the amount of many millions of dollars to pay the interest on the bonds issued to the Pacific railroads. Taxes are also collected to the amount of $18,000,000 or $20,000,000 to pay the interest on the banking capital of the country, the stock of a gigantic corporation, chartered by congress, but in the hands and under the control of private parties and companies. While the general government, under the constitution, has the control of the money of the country, and its coinage, value, etc., and can provide such means as shall be deemed best for the administration of the national or public finances, it has no power to enter into private banking; and because it has not this power, it cannot create private banking institutions and tax the people for their support. Any tax levied upon the citizen by the general government for any purpose whatsoever, save for the necessary expenses in the administration of the same, in all of its departments, in accordance with the letter and spirit of the constitution, is without authority, and violates the fundamental law. The levy of taxes in aid of private corporations subserves none of the purposes of the government, and is the exercise of a power not possessed by congress. Our position is fully sustained by legal adjudications, and by the writings of eminent jurists. Chief Justice Marshall, in his writings upon the constitution, has considered this point. He says, on page 345 of his work: "It is, we think, a sound principle, that when a government becomes a partner in a trading company, it divests itself, so far as concerns the transactions of the company, of its sovereign character, and takes that of a private citizen. Instead of communicating to the company its privileges and its prerogatives, it descends to a level with those with whom it associates itself, and takes the character which belongs to its associates, and to the business which it transacts. * * * As a member of a corporation, a government never exercises its sovereignty. It acts merely as a corporator, and exercises no other powers in the management of the affairs of the corporation than are expressly given by the incorporation act. The government of the Union held shares in the old Bank of the United States; but the privileges of the government were not imparted by that circumstance to the bank." If there exists any authority in the general government to create a corporation for any purpose, it is in relation to the finances of the country. The necessity of a fiscal agent of some kind would seem to warrant the creation of a banking corporation. But, if the power is conceded, it does not follow that the people should be taxed to provide a bounty, payable semi-annually, to the private companies who are engaged in banking, and who alone receive the profits arising from the business. Yet the act of congress creating the banks provides for the payment of semi-annual interest on the capital invested; and this interest is collected from the people. All railroad corporations, created by act of congress, are absolutely private corporations. The insertion in the charter of the words--"to secure the more safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and government supplies"--found in all of these charters, does not change the character of the corporations. The grants are made to private parties; the roads are under their control; they receive aid from the general government, but in their own names own and control the roads, and can, at any time, dispose of the roads and franchises, and the general government has no power to prevent any action the companies may choose to adopt so long as they regard the provisions of their charters. No statesman or jurist of our country has at any time, until within the last few years, claimed that congress could create corporations for private purposes; on the contrary, in all of the earlier decisions of the federal courts, it was uniformly conceded that congress did not possess the power to create such corporations. Chancellor Kent, Chief Justice Marshall, and other eminent writers, are all agreed that, under the constitution, congress cannot create a private corporation. If congress had no constitutional right to create railroad corporations, how can it possess the power to tax the people to pay their debts? The people are now paying at least $8,000,000 per annum in shape of taxes for the purpose of liquidating the interest due from railroads chartered by congress in violation of the fundamental law of the land. This large amount of taxes is collected and applied by the general government in payment of interest due from railroad companies, because the influence of congressmen and their friends, in these companies, was sufficiently powerful to override constitutional barriers, and to procure the passage of an act enabling the parties holding the stock to pocket the earnings of their roads and make good the deficit in their interest account by taxing the people. The whole history of congressional legislation does not present a case of such entire disregard of the provisions of the constitution, and such dishonest and corrupt legislation as is contained in the acts of congress relating to the Pacific railroads. It is questionable whether another instance can be found in this or any other country, having a constitutional government, where legislators, by direct vote, have taken millions of money from the public treasury and given it to private corporations of which they were members and directors, and to make good the amount thus taken from the treasury have provided _by law_ for its collection from the people in the shape of taxes and duties! When we remember that congress does not possess the power to charter private corporations; that in so doing it violates the letter and spirit of the constitution; upon what principle can it claim the right to tax the people for the benefit of these private corporations? We repeat, no country in the world, governed by a written constitution, offers a parallel case. Not even in France, under the personal government of the late emperor, would such an unwarranted act have been attempted. We are aware that it is claimed that railroad corporations are public corporations--and this granted, taxes may be rightfully levied and collected for their benefit. But we do _not_ grant this, and shall, in the following pages, essay to demonstrate that all railroad corporations are private, being owned and controlled by private citizens, and not by the state or national government. But admitting they are public and not private corporations, the general government even then cannot legally charter or control them, because the power for that purpose has never been delegated by the states or the people; and it follows that the general government cannot rightfully impose taxes upon the people for the support of corporations over which it can have no control. If congress can levy taxes for the construction and support of railroads, and take the management and control of them, it certainly can take the entire supervision of all the highways in all the states, provide for their construction, and tax the people at will for that purpose. This being admitted, no local or police regulation in any of the states is exclusively under the jurisdiction of the state governments; but the general government may at any time take the absolute control of the governmental affairs of the several states, and thus complete the centralization of power now so rapidly developing in all the departments at Washington. The assumption of the right to tax the people for any and every purpose that to congress shall seem expedient, irrespective of constitutional prohibition, is at once destructive of the rights that were supposed to be guaranteed and preserved to the whole people by the constitution. If the will of those men who happen to occupy seats in congress (and that will too often controlled by personal interest) is to govern, then all constitutional government is at an end, and the liberty and property of the citizen have no constitutional safeguard. Taxes to the entire value of all the wealth in the country may be levied by the general government, and the citizen of this republic holds his entire estate at the will of the persons who fill the offices of the country. Under the system of congressional legislation that now obtains, the laboring and producing classes are being rapidly reduced to a state of servitude that would grace the most despotic government. CHAPTER XII. THE RIGHT OF EMINENT DOMAIN.--UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF MUNICIPAL AID TO RAILROADS. The question of taxation for the benefit of private corporations has agitated the public mind since the construction of railroads became one of the admitted necessities of the country. For the purpose of justifying and legalizing governmental aid to railroad corporations, in the various forms in which such aid has been afforded, the doctrine has obtained among the advocates of the measure that railroads are public highways, as well as a public necessity; and such being the fact, that aid in the shape of grants, taxes, and subsidies, are legal, legitimate, and proper. They draw an argument in favor of this doctrine, from the fact that legislatures, state and national, have provided by law for the condemnation of private property, for the use of the companies, respectively, upon paying the assessed value thereof; and that thus the right of eminent domain is vested in these corporations; that the right of _eminent domain_ is an attribute of sovereignty, and that the granting of this attribute to corporations imparts to them the character of public highways. They reason that because they are public highways, and the companies owning them are common carriers, taxes may be legally levied and collected for the exclusive use of these companies. They claim that because the United States, states, counties, cities, towns, and townships, have authority to construct, or to aid in constructing, common highways, they have the same right to construct, or aid in constructing, railroads. If it were not that precedent has tended to sustain this "false doctrine," we would not think it profitable to combat it. The only point in the argument in favor of this doctrine that has any real foundation, is, that railroad companies are allowed to locate their roads where they please, upon payment of the damages assessed in the manner prescribed by statute. The answer to this is, that railroads could not be built, unless the companies had permission to pass over the lands of private citizens. If the title from each land owner could be procured only by negotiation and purchase, no railroad could be constructed, for the reason that a direct or continuous line for a road could rarely be secured. Railroads are constructed to aid in the transportation of freight and passengers from one part of the country to another; to promote commerce throughout the whole country; to supply the wants of a people, just as a mill or factory supplies the wants of a particular locality. The miller constructs his dam across a stream, and, under the statutes of most of the states, he can procure the condemnation of the land of his neighbor overflowed by his dam, to his own use, upon payment of the damages assessed. It is not a condemnation for the use of the public, but for the use and benefit of the owner of the mill. The mill itself, while it is owned by a private individual, and can be sold and transferred by him at any time, is also a public benefit. Can it be said that the right of eminent domain attaches to the mill or its owner? So with railroads: They are owned by private companies--are built and controlled by them; they are of public benefit, but not owned or controlled by the public or by the state, or local authority, as in the case of public highways. Their private owners can sell them, with all their franchises, rights, and privileges. The rules for their operation, rates of charges, and all other matters affecting their government, are exclusively under the control of the parties owning them. Only that the companies may become the owners of the necessary grounds over which to build their roads, have legislatures provided that they may enter upon lands owned by private persons, and upon the payment of the appraised value thereof, appropriate a narrow strip (the width being fixed by statute) for the purpose of locating their road upon it. It is not condemned for public use, as in the case of a public highway, or where land is needed for public buildings, or any other public purpose. The assessed value is not paid by the government, or from the public fund, nor by individuals for the public; but by the private corporation out of its own purse, and for its own gain. This is what is called, by the advocates of the measure, "the right of eminent domain," a right that only belongs to the supreme government. This power cannot be exercised by local or subordinate governments, unless it is delegated to them by the supreme or superior government. While the courts in some of the states, Iowa included, have, by decisions, made this right of eminent domain attach to railroad companies, it cannot be supported on principle. To allow it to obtain is to clothe private corporations with the attributes of sovereignty. But conceding that this right attaches to these corporations, upon no principle of constitutional law or justice can the right to levy taxes upon private citizens to aid in the construction of railroads, either by acts of congress, by state statutes, or by local municipal government, be supported. And it matters not in what form these taxes are imposed upon the people, whether in the shape of municipal subscriptions of stock, to be paid by assessments upon the people; by donations of land or money, to be repaid by imposing a larger price upon lands sold to the citizen; by indirect taxation, or by special local elections held in cities, towns, or counties,--the compulsory taxation of the property of individuals, under our system of government, can only be imposed for governmental or public purposes. Taxes are levied for the support of the government in all its departments; for the construction and repairing of highways; for the building of school houses and all other edifices of a public character; for the support of schools; for the necessities of local municipal governments, and for other objects having the public weal for their sole consideration. These taxes are legitimate and proper, because the ends sought to be reached by such taxation are for the use and benefit of the whole people, and for the protection of their rights. For all of these purposes the legislature can provide an uniform system of taxation. But when the government attempts to compel A to pay a tax to assist B and C in building a railroad, it enters upon the exercise of a despotic and oppressive power, that is in conflict with the letter and spirit of our constitutions, both state and national. The legislature, by the passage of such a statute, says, in substance, to the taxpayer: "A company is formed for the purpose of building a railroad which passes through the county in which you reside. This company has not sufficient means for constructing and stocking its road. That the necessary means may be furnished to it for that purpose, you must pay a tax upon your property, amounting to one-tenth or one-twentieth of its value; this amount you must donate to the company. True, you will have no interest in this road when it is completed; you will not be a stockholder; you cannot ride in its cars, or ship your freights over the road, without paying the same price as other persons. It may cause you to sacrifice a part of your property to pay this tax, but the road will be of great advantage to the public, and you must make this donation to help the enterprise." The consequences flowing from this unjust and oppressive system of taxation are appalling. It has no foundation in right or justice. The legislature has no inherent right to impose taxes for any purpose. The authority to levy taxes is dependent upon the power delegated by the people as contained in the fundamental law. In a republic even a majority of the people do not possess the inherent right to tax the minority for private purposes. Such taxation can be imposed by no other government than a despotic one, where the will of the despot is the supreme law, and where might rather than right is the controlling power. So conscious are the advocates of this species of taxation of the fact that taxes can be levied for public purposes alone, that they deem it all-important to connect and blend in one--the right of eminent domain and taxation. But this position is not tenable. Bouvier defines the term, "Eminent Domain," as follows: "The right which the people or government retains over the estate of individuals, to resume the same for public use." Taxes are defined to be burdens or charges imposed by the legislative power of a state, upon persons or property, to raise money for public purposes. It will be seen that there is a wide distinction between the taxing power and the right of eminent domain: that while they both appropriate private property for public uses, they differ in degree. While the right of eminent domain takes from the private citizen the absolute title to property upon just and fair compensation, taxation exacts from each property owner a contribution for the support of the government, or for the benefit of the public, without any other compensation than the protection the government affords him in life, liberty, and property. Contribution for this purpose is a duty imposed upon all who are under the protection of government. A complete power to procure a regular and adequate supply of revenue forms an indispensable article in our constitution; and provisions for levying and collecting this revenue is a charge laid upon the legislative department. The levy and collection of all taxes deemed necessary for the administration of the government and for the public good, is an incident of sovereignty; but this does not extend to the levy and collection of taxes to aid private interests or enterprises. The taxing power is limited; the needs of the public fix this limit. When this is passed, the citizen is subject to continual plunder. The value of his property is destroyed; he is but a trustee holding his property subject to the will of an arbitrary power, that can at any moment call for a part or all of it. He had entered into a governmental contract for the purpose of appealing to the strong arm of constitutional law when his rights are assailed, but finds, instead of the protection he had reason to expect, an irresponsible, arbitrary, power, compelling him to divide his property with railroad corporations, or other private parties, without any consideration; not only without consideration, but the taxes illegally and forcibly taken from him are used to build up and protect a monopoly that is blasting the fruit of his labor, while it is as surely destroying constitutional and republican government. His property is taken from him by what can only be termed a superior, despotic, power, and appropriated without his consent for the benefit of a private corporation. It is not difficult to distinguish what are proper objects of public support and for which taxes can be levied and collected from those that are not, if we keep in sight the fundamental or organic law. In the formation of a republic no new rights are created. The adoption of a constitution is but declaratory of pre-existing rights and laws; its object is to define and limit the powers of the government, and to guard and protect the rights of the citizens. An eminent jurist, in speaking of the constitution, uses the following clear and forcible language: "It is not the beginning of a community, nor the origin of private rights; it is not the fountain of law, nor the incipient state of government; it is not the cause, but the consequence, of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but is the creation of their power, the instrument of their convenience, designed for their protection in the enjoyment of the rights and powers which they possessed before the constitution was made; it is but the frame-work of the political government, and necessarily based upon the pre-existing condition of laws, rights, habits, and modes of thought. There is nothing primitive in it; it is all derived from a known source. It pre-supposes an organized society, law, order, property, personal freedom, a love of political liberty, and enough of cultivated intelligence to know how to guard it against the encroachments of tyranny. A written constitution is, in every instance, a _limitation_ upon the powers of the government in the hands of agents, for there never was a written republican constitution which delegated to functionaries all the _latent powers_ which lie _dormant_ in every nation, and are boundless in extent, and incapable of definitions." Keeping in mind the distinction existing between measures of a governmental or public nature, and those that are private, and applying the above quoted definition of constitutional power, we cannot find it difficult to determine what are, and what are not, constitutional levies and collection of taxes. Another thought having weight in connection with the constitutional right to tax the people in aid of railroads, is, that minorities have the right to live, and to own and enjoy property; and the majority has no right to compel the minority to contribute aid to railroad corporations. It has always been conceded that in a republican government the majority should rule, and that their will expressed in a constitutional and legal manner should be the law of the land; yet no one claiming to respect constitutional law will contend that this will of the majority can act outside, or independent of, constitutional restrictions. If this doctrine should obtain, constitutional government is at an end; private rights are destroyed, and the unrestricted will of a bare majority becomes supreme; all the guarantees of the constitution are annulled; life, liberty, and property, are all dependent upon the popular will; constitutional safeguards are destroyed, and the stability of the government is lost. The first step in this direction is fraught with the greatest danger. When the restrictions embodied in the constitution are overridden and disregarded in one instance it affords a precedent for a second step in the same direction. Acquiescence in encroachments upon constitutional restriction by the people, undermine and absolutely destroy republican institutions and the government itself. If, for the accomplishment of some private purpose, a community, a state, or the general government disregard the provisions of the constitution, and assume powers not granted them by that instrument, they arbitrarily act the part of the absolute tyrant. And it makes no difference whether the course pursued, or the measure adopted, proves beneficial to the public, or oppressive. In the fact that it is the usurpation of an unauthorized power, lies the danger. The disregard of the limits fixed by the constitution, in the administration of the government, destroys the only guarantee the people have for the protection of their private rights. Among all the unconstitutional measures which now obtain throughout the country, the affording of aid to railroads, by the government, state and national, has proved the most burdensome to the people. Of this class of subsidies, that afforded by local, municipal subscription, with or without a vote of the people, has caused the greatest injury. A local or municipal government can lawfully impose taxes for the support of its administration, and for contribution to the general comfort and happiness of the people. It can tax for the purpose of laying out and constructing streets and public highways, because these objects are intended to be, and in fact are, open to the use of the whole people; all can use them on equal terms; they are made for the benefit of the public; each citizen has undertaken to contribute his just proportion of the expense of providing for the common, public benefit. But when a county, a city, town, or township, organized for the convenience of the people, and to more effectually protect their rights, attempts to become a stockholder in a railroad corporation, it attempts the exercise of a power it does not and cannot possess under the constitution. Municipal corporations were not created for the purposes of private speculation or private gain, but for purely and strictly government purposes. No power is granted (nor can it be implied) to county judges, commissioners, or supervisors, nor to township trustees, or city boards, to take stock in railroad corporations, or to issue bonds of the municipality in payment for such stock, for the reason that such power is not necessary for the administration of these several governments, and does not come within the limit of the powers granted by the people. We know there are many decisions of courts sustaining the position that municipal corporations can become stockholders in railroads, and may issue bonds in payment therefor, and that it is within the scope of the powers vested in such corporations to levy taxes for the payment of the bonds so issued; but we have yet to see a decision that is sustained by any provision of the constitution. Many of these decisions admit that the right to subscribe stock is not contained in the constitution, and cannot be justified on constitutional grounds. Of these decisions we shall speak hereafter, and we leave them for the present. We insist that there is no authority in the constitutions, state or national, under which any department of any of the governments can become stockholders in a railroad corporation; nor is the right to take such stock in accordance with the genius or spirit of republican government. The distinction that exists between cities and towns acting under charters, and counties, townships, school and road districts, is marked, and should be kept in mind in considering the nature of the powers possessed by each. County, township, school, and road district organizations are necessary in the administration of the laws of the state. They are at most but _quasi_ corporations; all their powers are derived from, and executed under, the general statutes of the state. They have no special grants or privileges, but are the chosen means for executing state laws. In the distribution of the powers and duties vested in and imposed upon the state governments, the duties of administering the local affairs of the counties, townships, and districts, are delegated to, and imposed upon, these _quasi_ corporations respectively. They can only exercise such powers as are necessary for the accomplishment of the objects of their creation. Their acts are the acts of the state government as applied to their respective localities. They are not clothed with any extraordinary power; nor can the state government delegate to them a power it does not itself possess. When the constitution of a state (as in the case of Iowa and other states) prohibits the state from subscribing stock, loaning its credit, or issuing its bonds to private corporations, we would at once conclude that it could not delegate authority to one of its subordinate departments to do an act forbidden to itself by the constitution. But this is what it has done, if these _quasi_ corporations possess the power to afford aid to railroad or other private enterprises. Municipal corporations, such as cities, towns, &c., act under special charters, and in some respects are sovereign. But they are governed and controlled as absolutely by the provisions of their charters, as is the state by its constitution. They can only act within the scope of their delegated powers, and in all doubtful questions the presumption is against their right and in favor of the public, for the reason that only special privileges are conferred upon them. Nor can the legislature confer upon them privileges or powers not possessed by itself under the constitution. It is then absolutely certain that neither counties, cities, nor towns can aid private corporations, or become stockholders in such corporations, unless the power has been delegated to them by the state legislature. It is equally certain that unless the state, in its sovereign capacity, possesses this power, it cannot delegate it to either counties or cities, and that when the constitution of a state forbids the exercise of a power, it includes the legislature, all the departments of the state government, all counties, cities, and towns, and all the people. All these corporations are agencies in the administration of the affairs of the public. Being political in their nature, they are entirely distinct from private corporations organized for the purpose of pecuniary profit. They are established for public purposes exclusively. Judge Dillon, in his valuable work on municipal corporations, says that "They can exercise the following powers, and no others: First, those granted in express words. Second, those necessarily or fairly implied, or incident to the powers expressly granted. Third, those essential to the declared objects and purposes of the corporation--not simply convenient, but indispensable." The same author, in treating upon aid to railroads, while admitting that the current of judicial decision is in favor of the principle that in the absence of special constitutional restrictive provisions, it is competent for the legislature to grant this power to municipal corporations, says that "Notwithstanding the opinions of so many learned and eminent judges, there remains serious thought as to the soundness of the principle, viewed simply as one of constitutional law. Regarded in the light of its effects, however, there is little hesitation in affirming that this invention to aid private enterprises has proved itself baneful in the last degree," and he adds: "Taxes, it is everywhere agreed, can only be imposed for public objects, and taxation to aid in building the roads of private railway companies is hardly consistent with a proper respect for the inviolability of private property and individual rights. Fraud usually accompanies its exercise, and extravagant indebtedness is the result, and sooner or later the power will be denied either by constitutional provision (as in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, it already is) or by legislative enactment." As we are now dealing with constitutional rights, and not with judicial decisions, we think we have fully shown that public or municipal corporations have no authority under the constitution to aid railroads by subscription of stock, or the issue of bonds, and that no authority exists for taxing the people to pay for such stock or bonds; and if it be true that counties and cities are not, and cannot be, clothed with the power to aid in the prosecution of private enterprises, it is equally true that the legislature cannot delegate to the majority of the voters of a county, city, township, or district, the authority to tax the minority for the same purpose. Legislatures cannot create new powers; they can only exercise such as they possess under the constitution. The powers not delegated by the people in the fundamental law, are retained by them. If the people are sovereign, they are the source of power, and all that is not vested in some department of the government remains vested exclusively in the sovereign. If the legislative, executive, or judicial department of the government can act independently of the restrictions and prohibitions contained in the constitution, then the will of the servants of the people is the supreme law, and the sovereign power supposed to reside in the people is destroyed, and constitutional government is at an end. Oppressive taxation imposed without authority, for private and selfish ends, if persisted in, will eventually subvert our republican institutions. This, and other unconstitutional legislation, to some of which we have already referred, has caused such a departure from the old landmarks that it is questionable if we now have, in fact, a republican government. Under the rules adopted in legislation, and the pliant decisions of courts, constitutions are made to yield to the demands of combinations, stock-jobbers, and private corporations, until we cease, as a people, to revere and respect these safeguards of our liberty. CHAPTER XIII. THE FATAL POLICY OF MORTGAGING CITIES AND COUNTIES FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF RAILROADS. The justification for the munificent grants and lavish taxation of the people in aid of railroads has been, that these roads afford the necessary facilities for transportation of freight, promote speedy communication throughout the country, provide ready markets for the products of husbandry, increase the value of property in their vicinity, and assist in improving and developing the new portions of our country. While some, or all, of these objects may have been in a degree promoted, the little good thus accomplished has been more than counterbalanced by the evils uniformly attending this species of aid to railroads. What are the evils incident to the general incorporation acts, and local taxation in favor of railroads? _First._ They take from the individual the natural and constitutional right of owning and controlling his own property, and license the agents of a county, city, or town, to incumber his property with a debt, without his consent and against his protest. _Second._ The policy engenders a rivalry between different localities, causing reckless extravagance and the creation of an immense indebtedness by public corporations. This indebtedness not unfrequently retards the settlement of the locality expected to be benefited, and depreciates instead of enhancing the value of property, for the constant and compulsory drain of the resources of the place in payment of the debt thus created can leave nothing but barrenness behind, the rule being, with but few exceptions, that non-residents hold the evidences of the indebtedness, and as a consequence, payment must be made to distant creditors. If one thinks that this is overdrawing the picture, let him examine the condition of those counties and cities that years ago loaned their credit to railroad companies, or subscribed to their capital stock. Localities less favorably situated, with fewer natural advantages, fewer miles of railroad, and with less productive countries tributary to their growth, have far outstripped their bonded neighbors in wealth, improvements, and the increased value of their property. Persons who are seeking locations dread and shun these bond-_cursed_ localities, and seek homes elsewhere. New counties far outstrip these old ones in improvement and wealth; new towns and cities spring up and destroy the business of these old bond-ridden ones, and the latter, instead of receiving the anticipated and promised increase of wealth, show a paralyzed industry and depreciated property. Localities that fifteen or twenty years ago gave promise of a prosperous future, are less wealthy, less prosperous, and in some instances less populous than when they subscribed stock, and issued bonds to railroads. For years to come, the wealth and industry of these places must suffer from the incubus of enormous taxes levied for the payment of bonds issued under the mistaken idea that great benefit was to result from the indebtedness. _Third._ It places the pecuniary interests of all of the people of the counties and cities creating this kind of indebtedness in the hands of unscrupulous and relentless non-resident creditors, mainly Wall Street stock-jobbers, who obtained it at large discounts, often at one-fourth its par value, and who own not only the county and city bonds, but control the railroads in aid of which they were issued, and so by constantly collecting from the people the oppressive taxes required to pay the interest and principal of these bonds, withdrawing the amounts so collected from circulation and sending it to the east without leaving, or ever having paid any equivalent, they are constantly impoverishing the people with the very means which were to have been sources of prosperity. _Fourth._ The aid granted to railroad companies has enabled them to get control of the commerce of the country. As a general rule, all of the railroads receiving subsidies in land, government, state, county, and city bonds, and large gifts in local taxes, have been owned or controlled by the same class of men, and not a few of the roads by the same ring or combination. Then speculators have visited all parts of the country, claiming to be men of "large hearts" who desire to benefit mankind. They talk of their large experience in railroad matters; of the great benefit the particular locality will derive from the construction of a certain line of road; of the great profit to be returned in the shape of dividends if local aid is voted, and after having by fraud, falsehood, and willful deception induced the people to move in the matter, they then turn their attention to state legislatures and to congress for more aid, and so perfect is their combination, that in almost all their attempts they are successful. Among these rings and combinations are found men to fill every department in the scheme for plundering the people. Some of them become directors in the corporations to which the aid is voted and granted, and they thus get control of the donations, grants, and bonds. Some members of the ring become agents to sell the bonds of the corporation, as well as any others received from the general or local government, and to mortgage the lands granted to the companies. Still another division of the ring become the purchasers of the bonds at their _market_ value. They all unite in this way and mortgage their roads, rights, and franchises, and construct the road, taking care that when the road is completed, the liabilities resting upon it shall be sufficient to represent its entire value. By this means they become the creditors of the counties and towns through which the road runs; they own and control the road; and the combination being the same substantially throughout the country, owning and controlling all the roads, holding and using the subsidy bonds, fixing the rates of freight and passenger transportation, they control the whole country and hold the best interests of the people subject to their will. In the prosecution of their ends they bribe local officers, state legislatures, and members of congress. To secure the election of their friends to congress, large gifts are made. In one instance one of these raiders upon the rights of the people bestowed upon a prospective United States senator, $10,000, for the purpose, as he stated, of securing friendly legislation for a certain railroad company. The pirates and robbers who prey upon mankind are not more dishonest or unscrupulous than are these rings who make the people their prey. They differ only in the degree of punishment received; the former being executed or sent to prison, while, of the latter, many are elected to congress or to other high and responsible offices, or they are appointed to high places of trust and profit in the government. If the reader will look through the _Railroad Manual_, he will find a long list of names of men, prominent now from the recent raids upon the people and public treasury, who have been engaged in the same business for at least twenty years; men whose names are now as familiar to the western people as "household words," who, like birds of prey, have flitted from one part of the country to another until their blighting influence is felt in the whole land. We are referring of course to the men who have followed the business of "organizing" railroad companies for the purpose of procuring aid in lands, bonds, and taxes, and who have devoted their energies to this class of railroads, and not to those capitalists who, with their own money and credit, have constructed their roads and pursued a legitimate business. Prominent among the men who have devoted their time and talents to railroad enterprises, will be found the names of Thomas C. Durant, John A. Dix, Henry Farnham and others, whose memory will remain fresh with western men, because of their diligence in procuring local aid to railroad companies from counties and cities fifteen or twenty years ago, and who, after obtaining such aid, by some means became the owners of city and county bonds, to a large amount, and then to prompt the people to greater diligence in the payment of taxes, levied to liquidate these bonds, applied to the president of the United States for troops to aid in their collection. Slightly varied, the same organization of men which inaugurated the system of constructing railroads through land grants, donations, and subsidies, is still in the same business. With their headquarters in New York and Boston; with Wall Street as the principal depot for all railroad stocks and bonds, as well as the bonds of the United States, and of such states, counties, and cities as have been duped by them, these _raiders_ upon the treasury and resources of a people have taken the absolute control of the railroad interest of the country, and "run it" for their own exclusive benefit, to the injury of the country and the absolute destruction of the agricultural interests of the great west. By having placed in their hands the large grants of land and subsidies voted to railroad corporations, they acquired the means of controlling the principal roads throughout the country. Roads in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and in other states and territories, are owned and managed in the exclusive interest of capitalists in the eastern cities who have no interest in the communities where these roads are located, save to realize large dividends by extortions and oppressions. All of the roads receiving large grants and subsidies, whether from the general or state government, or as local aid, are in the hands of this class of men, with their fiscal and transfer agencies in the cities above named. This statement has its illustration in the Kansas City, St. Joseph, & Council Bluffs company, which has five directors in Boston, two in New York, one in Michigan, and one in Missouri--Fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston. Peoria & Bureau Valley company has its principal office in New York; Chicago & Northwestern--Financial and transfer office, Wall street, New York; Dubuque & Southwestern--all of the directors, save one, and its financial agency, in New York; Atchinson, Topeka, & Santa Fe company--fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston; Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio company--Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Leavenworth, Lawrence, & Galveston company--Fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston; Kansas City & Sante Fe company--Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Cedar Falls & Minnesota company--All of the directors reside in New York; Iowa Falls & Sioux City company--Of the directors, John B. Alley, Oliver Ames, P. S. Crowell, and W. T. Gilden, reside in Massachusetts, J. I. Blair in New Jersey, and W. B. Allison and Horace Williams in Iowa--Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Colorado Central company--Of the directors, Oliver Ames, Frederick L. Ames, and four others, reside in Massachusetts, and the fiscal agency is in Boston, and the principal office in California; Cedar Rapids and Missouri River company--John B. Alley, Oliver Ames, and nine other of the directors are in the eastern states, and James F. Wilson, and three others, are of Iowa; Northern Pacific company--Principal office, New York; Hannibal & St. Joseph company--Fiscal and transfer office, New York; Burlington & Missouri River company--Fiscal and transfer office, New York; Union Pacific (central branch)--All but two of the directors in Washington City and the east, and principal office in New York; Union Pacific--Among the directors are Oliver Ames, Oakes Ames, and eleven others in New York and Massachusetts, one in Illinois, and G. M. Dodge in Iowa--Fiscal agency, Boston; transfer offices, Boston and New York; Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley company--John B. Alley, of Boston, John I. and D. C. Blair, of New Jersey, C. G. Mitchell, of New York, and three Cedar Rapids men, directors (this is a part of the Sioux City & Pacific road); Winona & St. Peters company--Fiscal and transfer office, Wall street, New York; Burlington & Missouri River (in Nebraska)--Principal office, Boston; Sioux City & Pacific company--Directors: Oakes Ames, and six others, in the east, and G. M. Dodge, of Iowa--Fiscal and transfer office, Boston; Missouri River, Fort Scott, & Gulf company--Fiscal and Transfer office, Boston; Central Pacific company--Fiscal offices, San Francisco and New York; [A]New Orleans, Mobile, & Texas company--Oakes Ames and twelve other directors, resident in New York and the east, and two in New Orleans; principal office, New York; Houston & Texas company--Fiscal agency and transfer office, New York; Chicago & Northern Pacific Air Line company--Principal office, New York; Elizabeth, Lexington, & Big Sandy company--Principal office, New York; Dubuque & Sioux City company--General offices, Dubuque, Iowa, and New York. [B]Texas and Pacific company--Principal office, New York. [A] NOTE.--This company has a donation from the state of Louisiana of $3,000,000; a subscription of stock by the same state to the amount of $2,500,000; and the same state has indorsed the company's bonds to the amount of $12,500 per mile. This company has also received other large sums in municipal aid and other donations. [B] NOTE.--This company has a grant of 13,440,000 acres of land, and other aid. We might continue the above list indefinitely, but think we have extended it sufficiently to sustain our charges. If the reader is desirous of learning who compose these various companies, the Railroad Manual will disclose the same set of leading men, divided into three or four principal squads or companies, who raid from one end of the country to the other; control all the roads that have received aid, and at once place them under the direction of the central railroad combinations in Boston and New York; diverting the grants and donations supposed to have been made for the benefit and in the interest of the people, to their own selfish purposes; making the aid thus granted a means of oppression to the people, rather than an agency for their relief. CHAPTER XIV. THE IMPOVERISHING TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.--THE WAREHOUSE CONSPIRACY. One of the great evils resulting from this bonded subsidy system of building railroads, is that it gives to those who manage them the control of the whole carrying trade of the country, and enables them to impoverish the great agricultural population of the west and south. The wealth of the United States lies in its agricultural products. The greater portion of the people are engaged in agricultural pursuits. Good markets and cheap freights are of the utmost importance to agriculture. However abundant may be the crops, unless a market can be reached without a sacrifice of one-half the product in the shape of freights and commissions the husbandman will be impoverished. If the farmers, the tillers of the soil, do not receive a fair remuneration for their work, all other industrial interests will suffer with them; anything that tends to deprive the producer of the value of his product, tends to the impoverishment of the whole country. Any system of laws, regulations, by government, or combinations of men, or corporations, that are oppressive to the producer, oppress the whole people. It matters not whether these oppressions are in taxes, tariffs, or charges for transportation of the farm product; no matter in what shape it comes, the result is the same. The great oppression now being practiced upon the people is in the enormous charges made by railroad companies for carrying freight. The charters, grants, subsidies, and privileges given to these companies have enabled them to organize a powerful monopoly, through which they demand and receive for transporting meats, grains, and other farm products from the west to the eastern markets, at least one-half the value thereof. The charges of these monopolies are arbitrary, and often fixed by the value of the different kinds of grain carried by them. For instance, they charge one-third more per ton for carrying wheat from the west to the east than for corn and oats; it being worth more in market, they ask a larger dividend from it. It can be carried as cheaply as oats or corn, but, because of its value, will bear a greater charge, and still leave one-half of its value for the producer. There is no good reason why a railroad company should charge thirty cents per hundred for carrying wheat from Muscatine (Iowa) to Chicago, when it charges but twenty cents for carrying oats and corn over the same road, the same distance. Yet such is the fact. Those who are in the interest of these monopolists talk about cheap freights; they argue that railroads can transport freights much cheaper than it can be done over ordinary highways. Let us turn again to the Railroad Manual, and see how the matter is treated. Says the author: "The cost of transporting Indian corn and wheat over ordinary highways will equal twenty cents per ton per mile. At such a rate, the former will bear transportation only 125 miles to a market where its value is equal to seventy-five cents per bushel; the latter only 250 miles when its value is $1.50 per bushel. With such highways only, our most valuable cereals will have no commercial value outside of a circle having a _radii_ of 125 miles and 250 miles, respectively. Upon a railroad the cost of transportation equals one and one-fourth cents per ton per mile. With such a work, consequently, the circle within which corn and wheat, at the price named, will have a marketable value, will be drawn upon a _radii_ of 1,600 and 3,200 miles respectively. The arc of a circle with a _radius_ of 125 miles is 49,087 square miles; that of a circle drawn upon a _radius_ of 1,600 miles is about 160 times greater, or 8,042,406 square miles. Such a difference, enormous as it is, only measures the value of the new agencies employed in transportation, and the results achieved compared with the old." Here the fact is acknowledged that freights can be transported over railroads for one and one-fourth cents per ton per mile. At this rate, a ton of freight transported from Muscatine, Iowa, to Chicago, would cost less than $2.50. This is what the advocates of aid to railroad companies publish to the world as a fact, and from it deduce the argument in favor of increased facilities for their construction, with greater privileges to be granted to the companies constructing them. The same rate of charges for transportation from the state of Iowa to the city of New York would not amount to more than from twelve to fifteen dollars per ton, and would allow the producer a fair price for his product. But while it is admitted that the above stated amount will compensate the railroads for transporting freights, the amounts actually charged range from twenty-five to fifty dollars per ton from Iowa to Chicago, with a proportionate increase to New York and other eastern cities. Where commerce is open to competition, a fair remunerative price for carrying freights is all that is demanded or paid. If the railroads of the country were not owned and controlled by the same combinations; if they in any degree answered the ends anticipated by the public when their charters were granted and privileges were bestowed upon the companies constructing them, these excessive charges would not be made or paid. We have attempted to show that all the railroads in the country are owned, controlled, and operated in the interest of eastern capitalists, with their headquarters in New York or Boston; and that the only interest these capitalists have in the producer is to extort from him all they can get, even at the risk of ruining the whole country. These monopolists, taking advantage of the great privileges granted them, and of the necessities of the agricultural and producing classes, have combined, and defying all competition, as well as the legal restrictions sought to be placed upon them, are now, and for some time past have been, charging such unjust rates for transportation as to render the farm products of the west of little or no value. Corn, worth from sixty to seventy cents in New York, is worth only from fifteen to twenty-five in Iowa--two-thirds of its eastern value being absorbed in charges for transportation, storage, &c. Wheat, worth from $1.50 to $2.00 in New York, is worth but from ninety cents to $1.25 in Iowa, the difference being absorbed in charges for transportation, storage, commissions, and in passing it through elevators. It will be seen that these monopolists who have combined for that purpose are systematically robbing the farmer of about one-half of his crop. After he has labored diligently during the season, and harvested his crops and prepared them for market, because of the privileges granted to these monopolists he must divide with them, giving them one-half, or let it go to waste, and suffer his family to want for the necessaries of life. The combination against him is so perfect he is without remedy. All other means of transportation have been superseded by railroads, and he is powerless to resist. The banditti who raid upon the country, and levy tribute upon the inhabitants by force, are no greater robbers or oppressors than these monopolists. Indeed the wrongs practiced by the former are less to be dreaded than those practiced by the latter. The people, supported by natural and common law, as well as by statutes, can rid the country of the bandit; but the monopolist has become so powerful that he defies the people, moulds the statutes and decisions of courts to suit himself, and compels the whole country to submit to his extortions. No one would wish those engaged in transporting freights from the west to the east to lose money in the business. On the contrary, the people desire that railroad carriers should receive a fair and liberal compensation in their business, and upon the capital invested. But when it costs but $30,000 per mile to construct and stock the railroads, and when for the purpose of illegitimate gain the persons owning and controlling them water the stock, and add to the actual cost fictitious and imaginary items, that it may appear that these roads have cost fifty or sixty thousand dollars per mile, then issue to themselves or their agents bonds to meet these fictitious amounts, and annually pay to themselves the interest on these bonds, and to increase the value of these bonds declare dividends upon the whole stock, it will readily be seen why the producer does complain of the high rates now charged for transporting his products to market. These companies make it impossible to do an honest business and show dividends, or ever pay the interest upon the bonds they have issued. If it be true that the charges for freights cannot be reduced on railroads, two things are demonstrated: First, that the published statements of the costs of carrying upon railroads are untrue; and second, that railroads have entirely failed to supply the necessities of the country. If we are to depend upon railroads to carry the agricultural products of the country to the seaboard, all hope of competing with other countries in European markets is at an end. If the cost of carrying a bushel of wheat from Iowa to New York is to remain as at present, one of two alternatives is presented. Either the producer must sell at ruinous rates, or a home market must be found for his crop; for the large amount charged for carrying it to the coast, added to the ocean freight, destroys all hope of a foreign market, save in times of failure of crops elsewhere. We now complain of our lack of shipping upon the ocean, and of the fact that the balance of trade is against us. With our large annual product of cereals, meats, cotton, and yield of precious metals, the balance of trade is in favor of England; and American shipping, once the equal of England's, is now classed with only third and fourth rate nations. One of the chief causes of this deplorable state of affairs is the absolute control obtained by these petted monopolists over our inland commerce, and their tyrannical extortions in rates for transportation. We have spoken of the rates of charges from the west to the east. We need not go into details in this matter, for every farmer knows from experience what proportion of his crop railroads demand as their share. If he does not, let him look at his crib of corn, worth in New York from seventy-five cents to one dollar per bushel, and in Iowa from fifteen to twenty cents. Three-fourths of his crop is what these corporations, _these great blessings to the country_, as they claim to be, demand of him for carrying his one-fourth to market, provided he will, at his own proper cost, load his whole crop at the place of shipment, and unload it when it reaches its destination; or, what is worse for him, permit it to go into the company's storehouse. While this state of things lasts, it is not a question as to how much the producer is increasing in wealth, but how long will he be able to pay his taxes and keep his family from starving? If he is in debt, he is without hope of paying. No king, emperor, or despotic sultan, would dare to extort from his subjects three-fourths of the productions of their toil; yet this oligarchy, composed of men who, from long practice, have come to look upon the people as their vassals, and the fruits of their labor as lawful spoils, demand and receive as their toll from one-half to three-fourths of the entire farm products of the country. The consolidation is now so perfect, that these railroad kings can dictate to the people how much they shall receive for their products, and how much they must pay for transporting it to market. Any one of the railroad kings of New York, by a telegraphic dispatch to the west, can depress the price of grain one, five, or ten, cents per bushel. The order is made at headquarters, and in one hour from the time it is made the farmer in the west who is about to sell his one thousand dollars' worth of wheat must take nine hundred dollars for it, because this railroad king has sent word west that he must have another one hundred dollars added to the already enormous charges for transportation. Unless this combination can be broken up and destroyed, and they who own, manage, and control the carrying trade of the country forced to act honestly, there is no prosperous future for the laboring and producing portion of the people; they must remain bond-servants and vassals of this railroad oligarchy now controlling the country. Another evil resulting from this railroad system, directly affecting the producer, is the elevator and warehouse system, put in operation, supported by, and prosecuted in the interest of, this monopoly. As a necessity in shipping and handling grain and other farm products, there must be at shipping points, as well as at the great grain depots, warehouses, storehouses, and elevators. If these were owned and controlled by individuals, unrestricted by railroad companies, they would be of great benefit to the producer; but such is not the fact. Go to any way-station on the roads, or to any of the more prominent points, as well as to the great grain depots, and you will find an arbitrary and oppressive rule adopted, which demands of the producer a further dividend from his products. At unimportant points and way-stations, the warehouses and elevators are built upon the company's depot grounds, and, if not owned by the company, are built under an agreement that there shall be a division of the receipts; and in order to make it mutual, the elevator company, or warehouseman is to charge certain rates on all grain passing through their hands; and the railroad company is to receive on board their cars no grain that has not paid its duty to the elevator or storehouse. Whether it is stored or not, whether it passes through the elevator or not, this arbitrary toll or levy must be paid before it can be shipped. If the farmer deliver it directly on board the cars of the company, he must pay these charges the same as though he had delivered it to the warehouseman. He cannot avoid this extortion, for the only possible way he has to get his grain to market is to ship it over the road, and this he cannot do unless he pays this charge. But by far the greatest imposition is practiced at the great grain depots at Chicago, New York, and other cities. The immense daily receipts at these great depots demand immense warehouse and elevator facilities. Large numbers of elevators and warehouses were provided and used--formerly by individuals; and while warehousemen dealt individually with the public, there was but little abuse; competition was sufficient to insure reasonable charges. The owner of grain, upon its arrival at its destination, could avail himself of any competition among warehousemen, and select such as his judgment approved or his interest prompted. But a different rule now obtains. These railroads do not stop half way. Their combination for carrying the product of the country is perfect; but another combination will afford them an opportunity for extorting from the producer an additional portion of his crop in the shape of storage. To effect this object, the different warehouse companies in the principal grain marts have consolidated or "pooled" all their interests, and in combination with the railroad companies have pursued, and are pursuing, a course of extortion which is oppressive upon the producer. When his grain reaches its destination, it must go into a warehouse; he is in a worse situation now than when he shipped it; then he had the option to keep it, or submit to the first levy in favor of the warehouseman; but he is now entirely helpless in the hands of the _ring_ formed to rob him. Without asking his consent his grain is taken to such warehouse as the railroad agent directs; it is seized by the warehousemen and stored at such ruinous rates as to compel him to sell at once, or have the small portion of the crop which he sowed and harvested, and which thus far the railroad combination has graciously allowed him to retain, absorbed by elevator and warehouse charges. He is obliged to use all these agencies or let the crop go to waste on his hands; and these agencies are all owned and controlled by this vast, this gigantic corporate power, created, enriched, and protected by state and national legislation, and constantly guarded by the decisions of the courts, state and national. Indeed, the old despotic maxim, "The king can do no wrong," that his acts cannot be questioned, seems to have descended to these monopolies. They are protected by government, and, as the case now stands, _their servants, the people_, must be content, because all hope of relief from efficient action on the part of either the legislative or judicial departments of the government is denied them. CHAPTER XV. A NEW AND FALSE PRINCIPLE IN HYDRAULICS--WATERED STOCK--ITS UNLAWFUL PROFITS THE SOURCE OF EXTORTIONATE TARIFFS--THE "FAST DISPATCH" SWINDLE. We have attempted to show some of the oppressions of the present railroad system upon the agricultural interests of the country, and, at the close of our last chapter, were treating of freights, warehouse charges, &c. Closely connected with these latter charges is another abusive and fraudulent practice, which threatens not only to still further oppress the people, but also to more closely combine the power now so rapidly and surely destroying our republic. I refer to what is known as "Dispatch Companies." To fully understand the object and effect of these companies it will be necessary to look a little further into the management of railroads, and the methods adopted in their balance sheets for showing the cost of their construction, the amounts of paid-up capital, and their total indebtedness. These balance sheets do not present the truth in any instance, and have not that purpose, being only an exhibit that will apparently justify the many extortions and deceptions practiced by these corporations. The actual cost of constructing and stocking the roads is not given; instead, we have the cost as represented by the stock and bonds issued and _watered_. For a clear understanding of this book-keeping, let us examine the cost of some of the roads as the same is given to the public, and compare it with the actual cost as shown by other evidence. The "Central Pacific" will do for one illustration. The Central Pacific is eight hundred and eighty-one miles in length. The cost of the road as given is $120,432,717, or $136,700 per mile. The actual cost per mile, taking the whole length of the road into consideration, was less than one-half the amount reported. This information we get through reliable channels, and is undoubtedly correct. The evidence induces the belief that the cost was less than $50,000 per mile, and less than $50,000,000 for the whole road. The company report a capital stock of $54,283,190, and a funded debt of $82,208,000. They also report the liabilities of the road at $136,491,190, being more than $80,000,000 above the actual cost, and $16,000,000 more than the reported cost. The stock of this company was watered to so great an extent, that to pay the interest on the funded debt, and declare a dividend on the stock, and pay operating expenses, and other contingencies, the road must earn at least fifty per cent per annum. Or to put it in plain language, the company must defraud the public in unjust and extortionate charges. The "Sioux City & Pacific" is the pet road of Massachusetts and Iowa congressmen. The cost of this road per mile, as shown by the report of the company, is $34,547. This cost is represented by paid-up capital--$2,067,600, and first mortgage bonds--$1,629,000. The road is one hundred and seven miles long. The actual cost of this road was less than $30,000 per mile.[C] Aside from these government bonds, the reported cost of the road shows that the stock has been _watered_. [C] NOTE.--This company received $16,000 per mile, government subsidy bonds, amounting in the aggregate to $1,712,000, which does not appear in the report. The Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific railroad company has, from Chicago to Davenport, one hundred and eighty-four miles of road, and in Iowa three hundred and sixty miles, making five hundred and forty-four miles in all. The total cost as reported, is $28,496,999, or the sum of $52,384 per mile. The actual cost of the Illinois portion, as shown from official reports, did not amount to $30,000 per mile, and the Iowa extension cost still less, but including the bridge at Davenport, the cost will approximate to $30,000 per mile, making the total actual cost $15,320,000, showing that the stock of this road has been watered to the amount of $13,000,000. The Iowa portion of this road received a grant of five hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, and aid by county and city subscriptions amounting at least to $500,000, that do not appear in the published statement. The Iowa Falls & Sioux City road is under the special care of congressmen. It has one hundred and eighty-four miles of road, but no rolling stock. The total cost as given is $7,585,000, or $41,222 per mile, while the actual cost was about $31,000. The stock was watered to the amount of $1,800,000, and this, too, after having received a grant of land to the amount of one million two hundred and twenty-six thousand four hundred and six acres. We might continue this list, but think we have referred to a sufficient number for our purpose. It will be seen, and is now pretty well understood, that the cost of railroads as reported by the companies is not their actual cost, but includes large amounts that are pure fictions--an increase of the capital stock, no part of which is used or needed in the construction of the road, stock that is not even paid up, but is distributed among stockholders in proportion to the amount of _bona fide_ stock each one holds in the company. The capital stock of the company, and bonds issued by it, are supposed to represent the cost of the company's road, rolling stock, &c. But few roads in the country fail to earn large dividends on this actual cost, and but for the custom of watering stock, would show fair profits after running expenses, repairs, &c., are paid. If these corporations were prohibited by statute from increasing their capital stock above the actual cost of their roads, less money would be required for transportation of freights, and there would be no need of resorting to dispatch companies, or any other ring combinations for the purpose of extorting unjust amounts for transportation. But these combinations do not construct roads, simply for the purpose of operating them; this is but a secondary consideration. The main object is to speculate in stock and bonds. Wall street being the grand center for this kind of speculation, the company, in order to profit by sale of its bonds, must make a showing in this grand mart of receipts sufficient to command public attention, the rule being that stocks and bonds appreciate in value in market in proportion to the dividends declared upon their earnings. They who control these roads have two objects in view: first, to add to their capital stock; and second, to make dividends upon such increase of stock. If a line of road cost $2,000,000, and the company owning it can by any means make it pay dividends on three or four millions, they can issue to themselves stock representing this increase. Having thus increased their stock, under the pretense that they wish to construct more road, or improve or repair what they already have, they issue their bonds to the amount of the increased stock (sometimes to an amount equal to more than their entire capital) and put them upon the market. The first object is to get dividends upon whatever stock they have paid up (if any is paid up), and next to make their roads earn enough to pay the interest on their bonds, and then, if possible, to force the earnings of their roads to a point where dividends can be paid on the increase of stock. Having increased their capital stock, and issued and sold their bonds, they are in no haste to add to, or improve or repair, their roads; for they have already consummated the object in view, to-wit: made in cash the market value of their bonds. This same operation is repeated as often as their capital stock will bear reducing, and in some instances it has been repeated until the stocks and bonds became almost worthless. This species of speculation does not add one dollar to the wealth of the country, nor aid commerce. It only enriches that class of speculators who prey upon the public. We have shown that one and one-fourth cents per mile per ton will compensate for transporting freights over railroads, provided the business is conducted fairly and honestly, and we can now begin to understand why such enormous rates are charged. The roads must earn enough to pay the interest upon all the bonds sold and upon the capital stock issued by these companies. The people, the producers, are taxed for this purpose. One-half of the products of every farm in the west goes into the pockets of these Wall street speculators, and the rates for transportation are increased in the same proportion that these stocks and bonds are increased. When more money is demanded in Wall street, telegrams are sent throughout the country by these railroad kings to their agents and employes to advance the rates on transportation. This reduces the price of the farm products, and puts the earnings of the farmer into the pockets of the railroad monopolist, and the stock and bond gambler in Wall street. It would look as though the combinations of this oligarchy were perfect; that the system of extorting from the people and robbing the producers could not be improved, and that these most unscrupulous oppressors ought to be satisfied. Such is not the case. Either because they wish to have fewer numbers with whom to divide the spoils, or because they have reduced the value of their stocks and bonds until it is necessary that their roads pass under other management, or because they must have still higher rates for transportation, of late a new combination for transportation has been formed, called Dispatch agencies or companies--a kind of "Credit Mobilier" arrangement. These dispatch companies are comparatively new in the west, and we know but little of their organization save that it costs still more to ship with them than with railroad companies. These dispatch agencies are not formed to compete with railroad companies in the transportation of freights, nor are they, in any measure, rivals or opponents of railroad companies. In the nature of things there must be perfect accord between these two corporations, for the railroad companies could and would at once destroy the dispatch business, if the same in any manner conflicted with the interests of railroad managers. The dispatch companies depend entirely upon the railroad companies for cars, locomotives, and railroads for carrying their freight. Enough is known of railroad management to satisfy the most skeptical, that the organization of dispatch companies is for purposes other than the more expeditious transportation of freight. These dispatch companies are composed mainly of railroad directors and superintendents, with a few figure heads to represent the outside world. After the formation of the dispatch companies, contracts for the use of cars, locomotives, and roads are made upon the same principle and for the same objects as in the case of the Union Pacific railroad company and the Credit Mobilier company. The directors of the railway company, representing the company, contract with themselves as a dispatch company, to supply themselves cars, locomotives, and roads for the prosecution of the business of the dispatch company, and for a certain consideration agree to pay themselves, as directors of the railway company, for what is so leased to themselves as a dispatch company; and then in order to promote the business interests of the dispatch company, and secure to themselves as its directors higher rates for transportation of freight, they make it a point at all times to give the preference to the said dispatch company. As a result of this arrangement the dispatch companies monopolize the principal part of the business. They are in appearance opposition lines to the roads on whose tracks they are carried, and are really so, when the interest of the railroad stockholders not concerned in the dispatch companies are considered. These stockholders get their dividends upon their capital stock and their share of "watered stock" and bonds, but do not participate in the profits of the dispatch business. Like the Credit Mobilier, it pays large dividends which it extorts from the people, charging even higher rates than the railroad companies; but it only divides among its members, and not with the stockholders of the railroad company whose track it uses. The interest of these stockholders is not considered. They have built and equipped the road, and selected their directors and managers; but these managers and directors turn the road over to a hostile company, composed of themselves and select friends. To promote the business of the dispatch companies, their trains are transported from one end of the railroad to the other in less than half the time required to transport a train of freight cars belonging to the road. The effect of this course of procedure is obvious. Shippers, finding that these railroad managers discriminate against the cars belonging to the road proper, and that they grant extraordinary favors and facilities to the _opposition_ lines, quit patronizing the former and do business with the dispatch companies. The result is that the dispatch companies now control the freight business, and the railroads have, as a rule, quit providing themselves with freight cars. When applied to for cars, the answer is, "We have none," while at the same time the side tracks are filled with freight cars belonging to these dispatch companies, demanding much higher rates than the regular charges. At the first glance we fail to understand why a course so suicidal to the best interests of the railroad company is pursued by its directors and managers, nor can we readily comprehend why they permit these dispatch companies to monopolize their tracks and destroy the business of their roads. We think we can solve the problem. These managers of the railroads, and such stockholders as are admitted to a participation in the conspiracy, are the proprietors and incorporators of the dispatch companies. After payment of the running and other expenses of the road, and their own salaries (fixed by themselves) the dividends on their railroad stock is small. Their position as stockholders in both the railroad and dispatch companies is the same as was that of the stockholders of the Pacific railroad companies and the Credit Mobilier, who could well afford to sacrifice the interests of the road and its stockholders who had no interest in the Credit Mobilier, provided they received large dividends from their Credit Mobilier stock. So, in organizing the dispatch companies and giving them the preference over the roads, with the absolute control of the freighting business, while the railroad stocks pay no dividends and depreciate in value, and the roads and rolling stock are being worn out, the dispatch business thrives and pays large dividends to this inside ring--comparatively small in numbers--which controls the road, and in addition to preying upon the public, so arrange the business as to exclude the stockholders of the road from any share in the profits of the dispatch company. Having oppressed the public by extortionate charges for transportation, increased the stock of the railroad company to an amount that precludes profitable dividends, even from the highest of tariffs, and issued and sold bonds of the company to so large an extent as to make it impossible to pay the interest on them, and at the same time meet the running expenses of the road, including their own salaries as officers and managers, having, in short, loaded the railroad companies with burdens greater than they can bear, as a last master stroke of financiering they organize themselves into dispatch companies, and while they enrich themselves they reduce the railroad companies in which they are managing directors to absolute bankruptcy. The stockholders who, confiding in the integrity of these men, elected them directors and managers, are swindled out of their legitimate dividends, their stock becomes worthless, debts accumulate against the company, locomotives, tracks, and cars are worn out in transporting freights for the dispatch company, at rates ruinous to the railroad company, and as a grand _finale_ the road passes into the hands of these conspirators, under the orders or judgments of courts. In the meantime shippers are compelled to pay double prices for freights, because the _railroad companies_ have not the necessary facilities for shipping; all has passed into the hands and under the control of the dispatch companies. By a mere fiction, the managers of the road contracting with themselves as dispatch companies, a competition is permitted to take the control of the carrying trade over the road, control the track and rolling stock, as well as the officers of the railroad company, destroy their business and drive them into bankruptcy. Those not in the secret of the organization fail to comprehend its necessity; why, for example, a train of cars run in the interest of the dispatch companies can travel at double the rate of speed of the trains run in the interest of the railroad company, or why higher rates for transportation should be taxed and paid. The only solution we can give is, that it presents additional means for taking from the producer an additional portion of his product, in the shape of charges supposed to be paid to a company organized for the purpose of aiding in the transportation of freights, but which is, as a matter of fact, a combination in the interest of the managers of the road with the real purpose of making personal gain to themselves at the sacrifice of the interests of the stockholders. As a result of this new mode of conducting business, let us see how the price of freights is affected. During the summer and fall of 1872 the price of freights by water from Chicago to New York was $4.25 per ton, and by railroad from $7.00 to $8.00. With the close of navigation the rates, under the management of the dispatch companies, advanced to from $25.00 to $28.00 per ton. While the railroad companies can carry for $7.00, the dispatch companies charge $25.00. The margin for profit on the stock of these dispatch companies promises to equal the dividends of the Credit Mobilier stock, and from this showing we can have some idea of the robbery being practiced upon the people, particularly the farmers. Well may the producers of the west complain of these swindling monopolies, and band together for mutual protection. CHAPTER XVI. A PRIVILEGED CLASS--THE MONOPOLISTS RELIEVED OF THE BURDENS OF TAXATION--AN OUTRAGE UPON REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. Another evil resulting from the railroad system of the country is the partiality shown railroad companies in the matter of taxation. The constitutions of all the states provide that the levy of taxes shall be uniform; and in contemplation of law each owner of property subject to taxation must bear a proportionate share of the taxes levied for the support of the government. Indeed, it is a part of the compact entered into among all civilized people, that each will contribute a proportionate share towards defraying the expenses of the government under which he lives, and which affords him protection, and secures to him the enjoyment of his rights as a citizen. In a republic where all have, or are supposed to have, equal rights, this contribution to the support of the government is a duty weighing upon all, and to make a discrimination in favor of any man or class of men, or of any companies or corporations, contradicts the fundamental principles of republican government, and recognizes favored or privileged classes. To compel the property of individuals to alone bear the burdens which should be shared by that of corporations violates both the letter and spirit of the constitution. All public burdens should bear equally upon all people, associations, and corporations. The legislature has as much right to say that the property of one-half of the citizens of a state shall pay the entire expenses of the government, while no taxes shall be imposed upon the property of the other half; or to provide that they who engage in particular branches of business shall supply all the means for defraying the expenses of the government, as to provide for the partial or total exemption from taxation of the property of corporations. Yet as a matter-of-fact railroad corporations are not required to pay their proportionate share of taxes, nor is their property subjected to the same rules of taxation as that of individuals. In almost all the states these corporations are taxed upon their earnings; their own officers keep the books, and once in each year make a showing, and upon this showing a small tax is levied. If they are honest and present a correct statement of the earnings of their road, the amount of tax fixed by the legislature of the state is paid; but if they choose to suppress the truth a less amount must suffice. Take the state of Iowa as an illustration. Prior to 1872 railroad property in this state did not pay more than one-seventh as much tax upon its value as the property of individuals, and under the present law it does not pay more than one-half as much. Yet no property in the state has yielded such large profits on its actual cost and value as railroad property. Iowa had in 1872, subject to taxation, 3,160 miles of railroad. Take the value of their roads as fixed by the companies and reported in the Railroad Manual, and the average per mile is over, rather than under, $40,000. Then for the purpose of taxation reduce the valuation to about the same rates as are fixed upon the property of individuals, and the average would be about $18,000 per mile. This would make the grand aggregate for tax purposes $56,000,000. Now if a two per cent tax (which is less than the average rate for all purposes) was assessed upon this property, the revenue to the state and counties would amount to the sum of $1,120,000. But if the same rule of taxation were applied alike to all property in the state the rate demanded of individuals would be less than at present, while railroad companies would only be required to do what the constitution exacts of them, to-wit: pay their just proportion of taxes for the support of state government. Is it any wonder that we complain of high rates of taxes when so large a portion of the property in the state is exempt from taxation? In Muscatine county there is at present about eighty-five miles of railroad. At an assessed value of $18,000 per mile the total for taxation would be $1,530,000, which, on a two per cent tax would afford a revenue of $30,600, of which, if divided between the state and county as other taxes are divided, there would be paid into the county treasury about $24,500, which would be a large increase over the amount now paid to the county. The same would be the result in all the other counties in the state were the manner of taxing railroads so changed as to make no discriminations in their favor. The same kind of discrimination is made in most of the states in favor of the railroads and against the people. No good reason has ever been given for this kind of discrimination, nor can it be supported or justified upon principle or upon constitutional grounds. The value of a mile of railroad can be as easily ascertained as that of an acre of ground, or of a house and lot. The depot, and station grounds and buildings can be assessed as readily as any grounds or buildings. The value of their rolling stock is always included by the companies in giving the cost of their roads, and the value of the roads, including rolling stock, can be more easily ascertained by the assessor than the value of many kinds of personal property, yet it has never been considered necessary or permissible under the constitution to discriminate in favor of individuals or classes of individuals when assessing property for the purposes of taxation. But when the property of these gigantic corporations is to be taxed, when they are called upon for their share of taxes to aid in defraying the expenses of the governments that are granting them extraordinary and exclusive privileges, they refuse to submit to the law which prescribes the manner of collecting taxes from the people and ask special legislative enactments in their favor. To secure such enactments they use their great influence in filling the legislative halls with their stockholders, directors, and attorneys. Thus far they have generally succeeded, and in most of the states special statutes, discriminating in their favor, are now in force. Because of this special legislation the people are paying taxes that should be paid by railroad companies, and in return for favors shown, these companies are constantly increasing their extortions, and imposing additional burdens upon the people. We can more fully realize the extent of the unjust burdens imposed upon the people by ascertaining the amount of capital invested in railroads in the United States, and showing its relative value compared with the taxable property of the country. For this purpose it will not be unfair to take the value of railroad property as given by the different companies and published in the Railroad Manual. The reported cost of all but forty-six roads in the United States is $2,070,980,285. If we add to this amount the probable cost of those not reported, among which is the Union Pacific, this large sum will be swollen to nearly $3,000,000,000. The taxable property in the United States, reported in the census of 1870, was $14,178,986,732. If this railroad property was included, these corporations should pay about one-fifth of all the taxes collected in the country. The method of taxing railroad property that has always obtained in Iowa, and some of the other states, relieves it of at least three-fourths of the taxes justly due from it, and requires the people to supply the deficiency created by this exemption. But, as will appear from the census returns, a small portion only of the vast railroad wealth of the country is included in the valuation of property returned; nor is it listed and returned by local assessors as is the case with the property of individuals. In Iowa the census returns show the value of the property in the state to be $302,515,418. The value of railroads in Iowa, as shown by the different companies, is $84,067,663. An equal assessment and levy of taxes upon all the property in the state subject to taxation would require this railroad property to pay over one-fourth of all the taxes levied in the state; yet as a matter of fact not one-twentieth of this amount has ever been collected, unless we except the year 1872, when a small increase over old rates was required. While all acknowledge the injustice of this system of discrimination in favor of railroad companies, and while the people are burdened with more than their just proportion of taxes, all efforts to correct the evil seem to have proved abortive. The fact that more than eighty-four millions of dollars, being over one-fourth of the entire wealth of the state, is held and controlled by corporations, possessing under their charters special privileges, who have combined to prevent legislation that would require of them a contribution of their just share for the support of the government, explains the reasons for these discriminations in the collection of taxes. The power of this railroad oligarchy is now so great that it shapes and controls all revenue statutes. In all cases where the interests of the people and those of these corporations conflict, the corporations acting in concert, are triumphant, and the interests of the people are disregarded. Taxes justly due from the corporations, by special legislation, are extorted from the people, because this anti-republican combination, controlling the wealth of the country, demands it. CHAPTER XVII. THE STRONG GRASP OF CONSOLIDATED CAPITAL ON AMERICAN LEGISLATION--BEECHER ON "REFORMATION OR REVOLUTION"--"HISTORY OF RAILWAY LEGISLATION IN IOWA." However much we may boast of our purity, patriotism, and political integrity, the history of the legislation of the United States, both state and national, proves that legislators, like other men, are subject to temptation, and that they do not always successfully resist the tempter. It is not a pleasant truth to acknowledge, that the acquisition of money is the controlling motive in the American mind; yet it is a truth. Nor is it pleasing to admit that corporations control the legislation of our nation and state; but the fact is too patent to be denied. Nor will any one who, without prejudice, examines the history of legislation upon the subject of railroads, deny that legislators have been controlled in their acts by the desire, and from the prospect of receiving personal pecuniary benefit by the passage of acts granting special favors to railroad companies. If the instances of corrupt legislation were rare, or if the persons who acted from personal considerations, rather than for the public good, were few in number, we would not feel justified in devoting time to the discussion of the subject. But when this species of legislation becomes the rule, and legislation in favor of the people the exception, as has been the case for years past, we feel fully justified in calling the reader's attention to the matter. If we were asked what acts passed by the forty-second congress were of benefit to the people, we would be expected to answer that the internal revenue and tariff laws had been modified, and a part of their burdens lifted from the people; but nothing else of benefit to the public. If, however, we were to look through the acts of this congress, we would find almost all conceivable acts in favor of corporations, companies, and individuals, granting special privileges, which, in almost every instance, might be characterized a "congressional job." Patent right extensions; grants to railroad companies; for the sale of Indian reservations; amendments to railroad charters, bridge charters, and other like interests, have monopolized the time of the national legislature not consumed in investigating alleged irregularities of some of its members. As a rule, lobbyists and rings have shaped and controlled legislation for years, and have constituted themselves one of the established institutions at the national capital. The successful lobbyist demands and receives for his services larger pay than the salary of congressmen. These men never appear at Washington unless they have a congressional job on hand. To them the ear of the average congressman is always open. A measure without any merit, save to advance the interest of a patentee, or contractor, or a railroad company, will become a law, while measures of interest to the whole people are suffered to slumber, and die at the close of the session from sheer neglect. It is known to congressmen that these lobbyists are paid to influence legislation by the parties interested, and that dishonest and corrupt means are resorted to for the accomplishment of the object they have undertaken; that they are a species of brokers whose business it is to beg and buy congressional votes for some pet scheme; to do acts which in former times would have disgraced all parties concerned, but who are now looked upon as a necessary part of the legislative machinery. Of course those interests that can employ the greatest number of these _congressional brokers_, and wield the greatest influence throughout the country, are in the best shape to secure favorable legislation. No one interest in the country, nor all other interests combined, are as powerful as the railroad interest. Railroad corporations, by constantly asking and receiving, have acquired such strength as to control legislation in all cases where their interests are affected. With a net-work of roads throughout the country; with a large capital at command; with an organization perfect in all its parts; controlled by a few leading spirits like Scott, Vanderbilt, Gould, Jay, Tracy, and a dozen others, the whole strength and wealth of this corporate power can be put into operation at any moment, and congressmen are bought and sold by it like any article of merchandise. We have already shown the value of the railroad property in the United States, and some of the practices of companies, and their abuse of the privileges granted them. We are now treating of their influence upon legislators and legislation, and of the great power their wealth and combination secure for the purpose of controlling legislation. In this connection we must not forget that the vast sums owed by railroad companies in the United States, for which their bonds have been issued and sold, is a powerful persuasion for legislation in their favor. We look upon the national debt as being enormous, and are apt to complain of the burdens it imposes; but great as it is, these railroad corporations, after showing a paid-up capital equal to the cost of all the roads in the country, less $865,357,195, show a bonded indebtedness of $2,874,149,667, being two billions over and above the entire cost of all the roads in the United States, showing that the total amount chargeable against the railroads of the country, exclusive of floating debts, is the sum of $5,169,129,664. This vast sum, amounting to more than one-third in value of the entire taxable property of the nation, is concentrated in these corporations, whose interests are at war with the people's. Controlled as it is by a few leading men, who have their partners, agents, and servants everywhere, it is not strange that the champions of these monopolists should be found in congress. The power of this great monopoly is felt in the nomination and election of congressmen. One-third of the wealth of the nation combined under the control of a few men is a dangerous power in a republic. When the object sought to be accomplished by this power has been to take control of the government, and administer all its departments in the interest of anti-republican institutions, to build up monopolies, and trample upon the rights of the people, it has had no trouble to secure the number of congressmen sufficient for its purposes. In proof of this assertion we have only to look at the history of congressional legislation upon the subject of railroads as shown in a former part of this work. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the consolidation and combination of wealth and influence of railroad companies have procured the passage of acts of congress under, and by means of which, these corporations have added largely to their wealth, and strengthened themselves for the desperate struggle soon to come between them and the people. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher has had his attention drawn to some of the more alarming phases of our present political condition. In a recent address delivered in St. Louis, he used the following language: "I must, however, make haste to say, that among the dangers of the times, is one which has developed out of the prodigious rapidity of the accumulation of enormous and consolidated wealth. If I stand in the city of New York and look southward, I see a railroad--the Pennsylvania Central, that runs across the continent with all its connections. Its leases and branches represent a capital of some hundreds of millions of dollars. If I turn my eyes to the north, I see the Erie, where many hundreds of millions dollars lie. If still further to the north, I see the great New York Central, that represents hundreds of millions of dollars. These three roads represent thousands of millions of consolidated capital. Now suppose, in any emergency the railroad interest demands--suppose there were some great national question which demanded that the president of the United States should be a man, and the senate should be composed of men playing into the hands of the great national railroads' concentrated capitalists, what power is there on the continent that could for a moment resist them? It is not a great many years since it would seem almost atrocious to have suggested that thought. But legislatures have been bought and sold, until we think no more about it than of selling so many sheep and cattle. Does any body suppose that if it were a national interest that these vast corporations were seeking to subserve, that there is any legislature on this continent that could not be crushed or bought out by this despot, compared with which even slavery itself were a small danger. One of the greatest humiliations of a nation that is justly proud of so many things, is that disaster which has fallen upon our congress. When we see the slimy track of the monster, we may justly ask: 'What are we coming to?' There has got to be a public sentiment created on this subject, or we will be swept away by a common ruin. I tell you that the shadow that is already cast upon the land is prodigious. I do not believe in the sociologists, in the international, nor the communists; but when I see what rich men, as classes, are doing with our legislatures, what laws they have passed, what disregard there is to the great common interest, I fear that the time will come when the workingmen will rise up and say, that they have no appeal to courts, no appeal to legislatures; that they are bought and owned by consolidated capital, and when that time comes, unless it brings reformation, it will bring revolution; and if any such time does come, I do not hesitate to say I will stand by the common people for the encouragement of the working people, and against the wealth of the consolidated capital of the land." This great consolidated railroad interest now has its champions in the halls of congress. In the senate is Dorsey, president of the Arkansas Central railroad. Patterson, senator-elect from South Carolina, is a railroad man. Jones, of Nevada, Allison, of Iowa, Mitchell, of Oregon, Carpenter, of Wisconsin, and Windom, of Minnesota, and others are recognized as reliable railroad men. In the house we have Brooks, Kelly, Schofield, and many more who have proved their fealty to this great monopoly on many occasions. In addition to the friends of these corporations in the legislative halls, paid lobbyists throng the capital, supplied with stocks and money, to be used "where it will do the most good." This money is supplied by the railroad companies for purchasing votes for favorite measures, and the recent startling developments show that this fund does not lie idle. All this has resulted in corrupt legislation. Congressmen have aided in procuring grants and special privileges to companies of which they are members, and other congressmen have listened to the arguments of lobbyists, and sacrificed the best interests of the people to promote the interests of these monopolies. The influence of railroad companies over legislation is not confined to the general government. It develops its full strength in state legislatures. There it manifests itself openly. Railroad companies nominate and elect their own men for the avowed purpose of securing the enactment of laws favorable to themselves. Railroad directors, stockholders, and attorneys are elected to the legislature because their interests are adverse to those of the people; they are selected to defeat all legislation tending to protect or relieve the people from the oppression of these corporations. Paid lobbyists are kept in attendance during the legislative session for the same purpose. Free passes are given to legislators as cheap bribes, and money and railroad stock and bonds are placed "where they will do the most good" to the railroad interest. By the use of all these means, majorities in the interest of railroad companies are secured, or such strong minorities as will prevent unfriendly legislation. As a fact, now a part of the history of the country, the legislatures of many of the states are in the interest of, and controlled by, these corporations. They shape all public legislation, and rule the affairs of the state. The people are taxed and robbed by their own legislatures. Immense sums of money, or state bonds, are donated to these corporations, and the people are taxed to pay them, while the railroad property is practically exempt from taxation. The legislature of the state of Louisiana donated to a single railroad company $3,000,000, and guaranteed the bonds of the same company for about as much more. The legislature of the state of Alabama has voted to different railroad companies many millions of dollars. The same is true of Georgia, Texas, North and South Carolina, and many other states. In some of these states men who were elected to represent the people, and who were pledged in their interest, have openly sold themselves to this railroad monopoly. For a consideration paid to them they have assisted in bankrupting their states, and reducing the people who trusted and honored them to a state of servitude, scarcely less oppressive than the old system of African slavery. The value of property is destroyed by excessive taxation, and the political and judicial power of the states is handed over to railroad men, who, by combining their interests, have created a great central power, antagonistic to the people, and destructive of republican institutions. In the northern states it has been found impossible to procure just legislation where the interests of railroads and of the people conflict. In addition to the license given to railroad companies, by legislative grants and special privileges, to plunder the people, legislators, in violation of constitutional provisions, and of every principle of justice, have persistently refused to require of these corporations their just proportion of taxes, and have just as persistently provided for taxing the people to aid railroad corporations. Take the state of Indiana as an illustration. Counties, cities, and towns have been burdened for years with unjust taxation because of legislation in favor of local aid to railroads. In that state there are now three thousand five hundred and twenty-nine miles of railroads, representing about $100,000,000. For the purposes of taxation, all of this railroad property represents but $10,000,000. Some of these roads, for the purposes of taxation, are appraised at $3,000 per mile, and some as low as $500, and $400. While the property of individuals is appraised at about one-third of its estimated value, this railroad property does not pay taxes upon more than one-tenth part of its estimated value, and when at a recent session of the legislature an effort was made to amend the statute so as to make taxation more equal, it was defeated by the railroad men in the legislature, supported as they were by the strong lobby whom they had paid to be in attendance. The history of railroad legislation in the state of Iowa is of the same glaring character. We have the pleasure of laying before our readers the following succinct history of this Iowa legislation, from the pen of Hon. Samuel McNutt, who, for the last ten years, has been a member of the legislature (six years in the house and four years in the senate), and who kindly furnishes this communication at our request. HISTORY OF RAILWAY LEGISLATION IN IOWA. HON. D. C. CLOUD, Muscatine, Iowa:-- DEAR SIR: The progress of the railroad question is remarkable in our own state. As a member of the Iowa legislature, for ten consecutive years, I have had occasion to note that progress, and to observe the advancement of that interest from struggling infancy to vigorous growth--from feebleness to a strength that is fearful to contemplate. The people of Iowa, through their legislature, have always been eminently friendly to the construction of railroads and the promotion of the railway interests. In proof of this, witness the whole history of our legislation; witness our magnificent land grants, subsidies, bonds, subscriptions, and taxes, to the amount of five per cent of our entire valuation, in one year, as free gifts to railroad corporations. And yet some of these corporations have cheated us as people never were cheated before. We have afforded immunities to capital invested in railroads that are not afforded to any other kind of capital in the state. Witness the hitherto almost entire exemption from taxation of that kind of property. But, more than this, we have laws regulating the charges to be made by those engaged in several of the industrial pursuits, while up to the present time there has been no law upon our statute books interfering with the charges made by railroad corporations; and only _the right_ to interfere has been claimed in cases of public necessity, where those corporations are guilty of gross extortion or unjust discrimination. The first grant of lands to aid in the construction of railroads in our state is known as the "Iowa Land Bill," which passed congress and was approved by the president, May 15th, 1856. Under this act there has been certified to the state, to aid the four original land grant roads, as follows: to the Burlington & Missouri River railroad, two hundred and eighty-seven thousand acres; to the Mississippi & Missouri (now part of the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific) railroad, four hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and seventy-five acres; to the Iowa Central (afterwards the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River) railroad, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand and ninety-five acres; and, to the Dubuque & Sioux City railroad, one million two hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred and fifty-nine acres. On the 12th of May, 1864, congress passed an act granting lands to aid in the construction of another railroad across the state, from the city of McGregor, westward, on or near the forty-third parallel, to Sioux City. The lands in this grant were supposed to exceed a million of acres, but were found afterwards to be less than half a million. On the 12th of July, 1862, congress authorized the diversion of a portion of the Des Moines River Improvement company's land grant to the Des Moines Valley railroad company, the amount of which I have not before me. It is safe to say that all these railroad land grants, taken together, amount to _over four millions of acres_, or nearly one-eighth of the land of the state; or, more approximately, _one acre out of every eight and a half acres_ of the entire area of Iowa has been given away to railroad corporations. In addition to this immense subsidy, the people along the several lines contributed largely toward their construction. On the 14th of July, 1856, the general assembly, in extra session, passed an act conveying the land to the four first mentioned companies, upon certain conditions. Section 14 of that act (which act is the original "charter" of those corporations), now found as section 1,311 of the Revision of 1860, reads thus: "Said railroad companies accepting the provisions of this act shall at all times be subject to such rules and regulations as may, from time to time, be enacted by the general assembly of Iowa, not inconsistent with the provisions of this act, and the act of congress making the grant." Under this "charter" the companies went to work, and when some of their roads were extended toward the interior, complaints began to arise that the railroad tariffs were so arranged as to seriously discriminate against the trade and commerce of Iowa towns and in favor of points out of and beyond the state; that these tariff rates were also so arranged as to deprive our people of a choice of markets, rendering the Mississippi river useless as a highway of trade and commerce, and compelling our people either to pay tribute to Chicago or go without a market. The evidence in this matter was of a character that could not be questioned, and although the subject was brought before the general assembly of 1864, we refused to take any action at that time, hoping that the companies which had been so liberally dealt with by our people would, upon remonstrance, deal fairly and justly by them. When the general assembly met again, in 1866, the matter of railroad discriminations against our people had assumed a still more momentous shape. The greater portion of our time during that session was occupied with that question. Weeks after weeks were spent mainly discussing whether or not the state had the right to prevent unjust discrimination or in any way control railroad corporations as to their charges. The then attorney general (Hon. F. E. Bissell, now deceased) gave it as his official opinion that the state possessed no such right; but that in the matter of tariff charges, those corporations were above and beyond all legislative control. Whether the fact that he was a "railroad attorney," as well as attorney general for the state, had anything to do with influencing his "opinion," is not for me to say. We had able lawyers of the very opposite opinion, but the fact of this announcement gave great encouragement to the railroad party, and was calculated to dishearten those of us who believed that the people had some rights which even corporations should respect. It was now openly declared by eminent attorneys, both in the legislature and in the powerful "lobby" that hung around us, that in the original "charter," or grant, the state, while reserving the right to "enact rules and regulations," had either failed or neglected to reserve, in specific and "_express terms_," the particular right to regulate and limit tariff charges, and therefore she could not now exercise that right, and could never regain it. Listening to these astounding claims, put forth by the attorneys for the corporations, some of us declared that if God and the good people of Iowa ever gave us a chance to reserve, in a railroad charter, the right of control, we would surely do it in such specific and "express terms" as even a railroad attorney could neither mystify nor explain away. The golden opportunity to do this very thing occurred in 1868. A certain state of facts existed regarding the management of the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific railroad company, which rendered new legislation necessary. The executive committee, headed by John F. Tracy, had issued and put upon the New York money market nearly _four million dollars'_ worth of "watered stock," and realized the cash for it before certain other parties were aware of what had been done. With this money the Tracy party claimed that they intended to build the road from Des Moines to Council Bluffs (the road at this time being completed only to Des Moines). The immediate result of this "stock operation" was a bitter quarrel between the Tracy and the anti-Tracy parties of the stockholders. The Tracy party were said to be in the minority, but they had the money and the executive committee. Suits were commenced against them in the New York courts to forbid their construction of the road west of Des Moines, and to compel them to disgorge the four millions of dollars for distribution among the stockholders. In the meantime the company had forfeited their right to the land grant in consequence of the non-construction of the road beyond Des Moines, according to the terms of the original act. The consolidation of the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific railroad company's stock (a company organized under the laws of Illinois) with that of the Mississippi & Missouri railroad company (organized under the laws of Iowa), needed legislative sanction by the general assembly of Iowa; and further, the directors of the consolidated company wanted not only a legalizing act covering the above points, but also an extension of their term of office for one year beyond the time for which they had been elected by the stockholders. Under this state of things, the "Tracy party," legally representing the consolidated company, applied to our legislature for relief and protection; and, accordingly, a bill was introduced covering the desired points, and re-granting the lands to the company under certain conditions and restrictions, which, when agreed to by the company, should remain forever _a contract_ between the state and the company. At this juncture, one of the judges of the supreme court of New York issued a solemn injunction upon the general assembly of Iowa, forbidding that body to legislate, in any way, upon the matters I have above recited. Some of us, not having the fear of New York courts nor the majesty of Judge Cardozo before our eyes, fairly laughed at that judicial functionary's lordly impudence. We thought that the grand opportunity had now arrived when the state could justly step in and pass an act compelling the company to construct the road, for the sake of the extraordinary relief sought, and in that act _reserve, in "express terms,"_ as a matter of _contract_, the right to control the tariff rates of at least one powerful corporation, connecting with the Pacific railroad at Council Bluffs, and thereby control the rates of other lines crossing the state with similar connections. This express reservation of right, in the form of what was known as the "Doud Amendment," was inserted in the act in relation to the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific railroad company, and will be found as the first proviso in the second section of that act (chapter 13, on page 14, Acts of Twelfth General Assembly), and is in the following words: "_Provided_, said railroad company, accepting the provisions of this act, shall at all times be subject to such rules and regulations, and rates for the transportation of freight and passengers, as may, from time to time, be enacted by the general assembly of Iowa." The company, through its proper officers, accepted the terms of this act, and filed that acceptance in the office of the secretary of state, thus closing _a contract_ between the state and the company, and setting at rest forever the question of controlling and regulating the charges for freight and passengers in favor of the state. The same proviso was afterwards inserted in the act in relation to the Des Moines Valley railroad company (chapter 57, page 63); also in the act relating to the McGregor Western railroad company (chapter 58, page 67); also, in the act relating to the Dubuque & Sioux City railroad company (chapter 124, page 164); all acts of the twelfth general assembly. The passage of the last named act aroused unusual commotion along the proposed railroad line from Cedar Falls, via Fort Dodge, to Sioux City, in consequence of the railroad managers declaring that not another mile of that road would ever be built until the proviso for control should be repealed. Work ceased along the line; the laborers were discharged; the people who expected a railroad through their country became alarmed. Meetings were held at Fort Dodge, Sioux City, and other points, and extraordinary efforts were put forth to induce Governor Stone to call an extra session of the legislature for the purpose of repealing the so-called "_Doud Amendment_." A committee of prominent citizens was appointed to visit, in person, the members of the general assembly, and have them sign a request to the governor in favor of an extra session. This committee, knowing my record on this question, did not do me the honor of a personal visit, but they sent me a letter (still in my possession), to which I replied through the public press, strongly opposing their movement, and, after reciting a portion of the facts herein recapitulated, earnestly requested them to let the Doud Amendment alone; for I believed it to be one of the wisest measures ever enacted by our legislature, and, having been one of its foremost advocates in that body, I would still defend it. The effort to call an extra session failed, and the railroad managers in the north, finding their efforts, in that instance, vain, after frightening the people nearly a year, concluded to go to work again, and so the building of that road went on to completion. We had now succeeded in making the question of control a matter of contract between the state and the companies above named; so that, so far as they are concerned, no person or authority can question that _right_. Some of these roads being parallel lines across the state, the limitation of their charges will virtually control the others. I have always maintained that the state, by virtue of her sovereignty, possesses the right to regulate and limit railroad charges, whenever the public necessity, or the public welfare requires such limitation, without any special reservation in any charter or contract. But inasmuch as eminent counsel denied it, I was one of the original prompters and friends of the "Doud Amendment." I was this for the further reason, also, that history teaches me that when the interpretation of constitutions or doubtful laws, in cases where the poor and humble were on one side and wealth and power on the other side, that interpretation has been almost invariably on the side of wealth and power. During the session of 1870, the question of regulating and taxing railroads came up again; but nothing was done except the passage of a law authorizing the state treasurer to levy a tax on their gross receipts, as follows: On the first $3,000 or part thereof, per mile, one per centum; on receipts over $3,000, and under $6,000, two per centum; and on the excess of $6,000 per mile, three per centum. An act was also passed (which I opposed) authorizing townships, towns, and cities, to vote a tax, not exceeding five per cent of their assessed valuation, to aid in the construction of railroads. At this session I succeeded in securing the passage of an act (chapter 90, acts of Thirteenth General Assembly) providing that taxes levied by order of any court to pay judgments on county or city bonded indebtedness, no penalty but legal interest shall be collected. At the session of 1872, the questions of railroad tariffs, taxation, and control, came up again with increased interest. We passed an act (chapter 12 of public laws) making the work, &c., of laborers and mechanics a lien upon the road bed, right of way, &c., of railroads, thus securing them in their pay for labor done or materials furnished. The five per cent tax law was repealed, and an act (chapter 26 of public laws) was passed, making the census board (now executive council) a board of assessment of railroad property. Under this act a new plan of assessing this kind of property was adopted, and a much larger revenue derived therefrom than heretofore. A freight and passenger tariff bill (known as the O'Donnel bill) passed the house, but failed in the senate. Those of us, in the senate, who voted for the bill, were remembered by the railroad managers when we met in adjourned session last winter, (January 15th, 1873) by leaving us out of the list of senators whom they favored with free passes. But they sent passes to all the senators who voted _against_ the bill. The passes from the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific railroad company were accompanied with a private note, stating that free passes were not now given generally, "_but only to their friends_." The adjourned session of 1873 was for the special purpose of considering and enacting the new code, which the three commissioners had now spent nearly three years upon. Our time was limited by joint resolution to thirty days; and yet, during a considerable portion of our limited time, the railroad question occupied our attention. While we were in session, an extraordinary convention, or gathering of farmers, known as the "State Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry," met in Des Moines. This body was composed of the officers called Masters and Past Masters of the subordinate granges, or lodges, of a new secret society of agriculturists scattered throughout the state. This State Grange, or convention of delegates, numbered over twelve hundred members, representing, it was said, some seventy thousand farmers of Iowa. The meeting of this "Grange" lasted a week, and passed strong resolutions urging the legislature to enact a passenger and freight tariff law, and also presented an official petition to that effect. The members of the senate in favor of such a law prepared twelve sections (mainly from the old O'Donnel bill) to be inserted in chapter 5 of title 10, of the proposed code, and I was chosen to offer them in the senate, at the proper time. This I did, and the first section was adopted almost before the railroad men could rally their forces. This section limits the fare for passengers to three and one-half (3½) cents per mile. But the other sections, which fixed a maximum rate for the transportation of all kinds of grain, produce, lumber, manufactures, and commodities, were lost by a tie vote, the president of the senate, Lieutenant Governor Bulis, refusing to vote, which was equivalent to voting against the sections. These sections were afterwards fixed to the chapter by the House, with an additional section, known as the "Keables Amendment," but were again lost in the senate for want of two votes. The commissioners had omitted from the proposed new code all the so-called "Doud Amendments," and reservations of control by the state over railway corporations, on the ground that they were local or special provisions not to be included in a code of general laws. But some of us thought that those reservations of control, and special contracts, were of too important a character to the people of Iowa to be entirely ignored, and so I prepared an amendment to chapter 5, of title 10, in the following words:-- "SEC. 6. All contracts, stipulations, and conditions, regarding the right of controlling and regulating the charges for freight and passengers upon railroads, heretofore made, in granting lands or other property, or franchises to railroad corporations, are expressly reserved, continued, and perpetuated, in full force and effect, to be exercised by the general assembly whenever the public good and the public necessity requires such exercise thereof." This was adopted. I have thus hastily sketched the history of railroad legislation in our state, and yet perhaps I have exceeded the space you generously allow me in your valuable work. Time and space would not permit me to detail the skill exercised or the means used to defeat every act of legislation looking toward the control of railway corporations. To-day both the people and the government of this nation are, to a great degree, under the control of the consolidated money capital of the country, and a few individuals are at the head of this capital. These are men, mainly, who regard republican or democratic institutions as too unstable for the security of wealth, and have no real love for our form of government. It remains to be seen what the people will do in the coming crisis. I have faith in the people. Yours truly, SAMUEL MCNUTT. Mr. McNutt tells what he knows, and gives us a correct idea of the means resorted to by these corporations to thwart the will of the people. In view of the vast wealth of these corporations, their combination and consolidation, with their absolute control of congress and state legislatures, and the centralization of power in themselves, we may well inquire whether our constitutional guarantees have not been so long disregarded as to be virtually destroyed. The question at issue between the people and these corporations is clearly marked and defined. This great railroad oligarchy is gradually but surely overturning the principles upon which our government is founded. It is substituting a personal for a constitutional government, and to achieve its purposes, it brings to bear its vast wealth and influence; it bribes and buys legislators, and maintains throughout the country a vast army of employes, many of whom occupy high official position under the government. It now boldly proclaims the doctrine, that the interests of this great government, and of railroads, are one! On the other side of the question are the people, who begin to realize the oppressions of this oligarchy. They find themselves burdened with taxes; the value of the produce of the country consumed in unjust railroad charges; the halls of congress and of state legislatures cursed by the presence of men who take and give bribes in aid of the people's oppressors; their natural rights denied them; the guarantees of the constitution disregarded; all doubtful points decided in favor of the power that is reducing them to slavery, and making their property and the fruits of their labor of no value. They begin to realize that the final struggle must soon come, and that the question will be whether the people, the sovereign people, or their oppressors are to be the future rulers of the _republic_. The result is not uncertain. Legislatures and courts must restore to the people their constitutional rights. If these are denied, then, other means failing, the people, who are sovereign, _must take their rights by revolution_. The self-evident truth that all men are equal, that they have equal rights to enjoy and possess property, and to the protection of those rights in the courts, and that all should bear their proportionate share of the public burdens, MUST be recognized, by all classes, as the supreme law of this republic. CHAPTER XVIII. THE "TRAIL OF THE SERPENT" IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT. We have attempted to show the controlling influence of railroad corporations over the legislative department of the government, and its effect upon the people, without following it through all its various forms, our object being to present what we deemed sufficient evidence to direct the public mind to the great and growing evils resulting from this influence. We now desire to refer to the influence of these corporations over the executive department of the government. The administration of the laws being confided to the executive department of the government, their impartial and honest administration is of the greatest importance to the people. Congress, without the constitutional right, having granted charters and made large grants of lands and bonds to railroad companies, it became necessary that the executive department should have some kind of supervision over the companies. In the issuing of bonds and certificates for land grants; the transportation of mails, troops, etc.; the appointment of government directors, inspectors, and engineers; the transmission of telegraphic dispatches, and respecting many other matters connected with these corporations, special duties were imposed upon the president and members of his cabinet. The government directors, under the statute, had a place on all business committees of the Union Pacific railroad company. They were government officers, appointed by the president, and were to report, from time to time, upon the progress of the work, and condition of the roads. They were prohibited from owning stock, or being personally interested in the roads. Their reports were to be made to the secretary of the interior. If these government directors had faithfully performed the duties laid upon them by the law, the contract of the directors of the railroad company with the Credit Mobilier company could not have taken place without their knowledge, which fact should at once have been communicated to the secretary of the interior. Nor could the directors of the railroad have organized themselves into a Credit Mobilier company and contracted with themselves to rob the government and defraud the people, without the knowledge of the government directors. And, unless we concede that they were totally unfit for the discharge of the duties imposed upon them by statute--"more sinned against than sinning"--we must conclude that they had full knowledge of all the abuses being practiced by the railroad companies, and failed to discharge their official duties. The national reputation these government directors had achieved in the halls of congress, and elsewhere, precludes the idea of their being ignorant of what they should have known, and we are forced to conclude that they had this guilty knowledge of the frauds being perpetrated upon the government and the people. Their action in the premises can only be explained on the ground that they were subject to the same railroad influences which have controlled congress and state legislatures. If their action was not governed by corrupt motives and pecuniary considerations, that persuasive influence which emanates from these corporations, blinded their minds and warped their judgments to such an extent as to induce them to wink at the frauds of the companies in the construction of their roads and the prosecution of the business connected therewith. Recent investigations show that some of those directors were controlled in their actions by pecuniary considerations; that these corporations have been able to purchase the influence of the men selected by the president to protect the public interest, and that, by reason of such purchase, the sum of $16,000 per mile, in government bonds, has been duplicated on fifty-eight miles of the Pacific road. Other abuses, such as the defective construction of the roads, unlawful payment by the government of engineering expenses, dishonest returns of the cost of the roads, and other minor but important abuses of the privileges granted to these companies, were permitted by these government directors without objection, showing, beyond all reasonable doubt, that their duties, prescribed by acts of congress, were of secondary importance when the interests of the corporations or of these government directors were to be considered. While the reckless and dishonest transactions of the company directors were such as to call out a protest from an honest engineer employed on the road, prompting him to resign his position as chief engineer rather than be a party to fraud and scandal, these government directors seem to have remained silent and inactive. A contract had been entered into with a man by the name of Hoxie, who had neither personal means, nor position to command any considerable amount of capital, for the construction of a portion of the Union Pacific road. While this contract did not possess all the peculiarities of the contract with the Credit Mobilier, it was such an outrage upon right and justice, as to elicit from the chief engineer, Peter A. Dey, the following letter, addressed to General John A. Dix, after having tendered his resignation as chief engineer of the Union Pacific road, to General Dix, who was then president of the company. Mr. Dey says:-- "My views of the Pacific railroad are peculiar. I look upon its managers as trustees of the bounty of congress. I cannot willingly see them take a step in the incipiency of the project, that will, I believe, if followed out, swell the cost of construction so much that by the time the work reaches the mountains the representative capital will be accumulated so much that, at the very time when the company will have need for all its resources, of capital as well as of credit, its securities will not be negotiable in the market. From my very boyhood I have associated Mr. Cisco and yourself with Mr. Bronson and Mr. Flagg, men whose integrity, purity, and singleness of purpose have made them marked men in the generation in which they lived. Of course, my opinion remains unchanged. You are, doubtless, uninformed how disproportionate the amount to be paid is to the work contracted for. I need not expatiate upon the sincerity of my course, when you reflect upon the fact that I have resigned the best position in my profession this country has ever offered to any man. "With respect. "PETER A. DEY." Mr. Dey protested against the extravagant amount agreed to be paid Hoxie. The cost of the sections of the road contracted to Hoxie was $7,806,181. The amount agreed to be paid Hoxie for the work was $12,974,416. Mr. Dey saw that this man Hoxie was a _straw man_, and that near $5,000,000 were to be divided among the directors as the profit on this contract, and, as engineer, he protested against it. Yet these government directors, whose sole duty it was to look after and protect the interests of the government and the people, failed to discover and report these abuses to the secretary of the interior; or, if the same and the Credit Mobilier transactions were so reported, then the influence of these corporations controlled the department of the secretary. The truth is, the position of these government directors was such that, without a total disregard of the statutes, and their duties under it, it was not possible to keep all knowledge of these gross abuses from the department. But one conclusion can be drawn from the facts, which is, that the government directors, influenced by these powerful monopolies, were unfaithful to the trust confided to them by the president. Under the statute, the secretary of the interior has the general control of the issue of bonds, certificates for lands, rights of way, &c. The government directors were bound to report to him. If the duties imposed under the law had been faithfully discharged by him, the great abuses practiced by the Pacific railroad companies would have been prevented. The Hoxie contract, the Ames Credit Mobilier contract, and the Davis contract, were all made for about double the cost of building the respective sections of the road covered by these contracts, the actual cost of these respective sections being $50,720,957, and the amounts allowed the contractors being $93,546,387. In this amount is concluded $1,104,000, which was a duplicate payment allowed Ames for work done, and once paid for, under the Hoxie contract. These three jobs put into the pocket of the Credit Mobilier company a net profit of $43,929,337, a large part of which was in subsidy bonds issued by government. These bonds could only issue after the approval, by the secretary of the interior, of the report of the government directors. If the secretary had discharged his duty, or if the interest of the people, which he was supposed to be protecting, and not the interest of these companies, had controlled his action, _duplicate bonds_ would not have been issued at the rate of $16,000 per mile, for more than fifty miles of the road. Nor would certificates for land have issued to the companies while they were openly cheating, defrauding, and robbing the government and people. Let the reader look at the laws of congress chartering the roads, with the different amendments, and learn the duties of the secretary of the interior respecting their construction and the issuing of bonds and land certificates, and he will conclude that the secretary was ignorant of what the law made it his duty to know--that he was inexcusably negligent in the discharge of his duty, or what is most probable, that the same potent influences that controlled congress in aiding these companies, found their way successfully to the chief parlor of the interior department. Without the secretary's approval of the companies' work and accounts, they could not possibly have committed such gross frauds upon the government. If additional proof of the fact that the secretary of the interior was influenced by, and used his official position to assist the railroad corporations, in the raids upon the treasury, was needed, we have it in his action relative to the homestead and pre-emption rights of settlers upon the public lands, within the limits fixed by congress for the selection of lands by the different railroad companies. In all cases where lands have been granted to railroad companies, lands to which pre-emption rights attached at the time the line of the road was fixed have been saved to the pre-emption and homestead claimants. In many instances the railroad companies have not been able to find, within the limits fixed, the amount of lands granted to them belonging to the government. This has caused them to make war upon pre-emption and homestead claimants. If these claimants could be forced from their lands, some millions of acres would be thus seized by, and allowed to, the railroad companies. The practice of going upon the public land under the pre-emption and homestead acts had become so common, that these claims had been recognized by the public and the government as vesting in the claimant a title, which could only be defeated by his failure to comply with the provisions of the law respecting the perfection of his title. No one, save where two or more pre-emption claimants were contending for the same tract, could interfere; nor is there any provision of statute by which railroad companies can call in question the pre-emption or homestead right. In the absence of any contest between pre-emptors, the claimant has only to show a substantial compliance with the law, pay the required amount, and obtain his title. So, also, in regard to homestead rights. Nor did any difficulty arise until railroad companies began to interfere. The acts granting lands to railroad companies made no provision for the selection by them of lands held by pre-emption or homestead claimants at the time the lines of their roads were fixed, and subsequently abandoned. The companies applied to the secretary of the interior, and procured from him a construction of the statutes, giving them the right to select as railroad lands all such so abandoned. This was the first decision in their favor, and committed the secretary to their interest. A war upon pre-emption and homestead claimants was begun, and the representation to the department that a claimant had abandoned his claim was sure to pass the title to one hundred and sixty acres to the company. But something more must be done to get hold of the claimed land. The question as to the regularity and validity of the settler's claim is raised by the companies, and then they apply again to the secretary of the interior. While the statute respects and protects the occupancy and rights of the claimant, the secretary, to aid the railroad companies, interpolates the word, "valid," and holds that if the claim is invalid, the railroad companies can drive off the claimant and take his land. The action of the department gave the companies an advantage over the claimant which was almost equivalent to the destruction of his claim. Many claimants became alarmed, and did just what the companies desired,--they abandoned their claims to their oppressors, and the companies made large gains. But the claimants were not yet entirely in the power of their oppressors, and resort is again had to the department, and the settlers are placed entirely at the mercy of these monopolies. The interior department issued an order under date of June 22, 1872, allowing railroad companies to contest the right of pre-emption and homestead claimants to their quarter-sections. While the act of congress absolutely prohibited railroad companies from interfering with the rights of these claimants, the interior department, in the interest of these giant monopolies, in violation of the statute, by interpolation and a forced construction of the law, allowed these corporations to appear and dispute the claim of the poor pioneer who had gone in advance of railroads, and pre-empted a small tract of land for a home for his family, before the company disputing his right was organized, or had thought of locating a railroad in his vicinity. The pre-emption and homestead laws were passed for the benefit of the actual settlers of the country. If they get their lands, they pay the government the price fixed by law; but if the railroad companies get these lands, they aid in building up and strengthening a monopoly already too great for the welfare of the country. The department having lent its powerful aid to this monopoly, and, by unjust rulings, interpolations, and decisions, assisted in turning these poor men adrift and depriving them of their lands and years of toil, already more than one million of acres that of right, and under the law, properly interpreted and administered, would have belonged to actual settlers, have become the property of these railroad companies. Claimants are becoming alarmed at the action of the department, and are leaving their lands, choosing to lose their claims and the years of toil expended upon them, rather than defend against these companies, backed by the department. To still further show the _quasi_ collusion between the department and these great corporations, let us look at the circular issued to the different land offices from the department in June, 1872. The circular says:-- "A pre-emption or homestead claim of record is of course _prima facie_ evidence of a valid right; yet it may occur that such a claim has a fraudulent inception. When such is the case, the claim is of course void _ab initio_, and does not defeat the right of the railroad. In view of these rulings the following is communicated for your information and government, to the end that the rights of all parties may be protected, and the spirit of the _grants_ fully complied with:-- "1st. In relation to pre-emption claims, the pre-emption law requires that a person must be over the age of twenty-one years, or the head of a family, a citizen of the United States, or a person who has filed a declaration to become such, and also that a person may file a pre-emption claim for such land as he may have settled upon, thus imposing conditions as pre-requisite to the initiation of a claim. "2d. In relation to homestead claims, the law requires that a person must be over twenty-one years of age, or the head of a family, a citizen of the United States, or one who has declared his intention to become such, and under the first and third sections of the amendatory act of March 21, 1864, the persons claiming the benefit of said sections must make settlement upon the tracts before they can obtain the benefit of said sections. Therefore, as the fraudulent character of the pre-emption or homestead claim in its inception may be brought in question, it is right that the parties in interest should have an opportunity in all cases to be heard. With this view you are required,-- "3d. When application is made by a railroad company to select tracts which are covered by existing pre-emption or homestead claims at the date of the right of the road attaching, but subsequently relinquished or abandoned, to allow the company to file such proof as they may have in support of their right to the land, or to have hearings for the purpose, and should the evidence be satisfactory you will permit the selections. "4th. When any person applies to enter a tract of such lands, claiming the right to do so by such prior abandoned claim, you will order a hearing, notifying the railroad company, as well as the pre-emption or homestead claimant, so that they may produce such evidence in support of their right as they may have to furnish. Your inquiry must be directed to the personal qualifications of the original claimant, and his compliance with the law prior to filing an entry; and I desire to enjoin upon you the necessity of excluding all testimony not material to showing the facts upon the subject of inquiry. You will, however, be careful that all such facts are brought out, and if necessary to this end you will yourselves examine and question the witnesses. You will in all cases give the parties interested personal notice of the time and place of hearing, when their whereabouts are known, or they can be reached by such notice. In other cases you will cause the notice of contest to be published at least once a week for four weeks in the newspaper having the largest circulation in the vicinity of the land. Parties initiating a contest must provide for defraying the expenses thereof, but when the case comes before you for trial you can apportion the expenses according to the equities of each case. Your particular attention is called to the fact that in some of the earlier railroad grants, lands covered by homestead claims, which may subsequently be cancelled, are not exempted from the operation of the grant. Therefore, in such cases, the tracts revert to the grant, and you will recognize no application for these lands by other parties, but will pay due regard to the rights of the grantees. You will in no case allow pre-emption filing, or homestead entry on this class of lands, without instructions from this office." This circular, in the interest of railroad companies, is signed by Willis Drummond, commissioner, and directed to registers and receivers of district land offices. While the acts of congress exclude from the grants to railroad companies all lands held by pre-emption and homestead claims, the secretary of the interior says it means _valid_ claims. He then declares all claims invalid or fraudulent when there has not been a literal compliance with the statute. If the pre-emptor filed his claim one day or one week before he commenced his occupation, his claim, as against the railroad company, is fraudulent. Or, if for some cause, after having complied with all preliminaries, he should leave his claim for a day or a week, it could be treated as abandoned, and his right would be lost. These rulings, in favor of railroad companies, and adverse to the settlers, having been made, the companies were not slow in taking advantage of them. Men who supposed their claims to be valid, who had invested their all in improving them, have had their validity questioned, or have been charged with abandonment. The first intimation a settler has, is a notice to appear and defend the home of his family against the claim of a powerful corporation that is seeking to take it from him. He must submit to the alternative of losing his home at once, or of protracted, expensive litigation, with the assurance that he is combatting a powerful adversary before a tribunal that has already prejudged his case in favor of his opponent. All that the railroad companies need do to defraud the settler is to satisfy the register or receiver that, under the rulings of the department we have quoted, the settler's claim is invalid, or that he has abandoned it. We draw no fancy sketch. The circular speaks for itself, and the large number of men who have been compelled to leave their pre-emption and homestead claims, with the constantly increasing quarter-sections of land that are being added to the railroad grants, attest the truth of our statements. We are not aware of any law of the United States recognizing the right of railroad companies to become parties in a contest concerning a homestead or pre-emption right. Nor do we believe that the interior department of the government can legally authorize these companies to become claimants for lands held by settlers under act of congress. If any question arises between two pre-emption claimants, the commissioner of the general land office decides the dispute. If any question is raised as to whether the claimant is entitled to his pre-emption, there are, under the acts of congress, but two parties to the controversy--the claimant himself and the interior department. The order allowing railroad companies to appear as parties, and by virtue of numerical strength and immense wealth and influence, to overpower the settler, is doing him injustice, as well as degrading a high official position, and sustains our charge that these railroad companies influence the interior department of the government. We think we have shown that the whole strength of this department is used in favor of these great monopolies, and against the interests of the people. While we do not charge the officers of this department of government with intentional wrong, we do charge that this great corporate power, which has such unlimited influence over the legislative department of the government, has virtually taken control of the department of the interior in cases where its interests can be subserved by the influence of the department. CHAPTER XIX. THE MONOPOLISTS AT THE DOOR OF THE WHITE HOUSE. The influence of this great corporate power does not spend all its force at the interior department, but it is seen handing in its card at the white house. While we claim that railroads and other corporations have, to a considerable extent, influenced the distinguished occupants of the presidential chair, we do not wish to be understood as intimating that any of our chief magistrates have acted corruptly. We simply assert that this great corporate interest has secured favorable action from our presidents when they have been appealed to. As will be seen by their perusal, the acts of congress chartering the Pacific railroad and branches, imposed certain duties upon the president in connection with their location and construction. In the discharge of these duties the wishes of the companies were in all cases complied with, and in some instances to the injury and at the cost of the government and the public, and under circumstances leaving no doubt that the president acted wholly upon the representations of the companies. In the act of July, 1864, the Union Pacific charter was so amended as to permit any company organized under the laws of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, or Dakota, and designated by the president of the United States, to construct a railroad from Sioux City, Iowa, to connect with the Union Pacific road at some point not farther west than the one-hundredth degree of longitude. A company was organized under the laws of Iowa to build a railroad from Sioux City to Missouri Valley in the same state, the latter point being some thirty miles east of Sioux City, and seventy or more miles south. Another company was organized to build a railroad from Missouri Valley to Fremont, in Nebraska, the latter place being a point on the Union Pacific. These companies were incorporated by a few men, among whom were several members of congress who had aided in the passage of the act of July, 1864. Through the influence of one of the incorporators, then a member of congress, now of the United States senate, the president designated these companies as the companies to build the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific, and their roads, representing two sides of a triangle, were adopted as the branch road. The road is known as the Sioux City & Pacific. A road running westerly from Sioux City to Fremont would be about seventy-five miles in length. The road, as constructed between these two points, is, as given in the Railroad Manual, one hundred and seven miles. The act of congress required the road to be constructed on the most direct and practicable route. This road received the same privileges, subsidies, and grants, as the main line, with an addition of eighty sections of land per mile. Now it cannot be presumed that the president, acting on his own judgment, uninfluenced by the railroad company, would have designated these companies, and these roads, as the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific road, with one hundred sections of land and $16,000 subsidy bonds for every mile of the road. We have given this instance to show the direct influence of this corporate power over the president. This great influence, so dangerous to the welfare of the country, is indirect in its action. Vast numbers of men have their funds invested in railroad stocks and bonds. They engage in Wall street speculations; they buy and sell stocks and bonds; they operate in gold and values, and have no interest in common with the laboring and producing classes of the country. These corporations own and control property worth billions of dollars; they rule the finances of the country; they have tens of thousands of men in their employ; as they increase in strength and wealth, they are constantly striving for greater powers and privileges. Their lobbyists and retainers surround every department of the government. When public offices are to be filled, they unite in favor of men in their interest; and when decisions are to be made upon questions affecting their rights and obligations, they take care that their friends shall be in position to make or shape these decisions. The president, with his appointing power, if influenced in their favor, becomes an important ally. In his appointments to office, it is not to be expected that he can personally know the qualifications and views of every nominee. He must of necessity rely upon others, to a great extent, in making his selections. Next to legislative action in their favor, railroad companies are most deeply interested in the judicial decisions affecting their interests. Judges are apt to be influenced by the same motives that prevail with other men. Years spent by men as railroad attorneys, or as attorneys for any other great interest, will, to a certain extent, control their reasoning and decisions upon questions coming before them should they be promoted to the bench. In close relation with, and next in importance to the decisions of courts, on points affecting this great corporate interest, are the rulings and decisions of the attorney general of the United States. If these important offices can be filled by persons whose past pursuits have demonstrated that they entertain views favorable to the interests of these companies, an important gain is made at the start in their favor. To secure such appointments, all and every influence at the command of these corporations are brought to bear upon the president. The services of the most influential men, in congress and out, are engaged; the names of the candidates selected are presented for the consideration of the president, and their appointment urged by the whole railroad and corporate interest of the country. The president, following a long established precedent, usually appoints the persons who are most strongly recommended. This fact is well understood by these corporate interests and hence their vigilance and activity. We do not say that the president, in yielding to this tremendous pressure, acts from improper motives. We simply assert that this pressure is used, and that it is scarcely to be resisted. The fact that judges of ability and integrity differ in their construction of the constitution and laws, is well understood by the men who lead and control the corporate interests of the country; as also the further fact that the time is not distant when the question whether the people or railroad corporations shall govern, must be determined. To prepare for this issue they use their great influence to have the important positions in the government occupied by their friends. To a considerable extent they have succeeded. Mr. Ackerman, of North Carolina, was attorney general. He was what might be termed a strict constructionist. His views were conservative. As the legal adviser of the executive department, his opinions were adverse to the interests of the railroad companies on certain questions submitted to him. At the request of the president he resigned, and Judge Williams, of Oregon, was appointed in his stead. No one will question the integrity of the present attorney general. Yet it was a well-known fact that, at the date of his appointment, he was one of the attorneys of the Northern Pacific railroad company; that he was fully committed to the railroad interests, and that his appointment was urged by railroad men in all parts of the country. By his appointment a friend of these corporations became a member of the cabinet, and an important ally is present whenever questions affecting their interests are discussed in executive council. A question of the greatest importance to these corporations was the construction to be given to the statutes of the United States, and especially the "Legal Tender Act." The first of the legal tender acts was passed July, 1862. This was followed by other acts increasing the amounts of legal tender issues. Prior to the passage of these acts, railroad corporations had issued and sold many millions of bonds, and stipulated that both principal and interest should be paid in gold. Soon after the issue of legal tender bills their value depreciated, and from that time to the present there has been, and still is, a wide margin between their value and coin. If these railroad companies could pay their bond indebtedness with legal tender at par, a saving of from ten to fifteen dollars could be effected on every hundred so paid. In the year 1869, the question whether this act was retroactive in its operation or effect was presented to the supreme court. The court was then composed of eight justices. When the case involving this question was presented to and decided by the court, but seven of the justices were on the bench. Of these, four, including the chief justice, were of the opinion that the statute did not affect contracts made before its passage, and decided that these railroad companies must pay their bonds in coin according to the contract. This decision was not acceptable to this vast corporate power. It was condemned by railroad men throughout the country. The president was approached on the subject, and his great influence was besought in the matter. Four of the justices (one-half of the court) having held adversely to the corporations, a full bench could not reverse their decision. To effect a reversal, one of the four must change his opinion, or the number of justices must be increased. The latter alternative was decided to be the more feasible, and the president asked congress to increase their number to _nine_. The reason urged was, that upon important questions, before a full bench, the court might be equally divided, and important questions would remain undetermined. The railroad interest was fully represented in the lobby at Washington, and congress provided for an additional justice. About this time one of the justices retired from the bench, making a vacancy, and rendering it necessary for the president to appoint two new justices. This was a grand opportunity for the railroad interest. If men who were identified with them could be appointed, the decision on the "Legal Tender Act" could be reversed, and they could save from ten to fifteen millions of dollars on every hundred million of dollars due from them. Not only could they save this amount, but in future, as the members of the court are appointed during life or good behavior, they would have no apprehensions of a decision against their interest. At once the president was importuned to appoint William Strong, of Pennsylvania--a man who was fully identified with them by education and employment, he being attorney for the Pennsylvania railroad company--and Joseph P. Bradley, of New Jersey, who was also identified with this interest, he being the attorney of the greatest railroad corporation in that state. Neither of these men had any national reputation, but all at once the city of Washington, as well as the whole country, was enlightened as to their great judicial worth, and railroad men throughout the country were urging their appointment. It was publicly announced, and not contradicted, that they were in favor of reversing the decision of the court on the legal tender act, and their appointment was urged for this reason. This influence controlled the president. These gentlemen were nominated by him, and their appointment was confirmed by the senate in 1870. The decision on the legal tender act was reversed, and railroad men were happy. As we shall attempt to show, when we treat of the controlling influence of these corporations upon the finances of the country, this reversal was most baneful to the country, and detrimental to the best interests of the people. We do not wish to be understood as accusing the president of being governed by improper motives in the appointments of Messrs. Strong and Bradley to the supreme bench; but we do mean that the railroad interests, by concert of action, procured these appointments; it being known, or at least well understood, that these appointments would insure a reversal of the decision, as we have recounted, and that by such reversal their interests would be greatly subserved. Nor do we wish to be understood as accusing the persons so appointed of lacking the requisite ability for the honorable stations for which they were selected, or that their decisions were governed by personal considerations, or that they reversed said former decision to specially subserve the interests of railroad corporations. We have long since come to the conclusion that judges of courts, like other men, are influenced by surrounding circumstances; that they are not infallible, and that it is no unusual thing for the most eminent judges to differ upon questions submitted for their decision. While these decisions are honestly made, they are often controlled or dictated by extra judicial considerations. As we shall have occasion hereafter to examine this subject when treating of the intimate and controlling relations between these corporations and the courts of the country, we are content to leave the case of their influence with the executive department to the proof submitted in these three appointments of Williams, Bradley, and Strong. CHAPTER XX. THE UNITED STATES TREASURY THE VASSAL OF WALL STREET--STOCK "OPERATIONS" EXPLAINED. We now beg to call the reader's attention to the financial operations of the monopolists, and the course resorted to by them to control the finances of the country. There are now (January, 1873) seventy thousand one hundred and seventy-eight miles of railroad completed in the United States and territories. At an expense of $35,000 per mile, the total cost of these roads is $2,456,230,000. The cost as given by the companies is $3,436,638,749, or $48,970 per mile. In contemplation of law, and as reported, this cost is represented by stock certificates, and is supposed to be paid up. If the roads cost but $35,000 per mile, then $980,408,749, of the stock certificates (that amount being the excess over actual cost), have only an imaginary value. In addition to the stock certificates, representing the above sum of $3,456,230,749, the railroad companies have issued and put upon the market their bonds to the amount of $2,800,000,000, thus making their roads represent the enormous sum of _six billions two hundred and thirty-six millions six hundred and thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-nine dollars, or eighty-eight thousand eight hundred and seventy-two dollars per mile_. The only real value all these bonds and certificates of stock represent, is the railroads. These we have put at $35,000 per mile. Of course some lines of road exceed this valuation; but an examination of the actual cost, as reported by the engineers of the respective roads, will show that much the largest portion of the roads have cost less. Now let us look at the amount of the capital represented by a few of these roads, as reported in the _Railroad Manual_, and _The Stockholder_. The Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy is reputed to be one of the best and most prudently managed roads in the country. This road represents in stock and bonds the sum of $32,845,880, or $43,292 per mile. On the other extreme we will take the Central Pacific, which represents the sum of $182,208,000, or $130,000 per mile. The Atlantic & Great Western (an organization of the N. Y., Penn., & Ohio) represents the sum of $109,000,000, or $256,000 per mile. The Cedar Rapids & Missouri River railroad represents $11,334,000, or $41,000 per mile. The Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific represents the sum of $25,717,000, or $56,667 per mile. The Erie represents the sum of $112,935,710, or $125,750 per mile. The New York Central & Hudson River railroad represents $104,660,049, or $142,656 per mile. The Union Pacific represents $112,911,512, or $109,507 per mile. We give the above as samples of the amounts represented by the different roads. In some other instances the stocks are "watered" more, and in others less than in the roads above named. Taking all the roads in the country, and adding together the stock and bonds issued, they represent $3,800,408,749 more than their actual cost. It will not be out of place here to state that the only resource these railroad companies have for the payment of interest and dividends on their stock and bonds, representing the sum of $6,236,638,749, is the earnings of their roads. While a low rate of charges would pay fair dividends on the actual cost of the roads, yet in order to pay dividends on their "watered" stock, and interest on their bonds, oppressive and extortionate rates must be charged and collected. The men who control these great monopolies, viz: Col. Scott, who controls roads representing about $700,000,000; Vanderbilt, who controls about as great an interest; Drew, Gould, and some few others of the principal railroad men, care but little about the prosperity of the country, or the profits made by their roads, save as a basis for their Wall street speculations. The roads serve as a basis for financial operations. Like the old "wild cat" banks that issued bills without regard to stock or capital, so the roads controlled by these railroad monarchs are loaded with "watered" stock and bonds, until their value as roads are destroyed, and passengers and shippers are oppressively taxed for the purpose of giving some sort of market value to the bonds and "watered" stock with which Wall street is flooded. The issuing of stock certificates goes on, and will continue as long as dividends can be declared. At the present time the railroads of the country collectively represent about three times their value, or actual cost. If the people were not taxed on "watered" stock and bonds, dishonestly issued, the rates charged for transportation would be but little more than one-third the figures of the present tariff. The vast wealth claimed by railroad corporations is about two-thirds pure fiction, and but for the extortions practiced upon the public, their stocks and bonds, beyond the value of their roads, would not be considered in market; but so long as interest at the rate of six, eight, and ten per cent can be drawn from the public, they are marketable. These stocks and bonds are owned or controlled by the men who not only manage the railroad interests, but also the bond and stock market of the country. Being the leading spirits among Wall street brokers, using their railroads for the purpose of aiding in their stock-jobbing speculations, by compelling them to earn interest on all of the worthless stocks and bonds they put upon the market, a fictitious value is given to them. Having their principal place of business in the commercial metropolis of the country, being able whenever their interests demand it to "corner" the money of the country, it could be hardly expected that the treasury department of the government would escape their control. If a conflict should arise between the secretary of the treasury and these vast monopolies, the question of which side would come off victorious could not be doubtful. The circulating medium of the country is, in legal tender notes, $356,000,000. That of national banks, excluding their reserves, is less than $300,000,000. This currency is scattered over the country--a small portion of it in foreign countries. No coin is in circulation, most of it being locked up by Wall street brokers, in the interest of these railroad corporations. Many of the national banks of the country are owned by railroad men. In addition to the immense earnings of the railroads, which under the present system are concentrated in the city of New York, almost the entire amount of stock and bonds issued by railroad companies is either owned or represented in Wall street, and as occasion demands is put upon the market. Thus the whole of this corporate influence can be used at any time in a financial conflict with the government. It has been and is still being used against the government. Under the revenue laws of the country, import duties are paid in coin. A part of the sum thus realized is applied in payment of the national debt. There is no good reason why the secretary of the treasury should not apply this sum directly in payment of government bonds. Such a policy would tend toward the resumption of specie payment, making the money of the people of equal value with that used by the government. This would not suit railroad companies. So long as a margin can be preserved between coin and currency (and for their purposes the wider the better) under the decision of the supreme court they can discharge their bond indebtedness, contracted to be paid in gold, with depreciated paper at par, and save the margin. In order that a margin may be continued, instead of making direct payment of government bonds to the direct holders thereof, the secretary of the treasury is required to sell gold in New York, and purchase or liquidate the bonds with the proceeds of these sales. It is noticeable in all cases of the sale of coin, that Wall street brokers are the purchasers, and usually at less than the quoted market value. By this means the interests of these railroad managers are subserved in more than one particular. Their brokers purchase and corner the coin sold, and prevent it going into circulation, and the margin between coin and currency is preserved. The day for the resumption of specie payment is kept in the distant future. The importing merchant must buy gold of the brokers (who are the railroad managers) at its market value, to pay government duties on their imports, and thus the companies make the difference between the price paid and the price obtained. When some favorite railroad stocks are to be forced upon the market, these brokers, who can do so at pleasure, supply the money market, and sell the stocks at a large profit; and when the object is to reduce the value of stocks, they withdraw from circulation a sufficient amount of the currency to cause a stringency in the market, until their end is accomplished. Controlling absolutely the gold market, as well as the secretary of the treasury in his financial operations, they have only to corner a few millions of currency to make the entire commerce of the country subserve their special purposes. With all of their interests united, all their business concentrated in Wall street and controlled by six or eight leading men, they regulate the finances, fix the value of the produce of the country, and hold the producers of the great west in a state of vassalage which has no precedent, even in despotic countries. The secretary of the national treasury, who is supposed to control the financial department of government, is in fact the servant of these men, and whatever policy is beneficial to their interests must be adopted by the government. To the uninitiated it may appear impossible for a few men in New York to exercise a controlling influence over the financial policy of the nation, but if we remember that all the wealth of these corporations, actual and fictitious, is concentrated in that city, or controlled by men doing business there, and that an immense stream of money, received by these corporations from passengers and shippers, is constantly flowing into Wall street from all parts of the country, we can understand their power and appreciate their influence. The fact that it requires more than twice as much money to pay the interest on the bonds issued by these corporations, and dividends on their stock, as would pay the interest on the national debt, is significant. When private corporations combine their interests and become so powerful as to require an annual expenditure of more than twice the amount expended by the United States government, and when their revenues more than quadruple those of the government, they must of necessity exercise a controlling influence over the financial and industrial interests of the country. This fact is now being demonstrated by a combination of the railroad corporations of the country, as the people know to their cost. It will be proper here to detail the _modus operandi_ of these railroad companies at their headquarters in Wall street. We read of large operations in stocks and bonds, as well as in gold, and are apt to conclude that sales and purchases are made by regular transfers in a fair and legitimate manner. Such is not the case. Among the initiated sales are pure fiction in many cases, and in others it is but purchasing or selling the chance of an advance or decline in the price of stocks, bonds, or coin. To call these transactions by their right name--_they are nothing but gambling_. If legitimate sales are made, it is with outside parties, or to the uninitiated. The corporation rings congregated in Wall street, calling themselves bankers and brokers, sell to, or purchase stocks from, each other, without delivery or even payment, all the money passing between the seller and purchaser being the margin between the price agreed to be paid and the market reports at the time fixed for delivery. To illustrate, let us suppose that certain railroad stock is quoted at ninety-three cents, or seven per cent below par. A, who believes that there will be no further rise in the price, but that the same will decline, offers B $10,000 of this stock at ninety-one cents, to be delivered in three days. He has no stock, but believing it will decline to ninety cents or less, within the time fixed for delivery, he expects to buy at a still lower rate than he has agreed to sell, or to borrow it for a consideration if the decline does not meet his anticipations. Or he will settle his contract with B by paying him the difference between the market value at the time of delivery and the price at which he agreed to sell. The same process is gone through if the sale is made with the expectation of the stock advancing in price. A agrees to purchase of B four days after the date, $15,000 in stock at ninety-five cents, being an advance of two per cent on the market price on the day of sale. The stock does not advance, and at the time for delivery A pays B the margin between two cents on the dollar, and the market price. No stock has passed between them. It was a fight between a "bull" and a "bear" for the margin. Nearly all of the financial operations of Wall street brokers are of a like character. Some of them involve immense amounts. One man makes a fortune, and another becomes bankrupt in a day. Wall street is the place where men of all creeds and nationalities meet to engage in this kind of gambling traffic. Men run about the streets--into the "gold room," the "clearing house," their faces flushed, their whole person excited, their appearance "distorted, hair dishevelled," their voices hoarse, all intent on making money, not in a legitimate way, but by the chance of a rise or fall in gold, bonds, and stock. Let us see some of the terms used by them in their business. The rings operating in stocks are divided into two classes--"bulls" and "bears." They have the advantage of the real bear and bull in this: they can change from one to the other as the occasion serves. Daniel Drew, Col. Scott, and Commodore Vanderbilt can be bulls to-day and bears to-morrow, as their interests dictate. The object of the _bulls_ is to advance the price of stocks; that of the _bears_ to depreciate. They thrive most when the people generally are in want, or when some public calamity unsettles commerce. They oftentimes devise means to bring on a panic, that they may break the market and buy favorite stocks at low rates. They do not care how much the community may suffer, or how many men engaged in legitimate business may be ruined, provided their own interests are served. We take from _Appleton's Journal_ a description of some of their terms, and their manner of doing business:-- "The terms, 'long' and 'short' are of respective application to the 'bull' and 'bear' parties. The bulls are always 'long' of stock, and the bears are always 'short.' The speculator who has stock on hand which he bought with expectation of selling at higher prices, is on the bull side, and, in the parlance of the street, is 'long.' A bear seldom has stock on hand. His business is to sell 'short'--that is, to sell property which he has not got, intending to buy and deliver when prices are lower. Generally, the stock is to be delivered the day after it is sold, but quite often the bear does not buy it for a month or two, or three months. How, then, can he deliver it in twenty-four hours? By borrowing it from another person. There is in Wall street a regular system of borrowing stock. The borrower, who represents the speculator, procures the stock from another broker, to whom he gives a check as security for the stock borrowed. This transaction is good for one day only, but it may be renewed for the next day, and then the next, and thus several weeks may pass before the stock is really purchased for delivery. Meantime the seller, if he belongs to a clique, or 'pool,' is trying every day to depress prices, in order that he may buy the stock at a lower figure than that at which he sold it. This is the operation known as 'hammering the market,' and a very exciting one it sometimes is. But the bears are sometimes badly 'squeezed,' and then they make a rush to 'cover.' When the bulls learn that there is a large 'short' interest in a particular stock, they put their heads together and get up a 'corner.' When a stock is said to be 'cornered,' the meaning is that it is controlled by a clique. The clique hold enough of it to control the market, and exact such terms as may be desired. An upward movement is suddenly developed, and then the bears, who have sold 'short,' in expectation of lower prices, become alarmed, and begin to buy. In the majority of cases, the men who work the advance are the very ones who bought what the bears sold, and they are now selling it to them at higher figures for delivery back to themselves. 'Twisting' is the process of making the bears pay high prices for what they probably sold at low prices, and 'covering' is the operation of buying stock to close 'short' contracts. Once in a while a stock is so closely 'cornered' that it can only be borrowed at an enormous interest for a day's use--perhaps at a rate that exceeds a thousand per cent per annum. An operation of this sort is the worst squeeze of all; and it is not to be wondered at, that, as the gentlemen of the stock exchange say, the bears generally squeal under it. One shrewd manipulator of stock is known to have cleared $50,000 in one day, by loaning a fancy stock that he had 'cornered.' But the same gentleman sometimes gets into a 'corner' prepared by others. It is commonly understood that he was fleeced to the amount of $2,000,000 during the lively 'Northwest' gale a few weeks since. 'Puts' and 'calls' are terms of more than ordinary difficulty for the uninitiated to understand. A proposes to 'put' to B, that is, to deliver to him, a certain amount of a certain stock at a certain time, at a price agreed upon when the contract is made, and gives B a bonus of one, two, or three per cent, as the case may be, for the privilege. This is a 'put.' If the stock does not decline in value to an amount exceeding the sum given to B, A cannot make anything by the transaction; and, unless he chooses to deliver the stock, he is not obliged to do so. If it falls more than the amount, A makes a good profit, for B, having accepted the bonus, is bound to take it, even though it may be selling five or ten cents below the price at which he agreed to take it. A 'call' is pretty much the same thing, with this difference: A gives B a hundred or a thousand dollars, or whatever sum may be agreed upon, for the privilege of 'calling' from B a certain amount of stock within a given number of days. If it advances, A may 'call' it and make money. If it declines, he need not 'call' it, but of course the bonus he gave to B is forfeit. There are times when the business in 'puts' and 'calls' is quite large, and a great deal of money is made by it; but, like all other kinds of speculation, it is dangerous to the inexperienced. 'Scoop' is a term less familiar to the public than any of the foregoing. This 'scoop game' is a very common one, and is played in this way: A clique of speculators, let us suppose, wish to get possession of a good deal of some particular stock, which they have reason to believe will soon advance in price; but of course they want to get it cheap, and they accomplish their object by starting a break in the stock. This is done by offering it at low figures. They instruct their brokers to offer small quantities under the market price, and to keep on offering lower and lower, until other holders of the same stock who are not in their confidence become alarmed, and sell out at the best price they can get. In the meantime the clique have other brokers buying all the stock that is offered, and thus they get possession of a large amount of stock at low prices, which they can probably sell, a few days later, at a large profit. This 'scoop game' is one of the most profitable that the Wall street gentlemen play. The process of 'washing'--a very good one in its ordinary sense--is often employed in Wall street. 'Washing' is a peculiar operation there, very peculiar indeed, and the outsiders ought to keep as far as possible from the suds. A clique is as necessary to it as to the 'scoop' business. There is a stock on the list, for instance, that the public persist in letting alone, and the holders of it want to stir up some excitement in this stock, and induce the public to buy it. How do they proceed? Their plan is quite simple: Several brokers--let us suppose four--are employed to 'wash' the stagnant stock. No. 1 offers to sell; No. 2 takes what is offered. No. 3 wants to buy; No. 4 sells him all he wants. This is kept up for a few days, the price rising steadily as the 'wash' proceeds; but not one share is actually sold. The innocent outsider, supposing these fictitious transactions to be real, and thinking there is a chance to make a turn in the stock, goes in as a buyer himself. Ten to one he will never get as much for the stock as he paid, for it falls stagnant when the speculators have got it off their hands. 'Coppering' is a term recently introduced, but very well understood in the street. It means operating in a direction contrary to that of another. For example, one buys a particular stock, believing that it will advance; another man, observing that the first has not been lucky in his operations, sells this particular stock, believing it will decline. Or the first may sell a particular stock 'short,' and the second, calculating on the other's ill luck, will buy. This sort of speculation is carried on only among the smaller class of operators, and may be set down as sheer gambling. A 'straddle' is a double privilege, entitling the purchaser to either 'put' or 'call' a stock. The bonus is generally the amount paid for the single privilege of 'put' or 'call.' A 'margin' is the money deposited with the broker through whom the stocks are purchased, as a security against a sudden depreciation. The amount is generally about ten per cent of the par value of the stock. 'Margins' are the rocks on which many adventurers on the uncertain waters of speculation are utterly wrecked. 'Carrying' means holding stock in anticipation of higher prices. Often a stock is 'carried' for six months, but generally the time is not more than two months, and frequently not more than a week. Quick turns is the rule of a majority of speculators. 'Watering' is the operation of suddenly increasing the capital stock of a company. Wall street was thoroughly familiarized with it by the reckless Erie managers, who earned a notoriety that certainly honorable men would not covet. It is very dangerous to the holders of the stock previously in the market." The foregoing discloses the manner in which these corporations, through their managers, play the double _role_ of operating railroads and operating in Wall street. To outsiders there seems to be but little difference between what is known everywhere as downright gambling, and Wall street operations. The gambler who risks his half-dollar on a game at cards is punished for violating the law; but these Wall street operations, which are but games of chance, are dignified with the name of "speculations." Honorable men, reputed Christian men--Jew and Gentile--all engage in them. While they prey upon the producer in operating their roads, they prey upon the unsuspecting public in their stock operations; and, by way of variety, occasionally devour each other. Controlling, as they do, the means of transporting the products of the country to market, as well as the coin of the country and the stock market in Wall street, they are prepared to get up a "corner" on any marketable commodity--upon the currency of the country, and upon gold. In fact, they may have all the coin of the country under their control, save the amount held in the treasury of the government. The monthly reports of the secretary of the treasury show that while there was the amount of about $100,000,000 in the treasury one year ago, there is but about two-thirds of that amount now. The reports of sales show that these Wall street operators have cornered about one-third of the gold held by government within the last year. This cornering process goes on, and is now reduced to a system. Suppose the secretary sells, in the month of January, 1873, in New York, $6,000,000 in coin. It is all bought and cornered by the brokers. The importing merchants require but $3,000,000 during the same month to pay duties. The difference, $3,000,000, is locked up in Wall street. This transaction, in a greater or less degree, is repeated each month, and while the amount of gold in the treasury is decreasing, that controlled by railroad brokers is increasing. The treasury weakens, and these gambling rings and combinations strengthen. It is only a question of time, under the present system, when the treasury will be obliged to replenish itself by purchases from the brokers. So completely are the finances of the country under their control, the secretary of the treasury is obliged to keep a large surplus of coin on hand to meet emergencies. In order to prevent a panic, he is obliged to sell coin monthly, and whether the financial condition of the treasury or of the country will warrant it or not, he is obliged to pay some portion of the national debt as an excuse for selling coin. These corporate rings are laboring to control the gold of the country, and thus prevent the resumption of specie payment. To make resumption impossible, they "bull" gold as well as stock, and thus force gold sales by the secretary. The sooner they can deplete the national treasury, the sooner can they become masters of the situation. They now hold the secretary of the treasury at their mercy, and compel him to serve their selfish purposes. When they achieve their final victory (and achieve it they will under the present system) they can, without hindrance, fix the value of gold, and extort from the people and the government just such premiums as they please to ask for it. They can render specie payment impossible, and thus reap the full benefit of the "Legal Tender Decision." CHAPTER XXI. HOW WALL STREET BUILDS RAILROADS--A HOT-BED OF CORRUPTION. We have attempted to show the controlling influence of these railroad corporations upon the legislative and executive departments of the government, and have placed before the reader the danger to republican institutions and liberties of the people, resulting from this influence. In this connection it remains for us to treat of the influence of these corporations upon the judiciary of the country. Before proceeding to this branch of the subject we desire to direct the reader's attention to some alarming facts respecting these corporations, hitherto only alluded to, and the disastrous results which must follow their present management. We have already shown that railroads, in stocks and bonds, represent capital to about three times their actual value, and that because of this, the people are compelled to pay rates of transportation ruinous to the agricultural interest of the country. We have shown the relations existing between the men who manage these corporations and the Wall street gamblers, with their manner of issuing and putting upon the market fictitious or "watered" stock. The idea generally prevailing is, that the enormous wealth which these monopolies represent is real. In fact, about two-thirds of it is pure fiction. It is _manufactured_, and by reckless and dishonest men, who stop at nothing, and who care not for the prosperity of the nation, or of the government, when their own interests are in view. They drain the country of its wealth, concentrate it in Wall street, and there spend it in stock and gold gambling; and this hot-bed of corruption which has no counterpart, save in the infernal regions, has raised such a combination throughout the country as to control the whole financial policy, and compels even the secretary of the treasury to yield to its demands. The public and private wealth of the country is being rapidly destroyed by these corporations, and all departments of government are compelled to do them homage. We have shown that the railroads of the country are in the hands of unscrupulous men, whose sole interest in transportation is the money it can extort from the public. This must be so from the manner in which roads are built and controlled. Formerly railroads were paid for from the proceeds of paid-up capital. The men who became stockholders were interested in making good and cheap roads, and in operating them honestly and economically. These men were free from the scandal of watering stock, issuing and selling bonds to an unlimited amount, and were not partners in the iniquitous Wall street speculations which have become the bane of the country. In Appleton's Railroad and Steamboat Companion, published in 1849, we find a statement of the cost of railroads then constructed. The roads then constructed were supplied with rails that cost less than those now in use, but the road-beds in most cases, in the eastern states, cost much more than those constructed at more recent periods. Some of them were lines of solid masonry, supporting lateral or string timbers, throughout the entire length, and the rails were placed upon these timbers. Others were constructed upon the plan now in use, costing less than half the cost of the others. The roads in the eastern states, built upon the plan first named, cost as follows: In Massachusetts and the other New England states, $24,000 per mile. In New York, $26,000. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, $40,000. In Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, where the roads were built upon the modern plan, $11,000. Of course, the small cost in these last named states is attributable in part, to the nature of the country through which they pass. The facilities for building railroads at the present time more than counterbalance the additional cost of iron, and no good reason can be shown why the actual cost of roads at this time should exceed that of the more substantially constructed roads built thirty or forty years ago. But at the present time the building of railroads from the proceeds of paid-up stock is not generally practiced. A different rule prevails. The general rule now is to get grants of land, government, state, and local subsidies, in amounts sufficient to organize a company and commence the work of construction, then to issue and sell bonds, secured by mortgage upon the roads to be constructed, and from the proceeds construct the roads. Then stock certificates representing paid-up capital are issued, when in fact, all that has been paid is the local subscriptions obtained by managers from persons located along the lines of roads. The roads having been built on borrowed capital, the stock represents nothing but an opportunity for dishonest speculation. A "railroad" now means, to a large majority of those who are engaged in projecting and creating it, nothing but a fraudulent device for extorting money from the public under cover of developing the country and rendering great public benefit to the nation. After the roads are built, the men who have built the same, and issued and sold the bonds, issue to themselves certificates of stock, no part of which they have paid up, and go into Wall street to unload, that is, to sell their stock. If it be in good demand it will bear "watering." More stock is issued and sold, and by this process men who were worth nothing, but who were so fortunate as to get the control of certain railroad companies without having invested to the amount of a dollar, suddenly become immensely rich. The value of the road to those who have paid up their stock, but are not included in the ring, is destroyed; the road is loaded with a debt that destroys its value. This new method of construction meets with favor among a large class of men in all parts of the country, who have combined to aid each other. All that is lacking on their part to take absolute control of the whole country and government is a consolidation of all the railroads of the country under one management. At this time, six or eight great combinations, with a half dozen men at their head, manage the railroad interest of the country. They are extending their power and it may not be long until all will be consolidated in one, which would give this monopoly absolute control, not only of the markets, but of the whole legislation of the country in matters affecting their interests. With packed legislatures, state and national; with paid or intimidated judges, and with civil service of several thousand cunning clerks, and able-bodied brakemen, conductors, and switch tenders, they would be in that position most to be dreaded by all lovers of liberty--a powerful and enormously rich corporation, surrounded by a weak, timid, and helpless public. While we were still engaged in singing pæans over the glorious institutions of our happy country, we would suddenly find that our institutions had disappeared, and that we had, riveted around our necks, a worse despotism than we ever lamented for the down-trodden of other lands. This is really no imaginary picture as all will see who remember the stronghold, absolutely inaccessible to the law, which Fisk and Gould erected, and for a time maintained in New York; or the military operations of the employes of the Erie on the Susquehana road, and who have followed, with any attention, the helpless struggles of the government of the United States--formerly supposed quite able to take care of itself--in the foul toils of the Union Pacific railroad. These corporations foreshadow what must follow when a perfect consolidation is effected. Now at non-competing points they extort from shippers such enormous rates for transportation as absorb almost the entire value of the farm products; while from points at which there are competing lines of road they will carry at greatly reduced rates. They will charge no more for carrying freight one thousand miles from a point where there is a competing road, than for carrying one-tenth of that distance, where there is no competition. When they have the power, and hold the shipper at their mercy, they virtually rob him. What is true of their course where there is no competition, will become the universal rule, when a perfect consolidation of the whole railroad interest is effected. Add to this the control of the finances of the country (which they are now rapidly securing) and their rule becomes absolute over the whole people, and all departments of the government. If the reader has followed us thus far, he will have observed that the corporate interest of the country has assumed a position in antagonism to the people; that it has a secure hold upon the industrial and financial interests, and that, to a great extent, it already controls the action of the legislative and executive departments of the government, state and national. CHAPTER XXII. THE SUPREME BENCH INVADED--ITS DECISIONS REVIEWED. We are aware that many look upon the final decisions of courts with a degree of awe and respect which is almost reverential. The railroad companies of the country, with all their paid attorneys, are now extremely jealous in their efforts to convince the public that the supreme court of the United States is a body of the greatest jurists the world ever produced; that their decisions are pre-eminently able, and that it is disloyal, if not rank treason, to call them in question, or to even criticise them. While we feel bound to recognize the decisions of courts as binding until they are reversed, we claim that it is not only the right, but the duty of every citizen of the republic to examine these decisions, and to approve or condemn, as to his judgment shall seem right. We examine, and approve or condemn, acts of congress and state legislatures; we discuss the motives of legislators, and when acts have been passed which are not acceptable, their repeal has been demanded. Not unfrequently repeals have been effected soon after their enactment, either because of patent defects, or because the people condemned them. History has proven that the election of a man to congress, or to the legislature, does not clothe him with wisdom, not always with honesty, but that the frailties of humanity affected him as it did others. The same rule applies to courts and judges. They are made of the same flesh and blood, and are subject to the same infirmities as other men. Their knowledge is not perfect; their judgment is not infallible, nor are their official decisions always pure and free from bias. Instances are not wanting where judges have been impeached, and removed for dishonest practices. They have been and still are being influenced by popular feeling, by certain interests, and are always more or less controlled by education and association. Their decisions are often reversed, and they sometimes reverse their own decisions. If we want examples of a corrupt bench, we can refer to the city of New York, where certain judges have been impeached, and removed from office. Of partisan judges, we find them in Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, and many other states. Of ambitious judges, those who, while acting in their official capacity, enter into political contests, and use their judicial positions to secure other preferment, we need only to look over the history of any of the states, and to the highest court in the nation. Judges of the supreme court of the United States are found identified with political parties; entering the lists as candidates for higher distinction; and while they are holding high and responsible offices, to which they have been appointed for life, they are seen mixing with politicians as partizans, and seeking nominations. Judges whose judicial decisions have been controlled by public sentiment, can be found in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Judges who have reversed their own decisions, can be found in any state in the Union, and we have recent examples in the supreme court of the United States. Such being the facts, it is not strange that railroads, and other great corporations, should, to a very considerable extent, influence the actions and decisions of courts. We feel warranted in saying, that the decisions of courts, more than everything else combined, have promoted the rapid strides made by railroad corporations toward a complete destruction of republican institutions. The pernicious practice of solving all doubtful points in favor of these corporations by the "judicial construction" of statutes, or what might be called "judicial legislation," has been of vastly more benefit to them than all the grants received from legislative bodies. Legislatures do not possess the power to grant to any individual, company, or corporation, exclusive rights or privileges, unless such power is conferred by the constitution. The rule formerly obtained, that in cases where the rights of the public and that of an individual or corporation came in conflict, an act of the legislature of doubtful authority would be construed in favor of the people. The reason for this rule of construction is obvious. The people are sovereign. All the powers not delegated to the government, or to some department of it, were retained by the people. Hence, when a question was presented involving a doubt of its constitutionality, and a decision in favor of the individual or corporation would deprive the people of any of their reserved rights, it was resolved in favor of the sovereign people. The act was held to be unconstitutional because the legislature could not exceed the scope of the authority conferred upon it. The constitution was a limitation upon legislation. In a former chapter we have attempted to show the distinction between the power of the states and general government under the constitution; to demonstrate that the power of states was supreme in all matters save in those expressly conferred upon the general government by the constitution, and that for this reason the constitution of the United States should be strictly construed. We are warranted in saying that this rule obtained until questions involving the interests of railroads began to present themselves for the decisions of the supreme court of the United States. When these questions began to arise, a different rule was demanded by the companies, and by a gradual departure the supreme court has reversed this old and just rule, and now the will of that court must be treated as the supreme law of the land. Judicial legislation has usurped the place of judicial investigation, and the people are without remedy, unless a return can be had to constitutional rule. There is now a general complaint throughout the whole land, because of the recent interpretation given by the United States courts to the constitution; their disregard of statutes, constitutions, and decisions of state courts, which have reached a point which virtually makes the will of the supreme court superior to all constitutional and statute law. During the war, the power and jurisdiction of the United States courts were enlarged, and special powers were conferred upon them to meet the exigencies of the time. From that period to the present, these courts, by judicial construction of their power under the constitution and new interpretations of that instrument, and by judicial legislation, have gradually extended their jurisdiction, until there seems to be no constitutional or legal barrier to their decisions. Questions connected with railroad companies have increased rapidly. Conflicts have arisen between the public and these corporations; they have multiplied in the federal courts, and, as a general rule, have been decided in favor of the companies. In some instances, upon questions arising exclusively under the constitution and statutes of a state, the judges of the federal courts have disregarded the action of the people of the state, overridden their state constitutions and statutes, and pronounced the decisions of the state courts invalid, and refused to be bound by them, substituting their own conclusions in the interest of these monopolies. To prove this, let us compare some of the earlier decisions of these courts with those of more recent date, citing cases where the powers, rights, and privileges of corporations were involved, and where conflicts arose between the government of states and of the nation. In the early years of our republic, questions connected with corporate rights were submitted to the supreme court of the United States; they were ably argued by the best constitutional lawyers of the nation, and were carefully considered and decided by the courts. Upon the question as to whether state courts were inferior, the supreme court of the United States decided that they were not. The same court, on a question raised as to the authority of the legislature of a state to grant to private parties exclusive rights to certain property in Georgia, _held_, that the real party in interest was the people, and that it was only when the legislature acted within the power conferred, that their acts were valid; that it was the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society, but not to apply those rules to individuals of society. The question as to the rights, powers, and privileges, of corporations, came before the supreme court of the United States, and was fully examined and decided, in 1819, in what is known as the "Dartmouth College Case." The charter for the college had been granted by the king of England for educational purposes. It was in no sense a corporation for pecuniary profit. Without the consent of the trustees of the college, the legislature of New Hampshire amended the charter in a manner not acceptable to the trustees. They refused to recognize the change made. A suit was instituted, and the case was taken to the supreme court for a decision. The point at issue was whether the college was a public or private corporation; and, also, as to the extent of the power the state legislature possessed over its charter. It is not our purpose to examine all the points raised and decided in that case, but only to notice such as refer to the nature of corporations and the power of the state governments to control them. In deciding these questions, the court seems to have looked at the objects for which corporations were intended. The court says; "A corporation, being a mere creation of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to affect the object for which it was created. * * * "The objects for which corporations are created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country, and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant." * * "From the fact, then, that a charter of incorporation has been granted, nothing can be implied which changes the character of the institution, or transfers to the government any new power over it. The character of civil institutions does not grow out of their incorporation, but out of the manner in which they are founded, and the objects for which they are created. The right to change them is not founded on their being incorporated, but on their being the instruments of government created for its purposes. The same institution, created for the same objects, though not incorporated, would be public institutions, and, of course, controllable by the legislature. The incorporating act neither gives nor prevents this control." The doctrine above enunciated fixes the line of distinction between public and private corporations. Those created for public or governmental purposes are defined to be "public corporations," and those created for the advancement of private enterprises are "private corporations." Private corporations possess none of the attributes of sovereignty, and hence are to be treated in law as private individuals; the act of incorporation being for the purpose of affording the corporators proper facilities for transacting business. Corporations being the mere creatures of the law, they possess only those properties which the charters of their creation confer upon them. Under the decision to which we have referred, and from which we have quoted, corporations are created by statute, and are subject to the control of the power creating them. A grant from the sovereign power to an individual, or to a company, is not necessarily irrepealable, nor will it in all cases be treated as a contract. Corporations created for public or governmental purposes are binding as contracts only so far as they affect private interests, for the good reason that government cannot contract with itself. Nor could the legislature confer exclusive privileges upon a corporation, the exercise of which would deprive the people of the rights guaranteed to them in the constitution; for the reason that the attempt to clothe a corporation with such privileges would be an unauthorized act on their part. In the case of "Providence Bank _vs_. Billings & Pittman," decided by the same court, in 1830, it is said that "The great object of an incorporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men. This capacity is always given to such a body; any privileges which may exempt it from the burdens common to individuals do not flow necessarily from the charter, but must be expressed in it or they do not exist." The doctrine obtained that corporations can take nothing by implication, and that unless the power to regulate and control them has been surrendered by the legislature, that power remains undiminished. The rule that grants of privileges to corporations are to be strictly construed, when the rights of the public are affected, is recognized in this case. We are warranted in saying that it is only since corporations have become all-powerful in the land that a different rule has obtained. Under the statutes of the United States, and as formerly held by the supreme court, a promissory note given by a citizen of a state to another citizen of the same state, but transferred to a citizen of another state, could not be sued in the United States courts, but the holder was compelled to bring his action in the state courts. This rule obtained until counties, cities, and towns began to issue their bonds to railroad companies, and was then disregarded. Railroad companies had sold and delivered these bonds to parties in Wall street, or elsewhere; they had failed to fulfil their contracts with the parties from whom they had received the bonds, and when suit was brought upon them in the state courts the bondholders were beaten. Suits were then commenced in the federal courts, the plain letter of the statute was disregarded, the established decisions of the supreme courts were overruled, state statutes and constitutions were treated with contempt, the decisions of the supreme court of a state, which had been followed for years, were called "_oscillations_," and the interests, frauds, and deceits of railroad corporations were fully protected and sustained; not because this course was supported by the statutes or precedents, but because such a course would subserve these harmful interests. This action on the part of the supreme court was not the result of any dishonest or partisan intent, but it was made to prevent what the court was pleased to term great wrongs about to be inflicted on _innocent_ holders of bonds purchased of railroad companies. In many instances the _innocent_ bondholders were the same parties who, as railroad men, had cheated the counties and cities, and by fraud and false representation had obtained these bonds, for which no consideration has been paid to the present time. It will not be out of place here, as showing the influence of these corporations over the supreme court of the United States, to refer to the transactions that caused the first departure by the court from the settled rules of decisions on questions arising under the constitutions and statutes of states, and, we may add, initiated a rule of decisions, followed to the present time, which have well nigh destroyed states rights. Under this new rule the whole country is governed by the supreme court and corporations. The people are powerless, and monopolies reign supreme. We refer to the question of aid by counties and municipal corporations to railroads. In many of the states municipal corporations have subscribed stock and issued their bonds to railroad companies, in some instances under express statute authority, and in others without such authority. No one is prepared to admit that compulsory payment by the citizen of a part of his property, or money, to aid a private corporation in building a railroad, is the payment of taxes for the support of government, or that the levy and collection of a tax for that purpose can be supported by any section of the constitution. Yet we all know that such taxes have been, and are being, levied and collected. Judge Dillon, in his work on municipal corporations, says: "The courts concur, with great unanimity, in holding that there is _no implied authority_ in municipal corporations to incur debts or borrow money in order to become subscribers to the stock of railway companies, and that such power must be conferred by _express_ grant. To become stockholders in private corporations is manifestly foreign to purposes intended to be subserved by the creation of corporate municipalities, and the practice of bestowing powers of this kind is of recent date and origin; and hence the rule, that in order to exist, it must be specially conferred, and cannot be deduced from the ordinary municipal grants." If the above quotation is good law (and this no one will deny), the recent decisions made by the supreme court cannot be supported. But in order to avoid the force and effect of this principle, and to provide for the collection of bonds illegally issued (by recent decisions), a new doctrine has been promulgated by the court which overturns state statutes, as well as the decisions of state courts. Treating of this class of bonds, Judge Dillon says:-- "Respecting negotiable bonds issued under legislative authority, by municipalities for such and kindred purposes, when in the hands of _bona fide_ holders, the supreme court of the United States, influenced, doubtless, by a keen sense of the injustice and odium of repudiation, has at all times displayed a strong determination effectually to enforce payment. Accordingly it has refused to follow the subsequent decisions of the state courts against the validity of such bonds, in cases where the prior rulings of the state courts had been in favor of the power to issue them; it has adopted liberal constructions of statutes and charters authorizing the creation of such debts; it has given no favor to defences based upon mere irregularities in the issue of the bonds, or non-compliance with preliminary requirements, not going to the question of the power to contract; and has held that the circuit courts of the United States were clothed with full power and authority by _mandamus_, or otherwise, to enforce the collection of judgments rendered therein on such bonds, and that this authority could not in the least be interfered with, either by the legislature or the judiciary of the states." It will be seen that for the purpose of relieving railroad companies from their liabilities as guarantors, on bonds issued to them by municipalities (for these bonds were uniformly so guaranteed), the supreme court of the United States has declared the statutes of states, and the decisions of state courts, absolutely null and void. In violation of both the letter and spirit of the constitution, in order to compel the payment of bonds issued without authority, and in violation of every principle known to the law, it has said that these bonds must be paid because they are in the hands of _bona fide_ holders. This same court, as we will hereafter show, when the holders of bonds issued by railroad companies were asking payment, has released the companies from their written agreement to pay in coin, and compelled the holders to take at par depreciated paper. When the bondholders are demanding payment from the people, of the bonds issued without authority, the court, in order to compel payment, nullifies state government; but when these same bondholders demand that railroad companies shall live up to their written contracts, have decided that they need not do so. It fears the stigma of repudiation when the people are called upon to pay, but when the call is made upon corporations it decided in favor of repudiation. Our author continues: "It has upheld and protected the rights of such creditors with a firm hand, _disregarding at times, it would seem, principles which it applied in other cases, and asserts the jurisdiction and authority of the federal courts with such striking energy and vigor as apparently, if not actually, to trench upon the lawful rights of states and the acknowledged powers of the state tribunals_." Municipal corporations have no right to become stockholders in private corporations; acts of the legislature pretending to confer such authority are void; the officers who control and administer the municipal government are the mere agents of the municipality, and can only act within the scope of the powers conferred upon them by the charter of the municipality they represent. Neither the constitution of a state, nor of the United States, nor the charter of a municipality, can confer upon the nation, state, county, city, or town the authority to compel any citizen against his will to bestow any part of his money or property upon private corporations. And it matters not whether this comes in shape of a tax, an arbitrary appropriation of a fraction or of all his property or possessions to such private corporation, or by a subscription of stock to it. If the national, state, or municipal government can in either of the above methods compel him to aid in building up and supporting private corporations, then private corporations are clothed with attributes of sovereignty, and all private citizens own and possess their property subject to the will of these corporations. If a majority of the qualified voters of a state, or particular locality, are in favor of taxing the state, or local district, to the extent of one-tenth or one-half of the assessed value of all property in the district, and investing the amount in a railroad enterprise, the minority, notwithstanding their protest and remonstrance, must submit to have their property taken from them and applied to the same object. Their constitutional rights are taken from them, and our boasted free government has no real existence. By recent decisions of the supreme court of the United States, the people of the whole country are placed in that position now. Railroad corporations have been, and are now, under the fostering care and protection of this court. Statutes have been so often disregarded by it, when their interests were to be subserved, and in conflicts between the people and these monopolies the decisions have been so uniformly in favor of the latter, that it is now a question whether the government controls corporations, or corporations control the government. If a pernicious law is enacted by congress, or a state legislature, it is soon repealed. The men who compose those bodies are constantly changing, their term of office is short, and the errors committed by them can be speedily corrected. The judges of the supreme court are appointed for life; the people have no control over them; their decisions cannot be reversed by any department of the government. A decision of the supreme court is the supreme law of the land, and cannot be reversed or amended by any other power in the land. It is superior to all statute law, and the power of the court has no limit, save that fixed in the constitution and statutes of the United States, both of which must receive _their_ construction and interpretation from the court. We have already said that judges of this court are subject to the infirmities common to all men; that they are liable to be influenced by the same causes that influence others; that no matter how honest and pure they may be in their intentions and actions, their decisions were liable to be controlled by surrounding circumstances, and that the influence of this great corporate power did control them. In proof of this we need only look at their course of decisions on municipal bonds, and on bonds given by railroad companies, before referred to, as well as their decisions upon the nature of railroad corporations. It strikes us as remarkable that the supreme court of the nation should have or entertain any doubts as to the fact that these corporations are private. Upon what principle the court can hold that railroads are public highways is not readily seen. The stock, the roads, and all other property belonging to the different railroad companies, are as much their individual or corporate property as are the furnace, the factory, or the mining interests, the property of the companies owning them. Their ownership is as complete as that of the private person who owns the stage and team used for carrying the mails in certain districts. The same law that governs other common carriers, governs these corporations. Government can only interfere with their business when they abuse the privileges granted in their charters. It cannot compel them to carry the mails, save in pursuance of contracts made with them. They own the ground upon which their roads are built, and no one can travel upon these roads, or ship freight over them, save by the permission of the companies. While courts and legislatures have the constitutional right to regulate and control these corporations, and, if need be to prevent abuses and oppressions, to declare their charters forfeited, as in cases of banks, insurance companies, and other corporations,--upon no principle of law can they declare them public corporations. If it is a fact that they are public corporations, then as a resulting consequence they are clothed with the attributes of sovereignty, and are a part of the government. If railroads are public highways for any purpose, they are for all. Until they cease to be owned and controlled by private corporations, it will hardly be claimed by any respectable court that they are public highways, in the same sense as common public roads, nor can they be until they are open to public use. This cannot be until the public becomes the owner of these railroads. But we are told that the supreme court has decided the question, and declared that they are public highways, no matter whether they are owned by the state or private companies. We have not seen the decision; but if such decision has been made, we are bound to accept it as the law of the land, until the same court reverses it. Yet if the court was to decide that a river was a railroad, or that a steamboat was a train of cars, while we would accept this decision as the law, we would not admit that such was the fact. We are not aware that the question as to whether railroads are public highways has ever been before the supreme court, save in connection with the right of municipalities to subscribe stock and issue bonds therefor, and upon the question of voting taxes to aid in their construction. When these questions have been presented to the supreme court of the United States it has held that they were public highways. It is noticeable that these decisions have been made only when the interests of these corporations were to be subserved. In a recent case from Wisconsin the supreme court decided that they were public highways, and that it was just as lawful to levy taxes for railroads as _for any other public works_. The same court has decided in a large number of cases when suits were instituted on municipal bonds, that railroad corporations were private companies, and in all of the states where the question has arisen, we believe they have been held to be private corporations. We might cite several recent decisions of the supreme court to the same effect. In the cases of Kansas Pacific Railway Company _vs_. Prescott, Ribon _vs_. Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific Railway Company, Putnam _vs_. New Albany & Sandusky Railway Company, and Chicago & Quincy Railway Company _vs._ the County of Otoe, tried in Washington last winter, the court virtually decided the corporations were private, and not public. The doctrine to be gathered from these decisions is, that when the interests of these corporations demand it they are to be treated as private, but when the question is as to their right to compel the people to contribute of their substance to build railroads, then the roads are public highways. If the corporations are private, and their roads are built and owned by them, the fact that these roads are private still exists, notwithstanding the courts as to the law of the case decide that they are public highways. The fact that such a decision has been made, is strong proof of the correctness of our position, that the corporations have a controlling influence over the judiciary of the country more to be dreaded by the people than all the appliances that can be brought to bear upon the legislative and executive department of the government. But in no other instance has the influence of these corporations over the supreme court of the country been made more manifest than in what is known as the "legal tender" decision. And we might add that no other decision of the court, and no act of any department of the government, has proved so disastrous to the people as this decision. We have already referred to the means used by these corporations to secure a majority of the supreme court favorable to their designs, and of their success in the selection of judges committed to their interests. It only remains for us to review this decision to convince the most skeptical of the fact that corporations have captured the supreme court, as well as the other departments of the government, and the effect of this decision has given to these corporations, and Wall street brokers, and gamblers, the absolute control of the finances of the country. But before coming to the decision, it will not be out of place to remark, that _money_ is always the standard of value for all commodities; that the universally adopted idea of money means coin--gold and silver--or, what is called the precious metals. Bank bills, treasury notes, bills of exchange, and all kinds of commercial paper are only valuable as the representatives of money. The fact that they are expected to be converted into money gives them their value in the market. Let it be understood that they cannot at some future day be collected in money, and their commercial value ceases. In proportion to the length of time that must elapse before any bank bills, treasury notes, or other commercial paper can be paid in specie, does its value increase or diminish in commercial transactions. Nothing but money of the standard value can be made a legal tender in contracts between individuals. Congress does not possess the power, under the constitution, to say that A who has contracted to pay B $1,000 in money, can discharge that contract by paying him $1,000 in bank bills or treasury notes, that are worth in money but $800. If such powers exist, then all standard values of property is destroyed, and it fluctuates in value as the price of the paper representing money approaches to, or recedes from, the money standard. The rule that nothing but gold and silver is, or can be, "legal tender" has been uniformly adhered to from the formation of our government, until 1872, when a majority of the supreme court reversed the rule, and decided that what are termed treasury notes are, under the acts of congress, legal tender for all contracts and business intercourse among men. The question was fully argued in 1869 before a full bench, then composed of a chief justice and seven associates, five of whom concurred in deciding that the act of congress making anything but gold and silver a legal tender was unconstitutional. Before the decision was announced Justice Grier resigned, leaving but six associates on the bench when the opinion was delivered. Chief Justice Chase delivered the opinion, and, in speaking of the powers of congress, says: "No department of the government has any other powers than those delegated to it by the people. All the legislative power granted by the constitution belongs to congress; but it has no legislative power which is not thus granted. * * Not every act of congress, then, is to be regarded as the supreme law of the land, nor is it by every act of congress the judges are bound. This character, and this force, belongs only to such acts as are made in pursuance of the constitution." The court then decides that there is in the constitution no grant of legislative power to make any description of credit currency a legal tender in payment of debts, and that it does not exist as incidental to any of the granted powers. That the power does exist in congress to issue bills of credit or treasury notes, but not to make them legal tender for debts. The opinion concludes as follows: "We are obliged to conclude that an act making mere promises to pay dollars a legal tender to pay debts previously contracted, is not a means appropriate, plainly adapted, really calculated to carry into effect any express power vested in congress; that such an act is inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, and that it is prohibited by the constitution." This decision was not acceptable to corporations and railroad managers. It would compel them to live up to the contracts they had made, and destroy their power of controlling, in connection with the Wall street stock jobbers and gold brokers, the entire financial interests of the country. We have already shown how this combination of corporate interests secured an increase in the number of judges, and that Messrs. Strong and Bradley were appointed because of their opposition to the legal tender decision. None of the judges who had concurred in the decision of Judge Chase had changed their opinions; these were then dissenting members of the court. The two new appointees uniting with three dissenting judges, a majority of the court could overrule the long settled decisions of the court, and sustain the act of congress making depreciated paper a legal tender. The law of the land, recognized since the organization of the government, approved by all the eminent jurists and statesmen who have lived in the last century, could be overturned; values could be unsettled; the financial and commercial interests of the country could be made subject to this great corporate power which had obtained such complete control of the different departments of the government. Soon after the appointment of the two judges above named the legal tender question was again brought before the court, a full bench of nine judges sitting and participating in the decision of the question. Five of the nine concurred in holding the legal tender act constitutional, Justice Strong delivering the opinion of the court. It is a noticeable feature of the case that a judge who had just taken his seat should be selected to pronounce the decision; that after a uniform course of decisions, made and upheld by all the great jurists of the country for eighty-five years, two judges who had just been appointed should be found delivering opinions reversing this long settled rule, and that both of said judges were appointed because of their avowed friendship for the corporations which were to be so largely benefited by the reversal of this long settled construction of the constitution upon the question of legal tenders, and it seems that even these judges base their decision upon what they deem the necessity for a reversal rather than upon any constitutional grounds. Justice Strong, as preliminary to the opinion of the court, says: "The controlling questions in these cases are the following: Are the acts of congress, known as the legal tender acts, constitutional when applied to contracts made before their passage? and, secondly, Are they valid as applicable to debts contracted since their enactment? These questions have been elaborately argued, and they have received from the court that consideration which their great importance demands. It would be difficult to overestimate the consequences which must follow our decisions. They will affect the entire business of the country, and take hold of the possible continued existence of the government. If it be held by this court that congress has no constitutional power, under any circumstances, or in any emergency, to make treasury notes a legal tender for the payment of all debts (a power confessedly professed by every independent sovereignty other than the United States), the government is without those means of self-preservation which, all must admit, may, in certain contingencies, become indispensable, even if they were not when the act of congress now called in question was enacted. It is also clear that if we hold the acts invalid as applicable to debts incurred, or transactions which have occurred since their enactment, our decision must cause, throughout the country, great business derangements, wide-spread distress, and the rankest injustice. The debts which have been contracted since February 25th, 1862, constitute, doubtless, by far the greatest portion of the existing indebtedness of the country. They have been contracted in view of the acts of congress declaring treasury notes a legal tender, and in reliance upon that declaration. Men have bought and sold, borrowed and lent, and assumed every variety of obligation, contemplating that payment might be made with such notes. Indeed, legal tender notes have become the universal measure of values. If now, by our decision, it be established that their debts and obligations can be discharged only in gold coin; if, contrary to the expectations of all parties to these contracts, legal tender notes are rendered unavailable, the government has become an instrument of the grossest injustice, and debtors are loaded with an obligation it was never intended they should assume. A large percentage is added to every debt, and such must become the demand for gold to satisfy contracts, that ruinous sacrifices, general distress, and bankruptcy, may be expected. These consequences are too obvious to admit of question. And there is no well-founded distinction to be made between the constitutional validity of an act of congress declaring treasury notes a legal tender for debts contracted after its passage, and that of an act making them a legal tender for the discharge of all debts, as well those incurred before as those made after its enactment. There may be a difference in the effects produced by the acts and in the hardship of their operation; but in both cases the fundamental question, that which tests the validity of the legislation, is, Can congress constitutionally give to treasury notes the character and qualities of money? Can such notes be constituted a legitimate circulating medium having a defined legal value? If they can, then such notes must be available to fulfil all contracts (not expressed by exception) in money, without reference to the time when the contract was made." This quotation from the opinion of the court may be taken as a sample of the reasoning in favor of a reversal of former decisions on the question of legal tender. After elaborate argument in the same strain, by Justice Strong, and also by Justice Bradley, a majority of the court decide that the legal tender acts are constitutional, while the four judges remaining on the bench, who but a short time before had made a contrary decision, dissent from the opinion of the majority. The argument of the majority in favor of the decision seems to ignore the real question, to-wit, the constitutionality of the acts of congress, and to place the decision upon the ground that a contrary holding would be ruinous to the financial interests of the country. The assertion is made that the decision "_will affect the entire business of the country, and take hold of the possible continued existence of the government_." The decision was made about one year ago, and its effects on the business interests of the country are made manifest. If the court believed that the decision sustaining the legal tender acts would prove beneficial to the people, it was sadly mistaken. But if it believed such a decision would strengthen monopolies, and enable a few railroad managers and Wall street brokers to corner and control the finances of the country, then the decision was a success. The effect has been to unsettle the commercial and financial interests of the country, and to show that treasury notes, if they are the standard of values, are a fluctuating standard. The consequence of the decision has taken "_hold of the possible continued existence of the government_," and has enabled the gold and stock gamblers in Wall street to suck the life-blood of the nation. The decision gives strength to corporations, who, uniting with Wall street brokers, are depleting the treasury of the nation to advance their own private purposes. By the decision two standards of value are fixed: one that is stable, and must ever remain so--the standard of money--gold and silver; the other, the standard of fluctuating paper, of no intrinsic value, liable to be inflated or depressed, as shall best subserve the interests of the parties who, by combining, have got such absolute control of the market as to be able to change the value of this _legal tender_ paper at pleasure. The idea advanced in the decision, that to declare that nothing but coin could be a legal tender, would cause widespread ruin, presents but a partial view of this matter. As a matter of fact, no act of congress prior to 1862 had ever been passed making anything but coin a legal tender; nor was there any decision of the supreme court recognizing or deciding that paper money could be a legal tender until 1872; and yet no such widespread ruin had overtaken the financial interests of the country as has manifested itself since that decision was rendered. Simultaneous with the decision of the court declaring treasury notes legal tender, the quantity of coin in the treasury began to decrease, and one year's experience has sufficed to reduce the amount from one-third to one-half, and in proportion the amount controlled by Wall street has increased. The secretary of the treasury is now obliged to have recourse to the $44,000,000 of treasury notes held as a reserve to prevent panic and disaster. This decision does not benefit the importing merchant, who must pay in coin; it does not benefit the legitimate business of the country; it does not benefit the farmer, or any of the industrial interests of the country, because in buying and selling, if payments are made in paper (_legal tender_) the prices of the articles bought and sold are fixed by a gold or coin standard. Coin is, in all dealings, the measure of values. The decision of the court does not and cannot change these facts. The only parties who derive any real benefit from it are corporations and brokers, who can save large amounts by being released from their contracts. Another argument used by the court in favor of the decision is, that every independent nation possesses the power to make paper a legal tender, and that it must be possessed by our government. The answer to this is, that the constitution does not confer upon congress, or the courts, even by implication, any such power. And if we admit that other nations possess it, we conclude it is because the fundamental law recognizes it, or because the government is of unlimited power. The court decides that "_legal tender notes have become the universal measure of values_." This is simply untrue. In all quotations of values, the measure is fixed by gold, and then legal tender notes are quoted as being worth such per cent less (or what amounts to the same thing); gold is quoted as being worth ten, fifteen, twenty, or more cents to the dollar more than paper, and while the value of gold is fixed, that of treasury notes is constantly fluctuating. Under this decision railroad companies, and their associates, the Wall street gamblers, control the finances, while all the honest and legitimate business of the country languishes. Had the court designed to place the whole interests of the government and the people in the power of these corrupt rings and dishonest brokers, no more effectual means could have been devised or adopted. Justice Bradley, in his opinion concurring with the opinion of Justice Strong, makes use of the following bold and dangerous language: "It is absolutely essential to independent national existence that government should have a firm hold in the two great sovereign instrumentalities of the _Sword_ and the _Purse_, and the right to wield them on occasions of national peril." Let this pernicious doctrine be accepted as the law of the land; let the _purse and the sword_ be placed in the hands of government officials without restrictions, and what vestige of republican institutions is left? What difference is there between our government and absolute despotism? But more than this, let the highest court of a nation, by a partisan decision, place the _purse_ of the nation in the hands of a gigantic monopoly, banded together for the purpose of plundering the public, and what vestige of independence is left the people? Reader, look carefully at the almost unlimited power the corporations of the country have obtained over each department of the government; at the legal tender decision and its effect upon the people of the country, and then ask yourself if we, as a nation, are not nearing the point where we cease to be a republic, save in name. This decision impairs the obligation of contracts, in violation of the letter and spirit of the constitution. It compels the creditor to take from the debtor irredeemable paper at par, on a contract payable in money. It says that a mere promise to pay is a legal tender. It makes it absolutely impossible to resume specie payment because it withdraws all coin from circulation, and does away with the necessity for its use in domestic transactions. The coin of the country is shipped to foreign countries to meet demands against us in those countries, and to pay for such commodities as we purchase from them. Credit currency, no matter whether it is issued by the general or state government is not, nor can it under the the constitution, be made a legal tender by act of congress or by a decision of any court in the land, because the laws of trade will control the whole matter, being stronger than legal enactments or judicial decisions. Money is the universal medium or common standard which fixes the value of all other things that can be sold or bartered, and neither the congress of the nation, by the passage of a law declaring that paper shall be a legal tender, nor the supreme court deciding that such law is constitutional, can impart an actual value to such paper, because it is but a promise to pay money. They can no more accomplish this object than can the alchemist convert iron into gold. The only effect of this decision, as we have attempted to demonstrate, is to place the people more completely in the power of corporations. If the reader has followed us he will not fail to perceive that all the departments of the government are virtually controlled by the great anti-republican corporate interests now overshadowing and cursing the land; and that the supreme court of the United States, originally intended to be a check upon unconstitutional legislation, and to guard with jealous care the rights of the people, has become an instrument to aid this great power in its war upon the rights of the citizen; that by judicial construction of statutes involving the rights of corporations and the people, such decisions have been made as leave the people but little to hope for in the future, and induce the belief that the will of the court, and not constitutional law, is to be the "supreme law of the land." CHAPTER XXIII. BANK MONOPOLISTS--THEIR CONTROL OF THE CURRENCY. A BANKRUPT FINANCIAL POLICY. Gold and silver are and must remain the standard of values. This being true, any attempt to substitute any other standard unsettles values, and opens avenues for reckless speculation. Bank bills, or other promises to pay, are and always will remain unsafe as a money standard; especially when they cannot be exchanged for specie, save at large discounts. The policy of the government, of substituting treasury notes for coin, as legal tender, and then issuing national currency for general circulation by the banks of the country, has been effectual in preventing the circulation of coin, as well as the resumption of specie payment. No good reason can be given for issuing two kinds of currency, or for providing that one kind (treasury notes) shall be legal tender, and the other (national currency) shall be of less value, good in ordinary circumstances, but which no one is obliged to accept in payment of debts. The present banking law provides that any five or more persons may form a private corporation or banking association, and upon compliance with the provisions of the law, transact all business usually transacted by banking associations. As a condition to the issuing of bank notes, the company, after it has organized according to law, must deposit with the proper officer in Washington, in government bonds, an amount greater by ten per cent than the amount of bank notes it receives for circulation. If it deposit $100,000 in bonds, it receives from the comptroller of the currency, $90,000 in national currency, which it can issue, and as occasion requires, must redeem in treasury notes. The government bonds are held by the department as security for the redemption of the bank notes received for circulation, and the government pays to the different banking companies semi-annual interest at the rate specified in the bonds deposited by the companies respectively. The amount of tax annually collected from the people to pay this interest to bankers is between $18,000,000 and $20,000,000. All that the people receive in return for this sum is the privilege of borrowing national currency from banks at legal rates of interest. The banking companies receive from government their six per cent annually in gold on their bonds deposited with the department at Washington, and the lawful rates fixed by the states respectfully upon loans and discounts with such other profits usual among bankers. We cannot discover the wisdom of the law which provides that a banking company shall buy an amount of government bonds equal to its capital stock, paying government therefor, and after depositing it with the proper government officials, receive interest on it. If a man pay his note or bond, and gets it in his own possession, he would lack wisdom if he were to continue the payment of semi-annual interest on it after that time. Government is doing this with only this difference: It says to the banking company: "Buy my bonds, pay for them, and then I will hold them in trust, and pay you the interest on them." We can see no good reason for this provision of the law. If the object were to borrow money, it could have been accomplished by receiving it directly from the banking company, and then issuing to such company legal tender notes in payment therefor, and by so doing government would have saved the large amount of interest now being collected from the people. If the object were to furnish a circulating medium, the legal tender treasury notes would have been a preferable currency. The government would have hazarded nothing, because it would have had possession of the full value of the notes or bank bills furnished the company. But if the object were to foster and fatten corporations, then the law, as passed, has fully accomplished its purpose. The law provides for a general system of banking, without requiring the bankers to keep one dollar of coin for the redemption of their issues. It provides for the redemption of _currency_ with _currency_, thus making the resumption of specie payment impossible, so long as legal tender notes are in circulation. It locks up from one-tenth to four-tenths of all the capital invested in banking, and compels the people to pay interest on this amount without receiving any equivalent. It fixes arbitrarily the amount of circulating medium for the whole country; the amount being $356,000,000 in legal tender notes, and about the same amount in national currency; and of this last amount the banks are compelled to keep on hand a reserve of from fifteen to twenty-five per cent on all their bills and deposits, thus leaving for circulation, throughout the entire country, not more than $550,000,000, the whole of which is irredeemable in coin. It places the finance of the whole country under the control of one man--the secretary of the treasury. The amount of currency being fixed by law, and apportioned throughout the country, with no means for its increase, it is not difficult for speculators to withdraw sufficient from circulation to affect injuriously the commerce of the country. The combined corporate interest of the country can, at pleasure, corner such amounts as to create a stringency, and if desired, a panic. We have shown in a former chapter the combination existing between railroad corporations and Wall street brokers, and their control of the finances of the country. We have also shown the effect of the legal tender decision upon the financial interests of the country, and the large benefits the railroad corporations are deriving from it; and that they controlled to a great and dangerous extent all departments of the government. Under the present financial and banking system they hold the whole country at their mercy. They fix prices upon all the farm products of the country. Having full knowledge of the amount of currency in the banks of the great commercial centers, as well as the amounts in the different parts of the country, with the means in their own hands of controlling and expanding these amounts at pleasure, by withdrawing, or as it is termed "cornering" the necessary sum, they fix the price of all articles of commerce, and stocks, and gold. The government, under the present financial policy, cannot prevent this state of things. It has no reserve with which to aid the people. Nor can the banks, if they had the inclination, remedy this evil. The business interests of the country require more money. The government, as well as the banks, are prohibited from issuing more. Because of the lack of quantity required by commerce, the banks are, as a general thing, without any considerable surplus on hand. When these corporations and brokers desire a stringency in the market, they withdraw from the banks a few millions of dollars and lock it up. It is withdrawn from the already insufficient amount in circulation, and legitimate business languishes. Having their vast corporate stock and bond interest to protect, being engaged in constructing railroads, having created large debts upon their roads by reckless and dishonest watering of stock and loose issuing of bonds, they seek to compel all commercial and industrial pursuits to pay tribute to them, and they accomplish this object by controlling the currency of the country. A financial system that can be controlled by one interest, or in the interest of one class of men, is bad. When, as is now the case, that interest is a combination and consolidation of the greatest monopolies that ever cursed a country, the system should be changed. Under our present system, no matter how evenly the currency was originally distributed over the country, the larger portion of it finds its way to the great commercial centers. The merchant must carry his money to his place of purchase, or what is the same thing, buy an eastern draft from his local bank, which bank, in order to command eastern exchange, must have deposits in eastern banks. The farmer who ships his produce to the east, must pay the charges for transportation, which are usually collected at its place of destination; and these charges being much more than one-half the entire value of the shipment, are retained in the east, or if charges are paid to local agents, they are forwarded to the principal office in the east. Nearly all the great railroad companies having their principal offices in the large eastern cities, their earnings are forwarded to those offices. By these means, the currency of the country is concentrated in the larger commercial cities of the country, mainly in New York, where it is in the absolute custody of these great railroad corporations and brokers; and the financial and banking system of the country, designed to meet the wants of the people, has become, in the hands of these giant monopolies, a principal agency in their oppression. The produce of the farm, and of the entire industrial pursuits of the country, are being swallowed by this huge monopoly, and those others created by our tariff. For this state of things there is no relief without a change of policy on the part of the government. An increase of irredeemable paper will not afford relief. Already there is a wide margin between coin and currency. An increase of the latter would increase that margin, and lessen values. With a fixed amount of increase, the same interest that now controls the finances would, in a short time after its issue, obtain the same control, and this would demand another issue; the same process to be repeated until our currency would be of little or no value, the unlimited increase of irredeemable currency would in the end inflict upon the country absolute ruin. We are now traveling in that direction. Currency is only of value as the representative of money. Now (April, 1873) a dollar in paper represents but eighty-two cents in money. Our government has adopted the Utopian idea of making _small strips of paper_, with certain printed promises thereon, legal tender. This kind of paper has been decided by the supreme court to be _money_, the "measure of values." Notwithstanding the laws of congress and the decisions of the supreme court, this measure of values will not become or remain stable; it is gradually shrinking, while gold, the money of the country, is disappearing. Unfortunately for us, our strips of paper will not pass for money, or legal tender, with other nations. For this reason, the coin of the country has to be used in our commerce with foreign nations. Within the last year, the amount of coin in this country has decreased over $38,000,000. The balance against us in our dealings with other countries is the above named amount. Unless some course is adopted that will prevent this large export of gold, it is only a question of time when we shall have no gold in the country, and the only representative of values left us will be paper money without any intrinsic value. Under the present financial policy of the government, and the unlimited control that corporations and rings, with their power all centered in Wall street, have over the finances, we need not hope that the agricultural products of the country can be transported to the seaboard at rates that will enable us to export the same to foreign countries in any considerable amount. We cannot pay inland and ocean transportation, and compete with other grain-producing countries. The markets of the outside world are practically closed against us. With our high protective tariffs, extortionate charges for inland transportation, lack of ocean commerce, and immense foreign debts, public and private, absolute financial ruin must overtake us, unless a different policy is adopted. The amount of currency being fixed by law, the government has in effect declared that the people of this country shall have but this fixed amount for all the purposes for which money is used. The effect of this arbitrary law, followed and supported by the legal tender decision of the supreme court, is to prevent any increase of the currency or money. The control of the currency being placed in the hands of one man, the whole financial interests of the country are dependent upon his will. No matter how great the wants of the country may be, or how inadequate the supply, no departure is allowed from the inflexible rule as to reserves that the banks are required to hold. If the secretary of the treasury conclude to sell gold to ease the market, he does so; if he decide to issue a half million treasury notes, they are allowed to go into the hands of the people, and withdrawn, when in his judgment, he deems it advisable. His acts create a feverish excitement in the money market and derange business, carrying loss to everybody, except Wall street brokers. That power, so necessary to a despotism, and so destructive to republican institutions--the control of the purse of the people, and of the government, has fully obtained in this country. The whole people of the land are as completely under the control of the secretary of the treasury (and he in turn ruled by these powerful combinations) as a ward is ruled by his guardian. The system is bad, and should be changed at once. The government should control its own finances, and the people should be permitted to provide for themselves without asking the permission of the government. We subjoin the following expression of views of one of the ablest and most experienced of the bank officers in this country: "The incompetency of special legislation, when applied to the adjustment and regulation of the paper currency of the country, I presume few sensible men, at all acquainted with the subject, will question; nor is it possible for any man of business, or any possessor of property, in whatever shape, to feel safe while the power to inflate or contract the currency is arrogated by any one man, whether he happens to be some narrow-minded, bigoted, obstinate official, acting on his own volition, or some subordinate clerk, acted upon by others. "No one should be entrusted or tempted with such a power; for no man, however able and honest, could by any possibility justly or accurately exercise it. Foolish as was the experiment, however, we have tried it: and with the ill success that was inevitable. "The sway to and fro of our currency, controlled by the ebb and flow of our business transactions, consequent upon seed time and harvest, is subject to law as imperious and immutable as any that governs either the physical or moral world; and in just the degree that we understand and conform to its action can we hope for a successful solution of the problem that now so vexes the minds and disturbs the interests of all classes of the community. "The nearest approximation we have yet made to such an understanding and conformity has been in the New York free banking law, from which the national currency act has borrowed all of any merit it possesses. "This New York law, free from the vice of monopoly which the national currency act inherits from the necessities of its birth, and open to all men, as any honorable pursuit should be in this republic of ours, is also distinguished by three salient points: perfect security to bill-holders, freedom from arbitrary reserves, and systematic redemption of bills. In this last feature of the law, disagreeable as it is at times to speculation or unwary bankers, lies the key to its success, checking and governing as it does by its conservative action all over-issues, while still leaving the open freedom of the system untouched by any useless restriction; so that, no matter how great the number of those who choose to embark in the business, no more currency can be kept afloat than the wants of the country demand. The national currency act fails because it is a monopoly; because it has only a nominal redemption; and because of its arbitrary reserve clause, which serves only to hamper the means and obstruct the usefulness of our metropolitan banks at the very time when the trade of the country most requires their services, to say nothing of the power for evil which a knowledge of this fixed limit gives to the gamblers and speculators who hang around and within our stock-exchanges; and, lastly, because it has no power of expansion and contraction in response to the varying calls of trade and commerce. "The substitution of a free banking law for the national currency act--in the mere fact of the release it would give us from constant petitions to Washington officials, leaving the government to attend to its own monetary affairs and strictly mind its own business--would go a great way toward restoring and maintaining the manhood and self-respect we are fast losing, from our constant looking up to and attendance upon the central power, asking to have done for us things which should be self-regulating or which we should do for ourselves. Democrats as we profess to be, we are rapidly aping the follies and acquiring the habits of dependence upon authority characteristic of the older civilizations of monarchial Europe. It is hardly time, I think, for us to take the backward swing of the pendulum of political progress, that is sure eventually to land us where we began." A careful examination of the financial policy of the government ought to convince us that a change is necessary to prevent ultimate ruin and bankruptcy. With gold driven from circulation--an insufficient amount of depreciated currency for the transaction of the business of the country, and the facilities afforded the monopolies for controlling our whole commerce, the agricultural and industrial interests of the country languish--the farmer receives no reward for his toil--the laborer is poorly paid--and general prostration extends over the land. A return to specie payment, or an increase of sound currency, would relieve all cause of complaint, and enable the industry of the country to receive a fair remuneration for its labor. CHAPTER XXIV. OUR TARIFF POLICY.--DOES PROTECTION PROTECT? A diversity of opinion exists throughout the country upon the question of tariff. Politicians, statesmen, and the people generally, differ as to the policy the government should adopt respecting it. It is generally admitted that the revenue for the support of the government should be derived from duties levied upon imports. The real point upon which a difference exists is, whether the government should levy a tariff for revenue alone, or whether it should be levied for the purpose of affording what is termed a protection to American manufactures and interests. This question is no nearer a solution now than it was forty years ago. Those who favor protection appeal to our national pride; the necessity of encouraging home manufactures, and of competing with the cheap labor of Europe. A tariff for protection has been urged and adopted as the only means of fostering home productions for so long a time that it is deemed one of the necessities of the country by its advocates. They look upon it as a chief means of affording a home market for the farm produce of the country, as well as affording a market for all manufactured articles. While, on the other hand, those who are opposed to a tariff save for revenue, claim that what is termed protection, is, in fact, oppression; that it cripples commerce, taxes the people oppressively and unjustly, and, instead of benefiting the producer by affording him a market, deprives him of it. They insist that the agriculturalists of this country need, and must have, the advantage of foreign market in order to make farm pursuits remunerative. We have been combating monopolies, and shall attempt to show that what is termed a protection tariff affords no protection to the people at large, or to the operatives and laborers in factories and shops, but only to the capitalists of the country. An equitable tax for revenue is one that is levied upon articles of foreign growth or production, that enter into general consumption; and not one that is levied upon articles the main portion of which are of home manufacture. It is only the imported article that pays a duty to the government. The home manufacturer does not sell his fabrics for less price than is paid for the imported articles of like character and value; hence when only a part of any commodity is imported and pays a duty, and the other part is supplied from home manufactures, while the government derives revenue from the imported articles, the manufacturer puts into his own pocket the same per cent that is paid to the government in shape of import duty. To make it plainer: If a tariff of forty per cent is paid upon the imported article, when it is sold, the purchaser must re-pay this per cent to the importer, but the manufacturer can advance the price of his goods so as to realize forty per cent, or the amount of the tariff over his former prices, and still compete with the importer. The tariff protects him at the rate of forty per cent, which must be eventually paid by the consumer. No tariff is paid on home manufactures, and yet, in all cases, the manufacturer adds to the cost of production the amount of the tariff placed on like articles, and collects it from the purchaser or consumer. A tariff for protection gives to the manufacturers a monopoly, in some cases so complete as to drive the foreign article from our ports. In such cases the government receives no revenue, but the manufacturer makes a clean profit of the per cent fixed by the tariff, all of which is eventually paid by the consumer, and for which he receives no consideration. To illustrate this, let us take the duties on blankets for the year 1871, and the quantity imported. The duties on the four classes of blankets were 87, 88, 100, and 109 per cent, respectively. The whole imports for that year amounted to $19,355, and the tariff duties amounted to $17,316. All of the residue of blankets purchased during that year were home productions. The manufacturer has only to mark up his price to realize about one hundred per cent over the price at which they would have been sold but for the protection tariff. Take boots and shoes as another illustration: We imported none in 1871, and of course no revenue was received on these articles in that year; yet the manufacturers had the benefit of a tariff of thirty-five per cent on each pair sold. If a pair of boots was sold at $8.00, the protection the wearer paid the manufacturer was $2.80. The law compels the farmer and laborer to pay that sum as a bounty to the manufacturer. On cotton goods, the consumer pays a duty of from thirty-five to sixty-three per cent. For almost every article of clothing worn by man, woman, and child, a duty must be paid. The average is about forty-five per cent on the value. Prices are nearly uniform for the same classes of goods, whether of foreign or domestic manufacture. On imported articles the tariff is paid to the government; on domestic manufactures the duty is paid to the manufacturer. This system compels the poor man to contribute more than his fair proportion to protect the already rich manufacturer. To illustrate this, let us suppose that A is worth $500,000, and has a family of four to clothe, while B, who has nothing but his industry, and perhaps a small homestead, has a family of eight dependent upon him (as a general rule, the poor man has the larger family). Both families must be clothed and fed; each must contribute to the manufacturer the same rate of protection. The man with his half million in property and family of four will probably purchase as much for his family as the poor man will for his family of eight; each expends for his family during the year, for clothing, say four hundred dollars. If the duty on the purchases average forty per cent, each pays for the support of the government and to protect home manufactures the sum of $160.00. The sweat and toil of the poor man contributes just as much as the rich man's half-million. Or, suppose A is a man without family, and has great wealth, and B is dependent upon the product of a small farm for the support of himself and family. A spends for clothing $200.00, while B is obliged to expend $400.00 for clothing his family. Here the labor of the poor man pays twice as much as the capital of the rich man to protect home industry and support the government. The above illustrations will serve for all articles of general consumption. Let us look at the effect of the tariff upon other articles, taking railroad iron as an illustration. Under a revenue tariff railroad iron was sold for less than two-thirds of its present cost. Manufacturers amassed princely fortunes; laborers were better paid than they are now; the iron interests seemed to be in a prosperous condition; the demand was growing and increasing, and has continued to increase, until the supply is insufficient; and both foreign and domestic markets are depleted, and at times exhausted. With this increasing demand and scant supply there seems to be no good reason for government protection to home manufactures, yet a protective duty of about one-fourth its value is allowed on railroad iron. While the companies constructing the roads pay this duty, the producing classes also pay it in the end, in the shape of appreciated charges for transportation. The protection afforded to manufacturers does not extend to the laborers and operatives. The slight increase on the amount paid them does not meet the increased cost of living resulting from the protection tariff. They must pay more for what they consume, as well as receive the pay for their labor in depreciated currency. The effect of protecting the iron interests is to strengthen a monopoly that is now so rich and powerful that it controls some of the largest states in the Union. For this protection it returns no equivalent. The effect is the same in other manufacturing states. The owners of the factories make large profits, but the laborers and operatives, while their wages have advanced, really do not receive as much, over and above the increased cost of what they consume, as they received prior to 1860 under a revenue tariff. The purchasing power of a dollar before 1860 was as great as that of one and a half dollars now, for the reason that then it was the value of a coin dollar, while at the present time it is the value of an irredeemable paper dollar, at no time worth a dollar in coin, and for the further reason that the present tariff compels labor to pay for its purchases from thirty to eighty per cent for protection to the manufacturer. Thus, while the actual increase of wages is, as shown by reports made after investigation, but twelve per cent, the cost of living has increased fifty per cent. Under the plea of encouraging home manufactures, the operative and laborer is compelled to work at starvation prices, and it is not strange that they are organizing mutual aid societies. Another argument in favor of protection, which is often urged, is, that we should protect our people from the competing effects of the pauper labor of Europe. If this object were accomplished by a protective tariff, one good purpose would be achieved. But what are the facts? The manufacturers avail themselves of the higher prices warranted under the tariff, and then import their laborers and operatives from Europe, and, instead of finding, as formerly, American factories, furnaces, and machine shops, operated by Americans, they are worked mainly by imported laborers and operatives, and those who were to be protected and receive living wages are compelled to seek employment in other pursuits. Instead of protecting our own laborers from the competition of foreign pauper labor, the foreign laborers are imported, and supersede those who were promised protection. Another argument in favor of a protective tariff is, that it will afford a home market for the agricultural products of the country. Is this true? The vast agricultural resources of the great west and south demand the markets of the world. Illinois and Iowa can produce enough to supply a manufacturing population who, in turn, could supply all the fabrics and manufactured articles demanded by the entire population of the whole country. If we are to have the balance nicely drawn, so as to have a manufacturing population sufficient to consume the agricultural products of the country, then we could furnish the manufactured articles at rates that will allow us to export to other countries and compete with them in their own markets, or else the supply will so far exceed the demand that only a limited number could continue manufacturing pursuits, and a protective tariff, no matter how high, could not furnish a market beyond the demand. Let us refer to the returns made to the state department for an illustration of one point: In 1860 the exports of manufactured articles to foreign countries, under a revenue tariff, amounted to $21,351,562. The total amount of like exports in 1871, under the present protective tariff, amounted to $13,038,753, in coin. The exports in 1860 were in excess of those of 1871, under the highest tariff ever known in this country, $8,282,811, showing that under a low or revenue tariff our manufacturers could, and did, sell in foreign markets more than under the present system of high duties. Again, if we look at the exports of meat and breadstuffs for the years 1860 and 1871, we will find the amount exported in 1860 exceeded that exported in 1871 $2,000,000. We have not the figures before us, but believe they will show a still greater falling off in 1872. Now let us look at the imports during the same period. In 1860, we imported manufactured articles to the amount of $146,177,136, and in 1871 to the amount of $165,463,679, being an excess of the amount for the year 1860 in the sum of $19,286,543. If we add to this the falling off in exports ($2,000,000), the balance of trade against us, on manufactured articles, as between us and other nations, is $21,286,543. The imports for 1872 far exceed those of 1871, and the balance of trade against us for that year was but little less than $40,000,000. But if we take our entire commerce with other nations in account, the balance against us in 1871 was over $100,000,000! In 1872 it was over $140,000,000, and, if we add the amount of interest paid annually on bonds held in other countries, payable by railroads and other corporations, and the general government, the balance against us in 1872 was not less than $250,000,000. This balance must be paid with the products of our country, or in money. We have not coin with which to pay, and under our _protection_ system we cannot pay with our products. A protective tariff makes the farmers, the laborers, and all consumers, insurers of a certain profit to the already powerful combination of manufacturers. While the mechanic must depend upon the demand there is for his skill and labor, the laborer must also take his chances in the same way, and be content to accept such wages as his services will command, and the farmer must depend upon the demand and supply for the sale of his farm product, and not unfrequently will sell at ruinous prices, while the manufacturers have a monopoly in their line--they can always sell at a profit; all they need to do is to sell about as cheaply as the same article can be furnished for from a foreign market, plus the "protection" of the duty. The duty paid on the foreign article is the amount of _royalty_ the manufacturer charges for his goods. All other industries are compelled to divide their labor and products with him. The laborer who receives $20.00 per month and buys cloth of domestic manufacture for a suit of clothes, for which he pays $20.00, contributes about $7.35 of that amount to "protect" the manufacturer. The farmer who sells one hundred bushels of wheat for $100.00 and expends the amount in clothing for himself and family, donates about $38.00 to protect the manufacturer. The same is true of all other classes of consumers. Each one pays from thirty to eighty per cent on his purchases to protect the owners of factories, furnaces, etc. The protective tariff has destroyed our ocean commerce. It would not be profitable to spend time in reviewing the duty levied upon the materials and in the construction of vessels for ocean commerce. The fact is well known that our carrying has passed into the hands of other nations. That vessels can be built more cheaply in foreign ports is well known, as also that American ship owners build or purchase their ships in Europe, sail under English colors, and use English papers, assigning as a reason therefor their inability to pay the duty upon the materials used in ship building. So oppressive is this duty, and so damaging has it become to our commerce, that congress is being urged to grant subsidies to ship owners. As a necessary result of this system of protective tariff, the American built ships cannot carry freight as cheaply as those built in foreign countries, and the producer must be content to have his produce, already taxed to a half or two-thirds its value for inland transportation, taxed beyond the amounts charged by the vessels of other nations for ocean transportation, or allow the ocean trade to remain as it now is, in the hands of England. American seamen must abandon the ocean, or sail under foreign flags. Protection has destroyed our mercantile navy, and compelled our seamen to seek employment elsewhere, and in other occupations. With our vast agricultural wealth demanding the markets of the world, the protective policy of the government effectually closes our ports to other nations, while the farmer is obliged to accept for his grain the low price that a home market, already glutted, will afford him. The protective tariff is draining the country of coin, and making it impossible to resume specie payment. Taking it in connection with the combination of corporations, and Wall street brokers, the prospect of having coin as a circulating medium is but faint, if it is ever possible. The products of our mines for the year 1872 were about $62,000,000, and for the last four years have been nearly $200,000,000. The value of petroleum produced in the United States for the year 1872 was not less than $60,000,000, a large portion of which was shipped to and sold in foreign countries, and to that extent should be reckoned as money in our dealing with foreign nations. In 1862 the balance of trade was against us to the amount of about $250,000,000. After absorbing the produce of our mines, and our petroleum, the net balance against us was not less than $120,000,000. This balance had to be paid in coin or in the issue of new bonds. At no time since the enactment of the present tariff has the balance of trade been in our favor. Thus, notwithstanding the high duty paid, and the protection afforded by the tariff, our demands for foreign manufactures increase to such an extent as to threaten the nation with bankruptcy. According to official reports, the amount of coin in the country in 1868 was $350,000,000. The products of the mines since that date amount to $200,000,000. The amount of coin now in the country is reported less than $250,000,000, and most likely will not amount to $200,000,000. Protection to a small band of monopolists has caused an annual decrease in the amount of coin in the country equal to the excess of imports over exports. A few owners of factories and furnaces are being benefited and enriched by protection; the prices of manufactured articles have increased on an average about fifty per cent. The wages of operatives and laborers have increased but twelve per cent; the exports of manufactured articles have decreased; the value of imports has increased; the ocean commerce of the nation has been destroyed; the prices of the agricultural products of the country are reduced to a point that has blasted the prospects of the farmer, and made it difficult for him to live; the country is being drained of its precious metals, and an irredeemable currency has become the only circulating medium; values are unsettled, and the country is threatened with financial ruin--all to afford protection to home manufacturers and corporations. Protection is but another name for the systematic plunder of the farmer, laborer, and all the industrial interests of the country, by a class of monopolists that should be classed with corporations, stock jobbers, and Wall street brokers, and who are, in part at least, composed of the same men who control the corporate interests of the country. CHAPTER XXV. PATENT RIGHTS AND THEIR ABUSES. Closely allied to the monopolies of which we have been treating is that of patents to inventors. The original idea in granting patents was to protect inventors and discoverers when their inventions and discoveries were _new_ and _useful_. It is but just that the person who invents or discovers a new and useful principle in arts or mechanics, or makes a new and useful combination of principles not new, should be protected in his discoveries; that for a limited time he should reap the exclusive benefit of his discovery, in order that he may receive a fair consideration for the benefit his fellow-men are to derive from his studies and enterprise. To these inventors and discoverers we are indebted for much that is of great value to the public. The arts, sciences, and mechanics, as well as agriculture, have been greatly benefited by discoveries and inventions. The wealth, comfort, and happiness of the nation have been increased, while the inventors, because of the protection afforded them, have received a fair remuneration. The fact that valuable inventions reward the inventor liberally has led to great and growing abuses of the patent right statutes, and to great frauds and impositions. The desire to acquire sudden wealth has caused dishonest adventurers to enter the field of invention and discovery, with the intent of defrauding the people, as well as deceiving the patent office department. The same desire has caused those whose inventions are of value to resort to various schemes and subterfuges to continue their exclusive right to manufacture and sell their inventions long after they have been fully compensated for all they have expended in thought, time, and labor, in arranging and perfecting their discoveries and inventions. Having been granted a monopoly, they contrive to continue it. Lobbyists and congressmen become interested for a consideration, and patents are renewed from time to time by an abuse of the law that was designed to encourage discoveries and inventions, but not to build up and continue oppressions of the people. No class of the community has suffered as much from these monopolies as the agriculturalists. All improvements in farming implements and machinery are patented. Some of them, patented more than a quarter of a century ago, are still under the exclusive control of the patentees. Reapers that cost the manufacturer but fifty or sixty dollars, are sold for from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and twenty-five dollars, because the patentee, or his assigns, have now, and for nearly a generation have had, an exclusive right to make and sell them. So with seeders, plows, harrows, fanning mills, and almost all farming implements. The farmer is obliged to pay at least one hundred per cent royalty to the inventor, or his assigns, before he can receive any benefit from a discovery or an invention designed especially for his use. The inventors have already realized princely fortunes from their inventions, and the intent of the law has been fully accomplished; yet the patents are continued, and no one is allowed to make or sell these implements without the permission of the inventor. The law, which gave an exclusive right for fourteen years, has been amended from time to time; the rights have been extended, until patentees and their assigns annually claim tribute from the farmer in an amount that is oppressive. Patent right men operate together; they combine for the purpose of extorting from the people of this country, where they have a monopoly, while at the same time they sell their manufactured articles in foreign markets for one-half the price they demand in this country. We might illustrate this by numerous facts, but will content ourselves with reference to sewing machines and reapers. These are all patented, and all have patents for improvements made from time to time, many of which improvements are of little or no value, save as a pretext for the renewal of the patent. A sewing machine that cannot be purchased in the United States for less than seventy dollars costs but twelve or thirteen dollars for work and materials. This same machine (Singer's) is shipped to Europe and sold for $32.00. Here, where the patentee has an exclusive monopoly, we pay $38.00 more for the machine than it costs in England. We could order an American-made sewing machine from Belfast, pay freight and charges twice across the ocean, and get it for one-half it costs to buy it in America. If you purchase a McCormick's reaper in this country, it will cost you about $200.00. You can order the same machine from England, pay freights for its passage twice across the Atlantic, and get it for about one-half the money. The manufacturer cannot sell in this country without paying about one hundred per cent royalty to the inventor, but he can ship to Europe and sell at one-half the price charged in this country, and realize a fair profit on the sale. When a farmer purchases a reaper for himself, and a sewing machine for his wife, paying for the two $270.00, he pays as royalty to the inventor, $135.00. This same rate has been paid for the last twenty-five or thirty years. This large royalty is paid to the inventor, and is called protection. Continued beyond a reasonable time, it is nothing but legalized robbery. The fact that large fortunes have been, and are, made by inventors and pretended inventors, has filled the country with sharpers and swindlers, who are constantly on the lookout for an idea that may lead to some sort of invention upon which they can apply for a patent. The ease with which patents can be obtained encourages them in their undertaking. If we are to judge of the ability and competency of the examiners of models and drafts by the patents issued for almost all conceivable articles, we must conclude that the only qualifications they possess are to receive the fees, and recommend the issuing of letters patent. Principles so old that the date of their discovery is lost, that have been in use so long "that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," are being monopolized by letters patent, until a mechanic, or farmer, if he puts a handle in a hatchet, a hoe, or rake, or changes the arrangement of a harrow, plow, churn, or washboard, must expect to have a sharp speculator call upon him for royalty for an infringement upon his patent. Or, if a seamstress cuts her thread in a particular way, she must pay royalty. If the farmer makes a glove to protect his hands in husking corn, before he has used them a half hour, some vender of patents will call upon him for royalty. If the owner of a house attempts to paint it, or repair the roof, he must pay royalty for the privilege, if his own judgment should prompt him to compound his paints with some article not ordinarily used; or to use for his roof a kind of composition not in general use. The increase in the business of procuring patents is now so great that it has become a general and common nuisance to the whole country. The following is a list of one week's business in the patent office: Patents were issued in one week to applicants from the western states for threading nuts; broom corn duster; threshing machine; school desk and seat; station indicator; binding screw; corn sheller; windmill; photograph skylight; corn husking thimble; land pulverizer; manufacture of sweet biscuit; railroad frog; dress pattern; two for plows; thread cutter for sewing machine; corn husking glove; wheel plow; bridle bit; railroad track wrench; cradle; paper file; garden hose holder; sawing machine; saw swage; scythe rifle; butter package; spring hinge; swage for forming horse shoes; automatic grain weigher; fire-place grate; potato digger; automatic gate; faucet; stock for mill-stone picks; piston valve for steam engine; car coupling; motive power; grain basket; dining table; portable fence; fishing torch; extension table; driving gear for hand car; horse collar; harrow; cross-cut saw handle; extension ladder; machine for cutting leather; bee hive; cloth measuring register; cutter for tonguing and grooving lumber; heating stove; rotary steam engine; manufacture of steel; blast furnace; compound for preventing incrustation; fruit press; fire extinguisher; two for cultivators; hub for heavy wheeled vehicles; horse-shoe attachment; egg carrier; hose pipe nozzle; cotton cultivator; shoe pegging and trimming machine; combined seed separator and drill; felloe; filter for corn-juice, oils, &c.; gate hinge; distilling of turpentine; cotton stalk knocker; automatic fan. The above comprises only a partial list of the patents issued in one week. Followed up for one year, the list of patents would swell to near 4,000; about one in twenty of which are of value, while the residue are of no value save to enable the patentee to defraud the people upon whom he imposes his patent, or to force the timid to pay him royalty. Of the immense number of patents obtained for improved churns and washing machines, but few are of any real value. The same is true of patent bridges, reapers, and mowers, of threshing machines, of seeders and planters, of fences, and almost all farming implements. So of sewing machines. Many of the patents obtained contained no new principle, discovery, or combination, but, by imposition and fraud, adventurers obtain letters patent for something in general use, for the purpose of levying blackmail, in the shape of royalty, upon those who, ignorant of any exclusive right claimed by any one, continue to use an article which has been in general use long before the letters patent were issued. But few farmers or mechanics have escaped the claims of these patent right sharpers. Rather than be at the expense of defending a suit in the United States court, they submit to the demands of the man who presents himself as the agent or assignee of the patentee demanding blackmail, well knowing that the rascal has no legal claim, but preferring to buy peace rather than to be annoyed by vexatious litigation. No better illustration of the results of granting letters patent for pretended inventions or discoveries, as well as of the careless manner in which letters patent are issued, can be found than is presented by the gate, known in the west as "Teel's Patent." This gate in its combination and construction does not contain a single new principle. The same identical gate has been in use for thirty years in various parts of the Union. With the addition of "friction wheels" or "rollers," or "pivot wheels" (as they are indifferently called), this gate was on exhibition and sale in many of the western states in 1863. In fact, the patent for the friction wheels obtained in that year was attached to the gate and publicly exhibited, no claim being made for a patent upon the gate, but only upon the attachment. The gate itself consists of battens nailed upon the ends and near the center of four or five boards which forms the gate, with the posts so placed that after it is pushed a sufficient distance to make it balance on its center, it can be opened, its center acting as the pivotal point. The balancing principle for which the patent was obtained was first discovered by two of the descendants of Father Adam, in their youthful days, when they balanced a pole or board across a log or a fence, and, seated, one on each end, enjoyed a game of seesaw. The little boy who built a pig-pen years before the great intellect of Teel forged the idea, made the same kind of a balance gate for it. The man or boy of past generations who desired to make a cheap gate, instinctively made a _Teel Gate_. Yet some ten years ago the mighty intellect of Teel forged the idea, produced a model and forwarded it to the patent office. The _Scientific_ (?) _Examiner_, who decides upon the merits of all inventions, who, if he had traveled and observed the common farm gate in many parts of the country, must have seen the gate in actual public use, issued to Teel letters patent, which are safely and securely held until the new western country is settled and this cheap gate is in general use, when he and his agents and assignees appear and demand _royalty_. He has been given an exclusive monopoly for the making, selling, and using a gate that is not new in any of its principles. By this fraud of the applicant and the incompetence of the examiner, the farmer is forbidden to use the old invention of a cheap gate until he pays a bounty to a patentee. The law for the protection of discoverers and inventors is prostituted, and the people compelled to pay out their money without consideration. The same state of facts exists with respect to many other patents. Men travel over the country, examine all machinery and farming implements, not for the purpose of making new or useful discoveries or improvements, but for the purpose of learning whether they cannot so contrive as to collect royalty from others for an invention long in use, but for which the inventor had not asked or received a patent. Add this monopoly of patent rights to the other monopolies now cursing the country, and the need of a speedy reform, or the alternative of poverty and bankruptcy among the producing classes, becomes still more apparent. This patent right monopoly is, in a great measure, owing to the want of proper care and knowledge in the department of the patent office, where the only pre-requisite for the granting of letters patent for almost anything, where the application is not contested, is a model and the patent office fee. The effect of this free and easy course in the department is to bring into disrepute the really valuable invention and discovery, and to impose upon the people useless burdens. CONCLUSION. REFORMATION OR REVOLUTION.--A RADICAL CHANGE DEMANDED IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.--CONCLUSIONS OF THE AUTHOR. FIRST. We have sought to call the reader's attention to some of the monopolies existing in our land, and to show their power and influence with the government, and their control of the commercial and agricultural interests of the country. It now remains for us to direct his attention to the effect of these monopolies upon the people and prosperity of the country. No country in the world has been as bountifully supplied by the Creator with all the means to make a nation prosperous and happy as ours. It is vast in extent of territory. Its soil is rich, and most of it new. Lying in all latitudes, it produces fruits of every climate. The husbandman is assured of an abundant crop. All agricultural and horticultural pursuits are rewarded with large growths and bounteous harvests. Our shores are washed by oceans, which afford us highways, over which we can avail ourselves of the markets of the world; while flowing through the agricultural portions of our common country are our great rivers, upon whose waters the produce and manufactures of the land are transported to market. Our great lakes furnish us an outlet for the surplus product of the great west. Our sixty or seventy thousand miles of railroad traverse our country in all directions, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and spreading like a net-work from the lakes to the gulf. Our mines produce immense yields of the precious metals, while our hills and mountains are full of iron, coal, and lead. Petroleum flows in quantities which should add largely to the wealth of our common country. Our timber is not excelled by that of any growth in the world. Our lands are rich in fertility, and poor only in price. The Creator has done for us all that could be desired to make us prosperous and contented. Our government is, or was intended to be, based upon the will of the people. Our constitution recognizes no royal rulers, no lords, no titled gentry. Under it we are all equal. They who administer the laws are selected by the people. In contemplation of law, all are equal--all are free and independent. With all these blessings and advantages we ought to be the happiest and most prosperous people on the earth. Peace, plenty, and contentment should reign supreme throughout the land. What are the facts? Throughout the entire length and breadth of our land, mutterings and complainings are heard. From the farmers, the mechanics, and laborers alike, the complaint is heard, "We cannot pay our taxes and support our families;" "Our wages will not enable us to buy the necessaries of life, because of the large duties laid upon them;" "Our farm products will not pay taxes, charges for transportation, and other burdens imposed upon us, and leave us any margin;" "We had better let our lands lie idle than to attempt to cultivate them." These and like complaints are heard from the laboring and producing classes. Nor are their complaints without cause. Another interest has arisen in the land--it has become all-powerful. This interest penetrates the remotest portions of the country. It calls upon the laborer, the operative, the mechanic, the farmer, and all private citizens, for a division of the products of their labor. It enters the halls of legislatures and of congress, and demands, and not unfrequently purchases, special privileges and powers. It visits the executive department of the government, and there secures special favors. It stalks boldly into the courts of the country, and _there_ procures unjust decisions in its interest. It indeed places its own men upon these _seats of justice_, that the judiciary of the country may not fail to support its aims. It has already obtained complete control of the finances of the country. It has corrupted legislatures and congressmen, until the law-making power has become a party to schemes of robbery and plunder. By corrupt legislation and _ex parte_ judicial decisions, it has destroyed all the old republican landmarks, overridden the provisions of the constitution, and substituted for the government prepared for us by our forefathers an oligarchy that rules the land and holds the people at its mercy, and their property as its lawful booty. This great oppressor of the people is the railroad corporations and their associates, of which we have been treating. Railroad and other corporations, brokers, and stock-jobbers, have obtained such complete control over the government, the people, and the financial and commercial interests of the country, that they who depend upon agricultural pursuits, or upon their labor, for a support, are deprived of those God-given rights which formed the base of our political superstructure. Formerly, the people, through the ballot box, governed the country; they were sovereign. In this republic no rival power existed, and it was our boast that our people were free and independent. Our fundamental law is still the same. In theory, our people are still sovereign; in fact, most of their sovereignty has been legislated from them. Statutes are enacted compelling the people to divide their hard-earned substance with private corporations without any consideration; and the highest courts of the country have affirmed the constitutionality of these laws. The freedom and equality which was our national boast have disappeared, and instead thereof the people are ruled by cruel and oppressive task-masters, who are fostered and supported by legislatures and courts in their united purpose of controlling the country. These oppressions have been endured by the people, with but feeble efforts to regain their rights, until the alternative is presented of organized resistance or absolute ruin. Throughout the length and breadth of our common country, the laboring and producing classes are struggling for the necessaries of life, whilst those who own and manage the corporations of the country have firmly grasped and now control the financial and commercial interests of the country, and are amassing princely fortunes and rolling in wealth. To stay the course of their oppressors, and get back some of their rights, the laboring classes are organizing, and demanding of their employers such compensation as will enable them to supply the common necessaries of life. They demand that their wages shall be increased in proportion to the increased cost of living, occasioned by special grants and privileges bestowed upon corporations and monopolies; that instead of being treated as vassals of the despots who now rule the country and control the government, that their rights as freemen shall be recognized. The operatives and mechanics are banding together for the same purpose. They are all seeking, in the same degree, to counteract the evil effects of the grants and privileges conferred upon monopolies. The farmers, who, as a class, have always been deemed the most independent in the country, are so impoverished by these monopolies that they have been compelled to band together for mutual protection. No choice was left them. The bestowal of such great powers and special privileges upon corporations presented the alternative of utter financial ruin, or united and combined efforts on the part of the people, to check the great and growing power which now is fattening upon their toil and industry. While under ordinary circumstances, all class organizations are attended with some bad results, yet when any interest becomes so powerful as to oppress all others, when it has such strength that it can defy all ordinary attempts at reform, then any and all organizations having for their object the correction of abuses, the restoration of the rights of the people, the destruction of an oligarchy that has already obtained such power in the land as to subvert the very nature of free institutions, is not only right, but its objects are patriotic. Though the organization may have for its object the protection of a single interest, the correction of a single abuse, the restoration of a single right, it benefits all classes who suffer like oppressions. It is fortunate that while the grants of great bounties and special privileges to corporations have resulted in great wrongs and oppressions to the people generally, they have also been the means of effecting organizations that will eventually restore to the people those rights which in our government are considered as inalienable. When the agriculturalists of the whole country become united in their demands for redress, neither the state legislatures, the congress of the nation, or the courts, will dare to disregard their demands. Numbering more than all who are engaged in other pursuits, being a majority of the whole people, when their united voice is heard it will not be an "uncertain sound." It will command obedience. Grants of bounties and privileges to corporations have depressed and sometimes destroyed other great interests to the injury of the people, and divided the people into classes, one class representing the capital and corporate interests of the country, and the other, comprised of the laboring and producing classes; but this special legislation has also resulted in bringing to the front the great agricultural population, who possess the power, by united action, of restoring to the people their lost rights, while corporations shall enjoy equal rights with other interests, shorn of their power granted to them by corrupt and interested legislation and partial decisions of courts. This legislation and these decisions we have reviewed in preceding pages. It now remains for us to express our views upon the policy rendered necessary by the grave situation of the country. SECOND.--_The Constitutional Right and Duty Resting upon the People to Repeal all Class Legislation._--While we do not claim to possess more knowledge than other men, and while our views as to the means to be employed for remedying the evils under which we now suffer may be erroneous, we shall venture to present them with the hope of aiding the efforts now being made to arrest the rapid concentration of the whole political, commercial, and financial interests of the country, in corporations and other monopolies. We must not lose sight of the fact that under our constitution the people are sovereign; that the will of the majority expressed as provided by the fundamental law is supreme; that all the rights, privileges, and powers possessed by man in his normal state, are retained by the people, save such as they have transferred to the different departments of the government, state and national; that these rights, not so transferred, can be asserted and enforced as occasion requires; that when those entrusted with the administration of the government transcend or abuse the powers delegated to them, and by so doing deprive the people of the rights they possess under the constitution, the people are fully justified in resorting to whatever means may be necessary for the restoration and protection of those rights. In pursuing these necessary measures of relief, no injury is done to a minority, or to any individual, for the foundation on which our republic rests is equal and exact justice to all men, and the equality of all men before the law. All acts of legislatures, and all decisions of courts, which deny to the citizen, or to any class of citizens, or to a particular trade, occupation, business, or profession, the same privileges and protection granted to others, or which grant to any class of citizens or to corporations privileges which infringe upon the rights of others, are abuses of power and assumptions of authority not delegated by the people to the government, or to any department of it. It follows that any attempts of congress or legislatures to confer upon any corporations grants of power which enable them to override the rights reserved by the people, transcend the authority with which such legislatures are clothed, and are not binding upon the public. As agents, they have exceeded their power, and their acts do not bind their principals. If an agent acts under special authority, his acts, within the scope of his authority, are binding upon his principal; but if he violates his instructions, and attempts to make a contract not warranted by his letter of attorney, his acts have no binding force upon his principal. The same is true of those men who are elected and appointed to fill the different offices in the government. The constitution is their letter of attorney. They are bound by it. When they act outside of their instructions, as contained in that instrument, their acts are void. This will be conceded. Even members of railroad companies will not controvert this proposition. The real point is, Who is to decide when an act is in conflict with the constitution? The answer is, the courts, for such is the law. When complaint is made of usurpations of corporations, we are told that they are only exercising the privileges conferred upon them by law; that the courts have decided in their favor, and that from these decisions there is no appeal; nor can any redress be obtained, because the question has been settled in their favor by the highest power in the land--the supreme court of the United States. To this general rule of determining controverted questions there must be some exceptions, unless we concede that supreme power is vested in the courts, and that the constitution clothes them with all the attributes of despotic governments. We have shown that judges of courts are governed and controlled by the same influences which influence other men; that they are not infallible; that their decisions are influenced by surrounding circumstances; that education, association, and habits of life, have an important bearing upon their minds, and not unfrequently warp their judgments, and it is not treason to say that decisions of state and federal courts prove that they are as liable to change their views as are the majority of the people. The supreme power must have a permanent lodgment somewhere. If it remains with the people, it does not vest in the supreme court, and that court is but the agent of the people, and acts for them when it decides upon the validity of a statute, or defines the rights and duties of the people. Under our form of government, certain rights and powers are conferred upon the general government; these are all such as are necessary for our existence as a nation; they are limited, and should be strictly construed, because all powers and rights not expressly conferred upon the general government, "are reserved to the states or to the people." The states being sovereign, their power is superior to that of the general government, save in those matters surrendered to it. Hence, the state governments have a general, expressed, and implied jurisdiction in all matters not surrendered, and state constitutions are to be liberally construed. But over and above the powers vested in the general and state governments, that God-given right of self-protection remains with the people. This right they have never surrendered to legislatures or to courts. If by the action of the legislature, or of congress, or of the courts, the rights reserved to the people can be abridged, denied, or destroyed, then we do not live under a republican, but are the subjects of a despotic, government. If congress were to enact a law providing that one-tenth of the annual income of each inhabitant in the land should be paid to railroad corporations, and the supreme court of the United States should decide the act to be constitutional, if it be true that there is no appeal from these decisions, and that as good citizens of the government we are obliged to accept them as valid and binding, there could be no redress. This doctrine of submission we do not indorse. Such a decision would cause the people to resort to the powers and rights retained by them, and to make use of whatever means they possessed to reverse or destroy the force and effect of such a decision. They would be justified in resorting to nature's first law to rid themselves of so unjust a decision. While no such law has been passed, and no such decision has been made, laws have been enacted, and their validity affirmed by the courts, which are paving the way for the destruction of the civil and political rights of the people, and the centralization of all power in the general government. By a series of legislative enactments and decisions of courts, special privileges have been conferred upon railroad companies antagonistic to, and destructive of, the rights of the people. How are these rights to be restored? These questions will now claim our attention. All laws granting to railroad or other corporations organized for pecuniary profit, special and exclusive privileges, which encroach upon the rights of the public, should be repealed. The most prominent argument against repeal exists in the doctrine that railroads are public highways, and that a charter granted to a railroad corporation by the legislature is in the nature of a contract, and is therefore irrepealable. By the constant and persistent assertion of these propositions, and by frequent adjudication of the questions, candor compels us to admit that the current of judicial decisions supports this doctrine. Yet as the ancient dogma of tyrants, "The king can do no wrong," does not obtain in this country, we beg leave to call in question the soundness of this doctrine. If railroads are public highways, there can be no question as to the right of legislatures to exercise the same control over them that they assert in regard to common public roads. If they are public, private parties cannot have the exclusive control of them; nor can the legislature grant away the rights of the public by exclusive charters to private parties, for the reason that the legislature (the department of government that enacts all statutes) cannot, by the enactment of a statute, take from the whole people one of the rights belonging to them and confer it upon a private corporation. The legislature has no power to enact a statute declaring a foundry, or mill, built by an individual or a company with private capital (the absolute title vesting in such party) to be a public foundry or mill. If such a statute were enacted, it would not change the title to the property, nor would it prevent the owner from using and enjoying it as his own, exclusively. Whether it be called public or private would not change the nature of the ownership or convert the interest into public property. No matter by what name it might be called, it is still private property. The same is true of railroads. They are built and owned by private corporations; are under the control of their owners, who retain for their own use the earnings of their roads. If these roads are public highways, then the legislature, acting for the public good, occupies the anomalous position of granting charters to private parties to construct public highways, and to own them after their construction. The supreme court of the United States, and the courts of some of the states, have decided that they are public highways, and, according to the usual custom, these decisions are to be received as final. The courts having declared them public corporations does not change the facts in the case. The facts still remain. The roads are owned and controlled by private corporations. The title cannot be taken from them arbitrarily. The companies receive the earnings of the roads, and every fact contradicts the decision of the courts. If the courts were to decide that a crow was white and _not_ black, we would acknowledge the binding force of the decision, and admit, that by virtue of the decision, the crow _is_ white. But when we look at the _fact_, we would still insist that, notwithstanding the decision of the courts, the crow is as black as it was before the decision was made. If the courts were to decide that common highways were railroads, as a matter of law we would accept the decision as final; but as a matter of fact we would know that they were common highways. Railroads, owned and controlled by private parties, are not public highways. If railroads are public highways, then the other position, that the charters granted to railroad companies are irrepealable, is not tenable--for the reason that the legislature possesses full power to alter, amend, or repeal all laws enacted for the benefit of the public. Public highways are public property as much as public buildings, court-houses, school houses, asylums, and other institutions created for the use and benefit of the public. The legislature does not possess the power to vest in a company the exclusive right to build and own any of these public buildings. If a charter were granted for any such purpose, it could not be claimed that it was in the nature of a contract between the state and the company, absolutely binding upon all future legislation; that the company had acquired, by virtue of its charter, rights that neither courts nor future legislatures could disturb. Or suppose that a private company should obtain a charter for constructing and owning all the highways within a certain township or county, would it be contended that future legislatures could not alter or repeal the charter? If railroads are public highways, the companies constructing them must be subject to the same laws and decisions that apply to all other matters of like public character. Their charters are at all times under the control of the legislative authority, and subject to be altered, amended, or repealed. Being the component part of the government, of a public nature, the doctrine that private parties can acquire rights in the nature of a contract that cannot be disturbed without their consent is not tenable. Whether railroads are to be considered as private property, or as public highways, they are subject to the control of the legislature--because, under the constitution, the power to create corporations by charter, with absolute powers, does not exist. If the converse of this is true, then legislatures could, by conferring special privileges upon individuals and corporations, deprive the public of all attributes of sovereignty, and place the entire government in the hands of individuals and companies. The constitution has conferred no such power upon any department of the government. If such power is conferred, the constitution, instead of being the paramount law as intended--establishing the rights of the people, controlling legislative enactments, defining the powers of the different departments of the government, and guaranteeing protection from unjust and oppressive laws, and decisions of courts--is instead but an instrument to be used for the enslavement of the people. The power to grant to private parties a monopoly of any of the rights belonging to the whole people, or to confer upon these private parties such exclusive privileges as will infringe upon or take from the public, the rights that naturally attach, or belong to, the whole people, was never conferred upon the legislature of the state or nation. If legislatures have entered into contracts with corporations, under which the rights belonging to the people are transferred to such corporations, they have exceeded the power vested in them, and the charters granted, so far as they infringe upon the rights of the public, are null and void. The plea, that a repeal or amendment of such charters would destroy vested rights, has no force, because the power to make such grants or contracts is wanting. Nor does the plea, that innocent third parties would suffer, add any strength to the position. The corporations are the parties with whom these innocent parties contract, and to whom they must look for the fulfillment of their contracts. All acts of legislatures, granting to railroad or other corporations, rights belonging to the whole people, are subject to the control of future legislatures, and are repealable. The only purpose for which a railroad charter should be granted is to subserve the public interest. For this purpose the legislatures possess the power to confer upon corporations such rights and privileges as are necessary to enable them to have continued being, and to transact business, but reserving at all times the right to control them and reform abuses. Good faith on the part of railroad companies requires of them fair and honest dealing with the people. Adopting the idea that the public was to receive great benefit from the construction of railroads, large grants of lands, subsidy bonds, local municipal subscriptions, donations of money, and direct taxation, in different localities, have been afforded the different companies for the purpose of aiding in the construction of their roads. The benefit the public was to receive, and which the companies agreed to afford, was the only consideration expected by the people. This consideration the public has never received. We have shown the course pursued by railroad companies, in constructing their roads, watering their stock, and selling their bonds, and the oppressions practiced by them to force from the people the means for declaring dividends on fictitious stock, and to pay the interest on the immense amounts of bonds issued and sold to the different corporations. Assuming that their charters are contracts between themselves and the states, they defy all efforts made by the people to arrest their extortions. Our government being instituted for the protection and benefit of the whole people, they possess the power, and it is their right, to amend or repeal all laws that deny or abridge their own rights. Railroad companies should be compelled to reduce their stock to the actual cost of constructing their roads, and the rates of charges for the transportation of freights and passengers should be fixed by statute at such rates as would afford a fair dividend upon the capital actually invested. The public should not be compelled to pay interest or dividends on stock or bonds issued in excess of the actual cost of the roads. The property of railroad companies should be taxed by the same rules, and at the same rate, as the property of individuals. A general supervision of all railroad corporations throughout the country should be exercised by the respective state authorities. It may be said: "All this is proper, but how will you accomplish it? All efforts heretofore made in that direction have been defeated in the different legislative bodies, or by the decisions of the courts." We are compelled to admit that if future attempts at reform are to be measured by past efforts, the prospect is not flattering. When relief bills have been introduced into legislative bodies they have generally failed. Railroad men have been able to defeat almost every attempt at reform. The idea seems to have obtained in all legislative bodies that the men who built railroads were self-denying; that they were philanthropists; that for the purpose of developing the country, of affording speedy and cheap transportation to the eastern markets of the products of the west, they were sacrificing their personal comfort and wealth; and that the least the people could do was to extend to them a helping hand--to grant them local aid, to exempt them from taxes, to assist them in procuring the right of way, and, instead of enacting laws to protect the people from the abuses of railroad corporations, statutes should be enacted to prevent any interference with the corporations, and allowing them extraordinary privileges. Men who were elected to the legislature under pledges to favor the passage of statutes for the protection of the people against the encroachments of corporations, were found enlisted in their favor, and these monopolies, instead of being restricted in their powers, have continually received additional favors and privileges. When the people have appealed to the courts for redress, they have met with defeat. Lengthy decisions have been written and published, setting forth the great benefit of railroads, instructing the people that railroad charters are contracts, and that unless courts decide in favor of railroad companies "innocent third parties," who have purchased railroad bonds, will sustain loss. Thus, through the legislative and judicial departments of the government, the people are reduced to a state of vassalage, with railroad corporations as their masters and rulers. Notwithstanding this gloomy outlook, the people still retain sufficient power to correct the evil and to recover their constitutional rights. The country is now divided into two parties. One party is composed of the people, strong in nothing but numbers, and the determination to battle for their rights. The other side is composed of corporations, stock-jobbers, brokers, and capitalists, whose strength consists in the organization and consolidation of their interests, their control of the finances of the country, and of the different departments of the government. The lines dividing these parties are clearly and distinctly marked. Their interests are conflicting. The people now demand such legal enactments as will restrict extortionate charges by railroad companies, and compel them to pay their just share of taxes for the support of the government. Legislators being elected for short terms, being frequently called upon to render an account of their official acts to their constituents, if the people are united and persistent, it will not be difficult to procure the passage of such statutes as will compel railroad companies to deal fairly and honestly with the public. To effect reform, and obtain redress, the aid of another department of the government must be obtained, to-wit: the courts of the country. THIRD.--_The People have a Precedent for a Pledged Judiciary._ In treating of the courts and their decisions, we are venturing upon grounds that will subject us to criticism. The decision of a court of last resort upon controverted questions is generally received as final. In questions of constitutional law, or when the rights of the public or of private parties are involved, the final decisions of our highest tribunal are accepted by general consent, as the supreme law of the land. We look upon the judges of courts as men possessing superior legal sagacity, and upon their decisions as embodying the highest wisdom. The congress of the nation, or the legislatures of states, composed in part, at least, of men of extensive legal knowledge, who have made the science of government a life long study; who have carefully and critically examined the provisions of the constitution; who have full knowledge of the mischief to be remedied, or the rights to be enforced, carefully digest, prepare, and after full discussion in their respective bodies, enact a law which they believe will accomplish the intended purpose, and at the same time contravene no provision of the constitution. An attempt is made to enforce the law, and a question arises as to its constitutionality, or its meaning and effects. The court is appealed to. On this bench are sitting three, five, seven, or more judges. After argument, this court, by a majority of one, decides the law unconstitutional, giving to it an interpretation which defeats the object for which it was enacted. The minority of the court dissent from the opinion of the majority, and set forth at length the reasons for such dissent. The fact that five judges concur in the majority opinion and four dissent makes the decision of one man the supreme law of the land. It annuls acts of congress and state legislatures, and makes the opinions and decisions of four members of the court concurring with a majority of congress of no avail. One man's opinion is the law for the whole people. This we have shown in the action of the supreme court in the legal tender cases. Now it is not considered out of place to criticise the acts of congress or of legislatures, or the motives and influences that govern and control those bodies in the enactment of laws; yet it is looked upon as almost treasonable to refuse to accept the decisions of courts as good law, or to discuss the motives and influences leading to these decisions. In 1869 the supreme court of the United States, by a majority of one judge, decided that treasury notes were not legal tender for pre-existing debts. In 1871 the same court, by a majority of one, decided that they were a legal tender for all debts, public or private, save when there were special exceptions. So in other questions in the United States courts, and in the courts of the states, it has sometimes happened that the law of the land has been changed by the change of one or two judges. In Iowa this is demonstrated in the decisions of the supreme court upon the questions whether the legislature could authorize the levy and collection of a special tax to aid in the construction of railroads. We refer to these matters to show that judges are not infallible, and that sitting as courts, they are apt to differ as to the law and facts of the case. Instances are not wanting when judges have been appointed and elected because of their views upon certain questions, and when with the changes of the _personnel_ of the court, its final decisions have been reversed, thus making the supreme law of the land depend upon the election or appointment of one man to the bench. The argument to be drawn from this is, that no such sanctity surrounds the court or judges as forbids a scrutiny of their decisions or the motives prompting them. But it is said, if you discuss the motives underlying judicial decisions, you will debase the judiciary of the country; that candidates for the bench, like those for legislative or executive offices, will be selected because of their views respecting certain interests and questions that may come before them for judicial determination, and, like legislators they will be appointed or elected because these views harmonize with those of certain classes or interests. The answer to this is, that as a general rule, judges are now appointed or elected because of their political views. In almost every instance the man who is elected or appointed accords in his political views with the majority, and indeed, men have been nominated and elected, or appointed, as judges of courts because of their publicly expressed opinions on some particular subject. The decisions of courts upon constitutional and other questions change frequently. The most important interests and rights of the people under the constitution and laws of the country have been differently decided by the same court of last resort in both national and state tribunals. The constitution has been declared to mean one thing at one time, and a directly opposite meaning has been given to the same clause at another term of the same court, with but a few months intervening. An elasticity has been given this instrument neither contemplated by its framers, nor calculated to increase respect for it, or for the judiciary of the country. While we would not advocate the policy of candidates for judicial offices pledging themselves upon any question that may come before them for a decision, we claim that the people should exact from every candidate a pledge to "support, protect, and defend the constitution," to abstain from the dangerous practice which now obtains of construing the fundamental law of the land in favor of particular interests, and to abstain from judicial legislation. More danger to the liberties of the people is to be apprehended from the courts, than from any other source. The constitution is inelastic, unchangeable, save by amendment in the manner provided. No court should disregard it, nor warp its meaning. If the rules of construction practiced of late are to be continued, its sanctity is destroyed, and its provisions are no more binding than those of a statute. It is the duty of courts to interpret the constitution, but not to supply its (to them) seeming defects, or to override its plain provisions. We all feel a deep interest in the election of legislators, for the reason that all are to be affected by the laws enacted, but we seem not to realize to its full importance the fact that all laws passed by congress or a state legislature are liable to be declared null and void by the courts; that the interpretation and construction of statutes belong exclusively to the courts; that the men elected to judicial positions, under the constitution, are clothed with a power superior to that of the legislative and executive departments of the government; that by a single decision the supreme court of the state, or of the nation, can suspend or annul a statute which has been in force for years, or that an interpretation of the constitution, long acquiesced in, can be reversed and a new meaning given to it. Yet these are facts, and from these decisions there is no appeal. The courts may change their opinions upon constitutional questions at every term, and the nation must receive their decisions as the supreme law. We have said that the constitution is inelastic. It must remain so for the protection of the rights of the people. If courts can change its meaning as occasion requires, the will of the court and not the constitution, is the supreme law of the land. The decisions of courts, in the recent conflicts between railroad corporations and the people, and upon the legal tender question, demonstrate that the will of the court is already the supreme law of the land. One of the questions in the determination of which the courts have substituted their will for constitutional law, relates to the authority of state governments to aid in the construction of railroads. The constitution of Iowa prohibits the state from participating in or becoming a stockholder in any private corporation or any corporation created for profit. Counties are, necessarily, a part of the government; their creation and organization are a necessity in the administration of the state government. While the state is prohibited from aiding in the construction of railroads, the courts have said that the constitution does not prohibit counties from subscribing stock to railroad corporations and creating onerous debts in payment therefor. In other words, while the constitution forbids any participation on the part of the state, as a state, in the construction of railroads, it is no violation of the fundamental law for the inferior branches of the state government to become stockholders in the same corporations. Though the whole state is forbidden to aid in the construction of railroads, by dividing the state into counties, it is no violation of the fundamental law for these counties to aid in their construction. No one doubts that it was the intention of the framers of the constitution to protect the people against the evils of oppressive burdens always resulting from a participation of the public authorities in the construction of railroads. The question of the authority of counties to subscribe stock to railroads, in Iowa, has often been before the courts. The decisions have been numerous, but not unanimous or uniform. At no time has the supreme court of the state by unanimous decision held that the power existed; but on several occasions the court has united in deciding that the power did not exist, the constitutionality of such right depending entirely upon who were elected judges. Thus the fundamental law, which can only be changed by amendment in the manner provided, has been held to permit or forbid public aid in building railroads, as suited the peculiar views of the men who had been elected judges. What was constitutional one day was unconstitutional the next. The decision of the men who happened to occupy seats upon the supreme bench, has been the supreme law, and not the constitution. On the question of voting local aid to railroads the supreme court decided that the act of the legislature authorizing such aid was unconstitutional. In one year from that time the same supreme court, three judges concurring, decided that the law was constitutional, the reason of this variance being that in the interim two judges had retired from the bench and two new ones been elected in their place. Here, again, the will of the men who happened to be elected changed the meaning of the constitution. The same curious history has been enacted in many other states. When men who are interested in railroads, or who desire that the public should aid in their construction, occupy seats on the bench of the supreme court, the constitution is construed to allow such aid, and where the judges are opposed to the allowance of such aid, they decide the constitution does not authorize, but forbids it. In each case the fundamental law is interpreted to suit the peculiar views of the judges who occupy the bench, until it has ceased to have any binding effect. With this state of facts, known to all men, it is not strange that the people now demand pledges from men who aspire to judicial station. When state constitutions are made to mean anything or nothing, as suits the men whose duty it is to interpret them, and when laws are pronounced constitutional or unconstitutional, as caprice or the interests of corporations may prompt, "nature's first law, self-preservation," demands that those who aspire to become judges of courts should be controlled by the constitution rather than by their personal views as to what it should be; and that they should be fully committed and pledged to abstain from judicial constructions of the constitution which abridge the rights of the people and increase the power of corporations. While the decisions of the state courts have tended to abridge the rights of the people and increase the already too great power of corporations; while they have, in fact, decided that, under the constitution, a citizen can be compelled to bestow a part of what he possesses upon railroad corporations without an equivalent, the greatest danger to the liberties of the people and the perpetuity of republican government is to be apprehended from the supreme court of the United States. It possesses, under the constitution, unlimited jurisdiction upon all matters arising under the constitution and laws of the United States, but not the same general jurisdiction that appertains to state tribunals. Yet, as under the constitution it is a court of last resort, and its members hold their offices for life, it is independent of the people. Not only so, but it cannot be called to an account by any department of the government, state or national. It possesses powers superior to all other departments of the government; it rises above all law, and becomes a law in itself. Its decisions being final, the whole people must accept them as the supreme law of the land. No matter how oppressive, or unjust, or absurd, the whole government and people must accept these decisions as the highest law and authority in the land. These facts, taken into consideration with some of its recent decisions in favor of railroad corporations and other monopolies, raise the question whether we are now governed by constitutional law or by the edicts of the supreme court, promulgated in the guise of judicial decisions. Let us look at a few of these decisions, now in full force as the law of the land. In the construction of railroads, counties, cities, and towns have assisted by subscribing stock and levying taxes to pay such subscription. State courts have decided that under the constitution and laws of the states such subscription was unconstitutional, illegal, and void. The power to afford such aid to railroad companies was derived from state statutes, passed by virtue of the power presumed to be conferred by the constitution. Following precedents which had been established and recognized from the organization of our government, the decisions of the state courts should have been final, and binding upon the courts of the nation. Yet the supreme court of the United States, by a bare majority of one, in violation of all precedent, assumed power not conferred upon it by the constitution of the United States, annulled state constitutions, disregarded state laws, and reversed and refused to be bound by the decisions of state courts. The will of one man, who happened to occupy a seat upon the supreme bench, is made the supreme law of the land, not by virtue of any provision of the constitution, but by trampling upon the rights of states and the people. When it is remembered that their decisions were made in favor of corporations, and that their effect was to compel the people to contribute a part of their substance to help build up and strengthen monopolies, which have proved to be oppressive task-masters, we are justified in saying that the fundamental law of the land has been misinterpreted and the rights of the people sacrificed. We assert that no provision of the constitution can be shown that even indirectly authorizes taxation to aid in the construction of railroads owned by private corporations. The idea is at war with every principle of right and justice. When the supreme court of the nation assumed to decide in favor of such authority, it occupied the position and assumed the prerogative of an absolute monarch. The supreme court of the United States was as much bound by the decision of the state courts upon questions arising under state constitutions and laws as were the courts of the states by the decisions of the federal courts upon questions arising under the constitution and statutes of the United States. The adoption of a different rule will subvert the principles of our government, and, as a necessary result, the will of the supreme court will become the supreme law of the land. We might give other instances wherein the federal courts have overridden state tribunals without warrant of law and in disregard of state rights; but we pass to another question which is now engrossing public attention, and upon which the supreme court has recently made a decision. The question whether railroad corporations are public or private has been before the supreme court. The court has passed upon it, and decided that railroads are public highways; but it has not yet decided that railroad corporations are public. No question connected with railroads is of more importance to the people. If they are public highways, then the legislatures of the states have full control of them, and the roads are as much a part of the public or common property of all the people, to be used as occasion requires, as are common highways. Then the right to levy and collect taxes to aid in their construction, or to wholly construct them, cannot be questioned. The supreme court of the United States, in a very recent case appealed from the state of Wisconsin, has decided that, for the purposes of taxation, railroads are public highways. The opinion was delivered by Justice Strong, and is ingenious as well as unique. We desire to call the reader's attention to some portions of it, for the purpose of showing how the rights of the people are protected by the judiciary of the United States. The opinion pronounced by Justice Strong fully illustrates the fact that association and education will influence the decisions of judges as well as those of other men; and while we impute no improper motives to the judiciary of the nation, we say that this decision disposes of some of the rights of the people, supposed to be fully protected by the fundamental law, with as little hesitation as would be manifested by an inferior court in a case involving only the plainest legal points. The court says: "The legislature cannot create a public debt, or levy a tax, or authorize a municipal corporation to do so, in order to raise funds for a mere private purpose. It cannot, in the form of a tax, take the money of a citizen and give it to an individual, the public interest or welfare being in no way connected with the transaction. The objects for which money is raised by taxation must be public, and such as subserve the common interest and well-being of the community required to contribute." That this is good law, all will admit; but what shall we say of the following, copied from the same opinion: "To justify the court in arresting the proceedings and declaring the tax void, the absence of all _possible public interest_ in the purpose for which the funds are raised must be clear and palpable--so clear and palpable as to be perceptible by every mind at the first blush." It is decided by the supreme court of the United States, that if there is any "possible public interest" in the purposes for which a tax is levied, then such levy of tax is constitutional, and this decision is to be received as the supreme law of the land. Is this good law? The public has an interest in toll-bridges, plank roads, ferries, manufacturing companies, and many other enterprises prosecuted and controlled by private corporations and individuals--are these all so connected with the administration of the government as to be proper objects of compulsory contributions for their support? The man who crosses the bridge pays toll; the party driving over the plank road does the same; the ferryman exacts fare--and all receive it, not for the benefit of the public, but for their own private uses. Yet the public have an interest in them. Are they public corporations? Suppose the legislature of the state should, by statute, declare them public corporations, under what provision of the constitution is found the power to tax the people for their construction while they are owned and controlled by private parties? Stage coaches and steamboats are owned by private parties; they are common carriers, subject to be regulated and controlled by law; the public have an interest in them; the legislature can prescribe rules and regulations to be observed by them in the prosecution of their business as common carriers. Can the people be compelled to pay taxes for their support? No distinction exists between common carriers by water or by land over ordinary highways and railroad companies as to their rights and duties when the public are concerned, except that railroads cannot be built until the companies building them have procured the right of way. Private companies own the roads; they sell and mortgage them; they receive all the profits, and control them in their own interest. If a tax can be levied to aid in building railroads owned by private parties, then taxes can be levied in amount sufficient to build the entire road. If the decision is sound, its results will prove most disastrous. The people will be compelled to build the roads for private corporations, and, after they are built, pay toll or fare for the privilege of using them. The people pay for the roads, yet they do not own them, and have no interest in them, or right to use them except upon payment of such sums as the private corporations owning them may choose to demand. We insist that no such power is vested in the legislatures or in congress. If the power does exist--if the people can be compelled to build railroads for private corporations--in the language of a distinguished judge of the state of New York, "It is legal robbery, less respectable than highway robbery, in this: that the perpetrator of the latter assumes the danger and infamy of the act, while this act has the shield of legislative responsibility." The effect of this decision is to make railroad companies a component part of the government, to draw more clearly the line between the people and the combination of monopolies that now control the country. When the court of last resort in the nation comes boldly to the front, and by an edict (for it cannot be treated as a judicial decision) declares that unless there is an "absence of all possible public interest, so clear and palpable as to be perceptible by every mind at first blush," the power to levy and collect taxes in aid of railroads owned and controlled by private corporations exists, the people have reason to fear that the interests of railroads and not the constitution of the country is the paramount law. But says the court, "That railways, though constructed by private corporations and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had an existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railway. Clearly it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose was taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies the taking of property for private use. Yet, it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such road, making compensation to the owner. What else does the doctrine mean if not that building a railway, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use. And the reason why the use has always been held a public one is that such a road is a public highway, whether made by the government itself or by the agency of corporate bodies, or even by individuals, when they obtain their power to construct it from legislative grant." If the court had been employed as the attorneys of the parties seeking to collect the tax, no more ingenious or partisan argument could have been made for the claimants than is presented in this opinion. As a finishing argument in favor of the taxing power, the court says: "Whether the use of a railway is a public or a private one depends in no measure upon the question who constructed it or who owns it." The court decides that railroads are used for public purposes; that the right of eminent domain attaches to them; that, being used for public purposes, and having the right of eminent domain, they are public highways; and, being public highways, taxes may be levied upon the people to aid private parties in constructing them. We have quoted enough of this decision to give the reader an idea of the train of reasoning resorted to by the court to support the theory that railroads owned and controlled absolutely by private parties are public highways, and that the people may be taxed to build and maintain them. If the supreme court of the United States possessed the power under the constitution to pass upon the constitutionality of the law of the state of Wisconsin, we would be compelled to accept this decision as the law of the case; to acknowledge that as a question of law private railroads were public highways; yet, as a matter of fact, we would still have to insist that they remained private roads, over which the public could ride or ship freight upon making compensation to the owners, just as they could ride or ship freight upon a steamboat or common road wagon upon paying the required amount to the owner or master. While legislatures grant to railroad companies the right to appropriate the lands of others in procuring the right of way, upon making compensation therefor, no part of the price for this right of way is paid by the government or the public. It is paid by the companies building the roads. We are not prepared to admit that the grant of this privilege to railroad companies makes them a part of the government, or that it clothes them with any of the attributes of sovereignty. Taxes can only be levied for public purposes, for the support of the government, and for the benefit of the public. The compulsory payment of taxes to private corporations cannot be supported upon any other basis than of our government being a despotism and not a constitutional republic. We have before referred to the action and decisions of the supreme court on questions arising between the people and corporations, and only refer to it here for the purpose of showing the necessity of reform. The action of the courts shows that, whatever may have been their intention, they have departed from old constructions of the constitution; that judicial legislation has superseded constitutional restrictions and limitations, and that the personal views of the judges constituting a majority of the court have become the supreme law of the land. Another noticeable fact is that the recently appointed judges are the most prominent in this new departure. We make the assertion that the supreme court of the United States does not possess the power under the constitution to overrule or disregard the decision of a state court upon questions arising under state laws and constitutions. No paragraph, line, or syllable, of the constitution of the United States confers this power upon the supreme court, save when the state law or constitution contravenes some provision of the constitution of the United States, or some statute passed in aid of constitutional provisions. If the reader will examine the decisions from which we have been quoting, he will find that the rights of the states and of the people, expressly guaranteed by the constitution, have been, by a bold and unwarranted assumption by the United States supreme court, obliterated. The decision of the supreme court of a state, whose decision was final and binding upon the supreme court of the United States, has been overruled and declared null and void, not by virtue of any constitutional right vested in the United States court, but by an assumption of power making the will of that court the supreme law, and placing corporations beyond the control of the states granting them their charters. The fact that the reason upon which the decision is based appears in the nature of an apology for the decision, while constitutional rights are lost sight of, proves the truth of our assertion, that judges of courts are subject to influences that control other men, and that the interest of monopolies and not the constitutional rights of the people has a controlling influence in the highest court in the nation. It also demonstrates the fact that no thorough reform can be effected until the constitution of our common country shall control the decisions of the courts. In proof of the facts that the decisions of the supreme court of the United States are not always controlled by the constitution, let us again refer to the legal tender decisions. Here again, the opinion of a bare majority of the court (five of the judges concurring and four dissenting) establishes the law for forty millions of people, and does violence to both the letter and spirit of the constitution. Under the constitution the power to coin money and regulate its value is vested in congress. The states are prohibited from coining money, and from making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. The letter of the constitution does not deny to congress the power to issue paper money and make it a legal tender; but when we take into consideration that the power is denied to the states, the conclusion is irresistible that the power was intended to be denied to the general, as well as to the state governments. While as a war measure the power might be exercised, it certainly could not be in time of peace. Being one of the extraordinary powers vested in congress in time of war, rising above the constitutional restriction, if we may use the expression, governed by the law of necessity, the power should not be enlarged by judicial interpretation, nor should the plain letter of the acts of congress passed as war measures be made to extend beyond its express provisions. When the highest court in the nation decided that the legal tender act was ultro-active in its operations, that court decided, in effect, that under the constitution congress possessed the power to annul contracts made between private citizens, that one might legally take from another a part of his property without compensation. While that court has uniformly decided that bonds obtained from counties, cities, and towns fraudulently, and without consideration, must be paid, it decides that a retroactive statute may be passed which takes a man's property without consideration; and that congress, without any such power being conferred by the constitution, can substitute a new standard of values. Not only that congress can do this, but that the legal tender act extended beyond its plain reading, and made paper money, a thing that is of no intrinsic value, a legal tender for debts generally; that this paper was the standard of values, and that coin, gold and silver, were but articles of commerce, the value of which was fixed by this new paper standard. If one not learned in the law had been called upon to interpret the constitution he would have arrived at a different conclusion. If ten years ago one learned in the law had been called upon to interpret the meaning of the constitutional provision above referred to, he would, without hesitation, have decided that such an act was unconstitutional. If the eminent jurists who graced the supreme bench at any time since the organization of our government had been required to decide as to the validity of the statute, or to construe its terms, or declare its meaning, a realizing sense of the obligation resting upon them, and of the danger of violating the provisions of the constitution, would have deterred them from making such a decision. When, in the winter of 1869, the question was before the court, upon careful examination Chief Justice Chase, who was the author of the statute under which the question arose, and four other judges, decided that it only applied to contracts made after its passage, and then only as a war measure. The supreme court of the United States declared that the legal tender act had no retro-active operation, and that, under the constitution, it could not be extended beyond its terms. That to extend it further would be a violation of the fundamental law. Here the matter should have ended. The decision was and should have remained final. But it did not meet the approval of corporation rings and Wall street gamblers. They demanded a different decision, and their demand was gratified. To obtain a reversal without a reconstruction of the court was not expected. It was suddenly discovered that there was a necessity for an additional judge. The reason given was that an even number of judges might divide and no decision could be rendered. Hence the necessity for one more. It was known to them that one judge was about to resign, and that one had concurred in the decision which they desired reversed. Two judges were to be appointed. If both were in favor of reversal, then five of the nine would favor a reversal. (We have referred to this matter before, and do it now for a purpose that will soon appear.) Two railroad attorneys, Strong and Bradley, were recommended and appointed before the close of the term of the court at which the legal tender decision had been rendered. Notice was at once given that the legal tender case would again be presented to the court for a decision. It was announced, both before and after the appointment of Messrs. Strong and Bradley, that they were committed to a reversal of the legal tender decision. Soon after these _fresh caught railroad attorneys_ had taken their seats upon the supreme bench, we find them redeeming the pledges the friends of a reversal claimed had been made, and writing long arguments in favor of a reversal of the opinion of Chief Justice Chase and the four other eminent judges, in which argument they seem to disregard constitutional restrictions, and to apologize for the opinions they pronounced, declaring that treasury notes are a legal tender for all debts, save those that are excepted in favor of the government. Thus by the appointment of two judges, understood to be pledged to the railroad interests, the supreme law of the United States makes paper "promises to pay" a legal tender when contracts call for money; fixes this kind of paper as the standard of values, and makes gold and silver coin articles of commerce, and at the same time the constitution makes coin a legal tender and the standard of values, and prohibits the states from making anything but coin a legal tender. To serve a particular _interest_ and benefit railroad corporations, the personal views of these two judges, approved by three others, became the supreme law of the land, in disregard of the plain letter of the constitution, as well as the decisions of the same court upon the same statutes made but a few months before. We have been thus particular in referring to this decision and the means used to procure it, for the purpose of showing that the idea of exacting pledges of men who are candidates for judicial position is not new, and that those who apparently look with alarm at what they are pleased to term an innovation upon long established precedents, as well as an attempt to destroy the independence of the courts of the country, have themselves been successfully practicing the same thing, and securing the election and appointment of judges whose views accorded with their own. FOURTH.--_Judicial and Partisan Legislation Reviewed, and a Remedy Suggested._--The consequence of special legislation in favor of railroad corporations, the granting of subsidies of land and bonds, is not what is claimed by the advocates of such legislation. It has placed the whole producing interests of the country at the mercy of soulless corporations. It has given railroad corporations title to, and absolute control of, enough of the public land to make an empire of vast extent. Lands that of right belong to the people, are owned by these corporations, and instead of the nominal price fixed by the government upon them, our pioneers, who settle and develop the country, must pay whatever sum is demanded by these corporations, or content themselves with such lands as they can find in less desirable localities. It has given to railroad corporations the absolute control of the coal lands of the country, so that in the future, as well as at the present time, at all points where there is a scarcity of timber, the people are compelled to pay such prices as are, and in the future will be, demanded of them or perish with cold. It has established an unequal and unjust system of taxation, by means of which corporations are relieved from the payment of their just proportion of the public taxes. It sanctions and supports bare frauds upon the public, in permitting corporations to add to their capital stock at pleasure, making the apparent cost of these roads much greater than they really are, and permitting them to extort from the people for transportation of freights sufficient amounts to pay the interest and dividends on this "watered stock." It has taken from the people the rights guaranteed to them by the constitution, and transferred their rights to railroad companies. These are a part of the evil consequences of partial and special legislation in favor of corporations; and they could be speedily remedied, but for the decisions of the courts. These decisions we have noticed, and have shown that whatever may have been the intention of the courts rendering them, their tendency has been to strengthen and uphold the mighty power asserted by corporations. Where conflicts have arisen between counties and municipalities on the one side, and these corporations on the other, the courts have treated these railroad companies as private corporations, and have decided in their favor. When the majority of a legislature, believing that corporations were subject to legislative control, have attempted to restrict their powers, and correct their abuses, the courts have said their charters were in the nature of contracts, which the legislature could not alter or amend, and the people have been compelled to submit. When the question of the right to levy taxes for the purpose of building railroads is to be decided, another phase of the question is presented. All the courts agree that taxes cannot be levied for a private purpose. The difficulty is met and overcome in this way: _First._--It is announced that railroad corporations have the right of eminent domain, that this right is an attribute of sovereignty; and for this reason they must be considered public corporations. We have referred to this already, but refer to it again for the purpose of showing that the argument is not sound. The right of eminent domain is possessed by the supreme power of the nation. It belongs to all governments. Of right it is not inherent in, nor can it be acquired by, any private person or corporation. If the right is ever exercised by any corporation, company, or individual, it must be by the permission of the governing power; in this country by legislative grant. If it belonged to corporations they could exercise it without the consent of the legislature. They could themselves decide how, when, and where they would exercise it. They could prescribe the mode of condemning the property of others to their own use, and no power in government could question their acts. It will not be contended that without special legislative enactment, railroad companies could appropriate the property of others for the purpose of building their roads upon it. All will agree that before they can do this, the legislature must confer the right upon them. Does the act of granting to corporations the right to build their roads through the property of others confer upon them any of the attributes of sovereignty? If so, the legislature possesses the power of granting its attributes to corporations or to any private person. It would be immaterial whether a single person, a company, or a corporation, desired to build a railroad. To make such person, company, or corporation a part of the government, the legislature need but delegate to the party desiring to build a railroad the right of eminent domain; and from that moment the individual or corporation becomes a part of the government. A moment's reflection will convince the reader that the position is untenable. If one of the attributes of sovereignty can be _farmed out_ to railroad corporations, another can be to some other interest, and in process of time the government itself would become a mere skeleton, having delegated all its powers to private parties, remaining only a government in name. From time immemorial, the legislature has granted to various parties the same kind of privileges that are granted to railroad companies; yet it never was, and is not now claimed, that because of such grants, the parties obtaining them became public corporations, or that they were clothed with any of the attributes of sovereignty. Ferry companies, plank-road companies, and turnpike road companies, have been chartered with power to take the property of others, and place their ferries, buildings, and roads upon the property so taken, upon payment of the appraised value. In many of the states laws have been enacted under which private parties have been granted the same privilege. Persons building mills are permitted to construct dams across streams and appropriate such portions of the overflowed lands of adjoining owners to their own use, upon payment of its value as found by appraisers. A and B, and their associates, desire to build a mill; in the construction of their dam they cause the backwater to flood the land of C. Under the provisions of the statute a jury is called, who assess the value of the land of C so overflowed and appropriated by A and B. The mill is built for the accommodation of the public. All who desire to do so can take their grain to this mill and have it ground upon payment of the required toll. The owners have, under the statute, the same right of eminent domain that is conferred upon railroad companies; and their mill is used expressly for grinding for all who patronize it and pay the required toll. The owners of the railroad, and the owners of the mill alike, serve the public. Both do it for a pecuniary consideration. Both have the same right of appropriating the property of others. Yet the railroad, under the decisions of the courts, is a public corporation, while the mill is a private one. The railroad corporation is clothed with one of the attributes of sovereignty, while the owners of the mill retain their character as a private corporation. No good reason appears for this distinction. While we admit that the supreme court of the United States has decided that because of the fact of legislatures having granted to railroad companies the right to appropriate the lands of other persons to be used as road-beds, they become public corporations, and that until reversed we must accept it as the law, we contend that as long as the railroads are owned and controlled by private parties, and their earnings are appropriated and used exclusively for private purposes, the facts are in direct conflict with the law as declared by the supreme court, and that either the facts or the law must be changed before they harmonize. _Second._--It has also been decided by the courts that railroads are public highways (an absurdity on its face, that under the law railroads are public highways, while they are owned and controlled by private companies, who become public corporations because of one of the attributes of sovereignty having been conferred upon them), and that, because they are public highways, taxes can be levied upon the people for building and repairing them. The fact being admitted that private parties own and control railroads; that the government receives no part of their earnings, and that neither the government nor private persons can ride upon them without paying for the privilege, or procuring a pass, and that no freights can be shipped over them without payment of the amounts demanded, seems to conflict with the decisions of the courts. Under the decisions of the supreme court, the property of the citizen is taken from him without compensation, and bestowed upon a private corporation, and the plain provision of the constitution has received a new interpretation, which compels the property owners to bestow a part of it on corporations without any consideration whatever. The situation is about as follows: When a conflict arises between the people and railroad corporations, or when the legislature attempts to reform abuses practiced by them, the courts hold that railroad charters are in the nature of contracts, and that the legislature can neither alter, amend, or repeal them. The companies are then treated as private corporations. In proof of this look at the following decision, of recent date:-- "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. "_The Wilmington & Weldon Railroad Company, Plaintiff in error, vs. John A. Reid, Sheriff, etc.--In error to the Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina._ "Mr. Justice Davis delivered the opinion of the court:-- "This is a writ of error to the supreme court of the state of North Carolina, and brings up the question whether the recent legislation of the state, concerning the collection of taxes, is, as it affects the plaintiff in error, in violation of that provision of the constitution of the United States which declares that no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. As early as 1833, the general assembly of North Carolina incorporated the Wilmington & Weldon railroad company, for the purpose of constructing a railroad in the state, and inserted a provision in the charter 'that the property of said company, and the shares therein, shall be exempted from any public charge or tax whatsoever.' It has been so often decided by this court that a charter of incorporation granted by a state creates a contract between the state and the corporators, which the state cannot violate, that it would be a work of supererogation to repeat the reasons on which the argument is founded. It is true that when a corporation claims an exemption from taxation, it must show that the power to tax has been clearly relinquished by the state, and if there be a reasonable doubt about this having been done, that doubt must be solved in favor of the state. (The Binghampton Bridge Case, 3 Wallace.) If, however, the contract is plain and unambiguous, and the meaning of the parties to it can be clearly ascertained, it is the duty of the court to give effect to it, the same as if it were a contract between private persons, without regard to its supposed injurious effects upon the public interests. "It may be conceded that it were better for the interests of the state that the tax-paying power, which is one of the highest and most important attributes of sovereignty, should on no occasion be surrendered. In the nature of things, the necessities of the government cannot always be foreseen, and in the changes of time the ability to raise revenue from every species of property may be of vital importance to the state, but the courts of the country are not the proper tribunals to apply the corrective to improvident legislation of this character. If there be no constitutional restraint on the action of the legislature on this subject, there is no remedy, except through the influence of a wise public sentiment, reaching and controlling the conduct of the law-making power. "There is no difficulty whatever in this case. The general assembly of North Carolina told the Wilmington & Weldon railroad company, in language which no one can misunderstand, that if they would complete the work of internal improvement for which they were incorporated, their property and the shares of their stockholders should be forever exempt from taxation. This is not denied, but it is contended that the subsequent legislation does not impair the obligation of the contract, and this presents the only question in the case. The taxes imposed are upon the franchise and rolling stock of the company, and upon lots of land appurtenant to and forming part of the property of the company, and necessary to be used in the successful operation of its business. It certainly requires no argument to show that a railroad corporation cannot perform the functions for which it was created without owning rolling stock, and a limited quantity of real estate, and that these are embraced in the general term property. Property is a word of large import, and, in its application to this company, included all the real and personal estate required by it for the successful prosecution of its business. If it had appeared that the company had acquired either real or personal estate beyond its legitimate wants, it is very clear that such acquisitions would not be within the protection of the contract. But no such case has arisen, and we are only called upon to decide upon the case made by the record, which shows plainly enough that the company has not undertaken to abuse the favor of the legislature. "It is insisted, however, that the tax on the franchise is something entirely distinct from the property of the corporation, and that the legislature, therefore, was not inhibited from taxing it. This position is equally unsound with the others taken in this case. Nothing is better settled than that the franchise of a private corporation--which, in its application to a railroad, is the privilege of running it and taking fare and freight--is property, and of the most valuable kind, as it cannot be taken for public use even, without compensation. (Redfield on Railways, p. 129, sec. 70.) It is true it is not the same sort of property as the rolling stock, road-bed, and depot grounds, but it is equally with them covered by the general term, 'the property of the company,' and, therefore, equally within the protection of the charter. "It is needless to argue the question further. It is clear that the legislation in controversy did impair the obligation of the contract which the general assembly of North Carolina made with the plaintiff in error, and it follows that the judgment of the supreme court must be reversed. It is so ordered, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings, in conformity with this opinion. "D. W. MIDDLETON, "C. S. C. U. S." When the question of the right to levy taxes upon the people, for the purpose of building railroads, is before the courts, they decide that such right exists: First, because the right of eminent domain has been conferred upon the company; and, second, because the railroads are public highways; so, that, in every phase the question assumes, the decisions of the courts are in favor of these corporations, and adverse to the people. Notwithstanding the fact that the decisions of the courts fix the status of the railroad corporations as public in their nature, the real fact remains that railroads are owned and controlled by private parties, and it is a mere fiction of law to call them public; and while we accept the decisions as law, the facts are unchanged. The effect of the legislation to which we have referred is apparent to all. It has strengthened corporations, enlarged their powers, and constantly encroaches upon the rights of the people. So great has this evil become that almost the entire population of the country, not under the control of or interested in railroad corporations, are demanding a change of legislation, and relief from the oppressions heaped upon them by these monopolies. But the injuries inflicted upon the people by the decisions of the courts are far greater than those resulting from legislation. By the decisions of the supreme court of the United States, the distinction between public and private rights has been obliterated; the constitution of the country has become of no more binding force than statute laws. State statutes and the decisions of state courts have been overridden and annulled where the interests of corporations were to be subserved; the settled decisions of the same court have been overruled, and a new doctrine, in conflict with the settled interpretation of the fundamental law of the land, has been announced, which makes the people the vassals of railroad corporations. The rights of the people and the states have been disregarded, and the edicts of the supreme court have been substituted for constitutional law. By the decree of that court, railroad corporations are clothed with the attributes of sovereignty, and the people are compelled to pay taxes to aid in the construction of their roads. That court has engaged in judicial legislation, and fastened upon the people a despotic government, with railroad corporations as their rulers. If it be true that railroad corporations are public and not private, they are not subject to the control of state courts or state legislatures. They are not by their charters, or the powers derived from legislative grants, made public corporations, and if they are public, they are made so by the decisions of the supreme court, or by some assumed power not visible to the public eye. It is contended by some, that if it is fully established that they are public corporations, the state legislatures and the state courts can regulate and control them. Is this so? Will not that fact take from the states all jurisdiction over them? The decision making railroad corporations public, also makes their roads public highways extending throughout the country. It is claimed that the general government, having power to regulate commerce between the states, can take control of all the railroads in the United States. No power is conferred upon state legislatures, in many of the states, to grant charters to railroad companies, conferring upon them any sovereign powers. And by the constitutions of some of the states they are deprived of the power of aiding in any works of internal improvement. As a consequence, there could not be uniform legislation among the states in relation to railroads. Being public highways, and the corporations being also public, the power of regulating and controlling them, and preventing discrimination among the states, would belong to the general government, and these powerful corporations, chartered by the state in which they are located, could defy state authority. With a congress composed of their friends, and a supreme court already committed to their interests, the people would be powerless. But on the other hand, if (as we insist is the fact) railroad companies are private corporations, then they are within the jurisdiction, and subject to the control of, the authorities of the states in which they are located. This we insist is the true status of railroad corporations, and the courts, by their decisions, cannot change this character. The decisions of the courts of the different states and of the nation have not been of a character to command the respect of the people, and unless we accept the last edict of the supreme court of the nation, as the supreme law of the land, and admit that it supersedes the constitutions and statutes of the states, as well as the decisions of the state courts, it is difficult to determine the character of railroad corporations and their relation to the people. Accepting that decision as final, the constitution of the United States is of but small value, and state governments are of but little benefit to the people. Upon the various questions that have arisen in connection with the construction of railroads, and the rights of the people, and railroad corporations respectively, there has been such confusion in the decisions of the courts, as well as contradiction, reversals, and overrulings, that there now exists a necessity for the regular issue of a judicial bulletin, like the market reports, that the people may know what is the latest interpretation of the constitution. By the supreme court of the state of Iowa, it was decided to be constitutional for counties and cities to subscribe stock to railroad companies, and that there was a statute authorizing such subscriptions. By the same court it was decided, overruling the above named decision, that the constitution did not confer the power to subscribe stock to railroad companies, and that there was no law of the state authorizing such subscription. The whole matter arose under the constitution and laws of the state. The supreme court of the United States overruled this last decision of the state courts, and decided that such subscription was constitutional and was authorized by the laws of the state. The courts of the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, and others, made like decisions, and the supreme court of the United States overruled them. The legislatures of some of the states--Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan included, passed statutes authorizing local aid in shape of a tax to be voted to railroad companies. The supreme courts of these states decided that the statutes were unconstitutional, and within fifteen months thereafter the supreme court of Iowa decided that the Iowa act was constitutional. Like decisions were made in some of the other states. In Wisconsin the state courts decided the act was unconstitutional, and the supreme court of the United States overruled that decision and decided that the act was constitutional. Some of the state courts hold that railroad corporations are private, whilst others decide that they are public. The supreme court of the United States, by its decisions, clothes them with one of the attributes of sovereignty, and declares that under the law they are public corporations, and that their roads are public highways. The same court, upon the legal tender issues, decided that treasury notes were not legal tender for debts contracted before the enactment of the statute providing for their issue. In a few months after that decision was made, and after the friends of railroad corporations had so reconstructed the court as to have a majority of the court in favor of a re-hearing of the question, the same _high court_ decided that treasury notes were not only legal tender for all debts (save those excepted by the statutes), but that they were the standard of values. In all of the above decisions made by the supreme court of the nation, either reversing the decisions of the state courts, or reversing and overruling its own decisions, such reversals and overrulings were in favor of the corporations and against the people. When courts, whose duty it is to declare the law and interpret the constitution, differ so widely and change so often, it is not strange that the people should begin to look with suspicion upon, and doubt the binding force of, these decisions; and when it is received as a truth, that in the appointment of judges care was taken to select men who were pledged to decide important issues then pending, in accordance with the interests and expressed wishes of railroad companies, it will not appear strange that the people, before voting for a judge, should demand of him a pledge in favor of measures advocated by them, or that he at least should pledge himself to abstain from judicial legislation and from twisting the meaning of the constitution to suit the views of the monopolists who are already clothed with too much power. If it is important that men elected to congress and state legislatures should be in sympathy with the people in their struggle to regain their rights, now usurped by the different monopolies of the country; and if it is necessary that the executive departments of the state and national government should be filled with men who are friends of the people and in favor of restricting corporations within proper and legitimate bounds,--it is of vastly more importance that the seats of justice, the courts of the country, should be filled and controlled by men who, instead of deciding cases according to their own personal views of what the constitution ought to be, will accept it in letter and spirit as it is, and decide accordingly. An inordinate desire to interpret the fundamental law, to give it a new meaning, or, as it is commonly expressed, for amending the constitution by judicial legislation, seems to have seized the courts, and has been followed to such length as to make it almost impossible for even the courts themselves to decide when an act is constitutional and when it is not. A new decision is made as often as a new judge is appointed, not unfrequently overruling the long settled decisions of the courts. These decisions, no matter how absurd or unjust, must be accepted by the whole country as the supreme law of the land. Of late years, by accident or design, most of the decisions on questions of a general nature have been adverse to the interests of the people, and in favor of monopolies. Newly appointed judges, scarcely warm in their seats, have not hesitated to overrule the decisions of "Marshall," of "Story," and "Chase;" to disregard the views of "Webster," of "Adams," of "Jefferson," of "Washington," and "Hamilton," on constitutional questions. Their own personal views have been substituted for constitutional law, until the protection that instrument is supposed to afford the private citizen is entirely destroyed, and the absolute control of the government is transferred to the few monopolists, who, under the sanction of the courts, oppress the whole people. Whatever reform may be effected in the legislative and executive departments of the government, no real reform can obtain without a reformation of the courts. FIFTH.--_The Effect of the Legal Tender Decision, and its Antidote._--The power of congress to issue treasury notes and government paper as a war measure, is not denied. The authority or the right, under the constitution, to make government promises to pay (treasury notes) legal tender, is not admitted. We have already treated of the legal tender decisions; of the reconstruction of the court, and the means used to secure the appointment of judges to insure a majority in favor of the validity of the legal tender act, and its general application to all debts save those excepted in the act, no matter at what time they were contracted. We recur to this subject again for the purpose of showing its effect upon the financial interests of the country. Whatever may have been the views of congress in passing the act, or of the court in declaring it constitutional, it has proved disastrous to the interests of the people, and of great benefit to the corporate oligarchy that now rules the country. Whatever may have been the views of the majority of the court, or the motives that prompted and controlled that majority in rendering the legal tender decisions, these decisions have proved disastrous to the interests of the people, and added greatly to the already great power of corporations and Wall street speculators. In our commerce with foreign nations we are obliged to use _money_ or its equivalent. While the acts of congress and the decisions of courts may make treasury notes legal tender for all domestic debts, and all foreign debts payable in this country, neither the acts of congress nor the decisions of courts can have any power or controlling influence over other nations. Debts due from us payable in foreign countries must be paid in coin or its equivalent. Our governmental promises to pay will not pass current as money in foreign countries, even though accompanied and supported by the decision of the supreme court, deciding that they are to be received by us as legal tender in all of our transactions. No one will claim that treasury notes are money, or that they are of intrinsic value. It is because the government is pledged to redeem this class of paper with coin that it has a market value. All other nations recognize coin--gold and silver--as the measure of values. It is the standard for all other articles of barter or sale. It is _money_. All other issues are but the representatives of money. Debts due from us, payable in foreign countries, must be paid in money; legal tender will not answer. But if debts due us from persons residing in other countries are to be paid here, the debtors can take their money, buy our legal tender at a discount of fifteen or twenty dollars to the hundred, and discharge their debts, saving for themselves the difference between coin and paper. The confidence we have in the promises of the government to redeem in coin is all that makes treasury notes pass current, or gives them a market value. The hope of an early resumption of specie payment is blasted by the legal tender decision. Its effect is to drain the United States of coin in our commerce with foreign nations, thus making it impossible to resume. Our coin grows less from day to day, and the secretary of the treasury is obliged to sell gold in New York at short intervals and in large amounts, in order to prevent the Wall street brokers making a margin of twenty-five per cent or more between coin and government paper. While stock jobbers and gold brokers make large profits in the appreciated price of gold; and railroad companies, in paying their bonds, make a net gain to the amount of the difference in value between gold and legal tender currency, the farmers and producers suffer loss to the amount of this difference in disposing of their products. When wheat is sold for one dollar per bushel, the seller gets but eighty-four cents, or just the value of treasury notes, and not one dollar in money, as he imagines, because the dollar he gets has no intrinsic value, but sells at its market worth, coin being the standard of values. Another result of the legal tender decision is to make the value of farm products dependent upon the operations of Wall street sharpers. Legal tenders are the standard of values, says the court; coin and all marketable articles have their values measured by treasury notes. The price of treasury notes fluctuates. This fluctuation is not caused by any real change in the relative value of coin and treasury notes, but results from the dealings and operations in Wall street. If the "bulls" corner gold, its value rises, or, more properly speaking, treasury notes depreciate in value. When the "bears" control the market, the price of treasury notes advances. This legal measure of values is constantly changing, and with its rise and fall the prices of western products also rise or fall. Railroads, railroad stocks and bonds, and the currency of the country, as well as the coin, are all under the control of Wall street operators, and as long as treasury notes are treated as legal tender, these same operators will control the markets of the whole country. The legal tender acts and decisions, in effect, provide an irredeemable paper currency for the people, and coin for the government. Duties on imports must be paid in coin. Wall street brokers have the coin of the country cornered; the importer must buy it of them; he pays it to the government; government sells it to the broker, and he again sells it to the importer. It cannot get into general use, because the brokers preserve so great a margin between gold and paper as to drive all coin from circulation. They monopolize the gold market, and, under the legal tender decision, control the money market of the whole country. This state of things must continue until the legal tender act is repealed or the decisions of the supreme court are reversed. The imagination cannot devise a more perfect system for the subjection of the best interests of the people to the control of railroad and monied corporations and companies, and Wall street brokers and gamblers. It needed but the legal tender decision to make it perfect; to subject the whole country to the rule of rings and combinations of unscrupulous and dishonest men; to reduce the people to a state of vassalage more degrading than that of the Russian serfs. In name we are a free people, protected by the constitution of our country; in fact, we are the servants of these giant monopolies. We retain of the proceeds of our labor such portion as they graciously permit us to keep. With the congress of the United States, and the legislatures of most of the states, committed to their interests, and the supreme court of the nation issuing its edicts in their favor, they can defy the people and continue their oppressions. SIXTH.--_Popular Measure of Relief Discussed.--The Nature of the Reform Needed._--We recognize no higher human power than the will of the people. When the servants of the people, elected and appointed to represent their interests in legislative bodies, or to decide upon questions affecting public interests, prove recreant to the trusts and interests confided to them, the people--the sovereign power--can remove them in the method provided by the fundamental law, or, if this cannot be effected, then the people have the right, the God-given right, to resort to nature's first law for self-preservation. If by legislation the rights of the people are taken from them, then that power, retained by the whole people to be exercised when their rights are refused them--that power which is inherent in the supreme rulers of our country--can be exercised. Under our system of government it should not be asserted save in the last extremety. When all other means fail; when redress can be obtained in no other way, then the people, as supreme rulers, should arise in their majesty, and, by the exercise of their reserved rights, _take_ what their servants have denied them. As a people, we have not yet reached the point which would justify extreme measures. While the different monopolies of which we have been treating, by their shrewd management, by the use of their money, and by concert of action, have obtained almost unlimited control of all the departments of the government, numerically they comprise but a small part of the population of the country. Their success is to be attributed to two causes: their systematic organization, and their unlimited control of the finances of the country. We might add, as a further cause of their success, the inattention of a large majority of the people to the political affairs of the country, and their willingness to follow a few political leaders, to whom they seem to have entrusted the entire control of the politics of the country. As a rule, we submit to wrongs in the administration of the affairs of states, as well as the national government, until we individually suffer from their mal-administration, then, what has been termed the "sober second thought of the people" manifests itself, and reforms are effected. The situation of the affairs of the nation, and the great power that the monopolists have obtained in the land, have aroused that "sober second thought," and never in the history of our government has there been more urgent need of action on the part of the people. Never were issues presented that demanded more earnestly the united efforts of all who love and prize constitutional liberty. The evils of which we have been treating can be remedied by demanding of all who fill official positions a recognition of the superior binding force of the constitution. It is not to be expected that those men filling official places in the legislative and judicial departments of the government, who, from interest and custom, have become addicted to the habit of giving new meanings and interpretations to the constitution, will reform the abuses that have been rapidly accumulating, or that they will manifest any zeal or alacrity in stripping the railroad corporations and other monopolies of the great powers conferred upon them, or that any real reformation can be effected without a thorough change of public servants. No matter what political party has control of the government, or to what party the men selected to fill the different offices belong, or with what political organizations they affiliate, unless they acknowledge the superior binding force of the fundamental law they should be requested to vacate their official positions, and their places should be filled by men who are willing to acknowledge the binding force of the constitution, and will pledge themselves to abstain from judicial legislation. Men elected to congress and state legislatures are the servants of the people, elected to protect their interests; hence, their will should control the action of members of congress and state legislatures. Being elected to serve the people and not to promote selfish interests or support class legislation, the people, before supporting any candidate for a legislative office, should demand of him a pledge to labor for and support only such measures as will tend to a restoration of the rights that have been taken from and denied to them, and by special charters and grants conferred upon corporations and other monopolies. Railroad corporations being created by legislative grants, their business being that of common carriers for hire, the legislature possesses full power to enact such laws as will limit and restrict their charges for transportation to a reasonable tariff, prohibit and punish extortions and unjust discriminations, and provide for the swift infliction of penalties whenever the laws are violated. Before the people elect any man to a legislative office, he should pledge himself to support and obey the requirements of the constitution, and to abstain from that bane of a republican government, special class legislation. By supporting only such men as would, in good faith, pledge themselves, as above suggested, and who, as legislators, would abide by their pledges, unjust discriminations would cease, and some of the rights of the people would be restored. But reforms must extend beyond the points named. Railroad companies being chartered and railroads constructed for the prosecution of the business of common carriers, having received aid in lands and bonds from the general government, and from states, counties, cities, and towns, bonds and taxes, as well as special privileges not granted to any other corporations, in contemplation of law, these companies are bound to act honestly. It was never the intent of the legislatures (if they acted in good faith) to create these powerful corporations, to grant them extraordinary aid and privileges, and then allow them, by false and fictitious reports as to the cost of their roads, to charge unjust prices for carrying freights and passengers. By the watering process to which we have referred, the pretended cost of the roads, as shown from their reports, is often two or three times the actual cost, and the rates that are charged for transportation are such as to pay dividends not only on the cost of the road, but on the fictitious or added stock. Indeed, in many cases the stock reported as paid up is not paid in a legitimate manner; but when the company is organized, by selling bonds it builds its road from the proceeds, and from the earning of the road pays not only the interest on its bonds but accumulates a surplus. This surplus is divided among the stockholders, not as dividends on their paid-up stock, but is capitalized and stock issued to subscribers. The road is made to pay the interest, and eventually the principal, of the capital borrowed to build it, and also to earn money enough to show a paid-up capital to the amount of the actual cost of the road. This species of financiering on the part of the company is robbing the people, and abusing the privileges conferred by the charter. No thorough reform of the abuses practiced by railroad companies can be effected until the legislatures, by statutes, compel each and every company to purge its stock of every spurious dollar, so that the stock of each company shall not appear to be in excess of the cost of its road. If the legislature does not possess the power to do this, then it has the power to create a corporation that, by arbitrarily increasing its stock to any amount it may choose, can extort from the people sufficient to pay the interest upon such amount, and defy the power of its creator. The position is not sound. Any and all abuses practiced by railroad corporations can be corrected by legislative enactment, unless we admit that the creature is greater than the creator. But it is claimed that if the legislatures should by statute compel railroad companies to reduce their stock to the cost of constructing their roads, or to their actual value, and then limit their tariff of charges to reasonable rates, great injustice would be done the innocent holders of their bonds; that such reduction would render it impossible for them to pay either the interest or principal of these bonds; that such statutes would impair the obligations of contracts; that many of the bonds are held by widows and orphans, who would be ruined. This may or may not be true. If true, who is responsible for it? Certainly not the states or the people. Originally the bonds were purchased of the railroad companies. If these companies by false representations have obtained credit on their roads to two or three times their actual value, the companies are the responsible parties, and not the public. While innocent persons may suffer, their suffering results from their own imprudence, or it is a misfortune occasioned by the fraud of the railroad company. There is no justice in allowing these companies to extort from the people money sufficient to relieve themselves from the consequences of their frauds. A owns a farm worth $2,000; he represents it to be worth $6,000, and by reason of this false representation obtains from B a loan of $4,000, secured by a mortgage on this farm. He fails to pay the money borrowed, and B forecloses his mortgage, and sells the farm. It pays but one-half his judgment or decree. Would B have any claim upon the public for the balance of his debt? He made his own contract, and expected a profit on his investment, but was disappointed. Under the law A had full authority to mortgage his land, and B had the option of loaning his money to A and taking a mortgage. He acted in good faith, and believed his security was ample, but was mistaken. Is there any difference in principle between the case of A and B and the purchasers of railroad bonds? Both parties will suffer loss because of the fraud of the party with whom they dealt. Neither have any claim upon the public in law or in equity, and both must look to the parties with whom they contracted. The charters to railroad companies empowered them to transact business, but did not empower them to commit frauds, by mortgaging their roads for three times their actual value. To require railroad companies to act honestly and charge reasonable rates for carrying freights, does not impair the obligations of any contract. Nor does it, to compel them to reduce their stock to what it actually should be, measured by the value of their roads. The legislature should be composed of men who are not embarrassed by personal interest, and who have not received bribes. We do not claim that because of the fact that men are stockholders or directors in railroad companies they are disqualified for seats in the legislatures of states, or of congress. But do insist that when men are elected for the express purpose of advocating the increase of the already too great powers and privileges conferred upon corporations, they prostitute their offices to base and illegitimate purposes. When the sole aim of men elected to represent the people is demonstrated to be to defeat every measure designed to relieve them from the effect of unjust laws, and to correct abuses practiced by the combined influence of corporations, they dishonor the place they fill. The rights of the people can be neither restored nor preserved, until legislatures are purged of this class of men. Men who receive any remuneration from any man, class of men, or corporations, paid or bestowed for the purpose of securing friendly legislation, are unfit to represent the people. It makes no difference whether the consideration is paid in money, or in _passes over the railroads_; it is given as a _bribe_. Passes are called complimentary; they are accepted as complimentary, yet it is a fact that these complimentary passes are placed where they "will do the most good." They are given to congressmen, legislators, judges of courts, and executive officers. If it were necessary to offer proof that these passes were intended as bribes, we need only look at the manner of their distribution to the members of the last Iowa legislature. They were distributed among those friendly to legislation in favor of railroads, and withheld from those opposed to such legislation. If passes are purely complimentary, this was wrong; but if they are given as _bribes_ it was the proper distribution of them. The legislator who accepts a pass, and the party giving it, should be punished under the provisions of the statutes against "bribery and corruption in office." And the provisions of the same statutes ought to be enforced against all persons holding official positions in the states, and in the general government. If officers cannot afford to pay for travel over railroads on their present salaries, increase them so as to make them independent of railroad companies, who estimate official integrity as being equal in value to a pass over their respective roads. History demonstrates that in some cases these passes have been received as full consideration for official influence. Legislatures possess the power to regulate and control railroad companies, and should exercise that power in every case of abuse of their privileges by the railroad companies. Some deny the power of legislatures to compel railroad companies to reduce their stock to the actual cost of their roads. This power is lodged in some department of government. We are not prepared to admit that these corporations are supreme; that they can openly, and in defiance of law, and the rights of the governing power, practice frauds, which, if practiced by an individual, would consign him to prison. If the legislature does not possess it, the courts certainly do, as we will hereafter demonstrate. We have shown that by the manner of building roads with borrowed capital obtained by sale of bonds, and by extortionate charges for transportation, making their roads earn sufficient to pay dividends on stock which had not been paid, as well as on the watered stock, the railroad companies in the United States whose roads cost $2,456,230,000, yet in fact representing the enormous sum of $6,236,638,749, in what purports to be-paid-up capital stock, and bonds, were robbing the people. The question we are now discussing is, How to remedy these evils. Our attempt thus far has been to demonstrate the fact that the remedy is exclusively within the state authorities, and not in those of the United States, and that railroad companies are private, and not public. Adhering to these views, we contend that railroad companies are subject to taxation at the same rate on the assessed value of their property as an individual; and the legislature cannot adopt a different rule for taxing railroad property without disregarding the letter and spirit of the constitution. The chartering, regulating, and controlling of railroad companies, and all corporations created for pecuniary profit, must remain with the states. To concede the exercise of this power to the national administration is to overturn republican government and take from the people the rights and powers reserved to them and the states; create a great central power without constitutional limit or restitution, but governed by the personal views of those in office. We have treated of this subject in the preceding pages, and refer to it here in considering the remedies for the evils endured by the people. We know that congress has granted charters to corporations organized for pecuniary profit, and that United States courts have taken jurisdiction of cases arising under state statutes, and disregarded the action of state legislatures and state courts on questions affecting the interests of railroad corporations, and have also decided that congress possesses the power to charter railroad companies. But we do not recognize the decisions as right, nor do we believe they will remain long unreversed. The opinion generally prevails that railroad corporations have abused, and are abusing, their charters; that they are oppressing the people; that there must be a reform of the abuses practiced by them. But differences of opinion exist as to the means to be applied. If we recognize the people as the source of power, and that they retain all the power they have not delegated to the government, the more nearly the interests of the people and the companies approach each other, the more closely they can be blended and united, and the more readily can abuses be corrected. To divide their rights and interests; to provide different governments, and rules of decisions for them; to make the people amenable to state authority, while the United States authority takes control of corporations, will create rival interests, and render railroad companies independent of the people. If the congress of the United States, claiming to have the constitutional right, should provide by statute for transferring the exclusive control of railroad corporations to the United States, an entire change of the relation between the states and the general government would be the result. The states would not have the power to redress any abuses of the charter privileges granted to these companies, either by legislative enactment or by judicial decisions. Railroad companies created by state legislatures, and hitherto subject to the jurisdiction of the state courts, would be released from all obligations to state government, and from the control of state legislatures and courts. The congress of the United States and the federal courts would have exclusive control and jurisdiction over them, and constant confusion and conflicts of jurisdiction would naturally follow. Such a course would confer upon railroad companies still greater power, and place in their hands more efficient means for oppressing the people. Another evil resulting from such a course would be, that the whole corporate interest of the country could combine and concentrate their whole influence for the purpose of accomplishing any desired object. Now both congress and state legislatures must be bought over to their support; but if the United States government should take the whole control of corporations and railroad companies, the whole railroad force of the country, from the men who own, manage, and control this great interest, to the most menial employés, could be directed to a single purpose--that of securing congressional favor. Now, state legislatures must be approached, and _persuaded_, as well as congress; then a single legislative body, and that one the farthest removed from the people, would be the only body to claim the attention of this great corporate interest. When grants were once made to railroad companies, and privileges conferred upon them, it would be simply impossible to effect any change, no matter how oppressive they might be upon the people. The idea that railroads are public highways, and that railroad companies are public corporations, already obtains among congressmen and in the supreme court of the United States. This is well understood among railroad men, as well as the fact that there is an increasing demand on the part of the people for the reform of the many abuses that are now practiced by them. Hence their anxiety to have the United States government assume control of railroad corporations. They desire it for another reason: Most of the special favors and grants they have received have been the result of bargain and sale. The same means will be used in the future unless a thorough reform is effected, and it will cost the corporate interests of the country less to deal with one body representing all the states than it would to deal with the legislatures of all the states. Another reason for this desire on the part of railroad companies is, that the supreme court, as now formed, is in full sympathy with them upon the points at issue between corporations and the people. Careful consideration and examination of this question will satisfy the people that their only hope for the restoration and preservation of their rights in the conflict now existing between themselves and the railroad companies is in states retaining exclusive jurisdiction and control of all the railroad corporations and railroads within their respective borders. Another remedy suggested is, for the general government to purchase and own all the railroads in the country, and control them in the future. If this plan were feasible, it is of doubtful wisdom. The purchase could not be made without the consent of the owners of the roads. This consent could only be obtained upon payment of the prices demanded, because railroad stock is not such property as can be condemned for public use. It is not to be expected that the companies owning the stocks and roads would sell for less than cost; and this cost would be the amount of money represented by the roads. This we have shown is over $6,000,000,000. To pay less than this amount (being nearly three times their actual cost) would be aiding the companies to defraud their creditors, for the reason that the roads are the only security the bondholders have. The purchase of the roads would increase the national debt to the amount paid for them, and impose additional burdens in the shape of taxes upon the people. It would add to the list of government officers and employés at least two hundred thousand men, whose influence could be relied upon when the interests of the people and those persons in office conflicted. It may be said that the government would not operate the roads, but would lease them. Would this afford relief? It would require two parties to make the contract. The contractor would agree to pay a certain stipulated amount for the use of the road. He would then fix his own rate of charges for transportation, and being only a lessee, would be virtually irresponsible. Government could not fix the price to be paid for the use of the road, and also the tariff of charges. But the lessee would demand the right to fix his own tariff in order that he might have sufficient to make repairs, pay for the use of the road, and make his profit. This system would be subject to the abuses of which the shippers now complain. Irresponsible persons would often have control of these roads, or a part of them, and a wide field would be open for fraud and irregular practices. The wants of the people demand some other and cheaper mode of transportation; either a cheaper system of building and operating railroads, so that the tariffs can be reduced, or some new method. The present roads may be superseded and another kind adopted. In that case, the present railroad system would become of little value, and would prove a loss to the government. Last of all, the general government cannot go into the railroad business without contravening the provisions of the constitution. In addition to the above reasons why the government should not become the owner of the railroads, is this one, which outweighs all others: It would place them entirely beyond the control of the people. If the control of corporations is left to the states, they are in the hands of the people; each county, town, and neighborhood, can bring its influence to bear upon the questions at issue. In the election of congressmen and other United States officers, local issues are lost sight of. National questions engage the public mind, while in the election of members of the state legislatures and other state officers, local questions enter largely in the canvass. Numerically, the monopolists are but a small fraction of the people; their great strength lies in the control they have obtained over the business and finances of the country. The people, united against the monopolists, can elect whom they choose to any state office, and can secure a majority in their favor. The remedy is in their own hands, and by united action they cannot fail of success. If a reform is ever effected, if the people ever regain their lost rights, they must commence at the _ballot box_. The producers throughout the west and south are largely in the majority; they can elect their own men. If they fail to do so, if they do not themselves apply the remedy, they ought not to complain of others because they do not apply it for them. There need be no difficulty or delay in effecting reforms dependent upon legislative action, provided the people are true to their own interests. They elect their agents to act for them. If they do not elect men who are with them in principle, sympathy, and feeling, they ought not to complain. But, says the reader, admitting that legislative reform can be accomplished, how can the decisions of the courts be changed? This question presents more difficulty. It has been the custom from time immemorial for courts to be governed and controlled by precedents. This is adopted in order that the law may be settled and certain. When questions arise under statutes, the meaning of which is ambiguous, resort is had to former decisions under like statutes, for a rule of construction, and thus the law is _settled_. We accept the decision as the law of the land, and to criticise it is seemed discourteous to the court making it. To call in question the motives of the courts, or to doubt their wisdom, is deemed rank "treason." The rule governing them may be of ancient date; the reason for its adoption may have long since ceased; the rule itself may be obsolete. Yet, to find a precedent for a decision that outrages justice and is at war with the best interests of the people, but in favor of the corporate interests of the country, this old rule is dragged from its long repose and made the basis of new decisions. Most of these old precedents originated in monarchical countries, where all doubtful questions were construed in favor of the crown, and where the rights of the people always yielded to kingly prerogative. While precedents should have their true weight in determining between private parties, when none of the great questions arise affecting the national welfare, and while interpretations of the constitution, acquiesced in for many years, should remain as the settled law of the land, and be observed by the courts, the practice of solving constitutional problems by resort to old monarchical precedents, and the adoption of the reasoning of the high courts of the king's _exchequer_, should not be tolerated in a republic. Our form of government is new. Our courts should be the courts of the people, and not a _star chamber_ for the protection and perpetuation of the monarchical dogma, that "it is absolutely essential to independent national existence that government should have a firm hold of the two great sovereign instrumentalities of the _sword_ and the _purse_," as was declared by the supreme court of the United States, in December, 1871. Such declarations are at war with our ideas of republican government. It has no support save in despotic governments and decisions emanating from them; yet it is the doctrine that must obtain, if the recent decisions of the supreme court are to remain as the settled law of the nation. To accept this doctrine as a final exposition of the relative rights of the people and the government, is to acknowledge that the agents and servants of the people, elected and appointed to office, become their masters, clothed with imperial powers. It is not only in the adoption of old precedents that the rights of the people have been denied in courts, but by wresting the meaning of the earlier decisions made by the distinguished men who graced the bench of the supreme court in its earlier and purer days. The "Dartmouth College" case was the first in which the rights of states or the people to interfere with charter privileges was determined. We have given the history of this case in preceding pages. It in no sense justifies or supports the recent decisions of the court, as to the rights and privileges of corporations organized for pecuniary profit. Yet, taking the decision in that case as a precedent, the supreme court has gradually encroached upon the rights of the people, until, under its latest decisions, railroad corporations are public corporations, their roads are public highways, and the property of all the tax-payers can be taxed, and the taxes thus collected can be used by these private corporations to pay for building and repairing their roads. This is the latest new departure, and with the "Legal Tender" decision, makes the interest of the whole people, as well as the value of their property, depend upon the action of corporations. No good reason can be shown why the decisions of courts should not be subjected to criticism, the same as the acts of legislative bodies. The courts are a co-ordinate branch of the government, but with a power greater than that of the legislative and executive branches combined. The decisions of courts render nugatory the acts of the other departments of the government. To admit that the decisions of the judiciary cannot be questioned, is to concede to it all the prerogatives possessed by absolute tyrants. Not only have the people the right to question the decisions of the courts, and if need be to examine the motives which prompted them, but also to know the views of the men who aspire to judicial positions, upon all questions of a general and public nature. No candidate for judicial position should be expected to form an opinion upon, or decide a question affecting the rights of parties until it had been finally submitted. But, upon the great questions that frequently arise affecting the public welfare, his views should be publicly known. Let the people understand the views of the men seeking for a seat on the bench, before his election, and judicial legislation and partisan decisions will soon disappear. The judges of the supreme court of the United States hold their offices for life, by appointment; that court is further removed from the people than state courts. Reforms are not easily effected. Judges recently appointed received their appointment because of their understood views upon certain public questions. The course of decisions of this court demonstrates that the rights of the people are considered of less importance than the demands of corporations, in cases of conflict. While the present system of selecting these judges continues, with their life terms, it will be hard for the people to regain their rights. There are times when, because of oppressions, the people have the right to demand changes in the fundamental law. At the present time they are demanding redress; they are asking to be relieved from the unjust burdens imposed upon them by companies and corporations, who are petted and supported by the supreme court. But one certain means is left them, and that is an amendment to the constitution, restricting their term to a certain number of years, and providing for their election by the people. We could then free ourselves from the burdens imposed upon us by this anti-republican department of our national government, and take from corporations some of their oppressive powers and privileges, now assured to them by the decisions of the supreme court. If any relief is afforded the people from the oppressions under which they now suffer, they must obtain it through their own efforts. No other channel is now open. All of the departments of the government, state and national, are more or less controlled by the monopolies against which the farmers are now preparing to fight. The silent ballot is the weapon to use; when used by a united people victory is assured. It is more potent than all the appliances of an army; more thorough in its execution than the bullet. It is the dread of the unfaithful legislator, dishonest office-holder, and the unjust judge. It strikes terror into the hearts of the unscrupulous men, who are willing to sacrifice honor, country, and future happiness for the purpose of amassing wealth, by extortions practiced upon the sweating, toiling millions who till the ground. While partial relief may be obtained through other channels, real, genuine, and lasting redress can only be obtained by organized action at the polls. How can the abuses of the transportation system be corrected? This question is now having a practical test in Illinois, and is being discussed throughout the country. It is being demonstrated that a _pro rata_ tariff will not afford relief; and that some other means must be adopted. What that may be, time will develop. No uniform _pro rata_ tariff would be just to either the companies or the people. The shipping of way freights is always attended with more proportionate expense and delay than at prominent and terminal points. The extensive shipper, who loads a large number of cars for a single train, should be allowed more favorable rates than the one who ships at some way station but one car of freight at long intervals. The real cause of complaint is the uniformly exorbitant rates charged for carrying freights, in connection with the present warehouse and elevator system. The legislatures and the courts are clothed with full power to prevent oppressive or unjust charges for carrying freight. They care not how much per cent the companies shall make upon their investments; but when their charges amount to an abuse of their charter privileges the legislatures and the courts can correct them. The rule established by railroad companies, to force from shippers such rates as will pay interest or dividends upon an amount of imaginary stock, is unjust. The process by which they increase their stock to two or three times the amount invested is fraudulent. The legislatures and the courts possess the power to compel railroad companies to make a return of the actual amounts of money invested in their respective roads, in order to determine whether their charges are excessive and oppressive. Railroad companies being dependent upon state legislatures for such grants as will enable them to construct their roads, and being common carriers, the legislature can, by statute, restrict the capital stock to the amount invested. If this course had been adopted years ago many of the abuses now endured by the people would have been prevented. Not only has the law-making power the right to restrict the stock to the actual cost of the road, but it has also the power to fix the maximum rates for transportation. Competition will always have a controlling influence upon the price of any commodity, as well as fixing the price of any species of services or labor. The legislature has the power to enact statutes to prohibit the consolidation of the business of railroad companies, or a combination on their part to charge excessive tariffs; and the courts possess the power to enforce the observance of such statutes by the infliction of suitable penalties. In this connection the abuses practiced by the dispatch companies may be considered. The railroad companies receive their charters with the understanding and implied agreement on their part that, as common carriers, they will deal honestly with the public, and that they will furnish the necessary locomotives, cars, etc., for the purpose of supplying the ordinary wants of the people. This they are bound to furnish, and also to do the ordinary carrying of freights, for a reasonable compensation. We have already given a history of the dispatch lines, and told who compose the companies, and how they do the business the railroad companies agreed to transact when they obtained their charters. These dispatch lines are a fraud upon the public, for which the companies should be held responsible. Every dollar paid to them, in excess of the regular rates of the railroad companies' regular tariff, can be recovered from the companies. The fiction of hiring their roads and locomotives to another company, and giving such company a monopoly of the trade over their road, in order that higher rates may be charged, is an abuse that the legislature can correct and the courts can punish. Of the same nature are the "warehouse" and "elevator" combinations. Of these we know what is open and visible; but of the internal workings and divisions of the "pools," or, more properly speaking, the "spoils," we know but little. We know that it is a means of oppression, and that it compels farmers to sell to _inside_ men, or sacrifice the moiety of the crop the railroad companies allow them to retain. In law, railroad companies are bound to ship for all who pay the regular rates without bestowing a bounty upon elevator and warehouse men; and they are also bound to deliver the freight at such warehouses as the shippers direct. For a refusal to do so, they are liable to the shipper for damages to the amount of the loss suffered, and sums extorted. Shippers can compel the companies to receive their freights on board their cars at regular stations, and to deliver their freights at the place designated, irrespective of any and all combinations to prevent it. To conclude this whole matter, the people have the power to reform all the abuses they suffer at the hands of these monopolies by the election of men to legislative offices whose hands will not touch bribes, and by filling the seats of justice with judges who are not so wedded to ancient precedents as to do injustice rather than make a new departure; by men whose chief object shall be to do equal and exact justice to all, and not resort to judicial legislation and new interpretations of the constitution in order to uphold and strengthen the power and advance the interests of corporations already too powerful in the land. In order to restore to the people the rights now denied them, and to abridge the combined power of the monopolies who now rule the country, the control of the finances must be taken from them. The financial policy of the government, adopted during the late civil war as a war measure, is still adhered to. The internal commerce of the whole country is controlled by a few men--the same who own and operate the railroads and rule the _business_ in "Wall street." The peculiar financial policy of the government tends to concentrate the money of the country--to gather it together, rather than to scatter it abroad. New York City being the great commercial center, and the internal commerce of the country, being under the control of a few men who make this metropolis their principal place of business, with their vast lines of railroads extending over the whole country, bringing to them a never-ceasing stream of money, they are able to regulate the market value of almost all articles of commerce, and to limit the supply of the circulating medium as occasion serves. We have already shown the bad results of the system upon the interests of the people, and do not intend to repeat it here. Ordinarily, the laws of trade, of demand and supply, will regulate and equalize the distribution of the circulating medium over the country. Such will always be the case if no special causes exist to prevent it. But with the railroad interest of the country controlled by the same combination of men who "corner" all the coin in the country; with the established policy of the government making depreciated paper the only circulating medium, and the "legal tender" decision making this depreciated currency the standard of values; with the constant fluctuation of prices resulting from the above named causes--it is not strange that these corporations and Wall street brokers control the finances of the country. Until this control is taken from them, the wrongs of the people cannot be redressed. Money is said to be "power," and when a certain interest or locality has the absolute control of this "power," all others must suffer. One means of stripping railroad magnates and Wall street gamblers of this power would be the resumption of "specie payment." As we have shown, under the present financial and tariff policy of the country, this is out of the question. With our legal tender decisions, our depreciated currency, and our tariff system, the balance of trade is largely against us; our coin is being shipped to other countries, not leaving us sufficient for the purposes of resumption, or for circulation. Add to this the fact that the Wall street brokers own or control most of what is in the country, and the truth is patent that resumption cannot be effected until the whole financial policy of the government is remodeled. Will an increase of the banking facilities of the country under the present system accomplish this object? We answer, No. An increase of banks, and of the currency, would only afford temporary relief. Suppose $100,000,000 should be added to the present amount of currency, and that it should all be distributed in the west and south. Wall street operators would only have to increase their operations to gather the whole of it under their control. They now, in their various ramifications, own and control capital more than sufficient to pay the whole of the national debt and leave them a large surplus. While the distribution of additional currency through the country might afford them temporary relief, under the combined management of railroad corporations and Wall street brokers, and without any change in their present system, they could and would soon absorb this surplus of currency, and resume the absolute control of the finances of the country. The people would again be in their power, with an additional burden imposed upon them, "to-wit"--the payment of the interest on an additional $100,000,000 of government bonds. Would a change in the banking system of the country take from these monopolists the control of the finances of the country? This would depend upon the character of the change. If the secretary of the treasury, or his department, should retain the entire management of the system, no real relief could be expected. While the general government has the exclusive right to regulate the coinage and value of coin (money), it is the assumption of power not delegated to vest in one man, or department, the exclusive management of the finances of the entire country, not only of the government, but of all private persons. We do not comprehend the wisdom of fixing and limiting the amount of currency the country may have for a circulating medium, and empowering one man to decide, how, when, and where it shall be distributed. Conceding to the general government the power to charter banks and issue treasury notes, the power is not exclusive. There is no limit to the volume of gold and silver, and if government should attempt to limit the amount of coin, it could not do it. The laws of trade, the demand and supply, would fix the amount. Under our present banking system, coin is driven from circulation, and a definitely fixed amount of treasury notes and government paper is all that the country is permitted to have for the transaction of its whole business--and this amount must be placed just where the comptroller of the currency shall determine. The legal tender decisions have made the resumption of specie payment impossible. The present banking system prevents an increase of currency or treasury notes, and gives concentrated capital absolute and unlimited control of the business of the country. Any other banking system, if left under the same control, would be subject to the same objections. No one department of the government, nor the whole government combined, can determine the amount of currency necessary for transacting the business of the country. Fixing the amount in the present banking act has afforded the means to Wall street operators for "cornering" such amounts of currency as would derange the market and depress prices. No valid objection can be offered to what is known as the "free banking system." Such a system, if generally adopted, would strip railroad corporations, Wall street jobbers, and all other rings and combinations of men, of the power to control the finances of the country. Another advantage would result to the people: It would free them from the annual payment of from $18,000,000 to $20,000,000 interest on government bonds purchased by bankers and deposited with the treasury department. Such a system of banking would reduce the margin between coin and currency and promote the resumption of specie payment, and, instead of having only depreciated paper as a circulating medium, we would have a currency convertible into coin. The giant corporations and other monopolies that now rule would be shorn of much of their strength, and the people would be freed from their relentless grasp. SEVENTH.--_Free Trade and Direct Taxation._--Our conclusion would not be complete were we to omit a reference to the subject of tariff. Indeed, it so interlaces the question of transportation and the construction of railroads as to become an integral part of our discussion. Disclaiming any partisan views of the question, we shall try to demonstrate that all tariffs are unjust and oppressive. In a former chapter we have shown the operations of our tariff, and some of its results. We now proceed to demonstrate that the true rule in all our dealings and commercial transactions is, _to sell where we can obtain the best prices, and to purchase where we can obtain the desired article for the least money_. Demand and supply should regulate the prices in our dealings, and protective tariffs should be repealed. A "protection" that taxes three-fourths or four fifths of the whole people, in order that the remaining fraction may amass riches, is an oppression that ought not to be tolerated. No class is more oppressed by protective tariffs than the farmers and producers of the country. They do not ask, nor do they receive any protection. With high or protective tariffs, farmers and producers pay much more than their just proportion to the support of the government. The consumer simply pays tariff duties on what he consumes, while the producer not only pays on what he consumes, but his product must pay a large part of the duty upon what is consumed by others. The products of the country are its wealth. No matter who is obliged to pay the duty in the first instance, ultimately the producer must pay it. To illustrate this proposition, let us take any given article produced, manufactured, or constructed in the United States. There is a duty on some of the material used in the manufacture of the reaper. The manufacturer pays this duty, and adds it to the cost of the machine purchased by the farmer. In the erection of factories, machine shops, furnaces, and foundries, dutiable articles are used, all of which, in the end, must be paid for from the products of the country. In the construction of railroads, locomotives, cars, etc., iron and other articles are used upon which there are high tariff rates. These duties are paid by the companies in the first instance, the amounts paid are included in the cost of the roads, and must be returned in shape of increased rates for transportation over the roads. In the end these duties are paid by the producer. Every bushel of wheat, corn, or other grain, shipped over a railroad, pays part. Protective tariffs are so interwoven with the construction of railroads and the internal commerce of the country that they cannot be separated from the questions we have been discussing. All tariff duties are direct charges upon the productions of this country, and not on any other. Import duties are not paid by the people of the country from whence the goods are imported, but by our own people. It matters not who pays the tax in the first instance, in the end it must be paid from the product of the country. The main product of our country, especially of the west and south, being from the soil, it follows that the farmer must pay by far the greatest portion of tariff duties. The burdens imposed on him are more than his just share. In the first place he pays directly the duty charged upon what he consumes, and then pays, indirectly, much the larger part of the duties paid in the first instance by others. He is charged with the cost of shipping his grain to market, whether that market is in the United States or Europe, and his product must pay the cost of shipping the return cargo from Europe to America, with the addition of such protective duty as congress may fix by statute. His product must bear the whole burden. "In other words, the question of transportation is part and parcel of the tariff question, and cannot be dealt with apart from it. Transportation is made dear by the dearness of supplies; that is to say, the railroads are taxed enormously, and, through the railroads, the farmers, for the benefit of special industries. There can be no cheap transportation without cheap iron, cheap cars, cheap stations; and, what is more, there can be no market for American produce abroad so long as the sale of all foreign commodities, except gold, is made as difficult as high duties and vexatious custom house regulations can make it. Agricultural produce at the west is now a glut; it must become more and more of a glut, if either more railroads are opened or the cost of transportation on the present roads is diminished, as long as new markets are not provided, or, in other words, as long as access to the crowded regions of the Old World is artificially impeded. Of course, there may come a time when there will be population enough in the west to eat up all its corn and pork; but, at the present rate of agricultural and railroad development, this will not be witnessed by either the present generation or the next, and the cry of the 'Granges' ought to be for a clearing of the outlets to the Old World in all ways. To secure this, it is not enough to cheapen transportation; we have to offer a market to the foreigner for his commodities in order to get him to take ours." As we have before remarked, the settled plan for raising revenue for the support of the general government, is by import duties. By common consent this plan has been accepted as the most feasible. While we have been following this method from the organization of our government, by legislation we have been making war upon foreign commerce, by imposing tariffs for the protection and government of domestic manufactures. By congressional enactment, we determine that we will support the government by the collection of duties levied upon foreign imports; and then we levy high rates of duties for the purpose of prohibiting these foreign imports, and for building up and protecting home manufactures. Under the present tariff, but for the fact that our own manufacturers take advantage of the high rate of duties, and advance the price of their own products, to the extent of the duty, foreign importations would cease, and some other means would have to be adopted to supply the revenue needed by the government. The only benefit thus far resulting from our present high tariff is the enriching of a few men by the imposition of unjust and unequal burdens upon the farming and producing classes. It might be pertinent to inquire whether there is any justice in any kind of tariff. All are bound to contribute their _pro rata_ share for the support of the government. In theory the property of the country is taxed for this purpose. Such a system of taxation is just and equitable, because it is uniform; the property of each individual pays its _pro rata_ share, and the burden is equally divided. As we have already shown, revenue derived from tariffs is a tax upon the labor of the citizen, and not on the wealth or property of the country. The poor man, the man who depends entirely upon his daily labor for the support of himself and family, pays as much for the support of the government as the man of immense wealth. His daily toil, considered in the light of its value to the government, is taken as equivalent to the $500,000 of the rich man. The industry and not the wealth of the country is made to support the government when the revenue is derived from import duties. No one will deny the right of the general government to provide for its own support, nor its right to provide means to this end by the levy of import duties; yet the wisdom of these duties does not so clearly appear. The reader will have noticed that this method of raising revenue operates unequally; that it gives to American manufacturers an absolute monopoly of business; that the only reason why imports do not cease is because the prices of American fabrics have been arbitrarily raised to the highest point allowable without permitting the importer to undersell the home-made article. The manufacturers, under the statute, having a complete monopoly, are not slow in availing themselves of it, and, as a natural result, the whole country is compelled to contribute to their support. It may be asked: How would you provide for the support of the government? We answer, by direct taxation, because this is a just and equitable manner of raising revenue, compelling the wealth and property of the country, and not the labor of the toiling millions, to support the government. Because it will prove less expensive, and will do away with custom houses and custom house officers, with the frauds, swindling, and robbery, that now afflict the country. Because it will open to us the markets of the world, and give us an outlet and market for our agricultural products. Now the balance of trade is against us; our country is being drained of its coin and its wealth; all productive industries languish, because of our selfish policy of attempting to become exclusive in our commerce. We are content to trammel all dealings with foreign nations in the way of barter, sale, and exchange, and send our coin to Europe, while we use, as the representative of money, an irredeemable paper currency. Free trade would enable us to increase our commerce and shipping on the ocean; to arrest the stream of coin that is flowing from us to Europe; to sell where we could obtain the best prices, and buy where we could make the best bargains. We are in favor of direct taxation for the support of the government, because it will simplify our revenue system, and consequently require less revenue than is now needed. It will compel more rigid economy in the administration of the government, and place within the reach of the people the means of ascertaining how much is annually expended by those in power. It will destroy one branch of the system of monopolies that is robbing the agricultural and producing classes of their substance. Let us not become alarmed at the thought of this direct taxation. We accept it as the best method for raising revenue for the support of state and municipal government, and no good reason can be shown why the same method would not be best for the general government. The amount to be paid by the men of wealth would be in excess of what they now pay, because their property, and not what they consume, would be the basis of taxation. But to the laborer with a family, the mechanic, the farmer with small means, and to a majority of men who now pay in shape of duties from $100 to $200 annually, the amount required would be but a tithe of the sum now demanded. To learn something of the rate per cent necessary to support the government, let us look at the valuation of the property in the United States as returned with the census in 1870. The actual amount as returned was $14,178,486,732, call it in round numbers $15,000,000,000; a tax of one per cent on this amount would produce a revenue of $150,000,000. The above valuation is taken mainly from the returns made by assessors, and is but little more than one-third of the real value. Let us double the amount, then the value of the property in the United States will be $30,000,000,000. By an examination of the returns it will be seen that but little railroad property is included in the valuation. If this property is added, the above amount will be largely increased. By supposing the real value of the assessable property to be $30,000,000,000; then a tax of one-half per cent would raise a revenue of $150,000,000, a sum sufficient to pay all the necessary current expenses of the government and leave something to apply on the national debt. A tax of three-fourths per cent would raise a revenue of $225,000,000, enough to support the government and pay the interest on the whole of the national debt. Should the special tax be continued on spirits and tobacco, then a tax of four mills would raise a sufficient revenue for all legitimate governmental purposes. Now, a laboring man must pay from the proceeds of his labor from thirty per cent upwards for almost all his purchases of clothing for his family, and the same on many other articles of consumption. If, in the course of a year, he purchases to the amount of $150, of this sum, $50 is paid, indirectly, it is true, but nevertheless it is paid, and is a tax. With direct taxation, if his homestead should be worth $1,000, instead of paying $50 as he now does, he would pay five for the support of the government, and the other forty-five dollars now paid by him from the proceeds of his labor would be charged against the property of his rich neighbor. There is no injustice in this method of raising revenue for the support of the government, and its adoption would relieve the people from the oppressions of a ring of wealthy monopolies who now control the entire manufacturing industries of the country, and would allow the laws of trade, of demand and supply, to fix the prices of manufactured articles. No reason now exists for the continuance of a law that assures to the manufacturer large dividends on his investments, while the farm products must be sold and bartered for a nominal price. The producer asks no protection save access to the market and the privilege of keeping for his family and himself the net proceeds of his crops, without being compelled to bestow one-third of it as a gratuity upon the already rich and lordly manufacturer. This right the agriculturalists will never enjoy until the old anti-republican theory of protective and revenue tariffs is exploded, and the equal rights of all are vindicated. When this tariff embargo on commerce is removed, when this blockade is raised, and the producer can send his grain to Europe, and in return receive such manufactured articles as he needs, without paying _royalty_ to some American lord, in shape of tariffs (ironically called "protection") the producing classes will ask no other aid of government. Then will appear the dawn of that universal brotherhood of man, which sooner or later will illuminate the whole civilized world. With "free trade" and direct taxation, a death blow will be given to monopolists, and the burdens so long borne by the laboring and producing classes will be lifted from them, and they will be permitted to enjoy the fruit of their own labor. EIGHTH.--_Patent Rights--Cash Payments Recommended in Place of Long Standing Mortgages on the Genius of American Industry._--We have shown some of the abuses connected with the patent system of the country, and their effect upon the people. While the monopoly of inventions is not of as great magnitude as some others of which we have treated, the oppressions resulting from it are more annoying than many that engage general attention. Inventions are patented because they are expected to be of public benefit, and because it is but just that the inventor should be rewarded for a discovery or invention that will advantage the public generally, or individuals who may make use of the invention or discovery. The monopoly given to the inventor, or discoverer, is to enable him to compensate himself for the time, labor, and skill, as well as the talent or genius bestowed upon the invention, and also to encourage others to enter the lists as inventors or discoverers of new and useful articles and principles. But our patent system was never designed for giving a monopoly to any one who happened to shape a plow handle different from those now in use, or who cut a thread used in operating a sewing machine in a peculiar manner, or for the many hundreds of trifling alterations made in many articles in general use, or in the manner of using them. An examination of the list of patents issued will demonstrate that not one in ten contains any new principle, or is of any value to any one, save the patentee. The apparent ease with which patents are obtained, and the indiscriminate manner of their issue, is a great and growing evil that should be remedied. No patent should be issued until a test had demonstrated its perfection and usefulness. An examination of many articles on which letters patent have been issued, coupled with the attempt to use them, discloses the fact that the invention, if it ever could be of any particular value, required further improvement to make it of such value, and that letters patent had been issued for an undeveloped theory. If the invention had been submitted to a practical test, this state of things would not have occurred, and the public would not have been defrauded. Patented articles enter so largely in the prosecution of all industrial pursuits that it is of the utmost importance that they should be perfect in their plans and construction, and that the government should assume some kind of responsibility in all cases when letters patent are issued. Such letters say in substance, that the patented article is new and useful, and that it is reasonably fit for the work in the view of the inventor. These letters patent are a letter of credit to the patentee; as a license permitting him to sell his invention, and forbidding all persons to sell or use the invention without his consent. Under the present law it is simply a special favor, in shape of an exclusive right, granted to an individual to defraud the persons with whom he deals. The law should be so modified as to make the government or the examining officer responsible in all cases when patents issued for pretended discoveries or inventions prove to be neither new nor useful. If such were now the law, there would be less complaint of frauds practiced by pretended inventors, and the utter failure of patented articles to answer the purposes for which they were intended. The law should be so amended as to prevent oppressions and extortions in the sale and use of articles of real merit, for which the inventor should be rewarded, and should have an exclusive right to use and sell his invention. There should be some limit to the price of the article. Government has given him an exclusive right; he should be restricted to such prices as would fairly compensate him for his discovery. His case is not like that of other men, who in their dealings come in competition, and where this competition and the laws of demand and supply fix the prices of the commodities in which they deal. He has the whole business in his own hands, and any attempt on the part of others to interfere with his exclusive right is forbidden and punished. We have already stated that machines sold in this country for $75 could be bought in England for less than half that sum. Most of the articles and machines of different kinds patented in this country, and used in Europe, are sold by the patentees, their agents and assigns, at less than half the sums demanded here at home. In Europe, where they have no monopoly, no exclusive right, they come in competition with others; hence they sell at fair prices. But in this country, where they have an exclusive right, they extort from the purchaser from one hundred to five hundred per cent on the cost of the article. This, government should prevent. But a better way to adjust the whole matter between the public and the inventor would be for the government to pay a premium according to merit, for all new and useful inventions, and remove all restrictions. Let all be free to make, use, and sell, not the invention, but the thing invented. This course would require careful and thorough examination and experiment before the principle was indorsed by the government, and the premium paid. Or, if his invention proved to be new and useful, let government pay to the inventor such sum as would fairly and liberally compensate him, and give the invention to the public. Government has bestowed immense grants of land upon railroad companies, for the avowed purpose of assisting in the development of the country; with greater justice could it bestow upon the whole people all useful discoveries and inventions. Such a course, adopted and executed in good faith, would make it impossible for adventurers, sharpers, and swindlers to impose worthless inventions and pretended discoveries upon the government, and then palm them off upon the people. Under the present system of obtaining letters patent, the people are wronged and often cheated, and for their wrongs the government is mainly responsible. Some other plan should be adopted, which in its operations would liberally compensate the inventor, and at the same time protect the people from extortions practiced by the owners of valuable inventions, and also from the thousands of adventurers who have been so fortunate as to obtain letters patent upon pretended discoveries of principles neither new nor useful, using their letters of credit for the purpose of defrauding the public. CONCLUSION.--We now approach the end of our labors. We have sought to present to the reader a candid statement of the different questions we have discussed; to lay before him evidence of the great and growing power of the men who are surely and swiftly getting control of the departments of the government, and monopolizing the finances and commerce of the whole country. In doing this we have endeavored to direct attention to the exclusive and munificent grants made to railroad companies, and to their abuse of these grants; to the means used by them to get control of the legislative and judicial departments of the government, and their apparent success in that direction; to the abridgment of the rights of the people incident thereto; to the dishonest and fraudulent practices of the men constructing, owning, and operating railroads; to the disgraceful Credit Mobilier swindle, and its influence upon the country; to the questionable position of some of the men representing the people in congress; to the destruction of the rights of the states and of the people; to the disregard of the constitutional restrictions and safeguards when the interests of these corporations were to be subserved; the purposes for which taxes should be levied; to the nature of railroad corporations--that they are private in their organization, and subject to the control of the people; to the effect of the policy of affording local aid to railroad companies by taxation, etc.; to the blighting influence attending municipal subscriptions to railroad companies; to the impositions practiced in transporting freights, and the warehouse and elevator abuses; to the fraudulent increase of capital stock by railroad companies through the watering process, and the extortions necessary to this dishonest practice; to their relative immunity from the burdens imposed for the support of government; to the strong grasp of consolidated capital upon the legislation of the country; to the special privileges granted to corporations by state legislatures; to the influence of these corporations on the executive department of the government; to the absolute control of the treasury and the finances enjoyed by corporations and Wall street brokers, with the manner of doing business in Wall street; to the influence of corporations in the selection of judges of the supreme court, with the decisions following the reconstruction of that court; to the banking and financial policy of the government, and its bad results; to the tariff policy and its effect upon the agricultural and producing classes; to the patent system and its abuses; and finally to the fact demonstrated, that unless the many abuses that have obtained in the land can be corrected, the people will be justified in calling into action their inherent rights for regaining those privileges refused to them, but conferred upon the corporations, rings, and combinations which have obtained such great power in the government. We do not claim that our work is free from errors. We have sought to state the facts correctly. If they are inaccurate, the errors are unintentional. It was not with the wish or intention of doing injustice to any man, class of men, corporations, or officers of the government, that we undertook this work; but with the firm belief and strong conviction that the liberties of the people were being taken from them, while a gigantic oligarchy was obtaining control of the government. We believe the remedy is yet with the people; but to save themselves prompt, speedy, and united action is imperative. We have watched with increasing interest the growing power of corporations, for years, hoping that the time would come when the people would awake to the necessity of asserting their latent powers for the restoration of their rights. The civil war and other great political questions have engaged the public attention, while selfish and ambitious men have combined and consolidated their wealth and corporate power for the purpose of controlling the government and commerce of the country. Their success has been such as to alarm the agricultural, the producing, and laboring classes. The indications now are that active and aggressive war will be waged against these oppressors of the people until they are shorn of their great power and the rights of the people are restored. Desiring to aid in this great reform, we have deemed the present a favorable time to present this work to the public. While the combination the people are now combatting is powerful--possessing a dangerous influence over the legislative and judicial branches of the government, well organized and vigorous, controlling the finances of the country and holding our commerce in its grasp--strong in wealth, and in the extent of its organization--notwithstanding these fearful facts, that old republican truth still obtains, that "the people are the source of all power." That power is now being aroused. The watchword now heard, is "Equal and exact justice to all." That potent, though silent weapon, the ballot, is a sure correction of all abuses when intelligently used. The signs of the times are hopeful from the fact that, for the first time in many years, the people, especially the agricultural, producing, and laboring classes are taking the lead. They are reading, thinking and acting independently of old political and partisan leaders; they are exercising their rights as freemen. They have declared that "old things shall be done away, and all things shall become new;" that the government shall be taken out of the old political grooves in which it has been running; that it shall assume new life, with the rights of the people fully recognized. That when the rights of the people and of free government on the one hand, and the privileges claimed by the combined corporate interests of the country on the other, are at issue, these rights shall not be made to yield to old precedents originating in monarchial and despotic governments, in order that the privileges claimed by corporations may be upheld. The organization of the Patrons of Husbandry forms a nucleus around which all reformers can rally. The reforms they seek will effect the liberation of the whole people from the oppressions under which they now suffer. Our aim is to aid in this work. We feel assured that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the monopolies and the people; that the powers and privileges assured to corporations are at war with republican institutions, and hostile to the constitution of our country. To effect reforms will require time. Some relief can be speedily obtained, but to accomplish thorough reform, and bring the administration of the government under the control of the people, will require that the offices shall be filled by men whose education and pursuits have been such as to place them in full sympathy with the people--men who will not spend their time as legislators and judges in discussing federal prerogatives, and classing our republican government with old time despotisms. The doctrine that corporations are subject to legislative control must be fully established as the fixed and settled policy of our government. When this point is reached, the farmer will not be obliged to divide his crops with railroad companies--and so with all other abuses. The power to correct all abuses must remain with the people. The prosperity of the people, the perpetuity of our form of government, the rights of the states and the public can only be preserved by guarding against all encroachments made upon free institutions, whether they originate in congress or out of it--whether they are enunciated from the bench of the supreme court, or from the stump. In these days when the tendency is to a strong centralized government--when a few men control the finance of the country--when the whole commerce of the country is controlled by Wall Street gamblers--when special grants and privileges are bestowed upon companies and individuals, and when the property of each individual is insecure and liable to be assessed for the building of railroads--at this time, there came from Justice Bradley of the supreme court of the United States, these ominous words: "It is absolutely essential to the independent national existence that _government_ should have a firm hold on the two great sovereign instruments of the _sword_ and the _purse_." This announcement is made from the bench of the supreme court of the United States, on the fifteenth of January, 1872. The government must have a firm hold on the purse and sword. This is the declaration of the court made but a few months before it decided that railroad corporations were public, and that the property of private third parties of the whole people could be taxed to build them. We claim that under our form of government the people are the power to retain the control of the purse and sword; that to place them together in the hands of those persons who fill, for the time being, the government offices, is to take from the governing power its rights. But when the people's purse and the government finances are subject to the action of corporations and rings, the special favorites of the courts, the people are imperatively called upon to arise and assert their rights as freemen--to throw off this oppressive yoke--to stamp with the seal of condemnation, not only the enunciation of such anti-republican sentiment, but the judge who uttered it. The real question at issue between the people and monopolies fostered and protected by government is, whether the people shall rule, or remain the servants and vassals of the monopolists. The final determination of this question will decide whether we are to live under the republic planned and formed for us by our revolutionary ancestors, or are to submit to the oligarchy shaped for us by recent enactments and decisions in favor of a class of men, who, for the sake of private gain, are overturning and destroying our free institutions. The issue is fairly presented; the lines distinctly drawn. The corporate hosts are marshaling their forces; the people, under the lead of the tillers of the soil, are preparing for battle. When the Union was threatened with disruption, and the armies were about to engage in conflict, they armed themselves with the death dealing sword and gun. Hundreds of thousands of brave and patriotic men proved their devotion to their country by the sacrifice of their lives for its preservation. No such sacrifices are now demanded. In a legal, constitutional manner, these corporations, rings, and combinations, can be routed "horse, foot, and dragoons;" their friends "at court" can be displaced; their paid agents and attorneys can be driven from the halls of congress and state legislatures; their judges can be invited to vacate their seats that others, elected by the votes of the people, may fill them; and the standard of "equal rights" can be again reared aloft without the use of bullets or the shedding of blood. But after all these errors and abuses shall have been corrected, other questions will arise. The farmer of the west and south must have cheap transportation to the seaboard. It may be demonstrated that our present system of building railroads will not answer the purpose because of the great expense of constructing and operating them, and that other means must be adopted. Under the constitution the general government has exclusive maritime jurisdiction, and can make canals and slack water navigation. History demonstrates that water transportation is always cheapest. The government should provide for water transportation from the great agricultural centres to the sea-board. This kind of improvement the general government can lawfully make, and an expenditure of a small part of the wealth bestowed upon private railroad corporations would open up water channels, affording cheap transportation from the west to the east and south. Grain and meats could then be shipped to the sea-board at such rates as would warrant their transportation to foreign markets, which, with the abolition of protective duties, would furnish the farmer a good sale for his products, and an opportunity of purchasing his supplies free from the bounty he now pays the eastern manufacturer. With such means for shipping the farm products of the west and south, with protective tariffs abolished, and the financial policy of the nation so changed as to furnish to the people the same kind of money used by the government, with "specie payment" resumed, and the large margin between coin and paper removed, prosperity would again attend farming pursuits, and contentment would fill the land. With all the advantages Providence has given us in this great country, with the pure and simple republic bequeathed to us by the heroes and statesmen of Seventy-Six, we ought to be a prosperous and happy people. But, with the blighting curse of oppressive monopolies fastened upon us, upheld by bought legislation and strengthened by the decisions of judges and courts, who, from education, occupation, and sympathy with the oppressors of the people, or from baser motives, have become the special guardians of the monopolists, the laboring and producing classes find it difficult to live, and, in many instances, are being reduced to absolute want. The farmer has abundant harvests, but their value is absorbed in oppressive charges for transportation to market, and he is bound down with onerous and unequal taxes until his labor has ceased to be remunerative. While this is true of most industrial pursuits, the manufacturer, protected by the government, the moneyed men of Wall street, who operate in gold and stocks, and the railroad men, who are protected by the decisions of the courts of the country, all amass princely fortunes--the result of special privileges bestowed upon them. As a necessary consequence, the interests of the country are being divided. A moneyed "nobility" are arrayed against the laboring and producing classes. Special privileges, at war with republican institutions, are granted them; their wealth is virtually exempted from taxation, and they are fast becoming the governing power, while those who produce the wealth of the country are compelled to spend their strength and devote their lives to the business of adding to the wealth of their oppressors. It may be asked why this state of things exists. There are two reasons for it. First, the indifference manifested by the people to the affairs of the government; their willingness to allow others to direct and control the affairs of the nation, while they devote their time to their own personal interests, seemingly forgetful that they have any interest in national affairs, or in the administration of their own state government, and permitting those who now oppress them to shape legislation, and to obtain those grants and privileges which have now become the means of their oppression. The second cause is the disposition of those in power to override and disregard constitutional restrictions. During the civil war the constitution possessed no restrictive force. The law of necessity governed; the personal will of those in office was the supreme law. Acts of congress were passed with direct reference to a state of war, and decisions of courts were controlled by the same causes. With the return of peace these laws remained unrepealed; the decisions of courts remained unreversed; constitutional restrictions were deemed irksome and of little moment. Laws remained on our statute book which contravened the plain provisions of the constitution, and the decisions of courts have continued in the same channel, until the great charter of our civil liberty, has become obsolete, and the personal opinions of courts, like the edicts of a monarch, have become the supreme law. Under this species of legislation, and this class of decisions, these great oppressors of the country have grown up until their power is superior to that of all other interests, and not unfrequently defies the law. The first great reform to be effected is to re-establish the supremacy of the constitution, and to demand of courts and legislators a strict observance of its provisions. When this is effected, the rights of the states and the people will be protected. The courts of the United States, and all other departments of the government, must remember that in our republican system the federal government is limited and restricted to the exercise of such powers as are expressly delegated to it, and that all attempts to confer special charters and privileges upon private companies are usurpations. They must remember that we have no government with kingly prerogatives; that in a republic the people retain control of the _purse_ and _sword_, and that the liberties of the people, the equality of all before the law, as well as the perpetuation of republican institutions, are in the care and keeping of the sovereign people. That there should be some means adopted to arrest this great and growing power of corporations is now forcibly demonstrated. Since writing the preceding pages, still another fatal stab has been given to the republic. Vanderbilt, the leader in the raid made by corporations upon the liberties of the people, and also an operator in Wall street gambling, has added to the other roads under his control the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railway, and now controls the commerce of the west with the seaboard, and can fix the price of a barrel of flour, or bushel of wheat or corn, and from his decision there is no appeal. Extending these monopolies still further, Vanderbilt and his co-conspirators are about to take control of all the telegraph lines in the country, and dictate to the whole people the price to be paid for dispatches. Thus these enemies of republican government are surely getting control of all the business and commerce of the country. The finances, the carrying trade, the produce market, the price and sale of manufactured articles, and the means of communication between the different portions of the country, are all passing into the hands of the enemies of the people. At the present time if any railroad company attempts to act independently and honestly, this combination of sharpers and swindlers make war upon it and force it to surrender, or drive it into bankruptcy. No wonder that the people are becoming alarmed, and are preparing for the conflict. The attempt made to dissolve the Union was an open and bold one. The people met the issue, and triumphed. The attempt made to divide the country aroused the national patriotism. The attempt of this great combination of monopolists to obtain absolute control of the government, the finances, and commerce of the country, presents more serious cause for alarm than did the attempt to dissolve the Union. Our institutions cease to be of any value when they are perverted to means of oppression. When men in high official positions trifle with the liberties of the people and encourage their oppressors, an indignant constituency should hurl them from power. If, knowing the wrongs that are committed against us, the encroachments being made on our liberties, the threatened and partially accomplished destruction of republican institutions, we silently acquiesce, we are not freemen, and we deserve to be held as the bond-servants of our oppressors for all time to come. But while the people are long-suffering and patient under adversity, there is a point beyond which their oppressors cannot venture without arousing them to action. That point is now reached; the fiat of the sovereign power in this land has gone forth; the voice of the people is heard from all portions of our common country demanding redress, and that the government shall be brought back to constitutional limits; that the power of their oppressors shall be destroyed; that their rights as freemen shall be restored to them; that the halls of legislation and the courts of justice shall be filled by men who do not legislate for bribes, and who administer justice without respect to persons or interests, and prize constitutional restrictions and the liberties of the people above the interests of corporations and rings formed to oppress them. If redress cannot be obtained at the ballot-box; if the influences which now control the government and business of the country cannot be overcome; if redress is denied in legislative halls and in the courts--then the people have the right, the "God-given right," to arise in their sovereign power and take what their servants have refused to give them. If reform cannot be obtained, or the wrongs of the people redressed in any other method, a resort should be had to _revolution_--peaceable, if possible, but such as will bring the country back to the days of its purity, and compel all to acknowledge the _sacred_ binding force of the constitution. Having an abiding confidence that the reform being inaugurated by the farmers of the country will advance to a triumphant issue, we present this volume to the public, as an humble but honest champion of the cause, acknowledging its imperfections, expecting criticisms and condemnations from the monopolists and their dependents, but asking a careful perusal and earnest consideration of the doctrine advocated. APPENDIX. CHAPTER I. As our position on the "Legal Tender" decisions and their effect upon the finances and commerce of the country have been controverted by some of the _legal men_ to whom we have shown our manuscript, at the risk of wearying the reader, we quote the dissenting opinions of the late Chief Justice Chase, and his associates, on the points at issue in those cases, feeling assured that these opinions fully sustain us. If our views are correct as to the effect of these decisions upon the best interests of the country, and their tendency to increase the power of the combinations that now have such control over the different departments of the government, as well as the financial and commercial interests of the country, it follows that no real relief from the oppressions under which the people are suffering can be obtained until the legal tender statutes are repealed, and the latest decisions of the supreme court as to their constitutionality and scope are reversed. We have claimed that those decisions were in conflict with the provisions of the constitution. Our position is supported by the opinions quoted. We have said that the supreme court of the United States was reorganized in the interests of railroad corporations and other monopolies, before the legal tender questions were re-argued and reversed. The opinions quoted sustain us in this particular. But we desire the reader to examine these opinions and determine for himself. CHAPTER II. DISSENTING OPINION OF CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE. We dissent from the argument and conclusion in the opinion just announced. The rule, by which the constitutionality of an act of congress passed in the alleged exercise of an implied power is to be tried, is no longer, in this court, open to question. It was laid down in the case of _McCulloch_ v. _Maryland_, by Chief Justice Marshall, in these words: "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." And it is the plain duty of the court to pronounce acts of congress not made in the exercise of an express power nor coming within the reasonable scope of this rule, if made in virtue of an implied power, unwarranted by the constitution. Acts of congress not made in pursuance of the constitution are not laws. Neither of these propositions was questioned in the case of _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_. The judges who dissented in that case maintained that the clause in the act of February 25th, 1862, making the United States notes a legal tender in payment of debts, was an appropriate, plainly adapted means to a constitutional end, not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution. The majority of the court as then constituted, five judges out of eight, felt "obliged to conclude that an act making mere promises to pay dollars a legal tender in payments of debts previously contracted is not a means appropriate, plainly adapted, really calculated to carry into effect any express power vested in congress, is inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, and is prohibited by the constitution." In the case of the _United States_ v. _De Witt_, we held unanimously that a provision of the internal revenue law prohibiting the sale of certain illuminating oil in the states was unconstitutional, though it might increase the production and sale of other oils, and consequently the revenue derived from them, because this consequence was too remote and uncertain to warrant the court in saying that the prohibition was an appropriate and plainly adapted means for carrying into execution the power to lay and collect taxes. We agree, then, that the question whether a law is a necessary and proper means to execution of an express power, within the meaning of these words as defined by the rule--that is to say, a means appropriate, plainly adapted, not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution--is a judicial question. Congress may not adopt any means for the execution of an express power that congress may see fit to adopt. It must be a necessary and proper means within the fair meaning of the rule. If not such it cannot be employed consistently with the constitution. Whether the means actually employed in a given case are such or not the court must decide. The court must judge of the fact, congress of the degree of necessity. A majority of the court, five to four, in the opinion which has just been read, reverses the judgment rendered by the former majority of five to three, in pursuance of an opinion formed after repeated arguments, at successive terms, and careful consideration; and declares the legal tender clause to be constitutional; that is to say, that an act of congress making promises to pay dollars legal tender as coined dollars in payment of pre-existing debts is a means appropriate and plainly adapted to the exercise of powers expressly granted by the constitution, and not prohibited itself by the constitution but consistent with its letter and spirit. And this reversal, unprecedented in the history of the court, has been produced by no change in the opinions of those who concurred in the former judgment. One closed an honorable judicial career by resignation after the case had been decided, after the opinion had been read and agreed to in conference, and after the day when it would have been delivered in court, had not the delivery been postponed for a week to give time for the preparation of the dissenting opinion. The court was then full, but the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Justice Grier having been subsequently filled and an additional justice having been appointed under the act increasing the number of judges to nine, which took effect on the first Monday of December, 1869, the then majority find themselves in a minority of the court, as now constituted, upon the question. Their convictions, however, remain unchanged. We adhere to the opinion pronounced in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_. Reflection has only wrought a firmer belief in the soundness of the constitutional doctrines maintained, and in the importance of them to the country. We agree that much of what was said in the dissenting opinion in that case, which has become the opinion of a majority of the court as now constituted, was correctly said. We fully agree in all that was quoted from Chief Justice Marshall. We had indeed accepted, without reserve, the definition of implied powers in which that great judge summed up his argument, of which the language quoted formed a part. But if it was intended to ascribe to us "the doctrine that when an act of congress is brought to the test of this clause of the constitution," namely, the clause granting the power of ancillary legislation, "its necessity must be absolute, and its adaptation to the conceded purpose unquestionable," we must be permitted not only to disclaim it, but to say that there is nothing in the opinion of the then majority which approaches the assertion of any such doctrine. We did indeed venture to cite, with approval, the language of Judge Story in his great work on the constitution, that the words necessary and proper were intended to have "a sense at once admonitory and directory," and to require that the means used in the execution of an express power "should be _bona fide_, appropriate to the end," and also ventured to say that the tenth amendment, reserving to the states or the people all powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, "was intended to have a like admonitory and directory sense," and to restrain the limited government established by the constitution from the exercise of powers not clearly delegated or derived by just inference from powers so delegated. In thus quoting Judge Story, and in this expression of our own opinion, we certainly did not suppose it possible that we could be understood as asserting that the clause in question "was designed as a restriction upon the ancillary power incidental to every grant of power in express terms." It was this proposition which "was stated and refuted" in _McCulloch_ v. _Maryland_. That refutation touches nothing said by us. We assert only that the words of the constitution are such as admonish congress that implied powers are not to be rashly or lightly assumed, and that they are not to be exercised at all, unless, in the words of Judge Story, they are "_bona fide_ appropriate to the end," or, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, "appropriate, plainly adapted" to a constitutional and legitimate end, and "not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution." There appears, therefore, to have been no real difference of opinion in the court as to the rule by which the existence of an implied power is to be tested, when _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_ was decided, though the then minority seem to have supposed there was. The difference had reference to the application of the rule rather than to the rule itself. The then minority admitted that in the powers relating to coinage, standing alone, there is not "a sufficient warrant for the exercise of the power" to make notes a legal tender, but thought them "not without decided weight, when we come to consider the question of the existence of this power as one necessary and proper for carrying into execution other admitted powers of the government." This weight they found in the fact that an "express power over the lawful money of the country was confided to congress and forbidden to the states." It seemed to them not an "unreasonable inference" that, in a certain contingency, "making the securities of the government perform the office of money in the payment of debts would be in harmony with the power expressly granted to coin money." We perceive no connection between the express power to coin money and the inference that the government may, in any contingency, make its securities perform the functions of coined money, as a legal tender in payment of debts. We have supposed that the power to exclude from circulation notes not authorized by the national government might, perhaps, be deduced from the power to regulate the value of coin; but that the power of the government to emit bills of credit was an exercise of the power to borrow money, and that its power over the currency was incidental to that power and to the power to regulate commerce. This was the doctrine of the _Veazie Bank_ v. _Fenno_, although not fully elaborated in that case. The question whether the quality of legal tender can be imparted to these bills depends upon distinct considerations. Was, then, the power to make these notes of the government--these bills of credit--a legal tender in payments an appropriate, plainly adapted means to a legitimate and constitutional end? or, to state the question as the opinion of the then minority stated it, "Does there exist any power in congress, or in the government, by express grant, in execution of which this legal tender act was necessary and proper in the sense here defined and under the circumstances of its passage?" The opinion of the then minority affirmed the power on the ground that it was a necessary and proper means, within the definition of the court, in the case of _McCulloch_ v. _Maryland_, to carry on war, and that it was not prohibited by the spirit or letter of the constitution, though it was admitted to be a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and notwithstanding the objection that it deprived many persons of their property without compensation and without due process of law. We shall not add much to what was said in the opinion of the then majority on these points. The reference made in the opinion just read, as well as in the argument at the bar, to the opinions of the chief justice, when secretary of the treasury, seems to warrant, if it does not require, some observations before proceeding further in the discussion. It was his fortune at the time the legal tender clause was inserted in the bill to authorize the issue of United States notes and received the sanction of congress, to be charged with the anxious and responsible duty of providing funds for the prosecution of the war. In no report made by him to congress was the expedient of making the notes of the United States a legal tender suggested. He urged the issue of notes payable on demand in coin or received as coin in payment of duties. When the state banks had suspended specie payments, he recommended the issue of United States notes receivable for all loans to the United States and all government dues except duties on imports. In his report of December, 1862, he said that "United States notes receivable for bonds bearing a secure specie interest are next best to notes convertible into coin," and after stating the financial measures which in his judgment were advisable, he added: "The secretary recommends, therefore, no mere paper money scheme, but on the contrary a series of measures looking to a safe and gradual return to gold and silver as the only permanent basis, standard, and measure of value recognized by the constitution." At the session of congress before this report was made, the bill containing the legal tender clause had become a law. He was extremely and avowedly averse to this clause, but was very solicitous for the passage of the bill to authorize the issue of United States notes then pending. He thought it indispensably necessary that the authority to issue these notes should be granted by congress. The passage of the bill was delayed, if not jeoparded, by the difference of opinion which prevailed on the question of making them a legal tender. It was under these circumstances that he expressed the opinion, when called upon by the committee of ways and means, that it was necessary; and he was not sorry to find it sustained by the decisions of respected courts, not unanimous indeed, nor without contrary decisions of state courts equally respectable. Examination and reflection under more propitious circumstances have satisfied him that this opinion was erroneous, and he does not hesitate to declare it. He would do so, just as unhesitatingly, if his favor to the legal tender clause had been at that time decided, and his opinion as to the constitutionality of the measure clear. Was the making of the notes a legal tender necessary to the carrying on the war? In other words, was it necessary to the execution of the power to borrow money? It is not the question whether the issue of notes was necessary, nor whether any of the financial measures of the government were necessary. The issuing of the circulation commonly known as greenbacks was necessary, and was constitutional. They were necessary to the payment of the army and the navy and to all the purposes for which the government uses money. The banks had suspended specie payment, and the government was reduced to the alternative of using their paper or issuing its own. Now it is a common error, and in our judgment it was the error of the opinion of the minority in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, and is the error of the opinion just read, that considerations pertinent to the issue of United States notes have been urged in justification of making them a legal tender. The real question is, Was the making them a legal tender a necessary means to the execution of the power to borrow money? If the notes would circulate as well without as with this quality it is idle to urge the plea of such necessity. But the circulation of the notes was amply provided for by making them receivable for all national taxes, all dues to the government, and all loans. This was the provision relied upon for the purpose by the secretary when the bill was first prepared, and his reflections since have convinced him that it was sufficient. Nobody could pay a tax, or any debt, or buy a bond without using these notes. As the notes, not being immediately redeemable, would undoubtedly be cheaper than coin, they would be preferred by debtors and purchasers. They would thus, by the universal law of trade, pass into general circulation. As long as they were maintained by the government at or near par value of specie they would be accepted in payment of all dues, private as well as public. Debtors, as a general rule, would pay in nothing else unless compelled by suit, and creditors would accept them as long as they would lose less by acceptance than by suit. In new transactions, sellers would demand and purchasers would pay the premium for specie in the prices of commodities. The difference to them, in the currency, whether of coin or of paper, would be in the fluctuations to which the latter is subject. So long as notes should not sink so low as to induce creditors to refuse to receive them because they could not be said to be in any just sense payments of debts due, a provision for making them a legal tender would be without effect except to discredit the currency to which it was applied. The real support of note circulation not convertible on demand into coin, is receivability for debts due the government, including specie loans, and limitation of amount. If the amount is smaller than is needed for the transactions of the country, and the law allows the use in these transactions of but one description of currency, the demand for that description will prevent its depreciation. But history shows no instance of paper issues so restricted. An approximation in limitation is all that is possible, and this was attempted when the issues of United States notes were restricted to one hundred and fifty millions. But this limit was soon extended to four hundred and fifty millions, and even this was soon practically removed by the provision for the issue of notes by the national banking associations without any provision for corresponding reduction in the circulation of United States notes; and still further by the laws authorizing the issue of interest-bearing securities, made a tender for their amount, excluding interest. The best support for note circulation is not limitation, but receivability, especially for loans bearing coin interest. This support was given until the fall of 1864, when a loan bearing increased currency interest, payable in three years and convertible into a loan bearing less coin interest, was substituted for the six per cent and five per cent loans bearing specie interest, for which the notes had been previously received. It is plain that a currency so supported cannot depreciate more than the loans; in other words, below the general credit of the country. It will rise or fall with it. At the present moment, if the notes were received for five per cent bonds, they would be at par. In other words, specie payments would be resumed. Now, does making the notes a legal tender increase their value? It is said that it does, by giving them a new use. The best political economists say that it does not. When the government compels the people to receive its notes, it virtually declares that it does not expect them to be received without compulsion. It practically represents itself insolvent. This certainly does not improve the value of its notes. It is an element of depreciation. In addition, it creates a powerful interest in the debtor class and in the purchasers of bonds to depress to the lowest point the credit of the notes. The cheaper these become, the easier the payment of debts, and the more profitable the investments in bonds bearing coin interest. On the other hand, the higher prices become, for everything the government needs to buy, and the greater the accumulation of public as well as private debt. It is true that such a state of things is acceptable to debtors, investors in bonds, and speculators. It is their opportunity of relief or wealth. And many are persuaded by their representations that the forced circulation is not only a necessity but a benefit. But the apparent benefit is a delusion and the necessity imaginary. In their legitimate use, the notes are hurt not helped by being made a legal tender. The legal tender quality is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty. Every honest purpose is answered as well and better without it. We have no hesitation, therefor, in declaring our conviction that the making of these notes a legal tender was not a necessary or proper means to the carrying on war or to the exercise of any express power of the government. But the absence of necessity is not our only, or our weightiest objection to this legal tender clause. We still think, notwithstanding the argument adduced to the contrary, that it does violate an express provision of the constitution, and the spirit, if not the letter, of the whole instrument. It cannot be maintained that legislation justly obnoxious to such objections can be maintained as the exercise of an implied power. There can be no implication against the constitution. Legislation to be warranted as the exercise of implied powers must not be "prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution." The fifth amendment provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without compensation or due process of law. The opinion of the former minority says that the argument against the validity of the legal tender clause, founded on this constitutional provision, is "too vague for their perception." It says that a "declaration of war would be thus unconstitutional," because it might depreciate the value of property; and "the abolition of tariff on sugar, or iron," because it might destroy the capital employed in those manufactures; and "the successive issues of government bonds," because they might make those already in private hands less valuable. But it seems to have escaped the attention of the then minority that to declare war, to lay and repeal taxes, and to borrow money, are all express powers, and that the then majority were opposing the prohibition of the constitution to the claim of an implied power. Besides, what resemblance is there between the effect of the exercise of these express powers and the operation of the legal tender clause upon pre-existing debts? The former are indirect effects of the exercise of undisputed powers. The latter acts directly upon the relations of debtor and creditor. It violates that fundamental principle of all just legislation that the legislature shall not take the property of A and give it to B. It says that B, who has purchased a farm of A for a certain price, may keep the farm without paying for it, if he will only tender certain notes which may bear some proportion to the price, or be even worthless. It seems to us that this is a manifest violation of this clause of the constitution. We think also that it is inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution in that it impairs the obligation of contracts. In the opinion of the then minority it is frankly said: "Undoubtedly it is a law impairing the obligation of contracts made before its passage," but it is immediately added: "While the constitution forbids the states to pass such laws, it does not forbid congress," and this opinion, as well as the opinion just read, refers to the express authority to establish a uniform system of bankruptcy as a proof that it was not the intention of the constitution to withhold that power. It is true that the constitution grants authority to pass a bankrupt law, but our inference is, that in this way only can congress discharge the obligation of contracts. It may provide for ascertaining the inability of debtors to perform their contracts, and, upon the surrender of all their property may provide for their discharge. But this is a very different thing from providing that they may satisfy contracts without payment, without pretence of inability, and without any judicial proceeding. That congress possesses the general power to impair the obligation of contracts is a proposition which, to use the language of Chief Justice Marshall, "must find its vindication in a train of reasoning not often heard in courts of justice." "It may well be added," said the same great judge, "whether the nature of society and of government does not prescribe some limits to legislative power; and, if any be prescribed, where they are to be found, if the property of an individual, fairly and honestly acquired, can be seized without compensation? To the legislature all legislative power is granted, but the question whether the act of transferring the property of an individual to the public is in the nature of a legislative power is well worthy of serious reflection." And if the property of an individual cannot be transferred to the public, how much less to another individual? These remarks of Chief Justice Marshall were made in a case in which it became necessary to determine whether a certain act of the legislature of Georgia was within the constitutional prohibition against impairing the obligation of contracts. And they assert fundamental principles of society and government in which that prohibition had its origin. They apply with great force to the construction of the constitution of the United States. In like manner and spirit Mr. Justice Chase had previously declared that "an act of the legislature contrary to the great first principles of the social compact cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority." Among such acts he instances "a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens." Can we be mistaken in saying that such a law is contrary to the spirit of a constitution ordained to establish justice? Can we be mistaken in thinking that if Marshall and Story were here to pronounce judgment in this case they would declare the legal tender clause now in question to be prohibited by and inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution? It is unnecessary to say that we reject wholly the doctrine, advanced for the first time, we believe, in this court, by the present majority, that the legislature has any "powers under the constitution which grow out of the aggregate of powers conferred upon the government, or out of the sovereignty instituted by it." If this proposition be admitted, and it be also admitted that the legislature is the sole judge of the necessity for the exercise of such powers, the government becomes practically absolute and unlimited. Our observations thus far have been directed to the question of the constitutionality of the legal tender clause and its operation upon contracts made before the passage of the law. We shall now consider whether it be constitutional in its application to contracts made after its passage. In other words, whether congress has power to make anything but coin a legal tender. And here it is well enough again to say that we do not question the authority to issue notes or to fit them for a circulating medium, or to promote their circulation by providing for their receipt in payment of debts to the government, and for redemption either in coin or in bonds; in short, to adapt them to use as currency. Nor do we question the lawfulness of contracts stipulating for payment in such notes, or the propriety of enforcing the performance of such contracts by holding the tender of such currency, according to their terms, sufficient. The question is, Has congress power to make the notes of the government, redeemable or irredeemable, a legal tender without contract and against the will of the person to whom they are tendered? In considering this question we assume as a fundamental proposition that it is the duty of every government to establish a standard of value. The necessity of such a standard is indeed universally acknowledged. Without it the transactions of society would become impossible. All measures, whether of extent, or weight, or value, must have certain proportions of that which they are intended to measure. The unit of extent must have certain definite length, the unit of weight certain definite gravity, and the unit of value certain definite value. These units, multiplied or subdivided, supply the standards by which all measures are properly made. The selection, therefore, by the common consent of all nations, of gold and silver as the standard of value was natural, or, more correctly speaking, inevitable. For whatever definitions of value political economists may have given, they all agree that gold and silver have more value in proportion to weight and size, and are less subject to loss by wear or abrasion than any other material capable of easy subdivision and impression, and that their value changes less and by slower degrees, through considerable periods of time, than that of any other substance which could be used for the same purpose. And these are qualities indispensable to the convenient use of the standard required. In the construction of the constitutional grant of power to establish a standard of value, _every presumption_ is, therefore, against that which would authorize the adoption of any other materials than those sanctioned by universal consent. But the terms of the only express grant in the constitution of power to establish such a standard leave little room for presumptions. The power conferred is the power to coin money, and these words must be understood as they were used at the time the constitution was adopted. And we have been referred to no authority which at that time defined coining otherwise than as minting or stamping metals for money; or money otherwise than as metal coined for the purposes of commerce. These are the words of Johnson, whose great dictionary contains no reference to money of paper. It is true that notes issued by banks, both in England and America, were then in circulation, and were used in exchanges, and in common speech called money, and that bills of credit, issued both by congress and by the states, had been recently in circulation under the same general name; but these notes and bills were never regarded as real money, but were always treated as its representatives only, and were described as currency. The legal tender notes themselves do not purport to be anything else than promises to pay money. They have been held to be securities, and therefore exempt from state taxation; and the idea that it was ever designed to make such notes a standard of value by the framers of the constitution is wholly new. It seems to us impossible that it could have been entertained. Its assertion seems to us to ascribe folly to the framers of our fundamental law, and to contradict the most conspicuous facts in our public history. The power to coin money was a power to determine the fineness, weight, and denominations of the metallic pieces by which values were to be measured; and we do not perceive how this meaning can be extended without doing violence to the very words of the constitution by imposing on them a sense they were never intended to bear. This construction is supported by contemporaneous and all subsequent action of the legislature; by all the recorded utterances of statesmen and jurists, and the unbroken tenor of judicial opinion until a very recent period, when the excitement of the civil war led to the adoption, by many, of different views. The sense of the convention which framed the constitution is clear, from the account given by Mr. Madison of what took place when the power to emit bills of credit was stricken from the reported draft. He says distinctly that he acquiesced in the motion to strike out, because the government would not be disabled thereby from the use of public notes, so far as they would be safe and proper, while it cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender either for public or private debts. The whole discussion upon bills of credit proves, beyond all possible question, that the convention regarded the power to make notes a legal tender as absolutely excluded from the constitution. The papers of the Federalist, widely circulated, in favor of the ratification of the constitution, discuss briefly the power to coin money, as a power to fabricate metallic money, without a hint that any power to fabricate money of any other description was given to congress; and the views which it promulgated may be fairly regarded as the views of those who voted for adoption. Acting upon the same views, congress took measures for the establishment of a mint, exercising thereby the power to coin money, and has continued to exercise the same power, in the same way, until the present day. It established the dollar as the money unit, determined the quantity and quality of gold and silver of which each coin should consist, and prescribed the denominations and forms of all coins to be issued. Until recently no one in congress ever suggested that that body possessed power to make anything else a standard of value. Statesmen who have disagreed widely on other points have agreed in the opinion that the only constitutional measures of value are metallic coins, struck as regulated by the authority of congress. Mr. Webster expressed not only his opinion but the universal and settled conviction of the country when he said: "Most unquestionably there is no legal tender, and there can be no legal tender in this country, under the authority of this government or any other, but gold and silver, either the coinage of our mints or foreign coin at rates regulated by congress. This is a constitutional principle, perfectly plain and of the very highest importance. The states are prohibited from making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, and although no such express prohibition is applied to congress, _yet as congress has no power granted to it in this respect but to coin money and regulate the value of foreign coin_, it clearly has no power to substitute paper or anything else for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts." And this court, in _Gwin_ v. _Breedlove_, said: "_By the constitution of the United States gold and silver coin_ made current by law _can only be tendered_ in payment of debts." And in _The United States_ v. _Marigold_, this court, speaking of the trust and duty of maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of uniform value throughout the Union, said: "The power of coining money and regulating its value _was delegated to congress by the constitution for the very purpose_, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, _of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value_." The present majority of the court say that legal tender notes "have become the universal measure of values," and they hold that the legislation of congress, substituting such measures for coin by making the notes a legal tender in payment, is warranted by the constitution. But if the plain sense of words, if the contemporaneous exposition of parties, if common consent in understanding, if the opinions of courts avail anything in determine the meaning of the constitution, it seems impossible to doubt that the power to coin money is a power to establish a uniform standard of value, and that no other power to establish such a standard, by making notes a legal tender, is conferred upon congress by the constitution. My brothers Clifford and Field concur in these views, but in consideration of the importance of the principles involved will deliver their separate opinions. My brother Nelson also dissents. CHAPTER III. DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE CLIFFORD. Money, in the constitutional sense, means coins of gold and silver fabricated and stamped by authority of law as a measure of value, pursuant to the power vested in congress by the constitution. Coins of copper may also be minted for small fractional circulation, as authorized by law and the usage of the government for eighty years, but it is not necessary to discuss that topic at large in this investigation. Even the authority of congress upon the general subject does not extend beyond the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Express power is also conferred upon congress to fix the standard of weights and measures, and of course that standard, as applied to future transactions, may be varied or changed to promote the public interest, but the grant of power in respect to the standard of value is expressed in more guarded language, and the grant is much more restricted. Power to fix the standard of weights and measures is evidently a power of comparatively wide discretion, but the power to regulate the value of the money authorized by the constitution to be coined is a definite and precise grant of power, admitting of very little discretion in its exercise, and is not equivalent, except to a very limited extent, to the power to fix the standard of weights and measures, as the money authorized by that clause of the constitution is coined money, and as a necessary consequence must be money of actual value, fabricated from the precious metals generally used for that purpose at the period when the constitution was framed. Coined money, such as is authorized by that clause of the instrument, consists only of the coins of the United States fabricated and stamped by authority of law, and is the same money as that described in the next clause of the same section as the current coins of the United States, and is the same money also as "the gold and silver coins" described in the tenth section of the same article, which prohibits the states from coining money, emitting bills of credit, or making "anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." Intrinsic value exists in gold and silver, as well before as after it is fabricated and stamped as coin, which shows conclusively that the principal discretion vested in congress under that clause of the constitution consists in the power to determine the denomination, fineness, or value and description of the coins to be struck, and the relative proportion of gold or silver, whether standard or pure, and the proportion of alloy to be used in minting the coins, and to prescribe the mode in which the intended object of the grant shall be accomplished and carried into practical effect. Discretion, to some extent, in prescribing the value of the coins minted, is beyond doubt vested in congress, but the plain intent of the constitution is that congress, in determining that matter, shall be governed chiefly by the weight and intrinsic value of the coins, as it is clear that if the stamped value of the same should much exceed the real value of gold and silver not coined, the minted coins would immediately cease to be either current coins or a standard of value as contemplated by the constitution. Commercial transactions imperiously require a standard of value, and the commercial world, at a very early period in civilization, adopted gold and silver as the true standard for that purpose, and the standard originally adopted has ever since continued to be so regarded by universal consent to the present time. Paper emissions have, at one time or another, been authorized and employed as currency by most commercial nations, and by no government, past or present, more extensively than by the United States, and yet it is safe to affirm that all experience in its use as a circulating medium has demonstrated the proposition that it cannot by any legislation, however stringent, be made a standard of value or the just equivalent of gold and silver. Attempts of the kind have always failed, and no body of men, whether in public or private stations, ever had more instructive teachings of the truth of that remark than the patriotic men who framed the federal constitution, as they had seen the power to emit bills of credit freely exercised during the war of the Revolution, not only by the confederation, but also by the states, and knew from bitter experience its calamitous effects and the utter worthlessness of such a circulating medium as a standard of value. Such men so instructed could not have done otherwise than they did do, which was to provide an irrepealable standard of value, to be coined from gold and silver, leaving as little upon the subject to the discretion of congress as was consistent with a wise forecast and an invincible determination that the essential principles of the constitution should be perpetual as the means to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. Associated as the grant to coin money and regulate the value thereof is with the grant to fix the standard of weights and measures, the conclusion, when that fact is properly weighed in connection with the words of the grant, is irresistible that the purpose of the framers of the constitution was to provide a permanent standard of value which should, at all times and under all circumstances, consist of coin, fabricated and stamped, from gold and silver, by authority of law, and that they intended at the same time to withhold from congress, as well as from the States, the power to substitute any other money as a standard of value in matters of finance, business, trade, or commerce. Support to that view may also be drawn from the last words of the clause giving congress the unrestricted power to regulate the value of foreign coin, as it would be difficult if not impossible to give full effect to the standard of value prescribed by the constitution, in times of fluctuation, if the circulating medium could be supplied by foreign coins not subject to any congressional regulation as to their value. Exclusive power to regulate the alloy and value of the coin struck by their own authority, or by the authority of the states, was vested in congress under the confederation, but the congress was prohibited from enacting any regulation as to the value of the coins unless nine states assented to the proposed regulation. Subject to the power of congress to pass such regulations it is unquestionably true that the states, under the confederation as well as the United States, possessed the power to coin money, but the constitution, when it was adopted, denied to the states all authority upon the subject, and also ordained that they should not make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Beyond all doubt the framers of the constitution intended that the money unit of the United States, for measuring values, should be one dollar, as the word dollar in the plural form is employed in the body of the constitution, and also in the seventh amendment, recommended by congress at its first session after the constitution was adopted. Two years before that, to-wit, July 6, 1785, the congress of the confederation enacted that the money unit of the United States should "be one dollar," and one year later, to-wit, August 8, 1786, they established the standard for gold and silver, and also provided that the money of account of the United States should correspond with the coins established by law. On the 4th of March, 1789, congress first assembled under the constitution, and proceeded without unnecessary delay to enact such laws as were necessary to put the government in operation which the constitution had ordained and established. Ordinances had been passed during the confederation to organize the executive departments, and for the establishment of a mint, but the new constitution did not perpetuate any of those laws, and yet congress continued to legislate for a period of three years before any new law was passed prescribing the money unit or the money of account, either for "the public offices" or for the courts. Throughout that period it must have been understood that those matters were impliedly regulated by the constitution, as tariffs were enacted, tonnage duties imposed, laws passed for the collection of duties, the several executive departments created, and the judiciary of the United States organized and empowered to exercise full jurisdiction under the constitution. Duties of tonnage and import duties were required, by the act of the 31st of July, 1789, to be paid "in gold and silver coin," and congress, in the same act, adopted comprehensive regulations as to the value of foreign coin, but no provision was made for coining money or for a standard of value, except so far as that subject is involved in the regulation as to the value of foreign coin, or for a money unit, nor was any regulation prescribed as to the money of account. Revenue for the support of the government, under those regulations, was to be derived solely from duties of tonnage and import duties, and the express provision was that those duties should be collected in gold and silver coin. Legislation under the constitution had proceeded thus far before the treasury department was created. Treasury regulations for the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the public moneys became indispensable, and congress, on the 2d September, 1789, passed the act to establish the treasury department, which has ever since remained in force. By that act, the secretary of the treasury is declared to be the head of the department, and it is made his duty, among other things, to digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the public finances and for the support of the public credit; to prepare and report estimates of the public revenue and of the public expenditures; to superintend the collection of the revenue; to prescribe forms of keeping and stating accounts and for making returns; to grant all warrants for moneys to be issued from the treasury, in pursuance of appropriations by law, and to perform all such services relative to the finances as he shall be directed to perform. Moneys collected from duties of tonnage and from import duties constituted at that period the entire resources of the national treasury, and the antecedent act of congress, providing for the collection of those duties, imperatively required that all such duties should be paid in gold and silver coin, from which it follows that the moneys mentioned in the act creating the treasury department were moneys of gold and silver coin which were collected as public revenue from the duties of tonnage and import duties imposed by the before-mentioned prior acts of congress. Appropriations made by congress were understood as appropriations of moneys in the treasury, and all warrants issued by the secretary of the treasury were understood to be warrants for the payment of gold and silver coin. Forms for keeping and stating accounts, and for making returns, and for warrants for moneys to be issued from the treasury were prescribed, and in all those forms the secretary of the treasury adopted the money unit recognized in the constitution, and which had been ordained four years before by the congress of the confederation. Argument to show that the national treasury was organized on the basis that the gold and silver coins of the United States were to be the standard of value is unnecessary, as it is a historical fact which no man or body of men can ever successfully contradict. Public attention had been directed to the necessity of establishing a mint for the coinage of gold and silver, several years before the convention met to frame the constitution, and a committee was appointed by the congress of the confederation to consider and report upon the subject. They reported on the 21st February, 1782, more than a year before the treaty of peace, in favor of creating such an establishment, and on the 16th of October, 1786, the congress adopted an ordinance providing that a mint should be established for the coinage of gold, silver, and copper, agreeable to the resolves of congress previously mentioned, which prescribed the standard of gold and silver, and recognized the money unit established by the resolves passed in the preceding year. Congressional legislation organizing the new government had now progressed to the point where it became necessary to re-examine that subject and to make provision for the exercise of the power to coin money, as authorized by the constitution. Pursuant to that power, congress, on April 2d, 1792, passed the act establishing a mint for the purpose of a national coinage, and made provisions, among other things, that coins of gold and silver, of certain fineness and weight, and of certain denominations, value, and descriptions, should be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint. Specific provision is there made for coining gold and silver coins, as follows: First, gold coins, to-wit: Eagles of the value of ten dollars or units; half-eagles of the value of five dollars; quarter-eagles of the value of two and a half dollars, the act specifying in each case the number of grains and fractions of a grain the coin shall contain, whether fabricated from pure or standard gold. Second, silver coins, to-wit; "DOLLARS OR UNITS," each to contain 371 grains and 4/16ths parts of a grain of pure silver, or 416 grains of standard silver. Like provision is also made for the coinage of half-dollars, quarter-dollars, dimes, and half-dimes, and also for the coinage of certain copper coins, but it is not necessary to enter much into those details in this case. Provision, it must be conceded, is not there made, in express terms, that the money unit of the United States shall be one dollar, as in the ordinance passed during the confederation, but the act under consideration assumes throughout that the coin called dollar is the coin employed for that purpose, as is obvious from the fact that the words dollars and units are treated as synonymous, and that all the gold coins previously described in the same section are measured by that word as the acknowledged money unit of the constitution. Very strong doubts are entertained whether an act of congress is absolutely necessary to constitute the gold and silver coins of the United States, fabricated and stamped as such by the proper executive officers of the mint, a legal tender in payment of debts. Constituted, as such coins are, by the constitution, the standard of value, the better opinion would seem to be that they become legal tender for that purpose, if minted of the required weight and fineness, as soon as they are coined and put in circulation by lawful authority, but it is unnecessary to decide that question in this case, as the congress, by the 16th section of the act establishing a mint, provided that all the gold and silver coins which shall have been struck at, and issued from, the said mint shall be a lawful tender in all payments whatsoever--those of full weight "according to the respective values herein declared, and those of less than full weight at values proportioned to their respective weights." Such a regulation is at all events highly expedient, as all experience shows that even gold and silver coins are liable to be diminished in weight by wear and abrasion, even if it is not absolutely necessary in order to constitute the coins, if of full weight, a legal tender. Enough has already been remarked to show that the money unit of the United States is the coined dollar, described in the act establishing the mint, but if more be wanted it will be found in the twentieth section of that act, which provides that the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dimes or tenths, &c., and that all accounts in the public offices, and all proceedings in the federal courts, shall be kept and had in conformity to that regulation. Completed, as the circle of measures adopted by congress were, to put the new government into successful operation, by the passage of that act, it will be instructive to take a brief review of the important events which occurred within the period of ten years next preceding its passage, or of the ten years next following the time when that measure was first proposed in the congress of the confederation. Two reasons suggest the 21st of February, 1782, as the time to commence the review, in addition to the fact that it was on that day that the committee of congress made their report approving of the project to establish a national mint. They are as follows: (1) Because that date just precedes the close of the war of the Revolution; and (2) because the date at the same time extends back to a period when all America had come to the conclusion that all the paper currency in circulation was utterly worthless, and that nothing was fit for a standard of value but gold and silver coin fabricated and stamped by the national authority. Discussion upon the subject was continued, and the ordinance was passed, but the measure was not put in operation, as the convention met the next year, and the constitution was framed, adopted, and ratified, the president and the members of congress were elected, laws were passed, the judicial system was organized, the executive departments were created, the revenue system established, and provision was made to execute the power vested in congress to coin money and provide a standard of value, as ordained by the constitution. Perfect consistency characterizes the measures of that entire period in respect to the matter in question, and it would be strange if it had been otherwise, as the whole series of measures were to a very large extent the doings of the same class of men, whether the remark is applied to the old congress, or the convention which framed the constitution, or to the first and second sessions of the new congress, which passed the laws referred to and put the new system of government under the constitution into full operation. Wise and complete as those laws were, still some difficulties arose, as the several states had not adopted the money unit of the United States, nor the money of account prescribed by the twentieth section of the act establishing the mint. Such embarrassments, however, were chiefly felt in the federal courts, and they were not of long continuance, as the several states, one after another, in pretty rapid succession, adopted the new system established by congress both as to the money unit and the money of account. Virginia, December 19th, 1792, re-enacted that section in the act of congress without any material alteration, and New Hampshire, on the 20th of February, 1794, passed a similar law. Massachusetts adopted the same provision the next year, and so did Rhode Island and South Carolina. Georgia concurred on the 22d of February, 1796, and New York on the 27th of January, 1797, and all the other states adopted the same regulation in the course of a few years. State concurrence was essential in those particulars to the proper working of the new system, and it was cheerfully accorded by the state legislatures without unnecessary delay. Congress established as the money unit the coin mentioned in the constitution, and the one which had been adopted as such seven years before in the resolve passed by the congress of the confederation. Dollars, and decimals of dollars, were adopted as the money of account by universal consent, as may be inferred from the unanimity exhibited by the states in following the example of congress. Nothing remained for congress to do to perfect the new system but to execute the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, as it is clear that the constitution makes no provision for a standard of value unless the power to establish it is conferred by that grant. Power to fix the standard of weights and measures is vested in congress by the constitution in plain and unambiguous terms, and it was never doubted, certainly not until within a recent period, that the power conferred to coin money or to fabricate and stamp coins from gold and silver, which in the constitutional sense is the same thing, together with the power to determine the fineness, weight, and denominations of the moneys coined, was intended to accomplish the same purpose as to values. Indubitably it was so understood by congress in prescribing the various regulations contained in the act establishing the national mint, and it continued to be so understood by all branches of the government--executive, legislative, and judicial--and by the whole people of the United States, for the period of seventy years from the passage of that act. New regulations became necessary, and were passed in the meantime, increasing slightly the proportion of alloy used in fabricating the gold coins, but if those enactments are carefully examined, it will be found that no one of them contains anything inconsistent in principle with the views here expressed. Gold, at the time the act establishing the mint became a law, was valued 15 to 1 as compared with silver, but the disparity in value gradually increased, and to such an extent that the gold coins began to disappear from circulation, and, to remedy that evil, congress found it necessary to augment the _relative_ proportion of alloy by diminishing the required amount of gold, whether pure or standard. Eagles coined under that act were required to contain each two hundred and thirty-two grains of pure gold, or two hundred and fifty-eight grains of standard. Three years later congress enacted that the standard for both gold and silver coins should thereafter be such that, of one thousand parts by weight, nine hundred should be of pure metal and one hundred of alloy, by which the gross weight of the dollar was reduced to four hundred and twelve and a half grains, but the fineness of the coins was correspondingly increased, so that the money unit remained of the same intrinsic value as under the original act. Apply that rule to the eagle, and it will be seen that its gross weight would be increased, as it was in fact by that act, but it continued to contain, as under the preceding act, two hundred and thirty grains of pure gold and no more, showing conclusively that no change was made in the value of the coins. Double eagles and gold dollars were authorized to be "struck and coined" at the mint, by the act of March 3, 1849, but the standard established for other gold coins was not changed, and the provision was that the new coins should also be legal tender for their coined value. Fractional silver coins were somewhat reduced in value by the act of February 21st, 1853, but the same act provided to the effect that the silver coins issued in conformity thereto should not be a legal tender for any sum exceeding five dollars, showing that the purpose of the enactment was to prevent the fractional coins, so essential for daily use, from being hoarded or otherwise withdrawn from circulation. Suppose it be conceded, however, that the effect of that act was slightly to debase the fractional silver coins struck and coined under it, still it is quite clear that the amount was too inconsiderable to furnish any solid argument against the proposition that the standard of value in the United States was fixed by the constitution, and that such was the understanding, both of the government and of the people of the United States, for a period of more than seventy years from the time the constitution was adopted and put in successful operation under the laws of congress. Throughout that period the value of the money unit was never diminished, and it remains to-day, in respect to value, what it was when it was defined in the act establishing the mint, and it is safe to affirm that no one of the changes made in the other coins, except perhaps the fractional silver coins, ever extended one whit beyond the appropriate limit of constitutional regulation. Treasury notes, called United States notes, were authorized to be issued by the act of February 25th, 1862, to the amount of $150,000,000, on the credit of the United States, but they were not to bear interest, and were to be made payable to bearer at the treasury. They were to be issued by the secretary of the treasury, and the further provision was that the notes so issued should be lawful money and legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, within the United States, except duties on imports and interest upon bonds and notes of the United States, which the act provides "shall be paid in coin." Subsequent acts passed for a similar purpose also except "certificates of indebtedness and of deposit," but it will not be necessary to refer specially to the other acts, as the history of that legislation is fully given in the prior decision of this court upon the same subject. Strictly examined it is doubtful whether either of the cases before the court present any such questions as those which have been discussed in the opinion of the majority of the court just read; but suppose they do, which is not admitted, it then becomes necessary to inquire in the first place whether those questions are not closed by the recorded decisions of this court. Two questions are examined in the opinion of the majority of the court: (1.) Whether the legal tender acts are constitutional as to contracts made before the acts were passed. (2.) Whether they are valid if applied to contracts made since their passage. Assume that the views here expressed are correct, and it matters not whether the contract was made before or after the act of congress was passed, as it necessarily follows that congress cannot, under any circumstances, make paper promises, of any kind, a legal tender in payment of debts. Prior to the decision just pronounced it is conceded that the second question presented in the record was never determined by this court, except as it is involved in the first question, but it is admitted by the majority of the court that the first question, that is the question whether the acts under consideration are constitutional as to contracts made before their passage, was fully presented in the case of _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, and that the court decided that an act of congress making mere paper promises to pay dollars a legal tender in payment of debts previously contracted is unconstitutional and void. Admitted or not, it is as clear as anything in legal decision can be that the judgment of the court in that case controls the first question presented in the cases before the court, unless it be held that the judgment in that case was given for the wrong party and that the opinion given by the chief justice ought to be overruled. Attempt is made to show that the second question is an open one, but the two, in my judgment, involve the same considerations, as congress possesses no other power upon the subject than that which is derived from the grant to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. By that remark it is not meant to deny the proposition that congress in executing the express grants may not pass all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying the same into execution, as provided in another clause of the same section of the constitution. Much consideration of that topic is not required, as the discussion was pretty nearly exhausted by the chief justice in the case of _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, which arose under the same act and in which he gave the opinion. In that case the contract bore date prior to the passage of the law, and he showed conclusively that it could never be necessary and proper, within the meaning of the constitution, that congress, in executing any of the express powers, should pass laws to compel a creditor to accept paper promises as fulfilling a contract for the payment of money expressed in dollars. Obviously the decision was confined to the case before the court, but I am of the opinion that the same rule must be applied whether the contract was made before or after the passage of the law, as the contract for the payment of money, expressed in dollars, is a contract to make the payment in such money as the constitution recognizes and establishes as a standard of value. Money values can no more be measured without a standard of value than distances without a standard of extent, or quantities without a standard of weights or measures, and it is as necessary that there should be a money unit as that there should be a unit of extent, or of weight, or quantity. Credit currency, whether issued by the states or the United States, or by private corporations or individuals, is not recognized by the constitution as the standard of value, nor can it be made such by any law which congress or the states can pass, as the laws of trade are stronger than any legislative enactment. Commerce requires a standard of value, and all experience warrants the prediction that commerce will have it, whether the United States agree or disagree, as the laws of commerce in that respect are stronger than the laws of any single nation of the commercial world. Values cannot be measured without a standard any more than time or duration, or length, surface, or solidity, or weight, gravity, or quantity. Something in every such case must be adopted as a unit which bears a known relation to that which is to be measured, as the dollar for values, the hour for time or duration, the foot of twelve inches for length, the yard for cloth measure, the square foot or yard for surface, the cubic foot for solidity, the gallon for liquids, and the pound for weights; the pound avoirdupois being used in most commercial transactions and the pound troy "for weighing gold and silver and precious stones, except diamonds." Unrestricted power "to fix the standard of weights and measures" is vested in congress, but until recently congress had not enacted any general regulations in execution of that power. Regulations upon the subject existed in the states at the adoption of the constitution, the same as those which prevailed at that time in the parent country, and Judge Story says that the understanding was that those regulations remained in full force, and that the states, until congress should legislate, possessed the power to fix their own weights and measures. Power to coin money and regulate the value of domestic and foreign coin was vested in the national government to produce uniformity of value and to prevent the embarrassments of a perpetually fluctuating and variable currency. Money, says the same commentator, is the universal medium _or common standard_ by a comparison with which the value of all merchandise may be ascertained; and he also speaks of it as "a sign which represents the respective values of all other commodities." Such a power, that is the power to coin money, he adds, is one of the ordinary prerogatives of sovereignty, and is almost universally exercised in order to preserve a proper circulation of good coin, of a known value, in the home market. Interests of such magnitude and pervading importance as those involved in providing for a uniform standard of value throughout the Union were manifestly entitled to the protection of the national authority, and in view of the evils experienced for the want of such a standard during the war of the revolution, when the country was inundated with floods of depreciated paper, the members of the convention who framed the constitution did not hesitate to confide the power to congress, not only to coin money and regulate the value thereof, but also the power to regulate the value of foreign coin, which was denied to the congress of the confederation. Influenced by these considerations and others expressed in the opinion of the chief justice, this court decided in the case referred to, that the act of congress making the notes in question "lawful money and a legal tender in payment of debts" could not be vindicated as necessary and proper means for carrying into effect the power vested in congress to coin money and regulate the value thereof, or any other express power vested in congress under the constitution. Unless that case, therefore, is overruled, it is clear, in my judgment, that both the cases before the court are controlled by that decision. Controversies determined by the supreme court are finally and conclusively settled, as the decisions are numerous that the court cannot review and reverse their own judgments. But where the parties are different, it is said the court, in a subsequent case, may overrule a former decision, and it must be admitted that the proposition, in a technical point of view, is correct. Such examples are to be found in the reported decisions of the court, but they are not numerous, and it seems clear that the number ought never to be increased, especially in a matter of so much importance, unless the error is plain and upon the clearest convictions of judicial duty. Judgment was rendered for the plaintiff in that case on the 17th of September, 1864, in the highest court of the state, and on the 23d of June in the succeeding year the defendants sued out a writ of error, and removed the cause into this court for re-examination. Under the regular call of the docket, the case was first argued at the December term, 1867, but at the suggestion of the attorney general an order was passed that it be re-argued, and the case was accordingly continued for that purpose. Able counsel appeared at the next term, and it was again elaborately argued on both sides. Four or five other cases were also on the calendar, supposed at that time to involve the same constitutional questions, and those cases were also argued, bringing to the aid of the court an unusual array of counsel of great learning and eminent abilities. Investigation and deliberation followed, authorities were examined, and oft-repeated consultations among the justices ensued, and the case was held under advisement as long as necessary to the fullest examination by all the justices of the court, before the opinion of the court was delivered. By law, the supreme court at that time consisted of the chief justice and seven associate justices, the act of congress having provided that no vacancy in the office of associate justice should be filled until the number should be reduced to six. Five of the number, including the chief justice, concurred in the opinion in that case, and the judgment of the state court was affirmed, three of the associate justices dissenting. Since that time one of the justices who concurred in that opinion of the court has resigned, and congress having increased the number of associate justices to eight, the two cases before the court have been argued, and the result is that the opinion delivered in the former case is overruled, five justices concurring in the present opinion and four dissenting. Five justices concurred in the first opinion, and five have overruled it. Persuaded that the first opinion was right, for the reasons already assigned, it is not possible that I should concur in the second, even if it were true that no other reasons of any weight could be given in support of the judgment in the first case, and that the conclusion there reached must stand or fall without any other support. Many other reasons, however, may be invoked to fortify that conclusion, equally persuasive and convincing with those to which reference has been made. All writers upon political economy agree that money is the universal standard of value, and the measure of exchange, foreign and domestic, and that the power to coin and regulate the value of money is an essential attribute of national sovereignty. Goods and chattels were directly bartered, one for another, when the division of labor was first introduced, but gold and silver were adopted to serve the purpose of exchange by the tacit concurrence of all nations at a very early period in the history of commercial transactions. Commodities of various kinds were used as money at different periods in different countries, but experience soon showed the commercial nations that gold and silver embodied the qualities desirable in money in a much greater degree than any other known commodity or substance. Daily experience shows the truth of that proposition, and supersedes the necessity of any remarks to enforce it, as all admit that a commodity to serve as a standard of value and a medium of exchange must be easily divisible into small portions; that it must admit of being kept for an indefinite period without deteriorating; that it must possess great value in small bulk, and be capable of being easily transported from place to place; that a given denomination in money should always be equal in weight and quality, or fineness, to other pieces of money of the same denomination, and that its value should be the same or as little subject to variation as possible. Such qualities, all agree, are united in a much greater degree in gold and silver than in any other known commodity, which was as well known to the members of the convention who framed the constitution as to any body of men since assembled, and intrusted to any extent with the public affairs. They not only knew that the money of the commercial world was gold and silver, but they also knew, from bitter experience, that paper promises, whether issued by the states or the United States, were utterly worthless as a standard of value for any practical purpose. Evidence of the truth of these remarks, of the most convincing character is to be found in the published proceedings of that convention. Debate upon the subject first arose when an amendment was proposed to prohibit the states from emitting bills of credit or making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, and from the character of that debate, and the vote on the amendment, it became apparent that paper money had but few, if any friends in the convention. Article seven of the draft of the constitution as reported to the convention, contained the clause, "and emit bills on the credit of the United States," appended to the grant of power vested in congress to borrow money, and it was on the motion to strike out that clause that the principal discussion in respect to paper money took place. Mr. Madison inquired if it would not be sufficient to prohibit the making such bills a tender, as that would remove the temptation to emit them with unjust views. Promissory notes, he said, in that shape, that is when not a tender, "may in some emergencies be best." Some were willing to acquiesce in the modification suggested by Mr. Madison, but Mr. Morris, who submitted the motion, objected, insisting that if the motion prevailed there would still be room left for the notes of a responsible minister, which, as he said, "would do all the good without the mischief." Decided objections were advanced by Mr. Ellsworth, who said he thought the moment a favorable one "to shut and bar the door against paper money;" and others expressed their opposition to the clause in equally decisive language, even saying that they would sooner see the whole plan rejected than retain the three words, "and emit bills." Suffice it to say, without reproducing the discussion, that the motion prevailed--nine states to two--and the clause was stricken out and no attempt was ever made to restore it. Paper money, as legal tender, had few or no advocates in the convention, and it never had more than one open advocate throughout the period the constitution was under discussion, either in the convention which framed it, or in the conventions of the states where it was ratified. Virginia voted in the affirmative on the motion to strike out that clause, Mr. Madison being satisfied that if the motion prevailed it would not have the effect to disable the government from the use of treasury notes, and being himself in favor of cutting "_off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender, either for public or private debts_." When the draft for the constitution was reported the clause prohibiting the states from making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts contained an exception, "in case congress consented," but the convention struck out the exception and made the prohibition absolute, one of the members remarking that it was a favorable moment to crush out paper money, and all or nearly all of the convention seemed to concur in the sentiment. Contemporaneous acts are certainly evidence of intention, and if so, it is difficult to see what more is needed to show that the members of that convention intended to withhold from the states, and from the United States, all power to make anything but gold and silver a standard of value, or a tender in payment of debts. Equally decisive proof to the same effect is found in the debates which subsequently occurred in the conventions of the several states, to which the constitution, as adopted, was submitted for ratification. Mr. Martin thought that the states ought not to be totally deprived of the right to emit bills of credit, but he says "that the convention was so smitten with the paper money dread that they insisted that the prohibition should be absolute." Currency is a word much more comprehensive than the word money, as it may include bank bills and even bills of exchange as well as coins of gold and silver, but the word money, as employed in the grant of power under consideration, means the coins of gold and silver, fabricated and stamped as required by law, which, by virtue of their intrinsic value, as universally acknowledged, and their official origin, become the medium of exchange and the standard by which all other values are expressed and discharged. Support to the proposition that the word money, as employed in that clause, was intended to be used in the sense here supposed is also derived from the language employed in certain numbers of the Federalist, which, as is well known, were written and published during the period the question whether the states would ratify the constitution was pending in their several conventions. Such men as the writers of those essays never could have employed such language if they had entertained the remotest idea that congress possessed the power to make paper promises a legal tender. Like support is also derived from the language of Mr. Hamilton in his celebrated report recommending the incorporation of a national bank. He first states the objection to the proposed measure, that banks tend to banish the gold and silver of the country; and secondly he gives the answer to that objection made by the advocates of the bank, that it is immaterial what serves the purpose of money, and then says that the answer is not entirely satisfactory, as the permanent increase or decrease of the precious metals in a country can hardly ever be a matter of indifference. "As the commodity taken in lieu of every other, it (coin) is a species of the most effective wealth, and as the money of the world it is of great concern to the state that it possesses a sufficiency of it to face any demands which the protection of its external interests may create." He favored the incorporation of a national bank, with power to issue bills and notes _payable on demand in gold and silver_, but he expressed himself as utterly opposed to paper emissions by the United States, characterizing them as so liable to abuse and even so certain of being abused that the government ought never to trust itself "with the use of so seducing and dangerous an element." Opposed as he was to paper emissions by the United States, under any circumstances, it is past belief that he could ever have concurred in the proposition to make such emissions a tender in payment of debts, either as a member of the convention which framed the constitution or as the head of the treasury department. Treasury notes, however, have repeatedly been authorized by congress, commencing with the act of 30th of June, 1812, but it was never supposed before the time when the several acts in question were passed that congress could make such notes a legal tender in payment of debts. Such notes, it was enacted, should be received in payment of all duties and taxes laid, and in payment for public lands sold by the Federal authority. Provision was also made in most or all of the acts that the secretary of the treasury, with the approbation of the president, might cause treasury notes to be issued, at the par value thereof, in payment of services, of supplies, or of debts for which the United States were or might be answerable by law, to such person or persons as should be _willing to accept the same_ in payment, but it never occurred to the legislators of that day that such notes could be made a legal tender in discharge of such indebtedness, or that the public creditor could be compelled to accept them in payment of his just demands. Financial embarrassments, second only in their disastrous consequences to those which preceded the adoption of the constitution, arose towards the close of the last war with Great Britain, and it is matter of history that those embarrassments were too great and pervading to be overcome by the use of treasury notes or any other paper emissions without a specie basis. Expedients of various kinds were suggested, but it never occurred either to the executive or to congress that a remedy could be found by making treasury notes, as then authorized, a legal tender, and the result was that the second bank of the United States was incorporated. Paper currency, it may be said, was authorized by that act, which is undoubtedly true; and it is also true that the bills or notes of the bank were made receivable in all payments to the United States, if the same were at the time payable on demand, but the act provided that the corporation should not refuse, under a heavy penalty, the payment in gold and silver, of any of its notes, bills, or obligations, nor of any moneys received upon deposit in the bank or in any of its offices of discount and deposit. Serious attempt is made, strange to say, to fortify the proposition that the acts in question are constitutional from the fact that congress, in providing for the use of treasury notes, and in granting the charters to the respective national banks, made the notes and bills receivable in payment of duties and taxes, but the answer to the suggestion is so obvious that it is hardly necessary to pause to suggest its refutation. Creditors may exact gold and silver or they may waive the right to require such money, and accept credit currency, or commodities, other than gold and silver, and the United States, as creditors, or in the exercise of their express power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, may, if they see fit, accept the treasury notes or bank bills in such payments as substitutes for the constitutional currency. Further discussion of the proposition is unnecessary, as it is plainly destitute of any merit whatever. Resort was also had to treasury notes in the revulsion of 1837, and during the war with Mexico, and also in the great revulsion of 1857, but the new theory that congress could make treasury notes a legal tender was not even suggested, either by the president or by any member of congress. Seventy years are included in this review, even if the computation is only carried back to the passage of the act establishing the mint, and it is clear that there is no trace of any act, executive or legislative, within that period, which affords the slightest support to the new constitutional theory that congress can by law constitute paper emissions a tender in payment of debts. Even Washington, the father of our country, refused to accept paper money in payment of debts, contracted before the war of independence, and the proof is full to the point that Hamilton, as well as Jefferson and Madison, was opposed to paper emissions by the national authority. Sufficient also is recorded in the reports of the decisions of this court to show that the court, from the organization of the judicial system to the day when the judgments in the cases before the court were announced, held opinions utterly opposed to such a construction of the constitution as would authorize congress to make paper promises a legal tender as between debtor and creditor. Throughout that period the doctrine of the court has been, and still is, unless the opinion of the court just read constitutes an exception, that the government of the United States, as ordained and established by the constitution, is a government of enumerated powers; that all the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people; that every power vested in the Federal government under the constitution is in its nature sovereign, and that congress may pass all laws necessary and proper to carry the same into execution, or, in other words, that the power being sovereign includes, by force of the term, the requisite means, fairly applicable to the attainment of the contemplated end, which are not precluded by restrictions or exceptions expressed or necessarily implied, and not contrary to the essential ends of political society. Definitions slightly different have been given by different jurists to the words "necessary and proper," employed in the clause of the constitution conferring upon congress the power to pass laws for carrying the express grants of power into execution, but no one ever pretended that a construction or definition could be sustained that the general clause would authorize the employment of such means in the execution of one express grant as would practically nullify another or render another utterly nugatory. Circumstances made it necessary that Mr. Hamilton should examine that phrase at a very early period after the constitution was adopted, and the definition he gave to it is as follows: "All the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the end of such power which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the constitution, and not contrary to the essential ends of political society." Twenty-five years later the question was examined by the supreme court and authoritatively settled, the chief justice giving the opinion. His words were: "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, and which are not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." Substantially the same definition was adopted by the present chief justice in the former case, in which he gave the opinion of the court, and there is nothing contained in the Federal reports giving the slightest sanction to any broader definition of those words. Take the definition given by Mr. Hamilton, which, perhaps, is the broadest, if there is any difference, and still it is obvious that it would give no countenance whatever to the theory that congress, in passing a law to execute one express grant of the constitution, could authorize means which would nullify another express grant, or render it nugatory for the attainment of the end which the framers of the constitution intended it should accomplish. Authority to coin money was vested in congress to provide a permanent national standard of value, everywhere the same, and subject to no variation except what congress shall make under the power to regulate the value thereof, and it is not possible to affirm, with any hope that the utterance will avail in the argument, that the power to coin money is not an express power, and if those premises are conceded it cannot be shown that congress can so expand any other express power by implication as to nullify or defeat the great purposes which the power to coin money and establish a standard of value was intended to accomplish. Government notes, it is conceded, may be issued as a means of borrowing money, because the act of issuing the notes may be, and often is, a requisite means to execute the granted power, and being fairly applicable to the attainment of the end, the notes, as means, may be employed, as they are not precluded by any restrictions or exceptions, and are not repugnant to any other express grant contained in the constitution. Light-houses, buoys, and beacons may be erected under the power to regulate commerce, but congress cannot authorize an officer of the government to take private property for such a purpose without just compensation, as the exercise of such a power would be repugnant to the fifth amendment. Power to lay and collect taxes is conferred upon congress, but the congress cannot tax the salaries of the state judges, as the exercise of such a power is incompatible with the admitted power of the states to create courts, appoint judges, and provide for their compensation. Congress may also impose duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare, but the congress cannot lay any tax or duty on articles exported from any state, nor can congress give any preference by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another, as the exercise of any such power is prohibited by the constitution. Exclusive power is vested in congress to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. Appropriations to execute those powers may be made by congress, but no appropriations of money to that use can be made for a longer term than two years, as an appropriation for a longer term is expressly prohibited by the same clause which confers the power to raise and support armies. By virtue of those grants of power congress may erect forts and magazines, may construct navy-yards and dock-yards, manufacture arms and munitions of war, and may establish depots and other needful buildings for their preservation, but the congress cannot take private property for that purpose without making compensation to the owner, as the constitution provides that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. Legislative power under the constitution can never be rightfully extended to the exercise of a power not granted nor to that which is prohibited, and it makes no difference whether the prohibition is express or implied, as an implied prohibition, when once ascertained, is as effectual to negative the right to legislate as one that is expressed; the rule being that congress, in passing laws to carry the express powers granted into execution, cannot select any means as requisite for that purpose or as fairly applicable to the attainment of the end, which are precluded by restrictions or exceptions contained in the constitution, or which are contrary to the essential ends of political society. Concede these premises, and it follows that the acts of congress in question cannot be regarded as valid unless it can be held that the power to make paper emissions a legal tender in payment of debts can properly be implied from the power to coin money, and that such emissions, when enforced by such a provision, become the legal standard of value under the constitution. Extended discussion of the first branch of the proposition would seem to be unnecessary, as the dissenting justices in the former case abandoned that point and frankly stated in the dissenting opinion delivered that they were not able to see in those clauses, "standing alone, a sufficient warrant for the exercise of this power." Through their organ on the occasion they referred to the power to declare war, to suppress insurrection, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to borrow money, to pay the debts of the Union, and to provide for the common defence and general welfare, as grants of power conferred in separate clauses of the constitution. Reference was then made in very appropriate terms to the exigencies of the treasury during that period and the conclusion reached, though expressed interrogatively, appears to be that the provision making the notes a legal tender was a necessary and proper one as conducing "towards the purpose of borrowing money, of paying debts, of raising armies, of suppressing insurrection," or, as expressed in another part of the same opinion, the provision was regarded as "necessary and proper to enable the government to borrow money to carry on the war." Suggestions or intimations are made in one or more of the opinions given in the state courts that the power assumed by congress may be vindicated as properly implied from the power to coin money, but inasmuch as that assumption was not the ground of the dissent in the former case, and as the court is not referred to any case where a court affirming the validity of the acts of congress in question has ventured to rest their decision upon that theory, it does not appear to be necessary to protract the discussion upon that point. Such notes are not declared in the acts of congress to be a standard of value, and if they were the provision would be as powerless to impart that quality to the notes as were the processes of the alchemist to convert chalk into gold, or the contrivances of the mechanic to organize a machine and give it perpetual motion. Gold and silver were adopted as the standard of value, even before civil governments were organized, and they have always been regarded as such to the present time, and it is safe to affirm that they will continue to be such by universal consent, in spite of legislative enactments and of judicial decisions. Treasury notes, or the notes in question, called by what name they may be, never performed that office, even for a day, and it may be added that neither legislative enactments nor judicial decisions can compel the commercial world to accept paper emissions of any kind as the standard of value by which all other values are to be measured. Nothing but money will in fact perform that office, and it is clear that neither legislative enactments nor judicial decisions can perform commercial impossibilities. Commodities undoubtedly may be exchanged as matter of barter, or the seller may accept paper promises instead of money, but it is nevertheless true, as stated by Mr. Huskisson, that money is not only the _common measure_ and _common representative_ of all other commodities, but also the common and universal equivalent. Whoever buys, gives, whoever sells, receives such a quantity of pure gold or silver as is equivalent to the article bought or sold; or if he gives or receives paper instead of money, he gives and receives that which is valuable only as it stipulates the payment of a given quantity of gold or silver. "Most unquestionably," said Mr. Webster, "there is no legal tender, and there can be no legal tender, in this country, under the authority of this government, or any other, but gold and silver. * * This is a constitutional principle, perfectly plain and of the very highest importance." He admitted that no such express prohibition was contained in the constitution, and then proceeded to say: "As Congress has no power granted to it in this respect but to coin money and to regulate the value of foreign coins, _it clearly has no power to substitute paper_ or anything else for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts," adding that "Congress has exercised the power fully in both its branches. It has coined money and still coins it, it has regulated the value of foreign coins and still regulates their value. The legal tender, therefore, THE CONSTITUTIONAL STANDARD OF VALUE, IS ESTABLISHED AND CANNOT BE OVERTHROWN." Beyond peradventure he was of the opinion that gold and silver, at rates fixed by congress, constituted the legal standard of value, and that neither congress nor the states had authority to establish any other standard in its place. Views equally decisive have been expressed by this court in a case where the remarks were pertinent to the question presented for decision. Certain questions were certified here which arose in the circuit court in the trial of an indictment in which the defendant was charged with having brought into the United States from a foreign place, with intent to pass, utter, publish, and sell certain false, forged, and counterfeit coins, made, forged, and counterfeited in the resemblance and similitude of the coins struck at the mint. Doubts were raised at the trial whether congress had the power to pass the law on which the indictment was founded. Objection was made that the acts charged were only a fraud in traffic, and, as such, were punishable, if at all, under the state law. Responsive to that suggestion the court say that the provisions of the section "appertain rather to the execution of an important trust invested by the constitution, and to the obligation to fulfil that trust on the part of the government, namely, the trust and the duty of creating and maintaining _a uniform and pure metallic standard of value throughout the Union_; that the power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to congress by the constitution for the very purpose of _creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value_, and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to the different views of policy which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money being thus given to congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protecting the creature and object of that power." Appropriate suggestions follow as to the right of the government to adopt measures to exclude counterfeits and prevent the true coin from being substituted by others of no intrinsic value, and the justice delivering the opinion then proceeds to say, that congress "having emitted a circulating medium, _a standard of value indispensable for the purposes of the community_ and for the action of the government itself, the congress is accordingly authorized and bound in duty to prevent its debasement and expulsion and the destruction of the general confidence and convenience by the influx and substitution of a spurious coin in lieu of the constitutional currency." Equally decisive views were expressed by the court six years earlier, in the case of _Gwin_ v. _Breedlove_, in which the opinion of the court was delivered by the late Mr. Justice Catron, than whom no justice who ever sat in the court was more opposed to the expression of an opinion on a point not involved in the record. No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts. These prohibitions, said Mr. Justice Washington, associated with the powers granted to congress to coin money and regulate the value thereof and foreign coin, most obviously constitute members of the same family, being upon the same subject and governed by the same policy. This policy, said the learned justice, was to provide and fix a uniform standard of value throughout the United States, by which the commercial and other dealings between the citizens thereof, or between them and foreigners, as well as the moneyed transactions of the government, should be regulated. Language so well chosen and so explicit cannot be misunderstood, and the views expressed by Mr. Justice Johnson in the same case are even more decisive. He said the prohibition in the constitution to make anything but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts is _express and universal_. The framers of the constitution regarded it as an evil to be repelled without modification, and that they have therefore left nothing to be inferred or deduced from construction on the subject. Recorded as those opinions have been for forty-five years, and never questioned, they are certainly entitled to much weight, especially as the principles which are there laid down were subsequently affirmed in two cases by the unanimous opinion of this court. Strong support to the view here taken is also derived from the case of _Craig_ v. _Missouri_, last cited, in which the opinion was given by the chief justice. Loan certificates issued by the state were the consideration of the note in suit in that case, and the defence was that the certificates were bills of credit, and that the consideration of the note was illegal. Responsive to that defence the plaintiff insisted that the certificates were not bills of credit, because they had not been made a legal tender, to which the court replied, that the emission of bills of credit and the enactment of tender laws were distinct operations, independent of each other; that both were forbidden by the constitution; that the evils of paper money did not result solely from the quality of its being made a tender in payment of debts; that that quality might be the _most pernicious_ one, but that it was not an essential quality of bills of credit nor the only mischief resulting from such emissions. Remarks of the chief justice in the case of _Sturges_ v. _Crowninshield_ may also be referred to as even more explicit and decisive to the same conclusion than anything embodied in the other cases. He first describes, in vivid colors, the general distress which followed the war in which our independence was established. Paper money, he said, was issued, worthless lands and other property of no use to the creditor were made a tender in payment of debts, and the time of payment stipulated in the contract was extended by law. Mischief to such an extent was done, and so much more was apprehended, that general distrust prevailed, and all confidence between man and man was destroyed. Special reference was made to those grievances by the chief justice, because it was insisted that the prohibition to pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts ought to be confined by the court to matters of that description, but the court was of a different opinion, and held that the convention intended to establish a great principle, that contracts should be inviolable, that the provision was intended "to prohibit the use of any means by which the same mischief might be produced." He admitted that that provision was not intended to prevent the issue of paper money, as that evil was remedied and the practice prohibited by the clause forbidding the states to "emit bills of credit," inserted in the constitution expressly for that purpose, and he also admitted that the prohibition to emit bills of credit was not intended to restrain the states from enabling debtors to discharge their debts by the tender of property of no real value to the creditor, "because for that subject also particular provision is made" in the constitution; but he added, "NOTHING BUT GOLD AND SILVER COIN CAN BE MADE A TENDER IN PAYMENT OF DEBTS." Utterances of the kind are found throughout the reported decisions of this court, but there is not a sentence or word to be found within those volumes, from the organization of the court to the passage of the acts of congress in question, to support the opposite theory. Power, as before remarked, was vested in the congress under the confederation to borrow money and emit bills of credit, and history shows that the power to emit such bills had been exercised, before the convention which framed the constitution assembled, to an amount exceeding $350,000,000. Still the draft of the constitution, as reported, contained the words, "and to emit bills," appended to the clause authorizing congress to borrow money. When that clause was reached, says Mr. Martin, a motion was made to strike out the words, "to emit _bills of credit_;" and his account of what followed affords the most persuasive and convincing evidence that the convention, and nearly every member of it, intended to put an end to the exercise of such a power. Against the motion, he says, we urged that it would be improper to deprive the congress of that power; that it would be a novelty unprecedented to establish a government which should not have such authority; that it was impossible to look forward into futurity so far as to decide that events might not happen that would render the exercise of such a power absolutely necessary, &c. But a majority of the convention, he said, being wise beyond every event, and being willing to risk any political evil rather than admit the idea of a paper emission _in any possible case_, refused to trust the authority to a government to which they were lavishing the most unlimited powers of taxation, and to the mercy of which they were willing blindly to trust the liberty and property of the citizens of every state in the Union, _and "they erased that clause from the system_." More forcible vindication of the action of the convention could hardly be made than is expressed in the language of the Federalist, and the authority of Judge Story warrants the statement that the language there employed is "justified by almost every contemporary writer," and is "attested in its truth by facts" beyond the influence of every attempt at contradiction. Having adverted to those facts, the commentator proceeds to say, "that the same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the states the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium instead of coin." Emissions of the kind were not declared by the Continental congress to be a legal tender, but congress passed a resolution declaring that they ought to be a tender in payment of all private and public debts, and that a refusal to receive the tender ought to be an extinguishment of the debt, and recommended the states to pass such laws. They even went further, and declared that whoever should refuse to receive the paper as gold or silver should be deemed an enemy to the public liberty; but our commentator says that these measures of violence and terror, so far from aiding the circulation of the paper, led on to still further depreciation. New emissions followed and new measures were adopted to give the paper credit by pledging the public faith for its redemption. Effort followed effort in that direction, until the idea of redemption at par was abandoned. Forty for one was offered, and the states were required to report the bills under that regulation, but few of the old bills were ever reported, and of course few only of the contemplated new notes were issued, and the bills in a brief period ceased to circulate, and in the course of that year quietly died in the hands of their possessors. Bills of credit were made a tender by the states, but all such, as well as those issued by the congress, were dead in the hands of their possessors before the convention assembled to frame the constitution. Intelligent and impartial belief in the theory that such men, so instructed, in framing a government for their posterity as well as for themselves, would deliberately vest such a power, either in congress or the states, as a part of their perpetual system, can never in my judgment be secured in the face of the recorded evidences to the contrary which the political and judicial history of our country affords. Such evidence, so persuasive and convincing as it is, must ultimately bring all to the conclusion that neither the congress nor the states can make anything but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Exclusive power to coin money is certainly vested in congress, but "no amount of reasoning can show that executing a promissory note and ordering it to be taken in payment of public and private debts is a species of coining money." Complete refutation of such theory is also found in the dissenting opinion in the former case, in which the justice who delivered the opinion states that he is not able to deduce the power to pass the laws in question from that clause of the constitution, and in which he admits, without qualification, that the provision making such notes a legal tender does undoubtedly impair the "obligation of contracts made before its passage." Extended argument, therefore, to show that the acts in question impair the obligation of contracts made before their passage is unnecessary, but the admission stops short of the whole truth, as it leaves the implication to be drawn that the obligation of subsequent contracts is not impaired by such legislation. Contracts for the payment of money, whether made before or after the passage of such a provision, are contracts, if the promise is expressed in dollars, to pay the specified amount in the money recognized and established by the constitution as the standard of value, and any act of congress which in theory compels the creditor to accept paper emissions, instead of the money so recognized and established, impairs the obligation of such a contract, no matter whether the contract was made before or after the act compelling the creditor to accept such payment, as the constitution in that respect is a part of the contract, and by its terms entitles the creditor to demand payment in the medium which the constitution recognizes and establishes as the standard of value. Evidently the word dollar, as employed in the constitution, means the money recognized and established in the express power vested in congress to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, the framers of the constitution having borrowed and adopted the word as used by the Continental congress in the ordinance of the 6th of July, 1785, and of the 8th August, 1786, in which it was enacted that the money unit of the United States should be "one dollar," and that the money of account should be dollars and fractions of dollars, as subsequently provided in the ordinance establishing a mint. Repeated decisions of this court, of recent date, have established the rule that contracts to pay coined dollars can only be satisfied by the payment of such money, which is precisely equivalent to a decision that such notes as those described in the acts of congress in question are not the money recognized and established by the constitution as the standard of value, as the money so recognized and established, if the contract is expressed in dollars, will satisfy any and every contract between party and party. Beyond all question the cases cited recognize "the fact accepted by all men throughout the world, that value is inherent in the precious metals; that gold and silver are in themselves values, and being such, and being in other respects best adapted to the purpose, are _the only proper measures of value_; that these values are determined by weight and purity, and that form and impress are simply certificates of value, worthy of absolute reliance only because of the known integrity and good faith of the government which" put them in circulation. When the intent of the parties as to the medium of payment is clearly expressed in a contract, the court decide, in _Butler_ v. _Horwitz_, above cited, that damages for the breach of it, whether made before or since the enactment of these laws, may be properly assessed so as to give effect to that intent, and no doubt is entertained that that rule is correct. Parties may contract to accept payment in treasury notes, or specific articles, or in bank bills, and if they do so they are bound to accept the medium for which they contracted, provided the notes, specific articles, or bills are tendered on the day the payment under the contract becomes due, and it is clear that such a tender, if seasonable and sufficient in amount, is a good defence to the action. Decided cases also carry the doctrine much further, and hold, even where the contract is payable in money and the promise is expressed in dollars, that a tender of bank bills is a good tender if the party to whom it was made placed his objections to receiving it wholly upon the ground that the amount was not sufficient. Grant all that, and still it is clear that where the contract is for the payment of a certain sum of money, and the promise is expressed in dollars, or in coined dollars, the promisee, if he sees fit, may lawfully refuse to accept payment in any other medium than gold and silver, made a legal tender by act of congress passed in pursuance of that provision of the constitution which vests in congress the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Foreign coin of gold and silver may be made a legal tender, as the power to regulate the value thereof is vested in congress as well as the power to regulate the value of the coins fabricated and stamped at the mint. Opposed, as the new theory is, by such a body of evidence, covering the whole period of our constitutional history, all tending to the opposite conclusion, and unsupported as the theory is by a single historical fact, entitled to any weight, it would seem that the advocates of the theory ought to be able to give it a fixed domicile in the constitution, or else be willing to abandon it as a theory without any solid constitutional foundation. Vagrancy in that behalf, if conceded, is certainly a very strong argument at this day, that the power does not reside in the constitution at all, as if the fact were otherwise, the period of eighty-five years which has elapsed since the constitution was adopted is surely long enough to have enabled its advocates to discover its locality and to be able to point out its home to those whose researches have been less successful and whose conscientious convictions lead them to the conclusion that, as applied to the constitution, it is a myth without a habitation or a name. Unless the power to enact such a provision can be referred to some one or more of the express grants of power to congress, as the requisite means, or as necessary and proper for carrying such express power or powers into execution, it is usually conceded that the provision must be regarded as unconstitutional, as it is not pretended that the constitution contains any express grant of power authorizing such legislation. Powers not granted cannot be exercised by congress, and certainly all must agree that no powers are granted except what are expressed or such as are fairly applicable as requisite means to attain the end of a power which is granted, or, in other words, are necessary and proper to carry those which are expressed into execution. Pressed by these irrepealable rules of construction, as applied to the constitution, those who maintain the affirmative of the question under discussion are forced to submit a specification. Courts, in one or more cases, have intimated that the power in question may be implied from the express power to coin money, but inasmuch as no decided case is referred to where the judgment of the court rests upon that ground, the suggestion will be dismissed without further consideration, as one involving a proposition too latitudinous to require refutation. Most of the cases referred to attempt to deduce the power to make such paper emissions a legal tender from the express power to borrow money, or from the power to declare war, or from the two combined, as in the dissenting opinion in the case which is now overruled. Authority, it is conceded, exists in congress to pass laws providing for the issue of treasury notes, based on the national credit, as necessary and proper means for fulfilling the end of the express power to borrow money, nor can it be doubted at this day, that such notes, when issued by the proper authority, may lawfully circulate as credit currency, and that they may, in that conventional character, be lawfully employed, if the act authorizing their issue so provides, to pay duties, taxes, and all the public exactions required to be paid into the national treasury. Public creditors may also be paid in such currency by their own consent, and they may be used in all other cases, where the payment in such notes comports with the terms of the contract. Established usage founded upon the practice of the government, often repeated, has sanctioned these rules, until it may now be said that they are not open to controversy, but the question in the cases before the court is whether the congress may declare such notes to be lawful money, make them a legal tender, and impart to such a currency the quality of being a standard of value, and compel creditors to accept the payment of their debts in such a currency as the equivalent of the money recognized and established by the constitution as the standard of value by which the value of all other commodities is to be measured. Financial measures, of various kinds, for borrowing money to supply the wants of the treasury, beyond the receipts from taxation and the sales of the public lands, have been adopted by the government since the United States became an independent nation. Subscriptions for a loan of twelve millions of dollars were, on the 4th of August, 1790, directed to be opened at the treasury, to be made payable in certificates issued for the debt according to their specie value. Measures of the kind were repeated in rapid succession for several years, and laws providing for loans in one form or another appear to have been the preferred mode of borrowing money, until the 30th of June, 1812, when the first act was passed "to authorize the issue of treasury notes". Loans had been previously authorized in repeated instances, as will be seen by the following references, to which many more might be added. Earnest opposition was made to the passage of the first act of congress authorizing the issue of treasury notes, but the measure prevailed, and it may be remarked that the vote on the occasion was ever after regarded as having settled the question as to the constitutionality of such an act. Five millions of dollars were directed to be issued by that act, and the secretary of the treasury, with the approbation of the president, was empowered to cause such portion of the notes as he might deem expedient to be issued at par "to such public creditors _or other persons as may choose to receive such notes in payment_," it never having occurred to any one that even a public creditor could be compelled to receive such notes in payment except by his own consent. Twenty other issues of such notes were authorized by congress in the course of the fifty years next after the passage of that act and before the passage of the acts making such notes a legal tender, and every one of such prior acts, being twenty in all, contains either in express words or by necessary implication, an equally decisive negation to the new constitutional theory that congress can make paper emissions either a standard of value or a legal tender. Superadded to the conceded fact that the constitution contains no express words to support such a theory, this long and unbroken usage, that treasury notes shall not be constituted a standard of value nor be made a tender in payment of debts, is entitled to great weight, and when taken in connection with the persuasive and convincing evidence, derived from the published proceedings of the convention, that the framers of the constitution never intended to grant any such power, and from the recorded sentiments of the great men whose arguments in favor of the reported draft procured its ratification, and supported as that view is by the repeated decisions of this court, and by the infallible rule of interpretation that the language of one express power shall not be so expanded as to nullify the force and effect of another express power in the same instrument, it seems to me that it ought to be deemed final and conclusive that congress cannot constitute such notes or any other paper emissions a constitutional standard of value, or make them a legal tender in payment of debts--especially as it covers the period of two foreign wars, the creation of the second national bank, and the greatest financial revulsions through which our country has ever passed. Guided by the views expressed in the dissenting opinion in the former case, it must be taken for granted that the legal tender feature in the acts in question was placed emphatically, by those who enacted the provision, upon the necessity of the measure to the further borrowing of money and maintaining the army and navy, and such appears to be the principal ground assumed in the present opinion of the court. Enough also appears in some of the interrogative sentences of the dissenting opinion to show that the learned justice who delivered it intended to place the dissent very largely upon the same ground. Nothing need be added, it would seem, to show that the power to make such notes a standard of value and a legal tender cannot be derived from the power to borrow money, without so expanding it by implication as to nullify the power to coin money and regulate its value, nor without extending the scope and operation of the power to borrow money to an object never contemplated by the framers of the constitution; and if so, then it only remains to inquire whether it may be implied from the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, or to provide and maintain a navy, or "to enable the government to borrow money to carry on the war," as the phrase is in the dissenting opinion in the former case. Money is undoubtedly the sinews of war, but the power to raise money to carry on war, under the constitution, is not an implied power, and whoever adopts that theory commits a great constitutional error. Congress may declare war and congress may appropriate all moneys in the treasury to carry on the war, or congress may coin money for that purpose, or borrow money to any amount for the same purpose, or congress may lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to replenish the treasury, or may dispose of the public lands or other property belonging to the United States, and may in fact, by the exercise of the express powers of the constitution, command the whole wealth and substance of the people to sustain the public credit and prosecute the war to a successful termination. Two foreign wars were successfully conducted by means derived from those sources, and it is not doubted that those express powers will always enable congress to maintain the national credit and defray the public expenses in every emergency which may arise, even though the national independence should be assailed by the combined forces of all the rest of the civilized world. All remarks, therefore, in the nature of entreaty or appeal, in favor of an implied power to fulfil the great purpose of national defence or to raise money to prosecute a war, are a mere waste of words, as the most powerful and comprehensive means to accomplish the purpose for which the appeal is made are found in the express powers vested in congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises without limitation as to amount, to borrow money also without limitation, and to coin money, dispose of the public lands, and to appropriate all moneys in the public treasury to that purpose. Weighed in the light of these suggestions, as the question under discussion should be, it is plain, not only that the exercise of such an implied power is unnecessary to supply the sinews of war, but that the framers of the constitution never intended to trust a matter of such great and vital importance as that of raising means for the national defence or for the prosecution of a war to any implication whatever, as they had learned from bitter experience that the great weakness of the confederation during the war for independence consisted in the want of such express powers. Influenced by those considerations the framers of the constitution not only authorized congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to any and every extent, but also to coin money and to borrow money without any limitation as to amount, showing that the argument that to deny the implied power to make paper emissions a legal tender will be to cripple the government, is a mere chimera, without any solid constitutional foundation for its support. Comprehensive, however, as the power of Federal taxation is, being without limitation as to amount, still there are some restrictions as to the manner of its exercise, and some exceptions as to the objects to which it may be applied. Bills for raising revenue must originate in the house of representatives; duties, imposts, and excises must be uniform throughout the United States; direct taxes must be apportioned according to numbers; regulations of commerce and revenue shall not give any preference to the ports of one state over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to or from one state be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another; nor shall any tax or duty be laid on articles exported from any state. Preparation for war may be made in peace, but neither the necessity for such preparation nor the actual existence of war can have the effect to abrogate or supersede those restrictions, or to empower congress to tax the articles excepted from taxation by the constitution. Implied exceptions also exist, limiting the power of federal taxation as well as that of the states, and when an exception of that character is ascertained the objects falling within it are as effectually shielded from taxation as those falling within an express exception, for the plain reason that the "government of the United States is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers," from which it necessarily follows that powers not granted cannot be exercised. Moneys may be raised by taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to carry on war as well as to pay the public debt or to provide for the common defence and general welfare, but no appropriation of money to that use can be made for a period longer than two years, nor can congress, in exercising the power to levy taxes for that purpose, or any other, abrogate or supersede those restrictions, exceptions, and limitations, as they are a part of the constitution, and as such are as obligatory in war as in peace, as any other rule would subvert, in time of war, every restriction, exception, limitation, and prohibition in the constitution, and invest congress with unlimited power, even surpassing that possessed by the British parliament. Congress may also borrow money to carry on war, without limitation, and in exercising that express power may issue treasury notes as the requisite means for carrying the express power into execution, but congress cannot constitute such notes a standard of value nor make them a legal tender, neither in time of war nor in time of peace, for at least two reasons, either of which is conclusive that the exercise of such a power is not warranted by the constitution: (1.) Because the published proceedings of the convention which adopted the constitution, and of the state conventions which ratified it, show that those who participated in those deliberations never intended to confer any such power. (2.) Because such a power, if admitted to exist, would nullify the effect and operation of the express power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin; as it would substitute a paper medium in the place of gold and silver coin, which in itself, as compared with coin, possesses no value, is not money, either in the constitutional or commercial sense, but only a promise to pay money, is never worth par, and often much less, even as domestic exchange, and is always fluctuating and never acknowledged either as a medium of exchange or a standard of value in any foreign market known to American commerce. Power to issue such notes, it is conceded, exists without limitation, but the question is whether the framers of the constitution intended that congress, in the exercise of that power or the power to borrow money, whether in peace or war, should be empowered to constitute paper emissions, of any kind, a standard of value, and make the same a legal tender in payment of debts. Mere convenience, or even a financial necessity in a single case, cannot be the test, but the question is, What did the framers of the constitution intend at the time the instrument was adopted and ratified? Constitutional powers, of the kind last mentioned--that is, the power to ordain a standard of value and to provide a circulating medium for a legal tender--are subject to no mutations of any kind. They are the same in peace and in war. What the grants of power meant when the constitution was adopted and ratified they mean still, and their meaning can never be changed except as described in the fifth article providing for amendments, as the constitution "is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men and under all circumstances." Delegated power ought never to be enlarged beyond the fair scope of its terms, and that rule is emphatically applicable in the construction of the constitution. Restrictions may at times be inconvenient, or even embarrassing, but the power to remove the difficulty by amendment is vested in the people, and if they do not exercise it, the presumption is that the inconvenience is a less evil than the mischief to be apprehended if the restriction should be removed and the power extended, or that the existing inconvenience is the least of the two evils; and it should never be forgotten that the government ordained and established by the constitution is a government "of limited and enumerated powers," and that to depart from the true import and meaning of those powers is to establish a new constitution or to do for the people what they have not chosen to do for themselves, and to usurp the functions of a legislator and desert those of an expounder of the law. Arguments drawn from impolicy or inconvenience, says Judge Story, ought here to be of no weight, as "the only sound principle is to declare _ita lex scripta est_, to follow and to obey." For these reasons I am of the opinion that the judgment in each of the cases before the court should be reversed. CHAPTER IV. DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE FIELD. Whilst I agree with the chief justice in the views expressed in his opinion in these cases, the great importance which I attach to the question of legal tender induces me to present some further considerations on the subject. Nothing has been heard from counsel in these cases, and nothing from the present majority of the court, which has created a doubt in my mind of the correctness of the judgment rendered in the case of _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, or of the conclusions expressed in the opinion of the majority of the court as then constituted. That judgment was reached only after repeated arguments were heard from able and eminent counsel, and after every point raised on either side had been the subject of extended deliberation. The questions presented in that case were also involved in several other cases, and had been elaborately argued in them. It is not extravagant to say that no case has ever been decided by this court since its organization, in which the questions presented were more fully argued or more maturely considered. It was hoped that a judgment thus reached would not be lightly disturbed. It was hoped that it had settled forever, that under a constitution ordained, among other things, "to establish justice," legislation giving to one person the right to discharge his obligations to another by nominal instead of actual fulfillment, could never be justified. I shall not comment upon the causes which have led to a reversal of that judgment. They are patent to every one. I will simply observe that the chief justice and the associate justices, who constituted the majority of the court when that judgment was rendered, still adhere to their former convictions. To them the reasons for the original decision are as cogent and convincing now as they were when that decision was pronounced; and to them its justice, as applied to past contracts, is as clear to-day as it was then. In the cases now before us the questions stated, by order of the court, for the argument of counsel, do not present with entire accuracy the questions actually argued and decided. As stated, the questions are: 1st. Is the act of congress known as the legal tender act constitutional as to contracts made before its passage? 2d. Is it valid as applicable to transactions since its passage? The act thus designated as the legal tender act is the act of congress of February 25th, 1862, authorizing the issue of United States notes, and providing for their redemption or funding, and for funding the floating debt of the United States; and the questions, as stated, would seem to draw into discussion the validity of the entire act; whereas, the only questions intended for argument, and actually argued and decided, relate--1st, to the validity of that provision of the act which declares that these notes shall be a legal tender in payment of debts, as applied to private debts and debts of the government contracted previous to the passage of the act; and 2d, to the validity of the provision as applied to similar contracts subsequently made. The case of _Parker_ v. _Davis_ involves the consideration of the first question; and the case of _Knox_ v. _Lee_ is supposed by a majority of the court to present the second question. No question was raised as to the validity of the provisions of the act authorizing the issue of the notes, and making them receivable for dues to the United States; nor do I perceive that any objection could justly be made at this day to these provisions. The issue of the notes was a proper exercise of the power to borrow money, which is granted to congress without limitation. The extent to which the power may be exercised depends, in all cases, upon the judgment of that body as to the necessities of the government. The power to borrow includes the power to give evidences of indebtedness and obligations of repayment. Instruments of this character are among the securities of the United States mentioned in the constitution. These securities are sometimes in the form of certificates of indebtedness, but they may be issued in any other form, and in such form and in such amounts as will fit them for general circulation, and to that end may be made payable to the bearer and transferable by delivery. The form of notes, varying in amounts to suit the convenience or ability of the lender, has been found by experience a convenient form, and the one best calculated to secure the readiest acceptance and the largest loan. It has been the practice of the government to use notes of this character in raising loans and obtaining supplies from an early period in its history, their receipt by third parties being in all cases optional. In June, 1812, congress passed an act which provided for the issue of treasury notes, and authorized the secretary of the treasury, with the approbation of the president, "to borrow from time to time, not under par, such sums" as the president might think expedient, "on the credit of such notes." In February, 1813, congress passed another act for the issue of treasury notes, declaring "that the amount of money borrowed or obtained by virtue of the notes" issued under its second section should be a part of the money authorized to be borrowed under a previous act of the same session. There are numerous other acts of a similar character on our statute books. More than twenty, I believe, were passed previous to the legal tender act. In all of them the issue of the notes was authorized as a means of borrowing money, or obtaining supplies, or paying the debts of the United States, and in all of them the receipt of the notes by third parties was purely voluntary. Thus, in the first act, of June, 1812, the secretary of the treasury was authorized not only to borrow on the notes, but to issue such notes as the president might think expedient "in payment of supplies or debts due by the United States to such public creditors or other persons" as might "_choose to receive such notes in payment at par_." Similar provisions are found in all the acts except where the notes are authorized simply to take up previous loans. The issue of the notes for supplies purchased or services rendered at the request of the United States is only giving their obligations for an indebtedness thus incurred; and the same power which authorizes the issue of notes for money must also authorize their issue for whatever is received as an equivalent for money. The result to the United States is the same as if the money were actually received for the notes and then paid out for the supplies or services. The notes issued under the act of congress of February 25th, 1862, differ from the treasury notes authorized by the previous acts to which I have referred in the fact that they do not bear interest and do not designate on their face a period at which they shall be paid, features which may affect their value in the market but do not change their essential character. There cannot be, therefore, as already stated, any just objection at this day to the issue of the notes, nor to their adaptation in form for general circulation. Nor can there be any objection to their being made receivable for dues to the United States. Their receivability in this respect is only the application to the demands of the government, and demands against it, of the just principle which is applied to the demands of individuals against each other, that cross-demands shall offset and satisfy each other to the extent of their respective amounts. No rights of third parties are in any respect affected by the application of the rule here, and the purchasing and borrowing power of the notes are greatly increased by making them thus receivable for the public dues. The objection to the act does not lie in these features; it lies in the provision which declares that the notes shall be "a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private," so far as that provision applies to private debts, and debts owing by the United States. In considering the validity and constitutionality of this provision, I shall in the first place confine myself to the provision in its application to private debts. Afterwards I shall have something to say of the provision in its application to debts owing by the government. In the discussions upon the subject of legal tender the advocates of the measure do not agree as to the power in the constitution to which it shall be referred; some placing it upon the power to borrow money, some on the coining power, and some on what is termed a resulting power from the general purposes of the government; and these discussions have been accompanied by statements as to the effect of the measure, and the consequences which must have followed had it been rejected, and which will now occur if its validity be not sustained, which rest upon no solid foundation, and are not calculated to aid the judgment in coming to a just conclusion. In what I have to say I shall endeavor to avoid any such general and loose statements, and shall direct myself to an inquiry into the nature of these powers to which the measure is referred, and the relation of the measure to them. Now if congress can, by its legislative declaration, make the notes of the United States a legal tender in payment of private debts--that is, can make them receivable against the will of the creditor in satisfaction of debts due to him by third parties--its power in this respect is not derived from its power to borrow money, under which the notes were issued. That power is not different in its nature or essential incidents from the power to borrow possessed by individuals, and is not to receive a larger definition. Nor is it different from the power often granted to public and private corporations. The grant, it is true, is usually accompanied in these latter cases with limitations as to the amount to be borrowed, and a designation of the objects to which the money shall be applied--limitations which in no respect affect the nature of the power. The terms "power to borrow money" have the same meaning in all these cases, and not one meaning when used by individuals, another when granted to corporations, and still a different one when possessed by congress. They mean only a power to contract for a loan of money upon considerations to be agreed between the parties. The amount of the loan, the time of repayment, the interest it shall bear, and the form in which the obligation shall be expressed are simply matters of arrangement between the parties. They concern no one else. It is no part or incident of a contract of this character that the rights or interests of third parties, strangers to the matter, shall be in any respect affected. The transaction is completed when the lender has parted with his money, and the borrower has given his promise of repayment at the time, and in the manner, and with the securities stipulated between them. As an inducement to the loan, and security for its repayment, the borrower may of course pledge such property or revenues, and annex to his promises such rights and privileges as he may possess. His stipulations in this respect are necessarily limited to his own property, rights, and privileges, and cannot extend to those of other persons. Now, whether a borrower--be the borrower an individual, a corporation, or the government--can annex to the bonds, notes, or other evidences of debt given for the money borrowed, any quality by which they will serve as a means of satisfying the contracts of other parties, must necessarily depend upon the question whether the borrower possesses any right to interfere with such contracts, and determine how they shall be satisfied. The right of the borrower in this respect rests upon no different foundation than the right to interfere with any other property of third parties. And if it will not be contended, as I think I may assume it will not be, that the borrower possesses any right, in order to make a loan, to interfere with the tangible and visible property of third parties, I do not perceive how it can be contended that he has any right to interfere with their property when it exists in the form of contracts. A large part of the property of every commercial people exists in that form, and the principle which excludes a stranger from meddling with another's property which is visible and tangible, equally excludes him from meddling with it when existing in the form of contracts. That an individual or corporation borrowing possesses no power to annex to his evidences of indebtedness any quality by which the holder will be enabled to change his contracts with third parties, strangers to the loan, is admitted; but it is contended that congress possesses such power because, in addition to the express power to borrow money, there is a clause in the constitution which authorizes congress to make all laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of the powers enumerated. This clause neither augments nor diminishes the expressly designated powers. It only states in terms what congress would equally have had the right to do without its insertion in the constitution. It is a general principle that a power to do a particular act includes the power to adopt all the ordinary and appropriate means for its execution. "Had the constitution," says Hamilton, in the Federalist, speaking of this clause, "been silent on this head, there can be no doubt that all the particular powers requisite as a means of executing the general powers would have resulted to the government by unavoidable implication." No axiom is more clearly established in law or in reason, that whenever the end is required the means are authorized; whenever a general power to do a thing is given, every particular power necessary for doing it is included. The subsidiary power existing without the clause in question, its insertion in the constitution was no doubt intended, as observed by Mr. Hamilton, to prevent "all cavilling refinements" in those who might thereafter feel a disposition to curtail and evade the legitimate authorities of the Union; and also, I may add, to indicate the true sphere and limits of the implied powers. But though the subsidiary power would have existed without this clause, there would have been the same perpetually recurring question as now, as to what laws are necessary and proper for the execution of the expressly enumerated powers. The particular clause in question has at different times undergone elaborate discussions in congress, in cabinets, and in the courts. Its meaning was much debated in the first congress upon the proposition to incorporate a national bank, and afterwards in the cabinet of Washington, when that measure was presented for his approval. Mr. Jefferson, then secretary of state, and Mr. Hamilton, then secretary of the treasury, differed widely in their construction of the clause, and each gave his views in an elaborate opinion. Mr. Jefferson held that the word "necessary" restricted the power of congress to the use of those means, without which the grant would be nugatory, thus making necessary equivalent to indispensable. Mr. Hamilton favored a more liberal, and in my judgment, a more just interpretation, and contended that the terms "necessary and proper" meant no more than that the measures adopted must have an obvious relation as a means to the end intended. "If the end," he said, "be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of the national authority." "There is also," he added, "this further criterion which may materially assist the decision: Does the proposed measure abridge a pre-existing right of any state, or of any individual? If it does not, there is a strong presumption in favor of its constitutionality; and slighter relations to any declared object may be permitted to turn the scale." From the criterion thus indicated it would seem that the distinguished statesman was of opinion that a measure which did interfere with a pre-existing right of a state or an individual would not be constitutional. The interpretation given by Mr. Hamilton was substantially followed by Chief Justice Marshall, in _McCulloch_ v. _the State of Maryland_, when, speaking for the court, he said that if the end to be accomplished by the legislation of congress be legitimate, and within the scope of the constitution, "all the means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, and which are not prohibited, but are consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." The chief justice did not, it is true, in terms declare that legislation which is not thus appropriate, and plainly adapted to a lawful end, is unconstitutional, but such is the plain import of the argument advanced by him; and that conclusion must also follow from the principle that, when legislation of a particular character is specially authorized, the opposite of such legislation is inhibited. Tested by the rule given by Mr. Hamilton, or by the rule thus laid down by this court through Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, the annexing of a quality to the promises of the government for money borrowed, which will enable the holder to use them as a means of satisfying the demands of third parties, cannot be sustained as the exercise of an appropriate means of borrowing. That is only appropriate which has some relation of fitness to an end. Borrowing, as already stated, is a transaction by which, on one side, the lender parts with his money, and on the other the borrower agrees to repay it in such form and at such time as may be stipulated. Though not a necessary part of the contract of borrowing, it is usual for the borrower to offer securities for the repayment of the loan. The fitness which would render a means appropriate to this transaction thus considered must have respect to the terms which are essential to the contract, or to the securities which the borrower may furnish as an inducement to the loan. The quality of legal tender does not touch the terms of the contract of borrowing, nor does it stand as a security for the loan. A security supposes some right or interest in the thing pledged, which is subject to the disposition of the borrower. There has been much confusion on this subject from a failure to distinguish between the adaptation of particular means to an end and the effect, or supposed effect, of those means in producing results desired by the government. The argument is stated thus: the object of borrowing is to raise funds; the annexing of the quality of legal tender to the notes of the government induces parties the more readily to loan upon them; the result desired by the government--the acquisition of funds--is thus accomplished; therefore, the annexing of the quality of legal tender is an appropriate means to the execution of the power to borrow. But it is evident that the same reasoning would justify, as appropriate means to the execution of this power, any measures which would result in obtaining the required funds. The annexing of a provision by which the notes of the government should serve as a free ticket in the public conveyances of the country, or for ingress into places of public amusement, or which would entitle the holder to a percentage out of the revenues of private corporations, or exempt his entire property, as well as the notes themselves, from state and municipal taxation, would produce a ready acceptance of the notes. But the advocate of the most liberal construction would hardly pretend that these measures, or similar measures touching the property of third parties, would be appropriate as a means to the execution of the power to borrow. Indeed, there is no invasion by government of the rights of third parties which might not thus be sanctioned upon the pretence that its allowance to the holder of the notes would lead to their ready acceptance and produce the desired loan. The actual effect of the quality of legal tender in inducing parties to receive them was necessarily limited to the amount required by existing debtors, who did not scruple to discharge with them their pre-existing liabilities. For moneys desired from other parties, or supplies required for the use of the army or navy, the provision added nothing to the value of the notes. Their borrowing power or purchasing power depended, by a general and a universal law of currency, not upon the legal tender clause, but upon the confidence which the parties receiving the notes had in their ultimate payment. Their exchangeable value was determined by this confidence, and every person dealing in them advanced his money and regulated his charges accordingly. The inability of mere legislation to control this universal law of currency is strikingly illustrated by the history of the bills of credit issued by the Continental congress during our Revolutionary war. From June, 1775, to March, 1780, these bills amounted to over $300,000,000. Depreciation followed as a natural consequence, commencing in 1777, when the issues only equalled $14,000,000. Previous to this time, in January, 1776, when the issues were only $5,000,000, congress had, by resolution, declared that if any person should be "so lost to all virtue and regard to his country" as to refuse to receive the bills in payment, he should, on conviction thereof by the committee of the city, county, or district, or, in case of appeal from their decision, by the assembly, convention, council, or committee of safety of the colony where he resided, be "deemed, published, and treated as an enemy of his country, and precluded from all trade or intercourse with the inhabitants" of the colonies. And in January, 1777, when as yet the issues were only $14,000,000, congress passed this remarkable resolution: "_Resolved_, That all bills of credit emitted by authority of congress ought to pass current in all payments, trade, and dealings in these states, and be deemed in value equal to the same nominal sums in Spanish milled dollars, and that whosoever shall offer, ask, or receive more in the said bills for any gold or silver coins, bullion, or any other species of money whatsoever, than the nominal sum or amount thereof in Spanish milled dollars, or more in the said bills for any lands, houses, goods, or commodities whatsoever than the same could be purchased at of the same person or persons in gold, silver, or any other species of money whatsoever, or shall offer to sell any goods or commodities for gold or silver coins or any other species of money whatsoever and refuse to sell the same for the said continental bills, every such person ought to be deemed an enemy to the liberty of these United States and to forfeit the value of the money so exchanged, or house, land, or commodity so sold or offered for sale. And it is recommended to the legislatures of the respective states to enact laws inflicting such forfeitures and other penalties on offenders as aforesaid as will prevent such pernicious practices. That it be recommended to the legislatures of the United States to pass laws to make the bills of credit issued by the congress a lawful tender in payments of public and private debts, and a refusal thereof an extinguishment of such debts; that debts payable in sterling money be discharged with continental dollars at the rate of 4_s._ 6_d._ sterling per dollar, and that in discharge of all other debts and contracts continental dollars pass at the rate fixed by the respective states for the value of Spanish milled dollars." The several states promptly responded to the recommendations of congress and made the bills a legal tender for debts and the refusal to receive them an extinguishment of the debt. Congress also issued, in September, 1779, a circular addressed to the people on the subject, in which they showed that the United States would be able to redeem the bills, and they repelled with indignation the suggestion that there could be any violation of the public faith. "The pride of America," said the address, "revolts from the idea; her citizens know for what purposes these emissions were made, and have repeatedly plighted their faith for the redemption of them; they are to be found in every man's possession, and every man is interested in their being redeemed; they must, therefore, entertain a high opinion of American credulity who suppose the people capable of believing, on due reflection, that all America will, against the faith, the honor, and the interest of all America, be ever prevailed upon to countenance, support, or permit so ruinous, so disgraceful a measure. We are convinced that the efforts and arts of our enemies will not be wanting to draw us into this humiliating and contemptible situation. Impelled by malice and the suggestions of chagrin and disappointment at not being able to bend our necks to the yoke, they will endeavor to force or seduce us to commit this unpardonable sin in order to subject us to the punishment due to it, and that we may thenceforth be a reproach and a by-word among the nations. Apprised of these consequences, knowing the value of national character, and impressed with a due sense of the immutable laws of justice and honor, it is impossible that America should think without horror of such an execrable deed." Yet in spite of the noble sentiments contained in this address, which bears the honored name of John Jay, then president of congress and afterwards the first chief justice of this court, and in spite of legal tender provisions and harsh penal statutes, the universal law of currency prevailed. Depreciation followed until it became so great that the very idea of redemption at par was abandoned. Congress then proposed to take up the bills by issuing new bills on the credit of the several states, guaranteed by the United States, not exceeding one-twentieth of the amount of the old issue, the new bills to draw interest and be redeemable in six years. But the scheme failed, and the bills became, during 1780, of so little value that they ceased to circulate and "quietly died," says the historian of the period, "in the hands of their possessors." And it is within the memory of all of us that during the late rebellion the notes of the United States issued under the legal tender act rose in value in the market as the successes of our arms gave evidence of an early termination of the war, and that they fell in value with every triumph of the Confederate forces. No legislation of congress declaring these notes to be money instead of representatives of money or credit could alter this result one jot or tittle. Men measured their value not by congressional declaration, which could not alter the nature of things, but by the confidence reposed in their ultimate payment. Without the legal tender provision the notes would have circulated equally well and answered all the purposes of government--the only direct benefit resulting from that provision arising, as already stated, from the ability it conferred upon unscrupulous debtors to discharge with them previous obligations. The notes of state banks circulated without possessing that quality and supplied a currency for the people just so long as confidence in the ability of the banks to redeem the notes continued. The notes issued by the national bank associations during the war, under the authority of congress, amounting to $300,000,000, which were never made a legal tender, circulated equally well with the notes of the United States. Neither their utility nor their circulation was diminished in any degree by the absence of a legal tender quality. They rose and fell in the market under the same influences and precisely to the same extent as the notes of the United States, which possessed this quality. It is foreign, however, to my argument, to discuss the utility of the legal tender clause. The utility of a measure is not the subject of judicial cognizance, nor, as already intimated, the test of its constitutionality. But the relation of the measure as a means to an end, authorized by the constitution, is a subject of such cognizance, and the test of its constitutionality, when it is not prohibited by any specific provision of that instrument, and is consistent with its letter and spirit. "The degree," said Hamilton, "in which a measure is necessary, can never be a test of the _legal right_ to adopt it. That must be a matter of opinion, and can only be a test of expediency. The relation between the means and the end, between the nature of a _means_ employed toward the execution of the power and the _object_ of that power, must be the criterion of unconstitutionality; not the more or less of necessity or utility." If this were not so, if congress could not only exercise, as it undoubtedly may, unrestricted liberty of choice among the means which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the execution of an express power, but could also judge, without its conclusions being subject to question in cases involving private rights, what means are thus appropriate and adapted, our government would be, not what it was intended to be, one of limited, but one of unlimited powers. Of course congress must inquire in the first instance, and determine for itself not only the expediency, but the fitness to the end intended, of every measure adopted by its legislation. But the power of this tribunal to revise these determinations in cases involving private rights has been uniformly asserted, since the formation of the constitution to this day, by the ablest statesmen and jurists of the country. I have thus dwelt at length upon the clause of the constitution investing congress with the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, because it is under that power that the notes of the United States were issued, and it is upon the supposed enhanced value which the quality of legal tender gives to such notes, as the means of borrowing, that the validity and constitutionality of the provision annexing this quality are founded. It is true that, in the arguments of counsel, and in the several opinions of different state courts, to which our attention has been called, and in the dissenting opinion in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, reference is also made to other powers possessed by congress, particularly to declare war, to suppress insurrection, to raise and support armies, and to provide and maintain a navy; all of which were called into exercise and severely taxed at the time the legal tender act was passed. But it is evident that the notes have no relation to these powers, or to any other powers of congress, except as they furnish a convenient means for raising money for their execution. The existence of the war only increased the urgency of the government for funds. It did not add to its powers to raise such funds, or change, in any respect, the nature of those powers or the transactions which they authorized. If the power to engraft the quality of legal tender upon the notes existed at all with congress, the occasion, the extent, and the purpose of its exercise were mere matters of legislative discretion; and the power may be equally exerted when a loan is made to meet the ordinary expenses of government in time of peace, as when vast sums are needed to raise armies and provide navies in time of war. The wants of the government can never be the measure of its powers. The constitution has specifically designated the means by which funds can be raised for the uses of the government, either in war or peace. These are taxation, borrowing, coining, and the sale of its public property. Congress is empowered to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to any extent which the public necessities may require. Its power to borrow is equally unlimited. It can convert any bullion it may possess into coin, and it can dispose of the public lands and other property of the United States, or any part of such property. The designation of these means exhausts the powers of congress on the subject of raising money. The designation of the means is a negation of all others, for the designation would be unnecessary and absurd if the use of any and all means were permissible without it. These means exclude a resort to forced loans, and to any compulsory interference with the property of third persons, except by regular taxation in one of the forms mentioned. But this is not all. The power to "coin money" is, in my judgment, inconsistent with and repugnant to the existence of a power to make anything but coin a legal tender. To coin money is to mould metallic substances having intrinsic value into certain forms convenient for commerce, and to impress them with the stamp of the government indicating their value. Coins are pieces of metal, of definite weight and value, thus stamped by national authority. Such is the natural import of the terms, "to coin money," and "coin;" and if there were any doubt that this is their meaning in the constitution, it would be removed by the language which immediately follows the grant of the "power to coin," authorizing congress to regulate the value of the money thus coined, and also "of foreign coin," and by the distinction made in other clauses between coin and the obligations of the general government and of the several states. The power of regulation conferred is the power to determine the weight and purity of the several coins struck, and their consequent relation to the monetary unit which might be established by the authority of the government--a power which can be exercised with reference to the metallic coins of foreign countries, but which is incapable of execution with reference to their obligations or securities. Then, in the clause of the constitution immediately following, authorizing congress "to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States," a distinction between the obligations and coins of the general government is clearly made. And in the tenth section, which forbids the states to "coin money, emit bills of credit, and make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts," a like distinction is made between coin and the obligations of the several states. The terms gold and silver, as applied to the coin, exclude the possibility of any other conclusion. Now, money, in the true sense of the term, is not only a medium of exchange, but it is a standard of value by which all other values are measured. Blackstone says, and Story repeats his language: "Money is a universal medium or common standard, by a comparison with which the value of all merchandise may be ascertained, or it is a sign which represents the respective values of all commodities." Money being such standard, its coins or pieces are necessarily a legal tender to the amount of their respective values for all contracts or judgments payable in money, without any legislative enactment to make them so. The provisions in the different coinage acts that the coins to be struck shall be such legal tender, are merely declaratory of their effect when offered in payment, and are not essential to give them that character. The power to coin money is, therefore, a power to fabricate coins out of metal as money, and thus make them a legal tender for their declared values as indicated by their stamp. If this be the true import and meaning of the language used, it is difficult to see how congress can make the paper of the government a legal tender. When the constitution says that congress shall have the power to make metallic coins a legal tender, it declares in effect that it shall make nothing else such tender. The affirmative grant is here a negative of all other power over the subject. Besides this, there cannot well be two different standards of value, and consequently two kinds of legal tender for the discharge of obligations arising from the same transactions. The standard or tender of the lower actual value would in such case inevitably exclude and supersede the other, for no one would use the standard or tender of higher value when his purpose could be equally well accomplished by the use of the other. A practical illustration of the truth of this principle we have all seen in the effect upon coin of the act of congress making the notes of the United States a legal tender. It drove coin from general circulation, and made it, like bullion, the subject of sale and barter in the market. The inhibition upon the states to coin money and yet to make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, must be read in connection with the grant of the coinage power to congress. The two provisions taken together indicate beyond question that the coins which the national government was to fabricate; and the foreign coins, the valuation of which it was to regulate, were to consist principally, if not entirely, of gold and silver. The framers of the constitution were considering the subject of money to be used throughout the entire Union when these provisions were inserted, and it is plain that they intended by them that metallic coins fabricated by the national government, or adopted from abroad by its authority, composed of the precious metals, should everywhere be the standard and the only standard of value by which exchanges could be regulated and payments made. At that time gold and silver moulded into forms convenient for use and stamped with their value by public authority, constituted, with the exception of pieces of copper for small values, the money of the entire civilized world. Indeed these metals divided up and thus stamped always have constituted money with all people having any civilization, from the earliest periods in the history of the world down to the present time. It was with "four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant," that Abraham bought the field of Machpelah, nearly four thousand years ago. This adoption of the precious metals as the subject of coinage,--the material of money by all peoples in all ages of the world,--has not been the result of any vagaries of fancy, but is attributable to the fact that they of all metals alone possess the properties which are essential to a circulating medium of uniform value. "The circulating medium of a commercial community," says Mr. Webster, "must be that which is also the circulating medium of other commercial communities, or must be capable of being converted into that medium without loss. It must also be able not only to pass in payments and receipts among individuals of the same society and nation, but to adjust and discharge the balance of exchanges between different nations. It must be something which has a value abroad as well as at home, by which foreign as well as domestic debts can be satisfied. The precious metals alone answer these purposes. They alone, therefore, are money, and whatever else is to perform the functions of money must be their representative and capable of being turned into them at will. So long as bank paper retains this quality it is a substitute for money. Divested of this nothing can give it that character." The statesmen who framed the constitution understood this principle as well as it is understood in our day. They had seen in the experience of the Revolutionary period the demoralizing tendency, the cruel injustice, and the intolerable oppression of a paper currency not convertible on demand into money, and forced into circulation by legal tender provisions and penal enactments. When they therefore were constructing a government for a country, which they could not fail to see was destined to be a mighty empire, and have commercial relations with all nations, a government which they believed was to endure for ages, they determined to recognize in the fundamental law as the standard of value, that which ever has been and always must be recognized by the world as the true standard, and thus facilitate commerce, protect industry, establish justice, and prevent the possibility of a recurrence of the evils which they had experienced and the perpetration of the injustice which they had witnessed. "We all know," says Mr. Webster, "that the establishment of a sound and uniform currency was one of the greatest ends contemplated in the adoption of the present constitution. If we could now fully explore all the motives of those who framed and those who supported that constitution, perhaps we should hardly find a more powerful one than this." And how the framers of the constitution endeavored to establish this "sound and uniform currency" we have already seen in the clauses which they adopted providing for a currency of gold and silver coins. Their determination to sanction only a metallic currency is further evident from the debates in the convention upon the proposition to authorize congress to emit bills on the credit of the United States. By bills of credit, as the terms were then understood, were meant paper issues, intended to circulate through the community for its ordinary purposes as money, bearing upon their face the promise of the government to pay the sums specified thereon at a future day. The original draft contained a clause giving congress power to "borrow money and emit bills on the credit of the United States," and when the clause came up for consideration, Mr. Morris moved to strike out the words "and emit bills on the credit of the United States," observing that "if the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary; if they had not, unjust and useless." Mr. Madison inquired whether it would not be "sufficient to prohibit the making them a legal tender." "This will remove," he said, "the temptation to emit them with unjust views, and promissory notes in that shape may in some emergencies be best." Mr. Morris replied that striking out the words would still leave room for "notes of a responsible minister," which would do "all the good without the mischief." Mr. Gorham was for striking out the words without inserting any prohibition. If the words stood, he said, they might "suggest and lead to the measure," and that the power, so far as it was necessary or safe, was "involved in that of borrowing." Mr. Mason said he was unwilling "to tie the hands of congress," and thought congress "would not have the power unless it were expressed." Mr. Ellsworth thought it "a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money." "The mischiefs," he said, "of the various experiments which had been made were now fresh in the public mind and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost anything else. Paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. Wilson thought that "it would have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money." "This expedient," he said, "can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered, and as long as it can be resorted to it will be a bar to other resources." Mr. Butler was urgent for disarming the government of such a power, and remarked "that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe." Mr. Mason replied that if there was no example in Europe there was none in which the government was restrained on this head, and he was averse "to tying up the hands of the legislature altogether." Mr. Langdon preferred to reject the whole plan than retain the words. Of those who participated in the debates, only one, Mr. Mercer, expressed an opinion favorable to paper money, and none suggested that if congress were allowed to issue the bills their acceptance should be compulsory--that is, that they should be made a legal tender. But the words were stricken out by a vote of nine states to two. Virginia voted for the motion, and Mr. Madison has appended a note to the debates, stating that her vote was occasioned by his acquiescence, and that he "became satisfied that striking out the words would not disable the government from the use of public notes, as far as they could be safe and proper; and would only cut off the pretext for a _paper currency_ and particularly for making the bills _a tender_ either for public or private debts." If anything is manifest from these debates it is that the members of the convention intended to withhold from congress the power to issue bills to circulate as money--that is, to be receivable in compulsory payment, or, in other words, having the quality of legal tender--and that the express power to issue the bills was denied, under an apprehension that if granted it would give a pretext to congress, under the idea of declaring their effect, to annex to them that quality. The issue of notes simply as a means of borrowing money, which of course would leave them to be received at the option of parties, does not appear to have been seriously questioned. The circulation of notes thus issued as a voluntary currency and their receipt in that character in payment of taxes, duties, and other public expenses, was not subject to the objections urged. I am aware of the rule that the opinions and intentions of individual members of the convention, as expressed in its debates and proceedings, are not to control the construction of the plain language of the constitution or narrow down the powers which that instrument confers. Members, it is said, who did not participate in the debate may have entertained different views from those expressed. The several state conventions to which the constitution was submitted may have differed widely from each other and from its framers in their interpretation of its clauses. We all know that opposite opinions on many points were expressed in the conventions, and conflicting reasons were urged both for the adoption and the rejection of that instrument. All this is very true, but it does not apply in the present case, for on the subject now under consideration there was everywhere, in the several state conventions and in the discussions before the people, an entire uniformity of opinion, so far as we have any record of its expression, and that concurred with the intention of the convention, as disclosed by its debates, that the constitution withheld from congress all power to issue bills to circulate as money, meaning by that bills made receivable in compulsory payment, or, in other words, having the quality of legal tender. Every one appears to have understood that the power of making paper issues a legal tender, by congress or by the states, was absolutely and forever prohibited. Mr. Luther Martin, a member of the convention, in his speech before the Maryland legislature, as reported in his letter to that body, states the arguments urged against depriving congress of the power to emit bills of credit, and then says that a "majority of the convention, being wise beyond every event, and being willing to risk any political evil rather than admit the idea of a paper emission in any possible case, refused to trust this authority to a government to which they were lavishing the most unlimited powers of taxation and to the mercy of which they were willing blindly to trust the liberty and property of the citizens of every state in the Union, _and they erased that clause from the system_." Not only was this construction given to the constitution by its framers and the people in their discussions at the time it was pending before them, but until the passage of the act of 1862, a period of nearly three-quarters of a century, the soundness of this construction was never called in question by any legislation of congress or the opinion of any judicial tribunal. Numerous acts, as already stated, were passed during this period, authorizing the issue of notes for the purpose of raising funds or obtaining supplies, but in none of them was the acceptance of the notes made compulsory. Only one instance have I been able to find in the history of congressional proceedings where it was even suggested that it was within the competency of congress to annex to the notes the quality of legal tender, and this occurred in 1814. The government was then greatly embarrassed from the want of funds to continue the war existing with Great Britain, and a member from Georgia introduced into the house of representatives several resolutions directing an inquiry into the expediency of authorizing the secretary of the treasury to issue notes convenient for circulation and making provision for the purchase of supplies in each state. Among the resolutions was one declaring that the notes to be issued should be a legal tender for debts due or subsequently becoming due between citizens of the United States and between citizens and foreigners. The house agreed to consider all the resolutions but the one containing the legal tender provision. That it refused to consider by a vote of more than two to one. As until the act of 1862 there was no legislation making the acceptance of notes issued on the credit of the United States compulsory, the construction of the clause of the constitution containing the grant of the coinage power never came directly before this court for consideration, and the attention of the court was only incidentally drawn to it. But whenever the court spoke on the subject, even incidentally, its voice was in entire harmony with that of the convention. Thus, in _Gwin_ v. _Breedlove_, where a marshal of Mississippi, commanded to collect a certain amount of dollars on execution, received the amount in bank notes, it was held that he was liable to the plaintiff in gold and silver. "By the constitution of the United States," said the court, "gold or silver coin made current by law can only be tendered in payment of debts." And in the case of the _United States_ v. _Marigold_, where the question arose whether congress had power to enact certain provisions of law for the punishment of persons bringing into the United States counterfeit coin with intent to pass it, the court said: These provisions "appertain to the execution of an important trust invested by the constitution, and to the obligation to fulfil that trust on the part of the government, namely, the trust and the duty of creating and maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of value throughout the Union. The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to congress by the constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value, and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to different views of policy, which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money being thus given to congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protecting the creature and object of that power." It is difficult to perceive how the trust and duty here designated, of "creating and maintaining a uniform and metallic standard of value throughout the Union," is discharged, when another standard of lower value and fluctuating character is authorized by law, which necessarily operates to drive the first from circulation. In addition to all the weight of opinion I have mentioned we have, to the same purport, from the adoption of the constitution up to the passage of the act of 1862, the united testimony of the leading statesmen and jurists of the country. Of all the men who, during that period, participated with any distinction in the councils of the nation, not one can be named who ever asserted any different power in congress than what I have mentioned. As observed by the chief justice, statesmen who disagreed widely on other points agreed on this. Mr. Webster, who has always been regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as one of the ablest and most enlightened expounders of the constitution, did not seem to think there was any doubt on the subject, although he belonged to the class who advocated the largest exercise of powers by the general government. From his first entrance into public life, in 1812, he gave great consideration to the subject of the currency, and in an elaborate speech in the senate, in 1836, he said: "Currency, in a large and perhaps just sense, includes not only gold and silver and bank bills, but bills of exchange also. It may include all that adjusts, exchanges, and settles balances in the operations of trade and business; but if we understand by currency the legal money of the county, and that which constitutes a lawful tender for debts, and is the statute measure of value, then undoubtedly nothing is included but gold and silver. Most unquestionably there is no legal tender, and there can be no legal tender in this country, under the authority of this government or any other, but gold and silver--either the coinage of our own mints or foreign coins, at rates regulated by congress. This is a constitutional principle perfectly plain, and of the very highest importance. The states are expressly prohibited from making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, and, although no such express prohibition is applied to congress, yet, as congress has no power granted to it in this respect but to coin money, and to regulate the value of foreign coins, it clearly has no power to substitute paper, or anything else, for coin, as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts. Congress has exercised this power fully in both its branches. It has coined money, and still coins it; it has regulated the value of foreign coins, and still regulates their value. The legal tender, therefore, the constitutional standard of value, is established and cannot be overthrown. To overthrow it would shake the whole system." If, now, we consider the history of the times when the constitution was adopted; the intentions of the framers of that instrument, as shown in their debates; the contemporaneous exposition of the coinage power in the state conventions assembled to consider the constitution, and in the public discussions before the people; the natural meaning of the terms used; the nature of the constitution itself as creating a government of enumerated powers; the legislative exposition of nearly three-quarters of a century; the opinions of judicial tribunals, and the recorded utterances of statesmen, jurists, and commentators, it would seem impossible to doubt that the only standard of value authorized by the constitution was to consist of metallic coins struck or regulated by the direction of congress, and that the power to establish any other standard was denied by that instrument. There are other considerations besides those I have stated, which are equally convincing against the constitutionality of the legal tender provision of the act of February 25th, 1862, so far as it applies to private debts and debts by the government contracted previous to its passage. That provision operates directly to impair the obligation of such contracts. In the dissenting opinion, in the case of _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, this is admitted to be its operation, and the position is taken that, while the constitution forbids the states to pass such laws, it does not forbid congress to do this, and the power to establish a uniform system of bankruptcy, which is expressly conferred, is mentioned in support of the position. In some of the opinions of the state courts, to which our attention has been directed, it is denied that the provision in question impairs the obligation of previous contracts, it being asserted that a contract to pay money is satisfied, according to its meaning, by the payment of that which is money when the payment is made, and that if the law does not interfere with this mode of satisfaction, it does not impair the obligation of the contract. This position is true so long as the term money represents the same thing in both cases or their actual equivalents, but it is not true when the term has different meanings. Money is a generic term, and contracts for money are not made without a specification of the coins or denominations of money, and the number of them intended, as eagles, dollars, or cents; and it will not be pretended that a contract for a specified number of eagles can be satisfied by a delivery of an equal number of dollars, although both eagles and dollars are money; nor would it thus be contended, though at the time the contract matured the legislature had determined to call dollars eagles. Contracts are made for things, not names or sounds, and the obligation of a contract arises from its terms and the means which the law affords for its enforcement. A law which changes the terms of the contract, either in the time or mode of performance, or imposes new conditions, or dispenses with those expressed, or authorizes for its satisfaction something different from that provided, is a law which impairs its obligation, for such a law relieves the parties from the moral duty of performing the original stipulations of the contract, and it prevents their legal enforcement. The notion that contracts for the payment of money stand upon any different footing in this respect from other contracts appears to have had its origin in certain old English cases, particularly that of mixed money, which were decided upon the force of the prerogative of the king with respect to coin, and have no weight as applied to powers possessed by congress under our constitution. The language of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in _Faw_ v. _Marsteller_, which is cited in support of this notion, can only be made to express concurrence with it when detached from its context and read separated from the facts in reference to which it was used. It is obvious that the act of 1862 changes the terms of contracts for the payment of money made previous to its passage, in every essential particular. All such contracts had reference to metallic coins, struck or regulated by congress, and composed principally of gold and silver, which constituted the legal money of the country. The several coinage acts had fixed the weight, purity, forms, impressions, and denominations of these coins, and had provided that their value should be certified by the form and impress which they received at the mint. They had established the dollar as the money unit, and prescribed the grains of silver it should contain, and the grains of gold which should compose the different gold coins. Every dollar was therefore a piece of gold or silver certified to be of a specified weight and purity, by its form and impress. A contract to pay a specified number of dollars was then a contract to deliver the designated number of pieces of gold or silver of this character; and, by the laws of congress and of the several states the delivery of such dollars could be enforced by the holder. The act of 1862 changes all this; it declares that gold or silver dollars need not be delivered to the creditor according to the stipulations of the contract; that they need not be delivered at all; that promises of the United States, with which the creditor has had no relations, to pay these dollars, at some uncertain future day, shall be received in discharge of the contracts--in other words, that the holder of such contracts shall take in substitution for them different contracts with another party, less valuable to him, and surrender the original. Taking it, therefore, for granted that the law plainly impairs the obligation of such contracts, I proceed to inquire whether it is for that reason, subject to any constitutional objection. In the dissenting opinion in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, it is said, as already mentioned, that the constitution does not forbid legislation impairing the obligation of contracts. It is true there is no provision in the constitution forbidding in express terms such legislation. And it is also true that there are express powers delegated to congress, the execution of which necessarily operates to impair the obligation of contracts. It was the object of the framers of that instrument to create a national government competent to represent the entire country in its relations with foreign nations, and to accomplish by its legislation measures of common interest to all the people, which the several states, in their independent capacities, were incapable of effecting, or if capable, the execution of which would be attended with great difficulty and embarrassment. They, therefore, clothed congress with all the powers essential to the successful accomplishment of these ends, and carefully withheld the grant of all other powers. Some of the powers granted, from their very nature, interfere in their execution with contracts of parties. Thus war suspends intercourse and commerce between citizens or subjects of belligerent nations; it renders, during its continuance, the performance of contracts previously made unlawful. These incidental consequences were contemplated in the grant of the war power. So the regulation of commerce and the imposition of duties may so affect the prices of articles imported or manufactured as to essentially alter the value of previous contracts respecting them; but this incidental consequence was seen in the grant of the power over commerce and duties. There can be no valid objection to laws passed in execution of express powers that consequences like these follow incidentally from their execution. But it is otherwise when such consequences do not follow incidentally, but are directly enacted. The only express authority for any legislation affecting the obligation of contracts is found in the power to establish a uniform system of bankruptcy, the direct object of which is to release insolvent debtors from their contracts upon the surrender of their property. From this express grant in the constitution I draw a very different conclusion from that drawn in the dissenting opinion in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_, and in the opinion of the majority of the court just delivered. To my mind it is a strong argument that there is no general power in congress to interfere with contracts--that a special grant was regarded as essential to authorize a uniform system of bankruptcy. If such general power existed, the delegation of an express power in the case of bankrupts was unnecessary. As very justly observed by counsel, if this sovereign power could be taken in any case without express grant, it could be taken in connection with bankruptcies, which might be regarded in some respects as a regulation of commerce made in the interest of traders. The grant of a limited power over the subject of contracts necessarily implies that the framers of the constitution did not intend that congress should exercise unlimited power, or any power less restricted. The limitation designated is the measure of congressional power over the subject. This follows from the nature of the instrument as one of enumerated powers. The doctrine that where a power is not expressly forbidden it may be exercised, would change the whole character of our government. As I read the writings of the great commentators and the decisions of this court, the true doctrine is the exact reverse, that if a power is not in terms granted, and is not necessary and proper for the exercise of a power thus granted, it does not exist. The position that congress possesses some undefined power to do anything which it may deem expedient, as a resulting power from the general purposes of the government, which is advanced in the opinion of the majority, would of course settle the question under consideration without difficulty, for it would end all controversy by changing our government from one of enumerated powers to one resting in the unrestrained will of congress. "The government of the United States," says Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the court in _Martin_ v. _Hunter's Lessee_, "can claim no powers which are not granted to it by the constitution, and the powers actually granted must be such as are expressly given or given by necessary implication." This implication, it is true, may follow from the grant of several express powers as well as from one alone, but the power implied must, in all cases, be subsidiary to the execution of the powers expressed. The language of the constitution respecting the writ of habeas corpus, declaring that it shall not be suspended unless, when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it, is cited as showing that the power to suspend such writ exists somewhere in the constitution; and the adoption of the amendments is mentioned as evidence that important powers were understood by the people who adopted the constitution to have been created by it, which are not enumerated, and are not included incidentally in any of those enumerated. The answer to this position is found in the nature of the constitution, as one of granted powers, as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall. The inhibition upon the exercise of a specified power does not warrant the implication that, but for such inhibition, the power might have been exercised. In the convention which framed the constitution a proposition to appoint a committee to prepare a bill of rights was unanimously rejected, and it has been always understood that its rejection was upon the ground that such a bill would contain various exceptions to powers not granted, and on this very account would afford a pretext for asserting more than was granted. In the discussions before the people, when the adoption of the constitution was pending, no objection was urged with greater effect than this absence of a bill of rights, and in one of the numbers of the Federalist, Mr. Hamilton endeavored to combat the objection. After stating several reasons why such a bill was not necessary, he said: "I go further and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted, and on this very account would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power, but it is evident that it would furnish to men disposed to usurp a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge, with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a right to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of right." When the amendments were presented to the states for adoption they were preceded by a preamble stating that the conventions of a number of the states had, at the time of their adopting the constitution, expressed a desire "in order to prevent _misconception or abuse_ of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added." Now, will any one pretend that congress could have made a law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or the right of the people to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, had not prohibitions upon the exercise of any such legislative power been embodied in an amendment? How truly did Hamilton say that had a bill of rights been inserted in the constitution, it would have given a handle to the doctrine of constructive powers. We have this day an illustration in the opinion of the majority of the very claim of constructive power which he apprehended, and it is the first instance, I believe, in the history of this court, when the possession by congress of such constructive power has been asserted. The interference with contracts by the legislation of the several states previous to the adoption of the constitution was the cause of great oppression and injustice. "Not only," says Story, "was paper money issued and declared to be a tender in payment of debts, but laws of another character, well known under the appellation of tender laws, appraisement laws, instalment laws, and suspension laws, were from time to time enacted, which prostrated all private credit and all private morals. By some of these laws the due payment of debts was suspended; debts were, in violation of the very terms of the contract, authorized to be paid by instalments at different periods; property of any sort, however worthless, either real or personal, might be tendered by the debtor in payment of his debts, and the creditor was compelled to take the property of the debtor, which he might seize on execution, at an appraisement wholly disproportionate to its known value. Such grievances and oppressions and others of a like nature were the ordinary results of legislation during the Revolutionary war and the intermediate period down to the formation of the constitution. They entailed the most enormous evils on the country and introduced a system of fraud, chicanery, and profligacy, which destroyed all private confidence and all industry and enterprise." To prevent the recurrence of evils of this character not only was the clause inserted in the constitution prohibiting the states from issuing bills of credit and making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, but also the more general prohibition, from passing any law impairing the obligation of contracts. "To restore public confidence completely," says Chief Justice Marshall, "it was necessary not only to prohibit the use of particular means by which it might be effected, but to prohibit the use of any means by which the same mischief might be produced. The convention appears to have intended to establish a great principle, that contracts should be inviolable." It would require very clear evidence, one would suppose, to induce a belief that with the evils resulting from what Marshall terms the system of lax legislation following the Revolution, deeply impressed on their minds, the framers of the constitution intended to vest in the new government created by them this dangerous and despotic power, which they were unwilling should remain with the states, and thus widen the possible sphere of its exercise. When the possession of this power has been asserted in argument (for until now it has never been asserted in any decision of this court), it has been in cases where a supposed public benefit resulted from the legislation, or where the interference with the obligation of the contract was very slight. Whenever a clear case of injustice, in the absence of such supposed public good, is stated, the exercise of the power by the government is not only denounced but the existence of the power is denied. No one, indeed, is found bold enough to contend that if A has a contract for one hundred acres of land, or one hundred pounds of fruit, or one hundred yards of cloth, congress can pass a law compelling him to accept one-half of the quantity in satisfaction of the contract. But congress has the same power to establish a standard of weights and measures as it has to establish a standard of value, and can, from time to time, alter such standard. It can declare that the acre shall consist of eighty square rods instead of one hundred and sixty, the pound of eight ounces instead of sixteen, and the foot of six inches instead of twelve, and if it could compel the acceptance of the same _number_ of acres, pounds, or yards, after such alteration, instead of the actual _quantity_ stipulated, then the acceptance of one-half of the quantity originally designated could be directly required without going through the form of altering the standard. No just man could be imposed upon by this use of words in a double sense, where the same names were applied to denote different quantities of the same thing, nor would his condemnation of the wrong committed in such case be withheld, because the attempt was made to conceal it by this jugglery of words. The power of congress to interfere with contracts for the payment of money is not greater or in any particular different from its power with respect to contracts for lands or goods. The contract is not fulfilled any more in one case than in the other by the delivery of a thing which is not stipulated, because by legislative action it is called by the same name. Words in contracts are to be construed in both cases in the sense in which they were understood by the parties at the time of the contract. Let us for a moment see where the doctrine of the power asserted will lead. Congress has the undoubted right to give such denominations as it chooses to the coins struck by its authority, and to change them. It can declare that the dime shall hereafter be called a dollar, or, what is the same thing, it may declare that the dollar shall hereafter be composed of the grains of silver which now compose the dime. But would anybody pretend that a contract for dollars, composed as at present, could be satisfied by the delivery of an equal number of dollars of the new issue? I have never met any one who would go to that extent. The answer always has been that would be too flagrantly unjust to be tolerated. Yet enforcing the acceptance of paper promises or paper dollars, if the promises can be so called, in place of gold or silver dollars, is equally enforcing a departure from the terms of the contract, the injustice of the measure depending entirely upon the actual value at the time of the promises in the market. Now reverse the case. Suppose congress should declare that hereafter the eagle should be called a dollar, or that the dollar should be composed of as many grains of gold as the eagle, would anybody for a moment contend that a contract for dollars, composed as now of silver, should be satisfied by dollars composed of gold? I am confident that no judge sitting on this bench, and, indeed, that no judge in Christendom could be found who would sanction the monstrous wrong by decreeing that the debtor could only satisfy his contract in such case by paying ten times the value originally stipulated. The natural sense of right which is implanted in every mind would revolt from such supreme injustice. Yet there cannot be one law for debtors and another law for creditors. If the contract can at one time be changed by congressional legislation for the benefit of the debtor it may at another time be changed for the benefit of the creditor. For acts of flagrant injustice such as those mentioned there is no authority in any legislative body, even though not restrained by any express constitutional prohibition. For as there are unchangeable principles of right and morality, without which society would be impossible, and men would be but wild beasts preying upon each other, so there are fundamental principles of eternal justice, upon the existence of which all constitutional government is founded, and without which government would be an intolerable and hateful tyranny. There are acts, says Mr. Justice Chase, in _Calder_ v. _Bull_, which the federal and state legislatures cannot do, without exceeding their authority. Among these he mentions a law which punishes a citizen for an innocent action; a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a judge in his own cause; and a law that takes the property from A and gives it to B. "It is against all reason and right," says the learned justice, "for a people to intrust a legislature with such powers; and therefore it cannot be presumed that they have done it. The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. To maintain that our federal or state legislatures possess such powers, if they had not been expressly restrained, would, in my opinion, be a political heresy, altogether inadmissible in our free republican governments." In _Ogden_ v. _Saunders_, Mr. Justice Thompson, referring to the provisions in the constitution forbidding the states to pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, says: "Neither provision can strictly be considered as introducing any new principle, but only for greater security and safety to incorporate into this charter provisions admitted by all to be among the first principles of government. No state court would, I presume, sanction and enforce an _ex post facto_ law if no such prohibition was contained in the constitution of the United States; so, neither would retrospective laws, taking away vested rights, be enforced. Such laws are repugnant to those fundamental principles upon which every just system of laws is founded. It is an elementary principle, adopted and sanctioned by the courts of justice in this country and in Great Britain, whenever such laws have come under consideration, and yet retrospective laws are clearly within this prohibition." In _Wilkeson_ v. _Leland_, Mr. Justice Story, whilst commenting upon the power of the legislature of Rhode Island under the charter of Charles II. said: "The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require that the rights of personal liberty and private property should be held sacred. At least no court of justice in this country would be warranted in assuming that the power to violate and disregard them, a power so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty, lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expressions of the will of the people. The people ought not to be presumed to part with rights so vital to their security and well-being without very strong and direct expressions of such an intention." Similar views to these cited from the opinions of Chase, Thompson, Story, and Marshall, are found scattered through the opinions of the judges who have preceded us on this bench. As against their collective force the remark of Mr. Justice Washington, in the case of _Evans_ v. _Eaton_, is without significance. That was made at _nisi prius_ in answer to a motion for a nonsuit in an action brought for an infringement of a patent right. The state of Pennsylvania had, in March 1787, which was previous to the adoption of the constitution, given to the plaintiff the exclusive right to make, use, and vend his invention for fourteen years. In January, 1808, the United States issued to him a patent for the invention for fourteen years from that date. It was contended, for the nonsuit, that after the expiration of the plaintiff's privilege granted by the state, the right to his invention became invested in the people of the state, by an implied contract with the government, and, therefore, that congress could not consistently with the constitution grant to the plaintiff an exclusive right to the invention. The court replied that neither the premises upon which the motion was founded, nor the conclusion, could be admitted; that it was not true that the grant of an exclusive privilege to an invention for a limited time implied a binding and irrevocable contract with the people that at the expiration of the period limited the invention should become their property; and that even if the premises were true, there was nothing in the constitution which forbade congress to pass laws violating the obligation of contracts. The motion did not merit any consideration, as the federal court had no power to grant a nonsuit against the will of the plaintiff in any case. The expression under these circumstances of any reason why the court would not grant the motion, if it possessed the power, was aside the case, and is not, therefore, entitled to any weight whatever as authority. It was true, however, as observed by the court, that no such contract with the public, as stated, was implied, and inasmuch as congress was expressly authorized by the constitution to secure for a limited time to inventors the exclusive right to their discoveries, it had the power in that way to impair the obligation of such a contract, if any had existed. And this is perhaps, all that Mr. Justice Washington meant. It is evident from his language in _Ogden_ v. _Saunders_, that he repudiated the existence of any general power in congress to destroy or impair vested private rights. What I have heretofore said respecting the power of congress to make the notes of the United States a legal tender in payment of debts contracted previous to the act of 1862, and to interfere with contracts, has had reference to debts and contracts between citizens. But the same power which is asserted over these matters is also asserted with reference to previous debts owing by the government, and must equally apply to contracts between the government and the citizen. The act of 1862 declares that the notes issued shall be a legal tender in payment of _all debts, public and private_, with the exception of duties on imports and interest on the public debt. If they are a legal tender for antecedent private debts, they are also a legal tender for such debts owing by the United States, except in the cases mentioned. That any exception was made was a mere matter of legislative discretion. Express contracts for the payment of gold or silver have been maintained by this court, and specifically enforced on the ground that, upon a proper construction of the act of 1862, in connection with other acts, congress intended to except these contracts from the operation of the legal tender provision. But the power covers all cases if it exists at all. The power to make the notes of the United States the legal equivalent to gold and silver necessarily includes the power to cancel with them specific contracts for gold as well as money contracts generally. Before the passage of the act of 1862, there was no legal money except that which consisted of metallic coins, struck or regulated by the authority of congress. Dollars then meant, as already said, certain pieces of gold or silver, certified to be of a prescribed weight and purity by their form and impress received at the mint. The designation of dollars, in previous contracts, meant gold or silver dollars as plainly as if those metals were specifically named. It follows, then, logically, from the doctrine advanced by the majority of the court as to the power of congress over the subject of legal tender, that congress may borrow gold coin upon a pledge of the public faith to repay gold at the maturity of its obligations, and yet, in direct disregard of its pledge, in open violation of faith, may compel the lender to take, in place of the gold stipulated, its own promises; and that legislation of this character would not be in violation of the constitution, but in harmony with its letter and spirit. The government is, at the present time, seeking in the markets of the world a loan of several hundred millions of dollars in gold, upon securities containing the promises of the United States to repay the money, principal and interest, in gold; yet this court, the highest tribunal of the country, this day declares, by its solemn decision, that should such loan be obtained, it is entirely competent for congress to pay it off, not in gold, but in notes of the United States themselves, payable at such time and in such manner as congress may itself determine, and that legislation sanctioning such gross breach of faith would not be repugnant to the fundamental law of the land. What is this but declaring that repudiation by the government of the United States of its solemn obligations would be constitutional? Whenever the fulfilment of the obligation in the manner stipulated is refused, and the acceptance of something different from that stipulated is enforced against the will of the creditor, a breach of faith is committed; and to the extent of the difference of value between the thing stipulated and the thing which the creditor is compelled to receive, there is repudiation of the original obligation. I am not willing to admit that the constitution, the boast and glory of our country, would sanction or permit any such legislation. Repudiation in any form, or to any extent, would be dishonor, and for the commission of this public crime no warrant, in my judgment, can ever be found in that instrument. Some stress has been placed in argument in support of the asserted power of congress over the subject of legal tender in the fact that congress can regulate the alloy of the coins issued under its authority, and has exercised its power in this respect without question, by diminishing in some instances, the actual quantity of gold or silver they contain. Congress, it is assumed, can thus put upon the coins issued other than their intrinsic value; therefore, it is argued, congress may, by its declaration, give a value to the notes of the United States, issued to be used as money, other than that which they actually possess. The assumption and the inference are both erroneous, and the argument thus advanced is without force, and is only significant of the weakness of the position which has to rest for its support on an assumed authority of the government to debase the coin of the country. Undoubtedly congress can alter the value of the coins issued by its authority by increasing or diminishing, from time to time, the alloy they contain, just as it may alter, at its pleasure, the denominations of the several coins issued, but there its power stops. It cannot make these altered coins the equivalent of the coins in their previous condition; and, if the new coins should retain the same names as the original, they would only be current at their true value. Any declaration that they should have any other value would be inoperative in fact, and a monstrous disregard by congress of its constitutional duty. The power to coin money, as already declared by this court, is a great trust devolved upon congress, carrying with it the duty of creating and maintaining a uniform standard of value throughout the Union, and it would be a manifest abuse of this trust to give to the coins issued by its authority any other than their real value. By debasing the coins, when once the standard is fixed, is meant giving to the coins, by their form and impress, a certificate of their having a relation to that standard different from that which, in truth, they possess; in other words, giving to the coins a false certificate of their value. Arbitrary and profligate governments have often resorted to this miserable scheme of robbery, which Mill designates as a shallow and impudent artifice, the "least covert of all modes of knavery, which consists in calling a shilling a pound, that a debt of one hundred pounds may be cancelled by the payment of one hundred shillings." In this country no such debasement has ever been attempted, and I feel confident that none will ever be tolerated. The changes in the quantity of alloy in the different coins has been made from time to time, not with any idea of debasing them, but for the purpose of preserving the proper relative value between gold and silver. The first coinage act, passed in 1792, provided that the coins should consist of gold, silver, and copper--the coins of cents and half-cents consisting of copper, and the other coins consisting of gold and silver--and that the relative value of gold and silver should be as fifteen to one, that is, that an ounce of gold should be taken as the equal in value of fifteen ounces of silver. In progress of time, owing to the increased production of silver, particularly from the mines of Mexico and South America, this relative value was changed. Silver declined in relative value to gold until it bore the relation of one to sixteen instead of one to fifteen. The result was that the gold was bought up as soon as coined, being worth intrinsically sixteen times the value of silver, and yet passing by law only at fifteen times such value, and was sent out of the country to be recoined. The attention of congress was called to this change in the relative value of the two metals and the consequent disappearance of gold coin. This led, in 1834, to an act adjusting the rate of gold coin to its true relation to silver coin. The discovery of gold in California, some years afterwards, and the great production of that metal, again changed in another direction the relative value of the two metals. Gold declined, or in other words, silver was at a premium, and as gold coin before 1834 was bought up, so now silver coin was bought up, and a scarcity of small coin for change was felt in the community. Congress again interfered, and in 1853 reduced the amount of silver in coins representing fractional parts of a dollar, but even then these coins were restricted from being a legal tender for sums exceeding five dollars, although the small silver coins of previous issue continued to be a legal tender for any amount. Silver pieces of the denomination of three cents had been previously authorized in 1851, but were only made a tender for sums of thirty cents and under. These coins did not express their actual value, and their issue was soon stopped, and in 1853 their value was increased to the standard of coins of other fractional parts of a dollar. The whole of this subject has been fully and satisfactorily explained in the very able and learned argument of the counsel who contended for the maintenance of the original decision of this court in _Hepburn_ v. _Griswold_. He showed by the debates that congress has been moved, in all its actions under the coinage power, only by an anxious desire to ascertain the true relative value of the two precious metals, and to fix the coinage in accordance with it; and that in no case has any deviation from intrinsic value been permitted except in coins for fractional parts of a dollar, and even that has been only of so slight a character as to prevent them from being converted into bullion, the actual depreciation being made up by their portability and convenience. It follows, from this statement of the action of congress in altering at different times the alloy of certain coins, that the assumption of power to stamp metal with an arbitrary value and give it currency, does not rest upon any solid foundation, and that the argument built thereon goes with it to the ground. I have thus far spoken of the legal tender provision with particular reference to its application to debts contracted previous to its passage. It only remains to say a few words as to its validity when applied to subsequent transactions. So far as subsequent contracts are made payable in notes of the United States, there can of course be no objection to their specific enforcement by compelling a delivery of an equal amount of the notes, or by a judgment in damages for their value as estimated in gold or silver dollars, nor would there be any objection to such enforcement if the legal tender provision had never existed. From the general use of the notes throughout the country and the disappearance of gold and silver coin from circulation, it may perhaps be inferred in most cases, that notes of the United States are intended by the parties where gold or silver dollars are not expressly designated, except in contracts made in the Pacific states, where the constitutional currency has always continued in uses. As to subsequent contracts, the legal tender provision is not as unjust in its operation as when applied to past contracts, and does not impair to the same extent private rights. But so far as it makes the receipt of the notes, in absence of any agreement of the parties, compulsory in payment of such contracts, it is, in my judgment, equally unconstitutional. This seems to me to follow necessarily from the duty already mentioned cast upon congress by the coinage power,--to create and maintain a uniform metallic standard of value throughout the Union. Without a standard of value of some kind, commerce would be difficult, if not impossible, and just in proportion to the uniformity and stability of the standard is the security and consequent extent of commercial transactions. How is it possible for congress to discharge its duty by making the acceptance of paper promises compulsory in all future dealings--promises which necessarily depend for their value upon the confidence entertained by the public in their ultimate payment, and the consequent ability of the holder to convert them into gold or silver--promises which can never be uniform throughout the Union, but must have different values in different portions of the country; one value in New York, another at New Orleans, and still a different one at San Francisco. Speaking of paper money issued by the states,--and the same language is equally true of paper money issued by the United States--Chief Justice Marshall says, in _Craig_ v. _The State of Missouri_: "Such a medium has been always liable to considerable fluctuation. Its value is continually changing; and these changes, often great and sudden, expose individuals to immense loss, are the sources of ruinous speculations, and destroy all confidence between man and man. To cut up this mischief by the roots, a mischief which was felt by the United States, and which deeply affected the interest and prosperity of all, the people declared in their constitution that no state should emit bills of credit." Mr. Justice Washington, after referring, in _Ogden_ v. _Saunders_, to the provision of the constitution declaring that no state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, says: "These prohibitions, associated with the powers granted to congress 'to coin money and to regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin,' most obviously constitute members of the same family, being upon the same subject and governed by the same policy. This policy was to provide a fixed and uniform standard of value throughout the United States, by which the commercial and other dealings between the citizens thereof, or between them and foreigners, as well as the moneyed transactions of the government, should be regulated. For it might well be asked, Why vest in congress the power to establish a uniform standard of value by the means pointed out, if the states might use the same means, and thus defeat the uniformity of the standard, and consequently the standard itself? And why establish a standard at all for the government of the various contracts which might be entered into, if those contracts might afterwards be discharged by a different standard, or by that which is not money, under the authority of state tender laws? It is obvious, therefore, that these prohibitions in the tenth section are entirely homogeneous, and are essential to the establishment of a uniform standard of value in the formation and discharge of contracts." It is plain that this policy cannot be carried out, and this fixed and uniform metallic standard of value throughout the United States be maintained, so long as any other standard is adopted, which of itself has no intrinsic value and is forever fluctuating and uncertain. For the reasons which I have endeavored to unfold, I am compelled to dissent from the judgment of the majority of the court. I know that the measure, the validity of which I have called in question, was passed in the midst of a gigantic rebellion, when even the bravest hearts sometimes doubted the safety of the republic, and that the patriotic men who adopted it did so under the conviction that it would increase the ability of the government to obtain funds and supplies, and thus advance the national cause. Were I to be governed by my appreciation of the character of those men, instead of my views of the requirements of the constitution, I should readily assent to the views of the majority of the court. But, sitting as a judicial officer, and bound to compare every law enacted by congress with the greater law enacted by the people, and being unable to reconcile the measure in question with that fundamental law, I cannot hesitate to pronounce it as being, in my judgment, unconstitutional and void. In the discussions which have attended this subject of legal tender there has been at times what seemed to me to be a covert intimation, that opposition to the measure in question was the expression of a spirit not altogether favorable to the cause, in the interest of which that measure was adopted. All such intimations I repel with all the energy I can express. I do not yield to any one in honoring and reverencing the noble and patriotic men who were in the councils of the nation during the terrible struggle with the rebellion. To them belong the greatest of all glories in our history,--that of having saved the Union, and that of having emancipated a race. For these results they will be remembered and honored so long as the English language is spoken or read among men. But I do not admit that a blind approval of every measure which they may have thought essential to put down the rebellion is any evidence of loyalty to the country. The only loyalty which I can admit consists in obedience to the constitution and laws made in pursuance of it. It is only by obedience that affection and reverence can be shown to a superior having a right to command. So thought our great Master when he said to his disciples: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." CHAPTER V. GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF RAILROADS. Since concluding what we desired to say on the subject of controlling and regulating railroads and railroad corporations, our attention has been directed to a circular from _The New York Nation_, of July 27th, 1873, entitled: "The Railroad Discussion, and Common Sense." This singular article challenges attention. If it is put forth in the interest of railroad corporations, we can readily account for the views expressed, and the covert foreshadowing of national control of railroads; but if it be published and circulated in the interest of the people as _The Nation_ would have us understand, it is not calculated to assist them in their efforts at reform, but on the contrary will tend to divide and distract their counsels, and delay the relief sought. We copy the circular, that the reader may judge of its merits, and to give a more intelligent understanding of our remarks upon it:-- THE RAILROAD DISCUSSION AND COMMON SENSE--THE LATEST DEVICE FOR FIXING RATES OF TRANSPORTATION. (From the Nation [N. Y.] of July 17.) We have followed, and shall continue to follow, the "farmers' movement" with great interest, but it must be confessed that it seems at times of no little difficulty, owing to the very heterogeneous composition of the organizations which are carrying it on, and the wide diversity of their character and avowed aims. When Judge Lawrence was turned out of office in Illinois by the "Grangers," and Judge Craig put in his place, we took it for granted that they were going to deliver themselves from the tyranny of the railroads by putting judges on the bench pledged to interpret the state constitution in a particular way, or in other words, as one of the local papers put it, by showing that "the people" were superior to both laws and judges. It has, however, since been stoutly denied that this interference with the bench was anything more than a local accident, and we have been assured that the farmers seek changes of a much more legitimate character, and resting on more solid foundations than the creation of a subservient judiciary. The recent platforms have certainly had a much wider sweep than the earlier ones, and, unless language has been strangely abused in making them, embrace grave modifications in fiscal as well as in railroad legislation. But the question how to reduce the railroads to the condition of public highways, controllable by and existing solely or mainly for the convenience of the community, is still apparently as far from solution as ever. It is by no means surprising that this should be the case, but that it is the case we are forced to conclude by the extraordinary character of the latest plan propounded by the reformers, which has had sufficient plausibility to command the approval of so sober-minded a paper as the Chicago _Tribune_. The farmers have been accused, partly in consequence of their escapade about the judges in Illinois, of seeking to rob the railroad companies of their lawful earnings by forcing them to carry on their business at a loss, under the operation of cast-iron rules, drawn up without reference to its peculiar nature. This was a charge of which the farmers soon began to see the gravity, and they accordingly now announce that they have no scheme of spoliation or confiscation in their minds, but that they have at last hit upon a mode of ascertaining what are "reasonable rates," which consists in discovering what was the amount of capital "actually invested in constructing and operating the roads," and treating a fair percentage of this as a proper return to the stockholders, and all charges which bring in more than this as "unreasonable," and therefore open to prohibition by the courts and state legislatures. Under this theory of railroad property, all stock which does not represent money actually invested is treated as "fictitious," and all attempts to earn dividends on such stock as attempts at extortion. For instance--to put a case of frequent occurrence--a corporation obtains a charter for a road which will cost two million dollars to build. It accordingly borrows the two millions on mortgage bonds, and constructs the road, while the members divide among themselves two millions of stock more, and they work the road so as to make it pay interest on the four millions. The farmers now say that no road shall be so worked as to pay interest on anything but the proceeds of the bonds, or, in other words, the actual cost of construction and equipment. This, stripped of details, is the new plan, as gravely propounded by the Chicago _Tribune_. Now, if anybody will get up and propose a general railroad act of this nature, applicable to all roads hereafter to be built, we think we can promise that he will have the hearty support of everybody who has seriously reflected on the railroad problem. Forbid the construction of any road except with the proceeds of paid-up stock, and forbid any higher dividends than a certain fixed percentage on this amount, and we shall have a rule of which nobody can complain. We do not believe that a single mile of railroad would ever be constructed under such a rule in a new and thinly settled country like the west or south. Safe investments are not so scarce as to induce people to go into one of the most unsafe of investments, and one promising in most cases no return at all for several years, for the mere chance of seven or even ten per cent at the outside. But we should, nevertheless, be heartily glad to see the plan tried, and believe it would, by stopping railroad construction for the present, bring the western farmers to a healthier comprehension of their relations to the roads, and railroad companies to a healthier comprehension of their relations to the community, and might tend to a solution of the railroad problem, which would be both permanent and satisfactory. But the application of any such rule now to roads _already in operation_ would be spoliation pure and simple--spoliation as flagrant as any ever proposed by Karl Marx or Ben. Butler; if any attempt were made to carry it out, it would produce perhaps the greatest financial crash ever witnessed. It has in the first place that leading characteristic of Ben. Butler's greenback scheme, that it would not only violate a tacit pledge made by the state to individuals, but it would deprive men of rewards already earned by running great risks. When a railroad constructed for two million dollars is made to earn interest on four millions, the case is precisely similar to that of a government which in a time of great danger and perplexity sells seven per cent bonds at fifty; and the present proposal of the farmers resembles Butler's plan of paying the bondholders in 1870 what they gave for their bonds in 1862. In fact, it is the old-fashioned game on a great scale of "Heads I win, tails you lose." The west has, during the past thirty years, wanted railroads, which there was a very small chance of making profitable for a long time. It encouraged eastern men and foreigners to make them in any way they pleased, running whatever risk there was, and pocketing whatever gain there might be, and they were made. The investment then was one of great danger and difficulty; _to treat it now as one of no danger and no difficulty would, be simply swindling_. The word is hard, but the times demand plain speech. This was perhaps a bad mode of securing lines of communication, but the laws allowed it and encouraged it, and the people applauded it, and it is now a contract as binding in morals as in law. It is open to us to turn over a new leaf, and permit no more roads to be made in that way, but it is not open to us to treat those who lent us their money as dupes. As there has been enough of this sharp practice already, more of it would seriously shake the foundations of social order. In the second place, as regards the older roads, it is not possible for "the people" or anybody else to ascertain what is the exact amount on which, in abstract justice, the earnings ought to pay interest. The stock, whether "fictitious" or not, has in most cases passed out of the hands of the original holders. It has been sold and resold, in open market, under the most solemn guarantees known to civilized society, with the understanding that it represented the _bona fide_ ownership of the roads, with all their earnings, possible as well as actual. The laws, the courts, and public opinion, assured to it this character without reservation or qualification. In this character it has passed into the hands of widows, orphans, and helpless people generally, of charitable corporations, of colleges, banks, and institutions of all kinds by which the affairs of the community are administered. To throw any doubt on its value now would be to cause an amount of misery and alarm which no thinking man could contemplate without a shudder. If the state wants to make the railroads common highways, it has the right to take them, but at their market value, paying the owners what other people would pay them, and not enquiring curiously and knavishly into the original cost. Between honest parties to a bargain, that, to use a homely phrase, is "Neither here or there." The people ought, undoubtedly, to have looked forward a little when they first began to grant charters; but not having done so, they ought not to now throw on others the whole damage done by their own laches. Though last, not least, much of the outcry over the high rates charged by railroads is due to an immense but deeply seated popular delusion as to the value of railroad property. When one puts his newspaper aside, and sits down calmly to examine the receipts which the farmers are so anxious to have cut down, the proposal we are discussing assumes a somewhat ludicrous aspect. We have before us the last issue of "Poor's Railroad Manual," which certainly ought to be perfectly studied before the minds of the public are filled with wild and revolutionary notions about railroad property. There were in operation last year in the United States, 57,323 miles of railroad, the net earnings of which bore to the _cost_ of the roads the relation of 5.20 per cent, and to the capital stock of 3.21. This means simply that the work of transportation in the United States is, on the average, already done at a loss to the owners of the lines, or, in other words, vastly more cheaply to the public than there is the least likelihood of its being done in any other way--an assertion which anybody may verify by examining the accounts of the New York state canals. Now, fancy anybody seriously proposing to capitalists to construct railroads, as most of the western railroads were constructed, through a howling wilderness, for _the chance_ of five and a half per cent, whenever the earnings allowed it; and fancy what subjects for spoliation are presented by the bloated owners of railroad property who pocket on the average less than four per cent on the face value of their stock. Let us add, finally, that no corporation should be restricted by law to a certain rate of earnings, unless it contracts freely to do the work on those terms or has a minimum guaranteed to it by the state. In short, the railroad question, we would remind the Chicago _Tribune_, is not simply a question of dollars and cents. It is a question of morality in its highest and most important phases, and one the settlement of which must touch the security of all property, and affect the value of constitutions as safeguards of individual rights. We have gone on for thirty years treating railroads as private property, and permitting and encouraging their construction by private enterprise. Out of this numerous abuses have grown up which ought to be remedied. The corporations have grown too powerful; their influence in politics is corrupting; the power of directors in the management is too great. For the reform of all this, careful legislation _preceded by careful inquiry_ is necessary. The prohibition of special legislation would do much to abate the corruption. Some means ought also to be devised for protecting the minority of the stockholders against the despotic power, which in some cases amounts to virtual confiscation, of those holding a bare majority of the stock, or, in other words, of giving stockholders the means of actually superintending the management of their own property and defending themselves against "rings" and "raids." Moreover, the power of directors to do anything but work the road ought to be diminished. Their discretion as regards extensions, combinations, consolidations, leases, and purchases, ought to be greatly reduced, if not destroyed. This involves two things not easily supplied. One is wise legislation, and the other honest government inspection. How far we are from both is best shown by the Illinois attempt at reform, which consists at present in taking the working of the roads out of the hands of the exceedingly able body of trained business men who now have charge of it, and compelling them to use a crazy table of "rates" drawn up by a mob of excited and ignorant politicians. If we are not prepared for this, the alternative, and the only one, is the purchase of the railroads by the state, and their management by our Murphys and Caseys. We shall not argue against this at present, for obvious reasons. But this, whatever difficulties it may present, is the only honorable way of escaping the necessity of such reforms in the present system as we have indicated above. Whatever the evils of our railroad system, they are not to be met or removed by fraud. _First._ _The Nation_ says that it has "followed the 'farmers' movement' with great interest, and with no little difficulty, owing to the heterogeneous composition of the organizations which are carrying it on, and the wide diversity of their character and avowed aims." The thought suggested is, that because the farmers are not united in their views relative to the best means to effect reform, because of the heterogeniety of their composition, the author of the circular could not understand their objects and aims. Unity of thought and action is rarely found in any body of men, even when few in number, during the discussion of ends sought to be obtained. Such unity cannot be expected in the first stages of the organization, and discussions of plans for future action. When the people living in various parts of the country, in different states, with diverse interests, but all having in view the accomplishment of a common end, attempt to unite their efforts, it would be too much to expect that they would harmonize at the outset in their views, or that they would not commit some errors. The "farmers' movement" is in its incipiency; it maybe said to be now only preparing for action, and it is yet too soon to look for united effort. The first assertion of the circular is only a covert thrust at the "farmers' movement"--an attempt to impress upon the public mind the belief that it is the effort of an irresponsible _mob_ or _rabble_ to defy law and override the rights of other classes, and especially of railroad corporations. Hence _The Nation_ is desirous of talking "common sense," and in its opening discloses its "common sense" to be a plea in behalf of railroad corporations. _Second._ The circular casts odium on the efforts now being made to correct the abuses practiced by railroad corporations, by the use of the following language; "When Judge Lawrence was turned out of office in Illinois by the Grangers, and Judge Craig was put in his place, we took it for granted that they were going to deliver themselves from the tyranny of railroads by putting judges on the bench pledged to interpret the state constitution in a particular way, or, in other words, as a local paper has it, by showing that 'the people were superior to both laws and judges.'" Is it true that "Judge Lawrence was turned out of office?" He was a candidate for re-election, but a majority of the people voted for another man. Judge Craig was elected to office in the constitutional method, and took the seat formerly occupied by Judge Lawrence. The people did not "turn him out," but in the legal method, when his term had expired, elected another man. But, says the circular, "we took it for granted that they (the Grangers) were going to deliver themselves," etc. There were no other judges to be elected, and there was nothing in the election of Craig that would warrant _The Nation_ in arriving at the conclusion that control of the state was to be taken, and judges elected pledged to decide constitutional questions in a particular way. The idea is put prominently forth that the people who are attempting reform are a heterogeneous, irresponsible, body of men--a mob, who, by the mere strength of numbers, are going to overturn all law, pack the courts, and rule as mere caprice should dictate. This was taken for granted, because the people had elected one judge whom they believed was in sympathy with them. By the same rule we are warranted in assuming that the appointment of two judges in sympathy with the railroad interest of the county will revolutionize this whole government, and that all judges to be hereafter appointed will be pledged to decide all constitutional questions in favor of railroads. The author of this circular, however, is forced to admit that he was mistaken in his conclusions, and that the farmers "seek changes of a more legitimate character, and resting on a more solid formation than the creation of a subservient judiciary." While the people of the whole country knew and fully understood that the objects the farmers were seeking to accomplish were relief from the oppressions and extortions practiced by railroad companies; while the agricultural, political, and religious press of the land had been discussing the various propositions, and conventions of farmers and mechanics were meeting, and platforms and principles were being published, and the Patrons of Husbandry were discussing at public meetings and in the newspapers the best means for adoption, the author of this circular, who is now coming to the front as the champion of railroad corporations, or of the people, or of both, and is scattering his circular throughout the land, had heard nothing of the movement, and took it for granted that all that was sought by the "Grangers" was to elect "judges pledged to decide constitutional questions in a particular way;" and it required the "recent platforms" to admonish him that the Grangers looked to a reform of the abuses connected with the railroads and finances of the country. With the new light our author received from the "platforms," he hastens to illuminate the public mind on this "vexed" railroad question. Having now mastered the situation, the writer takes it for granted that the all-important question is, "How to reduce railroads to the condition of public highways, controllable and existing solely or mainly for the convenience of the community," and concludes that the question is "as far from solution as ever." It matters little whether railroads are considered "public highways" or private property. The name by which they are known will not make any difference. The real question is, how to make them subserve the objects for which they were intended, and at the same time afford a fair remuneration to the persons owning them. Some of the courts have already decided that the railroads of the country are public highways; but such decisions afford no relief. _The Nation_ does not give us its opinion, nor does it seem to be aware that the supreme court of the United States has decided that railroads are public highways. _Third._ _The Nation_ says that "The farmers have been accused partly because of their escapade about the judges of Illinois, of seeking to rob the railroad companies of their lawful earnings, by forcing them to carry on their business at a loss, under the operation of cast-iron rules, drawn up without reference to its peculiar nature; that the farmers virtually acknowledged this charge when they saw its gravity, and that they accordingly now announce that they have no scheme of spoliation or confiscation in their minds, but have at last hit upon a mode of ascertaining what are 'reasonable rates,' which consists in discovering what was the amount of capital invested in constructing and operating the roads, and treating a fair per cent on this as a proper return to the stockholders, and all charges which bring in more than this as 'unreasonable,' and therefore open to prohibition by the courts and state legislatures." _The Nation_ admits that this rule applied to companies hereafter organized, and roads hereafter built, would be just, and assures us that everybody would approve of such a law. Let the road be built with the proceeds of paid-up stock, and restricted to a fair per cent dividend on such paid stock, and _The Nation_ will approve. To verify its hearty indorsement of this plan, it tells us in the next sentence that it does "not believe that a single mile of railroad would ever be constructed under such a rule in a new and thinly-settled country like the west and south." It would be glad to see it tried, believing "it would stop building railroads for the present, bring western farmers to a healthier comprehension of their relation to the roads, and railroad companies to a healthier comprehension of their relation to the community, and might tend to a solution of the railroad problem which would be both permanent and satisfactory." It gives as a reason why no roads would be built, that capitalists would not invest their money on unsafe security, or where the return would be uncertain. The logical deduction is, that if railroad companies are limited in the amount of their stock to the actual cost of the roads, no money can be obtained to build them; but if the company is allowed to add fictitious stock--to "water" it at pleasure, then capital can be had. We do not discover the force of this reasoning. Railroads are usually constructed with borrowed capital. The capitalist loaning his money loans it on what he believes to be advantageous terms and good security. If a road cost $2,000,000, and is built with borrowed capital, we cannot readily see how the security is improved by issuing to the stockholders certificates for $2,000,000 of stock, no part of which has been paid. True, it may have the effect to place the road in the hands of men who are experienced in operating roads, capitalizing their earnings and watering stocks, borrowing money on bonds, and loading the road with a burden that can only be supported by extortion; but it does not increase the value of the security held by the lender, nor does it enhance the value of the road. The less burden in the way of debts there is resting on a road, the more valuable are its stock and bonds. We confess we cannot discover the strength of _The Nation's_ argument. It seems to take it for granted that railroads can only be constructed by the class of men who now monopolize the business; in other words, that the class of unscrupulous men who have reduced the organizing of railroad companies and the manner of obtaining capital for the construction of roads to a system, are the only men who can undertake any railroad enterprise. It looks upon the south and west as destitute of men competent to organize a railroad company, or to procure means for the construction of railroads, or to construct them when the capital has been obtained. It regards the home construction of railroads in these sections as out of the question. It concludes that the method now adopted for procuring capital and constructing railroads is the only one that can be adopted. It forgets that in purer and simpler times railroads were built and owned by the parties living along their lines; that the process of adding large amounts of stock by watering was not then discovered, and that without these fictitious additions fair returns were made for the amounts invested. After all, railroads are only built when and where the business of the country requires them, save where large bounties are paid. In the west and south, where the business of certain localities and districts require a railroad, it will be built, even if the legislature should require the owners and stockholders to become so far honest as to limit their stock to the actual cost of the road, and to compel stockholders to pay up before obtaining certificates for their stock. It does not require these professional men to organize and control railroad companies, or the roads after construction. But for the interference of rings formed to prevent such a consummation, any company of men who desire a railroad in their locality, by pursuing an honest course, could organize a company and build their road. If the amount of stock necessary to build the road was in good faith subscribed, and the same was being paid up as the construction of the road progressed, any reasonable amount of money could be obtained by such company by making an honest showing to capitalists. The demand for railroads would be as regularly supplied, as for any other article of necessity. The laws of trade would regulate their construction. In all such cases capitalists would have the best of security, and the roads would pay fair dividends on paid-up capital and interest on the sum borrowed for legitimate purposes. But if there were no legitimate call for the road, if it were intended as a fraud, by a set of educated sharpers who desired to receive large dividends on stock not paid up, or to borrow money by the sale of bonds in an amount double the cost or value of the road when completed, then it could not be built under the _new rules_ and _The Nation's_ prediction would be verified. Any legitimate business not "cornered" or controlled by combinations or rings can be successfully prosecuted, and to say, as does _The Nation_ in substance, that if railroad companies are forbidden to act dishonestly and corruptly, no more railroads will be constructed, is an admission that the whole system is a fraud, and is a strong argument in favor of immediate, prompt, and efficient action on the part of state legislatures and of the courts. If men must become dishonest in order to build and operate railroads successfully, the whole system is rotten and should be destroyed, and an honest plan substituted. _Fourth._ But says _The Nation_: "The application of any such rule to roads _already in operation_, would be spoliation, pure and simple. * * * * It would not only violate a tacit pledge made by the state to individuals, but would deprive men of rewards already earned by running great risks." This is the old argument in favor of railroad companies, but with this difference: It makes the state a party to the dishonest practices of men who have enriched themselves at the expense of the public, and those to whom they have sold their bonds. We venture the assertion that, with few exceptions, all railroads in the United States that have been honestly and prudently managed have earned a fair per cent on the capital actually expended in building, equipping, and operating them, and that a scale of tariffs greatly less than the rates now charged would, as a rule, afford fair dividends on the actual cost of the roads. No instances can be shown, where the states, in granting charters to railroad companies, directly or in the passage of general incorporation statutes, have given to the companies the right to commit frauds upon the parties with whom they deal by using their credit to build their roads, and without payment of their subscriptions issue to themselves certificates as for paid-up stock. In all cases, individual stockholders are made liable for the debts to the amount of their stock. In contemplation of law the stock is paid up, and the roads are constructed by using the capital derived from this source. The stock is supposed to amount to as much as the cost of the road. The state, in giving the company a corporate or artificial being, enters into no agreement, express or implied, to make good the contract of the company, or to be responsible for their misconduct, further than to exercise such control over them as to prevent or reform abuses, by compelling them to act honestly--being the same control exercised over all other persons within its jurisdiction. The creditors of railroad corporations have no stronger claim on the state in case of the non-fulfillment of contracts by railroad companies, or in cases of fraudulent and dishonest practices, than have the creditors of individuals. If a man worth $2,000 represents himself to be worth $4,000, knowing that his representations are false, and obtains credit upon his property for twice its real value, he violates the law, can be punished criminally, and is also responsible in a civil action; but his creditor has no claim upon the state for payment of the sum loaned or credit given on those representations. Is the claim different when a railroad corporation is the party obtaining the credit? Is the state under any greater obligations in one case than in the other? But _The Nation_ says the custom of doing business on this plan has obtained and been in use for thirty years, and from this draws an argument in favor of its legitimacy. Does this fact make it honest? or change the relation of the state to these corporations? A man has followed horse-stealing for thirty years, and is at last detected; he has been in the habit of selling his stolen horses to innocent parties; they have been reclaimed by the owners; can the purchasers, because this thief has so long followed his pursuit, claim compensation from the state? A man obtains goods under false pretenses, and before the owner can reclaim them, sells them to a third party; can the person defrauded claim compensation from the state? We cannot discover the distinction between the cases stated and that of railroad companies, who by falsely pretending that they have paid up their capital stock, obtain money on their bonds for an amount greater than the value of their entire roads. They all commit crimes for which they are liable to be punished, and all are liable in law to make good their contracts; but in neither case is there any pecuniary liability imposed upon the state or the public. Nor would the application of the rule to railroad companies already in existence, who have built their roads, be "spoliation pure and simple." It never can be wrong to compel men to do right. If railroad companies, by arbitrarily increasing their capital stock, and issuing certificates therefor without payment of any part of it, as is the general rule among them, are receiving dividends on such stock, justice to the public demands that the state legislatures should compel them to purge their stock, and at once cancel all such spurious and illegitimate issues. The duty the state government owes to the public demands this, that the oppressions under which the people suffer may be prevented in the future. But "it would deprive men of rewards already earned by running great risks." What these "great risks" are, is not readily seen. They certainly have not risked their money; they built their roads on borrowed capital, and have declared dividends to themselves on stock they have never paid. They extort from the public, in charges for transportation, money sufficient to pay the interest on the money borrowed for building their roads, and to pay dividends on their stock that has not cost them anything, and if they have run any risks they are the same that all men, who violate the law, have ventured upon. The pecuniary risks are all taken by the parties from whom they borrow. _The Nation_ says that the west during thirty years has wanted railroads, and that there was small chance of making them profitable for a long time. That "it encouraged eastern men and foreigners to make them in any way they pleased, running whatever risks existed, and pocketing whatever gain there might be--and they were made." The people of the west have vivid recollections of the manner in which the means were raised to make their railroads. They took large amounts of stock, and voted large amounts of local aid for which they were to receive stock and dividends. After contributing sufficient to pay at least one-half of the entire cost of their roads, their eastern _friends_ mortgaged their roads and sold them out, and the "people of the west" got neither stock nor dividends, but they are to-day paying taxes to discharge debts contracted by them in building their roads after having been swindled by their _eastern friends_ out of values, amounting in Iowa alone, to not less than $4,000,000. _The Nation_ further says that "the investment then was one of great danger and difficulty; _to treat it now as one of no difficulty and no danger, would be simple swindling_." This journal evidently knew but little of the real facts in the case, or it would not have made this assertion. But if we admit that the undertaking was both dangerous and difficult, does that exempt from all responsibility the adventurers who came west and _fattened_ off of the simplicity of the people? Does it absolve them from the effects of their dishonest acts? Are the states pledged to make good the dishonest contracts of these adventurers because of the danger or difficulty they run? While the law should regulate the action of all railroad companies, would it be "simple swindling" for the legislature to compel these pioneer adventurers to purge their companies of fictitious or "watered" stock, or limit their rate of charges? We do not believe that the legislature ever intended to charter railroad companies to prey upon the people at pleasure and without restriction, nor is it true that any injustice would be done in compelling companies, whose roads are constructed, to reduce their stocks to the amounts actually invested in their roads, and to limit their rates of charges to a fair and reasonable compensation for the money so invested. Nor would it shake the foundations of social order to compel these men to act honestly. But another difficulty is suggested in this circular. Our author says: "It is not possible for 'the people' or anybody else to ascertain the _exact_ amount, on which, in abstract justice, the earnings ought to pay interest." True, it may be hard to ascertain what is the "exact" amount, but this fact presents no great difficulty. It is now known to nearly everybody about what railroads cost per mile. When a road that we know, in the nature of things, could not have cost more than $35,000 per mile, is by the "watering" process shown to have cost the sum of $75,000, it would not be difficult to approximate the amount of stock that should be cancelled; nor need the fact that the exact amount cannot be ascertained prevent legislative action. In all cases a large margin to cover any doubts might be allowed to the companies, and still great reductions could be made. _Fifth._ _The Nation_, as it progresses, becomes more earnest. It takes up the oft repeated cry of "innocent purchasers," "widows and orphans," with their all invested in railroad stock. "Charitable corporations and banks" have invested in railroad stocks and "helpless people generally." It tells us that "this stock has been sold and resold, in open market, under the most solemn guarantees known to civilized society, with the understanding that it represents the _bona fide_ ownership of the roads, with all their earnings, possible as well as actual. The laws, the courts, and public opinion, assured to it this character without reservation or qualification. * * * To throw any doubt on its value now would be to cause an amount of misery and alarm which no thinking man could contemplate without a shudder." That some parties would suffer financially by compelling railroad companies to reduce their stock to an honest standard cannot be denied, and in some cases it might work absolute financial ruin. But that any considerable amount of railroad stock is held and owned by poor people is rather improbable, and that "helpless people generally" deal in railroad stock is not true. That some purchases are made by innocent parties may also be true; yet in this day and age when the fact that at least one-half of all railroad stock is mere fiction and has no intrinsic value is known to the public generally, a third party must be "innocent" indeed to purchase it without knowing that its value is imaginary rather than real. Most of the stocks and bonds of railroad companies are sold in Wall Street by the owners and managers, acting in their character of brokers and stock gamblers. The innocent third parties are generally the dupes of these brokers who are on the lookout for the unwary. These dupes are caught and stripped and turned loose without remorse, when the managers of the great railroad interests of the country are "loading or unloading," and no complaint is heard. The "innocents" are robbed without exciting a passing remark; but when an attempt is made to relieve the people from the onerous burdens imposed upon them, we hear on all sides the cry of "innocent purchasers!" and of the great wrongs about to be committed. They virtually admit their own dishonesty, but say in substance: "We have duped others and you must permit us to rob the people in order that 'innocent' third parties may not suffer." This is the pith of _The Nation's_ argument. It goes further, and says: The law and the courts have sanctioned this dishonest course, and because of this, the same raid upon the rights of the people must be allowed to continue without interruption. Neither the people nor the state are in any manner responsible for the acts of these railroad managers. All contracts for the sale of bonds or stocks are in the first instance made with the companies or their agents. They are responsible to the parties holding their bonds or stocks. Their roads are liable to their full value, and each stockholder is liable to the amount of stock he owns, and to that extent must make good the contracts made by the managers of the road. The purchaser had the means of knowing the value of the stock he purchased. If he suffer, his suffering is the result of the fraud of the directors of the road, and of his own negligence. None of these causes affect the right of the state to regulate the company, and to compel it to act honestly. The cry of "innocent purchasers" will not avail. While the people can sympathize with those who are defrauded by the dishonest acts of the companies, and appreciate the helpless condition of widows and orphans who have lost by railroad rascality, the facts will demonstrate that they are few in number, unless we include among the "widows and orphans" Commodore Vanderbilt, Col. Tom. Scott, Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and the Wall street brokers generally, who own and control most of the railroad stocks. If we admit all that is stated in the circular, the right of the people to be protected against the impositions and oppressions of the railroad companies remains unchanged, and the legislature, acting for the whole people, can control the management of the companies so far as it affects the public. If the doctrine advocated by the circular be true, railroad corporations are now able to defy the government and the people. _Sixth._ _The Nation_, in its circular letter, says: "If the state wants to make the railroads common highways, it has the right to take them, but at their market value, paying the owners what other people would pay them, and not inquiring curiously and knavishly into their original cost. Between honest parties to a bargain, that, to use a common phrase, is neither here nor there." We get more light as we advance. As we understand the principles of our government, the states possess the right of eminent domain. But they have no power to buy and sell, like corporations or individuals. They may condemn private property for public use, if the public good requires it. The value of property for public use is ascertained in the manner prescribed by statute. _The Nation_ is inconsistent. It says in one paragraph that the state has no lawful right to regulate railroads and restrict the action of railroad companies in the issuing of stock, etc., and then declares that the state can take the railroads from the companies should it desire to do so. But for cool assurance _The Nation_ is entitled to the champion belt when it says the state _must_ take the roads at their market value--at what other people would pay for them--without inquiring "curiously and knavishly" into the original cost! In other words, these corporations are so potent that should the state attempt to exercise its right of eminent domain, they can dictate the terms upon which they would be willing to surrender their roads to the public. The terms are that the state must pay the companies' value for all the watered stock with which they have loaded their roads, as well as for all the bonds the companies have sold, and do this _without asking questions_. If the people or the states should stop to inquire into their cost, they would be acting knavishly. True, the companies could not build their roads without special grants from state legislatures, but having obtained the privilege of locating their roads where they pleased, and having, by false pretences, obtained local aid and defrauded the people who helped to build the roads; having piled up their fictitious stock by the billion, and by onerous and dishonest charges reduced the farming population to poverty, their champion, _The Nation_, tells the states: "If you want the railroads, you can take them, but you must not be curious to know what they cost; this would be a knavish act; you can have them by paying the companies the full amount of money they claim to have invested, including fictitious and watered stock." This kind of impudence is sublime. The railroad companies, through this _hired spokesman_, propose to quit business provided the states will pay them just what they are pleased to call the value of their roads, and ask no questions. It is usual for the thief, when seeking immunity for his crimes, to propose to return a part of the stolen property, but these corporations, who have been robbing the states and the people for years, offer to close their career by forcing upon the parties robbed what is left of their booty, provided the states will pay to them not only the cost of the roads, but allow them par value for all their bogus or fictitious stock. They propose to compel the states to adopt a new rule--the rule that governs operations in Wall street. They will "bull" their stock to the highest point, and force the states to purchase at these high figures. _The Nation_ says that "The people ought undoubtedly to have looked forward a little when they first began to grant charters; but, not having done so, they ought not now throw on others the whole damage done by their own _laches_." The conclusion is that because they dealt with railroad companies as they deal with honest men, and did not provide in advance for the punishment of all conceivable dishonest practices on the part of the officers of the companies, _therefore_ the people are the guilty parties and should reward the innocent railroad companies by paying them real dollars for the imaginary dollars they have added to their stock. The railroad companies took an undue advantage of the people, but that is "neither here nor there;" the companies must get from the states all that they please to demand for their roads. This is the "common sense" _The Nation_ presents to the people. The power of the states, under the constitution, to purchase, is not doubted by this advocate of the railroad interest, nor does he, in his "common sense," consider the immense tax that the purchase of the railroads would entail upon the people. _Seventh._ _The Nation_ says that "Much of the outcry over the high rates charged by railroads is due to an immense but deeply-seated popular delusion as to the value of railroad property." The reader is then referred to Poor's Railroad Manual for the value of railroad property, but _The Nation_ fails to state that in this Manual the value of all railroads is given as furnished by the companies themselves; it includes all their watered stock and bonds with which the roads are "loaded," and does not purport to give the actual cost of any road. The book, too, is published in the interest of the companies, and for the purpose of inflating rather than giving the true value of the roads. From this Manual it appears that dividends do not average more than five per cent on the stock. When it is remembered that every dollar invested in railroads (taking all the roads in the United States) represents two additional dollars, or that by the increase of stock and issuing of bonds, the reported cost is three times the actual cost of the roads, a dividend of five per cent is equivalent to fifteen per cent on the actually paid-up honest capital, it would appear that _The Nation_, and not the people, is laboring under "a deep-seated delusion." _The Nation_ is not informed upon the subject, or desires to present an unfair view of it. In the Manual to which reference is made, the New York organ will find the statement that railroads can afford to carry freights for one and one-fourth per cent per ton per mile. This is their own statement. What _are_ their charges? Recently they have been reducing their rates. As published, old rates from New York to Chicago were one dollar per hundred-weight. This has been reduced to seventy-five cents by the managers of the Grand Trunk lines. By the new scale the rates charged are about double what the Manual fixes as "paying," and yet _The Nation_ thinks that because the farmers desire lower rates, the question of reduction assumes a "somewhat ludicrous aspect." We are advised to examine Poor's Railroad Manual before we permit our minds to be filled with revolutionary notions about railroads. The farmer should presume that the advantage is all on his side when railroad companies charge him _only_ seventy-five cents for carrying a bushel of wheat from Iowa to New York, and that at present rates railroad companies are making little or nothing, and are running great risks. These are proper deductions from the circular of _The Nation_. Having presented the whole case to its own satisfaction, it gives reign to fancy, and says: "Now fancy anybody seriously proposing to capitalists to construct railroads, as most of the western railroads were constructed, _through a howling wilderness_, for the _chance_ of five and a half per cent whenever the earnings of the road allowed it; and fancy what subjects for spoliation are presented by these bloated owners of railroad property, who pocket on the average less than four per cent _on the par value of their stock_,"--to which we might add, "including more than one billion of dollars for which they never paid one cent." The fact that these self-denying railroad men are constantly extending their roads, buying and leasing all that they can get control of, for the purpose of more effectually controlling the government and enslaving the people, and are devoting all the earnings of their roads to these objects, are not deemed worthy of notice by this champion of the railroad interest. We know as a fact, that the leading and controlling railroad men are spending their whole energy and their money to this end. These men are fast consolidating the whole railroad interest. We also know, that companies that are content to divide their earnings, rather than extend their roads, make large dividends, and leave a surplus to be capitalized. The "common sense" of _The Nation_ does not strike us with its intended force. _The Nation_ evidently has but a limited knowledge of the west. The fancy sketch of self-denying railroad men constructing railroads "_through a howling wilderness_," is finely drawn; but it exists only in the mind of _The Nation_. If this writer had been speaking of the mountain gorges and desolate pine plains which vex and impoverish the Boston & Albany track from Albany to Worcester, he might be excused for his words; but the "howling wilderness" does not apply to the cultivated prairies, whose enterprising farmers helped to build the roads now so bitterly and justly complained of, and it describes the domain of no western road save where the companies obtained, through legislative and congressional aid, enough of the people's land to construct the roads. _Eighth._ As a last point _The Nation_ says, that "no corporation should be restricted by law to a certain rate of earnings unless it consents freely to do such work on those terms, or has a minimum guaranteed to it by the state." The state possesses no power to guarantee to any private corporation any rate of dividends; nor would it be just to compel the people to donate a part of their earnings to railroad companies, or to any other private parties. In our judgment, the state has the constitutional right to regulate and control all private corporations and, when the good of the public demands it, to restrict the rates charged by railroad companies for carrying freights and passengers. We admit that "the questions connected with the regulation of railroads are questions of morality, in their highest and most important phases, the settlement of which must touch the security of all property, and affect the value of constitutions as safeguards of individual rights." We go further, and say that in the management of railroads, and the favors shown to the companies, the constitutional rights of individuals have already been measurably destroyed, and that the most important question now is, How can those rights be restored and no injustice be done to railroad companies? These questions we have already discussed, and will only add that the sole remedy to be applied is legislative limitation and restriction. The abuses now practiced by railroad companies must be corrected. The legislatures have the power and it is their duty to restrict the scale of charges to such rates as will afford a fair remuneration to the companies on their investments, and at the same time protect the people from the extortions of soulless corporations. This power can be exercised over the companies now in being as well as over those to be hereafter organized. We have devoted this chapter to an examination of the views of _The Nation_ for the reason that, in the form of a circular, they have been widely distributed, and are designed to distract and divide those who are seeking relief from the oppressions of this railroad monopoly, and because the writer treats the "Farmers' Movement," the "Grangers," and "the people" with undisguised derision and contempt. The farmers are characterized as a _mob_ of politicians--an irresponsible body--ignorant and careless of the rights of others, and represented as claiming a superiority to courts and laws. The idea that the people, farmers, or grangers have not sufficient knowledge to take the lead in any attempt to reform the abuses under which they suffer, is put prominently forth. The attempt at reform in Illinois is referred to in the following words, in speaking of the remedy for present abuses: "How far we are from both (_i. e._, ascertaining and applying the remedy) is best shown by the Illinois attempt at reform, which consists at present in taking the working of the roads out of the hands of the exceedingly able body of trained business men who have charge of it, and compelling them to use a crazy table of 'rates' drawn up by a _mob_ of excited and ignorant politicians." The prevailing notion which has obtained in some parts of the country, that farmers and working men are not qualified to act in matters of a public nature, is reflected throughout the circular, and the rights and privileges of railroad corporations are spread before the reader in what is termed a "common sense" manner. The object of all this is apparent: It is to impress upon the public mind the idea that the people are not equal to the occasion, and that no reform can be effected. CHAPTER VI. THE INFLUENCE OF MONOPOLIES UPON LABOR. It is a self-evident proposition, that the wealth of a country lies in its products, and that the quantity of its products depends directly upon the amount of labor employed. The diverse interests and pursuits in our country afford opportunity for the employment of an immense number of laborers. Indeed, the persons employed in manual labor in the various industrial pursuits of the country number more than one-half of the whole population. This great army of laborers is engaged in agricultural and horticultural pursuits; its rank labors in shops, factories, furnaces, mines, stores, and offices, upon railroads and canals, and in vessels, and in the numerous other relations requiring their services. Their right to fair remunerative prices for their labor is admitted by all. Whether that remuneration is paid in money, as when the labor is hired, or shares in the product of its creation, the workman should receive a just reward for his services. No onerous taxes, duties, or restrictions, should be imposed upon labor. The profits derived from labor should belong to the laborer. When capital and labor unite in producing, a fair division of the product should be made. Any system that gives the whole product to the capitalist, except the small stipend paid for the time the laborer is employed, is oppressive. We are not an advocate of a division or distribution of the wealth of the country among all classes and pursuits, but contend that it is but just that the operatives in the factory, the forgers of the foundry, the skilled artificers of the machine shop, the miners who extract wealth from the earth, the laborers who build and operate railroads, canals, etc., and, in short, all whose work and skill, combined with capital, produce a profit, should receive a fair proportion of the profit thus created. Prosperity and contentment can only be found where all industrial pursuits prove remunerative; where manual labor not only supports the laborer, but enables him to acquire a competence in process of time. That division of labor and capital which compels the laborer to toil daily to keep want from his door, and is so inflexible that the sickness of a single day entails the loss of necessaries to his family, is a species of slavery. When by the customs of the country, or by its laws, the line dividing labor and capital is so clearly defined, that the laborer, by a life-time of toil, can accumulate nothing, while the capitalist employing him realizes from ten to one hundred per cent per annum upon the amount invested, the one is but coining the life-blood of the other, and the laborer is but little better than a bond-servant. From time immemorial, those who obtain their support by manual labor have received less attention from government than any other class. Indeed, in all monarchial governments they are left out of consideration, except as their labor can be made useful in advancing the interests of the superior classes. In our own country there has existed a prejudice against the laboring classes. Especially was this so in the south until the abolition of slavery. As a nation, we have been apt to follow old opinions, and look upon labor as degrading, and the laborer as a menial. This prejudice still exists to a great degree, and our boys seek speculative rather than legitimate industrial employments. While in theory all men are considered equal in our country, practically the old feudal distinction is kept up. We have no titled aristocracy in America, but we are fast creating an aristocracy of wealth and pursuits. While labor is the motive-power, and manual laborers the engineers who keep the car of progress moving forward, they receive less consideration from the hands of government than the loungers and speculators. While acts of congress and state legislatures, designed to benefit the wealthy capitalists, are of frequent date, but few can be found designed or enacted in the interest of the laboring classes. Special legislation in favor of the capitalists, corporations, and manufacturers, has been the rule; legislation in the interest of the laboring classes the exception. The _dignity_ that should attach to labor is entirely wanting, and the respect the laborer should command is not accorded to him. Not that he is looked upon as the inferior of other men, but that in all matters affecting the public welfare, the interests of the capitalist, the large operator, the banker, manufacturer, and corporations generally, claim special attention, while the real wealth-producing portion of the people is neglected. This is not the result of any design on the part of those engaged in other pursuits--it results from the fact that capital pays particular attention to its own interests, while labor is content to let other interests take control of the government, of all public matters, and of even its own pursuits, quietly accepting a secondary position, and neglecting to claim the consideration and respect to which it is entitled from its intimate connection with the capital of the country and the body politic. The laborer's political existence is seldom felt save at elections, when the strongest _vote_ decides the day, and then generally in the blind following of its file leaders. The reforms promised to labor on these occasions are seldom realized, and the laborer, without asserting his rights as a freeman, is too apt to continue in the old, beaten track, sometimes complainingly, it is true, but willing and ready to be directed by his party or employer, whenever his help is needed. All of which is calculated to widen the line dividing capital and labor, and to increase the wealth and power of the capitalist. Let us illustrate: The capitalist is engaged in manufacturing, and wishes protection from the government. The question of protective tariffs is one of the issues of the campaign. He employs one hundred voters. He makes known to them his wishes, and explains to them the benefits he expects to receive. They wish to oblige their employer and accept his views as correct, and all cast their votes for what they are led to believe will be his benefit. They are not less intelligent than other men, but instead of acting independently they wish to please their employer. By this act, they involuntarily take an inferior place among men, and lower their dignity. While they have by their action enabled the manufacturer to increase his gains, by the success of a protective tariff, they have secured nothing for themselves, not even an advance of wages, unless their employer voluntarily allows such an advance. He is aided by legislative enactment through their votes, and can demand additional profit for the product of their labor; but the act is of no personal benefit to them. All they receive, if anything, is voluntarily allowed by the capitalist employing them. Had they examined for themselves they might have discovered that the act which benefited him was detrimental to their own interests. The same illustration will apply to all pursuits requiring capital and labor. The consolidation of any business so as to destroy or prevent competition is detrimental to the interests of labor. Monopolies, of whatever kind, are encroachments upon the interests of those who depend upon manual labor for support. Railroad corporations in the United States employ not less than two hundred thousand men. This large number of men have no interest in these corporations excepting the wages paid to them. Subtract the sums they so receive, and their daily labor still adds to the wealth of these powerful corporations. They are employed to perform manual labor; they are free and independent citizens of this republic. Their employers do not have any claim upon them for anything but their labor. Yet, as a general rule, in all matters affecting the interests of railroad corporations, when the issue is made at the ballot box, these men are found voting as their employers desire, too often without giving the matter due attention, and not unfrequently in support of measures which are at war with their own best interests. In thus voting they are influenced by what they deem proper motives; they desire to gratify their employers. This state of things is also most strikingly presented in local and municipal elections, when certain measures are to be carried. In such cases, as a general rule, the person or officer controlling or employing men votes them "solid" on the side of the question he supports. In the cases we have given, as well as in all others of a like character, where any combination or corporation desires to influence or carry certain measures, the undivided support of the employees is expected. So long has this manner of voting been practiced, it has grown into a custom; for the employee, if he refuses to observe it, does so at the risk of losing his employment. We have referred to these things, not for the purpose of showing that the men engaged in manual labor are inferior to other men, or to prove that they act from improper motives, but to demonstrate our proposition that they do not think and act independently in matters of public concern, and are indifferent to their own best interests. That while other interests procure special favors from government, the laboring classes are content to occupy an inferior position, and even give their support to measures tending to degrade rather than to ennoble them. Because of these things, the laboring classes, as a general rule, are treated by those who are getting control of the capital and business of the country as inferior beings, and labor is not classed by them as of honorable calling. The creation of privileged classes in our country is to be deprecated. The centralization of wealth and the grading of the standing of men by the amount of money they possess; the creation of great corporations, with power to control the business and finances of the country, now threaten to overthrow our republican institutions. But equally to be dreaded is the indifference manifested by the laboring classes in asserting and protecting their rights. Practically, so far as the business of the country is concerned, the line between capital and labor is now sharply drawn, and in the administration of the government, the old-time dogma, that the class controlling the wealth of the country should rule, while those who labor for a support are to remain "hewers of wood and drawers of water," is fast assuming tangible form, and unless the far-reaching and grasping policy of monopolies is checked by the laboring and producing classes, the absolute control of the government will pass from the people into the hands of their oppressors. By the action of railroad corporations; the special legislation in favor of certain interests; the monopolies given to manufacturers, and the action of the Wall street brokers, the wealth of the country has become centralized, and is controlled by and in the interests of the monopolists, who, because of their combinations, also control the value of labor throughout the country. The influence of the laboring classes is made to subserve the purposes of monopolists. The manufacturer, protected by government, enjoys all the profit accruing from the labor of the operatives, and uses the influence incident to his position to strengthen his interests by controlling their suffrages. In all the different labor-employing pursuits, the political privileges enjoyed by the employe are directed and controlled by the employer in his own interest; the whole mental and physical structure of the laborer is used in advancing his employer's interest. Because of this law of capital, the comparatively few men now controlling the railroads of the country, our manufacturers and other great interests which have become the special favorites of those in power, have obtained an almost unlimited influence over the best interests of the country. They have been able to entrench themselves in their strongholds, and compel all the agricultural, the commercial and other industrial pursuits to contribute to their already dangerous power. The great army of laborers, instead of controlling the political affairs of the country in their own interest, become the instruments in the hands of the monopolists of their own oppression. With sufficient strength to shape the whole policy of the government they are content to let others control them, while they toil from day to day for the small compensation allowed them, and derive no benefit from the proceeds of their labor. If the capital and labor of the country were combined, so that the products could be divided and a fair proportion allowed to the laborer, his social and financial condition would be improved, and the power of the few who now control the government in their own interest would be destroyed. While the duty of providing for himself and family is imposed upon every one, in _this country_ every citizen has another important duty to perform: the duty of aiding in the preservation of republican government and the equal rights of all the people. Those who become indifferent to these objects and duties, and allows selfish or ambitious men to get the control of the government, and prostitute it to their own purposes, are the authors of their own sufferings. And those who permit themselves to become instruments in the hands of the people's oppressors for the continuance of oppression, commit great wrongs to themselves and their country. The public opinion that accords to the Wall street stock gambler a place among honorable men, and allows him to shape the financial policy of the country, that allows him to live outside of prison walls, is corrupted and perverted. Yet there is no class of men in the whole country who have so great an influence over the government and the commercial and financial interests as the Wall street brokers. No class of citizens should command greater respect than that engaged in manual labor, nor should any other class exercise a more potent influence in the nation; yet, as a matter of fact, no class receives so little consideration or has less influence in national affairs. While great interests with concentrated wealth, requiring no special aids from government, are constantly receiving them, the interests of the laboring and producing classes receive no special care or attention. While railroad corporations and other great monopolies are vigilant in protecting and strengthening their interests, the laboring classes are indifferent as to what is to be their future. While other interests are extending their influence, the interests of the laborers are neglected, and the laborers themselves are content to occupy inferior places in the body politic. While labor is the means, and the _laborer_ the _power_ that developes and enriches the country, the _interests_ of the laborers languish, while those of the speculator, the stock broker, and capitalist, _prosper_. Before we can become a prosperous, contented, and happy people, all honorable pursuits must have equal rights before the law. Special and class legislation must be abandoned, and the _dignity_ of labor must be fully vindicated. But it may be asked, How are these things to be accomplished? We answer: 1st. By laborers asserting their right to think and act as independent men; by giving their employers to understand that they do not hire their intellects, their _rights_ as citizens, but only their physical force; that while they labor for their employers, they preserve their individuality and self-respect; by giving their employers to understand that they are only paid for manual labor, and that they are not bondsmen. 2d. By demanding for labor such remuneration as will allow the laborer to share in the profits resulting from his toil, either by treating it as an investment in the business in which it is employed, or by the payment of such compensation as will allow a surplus for investment--refusing to wear out their lives in procuring a bare subsistence. 3d. By the diffusion of knowledge among the laboring classes, especially of the theory and objects of our government, and the relation sustained by the laboring classes to the government, and by demanding for themselves due respect and consideration on the part of those engaged in other pursuits; by demanding of legislatures and of congress the enactment of such statutes as shall not impose taxes upon their labor for the benefit of other pursuits, and such as shall require all taxes levied for any purpose to be levied upon the _property_ and _not the labor_ of the country. 4th. By demanding the unconditional repeal of all statutes which confer upon individuals, classes, companies, corporations, or callings, special bounties, grants, privileges, or profits which in their operations act oppressively upon the laboring and producing classes. And lastly, to strive to eradicate the ancient and continuing prejudice against labor, and to vindicate the truth of the often repeated declaration of eminent men: "That the person engaged in manual labor is following the most ancient as well as the most noble calling." These objects can all be accomplished by united and intelligent action. The false, yet popular, idea that a man's respectability among his fellows is graduated by the extent of his possessions, and his political standing scaled by the amount of his money, can be obliterated, and merit alone will become the rule by which to measure the man. The laboring man with intellect and personal merit will supersede the man who has money but lacks mind, in the social and political world. When the laboring classes, including the farmers and mechanics, shall boldly step into the front ranks they will make their influence felt; reforms will be the order of the day; trading and dishonest politicians will be suffered to go into retirement; courts committed to the interests of monopolies will be reformed, and the law will be administered by judges who will not pervert the plain letter and spirit of the constitution for the purpose of upholding unjust laws; the monopolists who now rule and ruin the country will be shorn of their power, the producer and laborer will receive for their labor and products fair value in money, and will not be obliged to receive payment in depreciated paper, while the speculator, the broker, and the government buy and sell gold and silver as articles of commerce. The agriculturalist, the mechanic, and laborer will be the _peers_ of the men who are now forming an aristocracy of wealth; the laws will be faithfully and honestly administered, and peace and prosperity will fill the land. 
59456	----	FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN. BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART. Vol. I. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1871. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER I. Denmark Hill, 1st January, 1871. Friends, We begin to-day another group of ten years, not in happy circumstances. Although, for the time, exempted from the direct calamities which have fallen on neighbouring states, believe me, we have not escaped them because of our better deservings, nor by our better wisdom; but only for one or two bad reasons, or for both: either that we have not sense enough to determine in a great national quarrel which side is right, or that we have not courage to defend the right, when we have discerned it. I believe that both these bad reasons exist in full force; that our own political divisions prevent us from understanding the laws of international justice; and that, even if we did, we should not dare to defend, perhaps not even to assert them, being on this first of January, 1871, in much bodily fear; that is to say, afraid of the Russians; afraid of the Prussians; afraid of the Americans; afraid of the Hindoos; afraid of the Chinese; afraid of the Japanese; afraid of the New Zealanders; and afraid of the Caffres: and very justly so, being conscious that our only real desire respecting any of these nations has been to get as much out of them as we could. They have no right to complain of us, notwithstanding, since we have all, lately, lived ourselves in the daily endeavour to get as much out of our neighbours and friends as we could; and having by this means, indeed, got a good deal out of each other, and put nothing into each other, the actually obtained result, this day, is a state of emptiness in purse and stomach, for the solace of which our boasted "insular position" is ineffectual. I have listened to many ingenious persons, who say we are better off now than ever we were before. I do not know how well off we were before; but I know positively that many very deserving persons of my acquaintance have great difficulty in living under these improved circumstances: also, that my desk is full of begging letters, eloquently written either by distressed or dishonest people; and that we cannot be called, as a nation, well off, while so many of us are either living in honest or in villanous beggary. For my own part, I will put up with this state of things, passively, not an hour longer. I am not an unselfish person, nor an Evangelical one; I have no particular pleasure in doing good; neither do I dislike doing it so much as to expect to be rewarded for it in another world. But I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky, when there is any--which is seldom, now-a-days, near London--has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly. Therefore, as I have said, I will endure it no longer quietly; but henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do my poor best to abate this misery. But that I may do my best, I must not be miserable myself any longer; for no man who is wretched in his own heart, and feeble in his own work, can rightly help others. Now my own special pleasure has lately been connected with a given duty. I have been ordered to endeavour to make our English youth care somewhat for the arts; and must put my uttermost strength into that business. To which end I must clear myself from all sense of responsibility for the material distress around me, by explaining to you, once for all, in the shortest English I can, what I know of its causes; by pointing out to you some of the methods by which it might be relieved; and by setting aside regularly some small percentage of my income, to assist, as one of yourselves, in what one and all we shall have to do; each of us laying by something, according to our means, for the common service; and having amongst us, at last, be it ever so small, a national Store instead of a National Debt. Store which, once securely founded, will fast increase, provided only you take the pains to understand, and have perseverance to maintain, the elementary principles of Human Economy, which have, of late, not only been lost sight of, but wilfully and formally entombed under pyramids of falsehood. And first I beg you most solemnly to convince yourselves of the partly comfortable, partly formidable fact, that your prosperity is in your own hands. That only in a remote degree does it depend on external matters, and least of all on forms of government. In all times of trouble the first thing to be done is to make the most of whatever forms of government you have got, by setting honest men to work them; (the trouble, in all probability, having arisen only from the want of such;) and for the rest, you must in no wise concern yourselves about them; more particularly it would be lost time to do so at this moment, when whatever is popularly said about governments cannot but be absurd, for want of definition of terms. Consider, for instance, the ridiculousness of the division of parties into "Liberal" and "Conservative." There is no opposition whatever between those two kinds of men. There is opposition between Liberals and Illiberals; that is to say, between people who desire liberty, and who dislike it. I am a violent Illiberal; but it does not follow that I must be a Conservative. A Conservative is a person who wishes to keep things as they are; and he is opposed to a Destructive, who wishes to destroy them, or to an Innovator, who wishes to alter them. Now, though I am an Illiberal, there are many things I should like to destroy. I should like to destroy most of the railroads in England, and all the railroads in Wales. I should like to destroy and rebuild the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, and the East end of London; and to destroy, without rebuilding, the new town of Edinburgh, the north suburb of Geneva, and the city of New York. Thus in many things I am the reverse of Conservative; nay, there are some long-established things which I hope to see changed before I die; but I want still to keep the fields of England green, and her cheeks red; and that girls should be taught to curtsey, and boys to take their hats off, when a Professor or otherwise dignified person passes by; and that Kings should keep their crowns on their heads, and Bishops their crosiers in their hands; and should duly recognise the significance of the crown, and the use of the crook. As you would find it thus impossible to class me justly in either party, so you would find it impossible to class any person whatever, who had clear and developed political opinions, and who could define them accurately. Men only associate in parties by sacrificing their opinions, or by having none worth sacrificing; and the effect of party government is always to develope hostilities and hypocrisies, and to extinguish ideas. Thus the so-called Monarchic and Republican parties have thrown Europe into conflagration and shame, merely for want of clear conception of the things they imagine themselves to fight for. The moment a Republic was proclaimed in France, Garibaldi came to fight for it as a "Holy Republic." But Garibaldi could not know,--no mortal creature could know,--whether it was going to be a Holy or Profane Republic. You cannot evoke any form of government by beat of drum. The proclamation of a government implies the considerate acceptance of a code of laws, and the appointment of means for their execution, neither of which things can be done in an instant. You may overthrow a government, and announce yourselves lawless, in the twinkling of an eye, as you can blow up a ship, or upset and sink one. But you can no more create a government with a word, than an ironclad. No; nor can you even define its character in few words; the measure of sanctity in it depending on degrees of justice in the administration of law, which are often independent of form altogether. Generally speaking, the community of thieves in London or Paris have adopted Republican Institutions, and live at this day without any acknowledged Captain or Head; but under Robin Hood, brigandage in England, and under Sir John Hawkwood, brigandage in Italy, became strictly monarchical. Theft could not, merely by that dignified form of government, be made a holy manner of life; but it was made both dexterous and decorous. The pages of the English knights under Sir John Hawkwood spent nearly all their spare time in burnishing the knight's armour, and made it always so bright, that they were called "the White Company." And the Notary of Tortona, Azario, tells us of them, that these foragers (furatores) "were more expert than any plunderers in Lombardy. They for the most part sleep by day, and watch by night, and have such plans and artifices for taking towns, that never were the like or equal of them witnessed" [1] The actual Prussian expedition into France merely differs from Sir John's in Italy by being more generally savage, much less enjoyable, and by its clumsier devices for taking towns; for Sir John had no occasion to burn their libraries. In neither case does the monarchical form of government bestow any Divine right of theft; but it puts the available forces into a convenient form. Even with respect to convenience only, it is not yet determinable by the evidence of history, what is absolutely the best form of government to live under. There are indeed said to be republican villages (towns?) in America, where everybody is civil, honest, and substantially comfortable; but these villages have several unfair advantages--there are no lawyers in them, no town councils, and no parliaments. Such republicanism, if possible on a large scale, would be worth fighting for; though, in my own private mind, I confess I should like to keep a few lawyers, for the sake of their wigs, and the faces under them--generally very grand when they are really good lawyers--and for their (unprofessional) talk. Also I should like to have a Parliament, into which people might be elected on condition of their never saying anything about politics, that one might still feel sometimes that one was acquainted with an M.P. In the meantime Parliament is a luxury to the British squire, and an honour to the British manufacturer, which you may leave them to enjoy in their own way; provided only you make them always clearly explain, when they tax you, what they want with your money; and that you understand yourselves, what money is, and how it is got, and what it is good for, and bad for. These matters I hope to explain to you in this and some following letters; which, among various other reasons, it is necessary that I should write in order that you may make no mistake as to the real economical results of Art teaching, whether in the Universities or elsewhere. I will begin by directing your attention particularly to that point. The first object of all work--not the principal one, but the first and necessary one--is to get food, clothes, lodging, and fuel. It is quite possible to have too much of all these things. I know a great many gentlemen, who eat too large dinners; a great many ladies, who have too many clothes. I know there is lodging to spare in London, for I have several houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know there is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to pound the roads with, while our men stand idle; or drink till they can't stand, idle, or any otherwise. Notwithstanding, there is agonizing distress even in this highly favoured England, in some classes, for want of food, clothes, lodging, and fuel. And it has become a popular idea among the benevolent and ingenious, that you may in great part remedy these deficiencies by teaching, to these starving and shivering persons, Science and Art. In their way--as I do not doubt you will believe--I am very fond of both; and I am sure it will be beneficial for the British nation to be lectured upon the merits of Michael Angelo, and the nodes of the moon. But I should strongly object myself to being lectured on either, while I was hungry and cold; and I suppose the same view of the matter would be taken by the greater number of British citizens in those predicaments. So that, I am convinced, their present eagerness for instruction in painting and astronomy proceeds from an impression in their minds that, somehow, they may paint or star-gaze themselves into clothes and victuals. Now it is perfectly true that you may sometimes sell a picture for a thousand pounds; but the chances are greatly against your doing so--much more than the chances of a lottery. In the first place, you must paint a very clever picture; and the chances are greatly against your doing that. In the second place, you must meet with an amiable picture-dealer; and the chances are somewhat against your doing that. In the third place, the amiable picture-dealer must meet with a fool; and the chances are not always in favour even of his doing that--though, as I gave exactly the sum in question for a picture myself, only the other day, it is not for me to say so. Assume, however, to put the case most favourably, that what with the practical results of the energies of Mr. Cole, at Kensington, and the æsthetic impressions produced by various lectures at Cambridge and Oxford, the profits of art employment might be counted on as a rateable income. Suppose even that the ladies of the richer classes should come to delight no less in new pictures than in new dresses; and that picture-making should thus become as constant and lucrative an occupation as dress-making. Still, you know, they can't buy pictures and dresses too. If they buy two pictures a day, they can't buy two dresses a day; or if they do, they must save in something else. They have but a certain income, be it never so large. They spend that, now; and you can't get more out of them. Even if they lay by money, the time comes when somebody must spend it. You will find that they do verily spend now all they have, neither more nor less. If ever they seem to spend more, it is only by running in debt, and not paying; if they for a time spend less, some day the overplus must come into circulation. All they have, they spend; more than that, they cannot at any time; less than that, they can only for a short time. Whenever, therefore, any new industry, such as this of picture-making, is invented, of which the profits depend on patronage, it merely means that you have effected a diversion of the current of money in your own favour, and to somebody else's loss. Nothing, really, has been gained by the nation, though probably much time and wit, as well as sundry people's senses, have been lost. Before such a diversion can be effected, a great many kind things must have been done; a great deal of excellent advice given; and an immense quantity of ingenious trouble taken: the arithmetical course of the business throughout being, that for every penny you are yourself better, somebody else is a penny the worse; and the net result of the whole, precisely zero. Zero, of course, I mean, so far as money is concerned. It may be more dignified for working women to paint than to embroider; and it may be a very charming piece of self-denial, in a young lady, to order a high art fresco instead of a ball-dress; but as far as cakes and ale are concerned, it is all the same,--there is but so much money to be got by you, or spent by her, and not one farthing more, usually a great deal less, by high art than by low. Zero, also, observe, I mean partly in a complimentary sense to the work executed. If you have done no good by painting, at least you have done no serious mischief. A bad picture is indeed a dull thing to have in a house, and in a certain sense a mischievous thing; but it won't blow the roof off. Whereas, of most things which the English, French, and Germans are paid for making now-a-days,--cartridges, cannon, and the like,--you know the best thing we can possibly hope is that they may be useless, and the net result of them, zero. The thing, therefore, that you have to ascertain approximately, in order to determine on some consistent organization, is the maximum of wages-fund you have to depend on to start with, that is to say, virtually, the sum of the income of the gentleman of England. Do not trouble yourselves at first about France or Germany, or any other foreign country. The principle of free trade is, that French gentlemen should employ English workmen, for whatever the English can do better than the French; and that English gentlemen should employ French workmen, for whatever the French can do better than the English. It is a very right principle, but merely extends the question to a wider field. Suppose, for the present, that France, and every other country but your own, were--what I suppose you would, if you had your way, like them to be--sunk under water, and that England were the only country in the world. Then, how would you live in it most comfortably? Find out that, and you will then easily find how two countries can exist together; or more, not only without need for fighting, but to each other's advantage. For, indeed, the laws by which two next-door neighbours might live most happily--the one not being the better for his neighbour's poverty, but the worse, and the better for his neighbour's prosperity--are those also by which it is convenient and wise for two parishes, two provinces, or two kingdoms, to live side by side. And the nature of every commercial and military operation which takes place in Europe, or in the world, may always be best investigated by supposing it limited to the districts of a single country. Kent and Northumberland exchange hops and coals on precisely the same economical principles as Italy and England exchange oil for iron; and the essential character of the war between Germany and France may be best understood by supposing it a dispute between Lancaster and Yorkshire for the line of the Ribble. Suppose that Lancashire, having absorbed Cumberland and Cheshire, and been much insulted and troubled by Yorkshire in consequence, and at last attacked; and having victoriously repulsed the attack, and retaining old grudges against Yorkshire, about the colour of roses, from the fifteenth century, declares that it cannot possibly be safe against the attacks of Yorkshire any longer, unless it gets the townships of Giggleswick and Wigglesworth, and a fortress on Pen-y-gent. Yorkshire replying that this is totally inadmissible, and that it will eat its last horse, and perish to its last Yorkshireman, rather than part with a stone of Giggleswick, a crag of Pen-y-gent, or a ripple of Ribble,--Lancashire with its Cumbrian and Cheshire contingents invades Yorkshire, and meeting with much Divine assistance, ravages the West Riding, and besieges York on Christmas day. That is the actual gist of the whole business; and in the same manner you may see the downright common-sense--if any is to be seen--of other human proceedings, by taking them first under narrow and homely conditions. So, for the present, we will fancy ourselves, what you tell me you all want to be, independent: we will take no account of any other country but Britain; and on that condition I will begin to show you in my next paper how we ought to live, after ascertaining the utmost limits of the wages-fund, which means the income of our gentleman; that is to say, essentially, the income of those who have command of the land, and therefore of all food. What you call "wages," practically, is the quantity of food which the possessor of the land gives you, to work for him. There is, finally, no "capital" but that. If all the money of all the capitalists in the whole world were destroyed, the notes and bills burnt, the gold irrecoverably buried, and all the machines and apparatus of manufactures crushed, by a mistake in signals, in one catastrophe; and nothing remained but the land, with its animals and vegetables, and buildings for shelter,--the poorer population would be very little worse off than they are at this instant; and their labour, instead of being "limited" by the destruction, would be greatly stimulated. They would feed themselves from the animals and growing crops; heap here and there a few tons of ironstone together, build rough walls round them to get a blast, and in a fortnight, they would have iron tools again, and be ploughing and fighting, just as usual. It is only we who had the capital who would suffer; we should not be able to live idle, as we do now, and many of us--I, for instance--should starve at once: but you, though little the worse, would none of you be the better eventually, for our loss--or starvation. The removal of superfluous mouths would indeed benefit you somewhat, for a time; but you would soon replace them with hungrier ones; and there are many of us who are quite worth our meat to you in different ways, which I will explain in due place: also I will show you that our money is really likely to be useful to you in its accumulated form, (besides that, in the instances when it has been won by work, it justly belongs to us,) so only that you are careful never to let us persuade you into borrowing it, and paying us interest for it. You will find a very amusing story, explaining your position in that case, at the 117th page of the 'Manual of Political Economy,' published this year at Cambridge, for your early instruction, in an almost devotionally catechetical form, by Messrs. Macmillan. Perhaps I had better quote it to you entire: it is taken by the author "from the French." There was once in a village a poor carpenter, who worked hard from morning to night. One day James thought to himself, "With my hatchet, saw, and hammer, I can only make coarse furniture, and can only get the pay for such. If I had a plane, I should please my customers more, and they would pay me more. Yes, I am resolved, I will make myself a plane." At the end of ten days, James had in his possession an admirable plane which he valued all the more for having made it himself. Whilst he was reckoning all the profits which he expected to derive from the use of it, he was interrupted by William, a carpenter in the neighbouring village. William, having admired the plane, was struck with the advantages which might be gained from it. He said to James-- "You must do me a service; lend me the plane for a year." As might be expected, James cried out, "How can you think of such a thing, William? Well, if I do you this service, what will you do for me in return?" W. Nothing. Don't you know that a loan ought to be gratuitous? J. I know nothing of the sort; but I do know that if I were to lend you my plane for a year, it would be giving it to you. To tell you the truth, that was not what I made it for. W. Very well, then; I ask you to do me a service; what service do you ask me in return? J. First, then, in a year the plane will be done for. You must therefore give me another exactly like it. W. That is perfectly just. I submit to these conditions. I think you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing further. J. I think otherwise. I made the plane for myself, and not for you. I expected to gain some advantage from it. I have made the plane for the purpose of improving my work and my condition; if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will gain the profit of it during the whole of that time. I am not bound to do you such a service without receiving anything in return. Therefore, if you wish for my plane, besides the restoration already bargained for, you must give me a new plank as a compensation for the advantages of which I shall be deprived. These terms were agreed to, but the singular part of it is that at the end of the year, when the plane came into James's possession, he lent it again; recovered it, and lent it a third and fourth time. It has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends it. Let us examine this little story. The plane is the symbol of all capital, and the plank is the symbol of all interest. If this be an abridgment, what a graceful piece of highly wrought literature the original story must be! I take the liberty of abridging it a little more. James makes a plane, lends it to William on 1st January for a year. William gives him a plank for the loan of it, wears it out, and makes another for James, which he gives him on 31st December. On 1st January he again borrows the new one; and the arrangement is repeated continuously. The position of William therefore is, that he makes a plane every 31st of December; lends it to James till the next day, and pays James a plank annually for the privilege of lending it to him on that evening. This, in future investigations of capital and interest, we will call, if you please, "the Position of William." You may not at the first glance see where the fallacy lies (the writer of the story evidently counts on your not seeing it at all). If James did not lend the plane to William, he could only get his gain of a plank by working with it himself, and wearing it out himself. When he had worn it out at the end of the year, he would, therefore, have to make another for himself. William, working with it instead, gets the advantage instead, which he must, therefore, pay James his plank for; and return to James, what James would, if he had not lent his plane, then have had--not a new plane--but the worn-out one, James must make a new one for himself, as he would have had to do if no William had existed; and if William likes to borrow it again for another plank--all is fair. That is to say, clearing the story of its nonsense, that James makes a plane annually, and sells it to William for its proper price, which, in kind, is a new plank. But this arrangement has nothing whatever to do with principal or with interest. There are, indeed, many very subtle conditions involved in any sale; one among which is the value of ideas; I will explain that value to you in the course of time; (the article is not one which modern political economists have any familiarity with dealings in;) and I will tell you somewhat also of the real nature of interest; but if you will only get, for the present, a quite clear idea of "the Position of William," it is all I want of you. I remain, your faithful friend, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER II. Denmark Hill, 1st February, 1871. Friends,-- Before going farther, you may like to know, and ought to know, what I mean by the title of these Letters; and why it is in Latin. I can only tell you in part, for the Letters will be on many things, if I am able to carry out my plan in them; and that title means many things, and is in Latin, because I could not have given an English one that meant so many. We, indeed, were not till lately a loquacious people, nor a useless one; but the Romans did more, and said less, than any other nation that ever lived; and their language is the most heroic ever spoken by men. Therefore I wish you to know, at least, some words of it, and to recognize what thoughts they stand for. Some day, I hope you may know--and that European workmen may know--many words of it; but even a few will be useful. Do not smile at my saying so. Of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Chemistry, you can know but little, at the utmost; but that little, well learnt, serves you well. And a little Latin, well learnt, will serve you also, and in a higher way than any of these. 'Fors' is the best part of three good English words, Force, Fortitude, and Fortune. I wish you to know the meaning of those three words accurately. 'Force' (in humanity), means power of doing good work. A fool, or a corpse, can do any quantity of mischief; but only a wise and strong man, or, with what true vital force there is in him, a weak one, can do good. 'Fortitude' means the power of bearing necessary pain, or trial of patience, whether by time, or temptation. 'Fortune' means the necessary fate of a man: the ordinance of his life which cannot be changed. To 'make your Fortune' is to rule that appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable. Fors is a feminine word; and Clavigera, is, therefore, the feminine of 'Claviger.' Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a rudder. Gero means 'I carry.' It is the root of our word 'gesture' (the way you carry yourself); and, in a curious bye-way, of 'jest.' Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer, Key-bearer, or Nail-bearer. Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera corresponds to one of the three meanings of Fors. Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of Deed. Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience. Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law. I will tell you what you may usefully know of those three Greek persons in a little time. At present, note only of the three powers: 1. That the strength of Hercules is for deed, not misdeed; and that his club--the favourite weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form is the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek sculptors, (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum, and I shall have much to tell you of him--especially how he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented mixed vegetable soup)--was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. 2. That the Second Fors Clavigera is portress at a gate which she cannot open till you have waited long; and that her robe is of the colour of ashes, or dry earth. [2] 3. That the third Fors Clavigera, the power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal; and that the notablest crown yet existing in Europe of any that have been worn by Christian kings, was--people say--made of a Nail. That is enough about my title, for this time; now to our work. I told you, and you will find it true, that, practically, all wages mean the food and lodging given you by the possessors of the land. It begins to be asked on many sides how the possessors of the land became possessed of it, and why they should still possess it, more than you or I; and Ricardo's 'Theory' of Rent, though, for an economist, a very creditably ingenious work of fiction, will not much longer be imagined to explain the 'Practice' of Rent. The true answer, in this matter, as in all others, is the best. Some land has been bought; some, won by cultivation: but the greater part, in Europe, seized originally by force of hand. You may think, in that case, you would be justified in trying to seize some yourselves, in the same way. If you could, you, and your children, would only hold it by the same title as its present holders. If it is a bad one, you had better not so hold it; if a good one, you had better let the present holders alone. And in any case, it is expedient that you should do so, for the present holders, whom we may generally call 'Squires' (a title having three meanings, like Fors, and all good; namely, Rider, Shield-bearer, and Carver), are quite the best men you can now look to for leading: it is too true that they have much demoralized themselves lately by horse-racing, bird-shooting, and vermin-hunting; and most of all by living in London, instead of on their estates; but they are still (without exception) brave; nearly without exception, good-natured; honest, so far as they understand honesty; and much to be depended on, if once you and they understand each other. Which you are far enough now from doing; and it is imminently needful that you should: so we will have an accurate talk of them soon. The needfullest thing of all first is that you should know the functions of the persons whom you are being taught to think of as your protectors against the Squires;--your 'Employers,' namely; or Capitalist Supporters of Labour. 'Employers.' It is a noble title. If, indeed, they have found you idle, and given you employment, wisely,--let us no more call them mere 'Men' of Business, but rather 'Angels' of Business: quite the best sort of Guardian Angel. Yet are you sure it is necessary, absolutely, to look to superior natures for employment? Is it inconceivable that you should employ--yourselves? I ask the question, because these Seraphic beings, undertaking also to be Seraphic Teachers or Doctors, have theories about employment which may perhaps be true in their own celestial regions, but are inapplicable under worldly conditions. To one of these principles, announced by themselves as highly important, I must call your attention closely, because it has of late been the cause of much embarrassment among persons in a sub-seraphic life. I take its statement verbatim, from the 25th page of the Cambridge catechism before quoted: "This brings us to a most important proposition respecting capital, one which it is essential that the student should thoroughly understand. "The proposition is this--A demand for commodities is not a demand for labour. "The demand for labour depends upon the amount of capital: the demand for commodities simply determines in what direction labour shall be employed. "An example.--The truth of these assertions can best be shown by examples. Let us suppose that a manufacturer of woollen cloth is in the habit of spending £50 annually in lace. What does it matter, say some, whether he spends this £50 in lace or whether he uses it to employ more labourers in his own business? Does not the £50 spent in lace maintain the labourers who make the lace, just the same as it would maintain the labourers who make cloth, if the manufacturer used the money in extending his own business? If he ceased buying the lace, for the sake of employing more cloth-makers, would there not be simply a transfer of the £50 from the lace-makers to the cloth-makers? In order to find the right answer to these questions, let us imagine what would actually take place if the manufacturer ceased buying the lace, and employed the £50 in paying the wages of an additional number of cloth-makers. The lace manufacturer, in consequence of the diminished demand for lace, would diminish the production, and would withdraw from his business an amount of capital corresponding to the diminished demand. As there is no reason to suppose that the lace-maker would, on losing some of his custom, become more extravagant, or would cease to desire to derive income from the capital which the diminished demand has caused him to withdraw from his own business, it may be assumed that he would invest this capital in some other industry. This capital is not the same as that which his former customer, the woollen cloth manufacturer, is now paying his own labourers with; it is a second capital; and in the place of £50 employed in maintaining labour, there is now £100 so employed. There is no transfer from lace-makers to cloth-makers. There is fresh employment for the cloth-makers, and a transfer from the lace-makers to some other labourers."--Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 102. This is very fine; and it is clear that we may carry forward the improvement in our commercial arrangements by recommending all the other customers of the lace-maker to treat him as the cloth-maker has done. Whereupon he of course leaves the lace business entirely, and uses all his capital in 'some other industry.' Having thus established the lace-maker with a complete 'second capital' in the other industry, we will next proceed to develope a capital out of the cloth-maker, by recommending all his customers to leave him. Whereupon, he will also invest his capital in 'some other industry,' and we have a Third capital, employed in the National benefit. We will now proceed in the round of all possible businesses, developing a correspondent number of new capitals, till we come back to our friend the lace-maker again, and find him employed in whatever his new industry was. By now taking away again all his new customers, we begin the development of another order of Capitals in a higher Seraphic circle--and so develope at last an Infinite Capital! It would be difficult to match this for simplicity; it is more comic even than the fable of James and William, though you may find it less easy to detect the fallacy here; but the obscurity is not because the error is less gross, but because it is threefold. Fallacy 1st is the assumption that a cloth-maker may employ any number of men, whether he has customers or not; while a lace-maker must dismiss his men if he has not customers. Fallacy 2nd: That when a lace-maker can no longer find customers for lace, he can always find customers for something else. Fallacy 3rd (the essential one): That the funds provided by these new customers, produced seraphically from the clouds, are a 'second capital.' Those customers, if they exist now, existed before the lace-maker adopted his new business; and were the employers of the people in that business. If the lace-maker gets them, he merely diverts their fifty pounds from the tradesmen they were before employing, to himself; and that is Mr. Mill's 'second capital.' Underlying these three fallacies, however, there is, in the mind of 'the greatest thinker in England,' some consciousness of a partial truth, which he has never yet been able to define for himself--still less to explain to others. The real root of them is his conviction that it is beneficial and profitable to make broadcloth; and unbeneficial and unprofitable to make lace; [3] so that the trade of cloth-making should be infinitely extended, and that of lace-making infinitely repressed. Which is, indeed, partially true. Making cloth, if it be well made, is a good industry; and if you had sense enough to read your Walter Scott thoroughly, I should invite you to join me in sincere hope that Glasgow might in that industry long flourish; and the chief hostelry at Aberfoil be at the sign of the "Nicol Jarvie." Also, of lace-makers, it is often true that they had better be doing something else. I admit it, with no goodwill, for I know a most kind lady, a clergyman's wife, who devotes her life to the benefit of her country by employing lace-makers; and all her friends make presents of collars and cuffs to each other, for the sake of charity; and as, if they did not, the poor girl lace-makers would probably indeed be 'diverted' into some other less diverting industry, in due assertion of the rights of women, (cartridge-filling, or percussion-cap making, most likely,) I even go the length, sometimes, of furnishing my friend with a pattern, and never say a word to disturb her young customers in their conviction that it is an act of Christian charity to be married in more than ordinarily expensive veils. But there is one kind of lace for which I should be glad that the demand ceased. Iron lace. If we must even doubt whether ornamental thread-work may be, wisely, made on cushions in the sunshine, by dexterous fingers for fair shoulders,--how are we to think of Ornamental Iron-work, made with deadly sweat of men, and steady waste, all summer through, of the coals that Earth gave us for winter fuel? What shall we say of labour spent on lace such as that? Nay, says the Cambridge catechism, "the demand for commodities is not a demand for labour." Doubtless, in the economist's new earth, cast iron will be had for asking: the hapless and brave Parisians find it even rain occasionally out of the new economical Heavens, without asking. Gold will also one day, perhaps, be begotten of gold, until the supply of that, as well as of iron, may be, at least, equal to the demand. But, in this world, it is not so yet. Neither thread-lace, gold-lace, iron-lace, nor stone-lace, whether they be commodities or incommodities, can be had for nothing. How much, think you, did the gilded flourishes cost round the gas-lamps on Westminster Bridge? or the stone-lace of the pinnacles of the temple of Parliament at the end of it, (incommodious enough, as I hear;) or the point-lace of the park-railings which you so improperly pulled down, when you wanted to be Parliamentary yourselves; (much good you would have got of that!) or the 'openwork' of iron railings generally--the special glories of English design? Will you count the cost, in labour and coals, of the blank bars ranged along all the melancholy miles of our suburban streets, saying with their rusty tongues, as plainly as iron tongues can speak, "Thieves outside, and nothing to steal within." A beautiful wealth they are! and a productive capital! "Well, but," you answer, "the making them was work for us." Of course it was; is not that the very thing I am telling you? Work it was; and too much. But will you be good enough to make up your minds, once for all, whether it is really work that you want, or rest? I thought you rather objected to your quantity of work;--that you were all for having eight hours of it instead of ten? You may have twelve instead of ten, easily,--sixteen, if you like! If it is only occupation you want, why do you cast the iron? Forge it in the fresh air, on a workman's anvil; make iron-lace like this of Verona,-- [Illustration] every link of it swinging loose like a knight's chain mail: then you may have some joy of it afterwards, and pride; and say you knew the cunning of a man's right hand. But I think it is pay that you want, not work; and it is very true that pretty iron-work like that does not pay; but it is pretty, and it might even be entertaining, if you made those leaves at the top of it (which are, as far as I can see, only artichoke, and not very well done) in the likeness of all the beautiful leaves you could find, till you knew them all by heart. "Wasted time and hammer-strokes," say you? "A wise people like the English will have nothing but spikes; and, besides, the spikes are highly needful, so many of the wise people being thieves." Yes, that is so; and, therefore, in calculating the annual cost of keeping your thieves, you must always reckon, not only the cost of the spikes that keep them in, but of the spikes that keep them out. But how if, instead of flat rough spikes, you put triangular polished ones, commonly called bayonets; and instead of the perpendicular bars, put perpendicular men? What is the cost to you then, of your railing, of which you must feed the idle bars daily? Costly enough, if it stays quiet. But how, if it begin to march and countermarch? and apply its spikes horizontally? And now note this that follows; it is of vital importance to you. There are, practically, two absolutely opposite kinds of labour going on among men, for ever. [4] The first, labour supported by Capital, producing nothing. The second, labour unsupported by Capital, producing all things. Take two simple and precise instances on a small scale. A little while since, I was paying a visit in Ireland, and chanced to hear an account of the pleasures of a picnic party, who had gone to see a waterfall. There was of course ample lunch, feasting on the grass, and basketsful of fragments taken up afterwards. Then the company, feeling themselves dull, gave the fragments that remained to the attendant ragged boys, on condition that they should 'pull each other's hair.' Here, you see, is, in the most accurate sense, employment of food, or capital, in the support of entirely unproductive labour. Next, for the second kind. I live at the top of a short but rather steep hill; at the bottom of which, every day, all the year round, but especially in frost, coal-waggons get stranded, being economically provided with the smallest number of horses that can get them along on level ground. The other day, when the road, frozen after thaw, was at the worst, my assistant, the engraver of that bit of iron-work on the 11th page, was coming up here, and found three coal-waggons at a lock, helpless; the drivers, as usual, explaining Political Economy to the horses, by beating them over the heads. There were half a dozen fellows besides, out of work, or not caring to be in it--standing by, looking on. My engraver put his shoulder to a wheel, (at least his hand to a spoke,) and called on the idlers to do as much. They didn't seem to have thought of such a thing, but were ready enough when called on. "And we went up screaming," said Mr. Burgess. Do you suppose that was one whit less proper human work than going up a hill against a battery, merely because, in that case, half of the men would have gone down, screaming, instead of up; and those who got up would have done no good at the top? But observe the two opposite kinds of labour. The first lavishly supported by Capital, and producing Nothing. The second, unsupported by any Capital whatsoever,--not having so much as a stick for a tool,--but called, by mere goodwill, out of the vast void of the world's Idleness, and producing the definitely profitable result of moving a weight of fuel some distance towards the place where it was wanted, and sparing the strength of overloaded creatures. Observe further. The labour producing no useful result was demoralizing. All such labour is. The labour producing useful result was educational in its influence on the temper. All such labour is. And the first condition of education, the thing you are all crying out for, is being put to wholesome and useful work. And it is nearly the last conditions of it, too; you need very little more; but, as things go, there will yet be difficulty in getting that. As things have hitherto gone, the difficulty has been to avoid getting the reverse of that. For, during the last eight hundred years, the upper classes of Europe have been one large Picnic Party. Most of them have been religious also; and in sitting down, by companies, upon the green grass, in parks, gardens, and the like, have considered themselves commanded into that position by Divine authority, and fed with bread from Heaven: of which they duly considered it proper to bestow the fragments in support, and the tithes in tuition, of the poor. But, without even such small cost, they might have taught the poor many beneficial things. In some places they have taught them manners, which is already much. They might have cheaply taught them merriment also:--dancing and singing, for instance. The young English ladies who sit nightly to be instructed, themselves, at some cost, in melodies illustrative of the consumption of La Traviata, and the damnation of Don Juan, might have taught every girl peasant in England to join in costless choirs of innocent song. Here and there, perhaps, a gentleman might have been found able to teach his peasantry some science and art. Science and fine art don't pay; but they cost little. Tithes--not of the income of the country, but of the income, say, of its brewers--nay, probably the sum devoted annually by England to provide drugs for the adulteration of its own beer,--would have founded lovely little museums, and perfect libraries, in every village. And if here and there an English churchman had been found (such as Dean Stanley) willing to explain to peasants the sculpture of his and their own cathedral, and to read its black-letter inscriptions for them; and, on warm Sundays, when they were too sleepy to attend to anything more proper--to tell them a story about some of the people who had built it, or lay buried in it--we perhaps might have been quite as religious as we are, and yet need not now have been offering prizes for competition in art schools, nor lecturing with tender sentiment on the inimitableness of the works of Fra Angelico. These things the great Picnic Party might have taught without cost, and with amusement to themselves. One thing, at least, they were bound to teach, whether it amused them or not;--how, day by day, the daily bread they expected their village children to pray to God for, might be earned in accordance with the laws of God. This they might have taught, not only without cost, but with great gain. One thing only they have taught, and at considerable cost. They have spent four hundred millions [5] of pounds here in England within the last twenty years!--how much in France and Germany, I will take some pains to ascertain for you,--and with this initial outlay of capital, have taught the peasants of Europe--to pull each other's hair. With this result, 17th January, 1871, at and around the chief palace of their own pleasures, and the chief city of their delights: "Each demolished house has its own legend of sorrow, of pain, and horror; each vacant doorway speaks to the eye, and almost to the ear, of hasty flight, as armies or fire came--of weeping women and trembling children running away in awful fear, abandoning the home that saw their birth, the old house they loved--of startled men seizing quickly under each arm their most valued goods, and rushing, heavily laden, after their wives and babes, leaving to hostile hands the task of burning all the rest. When evening falls, the wretched outcasts, worn with fatigue and tears, reach Versailles, St. Germain, or some other place outside the range of fire, and there they beg for bread and shelter, homeless, foodless, broken with despair. And this, remember, has been the fate of something like a hundred thousand people during the last four months. Versailles alone has about fifteen thousand such fugitives to keep alive, all ruined, all hopeless, all vaguely asking the grim future what still worse fate it may have in store for them."--Daily Telegraph, Jan. 17th, 1871. That is the result round their pleasant city, and this within their industrious and practical one: let us keep, for the reference of future ages, a picture of domestic life, out of the streets of London in her commercial prosperity, founded on the eternal laws of Supply and Demand, as applied by the modern Capitalist: "A father in the last stage of consumption--two daughters nearly marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting clothing to 'cover their shame.' The rags that hang around their attenuated frames flutter in strips against their naked legs. They have no stool or chair upon which they can sit. Their father occupies the only stool in the room. They have no employment by which they can earn even a pittance. They are at home starving on a half-chance meal a day, and hiding their raggedness from the world. The walls are bare, there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of dirty rags are upon it. The dying father will shortly follow the dead mother; and when the parish coffin encloses his wasted form, and a pauper's grave closes above him, what shall be his daughters' lot? This is but a type of many other homes in the district: dirt, misery, and disease alone flourish in that wretched neighbourhood. 'Fever and smallpox rage,' as the inhabitants say, 'next door, and next door, and over the way, and next door to that, and further down.' The living, dying, and dead are all huddled together. The houses have no ventilation, the back yards are receptacles for all sorts of filth and rubbish, the old barrels or vessels that contain the supply of water are thickly coated on the sides with slime, and there is an undisturbed deposit of mud at the bottom. There is no mortuary house--the dead lie in the dogholes where they breathed their last, and add to the contagion which spreads through the neighbourhood."--Pall Mall Gazette, January 7th, 1871, quoting the Builder. As I was revising this sheet,--on the evening of the 20th of last month,--two slips of paper were brought to me. One contained, in consecutive paragraphs, an extract from the speech of one of the best and kindest of our public men, to the 'Liberal Association' at Portsmouth; and an account of the performances of the 35-ton gun called the 'Woolwich infant' which is fed with 700-pound shot, and 130 pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like the Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. "The gun was fired with the most satisfactory result," nobody being hurt, and nothing damaged but the platform, while the shot passed through the screens in front at the rate of 1,303 feet per second: and it seems, also, that the Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For Mr. Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the Liberals of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable neutrality "we must contemplate the contingency of a combined fleet coming from the ports of Prussia, Russia, and America, and making an attack on England." Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, Woolwich, and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind merely like another case of iron railings--thieves outside, and nothing to steal within. But the second slip of paper announced approaching help in a peaceful direction. It was the prospectus of the Boardmen's and General Advertising Co-operative Society, which invites, from the "generosity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum," and, "in addition to the above, a small sum of money by way of capital," to set the members of the society up in the profitable business of walking about London between two boards. Here is at last found for us, then, it appears, a line of life! At the West End, lounging about the streets, with a well-made back to one's coat, and front to one's shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of business; but, doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay, in time, only with proper preliminary expenditure of capital. My friends, I repeat my question: Do you not think you could contrive some little method of employing--yourselves? for truly I think the Seraphic Doctors are nearly at their wits' end (if ever their wits had a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning to find it difficult to live by lies of their own; and workmen will not find it much easier to live, by walking about, flattened between other people's. Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you to read a little history with me; perhaps also, because the world's time, seen truly, is but one long and fitful April, in which every day is All Fools' day,--we may continue our studies in that month; but on the first of May, you shall consider with me what you can do, or let me, if still living, tell you what I know you can do--those of you, at least, who will promise--(with the help of the three strong Fates), these three things: 1. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death. 2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and seek to avenge no injury. 3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones. Believe me, Your faithful friend, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER III. Denmark Hill, 1st March, 1871. My Friends, We are to read--with your leave--some history to-day; the leave, however, will perhaps not willingly be given, for you may think that of late you have read enough history, or too much, in Gazettes of morning and evening. No; you have read, and can read, no history in these. Reports of daily events, yes;--and if any journal would limit itself to statements of well-sifted fact, making itself not a "news"paper, but an "olds"paper, and giving its statements tested and true, like old wine, as soon as things could be known accurately; choosing also, of the many things that might be known, those which it was most vital to know, and summing them in few words of pure English,--I cannot say whether it would ever pay well to sell it; but I am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read no other. But even so, to know only what was happening day by day, would not be to read history. What happens now is but the momentary scene of a great play, of which you can understand nothing without some knowledge of the former action. And of that, so great a play is it, you can at best understand little; yet of history, as of science, a little, well known, will serve you much, and a little, ill known, will do you fatally the contrary of service. For instance, all your journals will be full of talk, for months to come, about whose fault the war was; and you yourselves, as you begin to feel its deadly recoil on your own interests, or as you comprehend better the misery it has brought on others, will be looking about more and more restlessly for some one to accuse of it. That is because you don't know the law of Fate, nor the course of history. It is the law of Fate that we shall live, in part, by our own efforts, but in the greater part, by the help of others; and that we shall also die, in part, for our own faults; but in the greater part for the faults of others. Do you suppose (to take the thing on the small scale in which you can test it) that those seven children torn into pieces out of their sleep, in the last night of the siege of Paris, [6] had sinned above all the children in Paris, or above yours? or that their parents had sinned more than you? Do you think the thousands of soldiers, German and French, who have died in agony, and of women who have died of grief, had sinned above all other soldiers, or mothers, or girls, there and here? It was not their fault, but their Fate. The thing appointed to them by the Third Fors. But you think it was at least the Emperor Napoleon's fault, if not theirs? Or Count Bismarck's? No; not at all. The Emperor Napoleon had no more to do with it than a cork on the top of a wave has with the toss of the sea. Count Bismarck had very little to do with it. When the Count sent for my waiter, last July, in the village of Lauterbrunnen, among the Alps,--that the waiter then and there packed his knapsack and departed, to be shot, if need were, leaving my dinner unserved (as has been the case with many other people's dinners since)--depended on things much anterior to Count Bismarck. The two men who had most to answer for in the mischief of the matter were St. Louis and his brother, who lived in the middle of the thirteenth century. One, among the very best of men; and the other, of all that I ever read of, the worst. The good man, living in mistaken effort, and dying miserably, to the ruin of his country; the bad man living in triumphant good fortune, and dying peaceably, to the ruin of many countries. Such were their Fates, and ours. I am not going to tell you of them, nor anything about the French war to-day; and you have been told, long ago, (only you would not listen, nor believe,) the root of the modern German power--in that rough father of Frederick, who "yearly made his country richer, and this not in money alone (which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at all, and even less), but in frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity,--the grand fountains from which money, and all real values and valours, spring for men. As a Nation's Husband, he seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy the nation which gets such a Husband, once in the half thousand years. The Nation, as foolish wives and Nations do, repines and grudges a good deal, its weak whims and will being thwarted very often; but it advances steadily, with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and, after long times, the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest to the Nation, and to all Nations." [7] No such harvest is sowing for you,--Freemen and Independent Electors of Parliamentary representatives, as you think yourselves. Freemen, indeed! You are slaves, not to masters of any strength or honour; but to the idlest talkers at that floral end of Westminster bridge. Nay, to countless meaner masters than they. For though, indeed, as early as the year 1102, it was decreed in a council at St. Peter's, Westminster, "that no man for the future should presume to carry on the wicked trade of selling men in the markets, like brute beasts, which hitherto hath been the common custom of England," the no less wicked trade of under-selling men in markets has lasted to this day; producing conditions of slavery differing from the ancient ones only in being starved instead of full-fed: and besides this, a state of slavery unheard of among the nations till now, has arisen with us. In all former slaveries, Egyptian, Algerine, Saxon, and American, the slave's complaint has been of compulsory work. But the modern Politico-Economic slave is a new and far more injured species, condemned to Compulsory Idleness, for fear he should spoil other people's trade; the beautifully logical condition of the national Theory of Economy in this matter being that, if you are a shoemaker, it is a law of Heaven that you must sell your goods under their price, in order to destroy the trade of other shoemakers; but if you are not a shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame, it is a law of Heaven that you must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide, to put between your foot and the stones, because that would interfere with the total trade of shoemaking. Which theory, of all the wonderful--! We will wait till April to consider of it; meantime, here is a note I have received from Mr. Alsager A. Hill, who having been unfortunately active in organizing that new effort in the advertising business, designed, as it seems, on this loveliest principle of doing nothing that will be perilously productive--was hurt by my manner of mention of it in the last number of Fors. I offered accordingly to print any form of remonstrance he would furnish me with, if laconic enough; and he writes to me, "The intention of the Boardmen's Society is not, as the writer of Fors Clavigera suggests, to 'find a line of life' for able-bodied labourers, but simply, by means of co-operation, to give them the fullest benefit of their labour whilst they continue a very humble but still remunerative calling. See Rule 12. The capital asked for to start the organization is essential in all industrial partnerships, and in so poor a class of labour as that of street board-carrying could not be supplied by the men themselves. With respect to the 'lies' alleged to be carried in front and behind, it is rather hard measure to say that mere announcements of public meetings or places of entertainments (of which street notices chiefly consist) are necessarily falsehoods." To which, I have only to reply that I never said the newly-found line of life was meant for able-bodied persons. The distinction between able and unable-bodied men is entirely indefinite. There are all degrees of ability for all things; and a man who can do anything, however little, should be made to do that little usefully. If you can carry about a board with a bill on it, you can carry, not about, but where it is wanted, a board without a bill on it; which is a much more useful exercise of your ability. Respecting the general probity, and historical or descriptive accuracy, of advertisements, and their function in modern economy, I will inquire in another place. You see I use none for this book, and shall in future use none for any of my books; having grave objection even to the very small minority of advertisements which are approximately true. I am correcting this sheet in the "Crown and Thistle" inn at Abingdon, and under my window is a shrill-voiced person, slowly progressive, crying, "Soles, three pair for a shillin'." In a market regulated by reason and order, instead of demand and supply, the soles would neither have been kept long enough to render such advertisement of them necessary, nor permitted, after their inexpedient preservation, to be advertised. Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure first to strive for leave to be useful. Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of, who are living round you, but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand years. So also, does the course of a thousand years to come, depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you. Little enough, and perishing, often without reward, however well spent. Understand that. Virtue does not consist in doing what will be presently paid, or even paid at all, to you, the virtuous person. It may so chance; or may not. It will be paid, some day; but the vital condition of it, as virtue, is that it shall be content in its own deed, and desirous rather that the pay of it, if any, should be for others; just as it is also the vital condition of vice to be content in its own deed, and desirous that the pay thereof, if any, should be to others. You have probably heard of St. Louis before now: and perhaps also that he built the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, of which you may have seen that I wrote the other day to the Telegraph, as being the most precious piece of Gothic in Northern Europe; but you are not likely to have known that the spire of it was Tenterden steeple over again, and the cause of fatal sands many, quick, and slow, and above all, of the running of these in the last hour-glass of France; for that spire, and others like it, subordinate, have acted ever since as lightning-rods, in a reverse manner; carrying, not the fire of heaven innocently to earth, but electric fire of earth innocently to heaven, leaving us all, down here, cold. The best virtue and heart-fire of France (not to say of England, who building her towers for the most part with four pinnacles instead of one, in a somewhat quadrumanous type, finds them less apt as conductors), have spent themselves for these past six centuries in running up those steeples and off them, nobody knows where, leaving a "holy Republic" as residue at the bottom; helpless, clay-cold, and croaking, a habitation of frogs, which poor Garibaldi fights for, vainly raging against the ghost of St. Louis. It is of English ghosts, however, that I would fain tell you somewhat to-day; of them, and of the land they haunt, and know still for theirs. For hear this to begin with:-- "While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region, a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William" (the Conqueror). So says, very truly, Mr. Freeman in his History of the Conquest. Are there any of you who care for this old England, of which the map has remained unchanged for so long? I believe you would care more for her, and less for yourselves, except as her faithful children, if you knew a little more about her; and especially more of what she has been. The difficulty, indeed, at any time, is in finding out what she has been; for that which people usually call her history is not hers at all; but that of her Kings, or the tax-gatherers employed by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history, or Mr. Lowe's, yours and mine. But the history even of her Kings is worth reading. You remember, I said, that sometimes in church it might keep you awake to be told a little of it. For a simple instance, you have heard probably of Absalom's rebellion against his father, and of David's agony at his death, until from very weariness you have ceased to feel the power of the story. You would not feel it less vividly if you knew that a far more fearful sorrow, of the like kind, had happened to one of your own Kings, perhaps the best we have had, take him for all in all. Not one only, but three of his sons, rebelled against him, and were urged into rebellion by their mother. The Prince, who should have been King after him, was pardoned, not once, but many times--pardoned wholly, with rejoicing over him as over the dead alive, and set at his father's right hand in the kingdom; but all in vain. Hard and treacherous to the heart's core, nothing wins him, nothing warns, nothing binds. He flies to France, and wars at last alike against father and brother, till, falling sick through mingled guilt, and shame, and rage, he repents idly as the fever-fire withers him. His father sends him the signet ring from his finger in token of one more forgiveness. The Prince lies down upon a heap of ashes with a halter round his neck, and so dies. When his father heard it he fainted away three times, and then broke out into bitterest crying and tears. This, you would have thought enough for the Third dark Fate to have appointed for a man's sorrows. It was little to that which was to come. His second son, who was now his Prince of England, conspired against him, and pursued his father from city to city, in Norman France. At last, even his youngest son, best beloved of all, abandoned him, and went over to his enemies. This was enough. Between him and his children Heaven commanded its own peace. He sickened and died of grief on the 6th of July, 1189. The son who had killed him, "repented" now; but there could be no signet ring sent to him. Perhaps the dead do not forgive. Men say, as he stood by his father's corpse, that the blood burst from his nostrils. One child only had been faithful to him, but he was the son of a girl whom he had loved much, and as he should not; his Queen, therefore, being a much older person, and strict upon proprieties, poisoned her; nevertheless poor Rosamond's son never failed him; won a battle for him in England, which, in all human probability, saved his kingdom; and was made a bishop, and turned out a bishop of the best. You know already a little about the Prince who stood unforgiven (as it seemed) by his father's body. He, also, had to forgive, in his time; but only a stranger's arrow shot--not those reversed "arrows in the hand of the giant," by which his father died. Men called him "Lion-heart," not untruly; and the English as a people, have prided themselves somewhat ever since on having, every man of them, the heart of a lion; without inquiring particularly either what sort of heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart of a lamb might not sometimes be more to the purpose. But it so happens that the name was very justly given to this prince; and I want you to study his character somewhat, with me, because in all our history there is no truer representative of one great species of the British squire, under all the three significances of the name; for this Richard of ours was beyond most of his fellows, a Rider and a Shieldbearer; and beyond all men of his day, a Carver; and in disposition and unreasonable exercise of intellectual power, typically a Squire altogether. Note of him first, then, that he verily desired the good of his people (provided it could be contrived without any check of his own humour), and that he saw his way to it a great deal clearer than any of your squires do now. Here are some of his laws for you:-- "Having set forth the great inconveniences arising from the diversity of weights and measures in different parts of the kingdom, he, by a law, commanded all measures of corn, and other dry goods, as also of liquors, to be exactly the same in all his dominions; and that the rim of each of these measures should be a circle of iron. By another law, he commanded all cloth to be woven two yards in breadth within the lists, and of equal goodness in all parts; and that all cloth which did not answer this description should be seized and burnt. He enacted, further, that all the coin of the kingdom should be exactly of the same weight and fineness;--that no Christian should take any interest for money lent; and, to prevent the extortions of the Jews, he commanded that all compacts between Christians and Jews should be made in the presence of witnesses, and the conditions of them put in writing." So, you see, in Coeur-de-Lion's day, it was not esteemed of absolute necessity to put agreements between Christians in writing! Which if it were not now, you know we might save a great deal of money, and discharge some of our workmen round Temple Bar, as well as from Woolwich Dockyards. Note also that bit about interest of money also for future reference. In the next place observe that this King had great objection to thieves--at least to any person whom he clearly comprehended to be a thief. He was the inventor of a mode of treatment which I believe the Americans--among whom it has not fallen altogether into disuse--do not gratefully enough recognize as a Monarchical institution. By the last of the laws for the government of his fleet in his expedition to Palestine, it is decreed,--"That whosoever is convicted of theft shall have his head shaved, melted pitch poured upon it, and the feathers from a pillow shaken over it, that he may be known; and shall be put on shore on the first land which the ship touches." And not only so; he even objected to any theft by misrepresentation or deception,--for being evidently particularly interested, like Mr. Mill, in that cloth manufacture, and having made the above law about the breadth of the web, which has caused it to be spoken of ever since as "Broad Cloth," and besides, for better preservation of its breadth, enacted that the Ell shall be of the same length all over the kingdom, and that it shall be made of iron--(so that Mr. Tennyson's provision for National defences--that every shop-boy should strike with his cheating yard-wand home, would be mended much by the substitution of King Richard's honest ell-wand, and for once with advisable encouragement to the iron trade)--King Richard finally declares--"That it shall be of the same goodness in the middle as at the sides, and that no merchant in any part of the kingdom of England shall stretch before his shop or booth a red or black cloth, or any other thing by which the sight of buyers is frequently deceived in the choice of good cloth." These being Richard's rough and unreasonable, chancing nevertheless, being wholly honest, to be wholly right, notions of business, the next point you are to note in him is his unreasonable good humour; an eminent character of English Squires; a very loveable one; and available to himself and others in many ways, but not altogether so exemplary as many think it. If you are unscrupulously resolved, whenever you can get your own way, to take it; if you are in a position of life wherein you can get a good deal of it, and if you have pugnacity enough to enjoy fighting with anybody who will not give it to you, there is little reason why you should ever be out of humour, unless indeed your way is a broad one, wherein you are like to be opposed in force. Richard's way was a very narrow one. To be first in battle, (generally obtaining that main piece of his will without question; once only worsted, by a French knight, and then, not at all good-humouredly,) to be first in recognized command--therefore contending with his father, who was both in wisdom and acknowledged place superior; but scarcely contending at all with his brother John, who was as definitely and deeply beneath him; good-humoured unreasonably, while he was killing his father, the best of kings, and letting his brother rule unresisted, who was among the worst; and only proposing for his object in life to enjoy himself everywhere in a chivalrous, poetical, and pleasantly animal manner, as a strong man always may. What should he have been out of humour for? That he brightly and bravely lived through his captivity is much indeed to his honour; but it was his point of honour to be bright and brave; not at all to take care of his kingdom. A king who cared for that, would have got thinner and sadder in prison. And it remains true of the English squire to this day, that, for the most part, he thinks that his kingdom is given him that he may be bright and brave; and not at all that the sunshine or valour in him is meant to be of use to his kingdom. But the next point you have to note in Richard is indeed a very noble quality, and true English; he always does as much of his work as he can with his own hands. He was not in any wise a king who would sit by a windmill to watch his son and his men at work, though brave kings have done so. As much as might be, of whatever had to be done, he would stedfastly do from his own shoulder; his main tool being an old Greek one, and the working God Vulcan's--the clearing axe. When that was no longer needful, and nothing would serve but spade and trowel, still the king was foremost; and after the weary retreat to Ascalon, when he found the place "so completely ruined and deserted, that it afforded neither food, lodging, nor protection," nor any other sort of capital,--forthwith, 20th January, 1192--his army and he set to work to repair it; a three months' business, of incessant toil, "from which the king himself was not exempted, but wrought with greater ardour than any common labourer." The next point of his character is very English also, but less honourably so. I said but now that he had a great objection to anybody whom he clearly comprehended to be a thief. But he had great difficulty in reaching anything like an abstract definition of thieving, such as would include every method of it, and every culprit, which is an incapacity very common to many of us to this day. For instance, he carried off a great deal of treasure which belonged to his father, from Chinon (the royal treasury-town in France), and fortified his own castles in Poitou with it; and when he wanted money to go crusading with, sold the royal castles, manors, woods, and forests, and even the superiority of the Crown of England over the kingdom of Scotland, which his father had wrought hard for, for about a hundred thousand pounds. Nay, the highest honours and most important offices become venal under him; and from a Princess's dowry to a Saracen caravan, nothing comes much amiss; not but that he gives generously also; whole ships at a time when he is in the humour; but his main practice is getting and spending, never saving; which covetousness is at last the death of him. For hearing that a considerable treasure of ancient coins and medals has been found in the lands of Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, King Richard sends forthwith to claim this waif for himself. The Viscount offers him part only, presumably having an antiquarian turn of mind. Whereupon Richard loses his temper, and marches forthwith with some Brabant men, mercenaries, to besiege the Viscount in his castle of Chalus; proposing, first, to possess himself of the antique and otherwise interesting coin in the castle, and then, on his general principle of objection to thieves, to hang the garrison. The garrison, on this, offer to give up the antiquities if they may march off themselves; but Richard declares that nothing will serve but they must all be hanged. Whereon the siege proceeding by rule. and Richard looking, as usual, into matters with his own eyes, and going too near the walls, an arrow well meant, though half spent, pierces the strong, white shoulder; the shield-bearing one, carelessly forward above instead of under shield; or perhaps, rather, when he was afoot, shieldless, engineering. He finishes his work, however, though the scratch teases him; plans his assault, carries his castle, and duly hangs his garrison, all but the archer, whom in his royal, unreasoning way he thinks better of, for the well-spent arrow. But he pulls it out impatiently, and the head of it stays in the fair flesh; a little surgery follows; not so skilful as the archery of those days, and the lion heart is appeased-- Sixth April, 1199. We will pursue our historical studies, if you please, in that month of the present year. But I wish, in the meantime, you would observe, and meditate on, the quite Anglican character of Richard, to his death. It might have been remarked to him, on his projecting the expedition to Chalus, that there were not a few Roman coins, and other antiquities, to be found in his own kingdom of England, without fighting for them, but by mere spade labour and other innocuous means;--that even the brightest new money was obtainable from his loyal people in almost any quantity for civil asking; and that the same loyal people, encouraged and protected, and above all, kept clean-handed, in the arts, by their king, might produce treasures more covetable than any antiquities. "No;" Richard would have answered,--"that is all hypothetical and visionary; here is a pot of coin presently to be had--no doubt about it--inside the walls here:--let me once get hold of that, and then,"-- That is what we English call being "Practical." Believe me, Faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER IV. Denmark Hill, 1st April, 1871. My Friends, It cannot but be pleasing to us to reflect, this day, that if we are often foolish enough to talk English without understanding it, we are often wise enough to talk Latin without knowing it. For this month retains its pretty Roman name, and means the month of Opening; of the light in the days, and the life in the leaves, and of the voices of birds, and of the hearts of men. And being the month of Manifestation, it is pre-eminently the month of Fools;--for under the beatific influences of moral sunshine, or Education, the Fools always come out first. But what is less pleasing to reflect upon, this spring morning, is, that there are some kinds of education which may be described, not as moral sunshine, but as moral moonshine; and that, under these, Fools come out both First--and Last. We have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on this one point, that we will have education for all men and women now, and for all boys and girls that are to be. Nothing, indeed, can be more desirable, if only we determine also what kind of education we are to have. It is taken for granted that any education must be good;--that the more of it we get, the better; that bad education only means little education; and that the worst thing we have to fear is getting none. Alas, that is not at all so. Getting no education is by no means the worst thing that can happen to us. One of the pleasantest friends I ever had in my life was a Savoyard guide, who could only read with difficulty, and write scarcely intelligibly, and by great effort. He knew no language but his own--no science, except as much practical agriculture as served him to till his fields. But he was, without exception, one of the happiest persons, and, on the whole, one of the best, I have ever known: and after lunch, when he had had his half bottle of Savoy wine, he would generally, as we walked up some quiet valley in the afternoon light, give me a little lecture on philosophy; and after I had fatigued and provoked him with less cheerful views of the world than his own, he would fall back to my servant behind me, and console himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and a whispered "Le pauvre enfant, il ne sait pas vivre!"--("The poor child, he doesn't know how to live.") No, my friends, believe me, it is not the going without education at all that we have most to dread. The real thing to be feared is getting a bad one. There are all sorts--good, and very good; bad, and very bad. The children of rich people often get the worst education that is to be had for money; the children of the poor often get the best for nothing. And you have really these two things now to decide for yourselves in England before you can take one quite safe practical step in the matter, namely, first, what a good education is; and, secondly, who is likely to give it you. What it is? "Everybody knows that," I suppose you would most of you answer. "Of course--to be taught to read, and write, and cast accounts; and to learn geography, and geology, and astronomy, and chemistry, and German, and French, and Italian, and Latin, and Greek and the aboriginal Aryan language." Well, when you had learned all that, what would you do next? "Next? Why then we should be perfectly happy, and make as much money as ever we liked, and we would turn out our toes before any company." I am not sure myself, and I don't think you can be, of any one of these three things. At least, as to making you very happy, I know something, myself, of nearly all these matters--not much, but still quite as much as most men, under the ordinary chances of life, with a fair education, are likely to get together--and I assure you the knowledge does not make me happy at all. When I was a boy I used to like seeing the sun rise. I didn't know, then, there were any spots on the sun; now I do, and am always frightened lest any more should come. When I was a boy, I used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire; my whole collection had cost, perhaps, three half-crowns, and was worth considerably less; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, about any single stone in it;--could not even spell their names: but words cannot tell the joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth perhaps from two to three thousand pounds; and I know more about some of them than most other people. But I am not a whit happier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, for other geologists dispute my theories, to my grievous indignation and discontentment; and I am miserable about all my best specimens, because there are better in the British Museum. No, I assure you, knowledge by itself will not make you happy; still less will it make you rich. Perhaps you thought I was writing carelessly when I told you, last month, "science did not pay." But you don't know what science is. You fancy it means mechanical art; and so you have put a statue of Science on the Holborn Viaduct, with a steam-engine regulator in its hands. My ingenious friends, science has no more to do with making steam-engines than with making breeches; though she condescends to help you a little in such necessary (or it may be, conceivably, in both cases, sometimes unnecessary) businesses. Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor. Mr. John Kepler, for instance, who is found by Sir Henry Wotton "in the picturesque green country by the shores of the Donau, in a little black tent in a field, convertible, like a windmill, to all quarters, a camera-obscura, in fact. Mr. John invents rude toys, writes almanacks, practises medicine, for good reasons, his encouragement from the Holy Roman Empire and mankind being a pension of 18l. a year, and that hardly ever paid." [8] That is what one gets by star-gazing, my friends. And you cannot be simple enough, even in April, to think I got my three thousand pounds'-worth of minerals by studying mineralogy? Not so; they were earned for me by hard labour; my father's in England, and many a sun-burnt vineyard-dresser's in Spain. "What business had you, in your idleness, with their earnings then?" you will perhaps ask. None, it may be; I will tell you in a little while how you may find that out; it is not to the point now. But it is to the point that you should observe I have not kept their earnings, the portion of them, at least, with which I bought minerals. That part of their earnings is all gone to feed the miners in Cornwall, or on the Hartz mountains, and I have only got for myself a few pieces of glittering (not always that, but often unseemly) stone, which neither vine-dressers nor miners cared for; which you yourselves would have to learn many hard words, much cramp mathematics, and useless chemistry, in order to care for; which, if ever you did care for, as I do, would most likely only make you envious of the British Museum, and occasionally uncomfortable if any harm happened to your dear stones. I have a piece of red oxide of copper, for instance, which grieves me poignantly by losing its colour; and a crystal of sulphide of lead, with a chip in it, which causes me a great deal of concern--in April; because I see it then by the fresh sunshine. My oxide of copper and sulphide of lead you will not then wisely envy me. Neither, probably, would you covet a handful of hard brown gravel, with a rough pebble in it, whitish, and about the size of a pea; nor a few grains of apparently brass filings, with which the gravel is mixed. I was but a fool to give good money for such things, you think? It may well be. I gave thirty pounds for that handful of gravel, and the miners who found it were ill-paid then; and it is not clear to me that this produce of their labour was the best possible. Shall we consider of it, with the help of the Cambridge Catechism? at the tenth page of which you will find that Mr. Mill's definition of productive labour is--"That which produces utilities fixed and embodied in material objects." This is very fine--indeed, superfine--English; but I can, perhaps, make the meaning of the Greatest Thinker in England a little more lucid for you by vulgarizing his terms. "Object," you must always remember, is fine English for "Thing." It is a semi-Latin word, and properly means a thing "thrown in your way;" so that if you put "ion" to the end of it, it becomes Objection. We will rather say "Thing," if you have no objection--you and I. A "Material" thing, then, of course, signifies something solid and tangible. It is very necessary for Political Economists always to insert this word "material," lest people should suppose that there was any use or value in Thought or Knowledge, and other such immaterial objects. "Embodied" is a particularly elegant word; but superfluous, because you know it would not be possible that a Utility should be disembodied, as long as it was in a material object. But when you wish to express yourself as thinking in a great manner, you may say--as, for instance, when you are supping vegetable soup--that your power of doing so conveniently and gracefully is "Embodied" in a spoon. "Fixed" is, I am afraid, rashly, as well as superfluously, introduced into his definition by Mr. Mill. It is conceivable that some Utilities may be also volatile, or planetary, even when embodied. But at last we come to the great word in the great definition--"Utility." And this word, I am sorry to say, puzzles me most of all; for I never myself saw a Utility, either out of the body, or in it, and should be much embarrassed if ordered to produce one in either state. But it is fortunate for us that all this seraphic language, reduced to the vulgar tongue, will become, though fallen in dignity and reduced in dimension, perfectly intelligible. The Greatest Thinker in England means by these beautiful words to tell you that Productive labour is labour that produces a Useful Thing. Which, indeed, perhaps, you knew--or, without the assistance of great thinkers, might have known, before now. But if Mr. Mill had said so much, simply, you might have been tempted to ask farther--"What things are useful, and what are not?" And as Mr. Mill does not know, nor any other Political Economist going,--and as they therefore particularly wish nobody to ask them,--it is convenient to say instead of "useful things," "utilities fixed and embodied in material objects," because that sounds so very like complete and satisfactory information, that one is ashamed, after getting it, to ask for any more. But it is not, therefore, less discouraging that for the present I have got no help towards discovering whether my handful of gravel with the white pebble in it was worth my thirty pounds or not. I am afraid it is not a useful thing to me. It lies at the back of a drawer, locked up all the year round. I never look at it now, for I know all about it: the only satisfaction I have for my money is knowing that nobody else can look at it; and if nobody else wanted to, I shouldn't even have that. "What did you buy it for, then?" you will ask. Well, if you must have the truth, because I was a Fool, and wanted it. Other people have bought such things before me. The white stone is a diamond, and the apparent brass filings are gold dust; but, I admit, nobody ever yet wanted such things who was in his right senses. Only now, as I have candidly answered all your questions, will you answer one of mine? If I hadn't bought it, what would you have had me do with my money? Keep that in the drawer instead?--or at my banker's, till it grew out of thirty pounds into sixty and a hundred, in fulfilment of the law respecting seed sown in good ground? Doubtless, that would have been more meritorious for the time. But when I had got the sixty or the hundred pounds--what should I have done with them? The question only becomes doubly and trebly serious; and all the more, to me, because when I told you last January that I had bought a picture for a thousand pounds, permitting myself in that folly for your advantage, as I thought, hearing that many of you wanted art Patronage, and wished to live by painting,--one of your own popular organs, the Liverpool Daily Courier, of February 9th, said, "it showed want of taste,--of tact," and was "something like a mockery," to tell you so! I am not to buy pictures, therefore, it seems;--you like to be kept in mines and tunnels, and occasionally blown hither and thither, or crushed flat, rather than live by painting, in good light, and with the chance of remaining all day in a whole and unextended skin? But what shall I buy, then, with the next thirty pieces of gold I can scrape together? Precious things have been bought, indeed, and sold, before now for thirty pieces, even of silver, but with doubtful issue. The over-charitable person who was bought to be killed at that price, indeed, advised the giving of alms; but you won't have alms, I suppose, you are so independent, nor go into almshouses--(and, truly, I did not much wonder, as I walked by the old church of Abingdon, a Sunday or two since, where the almshouses are set round the churchyard, and under the level of it, and with a cheerful view of it, except that the tombstones slightly block the light of the lattice-windows; with beautiful texts from Scripture over the doors, to remind the paupers still more emphatically that, highly blessed as they were, they were yet mortal)--you won't go into almshouses; and all the clergy in London have been shrieking against almsgiving to the lower poor this whole winter long, till I am obliged, whenever I want to give anybody a penny, to look up and down the street first, to see if a clergyman's coming. Of course, I know I might buy as many iron railings as I please, and be praised; but I've no room for them. I can't well burn more coals than I do, because of the blacks, which spoil my books; and the Americans won't let me buy any blacks alive, or else I would have some black dwarfs with parrots, such as one sees in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I should, of course, like myself, above all things, to buy a pretty white girl, with a title--and I could get great praise for doing that--only I haven't money enough. White girls come dear, even when one buys them only like coals, for fuel. The Duke of Bedford, indeed, bought Joan of Arc from the French, to burn, for only ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year to the Bastard of Vendôme--and I could and would have given that for her, and not burnt her; but one hasn't such a chance every day. Will you, any of you, have the goodness--beggars, clergymen, workmen, seraphic doctors, Mr. Mill, Mr. Fawcett, or the Politico-Economic Professor of my own University--I challenge you, I beseech you, all and singly, to tell me what I am to do with my money. I mean, indeed, to give you my own poor opinion on the subject in May; though I feel the more embarrassed in the thought of doing so, because, in this present April, I am so much a fool as not even to know clearly whether I have got any money or not. I know, indeed, that things go on at present as if I had; but it seems to me that there must be a mistake somewhere, and that some day it will be found out. For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the Founding of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit of paper gives me a right to tax you every year, and make you pay me two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me: but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to you, any summer's day, that you had better not? Where would my seven thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves a rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no real existence;--it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn't got it. And this is surely a very odd kind of money for a country to boast of. Well, then, besides this, I have a bit of low land at Greenwich, which, as far as I see anything of it, is not money at all, but only mud; and would be of as little use to me as my handful of gravel in the drawer, if it were not that an ingenious person has found out that he can make chimney-pots of it; and, every quarter, he brings me fifteen pounds off the price of his chimney-pots, so that I am always sympathetically glad when there's a high wind, because then I know my ingenious friend's business is thriving. But suppose it should come into his head, in any less windy month than this April, that he had better bring me none of the price of his chimneys? And even though he should go on, as I hope he will, patiently,--(and I always give him a glass of wine when he brings me the fifteen pounds),--is this really to be called money of mine? And is the country any richer because, when anybody's chimney-pot is blown down in Greenwich, he must pay something extra, to me, before he can put it on again? Then, also, I have some houses in Marylebone, which though indeed very ugly and miserable, yet, so far as they are actual beams and brick-bats put into shape, I might have imagined to be real property; only, you know, Mr. Mill says that people who build houses don't produce a commodity, but only do us a service. So I suppose my houses are not "utilities embodied in material objects" (and indeed they don't look much like it); but I know I have the right to keep anybody from living in them unless they pay me; only suppose some day the Irish faith, that people ought to be lodged for nothing, should become an English one also--where would my money be? Where is it now, except as a chronic abstraction from other people's earnings? So again, I have some land in Yorkshire--some Bank "Stock" (I don't in the least know what that is)--and the like; but whenever I examine into these possessions, I find they melt into one or another form of future taxation, and that I am always sitting (if I were working I shouldn't mind, but I am only sitting) at the receipt of Custom, and a Publican as well as a sinner. And then, to embarrass the business further yet, I am quite at variance with other people about the place where this money, whatever it is, comes from. The Spectator, for instance, in its article of 25th June of last year, on Mr. Goschen's "lucid and forcible speech of Friday-week," says that "the country is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to the actual workers." But whence, then, did it filter down to us, the actual idlers? This is really a question very appropriate for April. For such golden rain raineth not every day, but in a showery and capricious manner, out of heaven, upon us; mostly, as far as I can judge, rather pouring down than filtering upon idle persons, and running in thinner driblets, but I hope purer for the filtering process, to the "actual workers." But where does it come from? and in the times of drought between the showers, where does it go to? "The country is getting rich again," says the Spectator; but then, if the April clouds fail, may it get poor again? And when it again becomes poor,--when, last 25th of June, it was poor,--what becomes, or had become, of the money? Was it verily lost, or only torpid in the winter of our discontent? or was it sown and buried in corruption, to be raised in a multifold power? When we are in a panic about our money, what do we think is going to happen to it? Can no economist teach us to keep it safe after we have once got it? nor any "beloved physician"--as I read the late Sir James Simpson is called in Edinburgh--guard even our solid gold against death, or at least, fits of an apoplectic character, alarming to the family? All these questions trouble me greatly; but still to me the strangest point in the whole matter is, that though we idlers always speak as if we were enriched by Heaven, and became ministers of its bounty to you; if ever you think the ministry slack, and take to definite pillage of us, no good ever comes of it to you; but the sources of wealth seem to be stopped instantly, and you are reduced to the small gain of making gloves of our skins; while, on the contrary, as long as we continue pillaging you, there seems no end to the profitableness of the business; but always, however bare we strip you, presently, more, to be had. For instance--just read this little bit out of Froissart--about the English army in France before the battle of Crecy:-- "We will now return to the expedition of the King of England. Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, as marshal, advanced before the King, with the vanguard of five hundred armed men and two thousand archers, and rode on for six or seven leagues' distance from the main army, burning and destroying the country. They found it rich and plentiful, abounding in all things; the barns full of every sort of corn, and the houses with riches: the inhabitants at their ease, having cars, carts, horses, swine, sheep, and everything in abundance which the country afforded. They seized whatever they chose of all these good things, and brought them to the King's army; but the soldiers did not give any account to their officers, or to those appointed by the King, of the gold and silver they took, which they kept to themselves. When they were come back, with all their booty safely packed in waggons, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Thomas Holland, and the Lord Reginald Cobham, took their march, with their battalion on the right, burning and destroying the country in the same way that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt was doing. The King marched, with the main body, between these two battalions; and every night they all encamped together. The King of England and Prince of Wales had, in their battalion, about three thousand men-at-arms, six thousand archers, ten thousand infantry, without counting those that were under the marshals; and they marched on in the manner I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but without breaking their line of battle. They did not turn towards Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which in those days was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count eight or nine score that were engaged in commerce. When the King of England was come near to the town, he encamped; he would not lodge in it for fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who soon conquered it, at a trifling loss, and completely plundered it. No one can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it, nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers, they might have bought enough at a very cheap rate. "The English then advanced towards Caen, which is a much larger town, stronger, and fuller of draperies and all other sorts of merchandize, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine churches. "On this day (Froissart does not say what day) the English rose very early, and made themselves ready to march to Caen: the King heard mass before sunrise, and afterwards mounting his horse, with the Prince of Wales, and Sir Godfrey de Harcourt (who was marshal and director of the army), marched forward in order of battle. The battalion of the marshals led the van, and came near to the handsome town of Caen. "When the townsmen, who had taken the field, perceived the English advancing, with banners and pennons flying in abundance, and saw those archers whom they had not been accustomed to, they were so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and ran for the town in great disorder. "The English, who were after the runaways, made great havoc; for they spared none. "Those inhabitants who had taken refuge in the garrets, flung down from them, in these narrow streets, stones, benches, and whatever they could lay hands on; so that they killed and wounded upwards of five hundred of the English, which so enraged the King of England, when he received the reports in the evening, that he ordered the remainder of the inhabitants to be put to the sword, and the town burnt. But Sir Godfrey de Harcourt said to him: 'Dear sir, assuage somewhat of your anger, and be satisfied with what has already been done. You have a long journey yet to make before you arrive at Calais, whither it is your intention to go: and there are in this town a great number of inhabitants, who will defend themselves obstinately in their houses, if you force them to it: besides, it will cost you many lives before the town can be destroyed, which may put a stop to your expedition to Calais, and it will not redound to your honour: therefore be sparing of your men, for in a month's time you will have call for them.' The King replied: 'Sir Godfrey, you are our marshal; therefore order as you please; for this time we wish not to interfere.' "Sir Godfrey then rode through the streets, his banner displayed before him, and ordered, in the King's name, that no one should dare, under pain of immediate death, to insult or hurt man or woman of the town, or attempt to set fire to any part of it. Several of the inhabitants, on hearing this proclamation, received the English into their houses; and others opened their coffers to them, giving up their all, since they were assured of their lives. However, there were, in spite of these orders, many atrocious thefts and murders committed. The English continued masters of the town for three days; in this time, they amassed great wealth, which they sent in barges down the river of Estreham, to St. Sauveur, two leagues off, where their fleet was. The Earl of Huntingdon made preparations therefore, with the two hundred men-at-arms and his four hundred archers, to carry over to England their riches and prisoners. The King purchased, from Sir Thomas Holland and his companions, the constable of France and the Earl of Tancarville, and paid down twenty thousand nobles for them. "When the King had finished his business in Caen, and sent his fleet to England, loaded with cloths, jewels, gold and silver plate, and a quantity of other riches, and upwards of sixty knights, with three hundred able citizens, prisoners; he then left his quarters and continued his march as before, his two marshals on his right and left, burning and destroying all the flat country. He took the road to Evreux, but found he could not gain anything there, as it was well fortified. He went on towards another town called Louviers, which was in Normandy, and where there were many manufactories of cloth: it was rich and commercial. The English won it easily, as it was not inclosed; and having entered the town, it was plundered without opposition. They collected much wealth there; and, after they had done what they pleased, they marched on into the county of Evreux, where they burnt everything except the fortified towns and castles, which the King left unattacked, as he was desirous of sparing his men and artillery. He therefore made for the banks of the Seine, in his approach to Rouen, where there were plenty of men-at-arms from Normandy, under the command of the Earl of Harcourt, brother to Sir Godfrey, and the Earl of Dreux. "The English did not march direct towards Rouen, but went to Gisors, which has a strong castle, and burnt the town. After this, they destroyed Vernon, and all the country between Rouen and Pont-de-l'Arche: they then came to Mantes and Meulan, which they treated in the same manner, and ravaged all the country round about. "They passed by the strong castle of Roulleboise, and everywhere found the bridges on the Seine broken down. They pushed forward until they came to Poissy, where the bridge was also destroyed; but the beams and other parts of it were lying in the river. "The King of England remained at the nunnery of Poissy to the middle in August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin Mary." It all reads at first, you see, just like a piece out of the newspapers of last month; but there are material differences, notwithstanding. We fight inelegantly as well as expensively, with machines instead of bow and spear; we kill about a thousand now to the score then, in settling any quarrel--(Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a hundred men; only 25,000 English altogether were engaged at Crecy; and 12,000, some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); we kill with far ghastlier wounds, crashing bones and flesh together; we leave our wounded necessarily for days and nights in heaps on the fields of battle; we pillage districts twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of more valuable property; and with a destruction as irreparable as it is complete; for if the French or English burnt a church one day, they could build a prettier one the next; but the modern Prussians couldn't even build so much as an imitation of one; we rob on credit, by requisition, with ingenious mercantile prolongations of claim; and we improve contention of arms with contention of tongues, and are able to multiply the rancour of cowardice, and mischief of lying, in universal and permanent print; and so we lose our tempers as well as our money, and become indecent in behaviour as in raggedness; for, whereas, in old times, two nations separated by a little pebbly stream like the Tweed, or even the two halves of one nation, separated by thirty fathoms' depth of salt water (for most of the English knights and all the English kings were French by race, and the best of them by birth also)--would go on pillaging and killing each other century after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards, or disrespect for, one another,--we can neither give anybody a beating courteously, nor take one in good part, or without screaming and lying about it: and finally, we add to these perfected Follies of Action more finely perfected Follies of Inaction; and contrive hitherto unheard-of ways of being wretched through the very abundance of peace; our workmen, here, vowing themselves to idleness, lest they should lower Wages, and there, being condemned by their parishes to idleness lest they should lower Prices; while outside the workhouse all the parishioners are buying anything nasty, so that it be cheap; and, in a word, under the seraphic teaching of Mr. Mill, we have determined at last that it is not Destruction, but Production, that is the cause of human distress; and the "Mutual and Co-operative Colonization Company" declares, ungrammatically, but distinctly, in its circular sent to me on the 13th of last month, as a matter universally admitted, even among Cabinet Ministers--"that it is in the greater increasing power of production and distribution as compared with demand, enabling the few to do the work of many, that the active cause of the wide-spread poverty among the producing and lower-middle classes lay, which entails such enormous burdens on the Nation, and exhibits our boasted progress in the light of a monstrous Sham." Nevertheless, however much we have magnified and multiplied the follies of the past, the primal and essential principles of pillage have always been accepted; and from the days when England lay so waste under that worthy and economical King who "called his tailor lown," that "whole families, after sustaining life as long as they could by eating roots, and the flesh of dogs and horses, at last died of hunger, and you might see many pleasant villages without a single inhabitant of either sex," while little Harry Switch-of-Broom sate learning to spell in Bristol Castle, (taught, I think, properly by his good uncle the preceptorial use of his name-plant, though they say the first Harry was the finer clerk,) and his mother, dressed all in white, escaped from Oxford over the snow in the moonlight, through Bagley Wood here to Abingdon; and under the snows, by Woodstock, the buds were growing for the bower of his Rose,--from that day to this, when the villages round Paris, and food-supply, are, by the blessing of God, as they then were round London--Kings have for the most part desired to win that pretty name of "Switch-of-Broom" rather by habit of growing in waste places; or even emulating the Vision of Dion in "sweeping--diligently sweeping," than by attaining the other virtue of the Planta Genista, set forth by Virgil and Pliny, that it is pliant, and rich in honey; the Lion-hearts of them seldom proving profitable to you, even so much as the stomach of Samson's Lion, or rendering it a soluble enigma in our Israel, that "out of the eater came forth meat;" nor has it been only your Kings who have thus made you pay for their guidance through the world, but your ecclesiastics have also made you pay for guidance out of it--particularly when it grew dark, and the signpost was illegible where the upper and lower roads divided;--so that, as far as I can read or calculate, dying has been even more expensive to you than living; and then, to finish the business, as your virtues have been made costly to you by the clergyman, so your vices have been made costly to you by the lawyers; and you have one entire learned profession living on your sins, and the other on your repentance. So that it is no wonder that, things having gone on thus for a long time, you begin to think that you would rather live as sheep without any shepherd, and that having paid so dearly for your instruction in religion and law, you should now set your hope on a state of instruction in Irreligion and Liberty, which is, indeed, a form of education to be had for nothing, alike by the children of the Rich and Poor; the saplings of the tree that was to be desired to make us wise, growing now in copsewood on the hills, or even by the roadsides, in a Republican-Plantagenet manner, blossoming into cheapest gold, either for coins, which of course you Republicans will call, not Nobles, but Ignobles; or crowns, second and third hand--(head, I should say)--supplied punctually on demand, with liberal reduction on quantity; the roads themselves beautifully public--tramwayed, perhaps--and with gates set open enough for all men to the free, outer, better world, your chosen guide preceding you merrily, thus-- [Illustration] with music and dancing. You have always danced too willingly, poor friends, to that player on the viol. We will try to hear, far away, a faint note or two from a more chief musician on stringed instruments, in May, when the time of the Singing of Birds is come. Faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER V. "For lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds is come, Arise, O my fair one, my dove, And come." [9] Denmark Hill, 1st May, 1871. My Friends, It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it was difficult for you to understand. I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor words,--the saddest of them perhaps too well. But I have great fear that you may never come to understand these written above, which are part of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone. I fear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass,--the flowers never appear on the earth;--that for you no bird may ever sing;--for you no perfect Love arise, and fulfil your life in peace. "And why not for us, as for others?" will you answer me so, and take my fear for you as an insult? Nay, it is no insult;--nor am I happier than you. For me, the birds do not sing, nor ever will. But they would, for you, if you cared to have it so. When I told you that you would never understand that love-song, I meant only that you would not desire to understand it. Are you again indignant with me? Do you think, though you should labour, and grieve, and be trodden down in dishonour all your days, at least you can keep that one joy of Love, and that one honour of Home? Had you, indeed, kept that, you had kept all. But no men yet, in the history of the race, have lost it so piteously. In many a country, and many an age, women have been compelled to labour for their husband's wealth, or bread; but never until now were they so homeless as to say, like the poor Samaritan, "I have no husband." Women of every country and people have sustained without complaint the labour of fellowship: for the women of the latter days in England it has been reserved to claim the privilege of isolation. This, then, is the end of your universal education and civilization, and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle Ages, and of their chivalry. Not only do you declare yourselves too indolent to labour for daughters and wives, and too poor to support them; but you have made the neglected and distracted creatures hold it for an honour to be independent of you, and shriek for some hold of the mattock for themselves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been so low a level of thought reached by any race, since they grew to be male and female out of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else they have been made from, by natural selection,--according to modern science. That modern science also, Economic and of other kinds, has reached its climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed function of the nineteenth century to exhibit in all things the elect pattern of perfect Folly, for a warning to the farthest future. Thus the statement of principle which I quoted to you in my last letter, from the circular of the Emigration Society, that it is over-production which is the cause of distress, is accurately the most foolish thing, not only hitherto ever said by men, but which it is possible for men ever to say, respecting their own business. It is a kind of opposite pole (or negative acme of mortal stupidity) to Newton's discovery of gravitation as an acme of mortal wisdom:--as no wise being on earth will ever be able to make such another wise discovery, so no foolish being on earth will ever be capable of saying such another foolish thing, through all the ages. And the same crisis has been exactly reached by our natural science and by our art. It has several times chanced to me, since I began these papers, to have the exact thing shown or brought to me that I wanted for illustration, just in time [10]--and it happened that on the very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go to the Kensington Museum; and there I saw the most perfectly and roundly ill-done thing which, as yet, in my whole life I ever saw produced by art. It had a tablet In front of it, bearing this inscription,-- "Statue in black and white marble, a Newfoundland Dog standing on a Serpent, which rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief.--English. Present Century. No. I." It was so very right for me, the Kensington people having been good enough to number it "I.," the thing itself being almost incredible in its one-ness; and, indeed, such a punctual accent over the iota of Miscreation,--so absolutely and exquisitely miscreant, that I am not myself capable of conceiving a Number two, or three, or any rivalship or association with it whatsoever. The extremity of its unvirtue consisted, observe, mainly in the quantity of instruction which was abused in it. It showed that the persons who produced it had seen everything, and practised everything; and misunderstood everything they saw, and misapplied everything they did. They had seen Roman work, and Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work; and misunderstanding of everything had passed through them as the mud does through earthworms, and here at last was their worm-cast of a Production. But the second chance that came to me that day, was more significant still. From the Kensington Museum I went to an afternoon tea, at a house where I was sure to meet some nice people. And among the first I met was an old friend who had been hearing some lectures on botany at the Kensington Museum, and been delighted by them. She is the kind of person who gets good out of everything, and she was quite right in being delighted; besides that, as I found by her account of them, the lectures were really interesting, and pleasantly given. She had expected botany to be dull, and had not found it so, and "had learned so much." On hearing this, I proceeded naturally to inquire what; for my idea of her was that before she went to the lectures at all, she had known more botany than she was likely to learn by them. So she told me that she had learned first of all that "there were seven sorts of leaves." Now I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven; because when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them from becoming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands. So I thought to myself that it would be very charming if there were only seven sorts of leaves; but that, perhaps, if one looked the woods and forests of the world carefully through, it was just possible that one might discover as many as eight sorts; and then where would my friend's new knowledge of Botany be? So I said, "That was very pretty; but what more?" Then my friend told me that she had no idea, before, that petals were leaves. On which, I thought to myself that it would not have been any great harm to her if she had remained under her old impression that petals were petals. But I said, "That was very pretty, too; and what more?" So then my friend told me that the lecturer said, "the object of his lectures would be entirely accomplished if he could convince his hearers that there was no such thing as a flower." Now, in that sentence you have the most perfect and admirable summary given you of the general temper and purposes of modern science. It gives lectures on Botany, of which the object is to show that there is no such thing as a flower; on Humanity, to show that there is no such thing as a Man; and on Theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a Man, but only a Mechanism; no such thing as a God, but only a series of forces. The two faiths are essentially one: if you feel yourself to be only a machine, constructed to be a Regulator of minor machinery, you will put your statue of such science on your Holborn Viaduct, and necessarily recognize only major machinery as regulating you. I must explain the real meaning to you, however, of that saying of the Botanical lecturer, for it has a wide bearing. Some fifty years ago the poet Goethe discovered that all the parts of plants had a kind of common nature, and would change into each other. Now this was a true discovery, and a notable one; and you will find that, in fact, all plants are composed of essentially two parts--the leaf and root--one loving the light, the other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part up, the other for the most part down; and each having faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one which loves the light has, above all things, the purpose of being married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's children of leaves, to make the earth fair for ever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts of honey, and we call them "Flowers." In a certain sense, therefore, you see the Botanical lecturer was quite right. There are no such things as Flowers--there are only Leaves. Nay, farther than this, there may be a dignity in the less happy, but unwithering leaf, which is, in some sort, better than the brief lily of its bloom;--which the great poets always knew,--well;--Chaucer, before Goethe; and the writer of the first Psalm, before Chaucer. The Botanical lecturer was, in a deeper sense than he knew, right. But in the deepest sense of all, the Botanical lecturer was, to the extremity of wrongness, wrong; for leaf, and root, and fruit, exist, all of them, only--that there may be flowers. He disregarded the life and passion of the creature, which were its essence. Had he looked for these, he would have recognized that in the thought of Nature herself, there is, in a plant, nothing else but its flowers. Now in exactly the sense that modern Science declares there is no such thing as a Flower, it has declared there is no such thing as a Man, but only a transitional form of Ascidians and apes. It may, or may not be true--it is not of the smallest consequence whether it be or not. The real fact is, that, seen with human eyes, there is nothing else but man; that all animals and beings beside him are only made that they may change into him; that the world truly exists only in the presence of Man, acts only in the passion of Man. The essence of light is in his eyes,--the centre of Force in his soul,--the pertinence of action in his deeds. And all true science--which my Savoyard guide rightly scorned me when he thought I had not,--all true science is "savoir vivre." But all your modern science is the contrary of that. It is "savoir mourir." And of its very discoveries, such as they are, it cannot make use. That telegraphic signalling was a discovery; and conceivably, some day, may be a useful one. And there was some excuse for your being a little proud when, about last sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, and Albert Durer's), you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombay, and flashed a message along it, and back. But what was the message, and what the answer? Is India the better for what you said to her? Are you the better for what she replied? If not, you have only wasted an all-round-the-world's length of copper wire,--which is, indeed, about the sum of your doing. If you had had, perchance, two words of common sense to say, though you had taken wearisome time and trouble to send them;--though you had written them slowly in gold, and sealed them with a hundred seals, and sent a squadron of ships of the line to carry the scroll, and the squadron had fought its way round the Cape of Good Hope, through a year of storms, with loss of all its ships but one,--the two words of common sense would have been worth the carriage, and more. But you have not anything like so much as that to say, either to India, or to any other place. You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you. That was also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them then; not one of you cares for the loss of them now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the Vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening--Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the light--walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley--you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the Gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange--you Fools Everywhere. To talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say, though you were ever so near; to go fast from this place to that, with nothing to do either at one or the other: these are powers certainly. Much more, power of increased Production, if you, indeed, had got it, would be something to boast of. But are you so entirely sure that you have got it--that the mortal disease of plenty, and afflictive affluence of good things, are all you have to dread? Observe. A man and a woman, with their children, properly trained, are able easy to cultivate as much ground as will feed them; to build as much wall and roof as will lodge them, and to build and weave as much cloth as will clothe them. They can all be perfectly happy and healthy in doing this. Supposing that they invent machinery which will build, plough, thresh, cook, and weave, and that they have none of these things any more to do, but may read, or play croquet, or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that they will neither be so good nor so happy as without the machines. But I waive my belief in this matter for the time. I will assume that they become more refined and moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the mother of all good. But observe, I repeat, the power of your machine is only in enabling them to be idle. It will not enable them to live better than they did before, nor to live in greater numbers. Get your heads quite clear on this matter. Out of so much ground, only so much living is to be got, with or without machinery. You may set a million of steam-ploughs to work on an acre, if you like--out of that acre only a given number of grains of corn will grow, scratch or scorch it as you will. So that the question is not at all whether, by having more machines, more of you can live. No machines will increase the possibilities of life. They only increase the possibilities of idleness. Suppose, for instance, you could get the oxen in your plough driven by a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not even a cream bowl,--(you have nearly managed to get it driven by an iron goblin, as it is;)--Well, your furrow will take no more seeds than if you had held the stilts yourself. But, instead of holding them, you sit, I presume, on a bank beside the field, under an eglantine;--watch the goblin at his work, and read poetry. Meantime, your wife in the house has also got a goblin to weave and wash for her. And she is lying on the sofa reading poetry. Now, as I said, I don't believe you would be happier so, but I am willing to believe it; only, since you are already such brave mechanists, show me at least one or two places where you are happier. Let me see one small example of approach to this seraphic condition. I can show you examples, millions of them, of happy people, made happy by their own industry. Farm after farm I can show you, in Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and such other places, where men and women are perfectly happy and good, without any iron servants. Show me, therefore, some English family, with its fiery familiar, happier than these. Or bring me,--for I am not inconvincible by any kind of evidence,--bring me the testimony of an English family or two to their increased felicity. Or if you cannot do so much as that, can you convince even themselves of it? They are perhaps happy, if only they knew how happy they were; Virgil thought so, long ago, of simple rustics; but you hear at present your steam-propelled rustics are crying out that they are anything else than happy, and that they regard their boasted progress "in the light of a monstrous Sham." I must tell you one little thing, however, which greatly perplexes my imagination of the relieved ploughman sitting under his rose bower, reading poetry. I have told it you before indeed, but I forget where. There was really a great festivity, and expression of satisfaction in the new order of things, down in Cumberland, a little while ago; some first of May, I think it was, a country festival, such as the old heathens, who had no iron servants, used to keep with piping and dancing. So I thought, from the liberated country people--their work all done for them by goblins--we should have some extraordinary piping and dancing. But there was no dancing at all, and they could not even provide their own piping. They had their goblin to pipe for them. They walked in procession after their steam plough, and their steam plough whistled to them occasionally in the most melodious manner it could. Which seemed to me, indeed, a return to more than Arcadian simplicity; for in old Arcadia, ploughboys truly whistled as they went, for want of thought; whereas, here was verily a large company walking without thought, but not having any more even the capacity of doing their own whistling. But next, as to the inside of the house. Before you got your power-looms, a woman could always make herself a chemise and petticoat of bright and pretty appearance. I have seen a Bavarian peasant-woman at church in Munich, looking a much grander creature, and more beautifully dressed, than any of the crossed and embroidered angels in Hesse's high-art frescoes; (which happened to be just above her, so that I could look from one to the other). Well, here you are, in England, served by household demons, with five hundred fingers, at least, weaving, for one that used to weave in the days of Minerva. You ought to be able to show me five hundred dresses for one that used to be; tidiness ought to have become five hundred-fold tidier; tapestry should be increased into cinque-cento-fold iridescence of tapestry. Not only your peasant-girl ought to be lying on the sofa reading poetry, but she ought to have in her wardrobe five hundred petticoats instead of one. Is that, indeed, your issue? or are you only on a curiously crooked way to it? It is just possible, indeed, that you may not have been allowed to get the use of the goblin's work--that other people may have got the use of it, and you none; because, perhaps, you have not been able to evoke goblins wholly for your own personal service: but have been borrowing goblins from the capitalist, and paying interest, in the "position of William," on ghostly self-going planes; but suppose you had laid by capital enough, yourselves, to hire all the demons in the world,--nay,--all that are inside of it; are you quite sure you know what you might best set them to work at? and what "useful things" you should command them to make for you? I told you, last month, that no economist going (whether by steam or ghost) knew what are useful things and what are not. Very few of you know, yourselves, except by bitter experience of the want of them. And no demons, either of iron or spirit, can ever make them. There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one "knows how to live" till he has got them. These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth. There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got them. These are, Admiration, Hope, and Love. [11] Admiration--the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible Form, and lovely in human Character; and, necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful in form, and to become what is lovely in character. Hope--the recognition, by true Foresight, of better things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and undisappointable effort to advance, according to our proper power, the gaining of them. Love, both of family and neighbour, faithful, and satisfied. These are the six chiefly useful things to be got by Political Economy, when it has become a science. I will briefly tell you what modern Political Economy--the great "savoir mourir"--is doing with them. The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without limit, the available qualities of them. You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of you. You or your fellows, German and French, are at present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power in every direction; chiefly at this moment with corpses, and animal and vegetable ruin in war: changing men, horses, and garden-stuff into noxious gas. But everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease. On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere,--is literally infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food. Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you will, by planting wisely and tending carefully;--drought where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools; so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls dirty. Then for the third, Earth,--meant to be nourishing for you, and blossoming. You have learned, about it, that there is no such thing as a flower; and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and life giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter, [12] into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone--with the voice of your brother's blood crying out of it, in one wild harmony round all its murderous sphere. This is what you have done for the Three Material Useful Things. Then for the Three Immaterial Useful Things. For Admiration, you have learnt contempt and conceit. There is no lovely thing ever yet done by man that you care for, or can understand; but you are persuaded you are able to do much finer things yourselves. You gather, and exhibit together, as if equally instructive, what is infinitely bad, with what is infinitely good. You do not know which is which; you instinctively prefer the Bad, and do more of it. You instinctively hate the Good, and destroy it. [13] Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not so much spirit of it in you as to begin any plan which will not pay for ten years; nor so much intelligence of it in you, (either politicians or workmen), as to be able to form one clear idea of what you would like your country to become. Then, thirdly, for Love. You were ordered by the Founder of your religion to love your neighbour as yourselves. You have founded an entire Science of Political Economy, on what you have stated to be the constant instinct of man--the desire to defraud his neighbour. And you have driven your women mad, so that they ask no more for Love, nor for fellowship with you; but stand against you, and ask for "justice." Are there any of you who are tired of all this? Any of you, Landlords or Tenants? Employers or Workmen? Are there any landlords,--any masters,--who would like better to be served by men than by iron devils? Any tenants, any workmen, who can be true to their leaders and to each other? who can vow to work and to live faithfully, for the sake of the joy of their homes? Will any such give the tenth of what they have, and of what they earn,--not to emigrate with, but to stay in England with; and do what is in their hands and hearts to make her a happy England? I am not rich, (as people now estimate riches,) and great part of what I have is already engaged in maintaining art-workmen, or for other objects more or less of public utility. The tenth of whatever is left to me, estimated as accurately as I can, (you shall see the accounts,) I will make over to you in perpetuity, with the best security that English law can give, on Christmas Day of this year, with engagement to add the tithe of whatever I earn afterwards. Who else will help, with little or much? the object of such fund being, to begin, and gradually--no matter how slowly--to increase, the buying and securing of land in England, which shall not be built upon, but cultivated by Englishmen, with their own hands, and such help of force as they can find in wind and wave. I do not care with how many, or how few, this thing is begun, nor on what inconsiderable scale,--if it be but in two or three poor men's gardens. So much, at least, I can buy, myself, and give them. If no help come, I have done and said what I could, and there will be an end. If any help come to me, it is to be on the following conditions:--We will try to take some small piece of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant obedience to known law, and appointed persons: no equality upon it; but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or boats; we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields,--and few bricks. We will have some music and poetry; the children shall learn to dance to it and sing it;--perhaps some of the old people, in time, may also. We will have some art, moreover; we will at least try if, like the Greeks, we can't make some pots. The Greeks used to paint pictures of gods on their pots; we probably, cannot do as much, but we may put some pictures of insects on them, and reptiles;--butterflies, and frogs, if nothing better. There was an excellent old potter in France who used to put frogs and vipers into his dishes, to the admiration of mankind; we can surely put something nicer than that. Little by little, some higher art and imagination may manifest themselves among us; and feeble rays of science may dawn for us. Botany, though too dull to dispute the existence of flowers; and history, though too simple to question the nativity of men;--nay--even perhaps an uncalculating and uncovetous wisdom, as of rude Magi, presenting, at such nativity, gifts of gold and frankincense. Faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER VI. Denmark Hill, 1st June, 1871. [14] My Friends, The main purpose of these letters having been stated in the last of them, it is needful that I should tell you why I approach the discussion of it in this so desultory way, writing (as it is too true that I must continue to write,) "of things that you little care for, in words that you cannot easily understand." I write of things you care little for, knowing that what you least care for is, at this juncture, of the greatest moment to you. And I write in words you are little likely to understand, because I have no wish (rather the contrary) to tell you anything that you can understand without taking trouble. You usually read so fast that you can catch nothing but the echo of your own opinions, which, of course, you are pleased to see in print. I neither wish to please, nor displease you; but to provoke you to think; to lead you to think accurately; and help you to form, perhaps, some different opinions from those you have now. Therefore, I choose that you shall pay me the price of two pots of beer, twelve times in the year, for my advice, each of you who wants it. If you like to think of me as a quack doctor, you are welcome; and you may consider the large margins, and thick paper, and ugly pictures of my book, as my caravan, drum, and skeleton. You would probably, if invited in that manner, buy my pills; and I should make a great deal of money out of you; but being an honest doctor, I still mean you to pay me what you ought. You fancy, doubtless, that I write--as most other political writers do--my 'opinions'; and that one man's opinion is as good as another's. You are much mistaken. When I only opine things, I hold my tongue; and work till I more than opine--until I know them. If the things prove unknowable, I, with final perseverance, hold my tongue about them, and recommend a like practice to other people. If the things prove knowable, as soon as I know them, I am ready to write about them, if need be; not till then. That is what people call my 'arrogance.' They write and talk themselves, habitually, of what they know nothing about; they cannot in anywise conceive the state of mind of a person who will not speak till he knows; and then tells them, serenely, "This is so; you may find it out for yourselves, if you choose; but, however little you may choose it, the thing is still so." Now it has cost me twenty years of thought, and of hard reading, to learn what I have to tell you in these pamphlets; and you will find, if you choose to find, it is true; and may prove, if you choose to prove, that it is useful: and I am not in the least minded to compete for your audience with the 'opinions' in your damp journals, morning and evening, the black of them coming off on your fingers, and--beyond all washing--into your brains. It is no affair of mine whether you attend to me or not; but yours wholly; my hand is weary of pen-holding--my heart is sick of thinking; for my own part, I would not write you these pamphlets though you would give me a barrel of beer, instead of two pints, for them:--I write them wholly for your sake; I choose that you shall have them decently printed on cream-coloured paper, and with a margin underneath, which you can write on, if you like. That is also for your sake: it is a proper form of book for any man to have who can keep his books clean; and if he cannot, he has no business with books at all. It costs me ten pounds to print a thousand copies, and five more to give you a picture; and a penny off my sevenpence to send you the book;--a thousand sixpences are twenty-five pounds; when you have bought a thousand Fors of me, I shall therefore have five pounds for my trouble--and my single shopman, Mr. Allen, five pounds for his; we won't work for less, either of us; not that we would not, were it good for you; but it would be by no means good. And I mean to sell all my large books, henceforward, in the same way; well printed, well bound, and at a fixed price; and the trade may charge a proper and acknowledged profit for their trouble in retailing the book. Then the public will know what they are about, and so will tradesmen; I, the first producer, answer, to the best of my power, for the quality of the book;--paper, binding, eloquence, and all: the retail dealer charges what he ought to charge, openly; and if the public do not choose to give it, they can't get the book. That is what I call legitimate business. Then as for this misunderstanding of me--remember that it is really not easy to understand anything, which you have not heard before, if it relates to a complex subject; also, it is quite easy to misunderstand things that you are hearing every day--which seem to you of the intelligiblest sort. But I can only write of things in my own way and as they come into my head; and of the things I care for, whether you care for them or not, as yet. I will answer for it, you must care for some of them, in time. To take an instance close to my hand: you would of course think it little conducive to your interests that I should give you any account of the wild hyacinths which are opening in flakes of blue fire, this day, within a couple of miles of me, in the glades of Bagley wood through which the Empress Maud fled in the snow, (and which, by the way, I slink through, myself, in some discomfort, lest the gamekeeper of the college of the gracious Apostle St. John should catch sight of me; not that he would ultimately decline to make a distinction between a poacher and a professor, but that I dislike the trouble of giving an account of myself). Or, if even you would bear with a scientific sentence or two about them, explaining to you that they were only green leaves turned blue, and that it was of no consequence whether they were either; and that, as flowers, they were scientifically to be considered as not in existence,--you will, I fear, throw my letter, even though it has cost you sevenpence, aside at once, when I remark to you that these wood hyacinths of Bagley have something to do with the battle of Marathon, and if you knew it, are of more vital interest to you than even the Match Tax. Nevertheless, as I shall feel it my duty, some day, to speak to you of Theseus and his vegetable soup, so, to-day, I think it necessary to tell you that the wood-hyacinth is the best English representative of the tribe of flowers which the Greeks called "Asphodel," and which they thought the heroes who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, or in any other battle, fought in just quarrel, were to be rewarded, and enough rewarded, by living in fields-full of; fields called, by them, Elysian, or the Fields of Coming, as you and I talk of the good time 'Coming,' though with perhaps different views as to the nature of the to be expected goodness. Now what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day to the Civil Engineers (see Saturday Review, April 29th,) is entirely true; namely, that in any of our colliery or cartridge-manufactory explosions, we send as many men (or women) into Elysium as were likely to get there after the battle of Marathon; [15] and that is, indeed, like the rest of our economic arrangements, very fine, and pleasant to think upon; neither may it be doubted, on modern principles of religion and equality, that every collier and cartridge-filler is as fit for Elysium as any heathen could be; and that in all these respects the battle of Marathon is no more deserving of English notice. But what I want you to reflect upon, as of moment to you, is whether you really care for the hyacinthine Elysium you are going to? and if you do, why you should not live a little while in Elysium here, instead of waiting so patiently, and working so hardly, to be blown or flattened into it? The hyacinths will grow well enough on the top of the ground, if you will leave off digging away the bottom of it; and another plant of the asphodel species, which the Greeks thought of more importance even than hyacinths--onions; though, indeed, one dead hero is represented by Lucian as finding something to complain of even in Elysium, because he got nothing but onions there to eat. But it is simply, I assure you, because the French did not understand that hyacinths and onions were the principal things to fill their existing Elysian Fields, or Champs Elysées, with, but chose to have carriages, and roundabouts, instead, that a tax on matches in those fields would be, nowadays, so much more productive than one on Asphodel; and I see that only a day or two since even a poor Punch's show could not play out its play in Elysian peace, but had its corner knocked off by a shell from Mont Valérien, and the dog Toby "seriously alarmed." One more instance of the things you don't care for, that are vital to you, may be better told now than hereafter. In my plan for our practical work, in last number, you remember I said, we must try and make some pottery, and have some music, and that we would have no steam engines. On this I received a singular letter from a resident at Birmingham, advising me that the colours for my pottery must be ground by steam, and my musical instruments constructed by it. To this, as my correspondent was an educated person, and knew Latin, I ventured to answer that porcelain had been painted before the time of James Watt; that even music was not entirely a recent invention; that my poor company, I feared, would deserve no better colours than Apelles and Titian made shift with, or even the Chinese; and that I could not find any notice of musical instruments in the time of David, for instance, having been made by steam. To this my correspondent again replied that he supposed David's "twangling upon the harp" would have been unsatisfactory to modern taste; in which sentiment I concurred with him, (thinking of the Cumberland procession, without dancing, after its sacred, cylindrical Ark). We shall have to be content, however, for our part, with a little "twangling" on such roughly-made harps, or even shells, as the Jews and Greeks got their melody out of, though it must indeed be little conceivable in a modern manufacturing town that a nation could ever have existed which imaginarily dined on onions in Heaven, and made harps of the near relations of turtles on Earth. But to keep to our crockery, you know I told you that for some time we should not be able to put any pictures of Gods on it; and you might think that would be of small consequence: but it is of moment that we should at least try--for indeed that old French potter, Palissy, was nearly the last of potters in France, or England either, who could have done so, if anybody had wanted Gods. But nobody in his time did;--they only wanted Goddesses, of a demi-divine-monde pattern; Palissy, not well able to produce such, took to moulding innocent frogs and vipers instead, in his dishes; but at Sèvres and other places for shaping of courtly clay, the charmingest things were done, as you probably saw at the great peace-promoting Exhibition of 1851; and not only the first rough potter's fields, tileries, as they called them, or Tuileries, but the little den where Palissy long after worked under the Louvre, were effaced and forgotten in the glory of the House of France; until the House of France forgot also that to it, no less than the House of Israel, the words were spoken, not by a painted God, "As the clay is in the hands of the potter, so are ye in mine;" and thus the stained and vitrified show of it lasted, as you have seen, until the Tuileries again became the Potter's field, to bury, not strangers in, but their own souls, no more ashamed of Traitorhood, but invoking Traitorhood, as if it covered, instead of constituting, uttermost shame;--until, of the kingdom and its glory there is not a shard left, to take fire out of the hearth. Left--to men's eyes, I should have written. To their thoughts, is left yet much; for true kingdoms and true glories cannot pass away. What France has had of such, remain to her. What any of us can find of such, will remain to us. Will you look back, for an instant, again to the end of my last Letter, p. 23, and consider the state of life described there:--"No liberty, but instant obedience to known law and appointed persons; no equality, but recognition of every betterness and reprobation of every worseness; and none idle but the dead." I beg you to observe that last condition especially. You will debate for many a day to come the causes that have brought this misery upon France, and there are many; but one is chief--chief cause, now and always, of evil everywhere; and I see it at this moment, in its deadliest form, out of the window of my quiet English inn. It is the 21st of May, and a bright morning, and the sun shines, for once, warmly on the wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental pattern, imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been of wood-work, it would, doubtless, have been painted to look like brick). Against this low decorative edifice leans a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen or eighteen, in a white blouse and brown corduroy trousers, and a domical felt hat; with the sun, as much as can get under the rim, on his face, and his hands in his pockets; listlessly watching two dogs at play. He is a good boy, evidently, and does not care to turn the play into a fight; [16] still it is not interesting enough to him, as play, to relieve the extreme distress of his idleness, and he occasionally takes his hands out of his pockets, and claps them at the dogs, to startle them. The ornamental wall he leans against surrounds the county police-office, and the residence at the end of it, appropriately called "Gaol Lodge." This county gaol, police-office, and a large gasometer, have been built by the good people of Abingdon to adorn the principal entrance to their town from the south. It was once quite one of the loveliest, as well as historically interesting, scenes in England. A few cottages and their gardens, sloping down to the river-side, are still left, and an arch or two of the great monastery; but the principal object from the road is now the gaol, and from the river the gasometer. It is curious that since the English have believed (as you will find the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, quoting to you from Macaulay, in his leader of the 9th of this month), "the only cure for Liberty is more liberty," (which is true enough, for when you have got all you can, you will be past physic,) they always make their gaols conspicuous and ornamental. Now I have no objection, myself, detesting, as I do, every approach to liberty, to a distinct manifestation of gaol, in proper quarters; nay, in the highest, and in the close neighbourhood of palaces; perhaps, even, with a convenient passage, and Ponte de' Sospiri, from one to the other, or, at least, a pleasant access by water-gate and down the river; but I do not see why in these days of 'incurable' liberty, the prospect in approaching a quiet English county town should be a gaol, and nothing else. That being so, however, the country boy, in his white blouse, leans placidly against the prison wall this bright Sunday morning, little thinking what a luminous sign-post he is making of himself, and living gnomon of sun-dial, of which the shadow points sharply to the subtlest cause of the fall of France, and of England, as is too likely, after her. Your hands in your own pockets, in the morning. That is the beginning of the last day; your hands in other people's pockets at noon; that is the height of the last day; and the gaol, ornamented or otherwise (assuredly the great gaol of the grave), for the night. That is the history of nations under judgment. Don't think I say this to any single class; least of all specially to you; the rich are continually, nowadays, reproaching you with your wish to be idle. It is very wrong of you; but, do they want to work all day, themselves? All mouths are very properly open now against the Paris Communists because they fight that they may get wages for marching about with flags. What do the upper classes fight for, then? What have they fought for since the world became upper and lower, but that they also might have wages for walking about with flags, and that mischievously? It is very wrong of the Communists to steal church-plate and candlesticks. Very wrong indeed; and much good may they get of their pawnbrokers' tickets. Have you any notion (I mean that you shall have some soon) how much the fathers and fathers' fathers of these men, for a thousand years back, have paid their priests, to keep them in plate and candlesticks? You need not think I am a republican, or that I like to see priests ill-treated, and their candlesticks carried off. I have many friends among priests, and should have had more had I not long been trying to make them see that they have long trusted too much in candlesticks, not quite enough in candles; not at all enough in the sun, and least of all enough in the sun's Maker. Scientific people indeed of late opine the sun to have been produced by collision, and to be a splendidly permanent railroad accident, or explosive Elysium: also I noticed, only yesterday, that gravitation itself is announced to the members of the Royal Institution as the result of vibratory motion. Some day, perhaps, the members of the Royal Institution will proceed to inquire after the cause of--vibratory motion. Be that as it may, the Beginning, or Prince of Vibration, as modern science has it,--Prince of Peace, as old science had it,--continues through all scientific analysis, His own arrangements about the sun, as also about other lights, lately hidden or burning low. And these are primarily, that He has appointed a great power to rise and set in heaven, which gives life, and warmth, and motion, to the bodies of men, and beasts, creeping things, and flowers; and which also causes light and colour in the eyes of things that have eyes. And He has set above the souls of men, on earth, a great law or Sun of Justice or Righteousness, which brings also life and health in the daily strength and spreading of it, being spoken of in the priest's language, (which they never explained to anybody, and now wonder that nobody understands,) as having "healing in its wings:" and the obedience to this law, as it gives strength to the heart, so it gives light to the eyes of souls that have got any eyes, so that they begin to see each other as lovely, and to love each other. That is the final law respecting the sun, and all manner of minor lights and candles, down to rushlights; and I once got it fairly explained, two years ago, to an intelligent and obliging wax-and-tallow chandler at Abbeville, in whose shop I used to sit sketching in rainy days; and watching the cartloads of ornamental candles which he used to supply for the church at the far east end of the town, (I forget what saint it belongs to, but it is opposite the late Emperor's large new cavalry barracks,) where the young ladies of the better class in Abbeville had just got up a beautiful evening service, with a pyramid of candles which it took at least half an hour to light, and as long to put out again, and which, when lighted up to the top of the church, were only to be looked at themselves, and sung to, and not to light anybody or anything. I got the tallow-chandler to calculate vaguely the probable cost of the candles lighted in this manner, every day, in all the churches of France; and then I asked him how many cottagers' wives he knew round Abbeville itself who could afford, without pinching, either dip or mould in the evening to make their children's clothes by, and whether, if the pink and green beeswax of the district were divided every afternoon among them, it might not be quite as honourable to God, and as good for the candle trade? Which he admitted readily enough; but what I should have tried to convince the young ladies themselves of, at the evening service, would probably not have been admitted so readily;--that they themselves were nothing more than an extremely graceful kind of wax-tapers which had got into their heads that they were only to be looked at, for the honour of God, and not to light anybody. Which is indeed too much the notion of even the masculine aristocracy of Europe at this day. One can imagine them, indeed, modest in the matter of their own luminousness, and more timid of the tax on agricultural horses and carts, than of that on lucifers; but it would be well if they were content, here in England, however dimly phosphorescent themselves, to bask in the sunshine of May at the end of Westminster Bridge, (as my boy on Abingdon Bridge,) with their backs against the large edifice they have built there,--an edifice, by the way, to my own poor judgment, less contributing to the adornment of London, than the new police-office to that of Abingdon. But the English squire, after his fashion, sends himself to that highly decorated gaol all spring-time; and cannot be content with his hands in his own pockets, nor even in yours and mine; but claps and laughs, semi-idiot that he is, at dog-fights on the floor of the House, which, if he knew it, are indeed dog-fights of the Stars in their courses, Sirius against Procyon; and of the havock and loosed dogs of war, makes, as the Times correspondent says they make, at Versailles, of the siege of Paris, "the Entertainment of the Hour." You think that, perhaps, an unjust saying of him, as he will, assuredly, himself. He would fain put an end to this wild work, if he could, he thinks. My friends, I tell you solemnly, the sin of it all, down to this last night's doing, or undoing, (for it is Monday now, I waited before finishing my letter, to see if the Sainte Chapelle would follow the Vendôme Column;) the sin of it, I tell you, is not that poor rabble's, spade and pickaxe in hand among the dead; nor yet the blasphemer's, making noise like a dog by the defiled altars of our Lady of Victories; and round the barricades, and the ruins, of the Street of Peace. This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the most honourable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nurtured men, who through their happy and, as they thought, holy lives, have sought, and still seek, only "the entertainment of the hour." And this robbery has been taught to the hands,--this blasphemy to the lips,--of the lost poor, by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ in vain, and leagued themselves with his chief enemy, "Covetousness, which is idolatry." Covetousness, lady of Competition and of deadly Care; idol above the altars of Ignoble Victory; builder of streets, in cities of Ignoble Peace. I have given you the picture of her--your goddess and only Hope--as Giotto saw her; dominant in prosperous Italy as in prosperous England, and having her hands clawed then, as now, so that she can only clutch, not work; also you shall read next month with me what one of Giotto's friends says of her--a rude versifier, one of the twangling harpers; as Giotto was a poor painter for low price, and with colours ground by hand; but such cheap work must serve our turn for this time; also, here, is portrayed for you [17] one of the ministering angels of the goddess; for she herself, having ears set wide to the wind, is careful to have wind-instruments provided by her servants for other people's ears. [Illustration] This servant of hers was drawn by the court portrait-painter, Holbein; and was a councillor at poor-law boards, in his day; counselling then, as some of us have, since, "Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction" for the vagrant as such,--which is, indeed, good advice, if you are quite sure the vagrant has, or may have, a home; not otherwise. But we will talk further of this next month, taking into council one of Holbein's prosaic friends, as well as that singing friend of Giotto's--an English lawyer and country gentleman, living on his farm, at Chelsea (somewhere near Cheyne Row, I believe)--and not unfrequently visited there by the King of England, who would ask himself unexpectedly to dinner at the little Thames-side farm, though the floor of it was only strewn with green rushes. It was burnt at last, rushes, ricks, and all; some said because bread of affliction and water of affliction had been served to heretics there, its master being a stout Catholic; and, singularly enough, also a Communist; so that because of the fire, and other matters, the King at last ceased to dine at Chelsea. We will have some talk, however, with the farmer, ourselves, some day soon; meantime and always, believe me, Faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. POSTSCRIPT. 25th May (early morning).--Reuter's final telegram, in the Echo of last night, being "The Louvre and the Tuileries are in flames, the Federals having set fire to them with petroleum," it is interesting to observe how, in fulfilment of the Mechanical Glories of our age, its ingenious Gomorrah manufactures, and supplies to demand, her own brimstone; achieving also a quite scientific, instead of miraculous, descent of it from Heaven; and ascent of it, where required, without any need of cleaving or quaking of earth, except in a superficially 'vibratory' manner. Nor can it be less encouraging to you to see how, with a sufficiently curative quantity of Liberty, you may defend yourselves against all danger of over-production, especially in art; but, in case you should ever wish to re-'produce' any of the combustibles (as oil, or canvas) used in these Parisian Economies, you will do well to inquire of the author of the "Essay on Liberty" whether he considers oil of linseed, or petroleum, as best fulfilling his definition, "utilities fixed and embodied in material objects." FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER VII. Denmark Hill, 1st July, 1871. My Friends, It seldom chances, my work lying chiefly among stones, clouds, and flowers, that I am brought into any freedom of intercourse with my fellow-creatures; but since the fighting in Paris I have dined out several times, and spoken to the persons who sat next me, and to others when I went upstairs; and done the best I could to find out what people thought about the fighting, or thought they ought to think about it, or thought they ought to say. I had, of course, no hope of finding any one thinking what they ought to do. But I have not yet, a little to my surprise, met with any one who either appeared to be sadder, or professed himself wiser, for anything that has happened. It is true that I am neither sadder nor wiser, because of it, myself. But then I was so sad before, that nothing could make me sadder; and getting wiser has always been to me a very slow process,--(sometimes even quite stopping for whole days together),--so that if two or three new ideas fall in my way at once, it only puzzles me; and the fighting in Paris has given me more than two or three. The newest of all these new ones, and, in fact, quite a glistering and freshly minted idea to me, is the Parisian notion of Communism, as far as I understand it, (which I don't profess to do altogether, yet, or I should be wiser than I was, with a vengeance). For, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old school--reddest also of the red; and was on the very point of saying so at the end of my last letter; only the telegram about the Louvre's being on fire stopped me, because I thought the Communists of the new school, as I could not at all understand them, might not quite understand me. For we Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to everybody, and everybody's property to us; so of course I thought the Louvre belonged to me as much as to the Parisians, and expected they would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message or intimation to that effect ever reached me. Then the next bit of new coinage in the way of notion which I have picked up in Paris streets, is the present meaning of the French word 'Ouvrier,' which in my time the dictionaries used to give as 'Workman,' or 'Working-man.' For again, I have spent many days, not to say years, with the working-men of our English school myself; and I know that, with the more advanced of them, the gathering word is that which I gave you at the end of my second number--"To do good work, whether we live or die." Whereas I perceive the gathering, or rather scattering, word of the French 'ouvrier' is, 'To undo good work, whether we live or die.' And this is the third, and the last, I will tell you for the present, of my new ideas, but a troublesome one: namely, that we are henceforward to have a duplicate power of political economy; and that the new Parisian expression for its first principle is not to be 'laissez faire,' but 'laissez refaire.' I cannot, however, make anything of these new French fashions of thought till I have looked at them quietly a little; so to-day I will content myself with telling you what we Communists of the old school meant by Communism; and it will be worth your hearing, for--I tell you simply in my 'arrogant' way--we know, and have known, what Communism is--for our fathers knew it, and told us, three thousand years ago; while you baby Communists do not so much as know what the name means, in your own English or French--no, not so much as whether a House of Commons implies, or does not imply, also a House of Uncommons; nor whether the Holiness of the Commune, which Garibaldi came to fight for, had any relation to the Holiness of the 'Communion' which he came to fight against. Will you be at the pains, now, however, to learn rightly, and once for all, what Communism is? First, it means that everybody must work in common, and do common or simple work for his dinner; and that if any man will not do it, he must not have his dinner. That much, perhaps, you thought you knew?--but you did not think we Communists of the old school knew it also? You shall have it, then, in the words of the Chelsea farmer and stout Catholic, I was telling you of, in last number. He was born in Milk Street, London, three hundred and ninety-one years ago, (1480, a year I have just been telling my Oxford pupils to remember for manifold reasons,) and he planned a Commune flowing with milk and honey, and otherwise Elysian; and called it the 'Place of Wellbeing' or Utopia; which is a word you perhaps have occasionally used before now, like others, without understanding it;--(in the article of the Liverpool Daily Post before referred to, it occurs felicitously seven times). You shall use it in that stupid way no more, if I can help it. Listen how matters really are managed there. "The chief, and almost the only business of the government, [18] is to take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow his trade diligently: yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning till night, as if they were beasts of burden, which, as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians; but they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and, at eight o'clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man's discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading. "But the time appointed for labour is to be narrowly examined, otherwise, you may imagine that, since there are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions: but it is so far from being true that this time is not sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things, either necessary or convenient, that it is rather too much; and this you will easily apprehend, if you consider how great a part of all other nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind; and, if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle: then,-- ..." What then? We will stop a minute, friends, if you please, for I want you before you read what then, to be once more made fully aware that this farmer who is speaking to you is one of the sternest Roman Catholics of his stern time; and at the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, became Lord High Chancellor of England in his stead. "--then, consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that are called religious men; add to these, all rich men, chiefly those that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen, together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept more for show than use; add to these, all those strong and lusty beggars that go about, pretending some disease in excuse for their begging; and, upon the whole account, you will find that the number of those by whose labours mankind is supplied is much less than you, perhaps, imagined: then, consider how few of those that work are employed in labours that are of real service! for we, who measure all things by money, give rise to many trades that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury: for if those who work were employed only in such things as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance of them, that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could not be maintained by their gains;"--(italics mine--Fair and softly, Sir Thomas! we must have a shop round the corner, and a pedlar or two on fair-days, yet;)--"if all those who labour about useless things were set to more profitable employments, and if all that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work) were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure is kept within its due bounds: this appears very plainly in Utopia; for there, in a great city, and in all the territory that lies round it, you can scarce find five hundred, either men or women, by their age and strength capable of labour, that are not engaged in it! even the heads of government, though excused by the law, yet do not excuse themselves, but work, that, by their examples, they may excite the industry of the rest of the people." You see, therefore, that there is never any fear, among us of the old school, of being out of work; but there is great fear, among many of us, lest we should not do the work set us well; for, indeed, we thoroughgoing Communists make it a part of our daily duty to consider how common we are; and how few of us have any brains or souls worth speaking of, or fit to trust to;--that being the, alas, almost unexceptionable lot of human creatures. Not that we think ourselves, (still less, call ourselves without thinking so,) miserable sinners, for we are not in anywise miserable, but quite comfortable for the most part; and we are not sinners, that we know of; but are leading godly, righteous, and sober lives, to the best of our power, since last Sunday; (on which day some of us were, we regret to be informed, drunk;) but we are of course common creatures enough, the most of us, and thankful if we may be gathered up in St. Peter's sheet, so as not to be uncivilly or unjustly called unclean too. And therefore our chief concern is to find out any among us wiser and of better make than the rest, and to get them, if they will for any persuasion take the trouble, to rule over us, and teach us how to behave, and make the most of what little good is in us. So much for the first law of old Communism, respecting work. Then the second respects property, and it is that the public, or common, wealth, shall be more and statelier in all its substance than private or singular wealth; that is to say (to come to my own special business for a moment) that there shall be only cheap and few pictures, if any, in the insides of houses, where nobody but the owner can see them; but costly pictures, and many, on the outsides of houses, where the people can see them: also that the Hôtel-de-Ville, or Hotel of the whole Town, for the transaction of its common business, shall be a magnificent building, much rejoiced in by the people, and with its tower seen far away through the clear air; but that the hotels for private business or pleasure, cafés, taverns, and the like, shall be low, few, plain, and in back streets; more especially such as furnish singular and uncommon drinks and refreshments; but that the fountains which furnish the people's common drink shall be very lovely and stately, and adorned with precious marbles, and the like. Then farther, according to old Communism, the private dwellings of uncommon persons--dukes and lords--are to be very simple, and roughly put together,--such persons being supposed to be above all care for things that please the commonalty; but the buildings for public or common service, more especially schools, almshouses, and workhouses, are to be externally of a majestic character, as being for noble purposes and charities; and in their interiors furnished with many luxuries for the poor and sick. And, finally and chiefly, it is an absolute law of old Communism that the fortunes of private persons should be small, and of little account in the State; but the common treasure of the whole nation should be of superb and precious things in redundant quantity, as pictures, statues, precious books; gold and silver vessels, preserved from ancient times; gold and silver bullion laid up for use, in case of any chance need of buying anything suddenly from foreign nations; noble horses, cattle, and sheep, on the public lands; and vast spaces of land for culture, exercise, and garden, round the cities, full of flowers, which, being everybody's property, nobody could gather; and of birds which, being everybody's property, nobody could shoot. And, in a word, that instead of a common poverty, or national debt, which every poor person in the nation is taxed annually to fulfil his part of, there should be a common wealth, or national reverse of debt, consisting of pleasant things, which every poor person in the nation should be summoned to receive his dole of, annually; and of pretty things, which every person capable of admiration, foreigners as well as natives, should unfeignedly admire, in an æsthetic, and not a covetous manner (though for my own part I can't understand what it is that I am taxed now to defend, or what foreign nations are supposed to covet, here). But truly, a nation that has got anything to defend of real public interest, can usually hold it; and a fat Latin communist gave for sign of the strength of his commonalty, in its strongest time,-- "Privatus illis census erat brevis, Commune magnum;" [19] which you may get any of your boys or girls to translate for you, and remember; remembering, also, that the commonalty or publicity depends for its goodness on the nature of the thing that is common, and that is public. When the French cried, "Vive la République!" after the battle of Sedan, they were thinking only of the Publique, in the word, and not of the Re in it. But that is the essential part of it, for that "Re" is not like the mischievous Re in Reform, and Refaire, which the words had better be without; but it is short for res, which means 'thing'; and when you cry, "Live the Republic," the question is mainly, what thing it is you wish to be publicly alive, and whether you are striving for a Common-Wealth, and Public-Thing; or, as too plainly in Paris, for a Common-Illth, and Public-Nothing, or even Public-Less-than-nothing and Common Deficit. Now all these laws respecting public and private property, are accepted in the same terms by the entire body of us Communists of the old school; but with respect to the management of both, we old Reds fall into two classes, differing, not indeed in colour of redness, but in depth of tint of it--one class being, as it were, only of a delicately pink, peach-blossom, or dog-rose redness; but the other, to which I myself do partly, and desire wholly, to belong, as I told you, reddest of the red--that is to say, full crimson, or even dark crimson, passing into that deep colour of the blood which made the Spaniards call it blue, instead of red, and which the Greeks call phoinikeos, being an intense phoenix or flamingo colour: and this not merely, as in the flamingo feathers, a colour on the outside, but going through and through, ruby-wise; so that Dante, who is one of the few people who have ever beheld our queen full in the face, says of her that, if she had been in a fire, he could not have seen her at all, so fire-colour she was, all through. [20] And between these two sects or shades of us, there is this difference in our way of holding our common faith, (that our neighbour's property is ours, and ours his,) namely, that the rose-red division of us are content in their diligence of care to preserve or guard from injury or loss their neighbours' property, as their own; so that they may be called, not merely dog-rose red, but even 'watch-dog-rose' red; being, indeed, more careful and anxious for the safety of the possessions of other people, (especially their masters,) than for any of their own; and also more sorrowful for any wound or harm suffered by any creature in their sight, than for hurt to themselves. So that they are Communists, even less in their having part in all common well-being of their neighbours, than part in all common pain: being yet, on the whole, infinite gainers; for there is in this world infinitely more joy than pain to be shared, if you will only take your share when it is set for you. The vermilion, or Tyrian-red sect of us, however, are not content merely with this carefulness and watchfulness over our neighbours' good, but we cannot rest unless we are giving what we can spare of our own; and the more precious it is, the more we want to divide it with somebody. So that above all things, in what we value most of possessions, pleasant sights, and true knowledge, we cannot relish seeing any pretty things unless other people see them also; neither can we be content to know anything for ourselves, but must contrive, somehow, to make it known to others. And as thus especially we like to give knowledge away, so we like to have it good to give, (for, as for selling knowledge, thinking it comes by the spirit of Heaven, we hold the selling of it to be only a way of selling God again, and utterly Iscariot's business;) also, we know that the knowledge made up for sale is apt to be watered and dusted, or even itself good for nothing; and we try, for our part, to get it, and give it, pure: the mere fact that it is to be given away at once to anybody who asks to have it, and immediately wants to use it, is a continual check upon us. For instance, when Colonel North, in the House of Commons, on the 20th of last month, (as reported in the Times,) "would simply observe, in conclusion, that it was impossible to tell how many thousands of the young men who were to be embarked for India next September, would be marched, not to the hills, but to their graves;" any of us Tyrian-reds "would simply observe" that the young men themselves ought to be constantly, and on principle, informed of their destination before embarking; and that this pleasant communicativeness of what knowledge on the subject was to be got, would soon render quite possible the attainment of more. So also, in abstract science, the instant habit of making true discoveries common property, cures us of a bad trick which one may notice to have much hindered scientific persons lately, of rather spending their time in hiding their neighbours' discoveries, than improving their own: whereas, among us, scientific flamingoes are not only openly graced for discoveries, but openly disgraced for coveries; and that sharply and permanently; so that there is rarely a hint or thought among them of each other's being wrong, but quick confession of whatever is found out rightly. [21] But the point in which we dark-red Communists differ most from other people is, that we dread, above all things, getting miserly of virtue; and if there be any in us, or among us, we try forthwith to get it made common, and would fain hear the mob crying for some of that treasure, where it seems to have accumulated. I say, 'seems,' only: for though, at first, all the finest virtue looks as if it were laid up with the rich, (so that, generally, a millionaire would be much surprised at hearing that his daughter had made a petroleuse of herself, or that his son had murdered anybody for the sake of their watch and cravat),--it is not at all clear to us dark-reds that this virtue, proportionate to income, is of the right sort; and we believe that even if it were, the people who keep it thus all to themselves, and leave the so-called canaille without any, vitiate what they keep by keeping it, so that it is like manna laid up through the night, which breeds worms in the morning. You see, also, that we dark-red Communists, since we exist only in giving, must, on the contrary, hate with a perfect hatred all manner of thieving: even to Coeur-de-Lion's tar-and-feather extreme; and of all thieving, we dislike thieving on trust most, (so that, if we ever get to be strong enough to do what we want, and chance to catch hold of any failed bankers, their necks will not be worth half an hour's purchase). So also, as we think virtue diminishes in the honour and force of it in proportion to income, we think vice increases in the force and shame of it, and is worse in kings and rich people than in poor; and worse on a large scale than on a narrow one; and worse when deliberate than hasty. So that we can understand one man's coveting a piece of vineyard-ground for a garden of herbs, and stoning the master of it, (both of them being Jews;)--and yet the dogs ate queen's flesh for that, and licked king's blood! but for two nations--both Christians--to covet their neighbours' vineyards, all down beside the River of their border, and slay until the River itself runs red! The little pool of Samaria!--shall all the snows of the Alps, or the salt pool of the Great Sea, wash their armour, for these? I promised in my last letter that I would tell you the main meaning and bearing of the war, and its results to this day:--now that you know what Communism is, I can tell you these briefly, and, what is more to the purpose, how to bear yourself in the midst of them. The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all European nations, are Thieves, and, in their hearts, greedy of their neighbours' goods, land, and fame. But besides being Thieves, they are also fools, and have never yet been able to understand that if Cornish men want pippins cheap, they must not ravage Devonshire--that the prosperity of their neighbours is, in the end, their own also; and the poverty of their neighbours, by the communism of God, becomes also in the end their own. 'Invidia,' jealousy of your neighbour's good, has been, since dust was first made flesh, the curse of man; and 'Charitas,' the desire to do your neighbour grace, the one source of all human glory, power, and material Blessing. But war between nations (fools and thieves though they be,) is not necessarily in all respects evil. I gave you that long extract from Froissart to show you, mainly, that Theft in its simplicity--however sharp and rude, yet if frankly done, and bravely--does not corrupt men's souls; and they can, in a foolish, but quite vital and faithful way, keep the feast of the Virgin Mary in the midst of it. But Occult Theft,--Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,--corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists--that is to say, people who live by percentages or the labour of others; instead of by fair wages for their own. The Real war in Europe, of which this fighting in Paris is the Inauguration, is between these and the workmen, such as these have made him. They have kept him poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might, without his knowledge, gather for themselves the produce of his toil. At last, a dim insight into the fact of this dawns on him; and such as they have made him he meets them, and will meet. Nay, the time is even come when he will study that Meteorological question, suggested by the Spectator, formerly quoted, of the Filtration of Money from above downwards. "It was one of the many delusions of the Commune," (says to-day's Telegraph, 24th June,) "that it could do without rich consumers." Well, such unconsumed existence would be very wonderful! Yet it is, to me also, conceivable. Without the riches,--no; but without the consumers?--possibly! It is occurring to the minds of the workmen that these Golden Fleeces must get their dew from somewhere. "Shall there be dew upon the fleece only?" they ask:--and will be answered. They cannot do without these long purses, say you? No; but they want to find where the long purses are filled. Nay, even their trying to burn the Louvre, without reference to Art Professors, had a ray of meaning in it--quite Spectatorial. "If we must choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton-mill," (wrote the Spectator of August 6th, last year, instructing me in political economy, just as the war was beginning,) "in the name of manhood and morality, give us the cotton-mill." So thinks the French workman also, energetically; only his mill is not to be in Lancashire. Both French and English agree to have no more Titians,--it is well,--but which is to have the Cotton-Mill? Do you see in the Times of yesterday and the day before, 22nd and 23rd June, that the Minister of France dares not, even in this her utmost need, put on an income tax; and do you see why he dares not? Observe, such a tax is the only honest and just one; because it tells on the rich in true proportion to the poor, and because it meets necessity in the shortest and bravest way, and without interfering with any commercial operation. All rich people object to income tax, of course;--they like to pay as much as a poor man pays on their tea, sugar, and tobacco,--nothing on their incomes. Whereas, in true justice, the only honest and wholly right tax is one not merely on income, but property; increasing in percentage as the property is greater. And the main virtue of such a tax is that it makes publicly known what every man has, and how he gets it. For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree in their dislike to give an account of the way they get their living; still less, of how much they have got sewn up in their breeches. It does not, however, matter much to a country that it should know how its poor Vagabonds live; but it is of vital moment that it should know how its rich Vagabonds live; and that much of knowledge, it seems to me, in the present state of our education, is quite attainable. But that, when you have attained it, you may act on it wisely, the first need is that you should be sure you are living honestly yourselves. That is why I told you, in my second letter, you must learn to obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones:--I will amplify now a little the three promises I want you to make. Look back at them. I. You are to do good work, whether you live or die. It may be you will have to die;--well, men have died for their country often, yet doing her no good; be ready to die for her in doing her assured good: her, and all other countries with her. Mind your own business with your absolute heart and soul; but see that it is a good business first. That it is corn and sweet pease you are producing,--not gunpowder and arsenic. And be sure of this, literally:--you must simply rather die than make any destroying mechanism or compound. You are to be literally employed in cultivating the ground, or making useful things, and carrying them where they are wanted. Stand in the streets, and say to all who pass by: Have you any vineyard we can work in,--not Naboth's? In your powder and petroleum manufactory, we work no more. I have said little to you yet of any of the pictures engraved--you perhaps think, not to the ornament of my book. Be it so. You will find them better than ornaments in time. Notice, however, in the one I give you with this letter--the "Charity" of Giotto--the Red Queen of Dante, and ours also,--how different his thought of her is from the common one. Usually she is nursing children, or giving money. Giotto thinks there is little charity in nursing children;--bears and wolves do that for their little ones; and less still in giving money. His Charity tramples upon bags of gold--has no use for them. She gives only corn and flowers; and God's angel given her, not even these--but a Heart. Giotto is quite literal in his meaning, as well as figurative. Your love is to give food and flowers, and to labour for them only. But what are we to do against powder and petroleum, then? What men may do; not what poisonous beasts may. If a wretch spit in your face, will you answer by spitting in his?--if he throw vitriol at you, will you go to the apothecary for a bigger bottle? There is no physical crime at this day, so far beyond pardon,--so without parallel in its untempted guilt, as the making of war-machinery, and invention of mischievous substance. Two nations may go mad, and fight like harlots--God have mercy on them;--you, who hand them carving-knives off the table, for leave to pick up a dropped sixpence, what mercy is there for you? We are so humane, forsooth, and so wise; and our ancestors had tar-barrels for witches; we will have them for everybody else, and drive the witches' trade ourselves, by daylight; we will have our cauldrons, please Hecate, cooled (according to the Darwinian theory,) with baboon's blood, and enough of it, and sell hell-fire in the open street. II. Seek to revenge no injury. You see now--do not you--a little more clearly why I wrote that? what strain there is on the untaught masses of you to revenge themselves, even with insane fire? Alas, the Taught masses are strained enough also;--have you not just seen a great religious and reformed nation, with its goodly Captains,--philosophical, sentimental, domestic, evangelical-angelical-minded altogether, and with its Lord's Prayer really quite vital to it,--come and take its neighbour nation by the throat, saying, "Pay me that thou owest"? Seek to revenge no injury: I do not say, seek to punish no crime: look what I hinted about failed bankers. Of that hereafter. III. Learn to obey good laws; and in a little while you will reach the better learning--how to obey good Men, who are living, breathing, unblinded law; and to subdue base and disloyal ones, recognizing in these the light, and ruling over those in the power, of the Lord of Light and Peace, whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion, and His Kingdom from generation to generation. Ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER VIII. My Friends, I begin this letter a month before it is wanted, [22] having several matters in my mind that I would fain put into words at once. It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismallest light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871. For the sky is covered with grey cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, yet without any substance, or wreathing, or colour of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunderstorm; only not violently, but enough to show the passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through meagre March, through changelessly sullen April, through despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has come grey-shrouded thus. And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings; and I never saw such as these, till now. And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about them, I believe, by this time; and how they move, and what they are made of. And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move, nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than they go, nor make them of anything else, better than they are made. But I would care much and give much, if I could be told where this bitter wind comes from, and what it is made of. For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory science, one might make it of something else. It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke; very possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's souls--such of them as are not gone yet where they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thither, doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for them. You know, if there are such things as souls, and if ever any of them haunt places where they have been hurt, there must be many about us, just now, displeased enough! You may laugh, if you like. I don't believe any one of you would like to live in a room with a murdered man in the cupboard, however well preserved chemically;--even with a sunflower growing out at the top of his head. And I don't, myself, like living in a world with such a multitude of murdered men in the ground of it--though we are making heliotropes of them, and scientific flowers, that study the sun. I wish the scientific men would let me and other people study it with our own eyes, and neither through telescopes nor heliotropes. You shall, at all events, study the rain a little, if not the sun, to-day, and settle that question we have been upon so long as to where it comes from. All France, it seems, is in a state of enthusiastic delight and pride at the unexpected facility with which she has got into debt; and Monsieur Thiers is congratulated by all our wisest papers on his beautiful statesmanship of borrowing. I don't myself see the cleverness of it, having suffered a good deal from that kind of statesmanship in private persons: but I daresay it is as clever as anything else that statesmen do, now-a-days; only it happens to be more mischievous than most of their other doings, and I want you to understand the bearings of it. Everybody in France who has got any money is eager to lend it to M. Thiers at five per cent. No doubt; but who is to pay the five per cent.? It is to be "raised" by duties on this and that. Then certainly the persons who get the five per cent. will have to pay some part of these duties themselves, on their own tea and sugar, or whatever else is taxed; and this taxing will be on the whole of their trade, and on whatever they buy with the rest of their fortunes; [23] but the five per cent. only on what they lend M. Thiers. It is a low estimate to say the payment of duties will take off one per cent. of their five. Practically, therefore, the arrangement is that they get four per cent. for their money, and have all the trouble of customs duties, to take from them another extra one per cent., and give it them back again. Four per cent., however, is not to be despised. But who pays that? The people who have got no money to lend, pay it; the daily worker and producer pays it. Unfortunate "William," who has borrowed, in this instance, not a plane he could make planks with, but mitrailleuses and gunpowder, with which he has planed away his own farmsteads, and forests, and fair fields of corn, and having left himself desolate, now has to pay for the loan of this useful instrument, five per cent. So says the gently commercial James to him: "Not only the price of your plane, but five per cent. to me for lending it, O sweetest of Williams." Sweet William, carrying generally more absinthe in his brains than wit, has little to say for himself, having, indeed, wasted too much of his sweetness lately, tainted disagreeably with petroleum, on the desert air of Paris. And the people who are to get their five per cent. out of him, and roll him and suck him,--the sugar-cane of a William that he is,--how should they but think the arrangement a glorious one for the nation? So there is great acclaim and triumphal procession of financiers! and the arrangement is made; namely, that all the poor labouring persons in France are to pay the rich idle ones five per cent. annually, on the sum of eighty millions of sterling pounds, until further notice. But this is not all, observe. Sweet William is not altogether so soft in his rind that you can crush him without some sufficient machinery: you must have your army in good order, "to justify public confidence;" and you must get the expense of that, beside your five per cent., out of ambrosial William. He must pay the cost of his own roller. Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to. First, you spend eighty millions of money in fireworks, doing no end of damage in letting them off. Then you borrow money, to pay the firework-maker's bill, from any gain-loving persons who have got it. And then, dressing your bailiff's men in new red coats and cocked hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what you have borrowed; and the expense of the cocked hats besides. That is "financiering," my friends, as the mob of the money-makers understand it. And they understand it well. For that is what it always comes to, finally; taking the peasant by the throat. He must pay--for he only can. Food can only be got out of the ground, and all these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but ways of getting at last down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the roots from him as he digs. And they have got him down, now, they think, well, for a while, poor William, after his fit of fury and petroleum: and can make their money out of him for years to come, in the old ways. Did you chance, my friends, any of you, to see, the other day, the 83rd number of the Graphic, with the picture of the Queen's concert in it? All the fine ladies sitting so trimly, and looking so sweet, and doing the whole duty of woman--wearing their fine clothes gracefully; and the pretty singer, white-throated, warbling "Home, sweet home" to them, so morally, and melodiously! Here was yet to be our ideal of virtuous life, thought the Graphic! Surely, we are safe back with our virtues in satin slippers and lace veils;--and our Kingdom of Heaven is come again, with observation, and crown diamonds of the dazzlingest. Cherubim and Seraphim in toilettes de Paris,--(blue-de-ciel--vert d'olivier-de-Noé--mauve de colombe-fusillée,) dancing to Coote and Tinney's band; and vulgar Hell reserved for the canaille, as heretofore! Vulgar Hell shall be didactically pourtrayed, accordingly; (see page 17,)--Wickedness going its way to its poor Home--bitter-sweet. Ouvrier and petroleuse--prisoners at last--glaring wild on their way to die. Alas! of these divided races, of whom one was appointed to teach and guide the other, which has indeed sinned deepest--the unteaching, or the untaught?--which now are guiltiest--these, who perish, or those--who forget? Ouvrier and petroleuse; they are gone their way--to their death. But for these, the Virgin of France shall yet unfold the oriflamme above their graves, and lay her blanches lilies on their smirched dust. Yes, and for these, great Charles shall rouse his Roland, and bid him put ghostly trump to lip, and breathe a point of war; and the helmed Pucelle shall answer with a wood-note of Domrémy;--yes, and for these the Louis they mocked, like his master, shall raise his holy hands, and pray God's peace. "Not as the world giveth." Everlasting shame only, and unrest, are the world's gifts. These Swine of the five per cent. shall share them duly. La sconoscente vita, che i fe' sozzi Ad ogni conoscenza or li fa bruni. [24] Che tutto l'oro, ch'e sotto la luna, E che già fù, di queste anime stanche Non poterebbe farne posar una. [25] "Ad ogni conoscenza bruni:" Dark to all recognition! So they would have it indeed, true of instinct. "Ce serait l'inquisition," screamed the Senate of France, threatened with income-tax and inquiry into their ways and means. Well,--what better thing could it be? Had they not been blind long enough, under their mole-hillocks, that they should shriek at the first spark of "Inquisition"? A few things might be "inquired," one should think, and answered, among honest men, now, to advantage, and openly? "Ah no--for God's sake," shrieks the Senate, "no Inquisition. If ever anybody should come to know how we live, we were disgraced for ever, honest gentlemen that we are." Now, my friends, the first condition of all bravery is to keep out of this loathsomeness. If you do live by rapine, stand up like a man for the old law of bow and spear; but don't fall whimpering down on your belly, like Autolycus, "grovelling on the ground," when another human creature asks you how you get your daily bread, with an "Oh, that ever I was born,--here is inquisition come on me!" The Inquisition must come. Into men's consciences, no; not now: there is little worth looking into there. But into their pockets--yes; a most practicable and beneficial inquisition, to be made thoroughly and purgatorially, once for all, and rendered unnecessary hereafter, by furnishing the relieved marsupialia with--glass pockets, for the future. You know, at least, that we, in our own society, are to have glass pockets, as we are all to give the tenth of what we have, to buy land with, so that we must every one know each other's property to a farthing. And this month I begin making up my own accounts for you, as I said I would: I could not, sooner, though I set matters in train as soon as my first letter was out, and effected (as I supposed!), in February, a sale of 14,000l. worth of houses, at the West End, to Messrs. ---- and ----, of ---- Row. But from then till now, I've been trying to get that piece of business settled, and until yesterday, 19th July, I have not been able. For, first there was a mistake made by my lawyer in the list of the houses: No. 7 ought to have been No. 1. It was a sheer piece of stupidity, and ought to have been corrected by a dash of the pen; but all sorts of deeds had to be made out again, merely that they might be paid for; and it took about three months to change 7 into 1. At last all was declared smooth again, and I thought I should get my money; but Messrs. ---- never stirred. My people kept sending them letters, saying I really did want the money, though they mightn't think it. Whether they thought it or not, they took no notice of any such informal communications. I thought they were going to back out of their bargain; but my man of business at last got their guarantee for its completion. "If they've guaranteed the payment, why don't they pay?" thought I; but still I couldn't get any money. At last I found the lawyers on both sides were quarrelling over the stamp-duties! Nobody knew, of the whole pack of them, whether this stamp or that was the right one! and my lawyers wouldn't give an eighty-pound stamp, and theirs wouldn't be content with a twenty-pound one. Now, you know, all this stamp business itself is merely Mr. Gladstone's [26] way of coming in for his share of the booty. I can't be allowed to sell my houses in peace, but Mr. Gladstone must have his three hundred pounds out of me, to feed his Woolwich infant with, and fire it off "with the most satisfactory result," "nothing damaged but the platform." I am content, if only he would come and say what he wants, and take it, and get out of my sight. But not to know what he does want! and to keep me from getting my money at all, while his lawyers are asking which is the right stamp? I think he had better be clear on that point next time. But here, at last, are six months come and gone, and the stamp question is--not settled, indeed, but I've undertaken to keep my man of business free of harm, if the stamps won't do; and so at last he says I'm to have my money; and I really believe, by the time this letter is out, Messrs. ---- will have paid me my 14,000l. Now you know I promised you the tenth of all I had, when free from incumbrances already existing on it. This first instalment of 14,000l. is not all clear, for I want part of it to found a Mastership of Drawing under the Art Professorship at Oxford; which I can't do rightly for less than 5,000l. But I'll count the sum left as 10,000l. instead of 9,000l., and that will be clear for our society, and so, you shall have a thousand pounds down, as the tenth of that, which will quit me, observe, of my pledge thus far. A thousand down, I say; but down where? Where can I put it to be safe for us? You will find presently, as others come in to help us, and we get something worth taking care of, that it becomes a very curious question indeed, where we can put our money to be safe! In the meantime, I've told my man of business to buy 1,000l. consols in the names of two men of honour; the names cannot yet be certain. What remains of the round thousand shall be kept to add to next instalment. And thus begins the fund, which I think we may advisably call the "St. George's" fund. And although the interest on consols is, as I told you before, only the taxation on the British peasant continued since the Napoleon wars, still this little portion of his labour, the interest on our St. George's fund, will at last be saved for him, and brought back to him. And now, if you will read over once again the end of my fifth letter, I will tell you a little more of what we are to do with this money, as it increases. First, let whoever gives us any, be clear in their minds that it is a Gift. It is not an Investment. It is a frank and simple gift to the British people: nothing of it is to come back to the giver. But also, nothing of it is to be lost. The money is not to be spent in feeding Woolwich infants with gunpowder. It is to be spent in dressing the earth and keeping it,--in feeding human lips,--in clothing human bodies,--in kindling human souls. First of all, I say, in dressing the earth. As soon as the fund reaches any sufficient amount, the Trustees shall buy with it any kind of land offered them at just price in Britain. Rock, moor, marsh, or sea-shore--it matters not what, so it be British ground, and secured to us. Then, we will ascertain the absolute best that can be made of every acre. We will first examine what flowers and herbs it naturally bears; every wholesome flower that it will grow shall be sown in its wild places, and every kind of fruit-tree that can prosper; and arable and pasture land extended by every expedient of tillage, with humble and simple cottage dwellings under faultless sanitary regulation. Whatever piece of land we begin to work upon, we shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual labour on it, until we have every foot of it under as strict care as a flower-garden: and the labourers shall be paid sufficient, unchanging wages; and their children educated compulsorily in agricultural schools inland, and naval schools by the sea, the indispensable first condition of such education being that the boys learn either to ride or to sail; the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; the youth of both sexes to be disciplined daily in the strictest practice of vocal music; and for morality, to be taught gentleness to all brute creatures,--finished courtesy to each other,--to speak truth with rigid care, and to obey orders with the precision of slaves. Then, as they get older, they are to learn the natural history of the place they live in,--to know Latin, boys and girls both,--and the history of five cities: Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London. Now, as I told you in my fifth letter, to what extent I may be able to carry this plan into execution, I know not; but to some visible extent, with my own single hand, I can and will, if I live. Nor do I doubt but that I shall find help enough, as soon as the full action of the system is seen, and ever so little a space of rightly cultivated ground in perfect beauty, with inhabitants in peace of heart, of whom none Doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti. Such a life we have lately been taught by vile persons to think impossible; so far from being impossible, it has been the actual life of all glorious human states in their origin. Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini; Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit; Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma. But, had it never been endeavoured until now, we might yet learn to hope for its unimagined good by considering what it has been possible for us to reach of unimagined evil. Utopia and its benediction are probable and simple things, compared to the Kakotopia and its curse, which we had seen actually fulfilled. We have seen the city of Paris (what miracle can be thought of beyond this?) with her own forts raining ruin on her palaces, and her young children casting fire into the streets in which they had been born, but we have not faith enough in heaven to imagine the reverse of this, or the building of any city whose streets shall be full of innocent boys and girls playing in the midst thereof. My friends, you have trusted, in your time, too many idle words. Read now these following, not idle ones; and remember them; and trust them, for they are true:-- "Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. "And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. "In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee.... "Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake.... "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord." Remember only that in this now antiquated translation, "righteousness" means, accurately and simply, "justice," and is the eternal law of right, obeyed alike in the great times of each state, by Jew, Greek, and Roman. In my next letter, we will examine into the nature of this justice, and of its relation to Governments that deserve the name. And so believe me Faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER IX. Denmark Hill, 1st September, 1871. My Friends, As the design which I had in view when I began these letters (and many a year before, in the germ and first outlines of it) is now fairly afoot, and in slow, but determined, beginning of realization, I will endeavour in this and the next following letter to set its main features completely before you; though, remember, the design would certainly be a shallow and vain one, if its bearings could be either shortly explained, or quickly understood. I have much in my own hope, which I know you are as yet incapable of hoping, but which your enemies are dexterous in discouraging, and eager to discourage. Have you noticed how curiously and earnestly the greater number of public journals that have yet quoted these papers, allege, for their part, nothing but the difficulties in our way; and that with as much contempt as they can venture to express? No editor could say to your face that the endeavour to give you fresh air, wholesome employment, and high education, was reprehensible or dangerous. The worst he can venture to say is, that it is ridiculous,--which you observe is, by most, declared as wittily as they may. Some must, indeed, candidly think, as well as say so. Education of any noble kind has of late been so constantly given only to the idle classes, or, at least, to those who conceive it a privilege to be idle, [27] that it is difficult for any person, trained in modern habits of thought, to imagine a true and refined scholarship, of which the essential foundation is to be skill in some useful labour. Time and trial will show which of the two conceptions of education is indeed the ridiculous one--and have shown, many and many a day before this, if any one would look at the showing. Such trial, however, I mean anew to make, with what life is left to me, and help given to me: and the manner of it is to be this, that, few or many, as our company may be, we will secure for the people of Britain as wide spaces of British ground as we can; and on such spaces of freehold land we will cause to be trained as many British children as we can, in healthy, brave, and kindly life, to every one of whom there shall be done true justice, and dealt fair opportunity of "advancement," or what else may, indeed, be good for them. "True justice!" I might more shortly have written "justice," only you are all now so much in the way of asking for what you think "rights," which, if you could get them, would turn out to be the deadliest wrongs;--and you suffer so much from an external mechanism of justice, which for centuries back has abetted, or, at best, resulted in, every conceivable manner of injustice--that I am compelled to say "True justice," to distinguish it from that which is commonly imagined by the populace, or attainable under the existing laws, of civilized nations. This true justice--(not to spend time, which I am apt to be too fond of doing, in verbal definition), consists mainly in the granting to every human being due aid in the development of such faculties as it possesses for action and enjoyment; primarily, for useful action, because all enjoyment worth having (nay, all enjoyment not harmful) must in some way arise out of that, either in happy energy, or rightly complacent and exulting rest. "Due" aid, you see, I have written. Not "equal" aid. One of the first statements I made to you respecting this domain of ours was "there shall be no equality in it." In education especially, true justice is curiously unequal--if you choose to give it a hard name, iniquitous. The right law of it is that you are to take most pains with the best material. Many conscientious masters will plead for the exactly contrary iniquity, and say you should take the most pains with the dullest boys. But that is not so (only you must be very careful that you know which are the dull boys; for the cleverest look often very like them). Never waste pains on bad ground; let it remain rough, though properly looked after and cared for; it will be of best service so; but spare no labour on the good, or on what has in it the capacity of good. The tendency of modern help and care is quite morbidly and madly in reverse of this great principle. Benevolent persons are always, by preference, busy on the essentially bad; and exhaust themselves in efforts to get maximum intellect from cretins, and maximum virtue from criminals. Meantime, they take no care to ascertain (and for the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and crime, and suffer the most splendid material in child-nature to wander neglected about the streets, until it has become rotten to the degree in which they feel prompted to take an interest in it. Now I have not the slightest intention--understand this, I beg of you, very clearly--of setting myself to mend or reform people; when they are once out of form they may stay so, for me. [28] But of what unspoiled stuff I can find to my hand I will cut the best shapes there is room for; shapes unalterable, if it may be, for ever. "The best shapes there is room for," since, according to the conditions around them, men's natures must expand or remain contracted; and, yet more distinctly, let me say, "the best shapes that there is substance for," seeing that we must accept contentedly infinite difference in the original nature and capacity, even at their purest; which it is the first condition of right education to make manifest to all persons--most of all to the persons chiefly concerned. That other men should know their measure, is, indeed, desirable; but that they should know it themselves, is wholly necessary. "By competitive examination of course?" Sternly, no! but under absolute prohibition of all violent and strained effort--most of all envious or anxious effort--in every exercise of body and mind; and by enforcing on every scholar's heart, from the first to the last stage of his instruction, the irrevocable ordinance of the third Fors Clavigera, that his mental rank among men is fixed from the hour he was born,--that by no temporary or violent effort can he train, though he may seriously injure the faculties he has; that by no manner of effort can he increase them; and that his best happiness is to consist in the admiration of powers by him for ever unattainable, and of arts, and deeds, by him ever inimitable. Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first actively engaged in Art teaching, a young Scottish student came up to London to put himself under me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect to the qualities looked for by the judges) in various schools of Art. He worked under me very earnestly and patiently for some time; and I was able to praise his doings in what I thought very high terms: nevertheless, there remained always a look of mortification on his face, after he had been praised, however unqualifiedly. At last, he could hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more than usually complimentary, turned to me with an anxious, yet not unconfident expression, and asked: "Do you think, sir, that I shall ever draw as well as Turner?" I paused for a second or two, being much taken aback; and then answered, [29] "It is far more likely you should be made Emperor of All the Russias. There is a new Emperor every fifteen or twenty years, on the average; and by strange hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might be made Emperor. But there is only one Turner in five hundred years, and God decides, without any admission of auxiliary cabal, what piece of clay His soul is to be put in." It was the first time that I had been brought into direct collision with the modern system of prize-giving and competition; and the mischief of it was, in the sequel, clearly shown to me, and tragically. This youth had the finest powers of mechanical execution I have ever met with, but was quite incapable of invention, or strong intellectual effort of any kind. Had he been taught early and thoroughly to know his place, and be content with his faculty, he would have been one of the happiest and most serviceable of men. But, at the Art schools, he got prize after prize for his neat handling; and having, in his restricted imagination, no power of discerning the qualities of great work, all the vanity of his nature was brought out unchecked; so that, being intensely industrious and conscientious, as well as vain, (it is a Scottish combination of character not unfrequent, [30]) he naturally expected to become one of the greatest of men. My answer not only mortified, but angered him, and made him suspicious of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from being fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked leave (he was then in my employment as well as under my teaching) to put himself under another master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, "if he found the other master no better to his mind, he might come back to me whenever he chose." The other master giving him no more hope of advancement than I did, he came back to me; I sent him into Switzerland, to draw Swiss architecture; but instead of doing what I bid him, quietly, and nothing else, he set himself, with furious industry, to draw snowy mountains and clouds, that he might show me he could draw like Albert Durer, or Turner;--spent his strength in agony of vain effort;--caught cold, fell into decline, and died. How many actual deaths are now annually caused by the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, it would startle us all if we could know: but the mischief done to the best faculties of the brain in all cases, and the miserable confusion and absurdity involved in the system itself, which offers every place, not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, but to the one who, on a given day, chances to have bodily strength enough to stand the cruellest strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and more lamentable than many deaths. This, then, shall be the first condition of what education it may become possible for us to give, that the strength of the youths shall never be strained; and that their best powers shall be developed in each, without competition, though they shall have to pass crucial, but not severe, examinations, attesting clearly to themselves and to other people, not the utmost they can do, but that at least they can do some things accurately and well: their own certainty of this being accompanied with the quite as clear and much happier certainty, that there are many other things which they will never be able to do at all. "The happier certainty?" Yes. A man's happiness consists infinitely more in admiration of the faculties of others than in confidence in his own. That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him; all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity of partly understanding a creature above him, is the dog's nobility. Increase such reverence in human beings, and you increase daily their happiness, peace, and dignity; take it away, and you make them wretched as well as vile. But for fifty years back modern education has devoted itself simply to the teaching of impudence; and then we complain that we can no more manage our mobs! "Look at Mr. Robert Stephenson," (we tell a boy,) "and at Mr. James Watt, and Mr. William Shakspeare! You know you are every bit as good as they; you have only to work in the same way, and you will infallibly arrive at the same eminence." Most boys believe the "you are every bit as good as they," without any painful experiment: but the better-minded ones really take the advised measures; and as, at the end of all things, there can be but one Mr. James Watt or Mr. William Shakspeare, the rest of the candidates for distinction, finding themselves, after all their work, still indistinct, think it must be the fault of the police, and are riotous accordingly. To some extent it is the fault of the police, truly enough, considering as the police of Europe, or teachers of politeness and civic manners, its higher classes,--higher either by race or faculty. Police they are, or else are nothing: bound to keep order, both by clear teaching of the duty and delight of Respect, and, much more, by being themselves--Respectable; whether as priests, or kings, or lords, or generals, or admirals;--if they will only take care to be verily that, the Respect will be forthcoming, with little pains: nay, even Obedience, inconceivable to modern free souls as it may be, we shall get again, as soon as there is anybody worth obeying, and who can keep us out of shoal water. Not but that those two admirals and their captains have been sorely, though needfully, dealt with. It was, doubtless, not a scene of the brightest in our naval history--that Agincourt, entomologically, as it were, pinned to her wrong place, off Gibraltar; but in truth, it was less the captain's fault, than the ironmonger's. You need not think you can ever have seamen in iron ships; it is not in flesh and blood to be vigilant when vigilance is so slightly necessary: the best seaman born will lose his qualities, when he knows he can steam against wind and tide, [31] and has to handle ships so large that the care of them is necessarily divided among many persons. If you want sea-captains indeed, like Sir Richard Grenville or Lord Dundonald, you must give them small ships, and wooden ones,--nothing but oak, pine, and hemp to trust to, above or below,--and those, trustworthy. You little know how much is implied in the two conditions of boys' education that I gave you in my last letter,--that they shall all learn either to ride or sail; nor by what constancy of law the power of highest discipline and honour is vested by Nature in the two chivalries--of the Horse and the Wave. Both are significative of the right command of man over his own passions; but they teach, farther, the strange mystery of relation that exists between his soul and the wild natural elements on the one hand, and the wild lower animals on the other. The sea-riding gave their chief strength of temper to the Athenian, Norman, Pisan, and Venetian,--masters of the arts of the world: but the gentleness of chivalry, properly so called, depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier animal-life, first clearly taught in the myth of Chiron, and in his bringing up of Jason, Æsculapius, and Achilles, but most perfectly by Homer in the fable of the horses of Achilles, and the part assigned to them, in relation to the death of his friend, and in prophecy of his own. There is, perhaps, in all the 'Iliad' nothing more deep in significance--there is nothing in all literature more perfect in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life, [32] than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest of the gods. You shall read Pope's translation; it does not give you the manner of the original, but it entirely gives you the passion:-- Meantime, at distance from the scene of blood, The pensive steeds of great Achilles stood; Their godlike master slain before their eyes They wept, and shared in human miseries. In vain Automedon now shakes the rein, Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain; Nor to the fight nor Hellespont they go, Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe; Still as a tombstone, never to be moved, On some good man or woman unreproved Lays its eternal weight; or fix'd as stands A marble courser by the sculptor's hands, Placed on the hero's grave. Along their face, The big round drops coursed down with silent pace, Conglobing on the dust. Their manes, that late Circled their arched necks, and waved in state, Trail'd on the dust, beneath the yoke were spread, And prone to earth was hung their languid head: Nor Jove disdain'd to cast a pitying look, While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke: "Unhappy coursers of immortal strain! Exempt from age, and deathless now in vain! Did we your race on mortal man bestow, Only, alas! to share in mortal woe? For ah! what is there, of inferior birth, That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth; What wretched creature of what wretched kind, Than man more weak, calamitous and blind? A miserable race! But cease to mourn! For not by you shall Priam's son be borne High on the splendid car; one glorious prize He rashly boasts; the rest our will denies. Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart, Ourself with rising spirits swell your heart. Automedon your rapid flight shall bear Safe to the navy through the storm of war...." He said; and, breathing in th' immortal horse Excessive spirit, urged them to the course; From their high manes they shake the dust, and bear The kindling chariot through the parted war. Is not that a prettier notion of horses than you will get from your betting English chivalry on the Derby day? [33] We will have, please heaven, some riding, not as jockeys ride, and some sailing, not as pots and kettles sail, once more on English land and sea; and out of both, kindled yet again, the chivalry of heart of the Knight of Athens, and Eques of Rome, and Ritter of Germany, and Chevalier of France, and Cavalier of England--chivalry gentle always and lowly, among those who deserved their name of knight; showing mercy to whom mercy was due, and honour to whom honour. It exists yet, and out of La Mancha, too (or none of us could exist), whatever you may think in these days of ungentleness and Dishonour. It exists secretly, to the full, among you yourselves, and the recovery of it again would be to you as the opening of a well in the desert. You remember what I told you were the three spiritual treasures of your life--Admiration, Hope, and Love. Admiration is the Faculty of giving Honour. It is the best word we have for the various feelings of wonder, reverence, awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work, and which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear-sighted persons, as opposed to the "impudence" of base and blind ones. The Latins called this great virtue "pudor," of which our "impudence" is the negative; the Greeks had a better word, "aidôs;" too wide in the bearings of it for me to explain to you to-day, even if it could be explained before you recovered the feeling;--which, after being taught for fifty years that impudence is the chief duty of man, and that living in coal-holes and ash-heaps is his proudest existence, and that the methods of generation of vermin are his loftiest subject of science,--it will not be easy for you to do; but your children may, and you will see that it is good for them. In the history of the five cities I named, they shall learn, so far as they can understand, what has been beautifully and bravely done; and they shall know the lives of the heroes and heroines in truth and naturalness; and shall be taught to remember the greatest of them on the days of their birth and death; so that the year shall have its full calendar of reverent Memory. And on every day, part of their morning service shall be a song in honour of the hero whose birthday it is: and part of their evening service, a song of triumph for the fair death of one whose death-day it is: and in their first learning of notes they shall be taught the great purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in the strongest and clearest possible way; and they shall never be taught to sing what they don't mean. They shall be able to sing merrily when they are happy, and earnestly when they are sad; but they shall find no mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity; neither shall they waste and profane their hearts with artificial and lascivious sorrow. Regulations which will bring about some curious changes in piano-playing, and several other things. "Which will bring." They are bold words, considering how many schemes have failed disastrously, (as your able editors gladly point out,) which seemed much more plausible than this. But, as far as I know history, good designs have not failed except when they were too narrow in their final aim, and too obstinately and eagerly pushed in the beginning of them. Prosperous Fortune only grants an almost invisible slowness of success, and demands invincible patience in pursuing it. Many good men have failed in haste; more in egotism, and desire to keep everything in their own hands; and some by mistaking the signs of their times; but others, and those generally the boldest in imagination, have not failed; and their successors, true knights or monks, have bettered the fate and raised the thoughts of men for centuries; nay, for decades of centuries. And there is assuredly nothing in this purpose I lay before you, so far as it reaches hitherto, which will require either knightly courage or monkish enthusiasm to carry out. To divert a little of the large current of English charity and justice from watching disease to guarding health, and from the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue; to establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals, and training schools instead of penitentiaries, is not, if you will slowly take it to heart, a frantic imagination. What farther hope I have of getting some honest men to serve, each in his safe and useful trade, faithfully, as a good soldier serves in his dangerous, and too often very wide of useful one, may seem, for the moment, vain enough; for indeed, in the last sermon I heard out of an English pulpit, the clergyman said it was now acknowledged to be impossible for any honest man to live by trade in England. From which the conclusion he drew was, not that the manner of trade in England should be amended, but that his hearers should be thankful they were going to heaven. It never seemed to occur to him that perhaps it might be only through amendment of their ways in trade that some of them could ever get there. Such madness, therefore, as may be implied in this ultimate hope of seeing some honest work and traffic done in faithful fellowship, I confess to you: but what, for my own part, I am about to endeavour, is certainly within my power, if my life and health last a few years more, and the compass of it is soon definable. First,--as I told you at the beginning of these Letters,--I must do my own proper work as well as I can--nothing else must come in the way of that; and for some time to come, it will be heavy, because, after carefully considering the operation of the Kensington system of Art-teaching throughout the country, and watching for two years its effect on various classes of students at Oxford, I became finally convinced that it fell short of its objects in more than one vital particular: and I have, therefore, obtained permission to found a separate Mastership of Drawing in connection with the Art Professorship at Oxford; and elementary schools will be opened in the University galleries, next October, in which the methods of teaching will be calculated to meet requirements which have not been contemplated in the Kensington system. But how far what these, not new, but very ancient, disciplines teach, may be by modern students, either required or endured, remains to be seen. The organization of the system of teaching, and preparation of examples, in this school, is, however, at present my chief work,--no light one,--and everything else must be subordinate to it. But in my first series of lectures at Oxford, I stated (and cannot too often or too firmly state) that no great arts were practicable by any people, unless they were living contented lives, in pure air, out of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from unnecessary mechanical occupation. It is simply one part of the practical work I have to do in Art-teaching, to bring, somewhere, such conditions into existence, and to show the working of them. I know also assuredly that the conditions necessary for the Arts of men, are the best for their souls and bodies; and knowing this, I do not doubt but that it may be with due pains, to some material extent, convincingly shown; and I am now ready to receive help, little or much, from any one who cares to forward the showing of it. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, and the Right Hon. William Cowper-Temple, have consented to be the Trustees of the fund; it being distinctly understood that in that office they accept no responsibility for the conduct of the scheme, and refrain from expressing any opinion of its principles. They simply undertake the charge of the money and land given to the St. George's fund; certify to the public that it is spent, or treated, for the purposes of that fund, in the manner stated in my accounts of it; and, in the event of my death, hold it for such fulfilment of its purposes as they may then find possible. But it is evidently necessary for the right working of the scheme that the Trustees should not, except only in that office, be at present concerned with or involved in it; and that no ambiguous responsibility should fall on them. I know too much of the manner of law to hope that I can get the arrangement put into proper form before the end of the year; but, I hope, at latest, on the eve of Christmas Day (the day I named first) to publish the December number of Fors with the legal terms all clear: until then, whatever sums or land I may receive will be simply paid to the Trustees, or secured in their name, for the St. George's Fund; what I may attempt afterwards will be, in any case, scarcely noticeable for some time; for I shall only work with the interest of the fund; [34] and as I have strength and leisure:--I have little enough of the one; and am like to have little of the other, for years to come, if these drawing-schools become useful, as I hope. But what I may do myself is of small consequence. Long before it can come to any convincing result, I believe some of the gentlemen of England will have taken up the matter, and seen that, for their own sake, no less than the country's, they must now live on their estates, not in shooting-time only, but all the year; and be themselves farmers, or "shepherd lords," and make the field gain on the street, not the street on the field; and bid the light break into the smoke-clouds, and bear in their hands, up to those loathsome city walls, the gifts of Giotto's Charity, corn and flowers. It is time, too, I think. Did you notice the lovely instances of chivalry, modesty, and musical taste recorded in those letters in the 'Times,' giving description of the "civilizing" influence of our progressive age on the rural district of Margate? They are of some documentary value, and worth preserving, for several reasons. Here they are:-- I.--A TRIP TO MARGATE. To the Editor of the Times. Sir,--On Monday last I had the misfortune of taking a trip per steamer to Margate. The sea was rough, the ship crowded, and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists prostrate with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must be seen to be believed possible in a civilized country. Shouts, yells, howls of delight greeted every pale-looking passenger, as he or she got on the pier, accompanied by a running comment of the lowest, foulest language imaginable. But the most insulted victims were a young lady, who having had a fit of hysterics on board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking old gentleman with a long grey beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick at all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the slippery steps leaning on two sticks. "Here's a guy!" "Hallo! you old thief, you won't get drowned, because you know that you are to be hung," etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed; and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course, no other effect than to draw all the abuse on myself. This is not an exceptional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with the roughness of the sea. Public exposure is the only likely thing to put a stop to such ruffianism; and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many people are ashamed of confessing that they have been to Margate. I remain, Sir, yours obediently, C. L. S. London, August 16. II.--MARGATE. To the Editor of the Times. Sir,--From personal experience obtained from an enforced residence at Margate, I can confirm all that your correspondent "C. L. S." states of the behaviour of the mob on the jetty; and in addition I will venture to say that in no town in England, or, so far as my experience goes, on the Continent, can such utterly indecent exhibitions be daily witnessed as at Margate during bathing hours. Nothing can be more revolting to persons having the least feelings of modesty than the promiscuous mixing of the bathers; nude men dancing, swimming, or floating with women not quite nude, certainly, but with scant clothing. The machines for males and females are not kept apart, and the latter do not apparently care to keep within the awnings. The authorities post notices as to "indecent bathing," but that appears to be all they think they ought to do. I am, Sir, yours obediently, B. To the Editor of the Times. Sir,--The account of the scenes which occur at the landing of passengers at the Margate jetty, given by your correspondent to-day, is by no means overcharged. But that is nothing. The rulers of the place seem bent on doing their utmost to keep respectable people away, or, doubtless, long before this the class of visitors would have greatly improved. The sea-fronts of the town, which in the summer would be otherwise enjoyable, are abandoned to the noisy rule of the lowest kinds of itinerant mountebanks, organ-grinders, and niggers; and from early morn till long after nightfall the place is one hopeless, hideous din. There is yet another grievance. The whole of the drainage is discharged upon the rocks to the east of the harbour, considerably above low-water mark; and to the west, where much building is contemplated, drains have already been laid into the sea, and, when these new houses are built and inhabited, bathing at Margate, now its greatest attraction, must cease for ever. Yours obediently, Pharos. Margate, August 18. I have printed these letters for several reasons. In the first place, read after them this account of the town of Margate, given in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' in 1797: "Margate, a seaport town of Kent, on the north side of the Isle of Thanet, near the North Foreland. It is noted for shipping vast quantities of corn (most, if not all, the product of that island) for London, and has a salt-water bath at the Post-house, which has performed great cures in nervous and paralytic cases." Now this Isle of Thanet, please to observe, which is an elevated (200 to 400 feet) mass of chalk, separated from the rest of Kent by little rivers and marshy lands, ought to be respected by you (as Englishmen), because it was the first bit of ground ever possessed in this greater island by your Saxon ancestors, when they came over, some six or seven hundred of them only, in three ships, and contented themselves for a while with no more territory than that white island. Also, the North Foreland, you ought, I think, to know, is taken for the terminal point of the two sides of Britain, east and south, in the first geographical account of our dwelling-place, definitely given by a learned person. But you ought, beyond all question, to know, that the cures of the nervous and paralytic cases, attributed seventy years ago to the "salt-water bath at the Post-house," were much more probably to be laid to account of the freshest and changefullest sea-air to be breathed in England, bending the rich corn over that white dry ground, and giving to sight, above the northern and eastern sweep of sea, the loveliest skies that can be seen, not in England only, but perhaps in all the world; able, at least, to challenge the fairest in Europe, to the far south of Italy. So it was said, I doubt not rightly, by the man who of all others knew best; the once in five hundred years given painter, whose chief work, as separate from others, was the painting of skies. He knew the colours of the clouds over the sea, from the Bay of Naples to the Hebrides; and being once asked where, in Europe, were to be seen the loveliest skies, answered instantly, "In the Isle of Thanet." Where, therefore, and in this very town of Margate, he lived, when he chose to be quit of London, and yet not to travel. And I can myself give this much confirmatory evidence of his saying;--that though I never stay in Thanet, the two loveliest skies I have myself ever seen (and next to Turner, I suppose few men of fifty have kept record of so many), were, one at Boulogne, and the other at Abbeville; that is to say, in precisely the correspondent French districts of corn-bearing chalk, on the other side of the Channel. "And what are pretty skies to us?" perhaps you will ask me: "or what have they to do with the behaviour of that crowd on Margate Pier?" Well, my friends, the final result of the education I want you to give your children will be, in a few words, this. They will know what it is to see the sky. They will know what it is to breathe it. And they will know, best of all, what it is to behave under it, as in the presence of a Father who is in heaven. Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER X. Denmark Hill, 7th September, 1871. My Friends, For the last two or three days, the papers have been full of articles on a speech of Lord Derby's, which, it seems, has set the public mind on considering the land question. My own mind having long ago been both set, and entirely made up, on that question, I have read neither the speech nor the articles on it; but my eye being caught this morning, fortunately, by the words "Doomsday Book" in my 'Daily Telegraph,' and presently, looking up the column, by "stalwart arms and heroic souls of free resolute Englishmen," I glanced down the space between, and found this, to me, remarkable passage: "The upshot is, that, looking at the question from a purely mechanical point of view, we should seek the beau ideal in a landowner cultivating huge farms for himself, with abundant machinery and a few well-paid labourers to manage the mechanism, or delegating the task to the smallest possible number of tenants with capital. But when we bear in mind the origin of landlordism, of our national needs, and the real interests of the great body of English tenantry, we see how advisable it is to retain intelligent yeomen as part of our means of cultivating the soil." This is all, then, is it, that your Liberal paper ventures to say for you? It is advisable to retain a few intelligent yeomen in the island. I don't mean to find fault with the 'Daily Telegraph': I think it always means well on the whole, and deals fairly; which is more than can be said for its highly toned and delicately perfumed opponent, the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' But I think a "Liberal" paper might have said more for the "stalwart arms and heroic souls" than this. I am going myself to say a great deal more for them, though I am not a Liberal--quite the polar contrary of that. You, perhaps, have been provoked, in the course of these letters, by not being able to make out what I was. It is time you should know, and I will tell you plainly. I am, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school; (Walter Scott's school, that is to say, and Homer's,) I name these two out of the numberless great Tory writers, because they were my own two masters. I had Walter Scott's novels, and the Iliad, (Pope's translation), for my only reading when I was a child, on week-days: on Sundays their effect was tempered by 'Robinson Crusoe' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress'; my mother having it deeply in her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more evangelical than my mother; and my aunt gave me cold mutton for Sunday's dinner, which--as I much preferred it hot--greatly diminished the influence of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and the end of the matter was, that I got all the noble imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and yet--am not an evangelical clergyman. I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that compulsorily, and every day of the week. (Have patience with me in this egotism; it is necessary for many reasons that you should know what influences have brought me into the temper in which I write to you.) Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own election, but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline--patient, accurate, and resolute--I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English, and the affectation of trying to write like Hooker and George Herbert was the most innocent I could have fallen into. From my own masters, then, Scott and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my best after-thought has only served to confirm. That is to say a most sincere love of kings, and dislike of everybody who attempted to disobey them. Only, both by Homer and Scott, I was taught strange ideas about kings, which I find, for the present, much obsolete; for, I perceived that both the author of the Iliad and the author of Waverley made their kings, or king-loving persons, do harder work than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus always killed twenty Trojans to other people's one, and Redgauntlet speared more salmon than any of the Solway fishermen, and--which was particularly a subject of admiration to me,--I observed that they not only did more, but in proportion to their doings, got less, than other people--nay, that the best of them were even ready to govern for nothing, and let their followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. Of late it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly the contrary of this, and that it has been supposed the duty of superior persons generally to do less, and to get more than anybody else; so that it was, perhaps, quite as well that in those early days my contemplation of existent kingship was a very distant one, and my childish eyes wholly unacquainted with the splendour of courts. The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays was my father's sister: she lived at Bridge-end, in the town of Perth, and had a garden full of gooseberry-bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door opening to the water, which ran past it clear-brown over the pebbles three or four feet deep; an infinite thing for a child to look down into. My father began business as a wine-merchant, with no capital, and a considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he began to lay by anything for himself, for which his best friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite slab over his grave that he was "an entirely honest merchant." As days went on he was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, out of which the water-carts were filled through beautiful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa-constrictors; and I was never weary of contemplating that mystery, and the delicious dripping consequent); and as years went on, and I came to be four or five years old, he could command a postchaise and pair for two months in the summer, by help of which, with my mother and me, he went the round of his country customers (who liked to see the principal of the house his own traveller); so that, at a jog-trot pace, and through the panoramic opening of the four windows of a postchaise, made more panoramic still to me because my seat was a little bracket in front, (for we used to hire the chaise regularly for the two months out of Long Acre, and so could have it bracketed and pocketed as we liked), I saw all the highroads, and most of the cross ones, of England and Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every other year we spent the whole summer; and I used to read the 'Abbot' at Kinross, and the 'Monastery' in Glen Farg, which I confused with "Glendearg," and thought that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen of Scots in the island of Loch Leven. It happened also, which was the real cause of the bias of my after life, that my father had a rare love of pictures. I use the word "rare" advisedly, having never met with another instance of so innate a faculty for the discernment of true art, up to the point possible without actual practice. Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night; and in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all the noblemen's houses in England; not indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures, but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle, and have nothing to be astonished at; but that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick Castle down. And, at this day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles. Nevertheless, having formed my notion of kinghood chiefly from the FitzJames of the 'Lady of the Lake,' and of noblesse from the Douglas there, and the Douglas in 'Marmion,' a painful wonder soon arose in my child-mind, why the castles should now be always empty. Tantallon was there; but no Archibald of Angus:--Stirling, but no Knight of Snowdoun. The galleries and gardens of England were beautiful to see--but his Lordship and her Ladyship were always in town, said the housekeepers and gardeners. Deep yearning took hold of me for a kind of "Restoration," which I began slowly to feel that Charles the Second had not altogether effected, though I always wore a gilded oak-apple very reverently in my button-hole on the 29th of May. It seemed to me that Charles the Second's Restoration had been, as compared with the Restoration I wanted, much as that gilded oak-apple to a real apple. And as I grew older, the desire for red pippins instead of brown ones, and Living Kings instead of dead ones, appeared to me rational as well as romantic; and gradually it has become the main purpose of my life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings. Hope, this last, for others much more than for myself. I can always behave as if I had a King, whether I have one or not; but it is otherwise with some unfortunate persons. Nothing has ever impressed me so much with the power of kingship, and the need of it, as the declamation of the French Republicans against the Emperor before his fall. He did not, indeed, meet my old Tory notion of a King; and in my own business of architecture he was doing, I saw, nothing but mischief; pulling down lovely buildings, and putting up frightful ones carved all over with L. N.'s: but the intense need of France for a governor of some kind was made chiefly evident to me by the way the Republicans confessed themselves paralyzed by him. Nothing could be done in France, it seemed, because of the Emperor: they could not drive an honest trade; they could not keep their houses in order; they could not study the sun and moon; they could not eat a comfortable déjeûner à la fourchette; they could not sail in the Gulf of Lyons, nor climb on the Mont d'Or; they could not, in fine, (so they said,) so much as walk straight, nor speak plain, because of the Emperor. On this side of the water, moreover, the Republicans were all in the same tale. Their opinions, it appeared, were not printed to their minds in the Paris journals, and the world must come to an end therefore. So that, in fact, here was all the Republican force of France and England, confessing itself paralyzed, not so much by a real King, as by the shadow of one. All the harm the extant and visible King did was, to encourage the dressmakers and stone-masons in Paris,--to pay some idle people very large salaries,--and to make some, perhaps agreeably talkative, people, hold their tongues. That, I repeat, was all the harm he did, or could do; he corrupted nothing but what was voluntarily corruptible,--crushed nothing but what was essentially not solid: and it remained open to these Republican gentlemen to do anything they chose that was useful to France, or honourable to themselves, between earth and heaven, except only--print violent abuse of this shortish man, with a long nose, who stood, as they would have it, between them and heaven. But there they stood, spell-bound; the one thing suggesting itself to their frantic impotence as feasible, being to get this one shortish man assassinated. Their children would not grow, their corn would not ripen, and the stars would not roll, till they had got this one short man blown into shorter pieces. If the shadow of a King can thus hold (how many?) millions of men, by their own confession, helpless for terror of it, what power must there be in the substance of one? But this mass of republicans--vociferous, terrified, and mischievous, is the least part, as it is the vilest, of the great European populace who are lost for want of true kings. It is not these who stand idle, gibbering at a shadow, whom we have to mourn over;--they would have been good for little, even governed;--but those who work and do not gibber,--the quiet peasants in the fields of Europe, sad-browed, honest-hearted, full of natural tenderness and courtesy, who have none to help them, and none to teach; who have no kings, except those who rob them while they live, no tutors, except those who teach them--how to die. I had an impatient remonstrance sent me the other day, by a country clergyman's wife, against that saying in my former letter, "Dying has been more expensive to you than living." Did I know, she asked, what a country clergyman's life was, and that he was the poor man's only friend? Alas, I know it, and too well. What can be said of more deadly and ghastly blame against the clergy of England, or any other country, than that they are the poor man's only friends? Have they, then, so betrayed their Master's charge and mind, in their preaching to the rich;--so smoothed their words, and so sold their authority,--that, after twelve hundred years entrusting of the gospel to them, there is no man in England (this is their chief plea for themselves forsooth) who will have mercy on the poor, but they; and so they must leave the word of God, and serve tables? I would not myself have said so much against English clergymen, whether of country or town. Three--and one dead makes four--of my dear friends (and I have not many dear friends) are country clergymen; and I know the ways of every sort of them; my architectural tastes necessarily bringing me into near relations with the sort who like pointed arches and painted glass; and my old religious breeding having given me an unconquerable habit of taking up with any travelling tinker of evangelical principles I may come across; and even of reading, not without awe, the prophetic warnings of any persons belonging to that peculiarly well-informed "persuasion," such, for instance, as those of Mr. Zion Ward "concerning the fall of Lucifer, in a letter to a friend, Mr. William Dick, of Glasgow, price twopence," in which I read (as aforesaid, with unfeigned feelings of concern,) that "the slain of the Lord shall be MAN-Y; that is, man, in whom death is, with all the works of carnality, shall be burnt up!" But I was not thinking either of English clergy, or of any other group of clergy, specially, when I wrote that sentence; but of the entire Clerkly or Learned Company, from the first priest of Egypt to the last ordained Belgravian curate, and of all the talk they have talked, and all the quarrelling they have caused, and all the gold they have had given them, to this day, when still "they are the poor man's only friends"--and by no means all of them that, heartily! though I see the Bishop of Manchester has, of late, been superintending--I beg his pardon, Bishops don't superintend--looking on, or over, I should have said--the recreations of his flock at the seaside; and "the thought struck him" that railroads were an advantage to them in taking them for their holiday out of Manchester. The thought may, perhaps, strike him, next, that a working man ought to be able to find "holy days" in his home, as well as out of it. [35] A year or two ago, a man who had at the time, and has still, important official authority over much of the business of the country, was speaking anxiously to me of the misery increasing in the suburbs and back streets of London, and debating, with the good help of the Oxford Regius Professor of Medicine--who was second in council--what sanitary or moral remedy could be found. The debate languished, however, because of the strong conviction in the minds of all three of us that the misery was inevitable in the suburbs of so vast a city. At last, either the minister or physician, I forget which, expressed the conviction. "Well," I answered, "then you must not have large cities." "That," answered the minister, "is an unpractical saying--you know we must have them, under existing circumstances." I made no reply, feeling that it was vain to assure any man actively concerned in modern parliamentary business, that no measures were "practical" except those which touched the source of the evil opposed. All systems of government--all efforts of benevolence, are vain to repress the natural consequences of radical error. But any man of influence who had the sense and courage to refuse himself and his family one London season--to stay on his estate, and employ the shopkeepers in his own village, instead of those in Bond Street--would be "practically" dealing with, and conquering, this evil, so far as in him lay; and contributing with his whole might to the thorough and final conquest of it. Not but that I know how to meet it directly also, if any London landlords choose so to attack it. You are beginning to hear something of what Miss Hill has done in Marylebone, and of the change brought about by her energy and good sense in the centre of one of the worst districts of London. It is difficult enough, I admit, to find a woman of average sense and tenderness enough to be able for such work; but there are, indeed, other such in the world, only three-fourths of them now get lost in pious lecturing, or altar-cloth sewing; and the wisest remaining fourth stay at home as quiet house-wives, not seeing their way to wider action; nevertheless, any London landlord who will content himself with moderate and fixed rent, (I get five per cent. from Miss Hill, which is surely enough!), assuring his tenants of secure possession if that is paid, so that they need not fear having their rent raised, if they improve their houses; and who will secure also a quiet bit of ground for their children to play in, instead of the street,--has established all the necessary conditions of success; and I doubt not that Miss Hill herself could find co-workers able to extend the system of management she has originated, and shown to be so effective. But the best that can be done in this way will be useless ultimately, unless the deep source of the misery be cut off. While Miss Hill, with intense effort and noble power, has partially moralized a couple of acres in Marylebone, at least fifty square miles of lovely country have been Demoralized outside London, by the increasing itch of the upper classes to live where they can get some gossip in their idleness, and show each other their dresses. That life of theirs must come to an end soon, both here and in Paris, but to what end, it is, I trust, in their own power still to decide. If they resolve to maintain to the last the present system of spending the rent taken from the rural districts in the dissipation of the capitals, they will not always find they can secure a quiet time, as the other day in Dublin, by withdrawing the police, nor that park-railings are the only thing which (police being duly withdrawn) will go down. Those favourite castle battlements of mine, their internal "police" withdrawn, will go down also; and I should be sorry to see it;--the lords and ladies, houseless at least in shooting season, perhaps sorrier, though they did find the grey turrets dismal in winter time. If they would yet have them for autumn, they must have them for winter. Consider, fair lords and ladies, by the time you marry, and choose your dwelling-places, there are for you but forty or fifty winters more in whose dark days you may see the snow fall and wreathe. There will be no snow in Heaven, I presume--still less elsewhere, (if lords and ladies ever miss of Heaven). And that some may, is perhaps conceivable, for there are more than a few things to be managed on an English estate, and to be "faithful" in those few cannot be interpreted as merely abstracting the rent of them. Nay, even the Telegraph's beau ideal of the landowner, from a mechanical point of view, may come short, somewhat. "Cultivating huge farms for himself with abundant machinery;--" Is that Lord Derby's ideal also, may it be asked? The Scott-reading of my youth haunts me, and I seem still listening to the (perhaps a little too long) speeches of the Black Countess who appears terrifically through the sliding panel in 'Peveril of the Peak,' about "her sainted Derby." Would Saint Derby's ideal, or his Black Countess's, of due ordinance for their castle and estate of Man, have been a minimum of Man therein, and an abundance of machinery? In fact, only the Trinacrian Legs of Man, transposed into many spokes of wheels--no use for "stalwart arms" any more--and less than none for inconveniently "heroic" souls? "Cultivating huge farms for himself!" I don't even see, after the sincerest efforts to put myself into a mechanical point of view, how it is to be done. For himself? Is he to eat the cornricks then? Surely such a beau ideal is more Utopian than any of mine? Indeed, whether it be praise- or blame-worthy, it is not so easy to cultivate anything wholly for oneself, nor to consume, oneself, the products of cultivation. I have, indeed, before now, hinted to you that perhaps the "consumer" was not so necessary a person economically, as has been supposed; nevertheless, it is not in his own mere eating and drinking, or even his picture-collecting, that a false lord injures the poor. It is in his bidding and forbidding--or worse still, in ceasing to do either. I have given you another of Giotto's pictures, this month, his imagination of Injustice, which he has seen done in his time, as we in ours; and I am sorry to observe that his Injustice lives in a battlemented castle and in a mountain country, it appears; the gates of it between rocks, and in the midst of a wood; but in Giotto's time, woods were too many, and towns too few. Also, Injustice has indeed very ugly talons to his fingers, like Envy; and an ugly quadruple hook to his lance, and other ominous resemblances to the "hooked bird," the falcon, which both knights and ladies too much delighted in. Nevertheless Giotto's main idea about him is, clearly, that he "sits in the gate" pacifically, with a cloak thrown over his chain-armour (you can just see the links of it appear at his throat), and a plain citizen's cap for a helmet, and his sword sheathed, while all robbery and violence have way in the wild places round him,--he heedless. Which is, indeed, the depth of Injustice: not the harm you do, but that you permit to be done,--hooking perhaps here and there something to you with your clawed weapon meanwhile. The baronial type exists still, I fear, in such manner, here and there, in spite of improving centuries. My friends, we have been thinking, perhaps, to-day, more than we ought of our masters' faults,--scarcely enough of our own. If you would have the upper classes do their duty, see that you also do yours. See that you can obey good laws, and good lords, or law-wards, if you once get them--that you believe in goodness enough to know what a good law is. A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize and pronounce it or not; a bad law is one that cannot hold, however much you ordain and pronounce it. That is the mighty truth which Carlyle has been telling you for a quarter of a century--once for all he told it you, and the landowners, and all whom it concerns, in the third book of 'Past and Present' (1845, buy Chapman and Hall's second edition if you can, it is good print, and read it till you know it by heart), and from that day to this, whatever there is in England of dullest and insolentest may be always known by the natural instinct it has to howl against Carlyle. Of late, matters coming more and more to crisis, the liberty men seeing their way, as they think, more and more broad and bright before them, and still this too legible and steady old sign-post saying, That it is not the way, lovely as it looks, the outcry against it becomes deafening. Now, I tell you once for all, Carlyle is the only living writer who has spoken the absolute and perpetual truth about yourselves and your business; and exactly in proportion to the inherent weakness of brain in your lying guides, will be their animosity against Carlyle. Your lying guides, observe, I say--not meaning that they lie wilfully--but that their nature is to do nothing else. For in the modern Liberal there is a new and wonderful form of misguidance. Of old, it was bad enough that the blind should lead the blind; still, with dog and stick, or even timid walking with recognized need of dog and stick, if not to be had, such leadership might come to good end enough; but now a worse disorder has come upon you, that the squinting should lead the squinting. Now the nature of bat, or mole, or owl, may be undesirable, at least in the day-time, but worse may be imagined. The modern Liberal politico-economist of the Stuart Mill school is essentially of the type of a flat-fish--one eyeless side of him always in the mud, and one eye, on the side that has eyes, down in the corner of his mouth,--not a desirable guide for man or beast. There was an article--I believe it got in by mistake, but the Editor, of course, won't say so--in the 'Contemporary Review,' two months back, on Mr. Morley's Essays, by a Mr. Buchanan, with an incidental page on Carlyle in it, unmatchable (to the length of my poor knowledge) for obliquitous platitude in the mud-walks of literature. Read your Carlyle, then, with all your heart, and with the best of brain you can give; and you will learn from him first, the eternity of good law, and the need of obedience to it: then, concerning your own immediate business, you will learn farther this, that the beginning of all good law, and nearly the end of it, is in these two ordinances,--That every man shall do good work for his bread: and secondly, that every man shall have good bread for his work. But the first of these is the only one you have to think of. If you are resolved that the work shall be good, the bread will be sure; if not,--believe me, there is neither steam plough nor steam mill, go they never so glibly, that will win it from the earth long, either for you, or the Ideal Landed Proprietor. Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XI. Denmark Hill. 15th October, 1871. My Friends, A day seldom passes, now that people begin to notice these Letters a little, without my receiving a remonstrance on the absurdity of writing "so much above the level" of those whom I address. I have said, however, that eventually you shall understand, if you care to understand, every word in these pages. Through all this year I have only been putting questions; some of them such as have puzzled the wisest, and which may, for a long time yet, prove too hard for you and me: but, next year, I will go over all the ground again, answering the questions, where I know of any answers; or making them plain for your examination, when I know of none. But, in the meantime, be it admitted, for argument's sake, that this way of writing, which is easy to me, and which most educated persons can easily understand, is very much above your level. I want to know why it is assumed so quietly that your brains must always be at a low level? Is it essential to the doing of the work by which England exists, that its workmen should not be able to understand scholar's English, (remember, I only assume mine to be so for argument's sake), but only newspaper's English? I chanced, indeed, to take up a number of 'Belgravia' the other day, which contained a violent attack on an old enemy of mine--'Blackwood's Magazine'; and I enjoyed the attack mightily, until 'Belgravia' declared, by way of coup-de-grace to 'Blackwood,' that something which 'Blackwood' had spoken of as settled in one way had been irrevocably settled the other way,--"settled," said triumphant 'Belgravia,' "in seventy-two newspapers." Seventy-two newspapers, then, it seems--or, with a margin, eighty-two,--perhaps, to be perfectly safe, we had better say ninety-two--are enough to settle anything in this England of ours, for the present. But, irrevocably, I doubt. If, perchance, you workmen should reach the level of understanding scholar's English instead of newspaper's English, things might a little unsettle themselves again; and, in the end, might even get into positions uncontemplated by the ninety-two newspapers,--contemplated only by the laws of Heaven, and settled by them, some time since, as positions which, if things ever got out of, they would need to get into again. And, for my own part, I cannot at all understand why well-educated people should still so habitually speak of you as beneath their level, and needing to be written down to, with condescending simplicity, as flat-foreheaded creatures of another race, unredeemable by any Darwinism. I was waiting last Saturday afternoon on the platform of the railway station at Furness Abbey; (the station itself is tastefully placed so that you can see it, and nothing else but it, through the east window of the Abbot's Chapel, over the ruined altar;) and a party of the workmen employed on another line, wanted for the swiftly progressive neighbourhood of Dalton, were taking Sabbatical refreshment at the tavern recently established at the south side of the said Abbot's Chapel. Presently, the train whistling for them, they came out in a highly refreshed state, and made for it as fast as they could by the tunnel under the line, taking very long steps to keep their balance in the direction of motion, and securing themselves, laterally, by hustling the wall, or any chance passengers. They were dressed universally in brown rags, which, perhaps, they felt to be the comfortablest kind of dress; they had, most of them, pipes, which I really believe to be more enjoyable than cigars; they got themselves adjusted in their carriages by the aid of snatches of vocal music, and looked at us,--(I had charge of a lady and her two young daughters),--with supreme indifference, as indeed at creatures of another race; pitiable, perhaps,--certainly disagreeable and objectionable--but, on the whole, despicable, and not to be minded. We, on our part, had the insolence to pity them for being dressed in rags, and for being packed so close in the third-class carriages: the two young girls bore being run against patiently; and when a thin boy of fourteen or fifteen, the most drunk of the company, was sent back staggering to the tavern for a forgotten pickaxe, we would, any of us, I am sure, have gone and fetched it for him, if he had asked us. For we were all in a very virtuous and charitable temper: we had had an excellent dinner at the new inn, and had earned that portion of our daily bread by admiring the Abbey all the morning. So we pitied the poor workmen doubly--first, for being so wicked as to get drunk at four in the afternoon; and, secondly, for being employed in work so disgraceful as throwing up clods of earth into an embankment, instead of spending the day, like us, in admiring the Abbey: and I, who am always making myself a nuisance to people with my political economy, inquired timidly of my friend whether she thought it all quite right. And she said, certainly not; but what could be done? It was of no use trying to make such men admire the Abbey, or to keep them from getting drunk. They wouldn't do the one, and they would do the other--they were quite an unmanageable sort of people, and had been so for generations. Which, indeed, I knew to be partly the truth, but it only made the thing seem to me more wrong than it did before, since here were not only the actual two or three dozen of unmanageable persons, with much taste for beer, and none for architecture; but these implied the existence of many unmanageable persons before and after them,--nay, a long ancestral and filial unmanageableness. They were a Fallen Race, every way incapable, as I acutely felt, of appreciating the beauty of 'Modern Painters,' or fathoming the significance of 'Fors Clavigera.' But what they had done to deserve their fall, or what I had done to deserve the privilege of being the author of those valuable books, remained obscure to me; and indeed, whatever the deservings may have been on either side, in this and other cases of the kind, it is always a marvel to me that the arrangement and its consequences are accepted so patiently. For observe what, in brief terms, the arrangement is. Virtually, the entire business of the world turns on the clear necessity of getting on table, hot or cold, if possible, meat--but, at least, vegetables,--at some hour of the day, for all of us: for you labourers, we will say at noon; for us æsthetical persons, we will say at eight in the evening; for we like to have done our eight hours' work of admiring abbeys before we dine. But, at some time of day, the mutton and turnips, or, since mutton itself is only a transformed state of turnips, we may say, as sufficiently typical of everything, turnips only, must absolutely be got for us both. And nearly every problem of State policy and economy, as at present understood, and practised, consists in some device for persuading you labourers to go and dig up dinner for us reflective and æsthetical persons, who like to sit still, and think, or admire. So that when we get to the bottom of the matter, we find the inhabitants of this earth broadly divided into two great masses;--the peasant paymasters--spade in hand, original and imperial producers of turnips; and, waiting on them all round, a crowd of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, for some--too often theoretical--service. There is, first, the clerical person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for giving him moral advice; then the legal person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for telling him, in black letter, that his house is his own; there is, thirdly, the courtly person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for presenting a celestial appearance to him; there is, fourthly, the literary person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for talking daintily to him; and there is, lastly, the military person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for standing, with a cocked hat on, in the middle of the field, and exercising a moral influence upon the neighbours. Nor is the peasant to be pitied if these arrangements are all faithfully carried out. If he really gets moral advice from his moral adviser; if his house is, indeed, maintained to be his own, by his legal adviser; if courtly persons, indeed, present a celestial appearance to him; and literary persons, indeed, talk beautiful words: if, finally, his scarecrow do, indeed, stand quiet, as with a stick through the middle of it, producing, if not always a wholesome terror, at least, a picturesque effect, and colour-contrast of scarlet with green,--they are all of them worth their daily turnips. But if, perchance, it happen that he get immoral advice from his moralist, or if his lawyer advise him that his house is not his own; and his bard, story-teller, or other literary charmer, begin to charm him unwisely, not with beautiful words, but with obscene and ugly words--and he be readier with his response in vegetable produce for these than for any other sort; finally, if his quiet scarecrow become disquiet, and seem likely to bring upon him a whole flight of scarecrows out of his neighbours' fields,--the combined fleets of Russia, Prussia, etc., as my friend and your trustee, Mr. Cowper-Temple, has it, (see above, Letter II., p. 21,) it is time to look into such arrangements under their several heads. Well looked after, however, all these arrangements have their advantages, and a certain basis of reason and propriety. But there are two other arrangements which have no basis on either, and which are very widely adopted, nevertheless, among mankind, to their great misery. I must expand a little the type of my primitive peasant before defining these. You observe, I have not named among the polite persons giving theoretical service in exchange for vegetable diet, the large, and lately become exceedingly polite, class, of artists. For a true artist is only a beautiful development of tailor or carpenter. As the peasant provides the dinner, so the artist provides the clothes and house: in the tailoring and tapestry producing function, the best of artists ought to be the peasant's wife herself, when properly emulative of Queens Penelope, Bertha, and Maude; and in the house-producing-and-painting function, though concluding itself in such painted chambers as those of the Vatican, the artist is still typically and essentially a carpenter or mason; first carving wood and stone, then painting the same for preservation;--if ornamentally, all the better. And, accordingly, you see these letters of mine are addressed to the "workmen and labourers" of England,--that is to say, to the providers of houses and dinners, for themselves, and for all men, in this country, as in all others. Considering these two sorts of Providers, then, as one great class, surrounded by the suppliant persons for whom, together with themselves, they have to make provision, it is evident that they both have need originally of two things--land, and tools. Clay to be subdued; and plough, or potter's wheel, wherewith to subdue it. Now, as aforesaid, so long as the polite surrounding personages are content to offer their salutary advice, their legal information, etc., to the peasant, for what these articles are verily worth in vegetable produce, all is perfectly fair; but if any of the polite persons contrive to get hold of the peasant's land, or of his tools, and put him into the "position of William," and make him pay annual interest, first for the wood that he planes, and then for the plane he planes it with!--my friends, polite or otherwise, these two arrangements cannot be considered as settled yet, even by the ninety-two newspapers, with all Belgravia to back them. Not by the newspapers, nor by Belgravia, nor even by the Cambridge Catechism, or the Cambridge Professor of Political Economy. Look to the beginning of the second chapter in the last edition of Professor Fawcett's Manual of Political Economy, (Macmillan, 1869, p. 105). The chapter purports to treat of the "Classes among whom wealth is distributed." And thus it begins:-- We have described the requisites of production to be three: land, labour, and capital. Since, therefore, land, labour, and capital are essential to the production of wealth, it is natural to suppose that the wealth which is produced ought to be possessed by those who own the land, labour, and capital which have respectively contributed to its production. The share of wealth which is thus allotted to the possessor of the land is termed rent; the portion allotted to the labourer is termed wages, and the remuneration of the capitalist is termed profit. You observe that in this very meritoriously clear sentence both the possessor of the land and the possessor of the capital are assumed to be absolutely idle persons. If they contributed any labour to the business, and so confused themselves with the labourer, the problem of triple division would become complicated directly;--in point of fact, they do occasionally employ themselves somewhat, and become deserving, therefore, of a share, not of rent only, nor of profit only, but of wages also. And every now and then, as I noted in my last letter, there is an outburst of admiration in some one of the ninety-two newspapers, at the amount of "work" done by persons of the superior classes; respecting which, however, you remember that I also advised you that a great deal of it was only a form of competitive play. In the main, therefore, the statement of the Cambridge Professor may be admitted to be correct as to the existing facts; the Holders of land and capital being virtually in a state of Dignified Repose, as the Labourer is in a state of--(at least, I hear it always so announced in the ninety-two newspapers)--Dignified Labour. But Professor Fawcett's sentence, though, as I have just said, in comparison with most writings on the subject, meritoriously clear, yet is not as clear as it might be,--still less as scientific as it might be. It is, indeed, gracefully ornamental, in the use, in its last clause, of the three words, "share," "portion," and "remuneration," for the same thing; but this is not the clearest imaginable language. The sentence, strictly put, should run thus:--"The portion of wealth which is thus allotted to the possessor of the land is termed rent; the portion allotted to the labourer is termed wages; and the portion allotted to the capitalist is termed profit." And you may at once see the advantage of reducing the sentence to these more simple terms; for Professor Fawcett's ornamental language has this danger in it, that "Remuneration," being so much grander a word than "Portion," in the very roll of it seems to imply rather a thousand pounds a day than three-and-sixpence. And until there be scientific reason shown for anticipating the portions to be thus disproportioned, we have no right to suggest their being so, by ornamental variety of language. Again, Professor Fawcett's sentence is, I said, not entirely scientific. He founds the entire principle of allotment on the phrase "it is natural to suppose." But I never heard of any other science founded on what it was natural to suppose. Do the Cambridge mathematicians, then, in these advanced days, tell their pupils that it is natural to suppose the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones? Nay, in the present case, I regret to say it has sometimes been thought wholly unnatural to suppose any such thing; and so exceedingly unnatural, that to receive either a "remuneration," or a "portion," or a "share," for the loan of anything, without personally working, was held by Dante and other such simple persons in the middle ages to be one of the worst of the sins that could be committed against nature: and the receivers of such interest were put in the same circle of Hell with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And it is greatly to be apprehended that if ever our workmen, under the influences of Mr. Scott and Mr. Street, come indeed to admire the Abbot's Chapel at Furness more than the railroad station, they may become possessed of a taste for Gothic opinions as well as Gothic arches, and think it "natural to suppose" that a workman's tools should be his own property. Which I, myself, having been always given to Gothic opinions, do indeed suppose, very strongly; and intend to try with all my might to bring about that arrangement wherever I have any influence;--the arrangement itself being feasible enough, if we can only begin by not leaving our pickaxes behind us after taking Sabbatical refreshment. But let me again, and yet again, warn you, that only by beginning so,--that is to say, by doing what is in your own power to achieve of plain right,--can you ever bring about any of your wishes; or, indeed, can you, to any practical purpose, begin to wish. Only by quiet and decent exaltation of your own habits can you qualify yourselves to discern what is just, or to define even what is possible. I hear you are, at last, beginning to draw up your wishes in a definite manner; (I challenged you to do so, in 'Time and Tide,' four years ago, in vain), and you mean to have them at last "represented in Parliament;" but I hear of small question yet among you, whether they be just wishes, and can be represented to the power of everlasting Justice, as things not only natural to be supposed, but necessary to be done. For she accepts no representation of things in beautiful language, but takes her own view of them, with her own eyes. I did, indeed, cut out a slip from the 'Birmingham Morning News,' last September, (12th,) containing a letter written by a gentleman signing himself "Justice" in person, and professing himself an engineer, who talked very grandly about the "individual and social laws of our nature:" but he had arrived at the inconvenient conclusions that "no individual has a natural right to hold property in land," and that "all land sooner or later must become public property." I call this an inconvenient conclusion, because I really think you would find yourselves greatly inconvenienced if your wives couldn't go into the garden to cut a cabbage, without getting leave from the Lord Mayor and Corporation; and if the same principle is to be carried out as regards tools, I beg to state to Mr. Justice-in-Person, that if anybody and everybody is to use my own particular palette and brushes, I resign my office of Professor of Fine Art. Perhaps, when we become really acquainted with the true Justice in Person, not professing herself an engineer, she may suggest to us, as a Natural Supposition,--"That land should be given to those who can use it, and tools to those who can use them;" and I have a notion you will find this a very tenable supposition also. I have given you, this month, the last of the pictures I want you to see from Padua;--Giotto's Image of Justice--which, you observe, differs somewhat from the Image of Justice we used to set up in England, above insurance offices, and the like. Bandaged close about the eyes, our English Justice was wont to be, with a pair of grocers' scales in her hand, wherewith, doubtless, she was accustomed to weigh out accurately their shares to the landlords, and portions to the labourers, and remunerations to the capitalists. But Giotto's Justice has no bandage about her eyes, (Albert Durer's has them round open, and flames flashing from them,) and weighs, not with scales, but with her own hands; and weighs not merely the shares, or remunerations of men, but the worth of them; and finding them worth this or that, gives them what they deserve--death, or honour. Those are her forms of "Remuneration." Are you sure that you are ready to accept the decrees of this true goddess, and to be chastised or rewarded by her, as is your due, being seen through and through to your hearts' core? Or will you still abide by the level balance of the blind Justice of old time; or rather, by the oblique balance of the squinting Justice of our modern geological Mud-Period?--the mud, at present, becoming also more slippery under the feet--I beg pardon, the belly--of squinting Justice, than was once expected; becoming, indeed, (as it is announced, even by Mr. W. P. Price, M.P., chairman at the last half-yearly meeting of the Midland Railway Company,) quite "delicate ground." The said chairman, you will find, by referring to the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of August 17th, 1871, having received a letter from Mr. Bass on the subject of the length of time that the servants of the company were engaged in labour, and their inadequate remuneration, made the following remarks:--"He (Mr. Bass) is treading on very delicate ground. The remuneration of labour, the value of which, like the value of gold itself, depends altogether on the one great universal law of supply and demand, is a question on which there is very little room for sentiment. He, as a very successful tradesman, knows very well how much the success of commercial operations depends on the observance of that law; and we, sitting here as your representatives, cannot altogether close our eyes to it." Now it is quite worth your while to hunt out that number of the 'Pall Mall Gazette' in any of your free libraries, because a quaint chance in the placing of the type has produced a lateral comment on these remarks of Mr. W. P. Price, M.P. Take your carpenter's rule, apply it level under the words, "Great Universal Law of Supply and Demand," and read the line it marks off in the other column of the same page. It marks off this, "In Khorassan one-third of the whole population has perished from starvation, and at Ispahan no less than 27,000 souls." Of course you will think it no business of yours if people are starved in Persia. But the Great "Universal" Law of Supply and Demand may some day operate in the same manner over here; and even in the Mud-and-Flat-fish period, John Bull may not like to have his belly flattened for him to that extent. You have heard it said occasionally that I am not a practical person. It may be satisfactory to you to know, on the contrary, that this whole plan of mine is founded on the very practical notion of making you round persons instead of flat. Round and merry, instead of flat and sulky. And my beau-ideal is not taken from "a mechanical point of view," but is one already realized. I saw last summer, in the flesh, as round and merry a person as I ever desire to see. He was tidily dressed--not in brown rags, but in green velveteen; he wore a jaunty hat, with a feather in it, a little on one side; he was not drunk, but the effervescence of his shrewd good-humour filled the room all about him; and he could sing like a robin. You may say "like a nightingale," if you like, but I think robin's singing the best, myself; only I hardly ever hear it now, for the young ladies of England have had nearly all the robins shot, to wear in their hats, and the bird-stuffers are exporting the few remaining to America. This merry round person was a Tyrolese peasant; and I hold it an entirely practical proceeding, since I find my idea of felicity actually produced in the Tyrol, to set about the production of it, here, on Tyrolese principles; which, you will find, on inquiry, have not hitherto implied the employment of steam, nor submission to the great Universal Law of Supply and Demand, nor even Demand for the local Supply of a "Liberal" government. But they do imply labour of all hands on pure earth and in fresh air. They do imply obedience to government which endeavours to be just, and faith in a religion which endeavours to be moral. And they result in strength of limbs, clearness of throats, roundness of waists, and pretty jackets, and still prettier corsets to fit them. I must pass, disjointedly, to matters which, in a written letter, would have been put in a postscript; but I do not care, in a printed one, to leave a useless gap in the type. First, the reference in page 11 of last number to the works of Mr. Zion Ward, is incorrect. The passage I quoted is not in the "Letter to a Friend," price twopence, but in the "Origin of Evil Discovered," price fourpence. (John Bolton, Steel House Lane, Birmingham.) And, by the way, I wish that booksellers would save themselves, and me, some (now steadily enlarging) trouble, by noting that the price of these Letters to friends of mine, as supplied by me, the original inditer, to all and sundry, through my only shopman, Mr. Allen, is sevenpence per epistle, and not fivepence half-penny; and that the trade profit on the sale of them is intended to be, and must eventually be, as I intend, a quite honestly confessed profit, charged to the customer, not compressed out of the author; which object may be easily achieved by the retail bookseller, if he will resolvedly charge the symmetrical sum of Tenpence per epistle over his counter, as it is my purpose he should. But to return to Mr. Ward; the correction of my reference was sent me by one of his disciples, in a very earnest and courteous letter, written chiefly to complain that my quotation totally misrepresented Mr. Ward's opinions. I regret that it should have done so, but gave the quotation neither to represent nor misrepresent Mr. Ward's opinions; but to show, which the sentence, though brief, quite sufficiently shows, that he had no right to have any. I have before noted to you, indeed, that, in a broad sense, nobody has a right to have opinions; but only knowledges: and, in a practical and large sense, nobody has a right even to make experiments, but only to act in a way which they certainly know will be productive of good. And this I ask you to observe again, because I begin now to receive some earnest inquiries respecting the plan I have in hand, the inquiries very naturally assuming it to be an "experiment," which may possibly be successful, and much more possibly may fail. But it is not an experiment at all. It will be merely the carrying out of what has been done already in some places, to the best of my narrow power, in other places: and so far as it can be carried, it must be productive of some kind of good. For example; I have round me here at Denmark Hill seven acres of leasehold ground. I pay £50 a year ground-rent, and £250 a year in wages to my gardeners; besides expenses in fuel for hothouses, and the like. And for this sum of three hundred odd pounds a year I have some pease and strawberries in summer; some camellias and azaleas in winter; and good cream, and a quiet place to walk in, all the year round. Of the strawberries, cream, and pease, I eat more than is good for me; sometimes, of course, obliging my friends with a superfluous pottle or pint. The camellias and azaleas stand in the anteroom of my library; and everybody says, when they come in, "How pretty!" and my young lady friends have leave to gather what they like to put in their hair, when they are going to balls. Meantime, outside of my fenced seven acres--owing to the operation of the great universal law of supply and demand--numbers of people are starving; many more, dying of too much gin; and many of their children dying of too little milk; and, as I told you in my first Letter, for my own part, I won't stand this sort of thing any longer. Now it is evidently open to me to say to my gardeners, "I want no more azaleas or camellias; and no more strawberries and pease than are good for me. Make these seven acres everywhere as productive of good corn, vegetables, or milk, as you can; I will have no steam used upon them, for nobody on my ground shall be blown to pieces; nor any fuel wasted in making plants blossom in winter, for I believe we shall, without such unseasonable blossoms, enjoy the spring twice as much as now; but, in any part of the ground that is not good for eatable vegetables, you are to sow such wild flowers as it seems to like, and you are to keep all trim and orderly. The produce of the land, after I have had my limited and salutary portion of pease, shall be your own; but if you sell any of it, part of the price you get for it shall be deducted from your wages." Now observe, there would be no experiment whatever in any one feature of this proceeding. My gardeners might be stimulated to some extra exertion by it; but in any event I should retain exactly the same command over them that I had before. I might save something out of my £250 of wages, but I should pay no more than I do now, and in return for the gift of the produce I should certainly be able to exact compliance from my people with any such capricious fancies of mine as that they should wear velveteen jackets, or send their children to learn to sing; and, indeed, I could grind them, generally, under the iron heel of Despotism, as the ninety-two newspapers would declare, to an extent unheard of before in this free country. And, assuredly, some children would get milk, strawberries, and wild flowers who do not get them now; and my young lady friends would still, I am firm in my belief, look pretty enough at their balls, even without the camellias or azaleas. I am not going to do this with my seven acres here; first, because they are only leasehold; secondly, because they are too near London for wild flowers to grow brightly in. But I have bought, instead, twice as many freehold acres, where wild flowers are growing now, and shall continue to grow; and there I mean to live: and, with the tenth part of my available fortune, I will buy other bits of freehold land, and employ gardeners on them in this above-stated matter. I may as well tell you at once that my tithe will be, roughly, about seven thousand pounds altogether, (a little less rather than more). If I get no help, I can show what I mean, even with this; but if any one cares to help me with gifts of either money or land, they will find that what they give is applied honestly, and does a perfectly definite service: they might, for aught I know, do more good with it in other ways; but some good in this way--and that is all I assert--they will do, certainly, and not experimentally. And the longer they take to think of the matter the better I shall like it, for my work at Oxford is more than enough for me just now, and I shall not practically bestir myself in this land-scheme for a year to come, at least; nor then, except as a rest from my main business: but the money and land will always be safe in the hands of your trustees for you, and you need not doubt, though I show no petulant haste about the matter, that I remain Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XII. Denmark Hill, 23rd December, 1871. My Friends, You will scarcely care to read anything I have to say to you this evening--having much to think of, wholly pleasant, as I hope; and prospect of delightful days to come, next week. At least, however, you will be glad to know that I have really made you the Christmas gift I promised--£7,000 Consols, in all, clear; a fair tithe of what I had: and to as much perpetuity as the law will allow me. It will not allow the dead to have their own way, long, whatever licence it grants the living in their humours: and this seems to me unkind to those helpless ones;--very certainly it is inexpedient for the survivors. For the wisest men are wise to the full in death; and if you would give them, instead of stately tombs, only so much honour as to do their will, when they themselves can no more contend for it, you would find it good memorial of them, such as the best of them would desire, and full of blessing to all men for all time. English law needs mending in many respects; in none more than in this. As it stands, I can only vest my gift in trustees, desiring them, in the case of my death, immediately to appoint their own successors, and in such continued succession, to apply the proceeds of the St. George's Fund to the purchase of land in England and Scotland, which shall be cultivated to the utmost attainable fruitfulness and beauty by the labour of man and beast thereon, such men and beasts receiving at the same time the best education attainable by the trustees for labouring creatures, according to the terms stated in this book, Fors Clavigera. These terms, and the arrangement of the whole matter, will become clearer to you as you read on with me, and cannot be clear at all, till you do;--here is the money, at any rate, to help you, one day, to make merry with, only, if you care to give me any thanks, will you pause now for a moment from your merrymaking, to tell me,--to whom, as Fortune has ordered it, no merrymaking is possible at this time, (nor, indeed, much at any time;)--to me, therefore, standing as it were astonished in the midst of this gaiety of yours, will you tell--what it is all about? Your little children would answer, doubtless, fearlessly, "Because the Child Christ was born to-day:" but you, wiser than your children, it may be,--at least, it should be,--are you also sure that He was? And if He was, what is that to you? I repeat, are you indeed sure He was? I mean, with real happening of the strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened near Him, showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood still over His head? You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and wish it were so with me; but I have been so puzzled lately by many matters that once seemed clear to me, that I seldom now feel sure of anything. Still seldomer, however, do I feel sure of the contrary of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove that it was visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible: and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the weakest grounds, than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I envy not at all are those who imagine they believe it, and do not. For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and without any manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange spiritual cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical period of their existence;--an impression which has produced, in past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an intellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determination of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come. Will you give some little time therefore, to think of it with me to-day, being, as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then, let me ask you, is its truth to you? The Child for whose birth you are rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their sins; but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious of any sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you with any one in particular--lying, or thieving, or the like--my belief is you would say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind. Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me--"That is because we have been saved from our sins; and we are making merry, because we are so perfectly good." Well; there would be some reason in such an answer. There is much goodness in you to be thankful for: far more than you know, or have learned to trust. Still, I don't believe you will tell me seriously that you eat your pudding and go to your pantomimes only to express your satisfaction that you are so very good. What is, or may be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat? Shall we consider, a little, what, at all events, it was to the people of its time; and so make ourselves more clear as to what it might be to us? We will read slowly. "And there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." Watching night and day, that means; not going home. The staying out in the field is the translation of a word from which a Greek nymph has her name Agraulos, "the stayer out in fields," of whom I shall have something to tell you, soon. "And behold, the Messenger of the Lord stood above them, and the glory of the Lord lightened round them, and they feared a great fear." "Messenger." You must remember that, when this was written, the word "angel" had only the effect of our word--"messenger"--on men's minds. Our translators say "angel" when they like, and "messenger" when they like; but the Bible, messenger only, or angel only, as you please. For instance, "Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the angels, and sent them forth another way?" Would not you fain know what this angel looked like? I have always grievously wanted, from childhood upwards, to know that; and gleaned diligently every word written by people who said they had seen angels: but none of them ever tell me what their eyes are like, or hair, or even what dress they have on. We dress them, in pictures, conjecturally, in long robes, falling gracefully; but we only continue to think that kind of dress angelic, because religious young girls, in their modesty, and wish to look only human, give their dresses flounces. When I was a child, I used to be satisfied by hearing that angels had always two wings, and sometimes six; but now nothing dissatisfies me so much as hearing that; for my business compels me continually into close drawing of wings; and now they never give me the notion of anything but a swift or a gannet. And, worse still, when I see a picture of an angel, I know positively where he got his wings from--not at all from any heavenly vision, but from the worshipped hawk and ibis, down through Assyrian flying bulls, and Greek flying horses, and Byzantine flying evangelists, till we get a brass eagle, (of all creatures in the world, to choose!) to have the gospel of peace read from the back of it. Therefore, do the best I can, no idea of an angel is possible to me. And when I ask my religious friends, they tell me not to wish to be wise above that which is written. My religious friends, let me write a few words of this letter, not to my poor puzzled workmen, but to you, who will all be going serenely to church to-morrow. This messenger, formed as we know not, stood above the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord lightened round them. You would have liked to have seen it, you think! Brighter than the sun; perhaps twenty-one coloured, instead of seven-coloured, and as bright as the lime-light: doubtless you would have liked to see it, at midnight, in Judæa. You tell me not to be wise above that which is written; why, therefore, should you be desirous, above that which is given? You cannot see the glory of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see it as bright as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You might, at least, forty Christmases since: but not now. You know I must antedate my letters for special days. I am actually writing this sentence on the second December, at ten in the morning, with the feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the last three weeks the days have been one long drift of ragged gloom, with only sometimes five minutes' gleam of the glory of God, between the gusts, which no one regarded. I am taking the name of God in vain, you think? No, my religious friends, not I. For completed forty years, I have been striving to consider the blue heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon and the stars which He hath ordained: but you have left me nothing now to consider here at Denmark Hill, but these black heavens, the work of your fingers, and the blotting of moon and stars which you have ordained; you,--taking the name of God in vain every Sunday, and His work and His mercy in vain all the week through. "You have nothing to do with it--you are very sorry for it--and Baron Liebig says that the power of England is coal?" You have everything to do with it. Were you not told to come out and be separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the evil work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share with, to be damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin by putting them out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of them with you there. But return to your night vision, and explain to me, if not what the angel was like, at least what you understand him to have said,--he, and those with him. With his own lips he told the shepherds there was born a Saviour for them; but more was to be told: "And suddenly there was with him a multitude of the heavenly host." People generally think that this verse means only that after one angel had spoken, there came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but it means far another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you find creation summed thus:--"So the heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them." Whatever living powers of any order, great or small, were to inhabit either, are included in the word. The host of earth includes the ants and the worms of it; the host of heaven includes,--we know not what;--how should we?--the creatures that are in the stars which we cannot count,--in the space which we cannot imagine; some of them so little and so low that they can become flying poursuivants to this grain of sand we live on; others having missions, doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on them. But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the powers of the outer world which have any concern with ours became in some way visible now: having interest--they, in the praise,--as all the hosts of earth in the life, of this Child, born in David's town. And their hymn was of peace to the lowest of the two hosts--peace on earth;--and praise in the highest of the two hosts; and, better than peace, and sweeter than praise, Love, among men. The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner of the hosts of heaven, have written something which they suppose this Song of Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves, in state, after successful battles. But you hear it, those of you who go to church in orthodox quarters, every Sunday; and will understand the terms of it better by recollecting that the Lordship, which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this, over all creatures, or over the two Hosts. In the Apocalypse it is "Lord, All governing"--Pantocrator--which we weakly translate "Almighty"; but the Americans still understand the original sense, and apply it so to their god, the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their Father which is in Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word "Sabaoth" again means all "hosts" or creatures; and it is an important word for workmen to recollect, because the saying of St. James is coming true, and that fast, that the cries of the reapers whose wages have been kept back by fraud, have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men at St. Catherine's Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai. You see, farther, I have written above, not "good will towards men," but "love among men." It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy to translate at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best from its use at Christ's baptism--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." For, in precisely the same words, the angels say, there is to be "well-pleasing in men." Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for God's glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present, think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps, dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, even when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press, are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of heaven to praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you; but you hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:--that He expected, then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have even great satisfaction--well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden; some of them will think it well laid out,--others ill. You are not solicitous about their opinions; but you like them to love each other; to build their nests without stealing each other's sticks, and to trust you to take care of them. Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world you would leave off telling its Master your opinions of Him, and, much more, your quarrelling about your opinions of Him; but would simply trust Him, and mind your own business modestly, He might have more satisfaction in you than He has had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one years, or than He seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and seventy-second. For first, instead of behaving like sparrows and robins, you want to behave like those birds you read the Gospel from the backs of,--eagles. Now the Lord of the garden made the claws of eagles for them, and your fingers for you; and if you would do the work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would, without doubt, have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to have claws--not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto's Injustice has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so you set to work to make yourselves manifold claws,--far-scratching;--and this smoke, which hides the sun and chokes the sky--this Egyptian darkness that may be felt--manufactured by you, singular modern children of Israel, that you may have no light in your dwellings, is none the fairer, because cast forth by the furnaces, in which you forge your weapons of war. A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed, once saw the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace; but not with envy of the country. Your English power is coal? Well; also the power of the Vale of Siddim was in slime,--petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities fell there; and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men. Emmanuel! God with us!--how often, you tenderly-minded Christians, have you desired to see this great sight,--this Babe lying in a manger? Yet, you have so contrived it, once more, this year, for many a farm in France, that if He were born again, in that neighbourhood, there would be found no manger for Him to lie in; only ashes of mangers. Our clergy and lawyers dispute, indeed, whether He may not be yet among us; if not in mangers, in the straw of them, or the corn. An English lawyer spoke twenty-six hours but the other day--the other four days, I mean--before the Lords of her Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, to prove that an English clergyman had used a proper quantity of equivocation in his statement that Christ was in Bread. Yet there is no harm in anybody thinking that He is in Bread,--or even in Flour! The harm is, in their expectation of His Presence in gunpowder. Present, however, you believe He was, that night, in flesh, to any one who might be warned to go and see Him. The inn was quite full; but we do not hear that any traveller chanced to look into the cow-house; and most likely, even if they had, none of them would have been much interested in the workman's young wife, lying there. They probably would have thought of the Madonna, with Mr. John Stuart Mill, ('Principles of Political Economy,' 8vo, Parker, 1848, vol. ii., page 321,) that there was scarcely "any means open to her of gaining a livelihood, except as a wife and mother;" and that "women who prefer that occupation might justifiably adopt it--but, that there should be no option, no other carrière possible, for the great majority of women, except in the humbler departments of life, is one of those social injustices which call loudest for remedy." The poor girl of Nazareth had less option than most; and with her weak "be it unto me as Thou wilt," fell so far below the modern type of independent womanhood, that one cannot wonder at any degree of contempt felt for her by British Protestants. Some few people, nevertheless, were meant, at the time, to think otherwise of her. And now, my working friends, I would ask you to read with me, carefully, for however often you may have read this before, I know there are points in the story which you have not thought of. The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born to them "in David's village." We are apt to think that this was told, as of special interest to them, because David was a King. Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a King; but a Shepherd like themselves. "To you, shepherds, is born this day a Saviour in the shepherd's town;" that would be the deep sound of the message in their ears. For the great interest to them in the story of David himself must have been always, not that he had saved the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or written Psalms, but that he had kept sheep in those very fields they were watching in; and that his grandmother [36] Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by. And they said hastily, "Let us go and see." Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not of worshipping? Even when they do see the Child, it is not said that they worshipped. They were simple people, and had not much faculty of worship; even though the heavens had opened for them, and the hosts of heaven had sung. They had been at first only frightened; then curious, and communicative to the bystanders: they do not think even of making any offering, which would have been a natural thought enough, as it was to the first of shepherds: but they brought no firstlings of their flock--(it is only in pictures, and those chiefly painted for the sake of the picturesque, that the shepherds are seen bringing lambs, and baskets of eggs). It is not said here that they brought anything, but they looked, and talked, and went away praising God, as simple people,--yet taking nothing to heart; only the mother did that. They went away:--"returned," it is said,--to their business, and never seem to have left it again. Which is strange, if you think of it. It is a good business truly, and one much to be commended, not only in itself, but as having great chances of "advancement"--as in the case of Jethro the Midianite's Jew shepherd and the herdsman of Tekoa; besides that keeper of the few sheep in the wilderness, when his brethren were under arms afield. But why are they not seeking for some advancement now, after opening of the heavens to them? or, at least, why not called to it afterwards, being, one would have thought, as fit for ministry under a shepherd king, as fishermen, or custom-takers? Can it be that the work is itself the best that can be done by simple men; that the shepherd Lord Clifford, or Michael of the Green-head ghyll, are ministering better in the wilderness than any lords or commoners are likely to do in Parliament, or other apostleship; so that even the professed Fishers of Men are wise in calling themselves Pastors rather than Piscators? Yet it seems not less strange that one never hears of any of these shepherds any more. The boy who made the pictures in this book for you could only fancy the Nativity, yet left his sheep, that he might preach of it, in his way, all his life. But they, who saw it, went back to their sheep. Some days later, another kind of persons came. On that first day, the simplest people of his own land;--twelve days after, the wisest people of other lands, far away: persons who had received, what you are all so exceedingly desirous to receive, a good education; the result of which, to you,--according to Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the page of the chapter on the probable future of the labouring classes, opposite to that from which I have just quoted his opinions about the Madonna's line of life--will be as follows:--"From this increase of intelligence, several effects may be confidently anticipated. First: that they will become even less willing than at present to be led, and governed, and directed into the way they should go, by the mere authority and prestige of superiors. If they have not now, still less will they have hereafter, any deferential awe, or religious principle of obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them." It is curious that, in this old story of the Nativity, the greater wisdom of these educated persons appears to have produced upon them an effect exactly contrary to that which you hear Mr. Stuart Mill would have "confidently anticipated." The uneducated people came only to see, but these highly trained ones to worship; and they have allowed themselves to be led, and governed, and directed into the way which they should go, (and that a long one,) by the mere authority and prestige of a superior person, whom they clearly recognize as a born king, though not of their people. "Tell us, where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have come to worship him." You may perhaps, however, think that these Magi had received a different kind of education from that which Mr. Mill would recommend, or even the book which I observe is the favourite of the Chancellor of the Exchequer--'Cassell's Educator.' It is possible; for they were looked on in their own country as themselves the best sort of Educators which the Cassell of their day could provide, even for Kings. And as you are so much interested in education, you will, perhaps, have patience with me while I translate for you a wise Greek's account of the education of the princes of Persia; account given three hundred years, and more, before these Magi came to Bethlehem. "When the boy is seven years old he has to go and learn all about horses, and is taught by the masters of horsemanship, and begins to go against wild beasts; and when he is fourteen years old, they give him the masters whom they call the Kingly Child-Guiders: and these are four, chosen the best out of all the Persians who are then in the prime of life--to wit, the most wise man they can find, and the most just, and the most temperate, and the most brave; of whom the first, the wisest, teaches the prince the magic of Zoroaster; and that magic is the service of the Gods: also, he teaches him the duties that belong to a king. Then the second, the justest, teaches him to speak truth all his life through. Then the third, the most temperate, teaches him not to be conquered by even so much as a single one of the pleasures, that he may be exercised in freedom, and verily a king, master of all things within himself, not slave to them. And the fourth, the bravest, teaches him to be dreadless of all things, as knowing that whenever he fears, he is a slave." Three hundred and some odd years before that carpenter, with his tired wife, asked for room in the inn, and found none, these words had been written, my enlightened friends; and much longer than that, these things had been done. And the three hundred and odd years (more than from Elizabeth's time till now) passed by, and much fine philosophy was talked in the interval, and many fine things found out: but it seems that when God wanted tutors for His little Prince,--at least, persons who would have been tutors to any other little prince, but could only worship this one,--He could find nothing better than those quaint-minded masters of the old Persian school. And since then, six times over, three hundred years have gone by, and we have had a good deal of theology talked in them;--not a little popular preaching administered; sundry Academies of studious persons assembled,--Paduan, Parisian, Oxonian, and the like; persons of erroneous views carefully collected and burnt; Eton, and other grammars, diligently digested; and the most exquisite and indubitable physical science obtained,--able, there is now no doubt, to extinguish gases of every sort, and explain the reasons of their smell. And here we are, at last, finding it still necessary to treat ourselves by Cassell's Educator,--patent filter of human faculty. Pass yourselves through that, my intelligent working friends, and see how clear you will come out on the other side. Have a moment's patience yet with me, first, while I note for you one or two of the ways of that older tutorship. Four masters, you see, there were for the Persian Prince. One had no other business than to teach him to speak truth; so difficult a matter the Persians thought it. We know better,--we. You heard how perfectly the French gazettes did it last year, without any tutor, by their Holy Republican instincts. Then the second tutor had to teach the Prince to be free. That tutor both the French and you have had for some time back; but the Persian and Parisian dialects are not similar in their use of the word "freedom"; of that hereafter. Then another master has to teach the Prince to fear nothing; him, I admit, you want little teaching from, for your modern Republicans fear even the devil little, and God, less; but may I observe that you are occasionally still afraid of thieves, though as I said some time since, I never can make out what you have got to be stolen. For instance, much as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of it, I know an English gentleman who was offered the other day a picture of it, by a good master,--Raphael,--for five-and-twenty pounds; and said it was too dear: yet had paid, only a day or two before, five hundred pounds for a pocket-pistol that shot people out of both ends, so afraid of thieves was he. [37] None of these three masters, however, the masters of justice, temperance, or fortitude, were sent to the little Prince at Bethlehem. Young as He was, He had already been in some practice of these; but there was yet the fourth cardinal virtue, of which, so far as we can understand, He had to learn a new manner for His new reign: and the masters of that were sent to Him--the masters of Obedience. For He had to become obedient unto Death. And the most wise--says the Greek--the most wise master of all, teaches the boy magic; and this magic is the service of the gods. My skilled working friends, I have heard much of your magic lately. Sleight of hand, and better than that, (you say,) sleight of machine. Léger-de-main, improved into léger-de-mécanique. From the West, as from the East, now, your American and Arabian magicians attend you; vociferously crying their new lamps for the old stable lantern of scapegoat's horn. And for the oil of the trees of Gethsemane, your American friends have struck oil more finely inflammable. Let Aaron look to it, how he lets any run down his beard; and the wise virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine la Pétroleuse, with her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster, and completes the worship of her Christ. Christmas, the mass of the Lord's anointed;--you will hear of devices enough to make it merry to you this year, I doubt not. The increase in the quantity of disposable malt liquor and tobacco is one great fact, better than all devices. Mr. Lowe has, indeed, says the Times of June 5th, "done the country good service, by placing before it, in a compendious form, the statistics of its own prosperity.... The twenty-two millions of people of 1825 drank barely nine millions of barrels of beer in the twelve months: our thirty-two millions now living drink all but twenty-six millions of barrels. The consumption of spirits has increased also, though in nothing like the same proportion; but whereas sixteen million pounds of tobacco sufficed for us in 1825, as many as forty-one million pounds are wanted now. By every kind of measure, therefore, and on every principle of calculation, the growth of our prosperity is established." [38] Beer, spirits, and tobacco, are thus more than ever at your command; and magic besides, of lantern, and harlequin's wand; nay, necromancy if you will, the Witch of Endor at number so and so round the corner, and raising of the dead, if you roll away the tables from off them. But of this one sort of magic, this magic of Zoroaster, which is the service of God, you are not likely to hear. In one sense, indeed, you have heard enough of becoming God's servants; to wit, servants dressed in His court livery, to stand behind His chariot, with gold-headed sticks. Plenty of people will advise you to apply to Him for that sort of position: and many will urge you to assist Him in carrying out His intentions, and be what the Americans call helps, instead of servants. Well! that may be, some day, truly enough; but before you can be allowed to help Him, you must be quite sure that you can see Him. It is a question now, whether you can even see any creature of His--or the least thing that He has made,--see it,--so as to ascribe due worth, or worship to it,--how much less to its Maker? You have felt, doubtless, at least those of you who have been brought up in any habit of reverence, that every time when in this letter I have used an American expression, or aught like one, there came upon you a sense of sudden wrong--the darting through you of acute cold. I meant you to feel that: for it is the essential function of America to make us all feel that. It is the new skill they have found there;--this skill of degradation; others they have, which other nations had before them, from whom they have learned all they know, and among whom they must travel, still, to see any human work worth seeing. But this is their speciality, this their one gift to their race,--to show men how not to worship,--how never to be ashamed in the presence of anything. But the magic of Zoroaster is the exact reverse of this, to find out the worth of all things and do them reverence. Therefore, the Magi bring treasures, as being discerners of treasures, knowing what is intrinsically worthy, and worthless; what is best in brightness, best in sweetness, best in bitterness--gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. Finders of treasure hid in fields, and goodliness in strange pearls, such as produce no effect whatever on the public mind, bent passionately on its own fashion of pearl-diving at Gennesaret. And you will find that the essence of the mis-teaching, of your day, concerning wealth of any kind, is in this denial of intrinsic value. What anything is worth, or not worth, it cannot tell you: all that it can tell is the exchange value. What Judas, in the present state of Demand and Supply, can get for the article he has to sell, in a given market, that is the value of his article:--Yet you do not find that Judas had joy of his bargain. No Christmas, still less Easter, holidays, coming to him with merrymaking. Whereas, the Zoroastrians, who "take stars for money," rejoice with exceeding great joy at seeing something, which--they cannot put in their pockets. For, "the vital principle of their religion is the recognition of one supreme power; the God of Light--in every sense of the word--the Spirit who creates the world, and rules it, and defends it against the power of evil." [39] I repeat to you, now, the question I put at the beginning of my letter. What is this Christmas to you? What Light is there, for your eyes, also, pausing yet over the place where the Child lay? I will tell you, briefly, what Light there should be;--what lessons and promise are in this story, at the least. There may be infinitely more than I know; but there is certainly, this. The Child is born to bring you the promise of new life. Eternal or not, is no matter; pure and redeemed, at least. He is born twice on your earth; first, from the womb, to the life of toil; then, from the grave, to that of rest. To His first life He is born in a cattle-shed, the supposed son of a carpenter; and afterwards brought up to a carpenter's craft. But the circumstances of His second life are, in great part, hidden from us: only note this much of it. The three principal appearances to His disciples are accompanied by giving or receiving of food. He is known at Emmaus in breaking of bread; at Jerusalem He Himself eats fish and honey to show that He is not a spirit; and His charge to Peter is "when they had dined," the food having been obtained under His direction. But in His first showing Himself to the person who loved Him best, and to whom He had forgiven most, there is a circumstance more singular and significant still. Observe--assuming the accepted belief to be true,--this was the first time when the Maker of men showed Himself to human eyes, risen from the dead, to assure them of immortality. You might have thought He would have shown Himself in some brightly glorified form,--in some sacred and before unimaginable beauty. He shows Himself in so simple aspect, and dress, that she, who, of all people on the earth, should have known Him best, glancing quickly back through her tears, does not know Him. Takes Him for "the gardener." Now, unless absolute orders had been given to us, such as would have rendered error impossible, (which would have altered the entire temper of Christian probation); could we possibly have had more distinct indication of the purpose of the Master--born first by witness of shepherds, in a cattle-shed, then by witness of the person for whom He had done most, and who loved Him best, in the garden, and in gardener's guise, and not known even by His familiar friends till He gave them bread--could it be told us, I repeat, more definitely by any sign or indication whatsoever, that the noblest human life was appointed to be by the cattle-fold and in the garden; and to be known as noble in breaking of bread? Now, but a few words more. You will constantly hear foolish and ignoble persons conceitedly proclaiming the text, that "not many wise and not many noble are called." Nevertheless, of those who are truly wise, and truly noble, all are called that exist. And to sight of this Nativity, you find that, together with the simple persons, near at hand, there were called precisely the wisest men that could be found on earth at that moment. And these men, for their own part, came--I beg you very earnestly again to note this--not to see, nor talk--but to do reverence. They are neither curious nor talkative, but submissive. And, so far as they came to teach, they came as teachers of one virtue only: Obedience. For of this Child, at once Prince and Servant, Shepherd and Lamb, it was written: "See, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. He shall not strive, nor cry, till he shall bring forth Judgment unto Victory." My friends, of the black country, you may have wondered at my telling you so often,--I tell you nevertheless, once more, in bidding you farewell this year,--that one main purpose of the education I want you to seek is, that you may see the sky, with the stars of it again; and be enabled, in their material light--"riveder le stelle." But, much more, out of this blackness of the smoke of the Pit, the blindness of heart, in which the children of Disobedience blaspheme God and each other, heaven grant to you the vision of that sacred light, at pause over the place where the young Child was laid; and ordain that more and more in each coming Christmas it may be said of you, "When they saw the Star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." Believe me your faithful servant, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES [1] Communicated to me by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, of Venice, from his yet unpublished work, 'The English in Italy in the 14th Century.' [2] See Carey's translation of the ninth book of Dante's 'Purgatory,' line 105. [3] I assume the Cambridge quotation to be correct: in my old edition (1848), the distinction is between 'weavers and lace-makers' and 'journeymen bricklayers;' and making velvet is considered to be the production of a 'commodity,' but building a house only doing a 'service.' [4] I do not mean that there are no other kinds, nor that well-paid labour must necessarily be unproductive. I hope to see much done, some day, for just pay, and wholly productive. But these, named in the text, are the two opposite extremes; and, in actual life, hitherto, the largest means have been usually spent in mischief, and the most useful work done for the worst pay. [5] £992,740,328, in seventeen years, say the working men of Burnley, in their address just issued--an excellent address in its way, and full of very fair arithmetic--if its facts are all right; only I don't see, myself, how, "from fifteen to twenty-five millions per annum," make nine hundred and ninety-two millions in seventeen years. [6] Daily Telegraph, 30th January, 1871. [7] Carlyle's Frederick, Book IV., chap. iii. [8] Carlyle, Frederick, vol. i. p. 321 (first edition). [9] Song of Solomon 2 : 11-13 [10] Here is another curious instance: I have but a minute ago finished correcting these sheets, and take up the Times of this morning, April 21st, and find in it the suggestion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the removal of exemption from taxation, of Agricultural horses and carts, in the very nick of time to connect it, as a proposal for economic practice, with the statement of economic principle respecting Production, quoted on last page. [11] Wordsworth, "Excursion," Book 4th; in Moxon's edition, 1857 (stupidly without numbers to lines), vol. vi., p. 135. [12] Read this, for instance, concerning the Gardens of Paris:--one sentence in the letter is omitted; I will give it in full elsewhere, with its necessary comments:-- "To the Editor of the Times. 5th April, 1871. "Sir,--As the paragraph you quoted on Monday from the Field gives no idea of the destruction of the gardens round Paris, if you can spare me a very little space I will endeavour to supplement it. "The public gardens in the interior of Paris, including the planting on the greater number of the Boulevards, are in a condition perfectly surprising when one considers the sufferings even well-to-do persons had to endure for want of fuel during the siege. Some of them, like the little oases in the centre of the Louvre, even look as pretty as ever. After a similar ordeal it is probable we should not have a stick left in London, and the presence of the very handsome planes on the Boulevards, and large trees in the various squares and gardens, after the winter of 1870-71, is most creditable to the population. But when one goes beyond the Champs Elysées and towards the Bois, down the once beautiful Avenue de l'Impératrice, a sad scene of desolation presents itself. A year ago it was the finest avenue garden in existence; now a considerable part of the surface where troops were camped is about as filthy and as cheerless as Leicester Square or a sparsely furnished rubbish yard. "The view into the once richly-wooded Bois from the huge and ugly banks of earth which now cross the noble roads leading into it is desolate indeed, the stump of the trees cut down over a large extent of its surface reminding one of the dreary scenes observable in many parts of Canada and the United States, where the stumps of the burnt or cut-down pines are allowed to rot away for years. The zone of the ruins round the vast belt of fortifications I need not speak of, nor of the other zone of destruction round each of the forts, as here houses and gardens and all have disappeared. But the destruction in the wide zone occupied by French and Prussian outposts is beyond description. I got to Paris the morning after the shooting of Generals Clement Thomas and Lecomte, and in consequence did not see so much of it as I otherwise might have done; but round the villages of Sceaux, Bourg-la-Reine, L'Hay, Vitry, and Villejuif, I saw an amount of havoc which the subscriptions to the French Horticultural Relief Fund will go but a very small way to repair. Notwithstanding all his revolutions and wars, the Frenchman usually found time to cultivate a few fruit trees, and the neighbourhood of the villages above mentioned were only a few of many covered by nurseries of young trees. When I last visited Vitry, in the autumn of 1868, the fields and hill-sides around were everywhere covered with trees; now the view across them is only interrupted by stumps about a foot high. When at Vitry on the 28th of March, I found the once fine nursery of M. Honoré Dufresne deserted, and many acres once covered with large stock and specimens cleared to the ground. And so it was in numerous other cases. It may give some notion of the effect of the war on the gardens and nurseries around Paris, when I state that, according to returns made up just before my visit to Vitry and Villejuif, it was found that around these two villages alone 2,400,400 fruit and other trees were destroyed. As to the private gardens, I cannot give a better idea of them than by describing the materials composing the protecting bank of a battery near Sceaux. It was made up of mattresses, sofas, and almost every other large article of furniture, with the earth stowed between. There were, in addition, nearly forty orange and oleander tubs gathered from the little gardens in the neighbourhood visible in various parts of this ugly bank. One nurseryman at Sceaux, M. Keteleer, lost 1,500 vols. of books, which were not taken to Germany, but simply mutilated and thrown out of doors to rot.... Multiply these few instances by the number of districts occupied by the belligerents during the war, and some idea of the effects of glory on gardening in France may be obtained. "W. Robinson." [13] Last night (I am writing this on the 18th of April) I got a letter from Venice, bringing me the, I believe, too well-grounded, report that the Venetians have requested permission from the government of Italy to pull down their Ducal Palace, and "rebuild" it. Put up a horrible model of it, in its place, that is to say, for which their architects may charge a commission. Meantime, all their canals are choked with human dung, which they are too poor to cart away, but throw out at their windows. And all the great thirteenth-century cathedrals in France have been destroyed, within my own memory, only that architects might charge commission for putting up false models of them in their place. [14] I think it best to publish this letter as it was prepared for press on the morning of the 25th of last month, at Abingdon, before the papers of that day had reached me. You may misinterpret its tone, and think it is written without feeling; but I will endeavour to give you, in my next letter, a brief statement of the meaning, to the French and to all other nations, of this war, and its results: in the meantime, trust me, there is probably no other man living to whom, in the abstract, and irrespective of loss of family and property, the ruin of Paris is so great a sorrow as it is to me. [15] Of course this was written, and in type, before the late catastrophe in Paris; and the one at Dunkirk is, I suppose, long since forgotten, much more our own good beginning at--Birmingham--was it? I forget, myself, now. [16] This was at seven in the morning; he had them fighting at half-past nine. [17] Engraved, as also the woodcut in the April number, carefully after Holbein, by my coal-waggon-assisting assistant: but he has missed his mark somewhat, here; the imp's abortive hands, hooked processes only, like Envy's, and pterodactylous, are scarcely seen in their clutch of the bellows, and there are other faults. We will do it better for you, afterwards. [18] I spare you, for once, a word for 'government' used by this old author, which would have been unintelligible to you, and is so, except in its general sense, to me, too. [19] Horace, Odes, Book II, Ode XV. [20] "Tanto rossa, ch' appena fora dentro al fuoco nota."--Purg., xxix. 122. [21] Confession always a little painful, however; scientific envy being the most difficult of all to conquer. I find I did much injustice to the botanical lecturer, as well as to my friend, in my last letter; and, indeed, suspected as much at the time; but having some botanical notions myself, which I am vain of, I wanted the lecturer's to be wrong, and stopped cross-examining my friend as soon as I had got what suited me. Nevertheless, the general statement that follows, remember, rests on no tea-table chat; and the tea-table chat itself is accurate, as far as it goes. [22] I have since been ill, and cannot thoroughly revise my sheets; but my good friend Mr. Robert Chester, whose keen reading has saved me many a blunder ere now, will, I doubt not, see me safely through the pinch. [23] "The charge on France for the interest of the newly-created debt, for the amount advanced by the Bank, and for the annual repayments--in short, for the whole additional burdens which the war has rendered necessary--is substantially to be met by increased Customs and Excise duties. The two principles which seem to have governed the selection of these imposts are, to extort the largest amount of money as it is leaving the hand of the purchaser, and to enforce the same process as the cash is falling into the hand of the native vendor; the results being to burden the consumer and restrict the national industry. Leading commodities of necessary use--such as sugar and coffee, all raw materials for manufacture, and all textile substances--have to pay ad valorem duties, in some cases ruinously heavy. Worse still, and bearing most seriously on English interests, heavy export duties are to be imposed on French products, among which wine, brandy, liqueurs, fruits, eggs, and oilcake stand conspicuous--these articles paying a fixed duty; while all others, grain and flour, we presume, included, will pay 1 per cent. ad valorem. Navigation dues are also to be levied on shipping, French and foreign; and the internal postage of letters is to be increased 25 per cent. From the changes in the Customs duties alone an increased revenue of £10,500,000 is anticipated. We will not venture to assert that these changes may not yield the amount of money so urgently needed; but if they do, the result will open up a new chapter in political economy. Judging from the experience of every civilised State, it is simply inconceivable that such a tariff can be productive, can possess the faculty of healthy natural increase, or can act otherwise than as a dead weight on the industrial energies of the country. Every native of France will have to pay more for articles of prime necessity, and will thus have less to spare on articles of luxury--that is, on those which contribute most to the revenue, with the least of damage to the resources of his industry. Again, the manufacturer will have the raw material of his trade enhanced in value; and, though he may have the benefit of a drawback on his exports, he will find his home market starved by State policy. His foreign customer will purchase less, because the cost is so much greater, and because his means are lessened by the increase in the prices of food through the export duty on French products. The French peasant finds his market contracted by an export duty which prevents the English consumers of his eggs, poultry, and wine from buying as largely as they once did; his profits are therefore reduced, his piece of ground is less valuable, his ability to pay taxes is lessened. The policy, in short, might almost be thought expressly devised to impoverish the entire nation when it most wants enriching--to strangle French industry by slow degrees, to dry up at their source the main currents of revenue. Our only hope is, that the proposals, by their very grossness, will defeat themselves."--Telegraph, June 29th. [24] Dante, Inferno, Canto VII. v. 53-54 [25] Dante, Inferno, Canto VII. v. 63-65 [26] Of course the Prime Minister is always the real tax-gatherer; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is only the cat's-paw. [27] Infinite nonsense is talked about the "work done" by the upper classes. I have done a little myself, in my day, of the kind of work they boast of; but mine, at least, has been all play. Even lawyer's, which is, on the whole, the hardest, you may observe to be essentially grim play, made more jovial for themselves by conditions which make it somewhat dismal to other people. Here and there we have a real worker among soldiers, or no soldiering would long be possible; nevertheless young men don't go into the Guards with any primal or essential idea of work. [28] I speak in the first person, not insolently, but necessarily, being yet alone in this design: and for some time to come the responsibility of carrying it on must rest with me, nor do I ask or desire any present help, except from those who understand what I have written in the course of the last ten years, and who can trust me, therefore. But the continuance of the scheme must depend on the finding men staunch and prudent for the heads of each department of the practical work, consenting, indeed, with each other as to certain great principles of that work, but left wholly to their own judgment as to the manner and degree in which they are to be carried into effect. [29] I do not mean that I answered in these words, but to the effect of them, at greater length. [30] We English are usually bad altogether in a harmonious way, and only quite insolent when we are quite good-for-nothing; the least good in us shows itself in a measure of modesty; but many Scotch natures, of fine capacity otherwise, are rendered entirely abortive by conceit. [31] "Steam has, of course, utterly extirpated seamanship," says Admiral Rous, in his letter to 'The Times' (which I had, of course, not seen when I wrote this). Read the whole letter and the article on it in 'The Times' of the 17th, which is entirely temperate and conclusive. [32] The myth of Balaam; the cause assigned for the journey of the first King of Israel from his father's house; and the manner of the triumphal entry of the greatest King of Judah into His capital, are symbolic of the same truths; but in a yet more strange humility. [33] Compare also. Black Auster at the Battle of the Lake, in Macaulay's 'Lays of Rome.' [34] Since last Fors was published I have sold some more property, which has brought me in another ten thousand to tithe; so that I have bought a second thousand Consols in the names of the Trustees--and have received a pretty little gift of seven acres of woodland, in Worcestershire, for you, already--so you see there is at least a beginning. [35] See § 159, (written seven years ago,) in 'Munera Pulveris.' [36] Great;--father's father's mother. [37] The papers had it that several gentlemen concurred in this piece of business; but they put the Nativity at five-and-twenty thousand, and the Agincourt, or whatever the explosive protector was called, at five hundred thousand. [38] This last clause does not, you are however to observe, refer in the great Temporal Mind, merely to the merciful Dispensation of beer and tobacco, but to the general state of things, afterwards thus summed with exultation: "We doubt if there is a household in the kingdom which would now be contented with the conditions of living cheerfully accepted in 1825." [39] Max Müller: 'Genesis and the Zend-Avesta.' 
7992	----	BETTER HOMES IN AMERICA Plan Book _for Demonstration Week October 9 to 14, 1922_ THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON July 21, 1922. My dear Mrs. Meloney: I am directed by the President to assure you of his earnest endorsement of the Better Homes Campaign which has been launched by the Advisory Council and is being carried on by representative women of America. He regards the campaign as of particular importance, because it places emphasis not only upon home ownership, which he regards as absolutely elemental in the development of the best citizenship, but upon furnishing, sanitation and equipment of the home. The President feels that as many millions of dollars and the best minds of this generation have been devoted to improve factory conditions, the home is deserving of its share of the same intensive consideration. There are twenty millions of house-keepers in America. For them, the home is their industrial center as well as their place of abode, and it is felt that altogether too little attention has been paid to lightening the labors and bettering the working conditions of these women. The President feels that the women, who are so successfully conducting this campaign are entitled to all consideration and recognition, and he hopes that every community in America will exhibit a model home. Your sincerely, Secretary to the President. Mrs. W. B. Meloney, Sec'y., Advisory Council for Better Homes Campaign, 223 Spring Street, New York City, N. Y. BETTER HOMES DEMONSTRATION WEEK Advisory Council CALVIN COOLIDGE _Vice-President of the United States_ HERBERT HOOVER _Secretary of Commerce_ HENRY C. WALLACE _Secretary of Agriculture_ JAMES JOHN DAVIS _Secretary of Labor_ Dr. HUGH S. CUMMING _Surgeon-General United States Public Health Service_ Dr. JOHN JAMES TIGERT _U. S. Commissioner of Education_ C. W. PUGSLEY _Assistant Secretary of Agriculture_ JOHN M. GRIES _Director Division of Building and Housing, Dept. of Commerce_ JULIUS H. BARNES _President Chamber of Commerce of the United States_ JOHN IHLDER _Director Housing Conditions, Chamber of Commerce of the United States_ DONN BARBER _Fellow American Institute of Architects_ JOHN BARTON PAYNE _Chairman Central Committee American Red Cross_ LIVINGSTON FARRAND _Chairman National Health Council_ Mrs. THOMAS G. WINTER _President General Federation of Women's Clubs_ MRS. LENA LAKE FORREST _President National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs_ * * * * * Bureau of Information, THE DELINEATOR, 223 Spring Street IN AMERICA--October Ninth to Fourteenth Co-operating Governors ALASKA SCOTT C. BONE, _Governor_ ARIZONA THOS. E. CAMPBELL, _Governor_ ARKANSAS T. C. McRAE, _Governor_ COLORADO O. H. SHOUP, _Governor_ FLORIDA CARY A. HARDEE, _Governor_ IDAHO D. W. DAVIS, _Governor_ INDIANA W. T. McCRAY, _Governor_ KANSAS HENRY J. ALLEN, _Governor_ KENTUCKY E. P. MORROW, _Governor_ MARYLAND A. C. RITCHIE, _Governor_ MASSACHUSETTS C. H. COX, _Governor_ MISSISSIPPI LEE M. RUSSELL, _Governor_ MISSOURI A. M. HYDE, _Governor_ NEBRASKA S. R. McKELVlE, _Governor_ NEVADA E. D. BOYLE, _Governor_ OHIO H. L. DAVIS, _Governor_ OREGON B. W. OLCOTT, _Governor_ PENNSYLVANIA W. C. SPROUL, _Governor_ SOUTH CAROLINA WILSON G. HARVEY, _Governor_ SOUTH DAKOTA W. H. McMASTER, _Governor_ TENNESSEE ALFRED A. TAYLOR, _Governor_ UTAH CHAS. R. MABEY, _Governor_ VERMONT JAMES HARTNESS, _Governor_ VIRGINIA E. L. TRINKLE, _Governor_ WYOMING ROBERT D. CAREY, _Governor_ * * * * * New York City Secretary, Mrs. William Brown Meloney _Better Homes_ _By_ CALVIN COOLIDGE We spend too much time in longing for the things that are far off and too little in the enjoyment of the things that are near at hand. We live too much in dreams and too little in realities. We cherish too many impossible projects of setting worlds in order, which are bound to fail. We consider too little plans for putting our own households in order, which might easily be made to succeed. A large part of our seeming ills would be dispelled if we could but turn from the visionary to the practical. We need the influence of vision, we need the inspiring power of ideals, but all these are worthless unless they can be translated into positive actions. The world has been through a great spiritual and moral awakening in these last few years. There are those who fear that this may all be dissipated. It will be unless it can be turned into something actual. In our own country conditions have developed which make this more than ever easy of accomplishment. It ought to be expressed not merely in official and public deeds, but in personal and private actions. It must come through a realization that the great things of life are not reserved for the enjoyment of a few, but are within the reach of all. There are two shrines at which mankind has always worshipped, must always worship: the altar which represents religion, and the hearthstone which represents the home. These are the product of fixed beliefs and fixed modes of living. They have not grown up by accident; they are the means, deliberate, mature, sanctified, by which the human race, in harmony with its own great nature, is developed and perfected. They are at once the source and the result of the inborn longing for what is completed, for what has that finality and security required to give to society the necessary element of stability. The genius of America has long been directed to the construction of great highways and railroads, the erection of massive buildings for the promotion of trade and the transaction of public business. It has supplied hospitals, institutions of learning and places of religious worship. All of these are worthy of the great effort and the sustained purpose which alone has made them possible. They contribute to the general welfare of all the people, but they are all too detached, too remote; they do not make the necessary contribution of a feeling of proprietorship and ownership. They do not complete the circuit. They are for the people, but not of the people. They do not satisfy that longing which exists in every human breast to be able to say: "This is mine." We believe in American institutions. We believe that they are justified by the light of reason, and by the result of experience. We believe in the right of self-government. We believe in the protection of the personal rights of life and liberty and the enjoyment of the rewards of industry. We believe in the right to acquire, to hold, and transmit property. We believe in all that which is represented under the general designation of a republic. But while we hold that these principles are sound we do not claim that they have yet become fully established. We do not claim that our institutions are yet perfected. It is of little avail to assert that there is an inherent right to own property unless there is an open opportunity that this right may be enjoyed in a fair degree by all. That which is referred to in such critical terms as capitalism cannot prevail unless it is adapted to the general requirements. Unless it be of the people it will cease to have a place under our institutions, even as slavery ceased. It is time to demonstrate more effectively that property is of the people. It is time to transfer some of the approbation and effort that has gone into the building of public works to the building, ornamenting, and owning of private homes by the people at large--attractive, worthy, permanent homes. Society rests on the home. It is the foundation of our institutions. Around it are gathered all the cherished memories of childhood, the accomplishments of maturity, and the consolations of age. So long as a people hold the home sacred they will be in the possession of a strength of character which it will be impossible to destroy. Apparently the world at large, certainly our own country, is turning more and more for guidance to that wisdom born of affection which we call the intuition of woman. Her first thought is always of the home. Her first care is for its provision. As our laws and customs are improved by her influence, it is likely to be first in the direction of greater facility for acquiring, and greater security in holding a home. Some of the fine enthusiasm which was developed by the required sacrifices of war may well find a new expression in turning towards the making of the home. It is the final answer to every challenge of the soundness of the fundamental principles of our institutions. It holds the assurance and prospect of contentment and of satisfaction. Under present conditions any ambition of America to become a nation of home owners would be by no means impossible of fulfillment. The land is available, the materials are at hand, the necessary accumulation of credit exists, the courage, the endurance and the sacrifice of the people are not wanting. Let them begin, however slender their means, the building and perfecting of the national character by the building and adorning of a home which shall be worthy of the habitation of an American family, calm in the assurance that "the gods send thread for a web begun." Here will be found that satisfaction which comes from possession and achievement. Here is the opportunity to express the soul in art. Here is the Sacred influence, here in the earth at our feet, around the hearthstone, which raises man to his true estate. (Signed) Calvin Coolidge THE HOME AS AN INVESTMENT By HERBERT HOOVER One can always safely judge of the character of a nation by its homes. For it is mainly through the hope of enjoying the ownership of a home that the latent energy of any citizenry is called forth. This universal yearning for better homes and the larger security, independence and freedom that they imply, was the aspiration that carried our pioneers westward. Since the preemption acts passed early in the last century, the United States, in its land laws, has recognized and put a premium upon this great incentive. It has stimulated the building of rural homes through the wide distribution of land under the Homestead Acts and by the distribution of credit through the Farm Loan Banks. Indeed, this desire for home ownership has, without question, stimulated more people to purposeful saving than any other factor. Saving, in the abstract, is, of course, a perfunctory process as compared with purposeful saving for a home, the possession of which may change the very physical, mental, and moral fibre of one's own children. Now, in the main because of the diversion of our economic strength from permanent construction to manufacturing of consumable commodities during and after the war, we are short about a million homes. In cities such a shortage implies the challenge of congestion. It means that in practically every American city of more than 200,000, from 20 to 30 per cent, of the population is adversely affected, and that thousands of families are forced into unsanitary and dangerous quarters. This condition, in turn, means a large increase in rents, a throw-back in human efficiency and that unrest which inevitably results from inhibition of the primal instinct in us all for home ownership. It makes for nomads and vagrants. In rural areas it means aggravation and increase of farm tenantry on one hand, an increase of landlordism on the other hand, and general disturbance to the prosperity and contentment of rural life. There is no incentive to thrift like the ownership of property. The man who owns his own home has a happy sense of security. He will invest his hard earned savings to improve the house he owns. He will develop it and defend it. No man ever worked for, or fought for a boarding-house. But the appalling anomaly of a nation as prosperous as ours thwarted largely in its common yearning for better homes, is now giving way to the gratifying revival of home construction. Accordingly the time is ripe for this revival to afford an opportunity to our people to look to more homes and better ones, to better, more economical and more uniform building codes, and to universal establishment and application of zoning rules that make for the development of better towns and cities. We have the productive capacity wasted annually in the United States sufficient to raise in large measure the housing conditions of our entire people to the level that only fifty per cent, of them now enjoy. We have wastes in the building industry itself which, if constructively applied, would go a long way toward supplying better homes, so that what is needed imperatively is organized intelligence and direction. For the problem is essentially one of ways and means. And, finally, while we are about Better Homes for America and are lending such indirect support to the movement as the Government, States, counties, communities, and patriotic individuals and organizations can rightfully give, let us have in mind not houses merely, but homes! There is a large distinction. It may have been a typesetter who confounded the two words. For, curiously, with all our American ingenuity and resourcefulness, we have overlooked the laundry and the kitchen, and thrown the bulk of our efforts in directions other than those designed to make better homes by adding to the facilities of our very habitations. If, in other words, the family is the unit of modern civilization, the home, its shelter and gathering-point, should, it would seem, warrant in its design and furnishing quite as large a share of attention as the power plant or the factory. We believe, therefore, that in every community in which it is possible a "_Better Homes in America_" Demonstration should be planned and carried through during the week of October 9th to 14th, 1922. (Signed) Herbert Hoover THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE WASHINGTON July 24, 1922. Dear Mrs. Meloney: Naturally I am interested in the "Better Homes in America" movement. When we consider the all powerful influence of home conditions and home atmosphere on the lives and character of our people, both young and old, surely every proper effort to improve those conditions should have the support of all good citizens. Our people in the Department of Agriculture will be glad to advise with your committee chairmen on any matters in which they can lend assistance. Our home demonstration agents in different sections of the country can no doubt be helpful in advising as to the setting up of demonstration kitchens. You seem to have gathered to your help the cooperation of a large number of state governors and also a number of other gentlemen who, because of their public work, can possibly contribute to the success of the campaign. With very best wishes, I am Sincerely yours, [Signature] Mrs. William Brown Meloney, Secretary to the Advisory Council for the "Better Homes" Campaign, 223 Spring Street, New York City. [Illustration: DEMONSTRATION OF BETTER. HOMES--October 9 to 14, 1922] A PLAN for COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION of BETTER HOMES IN AMERICA _Demonstration Week October 9th to 14th, 1922_ _The future history of America will be shaped in large measure by the character of its homes. If we continue to be a home-loving people we shall have the strength that comes only from a virile family life. This means that our homes must be attractive, comfortable, convenient, wholesome. They must keep pace with the progress made outside the home. Realization of this has crystallized into a national civic campaign for Better Homes in America endorsed and encouraged by Federal and State officials and by prominent men in public life as set forth in this Plan Book._ The following plan has been prepared to give practical help to citizens of any community organizing for a _Better Homes in America_ Demonstration Week, October 9th to 14th, 1922. The Campaign in each community centers about a _Better Home_--completely equipped, furnished and decorated, in accordance with approved modern practice, and placed on exhibition during Demonstration Week. Better Homes exhibitions have already been held, but now for the first time a national organization, endorsed and supported by the President of the United States and other Federal and State officials, is prepared to give practical help to every community wishing to share in the _Better Homes in America_ movement. The community which exhibits a _Better Home_ during Demonstration Week will be given a powerful impetus for good. Every civic interest, every business and industry will be favorably affected. A _Better Homes_ demonstration is a stimulus to better living, civic pride and community morale. It encourages thrift and industry. It develops a higher standard of taste. It means a better community in every way. This has been proved by the experience of many communities which have held successful exhibitions. They have ranged from cities as large as Cleveland, Milwaukee, Columbus, Kansas City and Dayton to villages of a few hundred population. In every case where the demonstration has been properly organized lasting benefits have followed. _Follow the Plan_ The National Advisory Council of _Better Homes in America_, through its Bureau of Information, has made a thorough investigation of previous exhibitions of this character. This investigation has shown clearly that when the local organizations proceed in the right way a _Better Homes_ demonstration may easily be made a great success. Causes of trouble as well as of success have been analyzed to bring out the methods that should be avoided. The Advisory Council, therefore, is in a position to recommend plans that have stood the test of practical experience. With Federal and State governments endorsing and encouraging this Plan of educating the people to _Better Homes in America_, the conduct of local demonstrations is given tremendous impetus and support. And with the suggestions and the Plan for conducting such demonstrations herewith presented, any community may confidently undertake the production of a _Better Homes_ Exhibition during Demonstration Week, October 9th to 14th, 1922. A comparatively few energetic and capable women, with the support of local civic organizations, can effectively put into practice the ideas and plans with which they will be supplied by the Bureau of Information. The expense of a _Better Home_ demonstration need not be great; in some communities it may be kept as low as $25.00. Builders, merchants and prominent citizens will combine to supply the Model _Better Home_, and to furnish it. Civic organizations and newspapers will cooperate to interest the public. The most successful demonstrations have been so managed as to impress upon visitors that they were not selfish enterprises, intended to help special interests, particular firms or individuals. They have been so conducted as to benefit every line of business and to help the community as a whole. Neither the name of the builder or owner of the home exhibited, nor the name of any person or business firm furnishing any portion of the exhibit, is permitted to be displayed. The motive behind the demonstration is primarily educational. _How to Form a General Committee for Better Homes Demonstration Week_ A Better Homes Demonstration should be organized and directed by a disinterested group of prominent women, working from motives of public service. This group should be formed of a Chairman and a General Committee of from four to seven members, depending upon the size of the community. Each member of the General Committee is Chairman of one or more sub-committees as outlined later in this Plan. The Chairman of the General Committee is appointed through the National Advisory Council of _Better Homes in America_. She appoints the members of the local General Committee. They in turn appoint the members of the Sub-committees. In the case of the Sub-committees it is particularly important that appointments should be made with the knowledge and approval of the local civic and commercial interests whose co-operation is desired. Detailed suggestions for procedure are outlined later. The duties of the members of the General Committee fit naturally into the following arrangement of Sub-committees with a member of the General Committee as Chairman of each Sub-committee: (1) Sub-committee on Advertising and Publicity. (2) Sub-committee on Selection of Demonstration Home. (3) Sub-committee on Equipment of Demonstration Home. (4) Sub-committee on Furnishing and Decorating. (5) Sub-committee on Reception of Visitors and Management of Home. (6) Sub-committee on Program of Events. (7) Sub-committee on Budget for Demonstration Week. Where the size of the community makes it desirable to have a General Committee of only four members, some such distribution of the Sub-committees as this is recommended: (1) Chairman (a member of the General Committee) heading (a) Sub-committee on Advertising and Publicity; and (b) Sub-committee on Progress of Events. (2) Chairman (a member of the General Committee) heading (a) Sub-committee on Equipment of Demonstration Home; and (b) Sub-committee on Furnishing and Decorating. (3) Chairman (a member of the General Committee) heading (a) Sub-committee on Selection of Demonstration Home; and (b) Sub-committee on Reception of Visitors and Management of Home. (4) Chairman (a member of the General Committee) heading (a) Sub-committee on Budget for Demonstration Week. _How To Secure Patrons for Better Homes Demonstration; Full Cooperation of All Local Interests Essential_ Following the organization of the General Committee, the first duty of its Chairman should be the arrangement for meetings of the Committee--or its individual members--with the various City Officials, and Civic and Commercial Organizations in the community, to explain the Plan for a _Better Homes_ Demonstration and to secure their endorsement and active support. Those endorsing and supporting the Demonstration may be known as Patrons and should comprise the following: The Mayor Commissioner of Education (or Superintendent of Public School) Publishers or Owners of Local Newspapers Presidents of Important Women's Clubs President of Chamber of Commerce Agricultural Home Bureau, etc. President of Real Estate Board President of Rotary Club President of Kiwanis Club Presidents of Building & Loan Associations Presidents of other Business or Trade Associations related to the Home Building and Furnishing Industries. Churches should also be asked to support the movement. Additional Patrons may properly be selected from prominent citizens of the community, who are noted for their public spirit and are not included in the above list. The two essentials for a successful _Better Homes in America_ Demonstration are genuine co-operation from all local civic, financial, commercial and educational interests, and full and extensive publicity through the local newspapers. From the youngest boy or girl scout to bank president, business man, school teacher, minister, manufacturer and city official, everybody in a community should have a real personal interest in the Demonstration. When the benefits of a successful _Better Homes_ Demonstration are once understood this interest is readily aroused. Investigation of successful exhibitions in Kansas City, Indianapolis, Cleveland and elsewhere proved conclusively that the cooperation of all local interests was the biggest single factor of success. _How to Form Sub-Committees_ It is important to appoint as Chairman of each Sub-committee a member of the General Committee who is particularly fitted to the specific work assigned to her Sub-committee. The special abilities of the members of the General Committee should be taken into careful consideration and so used in the arrangement of the Sub-committees as to secure the best and quickest results. The formation of Sub-committees is necessary not only to divide the work effectively, but also to arouse the interest and cooperation of the various local interests directly affected by home building and home betterment. All the local business groups--furniture dealers, hardware dealers, wall-paper and paint dealers, electrical dealers, real estate dealers, etc.--should be interviewed and asked to nominate a representative from each group to serve on the appropriate Sub-committee. In this way the appearance of favoring special interests will be avoided and the fullest co-operation secured. It may be well to stress here that the Chairman of the General Committee should not become immersed in the details of the Sub-committees' work. She establishes a point of contact and a clearing house for _all_ Sub-committees and directs the _Better Homes_ Demonstration as a whole, but not in detail. Neither should the Chairman of a Sub-committee attempt to enter into details of the work of other Sub-committees not under her direction. The Chairman of each Sub-committee is responsible to the Chairman of the General Committee, and to her alone. Suggestions for the formation and activities of the various Sub-committees are given in the following: _I--How to Form Sub-Committee on Budget for Demonstration Week_ A member of the General Committee is the Chairman. This Sub-committee should be made up of prominent citizens, representing both the financial and mercantile interests of the community. It would be appropriate to secure a Bank Cashier, who is accustomed to keeping accurate records of receipts and expenses, to act as Vice-chairman of the Sub-Committee. He may also act as Treasurer of the General Committee. This committee should have charge not only of the securing of the modest expense fund necessary for Demonstration Week, but also of the recording of facts and figures regarding the operation of the Demonstration Home, and the results obtained. Such a record will be exceedingly useful to the local General Committee as well as the National Advisory Council. Accurate figures on the local _Better Homes_ Demonstrations will be invaluable in continuing the _Better Homes_ in America Campaign, and arrangements have been made for prizes to be given to those Committees submitting the best reports and records of successful demonstrations. _Suggestions for the Sub-Committee_ There will be certain general expenses incurred in conducting a _Better Homes_ Demonstration. These general expenses may range from $25 to $500 or more, depending upon the size of the committee and the extensiveness and completeness of the Demonstration. Some of the items of expense which may be incurred are: insurance of borrowed property; special advertising in the form of street signs, window cards and posters; printing; prizes for contests; lecturers, and, possibly, special forms of entertainment. In many communities where Demonstrations have been held, the small contributions necessary have been readily volunteered by the various organizations, business firms or individuals directly interested in the financing and furnishing of homes. Contributions may be secured from bankers, stores, public utilities, real estate dealers, building material dealers, insurance men, etc. The amounts contributed by the various interests should be carefully apportioned and only a sufficient sum collected to pay the actual expenses of the Demonstration. In Dayton and other cities it was found that volunteer contributions were readily made by manufacturers of, or dealers in, trade-marked articles, such as pianos, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, electrical equipment, etc. As these articles, because of the trade name affixed, received special advertising in the Demonstration Home, it was considered proper to accept contributions from the dealers. The selection of trade-marked articles which may be shown in a Demonstration Home should be made in a disinterested manner by the Subcommittee on Equipment. _2--How to Form Sub-Committee on Advertising and Publicity_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. The success of the Demonstration rests largely upon the thoroughness with which this Committee does its work. It should, therefore, be composed of all of the Publishers or Advertising Managers of local Newspapers, and the Advertising Managers of Department Stores and other large business houses. The fullest co-operation should be secured from all the local publishing and advertising interests. Local newspapers will gladly aid a _Better Homes_ Demonstration, for such an exhibition presents unusual opportunities for selling advertising space to local merchants. In some of the cities where Demonstrations have been held, the newspapers have brought out large special editions carrying a great amount of local advertising, and filled with interesting and instructive reading matter regarding home building and home betterment. _Suggestions for the Sub-Committee_ The campaign publicity should commence with an announcement of the organization of the General Committee and the selection of Patrons. It should be continued, in advance of the opening of the Demonstration Home, by the use of reading matter descriptive of home planning, furnishing, decoration and equipment. The local newspapers should co-operate with the Sub-committee in seeing that advertisements of exhibitors during the demonstration week do not mention the fact that the advertiser is an exhibitor. This, of course, should not preclude the general advertising of goods suitable for the equipment or furnishing of _Better Homes_. This regulation is in line with the non-commercial policy of the campaign, and merchants will readily understand its fairness. This Sub-committee should provide painted signs announcing the location of the Exhibition Home. These signs should be placed at neighboring street intersections. Signs in the form of arrow pointers should be tacked on telephone poles in all parts of the city pointing in the direction of the Demonstration Home and announcing its exact location. Automobile Posters or Banners for the cars of the members of the Committee may be furnished by local sign painters or printers. The Committee should also see that show cards advertising the Demonstration are properly distributed and displayed in store windows and that posters are put up in suitable public places. Show cards, posters and stickers bearing the imprint of the _Better Homes in America_ campaign, with space left for local announcements, may be obtained by application to the Bureau of Information, _The Delineator_, 223 Spring Street, New York City, Secretary, Mrs. William Brown Meloney. A circular descriptive of the show cards, posters and stickers may also be obtained through the Bureau of Information, which has arranged to have this advertising display matter prepared for the use of local Committees. It is strongly recommended that these posters and cards be used in order to standardize the various local Demonstrations. The stickers should be widely distributed among local merchants for use on city mail during the week preceding and the week of the campaign. Small electrotypes of the _Better Homes in America_ campaign insignia, or trade-mark, may be obtained through the Bureau of Information for use on printed matter and in newspapers. They are shown in the circular descriptive of the advertising display material. _3--How to Form Sub-Committee on Selection of Demonstration Home_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. The selection of the home to be used for the Demonstration should be made by a _disinterested_ committee. Experience has shown that this is the only satisfactory method, as all personal interests are thus eliminated and criticism avoided. Previous experience also indicates that this Sub-committee, with a member of the General Committee as Chairman, of course, should be composed of the President of the local Real Estate Board (if there is one in the community), a representative of the Chamber of Commerce or Merchants Association, a representative architect, and a representative of the Building Material Dealers. Here again is illustrated the importance of securing the full co-operation of the various groups of business men directly affected by home building and owning. These groups should be interviewed and each group asked to appoint its representative on this committee. When the National campaign for _Better Homes in America_, and the Plan as outlined here, have been clearly explained to these interests, a Sub-committee for selecting the Demonstration Home may be organized, which will act disinterestedly and effectively. _Suggestions for the Sub-Committee_ The three cardinal principles to be observed in the selection of a Demonstration Home are: first, situation with respect to accessibility and nearness to street car lines; second, type of architecture; and third, cost. A Demonstration Home should be situated within a reasonable distance of the business section of a community, and it should not be more than four blocks from the nearest street car line. In a city where the Demonstration Home was selected some eight blocks from the car line and upon a hill, the attendance was disappointingly small. The Demonstration Home should not be situated in the outskirts of a community. This was found to be a disadvantage in a city where a Demonstration Home was selected in a new, partially developed suburb, some distance from the city limits. An extreme type of architecture should be avoided in a Demonstration Home. With respect to the cost of the home selected, it has been shown in a number of cities that a house priced slightly above the average cost of homes in the community attracted the larger number of visitors. The public apparently likes to visit a home costing more than the average, because of a desire to see and admire better things. Demonstration Homes, therefore, may range in price from $5,000 to $15,000, including the land, but not including the furnishings and equipment. Other essentials of an ideal home for demonstration purposes are fully outlined in an article prepared by direction of Secretary of Commerce Hoover and included in this Plan Book on pages 7 and 8. The builder or owner of the Home selected should be willing to loan it to the General Committee for the Demonstration Week, without charge. He should also be willing to landscape the grounds, decorate the walls and carry all insurance and damage risks. This has been gladly done by builders in Syracuse, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Kansas City and elsewhere. There is no better selling method for homes than that of putting on display a completely furnished and equipped home. If the entire plan of campaign is explained to the builder or owner of a suitable home, and the advantages of indirect selling methods are pointed out to him, his co-operation will be readily secured. The name of the builder or owner is not to be displayed on the Demonstration Home in any manner, shape or form, nor is his name to be carried in any of the advertising during the campaign. This will do away with all appearance of favoritism in the choice of the house to be used. It is proper, however, to insert a reading notice in the newspapers announcing the selection of the Demonstration Home and giving the name of the owner or builder. No further reference should be made to him in any of the advertising matter during Demonstration Week, though the attendants in the home may properly give his name to any person inquiring for it. _4--How to Form Sub-Committee on Equipment of Demonstration Home_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. The selection and installation of all practicable labor-saving devices and appliances in the Demonstration Home is left to this Sub-committee. It should be composed of representatives of dealers in home equipment, architects, builders, and, if possible, a Home Demonstration agent of the Agricultural Department. (See announcement of special co-operation of Department of Agriculture by Secretary Wallace on page 9). _Suggestions for Sub-Committee_ On pages 47-49 will be found a statement of the best modern practise in the equipment of a home permitting the most efficient and economical housekeeping. It is probable that many communities will be unable to equip the Demonstration Home completely, in accordance with the standards laid down. So far as practicable these suggestions should be followed, but local conditions and the stock of equipment carried by local dealers may require some modifications in detail. _5--How to Form Sub-Committee on Furnishing and Decorating_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. In the selection of this Sub-committee the greatest care must be taken to secure the cooperation of all the business firms and individuals concerned in the furnishing and decorating of homes. Each group--furniture dealers, hardware dealers, paint and wallpaper dealers, department stores (if any), decorators (if any), art and book stores--should be interviewed on this important subject and asked to appoint representatives to serve on this Subcommittee. _Suggestions for Sub-Committee_ In order to maintain the non-commercial aspect of Demonstration Week, no exhibitor's name should be displayed on any article shown in the Demonstration Home. No price tags should be permitted on any article. In this way all appearance of commercialism is avoided. This feature will appeal to the fair and broad-minded merchant and will secure the enthusiastic support of all the merchants in the community, no matter how small their business may be. The attendants at the Home, in response to inquiries as to where certain articles may be secured, should be instructed to reply that they may be had from the inquirer's own dealer or from any dealer in the city. In Dayton this non-commercial plan was wonderfully successful. In communities where suitable furnishings and decorations are not obtainable from the local stores they may be borrowed from public spirited citizens, who have such articles as are adapted to the scheme of decoration and furnishing. For the guidance of the Sub-committee, which may not include expert decorators or furnishers as members, practical suggestions on good furnishing and decorating have been set forth on pages 30-42 of this Plan Book. These suggestions will undoubtedly prove helpful in assembling the furnishings and decorations for a Demonstration Home. If more detailed information is required, write to the Bureau of Information, _The Delineator_, 223 Spring Street, New York City, Secretary, Mrs. William Brown Meloney. In all cases the basement of the Demonstration Home should be very carefully arranged, equipped and prepared for exhibition. The furnishing of the Demonstration Home should include well-selected, standard home literature and reference books, properly arranged in book-cases or on shelves. A printed list of this selected library may be supplied for distribution to the visitors. _6--How to Form Sub-Committee on Management and Reception_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. The members of this Sub-committee should be selected for their ability to manage the Demonstration Home and to receive and care for the visitors. It may be composed of representatives of the various women's organizations in the city. In order to insure the keeping of accurate records of attendance, one or more bank tellers should be members of the Sub-committee. This Sub-committee is to provide the attendants at the Demonstration Home and to handle the visitors in such a way as to avoid confusion and damage. It should also keep an accurate record of attendance, of interesting inquiries and the general results. It should report in detail to the Budget Committee, so that the General Committee may have an opportunity to compete for the prizes offered for the best report of a successful Demonstration. _Suggestions for the Sub-Committee_ During the hours of exhibition the Demonstration Home should be in charge of a capable woman of suitable personality. This may be a volunteer, or a paid worker, for the entire week, or several volunteer workers may undertake the management of the Home, having definite days of attendance assigned to them. The hours of exhibition should be from 1:00 to 10:00 p.m. continuously. It has been found in exhibitions that the home need not be kept open during the morning hours. During this period it may be cleaned and placed in readiness for visitors. An attendant for the bedrooms and two attendants for the first floor--one in the hall or living room and the other in the dining room and kitchen--will be required to direct and control the visitors and to keep the house in perfect order during the exhibition hours. These attendants may be club or committee members who volunteer their services for certain days in the week. It has been noted in several exhibitions that visitors usually congregate at certain hours in the afternoon and evening, and frequently overcrowd upon the lawns. It is necessary, therefore, to erect light guard rails along the sidewalk leading from the street to the house. And it may sometimes be necessary to have an outside attendant who will keep the visitors in an orderly line of entrance. This is work that may very well be performed by Boy Scouts. During times of congestion visitors should be taken through the house in groups not to exceed fifteen in number. They should be conducted through the rooms in an orderly manner by the attendants. In some cases it has been found advisable to send the visitors to the second floor first, so that they may depart through the kitchen after inspecting the first floor and basement. Girl Scouts may be used for conducting the visitors through the home. A careful check on the attendance at the Demonstration Home should be kept. This can best be done by assigning a Boy or Girl Scout to count the visitors as they enter the home and keep an accurate tally, which should be reported to the manager in charge. In some cities it has been found that a list of visitors to the home may be readily obtained by having them register upon a numbered card, which can be used for a drawing contest--a prize being awarded to the lucky number. In smaller communities where the attendance will not be large at any one time the names of visitors may be kept in a small register or list book. _7--How to Form Sub-Committee on Program of Events_ A member of the General Committee is Chairman. This Sub-committee should be composed of persons who are particularly capable in arranging programs of entertainment, and may be selected from members of the Board of Education, School Principals and Teachers, Theatrical and Moving Picture Managers, Community and Song Leaders, etc. _The Following Events Are Suggested_ 1--Sermons, Addresses and Sunday School talks in all churches on the Sunday preceding the opening of the exhibition. 2--Color slides relating to home owning, home management, home furnishing and decoration to be shown in moving picture houses. 3--Four-Minute Talks on thrift, home owning, home financing, home furnishing, home decoration, etc., in all moving picture houses. 4--Block Parties in front of the Demonstration Home. Lights for the block party may be supplied from the headlights and searchlights of automobiles properly arranged. 5--Window Dressing Contests for hardware merchants, house furnishing merchants, department stores, etc. 6--Erection of Miniature Home, suitable for a girl's playhouse, on Public Square--this playhouse may be given as first prize to the girl of school age writing the best essay on "Why You Should Own Your Home." 7--Showing special _Better Homes_ films in all moving picture houses. (See special announcement on page 24.) 8--Prizes for the best example of a Model Kitchen in the community. 9--Cooking Demonstrations by Home Demonstration Agent, or some well-known local cook, High School or Normal School student. 10--Singing by Choir or Quartette on porch of Demonstration Home each evening at about 7:30 and 8:00 o'clock. 11--(a) Guessing contest as to how many visitors enter Demonstration Home. 11--(b) Prize for best essay by a boy on Home Owning. (c) Prize for best essay by a girl on Home Equipment or Furnishing. (d) Prize for best landscape design for Small Home by High School or Art student. 12--Radio Program at Demonstration Home, or elsewhere in the city. 13--Lectures on Home Equipment, Decoration or Furnishing by experts, in local auditorium. It has been found that admission to these lectures may be charged, to help defray the expense of lecturers. _Lecture Courses and Lectures_ Lectures on Home Building, Furnishing, Decoration and allied subjects have been found to attract large audiences in cities where they have been given under the auspices of local organizations. Undoubtedly many communities co-operating in the _Better Homes in America_ Demonstration Week, October 9th to 14th, will desire to include in their program of events lectures on _Better Homes_ subjects. _Better Homes in America Bureau of Information The Delineator 223 Spring Street, New York City Secretary,_ Mrs. WILLIAM BROWN MELONEY The Bureau of Information has been established to support and coordinate the work of local _Better Homes in America_ committees. Additional copies of this Plan Book may be obtained from the Bureau of Information. Other data and material will be supplied as indicated in the Plan Book. Bulletins will be sent out from time to time to keep local committees posted on the national development of the _Better Homes in America_ campaign. In the following pages of the Plan Book are special articles prepared by governmental and other authorities on various phases of home building, equipment, decorating, sanitation, etc. The Bureau of Information will either answer inquiries in regard to any of these special articles or, when necessary, will refer the questions to the authors of the articles. MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS & DISTRIBUTORS OF AMERICA, INC. 522 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY WILL H. HAYS president COURTLAND SMITH SECRETARY Telephone Vandebilt 2110 July 19, 1922 Mrs. W. B. Meloney, 233 Spring Street, New York City. My dear Mrs. Meloney: I am immensely interested in the Better Homes Campaign. This is something that the motion picture industry should be interested in and I am sure that they will want to be. I would like to help you to have available for your Better Homes week, October 9-14, pictures that would show clearly just what the modern home should be. I am glad that the Better Homes Council has had such an encouraging response from the governors of the various states and from the women of this country. Certainly it is a matter to which all of us should give our very best. It will have an enduring influence on the lives of our people and it is one of the most creditable movements that I know of. I have a little home in Sullivan, Indiana, that we are most anxious to equip in just exactly the best way, and I am as much interested as any one could be in learning how this should be done, so I am looking forward to October 9-14 with much interest. With best wishes always, I am, Sincerely yours, [Signature] Essentials for Demonstration Home Suggestions on Buildings and Grounds By JOHN IHLDER DIRECTOR, HOUSING CONDITIONS, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES Different parts of the country have quite distinct types of one-family dwellings. The best, unquestionably, is the detached house with adequate yard space on all four sides; the house which gets sun and air no matter which way it faces or what the direction of the prevailing breeze; the house whose yard makes it possible for the family, and especially for the children, to live much in the open. But, though this is the best type, it may prove impracticable for people of moderate means in communities where past practice has resulted in crowding the land to such an extent that group or row houses have become the standard. Whatever the type of house, however, there are certain fundamentals of an essentially good house. The exhibition house should, as far as possible, embody these fundamentals as given below. _Open Space Belonging to the House_ If the house is of the detached type (open on all four sides) it should have a lot wide enough to permit fifteen feet of yard space on each side. Then it is protected from any danger of side windows being darkened and air cut off by any building which is permissible in a one-family house residence district (see Zoning and What it Means to the Home). Where there are no zoning regulations to give protection, even fifteen feet of side yard will not prevent injury from a tall apartment house or commercial building. Under no circumstances should the demonstration house, if of the detached type, have less than ten feet of side yard. If no detached house with ten feet or more (preferably fifteen feet or a little more) of side yard can be secured, then seek a house of another type. Next in order of excellence is the semi-detached house (twin--two houses side by side with a party wall). The single side yard of this house should be fifteen feet wide and never less than ten feet. Next in order is the group house, or the row house. The row house may be a perfectly good house if it is wide enough in proportion to its depth so that there may be adequate open spaces before every window, and if it is so planned as to take full advantage of these open spaces. Moreover a row of houses may be so designed--perhaps as one unit so far as the front elevation is concerned--that they will be very attractive in appearance. A wide, row house (18 to 20 feet or more), properly planned, is much better to live in than a detached or a semi-detached house whose side yards are so narrow that they do not give adequate light and air to middle rooms. The really good house is bright and airy. Consequently the demonstration house should be set back from the street and its front yard should be deep enough not only to assure privacy from the street, but also to permit at least a well sodded grass plot. The rear yard will, of course, extend across the whole lot. Or the rear yard may be 100 feet deep. But in this connection, it is necessary to bear in mind that a yard may be too large as well as too small. It must fit in with the house, and some account must be taken of the probable habits of its occupants. A family which has no servants, and in which the breadwinner works long hours away from home, may find a large yard a burden unless some member is an enthusiastic gardener. Lacking this gardener the back of a deep yard is likely to become a dump-heap. _The House Itself_ Given adequate open space as described above there are certain essentials in the house itself. _Construction_ A house is, or should be, an investment. Therefore it should be honestly constructed. One of the most important lessons for the home buyer to learn is that the initial cost of a house is not its full cost. It pays well to spend a little more on purchase price if, thereby, repair bills and maintenance costs are kept down. And it pays not only in dollars and cents but in satisfaction as well, for the house that soon begins to go to pieces, that soon looks shabby, is quite the opposite of a "joy forever." Consequently the demonstration house should be well built, and one of the most valuable parts of the demonstration should lie in pointing out by suitable placards its structural excellencies. Has the ground immediately outside the walls been drained so that water will not lie against these walls and gradually soak into them? Is the cellar well drained and dry; well lighted and ventilated? Is the foundation well built? Are the beams and joists heavy enough and of good material? Are the floors and woodwork of good material, well seasoned, and of good workmanship? Is the hardware (locks, hinges, lighting fixtures, etc.) strong enough to stand usage? Are the outside walls of good material--if of brick, of good quality with good quality mortar; if of frame, of good lumber, well seasoned and well painted with three coats of paint? What kind of sheathing is used? Is wood well seasoned? Is the roofing of a material adapted to the climate and of good quality? What material is used for flashing? Recently there has been some discussion of the heat-retaining quality of walls. It is advocated that openings which permit circulation of cold air between outer and inner walls shall be filled. This adds but little to the cost of building and in cold climates reduces materially the coal bill. Incidentally it also aids both in reducing the fire hazard and in rat proofing. For the latter, care must be taken that there are no unscreened openings through foundation walls into a cellar, and that all openings from the cellar to the space between outer and inner walls of stories above shall be filled with rat-proof material. Much attention is now being given to standardizing the parts of a house, both to reduce initial cost and to make replacement easier and less expensive. Are the doors, windows and other parts of the demonstration house of standard stock sizes? _Light and Ventilation_ _Every_ room must have adequate window areas giving upon wide outdoor spaces. An interior room, or one poorly lighted from a narrow court, or receiving its only light from a wide porch, may not impress the visitor, who sees it only when the house is new and the room artificially lighted, but it does in time impress the family who inhabit it. Row houses are best when they are only two rooms deep from front to rear. If, however, an extension is built upon the rear of a row house, the court on one side of this extension, from which middle rooms are lighted, should be _at least six_ feet wide for a two-story dwelling and seven feet for a three-story dwelling. If there is a front porch on a row house it should not extend clear across the front, darkening every window of the front ground-floor room, but should extend only part way, leaving one window free. This also adds to the value of the porch by giving it greater privacy, but of course it necessitates a house at least 18 feet wide, if the porch is to be large enough to use as an outdoor sitting room for the whole family in warm weather. So far as practicable, each room should have at least two windows, and corner rooms should have windows in two walls. The rooms should be planned so that they may be opened into each other and the breeze permitted to sweep through. _Privacy_ While the family is a unit, and a function of the house is to symbolize and emphasize family unity, there should, nevertheless, be provision for some individual privacy. The most elementary provision, of course, is that there be at least three bedrooms--on the assumption that the normal family will contain both boys and girls. Consequently the demonstration house must contain not less than three bedrooms. But beyond this, the grouping of rooms possible in a two-story house (bedrooms and bath on the second floor, common living rooms on the first floor) as against a one-story house, adds greatly to privacy. At the same time the two-story house is nearly always the more economical both to build and to operate, while one flight of stairs does not add appreciably to the house-wife's work. With the kitchen, dining room, living room and a lavatory on the ground floor there is comparatively little need of running up and downstairs, even when there are young children in the family. A third story, an upstairs sitting room, no ground floor lavatory, do add appreciably to the amount of stair climbing. Stair climbing is reduced by having the laundry on the same floor as the kitchen instead of in the basement or cellar. Though it is the scene of greatest activity only one or two days a week, it is often used at other times, and often in connection with kitchen work. On the score that the number of steps is thereby reduced, laundry tubs may be placed in the kitchen; but against this must be balanced the annoyance, or worse, that comes from having the kitchen full of steam and all cluttered up with clothes in process of washing when meals must be prepared. Because of this many women prefer a separate laundry in an ell or extension opening off the kitchen. From the latitude of Philadelphia south, this extension may be of light construction without danger of pipes freezing except in the coldest weather; and it is a simple matter to install a cut-off, so that these pipes may be emptied when not in use. _Sanitation_ There should be a fully equipped bathroom on the bedroom floor and a toilet--preferably a wash bowl also--on the ground floor. A toilet in the cellar is only a half-way measure. It does give an added convenience of very real value, especially when there are servants; but it is usually less accessible than the upstairs bathroom and, unless the cellar is unusually well lighted and ventilated--unless it is heated and unless its floor is high enough above the sewer to provide for the necessary slope of the soil pipe--it is very likely to become a nuisance. A sewer-connected toilet in the yard is only a step above the old-time privy vault. It is inaccessible in bad weather; after dark it is public; and it is likely to freeze. _Suggestion for Furnishing and Decorating the Demonstration Home_ PREPARED BY THE BUREAU OF INFORMATION Changing an empty house into a furnished, restful place of beauty is no less a task than transforming a piece of paper into a lovely picture. In one sense, interior decoration is a creative art. It is true that decorators, or persons furnishing houses, do not weave their own hangings, build their own furniture, or design their own wall-paper, but they select the things they require from shops, where they have been designed by others, and choose in such a way as to make a beautiful and harmonious whole. Persons who must furnish a house for the occupancy of a family face four distinct problems: first, they must see that the things selected suit the house in size, coloring, and style; second, that the pieces selected are harmonious with each other, and that they are comfortable and well-made; third, that they suit the requirements of the family; and fourth, that they fit the family purse. _Backgrounds_ The first requisite of a house is that it be restful; therefore, it is wise to use wall coverings that are plain in effect. Plain paints or tints, and wall-papers of a cloudy, all-over pattern, make the best backgrounds. When a room faces north, the best colors to use are the yellows, which might range from a cream color to a deep pumpkin yellow. In rooms that face south, it is possible to use light grays, which might range to a deep putty color; though it is possible in sunny rooms to use almost any color except those which might fade easily. The best way to treat rooms which have wide doorways connecting them with other rooms is to have the walls of both rooms alike, preferably in some plain color. _Floor Coverings_ Rugs and floor coverings should be several shades darker than the walls, and be either in plain colors or have a small or indefinite all-over design. Where walls are plain, the latter type of carpet should be used. When walls have on them any figured covering, plain carpet should be used. _Hangings_ The hangings for rooms which have plain wall coverings could be striped or figured, but in rooms where there is a figured wall covering, the hangings should be in plain colors, taking the color scheme for these from the dominating color note in walls and carpet. _Furnishings_ A good rule to follow in choosing furnishings is to avoid anything which strikes you as elaborate, or prominent. If a piece of furniture, carpet, or curtain material stands out in a shop, you may be quite certain that it will be even more noticeable in a house. A house can only be considered properly furnished when it meets the real needs of the occupants. Comfortable chairs, sofas, and beds, good tables, and soft carpets, make up the most important objects, and these should be the best that the family can afford. No definite rule can be applied to the arrangement of the furniture, but balance and wall space should be considered first. Where a single opening is placed in the center of the wall, or like openings at equal distances, the wall spaces will be in balance; in the case of unequal openings, the wall spaces will be out of balance. At balanced wall spaces, place pieces of furniture of relative size and contour. These may be tables, chairs, sofas, and pictures. Leave the more intimate and personal furniture, such as favorite chairs, sewing table, and foot stool, for a grouping at one side or in the center of the room. Lay all carpets and rugs parallel with the longest sides of the room. In a room with unbalanced wall spaces, place against the longest spaces the largest pieces of furniture--the piano, the bookcase, the davenport--grouping perhaps a table, mirror, and chair against a smaller and opposite wall space. This permits the comfortable chairs, tables, lamps, and pottery to relieve the stiffness, allowing them to be grouped in the center of the room. Do not indulge in too many pictures, but select a few of interest and good quality. These few should be hung on a level with the average eye. Small pictures should be hung somewhat lower. Do not invest in many ornaments. A few bits of colored pottery, or some brass ware, is all that is required to strike a lively note. Place these so that they will balance other objects arranged on the same mantel or bookshelf. For example, a pair of brass candlesticks placed at either end of a mantel, with a pottery bowl, clock, or ornament in the center, strikes a balance. Never have a large jar on a small table or stand, or small ornaments on a large table. A good thing to remember is that ornaments decrease in value as they increase in number. In the following pages will be found suggestive lists of articles which the rooms in a Better Home might contain. For further assistance and more detail, write the Bureau of Information. _Suggestions for Furnishing the Hall_ [Illustration: HALL A Modern Colonial Hall of good proportions and design, with the simple but necessary furnishings for convenience and welcome.] The first impression of a house and its occupants comes as one enters through the front door into the hall. Thus, nowhere in the entire house is it more important to strike the right keynote in furnishing and decoration. If there is no closet in the hall for wraps and umbrellas, it will be necessary to have in some obscure corner a wooden strip painted the same color as the woodwork, in which are solid brass hooks, placed low enough so that the young members of the family can reach them. Also, for umbrellas, provide a plain pottery jar which will harmonize with the color scheme of walls and carpets. On the hall table have a card tray--brass if the hardware is brass--silver if the hardware is nickel or iron--and a medium-sized pottery vase in crackle ware, or some natural color. A hall lantern or scones would be in harmony with these furnishings, and have decorative value. _A Suggested Color Scheme for the Hall_ _Walls_--Ivory paper or paint. _Woodwork_--Paint--dull finish. _Floors_--Hardwood--Stained antique oak, finished with wax or varnish. _Floors_--Softwood--Painted a deep yellow, or gray, or stained to represent hardwood. _Floors_--Linoleum--In a tile pattern of black and white, provided the living room is not directly connected with the hall; in such case use only plain brown, grey, or Jaspe linoleum. _Below is a Suggested List of Furnishings Which the Hall Might Contain_ _A table_--Of oak, mahogany, or walnut, either drop-leaf, gate-leg, or console. _A mirror_--Gilt, or to match the wood in the table, Early American or English. _A straight chair or two_--With or without rush seats, enameled black, with stencil design, or to match the wood of the tables. _A low-boy_--Of mahogany or walnut, with drawers for gloves, string, etc. _A large chest_--Of oak or brass-trimmed mahogany, for overshoes, etc. _One or two rugs_--May be _Oriental_ in blues, browns, tans or black; or wool braided, in blues, browns, tans or black; or Wilton, in blues, browns, tans or black; or Axminster, in blues, browns, tans or black. _A cocoa mat_ placed at front door. _The Living Room_ As the living room is the gathering place for family and friends, it may well be considered the most important room in the house. It should take its keynote for decoration from the hall. If there is a wide doorway connecting the living room with the hall, the color scheme should be the same. As the living room serves as library also, open book shelves, painted the same as the woodwork, are essential, and more substantial than book cases. The first requisite of such a room is that it shall be restful. Avoid using rocking chairs. Use little bric-a-brac. Nothing which does not contribute to the necessity and beauty of the room should be allowed. Tan or ivory is good in a room which is inclined to be dark, or gray and gray-green in a room inclined to be bright. _A Suggested Color Scheme for Living Room_ _Walls_--Ivory, cream or gray--paper or paint. _Woodwork_--Ivory paint--dull finish. _Floors_--Hardwood--Stained antique oak with wax or varnish finish. _Floors_--Softwood--Painted a deep yellow or gray, or stained to represent hardwoods. _A Suggested List of Furnishings for Living Room_ _Table_--Drop-leaf--in mahogany, weathered oak, or walnut; Gateleg--in mahogany, weathered oak, or walnut; Modern Chippendale--mahogany, weathered oak, or walnut, or Sheraton type of table. _Sofa_--Upholstered in either sage green or brown upholsterer's velvet; blue, yellow, mauve satin or taffeta sofa cushions. _Armchair_--Overstuffed chair in indefinite striped upholsterer's velvet in sage green; satin cushion in corn color. _Armchair_--Back and seat upholstered in brown like sofa--arms of mahogany. _Desk_--A reproduction of a Sheraton, Hepplewhite, or Early English Desk. _Chair_--Rush bottom--same wood as desk, or in dull black or sage green dull enamel, conventional stencil design. _Wicker chair_--Of brown or natural wicker, with printed linen cushions in floral pattern. _Tilt table for cards or tea_--Mahogany or walnut. _Fireplace_ (If any)--A wood-box or basket; andirons and fire screen, hearth brush and tongs. _A Reading Lamp_--Sage green or black pottery base; an old gold colored paper shade, fluted or plain, top and bottom bound with sage green tape ribbon, or guimpe. _A Clock_--In simple, plain design of wood, antique gilt, or leather. _Footstool_--Small ottoman, covered in black and yellow needlework, or velvet same as sofa (brown). _Waste paper basket_--Small black wicker next to desk. _Decorative Accessories_--Green vase, gold luster bowl, mauve pottery piece; Desk appointments in dull brass, bronze, or leather; Book-ends--Library Shears. Match box and ash tray on table in brass or bronze. _Carpet_--One large or several small Orientals, or a Wilton, Axminster, or velvet in two tone of brown or tan, or in plain colors. _Glass curtains_--Cream, marquisette, cheese-cloth, or scrim, made plain. _Overdraperies_--(If desired)--Can be either printed linen, same as cushion in wicker chair, lined with sage green sateen, or brown or sage green poplin, silk damask or sunfast. _Chairs_--If the room is large enough, one or two chairs, chosen to correspond with those already in the room, may be added. _Dining Room_ The dining room should be one of the most cheerful and inspiring rooms of the house. It is the place where the family gathers to enjoy meals together, and nothing insures a better start than having breakfast in a bright, cheerful room. If the dining room and living room are connected by wide doorways, have the walls of both rooms alike. If they are connected by a small door, the walls may be in some light cloudy landscape paper, or in a small allover pattern in light cream, buff, gray, tan, or putty color. Because there is so much blue china, persons feel that they want blue dining rooms. This is a mistake, as blue used in large quantities in either walls, china, or hanging absorbs the light and makes a room gloomy. Do not display china or glassware in a so-called china closet. A built-in corner cupboard, or a small mahogany or rosewood cabinet, which might hold rare bits of pottery and china, is permissible. It is far better to use the pantry shelves for china than to crowd it into a china closet. It is best to use a rug with small figures. The hangings should be in plain colors, taken from the predominating colors in the wall covering; or if the walls are the same as the living room, the hangings should be chosen from the predominating color in the living room. This will bring the rooms into perfect harmony, without having them just alike. _Suggested Color Scheme for Dining Room_ _Walls_--Ivory or cream, if closely connected with living room. A cloudy landscape, crepe, or cartridge paper in buffs, pale grays, fawn, or cream if closed off from living room. [Illustration: DINING ROOM This well-proportioned dining room with its plain walls and figured floor covering has a square mahogany table and eight chairs of the Georgian period.] _Woodwork_--Ivory. _Floors--Hardwood_--Stained antique oak, with wax or varnish finish. _Floors--Softwood_--Painted a deep yellow or gray, or covered in plain brown, gray, or Jaspe linoleum. _Suggested List of Furniture for Dining Room_ _Table_--Round or square extension, or drop-leaf--six legs--in mahogany, walnut, weathered oak, or painted black, gray, or coco. Might be reproduction of Hepplewhite, Sheraton, or Georgian period. A glass, silver, or pottery bowl, containing flowers, on the table; plain ecru linen doilies. _Chairs_--8 chairs--Mahogany--Damask seats, Hepplewhite backs. Walnut--English linen seats, Sheraton backs. Weathered Oak--Velvet Seats, Queen Anne backs. Painted--Rush seats, or wooden seats, Windsor or straight backs. _Sideboard_--Low, broad, after Hepplewhite or Sheraton, a Welsh dresser with Windsor chairs. (Here keep either a few good pieces of silver with candlesticks on either end, or a large pottery bowl filled with fruit in the center, and candlesticks to match the bowl placed at either end, or some bits of red or yellow glass, but do not combine all three. Do not use delicate lace runners or doilies. Plain linen, or heavy real filet is far more effective Display no cut glass or hand-painted china.) _Mirror or Mellow, dark-toned painting_--Framed in antique gilt or to correspond with the wood of the furniture selected, and hung on level with the eye, directly in the center and over the sideboard. _Serving Table_--To correspond with other furniture selected, and placed as near the kitchen door as possible. Here keep two or four silver or glass candlesticks which are used on the table at night, also a silver, mahogany, or wicker tray. _Mirror_--Queen Anne type--over serving table--especially if serving table is between two windows, it gives effect of space. _Muffin stand_--Especially for maidless house--of mahogany, walnut, or painted to correspond with furniture selected. _Nest of Tables_--Small, square, of either mahogany, walnut, or black lacquer, to be kept in a corner and used for tea parties, functions, etc. _Rug--Large Oriental_--In blues, yellows, browns, or old rose and black; Wilton--in blues, yellows, brown, or old rose, and black; Axminster--in blues, yellows, browns, or old rose, and black; Chenille or velvet, in plain colors. _Curtains_--Glass curtains to match living room, in either marquisette, cheese cloth, or scrim, made plain. _Overdraperies_--If desired, can be either like the living room, if rooms are in close proximity, or taken from the predominating color note of living room hangings if these are figured. With a cloudy or landscape paper, use plain poplin, rep, or sunfast, in warm tans, sage green, with bands of black or orange, or both, across the bottom; this would give character to the room. _Uniformity in furniture chosen_--Be sure in choosing your furniture that uniformity is observed as to period, wood, and type. For example, if a Sheraton sideboard in mahogany is selected, then the entire furniture of the dining room should be of the Sheraton type in mahogany. _Bedrooms_ The first requisite in furnishing a bedroom is that it appears crisp and clean. The walls, light in color, must be restful and simple in design. The woodwork should be white, if possible. Painted furniture is very popular for a bedroom because of its dainty appearance, but dull-finished mahogany or walnut in four post or Colonial design, with rag, braided, or hooked rugs, makes a charming bedroom. Place the bed where the sleeper will not be subject to strong light or cross drafts (see page 27 for proper ventilation). A dressing table is fashionable, but not as practical as a chest of drawers with mirror above. A full-length mirror installed in a closet door, or hung in a narrow wall space, is a very decided adjunct. Be sure to place the dressing table or chest of drawers where the light is not reflected from an opposite window. To secure a good view, the light should be directed upon the person to be reflected, and not upon the mirror. Avoid placing the furniture all on one side of the room. If possible, intermingle high and low pieces to secure a proper balance. If one bed is used, be sure to place beside it a table on which should be a lamp, telephone, and small water bottle and glass. If two beds are used, place this table between the two beds. If the walls are plain in color, figured draperies and bedspreads can be used. If the walls have on them a small design, plain materials for these purposes should be used. _Suggested Color Scheme for Bedroom_ _Walls_--Corn colored cross-bar paper. _Woodwork_--White, dull finish, paint. _Floors_--_Hardwood_--Stained antique oak, with wax or varnish finish. _Floors_--_Softwood_--Painted a deep yellow, or covered in plain brown, tan, or Jaspe linoleum. _Suggested List of Furnishings for the Bedroom_ _Bed_--Full size, or twin beds--In mahogany, walnut, ivory paint, or enamel. Box or wire springs. Mattress and pillows. Bedspreads and bureau covers may be made of unbleached muslin, bound with wide bands of plain yellow, blue, and brown, these colors overlapping each other, or plain white Swiss, dimity, or Marseilles. _One high-boy_, or high chest of drawers for man--In mahogany, walnut, or painted. This piece should conform with or match other furniture in room. Brushes, comb, box for odds and ends, clothes brush. _Mirror_--Hung flat against the wall--in same wood as high-boy. _One Dressing Table_--or low chest of drawers--for lady--with mirror hung over the chest of drawers. May be in mahogany, walnut, or painted. With toilet articles in silver or tortoise shell, or ivory; pin cushion, scent bottles. The mirror may be of Queen Anne type in antique gilt, to correspond with woods used in room. _Two straight back chairs_--In mahogany, walnut, or painted, with plain wood, rush, or caned seats. _Natural wicker arm chair_--Sturdy type placed near window, with cushions of chintz or sateen to match the bedspreads. _Small flat-top desk and chair_--In either mahogany, walnut, or painted, to correspond with furniture. Supply with note paper, silver or brass ink-well, and blue feather pen. _Small Sewing Table_--Of Martha Washington design, or a Colonial type, in mahogany or rosewood. Place on it small lamp with base of wood, in brown or tan porcelain, and having a shade of blue silk lined with tan silk. _A Chest_--In either cedar, mahogany, or cretonne-covered, and placed under a window or in a corner for storage of summer or winter clothes. _Rugs_--Oriental in black, blues, or yellows, plain brown or tan carpet, made into a large rug, or wool braided, hooked, or heavy rag rugs, in black, blues, tans, browns. Small rugs should be placed near the bed, dressing table, and high-boy. _Curtains_--Glass curtains of scrim, marquisette, or cheese-cloth, to correspond with those of living room and dining room. _Draperies_--Draperies of either cretonne or muslin to match bedspreads, with bands of yellow, blue and brown sateen to correspond with bedspreads. _Bedroom for Either Boys or Girls_ It has been proven that furnishings and color produce either desirable or disastrous effects upon the sensitive minds of children. As all children's rooms are usually a combination of bedroom, play room, and study, it is well to keep in mind colors, design, arrangement, and practicality for all purposes. To most children, a spotty or too often repeated design is distracting. Blues and violets soothe, while reds, yellows, and sometimes greens are exciting and stimulating colors. We so often send our children to study and amuse themselves in their room, but have we done our share in providing them with the comforts and necessities that will assist them to produce better school work? _Boys_--With no frills, light fabrics, or woodwork for them to soil and mar, their rooms still may be made interesting--even beautiful--but convenience and masculinity should be kept foremost in mind. _Girls_--A girl's room, on the other hand, should be dainty, bright, and frivolous. Her personality, even at a very tender age, will clearly be disclosed by the way she cares for her room. There is no need of a great expenditure of money in buying furniture or hangings for a girl's room. Some of the cheaper fabrics and simplest furniture will make the most charming room. _BOY'S ROOMS_ _A Suggested Color Scheme_ _Walls_--Buff-colored paint, or tinted walls. _Woodwork_--Stained mission oak or walnut. _Floors_--Hardwood floor, strips of coco matting, or woolbraided rugs. Softwood--a large square of linoleum. _Suggested List of Furnishings_ _Bed_--Something of the day bed type. Bedspread of blue denim, with stitched bands of yellow sateen at edge. _Chest of Drawers_--Painted buff or brown, or walnut or mission oak. _A Mirror_--Antique gilt, or of wood to match chest of drawers, hung low. _A Desk_--Of the craftsman type, with stool or bench to match. _Two Wooden Chairs_--Either painted or of mission oak. _A Table_--Low, plain wooden table, of walnut, or stained to match the woodwork. _One Comfortable Chair_--Brown wicker, or the Windsor type. _A Lamp_--Of the student type, or on a bracket, securely fastened on the wall. _A Tie Rack_--Hung near chest of drawers. _One or two shelves_--For books, trophies, etc. Made of plain wood, stained to match the woodwork of a plain bookcase of mission oak. _Curtains_--Of blue denim, with stitched bands of sateen at edge--hung straight. _GIRLS' ROOMS_ _A Suggested Color Scheme_ _Walls_--Papered in a soft gray-rose, allover design paper. _Woodwork_--Cream paint. _Floor_--Hardwood--Rag rugs, with rose stripes or a gray chenille carpet. Softwood--Battleship gray paint, with rag rugs or rose chenille carpet. _Suggested List of Furnishings_ _Bed_--_Single_--Painted ivory or cream--four post, or with some low, simple headboard. Bedspread of rose dotted swiss, with wide ruffle. _A Dressing Table_--To match bed, with rose colored sateen mats--bound in pale-gray with drawers. _A Large Box_--For waists, etc. Covered in rose and gray cretonne. _A Desk_--To correspond with painted furniture; a gray blotter and rose colored pen. _Two Chairs_--One of natural wicker with cushions of rose sateen, and one of wood to correspond with painted furniture, caned seat. _A Sewing Table_--Of mahogany or cherry. _A Lamp_--China base with a shade of silk, dotted swiss, or rose-colored paper. _The Nursery_ The ideal nursery is also a play room. It should, as nearly as possible, meet the ideals of the child's own world. In that room are received early impressions which are never forgotten, and which have a lasting influence on the adult life. Don't bedeck the cribs, beds, or curtains with ribbons and laces, and expect your child to be happy. The "don'ts" and "be carefuls" make children irritable and unhappy. Choose the room with a thought to sunlight, and be sure it has outside blinds which will darken the room without keeping out the air. The floor should be bare with the exception of one rug near the bed, or should be covered with a good grade of plain linoleum. The walls and woodwork should be painted, if possible, a cream or light gray. Some fairy tale friezes are attractive, and afford opportunities of introducing color, but, if used, should not be placed too high on the wall--about three-quarters of the way up from the floor is a reasonable height. Child-study has taught that many and oft-repeated designs and subjects become meaningless, especially to older children. The furniture in the nursery should be practical. Painted furniture and wicker chairs are attractive. A comfortable winged or overstuffed chair for the grown-ups is essential. Low shelves and cupboards, built for toys and books, are necessary if the room is to be kept neat and tidy. A stationary blackboard, and a large box for books and cherished belongings, are very welcome additions. _A Suggested Color Scheme for the Nursery_ _Walls_--A soft, misty, gray paint, tint, or plain paper. _Woodwork_--A dull white. _Floors_--Plain hardwood, with a rag or braided rug in sapphire blue--or softwood, entirely covered in taupe Jaspe linoleum. _Below Is a Suggested List of Furnishings Which the Nursery Might Contain_ _A Crib_--White iron or wood, on ball bearing casters. Bedspread of yellow and white seersucker, or a silky yellow sunfast. _A Tall Chest of Drawers_--Painted cream or white, with plenty of drawers. _Table_--Low nursery table or tall one which has had its legs cut. _Two Chairs_--Low, with wooden seats, and painted to match the furniture. _A Desk_--Flat top with plenty of paper and pencils. _Waste Paper Basket_--White or natural wicker. _One Large Fireside Chair_--With slip cover of blue and yellow striped linen. _Glass Curtains_--Of best quality of cream colored cheesecloth, bound in yellow tape. _Over draperies_ (If desired)--Of primrose yellow silk, or sunfast, or striped yellow and blue linen to match slip cover. _Clothes Rack_--Low wooden rack, painted white, with at least four hooks. _Closet_--Should have a low pole on which could be hung plenty of hangers. Also a shelf about 6 inches from the floor for shoes, etc. _Large Cushions_ for the floor--One each of blue, yellow, nile green and orange. _Color Scheme_--If you desire another color scheme, such as blue-and-white, or pink-and-white, write for information. _Model Kitchen_ PREPARED BY THE HOME ECONOMICS BUREAU OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE The first consideration in arranging kitchen equipment is to save steps and labor. The kitchen should be clean, odorless and attractive. _Size_--Not more than 120 square feet of working space for preparing food and washing dishes. More space when kitchen is used for laundry or has dining alcove. _Ventilation_--If no cross drafts are provided for, cut a transom over back door if possible and arrange window boards to allow ventilation through top and bottom of window. Is desirable to have hood installed over stove to carry off drafts. _Lighting_--Two or three windows desirable and a glass pane in kitchen door. If unavailable, increase light by having very pale walls and mirrors in dark corners. Artificial light should be from powerful burner hung from center of ceiling. Electric light should be indirect. Additional side lights should be added near sink and stove, unless they receive full light. _Wall Coverings_--(1) Commercial oil cloth wall covering; or (2) good oil enamel paint. Color--Light tones. On Southern exposure--pale gray, green or pale blue; on Northern exposure--buff walls with a deeper buff or tan woodwork are good. For very dark rooms--white. Avoid white in well lighted rooms because of glare. If natural color, woodwork should have two coats of water proof varnish; if painted, two coats of flat paint and one of enamel paint. _Floor Coverings_--If room has cement floors, provide rubber mats before sink, stove and cabinet to avoid foot strain. Otherwise, use linoleum slightly darker than walls and harmonizing or contrasting in color; or any other surface easy to keep clean. _List of Kitchen Fixtures_ The Kitchen should have the following equipment: _Range_--Coal, wood, gas, oil or electric. Good hood for ventilation is desirable. Height of all working surfaces depends upon height of woman who will work in kitchen. All working surfaces including top of range should be as near the same height as possible. Height should be at least 32 inches, or more, if worker is tall. A label should state this fact. If coal range is the main one, have supplementary gas, electric or oil range. Gas range should have stove pipe from oven. _Sink_--Sink should be large enough to accommodate both a washing and rinsing dish pan. Have large drain board on each side with raised edge or beading. It should either slope gradually toward sink or have sloping grooves. If only one drain board is provided, add an adjustable folding board. Bottom of sink should be at least 32 inches from floor. Sink should be placed under or near a window to insure coolness and view. _Cabinet_--White or colored enameled metal or natural wood finish with broad working shelf 32 inches from floor or higher according to height of worker. Shelves and bins for most commonly used supplies and utensils. If a cabinet with a good work shelf is not available an additional table near cabinet should be provided. _Tables_--One or two tables, porcelain, glass, enamel, or zinc topped. If none of these can be had, linoleum may be fitted with waterproof cement to a wooden table. It should be at least 32 inches high. A table with drawers underneath and a swinging stool and space for knees is good. _Cupboard_--If there is no dining room pantry, a cupboard should be added for the china; if space permits, this should be added anyhow for less frequently used utensils and supplies. _Stool_--Stool, preferably white, should be of right height to allow sitting at table, work-shelf or sink. Add a plain chair if space permits. _Refrigerator_--A well insulated ice box, preferably white. Ice compartment should be at side or top. Straight easily cleaned drain pipe should attach to plumbing. If refrigerator is indoors a door for icing from the outside is desirable. _Towel Rods_--Wood or nickel with space for four or five dish towels. _Hand Towel Rack_--If only one person uses it, roller towel rack may be installed. Otherwise, paper toweling or individual hand towels hung on cup hooks near sink by loops on corners. _Wall Clock_--Simple, with clear figures. _Housekeepers' Rest Corner_--If space permits, a comfortable chair, footrest and small table for books and sewing should occupy a little-used portion of the room, to permit rest and recreation while waiting for food to cook. _Garbage Pail_--Covered; with foot lever to raise cover without stooping; fireproof trash basket. _Arrangement of Equipment_ Sink, cabinet with broad working shelf and dish cabinet (if dishes are washed in kitchen) should be as close together as possible without cramping passage room. Stove should be convenient to, but slightly away from, work shelf for hot weather. An ideal arrangement is china cupboard at right of sink, cabinet with broad work shelf at left of sink and, in a narrow kitchen, range on opposite wall from sink across narrowest part of room; if range is far from any broad working surface a table should be very near range. All kitchen equipment, except range, should be as near as possible to dining room door. If no dining room pantry with sink is provided, kitchen sink should be near dining room door. Range with supplementary range beside it should be so placed that full day light will light the oven. If stove is already installed in a dark place in exhibition house, move it into light, even though repiping and wiring may be required. Mirrors may be hung to throw additional light on range. If there is no good working shelf on cabinet, a table should be near cabinet for mixing food. There will then have to be a second table with a heat proof top near the stove unless stove is so near to cabinet that one table will serve both for mixing and setting hot utensils on. If possible, install a gas range, or an electric range if current is cheap enough to warrant. The range should, if possible, have an oven heat regulator. Where gas is unavailable and cost of electric current high, install a good oil stove with an oven. Refrigerator should be on porch or vestibule just outside kitchen door or should be in the kitchen near the back door away from the stove. If space permits, table next to refrigerator is a convenience. An out-icer is a convenience; in cold weather the ice compartment may be left empty and open for the air to cool the food. Dish towel and hand towel racks should be as near as possible to sink, high enough to be out of the way. The dish towel rack should be on side towards window for drying and airing. Wall clock should be within sight of stove without worker turning around. Garbage pail and trash basket should be under sink. Stove should be near chief working surface; either table or cabinet. _Decorations_--Simple, easily washed curtains of gingham, striped calico or unbleached muslin with a colored tape border add to the attractiveness of the room. They should not obscure the light. If the windows are near working centers, curtains may be half length, that is, from top of window to center sash, and finished with a fringe. Smaller up-to-date equipment, such as a fireless cooker, a pressure cooker, utensils, electric whippers, cutlery, strainers and so on, should also be installed. Further information is given in another bulletin. _The Kitchen as Laundry_ If the Kitchen is also used as Laundry, laundry equipment should be away from cooking equipment if possible. _Two Tubs_--well-lighted, tops 34 inches, a _Washing Machine_ run by whatever power the locality affords, preferably electricity. Washing Machine may have direct connection with plumbing, or good pipe hose should be provided for draining and filling machine. Copper lined _Wash Boiler_ with spigot for emptying. _Zinc Topped Table_--on rollers, same height as top of stove, for carrying wash-boiler between sink and stove. _Ironing Board_--If possible, board that folds into cupboard. Board should have its own support far enough in from ends to permit of putting garment over it. _Clothes Basket_--_with Casters on Bottom_. _Iron_--Electric Iron, or if electricity is unavailable, gas iron. Electric or hand _Mangle_ for ironing. Have tubs, washing machine, ironing board and plug for electric iron grouped together. _The Equipment of the House_ Having a house that is structurally sound, well planned and with adequate yard space, the next question is its equipment. Equipment has to do with the operation, with the house work. On the one hand this is more or less determined by the size and plan of the building, on the other by the furnishing and decoration. A well planned house makes house work lighter; and furnishing and decoration which add unnecessarily to the number of things which must be cleaned or cared for, or heavy pieces which must be moved, add to the labor of house work. Nevertheless, equipment occupies a clear outfield of its own that calls for separate discussion. _Heating_ _Central Heating_--Central heating preferred. May be hot air, steam, hot water, or vapor. Insulate heater and pipes. Large furnace water pan, or radiator waterpans, desirable. Select heating system, using fuel most economical for your locality. Thermostat heat regulator installed in living room is desirable. Write placards describing why you selected this heating plant; why it is so well insulated; why large water pan or radiator water pans are important. _Supplementary Heat_--Open fireplace, Franklin stove or gas logs desirable in living room for beauty and comfort in spring and fall. _Water Supply_ Should have running hot and cold water. If city water not available, should be pumped by power rams. Hot water boiler may be attached to coal range with auxiliary gas or oil heater for summer. Where gas rate is low, gas may be used alone. Automatic gas hot water heaters very desirable. _Bathroom_ _Size_--Should be large enough for tub, basin, toilet, clothes-hamper, stool, medicine cabinet and towel cabinet. _Floor_--Should be most sanitary. Tile, stone or linoleums are the most sanitary. Small black and white pattern or light blue and white are good. A well-filled painted wood floor of battleship gray or colonial buff may be used. _Walls_--Tile or plaster painted with two coats flat paint and one coat of enamel, or oil cloth wall covering. White, blue and cream are the best colors. _Ventilation_--Window board should be in window to allow top and bottom ventilation. An additional separate ventilator is desirable. _Fixtures_--Porcelain or enameled iron tub with hot and cold running water; shower with spray set at angle not to wet hair. _Basin_--Porcelain or enamel with hot and cold water. _Toilet_--porcelain, white enameled seat desirable. _Medicine Cabinet_ with door and mirror over basin, shelves for shaving equipment, lotions, antiseptics, etc. _Cupboard_ large enough to hold supply of towels, soap, toilet paper, and equipment for cleaning bathroom fixtures. _Clothes hamper_ unless chute to bin near wash tubs is provided. Hamper should have white smooth surface. Enameled metal or wood desirable. _Towel racks_--A nickel or enameled wood rack for each member of family to keep towels separate. _Miscellaneous fixtures_--Two nickel or enameled metal soap racks, one beside basin and one beside or hooked to tub. Tooth brush rack to hold tooth brushes well separated. Toilet paper basket or rack. Individual mugs or glasses for each member of family. Shelf of glass or wood covered with oil cloth over basin. _Stool_--White enamel, preferably. _Clothes hooks_ on back of door, or clothes tree. _Sash curtains_ of white material, easy to launder. _Lavatory_--It is well to have additional lavatory on ground floor to save steps. It should contain toilet, wash bowl, stool and fixtures for accessories. Should be as easy to clean and hygienic as bathroom. _Lighting_ Electricity if possible. Bulbs in all rooms should be frosted or shaded. _Hall_--Electricity or lamp hung from center in form of lantern or cast iron bracket to hold at least one bulb or one lamp. If side lights are desired, fixtures of brass, cast iron, or enameled iron are effective. _Living Room_--If possible, at least one baseboard plug, one center ceiling light or side brackets if desired. If room is large a center floor plug is desirable. Plugs permit lamps to be used without unnecessary cords showing. If wire must pass through rug, do not cut rug but push threads apart. _Dining Room_--If a center light in shape of dome is used, hang low enough to avoid shining in eyes of those dining. A soft effect is gained by side brackets representing sconces. Wired metal or glass candlesticks on mantel and side-board, give pleasing effect. Floor plug near dining table for electrical table appliances. _Bedrooms_--Fixtures should be placed in long wall space convenient to bureau or dressing table. Have plug near bed for lamp for reading in bed. If space permits, night light on table in upper hall is useful. All plugs and sockets should be of standard shape and size. _Cleaning_ House should be easy to clean with hard smooth floors, with cracks well filled, and rugs rather than carpets. Rounded edges and corners of baseboards desirable, also simple baseboards. One flight of stairs is sufficient if located out of sight of living room. This saves labor of cleaning two flights. Two cleaning closets, one on ground floor and one on second floor, are labor savers. Have space for vacuum cleaner and for hanging all brushes, brooms and dusters, and a shelf above or at side for the cleaning compounds. Zinc or other fireproof lining to cupboard and ventilator desirable. _Storage Space_--Attic with rows of shelves for storing boxes and small objects is desirable. Wooden chests, trunks, and a cedar lined chest or cupboard useful. Built-in closets or rows of inexpensive chests of drawers with space to pass between are good. _Storage Closets_ Every bedroom should have clothes closet with hooks and a rod for hangers, a shelf for hats and a bottom shelf for shoes. A tall closet may have near ceiling an additional rod for hangers for less often used clothes, and long rod lifter to reach hangers. A cupboard for bed linen should be in upstairs hall or in a centrally located room. On ground floor coat closet is desirable; also tool cupboard or chest, large china cupboard, low enough for all china to be within reach. Cold closet with open wire screen cabinets in basement. _Pantry_ If kitchen is well ventilated and stove has hood, pass pantry not necessary. It makes extra steps. If pass pantry is in house, only its narrowest dimension should divide kitchen from dining room. Partitions under sink for trays to stand; a narrow space for table leaves; a china cupboard with reachable shelves, and a sink and drainboards like those described for kitchen are desirable. Drawer on small shelf for cleaning compounds and brushes for cleaning silver, steel, brass and copper. FINANCING A HOME PREPARED BY THE DIVISION OF BUILDING AND HOUSING, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE _1.--What You Buy and How to Buy It_ In purchasing a home a misstep may be unfortunate, so get the best advice you can, and watch every step. First of all, what you buy is the site and the improvements on it. If a building and loan association, or bank, loans you money on the property, it has a direct financial interest in helping you guard yourself on certain points, such as making sure that there are no old mortgages, no unpaid back taxes, or bills for building materials, or other claims against the property. Be certain your title is clear, or have it insured or guaranteed. Learn of any easements, such as the right of a telephone company to place its poles upon your lot. If you make a purchase offer with a cash deposit, include a statement as to whether window shades, stoves, and other movable property are included. Risk from loss by fire or elements should be assumed by the owner until the title passes to you. Your offer should be dependent on your obtaining a satisfactory loan to finance the proposition, and the ability of the owners to furnish papers to show a good marketable title, free from liens or encumbrances. In other words, do not bind yourself to the purchase until you are sure of what you are paying for, and that you can finance it. You must be prepared to pay taxes on your property, and special assessments for installation of water, sewerage, electric light, gas or other public utilities, or street paving and sidewalks. Note what improvements are already made, and what additional ones you may have to pay for. _2.--How to Pay for Your Home_ In buying a house and lot you must borrow what you cannot pay in cash. Remember that the more risks you assume, the fewer the lender will have to charge you for. Your promise to pay back what you borrow will be secured by a mortgage or trust on the property. A first mortgage loan on not over one-half or two-thirds of the value of a piece of property is a very safe investment, and the rates of interest should be low. The lender on a second mortgage takes more risk, and rates of interest and discounts are higher. If you agree to buy a home without the title passing to you at once, the seller takes less risk, and you may save money. _3.--Where to Get Loans_ There are building and loan associations throughout the country, usually organized to serve the needs of people like yourself, who wish to finance a home. Their plan of weekly or monthly payments, both on principal and for interest, has proved sound from the experience of millions of people as an aid to systematic saving. Loans may often be obtained from savings banks, trust companies, state banks, individuals, and trustees for estates. Obtaining money on a second mortgage is usually not so easy. Remember that when the owner of a house takes a second mortgage in payment he may plan to sell it for four-fifths or less of its face value, and that he probably charges you accordingly. Above all, when you start to save for a home do not throw your money into glittering schemes that promise big dividends and the chance to borrow money at 3 per cent or less. The concerns behind such schemes cannot be trusted. _4.--How Much Can You Afford?_ It is said that a man may own a home worth one and one-half to two and one-half times his annual income but the payments you make during the first few years after purchasing are what you should pay most attention to. Rent ordinarily requires from ten per cent, to twenty-five, or even more, of a family's annual income. In addition to what you ordinarily pay for rent, you can devote your customary savings, or more, to paying off the principal of loans on your home. Following is an example: A man who earns $2,000 a year buys a house and lot costing $4,000. He has $1,000 cash to pay down on it, and obtains a loan of $3,000, or 75 per cent, of the value of the property, from a building and loan association. Cost per year for a $4,000 house (not including depreciation) Payments on $3,000 B. & L. Shares at 1/2% a month or 6% a year (savings) $180.00 a year Interest on $3,000 loan at 6% 180.00 " " Interest on $1,000 cash at $% 50.00 " " Taxes (vary locally) 75.00 " " Insurance 5.00 " " Upkeep at 1-1/2% 60.00 " " -------- $550.00 Of the total income of $2,000, the $550 represents 27-1/2% divided as follows: 18-1/2% for rent; 9% for savings. In about twelve years the loan is paid off, and the home owned free and clear. Zoning and What it Means to the Home By DR. JOHN M. GRIES CHIEF DIVISION OF BUILDING AND HOUSING, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Zoning helps home owners by establishing residential districts from which garages, and business and factory buildings are excluded. Apartments or houses covering more than 30 or 40 per cent. of the area of a lot may be prohibited in some sections. This all means a better and fairer chance for each family to have a home with enough light and air, and healthful, decent surroundings, near to schools, playgrounds and transportation facilities. It may be added that zoning, when wisely carried out, provides for grouping of neighborhood stores at convenient points, and for guided growth of business and industrial districts, in the directions best suited for them. In the words of the Advisory Committee on Zoning appointed by Secretary Hoover: "Zoning is the application of common sense and fairness to the public regulations governing the use of private real estate. It is a painstaking, honest effort to provide each district or neighborhood, as nearly as practicable, with just such protection and just such liberty as are sensible in that particular district. It avoids the error of trying to apply exactly the same building regulations to every part of a city or town regardless of whether it is a suburban residence section or a factory district, or a business and financial center. "Zoning gives everyone who lives or does business in a community a chance for the reasonable enjoyment of his rights. At the same time it protects him from unreasonable injury by neighbors who would seek private gain at his expense. "Zoning regulations differ in different districts according to the determined uses of the land for residence, business, or manufacturing, and according to the advisable heights and ground areas. "But these differing regulations are the same for all districts of the same type. They treat all men alike." But the benefits of zoning are not confined to safeguarding the home and its surroundings. It can reduce losses due to topsy-turvy growth of cities, and cut the cost of living. Every year millions of dollars are wasted in American cities from the scrapping of buildings in "blighted" districts. For instance, fine residential districts may be threatened by sporadic factories or junk yards, and owners may become panicky and sell at a sacrifice millions of dollars worth of valuable dwellings which will be left to stand practically idle. The public must pay for this loss in one way or another. Frequently money for street, sewers and other utilities need never be spent if it is known in advance that large factories are to occupy new developments. Industry and homes are both more efficient if kept generally separate, though separation need not mean great distances for workers to travel. "How has zoning worked?" "What has it accomplished?" About 70 cities and towns have adopted zoning ordinances since 1916, and the idea has worked well. Reliable authorities declare that "the New York zoning regulations have prevented vast depreciation in many districts and effected savings in values amounting to millions of dollars in established sections." The highest class residential districts in New York, in which only 30 per cent of the lot area may be used for dwellings, have developed with much greater confidence, due to the knowledge that houses built would be safe from invasion by apartments or industry. In St. Louis "it was found that residences tended to follow the residence districts, and did not even attempt to seek locations in industrial or unrestricted areas. Except commercial buildings which were built partly in commercial and partly in industrial districts, the development of St. Louis is said to be fitting itself very closely to the zoning plan. "In New Jersey it has been found that the unzoned suburban town is at a distinct disadvantage as compared with the community protected by a zoning ordinance." It is sometimes said that zoning is arbitrary and restricts the liberty of the individual to do as he wishes; but when zoning laws have been sensibly and comprehensively drawn, the courts have approved them as a reasonable exercise of the police power "for the public health, safety and general welfare." Zoning should always be undertaken in close relation to a city plan. It is essentially a neighborly proposition, and there should be neighborhood meetings to explain it and gather suggestions. The purpose of a zoning ordinance is to insure that growth, instead of taking place sporadically and wastefully, should go on in an orderly way in response to generally recognized needs, and with due notice to all concerned. Zoning today is giving security and the sense of security to hundreds of thousands of families in America, in the enjoyment of happy homes amid the right kind of surroundings. _Is your city zoned_? 
6492	----	was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. BIOGRAPHIES OF WORKING MEN BY GRANT ALLEN, B.A. CONTENTS. I. THOMAS TELFORD, STONEMASON II. GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-MAN III. JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR IV. WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN V. JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, PAINTER VI. JAMES GARFIELD, CANAL BOY VII. THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER PREFACE. My acknowledgments are due to Dr. Smiles's "Lives of the Engineers," "Life of the Stephensons," and "Life of a Scotch Naturalist;" to Lady Eastlake's "Life of Gibson;" to Mr. Holden's "Life of Sir William Herschel;" to M. Seusier's "J. F. Millet, Sa Vie et Ses OEuvres;" and to Mr. Thayer's "Life of President Garfield;" from which most of the facts here narrated have been derived. G. A. I. THOMAS TELFORD, STONEMASON. High up among the heather-clad hills which form the broad dividing barrier between England and Scotland, the little river Esk brawls and bickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides and brown peat mosses, forming altogether some of the gloomiest and most forbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain. Almost the entire bulk of the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr is composed of just such solemn desolate upland wolds, with only a few stray farms or solitary cottages sprinkled at wide distances over their bare bleak surface, and with scarcely any sign of life in any part save the little villages which cluster here and there at long intervals around some stern and simple Scottish church. Yet the hardy people who inhabit this wild and chilly moorland country may well be considered to rank among the best raw material of society in the whole of Britain; for from the peasant homes of these southern Scotch Highlands have come forth, among a host of scarcely less distinguished natives, three men, at least, who deserve to take their place in the very front line of British thinkers or workers--Thomas Telford, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle. By origin, all three alike belonged in the very strictest sense to the working classes; and the story of each is full of lessons or of warnings for every one of us: but that of Telford is perhaps the most encouraging and the most remarkable of all, as showing how much may be accomplished by energy and perseverance, even under the most absolutely adverse and difficult circumstances. Near the upper end of Eskdale, in the tiny village of Westerkirk, a young shepherd's wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August, 1757. Her husband, John Telford, was employed in tending sheep on a neighbouring farm, and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage close by, with mud walls and rudely thatched roof, such as in southern England even the humblest agricultural labourer would scarcely consent willingly to inhabit. Before the child was three months old, his father died; and Janet Telford was left alone in the world with her unweaned baby. But in remote country districts, neighbours are often more neighbourly than in great towns; and a poor widow can manage to eke out a livelihood for herself with an occasional lift from the helping hands of friendly fellow-villagers. Janet Telford had nothing to live upon save her own ten fingers; but they were handy enough, after the sturdy Scotch fashion, and they earned some sort of livelihood in a humble way for herself and her fatherless boy. The farmers about found her work on their farms at haymaking or milking, and their wives took the child home with them while its mother was busy labouring in the harvest fields. Amid such small beginnings did the greatest of English engineers before the railway era receive his first hard lessons in the art of life. After her husband's death, the poor widow removed from her old cottage to a still more tiny hut, which she shared with a neighbour--a very small hut, with a single door for both families; and here young Tam Telford spent most of his boyhood in the quiet honourable poverty of the uncomplaining rural poor. As soon as he was big enough to herd sheep, he was turned out upon the hillside in summer like any other ragged country laddie, and in winter he tended cows, receiving for wages only his food and money enough to cover the cost of his scanty clothing. He went to school, too; how, nobody now knows: but he _did_ go, to the parish school of Westerkirk, and there he learnt with a will, in the winter months, though he had to spend the summer on the more profitable task of working in the fields. To a steady earnest boy like young Tam Telford, however, it makes all the difference in the world that he should have been to school, no matter how simply. Those twenty-six letters of the alphabet, once fairly learnt, are the key, after all, to all the book-learning in the whole world. Without them, the shepherd-boy might remain an ignorant, unprogressive shepherd all his life long, even his undeniable native energy using itself up on nothing better than a wattled hurdle or a thatched roof; with them, the path is open before him which led Tam Telford at last to the Menai Bridge and Westminster Abbey. When Tam had gradually eaten his way through enough thin oatmeal porridge (with very little milk, we fear) to make him into a hearty lad of fifteen, it began to be high time for him to choose himself a final profession in life, such as he was able. And here already the born tastes of the boy began to show themselves: for he had no liking for the homely shepherd's trade; he felt a natural desire for a chisel and a hammer--the engineer was there already in the grain--and he was accordingly apprenticed to a stonemason in the little town of Lochmaben, beyond the purple hills to eastward. But his master was a hard man; he had small mercy for the raw lad; and after trying to manage with him for a few months, Tam gave it up, took the law into his own hands, and ran away. Probably the provocation was severe, for in after-life Telford always showed himself duly respectful to constituted authority; and we know that petty self-made master-workmen are often apt to be excessively severe to their own hired helpers, and especially to helpless lads or young apprentices. At any rate, Tam wouldn't go back; and in the end, a well-to-do cousin, who had risen to the proud position of steward at the great hall of the parish, succeeded in getting another mason at Langholm, the little capital of Eskdale, to take over the runaway for the remainder of the term of his indentures. At Langholm, a Scotch country town of the quietest and sleepiest description, Tam Telford passed the next eight years of his uneventful early life, first as an apprentice, and afterwards as a journeyman mason of the humblest type. He had a good mother, and he was a good son. On Saturday nights he generally managed to walk over to the cottage at Westerkirk, and accompany the poor widow to the Sunday services at the parish kirk. As long as she lived, indeed, he never forgot her; and one of the first tasks he set himself when he was out of his indentures was to cut a neat headstone with a simple but beautiful inscription for the grave of that shepherd father whom he had practically never seen. At Langholm, an old maiden lady, Miss Pasley, interested herself kindly in Janet Telford's rising boy. She lent him what of all things the eager lad most needed--books; and the young mason applied himself to them in all his spare moments with the vigorous ardour and perseverance of healthy youth. The books he read were not merely those which bore directly or indirectly upon his own craft: if they had been, Tam Telford might have remained nothing more than a journeyman mason all the days of his life. It is a great mistake, even from the point of view of mere worldly success, for a young man to read or learn only what "pays" in his particular calling; the more he reads and learns, the more will he find that seemingly useless things "pay" in the end, and that what apparently pays least, often really pays most in the long run. This is not the only or the best reason why every man should aim at the highest possible cultivation of his own talents, be they what they may; but it is in itself a very good reason, and it is a sufficient answer for those who would deter us from study of any high kind on the ground that it "does no good." Telford found in after-life that his early acquaintance with sound English literature did do him a great deal of good: it opened and expanded his mind; it trained his intelligence; it stored his brain with images and ideas which were ever after to him a source of unmitigated delight and unalloyed pleasure. He read whenever he had nothing else to do. He read Milton with especial delight; and he also read the verses that his fellow-countryman, Rob Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman, was then just beginning to speak straight to the heart of every aspiring Scotch peasant lad. With these things Tam Telford filled the upper stories of his brain quite as much as with the trade details of his own particular useful handicraft; and the result soon showed that therein Tam Telford had not acted uncannily or unwisely. Nor did he read only; he wrote too--verses, not very good, nor yet very bad, but well expressed, in fairly well chosen language, and with due regard to the nice laws of metre and of grammar, which is in itself a great point. Writing verse is an occupation at which only very few even among men of literary education ever really succeed; and nine-tenths of published verse is mere mediocre twaddle, quite unworthy of being put into the dignity of print. Yet Telford did well for all that in trying his hand, with but poor result, at this most difficult and dangerous of all the arts. His rhymes were worth nothing as rhymes; but they were worth a great deal as discipline and training: they helped to form the man, and that in itself is always something. Most men who have in them the power to do any great thing pass in early life through a verse-making stage. The verses never come to much; but they leave their stamp behind them; and the man is all the better in the end for having thus taught himself the restraint, the command of language, the careful choice of expressions, the exercise of deliberate pains in composition, which even bad verse-making necessarily implies. It is a common mistake of near-sighted minds to look only at the immediate results of things, without considering their remoter effects. When Tam Telford, stonemason of Langholm, began at twenty-two years of age to pen poetical epistles to Robert Burns, most of his fellow-workmen doubtless thought he was giving himself up to very foolish and nonsensical practices; but he was really helping to educate Thomas Telford, engineer of the Holyhead Road and the Caledonian Canal, for all his future usefulness and greatness. As soon as Tam was out of his indentures, he began work as a journeyman mason at Langholm on his own account, at the not very magnificent wages of eighteenpence a day. That isn't much; but at any rate it is an independence. Besides building many houses in his own town, Tam made here his first small beginning in the matter of roads and highways, by helping to build a bridge over the Esk at Langholm. He was very proud of his part in this bridge, and to the end of his life he often referred to it as his first serious engineering work. Many of the stones still bear his private mark, hewn with the tool into their solid surface, with honest workmanship which helps to explain his later success. But the young mason was beginning to discover that Eskdale was hardly a wide enough field for his budding ambition. He could carve the most careful headstones; he could cut the most ornamental copings for doors or windows; he could even build a bridge across the roaring flooded Esk; but he wanted to see a little of the great world, and learn how men and masons went about their work in the busy centres of the world's activity. So, like a patriotic Scotchman that he was, he betook himself straight to Edinburgh, tramping it on foot, of course, for railways did not yet exist, and coaches were not for the use of such as young Thomas Telford. He arrived in the grey old capital of Scotland in the very nick of time. The Old Town, a tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards, surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which lies beyond a broad valley on the opposite hillside, and contains numerous streets of solid and handsome stone houses, such as are hardly to be found in any other town in Britain, except perhaps Bath and Aberdeen. Edinburgh is always, indeed, an interesting place for an enthusiastic lover of building, be he architect or stonemason; for instead of being built of brick like London and so many other English centres, it is built partly of a fine hard local sandstone and partly of basaltic greenstone; and besides its old churches and palaces, many of the public buildings are particularly striking and beautiful architectural works. But just at the moment when young Telford walked wearily into Edinburgh at the end of his long tramp, there was plenty for a stout strong mason to do in the long straight stone fronts of the rising New Town. For two years, he worked away patiently at his trade in "the grey metropolis of the North;" and he took advantage of the special opportunities the place afforded him to learn drawing, and to make minute sketches in detail of Holyrood Palace, Heriot's Hospital, Roslyn Chapel, and all the other principal old buildings in which the neighbourhood of the capital is particularly rich. So anxious, indeed, was the young mason to perfect himself by the study of the very best models in his own craft, that when at the end of two years he walked back to revisit his good mother in Eskdale, he took the opportunity of making drawings of Melrose Abbey, the most exquisite and graceful building that the artistic stone-cutters of the Middle Ages have handed down to our time in all Scotland. This visit to Eskdale was really Telford's last farewell to his old home, before setting out on a journey which was to form the turning-point in his own history, and in the history of British engineering as well. In Scotch phrase, he was going south. And after taking leave of his mother (not quite for the last time) he went south in good earnest, doing this journey on horseback; for his cousin the steward had lent him a horse to make his way southward like a gentleman. Telford turned where all enterprising young Scotchmen of his time always turned: towards the unknown world of London--that world teeming with so many possibilities of brilliant success or of miserable squalid failure. It was the year 1782, and the young man was just twenty-five. No sooner had he reached the great city than he began looking about him for suitable work. He had a letter of introduction to the architect of Somerset House, whose ornamental fronts were just then being erected, facing the Strand and the river; and Telford was able to get a place at once on the job as a hewer of the finer architectural details, for which both his taste and experience well fitted him. He spent some two years in London at this humble post as a stone-cutter; but already he began to aspire to something better. He earned first-class mason's wages now, and saved whatever he did not need for daily expenses. In this respect, the improvidence of his English fellow-workmen struck the cautious young Scotchman very greatly. They lived, he said, from week to week entirely; any time beyond a week seemed unfortunately to lie altogether outside the range of their limited comprehension. At the end of two years in London, Telford's skill and study began to bear good fruit. His next engagement was one which raised him for the first time in his life above the rank of a mere journeyman mason. The honest workman had attracted the attention of competent judges. He obtained employment as foreman of works of some important buildings in Portsmouth Dockyard. A proud man indeed was Thomas Telford at this change of fortune, and very proudly he wrote to his old friends in Eskdale, with almost boyish delight, about the trust reposed in him by the commissioners and officers, and the pains he was taking with the task entrusted to him. For he was above all things a good workman, and like all good workmen he felt a pride and an interest in all the jobs he took in hand. His sense of responsibility and his sensitiveness, indeed, were almost too great at times for his own personal comfort. Things _will_ go wrong now and then, even with the greatest care; well-planned undertakings will not always pay, and the best engineering does not necessarily succeed in earning a dividend; but whenever such mishaps occurred to his employers, Telford felt the disappointment much too keenly, as though he himself had been to blame for their miscalculations or over-sanguine hopes. Still, it is a good thing to put one's heart in one's work, and so much Thomas Telford certainly did. About this time, too, the rising young mason began to feel that he must get a little more accurate scientific knowledge. The period for general study had now passed by, and the period for special trade reading had set in. This was well. A lad cannot do better than lay a good foundation of general knowledge and general literature during the period when he is engaged in forming his mind: a young man once fairly launched in life may safely confine himself for a time to the studies that bear directly upon his own special chosen subject. The thing that Telford began closely to investigate was--lime. Now, lime makes mortar; and without lime, accordingly, you can have no mason. But to know anything really about lime, Telford found he must read some chemistry; and to know anything really about chemistry he must work at it hard and unremittingly. A strict attention to one's own business, understood in this very broad and liberal manner, is certainly no bad thing for any struggling handicraftsman, whatever his trade or profession may happen to be. In 1786, when Telford was nearly thirty, a piece of unexpected good luck fell to his lot. And yet it was not so much good luck as due recognition of his sterling qualities by a wealthy and appreciative person. Long before, while he was still in Eskdale, one Mr. Pulteney, a man of social importance, who had a large house in the bleak northern valley, had asked his advice about the repairs of his own mansion. We may be sure that Telford did his work on that occasion carefully and well; for now, when Mr. Pulteney wished to restore the ruins of Shrewsbury Castle as a dwelling-house, he sought out the young mason who had attended to his Scotch property, and asked him to superintend the proposed alterations in his Shropshire castle. Nor was that all: by Mr. Pulteney's influence, Telford was shortly afterwards appointed to be county surveyor of public works, having under his care all the roads, bridges, gaols, and public buildings in the whole of Shropshire. Thus the Eskdale shepherd-boy rose at last from the rank of a working mason, and attained the well-earned dignity of an engineer and a professional man. Telford had now a fair opportunity of showing the real stuff of which he was made. Those, of course, were the days when railroads had not yet been dreamt of; when even roads were few and bad; when communications generally were still in a very disorderly and unorganized condition. It is Telford's special glory that he reformed and altered this whole state of things; he reduced the roads of half Britain to system and order; he made the finest highways and bridges then ever constructed; and by his magnificent engineering works, especially his aqueducts, he paved the way unconsciously but surely for the future railways. If it had not been for such great undertakings as Telford's Holyhead Road, which familiarized men's minds with costly engineering operations, it is probable that projectors would long have stood aghast at the alarming expense of a nearly level iron road running through tall hills and over broad rivers the whole way from London to Manchester. At first, Telford's work as county surveyor lay mostly in very small things indeed--mere repairs of sidepaths or bridges, which gave him little opportunity to develop his full talents as a born engineer. But in time, being found faithful in small things, his employers, the county magistrates, began to consult him more and more on matters of comparative importance. First, it was a bridge to be built across the Severn; then a church to be planned at Shrewsbury, and next, a second church in Coalbrookdale. If he was thus to be made suddenly into an architect, Telford thought, almost without being consulted in the matter, he must certainly set out to study architecture. So, with characteristic vigour, he went to work to visit London, Worcester, Gloucester, Bath, and Oxford, at each place taking care to learn whatever was to be learned in the practice of his new art. Fortunately, however, for Telford and for England, it was not architecture in the strict sense that he was finally to practise as a real profession. Another accident, as thoughtless people might call it, led him to adopt engineering in the end as the path in life he elected to follow. In 1793, he was appointed engineer to the projected Ellesmere Canal. In the days before railways, such a canal as this was an engineering work of the very first importance. It was to connect the Mersey, the Dee, and the Severn, and it passed over ground which rendered necessary some immense aqueducts on a scale never before attempted by British engineers. Even in our own time, every traveller by the Great Western line between Chester and Shrewsbury must have observed on his right two magnificent ranges as high arches, which are as noticeable now as ever for their boldness, their magnitude, and their exquisite construction. The first of these mighty archways is the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct which carries the Ellesmere Canal across the wide valley of the Dee, known as the Vale of Llangollen; the second is the Chirk aqueduct, which takes it over the lesser glen of a minor tributary, the Ceriog. Both these beautiful works were designed and carried out entirely by Telford. They differ from many other great modern engineering achievements in the fact that, instead of spoiling the lovely mountain scenery into whose midst they have been thrown, they actually harmonize with it and heighten its natural beauty. Both works, however, are splendid feats, regarded merely as efforts of practical skill; and the larger one is particularly memorable for the peculiarity that the trough for the water and the elegant parapet at the side are both entirely composed of iron. Nowadays, of course, there would be nothing remarkable in the use of such a material for such a purpose; but Telford was the first engineer to see the value of iron in this respect, and the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct was one of the earliest works in which he applied the new material to these unwonted uses. Such a step is all the more remarkable, because Telford's own education had lain entirely in what may fairly be called the "stone age" of English engineering; while his natural predilections as a stonemason might certainly have made him rather overlook the value of the novel material. But Telford was a man who could rise superior to such little accidents of habit or training; and as a matter of fact there is no other engineer to whom the rise of the present "iron age" in engineering work is more directly and immediately to be attributed than to himself. Meanwhile, the Eskdale pioneer did not forget his mother. For years he had constantly written to her, in _print hand_, so that the letters might be more easily read by her aged eyes; he had sent her money in full proportion to his means; and he had taken every possible care to let her declining years be as comfortable as his altered circumstances could readily make them. And now, in the midst of this great and responsible work, he found time to "run down" to Eskdale (very different "running down" from that which we ourselves can do by the London and North Western Railway), to see his aged mother once more before she died. What a meeting that must have been, between the poor old widow of the Eskdale shepherd, and her successful son, the county surveyor of Shropshire, and engineer of the great and important Ellesmere Canal! While Telford was working busily upon his wonderful canal, he had many other schemes to carry out of hardly less importance, in connection with his appointment as county surveyor. His beautiful iron bridge across the Severn at Build was was another application of his favourite metal to the needs of the new world that was gradually growing up in industrial England; and so satisfied was he with the result of his experiment (for though not absolutely the first, it was one of the first iron bridges ever built) that he proposed another magnificent idea, which unfortunately was never carried into execution. Old London Bridge had begun to get a trifle shaky; and instead of rebuilding it, Telford wished to span the whole river by a single iron arch, whose splendid dimensions would have formed one of the most remarkable engineering triumphs ever invented. The scheme, for some good reason, doubtless, was not adopted; but it is impossible to look at Telford's grand drawing of the proposed bridge--a single bold arch, curving across the Thames from side to side, with the dome of St Paul's rising majestically above it--without a feeling of regret that such a noble piece of theoretical architecture was never realized in actual fact. Telford had now come to be regarded as the great practical authority upon all that concerned roads or communications; and he was reaping the due money-reward of his diligence and skill. Every day he was called upon to design new bridges and other important structures in all parts of the kingdom, but more especially in Scotland and on the Welsh border. Many of the most picturesque bridges in Britain, which every tourist has admired, often without inquiring or thinking of the hand that planned them, were designed by his inventive brain. The exquisite stone arch which links the two banks of the lesser Scotch Dee in its gorge at Tongueland is one of the most picturesque; for Telford was a bit of an artist at heart, and, unlike too many modern railway constructors, he always endeavoured to make his bridges and aqueducts beautify rather than spoil the scenery in whose midst they stood. Especially was he called in to lay out the great system of roads by which the Scotch Highlands, then so lately reclaimed from a state of comparative barbarism, were laid open for the great development they have since undergone. In the earlier part of the century, it is true, a few central highways had been run through the very heart of that great solid block of mountains; but these were purely military roads, to enable the king's soldiers more easily to march against the revolted clans, and they had hardly more connection with the life of the country than the bare military posts, like Fort William and Fort Augustus, which guarded their ends, had to do with the ordinary life of a commercial town. Meanwhile, however, the Highlands had begun gradually to settle down; and Telford's roads were intended for the far higher and better purpose of opening out the interior of northern Scotland to the humanizing influences of trade and industry. Fully to describe the great work which the mature engineer constructed in the Highland region, would take up more space than could be allotted to such a subject anywhere save in a complete industrial history of roads and travelling in modern Britain. It must suffice to say that when Telford took the matter in hand, the vast block of country north and west of the Great Glen of Caledonia (which divides the Highlands in two between Inverness and Ben Nevis)--a block comprising the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Cromarty, and half Inverness--had literally nothing within it worthy of being called a road. Wheeled carts or carriages were almost unknown, and all burdens were conveyed on pack-horses, or, worse still, on the broad backs of Highland lassies. The people lived in small scattered villages, and communications from one to another were well-nigh impossible. Telford set to work to give the country, not a road or two, but a main system of roads. First, he bridged the broad river Tay at Dunkeld, so as to allow of a direct route straight into the very jaws of the Highlands. Then, he also bridged over the Beauly at Inverness, so as to connect the opposite sides of the Great Glen with one another. Next, he laid out a number of trunk lines, running through the country on both banks, to the very north of Caithness, and the very west of the Isle of Skye. Whoever to this day travels on the main thoroughfares in the greater Scottish Islands--in Arran, Islay, Jura, Mull; or in the wild peninsula of Morvern, and the Land of Lorne; or through the rugged regions of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, where the railway has not yet penetrated,--travels throughout on Telford's roads. The number of large bridges and other great engineering masterpieces on this network of roads is enormous; among the most famous and the most beautiful, are the exquisite single arch which spans the Spey just beside the lofty rearing rocks of Craig Ellachie, and the bridge across the Dee, beneath the purple heather-clad braes of Ballater. Altogether, on Telford's Highland roads alone, there are no fewer than twelve hundred bridges. Nor were these the only important labours by which Telford ministered to the comfort and well-being of his Scotch fellow-countrymen. Scotland's debt to the Eskdale stonemason is indeed deep and lasting. While on land, he improved her communications by his great lines of roads, which did on a smaller scale for the Highland valleys what railways have since done for the whole of the civilized world; he also laboured to improve her means of transit at sea by constructing a series of harbours along that bare and inhospitable eastern coast, once almost a desert, but now teeming with great towns and prosperous industries. It was Telford who formed the harbour of Wick, which has since grown from a miserable fishing village into a large town, the capital of the North Sea herring fisheries. It was he who enlarged the petty port of Peterhead into the chief station of the flourishing whaling trade. It was he who secured prosperity for Fraserburgh, and Banff, and many other less important centres; while even Dundee and Aberdeen, the chief commercial cities of the east coast, owe to him a large part of their present extraordinary wealth and industry. When one thinks how large a number of human beings have been benefited by Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is impossible not to envy a great engineer his almost unlimited power of permanent usefulness to unborn thousands of his fellow-creatures. As a canal-maker, Telford was hardly less successful than as a constructor of roads and harbours. It is true, his greatest work in this direction was in one sense a failure. He was employed by Government for many years as the engineer of the Caledonian Canal, which runs up the Great Glen of Caledonia, connecting the line of lakes whose basins occupy that deep hollow in the Highland ranges, and so avoiding the difficult and dangerous sea voyage round the stormy northern capes of Caithness. Unfortunately, though the canal as an engineering work proved to be of the most successful character, it has never succeeded as a commercial undertaking. It was built just at the exact moment when steamboats were on the point of revolutionizing ocean traffic; and so, though in itself a magnificent and lordly undertaking, it failed to satisfy the sanguine hopes of its projectors. But though Telford felt most bitterly the unavoidable ill success of this great scheme, he might well have comforted himself by the good results of his canal-building elsewhere. He went to Sweden to lay out the Gotha Canal, which still forms the main high-road of commerce between Stockholm and the sea; while in England itself some of his works in this direction--such as the improvements on the Birmingham Canal, with its immense tunnel--may fairly be considered as the direct precursors of the great railway efforts of the succeeding generation. The most remarkable of all Telford's designs, however, and the one which most immediately paved the way for the railway system, was his magnificent Holyhead Road. This wonderful highway he carried through the very midst of the Welsh mountains, at a comparatively level height for its whole distance, in order to form a main road from London to Ireland. On this road occurs Telford's masterpiece of engineering, the Menai suspension bridge, long regarded as one of the wonders of the world, and still one of the most beautiful suspension bridges in all Europe. Hardly less admirable, however, in its own way is the other suspension bridge which he erected at Conway, to carry his road across the mouth of the estuary, beside the grey old castle, with which its charming design harmonizes so well. Even now it is impossible to drive or walk along this famous and picturesque highway without being struck at every turn by the splendid engineering triumphs which it displays throughout its entire length. The contrast, indeed, between the noble grandeur of Telford's bridges, and the works on the neighbouring railways, is by no means flattering in every respect to our too exclusively practical modern civilization. Telford was now growing an old man. The Menai bridge was begun in 1819 and finished in 1826, when he was sixty-eight years of age; and though he still continued to practise his profession, and to design many valuable bridges, drainage cuts, and other small jobs, that great undertaking was the last masterpiece of his long and useful life. His later days were passed in deserved honour and comparative opulence; for though never an avaricious man, and always anxious to rate his services at their lowest worth, he had gathered together a considerable fortune by the way, almost without seeking it. To the last, his happy cheerful disposition enabled him to go on labouring at the numerous schemes by which he hoped to benefit the world of workers; and so much cheerfulness was surely well earned by a man who could himself look back upon so good a record of work done for the welfare of humanity. At last, on the 2nd of September, 1834, his quiet and valuable life came gently to a close, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and few of the men who sleep within that great national temple more richly deserve the honour than the Westerkirk shepherd-boy. For Thomas Telford's life was not merely one of worldly success; it was still more pre-eminently one of noble ends and public usefulness. Many working men have raised themselves by their own exertions to a position of wealth and dignity far surpassing his; few indeed have conferred so many benefits upon untold thousands of their fellow-men. It is impossible, even now, to travel in any part of England, Wales, or Scotland, without coming across innumerable memorials of Telford's great and useful life; impossible to read the full record of his labours without finding that numberless structures we have long admired for their beauty or utility, owe their origin to the honourable, upright, hardworking, thoroughgoing, journeyman mason of the quiet little Eskdale village. Whether we go into the drained fens of Lincolnshire, or traverse the broad roads of the rugged Snowdon region; whether we turn to St. Katharine's Docks in London, or to the wide quays of Dundee and those of Aberdeen; whether we sail beneath the Menai suspension bridge at Bangor, or drive over the lofty arches that rise sheer from the precipitous river gorge at Cartland, we meet everywhere the lasting traces of that inventive and ingenious brain. And yet, what lad could ever have started in the world under apparently more hopeless circumstances than widow Janet Telford's penniless orphan shepherd-boy Tam, in the bleakest and most remote of all the lonely border valleys of southern Scotland? II. GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-MAN. Any time about the year 1786, a stranger in the streets of the grimy colliery village of Wylam, near Newcastle, might have passed by without notice a ragged, barefooted, chubby child of five years old, Geordie Stephenson by name, playing merrily in the gutter and looking to the outward eye in no way different from any of the other colliers' children who loitered about him. Nevertheless, that ragged boy was yet destined in after-life to alter the whole face of England and the world by those wonderful railways, which he more than any other man was instrumental in first constructing; and the story of his life may rank perhaps as one of the most marvellous in the whole marvellous history of able and successful British working men. George Stephenson was born in June, 1781, the son of a fireman who tended the pumping engine of the neighbouring colliery, and one of a penniless family of six children. So poor was his father, indeed, that the whole household lived in a single room, with bare floor and mud wall; and little Geordie grew up in his own unkempt fashion without any schooling whatever, not even knowing A from B when he was a big lad of seventeen. At an age when he ought to have been learning his letters, he was bird's-nesting in the fields or running errands to the Wylam shops; and as soon as he was old enough to earn a few pence by light work, he was set to tend cows at the magnificent wages of twopence a day, in the village of Dewley Burn, close by, to which his father had then removed. It might have seemed at first as though the future railway engineer was going to settle down quietly to the useful but uneventful life of an agricultural labourer; for from tending cows he proceeded in due time (with a splendid advance of twopence) to leading the horses at the plough, spudding thistles, and hoeing turnips on his employer's farm. But the native bent of a powerful mind usually shows itself very early; and even during the days when Geordie was still stumbling across the freshly ploughed clods or driving the cows to pasture with a bunch of hazel twigs, his taste for mechanics already made itself felt in a very marked and practical fashion. During all his leisure time, the future engineer and his chum Bill Thirlwall occupied themselves with making clay models of engines, and fitting up a winding machine with corks and twine like those which lifted the colliery baskets. Though Geordie Stephenson didn't go to school at the village teacher's, he was teaching himself in his own way by close observation and keen comprehension of all the machines and engines he could come across. Naturally, to such a boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow his own inclinations in the direction of mechanical labour. Besides, was he not earning the grand sum of sixpence a day as picker, increased to eightpence a little later on, when he rose to the more responsible and serious work of driving the gin-horse? A proud day indeed it was for him when, at fourteen, he was finally permitted to aid his father in firing the colliery engine; though he was still such a very small boy that he used to run away and hide when the owner went his rounds of inspection, for fear he should be thought too little to earn his untold wealth of a shilling a day in such a grown-up occupation. Humbler beginnings were never any man's who lived to become the honoured guest, not of kings and princes only, but of the truly greatest and noblest in the land. A coal-miner's life is often a very shifting one; for the coal in particular collieries gets worked out from time to time; and he has to remove, accordingly, to fresh quarters, wherever employment happens to be found. This was very much the case with George Stephenson and his family; all of them being obliged to remove several times over during his childish days in search of new openings. Shortly after Geordie had attained to the responsible position of assistant fireman, his father was compelled, by the closing of Dewley Burn mine, to get a fresh situation hard by at Newburn. George accompanied him, and found employment as full fireman at a small working, whose little engine he undertook to manage in partnership with a mate, each of them tending the fire night and day by twelve-hour shifts. Two years later, his wages were raised to twelve shillings a week, a sure mark of his diligent and honest work; so that George was not far wrong in remarking to a fellow-workman at the time that he now considered himself a made man for life. During all this time, George Stephenson never for a moment ceased to study and endeavour to understand the working of every part in the engine that he tended. He was not satisfied, as too many workmen are, with merely learning the routine work of his own trade; with merely knowing that he must turn such and such a tap or valve in order to produce such and such a desired result: he wanted to see for himself how and why the engine did this or that, what was the use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser--in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction. He took it to pieces for cleaning whenever it was needful; he made working models of it after his old childish pattern; he even ventured to tinker it up when out of order on his own responsibility. Thus he learnt at last something of the theory of the steam-engine, and learnt also by the way a great deal about the general principles of mechanical science. Still, even now, incredible as it seems, the future father of railways couldn't yet read; and he found this terrible drawback told fatally against his further progress. Whenever he wanted to learn something that he didn't quite understand, he was always referred for information to a Book. Oh, those books; those mysterious, unattainable, incomprehensible books; how they must have bothered and worried poor intelligent and aspiring but still painfully ignorant young George Stephenson! Though he was already trying singularly valuable experiments in his own way, he hadn't yet even begun to learn his letters. Under these circumstances, George Stephenson, eager and anxious for further knowledge, took a really heroic resolution. He wasn't ashamed to go to school. Though now a full workman on his own account, about eighteen years old, he began to attend the night school at the neighbouring village of Walbottle, where he took lessons in reading three evenings every week. It is a great thing when a man is not ashamed to learn. Many men are; they consider themselves so immensely wise that they look upon it as an impertinence in anybody to try to tell them anything they don't know already. Truly wise or truly great men--men with the capability in them for doing anything worthy in their generation--never feel this false and foolish shame. They know that most other people know some things in some directions which they do not, and they are glad to be instructed in them whenever opportunity offers. This wisdom George Stephenson possessed in sufficient degree to make him feel more ashamed of his ignorance than of the steps necessary in order to conquer it. Being a diligent and willing scholar, he soon learnt to read, and by the time he was nineteen he had learnt how to write also. At arithmetic, a science closely allied to his native mechanical bent, he was particularly apt, and beat all the other scholars at the village night school. This resolute effort at education was the real turning-point in George Stephenson's remarkable career, the first step on the ladder whose topmost rung led him so high that he himself must almost have felt giddy at the unwonted elevation. Shortly after, young Stephenson gained yet another promotion in being raised to the rank of brakesman, whose duty it was to slacken the engine when the full baskets of coal reached the top of the shaft. This was a more serious and responsible post than any he had yet filled, and one for which only the best and steadiest workmen were ever selected. His wages now amounted to a pound a week, a very large sum in those days for a skilled working-man. Meanwhile, George, like most other young men, had fallen in love. His sweetheart, Fanny Henderson, was servant at the small farmhouse where he had taken lodgings since leaving his father's home; and though but little is known about her (for she unhappily died before George had begun to rise to fame and fortune), what little we do know seems to show that she was in every respect a fitting wife for the active young brakesman, and a fitting mother for his equally celebrated son, Robert Stephenson. Fired by the honourable desire to marry Fanny, with a proper regard for prudence, George set himself to work to learn cobbling in his spare moments; and so successfully did he cobble the worn shoes of his fellow-colliers after working hours, that before long he contrived to save a whole guinea out of his humble earnings. That guinea was the first step towards an enormous fortune; a fortune, too, all accumulated by steady toil and constant useful labour for the ultimate benefit of his fellow-men. To make a fortune is the smallest and least noble of all possible personal ambitions; but to save the first guinea which leads us on at last to independence and modest comfort is indeed an important turning-point in every prudent man's career. Geordie Stephenson was so justly proud of his achievement in this respect that he told a friend in confidence he might now consider himself a rich man. By the time George was twenty-one, he had saved up enough by constant care to feel that he might safely embark on the sea of housekeeping. He was able to take a small cottage lodging for himself and Fanny, at Willington Quay, near his work at the moment, and to furnish it with the simple comfort which was all that their existing needs demanded. He married Fanny on the 28th of November, 1802; and the young couple proceeded at once to their new home. Here George laboured harder than ever, as became the head of a family. He was no more ashamed of odd jobs than he had been of learning the alphabet. He worked overtime at emptying ballast from ships; he continued to cobble, to cut lasts, and even to try his hand at regular shoemaking; furthermore, he actually acquired the art of mending clocks, a matter which lay strictly in his own line, and he thus earned a tidy penny at odd hours by doctoring all the rusty or wheezy old timepieces of all his neighbours. Nor did he neglect his mechanical education meanwhile; for he was always at work upon various devices for inventing a perpetual motion machine. Now perpetual motion is the most foolish will-o'-the-wisp that ever engaged a sane man's attention: the thing has been proved to be impossible from every conceivable point of view, and the attempt to achieve it, if pursued to the last point, can only end in disappointment if not in ruin. Still, for all that, the work George Stephenson spent upon this unpractical object did really help to give him an insight into mechanical science which proved very useful to him at a later date. He didn't discover perpetual motion, but he did invent at last the real means for making the locomotive engine a practical power in the matter of travelling. A year later, George's only son Robert was born; and from that moment the history of those two able and useful lives is almost inseparable. During the whole of George Stephenson's long upward struggle, and during the hard battle he had afterwards to fight on behalf of his grand design of railways, he met with truer sympathy, appreciation, and comfort from his brave and gifted son than from any other person whatsoever. Unhappily, his pleasure and delight in the up-bringing of his boy was soon to be clouded for a while by the one great bereavement of an otherwise singularly placid and happy existence. Some two years after her marriage, Fanny Stephenson died, as yet a mere girl, leaving her lonely husband to take care of their baby boy alone and unaided. Grief for this irretrievable loss drove the young widower away for a while from his accustomed field of work among the Tyneside coal-pits; he accepted an invitation to go to Montrose in Scotland, to overlook the working of a large engine in some important spinning-works. He remained in this situation for one year only; but during that time he managed to give clear evidence of his native mechanical insight by curing a defect in the pumps which supplied water to his engine, and which had hitherto defied the best endeavours of the local engineers. The young father was not unmindful, either, of his duty to his boy, whom he had left behind with his grandfather on Tyneside; for he saved so large a sum as L28 during his engagement, which he carried back with him in his pocket on his return to England. A sad disappointment awaited him when at last he arrived at home. Old Robert Stephenson, the father, had met with an accident during George's absence which made him quite blind, and incapacitated him for further work. Helpless and poor, he had no resource to save him from the workhouse except George; but George acted towards him exactly as all men who have in them a possibility of any good thing always do act under similar circumstances. He spent L15 of his hard-earned savings to pay the debts the poor blind old engine-man had necessarily contracted during his absence, and he took a comfortable cottage for his father and mother at Killingworth, where he had worked before his removal to Scotland, and where he now once more obtained employment, still as a brakesman. In that cottage this good and brave son supported his aged parents till their death, in all the simple luxury that his small means would then permit him. That, however, was not the end of George's misfortunes. Shortly after, he was drawn by lot as a militiaman; and according to the law of that time (for this was in 1807, during the very height of the wars against Napoleon) he must either serve in person or else pay heavily to secure a substitute. George chose regretfully the latter course--the only one open to him if he wished still to support his parents and his infant son. But in order to do so, he had to pay away the whole remainder of his carefully hoarded savings, and even to borrow L6 to make up the payment for the substitute. It must have seemed very hard to him to do this, and many men would have sunk under the blow, become hopeless, or taken to careless rowdy drinking habits. George Stephenson felt it bitterly, and gave way for a while to a natural despondency; he would hardly have been human if he had not; but still, he lived over it, and in the end worked on again with fuller resolution and vigour than ever. For several years Geordie, as his fellow-colliers affectionately called him, continued to live on at one or other of the Killingworth collieries. In a short time, he entered into a small contract with his employers for "brakeing" the engines; and in the course of this contract, he invented certain improvements in the matter of saving wear and tear of ropes, which were both profitable to himself and also in some small degree pointed the way toward his future plans for the construction of railways. It is true, the two subjects have not, apparently, much in common; but they are connected in this way, that both proceed upon the principle of reducing the friction to the smallest possible quantity. It was this principle that Stephenson was gradually learning to appreciate more and more at its proper value; and it was this which finally led him to the very summit of a great and pre-eminently useful profession. The great advantage, indeed, of a level railway over an up-and-down ordinary road is simply that in the railway the resistance and friction are almost entirely got rid of. It was in 1810, when Stephenson was twenty-nine, that his first experiment in serious engineering was made. A coal-pit had been sunk at Killingworth, and a rude steam-engine of that time had been set to pump the water out of its shaft; but, somehow, the engine made no headway against the rising springs at the bottom of the mine. For nearly a year the engine worked away in vain, till at last, one Saturday afternoon, Geordie Stephenson went over to examine her. "Well, George," said a pitman, standing by, "what do you think of her?" "Man," said George, boldly, "I could alter her and make her draw. In a week I could let you all go the bottom." The pitman reported this confident speech of the young brakesman to the manager; and the manager, at his wits' end for a remedy, determined to let this fellow Stephenson try his hand at her. After all, if he did no good, he would be much like all the others; and anyhow he seemed to have confidence in himself, which, if well grounded, is always a good thing. George's confidence _was_ well grounded. It was not the confidence of ignorance, but that of knowledge. He _understood_ the engine now, and he saw at once the root of the evil. He picked the engine to pieces, altered it to suit the requirements of the case, and set it to work to pump without delay. Sure enough, he kept his word; and within the week, the mine was dry, and the men were sent to the bottom. This was a grand job for George's future. The manager, a Mr. Dodds, not only gave him ten pounds at once as a present, in acknowledgment of his practical skill, but also appointed him engine-man of the new pit, another rise in the social scale as well as in the matter of wages. Dodds kept him in mind for the future, too; and a couple of years later, on a vacancy occurring, he promoted the promising hand to be engine-wright of all the collieries under his management, at a salary of L100 a year. When a man's income comes to be reckoned by the year, rather than by the week or month, it is a sign that he is growing into a person of importance. George had now a horse to ride upon, on his visits of inspection to the various engines; and his work was rather one of mechanical engineering than of mere ordinary labouring handicraft. The next few years of George Stephenson's life were mainly taken up in providing for the education of his boy Robert. He had been a good son, and he was now a good father. Feeling acutely how much he himself had suffered, and how many years he had been put back, by his own want of a good sound rudimentary education, he determined that Robert should not suffer from a similar cause. Indeed, George Stephenson's splendid abilities were kept in the background far too long, owing to his early want of regular instruction. So the good father worked hard to send his boy to school; not to the village teacher's only, but to a school for gentlemen's sons at Newcastle. By mending clocks and watches in spare moments, and by rigid economy in all unnecessary expenses (especially beer), Stephenson had again gathered together a little hoard, which mounted up this time to a hundred guineas. A hundred guineas is a fortune and a capital to a working man. He was therefore rich enough, not only to send little Robert to school, but even to buy him a donkey, on which the boy made the journey every day from Killingworth to Newcastle. This was in 1815, when George was thirty-four, and Robert twelve. Perhaps no man who ever climbed so high as George Stephenson, had ever reached so little of the way at so comparatively late an age. For in spite of his undoubted success, viewed from the point of view of his origin and early prospects, he was as yet after all nothing more than the common engine-wright of the Killingworth collieries--a long way off as yet from the distinguished father of the railway system. George Stephenson's connection with the locomotive, however, was even now beginning. Already, in 1816, he and his boy had tried a somewhat higher flight of mechanical and scientific skill than usual, in the construction of a sun-dial, which involves a considerable amount of careful mathematical work; and now George found that the subject of locomotive engines was being forced by circumstances upon his attention. From the moment he was appointed engine-wright of the Killingworth collieries, he began to think about all possible means of hauling coal at cheaper rates from the pit's mouth to the shipping place on the river. For that humble object alone--an object that lay wholly within the line of his own special business--did the great railway projector set out upon his investigations into the possibilities of the locomotive. Indeed, in its earliest origin, the locomotive was almost entirely connected with coals and mining; its application to passenger traffic on the large scale was quite a later and secondary consideration. It was only by accident, so to speak, that the true capabilities of railways were finally discovered in the actual course of their practical employment. George Stephenson was not the first person to construct either a locomotive or a tramway. Both were already in use, in more or less rude forms, at several collieries. But he _was_ the first person to bring the two to such a pitch of perfection, that what had been at first a mere clumsy mining contrivance, became developed into a smooth and easy iron highway for the rapid and convenient conveyance of goods and passengers over immense distances. Of course, this great invention, like all other great inventions, was not the work of one day or one man. Many previous heads had helped to prepare the way for George Stephenson; and George Stephenson himself had been working at the subject for many years before he even reached the first stage of realized endeavour. As early as 1814 he constructed his first locomotive at Killingworth colliery; it was not until 1822 that he laid the first rail of his first large line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Stephenson's earliest important improvement in the locomotive consisted in his invention of what is called the steam-blast, by which the steam is made to increase the draught of the fire, and so largely add to the effectiveness of the engine. It was this invention that enabled him at last to make the railway into the great carrier of the world, and to begin the greatest social and commercial upheaval that has ever occurred in the whole history of the human race. Meanwhile, however, George was not entirely occupied with the consideration of his growing engine. He had the clocks and watches to mend; he had Robert's schooling to look after; and he had another practical matter even nearer home than the locomotive on which to exercise his inventive genius. One day, in 1814, the main gallery of the colliery caught fire. Stephenson at once descended into the burning pit, with a chosen band of volunteers, who displayed the usual heroic courage of colliers in going to the rescue of their comrades; and, at the risk of their lives, these brave men bricked up the burning portion, and so, by excluding the air, put out the dangerous fire. Still, even so, several of the workmen had been suffocated, and one of the pitmen asked Geordie in dismay whether nothing could be done to prevent such terrible disasters in future. "The price of coal-mining now," he said, "is pitmen's lives." Stephenson promised to think the matter over; and he did think it over with good effect. The result of his thought was the apparatus still affectionately known to the pitmen as "the Geordie lamp." It is a lamp so constructed that the flame cannot pass out into the air outside, and so cause explosions in the dangerous fire-damp which is always liable to occur abundantly in the galleries of coal mines. By this invention alone George Stephenson's name and memory might have been kept green for ever; for his lamp has been the means of saving thousands of lives from a sudden, a terrible, and a pitiful death. Most accidents that now occur in mines are due to the neglect of ordinary precautions, and to the perverse habit of carrying a naked lighted candle in the hand (contrary to regulations) instead of a carefully guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than before the invention of the Geordie lamp. Curiously enough, at the very time when George Stephenson was busy inventing his lamp at Killingworth, Sir Humphrey Davy was working at just the same matter in London; and the two lamps, though a little different in minor points of construction, are practically the same in general principle. Now, Sir Humphrey was then the great fashionable natural philosopher of the day, the favourite of London society, and the popular lecturer of the Royal Institution. His friends thought it a monstrous idea that his splendid life-saving apparatus should have been independently devised by "an engine-wright of Killingworth of the name of Stephenson--a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry." This sounds very odd reading at the present day, when the engine-wright of the name of Stephenson has altered the whole face of the world, while Davy is chiefly remembered as a meritorious and able chemist; but at the time, Stephenson's claim to the invention met with little courtesy from the great public of London, where a meeting was held on purpose to denounce his right to the credit of the invention. What the coal-owners and colliers of the North Country thought about the matter was sufficiently shown by their subscription of L1000, as a Stephenson testimonial fund. With part of the money, a silver tankard was presented to the deserving engine-wright, while the remainder of the sum was handed over to him in ready cash. A very acceptable present it was, and one which George Stephenson remembered with pride down to his dying day. The Geordie lamp continues in use to the present moment in the Tyneside collieries with excellent effect. For some years more, Mr. Stephenson (he is now fairly entitled to that respectable prefix) went on still further experimenting on the question of locomotives and railways. He was now beginning to learn that much unnecessary wear and tear arose on the short lines of rail down from the pit's mouths to the loading-places on the river by the inequalities and roughnesses of the joints; and he invented a method of overlapping the rails which quite got over this source of loss--loss of speed, loss of power, and loss of material at once. It was in 1819 that he laid down his first considerable piece of road, the Hetton railway. The owners of a colliery at the village of Hetton, in Durham, determined to replace their waggon road by a locomotive line; and they invited the now locally famous Killingworth engine-wright to act as their engineer. Stephenson gladly undertook the post; and he laid down a railway of eight miles in length, on the larger part of which the trucks were to be drawn by "the iron horse," as people now began to style the altered and improved locomotive. The Hetton railway was opened in 1822, and the assembled crowd were delighted at beholding a single engine draw seventeen loaded trucks after it, at the extraordinary rate of four miles an hour--nearly as fast as a man could walk. Whence it may be gathered that Stephenson's ideas upon the question of speed were still on a very humble scale indeed. Before the Hetton railway was opened, however, George Stephenson had shown one more proof of his excellence as a father by sending his boy Robert, now nineteen, to Edinburgh University. It was a serious expense for a man who was even now, after all, hardly more than a working man of the superior grade; but George Stephenson was well repaid for the sacrifice he thus made on behalf of his only son. He lived to see him the greatest practical engineer of his own time, and to feel that his success was in large measure due to the wider and more accurate scientific training the lad had received from his Edinburgh teachers. In 1819 George married again, his second wife being the daughter of a farmer at Black Callerton. The work which finally secured the position of George Stephenson and of his dearly loved locomotive was the Stockton and Darlington railway. Like all the other early railways, it was originally projected simply as a mineral line. Darlington lies in the centre of a rich inland mining district; but the impossibility of getting the coal carried to the sea by cart or donkey long prevented the opening up of its immense natural wealth. At last, as early as 1817, Edward Pease and a few other enterprising Darlington Quakers determined to build a line of railway from the mining region to Stockton, on the river Tees, where the coal could be loaded into sea-going ships. It was a very long line, compared to any railway that had yet been constructed; but it was still only to be worked by horse-power--to be, in fact, what we now call a tramway, rather than a railway in the modern sense. However, while the plan was still undecided, George Stephenson, who had heard about the proposed scheme, went over to Darlington one day, and boldly asked to see Mr. Pease. The good Quaker received him kindly, and listened to his arguments in favour of the locomotive. "Come over to Killingworth some day and see my engine at work," said Stephenson, confidently; "and if you do you will never think of horses again." Mr. Pease, with Quaker caution, came and looked. George put the engine through its paces, and showed off its marvellous capabilities to such good effect that Edward Pease was immediately converted. Henceforth, he became a decided advocate of locomotives, and greatly aided by his wealth and influence in securing their final triumph. Not only that, but Mr. Pease also aided Stephenson in carrying out a design which George had long had upon his mind--the establishment of a regular locomotive factory, where the work of engine-making for this particular purpose might be carried on with all the necessary finish and accuracy. George himself put into the concern his precious L1000, not one penny of which he had yet touched; while Pease and a friend advanced as much between them. A factory was forthwith started at Newcastle on a small scale, and the hardworking engine-wright found himself now fully advanced to the commercial dignity of Stephenson and Co. With the gradual growth of railways, that humble Newcastle factory grew gradually into one of the largest and wealthiest manufacturing establishments in all England. Meanwhile, Stephenson was eagerly pushing on the survey of the Stockton and Darlington railway, all the more gladly now that he knew it was to be worked by means of his own adopted child, the beloved locomotive. He worked at his line early and late; he took the sights with the spirit-level with his own eye; he was determined to make it a model railway. It was a long and heavy work, for railway surveying was then a new art, and the appliances were all fresh and experimental; but in the end, Stephenson brought it to a happy conclusion, and struck at once the death-blow of the old road-travelling system. The line was opened successfully in 1825, and the engine started off on the inaugural ceremony with a magnificent train of thirty-eight vehicles. "Such was its velocity," says a newspaper of the day, "that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour." The success of the Stockton and Darlington railway was so immense and unexpected, the number of passengers who went by it was so great, and the quantity of coal carried for shipment so far beyond anything the projectors themselves could have anticipated, that a desire soon began to be felt for similar works in other places. There are no two towns in England which absolutely need a railway communication from one to the other so much as Liverpool and Manchester. The first is the great port of entry for cotton, the second is the great centre of its manufacture. The Bridgewater canal had helped for a time to make up for the want of water communication between those two closely connected towns; but as trade developed, the canal became too small for the demands upon it, and the need for an additional means of intercourse was deeply felt. A committee was formed to build a railway in this busy district, and after a short time George Stephenson was engaged to superintend its construction. A long and severe fight was fought over the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and it was at first doubtful whether the scheme would ever be carried out. Many great landowners were strongly opposed to it, and tried their best to keep the bill for authorizing it from passing through Parliament. Stephenson himself was compelled to appear in London as a witness before a parliamentary committee, and was closely cross-examined as to the possibilities of his plan. In those days, even after the success of the Stockton and Darlington line, his views about the future of railways were still regarded by most sober persons as ridiculously wild and enthusiastic; while the notion that trains might be made to travel twice as fast as stage-coaches, was scouted as the most palpable and ridiculous delusion. One of the members of the committee pressed Stephenson very hard with questions. "Suppose," he said, "a cow were to get upon the line, and the engine were to come into collision with it; wouldn't that be very awkward, now?" George looked up at him with a merry twinkle of the eye, and answered in his broad North Country dialect, "Oo, ay, very awkward for the _coo_." In spite of all Stephenson's earnestness and mother wit, however, Parliament refused to pass the bill (in 1825), and for the moment the engineer's vexation was bitter to behold. He and his friends plucked up heart, however; they were fighting the winning battle against prejudice and obstruction, and they were sure to conquer in the long run. The line was resurveyed by other engineers; the lands of the hostile owners were avoided; the causes of offence were dexterously smoothed down; and after another hard fight, in 1826, the bill authorizing the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester railway was finally passed. The board at once appointed Stephenson engineer for constructing the line, at a salary of L1000 a year. George might now fairly consider himself entitled to the honours of an Esquire. The line was a difficult one to construct; but George Stephenson set about it with the skill and knowledge acquired during many years of slow experience; and he performed it with distinguished success. He was now forty-four; and he had had more to do with the laying down of rails than any other man then living. The great difficulty of the Liverpool and Manchester line lay in the fact that it had to traverse a vast shaking bog or morass, Chat Moss, which the best engineers had emphatically declared it would be impossible to cross. George Stephenson, however, had a plan for making the impossible possible. He simply floated his line on a broad bottom, like a ship, on the top of the quaking quagmire; and proceeded to lay down his rails on this seemingly fragile support without further scruple. It answered admirably, and still answers to the present day. The other works on the railway, especially the cuttings, were such as might well have appalled the boldest heart in those experimental ages of railway enterprise. It is easy enough for us now to undertake tunnelling great hills or filling up wide valleys with long ranges of viaduct, because the thing has been done so often, and the prospect of earning a fair return on the money sunk can be calculated with so high a degree of reasonable probability. But it required no little faith for George Stephenson and his backers to drive a level road, for the first time, through solid rocks and over trembling morasses, the whole way from Liverpool to Manchester. He persevered, however, and in 1830, after four years' toilsome and ceaseless labour, during which he had worked far-harder than the sturdiest navvy on the line, his railway was finally opened for regular traffic. Before the completion of the railway, George Stephenson had taken part in a great contest for the best locomotive at Liverpool, a prize of L500 having been offered by the company to the successful competitor. Stephenson sent in his improved model, the Rocket, constructed after plans of his own and his son Robert's, and it gained the prize against all its rivals, travelling at what was then considered the incredible rate of 35 miles an hour. It was thus satisfactorily settled that the locomotive was the best power for drawing carriages on railways, and George Stephenson's long battle was thus at last practically won. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway was an era in the history of the world. From the moment that great undertaking was complete, there could no longer be any doubt about the utility and desirability of railways, and all opposition died away almost at once. New lines began immediately to be laid out, and in an incredibly short time the face of England was scarred by the main trunks in that network of iron roads with which its whole surface is now so closely covered. The enormous development of the railway system benefited the Stephenson family in more than one way. Robert Stephenson became the engineer of the vast series of lines now known as the London and North Western; and the increased demand for locomotives caused George Stephenson's small factory at Newcastle to blossom out suddenly into an immense and flourishing manufacturing concern. The rest of George Stephenson's life is one long story of unbroken success. In 1831, the year after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, George, being now fifty, began to think of settling down in a more permanent home. His son Robert, who was surveying the Leicester and Swannington railway, observed on an estate called Snibston, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, what to his experienced geological eye looked like the probable indications of coal beneath the surface. He wrote to his father about it, and as the estate was at the time for sale, George, now a comparatively wealthy man, bought it up on his son's recommendation. He also pitched his home close by at Alton Grange, and began to sink shafts in search of coal. He found it in due time; and thus, in addition to his Newcastle works he became a flourishing colliery proprietor. It is pleasing to note that Stephenson, unlike too many other self-made men, always treated his workmen with the greatest kindness and consideration, erecting admirable cottages for their accommodation, and providing them with church, chapel, and schools for their religious and social education. While living at Alton Grange, Stephenson was engaged in laying out several new lines in the middle and north of England, especially the Grand Junction and the Midland, both of which he constructed with great boldness and practical skill. As he grew older and more famous, he began to mix in the truly best society of England; his acquaintance being sought by all the most eminent men in literature, science, and political life. Though but an uneducated working man by origin, George Stephenson had so improved his mind by constant thought and expansive self-education, that he was able to meet these able and distinguished friends of his later days on terms of perfect intellectual and social equality. To the last, however, he never forgot his older and poorer friends, nor was he ever ashamed of their acquaintance. A pleasant trait is narrated by his genial biographer, Dr. Smiles, who notices that on one occasion he stopped to speak to one of his wealthy acquaintances in a fine carriage, and then turned to shake hands with the coachman on the box, whom he had known and respected in his earlier days. He enjoyed, too, the rare pleasure of feeling his greatness recognized in his own time: and once, when he went over to Brussels on a visit to the king of the Belgians, he was pleased and surprised, as the royal party entered the ball-room at the Town Hall, to hear a general murmur among the guests of "Which is Stephenson?" George Stephenson continued to live for sixteen years, first at Alton Grange, and afterwards at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, in comfort and opulence; growing big pines and melons, keeping birds and dogs, and indulging himself towards the end in the well-earned repose to which his useful and laborious life fully entitled him. At last, on the 12th of August, 1848, he died suddenly of intermittent fever, in his sixty-seventh year, and was peacefully buried in Chesterfield church. Probably no one man who ever lived did so much to change and renovate the whole aspect of human life as George Stephenson; and, unlike many other authors of great revolutions, he lived long enough to see the full result of his splendid labours in the girdling of England by his iron roads. A grand and simple man, he worked honestly and steadfastly throughout his days, and he found his reward in the unprecedented benefits which his locomotive was even then conferring upon his fellow-men. It is indeed wonderful to think how very different is the England in which we live to-day, from that in which we might possibly have been living were it not for the barefooted little collier boy who made clay models of engines at Wylam, and who grew at last into the great and famous engineer of the marvellous Liverpool and Manchester railway. The main characteristic of George Stephenson was perseverance; and it was that perseverance that enabled him at last to carry out his magnificent schemes in the face of so much bitter and violent opposition. III. JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR. In most cases, the working man who raises himself to wealth and position, does so by means of trade, which is usually the natural outgrowth of his own special handicraft or calling. If he attains, not only to riches, but to distinction as well, it is in general by mechanical talent, the direction of the mind being naturally biased by the course of one's own ordinary occupations. England has been exceptionally rich in great engineers and inventive geniuses of such humble origin--working men who have introduced great improvements in manufactures or communications; and our modern English civilization has been immensely influenced by the lives of these able and successful mechanical toilers. From Brindley, the constructor of the earliest great canal, to Joseph Gillott, the inventor of the very steel pen with which this book is written; from Arkwright the barber who fashioned the first spinning-machine, to Crompton the weaver, whose mule gave rise to the mighty Manchester cotton trade; from Newcomen, who made the first rough attempt at a steam-engine, to Stephenson, who sent the iron horse from end to end of the land,--the chief mechanical improvements in the country have almost all been due to the energy, intelligence, and skill of our labouring population. The English mind is intensely practical, and the English working man, for the last two centuries at least, has been mainly distinguished for his great mechanical aptitude, bursting out, here and there, in exceptional persons, under the form of exceedingly high inventive genius. At our very doors, however, there is a small nation of largely different blood and of wholly different speech from our own; a nation forming a part of our own kingdom, even more closely than the Scotch or the Irish, and yet in some respects further from us in mind and habit of life than either; a nation marked rather by the poetical and artistic, than by the mechanical and practical temperament--the ancient and noble Welsh people. It would hardly be reasonable to expect from the Welsh exactly the same kind of success in life which we often find in English workmen; the aims and ideals of the two races are so distinct, and it must be frankly confessed the advantage is not always on the side of the Englishman. The Welsh peasants, living among their own romantic hills and valleys, speaking their own soft and exquisite language, treasuring their own plaintive and melodious poetry, have grown up with an intense love for beauty and the beautiful closely intwined into the very warp and woof of their inmost natures. They have almost always a natural refinement of manner and delicacy of speech which is unfortunately too often wanting amongst our rougher English labouring classes, especially in large towns. They are intensely musical, producing a very large proportion of the best English singers and composers. They are fond of literature, for which they have generally some natural capacity, and in which they exercise themselves to an extent unknown, probably, among people of their class in any other country. At the local meetings of bards (as they call themselves) in Wales, it is not at all uncommon to hear that the first prize for Welsh poetry has been carried off by a shepherd, and the first prize for Welsh prose composition by a domestic servant. In short, the susceptibilities of the race run rather toward art and imagination, than toward mere money-making and practical ingenuity. John Gibson, sculptor, of Rome, as he loved to call himself, was a remarkable embodiment, in many ways, of this self-respecting, artistic, ideal Welsh peasant temperament. In a little village near Conway, in North Wales, there lived at the end of the last century a petty labouring market gardener of the name of Gibson, who knew and spoke no other tongue than his native Welsh. In 1790, his wife gave birth to a son whom they christened John, and who grew up, a workman's child, under the shadow of the great castle, and among the exquisite scenery of the placid land-locked Conway river. John Gibson's parents, like the mass of labouring Welsh people, were honest, God-fearing folk, with a great earnestness of principle, a profound love of truth, and a hatred of all mean or dirty actions. They brought up the boy in these respects in the way he should go; and when he was old he indeed did not depart from them. Throughout his life, John Gibson was remarkable for his calm, earnest, straightforward simplicity, a simplicity which seemed almost childish to those who could not understand so grand and uncommon and noble a nature as his. From his babyhood, almost, the love of art was innate in the boy; and when he was only seven years old, he began to draw upon a slate a scene that particularly pleased him--a line of geese sailing upon the smooth glassy surface of a neighbouring pond. He drew them as an ordinary child almost always does draw--one goose after another, in profile, as though they were in procession, without any attempt at grouping or perspective in any way. His mother praised the first attempt, saying to him in Welsh, "Indeed, Jack, this is very like the geese;" and Jack, encouraged by her praise, decided immediately to try again. But not being an ordinary child, he determined this time to do better; he drew the geese one behind the other as one generally sees them in actual nature. His mother then asked him to draw a horse; and "after gazing long and often upon one," he says, "I at last ventured to commit him to the slate." When he had done so, the good mother was even more delighted. So, to try his childish art, she asked him to put a rider on the horse's back. Jack went out once more, "carefully watched men on horseback," and then returning, made his sketch accordingly. In this childish reminiscence one can see already the first workings of that spirit which made Gibson afterwards into the greatest sculptor of all Europe. He didn't try even then to draw horse or man by mere guess-work; he went out and studied the subject at first hand. There are in that single trait two great elements of success in no matter what line of life--supreme carefulness, and perfect honesty of workmanship. When Jack was nine years old, his father determined to emigrate to America, and for that purpose went to Liverpool to embark for the United States. But when he had got as far as the docks, Mrs. Gibson, good soul, frightened at the bigness of the ships (a queer cause of alarm), refused plumply ever to put her foot on one of them. So her husband, a dutiful man with a full sense of his wife's government upon him, consented unwillingly to stop in Liverpool, where he settled down to work again as a gardener. Hitherto, Jack and his brothers had spoken nothing but Welsh; but at Liverpool he was put to school, and soon learned to express himself correctly and easily in English. Liverpool was a very different place for young Jack Gibson from Conway: there were no hills and valleys there, to be sure, but there were shops--such shops! all full of the most beautiful and highly coloured prints and caricatures, after the fashion of the days when George IV. was still Prince Regent. All his spare time he now gave up to diligently copying the drawings which he saw spread out in tempting array before him in the shop-windows. Flattening his little nose against the glass panes, he used to look long and patiently at a single figure, till he had got every detail of its execution fixed firmly on his mind's eye; and then he would go home hastily and sketch it out at once while the picture was still quite fresh in his vivid memory. Afterwards he would return to the shop-window, and correct his copy by the original till it was completely finished. No doubt the boy did all this purely for his own amusement; but at the same time he was quite unconsciously teaching himself to draw under a very careful and accurate master--himself. Already, however, he found his paintings had patrons, for he sold them when finished to the other boys; and once he got as much as sixpence for a coloured picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps--"the largest sum," he says brightly in his memoirs long after, "I had yet received for a work of art." Opportunities always arise for those who know how to use them. Little Jack Gibson used to buy his paper and colours at a stationer's in Liverpool, who one day said to him kindly, "My lad, you're a constant customer here: I suppose you're a painter." "Yes, sir," Jack answered, with childish self-complacency, "I do paint." The stationer, who had himself studied at the Royal Academy, asked him to bring his pictures on view; and when Jack did so, his new friend, Mr. Tourmeau, was so much pleased with them that he lent the boy drawings to copy, and showed him how to draw for himself from plaster casts. These first amateur lessons must have given the direction to all Gibson's later life: for when the time came for him to choose a trade, he was not set to till the ground like his father, but was employed at once on comparatively artistic and intelligent handicraft. Jack was fourteen when his father apprenticed him to a firm of cabinet-makers. For the first year, he worked away contentedly at legs and mouldings; but as soon as he had learnt the rudiments of the trade he persuaded his masters to change his indentures, and let him take the more suitable employment of carving woodwork for ornamental furniture. He must have been a good workman and a promising boy, one may be sure, or his masters would never have countenanced such a revolutionary proceeding on the part of a raw apprentice. Young Gibson was delighted with his new occupation, and pursued it so eagerly that he carved even during his leisure hours from plaster casts. But after another year, as ill-luck or good fortune would have it, he happened to come across a London marble-cutter, who had come down to Liverpool to carve flowers in marble for a local firm. The boy was enchanted with his freer and more artistic work; when the marble-cutter took him over a big yard, and showed him the process of modelling and cutting, he began to feel a deep contempt for his own stiff and lifeless occupation of wood-carving. Inspired with the desire to learn this higher craft, he bought some clay, took it home, and moulded it for himself after all the casts he could lay his hands on. Mr. Francis, the proprietor of the marble works, had a German workman in his employ of the name of Luge, who used to model small figures, chiefly, no doubt, for monumental purposes. Young Gibson borrowed a head of Bacchus that Luge had composed, and made a copy of it himself in clay. Mr. Francis was well pleased with this early attempt, and also with a clever head of Mercury in marble, which Gibson carved in his spare moments. The more the lad saw of clay and marble, the greater grew his distaste for mere woodwork. At last, he determined to ask Mr. Francis to buy out his indentures from the cabinet-makers, and let him finish his apprenticeship as a sculptor. But unfortunately the cabinet-makers found Gibson too useful a person to be got rid of so easily: they said he was the most industrious lad they had ever had; and so his very virtues seemed as it were to turn against him. Not so, really: Mr. Francis thought so well of the boy that he offered the masters L70 to be quit of their bargain; and in the end, Gibson himself having made a very firm stand in the matter, he was released from his indentures and handed over finally to Mr. Francis and a sculptor's life. And now the eager boy was at last "truly happy." He had to model all day long, and he worked away at it with a will. Shortly after he went to Mr. Francis's yard, a visitor came upon business, a magnificent-looking old man, with snowy hair and Roman features. It was William Roscoe, the great Liverpool banker, himself a poor boy who had risen, and who had found time not only to build up for himself an enormous fortune, but also to become thoroughly well acquainted with literature and art by the way. Mr. Roscoe had written biographies of Lorenzo de Medici, the great Florentine, and of Leo X., the art-loving pope; and throughout his whole life he was always deeply interested in painting and sculpture and everything that related to them. He was a philanthropist, too, who had borne his part bravely in the great struggle for the abolition of the slave trade; and to befriend a struggling lad of genius like John Gibson was the very thing that was nearest and dearest to his benevolent heart. Mr. Francis showed Roscoe the boy's drawings and models; and Roscoe's appreciative eye saw in them at once the visible promise of great things to be. He had come to order a chimney-piece for his library at Allerton, where his important historical works were all composed; and he determined that the clever boy should have a chief hand in its production. A few days later he returned again with a valuable old Italian print. "I want you to make a bas-relief in baked clay," he said to Gibson, "from this print for the centre of my mantelpiece." Gibson was overjoyed. The print was taken from a fresco of Raphael's in the Vatican at Rome, and Gibson's work was to reproduce it in clay in low relief, as a sculpture picture. He did so entirely to his new patron's satisfaction, and this his first serious work is now duly preserved in the Liverpool Institution which Mr. Roscoe had been mainly instrumental in founding. Roscoe had a splendid collection of prints and drawings at Allerton; and he invited the clever Welsh lad over there frequently, and allowed him to study them all to his heart's content. To a lad like John Gibson, such an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo was a great and pure delight. Before he was nineteen, he began to think of a big picture which he hoped to paint some day; and he carried it out as well as he was able in his own self-taught fashion. For as yet, it must be remembered, Gibson had had no regular artistic instruction: there was none such, indeed, to be had at all in Liverpool in his day; and there was no real art going on in the town in any way. Mr. Francis, his master, was no artist; nor was there anybody at the works who could teach him: for as soon as Mr. Francis found out the full measure of Gibson's abilities, he dismissed his German artist Luge, and put the clever boy entirely in his place. At this time, Gibson was only receiving six shillings a week as wages; but Mr. Francis got good prices for many of his works, and was not ashamed even to put his own name upon the promising lad's artistic performances. Mr. Roscoe did not merely encourage the young sculptor; he set him also on the right road for ultimate success. He urged Gibson to study anatomy, without which no sculpture worthy of the name is possible. Gibson gladly complied, for he knew that Michael Angelo had been a great anatomist, and Michael was just at that moment the budding sculptor's idol and ideal. But how could he learn? A certain Dr. Vose was then giving lectures on anatomy to young surgeons at Liverpool, and on Roscoe's recommendation he kindly admitted the eager student gratis to his dissecting-room. Gibson dissected there with a will in all his spare moments, and as he put his mind into the work he soon became well versed in the construction of the human body. From the day that Gibson arrived at man's estate, the great dream of his life was to go to Rome. For Rome is to art what London is to industry--the metropolis in its own way of the entire earth. But travelling in 1810 cost a vast deal of money; and the poor Liverpool marble-cutter (for as yet he was really nothing more) could hardly hope to earn the immense sum that such an expedition would necessarily cost him. So for six years more he went on working at Liverpool in his own native untaught fashion, doing his best to perfect himself, but feeling sadly the lack of training and competition. One of the last works he executed while still in Mr. Francis's service was a chimney-piece for Sir John Gladstone, father of the future premier. Sir John was so pleased with the execution, that he gave the young workman ten pounds as a present. But in spite of occasional encouragement like this, Gibson felt himself at Liverpool, as he says, "chained down by the leg, and panting for liberation." In 1817, when he was just twenty-seven, he determined to set off to London. He took with him good introductions from Mr. Roscoe to Mr. Brougham (afterwards Lord Chancellor), to Christie, the big picture-dealer, and to several other influential people. Later on, Roscoe recommended him to still more important leaders in the world of art--Flaxman the great sculptor, Benjamin West, the Quaker painter and President of the Royal Academy, and others of like magnitude. Mr. Watson Taylor, a wealthy art patron, gave Gibson employment, and was anxious that he should stop in London. But Gibson wanted more than employment; he wanted to _learn_, to perfect himself, to become great in his art. He could do that nowhere but at Rome, and to Rome therefore he was determined to go. Mr. Taylor still begged him to wait a little. "Go to Rome I will," Gibson answered boldly, "even if I have to go there on foot." He was not quite reduced to this heroic measure, however, for his Liverpool friends made up a purse of L150 for him (we may be sure it was repaid later on); and with that comparatively large sum in his pocket the young stone-cutter started off gaily on his continental tour, from which he was not to return for twenty-seven years. He drove from Paris to Rome, sharing a carriage with a Scotch gentleman; and when he arrived in the Pope's city (as it then was) he knew absolutely not a single word of Italian, or of any other language on earth save Welsh and English. In those days, Canova, the great Venetian sculptor, was the head of artistic society in Rome; and as _all_ society in Rome is more or less artistic, he might almost be said to have led the whole life of the great and lively city. Indeed, the position of such a man in Italy resembles far more that of a duke in England than of an artist as we here are accustomed to think of him. Gibson had letters of introduction to this prince of sculptors from his London friends; and when he went to present them, he found Canova in his studio, surrounded by his numerous scholars and admirers. The Liverpool stone-cutter had brought a few of his drawings with him, and Canova examined them with great attention. Instinctively he recognized the touch of genius. When he had looked at them keenly for a few minutes, he turned kindly to the trembling young man, and said at once, "Come to me alone next week, for I want to have a talk with you." On the appointed day, Gibson, quivering with excitement, presented himself once more at the great master's studio. Canova was surrounded as before by artists and visitors; but in a short time he took Gibson into a room by himself, and began to speak with him in his very broken English. Many artists came to Rome, he said, with very small means, and that perhaps might be Gibson's case. "Let me have the gratification, then," he went on, "of assisting you to prosecute your studies. I am rich. I am anxious to be of use to you. Let me forward you in your art as long as you stay in Rome." Gibson replied, with many stammerings, that he hoped his slender means would suffice for his personal needs, but that if Canova would only condescend to give him instruction, to make him his pupil, to let him model in his studio, he would be eternally grateful. Canova was one of the most noble and lovable of men. He acceded at once to Gibson's request, and Gibson never forgot his kind and fatherly assistance. "Dear generous master," the Welsh sculptor wrote many years after, when Canova had long passed away, "I see you before me now. I hear your soft Venetian dialect, and your kindly words inspiring my efforts and gently correcting my defects. My heart still swells with grateful recollection of you." Canova told his new pupil to devote a few days first to seeing the sights of Rome; but Gibson was impatient to begin at once. "I shall be at your studio to-morrow morning," the ardent Welshman said; and he kept his word. Canova, pleased with so much earnestness and promptitude, set him to work forthwith upon a clay model from his own statue of the Pugilist. Gibson went to the task with a will, moulding the clay as best he could into shape; but he still knew so little of the technical ways of regular sculptors that he tried to model this work from the clay alone, though its pose was such that it could not possibly hold together without an iron framework. Canova saw his error and smiled, but let him go on so that he might learn his business by experience. In a day or two the whole thing, of course, collapsed by its own weight; and then Canova called in a blacksmith and showed the eager beginner how the mechanical skeleton was formed with iron bars, and interlacing crosses of wood and wire. This was quite a new idea to Gibson, who had modelled hitherto only in his own self-taught fashion with moist clay, letting it support its own weight as best it might. Another pupil then fleshed out the iron skeleton with clay, and roughly shaped it to the required figure, so that it stood as firm as a rock for Gibson to work upon. The new hand turned to vigorously once more; and, in spite of his seeming rawness, finished the copy so well that Canova admitted him at once to the Academy to model from life. At this Academy Canova himself, who loved art far more than money, used to attend twice a week to give instruction to students without receiving any remuneration whatsoever. It is of such noble men as this that the world of art is largely made up--that world which we too-practical English have always undervalued or even despised. Gibson's student period at Rome under Canova was a very happy episode in a uniformly happy and beautiful life. His only trouble was that he had not been able to come there earlier. Singularly free from every taint of envy (like all the great sculptors of his time), he could not help regretting when he saw other men turning out work of such great excellence while he was still only a learner. "When I observed the power and experience of youths much younger than myself," he says in his generous appreciative fashion, "their masterly manner of sketching in the figure, and their excellent imitation of nature, my spirits fell many degrees, and I felt humbled and unhappy." He need not have done so, for the man who thus distrusts his own work is always the truest workman; it is only fools or poor creatures who are pleased and self-satisfied with their own first bungling efforts. But the great enjoyment of Rome to Gibson consisted in the free artistic society which he found there. At Liverpool, he had felt almost isolated; there was hardly anybody with whom he could talk on an equality about his artistic interests; nobody but himself cared about the things that pleased and engrossed his earnest soul the most. But at Rome, there was a great society of artists; every man's studio was open to his friends and fellow-workers; and a lively running fire of criticism went on everywhere about all new works completed or in progress. He was fortunate, too, in the exact moment of his residence: Rome then contained at once, besides himself, the two truest sculptors of the present century, Canova the Venetian, and Thorwaldsen the Dane. Both these great masters were singularly free from jealousy, rivalry, or vanity. In their perfect disinterestedness and simplicity of character they closely resembled Gibson himself. The ardent and pure-minded young Welshman, who kept himself so unspotted from the world in his utter devotion to his chosen art, could not fail to derive an elevated happiness from his daily intercourse with these two noble and sympathetic souls. After Gibson had been for some time in Canova's studio, his illustrious master told him that the sooner he took to modelling a life-size figure of his own invention, the better. So Gibson hired a studio (with what means he does not tell us in his short sketch of his own life) close to Canova's, so that the great Venetian was able to drop in from time to time and assist him with his criticism and judgment. How delightful is the friendly communion of work implied in all this graceful artistic Roman life! How different from the keen competition and jealous rivalry which too often distinguishes our busy money-getting English existence! In 1819, two years after Gibson's arrival at Rome, he began to model his Mars and Cupid, a more than life-size group, on which he worked patiently and lovingly for many months. When it was nearly finished, one day a knock came at the studio door. After the knock, a handsome young man entered, and announced himself brusquely as the Duke of Devonshire. "Canova sent me," he said, "to see what you were doing." Gibson wasn't much accustomed to dukes in those days--he grew more familiar with them later on--and we may be sure the poor young artist's heart beat a little more fiercely than usual when the stranger asked him the price of his Mars and Cupid in marble. The sculptor had never yet sold a statue, and didn't know how much he ought to ask; but after a few minutes' consideration he said, "Five hundred pounds. But, perhaps," he added timidly, "I have said too much." "Oh no," the duke answered, "not at all too much;" and he forthwith ordered (or, as sculptors prefer to say, commissioned) the statue to be executed for him in marble. Gibson was delighted, and ran over at once to tell Canova, thinking he had done a splendid stroke of business. Canova shared his pleasure, till the young man came to the price; then the older sculptor's face fell ominously. "Five hundred pounds!" he cried in dismay; "why, it won't cover the cost of marble and workmanship." And so indeed it turned out; for when the work was finished, it had stood Gibson in L520 for marble and expenses, and left him twenty pounds out of pocket in the end. So he got less than nothing after all for his many months of thought and labour over clay and marble alike. Discouraging as this beginning must have proved, it was nevertheless in reality the first important step in a splendid and successful career. It is something to have sold your first statue, even if you sell it at a disadvantage. In 1821 Gibson modelled a group of Pysche and the Zephyrs. That winter Sir George Beaumont, himself a distinguished amateur artist, and a great patron of art, came to Rome; and Canova sent him to see the young Welshman's new composition. Sir George asked the price, and Gibson, this time more cautious, asked for time to prepare an estimate, and finally named L700. To his joy, Sir George immediately ordered it, and also introduced many wealthy connoisseurs to the rising sculptor's studio. That same winter, also, the Duke of Devonshire came again, and commissioned a bas-relief in marble (which is now at Chatsworth House, with many other of Gibson's works), at a paying price, too, which was a great point for the young man's scanty exchequer. Unfortunately, Gibson has not left us any notice of how he managed to make both ends meet during this long adult student period at Rome. Information on that point would indeed be very interesting; but so absorbed was the eager Welshman always in his art, that he seldom tells us anything at all about such mere practical every-day matters as bread and butter. To say the truth, he cared but little about them. Probably he had lived in a very simple penurious style during his whole studenthood, taking his meals at a _caffe_ or eating-house, and centering all his affection and ideas upon his beloved studio. But now wealth and fame began to crowd in upon him, almost without the seeking. Visitors to Rome began to frequent the Welshman's rooms, and the death of "the great and good Canova," which occurred in 1822, while depriving Gibson of a dearly loved friend, left him, as it were, that great master's successor. Towards him and Thorwaldsen, indeed, Gibson always cherished a most filial regard. "May I not be proud," he writes long after, "to have known such men, to have conversed with them, watched all their proceedings, heard all their great sentiments on art? Is it not a pleasure to be so deeply in their debt for instruction?" And now the flood of visitors who used to flock to Canova's studio began to transfer their interest to Gibson's. Commission after commission was offered him, and he began to make money faster than he could use it. His life had always been simple and frugal--the life of a working man with high aims and grand ideals: he hardly knew now how to alter it. People who did not understand Gibson used to say in his later days that he loved money, because he made much and spent little. Those who knew him better say rather that he worked much for the love of art, and couldn't find much to do with his money when he had earned it. He was singularly indifferent to gain; he cared not what he eat or drank; he spent little on clothes, and nothing on entertainments; but he paid his workmen liberally or even lavishly; he allowed one of his brothers more than he ever spent upon himself, and he treated the other with uniform kindness and generosity. The fact is, Gibson didn't understand money, and when it poured in upon him in large sums, he simply left it in the hands of friends, who paid him a very small percentage on it, and whom he always regarded as being very kind to take care of the troublesome stuff on his account. In matters of art, Gibson was a great master; in matters of business, he was hardly more than a simple-minded child. Sometimes queer incidents occurred at Gibson's studio from the curious ignorance of our countrymen generally on the subject of art. One day, a distinguished and wealthy Welsh gentleman called on the sculptor, and said that, as a fellow Welshman, he was anxious to give him a commission. As he spoke, he cast an admiring eye on Gibson's group of Psyche borne by the Winds. Gibson was pleased with his admiration, but rather taken aback when the old gentleman said blandly, "If you were to take away the Psyche and put a dial in the place, it'd make a capital design for a clock." Much later, the first Duke of Wellington called upon him at Rome and ordered a statue of Pandora, in an attitude which he described. Gibson at once saw that the Duke's idea was a bad one, and told him so. By-and-by, on a visit to England, Gibson waited on the duke, and submitted photographs of the work he had modelled. "But, Mr. Gibson," said the old soldier, looking at them curiously, "you haven't followed my idea." "No," answered the sculptor, "I have followed _my own_." "You are very stubborn," said Wellington. "Duke," answered the sturdy sculptor, "I am a Welshman, and all the world knows that we are a stubborn race." The Iron Duke ought to have been delighted to find another man as unbending as himself, but he wasn't; and in the end he refused the figure, which Gibson sold instead to Lady Marian Alford. For twenty-seven years Gibson remained at Rome, working assiduously at his art, and rising gradually but surely to the very first place among then living sculptors. His studio now became the great centre of all fashionable visitors to Rome. Still, he made no effort to get rich, though he got rich without wishing it; he worked on merely for art's sake, not for money. He would not do as many sculptors do, keep several copies in marble of his more popular statues for sale; he preferred to devote all his time to new works. "Gibson was always absorbed in one subject," says Lady Eastlake, "and that was the particular work or part of a work--were it but the turn of a corner of drapery--which was then under his modelling hands. Time was nothing to him; he was long and fastidious." His favourite pupil, Miss Hosmer, once expressed regret to him that she had been so long about a piece of work on which she was engaged. "Always try to do the best you can," Gibson answered. "Never mind how long you are upon a work--no. No one will ask how long you have been, except fools. You don't care what fools think." During his long life at Rome, he was much cheered by the presence and assistance of his younger brother, Mr. Ben, as he always called him, who was also a sculptor, though of far less merit than John Gibson himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in whom the family genius had degenerated into mere eccentricity, never did anything for his own livelihood, but lived always upon John Gibson's generous bounty. In John's wealthy days, he and Mr. Ben used to escape every summer from the heat and dust of Rome--which is unendurable in July and August--to the delightfully cool air and magnificent mountain scenery of the Tyrol. "I cannot tell you how well I am," he writes on one of these charming visits, "and so is Mr. Ben. Every morning we take our walks in the woods here. I feel as if I were new modelled." Another passage in one of these summer tourist letters well deserves to be copied here, as it shows the artist's point of view of labours like Telford's and Stephenson's. "From Bormio," he says, "the famous road begins which passes over the Stelvio into the Tyrol; the highest carriage-road in the world. We began the ascent early in the morning. It is magnificent and wonderful. Man shows his talents, his power over great difficulties, in the construction of these roads. Behold the cunning little workman--he comes, he explores, and he says, 'Yes, I will send a carriage and horses over these mighty mountains;' and, by Jove, you are drawn up among the eternal snows. I am a great admirer of these roads." In 1844 Gibson paid his first visit to England, a very different England indeed to the one he had left twenty-seven years earlier. His Liverpool friends, now thoroughly proud of their stone-cutter, insisted upon giving him a public banquet. Glasgow followed the same example; and the simple-minded sculptor, unaccustomed to such honours, hardly knew how to bear his blushes decorously upon him. During this visit, he received a command to execute a statue of the queen. Gibson was at first quite disconcerted at such an awful summons. "I don't know how to behave to queens," he said. "Treat her like a lady," said a friend; and Gibson, following the advice, found it sufficiently answered all the necessities of the situation. But when he went to arrange with the Prince Consort about the statue, he was rather puzzled what he should do about measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the fashionable gown of the day, or men in swallow-tail coats and high collars. Another work which Gibson designed during this visit possesses for us a singular and exceptional interest. It was a statue of George Stephenson, to be erected at Liverpool. Thus, by a curious coincidence, the Liverpool stone-cutter was set to immortalize the features and figure of the Killingworth engine-man. Did those two great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter, know one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder? Perhaps not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of union between them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired Stephenson, just as he had admired the Stelvio road. "I will endeavour to give him a look capable of action and energy," he said; "but he must be contemplative, grave, simple. He is a good subject. I wish to make him look like an Archimedes." If Gibson admired Stephenson, however, he did not wholly admire Stephenson's railways. The England he had left was the England of mail-coaches. In Italy, he had learnt to travel by carriage, after the fashion of the country; but these new whizzing locomotives, with their time-tables, and their precision, and their inscrutable mysteries of shunts and junctions, were quite too much for his simple, childish, old-world habits. He had a knack of getting out too soon or too late, which often led him into great confusion. Once, when he wanted to go to Chichester, he found himself landed at Portsmouth, and only discovered his mistake when, on asking the way to the cathedral, he was told there was no cathedral in the town at all. Another story of how he tried to reach Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's place, is best told in his own words. "The train soon stopped at a small station, and, seeing some people get out, I also descended; when, in a moment, the train moved on--faster and faster--and left me standing on the platform. I walked a few paces backward and forward in disagreeable meditation. 'I wish to Heaven,' thought I to myself, 'that I was on my way back to Rome with a postboy.' Then I observed a policeman darting his eyes upon me, as if he would look me through. Said I to the fellow, 'Where is that cursed train gone to? It's off with my luggage and here am I.' The man asked me the name of the place where I took my ticket. 'I don't remember,' said I. 'How should I know the name of any of these places?--it's as long as my arm. I've got it written down somewhere.' 'Pray, sir,' said the man, after a little pause, 'are you a foreigner?' 'No,' I replied, 'I am not a foreigner; I'm a sculptor.'" The consequence of this almost childish carelessness was that Gibson had always to be accompanied on his long journeys either by a friend or a courier. While Mr. Ben lived, he usually took his brother in charge to some extent; and the relation between them was mutual, for while John Gibson found the sculpture, Mr. Ben found the learning, so that Gibson used often to call him "my classical dictionary." In 1847, however, Mr. Ben was taken ill. He got a bad cold, and would have no doctor, take no medicine. "I consider Mr. Ben," his brother writes, "as one of the most amiable of human beings--too good for this world--but he will take no care against colds, and when ill he is a stubborn animal." That summer Gibson went again to England, and when he came back found Mr. Ben no better. For four years the younger brother lingered on, and in 1851 died suddenly from the effects of a fall in walking. Gibson was thus left quite alone, but for his pupil Miss Hosmer, who became to him more than a daughter. During his later years Gibson took largely to tinting his statues--colouring them faintly with flesh-tones and other hues like nature; and this practice he advocated with all the strength of his single-minded nature. All visitors to the great Exhibition of 1862 will remember his beautiful tinted Venus, which occupied the place of honour in a light temple erected for the purpose by another distinguished artistic Welshman, Mr. Owen Jones, who did much towards raising the standard of taste in the English people. In January, 1866, John Gibson had a stroke of paralysis, from which he never recovered. He died within the month, and was buried in the English cemetery at Rome. Both his brothers had died before him; and he left the whole of his considerable fortune to the Royal Academy in England. An immense number of his works are in the possession of the Academy, and are on view there throughout the year. John Gibson's life is very different in many respects from that of most other great working men whose story is told in this volume. Undoubtedly, he was deficient in several of those rugged and stern qualities to which English working men have oftenest owed their final success. But there was in him a simple grandeur of character, a purity of soul, and an earnestness of aim which raised him at once far above the heads of most among those who would have been the readiest to laugh at and ridicule him. Besides his exquisite taste, his severe love of beauty, and his marvellous power of expressing the highest ideals of pure form, he had one thing which linked him to all the other great men whose lives we have here recounted--his steadfast and unconquerable personal energy. In one sense it may be said that he was not a practical man; and yet in another and higher sense, what could possibly be more practical than this accomplished resolve of the poor Liverpool stone-cutter to overcome all obstacles, to go to Rome, and to make himself into a great sculptor? It is indeed a pity that in writing for Englishmen of the present day such a life should even seem for a moment to stand in need of a practical apology. For purity, for guilelessness, for exquisite appreciation of the true purpose of sculpture as the highest embodiment of beauty of form, John Gibson's art stands unsurpassed in all the annals of modern statuary. IV. WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN. Old Isaac Herschel, the oboe-player of the King's Guard in Hanover, had served with his regiment for many years in the chilly climate of North Germany, and was left at last broken down in health and spirits by the many hardships of several severe European campaigns. Isaac Herschel was a man of tastes and education above his position; but he had married a person in some respects quite unfitted for him. His good wife, Anna, though an excellent housekeeper and an estimable woman in her way, had never even learned to write; and when the pair finally settled down to old age in Hanover, they were hampered by the cares of a large family of ten children. Respectable poverty in Germany is even more pressing than in England; the decent poor are accustomed to more frugal fare and greater privations than with us; and the domestic life of the Herschel family circle must needs have been of the most careful and penurious description. Still, Isaac Herschel dearly loved his art, and in it he found many amends and consolations for the sordid shifts and troubles of a straitened German household. All his spare time was given to music, and in his later days he was enabled to find sufficient pupils to eke out his little income with comparative comfort. William Herschel, the great astronomer (born in 1738), was the fourth child of his mother, and with his brothers he was brought up at the garrison school in Hanover, together with the sons of the other common soldiers. There he learned, not only the three R's, but also a little French and English. Still, the boy was not content with these ordinary studies; in his own playtime he took lessons in Latin and mathematics privately with the regimental schoolmaster. The young Herschels, indeed, were exceptionally fortunate in the possession of an excellent and intelligent father, who was able to direct their minds into channels which few people of their position in life have the opportunity of entering. Isaac Herschel was partly of Jewish descent, and he inherited in a marked degree two very striking Jewish gifts--a turn for music, and a turn for philosophy. The Jews are probably the oldest civilized race now remaining on earth; and their musical faculties have been continuously exercised from a time long before the days of David, so that now they produce undoubtedly a far larger proportion of musicians and composers than any other class of the population whatsoever. They are also deeply interested in the same profound theological and philosophical problems which were discussed with so much acuteness and freedom in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subtle argument of Job and his friends. There has never been a time when the Jewish mind has not exercised itself profoundly on these deep and difficult questions; and the Hanover bandsman inherited from his Jewish ancestry an unusual interest in similar philosophical subjects. Thus, while the little ones were sleeping in the same common room at night, William and his father were often heard discussing the ideas of such abstruse thinkers as Newton and Leibnitz, whose names must have sounded strange indeed to the ordinary frequenters of the Hanover barracks. On such occasions good dame Herschel was often compelled to interpose between them, lest the loudness of their logic should wake the younger children in the crib hard by. William, however, possessed yet another gift, which he is less likely to have derived from the Jewish side of the house. He and his brother Alexander were both distinguished by a natural taste for mechanics, and early gave proof of their learning by turning neat globes with the equator and ecliptic accurately engraved upon them, or by making model instruments for their own amusement out of bits of pasteboard. Thus, in early opportunities and educational advantages, the young Herschels certainly started in life far better equipped than most working men's sons; and, considering their father's doubtful position, it may seem at first sight rather a stretch of language to describe him as a working man at all. Nevertheless, when one remembers the humble grade of military bandsmen in Germany, even at the present day, and the fact that most of the Herschel family remained in that grade during all their lives, it is clear that William Herschel's life may be fairly included within the scope of the present series. "In my fifteenth year," he says himself, "I enlisted in military service," and he evidently looked upon his enlistment in exactly the same light as that of any ordinary soldier. England and Hanover were, of course, very closely connected together at the middle of the last century. The king moved about a great deal from one country to the other; and in 1755 the regiment of Hanoverian Guards was ordered on service to England for a year. William Herschel, then seventeen years of age, and already a member of the band, went together with his father; and it was in this modest capacity that he first made acquaintance with the land where he was afterwards to attain the dignity of knighthood and the post of the king's astronomer. He played the oboe, like his father before him, and no doubt underwent the usual severe military discipline of that age of stiff stocks and stern punishments. His pay was very scanty, and out of it he only saved enough to carry home one memento of his English experiences. That memento was in itself a sufficient mark of the stuff from which young Herschel was compounded. It was a copy of "Locke on the Human Understanding." Now, Locke's famous work, oftener named than read, is a very tough and serious bit of philosophical exposition; and a boy of seventeen who buys such a book out of his meagre earnings as a military bandsman is pretty sure not to end his life within the four dismal bare walls of the barrack. It is indeed a curious picture to imagine young William Herschel, among a group of rough and boisterous German soldiers, discussing high mathematical problems with his father, or sitting down quietly in a corner to read "Locke on the Human Understanding." In 1757, during the Seven Years' War, Herschel was sent with his regiment to serve in the campaign of Rossbach against the French. He was not physically strong, and the hardships of active service told terribly upon the still growing lad. His parents were alarmed at his appearance when he returned, and were very anxious to "remove" him from the service. That, however, was by no means an easy matter for them to accomplish. They had no money to buy his discharge, and so, not to call the transaction by any other than its true name, William Herschel was forced to run away from the army. We must not judge too harshly of this desertion, for the times were hard, and the lives of men in Herschel's position were valued at very little by the constituted authorities. Long after, it is said, when Herschel had distinguished himself by the discovery of the planet Uranus, a pardon for this high military offence was duly handed to him by the king in person on the occasion of his first presentation. George III. was not a particularly wise or brilliant man; but even he had sense enough to perceive that William Herschel could serve the country far better by mapping out the stars of heaven than by playing the oboe to the royal regiment of Hanoverian Guards. William was nineteen when he ran away. His good mother packed his boxes for him with such necessaries as she could manage, and sent them after him to Hamburg, but, to the boy's intense disgust, she forgot to send the copy of "Locke on the Human Understanding." What a sturdy deserter we have here, to be sure! "She, dear woman," he says plaintively, "knew no other wants than good linen and clothing!" So William Herschel the oboe player started off alone to earn his living as best he might in the great world of England. It is strange he should have chosen that, of all European countries; for there alone he was liable to be arrested as a deserter: but perhaps his twelvemonth's stay in London may have given him a sense of being at home amongst us which he would have lacked in any other part of Europe. At any rate, hither he came, and for the next three years picked up a livelihood, we know not how, as many other excellent German bandsmen have done before and since him. Our information about his early life is very meagre, and at this period we lose sight of him for a while altogether. About the year 1760, however, we catch another incidental glimpse of the young musician in his adopted country. By that time, he had found himself once more a regular post as oboist to the Durham militia, then quartered for its muster at Pontefract. A certain Dr. Miller, an organist at Doncaster, was dining one evening at the officers' mess; when his host happened to speak to him in high praise of a young German they had in their band, who was really, he said, a most remarkable and spirited performer. Dr. Miller asked to see (or rather hear) this clever musician; so Herschel was called up, and made to go through a solo for the visitor's gratification. The organist was surprised at his admirable execution, and asked him on what terms he was engaged to the Durham militia. "Only from month to month," Herschel answered. "Then leave them at the end of your month," said Miller, "and come to live with me. I'm a single man; I think we can manage together; and I'm sure I can get you a better situation." Herschel frankly accepted the offer so kindly made, and seems to have lived for much of the next five years with Miller in his little two-roomed cottage at Doncaster. Here he took pupils and performed in the orchestra at public concerts, always in a very quiet and modest fashion. He also lived for part of the time with a Mr. Bulman at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in William Herschel's character that to the end he was constantly engaged in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less energetic or less fortunate members of his own family. During these years, Herschel also seems to have given much attention to the organ, which enabled him to make his next step in life in 1765, when he was appointed organist at Halifax. Now, there is a great social difference between the position of an oboe-player in a band and a church organist; and it was through his organ-playing that Herschel was finally enabled to leave his needy hand-to-mouth life in Yorkshire. A year later, he obtained the post of organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath, an engagement which gave him new opportunities of turning his mind to the studies for which he possessed a very marked natural inclination. Bath was in those days not only the most fashionable watering-place in England, but almost the only fashionable watering-place in the whole kingdom. It was, to a certain extent, all that Brighton, Scarborough, Buxton, and Harrogate are to-day, and something more. In our own time, when railways and steamboats have so altered the face of the world, the most wealthy and fashionable English society resorts a great deal to continental pleasure towns like Cannes, Nice, Florence, Vichy, Baden, Ems, and Homburg; but in the eighteenth century it resorted almost exclusively to Bath. The Octagon Chapel was in one sense the centre of life in Bath; and through his connection with it, Herschel was thrown into a far more intelligent and learned society than that which he had left behind him in still rural Yorkshire. New books came early to Bath, and were read and discussed in the reading-rooms; famous men and women came there, and contributed largely to the intellectual life of the place; the theatre was the finest out of London; the Assembly Rooms were famous as the greatest resort of wit and culture in the whole kingdom. Herschel here was far more in his element than in the barracks of Hanover, or in the little two-roomed cottage at rustic Doncaster. He worked very hard indeed, and his work soon brought him comfort and comparative wealth. Besides his chapel services, and his later engagement in the orchestra of the Assembly Rooms, he had often as many as thirty-eight private pupils in music every week; and he also composed a few pieces, which were published in London with some modest success. Still, in spite of all these numerous occupations, the eager young German found a little leisure time to devote to self-education; so much so that, after a fatiguing day of fourteen or sixteen hours spent in playing the organ and teaching, he would "unbend his mind" by studying the higher mathematics, or give himself a lesson in Greek and Italian. At the same time, he was also working away at a line of study, seemingly useless to him, but in which he was afterwards to earn so great and deserved a reputation. Among the books he read during this Bath period were Smith's "Optics" and Lalande's "Astronomy." Throughout all his own later writings, the influence of these two books, thoroughly mastered by constant study in the intervals of his Bath music lessons, makes itself everywhere distinctly felt. Meanwhile, the family at Hanover had not been flourishing quite so greatly as the son William was evidently doing in wealthy England. During all those years, the young man had never forgotten to keep up a close correspondence with his people in Germany. Already, in 1764, during his Yorkshire days, William Herschel had managed out of his savings as an oboe-player to make a short trip to his old home; and his sister Carolina, afterwards his chief assistant in his astronomical labours, notes with pleasure the delight she felt in having her beloved brother with her once more, though she, poor girl, being cook to the household apparently, could only enjoy his society when she was not employed "in the drudgery of the scullery." A year later, when William had returned to England again, and had just received his appointment as organist at Halifax, his father, Isaac, had a stroke of paralysis which ended his violin-playing for ever, and forced him to rely thenceforth upon copying music for a precarious livelihood. In 1767 he died, and poor Carolina saw before her in prospect nothing but a life of that domestic drudgery which she so disliked. "I could not bear the idea of being turned into a housemaid," she says; and she thought that if only she could take a few lessons in music and fancy work she might get "a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel, like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father could do was to indulge me sometimes with a short lesson on the violin when my mother was either in good humour or out of the way. It was her certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his country, and my eldest brother would not have looked so high, if they had had a little less learning." Poor, purblind, well-meaning, obstructive old dame Herschel! what a boon to the world that children like yours are sometimes seized with this incomprehensible fancy for "looking too high"! Nevertheless, Carolina managed by rising early to take a few lessons at daybreak from a young woman whose parents lived in the same cottage with hers; and so she got through a little work before the regular daily business of the family began at seven. Imagine her delight then, just as the difficulties after her father's death are making that housemaid's place seem almost inevitable, when she gets a letter from William at Bath, asking her to come over to England and join him at that gay and fashionable city. He would try to prepare her for singing at his concerts; but if after two years' trial she didn't succeed, he would take her back again to Hanover himself. In 1772, indeed, William in person came over to fetch her, and thenceforth the brother and sister worked unceasingly together in all their undertakings to the day of the great astronomer's death. About this time Herschel had been reading Ferguson's "Astronomy," and felt very desirous of seeing for himself the objects in the heavens, invisible to the naked eye, of which he there found descriptions. For this purpose he must of course have a telescope. But how to obtain one? that was the question. There was a small two-and-a-half foot instrument on hire at one of the shops at Bath; and the ambitious organist borrowed this poor little glass for a time, not merely to look through, but to use as a model for constructing one on his own account. Buying was impossible, of course, for telescopes cost much money: but making would not be difficult for a determined mind. He had always been of a mechanical turn, and he was now fired with a desire to build himself a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long. He sent to London for the lenses, which could not be bought at Bath; and Carolina amused herself by making a pasteboard tube to fit them in her leisure hours. It was long before he reached twenty feet, indeed: his first effort was a seven-foot, attained only "after many continuous determined trials." The amateur pasteboard frame did not fully answer Herschel's expectations, so he was obliged to go in grudgingly for the expense of a tin tube. The reflecting mirror which he ought to have had proved too dear for his still slender purse, and he thus had to forego it with much regret. But he found a man at Bath who had once been in the mirror-polishing line; and he bought from him for a bargain all his rubbish of patterns, tools, unfinished mirrors and so forth, with which he proceeded to experiment on the manufacture of a proper telescope. In the summer, when the season was over, and all the great people had left Bath, the house, as Carolina says ruefully, "was turned into a workshop." William's younger brother Alexander was busy putting up a big lathe in a bedroom, grinding glasses and turning eyepieces while in the drawing-room itself, sacred to William's aristocratic pupils, a carpenter, sad to relate, was engaged in making a tube and putting up stands for the future telescopes. Sad goings on, indeed, in the family of a respectable music-master and organist! Many a good solid shopkeeper in Bath must no doubt have shaken his grey head solemnly as he passed the door, and muttered to himself that that young German singer fellow was clearly going on the road to ruin with his foolish good-for-nothing star-gazing. In 1774, when William Herschel was thirty-six, he had at last constructed himself a seven-foot telescope, and began for the first time in his life to view the heavens in a systematic manner. From this he advanced to a ten-foot, and then to one of twenty, for he meant to see stars that no astronomer had ever yet dreamt of beholding. It was comparatively late in life to begin, but Herschel had laid a solid foundation already, and he was enabled therefore to do an immense deal in the second half of those threescore years and ten which are the allotted average life of man, but which he himself really overstepped by fourteen winters. As he said long afterwards with his modest manner to the poet Campbell, "I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me; I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two millions of years to reach this earth." That would have been a grand thing for any man to be able truthfully to say under any circumstances: it was a marvellous thing for a man who had laboured under all the original disadvantages of Herschel--a man who began life as a penniless German bandsman, and up to the age of thirty-six had never even looked through a telescope. At this time, Herschel was engaged in playing the harpsichord in the orchestra of the theatre; and it was during the interval between the acts that he made his first general survey of the heavens. The moment his part was finished, he would rush out to gaze through his telescope; and in these short periods he managed to observe all the visible stars of what are called the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes. Henceforth he went on building telescope after telescope, each one better than the last; and now all his glasses were ground and polished either by his own hand or by his brother Alexander's. Carolina meanwhile took her part in the workshop; but as she had also to sing at the oratorios, and her awkward German manners might shock the sensitive nerves of the Bath aristocrats, she took two lessons a week for a whole twelvemonth (she tells us in her delightfully straightforward fashion) "from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing mistress, to drill me for a gentlewoman." Poor Carolina, there she was mistaken: Miss Fleming could make her into no gentlewoman, for she was born one already, and nothing proves it more than the perfect absence of false shame with which in her memoirs she tells us all these graphic little details of their early humble days. While they were thus working at Bath an incident occurred which is worth mentioning because it shows the very different directions in which the presence or the want of steady persistence may lead the various members of the very self-same family. William received a letter from his widowed mother at Hanover to say, in deep distress, that Dietrich, the youngest brother, had run away from home, it was supposed for the purpose of going to India, "with a young idler no older than himself." Forthwith, the budding astronomer left the lathe where he was busy turning an eye-piece from a cocoa-nut shell, and, like a good son and brother as he always was, hurried off to Holland and thence to Hanover. No Dietrich was anywhere to be found. But while he was away, Carolina at Bath received a letter from Dietrich himself, to tell her ruefully he was "laid up very ill" at a waterside tavern in Wapping--not the nicest or most savoury East End sailor-suburb of London. Alexander immediately took the coach to town, put the prodigal into a decent lodging, nursed him carefully for a fortnight, and then took him down with him in triumph to the family home at Bath. There brother William found him safe and sound on his return, under the sisterly care of good Carolina. A pretty dance he had led the two earnest and industrious astronomers; but they seem always to have treated this black sheep of the family with uniform kindness, and long afterwards Sir William remembered him favourably in his last will. In 1779 and the succeeding years the three Herschels were engaged during all their spare time in measuring the heights of about one hundred mountains in the moon, which William gauged by three different methods. In the same year, he made an acquaintance of some importance to him, as forming his first introduction to the wider world of science in London and elsewhere. Dr. Watson, a Fellow of the Royal Society, happened to see him working at his telescope; and this led to a visit from the electrician to the amateur astronomer. Dr. Watson was just then engaged in getting up a Philosophical Society at Bath (a far rarer institution at that time in a provincial town than now), and he invited William Herschel to join it. Here Herschel learned for the first time to mix with those who were more nearly his intellectual equals, and to measure his strength against other men's. It was in 1781 that Herschel made the great discovery which immediately established his fame as an astronomer, and enabled him to turn from conducting concerts to the far higher work of professionally observing the stars. On the night of Tuesday, March 13th, Herschel was engaged in his usual systematic survey of the sky, a bit at a time, when his telescope lighted among a group of small fixed stars upon what he at first imagined to be a new comet. It proved to be no comet, however, but a true planet--a veritable world, revolving like our own in a nearly circular path around the sun as centre, though far more remote from it than the most distant planet then known, Saturn. Herschel called his new world the _Georgium Sidus_ (King George's star) in honour of the reigning monarch; but it has since been known as Uranus. Astronomers all over Europe were soon apprised of this wonderful discovery, and the path of the freshly found planet was computed by calculation, its distance from the sun being settled at nineteen times that of our own earth. In order faintly to understand the importance attached at the time to Herschel's observation of this very remote and seemingly petty world, we must remember that up to that date all the planets which circle round our own sun had been familiarly known to everybody from time immemorial. To suggest that there was yet another world belonging to our system outside the path of the furthest known planet would have seemed to most people like pure folly. Since then, we have grown quite accustomed to the discovery of a fresh small world or two every year, and we have even had another large planet (Neptune), still more remote than Herschel's Uranus, added to the list of known orbs in our own solar system. But in Herschel's day, nobody had ever heard of a new planet being discovered since the beginning of all things. A hundred years before, an Italian astronomer, it is true, had found out four small moons revolving round Saturn, besides the big moon then already known; but for a whole century, everybody believed that the solar system was now quite fully explored, and that nothing fresh could be discovered about it. Hence Herschel's observation produced a very different effect from, say, the discovery of the two moons which revolve round Mars, in our own day. Even people who felt no interest in astronomy were aroused to attention. Mr. Herschel's new planet became the talk of the town and the subject of much admiring discussion in the London newspapers. Strange, indeed, that an amateur astronomer of Bath, a mere German music-master, should have hit upon a planet which escaped the sight even of the king's own Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Of course there were not people wanting who ascribed this wonderful discovery of Herschel's to pure chance. If he hadn't just happened to turn his telescope in that particular direction on that particular night, he wouldn't have seen this _Georgium Sidus_ they made such a fuss about at all. Quite so. And if he hadn't built a twenty-foot telescope for himself, he wouldn't have turned it anywhere at any time. But Herschel himself knew better. "This was by no means the result of chance," he said; "but a simple consequence of the position of the planet on that particular evening, since it occupied precisely that spot in the heavens which came in the order of the minute observations that I had previously mapped out for myself. Had I not seen it just when I did, I must inevitably have come upon it soon after, since my telescope was so perfect that I was able to distinguish it from a fixed star in the first minute of observation." Indeed, when once Herschel's twenty-foot telescope was made, he could not well have failed in the long run to discover Uranus, as his own description of his method clearly shows. "When I had carefully and thoroughly perfected the great instrument in all its parts," he says, "I made a systematic use of it in my observation of the heaven, first forming a determination never to pass by any, the smallest, portion of them without due investigation. This habit, persisted in, led to the discovery of the new planet (_Georgium Sidus_)." As well might one say that a skilled mining surveyor, digging for coal, came upon the seam by chance, as ascribe to chance the necessary result of such a careful and methodical scrutiny as this. Before the year was out, the ingenious Mr. Herschel of Bath was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was also presented with the Copley gold medal. From this moment all the distinguished people in Bath were anxious to be introduced to the philosophical music-master; and, indeed, they intruded so much upon his time that the daily music lessons were now often interrupted. He was soon, however, to give up lessons for ever, and devote himself to his more congenial and natural work in astronomy. In May, 1782, he went up to London, to be formally admitted to his Fellowship of the Royal Society. There he stayed so long that poor Carolina was quite frightened. It was "double the time which my brother could safely be absent from his scholars." The connection would be broken up, and the astronomy would be the ruin of the family. (A little of good old dame Herschel's housewifely leaven here, perhaps.) But William's letters from London to "Dear Lina" must soon have quieted her womanly fears. William had actually been presented to the king, and "met with a very gracious reception." He had explained the solar system to the king and queen, and his telescope was to be put up first at Greenwich and then at Richmond. The Greenwich authorities were delighted with his instrument; they have seen what Herschel calls "_my_ fine double stars" with it. "All my papers are printing," he tells Lina with pardonable pride, "and are allowed to be very valuable." But he himself is far from satisfied as yet with the results of his work. Evidently no small successes in the field of knowledge will do for William Herschel. "Among opticians and astronomers," he writes to Lina, "nothing now is talked of but _what they call_ my great discoveries. Alas! this shows how far they are behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are called _great_. Let me but get at it again! I will make such telescopes and see such things!" Well, well, William Herschel, in that last sentence we get the very keynote of true greatness and true genius. But must he go back quietly to Bath and the toils of teaching? "An intolerable waste of time," he thought it. The king happily relieved him from this intolerable waste. He offered Herschel a salary of L200 a year if he would come and live at Datchet, and devote himself entirely to astronomical observations. It was by no means a munificent sum for a king to offer for such labour; but Herschel gladly accepted it, as it would enable him to give up the interruption of teaching, and spend all his time on his beloved astronomy. His Bath friend, Sir William Watson, exclaimed when he heard of it, "Never bought monarch honour so cheap." Herschel was forty-three when he removed to Datchet, and from that day forth he lived almost entirely in his observatory, wholly given up to his astronomical pursuits. Even when he had to go to London to read his papers before the Royal Society, he chose a moonlight night (when the stars would be mostly invisible), so that it might not interfere with his regular labours. Poor Carolina was horrified at the house at Datchet, which seemed terribly desolate and poor, even to her modest German ideas; but William declared his willingness to live permanently and cheerfully upon "eggs and bacon" now that he was at last free to do nothing on earth but observe the heavens. Night after night he and Carolina worked together at their silent task--he noting the small features with his big telescope, she "sweeping for comets" with a smaller glass or "finder." Herschel could have had no more useful or devoted assistant than his sister, who idolized him with all her heart. Alexander, too, came to stay with them during the slack months at Bath, and then the whole strength of the family was bent together on their labour of love in gauging the heavens. But what use was it all? Why should they wish to go star-gazing? Well, if a man cannot see for himself what use it was, nobody else can put the answer into him, any more than they could put into him a love for nature, or for beauty, or for art, or for music, if he had it not to start with. What is the good of a great picture, a splendid oratorio, a grand poem? To the man who does not care for them, nothing; to the man who loves them, infinite. It is just the same with science. The use of knowledge to a mind like Herschel's is the mere possession of it. With such as he, it is a love, an object of desire, a thing to be sought after for its own sake; and the mere act of finding it is in itself purely delightful. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." So, to such a man as Herschel, that peaceful astronomer life at Datchet was indeed, in the truest sense of those much-abused words, "success in life." If you had asked some vulgar-minded neighbour of the great Sir William in his later days whether the astronomer had been a successful man or not, he would doubtless have answered, after his kind, "Certainly. He has been made a knight, has lands in two counties, and has saved L35,000." But if you had asked William Herschel himself, he would probably have said, with his usual mixture of earnestness and humility, "Yes, I have been a very fortunate man in life. I have discovered Uranus, and I have gauged all the depths of heaven, as none before ever gauged them, with my own great telescope." Still, those who cannot sympathize with the pure love of knowledge for its own sake--one of the highest and noblest of human aims--should remember that astronomy is also of immense practical importance to mankind, and especially to navigation and commerce. Unless great astronomical calculations were correctly performed at Greenwich and elsewhere, it would be impossible for any ship or steamer to sail with safety from England to Australia or America. Every defect in our astronomical knowledge helps to wreck our vessels on doubtful coasts; every advance helps to save the lives of many sailors and the cargoes of many merchants. It is this practical utility of astronomy that justifies the spending of national money on observatories and transits of Venus, and it is the best apology for an astronomer's life to those who do not appreciate the use of knowledge for its own beauty. At Datchet, Herschel not only made several large telescopes for sale, for which he obtained large prices, but he also got a grant of L2000 from the king to aid him in constructing his huge forty-foot instrument. It was here, too, in 1783, that Herschel married. His wife was a widow lady of scientific tastes like his own, and she was possessed of considerable means, which enabled him henceforth to lay aside all anxiety on the score of money. They had but one child, a son, afterwards Sir John Herschel, almost as great an astronomer as his father had been before him. In 1785, the family moved to Clay Hall, in Old Windsor, and in 1786 to Slough, where Herschel lived for the remainder of his long life. How completely his whole soul was bound up in his work is shown in the curious fact recorded for us by Carolina Herschel. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping the sky with the great glass till daylight; and by the next evening the telescope stood ready for observations once more in the new home at Slough. To follow Herschel through the remainder of his life would be merely to give a long catalogue of his endless observations and discoveries among the stars. Such a catalogue would be interesting only to astronomers; yet it would truly give the main facts of Herschel's existence in his happy home at Slough. Honoured by the world, dearly loved in his own family, and engrossed with a passionate affection for his chosen science, the great astronomer and philosopher grew grey in peace under his own roof, in the course of a singularly placid and gentle old age. In 1802 he laid before the Royal Society a list of five thousand new stars, star-clusters, or other heavenly bodies which he had discovered, and which formed the great body of his personal additions to astronomical knowledge. The University of Oxford made him Doctor of Laws, and very late in life he was knighted by the king--a too tardy acknowledgment of his immense services to science. To the very last, however, he worked on with a will; and, indeed, it is one of the great charms of scientific interest that it thus enables a man to keep his faculties on the alert to an advanced old age. In 1819, when Herschel was more than eighty, he writes to his sister a short note--"Lina, there is a great comet. I want you to assist me. Come to dine and spend the day here. If you can come soon after one o'clock, we shall have time to prepare maps and telescopes. I saw its situation last night. It has a long tail." How delightful to find such a living interest in life at the age of eighty! On the 25th of August, 1822, this truly great and simple man passed away, in his eighty-fifth year. It has been possible here only to sketch out the chief personal points in his career, without dwelling much upon the scientific importance of his later life-long labours; but it must suffice to say briefly upon this point that Herschel's work was no mere mechanical star-finding; it was the most profoundly philosophical astronomical work ever performed, except perhaps Newton's and Laplace's. Among astronomers proper there has been none distinguished by such breadth of grasp, such wide conceptions, and such perfect clearness of view as the self-taught oboe-player of Hanover. V. JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, PAINTER. There is no part of France so singularly like England, both in the aspect of the country itself and in the features and character of the inhabitants, as Normandy. The wooded hills and dales, the frequent copses and apple orchards, the numerous thriving towns and villages, the towers and steeples half hidden among the trees, recall at every step the very similar scenery of our own beautiful and fruitful Devonshire. And as the land is, so are the people. Ages ago, about the same time that the Anglo-Saxon invaders first settled down in England, a band of similar English pirates, from the old common English home by the cranberry marshes of the Baltic, drove their long ships upon the long rocky peninsula of the Cotentin, which juts out, like a French Cornwall, from the mainland of Normandy up to the steep cliffs and beetling crags of busy Cherbourg. There they built themselves little hamlets and villages of true English type, whose very names to this day remind one of their ancient Saxon origin. Later on, the Danes or Northmen conquered the country, which they called after their own name, Normandy, that is to say, the Northmen's land. Mixing with the early Saxon or English settlers, and with the still more primitive Celtic inhabitants, the Northmen founded a race extremely like that which now inhabits our own country. To this day, the Norman peasants of the Cotentin retain many marks of their origin and their half-forgotten kinship with the English race. While other Frenchmen are generally dark and thick-set, the Norman is, as a rule, a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed man, not unlike in build to our Yarmouth fisherman, or our Kentish labourers. In body and mind, there is something about him even now which makes him seem more nearly akin to us than the true Frenchmen who inhabit almost all the rest of France. In the village of Gruchy, near Greville, in this wild and beautiful region of the Cotentin, there lived at the beginning of the present century a sturdy peasant family of the name of Millet. The father of the family was one of the petty village landholders so common in France; a labourer who owned and tilled his own tiny patch of farm, with the aid of his wife and children. We have now no class in England exactly answering to the French peasant proprietors, who form so large and important an element in the population just across the Channel. The small landholder in France belongs by position to about the same level as our own agricultural labourer, and in many ways is content with a style of dress and a mode of living against which English labourers would certainly protest with horror. And yet, he is a proprietor, with a proprietor's sense of the dignity of his position, and an ardent love of his own little much-subdivided corner of agricultural land. On this he spends all his energies, and however many children he may have, he will try to make a livelihood for all by their united labour out of the soil, rather than let one of them go to seek his fortune by any other means in the great cities. Thus the ground is often tilled up to an almost ridiculous extent, the entire labour of the family being sometimes expended in cultivating, manuring, weeding, and tending a patch of land perhaps hardly an acre in size. It is quite touching to see the care and solicitude with which these toilsome peasants will laboriously lay out their bit of garden with fruits or vegetables, making every line almost mathematically regular, planting every pea at a measured distance, or putting a smooth flat pebble under every strawberry on the evenly ridged-up vines. It is only in the very last resort that the peasant proprietor will consent to let one of his daughters go out to service, or send one of his sons adrift to seek his fortune as an artisan in the big, unknown, outer world. Millet the elder, however, had nine children, which is an unusually large number for a French peasant family (where the women ordinarily marry late in life); and his little son Jean Francois (the second child and eldest boy), though set to weed and hoe upon the wee farm in his boyhood, was destined by his father for some other life than that of a tiller of the soil. He was born in the year before Waterloo--1814--and was brought up on his father's plot of land, in the hard rough way to which peasant children in France are always accustomed. Bronzed by sun and rain, poorly clad, and ill-fed, he acquired as a lad, from the open air and the toilsome life he led, a vigour of constitution which enabled him to bear up against the numerous hardships and struggles of his later days. "A Norman Peasant," he loved to call himself always, with a certain proud humility; and happily he had the rude health of one all his life long. Hard as he worked, little Francois' time was not entirely taken up with attending to the fields or garden. He was a studious boy, and learned not only to read and write in French, but also to try some higher flights, rare indeed for a lad of his position. His family possessed remarkable qualities as French peasants go; and one of his great-uncles, a man of admirable strength of character, a priest in the days of the great Revolution, had braved the godless republicans of his time, and though deprived of his cure, and compelled to labour for his livelihood in the fields, had yet guided the plough in his priestly garments. His grandmother first taught him his letters; and when she had instructed him to the length of reading any French book that was put before him, the village priest took him in hand. In France, the priest comes often from the peasant class, and remains in social position a member of that class as long as he lives. But he always possesses a fair knowledge of Latin, the language in which all his religious services are conducted; and this knowledge serves as a key to much that his unlearned parishioners could never dream of knowing. Young Millet's parish priest taught him as much Latin as he knew himself; and so the boy was not only able to read the Bible in the Latin or Vulgate translation, but also to make acquaintance with the works of Virgil and several others of the great Roman poets. He read, too, the beautiful "Confessions" of St. Augustine, and the "Lives of the Saints," which he found in his father's scanty library, as well as the works of the great French preachers, Bossuet and Fenelon. Such early acquaintance with these and many other masterpieces of higher literature, we may be sure, helped greatly to mould the lad's mind into that grand and sober shape which it finally acquired. Jean Francois' love of art was first aroused by the pictures in an old illustrated Bible which belonged to his father, and which he was permitted to look at on Sundays and festivals. The child admired these pictures immensely, and asked leave to be permitted to copy them. The only time he could find for the purpose, however, was that of the mid-day rest or siesta. It is the custom in France, as in Southern Europe generally, for labourers to cease from work for an hour or so in the middle of the day; and during this "tired man's holiday," young Millet, instead of resting, used to take out his pencil and paper, and try his hand at reproducing the pictures in the big Bible. His father was not without an undeveloped taste for art: "See," he would say, looking into some beautiful combe or glen on the hillside--"see that little cottage half buried in the trees; how beautiful it is! I think it ought to be drawn so--;" and then he would make a rough sketch of it on some scrap of paper. At times he would model things with a bit of clay, or cut the outline of a flower or an animal with his knife on a flat piece of wood. This unexercised talent Francois inherited in a still greater degree. As time went on, he progressed to making little drawings on his own account; and we may be sure the priest and all the good wives of Gruchy had quite settled in their own minds before long that Jean Francois Millet's hands would be able in time to paint quite a beautiful altar-piece for the village church. By-and-by, when the time came for Francois to choose a trade, he being then a big lad of about nineteen, it was suggested to his father that young Millet might really make a regular painter--that is to say, an artist. In France, the general tastes of the people are far more artistic than with us; and the number of painters who find work for their brushes in Paris is something immensely greater than the number in our own smoky, money-making London. So there was nothing very remarkable, from a French point of view, in the idea of the young peasant turning for a livelihood to the profession of an artist. But Millet's father was a sober and austere man, a person of great dignity and solemnity, who decided to put his son's powers to the test in a very regular and critical fashion. He had often watched Francois drawing, and he thought well of the boy's work. If he had a real talent for painting, a painter he should be; if not, he must take to some other craft, where he would have the chance of making himself a decent livelihood. So he told Francois to prepare a couple of drawings, which he would submit to the judgment of M. Mouchel, a local painter at Cherbourg, the nearest large town, and capital of the department. Francois duly prepared the drawings, and Millet the elder went with his son to submit them in proper form for M. Mouchel's opinion. Happily, M. Mouchel had judgment enough to see at a glance that the drawings possessed remarkable merit. "You must be playing me a trick," he said; "that lad could never have made these drawings." "I saw him do them with my own eyes," answered the father warmly. "Then," said Mouchel, "all I can say is this: he has in him the making of a great painter." He accepted Millet as his pupil; and the young man set off for Cherbourg accordingly, to study with care and diligence under his new master. Cherbourg, though not yet at that time a great naval port, as it afterwards became, was a busy harbour and fishing town, where the young artist saw a great deal of a kind of life with which he possessed an immense sympathy. The hard work of the fishermen putting out to sea on stormy evenings, or toiling with their nets ashore after a sleepless night, made a living picture which stamped itself deeply on his receptive mind. A man of the people himself, born to toil and inured to it from babyhood, this constant scene of toiling and struggling humanity touched the deepest chord in his whole nature, so that some of the most beautiful and noble of his early pictures are really reminiscences of his first student days at Cherbourg. But after he had spent a year in Mouchel's studio, sad news came to him from Gruchy. His father was dying, and Francois was only just in time to see him before he passed away. If the family was to be kept together at all, Francois must return from his easel and palette, and take once more to guiding the plough. With that earnest resolution which never forsook him, Millet decided to accept the inevitable. He went back home once more, and gave up his longings for art in order to till the ground for his fatherless sisters. Luckily, however, his friends at Gruchy succeeded after awhile in sending him back again to Cherbourg, where he began to study under another master, Langlois, and to have hopes once more for his artistic future, now that he was free at last to pursue it in his own way. At this time, he read a great deal--Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Byron, Goethe's "Faust," Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand; in fact, all the great works he could lay his hands upon. Peasant as he was, he gave himself, half unconsciously, a noble education. Very soon, it became apparent that the Cherbourg masters could do nothing more for him, and that, if he really wished to perfect himself in art, he must go to Paris. In France, the national interest felt in painting is far greater and more general than in England. Nothing is commoner than for towns or departments to grant pensions (or as we should call them, scholarships) to promising lads who wish to study art in Paris. Young Millet had attracted so much attention at Cherbourg, that the Council General of the Department of the Manche voted him a present of six hundred francs (about L24) to start him on the way; and the town of Cherbourg promised him an annual grant of four hundred francs more (about L16). So up to Paris Millet went, and there was duly enrolled as a student at the Government "School of Fine Arts." Those student days in Paris were days of hunger and cold, very often, which Millet bore with the steady endurance of a Norman peasant boy. But they were also days of something worse to him--of effort misdirected, and of constant struggling against a system for which he was not fitted. In fact, Millet was an original genius, whereas the teachers at the School of Fine Arts were careful and methodical rule-of-thumb martinets. They wished to train Millet into the ordinary pattern, which he could not follow; and in the end, he left the school, and attached himself to the studio of Paul Delaroche, then the greatest painter of historical pictures in all Paris. But even Delaroche, though an artist of deep feeling and power, did not fully understand his young Norman pupil. He himself used to paint historical pictures in the grand style, full of richness and beauty; but his subjects were almost always chosen from the lives of kings or queens, and treated with corresponding calmness and dignity. "The Young Princes in the Tower," "The Execution of Marie Antoinette," "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," "Cromwell viewing the Body of Charles I."--these were the kind of pictures on which Delaroche loved to employ himself. Millet, on the other hand, though also full of dignity and pathos, together with an earnestness far surpassing Delaroche's, did not care for these lofty subjects. It was the dignity and pathos of labour that moved him most; the silent, weary, noble lives of the uncomplaining peasants, amongst whom his own days had been mostly passed. Delaroche could not make him out at all; he was such a curious, incomprehensible, odd young fellow! "There, go your own way, if you will," the great master said to him at last; "for my part, I can make nothing of you." So, shortly after, Millet and his friend Marolle set up a studio for themselves in the Rue de l'Est in Paris. The precise occasion of their going was this. Millet was anxious to obtain the Grand Prize of Rome annually offered to the younger artists, and Delaroche definitely told him that his own influence would be used on behalf of another pupil. After this, the young Norman felt that he could do better by following out his own genius in his own fashion. At the Rue de l'Est, he continued to study hard, but he also devoted a large part of his time to painting cheap portraits--what artists call "pot-boilers;" mere hasty works dashed off anyhow to earn his daily livelihood. For these pictures he got about ten to fifteen francs apiece,--in English money from eight to twelve shillings. They were painted in a theatrical style, which Millet himself detested--all pink cheeks, and red lips, and blue satin, and lace collars; whereas his own natural style was one of great austerity and a certain earnest sombreness the exact reverse of the common Parisian taste to which he ministered. However, he had to please his patrons--and, like a sensible man, he went on producing these cheap daubs to any extent required, for a living, while he endeavoured to perfect himself meanwhile for the higher art he was meditating for the future. In the great galleries of the Louvre at Paris he found abundant models which he could study in the works of the old masters; and there, poring over Michael Angelo and Mantegna, he could recompense himself a little in his spare hours for the time he was obliged to waste on pinky-white faces and taffeta gowns. To an artist by nature there is nothing harder than working perforce against the bent of one's own innate and instinctive feelings. In 1840, Millet found his life in Paris still so hard that he seemed for a time inclined to give up the attempt, and returned to Greville, where he painted a marine subject of the sort that was dearest to his heart--a group of sailors mending a sail. Shortly after, however, he was back in Paris--the record of these years of hard struggle is not very clear--with his wife, a Cherbourg girl whom he had imprudently married while still barely able to support himself in the utmost poverty. It was not till 1844 that the hard-working painter at last achieved his first success. It was with a picture of a milkwoman, one of his own favourite peasant subjects; and the poetry and sympathy which he had thrown into so commonplace a theme attracted the attention of many critics among the cultivated Parisian world of art. The "Milkwoman" was exhibited at the Salon (the great annual exhibition of works of art in Paris, like that of the Royal Academy in London, but on a far larger scale); and several good judges of art began immediately to inquire, "Who is Jean Francois Millet?" Hunting his address out, a party of friendly critics presented themselves at his lodgings, only to learn that Madame Millet had just died, and that her husband, half in despair, had gone back again once more to his native Norman hills and valleys. But Millet was the last man on earth to sit down quietly with his hands folded, waiting for something or other to turn up. At Cherbourg, he set to work once more, no doubt painting more "pot-boilers" for the respectable shop-keepers of the neighbourhood--complacent portraits, perhaps, of a stout gentleman with a large watch-chain fully displayed, and of a stout lady in a black silk dress and with a vacant smile; and by hook or by crook he managed to scrape together a few hundred francs, with which once more he might return to Paris. But before he did so, he married again, this time more wisely. His wife, Catharine Lemaire, was a brave and good woman, who knew how to appreciate her husband, and to second him well in all his further struggles and endeavours. They went for a while to Havre, where Millet, in despair of getting better work, and not ashamed of doing anything honest to pay his way, actually took to painting sign-boards. In this way he saved money enough to make a fresh start in Paris. There, he continued his hard battle against the taste of the time; for French art was then dominated by the influence of men like Delaroche, or like Delacroix and Horace Vernet, who had accustomed the public to pictures of a very lofty, a very romantic, or a very fiery sort; and there were few indeed who cared for stern and sympathetic delineations of the French peasant's unlovely life of unremitting toil, such as Millet loved to set before them. Yet, in spite of discouragement, he did well to follow out this inner prompting of his own soul; for in that direction he could do his best work--and the best work is always the best worth doing in the long run. There are some minds, of which Franklin's is a good type, so versatile and so shifty that they can turn with advantage to any opening that chances to offer, no matter in what direction; and such minds do right in seizing every opportunity, wherever it occurs. But there are other minds, of which Gibson and Millet are excellent examples, naturally restricted to certain definite lines of thought or work; and such minds do right in persistently following up their own native talent, and refusing to be led aside by circumstances into any less natural or less promising channel. While living in Paris at this time, Millet painted several of his favourite peasant pictures, amongst others "The Workman's Monday," which is a sort of parallel in painting to Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" in poetry. Indeed, there is a great deal in Millet which strongly reminds one at every step of Burns. Both were born of the agricultural labouring class; both remained peasants at heart, in feelings and sympathies, all their lives long; neither was ashamed of his origin, even in the days of his greatest fame; painter and poet alike loved best to choose their themes from the simple life of the poor whose trials and hardships they knew so well by bitter experience; and in each case they succeeded best in touching the hearts of others when they did not travel outside their own natural range of subjects. Only (if Scotchmen will allow one to say so) there was in Millet a far deeper vein of moral earnestness than in Burns; he was more profoundly impressed by the dignity and nobility of labour; in his tender sympathy there was a touch of solemn grandeur which was wanting in the too genial and easy-going Ayrshire ploughman. In 1848, the year of revolutions, Millet painted his famous picture of "The Winnower," since considered as one of his finest works. Yet for a long time, though the critics praised it, it could not find a purchaser; till at last M. Ledru Rollin, a well-known politician, bought it for what Millet considered the capital price of five hundred francs (about L20). It would now fetch a simply fabulous price, if offered for sale. Soon after this comparative success Millet decided to leave Paris, where the surroundings indeed were little fitted to a man of his peculiarly rural and domestic tastes. He would go where he might see the living models of his peasant friends for ever before him; where he could watch them leaning over the plough pressed deep into the earth; cutting the faggots with stout arms in the thick-grown copses; driving the cattle home at milking time with weary feet, along the endless, straight white high-roads of the French rural districts. At the same time, he must be within easy reach of Paris; for though he had almost made up his mind not to exhibit any more at the Salon--people didn't care to see his reapers or his fishermen--he must still manage to keep himself within call of possible purchasers; and for this purpose he selected the little village of Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. The woods of Fontainebleau stand to Paris in somewhat the same relation that Windsor Great Park stands to London; only, the scenery is more forest-like, and the trees are big and antique looking. By the outskirts of this great wood stands the pretty hamlet of Barbizon, a single long street of small peasant cottages, built with the usual French rural disregard of beauty or cleanliness. At the top of the street, in a little three-roomed house, the painter and his wife settled down quietly; and here they lived for twenty-seven years, long after Millet's name had grown to be famous in the history of contemporary French painting. An English critic, who visited the spot in the days of Millet's greatest celebrity, was astonished to find the painter, whom he had come to see, strolling about the village in rustic clothes, and even wearing the _sabots_ or wooden shoes which are in France the social mark of the working classes, much as the smock-frock used once to be in the remoter country districts of England. Perhaps this was a little bit of affectation on Millet's part--a sort of proud declaration of the fact that in spite of fame and honours he still insisted upon counting himself a simple peasant; but if so, it was, after all, a very pretty and harmless affectation indeed. Better to see a man sticking pertinaciously to his wooden shoes, than turning his back upon old friends and old associations in the days of his worldly prosperity. At Barbizon Millet's life moved on so quietly that there is nothing to record in it almost, save a long list of pictures painted, and a gradual growth, not in popularity (for that Millet never really attained at all), but in the esteem of the best judges, which of course brought with it at last, first ease, then comfort, and finally comparative riches. Millet was able now to paint such subjects as pleased him best, and he threw himself into his work with all the fervour of his intensely earnest and poetical nature. Whatever might be the subject which he undertook, he knew how to handle it so that it became instinct with his own fine feeling for the life he saw around him. In 1852 he painted his "Man spreading Manure." In itself, that is not a very exalted or beautiful occupation; but what Millet saw in it was the man not the manure--the toiling, sorrowing, human fellow-being, whose labour and whose spirit he knew so well how to appreciate. And in this view of the subject he makes us all at once sympathize. Other pictures of this period are such as "The Gleaners," "The Reapers," "A Peasant grafting a Tree," "The Potato Planters," and so forth. These were very different subjects indeed from the dignified kings and queens painted by Delaroche, or the fiery battle-pieces of Delacroix; but they touch a chord in our souls which those great painters fail to strike, and his treatment of them is always truthful, tender, melancholy, and exquisite. Bit by bit, French artistic opinion began to recognize the real greatness of the retiring painter at Barbizon. He came to be looked upon as a true artist, and his pictures sold every year for increasingly large prices. Still, he had not been officially recognized; and in France, where everything, even to art and the theatre, is under governmental regulation, this want of official countenance is always severely felt. At last, in 1867, Millet was awarded the medal of the first class, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The latter distinction carries with it the right to wear that little tag of ribbon on the coat which all Frenchmen prize so highly; for to be "decorated," as it is called, is in France a spur to ambition of something the same sort as a knighthood or a peerage in England, though of course it lies within the reach of a far greater number of citizens. There is something to our ideas rather absurd in the notion of bestowing such a tag of ribbon on a man of Millet's aims and occupations; but all honours are honours just according to the estimation of the man who receives them and the society in which he lives; and Millet no doubt prized his admission to the Legion of Honour all the more because it had been so long delayed and so little truckled for. To the end of his days, Millet never left his beloved Barbizon. He stopped there, wandering about the fields, watching peasants at work, imprinting their images firmly upon his eye and brain, and then going home again to put the figures he had thus observed upon his vivid canvas. For, strange to say, unlike almost every other great painter, Millet never painted from a model. Instead of getting a man or woman to sit for him in the pose he required, he would go out into the meadows and look at the men and women at their actual daily occupations; and so keen and acute was his power of observation, and so retentive was his inner eye, that he could then recall almost every detail of action or manner as clearly as if he had the original present in his studio before him. As a rule, such a practice is not to be recommended to any one who wishes to draw with even moderate accuracy; constant study of the actual object, and frequent comparison by glancing from object to copy, are absolutely necessary for forming a correct draughtsman. But Millet knew his own way best; and how wonderfully minute and painstaking must his survey have been when it enabled him to reproduce the picture of a person afterwards in every detail of dress or movement. He did not paint very fast. He preferred doing good work to much work--an almost invariable trait of all the best workmen. During the thirty-one years that he worked independently, he produced only eighty pictures--not more, on an average, than two or three a year. Compared with the rate at which most successful artists cover canvas to sell, this was very slow. But then, Millet did not paint mainly to sell; he painted to satisfy his own strict ideas of what constituted the highest art. His pictures are usually very simple in their theme; take, for example, his "Angelus," painted at the height of his fame, in 1867. A man and a woman are working in the fields--two poor, simple-minded, weather-beaten, devout French peasants. It is nightfall; the bell called the "Angelus" rings out from the church steeple, and the two poor souls, resting for a moment from their labours, devote a few seconds to the silent prayers enjoined by their church. That is all; and yet in that one picture the sorrows, the toils, and the consolations of the needy French peasantry are summed up in a single glimpse of a pair of working and praying partners. Millet died somewhat suddenly in 1875. Strong and hearty as he was, even the sturdy health of the Norman peasant had been undermined by the long hardships of his early struggles, and his constitution gave way at last with comparative rapidity. Still, he had lived long enough to see his fame established, to enjoy ten years of ease and honour, and to find his work cordially admired by all those for whose admiration he could have cared to make an effort. After his death, the pictures and unfinished sketches in his studio were sold for 321,000 francs, a little less than L13,000. The peasant boy of Greville had at last conquered all the difficulties which obstructed his path, and had fought his own way to fame and dignity. And in so fighting, he had steadily resisted the temptation to pander to the low and coarse taste in art of the men by whom he was surrounded. In spite of cold, and hunger, and poverty, he had gone on trying to put upon his canvas the purer, truer, and higher ideas with which his own beautiful soul was profoundly animated. In that endeavour he nobly succeeded. While too many contemporary French pictures are vicious and sensual in tone and feeling, every one of Millet's pictures is a sermon in colour--a thing to make us sympathize more deeply with our kind, and to send us away, saddened perhaps, yet ennobled and purified. VI. JAMES GARFIELD, CANAL BOY. At the present time, the neighbourhood of Cleveland, Ohio, the busiest town along the southern shore of Lake Erie, may fairly rank as one of the richest agricultural districts in all America. But when Abram Garfield settled down in the township of Orange in 1830, it was one of the wildest and most unpeopled woodland regions in the whole of the United States. Pioneers from the older states had only just begun to make little clearings for themselves in the unbroken forest; and land was still so cheap that Abram Garfield was able to buy himself a tract of fifty acres for no more than L20. His brother-in-law's family removed there with him; and the whole strength of the two households was immediately employed in building a rough log hut for their common accommodation, where both the Garfields and the Boyntons lived together during the early days of their occupation. The hut consisted of a mere square box, made by piling logs on top of one another, the spaces between being filled with mud, while the roof was formed of loose stone slabs. Huts of that sort are everywhere common among the isolation of the American backwoods; and isolated indeed they were, for the Garfields' nearest neighbours, when they first set up house, lived as far as seven miles away, across the uncleared forest. When Abram Garfield came to this lonely lodge in the primaeval woodlands, he had one son and one daughter. In 1831, the year after his removal to his new home, a second boy was born into the family, whom his father named James Abram. Before the baby was eighteen months old, the father died, and was buried alone, after the only possible fashion among such solitary settlers, in a corner of the wheat field which he himself had cleared of its stumps. A widow's life is always a hard one, but in such a country and under such conditions it is even harder and more lonely than elsewhere. Mrs. Garfield's eldest boy, Thomas, was only eleven years old; and with the aid of this one ineffectual helper, she managed herself to carry on the farm for many years. Only those who know the hard toil of a raw American township can have any idea what that really means. A farmer's work in America is not like a farmer's work in England. The man who occupies the soil is there at once his own landlord and his own labourer; and he has to contend with nature as nobody in England has had to contend with it for the last five centuries at least. He finds the land covered with trees, which he has first to fell and sell as timber; then he must dig or burn out the stumps; clear the plot of boulders and large stones; drain it, fence it, plough it, and harrow it; build barns for the produce and sheds for the cows; in short, _make_ his farm, instead of merely _taking_ it. This is labour from which many strong men shrink in dismay, especially those who have come out fresh from a civilized and fully occupied land. For a woman and a boy, it is a task that seems almost above their utmost powers. Nevertheless, Mrs. Garfield and her son did not fail under it. With her own hands, the mother split up the young trees into rude triangular rails to make the rough snake fences of the country--mere zigzags of wood laid one bit above the other; while the lad worked away bravely at sowing fall and spring wheat, hoeing Indian corn, and building a little barn for the harvest before the arrival of the long cold Ohio winter. To such a family did the future President originally belong; and with them he must have shared those strong qualities of perseverance and industry which more than anything else at length secured his ultimate success in life. For James Garfield's history differs greatly in one point from that of most other famous working men, whose stories have been told in this volume. There is no reason to believe that he was a man of exceptional or commanding intellect. On the contrary, his mental powers appear to have been of a very respectable but quite ordinary and commonplace order. It was not by brilliant genius that James Garfield made his way up in life; it was rather by hard work, unceasing energy, high principle, and generous enthusiasm for the cause of others. Some of the greatest geniuses among working men, such as Burns, Tannahill, and Chatterton, though they achieved fame, and though they have enriched the world with many touching and beautiful works, must be considered to have missed success in life, so far as their own happiness was concerned, by their unsteadiness, want of self-control, or lack of fixed principle. Garfield, on the other hand, was not a genius; but by his sterling good qualities he nevertheless achieved what cannot but be regarded as a true success, and left an honourable name behind him in the history of his country. However poor an American township may be, it is seldom too poor to afford its children a moderate and humble education. While James Garfield was still very young, the settlers in the neighbourhood decided to import a schoolmaster, whom they "boarded about" between them, after a fashion very common in rural western districts. The school-house was only a log hut; the master was a lad of twenty; and the textbooks were of the very meagrest sort. But at least James Garfield was thus enabled to read and write, which after all is the great first step on the road to all possible promotion. The raw, uncouth Yankee lad who taught the Ohio boys, slept at Widow Garfield's, with Thomas and James; and the sons of the neighbouring settlers worked on the farm during the summer months, but took lessons when the long ice and snow of winter along the lake shore put a stop almost entirely for the time to their usual labours. James continued at school till he was twelve years old, and then, his brother Thomas (being by that time twenty-one) went away by agreement still further west to Michigan, leaving young Jim to take his place upon the little farm. The fences were all completed by this time; the barn was built, the ground was fairly brought under cultivation, and it required comparatively little labour to keep the land cropped after the rough fashion which amply satisfies American pioneers, with no rent to pay, and only their bare living to make out of the soil. Thomas was going to fell trees in Michigan, to clear land there for a farmer; and he proposed to use his earnings (when he got them) for the purpose of building a "frame house" (that is to say, a house built of planks) instead of the existing log hut. It must be added, in fairness, that hard as were the circumstances under which the young Garfields lived, they were yet lucky in their situation in a new country, where wages were high, and where the struggle for life is far less severe or competitive than in old settled lands like France and England. Thomas, in fact; would get boarded for nothing in Michigan, and so would be able easily to save almost all his high wages for the purpose of building the frame house. So James had to take to the farm in summer, while in the winter he began to work as a sort of amateur carpenter in a small way. As yet he had lived entirely in the backwoods, and had never seen a town or even a village; but his education in practical work had begun from his very babyhood, and he was handy after the usual fashion of American or colonial boys--ready to turn his hand to anything that happened to present itself. In new countries, where everybody has not got neighbours and workmen within call, such rough-and-ready handiness is far more common than in old England. The one carpenter of the neighbourhood asked James to help him, on the proud day when Tom brought back his earnings from Michigan, and set about the building of the frame house, for which he had already collected the unhewn timber. From that first beginning, by the time he was thirteen, James was promoted to assist in building a barn; and he might have taken permanently to a carpenter's life, had it not been that his boyish passion for reading had inspired him with an equal passion for going to sea. He had read Marryatt's novels and other sailor tales--what boy has not?--and he was fired with the usual childish desire to embark upon that wonderful life of chasing buccaneers, fighting pirates, capturing prizes, or hunting hidden treasure, which is a lad's brilliantly coloured fancy picture of an everyday sailor's wet, cold, cheerless occupation. At last, when James was about fifteen, his longing for the sea grew so strong that his mother, by way of a compromise, allowed him to go and try his luck with the Lake Erie captains at Cleveland. Shipping on the great lakes, where one can see neither bank from the middle of the wide blue sheet of water, and where wrecks are unhappily as painfully frequent as on our own coasts, was quite sufficiently like going to sea to suit the adventurous young backwoodsman to the top of his bent. But when he got to Cleveland, a fortunate disappointment awaited him. The Cleveland captains declined his services in such vigorous seafaring language (not unmixed with many unnecessary oaths), that he was glad enough to give up the idea of sailoring, and take a place as driver of a canal boat from Cleveland to Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, the boat being under the charge of one of his own cousins. Copper ore was then largely mined on Lake Superior, where it is very abundant, carried by ship to Cleveland, down the chain of lakes, and there transferred to canal boats, which took it on to Pittsburg, the centre of a great coal and manufacturing district in Pennsylvania, to be smelted and employed in various local arts. Young Garfield stuck for a little while to the canal business. He plodded along wearily upon the bank, driving his still wearier horse before him, and carrying ore down to Pittsburg with such grace as he best might; but it didn't somehow quite come up to his fancy picture of the seaman's life. It was dull and monotonous, and he didn't care for it much. In genuine American language, "he didn't find it up to sample." The sea might be very well in its way; but a canal was a very different matter indeed. So after a fair trial, James finally gave the business up, and returned to his mother on the little homestead, ill and tired with his long tramping. While he was at home, the schoolmaster of the place, who saw that the lad had abilities, was never tired of urging him to go to school, and do himself justice by getting himself a first-rate education, or at least as good a one as could be obtained in America. James was ready enough to take this advice, if the means were forthcoming; but how was he to do so? "Oh, that's easy enough," said young Bates, the master. "You'll only have to work out of hours as a carpenter, take odd jobs in your vacations, live plainly, and there you are." In England there are few schools where such a plan would be practicable; but in rough-and-ready America, where self-help is no disgrace, there are many, and they are all well attended. In the neighbouring town of Chester, a petty Baptist sect had started a young school which they named Geauga Seminary (there are no plain schools in America--they are all "academies" or "institutes"); and to this simple place young Garfield went, to learn and work as best he might for his own advancement. A very strange figure he must then have cut, indeed; for a person who saw him at the time described him as wearing a pair of trousers he had long outworn, rough cow-hide boots, a waistcoat much too short for him, and a thread-bare coat, with sleeves that only reached a little below the elbows. Of such stuff as that, with a stout heart and an eager brain, the budding presidents of the United States are sometimes made. James soon found himself humble lodgings at an old woman's in Chester, and he also found himself a stray place at a carpenter's shop in the town, where he was able to do three hours' work out of school time every day, besides giving up the whole of his Saturday holiday to regular labour. It was hard work, this schooling and carpentering side by side; but James throve upon it; and at the end of the first term he was not only able to pay all his bill for board and lodging, but also to carry home a few dollars in his pocket by way of savings. James stopped three years at the "seminary" at Chester; and in the holidays he employed himself by teaching in the little township schools among the country districts. There is generally an opening for young students to earn a little at such times by instructing younger boys than themselves in reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the surrounding farmers, who want schooling for their boys, are glad enough to take the master in on the "boarding round" system, for the sake of his usefulness in overlooking the lads in the preparation of their home lessons. It is a simple patriarchal life, very different from anything we know in England; and though Ohio was by this time a far more settled and populated place than when Abram Garfield first went there, it was still quite possible to manage in this extremely primitive and family fashion. The fact is, though luxuries were comparatively unknown, food was cheap and abundant; and a young teacher who was willing to put his heart into his work could easily earn more than enough to live upon in rough comfort. Sometimes the school-house was a mere log hut, like that in which young Garfield had been born; but, at any rate, it was work to do, and food to eat, and that alone was a great thing for a lad who meant to make his own way in the world by his own exertions. Near the end of his third year at Chester, James met, quite accidentally, with a young man who had come from a little embryo "college," of the sort so common in rising American towns, at a place called Hiram in Ohio. American schools are almost as remarkable as American towns for the oddity and ugliness of their names; and this "college" was known by the queer and meaningless title of the "Eclectic Institute." It was conducted by an obscure sect who dub themselves "The Disciples' Church," to which young Garfield's father and mother had both belonged. His casual acquaintance urged upon him strongly the desirability of attending the institute; and James, who had already begun to learn Latin, and wished to learn more, was easily persuaded to try this particular school rather than any other. In August, 1851, James Garfield, then aged nearly twenty, presented himself at the "Eclectic Institute," in the farm-labourer's clothes which were his only existing raiment. He asked to see the "president" of the school, and told him plainly that he wished to come there for education, but that he was poor, and if he came, he must work for his living. "What can you do?" asked the president. "Sweep the floors, light the fires, ring the bell, and make myself generally useful," answered the young backwoodsman. The president, pleased with his eagerness, promised to try him for a fortnight; and at the end of the fortnight, Garfield had earned his teaching so well that he was excused from all further fees during the remainder of his stay at the little institute. His post was by no mean an easy one, for he was servant-of-all-work as well as student; but he cared very little for that as long as he could gain the means for self-improvement. Hiram was a small town, as ugly as its name. Twelve miles from a railway, a mere agricultural centre, of the rough back-country sort, all brand new and dreary looking, with a couple of wooden churches, half a dozen wooden shops, two new intersecting streets with wooden sidewalks, and that was all. The "institute" was a square brick block, planted incongruously in the middle of an Indian-corn plantation; and the students were the sons and daughters of the surrounding farmers, for (as in most western schools) both sexes were here educated together. But the place suited Garfield far better than an older and more dignified university would have done. The other students knew no more than he did, so that he did not feel himself at a disadvantage; they were dressed almost as plainly as himself; and during the time he was at Hiram he worked away with a will at Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, so as to qualify himself for a better place hereafter. Meanwhile, the local carpenter gave him plenty of planing to do, with which he managed to pay his way; and as he had to rise before five every morning to ring the first bell, he was under no danger of oversleeping himself. By 1853, he had made so much progress in his studies that he was admitted as a sort of pupil teacher, giving instruction himself in the English department and in rudimentary Greek and Latin, while he went on with his own studies with the aid of the other teachers. James had now learnt as much as the little "Eclectic Institute" could possibly teach him, and he began to think of going to some better college in the older-settled and more cultivated eastern states, where he might get an education somewhat higher than was afforded him by the raw "seminaries" and "academies" of his native Ohio. True, his own sect, the "Disciples' Church," had got up a petty university of their own, "Bethany College"--such self-styled colleges swarm all over the United States; but James didn't much care for the idea of going to it. "I was brought up among the Disciples," he said; "I have mixed chiefly among them; I know little of other people; it will enlarge my views and give me more liberal feelings if I try a college elsewhere, conducted otherwise; if I see a little of the rest of the world." Moreover, those were stirring times in the States. The slavery question was beginning to come uppermost. The men of the free states in the north and west were beginning to say among themselves that they would no longer tolerate that terrible blot upon American freedom--the enslavement of four million negroes in the cotton-growing south. James Garfield felt all his soul stirred within him by this great national problem--the greatest that any modern nation has ever had to solve for itself. Now, his own sect, the Disciples, and their college, Bethany, were strongly tinctured with a leaning in favour of slavery, which young James Garfield utterly detested. So he made up his mind to having nothing to do with the accursed thing, but to go east to some New England college, where he would mix among men of culture, and where he would probably find more congenial feelings on the slavery question. Before deciding, he wrote to three eastern colleges, amongst others to Yale, the only American university which by its buildings and surroundings can lay any claim to compare, even at a long distance, in beauty and associations, with the least among European universities. The three colleges gave him nearly similar answers; but one of them, in addition to the formal statement of terms and so forth, added the short kindly sentence, "If you come here, we shall be glad to do what we can for you." It was only a small polite phrase; but it took the heart of the rough western boy. If other things were about the same, he said, he would go to the college which offered him, as it were, a friendly grasp of the hand. He had saved a little money at Hiram; and he proposed now to go on working for his living, as he had hitherto done, side by side with his regular studies. But his brother, who was always kind and thoughtful to him, would not hear of this. Thomas had prospered meanwhile in his own small way, and he insisted upon lending James such a sum as would cover his necessary expenses for two years at an eastern university. James insured his life for the amount, so that Thomas might not be a loser by his brotherly generosity in case of his death before repayment could be made; and then, with the money safe in his pocket, he started off for his chosen goal, the Williams College, in one of the most beautiful and hilly parts of Massachusetts. During the three years that Garfield was at this place, he studied hard and regularly, so much so that at one time his brain showed symptoms of giving way under the constant strain. In the vacations, he took a trip into Vermont, a romantic mountain state, where he opened a writing school at a little country village; and another into the New York State, where he engaged himself in a similar way at a small town on the banks of the lovely Hudson river. At college, in spite of his rough western dress and manners, he earned for himself the reputation of a thoroughly good fellow. Indeed, geniality and warmth of manner, qualities always much prized by the social American people, were very marked traits throughout of Garfield's character, and no doubt helped him greatly in after life in rising to the high summit which he finally reached. It was here, too, that he first openly identified himself with the anti-slavery party, which was then engaged in fighting out the important question whether any new slave states should be admitted to the Union. Charles Sumner, the real grand central figure of that noble struggle, was at that moment thundering in Congress against the iniquitous extension of the slave-holding area, and was employing all his magnificent powers to assail the abominable Fugitive Slave Bill, for the return of runaway negroes, who escaped north, into the hands of their angry masters. The American colleges are always big debating societies, where questions of politics are regularly argued out among the students; and Garfield put himself at the head of the anti-slavery movement at his own little university. He spoke upon the subject frequently before the assembled students, and gained himself a considerable reputation, not only as a zealous advocate of the rights of the negro, but also as an eloquent orator and a powerful argumentative debater. In 1856, Garfield took his degree at Williams College, and had now finished his formal education. By that time, he was a fair though not a great scholar, competently read in the Greek and Latin literatures, and with a good knowledge of French and German. He was now nearly twenty-five years old; and his experience was large and varied enough to make him already into a man of the world. He had been farmer, carpenter, canal driver, and student; he had seen the primitive life of the forest, and the more civilized society of the Atlantic shore; he had taught in schools in many states; he had supported himself for years by his own labours; and now, at an age when many young men are, as a rule, only just beginning life on their own account, he had practically raised himself from his own class into the class of educated and cultivated gentlemen. As soon as he had taken his degree, his old friends, the trustees of the "Eclectic Institute" at Hiram, proud of their former sweeper and bell-ringer, called him back at a good salary as teacher of Greek and Latin. It was then just ten years since he had toiled wearily along the tow-path of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. As a teacher, Garfield seems to have been eminently successful. His genial character and good-natured way of explaining things made him a favourite at once with the rough western lads he had to teach, who would perhaps have thought a more formal teacher stiff and stuck-up. Garfield was one of themselves; he knew their ways and their manners; he could make allowances for their awkwardness and bluntness of speech; he could adopt towards them the exact tone which put them at home at once with their easy-going instructor. Certainly, he inspired all his pupils with an immense love and devotion for him; and it is less easy to inspire those feelings in a sturdy Ohio farmer than in most other varieties of the essentially affectionate human species. From 1857 to 1861, Garfield remained at Hiram, teaching and working very hard. His salary, though a good one for the time and place, was still humble according to our English notions; but it sufficed for his needs; and as yet it would have seemed hardly credible that in only twenty years the Ohio schoolmaster would rise to be President of the United States. Indeed, it is only in America, that country of peculiarly unencumbered political action, where every kind of talent is most rapidly recognized and utilized, that this particular form of swift promotion is really possible. But while Garfield was still at his Institute, he was taking a vigorous part in local politics, especially on the slavery question. Whenever there was a political meeting at Hiram, the young schoolmaster was always called upon to take the anti-slavery side; and he delivered himself so effectively upon this favourite topic that he began to be looked upon as a rising political character. In America, politics are less confined to any one class than in Europe; and there would be nothing unusual in the selection of a schoolmaster who could talk to a seat in the local or general legislature. The practice of paying members makes it possible for comparatively poor men to offer themselves as candidates; and politics are thus a career, in the sense of a livelihood, far more than in any other country. In 1858, Garfield married a lady who had been a fellow-student of his in earlier days, and to whom he had been long engaged. In the succeeding year, he got an invitation which greatly pleased and flattered him. The authorities at Williams College asked him to deliver the "Master's Oration" at their annual festival; an unusual compliment to pay to so young a man, and one who had so recently taken his degree. It was the first opportunity he had ever had for a pleasure-trip, and taking his young wife with him (proud indeed, we may be sure, at this earliest honour of his life, the precursor of so many more) he went to Massachusetts by a somewhat roundabout but very picturesque route, down the Great Lakes, through the Thousand Islands, over the St. Lawrence rapids, and on to Quebec, the only town in America which from its old-world look can lay claim to the sort of beauty which so many ancient European cities abundantly possess. He delivered his address with much applause and returned to his Ohio home well satisfied with this pleasant outing. Immediately on his return, the speech-making schoolmaster was met by a very sudden and unexpected request that he would allow himself to be nominated for the State legislature. Every state of the Union has its own separate little legislative body, consisting of two houses; and it was to the upper of these, the Senate of Ohio, that James Garfield was asked to become a candidate. The schoolmaster consented; and as those were times of very great excitement, when the South was threatening to secede if a President hostile to the slave-owning interest was elected, the contest was fought out almost entirely along those particular lines. Garfield was returned as senator by a large majority, and took his seat in the Ohio Senate in January, 1860. There, his voice was always raised against slavery, and he was recognized at once as one of the ablest speakers in the whole legislature. In 1861, the great storm burst over the States. In the preceding November, Abraham Lincoln had been elected President. Lincoln was himself, like Garfield, a self-made man, who had risen from the very same pioneer labourer class;--a wood-cutter and rail-splitter in the backwoods of Illinois, he had become a common boatman on the Mississippi, and had there improved his mind by reading eagerly in all his spare moments. With one of those rapid rises so commonly made by self-taught lads in America, he had pushed his way into the Illinois legislature by the time he was twenty-five, and qualified himself to practise as a barrister at Springfield. His shrewd original talents had raised him with wonderful quickness into the front ranks of his own party; and when the question between the North and South rose into the region of practical politics, Lincoln was selected by the republicans (the anti-slavery group) as their candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This selection was a very significant one in several ways; Lincoln was a very strong opponent of slavery, and his candidature showed the southern slaveowners that if the Republicans were successful in the contest, a vigorous move against the slave-holding oligarchy would at once be made. But it was also significant in the fact that Lincoln was a western man; it was a sign that the farmers and grangers of the agricultural west were beginning to wake up politically and throw themselves into the full current of American State affairs. On both these grounds, Lincoln's nomination must have been deeply interesting to Garfield, whose own life had been so closely similar, and who was destined, twenty years later, to follow him to the same goal. Lincoln was duly elected, and the southern states began to secede. The firing upon Fort Sumter by the South Carolina secessionists was the first blow struck in that terrible war. Every man who was privileged to live in America at that time (like the present writer) cannot recall without a glow of recollection the memory of the wild eagerness with which the North answered that note of defiance, and went forth with overpowering faith and eagerness to fight the good fight on behalf of human freedom. Such a spontaneous outburst of the enthusiasm of humanity has never been known, before or since. President Lincoln immediately called for a supply of seventy-five thousand men. In the Ohio Senate, his message was read amid tumultuous applause; and the moment the sound of the cheers died away, Garfield, as natural spokesman of the republican party, sprang to his feet, and moved in a short and impassioned speech that the state of Ohio should contribute twenty thousand men and three million dollars as its share in the general preparations. The motion was immediately carried with the wildest demonstrations of fervour, and Ohio, with all the rest of the North, rose like one man to put down by the strong hand the hideous traffic in human flesh and blood. During those fiery and feverish days, every citizen of the loyal states felt himself to be, in reserve at least, a possible soldier. It was necessary to raise, drill, and render effective in an incredibly short time a large army; and it would have been impossible to do so had it not been for the eager enthusiasm with which civilians of every sort enlisted, and threw themselves into their military duties with almost incredible devotion. Garfield felt that he must bear his own part in the struggle by fighting it out, not in the Senate but on the field; and his first move was to obtain a large quantity of arms from the arsenal in the doubtfully loyal state of Missouri. In this mission he was completely successful; and he was next employed to raise and organize two new regiments of Ohio infantry. Garfield, of course, knew absolutely nothing of military matters at that time; but it was not a moment to stand upon questions of precedence or experience; the born organizers came naturally to the front, and Garfield was one of them. Indeed, the faculty for organization seems innate in the American people, so that when it became necessary to raise and equip so large a body of men at a few weeks' notice, the task was undertaken offhand by lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, and schoolmasters, without a minute's hesitation, and was performed on the whole with distinguished success. When Garfield had organized his regiments, the Governor asked him to accept the post of colonel to one of them. But Garfield at first mistrusted his own powers in this direction. How should he, who had hitherto been poring chiefly over the odes of Horace (his favourite poet), now take so suddenly to leading a thousand men into actual battle? He would accept only a subordinate position, he said, if a regular officer of the United States army, trained at the great military academy at West Point, was placed in command. So the Governor told him to go among his own farmer friends in his native district, and recruit a third regiment, promising to find him a West Point man as colonel, if one was available. Garfield accepted the post of lieutenant-colonel, raised the 42nd Ohio regiment, chiefly among his own old pupils at Hiram, and set off for the seat of operations. At the last moment the Governor failed to find a regular officer to lead these raw recruits, every available man being already occupied, and Garfield found himself, against his will, compelled to undertake the responsible task of commanding the regiment. He accepted the task thus thrust upon him, and as if by magic transformed himself at once from a schoolmaster into an able soldier. In less than one month, Colonel Garfield took his raw troops into action in the battle of Middle Creek, and drove the Confederate General Marshall, with far larger numbers, out of his intrenchments, compelling him to retreat into Virginia. This timely victory did much to secure the northern advance along the line of the Mississippi. During the whole of the succeeding campaign Garfield handled his regiment with such native skill and marked success that the Government appointed him Brigadier-General for his bravery and military talent. In spite of all his early disadvantages, he had been the youngest member of the Ohio Senate, and now he was the youngest general in the whole American army. Shortly after, the important victory of Chickamauga was gained almost entirely by the energy and sagacity of General Garfield. For this service, he was raised one degree in dignity, receiving his commission as Major-General. He served altogether only two years and three months in the army. But while Garfield was at the head of his victorious troops in Kentucky, his friends in Ohio were arranging, without his consent or knowledge, to call him away to a very different sphere of work. They nominated Garfield as their candidate for the United States House of Representatives at Washington. The General himself was unwilling to accede to their request, when it reached him. He thought he could serve the country better in the field than in Congress. Besides, he was still a comparatively poor man. His salary as Major-General was double that of a member of the House; and for his wife's and children's sake he hesitated to accept the lesser position. Had he continued in the army to the end of the war, he would doubtless have risen to the very highest honours of that stirring epoch. But President Lincoln was very anxious that Garfield should come into the Congress, where his presence would greatly strengthen the President's hands; and with a generous self-denial which well bespeaks his thorough loyalty, Garfield gave up his military post and accepted a place in the House of Representatives. He took his seat in December, 1863. For seventeen years, General Garfield sat in the general legislature of the United States as one of the members for Ohio. During all that time, he distinguished himself most honourably as the fearless advocate of honest government, and the pronounced enemy of those underhand dodges and wire-pulling machinery which are too often the disgrace of American politics. He was opposed to all corruption and chicanery, especially to the bad system of rewarding political supporters with places under Government, which has long been the chief blot upon American republican institutions. As a person of stalwart honesty and singleness of purpose, he made himself respected by both sides alike. Politically speaking, different men will judge very differently of Garfield's acts in the House of Representatives. Englishmen especially cannot fail to remark that his attitude towards ourselves was almost always one of latent hostility; but it is impossible for anybody to deny that his conduct was uniformly guided by high principle, and a constant deference to what he regarded as the right course of action. In 1880, when General Garfield had already risen to be the acknowledged leader of the House of Representatives, his Ohio supporters put him in nomination for the upper chamber, the Senate. They wished Garfield to come down to the state capital and canvas for support; but this the General would not hear of. "I never asked for any place yet," he said, "except the post of bell-ringer and general sweeper at the Hiram Institute, and I won't ask for one now." But at least, his friends urged, he would be on the spot to encourage and confer with his partisans. No, Garfield answered; if they wished to elect him they must elect him in his absence; he would avoid all appearance, even, of angling for office. The result was that all the other candidates withdrew, and Garfield was elected by acclamation. After the election he went down to Ohio and delivered a speech to his constituents, a part of which strikingly illustrates the courage and independence of the backwoods schoolmaster. "During the twenty years that I have been in public life," he said, "almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my conviction, at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name was Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation I should have bad companionship." Only one higher honour could now fall to the lot of a citizen of the United States. The presidency was the single post to which Garfield's ambition could still aspire. That honour came upon him, like all the others, without his seeking; and it came, too, quite unexpectedly. Five months later, in the summer of 1880, the National Republican Convention met to select a candidate for their party at the forthcoming presidential election. Every four years, before the election, each party thus meets to decide upon the man to whom its votes will be given at the final choice. After one or two ineffectual attempts to secure unanimity in favour of other and more prominent politicians, the Convention with one accord chose James Garfield for its candidate--a nomination which was quite as great a surprise to Garfield himself as to all the rest of the world. He was elected President of the United States in November, 1880. It was a marvellous rise for the poor canal boy, the struggling student, the obscure schoolmaster, thus to find himself placed at the head of one among the greatest nations of the earth. He was still less than fifty, and he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of a happy, useful, and honourable life. Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel that Garfield's death was other than a noble and enviable one. He was cut off suddenly in the very moment of his brightest success, before the cares and disappointments of office had begun to dim the pleasure of his first unexpected triumph. He died a martyr to a good and honest cause, and his death-bed was cheered and alleviated by the hushed sorrow and sympathy of an entire nation--one might almost truthfully add, of the whole civilized world. From the first, President Garfield set his face sternly against the bad practice of rewarding political adherents by allowing them to nominate officials in the public service--a species of covert corruption sanctioned by long usage in the United States. This honest and independent conduct raised up for him at once a host of enemies among his own party. The talk which they indulged in against the President produced a deep effect upon a half-crazy and wildly egotistic French-Canadian of the name of Guiteau, who had emigrated to the States and become an American citizen. General Garfield had arranged a trip to New England in the summer of 1881, to attend the annual festival at his old school, the Williams College, Massachusetts; and for that purpose he left the White House (the President's official residence at Washington) on July 2. As he stood in the station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway, arm in arm with Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State, Guiteau approached him casually, and, drawing out a pistol, fired two shots in rapid succession, one of which took effect on the President above the third rib. The assassin was at once secured, and the wounded President was carried back carefully to the White House. Almost everybody who reads this book will remember the long suspense, while the President lay stretched upon his bed for weeks and weeks together, with all Europe and America watching anxiously for any sign of recovery, and sympathizing deeply with the wounded statesman and his devoted wife. Every effort that was possible was made to save him, but the wound was past all surgical skill. After lingering long with the stored-up force of a good constitution, James Garfield passed away at last of blood-poisoning, more deeply regretted perhaps than any other man whom the present generation can remember. It is only in America that precisely such a success as Garfield's is possible for people who spring, as he did, from the midst of the people. In old-settled and wealthy countries we must be content, at best, with slower and less lofty promotion. But the lesson of Garfield's life is not for America only, but for the whole world of workers everywhere. The same qualities which procured his success there will produce a different, but still a solid success, anywhere else. As Garfield himself fittingly put it, with his usual keen American common sense, "There is no more common thought among young people than the foolish one, that by-and-by something will turn up by which they will suddenly achieve fame or fortune. No, young gentlemen; things don't turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up." VII. THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER. It is the object of this volume to set forth the lives of working men who through industry, perseverance, and high principle have raised themselves by their own exertions from humble beginnings. Raised themselves! Yes; but to what? Not merely, let us hope, to wealth and position, not merely to worldly respect and high office, but to some conspicuous field of real usefulness to their fellow men. Those whose lives we have hitherto examined did so raise themselves by their own strenuous energy and self-education. Either, like Garfield and Franklin, they served the State zealously in peace or war; or else, like Stephenson and Telford, they improved human life by their inventions and engineering works; or, again, like Herschel and Fraunhofer, they added to the wide field of scientific knowledge; or finally, like Millet and Gibson, they beautified the world with their noble and inspiring artistic productions. But in every one of these cases, the men whose lives we have been here considering did actually rise, sooner or later, from the class of labourers into some other class socially and monetarily superior to it. Though they did great good in other ways to others, they did still as a matter of fact succeed themselves in quitting the rank in which they were born, and rising to some other rank more or less completely above it. Now, it will be clear to everybody that so long as our present social arrangements exist, it must be impossible for the vast mass of labouring men ever to do anything of the sort. It is to be desired, indeed, that every labouring man should by industry and thrift secure independence in the end for himself and his family; but however much that may be the case, it will still rest certain that the vast mass of men will necessarily remain workers to the last; and that no attempt to raise individual working men above their own class into the professional or mercantile classes can ever greatly benefit the working masses as a whole. What is most of all desirable is that the condition, the aims; and the tastes of working men, as working men, should be raised and bettered; that without necessarily going outside their own ranks, they should become more prudent, more thrifty, better educated, and wider-minded than many of their predecessors have been in the past. Under such circumstances, it is surely well to set before ourselves some examples of working men who, while still remaining members of their own class, have in the truest and best sense "raised themselves" so as to attain the respect and admiration of others whether their equals or superiors in the artificial scale. Dr. Smiles, who has done much to illustrate the history of the picked men among the labouring orders, has chosen two or three lives of such a sort for investigation, and from them we may select a single one as an example of a working man's career rendered conspicuous by qualities other than those that usually secure external success. Thomas Edward, associate of the Linnean Society, though a Scotchman all his life long, was accidentally born (so to speak) at Gosport, near Portsmouth, on Christmas Day, 1814. His father was in the Fifeshire militia and in those warlike days, when almost all the regulars were on the Continent, fighting Napoleon, militia regiments used to be ordered about the country from one place to another, to watch the coast or mount guard over the French prisoners, in the most unaccountable fashion. So it happened, oddly enough, that Thomas Edward, a Scotchman of the Scotch, was born close under the big forts of Portsmouth harbour. After Waterloo, however, the Fifeshire regiment was sent home again; and the militia being before long disbanded, John Edward, our hero's father, went to live at Aberdeen, where he plied his poor trade of a hand-loom linen weaver for many years. It was on the green at Aberdeen, surrounded by small labourers' cottages, that Thomas Edward passed his early days. From his babyhood, almost, the boy had a strong love for all the beasties he saw everywhere around him; a fondness for birds and animals, and a habit of taming them which can seldom be acquired, but which seems with some people to come instinctively by nature. While Tam was still quite a child, he loved to wander by himself out into the country, along the green banks of the Dee, or among the tidal islands at the mouth of the river, overgrown by waving seaweeds, and fringed with great white bunches of blossoming scurvy-grass. He loved to hunt for crabs and sea-anemones beside the ebbing channels, or to watch the jelly-fish left high and dry upon the shore by the retreating water. Already, in his simple way, the little ragged bare-footed Scotch laddie was at heart a born naturalist. Very soon, Tam was not content with looking at the "venomous beasts," as the neighbours called them, but he must needs begin to bring them home, and set up a small aquarium and zoological garden on his own account. All was fish that came to Tam's net: tadpoles, newts, and stickleback from the ponds, beetles from the dung-heaps, green crabs from the sea-shore--nay, even in time such larger prizes as hedgehogs, moles, and nestfuls of birds. Nothing delighted him so much as to be out in the fields, hunting for and taming these his natural pets. Unfortunately, Tam's father and mother did not share the boy's passion for nature, and instead of encouraging him in pursuing his inborn taste, they scolded him and punished him bitterly for bringing home the nasty creatures. But nothing could win away Tam from the love of the beasties; and in the end, he had his own way, and lived all his life, as he himself afterwards beautifully put it, "a fool to nature." Too often, unhappily, fathers and mothers thus try to check the best impulses in their children, under mistaken notions of right, and especially is this the case in many instances as regards the love of nature. Children are constantly chidden for taking an interest in the beautiful works of creation, and so have their first intelligent inquiries and aspirations chilled at once; when a little care and sympathy would get rid of the unpleasantness of having white mice or lizards crawling about the house, without putting a stop to the young beginner's longing for more knowledge of the wonderful and beautiful world in whose midst he lives. When Tam was nearly five years old, he was sent to school, chiefly no doubt to get him out of the way; but Scotch schools for the children of the working classes were in those days very rough hard places, where the taws or leather strap was still regarded as the chief instrument of education. Little Edward was not a child to be restrained by that particular form of discipline; and after he had had two or three serious tussles with his instructors, he was at last so cruelly beaten by one of his masters that he refused to return, and his parents, who were themselves by no means lacking in old Scotch severity, upheld him in his determination. He had picked up reading by this time, and now for a while he was left alone to hunt about to his heart's content among his favourite fields and meadows. But by the time he was six years old, he felt he ought to be going to work, brave little mortal that he was; and as his father and mother thought so too, the poor wee mite was sent to join his elder brother in working at a tobacco factory in the town, at the wages of fourteen-pence a week. So, for the next two years, little Tam waited upon a spinner (as the workers are called) and began life in earnest as a working man. At the end of two years, however, the brothers heard that better wages were being given, a couple of miles away, at Grandholm, up the river Don. So off the lads tramped, one fast-day (a recognized Scotch institution), to ask the manager of the Grandholm factory if he could give them employment. They told nobody of their intention, but trudged away on their own account; and when they came back and told their parents what they had done, the father was not very well satisfied with the proposal, because he thought it too far for so small a boy as Tam to walk every day to and from his work. Tam, however, was very anxious to go, not only on account of the increased wages, but also (though this was a secret) because of the beautiful woods and crags round Grandholm, through which he hoped to wander during the short dinner hour. In the end, John Edward gave way, and the boys were allowed to follow their own fancy in going to the new factory. It was very hard work; the hours were from six in the morning till eight at night, for there was no Factory Act then to guard the interest of helpless children; so the boys had to be up at four in the morning, and were seldom home again till nine at night. In winter, the snow lies long and deep on those chilly Aberdeenshire roads, and the east winds from the German Ocean blow cold and cutting up the narrow valley of the Don; and it was dreary work toiling along them in the dark of morning or of night in bleak and cheerless December weather. Still, Tam liked it on the whole extremely well. His wages were now three shillings a week; and then, twice a day in summer, there was the beautiful walk to and fro along the leafy high-road. "People may say of factories what they please," Edward wrote much later, "but I liked this factory. It was a happy time for me whilst I remained there. The woods were easy of access during our meal-hours. What lots of nests! What insects, wild flowers, and plants, the like of which I had never seen before." The boy revelled in the beauty of the birds and beasts he saw here, and he retained a delightful recollection of them throughout his whole after life. This happy time, however, was not to last for ever. When young Edward was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night. Tam's master, one Charles Begg, was a drunken London workman, who had wandered gradually north; a good shoemaker, but a quarrelsome, rowdy fellow, loving nothing on earth so much as a round with his fists on the slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned fast--for he was not slothful in business--he would have learned faster, no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he would first beat Tam, and then proceed upstairs to beat his wife. For three years young Edward lived under this intolerable tyranny, till he could stand it no longer. At last, Begg beat and ill-treated him so terribly that Tam refused outright to complete his apprenticeship. Begg was afraid to compel him to do so--doubtless fearing to expose his ill-usage of the lad. So Tam went to a new master, a kindly man, with whom he worked in future far more happily. The boy now began to make himself a little botanical garden in the back yard of his mother's house--a piece of waste ground covered with rubbish, such as one often sees behind the poorer class of cottages in towns. Tam determined to alter all that, so he piled up all the stones into a small rockery, dug up the plot, manured it, and filled it with wild and garden flowers. The wild flowers, of course, he found in the woods and hedgerows around him; but the cultivated kinds he got in a very ingenious fashion, by visiting all the rubbish heaps of the neighbourhood, on which garden refuse was usually piled. A good many roots and plants can generally be found in such places, and by digging them up, Tam was soon able to make himself a number of bright and lively beds. Such self-help in natural history always lay very much in Edward's way. At the same time, young Edward was now beginning to feel the desire for knowing something more about the beasts and birds of which he was so fond. He used to go in all his spare moments among the shops in the town, to look at the pictures in the windows, especially the pictures of animals; and though his earnings were still small, he bought a book whenever he was able to afford one. In those days cheap papers for the people were only just beginning to come into existence; and Tam, who was now eighteen, bought the first number of the _Penny Magazine_, an excellent journal of that time, which he liked so much that he continued to take in the succeeding numbers. Some of the papers in it were about natural history, and these, of course, particularly delighted the young man's heart. He also bought the _Weekly Visitor_, which he read through over and over again. In 1831, when Tam was still eighteen, he enlisted in the Aberdeenshire militia, and during his brief period of service an amusing circumstance occurred which well displays the almost irresistible character of Edward's love of nature. While he was drilling with the awkward squad one morning, a butterfly of a kind that he had never seen before happened to flit in front of him as he stood in the ranks. It was a beautiful large brown butterfly, and Edward was so fascinated by its appearance that he entirely forgot, in a moment, where he was and what he was doing. Without a second's thought, he darted wildly out of the ranks, and rushed after the butterfly, cap in hand. It led him a pretty chase, over sandhills and shore, for five minutes. He was just on the point of catching it at last, when he suddenly felt a heavy hand laid upon his shoulder, and looking round, he saw the corporal of the company and several soldiers come to arrest him. Such a serious offence against military discipline might have cost him dear indeed, for corporals have little sympathy with butterfly hunting; but luckily for Edward, as he was crossing the parade ground under arrest, he happened to meet an officer walking with some ladies. The officer asked the nature of his offence, and when the ladies heard what it was they were so much interested in such a strange creature as a butterfly-loving militiaman, that they interceded for him, and finally begged him off his expected punishment. The story shows us what sort of stuff Edward was really made of. He felt so deep an interest in all the beautiful living creatures around him for their own sake, that he could hardly restrain his feelings even under the most untoward circumstances. When Edward was twenty, he removed from Aberdeen to Banff, where he worked as a journeyman for a new master. The hours were very long, but by taking advantage of the summer evenings, he was still able to hunt for his beloved birds, caterpillars, and butterflies. Still, the low wages in the trade discouraged him much, and he almost made up his mind to save money and emigrate to America. But one small accident alone prevented him from carrying out this purpose. Like a good many other young men, the naturalist shoemaker fell in love. Not only so, but his falling in love took practical shape a little later in his getting married; and at twenty-three, the lonely butterfly hunter brought back a suitable young wife to his little home. The marriage was a very happy one. Mrs. Edward not only loved her husband deeply, but showed him sympathy in his favourite pursuits, and knew how to appreciate his sterling worth. Long afterwards she said, that though many of her neighbours could not understand her husband's strange behaviour, she had always felt how much better it was to have one who spent his spare time on the study of nature than one who spent it on the public-house. As soon as Edward got a home of his own, he began to make a regular collection of all the animals and plants in Banffshire. This was a difficult thing for him to do, for he knew little of books, and had access to very few, so that he couldn't even find out the names of all the creatures he caught and preserved. But, though he didn't always know what they were called, he did know their natures and habits and all about them; and such first-hand knowledge in natural history is really the rarest and the most valuable of all. He saw little of his fellow-workmen. They were usually a drunken, careless lot; Edward was sober and thoughtful, and had other things to think of than those that they cared to talk about with one another. But he went out much into the fields, with invincible determination, having made up his mind that he would get to know all about the plants and beasties, however much the knowledge might cost him. For this object, he bought a rusty old gun for four-and-sixpence, and invested in a few boxes and bottles for catching insects. His working hours were from six in the morning till nine at night, and for that long day he always worked hard to support his wife, and (when they came) his children. He had therefore only the night hours between nine and six to do all his collecting. Any other man, almost, would have given up the attempt as hopeless; but Edward resolved never to waste a single moment or a single penny, and by care and indomitable energy he succeeded in making his wished-for collection. Sometimes he was out tramping the whole night; sometimes he slept anyhow, under a hedge or haystack; sometimes he took up temporary quarters in a barn, an outhouse, or a ruined castle. But night after night he went on collecting, whenever he was able; and he watched the habits and manners of the fox, the badger, the otter, the weasel, the stoat, the pole-cat, and many other regular night-roamers as no one else, in all probability, had ever before watched them in the whole world. Sometimes he suffered terrible disappointments, due directly or indirectly to his great poverty. Once, he took all his cases of insects, containing nine hundred and sixteen specimens, and representing the work of four years, up to his garret to keep them there till he was able to glaze them. When he came to take them down again he found to his horror that rats had got at the boxes, eaten almost every insect in the whole collection, and left nothing behind but the bare pins, with a few scattered legs, wings, and bodies, sticking amongst them. Most men would have been so disgusted with this miserable end to so much labour, that they would have given up moth hunting for ever. But Edward was made of different stuff. He went to work again as zealously as ever, and in four years more, he had got most of the beetles, flies, and chafers as carefully collected as before. By the year 1845, Edward had gathered together about two thousand specimens of beasts, birds, and insects found in the neighbourhood of his own town of Banff. He made the cases to hold them himself, and did it so neatly that, in the case of his shells, each kind had even a separate little compartment all of its own. And now he unfortunately began to think of making money by exhibiting his small museum. If only he could get a few pounds to help him in buying books, materials, perhaps even a microscope, to help him in prosecuting his scientific work, what a magnificent thing that would be for him! Filled with this grand idea, he took a room in the Trades Hall at Banff, and exhibited his collection during a local fair. A good many people came to see it, and the Banff paper congratulated the poor shoemaker on his energy in gathering together such a museum of curiosities "without aid, and under discouraging circumstances which few would have successfully encountered." He was so far lucky in this first venture that he covered his expenses and was able even to put away a little money for future needs. Encouraged by this small triumph, the unwearied naturalist set to work during the next year, and added several new attractions to his little show. At the succeeding fair he again exhibited, and made still mere money out of his speculation. Unhappily, the petty success thus secured led him to hope he might do even better by moving his collection to Aberdeen. To Aberdeen, accordingly, Edward went. He took a shop in the great gay thoroughfare of that cold northern city--Union Street--and prepared to receive the world at large, and to get the money for the longed-for books and the much-desired microscope. Now, Aberdeen is a big, busy, bustling town; it has plenty of amusements and recreations; it has two colleges and many learned men of its own; and the people did not care to come and see the working shoemaker's poor small collection. If he had been a president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, now--some learned knight or baronet come down by special train from London--the Aberdeen doctors and professors might have rushed to hear his address; or if he had been a famous music-hall singer or an imitation negro minstrel, the public at large might have flocked to be amused and degraded by his parrot-like buffoonery; but as he was only a working shoemaker from Banff, with a heaven-born instinct for watching and discovering all the strange beasts and birds of Scotland, and the ways and thoughts of them, why, of course, respectable Aberdeen, high or low, would have nothing in particular to say to him. Day after day went by, and hardly anybody came, till at last poor Edward's heart sank terribly within him. Even the few who did come were loth to believe that a working shoemaker could ever have gathered together such a large collection by his own exertions. "Do you mean to say," said one of the Aberdeen physicians to Edward, "that you've maintained your wife and family by working at your trade, all the while that you've been making this collection?" "Yes, I do," Edward answered. "Oh, nonsense!" the doctor said. "How is it possible you could have done that?" "By never losing a single minute or part of a minute," was the brave reply, "that I could by any means improve." It is wonderful indeed that when once Edward had begun to attract anybody's attention at all, he and his exhibition should ever have been allowed to pass so unnoticed in a great, rich, learned city like Aberdeen. But it only shows how very hard it is for unassuming merit to push its way; for the Aberdeen people still went unheeding past the shop in Union Street, till Edward at last began to fear and tremble as to how he should ever meet the expenses of the exhibition. After the show had been open four weeks, one black Friday came when Edward never took a penny the whole day. As he sat there alone and despondent in the empty room, the postman brought him a letter. It was from his master at Banff. "Return immediately," it said, "or you will be discharged." What on earth could he do? He couldn't remove his collection; he couldn't pay his debt. A few more days passed, and he saw no way out of it. At last, in blank despair, he offered the whole collection for sale. A gentleman proposed to pay him the paltry sum of L20 10s for the entire lot, the slow accumulations of ten long years. It was a miserable and totally inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has seldom been written. How he ever recovered from such a downfall to all his hopes and expectations is extraordinary. But the man had a wonderful power of bearing up against adverse circumstances; and when, after six weeks' absence, he returned to Banff, ruined and dispirited, he set to work once more, as best he might, at the old, old trade of shoemaking. He was obliged to leave his wife and children in Aberdeen, and to tramp himself on foot to Banff, so that he might earn the necessary money to bring them back; for the cash he had got for the collection had all gone in paying expenses. It is almost too sad to relate; and no wonder poor Edward felt crushed indeed when he got back once more to his lonely shoemaker's bench and fireless fireside. He was very lonely until his wife and children came. But when the carrier generously brought them back free (with that kindliness which the poor so often show to the poor), and the home was occupied once more, and the fire lighted, he felt as if life might still be worth living, at least for his wife and children. So he went back to his trade as heartily as he might, and worked at it well and successfully. For it is to be noted, that though Thomas Edward was so assiduous a naturalist and collector, he was the best hand, too, at making first-class shoes in all Banff. The good workman is generally the best man at whatever he undertakes. Certainly the best man is almost always a good workman at his own trade. But of course he made no more natural history collections? Not a bit of it. Once a naturalist, always a naturalist. Edward set to work once more, nothing daunted, and by next spring he was out everywhere with his gun, exactly as before, replacing the sold collection as fast as ever his hand was able. By this time Edward began to make a few good friends. Several magistrates for the county signed a paper for him, stating that they knew him to be a naturalist, and no poacher; and on presenting this paper to the gamekeepers, he was generally allowed to pursue his researches wherever he liked, and shoot any birds or animals he needed for his new museum. Soon after his return from Aberdeen, too, he made the acquaintance of a neighbouring Scotch minister, Mr. Smith of Monquhitter, who proved a very kind and useful friend to him. Mr. Smith was a brother naturalist, and he had books--those precious books--which he lent Edward, freely; and there for the first time the shoemaker zoologist learned the scientific names of many among the birds and animals with whose lives and habits he had been so long familiar. Another thing the good minister did for his shoemaker friend: he constantly begged him to write to scientific journals the results of his observations in natural history. At first Edward was very timid; he didn't like to appear in print; thought his grammar and style wouldn't be good enough; fought shy of the proposal altogether. But at last Edward made up his mind to contribute a few notes to the _Banffshire Journal_, and from that he went on slowly to other papers, until at last he came to be one of the most valued occasional writers for several of the leading scientific periodicals in England. Unfortunately, science doesn't pay. All this work was done for love only; and Edward's only reward was the pleasure he himself derived from thus jotting down the facts he had observed about the beautiful creatures he loved so well. Soon Mr. Smith induced the indefatigable shoemaker to send a few papers on the birds and beasts to the _Zoologist_. Readers began to perceive that these contributions were sent by a man of the right sort--a man who didn't merely read what other men had said about the creatures in books, but who watched their ways on his own account, and knew all about their habits and manners in their own homes. Other friends now began to interest themselves in him; and Edward obtained at last, what to a man of his tastes must have been almost as much as money or position--the society of people who could appreciate him, and could sympathize in all that interested him. Mr. Smith in particular always treated him, says Dr. Smiles, "as one intelligent man treats another." The paltry distinctions of artificial rank were all forgotten between them, and the two naturalists talked together with endless interest about all those lovely creatures that surround us every one on every side, but that so very few people comparatively have ever eyes to see or hearts to understand. It was a very great loss to Edward when Mr. Smith died, in 1854. In the year 1858 the untiring shoemaker had gathered his third and last collection, the finest and best of all. By this time he had become an expert stuffer of birds, and a good preserver of fish and flowers. But his health was now beginning to fail. He was forty-four, and he had used his constitution very severely, going out at nights in cold and wet, and cheating himself of sleep during the natural hours of rest and recuperation. Happily, during all these years, he had resisted the advice of his Scotch labouring friends, to take out whisky with him on his nightly excursions. He never took a drop of it, at home or abroad. If he had done so, he himself believed, he could not have stood the cold, the damp, and the exposure in the way he did. His food was chiefly oatmeal-cake; his drink was water. "Sometimes, when I could afford it," he says, "my wife boiled an egg or two, and these were my only luxuries." He had a large family, and the task of providing for them was quite enough for his slender means, without leaving much margin for beer or whisky. But the best constitution won't stand privation and exposure for ever. By-and-by Edward fell ill, and had a fever. He was ill for a month, and when he came round again the doctor told him that he must at once give up his nightly wandering. This was a real and serious blow to poor Edward; it was asking him to give up his one real pleasure and interest in life. All the happiest moments he had ever known were those which he had spent in the woods and fields, or among the lonely mountains with the falcons, and the herons, and the pine-martens, and the ermines. All this delightful life he was now told he must abandon for ever. Nor was that all. Illness costs money. While a man is earning nothing, he is running up a doctor's bill. Edward now saw that he must at last fall back upon his savings bank, as he rightly called it--his loved and cherished collection of Banffshire animals. He had to draw upon it heavily. Forty cases of birds were sold; and Edward now knew that he would never be able to replace the specimens he had parted with. Still, his endless patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his remaining energy, and in which he was to do better work for science than in all the rest--the sea. This new field he began to cultivate in a novel and ingenious way. He got together all the old broken pails, pots, pans, and kettles he could find in the neighbourhood, filled them with straw or bits of rag, and then sank them with a heavy stone into the rocky pools that abound along that weather-beaten coast. A rope was tied to one end, by which he could raise them again; and once a month he used to go his rounds to visit these very primitive but effectual sea-traps. Lots of living things had meanwhile congregated in the safe nests thus provided for them, and Edward sorted them all over, taking home with him all the newer or more valuable specimens. In this way he was enabled to make several additions to our knowledge of the living things that inhabit the sea off the north-east coast of Scotland. The fishermen also helped him not a little, by giving him many rare kinds of fish or refuse from their nets, which he duly examined and classified. As a rule, the hardy men who go on the smacks have a profound contempt for natural history, and will not be tempted, even by offers of money, to assist those whom they consider as half-daft gentlefolk in what seems to them a perfectly useless and almost childish amusement. But it was different with Tam Edward, the strange shoemaker whom they all knew so well; if _he_ wanted fish or rubbish for his neat collection in the home-made glass cases, why, of course he could have them, and welcome. So they brought him rare sandsuckers, and blue-striped wrasse, and saury pike, and gigantic cuttle-fish, four feet long, to his heart's content. Edward's daughters were now also old enough to help him in his scientific studies. They used to watch for the clearing of the nets, and pick out of the refuse whatever they thought would interest or please their father. But the fish themselves were Edward's greatest helpers and assistants. As Dr. Smiles quaintly puts it, they were the best of all possible dredgers. His daughters used to secure him as many stomachs as possible, and from their contents he picked out an immense number of beautiful and valuable specimens. The bill of fare of the cod alone comprised an incredible variety of small crabs, shells, shrimps, sea-mice, star-fish, jelly-fish, sea anemones, eggs, and zoophytes. All these went to swell Edward's new collection of marine animals. To identify and name so many small and little-known creatures was a very difficult task for the poor shoemaker, with so few books, and no opportunities for visiting museums and learned societies. But his industry and ingenuity managed to surmount all obstacles. Naturalists everywhere are very willing to aid and instruct one another; especially are the highest authorities almost always eager to give every help and encouragement in their power to local amateurs. Edward used to wait till he had collected a batch of specimens of a single class or order, and then he would send them by post to learned men in different parts of the country, who named them for him, and sent them back with some information as to their proper place in the classification of the group to which they belonged. Mr. Spence Bate of Plymouth is the greatest living authority on crustaceans, such as the lobsters, shrimps, sea-fleas, and hermit crabs; and to him Edward sent all the queer crawling things of that description that he found in his original sea-traps. Mr. Couch, of Polperro in Cornwall, was equally versed in the true backboned fishes; and to him Edward sent any doubtful midges, or gurnards, or gobies, or whiffs. So numerous are the animals and plants of the sea-shore, even in the north of Scotland alone, that if one were to make a complete list of all Edward's finds it would occupy an entire book almost as large as this volume. Naturalists now began to help Edward in another way, the way that he most needed, by kind presents of books, especially their own writings--a kind of gift which cost them nothing, but was worth to him a very great deal. Mr. Newman, the editor of the _Zoologist_ paper, was one of his most useful correspondents, and gave him several excellent books on natural history. Mr. Bate made him a still more coveted present--a microscope, with which he could examine several minute animals, too small to be looked at by the naked eye. The same good friend also gave him a little pocket-lens (or magnifying glass) for use on the sea-shore. As Edward went on, his knowledge increased rapidly, and his discoveries fully kept pace with it. The wretchedly paid Banff shoemaker was now corresponding familiarly with half the most eminent men of science in the kingdom, and was a valued contributor to all the most important scientific journals. Several new animals which he had discovered were named in his honour, and frequent references were made to him in printed works of the first importance. It occurred to Mr. Couch and Mr. Bate, therefore, both of whom were greatly indebted to the working-man naturalist for specimens and information, that Edward ought to be elected a member of some leading scientific society. There is no such body of greater distinction in the world of science than the Linnean Society; and of this learned institution Edward was duly elected an associate in 1866. The honour was one which he had richly deserved, and which no doubt he fully appreciated. And yet he was nothing more even now than a working shoemaker, who was earning not more but less wages even than he once used to do. He had brought up a large family honestly and respectably; he had paid his way without running into debt; his children were all growing up; and he had acquired a wide reputation among naturalists as a thoroughly trustworthy observer and an original worker in many different fields of botany and zoology. But his wages were now only eight shillings a week, and his science had brought him, as many people would say, only the barren honour of being an associate of the Linnean Society, or the respected friend of many among the noblest and greatest men of his country. He began life as a shoemaker, and he remained a shoemaker to the end. "Had I pursued money," he said, "with half the ardour and perseverance that I have pursued nature, I have no hesitation in saying that by this time I should have been a rich man." In 1876, Dr. Smiles, the historian of so many truly great working men, attracted by Edward's remarkable and self-sacrificing life, determined to write the good shoemaker's biography while he was still alive. Edward himself gave Dr. Smiles full particulars as to his early days and his later struggles; and that information the genial biographer wove into a delightful book, from which all the facts here related have been borrowed. The "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" attracted an immense deal of attention when it was first published, and led many people, scientific or otherwise, to feel a deep interest in the man who had thus made himself poor for the love of nature. The result was such a spontaneous expression of generous feeling towards Edward that he was enabled to pass the evening of his days not only in honour, but also in substantial ease and comfort. And shall we call such a life as this a failure? Shall we speak of it carelessly as unsuccessful? Surely not. Edward had lived his life happily, usefully, and nobly; he had attained the end he set before himself; he had conquered all his difficulties by his indomitable resolution; and he lived to see his just reward in the respect and admiration of all those whose good opinion was worth the having. If he had toiled and moiled all the best days of his life, at some work, perhaps, which did not even benefit in any way his fellow-men; if he had given up all his time to enriching himself anyhow, by fair means or foul; if he had gathered up a great business by crushing out competition and absorbing to himself the honest livelihood of a dozen other men; if he had speculated in stocks and shares, and piled up at last a vast fortune by doubtful transactions, all the world would have said, in its unthinking fashion, that Mr. Edward was a wonderfully successful man. But success in life does not consist in that only, if in that at all. Edward lived for an aim, and that aim he amply attained. He never neglected his home duties or his regular work; but in his stray moments he found time to amass an amount of knowledge which rendered him the intellectual equal of men whose opportunities and education had been far more fortunate than his own. The pleasure he found in his work was the real reward that science gave him. All his life long he had that pleasure: he saw the fields grow green in spring, the birds build nests in early summer, the insects flit before his eyes on autumn evenings, the stoat and hare put on their snow-white coat to his delight in winter weather. And shall we say that the riches he thus beheld spread ever before him were any less real or less satisfying to a soul like his than the mere worldly wealth that other men labour and strive for? Oh no. Thomas Edward was one of those who work for higher and better ends than outward show, and verily he had his reward. The monument raised up to that simple and earnest working shoemaker in the "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" is one of which any scientific worker in the whole world might well be proud. In his old age, he had the meed of public encouragement and public recognition, the one thing that the world at large can add to a scientific worker's happiness; and his name will be long remembered hereafter, when those of more pretentious but less useful labourers are altogether forgotten. How many men whom the world calls successful might gladly have changed places with that "fool to nature," the Banffshire shoemaker! 
61894	----	THE WORLD-STRUGGLE FOR OIL _Some_ BORZOI _Books_ _Midwinter, 1924_ SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL THEORY _Harry Elmer Barnes_ THE OLD AND THE NEW GERMANY _John Firman Coar_ THE BASIS OF SOCIAL THEORY _Albert G.A. Balz_ ESSAYS IN ECONOMIC THEORY _Simon Nelson Patten_ THE TREND OF ECONOMICS _Various Writers_ THE FABRIC OF EUROPE _Harold Stannard_ THE WORLD-STRUGGLE FOR OIL _Translated from the French of_ Pierre l'Espagnol de la Tramerye _by_ C. LEONARD LEESE [Illustration] NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF MCMXXIV COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. _Published, February, 1924_ _Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N.Y._ _Paper furnished by W.F. Etherington & Co., New York._ _Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York._ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS PART I. The World's Oil. Chap. I. "Who Has Oil Has Empire!" 9 II. Oil: Its Origin, Discovery, and History 21 III. Amazing Increase in Consumption: Fears of the United States 34 PART II. The Struggle of the Trusts. Chap. IV. The _Standard Oil Company_ 45 V. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ 59 VI. The Oil World's Napoleon: Henry Deterding 84 PART III. The Struggle between the Powers. Chap. VII. The _Europeanische Petroleum Union_: a German Trust for the Control of European Oil which founders in the Great World Conflict 97 VIII. The War and Oil 101 IX. An Imperialism not without Greatness 110 X. The Struggle between Great Britain and the United States in Mexico 113 XI. A State-subsidised Company: the _Anglo-Persian_ 129 XII. An American Balkanism: the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ 143 XIII. Political Tendencies of the Royal-Dutch: the British Oil Empire 147 XIV. How the United States lost Supremacy over Oil 151 XV. The American Retort 178 XVI. From Washington to Genoa: the Struggle for the Oil-fields of Russia 184 PART IV. France's Part in the Struggle between Great Britain and the United States. Chap. XVII. The Cartel of Ten 201 XVIII. The Petroleum Consortium 207 XIX. How Great Britain Succeeded in Winning France over to Her Side in the Struggle with the United States 215 XX. Great Britain and the Oil-fields of the French Colonial Empire 234 XXI. The _Standard_ and France 239 XXII. Conclusion: the World in 1923 244 PART I THE WORLD'S OIL CHAPTER I "WHO HAS OIL HAS EMPIRE!" The question of oil has become one of the most vital in all countries. Its importance is such that even the most solid political alliances are subordinate to it. The Great Powers have all an "oil policy." The United States, where the most powerful trust is an oil trust--the _Standard Oil Company_--the United States, which control 70 per cent. of the oil production of the world, have decided not to leave the question to private initiative alone, but to start a vigorous oil policy both at home and abroad. The American Senate recently decided to create the "United States Oil Corporation to develop new petroleum fields," while Mr. Bedford, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the _Standard Oil Company_, asked the Government to lend its support to any Americans who were soliciting oil concessions throughout the world. This support, which even Wilson--hostile to trusts as he was--did not refuse, was granted very energetically by Mr. Harding: three European States have just had experience of it. Britain, with her usual foresight, understood long ago the importance of oil, and took the necessary action. In the work of exploration alone she is at the present moment spending considerable sums, and she will soon have nearly all the remaining oil-fields of the world in her hands. France alone remains behind, hesitates, changes her mind, and allows herself to be despoiled, not only of the region of Mosul, one of the richest oil-fields of the world, which was formally promised to her by the Agreements of 1916, but also of the few modest oil deposits which she possesses in her colonies. For these are almost all exploited by British firms; and by the Agreement of San Remo the French Government has, in addition, promised to reserve a large share for "British co-operation" in new companies which may be established there. "Who has oil has Empire!" exclaimed Henry Bérenger, in a diplomatic note which he sent to Clemenceau on December 12, 1919, on the eve of the Franco-British conferences held in London to consider the future of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. "Control of the ocean by heavy oils, control of the air by highly refined oils, and of the land by petrol and illuminating oils. Empire of the World through the financial power attaching to a substance more precious, more penetrating, more influential in the world than gold itself!" The nation which controls this precious fuel will see the wealth of the rest of the world flowing towards it. The ships of other nations will soon be unable to sail without recourse to its stores of oil. Should it create a powerful merchant fleet, it becomes at once mistress of ocean trade. Now, the nation which obtains the world's carrying trade takes toll from all those whose goods it carries, and so has abundant capital. New industries arise round its ports, its banks become clearing houses for international payments. At one stroke the controlling centre of the world's credit is displaced. This is what happened already in the eighteenth century when, with the development of British shipping, it passed from Amsterdam to London. And British statesmen have had, at one time, a moment of anxiety lest it should move to New York! Thus began the terrible struggle between Britain and the United States for possession of the precious "rock-oil." "The country which dominates by means of oil," said Elliot Alves, head of the _British Controlled Oil-fields_, a semi-official, semi-private organization, which the British Government has specially commissioned to fight the _Standard Oil Company_, "will command at the same time the commerce of the world. Armies, navies, money, even entire populations, will count as nothing against the lack of oil." The War proved it. * * * * * Whence does oil derive this formidable power, before which the whole world bows down? From the fact that the fundamental basis upon which the industrial life of modern nations rests is fuel. Before the War, Germany, Britain, and the United States owed the whole of their power and their wealth to coal. It would have been true to say that the British Empire rested upon a foundation of coal. It is essential to have control over fuel in time of peace for economic prosperity, and in time of war to supply the navy and maintain control of the seas. Now oil has considerable advantages over coal. Its extraction is remarkably easy compared with that of coal. What is the boring of a well and the installation of some simple machinery on the surface compared with the expensive subterranean workings which are involved in the exploitation of a coal-mine? An oil-boring before the War cost a few hundred thousand francs, while the simplest workings for a colliery always necessitated an expenditure of several millions. The installations once made, oil flows by itself into the reservoirs, whence it is conducted by pipe-lines to the sea-ports and there pumped into the ships. It may be refined before exportation or only on arrival in the country where it is to be consumed. The expenditure upon labour in these various operations is extremely small, especially in undeveloped countries where native labour is employed. Thus, even at the present time, in the Dutch Indies the coolies are paid a florin a day. Now at the end of the War the employés of the _Royal Dutch_ in the Dutch Indies numbered only 1,000 Europeans and 2,906 natives and Chinese for a production of 1,706,675 tons. A native earned only 300 gold francs a year for 80 tons of oil extracted, refined and transported to the coast. After the Bolshevik revolution wages at Grosny were still only seven roubles a day, which, considering the depreciation of Russian money, represented very little. Generally the expenses of production in Russia did not exceed a few kopecks a pood (50 kopecks for one of the best-known firms, that of Akverdoff). Thus oil is bound to become in future more and more important as a fuel, because of its peculiarity in necessitating so insignificant a charge for labour--which protects it from the inconveniences resulting from the social crises in the midst of which we live--and because its net cost is so small. For half a century it was used only for lighting purposes, and then it had to compete with gas and electricity. At one time there was talk of limiting production! Between 1900 and 1910 the invention of the internal-combustion engine and the enormous development of motoring gave it new impetus. Fine oils only had been used up to then. Under pressure of the demand, it became customary to raise and refine poorer and poorer oils, giving from 60 to 75 per cent. of waste products. There remained the mazut[1] or fuel-oil, which required very high temperatures for combustion and which was very dirty in use. Then the German, Diesel, invented the internal-combustion engine for heavy oil. The mazut, subjected to high pressure in a cylinder, produces an explosive mixture which, without sparking-plug or magneto, drives the pistons in the manner of a petrol engine. The installation is rather heavy, but no boiler is required, and it takes up much less space than a steam engine of the same power. A vessel fitted with a Diesel engine can sail for fifty-seven days without re-fuelling, while with a steam engine it could only sail for a fortnight. A ship fitted with a Diesel engine and having a speed of 20 knots could sail from France to Suez, India, Australia, New Zealand, and return by Cape Horn without re-fuelling. But, better than any words, the following little table, made out for two boats of the same power, will give an idea of the great advantages of the Diesel engine:-- --------------------------+--------------+--------------- | Diesel. | Steam. --------------------------+--------------+--------------- H.P. | 21,000 | 21,000 Weight of engine and | | accessories | 1,000 tons | 3,400 tons Space required | 5,300 cu. m. | 10,000 cu. m. Daily consumption | 100 tons | 360 tons | (heavy oil) | (coal) Consumption for a voyage | | of 15 days | 1,500 tons | 5,400 tons Bunker space for a voyage | | of 15 days | 1,700 cu. m. | 7,000 cu. m. Total space required for | | engine and fuel | 7,000 cu. m. | 17,000 cu. m. --------------------------+--------------+--------------- At first oil was used on fishing boats, then on small coasters. To-day the biggest British cargo boats, of the type of the _Zeelandia_ or _Sutlandia_, are fitted with Diesel engines. All German submarines had them during the War. In 1917 Herr Ballin,[2] the great friend of William II and the head of the _Hamburg-Amerika_ line, just before his suicide decided on the construction of a fleet of enormous ships fitted with internal-combustion engines. Scandinavia, Holland, Italy, all now use the Diesel engine. France alone remains behind in this respect. It has even been used on railways, a little-known fact. Diesel locomotives with four cylinders, built by Sulzer Brothers of Winterthur, have recently been run on the line from Berlin to Mannsfeld. "The development of our metallurgy," wrote Admiral Degouy in April 1920, "will soon give us the assurance that we also shall be able to manufacture large-bore cylinders and pistons of flawless casting, like those made in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Stockholm, and Christiania, which will support for long periods without change (and consequently without leakage) the temperature of 1,000° C. which is developed by the combustion of mazut in these engines." Since the invention of the internal-combustion engine, mazut has been introduced directly into the furnaces of great ships. The heating power of this formerly despised product is almost double that of coal: 1 kilogramme of liquid fuel produces the same results as 1.7 kilogrammes of coal. Its use allows of the reduction by five-eighths in bunker space, and by 70 to 80 per cent. of the stokers, since a single man can look after several boilers. The fuelling of a ship is effected cleanly and quietly in a few hours. Hundreds of tons of oil can be pumped into the cisterns in a negligible time, and that even out at sea and in heavy weather. To give an idea of the difference in time and labour required for the loading of coal and oil before the sailing of a mail steamer of the tonnage of the _Olympic_ or the _Lusitania_, I will quote the following figures:-- Coal 5 days 500 men Oil 12 hours 12 men The labour of stoking and clearing the furnaces is done away with; there is no longer either dust or smoke. Parts of the ship which are too restricted or too inconveniently placed for housing coal can be used for oil. It is stored in the double bottom of the boat, and by utilizing the coal bunkers for general cargo the available storage space is increased by 10 per cent. On the latest _Cunard_ and _White Star_ liners the economy of space thus realized has been as much as 33 per cent. And Admiral Lord Fisher drew attention to the fact that on the _Mauretania_--the sister ship to the _Lusitania_--the adoption of oil fuel allowed of the reduction of the crew by three hundred men. The efficiency of a boiler heated by coal is not much more than 60 per cent.; that of one heated by oil reaches 80 per cent. On Japanese steamers of the type of the _Temyo Maru_, of 21,000 tons, with Parsons turbines of 20,000 horse-power, the consumption of oil is only 455 grammes to one effective horse-power, instead of 685 grammes of coal. The flexibility and ease of control are extraordinary. Since 1911 the merchant fleet of the United States has been consuming 15 million barrels annually. Nearly all the nations have followed this example,[3] especially those which dream of the dominion of the seas for the use of oil in their warships gives them an incontestable superiority. The presence of a squadron sailing under coal is disclosed at a distance of more than 10 kilometres by enormous clouds of smoke; under oil its presence is almost imperceptible; it becomes visible only at the moment when it is about to attack. Ease of approach is enormously increased; and even if an enemy vessel is discovered by marine or aerial scouts it is very difficult for the gunners of the threatened vessel to take their aim at so vague a target as an almost invisible horizontal silhouette. "No smoke, not even a funnel!" exclaimed Lord Fisher in his strenuous campaign for the transformation of the British Navy. Many years elapsed, however, before he saw the triumph of the new fuel. It has been objected that ships lose a little of the protection which is conferred upon them by their belts of coal bunkers; but this criticism is valueless. For, as they gain considerably in lightness, it is possible to increase the thickness of the armour plate and the size of the guns. The abolition of funnels permits of a considerable increase in the field of fire of the artillery. Moreover, with oil fuel fleets acquire an extreme mobility.[4] Half an hour after receiving the order to raise steam the ship is ready to start. Thirty-five minutes afterwards it is going at full speed. In six minutes it can pass from normal to maximum speed. Eleven minutes are needed to get a boiler under full pressure. A voyage at forced speed entails no extra fatigue for the crew: with coal it is hell! Thus, since 1912, oil has been constantly used on twenty-eight German battleships, almost the whole of the fleets of Great Britain and the United States, and the Russian squadrons in the Baltic and the Black Sea. _The American Navy has completely abandoned coal for its new units._ And France? France, which was the first to conceive the idea, had, at the moment when war broke out, only a few small boats burning oil, and not a single powerful modern vessel comparable with the _Queen Elizabeth_. And yet, as early as 1864, it was France that built the first ship, the _Puebla_, sailing under Lieutenant Farcy, to use the new fuel, which aroused so much curiosity during the Second Empire. But the selfish opposition of our coal-owners overcame those who were favourably inclined, including Napoleon III himself. No one gives a thought to these facts at the present time. France often points the way of progress; she never profits by it. * * * * * The most far-reaching revolutions have begun with a technical invention. The unknown monk who first mixed charcoal with sulphur and saltpetre razed feudal castles and created the great modern States. And he who balanced a magnetized needle on its pivot was the real founder of colonial empires. We are just entering upon an economic period which will turn the whole world upside-down--the Revolution in Fuel, with its far-reaching consequences. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "The famous petroleum wells of Baku ... yield crude naphtha, from which the petroleum or kerosene is distilled; while the heavier residue (_mazut_) is used as lubricating oil and for fuel."--_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed., vol. iii, p. 230.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.] [Footnote 2: "Herr Ballin committed suicide, foreseeing that unrestricted submarine warfare, which had then been decided upon, would be the downfall of Germany."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_: Contre-Admiral Degouy, "Oil and the Navy."] [Footnote 3: Since 1920 the world tonnage of oil-burning steamers has exceeded that of steamers built to burn coal.] [Footnote 4: At the battle of Jutland, only the oil-burning ships realized their trial speed.] CHAPTER II OIL: ITS ORIGIN, DISCOVERY, AND HISTORY The Great Producing States before 1914 and in 1921 Oil is found naturally in different forms. Sometimes it occurs as a volatile liquid at ordinary temperatures; it is then known as naphtha. Sometimes the volatile principles are only given off at higher temperatures; it is then called petroleum or rock-oil. Sometimes also it appears in a semi-solid form, asphalt, its volatile properties having already evaporated. It is very rarely that oil is found on the surface or gushing up by itself without the help of pumps. It is usually met with at a great depth underground, in pockets in which oil and gas are found above water. Thus, in order to detect its presence, it is necessary to make borings. When one reaches a pocket in the neighbourhood of the gas, the latter escapes by the outlet which is offered. If the boring first reaches oil, and if the pressure of gas is sufficient, the oil gushes out and forms a spring. This is what happened in the Caucasus, where certain wells spouted up to a height of eighty metres through the borings made by the prospectors. More often the gas pressure is not sufficient to raise the liquid to the surface, and it is necessary to install pumps driven by steam to empty the pocket. At the time of the boring, when the cylindrical metal drill, driven vertically by a metal cable and held vertical by the derrick (a sort of pyramidal framework of metal), reaches the deposit, the gas which has been accumulating for thousands of years escapes, driving, pushing, sucking up the oil, and making a fountain, a gusher, a sort of artesian well. The oil is led away in metal pipes, vertical till they reach the surface, horizontal to the refineries, ports, or other destinations. Once the well is capped, it is not touched again; it is alone in the desert, and only a metre records its daily output, while hundreds of thousands of men are obliged to work underground to wrest coal from the bowels of the earth by the strength of their arms! The depth of the wells varies from 200 to 1,600 metres, according to the region. The duration of the flow is essentially variable, depending upon the magnitude of the deposit of oil. But it goes without saying that when a spring has flowed for seven years more or less, like the first one exploited by the _Mexican Eagle_, it gives out, yielding salt water. The fact is quite ordinary, and is known in all competent circles, although it is sometimes brandished as a warning by interested people in order to lower the value of certain oil shares. One often hears of "pools," "rivers," or "veritable lakes of oil." These expressions are most inaccurate. Apart from certain exceptions, such as the famous well of the _Colombia_ in Rumania in 1913, the deposits of oil are neither rivers nor pools. They are _actually solid layers of sandstone, often very hard, impregnated, saturated with oil_. This sandstone is very porous and contains thousands of cavities or pockets enclosing the precious "rock-oil." Its thickness varies from the usual 30 or 50 metres (giving wells of a yield of 200, 500, or 1,000 barrels a day) to _one kilometre_ in certain wells of the _Eagle_ (yielding 70,000 to 100,000 barrels a day, instead of 200 to 1,000). The _Eagle_ is lucky, it must be admitted, and its history is unique in the annals of oil. Only its sister company, the _Mexican Oil_, which works in the same field, but for the _Standard Oil_ group, can be compared with it. Even a superficial examination of the chemical composition of oil, a hydrocarbon, in which the carbon, in a proportion of 80 to 88 per cent., is combined with hydrogen, and sometimes with a little oxygen, reveals in this compound a marvellous source of thermal energy, which may manifest itself in various ways. For, from the greenish-brown oil which is lighter than water, no less than 128 chemical compounds are obtained, which are used in forty different industries. From the retort in which the crude oil is distilled comes an infinity of substances of basic importance in modern industry. * * * * * Although the intensive use of oil and its industrial applications are of comparatively recent date, the discovery of deposits of petroleum goes back to remote antiquity. The history of oil is as old as the world, since there is already mention of it in the Book of Genesis. The wells of Baku were known long before the Christian era. In the peninsula of Apsheron, where they are situated, arose the cult of Zoroaster and the fire-worshippers. According to the latter, the flames which escaped from the soil would burn until the end of the world. They were, at any rate, famed throughout the world nearly three thousand years ago. The Greeks and Romans were acquainted with oil. The latter called it _bitumen_. In Low Latin it was _petroleus_, from _petra_--stone, and _oleum_--oil; and the word has come down to us through the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who adopted it. In ancient mythology and literature oil is often mentioned. It is probably with oil that the Centaur--to avenge himself upon Hercules--was obliged to anoint the famous shirt of Nessus! "It is not without reason," says Plutarch, "that certain authors, wishing to restore truth to legend, assert that petroleum is the substance which Medea used to smear the crown and veil that play so great a part in the tragedies; for fire does not issue from them of itself, but when they are brought near a flame fire is communicated to them by some kind of attraction with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow it." Herodotus, in his works, mentions the oil-fields of Zante; Pliny those of Agrigente in Sicily; Plutarch those of Ecbatana and Babylon. "The land of Babylon," he says, "is impregnated with fire.... It is as though the soil, agitated by the fiery substances which lie concealed in its bosom, has a sort of pulse which makes it quake." When Alexander conquered these regions he was particularly astonished, in the province of Ecbatana, at "a gulf from which rivers of flame streamed continually, as though from an inexhaustible source."[5] His return to Babylon was celebrated by the burning of two parallel streams flowing through the streets. And one of his courtiers, to amuse him, caused a young man to be anointed with oil; scarcely had it touched his body when he was enveloped in flames. The Chinese have used oil for lighting from the most distant times; Europeans since the fourteenth century. It is difficult to go further back owing to the absence of documents during the Middle Ages. But what was Greek Fire, if not oil? In the fifteenth century we find traces of its use in medicine; and even at the present time the natives of Mosul and Bagdad use some of the purer varieties, which they call "mourn," as a dressing for serious wounds. Oil has some fame as a vermifuge; as, for example, the oil of Gabiau in the south of France. A curious memoir of François Clouet, who was entrusted with the task of embalming Francis I in 1547, mentions the use of an oil ("pétrolle") in the colouring of a waxen mask made in the dead king's likeness. In the eighteenth century Apsheron was again the astonishment of British travellers seeking a route to India. "The Russians drink it as a tonic and as a beverage," writes Jonas Hanway, who visited these regions in 1754, speaking of petroleum. "It never intoxicates. Used internally, it is also an excellent cure for gravel. Used externally, it is a valuable remedy in cases of scurvy, gout, and cramp. It is very good for removing stains from fabrics, and would be in more frequent use if it did not leave behind it an abominable smell." [Illustration: World Production in 1918.] Finally, the earliest settlers found oil in America, or, to be more exact, recognized the wells which had already been dug by the Indians. But it was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that the real importance of the oil-fields scattered over the globe began to be realized. While France about 1840 made the first trial use of shale oil, and Germany in 1853 invented the oil lamp, later perfected by Laydaw of Edinburgh, "the bold and inventive spirit of Young America undeterred by a series of fruitless experiments, set itself to discover the first springs of the precious liquid in Pennsylvania." In 1858 Colonel Edward Drake, while boring a salt-water well near Tytusville, was nearly engulfed with his workmen in a jet of oily liquid, the spring of which was apparently inexhaustible, and continued to furnish several thousand litres a day. It was subsequently discovered that this liquid after a very simple process of purification, would burn with a brilliant light. The "oil fever" then seized all America and myriads of searchers rushed into the valleys of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania. The oil industry was created. For a long time America was the only country producing the precious oil; forty years ago she still furnished two-thirds of the world's supplies. But although the oil-fields of the Alleghanies and of Ohio were developed rapidly, they have been far surpassed by the enormous deposits of Baku. In 1898 Russia outdistanced the United States, and kept the first place until 1902, when America recovered it after a great struggle, thanks to the new oil basins of Texas, California, and the Mid-Continent, and above all those of Kansas and Oklahoma, with its famous "Glen Pool," which in 1908 produced the fantastic figure of 50,000 barrels _a day_. Russia has never been able to retrieve her position. Her production, which in 1901 was 50 per cent. of that of the whole world, was not more than 20 per cent. two years before the War, and in 1918 had fallen to 7.86 per cent. The cause is chiefly the diminution of production of the "black region" of Baku, in the peninsula of Apsheron, which juts out into the Caspian Sea and is connected with the open seas by a railway and by a pipe 800 kilometres long, through which the annual flow of oil towards Europe before the great world catastrophe amounted to 400,000 tons. In five years the average yield of the wells diminished by 40 per cent., while the mean depth of the borings was increased by 25 per cent. It was necessary to dig more and more deeply to find less and less oil. The old oil-fields of Baku were nearing exhaustion. Now they alone furnished four-fifths of the production of Russia. That is why, in 1918, Russia lost the second place, which she had held so long, to her young rival Mexico. It is true that the two revolutions which she had to undergo in this quarter century helped the process considerably. The revolution of 1905 caused the bloody disturbances of the Caucasus: the finest factories were burnt and numerous wells destroyed. Great unrest continued incessantly in this region until the triumph of Lenin. But there are still in Russia oil-fields of very considerable extent, scarcely touched before 1914, which the world cannot afford to dispense with.[6] The United States, Russia, Mexico, Rumania, these were, in order of importance, the four chief oil-producing countries before the War. Rumania shares with America the distinction of being the first country in which rock-oil was extracted. The same year in which Colonel Drake made his experiments at Tytusville 250 tons were extracted from a well by hand-pumping: the oil was only just below the surface. Since then Rumanian production has continually increased. It was 500,000 tons when the region of Moreni, one of the richest in the world, was discovered. Foreign capital flowed in immediately, and Rumanian production reached its highest point in 1913 with 2 million tons. The War gave it an appreciable setback; at the present time it does not come to more than half this figure.[7] [Illustration: Pre-war production of oil in Mexico, Rumania, the Dutch Indies and Galicia.] Although the production of Rumania, hampered by the lack of electricity which hinders the borings, has recovered with difficulty, that of Mexico, often a prey to civil war, has known no pause in its incredible progress. In ten years it has passed from 3 to 160 million barrels, carrying its share in world production from 1 per cent. to 23 per cent. The figures are worth quoting:-- -------+---------------------+----------------- Year. | World Production | Percentage from | 1910-21 (barrels). | Mexico only. -------+---------------------+----------------- 1910 | 328,000,000 | 1.10 1911 | 344,000,000 | 3.65 1912 | 352,500,000 | 4.70 1913 | 385,000,000 | 6.80 1914 | 400,000,000 | 5.30 1915 | 426,500,000 | 7.70 1916 | 459,500,000 | 8.70 1917 | 505,500,000 | 10.09 1918 | 515,000,000 | 12.40 1919 | 551,000,000 | 15.85 1920 | 684,000,000 | 23.35 1921 | 759,000,000 | 25.00 -------+---------------------+----------------- It is Mexico which saves the world to-day, for the United States--the greatest producers in the world--do not even supply enough for their own consumption, and are obliged to call in the help of Mexico to make good their deficit. In spite of all their efforts, they have only succeeded, during the last three years, in increasing production by 24 per cent., while Mexico has augmented hers by 130 per cent. The other countries follow at a considerable distance. Here is the record of each for 1921:-- Barrels. United States 469,639,000 Mexico 195,064,000 Russia 28,500,000 Dutch East Indies 18,000,000 Persia 14,600,000 Rumania 8,347,000 India 6,864,000 Poland (Galicia) 3,665,000 Peru 3,568,000 Japan and Formosa 2,600,000 Trinidad 2,354,000 Argentina 1,747,000 Egypt 1,181,000 Venezuela 1,078,000 France 392,000 Germany 200,000 Canada 190,000 Italy 35,000 Algeria 3,000 Great Britain 3,000 Other countries 1,000,000 The total production was 759,000,000 barrels of 42 gallons, against 684,000,000 barrels in 1920. It exceeds 100 million tons, easily beating the records of the preceding years. If we remember that half a century ago, it was only 66,000 tons, and that _between 1913 and 1920 it has almost doubled_, we shall see what a tremendous stimulus the great world War has been. But fears are increasingly felt. Will it be possible to satisfy the dizzy increase in the consumption of oil? And do not certain countries already fear to see the reserves contained in their soil exhausted? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Plutarch's _Lives_, Alexander the Great, chap. xliv.] [Footnote 6: Cp. chap. xvi, _The Struggle for the Oil-fields of Russia._] [Footnote 7: Having fallen to 920,000 tons in 1919, it had increased to 1,030,086 tons in 1920 (12 per cent. increase). This slight recovery is the first noted; for six years Rumanian production steadily decreased. The worst year was 1917.] CHAPTER III AMAZING INCREASE IN CONSUMPTION Fears of the United States The consumption of oil is rising at a terrific rate. Entire branches of industry are transformed, and it may be said that all modern transport is increasingly dependent upon the use of the new fuel. Automobilism and aviation owe their existence to it. Not only do steam engines tend to give place to the oil motor in a great number of cases, but they themselves begin to use oil instead of coal. Locomotives and the engines of ships more and more seek the source of their energy in oil. No more smoke, no more troublesome ash, and double the calorific power. The work of a fireman, formerly so exhausting, is reduced to the opening and closing of a tap. If coal is replaced by mazut in the furnaces of ships, their radius of action is increased by 50 per cent.; it is more than tripled if the internal-combustion engine is used. Certain British engineers are not afraid to assert that _one ton of mazut, used in a Diesel engine for ships, is equivalent to at least six tons of coal_. Few countries hesitate in face of such advantages. Since 1885 the railways of Southern Russia have been run on oil; those of Rumania since 1887. The railway companies of the United States consumed 20 million barrels even in 1909--that is, _one-tenth_ of the production at that time. And the last few years have been marked by the conclusion of contracts by the United States Railroad Administration for the delivery of 50 million barrels. The engines of the Southern Pacific Railway have been aptly described as veritable monsters. Their boilers are two metres in diameter and fourteen and a half metres long. Their heating-surface is double that of ordinary locomotives. The driver's place is in front, which allows him to see the track. Mexico has long since followed the example set by the United States. So also has Austria for her Alpine railways. France has made experiments which have been much talked of; and the Argentine, only a few months ago, has concluded important contracts with the _Shell Transport and Trading Company_ for the supply of oil for her railways. Everywhere the substitution of oil for coal is going on, and consumption is developing with such rapidity that the supply is no longer anything like equal to the demand. Even if Russia recovered, the discrepancy between the needs of the world and the quantity available would be considerable. That is why the price of liquid fuel, which requires little labour in its production, remains so high. Since North America supplies 80 per cent. of the world production, the dollar has become the standard currency for oil. At the present time, Rumanian oil, delivered in Hungary, is sold at the same price as American oil. _The market-price is therefore fixed for the whole world by New York._ Very few people realize at all clearly what will be the consumption of oil in a few years' time. It is natural enough, for it is only a short time since our great and instructive Press began--very timidly, however--to entertain its readers with this burning topic. There is no one, at present, who does not know that the question of fuel is of supreme importance to the whole industrial life of Europe. Now, the world-production of coal was, in 1920, about 100 million tons short, compared with the production in 1913. The directors of colliery companies endeavour to increase the output of the mines, but they obtain in general only disappointing results, which is not strange when we observe the increasing number of miners' strikes, the rise in wages, and the fact that laws are continually passed to reduce the hours of labour. In producing steam, one ton of mazut gives almost the same result as two tons of coal; more than 50 million tons of fuel-oil are therefore required to make good this enormous deficit. Now, in 1919 the world production of mazut did not exceed 75 million tons. After making good the shortage of coal, this would leave only 25 million tons to satisfy the ordinary demand. This comparison of figures makes clear how great is the need of oil, at a time when the use of oil, in preference to coal, is becoming more and more the order of the day. Now, the great and general increase in consumption is not equalled by the production which, though far from stationary, is none the less much below the needs which are predicted for the future in competent circles. An American oil journal recently published the following figures for the consumption of the United States:-- 1907 24 million tons 1918 57 million tons 1919 75 million tons And even at the beginning of 1920 an increase of 25 per cent. over 1919 was noted. The rate of increase was such that, in January and February 1921, the American consumption was greater by 230,729 barrels _a day_ than the national production. The stock of oil in the United States, both national and Mexican, has recently been considerably reduced, and does not amount to more than 114,000,000 barrels, representing only four months' consumption, although for years past it has always been sufficient to meet the consumption for six months. It must be remarked that motor-cars are terrible gluttons for petrol, and that in the United States every farmer has his car. In a self-respecting family there are generally three--a limousine for use in town, an open car for touring, and a Ford for the servants to fetch provisions. It has been calculated that there is on an average one motor-car to every thirteen inhabitants. The Ford works alone are capable of turning out three million annually. And, as if that was not enough, America is planning to develop, by motor traction, the means of transport in Asia, the continent without railways. We may predict for this a consumption of 120 million tons in the near future. _The United States consume twice as much oil as the rest of the world, while their resources do not amount to more than one-seventh of those of the world._ Their consumption increased in 1920 by 25 per cent.; their production only by 11 per cent. And already fears are entertained that it may diminish. Two-thirds of the oil-fields of Oklahoma, which state alone produces nearly one-quarter of the total, have been developed; and the number of borings tends to diminish. If the increase in world-consumption of oil continues at the rate that it has done during the past few years, the oil reserves of the United States, calculated on the basis of 70 barrels to each inhabitant, without allowing for increase of population, would, according to the Smithsonian Institute, come to an end about the year 1927. These figures seem to me a little exaggerated, for the reserves contained in the soil of the United States cannot possibly be completely exploited in so short a time. But the figures published by the Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior shows that other countries consume half as much oil as the United States, while their soil contains seven times more. "These countries consume at the present time two million barrels a year; at this rate, they have reserves sufficient for 250 years. The United States consume 400 million barrels a year; they have only enough for 18 years.[8] "The total amount of oil which can still be extracted from the soil of the entire world has been computed at 60,000 million barrels--43,000 million have already been brought to the surface by successful borings. "Of the 60,000 million which remain to be extracted, 7,000 million are to be found in the United States and in Alaska; 53,000 million in the rest of the world." That is why the American Navy, having in view the treatment of bituminous shale by distillation, has reserved to itself the rights over immense deposits, chiefly in Colorado and Utah. If the United States do not succeed in acquiring new oil-fields in the rest of the world, the position will become so serious that they will only be able to avoid war at the price of economic vassalage. There is oil in all parts of the world, and yet dominion over oil is one of the most concentrated possible. From Alaska almost to Tierra del Fuego, every country in the New World possesses some. Alaska. Canada: its presence was discovered in 1789 by Sir Alexander Mackenzie. United States. Mexico. Central America. Venezuela. Trinidad, Guiana. Colombia. Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia. Chili, the Argentine. Brazil and Uruguay: it is hoped that oil will be found shortly. [Illustration: Map of the Principal Oil-bearing Regions of the World.] In Europe it is less evenly distributed: Hanover (Wenigsen). Alsace. Italy. Poland. The Ukraine. Rumania. Hungary: a subsidiary company of the _Anglo-Persian_, the _D'Arcy Exploration_, found oil deposits in March 1921. Asia is nearly as rich as America: The Caucasus. Persia, Mesopotamia. Dutch Indies. Siam, Burma. China. Japan and Formosa. Africa and Oceania, on the contrary, seem to possess only small quantities of the precious oil. There is some in North Africa, in Egypt, and possibly in Madagascar. The great British prospecting group, which I have already mentioned in connection with Hungary, is making a thorough search at this moment in Western Australia and New Zealand. Now nearly all these oil-fields, scattered in the four corners of the world, and in so many different countries, are at the present moment in the hands of two great trusts--one American, the _Standard Oil_, and the other Anglo-Dutch, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_--and certain companies controlled by the British Government. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: Cp. Part III, chap. xiv, _How the United States Lost Supremacy over Oil_.] PART II THE STRUGGLE OF THE TRUSTS CHAPTER IV THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY Although it sometimes happens that governments oppose each other openly in the struggle for oil, as in the case of Poland, Rumania, the Caucasus, and Turkey, they prefer, in general, to hide behind trusts. There exist in the United States numerous oil concerns whose power is far from negligible, such as the _Sinclair Oil Company_, with a capital of 500 million dollars, and the _Texas_ and the Doheny interests, which together represent another 500 million dollars. But all these independent producers must bow before the unchallenged supremacy of the _Standard Oil_. The _Standard Oil_, a purely American concern, preceded the _Royal Dutch_--a Dutch company with considerable British, and recently a little French, capital[9]--by twenty years. As a matter of fact, there is no longer to-day one _Standard Oil_, but forty companies, all bearing this name followed by that of a town or State: _The Standard Oil of New Jersey_, _The Standard Oil of Pennsylvania_, _The Standard Oil of Kansas_, _The Standard Oil of Ohio_. The first is the most important. All are federated under one great administrative body. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of _Standard Oil Companies_ is at the present time Mr. Bedford, formerly Chairman of the _Standard Oil of New Jersey_, where his place has been taken by Walter Teagle. This great Council is the real brain of the _Standard_, from which emanates the general policy of this federation of companies, as powerful as the Government of the United States--more powerful sometimes. Its history, like that of all American trusts, has something of the marvellous. At the beginning of a great undertaking there is always a great man: the founder of the _Standard_ was John Rockefeller, a small dealer in oil, who, in 1865, conceived the idea of forming a federation of all American oil-dealers. There were in 1870, in the United States, 250 refineries, which waged among themselves a merciless price-war. It was to put an end to this struggle, which was so advantageous to the consumer, that the _Standard Oil Company_ was created, _a combine of refiners, not of producers_. Following a strict and constant principle, which it has always observed, the _Standard_ has refrained from seeking raw oil, leaving this task entirely to the prospectors and producers. But as soon as it reaches the surface, the oil, wherever it is found, becomes the exclusive property of the Company, to whose innumerable refineries it is conducted by pipe-lines. The original _Standard Oil Company_, that of Ohio, began humbly with a capital of a million dollars, and the small consumption of 600 barrels a day. Established in Cleveland, it grouped together all the interests in the refining and transport of oil acquired in Pennsylvania since 1865 by Rockefeller, Andrews, Harckess and Flager. Two years later, not only had it brought all the refineries in the neighbourhood of Cleveland under its own control, but it had built others at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Pittsburgh. Six years after its inauguration, it already acquired the greater part of the crude oil produced in the United States. Moreover, its capital had been twice increased, in 1872 and 1874. At the end of ten years, it transported and distributed 95 per cent. of the American output. In 1881 it amalgamated thirty-nine oil companies. The trust was constituted and already disposed of a capital of 75 million dollars. The first cycle of its growth was finished. Supreme in the United States market and sure of its monopoly, it completed the laying of its first pipe-line to the Atlantic. The _Standard Oil_ was about to lay claim to Europe. The Agreement of January 2, 1882 Such fortunes were not built up by entirely honourable methods. The directors of the _Standard Oil of Ohio_ had formed pools. They imposed buying and selling prices on every company which participated. This system, which in a dozen years gave such wonderful results, was not without its faults. There was friction between members of the pool. The need for establishing unity of direction was soon felt. It was with this object that the _Standard Oil Trust_ was founded in 1882. It was the first time that the word "Trust" appeared in the name of a firm. A Committee of nine members, or trustees, was formed. It comprised all the Rockefeller family: John Rockefeller, Payne, William Rockefeller, Bestwick, Flager, Warden, Pratt, Brewster, Archbold. The nine trustees became the sole delegates and depositories of all the 39 companies conjointly engaged. They received from each concern the shares and the corresponding voting powers. Trust Certificates, of a nominal value of 100 dollars, were exchanged for shares only in the proportion of the value of each undertaking to the total value of all the undertakings constituting the Trust. The Agreement of 1882 which sealed the pact, provided for the admission into the Trust of new companies and the eventual formation of a _Standard Oil Company_ in each State of the Union. Companies of four kinds entered the combine of 1882:-- 1. Fourteen companies in which _the whole_ of the shares were held by the trustees. Among these were the _Atlantic Refining Company_, the _Standard of Ohio_, and the _Standard of Pittsburgh_. The first of these companies succeeded in recovering its liberty in 1911. 2. Rich private individuals, having an interest in the oil industry and holders of large parcels of shares, such as W.C. Andrews and John Archbold. 3. Twenty-four companies in which the _majority_ of the shares were held by the trustees:-- _Central Refining Company of Pittsburgh_, _Germania Mining_, _Empire Refining_, _Keystone Refining_, _National Transit Company_, etc. These twenty-four companies placed themselves under the control of the Trust from 1882 onward. Two others have come in under compulsion:-- (1) The _Tide-water Pipe-line Company_, having constructed pipe-lines itself, entered into fierce competition with the _Standard_. On October 9, 1883, it was compelled to negotiate with the _National Company_. Under the resulting contract, it agreed to provide 11-1/2 per cent. of the quantity sent to the ports by pipe-lines as its share of the traffic, and was guaranteed an annual profit of at least half a million dollars for fifteen years. (2) _The Producers' Associated Oil Company_, born of a concerted effort of independent producers to fight the _Standard_, gave in in October, 1887. 4. One other company alone forms the fourth class. The Trust has an interest in this but has never been able, whatever its efforts, to obtain the majority of the shares and to control the company. This is the _United States Pipe-Line Company_. This company experienced many difficulties and mortifications. After having struggled against the inertia of the railways devoted to the _Standard Oil_, and spent more than 15,000 dollars on law costs alone, it succeeded in pushing its lines up to Washington, but could never get any further, nor reach the coast; the _Standard_ bought up the intervening territory. At its zenith, in 1911, when it was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of the United States, the _Standard_ owned 90 per cent. of the pipe-lines and controlled 86-1/2 per cent. of the oil production of America. A single company, the _Pure Oil Company_, founded in 1895, whose field of exploitation was Germany, was able to maintain its independence. The seventy-five small refineries existing outside the Trust did not refine, all put together, a fifth as much as the _Standard_. The refinery which the latter possessed at Bayonne was by itself more important than ten of these competing refineries. The European market was almost completely conquered. Everywhere the _Standard_ operated by means of its subsidiary companies:-- The _Anglo-American Oil Company_ in Great Britain. The _American Petroleum_ in Holland. The _Deutsche Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft_ in Germany. The _Société pour la Vente du Pétrole_ in Belgium. The _Vacuum Oil_ in Austria-Hungary. The _Societa Italo-Americana per Petrollo_ in Italy. The _Romana-Americana_ in Rumania. The _Danske Petroleum Altieselskabet_ in Denmark. The _Swenska Petroleum Altiebolage_ in Sweden. The _International Oil_ in Japan. In Galicia, the Trust held its own against all similar indigenous enterprises. The Rumanian refiners were obliged to come to an understanding with it; otherwise it would, with its powerful means of pressure, have created a monopoly for itself. And the _French Oil Cartel_ was at its mercy. Causes of the Success of the Standard The difficulty is not to produce oil, but to transport it, for it is generally found in more or less desert regions. Hence Rockefeller's brilliant idea, to construct pipe-lines bringing the oil direct to the great centres! Thenceforward, since the oil was transported almost automatically, its price dropped considerably. All the producers became tributaries of the pipe-lines, and the _Standard_ obtained practically complete control of the market. This was the first cause of the success of the _Standard_. All the small producing companies became compulsorily its clients. As controller of the market, it fixed the price in draconian fashion. There is a second cause: its alliance with the great railway companies, and the support which it received from the railway magnates--Scott of the _Pennsylvania Railroad_, Vanderbilt of the _New York Central_, Jewet of the _Erie Railroad_, Watson of the _Lake Shore_, and many others less well known. Its subsidiary, the _South Improvement Company_, on January 18, 1872, made contracts with the railway companies, by which it fixed the proportionate shares in the transport of oil to the Atlantic seaboard as follows:-- 27-1/2 per cent. to the _Erie_, 27-1/2 per cent. to the _New York Central_, 45 per cent. to the _Pennsylvania_. The companies thus favoured by the _Standard_ made their competitors pay double rates. One of these latter produced before the Inter-State Commerce Commission the scandalous tariffs demanded of them: On the _Louisville and Nashville Railroad_, increased rates to competitors of 87 to 333 per cent.; On the _Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific_, from 63 to 267 per cent.; On the _St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern_, from 82 to 257 per cent. Systematic negligence in transport was proved with regard to competitors. The _Union Tank Line Company_, which owns tank-wagons as the _International Sleeping Car Company_ owns restaurant cars, would only put them at the disposal of the _Standard_, and compelled its adversaries to dispatch their oil in barrels, which is much more costly. The Trust alone was entitled to lay its pipe-lines beside the railway-lines or underneath the track. It possessed 35,000 miles of such lines at the end of last century--or rather the _National Transit Line_, which acts as its instrument, owned them. Such abuses could not be allowed to continue. The inquiry by the Hepburn Committee revealed a multitude of crying injustices. For example, it was enough for the _Standard_ or the _South Improvement_ to telegraph "_Wilkinson and Co._ have received a truck which only paid $41.50; screw them up to $57.50," and the order was executed. The Charter of the _South Improvement_, which had even succeeded in acquiring the right of expropriation in order to construct its pipe-lines, was withdrawn under the pressure of indignant oil-producers. But the Federal Government of the United States will never succeed in crushing the _Standard Oil_. Its Two Dissolutions--Roosevelt's Fight against the Standard Oil Twice over, in 1892 and 1911, its constitution was judged illegal, but in vain. In 1892 the system of nine trustees was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Ohio. The trustees voted the dissolution of the Trust, but continued to administer all the corporations in the same way until 1899. The Trust was apparently divided into twenty distinct companies; the nine old trustees distributed the shares in such a way as to possess the majority in each one. Thus they made sure, as before, of unity of direction. Rockefeller had reversed the judgment of the court. Here is the legal formula, which is dignified in its simplicity: "John Rockefeller has placed in the hands of the said attorney 256,854/292,500 of the total shares held by the said trustees on July 1, 1892, in each of the companies whose shares were deposited." Still better, after receiving the shares which were granted them in each company, the old trustees took them and sold them to the _Standard Oil Company of New Jersey_, which has a capital of 100 million dollars of common stock, and only ten million dollars of preferred stock. For the _Standard_ has a monarchical constitution. All power to the holders of preferred stock! The holders of common stock have none but that of drawing dividends. Though they may be in an enormous majority, they count for nothing in the direction of the enterprise. About 1900 Rockefeller went still further. He increased the number of ordinary shares, and reduced that of the privileged shares. A memorandum of the Industrial Commission drew attention to this. "During the year 1900, the common stock has been increased by 38,550,700 dollars and the preferred stock has been reduced by 3,968,400 dollars." In short, Rockefeller makes the concern more and more autocratic. The _Standard_ forms a veritable State within a State, which nothing can bend. The Trust was reconstituted, with a holding company, the _Standard Oil Company of New Jersey_, holding the title-deeds of all the other companies. It was then that Roosevelt undertook to destroy a power before which everything bowed down. The Federal Government brought an action before the Court of St. Louis, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The _Standard Oil_ and the seventy companies dependent on it were accused of "conspiracy, coercion, intimidation, rebating and other illegal acts in restraint of trade." The Federal Court of St. Louis ordered the dissolution of the Trust in 1909. The _Standard_ entered an appeal before the Supreme Court of the United States, which confirmed the dissolution in 1911, after five years of inquiries, prosecutions, judgments and appeals. The struggle had been going on since 1906. Many judgments had to be reversed. Thus, the _Standard Oil Company of Indiana_, with a capital of only a million dollars, was ordered to pay a fine of 29 million dollars for an illicit understanding with the _Chicago and Alton Railway_. It was paying only six cents a hundredweight for transport, while its competitors paid eighteen. This judgment was reversed in July 1908 by the Court of Appeal of Chicago. "It is strange," ran the decision "that a company with a capital of a million dollars should be fined a sum representing twenty-nine times this capital." The first tribunal had found 1,462 infringements proved, and had zealously applied the maximum for each case; that is how it had arrived at the incredible figure of 29 million dollars. The _Standard Oil_ was given six months to dissolve. The result was the same as in 1892. There were simply thirty-four companies apparently independent. In the midst of this new constellation, the _Standard Oil Company of New Jersey_, whose capital has risen to 600 million dollars, merely shines with a greater brilliance than its satellites. And the _Standard_ has no longer to fear attack from the Government of the United States, which bows obediently to its will. Even better, the late President Harding energetically supported its claims throughout the world. Whoever attacks the _Standard_ attacks the Federal Government itself. To think of Rockefeller's modest company in 1870, with its 600 barrels a day and its small capital of a million dollars, and to see what it has become to-day, is to be lost in amazement. In 1920, the Great Council of the _Standard_ controlled a capital of a thousand million dollars; representing almost equal profits, and a daily consumption of two hundred million barrels, which it even hopes to see presently increased to three hundred million. Here are the original and the present positions; they are widely different:-- Capital has increased from 1 to 1,000. Profits have increased from 1 to 100,000. Production has increased from 1 to 300,000. The _Standard_ has soared so high because it was a national enterprise. Every bank, every shipping company, every railway in the United States, was interested in the success of the Trust, for this great corporation exported to the four corners of the world a commodity drawn from the soil of the Union, and brought into the country, one year with another, more than a hundred million dollars. It looked as though all competition was impossible, and yet a European company has been found bold enough to attack, not only in Europe and Asia, but on its own ground of the United States, this financial power, whose turn-over must be estimated at twelve thousand million francs at least, or more than twice the pre-War budget of a nation like France. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: Forty per cent. of the capital of the _Royal Dutch_ is in French hands, but France unfortunately has no voice in the direction of this undertaking.] CHAPTER V THE _ROYAL DUTCH-SHELL_ In face of the formidable hegemony which the _Standard Oil_ exercised over the oil markets of the world, an opposition arose, at first timid, then bolder in proportion as success attended its efforts. This was the _Royal Dutch_ allied to the _Shell_. Thirty years have sufficed to give it a unique position in the world. It was in 1890, at The Hague, that the _Royal Dutch Oil Company_[10] was founded, with a capital of 1,300,000 florins. As a result of borings carried out in the Sunda Islands, the Government of the Dutch Indies granted it concessions at Sumatra. After some years, as the sale of crude oil did not give a sufficient return on the capital already sunk, the directors of the young company resolved to erect a refinery on the spot. It was necessary for this purpose to increase the capital to 1,700,000 florins in 1892. A strange fact to relate to-day, this issue was a failure. The capitalists of the day had lost confidence in an undertaking whose net profits for two years had been _nil_. In spite of these initial difficulties, the board of directors persevered. It even acquired new concessions, whose more profitable exploitation allowed of a first dividend in 1894 of 8 per cent. This distribution restored the confidence of the public, and the _Royal Dutch_ was able to increase its capital without difficulty in 1895 to 2,300,000 florins, with a view to extending its sphere of action. In the same year it was able to distribute a dividend of 44 per cent. Considering the importance of its operations, the company decided in 1897 to increase its capital to 5,000,000 florins, in order to obtain tank steamers to transport its products. The dividends had then risen to 52 per cent., but it could not keep up for long so exceptional a rate. For, from 1898 onward, the _Standard_, becoming uneasy, tried to obtain control over its rival. To escape from its grip, the _Royal Dutch_ was compelled to issue one and a half million preference shares, which were allotted to friendly groups. A bitter economic struggle followed. The _Royal Dutch_ maintained its independence, but the _Standard_, to destroy its young rival, did not hesitate to sell in extra-American markets at less than cost, and the steady lowering of the price of oil compelled the Dutch company to reduce its dividend to 6 per cent. It was maintained at this rate the following year, but began to rise again in 1900, and reached 24 per cent. in 1901. Since then the _Royal Dutch_ has progressively increased its capital to the present fantastic figure, under conditions which were so many windfalls for its shareholders. Its dividends during the great world War rose to the enormous rates of 45, 48 and even 49 per cent. There were some years when it went so far as to distribute to its shareholders dividends in shares of 200 per cent., thus tripling its nominal capital. The Alliance with the Shell The early career of the _Royal Dutch_ was as modest as that of the _Standard Oil_ and far more troubled. At its very beginning it found in the East a young British firm, the _Shell Transport and Trading Company_, which put up a keen competition, the more disastrous because the latter possessed a fleet of tank steamers, while the _Royal Dutch_ as yet had none. The _Shell_ was directed by Sir Marcus Samuel, one of the cleverest business men in London. Samuel had begun humbly as a trader in sea-shells. His business prospering more and more, he hunted about for some commodity to exchange for the shells which he brought from the East. He decided upon oil, and became himself a producer in Borneo. In 1897 the _Shell_ was registered in Great Britain, with the view of absorbing the business of _Samuel and Company_ and certain other similar concerns. The new company had a large number of tank steamers and hundreds of depots. The _Royal Dutch_ had then amalgamated the greater number of the independent producers of the Sunda Islands, but was experiencing some difficulty in getting its oil to Europe, and so decided to negotiate with the _Shell_. Hence the agreement of 1902, by which the two companies entrusted the sale of their products to a company which they created specially for the purpose, the _Asiatic Petroleum_. Its capital was subscribed as follows:-- 1/3 by the _Royal Dutch_, 1/3 by the _Shell Transport_, 1/3 by the Rothschilds. This simple alliance became a complete union ten years later. The _Royal Dutch_ and the _Shell_ amalgamated on the following basis:-- On January 1, 1907, the two groups transferred their assets to two companies, one Dutch, one British. These were the _Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij_ and the _Anglo-Saxon Petroleum_. The _Bataafsche_, or _Batavian Oil Company_, which now has a capital of 200 million florins, was specially entrusted with the extraction of oil and with everything concerning its production. Its oil-fields are situated in Java, Sumatra and Borneo, and it exploits them directly or by subsidiary companies. It has interests in the Mexican _Corona_ company and in many Russian companies. Although this last part of its program has not hitherto been productive, the _Bataafsche_ has distributed during the last few years dividends representing annually nearly half its capital. Directly or indirectly, it is responsible for almost the whole production of the Dutch Indies, which amounts to nearly 20 million barrels annually, and is steadily rising. To meet this increase, the _Batavian Oil Company_ is obliged every year to construct new reservoirs. In 1920 their capacity had reached more than 900,000 tons. The _Anglo-Saxon Petroleum_, with its head-quarters in London, was entrusted with everything concerning the transport and sale of oil, that is to say, with the commercial side of the business. Unlike the _Bataafsche_, this company undertakes no direct exploitation, although it controls the production of a large number of subsidiary companies in Ceylon, British India, Malay, Northern and Southern China, Siam, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ has an almost organic structure. Instead of reproducing itself in new companies, always the same, like the _Standard Oil_, it only receives new adherents for distinct functions. One company is entrusted with the distribution of its products, another with the exploitation of oil-fields or with refining. The _Royal Dutch_ and the _Shell_ have become to-day holding companies. In 1907 the _Royal Dutch_ ceased to be an industrial enterprise and became an omnium of oil securities. Forty per cent. of the profits resulting from this co-operation were to come to the _Shell_, 60 per cent. to the _Royal Dutch_, which has reserved the lion's share for itself. At the time of signing this agreement the _Shell_ was not without a certain anxiety. Thus it was agreed, in order to safeguard its interests, that the _Royal Dutch_ would buy, on January 1, 1907, half a million ordinary shares of the _Shell_ at the price of thirty shillings, and would undertake not to sell again without the consent of the board of directors of the _Shell_. In case of liquidation or sale by private contract before January 1, 1932, it was stipulated that the net product of the liquidation, up to £9,000,000 sterling, was to be divided equally between the _Shell_ and the _Royal Dutch_, and that only above this amount the products should be shared in the proportion of 40 and 60 per cent. We see how closely these two concerns are allied. The only difference which exists between them is that, officially, one is Dutch, the other British. Deterding's First Victory. The Chinese Campaign Freed from all obstacles in the Dutch Indies and allied with one of the most powerful British firms, the _Royal Dutch_, under the skilful guidance of Henry Deterding, was ready to attempt a conquest of the world. But for the second time it came up against the hostility of the _Standard Oil_, which waged a bitter warfare in the Far East--the famous price-war of 1910. The _Standard Oil of New York_ considered China as its private property. It had taught the Chinese to use kerosene by distributing, free of charge, lamps inscribed _Mei Foo_, or _Good Luck_. When this method became too expensive it sold them at cost price, and when the _Royal Dutch_ appeared as a competitor it was selling, in this way, two million lamps a year. With a population of 400 million Chinese, this produced an unlimited market for kerosene, for which, in comparison with petrol, the American demand is small. The _Standard_ tried to fight by selling refined oil below cost price in foreign markets, while keeping the price very high in America in the shelter of the tariff wall. It even went so far as to sell in the Far East 50 per cent, lower than in Holland, although the latter market was nearer the American oil-fields. At the same time the refined American oil, which was quoted in England at the end of August 1910 at 6-1/4d. a gallon, fell at the end of November to 5-3/4d., and in December to 5-1/2d. Deterding's receipts from the sale of kerosene were reduced by 3,750,000 dollars. But he would not give way. He did not leave China; he stood his ground and fought. Although his oil was of an inferior quality to that of the _Standard_, it was near at hand, and had not to be transported for long distances like that of its rival (which involved the latter in great expense). An agreement was finally made. The _Standard_, which had taken possession of the Chinese market in 1903, gave up 50 per cent, of that trade to the _Royal Dutch_. The latter's share has even been increased recently to 60 per cent. For the first time Deterding had conquered! Perhaps he would not have triumphed so easily if the _Standard Trust_ had not been dissolved just at that time by the Supreme Court of the United States. But two such powerful groups could not have continued indefinitely to struggle for the international market without making sure of some stability and limiting their respective zones of operation. After many attempts they have come to an understanding. In 1907 an agreement fixed the quota of oil that each group might send to the British market. In 1912 an agreement of a similar kind put an end to the struggle that had been going on in the Far East. The absence of a definite general agreement between the two great Trusts did not exclude the possibility of tacit agreements, which regulated their operations in the international market and assured to both an extraordinary prosperity. _The_ Standard _has several times made very tempting offers of close co-operation to the_ Royal Dutch, _leaving this group free to make its own conditions_. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ has always refused, for _the future is its own_. What will happen to the _Standard_, an almost exclusively American concern, when the oil resources of the United States are exhausted? Since 1919 it has been endeavouring to acquire oil-fields in the rest of the world, to guard against this danger, but everywhere it finds the "closed door." The _Royal Dutch_, aided by the British Government, has taken possession of all that remain in the world. New Struggle with the Standard Oil for the Conquest of the World One day, to the great astonishment of everybody interested in the American oil industry, Mr. Deterding brought a cargo of oil to the United States and sold it under the very nose of the directors of the _Standard Oil_. Emboldened by this first success, he tried to establish himself in the United States, and with this aim in view bought oil-bearing properties in Oklahoma. The _Royal Dutch_ rapidly increased its territory. By a bold policy and without recourse to the sharp practices of the directors of the _Standard Oil_, Deterding revenged himself for the attack upon him in the Far East. The _Royal Dutch_ sent large quantities of petrol to America and sold them at rates as high as those of the _Standard_. This enabled it to make good its losses in the Old World and to emerge victorious from the struggle. During his Chinese campaign Deterding had been handicapped by the inferiority of the oil from Borneo. To remedy this he proposed to obtain possession of various Californian wells. Of all the wars that Deterding has waged, that of California is the most interesting and perhaps the most strenuous. It required a remarkable audacity for the _Royal Dutch_ to establish itself on the very territory of the _Standard_ in America. Would it not meet there the coalition of this great firm and the independent oil companies? And yet Deterding triumphed. He created the _Roxana Petroleum Company_ in Oklahoma, the _Shell Company of California_ on the shores of the Pacific, and then extended his conquests to Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Dakota and Nevada. Everywhere the _Royal Dutch_ brings with it its curious methods. It begins by taking an option for six months on an oil bearing property, giving it the right to examine the books of the company and to make an inquiry. At the end of six months it takes an option on another property, and continues in this way throughout the region. After leaving nearly all the options without sequel, the _Royal Dutch_ is ready to begin boring operations on its own account in selected places. This method, adopted for the first time in California, is to-day the _habitual method_ of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_. Thus this company rarely makes miscalculations in the oil-fields it exploits. Its agents have orders to report the minutest details to head-quarters. In order to interest the American public in the success of his enterprise, Deterding was clever enough to place upon the New York market, in 1916, 220,000 so-called American shares. This issue was a great success, and it has thus become against the interest of many Yankees for the United States Government to start reprisals against the _Royal Dutch_, of which the late President Harding has often spoken. In 1915 the _Royal Dutch_ already controlled one-ninth of the American output. _One-third of its total production comes to-day from the United States._ It has obtained for its pipe-lines the right of passage to St. Louis and the river, and its surveys of Virginia and Louisiana are complete. It owns the great refineries of Martinez, near San Francisco, and of St. Louis and New Orleans. Seventy-five per cent. of the Californian output, which exceeds ten million tons, now escapes the control of the _Standard Oil_. But more than this, the _Royal Dutch_ is gaining possession of the deposits of Mexico and Venezuela. The oil-bearing territories of Tampico and Panuco, the railway, and the local oil companies belong to Mr. Deterding. The importance of this region is well known. Its geographical position, a few miles from the sea, and its nearness to the Panama Canal double its value. Three hundred and fifty kilometres by sea, one hundred and seventy-five by pipe-line across the isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the oil can be delivered at a centre which commands the whole South American market. Not content with conquering the _Standard Oil_ on its own ground, Deterding also caused it to lose its "Algeria." Master of the _Mexican Eagle_, which he bought from its founder, Lord Cowdray, in 1918 for more than a thousand million francs, he controls to-day the bulk of Mexican production. By this master-stroke he increased by 50 per cent. the quantity of oil that the _Royal Dutch_ can offer to the world. The Americans felt the loss very keenly, for hitherto all the output of the _Mexican Eagle_ had gone to the _Standard Oil_. The _Mexican Eagle_ had a large number of tank steamers, the acquisition of which brought up the fleet of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ to more than a million tons. Moreover, the directors of the _Royal Dutch_ do not hesitate to assert that the oil-bearing district of Venezuela, of which, since their agreements with the _General Asphalt Company_, they control more than 15,000 square miles, is as rich in oil as the district of Tampico. That is why they have put up enormous buildings, both warehouses and refineries, at Curaçao. The _Shell_, which has operated for four or five years in Venezuela, has just overcome the difficulties of approaching the coast by constructing a flotilla of tankers of very small draught, thus permitting the transport of oil from Maracaibo to Curaçao. The Panama Canal itself is seriously menaced. The United States have spent more than 300 million dollars in constructing the canal, and now American vessels are going to be dependent upon the _Royal Dutch_ for oil. Mr. Deterding has a depot at one end of the canal and another at the entrance to the gulf. He dominates American commerce. This is indeed a work of conquest. Mr. Deterding follows the commercial example of Great Britain. _He has stations at all the strategic points of the world._ He also controls the Suez Canal at both ends. The capacity of the refinery at Suez has been increased by 7,000 barrels a day, on account of the increase in the tonnage passing through the canal during the War. Mr. Deterding is building a station on the Cape Verde Islands, situated just half-way between Africa and America. He has establishments at the Antipodes, in the East and West Indies, on the west coast of South America, on the coast of Africa, and at the Azores. The European market, in particular the French, is dependent on him. Through the instrumentality of M. Deutsch de la Meurthe, the oil deposits in Asia, owned by the Rothschilds, have come under the _Royal Dutch_ trust, which possesses 90 per cent. of the capital of the oil companies of the Caspian and Black Seas and 25 per cent. of that of the _New Russian Standard Company_ of Grosny. In August 1920 the _Shell_ bought the _Mantasheff_ and the _Lianosoff_, together with a 40 per cent. interest in the _Tsatouroff_, fearing to see the _Standard Oil_ acquire the Nobel properties at Baku. The contract was signed in London, but was incompletely carried out, for Great Britain hoped to treat directly with the Soviets at Genoa and to have no more responsibility towards the former owners.[11] A large part of the Rumanian production is controlled by the _Royal Dutch_. In Germany the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ has an interest in the _Erdol und Kohle Veränderung Aktien Gesellschaft_, the _Aktien Gesellschaft für Petroleum Industrie_ and the _Deutsche Bergin Aktien Gesellschaft_. Since 1912 it has established itself in Sweden as the _Anglo-Swedish Oil Company_, to drive out the _Standard Oil_, until then mistress of the market. Everywhere the _Royal Dutch_ insinuates itself into the good graces of governments, thanks to its elastic methods and to the cleverness of some of its directors, such as the brilliant Armenian Gulbenkian, who has been well named the "Talleyrand of Oil." In co-operation with the Belgrade Government, it has just formed a new company at Agram, with a capital of 50 million crowns, to exploit the oil of Jugo-Slavia. As the _Financial Times_ wrote: "Following the creation in France of the _Société Maritime des Pétroles_ and the _Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles_, the _Royal Dutch_ is able to obtain from the French Government an important interest in the oil-fields which remain at its disposal." Its last triumph was its entry into Spain. The eminently suggestive list of companies controlled by the _Royal Dutch_ will give an idea of the network which it has spread over the whole world:-- _Shell Transport and Trading Company._ _Asiatic Petroleum Company._ _Anglo-Saxon Petroleum._ _Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij._ _Erdol und Kohle Veränderung Aktien Gesellschaft._ _Aktien Gesellschaft für Petroleum Industrie._ _Deutsche Bergin A.G._ _Anglo-Swedish Oil Company._ _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Ceylon). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Egypt). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Federated Malay States). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (India). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Northern China). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Philippines). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Siam). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Southern China). _Asiatic Petroleum_ (Straits Settlements). _Anglo-Egyptian Oil-fields._ _British Imperial Company_ (Australia). _British Imperial Company_ (New Zealand). _British Imperial Company_ (South Africa). _Astra Romana._ _Caribbean Petroleum._ _Dordesche Petroleum Industrie Maatschappij._ _Dordesche Petroleum Company._ _Sumatra Palembang._ _Nederlandsche Indische Tanks Troomboat._ _Vereinigte Benzinwerke, Hamburg._ _Home Light Oil Company._ _British Petroleum Company._ _Norsk Encelska Mineralojeanie Colaget._ _Shell Marketing Company._ _Italian Company for the Import of Oil._ _British Tanker Company._ _Moebi Hid._ _Ceram Petroleum._ _Ceram Oil Syndicate._ _Société Bnito._ _North Caucasian._ _Russian Standard of Grosny._ _Mazut Company._ _Ural-Caspian Company._ _Grosny Sundja Oil-fields._ _New Shibaïeff Petroleum._ _Commercial and Industrial Oil Companies of the Caspian and Black Seas._ _Mantasheff._ _Lianosoff._ _Tsatouroff._ _Kotoku Oil-fields Syndicate._ _United British Refineries._ _New Orleans Refining Company._ _Simplex Refining Company of Panama._ _Panama Canal Storage Company._ _Shell Company of California._ _Californian Oil-fields, Ltd._ _W.V. Oil Company._ _Volley Pipe-Line Company._ _Roxana Petroleum Company_ (Oklahoma). _Trahola Pipe-Line Company_ (Oklahoma). _Shell Corporation of Martinez._ _Shell Company of Canada._ _Roxana Petroleum Maatschappij_ (Texas). _Tampico-Tanuco Petroleum._ _La Corona._ _Mexican Eagle._ _Eagle Oil Transport._ _Venezuelan Concessions Company._ _Curaçao Petroleum._ _General Asphalt Company._ _Burlington Investment Company._ _United British Oil-fields of Trinidad._ _United British West Indies Petroleum Syndicate._ _Turkish Petroleum._ _Roxana Petroleum Corporation of Virginia._ _Ozark Pipe-Line Corporation._ _Union Oil of Delaware._ _Société Maritime des Pétroles._ _Photogen_ (Austria, Hungary, Poland). _Jugo-Slav Petroleum._ This list is certainly not complete, and it grows longer every day. Is it not eloquent by itself? The _Royal Dutch_ has penetrated every State in the world, assuming everywhere the national colour of the country it desires to conquer. It has travelled far since it began in the Dutch Indies, with a tiny capital of a million florins and seven small tank steamers. Its annual production, which was then 25,000 tons, to-day exceeds 15 million tons. Its fleet of tankers is one of the most powerful in the world. Last year it amounted to 1,400,000 tons. _And the_ Royal Dutch _controls a capital of twenty-two thousand million francs_. Partial Decline of the Standard The _Standard Oil_ is certainly no longer the colossus of the world. It has never completely recovered from the last judgment delivered against it in 1912, which compelled it to separate from its subsidiary companies. Although the sentence of the Supreme Court could not put an end to the community of interests which united these--since Rockefeller himself possessed 25 per cent. of the shares of the various affiliated companies--it has certainly hampered the development of the _Standard_ during the last few years. The very heavy taxation imposed upon it has also contributed to limit its powers of expansion. The American Government takes 44 per cent. of its income in the form of taxes. In 1920 Rockefeller paid an ordinary federal tax of 12 per cent. and a super-tax of 65 per cent. In fact, Rockefeller and all his associates are being driven out of the business by the federal taxes. If Rockefeller is the person who paid in 1920 the largest sum in income tax (14,800,000 dollars), it is clear that the greater part of his money is passing from the coffers of the company to be invested in Government, State and municipal securities which are not taxable. _Up to about 1890 the_ Standard Oil _reigned as absolute mistress of the oil market, both in Europe and America_. But in 1890 the oil from the Caucasus, Galicia and Rumania began to break up this monopoly. Purely European financial groups, the Rothschilds of Paris and Vienna, the Nobels of Sweden, the great German banks, and those of Lille and Roubaix which later were to form the "Consortium du Nord," became progressively more and more interested in the new oil enterprises that were taking shape in Eastern Europe. Germany had formed an actual Trust, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, which, but for the War, would certainly have led to German control of all European oil. Instead of only two great Trusts fighting for world supremacy for the benefit of Britain or the United States, we should see a third, claiming Europe and Turkey in Asia for its share in the name of Germany. But this group, expanding rapidly when war broke out, found itself opposed from that moment by another organization, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which was also advancing by giant strides and which concentrated all its power throughout the world against that of the _Standard Oil_. The most skilful part of the policy of the _Royal Dutch_ was to _establish itself wherever there was any oil_, while the _Standard_ confined itself almost exclusively to America. This was a great mistake. To dominate the production and sale in America was defensible as a commercial policy so long as the United States were the greatest producers of oil. It became an error from the day on which important oil deposits were discovered in other parts of the world. The _Standard_ still has the preponderance in the United States, where the _Shell_ only appeared in 1900, but it is far from controlling 86 per cent. of the output, as it did at the height of its power in 1911. It has been much too negligent about extra-American oil deposits. In 1890 a representative of the _Standard Oil_ was in Java, studying the oil situation in the Far East. He urged the _Standard_ to establish itself there before any competitor appeared. Hypnotized by the American market, it refused. In a similar way it came into Rumania too late, and controls only 10 per cent. of the total output, while the _Royal Dutch_ controls 31 per cent. In Mexico the _Standard_ also met with the competition of the _Royal Dutch_, which, in combination with British interests, takes 40 per cent. of the production. In Russia its rôle is insignificant. This state of affairs has been brought about by the errors of judgment of the directors of the Trust. _The power of the_ Standard Oil _has diminished_, and it no longer exercises a really effective control except within the United States. Even this control the _Royal Dutch_ is striving to filch from it. The latter has just formed a new trust, uniting the companies hitherto independent: the Doheny group and the British Pearson syndicate, the _Associated Oil_, the _Oklahoma Producing_ and the _Oil Union of Oklahoma_, with six or eight other undertakings which have been successfully conducted during the last few years. The _Shell_ is trying to bring in the _Mexican Petroleum Company of Delaware_,[12] a sister company to the _Eagle_ and the greatest producer in Mexico, which has up to now remained faithful to the _Standard Oil_. That is why it bought up large quantities of _Mexican Petroleum_ stock in May 1919 on the New York Exchange. If it succeeds the _Standard_ will see its remaining share in Mexico yet further diminished. This new Trust has the financial support of the Morgans. It is particularly directed against the _Standard Oil_. These facts are very little known in France. _The_ Royal Dutch _is about to launch a new attack on the_ Standard, or to acquire an interest in a Trust destined to combat it, which will perhaps end by grouping under its ægis all Rockefeller's competitors. The Pearson syndicate, under Lord Cowdray, has joined the _Royal Dutch_. Now, Mr. Doheny himself is coming in too. The great oil International develops continuously. Where will it end? Already the _Standard Oil_ produces no more than 17 per cent. of the oil of the United States--it is true that it has always disdained the extraction of petroleum--but it refines only 49 per cent., which is a much more serious matter. Rapid Increase in the Activities of the Royal Dutch Production 1910 1,600,000 tons 1913 7,000,000 tons 1920 15,000,000 tons Net Profits 1907 13,000,000 florins 1915 29,000,000 florins 1920 130,000,000 florins Dividends 1907 27-3/4 per cent. 1915 49 per cent. Authorized Capital 1890 1,300,000 florins 1902 7,500,000 florins 1910 50,000,000 florins 1911 100,000,000 florins 1916 150,000,000 florins 1918 230,000,000 florins 1919 400,000,000 florins 1921 600,000,000 florins Financial Results of the Royal Dutch since its Agreement with the Shell. -----+----------------+----------------+----------------+------------- | Gross Profits | Prior Charges | Net Profits | Dividends Year | (in | (in | (in | (per cent.) | 1,000 florins) | 1,000 florins) | 1,000 florins) | -----+----------------+----------------+----------------+------------- 1907 | 13,657 | 242 | 13,415 | 27-3/4 1908 | 13,592 | 66 | 13,526 | 28 1909 | 12,978 | 66 | 12,912 | 28 1910 | 14,644 | 92 | 14,552 | 28 1911 | 13,693 | 2,652 | 11,041 | 19 1912 | 26,680 | 302 | 26,378 | 41 1913 | 30,554 | 384 | 30,170 | 48 1914 | 30,937 | 571 | 30,366 | 49 1915 | 30,419 | 440 | 29,979 | 49 1916 | 32,823 | 193 | 32,630 | 38 1917 | 49,740 | 5,367 | 44,373 | 48 1918 | 96,877 | 24,487 | 72,390 | 40 1919 | 118,169 | 18,169 | 100,000 | 45 1920 | 138,736 | 9,286 | 129,450 | 40 1921 | 107,170 | 3,071 | 104,098 | 31 -----+----------------+----------------+----------------+------------- FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: The Netherlands were then in the position in which France now finds herself. The _Royal Dutch_ began by sending two engineers to the United States to familiarize themselves with the details of oil production, since Holland possessed no such industry.] [Footnote 11: A first instalment, representing 70 per cent. of the value of these companies, was alone paid. See chap. xvi, _The Struggle for the Oil-fields of Russia_.] [Footnote 12: The _Mexican Petroleum Company of Delaware_ has control of a large number of companies in the United States and in Mexico, which include the following:-- _Mexican Petroleum of California_, _Huasteca Petroleum_, _Tamahua Petroleum_, _Tuxpan Petroleum_, _Mexican Petroleum Corporation_. ] CHAPTER VI THE OIL-WORLD'S NAPOLEON: HENRY DETERDING If the _Royal Dutch_ has succeeded in its amazing effort to reduce the power of the _Standard Oil_, it is because the former possessed a man who was worth millions, whom the Americans, in their outspoken admiration, have called the "Oil-World's Napoleon"--Henry Deterding. "Mr. Deterding is Napoleonic in boldness, and Cromwellian in depth," said Admiral Lord Fisher, the reorganizer of the British Navy in the twentieth century. The strongest personality in the oil-world is no longer Rockefeller, but Deterding. Supported by such men as Gulbenkian, the "Talleyrand of Oil"; Colijn, formerly War Minister to the Netherlands; Loudon, Cohen, Stuart, and Sir Marcus Samuel, the founder of the _Shell_ and a former Lord Mayor of London--Deterding dared to challenge the _Standard Oil_ and to keep up the war for twenty years in every part of the world, and even to establish himself on the latter's own ground, the United States. The _Royal Dutch_ was established in 1890, when the _Standard_ ruled as absolute sovereign over the markets of Europe and America. De Gelder was the first Chairman, but he was soon replaced by the more capable Kessler. "Old Kessler," as the _Royal Dutch_ people call him among themselves, fixed his head-quarters at Batavia. Needing an assistant, he engaged the young Deterding, who was then employed in a bank at Batavia. It was Kessler who guided the _Royal Dutch_ through the difficulties of its early years. But he died suddenly in 1900, and Deterding succeeded him. While the _Standard_ stuck to the formula, "American oil to light the world," Deterding set to work to acquire oil deposits as near as possible to all markets. The new policy extolled by Walter Teagle, Chairman of the _Standard Oil of New Jersey_, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the company in January 1920, is no other than that pursued by Deterding for fifteen years. For the _Standard Oil_, seeing to what a pass its former policy has brought it, has sought since 1919 to revise its methods and copy those of its rival. _Five factors have contributed to the world-wide expansion of the_ Royal Dutch. 1. Deterding's cleverness in associating the _Royal Dutch_ with the _Shell_, and in interesting the Rothschilds of Paris in his operations. Thanks to these connections, he surrounded himself with able personalities, such as Frederick Lane, Sir Marcus Samuel, Sir Waley Cohen, and Gulbenkian. 2. The support of the Dutch Government. 3. The support of the British Government. 4. The fact that the _Royal Dutch_ had not a market close at hand to absorb its production, in the Dutch Indies, as the _Standard_ had in the United States. 5. The readiness of the Dutch and British to prospect over-seas. It is a combination of these forces--personal, political, and economic--which has resulted in the formation of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ group, now a world-power. Under the laws of the United States, a similar group would be impossible. "Deterding is a plunger," said an American oil-man, who has often been a competitor of his in various parts of the world. "He plunges with other people's money, not his own; that is why he takes such risks. For instance, he paid five times what any one else would have paid to gain a footing in Egypt, and he has lost a great deal there. However, he pays in shares for the properties he buys, and this gives him an advantage over the _Standard_, which has always paid in cash. In spite of everything, he merits great praise for having started from nothing and having built up the great organization which he directs." Deterding's profession of faith, so to speak, is summarized in a memorable declaration which he made to the Committee of Imperial Defence in March 1913:-- "Oil is the most extraordinary article in the commercial world, and the only thing which retards its sale is its production. There is no other article in the world of which you can guarantee the consumption as long as you can produce it. _In the case of oil, begin by guaranteeing the production and consumption will look after itself._ There is no need to bother about consumption, and as a seller, it is useless to make contracts in advance, because oil sells itself. All that you need is a well-filled purse, so that you are dependent upon no one, and can say to the people who will not buy to-day, 'Very well. I am going to spend £1,000,000 in building reservoirs, and in future you will have to pay much more!' _The great point for the Navy is to make certain of oil from a group which can draw its supplies from many different geographical points_, because one cannot count on any particular oil-field. My experience is that districts which have regularly produced 18,000 barrels a day, have dropped to 3,000 without any previous warning." Since its alliance with the _Shell_, the _Royal Dutch_ has undergone a world-wide expansion. Deterding concluded long-term contracts with the famous British State-subsidized company, the _Anglo-Persian Oil_, guaranteeing it the greater part of the Persian output until 1922. But his cleverest stroke was certainly to acquire an interest in the management of the _Mexican Eagle_. Owing to this, the output of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ group increased by more than 50 per cent., rising from thirty to more than fifty million barrels a year. The purchase of shares from Lord Cowdray cost Deterding a thousand million francs. Deterding conducts his business like a soldier. He accepts or refuses a proposition once and for all. It is often dangerous not to fall in with his wishes. The _New Schibaïeff Petroleum Corporation_ has had experience of this. Reconstituted in 1913, with a capital of £1,150,000, it set itself against the will of Deterding. He fought, and at the end of the struggle the £1 shares were worth 6-1/2d., at which price the _Royal Dutch_ bought them up, at the same time condescending to accept control of the company. The establishment of close relations between the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ and the British Government was one of the most noticeable activities of the oil-world. It has not been proved that the British Government really controls the _Royal Dutch_, although well-informed people believe it. If there has been any change in the direction of the _Royal Dutch_, which, according to the constitution of the company, should remain in Dutch hands, it must have been effected as a result of agreements between the Dutch and British Governments, for the shares of the _Royal Dutch_ were held by interests closely connected with the Royal Family of the Netherlands. An alliance of this nature would have great advantages. Besides, since the British Government has purchased the control of the _Anglo-Persian_, Sir Marcus Samuel has made great efforts to induce it to take an interest in the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ group. The _Royal Dutch_ has become more British than ever since 1922, when it ceded the greater part of its share in the _Shell_ to the purely British consortium directed by the bank of _Cull and Company_. Deterding would find it difficult to do without the support of British foreign policy. He knew this very well when he transferred his offices from The Hague to London. The most striking proof of the alliance between the British Government and the _Royal Dutch_ is the course of events in India, where the oil situation is peculiar. In 1905, in exchange for certain exclusive rights and for a protective tariff granted by the State, the _Burmah Oil Company_ consented to maintain a fixed price for kerosene. In India, in an open market, kerosene would cost £25,000,000 sterling instead of £11,000,000 annually. Such, at least, is the opinion of Sir John Cargill, Chairman of the _Burmah Oil_. Before the War, there was overproduction of kerosene in India; this surplus has since been transformed into a veritable dearth. The _Royal Dutch_ supplied the _Burmah Oil_ with the petroleum that was needed to satisfy the Indian market. Thanks to Deterding, India will continue to get its oil cheaper than other countries. Without his help there would have been a considerable rise in price, and the _Burmah Oil_, in which the British Admiralty is interested, would have been weakened, and would have fallen into the hands of other companies. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ has rendered the same service to the British Government in Egypt. "We have conducted our business on the same lines in Egypt," said Sir Marcus Samuel. "_In order to help the Government, we have operated in the Egyptian market in the same way as in India._" In exchange the _Royal Dutch_ counts on the support of the British Government. This is the case in Venezuela, where the Venezuelan Government is trying to establish its rights over concessions which the company covets. And not in vain, for on March 7, 1921, it was announced in France that the Venezuelan Courts of Justice had upheld the validity of the fifty years' concessions which had been granted to the _Colon Development_, in which the _Royal Dutch_ is interested, through the _Burlington Investment_. But in Mesopotamia the company seeks the support of France against the _Anglo-Persian_, and is not opposed to American participation. I believe, rather, that it desires the support of the French Government in case the British Government, hypnotized by the _Anglo-Persian_, deserts it. In any case, it hopes to play off one against the other. Deterding's ambition is to crush the _Standard Oil_. He is the declared enemy of the _Standard_, Mr. W. Teagle, for whom he has some sympathy, excepted. When people tell him that he will never succeed in getting the better of the _Standard_, with its enormous capital, he replies that he has the means to fight against all the dollars that the _Standard_ can gather. Has he not the Rothschild millions at his disposal? Besides, he has great advantages over the _Standard_. I have already mentioned the cost of production of the _Royal Dutch_ in the Dutch Indies. It is considerably lower than that of the American Trust.[13] In a price war this would give it an incontestable superiority. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ possesses such reserves of oil that the question of exhaustion does not arise for it; and it extends over the whole world, whereas the _Standard_ has been able to root itself firmly in America alone. Several European States have crossed swords with it, for example, Austria, which definitely closed Galicia against it in 1911. Its high-handed methods have made many enemies. The _Royal Dutch_, on the contrary, thanks to its clever and elastic policy, has insinuated itself into the good graces of most governments. Almost everywhere, public opinion is on its side. Besides, _Deterding knows more about the affairs of the_ Standard _than the_ Standard _itself_. This statement was made by a director of the American company. Deterding has no difficulty in following its movements. On one of his visits to New York, he installed himself in the Board-room of the _Standard_, in order to tell the directors that he was not satisfied with the way in which the Chinese agreement was respected, that they owed him a rebate on oil sold in his preserves, and that they must not sell any more there--or it would be war. He spoke for ten or fifteen minutes, and that was time enough to say a great deal. Without a note, he quoted many details, and even figures; for example, the exact number of gallons sold by the _Standard_ in various places. And when one of his hearers inquired, after his departure, whether it was all accurate, another of Mr. Deterding's interrogators replied: "Last time he came, we took down all his statements in shorthand and verified them afterwards. We saw that he had an incredible knowledge of our affairs in every country in which our interests conflict with his own." Will there soon be a renewed conflict between the _Royal Dutch_ and the _Standard Oil_? Deterding wanted it quite recently. If we are to believe the authorities on the matter, we have narrowly escaped the greatest oil war in history. For once, Deterding gave way to the moderate counsels of the more conservative members of his company, and war was not declared. Mr. Colijn was sent from The Hague to the office in Great St. Helen's, in the city of London, and it was announced that Mr. Deterding was taking a much-needed rest. These personal struggles with the _Standard_ are probably at an end. Agreement is actively sought, at present, between the _Standard_ and the _Anglo-Persian_, especially owing to the influence of Sir John Cadman. Since 1922, Elliot Alves and the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ have followed the same policy. Perhaps before long there will be an "oil peace," concluded between the directors of the great Trusts. Was it not even outlined at The Hague Conference? Time will show how long it will last. My information, drawn from an authoritative source, tends to prove that a great re-grouping of oil interests will not long be delayed. A true saying, but perhaps a strange one--"Oil will be poured on the troubled waters of Europe." For economics is more powerful than politics. We are at the dawn of the great "Age of Oil." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 13: Only for the American portion of its production are the costs of the _Royal Dutch_ as high as those of the _Standard_.] PART III THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE POWERS CHAPTER VII THE _EUROPEANISCHE PETROLEUM UNION_: A German Trust for the Control of European Oil, which Foundered in the Great World Conflict The adoption of oil for general use coincided with the half-century of prosperity which preceded the great catastrophe, the great world War. Between 1865 and 1914, mazut, kerosene, petrol, vaseline and paraffin made their appearance, and spread throughout Europe. And yet Europe consumed foreign oil almost exclusively. For a long time, this oil came entirely from the United States. It was the golden age of the _Standard Oil_ in Europe. Its influence ruled over British distributing companies and French refiners, over the governments of Germany, Italy, Rumania and Spain. But the appearance of oil from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe rapidly broke up the _Standard's_ monopoly. The Rothschilds and the Nobels, the _Deutsche Bank_ and the _Disconto Gesellschaft_; the banks of Lille and Roubaix, exploiting the oil in Galicia; the cartel of French refiners founding the Polish company, _Limanowa_ and the _Aquila Franco-Romana_ in Rumania, and lastly, the _Royal Dutch_ through the _Astra Romana_ and the _Black Sea Company_--all multiplied their efforts between 1900 and 1914 to create various independent oil concerns on both sides of the Caucasus and the Carpathians. Parallel with these private efforts of manufacturers and bankers, the governments of Europe were engaged in safeguarding the independence of their States in this complex question of oil. In 1903, the French Chamber voted for the principle of monopoly in oil. From 1908 onwards, the British Government, through the d'Arcy group, encouraged the formation of the _Anglo-Persian_. And, while appearing to fear the remarkable growth of the _Shell_, it surreptitiously assisted it, and tried to guarantee supplies from Mexico through Pearson, from India through the _Burmah Oil_, and from Mesopotamia through the _Turkish Petroleum_ in agreement with Germany. In 1911 the Reichstag was on the point of adopting the same course as the French Chamber. Under the influence of the Kaiser, important companies such as the _Deutsche Erdol Aktien Gesellschaft_ and the _Deutsche Petroleum Verkaufs Gesellschaft_ were formed to gain control of Austrian, Rumanian and Caucasian oil. The powerful _Steaua Romana_, with a capital of 100 million francs, owed its existence to the latter, which had succeeded in acquiring a monopoly of the whole output of the Galician companies, _Schodnika_, _David Fanto_, and _Galizische Karpathen_, and had also obtained an interest in the _Danube Navigation Company_, _Bayerischer Lloyd_. In Rumania, the _Deutsche Erdol_ controlled the _Konzern_ group, which included the _Vega_, _Concordia_, and _Credit Petrolifer_. The oil of Pechelbronn in Alsace was also in its hands. In 1906 the _Deutsche Bank_ and the _Disconto Gesellschaft_ took under their control the great company of _Nobel Brothers_, in Russia. They founded, at Bremen, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, a trust which amalgamated the principal European oil interests, and was to give Germany the certainty of European preponderance. They absorbed the _Akverdoff_ company at Grosny, created the _Spies Petroleum_, and undertook the conquest of the oil industry in the Caucasus and in Apsheron. From 1911 to 1914, German capital and German interest predominated in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, in Scandinavia, and even in Turkey, for the _Deutsche Bank_ became an associate of Great Britain in the _Turkish Petroleum_, the sole concessionnaire of the Sultan for the oil of Mosul and Bagdad. This was the time when Sir Ernest Cassel, a little Frankfurt Jew, who became one of the lords of British finance and whose grand-daughter and heiress married a cousin of the King of England in July 1922, was striving to avert the impending world War by bringing French, British and German interests into association wherever possible. An agreement was arrived at. The capital of the _Turkish Petroleum_ was provided by the _Royal Dutch_, the _Anglo-Persian Oil_, and the _Deutsche Bank_. But for the catastrophe of 1914, Germany would have ended by dominating European oil. Probably the United States and Great Britain would not to-day share between them the lordship over oil. CHAPTER VIII THE WAR AND OIL The War which has just ravaged the world, proved that the country which controls oil will one day control the earth. It is just as Elliot Alves predicted: "Armies, navies, money, even entire populations, will count as nothing against the lack of oil." That the Allies have won this War is in great part due to the two greatest trusts, the _Standard Oil_ and the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which placed themselves at the service of the Entente. Germany, hemmed in on all sides, saw her last resources disappear when the Eastern front broke up. Without petrol for lorries, tractors, motor-cars, aeroplanes--without heavy oil for ships' boilers and factory engines--without lubricating oil for all machinery, how was it possible to carry out the combined movements of armies? It was not until about 1916 that people began to say this War would be a "war of oil." The army staffs first grasped its real utility during the defence of Verdun, situated at the end of a wretched railway with a single line of metals. The destruction of many railway lines and the inadequacy of the system behind the front led the generals to transport their troops more and more frequently by motor-lorry. It might be said that this War was the victory of the lorry over the railway. The last phase, in particular, consisted in a campaign of motors and aeroplanes against railways. Rich in railway materials, our enemies were poor in petrol. Our High Command, at the end of 1918, resolved to profit by our superiority on this point. Before the War, Germany imported 1,263,000 tons of oil: 719,000 from the United States; 220,000 from Galicia; 158,000 from Russia; 114,000 from Rumania; 52,000 from India. From the very beginning of hostilities nearly all these sources were closed to her. That is why the German General Staff fought so hard for Galicia, then for Rumania, and finally for the Caucasus. "As Austria could not supply us with sufficient oil," wrote Ludendorff in his _Memoirs_, "and as all our efforts to increase production were unavailing, Rumanian oil was of decisive importance to us. But even with deliveries of Rumanian oil, the question of oil supplies still remained very serious, and caused us great difficulty, not only for the conduct of the War, but for the life of the country. The stocks of the Caucasus opened a more favourable prospect for us in 1918." "The eastward march of the central empires is thus explained as due to the urgent need for the conquest of oil. The treaty of Bukarest was an 'oil peace,' as also was that of Brest Litovsk. "In Rumania, Germany seized all the oil-deposits, all the refineries, all the pipe-lines, and altered and reorganized them according to the immediate needs of her armies. For the benefit of her dependent company, the _Steaua Romana_, she plundered all the properties of the British, Dutch, French, or purely Rumanian companies. "It was then that she destroyed the Baïkop-Constantza pipe-line and relaid the pipes on a military route from Ploesti to Giurgiu. It was then that the economic staff of her army founded in 1917-18 the _Erdol Industrie Anlagen Gesellschaft_, which sequestrated, liquidated, despoiled all the other oil companies and collected the booty for its own profit in a vast monopoly of exploitation and distribution. This monopoly was only broken in August 1918, by the double victories of the Allies on the Eastern and Western fronts."[14] When the Eastern front gave way, Germany's resources vanished. She had left only her benzol, a little heavy oil, and no lubricating oil. She had to give benzol to her airmen instead of petrol, although knowing perfectly well that their machines would thereby lose greatly in power. Her motor-lorries were not in use during calm periods; Ludendorff kept them for critical moments. And the scarcity of oil was so serious in the interior of Germany that the peasants passed the long winter evenings in darkness. The Allies, also, lived through some tragic moments. The year 1917 was the most terrible for them. Their armies almost ran short of petrol, their navies of heavy oils. Now, their armies consumed a million tons of petrol a year, their navies eight million tons of heavy oils. The stocks were reduced to such a point that, in May 1917 the Grand Fleet had to give up its training cruises and battle exercises, for the German submarines made a special point of attacking tankers coming from America or Asia. In France and Italy, the use of oil and even petrol was severely restricted. In December 1917, when the cartel of the ten French refiners, which had undertaken to supply the French armies, recognized that it was powerless, and had to admit in an official letter that its stocks would be exhausted in March 1918, on the eve of the spring campaign, M. Clemenceau sent a despairing appeal to President Wilson. The representative of the Commander-in-Chief had pointed out that France did not possess in its storage depots sufficient reserves to last more than _three days_ in a situation like that of Verdun. Here is the text of the historic telegram: "At the decisive moment of this War, when the year 1918 will see military operations of the first importance begun on the French front, the French army must not be exposed for a single moment to a scarcity of the petrol necessary for its motor-lorries, aeroplanes, and the transport of its artillery. "A failure in the supply of petrol would cause the immediate paralysis of our armies, and _might compel us to a peace unfavourable to the Allies_. Now the minimum stock of petrol computed for the French armies by their Commander-in-Chief must be 44,000 tons and the monthly consumption is 30,000 tons. This indispensable stock has fallen to-day to 28,000 tons and threatens to fall almost to nothing if immediate and exceptional measures are not undertaken and carried out by the United States. "These measures can and must be undertaken without a day's delay for the common safety of the Allies, the essential condition being that President Wilson shall obtain permanently from the American oil companies tank steamers with a supplementary tonnage of 100,000 tons. This is essential for the French army and population. These tank-steamers exist. They are sailing at this moment _in the Pacific instead of the Atlantic Ocean_. Some of them may be obtained from the fleet of new tankers under construction in the United States. "President Clemenceau personally requests President Wilson to give the necessary Government authority _for the immediate dispatch to French ports of these steamers_. "The safety of the Allied nations is in the balance. If the Allies do not wish to lose the War, then, at the moment of the great German offensive, they must not let France lack the petrol which is as necessary as blood in the battles of to-morrow." To "harness the _Standard Oil_ to the victorious chariot of the Entente," to use the expression of Mr. Page, nothing less was necessary than the official intervention of the United States Government. The _Standard_ preferred to compete with the _Royal Dutch_ in the Pacific. Wilson put an end to this state of affairs and the Petroleum War Board immediately placed all the necessary boats at the disposal of France. Thanks to the reserves thus built up, Foch, at the time of the great German push in Picardy, was able to bring up heavy reinforcements by motor-lorries and fill the gaps where the British front had been broken. Marshal Foch was able to execute his strategic surprises only by relying on the 92,000 motor-lorries and the 50,000 tons of petrol a month, which the Government placed at his disposal from March to November, 1918. The Allied Governments had already decided to pool their resources, and had set up the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference, a central body whose task was to supply them all. It was constituted as follows: 1. Sir John Cadman, Kembal Cook, Ashdown and Graham, representing the British Petroleum Executive. 2. Captain Foley and L.J. Thomas, representing the American Petroleum War Board. 3. Professor Bordas, Controller-General of the French Technical Services, and head of the laboratories of the Ministry of Finance; Henry Bérenger, Lieutenant Georges Bénard, and the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, representing the French General Petroleum Commission. 4. Captain Pozzo and Lieutenant Farina, representing the Italian Commission on Mineral Oils. The Chairman was Sir John Cadman, a former professor in the University of Birmingham, who has played so important a part in British policy during the last few years. The Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference had a gigantic task to face. During the last eighteen months of the War, it had to procure twelve or thirteen million tons of oil. It succeeded because it was able to guarantee the co-operation of the _Royal Dutch_ and the _Standard Oil_ in the cause of the Entente. It ordered the two trusts to supply each country from the nearest producing country. This was a great sacrifice for them, as it obliged each trust to refrain from fighting in the territory of the other. It arranged for the transport of oil in the double bottoms of British ships; 1,280 ships were adapted in this way, being equivalent to a hundred new tank-steamers. And it hurried on the construction of tank-steamers in Great Britain and the United States; 600,000 tons were built in America and 400,000 in Great Britain. _During hostilities the Americans tripled their oil fleet._ Its efforts were so successful that, on March 28, 1918, at the height of Ludendorff's offensive, the President of the French General Petroleum Commission was able to write to the Prime Minister: "France has at her disposal for the battle 170,526 tons of petrol and 67,000 tons of other oils, instead of the 44,000 tons asked for." "Thanks to the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference," as M. Henry Bérenger remarked, "never, at any moment, have our soldiers lacked a drop of this spirit which gives them the necessary means of rapid movement and of cornering and defeating the enemy. If hostilities had lasted only a few more days, our victorious troops would have taken, in the Ardennes, whole armies whose line of retreat was becoming so congested that they must have fallen into our hands without resistance. Hence the Germans hastily accepted the conditions which were imposed upon them, without either hesitation or discussion." (December 7, 1918.) This time, the military and political importance of oil was apparent to every eye. On the morrow of the Armistice (November 21, 1918), it was celebrated in enthusiastic speeches. And Lord Curzon was able to declare, at Lancaster House, "Truly posterity will say that the Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 14: H. Bérenger: _La Politique du Pétrole_, 1920.] CHAPTER IX AN IMPERIALISM NOT WITHOUT GREATNESS If the trusts were powerful before the War, they are much more so to-day, assisted as they have been by the fantastic rise of the dollar and the pound and the unheard-of prices at which they were able to sell oil during the great conflict. The _Europeanische Petroleum Union_ has fallen to pieces; therefore they have no longer to fear a third rival. _The_ Royal Dutch _and the_ Standard Oil, _by helping the Allies, have also served their own interests_. We are living in the midst of a general disorganization of the world. Only two nations have found their position strengthened by the War: Great Britain and the United States. "Sentiment rapidly yielded to self-interest." Scarcely was the Armistice signed when the United States demanded the winding-up of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference. The _Standard_ was eager to regain its liberty. In vain France drew attention to her unhappy position, both in Paris and in London, and asked for the continuance of the Inter-Allied Conference. Britain was not sorry to be able to dispute the oil supremacy of the United States and to reap the benefit of the preparations she had been slyly making for several years. The British Empire rests on a foundation of coal. A new fuel, oil, appears which has such advantages over the former that it displaces it everywhere. Unfortunately, Great Britain possesses so little of it that Dr. David White, of the American Geological Survey, does not even mention it in his estimate of the oil deposits of the world. If we take the whole British Empire, it contains scarcely 4 per cent. of the known resources of the globe. Great Britain, to maintain her world supremacy, resolved to win the control of oil as she had done that of coal. Besides, her coal will only last another century. It was the silent task of a few men. Their proceedings were unknown, even to the people interested, and they did not fear to bring conflict into the world to win new greatness for their country. Meanwhile the United States basked in a false security, trusting in their production, which gave them 70 per cent. of the world's oil. "Ten years ago France and Britain were in the same position as regards oil. Each had a few millions invested in distant enterprises; neither had control over an indispensable fuel. Suddenly it was discovered that a technical invention, the introduction of mazut into the furnaces of ships, was going to give the United States the power to make all other nations her tributaries. At once a few British business men, technical experts, and diplomatists joined forces. They decided to wrest from America the mastery of this new force. They laid their plans in silence and followed them for years with determination; they sank millions of money, carried on intrigue in every corner of the world; they _fomented revolutions_ and accumulated on their own shoulders responsibilities, risks, expenses. "Why? To gain money or honours? No! Sir Marcus Samuel and Lord Cowdray count their wealth in millions; Lord Curzon is at the height of his diplomatic career.... But in Britain, as in America, there is a tradition that a successful business man has obligations towards the society in which he has amassed his millions. He must make a personal contribution to its greatness.... "It is to this tradition that Britain owes her great leaders; it is these leaders who have created her world-wide Empire, and who, under our astonished eyes, have just made possible for her so prodigious a development.... Their imperialism is a universal danger, but it does not lack a certain greatness."[15] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 15: Francis Delaisi, _Oil: Its Influence on Politics_.] CHAPTER X THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES IN MEXICO There is no country in the world where the struggle for oil between Britain and the United States has been so acute as in Mexico. That this country has been for many years in a state of perpetual unrest is because of the fight for oil concessions. The _Standard Oil_ enjoyed practically a monopoly in Mexico up to the time when the deposits at Tampico were discovered. It was the only firm which sold oil there, so it did not scruple to abuse its position. It imported crude oil, refined it on the spot, and re-sold it at a profit of 600 per cent. Immediately the oil deposits were discovered, Porfirio Diaz, to put an end to this monopoly, granted important concessions to the British firm of Pearson, which shortly afterwards founded the _Mexican Eagle_. These concessions were the signal for the newspaper campaign which was let loose against Porfirio Diaz in the United States, and for the outbreak of the Maderist insurrection in Sonora and Chihuahua. Rockefeller and Pearson made war on each other with the help of Mexican _condottieri_. The United States supported Madero, Great Britain Porfirio Diaz. The _Standard Oil_ subsidized the Maderists. Lane Wilson, formerly Ambassador of the United States to Mexico, actually stated in public, on January 7, 1913, that the movement on behalf of Madero had been paid for by the _Standard_, and that a document lying in the archives of the State Department at Washington proved it! Manuel Liyo, an official in a high position in the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, stated, before the Committee of the United States Senate, that the brothers Madero had concluded the following treaty with the _Standard_:-- I. If Madero is made President, he will grant to the _Standard_ all available concessions. II. He will withdraw all those granted to Pearson. When Madero was made President, the market price of the _Standard_ rose in Wall Street by 50 per cent. But this triumph did not last long. We are often astonished at the continual changes of front of the United States, which support the feeble Presidents in Mexico and oppose the energetic ones. By 1913 the _Daily Graphic_ and the _Vossische Zeitung_ had discovered the key to this mystery. Ever since Pearson obtained a footing in Mexico the _Standard_ has poured out gold in floods to drive out the British. It wishes to be the sole mistress of those immense oil-fields, which have turned out to be among the richest in the world. Only 54 million acres are being exploited at present, and already Mexico holds the second place in world production. Now the Mexican Minister of Industry and Commerce estimates the area of the oil-fields of that country at 150 million acres. Where will Mexico stand when all this territory is exploited? To arrest the progress of Pearson, the _Standard_ sent an emissary to Mexico to demand a monopoly of oil exploitation. It offered, in return, the immediate conclusion of a loan of 200 million Mexican dollars. Rockefeller's envoy promised, moreover, that the revolution would die down as though by magic, while, in case of refusal, it would continue until General Huerta was replaced by a more tractable President who would submit to American requirements. Like his predecessor, Porfirio Diaz, General Huerta refused to make Mexico the vassal of the great trust, and the insurrection redoubled in violence.[16] Tired of the continual struggles which ravaged their country for the benefit of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations, the Mexicans resolved to profit by the European War to win their freedom for ever. According to the laws of the country (1884, 1892, 1910) the owner of the surface was also the owner of the subsoil. All that a company had to do was to buy the ground and it was at peace with God and man. The Constitution of 1917 disturbed this peace. "The subsoil," it declared, "belongs to the nation." To exploit petroleum deposits a Government permit was required. This permit is only to be granted to Mexicans or to foreigners who consent to submit to the laws of the country as natives, and thus renounce their privileges as foreigners. As soon as they received word of these new arrangements the British and American newspapers thundered against the unhappy President Carranza, whose fall from power was not long delayed. Taught by his example, his successor attempted a policy of conciliation, but in vain. The present President, General Obregon, is faced with the same difficulties, but holds firm. The Mexican Government hopes to free itself for ever, by means of the Constitution of 1917, from the diplomatic interference which has poisoned its existence. But the Obregon Government, though moderate, is not strong. It is supported by the middle-classes, but has the army and the people against it. Now, for some time, unfortunate tendencies have been shown by the Mexican people. It has just indulged in a Communist Congress, with the object of "grouping all the forces of the proletariat." If President Wilson always maintained a policy of non-intervention towards Mexico--a policy, moreover, which was severely criticized within the United States--his successor at the White House meant to make himself felt there as well as in other parts of the world. President Harding had among his ministers Mr. Fall[17] of New Mexico, who has always interested himself in this question, and who at one time made energetic protests. He demanded that American citizens should not be expelled from Mexico on the simple order of the President of the Republic, and that a Commission should assess, at the earliest moment, the damages suffered by Americans during the Revolution-requirements contrary to the Constitution. Thus I was not particularly surprised to hear that the Committee of the United States Senate had undertaken to recognize the new Mexican Government only on the condition that the article of the Constitution of 1917 which forbids foreigners to hold mineral rights _was not applied to United States citizens_. The _Mexican Eagle_, however, is undisturbed. Pearson was clever enough, at its formation, to place it under Mexican law. His borings have continued uninterruptedly, while American companies were obliged to suspend operations and wait for Government authority. Pearson and the Mexican Eagle The struggle between Pearson and the _Standard Oil_ became at one time so acute that the United States Government acquiesced in the payment by American oil companies operating in Mexico of royalties to bandits and insurgents as though to the established Government.[18] The general insecurity was such that certain American companies paid 1,500 dollars _a month_ to a bandit in the Tampico district on the understanding that he would guarantee not to cut their pipe-lines. Such a state of affairs could not go on for ever. After many years of conflict the two companies came to a sort of understanding by which they shared the exploitation of oil deposits, and when faced by the hostility of General Carranza's Government they sent a common delegation to the Peace Conference to defend their interests against expropriation by the Mexican Government. In order to centralize its interests, each of the two groups founded, after a time, a company for the exploitation of the concessions granted to it. It was in this way that the _Mexican Eagle_ was created in 1908, to take up a part of the Pearson[19] interests. Its capital, which was originally 30 million Mexican dollars, was increased to 50 millions in 1911, on the acquisition of the Pearson oil properties in the Tehuantepec region. In 1920 it was 86,277,000 Mexican dollars. "An institution is the elongated shadow of a man," said Emerson. This definition applies very well to the _Eagle_, in the success of which the personality of Pearson has been the dominating factor. From the earliest days the difficulties it had to struggle against were considerable. They would have discouraged a man of weaker character and less tenacity. His entire production was destroyed in the disaster at the Dos Bocal well--an enormous gusher which took fire. A fierce price-war was going on at the moment, conducted by Americans with great persistence for many months. Then came the time of unrest and fighting, and of the civil war to drive the British from Mexico. However, the _Eagle_ remains, triumphant, possessing an immense domain of a million hectares in the richest regions, extending along the borders of the Gulf, in the State of Vera Cruz and the isthmus of Tehuantepec. Although it holds in reserve the greater part of this domain, its output exceeds 100,000 barrels a day. One of its wells alone produces in six days as much as the Pechelbronn deposits in Alsace yield to France in a year (60,000 tons), and, according to the estimates of British experts, its oil-field at Naranjos is alone capable of producing before its exhaustion a sum of money equal to the whole of the British national debt. Pearson's war against the _Standard Oil_ was worth while. 1919 The Royal Dutch-Shell Lays Hands upon the Mexican Eagle Towards 1919 the weak spot about the _Mexican Eagle_ was its isolation among organisms so powerful as the two dominating groups of the world, the _Standard Oil_ and the _Royal Dutch-Shell_. Isolated producers sometimes lack markets, especially if by their geographical position they are far from great centres of consumption. This was the case with the _Mexican Eagle_, which, though it remained independent, was nevertheless obliged to submit to the very burdensome competition of the _Standard_ in the sale of its products. Lord Cowdray held so large a number of shares in the _Mexican Eagle_ that to obtain them was practically to obtain control of the concern. In 1911 the _Standard_ wished to buy them from him; he refused. In 1913 the _Royal Dutch_ suffered the same rebuff. It had only offered him £2 15s. a share when he wanted £3. These shares, which were issued at par--10 Mexican gold dollars, that is, 25.90 francs, or scarcely more than £1--have risen at a phenomenal rate. Their _lowest_ prices were:-- 1912 36 francs 1918 83 francs 1919 126 francs 1920 398 francs And they rose to 712 francs in 1919 and 738 francs in 1920! Since then they have depreciated considerably, as have all oil securities. Skilful manoeuvres on a large scale provoked a panic among holders of Mexican shares, which made it possible to buy them at a low price, and led to important operations on the Stock Exchanges, beginning in December 1921 in New York. In June 1919 Deterding offered Lord Cowdray £6 a share; he accepted. The _Shell Transport_ took one million, the _Royal Dutch_ a million and a half. If Pearson consented to get rid of the controlling interest which he had in the vast undertaking founded by his genius and perseverance, it was by reason of the enormous sums which had to be found before the immense resources contained in the oil-bearing properties of the _Mexican Eagle_ could be turned to account. It can only handle 111,000 barrels a day, whereas, since the discovery of the oil-fields of Zacamixtle and Naranjos, its production could be increased, if it were desired, to 700,000 barrels a day, that is, about 110 million litres or 110,000 tons a day. In order that non-specialists may understand the importance of such a yield, we may say that one gallon contains 4.546 litres, one barrel (36 gallons) contains 163.655 litres, and that _six_ barrels represent one ton. The _Eagle's_ first well, which gave, to begin with, 100,000 barrels a day, thus yielded a daily production of 16,000,000 litres or 16,000 tons of oil. And it continued to yield large quantities--diminishing progressively, be it understood--until November 1919, when it was invaded by salt water. _The_ Shell _intends to spend several millions within the next five years in order to triple the output of the_ Eagle. Very shortly the development of its installations will allow of its refining 140,000 barrels daily, and it is clear that, some time hence, the enormous figure of 200,000 barrels daily will be reached, that is, 5 million barrels a month against the present 2-1/2 million. The _Shell's_ engineers will not push its exploitation to the maximum possible, for they wish to make the _Eagle_ last _half a century_. In acquiring control of the _Compania Mexicana de Petroleo El Aguila_ (the true name of the _Eagle_) the _Shell_ had in view simply to ensure a sufficiency of liquid fuel for the British Navy. For the _Mexican Eagle_ will soon hold one of the first positions among the world's producers. Before long it will furnish, by itself alone, one-third of the Mexican production. The capital of the _Shell_ was increased in 1919 simply with the object of hastening the development of the oil-fields it controls. In view of the considerable increase in Britain's need of petroleum we may believe that patriotism was Lord Cowdray's motive also. However it may be, the negotiations were concluded in June 1919, and it was a master-stroke on the part of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ group, for its position was greatly strengthened by this association, which increased its production of oil by 50 per cent. Moreover, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ made a very successful deal, since the shares bought at £6 each are now worth double on account of the increase of capital at par in January 1920 and the new increase in January 1921 under the same conditions, that is, one new for two old shares at par. Since the _Mexican Eagle_ came under the control of the great Anglo-Dutch trust it has benefited by the incomparable selling power of the _Shell_: the great shipping companies, the Pirrie and the Furness-Withy groups, and the Argentine railways immediately concluded with it important contracts for the supply of oil. And this alliance brings the _Eagle_ practically unlimited financial resources. Financial Results of the Mexican Eagle for Eleven Years ------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------- Year. | Gross Profits. | Net Profits. | Sinking Fund | Dividend. | | | and Reserves.| ------|----------------|--------------|--------------|-------- | $ | $ | $ |Per cent. 1911 | 1,974,000 | 874,000 | 194,000 | 8 1912 | 5,703,000 | 4,265,000 | 2,920,000 | 8 1913 | 10,488,000 | 8,166,000 | 3,551,000 | 8 1914 | 13,005,000 | 9,689,000 | 5,857,000 | 8 1915 | 14,676,000 | 11,215,000 | 6,562,000 | 8 1916 | 18,082,000 | 17,064,000 | 8,259,000 | 16 1917 | 20,521,000 | 12,948,000 | 6,922,000 | 20 1918 | 28,857,000 | 15,860,000 | 19,830,000 | 25 1919 | 36,868,000 | 29,508,000 | 11,050,000 | 45 1920 | 59,453,000 | 54,659,000 | 8,952,000 | 60 1921 | 81,982,000 | 69,083,000 | 34,879,000 | 30 ------+----------------+--------------+--------------+------- The balance-sheets of the _Mexican Eagle_ are expressed in Mexican gold dollars. The Mexican dollar, which, on the gold basis, is worth about half a dollar, was equivalent, at the rate of exchange of January 1, 1921, to:-- 8.50 francs. 2s. 9d. 0.495 dollar. Present Position of the Petroleum Industry in Mexico Almost the whole of the Mexican petroleum industry is in the hands of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations. Seventy per cent. of the capital invested there is American in origin, 27 per cent. Anglo-Dutch. Now Great Britain, in spite of the smallness of the capital she has sunk, triumphs more and more. Only 3 per cent. of the capital invested in this Mexican industry is Mexican.[20] [Illustration: Increase of oil production in Mexico from 1900 to 1920.] Production continues to grow at a prodigious rate.[21] It has risen from 87 million barrels in 1919 to 195 million in 1921. Edward Doheny declares that it will continue to increase for thirty years. Considerable oil-fields are still unexploited along the coast of the Pacific, and the Mexican Government officially announced the discovery of oil in the islands of the Gulf of California in September 1921. The _Mexican Petroleum_ has just bored a well, the Cerro Azul, producing 100,000 barrels a day. Two miles from this well there is another which yields 260,000 barrels a day. All these deposits are found at an almost uniform depth of 600 metres. It is estimated that Mexico can still produce 4,500 million barrels of oil. There were 367 wells in production in Mexico on January 1, 1921, of which 61 belong to the _Eagle_ and 34 to the _American Petroleum_. Other companies, with five exceptions, rarely hold more than a dozen wells. The _Eagle_ stands to-day at the head of all producing companies. Here are the four companies which produce the most:-- _Mexican Eagle_ 32 million barrels _Standard Oil of New Jersey_ 19 million barrels _Texas Company_ 12-1/2 million barrels _Mexican Petroleum_ 12-1/2 million barrels Great Britain has played a very clever game. As Phelan, the American Senator, wrote: "Her companies accommodate themselves to the political views of the Mexican Government." Moreover, they have all, from the _Mexican Eagle_ down to subsidiary companies of the _Royal Dutch_ like the _Corona_, been placed under Mexican law, which shields them from the effect of the Constitution of 1917. American companies, on the other hand, whether constituted under the laws of New Jersey, Texas or Delaware, remain foreign companies. Since March 1922 they have been working out a plan for amalgamation, so as to form a powerful American group which could resist the demands of the Mexican Government. The companies joining the group would be the _Standard Oil_, the _Sinclair_, the _Texas Company of Mexico_, the _Atlantic Refining_ and the _Mexican Petroleum_. The Supreme Court of Mexico has decided[22] that properties acquired before the Constitution of 1917 was promulgated would not be confiscated--a declaration which has reassured the United States. Mexico retains only 4 per cent. of her production. In 1920 alone she exported 153 million barrels out of the 159 million produced, keeping for home consumption only 6 million barrels. Seventy-eight per cent. of her production went to the United States. Every year Great Britain takes from Mexico more than 40 million gallons of illuminating oil, benzine and fuel oil. Mexico literally saves the world. Without her there would be a universal shortage of petroleum.[23] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 16: "During the last nine years," wrote a New York editor on the occasion of the last revolution, "there has not been a single disturbance in Mexico in which Americans have not taken part by lending their aid to the party opposed to the government.... Americans have supported Madero against Diaz, Huerta against Madero, Carranza against Huerta, Villa and Sapeta against Carranza."] [Footnote 17: Secretary of State for the Interior, an ardent partisan of intervention. Mr. Fall is a believer in the slogan "_Standard Oil_ must prevail."] [Footnote 18: Evidence of Edward Doheny before Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States Senate.] [Footnote 19: Since elevated to the peerage under the title of Lord Cowdray.] [Footnote 20: According to official statistics of July 2, 1920, the Mexican petroleum industry represents a value of 300 million Mexican dollars. Million dollars. Wells bored and in production 100 Value of ground on which they are situated 50 Pipe-lines, railways and rolling-stock 50 Refineries, buildings and machinery 50 Various properties, chiefly British 50 ] [Footnote 21: Cp. chap. ii, _Oil: Its Origin, Discovery, and History_.] [Footnote 22: July 1920.] [Footnote 23: Each Mexican well produced as much, in 1920, as 537 American wells.] CHAPTER XI A STATE-SUBSIDIZED COMPANY: THE _ANGLO-PERSIAN_ Although the United States, in spite of the civil wars they let loose there, could never drive Pearson out of Mexico, they triumphed over him in Central America and the chief States of South America by the mere force of their prestige. During 1912 and 1913 Pearson obtained concessions in Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. That would have given him a monopoly of the supply of oil to all shipping passing through the Panama Canal. Washington placed its veto on these concessions and caused them to be annulled in the name of the Monroe Doctrine. No South American republic dared to resist. Meanwhile the _Shell_ installed itself in Trinidad, a British colony, then in Venezuela and Colombia. To quiet all fears it was wise enough to associate itself with American firms: for example, the _Colon Development_ was founded, a British company constituted in common with the American _Carib Syndicate_. It has since come out that all the British shares are grouped in the hands of the _Burlington Investment_, which is itself dependent on the _Royal Dutch-Shell_. Not having succeeded directly, through Pearson, who was too much distrusted by America, Britain has none the less succeeded indirectly, through Deterding, in controlling the entrance to the Panama Canal. It is a strange fact that, while the United States were watching the activities of the Pearson group with evident hostility, they displayed not the least mistrust of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_. By a bold and masterly policy, the latter obtained a footing in the very heart of the territory of the _Standard Oil_. American law, unlike French, does not distinguish between ownership of land and ownership of the minerals. As in Mexico before 1917, both belong to the owner of the surface. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ bought land, sank wells, and was thus able to exploit oil as it pleased. Cleverly following the example of the _Royal Dutch_, the _Shell_ endeavoured to place its shares with the American people, so as to give them an interest in its prosperity. It was not difficult, considering its high dividends. In 1919 the _Shell_ placed 750,000 shares upon the New York market; by so doing, it realized a premium of £4,390,623, of which £4,000,000 were appropriated to reserve and to amortization. The source of its capital did it no harm, for, before the War, all American large-scale industries had had to make calls upon European savings. And if the _Shell_ was British, the _Royal Dutch_ was without a considerable German element, although officially a Dutch company. Deterding had not yet openly joined forces with Great Britain. He was hesitating. Foreseeing the imminent outbreak of the world conflict, he was much too clever to bind himself before he knew who would win. These two companies, connected since 1907, but each keeping its separate financial organization (at the same time reserving for each other a 40 per cent. share in any new subsidiary company), were thus freely allowed to install their reservoirs and pipe-lines beside those of the _Standard_. Besides, the Democrats, fearful of the political and commercial power of the American trusts, were not sorry to set against them competitors who could have no influence upon the domestic politics of the United States. They came to be looked upon as international undertakings without any political ends. To complete the illusion the British Government, which assisted them in secret, simulated fear of their excessive growth. * * * * * The British Admiralty declared that it was important to free the Royal Navy from the tutelage of the trusts. It was voted the money required to obtain an interest in the operations of the _Burmah Oil_, thus ensuring for itself a share of the oil of Burmah; and in May 1914 it bought half the shares of the _Anglo-Persian Oil_, which holds a thirty-years' monopoly for the exploitation of oil deposits in Persia, excepting only the five northern provinces. For Persian territory on the borders of the Caspian Sea was always reserved for Russian influence. The _Anglo-Persian_ began obscurely. Its inception, in 1909, passed unnoticed. It was founded, _without an appeal to the public to subscribe its capital_, by the _Burmah Oil_, a company at that time better known in Scotland than on the London Stock Exchange. Its first object was to take over the concessions which the Australian, d'Arcy, had obtained in 1901, and which covered the enormous area of 500,000 square miles. D'Arcy had obtained these concessions from the Persian Government for the infinitesimal sum of 200,000 francs, of which 100,000 francs only were paid in cash and the rest in shares. The Persian Government was to receive 16 per cent. of whatever profit d'Arcy might make. It was much disappointed, for the first investigations along the Turko-Persian frontier were really discouraging. D'Arcy spent five million francs in vain, and he was thinking of abandoning the whole affair when he heard of oozings and gushings in the Shustar region, 140 miles north of Mohammerah, to the north of the Persian Gulf. D'Arcy recognized the presence of oil, but had to face the construction of a pipe-line and refinery, and to find new capital for these purposes. Certain foreign capitalists made him tempting offers, but D'Arcy, who had found a staunch supporter in Admiral Fisher, the reorganizer of the British Navy in the twentieth century, resolved that the Persian concessions _should remain under British control_. He obtained the financial assistance of the _Burmah Oil_, and the latter founded the _Anglo-Persian_ in 1909. The Royal Navy had already 150 ships burning oil. Pretyman, a Lord of the Admiralty, got Lord Strathcona appointed to the chairmanship of the _Anglo-Persian_, the first results of which were encouraging, so that the British Government could direct its future. The capital of the new company was very quickly used up. It constructed a pipe-line 145 miles long to bring its oil to the Persian Gulf, and a refinery on the island of Abadan which cost a great deal. But as the prospecting then taking place revealed the existence in Persia of rich deposits, a commission of geological experts, presided over by a rear-admiral, was sent to the spot by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to make an inquiry. On the conclusions embodied in its report, the British Government decided to take control of the business. In the month of May 1914 the _Anglo-Persian_ made a somewhat stormy entrance into history, for up to then very little had been heard of it: the negotiations and then the contract with the Admiralty had been conducted with the greatest secrecy. Parliament showed great surprise when Winston Churchill placed the matter before it, and asked for its sanction to the agreements which had been made. It was even necessary for Sir Edward Grey to come to the rescue in order to win a majority in the House. The Government had a certain majority of two thousand votes by the purchase of £2,200,000 of new ordinary shares. This amount has since been more than doubled, for on March 6, 1921 the Government announced in the House of Commons that it held £5,200,000 ordinary shares, £1,000 preference shares, and £199,000 debentures. Two-thirds of the ordinary shares of the _Anglo-Persian_ are to-day in the hands of the British Government, the other third is held by the _Burmah Oil_, which is directed by the Admiralty. Thus absolute Government control is assured. The _Anglo-Persian_ has become literally a State-directed company, but British officials are wise enough to entrust to technical experts the actual management of the undertaking. This explains its great success. Two trustees, Lord Inchcape and Sir E.H. Packe, represent the Government on the Board of Directors: they have the right of absolute veto upon all decisions. Finally, the Government has made a contract with the _Anglo-Persian_ for the supply of important quantities of oil at an advantageous price for a certain number of years. The needs of the Navy are thus guaranteed for a period of years. There is no surprise to be feared, for the oil-fields are near the Persian Gulf, where Great Britain reigns as mistress, and where no foreign ship can enter without her permission. It is, moreover, an important strategic point; ships can be dispatched from there to all parts of the world where Great Britain has interests--Suez, Gibraltar, India, Australia, Africa. The oil-deposits of Persia are so rich that it will soon be necessary to increase tenfold the projected development of the equipment, pipe-lines, and refineries, to deal with future production. Even in our time the natives collect the oil by rudimentary processes and transport it on the backs of camels to the markets of the interior, where it serves as an object of exchange. Persia is one of the few countries in which numerous spontaneous springs and seepages reveal the existence of oil. In certain valleys it flows along the slopes and pours into the rivers, making the water unfit for consumption. The _Anglo-Persian_ already ranks among the chief oil-producing companies of the world. It is precisely this success, we may believe, which has caused so much apprehension in the United States on the subject of the rivalry between British and American producing companies. The _Anglo-Persian_ controls an almost unlimited production in Persia, and as soon as there are enough pipe-lines and reservoirs, the output will increase in enormous proportions. _From 1923 onward, the_ Anglo-Persian, _by itself, will be in a position to supply a large proportion of the needs of Great Britain_. It will then be free of the contract which, for more than seven years, has bound it to the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, obliging it to dispose of a considerable portion of its production through the latter company. When its program is completed, the _Anglo-Persian_ will possess a fleet, the capacity of which will exceed a million tons. Expenses are small, because of the great productivity of the wells, which gives to Persia a marked superiority over all the other oil-fields of the world, except perhaps Mexico. Its yield of benzine and kerosene is much superior to that of most of the oil-fields of the United States; it is richer than that of Mexico. But for several years, the _Anglo-Persian_ has no longer been content with Persia, rich as it is. Its ambitions now extend to the whole world. It is in process of installing its depots in all the great ports of the world. In French territory alone, reservoirs will be constructed in the ports of Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Bizerta, Algiers, Oran, Casablanca, Dakar. Through the agency of its subsidiary, the _d'Arcy Exploration_, it is prospecting for oil in every part of the globe. Wherever geological conditions appear to indicate the presence of oil in commercial quantities, the operations of drilling are undertaken. The activities of the _d'Arcy Exploration_ are carried on at present in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hungary; and again, quite recently, the company has concluded arrangements for investigating and prospecting in districts of France and her colonies which are likely to produce oil. A French company, the _Société Générale des Huiles de Pétrole_, has been founded, with an initial capital of 100 million francs, jointly subscribed by French and British groups, with the object of undertaking the refining and distribution of oil in France as well as her colonies. According to the agreement signed in London on October 27, 1920, by Sir Basil Zaharoff for the _Banque de la Seine_, nine subsidiary companies will be founded, each having a different function: importation, refining, distribution, and transport of oil.[24] And this "Franco-British Anglo-Persian" is even going to build an oil fleet, thanks to the _Société Navale de l'Ouest_. Other enterprises are also under consideration. The _Anglo-Persian Oil_ has acquired important interests in the _British Oil Bunkering_, and it has also founded the _Tankers Insurance Company Limited_, an insurance company with a capital of £100,000, for it intends, henceforward, _to do its own insurance_. By means of the _Scottish American Oil_, of which it has technical and commercial control, it has even succeeded in penetrating into Mexico, thus completing the work begun by Pearson and continued by the _Shell_. Its activities, during the month of December 1920 alone, were remarkable. It obtained a footing in Spain, founding a company with a capital of 25 million pesetas, of which 55 per cent. was subscribed by the _Anglo-Persian_ and 45 per cent. by a Spanish group having at its head the _Banco Urquijo_ and the _Spanish Credit Bank_. It concluded a contract _with the Hungarian Government guaranteeing it exclusive rights of exploitation on Magyar territory_, in case oil should be discovered there, which has happened. Deposits have been found near Letenye and the quantities which it is hoped to obtain will no doubt be more than sufficient to supply the needs of Hungary. The Hungarian Minister of Finance submitted to the National Assembly, in December 1920, a report concerning the cession of rights to prospect for oil to a syndicate controlled by the _d'Arcy Exploration_. The Government at Budapest, not having the necessary capital for exploration, was favourably disposed to the offers of the subsidiary of the _Anglo-Persian_. The negotiations were conducted by Dr. Telesky, a former Minister of Finance, and Dr. von Bockh, Secretary of State. According to the agreement reached, the _d'Arcy Exploration_ undertook to devote at least £100,000 to prospecting for oil; if the results were satisfactory, the company would exploit one-third of the geological productive units, one-third would be kept in reserve, and the remaining third would revert, free of all expense, to the State. As regards the second portion, the Hungarian Government reserved complete freedom of action. A company was formed with a capital of £1,000,000 sterling, of which the Hungarian Government subscribed ten per cent.; the company had to deposit with the Government 25 per cent. of the shares, and to undertake to hand over to it each year one-tenth of the production, in kind or in money. The _Anglo-Persian_ has also obtained possession of the oil-bearing territory of Transylvania, ceded to Rumania. During the War, this was seized and exploited by the Austrian military authorities, for it belonged to the _Hungarian National Petroleum Company_. The capital of this company was heavily drawn upon for repairs undertaken at the close of hostilities. An appeal for funds became necessary. The _Anglo-Persian_ demanded that the technical and commercial management of the undertaking should be entrusted to it and that two of its nominees should sit on the Board of Directors; it then subscribed £500,000 in preference shares. Each of these shares carried twenty votes against one for an ordinary share: thus the _Anglo-Persian_ has complete control. In addition to this, it has taken over the share which was reserved for Britain in the German interest in the _Steaua Romana_, and disposes of nearly 80 per cent. of the shares in the _Turkish Petroleum_, which has claims to oil concessions in Mesopotamia. On October 13, 1921, the _Anglo-Persian_ made an agreement with the Japanese company _Tei-Koku_, undertaking to supply it with 350,000 barrels of petroleum yearly. Half of this is destined for the Japanese Navy. Organizations for the sale of its products are to be found in Belgium, Denmark and Norway. Part of the famous deposits of Rivadavia, which the Argentine Government intended to reserve for itself, has fallen under its control. In co-operation with the Australian Government--from which it had already obtained, in May 1920, exclusive rights in the former German colonies of Papua--the _Anglo-Persian_ founded the _Commonwealth Oil Refineries_, with a capital of £500,000. It is prospecting actively in Western Australia, and has asked the Government of Perth for a concession of 100,000 acres. In New Zealand it has offered to subscribe 50 per cent. towards the formation of a capital of £100,000 for prospecting purposes. And the _Anglo-Persian_ is, at the present moment, building vast works in New Brunswick, for the distillation of oil from shale. The oil produced will be used for heating the boilers of British ships. The oil-bearing lands in this region are rich and extensive, and the shale of which it is composed has been found twice as rich in oil as the Scottish shale, the first from which the precious "rock-oil" was distilled.[25] As in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, there are enormous laminate rocks, stretching in beds below the valleys, of a thickness of eight to ten metres; when distilled they may produce up to 240 litres of oil to the ton. When the Mormons, fleeing from persecution in 1846, took refuge in the Far West and discovered these oil shales, they never suspected the service they would render half a century later to the British and American Navies.[26] They found themselves held up in their march across the desert for want of fuel, but one of their leaders announced that Providence would soon supply their needs. The prophecy came true that very day: a Mormon was surprised to notice that the stones on which he placed his saucepan took fire. Since then, hunters and prospectors venturing into these desolate regions use no other fuel than these rocks. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 24: The _Anglo-Persian_ will subscribe 45 per cent., France 55 per cent. of the capital of each of these companies. The Agreement of October 27, 1920, was the occasion of very sharp attacks from certain short-sighted members of the House of Commons, who did not understand that the British Government was about to lay hands, in concert with the _Royal Dutch_, upon the oil wealth of France, and reproached the Government with dispersing its efforts.] [Footnote 25: The Scottish factories treat three million tons of shale annually, from which the average yield is only 122.5 litres of oil to the ton, half the yield of the Canadian and American rocks. Apart from this bituminous shale, it seems unlikely that Great Britain, which controls 90 per cent. of the future production of the globe, would have succeeded in finding oil-deposits in her own soil.] [Footnote 26: Anticipating the time when the oil-fields of the United States will be exhausted, the American Government has taken possession of millions of hectares of land containing bituminous rock, in order to ensure the fuelling of its Navy.] CHAPTER XII AN AMERICAN BALKANISM The British Controlled Oil-fields The _Anglo-Persian Oil_ is no longer sufficient for Great Britain, which founded a new company in 1918, the _British Controlled Oil-fields_, specially commissioned to fight the _Standard Oil_. Established under Canadian law with an initial capital of £12,000,000, increased later to £40,000,000, and capable of a further increase up to £159,000,000, the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ will be one of the greatest financial powers of the world. Like the _Anglo-Persian_, it is entirely in the hands of the British Government under the system of the voting trust. It seems that an immense tract of oil-bearing territory exists from Mexico to the Argentine, a continuation of that of the United States. Already Mexico has become the second greatest producing State in the world; and oil has been found in almost all the South American States, even in Brazil and on the plateaux of Bolivia. Of these immense deposits the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ wishes to gain possession on behalf of the British Government, thus completing the work of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ in Venezuela and in the neighbourhood of the Panama Canal. It possesses properties of very great value from Mexico to Brazil, in Trinidad, Venezuela and Costa Rica. In 1920 it began operations in Ecuador, and it is at present prospecting in Brazil, in the State of Bahia, where bituminous seepages and traces of asphalt abound. Its concessions actually surround two-thirds of the Caribbean Sea: they are situated in the States of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, British Guiana, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and the island of Trinidad. The concessions of the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ are nearly always on the sea coast--or rather in close proximity to the sea--which is a considerable advantage. It has expressly chosen them, on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, as a precaution _in case war should break out between Britain and the United States_; for, even with the help of the Japanese fleet, the British Navy might not be able to seize the Panama Canal. And its units must be in a position to replenish their stores of fuel without being obliged to make a long detour round the Magellan Straits. The _British Controlled Oil-fields_ is at present negotiating for the control of important concessions in Panama and Nicaragua. It controls all those of British Guiana, nearly all those of Honduras, but I fear it is about to lose those it had in Costa Rica. In order to obtain them, Great Britain did not hesitate to foment revolution in this little Republic. Unable to obtain anything from the established Government, it helped to place in power the revolutionary President Tinoco, from whom it got all it wanted: more than 6,000 square miles granted to the _British Controlled Oil-fields_. Unfortunately Tinoco has been overthrown: the regular Government, restored to power, hastened to annul these concessions. Great Britain, to compel it to ratify these concessions, stirred up a war between Costa Rica and Panama, while she sent the cruiser _Cambrian_ to the coast of Costa Rica in order to increase the pressure. Events went against her. Costa Rican troops invaded Panama. A landing took place on February 28, 1921, on the Pacific coast, south of the Dulce Gulf, the eastern shore of which is common to both countries, and another less important one on the Atlantic, towards Bocas del Toro. Panama lost the territory of Coto. Mr. Alves, Chairman of the _British Controlled Oil-fields_, set out in March 1921 for Costa Rica, to study the question at issue. But the United States stepped in; and Judge White, as arbitrator, pronounced in favour of Costa Rica. On August 26, 1921, an American naval detachment assisted the Costa Rican forces to take definite possession of the contested territory, in spite of the indignant protests of the Government of Panama against the violent measures of which it was the victim. There is continual warfare among the little republics of Central America. The imbroglio of British and American affairs around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea (_British Controlled Oil-fields_, _Mexican Eagle_, _Royal Dutch Shell_, _Mexican Petroleum_, _Standard Oil_) makes this region _the Balkans of the oil world_. The _British Controlled Oil-fields_, the board of which includes a British admiral and a Member of Parliament, is the result of long investigations pursued by Lord Fisher on behalf of the Admiralty. The results of these studies are being methodically turned to account in order to ensure to Great Britain the supremacy of the sea by means of the supremacy of oil. CHAPTER XIII POLITICAL TENDENCIES OF THE _ROYAL DUTCH_ The British Oil Empire Until 1914, the British Government seemed to resist the formidable extension of the _Royal Dutch_ throughout the world. Under the pretext of ensuring reserves for itself, it got possession of outlets which this company had not yet touched, taking control of the _Anglo-Persian_ and in 1918 founding the _British Controlled Oil-fields_. The reason was that they were not yet allied. But since the War an event of considerable importance has taken place: Deterding has thrown in the fortunes of his trust with those of the greatest empire in the world, the British Empire, whose policy at present dominates the world. At the beginning of its history, the _Royal Dutch_ was a Dutch company. If the _Royal Dutch_ became British by its union with the _Shell_, it was German through its Rumanian share in the _Deutsche Petroleum_, which united the petroleum interests of the _Deutsche Bank_, _Steaua_, _European Petroleum_, and the _Deutsche Mineratal Industrie_. The first important capital of this powerful consortium was furnished by German banks: the _Deutsche Bank_, the _Disconto Gesellschaft_, and the firm of _Bleichröder_ are, as it were, the fundamental tripod supporting the edifice. It has been justly said that if Germany had not the most important place in the _Royal Dutch_, it is because Mr. Deterding was more concerned with British interests. He uses the power of nations as he uses money. Great Britain being mistress of the seas, he has given to British capital the most important part in his undertakings. But the Rothschild family is international. There are branches in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Mr. Deterding had safe places to anchor while waiting for the wind. During the retreat of the Rumanian army, the wells controlled by the _Royal Dutch_ were partly destroyed. Whether this destruction was the work of Rumanian or of German soldiers is not important. The _Deutsche Bank_ was associated with Mr. Deterding in Rumania. Whatever was the result of the War, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ had to be compensated.... It would have been just the same as far as Bagdad. If Germany had gained Asia Minor, the property of the _Royal Dutch_ would still have been saved by the _Deutsche Bank_. As the Allies have the upper hand, Mr. Deterding has nothing to fear. He is in close touch with France and Britain. He is in opposition only to America. And this coalition of the oil powers is a very curious one, in which enemy nations agree at certain times and disagree at others, all of them being led by a superior power to unsuspected ends, just as they were in the world race for armaments. An important fact which may puzzle the simple-minded, is that, during the War, Mr. Deterding made his flag respected. His cleverness was such that, _whichever side was victorious_, he was bound to come out unscathed from the conflict. Since Great Britain has conquered Germany, he has thrown in his fortunes with hers. It was a master-stroke for British policy. Allied to this powerful trust, Great Britain now possesses an oil empire extending throughout the world:-- Europe Russia _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Rumania _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Hungary _Anglo-Persian_ Jugo-Slavia _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Albania _Anglo-Persian_ America Newfoundland _Anglo-Persian_ New Brunswick _Anglo-Persian_ California _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Oklahoma _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Texas, Louisiana _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Mexico _Royal Dutch-Shell_ (_Mexican Eagle_) Central America _British Controlled Oil-fields_ Trinidad _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Venezuela _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Guiana _British Controlled Oil-fields_ Brazil _British Controlled Oil-fields_ Colombia _British Controlled Oil-fields_ Ecuador _British Controlled Oil-fields_ Argentine _Anglo-Persian_ Asia Caucasus _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Persia _Anglo-Persian_ Mesopotamia _Turkish Petroleum_ India _Burmah Oil_ Dutch Indies _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Straits Settlements _Royal Dutch-Shell_ China _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Oceania Australia _Anglo-Persian_ New Zealand _Anglo-Persian_ Papua _Anglo-Persian_ Africa Egypt _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Madagascar _Royal Dutch-Shell_ South Africa _Royal Dutch-Shell_ Morocco _Anglo-Persian_ CHAPTER XIV HOW THE UNITED STATES LOST SUPREMACY OVER OIL The Americans themselves realize that they are about to lose their supremacy over oil. "While we were basking in a false security, lulled by the knowledge of our resources," the American _Nation_ wrote recently, "foreign companies silently and energetically took possession of the unexploited oil-fields." The _Mexican Eagle_, a British company, received vast concessions in Mexico. The _Shell_, another British group, established itself in many places. The _Royal Dutch_, which, in appearance at least, was originally a Dutch company, was founded to exploit the oil of the East Indies. Later, a fusion of the _Royal Dutch_ and the _Shell_ took place, and the _Mexican Eagle_ sheltered under the wings of the new company. The _Anglo-Persian_ was created to exploit Persia and the East, and the British Government subscribed £2,000,000, reserving the control for itself in order to supply the needs of the navy.[27] This company was for years closely connected with the _Royal Dutch_.[28] This gigantic aggregation of British interests, at the present time, owns or controls a great part of the oil of California, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mexico, Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia, Rumania, Russia, Persia, Egypt, India, and the East Indies. Except in North America, many of the concessions are so vast that they exclude American companies from the most profitable oil-fields. However, adds the _Nation_, the experts of the United States Geological Survey were making disturbing discoveries that 40 per cent. of American oil was exhausted, and that, at the present rate of production, the exploitation would be complete in fifteen or twenty years, for home requirements were becoming so great that more oil would have to be imported than was being exported. In 1920, the imports exceeded the exports by 100 million barrels. And _British companies, closely connected with the British Government, are now in exclusive possession of 90 to 97 per cent. of the future world production_. What a change in the situation! Ten years ago, Britain possessed no oil, to-day she is independent, to-morrow she will be mistress. The feat has been accomplished by the silent efforts of a few men such as Sir Marcus Samuel, chairman of the _Shell_, Lord Cowdray (Pearson), Lord Curzon, formerly Viceroy of India, Sir John Cadman, technical adviser to the British Government, Professor in the University of Birmingham, and Chairman of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference during the War, Lord Strathcona, creator of the Canadian railways, who played a great part in the _Anglo-Persian_, and, above all, Admiral Lord Fisher. These men acted _even without the knowledge of the British people and its parliamentary representatives_. Their fellow-countrymen and their opponents only heard of their activities _when they had endowed their country with a world-wide oil empire_. There was veritable amazement in the House of Commons when it was informed of what Lord Fisher and Lord Strathcona had done with the _Anglo-Persian_. Their work narrowly escaped undoing. Lord Fisher himself described, in September 1919, the opposition he met with, even among his colleagues. "I was dubbed 'an oil maniac' when I was at the Admiralty in 1885. Lord Ripon, the First Lord, sent for me and told me I was called a Radical enthusiast and nicknamed 'Gambetta,' and said he meant to make me a member of the Board of Admiralty. I told him all the rest of the Board would leave. He saw me a week after and confessed it was so; but, thank God! I was spared to be Director of Naval Ordnance instead." Lord Fisher experienced the same difficulties when he wished to equip the British Navy with submarines. It is to him, and to the Bethlehem Steel Works (United States), that the Allies owed the prompt completion of the special type of submarines which "went, unconvoyed from America to the Dardanelles and acted there prodigiously." A few of these submarines which succeeded in passing through the wire nets of Chanak-Nagara, for a long time controlled the Sea of Marmora and prevented the Turks from taking supplies by sea to their fortifications on the Straits. Oil supremacy and naval supremacy go hand-in-hand. When he wished to give his country empire over oil, Lord Fisher's principal object was to preserve her dominion over the seas. For that fleet will be victorious which has at its disposal the most abundant sources of oil. Ships using oil have driven out those burning coal, just as the latter replaced sailing ships. When we compare the results obtained by France and by Britain, on whose soil it seems that no deposits of mineral oil have yet been discovered (a fact which rendered Lord Fisher's task none the easier); and when we see Britain mistress of nearly all the oil remaining in the world, we stand confounded with admiration before the genius of those to whom she owes such an empire. British Oil Policy Having been obliged to allow the first place to America, the country which first discovered oil, and which until recently produced 70 per cent. of the world's output, Great Britain began to gain upon her by keeping command of oil-carrying ships. Whoever transports a commodity controls it, and is master of it up to a certain point, for he is the indispensable intermediary for those who wish to obtain it. Should any difficulty arise, the transporter, according as he fulfils his office or not, grants or withholds supplies for the markets, as he pleases. The British genius has always sought to compensate, by maritime superiority, for the inferiority of Great Britain in certain respects. If the United States occupied the first place among producers of oil, they ranked second to Great Britain as transporters. Great Britain, understanding that oil "is destined to play the same part in the world as coal, cotton or steel," made a special point of retaining control of oil-carrying ships. It was a thrilling duel. The world tonnage of tank-steamers rose by June 30, 1919, to 2,616,000, tons, of which 1,500,000 tons sailed under the British flag, 1,000,000 tons under the American. In June, 1920, the United States had gained the first position. They had 308 tank-steamers, amounting to 1,734,843 tons, or 51 per cent. of the whole (3,386,091 tons). On January 1, 1921, the supremacy of Great Britain was restored. Of the 524 oil-steamers afloat, 252 belonged to her, the United States having only 191. But she lost this position again six months later. Mistress of one of the foremost oil-carrying fleets, Britain next sought, until 1922, to monopolize almost all the remaining resources of the world. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_, _British Controlled Oil-fields_, and _Anglo-Persian Oil_ were valuable auxiliaries of the Foreign Office for this object. According to Dr. David White, one of the members of the American Geological Survey, this is what Great Britain possesses to-day:-- Million barrels. Canada: the whole of the deposits are reserved for British control 995 Algeria, Egypt: 50 per cent. 462.5 Persia, Mesopotamia: 75 per cent. 4,365 S.E. Russia, S.W. Siberia, Caucasus: 50 per cent. 2,925 Rumania, Galicia, Europe: 50 per cent. 1,567.5 New Russia and Sakhaline: 50 per cent. 462.5 Dutch Indies: 50 per cent. 753.75 India: the whole 995 In Peru alone have the United States triumphed over Great Britain. The discovery of oil there is due to the English. But, thanks to the power of its capital, the _Standard Oil_, through the medium of the _International Petroleum Company_, managed to acquire the shares of the four most important British companies. And the United States at present controls 70 per cent. of the output there, the British retaining only 27 per cent. and Italy 3 per cent. The Peruvian production, however, is not very high; it does not yet reach 3 million barrels. The need for oil has grown so great that the deposits containing this precious liquid fuel are greedily coveted by the various governments which take shelter behind financial groups. _There is a shortage of 250 million tons of coal on this planet, and it produces only 98 million tons of oil._ But no Government can boast, in this matter, of having shown a foresight equal to that of Great Britain. The British Government is no longer content to-day to encourage, favour and defend its own nationals. Better than this, it makes conquests or establishes protectorates having as essential object the reservation exclusively for its nationals of new oil-bearing territories, such as Persia and Mesopotamia. The treaty recently imposed on Persia was nothing but a disguised protectorate. Fortunately for Britain, the Soviet Government has voluntarily given up its advance into that country since it concluded a trade agreement with London. And it is sufficient to read the Treaty of Sèvres to see the underlying motives of the British negotiators: the desire to monopolize the oil of Asia, and anxiety to keep out the United States, all the oil-fields left to France being in particular granted to her with the idea of a future British participation. The British Government is so jealous of its position in Mesopotamia that it will not even tolerate American prospectors there, and certain incidents have happened in connection with which the disappointed Yankees have asked the State Department at Washington to demand satisfaction. The British oil policy is not uniform. Sometimes, when it seems possible, she gets possession of proved oil-fields. Sometimes, in the case of a country which would hold its own, she negotiates for an advantageous share in the profits--this is what happened with France by the San Remo Agreement--or she makes contracts ensuring abundant supplies of the precious mineral oil. When a State does not fall in with her views sufficiently quickly, Britain does not recoil from any means of pressure. This is what led Admiral Degouy, in April 1920, to write: "As a corollary to well-known negotiations with one of the richest countries in oil in the Near East, the British Admiralty has organized and is maintaining on the Danube a numerous flotilla of gunboats and river monitors." The reason is easy to guess. From 1918 to 1920 an unofficial squadron of small Russian steamers, requisitioned and armed by Great Britain, dominated the Caspian Sea, so that Batum, the port of embarkation for oil on the Black Sea, and Baku, its place of production, were both in the hands of the British. They disposed of the petroleum and mazut there at their own pleasure, permitting no control over their purchases. Britain first took as much as she could; it was only afterwards that she allowed France to replenish her stores in turn, provided there was any petroleum left.[29] Thus ends the work of Lord Fisher, who applied himself for more than thirty years to the problems of oil. Thus end the experiments and observations conducted modestly and quietly for so long at Portsmouth. Henceforward the British Navy is sure of its supplies of oil for a century. But the position is such that the United States can avoid war only at the price of industrial servitude. Hemming-in of the United States While Great Britain was pouncing upon nearly all the oil remaining in the world, the United States basked in a false security. Had they not supplied 80 per cent. of the needs of the Allies during the War? It is true that if the War had continued the United States would not have been able to satisfy those needs. "In September and October 1918," declared Mr. Deen, who played such an important part in the alliance of the _Royal Dutch_ with the _Shell_ and who now directs the oil industry of Oklahoma, "the Allies were taking each day 194,000 barrels of petrol, while the average daily output was 191,000. Adding together the consignments sent to Europe by Mexico and the United States, we reach the figure of 1,200,000 barrels a day, while the United States was producing only 960,000 and Mexico 140,000. The daily deficit was thus 300,000 barrels." The United States sacrificed themselves in the cause of the Allies during the War.[30] Great Britain has shown no gratitude. They had already reached the point at which they could not supply their home consumption, since 25 per cent. of the petroleum consumed in the States used to come from Mexico, and they sent the Allies more than their own production. The War contributed not a little to placing them in their present position. According to Walter Teagle, the new chairman of the _Standard Oil_, if their consumption continues to increase at the present rate they will consume, in a few years, 630 million barrels, or double what they produced in 1919. Since 1914 alone the number of motor-cars in the United States has increased from 1,700,000 to 8,000,000 (Ford cars swarm there). These alone absorb 85 per cent. of the national output, leaving only 15 per cent. for the railways, shipping, manufactures and export. The American companies have made a great effort. They have speeded up production, raising it from 376 million barrels in 1919 to 443 million in 1920. New exploratory work has been carried on, especially in Texas and Kansas. But will not this hasten yet more the time when the resources of the United States will be exhausted? At the word of command from the United States Government, "Draw more and more on the oil in foreign countries," the _Standard_ sent out prospectors all over the world. But everywhere they ran up against an unforeseen obstacle. An American prospector had the misfortune to appear on the shores of the Dead Sea in October 1919. Without hesitation the British General who was Governor of Palestine had him arrested in Jerusalem. To the indignant protests of President Wilson Britain simply replied that it was not a question of measures aimed specially against the Americans, but that all prospecting in Palestine was forbidden until a new order. The same thing happened in Mesopotamia. Everywhere in the world, except possibly Canada, in which country they have considerable influence on account of their geographical proximity, the Americans for two years found the "closed door."[31] Generally they were either completely excluded from oil-bearing concessions situated in the territory, the colonies, or even the sphere of influence of Great Britain, Japan and the Netherlands; or else they were authorized to establish themselves only under such conditions that they would lose the effective control of their undertakings. Foreigners are forbidden to prospect for oil in Burma, India, Persia, Uganda and the United Kingdom. A policy which _excludes foreigners from the control_ of petroleum products is followed in Algeria, Australia, Barbados, Kenya Colony, British Guiana, France, French West Africa, Guatemala, Japan, Formosa, Saghalien, Madagascar, Mexico, New Guinea, and probably in the Union of South Africa. Venezuela and Uganda are considering a similar policy. The _right to exploit mineral wealth_ cannot be granted to foreigners in Australia, Barbados, Kenya Colony, New Guinea, the Dutch Indies, France, French West Africa, Guatemala, India (probably), Great Britain, Japan (practically), Trinidad (in part), Venezuela, Madagascar, and, except for rights already acquired, in Rumania and Slovakia. Temporary restrictions have been placed on the acquisition of oil concessions by foreigners in two districts of Colombia and in the new Rumanian territory. The ownership of oil deposits belongs to the Government in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Slovakia, South Africa, Uganda, Venezuela, Great Britain, and partly so in the Argentine, Australia, British Guiana, Ecuador, India, Trinidad, Canada and Colombia. The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Rumania and Russia are considering the possibility of following the same course. But the United States have pledged themselves not to recognize the new Mexican Government unless it renounces this measure. In France the Government has regalian rights over the riches of the subsoil; it grants them at its discretion. In face of this situation, Senator Gore of Oklahoma, on March 10, 1920, demanded of the Federal Government a report upon the measures taken by foreign Governments to exclude Americans from oil-fields. Two months later, on May 17th, President Wilson transmitted to the Senate the report of the Secretary of State. "The policy of the British Empire," wrote the Acting Secretary of State, Frank L. Polk, "is reported to be to bring about the exclusion of foreigners from the control of the petroleum supplies of the Empire, and to endeavour to secure some measure of control over oil properties in other countries. This policy appears to be developing along the following lines, which are directly or indirectly restrictive on citizens of the United States:-- "1. By debarring foreigners and foreign nationals from owning or operating oil-producing properties in the British Isles, colonies and protectorates. "2. By direct participation in ownership and control of petroleum properties. "3. By arrangements to prevent British oil companies from selling their properties to foreign-owned or controlled companies. "4. By Orders in Council that prohibit the transfer of shares in British oil companies to other than British subjects or nationals." These measures have led to the control of the _Shell_, by agreement with the _Royal Dutch_, which holds 60 per cent. of its shares. "It is understood that the British Government has a controlling interest in the _Anglo-Persian Oil Company_, and that it has also assisted in the development of the Papuan oil-fields by bearing one-half of the expense and contributing experts...." All prospecting for oil in the United Kingdom must be authorized by the Board of Trade. In fact, the only borings carried out in the country are by _S. Pearson and Son, Ltd._, acting as petroleum development managers to the Government. In Trinidad no one may acquire oil-bearing land without the authorization in writing of the Governor, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State for the colonies. Now the latter requires of every British company that not more than 25 per cent. of its capital is to be held by aliens and that the majority of the directors shall be British. The Polk Report goes on to prove that almost all other countries, even the smallest, close the door to Americans. Only Bolivia, Colombia and Costa Rica, which has recently annulled the concessions granted to the _British Controlled Oil-fields_ place Americans and their own nationals on the same footing. The case is different in Guatemala, in Ecuador, and, above all, in Mexico, "only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership in lands, waters and their appurtenances, or to obtain concessions to develop mines, waters, or mineral fuels in the Republic of Mexico. The nation may grant the same rights to foreigners provided they agree before the Department of Foreign Affairs to be considered Mexicans in respect of such property and accordingly not to invoke the protection of their Governments in respect to the same, under penalty, in case of breach, of forfeiture to the nation of property so acquired. Within a zone of 100 kilometres (62.14 miles) from the frontiers and of 50 kilometres (31.07 miles) from the sea-coast, no foreigner shall under any conditions acquire direct ownership of lands and waters." Meantime the San Remo Agreement had been signed, by which the French Government--voluntarily or no--associated itself with Great Britain in order to drive out America from the Asiatic centres of petroleum production, and delivered over to her the resources which might be discovered in the zones of influence reserved for France. The French Government was so embarrassed about this agreement that for three months it dared not publish it. When it made up its mind to do so, the publication aroused grave anxiety in the United States. The Struggle for Mesopotamia However, public opinion and American official circles followed the progress of the struggle with passionate interest. The situation became even more strained in consequence of an article in _Sperling's Journal_ by Sir Edward Mackay Edgar, which constituted a literal defiance. Great Britain openly boasted of her triumph. "I should say," wrote Sir Edward, "that two-thirds of the oil-fields exploited in Central and South America are in British hands. In the states of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, the great majority of the concessions are in the hands of British subjects and will be developed by our capital. "The Alves group (_British Controlled Oil-fields_) whose properties extend two-thirds round the Caribbean Sea is entirely British; and the regulations controlling it ensure the absolute perpetuity of direction in the interests of Great Britain. No citizen, no American group, has attained, or will ever attain, in Central America a position ... like that of Mr. Alves. If we consider the greatest of all petroleum organizations, the _Shell_ group, it possesses or controls undertakings in every oil-producing country of the world, including the United States, Russia, Mexico, the Dutch Indies, Rumania, Egypt, Venezuela, Trinidad, India, Ceylon, the Malay States, China, Siam, the Straits Settlements and the Philippines. "No doubt we shall have to wait some years before the benefits of this position can be reaped; but there is no doubt that the harvest will be magnificent. Before long America will be obliged to buy from British companies, at the rate of millions of pounds every year and to pay in dollars, in increasing quantities the oil she cannot do without, and which she can no longer obtain from her own reserves. "I estimate that if their consumption continues to increase at the present rate, in _ten years the Americans will be obliged to import 500 million barrels_, which, at the very low price of two dollars a barrel, means an annual paying out of a thousand million dollars, of which the greater part will fall into British pockets. With the exception of Mexico and a small part of Central America, _the whole world is solidly barricaded against an attack in force by the United States_. The British position is impregnable." One year after the peace the struggle between Great Britain and America reached its bitterest phase. The United States wished to obtain, at any price, part of the oil deposits of Mesopotamia and of the new oil-bearing territory which had just been discovered at Djambi in the Sunda Islands. Consequently, on November 20, 1920, Mr. Colby, Secretary of State, addressed a Note to Lord Curzon, which the American Press published on the 24th, in which he protested against the exclusion of Americans from Mesopotamia and claimed equality of treatment for all nations. The British Government made, at the time, only a vague reply to the Colby Note. The English Press published the complete text.[32] Lord Curzon then declared that the existing British rights in Mesopotamia were only the confirmation of those acquired before the War by the _Turkish Petroleum Company_, the control of which the British Government holds in common with the _Royal Dutch_, for it has bought 200,000 ordinary shares in this company. But for the War the exploitation of the oil deposits of Mosul and Baghdad would long since have begun. The rights acquired by the French Government under the San Remo Agreement represent only the German share, and they were granted in return for facilities given for the dispatch to the Mediterranean of the petroleum produced. Neither the rights of the _Turkish Petroleum Company_, nor the San Remo Agreement will preclude the Arab State of Iraq from enjoying the full benefit of ownership or from prescribing the conditions upon which the oil-fields shall be developed. The British Government has no desire whatever to deny the United States a share in the expansion of the petroleum industry of Mesopotamia. And the British Note draws attention to the fact that London by no means agrees with Washington on the estimate of the petroleum resources of the various nations. While the potentialities of the future are necessarily problematical, the undisputed fact remains that at present United States soil produces 70 per cent. of the oil production of the world.[33] It is not easy, therefore, to justify the United States Government's insistence that American control should now be extended to resources which may be developed in mandated territories. The British Government, nevertheless, is in general agreement with the contention of the United States Government that the world's oil resources should be thrown open for development without reference to nationality. This somewhat hypocritical reply did not satisfy the Federal Government. Great Britain might be in agreement with its contention that "oil resources should be thrown open for development without reference to nationality," but that did not make her open up Mesopotamia to Americans. And on the occasion of a meeting of the Council of the League of Nations at Paris, to examine in detail the problem of mandates, Washington, to annoy London, sent a Note on February 1, 1921, demanding that the question of mandates over former German colonies should be reconsidered. In the end America won her point, for during the negotiations which were conducted in London at the end of July 1922, Walter Teagle asked that the shares in the _Turkish Petroleum_ granted to the _Anglo-Persian_ (50 per cent.), to the _Royal Dutch_ (25 per cent.), and to France (25 per cent.) should be reduced in order to make room for American interests. Deterding protested, but finally accepted. The British Government gave way immediately. It is a doubtful victory for the United States, for who knows when this region will be pacified? And France will do her utmost to avoid the diminution of her share. The Angora Government showed itself at Lausanne determined to resume possession of the Mosul region, which is so rich in oil and which M. Clemenceau gave up to Britain with so little resistance. The Struggle for Djambi Meanwhile the _Royal Dutch_, which, in agreement with the _Anglo-Persian_, had asked the British Government to reserve for it the exploitation of Mesopotamian deposits, was endeavouring to monopolize the new deposits discovered at Djambi in the Sunda Islands. Djambi is the last great territory to be exploited in the Dutch Indies; the oil-fields in this district cover four million acres. At first the designs of the _Royal Dutch_ met with no opposition, and it obtained from the Dutch Lower Chamber the grant of these deposits for its subsidiary, the _Bataafsche Petroleum_. But two representatives of the Standard brought a communication to the Dutch Chamber and Ministers at The Hague. The _Standard_ offered to found a company in partnership with the Dutch Government, which would hold half the territories of Djambi on the same terms as the _Royal Dutch_. It recalled the fact that in the United States the Dutch had been given every facility, and counted on reciprocal treatment. This unexpected communication caused great disturbance in the financial and political world of the Netherlands. A deputy asked if the note from the _Standard_ came from the American Government. The Prime Minister replied that he did not know, but that in any case this note must express the views of Washington. A Socialist member proposed exploitation of the whole field by the State; this was defeated by 55 votes to 24. The Liberals, fearing international complications, were opposed to the Government plan. Finally, the Second Chamber adopted this plan by 49 votes to 30. Thereupon a vigorous Note arrived at The Hague from Mr. Hughes, the Secretary of State, who nearly defeated Wilson on the occasion of his re-election to the Presidency and who holds to-day the most important post in Mr. Coolidge's Cabinet. Mr. Hughes ordered the United States Ambassador to insist vigorously that the Dutch Government should grant the same facilities in the Dutch Indies to American as to other companies. For, he said, the nationals of all countries have an equal right to vital natural resources, and one cannot forbid access to one particular nation. "We do not seek preference over other countries, but we do not wish other countries to obtain advantages to our detriment. And concerning oil, the solution of the problem is to give equal rights to all the companies of all nations." The Government of the Netherlands sent to Washington its reply to the American Note. It drew special attention to the disinterestedness shown by the Americans at the time when competition was free, a time chosen by the _Royal Dutch_ to make a much more advantageous offer than those of its rivals. In 1915 the exploitation of the deposits in the Sumatra regions was granted to the State; but in 1918 this ruling was modified, and it was decided that exploitation might take place directly by the State, or through the agency of a company, or under the system of a State-controlled monopoly. At this time no American protest had reached the Dutch Government, and none was sent until after the signing of the contract between the _Royal Dutch_ and the Government. However, added the Note, there still remain numerous valuable oil-fields in the East Indies, and the Dutch Government would be prepared to grant concessions to American capital. This affair seems to have been by no means settled by the vote of the Dutch Lower Chamber. The polemic continued between Washington and The Hague. In May 1921 the American Government demanded the publication of its Note of April 19th, which The Hague was determined to keep secret. And in Holland the Colonial Secretary was violently reproached for having concealed from the Chamber the details of the correspondence exchanged with the United States. I have been able to procure the text of the letter submitted by the _Standard_: "The development of petroleum deposits is at present a vital question for every country, and increasing attention must be devoted to it by the whole world. The Dutch colonies have the good fortune to possess extremely rich petroleum deposits, especially in the Djambi region. The _Standard Oil_, an American limited liability petroleum company, asks to be allowed to share in the development of the deposits at Djambi, and a decision must shortly be taken on the matter. Considering the great extent of the oil-fields of Djambi, the Dutch Government will certainly not consider it to the interest of the country and people to allow them to be exploited by a single company. "The _Standard Oil_ submits for the approval of the Dutch Government a scheme for founding a Dutch company under the mining legislation of the Dutch Indies, according to which part of the Djambi region would be exploited on the basis of the native law. This project would have to be submitted to the Second Chamber of the States-General. The _Standard Oil_ declares itself ready to furnish all necessary guarantees for the exploitation of the said territory. "The _Standard Oil_ is convinced that the Dutch Government will readily admit that the United States, which are and always have been the greatest producers of petroleum, could bring as much profit to Dutch interests as they have done for their own citizens.[34] We American companies, therefore, believe that we have a right to share in the development of the petroleum fields of Djambi, and we are sure that this participation would serve the interests of Holland equally with those of the United States, and would help to strengthen the bonds of friendship which exist between the two countries." This did not have a soothing effect on public opinion in Great Britain. Since the War, wrote _The Times_, the question of petroleum had become an international question of the first order. Great Britain took an especial interest in it; its security depended, more than that of other countries, on power over sea and air. Up to Trafalgar, when the essential thing was to have ships of stout oak, she watched carefully over her forests.... She could not do the same with oil, for she possessed so little in the Empire. The United States desire equality of treatment. Britain denies the justice of this claim. "United States soil," wrote Lord Curzon, "produces 70 per cent., and American interests in adjoining territory control a further 12 per cent. of the oil production of the world." Great Britain, he pointed out, had only 40 per cent., and that in distant territories. The United States replied that eighteen years from now all their oil would be exhausted, and they would not even be able to satisfy their home consumption. The orders for 1920 exceeded the output. "Not so!" replied the British. The excessive demand caused the price of oil to rise, and the demand then diminished in reaction. You have even been obliged to lower the price. The price of Pennsylvanian crude oil fell from 6.10 to 3.00 dollars a barrel between December 1920 and April 1921. And as Mexico is developed the swing of the pendulum will continue in the same direction. But you need not fear the exhaustion of American petroleum. Read the reports of your experts. Mr. David White, of the United States Geological Survey, has given his opinion that the American fields will have passed maximum production in a few years' time. Mr. Lane, formerly Secretary of the Interior, has gone even further, and has estimated the percentages of exhaustion of the main oil-fields as follows:-- Lima, Indiana 93 per cent. Appalachian 70 per cent. Colorado 65 per cent. Illinois 51 per cent. But Mr. White himself admits that there are in the United States many oil-fields insufficiently exploited or even still unknown. As for Mexican petroleum, which is said to be threatened by salt water, there is no need for uneasiness. Exploitation there is only just beginning and will produce many pleasant surprises. Lord Curzon, moreover, sweeps aside all statistics with a disdainful gesture. We cannot trust their accuracy, he says. But this gesture did not impress the United States; they were determined to obtain satisfaction at any price. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 27: This amount has since been more than doubled.] [Footnote 28: By the contract already mentioned which expired in 1922.] [Footnote 29: _Revue Universelle_, October 15, 1920.] [Footnote 30: They did not sacrifice themselves for nothing!] [Footnote 31: Report of the American Director of the Bureau of Mines, Van H. Manning, to the Secretary of State for the Interior.] [Footnote 32: _Times_, April 6, 1921.] [Footnote 33: In reality, at the date of this Note, the United States were only producing 64 per cent., and a great part of this output is in British hands (_Royal Dutch-Shell_).] [Footnote 34: The question, however, has not been settled as they desired.] CHAPTER XV THE AMERICAN RETORT The United States began to retort by feverishly carrying out a naval program which aimed at depriving Great Britain of the supremacy of the sea. They built an immense merchant marine, which already numbered, on June 30, 1920, more than 28,000 ships. And their dockyards were busy constructing battleships more powerful than those of Britain. At the Washington Conference, Great Britain was obliged to renounce her claim to the sole naval supremacy. Besides, she could not have continued to struggle for it. The United States can devote hundreds of millions of pounds to their fleet without inconvenience, but Great Britain, who has suffered more from the War, and whose budget--if we are to believe her statesmen--is balanced with difficulty, could not do so. The British people are so over-burdened with taxation that it would be impossible to obtain more from them. If Great Britain is no longer sole mistress of the seas, what use, in case of war, would be the enormous oil-deposits of which she has secured the possession in Central America, Mexico, and on both sides of South America? What would be the use of all the work of the _British Controlled Oil-fields_? But if Great Britain still possessed naval supremacy _in the same proportions as in 1914_, it would be sufficient for America to have _a fleet equal to the former German fleet_ in order to prevent her access to the Caribbean Sea. The British fleet would never dare to venture there. It would do as it did from 1914 to 1919! Now, if the American fleet is in a position to prevent access to the American coast and to the Gulf of Mexico, its adversaries may have the most powerful battleships in their naval bases and the most imposing reserves of motor-lorries and aeroplanes in their depots, yet all these forces, in the present state of oil production, run the risk of being paralysed for want of sufficient supplies.[35] But the United States are not content with wanting to deprive Britain of her naval supremacy. By threatening reprisals on their territory against the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ and British companies, they compelled the British Government to give way on questions concerning Palestine and Mesopotamia. The Americans were all the more furious to see their prospectors arrested in Palestine, because they had obtained the right to make borings there, before the War, from the Turkish Government. The whole of the valley of Yarmak, the neighbourhood of Bethlehem (Vebi Musa), the south of the Dead Sea, and the east of the Jordan, were to be prospected by the _Standard_.[36] Moreover, by the General Leasing Act of 1920, the Federal Government obtained authority to exact from every oil company operating in the United States, that it should number none but American citizens among its shareholders. A judicial decision has just been given, refusing to British citizens the right to become shareholders in a company of this kind. Moreover, Mr. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, wished to get a Bill passed through Congress, authorizing the President to place an embargo on the export of petroleum. The _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which now draws 43 per cent. of its output from the United States, would thus be unable to transport it to Great Britain. But on this point he is in conflict with Mr. Payne, the new Secretary of the Interior, who thinks the above-mentioned Bill a sufficient protection for the United States. This Bill forbids the leasing of wells by a corporation of foreign shareholders, unless these latter belong to a country which grants reciprocal treatment; the corporation, besides, must have a majority of foreign shareholders. The system of reciprocity was inaugurated by President Harding. Governments which allow free competition to American companies receive the like treatment. The permits solicited by the _Royal Dutch_ will therefore probably be refused, while those sought by Canadian companies, such as the _Midland Oil_, are much more likely to be granted; it will be enough that their British shareholders become Canadians. For Canada has always allowed the _Standard Oil_ very great liberty on her territory. In April 1919, she even refused the association of interests proposed by the _Shell_, for fear of offending Washington. If ever war broke out between Great Britain and the United States, Canada would almost certainly proclaim her independence and break away from the British Empire. The General Leasing Act may become a dangerous weapon in the hands of the _Standard_, and will perhaps be used by it to bring pressure on the _Royal Dutch_, which has several times refused its co-operation. Many Californian companies, subsidiaries of the _Shell_, have already been called upon to prove that their shareholders are really American citizens as required by Congress. Thus, the threats uttered by Walter Teagle at the meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in 1920 are beginning to be put into execution: "If foreign Governments insist on carrying out their policy of nationalizing oil-bearing territory, if they insist on keeping petroleum deposits for their own future profit, at the same time demanding from the United States the satisfaction of their present needs, then there is no alternative for us but to take note of their attitude and, as a means of self-protection, to examine the methods of preserving our own oil for our own needs. Given their position in the world's commerce and the economic and financial weapons they have in their hands, the United States could certainly compel other countries to a redistribution of oil-bearing land, so as to obtain a part of those territories which these countries wish to keep for themselves." "_Great Britain_," Senator Phelan pointed out, "_holds one half the world's oil and produces only a quarter, while the United States, owning one-sixth, produce three-quarters._ In the possible conflicts of to-morrow, she desires, by means of oil, not only to have all the chances of success on her own side, but also to take from her future rivals, although they may be her friends of to-day, these same chances of triumph. She tries deliberately to diminish the resources of America, which will be exhausted in eighteen years, as things go at present." Shortly afterwards, in 1920, the former Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Franklin K. Lane, anxiously wondered whether Great Britain was acting in this way to prevent the growth of the American Navy. "_Now, do such proceedings lead to peace or war?_ Is it admissible that Britain--not merely British capitalists, but the State or Government of Great Britain, that is, a political entity--should take possession of a market of such importance and keep the rest of the world out of it? It is surely obvious that if not only nationals, but States themselves, represented by Governments, take part in economic competition, and turn themselves into business houses or manufacturing firms, there is no hope of appeasing the conflicts which will constantly arise from commercial rivalry." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 35: _Producteur_, January 1921, _Les Grands Programmes Nationaux_.] [Footnote 36: It took America three years to obtain satisfaction as regards Palestine. On April 9, 1922, the British Government notified the State Department at Washington that it granted, at last, to the _Standard Oil_ the prospecting rights which this company claimed, and conceded the same rights to Americans as to the nationals of all Governments signing the Treaty of Versailles.] CHAPTER XVI FROM WASHINGTON TO GENOA The Struggle for the Oil-fields of Russia A period of calm followed the Washington Conference. On his way to the United States, Sir John Cadman, the Grand Master of British Oil Policy, was lavish with protestations of peace and good will. He affirmed that British policy in no way aimed at eliminating Americans from the oil-bearing regions of the world, and he even declared himself in favour of co-operation between British and American capital in the exploitation of oil. "If," he added, "there are restrictions in certain Dominions and Colonies, it is because the home Government could not resist the demand for them. Besides, in Canada, the biggest company, the _Imperial Oil_, is American. In Trinidad there is a law excluding all but British companies from oil concessions upon Crown lands, but no restriction exists upon other lands in the colony. In Burma also the participation of foreign capital is forbidden, but this prohibition is of long standing; it goes back 35 or 40 years, and there is reason to believe that it may soon be repealed." Sir John Cadman went so far as to declare that he categorically repudiated all governmental intervention in the oil question. In the mouth of one of the directors of the _Anglo-Persian_, this statement is somewhat amusing. But undoubtedly, the British Government, feeling that it had gone too far, realized the necessity of dropping some ballast. During the Washington Conference, on the fringe of the main naval agreement, an oil truce was secretly negotiated. Britain even consented to allow the _Standard Oil_ to establish itself in the five provinces of Northern Persia which had formerly been reserved for Russian interests. In order to obtain concessions form the Persian Government, in spite of the initial opposition of the _Anglo-Persian_, the _Standard_ had not hesitated to make use of the American minister at Teheran.[37] _The support which the representatives of Washington never refused has always been one of the principal causes of its triumphs._ But the struggle between Britain and the United States was not long in breaking out again with renewed intensity, this time for the conquest of the remaining oil lands, now escheat, from the Caucasus to the Urals and Turkestan. The Genoa Conference will be regarded by history, not so much as a great effort towards world peace, as a "Conference on Oil," at which the immense riches of the old Tsarist Empire were offered by Tchitcherin to the appetites of the Powers. I have developed this point in the preface to the Russian edition of this book, which has recently been translated under the direction of M. Melik-Noubaroff, formerly President of the Imperial Technical Commission of Baku and chief engineer of the Nobel Company: "Though Russia, which held first place in the world's production for a few years at the beginning of the twentieth century, has now dropped back to third place, the reserves contained in her soil still exceed 1,000 million cubic metres, almost equalling those of the United States and Alaska together (1,113 million cubic metres). Persia and Mesopotamia, Mexico itself, as well as the north of South America, rank after her. All other countries are far behind. The time will come, perhaps in less than twenty years (exceptional circumstances apart) in view of the terrific rate of consumption, when the reserves of the United States will be exhausted; then Russia will play a big part in the world." The developed areas throughout Russia, Siberia, and the Caucasus are much smaller than the extent of the proved deposits, which themselves are but a small fraction of those whose existence has been indicated with certainty by preliminary surveys. The oil resources of Russia represent alone _one-sixth of the reserves of the world_. Hence the greed and covetousness with which they were regarded at Genoa. The question of oil is the primary political question of the present age, but in this Conference at which the future of Europe was to be enacted, France was the only nation which seemed not to notice the fact. The Quai d'Orsay had not deigned to appoint a single oil expert to Genoa.[38] More than that, I am in a position to state that the only one of the French delegates who was acquainted with the oil question had received precise instructions before his departure to keep strictly aloof from all discussions about oil. It was, of course, manifestly impossible to expect to settle the question of Russia's oil at Genoa in the absence of any representative of the United States. The French delegation therefore held only a watching brief. By this self-denial France at any rate earned the distinction of taking no part in the scandalous concession-hunting which went on behind the scenes at Genoa while the Soviet delegates were discussing the great principles of international morality with the official representatives of the Powers. Into this feverish atmosphere the news dropped like a bomb-shell that Krassin had signed a contract conferring upon the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ a monopoly of the oil in the Caucasus. The news caused a great sensation, and immediately provoked solemn denials, which were more resounding than convincing. The few oil magnates and their satellites who were not already at Genoa hurried thither prepared for battle. The French Government at once dispatched M. Laurent Eynac. The Cabinet, however, had decided that he alone should be attached to the delegation in an official capacity. And it was not until the afternoon of the day upon which it made this decision that it recognized the necessity of adding M. Pincan, the very able director of the Oil and Petrol Department of the Ministry of Commerce, on account of the fact that M. Eynac for over a year had been out of touch with his former colleagues. The French delegation adopted the Belgian point of view upon the restitution of private property, and energetically defended French pre-War interests in Russian oil, which, in December 1920, represented a value of 200 million francs. A common policy was elaborated in conjunction with the principal Belgian oil companies, whose importance in the Caucasus equalled our own, with a view to the defence of rights acquired before and after the nationalization of mines and factories by the Soviets. In order to obtain absolute equality of treatment for French interests in the Caucasus, M. Laurent Eynac very pointedly called the British Government's attention to the stipulations of the San Remo Agreement. He relied upon Article 2 of the Agreement, based upon the principle of cordial co-operation and reciprocity in all countries where the oil interests of France and Britain can in practice be combined, and upon Article 6, which runs thus: In the territories which belonged to the late Russian Empire the two Governments will give their joint support to their respective nationals in their joint efforts to obtain petroleum concessions and facilities to export and to arrange delivery of petroleum supplies. The British Government, anxious not to obstruct the private negotiations of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ and the Soviets, got out of the difficulty very skilfully by giving to this latter clause a restricted interpretation. On May 15, 1922, in the House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain went so far as to declare that Article 6 and the other analogous provisions of the San Remo Agreement would only become effective if French and British nationals decided jointly to acquire specific concessions. Nationals of a single country, like the British trusts, would therefore retain complete liberty of action. If, in the light of these explanations, one appreciates the threat of monopoly contained in the insertion, at the instance of the British delegation, of Clause 7 in the Memorandum of May 2, 1922, stipulating that in cases where the exploitation of property formerly belonging to foreigners could be assured only by incorporating them in a general group, the preferential right to the restitution of the property should not apply, one is driven to wonder what in such circumstances has become of the cordial "Franco-British co-operation" spoken of in the San Remo preamble. Would it not be merely an empty formula? * * * * * For a long time past, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ had been striving to obtain a grasp of the oil deposits in Russia, and thus to realize, by arrangement with the British Government, its dream of world hegemony in oil. Its only reason for not amalgamating with the _Anglo-Persian_ and the _Burmah Oil_ at the beginning of 1922 was fear of American reprisals. The question was much debated, but after considerable hesitation Mr. Lloyd George refused to give his consent; so soon after the Naval Pact of Washington it would have caused something approaching a sensation in the United States and would have appeared intentionally provocative. As soon as Britain had signed the trade agreement with Moscow, the _Royal Dutch_ opened negotiations with the Soviet representatives, and it was not long before these relations bore fruit in the sale of 10,000 tons of oil to the _Asiatic Petroleum_, one of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ subsidiaries. I may mention here that the signatories on behalf of the co-operatives of Russian producers were Krassin, Rakovsky, Mrs. Varvara Polovtsef, Victor Nogin, and Basil Krysin. The notorious agreement between the _Shell_ and the Soviets, which agitated the Press of the whole world and produced a scandal which almost wrecked the Conference, was not concluded at Genoa; it was drafted in London during February in the following form:-- The Russian Soviet Government is prepared to give consideration to a proposal by which the sale of all oil products available for export from the various oil-fields of Russia would be placed in the hands of a syndicate formed upon the following basis:-- The initial capital will be provided by equal contributions from the Russian Government and the foreign group. The management of the syndicate will have control of all sales and will be entrusted to a Council composed of an equal number of representatives of the Russian Government and the foreign group. The syndicate will be responsible to the Russian Government for the most favourable sale of oil products possible. In order to derive the maximum advantage from such sale, the syndicate will provide or within an agreed period create the necessary distributive organization, which will entail a certain capital expenditure. It is suggested that the capital thus required be raised by the issue of bonds bearing a fixed rate of interest. Payment of the interest upon these bonds will be guaranteed by the foreign group. The syndicate will receive, as remuneration for its activities, a certain commission upon all sales, which commission will be fixed upon a sliding scale according to the quantities sold. For quantities not exceeding 100,000 tons 5 per cent. is suggested; for larger quantities a proportionate rate will be arranged by mutual agreement. Furthermore, it is understood that any surplus realized by the sale of Russian oil over and above the export price of the American market will belong entirely to the syndicate. After meeting working expenses, the profits thus realized will be applied in the first place to the payment of the interest upon any bonds which the syndicate may issue, and the balance will be divided equally between the two parties to the syndicate, i.e., the Russian Government and the foreign group. These arrangements will hold good for five years certain, after which period the Russian Government will have the right to redeem the bonds at the price of issue or upon such other terms as may be stipulated at the time of issue, and to terminate the agreement. The Russian Government, however, will be obliged to give one year's notice at the end of the fourth year if it desires to terminate the agreement. In default of such notice, the agreement will hold good for another period of five years. It is understood that the Russian Government reserves the right at any time to sell oil products directly to foreign Governments, but such sales will in no case exceed 50 per cent. of the total quantity available for export in any year. The success of the syndicate will depend entirely in the early stages upon transport facilities between the places where the stocks of oil products are available and the ports of embarkation. Unfortunately, at the present time these facilities are in some measure lacking, and with a view to remedying the situation, the foreign party to the syndicate will be required to invest at least £500,000 in the transport system. This sum, as well as all other sums mentioned below, will be guaranteed by the Russian Government, and in case of necessity will be secured upon the stocks of Russian oil. This money will be used for the purchase of the necessary rolling stock, for the maintenance of pipe-lines, and, if required, for the installation of new pipe-lines for the various products. Against the sums thus employed, transport bonds will be issued bearing interest at the rate of 8 per cent.; furthermore, these bonds will carry the right to a bonus, the amount of which will be determined by the quantity of oil products transported over and above a pre-arranged quantity. The amount of this bonus will be fixed by mutual agreement, and will take the form of an agreed tax upon each pool of oil products transported in Russia over and above a pre-arranged quantity. Payment of the interest upon these bonds will be guaranteed by the Russian Government, and in case of necessity will be secured upon the existing stocks of oil. The transport organization thus formed by the rolling stock to be acquired and by that which is at present available will be under the management of a Council composed of an equal number of delegates of the Russian and the foreign group. All rolling stock and everything belonging to this joint undertaking will be exempt from requisition or confiscation whether by the Central Government or by local authorities. The Council of the undertaking will be free to appeal for qualified foreign workmen, and in general to administer and manage the business in the best interests of the enterprise and the objects it has in view. Any additional capital which may be required will be provided by equal contributions from the Russian Government and the foreign group. Such additional capital will be raised by the issue of bonds bearing interest at a rate to be fixed by mutual agreement at the time of issue, the Russian Government being responsible for the subscription of one-half of the issue and the foreign group for the subscription of the other half. These bonds will carry the right to a bonus in the same way as the bonds mentioned above. The activities of the Council of the joint undertaking will be subject to all laws and decrees of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and to all regulations which may be in force. Of all the employés of the syndicate in Russia, 50 per cent. only may be non-Russian. If an agreement upon this basis is deemed possible, the foreign group will have the right to appoint representatives in Russia to examine conditions of transport, to take samples of existing stocks, etc. After the expiry of ten years the Russian Government will be free to redeem the transport bonds at the price of issue or upon such other terms as may be stipulated at the time of issue. It is clearly understood that these terms will provide for certain bonuses at the time of redemption to be calculated upon the average profits of the joint enterprise during the last two years of its operations. The Russian Government will signify its intention to redeem these bonds by the end of the ninth year at latest. I am aware that serious changes in this contract were contemplated by the two parties in the course of the negotiations. _They were only to be introduced if Mr. Lloyd George succeeded in bringing about the_ de jure _recognition of the Federal Soviet Republic_. This agreement, which was duly initialled, _but not signed_, at Genoa, referred only to concessions for deposits not hitherto exploited. But the Soviet Government had given an oral promise to hand over to the English the fields which were already developed and which had been nationalized for the past four years. Moreover, during this winter, British groups, through Krassin as intermediary, had entered into relations with the former owners and had negotiated with them for the resumption of their concessions. The Bolshevik Government has always urged foreign Powers seeking to acquire a share of Russian oil to deal separately with the dispossessed owners in order to protect themselves against all possible claims in the future. From the very beginning of 1922, the _Royal Dutch_ spread a rumour in France that it was experiencing difficulties with the British Government and must rely upon the support of the French Government. This manoeuvre succeeded so well that, when the French representatives at Genoa were given precise information about the impending conclusion of the agreement between the _Shell_ and the Soviets, they shrugged their shoulders and smiled contemptuously; the rivalry between the _Royal Dutch_ and Great Britain was unquestionable. If the great trust obtained certain advantages, France would benefit; it was best to let it carry on. Their disillusionment was bitter. * * * * * Now the British Government, in conjunction with the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, has been seeking to obtain for itself the products of the oil wells of the Caucasus, not since 1922, but since 1919. The early negotiations proceeded slowly. Mr. Lloyd George had then but little confidence in the permanence of the Bolshevik régime. He did not even contemplate negotiations with its representatives. The financiers of the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ approached only the most important of the dispossessed Russian oil magnates. On July 27, 1920, one of the most powerful subsidiaries of the trust, the _Bataafsche Petroleum_, bought a large quantity of the shares in Caucasian companies owned by MM. Mantasheff, Lianosoff and Pitoieff. For the celebrated Russian actor, Pitoieff, is also a great oil proprietor. The purchase price was fixed at £11,042,000, of which £645,000 was paid in cash. The balance was to be paid by instalments, but the Russian proprietors have not received even the first. Events had moved quickly. Mr. Lloyd George had developed a sudden and violent sympathy with the Government of Moscow. He now saw in it a saviour who would secure for dormant British industry the work of reconstructing the immense devastated empire. He had decided to bestow upon it his official blessing, to obtain that of all Europe, and to approve its theories and practices, in particular nationalization. Henceforward, the _Shell_ considered it had no further concern with the proprietors of the old régime. And Colonel Boyle, one of its most active agents, entered into relations with Krassin, who _promised to reserve to the_ Royal Dutch-Shell _the monopoly of the export of Russian oil_. Krassin promised everything he was asked, and allowed the contract to be drafted. But as soon as there was talk of signing it at Genoa, he gave the project such publicity that the general diplomatic hue-and-cry which resulted prevented its signature. _It was the Soviets themselves which divulged their agreement with the_ Shell. They have no wish to place the greatest riches of Russia in the hands of a single people, and especially a people so successful and ambitious as the British. The British Government just failed to realize its greatest dream; the conquest of the remaining oil deposits throughout the world--a conquest which would have assured its supremacy in the future and would have made all other peoples its tributaries. But, in spite of everything, I believe in the future of the British people, one of whose leaders was not afraid to say, twenty years before Germany had begun to dream of European hegemony: "I believe in this race, one of the greatest governing races the world has ever known, this Anglo-Saxon race, proud, tenacious, self-confident, resolute, which no climate and no vicissitude can corrupt, and which will infallibly be the predominant force in future history." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 37: I believe that the exploitation of these deposits will shortly be placed in the hands of the Sinclair Company, one of the most powerful American concerns after the _Standard_. A large number of shares in this company have recently been bought by the _Standard_.] [Footnote 38: Nevertheless, it had been warned as early as the previous March of the agreement which was afoot between the _Shell_ and the Soviets, and it had seen the text of the contract.] PART IV FRANCE'S PART IN THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER XVII THE CARTEL OF TEN In this bitter struggle between Britain and the United States for dominion over the world's oil, what is France's position? France as yet possesses very little oil, although petroleum has been found in various parts of her colonial empire and that of Alsace has been restored to her; but on account of her political importance, she is a "second" who may decide the victory. Hence the efforts made by the two great Anglo-Saxon nations for her alliance. After 1870, there was no free competition in petroleum in France. The industry fell into the hands of the great firms which, sheltered behind the customs barriers established by the National Assembly at Versailles immediately after the Commune, formed a cartel enjoying a veritable monopoly, and apportioning the different regions of France. These ten firms did not compete. They fixed their prices in agreement and shared among themselves the quantities to be sold. It would have been impossible for an eleventh to establish itself in France without their consent. In the original cartel of 1885 there were only three members; round these the other existing refineries grouped themselves in 1893. Thus the Cartel of Ten was formed:-- _Fenaille et Despeaux._ _Désmarais frères._ _Fils de A. Deutsch._ _Compagnie Industrielle des Pétroles._ _Raffinerie du Midi._ _Société Lille-Bonnières et Colombes_ (_L.B.C._). _Paix et Cie._ _G. Lesieur et ses fils._ _Compagnie Générale des Pétroles._ _Raffinerie de Pétrole du Nord._ These were the ten firms which, protected by the ridiculously high customs tariff fixed on July 8, 1871, had monopolized for their own profit the sale of the petroleum brought in by the then all-powerful _Standard_. With a total capital not exceeding 100 million francs, _they made for the ten of them a profit of 50 million francs a year_.[39] Thus, France paid more for her oil than any other country in Europe. Protected by its agreement with the trusts by which it guaranteed them the monopoly of its supplies, the cartel did not exert itself. We had only 400 tank-wagons, 54 ill-organized depots, and 17 refineries. The process of refining in France has never employed more than 300 to 400 men, of whom just over a third were specialists.[40] Their fleet of tankers in 1914 comprised only 14 small boats of 3,000 to 6,000 tons, of which only three sailed under the French flag. The others were under the British flag "in order to profit by the less burdensome shipping regulations." It was a veritable humiliation for France, when, at the beginning of the War, she had to beg Great Britain to be good enough to return them. Britain had requisitioned them. If the two countries had not been allied, France would have been disarmed from the very first day! Eight of these ships were sunk during the War, and when the cartel was asked to build new ones it refused, "so as not to give offence" to the great trusts. Except for Charles Paix, who made a disastrous attempt to the south of Cheliff in Algeria, none of the "oil men" tried to discover petroleum in France or her colonial empire, and so to endow the country with a real independent petroleum industry. They much preferred, with the aid of the _Standard_, to draw large profits without running any risks. A remark of M. Deutsch de la Meurthe on this subject has become famous: "The greatest misfortune that could happen to us would be to discover petroleum deposits." M. Barthe well remarked in the course of a comprehensive indictment: "Our oil magnates have been neither producers nor transporters of oil, and they have not even continued to be refiners." For, since the law of 1893, which lowered the import duty from 20 francs to 9 francs a metric quintal[41] for crude oil, and from 32 francs to 13.50 francs for refined oil, thus reducing the incredible difference of 120 francs a ton between the two, the Cartel of Ten has arranged with the _Standard Oil_ to bring into France refined American oil with 7 or 8 per cent. of residual impurities, _which it passes as crude oil_, so frustrating the fiscal duty and realizing enormous gains. The understanding with the _Standard_ was changed about 1904 to a close dependence; the Ten became nothing more than Rockefeller's representatives in France, his _oil importers. The_ Standard _fixed the quantities to be sold by each one and made them sign an undertaking to sell at the prices fixed by it at the beginning of each week_. In the old refineries of Paris, Rouen, Bordeaux, etc., the agents of the _Standard_ carried on a simple process of distillation, a mere pretence of refining, well-known under the name of "cracking." They imported a mixture of mineral spirit and petroleum, oil manufactured in America, a mixture which they had only to heat slightly in order to separate the volatile spirit (petrol) from the heavy constituents (petroleum oils). This fiction has always been admitted by the State officials. It has allowed really refined oils to come into the country as crude oil, paying the minimum duty. Millions have thus been lost by the State to the profit of a few privileged individuals. Later on, when the cartel made an arrangement with _André et Cie._ that they should deliver Russian oil to it alone, the _Standard_ wanted the agreement submitted to it for ratification, and laid down the condition that _André et Cie._ should only make deliveries in the proportions it decided upon. Thus, the _Standard_ was dominant in France up to the War, fixing prices and eliminating other importers. But, in spite of the lowering of the customs duties in 1893 they still remained so high that the _Conseil Supérieur de Navigation Maritime_, at its meeting of May 15, 1913, complained of the difficulties of procuring petroleum in France at "reasonable terms." Mazut, the price of which is very low, could not enter the country on account of the 9 francs duty, with which the legislature had burdened it without discriminating between various kinds of crude oil of greater or lesser value. In 1918, the world as a whole was consuming 30 million tons of mazut, France not one quintal. And her shipping was very much behind that of other nations with regard to the use of the Diesel engine. Very few of her vessels burned oil. "What absolutely prevents the fitting up of our ships" wrote the Under-Secretary of State for the Merchant Marine, in a letter to the Minister for Commerce on June 2, 1913, "is the exaggerated price of liquid fuel caused by the fiscal exactions." On July 21st, M. Charles Roux, president of the _Comité Central des Armateurs_, took steps to obtain a lowering of these tariffs. They were without result until 1919, the year in which M. Clemenceau got the Chamber to pass the law of August 7th, which lowered the import duties on mazut from 9 francs to 0.40 francs. At last the prohibitive customs barrier was broken down. The tax on coal was then 1.10 francs a ton. A ton of liquid fuel paid duties _one hundred times as high_ (90 to 120 francs). From the fiscal point of view, this tax brought in nothing to the Treasury. _It was so high that it prevented all importation._ And thanks to that, also, France was left behind by all her rivals. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 39: Henry Bérenger, _Le Pétrole et la France_, p. 280.] [Footnote 40: Le Page, _L'Impérialisme du Pétrole_.] [Footnote 41: 220 lb.] CHAPTER XVIII THE PETROLEUM CONSORTIUM At the beginning of the War, the French State possessed no reserves of petrol or petroleum: a new example of the unpreparedness so often remarked! The "refineries" disposed of a stock amounting at the end of July 1914, according to the Customs statistics, to:-- 408,200 quintals of crude oil, 433,560 quintals of refined oil, 342,090 quintals of petrol. To meet the earliest needs, these were requisitioned. But, from the month of September, this method was changed for that of contracts with the "Ten." The cartel undertook to meet the needs of France; it made itself responsible for purchases from abroad. The State was thus a mere customer enjoying the rights of priority over other customers. The consumption was then unimportant. At the time of the first battle of the Marne, France had 22 squadrons of 6 aeroplanes (= 132), with engines of 80 or 100 horse-power; 110 motor-lorries and 50 tractors (= 160). The Germans had 70,000![42] At the time of the battle of Champagne, France had 4,000 aeroplanes and 8,500 motor-lorries; that compelled her to increase her reserves of oil from 22,000 to 40,000 tons. But the crisis as regards supplies began in April 1916. Payments to foreign countries were more than could be met by the cartel, which, having just paid an account of a hundred million francs for purchases made by the State, could advance no more money. The position grew steadily worse and reached its culminating point after the United States came into the War in November 1917. The original little fleet of tankers quickly proved as inadequate as the size of the docks provided in our ports, which were intended for boats of 4,000 to 5,000 tons while the American tank-steamers were of 10,000 to 15,000 tons. On December 5, 1917, the Cartel of Ten had to confess its impotence and resign to the State a task which was too much for its powers. The stocks ran grave risk of becoming too completely exhausted on March 1, 1918. It was imperative "to effect a reorganization which history will record as one of the most substantial triumphs of the Entente at the decisive moment, and which resulted--thanks to the pressure on behalf of France which President Wilson put on the _Standard_--in doubling the figures of our importations of oil and petrol" (Report addressed to M. Clémentel, Minister of Commerce, in April 1918). Mr. Wilson, as soon as he received M. Clemenceau's moving appeal, summoned Bedford and W. Teagle to his room, and insisted that a certain number of their ships should be taken off their usual routes and sent to France. Eight days later, three magnificent tank-steamers entered a French port, bringing 30,000 tons of petrol. And since then, thanks to a new system of rotation of ships, France was enabled to receive annually a quantity which, finally, exceeded a million tons. (Each boat was made to do one extra voyage a year; that gave a gain of 160,000 tons.) Consumption steadily increased; the requirements at the front rose, at certain times, to 1,800 tons _a day_. France consumed:-- Tons. Tons. 1914 (first half-year: peace) 200,000 } 476,000 1914 (second half-year: war) 276,000 } 1915 457,000 1916 640,000 1917 610,000 1918 1,000,000 _87-1/2 per cent. of this oil was supplied by the American continent_, the United States, Mexico, Trinidad, South America, etc.; _12-1/2 per cent. only by the Old World. That is why, in case of a new war, it would be impossible for any Power whatever to gain the victory if its tank-steamers could be barred from access to the New World._ During the month of October 1918, alone, the consumption of the Allied armies was:-- French 39,000 tons American 20,000 tons British 32,000 tons The _Shell_ could scarcely cope with the task of supplying the British Army. But for the help of the _Royal Dutch_ and the _Standard Oil_, "we should have had to cease hostilities to our disadvantage, in the fifth month of the War."[43] After the Cartel of Ten was obliged to confess its impotence in the midst of a crisis which nearly lost the War, its work was limited to putting into good condition the products bought and stored by the State. Its rôle had become singularly unimportant when the Minister of Commerce transformed it into a consortium. The petroleum consortium was born of the necessities of war, like the consortium of cotton and the consortium of oils. In the midst of these great conflicts, powerful economic associations, controlled by the State, can alone save national manufactures and commerce from perishing for want of materials, and can supply the enormous requirements created by the war. When, through fear of other countries, the French Republic took the form of an absolute monarchy, it inaugurated, under the guise of a protective State socialism, a system of intense exploitation of the nation's economic forces and of its products, which were monopolized, seized, or requisitioned. The Government was, in fact, reduced to a society of consortiums, which, each in its own domain, were the sole buyers and distributors of wealth. There was the _Comité des forges_ to deal with metallurgy; there was another for oil. Because of the difficulties of importation, manual labour, raw materials, freightage, and exchange, the simple liberty of the merchant or the isolated manufacturer is no more than an empty word, perhaps even a dangerous illusion. The system of the consortium was urged by the United State Government. Having created centralized organizations for its exports, it desired that these organizations should come into contact, not with scattered merchants, but with the Allied States themselves. The important inter-allied agreements made in Paris and London, in November 1916 and December 1917, on the initiative of M. Clémentel, confirmed the principle of these industrial and commercial syndicates, financially responsible to the State, which becomes a direct buyer. Besides, the French State was not anxious to see the incredible profits which were going to result from the doubling of oil imports--imports of a value of a thousand million francs yearly--fall into the hands of the Cartel of Ten. It therefore imposed upon it, on March 29, 1918, after three months of inquiries and hesitations, a curious contract. The State reserved to itself the monopoly of the purchase and import of oils, and sold them to a special organization (the consortium), constituted under the form of a limited company with a capital of thirty million francs, of which half was to be paid up immediately. This company undertook delivery of the commodity, reimbursed the State for its expenditure (cost, insurance, freight), itself met the charges for unloading and storage, and re-sold the oil to the ten members of the cartel at prices fixed for each variety by the Ministers of Commerce and Supply. _The distributive trade within the country was left free._ Each of the Ten subscribed towards the formation of the capital in the following proportions:-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Nominal Capital| Paid-up | Percentage. | subscribed. | Capital. | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Francs | Francs | Francs _Fenaille et Despeaux_ | 4,725,000 | 2,362,500| 15.75 _Désmarais frères_ | 4,725,000 | 2,362,500| 15.75 _Fils de A. Deutsch_ | 4,725,000 | 2,362,500| 15.75 _Cie. Industrielle des Pétroles_| 3,861,000 | 1,930,500| 12.87 _Raffinerie du Midi_ | 3,504,000 | 1,752,000| 11.68 _Société L.B.C._ | 2,526,000 | 1,263,000| 8.42 _Paix et Compagnie_ | 2,238,000 | 1,119,000| 7.46 _Cie. Générale des Pétroles_ | 1,428,000 | 714,000| 4.76 _Lesieur et fils_ | 1,284,000 | 642,000| 4.28 _Raffinerie du Nord_ | 984,000 | 492,000| 3.20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | 30,000,000 |15,000,000| -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As the consortium was founded in the general interest, they agreed to take interest at the rate of only 6 per cent. on the capital they had provided. Beyond that, all profits were to go to the State. They were fairly high, for on July 1, 1919, they amounted to 67 million francs. This organization constituted a first monopoly of importation by the State, under the financial management of the consortium, which arranged for the reception and storage of the products and their sale to refiners. Under the system which prevailed before that of the consortium, the Ten pocketed the supplementary profits arising from buying and transport. These were retained by the consortium for the benefit of the community. The oil magnates will never forgive the State for interfering with their affairs. According to M. Henry Bérenger, "although the State left to the cartel a large share in the management and the profits--more than 100 million francs--the latter never consented with a good grace to the intervention of their country's Government in matters concerning oil. They never freely accepted the principle of collaboration with the public authorities." In August, 1918, at the height of Marshal Foch's offensive, a grave crisis arose from the extraordinary particularism of the oil magnates. For fear of losing an additional profit of 15 centimes a litre, they refused to pool their cans, as the French High Command required of them. The reports sent in at this time by General Head-quarters are categorical in tone. The resistance from private interests became so strong that the Government decided, in the critical days of the great advance, to create a Commissioner-General for Petrol with full executive powers to subordinate rigorously all private commerce in oil to the requirements of the public safety. M. André Tardieu, the High Commissioner at Washington, was sometimes also greatly impeded in his negotiations by the Ten. From the end of 1917, he made direct purchases of oil from the _Standard Oil_, the _Atlantic Refining_, and the _Texas Oil_, because of the difficulties that had been made for him by the rivalry and manoeuvring which he denounced in his telegrams. While the French Government was trying to buy at £5, the oil dealers were offering £7 10s. Their clumsy and inopportune intervention furnished the _Standard Oil_ in many cases with an instrument of pressure.[44] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 42: Report placed before the Chamber on March 20, 1919, by the Duc de la Trémoïlle.] [Footnote 43: Statement by M. Henry Bérenger in the Senate, June 2, 1920.] [Footnote 44: Affairs of the _Archbold_, the _Goldshell_, and the _Muskogee_. André Tardieu's reply to the oil magnates when challenged by them to state exactly when and how his mission was impeded by their proceedings. The oil-men revenged themselves for the State collaboration which was imposed upon them by a bitter criticism of the system of the consortium in the _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_: accounts badly kept; profits arising from the State's arbitrary allowances for working expenses; ships arriving in ports where they were not expected, and without bills of lading (hence no means of control), etc....] CHAPTER XIX HOW GREAT BRITAIN WON OVER FRANCE TO HER SIDE IN THE STRUGGLE WITH THE UNITED STATES I. Activities of the Royal Dutch and the Anglo-Persian. On the morrow of the Armistice, on November 21, 1918, Lord Curzon gathered together all the members of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference at a great banquet, and there uttered the famous saying: "The Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil." M. Henry Bérenger, the French Commissioner for Petrol, proposed to retain the great inter-allied organizations for the distribution of oil, wheat, coal, etc. The _Standard Oil_ refused. Besides, Sir John Cadman, Sir Marcus Samuel and Lord Curzon were not sorry to regain their freedom. They had only one idea--to bring to a successful conclusion their vast scheme, followed up for ten years with such admirable tenacity, in every country of the globe, for the acquisition of oil-bearing territories. France, in compensation for the great damage she had suffered during the War, was to receive important rights for the development of concessions in Galicia, Rumania, and Turkey, formerly belonging to Germany. The great thing was to keep out the American rival. To attain this end, as M. Delaisi pointed out, the task was rather complex. Several things were necessary:-- 1. To negotiate directly with the Quai d'Orsay in order to get the principle admitted of an _exclusive association_ between France and Great Britain, for the exploitation of French concessions throughout the world; 2. To create Franco-British companies to carry out this agreement; 3. To establish a State monopoly in France, which, under pressure of diplomatic conventions, would be bound to keep off American competitors. On January 21, 1919, although the War was over, the mandate of the Petrol Commission was extended for another six months. The State retained the monopoly of buying oil and the system of the consortium. That prevented our oil-men from working hand in hand with the _Standard Oil_ as they did before the War. Then, on January 30th, M. Clemenceau granted diplomatic powers to M. Henry Bérenger. He immediately sent commissions of inquiry into every country in which France might have petroleum interests, to London, Warsaw, Bukarest, Constantinople, Baku, and Mesopotamia. M. Bérenger was all in favour of a great scheme for founding an inter-allied company in which the French State, bringing as its share the German concessions which would be ceded to her by the treaty of peace, should enter into association with Great Britain and the _Royal Dutch_. On March 7th, the Walter Long-Bérenger agreement was signed, fixing the broad outlines of a common oil policy in Mesopotamia, Rumania, and eventually in Galicia and Russia. It was a preliminary sketch of the San Remo Agreement. It remained only to prepare for its realization. Eighteen days later, without losing any time, the _Royal Dutch_ offered to co-operate in the plans of the French Government in matters concerning the management and exploitation of the various oil interests which might be reserved to France as a consequence of the treaty of peace. It proposed, moreover, to place at France's disposal "all its world-wide technical, industrial, commercial and financial organization, not only in the countries mentioned, but also _in all other countries_" in which she might need its co-operation. And it offered to supply France by priority, in time of peace as in time of war. M. Clemenceau welcomed the proposal. In order not to offend Parliament and public opinion, which was tending more and more in favour of a national oil policy, the _Royal Dutch_ entered into partnership with one of the great commercial banks, the _Union Parisienne_, in order to create with its concurrence companies of which the nationality, if not the capital, should be French. In this manner were created the _Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles_ in July, and the _Société Maritime des Pétroles_ in August 1919, the former with a capital of 20 million francs, and the latter of 10 million francs. In the first of these companies five out of nine of the directors bear names well-known in the _Royal Dutch_: Deterding, Gulbenkian (the Talleyrand of oil), Colijn, who at one time nearly succeeded Deterding and who has been Minister of War in the Netherlands, Cohen, Jonckheer, Hugo. France has only a minority on the Board of this "French" company, for M. Deutsch de la Meurthe, whose influence brought over the Cartel of Ten from the side of the _Standard_ to that of the _Royal Dutch_, is little more than the mouthpiece of London and The Hague. The _Royal Dutch_, besides, subscribed 60 per cent. of the capital of the _Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles_, though it now holds only 49 per cent. In the _Société Maritime des Pétroles_, the disproportion is still greater; out of seven directors, two only are French, and have played an important part in French politics during the last few years. It is to them, in particular, and to the skill of Gulbenkian, who conducted the negotiations very cleverly, that the _Royal Dutch_ owes its triumph in French official circles.[45] But the British Government is not content with these two companies founded by the _Royal Dutch_, (The second is so little French that 19,600 out of the 20,000 shares of its capital belong to the Anglo-Dutch trust, and 400 only have been subscribed by the two French members of its council.) In spite of the opposition of Parliament, it authorized the _Anglo-Persian_ to found a company much more important than the other two put together, a company with a capital of 227 million, the _Société des Huiles de Pétrole_. This Franco-British _Anglo-Persian_ was created by one of the most powerful personalities of the financial world in Eastern, Southern, and Western Europe,[46] to whom Great Britain owed the policy she was then following against the Turkish Empire.[47] Through the agency of Sir Basil Zaharoff, who is interested both in the _Société Navale de l'Ouest_ and in the _Banque de la Seine_, and holds 70 per cent. of the capital of Vickers, this British firm undertook to construct immediately, giving preference over the other trusts, the whole of the tank-boats, of 10,000 tons on an average, destined to ensure to the new "French" company the monopoly of the transport of oil for the French market. France will depend for its future supplies, in great part, on this Franco-British _Anglo-Persian_. Its stations will be found on all her coasts, as well as in her African possessions. The _Société Générale des Huiles de Pétrole_ will erect vast reservoirs at Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Bizerta, Algiers, Oran, Casablanca, and Dakar (Senegal). As the United States will probably still have the advantage for another dozen years as regards oil supplies--for it is not very likely that they will exhaust their reserves so soon as 1927, as the Smithsonian Institute pretends--, the new enterprise set out to gain immediate control in the matter of tank-steamers. Everything being thus prepared in the banks and chancelleries, it only remained to drive out the _Standard Oil_ from the French market and to establish firmly the monopoly of purchase and importation granted provisionally to the Petrol Commission. On May 6, 1919, M. Henry Bérenger announced in the Chamber the profits which remained for the State under the consortium system--profits not paid into the Treasury, but devoted to a special object, the development of the petroleum industry; and on June 17th, M. Klotz brought forward a Bill to establish this monopoly permanently. The _Standard_, which, since the Armistice, had been impatiently waiting for the time when restrictions upon trade in France would be removed, no longer had any illusions about the desire of the Commission to expel it from that country. Although the _Standard_ had resumed its freedom from the conclusion of hostilities, it had none the less continued its supplies of oil to France, and knowing the Treasury was in difficulties, had accepted 5 per cent. bonds in payment. Now, in self-defence, it declared that it refused all credit. The Oil Commission, in thus breaking free, had taken precautions against being caught unprovided. Three days after the rupture with the _Standard_, on November 25th, it obtained a credit of £2,000,000 from the _Royal Dutch_, which was increased on January 5, 1920, to £5,000,000. The _Standard Oil_ was ejected and the great Franco-British trust established in its place, thanks to this long-date contract. But shortly after the fall of the Clemenceau Cabinet, this success came near to being undone. No new commissioner had been appointed in place of Henry Bérenger: a high official of the Exchequer was given the title of Director-General. The politics of oil, when we needed a real Petroleum Department, as in Britain, were reduced to the common level of current events. For more than a month (February-March, 1920), what remained of the Petrol Commission was left at a loose end, only indispensable deliveries were made. A state of anarchy ruled. The stocks, which had, until then, been laid in four months in advance, fell to almost nothing. The _Standard Oil_ took advantage of this to regain its footing. In spite of its promises, the _Royal Dutch_ did not succeed in delivering sufficient quantities of oil. By March 13, 1920, the reserves had fallen below the danger-line, to less than 75,000 tons. The Director-General, anxious about supplies, decided to resort to the Americans. And as the powers of the Petrol Commission had been legally extinct since April 26th, and its provisional monopoly at an end since April 21st, he established the system of authorizing imports, and granted licences to several companies which had made contracts with the _Standard Oil_. Would the _Standard Oil_ succeed in re-entering France? It was not given the time, for the San Remo Agreement had just been signed (April 24, 1920). A few days later, the French Government resumed control of oil, and M. Laurent Eynac, the new Commissioner, taking the view that what had happened during the interregnum had no legal existence, hastened to annul the licences to import granted to the _Standard_. The great American trust found once more in France, as it had so often found since the War in other parts of the world, the "closed door." II. Diplomatic Negotiations "The diplomatic history of the Franco-British negotiations concerning Mosul will, when it is made known, constitute the most eloquent document upon British policy towards France."[48] According to the agreements of 1916, Mosul was in the French zone of influence in Arabia. Great Britain began by obtaining the cession of our territorial rights, as recognized by this treaty. The French Government gave way to her desires in spite of the opposition of its Foreign Minister. But when, later on, we demanded in compensation that 50 per cent. of the oil of Mosul should be reserved for us, Great Britain produced at the propitious moment the difficulty, unsuspected by our negotiators, of the _Turkish Petroleum_, a company which she had opportunely created in collaboration with the _Royal Dutch_ a few months before the declaration of War in 1914. Now the _Turkish Petroleum_ had obtained from the Turkish Government the grant of all the naphtha of the vilayets that we lost in renouncing the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. So, having abandoned Mosul, all we were to receive in exchange was the oil with which Britain consented, as a special favour, to supply us. "When one knows England well," wrote M. Le Page, with justice, "one is not surprised that, when, with the help of France she has driven out America from the territory she covets, she should strive to throw over her helper, having got rid of her rival." The petroliferous basin, which extends from Persia to Mesopotamia, is one of the most extensive as yet discovered in the whole world. The great deposits reach as far as twenty miles to the north of Mosul. In the valley of the Naphat, the oil flows naturally into the river. At Hit, on the Euphrates, there are asphalt deposits which have long been exploited by the natives. And it is probable that this petroleum basin, which also includes Palestine,[49] continues through Syria right to the shores of the Mediterranean. Near Latakia (Laodice) there are asphalt beds, which the _Latakia Oil_, a British company, has been exploiting since 1915. On the eastern side of the Gulf of Alexandretta, the streams which flow down from Mount Alma bear traces of oil. Thus, it is not surprising that this region has aroused, and still arouses, so much covetousness among the Powers. As early as 1903, the _Imperial Ottoman Bagdad Railway Company_, the famous _Bagdad Bahn_, obtained the grant of the right of exclusive exploitation of all deposits found within a distance of fifty kilometres from its lines. Germany transferred this right to the _Turkish Petroleum_ when the latter company was created. The capital of the _Turkish Petroleum_ was, to begin with, 50 per cent. British; 25 per cent. German (_Deutsche Bank_); 25 per cent. Dutch (_Royal Dutch_). Germany's share has been handed over to France by Great Britain in order to obtain her support in the struggle against the United States. As the War broke out almost at once, the _Turkish Petroleum_ had not time to begin the exploitation of the oils of Mesopotamia. After the new King of Iraq has decided definitely what is to happen to them, it will take nearly five years to develop them fully. In 1914, an Anglo-German agreement had expressly recognized the rights of France in Asia Minor. These rights, moreover, were respected in all essentials in the agreements between France, Russia, and Great Britain, in 1915 and 1916, for the partition of Asia Minor. This latter, in March 1916, defined French and British zones and French and British spheres of influence. "In a letter of May 15th," wrote the reporter of the Public Works Commission, "Sir Edward Grey requested that, in the zone which was to become French under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, it should be understood that _all existing concessions_, navigation rights, and the rights and privileges of all British religious, educational and medical establishments would be maintained." In a letter of the same date, M. Cambon agreed. By these means France was tricked, for doubtless M. Cambon was not aware at the time that, from June 26, 1914, a British firm, the _Turkish Petroleum Company_, had obtained from the Turkish Minister of Finance, Saïd Halim, the concession of all rights over oil discovered or to be discovered in the vilayets of Mosul, Basra, and Bagdad.[50] Now, it was just from these three vilayets that the oil in the French zone came; so much so that, by the interpretation of the Franco-British Agreement of May, 1916, France was completely ousted from the oil production of Mesopotamia. Thanks to Henry Bérenger, a new agreement was concluded between him and Mr. Walter Long in March and April, 1919. Henry Bérenger recalled the agreement made before 1914 between Saïd Halim and the _Bagdad Bahn_, the railway company which had passed into French and British hands since the German defeat. The _Turkish Petroleum Company_ was subject to this agreement, because the railway passed through its oil-fields. Rights had been reserved for the Germans over half the production of Mesopotamia. "Thus, France obtained 25 per cent. as her half-share of the German rights." Unfortunately, this agreement met with a certain opposition at the Quai d'Orsay. It was held up, and M. Clemenceau did not sign it, "because, on February 8, 1919, after we had ceded Mosul and Palestine at the request of Mr. Lloyd George upon the threefold condition of the oil agreement--whole-hearted British support of the French point of view in the event of American objections--and finally the exact fulfilment of the 1916 treaty concerning the frontiers of Syria, Mosul excepted, our British friends presented to us a map which deprived us of one-third of Syria in addition." Such was the explanation given to the Chamber by André Tardieu! A certainty was sacrificed for a possibility. M. Henry Bérenger strove to have the treaty revived, and on December 21st signed a new contract with Sir Hamar Greenwood, the British Minister in charge of oil questions, very similar to the Long-Bérenger Agreement, except in the matter of native interests. This time, however, Lloyd George, not considering it advantageous enough to Britain, refused to sign it. Such was the situation when France went to the Conference of San Remo. The San Remo Agreement It was not merely the oil deposits of Mesopotamia that France, in return for a lowly and subordinate participation in British control, was abandoning to Britain--as they would have had the Chamber believe at the time of the noisy debate upon Mosul--but the whole of French oil interests, present and future, whether in the colonies or abroad. The first article of the agreement which Mr. Lloyd George and the real "Grand Master" of British oil policy, Sir John Cadman, presented for signature, stipulated, it is true, that "this memorandum relates to the following States or countries: Rumania, Asia Minor, territories of the old Russian Empire, Galicia, French Colonies," and that the agreement might be extended to other countries by mutual consent; but, of British territories, only "British Crown Colonies" were opened to French co-operation, and then only "so far as existing regulations allow." Thus, London kept an easy method of evasion in reserve. Now, though the British Empire counts many "Dominions," there is not nowadays a large number of "Crown Colonies." The former German Colonies themselves, with one exception, have been handed over to the Commonwealth of Australia, or to New Zealand, or to the Union of South Africa. Thus, apart from former German East Africa and a small strip of the Cameroons which France ceded to Nigeria, these will not be open to "Franco-British co-operation." There is but a single country in which the San Remo Agreement has provided equal treatment for France and Britain, at least in theory; that country is Rumania. Rumania is the State in which French interests were the most important; they would be increased still more by the spoils of the _Deutsche Bank_ and the _Disconto-Gesellschaft_. Accordingly, the two Governments pledged themselves to support each other in acquiring concessions which belonged to sequestrated companies, such as the _Steaua Romana_, _Concordia_, and _Vega_, and in obtaining fresh concessions. "All shares belonging to former enemy concessions which can be secured and all other advantages derived from these negotiations shall be divided, 50 per cent. to British interests and 50 per cent. to French interests. It is understood that in the company or companies to be formed to undertake the management and the exploitation of the said shares, concessions, and other advantages, the two countries shall have the same proportion of 50 per cent. in all capital subscribed, as well as in representatives on the board, and voting power." This equality was not a favour, for the French capital invested in Rumanian oil was at least as important as that of Britain. In the territories of the old Russian Empire, where French interests are much less important than British interests, an equal distribution is not provided for: it would have been to the advantage of France. But it is stated that the two Governments will give their "joint support" to those of their nationals who make "joint efforts" to obtain concessions, and to export and deliver oil. Now, at the present moment, such efforts are being made by the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ alone, which is even going to the length of proposing to the Soviet Government to restore the oil industry of Russia, if it is granted extra-territoriality for its concessions. In Mesopotamia, "the British Government undertake to grant to the French Government 25 per cent. of the net output" if the Mesopotamian oil-fields are developed by Government action. If a private company is used, the British Government will place at the disposal of the French Government a share of 25 per cent. in such company. Thus, in the one case France will be simply a consumer of oil, or in the other she will be both a producer and a consumer. The negotiators took care to have inserted that "the price to be paid for such participation shall be no more than that paid by any of the other participants." They remembered the price at which British coal had been sold them! "It is also understood that the said petroleum company shall be _under permanent British control_." Should a private company be constituted, "the native Government or other native interests shall be allowed, if they so desire, to participate up to a maximum of 20 per cent. of the share capital of the said company, the French contributing one-half of the first 10 per cent. of such native participation." With this system, as M. Delaisi has observed, France would subscribe a _third_ of the capital, upon which condition she would have a right to a _quarter_ of the oil produced. If Britain consented to give France this share of the Mesopotamian oil, when, according to the document which Sir Edward Grey had got M. Paul Cambon to sign on May 15, 1915, she was _under no obligation_ to give anything at all--the more so because France had given up Mosul without previously laying down any conditions about the oil[51]--it was because the present carried with it as a counterpart privileges and exemptions granted by France to the _Anglo-Persian_, which will have access, if it so desires, to the Mediterranean by pipe-lines across Syria. It will even be able to build railways, refineries, and reservoirs there, and France is pledged to guarantee the security of its installations in her zone without levying any tolls. No export or transit dues are to be levied upon the oil which it sends through French ports. Finally, while the British Government only opens its "Crown Colonies" to French penetration, and in these restricts the favour to the "territories of the Crown,"[52] with the further condition that the concessions in question are not already the subject of negotiations initiated by private interests, the French Government threw open the whole of its great colonial empire, and undertook to facilitate the acquisition of concessions by "any Franco-British group or groups of good standing." It simply called attention to the fact that Parliament had resolved that, in companies formed for the exploitation of colonial deposits, French interests should be represented in the proportion of 67 per cent. But the French Parliament was under an illusion: in order to have control of a business, it is not sufficient to hold one-half or three-quarters of the shares. Every one knows that, in France, shareholders rarely attend the general meetings which appoint the directors. Still less will they undertake the journey to London, where the head office will almost always be located. They do not even go to The Hague; this explains why they have no influence in the _Royal Dutch_, although they hold more than half its capital. The last increase of capital of the _Royal Dutch_ was voted by _forty-four persons_, representing 218 votes. People did not allow their private arrangements to be disturbed by an event which might have notable results upon the world-future of this trust: not one share in 1,110 was represented. However, Britain did not wait till the San Remo Agreement was signed before grasping the oil-fields of the French colonial empire: she gained possession of them while the War was being fought! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 45: These facts are still too recent and too controversial for me to be able to make any more detailed reference to them.] [Footnote 46: Agreement signed in London, October 27, 1920. Cp. chap. xi, _A State-subsidized Company (the Anglo-Persian)_.] [Footnote 47: Policy of the "Auxiliary Greek Empire."] [Footnote 48: _Revue Universelle_, October 15, 1920, Le Page, _L'Impérialisme du Pétrole_.] [Footnote 49: The _Standard Oil_ obtained the grant of seven concessions there, to the south of the Dead Sea, which the British are preventing it from exploiting.] [Footnote 50: If he knew of it, there can never have been so serious a diplomatic blunder.] [Footnote 51: One of two things should have been done: either Mosul should only have been given up against the promise of a large share of its production, or Upper Mesopotamia should have been retained, because, even if its deposits had been exploited by British companies, the presence of France would have forced them to reckon with her.] [Footnote 52: This phrase does not appear in the official English text of the San Remo Agreement.--Translator's Note.] CHAPTER XX GREAT BRITAIN AND THE OIL-FIELDS OF THE FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE As early as July 10, 1914, M. Clémentel had appealed to the French Government to prevent foreign Powers from laying their hands upon the oil deposits of Northern Africa. "At a time when Britain is pursuing in Persia a policy which is well known to you, and when oil concessions are, at bottom, the chief cause of the troubles in Mexico," he exclaimed, "the French Government cannot permit its representatives in Algeria, or in Morocco, to give deposits of oil to all comers." The Government paid no attention to this, for, two years later, Lord Cowdray (Pearson) had obtained a concession of 730,000 hectares for prospecting, and 101,000 for immediate exploitation. These extensive territories were bounded on the east by the railway from Ténès to Orléansville, on the south by the railway from Orléansville to Relizane and thence to Saint-Lucien, on the west by the lines from Saint-Lucien to Saint-Barbe and from Trelat to Oran, and on the north by the sea between Oran and Ténès. And when, on November 9, 1916, M. Ernest Outrey submitted to the Chamber documents demonstrating how the French Government had proceeded to hand over the oil riches of Algeria without consulting Parliament, M. Marcel Sembat, the Minister for Public Works, deemed the following reply a complete justification: "If you are dealing with lands where the presence of oil is doubtful and where, according to technical experts, you would have to spend many millions upon prospecting, and if a company says to you 'Here are our guarantees; we have competent technicians, and we are prepared, under Government control, to spend four million francs upon prospecting,' what are you to do?" When the Pearson firm addressed its request for a concession to the French Government, on January 18, 1915, the Minister, in forwarding it to the Governor of Algeria, did not hesitate to write that "the question would have to be submitted to Parliament."[53] But he was not long in changing his opinion, and, in order to dispense with Parliament, it was decided to deal with the request "by decree enacted by the Council of State."[54] On August 18, 1916, before any final decision had been taken upon the matter, M. Marcel Sembat instructed the Governor of Algeria "to give the petitioning company every facility for the sale of oil obtained as a result of the investigations which it may undertake." And, on October 11th, M. Lutaud forwarded to him the following letter from the Prefect of Oran, which pointed out an ingenious method of _evading the law upon concessions_: "In conclusion, M. Dussert (Engineer-in-Chief for Mines at Algiers) proposes, if the Administration should decide not to present a Bill to Parliament, a different solution from that contemplated by the Minister for Public Works. He suggests that an immense mining concession, covering the whole of Dahra, the Bel-Hacel range, and the forest of Mouley-Smaïl, should be granted to Algeria, leaving the colony, from the date of this concession, to give the oil company a three years' lease, renewable for two years, which could be made permanent as soon as the company had selected the lands which it wished to retain." There followed a report by M. Dussert upon the petition: "This petition is formulated upon entirely abnormal conditions; _the boundaries to which it would apply would enclose an area fifteen times as great as the concessions which are usually granted_." What the English desired above everything was to get a grip on these vast lands so as to keep off their American rivals, should important sources of oil be found there later on. The production of oil in Algeria is still insignificant, though it increased almost tenfold between 1914 and 1917. Henceforward, the majority of companies operating there, the _Société co-intéressée des Pétroles algériens_, the _Société algérienne des Pétroles de Tiliouanet_, the _Société d'Études, de Recherches et d'Exploitation des Pétroles en Algérie_, are invariably British. Lord Murray has even been ingenious enough to have inserted in the articles of association of the last-mentioned company a clause which nullifies all the precautions taken by the legislature: two-thirds of the directors are to be French, as the law requires; the managing director is to be French; but "the Board may in addition by special resolution confer powers upon such persons as it deems fit and for such purpose or purposes as it may determine."[55] This little paragraph alone changes the whole aspect of these articles of association, which, on the surface, appear to conform so closely with the requirements of Parliament. The company will entrust its interests to whomsoever it wishes. But Britain has not been content with seizing the deposits in Algeria.[56] She has also installed herself in Madagascar. Since June, 1921, the _Royal Dutch_ has been making a minute inspection of the fields of Sakalava.[57] And if the hope to which M. Launay gave expression at the Academy of Sciences is realized, and oil is found in Indo-China, Laos, Tonkin, and Annam, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ will probably waste no time in gaining possession of deposits so near its base. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 53: Letter from the Minister to M. Lutaud, Governor of Algeria, January 27, 1915.] [Footnote 54: _Ibid._, June 26, 1916.] [Footnote 55: Article 27 of the articles of association of the _Société d'Études, de Recherches, et d'Exploitation des Pétroles en Algérie_, registered at Algiers, December 18, 1918.] [Footnote 56: The majority of firms operating in Algeria are British companies registered under French law, just as the _Mexican Eagle_ (_El Aguila_) is a British company registered under Mexican law. The most important is the _Société co-intéressée des Pétroles algériens_, which Pearson founded with a capital of ten million francs, and in which he has retained a considerable interest. But the one which has given the best results is the _Société algérienne des Pétroles, de Tiliouanet_, whose oil yields 15 per cent. of petrol, 65 per cent. of illuminating oil, and 20 per cent. of paraffin residues.] [Footnote 57: The _Royal Dutch-Shell_ contemplates the formation of a French company with a capital of twenty-five million francs for the exploitation of the oil deposits of Madagascar. This company would take over the concessions of the _Sakalava Proprietary Oil-fields_, which is already working there.] CHAPTER XXI THE _STANDARD_ AND FRANCE On May 17, 1921, Mr. Hughes Wallace, the United States Ambassador, handed to France an official statement of his Government's grievances. He pointed out all the obstacles which American companies encountered in France, and asserted that _British companies did not meet with the same difficulties_. Now, as Mr. Hughes Wallace observed, France needed ten times the quantity of mazut that she was getting, and many French factories were idle for want of fuel. Thus there was room in the French market for both British and American firms. Mr. Wallace therefore asked that they should be treated on an equal footing. M. Laurent Eynac, under whom the Commissariat for Petrol had been re-established, without mentioning the Agreement which bound him to the British, replied by putting all the blame on the inevitable delays of official inquiries, which were "the same for everybody." But a few days afterwards, _Le Temps_ published an incomplete summary of the San Remo Agreement; it did not give the official text till July 25th. The United States now understood the reasons for the attitude of silent hostility which France had adopted towards American oil companies. The San Remo Agreement aroused grave anxiety in Washington. President Harding displayed very clearly his intention not to tolerate such a policy. He made representations to the British and French Governments and protested against the exclusion of America from the Franco-British partition of the oil of Asia; he declared firmly that the British monopoly countersigned by France at San Remo was not to be tolerated, and that United States citizens were not to be ousted through the complacency of France towards the imperialism of London. The _Washington Post_ wrote as follows: "Oil is indispensable to America, and American companies only provide inadequate quantities at excessive prices. The complacent arrangement between France and Britain for the partition of the oil resources of lands which are not in their possession is subject to revision upon the request of the United States, intent on the pursuit of their naval policy." By subservience to British policy in the East, France was to reap the enmity of the United States. Its effects were soon felt, for, at the Brussels Conference in the following October, the "unofficial" delegate of the American Government declared that his country would not participate in any international loan for the capitalization of the German indemnity. This was one hope definitely lost, upon which France had long been relying. The same thing happened with the repayment of the French debt to the United States: France fondly hoped that the Americans would renounce what they had lent her during the War, just as Louis XVI renounced the millions which he advanced to their infant Republic, but when President Harding was sounded indirectly upon the subject, he returned a pointed refusal. The French Government recognized somewhat tardily the mistakes which it had committed, and, when Mr. Bedford came to Paris in the autumn to found the _Standard Franco-Américaine_, it allowed M. Jules Cambon to accept the presidency. To get round the eviction order which has been served upon them in the Near East and the French colonial empire, the United States adopted the ingenious method of founding a French company, which will have just as good a right as the _Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles_ to share in any concessions reserved to France. Abandoning the high-handed policy, which played the game of its opponents, the _Standard_, upon the advice of Walter Teagle, decided to employ the insinuating methods of the Anglo-Dutch trust. In France, the _Royal Dutch_ relied upon the _Banque de l'Union Parisienne_, the _Banque Bénard_, the _Banque Rothschild_, and also, it is said, the _Crédit Lyonnais_. The _Anglo-Persian_ had the support of the _Banque Transatlantique_ and the _Banque de la Seine_. The _Standard_ now allied itself with the _Banque de Paris_, the most powerful of the commercial banks in Europe. 51 per cent. of the capital of the _Standard Franco-Américaine_ (20 million francs) was subscribed by the _Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas_, and 49 per cent. by the American Trust. And in the constitution of the Board, the _Standard_ acted much more prudently than the _Royal Dutch_: five out of eight directors were French. Mr. Bedford, the actual head of the _Standard Oil_, went so far as to content himself with the vice-presidency, leaving the first place to a Frenchman. The establishment of the _Standard Franco-Américaine_ at this time was the more hazardous because M. Laurent Eynac, taking up the former Klotz-Bérenger program, was working for a definite State monopoly of the purchase and importation of oil. But the French market is of such importance to the _Standard Oil_ in its struggle with the _Royal Dutch_ that it preferred to take all the risks. "France," Mr. Bedford said, "on account of its geographical situation, is naturally a field for competition among all great companies." The _Standard_ desires to have its place there. It proposes to resuscitate the refining industry, which has almost passed out of existence, and set up great warehouses in the ports to receive the crude oil; and it would even go to the length of installing special reservoirs of petrol for supplying motor vehicles in the neighbourhood of the municipal toll-houses. Events have turned in its favour, for the idea of monopoly is to-day thoroughly discredited in France. M. Laurent Eynac was obliged hurriedly to withdraw his proposal owing to the commotion which it aroused. An extremely violent Press campaign broke out, and the political and diplomatic dangers of the San Remo Agreement became plain to every eye. The present diplomatic situation is strangely like that of Fashoda. In 1905, France was at one of the turning-points of her history: she had to choose between the two Powers which had hitherto been her hereditary enemies. She decided to follow the British, and not the German, policy. Will she have to choose between the British policy and the American policy--between the two countries which helped her to emerge victorious from the great world conflict? CHAPTER XXII CONCLUSION The World in 1923 The political independence of a people may sometimes be nothing but a sham. France, having neglected to obtain her share in the division of the world's oil, is to-day in a position of dependence upon Britain and America. If, to-morrow, she had to defend herself against a fresh attack, her tanks, her aeroplanes, her submarines, and the whole of her supply services could only function by consent of her Allies. Even with the first army in the world, France could be victorious only if Britain and the United States permitted.[58] Already in time of peace, nations without oil were in a position of considerable inferiority, in view of the hundreds of uses to which oil is put in industry, and especially in the important sphere of the transport and distribution of commodities. There is no true independence for a people but that which is assured economically and financially. Military supremacy is only the happy result of proper efforts undertaken to attain it. During the War, such independence was to be desired for France even more than during peace: it would have avoided the heavy debts which she incurred to her Allies, and it would have enabled her to exploit herself the resources at home and in the colonies which she has been compelled to hand over to foreigners. Before the War, France consumed more than 400,000 tons of oil a year. To-day, she requires 1,500,000, and the oil wells of Alsace, which the Treaty of Versailles has restored to her, produce only 60,000 tons, and Algeria 3,000-4,000 tons.[59] Thus, she is obliged to pay the foreigner nearly 2,000 million francs a year in order to obtain the oil which she lacks. Nevertheless, there is almost certainly oil in France, in the Ain valley, the Jura Mountains, Auvergne, and the Landes; there is oil in the French possessions in Northern Africa and in Madagascar; there must be some in the Cameroons, in Indo-China, and in New Caledonia. Is it not abnormal that the West Indies and Guiana, when in British or American hands, produce oil, but when in French hands never yield anything? The same applies to Oceania. But there is no reason to be astonished at this; for, under the legislation which was in force since 1810, no Frenchman had any inducement to search for oil. This explains the epigram of one of the most important members of the French cartel, when he declared that "the greatest misfortune that could happen to an oil magnate in France would be to discover a spring of oil." Happily, on March 22, 1922, the Chamber altered this state of affairs by granting, as was suggested in the first edition of this book, the guarantees which are indispensable to prospectors. Till that year, the exploitation of deposits which a prospector had discovered might be conceded to any foreign company which came on the scene at the right moment to reap the fruits of his labours. Repayment of money laid out was highly problematical, for the local authorities used to grant this only to those responsible for the final investigations leading directly to the discovery of oil. Now, hunting for a "wild cat"--the American term for a boring--is a very risky operation, which entails considerable expenditure. In a protest submitted to the Ministry of Public Works by five Algerian colonists, who had carried out explorations and borings upon land for which a concession was now asked by a company of foreign origin, the colonists stated by affidavit that they had spent 870,000 francs upon 14 borings and 85 wells, of which seven alone were actually producing a few tons of petroleum. Even so, the proportion of seven successful wells out of 85 is rather high. O'Donnell, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, estimates that, out of every hundred borings made, 98 are unprofitable. But for fifty years the 2 per cent. which succeeded sufficed for the consumption of the world. The policy of France in the Near East since the War has been simply one long suicide. Little by little, French diplomacy has abandoned everything that was promised by the agreements of London. While the San Remo Agreement marked the complete downfall of France in Asia, it considerably strengthened the position of Britain: not only does it recognize all rights acquired by Great Britain, including those which, as in Mesopotamia, rested upon a highly insecure foundation, but it gives British capitalists an important opening in French colonies which are still almost untouched, whereas the corresponding advantages which it confers upon France in some (not all) British colonies apply to territories where the most desirable fields are already being exploited. France is paying for her past inertia. If the Allies have to thank the two great trusts for enabling them to get their supplies of oil during the War, the latter in return have notably increased their power. The defeat of the Central Empires has brought about the ruin of their rival, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, and the destruction of the network of interests which Germany had succeeded in spreading over Galicia, Rumania, Russia, and Turkey. The ambition of the _Royal Dutch_ since it linked its fortunes with those of the British Empire knows no bounds. Its latest success at Djambi has now spurred it to ask the Netherlands Government for a monopoly of exploitation in all the Sunda Islands. It has almost reached the point of eliminating its American rival completely from the Far East. The _Standard_ retaliates, and sends prospectors wherever they are admitted--to Abyssinia (January 1921), Peru, Colombia, the Philippines, Bolivia. It has gained a footing in the Azores, and in July 1922 was trying in Ecuador to acquire control of the _Lobitos_ from the _Anglo-Ecuadorian_. It is actively cultivating the Government of Czecho-Slovakia for the grant of exclusive rights of exploitation, and it has obtained from the Italian Government a concession for the oil deposits of San Saba, near Trieste. But the Chinese Government has refused the permanent agreement which it proposed. Walter Teagle wishes the _Standard_, like the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, to become a producer of oil and not to content itself with the mere control of refining and distribution. But the time is long past when Rockefeller controlled 95 per cent. of the sales of oil in the United States. Although the _Standard's_ capital has risen to $1,310,000,000 and the number of its subsidiaries to 62 it now refines only 49 per cent. of American oil. In the United States there are forty-four independent companies, representing a capital of two thousand million dollars, which carry on, not only the extraction, but also the transport, refining, and sale of oil. Still more serious, the Anglo-Dutch trust has succeeded in establishing itself on the territory of the Union itself; at a recent congress of the American Petroleum Institute, Walter Teagle showed that the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ drew 43 per cent. of its total production from the United States. Be that as it may, the _Standard_, in America, is always regarded as the great national champion, upon which falls the task of fighting the _Royal Dutch_ and the British Empire, which have laid plans for depriving the United States of their supremacy in oil. _Who attacks the_ Standard _attacks the Washington Government directly_. And in Europe it still occupies a strong position through its various subsidiary companies. _The struggle for oil is no longer a rivalry between great trusts; it is a struggle between nations._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 58: Herein lies the explanation of the undecided policy of France since the signature of the Treaty of Versailles.] [Footnote 59: But she also possesses at Les Telets, near Autun, bituminous shale which, in 1917, produced 103,400 tons, yielding 75 litres of oil per cubic metre.] BIBLIOGRAPHY FRANCE _Agence Économique et Financière_ (1920-21). _Annales Franco-Helléniques_ (1920). Bérenger, Henry, _Le Pétrole et la France_ (1920). _La Politique du Pétrole_ (1920). _Brésil_ (1920, "Le Pétrole en Amérique latine"). _Capital_ (1914). _Courrier des Pétroles._ Delaisi, Francis, _Oil: Its Influence on Politics_ (1920: English translation, 1922). _Économiste Européen_ (1906-21). _Épargne_ (1919). _Europe Nouvelle_ (1921). Financial Bulletins of the _Société Générale_. _France Économique et Financière._ _Illustration Économique et Financière._ _Information_ (1906-21). Le Page, _L'Impérialisme du Pétrole_ (1921). _Messager de Paris_ (1919-20). _Moniteur Économique et Financier._ _Mouvement Financier_ (1909). _Nouvelles Économiques et Financières._ Parliamentary publications: Reports presented for the Customs Commission by the Duc de la Trémoïlle (March 1919), and Senator Jean Morel (June 1919). Report presented for the Finance Commission by M. Charles Leboucq (June 1920). #/ Documents submitted to the Sub-Committee on Oil of the Chamber of Deputies (1920). _Producteur_ (1921). _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (1st April, 1920, Contre-Amiral Degouy, "Le Pétrole et la Marine"). _Revue Financière_ (1911-21). _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_ (August 1920). _Revue Universelle_ (October-December 1920). _Vie Financière_ (1914-21). _Vie Économique et Financière_ (1912). GERMANY Ludendorff, _My Memoirs_. Potonie, _Entstehung der Steinkohle, des Petroleum, u.s.w._ (Berlin, 1910). _Vossische Zeitung_ (1913, "The Troubles in Mexico"). BELGIUM _Revue Belgo-Roumaine_ (1920, "Le Pétrole en Roumaine"). _Revue Économique Internationale_ (1921). GREAT BRITAIN _Daily Graphic_ (1913, "The Troubles in Mexico"). _Daily Mail_ (1920). _Engineering and Mining Journal._ _Financial News_ (1912-21). _Financial Times_ (1921). _Financier._ Lord Fisher's Letters to the _Times_ (September 1919). _Manchester Guardian_ (1921). _Petroleum Review_ (1910-21). _Petroleum Times_ (1920). UNITED STATES Barnes, _The Romance of Persian Oil_. _The Standard Oil Companies_ (1920). _Brooklyn Eagle_ (1920-21). _Nation_ (1921). _Petroleum Magazine_ (1921). _Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia). Reports of the State Department for Foreign Affairs. Hepburn Committee. Inter-State Commerce Commission. Director of the Bureau of Mines to the Secretary of State for the Interior. Statistics of the Geological Survey. Smithsonian Institute. Independent Oil Producers' Agency. American Chamber of Commerce in Paris. _National Bank of Commerce_ of New York. _Washington Post_ (1919-20). _World's Work_ (1920). MEXICO _Boletin del Petroleo_ (1920-21). Statistics of the Technical Commission on Petroleum of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Labour. INDEX Abyssinia, 248 Africa, 42, 245 Aktien Gesellschaft für Petroleum Industrie, 73, 74 Alaska, 40 Algeria, 234 Alleghanies, 28 Alpine Railways, 35 America, 66, 78, 239, 240 _et passim_ American Navy, 19, 40 American Petroleum, 51 Anglo-American Oil Co., 51 Anglo-Egyptian Oil-fields, 74 Anglo-Persian Oil Co., 87, 93, 151 _et passim_ Anglo-Saxon Petroleum, 62, 74 Anglo-Swedish Oil Co., 73, 74 Antipodes, 72 Apsheron, 26 Aquila Franco-Romana, 98 Argentine, 140, 143, 163 Arizona, 69 Asia, 72 Asia Minor, 225 Asiatic Petroleum Co., 74 Associated Oil, 80 Astra Romana, 75, 98 Australia, 42, 140 Austria, 35 Automobilism, 34 Aviation, 34 Azores, 72, 248 Bagdad, 26 Baku, 24, 29, 73 Banks Interested in Oil, 97, 98, 241, 242 Batavia, 85 Batavian Oil Company, 62, 74 Bibliography, 251 Bituminous Shale, 40 Black Sea, 72 Black Sea Co., 98 Bolivia, 248 Borneo, 61, 68, 75 Brazil, 144 British Controlled Oil-fields, 11, 143, 166 British Crown Colonies, 232 British Government, 89, 98, 133, 147, 152, 153, 157, 168 British Imperial Oil Co., 75 British Oil Policy, 158, 162, 182, 184, 215 British Pearson Syndicate, 80 British Petroleum Co., 75 British Tanker Co., 75 Burlington Investment Co., 76, 90, 130 Burmah Oil Co., 98, 131, 132 California, 68, 152 Californian Oil-fields, 76 Cape Verde Islands, 72 Carib Syndicate, 129 Caribbean Petroleum, 75 Carpathians, 98 Cartel of Ten, 52, 201, 208, 212 Caspian Sea, 72 Caucasus, 22, 45, 78, 97 Central Refining Co. of Pittsburg, 49 Ceram Oil Syndicate, 75 Ceram Petroleum, 75 China, 26, 65, 68, 92, 248 Coal, 12, 16, 17 Colby Note, 168 Colombia, 129, 152, 248 Colon Development Co., 90, 129 Colorado, 40, 69 Commercial and Industrial Companies of Caspian and Black Seas, 75 Companies Controlled by Royal Dutch, 73 Companies forming Standard Oil Trust, 49 Concordia Co., 229 Control of the Seas, 11, 18, 178 Costa Rica, 129, 144 Curaçao, 71 Curaçao Petroleum, 76 Czecho-Slovakia, 248 Dakota, 69 Danske Petroleum Altieselskabet, 51 Danube Navigation Co., 99 D'Arcy Exploration, 137 Deutsche Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft, 51 Deutsche Bergin A.G., 73, 74 Deutsche Erdol Aktien Gesellschaft, 98 Deutsche Petroleum Verkaufs Gesellschaft, 98 Diesel Engine, 14, 34 Dissolution of Standard Oil, 54 Distribution of Oil in Europe, 41 Distribution of Oil in New World, 40 Doheny Interests, 45, 80 Dordesche Petroleum Company, 75 Dordesche Petroleum Industrie, 75 Dutch Indies, 13, 77 Eagle Oil Transport, 76 East Indies, 152 Ecuador, 144 Egypt, 42, 152 Empire Refining Company, 49 Erdol Industrie Anlagen Gesellschaft, 103 Erdol und Kohle Veränderung Aktien Gesellschaft, 73, 74 Europeanische Petroleum Union, 79 Exhaustion of Oil-fields, 176 Far East, 65, 66, 80 Financial Groups, 78 Galicia, 51, 78 Galician Companies, 99 General Asphalt Company, 71, 76 General Leasing Act, 180, 181 Genoa Conference, 185 German Battleships, 19 German Submarines, 15 Grosny Sundja Oil-fields, 75 Hague Conference, 93 Home Light Oil Company, 75 Hungarian National Petroleum Co., 139 Hungary, 137 Imperial Oil Co., 184 Increase in Consumption of Oil, 33, 34 India, 90, 152 Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference, 107, 153 Internal Combustion Engine, 14, 15 International Oil Company, 51 Italian Company for the Import of Oil, 75 Java, 63, 80 Jugo-Slav Petroleum, 77 Jugo-Slavia, 73 Keystone Refining Company, 49 Konzern Group, 99 Kotoku Oil-fields Syndicate, 76 La Corona, 76 Latakia Oil, 224 Lianosoff, 72, 76 Limanowa, 98 Lobitos, 248 Louisiana, 70, 152 Mantasheff, 72, 75, 197 Market-price of Oil, 36 Mazut, 14, 16, 37, 112 Mazut Company, 75 Mesopotamia, 158, 168, 230 Mexican Eagle, 22, 71, 76, 121, 151 Mexico, 29, 30, 32, 70, 81, 113, 114, 115, 125, 143 Mineral Rights, 162 Moebi Hid, 75 Monopoly in Oil, 98, etc. Monroe Doctrine, 129 Montana, 69 Moreni, Region of, 30 Mormons, 141 Mosul, 10, 26, 223, 224 Motor-traction, 38 National Transit Company, 49 Nederlandsche Indische Tanks Troomboat, 75 Nevada, 69 New Mexico, 69 New Russian Standard Company, 72 New Shibaïeff Petroleum Corporation, 75, 88 New Zealand, 42, 141 Nobel Properties, 73, etc. Norsk Encelska Mineralojeanie Colaget, 75 North Caucasian, 75 Oceania, 42 Oil as Fuel, 13, 17, 19 Oil Borings, 21, etc. Oil Lamp, Invention of, 28 Oil Policy, 9 Oil Springs, 21, etc. Oil Union of Oklahoma, 80 Oklahoma, 80, 152, etc. Orleans Refining Company, 76 Ownership of Land and Minerals, 116, 129 Ozark Pipe-Line Corporation, 77 Palestine, 161, 179 Panama Canal, 70, 71, 130, 144 Panama Canal Storage Co., 76 Panuco, 70 Persia, 133, 152 Peru, 156, 248 Philippines, 248 Photogen, 77 Poland, 45 Polk Report, 163 Producers' Associated Oil Company, 50 Protective Tariff, 89, etc. Railways, 35 Royal Dutch, 45, 68, 77 Royal Dutch-Shell, 42, 59, 63, 73, 81, 84, 130, 147, 151 Roxana Petroleum Company, 69, 76 Roxana Petroleum Corporation, 77 Roxana Petroleum Maatschappij, 76 Rumania, 30, 45, 78, 102, 152, 229, etc. Russia, 29, 30, 152, 186, 230 Revolution of 1905, 30 Bolshevik Revolution, 13 Russia, Soviets, 73, 157 Agreement between Shell and Soviets, 191 Russian Standard, 75 Salt Water in Oil Wells, 20, 122 San Remo Agreement, 10, 165, 169, 228, 239 Sandstone, 23 Shell Co. of California, 76 Shell Group, 167 Shell Marketing Co., 75 Shell Transport & Trading Co., 35, 61, 74 Sherman Anti-Trust Law, 56 Simplex Refining Co., 76 Sinclair Oil Co., 45 Societa Italo-Americana per Petrollo, 51 Société Bnito, 75 Société Générale des Huiles de Pétrole, 137 Société Maritime des Pétroles, 73, 77, 218 Société Navale de l'Ouest, 137, 219 Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles, 74, 218 Société pour le Vente du Pétrole, 51 Spain, 74 Standard Franco-Américaine, 241 Standard Oil Co., 9, 11, 42, 45, 57, 65, 77, 86, 92, 130, 174, 215, 221, 239 _et passim_ Standard Oil Trust, 48 Steaua Romana, 99, 140 Submarines, 15, 104, 154 Suez Canal, 72 Sumatra, 63 Sumatra Palembang, 75 Sunda Islands, 59, 248 Swenska Petroleum Altiebolage, 51 Tampico, 70 Tampico-Tanuco Petroleum, 76 Tank Steamers, 155, 209 Tei-Koku (Japanese), 140 Telegram from Clemenceau to Wilson, 104 Texas, 69 Tierra del Fuego, 40 Treaty of Brest Litovsk, 103 Treaty of Bukarest, 103 Trinidad, 144, 152 Trusts, 79 Tsatouroff, 72, 76 Turkey, 45 Turkish Petroleum, 76, 98, 99, 140, 223, etc. Union Oil of Delaware, 77 United British Oil-fields of Trinidad, 76 United British Refineries, 76 United States, 9, 18, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 45 _et passim_ United States Pipe-Line Co., 50 Ural Caspian Co., 75 Utah, 40, 69 Vacuum Oil, 51 Vega Co., 229 Venezuela, 70, 71, 90, 144, 152 Venezuelan Concessions Co., 76 Vereinigte Benzinwerke, 75 Virginia, 70 Volley Pipe-Line Co., 76 Wages of Coolies, 13 War of 1914-1918, 12, 33, 101, 159, 210, etc. Washington Conference, 184, 185, etc. World-consumption of Oil, 39, etc. World-production of Coal, 36, etc. World-production of Oil, 32, etc. W.V. Oil Co., 76 
61591	----	FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN. BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART. Vol. II. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1872. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XIII. My Friends, 1st January, 1872. I would wish you a happy New Year, if I thought my wishes likely to be of the least use. Perhaps, indeed, if your cap of liberty were what you always take it for, a wishing cap, I might borrow it of you, for once; and be so much cheered by the chime of its bells, as to wish you a happy New Year, whether you deserved one or not: which would be the worst thing I could possibly bring to pass for you. But wishing cap, belled or silent, you can lend me none; and my wishes having proved, for the most part, vain for myself, except in making me wretched till I got rid of them, I will not present you with anything which I have found to be of so little worth. But if you trust more to any one else's than mine, let me advise your requesting them to wish that you may deserve a happy New Year, whether you get one or not. To some extent, indeed, that way, you are sure to get it: and it will much help you towards the seeing such way if you would make it a practice in your talk always to say you "deserve" things, instead of that you "have a right" to them. Say that you "deserve" a vote,--"deserve" so much a day, instead of that you have "a right to" a vote, etc. The expression is both more accurate and more general; for if it chanced, which heaven forbid,--but it might be,--that you deserved a whipping, you would never think of expressing that fact by saying you "had a right to" a whipping; and if you deserve anything better than that, why conceal your deserving under the neutral term, "rights"; as if you never meant to claim more than might be claimed also by entirely nugatory and worthless persons? Besides, such accurate use of language will lead you sometimes into reflection on the fact, that what you deserve, it is not only well for you to get, but certain that you ultimately will get; and neither less nor more. Ever since Carlyle wrote that sentence about rights and mights, in his "French Revolution," all blockheads of a benevolent class have been declaiming against him, as a worshipper of force. What else, in the name of the three Magi, is to be worshipped? Force of brains, Force of heart, Force of hand;--will you dethrone these, and worship apoplexy?--despise the spirit of Heaven, and worship phthisis? Every condition of idolatry is summed in the one broad wickedness of refusing to worship Force, and resolving to worship No-Force;--denying the Almighty, and bowing down to four-and-twopence with a stamp on it. But Carlyle never meant in that place to refer you to such final truth. He meant but to tell you that before you dispute about what you should get, you would do well to find out first what is to be gotten. Which briefly is, for everybody, at last, their deserts, and no more. I did not choose, in beginning this book a year since, to tell you what I meant it to become. This, for one of several things, I mean,--that it shall put before you so much of the past history of the world, in an intelligible manner, as may enable you to see the laws of Fortune or Destiny, "Clavigera," Nail bearing; or, in the full idea, nail-and-hammer bearing; driving the iron home with hammer-stroke, so that nothing shall be moved; and fastening each of us at last to the Cross we have chosen to carry. Nor do I doubt being able to show you that this irresistible power is also just; appointing measured return for every act and thought, such as men deserve. And that being so, foolish moral writers will tell you that whenever you do wrong you will be punished, and whenever you do right rewarded: which is true, but only half the truth. And foolish immoral writers will tell you that if you do right, you will get no good; and if you do wrong dexterously, no harm. Which, in their sense of good and harm, is true also, but, even in that sense, only half the truth. The joined and four-square truth is, that every right is exactly rewarded, and every wrong exactly punished; but that, in the midst of this subtle, and, to our impatience, slow, retribution, there is a startlingly separate or counter ordinance of good and evil,--one to this man, and the other to that,--one at this hour of our lives, and the other at that,--ordinance which is entirely beyond our control; and of which the providential law, hitherto, defies investigation. To take an example near at hand, which I can answer for. Throughout the year which ended this morning, I have been endeavouring, more than hitherto in any equal period, to act for others more than for myself: and looking back on the twelve months, am satisfied that in some measure I have done right. So far as I am sure of that, I see also, even already, definitely proportioned fruit, and clear results following from that course;--consequences simply in accordance with the unfailing and undeceivable Law of Nature. That it has chanced to me, in the course of the same year, to have to sustain the most acute mental pain yet inflicted on my life;--to pass through the most nearly mortal illness;--and to write your Christmas letter beside my mother's dead body, are appointments merely of the hidden Fors, or Destiny, whose power I mean to trace for you in past history, being hitherto, in the reasons of it, indecipherable, yet palpably following certain laws of storm, which are in the last degree wonderful and majestic. Setting this Destiny, over which you have no control whatsoever, for the time, out of your thoughts, there remains the symmetrical destiny, over which you have control absolute--namely, that you are ultimately to get--exactly what you are worth. And your control over this destiny consists, therefore, simply in being worth more or less, and not at all in voting that you are worth more or less. Nay, though you should leave voting, and come to fighting, which I see is next proposed, you will not, even that way, arrive any nearer to your object--admitting that you have an object, which is much to be doubted. I hear, indeed, that you mean to fight for a Republic, in consequence of having been informed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, and others, that a number of utilities are embodied in that object. We will inquire into the nature of this object presently, going over the ground of my last January's letter again; but first, may I suggest to you that it would be more prudent, instead of fighting to make us all republicans against our will,--to make the most of the republicans you have got. There are many, you tell me, in England,--more in France, a sprinkling in Italy,--and nobody else in the United States. What should you fight for, being already in such prevalence? Fighting is unpleasant, now-a-days, however glorious, what with mitrailleuses, torpedoes, and mismanaged commissariat. And what, I repeat, should you fight for? All the fighting in the world cannot make us Tories change our old opinions, any more than it will make you change your new ones. It cannot make us leave off calling each other names if we like--Lord this, and the Duke of that, whether you republicans like it or not. After a great deal of trouble on both sides, it might, indeed, end in abolishing our property; but without any trouble on either side, why cannot your friends begin by abolishing their own? Or even abolishing a tithe of their own? Ask them to do merely as much as I, an objectionable old Tory, have done for you. Make them send you in an account of their little properties, and strike you off a tenth, for what purposes you see good; and for the remaining nine-tenths, you will find clue to what should be done in the 'Republican' of last November, wherein Mr. W. Riddle, C.E., "fearlessly states" that all property must be taken under control; which is, indeed, precisely what Mr. Carlyle has been telling you these last thirty years, only he seems to have been under an impression, which I certainly shared with him, that you republicans objected to control of any description. Whereas if you let anybody put your property under control, you will find practically he has a good deal of hold upon you also. You are not all agreed upon that point perhaps? But you are all agreed that you want a Republic. Though England is a rich country, having worked herself literally black in the face to become so, she finds she cannot afford to keep a Queen any longer;--is doubtful even whether she would not get on better Queenless; and I see with consternation that even one of my own personal friends, Mr. Auberon Herbert, rising the other day at Nottingham, in the midst of great cheering, declares that, though he is not in favour of any immediate change, yet, "if we asked ourselves what form of government was the most reasonable, the most in harmony with ideas of self-government and self-responsibility, and what Government was most likely to save us from unnecessary divisions of party, and to weld us into one compact mass, he had no hesitation in saying the weight of argument was in favour of a Republic." [1] Well, suppose we were all welded into a compact mass. Might it not still be questionable what sort of a mass we were? After any quantity of puddling, iron is still nothing better than iron;--in any rarity of dispersion, gold-dust is still gold. Mr. Auberon Herbert thinks it desirable that you should be stuck together. Be it so; but what is there to stick? At this time of year, doubtless, some of your children, interested generally in production of puddings, delight themselves, to your great annoyance, with speculative pudding in the gutter; and enclose, between unctuous tops and bottoms, imaginary mince. But none of them, I suppose, deliberately come in to their mothers, at cooking-time, with materials for a treat on Republican principles. Mud for suet--gravel for plums--droppings of what heaven may send for flavour;--"Please, mother, a towel, to knot it tight--(or, to use Mr. Herbert's expression, "weld it into a compact mass")--Now for the old saucepan, mother; and you just lay the cloth!" My friends, I quoted to you last year the foolishest thing, yet said, according to extant history, by lips of mankind--namely, that the cause of starvation is quantity of meat. [2] But one can yet see what the course of foolish thought was which achieved that saying: whereas, though it is not absurd to quite the same extent to believe that a nation depends for happiness and virtue on the form of its government, it is more difficult to understand how so large a number of otherwise rational persons have been beguiled into thinking so. The stuff of which the nation is made is developed by the effort and the fate of ages: according to that material, such and such government becomes possible to it, or impossible. What other form of government you try upon it than the one it is fit for, necessarily comes to nothing; and a nation wholly worthless is capable of none. Notice, therefore, carefully Mr. Herbert's expression "welded into a compact mass." The phrase would be likely enough to occur to any one's mind, in a midland district; and meant, perhaps, no more than if the speaker had said "melted," or "blended" into a mass. But whether Mr. Herbert meant more or not, his words meant more. You may melt glass or glue into a mass, but you can only weld, or wield, metal. And are you sure that, if you would have a Republic, you are capable of being welded into one? Granted that you are no better than iron, are you as good? Have you the toughness in you? and can you bear the hammering? Or, would your fusion together,--your literal con-fusion--be as of glass only, blown thin with nitrogen, and shattered before it got cold? Welded Republics there indeed have been, ere now, but they ask first for bronze, then for a hammerer, and mainly, for patience on the anvil. Have you any of the three at command,--patience, above all things, the most needed, yet not one of your prominent virtues? And, finally, for the cost of such smith's work,--My good friends, let me recommend you, in that point of view, to keep your Queen. Therefore, for your first bit of history this year, I will give you one pertinent to the matter, which will show you how a monarchy, and such a Republic as you are now capable of producing, have verily acted on special occasion, so that you may compare their function accurately. The special occasion that I choose shall be the most solemn of all conceivable acts of Government; the adjudging and execution of the punishment of Death. The two examples of it shall be, one under an absolutely despotic Monarchy, acting through ministers trained in principles of absolute despotism; and the other in a completely free Republic, acting by its collective wisdom, and in association of its practical energies. The example of despotism shall be taken from the book which Mr. Froude most justly calls "the prose epic of the English nation," the records compiled by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, and sometime Student of Christchurch in Oxford, imprinted at London by Ralph Newberie, anno 1599, and then in five volumes, quarto, in 1811, two hundred and seventy copies only of this last edition being printed. These volumes contain the original--usually personal,--narratives of the earliest voyages of the great seamen of all countries,--the chief part of them English; who "first went out across the unknown seas, fighting, discovering, colonizing; and graved out the channels, paving them at last with their bones, through which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out over all the world." [3] I mean to give you many pieces to read out of this book, which Mr. Froude tells you truly is your English Homer; this piece, to our present purpose, is already quoted by him in his essay on England's forgotten worthies; among whom, far-forgotten though they be, most of you must have heard named Sir Francis Drake. And of him, it now imports you to know this much: that he was the son of a clergyman, who fled into Devonshire to escape the persecution of Henry VIII. (abetted by our old friend, Sir Thomas of Utopia)--that the little Frank was apprenticed by his father to the master of a small vessel trading to the Low Countries; and that as apprentice, he behaved so well that his master, dying, left him his vessel, and he begins his independent life with that capital. Tiring of affairs with the Low Countries, he sells his little ship, and invests his substance in the new trade to the West Indies. In the course of his business there, the Spaniards attack him, and carry off his goods. Whereupon, Master Francis Drake, making his way back to England, and getting his brother John to join with him, after due deliberation, fits out two ships, to wit, the Passover of 70 tons, and the Swan of 24, with 73 men and boys (both crews, all told,) and a year's provision; and, thus appointed, Master Frank in command of the Passover, and Master John in command of the Swan, weigh anchor from Plymouth on the 24th of May, 1572, to make reprisals on the most powerful nation of the then world. And making his way in this manner over the Atlantic, and walking with his men across the Isthmus of Panama, he beholds "from the top of a very high hill, the great South Sea, on which no English ship had ever sailed. Whereupon, he lifted up his hands to God, and implored His blessing on the resolution which he then formed, of sailing in an English ship on that sea." In the meantime, building some light fighting pinnaces, of which he had brought out the material in the Passover, and boarding what Spanish ships he can, transferring his men to such as he finds most convenient to fight in, he keeps the entire coast of Spanish America in hot water for several months; and having taken and rifled, between Carthagena and Nombre de Dios (Name of God) more than two hundred ships of all sizes, sets sail cheerfully for England, arriving at Plymouth on the 9th of August, 1573, on Sunday, in the afternoon; and so much were the people delighted with the news of their arrival, that they left the preacher, and ran in crowds to the quay, with shouts and congratulations. He passes four years in England, explaining American affairs to Queen Elizabeth and various persons at court; and at last in mid-life, in the year 1577, he obtains a commission from the Queen, by which he is constituted Captain-general of a fleet of five ships: the Pelican, admiral, 100 tons, his own ship; the Elizabeth, vice-admiral, 80 tons; the Swan, 50 tons; Marigold, 30; and Christopher (Christbearer) 15; the collective burden of the entire fleet being thus 275 tons; its united crews 164 men, all told: and it carries whatever Sir Francis thought "might contribute to raise in those nations, with whom he should have any intercourse, the highest ideas of the politeness and magnificence of his native country. He, therefore, not only procured a complete service of silver for his own table, and furnished the cook-room with many vessels of the same metal, but engaged several musicians to accompany him." I quote from Johnson's life of him,--you do not know if in jest or earnest? Always in earnest, believe me, good friends. If there be jest in the nature of things, or of men, it is no fault of mine. I try to set them before you as they truly are. And Sir Francis and his crew, musicians and all, were in uttermost earnest, as in the quiet course of their narrative you will find. For arriving on the 20th of June, 1578, "in a very good harborough, called by Magellan Port St. Julian, where we found a gibbet standing upon the maine, which we supposed to be the place where Magellan did execution upon his disobedient and rebellious company; ... in this port our Generall began to inquire diligently of the actions of M. Thomas Doughtie, and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutinie, or some other disorder, whereby (without redresse) the successe of the voyage might greatly have bene hazarded; whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found, partly by Master Doughtie's owne confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true; which when our Generall saw, although his private affection to M. Doughtie (as hee then in the presence of us all sacredly protested) was great, yet the care he had of the state of the voyage, of the expectation of her Maiestie, and of the honour of his countrey, did more touch him (as, indeede, it ought) than the private respect of one man: so that, the cause being thoroughly heard, and all things done in good order, as neere as might be to the course of our lawes in England, it was concluded that M. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the qualitie of the offence: and he, seeing no remedie but patience for himselfe, desired before his death to receive the Communion, which he did at the hands of M. Fletcher, our Minister, and our Generall himselfe accompanied him in that holy action: which being done, and the place of execution made ready, hee having embraced our Generall, and taken his leave of all the companie, with prayer for the Queen's Maiestie and our realme, in quiet sort laid his head to the blocke, where he ended his life. This being done, our Generall made divers speaches to the whole company, persuading us to unitie, obedience, love, and regard of our voyage; and for the better confirmation thereof, willed evry man the next Sunday following to prepare himselfe to receive the Communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to doe, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his businesse." Thus pass judgment and execution, under a despotic Government and despotic Admiral, by religious, or, it may be, superstitious, laws. You shall next see how judgment and execution pass on the purest republican principles; every man's opinion being held as good as his neighbour's; and no superstitious belief whatsoever interfering with the wisdom of popular decision, or the liberty of popular action. The republicanism shall also be that of this enlightened nineteenth century: in other respects the circumstances are similar; for the event takes place during an expedition of British--not subjects, indeed, but quite unsubjected persons,--acknowledging neither Queen nor Admiral,--in search, nevertheless, of gold and silver, in America, like Sir Francis himself. And to make all more precisely illustrative, I am able to take the account of the matter from the very paper which contained Mr. Auberon Herbert's speech, the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of 5th December last. In another column, a little before the addresses of the members for Nottingham, you will therein find, quoted from the 'New York Tribune,' the following account of some executions which took place at "the Angels" (Los Angeles), California, on the 24th October. "The victims were some unoffending Chinamen, the executioners were some 'warm-hearted and impulsive' Irishmen, assisted by some Mexicans. It seems that owing to an impression that the houses inhabited by the Chinamen were filled with gold, a mob collected in front of a store belonging to one of them named Yo Hing with the object of plundering it. The Chinamen barricaded the building, shots were fired, and an American was killed. Then commenced the work of pillage and murder. The mob forced an entrance, four Chinamen were shot dead, seven or eight were wounded, and seventeen were taken and hanged. The following description of the hanging of the first victim will show how the executions were conducted:-- "Weng Chin, a merchant, was the first victim of hanging. He was led through the streets by two lusty Irishmen, who were cheered on by a crowd of men and boys, most of Irish and Mexican birth. Several times the unfortunate Chinaman faltered or attempted to extricate himself from the two brutes who were leading him, when a half-drunken Mexican in his immediate rear would plunge the point of a large dirk knife into his back. This, of course, accelerated his speed, but never a syllable fell from his mouth. Arriving at the eastern gate of Tomlinson's old lumber yard, just out of Temple Street, hasty preparations for launching the inoffensive man into eternity were followed by his being pulled up to the beam with a rope round his neck. He didn't seem to 'hang right,' and one of the Irishmen got upon his shoulders and jumped upon them, breaking his collar-bone. What with shots, stabs, and strangulation, and other modes of civilized torture, the victim was 'hitched up' for dead, and the crowd gave vent to their savage delight in demoniac yells and a jargon which too plainly denoted their Hibernian nationality. "One victim, a Chinese physician of some celebrity, Dr. Gnee Sing, offered his tormentors 4,000 dollars in gold to let him go. His pockets were immediately cut and ransacked, a pistol-shot mutilated one side of his face 'dreadfully,' and he too was 'stretched up' with cheers. Another wretched man was jerked up with great force against the beam, and the operation repeated until his head was broken in a way we cannot describe. Three Chinese, one a youth of about fifteen years old, picked up at random, and innocent of even a knowledge of the disturbance, were hanged in the same brutal manner. Hardly a word escaped them, but the younger one said, as the rope was being placed round his neck, 'Me no 'fraid to die; me velly good China boy; me no hurt no man.' Three Chinese boys who were hanged 'on the side of a waggon' struggled hard for their lives. One managed to lay hold of the rope, upon which two Irishmen beat his hands with clubs and pistols till he released his hold and fell into a 'hanging position.' The Irishmen then blazed away at him with bullets, and so put an end to his existence." My republican friends--or otherwise than friends, as you choose to have it--you will say, I presume, that this comparison of methods of magistracy is partial and unfair? It is so. All comparisons--as all experiments--are unfair till you have made more. More you shall make with me; and as many as you like, on your own side. I will tell you, in due time, some tales of Tory gentlemen who lived, and would scarcely let anybody else live, at Padua and Milan, which will do your hearts good. Meantime, meditate a little over these two instances of capital justice, as done severally by monarchists and republicans in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; and meditate, not a little, on the capital justice which you have lately accomplished yourselves in France. You have had it all your own way there, since Sedan. No Emperor to paralyze your hands any more, or impede the flow of your conversation. Anything, since that fortunate hour, to be done,--anything to be said, that you liked; and in the midst of you, found by sudden good fortune, two quiet honest and brave men; one old and one young, ready to serve you with all their strength, and evidently of supreme gifts in the way of service,--Generals Trochu and Rossel. You have exiled one, shot the other, [4] and, but that, as I told you, my wishes are of no account that I know of, I should wish you joy of your "situation." Believe me, faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XIV. Denmark Hill, 1st February, 1872. My Friends, In going steadily over our ground again, roughly broken last year, you see that, after endeavouring, as I did last month, to make you see somewhat more clearly the absurdity of fighting for a Holy Republic before you are sure of having got so much as a single saint to make it of, I have now to illustrate farther the admission made in page 8 of my first Letter, that even the most courteous and perfect Monarchy cannot make an unsaintly life into a saintly one, nor constitute thieving, for instance, an absolutely praiseworthy profession, however glorious or delightful. It is indeed more difficult to show this in the course of past history than any other moral truth whatsoever. For, without doubt or exception, thieving has not only hitherto been the most respected of professions, but the most healthy, cheerful, and in the practical outcome of it, though not in theory, even the honestest, followed by men. Putting the higher traditional and romantic ideals, such as that of our Robin Hood, and the Scottish Red Robin, for the time, aside, and keeping to meagre historical facts, could any of you help giving your heartiest sympathy to Master Francis Drake, setting out in his little Paschal Lamb to seek his fortune on the Spanish seas, and coming home, on that happy Sunday morning, to the unspeakable delight of the Cornish congregation? Would you like to efface the stories of Edward III., and his lion's whelp, from English history; and do you wish that instead of pillaging the northern half of France, as you read of them in the passages quoted in my fourth Letter, and fighting the Battle of Creçy to get home again, they had stayed at home all the time; and practised, shall we say, upon the flute, as I find my moral friends think Frederick of Prussia should have done? Or would you have chosen that your Prince Harry should never have played that set with his French tennis-balls, which won him Harfleur, and Rouen, and Orleans, and other such counters, which we might have kept, to this day perhaps, in our pockets, but for the wood maid of Domremy? Are you ready, even now, in the height of your morality, to give back India to the Brahmins and their cows, and Australia to her aborigines and their apes? You are ready? Well, my Christian friends, it does one's heart good to hear it, providing only you are quite sure you know what you are about. "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour." You are verily willing to accept that alternative? I inquire anxiously, because I see that your Under Secretary of State for India, Mr. Grant Duff, proposes to you, in his speech at Elgin, not at all as the first object of your lives to be honest; but, as the first, to be rich, and the second to be intelligent: now when you have all become rich and intelligent, how do you mean to live? Mr. Grant Duff, of course, means by being rich that you are each to have two powdered footmen; but then who are to be the footmen, now that we mustn't have blacks? And granting you all the intelligence in the world on the most important subjects,--the spots in the sun, or the nodes of the moon, as aforesaid,--will that help you to get your dinner, unless you steal it in the old fashion? The subject is indeed discussed with closer definition than by Mr. Grant Duff, by Mr. William Riddle, C.E., the authority I quoted to you for taking property "under control." You had better perhaps be put in complete possession of his views, as stated by himself in the 'Republican,' of December last; the rather, as that periodical has not had, according to Mr. Riddle, hitherto a world-wide circulation:-- "THE SIMPLE AND ONLY REMEDY FOR THE WANTS OF NATIONS." "It is with great grief that I hear that your periodical finds but a limited sale. I ask you to insert a few words from me, which may strike some of your readers as being important. These are all in all. What all nations want, Sir, are--1, Shelter; 2, Food; 3, Clothes; 4, Warmth; 5, Cleanliness; 6, Health; 7, Love; 8, Beauty. These are only to be got in one way. I will state it. 1.--An International Congress must make a number of steam engines, or use those now made, and taking all property under its control (I fearlessly state it) must roll off iron and glass for buildings to shelter hundreds of millions of people. 2.--Must, by such engines, make steam apparatus to plough immense plains of wheat, where steam has elbow-room abroad; must make engines to grind it on an enormous scale, first fetching it in flat-bottomed ships, made of simple form, larger than the Great Eastern, and of simple form of plates, machine fastened; must bake it by machine ovens commensurate. 3.--Machine looms must work unattended night and day, rolling off textile yarns and fabrics, and machines must make clothes, just as envelopes are knocked off. 4.--Machinery must do laundress work, iron and mangling; and, in a word, our labour must give place to machinery, laid down in gigantic factories on common-sense principles by an International leverage. This is the education you must inculcate. Then man will be at last emancipated. All else is utter bosh, and I will prove it so when and wherever I can get the means to lecture. "Wm. Riddle, C.E. "South Lambeth, Nov. 2." Unfortunately, till those means can be obtained, (may it be soon), it remains unriddled to us on what principles of "international leverage" the love and beauty are to be provided. But the point I wish you mainly to notice is, that for this general emancipation, and elbow-room for men and steam, you are still required to find "immense plains of wheat abroad." Is it not probable that these immense plains may belong to somebody "abroad" already? And if not, instead of bringing home their produce in flat-bottomed ships, why not establish, on the plains themselves, your own flat-bottomed--I beg pardon,--flat-bellied, persons, instead of living here in glass cases, which surely, even at the British Museum, cannot be associated in your minds with the perfect manifestation of love and beauty? It is true that love is to be measured, in your perfected political economy, by rectangular area, as you will find on reference to the ingenious treatise of Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., Professor of Logic and Political Economy in Owens College, Manchester, who informs you, among other interesting facts, that pleasure and pain "are the ultimate objects of the calculus of economy," and that a feeling, whether of pleasure or pain, may be regarded as having two dimensions--namely, in duration and intensity, so that the feeling, say of a minute, "may be represented by a rectangle whose base corresponds to the duration of a minute, and whose height is proportioned to the intensity." [5] The collective area of the series of rectangles will mark the "aggregate of feeling generated." But the Professor appears unconscious that there is a third dimension of pleasure and pain to be considered, besides their duration and intensity; and that this third dimension is to some persons, the most important of all--namely, their quality. It is possible to die of a rose in aromatic pain; and, on the contrary, for flies and rats, even pleasure may be the reverse of aromatic. There is swine's pleasure, and dove's; villain's pleasure, and gentleman's, to be arranged, the Professor will find, by higher analysis, in eternally dissimilar rectangles. My friends, the follies of Modern Liberalism, many and great though they be, are practically summed in this denial or neglect of the quality and intrinsic value of things. Its rectangular beatitudes, and spherical benevolences,--theology of universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, mean, one and all of them, in the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in man; whereas Nature and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth from unworth in everything, and most of all in man. Your main problem is that ancient and trite one, "Who is best man?" and the Fates forgive much,--forgive the wildest, fiercest, cruellest experiments,--if fairly made for the determination of that. Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the favouring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to you your stolen goods; and their noblest voices applaud the lifting of your spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that question, "Who is best man?" But if you refuse such inquiry, and maintain every man for his neighbour's match, [6]--if you give vote to the simple, and liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now only wrong side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be done then to find out "Who is worst man?" Which, in so wide an order of merit, is, indeed, not easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest circle in the Inferno of Worst, you are sure to find, and to be governed by. And you may note that the wars of men, in this winnowing or sifting function, separate themselves into three distinct stages. In healthy times of early national development, the best men go out to battle, and divide the spoil; in rare generosity, perhaps, giving as much to those who tarry by the stuff, as to those who have followed to the field. In the second, and more ingenious stage, which is the one we have reached now in England and America, the best men still go out to battle, and get themselves killed,--or, at all events, well withdrawn from public affairs,--and the worst stop at home, manage the government, and make money out of the commissariat. (See § 124 of 'Munera Pulveris,' and my note there on the last American War.) Then the third and last stage, immediately preceding the dissolution of any nation, is when its best men (such as they are)--stop at home too!--and pay other people to fight for them. And this last stage, not wholly reached in England yet, is, however, within near prospect; at least, if we may again on this point refer to, and trust, the anticipations of Mr. Grant Duff, 'who racks his brains, without success, to think of any probable combination of European events in which the assistance of our English force would be half so useful to our allies as money.' Next month I will give you some farther account of the operations in favour of their Italian allies in the fourteenth century, effected by the White company under Sir John Hawkwood;--(they first crossed the Alps with a German captain, however,)--not at all consisting in disbursements of money; but such, on the contrary, as to obtain for them--(as you read in my first Letter) the reputation, with good Italian judges, of being the best thieves known at the time. It is in many ways important for you to understand the origin and various tendencies of mercenary warfare; the essential power of which, in Christendom, dates, singularly enough, from the struggle of the free burghers of Italy with a Tory gentleman, a friend of Frederick II. of Germany; the quarrel, of which you shall hear the prettiest parts, being one of the most dramatic and vital passages of mediæval history. Afterwards we shall be able to examine, more intelligently, the prospects in store for us according to the--I trust not too painfully racked,--brains of our Under Secretary of State. But I am tired to-day of following modern thought in these unexpectedly attenuated conditions; and I believe you will also be glad to rest, with me, by reading a few words of true history of such life as, in here and there a hollow of the rocks of Europe, just persons have sometimes lived, untracked by the hounds of war. And in laying them before you, I begin to give these letters the completed character I intend for them; first, as it may seem to me needful, commenting on what is passing at the time, with reference always to the principles and plans of economy I have to set before you; and then collecting out of past literature, and in occasional frontispieces or woodcuts, out of past art, what may confirm or illustrate things that are for ever true: choosing the pieces of the series so that, both in art and literature, they may become to you in the strictest sense, educational, and familiarise you with the look and manner of fine work. I want you, accordingly, now to read attentively some pieces of agricultural economy, out of Marmontel's 'Contes Moraux,'--(we too grandly translate the title into 'Moral Tales,' for the French word Moeurs does not in accuracy correspond to our Morals); and I think it first desirable that you should know something about Marmontel himself. He was a French gentleman of the old school; not noble, nor, in French sense, even "gentilhomme;" but a peasant's son, who made his way into Parisian society by gentleness, wit, and a dainty and candid literary power. He became one of the humblest, yet honestest, placed scholars at the court of Louis XV., and wrote pretty, yet wise, sentimental stories, in finished French, which I must render as I can in broken English; but, however rudely translated, the sayings and thoughts in them deserve your extreme attention, for in their fine, tremulous way, like the blossoming heads of grass in May, they are perfect. For introduction then, you shall have, to-day, his own description of his native place, Bort, in central south France, and of the circumstances of his child-life. You must take it without further preamble--my pages running short. "Bort, situated on the river Dordogne, between Auvergne and the province of Limoges, is a frightful place enough, seen by the traveller descending suddenly on it; lying, as it does, at the bottom of a precipice, and looking as if the storm torrents would sweep it away, or as if, some day, it must be crushed under a chain of volcanic rocks, some planted like towers on the height which commands the town, and others already overhanging, or half uprooted: but, once in the valley, and with the eye free to wander there, Bort becomes full of smiles. Above the town, on a green island which the river embraces with equal streams, there is a thicket peopled with birds, and animated also with the motion and noise of a mill. On each side of the river are orchards and fields, cultivated with laborious care. Below the village the valley opens, on one side of the river, into a broad, flat meadow, watered by springs; on the other, into sloping fields, crowned by a belt of hills whose soft slope contrasts with the opposing rocks, and is divided, farther on, by a torrent which rolls and leaps through the forest, and falls into the Dordogne in one of the most beautiful cataracts on the Continent. Near that spot is situated the little farm of St. Thomas, where I used to read Virgil under the blossoming trees that surrounded our bee-hives, and where I made delicious lunches of their honey. On the other side of the town, above the mill, and on the slope to the river, was the enclosure where, on fête days, my father took me to gather grapes from the vines he had himself planted, or cherries, plums, and apples, from the trees he had grafted. "But what in my memory is the chief charm of my native place is the impression of the affection which my family had for me, and with which my soul was penetrated in earliest infancy. If there is any goodness in my character, it is to these sweet emotions, and the perpetual happiness of loving and being loved that I believe it is owing. What a gift does Heaven bestow on us in the virtue of parents! "I owed much also to a certain gentleness of manners which reigned then in my native town; and truly the sweet and simple life that one led there must have had a strange attraction, for nothing was more unusual than that the children of Bort should ever go away from it. In their youth they were well educated, and in the neighbouring colleges their colony distinguished itself; but they came back to their homes as a swarm of bees comes back to the hive with its spoil. "I learned to read in a little convent where the nuns were friends of my mother. Thence I passed to the school of a priest of the town, who gratuitously, and for his own pleasure, devoted himself to the instruction of children; he was the only son of a shoemaker, one of the honestest fellows in the world; and this churchman was a true model of filial piety. I can yet remember, as if I had seen it but a moment since, the air of quiet courtesy and mutual regard which the old man and his son maintained to each other; the one never losing sight of the dignity of the priesthood, nor the other of the sanctity of the paternal character." I interrupt my translation for a moment to ask you to notice how this finished scholar applies his words. A vulgar writer would most probably have said "the sanctity of the priesthood" and "the dignity of the paternal character." But it is quite possible that a priest may not be a saint, yet (admitting the theory of priesthood at all) his authority and office are not, therefore, invalidated. On the other hand, a father may be entirely inferior to his son, incapable of advising him, and, if he be wise, claiming no strict authority over him. But the relation between the two is always sacred. "The Abbé Vaissère" (that was his name), "after he had fulfilled his duty at the church, divided the rest of his time between reading, and the lessons he gave to us. In fine weather, a little walk, and sometimes for exercise a game at mall in the meadow, were his only amusements. For all society he had two friends, people of esteem in our town. They lived together in the most peaceful intimacy, seeing each other every day, and every day with the same pleasure in their meeting; and for fulfilment of good fortune, they died within a very little while of each other. I have scarcely ever seen an example of so sweet and constant equality in the course of human life. "At this school I had a comrade, who was from my infancy an object of emulation to me. His deliberate and rational bearing, his industry in study, the care he took of his books, on which I never saw a stain; his fair hair always so well combed, his dress always fresh in its simplicity, his linen always white, were to me a constantly visible example; and it is rare that a child inspires another child with such esteem as I had for him. His father was a labourer in a neighbouring village, and well known to mine. I used to walk with his son to see him in his home. How he used to receive us, the white-haired old man,--the good cream! the good brown bread that he gave us! and what happy presages did he not please himself in making for my future life, because of my respect for his old age. Twenty years afterwards, his son and I met at Paris; I recognized in him the same character of prudence and kindness which I had known in him at school, and it has been to me no slight pleasure to name one of his children at baptism. "When I was eleven years old, just past, my master judged me fit to enter the fourth class of students; and my father consented, though unwillingly, to take me to the College of Mauriac. His reluctance was wise. I must justify it by giving some account of our household. "I was the eldest of many children; my father, a little rigid, but entirely good under his severe manner, loved his wife to idolatry; and well he might! I have never been able to understand how, with the simple education of our little convent at Bort, she had attained so much pleasantness in wit, so much elevation in heart, and a sentiment of propriety so just, pure, and subtle. My good Bishop of Limoges has often spoken to me since, at Paris, with most tender interest, of the letters that my mother wrote in recommending me to him. "My father revered her as much as he loved; and blamed her only for her too great tenderness for me: but my grandmother loved me no less. I think I see her yet--the good little old woman! the bright nature that she had! the gentle gaiety! Economist of the house, she presided over its management, and was an example to us all of filial tenderness, for she had also her own mother and her husband's mother to take care of. I am now dating far back, being just able to remember my great-grandmother drinking her little cup of wine at the corner of the hearth; but, during the whole of my childhood, my grandmother and her three sisters lived with us, and among all these women, and a swarm of children, my father stood alone, their support. With little means enough, all could live. Order, economy, and labour,--a little commerce, but above all things, frugality" (Note again the good scholar's accuracy of language: "Economy" the right arrangement of things, "Frugality" the careful and fitting use of them)--"these maintained us all in comfort. The little garden produced vegetables enough for the need of the house; the orchard gave us fruit, and our quinces, apples, and pears, preserved in the honey of our bees, made, during the winter, for the children and old women, the most exquisite breakfasts." I interrupt again to explain to you, once for all, a chief principle with me in translation. Marmontel says, "for the children and good old women." Were I quoting the French I would give his exact words, but in translating I miss the word "good," of which I know you are not likely to see the application at the moment. You would not see why the old women should be called good, when the question is only what they had for breakfast. Marmontel means that if they had been bad old women they would have wanted gin and bitters for breakfast, instead of honey-candied quinces; but I can't always stop to tell you Marmontel's meaning, or other people's, and therefore if I think it not likely to strike you, and the word weakens the sentence in the direction I want you to follow, I omit it in translating, as I do also entire sentences, here and there; but never, as aforesaid, in actual quotation. "The flock of the fold of St. Thomas, clothed, with its wool, now the women, and now the children; my aunt spun it, and spun also the hemp which made our under-dress; the children of our neighbours came to beat it with us in the evening by lamp-light, (our own walnut trees giving us the oil,) and formed a ravishing picture. The harvest of our little farm assured our subsistence; the wax and honey of our bees, of which one of my aunts took extreme care, were a revenue, with little capital. The oil of our fresh walnuts had flavour and smell, which we liked better than those of the oil-olive, and our cakes of buck-wheat, hot, with the sweet butter of Mont Dor, were for us the most inviting of feasts. By the fireside, in the evening, while we heard the pot boiling with sweet chestnuts in it, our grandmother would roast a quince under the ashes and divide it among us children. The most sober of women made us all gourmands. Thus, in a household, where nothing was ever lost, very little expense supplied all our further wants; the dead wood of the neighbouring forests was in abundance, the fresh mountain butter and most delicate cheese cost little; even wine was not dear, and my father used it soberly." That is as much, I suppose, as you will care for at once. Insipid enough, you think?--or perhaps, in one way, too sapid; one's soul and affections mixed up so curiously with quince-marmalade? It is true, the French have a trick of doing that; but why not take it the other way, and say, one's quince-marmalade mixed up with affection? We adulterate our affections in England, now-a-days, with a yellower, harder, baser thing than that; and there would surely be no harm in our confectioners putting a little soul into their sugar,--if they put in nothing worse? But as to the simplicity--or, shall we say, wateriness,--of the style, I can answer you more confidently. Milkiness would be a better word, only one does not use it of styles. This writing of Marmontel's is different from the writing you are accustomed to, in that there is never an exaggerating phrase in it--never a needlessly strained or metaphorical word, and never a misapplied one. Nothing is said pithily, to show the author's power, diffusely, to show his observation, nor quaintly, to show his fancy. He is not thinking of himself as an author at all; but of himself as a boy. He is not remembering his native valley as a subject for fine writing, but as a beloved real place, about which he may be garrulous, perhaps, but not rhetorical. But is it, or was it, or could it ever be, a real place, indeed?--you will ask next. Yes, real in the severest sense; with realities that are to last for ever, when this London and Manchester life of yours shall have become a horrible, and, but on evidence, incredible, romance of the past. Real, but only partially seen; still more partially told. The rightnesses only perceived; the felicities only remembered; the landscape seen as if spring lasted always; the trees in blossom or fruitage evermore: no shedding of leaf: of winter, nothing remembered but its fireside. Yet not untrue. The landscape is indeed there, and the life, seen through glass that dims them, but not distorts; and which is only dim to Evil. But now supply, with your own undimmed insight, and better knowledge of human nature; or invent, with imaginative malice, what evil you think necessary to make the picture true. Still--make the worst of it you will--it cannot but remain somewhat incredible to you, like the pastoral scene in a pantomime, more than a piece of history. Well; but the pastoral scene in a pantomime itself,--tell me,--is it meant to be a bright or a gloomy part of your Christmas spectacle? Do you mean it to exhibit, by contrast, the blessedness of your own life in the streets outside; or, for one fond and foolish half-hour, to recall the "ravishing picture" of days long lost? "The sheep-fold of St. Thomas," (you have at least, in him, an incredulous saint, and fit patron of a Republic at once holy and enlightened), the green island full of singing birds, the cascade in the forest, the vines on the steep river-shore;--the little Marmontel reading his Virgil in the shade, with murmur of bees round him in the sunshine;--the fair-haired comrade, so gentle, so reasonable, and, marvel of marvels, beloved for being exemplary! Is all this incredible to you in its good or in its evil? Those children rolling on the heaps of black and slimy ground, mixed with brickbats and broken plates and bottles, in the midst of Preston or Wigan, as edified travellers behold them when the station is blocked, and the train stops anywhere outside,--the children themselves, black, and in rags evermore, and the only water near them either boiling, or gathered in unctuous pools, covered with rancid clots of scum, in the lowest holes of the earth-heaps,--why do you not paint these for pastime? Are they not what your machine gods have produced for you? The mighty iron arms are visibly there at work;--no St. Thomas can be incredulous about the existence of gods such as they,--day and night at work--omnipotent, if not resplendent. Why do you not rejoice in these; appoint a new Christmas for these, in memory of the Nativity of Boilers, and put their realms of black bliss into new Arcadias of pantomime--the harlequin, mask all over? Tell me, my practical friends. Believe me, faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I must in future reserve a page, at the end of these Letters, partly for any chance word of correspondence; partly to give account of what I am doing, (when it becomes worth relating,) with the interest of the St. George's Fund. To-day I wish only to invite the reader's attention to the notice, which is sent out with each volume of the revised series of my works, that I mean to sell my own books at a price from which there shall be no abatement--namely, 18s. the plain volumes, and 27s. 6d. the illustrated ones; and that my publisher, Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, will supply them at that price without abatement, carriage paid, to any person in town or country, on remittance of the price of the number of volumes required. This absolute refusal of credit or abatement is only the carrying out of a part of my general method of political economy; and I adopt this system of sale, because I think authors ought not to be too proud to sell their own books, any more than painters to sell their own pictures. I intend the retail dealer to charge twenty shillings for the plain volumes, and thirty shillings for the others. If he declines offering them for that percentage, it is for the public to judge how much he gets usually. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XV. Denmark Hill, 1st March, 1872. My Friends, The Tory gentleman whose character I have to sketch for you, in due counterbalance of that story of republican justice in California, was, as I told you, the friend of Friedrich II. of Germany, another great Friedrich preceding the Prussian one by some centuries, and living quite as hard a life of it. But before I can explain to you anything either about him, or his friend, I must develop the statement made above (XI. 6), of the complex modes of injustice respecting the means of maintenance, which have hitherto held in all ages among the three great classes of soldiers, clergy, and peasants. I mean, by 'peasants' the producers of food, out of land or water; by 'clergy,' men who live by teaching or exhibition of behaviour; and by 'soldiers,' those who live by fighting, either by robbing wise peasants, or getting themselves paid by foolish ones. Into these three classes the world's multitudes are essentially hitherto divided. The legitimate merchant of course exists, and can exist, only on the small percentage of pay obtainable for the transfer of goods; and the manufacturer and artist are, in healthy society, developed states of the peasant. The morbid power of manufacture and commerce in our own age is an accidental condition of national decrepitude; the injustices connected with it are mainly those of the gambling-house, and quite unworthy of analytical inquiry; but the unjust relations of the soldier, clergyman, and peasant have hitherto been constant in all great nations;--they are full of mystery and beauty in their iniquity; they require the most subtle, and deserve the most reverent, analysis. The first root of distinction between the soldier and peasant is in barrenness and fruitfulness of possessed ground; the inhabitant of sands and rocks "redeeming his share" (see speech of Roderick in the 'Lady of the Lake') from the inhabitant of corn-bearing ground. The second root of it is delight in athletic exercise, resulting in beauty of person and perfectness of race, and causing men to be content, or even triumphant, in accepting continual risk of death, if by such risk they can escape the injury of servile toil. Again, the first root of distinction between clergyman and peasant is the greater intelligence, which instinctively desires both to learn and teach, and is content to accept the smallest maintenance, if it may remain so occupied. (Look back to Marmontel's account of his tutor.) The second root of distinction is that which gives rise to the word 'clergy,' properly signifying persons chosen by lot, or in a manner elect, for the practice and exhibition of good behaviour; the visionary or passionate anchorite being content to beg his bread, so only that he may have leave by undisturbed prayer or meditation, to bring himself into closer union with the spiritual world; and the peasant being always content to feed him, on condition of his becoming venerable in that higher state, and, as a peculiarly blessed person, a communicator of blessing. Now, both these classes of men remain noble, as long as they are content with daily bread, if they may be allowed to live in their own way; but the moment the one of them uses his strength, and the other his sanctity, to get riches with, or pride of elevation over other men, both of them become tyrants, and capable of any degree of evil. Of the clerk's relation to the peasant, I will only tell you, now, that, as you learn more of the history of Germany and Italy in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, almost to this day, you will find the soldiers of Germany are always trying to get mastery over the body of Italy, and the clerks of Italy are always trying to get mastery over the mind of Germany;--this main struggle between Emperor and Pope, as the respective heads of the two parties, absorbing in its vortex, or attracting to its standards, all the minor disorders and dignities of war; and quartering itself in a quaintly heraldic fashion with the methods of encroachment on the peasant, separately invented by baron and priest. The relation of the baron to the peasant, however, is all that I can touch upon to-day; and first, note that this word 'baron' is the purest English you can use to denote the soldier, soldato, or 'fighter, hired with pence, or soldi,' as such. Originally it meant the servant of a soldier, or, as a Roman clerk of Nero's time [7] tells us, (the literary antipathy thus early developing itself in its future nest,) "the extreme fool, who is a fool's servant;" but soon it came to be associated with a Greek word meaning 'heavy;' and so got to signify heavy-handed, or heavy-armed, or generally prevailing in manhood. For some time it was used to signify the authority of a husband; a woman called herself her husband's [8] 'ancilla,' (handmaid), and him her 'baron.' Finally the word got settled in the meaning of a strong fighter receiving regular pay. "Mercenaries are persons who serve for a regularly received pay; the same are called 'Barones' from the Greek, because they are strong in labours." This is the definition given by an excellent clerk of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and I wish you to recollect it, because it perfectly unites the economical idea of a Baron, as a person paid for fighting, with the physical idea of one, as prevailing in battle by weight; not without some attached idea of slight stupidity;--the notion holding so distinctly even to this day that Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks the entire class aptly describable under the term 'barbarians.' At all events, the word is the best general one for the dominant rank of the Middle Ages, as distinguished from the pacific peasant, and so delighting in battle that one of the most courteous barons of the fourteenth century tells a young knight who comes to him for general advice, that the moment war fails in any country, he must go into another. "Et se la guerre est faillie, Départie Fay tóst de cellui païs; N'arresté quoy que nul die." "And if the war has ended, Departure Make quickly from that country; Do not stop, whatever anybody says to you." [9] But long before this class distinction was clearly established, the more radical one between pacific and warrior nations had shown itself cruelly in the history of Europe. You will find it greatly useful to fix in your minds these following elementary ideas of that history:-- The Roman Empire was already in decline at the birth of Christ. It was ended five hundred years afterwards. The wrecks of its civilization, mingled with the broken fury of the tribes which had destroyed it, were then gradually softened and purged by Christianity; and hammered into shape by three great warrior nations, on the north, south, and west, worshippers of the storms, of the sun, and of fate. Three Christian kings, Henry the Fowler in Germany, Charlemagne in France, and Alfred in England, typically represent the justice of humanity, gradually forming the feudal system out of the ruined elements of Roman luxury and law, under the disciplining torment inflicted by the mountaineers of Scandinavia, India, and Arabia. This forging process takes another five hundred years. Christian feudalism may be considered as definitely organized at the end of the tenth century, and its political strength established, having for the most part absorbed the soldiers of the north, and soon to be aggressive on those of Mount Imaus and Mount Sinai. It lasts another five hundred years, and then our own epoch, that of atheistic liberalism, begins, practically necessitated,--the liberalism by the two discoveries of gunpowder and printing,--and the atheism by the unfortunate persistence of the clerks in teaching children what they cannot understand, and employing young consecrated persons to assert in pulpits what they do not know. That is enough generalization for you to-day. I want now to fix your thoughts on one small point in all this;--the effect of the discovery of gunpowder in promoting liberalism. Its first operation was to destroy the power of the baron, by rendering it impossible for him to hold his castle, with a few men, against a mob. The fall of the Bastile is a typical fact in history of this kind; but, of course long previously, castellated architecture had been felt to be useless. Much other building of a noble kind vanishes together with it; nor less (which is a much greater loss than the building,) the baronial habit of living in the country. Next to his castle, the baron's armour becomes useless to him; and all the noble habits of life vanish which depend on the wearing of a distinctive dress, involving the constant exercise of accurately disciplined strength, and the public assertion of an exclusive occupation in life, involving exposure to danger. Next, the baron's sword and spear become useless to him; and encounter, no longer the determination of who is best man, but of who is best marksman, which is a very different question indeed. Lastly, the baron being no more able to maintain his authority by force, seeks to keep it by form; he reduces his own subordinates to a fine machinery, and obtains the command of it by purchase or intrigue. The necessity of distinction of character is in war so absolute, and the tests of it are so many, that, in spite of every abuse, good officers get sometimes the command of squadrons or of ships; and one good officer in a hundred is enough to save the honour of an army, and the credit of a system: but generally speaking, our officers at this day do not know their business; and the result is--that, paying thirty millions a year for our army, we are informed by Mr. Grant Duff that the army we have bought is of no use, and we must pay still more money to produce any effect upon foreign affairs. So, you see, this is the actual state of things,--and it is the perfection of liberalism,--that first we cannot buy a Raphael for five-and-twenty pounds, because we have to pay five hundred for a pocket pistol; and next, we are coolly told that the pocket pistol won't go off, and that we must still pay foreign constables to keep the peace. In old times, under the pure baronial power, things used, as I told you, to be differently managed by us. We were, all of us, in some sense barons; and paid ourselves for fighting. We had no pocket pistols, nor Woolwich Infants--nothing but bows and spears, good horses, (I hear, after two-thirds of our existing barons have ruined their youth in horseracing, and a good many of them their fortunes also, we are now in irremediable want of horses for our cavalry,) and bright armour. Its brightness, observe, was an essential matter with us. Last autumn I saw, even in modern England, something bright; low sunshine at six o'clock of an October morning, glancing down a long bank of fern covered with hoar-frost, in Yewdale, at the head of Coniston Water. I noted it as more beautiful than anything I had ever seen, to my remembrance, in gladness and infinitude of light. Now, Scott uses this very image to describe the look of the chain-mail of a soldier in one of these free [10] companies;--Le Balafré, Quentin Durward's uncle:--"The archer's gorget, arm-pieces, and gauntlets were of the finest steel, curiously inlaid with silver, and his hauberk, or shirt of mail, was as clear and bright as the frost-work of a winter morning upon fern or briar." And Sir John Hawkwood's men, of whose proceedings in Italy I have now to give you some account, were named throughout Italy, as I told you in my first letter, the White Company of English,--'Societas alba Anglicorum,' or generally, the Great White Company, merely from the splendour of their arms. They crossed the Alps in 1361, and immediately caused a curious change in the Italian language. Azario lays great stress on their tall spears with a very long iron point at the extremity; this formidable weapon being for the most part wielded by two, and sometimes moreover by three individuals, being so heavy and huge, that whatever it came in contact with was pierced through and through. He says, that [11] "at their backs the mounted bowmen carried their bows; whilst those used by the infantry archers were so enormous that the long arrows discharged from them were shot with one end of the bow resting on the ground instead of being drawn in the air." Of the English bow you have probably heard before, though I shall have, both of it, and the much inferior Greek bow made of two goats' horns, to tell you some things that may not have come in your way; but the change these English caused in the Italian language, and afterwards generally in that of chivalry, was by their use of the spear; for "Filippo Villani tells us that, whereas, until the English company crossed the Alps, his countrymen numbered their military forces by 'helmets' and colour companies, (bandiere); thenceforth armies were reckoned by the spear, a weapon which, when handled by the White Company, proved no less tremendous than the English bayonet of modern times." It is worth noting as one of the tricks of the third Fors--the giver of names as well as fortunes--that the name of the chief poet of passionate Italy should have been 'the bearer of the wing,' and that of the chief poet of practical England, the bearer or shaker of the spear. Noteworthy also that Shakespeare himself gives a name to his type of the false soldier from the pistol; but, in the future, doubtless we shall have a hero of culminating soldierly courage named from the torpedo, and a poet of the commercial period, singing the wars directed by Mr. Grant Duff, named Shake-purse. The White Company when they crossed the Alps were under a German captain. (Some years before, an entirely German troop was prettily defeated by the Apennine peasants.) Sir John Hawkwood did not take the command until 1364, when the Pisans hired the company, five thousand strong, at the rate of a hundred and fifty thousand golden florins for six months. I think about fifty thousand pounds of our money a month, or ten pounds a man--Sir John himself being then described as a "great general," an Englishman of a vulpine nature, "and astute in their fashion." This English fashion of astuteness means, I am happy to say, that Sir John saw far, planned deeply, and was cunning in military stratagem; but would neither poison his enemies nor sell his friends--the two words of course being always understood as for the time being;--for, from this year 1364 for thirty years onward, he leads his gradually more and more powerful soldier's life, fighting first for one town and then for another; here for bishops, and there for barons, but mainly for those merchants of Florence, from whom that narrow street in your city is named Lombard Street, and interfering thus so decidedly with foreign affairs, that, at the end of the thirty years, when he put off his armour, and had lain resting for a little while in Florence Cathedral, King Richard the Second begged his body from the Florentines, and laid it in his own land; the Florentines granting it in the terms of this following letter:-- "To the King of England. "Most serene and invincible Sovereign, most dread Lord, and our very especial Benefactor-- "Our devotion can deny nothing to your Highness' Eminence: there is nothing in our power which we would not strive by all means to accomplish, should it prove grateful to you. "Wherefore, although we should consider it glorious for us and our people to possess the dust and ashes of the late valiant knight, nay, most renowned captain, Sir John Hawkwood, who fought most gloriously for us, as the commander of our armies, and whom at the public expense we caused to be entombed in the Cathedral Church of our city; yet, notwithstanding, according to the form of the demand, that his remains may be taken back to his country, we freely concede the permission, lest it be said that your sublimity asked anything in vain, or fruitlessly, of our reverential humility. "We, however, with due deference, and all possible earnestness, recommend to your Highness' graciousness, the son and posterity of said Sir John, who acquired no mean repute, and glory for the English name in Italy, as also our merchants and citizens." It chanced by the appointment of the third Fors, [12] to which, you know, I am bound in these letters uncomplainingly to submit, that, just as I had looked out this letter for you, given at Florence in the year 1396, I found in an old bookshop two gazettes, nearly three hundred years later, namely, Number 20 of the 'Mercurius Publicus,' and Number 50 of the 'Parliamentary Intelligencer,' the latter comprising the same "foraign intelligence, with the affairs now in agitation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, for information of the people. Publish'd by order, from Monday, December 3rd, to Monday, December 10th, 1660." This little gazette informs us in its first advertisement, that in London, November 30th, 1660, was lost, in or about this city, a small paper book of accounts and receipts, with a red leather cover, with two clasps on it; and that anybody that can give intelligence of it to the city crier at Bread Street end in Cheapside, "shall have five shillings for their pains, and more if they desire it." And its last paragraph is as follows:--"On Saturday (December 8), the Most Honourable House of Peers concurred with the Commons in the order for the digging up the carkasses of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, and Thomas Pride, and carrying them on an Hurdle to Tyburn, where they are to be first hang'd up in their Coffins, and then buried under the Gallows." The 'Public Mercury' is of date Thursday, June 14th, to Thursday, June 21st, 1660, and contains a report of the proceedings at the House of Commons, on Saturday, the 16th, of which the first sentence is:-- "Resolved,--That his Majesty be humbly moved to call in Milton's two books, and John Goodwin's, and order them to be burnt by the common hangman." By the final appointment of the third Fors, I chanced just after finding these gazettes, to come upon the following passage in my 'Daily Telegraph':-- "Every head was uncovered, and although among those who were farthest off there was a pressing forward and a straining to catch sight of the coffin, there was nothing unseemly or rude. The Catafalque was received at the top of the stairs by Col. Braine and other officers of the 9th, and placed in the centre of the vestibule on a rich velvet pall on which rested crowns, crosses, and other devices, composed of tuberoses and camellias, while beautiful lilies were scattered over the corpse, which was clothed in full regimentals, the cap and sword resting on the body. The face, with the exception of its pallor, was unchanged, and no one, unless knowing the circumstances, would have believed that Fiske had died a violent death. The body was contained in a handsome rosewood casket, with gold-plated handles, and a splendid plate bearing the inscription, 'James Fiske, jun., died January 7th, 1872, in the 37th year of his age.'" In the foregoing passages, you see, there is authentic account given you of the various honours rendered by the enlightened public of the fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries to the hero of their day or hour; the persons thus reverenced in their burial, or unburial, being all, by profession, soldiers; and holding rank in that profession, very properly describable by the pretty modern English word 'Colonel'--leader, that is to say, of a Coronel, Coronella, or daisy-like circlet of men; as in the last case of the three before us, of the Tammany 'Ring.' You are to observe, however, that the first of the three, Colonel Sir John Hawkwood, is a soldier both in heart and deed, every inch of him; and that the second, Colonel Oliver Cromwell, was a soldier in deed, but not in heart; being by natural disposition and temper fitted rather for a Huntingdonshire farmer, and not at all caring to make any money by his military business; and finally, that Colonel James Fiske, jun., was a soldier in heart, to the extent of being willing to receive any quantity of soldi from any paymaster, but no more a soldier in deed than you are yourselves, when you go piping and drumming past my gate at Denmark Hill (I should rather say--banging, than drumming, for I observe you hit equally hard and straightforward to every tune; so that from a distance it sounds just like beating carpets), under the impression that you are defending your country as well as amusing yourselves. Of the various honours, deserved or undeserved, done by enlightened public opinion to these three soldiers, I leave you to consider till next month, merely adding, to put you more entirely in command of the facts, that Sir John Hawkwood, (Acuto, the Italians called him, by happy adaptation of syllables,) whose entire subsistence was one of systematic military robbery, had, when he was first buried, the honour, rarely granted even to the citizens of Florence, of having his coffin laid on the font of the House of his name-saint, St. John Baptist--that same font which Dante was accused of having impiously broken to save a child from drowning, in "mio bel San Giovanni." I am soon going to Florence myself to draw this beautiful San Giovanni for the beginning of my lectures on Architecture, at Oxford; and you shall have a print of the best sketch I can make, to assist your meditations on the honours of soldiership, and efficacy of baptism. Meantime, let me ask you to read an account of one funeral more, and to meditate also on that. It is given in the most exquisite and finished piece which I know of English Prose literature in the eighteenth century; and, however often you may have seen it already, I beg of you to read it now, both in connection with the funeral ceremonies described hitherto, and for the sake of its educational effect on your own taste in writing:-- "We last night received a piece of ill news at our club, which very sensibly afflicted every one of us. I question not but my readers themselves will be troubled at the hearing of it. To keep them no longer in suspense, Sir Roger de Coverley is dead. He departed this life at his house in the country, after a few weeks' sickness. Sir Andrew Freeport has a letter from one of his correspondents in those parts, that informs him the old man caught a cold at the county-sessions, as he was very warmly promoting an address of his own penning, in which he succeeded according to his wishes. But this particular comes from a Whig justice of peace, who was always Sir Roger's enemy and antagonist. I have letters both from the chaplain and Captain Sentry, which mention nothing of it, but are filled with many particulars to the honour of the good old man. I have likewise a letter from the butler, who took so much care of me last summer when I was at the knight's house. As my friend the butler mentions, in the simplicity of his heart, several circumstances the others have passed over in silence, I shall give my reader a copy of his letter, without any alteration or diminution. "'Honoured Sir,--Knowing that you was my old master's good friend, I could not forbear sending you the melancholy news of his death, which has afflicted the whole country, as well as his poor servants, who loved him, I may say, better than we did our lives. I am afraid he caught his death the last county-sessions, where he would go to see justice done to a poor widow woman, and her fatherless children, that had been wronged by a neighbouring gentleman; for you know, Sir, my good master was always the poor man's friend. Upon his coming home, the first complaint he made was, that he had lost his roast-beef stomach, not being able to touch a sirloin, which was served up according to custom: and you know he used to take great delight in it. From that time forward he grew worse and worse, but still kept a good heart to the last. Indeed we were once in great hope of his recovery, upon a kind message that was sent him from the widow lady whom he had made love to the forty last years of his life; but this only proved a lightning before death. He has bequeathed to this lady, as a token of his love, a great pearl necklace, and a couple of silver bracelets set with jewels, which belonged to my good old lady his mother. He has bequeathed the fine white gelding that he used to ride a hunting upon, to his chaplain, because he thought he would be kind to him, and has left you all his books. He has moreover bequeathed to the chaplain a very pretty tenement with good lands about it. It being a very cold day when he made his will, he left for mourning to every man in the parish, a great frize-coat, and to every woman a black riding-hood. It was a most moving sight to see him take leave of his poor servants, commending us all for our fidelity, whilst we were not able to speak a word for weeping. As we most of us are grown grey-headed in our dear master's service, he has left us pensions and legacies, which we may live very comfortably upon the remaining part of our days. He has bequeathed a great deal more in charity, which is not yet come to my knowledge, and it is peremptorily said in the parish, that he has left money to build a steeple to the church; for he was heard to say some time ago, that if he lived two years longer, Coverley church should have a steeple to it. The chaplain tells every body that he made a very good end, and never speaks of him without tears. He was buried, according to his own directions, among the family of the Coverleys, on the left hand of his father Sir Arthur. The coffin was carried by six of his tenants, and the pall held up by six of the quorum. The whole parish followed the corpse with heavy hearts, and in their mourning suits; the men in frize, and the women in riding-hoods. Captain Sentry, my master's nephew, has taken possession of the Hall-house, and the whole estate. When my old master saw him a little before his death, he took him by the hand, and wished him joy of the estate which was falling to him, desiring him only to make a good use of it, and to pay the several legacies, and the gifts of charity, which he told him he had left as quit-rents upon the estate. The captain truly seems a courteous man, though he says but little. He makes much of those whom my master loved, and shews great kindness to the old house-dog, that you know my poor master was so fond of. It would have gone to your heart to have heard the moans the dumb creature made on the day of my master's death. He has never enjoyed himself since; no more has any of us. It was the melancholiest day for the poor people that ever happened in Worcestershire. This is all from, "'Honoured Sir, "'Your most sorrowful servant, "'Edward Biscuit. "'P.S. My master desired, some weeks before he died, that a book, which comes up to you by the carrier, should be given to Sir Andrew Freeport in his name.' "This letter, notwithstanding the poor butler's manner of writing it, gave us such an idea of our good old friend, that upon the reading of it there was not a dry eye in the club. Sir Andrew opening the book, found it to be a collection of acts of parliament. There was in particular the Act of Uniformity, with some passages in it marked by Sir Roger's own hand. Sir Andrew found that they related to two or three points which he had disputed with Sir Roger the last time he appeared at the club. Sir Andrew, who would have been merry at such an incident on another occasion, at the sight of the old man's hand-writing burst into tears, and put the book into his pocket. Captain Sentry informs me that the knight has left rings and mourning for every one in the club." I am obliged to give you this ideal of Addison's because I can neither from my own knowledge, nor, at this moment, out of any domestic chronicles I remember, give you so perfect an account of the funeral of an English squire who has lived an honourable life in peace. But Addison is as true as truth itself. So now, meditate over these four funerals, and the meaning and accuracy of the public opinions they express, till I can write again. And believe me, ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. A cutting was sent me the other day, from a provincial paper, apparently well meant and conducted, but which in its column of 'aphorisms,' having, unfortunately, ventured to lead off with one on political economy, enunciated itself as follows:-- "All capital comes back at last, though sometimes by a roundabout road, to the pocket of the labourer, in the shape of wages. Consumable produce, however, may be dissipated in a thousand ways, in none of which is either the capitalist or the prolétaire benefited at all." I don't happen to know, at this moment, what a 'prolétaire' is, and can't find it in my French dictionary; but will ascertain, by next month; and, meantime, I keep the 'aphorism,' being a very curious one, for future comment. A letter from "a working woman" has given me much pleasure. She says she does not understand my plans; but can trust me. She may be pleased to know that I don't yet understand some of my plans myself, for they are not, strictly speaking, mine at all, but Nature's and Heaven's, which are not always comprehensible, until one begins to act on them. Then they clear as one goes on, and, I hope, my expression of what I can see of them, for her, and all true workers, will, also. I have an interesting letter from Glasgow, but have not been able to read it yet. A slip of the 'Glasgow Chronicle' was enclosed, containing the Editor's opinions on my modes of selling my books. Not having any occasion for his opinions on the subject, I threw the slip into the fire. The letter, which I have just glanced at, says my comparison of the price of my books to a doctor's fee is absurd, for the poor don't pay guinea fees. I know that, and I don't want any poor people to read my books. I said so long ago, in 'Sesame.' I want them to read these letters, which they can get, each for the price of two pots of beer; and not to read my large books, nor anybody else's, till they are rich enough, at least, to pay for good printing and binding. Even oracular Mr. Grant Duff says they are all to be rich first, and only next to be intelligent, and I am happy in supposing it needs a great deal of intelligence to read 'Modern Painters.' But, by the way, if the Editor of the 'Glasgow Chronicle' will tell me, why, in these fine manufacturing counties of his, and mine, I can only, with the greatest possible difficulty, or by mere good luck, and help of the Third Fors, now get a quarter of a yard of honest leather to stitch my leaves into, I shall be greatly obliged to him, and will reprint his communication in my best type, instead of throwing it into the fire. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XVI. Denmark Hill, 15th March, 1872. My Friends, The meditation I asked you to give to the facts put before you in my last letter, if given, should have convinced you, for one thing, quite sufficiently for all your future needs, of the unimportance of momentary public opinion respecting the characters of men; and for another thing, of the preciousness of confirmed public opinion, when it happens to be right;--preciousness both to the person opined of, and the opiners;--as, for instance, to Sir Roger de Coverley, the opinion formed of him by his tenants and club: and for third thing, it might have properly led you to consider, though it was scarcely probable your thoughts should have turned that way, what an evil trick of human creatures it was to reserve the expression of these opinions--or even the examination of them, until the persons to be opined of are dead; and then to endeavour to put all right by setting their coffins on baptistery fonts--or hanging them up at Tyburn. Let me very strongly advise you to make up your minds concerning people, while they are with you; to honour and obey those whom you consider good ones; to dishonour and disobey those whom you consider bad ones; and when good and bad ones die, to make no violent or expressive demonstrations of the feelings which have now become entirely useless to the persons concerned, and are only, as they are true or false, serviceable, or the contrary, to yourselves; but to take care that some memorial is kept of men who deserve memory, in a distinct statement on the stone or brass of their tombs, either that they were true men, or rascals,--wise men, or fools. How beautiful the variety of sepulchral architecture might be, in any extensive place of burial, if the public would meet the small expense of thus expressing its opinions, in a verily instructive manner; and if some of the tombstones accordingly terminated in fools' caps; and others, instead of crosses or cherubs, bore engravings of cats-of-nine-tails, as typical of the probable methods of entertainment, in the next world, of the persons, not, it is to be hoped, reposing, below. But the particular subject led up to in my last letter, and which, in this special month of April, I think it appropriate for you to take to heart, is the way in which you spend your money, or allow it to be spent for you. Colonel Hawkwood and Colonel Fiske both passed their whole lives in getting possession, by various means, of other people's money; (in the final fact, of working-men's money,--yours, that is to say), and everybody praises and crowns them for doing so. Colonel Cromwell passes his life in fighting for, what in the gist of it meant, not freedom, but freedom from unjust taxation;--and you hang his coffin up at Tyburn. "Not Freedom, but deliverance from unjust taxation." You call me unpractical. Suppose you became practical enough yourselves to take that for a watchword for a little while, and see how near you can come to its realization. For, I very positively can inform you, the considerablest part of the misery of the world comes of the tricks of unjust taxation. All its evil passions--pride, lust, revenge, malice, and sloth,--derive their main deadliness from the facilities of getting hold of other people's money open to the persons they influence. Pay every man for his work,--pay nobody but for his work,--and see that the work be sound; and you will find pride, lust, and sloth have little room left for themselves. Observe, however, very carefully, that by unjust taxation, I do not mean merely Chancellor of Exchequer's business, but a great part of what really very wise and worthy gentlemen, but, unfortunately, proud also, suppose to be their business. For instance, before beginning my letter to you this morning, (the last I shall ever date from Denmark Hill, [13]) I put out of my sight, carefully, under a large book, a legal document, which disturbed me by its barbarous black lettering. This is an R [Corrupted handwritten R.] in it, for instance, which is ugly enough, as such; but how ugly is the significance of it, and reasons of its being written that way, instead of in a properly intelligible way, there is hardly vituperation enough in language justly to express to you. This said document is to release the sole remaining executor of my father's will from further responsibility for the execution of it. And all that there is really need for, of English scripture on the occasion, would be as follows:-- I, having received this 15th of March, 1822, from A. B., Esq., all the property which my father left, hereby release A. B., Esq., from future responsibility, respecting either my father's property, or mine, or my father's business, or mine. Signed, J. R., before such and such two witnesses. This document, on properly cured calf-skin, (not cleaned by acids), and written as plainly as, after having contracted some careless literary habits, I could manage to write it, ought to answer the purpose required, before any court of law on earth. In order to effect it in a manner pleasing to the present legal mind of England, I receive eighty-seven lines of close writing, containing from fourteen to sixteen words each, (one thousand two hundred and eighteen words in all, at the minimum); thirteen of them in black letters of the lovely kind above imitated, but produced with much pains by the scrivener. Of the manner in which this overplus of one thousand one hundred and seventy-eight words is accomplished, (my suggested form containing forty only), the following example--the last clause of the document--may suffice. "And the said J. R. doth hereby for himself his heirs executors and administrators covenant and agree with and to the said A. B. his executors and administrators that he the said J. R. his heirs executors administrators or assigns shall and will from time to time and at all times hereafter save harmless and keep indemnified the said A. B. his heirs executors administrators and assigns from and in respect of all claims and demands whatsoever which may be made upon him or them or any of them for or in respect of the real or personal estate of the said J. R. and from all suits costs charges and damages and expenses whatsoever which the said A. B. his heirs executors administrators or assigns shall be involved in or put unto for or in respect of the said real or personal estate or any part thereof." Now, what reason do you suppose there is for all this barbarism and bad grammar, and tax upon my eyes and time, for very often one has actually to read these things, or hear them read, all through? The reason is simply and wholly that I may be charged so much per word, that the lawyer and his clerk may live. But do you not see how infinitely advantageous it would be for me, (if only I could get the other sufferers under this black literature to be of my mind), to clap the lawyer and his clerk, once for all, fairly out of the way in a dignified almshouse, with parchment unlimited, and ink turned on at a tap, and maintenance for life, on the mere condition of their never troubling humanity more, with either their scriptures or opinions on any subject; and to have this release of mine, as above worded, simply confirmed by the signature of any person whom the Queen might appoint for that purpose, (say the squire of the parish), and there an end? How is it, do you think, that other sufferers under the black literature do not come to be of my mind, which was Cicero's mind also, and has been the mind of every sane person before Cicero and since Cicero,--so that we might indeed get it ended thus summarily? Well, at the root of all these follies and iniquities, there lies always one tacit, but infinitely strong persuasion in the British mind, namely, that somehow money grows out of nothing, if one can only find some expedient to produce an article that must be paid for. "Here," the practical Englishman says to himself, "I produce, being capable of nothing better, an entirely worthless piece of parchment, with one thousand two hundred entirely foolish words upon it, written in an entirely abominable hand; and by this production of mine, I conjure out of the vacant air, the substance of ten pounds, or the like. What an infinitely profitable transaction to me and to the world! Creation, out of a chaos of words, and a dead beast's hide, of this beautiful and omnipotent ten pounds. Do I not see with my own eyes that this is very good?" That is the real impression on the existing popular mind; silent, but deep, and for the present unconquerable. That by due parchment, calligraphy, and ingenious stratagem, money may be conjured out of the vacant air. Alchemy is, indeed, no longer included in our list of sciences, for alchemy proposed,--irrational science that it was,--to make money of something;--gold of lead, or the like. But to make money of nothing,--this appears to be manifoldly possible, to the modern Anglo-Saxon practical person,--instructed by Mr. John Stuart Mill. Sometimes, with rare intelligence, he is capable of carrying the inquiry one step farther. Pushed hard to assign a Providential cause for such legal documents as this we are talking of, an English gentleman would say: "Well, of course, where property needs legal forms to transfer it, it must be in quantity enough to bear a moderate tax without inconvenience; and this tax on its transfer enables many well-educated and agreeable persons to live." Yes, that is so, and I (speaking for the nonce in the name of the working-man, maker of property) am willing enough to be taxed, straightforwardly, for the maintenance of these most agreeable persons; but not to be taxed obliquely for it, nor teased, either obliquely or otherwise, for it. I greatly and truly admire (as aforesaid, in my first letter,) these educated persons in wigs; and when I go into my kitchen-garden in spring time, to see the dew on my early sprouts, I often mentally acknowledge the fitness, yet singularity, of the arrangement by which I am appointed to grow mute Broccoli for the maintenance of that talking Broccoli. All that I want of it is to let itself be kept for a show, and not to tax my time as well as my money. Kept for a show, of heads; or, to some better purpose, for writing on fair parchment, with really well-trained hands, what might be desirable of literature. Suppose every existing lawyer's clerk was trained, in a good drawing school, to write red and blue letters as well as black ones, in a loving and delicate manner; here for instance is an R and a number eleven, which begin the eleventh chapter of Job in one of my thirteenth-century Bibles. There is as good a letter and as good a number--every one different in design,--to every chapter, and beautifully gilded and painted ones to the beginning of books; all done for love, and teasing nobody. Now suppose the lawyer's clerks, thus instructed to write decently, were appointed to write for us, for their present pay, words really worth setting down--Nursery Songs, Grimm's Popular Stories, and the like, we should have again, not, perhaps, a cheap literature; but at least an innocent one. Dante's words might then be taken up literally by relieved mankind. "Più ridon le carte." "The papers smile more," they might say, of such transfigured legal documents. Not a cheap literature, even then; nor pleasing to my friend the 'Glasgow Herald,' who writes to me indignantly, but very civilly, (and I am obliged to him,) to declare that he is a Herald, and not a Chronicle. I am delighted to hear it; for my lectures on heraldry are just beginning at Oxford, and a Glaswegian opinion may be useful to me, when I am not sure of my blazon. Also he tells me good leather may be had in Glasgow. Let Glasgow flourish, and I will assuredly make trial of the same: but touching this cheap literature question, I cannot speak much in this letter, for I must keep to our especial subject of April--this Fools' Paradise of Cloud-begotten Gold. Cloud-begotten--and self-begotten--as some would have it. But it is not so, friends. Do you remember the questioning to Job? The pretty letter R stopped me just now at the Response of Zophar; but look on to the thirty-eighth chapter, and read down to the question concerning this April time:--"Hath the rain a Father--and who hath begotten the drops of dew,--the hoary Frost of Heaven--who hath gendered it?" That rain and frost of heaven; and the earth which they loose and bind: these, and the labour of your hands to divide them, and subdue, are your wealth, for ever--unincreasable. The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its light--such as the strength of the pure rock can grow--such as the unthwarted sun in his season brings--these are your inheritance. You can diminish it, but cannot increase: that your barns should be filled with plenty--your presses burst with new wine,--is your blessing; and every year--when it is full--it must be new; and every year, no more. And this money, which you think so multipliable, is only to be increased in the hands of some, by the loss of others. The sum of it, in the end, represents, and can represent, only what is in the barn and winepress. It may represent less, but cannot more. These ten pounds, for instance, which I am grumbling at having to pay my lawyer--what are they? whence came they? They were once, (and could be nothing now, unless they had been) so many skins of Xeres wine--grown and mellowed by pure chalk rock and unafflicted sunshine. Wine drunk, indeed, long ago--but the drinkers gave the vineyard dressers these tokens, which we call pounds, signifying, that having had so much good from them they would return them as much, in future time. And, indeed, for my ten pounds, if my lawyer didn't take it, I could still get my Xeres, if Xeres wine exists anywhere. But, if not, what matters it how many pounds I have, or think I have, or you either? It is meat and drink we want--not pounds. As you are beginning to discover--I fancy too many of you, in this rich country. If you only would discover it a little faster, and demand dinners, instead of Liberty! For what possible liberty do you want, which does not depend on dinner? Tell me, once for all, what is it you want to do, that you can't do? Dinner being provided, do you think the Queen will interfere with the way you choose to spend your afternoons, if only you knock nobody down, and break nobody's windows? But the need of dinner enslaves you to purpose! On reading the letter spoken of in my last correspondence sheet, I find that it represents this modern form of slavery with an unconscious clearness, which is very interesting. I have, therefore, requested the writer's permission to print it, and, with a passage or two omitted, and briefest comment, here it is in full type, for it is worth careful reading:-- Glasgow, 12th February, 1872. "Sir, "You say in your 'Fors' that you do not want any one to buy your books who will not give a 'doctor's fee' per volume, which you rate at 10s. 6d.; now, as the 'Herald' remarks, you are clearly placing yourself in a wrong position, as you arbitrarily fix your doctor's fee far too high; indeed, while you express a desire, no doubt quite sincerely, to elevate the working-man, morally, mentally, and physically, you in the meantime absolutely preclude him from purchasing your books at all, and so almost completely bar his way from the enjoyment and elevating influence of perhaps the most" [etc., complimentary terms--omitted]. "Permit me a personal remark:--I am myself a poorly paid clerk, with a salary not much over the income-tax minimum; now no doctor, here at least, would ever think of charging me a fee of 10s. 6d., and so you see it is as much out of my power to purchase your books as any working-man. While Mr. Carlyle is just now issuing a cheap edition of his Works at 2s. per volume, which I can purchase, here, quite easily for 1s. 6d.;" [Presumably, therefore, to be had, as far north as Inverness, for a shilling, and for sixpence in Orkney,] "I must say it is a great pity that a Writer so much, and, in my poor opinion, justly, appreciated as yourself, should as it were inaugurate with your own hands a system which thoroughly barriers your productions from the great majority of the middle and working classes. I take leave, however, to remark that I by no means shut my eyes to the anomalies of the Bookselling Trade, but I can't see that it can be remedied by an Author becoming his own Bookseller, and, at the same time, putting an unusually high price on his books. Of course, I would like to see an Author remunerated as highly as possible for his labours." [You ought not to like any such thing: you ought to like an author to get what he deserves, like other people, not more, nor less.] "I would also crave to remark, following up your unfortunate analogy of the doctor's fee, that doctors who have acquired, either professionally or otherwise, a competence, often, nay very often, give their advice gratis to nearly every class, except that which is really wealthy; at least, I speak from my own experience, having known, nay even been attended by such a benevolent physician in a little town in Kirkcudbrightshire, who, when offered payment, and I was both quite able and willing to do so, and he was in no way indebted or obliged to me or mine, positively declined to receive any fee. So much for the benevolent physician and his fees. "Here am I, possessed of a passionate love of nature in all her aspects, cooped up in this fearfully crammed mass of population, with its filthy Clyde, which would naturally have been a noble river, but, under the curse of our much belauded civilization, forsooth, turned into an almost stagnant loathsome ditch, pestilence-breathing, be-lorded over by hundreds upon hundreds of tall brick chimney-stacks vomiting up smoke unceasingly; and from the way I am situated, there are only one day and a half in the week in which I can manage a walk into the country; now, if I wished to foster my taste for the beautiful in nature and art, even while living a life of almost servile red-taped routine beneath the too frequently horror-breathing atmosphere of a huge overgrown plutocratic city like Glasgow, I cannot have your Works" [complimentary terms again] "as, after providing for my necessaries, I cannot indulge in books at 10s. 6d. a volume. Of course, as you may say" [My dear sir, the very last thing I should say], "I can get them from a library. Assuredly, but one (at least I would) wishes to have actual and ever-present possession of productions such as yours" [more compliments]. "You will be aware, no doubt, that 'Geo. Eliot' has adopted a 'new system' in publishing her new novel by issuing it in 5s. 'parts,' with the laudable view of enabling and encouraging readers to buy the work for themselves, and not trusting to get it from 'some Mudie' or another for a week, then galloping through the three volumes and immediately forgetting the whole matter. When I possess a book worth having I always recur to it now and again. Your 'new system,' however, tends to prevent the real reading public from ever possessing your books, and the wealthy classes who could afford to buy books at 10s. 6d. a volume, as a rule, I opine, don't drive themselves insane by much reading of any kind. "I beg a last remark and I've done. Glasgow, for instance, has no splendid public buildings. She has increased in wealth till I believe there are some of the greatest merchants in the world trading in her Exchange; but except her grand old Cathedral, founded by an almost-forgotten bishop in the twelfth century, in what we in our vain folly are pleased to call the dark ages, when we ourselves are about as really dark as need be; having no 'high calling' to strive for, except by hook or by crook to make money--a fortune--retire at thirty-five by some stroke of gambling of a highly questionable kind on the Share market or otherwise, to a suburban or country villa with Turkey carpets, a wine-cellar and a carriage and pair; as no man now-a-days is ever content with making a decent and honest livelihood. Truly a very 'high calling!' Our old Cathedral, thank God, was not built by contract or stock-jobbing: there was, surely, a higher calling of some sort in those quiet, old, unhurrying days. Our local plutocratic friends put their hands into their pockets to the extent of 150,000l. to help to build our new University buildings after a design by G. Gilbert Scott, which has turned out a very imposing pile of masonry; at least, it is placed on an imposing and magnificent site. I am no prophet, but I should not wonder if old St. Mungo's Cathedral, erected nearly six hundred years ago to the honour and glory of God, will be standing a noble ruin when our new spick-and-span College is a total wreck after all. Such being the difference between the work of really earnest God-fearing men, and that done by contract and Trades' Unions. The Steam Engine, one of the demons of our mad, restless, headlong civilization, is screaming its unearthly whistle in the very quadrangles of the now deserted, but still venerable College buildings in our High Street, almost on the very spot where the philosophic Professors of that day, to their eternal honour, gave a harbourage to James Watt, when the narrow-minded guild-brethren of Glasgow expelled him from their town as a stranger craftsman hailing from Greenock. Such is the irony of events! Excuse the presumption of this rather rambling letter, and apologizing for addressing you at such length, "I am, very faithfully yours." I have only time, just now, to remark on this letter, first, that I don't believe any of Mr. Scott's work is badly done, or will come down soon; and that Trades' Unions are quite right when honest and kind: but the frantic mistake of the Glaswegians, in thinking that they can import learning into their town safely in a Gothic case, and have 180,000 pounds' worth of it at command, while they have banished for ever from their eyes the sight of all that mankind have to learn anything about, is,--Well--as the rest of our enlightened public opinion. They might as well put a pyx into a pigsty, to make the pigs pious. In the second place, as to my correspondent's wish to read my books, I am entirely pleased by it; but, putting the question of fee aside for the nonce, I am not in the least minded, as matters stand, to prescribe my books for him. Nay, so far as in me lies, he shall neither read them, nor learn to trust in any such poor qualifications and partial comforts of the entirely wrong and dreadful condition of life he is in, with millions of others. If a child in a muddy ditch asked me for a picture-book, I should not give it him; but say, "Come out of that first; or, if you cannot, I must go and get help; but picture-books, there, you shall have none!" Only a day and a half in the week on which one can get a walk in the country, (and how few have as much, or anything like it!) just bread enough earned to keep one alive, on those terms--one's daily work asking not so much as a lucifer match's worth of human intelligence;--unwholesome besides--one's chest, shoulders, and stomach getting hourly more useless. Smoke above for sky, mud beneath for water; and the pleasant consciousness of spending one's weary life in the pure service of the devil! And the blacks are emancipated over the water there--and this is what you call "having your own way," here, is it? Very solemnly, my good clerk-friend, there is something to be done in this matter; not merely to be read. Do you know any honest men who have a will of their own, among your neighbours? If none, set yourself to seek for such; if any, commune with them on this one subject, how a man may have sight of the Earth he was made of, and his bread out of the dust of it--and peace! And find out what it is that hinders you now from having these, and resolve that you will fight it, and put end to it. If you cannot find out for yourselves, tell me your difficulties, briefly, and I will deal with them for you, as the Second Fors may teach me. Bring you the First with you, and the Third will help us. And believe me, faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XVII. Florence, 1st May, 1872. My Friends, Have you thought, as I prayed you to think, during the days of April, what things they are that will hinder you from being happy on this first of May? Be assured of it, you are meant, to-day, to be as happy as the birds, at least. If you are not, you, or somebody else, or something that you are one or other responsible for, is wrong; and your first business is to set yourself, them, or it, to rights. Of late you have made that your last business; you have thought things would right themselves, or that it was God's business to right them, not yours. Peremptorily it is yours. Not, observe, to get your rights, but to put things to rights. Some eleven in the dozen of the population of the world are occupied earnestly in putting things to wrongs, thinking to benefit themselves thereby. Is it any wonder, then, you are uncomfortable, when already the world, in our part of it, is over-populated, and eleven in the dozen of the over-population doing diligently wrong; and the remaining dozenth expecting God to do their work for them; and consoling themselves with buying two-shilling publications for eighteenpence? To put things to rights! Do you not know how refreshing it is, even to put one's room to rights, when it has got dusty and decomposed? If no other happiness is to be had, the mere war with decomposition is a kind of happiness. But the war with the Lord of Decomposition, the old Dragon himself,--St. George's war, with a princess to save, and win--are none of you, my poor friends, proud enough to hope for any part in that battle? Do you conceive no figure of any princess for May Queen; or is the definite dragon turned into indefinite cuttlefish, vomiting black venom into the waters of your life; or has he multiplied himself into an host of pulicarious dragons--bug-dragons, insatiable as unclean,--whose food you are, daily? St. George's war! Here, since last May, when I engraved Giotto's Hope for you, have I been asking whether any one would volunteer for such battle? Not one human creature, except a personal friend or two, for mere love of me, has answered. Now, it is true, that my writing may be obscure, or seem only half in earnest. But it is the best I can do: it expresses the thoughts that come to me as they come; and I have no time just now to put them into more intelligible words. And, whether you believe them or not, they are entirely faithful words: I have no interest at all to serve by writing, but yours. And, literally, no one answers. Nay, even those who read, read so carelessly that they don't notice whether the book is to go on or not. Heaven knows; but it shall, if I am able, and what I undertook last May, be fulfilled, so far as the poor faculty or time left me may serve. Read over, now, the end of that letter for May last, from "To talk at a distance," in page 10. I have given you the tenth of all I have, as I promised. I cannot, because of those lawyers I was talking of last month, get it given you in a permanent and accumulative form; besides that, among the various blockheadisms and rascalities of the day, the perversion of old endowments from their appointed purposes being now practised with applause, gives one little encouragement to think of the future. However, the seven thousand pounds are given, and wholly now out of my own power; and, as I said, only two or three friends, for love of me, and one for true love of justice also, have, in the course of the year, joined with me. However, this is partly my own fault, for not saying more clearly what I want; and for expecting people to be moved by writing, instead of by personal effort. The more I see of writing the less I care for it; one may do more with a man by getting ten words spoken with him face to face, than by the black lettering of a whole life's thought. In parenthesis, just read this little bit of Plato; and take it to heart. If the last sentence of it does not fit some people I know of, there is no prophecy on lip of man. Socrates is speaking. "I have heard indeed--but no one can say now if it is true or not--that near Nancratis, in Egypt, there was born one of the old gods, the one to whom the bird is sacred which they call the ibis; and this god or demigod's name was Theuth." Second parenthesis--(Theuth, or Thoth: he always has the head of an ibis with a beautiful long bill, in Egyptian sculpture; and you may see him at the British Museum on stone and papyrus infinite,--especially attending at judgments after death, when people's sins are to be weighed in scales; for he is the Egyptian account-keeper, and adds up, and takes note of, things, as you will hear presently from Plato. He became the god of merchants, and a rogue, among the Romans, and is one now among us). "And this demigod found out first, they say, arithmetic, and logic, and geometry, and astronomy, and gambling, and the art of writing. "And there was then a king over all Egypt, in the great city which the Greeks called Thebes. And Theuth, going to Thebes, showed the king all the arts he had invented, and said they should be taught to the Egyptians. But the king said:--'What was the good of them?' And Theuth telling him, at length, of each, the king blamed some things, and praised others. But when they came to writing: 'Now, this piece of learning, O king,' says Theuth, 'will make the Egyptians more wise and more remembering; for this is physic for the memory, and for wisdom.' But the king answered:--'O most artful Theuth, it is one sort of person's business to invent arts, and quite another sort of person's business to know what mischief or good is in them. And you, the father of letters, are yet so simple-minded that you fancy their power just the contrary of what it really is; for this art of writing will bring forgetfulness into the souls of those who learn it, because, trusting to the external power of the scripture, and stamp [14] of other men's minds, and not themselves putting themselves in mind, within themselves, it is not medicine of divine memory, but a drug of memorandum, that you have discovered, and you will only give the reputation and semblance of wisdom, not the truth of wisdom, to the learners: for,'" (now do listen to this, you cheap education-mongers), "'for becoming hearers of many things, yet without instruction, they will seem to have manifold opinions, but be in truth without any opinions; and the most of them incapable of living together in any good understanding; having become seeming-wise, instead of wise.'" So much for cheap literature; not that I like cheap talk better, mind you; but I wish I could get a word or two with a few honest people, now, face to face. For I have called the fund I have established The St. George's Fund, because I hope to find, here and there, some one who will join in a White Company, like Sir John Hawkwood's, to be called the Company of St. George; which shall have for its end the wise creating and bestowing, instead of the wise stealing, of money. Now it literally happened that before the White Company went into Italy, there was an Italian Company called 'of St. George,' which was afterwards incorporated with Sir John's of the burnished armour; and another company, called 'of the Rose,' which was a very wicked and destructive one. And within my St. George's Company,--which shall be of persons still following their own business, wherever they are, but who will give the tenth of what they have, or make, for the purchase of land in England, to be cultivated by hand, as aforesaid, in my last May number,--shall be another company, not destructive, called of "Monte Rosa," or "Mont Rose," because Monte Rosa is the central mountain of the range between north and south Europe, which keeps the gift of the rain of heaven. And the motto, or watchword of this company is to be the old French "Mont-joie." And they are to be entirely devoted, according to their power, first to the manual labour of cultivating pure land, and guiding of pure streams and rain to the places where they are needed: and secondly, together with this manual labour, and much by its means, they are to carry on the thoughtful labour of true education, in themselves, and of others. And they are not to be monks nor nuns; but are to learn, and teach all fair arts, and sweet order and obedience of life; and to educate the children entrusted to their schools in such practical arts and patient obedience; but not at all, necessarily, in either arithmetic, writing, or reading. That is my design, romantic enough, and at this day difficult enough; yet not so romantic, nor so difficult as your now widely and openly proclaimed design, of making the words "obedience" and "loyalty" to cease from the English tongue. That same number of the 'Republican' which announced that all property must be taken under control, was graced by a frontispiece, representing, figuratively, "Royalty in extremis;" the joyful end of Rule, and of every strength of Kingship; Britannia, having, perhaps, found her waves of late unruly, declaring there shall be no rule over the land neither. Some day I may let you compare this piece of figurative English art with Giotto's; but, meantime, since, before you look so fondly for the end of Royalty, it is well that you should know somewhat of its beginnings, I have given you a picture of one of the companions in the St. George's Company of all time, out of a pretty book, published at Antwerp, by John Baptist Vrints, cutter of figures in copper, on the 16th April, 1598; and giving briefly the stories, and, in no unworthy imagination, the pictures also, of the first 'foresters' (rulers of woods and waves [15]) in Flanders, where the waves once needed, and received, much ruling; and of the Counts of Flanders who succeeded them, of whom this one, Robert, surnamed "of Jerusalem," was the eleventh, and began to reign in 1077, being "a virtuous, prudent, and brave prince," who, having first taken good order in his money affairs, and ended some unjust claims his predecessors had made on church property; and established a perpetual chancellorship, and legal superintendence over his methods of revenue; took the cross against the infidels, and got the name, in Syria, for his prowess, of the "Son of St. George." So he stands, leaning on his long sword--a man desirous of setting the world to rights, if it might be; but not knowing the way of it, nor recognizing that the steel with which it can be done, must take another shape than that double-edged one. And from the eleventh century to this dull nineteenth, less and less the rulers of men have known their weapon. So far, yet, are we from beating sword into ploughshare, that now the sword is set to undo the plough's work when it has been done; and at this hour the ghastliest ruin of all that moulder from the fire, pierced through black rents by the unnatural sunlight above the ashamed streets of Paris, is the long, skeleton, and roofless hollow of the "Grenier d'Abondance." Such Agriculture have we contrived here, in Europe, and ploughing of new furrows for graves. Will you hear how Agriculture is now contrived in America?--where, since you spend your time here in burning corn, you must send to buy it; trusting, however, still to your serviceable friend the Fire, as here to consume, so there, to sow and reap, for repairing of consumption. I have just received a letter from California, which I trust the writer will not blame me for printing:-- "March 1st, 1872. "Sir, "You have so strongly urged 'agriculture by the hand' that it may be of some interest to you to know the result thus far of agriculture by machinery, in California. I am the more willing to address you on this subject from the fact that I may have to do with a new Colony in this State, which will, I trust, adopt, as far as practicable, your ideas as to agriculture by the hand. Such thoughts as you might choose to give regarding the conduct of such a Colony here would be particularly acceptable; and should you deem it expedient to comply with this earnest and sincere request, the following facts may be of service to you in forming just conclusions. "We have a genial climate and a productive soil. Our farms ('ranches') frequently embrace many thousands of acres, while the rule is, scarcely ever less than hundreds of acres. Wheat-fields of 5,000 acres are by no means uncommon, and not a few of above 40,000 acres are known. To cultivate these extensive tracts much machinery is used, such as steam-ploughs, gang-ploughs, reaping, mowing, sowing, and thrashing machines; and seemingly to the utter extermination of the spirit of home, and rural life. Gangs of labourers are hired during the emergency of harvesting; and they are left for the most part unhoused, and are also fed more like animals than men. Harvesting over, they are discharged, and thus are left near the beginning of our long and rainy winters to shift for themselves. Consequently the larger towns and cities are invested for months with idle men and boys. Housebreaking and highway robbery are of almost daily occurrence. As to the farmers themselves, they live in a dreamy, comfortless way, and are mostly without education or refinement. To show them how to live better and cleaner; to give them nobler aims than merely to raise wheat for the English market; to teach them the history of those five cities, and 'their girls to cook exquisitely,' etc., is surely a mission for earnest men in this country, no less than in England, to say nothing of the various accomplishments to which you have alluded. I have caused to be published in some of our farming districts many of the more important of your thoughts bearing on these subjects, and I trust with beneficial results. "I trust I shall not intrude on Mr. Ruskin's patience if I now say something by way of thankfulness for what I have received from your works. [16] I know not certainly if this will ever reach you. If it does, it may in some small way gladden you to know that I owe to your teaching almost all the good I have thus attained. A large portion of my life has been spent at sea, and in roaming in Mexico, Central and South America, and in the Malaysian and Polynesian Islands. I have been a sailor before and abaft the mast. Years ago I found on a remote island of the Pacific the 'Modern Painters'; after them the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture'; and finally your complete works. Ignorant and uncultivated, I began earnestly to follow certain of your teachings. I read most of the books you recommended, simply because you seemed to be my teacher; and so in the course of these years I have come to believe in you about as faithfully as one man ever believes in another. From having no fixed object in life I have finally found that I have something to do, and will ultimately, I trust, have something to say about sea-life, something that has not, I think, hitherto been said--if God ever permits me the necessary leisure from hard railway work, the most hopeless and depressing of all work I have hitherto done. "Your most thankful servant, ----" With the account given in the first part of this letter of the results of mechanical agriculture in California, you shall now compare a little sketch by Marmontel of the peasant life, not mechanical, in his own province. It is given, altering only the name of the river, in the "Contes Moraux," in the story, professing to continue that of Moliére's 'Misanthrope': "Alceste, discontented as you know, both with his mistress and with his judges, decided upon flying from men, and retired very far from Paris to the banks of the Vologne; this river, in which the shells enclose pearl, is yet more precious by the fertility which it causes to spring on its borders; the valley that it waters is one beautiful meadow. On one side of it rise smiling hills, scattered all over with woods and villages, on the other extends a vast level of fields covered with corn. It was there that Alceste went to live, forgotten by all, free from cares, and from irksome duties; entirely his own, and finally delivered from the odious spectacle of the world, he breathed freely, and praised heaven for having broken all his chains. A little study, much exercise, pleasures not vivid, but untroubled; in a word, a life peacefully active, preserved him from the ennui of solitude: he desired nothing, and regretted nothing. One of the pleasures of his retreat was to see the cultivated and fertile ground all about him nourishing a peasantry, which appeared to him happy. For a misanthrope who has become so by his virtue, only thinks that he hates men, because he loves them. Alceste felt a strange softening of the heart mingled with joy at the sight of his fellow-creatures rich by the labour of their hand. 'Those people,' said he, 'are very happy to be still half savage. They would soon be corrupted if they were more civilized.' As he was walking in the country, he chanced upon a labourer who was ploughing, and singing as he ploughed. 'God have a care of you, my good man!' said he; 'you are very gay?' 'I mostly am,' replied the peasant. 'I am happy to hear it: that proves that you are content with your condition.' 'Until now, I have good cause to be.' 'Are you married?' 'Yes, thank heaven.' 'Have you any children?' 'I had five. I have lost one, but that is a mischief that may be mended.' 'Is your wife young?' 'She is twenty-five years old.' 'Is she pretty?' 'She is, for me, but she is better than pretty, she is good.' 'And you love her?' 'If I love her! Who would not love her! I wonder?' 'And she loves you also, without doubt.' 'Oh! for that matter, with all her heart-- just the same as before marriage.' 'Then you loved each other before marriage?' 'Without that, should we have let ourselves be caught?' 'And your children--are they healthy?' 'Ah! it's a pleasure to see them! The eldest is only five years old, and he's already a great deal cleverer than his father, and for my two girls, never was anything so charming! It'll be ill-luck indeed if they don't get husbands. The youngest is sucking yet, but the little fellow will be stout and strong. Would you believe it?--he beats his sisters when they want to kiss their mother!--he's always afraid of anybody's taking him from the breast.' 'All that is, then, very happy?' 'Happy! I should think so--you should see the joy there is when I come back from my work! You would say they hadn't seen me for a year. I don't know which to attend to first. My wife is round my neck--my girls in my arms--my boy gets hold of my legs--little Jeannot is like to roll himself off the bed to get to me--and I, I laugh, and cry, and kiss all at once--for all that makes me cry!' 'I believe it, indeed,' said Alceste. 'You know it, sir, I suppose, for you are doubtless a father?' 'I have not that happiness.' 'So much the worse for you! There's nothing in the world worth having, but that.' 'And how do you live?' 'Very well: we have excellent bread, good milk, and the fruit of our orchard. My wife, with a little bacon, makes a cabbage soup that the King would be glad to eat! Then we have eggs from the poultry-yard; and on Sunday we have a feast, and drink a little cup of wine' 'Yes, but when the year is bad?' 'Well, one expects the year to be bad, sometimes, and one lives on what one has saved from the good years.' 'Then there's the rigour of the weather--the cold and the rain, and the heat--that you have to bear.' 'Well! one gets used to it; and if you only knew the pleasure that one has in the evening, in getting the cool breeze after a day of summer; or, in winter, warming one's hands at the blaze of a good faggot, between one's wife and children; and then one sups with good appetite, and one goes to bed; and think you, that one remembers the bad weather? Sometimes my wife says to me,--"My good man, do you hear the wind and the storm? Ah, suppose you were in the fields?" "But I'm not in the fields, I'm here," I say to her. Ah, sir! there are many people in the fine world, who don't live as content as we.' 'Well! but the taxes?' 'We pay them merrily--and well we should--all the country can't be noble, our squires and judges can't come to work in the fields with us--they do for us what we can't--we do for them what they can't--and every business, as one says, has its pains.' 'What equity!' said the misanthrope; 'there, in two words, is all the economy of primitive society. Ah, Nature! there is nothing just but thee! and the healthiest reason is in thy untaught simplicity. But, in paying the taxes so willingly, don't you run some risk of getting more put on you?' 'We used to be afraid of that; but, thank God, the lord of the place has relieved us from this anxiety. He plays the part of our good king to us. He imposes and receives himself, and, in case of need, makes advances for us. He is as careful of us as if we were his own children.' 'And who is this gallant man?' 'The Viscount Laval--he is known enough, all the country respects him.' 'Does he live in his château?' 'He passes eight months of the year there.' 'And the rest?' 'At Paris, I believe.' 'Does he see any company?' 'The townspeople of Bruyeres, and now and then, some of our old men go to taste his soup and chat with him.' 'And from Paris does he bring nobody?' 'Nobody but his daughter.' 'He is much in the right. And how does he employ himself?' 'In judging between us--in making up our quarrels--in marrying our children--in maintaining peace in our families--in helping them when the times are bad.' 'You must take me to see his village,' said Alceste, 'that must be interesting.' "He was surprised to find the roads, even the cross-roads, bordered with hedges, and kept with care; but, coming on a party of men occupied in mending them, 'Ah!' he said, 'so you've got forced labour here?' 'Forced?' answered an old man who presided over the work. 'We know nothing of that here, sir; all these men are paid, we constrain nobody; only, if there comes to the village a vagrant, or a do-nothing, they send him to me, and if he wants bread he can gain it; or, he must go to seek it elsewhere.' 'And who has established this happy police?' 'Our good lord--our father--the father to all of us.' 'And where do the funds come from?' 'From the commonalty; and, as it imposes the tax on itself, it does not happen here, as too often elsewhere, that the rich are exempted at the expense of the poor.' "The esteem of Alceste increased every moment for the wise and benevolent master who governed all this little country. 'How powerful would a king be!' he said to himself--'and how happy a state! if all the great proprietors followed the example of this one; but Paris absorbs both property and men, it robs all, and swallows up everything.' "The first glance at the village showed him the image of confidence and comfort. He entered a building which had the appearance of a public edifice, and found there a crowd of children, women, and old men occupied in useful labour;--idleness was only permitted to the extremely feeble. Childhood, almost at its first steps out of the cradle, caught the habit and the taste for work; and old age, at the borders of the tomb, still exercised its trembling hands; the season in which the earth rests brought every vigorous arm to the workshops--and then the lathe, the saw, and the hatchet gave new value to products of nature. "'I am not surprised,' said Alceste, 'that this people is pure from vice, and relieved from discontent. It is laborious, and occupied without ceasing.' He asked how the workshop had been established. 'Our good lord,' was the reply, 'advanced the first funds for it. It was a very little place at first, and all that was done was at his expense, at his risk, and to his profit; but, once convinced that there was solid advantage to be gained, he yielded the enterprise to us, and now interferes only to protect; and every year he gives to the village the instruments of some one of our arts. It is the present that he makes at the first wedding which is celebrated in the year.'" Thus wrote, and taught, a Frenchman of the old school, before the Revolution. But worldly-wise Paris went on her own way absorbing property and men; and has attained, this first of May, what means and manner of festival you see in her Grenier d'Abondance. Glance back now to my proposal for the keeping of the first of May, in the letter on "Rose Gardens" in 'Time and Tide,' and discern which state is best for you--modern "civilization," or Marmontel's rusticity, and mine. Ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XVIII. Pisa, 29th April, 1872. My Friends, You would pity me, if you knew how seldom I see a newspaper, just now; but I chanced on one yesterday, and found that all the world was astir about the marriage of the Marquis of B.; and that the Pope had sent him, on that occasion, a telegraphic blessing of super-fine quality. I wonder what the Marquis of B. has done to deserve to be blessed to that special extent, and whether a little mild beatitude, sent here to Pisa, might not have been better spent? For, indeed, before getting hold of the papers, I had been greatly troubled, while drawing the east end of the Duomo, by three fellows who were leaning against the Leaning Tower, and expectorating loudly and copiously, at intervals of half a minute each, over the white marble base of it, which they evidently conceived to have been constructed only to be spit upon. They were all in rags, and obviously proposed to remain in rags all their days, and pass what leisure of life they could obtain, in spitting. There was a boy with them, in rags also, and not less expectorant; but having some remains of human activity in him still, being not more than twelve years old; and he was even a little interested in my brushes and colours, but rewarded himself, after the effort of some attention to these, by revolving slowly round the iron railing in front of me like a pensive squirrel. This operation at last disturbed me so much, that I asked him if there were no other railings in Pisa he could turn upside down over, but these? "Sono cascato, Signor--" "I tumbled over them, please, Sir," said he, apologetically, with infinite satisfaction in his black eyes. Now it seemed to me that these three moist-throated men and the squirrelline boy stood much more in need of a paternal blessing than the Marquis of B.--a blessing, of course, with as much of the bloom off it as would make it consistent with the position in which Providence had placed them; but enough, in its moderate way, to bring the good out of them instead of the evil. For there was all manner of good in them, deep and pure--yet for ever to be dormant; and all manner of evil, shallow and superficial, yet for ever to be active and practical, as matters stood that day, under the Leaning Tower. Lucca, 7th May.--Eight days gone, and I've been working hard, and looking my carefullest; and seem to have done nothing, nor begun to see these places, though I've known them thirty years, and though Mr. Murray's Guide says one may see Lucca, and its Ducal Palace and Piazza, the Cathedral, the Baptistery, nine churches, and the Roman amphitheatre, and take a drive round the ramparts, in the time between the stopping of one train and the starting of the next. I wonder how much time Mr. Murray would allow for the view I had to-day, from the tower of the Cathedral, up the valley called of "Niévole,"--now one tufted softness of fresh springing leaves, far as the eye can reach. You know something of the produce of the hills that bound it, and perhaps of its own: at least, one used to see "Fine Lucca Oil" often enough in the grocers' windows (petroleum has, I suppose, now taken its place), and the staple of Spitalfields was, I believe, first woven with Lucca thread. The actual manner of production of these good things is thus:--The Val di Niévole is some five miles wide by thirty long, and is simply one field of corn or rich grass land, undivided by hedges; the corn two feet high, and more, to-day. Quite Lord Derby's style of agriculture, you think? No; not quite. Undivided by hedges, the fields are yet meshed across and across by an intricate network of posts and chains. The posts are maple-trees, and the chains, garlands of vine. The meshes of this net each enclose two or three acres of the corn-land, with a row of mulberry-trees up the middle of it, for silk. There are poppies, and bright ones too, about the banks and roadsides; but the corn of Val di Niévole is too proud to grow with poppies, and is set with wild gladiolus instead, deep violet. Here and there a mound of crag rises out of the fields, crested with stone-pine, and studded all over with the large stars of the white rock-cistus. Quiet streams, filled with close crowds of the golden waterflag, wind beside meadows painted with purple orchis. On each side of the great plain is a wilderness of hills, veiled at their feet with a grey cloud of olive woods; above, sweet with glades of chestnut; peaks of more distant blue, still, to-day, embroidered with snow, are rather to be thought of as vast precious stones than mountains, for all the state of the world's palaces has been hewn out of their marble. I was looking over all this from under the rim of a large bell, beautifully embossed, with a St. Sebastian upon it, and some lovely thin-edged laurel leaves, and an inscription saying that the people should be filled with the fat of the land, if they listened to the voice of the Lord. The bell-founder of course meant, by the voice of the Lord, the sound of his own bell; and all over the plain, one could see towers rising above the vines voiced in the same manner. Also much trumpeting and fiddling goes on below, to help the bells, on holy days; and, assuredly, here is fat enough of land to be filled with, if listening to these scrapings and tinklings were indeed the way to be filled. The laurel leaves on the bell were so finely hammered that I felt bound to have a ladder set against the lip of it, that I might examine them more closely; and the sacristan and bell-ringer were so interested in this proceeding that they got up, themselves, on the cross-beams, and sat like two jackdaws, looking on, one on each side; for which expression of sympathy I was deeply grateful, and offered the bell-ringer, on the spot, two bank-notes for tenpence each. But they were so rotten with age, and so brittle and black with tobacco, that, having unadvisedly folded them up small in my purse, the patches on their backs had run their corners through them, and they came out tattered like so much tinder. The bell-ringer looked at them hopelessly, and gave me them back. I promised him some better patched ones, and folded the remnants of tinder up carefully, to be kept at Coniston, (where we have still a tenpence-worth or so of copper,--though no olive oil)--for specimens of the currency of the new Kingdom of Italy. Such are the monuments of financial art, attained by a nation which has lived in the fattest of lands for at least three thousand years, and for the last twelve hundred of them has had at least some measure of Christian benediction, with help from bell, book, candle and, recently, even from gas. Yet you must not despise the benediction, though it has not provided them with clean bank-notes. The peasant race, at least, of the Val di Niévole are not unblest; if honesty, kindness, food sufficient for them, and peace of heart, can anywise make up for poverty in current coin. Only the evening before last, I was up among the hills to the south of Lucca, close to the remains of the country-house of Castruccio Castracani, who was Lord of the Val di Niévole, and much good land besides, in the year 1328; (and whose sword, you perhaps remember, was presented to the King of Sardinia, now King of Italy, when first he visited the Lucchese after driving out the old Duke of Tuscany; and Mrs. Browning wrote a poem upon the presentation;) a Neapolitan Duchess has got his country-house now, and has restored it to her taste. Well, I was up among the hills, that way, in places where no English, nor Neapolitans either, ever dream of going, being altogether lovely and at rest, and the country life in them unchanged; and I had several friends with me, and among them one of the young girls who were at Furness Abbey last year; and, scrambling about among the vines, she lost a pretty little cross of Florentine work. Luckily, she had made acquaintance, only the day before, with the peasant mistress of a cottage close by, and with her two youngest children, Adam and Eve. Eve was still tied up tight in swaddling clothes, down to the toes, and carried about as a bundle; but Adam was old enough to run about; and found the cross, and his mother gave it us back next day. Not unblest, such a people, though with some common human care and kindness you might bless them a little more. If only you would not curse them; but the curse of your modern life is fatally near, and only for a few years more, perhaps, they will be seen--driving their tawny kine, or with their sheep following them,--to pass, like pictures in enchanted motion, among their glades of vine. Rome, 12th May.--I am writing at the window of a new inn, whence I have a view of a large green gas-lamp, and of a pond, in rustic rock-work, with four large black ducks in it; also of the top of the Pantheon; sundry ruined walls; tiled roofs innumerable; and a palace about a quarter of a mile long, and the height, as near as I can guess, of Folkestone cliffs under the New Parade; all which I see to advantage over a balustrade veneered with an inch of marble over four inches of cheap stone, carried by balusters of cast iron, painted and sanded, but with the rust coming through,--this being the proper modern recipe in Italy for balustrades which may meet the increasing demand of travellers for splendour of abode. (By the way, I see I can get a pretty little long vignette view of the roof of the Pantheon, and some neighbouring churches, through a chink between the veneering and the freestone.) Standing in this balcony, I am within three hundred yards of the greater Church of St. Mary, from which Castruccio Castracani walked to St. Peter's on 17th January, 1328, carrying the sword of the German Empire, with which he was appointed to gird its Emperor, on his taking possession of Rome, by Castruccio's help, in spite of the Pope. The Lord of the Val di Niévole wore a dress of superb damask silk, doubtless the best that the worms of Lucca mulberry-trees could spin; and across his breast an embroidered scroll, inscribed, "He is what God made him," and across his shoulders, behind, another scroll, inscribed, "And he shall be what God will make." On the 3rd of August, that same year, he recovered Pistoja from the Florentines, and rode home to his own Lucca in triumph, being then the greatest war-captain in Europe, and Lord of Pisa, Pistoja, Lucca, half the coast of Genoa, and three hundred fortified castles in the Apennines; on the third of September he lay dead in Lucca, of fever. "Crushed before the moth;" as the silkworms also, who were boiled before even they became so much as moths, to make his embroidered coat for him. And, humanly speaking, because he had worked too hard in the trenches of Pistoja, in the dog-days, with his armour on, and with his own hands on the mattock, like the good knight he was. Nevertheless, his sword was no gift for the King of Italy, if the Lucchese had thought better of it. For those three hundred castles of his were all Robber-castles, and he, in fact, only the chief captain of the three hundred thieves who lived in them. In the beginning of his career, these "towers of the Lunigiana belonged to gentlemen who had made brigandage in the mountains, or piracy on the sea, the sole occupation of their youth. Castruccio united them round him, and called to his little court all the exiles and adventurers who were wandering from town to town, in search of war or pleasures." [17] And, indeed, to Professors of Art, the Apennine between Lucca and Pistoja is singularly delightful to this day, because of the ruins of these robber-castles on every mound, and of the pretty monasteries and arcades of cloister beside them. But how little we usually estimate the real relation of these picturesque objects! The homes of Baron and Clerk, side by side, established on the hills. Underneath, in the plain, the peasant driving his oxen. The Baron lives by robbing the peasant, and the Clerk by blessing the Baron. Blessing and absolving, though the Barons of grandest type could live, and resolutely die, without absolution. Old Straw-Mattress of Evilstone, [18] at ninety-six, sent his son from beside his death-mattress to attack the castle of the Bishop of Arezzo, thinking the Bishop would be off his guard, news having gone abroad that the grey-haired Knight of Evilstone could sit his horse no more. But, usually, the absolution was felt to be needful towards the end of life; and if one thinks of it, the two kinds of edifices on the hill-tops may be shortly described as those of the Pillager and Pardoner, or Pardonere, Chaucer's word being classical in spelling, and the best general one for the clergy of the two great Evangelical and Papal sects. Only a year or two ago, close to the Crystal Palace, I heard the Rev. Mr. Tipple announce from his pulpit that there was no thief, nor devourer of widows' houses, nor any manner of sinner, in his congregation that day, who might not leave the church an entirely pardoned and entirely respectable person, if he would only believe what the Rev. Mr. Tipple was about to announce to him. Strange, too, how these two great pardoning religions agree in the accompaniment of physical filth. I have never been hindered from drawing street subjects by pure human stench, but in two cities,--Edinburgh and Rome. There are some things, however, which Edinburgh and London pardon, now-a-days, which Rome would not. Penitent thieves, by all means, but not impenitent; still less impenitent peculators. Have patience a little, for I must tell you one or two things more about Lucca: they are all connected with the history of Florence, which is to be one of the five cities you are to be able to give account of; and, by the way, remember at once, that her florin in the 14th century was of such pure gold that when in Chaucer's "Pardonere's Tale" Death puts himself into the daintiest dress he can, it is into a heap of "floreines faire and bright." He has chosen another form at Lucca; and when I had folded up my two bits of refuse tinder, I walked into the Cathedral to look at the golden lamp which hangs before the Sacred Face--twenty-four pounds of pure gold in the lamp: Face of wood: the oath of kings, since William Rufus' days; carved eighteen hundred years ago, if one would believe, and very full of pardon to faithful Lucchese; yet, to some, helpless. There are, I suppose, no educated persons in Italy, and few in England, who do not profess to admire Dante; and, perhaps, out of every hundred of these admirers, three or four may have read the bit about Francesca di Rimini, the death of Ugolino, and the description of the Venetian Arsenal. But even of these honestly studious three or four we should rarely find one, who knew why the Venetian Arsenal was described. You shall hear, if you will. "As, in the Venetian Arsenal, the pitch boils in the winter time, wherewith to caulk their rotten ships ... so, not by fire, but divine art, a thick pitch boiled there, beneath, which had plastered itself all up over the banks on either side. But in it I could see nothing, except the bubbles that its boiling raised, which from time to time made it all swell up over its whole surface, and presently fell back again depressed. And as I looked at it fixedly, and wondered, my guide drew me back hastily, saying, 'Look, look!' And when I turned, I saw behind us, a black devil come running along the rocks. Ah, how wild his face! ah, how bitter his action as he came with his wings wide, light upon his feet! On his shoulder he bore a sinner, grasped by both haunches; and when he came to the bridge foot, he cried down into the pit: 'Here's an ancient from Lucca; put him under, that I may fetch more, for the land is full of such; there, for money, they make "No" into "Yes" quickly.' And he cast him in and turned back,--never mastiff fiercer after his prey. The thrown sinner plunged in the pitch, and curled himself up; but the devils from under the bridge cried out, 'There's no holy face here; here one swims otherwise than in the Serchio.' And they caught him with their hooks and pulled him under, as cooks do the meat in broth; crying, 'People play here hidden; so that they may filch in secret, if they can.'" Doubtless, you consider all this extremely absurd, and are of opinion that such things are not likely to happen in the next world. Perhaps not; nor is it clear that Dante believed they would; but I should be glad if you would tell me what you think is likely to happen there. In the meantime, please to observe Dante's figurative meaning, which is by no means absurd. Every one of his scenes has symbolic purpose, down to the least detail. This lake of pitch is money, which, in our own vulgar English phrase, "sticks to people's fingers;" it clogs and plasters its margin all over, because the mind of a man bent on dishonest gain makes everything within its reach dirty; it bubbles up and down, because underhand gains nearly always involve alternate excitement and depression; and it is haunted by the most cruel and indecent of all the devils, because there is nothing so mean, and nothing so cruel, but a peculator will do it. So you may read every line figuratively, if you choose: all that I want is, that you should be acquainted with the opinions of Dante concerning peculation. For with the history of the five cities, I wish you to know also the opinions, on all subjects personally interesting to you, of five people who lived in them; namely, of Plato, Virgil, Dante, Victor Carpaccio (whose opinions I must gather for you from his paintings, for painting is the way Venetians write), and Shakespeare. If, after knowing these five men's opinions on practical matters (these five, as you will find, being all of the same mind), you prefer to hold Mr. J. S. Mill's and Mr. Fawcett's opinions, you are welcome. And indeed I may as well end this by at once examining some of Mr. Fawcett's statements on the subject of Interest, that being one of our chief modern modes of peculation; but, before we put aside Dante for to-day, just note farther this, that while he has sharp punishment for thieves, forgers, and peculators,--the thieves being changed into serpents, the forgers covered with leprosy, and the peculators boiled in pitch,--he has no punishment for bad workmen; no Tuscan mind at that day being able to conceive such a ghastly sin as a man's doing bad work wilfully; and, indeed, I think the Tuscan mind, and in some degree the Piedmontese, retain some vestige of this old temper; for though, not a fortnight since (on 3rd May), the cross of marble in the arch-spandril next the east end of the Chapel of the Thorn at Pisa was dashed to pieces before my eyes, as I was drawing it for my class in heraldry at Oxford, by a stone-mason, that his master might be paid for making a new one, I have no doubt the new one will be as honestly like the old as master and man can make it; and Mr. Murray's Guide will call it a judicious restoration. So also, though here, the new Government is digging through the earliest rampart of Rome (agger of Servius Tullius), to build a new Finance Office, which will doubtless issue tenpenny notes in Latin, with the dignity of denarii (the "pence" of your New Testament), I have every reason to suppose the new Finance Office will be substantially built, and creditable to its masons; (the veneering and cast-iron work being, I believe, done mostly at the instigation of British building companies). But it seems strange to me that, coming to Rome for quite other reasons, I should be permitted by the Third Fors to see the agger of Tullius cut through, for the site of a Finance Office, and his Mons Justitiæ (Mount of Justice), presumably the most venerable piece of earth in Italy, carted away, to make room for a railroad-station of Piccola Velocità. For Servius Tullius was the first king who stamped money with the figures of animals, and introduced a word among the Romans with the sound of which Englishmen are also now acquainted, "pecunia." Moreover, it is in speaking of this very agger of Tullius that Livy explains in what reverence the Romans held the space between the outer and inner walls of their cities, which modern Italy delights to turn into a Boulevard. Now then, for Mr. Fawcett:-- At the 146th page of the edition of his 'Manual' previously quoted, you will find it stated that the interest of money consists of three distinct parts: 1. Reward for abstinence. 2. Compensation for the risk of loss. 3. Wages for the labour of superintendence. I will reverse this order in examining the statements; for the only real question is as to the first, and we had better at once clear the other two away from it. 3. Wages for the labour of superintendence. By giving the capitalist wages at all, we put him at once into the class of labourers, which in my November letter I showed you is partly right; but, by Mr. Fawcett's definition, and in the broad results of business, he is not a labourer. So far as he is one, of course, like any other, he is to be paid for his work. There is no question but that the partner who superintends any business should be paid for superintendence; but the question before us is only respecting payment for doing nothing. I have, for instance, at this moment 15,000l. of Bank Stock, and receive 1,200l. odd, a year, from the Bank, but I have never received the slightest intimation from the directors that they wished for my assistance in the superintendence of that establishment;--(more shame for them.) But even in cases where the partners are active, it does not follow that the one who has most money in the business is either fittest to superintend it, or likely to do so; it is indeed probable that a man who has made money already will know how to make more; and it is necessary to attach some importance to property as the sign of sense: but your business is to choose and pay your superintendent for his sense, and not for his money. Which is exactly what Mr. Carlyle has been telling you for some time; and both he and all his disciples entirely approve of interest, if you are indeed prepared to define that term as payment for the exercise of common sense spent in the service of the person who pays for it. I reserve yet awhile, however, what is to be said, as hinted in my first letter, about the sale of ideas. 2. Compensation for risk. Does Mr. Fawcett mean by compensation for risk, protection from it, or reward for running it? Every business involves a certain quantity of risk, which is properly covered by every prudent merchant, but he does not expect to make a profit out of his risks, nor calculate on a percentage on his insurance. If he prefer not to insure, does Professor Fawcett mean that his customers ought to compensate him for his anxiety; and that while the definition of the first part of interest is extra payment for prudence, the definition of the second part of interest is extra payment for imprudence? Or, does Professor Fawcett mean, what is indeed often the fact, that interest for money represents such reward for risk as people may get across the green cloth at Homburg or Monaco? Because so far as what used to be business is, in modern political economy, gambling, Professor Fawcett will please to observe that what one gamester gains another loses. You cannot get anything out of Nature, or from God, by gambling;--only out of your neighbour: and to the quantity of interest of money thus gained, you are mathematically to oppose a precisely equal disinterest of somebody else's money. These second and third reasons for interest then, assigned by Professor Fawcett, have evidently nothing whatever to do with the question. What I want to know is, why the Bank of England is paying me 1,200l. a year. It certainly does not pay me for superintendence. And so far from receiving my dividend as compensation for risk, I put my money into the bank because I thought it exactly the safest place to put it in. But nobody can be more anxious than I to find it proper that I should have 1,200l. a year. Finding two of Mr. Fawcett's reasons fail me utterly, I cling with tenacity to the third, and hope the best from it. The third, or first,--and now too sorrowfully the last--of the Professor's reasons, is this, that my 1,200l. are given me as "the reward of abstinence." It strikes me, upon this, that if I had not my 15,000l. of Bank Stock I should be a good deal more abstinent than I am, and that nobody would then talk of rewarding me for it. It might be possible to find even cases of very prolonged and painful abstinence, for which no reward has yet been adjudged by less abstinent England. Abstinence may, indeed, have its reward, nevertheless; but not by increase of what we abstain from, unless there be a law of growth for it, unconnected with our abstinence. "You cannot have your cake and eat it." Of course not; and if you don't eat it, you have your cake; but not a cake and a half! Imagine the complex trial of schoolboy minds, if the law of nature about cakes were, that if you ate none of your cake to-day, you would have ever so much bigger a cake to-morrow!--which is Mr. Fawcett's notion of the law of nature about money; and, alas, many a man's beside,--it being no law of nature whatever, but absolutely contrary to all her laws, and not to be enacted by the whole force of united mankind. Not a cake and a quarter to-morrow, dunce, however abstinent you are--only the cake you have,--if the mice don't get at it in the night. Interest, then, is not, it appears, payment for labour; it is not reward for risk; it is not reward for abstinence. What is it? One of two things it is;--taxation, or usury. Of which in my next letter. Meantime believe me Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XIX. Verona, 18th June, 1872. My Friends, What an age of progress it is, by help of advertisements! No wonder you put some faith in them, friends. In summer one's work is necessarily much before breakfast; so, coming home tired to-day, I order a steak, with which is served to me a bottle of "Moutarde Diaphane," from Bordeaux. What a beautiful arrangement have we here! Fancy the appropriate mixture of manufactures of cold and hot at Bordeaux--claret and diaphanous mustard! Then the quantity of printing and proclamation necessary to make people in Verona understand that diaphanous mustard is desirable, and may be had at Bordeaux. Fancy, then, the packing, and peeping into the packages, and porterages, and percentages on porterages; and the engineering, and the tunnelling, and the bridge-building, and the steam whistling, and the grinding of iron, and raising of dust in the Limousin (Marmontel's country), and in Burgundy, and in Savoy, and under the Mont Cenis, and in Piedmont, and in Lombardy, and at last over the field of Solferino, to fetch me my bottle of diaphanous mustard! And to think that, besides paying the railway officers all along the line, and the custom-house officers at the frontier, and the original expenses of advertisement, and the profits of its proprietors, my diaphanous mustard paid a dividend to somebody or other, all the way here! I wonder it is not more diaphanous by this time! An age of progress, indeed, in which the founding of my poor St. George's Company, growing its own mustard, and desiring no dividends, may well seem difficult. I have scarcely had courage yet to insist on that second particular, but will try to find it, on this Waterloo day. Observe, then, once for all, it is to be a company for Alms-giving, not for dividend-getting. For I still believe in Alms-giving, though most people now-a-days do not, but think the only hopeful way of serving their neighbour is to make a profit out of him. I am of opinion, on the contrary, that the hopefullest way of serving him is to let him make a profit out of me, and I only ask the help of people who are at one with me in that mind. Alms-giving, therefore, is to be our function; yet alms only of a certain sort. For there are bedesmen and bedesmen, and our charities must be as discriminate as possible. For instance, those two steely and stalwart horsemen, who sit, by the hour, under the two arches opposite Whitehall, from ten to four per diem, to receive the public alms. It is their singular and well-bred manner of begging, indeed, to keep their helmets on their heads, and sit erect on horseback; but one may, with slight effort of imagination, conceive the two helmets held in a reversed manner, each in the mouth of a well-bred and politely-behaving dog, Irish greyhound, or the like; sitting erect, it also, paws in air, with the brass instead of copper pan in its mouth, plume downwards, for reception of pence. "Ready to fight for us, they are, on occasional 18ths of June." Doubtless, and able-bodied;--barons of truest make: but I thought your idea of discriminate charity was to give rather to the sick than the able-bodied? and that you have no hope of interfering henceforward, except by money payments, in any foreign affairs? "But the Guards are necessary to keep order in the Park." Yes, certainly, and farther than the Park. The two breastplated figures, glittering in transfixed attitudes on each side of the authoritative clock, are, indeed, very precious time-piece ornamentation. No watchmaker's window in Paris or Geneva can show the like. Finished little figures, perfect down to the toes of their boots,--the enamelled clasp on the girdle of the British Constitution!--You think the security of that depends on the freedom of your press, and the purity of your elections? Do but unclasp this piece of dainty jewellery; send the metal of it to the melting-pot, and see where your British Constitution will be, in a few turns of the hands of the faultless clock. They are precious statues, these, good friends; set there to keep you and me from having too much of our own way; and I joyfully and gratefully drop my penny into each helmet as I pass by, though I expect no other dividend from that investment than good order, picturesque effect, and an occasional flourish on the kettle-drum. Likewise, from their contributed pence, the St. George's Company must be good enough to expect dividend only in good order and picturesque effect of another sort. For my notion of discriminate charity is by no means, like most other people's, the giving to unable-bodied paupers. My alms-people are to be the ablest bodied I can find; the ablest minded I can make; and from ten to four every day will be on duty. Ten to four, nine to three, or perhaps six to twelve;--just the time those two gilded figures sit with their tools idle on their shoulders, (being fortunately without employment,) my ungilded, but not unstately, alms-men shall stand with tools at work, mattock or flail, axe or hammer. And I do not doubt but in little time, they will be able to thresh or hew rations for their day out of the ground, and that our help to them need only be in giving them that to hew them out of. Which, you observe, is just what I ask may be bought for them. "'May be bought,' but by whom? and for whom, how distributed, in whom vested?" and much more you have to ask. As soon as I am sure you understand what needs to be done, I will satisfy you as to the way of doing it. But I will not let you know my plans, till you acknowledge my principles, which I have no expectation of your doing yet awhile. June 22nd. "Bought for them"--for whom? How should I know? The best people I can find, or make, as chance may send them: the Third Fors must look to it. Surely it cannot matter much, to you, whom the thing helps, so long as you are quite sure, and quite content, that it won't help you? That last sentence is wonderfully awkward English, not to say ungrammatical; but I must write such English as may come to-day, for there's something wrong with the Post, or the railroads, and I have no revise of what I wrote for you at Florence, a fortnight since; so that must be left for the August Letter, and meanwhile I must write something quickly in its place, or be too late for the first of July. Of the many things I have to say to you, it matters little which comes first; indeed, I rather like the Third Fors to take the order of them into her hands, out of mine. I repeat my question. It surely cannot matter to you whom the thing helps, so long as you are content that it won't, or can't, help you? But are you content so? For that is the essential condition of the whole business--I will not speak of it in terms of money--are you content to give work? Will you build a bit of wall, suppose--to serve your neighbour, expecting no good of the wall yourself? If so, you must be satisfied to build the wall for the man who wants it built; you must not be resolved first to be sure that he is the best man in the village. Help any one, anyhow you can: so, in order, the greatest possible number will be helped; nay, in the end, perhaps, you may get some shelter from the wind under your charitable wall yourself; but do not expect it, nor lean on any promise that you shall find your bread again, once cast away; I can only say that of what I have chosen to cast fairly on the waters myself, I have never yet, after any number of days, found a crumb. Keep what you want; cast what you can, and expect nothing back, once lost, or once given. But for the actual detail of the way in which benefit might thus begin, and diffuse itself, here is an instance close at hand. Yesterday a thunder-shower broke over Verona in the early afternoon; and in a quarter of an hour the streets were an inch deep in water over large spaces, and had little rivers at each side of them. All these little rivers ran away into the large river--the Adige, which plunges down under the bridges of Verona, writhing itself in strong rage; for Verona, with its said bridges, is a kind of lock-gate upon the Adige, half open--lock-gate on the ebbing rain of all the South Tyrolese Alps. The little rivers ran into it, not out of the streets only, but from all the hillsides; millions of sudden streams. If you look at Charles Dickens's letter about the rain in Glencoe, in Mr. Forster's Life of him, it will give you a better idea of the kind of thing than I can, for my forte is really not description, but political economy. Two hours afterwards the sky was clear, the streets dry, the whole thunder-shower was in the Adige, ten miles below Verona, making the best of its way to the sea, after swelling the Po a little (which is inconveniently high already), and I went out with my friends to see the sun set clear, as it was likely to do, and did, over the Tyrolese mountains. The place fittest for such purpose is a limestone crag about five miles nearer the hills, rising out of the bed of a torrent, which, as usual, I found a bed only; a little washing of the sand into moist masses here and there being the only evidence of the past rain. Above it, where the rocks were dry, we sat down, to draw, or to look; but I was too tired to draw, and cannot any more look at a sunset with comfort, because, now that I am fifty-three, the sun seems to me to set so horribly fast; when one was young, it took its time; but now it always drops like a shell, and before I can get any image of it, is gone, and another day with it. So, instead of looking at the sun, I got thinking about the dry bed of the stream, just beneath. Ugly enough it was; cut by occasional inundation irregularly out of the thick masses of old Alpine shingle, nearly every stone of it the size of an ostrich-egg. And, by the way, the average size of shingle in given localities is worth your thinking about, geologically. All through this Veronese plain the stones are mostly of ostrich-egg size and shape; some forty times as big as the pebbles of English shingle (say of the Addington Hills), and not flat nor round; but resolvedly oval. Now there is no reason, that I know of, why large mountains should break into large pebbles, and small ones into small; and indeed the consistent reduction of our own masses of flint, as big as a cauliflower, leaves and all, into the flattish rounded pebble, seldom wider across than half a crown, of the banks of Addington, is just as strange a piece of systematic reduction as the grinding of Monte Baldo into sculpture of ostrich-eggs:--neither of the processes, observe, depending upon questions of time, but of method of fracture. The evening drew on, and two peasants who had been cutting hay on a terrace of meadow among the rocks, left their work, and came to look at the sketchers, and make out, if they could, what we wanted on their ground. They did not speak to us, but bright light came into the face of one, evidently the master, on being spoken to, and excuse asked of him for our presence among his rocks, by which he courteously expressed himself as pleased, no less than (though this he did not say) puzzled. Some talk followed, of cold and heat, and anything else one knew the Italian for, or could understand the Veronese for (Veronese being more like Spanish than Italian); and I praised the country, as was just, or at least as I could, and said I should like to live there. Whereupon he commended it also, in measured terms; and said the wine was good. "But the water?" I asked, pointing to the dry river-bed. The water was bitter, he said, and little wholesome. "Why, then, have you let all that thunder-shower go down the Adige, three hours ago?" "That was the way the showers came." "Yes, but not the way they ought to go." (We were standing by the side of a cleft in the limestone which ran down through ledge after ledge, from the top of the cliff, mostly barren; but my farmer's man had led two of his grey oxen to make what they could of supper from the tufts of grass on the sides of it, half an hour before). "If you had ever been at the little pains of throwing half-a-dozen yards of wall here, from rock to rock, you would have had, at this moment, a pool of standing water as big as a mill-pond, kept out of that thunder-shower, which very water, to-morrow morning, will probably be washing away somebody's hay-stack into the Po." The above was what I wanted to say; but didn't know the Italian for hay-stack. I got enough out to make the farmer understand what I meant. Yes, he said, that would be very good, but "la spesa?" "The expense! What would be the expense to you of gathering a few stones from this hillside? And the idle minutes, gathered out of a week, if a neighbour or two joined in the work, could do all the building." He paused at this--the idea of neighbours joining in work appearing to him entirely abortive, and untenable by a rational being. Which indeed, throughout Christendom, it at present is,--thanks to the beautiful instructions and orthodox catechisms impressed by the two great sects of Evangelical and Papal pardoneres on the minds of their respective flocks--(and on their lips also, early enough in the lives of the little bleating things. "Che cosa è la fede?" I heard impetuously interrogated of a seven years' old one, by a conscientious lady in a black gown and white cap, in St. Michael's, at Lucca, and answered in a glib speech a quarter of a minute long). Neither have I ever thought of, far less seriously proposed, such a monstrous thing as that neighbours should help one another; but I have proposed, and do solemnly still propose, that people who have got no neighbours, but are outcasts and Samaritans, as it were, should put whatever twopenny charity they can afford into useful unity of action; and that, caring personally for no one, practically for every one, they should undertake "la spesa" of work that will pay no dividend on their twopences; but will both produce and pour oil and wine where they are most wanted. And I do solemnly propose that the St. George's Company in England, and (please the University of Padua) a St. Anthony's Company in Italy, should positively buy such bits of barren ground as this farmer's at Verona, and make the most of them that agriculture and engineering can. Venice, 23rd June. My letter will be a day or two late, I fear, after all; for I can't write this morning, because of the accursed whistling of the dirty steam-engine of the omnibus for Lido, waiting at the quay of the Ducal Palace for the dirty population of Venice, which is now neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor fisherman--cannot afford to be rowed, nor has strength nor sense enough to row itself; but smokes and spits up and down the piazzetta all day, and gets itself dragged by a screaming kettle to Lido next morning, to sea-bathe itself into capacity for more tobacco. Yet I am grateful to the Third Fors for stopping my revise; because just as I was passing by Padua yesterday I chanced upon this fact, which I had forgotten (do me the grace to believe that I knew it twenty years ago), in Antonio Caccianiga's 'Vita Campestre.' [19] "The Venetian Republic founded in Padua"--(wait a minute; for the pigeons are come to my window-sill and I must give them some breakfast)--"founded in Padua, in 1765, the first chair of rural economy appointed in Italy, annexed to it a piece of ground destined for the study, and called Peter Ardouin, a Veronese botanist, to honour the school with his lectures." Yes; that is all very fine; nevertheless, I am not quite sure that rural economy, during the 1760 years previous, had not done pretty well without a chair, and on its own legs. For, indeed, since the beginning of those philosophies in the eighteenth century, the Venetian aristocracy has so ill prospered that instead of being any more able to give land at Padua, it cannot so much as keep a poor acre of it decent before its own Ducal Palace, in Venice; nor hinder this miserable mob, which has not brains enough to know so much as what o'clock it is, nor sense enough so much as to go aboard a boat without being whistled for like dogs, from choking the sweet sea air with pitch-black smoke, and filling it with entirely devilish noise, which no properly bred human being could endure within a quarter of a mile of them--that so they may be sufficiently assisted and persuaded to embark, for the washing of themselves, at the Palace quay. It is a strange pass for things to have reached, under politic aristocracies and learned professors; but the policy and learning became useless, through the same kind of mistake on both sides. The professors of botany forgot that botany, in its original Greek, meant a science of things to be eaten; they pursued it only as a science of things to be named. And the politic aristocracy forgot that their own "bestness" consisted essentially in their being fit--in a figurative manner--to be eaten, and fancied rather that their superiority was of a titular character, and that the beauty and power of their order lay wholly in being fit to be--named. I must go back to my wall-building, however, for a minute or two more, because you might probably think that my answer to the farmer's objection about expense, (even if I had possessed Italian enough to make it intelligible,) would have been an insufficient one; and that the operation of embanking hill-sides so as to stay the rain-flow, is a work of enormous cost and difficulty. Indeed, a work productive of good so infinite as this would be, and contending for rule over the grandest forces of nature, cannot be altogether cheap, nor altogether facile. But spend annually one-tenth of the sum you now give to build embankments against imaginary enemies, in building embankments for the help of people whom you may easily make your real friends,--and see whether your budget does not become more satisfactory, so; and, above all, learn a little hydraulics. I wasted some good time, a year or two since, over a sensational novel in one of our magazines, which I thought would tell me more of what the public were thinking about strikes than I could learn elsewhere. But it spent itself in dramatic effects with lucifer matches, and I learned nothing from it, and the public mislearned much. It ended, (no, I believe it didn't end,--but I read no farther,) with the bursting of a reservoir, and the floating away of a village. The hero, as far as I recollect, was in the half of a house which was just going to be washed down; and the anti-hero was opposite him, in the half of a tree which was just going to be torn up; and the heroine was floating between them down the stream, and one wasn't to know, till next month, which would catch her. But the hydraulics were the essentially bad part of the book, for the author made great play with the tremendous weight of water against his embankment;--it never having occurred to him that the gate of a Liverpool dry dock can keep out--and could just as easily for that matter keep in--the Atlantic Ocean, to the necessary depth in feet and inches; the depth giving the pressure, not the superficies. Nay, you may see, not unfrequently, on Margate sands, your own six-years-old engineers of children keep out the Atlantic ocean quite successfully, for a little while, from a favourite hole; the difficulty being not at all in keeping the Atlantic well out at the side, but from surreptitiously finding its way in at the bottom. And that is the real difficulty for old engineers; properly the only one; you must not let the Atlantic begin to run surreptitiously either in or out, else it soon becomes difficult to stop; and all reservoirs ought to be wide, not deep, when they are artificial, and should not be immediately above villages (though they might always be made perfectly safe merely by dividing them by walls, so that the contents could not run out all at once). But when reservoirs are not artificial, when the natural rocks, with adamantine wall, and embankment built up from the earth's centre, are ready to catch the rain for you, and render it back as pure as their own crystal,--if you will only here and there throw an iron valve across a cleft,--believe me--if you choose to have a dividend out of Heaven, and sell the Rain, you may get it a good deal more easily and at a figure or two higher per cent. than you can on diaphanous mustard. There are certainly few men of my age who have watched the ways of Alpine torrents so closely as I have (and you need not think my knowing something of art prevents me from understanding them, for the first good canal-engineer in Italy was Lionardo da Vinci, and more drawings of water-wheels and water-eddies exist of his, by far, than studies of hair and eyes); and the one strong impression I have respecting them is their utter docility and passiveness, if you will educate them young. But our wise engineers invariably try to manage faggots instead of sticks; and, leaving the rivulets of the Viso without training, debate what bridle is to be put in the mouth of the Po! Which, by the way, is a running reservoir, considerably above the level of the plain of Lombardy; and if the bank of that one should break, any summer's day, there will be news of it, and more cities than Venice with water in their streets. June 24th. You must be content with a short letter (I wish I could flatter myself you would like a longer one) this month; but you will probably see some news of the weather here, yesterday afternoon, which will give some emphasis to what I have been saying, not for the first time by any means; and so I leave you to think of it, and remain Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I have received from Wells, in Somersetshire, thirty pounds for the St. George's Fund, the first money sent me by a stranger. For what has been given me by my personal friends I will account to them privately; and, henceforward, will accept no more given in their courteous prejudice, lest other friends, who do not believe in my crotchets, should be made uncomfortable. I am not quite sure if the sender of this money from Somersetshire would like his name to appear in so wide solitude; and therefore content myself with thus thanking him, and formally opening my accounts. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XX. Venice, 3rd July, 1872. My Friends, You probably thought I had lost my temper, and written inconsiderately, when I called the whistling of the Lido steamer 'accursed.' I never wrote more considerately; using the longer and weaker word 'accursed' instead of the simple and proper one, 'cursed,' to take away, as far as I could, the appearance of unseemly haste; and using the expression itself on set purpose, not merely as the fittest for the occasion, but because I have more to tell you respecting the general benediction engraved on the bell of Lucca, and the particular benediction bestowed on the Marquis of B.; several things more, indeed, of importance for you to know, about blessing and cursing. Some of you may perhaps remember the saying of St. James about the tongue: "Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse we men; out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." It is not clear whether St. James means that there should be no cursing at all, (which I suppose he does,) or merely that the blessing and cursing should not be uttered by the same lips. But his meaning, whatever it was, did not, in the issue, matter; for the Church of Christendom has always ignored this text altogether, and appointed the same persons in authority to deliver on all needful occasions, benediction or malediction, as either might appear to them due; while our own most learned sect, wielding State power, has not only appointed a formal service of malediction in Lent, but commanded the Psalms of David, in which the blessing and cursing are inlaid as closely as the black and white in a mosaic floor, to be solemnly sung through once a month. I do not wish, however, to-day to speak to you of the practice of the churches; but of your own, which, observe, is in one respect singularly different. All the churches, of late years, paying less and less attention to the discipline of their people, have felt an increasing compunction in cursing them when they did wrong; while also, the wrong doing, through such neglect of discipline, becoming every day more complex, ecclesiastical authorities perceived that, if delivered with impartiality, the cursing must be so general, and the blessing so defined, as to give their services an entirely unpopular character. Now, there is a little screw steamer just passing, with no deck, an omnibus cabin, a flag at both ends, and a single passenger; she is not twelve yards long, yet the beating of her screw has been so loud across the lagoon for the last five minutes, that I thought it must be a large new steamer coming in from the sea, and left my work to go and look. Before I had finished writing that last sentence, the cry of a boy selling something black out of a basket on the quay became so sharply distinguished above the voices of the always-debating gondoliers, that I must needs stop again, and go down to the quay to see what he had got to sell. They were half-rotten figs, shaken down, untimely, by the midsummer storms: his cry of "Fighiaie" scarcely ceased, being delivered, as I observed, just as clearly between his legs, when he was stooping to find an eatable portion of the black mess to serve a customer with, as when he was standing up. His face brought the tears into my eyes, so open, and sweet, and capable it was; and so sad. I gave him three very small halfpence, but took no figs, to his surprise: he little thought how cheap the sight of him and his basket was to me, at the money; nor what this fruit, "that could not be eaten, it was so evil," sold cheap before the palace of the Dukes of Venice, meant, to any one who could read signs, either in earth, or her heaven and sea. [20] Well; the blessing, as I said, not being now often legitimately applicable to particular people by Christian priests, they gradually fell into the habit of giving it of pure grace and courtesy to their congregations; or more especially to poor persons, instead of money, or to rich ones, in exchange for it,--or generally to any one to whom they wished to be polite: while, on the contrary, the cursing, having now become widely applicable, and even necessary, was left to be understood, but not expressed; and at last, to all practical purpose, abandoned altogether, (the rather that it had become very disputable whether it ever did any one the least mischief); so that, at this time being, the Pope, in his charmingest manner, blesses the bridecake of the Marquis of B., making, as it were, an ornamental confectionery figure of himself on the top of it; but has not, in anywise, courage to curse the King of Italy, although that penniless monarch has confiscated the revenues of every time-honoured religious institution in Italy; and is about, doubtless, to commission some of the Raphaels in attendance at his court, (though, I believe, grooms are more in request there,) to paint an opposition fresco in the Vatican, representing the Sardinian instead of the Syrian Heliodorus, successfully abstracting the treasures of the temple, and triumphantly putting its angels to flight. Now the curious difference between your practice, and the Church's, to which I wish to-day to direct your attention, is, that while thus the clergy, in what efforts they make to retain their influence over human mind, use cursing little, and blessing much, you working-men more and more frankly every day adopt the exactly contrary practice of using benediction little, and cursing much: so that, even in the ordinary course of conversation among yourselves, you very rarely bless, audibly, so much as one of your own children; but not unfrequently damn, audibly, them, yourselves, and your friends. I wish you to think over the meaning of this habit of yours very carefully with me. I call it a habit of yours, observe, only with reference to your recent adoption of it. You have learned it from your superiors; but they, partly in consequence of your too eager imitation of them, are beginning to mend their manners; and it would excite much surprise, nowadays, in any European court, to hear the reigning monarch address the heir-apparent on an occasion of state festivity, as a Venetian ambassador heard our James the First address Prince Charles,--"Devil take you, why don't you dance?" But, strictly speaking, the prevalence of the habit among all classes of laymen is the point in question. 4th July. And first, it is necessary that you should understand accurately the difference between swearing and cursing, vulgarly so often confounded. They are entirely different things: the first is invoking the witness of a Spirit to an assertion you wish to make; the second is invoking the assistance of a Spirit, in a mischief you wish to inflict. When ill-educated and ill-tempered people clamorously confuse the two invocations, they are not, in reality, either cursing or swearing; but merely vomiting empty words indecently. True swearing and cursing must always be distinct and solemn; here is an old Latin oath, for instance, which, though borrowed from a stronger Greek one, and much diluted, is still grand: "I take to witness the Earth, and the stars, and the sea; the two lights of heaven; the falling and rising of the year; the dark power of the gods of sorrow; the sacredness of unbending Death; and may the Father of all things hear me, who sanctifies covenants with his lightning. For I lay my hand on the altar, and by the fires thereon, and the gods to whom they burn, I swear that no future day shall break this peace for Italy, nor violate the covenant she has made." That is old swearing: but the lengthy forms of it appearing partly burdensome to the celerity, and partly superstitious to the wisdom, of modern minds, have been abridged,--in England, for the most part, into the extremely simple "By God;" in France into "Sacred name of God" (often the first word of the sentence only pronounced), and in Italy into "Christ" or "Bacchus;" the superiority of the former Deity being indicated by omitting the preposition before the name. The oaths are "Christ,"--never "by Christ;" and "by Bacchus,"--never "Bacchus." Observe also that swearing is only by extremely ignorant persons supposed to be an infringement of the Third Commandment. It is disobedience to the teaching of Christ; but the Third Commandment has nothing to do with the matter. People do not take the name of God in vain when they swear; they use it, on the contrary, very earnestly and energetically to attest what they wish to say. But when the Monster Concert at Boston begins, on the English day, with the hymn, "The will of God be done," while the audience know perfectly well that there is not one in a thousand of them who is trying to do it, or who would have it done, if he could help it, unless it was his own will too,--that is taking the name of God in vain, with a vengeance. Cursing, on the other hand, is invoking the aid of a Spirit to a harm you wish to see accomplished, but which is too great for your own immediate power: and to-day I wish to point out to you what intensity of faith in the existence and activity of a spiritual world is evinced by the curse which is characteristic of the English tongue. For, observe, habitual as it has become, there is still so much life and sincerity in the expression, that we all feel our passion partly appeased in its use; and the more serious the occasion, the more practical and effective the cursing becomes. In Mr. Kinglake's "History of the Crimean War," you will find the --th Regiment at Alma is stated to have been materially assisted in maintaining position quite vital to the battle by the steady imprecation delivered at it by its colonel for half an hour on end. No quantity of benediction would have answered the purpose; the colonel might have said, "Bless you, my children," in the tenderest tones, as often as he pleased,--yet not have helped his men to keep their ground. I want you therefore, first, to consider how it happens that cursing seems at present the most effectual means for encouraging human work; and whether it may not be conceivable that the work itself is of a kind which any form of effectual blessing would hinder instead of help. Then, secondly, I want you to consider what faith in a spiritual world is involved in the terms of the curse we usually employ. It has two principal forms; one complete and unqualified, "God damn your soul," implying that the soul is there, and that we cannot be satisfied with less than its destruction: the other, qualified, and on the bodily members only; "God damn your eyes and limbs." It is this last form I wish especially to examine. For how do you suppose that either eye, or ear, or limb, can be damned? What is the spiritual mischief you invoke? Not merely the blinding of the eye, nor palsy of the limb; but the condemnation or judgment of them. And remember that though you are for the most part unconscious of the spiritual meaning of what you say, the instinctive satisfaction you have in saying it is as much a real movement of the spirit within you, as the beating of your heart is a real movement of the body, though you are unconscious of that also, till you put your hand on it. Put your hand also, so to speak, upon the source of the satisfaction with which you use this curse; and ascertain the law of it. Now this you may best do by considering what it is which will make the eyes and the limbs blessed. For the precise contrary of that must be their damnation. What do you think was the meaning of that saying of Christ's, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see"? For to be made evermore incapable of seeing such things, must be the condemnation of the eyes. It is not merely the capacity of seeing sunshine, which is their blessing; but of seeing certain things under the sunshine; nay, perhaps, even without sunshine, the eye itself becoming a Sun. Therefore, on the other hand, the curse upon the eyes will not be mere blindness to the daylight, but blindness to particular things under the daylight; so that, when directed towards these, the eye itself becomes as the Night. Again, with regard to the limbs, or general powers of the body. Do you suppose that when it is promised that "the lame man shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing"--(Steam-whistle interrupts me from the Capo d' Istria, which is lying in front of my window with her black nose pointed at the red nose of another steamer at the next pier. There are nine large ones at this instant,--half-past six, morning, 4th July,--lying between the Church of the Redeemer and the Canal of the Arsenal; one of them an iron-clad, five smoking fiercely, and the biggest,--English, and half a quarter of a mile long,--blowing steam from all manner of pipes in her sides, and with such a roar through her funnel--whistle number two from Capo d' Istria--that I could not make any one hear me speak in this room without an effort,)--do you suppose, I say, that such a form of benediction is just the same as saying that the lame man shall leap as a lion, and the tongue of the dumb mourn? Not so, but a special manner of action of the members is meant in both cases: (whistle number three from Capo d' Istria; I am writing on, steadily, so that you will be able to form an accurate idea, from this page, of the intervals of time in modern music. The roaring from the English boat goes on all the while, for bass to the Capo d' Istria's treble, and a tenth steamer comes in sight round the Armenian Monastery)--a particular kind of activity is meant, I repeat, in both cases. The lame man is to leap, (whistle fourth from Capo d' Istria, this time at high-pressure, going through my head like a knife,) as an innocent and joyful creature leaps, and the lips of the dumb to move melodiously: they are to be blest, so; may not be unblest even in silence; but are the absolute contrary of blest, in evil utterance. (Fifth whistle, a double one, from Capo d' Istria, and it is seven o'clock, nearly; and here's my coffee, and I must stop writing. Sixth whistle--the Capo d' Istria is off, with her crew of morning bathers. Seventh,--from I don't know which of the boats outside--and I count no more.) 5th July. Yesterday, in these broken sentences, I tried to make you understand that for all human creatures there are necessarily three separate states: life positive, under blessing,--life negative, under curse,--and death, neutral between these; and, henceforward, take due note of the quite true assumption you make in your ordinary malediction, that the state of condemnation may begin in this world, and separately affect every living member of the body. You assume the fact of these two opposite states, then; but you have no idea whatever of the meaning of your words, nor of the nature of the blessedness or condemnation you admit. I will try to make your conception clearer. In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice, I had been carefully looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a young princess. Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them: and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath. These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth; but above, are bare and white. The second window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three-legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crimson cloth. On the table are a book set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under the shelf, near the table, so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. The door of this has been left open, and the books, I am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed, and one left standing on its side. Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture, (I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective,) with a lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense. The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed,--her white dog beside them. The coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. The white nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. At the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog, though lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) He is a very small angel, his head just, rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. He has soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. He comes in without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand--a scroll in his left. So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn. It is very pretty of Carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little an angel--very nearly a doll angel,--bringing her the branch of palm, and message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. Royal power over herself, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven. After I had spent my morning over this picture, I had to go to Verona by the afternoon train. In the carriage with me were two American girls with their father and mother, people of the class which has lately made so much money suddenly, and does not know what to do with it: and these two girls, of about fifteen and eighteen, had evidently been indulged in everything (since they had had the means) which western civilization could imagine. And here they were, specimens of the utmost which the money and invention of the nineteenth century could produce in maidenhood,--children of its most progressive race,--enjoying the full advantages of political liberty, of enlightened philosophical education, of cheap pilfered literature, and of luxury at any cost. Whatever money, machinery, or freedom of thought could do for these two children, had been done. No superstition had deceived, no restraint degraded them:--types, they could not but be, of maidenly wisdom and felicity, as conceived by the forwardest intellects of our time. And they were travelling through a district which, if any in the world, should touch the hearts and delight the eyes of young girls. Between Venice and Verona! Portia's villa perhaps in sight upon the Brenta,--Juliet's tomb to be visited in the evening,--blue against the southern sky, the hills of Petrarch's home. Exquisite midsummer sunshine, with low rays, glanced through the vine-leaves; all the Alps were clear, from the lake of Garda to Cadore, and to farthest Tyrol. What a princess's chamber, this, if these are princesses, and what dreams might they not dream, therein! But the two American girls were neither princesses, nor seers, nor dreamers. By infinite self-indulgence, they had reduced themselves simply to two pieces of white putty that could feel pain. The flies and the dust stuck to them as to clay, and they perceived, between Venice and Verona, nothing but the flies and the dust. They pulled down the blinds the moment they entered the carriage, and then sprawled, and writhed, and tossed among the cushions of it, in vain contest, during the whole fifty miles, with every miserable sensation of bodily affliction that could make time intolerable. They were dressed in thin white frocks, coming vaguely open at the backs as they stretched or wriggled; they had French novels, lemons, and lumps of sugar, to beguile their state with; the novels hanging together by the ends of string that had once stitched them, or adhering at the corners in densely bruised dog's-ears, out of which the girls, wetting their fingers, occasionally extricated a gluey leaf. From time to time they cut a lemon open, ground a lump of sugar backwards and forwards over it till every fibre was in a treacly pulp; then sucked the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery strings, for the sake of its bitter. Only one sentence was exchanged, in the fifty miles, on the subject of things outside the carriage (the Alps being once visible from a station where they had drawn up the blinds). "Don't those snow-caps make you cool?" "No--I wish they did." And so they went their way, with sealed eyes and tormented limbs, their numbered miles of pain. There are the two states for you, in clearest opposition; Blessed, and Accursed. The happy industry, and eyes full of sacred imagination of things that are not, (such sweet cosa, è la fede,) and the tortured indolence, and infidel eyes, blind even to the things that are. "How do I know the princess is industrious?" Partly by the trim state of her room,--by the hour-glass on the table,--by the evident use of all the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears,) but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one, a prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain housewifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time. A work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most in being so. In like manner, in a picture by a Florentine, whose mind I would fain have you know somewhat, as well as Carpaccio's--Sandro Botticelli--the girl who is to be the wife of Moses, when he first sees her at the desert-well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her right. [21] "To do good work, whether you live or die," it is the entrance to all Princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly, when you must labour for evil instead of good. It was some comfort to me, that second of May last, at Pisa, to watch the workman's ashamed face, as he struck the old marble cross to pieces. Stolidly and languidly he dealt the blows,--down-looking,--so far as in anywise sensitive, ashamed,--and well he might be. It was a wonderful thing to see done. This Pisan chapel, first built in 1230, then called the Oracle, or Oratory,--"Oraculum, vel Oratorium"--of the Blessed Mary of the New Bridge, afterwards called the Sea-bridge, (Ponte-a-Mare,) was a shrine like that of ours on the bridge of Wakefield; a boatman's praying-place: you may still see, or might, ten years since, have seen, the use of such a thing at the mouth of Boulogne Harbour, when the mackerel boats went out in a fleet at early dawn. There used to be a little shrine at the end of the longest pier; and as the Bonne Espérance, or Grâce-de-Dieu, or Vierge Marie, or Notre Dame des Dunes, or Reine des Anges, rose on the first surge of the open sea, their crews bared their heads, and prayed for a few seconds. So also the Pisan oarsmen looked back to their shrine, many-pinnacled, standing out from the quay above the river, as they dropped down Arno under their sea bridge, bound for the Isles of Greece. Later, in the fifteenth century, "there was laid up in it a little branch of the Crown of Thorns of the Redeemer which a merchant had brought home, enclosed in a little urn of Beyond-sea" (ultramarine), and its name was changed to "St. Mary's of the Thorn." In the year 1840 I first drew it, then as perfect as when it was built. Six hundred and ten years had only given the marble of it a tempered glow, or touched its sculpture here and there, with softer shade. I daguerreotyped the eastern end of it some years later, (photography being then unknown,) and copied the daguerreotype, that people might not be plagued in looking, by the lustre. The frontispiece to this letter is engraved from the drawing, and will show you what the building was like. But the last quarter of a century has brought changes, and made the Italians wiser. British Protestant missionaries explained to them that they had only got a piece of blackberry stem in their ultramarine box. German philosophical missionaries explained to them that the Crown of Thorns itself was only a graceful metaphor. French republican missionaries explained to them that chapels were inconsistent with liberty on the quay; and their own Engineering missionaries of civilization explained to them that steam-power was independent of the Madonna. And now in 1872, rowing by steam, digging by steam, driving by steam, here, behold, are a troublesome pair of human arms out of employ. So the Engineering missionaries fit them with hammer and chisel, and set them to break up the Spina Chapel. A costly kind of stone-breaking, this, for Italian parishes to set paupers on! Are there not rocks enough of Apennine, think you, they could break down instead? For truly, the God of their Fathers, and of their land, would rather see them mar His own work, than his children's. Believe me, faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. Norwood, S.E. June 5th. Dear Mr. Ruskin, Will you allow me to inform you that the utterance which you attribute to me, on the 12th page of this month's Fors Clavigera, is quite wrongly assigned. It is impossible that you should at any time have heard me say from my pulpit what you ascribe to me. Simply because I never said it, and could not--not at all believing it. I can only account for your misrepresentation by supposing that during my absence from home, from February until the end of June, in the year 1870, or again in July and August of last year, you may have mistaken for me--some other person--doing duty in my stead. Of course it is of no consequence to the readers of Fors Clavigera what "the Rev. Mr. Tipple" says or does not say; but you will understand that to "the Rev. Mr. Tipple" himself, it is of consequence--to be exhibited in its pages--with words on his lips which are wholly at variance with what he believes, and is engaged in trying to teach. Will you be kind enough, therefore, to correct the error into which you have fallen in your next number? I am yours truly, S. A. Tipple. If Mr. Tipple had been as unselfish as he is modest, and had considered in anywise what was of consequence to the readers of Fors Clavigera, as well as of consequence to himself, he would not have left them without some explanation of his eagerness to disclaim the doctrine attributed to him, however erroneously, in the passage he refers to. No words, I beg him to observe, are attributed to him. In quoting actual expression I always use inverted commas. The passage in question is the best abstract I could write of a piece of sermon which occupied some five minutes in delivery, and which I myself heard delivered in Mr. Tipple's chapel, and not, certainly, by Mr. Tipple's substitute in 1870, for my father and I had long talk over the passage when we came out; and my father died in 1864. But I have ever since kept note of this, now so hastily abjured, utterance, as the most perfect and clear statement of the great Evangelical doctrine of salvation by faith only which I ever heard from any English divine. My abstract of it is more logical than eloquent, but I answer absolutely for its accuracy, and for the specification of "thieves" and "devourers of widows' houses" by the preacher: and I am sure that some at least of the readers of Fors Clavigera will think it of consequence to know how Mr. Tipple, disclaiming the statement even in this undecorated form, can reconcile it with his conscience to remain the instructor of a Protestant congregation. For my own part, I can only say that I publish his letter with extreme pleasure; and, recommending him, for the future, to examine more accurately into the tenets of his substitutes, congratulate him on his vigorous repudiation of a doctrine which the Church of England most wisely describes as being "very full of comfort," but which, she ought farther to have observed, is much more comfortable to rogues than to honest people. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXI. Dulwich, 10th August, 1872. My Friends, I have not yet fully treated the subject of my last letter, for I must show you how things, as well as people, may be blessed, or cursed; and to show you that, I must explain to you the story of Achan the son of Carmi, which, too probably, you don't feel at present any special interest in; as well as several matters more about steam-engines and steam-whistling: but, in the meantime, here is my lost bit of letter from Florence, written in continuation of the June number; and it is well that it should be put into place at once, (I see that it notices, incidentally, some of the noises in Florence, which might with advantage cease) since it answers the complaints of two aggrieved readers. Florence, 10th June, 1872. In the page for correspondence you will find a letter from a workman, interesting in many respects; and besides, sufficiently representing the kind of expostulation now constantly made with me, on my not advertising either these letters, or any other of my writings. These remonstrances, founded as they always are, very politely, on the assumption that every one who reads my books derives extraordinary benefit from them, require from me, at least, the courtesy of more definite answer than I have hitherto found time to give. In the first place, my correspondents write under the conviction,--a very natural one,--that no individual practice can have the smallest power to change or check the vast system of modern commerce, or the methods of its transaction. I, on the contrary, am convinced that it is by his personal conduct that any man of ordinary power will do the greatest amount of good that is in him to do; and when I consider the quantity of wise talking which has passed in at one long ear of the world, and out at the other, without making the smallest impression upon its mind, I am sometimes tempted for the rest of my life to try and do what seems to me rational, silently; and to speak no more. But were it only for the exciting of earnest talk, action is highly desirable, and is, in itself, advertisement of the best. If, for instance, I had only written in these letters that I disapproved of advertisements, and had gone on advertising the letters themselves, you would have passed by my statement contemptuously, as one in which I did not believe myself. But now, most of my readers are interested in the opinion, dispute it eagerly, and are ready to hear patiently what I can say in its defence. For main defence of it, I reply (now definitely to my correspondent of the Black Country):--You ought to read books, as you take medicine, by advice, and not advertisement. Perhaps, however, you do take medicine by advertisement, but you will not, I suppose, venture to call that a wise proceeding? Every good physician, at all events, knows it to be an unwise one, and will by no means consent to proclaim even his favourite pills by the town-crier. But perhaps you have no literary physician,--no friend to whom you can go and say, "I want to learn what is true on such a subject--what book must I read?" You prefer exercising your independent judgment, and you expect me to appeal to it, by paying for the insertion in all the penny papers of a paragraph that may win your confidence. As, for instance, "Just published, the --th number of 'Fors Clavigera,' containing the most important information on the existing state of trade in Europe; and on all subjects interesting to the British Operative. Thousandth thousand. Price 7d. 7 for 3s. 6d. Proportional abatement an large orders. No intelligent workman should pass a day without acquainting himself with the entirely original views contained in these pages." You don't want to be advised in that manner, do you say? but only to know that such a book exists. What good would its existence do you, if you did not know whether it was worth reading? Were you as rich as Croesus, you have no business to spend such a sum as 7d. unless you are sure of your money's worth. Ask some one who knows good books from bad ones to tell you what to buy, and be content. You will hear of 'Fors,' so, in time;--if it be worth hearing of. But you have no acquaintance, you say, among people who know good books from bad ones? Possibly not; and yet, half the poor gentlemen of England are fain now-a-days to live by selling their opinions on this subject. It is a bad trade, let me tell them. Whatever judgment they have, likely to be useful to the human beings about them, may be expressed in few words; and those words of sacred advice ought not to be articles of commerce. Least of all ought they to be so ingeniously concocted that idle readers may remain content with reading their eloquent account of a book, instead of the book itself. It is an evil trade, and in our company of Mont Rose, we will have no reviewers; we will have, once for all, our book Gazette, issued every 1st of January, naming, under alphabetical list of authors and of titles, whatever serviceable or worthy writings have been published during the past year; and if, in the space of the year following, we have become acquainted with the same thoroughly, our time will not have been ill-spent, though we hear of no new book for twelve months. And the choice of the books to be named, as well as the brief accounts of them given in our Gazette, will be by persons not paid for their opinions, and who will not, therefore, express themselves voluminously. Meantime, your newspapers being your present advisers, I beg you to observe that a number of 'Fors' is duly sent to all the principal ones, whose editors may notice it if they choose; but I will not pay for their notice, nor for any man's. These, then, are my immediate reasons for not advertising. Indirect ones, I have, which weigh with me no less. I write this morning, wearily, and without spirit, being nearly deaf with the bell-ringing and bawling which goes on here, at Florence, ceaselessly, in advertisement of prayers, and wares; as if people could not wait on God for what they wanted, but God had to ring for them, like waiters, for what He wanted: and as if they could think of nothing they were in need of, till the need was suggested to them by bellowing at their doors, or bill-posting on their house-corners. Indeed, the fresco-painting of the bill-sticker is likely, so far as I see, to become the principal fine art of modern Europe: here, at all events, it is now the principal source of street effect. Giotto's time is past, like Oderigi's; but the bill-poster succeeds: and the Ponte Vecchio, the principal thoroughfare across the Arno, is on one side plastered over with bills in the exact centre, while the other side, for various reasons not to be specified, is little available to passengers. The bills on the bridge are theatrical, announcing cheap operas; but religious bills, inviting to ecclesiastical festivities, are similarly plastered over the front of the church once called "the Bride" for its beauty; and the pious bill-stickers paste them ingeniously in and out upon the sculptured bearings of the shields of the old Florentine knights. Political bills, in various stages of decomposition, decorate the street-corners and sheds of the markets; and among the last year's rags of these, one may still read here and there the heroic apostrophe, "Rome! or Death." It never was clear to me, until now, what the desperately-minded persons who found themselves in that dilemma, wanted with Rome; and now it is quite clear to me that they never did want it,--but only the ground it was once built on, for finance offices and railroad stations; or, it may be, for new graves, when Death, to young Italy, as to old, comes without alternative. For, indeed, young Italy has just chosen the most precious piece of ground above Florence, and a twelfth-century church in the midst of it, to bury itself in, at its leisure; and make the summer air loathsome and pestiferous, from San Miniato to Arcetri. No Rome, I repeat, did young Italy want; but only the site of Rome. Three days before I left it, I went to see a piece not merely of the rampart, but of the actual wall, of Tullius, which zealous Mr. Parker with fortunate excavation has just laid open on the Aventine. Fifty feet of blocks of massy stone, duly laid; not one shifted; a wall which was just eighteen hundred years old when Westminster Abbey was begun building. I went to see it mainly for your sakes, for after I have got past Theseus and his vegetable soup, I shall have to tell you something of the constitutions of Servius Tullius; and besides, from the sweet slope of vineyard beneath this king's wall, one looks across the fields where Cincinnatus was found ploughing, according to Livy; though, you will find, in Smith's Dictionary, that Mr. Niebuhr "has pointed out all the inconsistencies and impossibilities in this legend;" and that he is "inclined to regard it as altogether fabulous." Very possibly it may be so, (not that, for my own poor part, I attach much importance to Niebuhr's "inclinations,") but it is fatally certain that whenever you begin to seek the real authority for legends, you will generally find that the ugly ones have good foundation, and the beautiful ones none. Be prepared for this; and remember that a lovely legend is all the more precious when it has no foundation. Cincinnatus might actually have been found ploughing beside the Tiber fifty times over; and it might have signified little to any one;--least of all to you or me. But if Cincinnatus never was so found, nor ever existed at all in flesh and blood; but the great Roman nation, in its strength of conviction that manual labour in tilling the ground was good and honourable, invented a quite bodiless Cincinnatus; and set him, according to its fancy, in furrows of the field, and put its own words into his mouth, and gave the honour of its ancient deeds into his ghostly hand; this fable, which has no foundation;--this precious coinage of the brain and conscience of a mighty people, you and I--believe me--had better read, and know, and take to heart, diligently. Of which at another time: the point in question just now being that this same slope of the Aventine, under the wall of Tullius, falling to the shore of Tiber just where the Roman galleys used to be moored, (the marbles worn by the cables are still in the bank of it there,) and opposite the farm of Cincinnatus, commands, as you may suppose, fresh air and a fine view,--and has just been sold on "building leases." Sold, I heard, to an English company; but more probably to the agents of the society which is gradually superseding, with its splendid bills at all the street corners, the last vestiges of "Roma, o morte,"--the "Società Anonima," for providing lodgings for company in Rome. Now this anonymous society, which is about to occupy itself in rebuilding Rome, is of course composed of persons who know nothing whatever about building. They also care about it as little as they know; but they take to building, because they expect to get interest for their money by such operation. Some of them, doubtless, are benevolent persons, who expect to benefit Italy by building, and think that, the more the benefit, the larger will be the dividend. Generally the public notion of such a society would be that it was getting interest for its money in a most legitimate way, by doing useful work, and that Roman comfort and Italian prosperity would be largely promoted by it. But observe in what its dividends will consist. Knowing nothing about architecture, nor caring, it neither can choose, nor will desire to choose, an architect of merit. It will give its business to the person whom it supposes able to build the most attractive mansions at the least cost. Practically, the person who can and will do so, is the architect who knows where to find the worst bricks, the worst iron, and the worst workmen, and who has mastered the cleverest tricks by which to turn these to account. He will turn them to account by giving the external effect to his edifices which he finds likely to be attractive to the majority of the public in search of lodging. He will have stucco mouldings, veneered balconies, and cast-iron pillars: but, as his own commission will be paid on the outlay, he will assuredly make the building costly in some way or other; and he can make it costly with least trouble to himself by putting into it, somewhere, vast masses of merely squared stone, chiselled so as to employ handicraftsmen on whose wages commission can be charged, and who all the year round may be doing the same thing, without giving any trouble by asking for directions. Hence there will be assuredly in the new buildings an immense mass of merely squared or rusticated stones; for these appear magnificent to the public mind,--need no trouble in designing,--and pay a vast commission on the execution. The interior apartments will, of course, be made as luxurious as possible; for the taste of the European public is at present practically directed by women of the town; these having the government of the richest of our youth at the time when they spend most freely. And at the very time when the last vestiges of the heroic works of the Roman Monarchy are being destroyed, the base fresco-painting of the worst times of the Empire is being faithfully copied, with perfectly true lascivious instinct, for interior decoration. Of such architecture the anonymous society will produce the most it can; and lease it at the highest rents it can; and advertise and extend itself, so as, if possible, at last to rebuild, after its manner, all the great cities of Italy. Now the real moving powers at the bottom of all this are essentially the vanity and lust of the middle classes, all of them seeking to live, if it may be, in a cheap palace, with as much cheap pleasure as they can have in it, and the airs of great people. By 'cheap' pleasure, I mean, as I will show you in explaining the nature of cursed things, pleasure which has not been won by attention, or deserved by toil, but is snatched or forced by wanton passion. But the mechanical power which gives effect to this vanity and lust, is the instinct of the anonymous society, and of other such, to get a dividend by catering for them. It has chanced, by help of the Third Fors, (as again and again in the course of these letters the thing to my purpose has been brought before me just when I needed it,) that having to speak of interest of money, and first of the important part of it consisting in rents, I should be able to lay my finger on the point of land in all Europe where the principle of it is, at this moment, doing the most mischief. But, of course, all our great building work is now carried on in the same way; nor will any architecture, properly so called, be now possible for many years in Europe. For true architecture is a thing which puts its builders to cost--not which pays them dividends. If a society chose to organize itself to build the most beautiful houses, and the strongest that it could, either for art's sake, or love's; either palaces for itself, or houses for the poor; such a society would build something worth looking at, but not get dividends. True architecture is built by the man who wants a house for himself, and builds it to his own liking, at his own cost; not for his own gain, to the liking of other people. All orders of houses may be beautiful when they are thus built by their master to his own liking. Three streets from me, at this moment, is one of the sixteenth century. The corner stones of it are ten feet long by three broad, and two thick--fifty courses of such, and the cornice; flawless stones, laid as level as a sea-horizon, so that the walls become one solid mass of unalterable rock,--four grey cliffs set square in mid-Florence, some hundred and twenty feet from cornice to ground. The man who meant to live in it built it so; and Titian painted his little grand-daughter for him. He got no dividend by his building--no profit on his picture. House and picture, absolutely untouched by time, remain to this day. On the hills about me at Coniston there are also houses built by their owners, according to their means, and pleasure. A few loose stones gathered out of the fields, set one above another to a man's height from the ground; a branch or two of larch, set gable-wise across them,--on these some turf, cut from the next peat moss. It is enough: the owner gets no dividend on his building; but he has covert from wind and rain, and is honourable among the sons of Earth. He has built as best he could, to his own mind. You think that there ought to be no such differences in habitation; that nobody should live in a palace, and nobody under a heap of turf? But if ever you become educated enough to know something about the arts, you will like to see a palace built in noble manner; and if ever you become educated enough to know something about men, you will love some of them so well as to desire that at least they should live in palaces, though you cannot. But it will be long now before you can know much, either about arts or men. The one point you may be assured of is, that your happiness does not at all depend on the size of your house--(or, if it does, rather on its smallness than largeness); but depends entirely on your having peaceful and safe possession of it--on your habits of keeping it clean and in order--on the materials of it being trustworthy, if they are no more than stone and turf--and on your contentment with it, so that gradually you may mend it to your mind, day by day, and leave it to your children a better house than it was. To your children, and to theirs, desiring for them that they may live as you have lived; and not strive to forget you, and stammer when any one asks who you were, because, forsooth, they have become fine folks by your help. Euston Hotel, 18th August. Thus far I had written at Florence. To-day I received a severe lesson from a friend whose teaching is always serviceable to me, of which the main effect was to show me that I had been wrong in allowing myself so far in the habit of jesting, either in these letters, or in any other of my books, on grave subjects; and that although what little play I had permitted, rose, as I told you before, out of the nature of the things spoken of, it prevented many readers from understanding me rightly, and was an offence to others. The second effect of the lesson was to show me how vain it was, in the present state of English literature and mind, to expect anybody to attend to the real force of the words I wrote; and that it would be better to spare myself much of the trouble I took in choosing them, and try to get things explained by reiteration instead of precision, or, if I was too proud to do that, to write less myself, and only urge your attention, or aid it, to other people's happier sayings. Which indeed I meant to do, as 'Fors' went on; for I have always thought that more true force of persuasion might be obtained by rightly choosing and arranging what others have said, than by painfully saying it again in one's own way. And since as to the matter which I have to teach you, all the great writers and thinkers of the world are agreed, without any exception whatsoever, it is certain I can teach you better in other men's words than my own, if I can lay my hand at once on what I want of them. And the upshot of the lesson, and of my meditation upon it, is, that henceforward to the end of the year I will try very seriously to explain, as I promised, step by step, the things put questionably in last year's letters. We will conclude therefore first, and as fast as we can, the debate respecting interest of money which was opened in my letter of January, 1871. An impatient correspondent of mine, Mr. W. C. Sillar, who has long been hotly engaged in testifying publicly against the wickedness of taking interest, writes to me that all I say is mysterious, that I am bound to speak plainly, and, above everything, if I think taking interest sinful, not to hold bank stock. Once for all, then, Mr. Sillar is wholly right as to the abstract fact that lending for gain is sinful; and he has in various pamphlets, shown unanswerably that whatever is said either in the Bible, or in any other good and ancient book, respecting usury, is intended by the writers to apply to the receiving of interest, be it ever so little. But Mr. Sillar has allowed this idea to take possession of him, body and soul; and is just as fondly enthusiastic about abolition of usury as some other people are about the liquor laws. Now of course drunkenness is mischievous, and usury is mischievous, and whoredom is mischievous, and idleness is mischievous. But we cannot reform the world by preaching temperance only, nor refusal of interest only, nor chastity only, nor industry only. I am myself more set on teaching healthful industry than anything else, as the beginning of all redemption; then, purity of heart and body; if I can get these taught, I know that nobody so taught will either get drunk, or, in any unjust manner, "either a borrower or a lender be." But I expect also far higher results than either of these, on which, being utterly bent, I am very careless about such minor matters as the present conditions either of English brewing or banking. I hold bank stock simply because I suppose it to be safer than any other stock, and I take the interest of it, because though taking interest is, in the abstract, as wrong as war, the entire fabric of society is at present so connected with both usury and war, that it is not possible violently to withdraw, nor wisely to set example of withdrawing, from either evil. I entirely, in the abstract, disapprove of war; yet have the profoundest sympathy with Colonel Yea and his fusiliers at Alma, and only wish I had been there with them. I have by no means equal sympathy either with bankers or landlords; but am certain that for the present it is better that I receive my dividends as usual, and that Miss Hill should continue to collect my rents in Marylebone. "Ananias over again, or worse," Mr. Sillar will probably exclaim, when he reads this, and invoke lightning against me. I will abide the issue of his invocation, and only beg him to observe respecting either ancient or modern denunciations of interest, that they are much beside the mark unless they are accompanied with some explanation of the manner in which borrowing and lending, when necessary, can be carried on without it. Neither are often necessary in healthy states of society; but they always must remain so to some extent; and the name "Mount of Pity," [22] given still in French and Italian to the pawnbroker's shop, descends from a time when lending to the poor was as much a work of mercy as giving to them. And both lending and borrowing are virtuous, when the borrowing is prudent, and the lending kind; how much otherwise than kind lending at interest usually is, you, I suppose, do not need to be told; but how much otherwise than prudent nearly all borrowing is, and above everything, trade on a large scale on borrowed capital, it is very necessary for us all to be told. And for a beginning of other people's words, here are some quoted by Mr. Sillar from a work on the Labour question recently published in Canada, which, though common-place, and evidently the expressions of a person imperfectly educated, are true, earnest, and worth your reading:-- "These Scripture usury laws, then, are for no particular race and for no particular time. They lie at the very foundations of national progress and wealth. They form the only great safeguards of labour, and are the security of civil society, and the strength and protection of commerce itself. Let us beware, for our own sakes, how we lay our hand upon the barriers which God has reared around the humble dwelling of the labouring man.... "Business itself is a pleasure, but it is the anxieties and burdens of business arising all out of this debt system, which have caused so many aching pillows and so many broken hearts. What countless multitudes, during the last three hundred years, have gone down to bankruptcy and shame--what fair prospects have been for ever blighted--what happy homes desolated--what peace destroyed--what ruin and destruction have ever marched hand in hand with this system of debt, paper, and usury! Verily its sins have reached unto heaven and its iniquities are very great. "What shall the end of these things be? God only knoweth. I fear the system is beyond a cure. All the great interests of humanity are overborne by it, and nothing can flourish as it ought till it is taken out of the way. It contains within itself, as we have at times witnessed, most potent elements of destruction which in one hour may bring all its riches to nought." Here, lastly for this month, is another piece of Marmontel for you, describing an ideal landlord's mode of "investing" his money; losing, as it appears, half his income annually by such investment, yet by no means with "aching pillows" or broken hearts for the result. (By the way, for a lesson in writing, observe that I know the Canada author to be imperfectly educated merely by one such phrase as "aching pillow"--for pillows don't ache--and again, by his thinking it religious and impressive to say "knoweth" instead of "knows.") But listen to Marmontel. "In the neighbourhood of this country-house lived a kind of Philosopher, not an old one, but in the prime of life, who, after having enjoyed everything that he could during six months of the year in town, was in the habit of coming to enjoy six months of his own company in a voluptuous solitude. He presently came to call upon Elise. 'You have the reputation of a wise man, sir,' she said--'tell me, what is your plan of life?' 'My plan, madame? I have never had any,' answered the count. 'I do everything that amuses me. I seek everything that I like, and I avoid with care everything that annoys or displeases me.' 'Do you live alone, or do you see people?' asked Elise. 'I see sometimes our clergyman, whom I lecture on morals. I chat with labourers, who are better informed than all our servants. I give balls to little village girls, the prettiest in the world. I arrange little lotteries for them, of laces and ribands.' (Wrong, Mr. Philosopher: as many ribands as you please; but no lotteries.) 'What?' said Elise, with great surprise, 'do those sort of people know what love is?' 'Better than we do, madame--better than we do a hundred times; they love each other like turtle-doves--they make me wish to be married myself!' 'You will confess, however,' said Elise, 'that they love without any delicacy.' 'Nay, madame, delicacy is a refinement of art--they have only the instincts of nature; but, indeed, they have in feeling what we have only in fancy. I have tried, like another, to love, and to be beloved, in the town,--there, caprice and fashion arrange everything, or derange it:--here, there is true liking, and true choice. You will see in the course of the gaieties I give them, how these simple and tender hearts seek each other, without knowing what they are doing.' 'You give me,' replied Elise, 'a picture of the country I little expected; everybody says those sort of people are so much to be pitied.' 'They were so, madame, some years since; but I have found the secret of rendering their condition more happy.' 'Oh! you must tell me your secret!' interrupted Elise, with vivacity. 'I wish also to put it in practice.' 'Nothing can be easier,' replied the count,--'this is what I do: I have about two thousand a year of income; I spend five hundred in Paris, in the two visits that I make there during the year,--five hundred more in my country-house,--and I have a thousand to spare, which I spend on my exchanges.' 'And what exchanges do you make?' 'Well,' said the count, 'I have fields well cultivated, meadows well watered, orchards delicately hedged, and planted with care.' 'Well! what then?' 'Why, Lucas, Blaise, and Nicholas, my neighbours, and my good friends, have pieces of land neglected or worn out; they have no money to cultivate them. I give them a bit of mine instead, acre for acre; and the same space of land which hardly fed them, enriches them in two harvests: the earth which is ungrateful under their hands, becomes fertile in mine. I choose the seed for it, the way of digging, the manure which suits it best, and as soon as it is in good state, I think of another exchange. Those are my amusements.' 'That is charming!' cried Elise; 'you know then the art of agriculture?' 'I learn a little of it, madame; every day, I oppose the theories of the savants to the experience of the peasants. I try to correct what I find wrong in the reasonings of the one, and in the practice of the other.' 'That is an amusing study; but how you ought to be adored then in these cantons! these poor labourers must regard you as their father!' 'On each side, we love each other very much, madame.'" This is all very pretty, but falsely romantic, and not to be read at all with the unqualified respect due to the natural truth of the passages I before quoted to you from Marmontel. He wrote this partly in the hope of beguiling foolish and selfish persons to the unheard-of amusement of doing some good to their fellow-creatures; but partly also in really erroneous sentiment, his own character having suffered much deterioration by his compliance with the manners of the Court in the period immediately preceding the French Revolution. Many of the false relations between the rich and poor, which could not but end in such catastrophe, are indicated in the above-quoted passage. There is no recognition of duty on either side: the landlord enjoys himself benevolently, and the labourers receive his benefits in placid gratitude, without being either provoked or instructed to help themselves. Their material condition is assumed to be necessarily wretched unless continually relieved; while their household virtue and honour are represented (truly) as purer than those of their masters. The Revolution could not do away with this fatal anomaly; to this day the French peasant is a better man than his lord; and no government will be possible in France until she has learned that all authority, before it can be honoured, must be honourable. But, putting the romantic method of operation aside, the question remains whether Marmontel is right in his main idea that a landlord should rather take 2,000l. in rents, and return 1,000l. in help to his tenants, than remit the 1,000l. of rents at once. To which I reply, that it is primarily better for the State, and ultimately for the tenant, that administrative power should be increased in the landlord's hands; but that it ought not to be by rents which he can change at his own pleasure, but by fixed duties under State law. Of which, in due time;--I do not say in my next letter, for that would be mere defiance of the Third Fors. Ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. Tipton, 8th April, 1872. Sir,-- You have written a many letters to workmen, and seem to have suffered from a many replies by clerks, manufacturers, and others, to whom your letters were not addressed; and as you have noticed some of their performances, I am encouraged to expect you will kindly read one written by a man belonging to the class that you have chosen to write to,--one who is emphatically a workman, labouring many hours daily with hands and head in the wilderness known to people living in pleasanter places as the Black Country. This letter is not, however, sent to invite you to sympathise with me on account of the sooty residence I endure, for it is not so unpleasant a place to a man with a healthy mind, as gentle-folks with exaggerated sensibilities are apt to consider it. We do see the sky, and sometimes the green fields, and those who always live among the latter don't seem to be more refined, more elevated, or more use in the world than we are. But it is written very respectfully to remonstrate with you on account of your peculiar method of publication. You write books and letters, therefore I suppose you wish them to be read; but did it never occur to you that in order to be read, they must be made known to those whom you desire to read them? and how can that be done unless their publication is advertised? You object to do that, but do not substitute any other method--if, indeed, there is any other--of informing us of the letters and books that you have written. Booksellers do not offer your volumes, because your conditions of sale do not allow them to make a fair profit. Their customers can purchase the books as cheap as the book-dealer, and with as little trouble as an application to him would give them [23]--supposing they have accidentally heard of the books. Like many thousands more in this country of black faces and horny hands, I am imperfectly educated, but desirous to learn, and able, without much self-denial or any inconvenience, to purchase your volumes at a doctor's fee, or two fees each if you fix it so. Some of your books I possess, and the advantages I have received from the study of them makes me desirous that they should be more widely known and read. Commerce is too often a dishonest selfish scramble: employers and employed are at variance when their interests are identical. Daily toil does not obliterate our taste for art, and is it not desirable that those who have the means to gratify that taste should be able to know the right and the wrong in it, and recognise noble art when they see it? Upon all this you have written much in your books, but if the books are not known, it is as if unwritten, of even worse, because it is needful work not doing the good it might do. Your 'Fors' series of letters are almost unknown to those to whom you have addressed them. I heard of them six months after their commencement, because some "able editor" was short of copy, and endeavoured to be clever at your expense. Sir, I hope you will reconsider this matter,--what possible harm could it do to simply announce the publication of a volume or a letter in a few newspapers or magazines? It is certainly a mistake that the knowledge of a newly-issued volume should depend upon the exigences of foolish editors or the popular relish for their highly-spiced rubbish. I hate anonymous letters, and you can have my address if you want it. I read the other day if any one dared to expostulate with you that you would gibbet him. What that means, I know not. Something awful, no doubt. So I merely subscribe myself, Sir, Your very humble servant, ------ FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXII. Brantwood, 19th September, 1872. My Friends,-- I am to-day to begin explaining to you the meaning of my own books, which, some people will tell you, is an egotistical and impertinent thing for an author to do. My own view of the matter is, that it is generally more egotistical and impertinent to explain the meaning of other people's books,--which, nevertheless, at this day in England, many young and inexperienced persons are paid for pretending to do. What intents I have had, myself, therefore, in this 'Fors Clavigera,' and some other lately published writings, I will take on me to tell you, without more preamble. And first, for their little vignette stamp of roses on title-page. It is copied from the clearest bit of the pattern of the petticoat of Spring, where it is drawn tight over her thigh, in Sandro Botticelli's picture of her, at Florence. I drew it on the wood myself, and Mr. Burgess cut it; and it is on all my title-pages, because whatever I now write is meant to help in founding the society called of 'Monte Rosa;'--see page sixth of the seventeenth of these letters. Such reference hereafter, observe, is only thus printed, (XVII. 6). And I copied this vignette from Sandro Botticelli, for two reasons: first, that no man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them; secondly, because he was the only painter of Italy who thoroughly felt and understood Dante; and the only one also who understood the thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on the whole, the most universal of painters; and, take him all in all, the greatest Florentine workman: and I wish you to know with Dante's opinions, his, also, on all subjects of importance to you, of which Florentines could judge. And of his life, it is proper for you immediately to know thus much: or at least, that so much was current gossip about it in Vasari's time,--that, when he was a boy, he obstinately refused to learn either to read, write, or sum; (and I heartily wish all boys would and could do the same, till they were at least as old as the illiterate Alfred,) whereupon his father, "disturbed by these eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip of his, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith." And on this, note two things: the first, that all the great early Italian masters of painting and sculpture, without exception, began by being goldsmiths' apprentices: the second, that they all felt themselves so indebted to, and formed by the master-craftsman who had mainly disciplined their fingers, whether in work on gold or marble, that they practically considered him their father, and took his name rather than their own; so that most of the great Italian workmen are now known, not by their own names, but by those of their masters, [24] the master being himself often entirely forgotten by the public, and eclipsed by his pupil; but immortal in his pupil, and named in his name. Thus, our Sandro, Alessandro, or Alexander's own name was Filipepi; which name you never heard of, I suppose, till now: nor I, often, but his master's was Botticello; of which master we nevertheless know only that he so formed, and informed, this boy, that thenceforward the boy thought it right to be called "Botticello's Sandro," and nobody else's. Which in Italian is Sandro di Botticello; and that is abbreviated into Sandro Botticelli. So, Francesco Francia is short for Francesco di Francia, or "Francia's Francis," though nobody ever heard, except thus, of his master the goldsmith, Francia. But his own name was Raibolini. So, Philip Brunelleschi is short for Brunellesco's Philip, Brunellesco being his father's Christian name, to show how much he owed to his father's careful training; (the family name was Lippo;) and, which is the prettiest instance of all, "Piero della Francesca," means 'Francesca's Peter;' because he was chiefly trained by his mother, Francesca. All of which I beg you to take to heart, and meditate on, concerning Mastership and Pupilage. But to return to Sandro. Having learned prosperously how to manage gold, he takes a fancy to know how to manage colour; and is put by his good father under, as it chanced, the best master in Florence, or the world, at that time--the Monk Lippi, whose work is the finest, out and out, that ever monk did; which I attribute, myself, to what is usually considered faultful in him,--his having run away with a pretty novice out of a convent. I am not jesting, I assure you, in the least; but how can I possibly help the nature of things, when that chances to be laughable? Nay, if you think of it, perhaps you will not find it so laughable that Lippi should be the only monk (if this be a fact), who ever did good painter's work. Be that as it may, Lippi and his pupil were happy in each other; and the boy soon became a smiter of colour, or colour-smith, no less than a gold-smith; and eventually an "Alexander the Coppersmith," also, not inimical to St. Paul, and for whom Christian people may wish, not revengefully, "the Lord reward him according to his works," though he was fain, Demetrius-like, sometimes to shrine Diana. And he painted, for a beginning, a figure of Fortitude; and then, one of St. Jerome, and then, one of our Lady, and then, one of Pallas, and then, one of Venus with the Graces and Zephyrs, and especially the Spring aforesaid with flowery petticoats; and, finally, the Assumption of our Lady, with the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, the Virgins, and the Hierarchies. It is to be presumed that by this time he had learned to read, though we hear nothing of it, (rather the contrary, for he is taunted late in life with rude scholarship,)--and then paints under notable circumstances, of which presently, the calling of Moses, and of Aaron, and of Christ,--all well preserved and wonderful pieces, which no person now ever thinks of looking at, though they are the best works of pictorial divinity extant in Europe. And having thus obtained great honour and reputation, and considerable sums of money, he squandered all the last away; and then, returning to Florence, set himself to comment upon and illustrate Dante, engraving some plates for that purpose which I will try to give you a notion of, some day. And at this time, Savonarola beginning to make himself heard, and founding in Florence the company of the Piagnoni, (Mourners, or Grumblers, as opposed to the men of pleasure,) Sandro made a Grumbler of himself, being then some forty years old; and,--his new master being burned in the great square of Florence, a year afterwards (1498),--became a Grumbler to purpose; and doing what he could to show "che cosa è la fede," namely, in engraving Savonarola's "Triumph of Faith," fell sadder, wiser, and poorer, day by day; until he became a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de' Medici; and having gone some time on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and received his due share of what I hope we may call discriminate charity, died peacefully in his fifty-eighth year, having lived a glorious life; and was buried at Florence, in the Church of all Saints, three hundred and fifty-seven years ago. So much for my vignette. For my title, see II. 2, and XIII. 3. I mean it, as you will see by the latter passage, to be read, in English, as "Fortune the Nail-bearer," and that the book itself should show you how to form, or make, this Fortune, see the fifth sentence down the page, in II. 2; and compare III. 2, 3. And in the course of the first year's letters, I tried gradually to illustrate to you certain general propositions, which, if I had set them down in form at once, might have seemed to you too startling, or disputable, to be discussed with patience. So I tried to lead you into some discussion of them first, and now hope that you may endure the clearer statement of them, as follows:-- Proposition I. (I. 3, 4).--The English nation is beginning another group of ten years, empty in purse, empty in stomach, and in a state of terrified hostility to every other nation under the sun. I assert this very firmly and seriously. But in the course of these papers every important assertion on the opposite side shall be fairly inserted; so that you may consider of them at your leisure. Here is one, for instance, from the 'Morning Post' of Saturday, August 31, of this year:--"The country is at the present moment in a state of such unexampled prosperity that it is actually suffering from the very superabundance of its riches.... Coals and meat are at famine prices, we are threatened with a strike among the bakers, and there is hardly a single department of industry in which the cost of production has not been enhanced." This is exceedingly true; the 'Morning Post' ought to have congratulated you further on the fact that the things produced by this greater cost are now usually good for nothing: Hear on this head, what Mr. Emerson said of us, even so far back as 1856 (and we have made much inferior articles since then). "England is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills and shops; finding that milk will not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true England all is false and forged.... It is rare to find a merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade,--why prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money. [25] In the culmination of National Prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depôts, towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin." [26] Proposition II. (I. 5).--Of such prosperity I, for one, have seen enough, and will endure it no longer quietly; but will set aside some part of my income to help, if anybody else will join me, in forming a National store instead of a National Debt; and will explain to you as I have time and power, how to avoid such distress in future, by adhering to the elementary principles of Human Economy, which have been of late wilfully entombed under pyramids of falsehood. "Wilfully;" note this grave word in my second proposition; and invest a shilling in the purchase of 'Bishop Berkeley on Money,' being extracts from his 'Querist,' by James Harvey, Liverpool. [27] At the bottom of the twenty-first page you will find this query, "Whether the continuous efforts on the part of the 'Times,' the 'Telegraph,' [28] the 'Economist,' the 'Daily News,' and the daily newspaper press, and also of monied men generally, to confound money and capital, be the result of ignorance or design." Of ignorance in great part, doubtless, for "monied men, generally," are ignorant enough to believe and assert anything; but it is noticeable that their ignorance always tells on their own side; [29] and the 'Times' and 'Economist' are now nothing more than passive instruments in their hands. But neither they, nor their organs, would long be able to assert untruths in Political Economy, if the nominal professors of the science would do their duty in investigation of it. Of whom I now choose, for direct personal challenge, the Professor at Cambridge; and, being a Doctor of Laws of his own University, and a Fellow of two colleges in mine, I charge him with having insufficiently investigated the principles of the science he is appointed to teach. I charge him with having advanced in defence of the theory of Interest on Money, four arguments, every one of them false, and false with such fallacy as a child ought to have been able to detect. I have exposed one of these fallacies at page 19 of the first letter, and the three others at page 15 to 18 of the eighteenth letter, in this book, and I now publicly call on Professor Fawcett either to defend, or retract, the statements so impugned. And this open challenge cannot be ignored by Professor Fawcett, on the plea that Political Economy is his province, and not mine. If any man holding definite position as a scholar in either University, challenged me publicly and gravely with having falsely defined an elementary principle of Art, I should hold myself bound to answer him, and I think public opinion would ratify my decision. Proposition III. (I. 6).--Your redemption from the distress into which you have fallen is in your own hands, and in nowise depends on forms of government or modes of election. But you must make the most of what forms of government you have got, by choosing honest men to work them (if you choose at all), and preparatorily, by honestly obeying them, and in all possible ways, making honest men of yourselves; and if it be indeed, now impossible--as I heard the clergyman declare at Matlock--(IX. 16) for any honest man to live by trade in England, amending the methods of English trade in the necessary particulars, until it becomes possible for honest men to live by it again. In the meantime resolving that you, for your part, will do good work, whether you live by it or die--(II. 21). Proposition IV. (I. 10-13).--Of present parliaments and governments you have mainly to enquire what they want with your money when they demand it. And that you may do this intelligently, you are to remember that only a certain quantity of money exists at any given time, and that your first business must be to ascertain the available amount of it, and what it is available for. Because you do not put more money into rich people's hands, when you succeed in putting into rich people's heads that they want something to-day which they had no occasion for yesterday. What they pay you for one thing, they cannot for another; and if they now spend their incomes, they can spend no more. Which you will find they do, and always have done, and can, in fact, neither spend more, nor less--this income being indeed the quantity of food their land produces, by which all art and all manufacture must be supported, and of which no art or manufacture, except such as are directly and wisely employed on the land, can produce a morsel. Proposition V. (II. 4).--You had better take care of your squires. Their land, indeed, only belongs to them, or is said to belong, because they seized it long since by force of hand, (compare the quotation from Professor Fawcett at p. xix. of the preface to 'Munera Pulveris,') and you may think you have precisely the same right to seize it now, for yourselves, if you can. So you have,--precisely the same right,--that is to say, none. As they had no right to seize it then, neither have you now. The land, by divine right, can be neither theirs nor yours, except under conditions which you will not ascertain by fighting. In the meantime, by the law of England, the land is theirs; and your first duty as Englishmen is to obey the law of England, be it just or unjust, until it is by due and peaceful deliberation altered, if alteration of it be needful; and to be sure that you are able and willing to obey good laws, before you seek to alter unjust ones (II. 21). For you cannot know whether they are unjust or not until you are just yourselves. Also, your race of squires, considered merely as an animal one, is very precious; and you had better see what use you can make of it, before you let it fall extinct, like the Dodo's. For none other such exists in any part of this round little world; and, once destroyed, it will be long before it develops itself again from Mr. Darwin's germ-cells. Proposition VI. (V. 21).--But, if you can, honestly, you had better become minute squires yourselves. The law of England nowise forbids your buying any land which the squires are willing to part with, for such savings as you may have ready. And the main proposal made to you in this book is that you should so economize till you can indeed become diminutive squires, and develope accordingly into some proportionate fineness of race. Proposition VII. (II. 5).--But it is perhaps not equally necessary to take care of your capitalists, or so-called 'Employers.' For your real employer is the public; and the so-called employer is only a mediator between the public and you, whose mediation is perhaps more costly than need be, to you both. So that it will be well for you to consider how far, without such intervention, you may succeed in employing yourselves; and my seventh proposition is accordingly that some of you, and all, in some proportion, should be diminutive capitalists, as well as diminutive squires, yet under a novel condition, as follows:-- Proposition VIII.--Observe, first, that in the ancient and hitherto existent condition of things, the squire is essentially an idle person who has possession of land, and lends it, but does not use it; and the capitalist is essentially an idle person, who has possession of tools, and lends them, but does not use them; while the labourer, by definition, is a laborious person, and by presumption, a penniless one, who is obliged to borrow both land and tools; and paying, for rent on the one, and profit on the other, what will maintain the squire and capitalist, digs finally a remnant of roots, wherewith to maintain himself. These may, in so brief form, sound to you very radical and international definitions. I am glad, therefore, that (though entirely accurate) they are not mine, but Professor Fawcett's. You will find them quoted from his 'Manual of Political Economy' at the eleventh page of my eleventh letter. He does not, indeed, in the passage there quoted, define the capitalist as the possessor of tools, but he does so quite clearly at the end of the fable quoted in I. 18,--"The plane is the symbol of all capital," and the paragraph given in XI. 11, is, indeed, a most faithful statement of the present condition of things, which is, practically, that rich people are paid for being rich, and idle people are paid for being idle, and busy people taxed for being busy. Which does not appear to me a state of matters much longer tenable; but rather, and this is my 8th Proposition (XI. 13), that land should belong to those who can use it, and tools to those who can use them; or, as a less revolutionary, and instantly practicable, proposal, that those who have land and tools--should use them. Proposition IX. and last:--To know the "use" either of land or tools, you must know what useful things can be grown from the one, and made with the other. And therefore to know what is useful, and what useless, and be skilful to provide the one, and wise to scorn the other, is the first need for all industrious men. Wherefore, I propose that schools should be established, wherein the use of land and tools shall be taught conclusively:--in other words, the sciences of agriculture (with associated river and sea-culture); and the noble arts and exercises of humanity. Now you cannot but see how impossible it would have been for me, in beginning these letters, to have started with a formal announcement of these their proposed contents, even now startling enough, probably, to some of my readers, after nearly two years' preparatory talk. You must see also how in speaking of so wide a subject, it is not possible to complete the conversation respecting each part of it at once, and set that aside; but it is necessary to touch on each head by little and little. Yet in the course of desultory talk, I have been endeavouring to exhibit to you, essentially, these six following things, namely,--A, the general character and use of squires; B, the general character and mischievousness of capitalists; C, the nature of money; D, the nature of useful things; E, the methods of finance which obtain money; and F, the methods of work which obtain useful things. To these "six points" I have indeed directed my own thoughts, and endeavoured to direct yours, perseveringly, throughout these letters, though to each point as the Third Fors might dictate; that is to say, as light was thrown upon it in my mind by what might be publicly taking place at the time, or by any incident happening to me personally. Only it chanced that in the course of the first year, 1871, one thing which publicly took place, namely the siege and burning of Paris, was of interest so unexpected that it necessarily broke up what little consistency of plan I had formed, besides putting me into a humour in which I could only write incoherently; deep domestic vexation occurring to me at the same time, till I fell ill, and my letters and vexations had like to have ended together. So I must now patch the torn web as best I can, by giving you reference to what bears on each of the above six heads in the detached talk of these twenty months, (and I hope also a serviceable index at the two years' end); and, if the work goes on,--But I had better keep all Ifs out of it. Meantime, with respect to point A, the general character and use of squires, you will find the meaning of the word 'Squire' given in II. 4, as being threefold, like that of Fors. First, it means a rider; or in more full and perfect sense, a master or governor of beasts; signifying that a squire has fine sympathy with all beasts of the field, and understanding of their natures complete enough to enable him to govern them for their good, and be king over all creatures, subduing the noxious ones, and cherishing the virtuous ones. Which is the primal meaning of chivalry, the horse, as the noblest, because trainablest, of wild creatures, being taken for a type of them all. Read on this point, IX. 11-13, and if you can see my larger books, at your library, § 205 of 'Aratra Pentelici;' and the last lecture in 'Eagle's Nest.' [30] And observe farther that it follows from what is noted in those places, that to be a good squire, one must have the instincts of animals as well as those of men; but that the typical squire is apt to err somewhat on the lower side, and occasionally to have the instincts of animals instead of those of men. Secondly. The word 'Squire' means a Shield-bearer;--properly, the bearer of some superior person's shield; but at all events, the declarer, by legend, of good deserving and good intention, either others' or his own; with accompanying statement of his resolution to defend and maintain the same; and that so persistently that, rather than lose his shield, he is to make it his death-bed: and so honourably and without thought of vulgar gain, that it is the last blame of base governments to become 'shield-sellers;' (compare 'Munera Pulveris,' § 127). On this part of the Squire's character I have not yet been able to insist at any length; but you will find partial suggestion of the manner in which you may thus become yourselves shield-bearers, in 'Time and Tide,' §§ 72, 73, and I shall soon have the elementary copies in my Oxford schools published, and you may then learn, if you will, somewhat of shield-drawing and painting. And thirdly, the word 'Squire' means a Carver, properly a carver at some one else's feast; and typically, has reference to the Squire's duty as a Carver at all men's feasts, being Lord of Land, and therefore giver of Food; in which function his lady, as you have heard now often enough, (first from Carlyle,) is properly styled Loaf-giver; her duty being, however, first of all to find out where all loaves come from; for, quite retaining his character in the other two respects, the typical squire is apt to fail in this, and to become rather a loaf-eater, or consumer, than giver, (compare X. 4, and X. 16); though even in that capacity the enlightened press of your day thinks you cannot do without him. (VII. 17.) Therefore, for analysis of what he has been, and may be, I have already specified to you certain squires, whose history I wish you to know and think over; (with many others in due course; but, for the present, those already specified are enough,) namely, the Theseus of the Elgin Marbles and Midsummer Night's Dream, (II. 3); the best and unfortunatest [31] of the Kings of France, 'St. Louis' (III. 8); the best and unfortunatest of the Kings of England, Henry II. (III. 9); the Lion-heart of England (III. 11); Edward III. of England and his lion's whelp, (IV. 14); again and again the two Second Friedrichs, of Germany and Prussia; Sir John Hawkwood, (I. 6, and XV. 11); Sir Thomas More, (VII. 4); Sir Francis Drake, (XIII. 11); and Sir Richard Grenville, (IX. 11). Now all these squires are alike in their high quality of captainship over man and beast; they were pre-eminently the best men of their surrounding groups of men; and the guides of their people, faithfully recognized for such; unless when their people got drunk, (which sometimes happened, with sorrowful issue,) and all equality with them seen to be divinely impossible. (Compare XIV. 7.) And that most of them lived by thieving does not, under the conditions of their day, in any wise detract from their virtue, or impair their delightfulness, (any more than it does that of your, on the whole I suppose, favourite, Englishman, and nomadic Squire of Sherwood, Robin Hode or Hood); the theft, or piracy, as it might happen, being always effected with a good conscience, and in an open, honourable, and merciful manner. Thus, in the account of Sir Francis's third voyage, which was faithfully taken out of the reports of Mr. Christofer Ceely, Ellis Hixon, and others who were in the same voyage with him, by Philip Nichols, preacher, revised and annotated by Sir Francis himself, and set forth by his nephew, what I told you about his proceedings on the coast of Spanish America (XIII. 12) is thus summed:-- "There were at this time belonging to Carthagene, Nombre de Dios, Rio Grand, Santa Martha, Rio de Hacha, Venta Cruz, Veragua, Nicaragua, the Honduras, Jamaica, &c., about two hundred frigates, [32] some of a hundred and twenty tunnes, other but of tenne or twelve tunne, but the most of thirty or forty tunne, which all had entercourse betweene Carthagene and Nombre de Dios, the most of which, during our abode in those parts, wee tooke, and some of them twice or thrice each, yet never burnt nor suncke any, unless they were made out men-of-warre against us.... Many strange birds, beastes, and fishes, besides, fruits, trees, plants and the like were seene and observed of us in this journey, which, willingly, wee pretermit, as hastening to the end of our voyage, which from this Cape of St. Anthony wee intended to finish by sayling the directest and speediest way homeward, and accordingly even beyonde our owne expectation most happily performed. For whereas our captaine had purposed to touch at New-found-land, and there to have watered, which would have been some let unto us, though wee stood in great want of water, yet God Almighty so provided for us, by giving us good store of raine water, that wee were sufficiently furnished; and within twenty-three dayes wee past from the Cape of Florida to the Iles of Silley, and so arrived at Plimouth on Sunday, about sermon-time, August the Ninth, 1573, at what time the newes of our captaine's returne brought unto his" (people?) "did so speedily pass over all the church, and surpass their mindes with desire and delight to see him, that very fewe or none remained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidence of God's love and blessing towards our gracious Queene and countrey, by the fruite of our captaine's labour and successe. Soli Deo gloria." I am curious to know, and hope to find, that the deserted preacher was Mr. Philip Nichols, the compiler afterwards of this log-book of Sir Francis. Putting out of the question, then, this mode of their livelihood, you will find all these squires essentially "captaines," head, or chief persons, occupied in maintaining good order, and putting things to rights, so that they naturally become chief Lawyers without Wigs, (otherwise called Kings,) in the districts accessible to them. Of whom I have named first, the Athenian Theseus, "setter to rights," or "settler," his name means; he being both the founder of the first city whose history you are to know, and the first true Ruler of beasts: for his mystic contest with the Minotaur is the fable through which the Greeks taught what they knew of the more terrible and mysterious relations between the lower creatures and man; and the desertion of him by Ariadne, (for indeed he never deserted her, but she him,--involuntarily, poor sweet maid,--Death calling her in Diana's name,) is the conclusive stroke against him by the Third Fors. Of this great squire, then, you shall really have some account in next letter. I have only further time now to tell you that this month's frontispiece is a facsimile of two separate parts of an engraving originally executed by Sandro Botticelli. An impression of Sandro's own plate is said to exist in the Vatican; I have never seen one. The ordinarily extant impressions are assuredly from an inferior plate, a copy of Botticelli's. But his manner of engraving has been imitated by the copyist as far as he understood it, and the important qualities of the design are so entirely preserved that the work has often been assigned to the master himself. It represents the seven works of Mercy, as completed by an eighth work in the centre of all; namely, lending without interest, from the Mount of Pity accumulated by generous alms. In the upper part of the design are seen the shores of Italy, with the cities which first built Mounts of Pity: Venice, chief of all;--then Florence, Genoa, and Castruccio's Lucca; in the distance prays the monk of Ancona, who first thought--inspired of heaven--of such war with usurers; and an angel crowns him, as you see. The little dashes, which form the dark background, represent waves of the Adriatic; and they, as well as all the rest, are rightly and manfully engraved, though you may not think it; but I have no time to-day to give you a lecture on engraving, nor to tell you the story of Mounts of Pity, which is too pretty to be spoiled by haste; but I hope to get something of Theseus and Frederick the Second, preparatorily, into next letter. Meantime I must close this one by answering two requests, which, though made to me privately, I think it right to state my reasons for refusing, publicly. The first was indeed rather the offer of an honour to me, than a request, in the proposal that I should contribute to the Maurice Memorial Fund. I loved Mr. Maurice, learned much from him, worked under his guidance and authority, and have deep regard and respect for some persons whose names I see on the Memorial Committee. But I must decline joining them: first, because I dislike all memorials, as such; thinking that no man who deserves them, needs them: and secondly, because, though I affectionately remember and honour Mr. Maurice, I have no mind to put his bust in Westminster Abbey. For I do not think of him as one of the great, or even one of the leading, men of the England of his day; but only as the centre of a group of students whom his amiable sentimentalism at once exalted and stimulated, while it relieved them from any painful necessities of exact scholarship in divinity. And as he was always honest, (at least in intention,) and unfailingly earnest and kind, he was harmless and soothing in error, and vividly helpful when unerring. I have above referred you, and most thankfully, to his sermon on the relations of man to inferior creatures; and I can quite understand how pleasant it was for a disciple panic-struck by the literal aspect of the doctrine of justification by faith, to be told, in an earlier discourse, that "We speak of an anticipation as justified by the event. Supposing that anticipation to be something so inward, so essential to me, that my own very existence is involved in it, I am justified by it." But consolatory equivocations of this kind have no enduring place in literature; nor has Mr. Maurice more real right to a niche in Westminster Abbey than any other tender-hearted Christian gentleman, who has successfully, for a time, promoted the charities of his faith, and parried its discussion. I have been also asked to contribute to the purchase of the Alexandra Park; and I will not: and beg you, my working readers, to understand, once for all, that I wish your homes to be comfortable, and refined; and that I will resist, to the utmost of my power, all schemes founded on the vile modern notion that you are to be crowded in kennels till you are nearly dead, that other people may make money by your work, and then taken out in squads by tramway and railway, to be revived and refined by science and art. Your first business is to make your homes healthy and delightful: then, keep your wives and children there, and let your return to them be your daily "holy day." Ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. The subjoined letter is from a clergyman of the Church of England; I publish it with his permission, advising him at the same time to withhold his name, as the arguments he has brought forward are those which would generally occur to a mind ecclesiastically trained:-- 10th September, 1872. Sir,--At page 15 of the 21st letter of your 'Fors Clavigera' you tell the working men and labourers of this country that "lending for gain is sinful;" and you intimate, as I gather, that this is the teaching of the Bible. May I, therefore, be allowed to submit that this unqualified assertion, with its world-wide consequences, is not true? In Deut. xxiii. 20, you will find these words: "Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury." And the margin (a), for the scope and meaning of this word "stranger," refers you to Deut. x. 19, which says, "Love ye therefore the stranger." And the margin (b) refers us also to Lev. xix. 35, which enjoins us to "love the stranger" as ourselves. So that we are thus plainly taught-- I. That the lending upon usury cannot be in itself a sin, or God (c) could not have allowed it in any case whatsoever, any more than He could have allowed theft or lying (d). II. That the lending to the stranger was not incompatible with the command, "Love ye the stranger," or else God, in the laws and writings given by Moses, at one and the same time, stultifies and contradicts Himself (e). III. That the laws forbidding usury, like the laws for preserving estates to their families by the year of Jubilee, and like the laws which bound Israelitish servants until the "year of release," were peculiar and exclusive, and concerned only that people living in a peculiar and exclusive way. Outside that little patch of territory, but the size of our two largest English counties, the Jews were expressly told they might lend upon usury; and this at the same time that they were enjoined to love the stranger, and not to "oppress the stranger (f)." Says old 'Cruden's Concordance:'--"It seems as lawful for me to receive interest for money, which another takes pain with, improves, but runs the hazard of in trade, as it is to receive rent for my land, which another takes pain with, improves, but runs the hazard of in husbandry." What should we think of discovering in the holy books of some recently found people, a God so eccentric that he allowed you to invest money in tea, or sugar, or iron, or cotton, and get fifteen or even twenty per cent. out of it, and this from poor and rich alike, with whom you traded; but threatened you with his condemnation and everlasting displeasure if, at the same time, you helped a deserving man to commence business by lending him money at four per cent.; or lent money to your country until such time as it could pay its debts, for a moderate compensation, which would prevent you and yours from being ruined? (g) Love of self is as lawful as love of neighbour--"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." My neighbour is as much bound to give me some portion of the interest or gain he has earned with my money, as he would be chargeable with selfishness and grasping if he kept it wholly for himself. Trading much more whets the appetite for gain than the taking moderate interest for money. Would our Lord have held up that which was wicked in itself for our imitation, as He has done in Matt. xxv. 27, if lending upon interest were sinful? (h) Nothing but this sight of the taking portion of the Bible without the other, and then summing up and pronouncing judgment upon a portion of the evidence only, thus arriving at an unsound judgment, would have led me to trouble you with these lines. I remain, Sir, Yours faithfully. (a), (b), and (c). My correspondent uses "God" and "the margin" as synonymous terms. May I be allowed to submit to him that they are not the same, and that my statement involved no reference to either? My assertion is respecting the Bible; and has no reference either to its margin, or to God:--and my assertion is simply that "usury," in the language of the Bible, means any percentage, however small, on lent money. I have made no assertion myself as to the characters assigned to it, for I have not examined them. I know that usury is sinful, as I know that theft is, and have no need of inquiring whether the Bible says so or not, but Ezekiel 18th is sufficiently explicit. (d). Why does not my correspondent say "theft, lying, or murder"? The occupation of the land of Canaan was one colossal theft; the prophetess-Judge of Israel gave enthusiastic benediction, in one and the same person, to the firmness of the hand of the murderess, and fineness of the art of the liar; and the first monarch of Israel forfeited his throne, because after having faithfully slain the men, women, children, sucklings, and domestic animals of a hostile tribe, he faithlessly spared their king, and serviceablest cattle. (e). The writings commonly assumed to be given by Moses very certainly contradict themselves in many places. It is my correspondent's conclusion, not mine, that therefore God does so. (f). The Jews have accordingly carried out their love to the stranger, (though I beg my correspondent to observe that stranger is not the same word as Gentile) by making as much money out of him as they can, in all places and on all occasions. But it does not follow, either that they have been blessed in doing so, or that Christians are therefore justified in treating each other either as strangers or Jews. (g). A singular instance of the looseness of thought possible respecting matters to which we are accustomed. A man is not ruined, because he can get no gain by lending his money. No one objects to his keeping it in his pocket. (h). Presumably, the unjust steward's modification of his master's accounts was also virtuous? I have not time to ask Mr. Sillar's permission, but hope his pardon for assuming it, to print the following portion of a letter I have had very great pleasure in receiving from him:-- "You wrong me in saying I have entirely given myself up to this question. I am occupied in saving our lovely streams from pollution, and endeavouring (no easy task, I assure you,) to put in daily practice, the principles you teach. I wish you could see our works at Crossness. "The reason why I exclusively attack this vice is because it is the only one which is not attacked from the pulpit. Men do not know even that it is a vice. I have such confidence in the integrity of Englishmen that I believe they would at once discountenance it if they had the least idea of its character and mischievous nature." FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXIII. Brantwood, October 24th, 1872. My Friends, At breakfast this morning, which I was eating sulkily, because I had final press-corrections to do on 'Fors,' (and the last are always worst to do, being without repentance,) I took up the 'Pall Mall Gazette' for the 21st, and chanced on two things, of which one much interested, the other much pleased me, and both are to our present purpose. What interested me was the statement in the column of "This Evening's News," made by a gentleman much acquainted with naval business, that "Mr. Goschen is the one man to whom, and to whom alone, we can as a nation look even for permission to retain our power at sea." Whether entirely, or, as I apprehend, but partially, true, this statement is a remarkable one to appear in the journals of a nation which has occupied its mind lately chiefly on the subject of its liberties; and I cannot but wonder what Sir Francis Drake would have thought of such a piece of Evening's News, communicated in form to him! What he would have thought--if you can fancy it--would be very proper for you also to think, and much to our eventual purpose. But the part of the contents of the 'Pall Mall' which I found to bear on the subject of this letter, was the address by a mangled convict to a benevolent gentleman. The Third Fors must assuredly have determined that this letter should be pleasing to the Touchstone mind,--the gods will have it poetical; it ends already with rhyme, and must begin in like manner, for these first twelve verses of the address are much too precious to be lost among "news," whether of morning or evening. "Mr. P. Taylor, honnered Sir, Accept these verses I indict, Thanks to a gentle mother dear Whitch taught these infant hands to rite. "And thanks unto the Chaplin here, A heminent relidjous man, As kind a one as ever dipt A beke into the flowing can. "He pointes out to me most clear How sad and sinfull is my ways, And numerous is the briney tear Which for that man I nigtly prays. "'Cohen,' he ses, in sech a voice! 'Your lot is hard, your stripes is sore; But Cohen,' he ses, 'rejoice! rejoice! And never never steale no more!' "His langwidge is so kind and good, It works so strong on me inside, I woold not do it if I could, I coold not do it if I tryed. "Ah, wence this moisteur in my eye? Whot make me turn agin my food? O, Mister Taylor, arsk not why, Ime so cut up with gratitood. "Fansy a gentleman like you, No paultry Beak, but a M.P., A riggling in your heasy chair The riggles they put onto me. "I see thee shudderin ore thy wine,-- You hardly know what you are at, Whenere you think of Us emplyin The bloody and unhenglish Cat. "Well may your indigernation rise! I call it Manley what you feeled At seein Briton's n-k-d b-cks By brutial jalors acked and weald. "Habolish these yere torchiers! Dont have no horgies any more Of arf a dozen orficers All wallerin in a fellers goar. "Inprisonment alone is not A thing of whitch we would complane; Add ill-conwenience to our lot, But do not give the convick pain. "And well you know that's not the wust, Not if you went and biled us whole; The Lash's degeradation!--that's What cuts us to the wery soul!" The questions respecting punishment and reformation, which these verses incidentally propose, are precisely the same which had to be determined three thousand years ago in the city of Athens--(the only difference of any importance being that the instrument of execution discussed was club instead of cat); and their determination gave rise to the peculiar form in which the history of the great Athenian Squire, Theseus,--our to-day's subject--was presented to mankind. The story is a difficult one to tell, and a more difficult one still to understand. The likeness, or imagined likeness, of the hero himself, as the Greeks fancied him, you may see, when you care to do so, at the British Museum, in simple guise enough. Miss Edgeworth, in her noble last novel, 'Helen,' makes her hero fly into a passion at even being suspected of wishing to quote the too trite proverb that "No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre." But Mr. Beauclerk disclaims it for its triteness only, when he ought rather to have disclaimed it for its untruth. Every truly great man that ever I heard of, was a principal hero to his servants, and most heroic to those most intimate with him. At all events, the Greeks meant all the world to be to their hero as valets-de-chambre, for he sits mother-naked. Under which primitive aspect, indeed, I would fain show you, mentally as well as bodily, every hero I give you account of. It is the modern method, in order to give you more inviting pictures of people, to dress them--often very correctly--in the costume of the time, with such old clothes as the masquerade shops keep. But my own steady aim is to strip them for you, that you may see if they are of flesh, indeed, or dust. Similarly, I shall try to strip theories bare, and facts, such as you need to know. Mother-naked sits Theseus: and round about him, not much more veiled, ride his Athenians, in Pan-Athenaic procession, honouring their Queen-Goddess. Admired, beyond all other marble shapes in the world; for which reason, the gentlemen of my literary club here in London, professing devotion to the same goddess, decorate their very comfortable corner house in Pall Mall with a copy of this Attic sculpture. Being therein, themselves, Attic in no wise, but essentially barbarous, pilfering what they cannot imitate: for a truly Attic mind would have induced them to pourtray themselves, as they appear in their own Pan-Christian procession, whenever and wherever it may be:--presumably, to Epsom downs on the Derby day. You may see, I said, the statue of Theseus whenever you care to do so. I do not in the least know why you should care. But for years back, you, or your foolish friends, have been making a mighty fuss to get yourselves into the British Museum on Sundays: so I suppose you want to see the Theseus, or the stuffed birds, or the crabs and spiders, or the skeleton of the gorilla, or the parched alligator-skins; and you imagine these contemplations likely to improve, and sanctify, that is to say, recreate, your minds. But are you quite sure you have got any minds yet to be recreated? Before you expect edification from that long gallery full of long-legged inconceivable spiders, and colossal blotchy crabs, did you ever think of looking with any mind, or mindfulness, at the only too easily conceivable short-legged spider of your own English acquaintance? or did you ever so much as consider why the crabs on Margate sands were minded to go sideways instead of straightforward? Have you so much as watched a spider making his cobweb, or, if you have not yet had leisure to do that, in the toil of your own cobweb-making, did you ever think how he threw his first thread across the corner? No need for you to go to the British Museum yet, my friends, either on Sundays or any other day. "Well, but the Greek sculpture? We can't see that at home in our room corners." And what is Greek sculpture, or any sculpture, to you? Are your own legs and arms not handsome enough for you to look at, but you must go and stare at chipped and smashed bits of stone in the likenesses of legs and arms that ended their walks and work two thousand years ago? "Your own legs and arms are not as handsome as--you suppose they ought to be," say you? No; I fancy not: and you will not make them handsomer by sauntering with your hands in your pockets through the British Museum. I suppose you will have an agitation, next, for leave to smoke in it. Go and walk in the fields on Sunday, making sure, first, therefore, that you have fields to walk in: look at living birds, not at stuffed ones; and make your own breasts and shoulders better worth seeing than the Elgin Marbles. Which to effect, remember, there are several matters to be thought of. The shoulders will get strong by exercise. So indeed will the breast. But the breast chiefly needs exercise inside of it--of the lungs, namely, and of the heart; and this last exercise is very curiously inconsistent with many of the athletic exercises of the present day. And the reason I do want you, for once, to go to the British Museum, and to look at that broad chest of Theseus, is that the Greeks imagined it to have something better than a Lion's Heart beneath its breadth--a hero's heart, duly trained in every pulse. They imagined it so. Your modern extremely wise and liberal historians will tell you it never was so:--that no real Theseus ever existed then; and that none can exist now, or, rather, that everybody is himself a Theseus and a little more. All the more strange then, all the more instructive, as the disembodied Cincinnatus of the Roman, so this disembodied Theseus of the Ionian; though certainly Mr. Stuart Mill could not consider him, even in that ponderous block of marble imagery, a "utility fixed and embodied in a material object." Not even a disembodied utility--not even a ghost--if he never lived. An idea only; yet one that has ruled all minds of men to this hour, from the hour of its first being born, a dream, into this practical and solid world. Ruled, and still rules, in a thousand ways, which you know no more than the paths by which the winds have come that blow in your face. But you never pass a day without being brought, somehow, under the power of Theseus. You cannot pass a china-shop, for instance, nor an upholsterer's, without seeing, on some mug or plate, or curtain, or chair, the pattern known as the "Greek fret," simple or complex. I once held it in especial dislike, as the chief means by which bad architects tried to make their buildings look classical; and as ugly in itself. Which it is: and it has an ugly meaning also; but a deep one, which I did not then know; having been obliged to write too young, when I knew only half truths, and was eager to set them forth by what I thought fine words. People used to call me a good writer then; now they say I can't write at all; because, for instance, if I think anybody's house is on fire, I only say, "Sir, your house is on fire;" whereas formerly I used to say, "Sir, the abode in which you probably passed the delightful days of youth is in a state of inflammation," and everybody used to like the effect of the two p's in "probably passed," and of the two d's in "delightful days." Well, that Greek fret, ugly in itself, has yet definite and noble service in decorative work, as black has among colours; much more, has it a significance, very precious, though very solemn, when you can read it. There is so much in it, indeed, that I don't well know where to begin. Perhaps it will be best to go back to our cathedral door at Lucca, where we have been already. For as, after examining the sculpture on the bell, with the help of the sympathetic ringer, I was going in to look at the golden lamp, my eyes fell on a slightly traced piece of sculpture and legend on the southern wall of the porch, which, partly feeling it out with my finger, it being worn away by the friction of many passing shoulders, broad and narrow, these six hundred years and more, I drew for you, and Mr. Burgess has engraved. The straggling letters at the side, read straight, and with separating of the words, run thus:-- HIC QVEM CRETICVS EDIT DEDALVS EST LABERINTHVS. DE QVO NVLLVS VADERE QVIVIT QVI FVIT INTVS NI THESEVS GRATIS ADRIANE STAMINE JVTVS. which is in English:-- This is the labyrinth which the Cretan Dedalus built, Out of which nobody could get who was inside, Except Theseus; nor could he have done it, unless he had been helped with a thread by Adriane, all for love. Upon which you are to note, first, that the grave announcement, "This is the labyrinth which the Cretan Dedalus built," may possibly be made interesting even to some of your children, if reduced from mediæval sublimity, into your more popular legend--"This is the house that Jack built." The cow with the crumpled horn will then remind them of the creature who, in the midst of this labyrinth, lived as a spider in the centre of his web; and the "maiden all forlorn" may stand for Ariadne, or Adriane--(either name is given her by Chaucer, as he chooses to have three syllables or two)--while the gradual involution of the ballad, and necessity of clear-mindedness as well as clear utterance on the part of its singer, is a pretty vocal imitation of the deepening labyrinth. Theseus, being a pious hero, and the first Athenian knight who cut his hair short in front, may not inaptly be represented by the priest all shaven and shorn; the cock that crew in the morn is the proper Athenian symbol of a pugnacious mind; and the malt that lay in the house fortunately indicates the connection of Theseus and the Athenian power with the mysteries of Eleusis, where corn first, it is said, grew in Greece. And by the way, I am more and more struck every day, by the singular Grecism in Shakespeare's mind, contrary in many respects to the rest of his nature; yet compelling him to associate English fairyland with the great Duke of Athens, and to use the most familiar of all English words for land, "acre," in the Greek or Eleusinian sense, not the English one! "Between the acres of the rye, These pretty country-folks do lie--" and again--"search every acre in the high grown field," meaning "ridge," or "crest," not "ager," the root of "agriculture." Lastly, in our nursery rhyme, observe that the name of Jack, the builder, stands excellently for Dædalus, retaining the idea of him down to the phrase, "Jack-of-all-Trades." Of this Greek builder you will find some account at the end of my 'Aratra Pentelici:' to-day I can only tell you he is distinctively the power of finest human, as opposed to Divine, workmanship or craftsmanship. Whatever good there is, and whatever evil, in the labour of the hands, separated from that of the soul, is exemplified by his history and performance. In the deepest sense, he was to the Greeks, Jack of all trades, yet Master of none; the real Master of every trade being always a God. His own special work or craft was inlaying or dove-tailing, and especially of black in white. And this house which he built was his finest piece of involution, or cunning workmanship; and the memory of it is kept by the Greeks for ever afterwards, in that running border of theirs, involved in and repeating itself, called the Greek fret, of which you will at once recognise the character in these two pictures of the labyrinth of Dædalus itself, on the coins of the place where it was built, Cnossus, in the island of Crete; and which you see, in the frontispiece, surrounding the head of Theseus, himself, on a coin of the same city. Of course frets and returning lines were used in ornamentation when there were no labyrinths--probably long before labyrinths. A symbol is scarcely ever invented just when it is needed. Some already recognised and accepted form or thing becomes symbolic at a particular time. Horses had tails, and the moon quarters, long before there were Turks; but the horse-tail and crescent are not less definitely symbolic to the Ottoman. So, the early forms of ornament are nearly alike, among all nations of any capacity for design: they put meaning into them afterwards, if they ever come themselves to have any meaning. Vibrate but the point of a tool against an unbaked vase, as it revolves, set on the wheel,--you have a wavy or zigzag line. The vase revolves once; the ends of the wavy line do not exactly tally when they meet; you get over the blunder by turning one into a head, the other into a tail,--and have a symbol of eternity--if, first, which is wholly needful, you have an idea of eternity! Again, the free sweep of a pen at the finish of a large letter has a tendency to throw itself into a spiral. There is no particular intelligence, or spiritual emotion, in the production of this line. A worm draws it with his coil, a fern with its bud, and a periwinkle with his shell. Yet, completed in the Ionic capital, and arrested in the bending point of the acanthus leaf in the Corinthian one, it has become the primal element of beautiful architecture and ornament in all the ages; and is eloquent with endless symbolism, representing the power of the winds and waves in Athenian work, and of the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, in Gothic work: or, indeed, often enough, of both, the Devil being held prince of the power of the air--as in the story of Job, and the lovely story of Buonconte of Montefeltro, in Dante: nay, in this very tale of Theseus, as Chaucer tells it,--having got hold, by ill luck, only of the later and calumnious notion that Theseus deserted his saviour-mistress, he wishes him Devil-speed instead of God-speed, and that energetically-- "A twenty-divel way the wind him drive." For which, indeed, Chaucer somewhat deserved (for he ought not to have believed such things of Theseus,) the God of Love's anger at his drawing too near the daisy. I will write the pretty lines partly in modern spelling for you, that you may get the sense better:-- I, kneeling by this flower, in good intent, Abode, to know what all the people meant, As still as any stone; till at the last The God of Love on me his eyen cast And said, "Who kneeleth there?" And I answered Unto his asking, And said, "Sir, it am I," and came him near And salued him.--Quoth he, "What dost thou here So nigh mine own flower, so boldly? It were better worthy, truly, A worm to nighen near my flower than thou." "And why, Sir," quoth I, "an it like you?" "For thou," quoth he, "art nothing thereto able, It is my relike, digne, and delitable. And thou my foe, and all my folk worriest. [33] And of mine old servants thou missayest." But it is only for evil speaking of ladies that Chaucer felt his conscience thus pricked,--chiefly of Cressida; whereas, I have written the lines for you because it is the very curse of this age that we speak evil alike of ladies and knights, and all that made them noble in past days;--nay, of saints also; and I have, for first business, next January, to say what I can for our own St. George, against the enlightened modern American view of him, that he was nothing better than a swindling bacon-seller (good enough, indeed, so, for us, now!) But to come back to the house that Jack built. You will want to know, next, whether Jack ever did build it. I believe, in veritable bricks and mortar--no; in veritable limestone and cave-catacomb, perhaps, yes; it is no matter how; somehow, you see, Jack must have built it, for there is the picture of it on the coin of the town. He built it, just as St. George killed the dragon; so that you put a picture of him also on the coin of your town. Not but that the real and artful labyrinth might have been, for all we know. A very real one, indeed, was built by twelve brotherly kings in Egypt, in two stories, one for men to live in, the other for crocodiles;--and the upper story was visible and wonderful to all eyes, in authentic times: whereas, we know of no one who ever saw Jack's labyrinth: and yet, curiously enough, the real labyrinth set the pattern of nothing; while Jack's ghostly labyrinth has set the pattern of almost everything linear and complex, since; and the pretty spectre of it blooms at this hour, in vital hawthorn for you, every spring, at Hampton Court. Now, in the pictures of this imaginary maze, you are to note that both the Cretan and Lucchese designs agree in being composed of a single path or track, coiled, and recoiled, on itself. Take a piece of flexible chain and lay it down, considering the chain itself as the path: and, without an interruption, it will trace any of the three figures. (The two Cretan ones are indeed the same in design, except in being, one square, and the other round.) And recollect, upon this, that the word "Labyrinth" properly means "rope-walk," or "coil-of-rope-walk," its first syllable being probably also the same as our English name "Laura," 'the path,' and its method perfectly given by Chaucer in the single line--"And, for the house is crenkled to and fro." And on this, note farther, first, that had the walls been real, instead of ghostly, there would have been no difficulty whatever in getting either out or in, for you could go no other way. But if the walls were spectral, and yet the transgression of them made your final entrance or return impossible, Ariadne's clue was needful indeed. Note, secondly, that the question seems not at all to have been about getting in; but getting out again. The clue, at all events, could be helpful only after you had carried it in; and if the spider, or other monster in midweb, ate you, the help in your clue, for return, would be insignificant. So that this thread of Ariadne's implied that even victory over the monster would be vain, unless you could disentangle yourself from his web also. So much you may gather from coin or carving: next, we try tradition. Theseus, as I said before, is the great settler or law-giver of the Athenian state; but he is so eminently as the Peace-maker, causing men to live in fellowship who before lived separate, and making roads passable that were infested by robbers or wild beasts. He is the exterminator of every bestial and savage element, and the type of human, or humane power, which power you will find in this, and all my other books on policy, summed in the terms, "Gentleness and Justice." The Greeks dwelt chiefly in their thoughts on the last, and Theseus, representing the first, has therefore most difficulty in dealing with questions of punishment, and criminal justice. Now the justice of the Greeks was enforced by three great judges, who lived in three islands. �acus, who lived in the island of �gina, is the administrator of distributive, or 'dividing' justice; which relates chiefly to property, and his subjects, as being people of industrious temper, were once ants; afterwards called Ant-people, or 'Myrmidons.' Secondly, Minos, who lived in the island of Crete, was the judge who punished crime, of whom presently; finally, Rhadamanthus, called always by Homer "golden," or "glowing" Rhadamanthus, was the judge who rewarded virtue; and he lived in a blessed island covered with flowers, but which eye of man hath not yet seen, nor has any living ear heard lisp of wave on that shore. For the very essence and primal condition of virtue is that it shall not know of, nor believe in, any blessed islands, till it find them, it may be, in due time. And of these three judges, two were architects, but the third only a gardener. �acus helped the gods to build the walls of Troy. Minos appointed the labyrinth in coils round the Minotaur; but Rhadamanthus only set trees, with golden fruit on them, beside waters of comfort, and overlaid the calm waves with lilies. They did these things, I tell you, in very truth, cloud-hidden indeed; but the things themselves are with us to this day. No town on earth is more real than that town of Troy. Her prince, long ago, was dragged dead round the walls that �acus built; but her princedom did not die with him. Only a few weeks since, I was actually standing, as I told you, with my good friend Mr. Parker, watching the lizards play among the chinks in the walls built by �acus, for his wandering Trojans, by Tiber side. And, perhaps within memory of man, some of you may have walked up or down Tower Street, little thinking that its tower was also built by �acus, for his wandering Trojans and their Cæsar, by Thames side: and on Tower Hill itself--where I had my pocket picked only the other day by some of the modern �acidæ--stands the English Mint, "dividing" gold and silver which �acus, first of all Greeks, divided in his island of �gina, and struck into intelligible money-stamp and form, that men might render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's. But the Minos labyrinth is more real yet; at all events, more real for us. And what it was, and is, as you have seen at Lucca, you shall hear at Florence, where you are to learn Dante's opinion upon it, and Sandro Botticelli shall draw it for us. That Hell, which so many people think the only place Dante gives any account of, (yet seldom know his account even of that,) was, he tells you, divided into upper, midmost, and nether pits. You usually lose sight of this main division of it, in the more complex one of the nine circles; but remember, these are divided in diminishing proportion: six of them are the upper hell; two, the midmost; one, the lowest. [34] You will find this a very pretty and curious proportion. Here it is in labyrinthine form, putting the three dimensions at right angles to each other, and drawing a spiral round them. I show you it in a spiral line, because the idea of descent is in Dante's mind, spiral (as of a worm's or serpent's coil) throughout; even to the mode of Geryon's flight, "ruota e discende;" and Minos accordingly indicates which circle any sinner is to be sent to, in a most graphically labyrinthine manner, by twisting his tail round himself so many times, necessarily thus marking the level. The uppermost and least dreadful hell, divided into six circles, is the hell of those who cannot rightly govern themselves, but have no mind to do mischief to any one else. In the lowest circle of this, and within the same walls with the more terrible mid-hell, whose stench even comes up and reaches to them, are people who have not rightly governed their thoughts: and these are buried for ever in fiery tombs, and their thoughts thus governed to purpose; which you, my friends, who are so fond of freedom of thought, and freedom of the press, may wisely meditate on. Then the two lower hells are for those who have wilfully done mischief to other people. And of these, some do open injury, and some, deceitful injury, and of these the rogues are put the lower; but there is a greater distinction in the manner of sin, than its simplicity or roguery:--namely, whether it be done in hot blood or cold blood. The injurious sins, done in hot blood--that is to say, under the influence of passion--are in the midmost hell; but the sins done in cold blood, without passion, or, more accurately, contrary to passion, far down below the freezing point, are put in the lowest hell: the ninth circle. Now, little as you may think it, or as the friend thought it, who tried to cure me of jesting the other day, I should not have taken upon me to write this 'Fors,' if I had not, in some degree, been cured of jesting long ago; and in the same way that Dante was,--for in my poor and faltering path I have myself been taken far enough down among the diminished circles to see this nether hell--the hell of Traitors; and to know, what people do not usually know of treachery, that it is not the fraud, but the cold-heartedness, which is chiefly dreadful in it. Therefore, this nether Hell is of ice, not fire; and of ice that nothing can break. "Oh, ill-starred folk, Beyond all others wretched, who abide In such a mansion as scarce thought finds words To speak of, better had ye here on earth Been flocks or mountain goats. I saw, before, and underneath my feet, A lake, whose frozen surface liker seemed To glass than water. Not so thick a veil In winter e'er hath Austrian Danube spread O'er his still course, nor Tanais, far remote Under the chilling sky. Rolled o'er that mass Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fallen Not even its rim had creaked. As peeps the frog, Croaking above the wave,--what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil,-- Blue-pinched, and shrined in ice, the spirits stood, Moving their teeth in shrill note, like the stork." No more wandering of the feet in labyrinth like this, and the eyes, once cruelly tearless, now blind with frozen tears. But the midmost hell, for hot-blooded sinners, has other sort of lakes,--as, for instance, you saw a little while ago, of hot pitch, in which one bathes otherwise than in Serchio--(the Serchio is the river at Lucca, and Pietrapana a Lucchese mountain). But observe,--for here we get to our main work again,--the great boiling lake on the Phlegethon of this upper hell country is red, not black; and its source, as well as that of the river which freezes beneath, is in this island of Crete! in the Mount Ida, "joyous once with leaves and streams." You must look to the passage yourselves--'Inferno,' XIV. (line 120 in Carey)--for I have not room for it now. The first sight of it, to Dante, is as "a little brook, whose crimsoned wave Yet lifts my hair with horror." Virgil makes him look at this spring as the notablest thing seen by him in hell, since he entered its gate; but the great lake of it is under a ruinous mountain, like the fallen Alp through which the Adige foams down to Verona;--and on the crest of this ruin lies couched the enemy of Theseus--the Minotaur: "And there, At point of the disparted ridge, lay stretched The infamy of Crete--at sight of us It gnawed itself, as one with rage distract. To him my guide exclaimed, 'Perchance thou deem'st The King of Athens here.'" Of whom and of his enemy, I have time to tell you no more to-day--except only that this Minotaur is the type or embodiment of the two essentially bestial sins of Anger and Lust;--that both these are in the human nature, interwoven inextricably with its chief virtue, Love, so that Dante makes this very ruin of the Rocks of hell, on which the Minotaur is couched, to be wrought on them at the instant when "the Universe was thrilled with love,"--(the last moment of the Crucifixion)--and that the labyrinth of these passions is one not fabulous, nor only pictured on coins of Crete. And the right interweaving of Anger with Love, in criminal justice, is the main question in earthly law, which the Athenian lawgiver had to deal with. Look, if you can, at my introductory Lectures at Oxford, p. 83; and so I must leave Theseus for this time;--in next letter, which will be chiefly on Christmas cheer, I must really try to get as far as his vegetable soup. As for �acus, and his coining business, we must even let them alone now, till next year; only I have to thank some readers who have written to me on the subject of interest of money, (one or two complaining that I had dismissed it too summarily, when, alas! I am only at the threshold of it!), and, especially, my reader for the press, who has referred me to a delightful Italian book, 'Teoremi di Politica Cristiana,' (Naples, 1830,) and copied out ever so much of it for me; and Mr. Sillar, for farther most useful letters, of which to-day I can only quote this postscript:-- "Please note that your next number of 'Fors Clavigera' ought to be in the hands of your readers on Friday, the 1st, or Saturday, the 2nd, of November. The following day being Sunday, the 3rd, there will be read in every church in England, or in the world, where the Church Service is used, the 15th Psalm, which distinctly declares the man who shall ascend to God's holy hill to be him who, amongst other things, has not put forth his money upon usury; a verse impiously ignored in most of the metrical versions of the Psalms; those adapted to popular tunes or popular prejudices." I think, accordingly, that some of my readers may be glad to have a sounder version of that Psalm; and as the 14th is much connected with it, and will be variously useful to us afterwards, here they both are, done into verse by an English squire,--or his sister, for they alike could rhyme; and the last finished singing what her brother left unsung, the Third Fors having early put seal on his lips. PSALM XIV.--(Dixit insipiens.) The foolish man by flesh and fancy ledd, His guilty hart with this fond thought hath fed: There is noe God that raigneth. And so thereafter he and all his mates Do workes, which earth corrupt, and Heaven hates: Not one that good remaineth. Even God himself sent down his piercing ey; If of this clayy race he could espy One, that his wisdome learneth. And loe, he findes that all a strayeng went: All plung'd in stincking filth, not one well bent, Not one that God discerneth. O maddnes of these folkes, thus loosly ledd! These caniballs, who, as if they were bread, Gods people do devower: Nor ever call on God; but they shall quake More than they now do bragg, when he shall take The just into his power. Indeede the poore, opprest by you, you mock: Their councells are your common jesting stock: But God is their recomfort. Ah, when from Syon shall the Saver come, That Jacob, freed by thee, may glad become And Israel full of comfort? PSALM XV.--(Domine, quis habitabit.) In tabernacle thine, O Lord, who shall remaine? Lord, of thy holy hill, who shall the rest obtaine? Ev'n he that leades a life of uncorrupted traine Whose deedes of righteous hart, whose harty wordes be plain: Who with deceitfull tongue hath never us'd to faine; Nor neighboure hurtes by deede, nor doth with slander stain: Whose eyes a person vile doth hold in vile disdaine, But doth, with honour greate, the godly entertaine: Who othe and promise given doth faithfully maintain, Although some worldly losse thereby he may sustain; From bityng usury who ever doth refraine: Who sells not guiltlesse cause for filthy love of gain, Who thus proceedes for ay, in sacred mount shall raign. You may not like this old English at first; but if you can find anybody to read it to you who has an ear, its cadence is massy and grand, more than that of most verse I know, and never a word is lost. Whether you like it or not, the sense of it is true, and the way to the sacred mount, (of which mounts, whether of Pity, or of Roses, are but shadows,) told you for once, straightforwardly,--on which road I wish you God-speed. Ever faithfully yours, JOHN RUSKIN. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXIV. Corpus Christi Coll., November 7th, 1872. My Friends, I shall not call you so any more, after this Christmas; first, because things have chanced to me, of late, which have made me too sulky to be friends with anybody; secondly, because in the two years during which I have been writing these letters, not one of you has sent me a friendly word of answer; lastly, because, even if you were my friends, it would be waste print to call you so, once a month. Nor shall I sign myself "faithfully yours" any more; being very far from faithfully my own, and having found most other people anything but faithfully mine. Nor shall I sign my name, for I never like the look of it; being, I apprehend, only short for "Rough Skin," in the sense of "Pig-skin"; (and indeed, the planet under which I was born, Saturn, has supreme power over pigs,)--nor can I find historical mention of any other form of the name, except one I made no reference to when it occurred, as that of the leading devil of four,--Red-skin, Blue-skin--and I forget the skins of the other two--who performed in a religious play, of the fourteenth century, which was nearly as comic as the religious earnest of our own century. So that the letters will begin henceforward without address; and close without signature. You will probably know whom they come from, and I don't in the least care whom they go to. I was in London, all day yesterday, where the weather was as dismal as is its wont; and, returning here by the evening train, saw, with astonishment, the stars extricate themselves from the fog, and the moon glow for a little while in her setting, over the southern Berkshire hills, as I breathed on the platform at the Reading station;--(for there were six people in the carriage, and they had shut both the windows). When I got to Oxford, the sky was entirely clear; the Great Bear was near the ground under the pole, and the Charioteer high over-head, the principal star of him as bright as a gas-lamp. It is a curious default in the stars, to my mind, that there is a Charioteer among them without a chariot; and a Waggon with no waggoner; nor any waggon, for that matter, except the Bear's stomach; but I have always wanted to know the history of the absent Charles, who must have stopped, I suppose to drink, while his cart went on, and so never got to be stellified himself. I wish I knew; but I can tell you less about him than even about Theseus. The Charioteer's story is pretty, however:--he gave his life for a kiss, and did not get it; got made into stars instead. It would be a dainty tale to tell you under the mistletoe: perhaps I may have time next year: to-day it is of the stars of Ariadne's crown I want to speak. But that giving one's life for a kiss, and not getting it, is indeed a general abstract of the Greek notion of heroism, and its reward; and, by the way, does it not seem to you a grave defect in the stars, at Christmas time, that all their stories are Greek--not one Christian? In all the east, and all the west, there is not a space of heaven with a Christian story in it; the star of the Wise men having risen but once, and set, it seems, for ever; and the stars of Foolish men--innumerable, but unintelligible, forming, I suppose, all across the sky that broad way of Asses' milk; while a few Greek heroes and hunters, a monster or two, and some crustaceous animals, occupy, here in the north, our heaven's compass, down to the very margin of the illuminated book. A sky quite good enough for us, nevertheless, for all the use we make of it, either by night or day--or any hope we have of getting into it--or any inclination we have, while still out of it, to "take stars for money." Yet, with all deference to George Herbert, I will take them for nothing of the sort. Money is an entirely pleasant and proper thing to have, itself; and the first shilling I ever got in my life, I put in a pill-box, and put it under my pillow, and couldn't sleep all night for satisfaction. I couldn't have done that with a star; though truly the pretty system of usury makes the stars drop down something else than dew. I got a note from an arithmetical friend the other day, speaking of the death of "an old lady, a cousin of mine, who left--left, because she could not take it with her--200,000l. On calculation, I found this old lady, who has been lying bedridden for a year, was accumulating money (i.e. the results of other people's labour,) at the rate of 4d. a minute; in other words, she awoke in the morning ten pounds richer than she went to bed." At which, doubtless, and the like miracles throughout the world, "the stars with deep amaze, stand fixed with steadfast gaze;" for this is, indeed, a Nativity of an adverse god to the one you profess to honour, with them, and the angels, at Christmas, by over-eating yourselves. I suppose that is the quite essential part of the religion of Christmas; and, indeed, it is about the most religious thing you do in the year; and if pious people would understand, generally, that, if there be indeed any other God than Mammon, He likes to see people comfortable, and nicely dressed, as much as Mammon likes to see them fasting and in rags, they might set a wiser example to everybody than they do. I am frightened out of my wits, every now and then, here at Oxford, by seeing something come out of poor people's houses, all dressed in black down to the ground; which, (having been much thinking of wicked things lately,) I at first take for the Devil, and then find, to my extreme relief and gratification, that it's a Sister of Charity. Indeed, the only serious disadvantage of eating, and fine dressing, considered as religious ceremonies, whether at Christmas, or on Sunday, in the Sunday dinner and Sunday gown,--is that you don't always clearly understand what the eating and dressing signify. For example: why should Sunday be kept otherwise than Christmas, and be less merry? Because it is a day of rest, commemorating the fulfilment of God's easy work, while Christmas is a day of toil, commemorating the beginning of His difficult work? Is that the reason? Or because Christmas commemorates His stooping to thirty years of sorrow, and Sunday His rising to countless years of joy? Which should be the gladdest day of the two, think you, on either ground? Why haven't you Sunday pantomimes? It is a strait and sore question with me, for when I was a child, I lost the pleasure of some three-sevenths of my life because of Sunday; for I always had a way of looking forward to things, and a lurid shade was cast over the whole of Friday and Saturday by the horrible sense that Sunday was coming, and inevitable. Not that I was rebellious against my good mother or aunts in any wise; feeling only that we were all crushed under a relentless fate; which was indeed the fact, for neither they nor I had the least idea what Holiness meant, beyond what I find stated very clearly by Mr. David--the pious author of "The Paradezeal system of Botany, an arrangement representing the whole globe as a vast blooming and fruitful Paradise,"--that "Holiness is a knowledge of the Ho's." My mother, indeed, never went so far as my aunt; nor carried her religion down to the ninth or glacial circle of Holiness, by giving me cold dinner; and to this day, I am apt to over-eat myself with Yorkshire pudding, in remembrance of the consolation it used to afford me at one o'clock. Good Friday, also, was partly "intermedled," as Chaucer would call it, with light and shade, because there were hot-cross-buns at breakfast, though we had to go to church afterwards. And, indeed, I observe, happening to have under my hand the account in the 'Daily Telegraph' of Good Friday at the Crystal Palace, in 1870, that its observance is for your sakes also now "intermedled" similarly, with light and shade, by conscientious persons: for in that year, "whereas in former years the performances had been exclusively of a religious character, the directors had supplemented their programme with secular amusements." It was, I suppose, considered "secular" that the fountains should play (though I have noticed that natural ones persist in that profane practice on Sunday also), and accordingly, "there was a very abundant water-supply, while a brilliant sun gave many lovely prismatic effects to the fleeting and changeful spray" (not careful, even the sun, for his part, to remember how once he became "black as sackcloth of hair"). "A striking feature presented itself to view in the shape of the large and handsome pavilion of Howe and Cushing's American circus. This vast pavilion occupies the whole centre of the grand terrace, and was gaily decorated with bunting and fringed with the show-carriages of the circus, which were bright with gilding, mirrors, portraits, and scarlet panels. The out-door amusements began"--(the English public always retaining a distinct impression that this festival was instituted in the East)--"with an Oriental procession"--(by the way, why don't we always call Wapping the Oriental end of London?)--"of fifteen camels from the circus, mounted by negroes wearing richly coloured and bespangled Eastern costume. The performances then commenced, and continued throughout the day, the attractions comprising the trained wolves, the wonderful monkeys, and the usual scenes in the circle." "There was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour." I often wonder, myself, how long it will be, in the crucifixion afresh, which all the earth has now resolved upon, crying with more unanimous shout than ever the Jews, "Not this man, but Barabbas"--before the Ninth Hour comes. Assuming, however, that, for the nonce, trained wolves and wonderful monkeys are proper entertainments on Good Friday, pantomimes on Boxing-day, and sermons on Sunday, have you ever considered what observance might be due to Saturday,--the day on which He "preached to the spirits in prison"? for that seems to me quite the part of the three days' work which most of us might first hope for a share in. I don't know whether any of you perceive that your spirits are in prison. I know mine is, and that I would fain have it preached to, and delivered, if it be possible. For, however far and steep the slope may have been into the hell which you say every Sunday that you believe He descended into, there are places trenched deep enough now in all our hearts for the hot lake of Phlegethon to leak and ooze into: and the rock of their shore is no less hard than in Dante's time. And as your winter rejoicings, if they mean anything at all, mean that you have now, at least, a chance of deliverance from that prison, I will ask you to take the pains to understand what the bars and doors of it are, as the wisest man who has yet spoken of them tells you. There is first, observe, this great distinction in his mind between the penalties of the Hell, and the joy of Paradise. The penalty is assigned to definite act of hand; the joy, to definite state of mind. It is questioned of no one, either in the Purgatory or the Paradise, what he has done; but only what evil feeling is still in his heart, or what good, when purified wholly, his nature is noble enough to receive. On the contrary, Hell is constituted such by the one great negative state of being without Love or Fear of God;--there are no degrees of that State; but there are more or less dreadful sins which can be done in it, according to the degradation of the unredeemed Human nature. And men are judged according to their works. To give a single instance. The punishment of the fourth circle in Hell is for the Misuse of Money, for having either sinfully kept it, or sinfully spent it. But the pain in Purgatory is only for having sinfully Loved it: and the hymn of repentance is, "My soul cleaveth unto the dust; quicken thou me." Farther, and this is very notable. You might at first think that Dante's divisions were narrow and artificial, in assigning each circle to one sin only, as if every man did not variously commit many. But it is always one sin, the favourite, which destroys souls. That conquered, all others fall with it; that victorious, all others follow with it. Nevertheless, as I told you, the joiner's work, and interwoven walls of Dante's Inferno, marking double forms of sin, and their overlapping, as it were, when they meet, is one of the subtlest conditions traceable in his whole design. Look back to the scheme I gave you in last number. The Minotaur, spirit of lust and anger, rules over the central hell. But the sins of lust and anger, definitely and limitedly described as such, are punished in the upper hell, in the second and fifth circles. Why is this, think you? Have you ever noticed--enough to call it noticing seriously--the expression, "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind"? There is one lust and one anger of the flesh only; these, all men must feel; rightly feel, if in temperance; wrongly, if in excess; but even then, not necessarily to the destruction of their souls. But there is another lust, and another anger, of the heart; and these are the Furies of Phlegethon--wholly ruinous. Lord of these, on the shattered rocks, lies couched the Infamy of Crete. For when the heart, as well as the flesh, desires what it should not, and the heart, as well as the flesh, consents and kindles to its wrath, the whole man is corrupted, and his heart's blood is fed in its veins from the lake of fire. Take for special example, this sin of usury with which we have ourselves to deal. The punishment in the fourth circle of the upper hell is on Avarice, not Usury. For a man may be utterly avaricious,--greedy of gold--in an instinctive, fleshly way, yet not corrupt his intellect. Many of the most good-natured men are misers: my first shilling in the pill-box and sleepless night did not at all mean that I was an ill-natured or illiberal boy; it did mean, what is true of me still, that I should have great delight in counting money, and laying it in visible heaps and rouleaux. I never part with a new sovereign without a sigh: and if it were not that I am afraid of thieves, I would positively and seriously, at this moment, turn all I have into gold of the newest, and dig a hole for it in my garden, and go and look at it every morning and evening, like the man in �sop's Fables, or Silas Marner: and where I think thieves will not break through nor steal, I am always laying up for myself treasures upon earth, with the most eager appetite: that bit of gold and diamonds, for instance (IV. 8.), and the most gilded mass-books, and such like, I can get hold of; the acquisition of a Koran, with two hundred leaves richly gilt on both sides, only three weeks since, afforded me real consolation under variously trying circumstances. Truly, my soul cleaves to the dust of such things. But I have not so perverted my soul, nor palsied my brains, as to expect to be advantaged by that adhesion. I don't expect, because I have gathered much, to find Nature or man gathering for me more:--to find eighteenpence in my pill-box in the morning, instead of a shilling, as a "reward for continence;" or to make an income of my Koran by lending it to poor scholars. If I think a scholar can read it,--(N.B., I can't, myself,)--and would like to--and will carefully turn the leaves by the outside edge, he is welcome to read it for nothing: if he has got into the habit of turning leaves by the middle, or of wetting his finger, and shuffling up the corners, as I see my banker's clerks do with their ledgers, for no amount of money shall he read it. (Incidentally, note the essential vulgarism of doing anything in a hurry.) So that my mind and brains are in fact untainted and unwarped by lust of money, and I am free in that respect from the power of the Infamy of Crete. I used the words just above--Furies of Phlegethon. You are beginning to know something of the Fates: of the Furies also you must know something. The pit of Dante's central hell is reserved for those who have actually committed malicious crime, involving mercilessness to their neighbour, or, in suicide, to themselves. But it is necessary to serpent-tail this pit with the upper hell by a district for insanity without deed; the Fury which has brought horror to the eyes, and hardness to the heart, and yet, having possessed itself of noble persons, issues in no malicious crime. Therefore the sixth circle of the upper hell is walled in, together with the central pit, as one grievous city of the dead; and at the gates of it the warders are fiends, and the watchers Furies. Watchers, observe, as sleepless. Once in their companionship, Nor poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owed'st yesterday. Sleepless and merciless; and yet in the Greek vision of them which �schylus wrote, they are first seen asleep; and they remain in the city of Theseus, in mercy. Elsewhere, furies that make the eyes evil and the heart hard. Seeing Dante from their watch-tower, they call for Medusa. "So will we make flint of him" ("enamel," rather--which has been in the furnace first, then hardened); but Virgil puts his hands over his eyes. Thus the upper hell is knitted to the central. The central is half joined to the lower by the power of Fraud: only in the central hell, though in a deeper pit of it, (Phlegethon falls into the abyss in a Niagara of blood) Fraud is still joined with human passion, but in the nether hell is passionate no more; the traitors have not natures of flesh or of fire, but of earth; and the earth-giants, the first enemies of Athena, the Greek spirit of Life, stand about the pit, speechless, as towers of war. In a bright morning, this last midsummer, at Bologna, I was standing in the shade of the tower of Garisenda, which Dante says they were like. The sun had got just behind its battlements, and sent out rays round them as from behind a mountain peak, vast and grey against the morning sky. I may be able to get some picture of it, for the January 'Fors,' perhaps; and perchance the sun may some day rise for us from behind our Towers of Treachery. Note but this farther, and then we will try to get out of Hell for to-day. The divisions of the central fire are under three creatures, all of them partly man, partly animal. The Minotaur has a man's body, a bull's head, (which is precisely the general type of the English nation to-day). The Centaur Chiron has a horse's body; a man's head and breast. The Spirit of Fraud, Geryon, has a serpent's body, his face is that of a just man, and his breast chequered like a lizard's, with labyrinthine lines. All these three creatures signify the mingling of a brutal instinct with the human mind; but, in the Minotaur, the brute rules, the humanity is subordinate; in the Centaur, the man rules, and the brute is subordinate; in the third, the man and the animal are in harmony; and both false. Of the Centaurs, Chiron and Nessus, one, the type of human gentleness, justice, and wisdom, stooping to join itself with the nature of animals, and to be healed by the herbs of the ground,--the other, the destruction of Hercules,--you shall be told in the 'Fors' of January: to-day I must swiftly sum the story of Theseus. His conquest of the Minotaur, the chief glory of his life, is possible only to him through love, and love's hope and help. But he has no joy either of love or victory. Before he has once held Ariadne in his arms, Diana kills her in the isle of Naxos. Jupiter crowns her in heaven, where there is no following her. Theseus returns to Athens alone. The ship which hitherto had carried the Minotaur's victim's only, bore always a black sail. Theseus had received from his father a purple one, to hoist instead, if he returned victorious. The common and senseless story is that he forgot to hoist it. Forgot! A sail is so inconspicuous a part of a ship! and one is so likely to forget one's victory, returning, with home seen on the horizon! But he returned not victorious, at least for himself;--Diana and Death had been too strong for him. He bore the black sail. And his father, when he saw it, threw himself from the rock of Athens, and died. Of which the meaning is, that we must not mourn for ourselves, lest a worse thing happen to us,--a Greek lesson much to be remembered by Christians about to send expensive orders to the undertaker: unless, indeed, they mean by their black vestments to tell the world that they think their friends are in hell. If in Heaven, with Ariadne and the gods, are we to mourn? And if they were fit for Heaven, are we, for ourselves, ever to leave off mourning? Yet Theseus, touching the beach, is too just and wise to mourn there. He sends a herald to the city to tell his father he is safe; stays on the shore to sacrifice to the gods, and feast his sailors. He sacrifices; and makes pottage for them there on the sand. The herald returns to tell him his father is dead also. Such welcome has he for his good work, in the islands, and on the main. In which work he persists, no less, and is redeemed from darkness by Hercules, and at last helps Hercules himself in his sorest need--as you shall hear afterwards. I must stop to-day at the vegetable soup,--which you would think, I suppose, poor Christmas cheer. Plum-pudding is an Egyptian dish; but have you ever thought how many stories were connected with this Athenian one, pottage of lentils? A bargain of some importance, even to us, (especially as usurers); and the healing miracle of Elisha; and the vision of Habakkuk as he was bearing their pottage to the reapers, and had to take it far away to one who needed it more; and, chiefly of all, the soup of the bitter herbs, with its dipped bread and faithful company,--"he it is to whom I shall give the sop when I have dipped it." The meaning of which things, roughly, is, first, that we are not to sell our birth-rights for pottage, though we fast to death; but are diligently to know and keep them: secondly, that we are to poison no man's pottage, mental or real: lastly, that we look to it lest we betray the hand which gives us our daily bread. Lessons to be pondered on at Christmas time over our pudding; and the more, because the sops we are dipping for each other, and even for our own children, are not always the most nourishing, nor are the rooms in which we make ready their last supper always carefully furnished. Take, for instance, this example of last supper--(no, I see it is breakfast)--in Chicksand Street, Mile End:-- On Wednesday an inquest was held on the body of Annie Redfern, aged twenty-eight, who was found dead in a cellar at 5, Chicksand Street, Mile End, on the morning of last Sunday. This unfortunate woman was a fruit-seller, and rented the cellar in which she died at 1s. 9d. per week--her only companion being a little boy, aged three years, of whom she was the mother. It appeared from the evidence of the surgeon who was summoned to see the deceased when her body was discovered on Sunday morning that she had been dead some hours before his arrival. Her knees were drawn up and her arms folded in such a position as to show that she died with her child clasped in her arms. The room was very dark, without any ventilation, and was totally unfit for human habitation. The cause of death was effusion of serum into the pericardium, brought on greatly by living in such a wretched dwelling. The coroner said that as there were so many of these wretched dwellings about, he hoped the jurymen who were connected with the vestry would take care to represent the case to the proper authorities, and see that the place was not let as a dwelling again. This remark from the coroner incited a juryman to reply, "Oh, if we were to do that we might empty half the houses in London; there are thousands more like that, and worse." Some of the jurors objected to the room being condemned; the majority, however, refused to sign the papers unless this was done, and a verdict was returned in accordance with the evidence. It transpired that the body had to be removed to save it from the rats. If the little child who lay clasped in his dead mother's arms has not been devoured by these animals, he is probably now in the workhouse, and will remain a burden on the ratepayers, who unfortunately have no means of making the landlord of the foul den that destroyed his mother answerable for his support. I miss, out of the column of the 'Pall Mall' for the 1st of this month, one paragraph after this, and proceed to the next but one, which relates to the enlightened notion among English young women, derived from Mr. J. Stuart Mill,--that the "career" of the Madonna is too limited a one, and that modern political economy can provide them, as the 'Pall Mall' observes, with "much more lucrative occupations than that of nursing the baby." But you must know, first, that the Athenians always kept memory of Theseus' pot of vegetable soup, and of his sacrifice, by procession in spring-time, bearing a rod wreathed with lambs'-wool, and singing an Easter carol, in these words:-- "Fair staff, may the gods grant, by thee, the bringing of figs to us, and buttery cakes, and honey in bulging cups, and the sopping of oil, and wine in flat cups, easy to lift, that thou mayest" (meaning that we may, but not clear which is which,) "get drunk and sleep." Which Mr. Stuart Mill and modern political economy have changed into a pretty Christmas carol for English children, lambs for whom the fair staff also brings wine of a certain sort, in flat cups, "that they may get drunk, and sleep." Here is the next paragraph from the 'Pall Mall':-- One of the most fertile causes of excessive infant mortality is the extensive practice in manufacturing districts of insidiously narcotising young children that they may be the more conveniently laid aside when more lucrative occupations present themselves than that of nursing the baby. Hundreds of gallons of opium in various forms are sold weekly in many districts for this purpose. Nor is it likely that the practice will be checked until juries can be induced to take a rather severe view of the suddenly fatal misadventures which this sort of chronic poisoning not unfrequently produces. It appears, however, to be very difficult to persuade them to look upon it as other than a venial offence. An inquest was recently held at Chapel Gate upon the body of an infant who had died from the administration, by its mother, of about twelve times the proper dose of laudanum. The bottle was labelled carefully with a caution that "opium should not be given to children under seven years of age." In this case five drops of laudanum were given to a baby of eighteen months. The medical evidence was of a quite unmistakable character, and the coroner in summing up read to the jury a definition of manslaughter, and told them that "a lawful act, if dangerous, not attended with such care as would render the probability of danger very small, and resulting in death, would amount to manslaughter at the least. Then in this case they must return a verdict of manslaughter unless they could find any circumstance which would take it out of the rule of law he had laid down to them. It was not in evidence that the mother had used any caution at all in administering the poison." Nevertheless, the jury returned, after a short interval, the verdict of homicide by misadventure. "Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree top," my mother used to sing to me: and I remember the dawn of intelligence in which I began to object to the bad rhyme which followed:--"when the wind blows, the cradle will rock." But the Christmas winds must blow rudely, and warp the waters askance indeed, which rock our English cradles now. Mendelssohn's songs without words have been, I believe, lately popular in musical circles. We shall, perhaps, require cradle songs with very few words, and Christmas carols with very sad ones, before long; in fact, it seems to me, we are fast losing our old skill in carolling. There is a different tone in Chaucer's notion of it (though this carol of his is in spring-time indeed, not at Christmas):-- Then went I forth on my right hand, Down by a little path I found, Of Mintës full, and Fennel greene. Sir Mirth I found, and right anon Unto Sir Mirth gan I gone, There, where he was, him to solace: And with him, in that happy place, So fair folke and so fresh, had he, That when I saw, I wondered me From whence such folke might come, So fair were they, all and some; For they were like, as in my sight To angels, that be feathered bright. These folke, of which I tell you so, Upon a karole wenten tho, [35] A Ladie karoled them, that hight [36] Gladnesse, blissful and light. She could make in song such refraining It sate her wonder well to sing, Her voice full clear was, and full sweet, She was not rude, nor unmeet, But couth [37] enough for such doing, As longeth unto karolling; For she was wont, in every place, To singen first, men to solace. For singing most she gave her to, No craft had she so lefe [38] to do. Mr. Stuart Mill would have set her to another craft, I fancy (not but that singing is a lucrative one, now-a-day, if it be shrill enough); but you will not get your wives to sing thus for nothing, if you send them out to earn their dinners (instead of earning them yourselves for them), and put their babies summarily to sleep. It is curious how our English feeling seems to be changed also towards two other innocent kind of creatures. In nearly all German pictures of the Nativity, (I have given you an Italian one of the Magi for a frontispiece, this time,) the dove is one way or other conspicuous, and the little angels round the cradle are nearly always, when they are tired, allowed by the Madonna to play with rabbits. And in the very garden in which Ladie Gladness leads her karol-dance, "connis," as well as squirrels, are among the happy company; frogs only, as you shall hear, not being allowed; the French says, no flies either, of the watery sort! For the path among the mint and fennel greene leads us into this garden:-- The garden was by measuring, Right even and square in compasing: It was long as it was large, Of fruit had every tree his charge, And many homely trees there were, [39] That peaches, coines, [40] and apples bare. Medlers, plommes, peeres, chesteinis, Cherise, of which many one faine [41] is, With many a high laurel and pine Was ranged clean all that gardene. There might men Does and Roes see, And of Squirrels ful great plentee From bough to bough alway leping; Connis there were also playing And maden many a tourneying Upon the fresh grass springing. In places saw I wells there In which no frogges were. There sprang the violet all new And fresh pervinke, rich of hue, And flowers yellow, white and rede, Such plenty grew there never in mede, Full gay was all the ground, and quaint, And poudred, as men had it peint With many a fresh and sundry flour That castes up full good savour. So far for an old English garden, or "pleasance," and the pleasures of it. Now take a bit of description written this year of a modern English garden or pleasance, and the pleasures of it, and newly invented odours:-- In a short time the sportsmen issued from the (new?) hall, and, accompanied by sixty or seventy attendants, bent their steps towards that part of the park in which the old hall is situate. Here were the rabbit covers--large patches of rank fern, three or four feet in height, and extending over many acres. The doomed rabbits, assiduously driven from the burrows during the preceding week by the keepers, forced from their lodgings beneath the tree-roots by the suffocating fumes of sulphur, and deterred from returning thither by the application of gas-tar to the "runs," had been forced to seek shelter in the fern patch; and here they literally swarmed. At the edge of the ferns a halt was called, and the head gamekeeper proceeded to arrange his assistants in the most approved "beating" fashion. The shooting party, nine in number, including the prince, distributed themselves in advance of the line of beaters, and the word "Forward!" was given. Simultaneously the line of beaters moved into the cover, vigorously thrashing the long ferns with their stout sticks, and giving vent to a variety of uncouth ejaculations, which it was supposed were calculated to terrify the hidden rabbits. Hardly had the beaters proceeded half-a-dozen yards when the cover in front of them became violently agitated, and rabbits were seen running in all directions. The quantity of game thus started was little short of marvellous--the very ground seemed to be alive. Simultaneously with the appearance of the terrified animals the slaughter commenced. Each sportsman carried a double-barrelled breechloader, and an attendant followed him closely, bearing an additional gun, ready loaded. The shooter discharged both barrels of his gun, in some cases with only the interval of a second or two, and immediately exchanged it for a loaded one. Rabbits fell in all directions. The warning cry of "Rabbit!" from the relentless keepers was heard continuously, and each cry was as quickly followed by the sharp crack of a gun--a pretty sure indication that the rabbit referred to had come to an untimely end, as the majority of the sportsmen were crack shots. Of course all this is quite natural to a sporting people who have learned to like the smell of gunpowder, sulphur, and gas-tar, better than that of violets and thyme. But, putting the baby-poisoning, pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting of to-day in comparison with the pleasures of the German Madonna, and her simple company; and of Chaucer and his carolling company: and seeing that the present effect of peace upon earth, and well-pleasing in men, is that every nation now spends most of its income in machinery for shooting the best and bravest men, just when they were likely to have become of some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to you, my friends all, calling you so, I suppose, for the last time, (unless you are disposed for friendship with Herod instead of Barabbas,) whether it would not be more kind and less expensive, to make the machinery a little smaller; and adapt it to spare opium now, and expenses of maintenance and education afterwards, (besides no end of diplomacy) by taking our sport in shooting babies instead of rabbits? Believe me, Faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. ==> The first number of 'Fors Clavigera' for the year 1873 will be published (I hope) on 1st January next, and in the course of that month the Index to the two first volumes, for the years 1871, 1872, as an extra number, which will be sent gratis to subscribers to the complete work. Subscriptions to the St. George's Fund have been sent to me to the amount of 104l. 1s. I have therefore sent a cheque for 100l. to be added to the fund accumulating in the hands of the trustees. I think it inexpedient at present to give the names of my--not numerous--subscribers. Each of them knows his or her number in the subjoined list:-- £ s. d. 1. Annual, 4l. (1871, 1872) 8 0 0 2. Annual, 20l. (1871, 1872) 40 0 0 3. Gift (1871) 5 0 0 4. Gift (1872) 30 0 0 5. Gift (1872) 20 0 0 6. Annual (1872) 1 1 0 ---------- £104 1 0 It is a beginning. We shall get on in time--better than some companies that have started with large capital. The following cry of distress, from a bookseller of the most extended experience, has lain all this year by me, till I could find opportunity, which has not come, for commending its sound common sense in relation to several matters besides what it immediately touches on. It must stand on its own worth now, and is well able to do so. "February 28th, 1872. "It is often a question of considerable embarrassment for parents to know what to do with their children, and to place them in such a manner in a trade or profession as would best fit their talents and aptitudes. "Notions of 'gentility' induce too many parents to bring up their sons for professions or the Civil Service, and their daughters for a status which they are unlikely to attain. "I will say here only a few words to parents of the humbler classes:--Do not be allured by advertisements into seeking for your sons appointments as clerks in offices where a boy starts at once with a salary and short hours of business. Rely upon it, these tempting offers lead to poor prospects; hence has arisen the superabundant supply of 'genteel clerks,' and the deficient supply of good mechanics. It is much to be regretted that the former practice of apprenticeship has fallen so much out of use. Better mechanics were certainly thus formed. "There is one mechanical trade with which I am especially connected, viz., that of bookbinding. I regret to say, that an extreme difficulty exists to obtain intelligent and willing men to do the work which is ready to be given out. I ascribe this largely to a defective education of our youth. There is too much conceit amongst parents and their children as to their future in life, too much uniformity of thought, and by far too little exertion and preparation for the struggles of existence. Walking-sticks, meerschaum-pipes, and cheap sensational journals are found in the hands of strutting youngsters, who ought to be modestly attired, and who ought earnestly to prepare themselves for their future career. "In mentioning such a trade as bookbinding, I wish to convey that it is not the heavy and idle who are wanted, but the hardy and intelligent boys; and the better they are educated, the better are their future chances of success in life. "Being very much hampered in my pursuit as a bookseller by the want of proper execution in the binding and furbishing of books, I can speak decidedly to the fact that there is ample room for many more labourers in that interesting trade. Intelligence, honesty, and physical strength are required in starting a youth in every business; and when parents have prepared their children with these qualifications, a successful career in the bookbinding trade may be safely guaranteed. "It is painful to me, and must be equally unpleasant to all owners of libraries, to suffer constantly from the protracted delays caused by the deficiency of good workmen in the binding business. "Those curses of modern society, [42] 'Trades' Unions,' on one side, and absurd notions of gentility on the other, are doing each their share of harm in keeping down the supply of new hands. "I repeat--more hands, 'with heads,' are wanted in the bookbinding trade. This is a cry of distress from a bookseller whose business is injured owing to the delays and the inefficiency of the existing binders and their workmen." NOTES [1] See 'Pall Mall Gazette,' Dec. 5th, 1871. [2] Letter IV. p. 21. Compare Letter V. p. 5; and observe, in future references of this kind I shall merely say, IV. 21; V. 5, etc. [3] J. A. Froude, 'Short Studies on Great Subjects.' Longmans, 1867. Page 297. [4] "You did not shoot him"? No; my expression was hasty; you only stood by, in a social manner, to see him shot;--how many of you?--and so finely organized as you say you are! [5] I quote from the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of January 16th. In the more elaborate review given in the 'Fortnightly,' I am glad to see that Professor Caird is beginning to perceive the necessity of defining the word "useful;" and, though greatly puzzled, is making way towards a definition: but would it not be wiser to abstain from exhibiting himself in his state of puzzlement to the public? [6] Every man as good as his neighbour! you extremely sagacious English persons; and forthwith you establish competitive examination, which drives your boys into idiotcy, before you will give them a bit of bread to make their young muscles of! Every man as good as his neighbour! and when I told you, seven years ago, that at least you should give every man his penny of wages, whether he was good or not, so only that he gave you the best that was in him, what did you answer to me? [7] Cornutus, quoted by Ducange under the word 'Baro.' [8] I am told in the north such pleasant fiction still holds in the Teesdale district; the wife calling her husband 'my masterman.' [9] 'The Book of a Hundred Ballads.' You shall hear more of them, soon. [10] This singular use of the word 'free' in baronial times, corresponding to our present singular use of it respecting trade, we will examine in due time. A soldier who fights only for his own hand, and a merchant who sells only for his own hand, are of course, in reality, equally the slaves of the persons who employ them. Only the soldier is truly free, and only the merchants, who fight and sell as their country needs, and bids them. [11] I always give Mr. Rawdon Brown's translation from his work, 'The English in Italy,' already quoted. [12] Remember, briefly always, till I can tell you more about it, that the first Fors is Courage, the second, Patience, the third, Fortune. [13] Between May and October, any letters meant for me should be addressed to Brantwood, Coniston; between October and May, to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. They must be very short, and very plainly written, or they will not be read; and they need never ask me to do anything, because I won't do it. And, in general, I cannot answer letters; but for any that come to help me, the writers may be sure that I am grateful. I get a great many from people who "know that I must be good-natured," from my books. I was good-natured once; but I beg to state, in the most positive terms, that I am now old, tired, and very ill-natured. [14] "Type," the actual word in the Greek. [15] "Davantage, ilz se nommoyent Forestiers, non que leur charge et gouvernement fust seulement sur la terre, qui estoit lors occupee et empeschee de la forest Charbonniere, mais la garde de la mer leur estoit aussi commise. Convient ici entendre, que ce terme, forest, en vieil bas Aleman, convenoit aussi bien aux eaux comme aux boys, ainsi qu'il est narré es memoires de Jean du Tillet."--'Les Genealogies des Forestiers et Comtes de Flandres' AntP. 1598. [16] I accept the blame of vanity in printing the end of this letter, for the sake of showing more perfectly the temper of its writer, whom I have answered privately; in case my letter may not reach him, I should be grateful if he would send me again his address. [17] Sismondi: 'History of Italian Republics,' Vol. III., Chap. ii. [18] "Saccone of Pietra-mala." [19] Second Edition, Milan, 1870. (Fratelli Rechiadei), p. 86. [20] "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."--Rev. vi. 13; compare Jerem. xxiv. 8, and Amos viii. 1 and 2. [21] More accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. The fruit is a branch of apples; she has golden sandals, and a wreath of myrtle round her hair. [22] The "Mount" is the heap of money in store for lending without interest. You shall have a picture of it in next number, as drawn by a brave landscape painter four hundred years ago; and it will ultimately be one of the crags of our own Mont Rose; and well should be, for it was first raised among the rocks of Italy by a Franciscan monk, for refuge to the poor against the usury of the Lombard merchants who gave name to our Lombard Street, and perished by their usury, as their successors are like enough to do also. But the story goes back to Friedrich II. of Germany again, and is too long for this letter. [23] [If that be so, booksellers are of no use in the world, and ought to be abolished. Am I to give my buyers unnecessary trouble that booksellers may live?] [24] Or of their native towns or villages,--these being recognized as masters, also. [25] Or the use of it, Mr. Emerson should have added. [26] 'English Traits,' (Routledge, 1856), p. 95. [27] Provost, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. [28] The 'Telegraph' has always seemed to me to play fairer than the rest. The words "daily newspaper press" are, of course, too general. [29] Compare 'Munera Pulveris,' § 140. [30] Compare also Mr. Maurice's sermon for the fourth Sunday after Trinity in Vol. II. of third series. (Smith, Elder & Co., no date.) [31] In calling a man pre-eminently unfortunate, I do not mean that, as compared with others, he is absolutely less prosperous; but that he is one who has met with the least help or the greatest hostility, from the Third Fors, in proportion to the wisdom of his purposes, and virtue of his character. [32] Italian 'fregata,' I believe 'polished-sided' ship, for swiftness, 'fricata;' but the derivation is uncertain. [33] Chaucer's real word means "warrest with all my folk;" but it was so closely connected with "weary" and "worry" in association of sound, in his days, that I take the last as nearest the sense. [34] The deepening orders of sin, in the nine circles, are briefly these,--1. Unredeemed nature; 2. Lust; 3. Gluttony; 4. Avarice; 5. Discontent; 6. Heresy; 7. Open violence; 8. Fraudful violence; 9. Treachery. But they are curiously dove-tailed together,--serpent-tailed, I should say,--by closer coil, not expanding plume. You shall understand the joiner's work next month. [35] Went then in measure of a carol dance. [36] Was called. [37] Skilful. [38] Fond. [39] There were foreign trees besides. I insert bits here and there, without putting stars to interrupt the pieces given. [40] Quinces. [41] Fond. [42] Let me, however, beg you to observe, my dear Sir, that the cursing is the fault of modern society, not of Trades' Unions, which were an extreme blessing to ancient society, and will be so to all wholesome societies, for ever. 
61223	----	THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN BY THE SAME AUTHOR UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY THE STORY OF THE NEGRO WORKING WITH THE HANDS CHARACTER BUILDING MY LARGER EDUCATION THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN A RECORD OF OBSERVATION AND STUDY IN EUROPE BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON WITH THE COLLABORATION OF ROBERT E. PARK [Illustration: Logo] GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1912 _Copyright, 1911, by_ THE OUTLOOK COMPANY _Copyright, 1912, by_ DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Hunting the Man Farthest Down 3 II. The Man at the Bottom in London 21 III. From Petticoat Lane to Skibo Castle 37 IV. First Impression of Life and Labour on the Continent 53 V. Politics and Races 70 VI. Strikes and Farm Labour in Italy and Hungary 86 VII. Naples and the Land of the Emigrant 105 VIII. The Labourer and the Land in Sicily 124 IX. Women and the Wine Harvest in Sicily 148 X. The Church, the People and the Mafia 166 XI. Child Labour and the Sulphur Mines 192 XII. Fiume, Budapest and the Immigrant 217 XIII. Cracow and the Polish Jew 240 XIV. A Polish Village in the Mountains 264 XV. A Russian Border Village 276 XVI. The Women Who Work in Europe 296 XVII. The Organization of Country Life in Denmark 319 XVIII. Reconstructing the Life of the Labourer in London 341 XIX. John Burns and the Man Farthest Down in London 360 XX. The Future of the Man Farthest Down 377 The Man Farthest Down CHAPTER I HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN On the 20th of August, 1910, I sailed from New York City for Liverpool, England. I had been given a leave of absence of two months from my work at Tuskegee, on condition that I would spend that time in some way that would give me recreation and rest. Now I have found that about the only comfortable and satisfactory way for me to rest is to find some new kind of work or occupation. I determined therefore to carry out a plan I had long had in mind of making myself acquainted with the condition of the poorer and working classes in Europe, particularly in those regions from which an ever-increasing number of immigrants are coming to our country each year. There have been a number of efforts made in recent years to divert a portion of this immigration to the Southern States, and these efforts have been the source of wide differences of opinion in the South. Some people have contended that in these immigrants the Southern people would eventually find a substitute for the Negro labourer and that in this direction a solution for the race problem would be found. In some parts of the South, in fact, the experiment of using immigrants from Europe to take the place of the Negro on the sugar plantations and in the cotton fields has been tried. Naturally I have been interested in these experiments and as a consequence in the peoples with whom the experiments have been tried. The best way to get acquainted with an individual, or with a people, according to my experience, is to visit them at their work and in their homes, and in this way find out what is back of them. So it was that I determined to make use of my stay in Europe to visit the people in their homes, to talk with them at their work, and to find out everything I could, not only in regard to their present situation, but also in regard to their future prospects, opportunities, hopes, and ambitions. I was curious, for one thing, to learn why it was that so many of these European people were leaving the countries in which they were born and reared, in order to seek their fortunes in a new country and among strangers in a distant part of the world, and to this question I think I may say that I have found, in a general way, an answer. One general fact, at any rate, in regard to this matter of emigration, I may, perhaps, without attempting to go into details, mention here at the outset. It is this: The majority of the people who reach this country as immigrants from Europe are, as one might expect, from the farming regions. They are farm labourers or tenant farmers. Now there exists, as I discovered, a very definite relation between the condition of agriculture and the agricultural peoples in Europe and the extent of emigration to this country. In other words, wherever in any part of Europe I found the condition of agriculture and the situation of the farm labourers at their worst, there I almost invariably found emigration at the highest. On the other hand, wherever I visited a part of the country where emigration had, in recent years, decreased, there I quite as invariably found that the situation of the man on the soil had improved. What interested me still more was the fact that this improvement had been, to a very large extent, brought about through the influence of schools. Agricultural education has stimulated an intensive culture of the soil; this in turn has helped to multiply the number of small land owners and stimulate the organization of agriculture; the resulting prosperity has made itself felt not only in the country but in the cities. For example, I found that where the people were prosperous and contented in the country, there were fewer idle, discontented, starving and criminal people in the cities. It is just as true of the poorer and labouring classes in Europe as it is of the Negro in the South: that most of the problems that arise in the cities have their roots in the country. Another matter in regard to which I hoped to get some first-hand information during my stay abroad was what I may call the European, as distinguished from the American, race problem. I knew that in the south of Europe a number of races of widely different origin and characteristics had been thrown together in close contact and in large numbers, and I suspected that in this whirlpool of contending races and classes I should find problems--race problems and educational problems--different, to be sure, but quite as complicated, difficult and interesting as in our own country. While every race and every nation must solve its own problems in its own way, and for that reason it is not possible to make any very extended comparison between the race problems of Europe and of America, there is, at least, a certain advantage in knowing that other nations and other peoples have problems within their national life which are quite as difficult and perplexing as our own. We sometimes think and speak of the conditions existing in our own country as if they were wholly exceptional and without parallel in other parts of the world. My stay in Europe has convinced me that we are not worse off in America in this respect than other peoples. Even if they had the choice, I do not believe, for instance, that the Southern people, black or white, would be willing to exchange their own troubles, such as they are, for those of any other nation or group of people in Europe or elsewhere. There was another thing that made the trip I had outlined peculiarly attractive to me: I believed that I would find in some parts of Europe peoples who in respect to education, opportunity, and civilization generally were much nearer the level of the masses of the Negro people in the South than I was likely to find anywhere in America. I believed, also, that if I went far enough and deep enough I should find even in Europe great numbers of people who, in their homes, in their labour, and in their manner of living, were little, if any, in advance of the Negroes in the Southern States, and I wanted to study at first hand, as far as I was able, the methods which European nations were using to uplift the masses of the people who were at the bottom in the scale of civilization. In view of the rather elaborate plan I have sketched, I am certain that some of my readers will wonder how I expected to be able, in the eight weeks to which my vacation was limited, to cover all the ground or get any definite or satisfactory notions in regard to the special matters which interested me in the places I proposed to visit. It seems to me, therefore, that I ought to say something, by way of explanation and introduction, as to just how this journey was made and in regard to the manner in which the impressions and facts which make up the remainder of this book were obtained. In the first place, it should be remembered that I was looking in all the different countries I visited for one class of facts and seeking to make myself familiar with merely one phase of life. During the whole course of this journey, therefore, I kept myself religiously from the temptation that was constantly offered to look at anything, however important and interesting, that did not concern itself with the purpose of my journey. In the second place, I found that, while there were great differences to be observed in the condition of the different peoples whom I visited, there were, also, many broad similarities. I found, for example, that what I learned in London was very useful and valuable to me, by way of comparison, in studying and observing what I wanted to see in Copenhagen and in Denmark. I found that the things I observed among the peasants of Italy were a great help to me when I reached Austria and was able to compare the conditions of the farming population in these two different countries. The result was that the farther I went and the more familiar I became with the general situation of the labouring classes, the more I gained in insight and understanding of all that I saw. In fact I am convinced that if there is anything of special value in the studies and observations that I have set down in this book it will be found, not so much in the facts themselves, as in the attempt to bring them together into a single point of view. One of the first things I learned in Europe was the difficulty of meeting the ordinary man and seeing and getting acquainted with the matters of everyday life. I soon discovered that the most difficult things to see are not the sights that every one goes to look at, but the commonplace things that no one sees. In order to carry out the plan I had in mind it was necessary for me to leave the ordinary beaten track of European travel and to plunge into regions which have not been charted and mapped, and where ordinary guides and guide-books are of little or no avail. As a matter of fact, I found less difficulty in this respect in London than I did on the Continent, where it seemed to me that railways, guides, guide-books, and the friends I met on the way were in a conspiracy to compel me to see the things I did not want to see, and to prevent me from seeing all the things that I did want to see. For example, I had registered a firm resolution, before I sailed from America, that if I could prevent it I would not enter a single palace, museum, gallery, or cathedral. I succeeded partly in living up to this resolution. When I reached Cracow in Poland, however, my fate overtook me. I had heard a great deal of the ancient salt mines of Wieliczka. I knew that in many places women were employed side by side with the men in loading and carrying out the products of the mines, and for this reason, and because I had myself at one time been a miner in America, I was very anxious to see how the work was carried on in Europe. The salt mines are about ten miles from Cracow, and in order to reach them I found it necessary to take a carriage. At the entrance to the mines I was surprised to find a large number of sightseers waiting to go down in the shaft, and a dark suspicion crossed my mind that I had made a mistake. My worst suspicions were confirmed when, after descending some two or three hundred feet below the surface, I found myself suddenly ushered into an ancient underground chapel. The place was beautifully lighted and decorated with glistening figures which had been hewn from solid blocks of salt by the pious miners who had worked in these mines some three or four hundred years before. From this chapel we again descended, through a dark, damp passageway, into still another and then another large, elaborately decorated and brilliantly lighted chapel. In one of these we ran upon a great crowd of several hundred people carrying lighted torches and accompanied by a brass band. They were peasants who were making an annual pilgrimage to the mine for the purpose of visiting the underground chapels, which have acquired a wide fame in the surrounding country. For two or three hours we wandered on from one large chamber to another, going deeper and deeper into the mine, but never coming, as near as I could see, any nearer to the miners. Finally it began to dawn upon me that, so far from being in an actual salt mine, I was really in a sort of underground museum. There were chapels and monuments and crowds of people in holiday attire; there were lights and music and paper lanterns, but there was nothing that would in any way remind you of the actual daily life of the miners that I had come there to see; in fact, the only miners with whom I came in contact were those who acted as guides or played in the band. It was all very strange and very interesting, and there was, I learned, no possible means of escape. From what I have already said I fear that some of my readers will feel, as a great many people whom I met abroad did, that in my journey across Europe I must have gained a very unfortunate and one-sided view of the countries and the peoples I visited. It will seem to them, perhaps, that I was looking for everything that was commonplace or bad in the countries I visited, and avoiding everything that was extraordinary or in any way worth looking at. My only excuse is that I was, in fact, not looking for the best, but for the worst; I was hunting for the man farthest down. Most people who travel in Europe seem to me to be chiefly interested in two sorts of things: They want to see what is old, and they want to see what is dead. The regular routes of travel run through palaces, museums, art galleries, ancient ruins, monuments, churches, and graveyards. I have never been greatly interested in the past, for the past is something that you cannot change. I like the new, the unfinished and the problematic. My experience is that the man who is interested in living things must seek them in the grime and dirt of everyday life. To be sure, the things one sees there are not always pleasant, but the people one meets are interesting, and if they are sometimes among the worst they are also frequently among the best people in the world. At any rate, wherever there is struggle and effort there is life. I have referred to the way in which I tried and, to a reasonable extent, succeeded in confining my observations to a certain definite point of view. Aside from this I had certain other advantages upon this expedition in finding what I wanted to see and avoiding the things I did not want to see, without which I certainly could neither have covered the ground I did, nor have found my way to so many things that had for me special and peculiar interest. Some years ago I made the acquaintance, in Boston, of Dr. Robert E. Park, who has for some time past assisted me in my work at Tuskegee. At the time I first met him Doctor Park was interested in the movement to bring about a reform of the conditions then existing in the Congo Free State in Africa; in fact, he was at that time secretary of the Congo Reform Association, and it was through his efforts to interest me in that movement that I came to know him. He had a notion, as he explained to me, that the conditions of the natives in the Congo, as well as in other parts of Africa, could not be permanently improved only through a system of education, somewhat similar to that at Hampton and Tuskegee. The Congo Reform Association, as he explained, was engaged in a work of destruction, but what interested him chiefly was what should be done in the way of construction or reconstruction after the work of destruction was completed. We had frequent conversations upon the subject, and it was in this way that he finally became interested in the work that was being done for the Negro in the Southern States. Since that time he has spent the larger part of every year in the South, assisting me in my work at Tuskegee and using the opportunity thus offered to study what is called the Negro problem. The reason I make this statement here is because Doctor Park was not only my companion in all of my trip through Europe, but he also went to Europe some months in advance of me and thus had an opportunity to study the situation and make it possible for me to see more in a short space of time than I could otherwise have been able to do. In this and in other ways he has been largely responsible for what appears in this book. For instance, it was Doctor Park who studied out the general plans and details of our trip. He acted, also, not merely as a companion but as a guide and interpreter. He assisted me also in getting hold of the documents and literature in the different countries we visited which enabled me to correct the impressions I had formed on the spot and to supplement them with the facts and statistics in regard to the conditions we had observed. In several directions Doctor Park was peculiarly fitted for giving me this sort of assistance. In the first place, during the years he had been at Tuskegee he had become thoroughly acquainted with conditions in the Southern States and, in the course of the journey of observation and study on which he had accompanied me, we had become thoroughly acquainted with each other, so that he understood not only what I desired, but what it was important for me to see in Europe. In the second place, shortly before I met him, Doctor Park had just returned from four years of study in Europe. He was familiar with much of the ground we intended to cover and at the same time spoke the language which was of greatest use in most of the countries we visited--namely, German. Two people travelling together can, under any circumstances, see and learn a great deal more than one. When it comes to travelling in a new and unfamiliar country this is emphatically true. For this reason a large part of what I saw and learned about Europe is due directly to the assistance of Doctor Park. Our method of procedure was about as follows: When we reached a city or other part of the country which we wished to study we would usually start out together. I had a notebook in which I jotted down on the spot what I saw that interested me, and Doctor Park, who had had experience as a newspaper reporter, used his eyes and ears. Then in the course of our long stretches of railway travel we compared notes and comments and sifted, as thoroughly as we were able, the facts and observations we had been able to gather. Then as soon as we reached a large city I got hold of a stenographer and dictated, as fully as I was able, the story of what we had seen and learned. In doing this I used Doctor Park's observations, I suppose, quite as much as I did my own. In fact, I do not believe I am able to say now how much of what I have written is based upon my own personal observations and what is based upon those of Doctor Park. Thus, it should be remembered that although this book is written throughout in the first person it contains the observations of two different individuals. In another direction Doctor Park has contributed to make this book what it is. While I was dictating my own account of our adventures he would usually spend the time hunting through the book stores and libraries for any books or information which would throw any light on the matter in which we were interested. The result was that we returned with nearly a trunk-ful of books, papers, and letters which we had obtained in different places and from different people we met. With these documents Doctor Park then set to work to straighten out and complete the matter that I had dictated, filling in and adding to what I had written. The chapters which follow are the result. I set out from America, as I have said, to find the man farthest down. In a period of about six weeks I visited parts of England, Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sicily, Poland, and Denmark. I spent some time among the poorer classes of London and in several cities in Austria and Italy. I investigated, to a certain extent, the condition of the agricultural populations in Sicily, in Bohemia, Poland, and Denmark. I saw much that was sad and depressing, but I saw much, also, that was hopeful and inspiring. Bad as conditions are in some places, I do not think I visited any place where things are not better now than they were some years ago. I found also that the connection between Europe and America is much closer and more intimate than I had imagined. I am sure that very few persons in this country realize the extent to which America has touched and influenced the masses of the people in Europe. I think it is safe to say that no single influence which is to-day tending to change and raise the condition of the working people in the agricultural regions of southern Europe is greater than the constant stream of emigration which is pouring out of Europe into America and back again into Europe. It should be remembered that not only do large numbers of these people emigrate to America, but many of these emigrants return and bring with them not only money to buy lands, but new ideas, higher ambitions, and a wider outlook on the world. Everywhere that I went, even in the most distant parts of the country, where as yet the people have been almost untouched by the influences of modern civilization, I met men who spoke in broken English, but with genuine enthusiasm, of America. Once, when I had made a half-day's journey by rail and wagon into a distant village in Poland, in order to see something of life in a primitive farming village, I was enthusiastically welcomed at the country tavern by the proprietor and two or three other persons, all of whom had lived for some time in America and were able to speak a little English. At another time, when I visited the sulphur mines in the mountains of central Sicily, I was surprised and delighted to encounter, deep down in one of these mines, several hundred feet below the surface, a man with whom I was able to speak familiarly about the coal mines of West Virginia, where each of us, at different times, had been employed in mine labour. There seemed to be no part of Europe so distant or so remote that the legend of America had not penetrated to it; and the influence of America, of American ideas, is certainly making itself felt in a very definite way in the lowest strata of European civilization. The thing that impressed me most, however, was the condition of the labouring women of Europe. I do not know the statistics, but if I am permitted to judge by what I saw I should say that three fourths of the work on the farms, and a considerable part of the heavy work in the cities of Europe, is performed by women. Not only that, but in the low life of great cities, like London, it seems to me that the women suffer more from the evil influences of slum life than the men. In short, if I may put it that way, the man farthest down in Europe is woman. Women have the narrowest outlook, do the hardest work, stand in greatest need of education, and are farthest removed from influences which are everywhere raising the level of life among the masses of the European people. CHAPTER II THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM IN LONDON The _Carmania_, the ship in which I had sailed, disembarked its passengers late Saturday at Fishguard, off the coast of Wales. The special train which sped us on to London reached the city early Sunday morning, August 28. As I drove from the railway station in the gray of the early morning my attention was attracted by a strange, shapeless and disreputable figure which slunk out of the shadow of a building and moved slowly and dejectedly down the silent and empty street. In that quarter of the city, and in comparison with the solid respectability and comfort represented by the houses around him, the figure of this man seemed grotesquely wretched. In fact, he struck me as the most lonely object I had ever laid my eyes on. I watched him down the street as far as I could see. He turned neither to the left nor to the right, but moved slowly on, his head bent toward the ground, apparently looking for something he did not hope to find. In the course of my journey across Europe I saw much poverty, but I do not think I saw anything quite so hopeless and wretched. I had not been long in London before I learned that this man was a type. It is said that there are ten thousand of these homeless and houseless men and women in East London alone. They are, however, not confined to any part of the city. They may be found in the fashionable West End, lounging on the benches of St. James's Park, as well as in the East End, where the masses of the labouring people live. The Salvation Army has erected shelters for them in many of the poorer parts of the city, where, for anything from two to eight cents, they may get a room for the night, and sometimes a piece of bread and a bowl of soup. Thousands of them are not able to compass the small sum necessary to obtain even this minimum of food and comfort. These are the outcasts and the rejected, the human waste of a great city. They represent the man at the bottom in London. Later, in the course of my wanderings about the city, I met many of these hopeless and broken men. I saw them sitting, on sunshiny days, not only men but women also, crumpled up on benches or stretched out on the grass of the parks. I discovered them on rainy nights crouching in doorways or huddled away in dark corners where an arch or a wall protected them from the cold. I met them in the early morning hours, before the city was awake, creeping along the Strand and digging with their hands in the garbage-boxes; and again, late at night, on the Thames Embankment, where hundreds of them sleep--when the night watchman permits--on the benches or stretched out on the stone pavements. After a time I learned to distinguish the same type under the disguise of those street venders who stand on street corners and sell collar-buttons, matches, and other trifles, stretching out their hands in a pitiful sort of supplication to passers-by to buy their wares. Whenever I found an opportunity to do so, I talked with some of these outcasts. Gradually, partly from themselves and partly from others, I learned something of their histories. I found that it was usually drink that had been the immediate cause of their downfall. But there were always other and deeper causes. Most of them, it seemed to me, had simply been borne down by the temptations and the fierce competition of life in a great city. There comes a time when trade is dull; men who had been accustomed to spend much money begin to spend less, and there is no work to be had. At these times it is "the less efficient, the less energetic, the less strong, the less young, the less regular, the less temperate, or the less docile" who are crowded out. In this way these men have lost their hold and sunk to the bottom. I remember meeting one of these men late at night wandering along the Thames Embankment. In the course of my conversation with him I asked him, among other things, if he voted, and, if so, to what political party he belonged. He looked at me in amazement, and then he said he had never voted in his life. It was his expression rather than his words that impressed me. This expression told me how out of touch he was with the world about him. He had, in fact, as I learned, no family, no home, friends, trade; he belonged to no society; he had, so far as I could learn, no views on life. In the very midst of this great city he was as solitary as a hermit. A few weeks later, in a little village in Galicia, I asked the same question of a Polish peasant. "Oh, yes," he eagerly replied; "every one votes here now." Sixty years ago most of the peasants in this village to which I have referred were serfs, and it was not until two years ago that the Government gave them all the right to vote. Nevertheless, at the present time the people in this village are represented by one of their own number in the Imperial Parliament at Vienna. I stopped on my way through the village at the little store kept by this man. I found two young girls tending the store, his daughters, but the representative himself was not at home. I do not know why I should mention this circumstance here, except that I was impressed by the contrast in the reply of these two men, the one coming from a peasant in Poland and the other from an Englishman in London. It is generally said that the Negro represents in America the man farthest down. In going to Europe I had in mind to compare the masses of the Negro people of the Southern States with the masses in Europe in something like the same stage of civilization. It would not be difficult to compare the Negro in the South with the Polish peasant, for example, because the masses of the Poles are, like the masses of the Negroes, an agricultural people. I know no class among the Negroes in America, however, with whom I could compare the man at the bottom in England. Whatever one may say of the Negro in America, he is not, as a rule, a beggar. It is very rarely that any one sees a black hand stretched out for alms. One does see, to be sure, too many idle and loafing Negroes standing on the street corners and around the railway stations in the South, but the Negro is not, as a rule, a degenerate. If he is at the bottom in America, it is not because he has gone backward and sunk down, but because he has never risen. Another thing in regard to the Negro: although he is frequently poor, he is never without hope and a certain joy in living. No hardship he has yet encountered, either in slavery or in freedom, has robbed the Negro of the desire to live. The race constantly grew and increased in slavery, and it has considerably more than doubled in freedom. There are some people among the members of my race who complain about the hardships which the Negro suffers, but none of them yet, so far as I know, has ever recommended "race suicide" as a solution of the race problem. I mention this because I found just the contrary to be the case in England. I do not think that anything I saw or heard while I was in England gave me a more poignant impression of the hardships of the labouring man in England than the discovery that one of the most widely read weekly papers in England, under the caption of "The White Slaves of Morality," was making a public campaign in favour of reducing the size of the families among the working classes. The articles I refer to, which were written by a woman, were a protest, on the one hand, against the clergy because they taught that it would be immoral for women to refuse to have children, and, on the other hand, against the physicians who withheld from these women the knowledge by which they might be able to limit the size of their families. These articles were followed from week to week by letters purporting to come from working men and women telling of the heartbreaking struggle they were making to support their children on the wages they were able to earn. What made these articles the more startling was the fact that, at the very time when they were proposing to the English labourer what ex-President Roosevelt has defined as "race suicide," thousands of immigrants from the south of Europe were pouring into London every year to take the places left vacant by the recession of the native Anglo-Saxon. On my previous visit to England I had been struck by what seemed to me the cold and formal character of the English newspapers. It seemed to me that they were wholly lacking in human interest. Upon my last visit my opinion in regard to the London newspapers was considerably altered. A careful study of the daily newspaper, I found, will repay any one who wants to get an insight into social conditions in England. I had not been in London more than a day or two, for example, when my attention was attracted to the following item in one of the morning papers: STARVING FAMILY CORONER'S APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC FOR AID Telling of a terrible case of starvation in the Stoke Newington Coroner's Court, Dr. Wynn Westcott, the coroner, asked the press to bring a deserving case before the notice of the charitable public. He said that he had held an inquest upon a three-weeks-old baby which had died of starvation. Its father had had no regular work for three years, and only a little casual work in that time. There was so little money that the mother, Mrs. Attewell, of White Hart Street, Stoke Newington, was half starved too. She had only had a crust of bread to sustain her on the day her child died, although she had done nine and a half hours' washing to assist the home. The home was perfectly clean, although practically destitute of furniture. It was a most deserving case. After reading this item I began studying the papers more closely, and I was surprised at the frequency with which items of this kind occurred. I learned that the Local Government Board, which is represented in the English Cabinet by Mr. John Burns, has issued since 1871 an annual report, or return, as it is called, of the cases in which, upon formal investigation by a coroner's jury, it appears that the persons came to their death in London as a result of starvation. I obtained a copy of the return for 1908, in which are included the statistics on starvation not merely for London but for the rest of England and Wales. The forms issued to coroners were explicit. They provided that the return should include only cases in which the jury found that death was brought about by starvation or privation due to destitution. Cases in which death was caused by cold, starvation, exposure, etc., unconnected with destitution, were not entered in this return. Of the one hundred and twenty-five cases of starvation reported, fifty-two occurred in London. In eleven cases death was described as due to starvation in conjunction with some other cause--that is to say, disease, drink, exposure, or self-neglect. In eighty of the one hundred and twenty-five cases no application was made for poor relief, or application was made only when the deceased had been in a dying condition. A few days after I had succeeded in getting this report my attention was attracted one morning by the heading of a newspaper article: "How the Poor Die." The article was an account of the finding of the body of an unknown woman in a cellar in the basement of a house not very far from where I was stopping. "It appears," the article said, "that during the earlier part of the morning a tenant of the building observed a woman sleeping in the cellar, but no particular notice was taken of this because of the fact that strangers frequently utilized the cellar for such purposes. Mr. Oliver, one of the occupants of the building, had occasion to go downstairs, and saw the woman. She was crouched in a corner and her head was lying back. The police were called in and the services of Doctor Barton were requisitioned.... Although the cause of death will not be known until a post-mortem examination of the body has been made, death, it is thought, was due to starvation. The woman was about six feet in height, between forty and fifty years of age, and was in a very emaciated condition and clad in very scanty attire." Not infrequently, when in my public speeches I have made some reference to the condition of the Negro in the South, certain members of my own race in the North have objected because, they said, I did not paint conditions in the South black enough. During my stay in England I had the unusual experience of being criticised in the London newspapers for the same reason, this time by an American white man. At the very moment that this man attacked me because in my public interviews I emphasized the opportunities rather than the wrongs of the Negro in the South I had in my possession the document to which I have referred, which gives the official history of fifty-two persons, one for every week in the year, who had died in the city of London alone for want of food. I have never denied that the Negro in the South frequently meets with wrong and injustice; but he does not starve. I do not think a single case was ever heard of, in the South, where a Negro died from want of food. In fact, unless because of sickness or some other reason he has been unable to work, it is comparatively rare to find a Negro in an almshouse. It has not been my purpose in anything I have written to pass judgment upon the people or the conditions that I have found in the countries which I have visited. Criticism is an ungrateful task at best, and one for which I am not well fitted. Neither shall I attempt to offer any suggestions as to how conditions may be improved; in fact, I am convinced from what I learned that the people on the ground understand conditions much better than I possibly could, and in a later chapter I hope to tell something of the great work that has been done in England and elsewhere to raise the level of life and comfort among the people who are at the bottom in the countries which I visited. What I am anxious to do here is to emphasize some of the advantages which it seems the members of my own race, and particularly those living in the Southern States, have at the present time. It is not difficult to discover the disadvantages under which the Negroes in the South labour. Every traveller who passes through the South sees the conditions existing, and frequently returns to write books about them. There is danger, however, that the opportunities to which I have referred will be overlooked or not fully appreciated by the members of my race until it is too late. One direction in which the Negro in the South has an advantage is in the matter of labour. One of the most pitiful things I saw in London, Liverpool, and other English cities was the groups of idle men standing about on the street corners, especially around the bar-rooms, because they were not able to get work. One day, as I was going along one of the main avenues of the city, I noticed an unusually large crowd standing in front of a street organ which was drawn up at the side of the pavement. Pausing to see what there was about this organ that attracted so much attention and interest, I found that the man who owned this instrument was using it as a method of advertising his poverty. All over the front of the organ were plastered papers and documents of various kinds. On one side there was a list of advertisements cut from the "Want" columns of the daily newspapers. Attached to this was a statement that these were some of the places that the man had visited the day before in search of work, which he was not able to find. On the other side of the organ were attached six or seven pawn tickets, with the statement that "these are some of the articles which my dear wife pawned to get food for our children." This was followed by a pitiful appeal for help. The pathetic thing about it was that the only persons who stopped to look at these exhibits besides myself were a group of hungry and disreputable-looking men who were evidently in just as great want as the man who ground the organ. I watched those men. After reading the signs they would look inquiringly at the other members of the group and then relapse into the same stolid silence which I had noticed so many times in the forlorn figures that filled the benches of the parks. It seemed to me that they both pitied and admired the man who had conceived this novel way of advertising his misfortune. I have noticed these same people in other cases where it seemed to me they looked with something like envy upon a beggar who was blind or lame or had some other interesting misfortune which enabled him to win the sympathy of the public. Of course the persons that I have attempted to describe do not represent the labouring classes. They represent the man at the bottom, who lives by begging or casual labour. It shows, nevertheless, how bitter is the struggle for existence among the labouring class higher up, that the class below, the class which lives in actual poverty, is so large and so much in evidence. While I was in London I received letters from a great many persons of all classes and conditions. One of these was from a coloured man who was born and raised in the South and was anxious to get back home. I am tempted to quote some passages of his letter here, because they show how conditions impressed a coloured man from the South who got closer to them than I was able to. He had been living, he said, in London for fourteen months without work. "I have tried to apply for work," he continued. "They said they want Englishmen. It seems to me that all Britain are against the Negro race. Some say, 'Go back to your own country,' knowing if I had the means I would fly to-morrow." Perhaps I would do better to quote some passages from his letter verbatim. He says: I cannot get a passage; to be alone in London without any help or funds, like a pin in a haystack, nothing but sorrow and distress. Hearing Mr. B. T. Washington were in London I appeal to him in the name of God Almighty if he can possibly help me with a ticket to get across, because the lady that was kind enough to give me a shelter is without fund herself; being a Christian woman she gave me food for what she can afford. At night I have to sleep in a house with a widow which has two children which has to make her living by chopping wood, whom some day, does not earn enough to buy a loaf of bread for her children. The winter is coming on and I like to get home to shuck corn or to get to Maryland for a oyster draggin. It is a long time since I had watermelon, pig's feet and corn. Say, Mr. Washington, if you ever knew what a man in a hole is I guess I am in a hole and the cover over. I can see the pork chops and the corn bread and the hot biscuits calling me to come over and get some and many a time I have tried but failed. I can't reach them; the great Atlantic Ocean stop me and I remain Your Obedient Servant,---- This letter from which I have given a few extracts is but one of many which I received during my stay in London, not only from coloured but from white Americans who had come to England to better their condition or seek their fortune. These letters served still further to impress me with the fact that the masses of my own people in the South do not fully appreciate the advantages which they have in living in a country where there is a constant demand for labour of all kinds and where even poor people do not starve. If I were asked what I believed would be the greatest boon that could be conferred upon the English labourer, I should say that it would be for him to have the same opportunities for constant and steady work that the Negro now has in the South. If I were asked what would be the next greatest benefit that could be conferred upon the English labourer, I should say that it would be to have schools in which every class could learn to do some one thing well--to have, in other words, the benefit of the kind of industrial education that we are seeking, in some measure, to give to the Negro at the present time in the Southern States. CHAPTER III FROM PETTICOAT LANE TO SKIBO CASTLE The first thing about London that impressed me was its size; the second was the wide division between the different elements in the population. London is not only the largest city in the world; it is also the city in which the segregation of the classes has gone farthest. The West End, for example, is the home of the King and the Court. Here are the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, most of the historical monuments, the art galleries, and nearly everything that is interesting, refined, and beautiful in the lives of seven millions of people who make up the inhabitants of the city. If you take a cab at Trafalgar Square, however, and ride eastward down the Strand through Fleet Street, where all the principal newspapers of London are published, past the Bank of England, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the interesting sights and scenes of the older part of the city, you come, all of a sudden, into a very different region, the centre of which is the famous Whitechapel. The difference between the East End and the West End of London is that East London has no monuments, no banks, no hotels, theatres, art galleries; no history--nothing that is interesting and attractive but its poverty and its problems. Everything else is drab and commonplace. It is, however, a mistake, as I soon learned, to assume that East London is a slum. It is, in fact, a city by itself, and a very remarkable city, for it has, including what you may call its suburbs, East Ham and West Ham, a population of something over two millions, made up for the most part of hard-working, thrifty labouring people. It has its dark places, also, but I visited several parts of London during my stay in the city which were considerably worse in every respect than anything I saw in the East End. Nevertheless, it is said that more than one hundred thousand of the people in this part of the city, in spite of all the efforts that have been made to help them, are living on the verge of starvation. So poor and so helpless are these people that it was, at one time, seriously proposed to separate them from the rest of the population and set them off in a city by themselves, where they could live and work entirely under the direction of the state. It was proposed to put this hundred thousand of the very poor under the direction and care of the state because they were not able to take care of themselves, and because it was declared that all the service which they rendered the community could be performed by the remaining portion of the population in their leisure moments, so that they were, in fact, not a help but a hindrance to the life of the city as a whole. I got my first view of one of the characteristic sights of the East End life at Middlesex Street, or Petticoat Lane, as it was formerly called. Petticoat Lane is in the centre of the Jewish quarter, and on Sunday morning there is a famous market in this street. On both sides of the thoroughfare, running northward from Whitechapel Road until they lose themselves in some of the side streets, one sees a double line of pushcarts, upon which every imaginable sort of ware, from wedding rings to eels in jelly, is exposed for sale. On both sides of these carts and in the middle of the street a motley throng of bargain-hunters are pushing their way through the crowds, stopping to look over the curious wares in the carts or to listen to the shrill cries of some hawker selling painkiller or some other sort of magic cure-all. Nearly all of the merchants are Jews, but the majority of their customers belong to the tribes of the Gentiles. Among others I noticed a class of professional customers. They were evidently artisans of some sort or other who had come to pick out from the goods exposed for sale a plane or a saw or some other sort of second-hand tool; there were others searching for useful bits of old iron, bolts, brass, springs, keys, and other things of that sort which they would be able to turn to some use in their trades. I spent an hour or more wandering through this street and the neighbouring lane into which this petty pushcart traffic had overflowed. Second-hand clothing, second-hand household articles, the waste meats of the Saturday market, all kinds of wornout and cast-off articles which had been fished out of the junk heaps of the city or thrust out of the regular channels of trade, find here a ready market. I think that the thing which impressed me most was not the poverty, which was evident enough, but the sombre tone of the crowd and the whole proceeding. It was not a happy crowd; there were no bright colours, and very little laughter. It was an ill-dressed crowd, made up of people who had long been accustomed to live, as it were, at second-hand and in close relations with the pawnbroker. In the Southern States it would be hard to find a coloured man who did not make some change in his appearance on Sunday. The Negro labourer is never so poor that he forgets to put on a clean collar or a bright necktie or something out of the ordinary out of respect for the Sabbath. In the midst of this busy, pushing throng it was hard for me to remember that I was in England and that it was Sunday. Somehow or other I had got a very different notion of the English Sabbath. Petticoat Lane is in the midst of the "sweating" district, where most of the cheap clothing in London is made. Through windows and open doors I could see the pale faces of the garment-makers bent over their work. There is much furniture made in this region, also, I understand. Looking down into some of the cellars as I passed, I saw men working at the lathes. Down at the end of the street was a bar-room, which was doing a rushing business. The law in London is, as I understand, that travellers may be served at a public bar on Sunday, but not others. To be a traveller, a bona-fide traveller, you must have come from a distance of at least three miles. There were a great many travellers in Petticoat Lane on the Sunday morning that I was there. This same morning I visited Bethnal Green, another and a quite different quarter of the East End. There are a number of these different quarters of the East End, like Stepney, Poplar, St. George's in the East, and so forth. Each of these has its peculiar type of population and its own peculiar conditions. Whitechapel is Jewish; St. George's in the East is Jewish at one end and Irish at the other, but Bethnal Green is English. For nearly half a mile along Bethnal Green Road I found another Sunday market in full swing, and it was, if anything, louder and more picturesque than the one in Petticoat Lane. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning; the housewives of Bethnal Green were out on the street hunting bargains in meat and vegetables for the Sunday dinner. One of the most interesting groups I passed was crowded about a pushcart where three sturdy old women, shouting at the top of their lungs, were reeling off bolt after bolt of cheap cotton cloth to a crowd of women gathered about their cart. At another point a man was "knocking down" at auction cheap cuts of frozen beef from Australia at prices ranging from 4 to 8 cents a pound. Another was selling fish, another crockery, and a third tinware, and so through the whole list of household staples. The market on Bethnal Green Road extends across a street called Brick Lane and branches off again from that into other and narrower streets. In one of these there is a market exclusively for birds, and another for various sorts of fancy articles not of the first necessity. The interesting thing about all this traffic was that, although no one seemed to exercise any sort of control over it, somehow the different classes of trade had managed to organize themselves so that all the wares of one particular sort were displayed in one place and all the wares of another sort in another, everything in regular and systematic order. The streets were so busy and crowded that I wondered if there were any people left in that part of the town to attend the churches. One of the marvels of London is the number of handsome and stately churches. One meets these beautiful edifices everywhere, not merely in the West End, where there is wealth sufficient to build and support them, but in the crowded streets of the business part of the city, where there are no longer any people to attend them. Even in the grimiest precincts of the East End, where all is dirt and squalor, one is likely to come unexpectedly upon one of these beautiful old churches, with its quiet churchyard and little space of green, recalling the time when the region, which is now crowded with endless rows of squalid city dwellings, was, perhaps, dotted with pleasant country villages. These churches are beautiful, but as far as I could see they were, for the most part, silent and empty. The masses of the people enjoy the green spaces outside, but do not as a rule, I fear, attend the services on the inside. They are too busy. It is not because the churches are not making an effort to reach the people that the masses do not go to them. One has only to read the notices posted outside of any of the church buildings in regard to night schools, lectures, men's clubs and women's clubs, and many other organizations of various sorts, to know that there is much earnestness and effort on the part of the churches to reach down and help the people. The trouble seems to be that the people are not at the same time reaching up to the church. It is one of the results of the distance between the classes that rule and the classes that work. It is too far from Whitechapel to St. James's Park. What Mr. Kipling says, in another connection, seems to be true of London: "The East is East, and the West is West, And never these twain shall meet." While on one side of Bethnal Green Road the hucksters were shouting and the crowd was busy dickering and chaffering for food and clothes, I noticed on the other side of the street a wayside preacher. I went over and listened to what he had to say, and then I noted the effect of his words upon his hearers. He had gathered about him perhaps a dozen persons, most of them, however, seeming to be his own adherents who had come out to the meeting merely to give him the benefit of their moral support. The great mass of the people who passed up and down the street did not pay the slightest attention to him. There was no doubt about the earnestness and sincerity of the man, but as I listened to what he had to say I could find in his words nothing that seemed to me to touch in any direct or definite way the lives of the people about him. In fact, I doubted whether the majority of them could really understand what he was talking about. Somewhat later, in another part of the city, I had an opportunity to listen to another of these street preachers. In this case he was a young man, apparently fresh from college, and he was making a very genuine effort, as it seemed to me, to reach and influence in a practical way the people whom the lights of the torches and the music had attracted to the meeting. I observed that the people listened respectfully to what he had to say, and I have no doubt they were impressed, as I was, with his evident desire to help them. It was only too evident, however, that he was speaking another language than theirs; that, in fact, one might almost say he belonged to a different race of people. The gulf between them was too great. After listening to this man I thought I could understand in a way that I had not understood before the great success which the Salvation Army at one time had among the masses of the people of East London. In its early days, at least, the Salvation Army was of the people; it picked its preachers from the streets; it appealed to the masses it was seeking to help for its support; in fact, it set the slums to work to save itself. The Salvation Army is not so popular in East London, I understand, as it used to be. One trouble with the Salvation Army, as with much of the effort that has been made to help the people of East London, is that the Salvation Army seeks to reach only those who are already down; it does not attempt to deal with the larger and deeper problem of saving those who have not yet fallen. The problem of the man farthest down, whether he lives in America or in Europe, and whether he be black or white, is, in my opinion, not one of conversion merely, but of education as well. It is necessary, in other words, to inspire the masses in the lower strata of life with a disposition to live a sober, honest, and useful life, but it is necessary also to give them an opportunity and a preparation to live such a life after they have gained the disposition to do so. The Negro in America, whatever his drawbacks in other directions, is not indifferent to religious influences. The Negro is not only naturally religious, but the religion he enjoys in America is his own in a sense that is not true, it seems to me, of much of the religious life and work among the people of East London. The most powerful and influential organization among the Negroes in America to-day is the Negro church, and the Negroes support their own churches. They not only support the churches and the ministers, but they support also a large number of schools and colleges in which their children, and especially those who desire to be ministers, may get their education. These little theological seminaries are frequently poorly equipped and lacking in almost everything but good intentions; they are generally, however, as good as the people are able to make them. The Negro ministers in the backwoods districts of the South are frequently rude and ignorant and sometimes immoral, but they have this advantage, that they spring from and represent the people, and the religion which they preach is a religion which has grown up in response to the actual needs and feelings of the masses of the Negro people. In other words, the religion of the Negro in America is on a sound basis, because the Negro church has never got out of touch with the masses of the Negro people. After leaving East London on my first Sunday in England, I drove about fifteen miles through the famous Epping Forest to Waltham Abbey, the country seat of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, a grandson of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, who succeeded Wilberforce as leader of the anti-slavery party in parliament, and who framed the bill that finally resulted in the emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies. There is certainly no more beautiful country to look upon than rural England. Flowering vines cover the humble cottage of the farm labourer as well as the luxurious country seats of the landowners, and lend a charm to everything the eye rests upon. I was all the more impressed with the blooming freshness of the country because I had come out of the stifling life of the crowded city. I learned, however, that rural England has for a long time past been steadily losing its population. From 1891 to 1900 it is said that the number of farm labourers in England decreased 20 per cent., and it has been estimated that the rural population of England and Wales has diminished something like 30 or 40 per cent. during the past century, at a time when the urban population has multiplied itself many times over. There are, of course, many reasons for this decrease in the agricultural population. One is, that at the present time not more than 15 per cent. of the land in England is farmed by the people who own it. Thirty-eight thousand landowners hold four fifths of all the agricultural land in England. A few days after my visit to Sir Fowell Buxton at Waltham Abbey I went into northern Scotland to visit Mr. Andrew Carnegie at Skibo Castle. While I was there I had opportunity to get some sort of acquaintance with farming conditions in that part of the world. In Scotland the opportunities for the small farmer to obtain land are even less than they are in England. Some years ago, it is said, twenty-four persons in Scotland owned estates of more than 100,000 acres. The Duke of Sutherland owns a tract stretching, I was told, clear across Scotland from coast to coast. In no country in the world is so small a portion of the population engaged in agriculture as is true in England. For instance, 68 per cent. of the population of Hungary, 59 per cent. of the population of Italy, 48 per cent. of the population of Denmark, 37.5 per cent. of the population of the United States are engaged in agriculture. In England and in Wales in 1901 only 8 per cent. were engaged in agriculture. Not only is it true that a larger proportion of the population of England than of other countries has removed from the country to the city, but in England, also, the distance between the man in the city and the man on the soil is greater than elsewhere. For example, in Italy the distinction between the agricultural labourer and the labourer in the city may be said hardly to exist; the man who, at one part of the year, finds work in the city, is very likely to be found at work at some other time of the year in the country. In Germany also I noticed that a great many of the manufacturing plants were located in the country, where the factory labourer had an opportunity to cultivate a small patch of land. To the extent that he has been able to raise his own food, the factory hand in Germany has made himself independent of the manufacturers and the market. In Hungary I was told that in harvest time the public works were deserted and many of the factories were compelled to shut down, because every one went away to the country to work in the fields. Now, the thing that interested me in observing the vast dislocation of the rural population of England, represented by this vast labouring community of East London, was the extent to which the English labourer, in moving from the country to the city, had lost his natural independence. In losing his hold upon the soil the English labourer has made himself peculiarly dependent upon the organization of the society about him. He can, for instance, neither build his own home nor raise his own food. In the city he must pay a much larger rent than it would be necessary for him to pay in the country. He must work more steadily in order to live, and he has to depend upon some one else to give him the opportunity to work. In this respect, although the English labourer is probably better paid and better fed than any other labourer in Europe, he is less protected from the effects of competition. He is more likely to suffer from the lack of opportunity to work. In the same way England as a whole is more dependent upon foreign countries for the sale of its manufactured products and the purchase of its food supply than is any other country in Europe. Thus it will be found that most of the great questions which are now agitating England, like most of the great questions which are agitating other countries in Europe, are more or less directly concerned with the matter of agriculture and the condition of the labourer on the land. I said in the preceding chapter that one advantage that the Negro in the South had was the opportunity to work for the asking. The Negro in the South has opportunities in another direction that no other man in his position has, outside of America: he has the opportunity to get land. No one who has not visited Europe can understand what the opportunity to get land means to a race that has so recently gained its freedom. No one who has not seen something of the hardships of the average workingman in a great city like London can understand the privilege that we in the Southern States have in living in the country districts, where there is independence and a living for every man, and where we have the opportunity to fix ourselves forever on the soil. CHAPTER IV FIRST IMPRESSION OF LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT One clear, cold morning, about the first of September, I took a train at Bonar Bridge, in the north of Scotland, southward bound. There was a cold wind blowing, and Bonar Bridge is about the latitude, as I learned from looking at my atlas, of northern Labrador--farther north, in fact, than I had ever in my lifetime dreamed of going. I spent the next four or five hours looking out of a car window across the bleak, brown moors, studying the flocks of sheep and the little thatch-roofed cottages clinging to the lonesome hillsides. Three days later I was in the beautiful mountain region below Dresden, on my way to Prague, the capital of Bohemia. In many ways conditions in the farming regions of Bohemia are quite as primitive as they are among the crofters of northern Scotland. There are, for example, a larger number of small farmers owning their own land in Bohemia than there are in Scotland, but the Scottish crofter, although he remains a tenant on a large estate, has, at the present time, a more secure position on the soil than the man who rents his land in Bohemia. In other respects the Scotch Highlanders, whose country I had just left, and the Czechs, whose country I was just entering, are, I should say, about as different as one could well imagine. Among other things I noticed that the farming people in this part of the world do not live apart, scattered about in the open country, as they do in Scotland, and as is the case everywhere in America. On the contrary, the Bohemian farmers live huddled together in little villages, in the centre of the surrounding fields, from which they go out to their work in the morning and to which they return in the evening. These different manners of settling on the soil are one of the marks by which the people in the north of Europe are distinguished from those in the south. The northern people settle in widely scattered homesteads, while the southern people invariably herd together in little villages, and each individual becomes, to a great extent, dependent upon the community and loses himself in the life about him. This accounts, in large measure, for the difference in character of the northern and southern people. In the north the people are more independent; in the south they are more social. The northern people have more initiative; they are natural pioneers. The southern people are more docile, and get on better under the restraints and restrictions of city life. It is said, also, that this explains why it is that the people who are now coming to America from the south of Europe, although most of them come from the land, do not go out into the country districts in America, but prefer to live in the cities, or, as seems to be the case with the Italians, colonize the suburbs of the great cities. Another thing that interested me was the sight of women working on the land. I had not gone far on my way south from Berlin before my attention was attracted by the number of women in the fields. As I proceeded southward, the number of these women labourers steadily increased until they equalled and even outnumbered the men. One of these I had an opportunity to see close at hand; she was coarsely clad, barefoot, and carried a rake over her shoulder. I had seen pictures of something like that before, but never the real thing. Outside of Italy I have rarely seen men going barefoot either in the country or in the city, but in southern Europe it seems to be the custom among the working women, and I took it as an indication of the lower position which women occupy among the people of southern Europe as compared with the position that they occupy in America. I saw many barefoot women later in the course of my journey, both in the field and elsewhere. I confess, however, I was surprised to meet in Vienna, Austria, as I did on several occasions while I was there, women walking barefoot on the pavements in one of the most fashionable streets of the city. One day, in speaking to a native Austrian, I expressed my surprise at what I had seen. "Oh, well," he replied, "they are Slovaks." How vividly this reminded me of a parallel remark with which I was familiar, "Oh, well, they are Negroes!" It was the tone of this reply that caught my attention. It emphasized what I soon discovered to be another distinguishing feature of life in southern Europe. Everywhere I went in Austria and Hungary I found the people divided according to the race to which they belonged. There was one race at the top, another at the bottom, and then there were perhaps two or three other races which occupied positions relatively higher or lower in between. In most cases it was some section of the Slavic race, of which there are some five or six different branches in the Austrian Empire, which was at the bottom. Several times, in my efforts to find out something about these so-called "inferior people," I made inquires about them among their more successful neighbours. In almost every case, no matter what race it happened to be to which I referred, I received the same answer. I was told that they were lazy and would not work; that they had no initiative; that they were immoral and not fitted to govern themselves. At the same time, I found them doing nearly all the really hard, disagreeable, and ill-paid labour that was being done. Usually I found, also, that with fewer opportunities than the people around them, they were making progress. I was frequently surprised at the bitterness between the races. I have heard people talk more violently, but I do not think I have heard any one say anything worse in regard to the Negro than some of the statements that are made by members of one race in Austria in regard to members of some other. I reached the city of Prague late at night, and awoke next morning in a world that was utterly new to me. It was not that Prague looked so different from other European cities I had seen, but the language sounded more strange than anything else I had ever heard. I do not pretend to understand German, yet it seemed to me that there was something familiar and friendly about that language as compared with Czech. The Czechs are but one of the seventeen races of Austria-Hungary, each one of which, with the exception of the Jews, who are an exception to everything, is seeking to preserve its own language, and, if possible, compel all its neighbours to learn it. Preserving its own language is not difficult in the country districts, where each race lives apart in its own village and maintains its own peculiar customs and traditions. It is more difficult in the large cities like Vienna and Budapest, where the different nationalities come into intimate contact with each other and with the larger European world. There is a region in northeastern Hungary where in the course of a day's ride one may pass through, one after another, villages inhabited by as many as five different races--Ruthenians, Jews, Roumanians, Hungarians, and Germans. A racial map of the Dual Empire shows districts in which one race predominates, but these same districts will very likely be dotted with villages in which the fragments of other races still survive, some of them, like the Turks, so few in number that they are not separately counted as part of the population. Under these circumstances travel in this part of the world is made interesting but not easy. Fortunately, I had letters of introduction to Dr. Albert W. Clarke, head of the Austrian branch of the American Board of Missions at Prague, and he introduced me to some of his native assistants who spoke English, and kindly assisted me in finding what I most desired to see of the city and the people. Through him I had an opportunity to get inside of some of the tenements in which European people live, and to see some of the working people in their homes. I did not have an opportunity to explore the parts of the city in which the very poor people live; in fact, I was told that there was nothing in Prague that corresponded to the slums of our English and American cities. There is much poverty, but it is poverty of a self-respecting sort--not of those who have been defeated and gone under, but of those who have never got up. I found the average Bohemian workman living in two rooms and working for wages considerably less than the same kind of labour would have brought in England, and very much less than the same kind of labour would have brought in America. There is, however, very little use in comparing the wages that men earn unless you are able to compare all the surrounding conditions. During my stay in Prague I had an opportunity to see something close at hand of the life of the farming population. Under the guidance of one of Doctor Clarke's assistants I drove out one day to a little village where there were a number of people who had come under the influence of the American Mission in Prague, and where I was assured I should find a welcome. It was not, perhaps, the best place to get an idea of what is most characteristic in Bohemian country life. I had hoped to see something of the local customs of the country people, but, though it was a holiday when I made my visit, I did not see a single peasant costume. There are still many places in Bohemia, I understand, where the people take pride in wearing the national costumes, and there are still many parts of the Austrian Empire where relics of the older civilization linger. Indeed, I heard of places where, it is said, the peasants are still paying the old feudal dues; in other places the old unfree condition of the peasants is still continued in the form of peonage, as it may still be sometimes found in our Southern States. In this case the peasants have got themselves into debt for land. They are not allowed to work off this debt, and this serves as a pretence for keeping them bound to the soil. But education and the growth of manufacturing industries have banished the traces of the older civilization from the greater part of Bohemia. In the village which I visited, as in most of the farming villages in this part of the world, the houses of the farmers stand in a row quite close together on either side of the street. In the rear are the quarters of the servants, the storehouses and the stables, the pig-stys and the cow-stalls, all closely connected, so that it was often a little uncertain to me where the quarters for the servants left off and those for the animals began. In fact, in some places no very definite distinction was made. One of the most interesting places that I visited during my stay in this village was a dairy farm which was conducted by a Jew. He was evidently one of those of the lower or middle class--a type one hears much of in Europe--who, with very little knowledge or skill in the actual work of agriculture, have succeeded by their superior business skill in getting possession of the land and reducing the peasant to a position not much better than that of a serf. This man not only kept a dairy farm but he operated two or three brickyards besides, and had other extensive business interests in the village. Although he was a man of wealth and intelligence, he had his dwelling in the midst of a compound around which were grouped houses for his labourers, cow-stalls, a wheelwright and blacksmith shop, places for pigs, chickens, and dogs, the whole in a condition of indescribable disorder and filth. The greater part of the work on the farm seemed to be done by women, most of whom were barefooted or wore wooden shoes. I do not think I have seen any one wearing wooden shoes before since the days of slavery. They had remained in my mind as the symbol of poverty and degradation; but they are worn everywhere in country districts in Europe. In fact, I remember in one instance, when I visited an agricultural school, finding one of the teachers working in the garden wearing wooden shoes. The people who worked on this farm all lived, as far as I could see, in one little ill-smelling and filthy room. There was no sign in the homes which I visited of those household industries for which Hungarian peasants are noted, and which should help to brighten and make comfortable the simplest home. I believe there are few plantations in our Southern States where, even in the small one-room cabins, one would not find the coloured people living in more real comfort and more cleanliness than was the case here. Even in the poorest Negro cabins in the South I have found evidences that the floor was sometimes scrubbed, and usually there was a white counterpane on the bed, or some evidence of an effort to be tidy. Prague is one of the most ancient cities in Europe. A thing that impressed me with the antiquity of the town was the fact that before the beginning of the Christian era there was a Jewish quarter in this city. Prague is also one of the most modern cities in Europe. Within a comparatively few years large manufacturing plants have multiplied throughout the country. Bohemia makes, among other things, fezzes, and sells them to Turkey; raises beans, and ships them to Boston. What is most interesting is the fact that this progress has been, to a very large extent, made possible through the education of the masses of the people. The Bohemians are to-day among the best educated people in Europe. For example, among the immigrants who come from Europe to America, 24.2 per cent. over fourteen years of age are unable to read and write. In the case of the German immigrant not more than 5.8 per cent. are unable to read or write. In the case of the Bohemians the percentage of illiteracy is only 3 per cent. There is only one class of immigrants among whom the percentage of illiteracy is lower. Among the Danish immigrants it is 0.8 per cent. There is no part of the Austrian Empire where education is more generally diffused or where the schools are so well adapted to the actual needs of the people. In addition to the ordinary primary schools and the gymnasia (which correspond to our high schools) there are several higher institutes of technology which prepare students for industry and commerce. Besides these state schools there are a large number of industrial schools that are maintained by cities or by private associations. Some of these are located in the small towns and are closely connected with the local industries. Sometimes they are organized by the members of the different trades and crafts as a supplement to the apprentice system. For example, in a town where the inhabitants are engaged in the clay industry, there will be found schools which give practical courses in the making of vases and crockery. In some of the larger towns commercial and industrial instruction is given in "continuation schools." In these schools girls who have learned needlework in the elementary schools will be taught sewing, dressmaking, and embroidery and lace work. There are also courses in which boys are prepared to work in the sugar-making, brewing, watchmaking, and other manufacturing industries. In the two institutes of technology in Prague, one of which is for Bohemians and the other for Germans, courses are given which prepare students to be engineers, chemists, machinists, architects, bookkeepers, etc. In connection with these courses there are also special departments where students are prepared to be master workmen in such trades as bricklaying, carpentry, cabinet-making, and stone masonry. There is much in the life and history of the Bohemian people that is especially interesting to a race or a people like the Negro, that is itself struggling up to a higher and freer level of life and civilization. Up to 1848 the masses of the Bohemian people were held in a condition of serfdom. Until 1867 they were not allowed to emigrate from the country, and were thus held, as are the Russian peasants to-day, to a certain degree, prisoners in their own country. Most of the land was in the hands of the nobility, who were the descendants of foreigners who came into the country when it was conquered, a century or more before. Even to-day five families own 8 per cent. of all the land in the kingdom, and one tenth of the population owns 36 per cent. of the area of the country. The Emperor and the Catholic Church are also large landowners. One of the effects of this new education and the new life that has come with it has been to make the land held in larger estates less productive than that which is divided into smaller holdings and cultivated by the men who own it. It was interesting to me to learn that the Bohemians in their own country suffer from some of the same disadvantages as the Negro in the South. For example, the educational fund is divided between the races--the Germans and the Czechs--just as the money for education is divided in the South between the whites and the blacks, but, as is true in the South, it is not divided equally between the races. For example, in the city of Prague there is one gymnasium (school) to every 62,000 Czech inhabitants, while the Germans have one gymnasium for every 6,700 inhabitants. Of what are called the real-schools, in which the education is more practical than that of the gymnasia, there is one for every 62,000 Bohemian inhabitants, while the Germans have one for every 10,000 inhabitants. For a number of years past, although the Bohemians represent 70 per cent. of the population, they have received only a little more than one half of the money appropriated for secondary education, both in the gymnasia and the real-schools. The salaries of teachers in the elementary schools range from $155 to $400 per year; in the schools in which the German language is taught, however, teachers receive an added bonus for their services. To overcome their disadvantages in this direction the Czechs have supplemented the work of the public schools by industrial schools, which are maintained by the contributions of the people in the same way that the Negroes in many parts of the South have supplemented the work of the public schools in order to increase the terms of the school year and to introduce industrial training of various sorts. More than this, the masses of the people in Bohemia are limited and restricted in all their movements in ways of which no one in America who has not passed through the hands of the immigration inspectors at Ellis Island has any comprehension. For example, the people of Austria have had for a number of years freedom of conscience, and, in theory at least, every one is allowed to worship according to his own inclination and convictions. Nevertheless, it seems to be as much a crime in Austria to say anything that could be construed as disrespectful to the Catholic Church as it would be to insult the name of the Emperor. I heard a story of a woman who ran a small store in which she was using copies of a Catholic newspaper with which to wrap up articles which she had sold to her customers. She was warned by the police that if she continued to use this paper for that purpose she would be liable to arrest. Afterward packages were found in her store which were wrapped in this paper; she was arrested and the case was carried to the highest court, but the sentence which had been imposed upon her stood, and she was compelled to serve a term in prison as punishment for this offence. It was only with the greatest difficulty, Doctor Clarke informed me, that he succeeded in getting permission from the Government to establish a branch of the Young Men's Christian Association in Prague. I myself had some experience of these restrictions when I spoke before an audience composed largely of young Bohemian workmen in the rooms of this same Young Men's Christian Association. In order that I might be permitted to make this address it was necessary to announce the subject to the officers of the Government three days before I arrived in the city, and at the meeting I had the unusual experience of having my words taken down by a Government official who was present to see that I did not say anything that would disturb the public peace. Not knowing what else I could say to this audience that would interest them, I told briefly the story of my own life and of the work that we are trying to do for our students at Tuskegee. I told them also that the institution (Hampton Institute) in which I had gained my education had been established by the same American Board of Missions which was responsible for the existence of the Young Men's Christian Association in Bohemia. In order that my hearers might understand what I said, it was necessary for the secretary of the association, a Bohemian who spoke very good English, to translate my words sentence by sentence. In spite of these difficulties I do not think I ever spoke to an audience of labouring people who were more intelligent or more appreciative. It was a great pleasure and satisfaction to me to be able to speak to this audience. I felt, as I think they did, that we had something in common which others, perhaps, could not entirely understand, because each of us belonged to a race which, however different in other respects, was the same in this: that it was struggling upward. CHAPTER V POLITICS AND RACES In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, I came in contact for the first time with the advance guard, if I may use the expression, of a new race, the Slavs. I say a new race, because although the Slavic peoples claim an antiquity as great as that of any other race in Europe, the masses of the race seem just now emerging from a condition of life more primitive than that of almost any other people in Europe. Many little things, not only what I saw with my own eyes, but what I heard from others, gave me the impression, as I travelled southward, that I was entering into a country where the masses of the people lived a simpler and more primitive existence than any I had seen elsewhere in Europe. I remember, for one thing, that I was one day startled to see, in the neighbourhood of the mining regions of Bohemia, a half-dozen women engaged in loading a coal barge--shovelling the coal into wheelbarrows and wheeling them along a narrow plank from the coal wharf to the ship alongside. I was impressed, again, by the fact that several of the peoples of the Austrian Empire--the Moravians and Ruthenians are an illustration--still preserve their old tribal names. Certain other of these peoples still keep not only the tribal names, but many of the old tribal customs. Among most of the Slavic peoples, for example, custom still gives to the marriage ceremony the character of barter and sale. In fact, I found that in one of the large provincial towns in eastern Hungary the old "matrimonial fairs" are still kept up. On a certain day in each year hundreds of marriageable young women are brought down to this fair by their parents, where they may be seen seated on their trunks and surrounded by the cattle they expect to have for a dowry. Naturally young men come from all the surrounding country to attend this fair, and usually a lawyer sits out under a tree nearby prepared to draw up the marriage contract. In some cases as many as forty marriages are arranged in this way in a single day. Divided into petty kingdoms or provinces, each speaking a separate language, living for the most part in the country districts, and held in some sort of political and economic subjection, sometimes by the descendants of foreign conquerors, and sometimes, as in the case of the Poles, by the nobility of their own race, the masses of the Slavic peoples in southern Europe have lived for centuries out of touch with the life of cities, and to a large extent out of touch with the world. Compared, therefore, with the peoples of western Europe, who are living in the centres of modern life and progress, the Slavic peoples are just now on the horizon. In the course of my travels through Austria and Hungary I think I met, at one time or another, representatives of nearly every branch of the Slavic race in the empire. In Bohemia I became acquainted, as I have said, with the most progressive portion of the race, the Czechs. In Galicia I saw something of the life of the Polish people, both in the towns and in the country districts. Again, in Budapest and Vienna I learned something of the condition of the labouring and peasant classes, among whom the Slavic peoples are usually in the majority. At Fiume, the port of Hungary, from which forty thousand emigrants sail every year for the United States, I met and talked with Dalmatians, Croatians, Slovenes, Ruthenians, and Serbs--representatives, in fact, of almost every race in Hungary. In the plains of central Hungary, and again in eastern Prussia, I saw gangs of wandering labourers, made up of men and women who come to this part of the country from the Slavic countries farther south and east to take part in the harvest on the great estates. During this time I became acquainted to some extent also with representatives of almost every type of civilization, high and low, among the peoples of southern Europe, from the Dalmatian herdsmen, who lead a rude and semi-barbarous existence on the high, barren mountains along the coast of the Adriatic, to the thrifty and energetic artisans of Bohemia and the talented Polish nobility, who are said to be among the most intellectual people in Europe. I did not, among these classes I have mentioned, see the most primitive people of the Slavic race, nor the type of the man of that race farthest down. In fact, I have heard that in the mountain regions of southern Galicia there are people who make their homes in holes in the ground or herd together in little huts built of mud. I did not see, either, as I should like to have seen, the life of those Slavic people in southwestern Hungary who still hold their lands in common and live together in patriarchal communities, several families beneath one roof, under the rule of a "house father" and a "house mother," who are elected annually to govern the community. What little I did see of the life of the different branches of the race gave me the impression, however, of a people of great possibilities, who, coming late into the possession of modern ideas and modern methods, were everywhere advancing, in some places rapidly and in others more slowly, but always making progress. One thing that has hindered the advancement of the Slavs has been the difference in the languages spoken by the different branches of the race. So great an obstacle is this difference of language that some years ago, when a congress of all the Slavic peoples was held at Prague, the representatives of the different branches of the race, having no common tongue, were compelled to speak to each other in the one language that they all professed to hate--namely, German. Another thing that has hindered the progress of the Slavs has been the inherited jealousies and the memories they cherish of ancient injuries they have inflicted on one another in times past. In general, it seems to be true of the races of Austria-Hungary that each race or branch of the race hates and despises every other, and this hatred is the more bitter the more closely they are associated. For example, there is a long-standing feud between the Polish peasants and the Polish nobility. This division is so great that the Polish peasants have frequently sided against the Polish nobility in the contests of the latter with the central government of Austria. However, this sentiment of caste which separates the two classes of the Polish people is nothing compared with the contempt with which every Pole, whether he be peasant or noble, is said to feel for every Ruthenian, a people with whom the Pole is very closely related by blood, and with whom he has long been in close political association. On the other hand, the Ruthenian in Galicia looks upon the Pole just as the Czech in Bohemia looks upon his German neighbour: as his bitterest enemy. The two peoples refuse to intermingle socially; they rarely intermarry; in many cases they maintain separate schools, and are represented separately in the Imperial Parliament, each race electing its own representatives. But all are united in hating and despising the Jew, who, although he claims for himself no separate part of the empire, and has no language to distinguish himself from the other races about him, still clings as tenaciously as any other portion of the population to his own racial traditions and customs. The Slavic peoples, otherwise divided by language and tradition, are also divided by religion. People speaking the same language, and sharing in other respects the same traditions, are frequently just as widely separated by differences of religion as they could be by differences of race. For example, among the southern Slavs the majority of the Slovenes and the Croatians are Roman Catholics, others are Protestants. On the other hand, the majority of the Serbs, their close neighbours, are members of the Greek Orthodox Church, while others are Mohammedans. So wide is the division between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Slavs that in some cases members of the Eastern and Western branches of the Church belonging to the same nationality wear a different costume in order to emphasize the differences of religion that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked. In Galicia there are not only the Roman and Orthodox branches of the Church, but there are also three or four other minor branches. One of these, the Uniates, which is a compromise between the two and is intended to be a sort of link between the Eastern and Western churches, is now, it is said, just as distinct from both as any of the other branches of the Church. In this region, which has been the battleground of all the religions in Europe, religious distinctions play a much more important rôle than they do elsewhere, because the masses of the people have not yet forgotten the bitterness and the harshness of the early struggles of the sects. The result is that religious differences seem to have intensified rather than to have softened the racial animosities. In spite of the divisions and rivalries which exist, there seems to be growing up, under the influence of the struggle against the other and dominant races in the Empire, and as a result of the political agitations to which this struggle has given rise, a sense of common purpose and interest in the different branches of the Slavic race; a sort of racial consciousness, as it is sometimes called, which seems to be one of the conditions without which a race that is down is not able to get the ambition and the courage to rise. It is the presence of this great Slav race in western Europe, groping its way forward under the conditions and difficulties which I have described, that constitutes, as well as I am able to define it, the race problem of southern Europe. In many respects the situation of the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in southern Europe generally is more like that of the Negroes in the Southern States than is true of any other class or race in Europe. For one thing, the vast majority of that race are, like the Negroes, an agricultural people. For centuries they have lived and worked on the soil, where they have been the servants of the great landowners, looked down upon by the educated and higher classes as "an inferior race." Although they were not distinguished from the dominant classes, as the Negro was, by the colour of their skin, they were distinguished by the language they spoke, and this difference in language seems to have been, as far as mutual understanding and sympathy are concerned, a greater bar than the fact of colour has been in the case of the white man and the black man in the South. Up to a comparatively few years ago an educated Slav did not ordinarily speak, at least in public, the language of the masses of the people. Doctor Clarke, the head of the Austrian Mission of the American Board in Prague, told me that as recently as thirty years ago an educated Czech did not care to speak his own language on the streets of Prague. At that time the German language was still the language of the educated classes, and all the learning of Europe was, to a very large extent, a closed book to the people who did not speak and read that language. To-day conditions have so changed, Doctor Clarke tells me, that the people in certain quarters of Prague scowl at any one who speaks German on the street. "When we go to visit an official of the Government," said Doctor Clarke, "we usually inquire, first of all, which language this particular official prefers to speak, German or Czech. It is wise to do this because most of the officials, particularly if they represent the central government of Vienna, speak German; but a Czech who is loyal to his race will not speak the hated German unless he has to do so." Doctor Clarke told me, as illustrating the fanaticism of the Bohemian people in this matter of language, that his little girls, who had been educated in German schools and preferred to speak that language among themselves, had more than once been hooted at, and even stoned, by young Bohemians in the part of the town where he lives, because they spoke a language which the masses of the people had been brought up to hate. Another way in which the situation of the Slavic people resembles, to a certain extent, that of the masses of the Negroes in the Southern States, is in the matter of their political relations to the dominant races. Both in Austria and in Hungary all the races are supposed to have the same political privileges, and, in the case of Austria at least, the Government seems to have made a real effort to secure equal rights to all. Here, again, racial and traditional prejudices, as well as the wide differences in wealth and culture of the different peoples, have kept the political power in Austria proper in the hands of the Germans, and in Hungary in the hands of the Magyars. What makes the situation more difficult for the dominant races in these two countries is the fact that the so-called inferior peoples are increasing more rapidly than the other races in numbers, and the Germans and Magyars are every year becoming a smaller minority in the midst of the populations which they are attempting to control. The result has been that the empire seems to the one who looks on from the outside a seething mass of discontent, with nothing but the fear of being swallowed up by some of their more powerful neighbours to hold the nationalities together. There is one respect in which the situation of the Negro in America is entirely different from the various nationalities of Austria and Hungary. The Negro is not compelled to get his education through the medium of a language that is foreign to the other people by whom he is surrounded. The black man in the South speaks the same tongue and professes the same religion as the white people. He is not seeking to set up any separate nationality for himself nor to create any interest for himself which is separate from or antagonistic to the interest of the other people of the United States. The Negro is not seeking to dominate politically, at the expense of the white population, any part of the country which he inhabits. Although he has suffered wrongs and injustices, he has not become embittered or fanatical. Competition with the white race about him has given the Negro an ambition to succeed and made him feel pride in the successes he has already achieved; but he is just as proud to be an American citizen as he is to be a Negro. He cherishes no ambitions that are opposed to the interests of the white people, but is anxious to prove himself a help rather than a hindrance to the success and prosperity of the other race. I doubt whether there are many people in our Southern States who have considered how much more difficult the situation in the Southern States would be if the masses of the black people spoke a language different from the white people around them, and particularly if, at the same time, they cherished political and social ambitions that were antagonistic to the interests of the white man. On the other hand, I doubt whether the Negro people realize the advantage which they have in speaking one of the great world languages, the language, in fact, that is more largely used than any other by the people who are most advanced in science, in the arts, and in all that makes the world better. English is not only a great world language, it is the language of a people and a race among whom the highest are neither afraid nor ashamed to reach down and lift up the lowest, and help them in their efforts to reach a higher and a better life. In the south of Europe conditions are quite different. The languages spoken there, so far from helping to bring people together, are the very means by which the peoples are kept apart. Furthermore, the masses of the people of Austria speak languages which, until a hundred years ago, had almost no written literature. Up to the beginning of the last century the educated people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, and down to the middle of the century Latin was still the language of the Court. Until 1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech language in Bohemia. Up to that time there were almost no newspapers, magazines, or books printed in the language spoken by the masses of the people. It has been said that the written or literary languages of the Slavic people have been, with one or two exceptions, almost created during the past hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, although they have a rich oral literature, still have, I have been told, no written language of their own. A great change has been brought about in this respect in recent years. At the present time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in Austria-Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 938 in Magyar, 582 in Czech, and the remaining 1,480 are in some five or six other languages. The Magyar language is now taught in all the schools of Hungary, whether some other language is taught at the same time or not. Outside of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are some 8,000 exclusively German schools, 5,578 Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 schools in which Italian is taught, the 162 schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 5 in which Magyar is taught. To an outsider it seems as if the purpose of these schools must be to perpetuate the existing confusion and racial animosities in the empire. On the other side, it must be remembered that it has been an enormous advantage to the masses of the people to be able to read the language which they habitually speak. In fact, the multiplication of these different written languages, and of schools in which they are taught, seems to have been the only way of opening to the masses of the people the learning which had been before that time locked up in languages which they sometimes learned to read but rarely spoke. As I have considered the complications and difficulties, both political and economic, which not merely Austria but Europe has to face as a consequence of the different languages spoken by the different races, I have asked myself what would probably happen in our Southern States if, as some people have suggested, large numbers of these foreign peoples were induced to settle there. I greatly fear that if these people should come in large numbers and settle in colonies outside of the cities, where they would have comparatively few educational advantages and where they would be better able and more disposed to preserve their native customs and languages, we might have a racial problem in the South more difficult and more dangerous than that which is caused by the presence of the Negro. Whatever else one may say of the Negro, he is, in everything except his colour, more like the Southern white man, more willing and able to absorb the ideas and the culture of the white man and adapt himself to existing conditions, than is true of any race which is now coming into this country. Perhaps my attempt to compare racial conditions in southern Europe with racial conditions in the southern United States will seem to some persons a trifle strange and out of place because in the one case the races concerned are both white, while in the other case one is white and one is black. Nevertheless, I am convinced that a careful study of conditions as they exist in southern Europe will throw a great deal of light upon the situation of the races in our Southern States. More than that, strange and irrational as racial conflicts often seem, whether in Europe or in America, I suspect that at bottom they are merely the efforts of groups of people to readjust their relations under changing conditions. In short, they grow out of the efforts of the people who are at the bottom to lift themselves to a higher stage of existence. If that be so, it seems to me there need be no fear, under a free government, where every man is given opportunity to get an education, where every man is encouraged to develop in himself and bring to the service of the community the best that is in him, that racial difficulties should not finally be adjusted, and white man and black man live, each helping rather than hindering the other. CHAPTER VI STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR IN ITALY AND HUNGARY There is one English word which seems to be more widely known and used in Europe than almost any other. It is the word "strike." Labour strikes, I have understood, had their origin with the factory system in England. But the people on the Continent have improved on the original English device, and have found ways of using it of which we in America, I suspect, have rarely if ever heard. It seems to me that during my short journey in Europe I heard of more kinds of strikes, and learned more about the different ways in which this form of warfare can be used, than I ever learned before in all my life. In Europe one hears, for example, of "political" strikes, of "general" strikes, and of "agricultural" strikes--harvest strikes--which are a peculiar and interesting variety of the ordinary labour strikes. There are rent strikes, "hunger riots," strikes of students, even of legislatures, and when I was in Budapest some one called my attention to an account in one of the papers of what was called a "house strike." This was a case in which the tenants of one of the large tenement buildings or apartment houses of the city had gone on strike to compel the landlord to reduce the rent. They had hung the landlord in effigy in the big central court around which the building is erected; decorated the walls and balconies with scurrilous placards, and then created such a disturbance by their jeers and outcries, supplemented with fish horns, that the whole neighbourhood was roused. The house strikers took this way to advertise their grievances, gain public sympathy, and secure reduction of the rent. I had an opportunity, during my stay in Europe, to get some first-hand information in regard to these continental strikes. I was in Berlin just before and after the three days' battle between the striking coalyard men of Moabit and the police, in the course of which several of the officers and hundreds of the people were wounded. For several days one section of Berlin was practically in a state of siege. The police charged the crowd with their horses, trampled the people under foot, and cut them down with their swords. The soldiers hunted the strikers into the neighbouring houses, where they attempted to barricade themselves and replied to the attacks of the police by hurling missiles from the windows of the houses into the streets below. At night the streets were in darkness, because the strikers had cut the electric wires, thus shutting off the lights, so that the police were compelled to carry torches in order to distinguish friends from foes. At another time, while I was in Fiume, Hungary, I had an opportunity to see for myself the manner and spirit in which these strikes are conducted, or, rather, the way in which they are put down by the police. I had gone out one day to visit the emigrant station, which is situated on the outskirts of the city, and noticed, on my way thither, a number of policemen on the car. Then, apparently at a signal from a man in charge, they seemed to melt away. Half an hour later, while I was at the emigrant station, I was startled by loud cries outside the building. Every one rushed to the windows. The street was crowded with men, women, and children, all running helter-skelter in the direction of the city. Some of the hands in a nearby factory had gone on strike. I could not at first understand why every one seemed in such a state of terror. Very soon I learned, however, that they were running from the police, and a moment later the police themselves moved into view. They were formed in a broad double line across the avenue, and, marching rapidly, simply swept everything before them. At their head, bearing a heavy cane, was a man in plain clothes. I do not know whether he was an officer or the proprietor of the factory, but I was struck with the haughty and contemptuous air with which he surveyed the rabble as it melted away from in front of him. In a few minutes the street was empty and, so far as I could see, the strike was over. It was a small affair in any case. There was no bloodshed and almost no resistance on the part of the strikers, so far as I could see. It was sufficient, however, to give me a very vivid notion of the ruthless way in which the governments of these stern military powers deal with rebellious labourers. European governments seem to have the habit of interfering, in a way of which we have no conception in this country, in all the small intimate affairs of life. So it is not to be expected that they would be able, like the police in this country, to act as a neutral party or referee, so to speak, in the struggles of labour and capital. That is the reason, I suspect, why in Europe strikes almost always turn out to be a battle with the police or an insurrection against the Government. Almost anything may be made the occasion of a strike in Europe, it seems. Sometimes in Austria and Hungary, as I learned, members of the local diets or provincial legislatures go on a strike and refuse to make any laws until certain demands have been complied with by the central government at Vienna. Sometimes the students in one or more of the national universities go on a strike because a favourite professor has been removed by the Government, or because they are opposed to some particular measure of the Government. Not infrequently, in France or Italy, labour disturbances are fomented for political or party purposes, particularly among the employees of the state railways. Strikes are a favourite weapon of the Socialists when they are seeking to force some political measure through parliament. Until a few years ago it seemed that the "general strike," in which all the labourers of a city or several cities, by suddenly laying down their tools and refusing to return to their work, sought to force some concession by the Government, was the means by which the Socialists proposed to overturn all the existing governments in Europe. Since the failure of the revolution in Russia and of similar movements on a smaller scale in Italy and elsewhere, this form of strike seems to have fallen into disrepute. The most novel and interesting form of labour insurrection which I found while I was in Europe was the "strike of the agricultural labourers." In both Hungary and Italy the agricultural labourers have for some years past been organized into more or less secret societies, and the outbreaks which have been fomented by these secret societies have been, I understand, the most bloody and the most far-reaching in influence of any labour strikes in Europe. The possibility that farm hands might be organized into labour unions, and make use of this form of organization in order to compel landowners to raise wages, had never occurred to me, and I took some pains to learn the conditions in Hungary and Italy under which these organizations have grown up. I found that while the situation of the farm hands in Hungary differs from that of the farm hands in Italy in many ways, there are two important respects in which the situation of each is the same: First, a large part of the land of both countries is held in large estates; second, farm labourers, as a rule, particularly in Hungary, do not live, as is the case in America, on the land. On the contrary, they dwell apart in villages, so that they are hardly any more attached to the soil they cultivate than the factory hand is attached to the factory in which he is employed. In Hungary, for example, it is the custom for a group of labourers to enter, during the spring and summer, into a contract with a landowner to harvest his crop in the fall. A contractor, who either represents or employs the farm hands, will look over the field and bargain with the owner to do the work for a certain per cent. of the crop. At the harvest time the contractor will arrive with his labourers just as he would come with a gang of men to build a house or dig a ditch. While the work is going on the labourers, men and women together, practically camp in the fields, sleeping sometimes in the open or in such scant shelter as they are able to find. It happened that I was in Hungary at the harvest time, and in the course of my journey through the country I have several times seen these gangs of men and women going to their work at daybreak. In this part of the country the strangest costumes are worn by the peasant people, and the women especially, with their bright kerchiefs over their heads, their short skirts and high boots, when they were not barefoot, were quite as picturesque as anything I had read had led me to expect. The labourers go to work at early dawn, because during the harvest season the field hands work sometimes as much as fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and then throw themselves down to rest for the night on a truss of straw or under a single blanket. After the harvest is over they return again to their villages. Working in this way in troups of wandering labourers, there was no room for any permanent human relationships between themselves and their employers; such relationships, for example, as exist, in spite of the differences of race and colour, between every white planter in the South and his Negro tenants. On the other hand, the labourers, working and living together in the way I have described, come to have a strong sense of their common interest, all the stronger, perhaps, because they are looked down upon by the rest of the population, and particularly by the small landowners with whom they were associated up to the time of their emancipation, in 1848. About 1890 a series of bad harvests--coming on the heels of other changes which, for a number of years, had made their lives steadily harder--helped to increase the discontent of the farm hands. Thus it was that when, about this time, the Socialists turned their attention to the agricultural population of Hungary, they found the people prepared to listen to their doctrines. What made Socialism the more popular among the lowest farming classes was the fact that it not only promised to teach the farm labourers how they might increase their wages, but declared that the state was going to take the land out of the hands of the large landowners and divide it among the people who cultivated it. What made the situation the more difficult was the fact that the agricultural labourers, as soon as they were thoroughly organized, had the landowners, during the harvest time, at a peculiar disadvantage, because when work in the fields stopped, the standing grain ripened and spoiled and the landowner was ruined. In the emergency created by these strikes the Government came to the rescue of the landowner by establishing recruiting stations for farm labourers in different parts of the country. Collecting labourers in those parts of the country where labour was abundant, they shipped it to other parts of the country where, because of strikes, labourers were scarce and crops were in danger. Thus, the Government had at one time a reserve force of not less than 10,000 strike-breakers with which it was at any moment able to come to the rescue of a landowner who was threatened. In many cases the Government undertook to regulate wages between landowners and their hands. In some cases they even sent troops into the fields, and in the course of the struggle there were frequent bloody collisions between the labourers and the troops. One effect of these disturbances was to greatly increase the amount of immigration to America. In 1904, when the struggle was at its height, no less than 100,000 persons, mostly from the country districts, emigrated from Hungary. Thousands of others left the country and moved into the cities. Hungary is about half the size of Texas, and it has nearly five times its population. Those who remember the "Negro exodus" of thirty years ago, and the apprehension that was created when some 40,000 Negroes left the plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, will be able to understand the effect if for a number of years the South should lose annually by emigration to the cities or to other parts of the country 100,000 of its labourers in the cotton fields. The exodus of the farm labourer from Hungary threatened, in spite of the rapid increase of the population, to permanently check the rising prosperity of the country. It was soon found that the great landowners could not rely upon repressive measures alone to solve their labour problems. Something must be done to redress the grievances and to improve the condition of the agricultural population. As a matter of fact, a very great deal was done by the state for agriculture, and something was done for the agricultural labourers. For example, relief funds were organized in sixty-four counties and boroughs to aid temporarily disabled workmen. Public prizes and diplomas were offered to labourers who were faithful to their masters. Something was done to brighten the monotony of the agricultural labourer's life and to strengthen the ties between the labourers and their employers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Agriculture, an attempt was made to revive the harvest feasts, which brought the farmer and his labourers together. Workingmen's clubs, libraries, friendly and coöperative societies were encouraged by the Government. A popular weekly paper, printed in seven different languages, was started for the benefit of agricultural labourers and as a means of agricultural education. A bill for insurance against accidents and old age for the benefit of agricultural labourers provided that if a labourer loses more than a week's time he shall receive, in addition to the expenses of doctor and medicine, a sum amounting to about 25 cents a day for sixty days. In case of death of an agricultural labourer, his family receives a sum amounting to something between $40 and $50. In Italy, the Socialistic movement among the agricultural classes took a somewhat different course. For one thing, it was not confined merely to the poorest class--namely, those labourers who live in the villages and go out at certain seasons to assist in the work on the farms--but extended to the small proprietors also, and those who rented land. In many cases the large estates in Italy are not managed as in Hungary, by the proprietor, but by middlemen and overseers, who pay a certain amount of rent to the proprietor and then sublet to tenants. Sometimes, particularly in southern Italy, lands are sublet a second and third time. In many cases the terms upon which the land was held and worked by the small farmer were terribly oppressive, even in northern Italy, where conditions are incomparably better than in the south. Although the peasants in northern Italy were nominally given their freedom in 1793, their condition, until a few years ago, has been described by one who was himself a large land proprietor as "little better than if they were slaves." In addition to the high rents, the tenant farmer was compelled to furnish the overseer with a certain number of chickens and eggs, and a certain amount of peaches, nuts, figs, hemp and flax, in proportion to the amount of land he rented. The overseer claimed, also, just as the overlord did in the days of feudalism, the rights to the labour of the peasant and his ox-cart for a certain part of every year. His children were expected to work as servants in his household at a nominal price. The overseer sold the crop of the tenant farmer, and, after deducting all that was coming to him for rent and for other charges, returned the remainder to the tenant farmer as his share of the year's work. In one case where, as a result of the revolt of his tenants the middleman was driven out, the tenant farmer, under the direction of the Socialist leaders, undertook to rent the land directly from the landowners, it was found that the middleman had been appropriating not less than 48 per cent. of the profits, which, under the new arrangement, went directly into the hands of the man who tilled the soil. For a number of years there had existed among the small farmers numerous societies for mutual aid of various kinds. After the Socialists began to turn their attention to the agricultural population they succeeded in gaining leadership in these societies and used them as a means of encouraging agricultural strikes. It was from these same societies also that they recruited the members of those organizations of farm labourers and tenants which have attempted to form large estates on a coöperative basis. By this means the small farmer has been able to do away with the middleman and still retain the advantages which result, particularly in harvesting and marketing the crops, from conducting the operations on a large scale. In recent years coöperative organizations of all kinds have multiplied among the small farmers of northern Italy. There are societies for purchasing supplies as well as for disposing of the products of the small farmers; the most important of these societies have been, perhaps, the coöperative credit organizations, by means of which small landowners have been able to escape the burden of the heavy interest charges they were formerly compelled to pay. I was interested to learn that both the Government and the Socialists were at different times opposed to these coöperative societies, although for different reasons. The Socialists were opposed to coöperation because by removing the causes of discontent it sapped the revolutionary spirit of the farming classes. The Government, on the other hand, was opposed to the coöperative societies because their leaders were so frequently revolutionists who were using the society to stimulate discontent and organize the movement to overthrow the Government. The great general strike of September, 1904, which resulted in practically putting an end, for five days, to all kinds of business industries in the city of Milan, was provoked by the state police firing upon some peasants who were holding a meeting to pay their shares and take their lots in an agricultural coöperative society. I have attempted to describe at some length the character of the Socialistic movement as I found it in Hungary and Italy, because it represents on the whole the movement of the masses at the bottom of life in Europe. Through this party, for the first time, millions of human beings who have had no voice in and no definite ideas in respect to the Government under which they lived are learning to think and to give expression to their wants. Few people, I venture to say, have any definite notion to what extent the most remote parts of Europe, from which the majority of our immigrants now come, have been penetrated by the ideas and the sentiments of the Socialistic party. There are, for example, some five or six different branches of the party in Bohemia. Socialism, I learn, has made its way even into such countries as Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, and Dalmatia, where perhaps three fourths of the population are engaged in agriculture. There are, however, as I discovered, various kinds and types of Socialism. I think I saw during my journey across Europe as many different kinds of Socialists as I did kinds of Jews, which is saying a good deal. In Denmark and Italy, for example, I met men of the very highest type who were members of the Socialist party. In Copenhagen I was entertained by the editors of the Socialistic paper, _The Politiken_, which is perhaps the most ably edited and influential paper in Denmark. In Italy many of the most patriotic as well as the most brilliant men in the country, writers, students, and teachers, are members of the Socialist party. In Poland, on the other hand, I met other Socialists who had taken an active part in the revolution in Russia and who, for aught I know, were members of that group of desperate men who are said even now to be plotting from Cracow, Austria, a new revolutionary movement among the agricultural classes in Russia. In short, I found that where the masses of the people are oppressed, where the people at the bottom are being crushed by those who are above them, there Socialism means revolution. On the other hand, where governments have shown a liberal spirit, and especially where the Socialists have had an opportunity to participate in the Government, or have been able, by means of the coöperative societies I have described, to do constructive work for the benefit of the masses, they have ceased to be revolutionists, have no longer sought to overturn the Government, but have patriotically striven to strengthen the existing order by freeing it from those defects that were dangerous to its existence. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that I in any way favour the Socialistic programme of reform. I live in the Southern States, a part of the country which, more than any other part of the civilized world, still believes that the best government is the government that governs least; the government that you can wear like an old coat, without feeling it. More than that, I believe that the best and only fundamental way of bringing about reform is not by revolution, not through political machinery that tries to control and direct the individual from the outside, but by education, which gets at the individual from within; in short, fits him for life but leaves him free. There is much in the history of the agricultural labourers of Hungary and Italy that is interesting to any one who has studied the condition of the Negro farm labourer in the South. In many respects their history has been the same. There is, however, this difference: When the serfs were freed in Hungary, as in most other parts of Europe, provision was made to give them land, though to a very large extent they were denied the political privileges enjoyed by the upper classes. In Italy also it was intended, in giving the serfs freedom, to give them likewise land. Again, when the vast estates of the Church were taken over by the State, an attempt was made to increase the class of small owners and to give the land to the people who tilled it. In both cases, however, it was but a few years before the greater portion of the peasant owners were wiped out and their lands absorbed into the large estates. At the present time the small landowners, under the influence of education and agricultural organization, are gaining ground, and both countries, in the interest of agriculture, are seeking to encourage this movement. The case of the Negro was just the opposite. When the masses of the Negro people were turned loose from slavery they carried in their hands the ballot that they did not know how to use, but they took no property with them. At the present time, I believe, by a conservative estimate, that the Negroes in the South own not less than twenty million acres of land, an area equal to the five New England States of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. On the other hand, the Negroes have largely lost, at least temporarily, many of the political privileges which were given them at emancipation. The experience of the peasants of Europe, just as the experience of the Negro in America, has served to confirm an opinion I have long held--namely, that it is very hard for a man to keep anything that he has not earned or does not know how to use. And in most cases, the best way and, in fact, the only way to insure any people in the possession either of property or political privileges is to fit them by education to use these gifts for their own good and for the highest good of the community in which they live. The peasants were given land without effort on their part and soon lost it. The masses of the Negroes were given the ballot without effort on their part and they soon lost it. The peasants are now gradually gaining the land through their own effort and are keeping it. The masses of Negroes are gradually gaining the ballot through their own effort, and are likely to keep it when so gained. CHAPTER VII NAPLES AND THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT I had crossed Europe from north to south before I got my first glimpse of an emigrant bound for America. On the way from Vienna to Naples I stopped at midnight at Rome, and in the interval between trains I spent an hour in wandering about in the soft southern air--such air as I had not found anywhere since I left my home in Alabama. In returning to the station my curiosity was aroused, as I was passing in the shadow of the building, by what seemed to me a large vacant room near the main entrance to the station. As I attempted to enter this room I stumbled over the figure of a man lying on the stone floor. Looking farther, I saw something like forty or fifty persons, men as well as women, lying on the floor, their faces turned toward the wall, asleep. The room itself was apparently bare and empty of all furniture. There was neither a bench nor a table, so far as I could see, in any part of the room. It seems that, without any expectation of doing so, I had wandered into the room reserved for emigrants, and came accidentally upon one of the sights I most wanted to see in Italy--namely, a party of emigrants bound for America. As near as I could learn, these people were, for the most part, peasants, who had come in from the surrounding country, carrying what little property they possessed on their backs or tied up in little bundles in their arms, and were awaiting the arrival of the train that was to take them to the port from which they could take ship for America. I confess it struck me as rather pathetic that, in this splendid new and modern railway station, in which the foreign traveller and the native Italian of the upper classes were provided with every convenience and luxury, so little thought had been given to the comfort of these humble travellers, who represent the people in Italy who pay proportionately most of the taxes, and who, by their patient industry and thrift, have contributed more than any other class to such progress as Italy has made in recent years. Later on I had an opportunity to pass through the country from which perhaps the majority of these emigrants had come. I travelled through a long stretch of country where one sees only now and then a lonesome shepherd or a wretched hut with one low room and a cow-stall. I also visited some of the little villages which one sees clinging to the barren hilltops, to escape the poisonous mists of the plains below. There I saw the peasants in their homes and learned something of the way in which the lowly people in the rural districts have been neglected and oppressed. After that I was able to understand that it was no special hardship that these emigrants suffered at Rome. Perhaps many of them had never before slept in a place so clean and sanitary as the room the railway provided them. Early the next morning, as my train was approaching Naples, my attention was attracted by the large number of women I saw at work in the fields. It was not merely the number of women but the heavy wrought-iron hoes, of a crude and primitive manufacture, with which these women worked that aroused my interest. These hoes were much like the heavy tools I had seen the slaves use on the plantations before the Civil War. With these heavy instruments some of the women seemed to be hacking the soil, apparently preparing it for cultivation; others were merely leaning wearily upon their tools, as if they were over-tired with the exertion. This seemed quite possible to me, because the Italian women are slighter and not as robust as the women I had seen at work in the fields in Austria. I inquired why it was that I saw so many women in the fields in this part of the country, for I had understood that Italian women, as a rule, did not go so frequently into field work as the women do in Austria and Hungary. I learned that it was because so many of the men who formerly did this work had emigrated to America. As a matter of fact, three fourths of the emigration from Italy to America comes from Sicily and the other southern provinces. There are villages in lower Italy which have been practically deserted. There are others in which no one but women and old men are left behind, and the whole population is more than half supported by the earnings of Italian labourers in America. There are cities within twenty miles of Naples which have lost within ten years two thirds of their inhabitants. In fact, there is one little village not far from the city of which it is said that the entire male population is in America. Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I passed through the farming country south of Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants go every year to the United States. It is a sad and desolate region. Earthquakes, malaria, antiquated methods of farming, and the general neglect of the agricultural population have all contributed to the miseries of the people. The land itself--at least such portion of it as I saw--looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and the general air of desolation is emphasized when, as happened in my case, one comes suddenly, in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon some magnificent and lonely ruin representing the ancient civilization that flourished here two thousand years ago. Statistics which have been recently collected, after an elaborate investigation by the Italian Government, show that, in a general way, the extent of emigration from southern Italy is in direct ratio to the neglect of the agricultural classes. Where the wages are smallest and the conditions hardest, there emigration has reached the highest mark. In other words, it is precisely from those parts of Italy where there are the greatest poverty, crime, and ignorance that the largest number of emigrants from Italy go out to America, and, I might add, the smallest number return. Of the 511,935 emigrants who came to North and South America from Italy in 1906, 380,615 came from Sicily and the southern provinces. One of the most interesting experiences I had while in Europe was in observing the number of different classes and races there are in Europe who look down upon, and take a hopeless view of, certain of their neighbours because they regard them as inferior. For example, one of the first things I learned in Italy was that the people in northern Italy look down upon the people of southern Italy as an inferior race. I heard and read many times while I was in Italy stories and anecdotes illustrating the childishness, the superstition, and the ignorance of the peasant people, and the lower classes generally in southern Italy. In fact, nothing that I have known or heard about the superstition of the Negro people in America compares with what I heard about the superstition of the Italian peasants. What surprised me more was to learn that statistics gathered by the Italian Government indicate that in southern Italy, contrary to the experience of every other country, the agricultural labourers are physically inferior to every other class of the population. The people in the rural districts are shorter of stature and in a poorer condition generally than they are in the cities. For all these reasons I was the more anxious to learn for myself what these people were like. I wanted to find out precisely in what this inferiority of the southern Italian consisted, because I knew that these people were very largely descended from the ancient Greeks, who, by reputation at least, were the most gifted people the world has ever known. The city of Naples offers some advantages for studying the southern population, since it is the port at which the stream of emigration from the small towns and farming districts of the interior reaches the sea. The exportation of labourers to America is one of the chief businesses of that city. It was at Naples, then, that I gained my earliest first-hand acquaintance with the Italians of the south. I think the thing that impressed me most about Naples was the contrast between the splendour of its natural surroundings, the elegance and solidity of its buildings, and the dirt, disorder, and squalor in which the masses of the people live. It was early morning when I arrived in the city for the first time. The sun, which was just rising over the black mass of Vesuvius, flooded the whole city and the surrounding country with the most enchanting light. In this soft light the gray and white masses of the city buildings, piled against the projecting hillside to the right and stretching away along the curving shores to the left, made a picture which I shall never forget. Some of this sunshine seemed to have got into the veins of the people, too, for I never saw anywhere so much sparkle and colour, so much life and movement, as I did among the people who throng the narrow streets of Naples. I never heard before so many curious human noises or saw such vivid and expressive gestures. On the other hand, I never saw anywhere before so many beggars, so many barefooted men, so many people waiting at the station and around the streets to pick up a casual job. It seemed to me that there were at least six porters to every passenger who got off the train, and these porters were evidently well organized, for I had the experience of seeing myself and my effects calmly parcelled out among half a dozen of them, every one of whom demanded, of course, a separate fee for his services. My experience in Europe leads me to conclude that the number of casual labourers, hucksters, vagabonds, and hunters of odd jobs one meets in a city is a pretty good index of the condition of the masses of the people. By this measure I think that I should have been able to say at the outset that there was in Naples a larger class living in the dirt, degradation, and ignorance at the bottom of society than in any other city I visited in Europe. I make this statement even though cities like Catania and Palermo, in Sicily, which are surrounded by an agricultural population just as wretched, are little, if any, better than Naples in this respect. Very few persons who go to Naples merely as sightseers ever get acquainted, I suspect, with the actual conditions of the people. Most travellers who see Naples are carried away by the glamour of the sunshine, the colour, and the vivacity of the Italian temperament. For that reason they do not see the hard struggle for existence which goes on in the narrow streets of the city, or, if they do, they look upon the shifts and devices to which this light-hearted people are driven in order to live as merely part of the picturesqueness of the southern life and people. I have been more than once through the slums and poorer quarters of the coloured people of New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York, and my personal observation convinces me that the coloured population of these cities is in every way many per cent. better off than the corresponding classes in Naples and the other Italian cities I have named. As far as the actual hardships they have to endure or the opportunities open to them, the condition of the Negroes in these cities does not compare, in my opinion, with that of the masses of the Italians in these southern Italian cities. There is this difference also: the majority of the Negroes in the large cities of the South and North in the United States are from the country. They have been accustomed to range and wander in a country where life was loose and simple, and existence hardly a problem. They have not been accustomed to either the comforts or the hardships of complex city life. In the case of the Italians, life in the crowded, narrow streets, and the unsanitary intimacy and confusion in which men, goats, and cattle here mingle, have become the fixed habit of centuries. It is not an unusual thing, for instance, to find a cow or a mule living in close proximity, if not in the same room, with the rest of the family, and, in spite of the skill and artistic taste which show themselves everywhere in the construction and decoration of the buildings, the dirt and disorder in which the people live in these buildings are beyond description. Frequently, in passing through the streets of these southern cities, one meets a herd of goats wandering placidly along over the stone pavements, nibbling here and there in the gutters or holding up in front of a house to be milked. Even where the city government has made the effort to widen and improve the streets, let in air and sunlight, and maintain sanitary conditions, the masses of the people have not yet learned to make use of these conveniences. I recall, in passing along one of these streets, in the centre of the city, which had been recently laid out with broad stone sidewalks and built up with handsome three and four story stone buildings, seeing a man and a cow standing on the sidewalk at the corner of the street. It seemed to me that the natural thing would have been to let the cow stand in the street and not obstruct the sidewalk. But these people evidently look upon the cow as having the same rights as other members of the population. While the man who owned the cow was engaged in milking, a group of women from the neighbouring tenements stood about with their pitchers and gossiped, awaiting their turn at the cow. This method of distributing milk--namely, by driving the animal to the front door and milking while you wait--has some advantages. It makes it unnecessary to sterilize the milk, and adulteration becomes impracticable. The disadvantage is that, in order to make this method of milk delivery possible, the cow and the goat must become city dwellers and live in the same narrow streets with the rest of the population. Whatever may be true of the goat, however, I am sure that the cow is not naturally adapted to city life, and where, as is true in many instances, whole families are forced to crowd into one or two rooms, the cow-stall is likely to be still more crowded. Under these conditions I am sure that the average cow is going to be neither healthy nor happy. For my purposes it is convenient to divide the life of Naples into three classes. There is the life of the main avenues or boulevards, where one sees all that is charming in Neapolitan life. The buildings are handsome, streets are filled with carriages, sidewalks are crowded with handsomely dressed people. Occasionally one sees a barefooted beggar asleep on the marble steps of some public building. Sometimes one sees, as I did, a woman toiling up the long street side by side with a donkey pulling a cart. There are a good many beggars, but even they are cheerful, and they hold out their hands to you with a roguish twinkle in their eyes that somehow charms the pennies out of your pocket. Then there is the life of the narrower streets, which stretch out in an intricate network all over the older part of the city. Many of these streets contain the homes as well as the workshops of the artisan class. Others are filled with the petty traffic of hucksters and small tradesmen. In one street you may find a long row of pushcarts, with fish and vegetables, or strings of cheap meat dangling from cords, surrounded by a crowd, chaffering and gesticulating--Neapolitan bargain-hunters. In another street you will find, intermingled with the little shops, skilled artisans with their benches pushed half into the street, at work at their various tasks. Here you will see a wood-carver at his open doorway, busily engaged in carving out an elegant bit of furniture, while in the back of the shop his wife is likely to be engaged in getting the midday meal. A little farther along you may meet a goldsmith, a worker in iron or in copper. One is making a piece of jewellery, the other is mending a kettle. In these streets one sees, in fact, all the old handicrafts carried on in much the same manner and apparently with the same skill that they were carried on three hundred years ago. Finally, there are the narrower, darker, dirtier streets which are not picturesque and into which no ordinary traveller ventures. This seldom-visited region was, however, the one in which I was particularly interested, for I had come to Naples to see the people and to see the worst. In the neighbourhood of the hotel where I stayed there was a narrow, winding street which led by a stone staircase from the main thoroughfare up the projecting hillside to one of those dark and obscure alleyways for which Naples, in spite of the improvements which have been made in recent years, is still noted. Near the foot of the stairs there was a bakery, and not far away was the office of the State Lottery. The little street to which I refer is chiefly inhabited by fishermen and casual labourers, who belong to the poorest class of the city. They are the patrons also of the lottery and the bakery, for there is no part of Naples that is so poor that it does not support the luxury of a lottery; and, I might add, there are few places of business that are carried on in a filthier manner than these bakeries of the poorer classes. I was passing this place late in the afternoon, when I was surprised to see a huckster--I think he was a fish vender--draw up his wagon at the foot of this stone staircase and begin unhitching his mule. I looked on with some curiosity, because I could not, for the life of me, make out where he was going to put that animal after he had unhitched him. Presently the mule, having been freed from the wagon, turned of his own motion and began clambering up the staircase. I was so interested that I followed. A little way up the hill the staircase turned into a dark and dirty alleyway, which, however, was crowded with people. Most of them were sitting in their doorways or in the street; some were knitting, some were cooking over little charcoal braziers which were placed out in the street. One family had the table spread in the middle of the road and had just sat down very contentedly to their evening meal. The street was strewn with old bottles, dirty papers, and all manner of trash; at the same time it was filled with sprawling babies and with chickens, not to mention goats and other household appurtenances. The mule, however, was evidently familiar with the situation, and made his way along the street, without creating any surprise or disturbance, to his own home. I visited several other streets during my stay in Naples which were, if possible, in a worse condition than the one I have described. In a city where every one lives in the streets more than half the time, and where all the intimate business of life is carried on with a frankness and candour of which we in America have no conception, there is little difficulty in seeing how people live. I noted, for example, instances in which the whole family, to the number of six or seven, lived in a single room, on a dirt floor, without a single window. More than that, this one room, which was in the basement of a large tenement house, was not as large as the average one-room Negro cabin in the South. In one of these one-room homes I visited there was a blacksmith shop in one part of the room, while the family ate and slept in the other part. The room was so small that I took the trouble to measure it, and found it 8 � 13 feet in size. Many of these homes of the poorer classes are nothing better than dark and damp cellars. More than once I found in these dark holes sick children and invalid men and women living in a room in which no ray of light entered except through the open door. Sometimes there would be a little candle burning in front of a crucifix beside the bed of the invalid, but this flickering taper, lighting up some pale, wan face, only emphasized the dreary surroundings. It was a constant source of surprise to me that under such conditions these people could be so cheerful, friendly, and apparently contented. I made some inquiry as to what sort of amusements they had. I found that one of the principal forms of amusement of this class of people is gambling. What seems stranger still, this vice is in Italy a Government monopoly. The state, through its control of the lottery, adds to the other revenue which it extracts from the people not less than five million dollars a year, and this sum comes, for the most part, from the very poorest part of the population. There are, it seems, something like 1,700 or 1,800 offices scattered through the several large cities of Italy where the people may buy lottery tickets. It seemed to me that the majority of these offices must be in Naples, for in going about the city I saw them almost everywhere, particularly in the poorer quarters. These lottery offices were so interesting that I determined to visit one myself and learn how the game was played. It seems that there is a drawing every Saturday. Any one may bet, whatever amount he chooses, that a number somewhere between one and ninety will turn up in the drawing. Five numbers are drawn. If you win, the lottery pays ten to one. You may also bet that any two of the five numbers drawn will turn up in succession. In that case, the bank pays the winner something like fifty to one. You may also bet that three out of five will turn up, and in case you win the bank pays 250 times the amount you bet. Of course the odds are very much against the player, and it is estimated that the state gets about 50 per cent. of all the money that is paid in. The art of the game consists, according to popular superstition, in picking a lucky number. In order to pick a lucky number, however, one must go to a fortune-teller and have one's dreams interpreted, or one must pick a number according to some striking event, for it is supposed that every event of any importance suggests some lucky number. Of course all this makes the game more interesting and complicated, but it is, after all, a very expensive form of amusement for poor people. From all that I can learn, public sentiment in Italy is rapidly being aroused to the evils which cling to the present system of dealing with the agricultural labourer and the poorer classes. But Italy has not done well by her lower classes in the past. She has oppressed them with heavy taxes; has maintained a land system that has worn out the soil at the same time that it has impoverished the labourer; has left the agricultural labourers in ignorance; has failed to protect them from the rapacity of the large landowners; and has finally driven them to seek their fortunes in a foreign land. In return, these emigrants have repaid their native country by vastly increasing her foreign commerce, by pouring back into Italy the earnings they have made abroad, by themselves returning with new ideas and new ambitions and entering into the work of building up the country. These returned emigrants have brought back to the mother country improved farming machinery, new methods of labour, and new capital. Italian emigrants abroad not only contribute to their mother country a sum estimated at between five and six million dollars annually, but Italian emigration has awakened Italy to the value of her labouring classes, and in doing this has laid the foundation for the prosperity of the whole country. In fact, Italy is another illustration that the condition of the man at the bottom affects the life of every class above him. It is to the class lowest down that Italy largely owes what prosperity she has as yet attained. CHAPTER VIII THE LABOURER AND THE LAND IN SICILY Among the things that make Sicily interesting are its ruins. There are dead cities which even in their decay are larger and more magnificent than the living cities that have grown up beside them--larger and more magnificent even than any living city in Sicily to-day. There are relics of this proud and ancient past everywhere in this country. In the modern city of Catania, for example, I came suddenly one day upon the ruins of the forum of a Roman city which was buried under the modern Italian one. At Palermo I learned that when the members of the Mafia, which is the Sicilian name for the "Black Hand," want to conceal a murder they have committed, they put the body in one of the many ancient tombs outside the city, and leave it there for some archæologist to discover and learn from it the interesting fact that the ancient inhabitants of Sicily were in all respects like the modern inhabitants. Among the other antiquities that one may see in Sicily, however, is a system of agriculture and method of tilling the soil that is two thousand years old. In fact, some of the tools still in use in the interior of the island are older than the ruins of those ancient heathen temples, some of which were built five centuries before Christ. These living survivals, I confess, were more interesting to me than the dead relics of the past. These things are not easy to find. The guide-books mention them, but do not tell you where to look for them. Nevertheless, if one looks long enough and in the right place it is still possible to see in Sicily men scratching the field with an antique wooden plow, which, it is said, although I cannot vouch for that, is mentioned in Homer. One may see a Sicilian farmer laboriously pumping water to irrigate his cabbage garden with a water-wheel that was imported by the Saracens; or one may see, as I did, a wine press that is as old as Solomon, and men cutting the grapes and making the wine by the same methods that are described in the Bible. It was my purpose in going to Sicily to see, if possible, some of the life of the man who works on the soil. I wanted to get to the people who lived in the little villages remote from the larger cities. I was anxious to talk with some of these herdsmen I had seen at a distance, wandering about the lonesome hillsides, tending their goats and their cows and perhaps counting the stars as the shepherds did in the time of Abraham. As there are some 800,000 persons engaged in agriculture in one way or another, it did not seem to me that this would be difficult. In spite of this fact, if I may judge by my own experience, one of the most difficult persons to meet and get acquainted with in this country, where many things are strange and hard to understand, is the man who works out in the open country on the land. Even after one does succeed in finding this man, it is necessary to go back into history two or three hundred years and know a great deal about local conditions before one can understand the methods by which he works and thinks. In fact, I constantly had the feeling while I was in Sicily that I was among people who were so saturated with antiquity, so out of touch, except on the surface, with modern life, so imbedded in ancient habits and customs, that it would take a very long time, perhaps years, to get any real understanding of their ways of thinking and living. In saying this I do not, of course, refer to the better classes who live in the cities, and especially I do not refer to the great landowners, who in Sicily do not live on the land, but make their homes in the cities and support themselves from the rents which are paid them by overseers or middlemen, to whom they usually turn over the entire management of their properties. Nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties I have mentioned, I did get some insight into the condition of the rural agricultural classes in Sicily--namely, the small landowner and the agricultural labourer--and I can perhaps best tell what I learned by starting at the beginning. The first thing I remember seeing of Sicily was a long black headland which stretches out into the sea like a great black arm toward the ships that approach Palermo from Naples. After that the dark mass of the mainland, bare and brown and shining in the morning light, seemed to rise suddenly out of the smooth and glittering sea. A little later, the whole splendid panorama of the beautiful bay of Palermo lay stretched out before me. I recall this picture now because it suggests and partly explains the charm which so many travellers find in this island, and because it stands out in contrast with so much that I saw later when I visited the interior. Sicily is, in this, like a great many other places I saw in Europe: it looks better on the outside than it looks on the in. All the large cities in Sicily are situated on a narrow rim of fertile land which encircles the island between the mountains and the sea. Palermo, for example, is situated on a strip of this rim which is so rich that it is called the "Shell of Gold." In this region, where the soil is constantly enriched from the weathering of the neighbouring mountains, and where agriculture has been carried to the highest perfection that science and the skill of man can bring it, are situated those wonderful orange and lemon groves for which Sicily is famous. As an illustration of what irrigation and intensive culture can do in this soil, it is stated that the value of the crop in this particular region has been increased by irrigation from $8 to $160 an acre. When one goes to Sicily to look at the agriculture it is this region that one sees first. During my first day in Palermo I drove through miles of these magnificent fruit farms, all laid out in the most splendid style, surrounded by high stone walls, the entrance guarded by heavy iron gates, and provided with extensive works for supplying constant streams of water to the growing fruit. The whole country, which is dotted with beautiful villas and winter palaces, is less like a series of fruit farms than it is like one vast park. Here the fruit ripens practically the whole year round. The trees are heavy all winter with growing fruit, and one can wander for hours through a forest of lemon and orange trees so closely crowded together that the keen rays of the southern sun can scarcely penetrate their foliage. Palermo, however, like many other European cities in which the masses of the people are just now emerging out of the older civilization into the newer modern life, is divided into an old and a new city. There is the northern end, with broad streets and handsome villas, which the people call the "English Garden." This is the new city and the quarter of the wealthy classes. Then at the southern end there is the old city, with crowded, narrow and often miserably dirty streets, which is the home of the poorer class. After visiting one or two of the estates in the suburbs at the northern end of the city, I determined to see some of the truck farms of the smaller farmers which I had heard were located at the south end of the city. I made up my mind, also, if possible, to get out into the country, into the wilder and less settled regions, where I could plainly see from my hotel window the olive groves creeping up the steep mountainside and almost visibly searching out the crevices and sheltered places on the steep slopes in search of water, which is the one missing ingredient in the soil and climate of this southern country. Now one of the singular things about Palermo and some other cities in Sicily is that, as soon as you get to the edge of the town, you find yourself driving or walking between high stone walls which entirely shut out the view in every direction. We drove for an hour through these blind alleys, winding and twisting about without seeing anything of the country except occasionally the tops of the trees above the high stone walls that guarded the farms on either side. Occasionally we passed heavy iron gates which looked like the gates of a prison. Now and then we came upon a little group of houses built into the walls. These barren little cells, lighted only by an open door, looked as if they might be part of a prison, except for the number of sprawling children, the goats, and the chickens, and the gossiping housewives who sat outside their houses in the shadow of the wall sewing, or engaged in some other ordinary household task. There was scarcely a sprig of grass anywhere to be seen. The roads frequently became almost impassable for wagons, and eventually degenerated into mere mule paths, through which it seemed almost impossible, with our carriage, to reach the open country. What added to the prison-like appearance of the place was the fact that, as soon as we approached the edge of the town, we met, every hundred yards or more, a soldier or a police officer sitting near his sentry box, guarding the approaches to the city. When I inquired what the presence of these soldiers meant, I was told that they were customs officers and were stationed there to prevent the smuggling of food and vegetables into the city, without the payment of the municipal tax which, it seems, is levied on every particle of produce that is brought into the city. I am sure that in the course of half an hour we met as many as twenty of these officers watching the highway for smugglers. As we proceeded, our driver, who had made several fruitless attempts to turn us aside into an old church or cemetery, to see the "antee-chee," as he called it, grew desperate. When I inquired what was the trouble I learned that we had succeeded in getting him into a part of the city that he had never before visited in his whole life, and he was afraid that if he went too far into some of the roads in which we urged him to go he would never be able to get back. Finally we came to a road that appeared to lead to a spot where it seemed one could at least overlook the surrounding country. We urged him to go on, but he hesitated, stopped to inquire the way of a passing peasant and then, as if he had made a mighty resolve, he whipped up his horse and said he would go on even if that road took him to "paradise." All this time we were not a quarter of a mile beyond the limits of the customs zone of the city. Finally we came, by good fortune, to a hole in one of the walls that guarded the highway. We stopped the carriage, got out, clambered up the steep bank and made our way through this hole into the neighbouring field. Then we straightened up and took a long breath because it seemed like getting out of prison to be able to look about and see something green and growing again. We had hardly put our heads through the hole in this wall, however, when we saw two or three men lying in the shade of a little straw-thatched hut, in which the guards sleep during the harvest season, to keep the thieves from carrying away the crops. As soon as these men saw us, one of them, who seemed to be the proprietor, arose and came toward us. We explained that we were from America and that we were interested in agriculture. As soon as this man learned that we were from America he did everything possible he could to make us welcome. It seems that these men had just sat down to their evening meal, which consisted of black bread and tomatoes. Tomatoes seemed to be the principal part of the crop that this farmer was raising at that time. He invited us, in the politest manner possible, to share his meal with him and seemed greatly disappointed that we did not accept. Very soon he began telling the same story, which I heard so frequently afterward during my stay in Sicily. He had a son in America, who was in a place called Chicago, he said, and he wanted to know if I had ever heard of such a place and if so perhaps I might have met his son. The old man explained to me all about his farm; how he raised his crop and how he harvested it. He had about two acres of land, as well as I could make out, for which he paid in rent about $15 per acre a year. This included, as I understood, the water for irrigation purposes. He admitted that it took a lot of work to make a living for himself, and the others who were helping him, from this small piece of land. It was very hard to live anywhere in Sicily, he said, but the people in Palermo were much better off than they were in other places. I asked him what he would do if his son should come back from America with a bag of money. The old man's face lighted up and he said promptly, "Get some land and have a little home of my own." Many times since then I have asked the same or similar questions of some man I met working on the soil. Everywhere I received the same answer. Everywhere among the masses of the people is this desire to get close to the soil and own a piece of land of their own. From where we stood we could look out over the country and see in several places the elaborate and expensive works that had been erected for pumping water by steam for the purposes of irrigation. One of the small farmers I visited had a small engine in the back of his house which he used to irrigate a garden of cauliflower about four acres in extent. This man lived in a little low stone and stucco house, but he was, I learned, one of the well-to-do class. He had an engine for pumping water which cost him, he said, about $500. I saw as I entered his place a little stream of water, not much larger than my thumb, drizzling out of the side of the house and trickling out into the garden. He said it cost him between $4 and $5 a day to run that engine. The coal he used came from England. I had seen, as I entered the Palermo harbour, the manner in which this coal was unloaded, and it gave me the first tangible evidence I had found of the cheapness of human labour in this over-populated country. Instead of the great machines which are used for that purpose in America and England, I learned, this work was all done by hand. In order to take this coal from the ship it was first loaded into baskets, which were swung over the side of the vessel and there piled upon a lighter. This lighter was then moved from the ships to the shore. The baskets were then lifted out by hand and the coal dumped on the wharf. From these it was reloaded into carts and carried away. It was this coal, handled in this expensive way, that this farmer was using to pump the water needed to irrigate his land. After leaving Palermo I went to Catania, at the other side of the island. The railway which climbs the mountains in crossing the island took me through a very different country and among very different people than those I had seen at Palermo. It was a wild, bare, mountainous region through which we passed; more bare, perhaps, at the time I saw it than at other times, because the grain had been harvested and plowing had not begun. There were few regular roads anywhere. Now and then the train passed a lonely water-wheel; now and then I saw, winding up a rocky footpath, a donkey or pack-mule carrying water to the sulphur mines or provisions to some little inland mountain village. Outside of these little villages, in which the farm labourers live, the country was perfectly bare. One can ride for miles through this thickly populated country without seeing a house or a building of any kind, outside of the villages. In Sicily less than 10 per cent. of the farming class live in the open country. This results in an enormous waste of time and energy. The farm labourer has to walk many miles to and from his labour. A large part of the year he spends far away from his home. During this time he camps out in the field in some of the flimsy little straw-thatched shelters that one sees scattered over the country, or perhaps he finds himself a nest in the rocks or a hole in the ground. During this time he lives, so to speak, on the country. If he is a herdsman, he has his cows' or goats' milk to drink. Otherwise his food consists of a piece of black bread and perhaps a bit of soup of green herbs of some kind or other. During my journey through this mountain district, and in the course of a number of visits to the country which I made later, I had opportunity to learn something of the way these farming people live. I have frequently seen men who had done a hard day's work sit down to a meal which consisted of black bread and a bit of tomato or other raw vegetable. In the more remote regions these peasant people frequently live for days or months, I learned, on almost any sort of green thing they find in the fields, frequently eating it raw, just like the cattle. When they were asked how it was possible to eat such stuff, they replied that it was good; "it tasted sweet," they said. I heard, while I was in Sicily, of the case of a woman who, after her husband had been sent to prison, supported herself from the milk she obtained from a herd of goats, which she pastured on the steep slopes of the mountains. Her earnings amounted to not more than 12 to 14 cents a day, and, as this was not sufficient for bread for herself and her four children, she picked up during the day all sorts of green stuff that she found growing upon the rocks, and carried it home in her apron at night to fill the hungry mouths that were awaiting her return. Persons who have had an opportunity to carefully study the condition of this country say it is incredible what sort of things these poor people in the interior of Sicily will put into their stomachs. One of the principal articles of diet, in certain seasons of the year, is the fruit of a cactus called the Indian fig, which grows wild in all parts of the island. One sees it everywhere, either by the roadside, where it is used for hedges, or clinging to the steep cliffs on the mountainside. The fruit, which is about the size and shape of a very large plum, is contained in a thick, leathern skin, which is stripped off and fed to the cattle. The fruit within is soft and mushy and has a rather sickening, sweetish taste, which, however, is greatly relished by the country people. One day, in passing through one of the suburbs of Catania, I stopped in front of a little stone and stucco building which I thought at first was a wayside shrine or chapel. But it turned out to be a one-room house. This house had a piece of carpet hung as a curtain in front of the broad doorway. In front of this curtain there was a rude table made of rough boards; on this table was piled a quantity of the Indian figs I have described and some bottles of something or other that looked like what we in America call "pop." Two very good-looking young women were tending this little shop. I stopped and talked with them and bought some of the cactus fruit. I found it sold five pieces for a cent. They told me that from the sale of this fruit they made about 17 cents a day, and upon this sum they and their father, who was an invalid, were compelled to support themselves. There were a few goats and chickens and two pigs wandering about the place, and I learned that one of the economies of the household consisted in feeding the pigs and goats upon the shells or husks of the Indian figs that were eaten and thrown upon the ground. As near as I could learn, from all that I heard and read, the condition of the agricultural population in Sicily has been growing steadily worse for half a century, at least. Persons who have made a special study of the physical condition of these people declare that this part of the population shows marked signs of physical and mental deterioration, due, they say, to the lack of sufficient food. For example, in respect to stature and weight, the Sicilians are nearly 2 per cent. behind the population in northern Italy. This difference is mainly due to the poor physical condition of the agricultural classes, who, like the agricultural population of the southern mainland of Italy, are smaller than the population in the cities. In this connection, it is stated that considerably less than one third as much meat is consumed per capita in Sicily as in northern Italy. Even so, most of the meat that is eaten there is consumed in the hotels by the foreigners who visit the country. In looking over the budgets of a number of the small landowners, whose position is much better than that of the average farm labourer, I found that as much as $5 was spent for wine, while the item for meat was only $2 per year. There are thousands of people in Sicily, I learned, who almost never taste meat. The studies which have been made of the subject indicate that the whole population is underfed. Upon inquiry I found it to be generally admitted that the condition of the population was due to the fact that the larger part of the land was in the hands of large landowners, who have allowed the ignorant and helpless peasants to be crushed by a system of overseers and middlemen as vicious and oppressive as that which existed in many parts of the Southern States during the days of slavery. This middleman is called by Italians a gobellotto, and he seems to be the only man in Sicily who is getting rich out of the land. If a gobellotto has a capital of $12,000 he will be able to rent an estate of 2,500 acres for a term of six to nine years. He will, perhaps, work only a small portion of this land himself and sublet the remainder. Part of it will go to a class of farmers that correspond to what are known in the South as "cash renters." These men will have some stock, and, perhaps, a little house and garden. In a good season they will be able to make enough to live upon and, perhaps, save a little money. If the small farmer is so unfortunate, however, as to have a bad season; if he loses some of his cattle or is compelled to borrow money or seed, the middleman who advances him is pretty certain to "clean him up," as our farmers say, at the end of the season. In that case, he falls into the larger and more unfortunate class beneath him, which corresponds to what we call in the Southern States the "share cropper." This man, corresponding to the share cropper, is supposed to work his portion of land on half-shares, but if, as frequently happens, he has been compelled to apply to the landlord during the season for a loan, it goes hard with him on the day of settlement. For example, this is the way, according to a description that I received, the crop is divided between the landlord and his tenants: After the wheat has been cut and thrashed--thrashed not with a machine, nor yet perhaps with flails, but with oxen treading the sheaves on a dirt floor--the gobellotto subtracts from the returns of the harvest double, perhaps triple, measure of the seed he had advanced. After that, according to the local custom, he takes a certain portion for the cost of guarding the field while the grain is ripening, since no man's field is safe from thieves in Sicily. Then he takes another portion for the saints, something more for the use of the threshing floor and the storehouse and for anything else that occurs to him. Naturally he takes a certain portion for his other loans, if there have been any, and for interest. Then, finally, if there is nothing further to be subtracted, he divides the rest and gives the farmer his half. As a result the poor man who, as some one has said, "has watered the soil with his sweat," who has perhaps not slept more than two hours a night during the harvest time, and that, too, in the open field, is happy if he receives as much as a third or a quarter of the grain he has harvested. In the end the share cropper sinks, perhaps, still lower into the ranks of day labourer and becomes a wanderer over the earth, unless, before he reaches this point, he has not sold what little property he had and gone to America. I remember meeting one of these outcasts and wornout labourers, who had become a common beggar, tramping along the road toward Catania. He carried, swung across his back in a dirty cloth of some indescribable colour, a heavy pack. It contained, perhaps, some remnants of his earthly goods, and as he stopped to ask for a penny to help him on his way, I had a chance to look in his face and found that he was not the usual sort. He did not have the whine of the sturdy beggars I had been accustomed to meet, particularly in England. He was haggard and worn; hardship and hunger had humbled him, and there was a beaten look in his eyes, but suffering seemed to have lent a sort of nobility to the old man's face. I stopped and talked with him and managed to get from him some account of his life. He had been all his life a farm labourer; he could neither read nor write, but looked intelligent. He had never married and was without kith or kin. Three years before he had gotten into such a condition of health, he said, that they wouldn't let him work on the farm any more, and since that time he had been wandering about the country, begging, and living for the most part upon the charity of people who were almost as poor as he. I asked him where he was going. He said he had heard that in Catania an old man could get a chance to sweep the streets, and he was trying to reach there before nightfall. Several hours later, in returning from the country, I turned from the highway to visit the poorer districts of the city. As I turned into one of the streets which are lined with grimy little hovels made of blocks hewn from the great black stream of lava which Mt. �tna had poured over that part of the city three hundred and fifty years before, I saw the same old man lying in the gutter, with his head resting on his bundle, where he had sunken down or fallen. I have described at some length the condition of the farm labourers in Italy because it seems to me that it is important that those who are inclined to be discouraged about the Negro in the South should know that his case is by no means as hopeless as that of some others. The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States in America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily. The Negro farmer sometimes thinks he is badly treated in the South. Not infrequently he has to pay high rates of interest upon his "advances" and sometimes, on account of his ignorance, he is not fairly treated in his yearly settlements. But there is this great difference between the Negro farmer in the South and the Italian farmer in Sicily: In Sicily a few capitalists and descendants of the old feudal lords own practically all the soil and, under the crude and expensive system of agriculture which they employ, there is not enough land to employ the surplus population. The result is the farm labourers are competing for the privilege of working on the land. As agriculture goes down and the land produces less, the population increases and the rents go up. Thus between the upper and the nether millstone the farmer is crushed. In the South we have just the contrary situation. We have land crying for the hand to till it; we have the landowners seeking labour and fairly begging for tenants to work their lands. If a Negro tenant does not like the way he is treated he can go to the neighbouring farm; he can go to the mines or to the public works, where his labour is in demand. But the only way the poor Italian can get free is by going to America, and that is why thousands sail from Palermo every year for this country. In certain places in Sicily, in the three years including 1905 and 1907, more than four persons in every hundred of the population left Sicily for America. One thing that keeps the Sicilian down is the pride with which he remembers his past and the obstinacy with which he clings to his ancient customs and ways of doing things. It is said by certain persons, as an excuse for backward conditions of the country, that even if the landlords did attempt to introduce new machinery and modern methods of cultivation the people would rebel against any innovation. They are stuck so fast in their old traditional ways of doing things that they refuse to change. I have sometimes said that there was a certain advantage in belonging to a new race that was not burdened with traditions and a past--to a race, in other words, that is looking forward instead of backward, and is more interested in the future than in the past. The Negro farmer certainly has this advantage over the Italian peasant. If you ask a Sicilian workman why he does something in a certain way, he invariably replies: "We have always done that way," and that is enough for him. The Sicilian never forgets the past until he leaves Sicily, and frequently not even then. The result is that while the Negro in Africa is learning, as I saw from a recent report of the German Government, to plow by steam, the Sicilian farmer, clinging proudly to his ancient customs and methods, is still using the same plow that was used by the Greeks in the days of Homer, and he is threshing his grain as people did in the time of Abraham. CHAPTER IX WOMEN AND THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY It was late in September when I reached Catania, on the eastern side of Sicily. The city lies at the foot of Mt. �tna on the edge of the sea. Above it looms the vast bulk of the volcano, its slopes girdled with gardens and vineyards that mount, one terrace above the other, until they lose themselves in the clouds. A wide and fertile valley below the city to the south, through which the railway descends from the mountain to the sea, seemed, as did Mt. �tna itself, like one vast vineyard. This was the more noticeable and interesting because, at the time I reached there, the harvest was in progress; the vineyards were dotted with women carrying baskets; the wine presses were busy, and the air was filled with the fumes of the fermenting grape juice. Although it was Sunday morning and the bells in a hundred churches were calling the people to prayers, there was very little of the Sunday quiet I had somehow expected to meet. Most of the shops were open; in every part of the city men were sitting in their doorways or on the pavement in front of their little cell-like houses, busily at work at their accustomed crafts. Outside the southern gate of the city a thrifty merchant had set up a hasty wine shop, in order to satisfy the thirst of the crowds of people who were passing in and out of the city and also, perhaps, to escape the tax which the city imposes upon all sorts of provisions that enter the city from the surrounding country. Country wine was selling here at a few pennies a litre--I have forgotten the exact sum--and crowds of people from the city celebrated, something after the ancient custom of the country, I suppose, the annual harvest of the grapes. Out of the southern gate of the city, which leads into the fertile vine-clad plain, a dusty and perspiring procession--little two-wheeled carts, beautifully carved and decorated, carrying great casks of grape juice, little donkeys with a pigskin filled with wine on either flank and a driver trotting along beside them--pushed and crowded its way into the city. At the same time a steady stream of peasants on foot, or city people in carriages, mingling with the carts and pack-animals, poured out of the gate along the dusty highway, dividing and dwindling, until the stream lost itself among the cactus hedges that mark the winding country roads. It was to me a strange and interesting sight and, not only on this particular Sunday but afterward, almost every day I was in the city, in fact, I spent some time studying this procession, noting the different figures and the different types of which it was made up. It was at this gate that I observed one day a peasant woman haggling with the customs officer over the tax she was to pay for the privilege of bringing her produce to town. She was barefoot and travel-stained and had evidently come some distance, carrying her little stock of fruit and vegetables in a sack slung across her back. It seemed, however, that she had hidden, in the bottom of the sack, a few pounds of nuts, covering them over with fruit and vegetables. Something in her manner, I suppose, betrayed her, for the customs officer insisted on thrusting his hand down to the very bottom of the little sack and brought up triumphantly, at last, a little handful of the smuggled nuts. I could not understand what the woman said, but I could not mistake the pleading expression with which she begged the officer to let her and her little produce through because, as she indicated, showing him her empty palms, she did not have money enough to pay all that he demanded. I had heard and read a great deal about the hardships and cruelties of the tariff in America, but I confess that the best argument for free trade that I ever met was that offered by the spectacle of this poor woman, with her little store of fruit and nuts, trying to get to market with her goods. Not far outside the city the highway runs close beside a cemetery. From the road one can see the elegant and imposing monuments that have been erected to mark the final resting places of the wealthy and distinguished families of the city. The road to this cemetery passes through a marble archway which is closed, as I remember, by massive iron gates. Standing by this gate, I noticed one day a young peasant woman silently weeping. She stood there for a long time, looking out across the fields as if she were waiting for some one who did not come, while the tears streamed down her face. She seemed so helpless and hopeless that I asked the guide who was with me to go across the street and find out what her trouble was. I thought there might perhaps be something that we could do for her. The guide, with the natural tact and politeness of his race, approached the woman and inquired the cause of her grief. She did not move or change expression, but, while the tears still streamed down her face, pointed to a pair of high-heeled slippers which she had taken off and placed beside her on the ground. "They hurt my feet," she said, and then smiled a little, for she, too, saw that there was a certain element of humour in the situation. I looked at her feet and then at her shoes and made up my mind that I could not help her. Farther on we passed some of the large estates which are owned generally by some of the wealthy landed proprietors in the city. The corresponding region outside of Palermo is occupied by orange and lemon groves, but around Catania all the large estates, apparently, are given up to the culture of the vine. A large vineyard in the autumn or the time of the grape harvest presents one of the most interesting sights I have ever seen. The grapes, in thick, tempting clusters, hang so heavy on the low vines that it seems they must fall to the ground of their own weight. Meanwhile, troops of barefooted girls, with deep baskets, rapidly strip the vines of their fruit, piling the clusters in baskets. When all the baskets are full, they lift them to their heads or shoulders and, forming in line, march slowly in a sort of festal procession in the direction of the wine press. At the plantation which I visited the wine house was a large, rough building, set deep in the ground, so that one was compelled to descend a few steps to reach the ground floor. The building was divided so that one room contained the huge casks in which the wine was stored in order to get with age that delicate flavour that gives it its quality, while in the other the work of pressing the grapes was carried on. There was at one side of the room a press with a great twisted arm of a tree for a lever, but this was only used, I learned, for squeezing dry the refuse, from which a poorer and cheaper sort of wine was made. Directly in front as one entered the building, and high up under the roof, there was a huge, round, shallow tub-like vat. In this vat four or five men, with their trousers rolled up above their knees and their shoes and stockings on, were trotting about in a circle, and, singing as they went, tramping the grapes under their feet. Through an open space or door at the back I caught a glimpse now and then of the procession of girls and men as they mounted the little stairs at the back of the wine house to pour fresh grapes into the press. In the light that came in through this opening the figures of the men trampling the grapes, their bare legs stained with wine, stood out clear and distinct. At the same time the fumes which arose from the grapes filled the wine house so that the air, it almost seemed, was red with their odour. It is said that men who work all day in the wine press not infrequently become intoxicated from merely breathing the air saturated with this fermenting grape juice. I imagine that the harvest season has always been, in every land and in every time, a period of rejoicing and gladness. I remember it was so among the slaves on the plantation when I was a boy. As I watched these men and listened to the quaint and melancholy little songs they sang, while the red wine gushed out from under their trampling feet, I was reminded of the corn-huskings among the slaves, and of the songs the slaves sang at those times. I was reminded of it the more as I noticed the way in which the leader in the singing bowed his head and pressed his temples, just as I have seen it done before by the one who led the singing at the corn-husking. I recall that, as a boy, the way this leader or chorister bowed his head and pressed his hands against his temples made a deep impression. Perhaps he was merely trying in this way to remember the words, but it seemed as if he was listening to music that welled up inside of him, seeking in this way, not merely to recall the words, but catch the inspiration of the song. Sometimes, after he had seemed to listen this way for a few minutes, he would suddenly fling back his head and burst into a wilder and more thrilling strain. All this was strangely interesting and even thrilling to me, the more so, perhaps, because it seemed somehow as if I had seen or known all this somewhere before. Nevertheless, after watching these men, stained with wine and sweat, crushing the grapes under shoed and stockinged feet, I had even less desire to drink wine than ever before. It perhaps would not have been so bad if the men had not worn their socks. One thing that impressed me in all that I saw was the secondary and almost menial part the women took in the work. They worked directly under an overseer who directed all their movements--directed them, apparently, with a sharp switch which he carried in his hand. There was no laughter or singing and apparently little freedom among the women, who moved slowly, silently, with the weary and monotonous precision in their work I have frequently noted in gang labour. They had little if any share in the kind of pleasurable excitement which helped to lighten the work of the men. Once or twice every year, at the time of the grape and olive harvests, the girls and women come down from their mountain villages to share with the men in the work of the fields. For these two brief periods, as I understand it, the women of each one of these little country villages will be organized into a gang, just as is true of the gangs of wandering harvesters in Austria and Hungary. I had seen, on the Sunday I arrived in Catania, crowds of these women trooping, arm in arm, through the streets of the city. A party of them had, in fact, encamped on the pavement in the little open square at the southern gate of the city. They were there nearly all day and, I suppose, all night, also. I was interested to observe the patience with which they sat for hours on the curb or steps, with their heads on their bundles, waiting until the negotiations for hiring them were finished. This brief period of the harvest time is almost the only opportunity that the majority of these country women have to get acquainted with the outside world. For the remainder of the year, it seems, they are rarely allowed to venture beyond the limits of the street or village in which they live. In the course of my journey across the island I had seen, high up in the mountains, some of these inaccessible little nests from which, perhaps, these girls had come. In one or two cases, and especially at the time I visited the sulphur mines, I had an opportunity to see something of the life of these mountain villages. Now that I have come to speak especially of the women of the labouring and agricultural classes, I may as well tell here what I saw and learned of the way they live in their homes. Such a village as I have referred to consists, for the most part, of rows of low, one-story stone buildings, ranged along a street that is dirty beyond description. The wells are frequently built without mortar or plaster, and roofed sometimes with wood, but more frequently with tiles. In a corner there is a stone hearth upon which the cooking is done, when there is anything to cook. As there is no chimney, the smoke filters out through the roofing. I remember well a picture I saw in passing one such house. In front of the house a woman was standing holding in her arms a perfectly naked child. Another child, with nothing on but a shirt, was standing beside her holding her skirt. Through the open door I could see the whole of the single room in which this family lived. Back of the living-room and connected with it was a stall for the cattle. This was typical of many other homes that I saw. During the day the women, the children, the pigs, and the chickens spend most of their time in the dirty, crowded street. As a rule the men, unless they are engaged in some sort of handicraft, are away in the fields at work. In many cases they do not come home once a month. In my journeys through these villages and the poor streets of the larger cities one question constantly arose in my mind for which I was never able to find an answer. It was this: What becomes of these people, together with their pigs, goats, chickens, and other animals, at night? How does the interior of these homes look after sundown? I have gone through some of the poorer streets of Catania at night, but invariably found them in almost total darkness. I could hear the people talking as they sat in their doorways, but I could not see them. In fact, I could not see anything but the dim outlines of the buildings, because nowhere, apparently, were there any lights. A German author, Mr. S. Wermert, who has studied conditions closely in Sicily, and has written a great book on the social and economic conditions of the people, says, in regard to the way the people live in the little villages: "In the south, as is well known, people live for the most part out of doors. Every one sits in the street before the house door; there the craftsman works at his trade; there the mother of the family carries on her domestic labours. At evening, however, all crowd into the cave, parents and children, the mule or the donkey. The fattening pig, which, decorated with a collar, has been tied during the day in front of the house, where, with all the affection of a dog, it has glided about among the children, must also find a place in the house. The cock and hens betake themselves at sunset into this same space, in which the air is thick with smoke, because there is no chimney to the house. All breathe this air. One can imagine what a fearful atmosphere pervades the place. Every necessity of physical cleanliness and moral decency is lacking. In the corner there is frequently only one bunk, upon which the entire family sleeps, and for the most part it consists of nothing more than a heap of straw. In the fierce heat of the summer one naturally sleeps without a cover; in winter every one seeks to protect himself under the covers. Even when there are separate sleeping places all the most intimate secrets of family life become known to the children at an early age. Brothers and sisters almost always sleep in the same bed. Frequently a girl sleeps at the feet of her parents. The stupidity and coarseness of such a family existence is beyond description. There is naturally no such thing as a serious conception of morality among a people that for generations has grown up without education. For that reason, it frequently happens that the most unspeakable crimes are committed. It is, therefore, frequently difficult to determine with exactness the parentage of the children born into the family. The saying of the Romans, that 'paternity is always uncertain,' holds good here. In fact, it is quite possible that this legal conception owes its origin to observations in regard to the condition of the rural population of that period. It is, however, probable that in the country districts of Sicily conditions have changed very little since Roman times." From all that I can learn, the filthy promiscuity of these crowded houses and dirty streets have made the Sicilian rural villages breeding places of vices and crimes of a kind of which the rural Negro population in the United States, for example, probably never heard. There are some things, in connection with this ancient civilization, concerning which it is better the Negro should not know, because the knowledge of them means moral and physical degeneration, and at the present time, whatever else may be said about the condition of the Negro, he is not, in the rural districts at least, a degenerate. Even in those parts of the Southern States where he has been least touched by civilization, the Negro seems to me to be incomparably better off in his family life than is true of the agricultural classes in Sicily. The Negro is better off in his family, in the first place, because, even when his home is little more than a primitive one-room cabin, he is at least living in the open country in contact with the pure air and freedom of the woods, and not in the crowded village where the air and the soil have for centuries been polluted with the accumulated refuse and offscourings of a crowded and slatternly population. In the matter of his religious life, in spite of all that has been said in the past about the ignorance and even immorality of certain of the rural Negro preachers, I am convinced, from what I learned while I was in Sicily, that the Negro has a purer type of religion and a better and more earnest class of ministers than is true of the masses of these Sicilian people, particularly in the country districts. In this connection, it should not be forgotten also that the Negro is what he is because he has never had a chance to learn anything better. He is going forward. The people of Sicily, who have been Christians almost since the time that the Apostle Paul landed in Syracuse, have, on the other hand, gone backward. All kinds of barbarous superstitions have grown up in connection with their religious life and have crowded out, to a large extent, the better elements. While the condition of Negro education in the Southern States is by no means perfect, the Negro, and particularly the Negro woman, has some advantages which are so far beyond the reach of the peasant girl in Sicily that she has never dreamed of possessing them. For example, every Negro girl in America has the same opportunities for education that are given to Negro boys. She may enter the industrial school, or she may, if she choose, as she frequently does, go to college. All the trades and the professions are open to her. One of the first Negro doctors in Alabama was a woman. Every year there are hundreds and, perhaps, thousands of Negro girls who go up from the farming districts of the Southern States to attend these higher schools, where they have an opportunity to come under the influence of some of the best and most cultivated white people in the United States. In the country villages, I venture to say, not one girl in a hundred ever learns so much as to read and write. I was much impressed, as I went about in Sicily, with the substantial character of the buildings and improvements, such as they were. Everything is of stone. Even the most miserable house is built as if it were expected to last for centuries, and an incredible amount of labour has been spent everywhere throughout the country in erecting stone walls. One reason for this is that there is almost no wood to be had for building. Everything is necessarily built of stone and tiles. Another reason, I suspect, why Sicilian people build permanently is because they never expect any change in their condition. If one asks them why they have built their villages on the most inconvenient and inaccessible places, they do not know. They know only that these towns have always been there and they haven't the least idea but what they will remain always where they are. As a matter of fact, in order to find an explanation for the location of these towns, students, I learned, have had to go back several centuries before Christ to the time when the Greeks and the Phoenicians were contending for the possession of the island. At that time the original population took refuge in these mountain fastnesses, and through all the changes since, these towns, with, perhaps, some remnants of the race that originally inhabited the island, have remained. Everywhere in Sicily one is confronted with the fact that he is among a people that is living among the ruins and remains of an ancient civilization. For example, in seeking to understand the difference in the position of women in Sicily from that of other parts of Europe I learned that one had to go back to the Greeks and the Saracens, among whom women held a much lower position and were much less free than among the peoples of Europe. Not only that, but I met persons who professed to be able to distinguish among the women Greek and Saracen types. I remember having my attention called at one time to a group of women, wearing very black shawls over their heads, who seemed more shrinking and less free in their actions than other women I had seen in Sicily. I was informed that these women were of the Saracen type and that the habit of wearing these dark shawls over their heads and holding them tight under their chins was a custom that had come from the Arabs. The shawls, I suppose, took the place in a sort of way of the veils worn by Oriental women. Now all these ancient customs and habits, and all the quaint superstitions with which life among the ignorant classes is overgrown, have, I suppose, the same kind of interest and fascination as some of the ancient buildings. But very few people realize, I am convinced, to what degree these ancient customs weigh upon the people, especially the women, and hinder their progress. In the midst of these conditions the Sicilian women, who are looked upon by the men as inferior creatures and guarded by them as a species of property, live like prisoners in their own villages. Bound fast, on the one hand, by age-long customs, and on the other surrounded by a wall of ignorance which shuts out from them all knowledge of the outer world, they live in a sort of mental and moral slavery under the control of their husbands and of the ignorant, and possibly vicious, village priests. For this reason, the journey to America is for the woman of Sicily a real emancipation. In fact, I do not know of any more important work that is going on for the emancipation of women anywhere than that which is being done, directly and indirectly, through the emigration from Sicily and Italy to the United States, in bringing liberty of thought to the women of Southern Italy. CHAPTER X THE CHURCH, THE PEOPLE, AND THE MAFIA One of the interesting sights of Catania, Sicily, as of nearly every other city I visited in Europe, is the market-place. I confess that I have a fondness for visiting markets. I like to wander through the stalls, with their quantities of fruit, vegetables, meat and bread, all the common, wholesome and necessary things of life, piled and ranged in bountiful profusion. I like to watch the crowds of people coming and going, buying and selling, dickering and chaffering. A market, particularly an old-fashioned market, such as one may see almost anywhere in Europe, in which the people from the town and the people from the country, producer and consumer, meet and bargain with each other, seems a much more wholesome and human place than, for example, a factory. Besides that, any one who goes abroad to see people rather than to see things will, I believe, find the markets of Europe more interesting and more instructive than the museums. During my journey across Europe I visited the markets in nearly every large city in which I stopped. I saw something of the curious Sunday markets of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, London, with their long lines of shouting hucksters and their crowds of hungry shoppers, and the Jewish market in the Ghetto of Cracow, Poland, where pale-faced rabbis were slaughtering, according to the strict ritual of the Jewish law, droves of squawking geese. Among others, I visited the Monday market in Catania, which differs from the markets I had seen elsewhere in the multitudes of articles of household manufacture offered for sale, and in the general holiday character of the proceedings. It was like a country fair in one of our Southern cities, only cruder and quainter. For example, instead of the familiar shooting gallery, with painted targets, one enterprising man had set up a dozen painted sticks on a rough box, and offered to the public, for something less than a cent, the opportunity to shoot at them with an ancient cross-bow, such as I did not imagine existed outside of museums. Then there were all sorts of curious and primitive games of chance. Among other devices for entertaining and mystifying the people I noticed a young woman seated in a chair, blindfolded. A crowd surrounded her while she named various objects belonging to the crowd, which her companion, a man, held in his hands. At the same time she told the colour of the hair and eyes, and reeled off a prophecy in regard to the future of the different persons to whom the article belonged. More interesting still were the public story-tellers, who seemed to take the place, to a certain extent, of the daily newspaper among the masses of the people, so many of whom can neither read nor write. The story-tellers stood upon little platforms, which they carried about with them like portable pulpits, in order that they might be plainly visible to the crowd. Each carried a large banner on which were painted a series of pictures representing the scenes in the stories which they told. These stories, together with the pictures which illustrated them, had apparently been composed by the men who told them, for they all touched upon contemporary events. In fact, most of them referred in some way to America. Like those songbirds that have only one constantly repeated note, each story-teller had but one story, which he told over and over again, in the same tones, with the same attitudes, and same little dramatic surprises. Although I was not able to understand what was said, it was not difficult to follow the narrative from the pictures. One story told the fortunes of a young girl who had been lured away to America. Perhaps she was one of those "white slaves" to which I noticed a good many references in Italy, and in other of the emigrant countries. At any rate, she was imprisoned in a very dark and dismal place in some part of New York which I was not able to locate from the picture. Then her brother, or perhaps it was her lover, whom she had left behind in Sicily, saw a vision. It was a vision of St. George and the dragon, and after seeing this vision he rose up and went to America and rescued her. The touching thing about it all, the thing that showed how realistic this whole tale was to the crowd that stood and listened to it in rapt attention, was that when the story reached the point where the picture of St. George and the dragon is referred to, the men simultaneously raised their hats. At the same time the speaker assumed a more solemn tone, and the crowd listened with a reverential awe while he went on to relate the miracle by which the young woman had been saved. The sight of this crowd of people, standing bareheaded in an open square, listening reverentially to the story of a street fakir, struck me, like so much else that I saw of the life of the common people in Catania and elsewhere in Sicily, as strangely touching and pathetic. It reminded me of all that I had read and heard of the superstitions of the common people of the country and gave me as insight, such as I had not had before, into the way in which the masses of the people feel toward the Catholic Church, with all its religious ceremonies and symbols. It led me to suspect, also, that much in the religious life of the Sicilian people which looks, perhaps, to those who have had a different training, like superstition, is in fact merely the natural expression of the reverence and piety of a simple-minded and, perhaps, an ignorant people. I was told, while I was in that city, that Catania has two hundred and fifty churches, and though I do not know that this statement is correct, I could easily believe it from the interminable clanging church bells that smote upon my ears the first Sunday morning I was in the city. At any rate, no one can go through the city and look at the public buildings, or study the people in their homes, without meeting abundant evidence of the all-pervading influence of the Church. Everywhere, built into the buildings, on the street corners, and in every possible public place, one sees little images of the Virgin, with perhaps a burning lamp before them. Once I ran across one such image, with a lamp before it, planted in a field. I was told it was there to protect the crops from the influence of evil spirits. It did not seem to have occurred to any one that the image of the Virgin and the blessing of the Church, which were intended to protect the fields from evil spirits, might protect them also from thieves, or banish from the community the evil spirits that inspired men to rob and steal. If this opinion had been very widely held among the masses of the people it would hardly have been necessary to guard the fields night and day during the harvest season, by men armed with shotguns. This brings me to another point in which I should like to compare the masses of the Sicilian people with the masses of the Negroes in the Southern States--namely, in respect to their religious life. Naturally, the first thing that strikes one, in attempting to make such a comparison, is the wide difference in the situation of the average black man in the Southern States and the corresponding class in Sicily. In all the externals of religious life, at least, the Sicilian is far ahead of the Negro. Sicily was one of the first countries in the world in which Christianity was planted. St. Paul stopped three days in Syracuse on his way to Rome, and there is still standing a building in Catania in which St. Peter is said to have preached. Sicily has inherited the traditions, the organization and the splendid churches and buildings which have grown up and accumulated through a thousand years and more. The black man, on the contrary, gained his first knowledge of Christianity in slavery and in a very imperfect and unsatisfactory form. It is only since freedom came that the Negro church has had an opportunity to extend and establish its influence among the masses of the people, while out of their poverty Negroes, who are even yet struggling to build and own their own homes, and so establish family life, have had to build churches and training schools for their ministers, to establish a religious press, to support missionary societies and all the other aids and accessories of organized religion. In view of the wide difference between the people of Sicily and the Negroes in America, so far as concerns the external side of their religious life, it struck me as curious that I should hear almost exactly the same criticism of the people in Sicily, in respect to their religion, that I have frequently heard of the Negroes in America. A very large number of the popular superstitions of Sicily, what we sometimes call the folklore of a country, are very much like many of the notions that the Negroes are supposed to have imported to America from Africa. Any one who has listened to any of the older generation of coloured people tell of the various ways of "working the roots," as they call it, will learn a great many things that can be almost exactly duplicated in the popular notions about drugs and philters among the people of Sicily. It is said of the Sicilians, among other things, that their Christianity is saturated with pagan superstitions and that, for the average Sicilian, religion has no connection with moral life. In many cases it seems as if the image of the Virgin has become, among the lower class of people, little more than a fetish, a thing to conjure with. For example, the peasant who, in order to revenge himself upon his landlord, and perhaps to compensate himself for what he believes has been taken from him by fraud or extortion, determines to rob his landlord's field or flock, will pray before one of these images, before starting out, for success. If he is really "pious" he may offer to the saints, in case he is successful, a portion of what he has stolen. If, however, he fails and is merely superstitious, he will sometimes curse and revile, or even spit upon, the image to which he previously prayed. I have heard that the savages in Africa will sometimes behave in the same way toward the object of which they have made a fetish, but I have never heard of anything like that among my own people in the South. The Negro is frequently superstitious, as most other ignorant people are, but he is not cynical, and never scoffs at anything which has a religious significance. One thing that indicates the large part that religion plays in the lives of the Sicilian people is the fact that out of the 365 days in the year 104 are sacred to the Church. The large amounts of money expended annually by the different cities of Sicily upon processions and celebrations in honour of the local saints is one of the sources of complaint made by those who are urging reforms in the local administrations. They say that the money expended in this way might better be used in improving the sanitary condition of the cities. As indicating how little all this religious activity connects itself with practical and moral life it is stated that, while Sicily supports ten times as many churches and clergy in proportion to its population as is true of Germany, for instance, statistics show that it suffers from eleven times as many murders and crimes of violence. In quoting these statements I do not intend to suggest a comparison between the form of religion that prevails in Germany with that in Sicily. Religion, like everything else in Sicily, is deeply rooted in the past. It has shared all the changing history of that island, and naturally reflects the conditions, sentiments, and prejudices of the people. If the Catholic Church is in any way to blame for the existing conditions in Sicily it seems to me it is in the fact that during the long period of years in which the education of the people has been almost wholly in its hands, the Church has held fast to the old medieval notion that education was only for the few, and for that reason has done little or nothing to raise the standard of intelligence among the masses. It has been a great mistake on the part of the Church, it seems to me, to permit it to be said that the Socialists, many of whom are not merely indifferent but openly opposed to the Church, represent the only party that has sincerely desired and striven for the enlightenment and general welfare of the people at the bottom. Such a statement could not, of course, be so easily made of the Church in its relations to the masses of the people elsewhere in Italy. The fact about the Sicilian seems to be, however, not that he is, as is sometimes said of the Negro, unmoral, but that the moral code by which he governs himself sometimes makes him a menace to public order. One of the first things that impressed me, while I was in Sicily, was the enormous and expensive precautions that were necessary to guard the fields from thieves. Hundreds of miles of high stone walls have been erected in different parts of the island to protect property from vandalism and thieves. In the harvest time it is necessary to practically garrison the island with armed guards to preserve the crops. The cost of putting a private policeman in every field and garden is very heavy, and this expense, which is imposed upon the land, falls in the long run upon the labourer. The reason for this condition rests in the conviction, which every farm labourer shares, that for his long and crushing labour on the land he does not receive a sufficient wage. In many cases it is likely enough that he is driven by hunger to steal. Under such circumstances it is not difficult to understand that stealing soon ceases to be looked upon as a crime, and seems to be regarded as a kind of enterprise which is only wrong when it is unsuccessful. But there is something further, I learned, in the back of the head of almost every Sicilian which explains many things in the Sicilian character and customs that strike strangers as peculiar. I refer to what goes in Sicily under the name of the _omerta_, and is, like some of the customs that exist in the Southern States, part of the unwritten law of the country. The principle of this unwritten law is silence. If any one is robbed, wounded, or injured in any way he remains silent. If the police seek to find out who is his enemy he will answer, "I do not know." In some provinces in Sicily it is said to be almost impossible to arrest and convict criminals, because no one will hesitate to go into court and perjure himself for a friend. It is considered a point of honour to do so. On the other hand, to assist the police in any way in the prosecution of crime is looked upon as a disgrace. The ordinary man may be a thief, a robber, or a murderer and be forgiven, but there is no comfort in heaven or earth for the man who betrays a neighbour or a friend. Complaint is sometimes made that the coloured people in the Southern States will protect and conceal those among their number who are accused of crime. In most cases where that happens I believe it will be found that the real reason is not the desire to save any one of their number from a just and deserved punishment, but rather the feeling of uncertainty, because of what they have heard and seen of lynchings in different parts of the country, as to whether the accused will have the benefit of a full and fair investigation in a court of law. There is among the Negro population of the United States, even though the administration of the law is almost entirely in the hands of another race, no settled distrust of the Government and the courts and no disposition, as is true of the Sicilian, to resort to private justice and revenge. In spite of the fact that he frequently gets into trouble with the police and the courts the Negro is, by disposition at least, the most law-abiding man in the community. I mean by this, the Negro is never an anarchist, he is not opposed to law as such, but submits to it when he has committed a crime. This brings me to another feature of Sicilian life--namely, the Mafia. I had heard a great deal about the Mafia in Italy, and about the criminal political organizations in other parts of Italy, before I came to Europe, and was anxious, if possible, to learn something that would give me an insight into the local causes and conditions which had produced them. One of the professional story-tellers whom I encountered while I was wandering about in the market in Catania recalled the subject to my mind. He was retailing to a crowd in the market square a story that was even more exciting and interesting to me, at least, than the one which I have already mentioned. It was, in fact, nothing less than an account of the murders and outrages of the Black Hand in New York City. At first it struck me as very curious that I should meet in Italy, the home of the Mafia and the Camorra, a crowd of people in the public square listening with apparent wonder and awe to an account of the fabulous crimes and misdeeds of their fellow countrymen in another part of the world. I had a sort of notion that the Black Hand operations would be so familiar to Sicilians that they would have no curiosity about them. It was not so, however, and after I learned that New York had an Italian population larger than Rome, larger, in fact, than any Italian city, with the exception of Naples, this did not seem so strange. There are, as a matter of fact, more than 500,000 Italians in New York City, and 85 per cent. of them are from southern Italy. Among this 85 per cent. are very many who belong to the criminal classes. The result is that the Mafia, under the name of the Black Hand, is probably as active and, perhaps, as powerful among the Italian population in New York to-day as it ever was in Italy. While I was in Palermo I had the place pointed out to me where Petrosino, the Italian detective from New York, who went to Sicily to secure the records of some of the noted Italian criminals then living in America, was shot and killed. Petrosino was killed March 12, 1909. The killing of this American officer in the streets of Palermo served to call attention to the number of Black Hand crimes committed by Italians in this country. During the next nine months after Petrosino's death it was reported that no less than fifty "Italian killings," as they were called, took place either in New York City itself or in the surrounding territory, and from 1906 to 1909, according to statistics prepared by the New York _World_, of the 112 unexplained murders committed in and around New York, 54 were those of Italians. This suggests, at least, the manner in which our own country is affected by the conditions of the masses in southern Italy and Sicily. The Mafia, the Black Hand, as it is called in America, is a kind of institution which is so peculiar and to such an extent the product of purely local conditions that it seems difficult even for those who know most about it to explain its existence. One statement which I heard in regard to the matter was especially interesting to me. It was said that the condition of mind which made the Mafia possible, the fear and distrust which divide the masses of the people from the ruling classes and the Government, was the result of the mingling of the races in the island; that the Mafia was, in short, Sicily's race problem. It is certainly true that in no other part of Europe, with the possible exception of Spain, have the different peoples of Europe and Africa become so intermingled as they have in this island, which is one of the natural bridges between Europe and Africa. In addition to the Arabs and Saracens from Africa, nearly all the races of Europe, Germans, Latins, Greeks, have all at different times lived and ruled on the island. Near Palermo, for example, there are still the remnants of a colony of Albanians, a Slavic people who speak modern Greek, and worship after the fashion of the Eastern Church, and there are fragments and remnants of many other races still preserved in different parts of the island. My own experience has taught me, however, to distrust what I may call "racial explanations." They are convenient and easy to make, but too sweeping, and, practically, the effect of them is to discourage any effort to improve. For example, if some one discovers that the condition in which a people happens to be found at any given time is due to race, that it is constitutional, and in the blood, so to speak, then, of course, there is nothing to do. If, however, it is due to environment, education may help. The discussion and emphasis on the fact of race have been made the excuse, in the Southern States, for a good deal of apathy and indifference in regard to the hopes and progress of the Negro. In fact, whenever I hear a politician in the South ask the rhetorical question, "Can the leopard change his spots?" I usually find that he is opposing the establishment of a Negro school or is discouraging some other effort to improve the condition of the Negro people. The real trouble with explanations of this kind is that as soon as a man has made up his mind, for example, that a people, or class of people, belongs to a so-called "inferior race," he is not inclined to support any kind of experiment, like the building of a school, that may prove that his explanation was mistaken. The real reason for the backward condition of Sicily is, in my opinion, not so much the intermixture of races as the neglect and oppression of the masses of the people. In 1861, when Sicily became a part of the Italian Confederation, 90 per cent. of the population were wholly unable to read or write. This means that at this time the people of Sicily were not much better off, as far as education is concerned, than the Negro slaves at the time of emancipation. It has been estimated that between 5 and 10 per cent. of the slaves could read and write. One of the first things the Italian Government attempted to do, after annexation, was to reorganize the school system of Sicily. But even under the new Government, and with a compulsory education law on the statute books, progress has been slow. In 1881, twenty years later, more than 84 per cent. of the population could neither read nor write, and as late as 1901, for every hundred inhabitants of school age, more than seventy were illiterate. In practically the same period--that is, from 1866 to 1900--the Negro population in the United States reduced its illiteracy to 44.5 per cent. of the population of school age, and for every one hundred Negroes in the Southern States, fifty-two could read and write. Sicily has three universities, one in each of its three largest cities, Palermo, Catania, and Messina, but they are for the few, and have in no way connected themselves with the practical interests and the daily life of the people. One result of the ignorance of the people is that in Sicily, where the educational qualifications exclude more persons than elsewhere from the suffrage, not more than 3.62 persons in every hundred of the population vote. This is according to statistics, which go back, however, to 1895. As near as I can make out, the Mafia seems to have grown up, in the first place, like the White Caps, the Night Riders, and the lynchers in our own country, as a means of private vengeance. The people, perhaps because they despised and hated the Government, preferred to settle their scores in the old barbaric fashion of private warfare. The consequence was that the small towns were divided by tribal and family feuds. Under such circumstances professional outlaws became of service either for the purposes of attack or defence. From conditions something like this what is known as the Mafia sprang. It is said that it was the rich fruit gardens of the "Shell of Gold" outside of Palermo which gave the Mafia its first secure foothold and eventually made that city the centre of its activity. In that region field guards were necessary, in addition to the high walls, to keep thieves out of the plantations where the golden fruit ripened almost all the year round. In the course of time these field guards became associated in a sort of clan or guild. In these guilds the most enterprising of the guards eventually became the leaders, and ruled those under them like the tribal chiefs. Once established, these bands soon dominated the situation. No property owner dared install a guard without the consent of the chief. If he did, he was likely to have his trees destroyed or his whole crop stolen. A guard who was not a member of the band was likely to be brought down some night with a shot from a hedge. On the other hand, the mere knowledge that a certain plantation was under the protection of the Mafia was in itself almost sufficient to insure it from attack, and this because the Mafia, through all its devious connections with the lower and criminal classes, was much better able to ferret out and punish the criminals than the police. By making himself at the same time useful and feared in the community, the chief of the Mafia soon began to get his hand in almost everything that was going on. He found himself called on to settle disputes. He mixed in politics and was secretly in the employ of rich and powerful men. In this way the Mafia, which was at bottom largely a criminal organization, gained in time standing and recognition in the community, in some respects, not unlike, I imagine, that of Tammany Hall in New York. When the Mafia, under the name of the Black Hand, reached New York, however, it seems to have become a criminal organization, pure and simple. Those who have studied the history of this peculiar organization much farther than I have been able to do say that in their opinion the Mafia, or Black Hand, will not long survive in America because there is in this country no such oppression of the poor by the rich and no such hatred and suspicion of the high by the low as is the case in Sicily, to give it general support. In other words, the Mafia is dependent on class hatred and class oppression for its existence. Perhaps I can give some idea of what it is that embitters the poor man in Sicily, who is without property, education, or opportunity, against the large property owners, the rich, educated, and ruling class. It is estimated by the Socialists that in Italy the labouring man pays 54 per cent. of the taxes; business men and the professional classes pay 34 per cent., while the class which lives upon rents and the income from investments of various kinds furnishes but 12 per cent. of the revenues of the state. Italy has, I think, every kind and method of taxation which has ever been invented. There is an income tax, which varies between 7½ and 20 per cent., though small incomes of less than one hundred dollars a year are exempt. The tax on landed property amounts to 30, 40, or even 50 per cent. In addition to these there is the lottery, the state monopolies, the stamp tax and dog tax. Finally the municipal taxes on all kinds of foodstuffs which are brought into the town. This tax absorbs from 20 to 30 per cent. of the labouring man's income. All these taxes, direct and indirect, are so arranged that the heaviest burden falls upon that portion of the community which is least able to bear it. For example, salt is a Government monopoly in Italy, and in 1901 the people of Italy paid $15,000 for salt which cost the Government $1,200 to manufacture. The Italian Government ships salt to America for the use of the Gloucester fishermen for 50 cents a barrel of 280 pounds, or five and three-fifth pounds for a cent. This same salt costs the Italian, because of the monopoly of the Government, 4 cents a pound--that is to say, twelve times what it costs in America. In order to protect this monopoly the Government even goes so far as to station guards along the whole seacoast to prevent people from "stealing" sea water in buckets, to obtain salt. Fortunately the state monopoly of salt does not extend to Sicily, but the principle of taxing the people according to their necessities, rather than according to their ability to pay, is the same there as elsewhere in Italy. As an illustration of the unfair way in which the taxes are levied in some parts of the country it is said that the donkey of the poor farmer is compelled to pay a tax, while the saddle-horse of the rich landlord goes free. In comparison with this, the Negro in the South hardly knows what taxes are. The Negro farmer, for example, has an inexhaustible market for his cotton, corn, pork, and vegetables, and all the other farm vegetables that he can raise. Land is so cheap that a thrifty farmer can buy and pay for a farm within five or six years. Taxes on farm land are so low that the farmer hardly considers them in his yearly budget. Poor as some of the Negro schools are in some parts of the South, they are vastly better and more numerous than those of the country people in Sicily. More than that, the Government puts no tax either on rain or sunshine, and the Negro in the Southern States has plenty of both, which is not true of the Sicilian farmer, who has too much sunshine and not enough rain. So much is the farmer in Sicily in need of water that at certain times in the year it is said that wine is cheaper than water. Finally, the Negro farmer, if he desires to take a load of produce to the town, does not, as is the case of the Sicilian, meet a policeman on the outskirts of the city who takes one fifth of his cotton, corn, eggs, or whatever he happens to have, away from him, before he will allow him to enter the town. One day, while I was walking along the edge of the harbour in Catania, I noticed a man who was at work mending a high wire netting, about twenty or thirty feet high, which extended along the edge of the water. I saw that it extended as far as I could see. Upon inquiry I learned that it was placed there to prevent the fishermen, whom I noticed constantly coming and going with their little sailing boats, from bringing their fish into the city without paying the tax. At the custom house, where the fishermen land, I observed one of these fishermen, who had landed with a small quantity of fish, which he was carrying to the market nearby, stop and fumble in his clothes, trying to find money enough to pay the tariff. When he could not find sufficient money to pay the sum demanded, he left two small fishes behind with the collector to cover the amount of the tax. Fish is the cheapest and most abundant food the poor in the city can get to eat. The sea, just beyond their doors, is swarming with this kind of food. Nevertheless the city maintains an expensive army of officials to collect this miserable little tax upon the necessities of the poor. The yearly income of a labourer's family in Catania is about 750 lire, or $170 a year. Of this amount it has been reckoned that in the way of taxes upon foodstuffs brought into the city the labourer pays 150 lire, or one fifth of his whole income. In spite of all that has been proposed and attempted to improve conditions in Sicily since that island became a part of the Italian Confederation, the Government has failed, so far as I can learn, to gain the confidence, respect, and coöperation of the masses of the people. Naturally, conditions which have grown up in the course of hundreds of years and have become fixed in the minds and habits of all classes of the people cannot be changed suddenly. The farther I have looked into the situation in Sicily the more I am convinced that, different as it is in details, the problem of Sicily is fundamentally the same as that which we have here to face in the Southern States since the war. It is, in short, a problem of education, and by that I mean education which seeks to touch, to lift and inspire the man at the bottom, and fit him for practical daily life. In this opinion I find that I am in agreement with the members of the commission which was appointed by the Italian Government in 1896 to investigate the condition of the peasants in southern Italy, particularly in their relation to the landed proprietors. The report of the commission, which has been recently made, fills several large volumes, but the substance of it seems to be, as far as I can learn, that the root of the evil is in the ignorance of the rural population. One of the effects of Italian immigration to America will probably be the establishment of a popular school system for the people on the land. CHAPTER XI CHILD LABOUR AND THE SULPHUR MINES There is one street in Catania, Sicily, which seems to be given over to the trade and industry of the poorer people of the city. It is not mentioned in the guide-books, and there is perhaps no reason why it should be. Nevertheless, there are a great many interesting things to be seen in that street--strange, quaint, homely things--that give a stranger intimate glimpses into the life of the people. For example, on a street corner, tucked away in one of those snug spaces in which one sometimes finds a crowded fruit-stand, I discovered, one day, a macaroni factory. Within a space perhaps three feet wide and ten or twelve feet in length one man and a boy conducted the whole business of the sale as well as the manufacture of macaroni, from the raw grain to the completed article of trade. The process, as it was carried on in this narrow space, was necessarily a simple one. There was a bag of flour, a box in which to mix the paste, and a press by which this paste was forced through holes that converted it into hollow tubes. Afterward these hollow tubes were laid out on a cloth frame which, because there was no room inside, had been set up in the street. After leaving this cloth frame the macaroni was hung up on little wooden forms for inspection and for sale. One of the most curious and interesting places on the street was an apothecary's shop in which the apothecary manufactured all his own drugs, and acted at the same time as the poor man's physician or medical adviser. This man had never studied pharmacy in a college. His knowledge of drugs consisted entirely of the traditions and trade secrets which had come down to him from his predecessor in the business. His shop was filled with sweet-smelling herbs, gathered for him by the peasants, and from these he brewed his medicines. The skeleton of a fish hung over the counter from which medicines were dispensed, and the shelves behind were filled with many curious and musty bottles. The apothecary himself was a very serious person, with a high, pale forehead and the absorbed air of a man who feels the weight of the knowledge he carries around with him. All these things, especially the smell of the herbs, were quite awe-inspiring, and undoubtedly contributed something to the efficacy of the medicines. It is a very busy street in which the apothecary, the macaroni manufacturer, and the others are located. In fact, it seems as if work never stopped there, for it is full of little shops where men sit in their doorways or at the open windows until late at night, working steadily at their various trades, making the things they sell, and stopping only now and then to sell the things they make. The whole region is a hive of industry, for it is the neighbourhood where the artisans live, those skilled workmen who make everything by hand that, in our part of the world, we have long since learned to make by machine. In fact, in this street it is possible to get a very good picture, I suspect, of the way in which trade and industry were carried on in other parts of Europe before the age of steam. About nine o'clock Saturday night--the night upon which I arrived in Catania--I was walking down one of the side streets in this part of the city, when my attention was attracted to a man, sitting in his doorway, working by the light of a little smoky lamp. He was engaged in some delicate sort of iron work, and, as near as I could make out, he seemed to be a tool-maker. What particularly attracted my attention was a little girl, certainly not more than seven years of age, who was busily engaged in polishing and sharpening the stamps he used. I stopped for a moment and watched this man and child, working steadily, silently, at this late hour of the night. I could but marvel at the patience and the skill the child showed at her work. It was the first time in my life that I had seen such a very little child at work, although I saw many others in the days that followed. I have often heard it said that people who are born under the soft southern skies are habitually indolent, and never learn to work there, as they do in more northern latitudes. This is certainly not true of Sicily, for, so far as my experience goes, there is no other country in Europe where incessant labour is so largely the lot of the masses of the people. Certainly there is no other country where so much of the labour of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan as well as the rough labour of digging and carrying on the streets and in the mines, is performed by children, especially boys. There is a law against Sunday labour in Catania, but the next morning, as I passed through this same quarter of the city, I found the majority of the people still busily at work. I stopped to watch a man who was making mandolins. This man lived in one room, which was at the same time a workshop, kitchen, and bedroom. There was a great heap of mattresses piled high upon the bed in one corner. A little charcoal brazier, on which the cooking for the family was performed, stood upon the workbench. The ceiling was hung with finished instruments, and the pavement in front of the house was piled with others in various stages of completion. This room was occupied by a family of five, all of whom, with the exception of the wife and mother, were engaged, each in their different ways, in the work of manufacturing mandolins. All the skilled work (the setting of the decorations and the polishing of the frames) was performed by the boys, but a little girl who was standing near seemed to be making herself handy as a helper in the work of the others. In this treeless country, where there is almost no wood of any kind to be had, the most useful building material, after stone and plaster, seems to be tile. Not only the roofs but the floors of most of the buildings are made of this material, and its manufacture is consequently one of the principal minor industries of the country. One day, while I was wandering about in the outskirts of Catania, I ran across a plant where two men and three little boys were at work mixing the clay, forming it into octagonal shapes, and piling it out in the sun to dry. The two men were at work in the shade of a large open shed, but I could not make out what they were doing. As nearly as I could see, almost all of the actual work was performed by the children, who ranged, I should say, from eight to twelve years of age. The work of carrying the heavy clay, and piling it up in the sun after it had been formed into tiles, was done by the younger children. I am certain that if I had not seen them with my own eyes I would never have believed that such very little children could carry such heavy loads, or that they could work so systematically and steadily as they were compelled to do in order to keep pace with the rapid movements of the older boy, who was molding the tiles from the soft clay. The older boy could not have been, as I have said, more than twelve years of age, but he worked with all the skill and the rapidity of an experienced piece-worker driven at the top of his speed. I was so filled with pity and at the same time with admiration for this boy that, as I was unable to speak to him, I ventured to offer him a small coin in token of my appreciation of the skill with which he worked. So intent was he on his task, however, that he would not stop his work even to pick up the money I proffered him, but simply thanked me and nodded his head for me to place it on the bench beside him. These instances of skilled labour among children are by no means exceptional. At another time I remember stopping to look at a little boy who, it seemed to me, could not be more than eight or nine years of age, working side by side with a man, evidently his father, together with several other men, all of them engaged in building a boat. The boy I speak of was engaged in finishing off with a plane the hardwood rail of the sides of the boat, and as I watched him at his task I was again compelled to wonder at the ease and skill with which these little fellows use their tools. All these things, as I have said, gave me an idea of the manner in which the trades were carried on before the extensive use of machinery had brought the factory system into existence. It showed me also the easy way in which, in those days, the industrial education of children was carried on. When the work in the handicrafts was performed in the house, or in a shop adjoining the house, it was an easy thing for the father to hand down to the son the trade he himself had practised. Under the conditions in which trades are carried on in Sicily to-day children are literally born to the trade which their fathers practise. In these homes, where the shop and the home are crowded together in one or two rooms, children see their fathers and mothers at work from the time they are born. As soon as they are able to handle a tool of any kind the boys, at any rate, and frequently the girls also, are set to work helping their parents. As the father, in his turn, has probably inherited the accumulated traditions and skill of generations that preceded him in the same trade, his children are able to get from him, in the easiest and most natural way, an industrial education such as no other kind of school can give. Whatever may be the disadvantages of the people of Sicily in other respects, they have an advantage over the Negro in learning the skilled trades, the value of which it is difficult to estimate. Everywhere one sees the evidences of this skill with the hand, not only in the public buildings, but in some of the common objects of daily use. I have already referred to the way in which the ordinary little two-wheeled carts, which take the place of the ordinary farmer's wagon in this country, are decorated. I have seen in Catania men at work practically hewing these carts out of the log. I do not know to what extent the frame of the wagon is hewn out in this way, but, at any rate, the spokes are. Every detail is worked out with the greatest possible skill, even to the point of carving little figures or faces at the ends of the beams that make the frames. Likewise the harness of the donkeys that draw these carts is an elaborate and picturesque affair which must require a vast amount of patience and skill to make. The point I wish particularly to emphasize here is that all this skill in the handicrafts, which has become traditional in a people, is the best kind of preparation for every kind of higher education. In this respect the Italian, like the Japanese and Chinese, as well as every other race which has had centuries of training in the handicrafts, has an advantage over the Negro that can only be overcome when the masses of the Negro people have secured a training of the hand and a skill in the crafts that correspond to those of other races. Not only are children, especially boys, employed at a very early age in all the trades I have mentioned, but young boys from fourteen to sixteen perform, as I have said, in the mines and elsewhere an incredible amount of the crude, rough work of the community. I remember, one day in Palermo, seeing, for the first time in my life, boys, who were certainly not more than fourteen years of age, engaged in carrying on their backs earth from a cellar that was being excavated for a building. Men did the work of digging, but the mere drudgery of carrying the earth from the bottom of the excavation to the surface was performed by these boys. It was not simply the fact that mere children were engaged in this heavy work which impressed me. It was the slow, dragging steps, the fixed and unalterable expression of weariness that showed in every line of their bodies. Later I learned to recognize this as the habitual manner and expression of the _carusi_, which is the name that the Italians give to those boys who are employed in the sulphur mines to carry the crude ore up from the mines where it is dug and to load it into the cars by which it is conveyed to the surface. The work in a sulphur mine is organized in many respects, I learned, like that of a coal mine. The actual work of digging the sulphur is performed by the miner, who is paid by the amount of crude ore he succeeds in getting out. He, in his turn, has a man or a boy, sometimes two or three of them, to assist him in getting the ore out of the mine to the smelter, where it is melted and refined. As I myself had had some experience as a boy in work similar to this in the mines of West Virginia, I was interested in learning all I could in regard to these boys and the conditions under which they worked. In the case of boys employed for this work, the Sicilians have a custom of binding out their children to the miner, or _picconiero_, as he is called. Such a boy is then called, in the language of the country, a _caruso_. As a matter of fact, a _picconiero_ who buys a boy from his parents to employ him as a _caruso_ actually purchases a slave. The manner in which the purchase is made is as follows: In Sicily, where the masses of the people are so wretchedly poor in everything else, they are nevertheless unusually rich in children, and, as often happens, the family that has the largest number of mouths to fill has the least to put in them. It is from these families that the _carusi_ are recruited. The father who turns his child over to a miner receives in return a sum of money in the form of a loan. The sum usually amounts to from eight to thirty dollars, according to the age of the boy, his strength and general usefulness. With the payment of this sum the child is turned over absolutely to his master. From this slavery there is no hope of freedom, because neither the parents nor the child will ever have sufficient money to repay the original loan. Strange and terrible stories are told about the way in which these boy slaves have been treated by their masters. Before coming to Sicily I had met and talked with persons who described to me the processions of half-naked boys, their bodies bowed under the heavy weight of the loads they carried, groaning and cursing as they made their way up out of the hot and sulphurous holes in the earth, carrying the ore from the mine to the smelter. All that I had heard elsewhere was confirmed later by the details furnished by official reports and special studies of conditions in the mining regions, made at different times and by different persons. In these reports I learned that the mines had been in the past the refuge of a debased and criminal population, whose vices made the bleak, sulphur-smitten region where the mines are located as much like hell as it looks. The cruelties to which the child slaves have been subjected, as related by those who have studied them, are as bad as anything that was ever reported of the cruelties of Negro slavery. These boy slaves were frequently beaten and pinched, in order to wring from their overburdened bodies the last drop of strength they had in them. When beatings did not suffice, it was the custom to singe the calves of their legs with lanterns to put them again on their feet. If they sought to escape from this slavery in flight, they were captured and beaten, sometimes even killed. As they climbed out of the hot and poisonous atmosphere of the mines their bodies, naked to the waist and dripping with sweat, were chilled by the cold draughts in the corridors leading out of the mines, and this sudden transition was the frequent cause of pneumonia and tuberculosis. In former years children of six and seven years of age were employed at these crushing and terrible tasks. Under the heavy burdens (averaging about forty pounds) they were compelled to carry, they often became deformed, and the number of cases of curvature of the spine and deformations of the bones of the chest reported was very large. More than that, these children were frequently made the victims of the lust and unnatural vices of their masters. It is not surprising, therefore, that they early gained the appearance of gray old men, and that it has become a common saying that a _caruso_ rarely reaches the age of twenty-five. It was with something of all this in my mind that I set out from Palermo a little before daylight one morning in September to visit the mines at Campofranco, on the southern side of the island, in the neighbourhood of Girgenti. My misgivings were considerably increased when, upon reaching the railway station to take the train, I found that the guide and interpreter who had been employed the night before to accompany us on the trip had not made his appearance. We waited until all the porters at the station and the guards on the train were fairly in a fever of excitement in their well-meant efforts to get us and our baggage on the train. Then, at the last moment, with the feeling that we were taking a desperate chance, we scrambled aboard and started off into a wild region, which no guide-book had charted and, so far as I knew, no tourist had ever visited. The train carried us for some distance along the fertile plain between the sea and the hills. It was just possible to make out in the twilight of the early morning the dim outlines of the little towns we passed. At length, just as we were able to catch the first gleams of the morning sun along the crests of the mountains, the railway turned abruptly southward and the train plunged into a wide valley between the brown and barren hills. At Roccapalumba we left the main line of the railway, which turns eastward from there in the direction of Catania, and continued our journey with the somewhat ruder comforts of an accommodation train. From this point on the way grew rougher, the country wilder, and the only companions of our journey were the rude country folk, with an occasional sprinkling of miners. At the little town of Lercara we entered the zone of the sulphur mines. From now on, at nearly every station we passed, I saw great masses of the bright yellow substance, piled in cars, waiting to be carried down to the port of Girgenti for shipment to all parts of the world, and particularly to the United States, which is still the largest market for this Sicilian gold. The nearer the train approached our destination, the more uncomfortable I grew about the prospect that was before us. I felt very sure that I should be able to reach Campofranco and perhaps see something of the mines, but whether I should ever be able to get out again and what would become of me if I were compelled to seek shelter in some of the unpromising places I saw along the way was very uncertain. Fortunately, Dr. Robert E. Park, of Boston, who was travelling with me, and who accompanied me on nearly all of my excursions of this kind, was with me on this trip. Doctor Park had a pretty thorough mastery of the German language, and could speak a little French, but no Italian. He had, however, an Italian grammar in his satchel, and when we finally found ourselves at sea, in a region where neither English, German, nor French was of any help to us, he took that grammar from his satchel and set to work to learn enough Italian between Palermo and Campofranco to be able to make at least our most urgent wants known. For four hours he devoted himself industriously to the study of that beautiful and necessary language. It was a desperate case, and I think I am safe in saying that Doctor Park studied grammar more industriously during those four hours than he ever did before in his life. At any rate, by the time the train had crossed the rocky crest of the mountains which divide the north and south sides of Sicily, and before we disembarked at the lonesome little station of Campofranco, he could speak enough Italian, mixed with German, French, and English, to make himself understood. Perhaps another reason for Doctor Park's success was the fact that the Italians understand the sign language pretty well. The mines at Campofranco are on the slope of the mountain, just above the railway station. A mile or more across the great empty valley, high up on the slope of the opposite mountain, is the village from which the mines get their name, a little cluster of low stone and cement buildings, clinging to the mountainside as if they were in imminent danger of slipping into the valley below. A few hundred yards above the station great banks of refuse had been dumped into the valley, and a place levelled off on the side of the mountain, where the furnaces and smelters were located. There were great rows of kilns, like great pots, half buried in the earth, in which the ore is melted and then run off into forms, where it is cooled and allowed to harden. I confess that I had been very dubious as to the way that we were likely to be received at the mines, seeing that we did not know the customs nor the people, and had very scant supply of Italian in which to make known our wants. The manager, however, who proved to be a very polite and dignified man, could speak a little French and some English. He seemed to take a real pleasure in showing us about the works. He explained the methods by which the sulphur was extracted, insisted upon our drinking a glass of wine, and was even kind enough to loan me a horse and guide when I expressed a desire to rent one of the passing donkeys to convey me to some of the more inaccessible places, farther up the mountain, where I could see the miners had burrowed into the earth in search of sulphur. On the vast slope of the mountain and at a distance they looked like ants running in and out of little holes in the earth. It was at the mouth of one of these entrances to the mines that I got my first definite notion of what sulphur miners look like--those unfortunate creatures who wear out their lives amid the poisonous fumes and the furnace heat of these underground hells. There was a rumble of a car, and presently a man, almost stark naked, stepped out of the dark passageway. He was worn, haggard, and gray, and his skin had a peculiar grayish-white tinge. He spoke in a husky whisper, but I do not know whether that is one of the characteristic effects of the work in the mines or not. I was told that, in addition to other dangers, the sulphur has a bad effect upon the lungs. It was explained to me that the sulphur dust gets into the lungs and clogs them up, and that is what accounts for the groans of the _carusi_, so frequently spoken of, when they are tugging up the steep and winding passageways with the heavy burdens of crude ore on their backs. It had been many years since I had been in a mine, but as I entered the dark, damp gallery and felt the sudden underground chill, the memories of my early experiences all came back to me. As we got farther into the mine, however, the air seemed to grow warmer. Suddenly a door at the side of the gallery opened; a blast of hot air, like that from a furnace, burst out into the corridor, and another of those half-naked men, dripping with perspiration, stepped out. We passed at intervals along the main corridor a number of these doors which, as I discovered, led down into parts of the mine where the men were at work. It seemed incredible to me that any one could live and work in such heat, but I had come there to see what a sulphur mine was like, so I determined to try the experiment. The side passage which I entered was, in fact, little more than a burrow, twisting and winding its way, but going constantly deeper and deeper into the dark depths of the earth. I had known what it was to work deep down under the earth, but I never before so thoroughly realized what it meant to be in the bowels of the earth as I did while I was groping my way through the dark and winding passages of this sulphur mine. It is down at the bottom of these holes, and in this steaming atmosphere, that the miners work. They loosen the ore from the walls of the seams in which it is found, and then it is carried up out of these holes in sacks by the _carusi_. In the mine which I visited the work of getting the ore to the surface was performed in a modern and comparatively humane way. It was simply necessary to carry the ore from the different points where it is mined to the car, by which it is then transported to the smelter. In those mines, however, where the work is still carried on in the old, traditional fashion, which has been in vogue as far back as any one can remember, all the ore is carried on the backs of boys. In cases where the mine descended to the depth of two, three, or four hundred feet, the task of carrying these loads of ore to the surface is simply heartbreaking. I can well understand that persons who have seen conditions at the worst should speak of the children who have been condemned to this slavery as the most unhappy creatures on earth. From all that I can learn, however, the conditions have changed for the better in recent years. In 1902 a law was passed which forbade the employment of children under thirteen years in underground work, and to this was added, a little later, a provision which forbade, after 1905, the employment of children under fifteen in the mines. So far as I am able to say, this provision was carried out in the mine I visited, for I did not see children at work anywhere inside the mine. I saw a number of the poor little creatures at work in the dumps outside the mine, however. They were carrying refuse ore in bags on their backs, throwing it on screens, and then loading the finer particles back into the cars. Once having seen these gangs of boys at work, I could never mistake their slow, dragging movements and the expression of dull despair upon their faces. It is said that the employment of boys in the sulphur mines is decreasing. According to law, the employment of children under fifteen years of age has been forbidden since 1905. As is well known, however, in Italy as in America, it is much easier to make laws than to enforce them. This is especially true in Sicily. The only figures which I have been able to obtain upon the subject show that from 1880 to 1898 there was an enormous increase in the number of children employed in and about the mines. In 1880 there were 2,419 children under fifteen years working there, among whom were eight girls. Of this number 88 were seven and 163 were eight years of age, while 12 per cent. of the whole number were under nine years of age. In 1898, however, the number of children under fifteen years of age was 7,032, of whom 5,232 were at work inside the mines. At this time the Government had already attempted to put some restrictions on the employment of children in the mines, but the age limit had not been fixed as high as fifteen years. The sulphur mines are located on the southern slopes of the mountains that cross Sicily from east to west. About ten miles below Campofranco the two branches of the railway, one running directly south from Roccapalumba, and the other running southwest from Caltanisetta, come together a few miles above Girgenti. On the slopes of the broad valleys through which these two branches of the railway run are located nearly all the sulphur mines in Sicily. From these mines, which furnish something like 70 per cent. of the world's supply of sulphur, a constant stream of this yellow ore flows down to the sea at the port of Girgenti. After leaving Campofranco I travelled through this whole region. In many places the mountain slopes are fairly honeycombed with holes where the miners in years past have dug their way into the mountain in search of the precious yellow mineral. For many miles in every direction the vegetation has been blasted by the poisonous smoke and vapours from the smelters, and the whole country has a blotched and scrofulous appearance which is depressing to look upon, particularly when one considers the amount of misery and the number of human lives it has cost to create this condition. I have never in my life seen any place that seemed to come so near meeting the description of the "abomination of desolation" referred to in the Bible. There is even a certain grandeur in the desolation of this country which looks as if the curse of God rested upon it. I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life. As I have already said, however, there are indications that in the sulphur mines, as elsewhere in Sicily, the situation of the man farthest down is improving. I pray God that it is so, for I could not picture an existence more miserable than the slow torture of this crushing labour in the hot and poisonous air of these sulphur mines. Let me say also that I came away from the sulphur mines and from Sicily with a very much better opinion of the people than when I entered. I went to Italy with the notion that the Sicilians were a race of brigands, a sullen and irritable people who were disposed at any moment to be swept off their feet by violent and murderous passions. I came away with the feeling that, whatever might be the faults of the masses of the people, they were, at the very least, more sinned against than sinning, and that they deserve the sympathy rather than the condemnation of the world. The truth is that, as far as my personal experience goes, I was never treated more kindly in my whole life than I was the day when, coming as a stranger, without an introduction of any kind, I ventured to visit the region which has the reputation of being the most wicked, and is certainly the most unfortunate, in Europe. I mean the region around and north of Girgenti, which is the seat at once of the sulphur mines and the Mafia. If any one had told me before I went to Sicily that I would be willing to intrust my life to Sicilians away down in the darkness of a sulphur mine, I should have believed that such a person had lost his mind. I had read and heard so much of murders of the Mafia in Sicily, that for a long time I had had a horror of the name of Sicilians; but when I came in contact with them, before I knew it, I found myself trusting them absolutely to such an extent that I willingly followed them into the bowels of the earth; into a hot, narrow, dark sulphur mine where, without a moment's warning, they might have demanded my life or held me, if they cared to, for a ransom. Nothing of this kind occurred; on the other hand, I repeat, every Sicilian with whom I came in contact in the sulphur mine treated me in the most kindly manner, and I came away from their country having the highest respect for them. I did not meet, while I was there, a single person, from the superintendent to the lowest labourer at the mines, who did not seem, not only willing, but even anxious, to assist me to see and learn everything I wanted to know. What is more, Campofranco was the only place in Europe where I met men who refused to accept money for a service rendered me. CHAPTER XII FIUME, BUDAPEST, AND THE IMMIGRANT It was a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy day when the little coasting vessel that was to take us across the Adriatic drew out from the gray and misty harbour of the ancient city of Ancona and started in the direction of Fiume, the single point at which the Kingdom of Hungary touches the sea. I had read of the hardships of the early immigrants, and I heard once an old coloured man, who had been carried to America as a slave, tell of the long journey of himself and some fifty others, all crowded together in a little sailing vessel. It was not, however, until this trip of a few hours on the Adriatic in a dirty, ill-smelling little vessel that I began to understand, although I had crossed the ocean several times, how uncomfortable a sea voyage might be. Fortunately the journey was not a long one, and after the vessel found itself in the shelter of one of the beautiful green islands which are stationed like sentinels along the Dalmatian coast, it was possible to go on deck and enjoy the view of the rugged and broken coast line. It was indeed a splendid sight, in the clear light of the late afternoon, to watch the great blue-gray clouds roll up over the green and glistening masses of the islands, which lifted themselves on every side out of the surrounding sea. What I had heard and read of the Dalmatian coast had led me to look for the signs of an ancient civilization, not unlike that which I had left in Italy. What impressed me at first sight about Fiume, however, was the brand-new and modern character of everything in view. I do not mean that the city had any of the loose-jointed and straggling newness of some of our western American towns. It had rather the newness and completeness of one of those modern German cities, which seem to have been planned and erected out of hand, at the command of some higher authority. In that part of Germany which I visited I noticed that nothing was allowed to grow up naturally, in the comfortable and haphazard disorder that one finds in some parts of America. This is particularly true of the cities. Everything is tagged and labelled, and ordered with military precision. Even the rose-bushes in the gardens seem to show the effect of military discipline. Trimmed and pruned, they stand up straight, in long and regular rows, as if they were continually presenting arms. The impression which I got of modern Hungary at Fiume was confirmed by what I saw a few days later at Budapest, the capital. There was the same air of newness and novelty, as if the city had been erected overnight, and the people had not yet grown used to it. A little further acquaintance with the cities of Fiume and Budapest made it plain, however, in each case, that the new city which filled the eye of the stranger had been, as a matter of fact, built over, or, rather, added to, a more ancient one. In Fiume, for example, somewhat hidden away behind the new buildings which line the broad avenue of the modern Magyar city, there is still preserved the outlines of the ancient Italian town, with its narrow, winding streets, crowded with all the quaint and vivid life, the petty traffic, and the varied human sights and sounds with which I had become familiar during my journey through Italy. So in Budapest, across the river from the modern Hungarian, or, rather, Magyar city of Pest, there is the ancient German city of Buda, with its castle and palace, which dates back into the Middle Ages. What is still more interesting is that in these two modern cities of Fiume and Pest, in which one sees and feels the impress of a strong and masterful people, one meets everywhere, in the midst of this feverish and artificial modern life, evidences of the habit and manners which belong to an older and simpler age. For example, it struck me as curious that in a city which is so well provided with the latest type of electric street cars one should see peasant women trudging in from the country with heavy loads of vegetables on their backs; and, in a city where the Government is seeking to provide modern houses for the labouring classes, with all the conveniences that invention can supply, one should see these same peasant women peacefully sleeping on the pavement or under the wagons in the public square, just as they have been so long accustomed to sleep, during the harvest times, in the open fields. In the same way, in another connection, it seemed strange to read in the report of the Minister of Agriculture that an agricultural school at Debreczen, which had been carried on in connection with an agricultural college at the same place, had been closed because "the pupils of this school, being in daily contact with the first-year pupils of the college, boarding at the Pallag, attempted to imitate their ways, wanted more than was necessary _for their future social position_, and at the same time they aimed at a position they were not able to maintain." All this suggests and illustrates the rapidity with which changes are going on in Hungary and the haste with which the leaders in the Government and in social life are moving to catch up with and, if possible, get ahead of the procession of progress in the rest of Europe. The trouble seems to be that in Hungary progress has begun at the top, with the Government, instead of at the bottom, with the people. The Government, apparently, desires and hopes to give the masses of the people an education that will increase their usefulness, without at the same time increasing their wants and stimulating their desire to rise. Its efforts to improve the condition of the masses are further confused by a determination to suppress the other nationalities and preserve the domination of the Magyar race. In short, I think I might sum up the situation by saying that Hungary is trying the doubtful experiment of attempting to increase the efficiency of the people without giving them freedom. The result is that while the Government is closing up the schools because, as the Minister of Agriculture says, "an important political and social principle is endangered" when students begin to hope and dream of a higher and better situation in life than that in which they were born, the masses of the people are emigrating to America in order to better their condition. At Fiume I had an opportunity to study at close range what I may call the process of this emigration. I had, in other words, an opportunity to see something, not merely of the manner in which the stream of emigration, flowing out from the little inland villages, is collected and cared for at Fiume until it pours into and is carried away in the ships, but also to get a more definite idea of the motives and social forces that are working together to bring about this vast migration of the rural populations of southeastern Europe. In no country in Europe, not even in Italy, has emigration been so carefully studied, and in no country has more been done to direct and control emigration than in Hungary. At the same time I think it is safe to say that nowhere else has emigration brought so many changes in the political and social life of the people. At one time, indeed, it seemed as if Hungary proposed to make emigration a state monopoly. This was when the Government, in granting to the Cunard Steamship Company a monopoly of the emigrant business at Fiume, made a contract to furnish that line at least 30,000 emigrants a year. At that time there were between one hundred and two hundred thousand emigrants leaving Hungary every year, most of whom were making the journey to America by way of the German lines at Hamburg and Bremen. It is said that the Hungarian Government, in order to turn the tide of emigration in the direction of Fiume and swell the traffic at that port, directed that all steamship tickets should be sold by Government agents, who refused permission to emigrants to leave the country by other than the Fiume route. Since then, however, Hungary has, I understand, modified its contract with the Cunard Company in such a manner that it does not appear as if the Government had actually gone into the business of exporting its own citizens, and, instead of attempting to direct emigration through Fiume by something amounting almost to force, it has rather sought to invite traffic by creating at this post model accommodations for emigrants. As a matter of fact the Government has, as a rule, attempted to discourage emigration rather than increase it. Where that was not possible it has still tried to maintain its hold upon its citizens in America; to keep alive their interest in their native land and make the emigration, as far as possible, a temporary absence, in order that the state should not suffer a permanent loss of its labouring population, and in order, apparently, that the stream of gold which had poured into the country as a result of this emigration might not cease. The actual amount of money which is brought back by returning emigrants, or those living temporarily in America, cannot be definitely determined. For example, not less than 47,000 emigrants returned to Hungary in 1907. It is estimated, if I remember rightly, that each returned emigrant brought home at least $200, while the average immigrant, not permanently settled in America, sends back every year about $120, which is probably more money than he could earn at home. In the years 1900 to 1906, inclusive, there was sent to Hungary by money orders alone, $22,917,566. In the year 1903 an official investigation shows that, in addition to the money which went from America in other ways, $17,000,000 was sent to Hungary through banks. One result of this influx of money from America has been that the peasant has been able to gratify his passion to obtain for himself a little strip of land or increase the size of the farm he already possesses. In fact, in certain places mentioned by Miss Balch in her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizen," the demand for land has been so great that it has increased in value between 500 and 600 per cent.[1] In one year, 1903, according to Miss Balch, 4,317 emigrants from one county in Croatia sent home $560,860, which is an average of not quite $130 per immigrant. With this money 4,116 homes were bettered, by paying debts, buying more land, or making improvements. These facts give, however, but a small indication of the influence which immigration has had, directly and indirectly, upon the conditions of life among the masses of the people in Hungary and other portions of southeastern Europe. For one thing, in arousing the hopes, ambitions, and discontent of the so-called "inferior" peoples, it has added fuel to the racial conflicts of the kingdom. The Slovak or the Croatian who comes to America does not at once lose his interest in the political and social struggles of his native land. On the contrary, in America, where he has opportunity to read newspapers printed in his own language, and to freely discuss racial policies in the societies and clubs which have been formed by the different nationalities in many parts of the United States, the average Slovak or Croatian in America is likely to take a more intelligent interest in the struggle for national existence of his own people than he took at home. In the case of members of some of the minor nationalities it has happened that, owing to the persistence with which the Hungarian Government had discouraged their efforts to teach their own languages, it is not until they have reached America that they have had opportunity to read their mother-tongue. Some indication of the interest which the different immigrant peoples take in the struggles of the members of their own race, in their native land, is given by the work which several of these nationalist societies are doing in America. The National Slavonic Society organizes political meetings, raises funds for Slovak political prisoners in Hungary, and scatters Slovak literature for the purpose of arousing sympathy and interest in the Slovak cause. In his book, "Racial Problems in Hungary," Seton-Watson, who has made a special study of the condition of the Slovaks, says: "The returned Slovak emigrants who have saved money in the United States are steadily acquiring small holdings in Hungary, and helping to propagate ideas of freedom and nationality among their neighbours.... They speedily learn to profit by the free institutions of their adopted country, and to-day the 400,000 Slovaks of America possess a national culture and organization which present a striking contrast to the cramped development of their kinsmen in Hungary. There are more Slovak newspapers in America than in Hungary; but the Magyars seek to redress the balance by refusing to deliver these American journals through the Hungarian post-office. Everywhere among the emigrants, leagues, societies, and clubs flourish undisturbed; ... these societies do all in their power to awaken Slovak sentiment, and contribute materially to the support of the Slovak press in Hungary."[2] Seton-Watson adds that "the independence and confidence of the returned emigrants are in striking contrast with the pessimism and passivity of the elder generation." It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Magyars, who represent the "superior race" in Hungary, say that "America has spoiled the Slovak emigrant." In travelling across Hungary from Fiume to Budapest, and thence to Cracow, Poland, I passed successively through regions and districts inhabited by many different racial types, but I think I gained a more vivid notion of the strange mixture of races which make up the population of the Dual Monarchy from what I saw in Fiume than in any other part of the country. In Budapest, which is the great melting pot of the races in Hungary, there is much the same uniformity in the dress and manners of the different races that one meets in any other large and cosmopolitan city. Fiume, on the contrary, has a much larger number of people who seem to be still in touch with the customs and life of their native villages, and have not yet learned to be ashamed to wear the quaint and picturesque costumes of the regions to which they belong. Among the most striking costumes which I remember to have seen were those of the Montenegrin traders, with their red caps, embroidered vests, and the red sashes around their waists, which made them look like brigands. After these, perhaps the most picturesque costumes which I saw were worn by a troop of Dalmatian girls, the most striking feature of whose costume was the white woollen leggings, tied at the knee with ribbons. One figure in particular that I recall was that of a little woman striding through the streets of Fiume, driving a little train of beautiful cream-coloured oxen. All these distinctions of costume emphasized each other by contrast, and as they each signified differences in traditions, prejudices, and purposes of the people to whom they belonged, they gave one a sort of picture of the clash of races in this strange and interesting country. Even among those races which are no longer divided by costume and habits, racial distinctions seem to be more clearly drawn than at Budapest. For example, to a large extent the business of the city seems to be monopolized by Germans and Jews. The Government officials are Magyars, but the bulk of the population are Italians and Croatians. As a matter of fact there are three distinct cities, which commonly go under the name of Fiume. There is the modern city, with its opera house, its handsome official buildings, which is Magyar; the elder city, with its narrow, gossiping streets and Roman triumphal arch, which is Italian, and, finally, just across the canal, or "fiume," which seems to have given the name to the city, is a handsome new Croatian town which is officially distinct from the rest of the city, having its own mayor and town officials. Fiume itself has an exceptional position in the Kingdom of Hungary. It is what was known in the Middle Ages as a "free city," with a governor and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament. The mayor, I understand, however, is an Italian, who has married a Croatian wife. This alliance of two races in one family seems to have a certain advantage in the rather tumultuous politics of the city, for I was told that when the Croatians, as sometimes happens, go to the mayor's house in procession, with their grievances, the mayor's wife has been able to help her husband by addressing her own people in their native language. The most interesting thing I saw in Fiume, however, was the immense emigration building, which has accommodations, as I remember, for something like 3,000 emigrants. Here are the offices of the Hungarian emigration officials, and in this same building are received and cared for, until the next succeeding sailing, the accumulations of the stream of emigration which flows steadily out at this port from every part of the kingdom. Here the emigrants, after they have been medically examined, given a bath and their clothes disinfected, are detained until the time of embarkation. In company with United States Consul Slocum, from whom I received much valuable information, I visited the emigration building and spent a large part of one day looking into the arrangements and talking, through an interpreter, with emigrants from different parts of the country who were waiting there to embark. Under his guidance I inspected the barracks, furnished with rows upon rows of double-decked iron beds, observed the machinery for disinfecting the clothing of emigrants, visited the kitchen, tasted the soup, and finally saw all the different nationalities march in together to dinner, the women in one row and the men in another. The majority of them were of Magyar nationality; good, wholesome, sturdy, and thrifty people they seemed. They were from the country districts. Some of them were persons of property, who were going to America to earn enough money to pay off mortgages with which their lands were burdened. Very many of them had relatives, a brother, a sister, or a husband already in America, and they seemed to be very well informed about conditions in the new country where they were going. The two most interesting figures that I noticed among the intended emigrants were a tall, pallid, and barefooted girl, with rather delicate and animated features, and a man in a linen blouse which hung down to his knees, his feet and legs incased in a kind of moccason, surmounted with leggings, bound with leather thongs. The girl was a Ruthenian, who was going to meet relatives in America. The man, whom I noticed looking, with what seemed to me rather envious interest and curiosity, at a pair of American shoes on sale at one of the booths in the big common hall, was a Roumanian. Two of the emigrants with whom I talked had been in America before. One of these, who understood a little English, seemed to be a leader among the others. When I asked him the reason why he was going back to America he spoke quite frankly and disparagingly about conditions in the old country. He said it was not so much the wages that led people to emigrate, though they were small enough. But the worst of it was that there were long intervals when it was not possible to get any work. Besides that, the taxes were high. "And then," he added, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his arm with a gesture of impatience, "it is too tight here." I suspect that this expresses the feeling of a good many emigrants who, returning to their native country, have emigrated a second time. They have found things in the old country "too tight" for comfort. There is still room in America for people to spread out, and grow and find out for themselves what they are capable of. As long as people find things "too tight" they will move on. The plant stretches always toward the light. Among the emigrants with whom I had an opportunity to talk was a group of Roumanians who had come up from Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen, as they called it. They were a dark, silent sort of people, who hung very closely together and looked at us out of the corners of their eyes. When I sought to talk with them they seemed indisposed to answer my questions, and finally one of them told the interpreter that they had been instructed not to talk with any one until they reached America. Considering the elaborate regulations which their Government has imposed upon people seeking to leave Hungary, and the still more elaborate regulations which our Government has imposed upon people seeking to enter the United States, this did not particularly surprise me. Since these people were Roumanians, or Wallachs, from Siebenbürgen, they may have had other reasons for not telling why they were leaving the country. The Roumanians, although they proudly claim descent from the Roman conquerors of this part of the world, are, nevertheless, classed among the "inferior," as they are, in fact, among the most ignorant, races in Hungary. As they have been particularly persistent in advertising their wrongs to the rest of Europe, and have been frequently punished for it, they may, perhaps, have learned that silence is golden, particularly in the presence of Magyar officials. When in Vienna I was seeking for information that would help me to understand the racial situation in the Dual Monarchy, I found that one of the most learned and brilliant writers on that subject was a Roumanian who, while he was a student in a Roumanian academy in 1892, had been arrested with other students and condemned to four years' imprisonment for writing and circulating a pamphlet in which were enumerated "acts of violence" committed against the other races of Hungary by the "superior" Magyars. The superiority of the dominant race seems, as a matter of fact, to be the foundation stone of the political policy of the present government in Hungary. In the last analysis it seems to be the major premise, so to speak, of every argument which I happen to have heard or read in justification of the policy which the Government has pursued in reference to the other races of the monarchy. In fact, the "superiority of the Magyar" race is responsible for most that is good and evil in the history of Hungary for the past seventy years. It seems, for example, to have been the chief source of inspiration for the heroic struggle against Austria which began in 1848 and ended with the independence of Hungary in 1867. It seems, also, to have been the goad which has spurred on the impatient leaders of modern Hungary in their hurry to overtake and surpass the progress of civilization in the rest of Europe. Unfortunately the ambition and success of the Magyars in their effort to gain their political independence and preserve their peculiar racial type from being lost and swallowed up by the other and "inferior" peoples by whom it is surrounded have encouraged every other nationality in a similar desire and determination. "If it is good for the Magyars to preserve their language, customs, and racial traditions," say the other races, in effect, "why is it not just as important for us that we preserve ours?" The reply of the Magyars is, in effect: "You have no language, no history, no tradition worth keeping. In short, you are an inferior race." Naturally the argument does not end there. The other nationalities reply by founding national schools and colleges to study and preserve their peculiar language, traditions, and customs, while these nationalities who have previously had no history proceed to make some. Thus the doctrine of superiority of the Magyar race, which has been so valuable in stimulating the Magyars to heroic efforts in behalf of their own race, seems to have been just as valuable in stinging into life the racial pride and loyalty of the other races. And thus, on the whole, in spite of its incidental cruelties, the conflict of the races in Hungary, like the struggle of the white and black races in the South, seems to have done less harm than good. At least this is true so far as it concerns the races which are down and are struggling up, because oppression, which frequently stimulates the individual or the race which suffers from it, invariably injures most the individual or the race which inflicts it. Most of the "acts of violence" of which the subordinate nations complain are committed in the name of what is known as the "Magyar State Idea," which seems to be little more, however, than the idea that the Magyars must dominate, although they represent but 51 per cent. of the population in Hungary proper and 45 per cent. of the total population, including that of the annexed territory, Croatia-Slavonia. So far is the Magyar race identified with the Government in Hungary that it is punished as a kind of treason to say anything against the Magyars. Most of the persons who are persecuted for political crimes in Hungary seem to be charged either with panslavism, which is usually little more than a desire of the Slavs to preserve their own national existence, or with "incitement against the Magyar nationality." On the part of the Magyars it does not seem to be any crime to speak disrespectfully, or even contemptuously, of the other races. I have observed that those writers who have sought to defend the "Magyar State Idea" refer quite frankly to the Roumanians and the Slovaks as "inferior races," who are not competent to govern themselves. There is, likewise, a saying among the Magyars to the effect that "a Slovak is not a human being," a notion that seems to spring up quite naturally in the mind of any race which has accustomed itself to the slavery and oppression of another race. It is, however, all the more curious that such a saying should gain currency in Hungary in view of the fact that Kossuth, the great national hero of Hungary, was himself a Slovak. One hears strange stories in Hungary of the methods which the dominant race has employed to hold the other races in subjection. For example, in the matter of elections, bribery, intimidation, and all the other familiar methods for exploiting the vote of ignorant and simple-minded people are carried on in a manner and to an extent which recalls the days of Reconstruction in the Southern States. In order to maintain the superior race in power, newspapers are suppressed, schools are closed and the moneys for their support, which have been collected for educational purposes, are confiscated by the Government. As an illustration of the lengths to which Hungary has gone in order to maintain Magyar domination, it is said that when the Catholic clergy, seeing the ravages which drink had made among Slovaks, attempted to organize temperance societies among them, the Government suppressed these organizations on the ground that they tended to foster the sentiment of panslavism and so were in opposition to the "Magyar State Idea." It is known, however, that the chief complaints against these societies were from liquor dealers. Apparently it is just as easy in Hungary as in America for selfish persons to take advantage of racial prejudice and sentiment in order to use it for their own ends. In fact, all that I saw and learned in regard to the relation of the races in Hungary served to show me that racial hatred works in much the same way, whether it exists among people of the same colour but different speech, or among people of different colour and the same speech. If there are some points in which the relations of the races in Hungary and the United States are similar, there are others in which they differ. While Hungary is seeking to solve its racial problem by holding down the weaker races and people, America is seeking to accomplish the same result by lifting them up. In Hungary every effort seems to be made to compel the so-called "inferior race" to give up their separate language, to forget their national history, traditions, and civilization--everything, in fact, which might inspire them, as a people, with a desire or a proper ambition to win for themselves a position of respect and consideration in the civilized world. In America, on the contrary, each race and nationality is encouraged to cultivate and take pride in everything that is distinctive or peculiar, either in its traditions, racial traits, or disposition. I think I am safe in saying that there is no country in the world where so many different races of such different colours, habits, and traditions live together in such peace and harmony as is true in the United States. One reason for this is that there is no other country where "the man farthest down" has more opportunity or greater freedom than in the United States. FOOTNOTES: [1] Charities Publication Committee, 1910. [2] Quoted by Miss Balch in "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens," p. 116. CHAPTER XIII CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage, through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same Bible story. The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader, some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach. As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere. I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews. One of the first things I observed in regard to the Jews abroad was the very different forms which racial prejudice takes in the different countries that I visited. For example, in East London, which has long been the refuge for the poor and oppressed of other countries, the Jew is tolerated, although he is not liked. It is not clear just what is the source of the English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes made that the Jewish immigrant has driven out the native Briton from certain parts of East London, but it is admitted at the same time that in such cases it is because the Jew has proven a better tenant. He does not drink, he is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. It seems to be true in London, also, as it is in New York, that as soon as the Jewish immigrant has made a little success he does not remain in the same quarter of the city. He soon moves out and his place is taken by some new and half-starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so that there is a constant stream of "greeners," as they are called, coming in, and another, perhaps somewhat smaller, stream of those who have been successful moving out. In spite of this fact, it is generally admitted that general conditions have improved under the influence of the Jews. English prejudice where it exists seems to be due, therefore, partly to economic causes and partly to the general distrust of the alien that seems to be gaining in England with the influx of immigration from southern Europe. In Denmark, on the contrary, where the Jews seem to be very largely represented among the educated and well-to-do classes, I discovered a great deal of prejudice against the Germans but almost none against the Jews. In fact, one of the most distinguished men in Denmark, outside of the King, a man who has been a leader in the intellectual life of that country during the past thirty years, Prof. Georg Brandes, is a Jew. In Germany I learned that, while the Jews are prominent not only in business but in the professions, it was still difficult for them to rise in the army or to advance to the position of professor in the universities, unless they have first been baptized. In speaking about this matter to a German whom I met at one of the hotels in Vienna, I called to mind the name of a distinguished professor whose name I had heard as an instance of a Jew gaining a high position in a German university. "Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized." That recalls to my mind a conundrum which an acquaintance proposed while we were discussing some of the peculiarities of race prejudice in Europe. "When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The answer is of course, "When he is a Christian." In other words, prejudice in Germany seems to be directed only against the Jew who clings to his religion. When I reached Prague in Bohemia I learned that among the masses of the people there is little distinction made between Jews and Germans, since both speak the same language, and the Czechs, confusing the one with the other, hate both with a double hatred, first, for what they are, and then for what they seem to be. In Vienna and Budapest the Jews, through the newspapers which they control, seem to exercise a powerful influence on politics. I remember hearing repeated references while I was there to the "Jewish press." In Prague it is said that every German paper but one is controlled by Jews. Jews are represented, however, not only in the press in Austria-Hungary, but in the army and in all the other professions. They are not only financiers and business men, but doctors, lawyers, artists, and actors, as elsewhere in Europe where they have gained their freedom. Nevertheless it is still against the law for Jews and Christians to intermarry in Austria-Hungary. I have referred at some length to the condition of the Jews in other parts of Europe where they have profited by the social and political freedom which was granted them in the course of the nineteenth century, because their progress there is in such striking contrast with their condition as I saw it in and around Cracow, in Galicia; as it is, also, just across the borders of Austria-Hungary, in Russian Poland and Roumania, and as it seems to have been in other parts of Europe seventy-five or a hundred years ago, before the gates of the Ghetto were opened and the inhabitants emancipated. Some notion of the conditions under which the Jews lived, in almost every part of Europe, a hundred years ago, may be gathered from the restrictions which are imposed upon them to-day in Russia and Roumania. In Roumania a Jew can neither vote nor hold office in the civil service. He is excluded from the professions; he is not permitted, for example, to become a physician or even open a pharmacy; he is not permitted to live in the rural districts; he may neither own land outside of the town nor work as an agricultural labourer. In the mills and factories not more than 25 per cent. of the employees may be Jews. Although they are practically restricted to business enterprises, Jews may not become members of chambers of commerce. Jews are bound to serve in the army, they pay heavier taxes, proportionately, than other portions of the community, but they are classed under the laws as "aliens not subject to alien protection." In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live outside of what is called the "Pale of Settlement," which includes twelve provinces on the western and southwestern borders which Russia has annexed during the past two hundred years. Only merchants who pay a special license of 1,000 rubles, or about $500, university graduates, and a few others may live outside the pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in Siberia unless he has been sent there in punishment for crime. Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live outside the cities and incorporated towns. Although Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and send representatives to the Duma, they are not permitted to hold office or to be employed in the public service. They are compelled to pay in addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy enough, taxes on the rents they receive from property owned by them, or inheritances, on the meat killed according to the Jewish law, on candles used in some of their religious observances, and on the skull caps they wear during religious services. In spite of this they are excluded from hospitals, schools, and public functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid for out of the extra taxes imposed upon them. The most singular thing about it all is that the disabilities under which the Russian Jew now labours are at once removed by baptism. Not only that, but every Jew who allows himself to be sprinkled with holy water, in sign of the renunciation of his religion and his people, receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," as a reward. The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not subject to any of the medieval restrictions which are imposed upon members of their race in Russia and Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, all the political rights of other races. Nevertheless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than they are in some parts of Russian Poland, although very much better off than in some parts of southern Russia. Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had their freedom, Jews are as a rule more prosperous than the people by whom they are surrounded. In Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews represent 4.88 per cent. of the total population, 15 per cent. of those who had an income of 1,500 marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics show that similar conditions exist in other parts of Europe.[3] When I asked an acquaintance, who had lived a number of years in Austria, why this was so, he replied that there were so many Jews in Galicia that there were not enough other people to support them. He then went on to explain that between the two classes, the nobility who owned the land and the peasant who cultivated it, the Jew represented the trader, or middleman. It was, therefore, literally true that there were not enough other people in the country to support the Jew, who represents, however, not more than 11 per cent. of the total population. One of the first persons I met in Galicia was a representative of this poorer class of Jews. I reached Cracow late one afternoon in the latter part of September. There was a cold wind blowing and, for the first time since I had left Scotland, I noticed an uncomfortable keenness in the evening air, which was an indication, I suppose, that I was on the northern and eastern or the Russian side of the Carpathian Mountains. One of the first persons I encountered as I was standing shivering at the entrance of the hotel was a pale-faced, brown-eyed little boy, who spoke to me in English and seemed to want to establish some sort of friendship with me on the basis of our common acquaintance with the English language. He was unmistakably a Jew and, as we walked down the street together, he told me something of his life in London and then in Cracow. I gathered from what he was able to tell me that his father, who was a cabinetmaker and, as he said, "very poor," had found it harder to live in the fierce competition of the London sweatshops, where he had been employed, than in the Ghetto at Cracow, and so had grown discouraged and returned. I learned from him, as I did later from others of his race, that not all the Jews who came to England and America succeed and get rich in a few years, as seems to be commonly supposed. Some of them fail, and some get into unexpected troubles, and frequently families who immigrate are broken up and some of them sent back as a consequence of the enforcement of the immigration regulations, so that there is not so much eagerness to go to America as there was a few years ago. In spite of this fact the Jews of Galicia, nearly every one of whom probably has friends or relatives either in England or America, seem to look with peculiar interest upon every one who speaks the English language, because they regard them as representatives of a people who, more than any other in the world, have tried to be just to the Jews. A few days later I met in a little village a few miles from Cracow a Jewish trader who, like most of the Jews in this part of the country, spoke German as well as Polish, so that with the assistance of Doctor Park I was able to speak with him. He said that his business was to buy grain and fodder from the large landowners in different parts of Galicia and sell it again to the peasants, who used it to feed their stock. When he learned that I was from America and that I wanted to see something of the life of the peasant people he volunteered to be my guide. It was a very fortunate meeting for me, for I found that this man not only knew about the condition of nearly every family in the village, but he understood, also, exactly how to deal with them so that, at his touch, every door flew open, as if by magic, and I was able to see and learn all that I wanted to know. In the meantime I noticed that our guide and interpreter seemed to be quite as interested in learning about America as I was interested in getting acquainted with Galicia. He interlarded all his information about the condition of the peasants in different parts of the country with questions about conditions in America. As it turned out, he not only had relatives in America, but he had a cousin in New York who had got into trouble and been sent to prison for three years on account of some business irregularity. It was a small matter, according to my Jewish friend, that would not have cost more than eight days' imprisonment in Galicia. He could not understand, therefore, how a poor man should be treated more harshly in a free country like America, where all are equal, than he was at home, where he was the underdog and did not expect consideration. What seemed to trouble him most, however, was the fact that he had not heard from his cousin for a year and no one knew what had become of him. When the matter was explained to me, I told the man that if he would give me the name and last address of his cousin, when I returned to New York I would look the matter up and, if possible, learn what had become of the missing cousin. This seemed to me a very natural proposal, under the circumstances, but it evidently took the poor man by surprise, for he stopped, stared at me an instant, and then in the most humble manner knelt down and kissed my hand. I confess that at first I was a little shocked and rather disgusted. Afterward I learned that it is a common habit, more especially in Russia, for peasants to kiss the hands and even the feet of their superiors. The thought that occurred to me, however, was that it must have taken many centuries of subjection and oppression to make this attitude of humility a familiar and natural way, as it seemed to be in this case, of expressing gratitude. The singular thing about it all was that this Jew who had shown himself so humble toward me looked down upon and despised the Polish peasants among whom he trades. He referred to them as "ignorant and dirty creatures." For all that, he seemed to have learned their ways of expressing himself to those to whose power or influence he looked for help or protection. Under these circumstances, with these ingrained habits in the masses of the people, I found it hard to imagine just what the right of manhood suffrage, which has recently been conferred upon the people in all the provinces of Austria, was likely to mean in actual practice. Nothing was impressed more forcibly upon me during my study of conditions in Europe than this--namely, that we can tell very little from the mere fact that this or that political institution exists in a country just what privileges or disadvantages these institutions bring to the masses of the people. In fact, it seems to be just as true in Europe as it is in America, that mere legislative enactments can of themselves no more produce justice and freedom than they can produce industry and thrift. After the physical bondage has been destroyed there still remains the bondage of superstition, of ignorance, and of religious, class, and racial prejudice. The act of this Jew in kissing my hand was a revelation to me, not only of his own state of mind, but of the conditions by which he was surrounded. I think this one incident, more than anything else I saw or heard while I was in Galicia, gave me an insight into the life of the people. It seemed to me I could understand, for example, from this alone, why the Jews have made little more progress in Galicia than they have in the neighbouring provinces of Roumania and Russia. As for my guide, I might add that I never heard from him afterward. If he wrote to me the letter never reached me, and I do not know what finally became of the cousin whom he had lost. Perhaps I ought, before I attempt to describe the condition of the poorer class of Jews in Cracow, to say something of another Ghetto which I saw while in Europe. During my stay in Prague I took a walk one day through an ancient quarter of the city which had been formerly inhabited by Jews. The Ghetto of Prague is said to have been the largest and most famous in Europe. It was, in fact, a city in itself, for it contained not merely the oldest synagogue in Europe, with a famous old Jewish burial ground attached to it, but also a Rathhaus, or city hall, and a market in which, according to tradition, Jewish traders at one time sold Christian slaves. So thoroughly were the Jews at one time established in this quarter of the city that it went under the name of Judenstadt, or Jewtown. There they maintained, in a small way, a separate civil government of their own, just as they do, to a lesser extent, in Russia to-day. In his book on the Jews, already referred to, Mr. M. Fishberg, to whom I am indebted for many facts and statistics concerning the condition of the Jew, says of the Jews in Russia to-day: They speak their own language, Yiddish, and many conduct their affairs, keep their ledgers, write contracts, wills, and many other documents in this dialect; the registration of births, marriages, and deaths is done by their rabbis, and the divorces granted by them are recognized by the state as valid; in the smaller towns they prefer to settle their differences before their own judiciary (Beth din), and not in the state courts; they collect the greater part of their own taxes for the Government in the name of the Jewish community; not only is each individual Jew required to do military duty, but the Jewish community as a whole is held responsible for delivering annually a certain number of recruits. This separateness goes as far as the calendar with many Jews, who date their letters and documents according to the Hebrew and not the Russian calendar. Up to about fifty years ago it was a disgrace for a Jew to be able to read Russian or German, or even to have in his possession a book in one of these vulgar languages; it was a sin next to apostasy. But during the last two generations a profound change has taken place. At the time I was in Prague the ancient Ghetto was in process of demolition, and it illustrates the change which has come in recent years that most of the people living in the narrow streets and battered ancient buildings of the former Ghetto were not Jews but Christians. After Prague, the city which has the oldest and most interesting Ghetto in Europe is Cracow, and the most interesting thing about it is the fact that it is still inhabited by Jews. They live there to-day very much, I suppose, as they did a hundred years ago, a race separate and apart, more removed, apparently, from the manners, customs, and comprehension of the rest of the world than any people this side of China. I have known Jews nearly all my life. I have done business with them and have more than once talked to them in their synagogues, and have always found sympathy and support among them for the work I have had to do for my own people. I have frequently visited and studied, to some extent, the poorer classes in the Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York. In spite of this, however, when certain strange figures in long black coats, soft felt hats, with pale faces, lighted by dark glittering eyes and framed by glossy curls which hung down on either side in front of their ears, were pointed out to me in Vienna, I had not the slightest notion to what race or nationality of people they belonged. Later on, when I reached Cracow, these same slender figures and pale, delicate faces became very familiar to me, and I learned to recognize in them the higher type of Polish Jew. The great majority of the Jews in Cracow still make their homes in a quarter of the city called the "Kazimierz," which gets its name from that of a Polish king who fell in love with a beautiful Jewess some four hundred years ago and, for her sake, made Poland a refuge for the members of her race, who, at that time, were hunted almost like wild beasts in other parts of Europe. I visited the Kazimierz late one afternoon, when the narrow, dirty, and ill-smelling streets were swarming with their strange brood of slatternly, poverty-stricken, and unhealthy looking inhabitants. I have been through the Jewish quarter in New York, with its confusion of pushcarts, its swarms of black-eyed children, and its strange old men with gray-brown beards wandering careworn and absorbed through the crowded streets, each anxiously intent on some thought or purpose of his own. The Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York is, however, a pale reflection of the Ghetto in Cracow. For one thing, the Jew in New York, though he retains many of the habits and customs of the country from which he came, seems, in most cases, to be making an earnest effort to make an American of himself; to learn the language, adopt the dress and, as far as possible, the manners of the new country of which he is soon to become, if he is not already, a citizen. The masses of the Polish Jews, however, still cling tenaciously to the customs of their religion and of the Ghetto in which, for a thousand years or more, they have lived as exiles and, more or less, like prisoners. Instead of seeking to make themselves look like the rest of the people among whom they live, they seem to be making every effort to preserve and emphasize the characters in which they are different from the people about them. Although I met in Cracow Jews in all the various stages of transition--as far as their dress is concerned--from the traditional Ghetto Jew to the modern literary, professional or business man, nevertheless the majority of the Jews still cling to the long black coat which they were compelled to wear in the Middle Ages. Certain ones have discarded this symbol of exclusiveness, but still wear the long beard, and the side curls in front of their ears, which seem to be especially dear to them, perhaps, because, for some reason I could not understand, they are forbidden to wear them in Russia. Perhaps it was the effect of the costume, which gave them a strange and alien appearance, but it seemed to me, at first, as if every Jew in Cracow had exactly the same features, the same manner of walking, and the same expression of countenance. As I watched the different figures in the crowded streets more closely, however, I discovered that beneath the peculiar dress and manner many different types of human beings were concealed. There were the pale-browed students, who moved through the crowd with a hurried and abstracted air; there were slender and elegant aristocrats, who, while still wearing the uniform of their race, dressed with a scrupulous correctness and looked at you with an expression which seemed a curious mingling of the humility of the Jew and the scorn of the Pharisee. There was the commonplace plodding Jew, following humbly in the common ruts of barter and trade and the daily and weekly routine which his religion prescribed. There was the outcast beggar, dirty and wretched, doddering aimlessly along the dirty street or sitting in some doorway, staring disconsolately into the street. There was, also, the dirty, gluttonous, ignorant, and brutal type, on whom neither suffering nor fanaticism seemed to have made any impression, and who, in his Jewish dress and manners, looked like a caricature of his more high-bred neighbour. I visited the ancient synagogue while I was in Cracow, which they say was built for the Jews by that same Polish king, Kazimierz, who first invited them to take refuge in his country. I saw there the ancient Roll of the Laws and ancient Prayer Book which were brought from Spain when the Jews were expelled from that country. Nearby the synagogue is the ancient Jewish market. A narrow street leads into an open square in the centre of which is a circular building. Before one of the entrances of this building a man, with the pale brow and delicate features which seem to be a mark of superiority among the people of the Ghetto, was publicly slaughtering geese. The square in which this building stood was surrounded on all sides by rows of little market booths, in front of which groups of men and women were dickering and trading for various small wares. A crowd of women stood about the building in the centre of the square and watched the pale-browed man, who did not seem to relish the job, as he rapidly and dexterously performed the ceremony of cutting the throats of the geese. These were handed to him by a good-natured looking woman, wearing an apron and high boots, red with blood. After the geese were killed they were hung over a pit to drain, while fresh victims were brought from the baskets and crates standing about in the open square. A foul smell from the open pit in which the geese were allowed to bleed filled the square. This did not add to the dignity of the proceedings, but it served to impress them upon my memory. In one corner of the square I noticed a dull gray-coloured building from which troops of little Jewish children were issuing. It was one of those schools by means of which Jewish teachers, through all the persecutions and dispersions of nineteen centuries, have kept alive the memory of the Jewish history and the Jewish law and so kept the race together. I do not think I know of anything which so illustrates and emphasizes the power of education as the influences which these schools have had upon the Jewish people. I was interested in all that I saw of the life of the Jew in Cracow, because it gave me some idea of the poverty, degradation, and squalor in which more than half of the Jewish race is living to-day in different parts of Europe. Of the twelve million Jews in the world, about nine millions live in Europe. Of this number more than six million live in Russia and nearly two million and a half in Austria, Roumania, and the other parts of southeastern Europe. I have given some idea of the poverty of the Jews in Galicia, where they are politically free. From all that I can learn the Jews in Russia and Roumania are very much worse off than they are in the Austrian province of Galicia. Most of us, who are acquainted with Jews only in America or in western Europe, have been led to believe, in spite of the evident poverty of many of the Jews who live on the East Side in New York and in the Whitechapel district of London, that, as a race, the Jews are extremely wealthy. I was surprised, therefore, to read recently the statement, made by Jews who have investigated the condition of their own people, to the effect that, while they are undeniably wealthier than their Christian neighbours in the countries in which, during the past hundred years, they have been granted their freedom, taking the Jews as a whole they are poorer than any other civilized nation in the world. In short, one writer has said: "If we were to capitalize their wealth and distribute it among the twelve millions of Jews they would dispute with any poor nation for the lowest place in the scale of wealth."[4] The direction in which the Jews seem to be superior to all of the rest of the world is apparently not in wealth but in education. Even in Russia, where they do not have the same educational advantages that are given to the rest of the population, it is found that, while 79 per cent. of the total population can neither read nor write, the percentage of illiteracy among the Jews is 61 per cent. which is 18 per cent. less than that of the rest of the population. In western Europe, where Jews have equal opportunities with their Gentile neighbours in the matter of education, they are far in advance of them in education. Statistics for Cracow show, for example, that while only a little more than 2 per cent. of the Jews who applied for marriage licenses were unable to read and write, between 15 and 20 per cent. of the Christians in the same category were illiterate. In Italy, where 42.6 per cent. of the men and 57 per cent. of the women of the Christian population over fifteen years of age are unable to read and write, only 3 per cent. of the men and 7.5 per cent. of the women among the Jews are illiterate. In Austria over 25 per cent. of the students of the universities are Jews, although they represent only 5 per cent. of the population. In Hungary, where Jews represent 4.9 per cent. of the population, they furnish 30.27 per cent. of the students in the universities and other schools of higher education. In Baden, Germany, Jews have proportionately three and a half times as many students as the Christians. Since 1851 the number of Jewish students in Austrian universities has increased more than sevenfold, while the number of Christian students has scarcely more than trebled in that time. One reason for this is that the Jews have almost invariably made their homes in the cities, where the opportunities for education existed. They have, at the same time, been almost wholly engaged in business, which not only requires a certain amount of education, but is in itself, more than other occupations, a source of education. The name rabbi, or teacher, has always been a title of respect and honour among the Jews from the earliest time. It was the name that his disciples bestowed upon Jesus. If there were no other reasons why the story of the Jew should be studied, it would be interesting and inspiring as showing what education can do and has done for a people who, in the face of prejudice and persecution, have patiently struggled up to a position of power and preëminence in the life and civilization in which all races are now beginning to share. FOOTNOTES: [3] M. Fishberg, "The Jews," p. 366. [4] M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361. CHAPTER XIV A POLISH VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS It was a Jewish trader who advised me to visit Jedlovka. He said that I would see the peasants living there now as they had lived for hundreds of years--in the simplest and most primitive fashion. Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling village in the foothills of the Carpathians--the mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. In order to reach the village it was necessary to take the train at Cracow and ride for an hour or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is the Ruthenian, just as Cracow is the Polish, metropolis of Galicia. At a place called Turnow we changed cars and continued our journey in a direction at right angles to that in which we previously travelled. It was another hour's ride by train to the foothills of the mountain. At Tuchow, at the point where the railway, running southward, plunges into the mountain, we disembarked again and continued our journey by wagon. The road led up out of the broad plain through which we had been travelling, into a narrow and sombre little valley. At the end of this valley there is a little wayside inn. Higher up, where the road, winding up out of the valley, leads out into a high, clear space at what seemed to be the top of the mountain, there is a church, and this tavern and the church, together with a few scattering log huts, were the village of Jedlovka and the end of our journey. I had had a vague sort of notion that somewhere in this remote region I should meet peasants wearing sheepskin jackets, sandals, and leggings bound with thongs, driving their herds to pasture. I even had a wild hope that I should come upon some rustic festival, such as I had read about, where the young men and women would dance upon the greensward, to the music of shepherds' pipes. As a matter of fact, it chanced that our visit did fall upon a feast day, but there were no shepherds and no dances. What I saw was a crowd of women pouring out of the little church, high upon the hill, and crowds of drunken men carousing at the tavern below. Before I proceed to tell what I learned of the peasant life in this mountain country, however, I want to refer to one feature of Polish life which was impressed upon me by what I saw on the way. I have referred in the preceding chapter to the position which the Jew occupies in the economic organization of Polish life. He is the middleman and has the trade of the country very largely in his hands. I was particularly impressed with this fact by what I saw in the course of this journey. Although the Jews represent only about 13 per cent. of the population of Galicia, I am certain that more than half of the people on the train on which we travelled were people of that race. There were Jews of all descriptions and in all stages of evolution, from the poor, patient pedler, wearing the garb of the Ghetto, to the wealthy banker or merchant fastidiously dressed in the latest European fashion. When we left the train at Tuchow it was a Jewish horse trader who drove us in his improvised coach the remainder of our journey into the mountains. A restaurant at which we stopped to get something to eat on our return was conducted by a Jew. Halfway to our destination we passed a tumbledown cottage, close to the roadside, with a few trinkets in the window and some skins hanging from the beam which ran along the front of the building. We stopped and spoke to an ancient man with a long white beard, who lives there. He, also, was a Jewish trader. As I recall, he was engaged in buying skins from the peasants, paying them in the junk which I noticed displayed in the window. When we reached the tavern at the end of our journey it turned out that the man who ran the tavern was a Jew. Apparently wherever in Poland money changes hands a Jew is always there to take charge of it. In fact, it seemed to me that the Jew in Poland was almost like the money he handled, a sort of medium of exchange. It was a very curious conveyance in which we made the last stage of our journey into the mountains. Instead of the droske we had expected to meet at the station we found what, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a farmer's wagon, I suppose, although it was an altogether different sort of farmer's wagon from any I had ever seen in America. The frame of this vehicle was something like a great long basket, narrow at the bottom, where it sat upon the axles, and wider at the top. The rim of this basket was made of poles, about the size of a fence rail, and this rim was supported upon the frame, which rested on the wagon, by little poles or pickets fastened in the frame below and the rim above, like a fence paling. The frame was so formed that it might have served the purpose either of a hayrick or a carryall. In this case it had been converted into a sort of coach or omnibus, with hanging seats, supported with leather straps from the rim. Arranged in this way this farmer's wagon was a not inconvenient mode of travel, and, driving through the fresh green country, dotted with quaint, little moss-covered cottages which seemed as much a part of the landscape as if they had grown there, the journey was made very pleasantly. The houses in this part of the country were, for the most part, smaller, more weather-worn and decrepit, than those I had seen in other parts of Galicia. In fact, in some cases the green-thatched roofs were so old, so overgrown with vegetation, and the little whitewashed frames of the buildings that supported them had so sunken into the soil, that some of them looked like gigantic toadstools. As the day we visited this part of the country was a holiday, we met along the way many of the peasants, dressed in the quaint and picturesque garb of the country, passing in groups of two or three along the road. I had before this visited a number of the peasant houses and was familiar with the plan and arrangement of them. The interior of these houses is usually divided into two rooms, separated in most cases by an entrance or hallway. In one of these rooms the whole family, consisting of the parents and perhaps five or six children, live, eat, and sleep. In this room there is usually a very large brick or stone oven which, on the cold winter nights, I learned, frequently serves the purpose of a bed. In the other room are the cows, pigs, geese, chickens. If the farmer is well-to-do he will have a number of buildings arranged in a hollow square having a goose pond in the centre and, in that case, the servants will very likely sleep in the straw in the barns with the cattle. I can give a more vivid notion of some of these houses by quoting a few lines from the notes jotted down by Doctor Park at the time of our visit: To-day, for the first time, we visited some of the peasant houses in a little village about three or four miles from Cracow. It was difficult at first to make friends with the people. After a time it transpired that they were afraid that, although we were evidently foreigners, we might be Government officials of some sort. This is, perhaps, not strange, since there are many races in this country and most of them are "foreigners" to each other. Our guide says the people fear the country will be some day handed over to Russia. We got on better when the people learned we were Americans. Every window of the little cottages we passed was crowded with laughing, curious children, with pink faces and white teeth. We visited the home of a widow with ten "yokes" of land and two cows. The cows give fifteen litres of milk a day, which is about ten quarts. The woman carries this to the market in Cracow every day. In the narrow little kitchen the children were all lined up in a row against the wall as we entered. One of them darted forward suddenly to kiss my hand. Mother and children were barefoot. The cow is across the hall from the kitchen. These two rooms, the kitchen and the cow-stall, are all there is to the house. I discovered what the duck pond in front of the house is for. The woman was filling it with straw to make manure. One of the leading men in the village has a brand-new house made of logs. The logs were neatly squared and the chinks between them carefully plastered and painted. The house had three rooms, besides a storeroom and cow-stall. I counted three barns in the court, besides three outdoor cellars, one for the milk and the others for the storing of vegetables. To my question as to what the farmer did in the winter our guide replied, "Nothing. When they want money they go to the hole where the potatoes and turnips are buried and carry a load to the town." The owner of this house was very proud of his new place and showed one room in which were several huge chests, decorated and stained in bright vermilion in the peculiar style of peasant art. These chests were filled with clothes--peasant costumes of very handsome material, very beautifully embroidered and decorated. The principal ornament of the costume shown us was a belt studded with brass nails with broad leather clasps, as large as a small platter, behind and in front. It must have occupied the hours of a good many long winter evenings to make the garments this man had stowed away in these chests. Although there was plenty of room in this house, it is evident that the family lives almost wholly in the one large living-room. The houses I visited in the mountain were constructed on the same plan as those described, except sometimes there was only one room for the whole family, including the cow, the chickens, and the rest of the animals. It is very cold on the north side of the mountains in winter, and the peasants and cattle frequently live in the same room to keep warm. In one of the little huts which I ventured to enter I found two old women lying down, apparently asleep, on a heap of straw, while a cow standing nearby them was peacefully chewing her cud, and several chickens were busily scratching among the straw on the earth floor. As there was almost no ventilation the air in some of these houses was almost indescribable. It was in this part of the country, in the vicinity of the village tavern, that I found people who were poor, even by the very moderate standard of comfort that prevails in rural Poland. We passed on the drive up the valley a number of little huddling straw-thatched huts. One of these, which did not seem to be inhabited, I determined to explore. The building was of the prevailing type, with the cowshed in one end and the living-room in the other, but the thatch was no longer green, and age had imparted to the whole of the outside of the building a very dismal, weather-worn appearance. The windows were evidently of skins, of the same brown colour as the building itself. The entrance was through what would evidently have been the cowshed, but this was empty. The door into the living-room was open, and, as I entered, I saw at first only a cow tied to a manger. At the other end of the room, hovering about a little stone hearth, on which a little fire of twigs burned, were an old man and woman. As is frequently the case in many parts of Poland, there was no chimney, and the rafters of the house were deeply incrusted with the smoke which had accumulated in the peak of the roof and filtered out through the thatch or through an opening at the end of the building. The old people seemed very poor and helpless and, as I was about to leave the room, they held out their hands and begged for alms. I should like to have stayed and talked with them, but unfortunately I had no one with me at the time who was able to speak the Polish language. As I learned that a number of people had gone to America from this valley I suspected that these old people were some of those who had been left behind and perhaps forgotten by the younger generation who had gone across the seas. I made some attempt later to learn if my suspicions were well founded, but no one whom I afterward met seemed to know anything about the history of the old people. The wealthiest landlord in the vicinity was, as I learned, a Polish priest, who owned four different farms, and most of the people in the neighbourhood seemed to be his tenants. He lived in a big, bare, rambling house, surrounded by great barns filled with cattle and produce of various kinds. I stopped to call at this house, thinking that I might learn something from him about the poor people I have referred to, but the good priest was not at home and the people whom I found at this house did not seem to be able to tell me anything. The tavern, which was a long, low log structure, built on the same general plan as the houses in the village, was crowded with revellers and steaming with the fumes of beer. Men were standing about, swinging their arms and shouting at each other at the top of their lungs, and almost every one of them was drunk. Several of the men present, including the proprietor, had been, as I learned, in America. One of them, who could speak a few words of English, gave us an especially hearty welcome. Some of the money which pours into Poland from America had reached even this remote corner of the country, it seemed. I asked the proprietor, who had lived in Newark, N.J., for a time and spoke a little English, whether he liked this part of the world better than America. "It is easier to live here," he said. Then added, "when you have a little money." "But when you haven't any money?" I suggested. He shrugged his shoulders. "Then go to America," he said. He told me a good deal of land had been purchased in this part of the country with money earned in America. Land was worth from 500 to 1,000 guilder per "yoke," which is about $100 to $200 per acre, a very large sum in a country where wages are, perhaps, not more than 25 or 50 cents a day. At nightfall we returned to Tuchow, which appeared to be a typical market town. The town is arranged, like many of our country villages in the South, around a large open square. In the centre of this square is a great covered well, from which the town draws its water. Four pumps, with long twisted iron handles, arranged in a circle about the well, serve to draw the water to the surface. Around the four corners of this square are the tradesmen's shops, most of them with low, thatched roofs projecting over the sidewalk to form a cover for the walk in front of the shops, and frequently supported, on the side toward the street, by curiously carved wooden posts. The little shops were not more than six or eight feet wide. There was usually one little room in front which was for the store, and another little room back in which the shopkeeper lived. As the ceilings were usually very low and the windows under the wide projecting roofs were very small, it made everything appear very snug and tight, somewhat as if every building were holding on to all that it contained with both arms. It all looked very interesting but very quaint and old-fashioned. I noticed, however, that there were one or two new brick buildings in the town, and the evening we arrived every one was in great excitement over the installation in the public square of two new electric lights, the first, I suspect, that had been seen in that part of the country. It was evident that in spite of the apparent solidity and antiquity that things were changing here as elsewhere. CHAPTER XV A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE Of the three former capitals of Poland the city of Cracow, the last of Polish territory to lose its independence, is now an Austrian fortress. One day, shortly after my arrival, I was driving in the suburbs of the city when my attention was directed to a number of low, grass-covered mounds scattered about at regular intervals in the level plain outside the city. To all appearances these mounds were nothing more than slight elevations of land sinking, in a direction away from the city, almost imperceptibly into the surrounding landscape. In all probability, if it had not been for a certain regularity in the positions which they occupied, I should not have noticed them. I had never seen a modern fortified city and I was therefore considerably surprised when I learned that these gentle elevations were fortifications and that beneath these grass-grown mounds enormous guns were concealed, powerful enough to keep a vast army at bay. These facts served to remind me that Cracow was a border city, guarding a frontier which divides, not merely two European countries, but two civilizations--I might almost say, two worlds. Cracow is, as a matter of fact, ten miles from the Russian frontier, and, although the people in Russian Poland are of the same race or nationality as those who live in the Austrian province of Galicia, speaking the same language and sharing the same traditions, the line which divides them marks the limits of free government in Europe. Now, there were several things that made this frontier, where eastern and western Europe meet, peculiarly interesting to me. In the first place, I knew that thousands of people, most of them Poles and Jews, who were unwilling or unable to pay the high tax which Russia imposes upon its emigrants, were every year smuggled across that border in order to embark at some German or Austrian port for America. I knew at the same time that Jews and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, Poles, outside of Russia were making use of this same underground railway to send back, in return for the emigrants who came out, another kind of contraband--namely, books and bombs. In fact, I had heard that a few years ago, when Russian Poland was all aflame with civil war, it was from Cracow that the Jews, who were the leading spirits in that movement, directed the revolution. Naturally all this served to increase my natural curiosity in this border country. So it was that one cool, clear day in September I rented a little droske for the day and started, in company with my companion, Doctor Park, for the Russian border. We drove leisurely along a splendid military road, between broad fields, in which peasants were gathering, in the cool autumn sunlight, the last fruits of the summer's harvest. A country road in Galicia, as is true in almost any part of Europe, is a good deal more of a highway than a country road in most parts of America. One meets all sorts of travellers. We passed, for example, just beyond the limits of the city, a troop of soldiers, with the raw look of recruits--red-faced country boys they seemed, for the most, bulging out of their military suits and trudging along the dusty road with an awkward effort at the military precision and order of veterans. Now and then we passed a barefoot peasant woman, tramping briskly to or from the city, with a basket on her head or a milk can thrown over her shoulder. Once we stopped to watch a group of women and girls threshing. One woman was pitching down sheaves of rye from the barn loft, another was feeding them to the machine, and all were in high glee at the wonderful way, as it seemed to them, in which this new invention separated the grain from the chaff. They were so proud of this little machine that, when we stopped and showed our interest in what they were doing, they insisted on showing us how it worked, and took pains to explain the advantages over the old-fashioned flail. There was a man sitting on a beam outside the barn smoking a pipe, but the women were doing the work. On this same journey we stopped at a little straggling village and spent an hour or two visiting the homes of the people. We saw the house of the richest peasant in the village, who owned and farmed something like a hundred acres of land, as I remember; and then we visited the home of the poorest man in the community, who lived in a little thatch-roofed cottage of two rooms; one of these was just large enough to hold a cow, but there was no cow there. The other room, although it was neat and clean, was not much larger than the cow-stall, and in this room this poor old man and his daughter lived. Incidentally, in the course of our tramp about the village, Doctor Park managed to pick up something of the family histories of the people and not a little of the current gossip in the community, and all this aided me in getting an insight, such as I had not been able to get elsewhere, into the daily life and human interests of this little rural community. At one point along the road we stopped for a few minutes at a wayside tavern. It was a log structure, with one great, long, low, desolate room, in one corner of which was a bar at which a sour-faced woman presided. Two or three men were lounging about on the benches in different parts of the room, but here again the woman was doing the work. Every mile or two it seemed to me we met a wagon piled high with great bulging bags as large as bed ticks. In each case these wagons were driven by a little shrewd-faced Jew. These wagons, as I learned, had come that morning from Russia and the loads they carried were goose feathers. A little farther on we came up with a foot passenger who was making toward the border with great strides. He turned out to be a Jew, a tall, erect figure, with the customary round, flat hat and the long black coat which distinguish the Polish Jew. Our driver informed us, however, that he was a Russian Jew, and pointed out the absence of the side curls as indicating that fact. Although this man had the outward appearance, the manner, and the dress of the Jews whom I had seen in Cracow, there was something in the vigorous and erect carriage that impressed me to such an extent that I suggested that we stop and talk with him. As we were already near the border, and he was evidently from Russia, I suggested that Doctor Park show him our passports and ask him if they would let us into Russia. He stopped abruptly as we spoke to him, and turned his black, piercing eyes upon us. Without saying a word he took the passports, glanced them through rapidly, tapped them with the back of his hand, and handed them back to us. "That is no passport," he said, and then he added, "it should have the visé of your consul." Having said this much he turned abruptly, without waiting for further conversation, and strode on. We soon came up with and passed him, but he did not look up. A little later we halted at the border. I looked around to see what had become of our wandering Jew, but he had disappeared. Perhaps he had stopped at the inn, and perhaps he had his own way of crossing the border. I was reminded of this strange figure a few months later when I noticed in one of the London papers a telegram from Vienna to the effect that some thirty persons had been arrested at Cracow who were suspected of being the ringleaders "in what is believed to be a widespread revolutionary organization of Russian refugees." The report added that "a whole wagon-load of Mannliches rifles, Browning pistols, and dynamite grenades, together with a large number of compromising documents and plans of military works, were seized as a result of searches by the police in the houses of the arrested men." I had frequently seen reports like this in the newspapers before this time, but they had a new significance for me now that I had visited the border country where this commerce with what has been called the "Underground" or "Revolutionary" Russia was part of the daily experience of the people. It all recalled to my mind the stories I had heard, when I was a boy, from my mother's lips of the American Underground Railway and the adventures of the runaway slaves in their efforts to cross the border between the free and slave states. It reminded me, also, of the wilder and more desperate struggles, of which we used to hear whispers in slavery time, when the slaves sought to gain their freedom by means of insurrection. That was a time when, in the Southern States, no matter how good the relations between the individual master and his slaves, each race lived in constant fear of the other. It is in this condition, so far as I can learn, that a great part of the people in Russia are living to-day, for it is fatally true that no community can live without fear in which one portion of the people seeks to govern the other portion through terror. The Austrian and Russian border at Barany, the village at which we had now arrived, is not imposing. A wire fence, and a gate such as is sometimes used to guard a railway crossing, are all that separate one country from the other. On one side of this gate I noticed a little sentinel's box, marked in broad stripes, with the Austrian colours, and at the other end of the gate there was a similar little box marked in broad stripes, with the Russian colours. On the Austrian side there was a large building for the use of the customs officials. On the Russian side there was a similar building with the addition of a large compound. In this compound there were about twenty Russian soldiers, standing idly about, with their horses saddled and bridled. The reason for the presence of the soldiers on the Russian side of the border was due to the fact that it is the business of the customs officers not merely to collect the tolls on the commerce that crosses the border at this point, but to prevent any one entering or leaving the country. As Russia imposes an almost prohibitive tax on emigration, most of the Russian emigrants are smuggled across the border. At the same time it is necessary to closely guard the frontier in order to prevent, as I have said, the importation of books and bombs, the two elements in western civilization of which Russia seems to stand most in fear. Leaving our droske on the Austrian side of the boundary, Doctor Park and myself applied at the gate between the two countries. A big, good-natured Russian official grinned, but shook his head and indicated that we could not be allowed to cross over. Our driver spoke to him in Polish, but he did not understand, or pretended he did not. Then we found a man who could speak Russian as well as German, and through him we explained that we merely wanted to visit the town and be able to say that we had at least touched Russian soil. On this the man permitted us to go up to the customs office and make our request there. At the customs office we tried to look as harmless as possible, and, with the aid of the interpreter we had brought with us, I explained what we wanted. At the customs office every one was polite, good-humoured, and apparently quite as much interested in us as we were in them. I was told, however, that I should have to wait until a certain higher and more important personage arrived. In the course of half an hour the more important personage appeared. He looked us over carefully, listened to the explanations of his subordinates, and then, smiling good-naturedly, gave us permission to look about the village. With this gracious permission we started out. The first thing I noticed was that the smooth, hard road upon which we had travelled from Cracow to the frontier broke off abruptly on the Russian side of the border. The road through the village was full of ruts and mudholes and the mournful and mud-bedraggled teams which were standing near the gate, waiting to cross the border, showed only too plainly the difficulties of travel in the country through which they had passed. Now I had learned in Europe that roads are a pretty good index of the character of the governments that maintain them, so that it was not difficult to see at the outset that the Russians were very poor housekeepers, so to speak, at least as compared with their Austrian neighbours. This was evidently not due to a lack of men and officials to do the work. Counting the civil officials and the soldiers, I suppose there must have been somewhere between twenty and thirty persons, and perhaps more, stationed at this little border village, to collect the toll on the petty traffic that crossed at this point. They were, however, but part of the vast army of officials and soldiers which the Russian Empire maintains along its western border from the Baltic to the Black Sea, to keep the watch between the east and the west; to halt, inspect, and tax, not merely the ordinary traffic, but the interchange of sentiments and ideas. I could not help thinking how much more profitable it would be if these soldiers, clerks, and officials, and the vast army of frontiersmen to which they belonged, could be employed, for example, in building roads rather than maintaining fences; in making commerce easier, opening the way to civilization, rather than shutting it out. Indeed it was no longer strange that, with all the vast resources which Russia possesses, the masses of the people have made so little progress when I considered how large a portion of the population had no other task than that of holding the people down, hindering rather than inspiring and directing the efforts of the masses to rise. I had not gone far on our stroll about the village before I discovered that the Pole who so kindly volunteered to help us was a man of more than ordinary intelligence. He had seen something of the world, and I found his rather gossipy comments on the character of the different individuals we met, and upon the habits of the people generally in the village, not only entertaining but instructive. He had, for example, a very frank contempt for what he called the stupidity of the officials on both sides of the border, and it was clear he was no lover of the soldiers and the Government. At one time, as we started down a side street, he said: "There's a gendarme down there. He is just like one of those stupid, faithful watch-dogs that bristle up and bark at every person that passes. You will see presently. He will come puffing up the street to halt you and turn you back." "What shall we do when we meet him?" I asked. "Oh, there's nothing to do but go back if he says so, but you will, perhaps, be interested to observe the way he behaves." Presently we noticed a soldier clambering hastily over an adjoining fence, and in a few minutes he had come up with us, his face all screwed up in an expression of alarmed surprise. "This is the gendarme I was telling you about," said our guide quietly, and continued speaking about the man just as if he were not present. As we were not able to talk with this soldier ourselves, and as he did not look very promising in any case, we strolled leisurely back while our guide entered into a long explanation of who and what we were. I imagine that he must have put a good deal of varnish on his story, for I noticed that, as the soldier glanced at us from time to time, his eyes began getting bigger and bigger, and his mouth opened wider and wider, until he stared at us in a stupid, awestruck way. Finally the interpreter announced that the gendarme had come to the conclusion that we might go down the road as far as we wanted to, only he would be obliged to accompany us to see that we did not break the peace in any way. Under the direction of our self-appointed guide we visited a dusty, musty little bar-room, which seemed to be the centre of such life as existed in the village. We found a few young country boys lolling about on benches, and the usual shrewish, sharp-faced, overworked woman, who grumblingly left her housework to inquire what we wanted. The contents of the bar itself consisted of rows of little bottles of different coloured liquors, interspersed with packages of cigarettes, all of them made and sold under the supervision of the Government. I purchased one of these little bottles of vodka, as it is called, because I wanted to see what it was the Government gave the peasants to drink. It was a white, colourless liquid, which looked like raw alcohol and was, in fact, as I afterward learned, largely, if not wholly, what the chemists call "methylated spirits," or wood alcohol. We visited one of the little peasant houses in the neighbourhood of the customs office. It was a little, low log hut with a duck pond in front of the doorway and a cow-pen at right angles to the house. There were two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. In the kitchen, which had an earthen floor, three or four or five members of the family were sitting on stools, gathered about a large bowl, into which each was dipping his or her spoon. The bedroom was a neat little room, containing a high bed, a highly decorated chest of drawers, and was filled with curious bits of the rustic art, including among other things several religious pictures and images. Although everything in this house was very simple and primitive, there was about it an air of self-respecting thrift and neatness that showed that the family which lived here was relatively prosperous and well-to-do. Quite as interesting to me as the houses we visited were the stories that our guide told us about the people that lived in them. I recall among others the story of the young widow who served in the customs office as a clerk and lived in a single room in one corner of the peasant's cottage to which I have just referred. She was a woman, he told me, of the higher classes, as her enterprising manner and intelligent face seemed to indicate; one of the lesser nobility, who had married a Russian official condemned for some fault or other to serve at this obscure post. He had died here, leaving a child with the rickets, and no means. Another time our guide pointed out to us a more imposing building than the others we had seen, though it was built in the same rustic style as the smaller peasants' cottages around it. This house, it seems, had at one time belonged to one of the nobility, but it was now owned by a peasant. This peasant, as I understood, had at one time been a serf and served as a hostler in a wealthy family. From this family he had inherited, as a reward for his long and faithful service, a considerable sum of money, with which he had purchased this place and set himself up, in a small way, as a landlord. I gained, I think, a more intimate view of the peasant life in Poland than I did in any other part of Europe that I visited. For that reason, and because I hoped also that these seeming trivial matters would, perhaps, prove as interesting and suggestive to others as they were to me, I have set down in some detail in this and the preceding chapters the impressions which I gathered there. In the little village of Barany, in Russian Poland, I had reached the point farthest removed, if not in distance at least in its institutions and civilization, from America; but, as I stood on a little elevation of land at the edge of the village and looked across the rolling landscape, I felt that I was merely at the entrance of a world in which, under many outward changes and differences of circumstance, there was much the same life that I had known and lived among the Negro farmers in Alabama. I believed, also, that I would find in that life of the Russian peasants much that would be instructive and helpful to the masses of my own people. I touched, before I completed my European experiences, not only the Austrian, but the Russian and German Polish provinces, but I should have liked to have gone farther, to Warsaw and Posen, and looked deeper into the life and learned more of the remarkable struggle which the Polish people, especially in these two latter provinces, are making to preserve the Polish nationality and improve the conditions of the Polish people. In this connection, and in concluding what I have to say about my observations in Poland, I want to note one singular, and it seems to me suggestive, fact: Of the three sections of the Polish race, German, Russian, and Austrian, there are two in which, according to the information I was able to obtain, the people are oppressed, and one in which they seem to be, if anything, the oppressors. In Russian Poland and in German Poland the Polish are making a desperate struggle to maintain their national existence, but in these two countries the Poles are prosperous. Russian Poland has become in recent years one of the largest manufacturing centres in Europe, and the masses of the Polish people have become prosperous citizens and labourers. In German Poland the Polish peasants have, within the past forty years, become a thrifty farming class. The large estates which were formerly in the hands of the Polish nobility have been, to a very large extent, divided up and sold among a rapidly rising class of small landowners. In other words, what was originally a political movement in these two countries to revive and reëstablish the kingdom of Poland has become a determined effort to lift the level of existence among the masses of the Polish people. In Austrian Poland, on the contrary, where the Austrian Government, in order, perhaps, to hold the political aspirations of the Ruthenians in check, has given them a free hand in the government of the province, they have vastly greater freedom and they have made less progress. I am stating this fact baldly, as it was given to me, and without any attempt at an explanation. Many different factors have no doubt combined to produce this seeming paradox. I will merely add this further observation: Where the Poles are advancing, progress has begun at the bottom, among the peasants; where they have remained stationary the Polish nobility still rules and the masses of the people have not yet been forced to any great extent into the struggle for national existence. The nobles are content with opportunity to play at politics, in something like the old traditional way, and have not learned the necessity of developing the resources that exist in the masses of the people. On the other hand, oppression has not yet aroused the peasants as it has, particularly in Germany, to a united effort to help themselves. I mention this fact not merely because it is interesting, but because I am convinced that any one who studies the movements and progress of the Negroes in America will find much that is interesting by way of comparison in the present situation of the Polish people and that of the American Negroes. My own observation has convinced me, for example, that in those states where the leaders of the Negro have been encouraged to turn their attention to politics the masses of the people have not made the same progress that they have in those states where the leaders, because of racial prejudice or for other reasons, have been compelled to seek their own salvation in educating and building up, in moral and material directions, the more lowly members of their own people. I do not wish to make comparisons, but I think I can safely say, by way of illustration, that in no other part of the United States have the masses of the Negroes been more completely deprived of political privileges than in the state of Mississippi, and yet there is, at the same time, scarcely any part of the country in which the masses of the people have built more schools and churches, or where they have gained a more solid foothold on the soil and in the industries of the state. In calling attention to this fact I do not intend to offer an excuse for depriving any members of my race of any of the privileges to which the law entitles them. I merely wish to emphasize the fact that there is hope for them in other and more fundamental directions than ordinary party politics. More especially I wish to emphasize one fact--namely, that for the Negroes, as for other peoples who are struggling to get on their feet, success comes to those who learn to take advantage of their disadvantages and make their difficulties their opportunities. This is what the Poles in Germany, to a greater extent than any of the other oppressed nationalities in Europe, seem to have done. CHAPTER XVI THE WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE Several times during my stay in London I observed, standing on a corner in one of the most crowded parts of the city, a young woman selling papers. There are a good many women, young and old, who sell papers in London, but any one could see at a glance that this girl was different. There was something in her voice and manner which impressed me, because it seemed to be at once timid, ingratiating, and a little insolent, if that is not too strong a word. This young woman was, as I soon learned, a Suffragette, and she was selling newspapers--"Votes for Women." This was my first meeting with the women insurgents of England. A day or two later, however, I happened to fall in with a number of these Suffragette newspaper-sellers. One of them, in a lively and amusing fashion, was relating the story of the morning's happenings. I could hardly help hearing what she said, and soon became very much interested in the conversation. In fact, I soon found myself so entertained by the bright and witty accounts these young women gave of their adventures that it was not long before I began to enter with them into the spirit of their crusade and to realize for the first time in my life what a glorious and exciting thing it was to be a Suffragette, and, I might add, what a lot of fun these young women were having out of it. It had not occurred to me, when I set out from America to make the acquaintance of the man farthest down, that I should find myself in any way concerned with the woman problem. I had not been in London more than a few days, however, before I discovered that the woman who is at the bottom in London life is just as interesting as the man in the same level of life, and perhaps a more deserving object of study and observation. In a certain way all that I saw of the condition of woman at the bottom connected itself in my mind with the agitation that is going on with regard to woman at the top. Except in England, the women's movement has not, so far as I was able to learn, penetrated to any extent into the lower strata of life, and that strikes me as one of the interesting facts about the movement. It shows to what extent the interests, hopes, and ambitions of modern life have, or rather have not, entered into and become a force in the lives of the people at the bottom. Thus it came about that my interest in all that I saw of workingwomen in Europe was tinged with the thought of what was going to happen when the present agitation for the emancipation and the wider freedom of women generally should reach and influence the women farthest down. In my journey through Europe I was interested, in each of the different countries I visited, in certain definite and characteristic things. In London, for example, it was some of the destructive effects of a highly organized and complicated city life, and the methods which the Government and organized philanthropy have employed to correct them, that attracted my attention. Elsewhere it was chiefly the condition of the agricultural populations that interested me. In all my observation and study, however, I found that the facts which I have learned about the condition of women tended to set themselves off and assume a special importance in my mind. It is for that reason that I propose to give, as well as I am able, a connected account of them at this point. What impressed me particularly in London were the extent and effects of the drinking habit among women of the lower classes. Until I went to London I do not believe that I had more than once or twice in my life seen women standing side by side with the men in order to drink at a public bar. One of the first things I noticed in London was the number of drunken, loafing women that one passed in the streets of the poorer quarters. More than once I ran across these drunken and besotted creatures, with red, blotched faces, which told of years of steady excess--ragged, dirty, and disorderly in their clothing--leaning tipsily against the outside of a gin-parlour or sleeping peacefully on the pavement of an alleyway. In certain parts of London the bar-room seems to be the general meeting place of men and women alike. There, in the evening, neighbours gather and gossip while they drink their black, bitter beer. It is against the law for parents to take their children into the bar-rooms, but I have frequently observed women standing about the door of the tap-room with their babies in their arms, leisurely chatting while they sipped their beer. In such cases they frequently give the lees of their glass to the children to drink. In America we usually think of a bar-room as a sort of men's club, and, if women go into such a place at all, they are let in surreptitiously at the "family entrance." Among the poorer classes in England the bar-room is quite as much the woman's club as it is the man's. The light, the warmth, and the free and friendly gossip of these places make them attractive, too, and I can understand that the people in these densely populated quarters of the city, many of them living in one or two crowded little rooms, should be drawn to these places by the desire for a little human comfort and social intercourse. In this respect the bar-rooms in the poorer parts of London are like the beer halls that one meets on the Continent. There is, however, this difference--that the effect of drink upon the people of England seems to be more destructive than it is in the case of the people on the Continent. It is not that the English people as a whole consume more intoxicating drink than the people elsewhere, because the statistics show that Denmark leads the rest of Europe in the amount of spirits, just as Belgium leads in the amount of beer, consumed per capita of the population. One trouble seems to be that, under the English industrial system, the people take greater chances, they are subject to greater stress and strain, and this leads to irregularities and to excessive drinking. While I was in Vienna I went out one Sunday evening to the Prater, the great public park, which seems to be a sort of combination of Central Park, New York, and Coney Island. In this park one may see all types of Austrian life, from the highest to the lowest. Sunday seems, however, to be the day of the common people, and the night I visited the place there were, in addition to the ordinary labouring people of the city, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of peasant people from the country there. They were mostly young men and women who had evidently come into the city for the Sunday holiday. Beside the sober, modern dress of the city crowds these peasant women, with their high boots, the bright-coloured kerchiefs over their heads, and their wide, flaring, voluminous skirts (something like those of a female circus-rider, only a little longer and not so gauzy), made a strange and picturesque appearance. Meanwhile there was a great flare of music of a certain sort; and a multitude of catchpenny shows, mountebanks, music halls, theatres, merry-go-rounds, and dancing pavilions gave the place the appearance of a stupendous county fair. I do not think that I ever saw anywhere, except at a picnic or a barbecue among the Negroes of the Southern States, people who gave themselves up so frankly and with such entire zest to this simple, physical sort of enjoyment. Everywhere there were eating, drinking, and dancing, but nevertheless I saw no disorder; very few people seemed to be the worse for drinking, and in no instance did I see people who showed, in the disorder of their dress or in the blotched appearance of their faces, the effects of continued excesses, such as one sees in so many parts of London. Individuals were, for the most part, neatly and cleanly dressed; each class of people seemed to have its own place of amusement and its own code of manners, and every one seemed to keep easily and naturally within the restraints which custom prescribed. I do not mean to say that I approve of this way of spending the Sabbath. I simply desire to point out the fact, which others have noticed, that the effect of the drinking habit seems to be quite different in England from what it is in countries on the Continent. I had an opportunity to observe the evil effects of the drinking habit upon the Englishwomen of the lower classes when I visited some of the police courts in the poorer parts of London. When I remarked to a newspaper acquaintance in London that I wanted to see as much as I could, while I was in the city, of the life of the poorer people, he advised me to visit the Worship Street and Thames police stations. The Worship Street station is situated in one of the most crowded parts of London, in close proximity to Bethnal Green and Spitalfields, which have for many years been the homes of the poorer working classes, and especially of those poor people known as houseworkers and casuals, who live in garrets and make paper boxes, artificial flowers, etc., or pick up such odd jobs as they can find. The Thames station is situated a little way from London Dock and not far from the notorious Ratcliffe Highway, which until a few years ago was the roughest and most dangerous part of London. Perhaps I ought to say, at the outset, that two things in regard to the London police courts especially impressed me: first, the order and dignity with which the court is conducted; second, the care with which the judge inquires into all the facts of every case he tries, the anxiety which he shows to secure the rights of the defendant, and the leniency with which those found guilty are treated. In many cases, particularly those in which men or women were charged with drunkenness, the prisoners were allowed to go with little more than a mild and fatherly reprimand. After listening for several hours to the various cases that came up for hearing, I could well understand that the police have sometimes complained that their efforts to put down crime were not supported by the magistrates, who, they say, always take the side of the culprits. In this connection I might mention a statement which I ran across recently of a man who had served at one time as a magistrate in both the Worship Street and Thames police courts. He said that there was a great deal of drunkenness among certain of the factory girls of East London, although they were seldom arrested and brought into court for that offence. He added: "It must not be forgotten that the number of convictions for drunkenness is not by any means a proper measure of insobriety. If a policeman sees a drunken man conducting himself quietly or sleeping in a doorway, he passes on and takes no notice. Those who are convicted belong, as a rule, to the disorderly classes, who, the moment liquor rises to their heads, manifest their natural propensities by obstreperous and riotous conduct. For one drunkard of this order there must be fifty who behave quietly and always manage to reach their homes, however zigzag may be their journey thither." That statement was made a number of years ago, but I am convinced that it holds good now, because I noticed that most of the persons arrested and brought into court, especially women, were bloodstained and badly battered. In the majority of these cases, as I have said, the persons were allowed to go with a reprimand or a small fine. The only case in which, it seemed to me, the judge showed a disposition to be severe was in that of a poor woman who was accused of begging. She was a pale, emaciated, and entirely wretched appearing little woman, and the charge against her was that of going through the streets, leading one of her children by the hand, and asking for alms because she and her children were starving. I learned from talking with the officer who investigated the case that the statement she made was very likely true. He had known her for some time, and she was in a very sad condition. But then, it seems, the law required that in such circumstances she should have gone to the workhouse. I think that there were as many as fifteen or twenty women brought into court on each of the mornings I visited the court. Most of them were arrested for quarrelling and fighting, and nearly all of them showed in their bloated faces and in their disorderly appearance that steady and besotted drunkenness was at the bottom of their trouble. I have found since I returned from Europe that the extent of drunkenness among Englishwomen has frequently been a matter of observation and comment. Richard Grant White, in his volume "England Within and Without," says: I was struck with horror at the besotted condition of so many of the women--women who were bearing children every year, and suckling them, and who seemed to me little better than foul human stills through which the accursed liquor with which they were soaked filtered drop by drop into the little drunkards at their breasts. To these children drunkenness comes unconsciously, like their mother tongue. They cannot remember a time when it was new to them. They come out of the cloudland of infancy with the impression that drunkenness is one of the normal conditions of man, like hunger and sleep. This was written thirty years ago. It is said that conditions have greatly improved in recent years in respect to the amount of drunkenness among the poor of London. Nevertheless, I notice in the last volume of the "Annual Charities Register" for London the statement that inebriety seems to be increasing among women, and that it prevails to such an alarming extent among women in all ranks of society that "national action is becoming essential for the nation's very existence." The statistics of London crime show that, while only about half as many women as men are arrested on the charges of "simple drunkenness" and "drunkenness with aggravations," more than three times as many women as men are arrested on the charge of "habitual" drunkenness. Another thing that impressed me was that the American police courts deal much more severely with women. This is certainly true in the Southern States, where almost all the women brought before the police courts are Negroes. The class of people to whom I have referred represent, as a matter of course, the lowest and most degraded among the working classes. Nevertheless, they represent a very large element in the population, and the very existence of this hopeless class, which constitutes the dregs of life in the large cities, is an indication of the hardship and bitterness of the struggle for existence in the classes above them. I have attempted in what I have already said to indicate the situation of the women at the bottom in the complex life of the largest and, if I may say so, the most civilized city in the world, where women are just now clamouring for all the rights and privileges of men. But there are parts of Europe where, as far as I have been able to learn, women have as yet never heard that they had any rights or interests in life separate and distinct from those of their husbands and children. I have already referred to the increasing number of barefoot women I met as I journeyed southward from Berlin. At first these were for the most part women who worked in the fields. But by the time I reached Vienna I found that it was no uncommon thing to meet barefoot women in the most crowded and fashionable parts of the city. Experience in travelling had taught me that the wearing of shoes is a pretty accurate indication of civilization. The fact that in a large part of southern Europe women who come from the country districts have not yet reached the point where they feel comfortable in shoes is an indication of the backwardness of the people. What interested and surprised me more than the increasing absence of shoes among the countrywomen was the increasing number of women whom I saw engaged in rough and unskilled labour of every kind. I had never seen Negro women doing the sort of work I saw the women of southern Europe doing. When I reached Prague, for example, I noticed a load of coal going through the streets. A man was driving it, but women were standing up behind with shovels. I learned then that it was the custom to employ women to load and unload the coal and carry it into the houses. The driving and the shovelling were done by the man, but the dirtiest and the hardest part of the work was performed by the women. In Vienna I saw hundreds of women at work as helpers in the construction of buildings; they mixed the mortar, loaded it in tubs, placed it on their heads, and carried it up two or three stories to men at work on the walls. The women who engage in this sort of labour wear little round mats on their heads, which support the burdens which they carry. Some of these women are still young, simply grown girls, fresh from the country, but the majority of them looked like old women. Not infrequently I ran across women hauling carts through the streets. Sometimes there would be a dog harnessed to the cart beside them. That, for example, is the way in which the countrywomen sometimes bring their garden truck to market. More often, however, they will be seen bringing their garden products to market in big baskets on their heads or swung over their shoulders. I remember, while I was in Budapest, that, in returning to my hotel rather late one night, I passed through an open square near the market, where there were hundreds of these market women asleep on the sidewalks or in the street. Some of them had thrown down a truss of straw on the pavement under their wagons and gone to sleep there. Others, who had brought their produce into town from the country on their backs, had in many cases merely put their baskets on the sidewalk, lain down, thrown a portion of their skirts up over their heads, and gone to sleep. At this hour the city was still wide awake. From a nearby beer hall there came the sounds of music and occasional shouts of laughter. Meanwhile people were passing and repassing in the street and on the sidewalk, but they paid no more attention to these sleeping women than they would if they had been horses or cows. In other parts of Austria-Hungary I ran across women engaged in various sorts of rough and unskilled labour. While I was in Cracow, in Austrian Poland, I saw women at work in the stone quarries. The men were blasting out the rock, but the women were assisting them in removing the earth and in loading the wagons. At the same time I saw women working in brickyards. The men made the brick, the women acted as helpers. While I was in Cracow one of the most interesting places I visited in which women are employed was a cement factory. The man in charge was kind enough to permit me to go through the works, and explained the process of crushing and burning the stone used in the manufacture of cement. A large part of the rough work in this cement factory is done by girls. The work of loading the kilns is performed by them. Very stolid, heavy, and dirty-looking creatures they were. They had none of the freshness and health that I noticed so frequently among the girls at work in the fields. While I was studying the different kinds of work which women are doing in Austria-Hungary I was reminded of the complaint that I had heard sometimes from women in America, that they were denied their rights in respect to labour, that men in America wanted to keep women in the house, tied down to household duties. In southern Europe, at any rate, there does not seem to be any disposition to keep women tied up in the houses. Apparently they are permitted to do any kind of labour that men are permitted to do; and they do, in fact, perform a great many kinds of labour that we in America think fit only for men. I noticed, moreover, as a rule, that it was only the rough, unskilled labour which was allotted to them. If women worked in the stone quarries, men did the part of the work that required skill. Men used the tools, did the work of blasting the rock. If women worked on the buildings, they did only the roughest and cheapest kinds of work. I did not see any women laying brick, nor did I see anywhere women carpenters or stone-masons. In America Negro women and children are employed very largely at harvest time in the cotton-fields, but I never saw in America, as I have seen in Austria, women employed as section hands on a railway, or digging sewers, hauling coal, carrying the hod, or doing the rough work in brickyards, kilns, and cement factories. In the Southern States of America the lowest form of unskilled labour is that of the men who are employed on what is known as public works--that is to say, the digging of sewers, building of railways, and so forth. I was greatly surprised, while I was in Vienna, to see women engaged side by side with men in digging a sewer. This was such a novel sight to me that I stopped to watch these women handle the pick and shovel. They were, for the most part, young women, of that heavy, stolid type I have referred to. I watched them for some time, and I could not see but that they did their work as rapidly and as easily as the men beside them. After this I came to the conclusion that there was not anything a man could do which a woman could not do also. In Poland the women apparently do most of the work on the farms. Many of the men have gone to Vienna to seek their fortune. Many, also, have gone to the cities, and still others are in the army, because on the Continent every able-bodied man must serve in the army. The result is that more and more of the work that was formerly performed by men is now done by women. One of the most interesting sights I met in Europe was the market in Cracow. This market is a large open square in the very centre of the ancient city. In this square is situated the ancient Cloth Hall, a magnificent old building, which dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was used as a place for the exhibition of merchandise, principally textiles of various kinds. On the four sides of this square are some of the principal buildings of the city, including the City Hall and the Church of the Virgin Mary, from the tall tower of which the hours are sounded by the melodious notes of a bugle. On market days this whole square is crowded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of market women, who come in from the country in the early morning with their produce, remain until it is sold, and then return to their homes. In this market one may see offered for sale anything and everything that the peasant people produce in their homes or on the farms. Among other things for sale I noted the following: geese, chickens, bread, cheese, potatoes, salads, fruits of various sorts, mushrooms, baskets, toys, milk, and butter. What interested me as much as anything was to observe that nearly everything that was sold in this market was carried into the city on the backs of the women. Practically, I think, one may say that the whole city of Cracow, with a population of 90,000 persons, is fed on the provisions that the peasant women carry into the city, some of them travelling as far as ten or fifteen miles daily. One day, while driving in the market of Cracow, our carriage came up with a vigorous young peasant woman who was tramping, barefoot, briskly along the highway with a bundle swung on her shoulder. In this bundle, I noticed, she carried a milk-can. We stopped, and the driver spoke to her in Polish and then translated to my companion, Doctor Park, in German. At first the woman seemed apprehensive and afraid. As soon as we told her we were from America, however, her face lighted up and she seemed very glad to answer all my questions. I learned that she was a widow, the owner of a little farm with two cows. She lived something like fourteen kilometres (about ten miles) from the city, and every day she came into town to dispose of the milk she had from her two cows. She did not walk all the way, but rode half the distance in the train, and walked the other half. She owned a horse, she said, but the horse was at work on the farm, and she could not afford to use him to drive to town. In order to take care of and milk her cows and reach the city early enough to deliver her milk she had to get up very early in the morning, so that she generally got back home about ten or eleven o'clock. Then, in the afternoon, she took care of the house and worked in the garden. This is a pretty good example, I suspect, of the way some of these peasant women work. All day long one sees these women, with their bright-coloured peasant costumes, coming and going through the streets of Cracow with their baskets on their backs. Many of them are barefoot, but most of them wear very high leather boots, which differ from those I have seen worn by peasant women in other parts of Austria and Hungary in the fact that they have very small heels. I had an opportunity to see a great many types of women in the course of my journey across Europe, but I saw none who looked so handsome, fresh, and vigorous as these Polish peasant women. It is said of the Polish women, as it is said of the women of the Slavic races generally, that they are still living in the mental and physical slavery of former ages. Probably very few of them have ever heard of women's rights. But, if that is true, it simply shows how very little connection such abstract words have with the condition, welfare, and happiness of the people who enjoy the freedom and independence of country life. At any rate, I venture to say that there are very few women, even in the higher ranks of labouring women in England, whose condition in life compares with that of these vigorous, wholesome, and healthy peasant women. How can work in the stifling atmosphere of a factory or in some crowded city garret compare with the life which these women lead, working in the fields and living in the free and open country? The emigration to America has left an enormous surplus of women in Europe. In England, for instance, the women stand in the proportion of sixteen to fifteen to the men. In some parts of Italy there are cities, it is said, where all the able-bodied men have left the country and gone to America. The changes brought by emigration have not, on the whole, it seems to me, affected the life of women favourably. But the same thing is true with regard to the changes brought about by the growth of cities and the use of machinery. Men have profited by the use of machinery more than women. The machines have taken away from the women the occupations they had in the homes, and this has driven them to take up other forms of labour, of more or less temporary character, in which they are overworked and underpaid. Everywhere we find the women in Europe either doing the obsolete things or performing some form of unskilled labour. For example, there are still one hundred thousand people, mostly women, in East London, it is said, who are engaged in home industries--in other words, sweating their lives away in crowded garrets trying to compete with machinery and organization in the making of clothes or artificial flowers, and in other kinds of work of this same general description. The movement for women's suffrage in England, which began in the upper classes among the women of the West End, has got down, to some extent, to the lower levels among the women who work with the hands. Women's suffrage meetings have been held, I have learned, in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. But I do not believe that voting alone will improve the condition of workingwomen. There must be a new distribution of the occupations. Too many women in Europe are performing a kind of labour for which they are not naturally fitted and for which they have had no special training. There are too many women in the ranks of unskilled labour. My own conviction is that what the workingwomen of Europe need most is a kind of education that will lift a larger number of them into the ranks of skilled labour--that will teach them to do something, and to do that something well. The Negro women in America have a great advantage in this respect. They are everywhere admitted to the same schools to which the men are admitted. All the Negro colleges are crowded with women. They are admitted to the industrial schools and to training in the different trades on the same terms as men. One of the chief practical results of the agitation for the suffrage in Europe will be, I imagine, to turn the attention of the women in the upper classes to the needs of the women in the lower classes. In Europe there is much work for women among their own sex, for, as I have said elsewhere, in Europe the man farthest down is woman. CHAPTER XVII THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK In Europe the man whose situation most nearly corresponds to that of the Negro in the Southern States is the peasant. I had seen pictures of peasants before I went to Europe, but I confess that I was very hazy as to what a peasant was. I knew that he was a small farmer, like the majority of the Negro farmers in the Southern States, and that, like the Negro farmer again, he had in most cases descended from a class that had at one time been held in some sort of subjection to the large landowners, the difference being that, whereas the peasant had been a serf, the Negro farmer had been a slave. In regard to the present position of the peasant in the life about him, in regard to his manner of living, his opportunities and ambitions, I had but the vaguest sort of an idea. The pictures which I had seen were not reassuring in this regard. The picture which made the deepest impression upon my mind was that of a heavy, stupid, half-human looking creature, standing in the midst of a desolate field. The mud and the clay were clinging to him and he was leaning on a great, heavy, wrought-iron hoe, such as were formerly used by the Negro slaves. This picture represented about my idea of a peasant. In the course of my journey through Italy and through Austria-Hungary I saw a number of individuals who reminded me of this and other pictures of peasants that I can recall. I saw, as I have already said, peasant women sleeping, like tired animals, in the city streets; I saw others living in a single room with their cattle; at one time I entered a little cottage and saw the whole family eating out of a single bowl. In Sicily I found peasants living in a condition of dirt, poverty, and squalor almost beyond description. But everywhere I found among these people, even the lowest, individuals who, when I had an opportunity to talk with them, invariably displayed an amount of shrewd, practical wisdom, kindly good nature, and common sense that reminded me of some of the old Negro farmers with whom I am acquainted at home. It is very curious what a difference it makes in the impression that a man makes upon you if you stop and shake hands with him, instead of merely squinting at him critically in order to take a cold sociological inventory of his character and condition. Some of the pleasantest recollections I have of Europe are the talks I had, through an interpreter, of course, with some of these same ignorant but hard-working, sometimes barefoot, but always kindly peasants. The result was that long before I had completed my journey I had ceased to take some of the pictures of peasants I had seen literally. I discovered that the artist whose pictures had made so deep an impression upon me had sought to compress into the figure of a single individual the misery and wretchedness of a whole class; that he had tried, also, to bring to the surface and make visible in his picture all the hardships and the degradation which the casual observer does not see, perhaps does not want to see. It was not until I reached Denmark, however, that I began to feel that I had really begun to know the European peasant, because it was not until I reached that country that I saw what the possibilities of the peasant were. Before this I had seen a man who was struggling up under the weight of ignorance and the remains of an ancient oppression. In Denmark, however, this man has come to his own. Peasants already own a majority of the land. Three fourths of the farms are in their hands and the number of small farms is steadily increasing. In Denmark the peasant, as a certain gentleman whom I met there observed, is not only free, but he rules. The peasant is the leader in everything that relates to the progress of agriculture. The products of the coöperative dairies, the coöperative egg-collecting and pork-packing societies, organized and controlled by the peasants, bring in the markets of the world higher prices than similar products from any other country in Europe. The peasants are now the controlling influence in the Danish Parliament. When I was there half the members of the ministry in power were peasants, and half the members of the cabinet were either peasants or peasants' sons. Let me add that there is a very close connection between the price of the peasants' butter and the influence which the peasants exercise in politics. For a good many years, up to about 1901, I believe, the most influential party in Denmark was that represented by the large landowners. Forty years ago the peasants had all the political rights they now possess, but they did not count for much in political matters. At that time there were two kinds of butter in Denmark: there was the butter made in the creameries of the large landowners, called gentlemen's estates, and there was the butter from the small farmers. In other words, there was "gentleman's butter" and "peasant's butter." The peasant butter, however, was only worth in the market about one half as much as that from the gentleman's estate. When the price of peasant butter began to rise, however, the political situation began to change. Year by year the number of coöperative dairies increased and, year by year, the number of peasant farmers in parliament multiplied. In other words, the Danish peasant has become a power in Danish politics because he first became a leader in the industrial development of the country. Denmark is not only very small, about one third the size of Alabama, but it is not even especially fertile. It is an extremely level country, without hills, valleys, or running streams worth speaking of. I was told that the highest point in Denmark, which is called "Heaven's Hill," is only about 550 feet above sea level--that is to say about half as high as the tower of the Metropolitan Building in New York. As a result of this a large part of the country is windswept and, in northern Jutland, where the Danish peninsula thrusts a thin streak of land up into the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea, there were, forty years ago, 3,300 square miles of heather where not even a tree would grow. Since that time, by an elaborate process of physical and chemical manipulation of the soil, all but a thousand square miles have been reclaimed. The result is that where once only lonely shepherds wandered, "knitting stockings," as Jacob Riis says, "to pay the taxes," there are now flourishing little cities. Another disadvantage which Denmark suffers has its origin in the fact that more than one third of the country consists of islands, of which there are no less than forty-four. In going from Copenhagen to Hamburg the train on which I travelled, in crossing from one island to another and from there to the peninsula, was twice compelled to make the passage by means of a ferry, and at one of these passages we were on the boat for about an hour and a half. Riding or driving through Denmark to-day is like riding through Illinois or any other of the farming regions of the Middle Western States, with the exception that the fields are smaller and the number of men, cattle, and homesteads is much larger than one will see in any part of the United States. I have heard travellers through Denmark express regret because with the progress of the country, the quaint peasant costumes and the other characteristics of the primitive life of the peasant communities, which one may still see in other parts of Europe, have disappeared. One of my fellow-travellers tried to make me believe that the peasants in Europe were very much happier in the quiet, simple life of these small and isolated farming communities, each with its own picturesque costumes, its interesting local traditions, and its curious superstitions. This seems to be the view of a good many tourists. After what I have seen in Europe I have come to the conclusion, however, that the people and the places that are the most interesting to look at are not always the happiest and most contented. On the contrary, I have found that the places in which the life of the peasants is most interesting to tourists are usually the places that the peasants are leaving in the largest numbers. Emigration to America is making a large part of Europe commonplace, but it is making a better place to live in. The reorganization of agricultural life in Denmark has come about in other ways than by emigration, but it has left very little of the picturesque peasant life, and most of what remains is now kept in museums. I noticed in going through the country, however, two types of farm buildings which seem to have survived from an earlier time. One of these consisted of a long, low building, one end of which was a barn and the other a dwelling. The other type of building was of much the same shape, except that it formed one side of a court, the other two sides of which were enclosed by barns and stables. Upon inquiry I learned that the first type of dwelling belonged to a man who was called a _husmaend_, or houseman; in other words, a small farmer whose property consisted of his house, with a very small strip of land around it. The other type of dwelling belonged to a man who was called a _gaardmaend_, or yardman, because he owned enough land to have a _gaarde_, or yard. In Denmark farmers are still generally divided into _huse_ and _gaarde_; all farmers owning less than twenty-four acres are called "housemen," and all having more than that are called "yardmen," no matter how their buildings are constructed. As a matter of fact, it is not so long since conditions in Denmark were just about as primitive as they are now in some other parts of Europe. Jacob Riis, whom I learned, while I was in Denmark, is just as widely known and admired in Denmark as he is in the United States, says that he can remember when conditions were quite different among the homes of the people. "For example," he said, "I recall the time when in every peasant's family it was the custom for all to sit down and eat out of the same bowl in the centre of the table and then, after the meal was finished, each would wipe the spoon with which he had dipped into the common bowl, and without any further ceremony tuck it away on a little shelf over his head. "To-day," he added, "Danish farmers wash their pigs. The udders of the cows are washed with a disinfecting fluid before milking. When a man goes to milk he puts on a clean white suit." Not only is this true, but the Danish farmer grooms his cows, and blankets them when it is cold. He does this not only because it is good for the cow, but because it makes a saving in the feed. Although Denmark has more cattle in proportion to the number of inhabitants than any other part of Europe, I noticed very few pastures. On the contrary, as I passed through the country I observed long rows of tethered cattle, feeding from the green crops. As rapidly as the cows have consumed all the green fodder, usually four or five times a day, a man comes along and moves the stakes forward so that the cattle advance in orderly way, mowing down the crops in sections. Water is brought to the cows in a cart and they are milked three times a day. All of this requires a large increase of labour as well as constant study, care, and attention. In other words, the Danish peasant has become a scientific farmer. One difference between the farmer in Denmark and in other countries is that, whereas the ordinary farmer raises his crops and ships them to the market to be sold, the Danish farmer sells nothing but the manufactured product, and as far as possible he sells it direct to the consumer. For example, until about 1880 Denmark was still a grain exporting country; in recent years, however, it has become a grain importing country. Grain and fodder of various kinds to the value of something like twenty-five millions of dollars are now annually purchased by Danish farmers in Russia and neighbouring countries. The agricultural products thus imported are fed to the cattle, swine, and chickens and thus converted into butter, pork, and eggs. The butter is manufactured in a coöperative dairy; the pork is slaughtered in a coöperative pork-packing house; the eggs are collected and packed by a coöperative egg-collecting association. Then they are either sold direct, or are turned over to a central coöperative selling association, which disposes of the most of them in England. The annual exports to England amount to nearly $90,000,000 a year, of which $51,000,000 is for butter, nearly $30,000,000 for bacon, and the remainder for eggs. As a gentleman whom I met in Denmark put it: "If Denmark, like ancient Gaul, were divided into three parts, one of these would be butter, another pork, and the third eggs." It is from these things that the country, in the main, gets its living. There are in Denmark, as elsewhere, railways, newspapers, telephones, merchants, preachers, teachers, and all the other accessories of a high civilization, but they are all supported from the sale of butter, pork, and eggs, to which ought to be added cattle, for Denmark still exports a considerable amount of beef and live cattle. The export of live cattle has, however, fallen from about $21,000,000 a year in 1880 to about $7,000,000, but in the same period the excess of butter, bacon, and eggs has risen from something like $7,000,000 to over $70,000,000. Meanwhile the raw production of the Danish farms has increased 50 per cent. and more, the difference being that, instead of producing grains for the manufacture of flour and meal, the Danish farmers have turned their attention to producing root crops to feed their cattle. This means that the peasant in Denmark is not merely a scientific farmer, as I have already suggested, but he is at the same time, in a small way, a business man. The success of the peasant farmer in Denmark is, as I have already suggested, due to a very large extent to the coöperative societies which manufacture and sell his farm products. Through the medium of these the Danish peasant has become a business man--I might almost say, a capitalist. I do not know how much money is invested in these different coöperative dairies, egg-collecting and pork-packing concerns, but all Denmark is dotted with them, and the total amount of money invested in them must be considerable. There are, for example, 1,157 coöperative dairies, with a membership of 157,000. The number of coöperative pork-packing societies is 34, with a membership of 95,000. As soon as I found to what extent the peasants were manufacturing and selling their own products, I naturally wanted to know how they had succeeded in getting the capital to carry on these large enterprises, because in the part of the country from which I hail the average farmer not only has no money to put into any sort of business outside his farm, but has to borrow money, frequently at a high rate of interest, to carry on his farming operations. I found that when the farmers in Denmark began establishing coöperative dairies some of the well-to-do farmers came together and signed a contract to send all their milk which they were not able to use at home to the community dairy. Then they borrowed money on their land to raise the money to begin operations. In borrowing this money they bound themselves "jointly and severally," as the legal phrase is, to secure the payments of the money borrowed--that is, each man became individually responsible for the whole loan. This gave the bank which made the loan a much better security than if each individual had secured a loan on his own responsibility, and in this way it was possible to provide the capital needed at a very moderate rate of interest. When the farmer brought his milk to the common dairy he was paid a price for it a little less than the average market price. This added something to the working capital. At the end of the year a portion of the earnings of the dairy were set aside to pay interest charges, another portion was used to pay off the loan, and the remainder was divided in profits among the members of the association, each receiving an amount proportionate to the milk he had contributed. In this way the farmer in the course of some years found himself with a sum of money, equal to his individual share, invested in a paying enterprise that was every year increasing in value. In the meanwhile he had received more for his milk than if he had sold it in the ordinary way. At the same time, out of the annual profits he received from his share in the dairy, he had, perhaps, been able to put some money in the savings bank. The savings banks have always been popular and have played a much more important part in the life of the people than they have elsewhere. At the present time the average amount of deposits in proportion to the number of inhabitants is larger than is true of any other country in the world. For example, the average amount of deposits in the Danish savings banks is $77.88; in England $20.62; in the United States $31.22. At the same time the number of depositors in Danish savings banks is considerably larger than in other countries. For example, there are fifty-one depositors for every hundred persons in Denmark. In England the corresponding number is twenty-seven. The most remarkable thing about the Danish savings banks, however, is that 78 per cent.--nearly four fifths--of them are located in the rural districts. That is one reason that Danish farmers have not found it difficult to secure the capital they needed to organize and carry on their coöperative enterprises. With the money which they had saved and put in the savings bank from the earnings in the coöperative dairies they were able to borrow money with which to start their coöperative slaughterhouses and egg-collecting societies. But these are only a few of the different types of coöperative organizations. A Danish peasant may be a member of a society for the purchase of tools, implements, and other necessaries, of which there are fifteen in Denmark, with a membership numbering between sixty and seventy thousand. He may belong to a society for exporting cattle, for collecting and exporting eggs, for horse breeding, for cattle, sheep, and pig breeding. Finally he may belong to what are known as "control" societies, organized for the purpose of keeping account, by means of careful registration, of the milk yield of each cow belonging to a member of the society, and of the butter-fat in the milk, and the relation between the milk yield and the fodder consumed. The value of these societies is found in the fact that the annual yield per cow in the case of members of the control society was 67,760 pounds, while in the case of cows owned outside of the society the amount was 58,520 pounds. Through the medium of these different societies, some of which are purely commercial, while others exist for the purpose of improving the methods and technique of agriculture, the farming industry has become thoroughly organized. First of all, there has been a great saving in cost of handling and selling farm products. Not many years ago the Danish farmer used to send his butter to England by way of Hamburg, and there were at that time, I have been told, no less than six middlemen who came between the farmer and his customer. Now the coöperative manufacturing and selling societies sell a large part of their products direct to the coöperative purchasing societies in England. In this way the farmer and his customer, the producer and distributer, are brought together again, not exactly in the way in which they still come together in some of the old-fashioned market places in Europe, but still in a way to benefit both classes. For one thing, as a result of this organization of the farming industry, farming methods and the whole technical side of the industry have been greatly benefited. A striking evidence of this fact is found in the following statistics showing the rapid increase in the annual yield of milk per cow in the period from 1898 to 1908: Year Annual yield per cow in pounds 1898 4,480 1901 4,884 1904 5,335 1907 5,689 1908 5,874 I might add, as showing the extent to which Danish agriculture has been organized in the way I have described, that now Denmark produces about 253,000,000 pounds of butter every year. Of this amount 220,000,000 pounds come from the coöperative dairies. Behind all other organizations which have served to increase efficiency of the farming population are the schools, particularly the rural high schools and the agricultural schools. It is generally agreed in Denmark that the coöperative organizations which have done so much for the farming population of that country could not exist if the rural high schools had not prepared the way for them. I have described at some length, in another place, my impressions of the Danish schools, and shall not attempt to repeat here what I have said elsewhere.[5] I would like to emphasize, however, certain peculiarities about these schools that have particularly impressed me. In the first place, the schools that I visited, and, as I understand, practically all the schools that have been erected for the benefit of the rural population, are located either in the neighbourhood of the small towns or in the open country. In other words, they are close to the land and the people they are designed to help. In the second place, and this is just as true of the rural high schools, where almost no technical training is attempted, as it is of the agricultural schools, the courses have been especially worked out, after years of experiment and study, to fit the needs of the people for whom they are intended. There is no attempt to import into these schools the learning or style or methods of the city high schools or colleges. There is in fact, so far as I know, no school in existence that corresponds to or of which the Danish rural high school is in any way a copy. In the third place, all these schools are for older pupils. The ages of the students range from sixteen to twenty-four years, and, in addition to the regular courses, conferences and short courses for the older people have been established, as is the case with many of the Negro industrial schools in the South. In fact, everything possible is done to wed the work in the school to the life and work on the land. Finally, and this seems to me quite as important as anything else, these schools, like the coöperative societies to which I have referred, have grown up as the result of private initiative. The high schools had their origin in a popular movement begun more than fifty years ago by Nicola Frederik Severin Grundvig, a great religious reformer, who is sometimes referred to as the Luther of Denmark. Denmark was at this time almost in despair. England in the course of the war with Napoleon had destroyed the Danish fleet, and later, in 1864, Germany had taken from Denmark two of her best provinces and one third of her territory. Grundvig believed that the work of reconstructing and regenerating Denmark must begin at the bottom. He preached the doctrine that what Denmark had lost without she must regain within, and, with this motto, he set to work to develop the neglected resources of the country--namely, those which were in the people themselves. The work begun by Grundvig has been taken up and carried on in the same spirit by those who have followed him. The results of this movement show themselves in every department of life in Denmark--in the rapid increase of Danish exports and in the healthy democratic spirit of the whole Danish population. The Danish people are probably the best educated and best informed people in Europe. This is not simply my impression; it is that of more experienced travellers than myself. On my way from Copenhagen to London I fell in with an English gentleman who was just returning from five weeks of study and observation of farming conditions in Denmark. From him I was able to obtain a great many interesting details which confirmed my own impressions. He told me, I remember, that he had noticed in the cottage of a peasant, a man who did not farm more than four or five acres of land, copies of at least four periodicals to which he was a regular subscriber. "More than that," he continued, "the farmers' journals which I saw in the peasants' houses I visited seemed to me remarkably technical and literary." This remark struck me, because it had never occurred to me that any of the agricultural papers I had seen in America could be described as "technical and literary." If they were I am afraid the farmers, at least the farmers in my part of the country, would not read them. As illustrating the general intelligence of the farming population, this same gentleman told me that he had at one time called upon a creamery manager in a remote district whose salary, in addition to his house, which was provided him, was about twenty-four shillings, or six dollars, a week. In his house he found a recent copy of the _Studio_, a well-known English art publication. On his book shelves, in addition to the ordinary publications of a dairy expert, he had caught sight of volumes in English, French, German, and Swedish. I was impressed with the fact that almost every one I met in Denmark seemed to be able to speak at least three languages--namely, German, English, and Danish. I had been greatly surprised on the Sunday night of my arrival to meet an audience of fully 3,000 persons and find that at least the majority of those present were able to understand my speech. In fact I had not spoken ten minutes when I found myself talking as naturally and as easily to this Danish audience as if I was addressing a similar number of people in America. The people even flattered me by laughing at my jokes, and in the right places. I am convinced that any one who can understand an American joke, can understand almost anything in the English language. There is a saying to the effect that if you see a large building in Germany you may know that it is a military barracks, in England it is a factory, in Denmark a school. I never saw such healthy, happy, robust school children as I did in Denmark, and, with all respect to Danish agriculture, I am convinced that the best crop that Denmark raises is its children. While other countries have sought to increase the national wealth and welfare by developing the material resources, Denmark, having neither coal, iron, oil, nor any other mineral, nothing but the land, has increased not only the national wealth but the national comfort and happiness by improving her people. While other nations have begun the work of education and, I was going to say, civilization, at the top, Denmark has begun at the bottom. In doing this Denmark has demonstrated that it pays to educate the man farthest down. FOOTNOTE: [5] "What I Learned About Education in Denmark," chapter XI. "My Larger Education," Doubleday, Page & Company, 1911. CHAPTER XVIII RECONSTRUCTING THE LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON At the end of my long journey across Europe I returned to London. I had seen, during my visit to Denmark, some results of the reorganization of country life. In this chapter I want to tell something of what I saw and learned in London of the efforts to reconstruct the life of the Underman in the more complex conditions of a great city. In the course of my travels through various parts of the United States, in the effort to arouse public interest in the work we are trying to do for the Negro at Tuskegee, I have frequently met persons who have inquired of me, with some anxiety, as to what, in my opinion, could be done for the city Negroes, especially that class which is entering in considerable numbers every year into the life of the larger cities in the Northern and Southern States. The people who asked this question assumed, apparently because the great majority of the Negro population lives on the plantations and in the small towns of the South, that the work of a school like the Tuskegee Institute, which is located in the centre of a large Negro farming population, must be confined to the rural Negro and the South. In reply to these inquiries I have sometimes tried to point out that a good many of the problems of the city have their sources in the country and that, perhaps, the best way to better the situation of the city Negro is to improve the condition of the masses of the race in the country. To do this, I explained, would be to attack the evil at its root, since if country life were made more attractive, the flow of population to the city would largely cease. What is true in this respect of the masses of the Negroes in America is equally true, as I discovered, of similar classes in Europe. Any one who will take the trouble to look into the cause of European emigration will certainly be struck with the fact that the conditions of agriculture in Europe have had a marked effect on the growth and character of American cities. This fact suggests the close connection between country conditions and the city problem, but there is still another side to the matter. The thing that was mainly impressed upon me by my observation of the lower strata of London life and the efforts that have been made to improve it was this: That it is a great deal simpler and, in the long run, a great deal cheaper to build up and develop a people who have grown up in the wholesome air of the open country than it is to regenerate a people who have lived all or most of their lives in the fetid atmosphere of a city slum. In other words, it is easier to deal with people who are physically and morally sound than with people who, by reason of their unhealthy and immoral surroundings, have become demoralized and degenerate. The first is a problem of education; the second, one of reconstruction and regeneration. I think the thing that helped me most to realize the extent and the difficulty of this work of regeneration in London was the knowledge that I gained while there of the multitude of institutions and agencies, of various kinds, which are engaged in this work. I had been impressed, during my visits to Whitechapel and other portions of the East End of London, with the number of shelters, homes, refuges, and missions of all kinds which I saw advertised as I passed along Whitechapel Road. When I inquired of Rev. John Harris, organizing secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, who had at one time himself been engaged in mission work in that part of the city, whether it were possible to obtain a complete list of all the different types of charities and institutions of social betterment in London, he placed in my hands a volume of nearly seven hundred pages devoted entirely to the classification and description of the various charities, most of which were located in London. This book, which was called the "Annual Charities Register and Digest," I have read and studied with the greatest interest. I confess that I was amazed as well at the number and variety of the different charities as at the amount of time, energy, and money necessary to keep up and maintain them. In another volume, "London Statistics," published by the London County Council, I found the facts about London charities concisely summarized. From these books I learned that there are something like 2,035 charitable institutions of various kinds in London alone. Perhaps I can best give some idea of the character of these institutions, a number of which date back to the eighteenth century and perhaps to still earlier periods, by giving some details from these two volumes. There are in London, for example, 112 institutions for the blind, and 143 institutions which give medical aid in one form or another, for which the total amount of money expended is about five million seven hundred thousand dollars annually. There are 214 institutions for the care of convalescents, for which the annual expenditure amounts to nearly a million and three quarters; 220 homes for children and training homes for servants, which are maintained at an annual expense of over four million dollars annually; 257 institutions for "general and specific relief," which are supported at an annual cost of nearly six millions. There are, besides these, 159 institutions for "penitents," which receive an income of a million per year; 156 institutions for social and physical improvement, which include a multitude of the most varied sorts, as, for example, educational, temperance, and Christian associations, social settlements, boys' brigades, societies for the improvement of dwellings, for the improvement of national health, for suppression of the white slave traffic, etc. These 156 institutions are maintained at an expense of something over three million and a half dollars per year. Finally, there are 47 so-called "spiritual" institutions which are engaged in propagating in various ways and in various forms a knowledge of the Bible and a belief in the Christian religion. Although the spiritual associations represent less than one seventeenth of the total number of charitable organizations, nearly one fourth of the total amount of the charities is expended in maintaining them. According to the best estimate that can be made, the amount of money thus expended is not less than fifty millions annually. This does not include, either, the sums collected and expended by the different churches--the Congregational, Catholic, and Established churches. In two dioceses of the Church of England--namely, those of London and Southwark--the sums raised in this way amounted to more than six hundred thousand dollars. My attention was especially attracted by the number of shelters and refuges where homeless men, women, and children are given temporary aid of one kind and another. In addition to eight shelters maintained by the Salvation Army in different parts of the city, where homeless men and women are able to obtain a bed and something to eat, there is the asylum for the houseless poor, which claims to have given nights' lodging during the winter months to 80,000; the Free Shelter, in Ratcliffe Street East, which has given nights' lodging to 125,000; the Ham Yard Soup Kitchen and Hospice, which in 1908-1909 cared for 343 for an average of sixteen nights; the Providence Right Refuge and Home, with reports of nearly 2,100 lodgings, suppers, and breakfasts every week. In addition to these there is a considerable number of refuges and shelters for various classes of persons--for sailors, soldiers, Jews, Asiatics, and Africans; for ballet girls; "ladies who, on account of their conversion to the Catholic faith, are obliged to leave their homes or situations"; for "respectable female servants"; homeless boys and girls, governesses; "Protestant servants while they are seeking employment in the families of the nobility," and for "young women employed in hotels and West End clubs." These are but a few of the many different homes, lodging houses, and shelters with which the city is provided. In most cases it is stated in connection with these institutions that vagrants are rigidly excluded, and the purpose of most of them seems to be to keep respectable but unfortunate people from going to the public workhouses. In addition to the fifty millions and more spent in charity, nearly twenty millions more is expended by the different boroughs of London for relief to the poor in institutions and in homes. Altogether, it costs something like seventy million dollars annually to provide for the poor and unfortunate of the city. In the Southern States, where nine of the ten million Negroes in the United States make their homes, practically nothing is spent in charity upon the Negro. In two or three states reformatories have been established, so that Negro children arrested for petty crimes may not be sent to the chain gangs and confined with older and more hardened criminals employed in the mines and elsewhere. At the last session of the state legislature of Alabama a bill was passed providing that the state should take over and support a reformatory for coloured children which had been established and supported by the Negro women of the state. In several of the larger Southern cities Young Men's Christian Associations have been started which are supported by charity, and in certain instances hospitals have been established. The only purpose for which the Negro has asked or received philanthropic aid has been for the support of education. The people of the United States have been generous in their contributions to Negro education. In spite of this fact the income of all the Negro colleges, industrial schools, and other institutions of so-called higher education in the South is not one fiftieth part of what is expended every year in London in charity and relief, not for the purpose of education, but merely to rescue from worse disaster the stranded, the outcasts, and those who are already lost.[6] I find, as most people do, I have no doubt, that it is very hard to realize the significance of a fact that is stated in mere abstract figures. It is only after I have translated these abstractions into terms of my own experience that I am able to grasp them. That must be my excuse here for what may seem a rather far-fetched comparison. The Negro population of the Southern States is at present about nine million. In other words, the number of Negroes in the South is just about one fourth larger than the population of Greater London, which is something over seven million. Four fifths of this Southern Negro population still live on the plantations and in the small towns. From time to time thoughtful and interested persons--some of them, by the way, Englishmen--have visited the Southern States, talked with the white people and looked at the Negroes. Then they have gone back and written despondently, sometimes pessimistically, about the Negro problem. I wish some of these writers might study the situation of the races in the South long enough to determine what it would be possible to do there, not with seventy nor even fifty, but with one million dollars a year, provided that money were used, not for the purpose of feeding, sheltering, or protecting the Negro population, for which it is not needed, but in educating them; in building up the public schools in the country districts; in providing a system of high schools, industrial and agricultural schools, such as exists, for example, in Denmark; in extending the demonstration farming to all the people on the land, and in encouraging the small colleges to adapt their teaching to the actual needs of the people so that in the course of time Negro education in the South could be gradually organized and coördinated into a single coherent system. Perhaps I can illustrate in a broad way the difference in the situation of the poor man in the complex life of a great city like London and that of a similar class in the simpler conditions of a comparatively rural community, by a further comparison. The state of Alabama is nearly as large as England and Wales combined. It had, in 1900, a little more than one third the present population of what is known as "Administrative London," which means a city of 4,720,729. Of this population there were, on an average, 139,916 paupers. In Alabama, with a population in 1900 of 1,828,696, there were, in 1905, 771 paupers in almshouses, of whom 414 were white and 357 Negroes. In other words, while in London there were nearly three paupers for every one thousand of the population, in Alabama there were a little more than four paupers for every ten thousand of the population. This does not include the persons confined in asylums or those who are assisted in their homes. In Alabama the number of paupers cared for in this way is very small. As compared with the 2,000 charitable institutions in London, there were twenty such institutions in Alabama in 1904. Three of these, a hospital, an old folks' home and orphan asylum, and a school for the deaf and blind were for Negroes. I have quoted these figures to show the contrast between conditions in a large city and a comparatively rural community. But Alabama contains three cities of considerable size, which may account for a fairly large number of its paupers, so that I suspect that if the comparison were strictly carried out it would be found that pauperism is a good deal more of a city disease than it seems. The institutions in London to which I have referred, whether managed by private philanthropy or by the public, are mainly maintained for the sake of those who have already fallen in the struggle for existence. They are for the sick and wounded, so to speak. In recent years a movement has been steadily gaining ground which seeks to get at the source of this city disease, and by improving the conditions of city life do away to some extent with the causes of it. The work of reorganizing the life of the poorer classes in London seems to have made a beginning some fifty or sixty years ago. The condition of the working population at that time has been described in the following words by Mr. Sidney Webb, who has made a profound study of the condition of the labouring classes in London: Two thirds of the whole child population was growing up not only practically without schooling or religious influences of any kind, but also indescribably brutal and immoral; living amid the filth of vilely overcrowded courts, unprovided with water supply or sanitary conveniences, existing always at the lowest level of physical health, and constantly decimated by disease; incessantly under temptation by the flaring gin palaces which alone relieve the monotony of the mean streets to which they were doomed; graduating almost inevitably into vice and crime amid the now incredible street life of an unpoliced metropolis.[7] The first thing attempted was to provide public education for those who were not able to attend private schools, and, as one writer says, "rescue the children of the abyss." It was in this rescue work that England's public schools had their origin. These schools, begun in this way, steadily gained and broadened until now London has an elaborate system of continuation, trade and technical schools, culminating in the reorganized University of London. This system is by no means perfected; it still is in process, but it gives the outlines of a broad and generous educational plan, equal in conception and organization at least to the needs of the largest city in the world. London already has, for example, 327 night schools, with 127,130 pupils, in which young men and women who have left the day schools may continue their studies at night or perfect themselves in some branch of their trade. Cooking, household management, laundry work, and iron work are taught in more than half the elementary schools of London. The London County Council supports fourteen schools which give instruction in the arts and crafts, and in the trades. In addition, the Government lends its aid to something like sixty-one other institutions, with an attendance of over 6,000, in which technical and trade education of some kind is given. A number of these schools, like the Shoreditch Technical Institute and the Brixton School of Building, are devoted to a single trade or group of allied trades. In the Shoreditch Institute boys are fitted for the furniture trade. Half their time is given to academic studies and half to work in the trade. At the Brixton School instruction is given in bricklaying and masonry, plumbing, painting, architecture, building, and surveying. In other schools pupils are given instruction in photo-engraving and lithographing, in fine needlework and engraving, bookbinding, and in many other crafts requiring a high grade of intelligence and skill. With the growth of these schools the idea has been gaining ground that it is not sufficient to rescue those who, through misfortune or disease, are unable to support themselves; that on the contrary, instead of waiting until an individual has actually fallen a victim to what I have called the "city disease," measures of prevention be taken against pauperism as against other diseases. Along with this changed point of view has come the insight that the efficiency of the nation as a whole depends upon its ability to make the most of the capacities of the whole population. "Indeed," as Mr. Webb, the writer I have already quoted, says, "we now see with painful clearness that we have in the long run, for the maintenance of our preëminent industrial position in the world, nothing to depend on except the brains of our people. Public education has insensibly, therefore, come to be regarded, not as a matter of philanthropy, undertaken for the sake of the children benefited, but, as a matter of national concern, undertaken in the interest of the community as a whole." After the schools, the next direction in which an attempt was made to improve the condition of the poor in London was in the matter of housing. The Board of Works first and the London County Council afterward began some forty years ago buying vast areas in the crowded parts of London, clearing them of the disreputable buildings, and then offering them for sale again to persons who would agree to erect on them sanitary dwellings for the working classes. The Metropolitan Board of Works, for example, purchased forty-two acres in different parts of the city for clearance. After the buildings had been torn down and the sites resold, it was estimated that the net cost would be about £1,320,619 or about $6,603,395. There lived on this area 22,872 persons, so that the net cost of cleaning up this area and moving the population into better quarters was something like $281 for each individual inhabitant. Then the London County Council took up the work and it decided to begin building its own houses. Finally, a law was passed that the buildings so created should rent for more than the rents prevailing in the district and should pay the cost of maintenance, 3 per cent. on the capital invested. On these terms the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County Council have cleared in various parts of Central London an area of nearly eighty-six acres, containing a population of 41,584, at a cost which averages about $250 per person. On the property thus acquired the London County Council had in 1907 erected 8,223 tenements with 22,331 rooms. At this time, 1907, there were projected dwellings containing a total of 28,000 rooms, which, with those already erected, make a total of over 50,000 rooms. These tenements rent on an average of about 70 cents a week per room, so that the city of Greater London has an annual income of nearly $760,000 from its rents alone, on which the city earned in 1901, after all charges were paid, a profit of $10,000. At first the County Council merely sought to replace the buildings which it removed, and the new buildings occupied the site of the older ones. On or near Boundary Street, in the neighbourhood of Bethnal Green, twenty-two acres were cleared of slums and covered with model dwellings, provided with wash houses, club rooms and every modern appliance for health and comfort. The sad thing about it was that after the buildings were completed and occupied it was found that only eleven of the former inhabitants remained. They had poured down into slums in the older part of the city and increased the population in those already overcrowded regions. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country private enterprise and private philanthropy had gone in advance of the London County Council. Outside of Birmingham and Liverpool garden cities had been erected in which every family was provided with an acre of land, on some of which men employed in the factories, when they were not at work, increased their earnings in some instances as much as £50, or $250, a year. Then the County Council began to acquire tramways radiating out in every direction into the suburbs. At the present time the city owns something over a hundred miles of tramway within the city, and of the 300 miles or more in Greater London the majority is either owned by London or the suburban boroughs. At the ends of these lines the London County Council, and more frequently private individuals, have erected model dwellings on a large scale and are thus gradually moving the city population into the country. In the meantime much has been done in recent years to increase the number of playgrounds and breathing spaces, to supply bathrooms, wash houses and other conveniences which make it possible to keep the city and people in a healthful and sanitary condition. In many of the principal streets in London I noticed signs directing the people to public baths which were located somewhere underneath the street. The different boroughs contributed in 1907 $738,545 in taxes to support these public baths and bath houses, and at the same time the people of London paid over $400,000 for bath tickets and $85,000 for laundry tickets in order to make use of these public conveniences. Inner London, not including suburbs, has now an area of 6,588 acres in parks large and small, upon which the city has expended a capital of $9,125,910 and upon which it expends annually the sum of $548,065 or thereabout. Now, the thing that strikes me about all this is that these vast sums of money which London has spent in clearing up its slums, in providing decent houses, wider streets, breathing spaces, bath houses, swimming pools, and washrooms have been spent mainly on sunshine, air, and water, things which any one may have without cost in the country. I visited some of these wash houses and saw hundreds of women who had come in from the surrounding neighbourhood to do their week's washing. They were paying by the hour for the use of the municipal washtubs and water, but I am sure they were not any better provided for in this respect than the coloured women of the South who go down on sunshiny days to the brook to do their washing, boiling their clothes in a big iron kettle. I saw the boys in some of the swimming pools, but I did not see any of them that seemed happier than the boy who goes off to the brook with his hook and line and by the way takes a plunge in an old-fashioned swimming hole. Thus it is that London seems to have found that the best if not the only way to solve the city problem is by transporting its population to the country, settling them in colonies in the suburbs, where they may obtain, at an enormous expense, what four fifths of the Negro population in this country already have and what they can be taught to value and keep if some of the money that is now expended or which will be expended on the city slums were spent in giving the people on the farm some of the advantages which the city offers, the principal one of which is a chance for an education. FOOTNOTES: [6] The annual income of twenty Negro colleges in the United States was, in 1908, $804,663. [7] London Education, Nineteenth Century, October 1903, p. 563. CHAPTER XIX JOHN BURNS AND THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN IN LONDON I had heard a good deal, from time to time, about John Burns before I went to Europe, and when I reached London I took advantage of the first opportunity that offered to make my acquaintance with him a personal one. This meeting was a special good fortune to me at the time because, as I already knew, there is, in all probability, no one in England who better understands the hopes, ambitions, and the prospects of the labouring classes than the Rt. Hon. John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, himself the first labouring man to become a member of the British Cabinet. John Burns was born in poverty and went to work at the age of ten. He had known what it is to wander the streets of London for weeks and months looking for work. He had an experience of that kind once after he had lost his job because he made a Socialistic speech. Having learned by experience the life of that industrial outcast, the casual labourer, he organized in 1889 the great dock labourers' strike, which brought together into the labour unions 100,000 starving and disorganized labourers who had previously been shut out from the protection of organized labour. Besides that, he has been an agitator; was for years a marked man, and at one time gained for himself the name of the "man with the red flag." He has been several times arrested for making speeches, and has once been imprisoned for three months on the charge of rioting. Meanwhile he had become the idol of the working masses and even won the admiration and respect of the leaders of public opinion. He was elected in 1889 to the first London County Council, where he worked side by side with such distinguished men as Frederic Harrison and Lord Rosebery. He was chosen a member of parliament in 1890, where he became distinguished for the store of practical information which he accumulated during his eighteen years of practical experience in the London County Council. When he was twenty-one years of age Mr. Burns went as an engineer to Africa, where he spent a year among the swamps of the Lower Niger, occasionally fighting alligators and devoting his leisure to the study of political economy. When he returned he spent the money he had saved in Africa in six months of travel and study in Europe. Speaking of what he learned in Africa, Mr. Burns once said: "You talk of savagery and misery in heathen lands, but from my own experience I can tell you that there is more of all these, and more degradation of women, in the slums of London than you will see on the West Coast of Africa." He has had a wider experience than most men with mobs, for he has not only led them, but in 1900 he defended himself with a cricket bat for two days in his home on Lavender Hill, Battersea, against a mob said to number 10,000 which hurled stones through the windows and tried to batter down the door of his house because he had denounced the Boer War in parliament. In 1906, after he had been successful in writing something like one hundred labour laws into the acts of parliament, he accepted the position of President of Local Government and then became, as I have said, the first labouring man to accept a place in the British Cabinet. In reply to the criticisms which were offered when he accepted this high and responsible position in the government, Mr. Burns said: "I had to choose whether, for the next ten years, I should indulge, perhaps, in the futility of faction, possibly in the impotence of intrigue, or whether I should accept an office which in our day and generation I can make useful of good works." I have noted this statement because this is a choice which most reformers and agitators have to make sooner or later. He recognized, as he said, that "the day of the agitator was declining and that of the administrator had begun," and he did not shrink from accepting a position where he became responsible for administering laws he had helped to make. In his present position as the head of the Local Government Board Mr. Burns is probably doing more than any other man to improve the situation of the poor man in London and in the other large cities of England. It is a rare thing for a man who began life in poverty to find himself in middle life in a position of such power and usefulness as the head of one great branch of the British Government occupies. It is still more remarkable, however, that a man who began life as an agitator, the representative of the unemployed, the most helpless and unfortunate class in the community, should find himself, a comparatively few years later, charged with the task of carrying into effect the reforms which he had preached from the prisoner's dock in a police court. It is all the more fortunate for England that the Government has found a man with these qualifications, who has at the same time the training and qualities of a statesman, to carry the reforms into effect. As Mr. Burns himself once said: "Depend upon it, there are no such places for making a public man as Pentonville Prison and the London County Council." To me, however, the most surprising thing about it all is that a man with his history and qualifications should have found his way, by the ordinary methods of politics, into a position he is so well fitted to fill. It suggests to me that, in spite of all the misery that one still may see in London, in England, at least, there is hope for the man farthest down. It is not my purpose in this chapter to write a biography of John Burns, but rather to describe what I saw, under his direction, of what has already been done in London in the work of "reconstruction," to which I have already referred. It seemed to me, however, that it was not out of place to say something, by way of introduction, in regard to the man who is, perhaps, as much if not more than any one else responsible for the work now going on, and whose life is connected in a peculiar way with that part of the city I had opportunity to visit and with the improvements that have been made there. John Burns was born and still lives in Battersea, a quarter of the city inhabited, for the most part, by artisans, mechanics, and labourers of various kinds, with a sprinkling of gypsy pedlers and the very poor. Battersea is directly across the river from, and in plain sight of, the Parliament Buildings, and there is a story to the effect that, as he was coming home one winter night, helping his mother carry home the washing by which she supported herself and family, they two stopped within the shadow of those buildings to rest. Turning to his mother the boy said: "Mother, if ever I have health and strength no mother shall have to work as you do." John Burns has health and strength, and is now making a brave effort to keep that promise to his mother. Aside from Colonel Roosevelt, I do not think I ever saw a man who seemed his equal in vigour of mind and body; who seemed able to compress so much into a short space of time; or one who goes at the task before him with a greater zest. In all England I do not believe there is a man who works harder, accomplishes more for the good of his country and the world, or one who is happier in the work he is doing. I found him late in August, when every one else connected with the government had left London on their vacation, buried deep in the details and concerns of his office, but chock-full of energy and enthusiasm. What John Burns is doing, and the spirit in which he is doing it, will, perhaps, appear in the course of my description of a trip which I took with him through his own district of Battersea and the region adjoining it in order to see what the London County Council is doing there to make the life of the poor man better. I am sorry that I will not be able to describe in detail all that I saw on that trip, because we covered in a short time so much ground, and saw so many different things, that it was not until I had returned to my hotel, and had an opportunity to study out the route of that journey, that I was able to get any definite idea of the direction in which we had gone or of the connection and general plan which underlay the whole scheme of the improvements we had seen. I think it was about two o'clock in the afternoon when we left the offices of the Local Government Board. Mr. Burns insisted that, before we started, I should see something of the Parliament Buildings, and he promised to act as my guide. This hasty trip through the Parliament Buildings served to show me that John Burns, although he had entered political life as a Socialist, has a profound reverence for all the historic traditions and a very intimate knowledge of English history. I shall not soon forget the eloquent and vivid manner in which he summoned up for me, as we passed through Westminster Hall, on the way to the House of Commons, some of the great historical scenes and events which had taken place in that ancient and splendid room. I was impressed not only by the familiarity which he showed with all the associations of the place, but I was thrilled by the enthusiasm with which he spoke of and described them. It struck me as very strange that the same John Burns once known as "the man with the red flag," who had been imprisoned for leading a mob of workmen against the police, should be quoting history with all the enthusiasm of a student and a scholar. In the course of our journey we passed through a small strip of Chelsea. I remember that among the other places we passed he pointed out the home of Thomas Carlyle. I found that he was just as familiar with names and deeds of all the great literary persons who had lived in that quarter of London as he was with the political history. When he afterward told me that he had had very little education in school, because he had been compelled to go to work when he was ten years of age, I asked him how he had since found time, in the course of his busy life, to gain the wide knowledge of history and literature which he evidently possessed. "You see," he replied, with a quiet smile, "I earned my living for a time as a candle maker and I have burned a good many candles at night ever since." Mr. Burns had promised to show me, within the space of a few hours, examples of the sort of work which is now going on in every part of London. A few years ago, on the site of an ancient prison, the London County Council erected several blocks of workingmen's tenements. These were, I believe, the first, or nearly the first, of the tenements erected by the city in the work of clearing away unsanitary areas and providing decent homes for the working classes. It was to these buildings, in which a population of about 4,000 persons live, that we went first. The buildings are handsome brick structures, well lighted, with wide, open, brick-paved courts between the rows of houses, so that each block looked like a gigantic letter H with the horizontal connecting line left out. Of course, these buildings were, as some one said, little more than barracks compared with the houses that are now being erected for labouring people in some of the London suburbs, but they are clean and wholesome and, to any one familiar with the narrow, grimy streets in the East End of London, it was hard to believe that they stood in the midst of a region which a few years ago had been a typical London slum. A little farther on we crossed the river and entered what Mr. Burns referred to as "my own district," Battersea, where he was born and where he has lived and worked all his life, except for one year spent as an engineer in Nigeria, Africa. The great breathing place for the people of this region is Battersea Park, and as we sped along the edge of this beautiful green space, stopping to look for a moment at the refreshment booths on the cricket grounds, or to speak to a group of well-dressed boys going from school to the playgrounds, Mr. Burns interspersed his information about workmen's wages, the price of rents, and the general improvement of the labouring classes with comment on the historic associations of the places we passed. Where Battersea Park now stands there was formerly a foul and unwholesome swamp. Near here the Duke of Wellington had fought a duel with the Earl of Winchelsea, and a little farther up Julius Cæsar, nearly two thousand years ago, forded the river with one of his legions. It was a happy and novel experience to observe the pleasure which Mr. Burns took in pointing out the improvement in the people, in the dwellings, and in the life of the people generally, and to note, in turn, the familiar and cheerful way with which all sorts of people we met on the streets greeted him as we passed. "Hello! Johnny Burns," a group of schoolboys would call as we went by. Once we passed by a group of some fifteen or twenty workingwomen sitting in one of the refreshment booths, drinking their afternoon tea and, apparently, holding a neighbourhood meeting of some kind or other. As they recognized the man who, as member of the London County Council, had been responsible for most of the improvements that had been made in the homes and surroundings in which they lived, they stood up and waved their handkerchiefs, and even attempted a faint and feminine "hurrah for Johnny Burns," the member from Battersea. There are 150,000 people in Battersea, but Mr. Burns seemed to be acquainted with every one of them, and when he wanted to show me the inside of some of the new "County Council houses," as they are called, did not hesitate to knock at the nearest door, where we were gladly welcomed. The people seamed to be just as proud of their new houses, and of Mr. Burns, as he was of them. The houses which we visited were, some of them, no more than three or four rooms, but each one of them was as neat and wholesome as if it had been a palace. They were very compactly built, but provided with every sort of modern convenience, including electric lights and baths. There were houses of five and six rooms intended for clerks and small business men, which rented for a pound a week, and there were cheaper houses, for ordinary labouring people, which rented for two dollars per week. These houses are built directly under the direction of the London County Council, and are expected to pay 3 per cent. upon the investment, after completion. The London County Council was not the first to make the experiment of building decent and substantial houses for the labouring classes. Some thirty years before, on what is known as the Shaftbury Park Estate, 1,200 houses, which provide homes for eleven thousand people, were erected and the investment had been made to pay. I looked down the long lanes of little vine-covered buildings which make up this estate. It seemed as if some great army had settled on the land and built permanent quarters. These labour colonies were interesting, not merely for the improvement they had made in the lives of a large section of the people living in this part of the city, but as the forerunner of those garden cities which private enterprise has erected at places like Port Sunlight, near Liverpool; Bourneville, in the outskirts of Birmingham, and at Letchworth, thirty-four miles from London. Not far from Battersea Park, and in a part of the city which was formerly inhabited almost wholly by the very poor, we visited the public baths and a public washhouse where, during the course of a year, 42,000 women come to wash their clothes, paying at the rate of three cents an hour for the use of the municipal tubs and hot water. Children pay a penny or two cents for the use of the public baths. The building is also provided with a gymnasium for the use of the children in winter, and contains a hall which is rented to workingmen's clubs at a nominal price. What pleased me most was to see the orderly way in which the children had learned to conduct themselves in these places, which, as was evident, had become not merely places for recreation, but at the same time schools of good manners. We passed on the streets groups of neatly dressed, well-bred looking boys, with their books slung over their arms, going home from school or making their way to the park. Mr. Burns was delighted at the sight of these clean-cut, manly looking fellows. "Look at those boys, Mr. Washington," he would exclaim, as he pointed proudly to one or another of these groups. "Isn't that doing pretty well for the proletariat?" Then he would leap out of the automobile, before the driver could stop, put his arm around the boy nearest him and, in a moment, come back triumphant with the confirmation of his statement that the boy's father was, as he had said, only a small clerk or a letter carrier, or, perhaps, the son of a common labourer, a navvy. When I contrasted the appearance of these well-dressed and well-behaved boys with some of those I had seen elsewhere, with the children who attend the so-called "ragged" schools, for example, I understood and shared his enthusiasm. From Battersea Park we went to Clapham Common and, as we were speeding along through what appeared to be a quarter of well-to-do artisans' homes, Mr. Burns nodded casually in the direction of a little vine-clad cottage and said: "That is where I live." Although Mr. Burns now occupies one of the highest positions in the British Government, in which he has a salary of $10,000 a year, he has not yet assumed the high hat and the long-tailed coat which are the recognized uniform in London of a gentleman. On the contrary, he wears the same blue reefer coat and soft felt hat, speaks the same language, lives in the same style, and is apparently in every respect the same man that he was when he was living on the $25 a week guaranteed him by the Battersea Labour League when he entered parliament. He is still a labouring man and proud of the class to which he belongs. It was at Clapham Common, although Mr. Burns did not mention this fact, that he was arrested for the first time, away back in 1878, for making a public speech. It was somewhere in this region also, if I remember rightly, that Mr. Burns pointed out to us a private estate on which 3,000 houses of the cheaper class had been erected. "And mind you, there is no public house," said Mr. Burns. Instead he showed us a brand-new temperance billiard hall which had been erected to compete with, and take the place of, the bar-rooms which have disappeared. At Lower Tooting, an estate of some thirty-eight acres, the London County Council is building outright a city of something like 5,000 inhabitants, laying out the streets, building the houses, even putting a tidy little flower garden in each separate front door yard. It was as if the London County Council had gone to playing dolls, so completely planned and perfectly carried out in every detail is this little garden city. Mr. Burns, who has all his life been an advocate of temperance, although he had once served as pot-boy in a public house, pointed out here, as he did elsewhere, that there was no public house. In the building of this little paradise all the architectural and engineering problems had indeed been solved. There remained, however, the problem of human nature, and the question that I asked myself was: Will these people be able to live up to their surroundings? It is fortunate, in this connection, that in Mr. Burns the inhabitants have a leader who dares to speak plainly to them of their faults as well as their virtues and who is able, at the same time, to inspire them with an ambition and enthusiasm for the better life which is opened to them. Engineering and architecture cannot do everything, but education, leadership of the right sort, may complete what these have begun. At Warden Street and Lydden Road, on our way back to the city, we stopped to look for a moment at what Mr. Burns said was the most wretched part of the population in that quarter of the city. The houses were two-story dwellings, with the sills flush with the pavement, in front of which groups of lounging idle men and women stood or squatted on the pavement. A portion of the street was given up to gypsy vans, and the whole population was made up, as I learned, of pedlers and pushcart venders, a class of people who, in the very centre of civilization, manage somehow to maintain a nomadic and half-barbarous existence, wandering from one place to another with the seasons, living from hand to mouth, working irregularly and not more than half the time. A little farther on we passed by the Price candle factory, "where I began work at a dollar a week," said Mr. Burns in passing. A group of workmen were just coming from the factory as we passed, and the men recognized Mr. Burns and shouted to him as he passed. Then we drove on back across the Chelsea Bridge and along the river to the Parliament Buildings again. "Now," said Mr. Burns at the end of our journey, "you have seen a sample of what London is doing for its labouring population. If you went further you would see more, but little that is new or different." CHAPTER XX THE FUTURE OF THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN Upon my arrival in London I found myself, at the end of my journey, once more at my point of departure. A few days later, October 9th, to be precise, I sailed from Liverpool for New York. I had been less than seven weeks in Europe, but it seemed to me that I had been away for a year. My head was full of strange and confused impressions and I was reminded of the words of the traveller who, after he had crossed Europe from London to Naples, and had visited faithfully all the museums and neglected none of the regular "sights," wrote to friends he had visited in Europe a letter full of appreciation, concluding with the remark: "Well, I have seen a great deal and learned a great deal, and I _thank God it is all over_." It occurs to me that the readers who have followed me thus far in my narrative may find themselves at the conclusion of this book in somewhat the same situation as myself at the end of my journey. In that case it will, perhaps, not be out of place to take advantage of this concluding chapter to do for them as well as I am able what I tried to do for myself during my hours of leisure on the voyage home--namely, make a little clearer the relation of all that I had seen and learned to the problem of the Negro and The Man Farthest Down. I have touched, in the course of these chapters, upon many phases of life. I have had something to say, for example, in regard to the poverty, education, Socialism, and the race problems of Europe, since all these different matters are connected in one way or another with the subject and purpose of my journey and this book. In attempting to add the moral to my story, however, and state in general terms the upshot of it all, I find myself at a disadvantage. I can, perhaps, best explain what I mean by recalling the fact that I was born a slave and since I became free have been so busy with the task immediately in front of me that I have never had time to think out my experiences and formulate my ideas in general terms. In fact, almost all that I know about the problems of other races and other peoples I have learned in seeking a solution and a way out for my own people. For that reason I should have done better perhaps to leave to some one with more learning and more leisure than I happen to possess the task of writing about the Underman in Europe. In fact I would have done so if I had not believed that in making this journey I should gain some insight and, perhaps, be able to throw some new light upon the situation of my own people in America. Indeed, I confess that I should never have taken the time--brief as it was--to make this long journey if I had not believed it was going to have some direct relation to the work which I have been trying to do for the people of my race in America. In this, let me add, I was not disappointed. As a matter of fact, if there was one thing more than another, in all my European experiences, which was impressed upon my mind, it was the fact that the position of the Negro in America, both in slavery and in freedom, has not been so exceptional as it has frequently seemed. While there are wide differences between the situation of the people in the lower levels of life in Europe and the Negro in America, there are still many points of resemblance, and the truth is that the man farthest down in Europe has much in common with the man at the bottom in America. For example, the people at the bottom in Europe have been, in most cases, for the greater part of their history at least, like the Negroes in America, a subject people, not slaves, but bondmen or serfs, at any rate a disadvantaged people. In most cases the different under-classes in Europe only gained their freedom in the course of the last century. Since that time they have been engaged in an almost ceaseless struggle to obtain for themselves the political privileges that formerly belonged to the upper classes alone. Even in those places where the man at the bottom has gained political privileges resembling in most respects those of the classes at the top he finds, as the Negro in America has found, that he has only made a beginning, and the real work of emancipation remains to be done. The English labourer, for example, has had political freedom for a longer period of time than is true of any other representative of this class in Europe. Notwithstanding this fact, as things are, he can only in rare instances buy and own the land on which he lives. The labouring people of England live, for the most part, herded together with millions of others of their class in the slums of great cities, where air and water are luxuries. They are dependent upon some other nation for their food supplies, for butter, bread, and meat. And then, as a further consequence of the way they are compelled to live, the masses of the people find themselves part of an economic arrangement or system which is so vast and complicated that they can neither comprehend nor control it. The result is that the English labourer, of whose independence the world has heard so much, is, in many respects, more dependent than any other labouring class in Europe. This is due not to the fact that the English labourer lacks political rights, but to the fact that he lacks economic opportunities--opportunities to buy land and opportunities to labour; to own his own home, to keep a garden and raise his own food. The Socialists have discovered that the independence of the labouring classes has been undermined as a result of the growth of factories and city life, and believe they have found a remedy. What the Socialists would actually do in England or elsewhere, provided they should manage to get into power, is difficult to say, because, as my experience in Europe has taught me, there are almost as many kinds of Socialists as there are kinds of people. The real old-fashioned Socialists, those who still look forward to some great social catastrophe which will put an end to the present régime, believe it will then be possible to use the political power of the masses to reorganize society in a way to give every individual an economic opportunity equal to that of every other. Taking human beings as we find them, I have never been able to see how this was going to be brought about in precisely the way outlined in the Socialist programme. Some individuals will be good for one thing, some for another, and there will always be, I suppose, a certain number who will not be good for anything. As they have different capacities, so they will have different opportunities. Some will want to do one thing and some another, and some individuals and some people, like the Jews for example, will know how to make their disadvantages their opportunities and so get the best of the rest of the world, no matter how things are arranged. I have referred to the Socialists and the revolution they propose not because I wish to oppose their doctrines, which I confess I do not wholly understand, but because it seemed to me that, as I went through Europe and studied conditions, I could see the evidences of a great, silent revolution already in full progress. And this revolution to which I refer is touching and changing the lives of those who are at the bottom, particularly those in the remote farming communities, from which the lowest class of labourers in the city is constantly recruited. Let me illustrate what I mean: Under the old system in Europe--the feudal system, or whatever else it may at various times have been called--civilization began at the top. There were a few people who were free. They had all the wealth, the power, and the learning in their hands, or at their command. When anything was done it was because they wished it or because they commanded it. In order to give them this freedom and secure to them this power it was necessary that vast numbers of other people should live in ignorance, without any knowledge of, or share in, any but the petty life of the estate or the community to which they belonged. They were not permitted to move from the spot in which they were born, without the permission of their masters. It was, in their case, almost a crime to think. It was the same system, in a very large degree, as that which existed in the Southern States before the war, with the exception that the serfs in Europe were white, while the slaves in the Southern States were black. In Europe to-day the great problem to which statesmen are giving their thought and attention is not how to hold the masses of the people down but how to lift them up; to make them more efficient in their labour and give them a more intelligent share and interest in the life of the community and state of which they are a part. Everywhere in Europe the idea is gaining ground and influence that the work of civilization must begin at the bottom instead of at the top. The great medium for bringing about these changes is the school. In every part of Europe which I visited I was impressed with the multitude of schools of various kinds which are springing up to meet the new demand. The movement began earlier and has gone farther in Denmark than it has elsewhere, and the remarkable development of Danish country life has been the result. What has been accomplished in Denmark, through the medium of the country high schools, and in Germany, through the universities and technical training schools, is being industriously imitated elsewhere. In England I found that people were saying that the reason why German manufactures had been able to compete so successfully with the English products was because Germany had the advantage of better schools. In Germany I found that the German army, organized in the first instance for the national defence, is now looked upon as a great national school, in which the masses of the people get an education and discipline which, it is claimed, are gradually raising the industrial efficiency of the nation. There, as elsewhere, education is seeking to reach and touch every class and every individual of every class in the community. The deaf, the blind, the defectives of every description are now beginning to receive industrial education fitting them for trades in which they will be more useful to the community and more independent than it was possible for them to be when no attempt was made to fit them for any place in the life of the community. The effect of this movement, or revolution, as I have called it, is not to "tear down and level up" in order to bring about an artificial equality, but to give every individual a chance "to make good," to determine for himself his place and position in the community by the character and quality of the service he is able to perform. One effect of this change in point of view which I have described is that to-day there is hardly any one thing in which the people of Europe are more concerned than in the progress and future of the man farthest down. In all that I have written in the preceding chapters I have sought to emphasize, in the main, two things: first, that behind all the movements which have affected the masses of the people, Socialism or nationalism, emigration, the movements for the reorganization of city and country life, there has always been the Underman, groping his way upward, struggling to rise; second, that the effect of all that has been done to lift the man at the bottom, or to encourage him to lift himself, has been to raise the level of every man above him. If it is true, as I have so often said, that one man cannot hold another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with him, it is just as true that, in helping the man who is down to rise, the man who is up is freeing himself from a burden that would else drag him down. It is because the world seems to realize this fact more and more that, beyond and above all local and temporary difficulties, the future of the man farthest down looks bright. And now at the conclusion of my search for the man farthest down in Europe let me confess that I did not succeed in finding him. I did not succeed in reaching any place in Europe where conditions were so bad that I did not hear of other places, which friends advised me to visit, where conditions were a great deal worse. My own experience was, in fact, very much like that of a certain gentleman who came South some years ago to study the condition of the Negro people. He had heard that in many parts of the South the Negro was gradually sinking back into something like African savagery, and he was particularly desirous of finding a well-defined example of this relapse into barbarism. He started out with high hopes and a very considerable fund of information as to what he might expect to find and as to the places where he might hope to find it. Everywhere he went in his search, however, he found that he had arrived a few years too late. He found at every place he visited people who were glad to tell him the worst there was to be known about the coloured people; some were even kind enough to show what they thought was about the worst there was to be found among the Negroes in their particular part of the country. Still he was disappointed because he never found anything that approached the conditions he was looking for, and usually he was compelled to be contented with the statement, made to him by each one of his guides in turn, which ran something like this: "Conditions were not near as bad as they had been. A few years ago, if he had happened to have come that way, he would have been able to see things, and so forth; but now conditions were improving. However, if he wanted to see actual barbarism he should visit"--and then they usually named some distant part of the country with which he had not yet become acquainted. In this way this gentleman, who was hunting the worst that was to be seen among the Negroes, as I was hunting the worst that was to be seen among the people of Europe, travelled all over the Southern States, going from one dark corner to another, but never finding things as bad as they were advertised. Instead of that, backward as the people were in many of the remote parts of the country, he found, just as I did in Europe, that everywhere the people were making progress. In some places they were advancing more slowly than they were in others, but everywhere there was, on the whole, progress rather than decline. The result in his case was the same as it had been in mine, the farther he went and the more he saw of the worst there was to see, the more hopeful he became of the people as a whole. I saw much that was primitive and much that was positively evil in the conditions in Europe, but nowhere did I find things as bad as they were described to me by persons who knew them as they were some years before. And I found almost no part of the country in which substantial progress had not been made; no place, in short, where the masses of the people were without hope. It will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons that, after I had gone to Europe for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as I was able, the worst in European life, I should have returned with a hopeful rather than a pessimistic view of what I saw. The fact is, however, that the farther I travelled in Europe, and the more I entered into the life of the people at the bottom, the more I found myself looking at things from the point of view of the people who are looking up, rather than from that of the people who are at the top looking down, and, strange as it may seem, it is still true that the world looks, on the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and more filled with God's providence, when you are at the bottom looking up than when you are at the top looking down. To the man in the tower the world below him is likely to look very small. Men look like ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. But the man in the street who is looking and striving upward is in a different situation. However poor his present plight, the thing he aims at and is striving toward stands out clear and distinct above him, inspiring him with hope and ambition in his struggle upward. For the man who is down there is always something to hope for, always something to be gained. The man who is down, looking up, may catch a glimpse now and then of heaven, but the man who is so situated that he can only look down is pretty likely to see another and quite different place. THE END [Illustration: Logo] THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
61634	----	FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN. BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART. Vol. III. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1873. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXV. Brantwood, January 4th, 1873. The Third Fors, having been much adverse to me, and more to many who wish me well, during the whole of last year, has turned my good and helpful printer adrift in the last month of it; and, with that grave inconvenience to him, contrived for me the minor one of being a fortnight late with my New Year's letter. Under which provocation I am somewhat consoled this morning by finding in a cookery book, of date 1791, "written purely from practice, and dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, whom the author lately served as housekeeper," a receipt for Yorkshire Goose Pie, with which I think it will be most proper and delightful to begin my economical instructions to you for the current year. I am, indeed, greatly tempted to give precedence to the receipt for making "Fairy Butter," and further disturbed by an extreme desire to tell you how to construct an "Apple Floating-Island"; but will abide, nevertheless, by my Goose Pie. "Take a large fat goose, split it down the back, and take all the bones out; bone a turkey and two ducks the same way, season them very well with pepper and salt, with six woodcocks; lay the goose down on a clean dish, with the skin-side down; and lay the turkey into the goose, with the skin down; have ready a large hare, cleaned well, cut in pieces, and stewed in the oven, with a pound of butter, a quarter of an ounce of mace, beat fine, the same of white pepper, and salt to your taste, till the meat will leave the bones, and scum the butter off the gravy, pick the meat clean off, and beat it in a marble mortar very fine, with the butter you took off, and lay it in the turkey; take twenty-four pounds of the finest flour, six pounds of butter, half-a-pound of fresh rendered suet, make the paste pretty thick, and raise the pie oval; roll out a lump of paste, and cut it in vine-leaves or what form you please; rub the pie with the yolks of eggs, and put your ornaments on the walls; then turn the hare, turkey, and goose upside down, and lay them in your pie, with the ducks at each end, and the woodcocks on the sides; make your lid pretty thick, and put it on; you may lay flowers, or the shape of the fowls in paste, on the lid, and make a hole in the middle of your lid; the walls of the pie are to be one inch and a half higher than the lid; then rub it all over with the yolks of eggs, and bind it round with threefold paper, and lay the same over the top; it will take four hours baking in a brown-bread oven; when it comes out, melt two pounds of butter in the gravy that comes from the hare, and pour it hot in the pie through a tun-dish; close it well up, and let it be eight or ten days before you cut it; if you send it any distance, make up the hole in the middle with cold butter, to prevent the air from getting in." Possessed of these instructions, I immediately went to my cook to ask how far we could faithfully carry them out. But she told me nothing could be done without a "brown-bread oven;" which I shall therefore instantly build under the rocks on my way down to the lake: and, if I live, we will have a Lancashire goose-pie next Michaelmas. You may, perhaps, think this affair irrelevant to the general purposes of 'Fors Clavigera'; but it is not so by any means: on the contrary, it is closely connected with its primary intentions; and, besides, may interest some readers more than weightier, or, I should rather say, lighter and more spiritual matters. For, indeed, during twenty-three months, I had been writing to you, fellow-workmen, of matters affecting your best interests in this world, and all the interests you had anywhere else:--explaining, as I could, what the shrewdest of you, hitherto, have thought, and the best of you have done;--what the most selfish have gained, and the most generous have suffered. Of all this, no notice whatever is taken. In my twenty-fourth letter, incidentally, I mentioned the fact of my being in a bad humour, (which I nearly always am, and which it matters little to anybody whether I am or not, so long as I don't act upon it,) and forthwith I got quite a little mailcartful of consolation, reproof, and advice. Much of it kind,--nearly all of it helpful, and some of it wise; but very little bearing on matters in hand: an eager Irish correspondent offers immediately to reply to anything, "though he has not been fortunate enough to meet with the book;" one working man's letter, for self and mates, is answered in the terminal notes;--could not be answered before for want of address;--another, from a south-country clergyman, could not be answered any way, for he would not read any more, he said, of such silly stuff as 'Fors';--but would have been glad to hear of any scheme for giving people a sound practical education. I fain would learn, myself, either from this practical Divine, or any of his mates, what the ecclesiastical idea of a sound practical education is;--that is to say, what--in weekday schools (--the teaching in Sunday ones being necessarily to do no manner of work)--our clergy think that boys and girls should be taught to practise, in order that, when grown up, they may with dexterity perform the same. For indeed, the constant object of these letters of mine, from their beginning, has been to urge you to do vigorously and dextrously what was useful; and nothing but that. And I have told you of Kings and Heroes, and now am about to tell you what I can of a Saint, because I believe such persons to have done, sometimes, more useful things than you or I: begging your pardon always for not addressing you as heroes, which I believe you all think yourselves, or as kings, which I presume you all propose to be, or at least, if you cannot, to let nobody else be. Come what may of such proposal, I wish you would consider with me to-day what form of "sound practical education," if any, would enable you all to be Saints; and whether, such form proving discoverable, you would really like to be put through it, or whether, on the contrary, both the clergy and you mean, verily, and in your hearts, nothing by "practical education" but how to lay one penny upon another. Not but that it does my heart good to hear modern divines exhorting to any kind of practice--for, as far as I can make out, there is nothing they so much dread for their congregations as their getting into their heads that God expects them to do anything, beyond killing rabbits if they are rich, and being content with bad wages, if they are poor. But if any virtue more than these, (and the last is no small one) be indeed necessary to Saint-ship--may we not prudently ask what such virtue is, and, at this Holiday time, make our knowledge of the Hos more precise? Nay, in your pleading for perennial Holiday,--in your ten hours or eight hours bills, might you not urge your point with stouter conscience if you were all Saints, and the hours of rest you demanded became a realization of Baxter's Saints' Rest? Suppose we do rest, for a few minutes, from that process of laying one penny upon another, (those of us, at least, who have learned the trick of it,) and look with some attention at the last penny we laid on the pile--or, if we can do no better, at the first of the pile we mean to lay. Show me a penny--or, better, show me the three pages of our British Bible--penny, shilling, and pound, and let us try what we can read on them together. You see how rich they are in picture and legend: surely so practical a nation, in its most valued Scriptures, cannot have written or pictured anything but with discretion, and to the benefit of all beholders. We begin with the penny;--not that, except under protest, I call such a thing as that a Penny! Our farthings, when we were boys, were as big as that; and two-pence filled our waistcoat pockets. Who, then, is this lady, whom it represents, sitting, apparently, on the edge of a dish-cover? Britannia? Yes,--of course. But who is Britannia? and what has she got on her head, in her hand, and on her seat? "Don't I know who Britannia is?" Not I; and much doubt if you do! Is she Great Britain,--or Little Britain? Is she England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the Indies,--or a small, dishonest, tailoring and engineering firm, with no connection over the way, and publicly fined at the police court for sneakingly supplying customers it had engaged not to? Is she a Queen, or an Actress, or a slave? Is she a Nation, mother of nations; or a slimy polype, multiplying by involuntary vivisection, and dropping half putrid pieces of itself wherever it crawls or contracts? In the world-feasts of the Nativity, can she sit, Madonna-like, saying: "Behold, I, and the children whom the Lord hath given me"? Or are her lips capable of such utterance--of any utterance--no more; the musical Rose of them cleft back into the long dumb trench of the lizard's; her motherhood summed in saying that she makes all the world's ditches dirtier with her spawn? And what has she on her head, in her hand, or on that,--Shield, I believe it is meant for,--which she sits on the edge of? A most truly symbolic position! For, you know, all those armour-plates and guns you pay for so pleasantly are indeed made, when you look into the matter, not at all to defend you against anybody--(no one ever pretends to say distinctly that the newest of them could protect you for twelve hours); but they are made that the iron masters may get commission on the iron, and the manufacturers commission on the manufacture. And so the Ironmongering and Manufacturing Britannia does very literally sit upon her Shield: the cognizance whereof, or--now too literally--the "Bearing,"--so obscured, becomes of small importance. Probably, in a little while, a convenient cushion--or, what not--may be substituted for St. George's Cross; to the public satisfaction. I must not question farther what any of these symbols may come to mean; I will tell you, briefly, what they meant once, and are yet, by courtesy, supposed to mean. They were all invented by the Greeks; and all, except the Cross, some twelve hundred years before the first Christmas; they became intelligible and beautiful first about Theseus' time. The Helmet crest properly signifies the adoption by man of the passions of pride and anger which enable nearly all the lower creatures to erect some spinous or plumose ridge upon their heads or backs. It is curiously associated with the story of the Spartan Phalanthus, the first colonist of Tarentum, which might have been the port of an Italia ruling the waves, instead of Britannia, had not the crest fallen from the helmet of the Swabian prince, Manfred, in his death-battle with Charles of Anjou. He had fastened it that morning, he said, with his own hand,--you may think, if his armourer had fastened it, it would have stayed on, but kings could do things with their own hands in those days;--howbeit, it fell, and Manfred, that night, put off his armour for evermore, and the evil French King reigned in his stead: and South Italy has lain desert since that day, and so must lie, till the crest of some King rise over it again, who will be content with as much horse-hair as is needful for a crest, and not wear it, as our English Squires have done lately (or perhaps even the hair of an animal inferior to the horse), on their heads, instead of their helmets. Of the trident in Britannia's hand, and why it must be a trident, that is to say, have three prongs, and no more; and in what use or significance it differs from other forks, (as for pitching, or toasting)--we will enquire at another time. Take up next the shilling, or, more to our purpose, the double shilling,--get a new florin, and examine the sculpture and legend on that. The Legend, you perceive, is on the one side English,--on the other Latin. The latter, I presume, you are not intended to read, for not only it is in a dead language, but two words are contracted, and four more indicated only by their first letters. This arrangement leaves room for the ten decorative letters, an M, and a D, and three C's, and an L, and the sign of double stout, and two I's; of which ten letters the total function is to inform you that the coin was struck this year, (as if it mattered either to you or to me, when it was struck!) But the poor fifth part of ten letters, preceding--the F and D, namely--have for function to inform you that Queen Victoria is the Defender of our Faith. Which is an all-important fact to you and me, if it be a fact at all;--nay, an all-important brace of facts; each letter vocal, for its part, with one. F, that we have a Faith to defend; D, that our monarch can defend it, if we chance to have too little to say for it ourselves. For both which facts, Heaven be praised, if they be indeed so,--nor dispraised by our shame, if they have ceased to be so: only, if they be so, two letters are not enough to assert them clearly; and if not so, are more than enough to lie with. On the reverse of the coin, however, the legend is full, and clear. "One Florin." "One Tenth of a Pound." Yes; that is all very practical and instructive. But do we know either what a pound is, or what a florin or "Fiorino" was, or why this particular coin should be called a Florin, or whether we have any right to call any coin of England, now, by that name? And, by the way, how is it that I get continually reproved for writing above the level of the learning of my general readers, when here I find the most current of all our books written in three languages, of which one is dead, another foreign, and the third written in defunct letters, so that anybody with two shillings in his pocket is supposed able to accept information conveyed in contracted Latin, Roman numerals, old English, and spoiled Italian? How practical, and how sentimental, at once! For indeed we have no right, except sentimentally, to call that coin a florin,--that is to say, a "flower (lily-flower) piece," or Florence-piece. What have we any more to do with Lilies? Do you ever consider how they grow--or care how they die? Do the very water-lilies, think you, keep white now, for an hour after they open, in any stream in England? And for the heraldry of the coin, neither on that, nor any other, have we courage or grace to bear the Fleur-de-Lys any more, it having been once our first bearing of all. For in the first quarter of our English shield we used to bear three golden lilies on a blue ground, being the regal arms of France; (our great Kings being Frenchmen, and claiming France as their own, before England). Also these Fleur-de-Lys were from the beginning the ensigns of a King; but those three Lions which you see are yet retained for the arms of England on two of the shields in your false florin, (false in all things, for heaven knows, we have as little right to lions now as to lilies,) "are deduced onely from Dukedomes [1]: I say deduced, because the Kings of England after the Conquest did beare two leopards (the ensignes of the Dukedome of Normandy) till the time of King Henry the Second, who, according to the received opinion, by marriage of Eleanor, daughter and heire of the duke of Aquitaine and Guyon" (Guienne) "annexed the Lyon, her paternall coate, being of the same Field, Metall, and Forme with the Leopards, and so from thence forward they were jointly marshalled in one Shield and Blazoned three Lyons." Also "at the first quartering of these coats by Edward the Third, question being moved of his title to France, the King had good cause to put that coat in the first ranke, to show his most undoubted Title to that Kingdom, and therefore would have it the most perspicuous place of his Escocheon." But you see it is now on our shield no more,--we having been beaten into cowardly and final resignation of it, at the peace of Amiens, in George III.'s time, and precisely in the first year of this supreme nineteenth century. He, as monarch of England, being unable to defend our Lilies, and the verbal instruction of the pacific angel Gabriel of Amiens, as he dropped his lilies, being to the English accordingly, that thenceforward they were to "hate a Frenchman as they did the Devil," which, as you know, was Nelson's notion of the spirit in which England expected every man to do his duty. Next to the three Lions, however (all of them, you find, French), there is a shield bearing one Lion, "Rampant"--that is to say, climbing like a vine on a wall. Remember that the proper sense of the word "rampant" is "creeping," as you say it of ground ivy, and such plants: and that a lion rampant--whether British, or as this one Scotch, is not at all, for his part, in what you are so fond of getting into--"an independent position," nor even in a specifically leonine one, but rather generally feline, as of a cat, or other climbing animal, on a tree; whereas the three French Lions, or Lioncels, are "passant-gardant," "passing on the look out," as beasts of chase. Round the rampant Scottish animal (I can't find why the Scotch took him for their type) you observe farther, a double line, with--though almost too small to be seen--fleur-de-Lys at the knots and corners of it. This is the tressure, or binding belt, of the great Charles, who has really been to both English and Scottish lions what that absent Charles of the polar skies must, I suppose, have been to their Bear, and who entirely therefore deserves to be stellified by British astronomers. The Tressure, heraldically, records alliance of that Charlemagne with the Scottish King Achaius, and the vision by the Scottish army of St. Andrew's cross--and the adoption of the same, with the Thistle and Rue, for their national device; of all which the excellent Scotch clergyman and historian, Robert Henry, giving no particular account, prefers to note, as an example of such miraculous appearances in Scotland, the introduction, by King Kenneth, the son of Alpine, of a shining figure "clothed in the skins of dried fish, which shone in the dark," to his nobility and councillors, to give them heavenly admonitions "after they had composed themselves to rest." Of course a Presbyterian divine must have more pleasure in recording a miracle so connected with the existing national interests of the herring and salmon fisheries, than the tradition of St. Andrew's cross; and that tradition itself is so confused among Rodericks, Alpines, and Ferguses, that the 'Lady of the Lake' is about as trustworthy historical reading. But St. Andrew's Cross and the Thistle--(I don't know when the Rue, much the more honourable bearing of the two, was dropped)--are there, you see, to this day; and you must learn their story--but I've no time to go into that, now. For England, the tressure really implies, though not in heraldry, more than for Scotland. For the Saxon seven kingdoms had fallen into quite murderous anarchy in Charlemagne's time, and especially the most religious of them, Northumberland; which then included all the country between the Frith of Forth and the Cheviots commanded by the fortress of Edwin's Burg, (fortress now always standing in a rampant manner on its hind-legs, as the Modern Athens). But the pious Edwin's spirit had long left his burg, and the state of the whole district from which the Saxon angels--(non Angli)--had gone forth to win the pity of Rome, was so distracted and hopeless that Charlemagne called them "worse than heathens," and had like to have set his hand to exterminate them altogether; but the Third Fors ruled it otherwise, for luckily, a West Saxon Prince, Egbert, being driven to Charles's court, in exile, Charles determined to make a man of him, and trained him to such true knighthood, that, recovering the throne of the West Saxons, the French-bred youth conquered the Heptarchy, and became the first King of "England" (all England);--and the Grandfather of Alfred. Such belt of lilies did the French chivalry bind us with; the "tressure" of Charlemagne. Of the fourth shield, bearing the Irish Harp, and the harmonious psalmody of which that instrument is significant, I have no time to speak to-day; nor of the vegetable heraldry between the shields;--but before you lay the florin down I must advise you that the very practical motto or war-cry which it now bears--"one tenth of a pound," was not anciently the motto round the arms of England, that is to say, of English kings, (for republican England has no shield); but a quite different one--to wit--"Accursed (or evil-spoken of, maledictus, opposed to well-spoken of, or benedictus,) be He who thinks Evil;" and that this motto ought to be written on another Tressure or band than Charlemagne's, surrounding the entire shield--namely, on a lady's garter; specifically the garter of the most beautiful and virtuous English lady, Alice of Salisbury, (of whom soon); and that without this tressure and motto, the mere shield of Lions is but a poor defence. For this is a very great and lordly motto; marking the utmost point and acme of honour, which is not merely in doing no evil, but in thinking none; and teaching that the first--as indeed the last--nobility of Education is in the rule over our Thoughts, on which matter, I must digress for a minute or two. Among the letters just received by me, as I told you, is one from a working man of considerable experience, which laments that, in his part of the country, "literary institutes are a failure." Indeed, your literary institutes must everywhere fail, as long as you think that merely to buy a book, and to know your letters, will enable you to read the book. Not one word of any book is readable by you except so far as your mind is one with its author's, and not merely his words like your words, but his thoughts like your thoughts. For instance, the other day, at a bookstall, I bought a shilling Shakespeare. To such degree of wealth, ingenuity, and literary spirit, has the nineteenth century reached, that it has a shilling to spare for its Shakespeare--can produce its Shakespeare in a pocketable shape for that sum--and is ready to invest its earnings in a literature to that extent. Good. You have now your Shakespeare, complete, in your pocket; you will read the greatest of dramatic authors at your leisure, and form your literary taste on that model. Suppose we read a line or two together then, you and I;--it may be, that I cannot, unless you help me. "And there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his Captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long." What do you suppose Shakespeare means by calling Venice a "pleasant" country? What sort of country was, or would have been, pleasant to him? The same that is pleasant to you, or another kind of country? Was there any coal in that earth of Venice, for instance? Any gas to be made out of it? Any iron? Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a "pure" soul, or by Purity in general? How does a soul become pure, or clean, and how dirty? Are you sure that your own soul is pure? if not, is its opinion on the subject of purity likely to be the same as Shakespeare's? And might you not just as well read a mure soul, or demure, or a scure soul, or obscure, as a pure soul, if you don't know what Shakespeare means by the word? Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a captain, or head-person? What were his notions of head-ship, shoulder-ship, or foot-ship, either in human or divine persons? Have you yourselves ever seen a captain, think you--of the true quality; (see above, xxii. 18;) and did you know him when you saw him? Or again. What does Shakespeare mean by colours? The "gaily decorative bunting" of Howe and Cushing's American Circus? Or the banners with invigorating inscriptions concerning Temperance and Free-trade, under which you walk in procession, sometimes, after a band? Or colours more dim and tattered than these? What he does mean, in all these respects, we shall best understand by reading a little bit of the history of one of those English Squires, named above, for our study; (xxii. 18,) Edward III. of England, namely; since it was he who first quartered our arms for us; whom I cannot more honourably first exhibit to you than actually fighting under captainship and colours of his own choice, in the fashion Shakespeare meant. Under captainship, mark you, though himself a King, and a proud one. Which came to pass thus: "When the King of England heard these news" (that Geoffrey of Chargny was drawing near his dear town of Calais, and that Amery of Pavia, the false Lombard, was keeping him in play,) "then the King set out from England with 300 men at arms, and 600 archers, and took ship at Dover, and by vespers arrived at Calais, and put his people in ambush in the castle, and was with them himself. And said to the Lord de Manny: 'Master Walter, I will that you should be the head in this need, for I and my son will fight under your banner.' [2] Now My Lord Geoffrey of Chargny had left Arras on the last day of December, in the evening, with all his gens-d'-armes, and came near Calais about one in the morning,--and he said to his knights [3] 'Let the Lombard open the gates quickly--he makes us die of cold.' 'In God's name,' said Pepin de Werre, 'the Lombards are cunning folks;--he will look at your florins first, to see that none are false.'" (You see how important this coin is; here is one engraved for you therefore--pure Florentine gold--that you may look at it honestly, and not like a Lombard.) "And at these words came the King of England, and his son at his side, under the banner of Master Walter de Manny; and there were other banners with them, to wit, the Count of Stafford's, the Count of Suffolk's, My Lord John de Montagu's, My Lord Beauchamp's, and the Lord de la Werre's, and no more, that day. When the French saw them come out, and heard the cry, 'Manny, to the rescue,' they knew they were betrayed. [4] Then said Master Geoffrey to his people, 'Lords, if we fly, we are lost; it is best to fight with good will;--hope is, we may gain the day.' 'By St. George,' said the English, 'you say true, and evil be to him who flies.' Whereupon they drew back a little, being too crowded, and dismounted, and let their horses go. And the King of England, under the banner of Master Walter de Manny, came with his people, all on foot, to seek his enemies; who were set close, their lances cut short by five feet, in front of them" (set with the stumps against the ground and points forward, eight or ten feet long, still, though cut short by five). "At the first coming there was hard encounter, and the King stopped under" (opposite) "My Lord Eustace of Ribaumont, who was a strong and brave chevalier. And he fought the King so long that it was a wonder; yes, and much pleasure to see. Then they all joined battle," (the English falling on, I think, because the King found he had enough on his hands, though without question one of the best knights in Europe;) "and there was a great coil, and a hard,--and there fought well, of the French, My Lord Geoffrey of Chargny and My Lord John of Landas, and My Lord Gawain of Bailleul, and the Sire of Cresques; and the others; but My Lord Eustace of Ribaumont passed all,--who that day struck the King to his knees twice; but in the end gave his sword to the King, saying, 'Sire Chevalier, I render me your prisoner, for the day must remain to the English.' For by that time they were all taken or killed who were with My Lord Geoffrey of Chargny; and the last who was taken, and who had done most, was Master Eustace of Ribaumont. "So when the need [5] was past, the King of England drew back into Calais, into the castle; and made be brought all the prisoner-knights thither. And then the French knew that the King of England had been in it, in person, under the banner of Master Walter de Manny. So also the King sent to say to them, as it was the New-year's night, he would give them all supper in his castle of Calais. So when the supper time came," (early afternoon, 1st January, 1349) "the King and his knights dressed themselves, and all put on new robes; and the French also made themselves greatly splendid, for so the King wished, though they were prisoners. The King took seat, and set those knights beside him in much honour. And the gentle [6] Prince of Wales and the knights of England served them, at the first course; and at the second course, went away to another table. So they were served in peace, and in great leisure. When they had supped they took away the tables; but the King remained in the hall between those French and English knights; and he was bare-headed; only wearing a chaplet of pearls. [7] And he began to go from one to another; and when he addressed himself to Master Geoffrey of Chargny, he altered countenance somewhat, and looking askance at him, said, 'Master Geoffrey,--I owe you by right, little love, when you would have stolen by night what had cost me so dear. So glad and joyous I am, that I took you at the trial.' At these words he passed on, and let Master Geoffrey alone, who answered no word; and so came the King to Master Eustace of Ribaumont, to whom he said joyously, 'Master Eustace, you are the chevalier whom in all the world I have seen most valiantly attack his enemy and defend his body: neither did I ever find in battle any one who gave me so much work, body to body, as you did to-day. So I give you the prize of the day, and that over all the knights of my own court, by just sentence.' Thereupon the King took off the chaplet, that he wore, (which was good and rich,) and put it on the head of My Lord Eustace; and said, 'My Lord Eustace, I give you this chaplet, for that you have been the best fighter to-day of all those without or within, and I pray you that you wear it all this year for the love of me. I know well that you are gay, and loving, and glad to be among dames and damsels. So therefore say to them whither-soever you go, that I gave it you; and so I quit you of your prison, and you may set forth to-morrow if it please you.'" Now, if you have not enjoyed this bit of historical study, I tell you frankly, it is neither Edward the Third's fault, nor Froissart's, nor mine, but your own, for not having cheerfulness, loyalty, or generosity enough in you to understand what is going on. But even supposing you have these, and do enjoy the story as now read, it does not at all follow that you would enjoy it at your Literary Institute. There you would find, most probably, a modern abstract of the matter given in polished language. You would be fortunate if you chanced on so good a history as Robert Henry's above referred to, which I always use myself, as intelligent, and trustworthy for general reference. But hear his polished account of this supper at Calais. "As Edward was a great admirer of personal valour, he ordered all the French knights and gentlemen to be feasted by the Prince of Wales, in the great hall of the castle. The king entered the hall in the time of the banquet, and discovered to his prisoners that he had been present in the late conflict, and was the person who had fought hand to hand with the Sieur Ribaumont. Then, addressing himself to that gentleman, he gave him his liberty, presented him with a chaplet adorned with pearls, which he desired him to wear for his sake, and declared him to be the most expert and valorous knight with whom he had ever engaged." Now, supposing you can read no other history than such as this, you had--with profoundest earnestness I say it--infinitely better read none. It is not the least necessary for you to know anything about Edward III.; but quite necessary for you to know something vital and real about somebody; and not to have polished language given you instead of life. "But you do enjoy it, in Froissart?" And you think it would have been, to you also, a "pleasure to see" that fight between Edward and the Sieur de Ribaumont? So be it: now let us compare with theirs, a piece of modern British fighting, done under no banner, and in no loyalty nor obedience, but in the independent spirit of freedom, and yet which, I think, it would have been no pleasure to any of us to see. As we compared before, loyal with free justice, so let us now compare loyal with free fighting. The most active of the contending parties are of your own class, too, I am sorry to say, and that the 'Telegraph' (16th Dec.) calls them many hard names; but I can't remedy this without too many inverted commas. Four savages--four brute beasts in human form we should rather say--named Slane, Rice, Hays, and Beesley, ranging in age between thirty-two and nineteen years, have been sentenced to death for the murder on the 6th of November last, at a place called Spennymoor, of one Joseph Waine. The convicts are Irishmen, and had been working as puddlers in the iron foundries. The principal offender was the ruffian Slane, who seems to have had some spite against the deceased, a very sober, quiet man, about forty years of age, who, with his wife and son, kept a little chandler's shop at Spennymoor. Into this shop Slane came one night, grossly insulted Waine, ultimately dragged him from the shop into a dark passage, tripped him up, holding his head between his legs, and then whistled for his three confederates. When Rice, Hayes, and Beesley appeared on the scene, they were instructed by the prime savage to hold Waine down--the wretch declaring, "If I get a running kick at him, it shall be his last." The horrible miscreant did get a "running kick"--nay, more than a dozen--at his utterly powerless victim; and when Slane's strength was getting exhausted the other three wretches set upon Waine, kicking him in the body with their hob-nailed boots, while the poor agonized wife strove vainly to save her husband. A lodger in the house, named Wilson, at last interfered, and the savages ran away. The object of their brutality lived just twenty-five minutes after the outrage, and the post-mortem examination showed that all the organs were perfectly healthy, and that death could only have arisen from the violence inflicted on Waine by these fiends, who were plainly identified by the widow and her son. It may be noticed, however, as a painfully significant circumstance, that the lodger Wilson, who was likewise a labouring man, and a most important witness for the prosecution, refused to give evidence, and, before the trial came on, absconded altogether. Among the epithets bestowed by the 'Telegraph',--very properly, but unnecessarily--on these free British Operatives, there is one which needs some qualification;--that of "Miscreant," or "Misbeliever," which is only used accurately of Turks or other infidels, whereas it is probable these Irishmen were zealously religious persons, Evangelical or Catholic. But the perversion of the better faith by passion is indeed a worse form of "misbelieving" than the obedient keeping of a poorer creed; and thus the word, if understood not of any special heresy, but of powerlessness to believe, with strength of imagination, in anything, goes to the root of the matter; which I must wait till after Christmas to dig for, having much else on my hands. 26th December, 1872, 8, Morning. The first quiet and pure light that has risen this many a day, was increasing through the tall stems of the trees of our garden, which is walled by the walls of old Oxford; and a bird,--(I am going to lecture on ornithology next term, but don't know what bird, and couldn't go to ask the gardener,) singing steady, sweet, momentary notes, in a way that would have been very pleasant to me, once. And as I was breathing out of the window, thrown up as high as I could, (for my servant had made me an enormous fire, as servants always do on hot mornings,) and looking at the bright sickle of a moon, fading as she rose, the verse came into my mind,--I don't in the least know why,--"Lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting;"--which chanced to express in the most precise terms, what I want you to feel, about Edward III.'s fighting, (though St. Paul is speaking of prayer, not of fighting, but it's all the same;) as opposed to this modern British fighting, which is the lifting up of unholy hands,--feet, at least,--in wrath, and doubting. Also, just the minute before, I had upset my lucifer-match box, a nasty brown tin thing, containing,--as the spiteful Third Fors would have it--just two hundred and sixty-six wax matches, half of which being in a heap on the floor, and the rest all at cross purposes, had to be picked up, put straight and repacked, and at my best time for other work. During this operation, necessarily deliberate, I was thinking of my correspondent's query, (see terminal notes,) respecting what I meant by doing anything "in a hurry." I mean essentially doing it in hurry of mind,--"doubting" whether we are doing it fast enough,--not knowing exactly how fast we can do it, or how slowly it must be done, to be done well. You cannot pack a lucifer-box, nor make a dish of stir-about, nor knead a brown loaf, but with patience; nor meet even the most pressing need, but with coolness. Once, when my father was coming home from Spain, in a merchant ship, and in mid-bay of Biscay, the captain and passengers being at dinner, the sea did something or other to the ship which showed that the steersman was not minding what he was about. The captain jumped straight over the table, went on deck, and took the helm. Now I do not mean that he ought to have gone round the table, but that, if a good captain, as he took the wheel, he would not miss his grasp of the spokes by snatching at them an instant too soon. And you will find that St. Paul's "without doubting"--for which, if you like, you may substitute, "by, or in, faith," covers nearly every definition of right action--and also that it is not possible to have this kind of faith unless one can add--as he does--"having faith and a good conscience." It does not at all follow that one must be doing a right thing; that will depend on one's sense and information; but one must be doing deliberately a thing we entirely suppose to be right, or we shall not do it becomingly. Thus, observe, I enter into no question at present as to the absolute rightness of King Edward's fighting, which caused, that day, at Calais, the deaths of more than four hundred innocent men; nor as to the absolute wrongness of the four Irishmen's fighting, which causes only the death of one, (--who also may, for aught I know, have done something really seeming evil to the dull creatures)--but there is no doubt that the King fought wholly without wrath, and without doubting his rightness; and they with vile wrath and miserable consciousness of doing wrong; and that you have in the two scenes, as perfect types as I can put before you of entirely good ancient French breeding, and entirely bad modern British breeding. Breeding;--observe the word; I mean it literally; involving first the race--and then the habits enforced in youth: entirely excluding intellectual conclusions. The "breeding" of a man is what he gets from the Centaur Chiron; the "beastly" part of him in a good sense;--that which makes him courageous by instinct, true by instinct, loving by instinct, as a Dog is; and therefore felicitously above or below (whichever you like to call it,) all questions of philosophy and divinity. And of both the Centaur Chiron, and St. George, one, the typical Greek tutor of gentlemen, and the other, the type of Christian gentlemen, I meant to tell you in this letter; and the Third Fors won't let me, yet, and I scarcely know when; for before we leave King Edward, lest you should suppose I mean to set him up for a saint instead of St. George, you must hear the truth of his first interview with Alice of Salisbury,--(he had seen her married, but not noticed her then, particularly,)--wherein you will see him becoming doubtful, and of little faith, or distorted faith, "miscreant"; but the lady Alice no wise doubtful; wherefore she becomes worthy to give the shield of England its "tressure" and St. George's company their watchword, as aforesaid. But her story must not be told in the same letter with that of our modern British courage; and now that I think of it, St. George's had better be first told in February, when, I hope, some crocuses will be up, and an amaryllis or two, St. George having much interest in both. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. In an interesting letter "for self and mates" a Manchester working man asks me the meaning of "Fors Clavigera" (surely enough explained in II. 4?) and whether I mean by vulgarity "commonness," and why I say that doing anything in a hurry is vulgar. I do not mean by vulgarity, commonness. A daisy is common; and a baby, not uncommon. Neither are vulgar. Has my correspondent really no perception of the difference between good breeding and vulgarity?--if he will tell me this, I will try to answer him more distinctly: meantime, if in the Salford Library there is a copy of my 'Modern Painters,' let him look at Vol. V., Part IX., Chap. VII. He says also that he and his mates must do many things in a hurry. I know it. But do they suppose such compulsion is a law of Heaven? or that, if not, it is likely to last? I was greatly pleased by Mr. Affleck's letter, and would have told him so; only he gave me his address in Gordon Street, without telling me of what town. His post-mark was Galashiels, which I tried, and Edinburgh; but only with embarrassment to Her Majesty's service. Another communication, very naïve and honest, came from a Republican of literary tastes, who wished to assist me in the development of my plans in 'Fors;' and, in the course of resulting correspondence, expressed his willingness to answer any questions I might wish to put to him. I answered that I imagined myself, as far as I thought needful for me, acquainted with his opinions; but that perhaps he might wish to know something more definite about mine, and that if he liked to put any questions to me, I would do my best to reply intelligibly. Whereupon, apparently much pleased, he sent me the following eleven interrogations, to each of which I have accordingly given solution, to the best of my ability. 1. "Can the world--its oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, continents, islands, or portions thereof, be rightfully treated by human legislators as the 'private property' of individuals?" Ans. Certainly. Else would man be more wretched than the beasts, who at least have dens of their own. 2. "Should cost be the limit of price?" Ans. It never was, and never can be. So we need not ask whether it should be. 3. "Can one man rightfully tax another man?" Ans. By all means. Indeed, I have seldom heard of anybody who would tax himself. 4. "Can a million men rightfully tax other men?" Ans. Certainly, when the other men are not strong enough to tax the million. 5. "Should not each adult inhabitant of a country (who performs service equivalent in value to his or her use of the service of other inhabitants) have electoral rights granted equal to those granted to any other inhabitant?" Ans. Heaven forbid! It is not everybody one would set to choose a horse, or a pig. How much less a member of Parliament? 6. "Is it not an injustice for a State to require or try to enforce, allegiance to the State from self-supporting adults, who have never been permitted to share in the framing or endorsing of the laws they are expected to obey?" Ans. Certainly not. Laws are usually most beneficial in operation on the people who would have most strongly objected to their enactment. 7. "The Parliament of this country is now almost exclusively composed of representatives of the classes whose time is mostly occupied in consuming and destroying. Is this statement true? If true--is it right that it should be so?" Ans. The statement is untrue. A railway navvy consumes, usually, about six times as much as an average member of Parliament; and I know nothing which members of Parliament kill, except time, which other people would not kill, if they were allowed to. It is the Parliamentary tendency to preservation, rather than to destruction, which I have mostly heard complained of. 8. "The State undertakes the carriage and delivery of letters. Would it be just as consistent and advisable for the State to undertake the supply of unadulterated and wholesome food, clean and healthy dwellings, elementary, industrial, and scientific instruction, medical assistance, a national paper money, and other necessities?" Ans. All most desirable. But the tax-gatherers would have a busy life of it! 9. "Should not a State represent the co-operation of all the people of a country, for the benefit of all?" Ans. You mean, I suppose, by "a State" the Government of a State. The Government cannot "represent" such co-operation; but can enforce it, and should. 10. "Is the use of scarce metals as material of which to make 'currency,' economical and beneficent to a nation?" Ans. No; but often necessary: see 'Munera Pulveris,' chap. iii. 11. "Is that a right condition of a people, their laws, and their money which makes 'interest' for use of money legal and possible to obtain?" Ans. See 'Fors Clavigera,' throughout, which indeed I have written to save you the trouble of asking questions on such subjects. It might be well if my Republican correspondent for his own benefit, would write down an exact definition of the following terms used by him:-- 1. "Private property." 2. "Tax." 3. "State." FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXVI. Brantwood, Coniston, 3rd January, 1873. "By St. George," said the English, "you say true!" If, by the same oath, the English could still, now-a-days, both say and do true, themselves, it would be a merrier England. I hear from those of my acquaintance who are unhappy enough to be engaged in commercial operations, that their correspondents are "failing in all directions." Failing! What business has anybody to fail? I observe myself to be getting into the habit of always thinking the last blockheadism I hear, or think of, the biggest. But this system of mercantile credit, invented simply to give power and opportunity to rogues, and enable them to live upon the wreck of honest men--was ever anything like it in the world before? That the wretched, impatient, scrambling idiots, calling themselves commercial men, forsooth, should not be able so much as to see this plainest of all facts, that any given sum of money will be as serviceable to commerce in the pocket of the seller of the goods, as of the buyer; and that nobody gains one farthing by "credit" in the long run. It is precisely as great a loss to commerce that every seller has to wait six months for his money, as it is a gain to commerce that every buyer should keep his money six months in his pocket. In reality there is neither gain nor loss--except by roguery, when the gain is all to the rogue, and the loss to the true man. In all wise commerce, payment, large or small, should be over the counter. If you can't pay for a thing--don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it--don't sell it. So, you will have calm days, drowsy nights, all the good business you have now, and none of the bad. (Just as I am correcting this sheet I get a lovely illuminated circular, printed in blue and red, from Messrs. Howell, James, and Co., silk mercers, etc., to the Royal Family, which respectfully announces that their half-yearly clearance sale COMMENCES JANUARY 27th. and continues one month, and that the whole of the valuable stock will be completely overhauled, and large portions subjected to such reductions in price, as will ensure their being disposed of prior to the commencement of the approaching spring season. Each department will present special attractions in the way of bargains, and ladies will have an opportunity of purchasing the highest class of goods at prices quite as low as those of inferior manufacture. What a quite beautiful and generally satisfactory commercial arrangement, most obliging H. and J.!) If, however, for the nonce, you chance to have such a thing as a real "pound" in your own pocket, besides the hypothetical pounds you have in other people's--put it on the table, and let us look at it together. As a piece of mere die-cutting, that St. George is one of the best bits of work we have on our money. [8] But as a design,--how brightly comic it is! The horse looking abstractedly into the air, instead of where precisely it would have looked, at the beast between its legs: St. George, with nothing but his helmet on (being the last piece of armour he is likely to want), putting his naked feet, at least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, well forward, that the dragon may with the greatest convenience get a bite at them; and about to deliver a mortal blow at him with a sword which cannot reach him by a couple of yards--or, I think, in George III.'s piece--with a field-marshal's truncheon. Victor Carpaccio had other opinions on the likelihood of matters in this battle. His St. George exactly reverses the practice of ours. He rides armed, from shoulder to heel, in proof--but without his helmet. For the real difficulty in dragon-fights, as you shall hear, is not so much to kill your dragon, as to see him; at least to see him in time, it being too probable that he will see you first. Carpaccio's St. George will have his eyes about him, and his head free to turn this way or that. He meets his dragon at the gallop--catches him in the mouth with his lance--carries him backwards off his fore feet, with the spear point out at the back of his neck. But Victor Carpaccio had seen knights tilting; and poor Pistrucci, who designed this St. George for us, though he would have been a good sculptor in luckier circumstances, had only seen them presenting addresses as my Lord Mayor, and killing turtle instead of dragon. And, to our increasing sorrow, modern literature is as unsatisfactory in its picturing of St. George as modern art. Here is Mr. Emerson's bas-relief of the Saint, given in his 'English Traits,' a book occasionally wise, and always observant as to matters actually proceeding in the world; but thus, in its ninth chapter, calumnious of our Georgic faith: "George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and informer; he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a faction to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. 361, George was dragged to prison. The prison was burst open by the mob, and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this precious knave became, in good time, Saint George of England--patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world!" Here is a goodly patron of our dainty doings in Hanover Square! If all be indeed as our clear-sighted, unimaginative, American cousin tells us. But if all be indeed so, what conclusion would our American cousin draw from it? The sentence is amusing--the facts (if facts) surprising. But what is to follow? Mr. Emerson's own conclusion is "that nature trips us up when we strut." But that is, in the first place, untrue absolutely, for Nature teaches all cock-sparrows, and their like (who are many) to strut; and never without wholesome effect on the minds of hen-sparrows, and their like, who are likewise many. But in its relative, if not absolute, truth, is this the conclusion here wisely to be gathered? Are "chivalry, victory, civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world," generally to be described as "strutting?" And is the discovery of the peculations of George of Cilicia a wholesome reproof, administered by Nature, to those unnatural modes of thinking and feeling? Mr. Emerson does not think so. No modern person has truer instinct for heroism than he: nay, he is the only man I know of, among all who ever looked at books of mine, who had nobleness enough to understand and believe the story of Turner's darkening his own picture that it might not take the light out of Lawrence's. The level of vulgar English temper is now sunk so far below the power of doing such a thing, that I never told the story yet, in general society, without being met by instant and obstinate questioning of its truth, if not by quiet incredulity. But men with "the pride of the best blood of England" can believe it; and Mr. Emerson believes it. And yet this chivalry, and faith, and fire of heart, recognised by him as existent, confuse themselves in his mind with effete Gothic tradition; and are all "tripped up" by his investigation, itself superficial, of the story of St. George. In quieter thought, he would have felt that the chivalry and victory, being themselves real, must have been achieved, at some time or another, by a real chevalier and victor,--nay, by thousands of chevaliers and victors. That instead of one St. George, there must have been armies of St. Georges;--that this vision of a single Knight was as securely the symbol of knights innumerable, as the one Dragon of sins and trials innumerable; and no more depended for its vitality, or virtue, on the behaviour of George of Cilicia than the terror of the present temptation depends on the natural history of the rattlesnake. And farther, being an American, he should have seen that the fact of the Christian world's having made a bishop of a speculating bacon-seller, and afterwards kept reverent record of this false St. George, but only obscure record of its real St. Georges, was by no means an isolated fact in the history of the Christian world,--but rather a part of its confirmed custom and "practical education;" and that, only the other day, St. James Fiske, canonised tearfully in America, and bestrewn with tuberoses and camellias, as above described, (xv. 14), was a military gentleman of exactly the type of the Cilician St. George. Farther. How did it never occur to Mr. Emerson that, whether his story of the bookcollecting bishop were true or not, it was certainly not the story told to Coeur-de-Lion, or to Edward III., when they took St. George for their Master? No bookcollecting episcopal person, had he been ever so much a saint, would have served them to swear by, or to strike by. They must have heard some other story;--not, perhaps, one written down, nor needing to be written. A remembered story,--yet, probably, a little truer than the written one; and a little older. It is, above all, strange that the confusion of his own first sentence did not strike him, "George of Cappadocia, born in Cilicia." It is true that the bacon-selling and book-collecting Arian bishop was born in Cilicia, and that this Arian bishop was called George. But the Arians only contrived to get this bishop of theirs thought of as a saint at all, because there was an antecedent St. George, with whom he might be confused; a St. George, indeed, "of Cappadocia;" and as it chanced that their own bishop came out of Cappadocia to his bishopric, very few years after his death sufficed to render the equivocation possible. But the real St. George had been martyred seventy years before, A.D. 290, whereas the Arian bishop was killed in 361. And this is the story of the real St. George, which filled the heart of the early Christian church, and was heard by Coeur-de-Lion and by Edward III., somewhat in this following form, it, luckily for us, having been at least once fairly written out, in the tenth century, by the best eastern scholar who occupied himself with the history of Saints. I give you an old English translation of it, rather than my own, from p. 132 of the 'Historie of that most famous Saint and Souldier of Christ Jesus, St. George of Cappadocia, asserted from the fictions of the middle ages of the Church, and opposition of the present, by Peter Heylyn; printed in London for Henry Seyle, and to be sold at his shop the signe of the Tyger's head in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1631.' "St. George was born in Cappadocia, of Christian parents, and those not of the meanest qualitie: by whom he was brought up in true Religion, and the feare of God. Hee was no sooner past his Childhood, but hee lost his father, bravely encountring with the enemies of Christ; and thereupon departed with his afflicted Mother into Palestine, whereof she was a native; and where great fortunes and a faire inheritance did fall unto him. Thus qualified in birth, and being also of an able bodie, and of an age fit for employment in the warres; hee was made a Colonell." (This word is explained, above, xv. 15.) "In which employment hee gave such testimonies of his valour, and behav'd himselfe so nobly; that forthwith Diocletian, not knowing yet that he was a Christian, advanc'd him to the place and dignitie of his Councell for the warres; (for so on good authoritie I have made bold to render 'Comes' in this place and time). About this time his Mother dyed: and hee, augmenting the heroicke resolutions of his mind, with the increase of his revenue, did presently applie himselfe unto the Court and service of his Prince; his twentieth yeere being even then compleat and ended." "But Diocletian being soon after compelled into his persecution of the Christians" (Heylyn now gives abstract of his author,) "and warrants granted out unto the officers and rulers of the Provinces to speed the execution, and that done also in frequent senate, the Emperour there himself in person, St. George, though not yet sainted, could continue no longer, but there exposed himself unto their fury and his owne glory:" (Translation begins again.) "When therefore George, even in the first beginnings, had observ'd the extraordinarie cruelty of these proceedings, hee presently put off his military habiliments, and, making dole of all his substance to the poore, on the third Session of the Senate, when the Imperiall decree was to be verified, quite voide of feare, he came into the Senate-house, and spake unto them in this manner. 'How long, most noble Emperour and you Conscript Fathers, will you augment your tyrannies against the Christians? How long will you enact unjust and cruell Lawes against them, compelling those which are aright instructed in the faith, to follow that Religion, of whose truth your selves are doubtfull. Your Idols are no Gods, and I am bold to say againe, they are not. Be not you longer couzned in the same errour. Our Christ alone is God, he only is the Lord, in the glory of the Father. Eyther do you therefore acknowledge that Religion which undoubtedly is true: or else disturbe not them by your raging follies, which would willingly embrace it.' This said, and all the Senate wonderfully amazed at the free speech and boldnesse of the man;" (and no wonder;--my own impression is indeed that most martyrs have been made away with less for their faith than their incivility. I have always a lurking sympathy with the Heathen;) "they all of them turn'd their eyes upon the Emperour, expecting what hee would reply: who beckoning to Magnentius, then Consull, and one of his speciall Favourites, to returne an answere; hee presently applyed himselfe to satisfie his Prince's pleasure." "Further" (says Heylyn) "we will not prosecute the storie in our Authors words, which are long and full of needlesse conference; but will briefly declare the substance of it, which is this. Upon St. George's constant profession of his Faith, they wooed him first with promises of future honours, and more faire advancements: but finding him unmoveable, not to be wrought upon with words, they tried him next with torments: not sparing anything which might expresse their cruelty or enoble his affliction. When they saw all was fruitlesse, at last the fatall Sentence was pronounced against him in this manner: that, beeing had againe to prison, hee should the following day be drawne through the City and beheaded. "Which sentence was accordingly performed, and George invested with the glorious Crowne of Martyrdome upon the 23. day of April, Anno Domini nostri, 290." That is St. George's "true" story, how far literally true is of no moment; it is enough for us that a young soldier, in early days of Christianity, put off his armour, and gave up his soul to his Captain, Christ; and that his death did so impress the hearts of all Christian men who heard of it, that gradually he became to them the leader of a sacred soldiership, which conquers more than its mortal enemies, and prevails against the poison, and the shadow, of Pride, and Death. And above all, his putting off his knight's armour, especially the military belt, as then taking service with Christ instead of the Roman Emperor, impressed the minds of the later Christian knights; because of the law referred to by St. Golden-Lips (quoted by Heylyn farther on), "No one, who is an officer, would dare to appear without his zone and mantle before him who wears the diadem." So that having thus voluntarily humbled himself, he is thought of as chiefly exalted among Christian soldiers, and called, not only "the great Martyr," but the "Standard Bearer," (Tropæophorus). Whence he afterwards becomes the knight bearing the bloody cross on the argent field, and the Captain of Christian war. The representation of all his spiritual enemies under the form of the Dragon was simply the natural habit of the Greek mind: the stories of Apollo delivering Latona from the Python, and of Perseus delivering Andromeda from the sea monster, had been as familiar as the pitcher and wine-cups they had been painted on, in red and black, for a thousand years before: and the name of St. George, the "Earthworker," or "Husbandman," [9] connected him instantly, in Greek thoughts, not only with the ancient dragon, Erichthonius, but with the Spirit of agriculture, called "Thricewarrior" to whom the dragon was a harnessed creature of toil. Yet, so far as I know, it was not until the more strictly Christian tradition of the armed archangel Michael confused its symbolism with that of the armed saint, that the dragon enters definitely into the story of St. George. The authoritative course of Byzantine painting, sanctioned and restricted by the Church in the treatment of every subject, invariably represents St. George as the soldier Martyr, or witness, before Diocletian, never as victor over the dragon: [10] his story, as the painters tell it, corresponds closely with that of St. Catherine of Sinai; [11] and is, in the root of it, truth, and in the branching of it, beautiful dream, of the same wild and lovely character. And we might as well confuse Catherine of Sinai with Catherine of Siena (or for that matter, Catherine de Medicis!), as St. George of the Eastern Church with George the Arian. And this witness of painting remains simple and unbroken, down to the last days of Venice. St. Mark, St. Nicholas, and St. George are the three saints who are seen, in the vision of the Fisherman, delivering Venice from the fiends. St. George, first "of the seaweed," has three other churches besides in Venice; and it will be the best work I have ever done in this broken life of mine, if I can some day show you, however dimly, how Victor Carpaccio has painted him in the humblest of these,--the little chapel of St. George on the "Shore of the Slaves." There, however, our dragon does not fail us, both Carpaccio and Tintoret having the deepest convictions on that subject;--as all strong men must have; for the Dragon is too true a creature, to all such, spiritually. That it is an indisputably living and venomous creature, materially, has been the marvel of the world, innocent and guilty, not knowing what to think of the terrible worm; nor whether to worship it, as the Rod of their lawgiver, or to abhor it as the visible symbol of the everlasting Disobedience. Touching which mystery, you must learn one or two main facts. The word 'Dragon,' means "the Seeing Creature," and I believe the Greeks had the same notion in their other word for a serpent, "ophis." There were many other creeping, and crawling, and rampant things; the olive stem and the ivy were serpentine enough, blindly; but here was a creeping thing that saw! The action of the cobra, with its lifted and levelled head, and the watchfulness of the coiled viper impressed the Egyptians and Greeks intensely. To the Egyptian the serpent was awful and sacred, and became the ornament on the front of the King's diadems (though an evil spirit also, when not erect). The Greeks never could make up their minds about it. All human life seems to them as the story of Laocoon. The fiery serpents slay us for our wisdom and fidelity;--then writhe themselves into rest at the feet of the Gods. The Egyptians were at the same pause as to their Nile Dragon, for whom I told you they built their labyrinth. "For in the eyes of some of the Egyptians, the crocodiles are sacred; but by others they are held for enemies. And it is they who dwell by the Lake Moeris, who think them greatly sacred. Every one of these lake people has care of his own crocodile, taught to be obedient to the lifting of finger. And they put jewels of enamel and gold into their ears, and bracelets on their forefeet, and feed them with the sacred shew-bread daily, and attend upon them, that they may live beautiful lives; and, when they die, bury them, embalmed, in holy tombs." (Thus religion, as a pious friend, I observe, writes in a Devonshire paper the other day, leads to the love of Nature!) "But they of the city Elephantine eat their crocodiles, holding them nowise sacred. Neither do they call them crocodiles, but champsæ; it is the Ionians who call them "crocodiles," because they think them like the little crocodiles that live in the dry stone walls." I do not know if children generally have strong associative fancy about words; but when I was a child, that word "Crocodile" always seemed to me very terrific, and I would even hastily, in any book, turn a leaf in which it was printed with a capital C. If anybody had but told me the meaning of it--"a creature that is afraid of crocuses!" That, at least, is all I can make of it, now; though I can't understand how this weakness of the lizard mind was ever discovered, for lizards never see crocuses, that I know of. The next I meet in Italy, (poor little, glancing, panting things,--I miss them a little here from my mossy walls)--shall be shown an artificial crocus, Paris-made; we will see what it thinks of it! But however it came to be given, for the great Spirit-Lizard, the name is a good one. For as the wise German's final definition of the Devil (in the second part of Faust) is that he is afraid of roses, so the earliest and simplest possible definition of him is that in spring time he is afraid of crocuses; which I am quite sure, both our farmers and manufacturers are now, in England, to the utmost. On the contrary, the Athenian Spirit of Wisdom was so fond of crocuses that she made her own robe crocus-colour, before embroidering it with the wars of the Giants; she being greatly antagonistic to the temper which dresses sisters of charity in black, for a crocus-colour dress was much the gayest--not to say the giddiest--thing she could possibly wear in Athens. And of the crocus, vernal, and autumnal, more properly the enchanted herb of Colchis, (see, by the way, White's 'History of Selborne' at the end of its 41st letter) I must tell you somewhat more in next letter; meantime, look at the saffron crest in the centre of it, carefully, and read, with some sympathy, if you can, this true story of a crocus, which being told me the other day by one who, whether I call him friend or not, is indeed friendly to me, and to all whom he can befriend, I begged him to write it for your sakes, which he has thus graciously done:-- A STORY OF A FLOWER. "It is impossible to describe the delight which I took in my first flower, yet it was only a poor peeky, little sprouting crocus. Before I begin the story, I must, in two lines, make known my needy state at the time when I became the owner of the flower. I was in my eleventh year, meanly clothed, plainly fed, and penniless; an errand boy in receipt of one shilling and sixpence a week, which sum I consumed in bread and shoe leather. Yet I was happy enough, living in a snug cottage in the suburbs of Oxford, within sight of its towers, and within hearing of its bells. In the back yard of my home were many wonders. The gable end of a barn was mantled with ivy, centuries old, and sparrows made their home in its leafage; an ancient wall, old as the Norman tower at the other end of the town, was rich in gilly-flowers; a wooden shed, with red tiles, was covered by a thriving "tea tree," so we called it, which in summer was all blossom, pendant mauve coloured blossoms. This tree managed to interlace its branches among the tiles so effectively as in the end to lift off the whole roof in a mass, and poise it in the air. Bees came in swarms to sip honey at the blossoms: I noted civilised hive bees, and large ones whose waxen cells were hidden in mossy banks in the woods--these had crimson and saffron tinted bodies, or, for variety, hairy shapes of sombre green and black. I was never weary of my wall-flowers, and bees, and butterflies. But, so it is, I happened one day to get a glimpse of a college garden about the end of February, or the beginning of March, when its mound of venerable elms was lit up with star-like yellow flowers. The dark earth was robed as with a bright garment of imperial, oriental splendour. It was the star-shaped aconite, as I believe, but am not sure, whose existence in flower is brief, but glorious, when beheld, as I beheld it, in masses. Henceforth, if Old Fidget, the gardener, was not at the back gate of St. J---- I peeped through the keyhole at my yellow garden bed, which seemed flooded with sunlight, only broken by patches of rich black earth, which formed strange patterns, such as we see on Japanese screens of laquer and bronze, only that the flowers had a glory of their own. Well, I looked through the keyhole every time I passed, and that was four times daily, and always with increased interest for my flowering aconite. But oh! trouble upon trouble, one day I found the keyhole stopt, and there was an end of my daily joy, and of the interest which had been awakened in me, in a new way, for the wonders of nature. My love of flowers, however, increased, and I found means to feed my love. I had often observed Old Fidget, the head gardener, and his mates, bring out wheelbarrow loads of refuse from the shrubbery and flower beds, and throw them in a heap along the garden wall without, where a long, deep trench had become the well-known receptacle for rubbish. Such places were common in town suburbs in those days. The rubbish consisted of cuttings of shrubs and plants, and rakings of flower-borders, but more bountifully, of elm leaves, and the cast off clothing of chestnut trees, which soon lay rotting in flaky masses, until I happened to espy a fragment of a bulb, and then, the rubbish of the garden, which concealed sprouting chestnuts, knew no rest. I went, one holiday, and dug deep, with no other implement than my hands, into this matted mass. I laboured, till at length, in a mass of closely pressed leaves, I came upon a perfect crocus. It lay like a dead elfin infant in its forest grave. I was enchanted, and afraid to touch it, as one would fear to commit a piece of sacrilege. It lay in its green robes, which seemed spun from dainty silken threads unsoiled by mortal hands. Its blossom of pale flesh tint lay concealed within a creamy opalescent film, which seemed to revive and live when the light penetrated the darksome tomb, contrasting with the emerald robes, and silken, pliant roots. At length I lifted the flower from its bed, and carried it to my garden plot with breathless care. My garden plot, not much larger than a large baking dish, was enclosed by broken tiles, a scrubby place, unsuited to my newly discovered treasure. I broke up the earth and pulverised it with my fingers, but its coarseness was incurable. I abandoned it as I thought of some mole hills in a neighbouring copse, and soon my plot was filled deeply with soft sandy soil, fit for my flower. And then came the necessity of protecting it from the searching March winds, which I did effectually by covering it with a flower pot, and the season wore on, and soft, mild days set in apace, and my flower, which was ever uppermost in my thoughts, whether sleeping or waking, began to show signs of life, as day by day I permitted the sun to look at it, until at length, one sunny, silent, Sunday morning, it opened its glowing, golden, sacramental cup, gleaming like light from heaven--dropt in a dark place, living light and fire. So it seemed to my poor vision, and I called the household and the neighbours from their cares to share my rapture. But alas! my dream was ended; the flower had no fascination for those who came at my call. It was but a yellow crocus to them--some laughed, some tittered, some jeered me, and old Dick Willis, poor man, who got a crust by selling soft water by the pail, he only rubbed his dim eyes, and exclaimed in pity, "God bless the poor boy!" Little thinking how much he was already blessed,--he--and his flower! For indeed Crocus and Carduus are alike Benedict flowers, if only one knew God's gold and purple from the Devil's, which, with St. George's help, and St. Anthony's,--the one well knowing the flowers of the field, and the other those of the desert,--we will try somewhat to discern. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXVII. Brantwood, 27th January, 1873. "If it were not so, I would have told you." I read those strange words of St. John's gospel this morning, for at least the thousandth time; and for the first time, that I remember, with any attention. It is difficult, if not impossible, to attend rightly without some definite motive, or chance-help, to words which one has read and re-read till every one of them slips into its place unnoticed, as a familiar guest,--unchallenged as a household friend. But the Third Fors helped me, to-day, by half effacing the n in the word Mona, in the tenth century MS. I was deciphering; and making me look at the word, till I began to think of it, and wondered. You may as well learn the old meaning of that pretty name of the isle of Anglesea. "In my Father's house," says Christ, "are many monas,"--remaining-places--"if it were not so, I would have told you." Alas, had He but told us more clearly that it was so! I have the profoundest sympathy with St. Thomas, and would fain put all his questions over again, and twice as many more. "We know not whither Thou goest." That Father's house,--where is it? These "remaining-places," how are they to be prepared for us?--how are we to be prepared for them? If ever your clergy mean really to help you to read your Bible,--the whole of it, and not merely the bits which tell you that you are miserable sinners, and that you needn't mind,--they must make a translation retaining as many as possible of the words in their Greek form, which you may easily learn, and yet which will be quit of the danger of becoming debased by any vulgar English use. So also, the same word must always be given when it is the same; and not in one place translated "mansion," and in another "abode." (Compare verse 23 of this same chapter. [12]) Not but that "mansion" is a very fine Latin word, and perfectly correct, (if only one knows Latin,) but I doubt not that most parish children understand by it, if anything, a splendid house with two wings, and an acre or two of offices, in the middle of a celestial park; and suppose that some day or other they are all of them to live in such, as well as the Squire's children; whereas, if either "mona" or "remaining" were put in both verses, it is just possible that sometimes both the Squire and the children, instead of vaguely hoping to be lodged some day in heaven by Christ and His Father, might take notice of their offer in the last verse I have quoted, and get ready a spare room both in the mansion and cottage, to offer Christ and His Father immediately, if they liked to come into lodgings on earth. I was looking over some of my own children's books the other day, in the course of rearranging the waifs and strays of Denmark Hill at Brantwood; and came upon a catechism of a very solemn character on the subject of the County of Kent. It opens by demanding "the situation of Kent;" then, the extent of Kent,--the population of Kent, and a sketch of the history of Kent; in which I notice with interest that hops were first grown in Kent in 1524, and petitioned against as a wicked weed in 1528. Then, taking up the subject in detail, inquiry is made as to "the situation of Dover?" To which the orthodox reply is that Dover is pleasantly situated on that part of the island of Great Britain nearest the Continent, and stands in a valley between stupendous hills. To the next question, "What is the present state of Dover?" the well-instructed infant must answer, "That Dover consists of two parts, the upper, called the Town, and the lower, the Pier; and that they are connected by a long narrow street, which, from the rocks that hang over it, and seem to threaten the passenger with destruction, has received the name of Snaregate Street." The catechism next tests the views of the young respondent upon the municipal government of Dover, the commercial position of Dover, and the names of the eminent men whom Dover has produced; and at last, after giving a proper account of the Castle of Dover and the two churches in Dover, we are required to state whether there is not an interesting relic of antiquity in the vicinity of Dover; upon which, we observe that, about two miles north-west from Dover, are the remains of St. Radagune's Abbey, now converted into a farm-house; and finally, to the crucial interrogation--"What nobleman's seat is near Dover?" we reply, with more than usual unction, that "In the Parish of Waldershaw, five miles and a half from Dover, is Waldershaw Park, the elegant seat of the Earl of Guildford, and that the house is a magnificent structure, situated in a vale, in the centre of a well-wooded Park." Whereat I stopped reading; first, because St. Radagune's Abbey, though it is nothing but walls with a few holes through them by which the cows get in for shelter on windy days, was the first "remaining" of Antiquity I ever sketched, when a boy of fourteen, spending half my best BB pencil on the ivy and the holes in the walls; and, secondly, the tone of these two connected questions in the catechism marks exactly the curious period in the English mind when the worship of St. Radagune was indeed utterly extinct, so that her once elegant mansion becomes a farm-house, as in that guise fulfilling its now legitimate function:--but the worship of Earls of Guildford is still so flourishing that no idea would ever occur to the framers of catechism that the elegant seats of these also were on the way to become farm-houses. Which is nevertheless surely the fact:--and the only real question is whether St. Radagune's mansion and the Earl of Guildford's are both to be farm-houses, or whether the state of things at the time of the Dover Catechism may not be exactly reversed,--and St. Radagune have her mansion and park railed in again, while the Earl's walls shelter the cows on windy days. For indeed, from the midst of the tumult and distress of nations, fallen wholly Godless and lordless, perhaps the first possibility of redemption may be by cloistered companies, vowed once more to the service of a divine Master, and to the reverence of His saints. You were shocked, I suppose, by my catalogue, in last Fors, of such persons, as to be revered by our own Company. But have you ever seriously considered what a really vital question it is to you whether St. Paul and St. Pancras, (not that I know myself at this moment, who St. Pancras was,--but I'll find out for next Fors,)--St. George and St. Giles, St. Bridget and St. Helen, are really only to become the sponsors of City parishes, or whether you mean still to render them any gratitude as the first teachers of what used to be called civilization; nay, whether there may not even be, irrespective of what we now call civilization--namely, coals and meat at famine prices,--some manner of holy living and dying, of lifting holy hands without wrath, and sinking to blessed sleep without fear, of which these persons, however vaguely remembered, have yet been the best patterns the world has shown us. Don't think that I want to make Roman Catholics of you, or to make anything of you, except honest people. But as for the vulgar and insolent Evangelical notion, that one should not care for the Saints,--nor pray to them,--Mercy on us!--do the poor wretches fancy that God wouldn't be thankful if they would pray to anybody, for what it was right they should have; or that He is piqued, forsooth, if one thinks His servants can help us sometimes, in our paltry needs. "But they are dead, and cannot help us, nor hear!" Alas; perchance--no. What would I not give to be so much a heretic as to believe the Dead could hear!--but are there no living Saints, then, who can help you? Sir C. Dilke, or Mr. Beales, for instance? and if you don't believe there are any parks or monas abiding for you in heaven, may you not pull down some park railings here, and--hold public meetings in them, of a Paradisiacal character? Indeed, that pulling down of the Piccadilly railings was a significant business. "Park," if you will look to your Johnson, you will find is one of quite the oldest words in Europe; vox antiquissima, a most ancient word, and now a familiar one among active nations. French, Parc, Welsh, the same, Irish, Pairc, "being" a piece of ground enclosed and stored with wild beasts of chase. Manwood, in his Forest Law, defines it thus, "A park is a place for privilege for wild beasts of venery, and also for other wild beasts that are beasts of the forest and of the chase, and those wild beasts are to have a firm peace and protection there, so that no man may hurt or chase them within the park, without licence of the owner: a park is of another nature than either a chase or a warren; for a park must be enclosed, and may not lie open--if it does, it is a good cause of seizure into the King's hands." Or into King Mob's for parliamentary purposes--and how monstrous, you think, that such pleasant habitations for wild beasts should still be walled in, and in peace, while you have no room to--speak in,--I had like to have said something else than speak--but it is at least polite to you to call it 'speaking.' Yes. I have said so, myself, once or twice;--nevertheless something is to be said for the beasts also. What do you think they were made for? All these spotty, scaly, finned, and winged, and clawed things, that grope between you and the dust, that flit between you and the sky. These motes in the air--sparks in the sea--mists and flames of life. The flocks that are your wealth--the moth that frets it away. The herds upon a thousand hills,--the locust,--and the worm, and the wandering plague whose spots are worlds. The creatures that mock you, and torment. The creatures that serve and love you, (or would love if they might,) and obey. The joys of the callow nests and burrowed homes of Earth. The rocks of it, built out of its own dead. What is the meaning to you of all these,--what their worth to you? No worth, you answer, perhaps; or the contrary of worth. In fact, you mean to put an end to all that. You will keep pigeons to shoot--geese to make pies of--cocks for fighting--horses to bet on--sheep for wool, and cows for cheese. As to the rest of the creatures, you owe no thanks to Noah; and would fain, if you could, order a special deluge for their benefit; failing that, you will at all events get rid of the useless feeders as fast as possible. Indeed, there is some difficulty in understanding why some of them were made. I lost great part of my last hour for reading, yesterday evening, in keeping my kitten's tail out of the candles,--a useless beast, and still more useless tail--astonishing and inexplicable even to herself. Inexplicable, to me, all of them--heads and tails alike. "Tiger--tiger--burning bright"--is this then all you were made for--this ribbed hearthrug, tawny and black? If only the Rev. James McCosh were here! His book is; and I'm sure I don't know how, but it turns up in re-arranging my library. 'Method of the Divine Government Physical and Moral.' Preface begins. "We live in an age in which the reflecting portion of mankind are much addicted to the contemplation of the works of Nature. It is the object of the author in this Treatise to interrogate Nature with the view of making her utter her voice in answer to some of the most important questions which the inquiring spirit of man can put." Here is a catechumen for you!--and a catechist! Nature with her hands behind her back--Perhaps Mr. McCosh would kindly put it to her about the tiger. Farther on, indeed, it is stated that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, and I observe that the author, with the shrinking modesty characteristic of the clergy of his persuasion, feels that, even the intellect of a McCosh cannot, without risk of error, embrace more than the present method of the Divine management of Creation. Wherefore "no man," he says, "should presume to point out all the ways in which a God of unbounded resources might govern the universe." But the present way--(allowing for the limited capital,)--we may master that, and pay our compliments to God upon it? We will hope so; in the meantime I can assure you, this creation of His will bear more looking at than you have given, yet, however addicted you may be to the contemplation of Nature; (though I suspect you are more addicted to the tasting of her,) and that if instead of being in such a hurry to pull park railings down, you would only beg the owners to put them to their proper use, and let the birds and beasts, which were made to breathe English air as well as you, take shelter there, you would soon have a series of National Museums more curious than that in Great Russell Street; and with something better worth looking at in them than the sacred crocodiles. Besides, you might spare the poor beasts a little room on earth, for charity, if not for curiosity. They have no mansions preparing for them elsewhere. What! you answer; indignant,--"All that good land given up to beasts!" Have you ever looked how much or little of England is in park land? I have here, by me, Hall's Travelling Atlas of the English Counties; which paints conveniently in red the railroads, and in green the parks (not conscious, probably--the colourist--of his true expression of antagonism by those colours). The parks lie on the face of each county like a few crumbs on a plate; if you could turn them all at once into corn land, it would literally not give you a mouthful extra of dinner. Your dog, or cat, is more costly to you, in proportion to your private means, than all these kingdoms of beasts would be to the nation. "Cost what they might, it would be too much"--think you? You will not give those acres of good land to keep beasts? Perhaps not beasts of God's making; but how many acres of good land do you suppose, then, you do give up, as it is, to keep beasts He never made,--never meant to be made,--the beasts you make of yourselves? Do you know how much corn land in the United Kingdom is occupied in supplying you with the means of getting drunk? Mind, I am no temperance man. You should all have as much beer and alcohol as was good for you if I had my way. But the beer and alcohol which are not good for you,--which are the ruin of so many of you, suppose you could keep the wages you spend in that liquor in the savings bank, and left the land, now tilled to grow it for you, to natural and sober beasts?--Do you think it would be false economy?--Why, you might have a working men's park for nothing, in every county, bigger than the Queen's! and your own homes all the more comfortable. I had no notion myself, till the other day, what the facts were, in this matter. Get, if you can, Professor Kirk's 'Social Politics,' (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.,) and read, for a beginning, his 21st chapter, on land and liquor; and then, as you have leisure, all the book, carefully. Not that he would help me out with my park plan; he writes with the simple idea that the one end of humanity is to eat and drink; and it is interesting to see a Scotch Professor thinking the lakes of his country were made to be 'Reservoirs,' and particularly instancing the satisfaction of thirsty Glasgow out of Loch Katrine; so that, henceforward, it will be proper in Scotch economical circles not to speak of the Lady of the Lake, but of the Lady of the Reservoir. Still, assuming that to eat and drink is the end of life, the Professor shows you clearly how much better this end may be accomplished than it is now. And the broad fact which he brings out concerning your drink is this; that about one million five hundred thousand acres of land in the United Kingdom are occupied in producing strong liquor (and I don't see that he has included in this estimate what is under the wicked weeds of Kent; it is curious what difficulty people always seem to have in putting anything accurately into short statement). The produce of this land, which is more than all the arable for bread in Scotland, after being manufactured into drink, is sold to you at the rates,--the spirits, of twenty-seven shillings and sixpence for two shillings' worth; and the beer, of two shillings for threepence-halfpenny worth. The sum you spend in these articles, and in tobacco, annually, is ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX MILLIONS OF POUNDS; on which the pure profit of the richer classes, (putting the lower alehouse gains aside) is, roughly, a hundred millions. That is the way the rich Christian Englishman provides against the Day of Judgment, expecting to hear his Master say to him, "I was thirsty--and ye gave me drink--Two shillings' worth for twenty-seven and sixpence." Again; for the matter of lodging. Look at the Professor's page 73. There you find that in the street dedicated in Edinburgh to the memory of the first Bishop of Jerusalem, in No. 23, there are living 220 persons. In the first floor of it live ten families,--forty-nine persons; in the second floor, nine families--fifty-four persons; and so on, up to six floors, the ground-floor being a shop; so that "the whole 220 persons in the building are without one foot of the actual surface of the land on which to exist." "In my Father's house," says Christ, "are many mansions." Verily, that appears to be also the case in some of His Scotch Evangelical servants' houses here. And verecund Mr. McCosh, who will not venture to suggest any better arrangement of the heavens,--has he likewise no suggestion to offer as to the arrangement of No. 23, St. James's Street? "Whose fault is it?" do you ask? Immediately, the fault of the landlords; but the landlords from highest to lowest, are more or less thoughtless and ignorant persons, from whom you can expect no better. The persons really answerable for all this are your two professed bodies of teachers; namely, the writers for the public press, and the clergy. Nearly everything that I ever did of any use in this world has been done contrary to the advice of my friends; and as my friends are unanimous at present in begging me never to write to newspapers, I am somewhat under the impression that I ought to resign my Oxford professorship, and try to get a sub-editorship in the 'Telegraph'. However, for the present, I content myself with my own work, and have sustained patiently, for thirty years, the steady opposition of the public press to whatever good was in it, (said 'Telegraph' always with thanks excepted) down to the article in the 'Spectator' of August 13th, 1870, which, on my endeavour to make the study of art, and of Greek literature, of some avail in Oxford to the confirmation of right principle in the minds of her youth, instantly declared that "the artistic perception and skill of Greece were nourished by the very lowness of her ethical code, by her lack of high aims, by her freedom from all aspirations after moral good, by her inability even to conceive a Hebrew tone of purity, by the fact that she lived without God, and died without hope." "High aims" are explained by the 'Spectator,' in another place, to consist in zeal for the establishment of cotton mills. And the main body of the writers for the public press are also--not of that opinion--for they have no opinions; but they get their living by asserting so much to you. Against which testimony of theirs, you shall hear, to-day, the real opinion of a man of whom Scotland once was proud; the man who first led her to take some notice of that same reservoir of hers, which Glasgow,--Clyde not being deep enough for her drinking, or perhaps, (see above, xvi. 16) not being now so sweet as stolen waters,--cools her tormented tongue with. "The poor laws into which you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan's Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart-loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical remedies, such as general systems of education, and so forth. But a man with a broken constitution might as well put faith in Spilsburg or Godbold. It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is productive of real benefit. "There is a terrible evil in England to which we are strangers" (some slight acquaintance has been raked up since, Sir Walter,) "the number, to wit, of tippling houses, where the labourer, as a matter of course, spends the overplus of his earnings. In Scotland there are few; and the Justices are commendably inexorable in rejecting all application for licences where there appears no public necessity for granting them. A man, therefore, cannot easily spend much money in liquor, since he must walk three or four miles to the place of suction, and back again, which infers a sort of malice prepense of which few are capable; and the habitual opportunity of indulgence not being at hand, the habits of intemperance, and of waste connected with it, are not acquired. If financiers would admit a general limitation of the alehouses over England to one-fourth of the number, I am convinced you would find the money spent in that manner would remain with the peasant, as a source of self-support and independence. All this applies chiefly to the country; in towns, and in the manufacturing districts, the evil could hardly be diminished by such regulations. There would, perhaps, be no means so effectual as that (which will never be listened to) of taxing the manufacturers according to the number of hands which they employ on an average, and applying the produce in maintaining the manufacturing poor. If it should be alleged that this would injure the manufacturers, I would boldly reply,--'And why not injure, or rather limit, speculations, the excessive stretch of which has been productive of so much damage to the principles of the country, and to the population, whom it has, in so many respects, degraded and demoralized?' For a great many years, manufacturers, taken in a general point of view, have not partaken of the character of a regular profession, in which all who engaged with honest industry and a sufficient capital might reasonably expect returns proportional to their advances and labour,--but have, on the contrary, rather resembled a lottery, in which the great majority of the adventurers are sure to be losers, although some may draw considerable advantage. Men continued for a great many years to exert themselves, and to pay extravagant wages, not in hopes that there could be a reasonable prospect of an orderly and regular demand for the goods they wrought up, but in order that they might be the first to take advantage of some casual opening which might consume their cargo, let others shift as they could. Hence extravagant wages on some occasions; for these adventurers who thus played at hit or miss, stood on no scruples while the chance of success remained open. Hence, also, the stoppage of work, and the discharge of the workmen, when the speculators failed of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;--for whoever gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-wages and over-living, and necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and render only fit for the almshouse, in prosecution of their own adventures, though it operated as a check on the increase of manufacturers, would be a measure just in itself, and beneficial to the community. But it would never be listened to;--the weaver's beam, and the sons of Zeruiah, would be too many for the proposers. "This is the eleventh of August; Walter, happier than he will ever be again, perhaps, is preparing for the moors. He has a better dog than Trout, and rather less active. Mrs. Scott and all our family send kind love. Yours ever. W. S." I have italicized one sentence in this letter, written in the year 1817 (what would the writer have thought of the state of things now?)--though I should like, for that matter, to italicise it all. But that sentence touches the root of the evil which I have most at heart, in these letters, to show you; namely, the increasing poverty of the country through the enriching of a few. I told you, in the first sentence of them, that the English people was not a rich people; that it "was empty in purse--empty in stomach." The day before yesterday, a friend, who thinks my goose pie not an economical dish! sent me a penny cookery book, a very desirable publication, which I instantly sat down to examine. It starts with the great principle that you must never any more roast your meat, but always stew it; and never have an open fire, but substitute, for the open fire, close stoves, all over England. Now observe. There was once a dish, thought peculiarly English--Roast Beef. And once a place, thought peculiarly English--the Fireside. These two possessions are now too costly for you. Your England, in her unexampled prosperity, according to the 'Morning Post,' can no longer afford either her roast beef--or her fireside. She can only afford boiled bones, and a stove-side. Well. Boiled bones are not so bad things, neither. I know something more about them than the writer of the penny cookery book. Fifty years ago, Count Rumford perfectly ascertained the price, and nourishing power, of good soup; and I shall give you a recipe for Theseus' vegetable diet, and for Lycurgus' black and Esau's red pottage, for your better pot-luck. But what next? To-day, you cannot afford beef--to-morrow, are you sure that you will be still able to afford bones? If things are to go on thus, and you are to study economy to the utmost, I can beat the author of the penny cookery book even on that ground. What say you to this diet of the Otomac Indians; persons quite of our present English character? "They have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing. They are men of a very robust constitution, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. While the waters of the Orinoco are low, they subsist on fish and turtles, but at the period of its inundations, (when the fishing ceases) they eat daily, during some months, three quarters of a pound of clay, slightly hardened by fire" [13]--(probably stewable in your modern stoves with better effect).--"Half, at least" (this is Father Gumilla's statement, quoted by Humboldt) "of the bread of the Otomacs and the Guamoes is clay--and those who feel a weight on their stomach, purge themselves with the fat of the crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to continue to eat pure earth." "I doubt"--Humboldt himself goes on, "the manteca de caiman being a purgative. But it is certain that the Guamoes are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh, of the crocodile." We have surely brickfields enough to keep our clay from ever rising to famine prices, in any fresh accession of prosperity;--and though fish can't live in our rivers, the muddy waters are just of the consistence crocodiles like: and, at Manchester and Rochdale, I have observed the surfaces of the streams smoking, so that we need be under no concern as to temperature. I should think you might produce in them quite 'streaky' crocodile,--fat and flesh concordant,--St. George becoming a bacon purveyor, as well as seller, and laying down his dragon in salt; (indeed it appears, by an experiment made in Egypt itself, that the oldest of human words is Bacon;) potted crocodile will doubtless, also, from countries unrestrained by religious prejudices, be imported, as the English demand increases, at lower quotations; and for what you are going to receive, the Lord make you truly thankful. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. ==> I hope, in future, to arrange the publishing and editing of 'Fors,' so that the current number may always be in my readers' hands on the first of the month: but I do not pledge myself for its being so. In case of delay, however, subscribers may always be secure of its ultimate delivery, as they would at once receive notice in the event of the non-continuance of the work. I find index-making more difficult and tedious than I expected, and am besides bent at present on some Robinson Crusoe operations of harbour-digging, which greatly interfere with literary work of every kind; but the thing is in progress. I cannot, myself, vouch for the facts stated in the following letter, but am secure of the writer's purpose to state them fairly, and grateful for his permission to print his letter:-- 1, St. Swithin's Lane, London, E. C., 4th February, 1873. My dear Mr. Ruskin,--I have just finished reading your 'Munera Pulveris,' and your paragraph No. 160 is such a reflex of the experience I have of City business that I must call your attention to it. I told you that I was endeavouring to put into practice what you are teaching, and thus our work should be good work, whether we live or die. I read in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science' that the waste of the Metropolitan sewage is equivalent to three million quartern loaves floating down the Thames every day. I read in the papers that famine fever has broken out in the Metropolis. I have proved that this bread can be saved, by purifying sewage, and growing such corn with the produce as amazes those that have seen it. I have proved this so completely to capitalists that they have spent £25,000 in demonstrating it to the Metropolitan Board of Works. 'But nothing of this work will pay.' [14] We have never puffed, we have never advertised, and hard work I have had to get the Board of Directors to agree to this modest procedure--nevertheless they have done so. Now, there is a band of conspirators on the Stock Exchange bound to destroy the Company, because, like Jezebel, they have sold a vineyard that does not belong to them--in other words, they have sold 'bears,' and they cannot fulfil their contract without killing the Company, or terrifying the shareholders into parting with their property. No stone is left unturned to thwart our work, and if you can take the trouble to look at the papers I send you, you will see what our work would be for the country, and how it is received. We are now to be turned out of Crossness, and every conceivable mischief will be made of the fact. I have fought the fight almost single-handed. I might have sold out and retired from the strife long ago, for our shares were 800 per cent. premium, but I prefer completing the work I have begun, if I am allowed. From very few human beings have I ever received, nor did I expect, anything but disapproval; for this effort to discountenance the City's business way of doing things, except Alfred Borwick, and my Brother, R. G. Sillar; but we have been repeatedly told that we must abandon these absurd principles.... However, with or without encouragement, I shall work on, though I have to do it through a mass of moral filth and corruption, compared with which a genuine cesspit is good company. Believe me sincerely yours, W. C. Sillar. The Third Fors puts into my hand, as I correct the press, a cutting from the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of September 13th, 1869, which aptly illustrates the former 'waste' of sewage referred to by Mr. Sillar:-- "We suffer much from boards of guardians and vestries in and about London, but what they must suffer in remote parts of the country may be imagined rather than described. At a late meeting of the Lincoln board of guardians Mr. Mantle gave a description of a visit he paid with other gentlemen to the village of Scotherne. What they saw he said he should never forget. The village was full of fever cases, and no wonder. The beck was dried up and the wells were filled with sewage matter. They went to one pump, and found the water emitted an unbearable stench. He (Mr. Mantle) asked a woman if she drank the water from the well, and she replied that she did, but that it stank a bit; and there could be no doubt about that, for the well was full of 'pure' sewage matter. They went to another house, occupied by a widow with five children, the head of the family having died of fever last year. This family was now on the books of the union. The house was built on a declivity; the pigsty, privy, vault, and cesspool were quite full, and after a shower of rain the contents were washed up to and past the door. The family was in an emaciated state, and one of the children was suffering from fever. After inspecting that part of the village, they proceeded to the house of a man named Harrison, who, with his wife, was laid up with fever; both man and wife were buried in one grave yesterday week, leaving five children to be supported by the union. When visited, the unfortunate couple were in the last stage of fever, and the villagers had such a dread of the disease that none of them would enter the house, and the clergyman and relieving officer had to administer the medicine themselves. Harrison was the best workman in the parish. The cost to the union has already been £12, and at the lowest computation a cost of £600 would fall upon the union for maintaining the children, and probably they might remain paupers for life. This amount would have been sufficient to drain the parish." FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXVIII. Brantwood, 20th Feb., 1873. I was again stopped by a verse in St. John's gospel this morning: not because I have not thought of it before, often enough; but because it bears much on our immediate business in one of its expressions,--"Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own." His own what? His own property, his own rights, his own opinions, his own place, I suppose one must answer? Every man in his own place; and every man acting on his own opinions; and every man having his own way. Those are somewhat your own notions of the rightest possible state of things, are they not? And you do not think it of any consequence to ask what sort of a place your own is? As for instance, taking the reference farther on, to the one of Christ's followers who that night, most distinctly of all that were scattered, found his place, and stayed in it,--"This ministry and Apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place." What sort of a place? It should interest you, surely, to ask of such things, since you all, whether you like them or not, have your own places; and whether you know them or not, your own opinions. It is too true that very often you fancy you think one thing, when, in reality, you think quite another. Most Christian persons, for instance, fancy they would like to be in heaven. But that is not their real opinion of the place at all. See how grave they will look, if their doctor hints to them that there is the least probability of their soon going there. And the ascertaining what you really do think yourself, and do not merely fancy you think, because other people have said so; as also the ascertaining, if every man had indeed to go to his own place, what place he would verily have to go to, are most wholesome mental exercises; and there is no objection whatever to your giving weight to that really 'private opinion,' and that really 'individual right.' But if you ever come really to know either what you think, or what you deserve, it is ten to one but you find it as much the character of Prudence as of Charity, that she "seeketh not her own." For indeed that same apostle, who so accurately sought his own, and found it, is, in another verse, called the "Son of Loss." "Of them whom Thou gavest me, have I lost none, but the Son of Loss," says Christ (your unlucky translation, again, quenches the whole text by its poor Latinism--"perdition"). Might it not be better to lose your place than to find it, on such terms? But, lost or found, what do you think is your place at this moment? Are you minded to stay in it, if you are in it? Do you mind where it is, if you are out of it? What sort of creatures do you think yourselves? How do those you call your best friends think of you, when they advise you to claim your just place in the world? I said, two letters back, that we would especially reverence eight saints, and among them St. Paul. I was startled to hear, only a few days afterwards, that the German critics have at last positively ascertained that St. Paul was Simon Magus;--but I don't mind whether he was or not;--if he was, we have got seven saints, and one of the Magi, to reverence, instead of eight saints;--plainly and practically, whoever wrote the 13th of 1st Corinthians is to be much respected and attended to; not as the teacher of salvation by faith, still less of salvation by talking, nor even of salvation by almsgiving or martyrdom, but as the bold despiser of faith, talk-gift, and burning, if one has not love. Whereas this age of ours is so far contrary to any such Pauline doctrine that, without especial talent either for faith or martyrdom, and loquacious usually rather with the tongues of men than of angels, it nevertheless thinks to get on, not merely without love of its neighbour, but founding all its proceedings on the precise contrary of that,--love of itself, and the seeking of every man for his own,--I should say of every beast for its own; for your modern social science openly confesses that it no longer considers you as men, but as having the nature of Beasts of Prey; [15] which made me more solicitous to explain to you the significance of that word 'Park' in my last letter; for indeed you have already pulled down the railings of those small green spots of park to purpose--and in a very solemn sense, turned all England into a Park. Alas!--if it were but even so much. Parks are for beasts of the field, which can dwell together in peace: but you have made yourselves beasts of the Desert, doleful creatures, for whom the grass is green no more, nor dew falls on lawn or bank; no flowers for you--not even the bare and quiet earth to lie down on, but only the sand-drift, and the dry places which the very Devils cannot rest in. Here and there, beside our sweet English waters, the sower may still send forth the feet of the ox and the ass; but for men with ox's heads, and ass's heads,--not the park, for these; by no manner of means the Park; but the everlasting Pound. Every man and beast being in their own place, that you choose for yours. I have given you therefore, this month, for frontispiece, the completest picture I can find of that pound or labyrinth which the Greeks supposed to have been built by Daedalus, to enclose the bestial nature, engrafted on humanity. The Man with the Bull's head. The Greek Daedalus is the power of mechanical as opposed to imaginative art; [16] and this is the kind of architecture which Greeks and Florentines alike represent him as providing for human beasts. Could anything more precisely represent the general look of your architecture now? When I come down here; to Coniston, through Preston and Wigan, it seems to me that I have seen that thing itself, only built a little higher, and smoking, or else set on its side, and spinning round, a thousand times over in the course of the day. Then the very writing of the name of it is so like your modern education! You miss the first letter of your lives; and begin with A for apple-pie, instead of L for love; and the rest of the writing is--some little--some big--some turned the wrong way; and the sum of it all to you Perplexity. "Abberinto." For the rest, the old Florentine engraver took the story as it ran currently, that Theseus deserted Ariadne (but, indeed, she was the letter L lost out of his life), and besides, you know if he ever did do anything wrong, it was all Titania's fault,-- "Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night, And make him with fair �gle break his faith, With Ariadne, and Antiopa?" If you have young eyes, or will help old ones with a magnifying glass, you will find all her story told. In the front, Theseus is giving her his faith; their names, TESEO . ADRIANNA, are written beneath them. He leans on his club reversed. She brings him three balls of thread, in case one, or even two, should not be long enough. His plumed cap means earthly victory; her winged one heavenly power and hope. Then, at the side of the arched gate of the labyrinth, Theseus has tied one end of the clue to a ring, and you see his back and left leg as he goes in. And just above, as the end of the adventure, he is sailing away from Naxos, with his black sail. On the left is the isle of Naxos, and deserted Adriane waving Theseus back, with her scarf tied to a stick. Theseus not returning, she throws herself into the sea; you can see her feet, and her hand, still with the staff in it, as she plunges in backwards. Whereupon, winged Jupiter, GIOVE, comes down and lifts her out of the sea; you see her winged head raised to him. Then he carries her up to heaven. He holds her round the waist, but, strangely, she is not thinking of Jupiter at all, but of something above and more than Jupiter; her hands and head raised, as in some strong desire. But on the right, there is another fall, without such rising. Theseus' father throws himself into the sea from the wall of Athens, and you see his feet as he goes in; but there is no God to lift him out of the waves. He stays, in his place, as Adriane in hers. "Such an absurd old picture, or old story, you never saw or heard of? The very blaze of fireworks, in which Jupiter descends, drawn with black sparks instead of white! the whole point of the thing, the 'terrific combat,' missed out of the play! and nothing, on the whole, seen, except people's legs, as in a modern pantomime, only not to so much advantage." That is what you think of it? Well, such as it is, that is 'fine art' (if you will take my opinion in my own business); and even this poor photograph of it is simply worth all the illustrations in your 'Illustrated News' or 'Illustrated Times' from one year's end to another. Worth them all--nay, there is no comparison, for these illustrated papers do you definite mischief, and the more you look at them, the worse for you. Whereas, the longer you look at this, and think of it, the more good you will get. Examine, for instance, that absurdly tall crest of Theseus. Behind it, if you look closely, you will see that he also has the wings of hope on his helmet; but the upright plumes nearly hide them. Have you never seen anything like them before? They are five here, indeed; but you have surely met with them elsewhere,--in number, Three--those curling, upright plumes? For that Prince who waited on his father and the French Knights in the castle of Calais, bears them in memory of the good knight and king who fought sightless at Cressy; whose bearings they were, with the motto which you know so well, yet are so little minded to take for your own,--"I serve." Also the cap of the Knights of St. George has these white plumes 'of three falls,' but the Prince of Wales more fitly, because the meaning of the ostrich feather is order and rule; for it was seen that, long and loose though the filaments seemed, no wind could entangle or make them disorderly. "So this plume betokeneth such an one as nothing can disturb his mind or disquiet his spirits, but is ever one and the same." Do you see how one thing bears out and fulfils another, in these thoughts and symbols of the despised people of old time? Do you recollect Froissart's words of the New Year's Feast at Calais? "So they were served in peace, and in great leisure." You have improved that state of things, at any rate. I must say so much for you, at Wolverton, and Rugby, and such other places of travellers' repose. Theseus then, to finish with him for this time, bears these plumes specially as the Institutor of Order and Law at Athens; the Prince or beginner of the State there; and your own Prince of Wales bears them in like manner as the beginner of State with us, (the mocking and purposeful lawlessness, of Henry the Fifth when Prince, yet never indeed violating law, or losing self-command, is one of the notablest signs, rightly read, in the world's history). And now I want you to consider with me very carefully the true meaning of the words he begins his State with:-- "I serve." You have, I hope, noticed that throughout these letters addressed to you as workmen and labourers,--though I have once or twice ventured to call myself your fellow-workman, I have oftener spoken as belonging to, and sharing main modes of thought with, those who are not labourers, but either live in various ways by their wits--as lawyers, authors, reviewers, clergymen, parliamentary orators, and the like--or absolutely in idleness on the labour of others,--as the representative Squire. And, broadly speaking, I address you as workers, and speak in the name of the rest as idlers, thus not estimating the mere wit-work as work at all: it is always play, when it is good. Speaking to you, then, as workers, and of myself as an idler, tell me honestly whether you consider me as addressing my betters or my worses? Let us give ourselves no airs on either side. Which of us, do you seriously think, you or I, are leading the more honourable life? Would you like to lead my life rather than your own; or, if you couldn't help finding it pleasanter, would you be ashamed of yourselves for leading it? Is your place, or mine, considered as cure and sinecure, the better? And are either of us legitimately in it? I would fain know your own real opinion on these things. But note further: there is another relation between us than that of idler and labourer; the much more direct one of Master and Servant. I can set you to any kind of work I like, whether it be good for you or bad, pleasant to you or painful. Consider, for instance, what I am doing at this very instant--half-past seven, morning, 25th February, 1873. It is a bitter black frost, the ground deep in snow, and more falling. I am writing comfortably in a perfectly warm room; some of my servants were up in the cold at half-past five to get it ready for me; others, a few days ago, were digging my coals near Durham, at the risk of their lives; an old woman brought me my watercresses through the snow for breakfast yesterday; another old woman is going two miles through it to-day to fetch me my letters at ten o'clock. Half a dozen men are building a wall for me to keep the sheep out of my garden, and a railroad stoker is holding his own against the north wind, to fetch me some Brobdignag raspberry plants [17] to put in it. Somebody in the east end of London is making boots for me, for I can't wear those I have much longer; a washerwoman is in suds, somewhere, to get me a clean shirt for to-morrow; a fisherman is in dangerous weather somewhere, catching me some fish for Lent; and my cook will soon be making me pancakes, for it is Shrove Tuesday. Having written this sentence, I go to the fire, warm my fingers, saunter a little, listlessly, about the room, and grumble because I can't see to the other side of the lake. And all these people, my serfs or menials, who are undergoing any quantity or kind of hardship I choose to put on them,--all these people, nevertheless, are more contented than I am: I can't be happy, not I,--for one thing, because I haven't got the MS. Additional, (never mind what number,) in the British Museum, which they bought in 1848, for two hundred pounds, and I never saw it! And have never been easy in my mind, since. But perhaps it is not the purpose of Heaven to make refined personages, like me, easy in our minds; we are supposed to be too grand for that. Happy, or easy, or otherwise, am I in my place, think you; and you, my serfs, in yours? 'You are not serfs,' say you, 'but free-born Britons'? Much good may your birth do you. What does your birth matter to me, since, now that you are grown men, you must do whatever I like, or die by starvation? 'Strike!'--will you? Can you live by striking? And when you are forced to work again, will not your masters choose again, as they have chosen hitherto, what work you are to do? Not serfs!--it is well if you are so much as that; a serf would know what o'clock he had to go to his work at; but I find that clocks are now no more comprehensible in England than in Italy, and you also have to be "whistled for like dogs," all over Yorkshire--or rather buzzed for, that being the appropriate call to business, of due honey-making kind. "Hark," says an old Athenian, according to Aristophanes, "how the nightingale has filled the thickets with honey" (meaning, with music as sweet). In Yorkshire, your steam-nightingales fill the woods with--Buzz; and for four miles round are audible, summoning you--to your pleasure, I suppose, my free-born? It is well, I repeat, if you are so much as serfs. A serf means a 'saved person'--the word comes first from a Greek one, meaning to drag, or drag away into safety, (though captive safety), out of the slaughter of war. But alas, the trades most of you are set to now-a-days have no element of safety in them, either for body or soul. They take thirty years from your lives here;--what they take from your lives hereafter, ask your clergy. I have no opinion on that matter. But I used another terrible word just now--'menial.' The modern English vulgar mind has a wonderful dread of doing anything of that sort! I suppose there is scarcely another word in the language which people more dislike having applied to them, or of which they less understand the application. It comes from a beautiful old Chaucerian word, 'meinie,' or many, signifying the attendant company of any one worth attending to; the disciples of a master, scholars of a teacher, soldiers of a leader, lords of a King. Chaucer says the God of Love came, in the garden of the Rose with 'his many';--in the court of the King of Persia spoke a Lord, one 'of his many.' Therefore there is nothing in itself dishonourable in being menial: the only question is--whose many you belong to, and whether he is a person worth belonging to, or even safe to be belonged to; also, there is somewhat in the cause of your following: if you follow for love, it is good to be menial--if for honour, good also;--if for ten per cent.--as a railroad company follows its Director, it is not good to be menial. Also there is somewhat in the manner of following: if you obey your Taskmaster's eye, it is well;--if only his whip, still, well; but not so well:--but, above all, or below all, if you have to obey the whip as a bad hound, because you have no nose, like the members of the present House of Commons, it is a very humble form of menial service indeed. But even as to the quite literal form of it, in house or domestic service, are you sure it is so very disgraceful a state to live in? Among the people whom one must miss out of one's life, dead, or worse than dead, by the time one is fifty-four, I can only say, for my own part, that the one I practically and truly miss most, next to father and mother, (and putting losses of imaginary good out of the question,) was a 'menial,' my father's nurse, and mine. She was one of our many--(our many being always but few), and, from her girlhood to her old age, the entire ability of her life was given to serving us. She had a natural gift and specialty for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of a sick room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us were ill. She had also some parallel specialty for saying disagreeable things; and might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest view of any subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And she had a very creditable and republican aversion to doing immediately, or in set terms, as she was bid; so that when my mother and she got old together, and my mother became very imperative and particular about having her teacup set on one side of her little round table, Anne would observantly and punctiliously put it always on the other; which caused my mother to state to me, every morning after breakfast, gravely, that, if ever a woman in this world was possessed by the Devil, Anne was that woman. But in spite of these momentary and petulant aspirations to liberality and independence of character, poor Anne remained verily servile in soul all her days; and was altogether occupied from the age of fifteen to seventy-two, in doing other people's wills instead of her own, and seeking other people's good instead of her own: nor did I ever hear on any occasion of her doing harm to a human being, except by saving two hundred and some odd pounds for her relations; in consequence of which some of them, after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for several months. Two hundred and odd pounds;--it might have been more; but I used to hear of little loans to the relations occasionally; and besides, Anne would sometimes buy a quite unjustifiably expensive silk gown. People in her station of life are always so improvident. Two hundred odd pounds at all events she had laid by, in her fifty-seven years of unselfish labour. Actually twenty ten-pound notes. I heard the other day, to my great satisfaction, of the approaching marriage of a charming girl;--but to my dissatisfaction, that the approach was slow. "We can't marry yet"--said she;--"you know, we can't possibly marry on five hundred a year." People in that station of life are always so provident. Two hundred odd pounds,--that was what the third Fors, in due alliance with her sisters, thought fit to reward our Annie with, for fifty years of days' work and nights' watching; and what will not a dash of a pen win, sometimes in the hands of superior persons! Surely the condition must be a degraded one which can do no better for itself than this? And yet, have you ever taken a wise man's real opinion on this matter? You are not fond of hearing opinions of wise men; you like your anonymous penny-a-liners' opinions better. But do you think you could tolerantly receive that of a moderately and popularly wise man--such an one as Charles Dickens, for example? Have you ever considered seriously what his opinion was, about 'Dependants' and 'Menials'? He did not perhaps quite know what it was himself;--it needs wisdom of stronger make than his to be sure of what it does think. He would talk, in his moral passages, about Independence, and Self-dependence, and making one's way in the world, just like any hack of the 'Eatanswill Independent.' But which of the people of his imagination, of his own true children, did he love and honour most? Who are your favourites in his books--as they have been his? Menials, it strikes me, many of them. Sam, Mark, Kit, Peggoty, Mary-my-dear,--even the poor little Marchioness! I don't think Dickens intended you to look upon any of them disrespectfully. Or going one grade higher in his society, Tom Pinch, Newman Noggs, Tim Linkinwater, Oliver Twist--how independent, all of them! Very nearly menial, in soul, if they chance on a good master; none of them brilliant in fortune, nor vigorous in action. Is not the entire testimony of Dickens, traced in its true force, that no position is so good for men and women, none so likely to bring out their best human character, as that of a dependent, or menial? And yet with your supreme modern logic, instead of enthusiastically concluding from his works "let us all be servants," one would think the notion he put in your heads was quite the other, "let us all be masters," and that you understood his ideal of heroic English character to be given in Mr. Pecksniff or Sir Mulberry Hawk! Alas! more's the pity, you cannot all be dependants and menials, even if you were wise enough to wish it. Somebody there must be to be served, else there could be no service. And for the beatitudes and virtues of Masterhood, I must appeal to a wiser man than Dickens--but it is no use entering on that part of the question to-day; in the meantime, here is another letter of his, (you have had one letter already in last Fors,) just come under my hand, which gives you a sketch of a practical landlord, and true Master, on which you may meditate with advantage: "Here, above all, we had the opportunity of seeing in what universal respect and comfort a gentleman's family may live in that country, and in far from its most favoured district; provided only they live there habitually and do their duty as the friends and guardians of those among whom Providence has appointed their proper place. Here we found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all about. Here there was a very large school in the village, of which masters and pupils were, in nearly equal proportion, Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestant Squire himself making it a regular part of his daily business to visit the scene of their operations, and strengthen authority and enforce discipline by personal superintendence. Here, too, we pleased ourselves with recognising some of the sweetest features in Goldsmith's picture of 'Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;' and, in particular, we had 'the playful children just let loose from school' in perfection. Mr. Edgeworth's paternal heart delighted in letting them make a playground of his lawn; and every evening, after dinner, we saw leap-frog going on with the highest spirit within fifty yards of the drawing-room windows, while fathers and mothers, and their aged parents also, were grouped about among the trees watching the sport. It is a curious enough coincidence that Oliver Goldsmith and Maria Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and knowledge of Irish character and manners from the same identical district. He received part of his education at this very school of Edgeworthstown; and Pallasmore (the 'locus cui nomen est Pallas' of Johnson's epitaph), the little hamlet where the author of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' first saw the light, is still, as it was in his time, the property of the Edgeworths." "Strengthen authority," "enforce discipline"! What ugly expressions these! and a "whole hamlet," though it be a little one, "the property of the Edgeworths"! How long are such things yet to be? thinks my Republican correspondent, I suppose--from whom, to my regret, I have had no further dispatch since I endeavoured to answer his interrogations. [18] Only, note further respecting this chief question of the right of private property, that there are two kinds of ownership, which the Greeks wisely expressed in two different ways: the first, with the word which brought me to a pause in St. John's Gospel, 'idios,' signifying the way, for instance, in which a man's opinions and interests are his own; 'idia,' so that by persisting in them, independently of the truth, which is above opinion, and of the public interest, which is above private, he becomes what we very properly, borrowing the Greek word, call an 'idiot.' But their other phrase expresses the kind of belonging which is nobly won, and is truly and inviolably ours, in which sense a man may learn the full meaning of the word 'Mine' only once in his life,--happy he who has ever so learnt it. I was thinking over the prettiness of the word in that sense, a day or two ago, and opening a letter, mechanically, when a newspaper clipping dropped out of it (I don't know from what paper), containing a quotation from the 'Cornhill Magazine' setting forth the present privileges of the agricultural labourer attained for him by modern improvements in machinery, in the following terms:-- "An agricultural labourer, from forty to forty-five years of age, of tried skill, of probity, and sobriety, with £200 in his pocket, is a made man. True, he has had to forego the luxury of marriage; but so have his betters." And I think you may be grateful to the Third Fors for this clipping; which you see settles, in the region of Cornhill, at least, the question whether you are the betters or the worses of your masters. Decidedly the worses, according to the 'Cornhill.' Also, exactly the sum which my old nurse had for her reward at the end of her life, is, you see, to be the agricultural labourer's reward in the crowning triumph of his;--provided always that he has followed the example of his betters on the stock exchange and in trade, in the observance of the strictest probity;--that he be entirely skilful;--not given to purchasing two shillings' worth of liquor for twenty-seven and sixpence,--and finally, until the age of forty-five, has dispensed with the luxury of marriage. I have just said I didn't want to make Catholics of you; but truly I think your Protestantism is becoming too fierce in its opposition to the Popedom. Cannot it be content with preaching the marriage of the clergy, but it must preach also the celibacy of the laity? And the moral and anti-Byronic Mrs. B. Stowe, who so charmingly and pathetically describes the terrors of slavery, as an institution which separates men from their wives, and mothers from their children! Did she really contemplate, among the results contributed to by her interesting volumes, these ultimate privileges of Liberty,--that the men, at least under the age of forty-five, are not to have any wives to be separated from; and that the women, who under these circumstances have the misfortune to become mothers, are to feel it a hardship, not to be parted from their children, but to be prevented from accelerating the parting with a little soothing syrup? NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I have kept by me, and now reprint from the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of July 6th, 1868, the following report of a meeting held on the Labour Question by the Social Science Association in the previous week. It will be seen that it contains confirmation of my statement in p. 4 of the text. The passage I have italicized contains the sense of the views then entertained by the majority of the meeting. I think it desirable also to keep note of the questions I proposed to the meeting, and of the answers given in the 'Gazette.' I print the article, therefore, entire:-- THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION ON THE LABOUR QUESTION There would be something touching in the way in which people discuss the question of labour and wages, and in the desperate efforts made by Mr. Gladstone and other persons of high position to make love to the workmen, if there was not almost always a touch of absurdity in such proceedings. Mr. Gladstone, in particular, never approaches such subjects without an elaborate patting and stroking of the working man, which is intelligible only upon the assumption that primâ facie the labourer and the gentleman are natural enemies, and that they must be expected to regard each other as such, unless the higher class approaches the lower with the most elaborate assurances of goodwill and kindness. Such language as the following appears to us very ill-judged. After condemning in strong terms the crimes committed by some trade unions, Mr. Gladstone went on to say:--"Some things the working men required at their hands. In the first place, it was required that they should be approached in a friendly spirit, that they should feel that they were able to place confidence in their good intentions, that they should be assured that they were not approached in the spirit of class, but in the spirit of men who were attached to the truth," etc., etc. What can be the use of this sort of preaching? Does any human being suppose that any kind of men whatsoever, whether working men or idle men, are indifferent to being approached in an unfriendly spirit; or are disposed to deal with people whom they believe to entertain bad intentions towards them, or to be utterly indifferent to their interests, or to be actuated by interests opposed to their own? Such protestations always appear to us either prosy, patronizing, or insincere. No one suspects Mr. Gladstone of insincerity, but at times he is as prosy as a man must be, who, being already fully occupied with politics, will never miss an opportunity of doing a little philanthrophy and promoting peace and goodwill between different classes of the community. Blessed no doubt are the peacemakers, but at times they are bores. After Mr. Gladstone's little sermon the meeting proceeded to discuss a variety of resolutions about strikes, some of which seem very unimportant. One piece of vigorous good sense enlivened the discussion, and appears to us to sum up pretty nearly all that can be said upon the whole subject of strikes. It was uttered by Mr. Applegarth, who observed that "no sentiment ought to be brought into the subject. The employers were like the employed in trying to get as much as possible for as little as they could" Add to this the obvious qualification that even in driving a bargain it is possible to insist too strongly upon your own interest, and that it never can be in the interest either of masters or of men that the profits of any given trade to the capitalist should be permanently depressed much below the average profits of other trades; and nearly all that can be said upon the subject will have been said. If, instead of meeting together and kissing each other in public, masters and men would treat each other simply as civilized and rational beings who have to drive a bargain, and who have a common interest in producing the maximum of profit, though their interests in dividing it when it is produced are conflicting, they would get on much better together. People can buy and sell all sorts of other things without either quarrelling or crying over the transaction, and if they could only see it, there is no reason why they should not deal in labour just as coolly. The most remarkable feature of the evening was the attack made by Mr. Ruskin on this view of the subject. Replying to Mr. Dering, who had said that whenever it was possible "men would seek their own interests even at the expense of other classes," he observed [19] that many students of political economy "looked upon man as a predatory animal, while man on the contrary was an affectionate animal, and until the mutual interest of classes was based upon affection, difficulties must continue between those classes." There are, as it appears to us, several weak points in this statement. One obvious one is that most animals are both predatory and affectionate. Wolves will play together, herd together, hunt together, kill sheep together; and yet, if one wolf is wounded, the rest will eat him up. Animals, too, which as between each other are highly affectionate, are predatory to the last degree as against creatures of a different species or creatures of their own species who have got something which they want. Hence, if men are actuated to some extent at some times, and towards some persons, by their affections, and to a different extent at other times towards the same or other persons by their predatory instincts, they would resemble other animals. Mr. Ruskin's opposition between the predatory and affectionate animal is thus merely imaginary. Apart from this, the description of man as "an affectionate animal" appears to us not merely incomplete but misleading. Of course the affections are a most important branch of human nature, but they are by no means the whole of it. A very large department of human nature is primarily self-regarding. A man eats and drinks because he is hungry or thirsty, and he buys and sells because he wants to get gain. These are and always will be his leading motives, but they are no doubt to a certain extent counteracted in civilized life by motives of a different kind. No man is altogether destitute of regard for the interests and wishes of his neighbours, and almost every one will sacrifice something more or less for the gratification of others. Still, self-interest of the most direct unmistakable kind is the great leading active principle in many departments of life, and in particular in the trading department: to deny this is to shut one's eyes to the sun at noonday. To try to change is like trying to stop the revolution of the earth. To call it a "predatory" instinct is to talk at random. To take from a man by force what he possesses is an essentially different thing from driving the hardest of hard bargains with him. Every bargain is regarded as an advantage by both parties at the time when it is made, otherwise it would not be made at all. If I save a drowning man's life on condition that he will convey to me his whole estate, he is better off than if I leave him to drown. My act is certainly not affectionate, but neither is it predatory. It improves the condition of both parties, and the same is true of all trade. The most singular part of Mr. Ruskin's address consisted of a catechism which appears to us to admit of very simple answers, which we will proceed to give, as "the questions were received with much applause," though we do not appreciate their importance. They are as follows:-- Question.--"1. It is stated in a paper read before the jurisprudence section of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, and afterwards published at their office, that 'without the capitalist labour could accomplish nothing,' (p. 4). But for long periods of time in some parts of the world the accumulation of money was forbidden, and in others it was impossible. Has labour never accomplished anything in such districts?" Answer.--Capital is not merely "an accumulation of money." It is a general name for the whole stock by and out of which things are made. Labour never accomplished anything without materials or anything important without tools, and materials and tools are capital. Question.--"2. Supposing that in the present state of England the capital is necessary, are capitalists so? In other words, is it needful for right operation of capital that it should be administered under the arbitrary power of one person?" Answer.--Yes, it is, unless you do away with the institution of private property. It is necessary for the right operation of capital that some one or other should have arbitrary power over it, and that arbitrary power must either be lodged in individuals, who thereupon become capitalists, or else in the public or its representatives, in which case there is only one capitalist--the State. Question.--"3. Whence is all capital derived?" Answer.--From the combination of labour and material. Question.--"4. If capital is spent in paying wages for labour or manufacture which brings no return (as the labour of an acrobat or manufacturer of fireworks), is such capital lost or not? and if lost, what is the effect of such loss on the future wages fund?" Answer.--In the case supposed the capital ceases to exist as capital, and the future wages fund is diminished to that extent; but see the next answer. Question.--"5. If under such circumstances it is lost, and can only be recovered (much more recovered with interest) when it has been spent in wages for productive labour or manufacture, what labours and manufactures are productive, and what are unproductive? Do all capitalists know the difference, and are they always desirous to employ men in productive labours and manufactures, and in these only?" Answer.--Generally speaking, productive labour means labour which produces useful or agreeable results. Probably no paid labour is absolutely unproductive; for instance, the feats of the acrobat and the fireworks amuse the spectators. Capitalists in general desire to employ men in labours and manufactures which produce gain to the capitalists themselves. The amount of the gain depends on the relation between the demand for the product and the cost of production; and the demand for the product depends principally upon the extent to which it is useful or agreeable--that is, upon the extent to which the labour is productive or unproductive. In this indirect way capitalists are generally desirous to employ men in productive labours and manufactures, and in them only. Question.--"6. Considering the unemployed and purchasing public as a great capitalist, employing the workmen and their masters both, what results happen finally to this purchasing public if it employs all its manufactures in productive labour? and what if it employs them all in unproductive labour?" Answer.--This is not the light in which we should consider the "unemployed and purchasing public." But if they are all to be considered in that light, it is obvious that the result of employing all manufacturers in doing what is useless or disagreeable would be general misery, and vice versâ. Question.--"7. If there are thirty workmen, ready to do a day's work, and there is only a day's work for one of them to do, what is the effect of the natural laws of wages on the other twenty-nine?" Answer.--The twenty-nine must go without work and wages; but the phrase "natural law" is not ours. Question.--"8. (a) Is it a natural law that for the same quantity or piece of work, wages should be sometimes high, sometimes low? (b) With what standard do we properly or scientifically compare them, in calling them high or low? (c) And what is the limit of their possible lowness under natural laws?" Answer.--(a) It is an inevitable result from the circumstances in which mankind are placed, if you call that a natural law. (b) High wages are wages greater than those which have been usually paid at a given time and place in a given trade; low wages are the reverse. There is no absolute standard of wages. (c) The limit of the possible lowness of wages is the starvation of the workman. Question.--"9. In what manner do natural laws affect the wages of officers under Government in various countries?" Answer.--In endless ways, too long to enumerate. Question.--"10. 'If any man will not work, neither should he eat.' Does this law apply to all classes of society?" Answer.--No; it does not. It is not a law at all, but merely a striking way of saying that idleness produces want. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXIX. Brantwood, April 2, 1873. It is a bright morning, the first entirely clear one I have seen for months; such, indeed, as one used to see, before England was civilized into a blacksmith's shop, often enough in the sweet spring-time; and as, perhaps, our children's children may see often enough again, when their coals are burnt out, and they begin to understand that coals are not the source of all power Divine and human. In the meantime as I say, it is months since I saw the sky, except through smoke, or the strange darkness brought by blighting wind (viii. 3), and if such weather as this is to last, I shall begin to congratulate myself, as the 'Daily News' does its readers, on the "exceptionally high price of coal," indicating a most satisfactory state of things, it appears, for the general wealth of the country, for, says that well-informed journal, on March 3rd, 1873, "The net result of the exceptionally high price of coal is in substance this, that the coal owners and workers obtain an unusually large share in the distribution of the gross produce of the community, and the real capital of the community is increased!" This great and beautiful principle must of course apply to a rise in price in all other articles, as well as in coals. Accordingly, whenever you see the announcement in any shops, or by any advertising firm, that you can get something there cheaper than usual, remember, the capital of the community is being diminished; and whenever you have reason to think that anybody has charged you threepence for a twopenny article, remember that, according to the 'Daily News,' "the real capital of the community is increased." And as I believe you may be generally certain, in the present state of trade, of being charged even as much as twenty-seven pence for a twopenny article, the capital of the community must be increasing very fast indeed. Holding these enlightened views on the subject of the prices of things, the 'Daily News' cannot be expected to stoop to any consideration of their uses. But there is another "net result" of the high price of coal, besides the increase of the capital of the community, and a result which is more immediately your affair, namely, that a good many of you will die of cold. It may console you to reflect that a great many rich people will at least feel chilly, in economical drawing-rooms of state, and in ill-aired houses, rawly built on raw ground, and already mouldy for want of fires, though under a blackened sky. What a pestilence of them, and unseemly plague of builders' work--as if the bricks of Egypt had multiplied like its lice, and alighted like its locusts--has fallen on the suburbs of loathsome London! The road from the village of Shirley, near Addington, where my father and mother are buried, to the house they lived in when I was four years old, lay, at that time, through a quite secluded district of field and wood, traversed here and there by winding lanes, and by one or two smooth mail-coach roads, beside which, at intervals of a mile or two, stood some gentleman's house, with its lawn, gardens, offices, and attached fields, indicating a country life of long continuance and quiet respectability. Except such an one here and there, one saw no dwellings above the size of cottages or small farmsteads; these, wood-built usually, and thatched, their porches embroidered with honeysuckle, and their gardens with daisies, their doors mostly ajar, or with a half one shut to keep in the children, and a bricked or tiled footway from it to the wicket gate,--all neatly kept, and vivid with a sense of the quiet energies of their contented tenants,--made the lane-turnings cheerful, and gleamed in half-hidden clusters beneath the slopes of the woodlands at Sydenham and Penge. There were no signs of distress, of effort, or of change; many of enjoyment, and not a few of wealth beyond the daily needs of life. That same district is now covered by, literally, many thousands of houses built within the last ten years, of rotten brick, with various iron devices to hold it together. They, every one, have a drawing-room and dining-room, transparent from back to front, so that from the road one sees the people's heads inside, clear against the light. They have a second story of bedrooms, and an underground one of kitchen. They are fastened in a Siamese-twin manner together by their sides, and each couple has a Greek or Gothic portico shared between them, with magnificent steps, and highly ornamented capitals. Attached to every double block are exactly similar double parallelograms of garden, laid out in new gravel and scanty turf, on the model of the pleasure grounds in the Crystal Palace, and enclosed by high, thin, and pale brick walls. The gardens in front are fenced from the road with an immense weight of cast iron, and entered between two square gate-posts, with projecting stucco cornices, bearing the information that the eligible residence within is Mortimer House or Montague Villa. On the other side of the road, which is laid freshly down with large flints, and is deep at the sides in ruts of yellow mud, one sees Burleigh House, or Devonshire Villa, still to let, and getting leprous in patches all over the fronts. Think what the real state of life is, for the people who are content to pass it in such places; and what the people themselves must be. Of the men, their wives, and children, who live in any of those houses, probably not the fifth part are possessed of one common manly or womanly skill, knowledge, or means of happiness. The men can indeed write, and cast accounts, and go to town every day to get their living by doing so; the women and children can perhaps read story-books, dance in a vulgar manner, and play on the piano with dull dexterities for exhibition; but not a member of the whole family can, in general, cook, sweep, knock in a nail, drive a stake, or spin a thread. They are still less capable of finer work. They know nothing of painting, sculpture, or architecture; of science, inaccurately, as much as may more or less account to them for Mr. Pepper's ghost, and make them disbelieve in the existence of any other ghost but that, particularly the Holy One: of books, they read 'Macmillan's Magazine' on week days, and 'Good Words' on Sundays, and are entirely ignorant of all the standard literature belonging to their own country, or to any other. They never think of taking a walk, and, the roads for six miles round them being ancle deep in mud and flints, they could not if they would. They cannot enjoy their gardens, for they have neither sense nor strength enough to work in them. The women and girls have no pleasures but in calling on each other in false hair, cheap dresses of gaudy stuffs, machine made, and high-heeled boots, of which the pattern was set to them by Parisian prostitutes of the lowest order: the men have no faculty beyond that of cheating in business; no pleasures but in smoking or eating; and no ideas, nor any capacity of forming ideas, of anything that has yet been done of great, or seen of good, in this world. That is the typical condition of five-sixths, at least, of the "rising" middle classes about London--the lodgers in those damp shells of brick, which one cannot say they inhabit, nor call their "houses;" nor "their's" indeed, in any sense; but packing-cases in which they are temporarily stored, for bad use. Put the things on wheels (it is already done in America, but you must build them stronger first), and they are mere railway vans of brick, thrust in rows on the siding; vans full of monkeys that have lost the use of their legs. The baboons in Regent's Park--with Mr. Darwin's pardon--are of another species; a less passive, and infinitely wittier one. Here, behold, you have a group of gregarious creatures that cannot climb, and are entirely imitative, not as the apes, occasionally, for the humour of it, but all their lives long; the builders trying to build as Christians did once, though now swindling on every brick they lay; and the lodgers to live like the Duke of Devonshire, on the salaries of railroad clerks. Lodgers, do I say! Scarcely even that. Many a cottage, lodged in but for a year or two, has been made a true home, for that span of the owner's life. In my next letter but one, I hope to give you some abstract of the man's life whose testimony I want you to compare with that of Dickens, as to the positions of Master and Servant: meantime compare with what you may see of these railroad homes, this incidental notice by him of his first one: "When we approached that village (Lasswade), Scott, who had laid hold of my arm, turned along the road in a direction not leading to the place where the carriage was to meet us. After walking some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet to see. "'Yes,' said he, 'and I have been bringing you where there is little enough to be seen, only that Scotch cottage (one by the roadside, with a small garth); but, though not worth looking at, I could not pass it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a contrivance we had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow trees on either side the gate into the enclosure; they are tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure, it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I had constructed it, mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from it to the cottage door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its picturesque effect. I did want to see if it was still there.'" I had scarcely looked out this passage for you, when I received a letter from the friend who sent me the penny cookery book, incidentally telling me of the breaking up of a real home. I have obtained her leave to let you read part of it. It will come with no disadvantage, even after Scott's recording as it does the same kind of simple and natural life, now passing so fast away. The same life, and also in the district which, henceforward, I mean to call "Sir Walter's Land"; definable as the entire breadth of Scots and English ground from sea to sea, coast and isle included, between Schehallien on the north, and Ingleborough on the south, (I have my reasons, though some readers may doubt them, for fixing the limit south of Skye, and north of Ashby-de-la-Zouche.) Within this district, then, but I shall not say in what part of it, the home my friend speaks of stood. In many respects it was like the "Fair-ladies" in "Red Gauntlet"; as near the coast, as secluded, and in the same kind of country; still more like, in its mistress's simple and loyal beneficence. Therefore, because I do not like leaving a blank for its name, I put "Fair-ladies" for it in the letter, of which the part I wish you to see begins thus:-- "Please let me say one practical thing. In no cottage is there a possibility of roasting more than a pound of meat, if any; and a piece of roast beef, such as you or I understand by the word, costs ten shillings or twelve, and is not meant for artisans. I never have it in this house now, except when it is full. I have a much sadder example of the changes wrought by modern wages and extravagance. Miss ----, who had her house and land for her home-farm expenses (or rather produce), and about ---- hundred a year; who entertained for years all her women and children acquaintances; trained a dozen young servants in a year, and was a blessing to the country for miles round; writes me word yesterday that she hopes and intreats that we will go this summer to Fair-ladies, as it is the last. She says the provisions are double the price they used to be--the wages also--and she cannot even work her farm as she used to do; the men want beer instead of milk, and won't do half they used to do; so she must give it up, and let the place, and come and live by me or some one to comfort her, and Fair-ladies will know her no more. I am so sorry, because I think it such a loss to the wretched people who drive her away. Our weekly bills are double what they used to be, yet every servant asks higher wages each time I engage one; and as to the poor people in the village, they are not a bit better off--they eat more, and drink more, and learn to think less of religion and all that is good. One thing I see very clearly, that, as the keeping of Sunday is being swept away, so is their day of rest going with it. Of course if no one goes to worship God one day more than another, [20] what is the sense of talking about the Sabbath? If all the railway servants, and all the post-office, and all the museum and art-collection servants, and all the refreshment places, and other sorts of amusement, servants are to work on Sunday, why on earth should not the artisans, who are as selfish and irreligious as any one? No! directly I find every one else is at work, I shall insist on the baker and the butcher calling for orders as usual. (Quite right, my dear.) The result of enormous wages will be that I rely more on my own boys for carpentering, and on preserved food, and the cook and butcher will soon be dismissed." My poor little darling, rely on your own boys for carpentering by all means; and grease be to their elbows--but you shall have something better to rely on than potted crocodile, in old England, yet,--please the pixies, and pigs, and St. George, and St. Anthony. Nay, we will have also a blue-aproned butcher or two still, to call for orders; they are not yet extinct. We have not even reached the preparatory phase of steam-butcher-boys, riding from Buxton for orders to Bakewell, and from Bakewell for orders to Buxton; and paying dividends to a Steam-Butcher's-boy-Company. Not extinct yet, and a kindly race, for the most part. "He told me," (part of another friend's letter, speaking of his butcher,) "his sow had fourteen pigs, and could only rear twelve, the other two, he said, he was feeding with a spoon. I never could bear, he said, to kill a young animal because he was one too many." Yes; that is all very well when it's a pig; but if it be--Wait a minute;--I must go back to Fair-ladies, before I finish my sentence. For note very closely what the actual facts are in this short letter from an English housewife. She in the south, and the mistress of Fair-ladies in the north, both find "their weekly bills double what they used to be;" that is to say, they are as poor again as they were, and they have to pay higher wages, of course, for now all wages buy so much less. I have too long, perhaps, put questions to you which I knew you could not answer, partly in the hope of at least making you think, and partly because I knew you would not believe the true answer, if I gave it. But, whether you believe me or not, I must explain the meaning of this to you at once. The weekly bills are double, because the greater part of the labour of the people of England is spent unproductively; that is to say, in producing iron plates, iron guns, gunpowder, infernal machines, infernal fortresses floating about, infernal fortresses standing still, infernal means of mischievous locomotion, infernal lawsuits, infernal parliamentary elocution, infernal beer, and infernal gazettes, magazines, statues, and pictures. Calculate the labour spent in producing these infernal articles annually, and put against it the labour spent in producing food! The only wonder is, that the weekly bills are not tenfold instead of double. For this poor housewife, mind you, cannot feed her children with any one, or any quantity, of these infernal articles. Children can only be fed with divine articles. Their mother can indeed get to London cheap, but she has no business there; she can buy all the morning's news for a halfpenny, but she has no concern with them; she can see Gustave Doré's pictures (and she had better see the devil), for a shilling; she can be carried through any quantity of filthy streets on a tramway for threepence; but it is as much as her life's worth to walk in them, or as her modesty's worth to look into a print shop in them. Nay, let her have but to go on foot a quarter of a mile in the West End, she dares not take her purse in her pocket, nor let her little dog follow her. These are her privileges and facilities, in the capital of civilization. But none of these will bring meat or flour into her own village. Far the contrary! The sheep and corn which the fields of her village produce are carried away from it to feed the makers of Armstrong guns. And her weekly bills are double. But you, forsooth, you think, with your beer for milk, are better off. Read pages 12 to 14 of my second letter over again. And now observe farther:-- The one first and absolute question of all economy is--What are you making? Are you making Hell's articles, or Heaven's?--gunpowder, or corn? There is no question whether you are to have work or not. The question is, what work. This poor housewife's mutton and corn are given you to eat. Good. Now, if you, with your day's work, produce for her, and send to her, spices, or tea, or rice, or maize, or figs, or any other good thing,--that is true and beneficent trade. But if you take her mutton and corn from her, and send her back an Armstrong gun, what can she make of that? But you can't grow figs and spices in England, you say? No, certainly, and therefore means of transit for produce in England are little necessary. Let my poor housewife keep her sheep in her near fields, and do you--keep sheep at Newcastle--and the weekly bills will not rise. But you forge iron at Newcastle; then you build an embankment from Newcastle to my friend's village, whereupon you take her sheep from her, suffocating half of them on the way; and you send her an Armstrong gun back; or, perhaps not even to her, but to somebody who can fire it down your own throats, you jolterheads. No matter, you say, in the meantime, we eat more, and drink more; the housewife herself allows that. Yes, I have just told you, her corn and sheep all are sent to you. But how about other people? I will finish my sentence now, paused in above. It is all very well to bring up creatures with a spoon, when they are one or two too many, if they are useful things like pigs. But how if they be useless things like young ladies? You don't want any wives, I understand, now, till you are forty-five; what in the world will you do with your girls? Bring them up with a spoon, to that enchanting age? "The girls may shift for themselves." Yes,--they may, certainly. Here is a picture of some of them, as given by the 'Telegraph' of March 18th, of the present year, under Lord Derby's new code of civilization, endeavouring to fulfil Mr. John Stuart Mill's wishes, and procure some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby:-- "After all the discussions about woman's sphere and woman's rights, and the advisability of doing something to redress the inequality of position against which the fair sex, by the medium of many champions, so loudly protests and so constantly struggles, it is not satisfactory to be told what happened at Cannon-row two days last week. It had been announced that the Civil Service Commissioners would receive applications personally from candidates for eleven vacancies in the metropolitan post-offices, and in answer to this notice, about 2,000 young women made their appearance. The building, the courtyard, and the street were blocked by a dense throng of fair applicants; locomotion was impossible, even with the help of policemen; windows were thrown up to view the sight, as if a procession had been passing that way; traffic was obstructed, and nothing could be done for hours. We understand, indeed, that the published accounts by no means do justice to the scene. Many of the applicants, it appears, were girls of the highest respectability and of unusually good social position, including daughters of clergymen and professional men, well connected, well educated, tenderly nurtured; but nevertheless, driven by the res angustæ which have caused many a heart-break, and scattered the members of many a home to seek for the means of independent support. The crowd, the agitation, the anxiety, the fatigue, proved too much for many of those who attended; several fainted away; others went into violent hysterics; others, despairing of success, remained just long enough to be utterly worn out, and then crept off, showing such traces of mental anguish as we are accustomed to associate with the most painful bereavements. In the present case, it is stated, the Commissioners examined over 1,000 candidates for the eleven vacancies. This seems a sad waste of power on both sides, when, in all probability, the first score supplied the requisite number of qualified aspirants." Yes, my pets, I am tired of talking to these workmen, who never answer a word; I will try you now--for a letter or two--but I beg your pardon for calling you pets,--my "qualified aspirants" I mean (Alas! time was when the qualified aspiration was on the bachelor's side). Here you have got all you want, I hope!--liberty enough, it seems--if only the courtyard were bigger; equality enough--no distinction made between young ladies of the highest, or the lowest, respectability; rights of women generally claimed, you perceive; and obtained without opposition from absurdly religious, moral, or chivalric persons. You have got no God, now, to bid you do anything you don't like; no husbands, to insist on having their own way--(and much of it they got, in the old times--didn't they?)--no pain nor peril of childbirth;--no bringing up of tiresome brats. Here is an entirely scientific occupation for you! Such a beautiful invention this of Mr. Wheatstone's! and I hope you all understand the relations of positive and negative electricity. Now you may "communicate intelligence" by telegraph. Those wretched girls that used to write love-letters, of which their foolish lovers would count the words, and sometimes be thankful for--less than twenty--how they would envy you if they knew. Only the worst is, that this beautiful invention of Mr. Wheatstone's for talking miles off, won't feed people in the long run, my dears, any more than the old invention of the tongue, for talking near, and you'll soon begin to think that was not so bad a one, after all. But you can't live by talking, though you talk in the scientificalest of manners, and to the other side of the world. All the telegraph wire over the earth and under the sea, will not do so much for you, my poor little qualified aspirants, as one strong needle with thimble and thread. You do sometimes read a novel still, don't you, my scientific dears? I wish I could write one; but I can't; and George Eliot always makes them end so wretchedly that they're worse than none--so she's no good, neither. I must even translate a foreign novelette or nouvelette, which is to my purpose, next month; meantime I have chanced on a little true story, in the journal of an Englishman, travelling, before the Revolution, in France, which shows you something of the temper of the poor unscientific girls of that day. Here are first, however, a little picture or two which he gives in the streets of Paris, and which I want all my readers to see; they mark, what most Englishmen do not know, that the beginning of the French Revolution, with what of good or evil it had, was in English, not French, notions of "justice" and "liberty." The writer is travelling with a friend, Mr. B----, who is of the Liberal school, and, "He and I went this forenoon to a review of the foot-guards, by Marshal Biron. There was a crowd, and we could with difficulty get within the circle, so as to see conveniently. An old officer of high rank touched some people who stood before us, saying, 'Ces deux Messieurs sont des étrangers;' upon which they immediately made way, and allowed us to pass. 'Don't you think that was very obliging?' said I. 'Yes,' answered he; 'but by heavens, it was very unjust.' "We returned by the Boulevards, where crowds of citizens, in their holiday dresses, were making merry; the young dancing cotillons, the old beating time to the music, and applauding the dancers. 'These people seem very happy,' said I. 'Happy!' exclaimed B----; 'if they had common sense, or reflection, they would be miserable.' 'Why so?' 'Could not the minister,' answered he, 'pick out half-a-dozen of them if he pleased, and clap them into the Bicêtre?' 'That is true, indeed,' said I; 'that is a catastrophe which, to be sure, may very probably happen, and yet I thought no more of it than they.' "We met, a few days after he arrived, at a French house where we had been both invited to dinner. There was an old lady of quality present, next to whom a young officer was seated, who paid her the utmost attention. He helped her to the dishes she liked, filled her glass with wine or water, and addressed his discourse particularly to her. 'What a fool,' says B----, 'does that young fellow make of the poor old woman! if she were my mother, d--n me, if I would not call him to an account for it.' "Though B---- understands French, and speaks it better than most Englishmen, he had no relish for the conversation, soon left the company, and has refused all invitations to dinner ever since. He generally finds some of our countrymen, who dine and pass the evening with him at the Parc Royal. "After the review this day, we continued together, and being both disengaged, I proposed, by way of variety, to dine at the public ordinary of the Hôtel de Bourbon. He did not like this much at first. 'I shall be teased,' says he, 'with their confounded ceremony;' but on my observing that we could not expect much ceremony or politeness at a public ordinary, he agreed to go. "Our entertainment turned out different, however, from my expectations and his wishes. A marked attention was paid us the moment we entered; everybody seemed inclined to accommodate us with the best places. They helped us first, and all the company seemed ready to sacrifice every convenience and distinction to the strangers; for, next to that of a lady, the most respected character at Paris is that of a stranger. "After dinner, B---- and I walked into the gardens of the Palais Royal. "'There was nothing real in all the fuss those people made about us,' says he. "'I can't help thinking it something,' said I, 'to be treated with civility and apparent kindness in a foreign country, by strangers who know nothing about us, but that we are Englishmen, and often their enemies.'" So much for the behaviour of old Paris. Now for our country story. I will not translate the small bits of French in it; my most entirely English readers can easily find out what they mean, and they must gather what moral they may from it, till next month, for I have no space to comment on it in this letter. "My friend F---- called on me a few days since, and as soon as he understood that I had no particular engagement, he insisted that I should drive somewhere into the country, dine tête-à-tête with him, and return in time for the play. "When we had driven a few miles, I perceived a genteel-looking young fellow, dressed in an old uniform. He sat under a tree on the grass, at a little distance from the road, and amused himself by playing on the violin. As we came nearer we perceived he had a wooden leg, part of which lay in fragments by his side. "'What do you do there, soldier?' said the Marquis. 'I am on my way home to my own village, mon officier,' said the soldier. 'But, my poor friend,' resumed the Marquis, 'you will be a furious long time before you arrive at your journey's end, if you have no other carriage besides these,' pointing at the fragments of his wooden leg. 'I wait for my equipage and all my suite,' said the soldier, 'and I am greatly mistaken if I do not see them this moment coming down the hill.' "We saw a kind of cart, drawn by one horse, in which was a woman, and a peasant who drove the horse. While they drew near, the soldier told us he had been wounded in Corsica--that his leg had been cut off--that before setting out on that expedition, he had been contracted to a young woman in the neighbourhood--that the marriage had been postponed till his return;--but when he appeared with a wooden leg, that all the girl's relations had opposed the match. The girl's mother, who was her only surviving parent when he began his courtship, had always been his friend; but she had died while he was abroad. The young woman herself, however, remained constant in her affections, received him with open arms, and had agreed to leave her relations, and accompany him to Paris, from whence they intended to set out in the diligence to the town where he was born, and where his father still lived. That on the way to Paris his wooden leg had snapped, which had obliged his mistress to leave him, and go to the next village in quest of a cart to carry him thither, where he would remain till such time as the carpenter should renew his leg. 'C'est un malheur,' concluded the soldier, 'mon officier, bientôt reparé--et voici mon amie!' "The girl sprung before the cart, seized the outstretched hand of her lover, and told him, with a smile full of affection, that she had seen an admirable carpenter, who had promised to make a leg that would not break, that it would be ready by to-morrow, and they might resume their journey as soon after as they pleased. "The soldier received his mistress's compliment as it deserved. "She seemed about twenty years of age, a beautiful, fine-shaped girl--a brunette, whose countenance indicated sentiment and vivacity. "'You must be much fatigued, my dear,' said the Marquis. 'On ne se fatigue pas, Monsieur, quand on travaille pour ce qu'on aime,' replied the girl. The soldier kissed her hand with a gallant and tender air. 'Allons,' continued the Marquis, addressing himself to me; 'this girl is quite charming--her lover has the appearance of a brave fellow; they have but three legs betwixt them, and we have four;--if you have no objection, they shall have the carriage, and we will follow on foot to the next village, and see what can be done for these lovers.' I never agreed to a proposal with more pleasure in my life. "The soldier began to make difficulties about entering into the vis-à-vis. 'Come, come, friend,' said the Marquis, 'I am a colonel, and it is your duty to obey: get in without more ado, and your mistress shall follow.' "'Entrons, mon bon ami,' said the girl, 'since these gentlemen insist upon doing us so much honour.' "'A girl like you would do honour to the finest coach in France. Nothing could please me more than to have it in my power to make you happy,' said the Marquis. 'Laissez-moi faire, mon colonel,' said the soldier. 'Je suis heureuse comme une reine,' said Fanchon. Away moved the chaise, and the Marquis and I followed. "'Voyez vous, combien nous sommes heureux nous autres François, à bon marché,' said the Marquis to me, adding with a smile, 'le bonheur, à ce qu'on m'a dit, est plus cher en Angleterre.' 'But,' answered I, 'how long will this last with these poor people?' 'Ah, pour le coup,' said he, 'voilà une réflexion bien Angloise;'--that, indeed, is what I cannot tell; neither do I know how long you or I may live; but I fancy it would be great folly to be sorrowful through life, because we do not know how soon misfortunes may come, and because we are quite certain that death is to come at last. "When we arrived at the inn to which we had ordered the postillion to drive, we found the soldier and Fanchon. After having ordered some victuals and wine, 'Pray,' said I to the soldier, 'how do you propose to maintain your wife and yourself?' 'One who has contrived to live for five years on soldier's pay,' replied he, 'can have little difficulty for the rest of his life. I can play tolerably well on the fiddle,' added he, 'and perhaps there is not a village in all France of the size, where there are so many marriages as in that in which we are going to settle; I shall never want employment.' 'And I,' said Fanchon, 'can weave hair nets and silk purses, and mend stockings. Besides, my uncle has two hundred livres of mine in his hands, and although he is brother-in-law to the bailiff, and volontiers brutal, yet I will make him pay it every sous.' 'And I,' said the soldier, 'have fifteen livres in my pocket, besides two louis that I have lent to a poor farmer to enable him to pay taxes, and which he will repay me when he is able.' "'You see, Sir,' said Fanchon to me, 'that we are not objects of compassion. May we not be happy, my good friend (turning to her lover with a look of exquisite tenderness), if it be not our own fault?' 'If you are not, ma douce amie!' said the soldier with great warmth, 'je serai bien à plaindre.'" NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. As the circulation of "Fors" increases, the correspondence connected with it must of course, and that within no long time, become unmanageable, except by briefest reference to necessary points in letters of real value; many even of such may not be acknowledged, except with the general thanks which I render in advance to all who write either with the definite purpose of helping me, or of asking explanation of what I have said. A letter of great interest has thus lain by me since Christmas, though the writer would know I had received it by my instant use of the book he told me of,--Professor Kirk's. With reference to the statements therein made respecting the robbing of the poor by the rich, through temptation of drink, the letter goes on:-- "But to my mind the enquiry does not reach deep enough. I would know, first, why it is that the workers have so little control over their appetites in this direction? (a) and what the remedy? secondly, why is it that those who wish to drain the working men are permitted to govern them? (b) and what the remedy? (c) "The answers to each question will, I think, be found to be nearly related. "The possibility of a watchful and exacting, yet respected, government within a government, is well shown by the existence and discipline of the Society of Friends, of which I am a member. Our society is, no doubt, greatly injured by narrow views of religious truth; yet may it not be that their change from an agricultural to a trading people has done the most to sap the vital strength of their early days? But the tree is not without good fruit yet. A day or two ago the following sentence was extracted by me from a newspaper notice of the death of Robert Charleton, of Bristol:-- "'In him the poor and needy, the oppressed, the fallen and friendless, and the lonely sufferer, ever had a tender and faithful friend. When in trade, he was one of the best employers England could boast. He lived for his people, rather than expected them to live for him; and when he did not derive one penny profit from his factory, but rather lost by it, he still kept the business going, for the sake of his work-people'" (d). The answers to my correspondent's questions are very simple (a) The workers have in general much more control over their appetites than idle people. But as they are for the most part hindered by their occupation from all rational, and from the best domestic, pleasures, and as manual work naturally makes people thirsty, what can they do but drink? Intoxication is the only Heaven that, practically, Christian England ever displays to them. But see my statements on this point in the fourth lecture in the "Crown of Wild Olive," when I get it out; (the unfinished notes on Frederick keeping it back a while). (b) Because, as the working men have been for the last fifty years taught that one man is as good as another, they never think of looking for a good man to govern them; and only those who intend to pillage or cheat them will ever come forward of their own accord to govern them; or can succeed in doing so, because as long as they trust in their own sagacity, any knave can humbug them to the top of his bent; while no wise man can teach them anything whatever, contrary to their immediate notions. And the distrust in themselves, which would make them look for a real leader, and believe him, is the last sensation likely to occur to them at present; (see my republican correspondent's observations on election, in the next letter.) (c) My correspondent twice asks what is the remedy? I believe none, now, but the natural one;--namely, some of the forms of ruin which necessarily cut a nation of blockheads down to the ground, and leave it, thence to sprout again, if there be any life left for it in the earth, or lesson teachable to it by adversity. But, through whatever catastrophes, for any man who cares for the right and sees it, his own duty in the wreck is always clear--to keep himself cool and fearless, and do what is instantly serviceable to the people nearest him, and the best he can, silently, for all. Cotton in one's ears may be necessary--for we are like soon to have screaming enough in England, as in the wreck of the Northfleet, if that would do any good. (d) Yes, that is all very fine; but suppose that keeping useless work going on, for the sake of the work-people, be not the wisest thing to do for the sake of other people? Of this hereafter. The sentence respecting the corrupting power of trade, as opposed to agriculture, is certainly right, and very notable. Perhaps some of my readers may be surprised at my giving space to the following comments of my inquisitive Republican acquaintance on my endeavours to answer his questions. But they are so characteristic of the genius of Republicanism, that I esteem them quite one of the best gifts of the Third "Fors" to us: also, the writer is sincere, and might think, if I did not print his answers, that I treated him unfairly. I may afterwards take note of some points in them, but have no time this month. "We are all covetous. I am ravenously covetous of the means to speak in such type and on such paper as you can buy the use of. 'Oh that mine enemy would' give me the means of employing such a printer as you can employ!" (Certainly, he could do nothing worse for you!) "I find you have published my questions, and your criticism thereon. I thank you for your 'good-will to man,' but protest against the levity of your method of dealing with politics. "You assume that you understand me, and that I don't understand myself or you. I fully admit that I don't understand you or myself, and I declare that neither do you understand me. But I will pass hyper-criticism (and, by-the-by, I am not sure that I know what that compound word means; you will know, of course, for me) and tackle your 'Answers.' "1. You evade the meaning--the question,--for I cannot think you mean that the 'world' or an 'ocean,' can be rightfully regarded by legislators as the private property of 'individuals.' "2. 'It never was, and never can be.' The price of a cocoa-nut was the cost of labour in climbing the tree; the climber ate the nut. "3. What do you understand by a 'tax'? The penny paid for the conveyance of a letter is not a tax. Lord Somebody says I must perish of hunger, or pay him for permission to dig in the land on which I was born. He taxes me that he may live without labouring, and do you say 'of course,' 'quite rightfully'? "4. ? "5. You may choose a pig or horse for yourself, but I claim the right of choosing mine, even though you know that you could choose better animals for me. By your system, if logically carried out, we should have no elections, but should have an emperor of the world,--the man who knew himself to be the most intelligent of all. I suppose you should be allowed to vote? It is somebody else who must have no political voice? Where do you draw the line? Just below John Ruskin? [21] Is a man so little and his polish so much? Men and women must vote, or must not submit. I have bought but little of the polish sold at schools; but, ignorant as I am, I would not yield as the 'subject' of thirty million Ruskins, or of the king they might elect without consulting me. You did not let either your brain or your heart speak when you answered that question. "6. 'Beneficial.' I claim the right of personal judgment, and I would grant the exercise of that right to every man and woman. "7. 'Untrue.' Untrue. Lord Somebody consumes, with the aid of a hundred men and women, whom he keeps from productive industry, as much as would suffice to maintain a hundred families. A hundred--yes, a thousand navvies. 'Destroying'? Did you forget that so many admirals, generals, colonels, and captains, were your law-makers? Are they not professional destroyers? I could fill your pages with a list of other destructive employments of your legislators. "8. Has the tax gatherer too busy a time of it to attend to the duties added by the establishment of a National Post Office? We remove a thousand toll-bars, and collect the assessment annually with economy. We eat now, and are poisoned, and pay dearly. The buyers and sellers of bread 'have a busy time of it.' "9. Thank you for the straightforwardness. But I find you ask me what I mean by a 'State.' I meant it as you accepted it, and did not think it economical to bother you or myself with a page of incomplete definitions. "10. 'See Munera Pulveris!' And, ye 'workmen and labourers,' go and consult the Emperor of China. "You speak of a king who killed 'without wrath, and without doubting his rightness,' and of a collier who killed with 'consciousness.' Glorious, ignorant brute of a king! Degraded, enlightened collier! It is enough to stimulate a patriot to burn all the colleges and libraries. Much learning makes us ignoble! No! it is the much labour and the bad teaching of the labourer by those who never earned their food by the sweat of their own brow." FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXX. Brantwood, April 19, 1873. On the thirteenth shelf of the south bookcase of my home-library, stand, first, Kenelm Digby's 'Broad Stone of Honour,' then in five volumes, bound in red, the 'History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha;' and then, in one volume, bound in green, a story no less pathetic, called the 'Mirror of Peasants.' Its author does not mean the word 'mirror' to be understood in the sense in which one would call Don Quixote the 'Mirror of Chivalry;' but in that of a glass in which a man--beholding his natural heart--may know also the hearts of other men, as, in a glass, face answers to face. The author of this story was a clergyman; but employed the greater part of his day in writing novels, having a gift for that species of composition as well as for sermons, and observing, though he gave both excellent in their kind, that his congregation liked their sermons to be short, and his readers, their novels to be long. Among them, however, were also many tiny novelettes, of which, young ladies, I to-day begin translating for you one of the shortest; hoping that you will not think the worse of it for being written by a clergyman. Of this author I will only say, that, though I am not prejudiced in favour of persons of his profession, I think him the wisest man, take him all in all, with whose writings I am acquainted; chiefly because he showed his wisdom in pleasant and unappalling ways; as, for instance, by keeping, for the chief ornament of his study (not being able to afford expensive books), one book beautifully bound, and shining with magnificence of golden embossing; this book of books being his register, out of which he read, from the height of his pulpit, the promises of marriage. "Dans lequel il lisait, du haut de la chaire, les promesses de mariage." He rose always early; breakfasted himself at six o'clock; and then got ready with his own hands the family breakfast, liking his servants better to be at work out of doors: wrote till eleven, dined at twelve, and spent the afternoon in his parish work, or in his fields, being a farmer of shrewdest and most practical skill; and through the Sundays of fifteen years, never once was absent from his pulpit. And now, before I begin my little story, which is a translation of a translation, for the original is German, and I can only read French, I must say a few serious words as to the sense in which I wish you to receive what religious instruction this romantic clergyman may sometimes mingle with his romance. He is an Evangelical divine of the purest type. It is therefore primarily for my Evangelical readers that I translate this or others of his tales; and if they have read either former letters of 'Fors,' or any of my later books, they must know that I do not myself believe in Evangelical theology. But I shall, with my best care, represent and enforce this clergyman's teaching to my said Evangelical readers, exactly as I should feel it my duty, if I were talking to a faithful Turk, to represent and enforce to him any passage of the Koran which was beyond all question true, in its reference to practical light; and with the bearings of which I was more familiar than he. For I think that our common prayer that God "would take away all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of His word, from all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics," is an entirely absurd one. I do not think all Jews have hard hearts; nor that all infidels would despise God's word, if only they could hear it; nor do I in the least know whether it is my neighbour or myself who is really the heretic. But I pray that prayer for myself as well as others; and in this form, that God would make all Jews honest Jews, all Turks honest Turks, all infidels honest infidels, and all Evangelicals and heretics honest Evangelicals and heretics; that so these Israelites in whom there is no guile, Turks in whom there is no guile, and so on, may in due time see the face, and know the power, of the King alike of Israel and Esau. Now, therefore, young ladies, I beg you to understand that I entirely sympathize with this Evangelical clergyman's feelings because I know him to be honest: also, that I give you of his teaching what is universally true: and that you may get the more good from his story, I will ask you first to consider with yourselves what St. James means by saying in the eighth verse of his general Epistle, "Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that he is made low;" and if you find, as you generally will, if you think seriously over any verse of your Bibles whatsoever, that you never have had, and are never likely to have, the slightest idea what it means, perhaps you will permit me to propose the following explanation to you. That while both rich and poor are to be content to remain in their several states, gaining only by the due and natural bettering of an honest man's settled life; if, nevertheless, any chance should occur to cause sudden difference in either of their positions, the poor man might wisely desire that it should be some relief from the immediate pressure of poverty, while the rich should esteem it the surest sign of God's favour, if, without fault of his own, he were forced to know the pain of a lower condition. I have noticed, in 'Sesame and Lilies,' § 2, the frantic fear of the ordinary British public, lest they should fall below their proper "station in life." It appears that almost the only real sense of duty remaining now in the British conscience is a passionate belief in the propriety of keeping up an appearance; no matter if on other people's money, so only that there be no signs of their coming down in the world. I should be very glad therefore if any of my young lady readers, who consider themselves religious persons, would inform me whether they are satisfied with my interpretation of the text; and if so, then how far they would consent, without complaining, to let God humble them, if He wished to? If, for instance, they would, without pouting, allow Him to have His way, even to the point of forcing them to gain their bread by some menial service,--as, suppose, a housemaid's; and whether they would feel aggrieved at being made lower housemaid instead of upper. If they have read their Bible to so good purpose as not to care which, I hope the following story may not be thought wholly beneath their attention; concerning, as it does, the housemaid's principal implement; or what (supposing her a member of St. George's Company) we may properly call her spear, or weapon of noble war. THE BROOM MERCHANT. Brooms are, as we know, among the imperious necessities of the epoch; and in every household, there are many needful articles of the kind which must be provided from day to day, or week to week; and which one accordingly finds, everywhere, persons glad to supply. But we pay daily less and less attention to these kindly disposed persons, since we have been able to get the articles at their lowest possible price. Formerly it was not thus. The broom merchant, the egg merchant, the sand and rottenstone merchant, were, so to speak, part of the family; one was connected with them by very close links; one knew the day on which each would arrive; and according to the degree of favour they were in, one kept something nice for their dinner; and if, by any chance, they did not come to their day, they excused themselves, next time, as for a very grave fault indeed. They considered the houses which they supplied regularly, as the stars of their heaven,--took all the pains in the world to serve them well,--and, on quitting their trade for anything more dignified, did all they could to be replaced either by their children, or by some cousin, or cousine. There was thus a reciprocal bond of fidelity on one side, and of trust on the other, which unhappily relaxes itself more and more every day, in the measure that also family spirit disappears. The broom merchant of Rychiswyl was a servant of this sort; he whom one regrets now, so often at Berne,--whom everybody was so fond of at Thun! The Saturday might sooner have been left out of the almanack, than the broom-man not appear in Thun on the Saturday. He had not always been the broom-man; for a long time he had only been the broom-boy; until, in the end, the boy had boys of his own, who put themselves to push his cart for him. His father, who had been a soldier, died early in life; the lad was then very young, and his mother ailing. His elder sister had started in life many a day before, barefoot, and had found a place in helping a woman who carried pine-cones and turpentine to Berne. When she had won her spurs, that is to say, shoes and stockings, she obtained advancement, and became a governess of poultry, in a large farm near the town. Her mother and brother were greatly proud of her, and never spoke but with respect of their pretty Babeli. Hansli could not leave his mother, who had need of his help, to fetch her wood, and the like. They lived on the love of God and good people; but badly enough. One day, the farmer they lodged with says to Hansli: My lad, it seems to me you might try and earn something now; you are big enough, and sharp enough. I wish I could, said Hansli; but I don't know how. I know something you could do, said the farmer. Set to work to make brooms; there are plenty of twigs on my willows. I only get them stolen as it is; so they shall not cost you much. You shall make me two brooms a year of them. [22] Yes, that would be very fine and good, said Hansli; but where shall I learn to make brooms? Pardieu, [23] there's no such sorcery in the matter, said the farmer. I'll take on me the teaching of you; many a year now I've made all the brooms we use on the farm myself, and I'll back myself to make as good as are made; [24] you'll want few tools, and may use mine at first. All which was accordingly done; and God's blessing came on the doing of it. Hansli took a fancy to the work; and the farmer was enchanted with Hansli. Don't look so close; [25] put all in that is needful, do the thing well, so as to show people they may put confidence in you. Once get their trust, and your business is done, said always the farmer, [26] and Hansli obeyed him. In the beginning, naturally, things did not go very fast, nevertheless he placed [27] what he could make; and as he became quicker in the making, the sale increased in proportion. Soon, everybody said that no one had such pretty brooms as the little merchant of Rychiswyl; and the better he succeeded, the harder he worked. His mother visibly recovered liking for life. Now the battle's won, said she; as soon as one can gain one's bread honourably, one has the right to enjoy oneself, and what can one want more! Always, from that time, she had, every day, as much as she liked to eat; nay, even every day there remained something over for the next: and she could have as much bread as she liked. Indeed, Hansli very often brought her even a little white bread back from the town, whereupon [28] how happy did she not feel herself! and how she thanked God for having kept so many good things for her old days. On the contrary, now for a little while, Hansli was looking cross and provoked. Soon he began actually to grumble. 'Things could not go on much longer that way; he could not put up with it.' When the farmer at last set himself to find out what that meant, Hansli declared to him that he had too many brooms to carry, and could not carry them; and that even when the miller took them on his cart, it was very inconvenient, and that he absolutely wanted a cart of his own, but he hadn't any money to buy one, and didn't know anybody who was likely to lend him any. You are a gaby, [29] said the peasant. Look you, I won't have you become one of those people who think a thing's done as soon as they've dreamt it. That's the way one spends one's money to make the fish go into other people's nets. You want to buy a cart, do you? why don't you make one yourself. Hansli put himself, [30] to stare at the farmer with his mouth open, and great eyes. Yes, make it yourself: you will manage it, if you make up your mind, went on the farmer. You can chip wood well enough, and the wood won't cost you much--what I haven't, another peasant will have; and there must be old iron about, plenty, in the lumber-room. I believe there's even an old cart somewhere, which you can have to look at--or to use, if you like. Winter will be here soon; set yourself to work, and by the spring all will be done, and you won't have spent a threepenny piece, [31] for you may pay the smith too, with brooms, or find a way of doing without him--who knows? Hansli began to open his eyes again. I make a cart,--but how ever shall I,--I never made one. Gaby, answered the farmer, one must make everything once the first time. Take courage, and it's half done. If people took courage solidly, there are many now carrying the beggar's wallet, who would have money up to their ears, and good metal, too. Hansli was on the point of asking if the peasant had lost his head. Nevertheless, he finished by biting at the notion; and entering into it little by little, as a child into cold water. The peasant came now and then to help him; and in spring the new cart was ready, in such sort that on Easter Tuesday Hansli conducted it, [32] for the first time, to Berne, and the following Saturday to Thun, also for the first time. The joy and pride that this new cart gave him, it is difficult to form anything like a notion of. If anybody had proposed to give him the Easter ox for it, that they had promenaded at Berne the evening before, and which weighed well its twenty-five quintals, he wouldn't have heard of such a thing. It seemed to him that everybody stopped as they passed, to look at his cart; and, whenever he got a chance, he put himself to explain at length what advantages that cart had over every other cart that had yet been seen in the world. He asserted very gravely that it went of itself, except only at the hills; where it was necessary to give it a touch of the hand. [33] A cookmaid said to him that she would not have thought him so clever; and that if ever she wanted a cart, she would give him her custom. That cookmaid, always, afterwards, when she bought a fresh supply of brooms, had a present of two little ones into the bargain, to sweep into the corners of the hearth with; things which are very convenient for maids who like to have everything clean even into the corners; and who always wash their cheeks to behind their ears. It is true that maids of this sort are thin-sprinkled enough. [34] From this moment, Hansli began to take good heart to his work: his cart was for him his farm; [35] he worked with real joy; and joy in getting anything done is, compared to ill-humour, what a sharp hatchet is to a rusty one, in cutting wood. The farmers of Rychiswyl were delighted with the boy. There wasn't one of them who didn't say, 'When you want twigs, you've only to take them in my field; but don't damage the trees, and think of the wife sometimes; women use so many brooms in a year that the devil couldn't serve them.' Hansli did not fail; also was he in great favour with all the farm-mistresses. They never had been in the way of setting any money aside for buying brooms; they ordered their husbands to provide them, [36] but one knows how things go, that way. Men are often too lazy to make shavings, [37] how much less brooms!--aussi the women were often in a perfect famine of brooms, and the peace of the household had greatly to suffer for it. But now, Hansli was there before one had time to think; and it was very seldom a paysanne [38] was obliged to say to him, 'Hansli, don't forget us, we're at our last broom.' Besides the convenience of this, Hansli's brooms were superb--very different from the wretched things which one's grumbling husband tied up loose, or as rough and ragged as if they had been made of oat straw. Of course, in these houses, Hansli gave his brooms for nothing; yet they were not the worst placed pieces of his stock; for, not to speak of the twigs given him gratis, all the year round he was continually getting little presents, in bread and milk, and such kinds of things, which a paysanne has always under her hand, and which she gives without looking too close. Also, rarely one churned butter without saying to him, Hansli, we beat butter to-morrow; if you like to bring a pot, you shall have some of the beaten. [39] And as for fruit, he had more than he could eat of it; so that it could not fail, things going on in this way, that Hans should prosper; being besides thoroughly economical. If he spent as much as a batz on the day he went to the town, it was the end of the world. [40] In the morning, his mother took care he had a good breakfast, after which he took also something in his pocket, without counting that sometimes here, and sometimes there, one gave him a morsel in the kitchens where he was well known; and finally he didn't imagine that he ought always to have something to eat, the moment he had a mind to it. I am very sorry, but find there's no chance of my getting the romantic part of my story rightly into this letter; so I must even leave it till August, for my sketch of Scott's early life is promised for July, and I must keep my word to time more accurately than hitherto, else, as the letters increase in number, it is too probable I may forget what I promised in them; not that I lose sight even for a moment of my main purpose; but the contents of the letters being absolutely as the Third Fors may order, she orders me here and there so fast sometimes that I can't hold the pace. This unlucky index, for example! It is easy enough to make an index, as it is to make a broom of odds and ends, as rough as oat straw; but to make an index tied up tight, and that will sweep well into corners, isn't so easy. Ill-tied or well, it shall positively be sent with the July number (if I keep my health), and will be only six months late then; so that it will have been finished in about a fourth of the time a lawyer would have taken to provide any document for which there was a pressing necessity. In the meantime, compare the picture of country life in Switzerland, already beginning to show itself in outline in our story of the broom-maker, with this following account of the changes produced by recent trade in the country life of the island of Jersey. It is given me by the correspondent who directed me to Professor Kirk's book; (see the notes in last letter,) and is in every point of view of the highest value. Compare especially the operations of the great universal law of supply and demand in the article of fruit, as they affect the broom-boy, and my correspondent; and consider for yourselves, how far that beautiful law may affect, in time to come, not your pippins only, but also your cheese; and even at last your bread. I give this letter large print; it is quite as important as anything I have myself to say. The italics are mine. Mont à l'Abbe, Jersey, April 17, 1873. Dear Master,--The lesson I have gathered here in Jersey as to the practical working of bodies of small land-owners, is that they have three arch-enemies to their life and well-being. First, the covetousness that, for the sake of money-increase, permits and seeks that great cities should drain the island of its life-blood--their best men and their best food or means of food; secondly, love of strong drink and tobacco; and thirdly, (for these two last are closely connected,) want of true recreation. The island is cut up into small properties or holdings, a very much larger proportion of these being occupied and cultivated by the owners themselves than is the case in England. Consequently, as I think, the poor do not suffer as much as in England. Still the times have altered greatly for the worse within the memory of every middle-aged resident, and the change has been wrought chiefly by the regular and frequent communication with London and Paris, but more especially the first, which in the matter of luxuries of the table, has a maw insatiable. [41] Thus the Jersey farmer finds that, by devoting his best labour and land to the raising of potatoes sufficiently early to obtain a fancy price for them, very large money-gains are sometimes obtained,--subject also to large risks; for spring frosts on the one hand, and being outstripped by more venturous farmers on the other, are the Jersey farmers' Scylla and Charybdis. Now for the results. Land, especially that with southern aspect, has increased marvellously in price. Wages have also risen. In many employments nearly doubled. Twenty years ago a carpenter obtained 1s. 8d. per day. Now he gets 3s.; and field labourers' wages have risen nearly as much in proportion. But food and lodging have much more than doubled. Potatoes for ordinary consumption are now from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per cabot (40 lb.); here I put out of court the early potatoes, which bring, to those who are fortunate in the race, three times that price. Fifteen years ago the regular price for the same quantity was from 5d. to 8d. Butter is now 1s. 4d. per lb. Then it was 6d.; and milk of course has altered in the same proportion. Fruit, which formerly could be had in lavish, nay, almost fabulous abundance, is now dearer than in London. In fact I, who am essentially a frugivorous animal, have found myself unable to indulge in it, and it is only at very rare intervals to be found in any shape at my table. All work harder, and all fare worse; but the poor specially so. The well-to-do possess a secret solace denied to them. It is found in the 'share market.' I am told by one employed in a banking-house and 'finance' business here, that it is quite wonderful how fond the Jersey farmers are of Turkish bonds, Grecian and Spanish coupons. Shares in mines seem also to find favour here. My friend in the banking-house tells me that he was once induced to try his fortune in that way. To be cautious, he invested in four different mines. It was perhaps fortunate for him that he never received a penny of his money back from any one of the four. Another mode by which the earnings of the saving and industrious Jerseyman find their way back to London or Paris is the uncalculated, but not unfrequent, advent of a spendthrift among the heirs of the family. I am told that the landlord of the house I live in is of this stamp, and that two years more of the same rate of expenditure at Paris that he now uses, will bring him to the end of his patrimony. But what of the stimulants, and the want of recreation? I have coupled these together because I think that drinking is an attempt to find, by a short and easy way, the reward of a true recreation; to supply a coarse goad to the wits, so that there may be forced or fancied increase of play to the imagination, and to experience, with this, an agreeable physical sensation. I think men will usually drink to get the fascinating combination of the two. True recreation is the cure, and this is not adequately supplied here, either in kind or degree, by tea-meetings and the various religious 'services,' which are almost the only social recreations (no irreverence intended by thus classing them) in use among the country folk of Jersey. But I had better keep to my facts. The deductions I can well leave to my master. Here is a fact as to the working of the modern finance system here. There is exceedingly little gold coin in the island; in place thereof we use one-pound notes issued by the banks of the island. The principal bank issuing these, and also possessing by far the largest list of depositors, has just failed. Liabilities, as estimated by the accountants, not less than £332,000; assets calculated by the same authorities not exceeding £34,000. The whole island is thrown into the same sort of catastrophe as English merchants by the Overend-Gurney failure. Business in the town nearly at a stand-still, and failures of tradesmen taking place one after another, with a large reserve of the same in prospect. But as the country people are as hard at work as ever, and the panic among the islanders has hindered in nowise the shooting of the blades through the earth, and general bursting forth of buds on the trees, I begin to think the island may survive to find some other chasm for their accumulations. Unless indeed the champion slays the dragon first. [As far as one of the unlearned may have an opinion, I strongly object both to 'Rough skin,' and 'Red skin,' as name derivations. There have been useful words derived from two sources, and I shall hold that the Latin prefix to the Saxon kin establishes a sort of relationship with St. George.] I am greatly flattered by my correspondent's philological studies; but alas, his pretty result is untenable: no derivation can stand astride on two languages; also, neither he, nor any of my readers, must think of me as setting myself up either for a champion or a leader. If they will look back to the first letter of this book, they will find it is expressly written to quit myself of public responsibility in pursuing my private work. Its purpose is to state clearly what must be done by all of us, as we can, in our place; and to fulfil what duty I personally acknowledge to the State; also I have promised, if I live, to show some example of what I know to be necessary, if no more able person will show it first. That is a very different thing from pretending to leadership in a movement which must one day be as wide as the world. Nay, even my marching days may perhaps soon be over, and the best that I can make of myself be a faithful signpost. But what I am, or what I fail to be, is of no moment to the cause. The two facts which I have to teach, or sign, though alone, as it seems, at present, in the signature, that food can only be got out of the ground, and happiness only out of honesty, are not altogether dependent on any one's championship, for recognition among mankind. For the present, nevertheless, these two important pieces of information are never, so far as I am aware, presented in any scheme of education either to the infantine or adult mind. And, unluckily, no other information whatever, without acquaintance with these facts, can produce either bread and butter, or felicity. I take the following four questions, for instance, as sufficiently characteristic, out of the seventy-eight, proposed, on their Fifth subject of study, to the children of St. Matthias' National School, Granby Street, Bethnal Green, (school fees, twopence or threepence a week,) by way of enabling them to pass their First of May pleasantly, in this blessed year 1873. 1. Explain the distinction between an identity and an equation, and give an easy example of each. Show that if a simple equation in x is satisfied by two different values of x, it is an identity. 2. In what time will a sum of money double itself if invested at 10 per cent. per annum, compound interest? 3. How many different permutations can be made of the letters in the word Chillianwallah? How many if arranged in a circle, instead of a straight line? And how many different combinations of them, two and two, can be made? 4. Show that if alpha and beta be constant, and phi and lambda variable, and if cos^2 alpha cos^2 beta (tan^2 alpha cos^2 lambda + tan^2 beta sin^2 lambda) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- = tan^2 alpha cos^2 beta cos^2 lambda + tan^2 beta cos^2 alpha sin^2 lambda sin^2 alpha cos^2 phi + sin beta sin^8 phi -------------------------------------------- , tan^2 alpha cos^2 phi + tan^2 beta sin^2 phi then cos^2 beta tan phi = cos^2 alpha tan^2 lambda, unless alpha = beta ± n pi. I am bound to state that I could not answer any one of these interrogations myself, and that my readers must therefore allow for the bias of envy in the expression of my belief that to have been able to answer the sort of questions which the First of May once used to propose to English children,--whether they knew a cowslip from an oxslip, and a blackthorn from a white,--would have been incomparably more to the purpose, both of getting their living, and liking it. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. The following expression of the wounded feelings of the 'Daily News' is perhaps worth preserving:-- "Mr. Ruskin's 'Fors Clavigera' has already become so notorious as a curious magazine of the blunders of a man of genius who has travelled out of his province, that it is perhaps hardly worth while to notice any fresh blunder. No one who writes on financial subjects need be at all surprised that Mr. Ruskin funnily misinterprets what he has said, and we have ourselves just been the victim of a misinterpretation of the sort. Mr. Ruskin quotes a single sentence from an article which appeared in our impression of the 3rd of March, and places on it the interpretation that 'whenever you have reason to think that anybody has charged you threepence for a twopenny article, remember that, according to the "Daily News," the real capital of the community is increased.' We need hardly tell our readers that we wrote no nonsense of that kind. Our object was to show that the most important effect of the high price of coal was to alter the distribution of the proceeds of production in the community, and not to diminish the amount of it; that it was quite possible for real production, which is always the most important matter in a question of material wealth, to increase, even with coal at a high price; and that there was such an increase at the time we were writing, although coal was dear. These are certainly very different propositions from the curious deduction which Mr. Ruskin makes from a single short sentence in a long article, the purport of which was clear enough. There is certainly no cause for astonishment at the blunders which Mr. Ruskin makes in political economy and finance, if his method is to rush at conclusions without patiently studying the drift of what he reads. Oddly enough, it may be added, there is one way in which dear coal may increase the capital of a country like England, though Mr. Ruskin seems to think the thing impossible. We are exporters of coal, and of course the higher the price the more the foreigner has to pay for it. So far, therefore, the increased price is advantageous, although on balance, every one knows, it is better to have cheap coal than dear." Let me at once assure the editor of the 'Daily News' that I meant him no disrespect in choosing a 'long' article for animadversion. I had imagined that the length of his articles was owing rather to his sense of the importance of their subject than to the impulsiveness and rash splendour of his writing. I feel, indeed, how much the consolation it conveys is enhanced by this fervid eloquence; and even when I had my pocket picked the other day on Tower Hill, it might have soothed my ruffled temper to reflect that, in the beautiful language of the 'Daily News,' the most important effect of that operation was "to alter the distribution of the proceeds of production in the community, and not to diminish the amount of it." But the Editor ought surely to be grateful to me for pointing out that, in his present state of mind, he may not only make one mistake in a long letter, but two in a short one. Their object, declares the 'Daily News,' (if I would but have taken the pains to appreciate their efforts,) "was to show that it was quite possible for real production to increase, even with coal at a high price." It is quite possible for the production of newspaper articles to increase, and of many other more useful things. The speculative public probably knew, without the help of the 'Daily News,' that they might still catch a herring, even if they could not broil it. But the rise of price in coal itself was simply caused by the diminution of its production, or by roguery. Again, the intelligent journal observes that "dear coal may increase the capital of a country like England, because we are exporters of coal, and the higher the price, the more the foreigner has to pay for it." We are exporters of many other articles besides coal, and foreigners are beginning to be so foolish, finding the prices rise, as, instead of "having more to pay for them," never to buy them. The 'Daily News,' however, is under the impression that over, instead of under, selling, is the proper method of competition in foreign markets, which is not a received view in economical circles. I observe that the 'Daily News,' referring with surprise to the conclusions which unexpectedly, though incontrovertibly, resulted from their enthusiastic statement, declare they need hardly tell their readers they "wrote no nonsense of that kind." But I cannot but feel, after their present better-considered effusion, that it would be perhaps well on their part to warn their readers how many other kinds of nonsense they will in future be justified in expecting. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXI. Of the four great English tale-tellers whose dynasties have set or risen within my own memory--Miss Edgeworth, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray--I find myself greatly at pause in conjecturing, however dimly, what essential good has been effected by them, though they all had the best intentions. Of the essential mischief done by them, there is, unhappily, no doubt whatever. Miss Edgeworth made her morality so impertinent that, since her time, it has only been with fear and trembling that any good novelist has ventured to show the slightest bias in favour of the Ten Commandments. Scott made his romance so ridiculous, that, since his day, one can't help fancying helmets were always pasteboard, and horses were always hobby. Dickens made everybody laugh, or cry, so that they could not go about their business till they had got their faces in wrinkles; and Thackeray settled like a meatfly on whatever one had got for dinner, and made one sick of it. That, on the other hand, at least Miss Edgeworth and Scott have indeed some inevitable influence for good, I am the more disposed to think, because nobody now will read them. Dickens is said to have made people good-natured. If he did, I wonder what sort of natures they had before! Thackeray is similarly asserted to have chastised and repressed flunkeydom,--which it greatly puzzles me to hear, because, as far as I can see, there isn't a carriage now left in all the Row with anybody sitting inside it: the people who ought to have been in it are, every one, hanging on behind the carriage in front. What good these writers have done, is therefore, to me, I repeat, extremely doubtful. But what good Scott has in him to do, I find no words full enough to tell. His ideal of honour in men and women is inbred, indisputable; fresh as the air of his mountains; firm as their rocks. His conception of purity in woman is even higher than Dante's; his reverence for the filial relation, as deep as Virgil's; his sympathy universal;--there is no rank or condition of men of which he has not shown the loveliest aspect; his code of moral principle is entirely defined, yet taught with a reserved subtlety like Nature's own, so that none but the most earnest readers perceive the intention: and his opinions on all practical subjects are final; the consummate decisions of accurate and inevitable common sense, tempered by the most graceful kindness. That he had the one weakness--I will not call it fault--of desiring to possess more and more of the actual soil of the land which was so rich to his imagination, and so dear to his pride; and that, by this postern-gate of idolatry, entered other taints of folly and fault, punished by supreme misery, and atoned for by a generosity and solemn courage more admirable than the unsullied wisdom of his happier days, I have ceased to lament: for all these things make him only the more perfect to us as an example, because he is not exempt from common failings, and has his appointed portion in common pain. I said we were to learn from him the true relations of Master and Servant; and learning these, there is little left for us to learn; but, on every subject of immediate and vital interest to us, we shall find, as we study his life and words, that both are as authoritative as they are clear. Of his impartiality of judgment, I think it is enough, once for all, to bid you observe that, though himself, by all inherited disposition and accidental circumstances, prejudiced in favour of the Stewart cause, the aristocratic character, and the Catholic religion,--the only perfectly noble character in his first novel is that of a Hanoverian colonel, [42] and the most exquisitely finished and heroic character in all his novels, that of a Presbyterian milkmaid. But before I press any of his opinions--or I ought rather to say, knowledges--upon you, I must try to give you some idea of his own temper and life. His temper, I say; the mixture of clay, and the fineness of it, out of which the Potter made him; and of his life, what the power of the Third Fors had been upon it, before his own hands could make or mar his fortune, at the turn of tide. I shall do this merely by abstracting and collating (with comment) some passages out of Lockhart's life of him; and adding any elucidatory pieces which Lockhart refers to, or which I can find myself, in his own works, so that you may be able to read them easily together. And observe, I am not writing, or attempting to write, another life of Scott; but only putting together bits of Lockhart's life in the order which my side-notes on the pages indicate for my own reading; and I shall use Lockhart's words, or my own, indifferently, and without the plague of inverted commas. Therefore, if anything is wrong in my statement, Lockhart is not answerable for it; but my own work in the business will nevertheless be little more than what the French call putting dots on the i's, and adding such notes as may be needful for our present thought. Sir Walter was born on the 15th August, 1771, in a house belonging to his father, at the head of the College Wynd, Edinburgh. The house was pulled down to make room for the northern front of the New College; and the wise people of Edinburgh then built, for I don't know how many thousand pounds, a small vulgar Gothic steeple on the ground, and called it the "Scott Monument." There seems, however, to have been more reason than usual for the destruction of the College Wynd, for Scott was the first survivor of seven children born in it to his father, and appears to have been saved only by the removal to the house in George's Square, [43] which his father always afterwards occupied; and by being also sent soon afterwards into the open country. He was of purest Border race--seventh in descent from Wat of Harden and the Flower of Yarrow. Here are his six ancestors, from the sixteenth century, in order:-- 1. Walter Scott (Auld Wat) of Harden. 2. Sir William Scott of Harden. 3. Walter Scott of Raeburn. 4. Walter Scott, Tutor of Raeburn. 5. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe. 6. Walter Scott, citizen of Edinburgh. I will note briefly what is important respecting each of these. I. Wat of Harden. Harden means 'the ravine of hares.' It is a glen down which a little brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary of the Teviot, six miles west of Hawick, and just opposite Branxholm. So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he made a yearly pilgrimage to it, with whatever friend happened to be his guest at the time. [44] Wat's wife, Mary, the Flower of Yarrow, is said to have chiefly owed her celebrity to the love of an English captive,--a beautiful child whom she had rescued from the tender mercies [45] of Wat's moss-troopers, on their return from a Cumberland foray. The youth grew up under her protection, and is believed to have written both the words and music of many of the best songs of the Border. [46] This story is evidently the germ of that of the 'Lay of the last Minstrel,' only the captivity is there of a Scottish boy to the English. The lines describing Wat of Harden are in the 4th canto,-- "Marauding chief; his sole delight The moonlight raid, the morning fight. Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms, In youth, might tame his rage for arms; And still in age he spurned at rest, And still his brows the helmet pressed, Albeit the blanchèd locks below Were white as Dinlay's spotless snow." [47] With these, read also the answer of the lady of Branksome, 23rd and 24th stanzas,-- "'Say to your lords of high emprize, Who war on women and on boys,-- For the young heir of Branksome's line, God be his aid; and God be mine: Through me no friend shall meet his doom; Here, while I live, no foe finds room.' Proud she looked round, applause to claim; Then lightened Thirlstane's eye of flame; His bugle Watt of Harden blew. Pensils [48] and pennons wide were flung, To heaven the Border slogan rung, 'St. Mary, for the young Buccleugh.'" Let us stop here to consider what good there may be in all this for us. The last line, "St. Mary for the young Buccleugh," probably sounds absurd enough to you. You have nothing whatever to do, you think, with either of these personages. You don't care for any St. Mary; and still less for any, either young or old, Buccleugh? Well, I'm sorry for you:--but if you don't care for St. Mary, the wife of Joseph, do you care at all for St. Mary-Anne, the wife of Joe? Have you any faith in the holiness of your own wives, who are here, in flesh and blood? or do you verily wish them, as Mr. Mill [49] would have it--sacrifice all pretence to saintship, as to holy days--to follow "some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby"? And you don't care for the young Buccleugh? Cut away the cleugh, then, and read the Buc backwards. Do you care for your own cub as much as Sir Walter would have cared for his own beast? (see, farther on, how he takes care of his wire-haired terrier, Spice,) or as any beast cares for its cub? Or do you send your poor little brat to make money for you, like your wife; as though a cock should send his hen and chickens to pick up what they could for him; and it were the usual law of nature that nestlings should feed the parent birds? If that be your way of liberal modern life, believe me, the Border faith in its Mary and its master, however servile, was not benighted in comparison. But the Border morals? "Marauding chief, whose sole delight," etc. Just look for the passages indicated under the word 'theft' in my fine new index to the first two volumes of 'Fors.' I will come back to this point: for the present, in order to get it more clearly into your minds, remember that the Flower of Yarrow was the chieftainess to whom the invention of serving the empty dish with two spurs in it, for hint to her husband that he must ride for his next dinner, is first ascribed. Also, for comparison of the English customs of the same time, read this little bit of a letter of Lord Northumberland's to Henry VIII. in 1533. [50] "Please it your most gracious Highness to be advertised that my comptroller, with Raynold Carnaby, desired licence of me to invade the realm of Scotland, to the annoyance of your Highness's enemies, and so they did meet upon Monday before night, at Warhope, upon North Tyne water, to the number of 1500 men: and so invaded Scotland, at the hour of eight of the clock at night, and actively did set upon a town [51] called Branxholm, where the Lord of Buccleugh dwelleth, albeit that knight he was not at home. And so they burnt the said Branxholm, and other towns, and had ordered themselves so that sundry of the said Lord Buccleugh's servants, who did issue forth of his gates, were taken prisoners. They did not leave one house, one stack of corn, nor one sheaf without the gate of the said Lord Buccleugh unburnt; and so in the breaking of the day receded homeward. And thus, thanks be to God, your Highness's subjects, about the hour of twelve of the clock the same day, came into this, your Highness's realm, bringing with them above forty Scotsmen prisoners, one of them named Scott, of the surname and kin of the said Lord of Buccleugh. And of his household they brought also three hundred nowte" (cattle), "and above sixty horses and mares, keeping in safety from loss or hurt all your said Highness's subjects." They had met the evening before on the North Tyne, under Carter Fell; (you will find the place partly marked as "Plashett's coal-fields" in modern atlases;) rode and marched their twenty miles to Branxholm; busied themselves there, as we hear, till dawn, and so back thirty miles down Liddesdale,--a fifty miles' ride and walk altogether, all finished before twelve on Tuesday: besides what pillaging and burning had to be done. Now, but one more point is to be noticed, and we will get on with our genealogy. After this bit of the Earl's letter, you will better understand the speech of the Lady of Buccleugh, defending her castle in the absence of her lord, and with her boy taken prisoner. And now look back to my 25th letter, for I want you not to forget Alice of Salisbury. King Edward's first sight of her was just after she had held her castle exactly in this way, against a raid of the Scots in Lord Salisbury's absence. Edward rode night and day to help her; and the Scots besiegers, breaking up at his approach, this is what follows, which you may receive on Froissart's telling as the vital and effectual truth of the matter. A modern English critic will indeed always and instantly extinguish this vital truth; there is in it something inherently detestable to him; thus the editor of Johnes' Froissart prefaces this very story with "the romance--for it is nothing more." Now the labyrinth of Crete, and the labyrinth of Woodstock, are indeed out of sight; and of a real Ariadne or Rosamond, a blockhead might be excused for doubting; but St. George's Chapel at Windsor--(or Winde-Rose, as Froissart prettily transposes it, like Adriane for Ariadne) is a very visible piece of romance; and the stones of it were laid, and the blue riband which your queen wears on her breast is fastened, to this day, by the hand of Alice of Salisbury. "So the King came at noon; and angry he was to find the Scots gone; for he had come in such haste that all his people and horses were dead-tired and toiled. So every one went to rest; and the King, as soon as he was disarmed, took ten or twelve knights with him, and went towards the castle to salute the Countess, and see how the defence had been made. So soon as the Lady of Salisbury knew of the King's coming, she made all the gates be opened," (inmost and outmost at once,) "and came out, so richly dressed that every one was wonderstruck at her, and no one could cease looking at her, nor from receiving, as if they had been her mirrors, the reflection of her great nobleness, and her great beauty, and her gracious speaking and bearing herself. When she came to the King, she bowed down to the earth, over against him, in thanking him for his help, and brought him to the castle, to delight him and honour him--as she who well knew how to do it. Every one looked at her, even to amazement, and the King himself could not stop looking at her, for it seemed to him that in the world never was lady who was so much to be loved as she. So they went hand in hand into the castle, and the Lady led him first into the great hall, and then into her own chamber, (what the French now call a pouting-room, but the ladies of that day either smiled or frowned, but did not pout,) which was nobly furnished, as befitted such lady. And always the King looked at the gentle Lady, so hard that she became all ashamed. When he had looked at her a long while, he went away to a window, to lean upon it, and began to think deeply. The Lady went to cheer the other knights and squires; then ordered the dinner to be got ready, and the room to be dressed. When she had devised all, and commanded her people what seemed good to her, she returned with a gladsome face before the King,"--in whose presence we must leave her yet awhile, having other matters to attend to. So much for Wat of Harden's life then, and his wife's. We shall get a little faster on with the genealogy after this fair start. II. Sir William Scott of Harden. Wat's eldest son; distinguished by the early favour of James VI. In his youth, engaging in a foray on the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, and being taken prisoner, Murray offers him choice between being hanged, or marrying the plainest of his daughters. The contract of marriage, written on the parchment of a drum, is still in possession of the family of Harden. [52] This is Lockhart's reading of the circumstances, and I give his own statement of them in the note below. But his assumption of the extreme plainness of the young lady, and of the absolute worldly-mindedness of the mother, are both examples of the modern manner of reading traditions, out of which some amusement may be gathered by looking only at them on the grotesque side, and interpreting that grotesqueness ungenerously. There may, indeed, be farther ground than Lockhart has thought it worth while to state for his colour of the facts; but all that can be justly gathered from those he has told is that, Sir Gideon having determined the death of his troublesome neighbour, Lady Murray interfered to save his life; and could not more forcibly touch her husband's purpose than by reminding him that hostility might be better ended in alliance than in death. The sincere and careful affection which Sir William of Harden afterwards shows to all his children by the Maid of Elibank, and his naming one of them after her father, induce me still farther to trust in the fairer reading of the tradition. I should, indeed, have been disposed to attach some weight, on the side of the vulgar story, to the curiously religious tendencies in Sir William's children, which seem to point to some condition of feeling in the mother, arising out of despised life. Women are made nobly religious by the possession of extreme beauty, and morbidly so by distressed consciousness of the want of it; but there is no reason for insisting on this probability, since both the Christian and surname of Sir Gideon Murray point to his connection with the party in Scotland which was at this time made strong in battle by religious faith, and melancholy in peace by religious passion. III. Walter Scott, first Laird of Raeburn; third son of Sir William and this enforced bride of Elibank. They had four sons altogether; the eldest, William, becomes the second Sir William of Harden; their father settled the lands of Raeburn upon Walter; and of Highchester on his second son, Gideon, named, after the rough father-in-law, of Elibank. Now about this time (1657), George Fox comes into Scotland; boasting that "as he first set his feet upon Scottish ground he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." And he forthwith succeeds in making Quakers of Gideon, Walter, and Walter's wife. This is too much for Sir William of Harden, the eldest brother, who not only remains a staunch Jacobite, but obtains order from the Privy Council of Scotland to imprison his brother and brother's wife; that they may hold no further converse with Quakers, and also to "separate and take away their children, being two sons and a daughter, from their family and education, and to breed them in some convenient place." Which is accordingly done; and poor Walter, who had found pleasantly conversible Quakers in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, is sent to Jedburgh, with strict orders to the Jedburgh magistrates to keep Quakers out of his way. The children are sent to an orthodox school by Sir William; and of the daughter I find nothing further; but the two sons both became good scholars, and were so effectually cured of Quakerism, that the elder (I don't find his Christian name), just as he came of age, was killed in a duel with Pringle of Crichton, fought with swords in a field near Selkirk--ever since called, from the Raeburn's death, "the Raeburn meadow-spot;"--and the younger, Walter, who then became "Tutor of Raeburn," i.e., guardian to his infant nephew, intrigued in the cause of the exiled Stewarts till he had lost all he had in the world--ran a narrow risk of being hanged--was saved by the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleugh--founded a Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the conversation is said to have been maintained in Latin--and wore his beard unclipped to his dying day, vowing no razor should pass on it until the return of the Stewarts, whence he held his Border name of "Beardie." It is only when we remember how often this history must have dwelt on Sir Walter's mind that we can understand the tender subtlety of design with which he has completed, even in the weary time of his declining life, the almost eventless story of 'Redgauntlet,' and given, as we shall presently see, in connection with it, the most complete, though disguised, portion of his own biography. IV. Beardie. I find no details of Beardie's life given by Scott, but he was living at Leasudden when his landlord, Scott of Harden, [53] living at Mertoun House, addressed to him the lines given in the note to the introduction to the sixth canto of 'Marmion,' in which Scott himself partly adopts the verses, writing from Mertoun House to Richard Heber. "For course of blood, our proverbs dream, Is warmer than the mountain stream. And thus my Christmas still I hold Where my great-grandsire came of old, [54] 'With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air, The feast and holytide to share, And mix sobriety with wine, And honest mirth with thoughts divine.' Small thought was his, in after-time, E'er to be hitched into a rhyme. The simple sire could only boast That he was loyal to his cost, The banished race of kings revered, And lost his land--but kept his beard,--" "a mark of attachment," Scott adds in his note, "which I suppose had been common during Cromwell's usurpation; for in Cowley's 'Cutter of Coleman Street' one drunken cavalier upbraids another that when he was not able to pay a barber, he affected to 'wear a beard for the King.'" Observe, here, that you must always be on your guard, in reading Scott's notes or private letters, against his way of kindly laughing at what he honours more deeply than he likes to confess. The house in which Beardie died was still standing when Sir Walter wrote his autobiography, (1808), at the north-east entrance of the churchyard of Kelso. He left three sons. Any that remain of the family of the elder are long since settled in America (male heirs extinct). James Scott, well known in India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales Island, was a son of the youngest, who died at Lasswade, in Midlothian (first mention of Scott's Lasswade). But of the second son, Scott's grandfather, we have to learn much. V. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, second son of Beardie. I cannot shorten Scott's own account of the circumstances which determined his choice of life. "My grandfather was originally bred to the sea, but being shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial voyage, he took such a sincere dislike to that element, that he could not be persuaded to a second attempt. This occasioned a quarrel between him and his father, who left him to shift for himself. Robert was one of those active spirits to whom this was no misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and fairly abjured his father's politics and his learned poverty. His chief and relative, Mr. Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of the farm of Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks in the centre of which Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe Tower is situated. He took for his shepherd an old man called Hogg, who willingly lent him, out of respect to his family, his whole savings, about £30, to stock the new farm. With this sum, which it seems was at the time sufficient for the purpose, the master and servant [55] set off to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun-tryste, a fair held on a hill near Wooler, in Northumberland. The old shepherd went carefully from drove to drove, till he found a hirsel likely to answer their purpose, and then returned to tell his master to come up and conclude the bargain. But what was his surprise to see him galloping a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to find he had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary purchase! Moses' bargain of green spectacles did not strike more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield's family than my grandfather's rashness into the poor old shepherd. The thing, however, was irretrievable, and they returned without the sheep. In the course of a few days, however, my grandfather, who was one of the best horsemen of his time, attended John Scott of Harden's hounds on this same horse, and displayed him to such advantage that he sold him for double the original price. The farm was now stocked in earnest, and the rest of my grandfather's career was that of successful industry. He was one of the first who were active in the cattle trade, afterwards carried to such an extent between the Highlands of Scotland and the leading counties in England, and by his droving transactions acquired a considerable sum of money. He was a man of middle stature, extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper, stubbornly honest, and so distinguished for his skill in country matters that he was the general referee in all points of dispute which occurred in the neighbourhood. His birth being admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best society in the county, and his dexterity in country sports, particularly hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the field as well as at the table." Thus, then, between Auld Wat of Harden, and Scott's grandfather, we have four generations, numbering approximately a hundred and fifty years, from 1580 to 1730, [56] and in that time we have the great change in national manners from stealing cattle to breeding and selling them, which at first might seem a change in the way of gradually increasing honesty. But observe that this first cattle-dealer of our line is "stubbornly honest," a quality which it would be unsafe to calculate upon in any dealer of our own days. Do you suppose, then, that this honesty was a sudden and momentary virtue--a lightning flash of probity between the two darknesses of Auld Wat's thieving and modern cozening? Not so. That open thieving had no dishonesty in it whatsoever. Far the contrary. Of all conceivable ways of getting a living, except by actual digging of the ground, this is precisely the honestest. All other gentlemanly professions but this have taint of dishonesty in them. Even the best--the physician's--involves temptation to many forms of cozening. How many second-rate mediciners have lived, think you, on prescriptions of bread pills and rose-coloured water?--how many, even of leading physicians, owe all their success to skill unaided by pretence? Of clergymen, how many preach wholly what they know to be true without fear of their congregations? Of lawyers, of authors, of painters, what need we speak? These all, so far as they try to please the mob for their living, are true cozeners,--unsound in the very heart's core. But Wat of Harden, setting my farm on fire, and driving off my cattle, is no rogue. An enemy, yes, and a spoiler; but no more a rogue than the rock eagles. And Robert the first cattle-dealer's honesty is directly inherited from his race, and notable as a virtue, not in opposition to their character, but to ours. For men become dishonest by occult trade, not by open rapine. There are, nevertheless, some very definite faults in our pastoral Robert of Sandy-Knowe, which Sir Walter himself inherits and recognizes in his own temper, and which were in him severely punished. Of the rash investment of the poor shepherd's fortune, we shall presently hear what Sir Walter thought. Robert's graver fault, the turning Whig to displease his father, is especially to be remembered in connection with Sir Walter's frequent warnings against the sacrifice to momentary passion of what ought to be the fixed principles of youth. It has not been enough noticed that the design of his first and greatest story is to exhibit and reprehend, while it tenderly indicates the many grounds for forgiving, the change of political temper under circumstances of personal irritation. But in the virtues of Robert Scott, far outnumbering his failings, and above all in this absolute honesty and his contentment in the joy of country life, all the noblest roots of his grandson's character found their happy hold. Note every syllable of the description of him given in the introduction to the third canto of 'Marmion:' "Still, with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brightened at our evening fire; From the thatched mansion's grey-haired sire, Wise without learning, plain, and good, And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Showed what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought, To him, the venerable priest, Our frequent and familiar guest." Note, I say, every word of this. The faces "brightened at the evening fire,"--not a patent stove; fancy the difference in effect on the imagination, in the dark long nights of a Scottish winter, between the flickering shadows of firelight, and utter gloom of a room warmed by a close stove! "The thatched mansion's."--The coolest roof in summer, warmest in winter. Among the various mischievous things done in France, apparently by the orders of Napoleon III., but in reality by the foolish nation uttering itself through his passive voice, (he being all his days only a feeble Pan's pipe, or Charon's boatswain's whistle, instead of a true king,) the substitution of tiles for thatch on the cottages of Picardy was one of the most barbarous. It was to prevent fire, forsooth! and all the while the poor peasants could not afford candles, except to drip about over their church floors. See above, 6, 17. "Wise without learning."--By no means able, this Border rider, to state how many different arrangements may be made of the letters in the word Chillianwallah. He contrived to exist, and educate his grandson to come to something, without that information. "Plain, and good."--Consider the value there is in that virtue of plainness--legibility, shall we say?--in the letters of character. A clear-printed man, readable at a glance. There are such things as illuminated letters of character also,--beautifully unreadable; but this legibility in the head of a family is greatly precious. "And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood."--I am not sure if this is merely an ordinary expression of family pride, or whether, which I rather think, Scott means to mark distinctly the literal gentleness and softening of character in his grandfather, and in the Lowland Scottish shepherd of his day, as opposed to the still fiery temper of the Highland clans--the blood being equally pure, but the race altogether softer and more Saxon. Even Auld Wat was fair-haired, and Beardie has "amber beard and flaxen hair." "Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought."-- Here you have the exactly right and wise condition of the legal profession. All good judging, and all good preaching, must be given gratis. Look back to what I have incidentally said of lawyers and clergy, as professional--that is to say, as living by their judgment, and sermons. You will perhaps now be able to receive my conclusive statement, that all such professional sale of justice and mercy is a deadly sin. A man may sell the work of his hands, but not his equity, nor his piety. Let him live by his spade; and if his neighbours find him wise enough to decide a dispute between them, or if he is in modesty and simplicity able to give them a piece of pious advice, let him do so, in Heaven's name, but not take a fee for it. Finally, Robert Scott is a cattle-dealer, yet a gentleman, giving us the exact balance of right between the pride which refuses a simple employment, and the baseness which makes that simple employment disgraceful, because dishonest. Being wholly upright, he can sell cattle, yet not disgrace his lineage. We shall return presently to his house; but must first complete, so as to get our range of view within due limits, the sketch of the entire ancestral line. VI. Walter Scott, of George's Square, Edinburgh, Scott's father, born 1729. He was the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, and had three brothers and a sister, namely, Captain Robert Scott, in East India Service; Thomas Scott, cattle-dealer, following his father's business; a younger brother who died early, (also) in East India Service; and the sister Janet, whose part in Scott's education was no less constant, and perhaps more influential, than even his mother's. Scott's regard for one of his Indian uncles, and his regret for the other's death, are both traceable in the development of the character of Colonel Mannering; but of his uncle Thomas, and his aunt Jessie, there is much more to be learned and thought on. The cattle-dealer followed his father's business prosperously; was twice married--first to Miss Raeburn, and then to Miss Rutherford of Knowsouth--and retired, in his old age, upon a handsome independence. Lockhart, visiting him with Sir Walter, two years before the old man's death, (he being then eighty-eight years old,) thus describes him: "I thought him about the most venerable figure I had ever set my eyes on,--tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of the most silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his knees, after the fashion of three generations back. He sat reading his Bible without spectacles, and did not, for a moment, perceive that any one had entered his room; but on recognizing his nephew he rose with cordial alacrity, kissing him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, 'God bless thee, Walter, my man; thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always good.' His remarks were lively and sagacious, and delivered with a touch of that humour which seems to have been shared by most of the family. He had the air and manners of an ancient gentleman, and must in his day have been eminently handsome." Next read Sir Walter Scott's entry made in his copy of the Haliburton Memorials:-- "The said Thomas Scott died at Monklaw, near Jedburgh, at two of the clock, 27th January, 1823, in the 90th year of his life, and fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till nearly the year before his death; and being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed, a favourite tune played over to him by his son James, that he might be sure he left him in full possession of it. After hearing it, he hummed it over himself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The air was that called 'Sour Plums in Galashiels.' When barks and other tonics were given him during his last illness, he privately spat them into his handkerchief, saying, as he had lived all his life without taking doctors' drugs, he wished to die without doing so." No occasion whatever for deathbed repentances, you perceive, on the part of this old gentleman; no particular care even for the disposition of his handsome independence; but here is a bequest of which one must see one's son in full possession--here is a thing to be well looked after, before setting out for heaven, that the tune of "Sour Plums in Galashiels" may still be played on earth in an incorrupt manner, and no damnable French or English variations intruded upon the solemn and authentic melody thereof. His views on the subject of Materia Medica are also greatly to be respected. "I saw more than once," Lockhart goes on, "this respectable man's sister (Scott's aunt Janet), who had married her cousin Walter, Laird of Raeburn, thus adding a new link to the closeness of the family connection. She also must have been, in her youth, remarkable for personal attractions; as it was, she dwells on my memory as the perfect picture of an old Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple dignity in her bearing, but with the softest eye and the sweetest voice, and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every look and expression. She spoke her native language pure and undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long banished from courts, and which has not been avoided by any modern writer who has ventured to introduce it, with the exception of Scott, and I may add, speaking generally, of Burns. Lady Raeburn, as she was universally styled, may be numbered with those friends of early days whom her nephew has alluded to in one of his prefaces as preserving what we may fancy to have been the old Scotch of Holyrood." To this aunt, to his grandmother, his mother, and to the noble and most wise Rector of the High School of Edinburgh, Dr. Adam, Scott owed the essential part of his "education," which began in this manner. At eighteen months old his lameness came on, from sudden cold, bad air, and other such causes. His mother's father, Dr. Rutherford, advised sending him to the country; he is sent to his grandfather's at Sandy-Knowe, where he first becomes conscious of life, and where his grandmother and aunt Janet beautifully instruct, but partly spoil him. When he is eight years old, he returns to, and remains in, his father's house at George's Square. And now note the following sentence:-- "I felt the change from being a single indulged brat, to becoming a member of a large family, very severely; for under the gentle government of my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and of my aunt, who, though of a higher temper, was exceedingly attached to me, I had acquired a degree of license which could not be permitted in a large family. I had sense enough, however, to bend my temper to my new circumstances; but such was the agony which I internally experienced, that I have guarded against nothing more, in the education of my own family, than against their acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domination." The indulgence, however, no less than the subsequent discipline, had been indeed altogether wholesome for the boy, he being of the noble temper which is the better for having its way. The essential virtue of the training he had in his grandfather's and father's house, and his aunt Jessie's at Kelso, I will trace further in next letter. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXII. I do not know how far I shall be able in this letter to carry you forward in the story of Scott's life; let me first, therefore, map its divisions clearly; for then, wherever we have to stop, we can return to our point in fit time. First, note these three great divisions--essentially those of all men's lives, but singularly separate in his,--the days of youth, of labour, and of death. Youth is properly the forming time--that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is for ever to be. Then comes the time of labour, when, having become the best he can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, which, in happy lives, is very short: but always a time. The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death. Scott records the beginning of his own in the following entry in his diary, which reviews the life then virtually ended:-- "December 18th, 1825. [57]--What a life mine has been!--half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold, clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times: once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride. [58]... "Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me; that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge in their own pride in thinking that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest?--how live a poor, indebted man, where I was once the wealthy, the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday, in joy and prosperity, to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees; I hear them whining, and seeking me everywhere." He was fifty-four on the 15th August of that year, and spoke his last words--"God bless you all,"--on the 21st September, 1832: so ending seven years of death. His youth, like the youth of all the greatest men, had been long, and rich in peace, and altogether accumulative and crescent. I count it to end with that pain which you see he remembers to his dying day, given him by--Lilias Redgauntlet, in October, 1796. Whereon he sets himself to his work, which goes on nobly for thirty years, lapping over a little into the death-time [59] ('Woodstock' showing scarcely a trace of diminution of power). Count, therefore, thus:-- Youth, twenty-five years 1771-1796. Labour-time, thirty years 1796-1826. Death-time, seven years 1825-1832. The great period of mid-life is again divided exactly in the midst by the change of temper which made him accurate instead of fantastic in delineation, and therefore habitually write in prose rather than verse. The 'Lady of the Lake' is his last poem, (1810). 'Rokeby,' (1812) is a versified novel; the 'Lord of the Isles' is not so much. The steady legal and historical work of 1810-1814, issuing in the 'Essay on Scottish Judicature,' and the 'Life of Swift,' with preparation for his long-cherished purpose of an edition and 'Life of Pope,' [60] ("the true deacon of the craft," as Scott often called him,) confirmed, while they restrained and chastised, his imaginative power; and 'Waverley,' (begun in 1805) was completed in 1814. The apparently unproductive year of accurate study, 1811, divides the thirty years of mid-life in the precise centre, giving fifteen to song, and fifteen to history. You may be surprised at my speaking of the novels as history. But Scott's final estimate of his own work, given in 1830, is a perfectly sincere and perfectly just one; (received, of course, with the allowance I have warned you always to make for his manner of reserve in expressing deep feelings). "He replied [61] that in what he had done for Scotland as a writer, he was no more entitled to the merit which had been ascribed to him than the servant who scours the brasses to the credit of having made them; that he had perhaps been a good housemaid to Scotland, and given the country a 'rubbing up;' and in so doing might have deserved some praise for assiduity, and that was all." Distinguish, however, yourselves, and remember that Scott always tacitly distinguishes, between the industry which deserves praise, and the love which disdains it. You do not praise Old Mortality for his love to his people; you praise him for his patience over a bit of moss in a troublesome corner. Scott is the Old Mortality, not of tables of stone, but of the fleshly tables of the heart. We address ourselves to-day, then, to begin the analysis of the influences upon him during the first period of twenty-five years, during which he built and filled the treasure-house of his own heart. But this time of youth I must again map out in minor detail, that we may grasp it clearly. 1. From birth to three years old. In Edinburgh, a sickly child; permanent lameness contracted, 1771-1774. 2. Three years old to four. Recovers health at Sandy-Knowe. The dawn of conscious life, 1774-1775. 3. Four years old to five. At Bath, with his aunt, passing through London on the way to it. Learns to read, and much besides, 1775-1776. 4. Five years old to eight. At Sandy-Knowe. Pastoral life in its perfectness forming his character: (an important though short interval at Prestonpans begins his interest in sea-shore), 1776-1779. 5. Eight years old to twelve. School life, under the Rector Adams, at High School of Edinburgh, with his aunt Janet to receive him at Kelso, 1779-1783. 6. Twelve years old to fifteen. College life, broken by illness, his uncle Robert taking good care of him at Rosebank, 1783-1786. 7. Fifteen to twenty-five. Apprenticeship to his father, and law practice entered on. Study of human life, and of various literature in Edinburgh. His first fee of any importance expended on a silver taper-stand for his mother. 1786-1796. You have thus 'seven ages' of his youth to examine, one by one; and this convenient number really comes out without the least forcing; for the virtual, though not formal, apprenticeship to his father--happiest of states for a good son--continues through all the time of his legal practice. I only feel a little compunction at crowding the Prestonpans time together with the second Sandy-Knowe time; but the former is too short to be made a period, though of infinite importance to Scott's life. Hear how he writes of it, [62] revisiting the place fifty years afterwards:-- "I knew the house of Mr. Warroch, where we lived," (see where the name of the Point of Warroch in 'Guy Mannering' comes from!) "I recollected my juvenile ideas of dignity attendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out upon the sea. I saw the Links where I arranged my shells upon the turf, and swam my little skiff in the pools. Many recollections of my kind aunt--of old George Constable--of Dalgetty" (you know that name also, don't you?), "a virtuous half-pay lieutenant, who swaggered his solitary walk on the parade, as he called a little open space before the same port." (Before the black arch, Scott means, not the harbour.) And he falls in love also there, first--"as children love." And now we can begin to count the rosary of his youth, bead by bead. 1st period--From birth to three years old. I have hitherto said nothing to you of his father or mother, nor shall I yet, except to bid you observe that they had been thirteen years married when Scott was born; and that his mother was the daughter of a physician, Dr. Rutherford, who had been educated under Boerhaave. This fact might be carelessly passed by you in reading Lockhart; but if you will take the pains to look through Johnson's life of Boerhaave, you will see how perfectly pure and beautiful and strong every influence was, which, from whatever distance, touched the early life of Scott. I quote a sentence or two from Johnson's closing account of Dr. Rutherford's master:-- "There was in his air and motion something rough and artless, but so majestic and great at the same time, that no man ever looked upon him without veneration, and a kind of tacit submission to the superiority of his genius. The vigour and activity of his mind sparkled visibly in his eyes, nor was it ever observed that any change of his fortune, or alteration in his affairs, whether happy or unfortunate, affected his countenance. "His greatest pleasure was to retire to his house in the country, where he had a garden stored with all the herbs and trees which the climate would bear; here he used to enjoy his hours unmolested, and prosecute his studies without interruption." [63] The school of medicine in Edinburgh owed its rise to this man, and it was by his pupil Dr. Rutherford's advice, as we saw, that the infant Walter's life was saved. His mother could not nurse him, and his first nurse had consumption. To this, and the close air of the wynd, must be attributed the strength of the childish fever which took away the use of the right limb when he was eighteen months old. How many of your own children die, think you, or are wasted with sickness, from the same causes, in our increasing cities? Scott's lameness, however, we shall find, was, in the end, like every other condition of his appointed existence, helpful to him. A letter from my dear friend Dr. John Brown, [64] corrects (to my great delight) a mistake about George's Square I made in my last letter. It is not in the New Town, but in what was then a meadow district, sloping to the south from old Edinburgh; and the air of it would be almost as healthy for the child as that of the open country. But the change to George's Square, though it checked the illness, did not restore the use of the limb; the boy wanted exercise as well as air, and Dr. Rutherford sent him to his other grandfather's farm. II. 1774--1775. The first year at Sandy-Knowe. In this year, note first his new nurse. The child had a maid sent with him to prevent his being an inconvenience to the family. This maid had left her heart behind her in Edinburgh (ill trusted), [65] and went mad in the solitude;--"tempted by the devil," she told Alison Wilson, the housekeeper, "to kill the child and bury it in the moss." "Alison instantly took possession of my person," says Scott. And there is no more said of Alison in the autobiography. But what the old farm-housekeeper must have been to the child, is told in the most finished piece of all the beautiful story of 'Old Mortality.' Among his many beautifully invented names, here is one not invented--very dear to him. "'I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson, who resides here,' said Henry. "'She's no at hame the day,' answered Mrs. Wilson in propriâ personâ--the state of whose headdress perhaps inspired her with this direct mode of denying herself--'and ye are but a mislear'd person to speer for her in sic a manner. Ye might have had an M under your belt for Mistress Wilson of Milnwood.'" Read on, if you forget it, to the end, that third chapter of the last volume of 'Old Mortality.' The story of such return to the home of childhood has been told often; but never, so far as I have knowledge, so exquisitely. I do not doubt that Elphin's name is from Sandy-Knowe also; but cannot trace it. Secondly, note his grandfathers' medical treatment of him; for both his grandfathers were physicians,--Dr. Rutherford, as we have seen, so professed, by whose advice he is sent to Sandy-Knowe. There, his cattle-dealing grandfather, true physician by diploma of Nature, orders him, whenever the day is fine, to be carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd among the crags or rocks around which he fed his sheep. "The impatience of a child soon inclined me to struggle with my infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, to walk, and to run. Although the limb affected was much shrunk and contracted, my general health, which was of more importance, was much strengthened by being frequently in the open air; and, in a word, I, who in a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, (italics mine,) was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy child,--non sine dîs animosus infans." This, then, is the beginning of Scott's conscious existence,--laid down beside the old shepherd, among the rocks, and among the sheep. "He delighted to roll about in the grass all day long in the midst of the flock, and the sort of fellowship he formed with the sheep and lambs impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate feeling towards them which lasted throughout life." [66] Such cradle, and such companionship, Heaven gives its favourite children. In 1837, two of the then maid-servants of Sandy-Knowe were still living in its neighbourhood; one of them, "Tibby Hunter, remembered the child Scott's coming, well. The young ewe-milkers delighted, she says, to carry him about on their backs among the crags; and he was 'very gleg (quick) at the uptak, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb by head-mark as well as any of them.' His great pleasure, however, was in the society of the 'aged hind' recorded in the epistle to Erskine. 'Auld Sandy Ormistoun,' called, from the most dignified part of his function, 'the cow-bailie,' had the chief superintendence of the flocks that browsed upon 'the velvet tufts of loveliest green.' If the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company, as he lay watching his charge. "The cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle which signified to the maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to be carried home again." "Every sheep and lamb by head-mark;"--that is our first lesson; not an easy one, you will find it, if you try the flock of such a farm. Only yesterday (12th July, 1873,) I saw the dairy of one half filled with the 'berry-bread' (large flat-baked cakes enclosing layers of gooseberries) prepared by its mistress for her shearers;--the flock being some six or seven hundred, on Coniston Fells. That is our first lesson, then, very utterly learned 'by heart.' This is our second, (marginal note on Sir Walter's copy of Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, ed. 1724): "This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught 'Hardiknute' by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever forget." [67] He repeated a great part of it, in the forests of La Cava, in the spring of the year in which he died; and above the lake Avernus, a piece of the song of the ewe-milkers:-- "Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, We canna' go a-milking, for Charlie and his men." These I say, then, are to be your first lessons. The love, and care, of simplest living creatures; and the remembrance and honour of the dead, with the workmanship for them of fair tombs of song. The Border district of Scotland was at this time, of all districts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently the singing country,--that which most naturally expressed its noble thoughts and passions in song. The easily traceable reasons for this character are, I think, the following; (many exist, of course, untraceably). First, distinctly pastoral life, giving the kind of leisure which, in all ages and countries, solaces itself with simple music, if other circumstances are favourable,--that is to say, if the summer air is mild enough to allow repose, and the race has imagination enough to give motive to verse. The Scottish Lowland air is, in summer, of exquisite clearness and softness,--the heat never so great as to destroy energy, and the shepherd's labour not severe enough to occupy wholly either mind or body. A Swiss herd may have to climb a hot ravine for thousands of feet, or cross a difficult piece of ice, to rescue a lamb, or lead his flock to an isolated pasture. But the borderer's sheep-path on the heath is, to his strong frame, utterly without labour or danger; he is free-hearted and free-footed all the summer day long; in winter darkness and snow finding yet enough to make him grave and stout of heart. Secondly, the soldier's life, passing gradually, not in cowardice or under foreign conquest, but by his own increasing kindness and sense, into that of the shepherd; thus, without humiliation, leaving the war-wounded past to be recalled for its sorrow and its fame. Thirdly, the extreme sadness of that past itself: giving pathos and awe to all the imagery and power of Nature. Fourthly, (this a merely physical cause, yet a very notable one,) the beauty of the sound of Scottish streams. I know no other waters to be compared with them;--such streams can only exist under very subtle concurrence of rock and climate. There must be much soft rain, not (habitually) tearing the hills down with floods; and the rocks must break irregularly and jaggedly. Our English Yorkshire shales and limestones merely form--carpenter-like--tables and shelves for the rivers to drip and leap from; while the Cumberland and Welsh rocks break too boldly, and lose the multiplied chords of musical sound. Farther, the loosely-breaking rock must contain hard pebbles, to give the level shore of white shingle, through which the brown water may stray wide, in rippling threads. The fords even of English rivers have given the names to half our prettiest towns and villages;--(the difference between ford and bridge curiously--if one may let one's fancy loose for a moment--characterizing the difference between the baptism of literature, and the edification of mathematics, in our two great universities);--but the pure crystal of the Scottish pebbles, [68] giving the stream its gradations of amber to the edge, and the sound as of "ravishing division to the lute," make the Scottish fords the happiest pieces of all one's day walk. "The farmhouse itself was small and poor, with a common kailyard on one flank, and a staring barn of the doctor's ('Douglas') erection on the other; while in front appeared a filthy pond, covered with ducks and duckweed, [69] from which the whole tenement had derived the unharmonious designation of 'Clarty Hole.' But the Tweed was everything to him: a beautiful river, flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless where, here and there, it darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by the birches and alders which had survived the statelier growth of the primitive forest; and the first hour that he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of the adjoining ford." [70] With the murmur, whisper, and low fall of these streamlets, unmatched for mystery and sweetness, we must remember also the variable, but seldom wild, thrilling of the wind among the recesses of the glens; and, not least, the need of relief from the monotony of occupations involving some rhythmic measure of the beat of foot or hand, during the long evenings at the hearth-side. In the rude lines describing such passing of hours quoted by Scott in his introduction to the 'Border Minstrelsy,' [71] you find the grandmother spinning, with her stool next the hearth,--"for she was old, and saw right dimly" (fire-light, observe, all that was needed even then;) "she spins to make a web of good Scots linen," (can you show such now, from your Glasgow mills?) The father is pulling hemp (or beating it). The only really beautiful piece of song which I heard at Verona, during several months' stay there in 1869, was the low chant of girls unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm, in the cottages among the olive-clad hills on the north of the city. Never any in the streets of it;--there, only insane shrieks of Republican populace, or senseless dance-music, played by operatic-military bands. And one of the most curious points connected with the study of Border-life is this connection of its power of song either with its industry or human love, but never with the religious passion of its "Independent" mind. The definite subject of the piper or minstrel being always war or love, (peasant love as much honoured as the proudest,) his feeling is steadily antagonistic to Puritanism; and the discordance of Scottish modern psalmody is as unexampled among civilized nations as the sweetness of their ballads--shepherds' or ploughmen's (the plough and pulpit coming into fatalest opposition in Ayrshire); so that Wandering Willie must, as a matter of course, head the troop of Redgauntlet's riotous fishermen with "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife." And see Wandering Willie's own description of his gudesire: "A rambling, rattling chiel he had been, in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes;--he was famous at 'Hoopers and Girders;' a' Cumberland could not touch him at 'Jockie Lattin;' and he had the finest finger for the back-lilt between Berwick and Carlisle;--the like o' Steenie was na the sort they made Whigs o'." And yet, to this Puritan element, Scott owed quite one of the most noble conditions of his mental life. But it is of no use trying to get on to his aunt Janet in this letter, for there is yet one thing I have to explain to you before I can leave you to meditate, to purpose, over that sorrowful piece of Scott's diary with which it began. If you had before any thoughtful acquaintance with his general character, or with his writings, but had not studied this close of his life, you cannot but have read with surprise, in the piece of the diary I quoted, the recurring sentences showing the deep wounds of his pride. Your impression of him was, if thoughtfully received, that of a man modest and self-forgetful, even to error. Yet, very evidently, the bitterest pain under his fallen fortune is felt by his pride. Do you fancy the feeling is only by chance so strongly expressed in that passage? It is dated 18th December. Now read this:-- "February 5th, 1826.--Missie was in the drawing-room, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune? If I have a very strong passion in the world, it is pride; and that never hinged upon world's gear, which was always, with me--Light come, light go." You will not at first understand the tone of this last piece, in which two currents of thought run counter, or, at least, one with a back eddy; and you may think Scott did not know himself, and that his strongest passion was not pride; and that he did care for world's gear. Not so, good reader. Never allow your own conceit to betray you into that extremest folly of thinking that you can know a great man better than he knows himself. He may not often wear his heart on his sleeve for you; but when he does, depend upon it, he lets you see deep, and see true. Scott's ruling passion was pride; but it was nobly set--on his honour, and his courage, and his quite conscious intellectual power. The apprehended loss of honour,--the shame of what he thinks in himself cowardice,--or the fear of failure in intellect, are at any time overwhelming to him. But now, he felt that his honour was safe; his courage was, even to himself, satisfying; his sense of intellectual power undiminished; and he had therefore recovered some peace of mind, and power of endurance. The evils he could not have borne, and lived, have not been inflicted on him, and could not be. He can laugh again with his friend;--"but do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune?" What is this loss, then, which he is grieving for--as for a lost sister? Not world's gear, "which was always, with me, Light come, light go." Something far other than that. Read but these three short sentences more, [72] out of the entries in December and January:-- "My heart clings to the place I have created: there is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me." "Poor Will Laidlaw--poor Tom Purdie--such news will wring your hearts; and many a poor fellow besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread." "I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.--My poor people, whom I loved so well!" Nor did they love him less. You know that his house was left to him, and that his "poor people" served him until his death--or theirs. Hear now how they served. "The butler," says Lockhart, visiting Abbotsford in 1827, "instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of the house, at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman-in-ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done before. Their good conduct had given every one of them a new elevation in his own mind; and yet their demeanour had gained, in place of losing, in simple humility of observance. The great loss was that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the estate being all but a fragment in the hands of the trustees and their agent) there was now no occupation here. The cottage which his taste had converted into a loveable retreat had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was living a dozen miles off, on the farm of a relation in the Vale of Yarrow. Every week, however, he came down to have a ramble with Sir Walter over their old haunts, to hear how the pecuniary atmosphere was darkening or brightening, and to read, in every face at Abbotsford, that it could never be itself again until circumstances should permit his re-establishment at Kaeside. "All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had a preciously soothing influence on the mind of Scott, who may be said to have lived upon love. No man cared less about popular admiration and applause; but for the least chill on the affection of any near and dear to him, he had the sensitiveness of a maiden. I cannot forget, in particular, how his eyes sparkled when he first pointed out to me Peter Mathieson guiding the plough on the haugh. 'Egad,' said he, 'auld Pepe' (this was the children's name for their good friend), 'auld Pepe's whistling at his darg. The honest fellow said a yoking in a deep field would do baith him and the blackies good. If things get round with me, easy shall be Pepe's cushion.'" You see there is not the least question about striking for wages on the part of Sir Walter's servants. The law of supply and demand is not consulted, nor are their wages determined by the great principle of competition--so rustic and absurd are they; not but that they take it on them sometimes to be masters instead of servants:-- "March 21.--Wrote till twelve, then out upon the heights, and faced the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not with me; he would have obliged me to keep the sheltered ground." [73] You are well past all that kind of thing, you think, and know better how to settle the dispute between Capital and Labour. "What has that to do with domestic servants?" do you ask? You think a house with a tall chimney, and two or three hundred servants in it, is not properly a house at all; that the sacred words, Domus, Duomo, cannot be applied to it; and that Giotto would have refused to build a Buzzing Tower, by way of belfry, in Lancashire? Well, perhaps you are right. If you are merely unlucky Williams--borrowing colossal planes--instead of true servants, it may well be that Pepe's own whistling at his darg must be very impossible for you, only manufactured whistling any more possible. Which are you? Which will you be? I am afraid there is little doubt which you are;--but there is no doubt whatever which you would like to be, whether you know your own minds or not. You will never whistle at your dargs more, unless you are serving masters whom you can love. You may shorten your hours of labour as much as you please;--no minute of them will be merry, till you are serving truly: that is to say, until the bond of constant relationship--service to death--is again established between your masters and you. It has been broken by their sin, but may yet be recovered by your virtue. All the best of you cling to the least remnant or shadow of it. I heard but the other day of a foreman, in a large house of business, discharged at a week's warning on account of depression in trade,--who thereupon went to one of the partners, and showed him a letter which he had received a year before, offering him a situation with an increase of his salary by more than a third; which offer he had refused without so much as telling his masters of its being made to him, that he might stay in the old house. He was a Scotchman--and I am glad to tell the story of his fidelity with that of Pepe and Tom Purdie. I know not how it may be in the south; but I know that in Scotland, and the northern Border, there still remains something of the feeling which fastened the old French word 'loial' among the dearest and sweetest of their familiar speech; and that there are some souls yet among them, who, alike in labour or in rest, abide in, or will depart to, the Land of the Leal. "Sire, moult me plaist vostre escole Et vo noble conseil loial, Ne du trespasser n'ay entente; Sans lui n'aray ne bien ne mal. Amours ce vouloir me présente, Qui veult que tout mon appareil Soit mis à servir soir et main Loiauté, et moult me merveil Comment homs a le cuer si vain Qu'il a à fausetié réclaim." NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I have been making not a few mistakes in Fors lately; and, indeed, am careless enough in it, not solicitous at all to avoid mistakes; for being entirely sure of my main ground, and entirely honest in purpose, I know that I cannot make any mistake which will invalidate my work, and that any chance error which the third Fors may appoint for me, is often likely to bring out, in its correction, more good than if I had taken the pains to avoid it. Here, for instance, is Dr. Brown's letter, which I should not have had, but for my having confused George's Street with George's Square, and having too shortly generalized my experience of modern novel readers; and it tells me, and you, something about Scott and Dickens which is of the greatest use. "My dear Friend,--I am rejoiced to see you upon Scott. It will be a permanent good, your having broken this ground. But you are wrong in two things--George's Square is not in the detestable New Town, it is to the south of the very Old Town, and near the Meadows. "Then you say 'nobody now will read them' (Miss Edgeworth and Sir Walter). She is less read than I think she should be, but he is enormously read--here and in America. "In the twelve months ending June, 1873, Adam Black and his sons have sold over 250,000 Waverleys, and I know that when Dickens--that great master of fun and falsetto--went last to America, and there was a fury for him and his books, the sale of them only touched for a short time the ordinary sale of the Scott Novels, and subsided immensely, soon, the Scotts going steadily on increasing. Our young 'genteel' girls and boys, I fear, don't read them as the same class did thirty years ago, but the readers of them, in the body of the people, are immense, and you have only to look at the four or five copies of the whole set in our public libraries to see how they are being read. That is a beautiful drawing of Chantrey's, and new to me,--very like, having the simple, childlike look which he had. The skull is hardly high enough." A subsequent letter tells me than Dinlay is a big hill in Liddesdale; and enclosed (search for it being made) the tune of Sour Plums in Galashiels, of which I will only at present bid you farther observe that it is the first "touch of the auld bread-winner" that Wandering Willie plays to Darsie. Another valued correspondent reminds me that people might get hold of my having spoken, a good many numbers back, of low sunshine "at six o'clock on an October morning;" and truly enough it must have been well on towards seven. A more serious, but again more profitable, mistake, was made in the June Fors, by the correspondent (a working man) who sent me the examination paper, arranged from a Kensington one, from which I quoted the four questions,--who either did not know, or did not notice, the difference between St. Matthew and St. Matthias. The paper had been set in the schools of St. Matthew, and the chairman of the committee of the schools of St. Matthias wrote to me in violent indignation--little thinking how greatly pleased I should be to hear of any school in which Kensington questions were not asked,--or if asked, were not likely to be answered. I find even that the St. Matthias children could in all probability answer the questions I proposed as alternative,--for they have flower shows, and prizes presented by Bishops, and appear to be quite in an exemplary phase of education: all of which it is very pleasant to me to learn. (Apropos of the equivoque between St. Matthew and St. Matthias, another correspondent puts me in mind of the promise I made to find out for you who St. Pancras was. I did; but did not much care to tell you--for I had put him with St. Paul only because both their names began with P; and found that he was an impertinent youth of sixteen, who ought to have been learning to ride and swim, and took to theology instead, and was made a martyr of, and had that mock-Greek church built to his Christian honour in Mary-le-bone. I have no respect whatever for boy or girl martyrs;--we old men know the value of the dregs of life: but young people will throw the whole of it away for a freak, or in a pet at losing a toy.) I suppose I shall next have a fiery letter abjuring Kensington from the committee of the schools of St. Matthew:--nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure. I did not, indeed, intend for some time to give you any serious talk about Kensington, and then I meant to give it you in large print--and at length; but as this matter has been 'forced' upon me (note the power of the word Fors in the first syllable of that word) I will say a word or two now. I have lying beside me on my table, in a bright orange cover, the seventh edition of the 'Young Mechanic's Instructor; or, Workman's Guide to the various Arts connected with the Building Trades; showing how to strike out all kinds of Arches and Gothic Points, to set out and construct Skew Bridges; with numerous Illustrations of Foundations, Sections, Elevations, etc. Receipts, Rules, and Instructions in the art of Casting, Modelling, Carving, Gilding, Dyeing, Staining, Polishing, Bronzing, Lacquering, Japanning, Enamelling, Gasfitting, Plumbing, Glazing, Painting, etc. Jewellers' Secrets, Miscellaneous Receipts, Useful Tables, etc., and a variety of useful information designed specially for the Working Mechanic.--London: Brodie and Middleton, 79, Long Acre; and all Booksellers in Town and Country. Price, 2s. 6d.' From pages 11, 20, and 21 of the introduction to this work, I quote the following observations on St. Paul's, the Nineveh sculptures, and the Houses of Parliament. I. OF ST. PAUL'S. "Since London was first built, which we are led to believe was about the year 50, by the Romans, there has not been a more magnificent building erected in it than St. Paul's--this stupendous edifice which absorbs the attention, and strikes with wonder all who behold it, was founded by Ethelbert, the fifth King of Kent, in the year 604 A.D. And it is certain that since the completion of this building succeeding generations have made no progress in the construction of public buildings." II. OF THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES. "There is one feature in the Nineveh sculptures which most beautifully illustrates and corroborates the truth of the Scriptures; any person who has carefully read the Scriptures, and has seen the Nineveh sculptures, cannot fail to see the beautiful illustration; it will be remembered that the king is spoken of in many places as riding in his chariot, and of the king's armour-bearer following him to the battle. In the Nineveh sculptures you will see the fact exemplified--the king in his chariot, and his armour-bearer defending him with his shield." III. OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. "Of all the Gothic buildings that we have in our country, both of ancient and modern date, the Houses of Parliament are the best and most elaborate; the first step of its grandeur is, that it stands parallel to the majestic stream of the River Thames, and owing to its proximate distance to the river, there is no thoroughfare between it and the water; its open situation gives it a sublime view from the opposite side; but especially from Westminster Bridge its aspect is grand and magnificent in the extreme. Its superb tracery glitters in the distance, in the sight of the spectator, like the yellow autumnal foliage of some picturesque grove, which beautifies the verdant valleys and bedecks the silvery hills. The majestic figures in their stately order, encanopied in their Gothic palaces, bring to our remembrance the noble patriarchs of old, or the patriots of recent days. Its numerous pinnacles, turrets, and towers, rise up into the smoky and blue atmosphere like forest trees, which will stand as an everlasting memento of the great and noble-minded generation who raised this grand and magnificent structure, so that after-generations may say, 'Surely our forefathers were great and illustrious men, that they had reached the climax of human skill, so that we cannot improve on their superb and princely buildings.'" These three extracts, though in an extreme degree, are absolutely and accurately characteristic of the sort of mind, unexampled in any former ages for its conceit, its hypocrisy, and its sevenfold--or rather seventy times sevenfold--ignorance, the dregs of corrupted knowledge, which modern art-teaching, centralized by Kensington, produces in our workmen and their practical 'guides.' How it is produced, and how the torturing examinations as to the possible position of the letters in the word. Chillianwallah, and the collection of costly objects of art from all quarters of the world, end in these conditions of paralysed brain and corrupted heart, I will show you at length in a future letter. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXIII. I find some of my readers are more interested in the last two numbers of Fors than I want them to be. "Give up your Fors altogether, and let us have a life of Scott," they say. They must please to remember that I am only examining the conditions of the life of this wise man, that they may learn how to rule their own lives, or their children's, or their servants'; and, for the present, with this particular object, that they may be able to determine, for themselves, whether ancient sentiment, or modern common sense, is to be the rule of life, and of service. I beg them, therefore, to refer constantly to that summary of modern common sense given by Mr. Applegarth, and quoted with due commendation by the 'Pall Mall Gazette' (above, XXVIII., 22):-- "One piece of vigorous good sense enlivened the discussion. It was uttered by Mr. Applegarth, who observed that 'no sentiment ought to be brought into the subject.'" No sentiment, you observe, is to be brought into your doing, or your whistling, according to Mr. Applegarth. And the main purpose of Fors is to show you that there is, sometimes, in weak natural whistling quite as much virtue as in vigorous steam whistling. But it cannot show you this without explaining what your darg, or 'doing,' is; which cannot be shown merely by writing pleasant biographies. You are always willing enough to read lives, but never willing to lead them. For instance, those few sentences, almost casually given in last Fors, about the Scottish rivers, have been copied, I see, into various journals, as if they, at any rate, were worth extract from the much useless matter of my books. Scotchmen like to hear their rivers talked about, it appears! But when last I was up Huntly Burn way, there was no burn there. It had all been drawn off to somebody's 'works;' and it is painful for me, as an author, to reflect that, "of all polluting liquids belonging to this category (liquid refuse from manufactories), the discharges from paper works are the most difficult to deal with." [74] At Edinburgh there is a railroad station instead of the North Loch; the water of Leith is--well, one cannot say in civilized company what it is; [75] and at Linlithgow, of all the palaces so fair,--built for a royal dwelling, etc.,--the oil, (paraffin,) floating on the streams, can be ignited, burning with a large flame. [76] My good Scottish friends, had you not better leave off pleasing yourselves with descriptions of your rivers as they were, and consider what your rivers are to be? For I correct my derivation of Clarty Hole too sorrowfully. [77] It is the Ford that is clarty now--not the Hole. To return to our sentimental work, however, for a while. I left in my last letter one or two of the most interesting points in the first year at Sandy-Knowe unnoticed, because I thought it best to give you, by comparison with each other, some idea of the three women who, as far as education could do it, formed the mind of Scott. His masters only polished and directed it. His mother, grandmother, and aunt welded the steel. Hear first this of his mother. (Lockhart, vol. i., p. 78.) "She had received, as became the daughter of an eminently learned physician, the best sort of education then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland." The poet, speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at which his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr. Robert Chambers, said that "she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after-life, fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and the belles lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt-book, and perfectly well-bred in society." Mr. Chambers adds, "Sir Walter further communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's pupils, were sent afterwards to be finished off by the Honourable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie." You are to note in this extract three things. First, the singular influence of education, given by a master or mistress of real power. "All her young ladies" (all, Sir Walter! do you verily mean this?) "fond of reading," and so forth. Well, I believe that, with slight exception, Sir Walter did mean it. He seldom wrote, or spoke, in careless generalization. And I doubt not that it is truly possible, by first insisting on a girl's really knowing how to read, and then by allowing her very few books, and those absolutely wholesome,--and not amusing!--to give her a healthy appetite for reading. Spelling, I had thought was impossible to many girls; but perhaps this is only because it is not early enough made a point of: it cannot be learned late. Secondly: I wish Mr. Chambers had given us Sir Walter's words, instead of only the substance of what he "further communicated." But you may safely gather what I want you to notice, that Sir Walter attributes the essentials of good breeding to the first careful and scholarly mistress; and only the formality, which he somewhat hesitatingly approves, to the finishing hand of Mrs. Ogilvie. He would have paid less regard to the opinion of modern society on such matters, had he lived to see our languid Paradise of sofas and rocking-chairs. The beginning, and very nearly the end, of bodily education for a girl, is to make sure that she can stand, and sit, upright; the ankle vertical, and firm as a marble shaft; the waist elastic as a reed, and as unfatiguable. I have seen my own mother travel from sunrise to sunset, in a summer's day, without once leaning back in the carriage. Thirdly: The respectability belonging in those days to the profession of a schoolmistress. In fact, I do not myself think that any old lady can be respectable, unless she is one, whether she be paid for her pupils or not. And to deserve to be one, makes her Honourable at once, titled or untitled. This much comes, then, of the instructions of Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Ogilvie; and why should not all your daughters be educated by Honourable Mrs. Ogilvies, and learn to spell, and to sit upright? Then they will all have sons like Sir Walter Scott, you think? Not so, good friends. Miss Rutherford had not wholly learned to sit upright from Mrs. Ogilvie. She had some disposition of her own in that kind, different from the other pupils, and taught in older schools. Look at the lines in the Lay, where Conrad of Wolfenstein, "In humour highly crossed About some steeds his band had lost, High words to words succeeding still, Smote with his gauntlet stout Hunthill; A hot and hardy Rutherford, Whom men call Dickon Draw-the-Sword. Stern Rutherford right little said, But bit his glove, and shook his head.-- A fortnight thence, in Inglewood, Stout Conrad, cold and drenched in blood, His bosom gored with many a wound, Was by a woodman's lyme-dog [78] found; Unknown the manner of his death, Gone was his brand, both sword and sheath; But ever from that time, 'twas said That Dickon wore a Cologne blade." Such the race,--such the school education,--of Scott's mother. Of her home education, you may judge by what she herself said of her father to her son's tutor (whose exquisitely grotesque letter, for the rest, vol. i., p. 108,) is alone enough to explain Scott's inevitable future perception of the weakness of religious egotism. "Mrs. Scott told me that, when prescribing for his patients, it was Dr. Rutherford's custom to offer up, at the same time, a prayer for the accompanying blessing of heaven,--a laudable practice, in which, I fear, he has not been generally imitated by those of his profession." A very laudable practice indeed, good Mr. Mitchell; perhaps even a useful and practically efficacious one, on occasion; at all events one of the last remains of noble Puritanism, in its sincerity, among men of sound learning. For Dr. Rutherford was also an excellent linguist, and, according to the custom of the times, delivered his prelections to the students in Latin, (like the conversation in Beardie's Jacobite Club). Nowadays, you mean to have no more Latin talked, as I understand; nor prayers said. Pills--Morison's and others--can be made up on cheaper terms, you think,--and be equally salutary? Be it so. In these ancient manners, however, Scott's mother is brought up, and consistently abides; doubtless, having some reverence for the Latin tongue, and much faith in the medicine of prayer;--having had troubles about her soul's safety also; perhaps too solicitous, at one time, on that point; but being sure she has a soul to be solicitous about, which is much; obedient herself to the severest laws of morality and life; mildly and steadily enforcing them on her children; but naturally of light and happy temper, and with a strong turn to study poetry and works of imagination. I do not say anything of his father till we come to the apprenticeship,--except only that he was no less devout than his mother, and more formal. Of training which could be known or remembered, neither he nor the mother give any to their boy until after the Sandy-Knowe time. But how of the unremembered training? When do you suppose the education of a child begins? At six months old it can answer smile with smile, and impatience with impatience. It can observe, enjoy, and suffer, acutely, and, in a measure, intelligently. Do you suppose it makes no difference to it that the order of the house is perfect and quiet, the faces of its father and mother full of peace, their soft voices familiar to its ear, and even those of strangers, loving; or that it is tossed from arm to arm, among hard, or reckless, or vain-minded persons, in the gloom of a vicious household, or the confusion of a gay one? The moral disposition is, I doubt not, greatly determined in those first speechless years. I believe especially that quiet, and the withdrawal of objects likely to distract, by amusing the child, so as to let it fix its attention undisturbed on every visible least thing in its domain, is essential to the formation of some of the best powers of thought. It is chiefly to this quietude of his own home that I ascribe the intense perceptiveness and memory of the three-years'-old child at Sandy-Knowe; for, observe, it is in that first year he learns his Hardiknute; by his aunt's help he learns to read at Bath, and can cater for himself on his return. Of this aunt, and her mother, we must now know what we can. You notice the difference which Scott himself indicates between the two: "My grandmother, who was meekness itself, and my aunt, who was of a higher temper." Yet his grandmother, Barbara Haliburton, was descended from the so-called, in speciality of honour, 'Standard-bearer' of the Douglases; and Dryburgh Abbey was part of her family's estate, they having been true servants to the monks of it, once on a time. Here is a curious little piece of lecture on the duties of master and servant,--Royal Proclamation on the 8th of May, 1535, by James the Fifth: [79] "Whereas we, having been advised, and knowing the said gentlemen, the Halliburtons, to be leal and true honest men, long servants unto the saide abbeye, for the saide landis, stout men at armes, and goode borderers against Ingland; and doe therefore decree and ordaine, that they shall be re-possess'd, and bruik and enjoy the landis and steedings they had of the said abbeye, paying the use and wonte: and that they sall be goode servants to the said venerabil father, like as they and their predecessours were to the said venerabil father, and his predecessours, and he a good master to them." The Abbot of Dryburgh, however, and others in such high places, having thus misread their orders, and taken on themselves to be masters instead of ministers, the Reformation took its course; and Dryburgh claims allegiance no more--but to its dead. You notice the phrase, "good borderers against England." Lest I should have to put it off, too long, I may as well, in this place, let you know the origin of the tune which Scott's uncle was so fond of. From the letter of one of his friends to Dr. Brown I gratefully take the following passage:-- "In the fourteenth century some English riders were slaking their thirst on the banks of the Tweed, nearly opposite Cartley Hole,--now Abbotsford,--where wild plums grew. The borderers came down upon them unexpectedly, and annihilated them, driving some into the Tweed, at a place called the Englishman's Dyke. The borderers accordingly thought their surprise sourer fruit to the invaders than the plums they went to pluck, and christened themselves by the soubriquet of 'Sour Plums in Galashiels,' which gave a text for the song and tune, and a motto for the arms of the town of Galashiels." There is something to think of for you, when next you see the blackthorn blow, or the azure bloom spread on its bossed clusters of fruit. I cannot find any of the words of the song; but one beautiful stanza of the ballad of Cospatrick may at least serve to remind you of the beauty of the Border in its summer time:-- "For to the greenwood I maun gae To pu' the red rose and the slae, To pu' the red rose and the thyme, To deck my mother's bour and mine." "Meekness itself," and yet possibly with some pride in her also, this Barbara, with the ruins of her Dryburgh still seen grey above the woods, from the tower at whose foot her grandchild was playing. So short the space he had to travel, when his lameness should be cured,--the end of all travel already in sight! Some pride in her, perhaps: you need not be surprised her grandchild should have a little left. "Many a tale" (she told him) "of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood (Oakwood), Jamie Tellfer of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes--merry men, all of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and Little John. A more recent hero, but not of less note, was the celebrated De'il of Little Dean, whom she well remembered, as he had married her mother's sister. Of this extraordinary person I learned many a story--grave and gay, comic and warlike"--(dearest, meek, grandmamma!) "Two or three old books which lay in the window-seat were explored for my amusement in the tedious winter days. Automathes [80] and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany were my favourites, although, at a later period, an odd volume of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my partiality." "Two or three old books in the window-seat," and "an odd volume of Josephus." How entertaining our farm library! (with the Bible, you observe;) and think how much matters have changed for the better: your package down from Mudie's monthly, with all the new magazines, and a dozen of novels; Good Words--as many as you choose,--and Professor Tyndall's last views on the subject of the Regelation of Ice. (Respecting which, for the sake of Scott's first love, and for the sake also of my own first love--which was of snow, even more than water,--I have a few words to say to Professor Tyndall, but they must be for next month, as they will bitterly interrupt our sentimental proceedings.) Nay--with your professional information that when ice breaks you can stick it together again, you have also imaginative literature of the rarest. Here--instead of Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, with its Hardiknute and other ballads of softer tendency,--some of them not the best of their kind, I admit,--here you have Mr. Knatchbull-Huguessen, M.P.'s, Tales at Tea-time, [81] dedicated to the schoolroom teapot, in which the first story is of the "Pea Green Nose," and in which (opening at random) I find it related of some Mary of our modern St. Mary's Lochs, that "Mary stepped forward hastily, when one of the lobsters sprang forward, and seized her arm in his claw, saying, in a low, agitated tone of voice," etc. etc. You were better off, little as you think it, with that poor library on the window-seat. Your own, at worst, though much fingered and torn;--your own mentally, still more utterly; and though the volume be odd, do you think that, by any quantity of reading, you can make your knowledge of history, even? You are so proud of having learned to read too, and I warrant you could not read so much as Barbara Haliburton's shield: Or, on a bend azure, three mascles of the first; in the second quarter a buckle of the second. I meant to have engraved it, but shall never get on to aunt Jessie at this rate. "My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me, with admirable patience, until I could repeat long passages by heart." Why admirable, Sir Walter? Surely she might have spent her time more usefully--lucratively at least--than in this manner of 'nursing the baby.' Might you not have been safely left, to hunt up Hardiknute, in maturer years, for yourself? By no manner of means, Sir Walter thinks; and justly. With all his gifts, but for this aunt Janet,--for his mother,--and for Lilias Redgauntlet,--he had assuredly been only a hunting laird, and the best story-teller in the Lothians. We scarcely ever, in our study of education, ask this most essential of all questions about a man, What patience had his mother or sister with him? And most men are apt to forget it themselves. Pardon me for speaking of myself for a moment; (if I did not know things by my own part in them, I would not write of them at all). You know that people sometimes call me a good writer: others like to hear me speak. I seldom mis-spell or mis-pronounce a word, grossly; and can generally say what I want to say. Well, my own impression about this power, such as it may be, is that it was born with me, or gradually gained by my own study. It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise,--toil on both sides equal,--by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn all the Scotch paraphrases by heart, and ever so many chapters of the Bible besides, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one,--try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the "of" in the lines "Shall any following spring revive The ashes of the urn?" I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and their contents), on reciting it, "The ashes of the urn." It was not, I say, till after three weeks' labour, that my mother got the accent laid upon the ashes, to her mind. But had it taken three years, she would have done it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, I had been simply an avaricious picture collector, or perhaps even a more avaricious money collector, to this day; and had she done it wrongly, no after-study would ever have enabled me to read so much as a single line of verse. It is impossible, either in history or biography, to arrange what one wants to insist upon wholly by time, or wholly by rational connection. You must observe that the visit to England, of which I am now going to speak, interrupts, with a brilliant display of pyrotechnic light, the steady burning of the stars above Scott's childhood. From the teaching of his aunt, before he could read, I should like, for several reasons, to go on at once to the teaching of his mother, after he could read; but I must content myself, for the moment, with adding the catalogue of mamma's library to that of aunt Jessie's. On the window-seat of Sandy-Knowe--only to be got at the pith of by help of auntie--we had the odd volume of Josephus, Automathes, and two or three old books not named. A year later, mamma provides for us--now scholars ourselves--Pope's Homer, Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, and, for Sundays, Bunyan, Gesner's Death of Abel, and Rowe's (Mrs.) Letters from the Other World. But we have made our grand tour in the meantime, and have some new ideas of this world in our head; of which the reader must now consider. "I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate aunt--although such a journey promised to a person of her retired habits anything but pleasure or amusement--undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected all the delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitants." And why should she not? Does it not seem somewhat strange to you, from what you know of young, or even middle-aged, aunt Jessies of the present day, that Miss Scott should look upon the journey to Bath as so severe a piece of self-denial; and that her nephew regards her doing so as a matter of course? How old was aunt Jessie, think you? Scott's father, the eldest of a large family, was born in 1729,--in this year, therefore, was forty-six. If we uncharitably suppose Miss Jessie the next oldest, she would be precisely of the age of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble; and one could fancy her, it seems to me, on the occasion of this unforeseen trip to the most fashionable watering-place in England, putting up her "rose-collard neglegay with green robins, and her bloo quilted petticot," without feeling herself in the position of a martyr led to the stake. But aunt Jessie must really have been much younger than Mrs. Tabitha, and have had the advantage of her in other particulars besides spelling. She was afterwards married, and when Lockhart saw her (1820?)--forty years or so after this--had still "the softest eye and the sweetest voice." And from the thatched mansion of the moorland, Miss Jessie feels it so irksome and solemn a duty--does she?--to go to "the squares, the circus, and the parades, which put you" (Miss Lydia Melford) "in mind of the sumptuous palaces represented in prints and pictures; and the new buildings, such as Prince's Row, Harlequin's Row, Bladud's Row, and twenty other rows besides,"--not to speak of a real pump in a pump-room, with a handle to it, and other machinery, instead of the unpumped Tweed! Her nephew, however, judges her rightly. Aunt Jessie could give him no truer proof of faithful affection than in the serenity with which she resolves to take him to this centre of gaiety. Whereupon, you are to note this, that the end of all right education for a woman is to make her love her home better than any other place; that she should as seldom leave it as a queen her queendom; nor ever feel entirely at rest but within its threshold. For her boy, however, there are things to be seen in Bath, and to be learned. "I acquired the rudiments of reading from an old dame near our lodgings, and I had never a more regular teacher, though I think I did not attend her more than a quarter of a year. An occasional lesson from my aunt supplied the rest." Yes, little Walter. If we indeed have a mind to our book, that is all the teaching we want; we shall perhaps get through a volume or two in time. "The circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath are but trifling; yet I never recall them without a feeling of pleasure. The beauties of the Parade (which of them I know not), with the river Avon winding around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could have looked on the outside of the Abbey Church (if I mistake not, the principal church at Bath is so called,) with more horror than the image of Jacob's Ladder, with all its angels, presented to my infant eye. My uncle [82] effectually combated my terrors, and formally introduced me to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleasure-boat crosses to Spring Gardens." "A sweet retreat"--Spring Gardens (again I quote Miss Lydia)--"laid out in walks, and ponds, and parterres of flowers, and hard by the Pamprom is a coffee-house for the ladies, but my aunt says young girls are not admitted, inasmuch as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, philosophy, and other subjects above our capacity." Is aunt Janet old enough and clever enough for the company, I wonder? And Walter--what toys did he mostly covet in the Orange Grove? The passage about the effect of sculpture upon him is intensely interesting to me, partly as an indication of the state of his own nascent imagination, partly as illustrative of the power of religious sculpture, meant to terrify, on the minds of peasant children of high faculty. But I cannot dwell on this point here: I must get on to his first sight of a play. The third Fors--still favourable to him--appoints it to be "As you like it." A never-to-be-forgotten delight, influencing him in his whole nature thenceforward. It is uncle Robert's doing this, aunt Jessie having been probably doubtful on the matter, but irresistibly coaxed. Uncle Robert has much to answer for! How much, I can't tell you to-day; nor for a while now, for I have other matters on hand in the next Fors or two--Glacier theory, and on the road to it I must not let you forget the broom-market between Berne and Thun; and I've got to finish my notes on Friedrich and his father, who take more noticing than I expected; besides that I've Friedrich II. of Germany to give some account of; and all my Oxford work besides. I can only again and again beg the many valued correspondents whose letters I must abruptly answer, to remember that not one word on any of these subjects can be set down without care; and to consider what the length of a day is, under existing solar arrangements. Meantime, here is a point for you to think of. The boy interrupts the first scene of the play by crying aloud, "An't they brothers?"--(the third Fors had appointed for him that one day he should refuse to speak to his own;)--and long remembers the astonishment with which he "looked upon the apathy of the elder part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every evening at the theatre." How was it that he never could write a Play? NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I have mislaid, just when I wanted it, a valuable letter, which gave me the first name of Abbotsford accurately,--Clarty Hole being only a corruption of it, and the real name bearing no such sense. I shall come upon it some time or other: meantime, my Scottish readers must not suppose I mean that the treatment of rivers is worse in North than in South Britain,--only they have prettier streams in Scotland to float their paraffin, or other beautiful productions of modern art, or nature, on the top of. We had one or two clear streams in Surrey, indeed; but as I was investigating the source of one of them, only the other day, I found a police office had been built over it, and that the authorities had paid five hundred pounds to construct a cesspool, with a huge iron cylinder conducting to it, through the spring. Excavating, I found the fountain running abundantly, round the pipe. The following paragraph, and the two subjoined letters, appeared in the same impression of the 'Daily Telegraph,' on the 12th January, 1871. I wish to preserve them in Fors; and I print them in this number, because the succession of the first four names in the statement of the journal, associated with that of the first magistrate of the City of London, in connection with the business in hand that day, is to me the most pleasant piece of reading--and I think must be to all of us among the most significant--that has lately met our eyes in a public print; and it means such new solemn league and covenant as Scott had been fain to see. My letter about the Italian streams may well follow what I have said of Scottish ones. The French Appeal to England. "We are happy to announce farther contributions to the fund which is being raised in response to the appeal of the Bishop of Versailles and the clergy of the Seine-et-Oise department; and also to state that, in addition to those influential persons whom we named yesterday as being ready to serve on a committee, two other gentlemen of high official and social position have consented to join the body. The list at present is as follows: The Lord Bishop of London; Dr. Manning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; the Rev. Dr. Brock, the Baptist minister; Mr. Alfred de Rothschild; and the Lord Mayor, who has courteously placed the Mansion House at the service of the committee. Besides these names, the members of the 'Paris Food Fund,' as will be seen from the subjoined letter, propose to join the more comprehensive organization." To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. "Sir,--Acting on your suggestion that the 'Paris Food Fund,' which I yesterday described to you, might be advantageously united with that which has been suggested by the Bishop of Versailles, I beg to say that Archbishop Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Ruskin will, with myself, have great pleasure in forming part of such a public committee as you have advised, and in placing the subscriptions already sent to us at its disposal. "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "James T. Knowles." "Jan. 11." Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871. Roman Inundations. To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. "Sir,--May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace rather than to smile with him? "In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself, he thought of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and scanty waters: Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus, Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium Regnavit populorum. "Now the anger and power of that tauriformis Aufidus is precisely because regna Dauni præfluit--because it flows past the poor kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their sources,--they are so much death, if they once break down unbridled into the plains. "At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said that the King of Italy expressed 'an earnest desire to do something, as far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate inundations for the future.' "Now, science and industry can do, not 'something,' but everything; and not merely to mitigate inundations--and, deadliest of inundations, because perpetual--maremmas; but to change them into national banks instead of debts. "The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the streams of it. "If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the people also form alternately torrent and maremma, in pestilential fury or pestilential idleness. They also will change into living streams of men, if their Kings literally 'lead them forth beside the waters of comfort.' Half the money lost by this inundation of Tiber, spent rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave of it into so much fruit and foliage in spring, where now they will be only burning rock. And the men who have been killed within the last two months, and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled Europe with misery which fifty years will not efface, had they been set at the same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroy it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every dangerous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of blessing for centuries to come--they and their families living all the while in brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the Red Prince look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time. "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "John Ruskin." "Jan. 10." Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXIV. "Love, it is a wrathful peace, A free acquittance, without release, And truth with falsehood all a-fret, And fear within secureness set; In heart it is despairing hope; And full of hope, it is vain hope. Wise madness and wild reasonne, And sweet danger, wherein to droune. A heavy burden, light to bear; A wicked way, away to wear. It is discordance that can accord, And accordance to discord; It is cunning without science, Wisdom without sapience, Wit without discretion, Having, without possession, And health full of malady, And charity full of envy, And restraint full of abundance, And a greedy suffisaunce. Delight right full of heaviness, And drearihood, full of gladness; Bitter sweetness, and sweet error, Right evil savoured good savour; Sin, that pardon hath within, And pardon, spotted outside with sin: A pain also it is joyous, And cruelty, right piteous; A strength weak to stand upright, And feebleness full of might; Wit unadvised, sage follie, And joy full of tormentry. A laughter it is, weeping aye; Rest, that travaileth night and day; Also a sweet Hell it is, And a sorrowful Paradise; [83] A pleasant gaol, and an easy prison, And full of froste, summer season; Prime-time, full of froste's white, And May devoid of all delight." "Mesment de ceste amour Li plus sages n'y sceunt tour Maiz ou entent je te diray Une aût (outre) amour te descriray De celle veuil je que pour t'ame Tu aimes la tres-doulce dame. Si com dist la ste escripture Amours est fors, amours est dure, Amours soustient, amours endure, Amours revient, et tousjours dure; Amours met en amer sa cure; Amours loyal, amours seure Sert, et de servise nacure. Amours fait de propre commun, Amours fait de deux cuers un; Amours enchace, ce me semble, Amours rent cuers, amours les emble, Amours despiece, amours refait, Amours fait paix, amours fait plait, Amours fait bel, amours fait lait, Toutes heures quant il lui plaist Amours attrait, amours estrange Amours fait de prive estrange; Amours seurprent, amours emprent, Amours reprent, amours esprent, Il n'est riens qu'amours ne face; Amours tolt cuer, amours tolt grace, Amours delie, amours enlace, Amours ocist, amours efface, Amours ne craint ne pic ne mace: Amours fist Dieu venir en place, Amours lui fist ûre (notre) char prendre, Amours le fist devenir mendre, Amours le fist en la croix pendre, Amours le fist illec extendre, Amours le fist le coste fendre, Amours le fist les maulx reprendre, Amours lui fist les bons aprendre, Amours le fist a nous venir, Amours nous fait a lui tenir." These descriptions of the two kinds of noble love are both given in the part of the Romance of the Rose which was written by Jean de Meung. [84] Chaucer translated the first, and I have partly again translated his translation into more familiar English. I leave the original French of the other for you to work at, if ever you care to learn French;--the first is all that I want you to read just now; but they should not be separated, being among the most interesting expressions extant of the sentiment of the dark ages, which Mr. Applegarth is desirous of eliminating from modern business. The two great loves,--that of husband and wife, representing generally the family affections, and that of mankind, to which, at need, the family affection must be sacrificed,--include, rightly understood, all the noble sentiments of humanity. Modern philosophy supposes these conditions of feeling to have been always absurd, and at present, happily, nearly extinct; and that the only proper, or, in future, possible, motives of human action are the three wholly unsentimental desires,--the lust of the flesh, (hunger, thirst, and sexual passion), the lust of the eyes, (covetousness), and the pride of life, (personal vanity). Thus, in a recent debate on the treatment of Canada, [85] Sir C. Adderley deprecates the continuance of a debate on a question "purely sentimental." I doubt if Sir C. Adderley knew in the least what was meant by a sentimental question. It is a purely "sentimental question," for instance, whether Sir C. Adderley shall, or shall not, eat his mother, instead of burying her. Similarly, it is a purely sentimental question, whether, in the siege of Samaria, the mother who boiled her son and ate him, or the mother who hid her son, was best fulfilling her duty to society. Similarly, the relations of a colony to its mother-country, in their truth and depth, are founded on purely parental and filial instincts, which may be either sentimental or bestial, but must be one or the other. Sir Charles probably did not know that the discussion of every such question must therefore be either sentimental or bestial. Into one or other, then, of these two forms of sentiment, conjugal and family love, or compassion, all human happiness, properly so called, resolves itself; but the spurious or counter-happiness of lust, covetousness, and vanity being easily obtained, and naturally grasped at, instead, may altogether occupy the lives of men, without ever allowing them to know what happiness means. But in the use I have just made of the word 'compassion', I mean something very different from what is usually understood by it. Compassion is the Latin form of the Greek word 'sympathy'--the English for both is 'fellow-feeling'; and the condition of delight in characters higher than our own is more truly to be understood by the word 'compassion' than the pain of pity for those inferior to our own; but in either case, the imaginative understanding of the natures of others, and the power of putting ourselves in their place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind. The main use of works of fiction, and of the drama, is to supply, as far as possible, the defect of this imagination in common minds. But there is a curious difference in the nature of these works themselves, dependent on the degree of imaginative power of the writers, which I must at once explain, else I can neither answer for you my own question put in last 'Fors,' why Scott could not write a play, nor show you, which is my present object, the real nature of sentiment. Do you know, in the first place, what a play is? or what a poem is? or what a novel is? That is to say, do you know the perpetual and necessary distinctions in literary aim which have brought these distinctive names into use? You had better first, for clearness' sake, call all the three 'poems,' for all the three are so, when they are good, whether written in verse or prose. All truly imaginative account of man is poetic; but there are three essential kinds of poetry,--one dramatic, one lyric, and one epic. Dramatic poetry is the expression by the poet of other people's feelings, his own not being told. Lyric poetry is the expression by the poet of his own feelings. Epic poetry is account given by the poet of other people's external circumstances, and of events happening to them, with only such expression either of their feelings, or his own, as he thinks may be conveniently added. The business of Dramatic poetry is therefore with the heart essentially; it despises external circumstance. Lyric poetry may speak of anything that excites emotion in the speaker; while Epic poetry insists on external circumstances, and no more exhibits the heart-feeling than as it may be gathered from these. For instance, the fight between the Prince of Wales and Hotspur, in Henry the Fourth, corresponds closely, in the character of the event itself, to the fight of Fitz-James with Roderick, in the Lady of the Lake. But Shakespeare's treatment of his subject is strictly dramatic; Scott's, strictly epic. Shakespeare gives you no account whatever of any blow or wound: his stage direction is, briefly, "Hotspur is wounded, and falls." Scott gives you accurate account of every external circumstance, and the finishing touch of botanical accuracy,-- "Down came the blow; but in the heath The erring blade found bloodless sheath,"-- makes his work perfect, as epic poetry. And Scott's work is always epic, and it is contrary to his very nature to treat any subject dramatically. That is the technical distinction, then, between the three modes of work. But the gradation of power in all three depends on the degree of imagination with which the writer can enter into the feelings of other people. Whether in expressing their's or his own, and whether in expressing their feelings only, or also the circumstances surrounding them, his power depends on his being able to feel as they do; in other words, on his being able to conceive character. And the literature which is not poetry at all, which is essentially unsentimental, or anti-poetic, is that which is produced by persons who have no imagination; and whose merit (for of course I am not speaking of bad literature) is in their wit or sense, instead of their imagination. The most prosaic, in this sense, piece I have ever myself examined, in the literature of any nation, is the Henriade of Voltaire. You may take that as a work of a man whose head was as destitute of imaginative power as it is possible for the healthy cerebral organization of a highly developed mammalian animal to be. The description of the storm which carries Henry to Jersey, and of the hermit in Jersey "que Dieu lui fit connaitre," and who, on that occasion, "au bord d'une onde pure, offre un festin champêtre," cannot be rivalled, for stupor in conceptive power, among printed books of reputation. On the other hand, Voltaire's wit, and reasoning faculties, are nearly as strong as his imagination is weak. His natural disposition is kind; his sympathy therefore is sincere with any sorrow that he can conceive; and his indignation great against injustices of which he cannot comprehend the pathetic motives. Now notice further this, which is very curious, and to me inexplicable, but not on that account less certain as a fact. The imaginative power always purifies; the want of it therefore as essentially defiles; and as the wit-power is apt to develope itself through absence of imagination, it seems as if wit itself had a defiling tendency. In Pindar, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Scott, the colossal powers of imagination result in absolute virginal purity of thought. The defect of imagination and the splendid rational power in Pope and Horace associate themselves--it is difficult to say in what decided measures--with foulness of thought. The Candide of Voltaire, in its gratuitous filth, its acute reasoning, and its entire vacuity of imagination, is a standard of what may perhaps be generally and fitly termed 'fimetic literature,' still capable, by its wit, and partial truth, of a certain service in its way. But lower forms of modern literature and art--Gustave Doré's paintings, for instance,--are the corruption, in national decrepitude, of this pessimist method of thought; and of these, the final condemnation is true--they are neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill. It is one of the most curious problems respecting mental government to determine how far this fimetic taint must necessarily affect intellects in which the reasoning and imaginative powers are equally balanced, and both of them at high level,--as in Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Molière, Cervantes, and Fielding; but it always indicates the side of character which is unsympathetic, and therefore unkind; (thus Shakespeare makes Iago the foulest in thought, as cruelest in design, of all his villains,) but which, in men of noble nature, is their safeguard against weak enthusiasms and ideals. It is impossible, however, that the highest conditions of tenderness in affectionate conception can be reached except by the absolutely virginal intellect. Shakespeare and Chaucer throw off, at noble work, the lower part of their natures as they would a rough dress; and you may also notice this, that the power of conceiving personal, as opposed to general, character, depends on this purity of heart and sentiment. The men who cannot quit themselves of the impure taint, never invent character, properly so called; they only invent symbols of common humanity. Even Fielding's Allworthy is not a character, but a type of a simple English gentleman; and Squire Western is not a character, but a type of the rude English squire. But Sir Roger de Coverley is a character, as well as a type; there is no one else like him; and the masters of Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, Monkbarns, and Osbaldistone Hall, are all, whether slightly or completely drawn, portraits, not mere symbols. The little piece which I shall to-day further translate for you from my Swiss novel is interesting chiefly in showing the power with which affectionate and sentimental imagination may attach itself even to inanimate objects, and give them personality. But the works of its writer generally show the most wholesome balance of the sentimental and rational faculty I have ever met with in literature;--the part of Gotthelf's nature which is in sympathy with Pope and Fielding enables him to touch, to just the necessary point, the lower grotesqueness of peasant nature, while his own conception of ideal virtue is as pure as Wordsworth's. But I have only room in this 'Fors' for a very little bit more of the broom-maker. I continue the last sentence of it from page 13 of Letter XXX.:-- "And then Hansli always knew that as soon as he got home there would be enough to eat;--his mother saw faithfully to that. She knew the difference it makes whether a man finds something ready to eat, when he comes in, or not. He who knows there will be something at home, does not stop in the taverns; he arrives with an empty stomach, and furnishes it, highly pleased with all about him; but if he usually finds nothing ready when at home, he stops on the road, comes in when he has had enough or too much; and grumbles right and left. "Hansli was not avaricious, but economical. For things really useful and fit, he did not look at the money. In all matters of food and clothes, he wished his mother to be thoroughly at ease. He made a good bed for himself; and when he had saved enough to buy a knife or a good tool, he was quite up in the air. He himself dressed well, not expensively, but solidly. Any one with a good eye knows quickly enough, at the sight of houses or of people, whether they are going up or down. As for Hansli, it was easy to see he was on his way up--not that he ever put on anything fine, but by his cleanliness and the careful look of his things: aussi, everybody liked to see him, and was very glad to know that he prospered thus, not by fraud, but by work. With all that, he never forgot his prayers. On Sunday he made no brooms: in the morning he went to the sermon, [86] and in the afternoon he read a chapter of the Bible to his mother, whose sight was now failing. After that he gave himself a personal treat. This treat consisted in bringing out all his money, counting it, looking at it, [87] and calculating how much it had increased, and how much it would yet increase, etc. etc. In that money there were some very pretty pieces,--above all, pretty white pieces" (silver among the copper). "Hansli was very strong in exchanges; he took small money willingly enough, but never kept it long; it seemed always to him that the wind got into it and carried it off too quickly. The new white pieces gave him an extreme pleasure,--above all, the fine dollars of Berne with the bear, and the superb Swiss of old time. When he had managed to catch one of these, it made him happy for many days. [88] "Nevertheless, he had also his bad days. It was always a bad day for him when he lost a customer, or had counted on placing a dozen of new brooms anywhere, and found himself briskly sent from the door with 'We've got all we want.' At first Hansli could not understand the cause of such rebuffs, not knowing that there are people who change their cook as often as their shirt--sometimes oftener,--and that he couldn't expect new cooks to know him at first sight. He asked himself then, with surprise, what he could have failed in,--whether his brooms had come undone, or whether anybody had spoken ill of him. He took that much to heart, and would plague himself all night to find out the real cause. But soon he took the thing more coolly; and even when a cook who knew him very well sent him about his business, he thought to himself, 'Bah! cooks are human creatures, like other people; and when master or mistress have been rough with them [89] because they've put too much pepper in the soup, or too much salt in the sauce, or when their schatz" (lover,--literally, treasure) "is gone off to Pepperland, [90] the poor girls have well the right to quarrel with somebody else.' Nevertheless, the course of time needs brought him some worse days still, which he never got himself to take coolly. He knew now, personally, very nearly all his trees; he had indeed given, for himself alone, names to his willows, and some other particular trees, as Lizzie, Little Mary-Anne, Rosie, and so on. These trees kept him in joy all the year round, and he divided very carefully the pleasure of gathering their twigs. He treated the most beautiful with great delicacy, and carried the brooms of them to his best customers. It is true to say also that these were always master-brooms. But when he arrived thus, all joyous, at his willows, and found his Lizzie or his Rosie all cut and torn from top to bottom, his heart was so strained that the tears ran down his cheeks, and his blood became so hot that one could have lighted matches at it. That made him unhappy for a length of time; he could not swallow it, and all he asked was that the thief might fall into his grip, not for the value of the twigs, but because his trees had been hurt. If Hansli was not tall, still he knew how to use his limbs and his strength, and he felt his heart full of courage. On that point he absolutely would not obey his mother, who begged him for the love of God not to meddle with people who might kill him, or do him some grievous harm. But Hansli took no heed of all that. He lay in wait and spied until he caught somebody. Then there were blows and formidable battles in the midst of the solitary trees. Sometimes Hansli got the better, sometimes he came home all in disorder. But at the worst, he gained at least this, that thenceforward one let his willows more and more alone, as happens always when a thing is defended with valour and perseverance. What is the use of putting oneself in the way of blows, when one can get things somewhere else without danger? Aussi, the Rychiswyl farmers were enchanted with their courageous little garde-champêtre, and if one or the other saw him with his hair pulled, they failed not to say, 'Never mind, Hansli; he will have had his dance all the same. Tell me the next time you see anything--I'll go with you, and we'll cure him of his taste for brooms.' Whereupon, Hansli would tell him when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peasant [91] kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack; the adversary, thinking himself strongest, waited for him; once the thief seized, the peasant showed himself, and all was said. Then the marauder would have got away if he could, but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fitting. "This was a very efficacious remedy against the switch-stealers, and Little Mary-Anne and Rosie remained in perfect security in the midst of the loneliest fields. Thus Hansli passed some years without perceiving it, and without imagining that things could ever change. A week passed, as the hand went round the clock, he didn't know how. Tuesday, market-day at Berne, was there before he could think about it; and Tuesday was no sooner past than Saturday was there; and he had to go to Thun, whether he would or no, for how could the Thun people get on without him? Between times he had enough to do to prepare his cartload, and to content his customers,--that is to say, those of them that pleased him. Our Hansli was a man; and every man, when his position permits it, has his caprices of liking and disliking. Whenever one had trod on his toes, one must have been very clever afterwards to get the least twig of a broom from him. The parson's wife, for instance, couldn't have got one if she would have paid for it twice over. It was no use sending to him; every time she did, he said he was very sorry, but he hadn't a broom left that would suit her. "That was because she had one day said to him that he was just like other people, and contented himself with putting a few long twigs all round, and then bad ones in the middle. "'Then you may as well get your brooms from somebody else,' said he; and held to it too;--so well that the lady died without ever having been able to get the shadow of a broom from him. "One Tuesday he was going to Berne with an enormous cartful of his prettiest brooms, all gathered from his favourite trees, that is to say, Rosie, Little Mary-Anne, and company. He was pulling with all his strength, and greatly astonished to find that his cart didn't go of itself, as it did at first; that it really pulled too hard, and that something must be wrong with it. At every moment he was obliged to stop to take breath and wipe his forehead. 'If only I was at the top of the hill of Stalden!' said he. He had stopped thus in the little wood of Muri, close to the bench that the women rest their baskets on. Upon the bench sat a young girl, holding a little bundle beside her, and weeping hot tears. Hansli, who had a kind heart, asked her what she was crying for. "The young girl recounted to him that she was obliged to go into the town, and that she was so frightened she scarcely dared; that her father was a shoemaker, and that all his best customers were in the town; that for a long time she had carried her bundle of shoes in, on market days, and that nothing had ever happened to her. But behold, there had arrived in the town a new gendarme, very cross, who had already tormented her every Tuesday she had come, for some time back; and threatened her, if she came again, to take her shoes from her, and put her in prison. She had begged her father not to send her any more, but her father was as severe as a Prussian soldier, and had ordered her to 'go in, always; and if anybody hurt her, it was with him they would have affairs;' but what would that help her?--she was just as much afraid of the gendarme as before. "Hansli felt himself touched with compassion; above all, on account of the confidence the young girl had had in telling him all this; that which certainly she would not have done to everybody. 'But she has seen at once that I am not a bad fellow, and that I have a kind heart,' thought he. "Poor Hansli!--but after all, it is faith which saves, people say." My readers may at first be little interested by this uneventful narrative; but they will find it eventually delightful, if they accustom themselves to classic and sincere literature; and as an account of Swiss life now fast passing away, it is invaluable. More than the life of Switzerland,--its very snows,--eternal, as one foolishly called them,--are passing away, as if in omen of evil. One-third, at least, in the depth of all the ice of the Alps, has been lost in the last twenty years; and the change of climate thus indicated is without any parallel in authentic history. In its bearings on the water supply and atmospheric conditions of central Europe, it is the most important phenomenon, by far, of all that offer themselves to the study of living men of science: yet in Professor Tyndall's recent work on the glaciers, [92] though he notices the change as one which, "if continued, will reduce the Swiss glaciers to the mere spectres of their former selves," he offers no evidence, nor even suggestion, as to the causes of the change itself. I have no space in this number of 'Fors' to say what reason there is for my taking notice of this book, or the glacier theory, in connection with the life of Scott. In the interests of general literature, it is otherwise fitting that the nature of the book itself should be pointed out. Its nature, that is to say, so far as it has any. It seems to be written for a singular order of young people, whom, if they were older, Professor Tyndall assures them, it would give him pleasure to take up Mont Blanc; but whom he can at present invite to walk with him along the moraine from the Jardin, where "perfect steadiness of foot is necessary,--a slip would be death;" and to whom, with Mr. Hirsch, he can "confide confidently" the use of his surveying chain. It is, at all events, written for entirely ignorant people--and entirely idle ones, who cannot be got to read without being coaxed and flattered into the unusual exertion. "Here, my friend," says the Professor, at the end of his benevolently alluring pages, "our labours close! It has been a true pleasure to me to have you at my side so long. You have been steadfast and industrious throughout.... Steadfast, prudent, without terror, though not at all times without awe, I have found you, on rock and ice. Give me your hand--Goodbye." Does the Professor count, then, upon no readers but those whom he can gratify with polite expressions of this kind? Upon none who perhaps unsteadfast, imprudent, and very much frightened upon rock and ice, have nevertheless done their own work there, and know good work of other people's, from bad, anywhere; and true praise from false anywhere; and can detect the dishonouring of nameable and noble persons, couched under sycophancy of the nameless? He has at least had one reader whom I can answer for, of this inconvenient sort. It is, I am sorry to say, just forty years (some day last month) since I first saw the Bernese Alps from above Schaffhausen. Since that evening I have never let slip a chance of knowing anything definite about glaciers and their ways; and have watched the progress of knowledge, and the oscillations of theory, on the subject, with an interest not less deep, and certainly more sincere, than it would have been if my own industry had been able to advance the one, or my own ingenuity to complicate the other. But only one great step in the knowledge of glaciers has been made in all that period; and it seems the principal object of Professor Tyndall's book to conceal its having been taken, that he and his friends may get the credit, some day, of having taken it themselves. I went to the University in 1836, and my best friend there, among the older masters, Dr. Buckland, kept me not ill-informed on my favourite subject, the geological, or crystallogical, question. Nearly everything of which Professor Tyndall informs his courageous readers was known then, just as well as it is now. We all,--that is to say, all geologists of any standing, and their pupils,--knew that glaciers moved; that they were supplied by snow at the top of the Alps, and consumed by heat at the bottom of them; that there were cracks all through them, and moraines all down them; that some of their ice was clear, and other ice opaque; that some of it was sound, and some rotten; and that streams fell into them at places called mills, and came out of them at places called grottoes. We were, I am sorry to say, somewhat languidly content with these articles of information; we never thought of wading "breast-deep through snow" in search of more, and still less of "striking our theodolites with the feelings of a general who had won a small battle." [93] Things went on thus quietly enough. We were all puzzled to account for glacier motion, but never thought of ascertaining what the motion really was. We knew that the ice slipped over the rocks at some places, tumbled over them at others; gaped, or as people who wanted to write sublimely always said, yawned, when it was steep, and shut up again when it was level. And Mr. Charpentiêr wrote a thick volume to show that it moved by expansion and contraction, which I read all through, and thought extremely plausible. But none of us ever had the slightest idea of the ice's being anything but an entirely solid substance, which was to be reasoned about as capable indeed of being broken, or crushed, or pushed, or pulled in any direction, and of sliding or falling as gravity and smooth surfaces might guide it, but was always entirely rigid and brittle in its substance like so much glass or stone. This was the state of affairs in 1841. Professor Agassiz, of Neuchâtel, had then been some eight or ten years at work on the glaciers: had built a cabin on one of them; walked a great many times over a great many of them; described a number of their phenomena quite correctly; proposed, and in some cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon them; and indeed done almost everything that was to be done for them--except find out the one thing that we wanted to know. As his malicious fortune would have it, he invited in that year (1841) a man of acute brains to see what he was about. The invitation was accepted. The visitor was a mathematician; and after examining the question, for discussion of which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the data except those which were essential, resolved to find out the essential ones himself. Which in the next year (1842) he quietly did; and in 1843 solved the problem of glacier motion for ever,--announcing, to everybody's astonishment, and to the extreme disgust and mortification of all glacier students,--including my poor self, (not the least envious, I fancy, though with as little right to be envious as anyone),--that glaciers were not solid bodies at all, but semi-liquid ones, and ran down in their beds like so much treacle. "Cela saute aux yeux," we all said, as soon as we were told; and I well remember the intense mortification of first looking down on the dirt bands of the Mer-de-Glace, from the foot of the Little Charmoz, after I had read Principal Forbes' book. That we never should have seen them before!--so palpable, so inevitable now, with every inch of the ice's motion kept record of, in them, for centuries, and every curve pencilled in dark, so that no river eddies, no festooned fall of sweeping cascade, could be more conclusive in proof of the flowing current. And of course it flowed; how else could it have moved but by a series of catastrophes? [94] Everything explained, now, by one shrewd and clear-sighted man's work for a couple of summer months; and what asses we had all been! But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel des Neuchâtelois! To have had the thing under his nose for ten years, and missed it! There is nothing in the annals of scientific mischance--(perhaps the truer word would be scientific dulness)--to match it; certainly it would be difficult for provocation to be more bitter,--at least, for a man who thinks, as most of our foolish modern scientific men do think, that there is no good in knowing anything for its own sake, but only in being the first to find it out. Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes in his method of proceeding, except on the terms of battle which men of science have laid down for themselves. Here is a man has been ten years at his diggings; has trenched here, and bored there, and been over all the ground again and again, except just where the nugget is. He asks one to dinner--and one has an eye for the run of a stream; one does a little bit of pickaxing in the afternoon on one's own account,--and walks off with his nugget. It is hard. Still, in strictness, it is perfectly fair. The new comer, spade on shoulder, does not understand, when he accepts the invitation to dinner, that he must not dig,--or must give all he gets to his host. The luck is his, and the old pitsman may very excusably growl and swear at him a little; but has no real right to quarrel with him,--still less to say that his nugget is copper, and try to make everybody else think so too. Alas, it was too clear that this Forbes' nugget was not copper. The importance of the discovery was shown in nothing so much as in the spite of Agassiz and his friends. The really valuable work of Agassiz on the glaciers was itself disgraced, and made a monument to the genius of Forbes, by the irrelevant spite with which every page was stained in which his name could be introduced. Mr. Desor found consolation in describing the cowardice of the Ecossais on the top of the Jungfrau; and all the ingenuity and plausibility of Professor Tyndall have been employed, since the death of Forbes, to diminish the lustre of his discovery, and divide the credit of it. To diminish the lustre, observe, is the fatallest wrong; by diminishing its distinctness. At the end of this last book of his, in the four hundred and tenth of the sapient sentences which he numbers with paternal care, he still denies, as far as he dares, the essential point of Forbes' discovery; denies it interrogatively, leaving the reader to consider the whole subject as yet open to discussion,--only to be conclusively determined by--Professor Tyndall and his friends. "Ice splits," he says, "if you strike a pointed pricker into it; fissures, narrow and profound, may be traced for hundreds of yards through the ice. Did the ice possess even a very small modicum of that power of stretching which is characteristic of a viscous substance, 'such crevasses could not be formed.'" Professor Tyndall presumably never having seen a crack in clay, nor in shoe-leather, nor in a dish of jelly set down with a jerk; nor, in the very wax he himself squeezed flat to show the nature of cleavage,--understood that the cleavage meant the multiplication of fissure! And the book pretends to be so explanatory, too, to his young friends!--explanatory of the use of the theodolite, of the nature of presence of mind, of the dependence of enjoyment of scenery upon honest labour, of the necessity that in science, "thought, as far as possible, should be wedded to fact," and of the propriety of their becoming older and better informed before they unqualifiedly accept his opinion of the labours of Rendu! But the one thing which, after following him through the edification of his four hundred and ten sentences, they had a right to have explained to them--the one thing that will puzzle them if ever they see a glacier, "how the centre flows past the sides, and the top flows over the bottom," the Professor does not explain; but only assures them of the attention which the experiments of Mr. Mathews, Mr. Froude, and above all Signor Bianconi, on that subject, "will doubtless receive at a future time." The readers of 'Fors' may imagine they have nothing to do with personal questions of this kind. But they have no conception of the degree in which general science is corrupted and retarded by these jealousies of the schools; nor how important it is to the cause of all true education, that the criminal indulgence of them should be chastised. Criminal is a strong word, but an entirely just one. I am not likely to overrate the abilities of Professor Tyndall; but he had at least intelligence enough to know that his dispute of the statements of Forbes by quibbling on the word "viscous" was as uncandid as it was unscholarly; and it retarded the advance of glacier science for at least ten years. It was unscholarly, because no other single word existed in the English language which Forbes could have used instead; and uncandid, because Professor Tyndall knew perfectly well that Forbes was aware of the difference between ice and glue, without any need for experiments on them at the Royal Institution. Forbes said that the mass of glacier ice was viscous, though an inch of ice was not, just as it may be said, with absolute truth, that a cartload of fresh-caught herring is liquid, though a single herring is not. And the absurdity as well as the iniquity of the Professor's wilful avoidance of this gist of the whole debate is consummated in this last book, in which, though its title is "The Forms of Water," he actually never traces the transformation of snow into glacier ice at all--(blundering by the way, in consequence, as to the use of one of the commonest words in Savoyard French, névé). For there are three great "forms of water" by which the Alps are sheeted,--one is snow; another is glacier ice; the third is névé, which is the transitional substance between one and the other. And there is not a syllable, from the beginning of the book to the end, on the subject of this change, the nature of which is quite the first point to be determined in the analysis of glacier motion. I have carried my letter to an unusual length, and must end for the time; and next month have to deal with some other matters; but as the Third Fors has dragged me into this business, I will round it off as best I may; and in the next letter which I can devote to the subject, I hope to give some available notes on the present state of glacier knowledge, and of the points which men who really love the Alps may now usefully work upon. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I cut out of the 'Morning Post' of September 15th, 1873, the following piece of fashionable intelligence, as a sufficiently interesting example of the "Sorrowful Paradise" which marriage, and the domestic arrangements connected with it, occasionally construct in the districts of England where Mr. Applegarth's great principle, "No sentiment ought to be brought into the subject," would be most consistently approved in all the affairs of life. The inconvenience to his master of the inopportune expression of sentiment on the part of the dog, is a striking corroboration of Mr. Applegarth's views:--"Charles Dawson, an ironworker, who had left his wife and cohabited with a young woman named Margaret Addison, attacked her in the house with a coal rake on the head and body. He then, when his victim screamed, pressed her neck down on the floor with one of his heavy boots, while with the other he kicked her. He jumped upon her, and finally seized a large earthern pan and dashed it upon her head, killing her on the spot. The whole of the attack was witnessed by a man who was deterred from interfering by a loaded revolver which Dawson held. Dawson decamped, and strong bodies of police guarded the different roads from the town, and searched several of his haunts. At three o'clock yesterday morning a dog recognised to be Dawson's was followed, and Sergeant Cuthbert broke open the door where the animal was scratching to obtain admission, and captured Dawson, who was sitting on a chair. Although he was armed with a loaded revolver, he offered no resistance." I ought to have noted in last 'Fors,' respecting the difficulty of spelling, some forms of bad spelling which result from the mere quantity of modern literature, and the familiarity of phrases which are now caught by the eye and ear, without being attentively looked at for an instant, so that spelling and pronunciation go to ruin together. On the other hand, I print the following portions of a very graceful letter I received early this year, which indicates the diffusion of really sound education. I wish its writer would tell me her employment. "London, S.E. "March 9th, 1873. "And you will not again call yourself our friend, because you are disheartened by our regardlessness of your friendship, and still more, it may be, by the discouraging voice of some on whom you might perhaps more reasonably have counted. "You say we have never written you a word of encouragement. But don't you think the fault-finders would be sure to speak first, and loudest? I even, in my loneliness, am able to lend my copies to four, who all look forward to their turn with pleasure. (They get their pleasure for nothing, and I was not quite sure you would approve! until I found you would be willing to lend your Talmud!) "On one point I grumble and find fault. "Most of those works which you say you want us to read, I have read; but if I had had to pay the price at which you propose to publish them, they would have cost me £3 and I could not have afforded it; because, much as I delighted in them, I longed for certain other books as well. Many an intelligent working man with a family is poorer than I am. "I quite thoroughly and heartily sympathise with your contempt for advertising (as it is abused at present, anyway). But I think all good books should be cheap. I would make bad ones as dear as you like. "Was it not Socrates alone of the great Greeks who would put no price on his wisdom?--and Christ 'taught daily in their streets.' I do assure you there are plenty of us teachable enough, if only any one capable of teaching could get near enough, who will never, in this world, be able to afford 'a doctor's fee.' "I wonder--if it be wrong to take interest--of what use my very small savings could be to me in old age? Would it be worth while for working women to save at all? (Signed) "A Working Woman." No, certainly not wrong. The wrong is in the poor wages of good work, which make it impossible to buy books at a proper price, or to save what would be enough for old age. Books should not be cheaper, but work should be dearer. A young lady writing to me the other day to ask what I really wanted girls to do, I answered as follows, requesting her to copy the answer, that it might serve once for all. I print it accordingly, as perhaps a more simple statement than the one given in 'Sesame and Lilies.' Women's work is,-- I. To please people. II. To feed them in dainty ways. III. To clothe them. IV. To keep them orderly. V. To teach them. I. To please.--A woman must be a pleasant creature. Be sure that people like the room better with you in it than out of it; and take all pains to get the power of sympathy, and the habit of it. II. Can you cook plain meats and dishes economically and savourily? If not, make it your first business to learn, as you find opportunity. When you can, advise, and personally help, any poor woman within your reach who will be glad of help in that matter; always avoiding impertinence or discourtesy of interference. Acquaint yourself with the poor, not as their patroness, but their friend: if then you can modestly recommend a little more water in the pot, or half an hour's more boiling, or a dainty bone they did not know of, you will have been useful indeed. III. To clothe.--Set aside a quite fixed portion of your time for making strong and pretty articles of dress of the best procurable materials. You may use a sewing machine; but what work is to be done (in order that it may be entirely sound) with finger and thimble, is to be your especial business. First-rate material, however costly, sound work, and such prettiness as ingenious choice of colour and adaptation of simple form will admit, are to be your aims. Head-dress may be fantastic, if it be stout, clean, and consistently worn, as a Norman paysanne's cap. And you will be more useful in getting up, ironing, etc., a pretty cap for a poor girl who has not taste or time to do it for herself, than in making flannel petticoats or knitting stockings. But do both, and give--(don't be afraid of giving;--Dorcas wasn't raised from the dead that modern clergymen might call her a fool)--the things you make to those who verily need them. What sort of persons these are, you have to find out. It is a most important part of your work. IV. To keep them orderly,--primarily clean, tidy, regular in habits.--Begin by keeping things in order; soon you will be able to keep people, also. Early rising--on all grounds, is for yourself indispensable. You must be at work by latest at six in summer and seven in winter. (Of course that puts an end to evening parties, and so it is a blessed condition in two directions at once.) Every day do a little bit of housemaid's work in your own house, thoroughly, so as to be a pattern of perfection in that kind. Your actual housemaid will then follow your lead, if there's an atom of woman's spirit in her--(if not, ask your mother to get another). Take a step or two of stair, and a corner of the dining-room, and keep them polished like bits of a Dutch picture. If you have a garden, spend all spare minutes in it in actual gardening. If not, get leave to take care of part of some friend's, a poor person's, but always out of doors. Have nothing to do with greenhouses, still less with hothouses. When there are no flowers to be looked after, there are dead leaves to be gathered, snow to be swept, or matting to be nailed, and the like. V. Teach--yourself first--to read with attention, and to remember with affection, what deserves both, and nothing else. Never read borrowed books. To be without books of your own is the abyss of penury. Don't endure it. And when you've to buy them, you'll think whether they're worth reading; which you had better, on all accounts. (Glacier catastrophe, page 22.) With the peculiar scientific sagacity on which Professor Tyndall piques himself, he has entirely omitted to inquire what would be the result on a really brittle body,--say a sheet of glass, four miles long by two hundred feet thick, (A to B, in this figure, greatly exaggerates the proportion in depth,) of being pushed down over a bed of rocks of any given probable outline--say C to D. Does he suppose it would adhere to them like a tapering leech, in the line given between C and D? The third sketch shows the actual condition of a portion of a glacier flowing from E to F over such a group of rocks as the lower bed of the Glacier des Bois once presented. Professor Tyndall has not even thought of explaining what course the lines of lower motion, or subsidence, (in ice of the various depths roughly suggested by the dots) would follow on any hypothesis; for, admitting even Professor Ramsay's theory, that the glacier cut its own bed--(though it would be just as rational to think that its own dish was made for itself by a custard pudding)--still the rocks must have had some irregularity in shape to begin with, and are not cut, even now, as smooth as a silver spoon. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXV. Brantwood, 18th September, 1873. Looking up from my paper, as I consider what I am to say in this letter, and in what order to say it, I see out of my window, on the other side of the lake, the ivied chimneys (thick and strong-built, like castle towers, and not at all disposed to drop themselves over people below,) of the farmhouse where, I told you the other day, I saw its mistress preparing the feast of berry-bread for her sheep-shearers. In that farmhouse, about two hundred and fifty years ago, warmed himself at the hearth, ten feet across, of its hall, the English squire who wrote the version of the Psalms from which I chose for you the fourteenth and fifteenth, last November. Of the said squire I wish you, this November, to know somewhat more; here, to begin, is his general character, given by a biographer who may be trusted:-- "He was a true model of worth; a man fit for conquest, plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest among men; withal such a lover of mankind and goodness, that whosoever had any real parts in him found comfort, participation, and protection to the uttermost of his power. The universities abroad and at home accounted him a general Mæcenas of learning, dedicated their books to him, and communicated every invention or improvement of knowledge with him. Soldiers honoured him, and were so honoured by him, as no man thought he marched under the true banner of Mars, that had not obtained his approbation. Men of affairs in most parts of Christendom entertained correspondency with him. But what speak I of these? His heart and capacity were so large, that there was not a cunning painter, a skilful engineer, an excellent musician, or any other artificer of extraordinary fame, that made not himself known to this famous spirit, and found him his true friend without hire, and the common rendezvous of worth, in his time." This being (and as I can assure you, by true report,) his character, and manner of life, you are to observe these things, farther, about his birth, fate, and death. When he was born, his mother was in mourning for her father, brother, and sister-in-law, who all had died on the scaffold. Yet, very strangely, you will find that he takes no measures, in his political life, for the abolition of capital punishment. Perhaps I had better at once explain to you the meaning of his inactivity in that cause, although for my own part I like best to put questions only, and leave you to work them out for yourselves as you are able. But you could not easily answer this one without help. This psalm-singing squire has nothing to urge against capital punishment, because his grandfather, uncle, and aunt-in-law all died innocent. It is only rogues who have a violent objection to being hanged, and only abettors of rogues who would desire anything else for them. Honest men don't in the least mind being hanged occasionally by mistake, so only that the general principle of the gallows be justly maintained; and they have the pleasure of knowing that the world they leave is positively minded to cleanse itself of the human vermin with which they have been classed by mistake. The contrary movement--so vigorously progressive in modern days--has its real root in a gradually increasing conviction on the part of the English nation that they are all vermin. ('Worms' is the orthodox Evangelical expression.) Which indeed is becoming a fact, very fast indeed;--but was by no means so in the time of this psalm-singing squire. In his days, there was still a quite sharp separation between honest men and rogues; and the honest men were perfectly clear about the duty of trying to find out which was which. The confusion of the two characters is a result of the peculiar forms of vice and ignorance, reacting on each other, which belong to the modern Evangelical sect, as distinguished from other bodies of Christian men; and date therefore, necessarily, from the Reformation. They consist especially in three things. First, in declaring a bad translation of a group of books of various qualities, accidentally associated, to be the 'Word of God.' Secondly, reading, of this singular 'Word of God,' only the bits they like; and never taking any pains to understand even those. [95] Thirdly, resolutely refusing to practise even the very small bits they do understand, if such practice happen to go against their own worldly--especially money--interests. Of which three errors, the climax is in their always delightedly reading--without in the slightest degree understanding--the fourteenth Psalm; and never reading, nor apparently thinking it was ever intended they should read, the next one to it--the fifteenth. For which reason I gave you those two together, from the squire's version, last November,--and, this November and December, will try to make you understand both. For among those books accidentally brought together, and recklessly called the 'Word of God,' the book of Psalms is a very precious one. It is certainly not the 'Word of God'; but it is the collected words of very wise and good men, who knew a great many important things which you don't know, and had better make haste to know,--and were ignorant of some quite unimportant things, which Professor Huxley knows, and thinks himself wiser on that account than any quantity of Psalmists, or Canticle-singers either. The distinction between the two, indeed, is artificial, and worse than that, non-natural. For it is just as proper and natural, sometimes, to write a psalm, or solemn song, to your mistress, and a canticle, or joyful song, to God, as to write grave songs only to God, and canticles to your mistress. And there is, observe, no proper distinction in the words at all. When Jean de Meung continues the love-poem of William de Loris, he says sorrowfully:-- "Cys trespassa Guilleaume De Loris, et ne fit plus pseaume." "Here died William Of Loris, and made psalm no more." And the best word for "Canticles" in the Bible is "Asma," or Song, which is just as grave a word as Psalmos, or Psalm. And as it happens, this psalm-singing, or, at least, exquisitely psalm-translating, squire, mine ancient neighbour, is just as good a canticle-singer. I know no such lovely love poems as his, since Dante's. Here is a specimen for you, which I choose because of its connection with the modern subject of railroads; only note, first, The word Squire, I told you, meant primarily a "rider." And it does not at all mean, and never can mean, a person carried in an iron box by a kettle on wheels. Accordingly, this squire, riding to visit his mistress along an old English road, addresses the following sonnet to the ground of it,--gravel or turf, I know not which:-- "Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be; And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet, More oft than to a chamber melody; Now, blessed you, bear onward blessed me, To her, where I my heart, safe left, shall meet; My Muse and I must you of duty greet With thanks and wishes; wishing thankfully-- Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed; By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot; Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed; And that you know, I envy you no lot Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,-- Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.'" Hundreds of years! You think that a mistake? No, it is the very rapture of love. A lover like this does not believe his mistress can grow old, or die. How do you think the other verses read, apropos of railway signals and railway scrip? "Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed, [96] Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed." But to keep our eyes and ears with our squire. Presently he comes in sight of his mistress's house, and then sings this sonnet:-- "I see the house; my heart, thyself contain! Beware full sails drown not thy tott'ring barge; Lest joy, by nature apt spirits to enlarge, Thee, to thy wreck, beyond thy limits strain. Nor do like lords, whose weak, confused brain, Not pointing to fit folks each undercharge, While ev'ry office themselves will discharge, With doing all, leave nothing done but pain. But give apt servants their due place; let eyes See beauty's total sum, summ'd in her face; Let ears hear speech, which wit to wonder ties; Let breath suck up those sweets; let arms embrace The globe of weal; lips, Love's indentures make; Thou, but of all the kingly tribute take!" And here is one more, written after a quarrel, which is the prettiest of all as a song; and interesting for you to compare with the Baron of Bradwardine's song at Lucky M'Leary's:-- "All my sense thy sweetness gained Thy fair hair my heart enchained; My poor reason thy words moved, So that thee, like heav'n, I loved. Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan; Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei; While to my mind the outside stood, For messenger of inward good. Now thy sweetness sour is deemed; Thy hair not worth a hair esteemed, Reason hath thy words removed, Finding that but words they proved. Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan; Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei; For no fair sign can credit win, If that the substance fail within. No more in thy sweetness glory, For thy knitting hair be sorry; Use thy words but to bewail thee, That no more thy beams avail thee; Dan, dan, Dan, dan, Lay not thy colours more to view Without the picture be found true. Woe to me, alas! she weepeth! Fool! in me what folly creepeth? Was I to blaspheme enraged Where my soul I have engaged? And wretched I must yield to this? The fault I blame, her chasteness is. Sweetness! sweetly pardon folly; Tie me, hair, your captive wholly; Words! O words of heav'nly knowledge! Know, my words their faults acknowledge; And all my life I will confess, The less I love, I live the less." Now if you don't like these love-songs, you either have never been in love, or you don't know good writing from bad, (and likely enough both the negatives, I'm sorry to say, in modern England). But perhaps if you are a very severe Evangelical person, you may like them still less, when you know something more about them. Excellent love-songs seem always to be written under strange conditions. The writer of that "Song of Songs" was himself, as you perhaps remember, the child of her for whose sake the Psalmist murdered his Hittite friend; and besides, loved many strange women himself, after that first bride. And these, sixty or more, exquisite love-ditties, from which I choose, almost at random, the above three, are all written by my psalm-singing squire to somebody else's wife, he having besides a very nice wife of his own. For this squire is the, so called, 'Divine' Astrophel, 'Astrophilos,' or star lover,--the un-to-be-imitated Astrophel, the 'ravishing sweetness of whose poesy,' Sir Piercie Shafton, with his widowed voice,--"widowed in that it is no longer matched by my beloved viol-de-gambo,"--bestows on the unwilling ears of the Maid of Avenel. [97] And the Stella, or star, whom he loved was the Lady Penelope Devereux, who was his first love, and to whom he was betrothed, and remained faithful in heart all his life, though she was married to Robert, Lord Rich, and he to the daughter of his old friend, Sir Francis Walsingham. How very wrong, you think? Well, perhaps so;--we will talk of the wrongs and the rights of it presently. One of quite the most curious facts bearing upon them is that the very strict queen (the mother of Coeur-de-Lion) who poisoned the Rose of Woodstock and the world for her improper conduct, had herself presided at the great court of judgment held by the highest married ladies of Christian Europe, which re-examined, and finally re-affirmed, the decree of the Court of Love, held under the presidency of Ermengarde, Countess of Narbonne;--decree, namely, that "True love cannot exist between married persons." [98] Meantime let me finish what I have mainly to tell you of the divine Astrophel. You hear by the general character first given of him that he was as good a soldier as a lover, and being about to take part in a skirmish in the Netherlands,--in which, according to English history, five hundred, or a few more, English, entirely routed three thousand Dutchmen,--as he was going into action, meeting the marshal of the camp lightly armed, he must needs throw off his own cuishes, or thigh armour, not to have an unfair advantage of him; and after having so led three charges, and had one horse killed under him and mounted another, "he was struck by a musket shot a little above his left knee, which brake and rifted the bone, and entered the thigh upward; whereupon he unwillingly left the field," (not without an act of gentleness, afterwards much remembered, to a poor soldier, wounded also;) and, after lingering sixteen days in severe and unceasing pain, "which he endured with all the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, symptoms of mortification, the certain forerunner of death, at length appeared; which he himself being the first to perceive, was able nevertheless to amuse his sick-bed by composing an ode on the nature of his wound, which he caused to be sung to solemn music, as an entertainment that might soothe and divert his mind from his torments; and on the 16th October breathed his last breath in the arms of his faithful secretary and bosom companion, Mr. William Temple, after giving this charge to his own brother: "Love my memory; cherish my friends. Their faith to me may assure you they are honest. But above all govern your will and affections by the will and word of your Creator, [99] in me beholding the end of this world, with all its vanities." Thus died, for England, and a point of personal honour, in the thirty-second year of his age, Sir Philip Sidney, whose name perhaps you have heard before, as well as that of his aunt-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, for whose capital punishment, as well as that of the Duke of Northumberland, (his grandfather,) his mother, as above stated, was in mourning when he was born. And Spenser broke off his Faëry Queen, for grief, when he died; and all England went into mourning for him; which meant, at that time, that England was really sorry, and not that an order had been received from Court. 16th October. (St. Michael's.)--I haven't got my goose-pie made, after all; for my cook has been ill, and, unluckily, I've had other things as much requiring the patronage of St. Michael, to think of. You suppose, perhaps, (the English generally seem to have done so since the blessed Reformation,) that it is impious and Popish to think of St. Michael with reference to any more serious affair than the roasting of goose, or baking thereof; and yet I have had some amazed queries from my correspondents, touching the importance I seem to attach to my pie; and from others, questioning the economy of its construction. I don't suppose a more savoury, preservable, or nourishing dish could be made, with Michael's help, to drive the devil of hunger out of poor men's stomachs, on the occasions when Christians make a feast, and call to it the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. But, putting the point of economy aside for the moment, I must now take leave to reply to my said correspondents, that the importance and reality of goose-pie, in the English imagination, as compared with the unimportance and unreality of the archangel Michael, his name, and his hierarchy, are quite as serious subjects of regret to me as to them; and that I believe them to be mainly traceable to the loss of the ideas, both of any 'arche,' beginning, or princedom of things, and of any holy or hieratic end of things; so that, except in eggs of vermin, embryos of apes, and other idols of genesis enthroned in Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Huxley's shrines, or in such extinction as may be proper for lice, or double-ends as may be discoverable in amphisbaenas, there is henceforward, for man, neither alpha nor omega,--neither, beginning nor end, neither nativity nor judgment; no Christmas Day, except for pudding; no Michaelmas, except for goose; no Dies Iræ, or day of final capital punishment, for anything; and that, therefore, in the classical words of Ocellus Lucanus, quoted by Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson, "Anarchon kai atelutaion to pan." There remains, however, among us, very strangely, some instinct of general difference between the abstractedly angelic, hieratic, or at least lord- and lady-like character;--and the diabolic, non-hieratic, or slave- and (reverse-of-lady-) like character. Instinct, which induces the 'London Journal,' and other such popular works of fiction, always to make their heroine, whether saint or poisoner, a 'Lady' something; and which probably affects your minds not a little in connection with the question of capital punishment; so that when I told you just now who Sir Philip's aunt was, perhaps you felt as if I had cheated you by the words of my first reference to her, and would say to yourselves, "Well, but Lady Jane Grey wasn't hanged!" No; she was not hanged; nor crucified, which was the most vulgar of capital punishments in Christ's time; nor kicked to death, which you at present consider the proper form of capital punishment for your wives; nor abused to death, which the mob will consider the proper form of capital punishment for your daughters, [100] when Mr. John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty shall have become the Gospel of England, and his statue be duly adored. She was only decapitated, in the picturesque manner represented to you by Mr. Paul de la Roche in that charming work of modern French art which properly companions the series of Mr. Gerome's deaths of duellists and gladiators, and Mr. Gustave Doré's pictures of lovers, halved, or quartered, with their hearts jumping into their mistresses' laps. Of all which pictures, the medical officer of the Bengalee-Life-insurance Society would justly declare that "even in an anatomical point of view, they were--per-fection." She was only decapitated, by a man in a black mask, on a butcher's block; and her head rolled into sawdust,--if that's any satisfaction to you. But why on earth do you care more about her than anybody else, in these days of liberty and equality? I shall have something soon to tell you of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, no less than Sir Thomas More's Utopia. The following letter, though only a girl's, contains so much respecting the Arcadia of Modern England which I cannot elsewhere find expressed in so true and direct a way, that I print it without asking her permission, promising however, hereby, not to do so naughty a thing again,--to her, at least; new correspondents must risk it. "I wish people would be good, and do as you wish, and help you. Reading 'Fors' last night made me determined to try very hard to be good. I cannot do all the things you said in the last letter you wanted us to do, but I will try. "Oh dear! I wish you would emigrate, though I know you won't. I wish we could all go somewhere fresh, and begin anew: it would be so much easier. In fact it seems impossible to alter things here. You cannot think how it is, in a place like this. The idea of there being any higher law to rule all one's actions than self-interest, is treated as utter folly; really, people do not hesitate to say that in business each one must do the best he can for himself, at any risk or loss to others. You do know all this, perhaps, by hearsay, but it is so sad to see in practice. They all grow alike--by constant contact I suppose; and one has to hear one after the other gradually learning and repeating the lesson they learn in town--to trust no one, believe in no one, admire no one; to act as if all the world was made of rogues and thieves, as the only way to be safe, and not to be a rogue or thief oneself if it's possible to make money without. And what can one do? They laugh at me. Being a woman, of course I know nothing; being, moreover, fond of reading, I imagine I do know something, and so get filled with foolish notions, which it is their duty to disabuse me of as soon as possible. I should so like to drag them all away from this wretched town, to some empty, new, beautiful, large country, and set them all to dig, and plant, and build; and we could, I am sure, all be pure and honest once more. No, there is no chance here. I am so sick of it all. "I want to tell you one little fact that I heard the other day that made me furious. It will make a long letter, but please read it. You have heard of ----,--the vilest spot in all the earth, I am sure, and yet they are very proud of it. It is all chemical works, and the country for miles round looks as if under a curse. There are still some farms struggling for existence, but the damage done to them is very great, and to defend themselves, when called upon to make reparation, the chemical manufacturers have formed an association, so that if one should be brought to pay, the others should support him. Of course, generally it is almost impossible to say which of the hundreds of chimneys may have caused any particular piece of mischief; and further frightened by this coalition, and by the expense of law, [101] the farmers have to submit. But one day, just before harvest-time this year, a farmer was in his fields, and saw a great stream, or whatever you would call it, of smoke come over his land from one of these chimneys, and, as it passed, destroy a large field of corn. It literally burns up vegetation, as if it were a fire. The loss to this man, who is not well off, is about £400. He went to the owners of the works and asked for compensation. They did not deny that it might have been their gas, but told him he could not prove it, and they would pay nothing. I dare say they were no worse than other people, and that they would be quite commended by business men. But that is our honesty, and this is a country where there is supposed to be justice. These chemical people are very rich, and could consume all this gas and smoke at a little more cost of working. I do believe it is hopeless to attempt to alter these things, they are so strong. Then the other evening I took up a 'Telegraph'--a newspaper is hardly fit to touch nowadays--but I happened to look at this one, and read an account of some cellar homes in St. Giles'. It sent me to bed miserable, and I am sure that no one has a right to be anything but miserable while such misery is in the world. What cruel wretches we must all be, to suffer tamely such things to be, and sit by, enjoying ourselves! I must do something; yet I am tied hand and foot, and can do nothing but cry out. And meanwhile--oh! it makes me mad--our clergymen, who are supposed to do right, and teach others right, are squabbling over their follies; here they are threatening each other with prosecutions, for exceeding the rubric, or not keeping the rubric, and mercy and truth are forgotten. I wish I might preach once, to them and to the rich;--no one ought to be rich; and if I were a clergyman I would not go to one of their dinner-parties, unless I knew that they were moving heaven and earth to do away with this poverty, which, whatever its cause, even though it be, as they say, the people's own fault, is a disgrace to every one of us. And so it seems to me hopeless, and I wish you would emigrate. "It is no use to be more polite, if we are less honest. No use to treat women with more respect outwardly, and with more shameless, brutal, systematic degradation secretly. Worse than no use to build hospitals, and kill people to put into them; and churches, and insult God by pretending to worship Him. Oh dear! what is it all coming to? Are we going like Rome, like France, like Greece, or is there time to stop? Can St. George fight such a Dragon? You know I am a coward, and it does frighten me. Of course I don't mean to run away, but is God on our side? Why does He not arise and scatter His enemies? If you could see what I see here! This used to be quite a peaceful little country village; now the chemical manufacturers have built works, a crowd of them, along the river, about two miles from here. The place where this hideous colony has planted itself, is, I am sure, the ugliest, most loathsome spot on the earth." (Arcadia, my dear, Arcadia.) "It has been built just as any one wanted either works or a row of cottages for the men,--all huddled up, backs to fronts, any way; scrambling, crooked, dirty, squeezed up; the horrid little streets separated by pieces of waste clay, or half-built-up land. The works themselves, with their chimneys and buildings, and discoloured ditches, and heaps of refuse chemical stuff lying about, make up the most horrible picture of 'progress' you can imagine. Because they are all so proud of it. The land, now every blade of grass and every tree is dead, is most valuable--I mean, they get enormous sums of money for it,--and every year they build new works, and say, 'What a wonderful place ---- is!' It is creeping nearer and nearer here. There is a forest of chimneys visible, to make up, I suppose, for the trees that are dying. We can hardly ever now see the farther bank of our river, that used to be so pretty, for the thick smoke that hangs over it. And worse than all, the very air is poisoned with their gases. Often the vilest smells fill the house, but they say they are not unhealthy. I wish they were--perhaps then they would try to prevent them. It nearly maddens me to see the trees, the poor trees, standing bare and naked, or slowly dying, the top branches dead, the few leaves withered and limp. The other evening I went to a farm that used to be (how sad that 'used to be' sounds) so pretty, surrounded by woods. Now half the trees are dead, and they are cutting down the rest as fast as possible, so that they can at least make use of the wood. The gas makes them useless. Yesterday I went to the house of the manager of some plate-glass works. He took me over them, and it was very interesting, and some of it beautiful. You should see the liquid fire streaming on to the iron sheets, and then the sparkling lakes of gold, so intensely bright, like bits out of a setting sun sometimes. When I was going away, the manager pointed proudly to the mass of buildings we had been through, and said, 'This was all corn-fields a few years ago!' It sounded so cruel, and I could not help saying, 'Don't you think it was better growing corn than making glass?' He laughed, and seemed so amused; but I came away wondering, if this goes on, what will become of England. The tide is so strong--they will try to make money, at any price. And it is no use trying to remedy one evil, or another, unless the root is rooted out, is it?--the love of money." It is of use to remedy any evil you can reach: and all this will very soon now end in forms of mercantile catastrophe, and political revolution, which will end the "amusement" of managers, and leave the ground (too fatally) free, without "emigration." Oxford, 24th October. The Third Fors has just put into my hands, as I arrange my books here, a paper read before a Philosophical Society in the year 1870, (in mercy to the author, I forbear to give his name; and in respect to the Philosophical Society, I forbear to give its name,) which alleges as a discovery, by 'interesting experiment,' that a horizontal plank of ice laid between two points of support, bends between them; and seriously discusses the share which the 'motive power of heat' has in that amazing result. I am glad, indeed, to see that the author "cannot, without some qualifications agree" in the lucid opinion of Canon Moseley, that since, in the Canon's experiments, ice was crushed under a pressure of 308 lb. on the square inch, a glacier over 710 feet thick would crush itself to pieces at the bottom. (The Canon may still further assist modern science by determining what weight is necessary to crush an inch cube of water; and favouring us with his resulting opinion upon the probable depth of the sea.) But I refer to this essay only to quote the following passages in it, to prove, for future reference, the degree of ignorance to which the ingenuity of Professor Tyndall had reduced the general scientific public, in the year 1870:-- "The generally accepted theory proved by the Rev. Canon Moseley to be incorrect.--Since the time that Professor Tyndall had shown that all the phenomena formerly attributed by Professor Forbes to plasticity could be explained upon the principle of regelation, discovered by Faraday, the viscous theory of glacier-motion has been pretty generally given up. The ice of a glacier is now almost universally believed to be, not a soft plastic substance, but a substance hard, brittle, and unyielding. The power that the glacier has of accommodating itself to the inequalities of its bed without losing its apparent continuity is referred to the property of regelation possessed by ice. All this is now plain." "The present state of the question.--The condition which the perplexing question of the cause of the descent of glaciers has now reached seems to be something like the following. The ice of a glacier is not in a soft and plastic state, but is solid, hard, brittle, and unyielding." I hope to give a supplementary number of Fors, this winter, on glacier questions; and will only, therefore, beg my readers at present to observe that the opponents of Forbes are simply, in the position of persons who deny the flexibility of chain-mail because 'steel is not flexible;' and, resolving that steel is not flexible, account for the bending of an old carving-knife by the theory of 'contraction and expansion.' Observe, also, that 'regelation' is only scientific language for 'freezing again;' and it is supposed to be more explanatory, as being Latin. Similarly, if you ask any of these scientific gentlemen the reason of the forms of hoar-frost on your window-pane, they will tell you they may be all explained by the "theory of congelation." Finally; here is the first part of the question, in brief terms for you to think over. A cubic foot of snow falls on the top of the Alps. It takes, more or less, forty years (if it doesn't melt) to get to the bottom of them. During that period it has been warmed by forty summers, frozen by forty winters; sunned and shaded,--sopped and dried,--dropped and picked up again,--wasted and supplied,--cracked and mended,--squeezed together and pulled asunder, by every possible variety of temperature and force that wind, weather, and colossal forces of fall and weight, can bring to bear upon it. How much of it will get to the bottom? With what additions or substitutions of matter, and in what consistence? NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I find an excellent illustration of the state of modern roads, 'not blamed for blood,' in the following "Month's List of Killed and Wounded," from the 'Pall Mall Gazette':-- "We have before us a task at once monotonous, painful, and revolting. It is to record, for the benefit of the public, the monthly list of slaughter by rail, for the last four weeks unprecedented in degree and variety. In August there were three 'accidents,' so called, for every five days. In the thirty days of September there have been in all thirty-six. We need not explain the dreary monotony of this work. Every newspaper reader understands that for himself. It is also painful, because we are all more or less concerned, either as travellers, shareholders, or workers on railways; and it is grievous to behold enormous sums of money thrown away at random in compensation for loss of life and limb, in making good the damage done to plant and stock, in costly law litigation, and all for the sake of what is called economy. It is, moreover, a just source of indignation to the tax-payer to reflect that he is compelled to contribute to maintain a costly staff of Government inspectors (let alone the salaries of the Board of Trade), and that for any practical result of the investigations and reports of these gentlemen, their scientific knowledge and 'urgent recommendations,' they might as well be men living in the moon. It is revolting because it discloses a miserable greed, and an entire callousness of conscience on the part of railway directors, railway companies, and the railway interest alike, and in the Government and Legislature a most unworthy and unwise cowardice. It is true that the situation may be accounted for by the circumstance that there are between one and two hundred railway directors in the House of Commons who uniformly band together, but that explanation does not improve the fact. Sept. 2.--North-Eastern Railway, near Hartlepool. Passenger train got off the line; three men killed, several injured. Cause, a defective wheel packed with sheet iron. The driver had been recently fined for driving too slowly. Sept. 5.--Great Western. A goods train ran into a number of beasts, and then came into collision with another goods train. Sept. 6.--Line from Helensburgh to Glasgow. A third-class carriage got on fire. No communication between passengers and guard. The former got through the windows as best they could, and were found lying about the line, six of them badly injured. Sept. 8.--A train appeared quite unexpectedly on the line between. Tamworth and Rugby. One woman run over and killed. Sept. 9.--Cannon Street. Two carriages jumped off the line; traffic much delayed. Sept. 9.--Near Guildford. A bullock leaped over a low gate on to the line; seven carriages were turned over the embankment and shivered to splinters; three passengers were killed on the spot, suffocated or jammed to death; about fifteen were injured. Sept. 10.--London and North-Western, at Watford. Passenger train left the rails where the points are placed, and one carriage was overturned; several persons injured, and many severely shaken. Sept. 10.--Great Northern, at Ardsley. Some empty carriages were put unsecured on an incline, and ran into the Scotch express; three carriages smashed, several passengers injured, and driver, stoker, and guard badly shaken. Sept. 11.--Great Eastern, near Sawbridgeworth. A goods train, to which was attached a waggon inscribed as defective and marked for repair, was proceeding on the up line; the waggon broke down, and caught a heavy passenger train on the down line: one side of this train was battered to pieces; many passengers severely shaken and cut with broken glass. Sept. 12.--East Lancashire, near Bury. A collision between two goods trains. Both lines blocked and waggons smashed. One driver was very badly hurt. Sept. 13.--London, Chatham, and Dover, near Birchington station. Passenger train drove over a number of oxen; engine was thrown off the line; driver terribly bruised; passengers severely shaken. Cause, the animals got loose while being driven over a level crossing, and no danger signals were hoisted. Sept. 15.--Caledonian line, near Glasgow. Passenger train ran into a mineral train which had been left planted on the line; one woman not expected to survive, thirteen passengers severely injured. Cause, gross negligence. Same day, and same line.--Caledonian goods train was run into broadside by a North British train; great damage done; the guard was seriously injured. Cause, defective signalling. Sept. 16.--Near Birmingham. A passenger train, while passing over some points, got partly off the line; no one severely hurt, but all shaken and frightened. Cause, defective working of points. Sept. 17.--Between Preston and Liverpool, near Houghton. The express train from Blackburn ran into a luggage train which was in course of being shunted, it being perfectly well known that the express was overdue. About twenty passengers were hurt, or severely shaken and alarmed, but no one was actually killed. Cause, gross negligence, want of punctuality, and too much traffic. Same day.--Great Eastern. Points not being closed, a cattle train left the metal and ploughed up the line, causing much damage and delay in traffic. Cause, negligence. Same day.--Oxford and Bletchley Railway. Axle-wheel of waggon broke, and with seven trucks left the line. A general smash ensued; broken carriages were strewed all over the line, and a telegraph post was knocked down: blockage for four hours. Cause, defective axle. Same day.--A goods train from Bolton to Manchester started so laden as to project over the other line for the down traffic. Encountering the express from Manchester near Stone Clough, every passenger carriage was in succession struck and injured. Cause, gross negligence of porters, station-master, and guard of goods train. "Here, it will be observed, we have already got eighteen catastrophes within seventeen days. On September 18 and 19 there was a lull, followed by an appalling outbreak. Sept. 20.--At the Bristol terminus, where the points of the Midland and Great Western meet, a mail train of the former ran full into a passenger train belonging to the latter. As they were not at full speed, no one was killed, but much damage was done. Cause, want of punctuality and gross negligence. Under a system where the trains of two large companies have a junction in common and habitually cross each other many times a day, the block system seems impossible in practice. Same day.--Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln line. A passenger train was unhooked from the engine at Peninstone, and ran down the incline at a fearful rate. A signalman, seeing something wrong, and naturally confused, turned it on to the Sheffield line. At Wortley it encountered a goods train laden with pig-iron. Smash in every direction, carriages and trucks mounting one on the top of the other. Fortunately there were only three passengers; but all were seriously injured. Cause, gross negligence. Sept. 22.--Midland Railway, near Kettering. A train ran off the line; metals torn up; traffic delayed for two hours. Same day.--Passenger train from Chester was descending the tunnel under Birkenhead; the engine ran off the line and dashed against the tunnel wall. Passengers much shaken, but not seriously maimed. Traffic stopped for several hours. Sept. 23.--A lull. Sept. 24.--North British Railway, at Reston Junction. The early express train which leaves Berwick for Edinburgh at 4.30 a.m. was going at full speed, all signals being at safety, but struck a waggon which was left standing a little on the main line over a siding; engine damaged, and the panels and foot-boards of ten carriages knocked to bits; no loss of life. Cause, gross negligence. Sept. 25.--A Midland excursion train from Leicester got off the line near New Street station; the van was thrown across both lines of rails; great damage and delay. Cause, over-used metal. Same day.--London and North-Western, between Greenfield and Moseley. A bundle of cotton which had fallen from a train pulled one waggon off the line; twenty other waggons followed it, and the line was ploughed up for two hundred yards; great damage, delay, and many waggons smashed: no loss of life. Cause, negligence. Same day.--Great Eastern, St. Ives. Through carelessness a pointsman ran a Midland passenger train into a siding on to some trucks; passengers badly shaken, and a good many had their teeth knocked out. The account stated naïvely, "No passengers were seriously hurt, but they were nevertheless very much alarmed, and fled the carriages in the greatest state of excitement." Cause, gross negligence. Same day.--South Yorkshire, near Conisbro'. A mineral train (signals being all right) dashed full into a heavy coal train. Much damage, but no loss of life. Cause, gross negligence and over-traffic. Sept. 26.--This was a very fatal day. At Sykes Junction, near Retford, the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln joins the Great Northern. A coal train of the latter while passing the junction was run into at full speed by a cattle train of the former. The engine and fifteen carriages were thrown down the bank and smashed, and valuable cattle killed. Meanwhile a goods train drew up, the signal being for once at danger, and was immediately run into by a mineral train from behind, which had not been warned. Drivers, guards, firemen injured. A fog was on at the time, but no fog signals appear to have been used. Cause, negligence and over-traffic. Same day.--North-Eastern passenger train from Stockton to Harrowgate ran into a heavy goods train near Arthington. The crash was fearful. About twenty passengers were injured; half that number very seriously. The signals contradicted each other. Cause, gross negligence. Same day.--North-Eastern, Newcastle and Carlisle division. There was a collision between a mineral and a cattle train on a bridge of the river Eden more than 100 feet high. Part of the bridge was hurled down below; several waggons followed it, while others remained suspended. Cattle were killed; three men badly injured. Cause, gross negligence. Same day.--Near Carnarvon. A passenger train ran over a porter's lorry which had been left on the line; no one was injured, but damage ensued; passengers had fortunately alighted. Cause, negligence. Same day.--Great Eastern. A train of empty carriages was turned on to a siding at Fakenham, and came into collision with laden trucks, which in their turn were driven into a platform wall; much damage done, but no personal injury. Cause, gross negligence. Sept. 27.--The Holyhead mail due at Crewe at 5.30 was half an hour late; left standing on a curve, it was run into by a goods train; a number of carriages were smashed, and though no one was killed, nearly fifty persons were injured. The signals were against the goods train, but the morning being hazy the driver did not see them. Cause, negligence, unpunctuality, and want of fog signals. Sept. 28.--South Devon Line, near Plymouth. A luggage train was set on fire, and a van laden with valuable furniture completely consumed. Sept. 30.--The London and Glasgow express came up at full speed near Motherwell Junction, and dashed into a van which was being shunted on the main line; the engine was thrown down an embankment of thirty feet, and but for the accident of the coupling-iron breaking the whole train would have followed it. The fireman was crushed to death, the driver badly injured, and many passengers severely shaken. Cause, criminal recklessness in shunting van when an express is due. Sept. 30.--Great Western. Collision at Uffington between a fish and luggage train; no loss of life, but engine shattered, traffic delayed, and damage done. Cause, negligence. "Besides the above, two express trains had a very narrow escape from serious collision on September 13 and September 26, the one being near Beverley station, and the other on the Great Western, between Oxford and Didcot. Both were within an ace of running into luggage vans which had got off the lines. It will be observed that in this dismal list there is hardly one which can properly be called an accident, i.e., non-essential to the existing condition of things, not to be foreseen or prevented, occurring by chance, which means being caused by our ignorance of laws which we have no means of ascertaining. The reverse is the true state of the case: the real accidents would have been if the catastrophes in question had not occurred." A correspondent, who very properly asks, "Should we not straightway send more missionaries to the Kaffirs?" sends me the following extracts from the papers of this month. I have no time to comment on them. The only conclusion which Mr. Dickens would have drawn from them, would have been that nobody should have been hanged at Kirkdale; the conclusion the public will draw from them will doubtless be, as suggested by my correspondent, the propriety of sending more missionaries to the Kaffirs, with plenty of steam-engines. JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. Yesterday, a lad named Joseph Frieman, eleven years of age, was charged before the Liverpool magistrates with cutting and wounding his brother, a child six years old. It appeared that on Saturday, during the absence of their mother, the prisoner threw the little fellow down and wounded him with a knife in a frightful manner, and on the return of the mother she found the lad lying in great agony and bleeding profusely. In reply to her questions the prisoner said that his brother "had broken a plate, and the knife slipped." The woman stated that the prisoner was an incorrigible boy at home, and stole everything he could lay his hands on. A few weeks ago, about the time of the recent execution at Kirkdale, he suspended his little sister with a rope from the ceiling in one of the bedrooms, nearly causing death. The prisoner was remanded for a week, as the injured boy lies in a very dangerous state. SHOCKING PARRICIDE IN HALIFAX. A man, named Andrew Costello, 86, died in Halifax yesterday, from injuries committed on him by his daughter, a mill hand. She struck him on Monday with a rolling-pin, and on the following day tore his tongue out at the root at one side. He died in the workhouse, of lockjaw. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXVI. Three years have passed since I began these letters. Of the first, and another, I forget which, a few more than a thousand have been sold; and as the result of my begging for money, I have got upwards of two hundred pounds. The number of the simple persons who have thus trusted me is stated at the end of this letter. Had I been a swindler, the British public would delightedly have given me two hundred thousand pounds instead of two hundred, of which I might have returned them, by this time, say, the quarter, in dividends; spent a hundred and fifty thousand pleasantly, myself, at the rate of fifty thousand a year; and announced, in this month's report, with regret, the failure of my project, owing to the unprecedented state of commercial affairs induced by strikes, unions, and other illegitimate combinations among the workmen. And the most curious part of the business is that I fancy I should have been a much more happy and agreeable member of society, spending my fifty thousand a year thus, in the way of business, than I have been in giving away my own seven thousand, and painfully adding to it this collection of two hundred, for a piece of work which is to give me a great deal of trouble, and be profitable only to other people. Happy, or sulky, however, I have got this thing to do; and am only amused, instead of discouraged, by the beautiful reluctance of the present English public to trust an honest person, without being flattered, or promote a useful work, without being bribed. It may be true that I have not brought my plan rightly before the public yet. "A bad thing will pay, if you put it properly before the public," wrote a first-rate man of business the other day, to one of my friends. But what the final results of putting bad things properly before the public will be to the exhibitor of them, and the public also, no man of business that I am acquainted with is yet aware. I mean, therefore, to persist in my own method; and to allow the public to take their time. One of their most curiously mistaken notions is that they can hurry the pace of Time itself, or avert its power. As to these letters of mine, for instance, which all my friends beg me not to write, because no workman will understand them now;--what would have been the use of writing letters only for the men who have been produced by the instructions of Mr. John Stuart Mill? I write to the labourers of England; but not of England in 1870-73. A day will come when we shall have men resolute to do good work, and capable of reading and thinking while they rest; who will not expect to build like Athenians without knowing anything about the first king of Athens, not like Christians without knowing anything about Christ: and then they will find my letters useful, and read them. And to the few readers whom these letters now find, they will become more useful as they go on, for they are a mosaic-work into which I can put a piece here and there as I find glass of the colour I want; what is as yet done being set, indeed, in patches, but not without design. One chasm I must try to fill to-day, by telling you why it is so grave a heresy (or wilful source of division) to call any book, or collection of books, the 'Word of God.' By that Word, or Voice, or Breath, or Spirit, the heavens and earth, and all the host of them, were made; and in it they exist. It is your life; and speaks to you always, so long as you live nobly;--dies out of you as you refuse to obey it; leaves you to hear, and be slain by, the word of an evil spirit, instead of it. It may come to you in books,--come to you in clouds,--come to you in the voices of men,--come to you in the stillness of deserts. You must be strong in evil, if you have quenched it wholly;--very desolate in this Christian land, if you have never heard it at all. Too certainly, in this Christian land you do hear, and loudly, the contrary of it,--the doctrine or word of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy; forbidding to marry, recommending women to find some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby; and commanding to abstain from meats, (and drinks,) which God has appointed to be received with thanksgiving. For "everything which God has made is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be sanctified by the Word of God." And by what else? If you have been accustomed to hear the clergyman's letter from which I have just been quoting, as if it were itself the word of God,--you have been accustomed also to hear our bad translation of it go on saying, "If it be sanctified by the Word of God, and prayer." But there is nothing whatever about prayer in the clergyman's letter,--nor does he say, If it be sanctified. He says, "For it is sanctified by the Word of God, and the chance that brings it." [102] Which means, that when meat comes in your way when you are hungry, or drink when you are thirsty, and you know in your own conscience that it is good for you to have it, the meat and drink are holy to you. But if the Word of God in your heart is against it, and you know that you would be better without the extra glass of beer you propose to take, and that your wife would be the better for the price of it, then it is unholy to you: and you can only have the sense of entire comfort and satisfaction, either in having it, or going without it, if you are simply obeying the Word of God about it in your mind, and accepting contentedly the chances for or against it; as probably you have heard of Sir Philip Sidney's accepting the chance of another soldier's needing his cup of water more than he, on his last battle-field, and instantly obeying the Word of God coming to him on that occasion. Not that it is intended that the supply of these good creatures of God should be left wholly to chance; but that if we observe the proper laws of God concerning them, and, for instance, instead of forbidding marriage, duly and deeply reverence it, then, in proper time and place, there will be true Fors, or chancing on, or finding of, the youth and maid by each other, such in character as the Providence of Heaven appoints for each: and, similarly, if we duly recognize the laws of God about meats and drinks, there will for every labourer and traveller be such chancing upon meat and drink and other entertainment as shall be sacredly pleasant to him. And there cannot indeed be at present imagined a more sacred function for young Christian men than that of hosts or hospitallers, supplying, to due needs, and with proper maintenance of their own lives, wholesome food and drink to all men: so that as, at least, always at one end of a village there may be a holy church and vicar, so at the other end of the village there may be a holy tavern and tapster, ministering the good creatures of God, so that they may be sanctified by the Word of God and His Providence. And as the providence of marriage, and the giving to each man the help meet for his life, is now among us destroyed by the wantonness of harlotry, so the providence of the Father who would fill men's hearts with food and gladness is destroyed among us by prostitution of joyless drink; and the never to be enough damned guilt of men, and governments, gathering pence at the corners of the streets, standing there, pot in hand, crying, 'Turn in hither; come, eat of my evil bread, and drink of my beer, which I have venomously mingled.' Against which temptations--though never against the tempters--one sometimes hears one's foolish clergy timorously inveighing; and telling young idlers that it is wrong to be lustful, and old labourers that it is wrong to be thirsty: but I never heard a clergyman yet, (and during thirty years of the prime of my life I heard one sermon at least every Sunday, so that it is after experience of no fewer than one thousand five hundred sermons, most of them by scholars, and many of them by earnest men,) that I now solemnly state I never heard one preacher deal faithfully with the quarrel between God and Mammon, or explain the need of choice between the service of those two masters. And all vices are indeed summed, and all their forces consummated, in that simple acceptance of the authority of gold instead of the authority of God; and preference of gain, or the increase of gold, to godliness, or the peace of God. I take then, as I promised, the fourteenth and fifteenth Psalms for examination with respect to this point. The second verse of the fourteenth declares that of the children of men, there are none that seek God. The fifth verse of the same Psalm declares that God is in the generation of the righteous. In them, observe; not needing to be sought by them. From which statements, evangelical persons conclude that there are no righteous persons at all. Again, the fourth verse of the Psalm declares that all the workers of iniquity eat up God's people as they eat bread. Which appears to me a very serious state of things, and to be put an end to, if possible; but evangelical persons conclude thereupon that the workers of iniquity and the Lord's people are one and the same. Nor have I ever heard in the course of my life any single evangelical clergyman so much as put the practical inquiry, Who is eating, and who is being eaten? Again, the first verse of the Psalm declares that the fool hath said in his heart there is no God; but the sixth verse declares of the poor that he not only knows there is a God, but finds Him to be a refuge. Whereupon evangelical persons conclude that the fool and the poor mean the same people; and make all the haste they can to be rich. Putting them, and their interpretations, out of our way, the Psalm becomes entirely explicit. There have been in all ages children of God and of man: the one born of the Spirit, and obeying it; the other born of the flesh, and obeying it. I don't know how that entirely unintelligible sentence, "There were they in great fear," got into our English Psalm; in both the Greek and Latin versions it is, "God hath broken the bones of those that please men." And it is here said of the entire body of the children of men, at a particular time, that they had at that time all gone astray beyond hope; that none were left who so much as sought God, much less who were likely to find Him; and that these wretches and vagabonds were eating up God's own people as they ate bread. Which has indeed been generally so in all ages; but beyond all recorded history is so in ours. Just and godly people can't live; and every clever rogue and industrious fool is making his fortune out of them, and producing abominable works of all sorts besides,--material gasometers, furnaces, chemical works, and the like,--with spiritual lies and lasciviousness unheard of till now in Christendom. Which plain and disagreeable meaning of this portion of Scripture you will find pious people universally reject with abhorrence,--the direct word and open face of their Master being, in the present day, always by them, far more than His other enemies, "spitefully entreated, and spitted on." Next for the fifteenth Psalm. It begins by asking God who shall abide in His tabernacle, or movable tavern; and who shall dwell in His holy hill. Note the difference of those two abidings. A tavern, or taberna, is originally a hut made by a traveller, or sticks cut on the spot; then, if he so arrange it as to be portable, it is a tabernacle; so that, generally a portable hut or house, supported by rods or sticks when it is set up, is a tabernacle;--on a large scale, having boards as well as curtains, and capable of much stateliness, but nearly synonymous with a tent, in Latin. Therefore, the first question is, Who among travelling men will have God to set up his tavern for him when he wants rest? And the second question is, Who, of travelling men, shall finally dwell, desiring to wander no more, in God's own house, established above the hills, where all nations flow to it? You, perhaps, don't believe that either of these abodes may, or do, exist in reality: nor that God would ever cut down branches for you; or, better still, bid them spring up for a bower; or that He would like to see you in His own house, if you would go there. You prefer the buildings lately put up in rows for you "one brick thick in the walls," [103] in convenient neighbourhood to your pleasant business? Be it so;--then the fifteenth Psalm has nothing to say to you. For those who care to lodge with God, these following are the conditions of character. They are to walk or deal uprightly with men. They are to work or do justice; or, in sum, do the best they can with their hands. They are to speak the truth to their own hearts, and see they do not persuade themselves they are honest when they ought to know themselves to be knaves; nor persuade themselves they are charitable and kind, when they ought to know themselves to be thieves and murderers. They are not to bite people with their tongues behind their backs, if they dare not rebuke them face to face. They are not to take up, or catch at, subjects of blame; but they are utterly and absolutely to despise vile persons who fear no God, and think the world was begot by mud, and is fed by money; and they are not to defend a guilty man's cause against an innocent one. Above all, this last verse is written for lawyers, or professed interpreters of justice, who are of all men most villainous, if, knowingly, they take reward against an innocent or rightfully contending person. And on these conditions the promise of God's presence and strength is finally given. He that doeth thus shall not be moved, or shaken: for him, tabernacle and rock are alike safe: no wind shall overthrow them, nor earthquake rend. That is the meaning of the fourteenth and fifteenth Psalms; and if you so believe them, and obey them, you will find your account in it. And they are the Word of God to you, so far as you have hearts capable of understanding them, or any other such message brought by His servants. But if your heart is dishonest and rebellious, you may read them for ever with lip-service, and all the while be 'men-pleasers,' whose bones are to be broken at the pit's mouth, and so left incapable of breath, brought by any winds of Heaven. And that is all I have to say to you this year. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. As I send these last sheets to press, I get from the Cheap-Fuel Supply Association, Limited, a letter advising me that the Right Hon. Lord Claud Hamilton, M.P., and the late Director of Stores at the War Office, and Michael Angelo, Esq., of St. James's Square, and the late Controller of Military Finance in Calcutta, with other estimable persons, are about to undertake the manufacture of peat into cheap fuel, for the public benefit; and promise a net profit on the operation, of six shillings and sixpence a ton; of which I am invited to secure my share. The manufacture of peat into portable fuel may, or may not, be desirable; that depends on what the British public means to do after they have burnt away all their bituminous and boggy ground in driving about at forty miles an hour, and making iron railings, and other such valuable property, for the possession of their posterity. But granting the manufacture desirable, and omitting all reference to its effect on the picturesque, why Lord Claud Hamilton and Michael Angelo, Esq., should offer me, a quiet Oxford student, any share of their six-and-sixpences, I can't think. I could not cut a peat if they would give me six-and-sixpence the dozen--I know nothing about its manufacture. What on earth do they propose to pay me for? The following letter from an old friend, whose manner of life, like my own, has been broken up, (when it was too late to mend it again,) by modern improvements, will be useful to me for reference in what I have to say in my January letter:-- "About myself--ere long I shall be driven out of my house, the happiest refuge I ever nested in. It is again, like most old rooms, very lofty, is of wood and plaster, evidently of the Seventh Harry's time, and most interesting in many ways. It belonged to the Radcliffe family,--some branch, as I understand, from the scanty information I can scrape, of the Derwentwater family. Lord ---- owns it now, or did till lately; for I am informed he has sold it and the lands about it to an oil-cloth company, who will start building their factory behind it shortly, and probably resell the land they do not use, with the hall, to be demolished as an incumbrance that does not pay. Already the 'Egyptian plague of bricks' has alighted on its eastern side, devouring every green blade. Where the sheep fed last year, five streets of cheap cottages--one brick thick in the walls--(for the factory operatives belonging to two great cotton mills near) are in course of formation--great cartloads of stinking oyster-shells having been laid for their foundations; and the whole vicinity on the eastern side, in a state of mire and débris of broken bricks and slates, is so painful to my eyes that I scarce ever go out in daylight. "Fifteen years ago a noble avenue of sycamores led to the hall, and a large wood covered the surface of an extensive plateau of red sandstone, and a moat surrounded the walls of the hall. Not a tree stands now, the moat is filled up, and the very rock itself is riddled into sand, and is being now carted away." ADVICE. I have now published my Fors Clavigera during three years, at a price which (some of my first estimates having been accidentally too low) neither pays me, for my work, nor my assistant for his trouble. To my present subscribers, nevertheless, it will be continued at its first price. To new subscribers or casual purchasers, the price of each number, after the 31st December, 1873, will be tenpence, carriage paid as hitherto; and there will be no frontispieces. Total Subscriptions to St. George's Fund TO THE END OF THE YEAR 1873. (The Subscribers each know his or her number in this List.) 1. Annual, £4 0 0 (1871, '72) £8 0 0 2. Annual, £20 0 0 (1871, '72, '73) 60 0 0 3. Gift 5 0 0 4. Gifts, (1871) £30 0 0 (1873) 20 0 0 -------- 50 0 0 5. Gift, (1872) 20 0 0 6. Annual, £1 1 0 (1872, '73) 2 2 0 7. Gift, (1872) 10 0 0 8. Annual, £20 0 0 (1872) 20 0 0 9. Annual, £25 0 0 (1872) 25 0 0 10. Annual, £5 0 0 (1872, '73) 10 0 0 11. Annual, £1 1 0 (1873) 1 1 0 12. Gift, (1873) 4 0 0 13. Annual, (1873) 3 0 0 14. Gift, (1873) 13 10 0 15. Gift, (1873) 5 0 0 --------- £236 13 0 NOTES [1] Guillim, Ed. 1638. [2] The reason of this honour to Sir Walter was that he had been the first English knight who rode into France after the king had quartered the Fleur-de-Lys. [3] I omit much, without putting stars, in these bits of translation. By the way, in last 'Fors,' p. 21, note, for "insert," read "omit." [4] Not unfairly; only having to fight for their Calais instead of getting in for a bribe. [5] Besogne. "The thing that has to be done"--word used still in household service, but impossible to translate; we have no such concentrated one in English. [6] The passage is entirely spoiled in Johnes' translation by the use of the word 'gallant' instead of 'gentle' for the French 'gentil.' The boy was not yet nineteen, (born at Woodstock, June 15, 1330,) and his father thirty-six: fancy how pretty to see the one waiting on the other, with the French knights at his side. [7] Sacred fillet, or "diadema," the noblest, as the most ancient, crown. [8] The best is on George III.'s pound, 1820, the most finished in work on George IV.'s crown-piece, 1821. [9] More properly 'named from the husbandman.' Thus Lycus is 'a wolf,' Lycius, 'named from the wolf,' or 'wolfish.' So, Georgus is 'a husbandman,' Georgius, 'named from the husbandman,' or 'husbandmannish.' [10] See the complete series of subjects as given by M. Didron in his 'Iconographie Chrétienne' (8vo. Paris, 1845, p. 369), and note the most interesting trace of the idea of Triptolemus, in the attendant child with the water-pitcher behind the equestrian figure of the Saint. [11] You will find that in my 19th letter, p. 11, I propose that our St. George's Company in England shall be under the patronage also of St. Anthony in Italy. And in general, we will hold ourselves bound to reverence, in one mind, with Carpaccio and the good Painters and Merchants of Venice, the eight great Saints of the Greek Church,--namely (in the order M. Didron gives them)--the Archangel Michael, the Precursor (John Baptist), St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Nicholas, St. George, Ste. Catherine of Sinai, and St. Anthony, these being patrons of our chief occupations, (while, over our banking operations we will have for patron or principal manager, the more modern Western Saint, Francis of Assisi;) meaning always no disrespect to St. Jerome or Ste. Cecilia, in case we need help in our literature or music. [12] "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." Our mona,--as in the 2nd verse (John xiv.) [13] Humboldt, Personal Narrative, London, 1827, vol. v., p. 640 et seq. I quote, as always, accurately, but missing the bits I don't want. [14] The saying is only quoted in 'Munera Pulveris' to be denied, the reader must observe. [15] See terminal notes. [16] Compare XXIII. 12. [17] See Miss Edgeworth's Story, 'Forgive and Forget,' in the 'Parents' Assistant.' [18] 21st March: one just received, interesting, and to be answered next month. [19] I observed nothing of the kind. It was the previous speaker (unknown to me, but, according to the 'Pall Mall' Mr. Dering) who not merely 'observed' but positively affirmed, as the only groundwork of sound political economy, that the nature of man was that of a beast of prey, to all his fellows. [20] My dear friend, I can't bear to interrupt your pretty letter; but, indeed, one should not worship God on one day more, or less, than on another; and one should rest when one needs rest, whether on Sunday or Saturday. [21] My correspondent will perhaps be surprised to hear that I have never in my life voted for any candidate for Parliament, and that I never mean to. [22] Far wiser than letting him gather them as valueless. [23] Not translateable. In French, it has the form of a passionate oath, but the spirit of a gentle one. [24] Head of house doing all he can do well, himself. If he had not had time to make the brooms well, he would have bought them. [25] Do not calculate so closely how much you can afford to give for the price. [26] Not meaning "you can cheat them afterwards," but that the customer would not leave him for another broom-maker. [27] Sold. [28] "Aussi" also how happy she felt. Aussi is untranslateable in this pretty use; so hereafter I shall put it, as an English word, in its place. [29] "Nigaud," good for nothing but trifles; worthless, but without sense of vice; (vaut-rien, means viciously worthless). The real sense of this word here would be "Handless fool," but said good-humouredly. [30] Se mit à regarder. I shall always translate such passages with the literal idiom--put himself. [31] A single batz, about three halfpence in bad silver, flat struck: I shall use the word without translating henceforward. [32] Pushed it. No horse wanted. [33] Coup de main, a nice French idiom meaning the stroke of hand as opposed by that of a senseless instrument. The phrase "Taking a place by a coup de main" regards essentially not so much the mere difference between sudden and long assault, as between assault with flesh or cannon. [34] Assez clair semées. [35] He is now a capitalist, in the entirely wholesome and proper sense of the word. See answer of 'Pall Mall Gazette,' driven to have recourse to the simple truth, to my third question in last 'Fors.' [36] See above, the first speech of the farmer to Hansli, "Many's the year now," etc. It would be a shame for a well-to-do farmer to have to buy brooms; it is only the wretched townspeople whom Hansli counts on for custom. [37] Copeaux, I don't understand this. [38] The mistress of a farm; paysan, the master. I shall use paysanne, after this, without translation, and peasant, for paysan; rarely wanting the word in our general sense. [39] "Du battu," I don't know if it means the butter, or the buttermilk. [40] "Le bout du monde," meaning, he never thought of going any farther. [41] Compare, if you can get at the book in any library, my article on 'Home and its Economies' in the 'Contemporary Review' for May. [42] Colonel Talbot, in 'Waverley;' I need not, surely, name the other:--note only that, in speaking of heroism, I never admit into the field of comparison the merely stage-ideals of impossible virtue and fortune--(Ivanhoe, Sir Kenneth, and the like)--but only persons whom Scott meant to be real. Observe also that with Scott, as with Titian, you must often expect the most tender pieces of completion in subordinate characters. [43] I beg my readers to observe that I never flinch from stating a fact that tells against me. This George's Square is in that New Town of Edinburgh which I said, in the first of these letters, I should like to destroy to the ground. [44] Lockhart's Life, 8vo. Edinburgh: Cadell, 1837. Vol. i. p. 65. In my following foot-notes I shall only give volume and page--the book being understood. [45] i. 67. What sort of tender mercies were to be expected? [46] His name unknown, according to Leyden, is perhaps discoverable; but what songs? Though composed by an Englishman, have they the special character of Scottish music? [47] Dinlay;--where? [48] Pensil, a flag hanging down--'pensile.' Pennon, a stiff flag sustained by a cross arm, like the broad part of a weathercock. Properly, it is the stiff-set feather of an arrow. "Ny autres riens qui d'or ne fust Fors que les pennons, et le fust." 'Romance of the Rose,' of Love's arrows: Chaucer translates, "For all was gold, men might see, Out-take the feathers and the tree." [49] People would not have me speak any more harm of Mr. Mill, because he's dead, I suppose? Dead or alive, all's one to me, with mischievous persons; but alas! how very grievously all's two to me, when they are helpful and noble ones. [50] Out of the first of Scott's notes to the Lay, but the note is so long that careless readers are sure to miss the points; also I give modern spelling for greater ease. [51] A walled group of houses: tynen, Saxon, to shut in (Johnson). [52] i. 68. "The indignant laird was on the point of desiring his prisoner to say a last prayer, when his more considerate dame interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three unmarried daughters. Young Harden, it is said, not without hesitation, agreed to save his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands." [53] Eldest son, or grandson, of Sir William Scott of Harden, the second in our genealogy. [54] Came, by invitation from his landlord, Scott of Harden. [55] Here, you see, our subject begins to purpose! [56] I give the round numbers for better remembering. Wat of Harden married the Flower of Yarrow in 1567; Robert of Sandy-Knowe married Barbara Haliburton in 1728. [57] Vol. vi., p. 164. [58] Portion omitted short, and of no moment just now. I shall refer to it afterwards. [59] The actual toil gone through by him is far greater during the last years than before--in fact it is unceasing and mortal; but I count only as the true labour-time that which is healthy and fruitful. [60] If my own life is spared a little longer, I can at least rescue Pope from the hands of his present scavenger biographer; but alas, for Scott's loving hand and noble thought, lost to him! [61] To the speech of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode; vol. vii., p. 221. [62] Vol. vii., p. 213. [63] Not to break away from my text too long, I add one or two farther points worth notice, here:-- "Boerhaave lost none of his hours, but when he had attained one science attempted another. He added physick to divinity, chemistry to the mathematicks, and anatomy to botany. "He knew the importance of his own writings to mankind, and lest he might, by a roughness and barbarity of style too frequent among men of great learning, disappoint his own intentions, and make his labours less useful, he did not neglect the politer arts of eloquence and poetry. Thus was his learning at once various and exact, profound and agreeable. "But his knowledge, however uncommon, holds in his character but the second place; his virtue was yet much more uncommon than his learning. "Being once asked by a friend, who had often admired his patience under great provocations, whether he knew what it was to be angry, and by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous and ungovernable passion, he answered, with the utmost frankness and sincerity, that he was naturally quick of resentment, but that he had, by daily prayer and meditation, at length attained to this mastery over himself." [64] See terminal notes. [65] Autobiography, p. 15. [66] His own words to Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, vol. i., p. 83, spoken while Turner was sketching Smailholm Tower, vol. vii., p. 302. [67] The Ballad of Hardiknute is only a fragment--but one consisting of forty-two stanzas of eight lines each. It is the only heroic poem in the Miscellany; of which--and of the poem itself--more hereafter. The first four lines are ominous of Scott's own life:-- "Stately stept he East the wa', And stately stept he West; Full seventy years he now had seen, With scarce seven years of rest." [68] Lockhart, in the extract just below, calls them "milk-white." This is exactly right of the pale bluish translucent quartz, in which the agatescent veins are just traceable, and no more, out of the trap rocks; but the gneissitic hills give also exquisitely brilliant pure white and cream-coloured quartz, rolled out of their vein stones. [69] With your pardon, Mr. Lockhart, neither ducks nor duckweed are in the least derogatory to the purity of a pool. [70] Vol. ii., p. 358; compare ii., 70. "If it seemed possible to scramble through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford," etc. [71] 8vo, 1806, p. 119. [72] Vol. vii., pp. 164, 166, 196. [73] Vol. vii., p. 9. [74] Fourth Report of Rivers Pollution Commission, p. 52. [75] See Analysis of Water of Leith, the Foul Burn, and Pow Burn, same Report, p. 21. [76] Same Report; so also the River Almond, pp. 22-45. [77] See terminal Notes. [78] Blood-hound, from 'lym,' Saxon for leash. [79] Introduction to Border Minstrelsy, p. 86. [80] "The Capacity and Extent of the Human Understanding; exemplified in the extraordinary case of Automathes, a young nobleman who was accidentally left in his infancy upon a desolate island, and continued nineteen years in that solitary state, separate from all human society." By John Kirkby. 1745. Small 8vo. [81] It is impossible to concentrate the vulgar modern vices of art and literature more densely than has been done in this--in such kind, documental--book. Here is a description of the 'Queen of the Flowers' out of it, which is so accurately characteristic of the 'imagination' of an age of demand and supply, that I must find space for it in small print. She appears in a wood in which "here and there was a mulberry tree disporting itself among the rest." (Has Mr. Huguessen, M.P., ever seen a mulberry tree, or read as much of Pyramus and Thisbe as Bottom?) "The face was the face of a lady, and of a pretty, exceedingly good-humoured lady too; but the hair which hung down around her head"--(the author had better have written hung up)--"was nothing more or less than festoons of roses,--red, lovely, sweet-scented" (who would have thought it!) "roses; the arms were apparently entirely composed of cloves and" (allspice? no) "carnations; the body was formed of a multitude of various flowers--the most beautiful you can imagine, and a cloak of honeysuckle and sweetbriar was thrown carefully over the shoulders." (Italics mine--care being as characteristic of the growth of the honeysuckle as disport is that of the mulberry.) [82] Robert, who comes to visit them in Bath, to little Walter's great joy. [83] See first terminal note. [84] Or Méhun, near Beaugency, Loire. [85] On Mr. M'Fie's motion for a committee to consider the relations that subsist between the United Kingdom and the Colonies. On the varieties of filial sentiment, compare Herodotus, iii. 38; iv. 26. [86] Much the most important part of the service in Protestant Switzerland, and a less formal one than in Scotland. [87] Utmost wisdom is not in self-denial, but in learning to find extreme pleasure in very little things. [88] This pleasure is a perfectly natural and legitimate one, and all the more because it is possible only when the riches are very moderate. After getting the first shilling of which I told you, I set my mind greatly upon getting a pile of new "lion shillings," as I called them--the lion standing on the top of the crown; and my delight in the bloomy surface of their dead silver is quite a memorable joy to me. I have engraved, for the frontispiece, the two sides of one of Hansli's Sunday playthings; it is otherwise interesting as an example of the comparatively vulgar coinage of a people uneducated in art. [89] Has quarrelled with them. [90] "Les ont brusquées." I can't get the derivation beyond Johnson: "Fr. brusque; Gothic, braska." But the Italian brusco is connected with the Provençal brusca, thicket, and Fr. broussaille. [91] Paysan--see above. [92] 'The Forms of Water.' King and Co., Cornhill. 1872. [93] When next the reader has an opportunity of repeating Professor Tyndall's experiments (p. 92) in a wreath of dry snow, I recommend him first to try how much jumping is necessary in order to get into it "breast-deep"; and secondly, how far he can "wade" in that dramatic position. [94] See the last terminal note. [95] I have long since expressed these facts in my 'Ethics of the Dust,' but too metaphorically. "The way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground: what fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture, and that nothing else is." [96] See terminal Notes, 1. [97] If you don't know your Scott properly, it is of no use to give you references. [98] "Dicimus, et stabilito tenore firmamus, amorem non posse, inter duos jugales, suas extendere vires." [99] He meant the Bible; having learned Evangelical views at the massacre of St. Bartholomew. [100] For the present, the daughters seem to take the initiative. See story from Halifax in the last terminal Note. [101] Italics mine. [102] The complete idea I believe to be "the Divine Fors," or Providence, accurately so called, of God. "For it is sanctified by the Word of God, and the granting." [103] See p. 14 in the Notes. 
7213	----	Charles Franks, and the DP Team MY LIFE AND WORK By Henry Ford In Collaboration With Samuel Crowther CONTENTS INTRODUCTION--WHAT IS THE IDEA? I. THE BEGINNING II. WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS III. STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS IV. THE SECRET OF MANUFACTURING AND SERVING V. GETTING INTO PRODUCTION VI. MACHINES AND MEN VII. THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE. VIII. WAGES IX. WHY NOT ALWAYS HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? X. HOW CHEAPLY CAN THINGS BE MADE? XI. MONEY AND GOODS XII. MONEY--MASTER OR SERVANT? XIII. WHY BE POOR? XIV. THE TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING XV. WHY CHARITY? XVI. THE RAILROADS XVII. THINGS IN GENERAL XVIII. DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY XIX. WHAT WE MAY EXPECT. INDEX INTRODUCTION WHAT IS THE IDEA? We have only started on our development of our country--we have not as yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the surface. The progress has been wonderful enough--but when we compare what we have done with what there is to do, then our past accomplishments are as nothing. When we consider that more power is used merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much opportunity there is ahead. And now, with so many countries of the world in ferment and with so much unrest every where, is an excellent time to suggest something of the things that may be done in the light of what has been done. When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields. I think that we have already done too much toward banishing the pleasant things from life by thinking that there is some opposition between living and providing the means of living. We waste so much time and energy that we have little left over in which to enjoy ourselves. Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live. They are but means to an end. For instance, I do not consider the machines which bear my name simply as machines. If that was all there was to it I would do something else. I take them as concrete evidence of the working out of a theory of business, which I hope is something more than a theory of business--a theory that looks toward making this world a better place in which to live. The fact that the commercial success of the Ford Motor Company has been most unusual is important only because it serves to demonstrate, in a way which no one can fail to understand, that the theory to date is right. Considered solely in this light I can criticize the prevailing system of industry and the organization of money and society from the standpoint of one who has not been beaten by them. As things are now organized, I could, were I thinking only selfishly, ask for no change. If I merely want money the present system is all right; it gives money in plenty to me. But I am thinking of service. The present system does not permit of the best service because it encourages every kind of waste--it keeps many men from getting the full return from service. And it is going nowhere. It is all a matter of better planning and adjustment. I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas. An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product. I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have put into practice are capable of the largest application--that they have nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars or tractors but form something in the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it is the natural code and I want to demonstrate it so thoroughly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural code. The natural thing to do is to work--to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. Human ills flow largely from attempting to escape from this natural course. I have no suggestion which goes beyond accepting in its fullest this principle of nature. I take it for granted that we must work. All that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it is better to work intelligently and forehandedly; that the better we do our work the better off we shall be. All of which I conceive to be merely elemental common sense. I am not a reformer. I think there is entirely too much attempt at reforming in the world and that we pay too much attention to reformers. We have two kinds of reformers. Both are nuisances. The man who calls himself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the sort of man who would tear up a whole shirt because the collar button did not fit the buttonhole. It would never occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole. This sort of reformer never under any circumstances knows what he is doing. Experience and reform do not go together. A reformer cannot keep his zeal at white heat in the presence of a fact. He must discard all facts. Since 1914 a great many persons have received brand-new intellectual outfits. Many are beginning to think for the first time. They opened their eyes and realized that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill of independence, they realized that they could look at the world critically. They did so and found it faulty. The intoxication of assuming the masterful position of a critic of the social system--which it is every man's right to assume--is unbalancing at first. The very young critic is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favor of wiping out the old order and starting a new one. They actually managed to start a new world in Russia. It is there that the work of the world makers can best be studied. We learn from Russia that it is the minority and not the majority who determine destructive action. We learn also that while men may decree social laws in conflict with natural laws, Nature vetoes those laws more ruthlessly than did the Czars. Nature has vetoed the whole Soviet Republic. For it sought to deny nature. It denied above all else the right to the fruits of labour. Some people say, "Russia will have to go to work," but that does not describe the case. The fact is that poor Russia is at work, but her work counts for nothing. It is not free work. In the United States a workman works eight hours a day; in Russia, he works twelve to fourteen. In the United States, if a workman wishes to lay off a day or a week, and is able to afford it, there is nothing to prevent him. In Russia, under Sovietism, the workman goes to work whether he wants to or not. The freedom of the citizen has disappeared in the discipline of a prison-like monotony in which all are treated alike. That is slavery. Freedom is the right to work a decent length of time and to get a decent living for doing so; to be able to arrange the little personal details of one's own life. It is the aggregate of these and many other items of freedom which makes up the great idealistic Freedom. The minor forms of Freedom lubricate the everyday life of all of us. Russia could not get along without intelligence and experience. As soon as she began to run her factories by committees, they went to rack and ruin; there was more debate than production. As soon as they threw out the skilled man, thousands of tons of precious materials were spoiled. The fanatics talked the people into starvation. The Soviets are now offering the engineers, the administrators, the foremen and superintendents, whom at first they drove out, large sums of money if only they will come back. Bolshevism is now crying for the brains and experience which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. All that "reform" did to Russia was to block production. There is in this country a sinister element that desires to creep in between the men who work with their hands and the men who think and plan for the men who work with their hands. The same influence that drove the brains, experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in raising prejudice here. We must not suffer the stranger, the destroyer, the hater of happy humanity, to divide our people. In unity is American strength--and freedom. On the other hand, we have a different kind of reformer who never calls himself one. He is singularly like the radical reformer. The radical has had no experience and does not want it. The other class of reformer has had plenty of experience but it does him no good. I refer to the reactionary--who will be surprised to find himself put in exactly the same class as the Bolshevist. He wants to go back to some previous condition, not because it was the best condition, but because he thinks he knows about that condition. The one crowd wants to smash up the whole world in order to make a better one. The other holds the world as so good that it might well be let stand as it is--and decay. The second notion arises as does the first--out of not using the eyes to see with. It is perfectly possible to smash this world, but it is not possible to build a new one. It is possible to prevent the world from going forward, but it is not possible then to prevent it from going back--from decaying. It is foolish to expect that, if everything be overturned, everyone will thereby get three meals a day. Or, should everything be petrified, that thereby six per cent, interest may be paid. The trouble is that reformers and reactionaries alike get away from the realities--from the primary functions. One of the counsels of caution is to be very certain that we do not mistake a reactionary turn for a return of common sense. We have passed through a period of fireworks of every description, and the making of a great many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get anywhere. It was a convention, not a march. Lovely things were said, but when we got home we found the furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken advantage of the recoil from such a period, and they have promised "the good old times"--which usually means the bad old abuses--and because they are perfectly void of vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men." Their return to power is often hailed as the return of common sense. The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation. Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together. Raising things, making things, and earning things are as primitive as human need and yet as modern as anything can be. They are of the essence of physical life. When they cease, community life ceases. Things do get out of shape in this present world under the present system, but we may hope for a betterment if the foundations stand sure. The great delusion is that one may change the foundation--usurp the part of destiny in the social process. The foundations of society are the men and means to _grow_ things, to _make_ things, and to _carry_ things. As long as agriculture, manufacture, and transportation survive, the world can survive any economic or social change. As we serve our jobs we serve the world. There is plenty of work to do. Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced--that is not business. It is just more or less respectable graft. But it cannot be legislated out of existence. Laws can do very little. Law never does anything constructive. It can never be more than a policeman, and so it is a waste of time to look to our state capitals or to Washington to do that which law was not designed to do. As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow. We have had enough of looking to Washington and we have had enough of legislators--not so much, however, in this as in other countries--promising laws to do that which laws cannot do. When you get a whole country--as did ours--thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves; our help may, however, go to Washington as a sort of central distribution point where all our efforts are coordinated for the general good. We may help the Government; the Government cannot help us. The slogan of "less government in business and more business in government" is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a commercial schedule. The United States--its land, people, government, and business--are but methods by which the life of the people is made worth while. The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman. We cannot live without business and we cannot live without government. Business and government are necessary as servants, like water and grain; as masters they overturn the natural order. The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is where it should be and that is where it is safest. Governments can promise something for nothing but they cannot deliver. They can juggle the currencies as they did in Europe (and as bankers the world over do, as long as they can get the benefit of the juggling) with a patter of solemn nonsense. But it is work and work alone that can continue to deliver the goods--and that, down in his heart, is what every man knows. There is little chance of an intelligent people, such as ours, ruining the fundamental processes of economic life. Most men know they cannot get something for nothing. Most men feel--even if they do not know--that money is not wealth. The ordinary theories which promise everything to everybody, and demand nothing from anybody, are promptly denied by the instincts of the ordinary man, even when he does not find reasons against them. He _knows_ they are wrong. That is enough. The present order, always clumsy, often stupid, and in many ways imperfect, has this advantage over any other--it works. Doubtless our order will merge by degrees into another, and the new one will also work--but not so much by reason of what it is as by reason of what men will bring into it. The reason why Bolshevism did not work, and cannot work, is not economic. It does not matter whether industry is privately managed or socially controlled; it does not matter whether you call the workers' share "wages" or "dividends"; it does not matter whether you regimentalize the people as to food, clothing, and shelter, or whether you allow them to eat, dress, and live as they like. Those are mere matters of detail. The incapacity of the Bolshevist leaders is indicated by the fuss they made over such details. Bolshevism failed because it was both unnatural and immoral. Our system stands. Is it wrong? Of course it is wrong, at a thousand points! Is it clumsy? Of course it is clumsy. By all right and reason it ought to break down. But it does not--because it is instinct with certain economic and moral fundamentals. The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labour that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature. The moral fundamental is man's right in his labour. This is variously stated. It is sometimes called "the right of property." It is sometimes masked in the command, "Thou shalt not steal." It is the other man's right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does more than steal bread; he invades a sacred human right. If we cannot produce we cannot have--but some say if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better means of production are of the foundation of society. They have really nothing of their own. They merely manage property for the benefit of others. Capitalists who become such through trading in money are a temporarily necessary evil. They may not be evil at all if their money goes to production. If their money goes to complicating distribution--to raising barriers between the producer and the consumer--then they are evil capitalists and they will pass away when money is better adjusted to work; and money will become better adjusted to work when it is fully realized that through work and work alone may health, wealth, and happiness inevitably be secured. There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We are not getting anywhere when we insist that every man ought to have more than he deserves to have--just because some do get more than they deserve to have. There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal. Most certainly all men are not equal, and any democratic conception which strives to make men equal is only an effort to block progress. Men cannot be of equal service. The men of larger ability are less numerous than the men of smaller ability; it is possible for a mass of the smaller men to pull the larger ones down--but in so doing they pull themselves down. It is the larger men who give the leadership to the community and enable the smaller men to live with less effort. The conception of democracy which names a leveling-down of ability makes for waste. No two things in nature are alike. We build our cars absolutely interchangeable. All parts are as nearly alike as chemical analysis, the finest machinery, and the finest workmanship can make them. No fitting of any kind is required, and it would certainly seem that two Fords standing side by side, looking exactly alike and made so exactly alike that any part could be taken out of one and put into the other, would be alike. But they are not. They will have different road habits. We have men who have driven hundreds, and in some cases thousands of Fords and they say that no two ever act precisely the same--that, if they should drive a new car for an hour or even less and then the car were mixed with a bunch of other new ones, also each driven for a single hour and under the same conditions, that although they could not recognize the car they had been driving merely by looking at it, they could do so by driving it. I have been speaking in general terms. Let us be more concrete. A man ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that he renders. This is rather a good time to talk about this point, for we have recently been through a period when the rendering of service was the last thing that most people thought of. We were getting to a place where no one cared about costs or service. Orders came without effort. Whereas once it was the customer who favored the merchant by dealing with him, conditions changed until it was the merchant who favored the customer by selling to him. That is bad for business. Monopoly is bad for business. Profiteering is bad for business. The lack of necessity to hustle is bad for business. Business is never as healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets. Things were coming too easily. There was a let-down of the principle that an honest relation ought to obtain between values and prices. The public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even a "public be damned" attitude in many places. It was intensely bad for business. Some men called that abnormal condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity-- it was just a needless money chase. Money chasing is not business. It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get burdened with money and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget all about selling to the people what they want. Business on a money-making basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, moving irregularly and rarely over a term of years amounting to much. It is the function of business to produce for consumption and not for money or speculation. Producing for consumption implies that the quality of the article produced will be high and that the price will be low--that the article be one which serves the people and not merely the producer. If the money feature is twisted out of its proper perspective, then the production will be twisted to serve the producer. The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight. During the boom period the larger effort of production was to serve itself and hence, the moment the people woke up, many producers went to smash. They said that they had entered into a "period of depression." Really they had not. They were simply trying to pit nonsense against sense which is something that cannot successfully be done. Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it, but when one serves for the sake of service--for the satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be right--then money abundantly takes care of itself. Money comes naturally as the result of service. And it is absolutely necessary to have money. But we do not want to forget that the end of money is not ease but the opportunity to perform more service. In my mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has any right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler. Any scheme looking to abolishing money is only making affairs more complex, for we must have a measure. That our present system of money is a satisfactory basis for exchange is a matter of grave doubt. That is a question which I shall talk of in a subsequent chapter. The gist of my objection to the present monetary system is that it tends to become a thing of itself and to block instead of facilitate production. My effort is in the direction of simplicity. People in general have so little and it costs so much to buy even the barest necessities (let alone that share of the luxuries to which I think everyone is entitled) because nearly everything that we make is much more complex than it needs to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings--all could be much simpler than they now are and at the same time be better looking. Things in past ages were made in certain ways and makers since then have just followed. I do not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we went around Indian-fashion in blankets. Real simplicity means that which gives the very best service and is the most convenient in use. The trouble with drastic reforms is they always insist that a man be made over in order to use certain designed articles. I think that dress reform for women--which seems to mean ugly clothes--must always originate with plain women who want to make everyone else look plain. That is not the right process. Start with an article that suits and then study to find some way of eliminating the entirely useless parts. This applies to everything--a shoe, a dress, a house, a piece of machinery, a railroad, a steamship, an airplane. As we cut out useless parts and simplify necessary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process starts with a cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a simplifying of the article. The start ought to be with the article. First we ought to find whether it is as well made as it should be--does it give the best possible service? Then--are the materials the best or merely the most expensive? Then--can its complexity and weight be cut down? And so on. There is no more sense in having extra weight in an article than there is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. In fact, there is not as much. For the cockade may help the coachman to identify his hat while the extra weight means only a waste of strength. I cannot imagine where the delusion that weight means strength came from. It is all well enough in a pile-driver, but why move a heavy weight if we are not going to hit anything with it? In transportation why put extra weight in a machine? Why not add it to the load that the machine is designed to carry? Fat men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as though dead-weight fat increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of the carriage of excess weight. Some day we shall discover how further to eliminate weight. Take wood, for example. For certain purposes wood is now the best substance we know, but wood is extremely wasteful. The wood in a Ford car contains thirty pounds of water. There must be some way of doing better than that. There must be some method by which we can gain the same strength and elasticity without having to lug useless weight. And so through a thousand processes. The farmer makes too complex an affair out of his daily work. I believe that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per cent of the energy that he spends. If any one ever equipped a factory in the style, say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be cluttered with men. The worst factory in Europe is hardly as bad as the average farm barn. Power is utilized to the least possible degree. Not only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to logical arrangement. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a rickety ladder a dozen times. He will carry water for years instead of putting in a few lengths of pipe. His whole idea, when there is extra work to do, is to hire extra men. He thinks of putting money into improvements as an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices are dearer than they ought to be. Farm profits at their highest are lower than they ought to be. It is waste motion--waste effort--that makes farm prices high and profits low. On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by machinery. We have eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on real economy. We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years of intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought to be done. We have left more undone than we have done. Yet at no time--no matter what the value of crops--have we failed to turn a first-class profit. We are not farmers--we are industrialists on the farm. The moment the farmer considers himself as an industrialist, with a horror of waste either in material or in men, then we are going to have farm products so low-priced that all will have enough to eat, and the profits will be so satisfactory that farming will be considered as among the least hazardous and most profitable of occupations. Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of knowledge of what the job really is and the best way of doing it are the reasons why farming is thought not to pay. Nothing could pay the way farming is conducted. The farmer follows luck and his forefathers. He does not know how economically to produce, and he does not know how to market. A manufacturer who knew how neither to produce nor to market would not long stay in business. That the farmer can stay on shows how wonderfully profitable farming can be. The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production in the factory or on the farm--and low-priced, high-volume production means plenty for everyone--is quite simple. The trouble is that the general tendency is to complicate very simple affairs. Take, for an instance, an "improvement." When we talk about improvements usually we have in mind some change in a product. An "improved" product is one that has been changed. That is not my idea. I do not believe in starting to make until I have discovered the best possible thing. This, of course, does not mean that a product should never be changed, but I think that it will be found more economical in the end not even to try to produce an article until you have fully satisfied yourself that utility, design, and material are the best. If your researches do not give you that confidence, then keep right on searching until you find confidence. The place to start manufacturing is with the article. The factory, the organization, the selling, and the financial plans will shape themselves to the article. You will have a cutting, edge on your business chisel and in the end you will save time. Rushing into manufacturing without being certain of the product is the unrecognized cause of many business failures. People seem to think that the big thing is the factory or the store or the financial backing or the management. The big thing is the product, and any hurry in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T--which is what is known to-day as the Ford car--that suited me. We did not attempt to go into real production until we had a real product. That product has not been essentially changed. We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If you travel the roads in the neighbourhood of Dearborn you can find all sorts of models of Ford cars. They are experimental cars--they are not new models. I do not believe in letting any good idea get by me, but I will not quickly decide whether an idea is good or bad. If an idea seems good or seems even to have possibilities, I believe in doing whatever is necessary to test out the idea from every angle. But testing out the idea is something very different from making a change in the car. Where most manufacturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the product than in the method of manufacturing--we follow exactly the opposite course. Our big changes have been in methods of manufacturing. They never stand still. I believe that there is hardly a single operation in the making of our car that is the same as when we made our first car of the present model. That is why we make them so cheaply. The few changes that have been made in the car have been in the direction of convenience in use or where we found that a change in design might give added strength. The materials in the car change as we learn more and more about materials. Also we do not want to be held up in production or have the expense of production increased by any possible shortage in a particular material, so we have for most parts worked out substitute materials. Vanadium steel, for instance, is our principal steel. With it we can get the greatest strength with the least weight, but it would not be good business to let our whole future depend upon being able to get vanadium steel. We have worked out a substitute. All our steels are special, but for every one of them we have at least one, and sometimes several, fully proved and tested substitutes. And so on through all of our materials and likewise with our parts. In the beginning we made very few of our parts and none of our motors. Now we make all our motors and most of our parts because we find it cheaper to do so. But also we aim to make some of every part so that we cannot be caught in any market emergency or be crippled by some outside manufacturer being unable to fill his orders. The prices on glass were run up outrageously high during the war; we are among the largest users of glass in the country. Now we are putting up our own glass factory. If we had devoted all of this energy to making changes in the product we should be nowhere; but by not changing the product we are able to give our energy to the improvement of the making. The principal part of a chisel is the cutting edge. If there is a single principle on which our business rests it is that. It makes no difference how finely made a chisel is or what splendid steel it has in it or how well it is forged--if it has no cutting edge it is not a chisel. It is just a piece of metal. All of which being translated means that it is what a thing does--not what it is supposed to do--that matters. What is the use of putting a tremendous force behind a blunt chisel if a light blow on a sharp chisel will do the work? The chisel is there to cut, not to be hammered. The hammering is only incidental to the job. So if we want to work why not concentrate on the work and do it in the quickest possible fashion? The cutting edge of merchandising is the point where the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactory product is one that has a dull cutting edge. A lot of waste effort is needed to put it through. The cutting edge of a factory is the man and the machine on the job. If the man is not right the machine cannot be; if the machine is not right the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use more force than is absolutely necessary for the job in hand is waste. The essence of my idea then is that waste and greed block the delivery of true service. Both waste and greed are unnecessary. Waste is due largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in doing of it. Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have striven toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste, both of materials and of human effort, and then toward distribution at a minimum of profit, depending for the total profit upon the volume of distribution. In the process of manufacturing I want to distribute the maximum of wage--that is, the maximum of buying power. Since also this makes for a minimum cost and we sell at a minimum profit, we can distribute a product in consonance with buying power. Thus everyone who is connected with us--either as a manager, worker, or purchaser--is the better for our existence. The institution that we have erected is performing a service. That is the only reason I have for talking about it. The principles of that service are these: 1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress. 2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow man--to rule by force instead of by intelligence. 3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service. 4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only to clog this progression. How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it applies generally are the subjects of these chapters. CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously alike--except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy, even though it had but two cylinders, would make twenty miles an hour and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was built. The development in methods of manufacture and in materials has been greater than the development in basic design. The whole design has been refined; the present Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four cylinders and a self starter--it is in every way a more convenient and an easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car. But almost every point in it may be found also in the first car. The changes have been brought about through experience in the making and not through any change in the basic principle--which I take to be an important fact demonstrating that, given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as much as any one can handle. It was life on the farm that drove me into devising ways and means to better transportation. I was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan, and my earliest recollection is that, considering the results, there was too much work on the place. That is the way I still feel about farming. There is a legend that my parents were very poor and that the early days were hard ones. Certainly they were not rich, but neither were they poor. As Michigan farmers went, we were prosperous. The house in which I was born is still standing, and it and the farm are part of my present holding. There was too much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics--although my mother always said that I was born a mechanic. I had a kind of workshop with odds and ends of metal for tools before I had anything else. In those days we did not have the toys of to-day; what we had were home made. My toys were all tools--they still are! And every fragment of machinery was a treasure. The biggest event of those early years was meeting with a road engine about eight miles out of Detroit one day when we were driving to town. I was then twelve years old. The second biggest event was getting a watch--which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen. It was intended primarily for driving threshing machines and sawmills and was simply a portable engine and boiler mounted on wheels with a water tank and coal cart trailing behind. I had seen plenty of these engines hauled around by horses, but this one had a chain that made a connection between the engine and the rear wheels of the wagon-like frame on which the boiler was mounted. The engine was placed over the boiler and one man standing on the platform behind the boiler shoveled coal, managed the throttle, and did the steering. It had been made by Nichols, Shepard & Company of Battle Creek. I found that out at once. The engine had stopped to let us pass with our horses and I was off the wagon and talking to the engineer before my father, who was driving, knew what I was up to. The engineer was very glad to explain the whole affair. He was proud of it. He showed me how the chain was disconnected from the propelling wheel and a belt put on to drive other machinery. He told me that the engine made two hundred revolutions a minute and that the chain pinion could be shifted to let the wagon stop while the engine was still running. This last is a feature which, although in different fashion, is incorporated into modern automobiles. It was not important with steam engines, which are easily stopped and started, but it became very important with the gasoline engine. It was that engine which took me into automotive transportation. I tried to make models of it, and some years later I did make one that ran very well, but from the time I saw that road engine as a boy of twelve right forward to to-day, my great interest has been in making a machine that would travel the roads. Driving to town I always had a pocket full of trinkets--nuts, washers, and odds and ends of machinery. Often I took a broken watch and tried to put it together. When I was thirteen I managed for the first time to put a watch together so that it would keep time. By the time I was fifteen I could do almost anything in watch repairing--although my tools were of the crudest. There is an immense amount to be learned simply by tinkering with things. It is not possible to learn from books how everything is made--and a real mechanic ought to know how nearly everything is made. Machines are to a mechanic what books are to a writer. He gets ideas from them, and if he has any brains he will apply those ideas. From the beginning I never could work up much interest in the labour of farming. I wanted to have something to do with machinery. My father was not entirely in sympathy with my bent toward mechanics. He thought that I ought to be a farmer. When I left school at seventeen and became an apprentice in the machine shop of the Drydock Engine Works I was all but given up for lost. I passed my apprenticeship without trouble--that is, I was qualified to be a machinist long before my three-year term had expired--and having a liking for fine work and a leaning toward watches I worked nights at repairing in a jewelry shop. At one period of those early days I think that I must have had fully three hundred watches. I thought that I could build a serviceable watch for around thirty cents and nearly started in the business. But I did not because I figured out that watches were not universal necessities, and therefore people generally would not buy them. Just how I reached that surprising conclusion I am unable to state. I did not like the ordinary jewelry and watch making work excepting where the job was hard to do. Even then I wanted to make something in quantity. It was just about the time when the standard railroad time was being arranged. We had formerly been on sun time and for quite a while, just as in our present daylight-saving days, the railroad time differed from the local time. That bothered me a good deal and so I succeeded in making a watch that kept both times. It had two dials and it was quite a curiosity in the neighbourhood. In 1879--that is, about four years after I first saw that Nichols-Shepard machine--I managed to get a chance to run one and when my apprenticeship was over I worked with a local representative of the Westinghouse Company of Schenectady as an expert in the setting up and repair of their road engines. The engine they put out was much the same as the Nichols-Shepard engine excepting that the engine was up in front, the boiler in the rear, and the power was applied to the back wheels by a belt. They could make twelve miles an hour on the road even though the self-propelling feature was only an incident of the construction. They were sometimes used as tractors to pull heavy loads and, if the owner also happened to be in the threshing-machine business, he hitched his threshing machine and other paraphernalia to the engine in moving from farm to farm. What bothered me was the weight and the cost. They weighed a couple of tons and were far too expensive to be owned by other than a farmer with a great deal of land. They were mostly employed by people who went into threshing as a business or who had sawmills or some other line that required portable power. Even before that time I had the idea of making some kind of a light steam car that would take the place of horses--more especially, however, as a tractor to attend to the excessively hard labour of ploughing. It occurred to me, as I remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless carriage was a common idea. People had been talking about carriages without horses for many years back--in fact, ever since the steam engine was invented--but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem so practical to me as the idea of an engine to do the harder farm work, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. Our roads were poor and we had not the habit of getting around. One of the most remarkable features of the automobile on the farm is the way that it has broadened the farmer's life. We simply took for granted that unless the errand were urgent we would not go to town, and I think we rarely made more than a trip a week. In bad weather we did not go even that often. Being a full-fledged machinist and with a very fair workshop on the farm it was not difficult for me to build a steam wagon or tractor. In the building of it came the idea that perhaps it might be made for road use. I felt perfectly certain that horses, considering all the bother of attending them and the expense of feeding, did not earn their keep. The obvious thing to do was to design and build a steam engine that would be light enough to run an ordinary wagon or to pull a plough. I thought it more important first to develop the tractor. To lift farm drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant ambition. It was circumstances that took me first into the actual manufacture of road cars. I found eventually that people were more interested in something that would travel on the road than in something that would do the work on the farms. In fact, I doubt that the light farm tractor could have been introduced on the farm had not the farmer had his eyes opened slowly but surely by the automobile. But that is getting ahead of the story. I thought the farmer would be more interested in the tractor. I built a steam car that ran. It had a kerosene-heated boiler and it developed plenty of power and a neat control--which is so easy with a steam throttle. But the boiler was dangerous. To get the requisite power without too big and heavy a power plant required that the engine work under high pressure; sitting on a high-pressure steam boiler is not altogether pleasant. To make it even reasonably safe required an excess of weight that nullified the economy of the high pressure. For two years I kept experimenting with various sorts of boilers--the engine and control problems were simple enough--and then I definitely abandoned the whole idea of running a road vehicle by steam. I knew that in England they had what amounted to locomotives running on the roads hauling lines of trailers and also there was no difficulty in designing a big steam tractor for use on a large farm. But ours were not then English roads; they would have stalled or racked to pieces the strongest and heaviest road tractor. And anyway the manufacturing of a big tractor which only a few wealthy farmers could buy did not seem to me worth while. But I did not give up the idea of a horseless carriage. The work with the Westinghouse representative only served to confirm the opinion I had formed that steam was not suitable for light vehicles. That is why I stayed only a year with that company. There was nothing more that the big steam tractors and engines could teach me and I did not want to waste time on something that would lead nowhere. A few years before--it was while I was an apprentice--I read in the _World of Science_, an English publication, of the "silent gas engine" which was then coming out in England. I think it was the Otto engine. It ran with illuminating gas, had a single large cylinder, and the power impulses being thus intermittent required an extremely heavy fly-wheel. As far as weight was concerned it gave nothing like the power per pound of metal that a steam engine gave, and the use of illuminating gas seemed to dismiss it as even a possibility for road use. It was interesting to me only as all machinery was interesting. I followed in the English and American magazines which we got in the shop the development of the engine and most particularly the hints of the possible replacement of the illuminating gas fuel by a gas formed by the vaporization of gasoline. The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people--they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. The gas engine interested me and I followed its progress, but only from curiosity, until about 1885 or 1886 when, the steam engine being discarded as the motive power for the carriage that I intended some day to build, I had to look around for another sort of motive power. In 1885 I repaired an Otto engine at the Eagle Iron Works in Detroit. No one in town knew anything about them. There was a rumour that I did and, although I had never before been in contact with one, I undertook and carried through the job. That gave me a chance to study the new engine at first hand and in 1887 I built one on the Otto four-cycle model just to see if I understood the principles. "Four cycle" means that the piston traverses the cylinder four times to get one power impulse. The first stroke draws in the gas, the second compresses it, the third is the explosion or power stroke, while the fourth stroke exhausts the waste gas. The little model worked well enough; it had a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke, operated with gasoline, and while it did not develop much power, it was slightly lighter in proportion than the engines being offered commercially. I gave it away later to a young man who wanted it for something or other and whose name I have forgotten; it was eventually destroyed. That was the beginning of the work with the internal combustion engine. I was then on the farm to which I had returned, more because I wanted to experiment than because I wanted to farm, and, now being an all-around machinist, I had a first-class workshop to replace the toy shop of earlier days. My father offered me forty acres of timber land, provided I gave up being a machinist. I agreed in a provisional way, for cutting the timber gave me a chance to get married. I fitted out a sawmill and a portable engine and started to cut out and saw up the timber on the tract. Some of the first of that lumber went into a cottage on my new farm and in it we began our married life. It was not a big house--thirty-one feet square and only a story and a half high--but it was a comfortable place. I added to it my workshop, and when I was not cutting timber I was working on the gas engines--learning what they were and how they acted. I read everything I could find, but the greatest knowledge came from the work. A gas engine is a mysterious sort of thing--it will not always go the way it should. You can imagine how those first engines acted! It was in 1890 that I began on a double-cylinder engine. It was quite impractical to consider the single cylinder for transportation purposes--the fly-wheel had to be entirely too heavy. Between making the first four-cycle engine of the Otto type and the start on a double cylinder I had made a great many experimental engines out of tubing. I fairly knew my way about. The double cylinder I thought could be applied to a road vehicle and my original idea was to put it on a bicycle with a direct connection to the crankshaft and allowing for the rear wheel of the bicycle to act as the balance wheel. The speed was going to be varied only by the throttle. I never carried out this plan because it soon became apparent that the engine, gasoline tank, and the various necessary controls would be entirely too heavy for a bicycle. The plan of the two opposed cylinders was that, while one would be delivering power the other would be exhausting. This naturally would not require so heavy a fly-wheel to even the application of power. The work started in my shop on the farm. Then I was offered a job with the Detroit Electric Company as an engineer and machinist at forty-five dollars a month. I took it because that was more money than the farm was bringing me and I had decided to get away from farm life anyway. The timber had all been cut. We rented a house on Bagley Avenue, Detroit. The workshop came along and I set it up in a brick shed at the back of the house. During the first several months I was in the night shift at the electric-light plant--which gave me very little time for experimenting--but after that I was in the day shift and every night and all of every Saturday night I worked on the new motor. I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard. I always am certain of results. They always come if you work hard enough. But it was a very great thing to have my wife even more confident than I was. She has always been that way. I had to work from the ground up--that is, although I knew that a number of people were working on horseless carriages, I could not know what they were doing. The hardest problems to overcome were in the making and breaking of the spark and in the avoidance of excess weight. For the transmission, the steering gear, and the general construction, I could draw on my experience with the steam tractors. In 1892 I completed my first motor car, but it was not until the spring of the following year that it ran to my satisfaction. This first car had something of the appearance of a buggy. There were two cylinders with a two-and-a-half-inch bore and a six-inch stroke set side by side and over the rear axle. I made them out of the exhaust pipe of a steam engine that I had bought. They developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds--one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour--obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could run free. To start the car it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand with the clutch free. To stop the car one simply released the clutch and applied the foot brake. There was no reverse, and speeds other than those of the belt were obtained by the throttle. I bought the iron work for the frame of the carriage and also the seat and the springs. The wheels were twenty-eight-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires. The balance wheel I had cast from a pattern that I made and all of the more delicate mechanism I made myself. One of the features that I discovered necessary was a compensating gear that permitted the same power to be applied to each of the rear wheels when turning corners. The machine altogether weighed about five hundred pounds. A tank under the seat held three gallons of gasoline which was fed to the motor through a small pipe and a mixing valve. The ignition was by electric spark. The original machine was air-cooled--or to be more accurate, the motor simply was not cooled at all. I found that on a run of an hour or more the motor heated up, and so I very shortly put a water jacket around the cylinders and piped it to a tank in the rear of the car over the cylinders. Nearly all of these various features had been planned in advance. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It will not be rightly proportioned. Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting. The largest building difficulties that I had were in obtaining the proper materials. The next were with tools. There had to be some adjustments and changes in details of the design, but what held me up most was that I had neither the time nor the money to search for the best material for each part. But in the spring of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road. CHAPTER II WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS My "gasoline buggy" was the first and for a long time the only automobile in Detroit. It was considered to be something of a nuisance, for it made a racket and it scared horses. Also it blocked traffic. For if I stopped my machine anywhere in town a crowd was around it before I could start up again. If I left it alone even for a minute some inquisitive person always tried to run it. Finally, I had to carry a chain and chain it to a lamp post whenever I left it anywhere. And then there was trouble with the police. I do not know quite why, for my impression is that there were no speed-limit laws in those days. Anyway, I had to get a special permit from the mayor and thus for a time enjoyed the distinction of being the only licensed chauffeur in America. I ran that machine about one thousand miles through 1895 and 1896 and then sold it to Charles Ainsley of Detroit for two hundred dollars. That was my first sale. I had built the car not to sell but only to experiment with. I wanted to start another car. Ainsley wanted to buy. I could use the money and we had no trouble in agreeing upon a price. It was not at all my idea to make cars in any such petty fashion. I was looking ahead to production, but before that could come I had to have something to produce. It does not pay to hurry. I started a second car in 1896; it was much like the first but a little lighter. It also had the belt drive which I did not give up until some time later; the belts were all right excepting in hot weather. That is why I later adopted gears. I learned a great deal from that car. Others in this country and abroad were building cars by that time, and in 1895 I heard that a Benz car from Germany was on exhibition in Macy's store in New York. I traveled down to look at it but it had no features that seemed worth while. It also had the belt drive, but it was much heavier than my car. I was working for lightness; the foreign makers have never seemed to appreciate what light weight means. I built three cars in all in my home shop and all of them ran for years in Detroit. I still have the first car; I bought it back a few years later from a man to whom Mr. Ainsley had sold it. I paid one hundred dollars for it. During all this time I kept my position with the electric company and gradually advanced to chief engineer at a salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. But my gas-engine experiments were no more popular with the president of the company than my first mechanical leanings were with my father. It was not that my employer objected to experiments--only to experiments with a gas engine. I can still hear him say: "Electricity, yes, that's the coming thing. But gas--no." He had ample grounds for his skepticism--to use the mildest terms. Practically no one had the remotest notion of the future of the internal combustion engine, while we were just on the edge of the great electrical development. As with every comparatively new idea, electricity was expected to do much more than we even now have any indication that it can do. I did not see the use of experimenting with electricity for my purposes. A road car could not run on a trolley even if trolley wires had been less expensive; no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical. An electrical car had of necessity to be limited in radius and to contain a large amount of motive machinery in proportion to the power exerted. That is not to say that I held or now hold electricity cheaply; we have not yet begun to use electricity. But it has its place, and the internal combustion engine has its place. Neither can substitute for the other--which is exceedingly fortunate. I have the dynamo that I first had charge of at the Detroit Edison Company. When I started our Canadian plant I bought it from an office building to which it had been sold by the electric company, had it revamped a little, and for several years it gave excellent service in the Canadian plant. When we had to build a new power plant, owing to the increase in business, I had the old motor taken out to my museum--a room out at Dearborn that holds a great number of my mechanical treasures. The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company but only on condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself to something really useful. I had to choose between my job and my automobile. I chose the automobile, or rather I gave up the job--there was really nothing in the way of a choice. For already I knew that the car was bound to be a success. I quit my job on August 15, 1899, and went into the automobile business. It might be thought something of a step, for I had no personal funds. What money was left over from living was all used in experimenting. But my wife agreed that the automobile could not be given up--that we had to make or break. There was no "demand" for automobiles--there never is for a new article. They were accepted in much the fashion as was more recently the airplane. At first the "horseless carriage" was considered merely a freak notion and many wise people explained with particularity why it could never be more than a toy. No man of money even thought of it as a commercial possibility. I cannot imagine why each new means of transportation meets with such opposition. There are even those to-day who shake their heads and talk about the luxury of the automobile and only grudgingly admit that perhaps the motor truck is of some use. But in the beginning there was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could be a large factor in industry. The most optimistic hoped only for a development akin to that of the bicycle. When it was found that an automobile really could go and several makers started to put out cars, the immediate query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious but natural development--that racing idea. I never thought anything of racing, but the public refused to consider the automobile in any light other than as a fast toy. Therefore later we had to race. The industry was held back by this initial racing slant, for the attention of the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good cars. It was a business for speculators. A group of men of speculative turn of mind organized, as soon as I left the electric company, the Detroit Automobile Company to exploit my car. I was the chief engineer and held a small amount of the stock. For three years we continued making cars more or less on the model of my first car. We sold very few of them; I could get no support at all toward making better cars to be sold to the public at large. The whole thought was to make to order and to get the largest price possible for each car. The main idea seemed to be to get the money. And being without authority other than my engineering position gave me, I found that the new company was not a vehicle for realizing my ideas but merely a money-making concern--that did not make much money. In March, 1902, I resigned, determined never again to put myself under orders. The Detroit Automobile Company later became the Cadillac Company under the ownership of the Lelands, who came in subsequently. I rented a shop--a one-story brick shed--at 81 Park Place to continue my experiments and to find out what business really was. I thought that it must be something different from what it had proved to be in my first adventure. The year from 1902 until the formation of the Ford Motor Company was practically one of investigation. In my little one-room brick shop I worked on the development of a four-cylinder motor and on the outside I tried to find out what business really was and whether it needed to be quite so selfish a scramble for money as it seemed to be from my first short experience. From the period of the first car, which I have described, until the formation of my present company I built in all about twenty-five cars, of which nineteen or twenty were built with the Detroit Automobile Company. The automobile had passed from the initial stage where the fact that it could run at all was enough, to the stage where it had to show speed. Alexander Winton of Cleveland, the founder of the Winton car, was then the track champion of the country and willing to meet all comers. I designed a two-cylinder enclosed engine of a more compact type than I had before used, fitted it into a skeleton chassis, found that I could make speed, and arranged a race with Winton. We met on the Grosse Point track at Detroit. I beat him. That was my first race, and it brought advertising of the only kind that people cared to read. The public thought nothing of a car unless it made speed--unless it beat other racing cars. My ambition to build the fastest car in the world led me to plan a four-cylinder motor. But of that more later. The most surprising feature of business as it was conducted was the large attention given to finance and the small attention to service. That seemed to me to be reversing the natural process which is that the money should come as the result of work and not before the work. The second feature was the general indifference to better methods of manufacture as long as whatever was done got by and took the money. In other words, an article apparently was not built with reference to how greatly it could serve the public but with reference solely to how much money could be had for it--and that without any particular care whether the customer was satisfied. To sell him was enough. A dissatisfied customer was regarded not as a man whose trust had been violated, but either as a nuisance or as a possible source of more money in fixing up the work which ought to have been done correctly in the first place. For instance, in automobiles there was not much concern as to what happened to the car once it had been sold. How much gasoline it used per mile was of no great moment; how much service it actually gave did not matter; and if it broke down and had to have parts replaced, then that was just hard luck for the owner. It was considered good business to sell parts at the highest possible price on the theory that, since the man had already bought the car, he simply had to have the part and would be willing to pay for it. The automobile business was not on what I would call an honest basis, to say nothing of being, from a manufacturing standpoint, on a scientific basis, but it was no worse than business in general. That was the period, it may be remembered, in which many corporations were being floated and financed. The bankers, who before then had confined themselves to the railroads, got into industry. My idea was then and still is that if a man did his work well, the price he would get for that work, the profits and all financial matters, would care for themselves and that a business ought to start small and build itself up and out of its earnings. If there are no earnings then that is a signal to the owner that he is wasting his time and does not belong in that business. I have never found it necessary to change those ideas, but I discovered that this simple formula of doing good work and getting paid for it was supposed to be slow for modern business. The plan at that time most in favor was to start off with the largest possible capitalization and then sell all the stock and all the bonds that could be sold. Whatever money happened to be left over after all the stock and bond-selling expenses and promoters, charges and all that, went grudgingly into the foundation of the business. A good business was not one that did good work and earned a fair profit. A good business was one that would give the opportunity for the floating of a large amount of stocks and bonds at high prices. It was the stocks and bonds, not the work, that mattered. I could not see how a new business or an old business could be expected to be able to charge into its product a great big bond interest and then sell the product at a fair price. I have never been able to see that. I have never been able to understand on what theory the original investment of money can be charged against a business. Those men in business who call themselves financiers say that money is "worth" 6 per cent, or 5 per cent, or some other per cent, and that if a business has one hundred thousand dollars invested in it, the man who made the investment is entitled to charge an interest payment on the money, because, if instead of putting that money into the business he had put it into a savings bank or into certain securities, he could have a certain fixed return. Therefore they say that a proper charge against the operating expenses of a business is the interest on this money. This idea is at the root of many business failures and most service failures. Money is not worth a particular amount. As money it is not worth anything, for it will do nothing of itself. The only use of money is to buy tools to work with or the product of tools. Therefore money is worth what it will help you to produce or buy and no more. If a man thinks that his money will earn 5 per cent, or 6 per cent, he ought to place it where he can get that return, but money placed in a business is not a charge on the business--or, rather, should not be. It ceases to be money and becomes, or should become, an engine of production, and it is therefore worth what it produces--and not a fixed sum according to some scale that has no bearing upon the particular business in which the money has been placed. Any return should come after it has produced, not before. Business men believed that you could do anything by "financing" it. If it did not go through on the first financing then the idea was to "refinance." The process of "refinancing" was simply the game of sending good money after bad. In the majority of cases the need of refinancing arises from bad management, and the effect of refinancing is simply to pay the poor managers to keep up their bad management a little longer. It is merely a postponement of the day of judgment. This makeshift of refinancing is a device of speculative financiers. Their money is no good to them unless they can connect it up with a place where real work is being done, and that they cannot do unless, somehow, that place is poorly managed. Thus, the speculative financiers delude themselves that they are putting their money out to use. They are not; they are putting it out to waste. I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw going on around me, was quite enough proof that business as a mere money-making game was not worth giving much thought to and was distinctly no place for a man who wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem to me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have it demonstrated that it is the way. For the only foundation of real business is service. A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements--a dissatisfied customer. There was something more than a tendency in the early days of the automobile to regard the selling of a machine as the real accomplishment and that thereafter it did not matter what happened to the buyer. That is the shortsighted salesman-on-commission attitude. If a salesman is paid only for what he sells, it is not to be expected that he is going to exert any great effort on a customer out of whom no more commission is to be made. And it is right on this point that we later made the largest selling argument for the Ford. The price and the quality of the car would undoubtedly have made a market, and a large market. We went beyond that. A man who bought one of our cars was in my opinion entitled to continuous use of that car, and therefore if he had a breakdown of any kind it was our duty to see that his machine was put into shape again at the earliest possible moment. In the success of the Ford car the early provision of service was an outstanding element. Most of the expensive cars of that period were ill provided with service stations. If your car broke down you had to depend on the local repair man--when you were entitled to depend upon the manufacturer. If the local repair man were a forehanded sort of a person, keeping on hand a good stock of parts (although on many of the cars the parts were not interchangeable), the owner was lucky. But if the repair man were a shiftless person, with an adequate knowledge of automobiles and an inordinate desire to make a good thing out of every car that came into his place for repairs, then even a slight breakdown meant weeks of laying up and a whopping big repair bill that had to be paid before the car could be taken away. The repair men were for a time the largest menace to the automobile industry. Even as late as 1910 and 1911 the owner of an automobile was regarded as essentially a rich man whose money ought to be taken away from him. We met that situation squarely and at the very beginning. We would not have our distribution blocked by stupid, greedy men. That is getting some years ahead of the story, but it is control by finance that breaks up service because it looks to the immediate dollar. If the first consideration is to earn a certain amount of money, then, unless by some stroke of luck matters are going especially well and there is a surplus over for service so that the operating men may have a chance, future business has to be sacrificed for the dollar of to-day. And also I noticed a tendency among many men in business to feel that their lot was hard--they worked against a day when they might retire and live on an income--get out of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of "getting settled." If to petrify is success all one has to do is to humour the lazy side of the mind but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they were always managed, and though the management may have been most excellent in its day, its excellence consisted in its alertness to its day, and not in slavish following of its yesterdays. Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most feels himself "settled" is not settled--he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there. And out of the delusion that life is a battle that may be lost by a false move grows, I have noticed, a great love for regularity. Men fall into the half-alive habit. Seldom does the cobbler take up with the new-fangled way of soling shoes, and seldom does the artisan willingly take up with new methods in his trade. Habit conduces to a certain inertia, and any disturbance of it affects the mind like trouble. It will be recalled that when a study was made of shop methods, so that the workmen might be taught to produce with less useless motion and fatigue, it was most opposed by the workmen themselves. Though they suspected that it was simply a game to get more out of them, what most irked them was that it interfered with the well-worn grooves in which they had become accustomed to move. Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about--men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas. It could almost be written down as a formula that when a man begins to think that he has at last found his method he had better begin a most searching examination of himself to see whether some part of his brain has not gone to sleep. There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off. There is also the great fear of being thought a fool. So many men are afraid of being considered fools. I grant that public opinion is a powerful police influence for those who need it. Perhaps it is true that the majority of men need the restraint of public opinion. Public opinion may keep a man better than he would otherwise be--if not better morally, at least better as far as his social desirability is concerned. But it is not a bad thing to be a fool for righteousness' sake. The best of it is that such fools usually live long enough to prove that they were not fools--or the work they have begun lives long enough to prove they were not foolish. The money influence--the pressing to make a profit on an "investment"--and its consequent neglect of or skimping of work and hence of service showed itself to me in many ways. It seemed to be at the bottom of most troubles. It was the cause of low wages--for without well-directed work high wages cannot be paid. And if the whole attention is not given to the work it cannot be well directed. Most men want to be free to work; under the system in use they could not be free to work. During my first experience I was not free--I could not give full play to my ideas. Everything had to be planned to make money; the last consideration was the work. And the most curious part of it all was the insistence that it was the money and not the work that counted. It did not seem to strike any one as illogical that money should be put ahead of work--even though everyone had to admit that the profit had to come from the work. The desire seemed to be to find a short cut to money and to pass over the obvious short cut--which is through the work. Take competition; I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly through artificial means. The idea was that there were only a certain number of people who could buy and that it was necessary to get their trade ahead of someone else. Some will remember that later many of the automobile manufacturers entered into an association under the Selden Patent just so that it might be legally possible to control the price and the output of automobiles. They had the same idea that so many trades unions have--the ridiculous notion that more profit can be had doing less work than more. The plan, I believe, is a very antiquated one. I could not see then and am still unable to see that there is not always enough for the man who does his work; time spent in fighting competition is wasted; it had better be spent in doing the work. There are always enough people ready and anxious to buy, provided you supply what they want and at the proper price--and this applies to personal services as well as to goods. During this time of reflection I was far from idle. We were going ahead with a four-cylinder motor and the building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time, for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one's work in office hours, to take up the work in the morning, to drop it in the evening--and not have a care until the next morning. It is perfectly possible to do that if one is so constituted as to be willing through all of his life to accept direction, to be an employee, possibly a responsible employee, but not a director or manager of anything. A manual labourer must have a limit on his hours, otherwise he will wear himself out. If he intends to remain always a manual labourer, then he should forget about his work when the whistle blows, but if he intends to go forward and do anything, the whistle is only a signal to start thinking over the day's work in order to discover how it might be done better. The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. I cannot pretend to say, because I do not know, whether the man who works always, who never leaves his business, who is absolutely intent upon getting ahead, and who therefore does get ahead--is happier than the man who keeps office hours, both for his brain and his hands. It is not necessary for any one to decide the question. A ten-horsepower engine will not pull as much as a twenty. The man who keeps brain office hours limits his horsepower. If he is satisfied to pull only the load that he has, well and good, that is his affair--but he must not complain if another who has increased his horsepower pulls more than he does. Leisure and work bring different results. If a man wants leisure and gets it--then he has no cause to complain. But he cannot have both leisure and the results of work. Concretely, what I most realized about business in that year--and I have been learning more each year without finding it necessary to change my first conclusions--is this: (1) That finance is given a place ahead of work and therefore tends to kill the work and destroy the fundamental of service. (2) That thinking first of money instead of work brings on fear of failure and this fear blocks every avenue of business--it makes a man afraid of competition, of changing his methods, or of doing anything which might change his condition. (3) That the way is clear for any one who thinks first of service--of doing the work in the best possible way. CHAPTER III STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS In the little brick shop at 81 Park Place I had ample opportunity to work out the design and some of the methods of manufacture of a new car. Even if it were possible to organize the exact kind of corporation that I wanted--one in which doing the work well and suiting the public would be controlling factors--it became apparent that I never could produce a thoroughly good motor car that might be sold at a low price under the existing cut-and-try manufacturing methods. Everybody knows that it is always possible to do a thing better the second time. I do not know why manufacturing should not at that time have generally recognized this as a basic fact--unless it might be that the manufacturers were in such a hurry to obtain something to sell that they did not take time for adequate preparation. Making "to order" instead of making in volume is, I suppose, a habit, a tradition, that has descended from the old handicraft days. Ask a hundred people how they want a particular article made. About eighty will not know; they will leave it to you. Fifteen will think that they must say something, while five will really have preferences and reasons. The ninety-five, made up of those who do not know and admit it and the fifteen who do not know but do not admit it, constitute the real market for any product. The five who want something special may or may not be able to pay the price for special work. If they have the price, they can get the work, but they constitute a special and limited market. Of the ninety-five perhaps ten or fifteen will pay a price for quality. Of those remaining, a number will buy solely on price and without regard to quality. Their numbers are thinning with each day. Buyers are learning how to buy. The majority will consider quality and buy the biggest dollar's worth of quality. If, therefore, you discover what will give this 95 per cent. of people the best all-round service and then arrange to manufacture at the very highest quality and sell at the very lowest price, you will be meeting a demand which is so large that it may be called universal. This is not standardizing. The use of the word "standardizing" is very apt to lead one into trouble, for it implies a certain freezing of design and method and usually works out so that the manufacturer selects whatever article he can the most easily make and sell at the highest profit. The public is not considered either in the design or in the price. The thought behind most standardization is to be able to make a larger profit. The result is that with the economies which are inevitable if you make only one thing, a larger and larger profit is continually being had by the manufacturer. His output also becomes larger--his facilities produce more--and before he knows it his markets are overflowing with goods which will not sell. These goods would sell if the manufacturer would take a lower price for them. There is always buying power present--but that buying power will not always respond to reductions in price. If an article has been sold at too high a price and then, because of stagnant business, the price is suddenly cut, the response is sometimes most disappointing. And for a very good reason. The public is wary. It thinks that the price-cut is a fake and it sits around waiting for a real cut. We saw much of that last year. If, on the contrary, the economies of making are transferred at once to the price and if it is well known that such is the policy of the manufacturer, the public will have confidence in him and will respond. They will trust him to give honest value. So standardization may seem bad business unless it carries with it the plan of constantly reducing the price at which the article is sold. And the price has to be reduced (this is very important) because of the manufacturing economies that have come about and not because the falling demand by the public indicates that it is not satisfied with the price. The public should always be wondering how it is possible to give so much for the money. Standardization (to use the word as I understand it) is not just taking one's best selling article and concentrating on it. It is planning day and night and probably for years, first on something which will best suit the public and then on how it should be made. The exact processes of manufacturing will develop of themselves. Then, if we shift the manufacturing from the profit to the service basis, we shall have a real business in which the profits will be all that any one could desire. All of this seems self-evident to me. It is the logical basis of any business that wants to serve 95 per cent. of the community. It is the logical way in which the community can serve itself. I cannot comprehend why all business does not go on this basis. All that has to be done in order to adopt it is to overcome the habit of grabbing at the nearest dollar as though it were the only dollar in the world. The habit has already to an extent been overcome. All the large and successful retail stores in this country are on the one-price basis. The only further step required is to throw overboard the idea of pricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the common-sense basis of pricing on what it costs to manufacture and then reducing the cost of manufacture. If the design of the product has been sufficiently studied, then changes in it will come very slowly. But changes in manufacturing processes will come very rapidly and wholly naturally. That has been our experience in everything we have undertaken. How naturally it has all come about, I shall later outline. The point that I wish to impress here is that it is impossible to get a product on which one may concentrate unless an unlimited amount of study is given beforehand. It is not just an afternoon's work. These ideas were forming with me during this year of experimenting. Most of the experimenting went into the building of racing cars. The idea in those days was that a first-class car ought to be a racer. I never really thought much of racing, but following the bicycle idea, the manufacturers had the notion that winning a race on a track told the public something about the merits of an automobile--although I can hardly imagine any test that would tell less. But, as the others were doing it, I, too, had to do it. In 1903, with Tom Cooper, I built two cars solely for speed. They were quite alike. One we named the "999" and the other the "Arrow." If an automobile were going to be known for speed, then I was going to make an automobile that would be known wherever speed was known. These were. I put in four great big cylinders giving 80 H.P.--which up to that time had been unheard of. The roar of those cylinders alone was enough to half kill a man. There was only one seat. One life to a car was enough. I tried out the cars. Cooper tried out the cars. We let them out at full speed. I cannot quite describe the sensation. Going over Niagara Falls would have been but a pastime after a ride in one of them. I did not want to take the responsibility of racing the "999" which we put up first, neither did Cooper. Cooper said he knew a man who lived on speed, that nothing could go too fast for him. He wired to Salt Lake City and on came a professional bicycle rider named Barney Oldfield. He had never driven a motor car, but he liked the idea of trying it. He said he would try anything once. It took us only a week to teach him how to drive. The man did not know what fear was. All that he had to learn was how to control the monster. Controlling the fastest car of to-day was nothing as compared to controlling that car. The steering wheel had not yet been thought of. All the previous cars that I had built simply had tillers. On this one I put a two-handed tiller, for holding the car in line required all the strength of a strong man. The race for which we were working was at three miles on the Grosse Point track. We kept our cars as a dark horse. We left the predictions to the others. The tracks then were not scientifically banked. It was not known how much speed a motor car could develop. No one knew better than Oldfield what the turns meant and as he took his seat, while I was cranking the car for the start, he remarked cheerily: "Well, this chariot may kill me, but they will say afterward that I was going like hell when she took me over the bank." And he did go.... He never dared to look around. He did not shut off on the curves. He simply let that car go--and go it did. He was about half a mile ahead of the next man at the end of the race! The "999" did what it was intended to do: It advertised the fact that I could build a fast motorcar. A week after the race I formed the Ford Motor Company. I was vice-president, designer, master mechanic, superintendent, and general manager. The capitalization of the company was one hundred thousand dollars, and of this I owned 25 1/2 per cent. The total amount subscribed in cash was about twenty-eight thousand dollars--which is the only money that the company has ever received for the capital fund from other than operations. In the beginning I thought that it was possible, notwithstanding my former experience, to go forward with a company in which I owned less than the controlling share. I very shortly found I had to have control and therefore in 1906, with funds that I had earned in the company, I bought enough stock to bring my holdings up to 51 per cent, and a little later bought enough more to give me 58-1/2 per cent. The new equipment and the whole progress of the company have always been financed out of earnings. In 1919 my son Edsel purchased the remaining 41-1/2 per cent of the stock because certain of the minority stockholders disagreed with my policies. For these shares he paid at the rate of $12,500 for each $100 par and in all paid about seventy-five millions. The original company and its equipment, as may be gathered, were not elaborate. We rented Strelow's carpenter shop on Mack Avenue. In making my designs I had also worked out the methods of making, but, since at that time we could not afford to buy machinery, the entire car was made according to my designs, but by various manufacturers, and about all we did, even in the way of assembling, was to put on the wheels, the tires, and the body. That would really be the most economical method of manufacturing if only one could be certain that all of the various parts would be made on the manufacturing plan that I have above outlined. The most economical manufacturing of the future will be that in which the whole of an article is not made under one roof--unless, of course, it be a very simple article. The modern--or better, the future--method is to have each part made where it may best be made and then assemble the parts into a complete unit at the points of consumption. That is the method we are now following and expect to extend. It would make no difference whether one company or one individual owned all the factories fabricating the component parts of a single product, or whether such part were made in our independently owned factory, _if only all adopted the same service methods_. If we can buy as good a part as we can make ourselves and the supply is ample and the price right, we do not attempt to make it ourselves--or, at any rate, to make more than an emergency supply. In fact, it might be better to have the ownership widely scattered. I had been experimenting principally upon the cutting down of weight. Excess weight kills any self-propelled vehicle. There are a lot of fool ideas about weight. It is queer, when you come to think of it, how some fool terms get into current use. There is the phrase "heavyweight" as applied to a man's mental apparatus! What does it mean? No one wants to be fat and heavy of body--then why of head? For some clumsy reason we have come to confuse strength with weight. The crude methods of early building undoubtedly had much to do with this. The old ox-cart weighed a ton--and it had so much weight that it was weak! To carry a few tons of humanity from New York to Chicago, the railroad builds a train that weighs many hundred tons, and the result is an absolute loss of real strength and the extravagant waste of untold millions in the form of power. The law of diminishing returns begins to operate at the point where strength becomes weight. Weight may be desirable in a steam roller but nowhere else. Strength has nothing to do with weight. The mentality of the man who does things in the world is agile, light, and strong. The most beautiful things in the world are those from which all excess weight has been eliminated. Strength is never just weight--either in men or things. Whenever any one suggests to me that I might increase weight or add a part, I look into decreasing weight and eliminating a part! The car that I designed was lighter than any car that had yet been made. It would have been lighter if I had known how to make it so--later I got the materials to make the lighter car. In our first year we built "Model A," selling the runabout for eight hundred and fifty dollars and the tonneau for one hundred dollars more. This model had a two-cylinder opposed motor developing eight horsepower. It had a chain drive, a seventy-two inch wheel base--which was supposed to be long--and a fuel capacity of five gallons. We made and sold 1,708 cars in the first year. That is how well the public responded. Every one of these "Model A's" has a history. Take No. 420. Colonel D. C. Collier of California bought it in 1904. He used it for a couple of years, sold it, and bought a new Ford. No. 420 changed hands frequently until 1907 when it was bought by one Edmund Jacobs living near Ramona in the heart of the mountains. He drove it for several years in the roughest kind of work. Then he bought a new Ford and sold his old one. By 1915 No. 420 had passed into the hands of a man named Cantello who took out the motor, hitched it to a water pump, rigged up shafts on the chassis and now, while the motor chugs away at the pumping of water, the chassis drawn by a burro acts as a buggy. The moral, of course, is that you can dissect a Ford but you cannot kill it. In our first advertisement we said: Our purpose is to construct and market an automobile specially designed for everyday wear and tear--business, professional, and family use; an automobile which will attain to a sufficient speed to satisfy the average person without acquiring any of those breakneck velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all-around convenience, and--last but not least--its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the reach of many thousands who could not think of paying the comparatively fabulous prices asked for most machines. And these are the points we emphasized: Good material. Simplicity--most of the cars at that time required considerable skill in their management. The engine. The ignition--which was furnished by two sets of six dry cell batteries. The automatic oiling. The simplicity and the ease of control of the transmission, which was of the planetary type. The workmanship. We did not make the pleasure appeal. We never have. In its first advertising we showed that a motor car was a utility. We said: We often hear quoted the old proverb, "Time is money"--and yet how few business and professional men act as if they really believed its truth. Men who are constantly complaining of shortage of time and lamenting the fewness of days in the week--men to whom every five minutes wasted means a dollar thrown away--men to whom five minutes' delay sometimes means the loss of many dollars--will yet depend on the haphazard, uncomfortable, and limited means of transportation afforded by street cars, etc., when the investment of an exceedingly moderate sum in the purchase of a perfected, efficient, high-grade automobile would cut out anxiety and unpunctuality and provide a luxurious means of travel ever at your beck and call. Always ready, always sure. Built to save you time and consequent money. Built to take you anywhere you want to go and bring you back again on time. Built to add to your reputation for punctuality; to keep your customers good-humoured and in a buying mood. Built for business or pleasure--just as you say. Built also for the good of your health--to carry you "jarlessly" over any kind of half decent roads, to refresh your brain with the luxury of much "out-doorness" and your lungs with the "tonic of tonics"--the right kind of atmosphere. It is your say, too, when it comes to speed. You can--if you choose--loiter lingeringly through shady avenues or you can press down on the foot-lever until all the scenery looks alike to you and you have to keep your eyes skinned to count the milestones as they pass. I am giving the gist of this advertisement to show that, from the beginning, we were looking to providing service--we never bothered with a "sporting car." The business went along almost as by magic. The cars gained a reputation for standing up. They were tough, they were simple, and they were well made. I was working on my design for a universal single model but I had not settled the designs nor had we the money to build and equip the proper kind of plant for manufacturing. I had not the money to discover the very best and lightest materials. We still had to accept the materials that the market offered--we got the best to be had but we had no facilities for the scientific investigation of materials or for original research. My associates were not convinced that it was possible to restrict our cars to a single model. The automobile trade was following the old bicycle trade, in which every manufacturer thought it necessary to bring out a new model each year and to make it so unlike all previous models that those who had bought the former models would want to get rid of the old and buy the new. That was supposed to be good business. It is the same idea that women submit to in their clothing and hats. That is not service--it seeks only to provide something new, not something better. It is extraordinary how firmly rooted is the notion that business--continuous selling--depends not on satisfying the customer once and for all, but on first getting his money for one article and then persuading him he ought to buy a new and different one. The plan which I then had in the back of my head but to which we were not then sufficiently advanced to give expression, was that, when a model was settled upon then every improvement on that model should be interchangeable with the old model, so that a car should never get out of date. It is my ambition to have every piece of machinery, or other non-consumable product that I turn out, so strong and so well made that no one ought ever to have to buy a second one. A good machine of any kind ought to last as long as a good watch. In the second year we scattered our energies among three models. We made a four-cylinder touring car, "Model B," which sold for two thousand dollars; "Model C," which was a slightly improved "Model A" and sold at fifty dollars more than the former price; and "Model F," a touring car which sold for a thousand dollars. That is, we scattered our energy and increased prices--and therefore we sold fewer cars than in the first year. The sales were 1,695 cars. That "Model B"--the first four-cylinder car for general road use--had to be advertised. Winning a race or making a record was then the best kind of advertising. So I fixed up the "Arrow," the twin of the old "999"--in fact practically remade it--and a week before the New York Automobile show I drove it myself over a surveyed mile straightaway on the ice. I shall never forget that race. The ice seemed smooth enough, so smooth that if I had called off the trial we should have secured an immense amount of the wrong kind of advertising, but instead of being smooth, that ice was seamed with fissures which I knew were going to mean trouble the moment I got up speed. But there was nothing to do but go through with the trial, and I let the old "Arrow" out. At every fissure the car leaped into the air. I never knew how it was coming down. When I wasn't in the air, I was skidding, but somehow I stayed top side up and on the course, making a record that went all over the world! That put "Model B" on the map--but not enough on to overcome the price advances. No stunt and no advertising will sell an article for any length of time. Business is not a game. The moral is coming. Our little wooden shop had, with the business we were doing, become totally inadequate, and in 1906 we took out of our working capital sufficient funds to build a three-story plant at the corner of Piquette and Beaubien streets--which for the first time gave us real manufacturing facilities. We began to make and to assemble quite a number of the parts, although still we were principally an assembling shop. In 1905-1906 we made only two models--one the four-cylinder car at $2,000 and another touring car at $1,000, both being the models of the previous year--and our sales dropped to 1,599 cars. Some said it was because we had not brought out new models. I thought it was because our cars were too expensive--they did not appeal to the 95 per cent. I changed the policy in the next year--having first acquired stock control. For 1906-1907 we entirely left off making touring cars and made three models of runabouts and roadsters, none of which differed materially from the other in manufacturing process or in component parts, but were somewhat different in appearance. The big thing was that the cheapest car sold for $600 and the most expensive for only $750, and right there came the complete demonstration of what price meant. We sold 8,423 cars--nearly five times as many as in our biggest previous year. Our banner week was that of May 15, 1908, when we assembled 311 cars in six working days. It almost swamped our facilities. The foreman had a tallyboard on which he chalked up each car as it was finished and turned over to the testers. The tallyboard was hardly equal to the task. On one day in the following June we assembled an even one hundred cars. In the next year we departed from the programme that had been so successful and I designed a big car--fifty horsepower, six cylinder--that would burn up the roads. We continued making our small cars, but the 1907 panic and the diversion to the more expensive model cut down the sales to 6,398 cars. We had been through an experimenting period of five years. The cars were beginning to be sold in Europe. The business, as an automobile business then went, was considered extraordinarily prosperous. We had plenty of money. Since the first year we have practically always had plenty of money. We sold for cash, we did not borrow money, and we sold directly to the purchaser. We had no bad debts and we kept within ourselves on every move. I have always kept well within my resources. I have never found it necessary to strain them, because, inevitably, if you give attention to work and service, the resources will increase more rapidly than you can devise ways and means of disposing of them. We were careful in the selection of our salesmen. At first there was great difficulty in getting good salesmen because the automobile trade was not supposed to be stable. It was supposed to be dealing in a luxury--in pleasure vehicles. We eventually appointed agents, selecting the very best men we could find, and then paying to them a salary larger than they could possibly earn in business for themselves. In the beginning we had not paid much in the way of salaries. We were feeling our way, but when we knew what our way was, we adopted the policy of paying the very highest reward for service and then insisting upon getting the highest service. Among the requirements for an agent we laid down the following: (1) A progressive, up-to-date man keenly alive to the possibilities of business. (2) A suitable place of business clean and dignified in appearance. (3) A stock of parts sufficient to make prompt replacements and keep in active service every Ford car in his territory. (4) An adequately equipped repair shop which has in it the right machinery for every necessary repair and adjustment. (5) Mechanics who are thoroughly familiar with the construction and operation of Ford cars. (6) A comprehensive bookkeeping system and a follow-up sales system, so that it may be instantly apparent what is the financial status of the various departments of his business, the condition and size of his stock, the present owners of cars, and the future prospects. (7) Absolute cleanliness throughout every department. There must be no unwashed windows, dusty furniture, dirty floors. (8) A suitable display sign. (9) The adoption of policies which will ensure absolutely square dealing and the highest character of business ethics. And this is the general instruction that was issued: A dealer or a salesman ought to have the name of every possible automobile buyer in his territory, including all those who have never given the matter a thought. He should then personally solicit by visitation if possible--by correspondence at the least--every man on that list and then making necessary memoranda, know the automobile situation as related to every resident so solicited. If your territory is too large to permit this, you have too much territory. The way was not easy. We were harried by a big suit brought against the company to try to force us into line with an association of automobile manufacturers, who were operating under the false principle that there was only a limited market for automobiles and that a monopoly of that market was essential. This was the famous Selden Patent suit. At times the support of our defense severely strained our resources. Mr. Selden, who has but recently died, had little to do with the suit. It was the association which sought a monopoly under the patent. The situation was this: George B. Selden, a patent attorney, filed an application as far back as 1879 for a patent the object of which was stated to be "The production of a safe, simple, and cheap road locomotive, light in weight, easy to control, possessed of sufficient power to overcome an ordinary inclination." This application was kept alive in the Patent Office, by methods which are perfectly legal, until 1895, when the patent was granted. In 1879, when the application was filed, the automobile was practically unknown to the general public, but by the time the patent was issued everybody was familiar with self-propelled vehicles, and most of the men, including myself, who had been for years working on motor propulsion, were surprised to learn that what we had made practicable was covered by an application of years before, although the applicant had kept his idea merely as an idea. He had done nothing to put it into practice. The specific claims under the patent were divided into six groups and I think that not a single one of them was a really new idea even in 1879 when the application was filed. The Patent Office allowed a combination and issued a so-called "combination patent" deciding that the combination (a) of a carriage with its body machinery and steering wheel, with the (b) propelling mechanism clutch and gear, and finally (c) the engine, made a valid patent. With all of that we were not concerned. I believed that my engine had nothing whatsoever in common with what Selden had in mind. The powerful combination of manufacturers who called themselves the "licensed manufacturers" because they operated under licenses from the patentee, brought suit against us as soon as we began to be a factor in motor production. The suit dragged on. It was intended to scare us out of business. We took volumes of testimony, and the blow came on September 15, 1909, when Judge Hough rendered an opinion in the United States District Court finding against us. Immediately that Licensed Association began to advertise, warning prospective purchasers against our cars. They had done the same thing in 1903 at the start of the suit, when it was thought that we could be put out of business. I had implicit confidence that eventually we should win our suit. I simply knew that we were right, but it was a considerable blow to get the first decision against us, for we believed that many buyers--even though no injunction was issued against us--would be frightened away from buying because of the threats of court action against individual owners. The idea was spread that if the suit finally went against me, every man who owned a Ford car would be prosecuted. Some of my more enthusiastic opponents, I understand, gave it out privately that there would be criminal as well as civil suits and that a man buying a Ford car might as well be buying a ticket to jail. We answered with an advertisement for which we took four pages in the principal newspapers all over the country. We set out our case--we set out our confidence in victory--and in conclusion said: In conclusion we beg to state if there are any prospective automobile buyers who are at all intimidated by the claims made by our adversaries that we will give them, in addition to the protection of the Ford Motor Company with its some $6,000,000.00 of assets, an individual bond backed by a Company of more than $6,000,000.00 more of assets, so that each and every individual owner of a Ford car will be protected until at least $12,000,000.00 of assets have been wiped out by those who desire to control and monopolize this wonderful industry. The bond is yours for the asking, so do not allow yourself to be sold inferior cars at extravagant prices because of any statement made by this "Divine" body. N. B.--This fight is not being waged by the Ford Motor Company without the advice and counsel of the ablest patent attorneys of the East and West. We thought that the bond would give assurance to the buyers--that they needed confidence. They did not. We sold more than eighteen thousand cars--nearly double the output of the previous year--and I think about fifty buyers asked for bonds--perhaps it was less than that. As a matter of fact, probably nothing so well advertised the Ford car and the Ford Motor Company as did this suit. It appeared that we were the under dog and we had the public's sympathy. The association had seventy million dollars--we at the beginning had not half that number of thousands. I never had a doubt as to the outcome, but nevertheless it was a sword hanging over our heads that we could as well do without. Prosecuting that suit was probably one of the most shortsighted acts that any group of American business men has ever combined to commit. Taken in all its sidelights, it forms the best possible example of joining unwittingly to kill a trade. I regard it as most fortunate for the automobile makers of the country that we eventually won, and the association ceased to be a serious factor in the business. By 1908, however, in spite of this suit, we had come to a point where it was possible to announce and put into fabrication the kind of car that I wanted to build. CHAPTER IV THE SECRET OF MANUFACTURING AND SERVING Now I am not outlining the career of the Ford Motor Company for any personal reason. I am not saying: "Go thou and do likewise." What I am trying to emphasize is that the ordinary way of doing business is not the best way. I am coming to the point of my entire departure from the ordinary methods. From this point dates the extraordinary success of the company. We had been fairly following the custom of the trade. Our automobile was less complex than any other. We had no outside money in the concern. But aside from these two points we did not differ materially from the other automobile companies, excepting that we had been somewhat more successful and had rigidly pursued the policy of taking all cash discounts, putting our profits back into the business, and maintaining a large cash balance. We entered cars in all of the races. We advertised and we pushed our sales. Outside of the simplicity of the construction of the car, our main difference in design was that we made no provision for the purely "pleasure car." We were just as much a pleasure car as any other car on the market, but we gave no attention to purely luxury features. We would do special work for a buyer, and I suppose that we would have made a special car at a price. We were a prosperous company. We might easily have sat down and said: "Now we have arrived. Let us hold what we have got." Indeed, there was some disposition to take this stand. Some of the stockholders were seriously alarmed when our production reached one hundred cars a day. They wanted to do something to stop me from ruining the company, and when I replied to the effect that one hundred cars a day was only a trifle and that I hoped before long to make a thousand a day, they were inexpressibly shocked and I understand seriously contemplated court action. If I had followed the general opinion of my associates I should have kept the business about as it was, put our funds into a fine administration building, tried to make bargains with such competitors as seemed too active, made new designs from time to time to catch the fancy of the public, and generally have passed on into the position of a quiet, respectable citizen with a quiet, respectable business. The temptation to stop and hang on to what one has is quite natural. I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have never felt the urge myself but I can comprehend what it is--although I think that a man who retires ought entirely to get out of a business. There is a disposition to retire and retain control. It was, however, no part of my plan to do anything of that sort. I regarded our progress merely as an invitation to do more--as an indication that we had reached a place where we might begin to perform a real service. I had been planning every day through these years toward a universal car. The public had given its reactions to the various models. The cars in service, the racing, and the road tests gave excellent guides as to the changes that ought to be made, and even by 1905 I had fairly in mind the specifications of the kind of car I wanted to build. But I lacked the material to give strength without weight. I came across that material almost by accident. In 1905 I was at a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our "Model K"--the high-powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I gave the stem to my assistant. "Find out all about this," I told him. "That is the kind of material we ought to have in our cars." He found eventually that it was a French steel and that there was vanadium in it. We tried every steel maker in America--not one could make vanadium steel. I sent to England for a man who understood how to make the steel commercially. The next thing was to get a plant to turn it out. That was another problem. Vanadium requires 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The ordinary furnace could not go beyond 2,700 degrees. I found a small steel company in Canton, Ohio. I offered to guarantee them against loss if they would run a heat for us. They agreed. The first heat was a failure. Very little vanadium remained in the steel. I had them try again, and the second time the steel came through. Until then we had been forced to be satisfied with steel running between 60,000 and 70,000 pounds tensile strength. With vanadium, the strength went up to 170,000 pounds. Having vanadium in hand I pulled apart our models and tested in detail to determine what kind of steel was best for every part--whether we wanted a hard steel, a tough steel, or an elastic steel. We, for the first time I think, in the history of any large construction, determined scientifically the exact quality of the steel. As a result we then selected twenty different types of steel for the various steel parts. About ten of these were vanadium. Vanadium was used wherever strength and lightness were required. Of course they are not all the same kind of vanadium steel. The other elements vary according to whether the part is to stand hard wear or whether it needs spring--in short, according to what it needs. Before these experiments I believe that not more than four different grades of steel had ever been used in automobile construction. By further experimenting, especially in the direction of heat treating, we have been able still further to increase the strength of the steel and therefore to reduce the weight of the car. In 1910 the French Department of Commerce and Industry took one of our steering spindle connecting rod yokes--selecting it as a vital unit--and tried it against a similar part from what they considered the best French car, and in every test our steel proved the stronger. The vanadium steel disposed of much of the weight. The other requisites of a universal car I had already worked out and many of them were in practice. The design had to balance. Men die because a part gives out. Machines wreck themselves because some parts are weaker than others. Therefore, a part of the problem in designing a universal car was to have as nearly as possible all parts of equal strength considering their purpose--to put a motor in a one-horse shay. Also it had to be fool proof. This was difficult because a gasoline motor is essentially a delicate instrument and there is a wonderful opportunity for any one who has a mind that way to mess it up. I adopted this slogan: "When one of my cars breaks down I know I am to blame." From the day the first motor car appeared on the streets it had to me appeared to be a necessity. It was this knowledge and assurance that led me to build to the one end--a car that would meet the wants of the multitudes. All my efforts were then and still are turned to the production of one car--one model. And, year following year, the pressure was, and still is, to improve and refine and make better, with an increasing reduction in price. The universal car had to have these attributes: (1) Quality in material to give service in use. Vanadium steel is the strongest, toughest, and most lasting of steels. It forms the foundation and super-structure of the cars. It is the highest quality steel in this respect in the world, regardless of price. (2) Simplicity in operation--because the masses are not mechanics. (3) Power in sufficient quantity. (4) Absolute reliability--because of the varied uses to which the cars would be put and the variety of roads over which they would travel. (5) Lightness. With the Ford there are only 7.95 pounds to be carried by each cubic inch of piston displacement. This is one of the reasons why Ford cars are "always going," wherever and whenever you see them--through sand and mud, through slush, snow, and water, up hills, across fields and roadless plains. (6) Control--to hold its speed always in hand, calmly and safely meeting every emergency and contingency either in the crowded streets of the city or on dangerous roads. The planetary transmission of the Ford gave this control and anybody could work it. That is the "why" of the saying: "Anybody can drive a Ford." It can turn around almost anywhere. (7) The more a motor car weighs, naturally the more fuel and lubricants are used in the driving; the lighter the weight, the lighter the expense of operation. The light weight of the Ford car in its early years was used as an argument against it. Now that is all changed. The design which I settled upon was called "Model T." The important feature of the new model--which, if it were accepted, as I thought it would be, I intended to make the only model and then start into real production--was its simplicity. There were but four constructional units in the car--the power plant, the frame, the front axle, and the rear axle. All of these were easily accessible and they were designed so that no special skill would be required for their repair or replacement. I believed then, although I said very little about it because of the novelty of the idea, that it ought to be possible to have parts so simple and so inexpensive that the menace of expensive hand repair work would be entirely eliminated. The parts could be made so cheaply that it would be less expensive to buy new ones than to have old ones repaired. They could be carried in hardware shops just as nails or bolts are carried. I thought that it was up to me as the designer to make the car so completely simple that no one could fail to understand it. That works both ways and applies to everything. The less complex an article, the easier it is to make, the cheaper it may be sold, and therefore the greater number may be sold. It is not necessary to go into the technical details of the construction but perhaps this is as good a place as any to review the various models, because "Model T" was the last of the models and the policy which it brought about took this business out of the ordinary line of business. Application of the same idea would take any business out of the ordinary run. I designed eight models in all before "Model T." They were: "Model A," "Model B," "Model C," "Model F," "Model N," "Model R," "Model S," and "Model K." Of these, Models "A," "C," and "F" had two-cylinder opposed horizontal motors. In "Model A" the motor was at the rear of the driver's seat. In all of the other models it was in a hood in front. Models "B," "N," "R," and "S" had motors of the four-cylinder vertical type. "Model K" had six cylinders. "Model A" developed eight horsepower. "Model B" developed twenty-four horsepower with a 4-1/2-inch cylinder and a 5-inch stroke. The highest horsepower was in "Model K," the six-cylinder car, which developed forty horsepower. The largest cylinders were those of "Model B." The smallest were in Models "N," "R," and "S" which were 3-3/4 inches in diameter with a 3-3/8-inch stroke. "Model T" has a 3-3/4-inch cylinder with a 4-inch stroke. The ignition was by dry batteries in all excepting "Model B," which had storage batteries, and in "Model K" which had both battery and magneto. In the present model, the magneto is a part of the power plant and is built in. The clutch in the first four models was of the cone type; in the last four and in the present model, of the multiple disc type. The transmission in all of the cars has been planetary. "Model A" had a chain drive. "Model B" had a shaft drive. The next two models had chain drives. Since then all of the cars have had shaft drives. "Model A" had a 72-inch wheel base. Model "B," which was an extremely good car, had 92 inches. "Model K" had 120 inches. "Model C" had 78 inches. The others had 84 inches, and the present car has 100 inches. In the first five models all of the equipment was extra. The next three were sold with a partial equipment. The present car is sold with full equipment. Model "A" weighed 1,250 pounds. The lightest cars were Models "N" and "R." They weighed 1,050 pounds, but they were both runabouts. The heaviest car was the six-cylinder, which weighed 2,000 pounds. The present car weighs 1,200 lbs. The "Model T" had practically no features which were not contained in some one or other of the previous models. Every detail had been fully tested in practice. There was no guessing as to whether or not it would be a successful model. It had to be. There was no way it could escape being so, for it had not been made in a day. It contained all that I was then able to put into a motor car plus the material, which for the first time I was able to obtain. We put out "Model T" for the season 1908-1909. The company was then five years old. The original factory space had been .28 acre. We had employed an average of 311 people in the first year, built 1,708 cars, and had one branch house. In 1908, the factory space had increased to 2.65 acres and we owned the building. The average number of employees had increased to 1,908. We built 6,181 cars and had fourteen branch houses. It was a prosperous business. During the season 1908-1909 we continued to make Models "R" and "S," four-cylinder runabouts and roadsters, the models that had previously been so successful, and which sold at $700 and $750. But "Model T" swept them right out. We sold 10,607 cars--a larger number than any manufacturer had ever sold. The price for the touring car was $850. On the same chassis we mounted a town car at $1,000, a roadster at $825, a coupe at $950, and a landaulet at $950. This season demonstrated conclusively to me that it was time to put the new policy in force. The salesmen, before I had announced the policy, were spurred by the great sales to think that even greater sales might be had if only we had more models. It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it. The salesmen were insistent on increasing the line. They listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If there is any defect in service then that must be instantly and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not merely a personal whim that is being voiced. Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy his every requirement--that is, of course, provided what they have does satisfy these requirements. Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be "Model T," and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling people could not of course see the advantages that a single model would bring about in production. More than that, they did not particularly care. They thought that our production was good enough as it was and there was a very decided opinion that lowering the sales price would hurt sales, that the people who wanted quality would be driven away and that there would be none to replace them. There was very little conception of the motor industry. A motor car was still regarded as something in the way of a luxury. The manufacturers did a good deal to spread this idea. Some clever persons invented the name "pleasure car" and the advertising emphasized the pleasure features. The sales people had ground for their objections and particularly when I made the following announcement: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one--and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces." This announcement was received not without pleasure. The general comment was: "If Ford does that he will be out of business in six months." The impression was that a good car could not be built at a low price, and that, anyhow, there was no use in building a low-priced car because only wealthy people were in the market for cars. The 1908-1909 sales of more than ten thousand cars had convinced me that we needed a new factory. We already had a big modern factory--the Piquette Street plant. It was as good as, perhaps a little better than, any automobile factory in the country. But I did not see how it was going to care for the sales and production that were inevitable. So I bought sixty acres at Highland Park, which was then considered away out in the country from Detroit. The amount of ground bought and the plans for a bigger factory than the world has ever seen were opposed. The question was already being asked: "How soon will Ford blow up?" Nobody knows how many thousand times it has been asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to grasp that a principle rather than an individual is at work, and the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious. For 1909-1910, in order to pay for the new land and buildings, I slightly raised the prices. This is perfectly justifiable and results in a benefit, not an injury, to the purchaser. I did exactly the same thing a few years ago--or rather, in that case I did not lower the price as is my annual custom, in order to build the River Rouge plant. The extra money might in each case have been had by borrowing, but then we should have had a continuing charge upon the business and all subsequent cars would have had to bear this charge. The price of all the models was increased $100, with the exception of the roadster, which was increased only $75 and of the landaulet and town car, which were increased $150 and $200 respectively. We sold 18,664 cars, and then for 1910-1911, with the new facilities, I cut the touring car from $950 to $780 and we sold 34,528 cars. That is the beginning of the steady reduction in the price of the cars in the face of ever-increasing cost of materials and ever-higher wages. Contrast the year 1908 with the year 1911. The factory space increased from 2.65 to 32 acres. The average number of employees from 1,908 to 4,110, and the cars built from a little over six thousand to nearly thirty-five thousand. You will note that men were not employed in proportion to the output. We were, almost overnight it seems, in great production. How did all this come about? Simply through the application of an inevitable principle. By the application of intelligently directed power and machinery. In a little dark shop on a side street an old man had laboured for years making axe handles. Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper. Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average product was eight handles a week, for which he received a dollar and a half each. And often some of these were unsaleable--because the balance was not true. To-day you can buy a better axe handle, made by machinery, for a few cents. And you need not worry about the balance. They are all alike--and every one is perfect. Modern methods applied in a big way have not only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of their former cost--but they have immensely improved the product. It was the application of these same methods to the making of the Ford car that at the very start lowered the price and heightened the quality. We just developed an idea. The nucleus of a business may be an idea. That is, an inventor or a thoughtful workman works out a new and better way to serve some established human need; the idea commends itself, and people want to avail themselves of it. In this way a single individual may prove, through his idea or discovery, the nucleus of a business. But the creation of the body and bulk of that business is shared by everyone who has anything to do with it. No manufacturer can say: "I built this business"--if he has required the help of thousands of men in building it. It is a joint production. Everyone employed in it has contributed something to it. By working and producing they make it possible for the purchasing world to keep coming to that business for the type of service it provides, and thus they help establish a custom, a trade, a habit which supplies them with a livelihood. That is the way our company grew and just how I shall start explaining in the next chapter. In the meantime, the company had become world-wide. We had branches in London and in Australia. We were shipping to every part of the world, and in England particularly we were beginning to be as well known as in America. The introduction of the car in England was somewhat difficult on account of the failure of the American bicycle. Because the American bicycle had not been suited to English uses it was taken for granted and made a point of by the distributors that no American vehicle could appeal to the British market. Two "Model A's" found their way to England in 1903. The newspapers refused to notice them. The automobile agents refused to take the slightest interest. It was rumoured that the principal components of its manufacture were string and hoop wire and that a buyer would be lucky if it held together for a fortnight! In the first year about a dozen cars in all were used; the second was only a little better. And I may say as to the reliability of that "Model A" that most of them after nearly twenty years are still in some kind of service in England. In 1905 our agent entered a "Model C" in the Scottish Reliability Trials. In those days reliability runs were more popular in England than motor races. Perhaps there was no inkling that after all an automobile was not merely a toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The Ford came through with only one involuntary stop against it. That started the Ford sales in England. In that same year Ford taxicabs were placed in London for the first time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up. The cars went into every endurance and reliability test and won every one of them. The Brighton dealer had ten Fords driven over the South Downs for two days in a kind of steeplechase and every one of them came through. As a result six hundred cars were sold that year. In 1911 Henry Alexander drove a "Model T" to the top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 feet. That year 14,060 cars were sold in England, and it has never since been necessary to stage any kind of a stunt. We eventually opened our own factory at Manchester; at first it was purely an assembling plant. But as the years have gone by we have progressively made more and more of the car. CHAPTER V GETTING INTO PRODUCTION If a device would save in time just 10 per cent. or increase results 10 per cent., then its absence is always a 10 per cent. tax. If the time of a person is worth fifty cents an hour, a 10 per cent. saving is worth five cents an hour. If the owner of a skyscraper could increase his income 10 per cent., he would willingly pay half the increase just to know how. The reason why he owns a skyscraper is that science has proved that certain materials, used in a given way, can save space and increase rental incomes. A building thirty stories high needs no more ground space than one five stories high. Getting along with the old-style architecture costs the five-story man the income of twenty-five floors. Save ten steps a day for each of twelve thousand employees and you will have saved fifty miles of wasted motion and misspent energy. Those are the principles on which the production of my plant was built up. They all come practically as of course. In the beginning we tried to get machinists. As the necessity for production increased it became apparent not only that enough machinists were not to be had, but also that skilled men were not necessary in production, and out of this grew a principle that I later want to present in full. It is self-evident that a majority of the people in the world are not mentally--even if they are physically--capable of making a good living. That is, they are not capable of furnishing with their own hands a sufficient quantity of the goods which this world needs to be able to exchange their unaided product for the goods which they need. I have heard it said, in fact I believe it is quite a current thought, that we have taken skill out of work. We have not. We have put in skill. We have put a higher skill into planning, management, and tool building, and the results of that skill are enjoyed by the man who is not skilled. This I shall later enlarge on. We have to recognize the unevenness in human mental equipments. If every job in our place required skill the place would never have existed. Sufficiently skilled men to the number needed could not have been trained in a hundred years. A million men working by hand could not even approximate our present daily output. No one could manage a million men. But more important than that, the product of the unaided hands of those million men could not be sold at a price in consonance with buying power. And even if it were possible to imagine such an aggregation and imagine its management and correlation, just think of the area that it would have to occupy! How many of the men would be engaged, not in producing, but in merely carrying from place to place what the other men had produced? I cannot see how under such conditions the men could possibly be paid more than ten or twenty cents a day--for of course it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages. The more economical methods of production did not begin all at once. They began gradually--just as we began gradually to make our own parts. "Model T" was the first motor that we made ourselves. The great economies began in assembling and then extended to other sections so that, while to-day we have skilled mechanics in plenty, they do not produce automobiles--they make it easy for others to produce them. Our skilled men are the tool makers, the experimental workmen, the machinists, and the pattern makers. They are as good as any men in the world--so good, indeed, that they should not be wasted in doing that which the machines they contrive can do better. The rank and file of men come to us unskilled; they learn their jobs within a few hours or a few days. If they do not learn within that time they will never be of any use to us. These men are, many of them, foreigners, and all that is required before they are taken on is that they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy. They do not have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs that require great physical strength--although they are rapidly lessening; we have other jobs that require no strength whatsoever--jobs which, as far as strength is concerned, might be attended to by a child of three. It is not possible, without going deeply into technical processes, to present the whole development of manufacturing, step by step, in the order in which each thing came about. I do not know that this could be done, because something has been happening nearly every day and nobody can keep track. Take at random a number of the changes. From them it is possible not only to gain some idea of what will happen when this world is put on a production basis, but also to see how much more we pay for things than we ought to, and how much lower wages are than they ought to be, and what a vast field remains to be explored. The Ford Company is only a little way along on the journey. A Ford car contains about five thousand parts--that is counting screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are fairly bulky and others are almost the size of watch parts. In our first assembling we simply started to put a car together at a spot on the floor and workmen brought to it the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way that one builds a house. When we started to make parts it was natural to create a single department of the factory to make that part, but usually one workman performed all of the operations necessary on a small part. The rapid press of production made it necessary to devise plans of production that would avoid having the workers falling over one another. The undirected worker spends more of his time walking about for materials and tools than he does in working; he gets small pay because pedestrianism is not a highly paid line. The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two general principles in all operations--that a man shall never have to take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stoop over. The principles of assembly are these: (1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing. (2) Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place--which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand--and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his operation. (3) Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances. The net result of the application of these principles is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduction of his movements to a minimum. He does as nearly as possible only one thing with only one movement. The assembling of the chassis is, from the point of view of the non-mechanical mind, our most interesting and perhaps best known operation, and at one time it was an exceedingly important operation. We now ship out the parts for assembly at the point of distribution. Along about April 1, 1913, we first tried the experiment of an assembly line. We tried it on assembling the flywheel magneto. We try everything in a little way first--we will rip out anything once we discover a better way, but we have to know absolutely that the new way is going to be better than the old before we do anything drastic. I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef. We had previously assembled the fly-wheel magneto in the usual method. With one workman doing a complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations; that cut down the assembly time to thirteen minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised the height of the line eight inches--this was in 1914--and cut the time to seven minutes. Further experimenting with the speed that the work should move at cut the time down to five minutes. In short, the result is this: by the aid of scientific study one man is now able to do somewhat more than four did only a comparatively few years ago. That line established the efficiency of the method and we now use it everywhere. The assembling of the motor, formerly done by one man, is now divided into eighty-four operations--those men do the work that three times their number formerly did. In a short time we tried out the plan on the chassis. About the best we had done in stationary chassis assembling was an average of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experiment of drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers traveled with the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along the line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we elevated the assembly line. We had adopted the policy of "man-high" work; we had one line twenty-six and three quarter inches and another twenty-four and one half inches from the floor--to suit squads of different heights. The waist-high arrangement and a further subdivision of work so that each man had fewer movements cut down the labour time per chassis to one hour thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then assembled in the line. The body was placed on in "John R. Street"--the famous street that runs through our Highland Park factories. Now the line assembles the whole car. It must not be imagined, however, that all this worked out as quickly as it sounds. The speed of the moving work had to be carefully tried out; in the fly-wheel magneto we first had a speed of sixty inches per minute. That was too fast. Then we tried eighteen inches per minute. That was too slow. Finally we settled on forty-four inches per minute. The idea is that a man must not be hurried in his work--he must have every second necessary but not a single unnecessary second. We have worked out speeds for each assembly, for the success of the chassis assembly caused us gradually to overhaul our entire method of manufacturing and to put all assembling in mechanically driven lines. The chassis assembling line, for instance, goes at a pace of six feet per minute; the front axle assembly line goes at one hundred eighty-nine inches per minute. In the chassis assembling are forty-five separate operations or stations. The first men fasten four mud-guard brackets to the chassis frame; the motor arrives on the tenth operation and so on in detail. Some men do only one or two small operations, others do more. The man who places a part does not fasten it--the part may not be fully in place until after several operations later. The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not tighten it. On operation number thirty-four the budding motor gets its gasoline; it has previously received lubrication; on operation number forty-four the radiator is filled with water, and on operation number forty-five the car drives out onto John R. Street. Essentially the same ideas have been applied to the assembling of the motor. In October, 1913, it required nine hours and fifty-four minutes of labour time to assemble one motor; six months later, by the moving assembly method, this time had been reduced to five hours and fifty-six minutes. Every piece of work in the shops moves; it may move on hooks on overhead chains going to assembly in the exact order in which the parts are required; it may travel on a moving platform, or it may go by gravity, but the point is that there is no lifting or trucking of anything other than materials. Materials are brought in on small trucks or trailers operated by cut-down Ford chassis, which are sufficiently mobile and quick to get in and out of any aisle where they may be required to go. No workman has anything to do with moving or lifting anything. That is all in a separate department--the department of transportation. We started assembling a motor car in a single factory. Then as we began to make parts, we began to departmentalize so that each department would do only one thing. As the factory is now organized each department makes only a single part or assembles a part. A department is a little factory in itself. The part comes into it as raw material or as a casting, goes through the sequence of machines and heat treatments, or whatever may be required, and leaves that department finished. It was only because of transport ease that the departments were grouped together when we started to manufacture. I did not know that such minute divisions would be possible; but as our production grew and departments multiplied, we actually changed from making automobiles to making parts. Then we found that we had made another new discovery, which was that by no means all of the parts had to be made in one factory. It was not really a discovery--it was something in the nature of going around in a circle to my first manufacturing when I bought the motors and probably ninety per cent. of the parts. When we began to make our own parts we practically took for granted that they all had to be made in the one factory--that there was some special virtue in having a single roof over the manufacture of the entire car. We have now developed away from this. If we build any more large factories, it will be only because the making of a single part must be in such tremendous volume as to require a large unit. I hope that in the course of time the big Highland Park plant will be doing only one or two things. The casting has already been taken away from it and has gone to the River Rouge plant. So now we are on our way back to where we started from--excepting that, instead of buying our parts on the outside, we are beginning to make them in our own factories on the outside. This is a development which holds exceptional consequences, for it means, as I shall enlarge in a later chapter, that highly standardized, highly subdivided industry need no longer become concentrated in large plants with all the inconveniences of transportation and housing that hamper large plants. A thousand or five hundred men ought to be enough in a single factory; then there would be no problem of transporting them to work or away from work and there would be no slums or any of the other unnatural ways of living incident to the overcrowding that must take place if the workmen are to live within reasonable distances of a very large plant. Highland Park now has five hundred departments. Down at our Piquette plant we had only eighteen departments, and formerly at Highland Park we had only one hundred and fifty departments. This illustrates how far we are going in the manufacture of parts. Hardly a week passes without some improvement being made somewhere in machine or process, and sometimes this is made in defiance of what is called "the best shop practice." I recall that a machine manufacturer was once called into conference on the building of a special machine. The specifications called for an output of two hundred per hour. "This is a mistake," said the manufacturer, "you mean two hundred a day--no machine can be forced to two hundred an hour." The company officer sent for the man who had designed the machine and they called his attention to the specification. He said: "Yes, what about it?" "It can't be done," said the manufacturer positively, "no machine built will do that--it is out of the question." "Out of the question!" exclaimed the engineer, "if you will come down to the main floor you will see one doing it; we built one to see if it could be done and now we want more like it." The factory keeps no record of experiments. The foremen and superintendents remember what has been done. If a certain method has formerly been tried and failed, somebody will remember it--but I am not particularly anxious for the men to remember what someone else has tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done. That is one of the troubles with extensive records. If you keep on recording all of your failures you will shortly have a list showing that there is nothing left for you to try--whereas it by no means follows because one man has failed in a certain method that another man will not succeed. They told us we could not cast gray iron by our endless chain method and I believe there is a record of failures. But we are doing it. The man who carried through our work either did not know or paid no attention to the previous figures. Likewise we were told that it was out of the question to pour the hot iron directly from the blast furnace into mould. The usual method is to run the iron into pigs, let them season for a time, and then remelt them for casting. But at the River Rouge plant we are casting directly from cupolas that are filled from the blast furnaces. Then, too, a record of failures--particularly if it is a dignified and well-authenticated record--deters a young man from trying. We get some of our best results from letting fools rush in where angels fear to tread. None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert--because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. The right kind of experience, the right kind of technical training, ought to enlarge the mind and reduce the number of impossibilities. It unfortunately does nothing of the kind. Most technical training and the average of that which we call experience, provide a record of previous failures and, instead of these failures being taken for what they are worth, they are taken as absolute bars to progress. If some man, calling himself an authority, says that this or that cannot be done, then a horde of unthinking followers start the chorus: "It can't be done." Take castings. Castings has always been a wasteful process and is so old that it has accumulated many traditions which make improvements extraordinarily difficult to bring about. I believe one authority on moulding declared--before we started our experiments--that any man who said he could reduce costs within half a year wrote himself down as a fraud. Our foundry used to be much like other foundries. When we cast the first "Model T" cylinders in 1910, everything in the place was done by hand; shovels and wheelbarrows abounded. The work was then either skilled or unskilled; we had moulders and we had labourers. Now we have about five per cent. of thoroughly skilled moulders and core setters, but the remaining 95 per cent. are unskilled, or to put it more accurately, must be skilled in exactly one operation which the most stupid man can learn within two days. The moulding is all done by machinery. Each part which we have to cast has a unit or units of its own--according to the number required in the plan of production. The machinery of the unit is adapted to the single casting; thus the men in the unit each perform a single operation that is always the same. A unit consists of an overhead railway to which at intervals are hung little platforms for the moulds. Without going into technical details, let me say the making of the moulds and the cores, and the packing of the cores, are done with the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured at another point as the work moves, and by the time the mould in which the metal has been poured reaches the terminal, it is cool enough to start on its automatic way to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform is moving around for a new load. Take the development of the piston-rod assembly. Even under the old plan, this operation took only three minutes and did not seem to be one to bother about. There were two benches and twenty-eight men in all; they assembled one hundred seventy-five pistons and rods in a nine-hour day--which means just five seconds over three minutes each. There was no inspection, and many of the piston and rod assemblies came back from the motor assembling line as defective. It is a very simple operation. The workman pushed the pin out of the piston, oiled the pin, slipped the rod in place, put the pin through the rod and piston, tightened one screw, and opened another screw. That was the whole operation. The foreman, examining the operation, could not discover why it should take as much as three minutes. He analyzed the motions with a stop-watch. He found that four hours out of a nine-hour day were spent in walking. The assembler did not go off anywhere, but he had to shift his feet to gather in his materials and to push away his finished piece. In the whole task, each man performed six operations. The foreman devised a new plan; he split the operation into three divisions, put a slide on the bench and three men on each side of it, and an inspector at the end. Instead of one man performing the whole operation, one man then performed only one third of the operation--he performed only as much as he could do without shifting his feet. They cut down the squad from twenty-eight to fourteen men. The former record for twenty-eight men was one hundred seventy-five assemblies a day. Now seven men turn out twenty-six hundred assemblies in eight hours. It is not necessary to calculate the savings there! Painting the rear axle assembly once gave some trouble. It used to be dipped by hand into a tank of enamel. This required several handlings and the services of two men. Now one man takes care of it all on a special machine, designed and built in the factory. The man now merely hangs the assembly on a moving chain which carries it up over the enamel tank, two levers then thrust thimbles over the ends of the ladle shaft, the paint tank rises six feet, immerses the axle, returns to position, and the axle goes on to the drying oven. The whole cycle of operations now takes just thirteen seconds. The radiator is a complex affair and soldering it used to be a matter of skill. There are ninety-five tubes in a radiator. Fitting and soldering these tubes in place is by hand a long operation, requiring both skill and patience. Now it is all done by a machine which will make twelve hundred radiator cores in eight hours; then they are soldered in place by being carried through a furnace by a conveyor. No tinsmith work and so no skill are required. We used to rivet the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic press operated by one man, who does nothing else, gets through five times as much work in a day as those twelve men did. In the Piquette plant the cylinder casting traveled four thousand feet in the course of finishing; now it travels only slightly over three hundred feet. There is no manual handling of material. There is not a single hand operation. If a machine can be made automatic, it is made automatic. Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way. At that, only about ten per cent. of our tools are special; the others are regular machines adjusted to the particular job. And they are placed almost side by side. We put more machinery per square foot of floor space than any other factory in the world--every foot of space not used carries an overhead expense. We want none of that waste. Yet there is all the room needed--no man has too much room and no man has too little room. Dividing and subdividing operations, keeping the work in motion--those are the keynotes of production. But also it is to be remembered that all the parts are designed so that they can be most easily made. And the saving? Although the comparison is not quite fair, it is startling. If at our present rate of production we employed the same number of men per car that we did when we began in 1903--and those men were only for assembly--we should to-day require a force of more than two hundred thousand. We have less than fifty thousand men on automobile production at our highest point of around four thousand cars a day! CHAPTER VI MACHINES AND MEN That which one has to fight hardest against in bringing together a large number of people to do work is excess organization and consequent red tape. To my mind there is no bent of mind more dangerous than that which is sometimes described as the "genius for organization." This usually results in the birth of a great big chart showing, after the fashion of a family tree, how authority ramifies. The tree is heavy with nice round berries, each of which bears the name of a man or of an office. Every man has a title and certain duties which are strictly limited by the circumference of his berry. If a straw boss wants to say something to the general superintendent, his message has to go through the sub-foreman, the foreman, the department head, and all the assistant superintendents, before, in the course of time, it reaches the general superintendent. Probably by that time what he wanted to talk about is already history. It takes about six weeks for the message of a man living in a berry on the lower left-hand corner of the chart to reach the president or chairman of the board, and if it ever does reach one of these august officials, it has by that time gathered to itself about a pound of criticisms, suggestions, and comments. Very few things are ever taken under "official consideration" until long after the time when they actually ought to have been done. The buck is passed to and fro and all responsibility is dodged by individuals--following the lazy notion that two heads are better than one. Now a business, in my way of thinking, is not a machine. It is a collection of people who are brought together to do work and not to write letters to one another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad for both men. When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done, then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no red tape. We make the individual responsibility complete. The workman is absolutely responsible for his work. The straw boss is responsible for the workmen under him. The foreman is responsible for his group. The department head is responsible for the department. The general superintendent is responsible for the whole factory. Every man has to know what is going on in his sphere. I say "general superintendent." There is no such formal title. One man is in charge of the factory and has been for years. He has two men with him, who, without in any way having their duties defined, have taken particular sections of the work to themselves. With them are about half a dozen other men in the nature of assistants, but without specific duties. They have all made jobs for themselves--but there are no limits to their jobs. They just work in where they best fit. One man chases stock and shortages. Another has grabbed inspection, and so on. This may seem haphazard, but it is not. A group of men, wholly intent upon getting work done, have no difficulty in seeing that the work is done. They do not get into trouble about the limits of authority, because they are not thinking of titles. If they had offices and all that, they would shortly be giving up their time to office work and to wondering why did they not have a better office than some other fellow. Because there are no titles and no limits of authority, there is no question of red tape or going over a man's head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so established has become this custom, that a foreman does not get sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of the factory. The workman rarely ever does so, because a foreman knows as well as he knows his own name that if he has been unjust it will be very quickly found out, and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The moment a man starts to swell with authority he is discovered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine. A large amount of labour unrest comes from the unjust exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions, and I am afraid that in far too many manufacturing institutions it is really not possible for a workman to get a square deal. The work and the work alone controls us. That is one of the reasons why we have no titles. Most men can swing a job, but they are floored by a title. The effect of a title is very peculiar. It has been used too much as a sign of emancipation from work. It is almost equivalent to a badge bearing the legend: "This man has nothing to do but regard himself as important and all others as inferior." Not only is a title often injurious to the wearer, but it has its effect on others as well. There is perhaps no greater single source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the fact that the title-bearers are not always the real leaders. Everybody acknowledges a real leader--a man who is fit to plan and command. And when you find a real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire of someone else what his title is. He doesn't boast about it. Titles in business have been greatly overdone and business has suffered. One of the bad features is the division of responsibility according to titles, which goes so far as to amount to a removal altogether of responsibility. Where responsibility is broken up into many small bits and divided among many departments, each department under its own titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a group bearing their nice sub-titles, it is difficult to find any one who really feels responsible. Everyone knows what "passing the buck" means. The game must have originated in industrial organizations where the departments simply shove responsibility along. The health of every organization depends on every member--whatever his place--feeling that everything that happens to come to his notice relating to the welfare of the business is his own job. Railroads have gone to the devil under the eyes of departments that say: "Oh, that doesn't come under our department. Department X, 100 miles away, has that in charge." There used to be a lot of advice given to officials not to hide behind their titles. The very necessity for the advice showed a condition that needed more than advice to correct it. And the correction is just this--abolish the titles. A few may be legally necessary; a few may be useful in directing the public how to do business with the concern, but for the rest the best rule is simple: "Get rid of them." As a matter of fact, the record of business in general just now is such as to detract very much from the value of titles. No one would boast of being president of a bankrupt bank. Business on the whole has not been so skillfully steered as to leave much margin for pride in the steersmen. The men who bear titles now and are worth anything are forgetting their titles and are down in the foundation of business looking for the weak spots. They are back again in the places from which they rose--trying to reconstruct from the bottom up. And when a man is really at work, he needs no title. His work honours him. All of our people come into the factory or the offices through the employment departments. As I have said, we do not hire experts--neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him--if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not care in the least about a man's antecedents--we do not hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. I think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very likely to make a special effort to keep out of jail. Our employment office does not bar a man for anything he has previously done--he is equally acceptable whether he has been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well understood that a man in the Ford plant works. We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he has gone to college he ought to be able to go ahead faster, but he has to start at the bottom and prove his ability. Every man's future rests solely with himself. There is far too much loose talk about men being unable to obtain recognition. With us every man is fairly certain to get the exact recognition he deserves. Of course, there are certain factors in the desire for recognition which must be reckoned with. The whole modern industrial system has warped the desire so out of shape that it is now almost an obsession. There was a time when a man's personal advancement depended entirely and immediately upon his work, and not upon any one's favor; but nowadays it often depends far too much upon the individual's good fortune in catching some influential eye. That is what we have successfully fought against. Men will work with the idea of catching somebody's eye; they will work with the idea that if they fail to get credit for what they have done, they might as well have done it badly or not have done it at all. Thus the work sometimes becomes a secondary consideration. The job in hand--the article in hand, the special kind of service in hand--turns out to be not the principal job. The main work becomes personal advancement--a platform from which to catch somebody's eye. This habit of making the work secondary and the recognition primary is unfair to the work. It makes recognition and credit the real job. And this also has an unfortunate effect on the worker. It encourages a peculiar kind of ambition which is neither lovely nor productive. It produces the kind of man who imagines that by "standing in with the boss" he will get ahead. Every shop knows this kind of man. And the worst of it is there are some things in the present industrial system which make it appear that the game really pays. Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should be flattered by being made to believe that they hold the weal or woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural, also, that being open to flattery, their self-seeking subordinates should flatter them still more to obtain and profit by their favor. That is why I want as little as possible of the personal element. It is particularly easy for any man who never knows it all to go forward to a higher position with us. Some men will work hard but they do not possess the capacity to think and especially to think quickly. Such men get as far as their ability deserves. A man may, by his industry, deserve advancement, but it cannot be possibly given him unless he also has a certain element of leadership. This is not a dream world we are living in. I think that every man in the shaking-down process of our factory eventually lands about where he belongs. We are never satisfied with the way that everything is done in any part of the organization; we always think it ought to be done better and that eventually it will be done better. The spirit of crowding forces the man who has the qualities for a higher place eventually to get it. He perhaps would not get the place if at any time the organization--which is a word I do not like to use--became fixed, so that there would be routine steps and dead men's shoes. But we have so few titles that a man who ought to be doing something better than he is doing, very soon gets to doing it--he is not restrained by the fact that there is no position ahead of him "open"--for there are no "positions." We have no cut-and-dried places--our best men make their places. This is easy enough to do, for there is always work, and when you think of getting the work done instead of finding a title to fit a man who wants to be promoted, then there is no difficulty about promotion. The promotion itself is not formal; the man simply finds himself doing something other than what he was doing and getting more money. All of our people have thus come up from the bottom. The head of the factory started as a machinist. The man in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a patternmaker. Another man overseeing one of the principal departments started as a sweeper. There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. Everything that we have developed has been done by men who have qualified themselves with us. We fortunately did not inherit any traditions and we are not founding any. If we have a tradition it is this: Everything can always be done better than it is being done. That pressing always to do work better and faster solves nearly every factory problem. A department gets its standing on its rate of production. The rate of production and the cost of production are distinct elements. The foremen and superintendents would only be wasting time were they to keep a check on the costs in their departments. There are certain costs--such as the rate of wages, the overhead, the price of materials, and the like, which they could not in any way control, so they do not bother about them. What they can control is the rate of production in their own departments. The rating of a department is gained by dividing the number of parts produced by the number of hands working. Every foreman checks his own department daily--he carries the figures always with him. The superintendent has a tabulation of all the scores; if there is something wrong in a department the output score shows it at once, the superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thumb method of rating production. The foreman need not be a cost accountant--he is no better a foreman for being one. His charges are the machines and the human beings in his department. When they are working at their best he has performed his service. The rate of his production is his guide. There is no reason for him to scatter his energies over collateral subjects. This rating system simply forces a foreman to forget personalities--to forget everything other than the work in hand. If he should select the people he likes instead of the people who can best do the work, his department record will quickly show up that fact. There is no difficulty in picking out men. They pick themselves out because--although one hears a great deal about the lack of opportunity for advancement--the average workman is more interested in a steady job than he is in advancement. Scarcely more than five per cent, of those who work for wages, while they have the desire to receive more money, have also the willingness to accept the additional responsibility and the additional work which goes with the higher places. Only about twenty-five per cent. are even willing to be straw bosses, and most of them take that position because it carries with it more pay than working on a machine. Men of a more mechanical turn of mind, but with no desire for responsibility, go into the tool-making departments where they receive considerably more pay than in production proper. But the vast majority of men want to stay put. They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and to have no responsibility. Therefore, in spite of the great mass of men, the difficulty is not to discover men to advance, but men who are willing to be advanced. The accepted theory is that all people are anxious for advancement, and a great many pretty plans have been built up from that. I can only say that we do not find that to be the case. The Americans in our employ do want to go ahead, but they by no means do always want to go clear through to the top. The foreigners, generally speaking, are content to stay as straw bosses. Why all of this is, I do not know. I am giving the facts. As I have said, everyone in the place reserves an open mind as to the way in which every job is being done. If there is any fixed theory--any fixed rule--it is that no job is being done well enough. The whole factory management is always open to suggestion, and we have an informal suggestion system by which any workman can communicate any idea that comes to him and get action on it. The saving of a cent per piece may be distinctly worth while. A saving of one cent on a part at our present rate of production represents twelve thousand dollars a year. One cent saved on each part would amount to millions a year. Therefore, in comparing savings, the calculations are carried out to the thousandth part of a cent. If the new way suggested shows a saving and the cost of making the change will pay for itself within a reasonable time--say within three months--the change is made practically as of course. These changes are by no means limited to improvements which will increase production or decrease cost. A great many--perhaps most of them--are in the line of making the work easier. We do not want any hard, man-killing work about the place, and there is now very little of it. And usually it so works out that adopting the way which is easier on the men also decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection between decency and good business. We also investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or to buy a part. The suggestions come from everywhere. The Polish workmen seem to be the cleverest of all of the foreigners in making them. One, who could not speak English, indicated that if the tool in his machine were set at a different angle it might wear longer. As it was it lasted only four or five cuts. He was right, and a lot of money was saved in grinding. Another Pole, running a drill press, rigged up a little fixture to save handling the part after drilling. That was adopted generally and a considerable saving resulted. The men often try out little attachments of their own because, concentrating on one thing, they can, if they have a mind that way, usually devise some improvement. The cleanliness of a man's machine also--although cleaning a machine is no part of his duty--is usually an indication of his intelligence. Here are some of the suggestions: A proposal that castings be taken from the foundry to the machine shop on an overhead conveyor saved seventy men in the transport division. There used to be seventeen men--and this was when production was smaller--taking the burrs off gears, and it was a hard, nasty job. A man roughly sketched a special machine. His idea was worked out and the machine built. Now four men have several times the output of the seventeen men--and have no hard work at all to do. Changing from a solid to a welded rod in one part of the chassis effected an immediate saving of about one half million a year on a smaller than the present-day production. Making certain tubes out of flat sheets instead of drawing them in the usual way effected another enormous saving. The old method of making a certain gear comprised four operations and 12 per cent. of the steel went into scrap. We use most of our scrap and eventually we will use it all, but that is no reason for not cutting down on scrap--the mere fact that all waste is not a dead loss is no excuse for permitting waste. One of the workmen devised a very simple new method for making this gear in which the scrap was only one per cent. Again, the camshaft has to have heat treatment in order to make the surface hard; the cam shafts always came out of the heat-treat oven somewhat warped, and even back in 1918, we employed 37 men just to straighten the shafts. Several of our men experimented for about a year and finally worked out a new form of oven in which the shafts could not warp. In 1921, with the production much larger than in 1918, we employed only eight men in the whole operation. And then there is the pressing to take away the necessity for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool hardener was an expert. He had to judge the heating temperatures. It was a hit-or-miss operation. The wonder is that he hit so often. The heat treatment in the hardening of steel is highly important--providing one knows exactly the right heat to apply. That cannot be known by rule-of-thumb. It has to be measured. We introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the pyrometer--the instrument which registers the temperature. Coloured electric lights give him his signals. None of our machines is ever built haphazardly. The idea is investigated in detail before a move is made. Sometimes wooden models are constructed or again the parts are drawn to full size on a blackboard. We are not bound by precedent but we leave nothing to luck, and we have yet to build a machine that will not do the work for which it was designed. About ninety per cent. of all experiments have been successful. Whatever expertness in fabrication that has developed has been due to men. I think that if men are unhampered and they know that they are serving, they will always put all of mind and will into even the most trivial of tasks. CHAPTER VII THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE Repetitive labour--the doing of one thing over and over again and always in the same way--is a terrifying prospect to a certain kind of mind. It is terrifying to me. I could not possibly do the same thing day in and day out, but to other minds, perhaps I might say to the majority of minds, repetitive operations hold no terrors. In fact, to some types of mind thought is absolutely appalling. To them the ideal job is one where the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have very few takers--we always need men who like a job because it is difficult. The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion--above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think. Those who have what might be called the creative type of mind and who thoroughly abhor monotony are apt to imagine that all other minds are similarly restless and therefore to extend quite unwanted sympathy to the labouring man who day in and day out performs almost exactly the same operation. When you come right down to it, most jobs are repetitive. A business man has a routine that he follows with great exactness; the work of a bank president is nearly all routine; the work of under officers and clerks in a bank is purely routine. Indeed, for most purposes and most people, it is necessary to establish something in the way of a routine and to make most motions purely repetitive--otherwise the individual will not get enough done to be able to live off his own exertions. There is no reason why any one with a creative mind should be at a monotonous job, for everywhere the need for creative men is pressing. There will never be a dearth of places for skilled people, but we have to recognize that the will to be skilled is not general. And even if the will be present, then the courage to go through with the training is absent. One cannot become skilled by mere wishing. There are far too many assumptions about what human nature ought to be and not enough research into what it is. Take the assumption that creative work can be undertaken only in the realm of vision. We speak of creative "artists" in music, painting, and the other arts. We seemingly limit the creative functions to productions that may be hung on gallery walls, or played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or line, or colour; let him come where he may deal with the laws of personality. We want artists in industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method--both from the standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. We have limited the creative faculty too much and have used it for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life. Good intentions plus well-thought-out working designs can be put into practice and can be made to succeed. It is possible to increase the well-being of the workingman--not by having him do less work, but by aiding him to do more. If the world will give its attention and interest and energy to the making of plans that will profit the other fellow as he is, then such plans can be established on a practical working basis. Such plans will endure--and they will be far the most profitable both in human and financial values. What this generation needs is a deep faith, a profound conviction in the practicability of righteousness, justice, and humanity in industry. If we cannot have these qualities, then we were better off without industry. Indeed, if we cannot get those qualities, the days of industry are numbered. But we can get them. We are getting them. If a man cannot earn his keep without the aid of machinery, is it benefiting him to withhold that machinery because attendance upon it may be monotonous? And let him starve? Or is it better to put him in the way of a good living? Is a man the happier for starving? If he is the happier for using a machine to less than its capacity, is he happier for producing less than he might and consequently getting less than his share of the world's goods in exchange? I have not been able to discover that repetitive labour injures a man in any way. I have been told by parlour experts that repetitive labour is soul--as well as body--destroying, but that has not been the result of our investigations. There was one case of a man who all day long did little but step on a treadle release. He thought that the motion was making him one-sided; the medical examination did not show that he had been affected but, of course, he was changed to another job that used a different set of muscles. In a few weeks he asked for his old job again. It would seem reasonable to imagine that going through the same set of motions daily for eight hours would produce an abnormal body, but we have never had a case of it. We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them--that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous--so monotonous that it seems scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task in the whole factory is one in which a man picks up a gear with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into a basket. The motion never varies. The gears come to him always in exactly the same place, he gives each one the same number of shakes, and he drops it into a basket which is always in the same place. No muscular energy is required, no intelligence is required. He does little more than wave his hands gently to and fro--the steel rod is so light. Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight solid years. He has saved and invested his money until now he has about forty thousand dollars--and he stubbornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job! The most thorough research has not brought out a single case of a man's mind being twisted or deadened by the work. The kind of mind that does not like repetitive work does not have to stay in it. The work in each department is classified according to its desirability and skill into Classes "A," "B," and "C," each class having anywhere from ten to thirty different operations. A man comes directly from the employment office to "Class C." As he gets better he goes into "Class B," and so on into "Class A," and out of "Class A" into tool making or some supervisory capacity. It is up to him to place himself. If he stays in production it is because he likes it. In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for work is refused on account of physical condition. This policy went into effect on January 12, 1914, at the time of setting the minimum wage at five dollars a day and the working day at eight hours. It carried with it the further condition that no one should be discharged on account of physical condition, except, of course, in the case of contagious disease. I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general. We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by charity--as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. We do not prefer cripples--but we have demonstrated that they can earn full wages. It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world--that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work--whether the physical labour involved was light, medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a dry job, and if not, with what kind of fluid; whether it were clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the light was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material handled; and the description of the strain upon the worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some of them required strength--did not require full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency. When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition. If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the sound men. This salvage can be carried further. It is usually taken for granted that when a man is injured he is simply out of the running and should be paid an allowance. But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind. We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate better and recovered more rapidly. No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees. They do their work one hundred per cent. The tubercular employees--and there are usually about a thousand of them--mostly work in the material salvage department. Those cases which are considered contagious work together in an especially constructed shed. The work of all of them is largely out of doors. At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments. The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking. The discipline throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice and therefore dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or, without giving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let go. A refusal to learn English in the school provided accounted for 38 more; 108 enlisted; about 3,000 were transferred to other plants. Going home, going into farming or business accounted for about the same number. Eighty-two women were discharged because their husbands were working--we do not employ married women whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole lot only 80 were flatly discharged and the causes were: Misrepresentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20; and undesirable, 4. We expect the men to do what they are told. The organization is so highly specialized and one part is so dependent upon another that we could not for a moment consider allowing men to have their own way. Without the most rigid discipline we would have the utmost confusion. I think it should not be otherwise in industry. The men are there to get the greatest possible amount of work done and to receive the highest possible pay. If each man were permitted to act in his own way, production would suffer and therefore pay would suffer. Any one who does not like to work in our way may always leave. The company's conduct toward the men is meant to be exact and impartial. It is naturally to the interest both of the foremen and of the department heads that the releases from their departments should be few. The workman has a full chance to tell his story if he has been unjustly treated--he has full recourse. Of course, it is inevitable that injustices occur. Men are not always fair with their fellow workmen. Defective human nature obstructs our good intentions now and then. The foreman does not always get the idea, or misapplies it--but the company's intentions are as I have stated, and we use every means to have them understood. It is necessary to be most insistent in the matter of absences. A man may not come or go as he pleases; he may always apply for leave to the foreman, but if he leaves without notice, then, on his return, the reasons for his absence are carefully investigated and are sometimes referred to the Medical Department. If his reasons are good, he is permitted to resume work. If they are not good he may be discharged. In hiring a man the only data taken concerns his name, his address, his age, whether he is married or single, the number of his dependents, whether he has ever worked for the Ford Motor Company, and the condition of his sight and his hearing. No questions are asked concerning what the man has previously done, but we have what we call the "Better Advantage Notice," by which a man who has had a trade before he came to us files a notice with the employment department stating what the trade was. In this way, when we need specialists of any kind, we can get them right out of production. This is also one of the avenues by which tool makers and moulders quickly reach the higher positions. I once wanted a Swiss watch maker. The cards turned one up--he was running a drill press. The Heat Treat department wanted a skilled firebrick layer. He also was found on a drill press--he is now a general inspector. There is not much personal contact--the men do their work and go home--a factory is not a drawing room. But we try to have justice and, while there may be little in the way of hand shaking--we have no professional hand shakers--also we try to prevent opportunity for petty personalities. We have so many departments that the place is almost a world in itself--every kind of man can find a place somewhere in it. Take fighting between men. Men will fight, and usually fighting is a cause for discharge on the spot. We find that does not help the fighters--it merely gets them out of our sight. So the foremen have become rather ingenious in devising punishments that will not take anything away from the man's family and which require no time at all to administer. One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity, as well as to humane production, is a clean, well-lighted and well-ventilated factory. Our machines are placed very close together--every foot of floor space in the factory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. The consumer must pay the extra overhead and the extra transportation involved in having machines even six inches farther apart than they have to be. We measure on each job the exact amount of room that a man needs; he must not be cramped--that would be waste. But if he and his machine occupy more space than is required, that also is waste. This brings our machines closer together than in probably any other factory in the world. To a stranger they may seem piled right on top of one another, but they are scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of operations, but to give every man and every machine every square inch that he requires and, if possible, not a square inch, and certainly not a square foot, more than he requires. Our factory buildings are not intended to be used as parks. The close placing requires a maximum of safeguards and ventilation. Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do not consider any machine--no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work--as a proper machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consider unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every accident, no matter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man employed solely for that purpose, and a study is made of the machine to make that same accident in the future impossible. When we put up the older buildings, we did not understand so much about ventilation as we do to-day. In all the later buildings, the supporting columns are made hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and the good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is kept everywhere the year round and, during daylight, there is nowhere the necessity for artificial light. Something like seven hundred men are detailed exclusively to keeping the shops clean, the windows washed, and all of the paint fresh. The dark corners which invite expectoration are painted white. One cannot have morale without cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift cleanliness no more than makeshift methods. No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state that invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this mental state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make machinery absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of accidents as they are grouped by the experts are: (1) Defective structures; (2) defective machines; (3) insufficient room; (4) absence of safeguards; (5) unclean conditions; (6) bad lights; (7) bad air; (8) unsuitable clothing; (9) carelessness; (10) ignorance; (11) mental condition; (12) lack of cooperation. The questions of defective structures, defective machinery, insufficient room, unclean conditions, bad light, bad air, the wrong mental condition, and the lack of cooperation are easily disposed of. None of the men work too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental problems and construction gets rid of the others. We have then to guard against unsuitable clothing, carelessness, and ignorance, and to make everything we have fool-proof. This is more difficult where we have belts. In all of our new construction, each machine has its individual electric motor, but in the older construction we had to use belts. Every belt is guarded. Over the automatic conveyors are placed bridges so that no man has to cross at a dangerous point. Wherever there is a possibility of flying metal, the workman is required to wear goggles and the chances are further reduced by surrounding the machine with netting. Around hot furnaces we have railings. There is nowhere an open part of a machine in which clothing can be caught. All the aisles are kept clear. The starting switches of draw presses are protected by big red tags which have to be removed before the switch can be turned--this prevents the machine being started thoughtlessly. Workmen will wear unsuitable clothing--ties that may be caught in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of unsuitable articles. The bosses have to watch for that, and they catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in every way before they are permitted to be installed. As a result we have practically no serious accidents. Industry needs not exact a human toll. CHAPTER VIII WAGES There is nothing to running a business by custom--to saying: "I pay the going rate of wages." The same man would not so easily say: "I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has." No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the "liquidation of labour" and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages--which means only the cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages--most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living--the rate of their wages--determines the prosperity of the country. Throughout all the Ford industries we now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day; we used to have a minimum of five dollars; before that we paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back to the old market rate of paying--but also it would be the worst sort of bad business. First get at the relationships. It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he? Whenever a man finds the management of a business too much for his own time or strength, he calls in assistants to share the management with him. Why, then, if a man finds the production part of a business too much for his own two hands should he deny the title of "partner" to those who come in and help him produce? Every business that employs more than one man is a kind of partnership. The moment a man calls for assistance in his business--even though the assistant be but a boy--that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation--the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is partner of his boss. And such being the case, it is useless for one group or the other to assume that it is the one indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one can become unduly assertive only at the expense of the other--and eventually at its own expense as well. It is utterly foolish for Capital or for Labour to think of themselves as groups. They are partners. When they pull and haul against each other--they simply injure the organization in which they are partners and from which both draw support. It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible. Of course there are men in all shops who seem to believe that if they do their best, it will be only for the employer's benefit--and not at all for their own. It is a pity that such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back into "getting by." But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope--proof that harder work means higher pay--then also they begin to learn that they are a part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it. "What ought the employer to pay?"--"What ought the employee to receive?" These are but minor questions. The basic question is "What can the business stand?" Certainly no business can stand outgo that exceeds its income. When you pump water out of a well at a faster rate than the water flows in, the well goes dry. And when the well runs dry, those who depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump to some other well, it is only a matter of time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a widespread demand for more justly divided rewards, but it must be recognized that there are limits to rewards. The business itself sets the limits. You cannot distribute $150,000 out of a business that brings in only $100,000. The business limits the wages, but does anything limit the business? The business limits itself by following bad precedents. If men, instead of saying "the employer ought to do thus-and-so," would say, "the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so," they would get somewhere. Because only the business can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants. But if that business does warrant higher wages and the employer refuses, what is to be done? As a rule a business means the livelihood of too many men, to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a business to which large numbers of men have given their labours and to which they have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help. The employer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and asking himself, "How little can I get them to take?" Nor the employee by glaring back and asking, "How much can I force him to give?" Eventually both will have to turn to the business and ask, "How can this industry be made safe and profitable, so that it will be able to provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us?" But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight. The habit of acting shortsightedly is a hard one to break. What can be done? Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread. But spread it must, for the concern in which both employer and employees work to the same end of service is bound to forge ahead in business. What do we mean by high wages, anyway? We mean a higher wage than was paid ten months or ten years ago. We do not mean a higher wage than ought to be paid. Our high wages of to-day may be low wages ten years from now. If it is right for the manager of a business to try to make it pay larger dividends, it is quite as right that he should try to make it pay higher wages. But it is not the manager of the business who pays the high wages. Of course, if he can and will not, then the blame is on him. But he alone can never make high wages possible. High wages cannot be paid unless the workmen earn them. Their labour is the productive factor. It is not the only productive factor--poor management can waste labour and material and nullify the efforts of labour. Labour can nullify the results of good management. But in a partnership of skilled management and honest labour, it is the workman who makes high wages possible. He invests his energy and skill, and if he makes an honest, wholehearted investment, high wages ought to be his reward. Not only has he earned them, but he has had a big part in creating them. It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity of work. Nature has seen to that. Idle hands and minds were never intended for any one of us. Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows only out of honest work. The man who contributes much should take away much. Therefore no element of charity is present in the paying of wages. The kind of workman who gives the business the best that is in him is the best kind of workman a business can have. And he cannot be expected to do this indefinitely without proper recognition of his contribution. The man who comes to the day's job feeling that no matter how much he may give, it will not yield him enough of a return to keep him beyond want, is not in shape to do his day's work. He is anxious and worried, and it all reacts to the detriment of his work. But if a man feels that his day's work is not only supplying his basic need, but is also giving him a margin of comfort and enabling him to give his boys and girls their opportunity and his wife some pleasure in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his best. This is a good thing for him and a good thing for the business. The man who does not get a certain satisfaction out of his day's work is losing the best part of his pay. For the day's work is a great thing--a very great thing! It is at the very foundation of the world; it is the basis of our self-respect. And the employer ought constantly to put in a harder day's work than any of his men. The employer who is seriously trying to do his duty in the world must be a hard worker. He cannot say, "I have so many thousand men working for me." The fact of the matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them--and the better they work the busier they keep him disposing of their products. Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this must be so, in order to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it is discovered that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid. When we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits--by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized. There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated to a position of equal importance with the material side. And that is going to come about. It is just a question whether it is going to be brought about wisely--in a way that will conserve the material side which now sustains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall take from us all the benefit of the work of the past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our economic progress, and gives us our place among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we want is a better recognition of the human element in business. And surely it can be achieved without dislocation, without loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human being. And the secret of it all is in a recognition of human partnership. Until each man is absolutely sufficient unto himself, needing the services of no other human being in any capacity whatever, we shall never get beyond the need of partnership. Such are the fundamental truths of wages. They are partnership distributions. When can a wage be considered adequate? How much of a living is reasonably to be expected from work? Have you ever considered what a wage does or ought to do? To say that it should pay the cost of living is to say almost nothing. The cost of living depends largely upon the efficiency of production and transportation; and the efficiency of these is the sum of the efficiencies of the management and the workers. Good work, well managed, ought to result in high wages and low living costs. If we attempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere. The cost of living is a result and we cannot expect to keep a result constant if we keep altering the factors which produce the result. When we try to regulate wages according to the cost of living, we are imitating a dog chasing his tail. And, anyhow, who is competent to say just what kind of living we shall base the costs on? Let us broaden our view and see what a wage is to the workmen--and what it ought to be. The wage carries all the worker's obligations outside the shop; it carries all that is necessary in the way of service and management inside the shop. The day's productive work is the most valuable mine of wealth that has ever been opened. Certainly it ought to bear not less than all the worker's outside obligations. And certainly it ought to be made to take care of the worker's sunset days when labour is no longer possible to him--and should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to do even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a schedule of production, distribution, and reward, which will stop the leaks into the pockets of men who do not assist in production. In order to create a system which shall be as independent of the good-will of benevolent employers as of the ill-will of selfish ones, we shall have to find a basis in the actual facts of life itself. It costs just as much physical strength to turn out a day's work when wheat is $1 a bushel, as when wheat is $2.50 a bushel. Eggs may be 12 cents a dozen or 90 cents a dozen. What difference does it make in the units of energy a man uses in a productive day's work? If only the man himself were concerned, the cost of his maintenance and the profit he ought to have would be a simple matter. But he is not just an individual. He is a citizen, contributing to the welfare of the nation. He is a householder. He is perhaps a father with children who must be reared to usefulness on what he is able to earn. We must reckon with all these facts. How are you going to figure the contribution of the home to the day's work? You pay the man for his work, but how much does that work owe to his home? How much to his position as a citizen? How much to his position as a father? The man does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in the home. The shop must pay them both. On what system of figuring is the home going to find its place on the cost sheets of the day's work? Is the man's own livelihood to be regarded as the "cost"? And is his ability to have a home and family the "profit"? Is the profit on a day's work to be computed on a cash basis only, measured by the amount a man has left over after his own and his family's wants are all supplied? Or are all these relationships to be considered strictly under head of cost, and the profit to be computed entirely outside of them? That is, after having supported himself and family, clothed them, housed them, educated them, given them the privileges incident to their standard of living, ought there to be provision made for still something more in the way of savings profit? And are all properly chargeable to the day's work? I think they are. Otherwise, we have the hideous prospect of little children and their mothers being forced out to work. These are questions which call for accurate observation and computation. Perhaps there is no one item connected with our economic life that would surprise us more than a knowledge of just what burdens the day's work. It is perhaps possible accurately to determine--albeit with considerable interference with the day's work itself--how much energy the day's work takes out of a man. But it is not at all possible accurately to determine how much it will require to put back that energy into him against the next day's demands. Nor is it possible to determine how much of that expended energy he will never be able to get back at all. Economics has never yet devised a sinking fund for the replacement of the strength of a worker. It is possible to set up a kind of sinking fund in the form of old-age pensions. But pensions do not attend to the profit which each day's labour ought to yield in order to take care of all of life's overhead, of all physical losses, and of the inevitable deterioration of the manual worker. The best wages that have up to date ever been paid are not nearly as high as they ought to be. Business is not yet sufficiently well organized and its objectives are not yet sufficiently clear to make it possible to pay more than a fraction of the wages that ought to be paid. That is part of the work we have before us. It does not help toward a solution to talk about abolishing the wage system and substituting communal ownership. The wage system is the only one that we have, under which contributions to production can be rewarded according to their worth. Take away the wage measure and we shall have universal injustice. Perfect the system and we may have universal justice. I have learned through the years a good deal about wages. I believe in the first place that, all other considerations aside, our own sales depend in a measure upon the wages we pay. If we can distribute high wages, then that money is going to be spent and it will serve to make storekeepers and distributors and manufacturers and workers in other lines more prosperous and their prosperity will be reflected in our sales. Country-wide high wages spell country-wide prosperity, provided, however, the higher wages are paid for higher production. Paying high wages and lowering production is starting down the incline toward dull business. It took us some time to get our bearings on wages, and it was not until we had gone thoroughly into production on "Model T," that it was possible to figure out what wages ought to be. Before then we had had some profit sharing. We had at the end of each year, for some years past, divided a percentage of our earnings with the employees. For instance, as long ago as 1909 we distributed eighty thousand dollars on the basis of years of service. A one-year man received 5 per cent. of his year's wages; a two-year man, 7-1/2 per cent., and a three-year man, 10 per cent. The objection to that plan was that it had no direct connection with the day's work. A man did not get his share until long after his work was done and then it came to him almost in the way of a present. It is always unfortunate to have wages tinged with charity. And then, too, the wages were not scientifically adjusted to the jobs. The man in job "A" might get one rate and the man in job "B" a higher rate, while as a matter of fact job "A" might require more skill or exertion than job "B." A great deal of inequity creeps into wage rates unless both the employer and the employee know that the rate paid has been arrived at by something better than a guess. Therefore, starting about 1913 we had time studies made of all the thousands of operations in the shops. By a time study it is possible theoretically to determine what a man's output should be. Then, making large allowances, it is further possible to get at a satisfactory standard output for a day, and, taking into consideration the skill, to arrive at a rate which will express with fair accuracy the amount of skill and exertion that goes into a job--and how much is to be expected from the man in the job in return for the wage. Without scientific study the employer does not know why he is paying a wage and the worker does not know why he is getting it. On the time figures all of the jobs in our factory were standardized and rates set. We do not have piece work. Some of the men are paid by the day and some are paid by the hour, but in practically every case there is a required standard output below which a man is not expected to fall. Were it otherwise, neither the workman nor ourselves would know whether or not wages were being earned. There must be a fixed day's work before a real wage can be paid. Watchmen are paid for presence. Workmen are paid for work. Having these facts in hand we announced and put into operation in January, 1914, a kind of profit-sharing plan in which the minimum wage for any class of work and under certain conditions was five dollars a day. At the same time we reduced the working day to eight hours--it had been nine--and the week to forty-eight hours. This was entirely a voluntary act. All of our wage rates have been voluntary. It was to our way of thinking an act of social justice, and in the last analysis we did it for our own satisfaction of mind. There is a pleasure in feeling that you have made others happy--that you have lessened in some degree the burdens of your fellow-men--that you have provided a margin out of which may be had pleasure and saving. Good-will is one of the few really important assets of life. A determined man can win almost anything that he goes after, but unless, in his getting, he gains good will he has not profited much. There was, however, no charity in any way involved. That was not generally understood. Many employers thought we were just making the announcement because we were prosperous and wanted advertising and they condemned us because we were upsetting standards--violating the custom of paying a man the smallest amount he would take. There is nothing to such standards and customs. They have to be wiped out. Some day they will be. Otherwise, we cannot abolish poverty. We made the change not merely because we wanted to pay higher wages and thought we could pay them. We wanted to pay these wages so that the business would be on a lasting foundation. We were not distributing anything--we were building for the future. A low wage business is always insecure. Probably few industrial announcements have created a more world-wide comment than did this one, and hardly any one got the facts quite right. Workmen quite generally believed that they were going to get five dollars a day, regardless of what work they did. The facts were somewhat different from the general impression. The plan was to distribute profits, but instead of waiting until the profits had been earned--to approximate them in advance and to add them, under certain conditions, to the wages of those persons who had been in the employ of the company for six months or more. It was classified participation among three classes of employees: (1) Married men living with and taking good care of their families. (2) Single men over twenty-two years of age who are of proved thrifty habits. (3) Young men under twenty-two years of age, and women who are the sole support of some next of kin. A man was first to be paid his just wages--which were then on an average of about fifteen per cent. above the usual market wage. He was then eligible to a certain profit. His wages plus his profit were calculated to give a minimum daily income of five dollars. The profit sharing rate was divided on an hour basis and was credited to the hourly wage rate, so as to give those receiving the lowest hourly rate the largest proportion of profits. It was paid every two weeks with the wages. For example, a man who received thirty-four cents an hour had a profit rate of twenty-eight and one half cents an hour--which would give him a daily income of five dollars. A man receiving fifty-four cents an hour would have a profit rate of twenty-one cents an hour--which would give him a daily income of six dollars. It was a sort of prosperity-sharing plan. But on conditions. The man and his home had to come up to certain standards of cleanliness and citizenship. Nothing paternal was intended!--a certain amount of paternalism did develop, and that is one reason why the whole plan and the social welfare department were readjusted. But in the beginning the idea was that there should be a very definite incentive to better living and that the very best incentive was a money premium on proper living. A man who is living aright will do his work aright. And then, too, we wanted to avoid the possibility of lowering the standard of work through an increased wage. It was demonstrated in war time that too quickly increasing a man's pay sometimes increases only his cupidity and therefore decreases his earning power. If, in the beginning, we had simply put the increase in the pay envelopes, then very likely the work standards would have broken down. The pay of about half the men was doubled in the new plan; it might have been taken as "easy money." The thought of easy money breaks down work. There is a danger in too rapidly raising the pay of any man--whether he previously received one dollar or one hundred dollars a day. In fact, if the salary of a hundred-dollar-a-day man were increased overnight to three hundred dollars a day he would probably make a bigger fool of himself than the working man whose pay is increased from one dollar to three dollars an hour. The man with the larger amount of money has larger opportunity to make a fool of himself. In this first plan the standards insisted upon were not petty--although sometimes they may have been administered in a petty fashion. We had about fifty investigators in the Social Department; the standard of common sense among them was very high indeed, but it is impossible to assemble fifty men equally endowed with common sense. They erred at times--one always hears about the errors. It was expected that in order to receive the bonus married men should live with and take proper care of their families. We had to break up the evil custom among many of the foreign workers of taking in boarders--of regarding their homes as something to make money out of rather than as a place to live in. Boys under eighteen received a bonus if they supported the next of kin. Single men who lived wholesomely shared. The best evidence that the plan was essentially beneficial is the record. When the plan went into effect, 60 per cent. of the workers immediately qualified to share; at the end of six months 78 per cent. were sharing, and at the end of one year 87 per cent. Within a year and one half only a fraction of one per cent. failed to share. The large wage had other results. In 1914, when the first plan went into effect, we had 14,000 employees and it had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a year in order to keep a constant force of 14,000. In 1915 we had to hire only 6,508 men and the majority of these new men were taken on because of the growth of the business. With the old turnover of labour and our present force we should have to hire at the rate of nearly 200,000 men a year--which would be pretty nearly an impossible proposition. Even with the minimum of instruction that is required to master almost any job in our place, we cannot take on a new staff each morning, or each week, or each month; for, although a man may qualify for acceptable work at an acceptable rate of speed within two or three days, he will be able to do more after a year's experience than he did at the beginning. The matter of labour turnover has not since bothered us; it is rather hard to give exact figures because when we are not running to capacity, we rotate some of the men in order to distribute the work among greatest number. This makes it hard to distinguish between the voluntary and involuntary exits. To-day we keep no figures; we now think so little of our turnover that we do not bother to keep records. As far as we know the turnover is somewhere between 3 per cent. and 6 per cent. a month. We have made changes in the system, but we have not deviated from this principle: If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus--which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system--show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business. There were objections to the bonus-on-conduct method of paying wages. It tended toward paternalism. Paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment. CHAPTER IX WHY NOT ALWAYS HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? The employer has to live by the year. The workman has to live by the year. But both of them, as a rule, work by the week. They get an order or a job when they can and at the price they can. During what is called a prosperous time, orders and jobs are plentiful. During a "dull" season they are scarce. Business is always either feasting or fasting and is always either "good" or "bad." Although there is never a time when everyone has too much of this world's goods--when everyone is too comfortable or too happy--there come periods when we have the astounding spectacle of a world hungry for goods and an industrial machine hungry for work and the two--the demand and the means of satisfying it--held apart by a money barrier. Both manufacturing and employment are in-and-out affairs. Instead of a steady progression we go ahead by fits and starts--now going too fast, now stopping altogether. When a great many people want to buy, there is said to be a shortage of goods. When nobody wants to buy, there is said to be an overproduction of goods. I know that we have always had a shortage of goods, but I do not believe we have ever had an overproduction. We may have, at a particular time, too much of the wrong kind of goods. That is not overproduction--that is merely headless production. We may also have great stocks of goods at too high prices. That is not overproduction--it is either bad manufacturing or bad financing. Is business good or bad according to the dictates of fate? Must we accept the conditions as inevitable? Business is good or bad as we make it so. The only reason for growing crops, for mining, or for manufacturing, is that people may eat, keep warm, have clothing to wear, and articles to use. There is no other possible reason, yet that reason is forced into the background and instead we have operations carried on, not to the end of service, but to the end of making money--and this because we have evolved a system of money that instead of being a convenient medium of exchange, is at times a barrier to exchange. Of this more later. We suffer frequent periods of so-called bad luck only because we manage so badly. If we had a vast crop failure, I can imagine the country going hungry, but I cannot conceive how it is that we tolerate hunger and poverty, when they grow solely out of bad management, and especially out of the bad management that is implicit in an unreasoned financial structure. Of course the war upset affairs in this country. It upset the whole world. There would have been no war had management been better. But the war alone is not to blame. The war showed up a great number of the defects of the financial system, but more than anything else it showed how insecure is business supported only by a money foundation. I do not know whether bad business is the result of bad financial methods or whether the wrong motive in business created bad financial methods, but I do know that, while it would be wholly undesirable to try to overturn the present financial system, it is wholly desirable to reshape business on the basis of service. Then a better financial system will have to come. The present system will drop out because it will have no reason for being. The process will have to be a gradual one. The start toward the stabilization of his own affairs may be made by any one. One cannot achieve perfect results acting alone, but as the example begins to sink in there will be followers, and thus in the course of time we can hope to put inflated business and its fellow, depressed business, into a class with small-pox--that is, into the class of preventable diseases. It is perfectly possible, with the reorganization of business and finance that is bound to come about, to take the ill effect of seasons, if not the seasons, out of industry, and also the periodic depressions. Farming is already in process of reorganization. When industry and farming are fully reorganized they will be complementary; they belong together, not apart. As an indication, take our valve plant. We established it eighteen miles out in the country so that the workers could also be farmers. By the use of machinery farming need not consume more than a fraction of the time it now consumes; the time nature requires to produce is much larger than that required for the human contribution of seeding, cultivating, and harvesting; in many industries where the parts are not bulky it does not make much difference where they are made. By the aid of water power they can well be made out in farming country. Thus we can, to a much larger degree than is commonly known, have farmer-industrialists who both farm and work under the most scientific and healthful conditions. That arrangement will care for some seasonal industries; others can arrange a succession of products according to the seasons and the equipment, and still others can, with more careful management, iron out their seasons. A complete study of any specific problem will show the way. The periodic depressions are more serious because they seem so vast as to be uncontrollable. Until the whole reorganization is brought about, they cannot be wholly controlled, but each man in business can easily do something for himself and while benefiting his own organization in a very material way, also help others. The Ford production has not reflected good times or bad times; it has kept right on regardless of conditions excepting from 1917 to 1919, when the factory was turned over to war work. The year 1912-1913 was supposed to be a dull one; although now some call it "normal"; we all but doubled our sales; 1913-1914 was dull; we increased our sales by more than a third. The year 1920-1921 is supposed to have been one of the most depressed in history; we sold a million and a quarter cars, or about five times as many as in 1913-1914--the "normal year." There is no particular secret in it. It is, as is everything else in our business, the inevitable result of the application of a principle which can be applied to any business. We now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day paid without reservation. The people are sufficiently used to high wages to make supervision unnecessary. The minimum wage is paid just as soon as a worker has qualified in his production--which is a matter that depends upon his own desire to work. We have put our estimate of profits into the wage and are now paying higher wages than during the boom times after the war. But we are, as always, paying them on the basis of work. And that the men do work is evidenced by the fact that although six dollars a day is the minimum wage, about 60 per cent. of the workers receive above the minimum. The six dollars is not a flat but a minimum wage. Consider first the fundamentals of prosperity. Progress is not made by pulling off a series of stunts. Each step has to be regulated. A man cannot expect to progress without thinking. Take prosperity. A truly prosperous time is when the largest number of people are getting all they can legitimately eat and wear, and are in every sense of the word comfortable. It is the degree of the comfort of the people at large--not the size of the manufacturer's bank balance--that evidences prosperity. The function of the manufacturer is to contribute to this comfort. He is an instrument of society and he can serve society only as he manages his enterprises so as to turn over to the public an increasingly better product at an ever-decreasing price, and at the same time to pay to all those who have a hand in his business an ever-increasing wage, based upon the work they do. In this way and in this way alone can a manufacturer or any one in business justify his existence. We are not much concerned with the statistics and the theories of the economists on the recurring cycles of prosperity and depression. They call the periods when prices are high "prosperous." A really prosperous period is not to be judged on the prices that manufacturers are quoting for articles. We are not concerned with combinations of words. If the prices of goods are above the incomes of the people, then get the prices down to the incomes. Ordinarily, business is conceived as starting with a manufacturing process and ending with a consumer. If that consumer does not want to buy what the manufacturer has to sell him and has not the money to buy it, then the manufacturer blames the consumer and says that business is bad, and thus, hitching the cart before the horse, he goes on his way lamenting. Isn't that nonsense? Does the manufacturer exist for the consumer or does the consumer exist for the manufacturer? If the consumer will not--says he cannot--buy what the manufacturer has to offer, is that the fault of the manufacturer or the consumer? Or is nobody at fault? If nobody is at fault then the manufacturer must go out of business. But what business ever started with the manufacturer and ended with the consumer? Where does the money to make the wheels go round come from? From the consumer, of course. And success in manufacture is based solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking. He may be served by quality or he may be served by price. He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price, and any man who can give to the consumer the highest quality at the lowest price is bound to be a leader in business, whatever the kind of an article he makes. There is no getting away from this. Then why flounder around waiting for good business? Get the costs down by better management. Get the prices down to the buying power. Cutting wages is the easiest and most slovenly way to handle the situation, not to speak of its being an inhuman way. It is, in effect, throwing upon labour the incompetency of the managers of the business. If we only knew it, every depression is a challenge to every manufacturer to put more brains into his business--to overcome by management what other people try to overcome by wage reduction. To tamper with wages before all else is changed, is to evade the real issue. And if the real issue is tackled first, no reduction of wages may be necessary. That has been my experience. The immediate practical point is that, in the process of adjustment, someone will have to take a loss. And who can take a loss except those who have something which they can afford to lose? But the expression, "take a loss," is rather misleading. Really no loss is taken at all. It is only a giving up of a certain part of the past profits in order to gain more in the future. I was talking not long since with a hardware merchant in a small town. He said: "I expect to take a loss of $10,000 on my stock. But of course, you know, it isn't really like losing that much. We hardware men have had pretty good times. Most of my stock was bought at high prices, but I have already sold several stocks and had the benefit of them. Besides, the ten thousand dollars which I say I will lose are not the same kind of dollars that I used to have. They are, in a way, speculative dollars. They are not the good dollars that bought 100 cents' worth. So, though my loss may sound big, it is not big. And at the same time I am making it possible for the people in my town to go on building their houses without being discouraged by the size of the hardware item." He is a wise merchant. He would rather take less profit and keep business moving than keep his stock at high prices and bar the progress of his community. A man like that is an asset to a town. He has a clear head. He is better able to swing the adjustment through his inventory than through cutting down the wages of his delivery men--through cutting down their ability to buy. He did not sit around holding on to his prices and waiting for something to turn up. He realized what seems to have been quite generally forgotten--that it is part of proprietorship every now and again to lose money. We had to take our loss. Our sales eventually fell off as all other sales fell off. We had a large inventory and, taking the materials and parts in that inventory at their cost price, we could not turn out a car at a price lower than we were asking, but that was a price which on the turn of business was higher than people could or wanted to pay. We closed down to get our bearings. We were faced with making a cut of $17,000,000 in the inventory or taking a much larger loss than that by not doing business. So there was no choice at all. That is always the choice that a man in business has. He can take the direct loss on his books and go ahead and do business or he can stop doing business and take the loss of idleness. The loss of not doing business is commonly a loss greater than the actual money involved, for during the period of idleness fear will consume initiative and, if the shutdown is long enough, there will be no energy left over to start up with again. There is no use waiting around for business to improve. If a manufacturer wants to perform his function, he must get his price down to what people will pay. There is always, no matter what the condition, a price that people can and will pay for a necessity, and always, if the will is there, that price can be met. It cannot be met by lowering quality or by shortsighted economy, which results only in a dissatisfied working force. It cannot be met by fussing or buzzing around. It can be met only by increasing the efficiency of production and, viewed in this fashion, each business depression, so-called, ought to be regarded as a challenge to the brains of the business community. Concentrating on prices instead of on service is a sure indication of the kind of business man who can give no justification for his existence as a proprietor. This is only another way of saying that sales should be made on the natural basis of real value, which is the cost of transmuting human energy into articles of trade and commerce. But that simple formula is not considered business-like. It is not complex enough. We have "business" which takes the most honest of all human activities and makes them subject to the speculative shrewdness of men who can produce false shortages of food and other commodities, and thus excite in society anxiety of demand. We have false stimulation and then false numbness. Economic justice is being constantly and quite often innocently violated. You may say that it is the economic condition which makes mankind what it is; or you may say that it is mankind that makes the economic condition what it is. You will find many claiming that it is the economic system which makes men what they are. They blame our industrial system for all the faults which we behold in mankind generally. And you will find other men who say that man creates his own conditions; that if the economic, industrial, or social system is bad, it is but a reflection of what man himself is. What is wrong in our industrial system is a reflection of what is wrong in man himself. Manufacturers hesitate to admit that the mistakes of the present industrial methods are, in part at least, their own mistakes, systematized and extended. But take the question outside of a man's immediate concerns, and he sees the point readily enough. No doubt, with a less faulty human nature a less faulty social system would have grown up. Or, if human nature were worse than it is, a worse system would have grown up--though probably a worse system would not have lasted as long as the present one has. But few will claim that mankind deliberately set out to create a faulty social system. Granting without reserve that all faults of the social system are in man himself, it does not follow that he deliberately organized his imperfections and established them. We shall have to charge a great deal up to ignorance. We shall have to charge a great deal up to innocence. Take the beginnings of our present industrial system. There was no indication of how it would grow. Every new advance was hailed with joy. No one ever thought of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one ever dreamed that the very fact of success would bring insidious dangers with it. And yet with growth every imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's business grew to such proportions that he had to have more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And yet it has since led to an impersonal system wherein the workman has become something less than a person--a mere part of the system. No one believes, of course, that this dehumanizing process was deliberately invented. It just grew. It was latent in the whole early system, but no one saw it and no one could foresee it. Only prodigious and unheard-of development could bring it to light. Take the industrial idea; what is it? The true industrial idea is not to make money. The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to duplicate a useful idea, by as many thousands as there are people who need it. To produce, produce; to get a system that will reduce production to a fine art; to put production on such a basis as will provide means for expansion and the building of still more shops, the production of still more thousands of useful things--that is the real industrial idea. The negation of the industrial idea is the effort to make a profit out of speculation instead of out of work. There are short-sighted men who cannot see that business is bigger than any one man's interests. Business is a process of give and take, live and let live. It is cooperation among many forces and interests. Whenever you find a man who believes that business is a river whose beneficial flow ought to stop as soon as it reaches him you find a man who thinks he can keep business alive by stopping its circulation. He would produce wealth by this stopping of the production of wealth. The principles of service cannot fail to cure bad business. Which leads us into the practical application of the principles of service and finance. CHAPTER X HOW CHEAPLY CAN THINGS BE MADE? No one will deny that if prices are sufficiently low, buyers will always be found, no matter what are supposed to be the business conditions. That is one of the elemental facts of business. Sometimes raw materials will not move, no matter how low the price. We have seen something of that during the last year, but that is because the manufacturers and the distributors were trying to dispose of high-cost stocks before making new engagements. The markets were stagnant, but not "saturated" with goods. What is called a "saturated" market is only one in which the prices are above the purchasing power. Unduly high prices are always a sign of unsound business, because they are always due to some abnormal condition. A healthy patient has a normal temperature; a healthy market has normal prices. High prices come about commonly by reason of speculation following the report of a shortage. Although there is never a shortage in everything, a shortage in just a few important commodities, or even in one, serves to start speculation. Or again, goods may not be short at all. An inflation of currency or credit will cause a quick bulge in apparent buying power and the consequent opportunity to speculate. There may be a combination of actual shortages and a currency inflation--as frequently happens during war. But in any condition of unduly high prices, no matter what the real cause, the people pay the high prices because they think there is going to be a shortage. They may buy bread ahead of their own needs, so as not to be left later in the lurch, or they may buy in the hope of reselling at a profit. When there was talk of a sugar shortage, housewives who had never in their lives bought more than ten pounds of sugar at once tried to get stocks of one hundred or two hundred pounds, and while they were doing this, speculators were buying sugar to store in warehouses. Nearly all our war shortages were caused by speculation or buying ahead of need. No matter how short the supply of an article is supposed to be, no matter if the Government takes control and seizes every ounce of that article, a man who is willing to pay the money can always get whatever supply he is willing to pay for. No one ever knows actually how great or how small is the national stock of any commodity. The very best figures are not more than guesses; estimates of the world's stock of a commodity are still wilder. We may think we know how much of a commodity is produced on a certain day or in a certain month, but that does not tell us how much will be produced the next day or the next month. Likewise we do not know how much is consumed. By spending a great deal of money we might, in the course of time, get at fairly accurate figures on how much of a particular commodity was consumed over a period, but by the time those figures were compiled they would be utterly useless except for historical purposes, because in the next period the consumption might be double or half as much. People do not stay put. That is the trouble with all the framers of Socialistic and Communistic, and of all other plans for the ideal regulation of society. They all presume that people will stay put. The reactionary has the same idea. He insists that everyone ought to stay put. Nobody does, and for that I am thankful. Consumption varies according to the price and the quality, and nobody knows or can figure out what future consumption will amount to, because every time a price is lowered a new stratum of buying power is reached. Everyone knows that, but many refuse to recognize it by their acts. When a storekeeper buys goods at a wrong price and finds they will not move, he reduces the price by degrees until they do move. If he is wise, instead of nibbling at the price and encouraging in his customers the hope of even lower prices, he takes a great big bite out of the price and gets the stuff out of his place. Everyone takes a loss on some proposition of sales. The common hope is that after the loss there may be a big profit to make up for the loss. That is usually a delusion. The profit out of which the loss has to be taken must be found in the business preceding the cut. Any one who was foolish enough to regard the high profits of the boom period as permanent profits got into financial trouble when the drop came. However, there is a belief, and a very strong one, that business consists of a series of profits and losses, and good business is one in which the profits exceed the losses. Therefore some men reason that the best price to sell at is the highest price which may be had. That is supposed to be good business practice. Is it? We have not found it so. We have found in buying materials that it is not worth while to buy for other than immediate needs. We buy only enough to fit into the plan of production, taking into consideration the state of transportation at the time. If transportation were perfect and an even flow of materials could be assured, it would not be necessary to carry any stock whatsoever. The carloads of raw materials would arrive on schedule and in the planned order and amounts, and go from the railway cars into production. That would save a great deal of money, for it would give a very rapid turnover and thus decrease the amount of money tied up in materials. With bad transportation one has to carry larger stocks. At the time of revaluing the inventory in 1921 the stock was unduly high because transportation had been so bad. But we learned long ago never to buy ahead for speculative purposes. When prices are going up it is considered good business to buy far ahead, and when prices are up to buy as little as possible. It needs no argument to demonstrate that, if you buy materials at ten cents a pound and the material goes later to twenty cents a pound you will have a distinct advantage over the man who is compelled to buy at twenty cents. But we have found that thus buying ahead does not pay. It is entering into a guessing contest. It is not business. If a man buys a large stock at ten cents, he is in a fine position as long as the other man is paying twenty cents. Then he later gets a chance to buy more of the material at twenty cents, and it seems to be a good buy because everything points to the price going to thirty cents. Having great satisfaction in his previous judgment, on which he made money, he of course makes the new purchase. Then the price drops and he is just where he started. We have carefully figured, over the years, that buying ahead of requirements does not pay--that the gains on one purchase will be offset by the losses on another, and in the end we have gone to a great deal of trouble without any corresponding benefit. Therefore in our buying we simply get the best price we can for the quantity that we require. We do not buy less if the price be high and we do not buy more if the price be low. We carefully avoid bargain lots in excess of requirements. It was not easy to reach that decision. But in the end speculation will kill any manufacturer. Give him a couple of good purchases on which he makes money and before long he will be thinking more about making money out of buying and selling than out of his legitimate business, and he will smash. The only way to keep out of trouble is to buy what one needs--no more and no less. That course removes one hazard from business. This buying experience is given at length because it explains our selling policy. Instead of giving attention to competitors or to demand, our prices are based on an estimate of what the largest possible number of people will want to pay, or can pay, for what we have to sell. And what has resulted from that policy is best evidenced by comparing the price of the touring car and the production. YEAR PRICE PRODUCTION 1909-10 $950 18,664 cars 1910-11 $780 34,528 " 1911-12 $690 78,440 " 1912-13 $600 168,220 " 1913-14 $550 248,307 " 1914-15 $490 308,213 " 1915-16 $440 533,921 " 1916-17 $360 785,432 " 1917-18 $450 706,584 " 1918-19 $525 533,706 " (The above two years were war years and the factory was in war work). 1919-20 $575 to $440 996,660 " 1920-21 $440 to $355 1,250,000 " The high prices of 1921 were, considering the financial inflation, not really high. At the time of writing the price is $497. These prices are actually lower than they appear to be, because improvements in quality are being steadily made. We study every car in order to discover if it has features that might be developed and adapted. If any one has anything better than we have we want to know it, and for that reason we buy one of every new car that comes out. Usually the car is used for a while, put through a road test, taken apart, and studied as to how and of what everything is made. Scattered about Dearborn there is probably one of nearly every make of car on earth. Every little while when we buy a new car it gets into the newspapers and somebody remarks that Ford doesn't use the Ford. Last year we ordered a big Lanchester--which is supposed to be the best car in England. It lay in our Long Island factory for several months and then I decided to drive it to Detroit. There were several of us and we had a little caravan--the Lanchester, a Packard, and a Ford or two. I happened to be riding in the Lanchester passing through a New York town and when the reporters came up they wanted to know right away why I was not riding in a Ford. "Well, you see, it is this way," I answered. "I am on a vacation now; I am in no hurry, we do not care much when we get home. That is the reason I am not in the Ford." You know, we also have a line of "Ford stories"! Our policy is to reduce the price, extend the operations, and improve the article. You will notice that the reduction of price comes first. We have never considered any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price to a point where we believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother about the costs. The new price forces the costs down. The more usual way is to take the costs and then determine the price, and although that method may be scientific in the narrow sense, it is not scientific in the broad sense, because what earthly use is it to know the cost if it tells you you cannot manufacture at a price at which the article can be sold? But more to the point is the fact that, although one may calculate what a cost is, and of course all of our costs are carefully calculated, no one knows what a cost ought to be. One of the ways of discovering what a cost ought to be is to name a price so low as to force everybody in the place to the highest point of efficiency. The low price makes everybody dig for profits. We make more discoveries concerning manufacturing and selling under this forced method than by any method of leisurely investigation. The payment of high wages fortunately contributes to the low costs because the men become steadily more efficient on account of being relieved of outside worries. The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar day wage is cheaper than the five. How far this will go, we do not know. We have always made a profit at the prices we have fixed and, just as we have no idea how high wages will go, we also have no idea how low prices will go, but there is no particular use in bothering on that point. The tractor, for instance, was first sold for $750, then at $850, then at $625, and the other day we cut it 37 per cent, to $395. The tractor is not made in connection with the automobiles. No plant is large enough to make two articles. A shop has to be devoted to exactly one product in order to get the real economies. For most purposes a man with a machine is better than a man without a machine. By the ordering of design of product and of manufacturing process we are able to provide that kind of a machine which most multiplies the power of the hand, and therefore we give to that man a larger role of service, which means that he is entitled to a larger share of comfort. Keeping that principle in mind we can attack waste with a definite objective. We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless. We will not put up elaborate buildings as monuments to our success. The interest on the investment and the cost of their upkeep only serve to add uselessly to the cost of what is produced--so these monuments of success are apt to end as tombs. A great administration building may be necessary. In me it arouses a suspicion that perhaps there is too much administration. We have never found a need for elaborate administration and would prefer to be advertised by our product than by where we make our product. The standardization that effects large economies for the consumer results in profits of such gross magnitude to the producer that he can scarcely know what to do with his money. But his effort must be sincere, painstaking, and fearless. Cutting out a half-a-dozen models is not standardizing. It may be, and usually is, only the limiting of business, for if one is selling on the ordinary basis of profit--that is, on the basis of taking as much money away from the consumer as he will give up--then surely the consumer ought to have a wide range of choice. Standardization, then, is the final stage of the process. We start with consumer, work back through the design, and finally arrive at manufacturing. The manufacturing becomes a means to the end of service. It is important to bear this order in mind. As yet, the order is not thoroughly understood. The price relation is not understood. The notion persists that prices ought to be kept up. On the contrary, good business--large consumption--depends on their going down. And here is another point. The service must be the best you can give. It is considered good manufacturing practice, and not bad ethics, occasionally to change designs so that old models will become obsolete and new ones will have to be bought either because repair parts for the old cannot be had, or because the new model offers a new sales argument which can be used to persuade a consumer to scrap what he has and buy something new. We have been told that this is good business, that it is clever business, that the object of business ought to be to get people to buy frequently and that it is bad business to try to make anything that will last forever, because when once a man is sold he will not buy again. Our principle of business is precisely to the contrary. We cannot conceive how to serve the consumer unless we make for him something that, as far as we can provide, will last forever. We want to construct some kind of a machine that will last forever. It does not please us to have a buyer's car wear out or become obsolete. We want the man who buys one of our products never to have to buy another. We never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete. The parts of a specific model are not only interchangeable with all other cars of that model, but they are interchangeable with similar parts on all the cars that we have turned out. You can take a car of ten years ago and, buying to-day's parts, make it with very little expense into a car of to-day. Having these objectives the costs always come down under pressure. And since we have the firm policy of steady price reduction, there is always pressure. Sometimes it is just harder! Take a few more instances of saving. The sweepings net six hundred thousand dollars a year. Experiments are constantly going on in the utilization of scrap. In one of the stamping operations six-inch circles of sheet metal are cut out. These formerly went into scrap. The waste worried the men. They worked to find uses for the discs. They found that the plates were just the right size and shape to stamp into radiator caps but the metal was not thick enough. They tried a double thickness of plates, with the result that they made a cap which tests proved to be stronger than one made out of a single sheet of metal. We get 150,000 of those discs a day. We have now found a use for about 20,000 a day and expect to find further uses for the remainder. We saved about ten dollars each by making transmissions instead of buying them. We experimented with bolts and produced a special bolt made on what is called an "upsetting machine" with a rolled thread that was stronger than any bolt we could buy, although in its making was used only about one third of the material that the outside manufacturers used. The saving on one style of bolt alone amounted to half a million dollars a year. We used to assemble our cars at Detroit, and although by special packing we managed to get five or six into a freight car, we needed many hundreds of freight cars a day. Trains were moving in and out all the time. Once a thousand freight cars were packed in a single day. A certain amount of congestion was inevitable. It is very expensive to knock down machines and crate them so that they cannot be injured in transit--to say nothing of the transportation charges. Now, we assemble only three or four hundred cars a day at Detroit--just enough for local needs. We now ship the parts to our assembling stations all over the United States and in fact pretty much all over the world, and the machines are put together there. Wherever it is possible for a branch to make a part more cheaply than we can make it in Detroit and ship it to them, then the branch makes the part. The plant at Manchester, England, is making nearly an entire car. The tractor plant at Cork, Ireland, is making almost a complete tractor. This is an enormous saving of expense and is only an indication of what may be done throughout industry generally, when each part of a composite article is made at the exact point where it may be made most economically. We are constantly experimenting with every material that enters into the car. We cut most of our own lumber from our own forests. We are experimenting in the manufacture of artificial leather because we use about forty thousand yards of artificial leather a day. A penny here and a penny there runs into large amounts in the course of a year. The greatest development of all, however, is the River Rouge plant, which, when it is running to its full capacity, will cut deeply and in many directions into the price of everything we make. The whole tractor plant is now there. This plant is located on the river on the outskirts of Detroit and the property covers six hundred and sixty-five acres--enough for future development. It has a large slip and a turning basin capable of accommodating any lake steamship; a short-cut canal and some dredging will give a direct lake connection by way of the Detroit River. We use a great deal of coal. This coal comes directly from our mines over the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railway, which we control, to the Highland Park plant and the River Rouge plant. Part of it goes for steam purposes. Another part goes to the by-product coke ovens which we have established at the River Rouge plant. Coke moves on from the ovens by mechanical transmission to the blast furnaces. The low volatile gases from the blast furnaces are piped to the power plant boilers where they are joined by the sawdust and the shavings from the body plant--the making of all our bodies has been shifted to this plant--and in addition the coke "breeze" (the dust in the making of coke) is now also being utilized for stoking. The steam power plant is thus fired almost exclusively from what would otherwise be waste products. Immense steam turbines directly coupled with dynamos transform this power into electricity, and all of the machinery in the tractor and the body plants is run by individual motors from this electricity. In the course of time it is expected that there will be sufficient electricity to run practically the whole Highland Park plant, and we shall then have cut out our coal bill. Among the by-products of the coke ovens is a gas. It is piped both to the Rouge and Highland Park plants where it is used for heat-treat purposes, for the enamelling ovens, for the car ovens, and the like. We formerly had to buy this gas. The ammonium sulphate is used for fertilizer. The benzol is a motor fuel. The small sizes of coke, not suitable for the blast furnaces, are sold to the employees--delivered free into their homes at much less than the ordinary market price. The large-sized coke goes to the blast furnaces. There is no manual handling. We run the melted iron directly from the blast furnaces into great ladles. These ladles travel into the shops and the iron is poured directly into the moulds without another heating. We thus not only get a uniform quality of iron according to our own specifications and directly under our control, but we save a melting of pig iron and in fact cut out a whole process in manufacturing as well as making available all our own scrap. What all this will amount to in point of savings we do not know--that is, we do not know how great will be the saving, because the plant has not been running long enough to give more than an indication of what is ahead, and we save in so many directions--in transportation, in the generation of our power, in the generation of gas, in the expense in casting, and then over and above that is the revenue from the by-products and from the smaller sizes of coke. The investment to accomplish these objects to date amounts to something over forty million dollars. How far we shall thus reach back to sources depends entirely on circumstances. Nobody anywhere can really do more than guess about the future costs of production. It is wiser to recognize that the future holds more than the past--that every day holds within it an improvement on the methods of the day before. But how about production? If every necessary of life were produced so cheaply and in such quantities, would not the world shortly be surfeited with goods? Will there not come a point when, regardless of price, people simply will not want anything more than what they already have? And if in the process of manufacturing fewer and fewer men are used, what is going to become of these men--how are they going to find jobs and live? Take the second point first. We mentioned many machines and many methods that displaced great numbers of men and then someone asks: "Yes, that is a very fine idea from the standpoint of the proprietor, but how about these poor fellows whose jobs are taken away from them?" The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than are working on the railways? Should we have prevented the taxicab because its coming took the bread out of the mouths of the horse-cab drivers? How does the number of taxicabs compare with the number of horse-cabs when the latter were in their prime? The coming of shoe machinery closed most of the shops of those who made shoes by hand. When shoes were made by hand, only the very well-to-do could own more than a single pair of shoes, and most working people went barefooted in summer. Now, hardly any one has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making is a great industry. No, every time you can so arrange that one man will do the work of two, you so add to the wealth of the country that there will be a new and better job for the man who is displaced. If whole industries changed overnight, then disposing of the surplus men would be a problem, but these changes do not occur as rapidly as that. They come gradually. In our own experience a new place always opens for a man as soon as better processes have taken his old job. And what happens in my shops happens everywhere in industry. There are many times more men to-day employed in the steel industries than there were in the days when every operation was by hand. It has to be so. It always is so and always will be so. And if any man cannot see it, it is because he will not look beyond his own nose. Now as to saturation. We are continually asked: "When will you get to the point of overproduction? When will there be more cars than people to use them?" We believe it is possible some day to reach the point where all goods are produced so cheaply and in such quantities that overproduction will be a reality. But as far as we are concerned, we do not look forward to that condition with fear--we look forward to it with great satisfaction. Nothing could be more splendid than a world in which everybody has all that he wants. Our fear is that this condition will be too long postponed. As to our own products, that condition is very far away. We do not know how many motor cars a family will desire to use of the particular kind that we make. We know that, as the price has come down, the farmer, who at first used one car (and it must be remembered that it is not so very long ago that the farm market for motor cars was absolutely unknown--the limit of sales was at that time fixed by all the wise statistical sharps at somewhere near the number of millionaires in the country) now often uses two, and also he buys a truck. Perhaps, instead of sending workmen out to scattered jobs in a single car, it will be cheaper to send each worker out in a car of his own. That is happening with salesmen. The public finds its own consumptive needs with unerring accuracy, and since we no longer make motor cars or tractors, but merely the parts which when assembled become motor cars and tractors, the facilities as now provided would hardly be sufficient to provide replacements for ten million cars. And it would be quite the same with any business. We do not have to bother about overproduction for some years to come, provided the prices are right. It is the refusal of people to buy on account of price that really stimulates real business. Then if we want to do business we have to get the prices down without hurting the quality. Thus price reduction forces us to learn improved and less wasteful methods of production. One big part of the discovery of what is "normal" in industry depends on managerial genius discovering better ways of doing things. If a man reduces his selling price to a point where he is making no profit or incurring a loss, then he simply is forced to discover how to make as good an article by a better method--making his new method produce the profit, and not producing a profit out of reduced wages or increased prices to the public. It is not good management to take profits out of the workers or the buyers; make management produce the profits. Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains--do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited. And all of this can always be done. CHAPTER XI MONEY AND GOODS The primary object of a manufacturing business is to produce, and if that objective is always kept, finance becomes a wholly secondary matter that has largely to do with bookkeeping. My own financial operations have been very simple. I started with the policy of buying and selling for cash, keeping a large fund of cash always on hand, taking full advantage of all discounts, and collecting interest on bank balances. I regard a bank principally as a place in which it is safe and convenient to keep money. The minutes we spend on a competitor's business we lose on our own. The minutes we spend in becoming expert in finance we lose in production. The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop, and not the bank. I would not say that a man in business needs to know nothing at all about finance, but he is better off knowing too little than too much, for if he becomes too expert he will get into the way of thinking that he can borrow money instead of earning it and then he will borrow more money to pay back what he has borrowed, and instead of being a business man he will be a note juggler, trying to keep in the air a regular flock of bonds and notes. If he is a really expert juggler, he may keep going quite a long time in this fashion, but some day he is bound to make a miss and the whole collection will come tumbling down around him. Manufacturing is not to be confused with banking, and I think that there is a tendency for too many business men to mix up in banking and for too many bankers to mix up in business. The tendency is to distort the true purposes of both business and banking and that hurts both of them. The money has to come out of the shop, not out of the bank, and I have found that the shop will answer every possible requirement, and in one case, when it was believed that the company was rather seriously in need of funds, the shop when called on raised a larger sum than any bank in this country could loan. We have been thrown into finance mostly in the way of denial. Some years back we had to keep standing a denial that the Ford Motor Company was owned by the Standard Oil Company and with that denial, for convenience's sake, we coupled a denial that we were connected with any other concern or that we intended to sell cars by mail. Last year the best-liked rumour was that we were down in Wall Street hunting for money. I did not bother to deny that. It takes too much time to deny everything. Instead, we demonstrated that we did not need any money. Since then I have heard nothing more about being financed by Wall Street. We are not against borrowing money and we are not against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed money take the place of work. We are against the kind of banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut. The thing is to keep money and borrowing and finance generally in their proper place, and in order to do that one has to consider exactly for what the money is needed and how it is going to be paid off. Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get. The point is--cure the misuse. When that is done, the business will begin to make its own money, just as a repaired human body begins to make sufficient pure blood. Borrowing may easily become an excuse for not boring into the trouble. Borrowing may easily become a sop for laziness and pride. Some business men are too lazy to get into overalls and go down to see what is the matter. Or they are too proud to permit the thought that anything they have originated could go wrong. But the laws of business are like the law of gravity, and the man who opposes them feels their power. Borrowing for expansion is one thing; borrowing to make up for mismanagement and waste is quite another. You do not want money for the latter--for the reason that money cannot do the job. Waste is corrected by economy; mismanagement is corrected by brains. Neither of these correctives has anything to do with money. Indeed, money under certain circumstances is their enemy. And many a business man thanks his stars for the pinch which showed him that his best capital was in his own brains and not in bank loans. Borrowing under certain circumstances is just like a drunkard taking another drink to cure the effect of the last one. It does not do what it is expected to do. It simply increases the difficulty. Tightening up the loose places in a business is much more profitable than any amount of new capital at 7 per cent. The internal ailments of business are the ones that require most attention. "Business" in the sense of trading with the people is largely a matter of filling the wants of the people. If you make what they need, and sell it at a price which makes possession a help and not a hardship, then you will do business as long as there is business to do. People buy what helps them just as naturally as they drink water. But the process of making the article will require constant care. Machinery wears out and needs to be restored. Men grow uppish, lazy, or careless. A business is men and machines united in the production of a commodity, and both the man and the machines need repairs and replacements. Sometimes it is the men "higher up" who most need revamping--and they themselves are always the last to recognize it. When a business becomes congested with bad methods; when a business becomes ill through lack of attention to one or more of its functions; when executives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if the plans they inaugurated are going to keep them going forever; when business becomes a mere plantation on which to live, and not a big work which one has to do--then you may expect trouble. You will wake up some fine morning and find yourself doing more business than you have ever done before--and getting less out of it. You find yourself short of money. You can borrow money. And you can do it, oh, so easily. People will crowd money on you. It is the most subtle temptation the young business man has. But if you do borrow money you are simply giving a stimulant to whatever may be wrong. You feed the disease. Is a man more wise with borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a usual thing. To borrow under such conditions is to mortgage a declining property. The time for a business man to borrow money, if ever, is when he does not need it. That is, when he does not need it as a substitute for the things he ought himself to do. If a man's business is in excellent condition and in need of expansion, it is comparatively safe to borrow. But if a business is in need of money through mismanagement, then the thing to do is to get into the business and correct the trouble from the inside--not poultice it with loans from the outside. My financial policy is the result of my sales policy. I hold that it is better to sell a large number of articles at a small profit than to sell a few at a large profit. This enables a larger number of people to buy and it gives a larger number of men employment at good wages. It permits the planning of production, the elimination of dull seasons, and the waste of carrying an idle plant. Thus results a suitable, continuous business, and if you will think it over, you will discover that most so-called urgent financing is made necessary because of a lack of planned, continuous business. Reducing prices is taken by the short-sighted to be the same as reducing the income of a business. It is very difficult to deal with that sort of a mind because it is so totally lacking in even the background knowledge of what business is. For instance, I was once asked, when contemplating a reduction of eighty dollars a car, whether on a production of five hundred thousand cars this would not reduce the income of the company by forty million dollars. Of course if one sold only five hundred thousand cars at the new price, the income would be reduced forty million dollars--which is an interesting mathematical calculation that has nothing whatsoever to do with business, because unless you reduce the price of an article the sales do not continuously increase and therefore the business has no stability. If a business is not increasing, it is bound to be decreasing, and a decreasing business always needs a lot of financing. Old-time business went on the doctrine that prices should always be kept up to the highest point at which people will buy. Really modern business has to take the opposite view. Bankers and lawyers can rarely appreciate this fact. They confuse inertia with stability. It is perfectly beyond their comprehension that the price should ever voluntarily be reduced. That is why putting the usual type of banker or lawyer into the management of a business is courting disaster. Reducing prices increases the volume and disposes of finance, provided one regards the inevitable profit as a trust fund with which to conduct more and better business. Our profit, because of the rapidity of the turnover in the business and the great volume of sales, has, no matter what the price at which the product was sold, always been large. We have had a small profit per article but a large aggregate profit. The profit is not constant. After cutting the prices, the profits for a time run low, but then the inevitable economies begin to get in their work and the profits go high again. But they are not distributed as dividends. I have always insisted on the payment of small dividends and the company has to-day no stockholders who wanted a different policy. I regard business profits above a small percentage as belonging more to the business than to the stockholders. The stockholders, to my way of thinking, ought to be only those who are active in the business and who will regard the company as an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money. If large profits are made--and working to serve forces them to be large--then they should be in part turned back into the business so that it may be still better fitted to serve, and in part passed on to the purchaser. During one year our profits were so much larger than we expected them to be that we voluntarily returned fifty dollars to each purchaser of a car. We felt that unwittingly we had overcharged the purchaser by that much. My price policy and hence my financial policy came up in a suit brought against the company several years ago to compel the payment of larger dividends. On the witness stand I gave the policy then in force and which is still in force. It is this: In the first place, I hold that it is better to sell a large number of cars at a reasonably small margin than to sell fewer cars at a large margin of profit. I hold this because it enables a large number of people to buy and enjoy the use of a car and because it gives a larger number of men employment at good wages. Those are aims I have in life. But I would not be counted a success; I would be, in fact, a flat failure if I could not accomplish that and at the same time make a fair amount of profit for myself and the men associated with me in business. This policy I hold is good business policy because it works--because with each succeeding year we have been able to put our car within the reach of greater and greater numbers, give employment to more and more men, and, at the same time, through the volume of business, increase our own profits beyond anything we had hoped for or even dreamed of when we started. Bear in mind, every time you reduce the price of the car without reducing the quality, you increase the possible number of purchasers. There are many men who will pay $360 for a car who would not pay $440. We had in round numbers 500,000 buyers of cars on the $440 basis, and I figure that on the $360 basis we can increase the sales to possibly 800,000 cars for the year--less profit on each car, but more cars, more employment of labour, and in the end we shall get all the total profit we ought to make. And let me say right here, that I do not believe that we should make such an awful profit on our cars. A reasonable profit is right, but not too much. So it has been my policy to force the price of the car down as fast as production would permit, and give the benefits to users and labourers--with resulting surprisingly enormous benefits to ourselves. This policy does not agree with the general opinion that a business is to be managed to the end that the stockholders can take out the largest possible amount of cash. Therefore I do not want stockholders in the ordinary sense of the term--they do not help forward the ability to serve. My ambition is to employ more and more men and to spread, in so far as I am able, the benefits of the industrial system that we are working to found; we want to help build lives and homes. This requires that the largest share of the profits be put back into productive enterprise. Hence we have no place for the non-working stockholders. The working stockholder is more anxious to increase his opportunity to serve than to bank dividends. If it at any time became a question between lowering wages or abolishing dividends, I would abolish dividends. That time is not apt to come, for, as I have pointed out, there is no economy in low wages. It is bad financial policy to reduce wages because it also reduces buying power. If one believes that leadership brings responsibility, then a part of that responsibility is in seeing that those whom one leads shall have an adequate opportunity to earn a living. Finance concerns not merely the profit or solvency of a company; it also comprehends the amount of money that the company turns back to the community through wages. There is no charity in this. There is no charity in proper wages. It is simply that no company can be said to be stable which is not so well managed that it can afford a man an opportunity to do a great deal of work and therefore to earn a good wage. There is something sacred about wages--they represent homes and families and domestic destinies. People ought to tread very carefully when approaching wages. On the cost sheet, wages are mere figures; out in the world, wages are bread boxes and coal bins, babies' cradles and children's education--family comforts and contentment. On the other hand, there is something just as sacred about capital which is used to provide the means by which work can be made productive. Nobody is helped if our industries are sucked dry of their life-blood. There is something just as sacred about a shop that employs thousands of men as there is about a home. The shop is the mainstay of all the finer things which the home represents. If we want the home to be happy, we must contrive to keep the shop busy. The whole justification of the profits made by the shop is that they are used to make doubly secure the homes dependent on that shop, and to create more jobs for other men. If profits go to swell a personal fortune, that is one thing; if they go to provide a sounder basis for business, better working conditions, better wages, more extended employment--that is quite another thing. Capital thus employed should not be carelessly tampered with. It is for the service of all, though it may be under the direction of one. Profits belong in three places: they belong to the business--to keep it steady, progressive, and sound. They belong to the men who helped produce them. And they belong also, in part, to the public. A successful business is profitable to all three of these interests--planner, producer, and purchaser. People whose profits are excessive when measured by any sound standard should be the first to cut prices. But they never are. They pass all their extra costs down the line until the whole burden is borne by the consumer; and besides doing that, they charge the consumer a percentage on the increased charges. Their whole business philosophy is: "Get while the getting is good." They are the speculators, the exploiters, the no-good element that is always injuring legitimate business. There is nothing to be expected from them. They have no vision. They cannot see beyond their own cash registers. These people can talk more easily about a 10 or 20 per cent. cut in wages than they can about a 10 or 20 per cent. cut in profits. But a business man, surveying the whole community in all its interests and wishing to serve that community, ought to be able to make his contribution to stability. It has been our policy always to keep on hand a large amount of cash--the cash balance in recent years has usually been in excess of fifty million dollars. This is deposited in banks all over the country, we do not borrow but we have established lines of credit, so that if we so cared we might raise a very large amount of money by bank borrowing. But keeping the cash reserve makes borrowing unnecessary--our provision is only to be prepared to meet an emergency. I have no prejudice against proper borrowing. It is merely that I do not want to run the danger of having the control of the business and hence the particular idea of service to which I am devoted taken into other hands. A considerable part of finance is in the overcoming of seasonal operation. The flow of money ought to be nearly continuous. One must work steadily in order to work profitably. Shutting down involves great waste. It brings the waste of unemployment of men, the waste of unemployment of equipment, and the waste of restricted future sales through the higher prices of interrupted production. That has been one of the problems we had to meet. We could not manufacture cars to stock during the winter months when purchases are less than in spring or summer. Where or how could any one store half a million cars? And if stored, how could they be shipped in the rush season? And who would find the money to carry such a stock of cars even if they could be stored? Seasonal work is hard on the working force. Good mechanics will not accept jobs that are good for only part of the year. To work in full force twelve months of the year guarantees workmen of ability, builds up a permanent manufacturing organization, and continually improves the product--the men in the factory, through uninterrupted service, become more familiar with the operations. The factory must build, the sales department must sell, and the dealer must buy cars all the year through, if each would enjoy the maximum profit to be derived from the business. If the retail buyer will not consider purchasing except in "seasons," a campaign of education needs to be waged, proving the all-the-year-around value of a car rather than the limited-season value. And while the educating is being done, the manufacturer must build, and the dealer must buy, in anticipation of business. We were the first to meet the problem in the automobile business. The selling of Ford cars is a merchandising proposition. In the days when every car was built to order and 50 cars a month a big output, it was reasonable to wait for the sale before ordering. The manufacturer waited for the order before building. We very shortly found that we could not do business on order. The factory could not be built large enough--even were it desirable--to make between March and August all the cars that were ordered during those months. Therefore, years ago began the campaign of education to demonstrate that a Ford was not a summer luxury but a year-round necessity. Coupled with that came the education of the dealer into the knowledge that even if he could not sell so many cars in winter as in summer it would pay him to stock in winter for the summer and thus be able to make instant delivery. Both plans have worked out; in most parts of the country cars are used almost as much in winter as in summer. It has been found that they will run in snow, ice, or mud--in anything. Hence the winter sales are constantly growing larger and the seasonal demand is in part lifted from the dealer. And he finds it profitable to buy ahead in anticipation of needs. Thus we have no seasons in the plant; the production, up until the last couple of years, has been continuous excepting for the annual shut downs for inventory. We have had an interruption during the period of extreme depression but it was an interruption made necessary in the process of readjusting ourselves to the market conditions. In order to attain continuous production and hence a continuous turning over of money we have had to plan our operations with extreme care. The plan of production is worked out very carefully each month between the sales and production departments, with the object of producing enough cars so that those in transit will take care of the orders in hand. Formerly, when we assembled and shipped cars, this was of the highest importance because we had no place in which to store finished cars. Now we ship parts instead of cars and assemble only those required for the Detroit district. That makes the planning no less important, for if the production stream and the order stream are not approximately equal we should be either jammed with unsold parts or behind in our orders. When you are turning out the parts to make 4,000 cars a day, just a very little carelessness in overestimating orders will pile up a finished inventory running into the millions. That makes the balancing of operations an exceedingly delicate matter. In order to earn the proper profit on our narrow margin we must have a rapid turnover. We make cars to sell, not to store, and a month's unsold production would turn into a sum the interest on which alone would be enormous. The production is planned a year ahead and the number of cars to be made in each month of the year is scheduled, for of course it is a big problem to have the raw materials and such parts as we still buy from the outside flowing in consonance with production. We can no more afford to carry large stocks of finished than we can of raw material. Everything has to move in and move out. And we have had some narrow escapes. Some years ago the plant of the Diamond Manufacturing Company burned down. They were making radiator parts for us and the brass parts--tubings and castings. We had to move quickly or take a big loss. We got together the heads of all our departments, the pattern-makers and the draughtsmen. They worked from twenty-four to forty-eight hours on a stretch. They made new patterns; the Diamond Company leased a plant and got some machinery in by express. We furnished the other equipment for them and in twenty days they were shipping again. We had enough stock on hand to carry us over, say, for seven or eight days, but that fire prevented us shipping cars for ten or fifteen days. Except for our having stock ahead it would have held us up for twenty days--and our expenses would have gone right on. To repeat. The place in which to finance is the shop. It has never failed us, and once, when it was thought that we were hard up for money, it served rather conclusively to demonstrate how much better finance can be conducted from the inside than from the outside. CHAPTER XII MONEY--MASTER OR SERVANT? In December, 1920, business the country over was marking time. More automobile plants were closed than were open and quite a number of those which were closed were completely in the charge of bankers. Rumours of bad financial condition were afloat concerning nearly every industrial company, and I became interested when the reports persisted that the Ford Motor Company not only needed money but could not get it. I have become accustomed to all kinds of rumours about our company--so much so, that nowadays I rarely deny any sort of rumour. But these reports differed from all previous ones. They were so exact and circumstantial. I learned that I had overcome my prejudice against borrowing and that I might be found almost any day down in Wall Street, hat in hand, asking for money. And rumour went even further and said that no one would give me money and that I might have to break up and go out of business. It is true that we did have a problem. In 1919 we had borrowed $70,000,000 on notes to buy the full stock interest in the Ford Motor Company. On this we had $33,000,000 left to pay. We had $18,000,000 in income taxes due or shortly to become due to the Government, and also we intended to pay our usual bonus for the year to the workmen, which amounted to $7,000,000. Altogether, between January 1st and April 18, 1921, we had payments ahead totaling $58,000,000. We had only $20,000,000 in bank. Our balance sheet was more or less common knowledge and I suppose it was taken for granted that we could not raise the $38,000,000 needed without borrowing. For that is quite a large sum of money. Without the aid of Wall Street such a sum could not easily and quickly be raised. We were perfectly good for the money. Two years before we had borrowed $70,000,000. And since our whole property was unencumbered and we had no commercial debts, the matter of lending a large sum to us would not ordinarily have been a matter of moment. In fact, it would have been good banking business. However, I began to see that our need for money was being industriously circulated as an evidence of impending failure. Then I began to suspect that, although the rumours came in news dispatches from all over the country, they might perhaps be traced to a single source. This belief was further strengthened when we were informed that a very fat financial editor was at Battle Creek sending out bulletins concerning the acuteness of our financial condition. Therefore, I took care not to deny a single rumour. We had made our financial plans and they did not include borrowing money. I cannot too greatly emphasize that the very worst time to borrow money is when the banking people think that you need money. In the last chapter I outlined our financial principles. We simply applied those principles. We planned a thorough house-cleaning. Go back a bit and see what the conditions were. Along in the early part of 1920 came the first indications that the feverish speculative business engendered by the war was not going to continue. A few concerns that had sprung out of the war and had no real reason for existence failed. People slowed down in their buying. Our own sales kept right along, but we knew that sooner or later they would drop off. I thought seriously of cutting prices, but the costs of manufacturing everywhere were out of control. Labour gave less and less in return for high wages. The suppliers of raw material refused even to think of coming back to earth. The very plain warnings of the storm went quite unheeded. In June our own sales began to be affected. They grew less and less each month from June on until September. We had to do something to bring our product within the purchasing power of the public, and not only that, we had to do something drastic enough to demonstrate to the public that we were actually playing the game and not just shamming. Therefore in September we cut the price of the touring car from $575 to $440. We cut the price far below the cost of production, for we were still making from stock bought at boom prices. The cut created a considerable sensation. We received a deal of criticism. It was said that we were disturbing conditions. That is exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to do our part in bringing prices from an artificial to a natural level. I am firmly of the opinion that if at this time or earlier manufacturers and distributors had all made drastic cuts in their prices and had put through thorough house-cleanings we should not have so long a business depression. Hanging on in the hope of getting higher prices simply delayed adjustment. Nobody got the higher prices they hoped for, and if the losses had been taken all at once, not only would the productive and the buying powers of the country have become harmonized, but we should have been saved this long period of general idleness. Hanging on in the hope of higher prices merely made the losses greater, because those who hung on had to pay interest on their high-priced stocks and also lost the profits they might have made by working on a sensible basis. Unemployment cut down wage distribution and thus the buyer and the seller became more and more separated. There was a lot of flurried talk of arranging to give vast credits to Europe--the idea being that thereby the high-priced stocks might be palmed off. Of course the proposals were not put in any such crude fashion, and I think that quite a lot of people sincerely believed that if large credits were extended abroad even without a hope of the payment of either principal or interest, American business would somehow be benefited. It is true that if these credits were taken by American banks, those who had high-priced stocks might have gotten rid of them at a profit, but the banks would have acquired so much frozen credit that they would have more nearly resembled ice houses than banks. I suppose it is natural to hang on to the possibility of profits until the very last moment, but it is not good business. Our own sales, after the cut, increased, but soon they began to fall off again. We were not sufficiently within the purchasing power of the country to make buying easy. Retail prices generally had not touched bottom. The public distrusted all prices. We laid our plans for another cut and we kept our production around one hundred thousand cars a month. This production was not justified by our sales but we wanted to have as much as possible of our raw material transformed into finished product before we shut down. We knew that we would have to shut down in order to take an inventory and clean house. We wanted to open with another big cut and to have cars on hand to supply the demand. Then the new cars could be built out of material bought at lower prices. We determined that we were going to get lower prices. We shut down in December with the intention of opening again in about two weeks. We found so much to do that actually we did not open for nearly six weeks. The moment that we shut down the rumours concerning our financial condition became more and more active. I know that a great many people hoped that we should have to go out after money--for, were we seeking money, then we should have to come to terms. We did not ask for money. We did not want money. We had one offer of money. An officer of a New York bank called on me with a financial plan which included a large loan and in which also was an arrangement by which a representative of the bankers would act as treasurer and take charge of the finance of the company. Those people meant well enough, I am quite sure. We did not want to borrow money but it so happened that at the moment we were without a treasurer. To that extent the bankers had envisaged our condition correctly. I asked my son Edsel to be treasurer as well as president of the company. That fixed us up as to a treasurer, so there was really nothing at all that the bankers could do for us. Then we began our house-cleaning. During the war we had gone into many kinds of war work and had thus been forced to depart from our principle of a single product. This had caused many new departments to be added. The office force had expanded and much of the wastefulness of scattered production had crept in. War work is rush work and is wasteful work. We began throwing out everything that did not contribute to the production of cars. The only immediate payment scheduled was the purely voluntary one of a seven-million-dollar bonus to our workmen. There was no obligation to pay, but we wanted to pay on the first of January. That we paid out of our cash on hand. Throughout the country we have thirty-five branches. These are all assembling plants, but in twenty-two of them parts are also manufactured. They had stopped the making of parts but they went on assembling cars. At the time of shutting down we had practically no cars in Detroit. We had shipped out all the parts, and during January the Detroit dealers actually had to go as far a field as Chicago and Columbus to get cars for local needs. The branches shipped to each dealer, under his yearly quota, enough cars to cover about a month's sales. The dealers worked hard on sales. During the latter part of January we called in a skeleton organization of about ten thousand men, mostly foremen, sub-foremen, and straw bosses, and we started Highland Park into production. We collected our foreign accounts and sold our by-products. Then we were ready for full production. And gradually into full production we went--on a profitable basis. The house-cleaning swept out the waste that had both made the prices high and absorbed the profit. We sold off the useless stuff. Before we had employed fifteen men per car per day. Afterward we employed nine per car per day. This did not mean that six out of fifteen men lost their jobs. They only ceased being unproductive. We made that cut by applying the rule that everything and everybody must produce or get out. We cut our office forces in halves and offered the office workers better jobs in the shops. Most of them took the jobs. We abolished every order blank and every form of statistics that did not directly aid in the production of a car. We had been collecting tons of statistics because they were interesting. But statistics will not construct automobiles--so out they went. We took out 60 per cent. of our telephone extensions. Only a comparatively few men in any organization need telephones. We formerly had a foreman for every five men; now we have a foreman for every twenty men. The other foremen are working on machines. We cut the overhead charge from $146 a car to $93 a car, and when you realize what this means on more than four thousand cars a day you will have an idea how, not by economy, not by wage-cutting, but by the elimination of waste, it is possible to make an "impossible" price. Most important of all, we found out how to use less money in our business by speeding up the turnover. And in increasing the turnover rate, one of the most important factors was the Detroit, Toledo, & Ironton Railroad--which we purchased. The railroad took a large place in the scheme of economy. To the road itself I have given another chapter. We discovered, after a little experimenting, that freight service could be improved sufficiently to reduce the cycle of manufacture from twenty-two to fourteen days. That is, raw material could be bought, manufactured, and the finished product put into the hands of the distributor in (roughly) 33 per cent. less time than before. We had been carrying an inventory of around $60,000,000 to insure uninterrupted production. Cutting down the time one third released $20,000,000, or $1,200,000 a year in interest. Counting the finished inventory, we saved approximately $8,000,000 more--that is, we were able to release $28,000,000 in capital and save the interest on that sum. On January 1st we had $20,000,000. On April 1st we had $87,300,000, or $27,300,000 more than we needed to wipe out all our indebtedness. That is what boring into the business did for us! This amount came to us in these items: Cash on hand, January $20,000,000 Stock on hand turned into cash, January 1 to April 1 24,700,000 Speeding up transit of goods released 28,000,000 Collected from agents in foreign countries 3,000,000 Sale of by-products 3,700,000 Sale of Liberty Bonds 7,900,000 TOTAL $87,300,000 Now I have told about all this not in the way of an exploit, but to point out how a business may find resources within itself instead of borrowing, and also to start a little thinking as to whether the form of our money may not put a premium on borrowing and thus give far too great a place in life to the bankers. We could have borrowed $40,000,000--more had we wanted to. Suppose we had borrowed, what would have happened? Should we have been better fitted to go on with our business? Or worse fitted? If we had borrowed we should not have been under the necessity of finding methods to cheapen production. Had we been able to obtain the money at 6 per cent. flat--and we should in commissions and the like have had to pay more than that--the interest charge alone on a yearly production of 500,000 cars would have amounted to about four dollars a car. Therefore we should now be without the benefit of better production and loaded with a heavy debt. Our cars would probably cost about one hundred dollars more than they do; hence we should have a smaller production, for we could not have so many buyers; we should employ fewer men, and in short, should not be able to serve to the utmost. You will note that the financiers proposed to cure by lending money and not by bettering methods. They did not suggest putting in an engineer; they wanted to put in a treasurer. And that is the danger of having bankers in business. They think solely in terms of money. They think of a factory as making money, not goods. They want to watch the money, not the efficiency of production. They cannot comprehend that a business never stands still, it must go forward or go back. They regard a reduction in prices as a throwing away of profit instead of as a building of business. Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry. Most business men will privately admit that fact. They will seldom publicly admit it because they are afraid of their bankers. It required less skill to make a fortune dealing in money than dealing in production. The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically controls the average business man. There has been a great reaching out by bankers in the last fifteen or twenty years--and especially since the war--and the Federal Reserve System for a time put into their hands an almost limitless supply of credit. The banker is, as I have noted, by training and because of his position, totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry. Everyone will admit that. They were pushed there, willy-nilly, by the system itself. Therefore, I personally want to discover whether we are operating under the best financial system. Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers has nothing to do with personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need of thoughtful men, skilled in finance. The world cannot go on without banking facilities. We have to have money. We have to have credit. Otherwise the fruits of production could not be exchanged. We have to have capital. Without it there could be no production. But whether we have based our banking and our credit on the right foundation is quite another matter. It is no part of my thought to attack our financial system. I am not in the position of one who has been beaten by the system and wants revenge. It does not make the least difference to me personally what bankers do because we have been able to manage our affairs without outside financial aid. My inquiry is prompted by no personal motive whatsoever. I only want to know whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number. No financial system is good which favors one class of producers over another. We want to discover whether it is not possible to take away power which is not based on wealth creation. Any sort of class legislation is pernicious. I think that the country's production has become so changed in its methods that gold is not the best medium with which it may be measured, and that the gold standard as a control of credit gives, as it is now (and I believe inevitably) administered, class advantage. The ultimate check on credit is the amount of gold in the country, regardless of the amount of wealth in the country. I am not prepared to dogmatize on the subject of money or credit. As far as money and credit are concerned, no one as yet knows enough about them to dogmatize. The whole question will have to be settled as all other questions of real importance have to be settled, and that is by cautious, well-founded experiment. And I am not inclined to go beyond cautious experiments. We have to proceed step by step and very carefully. The question is not political, it is economic, and I am perfectly certain that helping the people to think on the question is wholly advantageous. They will not act without adequate knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere effort is made to provide them with knowledge. The money question has first place in multitudes of minds of all degrees or power. But a glance at most of the cure-all systems shows how contradictory they are. The majority of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind, to begin with, and that, of course, is a prime defect. Even our present system would work splendidly if all men were honest. As a matter of fact, the whole money question is 95 per cent. human nature; and your successful system must check human nature, not depend upon it. The people are thinking about the money question; and if the money masters have any information which they think the people ought to have to prevent them going astray, now is the time to give it. The days are fast slipping away when the fear of credit curtailment will avail, or when wordy slogans will affright. The people are naturally conservative. They are more conservative than the financiers. Those who believe that the people are so easily led that they would permit printing presses to run off money like milk tickets do not understand them. It is the innate conservation of the people that has kept our money good in spite of the fantastic tricks which the financiers play--and which they cover up with high technical terms. The people are on the side of sound money. They are so unalterably on the side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiated can do with it. The present money system is not going to be changed by speech-making or political sensationalism or economic experiment. It is going to change under the pressure of conditions--conditions that we cannot control and pressure that we cannot control. These conditions are now with us; that pressure is now upon us. The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few. Money, after all, is extremely simple. It is a part of our transportation system. It is a simple and direct method of conveying goods from one person to another. Money is in itself most admirable. It is essential. It is not intrinsically evil. It is one of the most useful devices in social life. And when it does what it was intended to do, it is all help and no hindrance. But money should always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent dollar, and then the 47-cent dollar, as the good old American gold and silver dollars did, what is the use of yelling about "cheap money," "depreciated money"? A dollar that stays 100 cents is as necessary as a pound that stays 16 ounces and a yard that stays 36 inches. The bankers who do straight banking should regard themselves as naturally the first men to probe and understand our monetary system--instead of being content with the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if they would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name of "banker" and oust them once for all from the place of influence which that name gives them, banking would be restored and established as the public service it ought to be, and the iniquities of the present monetary system and financial devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the people. There is an "if" here, of course. But it is not insurmountable. Affairs are coming to a jam as it is, and if those who possess technical facility do not engage to remedy the case, those who lack that facility may attempt it. Nothing is more foolish than for any class to assume that progress is an attack upon it. Progress is only a call made upon it to lend its experience for the general advancement. It is only those who are unwise who will attempt to obstruct progress and thereby become its victims. All of us are here together, all of us must go forward together; it is perfectly silly for any man or class to take umbrage at the stirring of progress. If financiers feel that progress is only the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all suggestions of betterment as a personal slap, then they are taking the part which proves more than anything else could their unfitness to continue in their leadership. If the present faulty system is more profitable to a financier than a more perfect system would be, and if that financier values his few remaining years of personal profits more highly than he would value the honour of making a contribution to the life of the world by helping to erect a better system, then there is no way of preventing a clash of interests. But it is fair to say to the selfish financial interests that, if their fight is waged to perpetuate a system just because it profits them, then their fight is already lost. Why should finance fear? The world will still be here. Men will do business with one another. There will be money and there will be need of masters of the mechanism of money. Nothing is going to depart but the knots and tangles. There will be some readjustments, of course. Banks will no longer be the masters of industry. They will be the servants of industry. Business will control money instead of money controlling business. The ruinous interest system will be greatly modified. Banking will not be a risk, but a service. Banks will begin to do much more for the people than they do now, and instead of being the most expensive businesses in the world to manage, and the most highly profitable in the matter of dividends, they will become less costly, and the profits of their operation will go to the community which they serve. Two facts of the old order are fundamental. First: that within the nation itself the tendency of financial control is toward its largest centralized banking institutions--either a government bank or a closely allied group of private financiers. There is always in every nation a definite control of credit by private or semi-public interests. Second: in the world as a whole the same centralizing tendency is operative. An American credit is under control of New York interests, as before the war world credit was controlled in London--the British pound sterling was the standard of exchange for the world's trade. Two methods of reform are open to us, one beginning at the bottom and one beginning at the top. The latter is the more orderly way, the former is being tried in Russia. If our reform should begin at the top it will require a social vision and an altruistic fervour of a sincerity and intensity which is wholly inconsistent with selfish shrewdness. The wealth of the world neither consists in nor is adequately represented by the money of the world. Gold itself is not a valuable commodity. It is no more wealth than hat checks are hats. But it can be so manipulated, as the sign of wealth, as to give its owners or controllers the whip-hand over the credit which producers of real wealth require. Dealing in money, the commodity of exchange, is a very lucrative business. When money itself becomes an article of commerce to be bought and sold before real wealth can be moved or exchanged, the usurers and speculators are thereby permitted to lay a tax on production. The hold which controllers of money are able to maintain on productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered that, although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the world, there is always much more wealth than there is money, and real wealth is often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most paradoxical situation--a world filled with wealth but suffering want. These facts are not merely fiscal, to be cast into figures and left there. They are instinct with human destiny and they bleed. The poverty of the world is seldom caused by lack of goods but by a "money stringency." Commercial competition between nations, which leads to international rivalry and ill-will, which in their turn breed wars-- these are some of the human significations of these facts. Thus poverty and war, two great preventable evils, grow on a single stem. Let us see if a beginning toward a better method cannot be made. CHAPTER XIII WHY BE POOR? Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which are controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely feasible to abolish both poverty and special privilege--and there can be no question but that their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to which we must look for results. By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be differences in the grades of sustenance. Men are not equal in mentality or in physique. Any plan which starts with the assumption that men are or ought to be equal is unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be no feasible or desirable process of leveling down. Such a course only promotes poverty by making it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing the efficient producer to become inefficient does not make the inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have according to ability and industry. The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their reasoning that industry would inevitably crush the worker. Modern industry is gradually lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by individual initiative and ingenuity--by intelligent individual leadership. The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot give positive aid to any really constructive programme. It can give negative aid--by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be a burden upon the community. The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them, are essentially due to the bad adjustment between production and distribution, in both industry and agriculture--between the source of power and its application. The wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of these wastes must fall before intelligent leadership consecrated to service. So long as leadership thinks more of money than it does of service, the wastes will continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not by short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of money. They cannot see waste. They think of service as altruistic instead of as the most practical thing in the world. They cannot get far enough away from the little things to see the big things--to see the biggest thing of all, which is that opportunist production from a purely money standpoint is the least profitable. Service can be based upon altruism, but that sort of service is not usually the best. The sentimental trips up the practical. It is not that the industrial enterprises are unable fairly to distribute a share of the wealth which they create. It is simply that the waste is so great that there is not a sufficient share for everyone engaged, notwithstanding the fact that the product is usually sold at so high a price as to restrict its fullest consumption. Take some of the wastes. Take the wastes of power. The Mississippi Valley is without coal. Through its centre pour many millions of potential horsepower--the Mississippi River. But if the people by its banks want power or heat they buy coal that has been hauled hundreds of miles and consequently has to be sold at far above its worth as heat or power. Or if they cannot afford to buy this expensive coal, they go out and cut down trees, thereby depriving themselves of one of the great conservers of water power. Until recently they never thought of the power at hand which, at next to nothing beyond the initial cost, could heat, light, cook, and work for the huge population which that valley is destined to support. The cure of poverty is not in personal economy but in better production. The "thrift" and "economy" ideas have been overworked. The word "economy" represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against extravagance--the mind catches hold of the idea of "economy." But it only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full journey from error to truth. Economy is the rule of half-alive minds. There can be no doubt that it is better than waste; neither can there be any doubt that it is not as good as use. People who pride themselves on their economy take it as a virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel--body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste--that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a reaction from extravagance. Everything was given us to use. There is no evil from which we suffer that did not come about through misuse. The worst sin we can commit against the things of our common life is to misuse them. "Misuse" is the wider term. We like to say "waste," but waste is only one phase of misuse. All waste is misuse; all misuse is waste. It is possible even to overemphasize the saving habit. It is proper and desirable that everyone have a margin; it is really wasteful not to have one--if you can have one. But it can be overdone. We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has a value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child out into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save. Most men who are laboriously saving a few dollars would do better to invest those few dollars--first in themselves, and then in some useful work. Eventually they would have more to save. Young men ought to invest rather than save. They ought to invest in themselves to increase creative value; after they have taken themselves to the peak of usefulness, then will be time enough to think of laying aside, as a fixed policy, a certain substantial share of income. You are not "saving" when you prevent yourself from becoming more productive. You are really taking away from your ultimate capital; you are reducing the value of one of nature's investments. The principle of use is the true guide. Use is positive, active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds to the sum of good. Personal want may be avoided without changing the general condition. Wage increases, price increases, profit increases, other kinds of increases designed to bring more money here or money there, are only attempts of this or that class to get out of the fire--regardless of what may happen to everyone else. There is a foolish belief that if only the money can be gotten, somehow the storm can be weathered. Labour believes that if it can get more wages, it can weather the storm. Capital thinks that if it can get more profits, it can weather the storm. There is a pathetic faith in what money can do. Money is very useful in normal times, but money has no more value than the people put into it by production, and it can be so misused. It can be so superstitiously worshipped as a substitute for real wealth as to destroy its value altogether. The idea persists that there exists an essential conflict between industry and the farm. There is no such conflict. It is nonsense to say that because the cities are overcrowded everybody ought to go back to the farm. If everybody did so farming would soon decline as a satisfactory occupation. It is not more sensible for everyone to flock to the manufacturing towns. If the farms be deserted, of what use are manufacturers? A reciprocity can exist between farming and manufacturing. The manufacturer can give the farmer what he needs to be a good farmer, and the farmer and other producers of raw materials can give the manufacturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer. Then with transportation as a messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system built on service. If we live in smaller communities where the tension of living is not so high, and where the products of the fields and gardens can be had without the interference of so many profiteers, there will be little poverty or unrest. Look at this whole matter of seasonal work. Take building as an example of a seasonal trade. What a waste of power it is to allow builders to hibernate through the winter, waiting for the building season to come around! And what an equal waste of skill it is to force experienced artisans who have gone into factories to escape the loss of the winter season to stay in the factory jobs through the building season because they are afraid they may not get their factory places back in the winter. What a waste this all-year system has been! If the farmer could get away from the shop to till his farm in the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons (they are only a small part of the year, after all), and if the builder could get away from the shop to ply his useful trade in its season, how much better they would be, and how much more smoothly the world would proceed. Suppose we all moved outdoors every spring and summer and lived the wholesome life of the outdoors for three or four months! We could not have "slack times." The farm has its dull season. That is the time for the farmer to come into the factory and help produce the things he needs to till the farm. The factory also has its dull season. That is the time for the workmen to go out to the land to help produce food. Thus we might take the slack out of work and restore the balance between the artificial and the natural. But not the least benefit would be the more balanced view of life we should thus obtain. The mixing of the arts is not only beneficial in a material way, but it makes for breadth of mind and fairness of judgment. A great deal of our unrest to-day is the result of narrow, prejudiced judgment. If our work were more diversified, if we saw more sides of life, if we saw how necessary was one factor to another, we should be more balanced. Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky. It is not at all impossible. What is desirable and right is never impossible. It would only mean a little teamwork--a little less attention to greedy ambition and a little more attention to life. Those who are rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary for an outdoor, seasonal employment. It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the unrest we see about us is the result of unnatural modes of life. Men who do the same thing continuously the year around and are shut away from the health of the sun and the spaciousness of the great out of doors are hardly to be blamed if they see matters in a distorted light. And that applies equally to the capitalist and the worker. What is there in life that should hamper normal and wholesome modes of living? And what is there in industry incompatible with all the arts receiving in their turn the attention of those qualified to serve in them? It may be objected that if the forces of industry were withdrawn from the shops every summer it would impede production. But we must look at the matter from a universal point of view. We must consider the increased energy of the industrial forces after three or four months in outdoor work. We must also consider the effect on the cost of living which would result from a general return to the fields. We have, as I indicated in a previous chapter, been working toward this combination of farm and factory and with entirely satisfactory results. At Northville, not far from Detroit, we have a little factory making valves. It is a little factory, but it makes a great many valves. Both the management and the mechanism of the plant are comparatively simple because it makes but one thing. We do not have to search for skilled employees. The skill is in the machine. The people of the countryside can work in the plant part of the time and on the farm part of the time, for mechanical farming is not very laborious. The plant power is derived from water. Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building at Flat Rock, about fifteen miles from Detroit. We have dammed the river. The dam also serves as a bridge for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, which was in need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the public--all in one construction. We are going to make our glass at this point. The damming of the river gives sufficient water for the floating to us of most of our raw material. It also gives us our power through a hydroelectric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the farming country, there can be no possibility of crowding or any of the ills incident to too great a concentration of population. The men will have plots of ground or farms as well as their jobs in the factory, and these can be scattered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding--for of course nowadays the workingman can come to the shop in an automobile. There we shall have the combination of agriculture and industrialism and the entire absence of all the evils of concentration. The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn more about manufacturing and learn to make articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under the best possible conditions. And these best possible conditions, as far as the employees are concerned, are also the best possible conditions from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the combination of little plants, each making a single part, will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There are exceptions, as where casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want to use all of the waste power. This requires a large investment and a considerable force of men in one place. But such combinations are the exception rather than the rule, and there would not be enough of them seriously to interfere with the process of breaking down the concentration of industry. Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would be rebuilt as it is, were it destroyed--which fact is in itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities. The city had a place to fill, a work to do. Doubtless the country places would not have approximated their livableness had it not been for the cities. By crowding together, men have learned some secrets. They would never have learned them alone in the country. Sanitation, lighting, social organization--all these are products of men's experience in the city. But also every social ailment from which we to-day suffer originated and centres in the big cities. You will find the smaller communities living along in unison with the seasons, having neither extreme poverty nor wealth--none of the violent plagues of upheave and unrest which afflict our great populations. There is something about a city of a million people which is untamed and threatening. Thirty miles away, happy and contented villages read of the ravings of the city! A great city is really a helpless mass. Everything it uses is carried to it. Stop transport and the city stops. It lives off the shelves of stores. The shelves produce nothing. The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City conditions of work and living are so artificial that instincts sometimes rebel against their unnaturalness. And finally, the overhead expense of living or doing business in the great cities is becoming so large as to be unbearable. It places so great a tax upon life that there is no surplus over to live on. The politicians have found it easy to borrow money and they have borrowed to the limit. Within the last decade the expense of running every city in the country has tremendously increased. A good part of that expense is for interest upon money borrowed; the money has gone either into non-productive brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city life, such as water supplies and sewage systems at far above a reasonable cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost of keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is greater than the advantages derived from community life. The modern city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will cease to be. The provision of a great amount of cheap and convenient power--not all at once, but as it may be used--will do more than anything else to bring about the balancing of life and the cutting of the waste which breeds poverty. There is no single source of power. It may be that generating electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will be the most economical method for one community. Hydro-electric power may be best for another community. But certainly in every community there ought to be a central station to furnish cheap power--it ought to be held as essential as a railway or a water supply. And we could have every great source of power harnessed and working for the common good were it not that the expense of obtaining capital stands in the way. I think that we shall have to revise some of our notions about capital. Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed to expand the workman's opportunity and increase his comfort and prosperity, and that is used to give more and more men work, at the same time reducing the cost of service to the public--that sort of capital, even though it be under single control, is not a menace to humanity. It is a working surplus held in trust and daily use for the benefit of all. The holder of such capital can scarcely regard it as a personal reward. No man can view such a surplus as his own, for he did not create it alone. It is the joint product of his whole organization. The owner's idea may have released all the energy and direction, but certainly it did not supply all the energy and direction. Every workman was a partner in the creation. No business can possibly be considered only with reference to to-day and to the individuals engaged in it. It must have the means to carry on. The best wages ought to be paid. A proper living ought to be assured every participant in the business--no matter what his part. But, for the sake of that business's ability to support those who work in it, a surplus has to be held somewhere. The truly honest manufacturer holds his surplus profits in that trust. Ultimately it does not matter where this surplus be held nor who controls it; it is its use that matters. Capital that is not constantly creating more and better jobs is more useless than sand. Capital that is not constantly making conditions of daily labour better and the reward of daily labour more just, is not fulfilling its highest function. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are helping to solve the social problem, we are not doing our principal work. We are not fully serving. CHAPTER XIV THE TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING It is not generally known that our tractor, which we call the "Fordson," was put into production about a year before we had intended, because of the Allies' war-time food emergency, and that all of our early production (aside, of course, from the trial and experimental machines) went directly to England. We sent in all five thousand tractors across the sea in the critical 1917-18 period when the submarines were busiest. Every one of them arrived safely, and officers of the British Government have been good enough to say that without their aid England could scarcely have met its food crisis. It was these tractors, run mostly by women, that ploughed up the old estates and golf courses and let all England be planted and cultivated without taking away from the fighting man power or crippling the forces in the munitions factories. It came about in this way: The English food administration, about the time that we entered the war in 1917, saw that, with the German submarines torpedoing a freighter almost every day, the already low supply of shipping was going to be totally inadequate to carry the American troops across the seas, to carry the essential munitions for these troops and the Allies, to carry the food for the fighting forces, and at the same time carry enough food for the home population of England. It was then that they began shipping out of England the wives and families of the colonials and made plans for the growing of crops at home. The situation was a grave one. There were not enough draft animals in all England to plough and cultivate land to raise crops in sufficient volume to make even a dent in the food imports. Power farming was scarcely known, for the English farms were not, before the war, big enough to warrant the purchase of heavy, expensive farm machinery, and especially with agricultural labour so cheap and plentiful. Various concerns in England made tractors, but they were heavy affairs and mostly run by steam. There were not enough of them to go around. More could not easily be made, for all the factories were working on munitions, and even if they had been made they were too big and clumsy for the average field and in addition required the management of engineers. We had put together several tractors at our Manchester plant for demonstration purposes. They had been made in the United States and merely assembled in England. The Board of Agriculture requested the Royal Agricultural Society to make a test of these tractors and report. This is what they reported: At the request of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, we have examined two Ford tractors, rated at 25 h. p., at work ploughing: First, cross-ploughing a fallow of strong land in a dirty condition, and subsequently in a field of lighter land which had seeded itself down into rough grass, and which afforded every opportunity of testing the motor on the level and on a steep hill. In the first trial, a 2-furrow Oliver plough was used, ploughing on an average 5 inches deep with a 16-inch wide furrow; a 3-furrow Cockshutt plough was also used at the same depth with the breast pitched 10 inches. In the second trial, the 3-furrow plough was used, ploughing an average of 6 inches deep. In both cases the motor did its work with ease, and on a measured acre the time occupied was 1 hour 30 minutes, with a consumption of 2 gallons of paraffin per acre. These results we consider very satisfactory. The ploughs were not quite suitable to the land, and the tractors, consequently, were working at some disadvantage. The total weight of the tractor fully loaded with fuel and water, as weighed by us, was 23 1/4 cwts. The tractor is light for its power, and, consequently, light on the land, is easily handled, turns in a small circle, and leaves a very narrow headland. The motor is quickly started up from cold on a small supply of petrol. After these trials we proceeded to Messrs. Ford's works at Trafford Park, Manchester, where one of the motors had been sent to be dismantled and inspected in detail. We find the design of ample strength, and the work of first-rate quality. We consider the driving-wheels rather light, and we understand that a new and stronger pattern is to be supplied in future. The tractor is designed purely for working on the land, and the wheels, which are fitted with spuds, should be provided with some protection to enable them to travel on the road when moving from farm to farm. Bearing the above points in mind, we recommend, under existing circumstances, that steps be taken to construct immediately as many of these tractors as possible. The report was signed by Prof. W. E. Dalby and F. S. Courtney, engineering; R. N. Greaves, engineering and agriculture; Robert W. Hobbs and Henry Overman, agriculture; Gilbert Greenall, honorary directors, and John E. Cross, steward. Almost immediately after the filing of that report we received the following wire: Have not received anything definite concerning shipment necessary steel and plant for Cork factory. Under best circumstances however Cork factory production could not be available before next spring. The need for food production in England is imperative and large quantity of tractors must be available at earliest possible date for purpose breaking up existing grass land and ploughing for Fall wheat. Am requested by high authorities to appeal to Mr. Ford for help. Would you be willing to send Sorensen and others with drawings of everything necessary, loaning them to British Government so that parts can be manufactured over here and assembled in Government factories under Sorensen's guidance? Can assure you positively this suggestion is made in national interest and if carried out will be done by the Government for the people with no manufacturing or capitalist interest invested and no profit being made by any interests whatever. The matter is very urgent. Impossible to ship anything adequate from America because many thousand tractors must be provided. Ford Tractor considered best and only suitable design. Consequently national necessity entirely dependent Mr. Ford's design. My work prevents me coming America to present the proposal personally. Urge favorable consideration and immediate decision because every day is of vital importance. You may rely on manufacturing facility for production here under strictest impartial Government control. Would welcome Sorensen and any and every other assistance and guidance you can furnish from America. Cable reply, Perry, Care of Harding "Prodome," London. PRODOME. I understand that its sending was directed by the British Cabinet. We at once cabled our entire willingness to lend the drawings, the benefit of what experience we had to date, and whatever men might be necessary to get production under way, and on the next ship sent Charles E. Sorensen with full drawings. Mr. Sorensen had opened the Manchester plant and was familiar with English conditions. He was in charge of the manufacture of tractors in this country. Mr. Sorensen started at work with the British officials to the end of having the parts made and assembled in England. Many of the materials which we used were special and could not be obtained in England. All of their factories equipped for doing casting and machine work were filled with munition orders. It proved to be exceedingly difficult for the Ministry to get tenders of any kind. Then came June and a series of destructive air raids on London. There was a crisis. Something had to be done, and finally, after passing to and fro among half the factories of England, our men succeeded in getting the tenders lodged with the Ministry. Lord Milner exhibited these tenders to Mr. Sorensen. Taking the best of them the price per tractor came to about $1,500 without any guarantee of delivery. "That price is out of all reason," said Mr. Sorensen, "These should not cost more than $700 apiece." "Can you make five thousand at that price?" asked Lord Milner. "Yes," answered Mr. Sorensen. "How long will it take you to deliver them?" "We will start shipping within sixty days." They signed a contract on the spot, which, among other things, provided for an advance payment of 25 per cent. of the total sum. Mr. Sorensen cabled us what he had done and took the next boat home. The 25 five per cent. payment was, by the way, not touched by us until after the entire contract was completed: we deposited it in a kind of trust fund. The tractor works was not ready to go into production. The Highland Park plant might have been adapted, but every machine in it was going day and night on essential war work. There was only one thing to do. We ran up an emergency extension to our plant at Dearborn, equipped it with machinery that was ordered by telegraph and mostly came by express, and in less than sixty days the first tractors were on the docks in New York in the hands of the British authorities. They delayed in getting cargo space, but on December 6, 1917, we received this cable: London, December 5, 1917. SORENSEN, Fordson, F. R. Dearborn. First tractors arrived, when will Smith and others leave? Cable. PERRY. The entire shipment of five thousand tractors went through within three months and that is why the tractors were being used in England long before they were really known in the United States. The planning of the tractor really antedated that of the motor car. Out on the farm my first experiments were with tractors, and it will be remembered that I was employed for some time by a manufacturer of steam tractors--the big heavy road and thresher engines. But I did not see any future for the large tractors. They were too expensive for the small farm, required too much skill to operate, and were much too heavy as compared with the pull they exerted. And anyway, the public was more interested in being carried than in being pulled; the horseless carriage made a greater appeal to the imagination. And so it was that I practically dropped work upon a tractor until the automobile was in production. With the automobile on the farms, the tractor became a necessity. For then the farmers had been introduced to power. The farmer does not stand so much in need of new tools as of power to run the tools that he has. I have followed many a weary mile behind a plough and I know all the drudgery of it. What a waste it is for a human being to spend hours and days behind a slowly moving team of horses when in the same time a tractor could do six times as much work! It is no wonder that, doing everything slowly and by hand, the average farmer has not been able to earn more than a bare living while farm products are never as plentiful and cheap as they ought to be. As in the automobile, we wanted power--not weight. The weight idea was firmly fixed in the minds of tractor makers. It was thought that excess weight meant excess pulling power--that the machine could not grip unless it were heavy. And this in spite of the fact that a cat has not much weight and is a pretty good climber. I have already set out my ideas on weight. The only kind of tractor that I thought worth working on was one that would be light, strong, and so simple that any one could run it. Also it had to be so cheap that any one could buy it. With these ends in view, we worked for nearly fifteen years on a design and spent some millions of dollars in experiments. We followed exactly the same course as with the automobile. Each part had to be as strong as it was possible to make it, the parts had to be few in number, and the whole had to admit of quantity production. We had some thought that perhaps the automobile engine might be used and we conducted a few experiments with it. But finally we became convinced that the kind of tractor we wanted and the automobile had practically nothing in common. It was the intention from the beginning that the tractor should be made as a separate undertaking from the automobile and in a distinct plant. No plant is big enough to make two articles. The automobile is designed to carry; the tractor is designed to pull--to climb. And that difference in function made all the difference in the world in construction. The hard problem was to get bearings that would stand up against the heavy pull. We finally got them and a construction which seems to give the best average performance under all conditions. We fixed upon a four-cylinder engine that is started by gasoline but runs thereafter on kerosene. The lightest weight that we could attain with strength was 2,425 pounds. The grip is in the lugs on the driving wheels--as in the claws of the cat. In addition to its strictly pulling functions, the tractor, to be of the greatest service, had also to be designed for work as a stationary engine so that when it was not out on the road or in the fields it might be hitched up with a belt to run machinery. In short, it had to be a compact, versatile power plant. And that it has been. It has not only ploughed, harrowed, cultivated, and reaped, but it has also threshed, run grist mills, saw mills, and various other sorts of mills, pulled stumps, ploughed snow, and done about everything that a plant of moderate power could do from sheep-shearing to printing a newspaper. It has been fitted with heavy tires to haul on roads, with sledge runners for the woods and ice, and with rimmed wheels to run on rails. When the shops in Detroit were shut down by coal shortage, we got out the _Dearborn Independent_ by sending a tractor to the electro-typing factory--stationing the tractor in the alley, sending up a belt four stories, and making the plates by tractor power. Its use in ninety-five distinct lines of service has been called to our attention, and probably we know only a fraction of the uses. The mechanism of the tractor is even more simple than that of the automobile and it is manufactured in exactly the same fashion. Until the present year, the production has been held back by the lack of a suitable factory. The first tractors had been made in the plant at Dearborn which is now used as an experimental station. That was not large enough to affect the economies of large-scale production and it could not well be enlarged because the design was to make the tractors at the River Rouge plant, and that, until this year, was not in full operation. Now that plant is completed for the making of tractors. The work flows exactly as with the automobiles. Each part is a separate departmental undertaking and each part as it is finished joins the conveyor system which leads it to its proper initial assembly and eventually into the final assembly. Everything moves and there is no skilled work. The capacity of the present plant is one million tractors a year. That is the number we expect to make--for the world needs inexpensive, general-utility power plants more now than ever before--and also it now knows enough about machinery to want such plants. The first tractors, as I have said, went to England. They were first offered in the United States in 1918 at $750. In the next year, with the higher costs, the price had to be made $885; in the middle of the year it was possible again to make the introductory price of $750. In 1920 we charged $790; in the next year we were sufficiently familiar with the production to begin cutting. The price came down to $625 and then in 1922 with the River Rouge plant functioning we were able to cut to $395. All of which shows what getting into scientific production will do to a price. Just as I have no idea how cheaply the Ford automobile can eventually be made, I have no idea how cheaply the tractor can eventually be made. It is important that it shall be cheap. Otherwise power will not go to all the farms. And they must all of them have power. Within a few years a farm depending solely on horse and hand power will be as much of a curiosity as a factory run by a treadmill. The farmer must either take up power or go out of business. The cost figures make this inevitable. During the war the Government made a test of a Fordson tractor to see how its costs compared with doing the work with horses. The figures on the tractor were taken at the high price plus freight. The depreciation and repair items are not so great as the report sets them forth, and even if they were, the prices are cut in halves which would therefore cut the depreciation and repair charge in halves. These are the figures: COST, FORDSON, $880. WEARING LIFE, 4,800 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRES PER HOUR, 3,840 ACRES 3,840 acres at $880; depreciation per acre .221 Repairs for 3,840 acres, $100; per acre .026 Fuel cost, kerosene at 19 cents; 2 gal. per acre .38 1 gal. oil per 8 acres; per acre .075 Driver, $2 per day, 8 acres; per acre .25 --- Cost of ploughing with Fordson; per acre. .95 8 HORSES COST, $1,200. WORKING LIFE, 5,000 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRE PER HOUR, 4,000 ACRES 4,000 acres at $1,200, depreciation of horses, per acre. . . . 30 Feed per horse, 40 cents (100 working days) per acre . . . . . 40 Feed per horse, 10 cents a day (265 idle days) per acre. . . 2.65 Two drivers, two gang ploughs, at $2 each per day, per acre. . 50 ---- Cost of ploughing with horses; per acre. . . . . . . . . . . 1.46 At present costs, an acre would run about 40 cents only two cents representing depreciation and repairs. But this does not take account of the time element. The ploughing is done in about one fourth the time, with only the physical energy used to steer the tractor. Ploughing has become a matter of motoring across a field. Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into a picturesque memory. This does not mean that work is going to remove from the farm. Work cannot be removed from any life that is productive. But power-farming does mean this--drudgery is going to be removed from the farm. Power-farming is simply taking the burden from flesh and blood and putting it on steel. We are in the opening years of power-farming. The motor car wrought a revolution in modern farm life, not because it was a vehicle, but because it had power. Farming ought to be something more than a rural occupation. It ought to be the business of raising food. And when it does become a business the actual work of farming the average sort of farm can be done in twenty-four days a year. The other days can be given over to other kinds of business. Farming is too seasonal an occupation to engage all of a man's time. As a food business, farming will justify itself as a business if it raises food in sufficient quantity and distributes it under such conditions as will enable every family to have enough food for its reasonable needs. There could not be a food trust if we were to raise such overwhelming quantities of all kinds of food as to make manipulation and exploitation impossible. The farmer who limits his planting plays into the hands of the speculators. And then, perhaps, we shall witness a revival of the small flour-milling business. It was an evil day when the village flour mill disappeared. Cooperative farming will become so developed that we shall see associations of farmers with their own packing houses in which their own hogs will be turned into ham and bacon, and with their own flour mills in which their grain will be turned into commercial foodstuffs. Why a steer raised in Texas should be brought to Chicago and then served in Boston is a question that cannot be answered as long as all the steers the city needs could be raised near Boston. The centralization of food manufacturing industries, entailing enormous costs for transportation and organization, is too wasteful long to continue in a developed community. We shall have as great a development in farming during the next twenty years as we have had in manufacturing during the last twenty. CHAPTER XV WHY CHARITY? Why should there by any necessity for almsgiving in a civilized community? It is not the charitable mind to which I object. Heaven forbid that we should ever grow cold toward a fellow creature in need. Human sympathy is too fine for the cool, calculating attitude to take its place. One can name very few great advances that did not have human sympathy behind them. It is in order to help people that every notable service is undertaken. The trouble is that we have been using this great, fine motive force for ends too small. If human sympathy prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give the larger desire--to make hunger in our midst impossible? If we have sympathy enough for people to help them out of their troubles, surely we ought to have sympathy enough to keep them out. It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary. To make the giving unnecessary we must look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery--not hesitating, of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but not stopping with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be in getting to look beyond to the causes. More people can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved to give their minds toward the removal of poverty altogether. I have no patience with professional charity, or with any sort of commercialized humanitarianism. The moment human helpfulness is systematized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized, the heart of it is extinguished, and it becomes a cold and clammy thing. Real human helpfulness is never card-catalogued or advertised. There are more orphan children being cared for in the private homes of people who love them than in the institutions. There are more old people being sheltered by friends than you can find in the old people's homes. There is more aid by loans from family to family than by the loan societies. That is, human society on a humane basis looks out for itself. It is a grave question how far we ought to countenance the commercialization of the natural instinct of charity. Professional charity is not only cold but it hurts more than it helps. It degrades the recipients and drugs their self-respect. Akin to it is sentimental idealism. The idea went abroad not so many years ago that "service" was something that we should expect to have done for us. Untold numbers of people became the recipients of well-meant "social service." Whole sections of our population were coddled into a state of expectant, child-like helplessness. There grew up a regular profession of doing things for people, which gave an outlet for a laudable desire for service, but which contributed nothing whatever to the self-reliance of the people nor to the correction of the conditions out of which the supposed need for such service grew. Worse than this encouragement of childish wistfulness, instead of training for self-reliance and self-sufficiency, was the creation of a feeling of resentment which nearly always overtakes the objects of charity. People often complain of the "ingratitude" of those whom they help. Nothing is more natural. In the first place, precious little of our so-called charity is ever real charity, offered out of a heart full of interest and sympathy. In the second place, no person ever relishes being in a position where he is forced to take favors. Such "social work" creates a strained relation--the recipient of bounty feels that he has been belittled in the taking, and it is a question whether the giver should not also feel that he has been belittled in the giving. Charity never led to a settled state of affairs. The charitable system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not performing service. It is simply making a job for itself and is an added item to the record of non-production. Charity becomes unnecessary as those who seem to be unable to earn livings are taken out of the non-productive class and put into the productive. In a previous chapter I have set out how experiments in our shops have demonstrated that in sufficiently subdivided industry there are places which can be filled by the maimed, the halt, and the blind. Scientific industry need not be a monster devouring all who come near it. When it is, then it is not fulfilling its place in life. In and out of industry there must be jobs that take the full strength of a powerful man; there are other jobs, and plenty of them, that require more skill than the artisans of the Middle Ages ever had. The minute subdivision of industry permits a strong man or a skilled man always to use his strength or skill. In the old hand industry, a skilled man spent a good part of his time at unskilled work. That was a waste. But since in those days every task required both skilled and unskilled labour to be performed by the one man, there was little room for either the man who was too stupid ever to be skilled or the man who did not have the opportunity to learn a trade. No mechanic working with only his hands can earn more than a bare sustenance. He cannot have a surplus. It has been taken for granted that, coming into old age, a mechanic must be supported by his children or, if he has no children, that he will be a public charge. All of that is quite unnecessary. The subdivision of industry opens places that can be filled by practically any one. There are more places in subdivision industry that can be filled by blind men than there are blind men. There are more places that can be filled by cripples than there are cripples. And in each of these places the man who short-sightedly might be considered as an object of charity can earn just as adequate a living as the keenest and most able-bodied. It is waste to put an able-bodied man in a job that might be just as well cared for by a cripple. It is a frightful waste to put the blind at weaving baskets. It is waste to have convicts breaking stone or picking hemp or doing any sort of petty, useless task. A well-conducted jail should not only be self-supporting, but a man in jail ought to be able to support his family or, if he has no family, he should be able to accumulate a sum of money sufficient to put him on his feet when he gets out of jail. I am not advocating convict labour or the farming out of men practically as slaves. Such a plan is too detestable for words. We have greatly overdone the prison business, anyway; we begin at the wrong end. But as long as we have prisons they can be fitted into the general scheme of production so neatly that a prison may become a productive unit working for the relief of the public and the benefit of the prisoners. I know that there are laws--foolish laws passed by unthinking men--that restrict the industrial activities of prisons. Those laws were passed mostly at the behest of what is called Labour. They are not for the benefit of the workingman. Increasing the charges upon a community does not benefit any one in the community. If the idea of service be kept in mind, then there is always in every community more work to do than there are men who can do it. Industry organized for service removes the need for philanthropy. Philanthropy, no matter how noble its motive, does not make for self-reliance. We must have self-reliance. A community is the better for being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for service--and the workingman as well as the leader must serve--can pay wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be both self-reliant and self-supporting. A philanthropy that spends its time and money in helping the world to do more for itself is far better than the sort which merely gives and thus encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that it can be. I have personally been experimenting with a trade school and a hospital to discover if such institutions, which are commonly regarded as benevolent, cannot be made to stand on their own feet. I have found that they can be. I am not in sympathy with the trade school as it is commonly organized--the boys get only a smattering of knowledge and they do not learn how to use that knowledge. The trade school should not be a cross between a technical college and a school; it should be a means of teaching boys to be productive. If they are put at useless tasks--at making articles and then throwing them away--they cannot have the interest or acquire the knowledge which is their right. And during the period of schooling the boy is not productive; the schools--unless by charity--make no provision for the support of the boy. Many boys need support; they must work at the first thing which comes to hand. They have no chance to pick and choose. When the boy thus enters life untrained, he but adds to the already great scarcity of competent labour. Modern industry requires a degree of ability and skill which neither early quitting of school nor long continuance at school provides. It is true that, in order to retain the interest of the boy and train him in handicraft, manual training departments have been introduced in the more progressive school systems, but even these are confessedly makeshifts because they only cater to, without satisfying, the normal boy's creative instincts. To meet this condition--to fulfill the boy's educational possibilities and at the same time begin his industrial training along constructive lines--the Henry Ford Trade School was incorporated in 1916. We do not use the word philanthropy in connection with this effort. It grew out of a desire to aid the boy whose circumstances compelled him to leave school early. This desire to aid fitted in conveniently with the necessity of providing trained tool-makers in the shops. From the beginning we have held to three cardinal principles: first, that the boy was to be kept a boy and not changed into a premature working-man; second, that the academic training was to go hand in hand with the industrial instruction; third, that the boy was to be given a sense of pride and responsibility in his work by being trained on articles which were to be used. He works on objects of recognized industrial worth. The school is incorporated as a private school and is open to boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is organized on the basis of scholarships and each boy is awarded an annual cash scholarship of four hundred dollars at his entrance. This is gradually increased to a maximum of six hundred dollars if his record is satisfactory. A record of the class and shop work is kept and also of the industry the boy displays in each. It is the marks in industry which are used in making subsequent adjustments of his scholarship. In addition to his scholarship each boy is given a small amount each month which must be deposited in his savings account. This thrift fund must be left in the bank as long as the boy remains in the school unless he is given permission by the authorities to use it for an emergency. One by one the problems of managing the school are being solved and better ways of accomplishing its objects are being discovered. At the beginning it was the custom to give the boy one third of the day in class work and two thirds in shop work. This daily adjustment was found to be a hindrance to progress, and now the boy takes his training in blocks of weeks--one week in the class and two weeks in the shop. Classes are continuous, the various groups taking their weeks in turn. The best instructors obtainable are on the staff, and the text-book is the Ford plant. It offers more resources for practical education than most universities. The arithmetic lessons come in concrete shop problems. No longer is the boy's mind tortured with the mysterious A who can row four miles while B is rowing two. The actual processes and actual conditions are exhibited to him--he is taught to observe. Cities are no longer black specks on maps and continents are not just pages of a book. The shop shipments to Singapore, the shop receipts of material from Africa and South America are shown to him, and the world becomes an inhabited planet instead of a coloured globe on the teacher's desk. In physics and chemistry the industrial plant provides a laboratory in which theory becomes practice and the lesson becomes actual experience. Suppose the action of a pump is being taught. The teacher explains the parts and their functions, answers questions, and then they all troop away to the engine rooms to see a great pump. The school has a regular factory workshop with the finest equipment. The boys work up from one machine to the next. They work solely on parts or articles needed by the company, but our needs are so vast that this list comprehends nearly everything. The inspected work is purchased by the Ford Motor Company, and, of course, the work that does not pass inspection is a loss to the school. The boys who have progressed furthest do fine micrometer work, and they do every operation with a clear understanding of the purposes and principles involved. They repair their own machines; they learn how to take care of themselves around machinery; they study pattern-making and in clean, well-lighted rooms with their instructors they lay the foundation for successful careers. When they graduate, places are always open for them in the shops at good wages. The social and moral well-being of the boys is given an unobtrusive care. The supervision is not of authority but of friendly interest. The home conditions of every boy are pretty well known, and his tendencies are observed. And no attempt is made to coddle him. No attempt is made to render him namby-pamby. One day when two boys came to the point of a fight, they were not lectured on the wickedness of fighting. They were counseled to make up their differences in a better way, but when, boy-like, they preferred the more primitive mode of settlement, they were given gloves and made to fight it out in a corner of the shop. The only prohibition laid upon them was that they were to finish it there, and not to be caught fighting outside the shop. The result was a short encounter and--friendship. They are handled as boys; their better boyish instincts are encouraged; and when one sees them in the shops and classes one cannot easily miss the light of dawning mastery in their eyes. They have a sense of "belonging." They feel they are doing something worth while. They learn readily and eagerly because they are learning the things which every active boy wants to learn and about which he is constantly asking questions that none of his home-folks can answer. Beginning with six boys the school now has two hundred and is possessed of so practical a system that it may expand to seven hundred. It began with a deficit, but as it is one of my basic ideas that anything worth while in itself can be made self-sustaining, it has so developed its processes that it is now paying its way. We have been able to let the boy have his boyhood. These boys learn to be workmen but they do not forget how to be boys. That is of the first importance. They earn from 19 to 35 cents an hour--which is more than they could earn as boys in the sort of job open to a youngster. They can better help support their families by staying in school than by going out to work. When they are through, they have a good general education, the beginning of a technical education, and they are so skilled as workmen that they can earn wages which will give them the liberty to continue their education if they like. If they do not want more education, they have at least the skill to command high wages anywhere. They do not have to go into our factories; most of them do because they do not know where better jobs are to be had--we want all our jobs to be good for the men who take them. But there is no string tied to the boys. They have earned their own way and are under obligations to no one. There is no charity. The place pays for itself. The Ford Hospital is being worked out on somewhat similar lines, but because of the interruption of the war--when it was given to the Government and became General Hospital No. 36, housing some fifteen hundred patients--the work has not yet advanced to the point of absolutely definite results. I did not deliberately set out to build this hospital. It began in 1914 as the Detroit General Hospital and was designed to be erected by popular subscription. With others, I made a subscription, and the building began. Long before the first buildings were done, the funds became exhausted and I was asked to make another subscription. I refused because I thought that the managers should have known how much the building was going to cost before they started. And that sort of a beginning did not give great confidence as to how the place would be managed after it was finished. However, I did offer to take the whole hospital, paying back all the subscriptions that had been made. This was accomplished, and we were going forward with the work when, on August 1, 1918, the whole institution was turned over to the Government. It was returned to us in October, 1919, and on the tenth day of November of the same year the first private patient was admitted. The hospital is on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit and the plot embraces twenty acres, so that there will be ample room for expansion. It is our thought to extend the facilities as they justify themselves. The original design of the hospital has been quite abandoned and we have endeavoured to work out a new kind of hospital, both in design and management. There are plenty of hospitals for the rich. There are plenty of hospitals for the poor. There are no hospitals for those who can afford to pay only a moderate amount and yet desire to pay without a feeling that they are recipients of charity. It has been taken for granted that a hospital cannot both serve and be self-supporting--that it has to be either an institution kept going by private contributions or pass into the class of private sanitariums managed for profit. This hospital is designed to be self-supporting--to give a maximum of service at a minimum of cost and without the slightest colouring of charity. In the new buildings that we have erected there are no wards. All of the rooms are private and each one is provided with a bath. The rooms--which are in groups of twenty-four--are all identical in size, in fittings, and in furnishings. There is no choice of rooms. It is planned that there shall be no choice of anything within the hospital. Every patient is on an equal footing with every other patient. It is not at all certain whether hospitals as they are now managed exist for patients or for doctors. I am not unmindful of the large amount of time which a capable physician or surgeon gives to charity, but also I am not convinced that the fees of surgeons should be regulated according to the wealth of the patient, and I am entirely convinced that what is known as "professional etiquette" is a curse to mankind and to the development of medicine. Diagnosis is not very much developed. I should not care to be among the proprietors of a hospital in which every step had not been taken to insure that the patients were being treated for what actually was the matter with them, instead of for something that one doctor had decided they had. Professional etiquette makes it very difficult for a wrong diagnosis to be corrected. The consulting physician, unless he be a man of great tact, will not change a diagnosis or a treatment unless the physician who has called him in is in thorough agreement, and then if a change be made, it is usually without the knowledge of the patient. There seems to be a notion that a patient, and especially when in a hospital, becomes the property of the doctor. A conscientious practitioner does not exploit the patient. A less conscientious one does. Many physicians seem to regard the sustaining of their own diagnoses as of as great moment as the recovery of the patient. It has been an aim of our hospital to cut away from all of these practices and to put the interest of the patient first. Therefore, it is what is known as a "closed" hospital. All of the physicians and all of the nurses are employed by the year and they can have no practice outside of the hospital. Including the interns, twenty-one physicians and surgeons are on the staff. These men have been selected with great care and they are paid salaries that amount to at least as much as they would ordinarily earn in successful private practice. They have, none of them, any financial interest whatsoever in any patient, and a patient may not be treated by a doctor from the outside. We gladly acknowledge the place and the use of the family physician. We do not seek to supplant him. We take the case where he leaves off, and return the patient as quickly as possible. Our system makes it undesirable for us to keep patients longer than necessary--we do not need that kind of business. And we will share with the family physician our knowledge of the case, but while the patient is in the hospital we assume full responsibility. It is "closed" to outside physicians' practice, though it is not closed to our cooperation with any family physician who desires it. The admission of a patient is interesting. The incoming patient is first examined by the senior physician and then is routed for examination through three, four, or whatever number of doctors seems necessary. This routing takes place regardless of what the patient came to the hospital for, because, as we are gradually learning, it is the complete health rather than a single ailment which is important. Each of the doctors makes a complete examination, and each sends in his written findings to the head physician without any opportunity whatsoever to consult with any of the other examining physicians. At least three, and sometimes six or seven, absolutely complete and absolutely independent diagnoses are thus in the hands of the head of the hospital. They constitute a complete record of the case. These precautions are taken in order to insure, within the limits of present-day knowledge, a correct diagnosis. At the present time, there are about six hundred beds available. Every patient pays according to a fixed schedule that includes the hospital room, board, medical and surgical attendance, and nursing. There are no extras. There are no private nurses. If a case requires more attention than the nurses assigned to the wing can give, then another nurse is put on, but without any additional expense to the patient. This, however, is rarely necessary because the patients are grouped according to the amount of nursing that they will need. There may be one nurse for two patients, or one nurse for five patients, as the type of cases may require. No one nurse ever has more than seven patients to care for, and because of the arrangements it is easily possible for a nurse to care for seven patients who are not desperately ill. In the ordinary hospital the nurses must make many useless steps. More of their time is spent in walking than in caring for the patient. This hospital is designed to save steps. Each floor is complete in itself, and just as in the factories we have tried to eliminate the necessity for waste motion, so have we also tried to eliminate waste motion in the hospital. The charge to patients for a room, nursing, and medical attendance is $4.50 a day. This will be lowered as the size of the hospital increases. The charge for a major operation is $125. The charge for minor operations is according to a fixed scale. All of the charges are tentative. The hospital has a cost system just like a factory. The charges will be regulated to make ends just meet. There seems to be no good reason why the experiment should not be successful. Its success is purely a matter of management and mathematics. The same kind of management which permits a factory to give the fullest service will permit a hospital to give the fullest service, and at a price so low as to be within the reach of everyone. The only difference between hospital and factory accounting is that I do not expect the hospital to return a profit; we do expect it to cover depreciation. The investment in this hospital to date is about $9,000,000. If we can get away from charity, the funds that now go into charitable enterprises can be turned to furthering production--to making goods cheaply and in great plenty. And then we shall not only be removing the burden of taxes from the community and freeing men but also we can be adding to the general wealth. We leave for private interest too many things we ought to do for ourselves as a collective interest. We need more constructive thinking in public service. We need a kind of "universal training" in economic facts. The over-reaching ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreasonable demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance of the economic basis of life. Nobody can get more out of life than life can produce--yet nearly everybody thinks he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants more; the source of raw material wants more; and the purchasing public wants more. A family knows that it cannot live beyond its income; even the children know that. But the public never seems to learn that it cannot live beyond its income--have more than it produces. In clearing out the need for charity we must keep in mind not only the economic facts of existence, but also that lack of knowledge of these facts encourages fear. Banish fear and we can have self-reliance. Charity is not present where self-reliance dwells. Fear is the offspring of a reliance placed on something outside--on a foreman's good-will, perhaps, on a shop's prosperity, on a market's steadiness. That is just another way of saying that fear is the portion of the man who acknowledges his career to be in the keeping of earthly circumstances. Fear is the result of the body assuming ascendancy over the soul. The habit of failure is purely mental and is the mother of fear. This habit gets itself fixed on men because they lack vision. They start out to do something that reaches from A to Z. At A they fail, at B they stumble, and at C they meet with what seems to be an insuperable difficulty. They then cry "Beaten" and throw the whole task down. They have not even given themselves a chance really to fail; they have not given their vision a chance to be proved or disproved. They have simply let themselves be beaten by the natural difficulties that attend every kind of effort. More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour. People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things. They see the successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that is a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard. A man can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is. It is this which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines that are not useful and uplifting. If a man is in constant fear of the industrial situation he ought to change his life so as not to be dependent upon it. There is always the land, and fewer people are on the land now than ever before. If a man lives in fear of an employer's favor changing toward him, he ought to extricate himself from dependence on any employer. He can become his own boss. It may be that he will be a poorer boss than the one he leaves, and that his returns will be much less, but at least he will have rid himself of the shadow of his pet fear, and that is worth a great deal in money and position. Better still is for the man to come through himself and exceed himself by getting rid of his fears in the midst of the circumstances where his daily lot is cast. Become a freeman in the place where you first surrendered your freedom. Win your battle where you lost it. And you will come to see that, although there was much outside of you that was not right, there was more inside of you that was not right. Thus you will learn that the wrong inside of you spoils even the right that is outside of you. A man is still the superior being of the earth. Whatever happens, he is still a man. Business may slacken tomorrow--he is still a man. He goes through the changes of circumstances, as he goes through the variations of temperature--still a man. If he can only get this thought reborn in him, it opens new wells and mines in his own being. There is no security outside of himself. There is no wealth outside of himself. The elimination of fear is the bringing in of security and supply. Let every American become steeled against coddling. Americans ought to resent coddling. It is a drug. Stand up and stand out; let weaklings take charity. CHAPTER XVI THE RAILROADS Nothing in this country furnishes a better example of how a business may be turned from its function of service than do the railroads. We have a railroad problem, and much learned thought and discussion have been devoted to the solution of that problem. Everyone is dissatisfied with the railways. The public is dissatisfied because both the passenger and freight rates are too high. The railroad employees are dissatisfied because they say their wages are too low and their hours too long. The owners of the railways are dissatisfied because it is claimed that no adequate return is realized upon the money invested. All of the contacts of a properly managed undertaking ought to be satisfactory. If the public, the employees, and the owners do not find themselves better off because of the undertaking, then there must be something very wrong indeed with the manner in which the undertaking is carried through. I am entirely without any disposition to pose as a railroad authority. There may be railroad authorities, but if the service as rendered by the American railroad to-day is the result of accumulated railway knowledge, then I cannot say that my respect for the usefulness of that knowledge is at all profound. I have not the slightest doubt in the world that the active managers of the railways, the men who really do the work, are entirely capable of conducting the railways of the country to the satisfaction of every one, and I have equally no doubt that these active managers have, by force of a chain of circumstances, all but ceased to manage. And right there is the source of most of the trouble. The men who know railroading have not been allowed to manage railroads. In a previous chapter on finance were set forth the dangers attendant upon the indiscriminate borrowing of money. It is inevitable that any one who can borrow freely to cover errors of management will borrow rather than correct the errors. Our railway managers have been practically forced to borrow, for since the very inception of the railways they have not been free agents. The guiding hand of the railway has been, not the railroad man, but the banker. When railroad credit was high, more money was to be made out of floating bond issues and speculating in the securities than out of service to the public. A very small fraction of the money earned by the railways has gone back into the rehabilitation of the properties. When by skilled management the net revenue became large enough to pay a considerable dividend upon the stock, then that dividend was used first by the speculators on the inside and controlling the railroad fiscal policy to boom the stock and unload their holdings, and then to float a bond issue on the strength of the credit gained through the earnings. When the earnings dropped or were artificially depressed, then the speculators bought back the stock and in the course of time staged another advance and unloading. There is scarcely a railroad in the United States that has not been through one or more receiverships, due to the fact that the financial interests piled on load after load of securities until the structures grew topheavy and fell over. Then they got in on the receiverships, made money at the expense of gullible security holders, and started the same old pyramiding game all over again. The natural ally of the banker is the lawyer. Such games as have been played on the railroads have needed expert legal advice. Lawyers, like bankers, know absolutely nothing about business. They imagine that a business is properly conducted if it keeps within the law or if the law can be altered or interpreted to suit the purpose in hand. They live on rules. The bankers took finance out of the hands of the managers. They put in lawyers to see that the railroads violated the law only in legal fashion, and thus grew up immense legal departments. Instead of operating under the rules of common sense and according to circumstances, every railroad had to operate on the advice of counsel. Rules spread through every part of the organization. Then came the avalanche of state and federal regulations, until to-day we find the railways hog-tied in a mass of rules and regulations. With the lawyers and the financiers on the inside and various state commissions on the outside, the railway manager has little chance. That is the trouble with the railways. Business cannot be conducted by law. We have had the opportunity of demonstrating to ourselves what a freedom from the banker-legal mortmain means, in our experience with the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway. We bought the railway because its right of way interfered with some of our improvements on the River Rouge. We did not buy it as an investment, or as an adjunct to our industries, or because of its strategic position. The extraordinarily good situation of the railway seems to have become universally apparent only since we bought it. That, however, is beside the point. We bought the railway because it interfered with our plans. Then we had to do something with it. The only thing to do was to run it as a productive enterprise, applying to it exactly the same principles as are applied in every department of our industries. We have as yet made no special efforts of any kind and the railway has not been set up as a demonstration of how every railway should be run. It is true that applying the rule of maximum service at minimum cost has caused the income of the road to exceed the outgo--which, for that road, represents a most unusual condition. It has been represented that the changes we have made--and remember they have been made simply as part of the day's work--are peculiarly revolutionary and quite without application to railway management in general. Personally, it would seem to me that our little line does not differ much from the big lines. In our own work we have always found that, if our principles were right, the area over which they were applied did not matter. The principles that we use in the big Highland Park plant seem to work equally well in every plant that we establish. It has never made any difference with us whether we multiplied what we were doing by five or five hundred. Size is only a matter of the multiplication table, anyway. The Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway was organized some twenty-odd years ago and has been reorganized every few years since then. The last reorganization was in 1914. The war and the federal control of the railways interrupted the cycle of reorganization. The road owns 343 miles of track, has 52 miles of branches, and 45 miles of trackage rights over other roads. It goes from Detroit almost due south to Ironton on the Ohio River, thus tapping the West Virginia coal deposits. It crosses most of the large trunk lines and it is a road which, from a general business standpoint, ought to pay. It has paid. It seems to have paid the bankers. In 1913 the net capitalization per mile of road was $105,000. In the next receivership this was cut down to $47,000 per mile. I do not know how much money in all has been raised on the strength of the road. I do know that in the reorganization of 1914 the bondholders were assessed and forced to turn into the treasury nearly five million dollars--which is the amount that we paid for the entire road. We paid sixty cents on the dollar for the outstanding mortgage bonds, although the ruling price just before the time of purchase was between thirty and forty cents on the dollar. We paid a dollar a share for the common stock and five dollars a share for the preferred stock--which seemed to be a fair price considering that no interest had ever been paid upon the bonds and a dividend on the stock was a most remote possibility. The rolling stock of the road consisted of about seventy locomotives, twenty-seven passenger cars, and around twenty-eight hundred freight cars. All of the rolling stock was in extremely bad condition and a good part of it would not run at all. All of the buildings were dirty, unpainted, and generally run down. The roadbed was something more than a streak of rust and something less than a railway. The repair shops were over-manned and under-machined. Practically everything connected with operation was conducted with a maximum of waste. There was, however, an exceedingly ample executive and administration department, and of course a legal department. The legal department alone cost in one month nearly $18,000. We took over the road in March, 1921. We began to apply industrial principles. There had been an executive office in Detroit. We closed that up and put the administration into the charge of one man and gave him half of the flat-topped desk out in the freight office. The legal department went with the executive offices. There is no reason for so much litigation in connection with railroading. Our people quickly settled all the mass of outstanding claims, some of which had been hanging on for years. As new claims arise, they are settled at once and on the facts, so that the legal expense seldom exceeds $200 a month. All of the unnecessary accounting and red tape were thrown out and the payroll of the road was reduced from 2,700 to 1,650 men. Following our general policy, all titles and offices other than those required by law were abolished. The ordinary railway organization is rigid; a message has to go up through a certain line of authority and no man is expected to do anything without explicit orders from his superior. One morning I went out to the road very early and found a wrecking train with steam up, a crew aboard and all ready to start. It had been "awaiting orders" for half an hour. We went down and cleared the wreck before the orders came through; that was before the idea of personal responsibility had soaked in. It was a little hard to break the "orders" habit; the men at first were afraid to take responsibility. But as we went on, they seemed to like the plan more and more and now no man limits his duties. A man is paid for a day's work of eight hours and he is expected to work during those eight hours. If he is an engineer and finishes a run in four hours then he works at whatever else may be in demand for the next four hours. If a man works more than eight hours he is not paid for overtime--he deducts his overtime from the next working day or saves it up and gets a whole day off with pay. Our eight-hour day is a day of eight hours and not a basis for computing pay. The minimum wage is six dollars a day. There are no extra men. We have cut down in the offices, in the shops, and on the roads. In one shop 20 men are now doing more work than 59 did before. Not long ago one of our track gangs, consisting of a foreman and 15 men, was working beside a parallel road on which was a gang of 40 men doing exactly the same sort of track repairing and ballasting. In five days our gang did two telegraph poles more than the competing gang! The road is being rehabilitated; nearly the whole track has been reballasted and many miles of new rails have been laid. The locomotives and rolling stock are being overhauled in our own shops and at a very slight expense. We found that the supplies bought previously were of poor quality or unfitted for the use; we are saving money on supplies by buying better qualities and seeing that nothing is wasted. The men seem entirely willing to cooperate in saving. They do not discard that which might be used. We ask a man, "What can you get out of an engine?" and he answers with an economy record. And we are not pouring in great amounts of money. Everything is being done out of earnings. That is our policy. The trains must go through and on time. The time of freight movements has been cut down about two thirds. A car on a siding is not just a car on a siding. It is a great big question mark. Someone has to know why it is there. It used to take 8 or 9 days to get freight through to Philadelphia or New York; now it takes three and a half days. The organization is serving. All sorts of explanations are put forward, of why a deficit was turned into a surplus. I am told that it is all due to diverting the freight of the Ford industries. If we had diverted all of our business to this road, that would not explain why we manage at so much lower an operating cost than before. We are routing as much as we can of our own business over the road, but only because we there get the best service. For years past we had been trying to send freight over this road because it was conveniently located, but we had never been able to use it to any extent because of the delayed deliveries. We could not count on a shipment to within five or six weeks; that tied up too much money and also broke into our production schedule. There was no reason why the road should not have had a schedule; but it did not. The delays became legal matters to be taken up in due legal course; that is not the way of business. We think that a delay is a criticism of our work and is something at once to be investigated. That is business. The railroads in general have broken down, and if the former conduct of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton is any criterion of management in general there is no reason in the world why they should not have broken down. Too many railroads are run, not from the offices of practical men, but from banking offices, and the principles of procedure, the whole outlook, are financial--not transportational, but financial. There has been a breakdown simply because more attention has been paid to railroads as factors in the stock market than as servants of the people. Outworn ideas have been retained, development has been practically stopped, and railroad men with vision have not been set free to grow. Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a billion dollars will only make the difficulty one billion dollars worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to continue the present methods of railroad management, and it is because of the present methods that we have any railroad difficulties at all. The mistaken and foolish things we did years ago are just overtaking us. At the beginning of railway transportation in the United States, the people had to be taught its use, just as they had to be taught the use of the telephone. Also, the new railroads had to make business in order to keep themselves solvent. And because railway financing began in one of the rottenest periods of our business history, a number of practices were established as precedents which have influenced railway work ever since. One of the first things the railways did was to throttle all other methods of transportation. There was the beginning of a splendid canal system in this country and a great movement for canalization was at its height. The railroad companies bought out the canal companies and let the canals fill up and choke with weeds and refuse. All over the Eastern and in parts of the Middle Western states are the remains of this network of internal waterways. They are being restored now as rapidly as possible; they are being linked together; various commissions, public and private, have seen the vision of a complete system of waterways serving all parts of the country, and thanks to their efforts, persistence, and faith, progress is being made. But there was another. This was the system of making the haul as long as possible. Any one who is familiar with the exposures which resulted in the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission knows what is meant by this. There was a period when rail transport was not regarded as the servant of the traveling, manufacturing, and commercial publics. Business was treated as if it existed for the benefit of the railways. During this period of folly, it was not good railroading to get goods from their shipping point to their destination by the most direct line possible, but to keep them on the road as long as possible, send them around the longest way, give as many connecting lines as possible a piece of the profit, and let the public stand the resulting loss of time and money. That was once counted good railroading. It has not entirely passed out of practice to-day. One of the great changes in our economic life to which this railroad policy contributed was the centralization of certain activities, not because centralization was necessary, nor because it contributed to the well-being of the people, but because, among other things, it made double business for the railroads. Take two staples--meat and grain. If you look at the maps which the packing houses put out, and see where the cattle are drawn from; and then if you consider that the cattle, when converted into food, are hauled again by the same railways right back to the place where they came from, you will get some sidelight on the transportation problem and the price of meat. Take also grain. Every reader of advertisements knows where the great flour mills of the country are located. And they probably know also that these great mills are not located in the sections where the grain of the United States is raised. There are staggering quantities of grain, thousands of trainloads, hauled uselessly long distances, and then in the form of flour hauled back again long distances to the states and sections where the grain was raised--a burdening of the railroads which is of no benefit to the communities where the grain originated, nor to any one else except the monopolistic mills and the railroads. The railroads can always do a big business without helping the business of the country at all; they can always be engaged in just such useless hauling. On meat and grain and perhaps on cotton, too, the transportation burden could be reduced by more than half, by the preparation of the product for use before it is shipped. If a coal community mined coal in Pennsylvania, and then sent it by railway to Michigan or Wisconsin to be screened, and then hauled it back again to Pennsylvania for use, it would not be much sillier than the hauling of Texas beef alive to Chicago, there to be killed, and then shipped back dead to Texas; or the hauling of Kansas grain to Minnesota, there to be ground in the mills and hauled back again as flour. It is good business for the railroads, but it is bad business for business. One angle of the transportation problem to which too few men are paying attention is this useless hauling of material. If the problem were tackled from the point of ridding the railroads of their useless hauls, we might discover that we are in better shape than we think to take care of the legitimate transportation business of the country. In commodities like coal it is necessary that they be hauled from where they are to where they are needed. The same is true of the raw materials of industry--they must be hauled from the place where nature has stored them to the place where there are people ready to work them. And as these raw materials are not often found assembled in one section, a considerable amount of transportation to a central assembling place is necessary. The coal comes from one section, the copper from another, the iron from another, the wood from another--they must all be brought together. But wherever it is possible a policy of decentralization ought to be adopted. We need, instead of mammoth flour mills, a multitude of smaller mills distributed through all the sections where grain is grown. Wherever it is possible, the section that produces the raw material ought to produce also the finished product. Grain should be ground to flour where it is grown. A hog-growing country should not export hogs, but pork, hams, and bacon. The cotton mills ought to be near the cotton fields. This is not a revolutionary idea. In a sense it is a reactionary one. It does not suggest anything new; it suggests something that is very old. This is the way the country did things before we fell into the habit of carting everything around a few thousand miles and adding the cartage to the consumer's bill. Our communities ought to be more complete in themselves. They ought not to be unnecessarily dependent on railway transportation. Out of what they produce they should supply their own needs and ship the surplus. And how can they do this unless they have the means of taking their raw materials, like grain and cattle, and changing them into finished products? If private enterprise does not yield these means, the cooperation of farmers can. The chief injustice sustained by the farmer to-day is that, being the greatest producer, he is prevented from being also the greatest merchandiser, because he is compelled to sell to those who put his products into merchantable form. If he could change his grain into flour, his cattle into beef, and his hogs into hams and bacon, not only would he receive the fuller profit of his product, but he would render his near-by communities more independent of railway exigencies, and thereby improve the transportation system by relieving it of the burden of his unfinished product. The thing is not only reasonable and practicable, but it is becoming absolutely necessary. More than that, it is being done in many places. But it will not register its full effect on the transportation situation and upon the cost of living until it is done more widely and in more kinds of materials. It is one of nature's compensations to withdraw prosperity from the business which does not serve. We have found that on the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton we could, following our universal policy, reduce our rates and get more business. We made some cuts, but the Interstate Commerce Commission refused to allow them! Under such conditions why discuss the railroads as a business? Or as a service? CHAPTER XVII THINGS IN GENERAL No man exceeds Thomas A. Edison in broad vision and understanding. I met him first many years ago when I was with the Detroit Edison Company--probably about 1887 or thereabouts. The electrical men held a convention at Atlantic City, and Edison, as the leader in electrical science, made an address. I was then working on my gasoline engine, and most people, including all of my associates in the electrical company, had taken pains to tell me that time spent on a gasoline engine was time wasted--that the power of the future was to be electricity. These criticisms had not made any impression on me. I was working ahead with all my might. But being in the same room with Edison suggested to me that it would be a good idea to find out if the master of electricity thought it was going to be the only power in the future. So, after Mr. Edison had finished his address, I managed to catch him alone for a moment. I told him what I was working on. At once he was interested. He is interested in every search for new knowledge. And then I asked him if he thought that there was a future for the internal combustion engine. He answered something in this fashion: Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained. No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the work of the country. We do not know what electricity can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything. Keep on with your engine. If you can get what you are after, I can see a great future. That is characteristic of Edison. He was the central figure in the electrical industry, which was then young and enthusiastic. The rank and file of the electrical men could see nothing ahead but electricity, but their leader could see with crystal clearness that no one power could do all the work of the country. I suppose that is why he was the leader. Such was my first meeting with Edison. I did not see him again until many years after--until our motor had been developed and was in production. He remembered perfectly our first meeting. Since then we have seen each other often. He is one of my closest friends, and we together have swapped many an idea. His knowledge is almost universal. He is interested in every conceivable subject and he recognizes no limitations. He believes that all things are possible. At the same time he keeps his feet on the ground. He goes forward step by step. He regards "impossible" as a description for that which we have not at the moment the knowledge to achieve. He knows that as we amass knowledge we build the power to overcome the impossible. That is the rational way of doing the "impossible." The irrational way is to make the attempt without the toil of accumulating knowledge. Mr. Edison is only approaching the height of his power. He is the man who is going to show us what chemistry really can do. For he is a real scientist who regards the knowledge for which he is always searching as a tool to shape the progress of the world. He is not the type of scientist who merely stores up knowledge and turns his head into a museum. Edison is easily the world's greatest scientist. I am not sure that he is not also the world's worst business man. He knows almost nothing of business. John Burroughs was another of those who honoured me with their friendship. I, too, like birds. I like the outdoors. I like to walk across country and jump fences. We have five hundred bird houses on the farm. We call them our bird hotels, and one of them, the Hotel Pontchartrain--a martin house--has seventy-six apartments. All winter long we have wire baskets of food hanging about on the trees and then there is a big basin in which the water is kept from freezing by an electric heater. Summer and winter, food, drink, and shelter are on hand for the birds. We have hatched pheasants and quail in incubators and then turned them over to electric brooders. We have all kinds of bird houses and nests. The sparrows, who are great abusers of hospitality, insist that their nests be immovable--that they do not sway in the wind; the wrens like swaying nests. So we mounted a number of wren boxes on strips of spring steel so that they would sway in the wind. The wrens liked the idea and the sparrows did not, so we have been able to have the wrens nest in peace. In summer we leave cherries on the trees and strawberries open in the beds, and I think that we have not only more but also more different kinds of bird callers than anywhere else in the northern states. John Burroughs said he thought we had, and one day when he was staying at our place he came across a bird that he had never seen before. About ten years ago we imported a great number of birds from abroad--yellow-hammers, chaffinches, green finches, red pales, twites, bullfinches, jays, linnets, larks--some five hundred of them. They stayed around a while, but where they are now I do not know. I shall not import any more. Birds are entitled to live where they want to live. Birds are the best of companions. We need them for their beauty and their companionship, and also we need them for the strictly economic reason that they destroy harmful insects. The only time I ever used the Ford organization to influence legislation was on behalf of the birds, and I think the end justified the means. The Weeks-McLean Bird Bill, providing for bird sanctuaries for our migratory birds, had been hanging in Congress with every likelihood of dying a natural death. Its immediate sponsors could not arouse much interest among the Congressmen. Birds do not vote. We got behind that bill and we asked each of our six thousand dealers to wire to his representative in Congress. It began to become apparent that birds might have votes; the bill went through. Our organization has never been used for any political purpose and never will be. We assume that our people have a right to their own preferences. To get back to John Burroughs. Of course I knew who he was and I had read nearly everything he had written, but I had never thought of meeting him until some years ago when he developed a grudge against modern progress. He detested money and especially he detested the power which money gives to vulgar people to despoil the lovely countryside. He grew to dislike the industry out of which money is made. He disliked the noise of factories and railways. He criticized industrial progress, and he declared that the automobile was going to kill the appreciation of nature. I fundamentally disagreed with him. I thought that his emotions had taken him on the wrong tack and so I sent him an automobile with the request that he try it out and discover for himself whether it would not help him to know nature better. That automobile--and it took him some time to learn how to manage it himself--completely changed his point of view. He found that it helped him to see more, and from the time of getting it, he made nearly all of his bird-hunting expeditions behind the steering wheel. He learned that instead of having to confine himself to a few miles around Slabsides, the whole countryside was open to him. Out of that automobile grew our friendship, and it was a fine one. No man could help being the better for knowing John Burroughs. He was not a professional naturalist, nor did he make sentiment do for hard research. It is easy to grow sentimental out of doors; it is hard to pursue the truth about a bird as one would pursue a mechanical principle. But John Burroughs did that, and as a result the observations he set down were very largely accurate. He was impatient with men who were not accurate in their observations of natural life. John Burroughs first loved nature for its own sake; it was not merely his stock of material as a professional writer. He loved it before he wrote about it. Late in life he turned philosopher. His philosophy was not so much a philosophy of nature as it was a natural philosophy--the long, serene thoughts of a man who had lived in the tranquil spirit of the trees. He was not pagan; he was not pantheist; but he did not much divide between nature and human nature, nor between human nature and divine. John Burroughs lived a wholesome life. He was fortunate to have as his home the farm on which he was born. Through long years his surroundings were those which made for quietness of mind. He loved the woods and he made dusty-minded city people love them, too--he helped them see what he saw. He did not make much beyond a living. He could have done so, perhaps, but that was not his aim. Like another American naturalist, his occupation could have been described as inspector of birds' nests and hillside paths. Of course, that does not pay in dollars and cents. When he had passed the three score and ten he changed his views on industry. Perhaps I had something to do with that. He came to see that the whole world could not live by hunting birds' nests. At one time in his life, he had a grudge against all modern progress, especially where it was associated with the burning of coal and the noise of traffic. Perhaps that was as near to literary affectation as he ever came. Wordsworth disliked railways too, and Thoreau said that he could see more of the country by walking. Perhaps it was influences such as these which bent John Burroughs for a time against industrial progress. But only for a time. He came to see that it was fortunate for him that others' tastes ran in other channels, just as it was fortunate for the world that his taste ran in its own channel. There has been no observable development in the method of making birds' nests since the beginning of recorded observation, but that was hardly a reason why human beings should not prefer modern sanitary homes to cave dwellings. This was a part of John Burroughs's sanity--he was not afraid to change his views. He was a lover of Nature, not her dupe. In the course of time he came to value and approve modern devices, and though this by itself is an interesting fact, it is not so interesting as the fact that he made this change after he was seventy years old. John Burroughs was never too old to change. He kept growing to the last. The man who is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail. If he talked more of one person than another, it was Emerson. Not only did he know Emerson by heart as an author, but he knew him by heart as a spirit. He taught me to know Emerson. He had so saturated himself with Emerson that at one time he thought as he did and even fell into his mode of expression. But afterward he found his own way--which for him was better. There was no sadness in John Burroughs's death. When the grain lies brown and ripe under the harvest sun, and the harvesters are busy binding it into sheaves, there is no sadness for the grain. It has ripened and has fulfilled its term, and so had John Burroughs. With him it was full ripeness and harvest, not decay. He worked almost to the end. His plans ran beyond the end. They buried him amid the scenes he loved, and it was his eighty-fourth birthday. Those scenes will be preserved as he loved them. John Burroughs, Edison, and I with Harvey S. Firestone made several vagabond trips together. We went in motor caravans and slept under canvas. Once we gypsied through the Adirondacks and again through the Alleghenies, heading southward. The trips were good fun--except that they began to attract too much attention. * * * * * To-day I am more opposed to war than ever I was, and I think the people of the world know--even if the politicians do not--that war never settles anything. It was war that made the orderly and profitable processes of the world what they are to-day--a loose, disjointed mass. Of course, some men get rich out of war; others get poor. But the men who get rich are not those who fought or who really helped behind the lines. No patriot makes money out of war. No man with true patriotism could make money out of war--out of the sacrifice of other men's lives. Until the soldier makes money by fighting, until mothers make money by giving their sons to death--not until then should any citizen make money out of providing his country with the means to preserve its life. If wars are to continue, it will be harder and harder for the upright business man to regard war as a legitimate means of high and speedy profits. War fortunes are losing caste every day. Even greed will some day hesitate before the overwhelming unpopularity and opposition which will meet the war profiteer. Business should be on the side of peace, because peace is business's best asset. And, by the way, was inventive genius ever so sterile as it was during the war? An impartial investigation of the last war, of what preceded it and what has come out of it, would show beyond a doubt that there is in the world a group of men with vast powers of control, that prefers to remain unknown, that does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that belongs to no nation whatever but is international--a force that uses every government, every widespread business organization, every agency of publicity, every resource of national psychology, to throw the world into a panic for the sake of getting still more power over the world. An old gambling trick used to be for the gambler to cry "Police!" when a lot of money was on the table, and, in the panic that followed, to seize the money and run off with it. There is a power within the world which cries "War!" and in the confusion of the nations, the unrestrained sacrifice which people make for safety and peace runs off with the spoils of the panic. The point to keep in mind is that, though we won the military contest, the world has not yet quite succeeded in winning a complete victory over the promoters of war. We ought not to forget that wars are a purely manufactured evil and are made according to a definite technique. A campaign for war is made upon as definite lines as a campaign for any other purpose. First, the people are worked upon. By clever tales the people's suspicions are aroused toward the nation against whom war is desired. Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation suspicious. All you need for this is a few agents with some cleverness and no conscience and a press whose interest is locked up with the interests that will be benefited by war. Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It is no trick at all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two nations up to the proper pitch. There were men in every country who were glad to see the World War begin and sorry to see it stop. Hundreds of American fortunes date from the Civil War; thousands of new fortunes date from the World War. Nobody can deny that war is a profitable business for those who like that kind of money. War is an orgy of money, just as it is an orgy of blood. And we should not so easily be led into war if we considered what it is that makes a nation really great. It is not the amount of trade that makes a nation great. The creation of private fortunes, like the creation of an autocracy, does not make any country great. Nor does the mere change of an agricultural population into a factory population. A country becomes great when, by the wise development of its resources and the skill of its people, property is widely and fairly distributed. Foreign trade is full of delusions. We ought to wish for every nation as large a degree of self-support as possible. Instead of wishing to keep them dependent on us for what we manufacture, we should wish them to learn to manufacture themselves and build up a solidly founded civilization. When every nation learns to produce the things which it can produce, we shall be able to get down to a basis of serving each other along those special lines in which there can be no competition. The North Temperate Zone will never be able to compete with the tropics in the special products of the tropics. Our country will never be a competitor with the Orient in the production of tea, nor with the South in the production of rubber. A large proportion of our foreign trade is based on the backwardness of our foreign customers. Selfishness is a motive that would preserve that backwardness. Humanity is a motive that would help the backward nations to a self-supporting basis. Take Mexico, for example. We have heard a great deal about the "development" of Mexico. Exploitation is the word that ought instead to be used. When its rich natural resources are exploited for the increase of the private fortunes of foreign capitalists, that is not development, it is ravishment. You can never develop Mexico until you develop the Mexican. And yet how much of the "development" of Mexico by foreign exploiters ever took account of the development of its people? The Mexican peon has been regarded as mere fuel for the foreign money-makers. Foreign trade has been his degradation. Short-sighted people are afraid of such counsel. They say: "What would become of our foreign trade?" When the natives of Africa begin raising their own cotton and the natives of Russia begin making their own farming implements and the natives of China begin supplying their own wants, it will make a difference, to be sure, but does any thoughtful man imagine that the world can long continue on the present basis of a few nations supplying the needs of the world? We must think in terms of what the world will be when civilization becomes general, when all the peoples have learned to help themselves. When a country goes mad about foreign trade it usually depends on other countries for its raw material, turns its population into factory fodder, creates a private rich class, and lets its own immediate interest lie neglected. Here in the United States we have enough work to do developing our own country to relieve us of the necessity of looking for foreign trade for a long time. We have agriculture enough to feed us while we are doing it, and money enough to carry the job through. Is there anything more stupid than the United States standing idle because Japan or France or any other country has not sent us an order when there is a hundred-year job awaiting us in developing our own country? Commerce began in service. Men carried off their surplus to people who had none. The country that raised corn carried it to the country that could raise no corn. The lumber country brought wood to the treeless plain. The vine country brought fruit to cold northern climes. The pasture country brought meat to the grassless region. It was all service. When all the peoples of the world become developed in the art of self-support, commerce will get back to that basis. Business will once more become service. There will be no competition, because the basis of competition will have vanished. The varied peoples will develop skills which will be in the nature of monopolies and not competitive. From the beginning, the races have exhibited distinct strains of genius: this one for government; another for colonization; another for the sea; another for art and music; another for agriculture; another for business, and so on. Lincoln said that this nation could not survive half-slave and half-free. The human race cannot forever exist half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions. France has something to give the world of which no competition can cheat her. So has Italy. So has Russia. So have the countries of South America. So has Japan. So has Britain. So has the United States. The sooner we get back to a basis of natural specialties and drop this free-for-all system of grab, the sooner we shall be sure of international self-respect--and international peace. Trying to take the trade of the world can promote war. It cannot promote prosperity. Some day even the international bankers will learn this. I have never been able to discover any honourable reasons for the beginning of the World War. It seems to have grown out of a very complicated situation created largely by those who thought they could profit by war. I believed, on the information that was given to me in 1916, that some of the nations were anxious for peace and would welcome a demonstration for peace. It was in the hope that this was true that I financed the expedition to Stockholm in what has since been called the "Peace Ship." I do not regret the attempt. The mere fact that it failed is not, to me, conclusive proof that it was not worth trying. We learn more from our failures than from our successes. What I learned on that trip was worth the time and the money expended. I do not now know whether the information as conveyed to me was true or false. I do not care. But I think everyone will agree that if it had been possible to end the war in 1916 the world would be better off than it is to-day. For the victors wasted themselves in winning, and the vanquished in resisting. Nobody got an advantage, honourable or dishonourable, out of that war. I had hoped, finally, when the United States entered the war, that it might be a war to end wars, but now I know that wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard. When our country entered the war, it became the duty of every citizen to do his utmost toward seeing through to the end that which we had undertaken. I believe that it is the duty of the man who opposes war to oppose going to war up until the time of its actual declaration. My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about. Once we were in the war, every facility of the Ford industries was put at the disposal of the Government. We had, up to the time of the declaration of war, absolutely refused to take war orders from the foreign belligerents. It is entirely out of keeping with the principles of our business to disturb the routine of our production unless in an emergency. It is at variance with our human principles to aid either side in a war in which our country was not involved. These principles had no application, once the United States entered the war. From April, 1917, until November, 1918, our factory worked practically exclusively for the Government. Of course we made cars and parts and special delivery trucks and ambulances as a part of our general production, but we also made many other articles that were more or less new to us. We made 2 1/2-ton and 6-ton trucks. We made Liberty motors in great quantities, aero cylinders, 1.55 Mm. and 4.7 Mm. caissons. We made listening devices, steel helmets (both at Highland Park and Philadelphia), and Eagle Boats, and we did a large amount of experimental work on armour plate, compensators, and body armour. For the Eagle Boats we put up a special plant on the River Rouge site. These boats were designed to combat the submarines. They were 204 feet long, made of steel, and one of the conditions precedent to their building was that their construction should not interfere with any other line of war production and also that they be delivered quickly. The design was worked out by the Navy Department. On December 22, 1917, I offered to build the boats for the Navy. The discussion terminated on January 15, 1918, when the Navy Department awarded the contract to the Ford Company. On July 11th, the first completed boat was launched. We made both the hulls and the engines, and not a forging or a rolled beam entered into the construction of other than the engine. We stamped the hulls entirely out of sheet steel. They were built indoors. In four months we ran up a building at the River Rouge a third of a mile long, 350 feet wide, and 100 feet high, covering more than thirteen acres. These boats were not built by marine engineers. They were built simply by applying our production principles to a new product. With the Armistice, we at once dropped the war and went back to peace. * * * * * An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability to do things is dependent on what he has in him. What he has in him depends on what he started with and what he has done to increase and discipline it. An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates in history--he is one who can accomplish things. A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired. Thinking is the hardest work any one can do--which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You cannot learn in any school what the world is going to do next year, but you can learn some of the things which the world has tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young student away from some of the false theories on which men have tried to build, so that he may be saved the loss of the time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts indicating the failure and the fallacies of the past doubtless would be very useful. It is not education just to possess the theories of a lot of professors. Speculation is very interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is not education. To be learned in science to-day is merely to be aware of a hundred theories that have not been proved. And not to know what those theories are is to be "uneducated," "ignorant," and so forth. If knowledge of guesses is learning, then one may become learned by the simple expedient of making his own guesses. And by the same token he can dub the rest of the world "ignorant" because it does not know what his guesses are. But the best that education can do for a man is to put him in possession of his powers, give him control of the tools with which destiny has endowed him, and teach him how to think. The college renders its best service as an intellectual gymnasium, in which mental muscle is developed and the student strengthened to do what he can. To say, however, that mental gymnastics can be had only in college is not true, as every educator knows. A man's real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life. There are many kinds of knowledge, and it depends on what crowd you happen to be in, or how the fashions of the day happen to run, which kind of knowledge, is most respected at the moment. There are fashions in knowledge, just as there are in everything else. When some of us were lads, knowledge used to be limited to the Bible. There were certain men in the neighbourhood who knew the Book thoroughly, and they were looked up to and respected. Biblical knowledge was highly valued then. But nowadays it is doubtful whether deep acquaintance with the Bible would be sufficient to win a man a name for learning. Knowledge, to my mind, is something that in the past somebody knew and left in a form which enables all who will to obtain it. If a man is born with normal human faculties, if he is equipped with enough ability to use the tools which we call "letters" in reading or writing, there is no knowledge within the possession of the race that he cannot have--if he wants it! The only reason why every man does not know everything that the human mind has ever learned is that no one has ever yet found it worth while to know that much. Men satisfy their minds more by finding out things for themselves than by heaping together the things which somebody else has found out. You can go out and gather knowledge all your life, and with all your gathering you will not catch up even with your own times. You may fill your head with all the "facts" of all the ages, and your head may be just an overloaded fact-box when you get through. The point is this: Great piles of knowledge in the head are not the same as mental activity. A man may be very learned and very useless. And then again, a man may be unlearned and very useful. The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking. And it often happens that a man can think better if he is not hampered by the knowledge of the past. It is a very human tendency to think that what mankind does not yet know no one can learn. And yet it must be perfectly clear to everyone that the past learning of mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future learning. Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its progress against the knowledge that is yet to be gained--the secrets that are yet to be learned. One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head with all the learning of the past; it makes him feel that because his head is full, there is nothing more to learn. Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test. If a man can hold up his own end, he counts for one. If he can help ten or a hundred or a thousand other men hold up their ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is a learned man just the same. When a man is master of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he has won his degree--he has entered the realm of wisdom. * * * * * The work which we describe as Studies in the Jewish Question, and which is variously described by antagonists as "the Jewish campaign," "the attack on the Jews," "the anti-Semitic pogrom," and so forth, needs no explanation to those who have followed it. Its motives and purposes must be judged by the work itself. It is offered as a contribution to a question which deeply affects the country, a question which is racial at its source, and which concerns influences and ideals rather than persons. Our statements must be judged by candid readers who are intelligent enough to lay our words alongside life as they are able to observe it. If our word and their observation agree, the case is made. It is perfectly silly to begin to damn us before it has been shown that our statements are baseless or reckless. The first item to be considered is the truth of what we have set forth. And that is precisely the item which our critics choose to evade. Readers of our articles will see at once that we are not actuated by any kind of prejudice, except it may be a prejudice in favor of the principles which have made our civilization. There had been observed in this country certain streams of influence which were causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct; business was departing from its old-time substantial soundness; a general letting down of standards was felt everywhere. It was not the robust coarseness of the white man, the rude indelicacy, say, of Shakespeare's characters, but a nasty Orientalism which has insidiously affected every channel of expression--and to such an extent that it was time to challenge it. The fact that these influences are all traceable to one racial source is a fact to be reckoned with, not by us only, but by the intelligent people of the race in question. It is entirely creditable to them that steps have been taken by them to remove their protection from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality, but there is still room to discard outworn ideas of racial superiority maintained by economic or intellectually subversive warfare upon Christian society. Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the Jew in America. It says only the word which describes his obvious present impress on the country. When that impress is changed, the report of it can be changed. For the present, then, the question is wholly in the Jews' hands. If they are as wise as they claim to be, they will labour to make Jews American, instead of labouring to make America Jewish. The genius of the United States of America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its destiny is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian meaning with it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from other principles in that it provides for liberty with morality, and pledges society to a code of relations based on fundamental Christian conceptions of human rights and duties. As for prejudice or hatred against persons, that is neither American nor Christian. Our opposition is only to ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people. These ideas proceed from easily identified sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable methods; and they are controlled by mere exposure. We have simply used the method of exposure. When people learn to identify the source and nature of the influence swirling around them, it is sufficient. Let the American people once understand that it is not natural degeneracy, but calculated subversion that afflicts us, and they are safe. The explanation is the cure. This work was taken up without personal motives. When it reached a stage where we believed the American people could grasp the key, we let it rest for the time. Our enemies say that we began it for revenge and that we laid it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are merely dealing in evasion because they dare not tackle the main question. Time will also show that we are better friends to the Jews' best interests than are those who praise them to their faces and criticize them behind their backs. CHAPTER XVIII DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the empty forms of government and more concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and such matters as have nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We can get down to facts. We stand in need of facts. It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity is human--that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the attitude of a class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in so far as they are swayed by the false notion of "classes." Before, when it was the constant effort of propaganda to make the people believe that it was only the "rich" who were without humane feelings, the opinion became general that among the "poor" the humane virtues flourished. But the "rich" and the "poor" are both very small minorities, and you cannot classify society under such heads. There are not enough "rich" and there are not enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such classification. Rich men have become poor without changing their natures, and poor men have become rich, and the problem has not been affected by it. Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are neither rich nor poor. A society made up exclusively of millionaires would not be different from our present society; some of the millionaires would have to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery and run trains--else they would all starve to death. Someone must do the work. Really we have no fixed classes. We have men who will work and men who will not. Most of the "classes" that one reads about are purely fictional. Take certain capitalist papers. You will be amazed by some of the statements about the labouring class. We who have been and still are a part of the labouring class know that the statements are untrue. Take certain of the labour papers. You are equally amazed by some of the statements they make about "capitalists." And yet on both sides there is a grain of truth. The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who gambles with the fruits of other men's labours, deserves all that is said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The statements we read about the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by managers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing what they think will please their employers. They write what they imagine will please. Examine the labour press and you will find another class of writers who similarly seek to tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labouring man to have. Both kinds of writers are mere propagandists. And propaganda that does not spread facts is self-destructive. And it should be. You cannot preach patriotism to men for the purpose of getting them to stand still while you rob them--and get away with that kind of preaching very long. You cannot preach the duty of working hard and producing plentifully, and make that a screen for an additional profit to yourself. And neither can the worker conceal the lack of a day's work by a phrase. Undoubtedly the employing class possesses facts which the employed ought to have in order to construct sound opinions and pass fair judgments. Undoubtedly the employed possess facts which are equally important to the employer. It is extremely doubtful, however, if either side has all the facts. And this is where propaganda, even if it were possible for it to be entirely successful, is defective. It is not desirable that one set of ideas be "put over" on a class holding another set of ideas. What we really need is to get all the ideas together and construct from them. Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labour and the right to strike. The only strong group of union men in the country is the group that draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them are interested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of finance. Others are so extreme in their so-called socialism that they border on Bolshevism and anarchism--their union salaries liberating them from the necessity of work so that they can devote their energies to subversive propaganda. All of them enjoy a certain prestige and power which, in the natural course of competition, they could not otherwise have won. If the official personnel of the labour unions were as strong, as honest, as decent, and as plainly wise as the bulk of the men who make up the membership, the whole movement would have taken on a different complexion these last few years. But this official personnel, in the main--there are notable exceptions--has not devoted itself to an alliance with the naturally strong qualities of the workingman; it has rather devoted itself to playing upon his weaknesses, principally upon the weaknesses of that newly arrived portion of the population which does not yet know what Americanism is, and which never will know if left to the tutelage of their local union leaders. The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the fallacious doctrine of "the class war" and who have accepted the philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry ("When you get your $12 a day, don't stop at that. Agitate for $14. When you get your eight hours a day, don't be a fool and grow contented; agitate for six hours. Start something! Always start something!"), have the plain sense which enables them to recognize that with principles accepted and observed, conditions change. The union leaders have never seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling, and crippled national life. Else where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a new argument for them; they point to it and say, "You see! You still need us." The only true labour leader is the one who leads labour to work and to wages, and not the leader who leads labour to strikes, sabotage, and starvation. The union of labour which is coming to the fore in this country is the union of all whose interests are interdependent--whose interests are altogether dependent on the usefulness and efficiency of the service they render. There is a change coming. When the union of "union leaders" disappears, with it will go the union of blind bosses--bosses who never did a decent thing for their employees until they were compelled. If the blind boss was a disease, the selfish union leader was the antidote. When the union leader became the disease, the blind boss became the antidote. Both are misfits, both are out of place in well-organized society. And they are both disappearing together. It is the blind boss whose voice is heard to-day saying, "Now is the time to smash labour, we've got them on the run." That voice is going down to silence with the voice that preaches "class war." The producers--from the men at the drawing board to the men on the moulding floor--have gotten together in a real union, and they will handle their own affairs henceforth. The exploitation of dissatisfaction is an established business to-day. Its object is not to settle anything, nor to get anything done, but to keep dissatisfaction in existence. And the instruments used to do this are a whole set of false theories and promises which can never be fulfilled as long as the earth remains what it is. I am not opposed to labour organization. I am not opposed to any sort of organization that makes for progress. It is organizing to limit production--whether by employers or by workers--that matters. The workingman himself must be on guard against some very dangerous notions--dangerous to himself and to the welfare of the country. It is sometimes said that the less a worker does, the more jobs he creates for other men. This fallacy assumes that idleness is creative. Idleness never created a job. It creates only burdens. The industrious man never runs his fellow worker out of a job; indeed, it is the industrious man who is the partner of the industrious manager--who creates more and more business and therefore more and more jobs. It is a great pity that the idea should ever have gone abroad among sensible men that by "soldiering" on the job they help someone else. A moment's thought will show the weakness of such an idea. The healthy business, the business that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an honourable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a day's work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with economic laws, because if we do they handle us in very hard ways. The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine men which used to be done by ten men does not mean that the tenth man is unemployed. He is merely not employed on that work, and the public is not carrying the burden of his support by paying more than it ought on that work--for after all, it is the public that pays! An industrial concern which is wide enough awake to reorganize for efficiency, and honest enough with the public to charge it necessary costs and no more, is usually such an enterprising concern that it has plenty of jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow, and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern is always seeking to lower the labour cost to the public; and it is certain to employ more men than the concern which loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its mismanagement. The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate consumer was paying him. But the fact that he was unnecessary on that particular job does not mean that he is unnecessary in the work of the world, or even in the work of his particular shop. The public pays for all mismanagement. More than half the trouble with the world to-day is the "soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever two men are being paid for what one can do, the people are paying double what they ought. And it is a fact that only a little while ago in the United States, man for man, we were not producing what we did for several years previous to the war. A day's work means more than merely being "on duty" at the shop for the required number of hours. It means giving an equivalent in service for the wage drawn. And when that equivalent is tampered with either way--when the man gives more than he receives, or receives more than he gives--it is not long before serious dislocation will be manifest. Extend that condition throughout the country, and you have a complete upset of business. All that industrial difficulty means is the destruction of basic equivalents in the shop. Management must share the blame with labour. Management has been lazy, too. Management has found it easier to hire an additional five hundred men than to so improve its methods that one hundred men of the old force could be released to other work. The public was paying, and business was booming, and management didn't care a pin. It was no different in the office from what it was in the shop. The law of equivalents was broken just as much by managers as by workmen. Practically nothing of importance is secured by mere demand. That is why strikes always fail--even though they may seem to succeed. A strike which brings higher wages or shorter hours and passes on the burden to the community is really unsuccessful. It only makes the industry less able to serve--and decreases the number of jobs that it can support. This is not to say that no strike is justified--it may draw attention to an evil. Men can strike with justice--that they will thereby get justice is another question. The strike for proper conditions and just rewards is justifiable. The pity is that men should be compelled to use the strike to get what is theirs by right. No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course. These justifiable strikes are usually the employer's fault. Some employers are not fit for their jobs. The employment of men--the direction of their energies, the arranging of their rewards in honest ratio to their production and to the prosperity of the business--is no small job. An employer may be unfit for his job, just as a man at the lathe may be unfit. Justifiable strikes are a sign that the boss needs another job--one that he can handle. The unfit employer causes more trouble than the unfit employee. You can change the latter to another more suitable job. But the former must usually be left to the law of compensation. The justified strike, then, is one that need never have been called if the employer had done his work. There is a second kind of strike--the strike with a concealed design. In this kind of strike the workingmen are made the tools of some manipulator who seeks his own ends through them. To illustrate: Here is a great industry whose success is due to having met a public need with efficient and skillful production. It has a record for justice. Such an industry presents a great temptation to speculators. If they can only gain control of it they can reap rich benefit from all the honest effort that has been put into it. They can destroy its beneficiary wage and profit-sharing, squeeze every last dollar out of the public, the product, and the workingman, and reduce it to the plight of other business concerns which are run on low principles. The motive may be the personal greed of the speculators or they may want to change the policy of a business because its example is embarrassing to other employers who do not want to do what is right. The industry cannot be touched from within, because its men have no reason to strike. So another method is adopted. The business may keep many outside shops busy supplying it with material. If these outside shops can be tied up, then that great industry may be crippled. So strikes are fomented in the outside industries. Every attempt is made to curtail the factory's source of supplies. If the workingmen in the outside shops knew what the game was, they would refuse to play it, but they don't know; they serve as the tools of designing capitalists without knowing it. There is one point, however, that ought to rouse the suspicions of workingmen engaged in this kind of strike. If the strike cannot get itself settled, no matter what either side offers to do, it is almost positive proof that there is a third party interested in having the strike continue. That hidden influence does not want a settlement on any terms. If such a strike is won by the strikers, is the lot of the workingman improved? After throwing the industry into the hands of outside speculators, are the workmen given any better treatment or wages? There is a third kind of strike--the strike that is provoked by the money interests for the purpose of giving labour a bad name. The American workman has always had a reputation for sound judgment. He has not allowed himself to be led away by every shouter who promised to create the millennium out of thin air. He has had a mind of his own and has used it. He has always recognized the fundamental truth that the absence of reason was never made good by the presence of violence. In his way the American workingman has won a certain prestige with his own people and throughout the world. Public opinion has been inclined to regard with respect his opinions and desires. But there seems to be a determined effort to fasten the Bolshevik stain on American Labour by inciting it to such impossible attitudes and such wholly unheard-of actions as shall change public sentiment from respect to criticism. Merely avoiding strikes, however, does not promote industry. We may say to the workingman: "You have a grievance, but the strike is no remedy--it only makes the situation worse whether you win or lose." Then the workingman may admit this to be true and refrain from striking. Does that settle anything? No! If the worker abandons strikes as an unworthy means of bringing about desirable conditions, it simply means that employers must get busy on their own initiative and correct defective conditions. The experience of the Ford industries with the workingman has been entirely satisfactory, both in the United States and abroad. We have no antagonism to unions, but we participate in no arrangements with either employee or employer organizations. The wages paid are always higher than any reasonable union could think of demanding and the hours of work are always shorter. There is nothing that a union membership could do for our people. Some of them may belong to unions, probably the majority do not. We do not know and make no attempt to find out, for it is a matter of not the slightest concern to us. We respect the unions, sympathize with their good aims and denounce their bad ones. In turn I think that they give us respect, for there has never been any authoritative attempt to come between the men and the management in our plants. Of course radical agitators have tried to stir up trouble now and again, but the men have mostly regarded them simply as human oddities and their interest in them has been the same sort of interest that they would have in a four-legged man. In England we did meet the trades union question squarely in our Manchester plant. The workmen of Manchester are mostly unionized, and the usual English union restrictions upon output prevail. We took over a body plant in which were a number of union carpenters. At once the union officers asked to see our executives and arrange terms. We deal only with our own employees and never with outside representatives, so our people refused to see the union officials. Thereupon they called the carpenters out on strike. The carpenters would not strike and were expelled from the union. Then the expelled men brought suit against the union for their share of the benefit fund. I do not know how the litigation turned out, but that was the end of interference by trades union officers with our operations in England. We make no attempt to coddle the people who work with us. It is absolutely a give-and-take relation. During the period in which we largely increased wages we did have a considerable supervisory force. The home life of the men was investigated and an effort was made to find out what they did with their wages. Perhaps at the time it was necessary; it gave us valuable information. But it would not do at all as a permanent affair and it has been abandoned. We do not believe in the "glad hand," or the professionalized "personal touch," or "human element." It is too late in the day for that sort of thing. Men want something more than a worthy sentiment. Social conditions are not made out of words. They are the net result of the daily relations between man and man. The best social spirit is evidenced by some act which costs the management something and which benefits all. That is the only way to prove good intentions and win respect. Propaganda, bulletins, lectures--they are nothing. It is the right act sincerely done that counts. A great business is really too big to be human. It grows so large as to supplant the personality of the man. In a big business the employer, like the employee, is lost in the mass. Together they have created a great productive organization which sends out articles that the world buys and pays for in return money that provides a livelihood for everyone in the business. The business itself becomes the big thing. There is something sacred about a big business which provides a living for hundreds and thousands of families. When one looks about at the babies coming into the world, at the boys and girls going to school, at the young workingmen who, on the strength of their jobs, are marrying and setting up for themselves, at the thousands of homes that are being paid for on installments out of the earnings of men--when one looks at a great productive organization that is enabling all these things to be done, then the continuance of that business becomes a holy trust. It becomes greater and more important than the individuals. The employer is but a man like his employees and is subject to all the limitations of humanity. He is justified in holding his job only as he can fill it. If he can steer the business straight, if his men can trust him to run his end of the work properly and without endangering their security, then he is filling his place. Otherwise he is no more fit for his position than would be an infant. The employer, like everyone else, is to be judged solely by his ability. He may be but a name to the men--a name on a signboard. But there is the business--it is more than a name. It produces the living--and a living is a pretty tangible thing. The business is a reality. It does things. It is a going concern. The evidence of its fitness is that the pay envelopes keep coming. You can hardly have too much harmony in business. But you can go too far in picking men because they harmonize. You can have so much harmony that there will not be enough of the thrust and counterthrust which is life--enough of the competition which means effort and progress. It is one thing for an organization to be working harmoniously toward one object, but it is another thing for an organization to work harmoniously with each individual unit of itself. Some organizations use up so much energy and time maintaining a feeling of harmony that they have no force left to work for the object for which the organization was created. The organization is secondary to the object. The only harmonious organization that is worth anything is an organization in which all the members are bent on the one main purpose--to get along toward the objective. A common purpose, honestly believed in, sincerely desired--that is the great harmonizing principle. I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures. Not only are they business failures; they are character failures also; it is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations. People have too great a fondness for working with the people they like. In the end it spoils a good many valuable qualities. Do not misunderstand me; when I use the term "good feeling" I mean that habit of making one's personal likes and dislikes the sole standard of judgment. Suppose you do not like a man. Is that anything against him? It may be something against you. What have your likes or dislikes to do with the facts? Every man of common sense knows that there are men whom he dislikes, who are really more capable than he is himself. And taking all this out of the shop and into the broader fields, it is not necessary for the rich to love the poor or the poor to love the rich. It is not necessary for the employer to love the employee or for the employee to love the employer. What is necessary is that each should try to do justice to the other according to his deserts. That is real democracy and not the question of who ought to own the bricks and the mortar and the furnaces and the mills. And democracy has nothing to do with the question, "Who ought to be boss?" That is very much like asking: "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. You could not have deposed Caruso. Suppose some theory of musical democracy had consigned Caruso to the musical proletariat. Would that have reared another tenor to take his place? Or would Caruso's gifts have still remained his own? CHAPTER XIX WHAT WE MAY EXPECT We are--unless I do not read the signs aright--in the midst of a change. It is going on all about us, slowly and scarcely observed, but with a firm surety. We are gradually learning to relate cause and effect. A great deal of that which we call disturbance--a great deal of the upset in what have seemed to be established institutions--is really but the surface indication of something approaching a regeneration. The public point of view is changing, and we really need only a somewhat different point of view to make the very bad system of the past into a very good system of the future. We are displacing that peculiar virtue which used to be admired as hard-headedness, and which was really only wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are getting rid of mushy sentimentalism. The first confused hardness with progress; the second confused softness with progress. We are getting a better view of the realities and are beginning to know that we have already in the world all things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we shall use them better once we learn what they are and what they mean. Whatever is wrong--and we all know that much is wrong--can be righted by a clear definition of the wrongness. We have been looking so much at one another, at what one has and another lacks, that we have made a personal affair out of something that is too big for personalities. To be sure, human nature enters largely into our economic problems. Selfishness exists, and doubtless it colours all the competitive activities of life. If selfishness were the characteristic of any one class it might be easily dealt with, but it is in human fibre everywhere. And greed exists. And envy exists. And jealousy exists. But as the struggle for mere existence grows less--and it is less than it used to be, although the sense of uncertainty may have increased--we have an opportunity to release some of the finer motives. We think less of the frills of civilization as we grow used to them. Progress, as the world has thus far known it, is accompanied by a great increase in the things of life. There is more gear, more wrought material, in the average American backyard than in the whole domain of an African king. The average American boy has more paraphernalia around him than a whole Eskimo community. The utensils of kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and coal cellar make a list that would have staggered the most luxurious potentate of five hundred years ago. The increase in the impedimenta of life only marks a stage. We are like the Indian who comes into town with all his money and buys everything he sees. There is no adequate realization of the large proportion of the labour and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be owned--that perform no service in the world and are at last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste. Humanity is advancing out of its trinket-making stage, and industry is coming down to meet the world's needs, and thus we may expect further advancement toward that life which many now see, but which the present "good enough" stage hinders our attaining. And we are growing out of this worship of material possessions. It is no longer a distinction to be rich. As a matter of fact, to be rich is no longer a common ambition. People do not care for money as money, as they once did. Certainly they do not stand in awe of it, nor of him who possesses it. What we accumulate by way of useless surplus does us no honour. It takes only a moment's thought to see that as far as individual personal advantage is concerned, vast accumulations of money mean nothing. A human being is a human being and is nourished by the same amount and quality of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing, whether he be rich or poor. And no one can inhabit more than one room at a time. But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary resources could possibly realize, if one has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and efficiency, then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn--the beginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no more be selfishly confined than can the sun's rays. There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured. They are both on the wrong track. They might as well try to corner all the checkers or all the dominoes of the world under the delusion that they are thereby cornering great quantities of skill. Some of the most successful money-makers of our times have never added one pennyworth to the wealth of men. Does a card player add to the wealth of the world? If we all created wealth up to the limits, the easy limits, of our creative capacity, then it would simply be a case of there being enough for everybody, and everybody getting enough. Any real scarcity of the necessaries of life in the world--not a fictitious scarcity caused by the lack of clinking metallic disks in one's purse--is due only to lack of production. And lack of production is due only too often to lack of knowledge of how and what to produce. * * * * * This much we must believe as a starting point: That the earth produces, or is capable of producing, enough to give decent sustenance to everyone--not of food alone, but of everything else we need. For everything is produced from the earth. That it is possible for labour, production, distribution, and reward to be so organized as to make certain that those who contribute shall receive shares determined by an exact justice. That regardless of the frailties of human nature, our economic system can be so adjusted that selfishness, although perhaps not abolished, can be robbed of power to work serious economic injustice. * * * * * The business of life is easy or hard according to the skill or the lack of skill displayed in production and distribution. It has been thought that business existed for profit. That is wrong. Business exists for service. It is a profession, and must have recognized professional ethics, to violate which declasses a man. Business needs more of the professional spirit. The professional spirit seeks professional integrity, from pride, not from compulsion. The professional spirit detects its own violations and penalizes them. Business will some day become clean. A machine that stops every little while is an imperfect machine, and its imperfection is within itself. A body that falls sick every little while is a diseased body, and its disease is within itself. So with business. Its faults, many of them purely the faults of the moral constitution of business, clog its progress and make it sick every little while. Some day the ethics of business will be universally recognized, and in that day business will be seen to be the oldest and most useful of all the professions. * * * * * All that the Ford industries have done--all that I have done--is to endeavour to evidence by works that service comes before profit and that the sort of business which makes the world better for its presence is a noble profession. Often it has come to me that what is regarded as the somewhat remarkable progression of our enterprises--I will not say "success," for that word is an epitaph, and we are just starting--is due to some accident; and that the methods which we have used, while well enough in their way, fit only the making of our particular products and would not do at all in any other line of business or indeed for any products or personalities other than our own. It used to be taken for granted that our theories and our methods were fundamentally unsound. That is because they were not understood. Events have killed that kind of comment, but there remains a wholly sincere belief that what we have done could not be done by any other company--that we have been touched by a wand, that neither we nor any one else could make shoes, or hats, or sewing machines, or watches, or typewriters, or any other necessity after the manner in which we make automobiles and tractors. And that if only we ventured into other fields we should right quickly discover our errors. I do not agree with any of this. Nothing has come out of the air. The foregoing pages should prove that. We have nothing that others might not have. We have had no good fortune except that which always attends any one who puts his best into his work. There was nothing that could be called "favorable" about our beginning. We began with almost nothing. What we have, we earned, and we earned it by unremitting labour and faith in a principle. We took what was a luxury and turned it into a necessity and without trick or subterfuge. When we began to make our present motor car the country had few good roads, gasoline was scarce, and the idea was firmly implanted in the public mind that an automobile was at the best a rich man's toy. Our only advantage was lack of precedent. We began to manufacture according to a creed--a creed which was at that time unknown in business. The new is always thought odd, and some of us are so constituted that we can never get over thinking that anything which is new must be odd and probably queer. The mechanical working out of our creed is constantly changing. We are continually finding new and better ways of putting it into practice, but we have not found it necessary to alter the principles, and I cannot imagine how it might ever be necessary to alter them, because I hold that they are absolutely universal and must lead to a better and wider life for all. If I did not think so I would not keep working--for the money that I make is inconsequent. Money is useful only as it serves to forward by practical example the principle that business is justified only as it serves, that it must always give more to the community than it takes away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence of a business then that business should not exist. I have proved this with automobiles and tractors. I intend to prove it with railways and public-service corporations--not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if profit were the main object.) I want to prove it so that all of us may have more, and that all of us may live better by increasing the service rendered by all businesses. Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished only by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an experimental station to prove a principle. That we do make money is only further proof that we are right. For that is a species of argument that establishes itself without words. In the first chapter was set forth the creed. Let me repeat it in the light of the work that has been done under it--for it is at the basis of all our work: (1) An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress. (2) A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow-men, to rule by force instead of by intelligence. (3) The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprises cannot fail to return a profit but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service. (4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and distributing it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing tend only to clog this progression. * * * * * We must have production, but it is the spirit behind it that counts most. That kind of production which is a service inevitably follows a real desire to be of service. The various wholly artificial rules set up for finance and industry and which pass as "laws" break down with such frequency as to prove that they are not even good guesses. The basis of all economic reasoning is the earth and its products. To make the yield of the earth, in all its forms, large enough and dependable enough to serve as the basis for real life--the life which is more than eating and sleeping--is the highest service. That is the real foundation for an economic system. We can make things--the problem of production has been solved brilliantly. We can make any number of different sort of things by the millions. The material mode of our life is splendidly provided for. There are enough processes and improvements now pigeonholed and awaiting application to bring the physical side of life to almost millennial completeness. But we are too wrapped up in the things we are doing--we are not enough concerned with the reasons why we do them. Our whole competitive system, our whole creative expression, all the play of our faculties seem to be centred around material production and its by-products of success and wealth. There is, for instance, a feeling that personal or group benefit can be had at the expense of other persons or groups. There is nothing to be gained by crushing any one. If the farmer's bloc should crush the manufacturers would the farmers be better off? If the manufacturer's bloc should crush the farmers, would the manufacturers be better off? Could Capital gain by crushing Labour? Or Labour by crushing Capital? Or does a man in business gain by crushing a competitor? No, destructive competition benefits no one. The kind of competition which results in the defeat of the many and the overlordship of the ruthless few must go. Destructive competition lacks the qualities out of which progress comes. Progress comes from a generous form of rivalry. Bad competition is personal. It works for the aggrandizement of some individual or group. It is a sort of warfare. It is inspired by a desire to "get" someone. It is wholly selfish. That is to say, its motive is not pride in the product, nor a desire to excel in service, nor yet a wholesome ambition to approach to scientific methods of production. It is moved simply by the desire to crowd out others and monopolize the market for the sake of the money returns. That being accomplished, it always substitutes a product of inferior quality. * * * * * Freeing ourselves from the petty sort of destructive competition frees us from many set notions. We are too closely tied to old methods and single, one-way uses. We need more mobility. We have been using certain things just one way, we have been sending certain goods through only one channel--and when that use is slack, or that channel is stopped, business stops, too, and all the sorry consequences of "depression" set in. Take corn, for example. There are millions upon millions of bushels of corn stored in the United States with no visible outlet. A certain amount of corn is used as food for man and beast, but not all of it. In pre-Prohibition days a certain amount of corn went into the making of liquor, which was not a very good use for good corn. But through a long course of years corn followed those two channels, and when one of them stopped the stocks of corn began to pile up. It is the money fiction that usually retards the movement of stocks, but even if money were plentiful we could not possibly consume the stores of food which we sometimes possess. If foodstuffs become too plentiful to be consumed as food, why not find other uses for them? Why use corn only for hogs and distilleries? Why sit down and bemoan the terrible disaster that has befallen the corn market? Is there no use for corn besides the making of pork or the making of whisky? Surely there must be. There should be so many uses for corn that only the important uses could ever be fully served; there ought always be enough channels open to permit corn to be used without waste. Once upon a time the farmers burned corn as fuel--corn was plentiful and coal was scarce. That was a crude way to dispose of corn, but it contained the germ of an idea. There is fuel in corn; oil and fuel alcohol are obtainable from corn, and it is high time that someone was opening up this new use so that the stored-up corn crops may be moved. Why have only one string to our bow? Why not two? If one breaks, there is the other. If the hog business slackens, why should not the farmer turn his corn into tractor fuel? We need more diversity all round. The four-track system everywhere would not be a bad idea. We have a single-track money system. It is a mighty fine system for those who own it. It is a perfect system for the interest-collecting, credit-controlling financiers who literally own the commodity called Money and who literally own the machinery by which money is made and used. Let them keep their system if they like it. But the people are finding out that it is a poor system for what we call "hard times" because it ties up the line and stops traffic. If there are special protections for the interests, there ought also to be special protections for the plain people. Diversity of outlet, of use, and of financial enablement, are the strongest defenses we can have against economic emergencies. It is likewise with Labour. There surely ought to be flying squadrons of young men who would be available for emergency conditions in harvest field, mine, shop, or railroad. If the fires of a hundred industries threaten to go out for lack of coal, and one million men are menaced by unemployment, it would seem both good business and good humanity for a sufficient number of men to volunteer for the mines and the railroads. There is always something to be done in this world, and only ourselves to do it. The whole world may be idle, and in the factory sense there may be "nothing to do." There may be nothing to do in this place or that, but there is always something to do. It is this fact which should urge us to such an organization of ourselves that this "something to be done" may get done, and unemployment reduced to a minimum. * * * * * Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual. The mass can be no better than the sum of the individuals. Advancement begins within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere _dilettante_ at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without oversight and without prodding--why, then the world advances! The advance is not easy. We live in flabby times when men are being taught that everything ought to be easy. Work that amounts to anything will never be easy. And the higher you go in the scale of responsibility, the harder becomes the job. Ease has its place, of course. Every man who works ought to have sufficient leisure. The man who works hard should have his easy chair, his comfortable fireside, his pleasant surroundings. These are his by right. But no one deserves ease until after his work is done. It will never be possible to put upholstered ease into work. Some work is needlessly hard. It can be lightened by proper management. Every device ought to be employed to leave a man free to do a man's work. Flesh and blood should not be made to bear burdens that steel can bear. But even when the best is done, work still remains work, and any man who puts himself into his job will feel that it is work. And there cannot be much picking and choosing. The appointed task may be less than was expected. A man's real work is not always what he would have chosen to do. A man's real work is what he is chosen to do. Just now there are more menial jobs than there will be in the future; and as long as there are menial jobs, someone will have to do them; but there is no reason why a man should be penalized because his job is menial. There is one thing that can be said about menial jobs that cannot be said about a great many so-called more responsible jobs, and that is, they are useful and they are respectable and they are honest. The time has come when drudgery must be taken out of labour. It is not work that men object to, but the element of drudgery. We must drive out drudgery wherever we find it. We shall never be wholly civilized until we remove the treadmill from the daily job. Invention is doing this in some degree now. We have succeeded to a very great extent in relieving men of the heavier and more onerous jobs that used to sap their strength, but even when lightening the heavier labour we have not yet succeeded in removing monotony. That is another field that beckons us--the abolition of monotony, and in trying to accomplish that we shall doubtless discover other changes that will have to be made in our system. * * * * * The opportunity to work is now greater than ever it was. The opportunity to advance is greater. It is true that the young man who enters industry to-day enters a very different system from that in which the young man of twenty-five years ago began his career. The system has been tightened up; there is less play or friction in it; fewer matters are left to the haphazard will of the individual; the modern worker finds himself part of an organization which apparently leaves him little initiative. Yet, with all this, it is not true that "men are mere machines." It is not true that opportunity has been lost in organization. If the young man will liberate himself from these ideas and regard the system as it is, he will find that what he thought was a barrier is really an aid. Factory organization is not a device to prevent the expansion of ability, but a device to reduce the waste and losses due to mediocrity. It is not a device to hinder the ambitious, clear-headed man from doing his best, but a device to prevent the don't-care sort of individual from doing his worst. That is to say, when laziness, carelessness, slothfulness, and lack-interest are allowed to have their own way, everybody suffers. The factory cannot prosper and therefore cannot pay living wages. When an organization makes it necessary for the don't-care class to do better than they naturally would, it is for their benefit--they are better physically, mentally, and financially. What wages should we be able to pay if we trusted a large don't-care class to their own methods and gait of production? If the factory system which brought mediocrity up to a higher standard operated also to keep ability down to a lower standard--it would be a very bad system, a very bad system indeed. But a system, even a perfect one, must have able individuals to operate it. No system operates itself. And the modern system needs more brains for its operation than did the old. More brains are needed to-day than ever before, although perhaps they are not needed in the same place as they once were. It is just like power: formerly every machine was run by foot power; the power was right at the machine. But nowadays we have moved the power back--concentrated it in the power-house. Thus also we have made it unnecessary for the highest types of mental ability to be engaged in every operation in the factory. The better brains are in the mental power-plant. Every business that is growing is at the same time creating new places for capable men. It cannot help but do so. This does not mean that new openings come every day and in groups. Not at all. They come only after hard work; it is the fellow who can stand the gaff of routine and still keep himself alive and alert who finally gets into direction. It is not sensational brilliance that one seeks in business, but sound, substantial dependability. Big enterprises of necessity move slowly and cautiously. The young man with ambition ought to take a long look ahead and leave an ample margin of time for things to happen. * * * * * A great many things are going to change. We shall learn to be masters rather than servants of Nature. With all our fancied skill we still depend largely on natural resources and think that they cannot be displaced. We dig coal and ore and cut down trees. We use the coal and the ore and they are gone; the trees cannot be replaced within a lifetime. We shall some day harness the heat that is all about us and no longer depend on coal--we may now create heat through electricity generated by water power. We shall improve on that method. As chemistry advances I feel quite certain that a method will be found to transform growing things into substances that will endure better than the metals--we have scarcely touched the uses of cotton. Better wood can be made than is grown. The spirit of true service will create for us. We have only each of us to do our parts sincerely. * * * * * Everything is possible ... "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." THE BOOK ENDS INDEX Absentees discharged, Accidents, safeguarding against; causes of Advancement, personal Advertisement, first, of Ford Motor Co. Agents, Agriculture, a primary function Ainsley, Charles Alexander, Henry, drives Ford car to top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 feet, in 1911 Antecedents, a man's, of no interest in hiring at Ford factory Assembly of a Ford car; first experiment in a moving assembly line, April 1, 1913; results of the experiment Automobile, public's first attitude toward Automobile business, bad methods of; in its beginnings Bankers play too great a part in business; in railroads Banking, Bedridden men at work, Benz car on exhibition at Macy's in 1885, Birds, Mr. Ford's fondness for Blind men can work, Bolshevism, Bonuses--_See_ "Profit-Sharing" Borrowing money; what it would have meant to Ford Motor Co. in 1920 British Board of Agriculture, British Cabinet and Fordson tractors, Burroughs, John Business, monopoly and profiteering bad for; function of Buying for immediate needs only, Cadillac Company, Capital, Capitalist newspapers, Capitalists, Cash balance, large Charity, professional City life, "Classes" mostly fictional, Classification of work at Ford plants, Cleanliness of factory, Coal used in Ford plants from Ford mines, Coke ovens at River Rouge plant, Collier, Colonel D. C. Competition, Consumption varies according to price and quality, Convict labour, Cooper, Tom Cooperative farming, Cork, Ireland, Fordson tractor plant Corn, potential uses of Costs of production, records of; prices force down; high wages contribute to low Country, living in Courtney, F. S. Creative work, Creed, industrial, Mr. Ford's Cripples can work, Cross, John E. Dalby, Prof. W. E., Deaf and dumb men at work, _Dearborn Independent_, Dearborn plant, Democracy, Detroit Automobile Co., Detroit General Hospital, now Ford Hospital, Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railway, purchased by Ford Motor Co., in March, 1921, Development, opportunity for, in U. S., Diamond Manufacturing Co. fire, Discipline at Ford plants, "Dividends, abolish, rather than lower wages," Dividends, small, Ford policy of, Doctors, Dollar, the fluctuating, Drudgery, Eagle Boats, Economy, Edison, Thomas A., Educated man, an; definition of, Education, Mr. Ford's ideas on, Educational Department, Electricity generated at Ford plants, "Employees, all, are really partners," Employment Department, Equal, all men are not, Experience, lack of, no bar to employment, Experiments, no record of, kept at Ford factories, "Experts," no, at Ford plants, Factory, Ford, growth of, Factory organization, function of, Failure, habit of, Farming, lack of knowledge in, no conflict between, and industry, future development in, Farming with tractors, Fear, Federal Reserve System, Fighting, a cause for immediate discharge, Finance, Financial crisis in 1921, how Ford Motor Co. met, Financial system at present inadequate, Firestone, Harvey S., Flat Rock plant, Floor space for workers, Flour-milling, Foodstuffs, potential uses of, Ford car-- the first, No. 5,000,000, the second, introduction of, in England in 1903, about 5,000 parts in, sales and production--_See_ "Sales" Ford, Henry-- Born at Dearborn, Mich., July 30, 1863, mechanically inclined, leaves school at seventeen, becomes apprentice at Drydock Engine Works, watch repairer, works with local representative of Westinghouse Co. as expert in setting up and repairing road engines, builds a steam tractor in his workshop, reads of the "silent gas engine" in the _World of Science_, in 1887 builds one on the Otto four-cycle model, father gives him forty acres of timber land, marriage, in 1890 begins work on double-cylinder engine, leaves farm and works as engineer and machinist with the Detroit Electric Co., rents house in Detroit and sets up workshop in back yard, in 1892 completes first motor car, first road test in 1893, builds second motor car, quits job with Electric Co. August 15, 1899, and goes into automobile business, organization of Detroit Automobile Co., resigns from, in 1902, rents shop to continue experiments at 81 Park Place, Detroit, beats Alexander Winton in race, early reflections on business, in 1903 builds, with Tom Cooper, two cars, the "999" and the "Arrow" for speed, forms the Ford Motor Co., buys controlling share in 1906, builds "Model A," builds "Model B" and "Model C," makes a record in race over ice in the "Arrow," builds first real manufacturing plant, in May, 1908, assembles 311 cars in six workings days, in June, 1908, assembles one hundred cars in one day, in 1909, decides to manufacture only "Model T," painted black, buys sixty acres of land for plant at Highland Park, outside of Detroit, how he met the financial crises of 1921, buys Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Ry., March, 1921, "Ford doesn't use the Ford," Ford, Edsel, Ford Hospital, Ford Motor Co., organized 1903, Henry Ford buys controlling share in 1906, how it met financial crisis in 1921, thirty-five branches of, in U. S. "Ford, you can dissect it, but you cannot kill it," Fordson tractor, prices, genesis and development of, cost of farming with, 5,000 sent to England in 1917-18, Foreign trade, Gas from coke ovens at River Rouge plant utilized, "Gold is not wealth," "Good feeling" in working not essential, though desirable, Government, the function of, Greaves, R. N., Greed vs. service, Greenhall, Gilbert, Grosse Point track, "Habit conduces to a certain inertia," Highland Park plant, Hobbs, Robert W., Hospital, Ford, Hough, Judge, renders decision against Ford Motor Co. in Selden Patent suit, Hours of labour per day reduced from nine to eight in January, 1914, "Human, a great business is too big to be," Human element in business, Ideas, old and new, Improvements in products, Interstate Commerce Commission, Inventory, cutting down, by improved freight service, Investment, interest on, not properly chargeable to operating expenses, Jacobs, Edmund, "Jail, men in, ought to be able to support their families," Jewish question, studies in the, Jobs, menial, "John R. Street," Labour, the economic fundamental, and Capital, potential uses of, Labour leaders, Labour newspapers, Labour turnover, "Lawyers, like bankers, know absolutely nothing about business," Legislation, the function of, Licensed Association, "Life is not a location, but a journey," Light for working, Loss, taking a; in times of business depression, Manchester, Eng., Ford plant at, strike at, Machinery, its place in life, Manufacture, a primary function, Medical Department, Mexico, Milner, Lord, Models-- "A," "B," "C," "F," "K," "N," "R," "S," "T," changing, not a Ford policy, Money, chasing, present system of, what it is worth, invested in a business not chargeable to it, fluctuating value of, is not wealth, Monopoly, bad for business, Monotonous work, Motion, waste, eliminating, Northville, Mich., plant, combination farm and factory, Oldfteld, Barney, Opportunity for young men of today, Organization, excess, and red tape, Overman, Henry, Otto engine, Overhead charge per car, cut from $146 to $93, Parts, about 5,000, in a Ford car, Paternalism has no place in industry, "Peace Ship" Philanthropy, Physical incapacity not necessarily a hindrance to working, Physicians, Piquette plant, Poverty, Power-farming, Price policy, Mr. Ford's, Producer depends upon service, Production, principles of Ford plant, plan of, worked out carefully, (For production of Ford cars, _see_ "Sales" and table of production on p. 145) Professional charity, Profiteering, bad for business, Profit-sharing, Property, the right of, Profit, small per article, large aggregate, Profits belong to planner, producer, and purchaser, Price raising, reducing, "Prices, If, of goods are above the incomes of the people, then get the prices down to the incomes," "Prices, unduly high, always a sign of unsound business," Prices of Ford touring cars since 1909, Prison laws, "Prisoners ought to be able to support their families," Railroads, active managers have ceased to manage, suffering from bankers and lawyers, folly of long hauls, Reactionaries, Red tape, "Refinancing," Reformers, Repetitive labour, "Rich, It is no longer a distinction to be," Right of property, River Rouge plant, Routine work, Royal Agricultural Society, Rumours in 1920 that Ford Motor Co. was in a bad financial condition, Russia, under Sovietism, Safeguarding machines, "Sales depend upon wages," Sales of Ford cars in 1903-4, 1,708 cars, in 1904-5, 1,695 cars, in 1905-6, 1,599 cars, in 1906-7, 8,423 cars, in 1907-8, 6,398 cars, in 1908-9, 10,607 cars, in 1909-10, 18,664 cars, in 1910-11, 84,528 cars, see also table of production since 1909, Saturation, point of, Saving habit, Schools, trade, Henry Ford Trade School, Scottish Reliability Trials, test of Ford car in Scrap, utilization of, Seasonal unemployment, Selden, George B., Selden Patent, famous suit against Ford Motor Co., in 1909, Service, principles of, "the foundation of real business," "comes before profit," Simplicity, philosophy of, Social Department, Sorensen, Charles E., Standard Oil Co., Standardization, Statistics abolished in 1920, Steel, vanadium, Strelow's carpenter shop, Strike, the right to, Strikes, why, fail, Suggestions from employees, Surgeons' fees, Sweepings, saving, nets $6,000 a year, Titles, no, to jobs at Ford factory, Tractor--_See_ "Fordson" Trade, foreign, Trade schools, Henry Ford Trade School Training, little, required for jobs at Ford plants, Transportation, a primary function, Turnover of goods, Union labour, Universal car, essential attributes of, Vanadium steel, Ventilation of factory, Wages, minimum of $6 a day at all Ford plants, are partnership distributions, fallacy of regulating, on basis of cost of, living, sales depend upon, minimum of $5 a day introduced in January, 1914, danger in rapidly raising, cutting, a slovenly way to meet business depression, high, contribute to low cost, abolish dividends rather than lower, War, opposition to, Ford industries in the, Waste, vs. service, eliminating, Weeks-McLean Bird Bill, Weight, excess, in an automobile, Welfare work--_See_ "Social Department," "Medical Department," and "Educational Department." Winton, Alexander, Women, married, whose husbands have jobs, not employed at Ford plants, Work, its place in life, the right to 
6766	----	images generously made available by the CWRU Preservation Department Digital Library. THE PRESS-GANG AFLOAT AND ASHORE By J. R. Hutchinson CONTENTS I. HOW THE PRESS-GANG CAME IN. II. WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY. III. WHAT THE PRESS-GANG WAS. IV. WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE. V. WHAT THE GANG DID AFLOAT. VI. EVADING THE GANG. VII. WHAT THE GANG DID ASHORE. VIII. AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG. IX. THE GANG AT PLAY. X. WOMEN AND THE PRESS-GANG. XI. IN THE CLUTCH OF THE GANG. XII. HOW THE GANG WENT OUT. APPENDIX: ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO. INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS: AN UNWELCOME VISIT FROM THE PRESS GANG. MANNING THE NAVY. Reproduced by kind permission from a rare print in the collection of Mr. A. M. BROADLEY. THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM. SEIZING A WATERMAN ON TOWER HILL ON THE MORNING OF HIS WEDDING DAY. JACK IN THE BILBOES. From the Painting by MORLAND. ONE OF THE RAREST OF PRESS-GANG RECORDS. A play-bill announcing the suspension of the Gang's operations on "Play Nights," in the collection of Mr. A. M. BROADLEY, by whose kind permission it is reproduced. SAILORS CAROUSING. From the Mezzotint after J. IBBETSON. ANNE MILLS WHO SERVED ON BOARD THE _MAIDSTONE_ IN 1740. MARY ANNE TALBOT. MARY ANNE TALBOT DRESSED AS A SAILOR. THE PRESS GANG, OR ENGLISH LIBERTY DISPLAYED. ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO. Reproduced from the Original Drawing at the Public Record Office. THE PRESS-GANG. CHAPTER I. HOW THE PRESS-GANG CAME IN. The practice of pressing men--that is to say, of taking by intimidation or force those who will not volunteer--would seem to have been world-wide in its adoption. Wherever man desired to have a thing done, and was powerful enough to insure the doing of it, there he attained his end by the simple expedient of compelling others to do for him what he, unaided, could not do for himself. The individual, provided he did not conspire in sufficient numbers to impede or defeat the end in view, counted only as a food-consuming atom in the human mass which was set to work out the purpose of the master mind and hand. His face value in the problem was that of a living wage. If he sought to enhance his value by opposing the master hand, the master hand seized him and wrung his withers. So long as the compelling power confined the doing of the things it desired done to works of construction, it met with little opposition in its designs, experienced little difficulty in coercing the labour necessary for piling its walls, excavating its tanks, raising its pyramids and castles, or for levelling its roads and building its ships and cities. These were the commonplace achievements of peace, at which even the coerced might toil unafraid; for apart from the normal incidence of death, such works entailed little danger to the lives of the multitudes who wrought upon them. Men could in consequence be procured for them by the exercise of the minimum of coercion--by, that is to say, the mere threat of it. When peace went to the wall and the pressed man was called upon to go to battle, the case assumed another aspect, an acuter phase. Given a state of war, the danger to life and limb, the incidence of death, at once jumped enormously, and in proportion as these disquieting factors in the pressed man's lot mounted up, just in that proportion did his opposition to the power that sought to take him become the more determined, strenuous, and undisguised. Particularly was this true of warlike operations upon the sea, for to the extraordinary and terrible risks of war were here added the ordinary but ever-present dangers of wind and wave and storm, sufficient in themselves to appal the unaccustomed and to antagonise the unwilling. In face of these superlative risks the difficulty of procuring men was accentuated a thousand-fold, and with it both the nature and the degree of the coercive force necessary to be exercised for their procuration. In these circumstances the Ruling Power had no option but to resort to more exigent means of attaining its end. In times of peace, working through myriad hands, it had constructed a thousand monuments of ornamental or utilitarian industry. These, with the commonweal they represented, were now threatened and must be protected at all costs. What more reasonable than to demand of those who had built, or of their successors in the perpetual inheritance of toil, that they should protect what they had reared. Hitherto, in most cases, the men required to meet the national need had submitted at a threat. They had to live, and coercive toil meant at least a living wage. Now, made rebellious by a fearful looking forward to the risks they were called upon to incur, they had to be met by more effective measures. Faced by this emergency, Power did not mince matters. It laid violent hands upon the unwilling subject and forced him, _nolens volens_, to sail its ships, to man its guns, and to fight its battles by sea as he already, under less overt compulsion, did its bidding by land. It is with this phase of pressing--pressing open, violent and unashamed--that we purpose here to deal, and more particularly with pressing as it applies to the sea and sailors, to the Navy and the defence of an Island Kingdom. At what time the pressing of men for the sea service of the Crown was first resorted to in these islands it is impossible to determine. There is evidence, however, that the practice was not only in vogue, but firmly established as an adjunct of power, as early as the days of the Saxon kings. It was, in fact, coeval with feudalism, of which it may be described as a side-issue incidental to a maritime situation; for though it is impossible to point to any species of fee, as understood of the tenure of land, under which the holder was liable to render service at sea, yet it must not be forgotten that the great ports of the kingdom, and more especially the Cinque Ports, were from time immemorial bound to find ships for national purposes, whenever called upon to do so, in return for the peculiar rights and privileges conferred upon them by the Crown. The supply of ships necessarily involved the supply of men to sail and fight them, and in this supply, or, rather, in the mode of obtaining it, we have undoubtedly the origin of the later impress system. With the reign of John the practice springs into sudden prominence. The incessant activities of that uneasy king led to almost incessant pressing, and at certain crises in his reign commission after commission is directed, in feverish succession, to the sheriffs of counties and the bailiffs of seaports throughout the kingdom, straitly enjoining them to arrest and stay all ships within their respective jurisdictions, and with the ships the mariners who sail them. [Footnote: By a plausible euphemism they were said to be "hired." As a matter of fact, both ships and men were retained during the royal pleasure at rates fixed by custom.] No exception was taken to these edicts. Long usage rendered the royal lien indefeasible. [Footnote: In more modern times the pressing of ships, though still put forward as a prerogative of the Crown, was confined in the main to unforeseen exigencies of transport. On the fall of Louisburg in 1760, vessels were pressed at that port in order to carry the prisoners of war to France (_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1491--Capt. Byron, 17 June 1760); and in 1764, again, we find Capt. Brereton, of the _Falmouth_, forcibly impressing the East India ship _Revenge_ for the purpose of transporting to Fort St. George, in British India, the company, numbering some four hundred and twenty-one souls, of the _Siam_, then recently condemned at Manilla as unseaworthy.--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Letters of Capt. Brereton, 1764.] In the carrying out of the royal commands there was consequently, at this stage in the development of pressing, little if any resort to direct coercion. From the very nature of the case the principle of coercion was there, but it was there only in the bud. The king's right to hale whom he would into his service being practically undisputed, a threat of reprisals in the event of disobedience answered all purposes, and even this threat was as yet more often implied than openly expressed. King John was perhaps the first to clothe it in words. Requisitioning the services of the mariners of Wales, a notoriously disloyal body, he gave the warrant, issued in 1208, a severely minatory turn. "Know ye for certain," it ran, "that if ye act contrary to this, we will cause you and the masters of your vessels to be hanged, and all your goods to be seized for our use." At this point in the gradual subjection of the seaman to the needs of the nation, defensive or the contrary, we are confronted by an event as remarkable in its nature as it is epoch-making in its consequences. Magna Charta was sealed on the 13th of June 1215, and within a year of that date, on, namely, the 14th of April then next ensuing, King John issued his commission to the barons of twenty-two seaports, requiring them, in terms admitting of neither misconstruction nor compromise, to arrest all ships, and to assemble those ships, together with their companies, in the River of Thames before a certain day. [Footnote: Hardy, _Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum_, 1833.] This wholesale embargo upon the shipping and seamen of the nation, imposed as it was immediately after the ensealing of Magna Charta, raises a question of great constitutional interest. In what sense, and to what extent, was the Charter of English Liberties intended to apply to the seafaring man? Essentially a tyrant and a ruthless promise-breaker, John's natural cruelty would in itself sufficiently account for the dire penalties threatened under the warrant of 1208; but neither his tyranny, his faithlessness of character, nor his very human irritation at the concessions wrung from him by his barons, can explain to our satisfaction why, having granted a charter affirming and safeguarding the liberties of, ostensibly, every class of his people, he should immediately inflict upon one of those classes, and that, too, the one least of all concerned in his historic dispute, the pains of a most rigorous impressment. The only rational explanation of his conduct is, that in thus acting he was contravening no convention, doing violence to no covenant, but was, on the contrary, merely exercising, in accordance with time-honoured usage, an already well-recognised, clearly denned and firmly seated prerogative which the great charter he had so recently put his hand to was in no sense intended to limit or annul. This view of the case is confirmed by subsequent events. Press warrants, identical in every respect save one with the historic warrant of 1216, continued to emanate from the Crown long after King John had gone to his account, and, what is more to the point, to emanate unchallenged. Stubbs himself, our greatest constitutional authority, repeatedly admits as much. Every crisis in the destinies of the Island Kingdom--and they were many and frequent--produced its batch of these procuratory documents, every batch its quota of pressed men. The inference is plain. The mariner was the bondsman of the sea, and to him the _Nullus liber homo capiatur_ clause of the Great Charter was never intended to apply. In his case a dead-letter from the first, it so remained throughout the entire chapter of his vicissitudes. The chief point wherein the warrants of later times differed from those of King John was this: As time went on the penalties they imposed on those who resisted the press became less and less severe. The death penalty fell into speedy disuse, if, indeed, it was ever inflicted at all. Imprisonment for a term of from one to two years, with forfeiture of goods, was held to meet all the exigencies of the case. Gradually even this modified practice underwent amelioration, until at length it dawned upon the official intelligence that a seaman who was free to respond to the summons of the boatswain's whistle constituted an infinitely more valuable physical asset than one who cursed his king and his Maker in irons. All punishment of the condign order, for contempt or resistance of the press, now went by the board, and in its stead the seaman was merely admonished in paternal fashion, as in a Proclamation of 1623, to take the king's shilling "dutifully and reverently" when it was tendered to him. In its apparent guilelessness the admonition was nevertheless woefully deceptive. Like the subdued beat of drum by which, some five years later, the seamen of London were lured to Tower Hill, there to be seized and thrown bodily into the waiting fleet, it masked under its mild exterior the old threat of coercion in a new form. The ancient pains and penalties were indeed no more; but for the back of the sailor who was so ill-advised as to defy the press there was another rod in pickle. He could now be taken forcibly. For side by side with the negative change involved in the abolition of the old punishments, there had been in progress, throughout the intervening centuries, a positive development of far worse omen for the hapless sailor-man. The root-principle of direct coercion, necessarily inherent in any system that seeks to foist an arbitrary and obnoxious status upon any considerable body of men, was slowly but surely bursting into bud. The years that had seen the unprested seaman freed from the dread of the yardarm and the horrors of the forepeak, had bred a new terror for him. Centuries of usage had strengthened the arm of that hated personage the Press-Master, and the compulsion which had once skulked under cover of a threat now threw off its disguise and stalked the seafaring man for what it really was--Force, open and unashamed. The _dernier ressort_ of former days was now the first resort. The seafaring man who refused the king's service when "admonished" thereto had short shrift. He was "first knocked down, and then bade to stand in the king's name." Such, literally and without undue exaggeration, was the later system which, reaching the climax of its insolent pretensions to justifiable violence in the eighteenth century, for upwards of a hundred years bestrode the neck of the unfortunate sailor like some monstrous Old Man of the Sea. Outbursts of violent pressing before the dawn of the eighteenth century, though spasmodic and on the whole infrequent, were not entirely unknown. Times of national stress were peculiarly productive of them. Thus when, in 1545, there was reason to fear a French invasion, pressing of the most violent and unprecedented character was openly resorted to in order to man the fleet. The class who suffered most severely on that occasion were the fisher folk of Devon, "the most part" of whom were "taken as marryners to serve the king." [Footnote: _State Papers_, Henry VIII.--Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545. Bourne, who cites the incident in his _Tudor Seamen_, misses the essential point that the fishermen were forcibly pressed.] During the Civil Wars of the next century both parties to the strife issued press warrants which were enforced with the utmost rigour. The Restoration saw a marked recrudescence of similar measures. How great was the need of men at that time, and how exigent the means employed to procure them, may be gathered from the fact, cited by Pepys, that in 1666 the fleet lay idle for a whole fortnight "without any demand for a farthing worth of anything, but only to get men." The genial diarist was deeply moved by the scenes of violence that followed. They were, he roundly declares, "a shame to think of." The origin of the term "pressing," with its cognates "to press" and "pressed," is not less remarkable than the genesis of the violence it so aptly describes. Originally the man who was required for the king's service at sea, like his twin brother the soldier, was not "pressed" in the sense in which we now use the term. He was merely subjected to a process called "presting." To "prest" a man meant to enlist him by means of what was technically known as "prest" money--"prest" being the English equivalent of the obsolete French _prest_, now _prêt_, meaning "ready." In the recruiter's vocabulary, therefore, "prest" money stood for what is nowadays, in both services, commonly termed the "king's shilling," and the man who, either voluntarily or under duress, accepted or received that shilling at the recruiter's hands, was said to be "prested" or "prest." In other words, having taken the king's ready money, he was thenceforth, during the king's pleasure, "ready" for the king's service. By the transfer of the prest shilling from the hand of the recruiter to the pouch of the seaman a subtle contract, as between the latter and his sovereign, was supposed to be set up, than which no more solemn or binding pact could exist save between a man and his Maker. One of the parties to the contract was more often than not, it is true, a strongly dissenting party; but although under the common law of the land this circumstance would have rendered any similar contract null and void, in this amazing transaction between the king and his "prest" subject it was held to be of no vitiating force. From the moment the king's shilling, by whatever means, found its way into the sailor's possession, from that moment he was the king's man, bound in heavy penalties to toe the line of duty, and, should circumstances demand it, to fight the king's enemies to the death, be that fate either theirs or his. By some strange irony of circumstance there happened to be in the English language a word--"pressed"--which tallied almost exactly in pronunciation with the old French word _prest_, so long employed, as we have seen, to differentiate from his fellows the man who, by the devious means we have here described, was made "ready" for the sea service. "Press" means to constrain, to urge with force--definitions precisely connoting the development and manner of violent enlistment. Hence, as the change from covert to overt violence grew in strength, "pressing," in the mouths of the people at large, came to be synonymous with that most obnoxious, oppressive and fear-inspiring system of recruiting which, in the course of time, took the place of its milder and more humane antecedent, "presting." The "prest" man disappeared, [Footnote: The Law Officers of the Crown retained him, on paper, until the close of the eighteenth century--an example in which they were followed by the Admiralty. To admit his disappearance would have been to knock the bottom out of their case.] and in his stead there came upon the scene his later substitute the "pressed" man, "forced," as Pepys so graphically describes his condition, "against all law to be gone." An odder coincidence than this gradual substitution of "pressed" for _prest,_ or one more grimly appropriate in its application, it would surely be impossible to discover in the whose history of nomenclature. With the growth of the power and violence of the impress there was gradually inaugurated another change, which perhaps played a larger part than any other feature of the system in making it finally obnoxious to the nation at large--finally, because, as we shall see, the nation long endured its exactions with pathetic submission and lamentable indifference. The incidence of pressing was no longer confined, as in its earlier stages, to the overflow of the populace upon the country's rivers, and bays, and seas. Gradually, as naval needs grew in volume and urgency, the press net was cast wider and wider, until at length, during the great century of struggle, when the system was almost constantly working at its highest pressure and greatest efficiency, practically every class of the population of these islands was subjected to its merciless inroads, if not decimated by its indiscriminate exactions. On the very threshold of the century we stumble upon an episode curiously indicative of the set of the tide. Czar Peter of Russia had been recently in England, acquiring a knowledge of English customs which, on his return home, he immediately began to put in practice. His navy, such as it was, was wretchedly manned. [Footnote: The navy got together by Czar Peter had all but disappeared by the time Catherine II. came to the throne. "Ichabod" was written over the doors of the Russian Admiralty. Their ships of war were few in number, unseaworthy, ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen could with difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal fighting strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in reality consisted of men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the Gulf of Finland, whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at all." When the fleet was ordered to sea, the Admiralty "put soldiers on board, and by calling them sailors persuaded themselves that they really were so."--_State Papers, Russia,_ vol. lxxvii.--Macartney, Nov. 16-27, 1766.] Russian serfs made bad sailors and worse seamen. In the English ships thronging the quays at Archangel there was, however, plenty of good stuff-men who could use the sea without being sick, men capable of carrying a ship to her destination without piling her up on the rocks or seeking nightly shelter under the land. He accordingly pressed every ninth man out of those ships. When news of this high-handed proceeding reached England, it roused the Queen and her advisers to indignation. Winter though it was, they lost no time in dispatching Charles Whitworth, a rising diplomat of the suavest type, as "Envoy Extraordinary to our Good (but naughty) Brother the Czar of Muscovy," with instructions to demand the release, immediate and unconditional, of the pressed men. Whitworth found the Czar at Moscow. The Autocrat of All the Russias listened affably enough to what he had to say, but refused his demand in terms that left scant room for doubt as to his sincerity of purpose, and none for protracted "conversations." "Every Prince," he declared for sole answer, "can take what he likes out of his own havens." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt. J. Anderson's letters and enclosures; _State Papers, Russia_, vol. iv.--Whitworth to Secretary Harley.] The position thus taken up was unassailable. Centuries of usage hedged the prerogative in, and Queen Anne herself, in the few years she had been on the throne, had not only exercised it with a free hand, but had laid that hand without scruple upon many a foreign seaman. The lengths to which the system had gone by the end of the third quarter of the century is thrown into vivid relief by two incidents, one of which occurred in 1726, the other fifty years later. In the former year one William Kingston, pressed in the Downs--a man who hailed from Lyme Regis and habitually "used the sea"--was, notwithstanding that fact, discharged by express Admiralty order because he was a "substantial man and had a landed estate." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt Charles Browne, 25 March 1726, and endorsement.] The incident of 1776, known as the Duncan case, occurred, or rather began, at North Shields. Lieutenant Oaks, captain of the press-gang in that town, one day met in the streets a man who, unfortunately for his future, "had the appearance of a seaman." He accordingly pressed him; whereupon the man, whose name was Duncan, produced the title-deeds of certain house property in London, down Wapping way, worth some six pounds per annum, and claimed his discharge on the ground that as a freeholder and a voter he was immune from the press. The lieutenant laughed the suggestion to scorn, and Duncan was shipped south to the fleet. The matter did not end there. Duncan's friends espoused his cause and took energetic steps for his release. Threatened with an action at law, and averse from incurring either unnecessary risks or opprobrium where pressed men were concerned, the Admiralty referred the case to Mr. Attorney-General (afterwards Lord) Thurlow for his opinion. The point of law Thurlow was called upon to resolve was, "Whether being a freeholder is an exception from being pressed;" and as Duncan was represented in counsel's instructions--on what ground, other than his "appearance," is not clear--to be a man Who habitually used the sea, it is hardly matter for surprise that the great jurist's opinion, biassed as it obviously was by that alleged fact, should have been altogether inimical to the pressed man and favourable to the Admiralty. "I see no reason," he writes, in his crabbed hand and nervous diction, "why men using the sea, and being otherwise fit objects to be impressed into His Majesty's service, should be exempted only because they are Freeholders. Nor did I ever read or hear of such an exemption. Therefore, unless some use or practice, which I am ignorant of, gives occasion to this doubt, I see no reason for a Mariner being discharged, seriously, because he is a Freeholder. It's a qualification easily attained: a single house at Wapping would ship a first-rate man-of-war. If a Freeholder is exempt, _eo nomine_, it will be impossible to go on with the pressing service. [Footnote: It would have been equally impossible to go on with the naval service had the fleet contained many freeholders like John Barnes. Granted leave of absence from his ship, the _Neptune,_ early in May, "in order to give his vote in the city," he "return'd not till the 8th of August."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2653--Capt. Whorwood, 23 Aug. 1741.] There is no knowing a Freeholder by sight: and if claiming that character, or even showing deeds is sufficient, few Sailors will be without it." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1756-77, No. 64.] Backed by this opinion, so nicely in keeping with its own inclinations, the Admiralty kept the man. Its views, like its practice, had undergone an antipodal change since the Kingston incident of fifty years before. And possession, commonly reputed to be nine points of the law, more than made up for the lack of that element in Mr. Attorney-General's sophistical reasoning. In this respect Thurlow was in good company, for although Coke, who lived before violent pressing became the rule, had given it as his opinion that the king could not lawfully press men to serve him in his wars, the legal luminaries who came after him, and more particularly those of the eighteenth century, differed from him almost to a man. Blackstone, whilst admitting that no statute expressly legalised pressing, reminded the nation--with a leer, we might almost say--that many statutes strongly implied, and hence--so he put it--amply justified it. In thus begging the question he had in mind the so-called Statutes of Exemption which, in protecting from impressment certain persons or classes of persons, proceeded on the assumption, so dear to the Sea Lords, that the Crown possessed the right to press all. This also was the view taken by Yorke, Solicitor-General in 1757. "I take the prerogative," he declares, "to be most clearly legal." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 102.] Another group of lawyers took similar, though less exalted ground. Of these the most eminent was that "great oracle of law," Lord Mansfield. "The power of pressing," he contends, "is founded upon immemorial usage allowed for ages. If not, it can have no ground to stand upon. The practice is deduced from that trite maxim of the Constitutional Law of England, that private mischief had better be submitted to than that public detriment should ensue." The sea-lawyer had yet to be heard. With him "private mischief" counted for much, the usage of past ages for very little. He lived and suffered in the present. Of common law he knew nothing, but he possessed a fine appreciation of common justice, and this forced from him an indictment of the system that held him in thrall as scathing in its truth, its simplicity and its logic as it is spontaneous and untutored in its diction. "You confidently tell us," said he, dipping his pen in the gall of bitterness, "that our King is a father to us and our officers friends. They are so, we must confess, in some respects, for Indeed they use us like Children in Whiping us into Obedience. As for English Tars to be the Legitimate Sons of Liberty, it is an Old Cry which we have Experienced and Knows it to be False. God knows, the Constitution is admirable well Callculated for the Safety and Happiness of His Majesty's Subjects who live by Employments on Shore; but alass, we are not Considered as Subjects of the same Sovereign, unless it be to Drag us by Force from our Families to Fight the Battles of a Country which Refuses us Protection." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petitions of the Seamen of the Fleet, 1797.] Such, in rough outline, was the Impress System of the eighteenth century. In its inception, its development, and more especially in its extraordinary culmination, it perhaps constitutes the greatest anomaly, as it undoubtedly constitutes the grossest imposition, any free people ever submitted to. Although unlawful in the sense of having no foundation in law, and oppressive and unjust in that it yearly enslaved, under the most noxious conditions, thousands against their will, it was nevertheless for more than a hundred years tolerated and fostered as the readiest, speediest and most effective means humanly devisable for the manning of a fleet whose toll upon a free people, in the same period of time, swelled to more than thrice its original bulk. Standing as a bulwark against aggression and conquest, it ground under its heel the very people it protected, and made them slaves in order to keep them free. Masquerading as a protector, it dragged the wage-earner from his home and cast his starving family upon the doubtful mercies of the parish. And as if this were not enough, whilst justifying its existence on the score of public benefit it played havoc with the fisheries, clipped the wings of the merchant service, and sucked the life-blood out of trade. It was on the rising tide of such egregious contradictions as these that the press-gang came in; for the press-gang was at once the embodiment and the active exponent of all that was anomalous or bad in the Impress System. CHAPTER II. WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY. The root of the necessity that seized the British sailor and made of him what he in time became, the most abject creature and the most efficient fighting unit the world has ever produced, lay in the fact that he was island-born. In that island a great and vigorous people had sprung into being--a people great in their ambitions, commerce and dominion; vigorous in holding what they had won against the assaults, meditated or actual, of those who envied their greatness and coveted their possessions. Of this island people, as of their world-wide interests, the "chiefest defence" was a "good fleet at sea." [Footnote: This famous phrase is used, perhaps for the first time, by Josiah Burchett, sometime Secretary to the Admiralty, in his _Observations on the Navy_, 1700.] The Peace of Utrecht, marking though it did the close of the protracted war of the Spanish Succession, brought to the Island Kingdom not peace, but a sword; for although its Navy was now as unrivalled as its commerce and empire, the supreme struggle for existence, under the guise of the mastery of the sea, was only just begun. Decade after decade, as that struggle waxed and waned but went remorselessly on, the Navy grew in ships, the ships in tonnage and weight of metal, and with their growth the demand for men, imperative as the very existence of the nation, mounted ever higher and higher. In 1756 fifty thousand sufficed for the nation's needs. By 1780 the number had reached ninety-two thousand; and with 1802 it touched high-water mark in the unprecedented total of one hundred and twenty-nine thousand men in actual sea pay. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 567-Navy Progress, 1756-1805. These figures are below rather than above the mark, since the official returns on which they are based are admittedly deficient.] Beset by this enormous and steadily growing demand, the Admiralty, the defensive proxy of the nation, had perforce to face the question as to where and how the men were to be obtained. The source of supply was never at any time in doubt. Here, ready to hand, were some hundreds of thousands of persons using the sea, or following vocations merging into the sea in the capacity of colliers, bargemen, boatmen, longshoremen, fishermen and deep-sea sailors or merchantmen, who constituted the natural Naval Reserve of an Island Kingdom--a reserve ample, if judiciously drawn upon, to meet, and more than meet, the Navy's every need. The question of means was one more complicated, more delicate, and hence incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted unpleasantly upon those in power at Whitehall. Methods of procuration must therefore be devised of a nature such as to insure that neither trade nor Admiralty should suffer--that they should, in fact, enjoy what the unfortunate sailor never knew, some reasonable measure of ease. In its efforts to extricate itself and trade from the complex difficulties of the situation, Admiralty had at its back what an eighteenth century Beresford would doubtless have regarded as the finest talent of the service. Neither the unemployed admiral nor the half-pay captain had at that time, in his enforced retirement at Bath or Cheltenham, taken seriously to parliamenteering, company promoting, or the concocting of pedigrees as a substitute for walking the quarter-deck. His occupation was indeed gone, but in its stead there had come to him what he had rarely enjoyed whilst on the active service list--opportunity. Carried away by the stimulus of so unprecedented a situation as that afforded by the chance to make himself heard, he rushed into print with projects and suggestions which would have revolutionised the naval policy and defence of the country at a stroke had they been carried into effect. Or he devoted his leisure to the invention of signal codes, semaphore systems, embryo torpedoes, gun carriages, and--what is more to our point--methods ostensibly calculated to man the fleet in the easiest, least oppressive and most expeditious manner possible for a free people. Armed with these schemes, he bombarded the Admiralty with all the pertinacity he had shown in his quarter-deck days in applying for leave or seeking promotion. Many, perhaps most, of the inventions which it was thus sought to father upon the Sea Lords, were happily never more heard of; but here and there one, commending itself by its seeming practicability, was selected for trial and duly put to the test. Fair to look upon while still in the air, these fruits of leisured superannuation proved deceptively unsound when plucked by the hand of experiment. Registration, first adopted in 1696, held out undeniable advantages to the seaman. Under its provisions he drew a yearly allowance when not required at sea, and extra prize-money when on active service. Yet the bait did not tempt him, and the system was soon discarded as useless and inoperative. Bounty, defined by some sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an irresistible premium on desertion threatened to decimate the very ships it was intended to man. In 1795 what was commonly known as the Quota Scheme superseded it. This was a plan of Pitt's devising, under which each county contributed to the fleet according to its population, the quota varying from one thousand and eighty-one men for Yorkshire to twenty-three for Rutland, whilst a minor Act levied special toll on seaports, London leading the way with five thousand seven hundred and four men. Like its predecessor Bounty, however, this mode of recruiting drained the Navy in order to feed it. Both systems, moreover, possessed another and more serious defect. When their initial enthusiasm had cooled, the counties, perhaps from force of habit as component parts of a country whose backbone was trade, bought in the cheapest market. Hence the Quota Man, consisting as he generally did of the offscourings of the merchant service, was seldom or never worth the money paid for him. An old man-o'-war's-man, picking up a miserable specimen of this class of recruit by the slack of his ragged breeches, remarked to his grinning messmates as he dangled the disreputable object before their eyes: "'Ere's a lubber as cost a guinea a pound!" He was not far out in his estimate. As in the case of the good old method of recruiting by beat of drum and the lure of the king's shilling, system after system thus failed to draw into its net, however speciously that net was spread, either the class or the number of men whose services it was desired to requisition. And whilst these futilities were working out their own condemnation the stormcloud of necessity grew bigger and bigger on the national horizon. Let trade suffer as it might, there was nothing for it but to discard all new-fangled notions and to revert to the system which the usage of ages had sanctioned. The return was imperative. Failing what Junius stigmatised as the "spur of the Press," the right men in the right numbers were not to be procured. The wisdom of the nation was at fault. It could find no other way. There were, moreover, other reasons why the press-gang was to the Navy an indispensable appendage--reasons perhaps of little moment singly, but of tremendous weight in the scale of naval necessity when lumped together and taken in the aggregate. Of these the most prominent was that fatal flaw in naval administration which Nelson was in the habit of anathematising as the "Infernal System." Due partly to lack of foresight and false economy at Whitehall, partly to the character of the sailor himself, it resolved itself into this, that whenever a ship was paid off and put out of commission, all on board of her, excepting only her captain and her lieutenants, ceased to be officially connected with the Navy. Now, as ships were for various reasons constantly going out of commission, and as the paying off of a first-second-or third-rate automatically discharged from their country's employ a body of men many hundreds in number, the "lowering" effects of such a system, working year in, year out, upon a fleet always in chronic difficulties for men, may be more readily imagined than described. To a certain limited extent the loss to the service was minimised by a process called "turning over"; that is to say, the company of a ship paying off was turned over bodily, or as nearly intact as it was possible to preserve it, to another ship which at the moment chanced to be ready, or making ready, for sea. Or it might be that the commander of a ship paying off, transferred to another ship fitting out, carried the best men of his late command, commonly known as "old standers," along with him. Unfortunately, the occasion of fitting out did not always coincide with the occasion of paying off; and although turnovers were frequently made by Admiralty order, there were serious obstacles in the way of their becoming general. Once the men were paid off, the Admiralty had no further hold upon them. By a stretch of authority they might, it is true, be confined to quarters or on board a guardship; but if in these circumstances they rose in a body and got ashore, they could neither be retaken nor punished as deserters, but--to use the good old service term--had to be "rose" again by means of the press-gang. Turnovers, accordingly, depended mainly upon two closely related circumstances: the goodwill of the men, and the popularity of commanders. A captain who was notorious for his use of the lash or the irons, or who was reputed unlucky, rarely if ever got a turnover except by the adoption of the most stringent measures. One who, on the other hand, treated his men with common humanity, who bested the enemy in fair fight and sent rich prizes into port, never wanted for "followers," and rarely, if ever, had recourse to the gang. [Footnote: In his Autobiography Lord Dundonald asserts that he was only once obliged to resort to pressing--a statement so remarkable, considering the times he lived in, as to call for explanation. The occasion was when, returning from a year's "exile in a tub," a converted collier that "sailed like a hay-stack," he fitted out the _Pallas_ at Portsmouth and could obtain no volunteers. Setting his gangs to work, he got together a scratch crew of the wretchedest description; yet so marvellous were the personality and disciplinary ability of the man, that with only this unpromising material ready to his hand he intercepted the Spanish trade off Cape Finisterre and captured four successive prizes of very great value. The _Pallas_ returned to Portsmouth with "three large golden candlesticks, each about five feet high, placed upon the mast-heads," and from that time onward Dundonald's reputation as a "lucky" commander was made. He never again had occasion to invoke the aid of the gang.] Under such men the seaman would gladly serve "even in a dung barge." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 28 Sept. 1776.] Unhappily for the service, such commanders were comparatively few, and in their absence the Infernal System drained the Navy of its best blood and accentuated a hundred-fold the already overwhelming need for the impress. The old-time sailor, [Footnote: The use of the word "sailor" was long regarded with disfavour by the Navy Board, who saw in it only a colourless substitute for the good old terms "seaman" and "mariner." Capt. Bertie, of the _Ruby_ gunship, once reported the pressing of a "sailor," Thomas Letting by name, out of a collier in Yarmouth Roads, and was called upon by My Lords to define the new-fangled term. This he did with admirable circumlocution. "As for explaining the word 'sailor,'" said he, "I can doe it no otherwise than (by) letting of you know that Thomas Letting is a Sailor."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1468--Capt. Bertie, 6 May 1706.] again, was essentially a creature of contradictions. Notorious for a "swearing rogue," who punctuated his strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage he earned his money as hardly as a horse, and was as poor as a church mouse, yet the moment he stepped ashore he made it fly by the handful and squandered it, as the saying went, like an ass. When he was sober, which was seldom enough provided he could obtain drink, he possessed scarcely a rag to his back; but when he was drunk he was himself the first to acknowledge that he had "too many cloths in the wind." According to his own showing, his wishes in life were limited to three: "An island of tobacco, a river of rum, and--more rum;" but according to those who knew him better than he knew himself, he would at any time sacrifice all three, together with everything else he possessed, for the gratification of a fourth and unconfessed desire, the dearest wish of his life, woman. Ward's description of him, slightly paraphrased, fits him to a hair: "A salt-water vagabond, who is never at home but when he is at sea, and never contented but when he is ashore; never at ease until he has drawn his pay, and never satisfied until he has spent it; and when his pocket is empty he is just as much respected as a father-in-law is when he has beggared himself to give a good portion with his daughter." [Footnote: Ward, _Wooden World Dissected_, 1744.] With all this he was brave beyond belief on the deck of a ship, timid to the point of cowardice on the back of a horse; and although he fought to a victorious finish many of his country's most desperate fights, and did more than any other man of his time to make her the great nation she became, yet his roving life robbed him of his patriotism and made it necessary to wring from him by violent means the allegiance he shirked. It was at this point that he came in contact with what he hated most in life, yet dearly loved to dodge--the press-gang. That such a creature of contradictions should be averse from serving the country he loved is perhaps the most consistent trait in his character; for here at least the sailor had substantial grounds for his inconsistency. For one thing, his aversion to naval service was as old as the Navy itself, having grown with its growth. We have seen in what manner King John was obliged to admonish the sailor in order to induce him to take his prest-money; and Edward III., referring to his attitude in the fourteenth century, is said to have summed up the situation in the pregnant words: "There is navy enough in England, were there only the will." Raleigh, recalling with bitterness of soul those glorious Elizabethan days when no adventurer ever dreamt of pressing, scoffed at the seamen of King James's time as degenerates who went on board a man-of-war "with as great a grudging as if it were to be slaves in the galleys." A hundred years did not improve matters. The sailors of Queen Anne entered her ships like men "dragged to execution." [Footnote: Justice, _Dominion and Laws of the Sea_, 1705, Appendix on Pressing.] In the merchant service, where the sailor received his initiation into the art and mystery of the sea, life during the period under review, and indeed for long after, was hard enough in all conscience. Systematic and unspeakably inhuman brutality made the merchant seaman's lot a daily inferno. Traders sailing out of Liverpool, Bristol and a score of other British ports depended almost entirely for their crews upon drugged rum, so evil was their reputation in this respect amongst seafaring men. In the East India Company's ships, even, the conditions were little short of unendurable. Men had rather be hanged than sail to the Indies in them. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1463, 1472--Letters of Captains Bouler and Billingsley, and numerous instances.] Of all these bitternesses the sailor tasted freely. Cosmopolite that he was, he wandered far a-sea and incurred the blows and curses of many masters, happy if, amid his manifold tribulations, he could still call his soul his own. Just here, indeed, was where the shoe of naval service pinched him most sorely; for though upon the whole life on board a man-of-war was not many shades worse than life aboard a trader, it yet introduced into his already sadly circumscribed vista of happiness the additional element of absolute loss of free-will, and the additional dangers of being shot as an enemy or hanged as a deserter. These additional things, the littles that yet meant so much, bred in him a hatred of the service so implacable that nothing less drastic than the warrant and the hanger could cope with or subdue it. Eradicated it never was. The keynote to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, and the ordinary seaman something many degrees worse. These were technicalities of the service which had neither use nor meaning elsewhere. But to the navigation of the ship, to daily routine and the maintenance of that exact discipline on which the Navy prided itself, they were as essential as is milk to the making of cheese. Nothing could be done without them. Decent language was thrown away upon a set of fellows who had been bred in that very shambles of language, the merchant marine. To them "'twas just all the same as High Dutch." They neither understood it nor appreciated its force. But a volley of thumping oaths, bellowed at them from the brazen throat of a speaking-trumpet, and freely interlarded with adjectives expressive of the foulness of their persons, and the ultimate state and destination of their eyes and limbs, saved the situation and sometimes the ship. Officers addicted to this necessary flow of language were sensible of only one restraint. Visiting parties caused them embarrassment, and when this was the case they fell back upon the tactics of the commander who, unable to express himself with his usual fluency because of the presence of ladies on the quarter-deck, hailed the foreyard-arm in some such terms as these: "Foreyard-arm there! God bless you! God bless you! God bless you! _You know what I mean!_" Hard words break no bones, and to quarter-deck language, as such, the sailor entertained no rooted objection. What he did object to, and object to with all the dogged insistence of his nature, was the fact that this habitual flow of profane scurrility was only the prelude to what, with grim pleasantry, he was accustomed to describe as "serving out slops." Anything intended to cover his back was "slops" to the sailor, and the punishments meted out to him covered him like a garment. The old code of naval laws, the _Monumenta Juridica_ or _Black Book_ of the Admiralty, contained many curious disciplinary methods, not a few of which too long survived the age they originated in. If, for instance, one sailor robbed another and was found guilty of the crime, boiling pitch was poured over his head and he was powdered with feathers "to mark him," after which he was marooned on the first island the ship fell in with. Seamen guilty of undressing themselves while at sea were ducked three times from the yard-arm--a more humane use of that spar than converting it into a gallows. On this code were based Admiral the Earl of Lindsay's "Instructions" of 1695. These included ducking, keel-hauling, fasting, flogging, weighting until the "heart or back be ready to break," and "gogging" or scraping the tongue with hoop-iron for obscene or profane swearing; for although the "gentlemen of the quarter-deck" might swear to their heart's content, that form of recreation was strictly taboo in other parts of the ship. Here we have the origin of the brutal discipline of the next century, summed up in the Consolidation Act of George II. [Footnote: 22 George II. c. 33.]--an Act wherein ten out of thirty-six articles awarded capital punishment without option, and twelve death or minor penalties. Of the latter, the one most commonly in use was flogging at the gangway or jears. This duty fell to the lot of the boatswain's mate. [Footnote: "As it is the Custom of the Army to punish with the Drums, so it is the known Practice of the Navy to punish with the Boatswain's Mate."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. (afterwards Admiral) Boscawen, 25 Feb. 1746-7.] The instrument employed was the cat-o'-nine-tails, the regulation dose twelve lashes; but since the actual number was left to the captain's discretion or malice, as the case might be, it not infrequently ran into three figures. Thus John Watts, able seaman on board H.M.S. _Harwich,_ Capt. Andrew Douglas commander, in 1704 received one hundred and seventy lashes for striking a shipmate in self-defence, his captain meanwhile standing by and exhorting the boatswain's mate to "Swinge the Dog, for hee has a Tough Hide"--and that, too, with a cat waxed to make it bite the harder. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5.] It was just this unearned increment of blows--this dash of bitter added to the regulation cup--that made Jack's gorge rise. He was not the sort of chap, it must be confessed, to be ruled with a feather. "An impudent rascal" at the best of times, he often "deserved a great deal and had but little." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1472--Capt. Balchen, 26 Jan. 1716-7.] But unmerited punishment, too often devilishly devised, maliciously inflicted and inhumanly carried out, broke the back of his sense of justice, already sadly overstrained, and inspired him with a mortal hatred of all things naval. For the slightest offence he was "drubbed at the gears"; for serious offences, from ship to ship. If, when reefing topsails on a dark night or in the teeth of a sudden squall, he did not handle the canvas with all the celerity desired by the officer of the watch, he and his fellow yardsmen were flogged _en bloc_. He was made to run the gauntlet, often with the blood gushing from nose and ears as the result of a previous dose of the cat, until he fell to the deck comatose and at the point of death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Complaint of ye Abuse of a Sayler in the _Litchfield_, 1704. In this case the man actually died.] Logs of wood were bound to his legs as shackles, and whatever the nature of his offence, he invariably began his expiation of it, the preliminary canter, so to speak, in irons. If he had a lame leg or a bad foot, he was "started" with a rope's-end as a "slacker." If he happened to be the last to tumble up when his watch was called, the rattan [Footnote: Carried at one time by both commissioned and warrant officers.] raised weals on his back or drew blood from his head; and, as if to add insult to injury, for any of these, and a hundred and one other offences, he was liable to be black-listed and to lose his allowance of grog. Some things, too, were reckoned sins aboard ship which, unhappily for the sailor, could not well be avoided. Laughing, or even permitting the features to relax in a smile in the official presence, was such a sin. "He beats us for laughing," declare the company of the _Solebay_, in a complaint against their commander, "more like Doggs than Men." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1435--Capt. Aldred, 29 Feb. 1703-4.] One of the _Nymph's_ company, in or about the year 1797, received three dozen for what was officially termed "Silent Contempt"--"which was nothing more than this, that when flogged by the boatswain's mate the man smiled." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petitions, 1793-7.] This was the "Unpardonable Crime" of the service. Contrariwise, a man was beaten if he sulked. And as a rule the sailor was sulky enough. Works of supererogation, such as polishing everything polishable--the shot for the guns, in extreme cases, not even excepted--until it shone like the tropical sun at noonday, left him little leisure or inclination for mirth. "Very pretty to look at," said Wellington, when confronted with these glaring evidences of hyper-discipline, "but there is one thing wanting. I have not seen a bright face in the ship." A painful tale of discipline run mad, or nearly so, is unfolded by that fascinating series of sailor-records, the Admiralty Petitions. Many of them, it must in justice be owned, bear unqualified testimony to the kindness and humanity of officers; but in the great majority of cases the evidence they adduce is overwhelmingly to the contrary. And if their language is sometimes bombastic, if their style is almost uniformly illiterate, if they are the productions of a band of mutinous dogs standing out for rights which they never possessed and deserving of a halter rather than a hearing, these are circumstances that do not in the least detract from the veracity of the allegations they advance. The sailor appealed to his king, or to the Admiralty, "the same as a child to its father"; and no one who peruses the story of his wrongs, as set forth in these documents, can doubt for a moment that he speaks the truth with all a child's simplicity. The seamen of the _Reunion_ open the tale of oppression and ill-usage. "Our Captain oblidges us to Wash our Linnen twice a week in Salt Water and to put 2 Shirts on every Week, and if they do not look as Clean as if they were washed in Fresh Water, he stops the person's Grog which has the misfortune to displease him; and if our Hair is not Tyd to please him, he orders it to be Cutt Off." On the _Amphitrite_ "flogging is their portion." The men of the _Winchelsea_ "wold sooner be Shot at like a Targaite than to Remain." The treatment systematically meted out to the _Shannon's_ crew is more than the heart "can Cleaverly Bear"--enough, in short, to make them "rise and Steer the Ship into an Enemies Port." The seamen of the _Glory_ are made wretched by "beating, blacking, tarring, putting our heads in Bags," and by being forced to "drink half a Gallon of Salt Water" for the most trivial breaches of discipline or decorum. On the _Blanch,_ if they get wet and hang or spread their clothes to dry, the captain "thros them overboard." The _Nassau's_ company find it impossible to put the abuse they receive on paper. It is "above Humanity." Though put on board to fight for king and country, they are used worse than dogs. They have no encouragement to "face the Enemy with a chearful Heart." Besides being kept "more like Convicts than free-born Britons," the _Nymph's_ company have an unspeakable grievance. "When Engaged with the Enemy off Brest, March the 9th, 1797, they even Beat us at our Quarters, though on the Verge of Eternity." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5l25--Petitions, 1793-7.] On the principle advanced by Rochefoucault, that there is something not displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends, the sailor doubtless derived a sort of negative satisfaction from the fact that he was not the only one on shipboard liable to the pains and penalties of irascibility, brutality and excessive disciplinary zeal. Particularly was this true of his special friend the "sky-pilot" or chaplain, that super-person who perhaps most often fell a victim to quarter-deck ebullitions. Notably there is on record the case of one John Cruickshank, chaplain of H.M.S. _Assurance,_ who was clapped in irons, court-martialled and dismissed the service merely because he happened to take--what no sailor could ever condemn him for-a drop too much, and whilst in that condition insisted on preaching to the ship's company when they were on the very point of going into action. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5. His zeal was unusual. Most naval chaplains thought "of nothing more than making His Majesty's ships sinecures"] There is also that other case of the "saucy Surgeon of the _Seahorse_" who incurred his captain's dire displeasure all on account of candles, of which necessary articles he, having his wife on board, thought himself entitled to a more liberal share than was consistent with strict naval economy; and who was, moreover, so "troblesome about his Provisions, that if he did not always Chuse out of ye best in ye whole Ship," he straightway got his back up and "threatened to Murder the Steward." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Blowers, 3 Jan. 1710-11.] Such interludes as these would assuredly have proved highly diverting to the foremast-man had it not been for the cat and that savage litter of minor punishments awaiting the man who smiled. In the matter of provisions, there can be little doubt that the sailor shared to the full the desire evinced by the surgeon of the _Seahorse_ to take blood-vengeance upon someone on account of them. His "belly-timber," as old Misson so aptly if indelicately describes it, was mostly worm-eaten or rotten, his drink indescribably nasty. Charles II. is said to have made his breakfast off ship's diet the morning he left the _Naseby,_ and to have pronounced it good; and Nelson in 1803 declared it "could not possibly be improved upon." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580-Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Such, however, was not the opinion of the chaplain of the _Dartmouth,_ for after dining with his captain on an occasion which deserves to become historic, he swore that "although he liked that Sort of Living very well, as for the King's Allowance there was but a Sheat of Browne Paper between it and Hell." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1464--Misdemenors Comited by Mr Edward Lewis, Chapling on Board H. M. Shipp Dartmouth, 1 Oct. 1702.] Which of these opinions came nearest to the truth, the sequel will serve to show. On the face of it the sailor's dietary was not so bad. A ship's stores, in 1719, included ostensibly such items as bread, wine, beef, pork, peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, water and beer, and if Jack had but had his fair share of these commodities, and had it in decent condition, he would have had little reason to grumble about the king's allowance. Unhappily for him, the humanities of diet were little studied by the Victualling Board. Taking the beef, the staple article of consumption on shipboard, cooking caused it to shrink as much as 45 per cent., thus reducing the sailor's allowance by nearly one-half. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1495--Capt. Barrington, 23 Dec. 1770.] The residuum was often "mere carrion," totally unfit for human consumption. "Junk," the sailor contemptuously called it, likening it, in point of texture, digestibility and nutritive properties, to the product of picked oakum, which it in many respects strongly resembled. The pork, though it lost less in the cooking, was rancid, putrid stuff, repellent in odour and colour-particulars in which it found close competitors in the butter and cheese, which had often to be thrown overboard because they "stunk the ship." [Footnote: To disinfect a ship after she had been fouled by putrid rations or disease, burning sulphur and vinegar were commonly employed. Their use was preferable to the means adopted by the carpenter of the _Feversham_, who in order to "sweeten ship" once "turn'd on the cock in the hould" and through forgetfulness "left it running for eighteen howers," thereby not only endangering the vessel's safety, but incidentally spoiling twenty-one barrels of powder in the magazine.--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2653--Capt. Watson, 18 April 1741.] The peas "would not break." Boiled for eight hours on end, they came through the ordeal "almost as hard as shott." Only the biscuit, apart from the butter and cheese, possessed the quality of softness. Damp, sea-water, mildew and weevil converted "hard" into "soft tack" and added another horror to the sailor's mess. The water he washed these varied abominations down with was frequently "stuff that beasts would cough at." His beer was no better. It would not keep, and was in consequence both "stinking and sour." [Footnote: According to Raleigh, old oil and fish casks were used for the storing of ship's beer in Elizabeth's reign.] Although the contractor was obliged to make oath that he had used both malt and hops in the brewing, it often consisted of nothing more stimulating than "water coloured and bittered," and sometimes the "stingy dog of a brewer" even went so far as to omit the "wormwood." Such a dietary as this made a meal only an unavoidable part of the day's punishment and inspired the sailor with profound loathing. "Good Eating is an infallible Antidote against murmuring, as many a Big-Belly Place-Man can instance," he says in one of his petitions. Poor fellow! his opportunities of putting it to the test were few enough. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the so-called Banyan days of the service, when his hateful ration of meat was withheld and in its stead he regaled himself on plum-duff--the "plums," according to an old regulation, "not worse than Malaga"--he had a taste of it. Hence the banyan day, though in reality a fast-day, became indelibly associated in his simple mind and vocabulary with occasions of feasting and plenty, and so remains to this day. If the sailor's only delicacy was duff, his only comforts were rum and tobacco, and to explore some unknown island, and discover therein a goodly river of the famous Jamaica spirit, flowing deep and fragrant between towering mountains of "pig tail," is commonly reputed to have been the cherished wish of his heart. With tobacco the Navy Board did not provide him, nor afford dishonest pursers opportunity to "make dead men chew," [Footnote: Said of pursers who manipulated the Muster Books, which it was part of their duty to keep, in such a way as to make it appear that men "discharged dead" had drawn a larger quantity of tobacco than was actually the case, the difference in value of course going into their own pockets.] until 1798; but rum they allowed him at a comparatively early date. When sickness prevailed on board, when beer ran short or had to be turned over the side to preserve a sweet ship, rum or wine was issued, and although the Admiralty at first looked askance at the innovation, and at times left commanders of ships to foot the bill for spirits thus served out, the practice made gradual headway, until at length it ousted beer altogether and received the stamp of official approval. Half a pint, dealt out each morning and evening in equal portions, was the regular allowance--a quantity often doubled were the weather unusually severe or the men engaged in the arduous duty of watering ship. At first the ration of rum was served neat and appreciated accordingly; but about 1740 the practice of adding water was introduced. This was Admiral Vernon's doing. Vernon was best known to his men as "Old Grog," a nickname originating in a famous grogram coat he affected in dirty weather; and as the rum and water now served out to them was little to their liking, they marked their disapproval of the mixture, as well as of the man who invented it, by dubbing it "grog." The sailor was not without his sense of humour. The worst feature of rum, from the sailor's point of view, worse by far than dilution, was the fact that it could be so easily stopped. Here his partiality for the spirit told heavily against him. His grog was stopped because he liked it, rather than because he deserved to lose it. The malice of the thing did not make for a contented ship. The life of the man-o'-war's-man, according to Lord Nelson, was on an average "finished at forty-five years." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Bad food and strenuous labour under exceptionally trying conditions sapped his vitals, made him prematurely old, and exposed him to a host of ills peculiar to his vocation. He "fell down daily," to employ the old formula, in spotted or putrid fevers. He was racked by agues, distorted by rheumatic pains, ruptured or double-ruptured by the strain of pulling, hauling and lifting heavy weights. He ate no meal without incurring the pangs of acute indigestion, to which he was fearfully subject. He was liable to a "prodigious inflammation of the head, nose and eyes," occasioned by exposure. Scurvy, his most inveterate and merciless enemy, "beat up" for him on every voyage and dragged his brine-sodden body down to a lingering death. Or, did he escape these dangers and a watery grave, protracted disease sooner or later rendered him helpless, or a brush with the enemy disabled him for ever from earning his bread. His surgeons were, as a rule, a sorry lot. Not only were they deficient in numbers, they commonly lacked both professional training and skill. Their methods were consequently of the crudest description, and long continued so. The approved treatment for rupture, to which the sailor was painfully liable, was to hang the patient up by the heels until the prolapsus was reduced. Pepys relates how he met a seaman returning from fighting the Dutch with his eye-socket "stopped with oakum," and as late at least as the Battle of Trafalgar it was customary, in amputations, to treat the bleeding stump with boiling pitch as a cauterant. In his general attitude towards the sick and wounded the old-time naval surgeon was not unlike Garth, Queen Anne's famous physician. At the Kit Cat Club he one day sat so long over his wine that Steele ventured to remind him of his patients. "No matter," said Garth. "Nine have such bad constitutions that no physician can save them, and the other six such good ones that all the physicans in the world could not kill them." Many were the devices resorted to in order to keep the man-o'-war's-man healthy and fit. As early as 1602 a magic electuary, invented by one "Doctor Cogbourne, famous for fluxes," was by direction of the Navy Commissioners supplied for his use in the West Indies. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1464--Capt. Barker, 14 Oct. 1702.] By Admiral Vernon and his commanders he was dosed freely with "Elixir of Vitriol," which they not only "reckoned the best general medicine next to rhubarb," but pinned their faith to as a sovereign specific for scurvy and fevers. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 161--Admiral Vernon, 31 Oct. 1741.] Lime-juice, known as a valuable anti-scorbutic as early as the days of Drake and Raleigh, was not added to his rations till 1795. He did not find it very palatable. The secret of fortifying it was unknown, and oil had to be floated on its surface to make it keep. Sour-crout was much more to his taste as a preventive of scurvy, and in 1777, at the request of Admiral Montagu, then Governor and Commander-in-Chief over the Island of Newfoundland, the Admiralty caused to be sent out, for the use of the squadron on that station, where vegetables were unprocurable, a sufficient quantity of that succulent preparation to supply twelve hundred men for a period of two months. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 471--Admiral Montagu, 28 Feb. 1777, and endorsement.] Rice the sailor detested. Of all species of "soft tack" it was least to his liking. He nicknamed it "strike-me-blind," being firmly convinced that its continued use would rob him of his eyesight. Tea was not added to his dietary till 1824, but as early as 1795 he could regale himself on cocoa. For the rest, sugar, essence of malt, essence of spruce, mustard, cloves, opium and "Jesuits'" or Peruvian bark were considered essential to his well-being on shipboard. He was further allowed a barber-one to every hundred men-without whose attentions it was found impossible to keep him "clean and healthy." With books he was for many years "very scantily supplied." It was not till 1812, indeed, that the Admiralty, shocked by the discovery that he had practically nothing to elevate his mind but daily association with the quarter-deck, began to pour into the fleet copious supplies of literature for his use. Thereafter the sailor could beguile his leisure with such books as the _Old Chaplains Farewell Letter_, Wilson's _Maxims, The Whole Duty of Man_, Seeker's _Duties of the Sick_, and, lest returning health should dissipate the piety begotten of his ailments, Gibson's _Advice after Sickness_. Thousands of pounds were spent upon this improving literature, which was distributed to the fleet in strict accordance with the amount of storage room available at the various dockyards. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Accountant-General, Misc. (Various), No. l06--Accounts of the Rev. Archdeacon Owen, Chaplain-General to the Fleet, 1812-7.] A fundamental principle of man-o'-war routine was that the sailor formed no part of it for hospital purposes. Hence sickness was not encouraged. If the sailor-patient did not recover within a reasonable time, he was "put on shore sick," sometimes to the great terror of the populace, who, were he supposed to be afflicted with an infectious disease, fled from him "as if he had the plague." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 24 June 1740.] On shore he was treated for thirty days at his country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service. Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and the beggar's rôle. His pay was far from princely. From 3d. a day in the reign of King John it rose by grudging increments to 20s. a month in 1626, and 24s. in 1797. Years sometimes elapsed before he touched a penny of his earnings, except in the form of "slop" clothing and tobacco. Amongst the instances of deferred wages in which the Admiralty records abound, there may be cited the case of the _Dreadnought_, whose men in 1711 had four years' pay due; and of the _Dunkirk_, to whose company, in the year following, six and a half years' was owing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Bennett, 8 March 1710-11. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Butler, 19 March, 1711-12,] And at the time of the Nore Mutiny it was authoritatively stated that there were ships then in the fleet which had not been paid off for eight, ten, twelve and in one instance even fifteen years. "Keep the pay, keep the man," was the policy of the century--a sadly mistaken policy, as we shall presently see. In another important article of contentment the sailor was hardly better off. The system of deferred pay amounted practically to a stoppage of all leave for the period, however protracted, during which the pay was withheld. Thus the _Monmouth's_ men had in 1706 been in the ship "almost six years, and had never had the opportunity of seeing their families but once." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1468-Capt. Baker, 3 Nov. 1706.] In Boscawen's ship, the _Dreadnought_, there were in 1744 two hundred and fifty men who "had not set foot on shore near two year." Admiral Penrose once paid off in a seventy-four at Plymouth, many of whose crew had "never set foot on land for six or seven years"; [Footnote: Penrose (Sir V. C., Vice-Admiral of the Blue), _Observations on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc.,_ 1824.] and Brenton, in his _Naval History_, instances the case of a ship whose company, after having been eleven years in the East Indies, on returning to England were drafted straightway into another ship and sent back to that quarter of the globe without so much as an hour's leave ashore. What was true of pay and leave was also true of prize-money. The sailor was systematically kept out of it, and hence out of the means of enjoyment and carousal it afforded him, for inconscionable periods. From a moral point of view the check was hardly to his detriment. But the Navy was not a school of morals, and withholding the sailor's hard-earned prize-money over an indefinite term of years neither made for a contented heart nor enhanced his love for a service that first absorbed him against his will, and then, having got him in its clutches, imposed upon and bested him at every turn. Although the prime object in withholding his pay was to prevent his running from his ship, so far from compassing that desirable end it had exactly the contrary effect. Both the preventive and the disease were of long standing. With De Ruyter in the Thames in 1667, menacing London and the kingdom, the seamen of the fleet flocked to town in hundreds, clamouring for their wages, whilst their wives besieged the Navy Office in Seething Lane, shrieking: "This is what comes of not paying our husbands!" Essentially a creature of contradictions, the sailor rarely, if he could avoid it, steered the course laid down for him, and in nothing perhaps was this idiosyncrasy so glaringly apparent as in his behaviour as his country's creditor. He "would get to London if he could." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 12 Dec. 1742.] "An unaccountable humour" impelled him "to quit His Majesty's service without leave." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, 12 Sept. 1746.] Once the whim seized him, no ties of deferred pay or prize-money had power to hold him back. The one he could obtain on conditions; the other he could dispose of at a discount which, though ruinously heavy, still left him enough to frolic on. The weapon of deferred pay was thus a two-edged one. If it hurt the sailor, it also cut the fingers of those who employed it against him. So exigent were the needs of the service, he could "run" with impunity. For if he ran whilst his pay was in arrears, he did so with the full knowledge that, barring untimely recapture by the press-gang, he would receive a free pardon, together with payment of all dues, on the sole condition, which he never kept if he could help it, of returning to his ship when his money was gone. He therefore deserted for two reasons: First, to obtain his pay; second, to spend it. The penalty for desertion, under a well-known statute of George I., [Footnote: 13 George I., art. 7.] was death by hanging. As time went on, however, discipline in this respect suffered a grave relapse, and fear of the halter no longer served to check the continual exodus from the fleet. If the runaway sailor were taken, "it would only be a whipping bout." So he openly boasted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt. Boscawen, 26 April 1743.] The "bout," it is true, at times ran to six, or even seven hundred lashes--the latter being the heaviest dose of the cat ever administered in the British navy; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 12 Nov. 1765.] but even this terrible ordeal had no power to hold the sailor to his duty, and although Admiral Lord St. Vincent, better known in his day as "hanging Jervis," did his utmost to revive the ancient custom of stretching the sailor's neck, the trend of the times was against him, and within twenty-five years of the reaffirming of the penalty, in the 22nd year of George II., hanging for desertion had become practically obsolete. In the declining days of the practice a grim game at life and death was played upon the deck of a king's ship lying in the River St. Lawrence. The year was 1760. Quebec had only recently fallen before the British onslaught. A few days before that event, at a juncture when every man in the squadron was counted upon to play his part in the coming struggle, and to play it well, three seamen, James Mike, Thomas Wilkinson and William M'Millard by name, deserted from the _Vanguard_. Retaken some months later, they were brought to trial; but as men were not easy to replace in that latitude, the court, whilst sentencing all three to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, added to their verdict a rider to the effect that it would be good policy to spare two of them. Admiral Lord Colvill, then Commander-in-Chief, issued his orders accordingly, and at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 12th of July the condemned men, preceded to the scaffold by two chaplains, were led to the _Vanguard's_ forecastle, where they drew lots to determine which of them should die. The fatal lot fell to James Mike, who, in presence of the assembled boats of the squadron, was immediately "turned off" at the foreyard-arm. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 10 July 1760; Captains' Logs, 1026--Log of H.M.S. _Vanguard_.] Encouraged in this grim fashion, desertion assumed alarming proportions. Nelson estimated that whenever a large convoy of merchant ships assembled at Portsmouth, at least a thousand men deserted from the fleet. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] This was a "liberty they would take," do what you could to prevent it. Of those who thus deserted fully one-third, according to the same high authority, never saw the fleet again. "From loss of clothes, drinking and other debaucheries" they were "lost by death to the country." Some few of the remainder, after drinking His Majesty's health in a final bowl, voluntarily returned on board and "prayed for a fair wind"; but the majority held aloof, taking their chances and their pleasures in sailorly fashion until, their last stiver gone, they fell an easy prey to the press-gang or the crimp. While the crimp was to the merchant service what the press-gang was to the Navy, a kind of universal provider, there was in his method of preying upon the sailor a radical difference. Like his French compeer, the recruiting sergeant of the Pont Neuf in the days of Louis the Well-Beloved, wherever sailors congregated the crimp might be heard rattling his money-bags and crying: "Who wants any? Who wants any?" Where the press-gang used the hanger or the cudgel, the crimp employed dollars. The circumstance gave him a decided "pull" in the contest for men, for the dollars he offered, whether in the way of pay or bounty, were invariably fortified with rum. The two formed a contraption no sailor could resist. "Money and liquor held out to a seaman," said Nelson, "are too much for him." In law the offence of enticing seamen to desert His Majesty's service, like desertion itself, was punishable with death; [Footnote: 22 George n. cap. 33.] but in fact the penalty was either commuted to imprisonment, or the offender was dealt with summarily, without invoking the law. Crimps who were caught red-handed had short shrift. Two of the fraternity, named respectively Henry Nathan and Sampson Samuel, were once taken in the Downs. "Send Nathan and Samuel," ran the Admiralty order in their case, "to Plymouth by the first conveyance. Admiral Young is to order them on board a ship going on foreign service as soon as possible." Another time an officer, boarding a boat filled with men as it was making for an Indiaman at Gravesend, found in her six crimps, all of whom suffered the same fate. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Bazeley, 7 Feb. 1808. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1513--Capt. Bowater, 12 June 1796.] Men seduced by means of crimpage bounty were said to be "silver cooped," and the art of silver cooping was not only practised at home, it was world-wide. In whatever waters a British man-o'-war cast anchor, there the crimp appeared, plying his crafty trade. His assiduity paid a high compliment to the sterling qualities of the British seaman, but for the Navy it spelt wholesale depletion. In home ports he was everywhere in evidence. No ship of war could lie in Leith Roads but she lost a good part of her crew through his seductions. "M'Kirdy & M'Lean, petty-fogging writers," were the chief crimps at Greenock. Sheerness crimps gave "great advance money." Liverpool was infested with them, all the leading merchant shippers at Bristol, London and other great ports having "agents" there, who offered the man-o'-war's-man tempting bounties and substantial wages to induce him to desert his ship. A specially active agent of Bristol shipowners was one Vernon Ley, who plied his trade chiefly at Exeter and Plymouth, whence he was known to send to Bristol, in the space of six months, as many as seventy or eighty men, whom he provided with postchaises for the journey and 8 Pounds per man as bounty. James White, a publican who kept the "Pail of Barm" at Bedminster, made a close second in his activity and success. Spithead had its regular contingent of crimps, and many an East India ship sailing from that famous anchorage was "entirely manned" by their efforts, of course at the expense of the ships of war lying there. At Chatham, crimpage bounty varied from fifteen to twenty guineas per head; and at Cork, a favourite recruiting ground for both merchantmen and privateers, the same sum could be had any day, with high wages to boot. In the Crown Colonies a similar state of things prevailed. Queen's ships visiting Jamaica in or about the year 1716 lost so heavily they scarce dared venture the return voyage to England, their men having "gone a-wrecking" in the Gulf of Florida, where one armed sloop was reputed to have recovered Spanish treasure to the value of a hundred thousand dollars. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Balchen, 13 May 1716.] Time did not lessen desertion in the island, though it wrought a change in the cause. When Admiral Vernon was Commander-in-Chief there in the forties, he lost five hundred men within a comparatively short time--"seduced out," to use his own words, "through the temptations of high wages and thirty gallons of rum, and conveyed drunk on board from the punch-houses where they are seduced." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 233--Admiral Vernon, 5 Sept. 1742. A rare recruiting sheet of 1780, which has for its headpiece a volunteer shouting: "Rum for nothing!" describes Jamaica as "that delightful Island, abounding in Rum, Sugar and Spanish Dollars, where there is delicious living and plenty of GROGG and PUNCH."] At Louisberg, in the Island of Cape Breton, the North American Squadron in 1746 lost so many men through the seductions practised by New England skippers frequenting that port, that Townsend, the admiral in command, indited a strongly worded protest to Shirley, then Governor of Massachusetts; but the latter, though deploring the "vile behaviour" of the skippers in question, could do nothing to put a stop to it. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Townsend, 17 Aug.; Shirley, 12 Sept. 1746.] As a matter of fact he did not try. On the coast of Carolina many of the English merchantmen in 1743 paid from seventeen to twenty guineas for the run home, and in addition "as many pounds of Sugar, Gallons of Rum and pounds of Tobacco as pounds in Money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1 1479-Capt. Bladwell, 1 July 1743.] The lust for privateering had much to answer for in this respect. So possessed were the Virginians by the desire to get rich at the expense of their enemies that they quite "forgot their allegiance to the King." By the offer of inordinately high wages and rich prizes they did their utmost to seduce carpenters, gunners, sailmakers and able seamen from His Majesty's ships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1480--Capt. Lord Alexander Banff, 21 Oct. 1744.] Any ship forced to winter at Rhode Island, again, always counted upon losing enough men to "disable her from putting to sea" when the spring came. Here, too, the privateering spirit was to blame, Rhode Island being notorious for its enterprise in that form of piracy. Another impenitent sinner in her inroads upon the companies of king's ships was Boston, where "a sett of people made it their Business" to entice them away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Askew, 27 Aug. 1748.] No ship could clean, refit, victual or winter there without "the loss of all her men." Capt. Young, of the _Jason_, was in 1753 left there with never a soul on board except "officers and servants, widows' men, the quarter-deck gentlemen and those called idlers." The rest had been seduced at 30 Pounds per head. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 6 Oct. 1753. The "widows' men" here humorously alluded to would not add much to the effectiveness of the depleted company. They were imaginary sailors, borne on the ship's books for pay and prize-money which went to Greenwich Hospital.] So it went on. Day in, day out, at home and abroad, this ceaseless drain of men, linking hands in the decimation of the fleet with those able adjutants Disease and Death, accentuated progressively and enormously the naval needs of the country. For the apprehension and return of deserters from ships in home ports a drag-net system of rewards and conduct-money sprang into being; but this the sailor to some extent contrived to elude. He "stuck a cockade in his hat" and made shift to pass for a soldier on leave; or he laid furtive hands on a horse and set up for an equestrian traveller. In the neighbourhood of all great seaport towns, as on all main roads leading to that paradise and ultimate goal of the deserter, the metropolis, horse-stealing by sailors "on the run" prevailed to an alarming extent; and although there was a time when the law strung him up for the crime of borrowing horses to help him on his way, as it had once hanged him for deserting, the naval needs of the country eventually changed all that and brought him a permanent reprieve. Thenceforth, instead of sending the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care felon to the gallows, they turned him over to the press-gang and so re-consigned him, penniless and protesting, to the duty he detested. CHAPTER III. WHAT THE PRESS-GANG WAS. From the standpoint of a systematic supply of men to the fleet, the press-gang was a legitimate means to an imperative end. This was the official view. In how different a light the people came to regard the petty man-trap of power, we shall presently see. Designed as it was for the taking up of able-bodied adults, the main idea in the formation of the gang was strength and efficiency. It was accordingly composed of the stoutest men procurable, dare-devil fellows capable of giving a good account of themselves in fight, or of carrying off their unwilling prey against long odds. Brute strength combined with animal courage being thus the first requisite of the ganger, it followed--not perhaps as a matter of course so much as a matter of fact--that his other qualities were seldom such as to endear him to the people. Wilkes denounced him for a "lawless ruffian," and one of the newspapers of his time describes him, with commendable candour and undeniable truth, as a "profligate and abandoned wretch, perpetually lounging about the streets and incessantly vomiting out oaths and horrid curses." [Footnote: _London Chronicle,_ 16 March 1762.] The getting of a gang together presented little difficulty. The first business of the officer charged with its formation was to find suitable quarters, rent not to exceed twenty shillings a week, inclusive of fire and candle. Here he hung out a flag as the sign of authority and a bait for volunteers. As a rule, they were easily procurable. All the roughs of the town were at his disposal, and when these did not yield material enough recourse was had to beat of drum, that instrument, together with the man who thumped it, being either hired at half-a-crown a day or "loaned" from the nearest barracks. Selected members of the crowd thus assembled were then plied with drink "to invite them to enter"--an invitation they seldom refused. It goes without saying that gangs raised in this manner were of an exceedingly mixed character. On the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, seafaring men of course had first preference, but landsmen were by no means excluded. The gang operating at Godalming in 1782 may be cited as typical of the average inland gang. It consisted of three farmers, one weaver, one bricklayer, one labourer, and two others whose regular occupations are not divulged. They were probably sailors. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt. Boston, Report on Rendezvous, 1782.] Landsmen entered on the express understanding that they should not be pressed when the gang broke up. Sailor gangsmen, on the contrary, enjoyed no such immunity. The most they could hope for, when their arduous duties came to an end, was permission to "choose their ship." The concession was no mean one. By choosing his ship discreetly the gangsman avoided encounters with men he had pressed, thus preserving his head unbroken and his skin intact. Ship-gangs, unlike those operating on land, were composed entirely of seamen. For dash, courage and efficiency, they had no equal and few rivals. Apart from the officers commanding it, the number of men that went to the making of a gang varied from two to twenty or more according to the urgency of the occasion that called it into being and the importance or ill-repute of the centre selected as the scene of its operations. For Edinburgh and Leith twenty-one men, directed by a captain, two lieutenants and four midshipmen, were considered none too many. Greenock kept the same number of officers and twenty men fully employed, for here there was much visiting of ships on the water, a fast cutter being retained for that purpose. The Liverpool gang numbered eighteen men, directed by seven officers and backed by a flotilla of three tenders, each under the command of a special lieutenant. Towns such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Great Yarmouth, Cowes and Haverfordwest also had gangs of at least twenty men each, with boats as required; and Deal, Dover and Folkstone five gangs between them, totalling fifty men and fifteen officers, and employing as many boats as gangs for pressing in the Downs. In the case of ship-gangs, operating directly from a ship of war in harbour or at sea, the officers in charge were as a matter of course selected from the available ward or gun-room contingent. Few, if any, of the naval men whose names at one time or another spring into prominence during the century, escaped this unpleasant but necessary duty in their younger days. But on shore an altogether different order of things prevailed. [Illustration: MANNING THE NAVY. Reproduced by kind permission from a rare print in the collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley.] The impress service ashore was essentially the grave of promotion. Whether through age, fault, misfortune or lack of influence in high places, the officers who directed it were generally disappointed men, service derelicts whose chances of ever sporting a second "swab," or of again commanding a ship, had practically vanished. Naval men afloat spoke of them with good-natured contempt as "Yellow Admirals," the fictitious rank denoting a kind of service quarantine that knew no pratique. Like the salt junk of the foremast--man, the Yellow Admiral got fearfully "out of character" through over-keeping. With the service he lost all touch save in one degrading particular. His pay was better than his reputation, but his position was isolated, his duties and his actions subject to little official supervision. With opportunity came peculiar temptations to bribery and peculation, and to these he often succumbed. The absence of congenial society frequently weighed heavy upon him and drove him to immoderate drinking. Had he lived a generation or so later the average impress officer ashore could have echoed with perfect truth, and almost nightly iteration, the crapulous sentiment in which Byron is said to have toasted his hosts when dining on board H.M.S. _Hector_ at Malta:-- "Glorious Hector, son of Priam, Was ever mortal drunk as I am!" [Footnote: The authenticity of the anecdote, notwithstanding the fact that it was long current in naval circles, is more than doubtful. When Bryon visited Malta in 1808 the _Hector_ was doing duty at Plymouth as a prison-ship, and naval records disclose no other ship of that name till 1864.] A lieutenant attached to the gang at Chester is responsible for a piece of descriptive writing, of a biographical nature, which perhaps depicts the impress officer of the century at his worst. Addressing a brother lieutenant at Waterford, to which station his superior was on the point of being transferred, "I think but right," says he, "to give you a character of Capt. P., who is to be your Regulating Captain. I have been with him six months here, and if it had not been that he is leaving the place, I should have wrote to the Board of Admiralty to have been removed from under his command. At first you'll think him a Fine old Fellow, but if it's possible he will make you Quarrel with all your Acquaintance. Be very Careful not to Introduce him to any Family that you have a regard for, for although he is near Seventy Years of Age, he is the greatest Debauchee you ever met with--a Man of No Religion, a Man who is Capable of any Meanness, Arbitrary and Tyrannicall in his Disposition. This City has been several times just on the point of writing against him to the Board of Admiralty. He has a wife, and Children grown up to Man's Estate. The Woman he brings over with him is Bird the Builder's Daughter. To Conclude, there is not a House in Chester that he can go into but his own and the Rendezvous, after having been Six Months in one of the agreeablest Cities in England." [Footnote: _Ad,_ 1. 1500--Lieut. Shuckford, 7 March 1780.] Ignorant of the fact that his reputation had thus preceded him, Capt. P. found himself assailed, on his arrival at Waterford, by a "most Infamous Epitaph," emanating none knew whence, nor cared. This circumstance, accentuated by certain indiscretions of which the hectoring old officer was guilty shortly after his arrival, aroused strong hostility against him. A mob of fishwives, attacking his house at Passage, smashed the windows and were with difficulty restrained from levelling the place with the ground. His junior officers conspired against him. Piqued by the loss of certain perquisites which the newcomer remorselessly swept away, they denounced him to the Admiralty, who ordered an inquiry into his conduct. After a hearing of ten days it went heavily against him, practically every charge being proved. He was immediately superseded and never again employed--a sad ending to a career of forty years under such men as Anson, Boscawen, Hawke and Vernon. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Capt. Bennett, 13 Nov. 1780, and enclosures constituting the inquiry.] Yet such was the ultimate fate of many an impress officer. A stronger light focussed him ashore, and habits, proclivities and weaknesses that escaped censure at sea, were here projected odiously upon the sensitive retina of public opinion. Of the younger men who drifted into the shore service there were some, it need scarcely be said, who for obvious reasons escaped, or, rather, did not succumb to the common odium. A notable example of this type of officer was Capt. Jahleel Brenton, who for some years commanded the gangs at Leith and Greenock. Though a man of blunt sensibilities and speech, he possessed qualities which carried him out of the stagnant back-water of pressing into the swim of service afloat, where he eventually secured a baronetcy and the rank of Vice-Admiral. Singularly enough, he was American-born. The senior officer in charge of a gang, commonly known as the Regulating Captain, might in rank be either captain or lieutenant. It was his duty to hire, but not to "keep" the official headquarters of the gang, to organise that body, to direct its operations, to account for all moneys expended and men pressed, and to "regulate" or inspect the latter and certify them fit for service or otherwise. In this last-named duty a surgeon often assisted him, usually a local practitioner, who received a shilling a head for his pains. One or more lieutenants, each of whom had one or more midshipmen at his beck and call, served under the Regulating Captain. They "kept" the headquarters and led the gang, or contingents of the gang, on pressing forays, thus coming in for much of the hard work, and many of the harder knocks, that unpopular body was liable to. Sometimes, as in the case of Dover, Deal and Folkestone, several gangs were grouped under a single regulating officer. The pay of the Regulating Captain was 1 Pound a day, with an additional 5s. subsistence money. Lieutenants received their usual service pay, and for subsistence 3s. 6d. In special cases grants were made for coach-hire [Footnote: Capt. William Bennett's bill for the double journey between Waterford and Cork, on the occasion of the inquiry into the conduct of the Regulating Officer at the former place, over which he presided, amounted to forty-three guineas--a sum he considered "as moderate as any gentleman's could have been, laying aside the wearing of my uniform every day." Half the amount went in chaise and horse hire, "there being," we are told, "no chaises upon the road as in England," and "only one to be had at Cork, all the rest being gone to Dublin with the Lawyers and the Players, the Sessions being just ended and the Play House broke up" (_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Bennett, 24 March 1782). Nelson's bill for posting from Burnham, Norfolk, to London and back, 260 miles, in the year 1789, amounted to 19 Pounds, 55. 2d. (_Admiralty Records_ Victualling Dept, Miscellanea, No. 26).] and such purposes as "entertainments to the Mayor and Corporation, the Magistrates and the Officers of the Regulars and the Militia, by way of return for their civilities and for their assistance in carrying on the impress." The grant to the Newcastle officers, under this head, in 1763 amounted to upwards of 93 Pounds. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1493--Capt. Bover, 6 March 1763, and endorsement.] "Road-money" was generally allowed at the rate of 3d. a mile for officers and 1d. a mile for gangers when on the press; but as a matter of fact these modest figures were often largely exceeded--to the no small emolument of the regulating officer. Lieut. Gaydon, commanding at Ilfracombe, in 1795 debited the Navy Board with a sum of 148 Pounds for 1776 miles of travel; Capt. Gibbs, of Swansea, with 190 Pounds for 1561 miles; and Capt. Longcroft, of Haverfordwest, with 524 Pounds for 8388 miles--a charge characterised by Admiral M'Bride, who that year reported upon the working of the impress, as "immense." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 19 March 1795.] He might well have used a stronger term. An item which it was at one time permissible to charge, possesses a special interest. This was a bonus of 1s. a head on all men pressed--a bonus that was in reality nothing more than the historic prest shilling of other days, now no longer paid to pressed men, diverted into the pockets of those who did the pressing. The practice, however, was short-lived. Tending as it did to fill the ships with unserviceable men, it was speedily discontinued and the historic shilling made over to the certifying surgeon. The shore midshipman could boast but little affinity with his namesake of the quarter-deck. John Richards, midshipman of the Godalming gang, had never in his life set foot on board a man-of-war or been to sea. His age was forty. The case of James Good, of Hull, is even more remarkable. He had served as "Midshipman of the Impress" for thirty years out of sixty-three. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Acklom, 6 Oct. 1814. _Admiralty Records_ 1.1502--Capt. Boston, Report on Rendezvous, 1782.] The pay of these elderly youths at no time exceeded a guinea a week. The gangsman was more variously, if not more generously remunerated. At Deal, in 1743, he had 1s. per day for his boat, and "found himself," or, in the alternative, "ten shillings for every good seaman procured, in full for his trouble and the hire of the boat." At Dover, in 1776, he received 2s. 6d. a day; at Godalming, six years later, 10s. 6d. a week; and at Exeter, during the American War of Independence, when the demand for seamen was phenomenal, 14s. a week, 5s. for every man pressed, and clothing and shoes "when he deserved it." Pay and allowances were thus far from uniform. Both depended largely upon the scarcity or abundance of suitable gangsmen, the demand for seamen, and the astuteness of the officer organising the gang. Some gangs not on regular wages received as much as "twenty shillings for each man impressed, and six-pence a mile for as many miles as they could make it appear each man had travelled, not exceeding twenty, besides (a noteworthy addition) the twelve-pence press-money "; but if a man pressed under these conditions were found to be unserviceable after his appearance on shipboard, all money considerations for his capture were either withheld or recalled. On the whole, considering the arduous and disagreeable nature of the gangsman's calling, the Navy Board cannot be accused of dealing any too generously by him. "If ever you intend to man the fleet without being cheated by the captains and pursers," Charles II. is credited with having once said to his council, "you may go to bed." What in this sense was true of the service afloat was certainly not less true of that loosely organised and laxly supervised naval department, the impress ashore. Considering the repute of the officers engaged in it, and the opportunities they enjoyed for peculation and the taking of bribes--considering, above all, the extreme difficulty of keeping a watchful eye upon officers scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land, the wonder is, not that irregularities crept in, but that they should have been, upon the whole, so few and so venial. To allow the gangsmen to go fishing for sea-fish or dredging for oysters, as was commonly done when there was little prospect of a catch on land, was no more heinous than the custom prevailing--to everybody's knowledge--at King's Lynn in Norfolk, where the gang had no need to go a-fishing because, regularly as the cobbles came in, the midshipman attached to the gang appeared on the quay and had the "insolence to demand Three of the Best Fysh for the Regulating Captain, the Lieutenant and himself." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Petition of the Owners of the Fishing Cobbles of Lynn, 3 March 1809.] And if, again, rating a gangsman in choicest quarterdeck language were no serious offence, why should not the Regulating Captain rate his son as midshipman, even though "not proper to be employed as such." And similarly, granting it to be right to earn half a sovereign by pressing a man contrary to law, where was the wrong in "clearing him of the impress" for the same amount, as was commonly done by the middies at Sunderland and Shields. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1557--Capt. Bell, 27 June 1806, enclosure.] These were works of supererogation rather than sins against the service, and little official notice was taken of them unless, as in the case of Liverpool, they were carried to such lengths as to create a public scandal. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Child, 30 Jan. 1800.] There were, as a matter of course, some officers in the service who went far beyond the limits of such venial irregularities and, like Falstaff, "misused the king's press damnably." Though according to the terms of their warrant they were "to take care not to demand or receive any money, gratuity, reward, or any other consideration whatsoever for the sparing, exchanging or discharging any person or persons impressed or to be impressed," the taking of "gratifications" for these express purposes prevailed to a notorious extent. The difficulty was to fasten the offence upon the offenders. "Bailed men," as they were called, did not "peach." Their immunity from the press was too dearly bought to admit of their indulging personal animus against the officer who had taken their money. It was only through some tangle of circumstance over which the delinquent had no control that the truth leaked out. Such a case was that of the officer in command of the _Mary_ tender at Sunderland, a lieutenant of over thirty years' standing. Having pressed one Michael Dryden, a master's mate whom he ought never to have pressed at all, he so far "forgot" himself as to accept a bribe of 15 Pounds for the man's release, and then, "having that day been dining with a party of military officers," forgot to release the man. The double lapse of memory proved his ruin. Representations were made to the Admiralty, and the unfortunately constituted lieutenant was "broke" and black-listed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Atkinson, 24 June 1798, and endorsement.] Another species of fraud upon which the Admiralty was equally severe, was that long practised with impunity by a certain regulating officer at Poole. Not only did he habitually put back the dates on which men were pressed, thus "bearing" them for subsistence money they never received, he made it a further practice to enter on his books the names of fictitious pressed men who opportunely "escaped" after adding their quota to his dishonest perquisites. So general was misappropriation of funds by means of this ingenious fraud that detection was deservedly visited with instant dismissal. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1526--Capt. Boyle, 2 Oct. 1801, and endorsement.] Though to the gangsman all things were reputedly lawful, some things were by no means expedient. He could with impunity deprive almost any ablebodied adult of his freedom, and he could sometimes, with equal impunity, add to his scanty earnings by restoring that freedom for a consideration in coin of the realm; but when, like Josh Cooper, sometime gangsman at Hull, he extended his prerogative to the occupants of hen-roosts, he was apt to find himself at cross-purposes with the law as interpreted by the sitting magistrates. Amongst less questionable perquisites accruing to the gangsman two only need be mentioned here. One was the "straggling-money" paid to him for the apprehension of deserters--20s. for every deserter taken, with "conduct" money to boot; the other, the anker of brandy designedly thrown overboard by smugglers when chased by a gang engaged in pressing afloat. Occasionally the brandy checked the pursuit; but more often it gave an added zest to the chase and so hastened the capture of the fugitive donors. To the unscrupulous outsider the opportunities for illicit gain afforded by the service made an irresistible appeal. Sham gangs and make-believe press-masters abounded, thriving exceedingly upon the fears and credulity of the people until capture put a term to their activities and sent them to the pillory, the prison or the fleet they pretended to cater for. Their mode of operation seldom varied. They pressed a man, and then took money for "discharging" him; or they threatened to press and were bought off. One Philpot was in 1709 fined ten nobles and sentenced to the pillory for this fraud. He had many imitators, amongst them John Love, who posed as a midshipman, and William Moore, his gangsman, both of whom were eventually brought to justice and turned over to His Majesty's ships. The rôle adopted by these last-named pretenders was a favourite one with men engaged in crimping for the merchant service. Shrewsbury in 1780 received a visit from one of these individuals--"a Person named Hopkins, who appeared in a Lieutenant's Uniform and committed many fraudulant Actions and Scandalous Abuses in raising Men," as he said, "for the Navy." Two months later another impostor of the same type appeared at Birmingham, where he scattered broadcast a leaflet, headed with the royal arms and couched in the following seductive terms: "Eleven Pounds for every Able Seaman, Five Pounds for every ordinary Seaman, and Three Pounds for every Able-bodied Landsman, exclusive of a compleat set of Sea Clothing, given by the Marine Society. All Good Seamen, and other hearty young Fellows of Spirit, that are willing to serve on board any of His Majesty's Vessels or Ships of War, Let them with Chearfulness repair to the Sailors' Head Rendezvous in this Town, where a proper Officer attends, who will give them every encouragement they can desire. Now my Jolly Lads is the time to fill your Pockets with Dollars, Double Doubloon's & Luidores. Conduct Money allowed, Chest and Bedding sent Carriage Free." Soon after, the two united forces at Coventry, whither Capt. Beecher desired to "send a party to take them," but to this request the Admiralty turned a deaf ear. In their opinion the game was not worth the candle. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780] Ex-midshipman Rookhad, who when dismissed the service took to boarding vessels in the Thames and extorting money and liquor from the masters as a consideration for not pressing their men, did not escape so lightly. Him the Admiralty prosecuted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 12. Process was by information in the Court of King's Bench, for a misdemeanour.] It was in companies, however, that the sham ganger most frequently took the road, for numbers not only enhanced his chances of obtaining money, they materially diminished the risk of capture. One such gang was composed of "eighteen desperate villians," who were nevertheless taken. Another, a "parcel of fellows armed with cutlasses like a pressgang," appeared at Dublin in 1743, where they boldly entered public-houses on pretence of looking for sailors, and there extorted money and drink. What became of them we are not told; but in the case of the pretended gang whose victim, after handing over two guineas as the price of his release, was pressed by a regularly constituted gang, we learn the gratifying sequel. The real gang gave chase to the sham gang and pressed every man of them. According to the "Humble Petition of Grace Blackmore of Stratford le Bow, widow," on Friday the 29th of May, in an unknown year of Queen Anne's reign, "there came to Bow ffaire severall pretended pressmasters, endeavouring to impress." A tumult ensued. Murder was freely "cryed out," apparently with good reason, for in the mêlée petitioner's husband, then constable of Bow, was "wounded soe that he shortly after dyed." [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic,_ Anne, xxxvi. No. 17.] There were occasions when the sham gang operated under cover of a real press-warrant, and for this the Admiralty was directly to blame. It had become customary at the Navy Office to send out warrants, whether to commanders of ships or to Regulating Captains, in blank, the person to whom the warrant was directed filling in the name for himself. Such warrants were frequently stolen and put to irregular uses, and of this a remarkable instance occurred in 1755. In that year one Nicholas Cooke, having by some means obtained possession of such a warrant, "filled up the blank thereof by directing it to himself, by the name and description of Lieutenant Nicholas Cooke, tho' in truth not a Lieutenant nor an Officer in His Majesty's Navy," hired a vessel--the _Providence_ snow of Dublin--and in her cruised the coasts of Ireland, pressing men. After thus raising as many as he could carry, he shaped his course for Liverpool, no doubt intending, on his arrival at that port, to sell his unsuspecting victims to the merchant ships in the Mersey at so much a head. Through bad seamanship, however, the vessel was run aground at Seacombe, opposite to Liverpool, and Capt. Darby, of H.M.S. _Seahorse_, perceiving her plight, and thinking to render assistance in return for perhaps a man or two, took boat and rowed across to her. To his astonishment he found her full of Irishmen to the number of seventy-three, whom he immediately pressed and removed to his own ship. The circumstance of the false warrant now came to light, and with it another, of worse omen for the mock lieutenant. In the hold a quantity of undeclared spirits was discovered, and this fact afforded the Admiralty a handle they were not slow to avail themselves of. They put the Excise Officers on the scent, and Cooke was prosecuted for smuggling. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 101.] The most successful sham gang ever organised was perhaps that said to have been got together by a trio of mischievous Somerset girls. The scene of the exploit was the Denny-Bowl quarry, near Taunton. The quarrymen there were a hard-bitten set and great braggarts, openly boasting that no gang dare attack them, and threatening, in the event of so unlikely a contingency, to knock the gangsmen on the head and bury them in the rubbish of the pit. There happened to be in the neighbouring town "three merry maids," who heard of this tall talk and secretly determined to put the vaunted courage of the quarrymen to the test. They accordingly dressed themselves in men's clothing, stuck cockades in their hats, and with hangers under their arms stealthily approached the pit. Sixty men were at work there; but no sooner did they catch sight of the supposed gang than they one and all threw down their tools and ran for their lives. Officially known as the Rendezvous, a French term long associated with English recruiting, the headquarters of the gang were more familiarly, and for brevity's sake, called the "rondy." Publicans were partial to having the rondy on their premises because of the trade it brought them. Hence it was usually an alehouse, frequently one of the shadiest description, situated in the lowest slum of the town; but on occasions, as when the gang was of uncommon strength and the number of pressed men dealt with proportionately large, a private house or other suitable building was taken for the exclusive use of the service. It was distinguished by a flag--a Jack--displayed upon a pole. The cost of the two was 27s., and in theory they were supposed to last a year; but in towns where the populace evinced their love for the press by hewing down the pole and tearing the flag in ribbons, these emblems of national liberty had frequently to be renewed. At King's Lynn as much as 13 Pounds was spent upon them in four years--an outlay regarded by the Navy Board with absolute dismay. It would have been not less dismayed, perhaps, could it have seen the bunting displayed by rendezvous whose surroundings were friendly. There the same old Jack did duty year after year until, grimy and bedraggled, it more resembled the black flag than anything else that flew, wanting only the skull and cross-bones to make it a fitting emblem of authorised piracy. The rondy was hardly a spot to which one would have resorted for a rest-cure. When not engaged in pressing, the gangsmen were a roistering, drinking crew, under lax control and never averse from a row, either amongst themselves or with outsiders. Sometimes the commanding officer made the place his residence, and when this was the case some sort of order prevailed. The floors were regularly swept, the beds made, the frowsy "general" gratified by a weekly "tip" on pay-day. But when, on the other hand, the gangsmen who did not "find themselves" occupied the rondy to the exclusion of the officer, eating and sleeping there, tramping in and out at all hours of the day and night, dragging pressed men in to be "regulated" and locked up, and diverting such infrequent intervals of leisure as they enjoyed by pastimes in which fear of the "gent overhead" played no part--when this was the case the rondy became a veritable bear-garden, a place of unspeakable confusion wherein papers and pistols, boots and blankets, cutlasses, hats, beer-pots and staves cumbered the floors, the lockers and the beds with a medley of articles torn, rusty, mud-stained, dirt-begrimed and unkept. Amongst accessories essential to the efficient activity of gangs stationed at coast or river towns the boat had first place. Sometimes both sail and row-boats were employed. Luggers of the old type, fast boats carrying a great press of sail, served best for overhauling ships; but on inland waterways, such as the Thames, the Humber or the Tyne, a "sort of wherry, constructed for rowing fast," was the favourite vehicle of pursuit. The rate of hire varied from 1s. a day to two or more guineas a week, according to the size and class of boat. At Cork it was "five shillings Irish" per day. Accessories of a less indispensable nature, occasionally allowed, were, at Dartmouth and a few other places, cockades for the gangsmen's hats, supplied at a cost of 1s. each; at Tower Hill a messenger, pay 20s. a week; and at Appledore an umbrella for use in rainy weather, price 12s. 6d. The arms of the gang comprised, first, a press-warrant, and, second, such weapons as were necessary to enforce it. In the literature of the eighteenth century the warrant is inseparably associated with the short, incurvated service sword commonly known as the cutlass or hanger; but in the press-gang prints of the period the gangsmen are generally armed with stout clubs answering to Smollett's "good oak plant." Apart from this artistic evidence, however, there is no valid reason for believing that the bludgeon ever came into general use as the ganger's weapon. As early as the reign of Anne he went armed with the "Queen's broad cutlash," and for most gangs, certainly for all called upon to operate in rough neighbourhoods, the hanger remained the stock weapon throughout the century. In expeditions involving special risk or danger, the musket and the pistol supplemented what must have been in itself no mean weapon. As we have already seen, the earliest recorded press-warrants emanated from the king in person, whilst later ones were issued by the king in council and endorsed by the naval authorities. As the need of men became more and more imperative, however, this mode of issue was found to be too cumbersome and inexpeditious. Hence, by the time the eighteenth century came in, with its tremendously enhanced demands on behalf of the Navy, the royal prerogative in respect to warrants had been virtually delegated to the Admiralty, who issued them on their own initiative, though ostensibly in pursuance of His Majesty's Orders in Council. An Admiralty warrant empowered the person to whom it was directed to "impress" as many "seamen" as possibly he could procure, giving to each man so impressed 1s. "for prest money." He was to impress none but such as "were strong bodies and capable to serve the king"; and, having so impressed such persons, he was to deliver them up to the officer regulating the nearest rendezvous. All civil authorities were to be "aiding and assisting" to him in the discharge of this duty. Now this document, the stereotyped press-warrant of the century, here concisely summarised in its own phraseology, was not at all what it purported to be. It was in fact a warrant out of time, an official anachronism, a red-tape survival of that bygone period when pressing still meant "presting" and force went no further than a threat. For men were now no longer "prested." They were pressed, and that, too, in the most drastic sense of the term. The king's shilling no longer changed hands. Even in Pepys' time men were pressed "without money," and in none of the accounts of expenses incurred in pressing during the century which followed, excepting only a very few of the earlier ones, can any such item as the king's shilling or prest-money be discovered. Its abolition was a logical sequence of the change from presting to pressing. The seaman, moreover, so far from being the sole quarry of the warrant-holder, now sought concealment amongst a people almost without exception equally liable with himself to the capture he endeavoured to elude. Retained merely as a matter of form, and totally out of keeping with altered conditions, the warrant was in effect obsolete save as an instrument authorising one man to deprive another of his liberty in the king's name. Even the standard of "able bodies and capable" had deteriorated to such an extent that the officers of the fleet were kept nearly as busy weeding out and rejecting men as were the officers of the impress in taking them. Still, the warrant served. Stripped of its obsolete injunctions, it read: "Go ye out into the highways and hedges, and water-ways, and compel them to come in"--enough, surely, for any officer imbued with zeal for His Majesty's service. Though according to the strict letter of the law as defined by various decisions of the courts a press-warrant was legally executable only by the officer to whom it was addressed, in practice the limitation was very widely departed from, if not altogether ignored; for just as a constable or sheriff may call upon bystanders to assist him in the execution of his office, so the holder of a press-warrant, though legally unable to delegate his authority by other means, could call upon others to aid him in the execution of his duty. Naturally, the gangsmen being at hand, and being at hand for that very purpose, he gave them first preference. Hence, the gangsman pressed on the strength of a warrant which in reality gave him no power to press. While the law relating to the intensive force of warrants was thus deliberately set at naught, an extraordinary punctiliousness for legal formality was displayed in another direction. According to tradition and custom no warrant was valid until it had received the sanction of the civil power. Solicitor-General Yorke could find no statutory authority for such procedure. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 102.] He accordingly pronounced it to be non-essential to the validity of warrants. Nevertheless, save in cases where the civil power refused its endorsement, it was universally adhered to. What was bad law was notoriously good policy, for a disaffected mayor, or an unfriendly Justice of the Peace, had it in his power to make the path of the impress officer a thorny one indeed. "Make unto yourselves friends," was therefore one of the first injunctions laid upon officers whose duties unavoidably made them many enemies. CHAPTER IV. WHOM THE GANG MIGHT TAKE. In theory an authority for the taking of seafaring men only, the press-warrant was in practice invested with all the force of a Writ of Quo Warranto requiring every able-bodied male adult to show by what right he remained at large. The difference between the theory and the practice of pressing was consequently as wide as the poles. While the primary and ostensible objective of the impress remained always what it had been from the outset, the seaman who had few if any land-ties except those of blood or sex, from this root principle there sprang up a very Upas tree of pretension, whose noxious branches overspread practically every section of the community. Hence the press-gang, the embodiment of this pretension, eventually threw aside ostence and took its pick of all who came its way, let their occupation or position be what it might. It was no duty of the gangsman to employ his hanger in splitting hairs. "First catch your man," was for him the greatest of all the commandments. Discrimination was for his masters. The weeding out could be done when the pressing was over. The classes hardest hit by this lamentable want of discrimination were the classes engaged in trade. "Mr. Coventry," wrote Pepys some four years after the Restoration, "showed how the medium of the men the King hath one year with another employed in his navy since his coming, hath not been above 3000 men, or at most 4000; and now having occasion for 30,000, the remaining 26,000 _must be found out of the Trade of the Nation_." Naturally. Where a nation of shopkeepers was concerned it could hardly have been otherwise. They who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr. Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the next hundred years or so. Under the merciless exactions of the press-gang Trade did not, however, prove the submissive thing that was wont to stand at its doors and cry: "Will you buy? will you buy?" or to bow prospective customers into its rich emporiums with unctuous rubbing of hands and sauve words. Trade knew its power and determined to use it. "Look you! my Lords Commissioners," cried Trade, truculently cocking its hat in the face of Admiralty, "I have had enough. You have taken my butcher, my baker, my candlestick-maker, nor have you spared that worthy youth, the 'prentice who was to have wed my daughter. My coachman, the driver of my gilded chariot, goes in fear of you, and as for my sedan-chair man, he is no more found. My colliers, draymen, watermen, the carpenters who build my ships and the mariners who sail them, the ablest of these my necessary helpers sling their hammocks in your fleet. You have crippled the printing of my Bible and the brewing of my Beer, and I can bear no more. Protect me from my arch-enemy the foreigner if you must and will, but not, my Lords Commissioners, by such monstrous personal methods as these." "Your servant!" said Admiralty, obsequious before the only power it feared--"your servant to command!" and straightway set about finding a remedy for the evils Trade complained of. Now, to attain this end, so desirable if Trade were to be placated, it was necessary to define with precision either whom the gang might take, or whom it might not take; and here Admiralty, though notoriously a body without a brain, achieved a stroke of genius, for it brought down both birds with a single stone. Postulating first of all the old _lex sine lege_ fiction that every native-born Briton and every British male subject born abroad was legally pressable, it laid it down as a logical sequence that no man, whatever his vocation or station in life, was lawfully exempt; that exemption was in consequence an official indulgence and not a right; and that apart from such indulgence every man, unless idiotic, blind, lame, maimed or otherwise physically unfit, was not only liable to be pressed, but could be legally pressed for the king's service at sea. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 26; and _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, 14 Feb. 1805, well express the official view.] Having thus cleared the ground root and branch, Admiralty magnanimously proceeded to frame a category of persons whom, as an act of grace and a concession to Trade, it was willing to protect from assault and capture by its emissary the press-gang. These exemptions from the wholesale incidence of the impress were not granted all at once. Embodied from time to time in Acts of Parliament and so-called acts of official grace--slowly and painfully wrung from a reluctant Admiralty by the persistent demands and ever-growing power of Trade--they spread themselves over the entire century of struggle for the mastery of the sea, from which they were a reaction, and, touching the lives of the common people in a hundred and one intimate points and interests, culminated at length in the abolition of that most odious system of oppression from which they had sprung, and in a charter of liberties before which the famous charter of King John sinks into insignificance. [Illustration: THE PRESS-GANG SEIZING A VICTIM.] As a matter of policy the foreigner had first place in the list of exemptions. He could volunteer if he chose, [Footnote: Strenuous efforts were made in 1709 to induce the "Poor Palatines"--seven thousand of them encamped at Blackheath, and two thousand in Sir John Parson's brewhouse at Camberwell--to enter for the navy. But the "thing was New to them to go aboard a Man of Warr," so they declined the invitation, "having the Notion of being sent to Carolina."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Letters of Capt. Aston.] but he must not be pressed. [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 17.] To deprive him of his right in this respect was to invite unpleasant diplomatic complications, of which England had already too many on her hands. Trade, too, looked upon the foreigner as her perquisite, and Trade must be indulged. Moreover, he fostered mutiny in the fleet, where he was prone to "fly in the face" of authority and to refuse to work, much less fight, for an alien people. If, however, he served on board British merchant ships for two years, or if he married in England, he at once lost caste, since he then became a naturalised British subject and was liable to have even his honeymoon curtailed by a visit from the press-gang. Such, in fact, was the fate of one William Castle of Bristol in 1806. Pressed there in that year on his return from the West Indies, he was discharged as a person of alien birth; but having immediately afterwards committed the indiscretion of taking a Bristol woman to wife, he was again pressed, this time within three weeks of his wedding-day, and kept by express order of Admiralty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 23 July 1806.] For some years after the passing of the Act exempting the foreigner, his rights appear to have been generally, though by no means universally respected. "Discharge him if not married or settled in England," was the usual order when he chanced to be taken by the gang. With the turn of the century, however, a reaction set in. Pressed men claiming to be of alien birth were thenceforth only liberated "if unfit for service." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 11 March 1756, endorsement, and numerous instances.] For this untoward change the foreigner could blame none but himself. When taxed with having an English wife, he could seldom or never be induced to admit the soft impeachment. Consequently, whenever he was taken by the gang he was assumed, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to have committed the fatal act of naturalisation. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Phillip, 26 Feb. 1805.] Alien seamen in distress through shipwreck or other accidental causes, formed a humane exception to this unwritten law. The negro was never reckoned an alien. Looked upon as a proprietary subject of the Crown, and having no one in particular to speak up for or defend him, he "shared the same fate as the free-born white man." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 29 Oct. 1762.] Many blacks, picked up in the West Indies or on the American coast "without hurting commerce," were to be found on board our ships of war, where, when not incapacitated by climatic conditions, they made active, alert seamen and "generally imagined themselves free." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 585--Admiral Donnelly, 22 Feb. 1815.] Their point of view, poor fellows, was doubtless a strictly comparative one. Theoretically exempt by virtue of his calling, whatever that might be, the landsman was in reality scarcely less marked down by the gang than his unfortunate brother the seafaring man; for notwithstanding all its professions to the contrary, Admiralty could not afford to ignore the potentialities of the reserve the landsman represented. Hence no occupation, no property qualification, could or did protect him. As early as 1705 old Justice, in his treatise on sea law, deplores bitterly the "barbarous custom of pressing promiscuously landsmen and seamen," and declares that the gang, in its purblind zeal, "hurried away tradesmen from their houses, 'prentices and journeymen from their masters' shops, and even housekeepers (householders) too." By 1744 the practice had become confirmed. In that year Capt. Innes, of His Majesty's armed sloop the _Hind_, applied to the Lords Commissioners for "Twenty Landsmen from Twenty to Twenty-five years of Age." The Admiralty order, "Let the Regulating Captains send them as he desires," [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1983--Capt. Innes, 3 May 1744, and endorsement.] leaves no room for doubt as to the class of men provided. They were pressed men, not volunteers. Nor is this a solitary instance of a practice that was rapidly growing to large proportions. Many a landsman, in the years that followed, shared the fate of the Irish "country farmer" who went into Waterford to sell his corn, and was there pressed and sent on board the tender; of James Whitefoot, the Bristol glover, "a timid, unformed young man, the comfort and support of his parents," who, although he had "never seen a ship in his life," was yet pressed whilst "passing to follow his business," which knew him no more; and of Winstanley, the London butcher, who served for upwards of sixteen years as a pressed man. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Bligh, 16 May 1781. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Duchess of Gordon, 14 Feb. 1804. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 584--Humble Petition of Betsey Winstanley, 2 Sept. 1814.] Wilkes' historic barber would have entered upon the same enforced career had not that astute Alderman discovered, to the astonishment of the nation at large, that a warrant which authorised the pressing of seamen did not necessarily authorise the pressing of a city tonsor. Amongst landsmen the harvester, as a worker of vital utility to the country, enjoyed a degree of exemption accorded to few. Impress officers had particular instructions concerning him. They were to delete him from the category of those who might be taken. Armed with a certificate from the minister and churchwardens of his parish, this migratory farm-hand, provided always he were not a sailor masquerading in that disguise, could traverse the length and breadth of the land to all intents and purposes a free man. To him, as well as to the grower of corn who depended so largely upon his aid in getting his crop, the concession proved an inestimable boon. There were violations of the harvester's status, it is true; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Memorial of Sir William Oglander, Bart., July 1796.] but these were too infrequent to affect seriously the industry he represented. So far as the press was concerned, the harvester was better off than the gentleman, for while the former could dress as he pleased, the latter was often obliged to dress as he could, and in this lay an element of danger. So long as his clothes were as good as the blood he boasted, and he wore them with an aplomb suggestive of position and influence, the gentleman was safe; but let his pretensions to gentility lie more in the past than in the suit on his back, and woe betide him! In spite of his protestations the gang took him, and he was lucky indeed if, like the gentleman who narrates his experience in the _Review_ for the both of February 1706, he was able to convince his captors that he was foreign born by "talking Latin and Greek." To the people at large, whether landsmen or seafarers, the Act exempting from the press every male under eighteen and over fifty-five years of age would have brought a sorely needed relief had not Admiralty been a past-master in the subtle art of outwitting the law. In this instance a simple regulation did the trick. Every man or boy who claimed the benefit of the age-limit when pressed, was required to prove his claim ere he could obtain his discharge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 43: "It is incumbent on those who claim to be exempted to prove the facts."] The impossibility of any general compliance with such a demand on the part of persons often as ignorant of birth certificates as they were of the sea, practically wiped the exemption off the slate. In the eyes of the Regulating Captain no man was older than he looked, no lad as young as he avowed. Hence thousands of pressed men over fifty-five, who did not look the age they could not prove, figured on the books of the fleet with boys whose precocity of appearance gave the lie to their assertions. George Stephens, son of a clerk in the Transport Office, suffered impressment when barely thirteen; and the son of a corporal in Lord Elkinton's regiment, one Alexander M'Donald, was listed in the same manner while still "under the age of twelve." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Vice-Admiral Hunter, 10 May 1813. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Butchart, 22 Jan. 1782, and enclosure.] The gang did not pause by the way to discuss such questions. Apprentices fell into a double category--those bound to the sea, those apprenticed on land. Nominally, the sea apprentice was protected from the impress for a term of three years from the date of his indentures, provided he had not used the sea before; [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6, re-affirmed 13 George II. cap. 17.] while the land apprentice enjoyed immunity under the minimum age-limit of eighteen years. The proviso in the first case, however, left open a loop-hole the impress officer was never slow to take advantage of; and the minimum age-limit, as we have just seen, had little if any existence in fact. Apprentices pressed after the three years' exemption had expired were never given up, nor could their masters successfully claim them in law. They dropped like ripe fruit into the lap of Admiralty. On the other hand, apprentices pressed within the three years' exemption period were generally discharged, for if they were not, they could be freed by a writ of Habeas Corpus, or else the masters could maintain an action for damages against the Admiralty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 25.] 'Prentices who "eloped" or ran away from their masters, and then entered voluntarily, could not be reclaimed by any known process at law if they were over eighteen years of age. On the whole, the position of the apprentice, whether by land or sea, was highly anomalous and uncertain. Often taken by the gang in the hurry of visiting a ship, or in the scurry of a hot press on shore, he was in effect the shuttlecock of the service, to-day singing merrily at his capstan or bench, to-morrow bewailing his hard fate on board a man-o'-war. When it came to the exemption of seamen, Admiralty found itself on the horns of a dilemma. Both the Navy and the merchant service depended in a very large degree upon the seaman who knew the ropes--who could take his turn at the wheel, scud aloft without going through the lubber-hole, and act promptly and sailorly in emergency. To take wholesale such men as these, while it would enormously enhance the effectiveness of His Majesty's ships of war, must inevitably cripple sea-borne trade. It was therefore necessary, for the well-being of both services, to discover the golden mean. According to statute law [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 17.] every person using the sea, of what age soever he might be, was exempt from the impress for two years from the time of his first making the venture. The concession did not greatly improve the situation from a trade point of view. It merely touched the fringe of the problem, and Trade was insistent. A further concession was accordingly made. All masters, mates, boatswains and carpenters of vessels of fifty tons and upwards were exempted from the impress on condition of their going before a Justice of the Peace and making oath to their several qualifications. This affidavit, coupled with a succinct description of the deponent, constituted the holder's "protection" and shielded him, or was supposed to shield him, from molestation by the gang. Masters and mates of colliers, and of vessels laid up for the winter, came under this head; but masters or mates of vessels detected in running dutiable goods, or caught harbouring deserters from the fleet, could be summarily dealt with notwithstanding their protections. The same fate befell the mate or apprentice who was lent by one ship to another. In addition to the executive of the vessel, as defined in the foregoing paragraph, it was of course necessary to extend protection to as many of her "hands", as were essential to her safe and efficient working. How many were really required for this purpose was, however, a moot point on which ship-masters and naval officers rarely saw eye to eye; and since the arbiter in all such disputes was the "quarter-deck gentlemen," the decision seldom if ever went in favour of the master. The importance of the coal trade won for colliers an early concession, which left no room for differences of opinion. Every vessel employed in that trade was entitled to carry one exempt able-bodied man for each hundred units of her registered tonnage, provided it did not exceed three hundred. The penalty for pressing such men was 10 Pounds for each man taken. [Footnote: 2 & 3 Anne, cap. 6.] On the coasts of Scotland commanders of warships whose carpenters had run or broken their leave, and who perhaps were left, like Capt. Gage of the _Otter_ sloop, "without so much as a Gimblett on board," [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829-Capt. Gage, 29 Sept. 1742.] might press shipwrights from the yards on shore to fill the vacancy, and suffer no untoward consequences; but south of the Tweed this mode of collecting "chips" was viewed with disfavour. There, although ship-carpenters, sailmakers and men employed in rope-walks were by a stretch of the official imagination reckoned as persons using the sea, and although they were generally acknowledged to be no less indispensable to the complete economy of a ship than the able-bodied seaman, legal questions of an extremely embarrassing nature nevertheless cropped up when the scene of their activities underwent too sudden and violent a change. The pressing of such artificers consequently met with little official encouragement. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 2.] Where the Admiralty scored, in the matter of ship protections, and scored heavily, was when the protected person went ashore. For when on shore the protected master, mate, boatswain, carpenter, apprentice or seaman no longer enjoyed protection unless he was there "on ship's duty." The rule was most rigorously, not to say arbitrarily, enforced. Thus at Plymouth, in the year 1746, a seaman who protested in broken English that he had come ashore to "look after his master's _sheep_" was pressed because the naval officer who met and questioned him "imagined sheep to have no affinity with a ship!" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2381--Capt. John Roberts, 11 July 1746. Capt. Roberts was a very downright individual, and years before the characteristic had got him into hot water. The occasion was when, in 1712, an Admiralty letter, addressed to him at Harwich and containing important instructions, by some mischance went astray and Roberts accused the Clerk of the Check of having appropriated it. The latter called him a liar, whereupon Roberts "gave him a slap in the face and bid him learn more manners." For this exhibition of temper he was superseded and kept on the half-pay list for some six years. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Brand, 8 March 1711-12. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2378, section 11, Admiralty note.] Any mate who failed to register his name at the rendezvous, as soon as his ship arrived in port, did so at his peril. Without that formality he was "not entitled to liberty." So strict was the rule that when William Tassell, mate of the _Elizabeth_ ketch, was caught drinking in a Lynn alehouse one night at ten o'clock, after having obtained "leave to run about the town" until eight only, he was immediately pressed and kept, the Admiralty refusing to declare the act irregular. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Capt. Bowyer, 25 July 1809, and enclosure.] In many ports it was customary for sailors to sleep ashore while their ships lay at the quay or at moorings. The proceeding was highly dangerous. No sailor ever courted sleep in such circumstances, even though armed with a "line from the master setting forth his business," without grave risk of waking to find himself in the bilboes. The Mayor of Poole once refused to "back" press-warrants for local use unless protected men belonging to trading vessels of the port were granted the privilege of lodging ashore. "Certainly not!" retorted the Admiralty. "We cannot grant Poole an indulgence _that other towns do not enjoy_." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 4 Jan. 1780, and endorsement.] In spite of the risk involved, the sailor slept ashore and--if he survived the night--tried to steal back to his ship in the grey of the morning. Now and then, by a run of luck, he made his offing in safety; but more frequently he met the fate of John White of Bristol, who was taken by the gang when only "about ninety yards from his vessel." The only exceptions to this stringent rule were certain classes of men engaged in the Greenland and South Seas whale fisheries. Skilled harpooners, linesmen and boat-steerers, on their return from a whaling cruise, could obtain from any Collector of Customs, for sufficient bond put in, a protection from the impress which no Admiralty regulation, however sweeping, could invalidate or override. Safeguarded by this document, they were at liberty to live and work ashore, or to sail in the coal trade, until such time as they should be required to proceed on another whaling voyage. If, however, they took service on board any vessel other than a collier, they forfeited their protections and could be "legally detained." [Footnote: 13 George II. cap. 28. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 14 March 1756. _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 42.] In one ironic respect the gang strongly resembled a boomerang. So thoroughly and impartially did it do its work that it recoiled upon those who used it. The evil was one of long standing. Pepys complained of it bitterly in his day, asserting that owing to its prevalence letters could neither be received nor sent, and that the departmental machinery for victualling and arming the fleet was like to be undone. With the growth of pressing the imposition was carried to absurd lengths. The crews of the impress tenders, engaged in conveying pressed men to the fleet, could not "proceed down" without falling victims to the very service they were employed in. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755, and numerous instances.] To check this egregious robbing of Peter to pay Paul, both the Navy Board and the Government were obliged to "protect" their own sea-going hirelings, and even then the protections were not always effective. Between the extremes represented by the landsman who enjoyed nominal exemption and the seaman who enjoyed none, there existed a middle or amphibious class of persons who lived exclusively on neither land nor water, but habitually used both in the pursuit of their various callings. These were the wherry or watermen, the lightermen, bargemen, keelmen, trowmen and canal-boat dwellers frequenting mainly the inland waterways of the country. In the reign of Richard II. the jurisdiction of Admirals was denned as extending, in a certain particular, to the "main stream of great rivers nigh the sea." [Footnote: 15 Richard II. cap. 2.] Had the same line of demarcation been observed in the pressing of those whose occupations lay upon rivers, there would have been little cause for outcry or complaint. But the Admiralty, the successors of the ancient "Guardians of the Sea" whose powers were so clearly limited by the Ricardian statute, gradually extended the old-time jurisdiction until, for the purposes of the impress, it included all waterways, whether "nigh the sea" or inland, natural or artificial, whereon it was possible for craft to navigate. All persons working upon or habitually using such waterways were regarded as "using the sea," and later warrants expressly authorised the gangs to take as many of them as they should be able, not excepting even the ferryman. The extension was one of tremendous consequence, since it swept into the Navy thousands of men who, like the Ely and Cambridge bargemen, were "hardy, strong fellows, who never failed to make good seamen." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 29 April 1755.] Amongst these denizens of the country's waterways the position of the Thames wherryman was peculiar in that from very early times he had been exempt from the ordinary incidence of the press on condition of his periodically supplying from his own numbers a certain quota of able-bodied men for the use of the fleet. The rule applied to all watermen using the river between Gravesend and Windsor, and members of the fraternity who "withdrew and hid themselves" at the time of the making of such levies, were liable to be imprisoned for two years and "banished any more to row for a year and a day." [Footnote: 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 16.] The exemption he otherwise enjoyed appears to have conduced not a little to the waterman's proverbial joviality. As a youth he spent his leisure in "dancing and carolling," thus earning the familiar sobriquet of "the jolly young waterman." Even so, his tenure of happiness was anything but secure. With the naval officer and the gang he was no favourite, and few opportunities of dashing his happiness were allowed to pass unimproved. In the person of John Golden, however, they caught a Tartar. To the dismay of the Admiralty and the officer responsible for pressing him, he proved to be one of my Lord Mayor's bargemen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733-Capt. Young, 7 March 1756.] Apart from the watermen of the Thames, the purchase of immunity from the press by periodic levies met with little favour, and though the levy was in many cases reluctantly adopted, it was only because it entailed the lesser of two evils. The basis of such levies varied from one man in ten to one in five--a percentage which the Admiralty considered a "matter of no distress"; and the penalty for refusing to entertain them was wholesale pressing. The Tyne keelmen, while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves. By offering bounties they drew the price of their freedom to work in the keels from outside sources. Lord Thurlow confessed that he did not know what "working in the keels" meant. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1752-77, No. 70.] There were' few in the fleet who could have enlightened him of their own experience. The keelmen kept their ranks as far as possible intact. In this they were materially aided by the Mayor and Corporation of Newcastle, who held a "Grand Protection" of the Admiralty, and in return for this exceptional mark of their Lordships' favour did all they could to further the pressing of persons less essential to the trade of the town and river than were their own keelmen. On the rivers Severn and Wye there was plying in 1806 a flotilla of ninety-eight trows, ranging in capacity from sixty to one hundred and thirty tons, and employing five hundred and eighty-eight men, of whom practically all enjoyed exemption from the press. It being a time of exceptional stress for men, the Admiralty considered this proportion excessive, and Capt. Barker, at that time regulating the press at Bristol, was ordered to negotiate terms. He proposed a contribution of trowmen on the basis of one in every ten, coupling the suggestion with a thinly veiled threat that if it were not complied with he would set his gangs to work and take all he could get. The Association of Severn Traders, finding themselves thus placed between the devil and the deep sea, agreed to the proposal with a reluctance they in vain endeavoured to hide under ardent protestations of loyalty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Barker, 24 April and 9 May 1806, and enclosure.] In the three hundred "flats" engaged in carrying salt, coals and other commodities between Nantwich and Liverpool there were employed, in 1795, some nine hundred men who had up to that time largely escaped the attentions of the gang. In that year, however, an arrangement was entered into, under duress of the usual threat, to the effect that they should contribute one man in six, or at the least one man in nine, in return for exemption to be granted to the remainder. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795.] Turf-boats plying on the Blackwater and the Shannon seem to have enjoyed no special concessions. The men working them were pressed when-ever they could be laid hold of, and if they were not always kept, their discharge was due to reasons of physical unfitness rather than to any acknowledged right to labour unmolested. Ireland's contribution to the fleet, apart from the notoriously disaffected, was of too much consequence to be played with; for the Irishman was essentially a good-natured soul, and when his native indolence and slowness of movement had been duly corrected by a judicious use of the rattan and the rope's-end, his services were highly esteemed in His Majesty's ships of war. In the category of exemptions the fisheries occupied a place entirely their own. They were carefully fostered, but indifferently protected. Previous to the year 1729 the most important concession granted to those engaged in the taking of fish was the establishing of two extra "Fishe Dayes" in the week. The provision was embodied in a statute of 1563, whereby the people were required, under a penalty of, 3 Pounds for each omission, "or els three monethes close Imprisonment without Baile or Maineprise," to eat fish, to the total exclusion of meat, on Fridays and Saturdays, and to content themselves with "one dish of flesh to three dishes of fish" on Wednesdays. [Footnote: 5 Elizabeth, cap. 5.] The enactment had no religious significance whatever; but in order to avoid any suspicion of Popish tendencies it was deemed advisable, by those responsible for the measure, to saddle it with a rider to the effect that all persons teaching, preaching or proclaiming the eating of fish, as enjoined by the Act, to be of "necessitee for the saving of the soule of man," should be punished as "spreaders of fause newes." The true significance of the measure lay in this. The abolition of Romish fast-days had resulted, since the Reformation, in an enormous falling off in the consumption of fish, and this decrease had in turn played havoc with the fisheries. Now the fisheries were in reality the national incubator for seamen, and Cecil, Elizabeth's astute Secretary of State, perceiving in their decadence a grave menace to the manning of prospective fleets, determined, for that reason if for no other, to reanimate the dying industry. The Act in question was the practical outcome of his deliberations. [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic_, Elizabeth, vol. xxvii. Nos. 71 and 72, comprising Cecil's original memoranda.] An enactment which combined so happily the interests of the fisher classes with those of national defence could not but be productive of far-reaching consequences. The fishing industry not only throve exceedingly because of it, it in time became, as Cecil clearly foresaw it would become, a nursery for seamen and a feeder of the fleet as unrivalled for the excellence of its material as it was inexhaustible in its resources. Its prosperity was in fact its curse. Few exemptions were granted it. Adventurers after whale and cod had special concessions, suited to the peculiar conditions of their calling; but with these exceptions craft of every description employed in the taking or the carrying of fish, for a very protracted period enjoyed only such exemptions as were grudgingly extended to sea-going craft in general. The source of supply represented by the leviathan industry was too valuable to be lightly restricted. On the other hand, it was too important to be lightly depleted. Therefore under Cecil's Act establishing extra "Fishe Dayes," no fisherman "using or haunting the sea" could be pressed off-hand to serve in the Queen's Navy. The "taker," as the press-master was at that time called, was obliged to carry his warrant to the Justices inhabiting the place or places where it was proposed that the fishermen should be pressed, and of these Justices any two were empowered to "choose out such nomber of hable men" as the warrant specified. In this way originated the "backing" or endorsing of warrants by the civil power. At first obligatory only as regards the pressing of fishermen, it came to be regarded in time as an essential preliminary to all pressing done on land. No further provision of a special nature would appear to have been made for the protecting of fisher folk from the press until the year 1729, when an exemption was granted which covered the master, one apprentice, one seaman and one landsman for each vessel. [Footnote: 2 George n. cap. 15.] In 1801, however, a sweeping change was inaugurated. A statute of that date provided that no person engaged in the taking, curing or selling of fish should be impressed. [Footnote: 41 George in. cap. 21.] The exemption came too late to prove substantially beneficial to an industry which had suffered incalculable injury from the then recent wars. The press-gang was already nearing its last days. Prior to the Act of 1801 persons whose sole occupation was "to pick oysters and mussels at low water" were accounted fishermen and habitually pressed as "using the sea." The position of the smaller fry of fishermen is thrown into vivid relief by an official communique of 1709 as opposed to an incident of later date. "These poor people," runs the note, which was addressed to a naval commander who had pressed a fisherman out of a boat of less than three tons, "have been always protected for the support of their indigent families, and therefore they must not Be taken into the service unless there is a pressing occasion, _and then they will be all forced thereinto_." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.2377--Capt. Robinson, 4 Feb. 1708-9, and endorsement.] Captain Boscawen, writing from the Nore in 1745, supplies the antithesis. He had been instructed to procure half a dozen fishing smacks, each of not less than sixty tons burden, for transport purposes. None were to be had. "The reason the fishermen give for not employing vessels of that size," he states, in explanation of the fact, "is that all the young men are pressed, and that the old men and boys are not able to work them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1481--Capt. Boscawen, 23 Dec. 1745.] Conditions such as these in time taught the fisherman wisdom, and he awoke to the fact that exemption for a consideration, as in the case of workers on rivers and canals, was preferable to paying through the nose. The Admiralty was never averse from driving a bargain of this description. It saved much distress, much bad blood, much good money. In this way Worthing fishermen bought exemption in 1780. The fishery of that town was then in its infancy, the people engaged in it "very poor and needy." They employed only sixteen boats. Yet they found it cheaper to contribute five men to the Navy, at a cost of 40 Pounds in bounties, than to entertain the gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt. Alms, 2 Jan. 1780.] The Orkney fisherman bought his freedom, both on his fishing-grounds and when carrying his catch to market, on similar terms; but being a person of frugal turn of mind, he gradually developed the habit of withholding his stipulated quota. The unexpected arrival in his midst of an armed smack, followed by a spell of vigorous pressing, taught him that to be penny-wise is sometimes to be pound-foolish. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Abbs, 11 May 1798, and Admiralty note.] On the Scottish coasts fishermen and ferrymen--the latter a numerous class on that deeply indented seaboard--offered up one man in every five or six on the altar of protection. The sacrifice distressed them less than indiscriminate pressing. A prosperous people, they chose out those of their number who could best be spared, supporting the families thus left destitute by common subscription. Buss fishermen, who followed the migratory herring; from fishing-ground to fishing-ground, were in another category. Their contribution, when on the Scottish coast, figured out at a man per buss, but as they were for some inscrutable reason called upon to pay similar tribute on other parts of the coast, they cannot be said to have escaped any too lightly. Neither did the four hundred fishing-boats composing the Isle of Man fleet. Their crews were obliged to surrender one man in every seven. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795; Admiral Philip, Report on Rendezvous, 1 Aug. 1801.] Opinions as to the value of material drawn from these sources differed widely. The buss fisherman was on all hands acknowledged to be a seasoned sailor; but when it came to those employed in smaller craft, it was held that heaving at the capstan for a matter of only six or seven weeks in the year could never convert raw lads into useful seamen, even though they continued that healthful form of exercise all their lives. This was the view entertained by the masters of fishing-smacks smarting from loss of "hands." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Thomas Hurry, master, 3 March 1777.] Admiralty saw things in quite another light. "What you admit," said their Lordships, expressing the counter-view, "it is our business to prevent. We will therefore take these lads, who are admittedly of no service to you save for hauling in your nets or getting your anchors, and will make of them what you, on your own showing, can never make--able seamen.": The argument, backed as it was by the strong arm of the press-gang, was unanswerable. The fact that the fisherman passed much of his time on shore did not free him from the press any more than it freed the waterman, or the worker in keel or trow. In his main vocation he "used the sea," and that was enough. For the use of the sea was the rule and standard by which every man's liability to the press was supposed to be measured and determined. Except in the case of masters, mates and apprentices to the sea, whose affidavits or indentures constituted their respective safeguards against the press, every person exempt from that infliction, whether by statute law or Admiralty indulgence, was required to have in his possession an official voucher setting forth the fact and ground of his exemption. This document was ironically termed his "protection." Admiralty protections were issued under the hand of the Lord High Admiral; ordinary protections, by departments and persons who possessed either delegated or vested powers of issue. Thus each Trinity House protected its own pilots; the Customs protected whale fishermen and apprentices to the sea; impress officers protected seamen temporarily lent to ships in lieu of men taken out of them by the gangs. Some protections were issued for a limited period and lapsed when that period expired; others were of perpetual "force," unless invalidated by some irregular acton the part of the holder. No protection was good unless it bore a minute description of the person to whom it applied, and all protections had to be carried on the person and produced upon demand. Thomas Moverty was pressed out of a wherry in the Thames owing to his having changed his clothes and left his protection at home; and John Scott of Mistley, in Suffolk, was taken whilst working in his shirtsleeves, though his protection lay in the pocket of his jacket, only a few yards away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt. Bridges, 11 August 1743. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Capt. Ballard, 15 March 1804, and enclosure.] The most trifling irregularity in the protection itself, or the slightest discrepancy between the personal appearance of the bearer and the written description of him, was enough to convert the protection into so much waste paper and the bearer into a naval seaman. North-country apprentices, whose indentures bore a 14s. stamp in accordance with Scottish law, were pressed because that document did not bear a 15s. stamp according to English law. A seaman was in one instance described in his protection as "smooth-faced," that is, beardless. The impress officer scrutinised him closely. "Aha!" said he, "you are not smooth-faced. You are pockmarked"; and he pressed the poor fellow for that reason. To be over-protected was as bad as having no protection at all. Thomas Letting, a collier's man, and John Anthony of the merchant ship _Providence_, learnt this fact to their cost when they were taken out of their respective ships for having each two protections. In short, the slightest pretext served. If a protection had but a few more days to run; if the name, date, place or other essential particular showed signs of "coaxing," that is, of having been "on purpose rubbed out" or altered; if a man's description did not figure in his protection, or if it figured on the back instead of in the margin, or in the margin instead of on the back; if his face wore a ruddy rather than a pale look, if his hair were red when it ought to have been brown, if he proved to be "tall and remarkable thin" when he should have been middle-sized and thick-set--in any of these, as in a hundred and one similar cases, the bearer of the protection paid the penalty for what the impress officer regarded as a "hoodwinking attempt" to cheat the King's service of an eligible man. Notwithstanding the fact that the impress officer regarded every pressable man as a person who made it his chief business in life to defraud the Navy of his services on the "miserable plea of a protection," it by no means followed that his zeal in pressing him on that account had in every case the countenance or met with the unqualified approval of the Admiralty. Thousands of men and boys taken in this irresponsible fashion obtained their discharge, though with more or less difficulty and delay, when the facts of the case were laid before the naval authorities; and in general it may be said, that although the Lords Commissioners were only too ready to wink at any colourable excuse whereby another physical unit might be added to the fleet, they nevertheless laid it down as a rule, inviolable at least on paper, "never to press any man from protections," since it brought "great trouble and clamour upon them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 3. 50--Admiralty Minutes, 26 Feb. 1744-5.] To assert that the rule was generally obeyed would be to turn the truth into a lie. On the contrary, it was almost universally disregarded. Both officers and gangs traversed it on every possible occasion, leaving the justice or injustice of the act to the arbitrament of the higher tribunal. Zeal for the service was no crime, and to release a man was always so much easier than to catch him. "Pressing from protections," as the phrase ran in the service, did not therefore mean that the Admiralty over-rode its own protections at pleasure. It merely signified that on occasion more than ordinarily stringent measures were adopted for the holding-up and examining of all protected persons, or of as many of them as could be got at by the gangs, to the end that all false or fraudulent vouchers might be weeded out and the dishonest bearers of them consigned to another place. And yet there were times when "pressing from protections" had its plenary significance too. Lovers of prints who are familiar with Hogarth's "Stage Coach; or, a Country Inn Yard," date 1747, will readily recall the two "outsides"--the one a down-in-the-mouth soldier, the other a jolly Jack-tar on whose bundle may be read the word "Centurion." Now the _Centurion_ was Anson's flag-ship, and in this print Hogarth has incidentally recorded the fact that her crew, on their return from that famous voyage round the world, were awarded life-protections from the press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Anson, 24 July 1744.] The life-protection was an indulgence extended to few. Samuel Davidson of Newcastle, sailor, aged fifty, who had "served for nine years during the late wars," in 1777 made bold to plead that fact as a reason why he should be freed from the attentions of the press-gang for the rest of his life. But the Lords Commissioners refused to admit the plea "unless he was in a position not inferior to that of chief mate." On the other hand, Henry Love of Hastings, who had merely served in a single Dutch expedition, but had the promise of Pitt and Dundas that both he and those who volunteered with him should never be pressed, was immediately discharged when that calamity befell him. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1449--Capt. Columbine, 21 July 1800.] The granting of extraordinary protections was thus something entirely erratic and not to be counted upon. Captain Balchen in 1708 had special protections for ten of his ship's company whom he desired to bring to London as witnesses in a suit then pending against him; but the building of the three earlier Eddystone lighthouses was allowed to be seriously impeded by the pressing of the unprotected workmen when on shore at Plymouth, and the keepers of the first erection of that name were once carried off bag and baggage by the gang. Smeaton, who built the third Eddystone, protected his men by means of silver badges, and his storeboat enjoyed similar immunity--presumably with the consent of Admiralty--by reason of a picture of the lighthouse painted on her sail. Other great constructors, as well as rich mercantile firms, bought protection at a price. They supplied a stipulated number of men for the fleet, and found the arrangement a highly convenient one for ridding themselves of those who were useless to them or had incurred their displeasure. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Admiral Thornborough, 30 Nov. 1813.] Private protections, of which great numbers saw the light, were in no case worth the paper they were written on. Joseph Bettesworth of Ryde, Isle of Wight, Attorney-at-Law and Lord of the Manor of Ashey and Ryde, by virtue of an ancient privilege pertaining to that Manor and confirmed by royal Letters Patent, in 1790 protected some twenty seafaring men to work his "Antient Ferry or Passage for the Wafting of Passengers to and from Ride, Portsmouth and Gosport, in a smack of about 14 tons, and a wherry." The regulating captain at the last-named place asked what he should do about it. "Press every man as soon as possible," replied their Lordships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1506--Capt. John Bligh, June 1790, and enclosure.] CHAPTER V. WHAT THE GANG DID AFLOAT. "A man we want, and a man we must have," was the naval cry of the century. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Deposition of John Swinburn, 28 July 1804.] Nowhere was the cry so loud or so insistent as on the sea, where every ship of war added to its volume. In times of peace, when the demand for men was gauged by those every-day factors, sickness, death and desertion, it dwindled, if it did not altogether die away; but given a war-cloud on the near horizon and the cry for men swelled, as many-voiced as there were keels in the fleet, to a sudden clamour of formidable proportions--a clamour that only the most strenuous and unremitting exertions could in any measure appease. Every navy is argus-eyed, and in crises such as these, when the very existence of the nation was perhaps at stake, it was first and principally towards the crews of the country's merchant ships that the eyes of the Navy were directed; for, shipboard life and shipboard duty being largely identical in both services, no elaborate training was required to convert the merchant sailor into a first-rate man-o'-war's-man. The ships of both services were sailing ships. Both, as a rule, went armed. Hence, not only was the merchant sailor an able seaman, he was also trained in the handling of great guns, and in the use of the cutlass, the musket and the boarding-pike. In a word, he was that most valuable of all assets to a people seeking to dominate the sea--a man-o'-war's-man ready-made, needing only to be called in in order to become immediately effective. The problem was how to catch him--how to take him fresh and vigorous from his deep-sea voyaging--how to enroll him in the King's Navy ere he got ashore with a pocketful of money and relaxed his hardened muscles in the uncontrolled debauchery he was so partial to after long abstention. A device of the simplest yet of the most elaborate description met the difficulty. It was based upon the fact that to take the sailor afloat was a much easier piece of strategy than to ferret him out of his hiding-places after he got ashore. The impress trap was therefore set in such a way as to catch him before he reached the land. With infinite ingenuity and foresight sea-gangs were picketed from harbour to harbour, from headland to headland, until they formed an almost unbroken chain around the coasts and guarded the sailor's every point of accustomed approach from overseas: This was the outer cordon of the system, the beginning of the gauntlet the returning sailor had to run, and he was a smart seaman indeed who could successfully negotiate the uncharted rocks and shoals with which the coast was everywhere strewn in his despite. The composition of this chain of sea-gangs was mixed to a degree, yet singularly homogeneous. First of all, on its extreme outer confines, perhaps as far down Channel as the Scillies, or as far north as the thirteen-mile stretch of sea running between the Mull of Kintyre and the Irish coast, where the trade for Liverpool, Whitehaven, Dublin and the Clyde commonly came in, the homing sailor would suddenly descry, bearing down upon him under press of sail, the trim figure of one of His Majesty's frigates, or the clean, swift lines of an armed sloop. The meeting was no chance one. Both the frigate and the sloop were there by design, the former cruising to complete her own complement, the latter to complete that of some ship-of-the-line at Plymouth, Spithead or the Nore, to which she stood in the relation of tender. Tenders were vessels taken into the king's service "at the time of Impressing Seamen." Hired at certain rates per month, they continued in the service as long as they were required, often most unwillingly, and were principally employed in obtaining men for the king's ships or in matters relative thereto. In burden they varied from thirty or forty to one hundred tons, [Footnote: This was the maximum tonnage for which the Navy Board paid, but when trade was slack larger vessels could be had, and were as a matter of fact frequently employed, at the nominal tonnage rate.] the smaller craft hugging the coast and dropping in from port to port, the larger cruising far beyond shore limits. For deep-sea or trade-route cruising the smaller craft were of little use. No ship of force would bring-to for them. While press-warrants were supplied regularly to every warship, no matter what her rating, the supply of tenders was less general and much more erratic. It was only when occasion demanded it, and then only to ships of the first, second and third rate, that tenders were assigned for the purpose of bringing their crews up to full strength. The urgency of the occasion, the men to be "rose," the diplomacy of the commander determined the number. A tender to each ship was the rule, but however parsimonious the Navy Board might be on such occasions, a carefully worded appeal to its prejudices seldom failed to produce a second, or even a third attendant vessel. Boscawen once had recourse to this ingenious ruse in order to obtain tender number two. The Navy Board detested straggling seamen, so he suggested that, with several tenders lying idle in the Thames, his men might be far more profitably employed than in straggling about town. "Most reprehensible practice!" assented the Board, and placed a second vessel at his disposal without more ado. Lieut. Upton was immediately put in charge of her and ordered seawards. He returned within a week with twenty-seven men, pressed out of merchantmen in Margate Roads. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Letters of Capt. Boscawen, July and August 1743.] The tender assigned to Boscawen on this occasion was the _Galloper_, an American-built vessel, "rigged in the manner the West Indians do their sloops." Her armament consisted of six 9-pounders and threescore small-arms, but as a sea-boat she belied her name, for she was hopelessly sluggish under sail, and the great depth of her waist, and her consequent liability to ship seas in rough weather, rendered her "very improper" for cruising in the Channel. For her company she had a master, a mate and six hands supplied by the owners, in addition to thirty-four seamen temporarily drafted into her from Boscawen's ship, the _Dreadnought_. It was the duty of the former to work the vessel, of the latter to do the pressing; but these duties were largely interchangeable. All were under the command of the lieutenant, who with forty-two men at his beck and call could organise, on a pinch, five gangs of formidable strength and yet leave sufficient hands, given fair weather, to mind the tender in their temporary absence. Tender's men were generally the flower of a ship's company, old hands of tried fidelity, equal to any emergency and reputedly proof against bribery, rum and petticoats. Yet the temptation to give duty the slip and enjoy the pleasures of town for a season sometimes proved too strong, even for them, and we read of one boat's-crew of eight, who, overcome in this way, were discovered after many days in a French prison. Instead of going pressing in the Downs, they had gone to Boulogne. On the commanders of His Majesty's ships the onus of raising men fell with intolerable insistence. Nelson's greatest pleasure in his promotion to Admiral's rank is said to have been derived from the fact that with it there came a blessed cessation to the scurvy business of pressing; and there were in the service few captains, whether before or after Nelson's day, who could not echo with hearty approval the sentiment of Capt. Brett of the _Roebuck_, when he said: "I can solemnly declare that the getting and taking care of my men has given me more trouble and uneasiness than all the rest of my duty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Brett, 27 Oct. 1742.] Commanders of smaller and less effective ships found themselves on the horns of a cruel dilemma did they dare to ask for tenders. Beg and pray as they would, these were rarely allowed them save as a special indulgence or a crying necessity. To most applications from this source the Admiralty opposed a front well calculated "to encourage the others." "If he has not men enough to proceed on service," ran its dictum, "their Lordships will lay up the ship." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Boyle, 1 March 1715-6, endorsement, and numerous instances.] Faced with the summary loss of his command, their Lordships' high displeasure, and consequent inactivity and half-pay for an indefinite period, the captain whose complement was short, and who could obtain neither men nor tender from the constituted authority, had no option but to put to sea with such hands as he already bore and there beat up for others. This, with their Lordships' gracious permission, he accordingly did, thus adding another unit to the fleet of armed vessels already prowling the Narrow Seas on a similar errand. It can be readily imagined that such commanders were not out for pleasure. To the great and incessantly active flotilla got together in this way, the regulating captains on shore contributed a further large contingent. Every seaport of consequence had its rendezvous, every seaport rendezvous its amphibious gang or gangs who ranged the adjacent coast for many leagues in swift bottoms whose character and mission often remained wholly unsuspected until some skilful manoeuvre laid them aboard their intended victim and brought the gang swarming over her decks, armed to the teeth and resolute to press her crew. We have now three classes of vessels, of varying build, rig, tonnage and armament, engaged in a common endeavour to intercept and take the homing sailor. Let us next see how they were disposed upon the coast. Tenders from Greenwich and Blackwall ransacked the Thames below bridge as far as Blackstakes in the river Medway, the Nore and the Swin channel. Tenders from Margate, Ramsgate, Deal and Dover watched the lower Thames estuary, swept the Downs, and kept a sharp lookout along the coasts of Kent and Sussex, of Essex and of Norfolk. To these tenders from Lynn dipped their colours off Wells-on-Sea or Cromer, whence they bore away for the mouth of Humber, where Hull tenders took up the running till met by those belonging to Sunderland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Shields, which in turn joined up the cordon with others hailing from Leith and the Firth of Forth. Northward of the Forth, away to the extreme Orkneys, and all down the west coast of Scotland through the two Minches and amongst the Hebrides, specially armed sloops from Leith and Greenock made periodic cruises. Greenock tenders, again, united with tenders from Belfast and Whitehaven in a lurking watch for ships making home ports by way of the North Channel; or circled the Isle of Man, ran thence across to Morecambe Bay, and so down the Lancashire coast the length of Formby Head, where the Mersey tenders, alert for the Jamaica trade, relieved them of their vigil. Dublin tenders guarded St. George's Channel, aided by others from Milford Haven and Haverfordwest. Bristol tenders cruised the channel of that names keeping a sharp eye on Lundy Island and the Holmes, where shipmasters were wont to play them tricks if they were not watchful. Falmouth and Plymouth tenders guarded the coast from Land's End to Portland Bill, Portsmouth tenders from Portland Bill to Beachy Head, and Folkestone and Dover tenders from Beachy Head to the North Foreland, thus completing the encircling chain. Nor was Ireland forgotten in the general sea-rummage. As a converging point for the great overseas trade-routes it was of prime importance, and tenders hailing from Belfast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, or making those places their chief ports of call, exercised unceasing vigilance over all the coast. In this general scouring of the coastal waters of the kingdom certain points were of necessity subjected to a much closer surveillance than others. Particularly was this true of the sea routes followed by the East and West India, and the Baltic, Virginia, Newfoundland, Dutch and Greenland trades, where these converged upon such centres of world-commerce as London, Poole, Bristol, Liverpool and the great northern entrepôts on the Forth and Clyde, the Humber and the Tyne. A tender stationed off Poole, when a Newfoundland fish-convoy was expected in, never failed to reap a rich harvest. At Highlake, near the mouth of the Mersey, many a fine haul was made from the sugar and rum-laden Jamaica ships, the privateers and slavers from which Liverpool drew her wealth. Early in the century sloops of war had orders "to cruise between Beechy and the Downs to Impress men out of homeward-bound Merchant Ships," and in 1755 Rodney's lieutenants found the Channel "full of tenders." Except in times of profound peace--few and brief in the century under review--it was rarely or never in any other state. An ocean highway so congested with the winged vehicles of commerce could not escape the constant vigilance of those whose business it was to waylay the inward-bound sailor. A favourite station in the Channel was "at ye west end of ye Isle of Wight, near Hurst Castle," where the watchful tender, having under her eye all ships coming from the westward, as well as all passing through the Needles, could press at pleasure by the simple expedient of sending gangs aboard of them. At certain times of the year such ports as Grimsby, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Brixham came in for similar attention. When the fleets were due back from the "Great Fishery" on the Dogger Banks, tenders cruising off those ports netted more men than they could find room for; and so heavy was the tribute paid in this way by the fishermen of the last-named port in 1805, that "not a single man was to be found in Brixham liable to the impress." Every unprotected man, out of a total of ninety-six fishing-smacks then belonging to the place, had been snapped up by the tenders and ships of war cruising off the bay or further up-Channel. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 15 Sept.] The double cordon composed of ships and tenders on the cruise by no means exhausted the resources called into play for the intercepting of the sailor afloat. Still nearer the land was a third or innermost line composed of boat-gangs operating, like so many of the tenders, from rendezvous on shore, or from ships of war lying in dock or riding at anchor. Less continuous than the outer cordon, it was not less effective, and many a sailor who by strategy or good luck had all but won through, struck his flag to the gang when perhaps only the cast of a line separated him from shore and liberty. It was across the entrance to harbours and navigable estuaries that this innermost line was most frequently and most successfully drawn. Pill, the pilot station for the port of Bristol, threw out such a line to the further bank of Avon and thereby caught many an able seaman who had evaded the tenders below King Road. On Southampton Water it was generally so impassable that few men who could in the slightest degree be considered liable to the press escaped its toils. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 5 Aug. 1805.] Dublin Bay knew it well. A press "on float" there, carried out silently and swiftly in the grey of a September morning, 1801, whilst the mists still hung thick over the water, resulted in the seizure of seventy-four seamen who had eluded the press-smacks cruising without the bay; but of this number two proving to be protected apprentices, the Lord Mayor sent the Water Bailiff of the city, "with a detachment of the army," and took them by force out of the hands of the gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1526--Capt. Brabazon, 16 Sept. 1801.] On the Thames, notwithstanding the ceaseless activity of the outer cordons, the innermost line of capture yielded enormously. The night of October the 28th, 1776, saw three hundred and ninety-nine men, the greater part of them good seamen, pressed by the boats of a single ship--the _Princess Augusta_, Captain Sir Richard Bickerton commander, then fitting out at Woolwich. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bickerton, 29 Oct. 1776.] Such a raid was very properly termed a "hot press." The amazing feature of this exploit is, that it should have been possible at all, in view of what was going on in the Thames estuary below a line drawn across the river's mouth from Foulness to Sheerness-reach. Seawards of this line lay the two most famous anchorages in the world, where ships foregathered from every quarter of the navigable globe. Than the Nore and the Downs no finer recruiting-ground could anywhere be found, and here the shore-gangs afloat, and the boat-gangs from ships of war, were for ever on the alert. No ship, whether inward or outward bound, could pass the Nore without being visited. Nothing went by unsearched. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 7 March 1756.] The wonder is that any unprotected sailor ever found his way to London. Between the Nore and the North Foreland the conditions were equally rigorous. Through all the channels leading to the sea, channels affording anchorage to innumerable ships of every conceivable rig and tonnage, the gangs roamed at will, exacting toll of everything that carried canvas. Even the smaller craft left high and dry upon the flats, or awaiting the tide in some sand-girt pool, did not escape their hawk-like vigilance. [Illustration: SEIZING A WATERMAN ON TOWER HILL ON THE MORNING OF HIS WEDDING DAY.] In the Downs these conditions reached their climax, for thither, in never-ending procession, came the larger ships which were so fruitful of good hauls. With the wind at north, or between north and east, few ships came in and little could be done. But when the wind veered and came piping out of the west or sou'-west, in they came in such numbers that the gangs, however numerous they might be, had all their work cut out to board them. A special tender, swift and exceedingly well-found, was accordingly stationed here, whose duty it was to be "very watchful that no vessel passed without a visit from the impress boats." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Orders of Vice-Admiral Buckle to Capt. Yates, 29 April 1778.] In such work as this man-o'-war boats were of little use. Just as they could not negotiate Deal beach without danger of being reduced to matchwood, so they could not live in the choppy sea kicked up in the Downs by a westerly gale. Folkstone market boats and Deal cutters had to be requisitioned for pressing in those waters. Their seaworthiness and speed made the Downs the crux of inward-bound ships, whose only means of escaping their attentions was to incur another danger by "going back of the Goodwins." The procedure of boat-gangs pressing in harbour or on rivers seldom varied, unless it were by accident. As a rule, night was the time selected, for to catch the sailor asleep conduced greatly to the success and safety of the venture. The hour chosen was consequently either close upon midnight, some little time after he had turned in, or in the early morning before he turned out. The darker the night and the dirtier the weather the better. Surprise, swiftly and silently carried out, was half the battle. A case in point is the attempt made by Lieut. Rudsdale, of H.M.S. _Licorne_, "to impress all men (without exception) from the ships and vessels lying at Cheek Point above Passage of Waterford," in the year '79. Putting-off in the pinnace with a picked crew at eleven o'clock on a dark and tempestuous October night, he had scarcely left the ship astern ere he overtook a boatload of men, how many he could not well discern in the darkness, pulling in the direction he himself was bound. Fearful lest they should suspect the nature of his errand and alarm the ships at Passage, he ran alongside of them and pressed the entire number, sending the boat adrift. Putting back, he set his capture on board the _Licorne_ and once more turned the nose of the pinnace towards Passage. There, dropping noiselessly aboard the _Triton_ brig, he caught the hands asleep, pressed as many of them as he had room for, and with them returned to the ship. Meanwhile, the master of the _Triton_ armed what hands he had left and met Rudsdale's second attempt to board him with a formidable array of handspikes, hatchets and crowbars. A fusillade of bottles and billets of wood further evinced his determination to protect the brig against all comers, and lest there should be any doubt on that point he swore roundly that he would be the death of every man in the pinnace if they did not immediately sheer off and leave him in peace. This the lieutenant wisely did. No further surprises were possible that night, for by this time the alarm had spread, the pinnace was half-full of missiles, and one of his men lay in the bottom of her severely wounded. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 471--Deposition of Lieut. Rudsdale, 24 Oct. 1779.] As it was, he had a very fair night's work to his credit. Between the occupants of the boat and those of the brig he had obtained close upon a score of men. The expedients resorted to by commanders of ships of war temporarily in port and short of their tale of men are vividly depicted in a report made to the Admiralty in 1711. "Three days ago, very privately," writes Capt. Billingsley, whose ship, the _Vanguard_, was then lying at Blackstakes, "I Sent two fishing Smacks with a Lieutenant and some Men, with orders to proceede along the Essex Coast, and downe as far as the Wallet, to the Naze, with directions to take all the men out of Oyster Vessels and others that were not Exempted. The project succeeded, and they are return'd with fourteen men, all fit, and but one has ever been in the Service. The coast was Alarm'd, and the country people came downe and fir'd from the Shore upon the Smacks, and no doubt but they doe still take 'em to be privateers." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Billingsley, 5 May 1711.] Pressing at sea differed materially in many of its aspects from pressing on the more sheltered waters of rivers and harbours. Carried out as a rule in the broad light of day, it was for that very reason accompanied with a more open and determined display of force than those quieter ventures which depended so largely for their success upon the element of surprise. Situated as we are in these latter days, when anyone who chooses may drive his craft from Land's End to John o' Groats without hindrance, it is difficult to conceive that there was ever a time when the whole extent of the coastal waters of the kingdom, as ranged by the impress tender, was under rigorous martial law. Yet such was unquestionably the case. Throughout the eighteenth century the flag was everywhere in armed evidence in those waters, and no sailing master of the time could make even so much as a day's run with any certainty that the peremptory summons: "Bring to! I'm coming aboard of you," would not be bawled at him from the mouth of a gun. The retention of the command of a tender depended entirely upon her success in procuring men. As a rule, she was out for no other purpose, and this being so, it is not to be supposed that the officer in charge of her would do otherwise than employ the means ordained for that end. Accordingly, as soon as a sail was sighted by the tender's lookout man, a gun was loaded, shotted with roundshot, and run out ready for the moment when the vessel should come within range. The first intimation the intended victim had of the fate in store for her was the shriek of the roundshot athwart her bows. This was the signal, universally known as such, for her to back her topsails and await the coming of the gang, already tumbling in ordered haste into the armed boat prepared for them under the tender's quarter. And yet it was not always easy for the sprat to catch the whale. A variety of factors entered into the problem and made for failure as often as for success. Sometimes the tender's powder was bad--so bad that in spite of an extra pound or so added to the charge, the shot could not be got to carry as far as a common musket ball. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Shirley, 5 Nov. 1780, and numerous instances.] When this was the case her commander suffered a double mortification. His shot, the symbol of authority and coercion, took the water far short of its destined goal, whilst the vessel it was intended to check and intimidate surged by amid the derisive cat-calls and laughter of her crew. Even with the powder beyond reproach, ships did not always obey the summons, peremptory though it was. One pretended not to hear it, or to misunderstand it, or to believe it was meant for some other craft, and so held stolidly on her course, vouchsafing no sign till a second shot, fired point-blank, but at a safe elevation, hurtled across her decks and brought her to her senses. Another, perhaps some well-armed Levantine trader or tall Indiaman whose crew had little mind to strike their colours submissively at the behest of a midget press-smack, would pipe to quarters and put up a stiff fight for liberty and the dear delights of London town--a fight from which the tender, supposing her to have accepted the gage of battle, rarely came off victor. Or the challenged ship, believing herself to be the faster craft of the two, clapped on all sail, caught an opportune "slatch of wind," and showed her pursuer a clean pair of heels, the tender's guns meanwhile barking away at her until she passed out of range. These were incidents in the chapter of pressing afloat which every tender's commander was familiar with. Back of them all lay a substantial fact, and on that he relied for his supply of men. There was somehow a magic in the boom of a naval gun that had its due effect upon most ship-masters. They brought-to, however reluctantly, and awaited the pleasure of the gang. But the sailor had still to be reckoned with. In order to invest the business of taking the sailor with some semblance of legality, it was necessary that the commander of the tender, in whose name the press-warrant was made out, or one of his two midshipmen, each of whom usually held a similar warrant, should conduct the proceedings in person; and the first duty of this officer, on setting foot upon the deck of the vessel held up in the manner just described, was to order her entire company to be mustered for his inspection. If the master proved civil, this preliminary passed off quickly and with no more confusion than was incidental to a general and hasty rummaging of sea-chests and lockers in search of those magic protections on which hung the immediate destiny of every man in the ship, excepting only the skipper, his mate and that privileged person, the boatswain. The muster effected, the officer next subjected each protection to the closest possible scrutiny, for none who knew the innate trickery of seamen would ever "take their words for it." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. Boscawen, 20 March 1745-6.] Men who had no protections, men whose papers bore evident traces of "coaxing" or falsification, men whose appearance and persons failed to tally exactly with the description there written down--these were set apart from their more fortunate messmates, to be dealt with presently. To their ranks were added others whose protections had either expired or were on the point of expiry, as well as skulkers who sought to evade His Majesty's press by stowing themselves away between or below decks, and who had been by this time more or less thoroughly routed out by members of the gang armed with hangers. The two contingents now lined up, and their total was checked by reference to the ship's articles, the officer never omitting to make affectionate inquiries after men marked down as "run," "drowned," or "discharged"; for none knew better than he, if an old hand at the game, how often the "run" man ran no further afield than some secure hiding-place overlooked by his gangers, or how miraculously the "drowned" bobbed up once more to the surface of things when the gang had ceased from troubling. If the ship happened to be an inward-bound, and to possess a general protection exempting her from the press only for the voyage then just ending, that fact greatly simplified and abbreviated the proceedings, for then her whole company was looked upon as the ganger's lawful prey. In the case of an outward-bound ship, the gang-officer's duty was confined to seeing that she carried no more hands than her protection and tonnage permitted her to carry. All others were pressed. Cowed by armed authority, or wounded and bleeding in a lost cause as hereafter to be related, the men were hustled into the boat with "no more violence than was necessary for securing them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aldred, 12 June 1708.] Their chests and bedding followed, making a full boat; and so, having cleared the ship of all her pressable hands, the gang prepared to return to the tender. But first there was a last stroke of business to be done. The gunner must have his bit. Up to this point, beyond producing the ship's papers for inspection and gruffly answering such questions as were put to, him, the master of the vessel had taken little part in what was going on. His turn now came. By virtue of his position he could not be pressed, but there existed a very ancient naval usage according to which he could be, and was, required to pay for the powder and shot expended in inducing him to receive the gang on board. In law the exaction was indefensible. Litigation often followed it, and as the century grew old the practice for that reason fell into gradual desuetude, a circumstance almost universally deplored by naval commanders of the old school, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 13 Oct. 1795, and Admiralty endorsement.] who were ever sticklers for respect to the flag; but during the first five or six decades of the century the shipmaster who had to be fired upon rarely escaped paying the shot. The money accruing from his compliance with the demand, 6s. 8d., went to the gunner, whose perquisite it was, and as several shots were frequently necessary to reduce a crew to becoming submissiveness, the gunners must have done very well out of it. Refusal to "pay the shot" could be visited upon the skipper only indirectly. Another man or two were taken out of him by way of reprisals, and the press-boat shoved off--to return a second, or even a third time, if the pressed men numbered more than she could stow. From this summary mode of depriving a ship of a part or the whole of her crew two serious complications arose, the first of which had to do with the wages of the men pressed, the second with what was technically called "carrying the ship up," that is to say, sailing her to her destination. According to the law of the land, the sailor who was pressed out of a ship was entitled to his wages in full till the day he was pressed, and not only was every shipmaster bound to provide such men with tickets good for the sums severally due to them, tickets drawn upon the owners and payable upon demand, but it was the duty of every impress officer to see that such tickets were duly made out and delivered to the men. Refusal to comply with the law in this respect led to legal proceedings, in which, except in the case of foreign ships, the Admiralty invariably won. Eminently fair to the sailor, the provision was desperately hard on masters and owners, for they, after having shipped their crews for the run or voyage, now found themselves left either with insufficient hands to carry the ship up, or with no hands at all. As a concession to the necessity of the moment a gang was sometimes put on board a ship for the avowed purpose of pressing her hands when she arrived in port; but such concessions were not always possible, [Footnote: Nor were they always effective, as witness the following: "Tuesday the 15th, the _Shandois_ sloop from Holland came by this place (the Nore). I put 15 men on board her to secure her Company till their Protection was expired. Soon after came from Sheerness the Master Attendant's boat to assist me on that service. I immediately sent her away with more Men and Armes for the better Securing of the Sloop's Company, but that night, in Longreach, the Vessel being near the Shore, and almost Calme, they hoisted the boat out to tow the Sloop about, and all the Sloop's men, being 18, got into her and Run ashore, bidding defiance to my people's fireing."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Bouler, H.M.S. _Argyle_, 18 Feb. 1725-6.] and common equity demanded that in their absence ample provision should be made for the safety of vessels suddenly disabled by the gang. This the Admiralty undertook to do, and hence there grew up that appendage to the impress afloat generally known as "men in lieu" or "ticket men." The vocation of the better type "man in lieu" was a vicarious sort of employment, entailing any but disagreeable consequences upon him who followed it. At every point on the coast where a gang was stationed, and at many where they were not, great numbers of these men were retained for service afloat whenever required. The three ports of Dover, Deal and Folkestone alone at one time boasted no less than four hundred and fifty of them, and when a hot press was in full swing in the Downs even this number was found insufficient to meet the demand. Mostly fishermen, Sea-Fencibles and others of a quasi-seafaring type, they enjoyed complete exemption from the impress as a consideration for "going in pressed men's rooms," received a shilling, and in some cases eighteen-pence a day while so employed, and had a penny a mile road-money for their return to the place of their abode, where they were free, in the intervals between carrying ships up, to follow any longshore occupation they found agreeable, save only smuggling. The enjoyment of these privileges, and particularly the privilege of exemption from the press, made them, as a class, notorious for their independence and insolence--characteristics which still survive in not a few of their descendants. Tenders going a-pressing often bore a score or two of these privileged individuals as supers, who were drafted into ships, as the crews were taken out, to assist the master, mate and few remaining hands, were any of the latter left, in carrying them up. Or, if no supers of this class were borne by the tender, she "loaned" the master a sufficient number of her own company, duly protected by tickets from the commanding officer, and invariably the most unserviceable people on board, to work the ship into the nearest port where regular "men in lieu" could be obtained. Had all "men in lieu" conformed to the standard of the better class substitute of that name, the system would have been laudable in the extreme and trade would have suffered little inconvenience from the depredations of the gangs; but there was in the system a flaw that generally reduced the aid lent to ships to something little better than a mere travesty of assistance. That flaw lay in the fact that Admiralty never gave as good as it took. Clearly, it could not. True, it supplied substitutes to go in "pressed men's rooms," but to call them "men in lieu" was a gross abuse of language. In reality the substitutes supplied were in the great majority of cases mere scum in lieu, the unpressable residuum of the population, consisting of men too old or lads too young to appeal to the cupidity of the gangs, poor creatures whom the regulating captains had refused, useless on land and worse than useless at sea. In the general character of the persons sent in pressed men's rooms Admiralty thus had Trade on the hip, and Trade suffered much in consequence. More than one rich merchantman, rusty from long voyaging, strewed the coast with her cargo and timbers because all the able seamen had been taken out of her, and none better than old men and boys could be found to sail her. Few seaport towns were as wise as Sunderland, where they had a Society of Shipowners for mutual insurance against the risks arising from the pressing of their men. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1541--Capt. Bligh, 8 Jan. 1807, enclosure.] Elsewhere masters, owners and underwriters groaned under the galling imposition; but the wrecker rejoiced exceedingly, thanking the gangs whose ceaseless activities rendered such an outrageous state of things possible. Whichever of these two classes the ticket man belonged to, he was an incorrigible deserter. "Thirteen out of the fifteen men in lieu that I sent up in the _Beaufort_ East-Indiaman," writes the disgusted commander of the _Comet_ bombship, from the Downs, "have never returned. As they are not worth inquiring for, I have made them run." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Burvill, 4 Sept. 1742. A man-o'-war's-man was "made run" when he failed to return to his ship after a reasonable absence and an R was written over against his name on the ship's books.] Such instances might be multiplied indefinitely. Once the ticket man had drawn his money for the trip, there was no such thing as holding him. The temptation to spend his earnings in town proved too strong, and he went on the spree with great consistency and enjoyment till his money was gone and his protection worthless, when the inevitable overtook him. The ubiquitous gang deprived him of his only remaining possession, his worthless liberty, and sent him to the fleet, a ragged but shameless derelict, as a punishment for his breach of privilege. The protecting ticket carried by the man in lieu dated from 1702, when it appears to have been first instituted; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1433--Capt. Anderson, 5 April 1702.] but even when the bearer was no deserter in fact or intention, it had little power to protect him. No ticket man could count upon remaining unmolested by the gangs except the undoubted foreigner and the marine, both of whom were much used as men in lieu. The former escaped because his alien tongue provided him with a natural protection; the latter because he was reputedly useless on shipboard. In the person of the marine, indeed, the man in lieu achieved the climax of ineptitude. It was an ironical rule of the service that persons refusing to act as men in lieu should suffer the very fate they stood in so much danger of in the event of their consenting. Broadstairs fishermen in 1803 objected to serving in that capacity, though tendered the exceptional wage of 27s. for the run to London. "If not compelled to go in that way," they alleged, "they could make their own terms with shipmasters and have as many guineas as they were now offered shillings." Orders to press them for their contumacy were immediately sent down. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1450--Capt. Carter, 16 Aug. 1803.] By the year 1811 the halcyon days of the man in lieu were at an end. As a class he was then practically extinct. Inveterate and long-continued pressing had drained the merchant service of all able-bodied British seamen except those who were absolutely essential to its existence. These were fully protected, and when their number fell short of the requirements of the service the deficiency was supplied by foreigners and apprentices similarly exempt. So few pressable men were to be found in any one ship that it was no longer considered necessary to send ticket men in their stead when they were taken out, and as a matter of fact less than a dozen such men were that year put on board ships passing the Downs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1453--Capt. Anderson, 31 Aug. 1811.] Pressing itself was in its decline, and as for the vocation of the man in lieu, it had gone never to return. Ships and tenders out for men met with varied fortunes. In the winter season the length of the nights, the tempestuous weather and the cold told heavily against success, as did at all times that factor in the problem which one old sea-dog so picturesquely describes as "the room there is for missing you." Capt. Barker, of the _Thetis_, in 1748 made a haul of thirty men off the Old-Head of Kinsale, but lost his barge in doing so, "it blowed so hard." Byng, of the _Sutherland_, grumbled atrociously because in the course of his run up-Channel in '42 he was able to press "no more than seventeen." Anson, looking quite casually into Falmouth on his way down-Channel, found there in '46 the _Betsey_ tender, then just recently condemned, and took out of her every man she possessed at the cost of a mere hour's work, ignorant of the fact that when pressing eight of those men the commander of the _Betsey_ had been "eight hours about it." It was all a game of chance, and when you played it the only thing you could count upon was the certainty of having both the sailor and the elements dead against you. [Illustration: JACK IN THE BILBOES. From the painting by Morland.] But if the "room there is for missing you," conspiring with other unfavourable conditions, rendered pressing afloat an uncertain and vexatious business, the chances of making a haul were on the other hand augmented by every ship that entered or left the Narrow Seas, not even excepting the foreigner. The foreign sailor could not be pressed unless, as we have seen, he had naturalised himself by marrying an English wife, but the foreign ship was fair game for every hunter of British seamen.--An ancient assumption of right made it so. From the British point of view the "Right of Search" was an eminently reasonable thing. Here was an island people to whose keeping Heaven had by special dispensation committed the dominion of the seas. To defend that dominion they needed every seaman they possessed or could produce. They could spare none to other nations; and when their sailors, who enjoyed no rights under their own flag, had the temerity to seek refuge under another, there was nothing for it but to fire on that flag if necessary, and to take the refugee by armed force from under its protection. This in effect constituted the time-honoured "Right of Search," and none were so reluctant to forego the prerogative, or so keen to enforce it, as those naval officers who saw in it a certain prospect of adding to their ships' companies. The right of search was always good for another man or two. It was often good for a great many more, for the foreign skipper was at the best an arrant man-stealing rogue. If a Yankee, he hated the British because he had beaten them; if a Frenchman or a Hollander, because they had beaten him. His animus was all against the British Navy, his sympathies all in favour of the British sailor, in whom he recognised as good, if not a better seaman than himself. He accordingly enticed him with the greatest pertinacity and hid him away with the greatest cunning. Every impress officer worth his salt was fully alive to these facts, and on all the coast no ship was so thoroughly ransacked as the ship whose skipper affected a bland ignorance of the English tongue or called Heaven to witness the blamelessness of his conduct with many gesticulations and strange oaths. Lieut. Oakley, regulating officer at Deal, once boarded an outward-bound Dutch East-Indiaman in the Downs. The master strenuously denied having any English sailors on board, but the lieutenant, being suspicious, sent his men below with instructions to leave no part of the ship unsearched. They speedily routed out three, "who discovered that there were in all thirteen on board, most of them good and able seamen." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 3363--Lieut. Oakley, 8 Dec. 1743.] The case is a typical one. Another source of joy and profit to the gangs afloat were the great annual convoys from overseas. For safety's sake merchantmen in times of hostilities sailed in fleets, protected by ships of war, and when a fleet of this description was due back from Jamaica, Newfoundland or the Baltic, that part of the coast where it might be expected to make its land-fall literally swarmed with tenders, all on the _qui vive_ for human plunder. They were seldom disappointed. The Admiralty protections under which the ships had put to sea in the first instance expired with the home voyage, leaving the crews at the mercy of the gangs. If, that is to say, the commanders of the convoying men-o'-war had not forestalled them, or the ships' companies were not composed, as in one case we read of, of men who were all "either sick or Dutchmen." The privateer had to be approached more warily than the merchantman, since the number of men and the weight of metal she carried made her an ugly customer to deal with. She was in consequence notorious for being the sauciest craft afloat, and though "sauce" was to the naval officer what a red rag is to a bull, there were few in the service who did not think twice before attempting to violate the armed sanctity of the privateer. At the same time the hands who crowded her deck were the flower of British seamen, and in this fact lay a tremendous incentive to dare all risks and press her men. Her commission or letter of marque of course protected her, but when she was inward-bound that circumstance carried no weight. Against such an adversary the tender stood little chance. When she hailed the privateer, the latter laughed at her, threatening to sink her out of hand, or, if ordered to bring to, answered with all the insolent contempt of the Spanish grandee: "Mariana!" Accident sometimes stood the tender in better stead, where the pressing of privateer's-men was concerned, than all the guns she carried. Capt. Adams, cruising for men in the Bristol Channel, one day fell in with the Princess Augusta, a letter of marque whose crew had risen upon their officers and tried to take the ship. After hard fighting the mutiny was quelled and the mutineers confined to quarters, in which condition Adams found them. The whole batch, twenty-nine in number, was handed over to him, "though 'twas only with great threats" that he could induce them to submit, "they all swearing to die to a man rather than surrender." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Adams, 28 June 1745.] A year or two prior to this event this same ship, the Princess Augusta, had a remarkable adventure whilst sailing under the merchant flag of England. On the homeward run from Barbadoes, some fifty leagues to the westward of the Scillies, she fell in with a Spanish privateer, who at once engaged and would undoubtedly have taken her but for an extraordinary occurrence. Just as the trader's assailants were on the point of boarding her the Spaniard blew up, strewing the sea with his wreckage, but leaving the merchantman providentially unharmed. Capt. Dansays, of H.M.S. the _Fubbs_ yacht, who happened to be out for men at the time in the chops of the Channel, brought the news to England. Meeting with the trader a few days after her miraculous escape, he had boarded her and pressed nine of her crew. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 7 Feb. 1741-2.] From the smuggling vessels infesting the coasts the sea-going gangs drew sure returns and rich booty. In the south and east of England people who were "in the know" could always buy tobacco, wines and silks for a mere song; and in Cumberland, in the coast towns there, and inland too, the very beggars are said to have regaled themselves on tea at sixpence or a shilling the pound. These commodities, as well as others dealt in by runners of contrabrand, were worth far more on the water than on land, and none was so keenly alive to the fact as the gangsman who prowled the coast. Animated by the prospect of double booty, he was by all odds the best "preventive man" the country ever had. There was a certainty, too, about the pressing of a smuggler that was wanting in other cases. The sailor taken out of a merchant ship, or the fisherman out of a smack, might at the eleventh hour spring upon you a protection good for his discharge. Not so the smuggler. There was in his case no room for the unexpected. No form of protection could save him from the consequences of his trade. Once caught, his fate was a foregone conclusion, for he carried with him evidence enough to make him a pressed man twenty times over. Hence the gangsman and the naval officer loved the smuggler and lost no opportunity of showing their affection. "Strong Breezes and Cloudy," records the officer in command of H.M.S. _Stag_, a twenty-eight gun frigate, in his log. "Having made the Signal for Two Strange Sail in the West, proceeded on under Courses & Double Reeft Topsails. At 1 sett the Jibb and Driver, at 3 boarded a Smugling Cutter, but having papers proving she was from Guernsey, and being out limits, pressed one Man and let her go." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2734--Log of H.M.S. _Stag_, Capt. Yorke commander, 5 Oct. 1794.] "Friday last," says the captain of the _Spy_ sloop of war, "I sail'd out of Yarmouth Roads with a Fleet of Colliers in order to press Men, & in my way fell in with Two Dutch Built Scoots sail'd by Englishmen, bound for Holland, one belonging to Hull, call'd the _Mary_, the other to Lyn, call'd the _Willing Traveller_. I search'd 'em and took out of the former 64 Pounds 14. and out of the latter 300 Pounds 6, all English Money, which I've deliver'd to the Collector of Custome at Yarmouth. I likewise Imprest out of the Two Vessells seven men." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1438--Capt. Arnold, 29 May 1727. The exporting of coin was illegal.] "In the execution of my orders for pressing," reports Capt. Young, from on board the Bonetta sloop under his command, "I lately met with two Smuglers, & landing my boats into a Rocky Bay where they were running of Goods, the Weather came on so Violent I had my pinnace Stove so much as to be rendered unservisable. They threw overboard all their Brandy, Tea and Tobacco, of which last wee recover'd about 14 Baggs and put it to the Custom house. In Endeavouring to bring one of them to Sail, my Boatswain, who is a very Brisk and Deserving Man, had his arm broke, so that tho' wee got no more of their Cargo, it has broke their Voyage and Trade this bout." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 6 April 1739.] On the 13th of December 1703, George Messenger, boatswain of the _Wolf_ armed sloop, whilst pressing on the Humber descried a "keel" lying high and dry apart from the other shipping in the river, where it was then low water. Boarding her with the intention of pressing her men, he found her deserted save for the master, and thinking that some of the hands might be in hiding below--where the master assured him he would find nothing but ballast--he "did order one of his Boat's crew to goe down in the Hold and see what was therein"; who presently returned and reported "a quantity of wool conceal'd under some Coales a foot thik." The exportation of wool being at that time forbidden under heavy penalties, the vessel was seized and the master pressed--a course frequently adopted in such circumstances, and uniformly approved. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1465--Deposition of George Messenger, 20 Dec. 1703. Owling, ooling or wooling, as the exportation of wool contrary to law was variously termed, was a felony punishable, according to an enactment of Edward III., with "forfeiture of life and member." So serious was the offence considered that in 1565 a further enactment was formulated against it. Thereafter any person convicted of exporting a live ram, lamb or sheep, was not only liable to forfeit all his goods, but to suffer imprisonment for a year, and at the end of the year "in some open market town, in the fulness of the market on the market day, to have his right hand cut off and nailed up in the openest place of such market." The first of these Acts remained in nominal force till 1863.] While the gangs afloat in this way lent their aid in the suppression of smuggling, they themselves were sometimes subjected to disagreeable espionage on the part of those whose duty it was to keep a special lookout for runners of contraband goods. An amusing instance of this once occurred in the Downs. The commanding officer of H.M.S. _Orford_, discovering his complement to be short, sent one of his lieutenants, Richardson by name, in quest of men to make up the deficiency. In the course of his visits from ship to ship there somehow found their way into the lieutenant's boat a fifteen-gallon keg of rum and ten bottles of white wine. Between seven and eight o'clock in the evening he boarded an Indiaman and went below with the master. Scarcely had he done so, however, when an uproar alongside brought him hurriedly on deck--to find his boat full of strange faces. A Customs cutter, in some unaccountable way getting wind of what was in the boat, had unexpectedly "clapt them aboard," collared the man-o'-war's-men for a set of rascally smugglers, and confiscated the unexplainable rum and wine, becoming so fuddled on the latter, which they lost no time in consigning to bond, that one of their number fell into the sea and was with difficulty fished out by Richardson's disgusted gangsmen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Brown, 30 July 1727, and enclosures.] The only inward-bound ship the gangsmen were forbidden to press from was the "sick ship" or vessel undergoing quarantine because of the presence, or the suspected presence, on board of her of some "catching" disease, and more particularly of that terrible scourge the plague. Dread of the plague in those days rode the country like a nightmare, and just as the earliest quarantine precautions had their origin in that fact, so those precautions were never more rigorously enforced than in the case of ships trading to countries known to be subject to plague or reported to be in the grip of it. The Levantine trader suffered most severely in this respect. In 1721 two vessels from Cyprus, where plague was then prevalent, were burned to the water's edge by order of the authorities, and as late as 1800 two others from Morocco, suspected of carrying the dread disease in the hides composing their cargo, were scuttled and sent to the bottom at the Nore. This was quarantine _in excelsis_. Ordinary preventive measures went no further than the withdrawal of "pratique," as communication with the shore was called, for a period varying usually from ten to sixty-five days, and during this period no gang was allowed to board the ship. The seamen belonging to such ships always got ashore if they could; for though the penalty for deserting a ship in quarantine was death, [Footnote: 26 George II. cap. 6.] it might be death to remain, and the sailor was ever an opportunist careless of consequences. So, for that matter, was the gangsman. Knowing well that Jack would make a break for it the first chance he got, he hovered about the ship both day and night, alert for every movement on board, watchful of every ripple on the water, taunting the woebegone sailors with the irksomeness of their captivity or the certainty of their capture, and awaiting with what patience he could the hour that should see pratique restored and the crew at his mercy. Whether the ship had "catching" disease on board or not might be an open question. There was no mistaking its symptoms in the gangsman. Stangate Creek, on the river Medway, was the great quarantine station for the port of London, and here, in the year 1744, was enacted one of the most remarkable scenes ever witnessed in connection with pressing afloat. The previous year had seen a recrudescence of plague in the Levant and consequent panic in England, where extraordinary precautions were adopted against possible infection. In December of that year there lay in Stangate Creek a fleet of not less than a dozen Levantine ships, in which were cooped up, under the most exacting conditions imaginable, more than two hundred sailors. At Sheerness, only a few miles distant, a number of ships of war, amongst them Rodney's, were at the same time fitting out and wanting men. The situation was thus charged with possibilities. It was estimated that in order to press the two hundred sailors from the quarantine ships, when the period of detention should come to an end, a force of not less than one hundred and fifty men would be required. These were accordingly got together from the various ships of war and sent into the Creek on board a tender belonging to the _Royal Sovereign_. This was on the 15th of December, and quarantine expired on the 22nd. The arrival of the tender threw the Creek into a state of consternation bordering on panic, and that very day a number of sailors broke bounds and fell a prey to the gangs in attempting to steal ashore. Seymour, the lieutenant in command of the tender, did not improve matters by his idiotic and unofficerlike behaviour. Every day be rowed up and down the Creek, in and out amongst the ships, taunting the men with what he would do unless they volunteered, when the 22nd arrived, and he was free to work his will upon them. He would have them all, he assured them, if he had to "shoot them like small birds." By the 22nd the sailors were in a state of "mutinous insolence." When the tender's boats approached the ships they were welcomed "with presented arms," and obliged to sheer off in order to obtain "more force," so menacing did the situation appear. Seeing this, and either mistaking or guessing the import of the move, the desperate seamen rushed the cabins, secured all the arms and ammunition they could lay hands on, hoisted out the ship's boats, and in these reached the shore in safety ere the tender's men, by this time out in strength, could prevent or come up with them. The fugitives, to the number of a hundred or more, made off into the country to the accompaniment, we are told, of "smart firing on both sides." With this exchange of shots the curtain falls on the "Fray at Stangate Creek." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1480--Capt. Berkeley, 30 Dec. 1744, and enclosure.] In the engagement two of the seamen were wounded, but all escaped the snare of the fowler, and in that happy denouement our sympathies are with them. Returning transports paid immediate and heavy tribute to the gangs afloat. Out of a fleet of such vessels arriving at the Nore in 1756 two hundred and thirty men, "a parcel of as fine fellows as were ever pressed," fell to the gangs. Not a man escaped from any of the ships, and the boats were kept busy all next day shifting chests and bedding and putting in ticket men to navigate the depleted vessels to London. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1487--Capt. Boys, 6, 7 and 8 July 1756.] A similar press at the Cove of Cork, on the return of the transports from America in '79, proved equally productive. Hundreds of sailors were secured, to the unspeakable grief of the local crimps, who were then offering long prices in order to recruit Paul Jones, at that time cruising off the Irish coast. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Letters of Capt. Bennett, 1779.] The cartel ship was an object of peculiar solicitude to the sea-going gangsman. In her, after weary months passed in French, Spanish or Dutch prisons, hundreds of able-bodied British seamen returned to their native land in more or less prime condition for His Majesty's Navy. The warmest welcome they received was from the waiting gangsman. Often they got no other. Few cartels had the extraordinary luck of the ship of that description that crept into Rye harbour one night in March 1800, and in bright moonlight landed three hundred lusty sailor-men fresh from French prisons, under the very nose of the battery, the guard at the port head and the _Clinker_ gun-brig. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1449--Capt. Aylmer, 9 March 1800.] Of all the seafaring men the gangsman took, there was perhaps none whom he pressed with greater relish than the pilot. The every-day pilot of the old school was a curious compound. When he knew his business, which was only too seldom, he was frequently too many sheets in the wind to embody his knowledge in intelligent orders; and when he happened to be sober enough to issue intelligent orders, he not infrequently showed his ignorance of what he was supposed to know by issuing wrong ones. The upshot of these contradictions was, that instead of piloting His Majesty's ships in a becoming seamanly manner, he was for ever running them aground. Fortunately for the service, an error of this description incapacitated him and made him fair game for the gangs, who lost no time in transferring him to those foremast regions where ship's grog was strictly limited and the captain's quite unknown. William Cook, impressed upon an occasion at Lynn, with unconscious humour styled himself a landsman. He was really a pilot who had qualified for that distinction by running vessels ashore. In the aggregate this unremitting and practically unbroken surveillance of the coast was tremendously effective. Like Van Tromp, the vessels and gangs engaged in it rode the seas with a broom at their masthead, sweeping into the service, not every man, it is true, but enormous numbers of them. As for their quality, "One man out of a merchant ship is better than three the lieutenants get in town." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2379--Capt. Roberts, 27 June 1732.] This was the general opinion early in the century; but as the century wore on the quality of the man pressed in town steadily deteriorated, till at length the sailor taken fresh from the sea was reckoned to be worth six of him. CHAPTER VI. EVADING THE GANG. As we have just seen, it was when returning from overseas that the British sailor ran the gravest risk of summary conversion into Falstaff's famous commodity, "food for powder." Outward bound, the ship's protection--that "sweet little cherub" which, contrary to all Dibdinic precedent, lay down below--had spread its kindly aegis over him, and, generally speaking, saved him harmless from the warrant and the hanger. But now the run for which he has signed on is almost finished, and as the Channel opens before him the magic Admiralty paper ceases to be of "force" for his protection. No sooner, therefore, does he make his land-fall off the fair green hills or shimmering cliffs than his troubles begin. He is now within the outer zone of danger, and all about him hover those dreaded sharks of the Narrow Seas, the rapacious press-smacks, seeking whom they may devour. Conning the compass-card of his chances as they bear down upon him and send their shot whizzing across his bows, the sailor, in his fixed resolve to evade the gang at any cost, resorted first of all to the most simple and sailorly expedient imaginable. He "let go all" and made a run for it. That way lay the line of least resistance, and, with luck on his side, of surest escape. Three modes of flight were his to choose between--three modes involving as many nice distinctions, plus a possible difference with the master. He could run away in his ship, run away with her, or as a last resort he could sacrifice his slops, his bedding, his pet monkey and the gaudy parrot that was just beginning to swear, and run from her. Which should it be? It was all a toss-up. The chance of the moment, instantly detected and as instantly acted upon, determined his choice. The sailor's flight in his ship depended mainly upon her sailing qualities and the master's willingness to risk being dismasted or hulled by the pursuer's shot. Granted a capful of wind on his beam, a fleet keel under foot, and a complacent skipper aft, the flight direct was perhaps the means of escape the sailor loved above all others. The spice of danger it involved, the dash and frolic of the chase, the joy of seeing his leaping "barky" draw slowly away from her pursuer in the contest of speed, and of watching the stretch of water lying between him and capture surely widen out, were sensations dear to his heart. Running away _with_ his ship was a more serious business, since the adoption of such a course meant depriving the master of his command, and this again meant mutiny. Happily, masters took a lenient view of mutinies begotten of such conditions. Not infrequently, indeed, they were consenting parties, winking at what they could not prevent, and assuming the command again when the safety of ship and crew was assured by successful flight, with never a hint of the irons, indictment or death decreed by law as the mutineer's portion. These modes of flight did not in every instance follow the hard-and-fast lines here laid down. Under stress of circumstance each was liable to become merged in the other; or both, perhaps, had to be abandoned in favour of fresh tactics rendered necessary by the accident or the exigency of the moment. The _Triton_ and _Norfolk_ Indiamen, after successfully running the gauntlet of the Channel tenders, in the Downs fell in with the _Falmouth_ man-o'-war. The meeting was entirely accidental. Both merchantmen were congratulating themselves on having negotiated the Channel without the loss of a man. The _Triton_ had all furled except her fore and mizen topsails, preparatory to coming to an anchor; but as the wind was strong southerly, with a lee tide running, the _Falmouth's_ boats could not forge ahead to board her before the set of the tide carried her astern of the warship's guns, whereupon her crew mutinied, threw shot into the man-o'-war's boats, which had by this time drawn alongside, and so, making sail with all possible speed, got clear away. Meantime a shot had brought the _Norfolk_ to on the _Falmouth's_ starboard bow, where she was immediately boarded. On her decks an ominous state of things prevailed. Her crew would not assist to clew up the sails, the anchor had been seized to the chain-plates and could not be let go, and when the gang from the _Falmouth_ attempted to cut the buoy ropes with which it was secured, the "crew attacked them with hatchets and treenails, made sail and obliged them to quit the ship." Being by that, time astern of the _Falmouth's_ guns, they too made their escape. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1485--Capt. Brett, 25 June 1755.] Never, perhaps, did the sailor adopt the expedient of running away, ship and all, with so malicious a goodwill or so bright a prospect of success, as when sailing under convoy. In those days he seldom ventured to "risk the run," even to Dutch ports and back, without the protection of one or more ships of war, and in this precaution there was danger as well as safety; for although the king's ships safeguarded him against the enemy if hostilities were in progress, as well as against the "little rogues" of privateers infesting the coasts and the adjacent seas, no sooner did the voyage near its end than the captains of the convoying ships took out of him, by force if necessary, as many men as they happened to require. This was a _quid pro quo_ of which the sailor could see neither the force nor the fairness, and he therefore let slip no opportunity of evading it. "Their Lordships," writes a commander who had been thus cheated, "need not be surprised that I pressed so few men out of so large a Convoy, for the Wind taking me Short before I got the length of Leostaff (Lowestoft), the Pilot would not take Charge of the Shipp to turn her out over the Stamford in the Night, which Oblig'd me to come to an Anchor in Corton Road. This I did by Signal, but the Convoy took no Notice of it, and all of them Run away and Left me, my Bottom being like a Rock for Roughness, so that I could not Follow them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Letters of Capt. Young, 1742.] Supposing, however, that all these manoeuvres failed him and the gang after a hot chase appeared in force on deck, the game was not yet up so far as the sailor was concerned. A ship, it is true, had neither the length of the Great North Road nor yet the depth of the Forest of Dean, but all the same there was within the narrow compass of her timbers many a lurking place wherein the artful sailor, by a judicious exercise of forethought and tools, might contrive to lie undetected until the gang had gone over the side. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the 25th of June 1756, Capt. William Boys, from the quarter-deck of his ship the _Royal Sovereign_, then riding at anchor at the Nore, observed a snow on fire in the five-fathom channel, a little below the Spoil Buoy. He immediately sent his cutter to her assistance, but in spite of all efforts to save her she ran aground and burnt to the water's edge. Her cargo consisted of wine, and the loss of the vessel was occasioned by one of her crew, who was fearful of being pressed, hiding himself in the hold with a lighted candle. He was burnt with the ship. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1487--Capt. Boys, 26 June 1756. Oddly enough, a somewhat similar accident was indirectly the cause of Capt. Boys' entering the Navy. In 1727, whilst the merchantman of which he was then mate was on the voyage home from Jamaica, two mischievous imps of black boys, inquisitive to know whether some liquor spilt on deck was rum or water, applied a lighted candle to it. It proved to be rum, and when the officers and crew, who were obliged to take to the boats in consequence, were eventually picked up by a Newfoundland fishing vessel, unspeakable sufferings had reduced their number from twenty-three to seven, and these had only survived by feeding on the bodies of their dead shipmates. In memory of that harrowing time Boys adopted as his seal the device of a burning ship and the motto: "From Fire, Water and Famine by Providence Preserved."] Barring the lighted candle and the lamentable accident which followed its use, the means of evading the gang resorted to in this instance was of a piece with many adopted by the sailor. He contrived cunning hiding-places in the cargo, where the gangsmen systematically "pricked" for him with their cutlasses when the nature of the vessel's lading admitted of it, or he stowed himself away in seachests, lockers and empty "harness" casks with an ingenuity and thoroughness that often baffled the astutest gangsman and the most protracted search. The spare sails forward, the readily accessible hiding-hole of the green-hand, afforded less secure concealment. Pierre Flountinherre, routed out of hiding there, endeavoured to save his face by declaring that he had "left France on purpose to get on board an English man-of-war." Frenchman though he was, the gang obliged him. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1510--Capt. Baskerville, 5 Aug. 1795.] In his endeavours to best the impress officers and gangsmen the sailor found a willing backer in his skipper, who systematically falsified the ship's articles by writing "run," "drowned," "discharged" or "dead" against the names of such men as he particularly desired to save harmless from the press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1525--Capt. Berry, 31 March 1801.] This done, the men were industriously coached in the various parts they were to play at the critical moment. In the skipper's stead, supposing him to be for some reason unfit for naval service, some specially valuable hand was dubbed master. Failing this substitution, which was of course intended to save the man and not the skipper, the ablest seaman in the ship figured as mate, whilst others became putative boatswain or carpenter and apprentices--privileged persons whom no gang could lawfully take, but who, to render their position doubly secure, were furnished with spurious papers, of which every provident skipper kept a supply at hand for use in emergencies. When all hands were finally mustered to quarters, so to speak, there remained on deck only a "master" who could not navigate the ship, a "mate" unable to figure out the day's run, a "carpenter" who did not know how to handle an adze, and some make-believe apprentices "bound" only to outwit the gang. And if in spite of all these precautions an able seaman were pressed, the real master immediately came forward and swore he was the mate. Such thoroughly organised preparedness as this, however, was the exception rather than the rule, for though often attempted, it rarely reached perfection or stood the actual test. The sailor was too childlike by nature to play the fraud successfully, and as for the impress officer and the gangsman, neither was easily gulled. Supposing the sailor, then, to have nothing to hope for from deception or concealment, and supposing, too, that it was he who had the rough bottom beneath him and the fleet keel in pursuit, how was he to outwit the gang and evade the pinch? Nothing remained for him but to heave duty by the board and abandon his ship to the doubtful mercies of wind and wave. He accordingly went over the side with all the haste he could, appropriating the boats in defiance of authority, and leaving only the master and his mate, the protected carpenter and the apprentices to work the ship. Many a trader from overseas, summarily abandoned in this way, crawled into some outlying port, far from her destination, in quest--since a rigorous press often left no others available--of "old men and boys to carry her up." There is even on record the case of a ship that passed the Nore "without a man belonging to her but the master, the passengers helping him to sail her." Her people had "all got ashore by Harwich." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Bouler, 18 Feb. 1725-6.] Few shipowners were so foolhardy as to incur the risk of being thus hit in the pocket by the sailor's well-known predilection for French leave when in danger of the press. Nor were the masters, for they, even when not part owners, had still an appreciable stake in the safety of the ships they sailed. As between masters, owners and men there consequently sprang up a sort of triangular sympathy, having for its base a common dread of the gangs, and for its apex their circumvention. This apex necessarily touched the coast at a point contiguous to the ocean tracks of the respective trades in which the ships sailed; and here, in some spot far removed from the regular haunts of the gangsman, an emergency crew was mustered by those indefatigable purveyors, the crimps, and held in readiness against the expected arrival. Composed of seafaring men too old, too feeble, or too diseased to excite the cupidity of the most zealous lieutenant who eked out his pay on impress perquisites; of lads but recently embarked on the adventurous voyage of their teens; of pilots willing, for a consideration, to forego the pleasure of running ships aground; of fishermen who evaded His Majesty's press under colour of Sea-Fencible, Militia, or Admiralty protections; and of unpressable foreigners whose wives bewailed them more or less beyond the seas, this scratch crew--the Preventive Men of the merchant service--here awaited the preconcerted signal which should apprise them that their employer's ship was ready for a change of hands. For safety's sake the transfer was generally effected by night, when that course was possible; but the untimely appearance of a press-smack on the scene not infrequently necessitated the shifting of the crews in the broad light of day and the hottest of haste. On shore all had been in readiness perhaps for days. At the signal off dashed the deeply laden boats to the frantic ship, the scratch crew scrambled aboard, and the regular hands, thus released from duty, tumbled pell-mell into the empty boats and pulled for shore with a will mightily heartened by a running fire of round-shot from the smack and of musketry from her cutter, already out to intercept the fugitives. Then it was:-- "Cheerily, lads, cheerily! there's a ganger hard to wind'ard; Cheerily, lads, cheerily! there's a ganger hard a-lee; Cheerily, lads, cheerily! else 'tis farewell home and kindred, And the bosun's mate a-raisin' hell in the King's Navee. Cheerily, lads, cheerily ho! the warrant's out, the hanger's drawn! Cheerily, lads, so cheerily! we'll leave 'em an _R_ in pawn!" [Footnote: When Jack deserted his ship under other conditions than those here described, an _R_ was written against his name to denote that he had "run." So, when he shirked an obligation, monetary or moral, by running away from it, he was said to "leave an _R_ in pawn."] The place of muster of the emergency men thus became in turn the landing-place of the fugitive crew. Its whereabouts depended as a matter of course upon the trade in which the ship sailed. The spot chosen for the relief of the Holland, Baltic and Greenland traders of the East Coast was generally some wild, inaccessible part abutting directly on the German Ocean or the North Sea. London skippers in those trades favoured the neighbourhood of Great Yarmouth, where the maze of inland waterways constituting the Broads enabled the shifty sailor to lead the gangs a merry game at hide and seek. King's Lynners affected Skegness and the Norfolk lip of the Wash. Of the men who sailed out of Hull not one in ten could be picked up, on their return, by the gangs haunting the Humber. They went ashore at Dimlington on the coast of Holderness, or at the Spurn. The homing sailors of Leith, as of the ports on the upper reaches of the Firth of Forth, enjoyed an immunity from the press scarcely less absolute than that of the Orkney Islanders, who for upwards of forty years contributed not a single man to the Navy. Having on either hand an easily accessible coast, inhabited by a people upon whose hospitality the gangs were chary of intruding, and abounding in lurking-places as secure as they were snug, the Mother Firth held on to her sailor sons with a pertinacity and success that excited the envy of the merchant seaman at large and drove impress officers to despair. The towns and villages to the north of the Firth were "full of men." On no part of the north coast, indeed, from St. Abb's Head clear round to Annan Water, was it an easy matter to circumvent the canny Scot who went a-sailoring. He had a trick of stopping short of his destination, when homeward bound, that proved as baffling to the gangs as it was in seeming contradiction to all the traditions of a race who pride themselves on "getting there." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] In the case of outward-bound ships, the disposition of the two crews was of course reversed. The scratch crew carried the ship down to the stipulated point of exchange, where they vacated her in favour of the actual crew, who had been secretly conveyed to that point by land. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Lord Nelson, Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Whichever way the trick was worked, it proved highly effective, for, except from the sea, no gang durst venture near such points of debarkation and departure without strong military support. There still remained the emergency crew itself. The most decrepit, crippled or youthful were of course out of the question. But the foreigner and our shifty friend the man in lieu were fair game. Entering largely as they did into the make-up of almost every scratch crew, they were pressed without compunction whenever and wherever caught abusing their privileges by playing the emergency man. To keep such persons always and in all circumstances was a point of honour with the Navy Board. It had no other means of squaring accounts with the scratch crew. The emergency man who plied "on his own" was more difficult to deal with. Keepers of the Eddystone made a "great deal of money" by putting inward-bound ships' crews ashore; but when one of their number, Matthew Dolon by name, was pressed as a punishment for that offence, the Admiralty, having the fear of outraged Trade before its eyes, ordered his immediate discharge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Yeo, 25 July 1727.] The pilot, the fisherman and the longshoreman were notorious offenders in this respect. Whenever they saw a vessel bound in, they were in the habit of putting off to her and of first inciting the crew to escape and then hiring themselves at exorbitant rates to work the vessel into port. On such mischievous interlopers the gangsman had no mercy. He took them whenever he could, confident that when their respective cases were stated to the Board, that body would "tumble" to the occasion. Any attempt at estimating the number of seafaring men who evaded the gangs and the call of the State by means of the devices and subterfuges here roughly sketched into the broad canvas of our picture would prove a task as profitless as it is impossible of accomplishment. One thing only is certain. The number fluctuated greatly from time to time with the activity or inactivity of the gangs. When the press was lax, there arose no question as there existed no need of escape; when it was hot, it was evaded systematically and with a degree of success extremely gratifying to the sailor. Taking the sea-borne coal trade of the port of London alone, it is estimated that in the single month of September 1770, at a time when an exceptionally severe press from protections was in full swing, not less than three thousand collier seamen got ashore between Yarmouth Roads and Foulness Point. As the coal trade was only one of many, and as the stretch of coast concerned comprised but a few miles out of hundreds equally well if not better adapted to the sailor's furtive habits, the total of escapes must have been little short of enormous. It could not have been otherwise. In this grand battue of the sea it was clearly impossible to round-up and capture every skittish son of Neptune. On shore, as at sea, the sailor's course, when the gang was on his track, followed the lines of least resistance, only here he became a skulk as well as a fugitive. It was not that he was a less stout-hearted fellow than when at sea. He was merely the victim of a type of land neurosis. Drink and his recent escape from the gang got on his nerves and rendered him singularly liable to panic. The faintest hint of a press was enough to make his hair rise. At the first alarm he scuttled into hiding in the towns, or broke cover like a frightened hare. The great press of 1755 affords many instances of such panic flights. Abounding in "lurking holes" where a man might lie perdue in comparative safety, King's Lynn nevertheless emptied itself of seamen in a few hours' time, and when the gang hurried to Wells by water, intending to intercept the fugitives there, the "idle fishermen on shore" sounded a fresh alarm and again they stampeded, going off to the eastward in great numbers and burying themselves in the thickly wooded dells and hills of that bit of Devon in Norfolk which lies between Clay-next-the-Sea and Sheringham. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 29 March and 21 April 1755.] A similar exodus occurred at Ipswich. The day the warrants came down, as for many days previous, the ancient borough was full of seamen; but no sooner did it become known that the press was out than they vanished like the dew of the morning. For weeks the face of but one sailor was seen in the town, and he was only ferreted out, with the assistance of a dozen constables, after prolonged and none too legal search. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Brand, 26 Feb. 1755.] How effectually the sailor could hide when dread of the press had him in its grip is strikingly illustrated by the hot London press of 1740. On that occasion the docks, the riverside slums and dens, the river itself both above and below bridge, were scoured by gangs who left no stratagem untried for unearthing and taking the hidden sailor. When the rigour of the press was past not a seaman, it is said, was to be found at large in London; yet within four-and-twenty hours sixteen thousand emerged from their retreats. [Footnote: Griffiths, _Impressment Fully Considered_.] The secret of such effectual concealment lay in the fact that the nature of his hiding-place mattered little to the sailor so long as it was secure. Accustomed to quarters of the most cramped description on shipboard, he required little room for his stowing. The roughest bed, the worst ventilated hole, the most insanitary surroundings and conditions were all one to him. He could thus hide himself away in places and receptacles from which the average landsman would have turned in fear or disgust. In quarry, clay-pit, cellar or well; in holt, hill or cave; in chimney, hayloft or secret cell behind some old-time oven; in shady alehouse or malodorous slum where a man's life was worth nothing unless he had the smell of tar upon him, and not much then; on isolated farmsteads and eyots, or in towns too remote or too hostile for the gangsman to penetrate--somewhere, somehow and of some sort the sailor found his lurking-place, and in it, by good providence, lay safe and snug throughout the hottest press. Many of the seamen employed in the Newfoundland trade of Poole, gaining the shore at Chapman's Pool or Lulworth, whiled away their stolen leisure either in the clay-pits of the Isle of Purbeck, where they defied intrusion by posting armed sentries at every point of access to their stronghold, or--their favourite haunt--on Portland Island, which the number and ill-repute of the labourers employed in its stone quarries rendered well-nigh impregnable. To search for, let alone to take the seamen frequenting that natural fortress--who of course "squared" the hard-bitten quarrymen--was more than any gang durst undertake unless, as was seldom the case, it consisted of some "very superior force." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 5 Aug. 1805.] With the solitary exception of Falmouth town, the Cornish coast was merely another Portland Neck enormously extended. From Rame Head to the Lizard and Land's End, and in a minor sense from Land's End away to Bude Haven in the far nor'-east, the entire littoral of this remote part of the kingdom was forbidden ground whereon no gangsman's life was worth a moment's purchase. The two hundred seins and twice two hundred drift-boats belonging to that coast employed at least six thousand fishermen, and of these the greater part, as soon as the fishing season was at an end, either turned "tinners" and went into the mines, where they were unassailable, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 28 Sept. 1805.] or betook themselves to their strongholds at Newquay, St. Ives, Newland, Mousehole, Coversack, Polpero, Cawsand and other places where, in common with smugglers, deserters from the king's ships at Hamoaze, and an endless succession of fugitive merchant seamen, they were as safe from intrusion or capture as they would have been on the coast of Labrador. It was impossible either to hunt them down or to take them on a coast so "completely perforated." A thousand "stout, able young fellows" could have been drawn from this source without being missed; but the gangs fought shy of the task, and only when they carried vessels in distress into Falmouth were the redoubtable sons of the coves ever molested. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 9 March 1795. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Petition of the Inhabitants of the Village of Coversack, 31 Jan. 1778.] On the Bristol Channel side Lundy Island offered unrivalled facilities for evasion, and many were the crews marooned there by far-sighted skippers who calculated on thus securing them against their return from Bristol, outward bound. The gangs as a rule gave this little Heligoland a wide berth, and when carried thither against their will they had a disconcerting habit of running away with the press-boat, and of thus marooning their commanding officer, that contributed not a little to the immunity the island enjoyed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Aylmer, 22 Dec. 1743.] The sailor's objection to Lundy was as strong as the gangsman's. From his point of view it was no ideal place to hide in, and the effect upon him of enforced sojourn there was to make him sulky and mutinous. Rather the shore with all its dangers than an island that produced neither tobacco, rum, nor women! He therefore preferred sticking to his ship, even though he thereby ran the risk of impressment, until she arrived the length of the Holmes. These islands are two in number, Steep Holme and Flat Holme, and so closely can vessels approach the latter, given favourable weather conditions, that a stone may be cast on shore from the deck. The business of landing and embarking was consequently easy, and though the islands themselves were as barren as Lundy of the three commodities the sailor loved, he was nevertheless content to terminate his voyage there for the following reasons. Under the lee of one or other of the islands there was generally to be found a boat-load of men who were willing, for a suitable return in coin of the realm, to work the ship into King Road, the anchorage of the port of Bristol. The sailor was thus left free to gain the shore in the neighbourhood of Uphill, Weston, or Clevedon Bay, whence it was an easy tramp, not to Bristol, of which he steered clear because of its gangs, but to Bath, or, did he prefer a place nearer at hand, to the little town of Pill, near Avon-mouth. A favourite haunt of seafaring men, fishermen, pilots and pilots' assistants, with a liberal sprinkling of that class of female known in sailor lingo as "brutes," this lively little town was a place after Jack's own heart. The gangsmen gave it a wide berth. It offered an abundance of material for him to work upon, but that material was a trifle too rough even for his infastidious taste. The majority of the permanent indwellers of Pill, as well as the casual ones, not only protected themselves from the press, when such a course was necessary, by a ready use of the fist and the club, but, when this means of exemption failed them, pleaded the special nature of their calling with great plausibility and success. They were "pilots' assistants," and as such they enjoyed for many years the unqualified indulgence of the naval authorities. The appellation they bore was nevertheless purely euphemistic. As a matter of fact they were sailors' assistants who, under cover of an ostensible vocation, made it their real business, at the instigation and expense of Bristol shipowners, to save crews harmless from the gangs by boarding ships at the Holmes and working them from thence into the roadstead or to the quays. They are said to have been "very fine young men," and many a longing look did the impress officers at Bristol cast their way whilst struggling to swell their monthly returns. So essentially necessary to the trade of the place were they considered to be, however, that they were allowed to checkmate the gangs, practically without molestation or hindrance, till about the beginning of the last century, when the Admiralty, suddenly awaking to the unpatriotic nature of a practice that so effectually deprived the Navy of its due, caused them to be served with a notice to the effect that "for the future all who navigated ships from the Holmes should be pressed as belonging to those ships." At this threat the Pill men jeered. Relying on the length of pilotage water between King Road and Bristol, they took a leaf from the sailor's log and ran before the press-boats could reach the ships in which they were temporarily employed. For four years this state of things continued. Then there was struck at the practice a blow which not even the Admiralty had foreseen. Tow-paths were constructed along the river-bank, and the pilots' assistants, ousted by horses, fell an easy prey to the gangs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 April 1805.] Bath had no gang, and was in consequence much frequented by sailors of the better class. In 1803--taking that as a normal year--the number within its limits was estimated at three hundred--enough to man a ship-of-the-line. The fact being duly reported to the Admiralty, a lieutenant and gang were ordered over from Bristol to do some pressing. The civic authorities--mayor, magistrates, constables and watchmen--fired with sudden zeal for the service, all came forward "in the most handsome manner" with offers of countenance and support. In the purlieus of the town, however, the advent of the gang created panic. The seamen went into prompt hiding, the mob turned out in force, angry and threatening, resolved that no gang should violate the sanctuary of a cathedral city. Seeing how the wind set, the mayor and magistrates, having begun by backing the warrant, continued backing until they backed out of the affair altogether. The zealous watchmen could not be found, the eager constables ran away. Dismayed by these untimely defections, the lieutenant hurriedly resolved "to drop the business." So the gang marched back to Bristol empty-handed, followed by the hearty execrations of the rabble and the heartier good wishes of the mayor, who assured them that as soon as he should be able to clap the skulking seamen in jail "on suspicion of various misdemeanours," he would send for them again. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1528--Capt. Barker, 3 and 11 July 1803.] We do not learn that he ever did. To Bristol no unprotected sailor ever repaired of his own free will, for early in the century of pressing the chickens of the most notorious kidnapping city in England began to come home to roost. The mantle of the Bristol mayor whom Jeffreys tried for a "kidnapping knave" fell upon a succession of regulating captains whose doings put their civic prototype to open shame, and more petitions and protests against the lawlessness of the gangs emanated from Bristol than from any other city in the kingdom. The trowmen who navigated the Severn and the Wye, belonging as they did mainly to extra-parochial spots in the Forest of Dean, were exempt from the Militia ballot and the Army of Reserve. On the ground that they came under the protection of inland navigation, they likewise considered themselves exempt from the sea service, but this contention the Court of Exchequer in 1798 completely overset by deciding that the "passage of the River Severn between Gloucester and Bristol is open sea." A press-gang was immediately let loose upon the numerous tribe frequenting it, whereupon the whole body of newly created sailors deserted their trows and fled to the Forest, where they remained in hiding till the disappointed gang sought other and more fruitful fields. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 April 1805.] Within Chester gates the sailor for many years slept as securely as upon the high seas. No householder would admit the gangsmen beneath his roof; and when at length they succeeded in gaining a foothold within the city, all who were liable to the press immediately deserted it--"as they do every town where there is a gang"--and went "to reside at Parkgate." Parkgate in this way became a resort of sea-faring men without parallel in the kingdom--a "nest" whose hornet bands were long, and with good reason, notorious for their ferocity and aggressiveness. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt. Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] An attempt to establish a rendezvous here in 1804 proved a failure. The seamen fled, no "business" could be done, and officer and gang were soon withdrawn. In comparison with the seething Deeside hamlet, Liverpool was tameness itself. Now and then, as in 1745, the sailor element rose in arms, demanding who was master; but as a rule it suffered the gang, if not gladly, at least with exemplary patience. Homing seamen who desired to evade the press in that city--and they were many--fled ashore from their ships at Highlake, a spot so well adapted to their purpose that it required "strict care to catch them." From Highlake they made their way to Parkgate, swelling still further the sailor population of that far-famed nest of skulkers. Cork was a minor Parkgate. A graphic account of the conditions obtaining in that city has been left to us by Capt. Bennett, of H.M.S. _Lennox_, who did port duty there from May 1779 till March 1783. "Many hundreds of the best Seamen in this Province," he tells us, "resort in Bodys in Country Villages round about here, where they are maintained by the Crimps, who dispose of them to Bristol, Liverpool and other Privateers, who appoint what part of the Coast to take them on Board. They go in Bodys, even in the Town of Cork, and bid defiance to the Press-gangs, and resort in houses armed, and laugh at both civil and military Power. This they did at Kinsale, where they threatened to pull the Jail down in a garrison'd Town." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt. Bennett, 12 and 26 April 1782.] These tactics rendered the costly press-gangs all but useless. A hot press at Cork, in 1796, yielded only sixteen men fit for the service. Space fails us to tell of how, owing to a three days' delay in the London post that brought the warrants to Newhaven in the spring of '78, the "alarm of soon pressing" spread like wildfire along that coast and drove every vessel to sea; of how "three or four hundred young fellows" belonging to Great Yarmouth and Gorleston, who had no families and could well have been spared without hindrance to the seafaring business of those towns, thought otherwise and took a little trip of "thirty or forty miles in the country to hide from the service"; or of how Capt. Routh, of the rendezvous at Leeds, happened upon a great concourse of skulkers at Castleford, whither they had been drawn by reasons of safety and the alleged fact that "Castleford woman must needs be fair, Because they wash both in Calder and Aire," and after two unsuccessful attempts at surprise, at length took them with the aid of the military. These were everyday incidents which were accepted as matters of course and surprised nobody. Nevertheless the vagaries of the wayward children of the State, who chose to run away and hide instead of remaining to play the game, cost the naval authorities many an anxious moment. _They_ had to face both evasion and invasion, and the prevalence of the one did not help to repel the other. His country's fear of invasion by the French afforded the seafaring man the chance of the century. Pitt's Quota Bill put good money in his pocket at the expense of his liberty, but in Admiral Sir Home Popham's great scheme for the defence of the coasts against Boney and his flat-bottomed boats he scented something far more to his advantage and taste. From the day in 1796 when Capt. Moriarty, press-gang-officer at Cork, reported the arrival of the long-expected Brest fleet off the Irish coast, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1621--Capt. Crosby, 30 Dec. 1796.] the question how best to defend from sudden attack so enormously extended and highly vulnerable a seaboard as that of the United Kingdom, became one of feverish moment. At least a hundred different projects for compassing that desirable end at one time or another claimed the attention of the Navy Board. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Knowles, 25 Jan. 1805.] One of these was decidedly ingenious. It aimed at destroying the French flotilla by means of logs of wood bored hollow and charged with gunpowder and ball. These were to be launched against the invaders somewhat after the manner of the modern torpedo, of which they were, in fact, the primitive type and original. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Rear-Admiral Young, 14 Aug. 1803, and secret enclosure, as in the Appendix. The Admiral's "machine," as he termed it, though embodying the true torpedo idea of an explosive device to be propelled against an enemy's ship, was not designed to be so propelled on its own buoyancy, but by means of a fishing-boat, in which it lay concealed. Had his inventive genius taken a bolder flight and given us a more finished product in place of this crudity, the Whitehead torpedo would have been anticipated, in something more than mere principle, by upwards of half a century.] Meantime, however, the Admiralty had adopted another plan--Admiral Popham, already famous for his improved code of signals, its originator. On paper it possessed the merits of all Haldanic substitutes for the real thing. It was patriotic, cheap, simple as kissing your hand. All you had to do was to take the fisherman, the longshoreman and other stalwarts who lived "one foot in sea and one on shore," enroll them in corps under the command (as distinguished from the control) of naval officers, and practise them (on Sundays, since it was a work of strict necessity) in the use of the pike and the cannon, and, hey presto! the country was as safe from invasion as if the meddlesome French had never been. The expense would be trivial. Granting that the French did not take alarm and incontinently drop their hostile designs upon the tight little island, there would be a small outlay for pay, a trifle of a shilling a day on exercise days, but nothing more--except for martello towers. The boats it was proposed to enroll and arm would cost nothing. Their patriotic owners were to provide them free of charge. Such was the Popham scheme on paper. On a working basis it proved quite another thing. The pikes provided were old ship-pikes, rotten and worthless. The only occasion on which they appear to have served any good purpose was when, at Gerrans and St. Mawes, the Fencibles joined the mob and terrified the farmers, who were ignorant of the actual condition of the pikes, into selling their corn at something less than famine prices. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Capt. Spry, 14 April 1801.] Guns hoary with age, requisitioned from country churchyards and village greens where they had rusted, some of them, ever since the days of Drake and Raleigh, were dragged forth and proudly grouped as "parks of artillery." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1513--Capt. Bradley, 21 Aug. 1796.] Signal stations could not be seen one from the other, or, if visible, perpetrated signals no one could read. The armed smacks were equally unreliable. In Ireland they could not be "trusted out of sight with a gun." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Bowen, 12 Oct. 1803.] In England they left the guns behind them. The weight, the patriotic owners discovered, seriously hampered the carrying capacity and seaworthiness of their boats; so to abate the nuisance they hove the guns overboard on to the beach, where they were speedily buried in sand or shingle, while the appliances were carried off by those who had other uses for them than their country's defence. The vessels thus armed, moreover, were always at sea, the men never at home. When it was desired to practise them in the raising of the sluice-gates which, in the event of invasion, were to convert Romney Marsh into an inland sea, no efforts availed to get together sufficient men for the purpose. Immune from the press by reason of their newly created status of Sea-Fencibles, they were all elsewhere, following their time-honoured vocations of fishing and smuggling with industry and gladness of heart. As a means of repelling invasion the Popham scheme was farcical and worthless; as a means of evading the press it was the finest thing ever invented. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Reports on Sea-Fencibles, 1805; Admiral Lord Keith, Sentiments upon the Sea-Fencible System, 7 Jan. 1805.] The only benefits the country ever drew from it, apart from this, were two. It provided the Admiralty with an incomparable register of seafaring men, and some modern artists with secluded summer retreats. It goes without saying that a document of such vital consequence to the seafaring man as an Admiralty protection did not escape the attention of those who, from various motives, sought to aid and abet the sailor in his evasion of the press. Protections were freely lent and exchanged, bought and sold, "coaxed," concocted and stolen. Skilful predecessors of Jim the Penman imitated to the life the signatures of Pembroke and Sandwich, Lord High Admirals, and of the lesser fry who put the official hand to those magic papers. "Great abuses" were "committed that way." Bogus protections could be obtained at Sunderland for 8s. 6d., Stephenson and Collins, the disreputable schoolmasters who made a business of faking them, coining money by the "infamous practice." In London "one Broucher, living in St. Michael's Lane," supplied them to all comers at 3 Pounds apiece. Even the Navy Office was not above suspicion in this respect, for in '98 a clerk there, whose name does not transpire, was accused of adding to his income by the sale of bogus protections at a guinea a head. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Abbs, 5 Oct. 1798.] American protections were the Admiralty's pet bugbear. For many years after the successful issue of the War of Independence a bitter animosity characterised the attitude of the British naval officer towards the American sailor. Whenever he could be laid hold of he was pressed, and no matter what documents he produced in evidence of his American birth and citizenship, those documents were almost invariably pronounced false and fraudulent. There were weighty reasons, however, for refusing to accept the claim of the alleged American sailor at its face value. No class of protection was so generally forged, so extensively bought and sold, as the American. Practically every British seaman who made the run to an American port took the precaution, during his sojourn in that land of liberty, to provide himself with spurious papers against his return to England, where he hoped, by means of them, to checkmate the gang. The process of obtaining such papers was simplicity itself. All the sailor had to do, at, say, New York, was to apply himself to one Riley, whose other name was Paddy. The sum of three dollars having changed hands, Riley and his client betook themselves to the retreat of some shady Notary Public, where the Irishman made ready oath that the British seaman was as much American born as himself. The business was now as good as done, for on the strength of this lying affidavit any Collector of Customs on the Atlantic coast would for a trifling fee grant the sailor a certificate of citizenship. Riley created American citizens in this way at the rate, it is said, of a dozen a day, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1523-Deposition of Zacharias Pasco, 20 Jan. 1800.] and as he was only one of many plying the same lucrative trade, the effect of such wholesale creations upon the impress service in England, had they been allowed to pass unchallenged, may be readily conceived. The fraud, worse luck for the service, was by no means confined to America. Almost every home seaport had its recognised perveyor of "false American passes." At Liverpool a former clerk to the Collector of Customs for Pembroke, Pilsbury by name, grew rich on them, whilst at Greenock, Shields and other north-country shipping centres they were for many years readily procurable of one Walter Gilly and his confederates, whose transactions in this kind of paper drove the Navy Board to desperation. They accordingly instructed Capt. Brown, gang-officer at Greenock, to take Gilly at all hazards, but the fabricator of passes fled the town ere the gang could be put on his track. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1549--Capt. Brown, 22 Aug. 1809.] Considering that every naval officer, from the Lord High Admiral downwards, had these facts and circumstances at his fingers' end, it is hardly suprising that protections having, or purporting to have, an American origin, should have been viewed with profound distrust--distrust too often justified, and more than justified, by the very nature of the documents themselves. Thus a gentleman of colour, Cato Martin by name, when taken out of the _Dolly_ West-Indiaman at Bristol, had the assurance to produce a white man's pass certifying his eyes, which were undeniably yellow, to be a soft sky-blue, and his hair, which was hopelessly black and woolly, to be of that well-known hue most commonly associated with hair grown north of the Tweed. It was reserved, however, for an able seaman bearing the distinguished name of Oliver Cromwell to break all known records in this respect. When pressed, he unblushingly produced a pass dated in America the 29th of May and viséd by the American Consul in London on the 6th of June immediately following, thus conferring on its bearer the unique distinction of having crossed the Atlantic in eight days at a time when the voyage occupied honester men nearly as many weeks. To press such frauds was a public benefit. On the other hand, one confesses to a certain sympathy with the American sailor who was pressed because he "spoke English very well." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2734--Capt. Yorke, 8 March 1798.] Believing in the simplicity of his heart that others were as gullible as himself, the fugitive sailor sought habitually to hide his identity beneath some temporary disguise of greater or less transparency. That of farm labourer was perhaps his favourite choice. The number of seamen so disguised, and employed on farms within ten miles of the coast between Hull and Whitby prior to the sailing of the Greenland and Baltic ships in 1803, was estimated at more than a thousand able-bodied men. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, Report on Rendezvous, 25 April 1804.] Seamen using the Newfoundland trade of Dartmouth were "half-farmer, half-sailor." When the call of the sea no longer lured them, they returned to the land in an agricultural sense, resorting in hundreds to the farmsteads in the Southams, where they were far out of reach of the gangs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, Report on Rendezvous, 28 Feb. 1795] CHAPTER VII. WHAT THE GANG DID ASHORE. In his endeavours to escape the gang the sailor resembled nothing so much as that hopelessly impotent fugitive the flying-fish. For both the sea swarmed with enemies bent on catching them. Both sought to evade those enemies by flight, and both, their ineffectual flight ended, returned to the sea again whether they would or not. It was their fate, a deep-sea kismet as unavoidable as death. The ultimate destination of the sailor who by strategy or accident succeeded in eluding the triple line of sea-gangs so placed as to head him off from the coast, was thus never in doubt. His longest flights were those he made on land, for here the broad horizon that stood the gangs in such good stead at sea was measurably narrower, while hiding-places abounded and were never far to seek. All the same, in spite of these adventitious aids to self-effacement, the predestined end of the seafaring man sooner or later overtook him. The gang met him at the turning of the ways and wiped him off the face of the land. In the expressive words of a naval officer who knew the conditions thoroughly well, the sailor's chances of obtaining a good run for his money "were not worth a chaw of tobacco." For this inevitable finish to all the sailor's attempts at flight on shore there existed in the main two reasons. The first of these lay in the sailor himself, making of him an unconscious aider and abettor in his own capture. Just as love and a cough cannot be hid, so there was no disguising the fact that the sailor was a sailor. He was marked by characteristics that infallibly betrayed him. His bandy legs and rolling gait suggested irresistibly the way of a ship at sea, and no "soaking" in alehouse or tavern could eliminate the salt from the peculiar oaths that were as natural to him as the breath of life. Assume what disguise he would, he fell under suspicion at sight, and he had only to open his mouth to turn that suspicion into certainty. It needed no Sherlock Holmes of a gangsman to divine what he was or whence he came. The second reason why the sailor could never long escape the gangs was because the gangs were numerically too many for him. It was no question of a chance gang here and there. The country swarmed with them. Take the coast. Here every seaport of any pretensions in the way of trade, together with every spot between such ports known to be favoured or habitually used by the homing sailor as a landing-place, with certain exceptions already noted, either had its own particular gang or was closely watched by some gang stationed within easy access of the spot. In this way the whole island was ringed in by gangs on shore, just as it was similarly ringed in by other gangs afloat. "If their Lordships would give me authority to press here," says Lieut. Oakley, writing to the Sea Lords from Deal in 1743, "I could frequently pick up good seamen ashoar. I mean seamen _who by some means escape being prest by the men of war and tenders_." In this modest request the lieutenant states the whole case for the land-gang, at once demonstrating its utility and defining its functions. Unconsciously he does more. He echoes a cry that incessantly assailed the ears of Admiralty: "The sailor has escaped! Send us warrants and give us gangs, and we will catch him yet." It was this call, the call of the fleet, that dominated the situation and forced order out of chaos. The men must be "rose," and only method could do it. The demand was a heavy one to make upon the most unsystematic system ever known, yet it survived the ordeal. The coast was mapped out, warrants were dispatched to this point and that, rendezvous were opened, gangs formed. No effort or outlay was spared to take the sailor the moment he got ashore, or very soon after. In this systematic setting of land-traps that vast head-centre of the nation's overseas trade, the metropolis, naturally had first place. The streets, and especially the waterside streets, were infested with gangs. At times it was unsafe for any able-bodied man to venture abroad unless he had on him an undeniable protection or wore a dress that unmistakeably proclaimed the gentleman. The general rendezvous was on Tower Hill; but as ships completing their complement nearly always sent a gang or two to London, minor rendezvous abounded. St. Katherine's by the Tower was specially favoured by them. The "Rotterdam Arms" and the "Two Dutch Skippers," well-known taverns within that precinct, were seldom without the bit of bunting that proclaimed the headquarters of the gang. At Westminster the "White Swan" in King's Street usually bore a similar decoration, as did also the "Ship" in Holborn. A characteristic case of pressing by a gang using the last-named house occurred in 1706. Ransacking the town in quest of pressable subjects of Her Majesty, they came one day to the "Cock and Rummer" in Bow Street, where a big dinner was in progress. Here nothing would suit their tooth but mine host's apprentice, and as ill-luck would have it the apprentice was cook to the establishment and responsible for the dinner. Him they nevertheless seized and would have hurried away in spite of his master's supplications, protests and offers of free drinks, had it not been for the fact that a mob collected and forcibly prevented them. Other gangs hurrying to the assistance of their hard-pressed comrades--to the number, it is said, of sixty men--a free fight ensued, in the course of which a burly constable, armed with a formidable longstaff, was singled out by the original gang, doubtless on account of the prominent part he took in the fray, as a fitting substitute for the apprentice. By dint of beating the poor fellow till he was past resistance they at length got him to the "Ship," where they were in the very act of bundling him into a coach, with the intention of carrying him to the waterside below bridge, and of their putting him on board the press-smack, when in the general confusion he somehow effected his escape. [Footnote: "A Horrible Relation," _Review_, 17 March 1705-6.] Such incidents were common enough not only at that time but long after. At Gravesend sailors came ashore in such numbers from East India and other ships as to keep a brace of gangs busy. Another found enough to do at Broadstairs, whence a large number of vessels sailed in the Iceland cod fishery and similar industries. Faversham was a port and had its gang, and from Margate right away to Portsmouth, and from Portsmouth to Plymouth, nearly every town of any size that offered ready hiding to the fugitive sailor from the Channel was similarly favoured. Brighton formed a notable exception, and this circumstance gave rise to an episode about which we shall have more to say presently. To record in these pages the local of all the gangs that were stationed in this manner upon the seaboard of the kingdom would be as undesirable as it is foreign to the scope of this chapter. Enough to repeat that the land, always the sailor's objective in eluding the triple cordon of sea-borne gangs, was ringed in and surrounded by a circle of land-gangs in every respect identical with that described as hedging the southern coast, and in its continuity almost as unbroken as the shore itself. Both sea-gangs and coast-gangs were amphibious, using either land or sea at pleasure. Inland the conditions were the same, yet materially different. What was on the coast an encircling line assumed here the form of a vast net, to which the principal towns, the great cross-roads and the arterial bridges of the country stood in the relation of reticular knots, while the constant "ranging" of the gangs, now in this direction, now in that, supplied the connecting filaments or threads. The gangs composing this great inland net were not amphibious. Their most desperate aquatic ventures were confined to rivers and canals. Ability to do their twenty miles a day on foot counted for more with them than a knowledge of how to handle an oar or distinguish the "cheeks" of a gaff from its "jaw." Just as the sea-gangs in their raids upon the land were the Danes and "creekmen" of their time, so the land-gangsman was the true highwayman of the century that begot him. He kept every strategic point of every main thoroughfare, held all the bridges, watched all the ferries, haunted all the fairs. No place where likely men were to be found escaped his calculating eye. He was an inveterate early riser, and sailors sauntering to the fair for want of better employment ran grave risks. In this way a large number were taken on the road to Croydon fair one morning in September 1743. For actual pressing the fair itself was unsafe because of the great concourse of people; but it formed one of the best possible hunting-grounds and was kept under close observation for that reason. Here the gangsman marked his victim, whose steps he dogged into the country when his business was done or his pleasure ended, never for a moment losing sight of him until he walked into the trap all ready set in some wayside spinny or beneath some sheltering bridge. Bridges were the inland gangsman's favourite haunt. They not only afforded ready concealment, they had to be crossed. Thus Lodden Bridge, near Reading, accounted one of the "likeliest places in the country for straggling seamen," was seldom without its gang. Nor was the great bridge at Gloucester, since, as the first bridge over the Severn, it drew to itself all the highroads and their users from Wales and the north. To sailors making for the south coast from those parts it was a point of approach as dangerous as it was unavoidable. Great numbers were taken here in consequence. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 58l--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 April 1805.] So of ferries. The passage boats at Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, watched by gangs from Inverkeithing, yielded almost as many men in the course of a year as the costly rendezvous at Leith. Greenock ferries proved scarcely less productive. But there was here an exception. The ferry between Glenfinart and Greenock plied only twice a week, and as both occasions coincided with market-days the boat was invariably crowded with women. Only once did it yield a man. Peter Weir, the hand in charge, one day overset the boat, drowning every soul on board except himself. Thereupon the gang pressed him, arguing that one who used the sea so effectively could not fail to make a valuable addition to the fleet. Inland towns traversed by the great highroads leading from north to south, or from east to west, were much frequented by the gangs. Amongst these Stourbridge perhaps ranked first. Situated midway between the great ports of Liverpool and Bristol, it easily and effectually commanded Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Kidderminster and other populous towns, while it was too small to afford secure hiding within itself. The gangs operating from Stourbridge brought in an endless procession of ragged and travel-stained seamen. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780.] From ports on the Bristol Channel to ports on the English Channel, and the reverse, many seamen crossed the country by stage-coach or wagon, and to intercept them gangs were stationed at Okehampton, Liskeard and Exeter. Taunton and Salisbury also, as "great thoroughfares to and from the west," had each its gang, and a sufficient number of sailors escaped the press at the latter place to justify the presence of another at Romsey. Andover had a gang as early as 1756, on the recommendation of no less a man than Rodney. Shore gangs were of necessity ambulatory. To sit down before the rendezvous pipe in hand, and expect the evasive sailor to come of his own accord and beg the favour of being pressed, would have been a futile waste of time and tobacco. The very essence of the gangman's duty lay in the leg-work he did. To that end he ate the king's victuals and wore the king's shoe-leather. Consequently he was early afoot and late to bed. Ten miles out and ten home made up his daily constitutional, and if he saw fit to exceed that distance he did not incur his captain's displeasure. The gang at Reading, a strategic point of great importance on the Bath and Bristol road, traversed all the country round about within a radius of twenty miles--double the regulation distance. That at King's Lynn, another centre of unmeasured possibilities, trudged as far afield as Boston, Ely, Peterborough and Wells-on-Sea. And the Isle of Wight gang, stationed at Cowes or Ryde, now and then co-operated with a gang from Portsmouth or Gosport and ranged the whole length and breadth of the island, which was a noted nest of deserters and skulkers. "Range," by the way, was a word much favoured by the officers who led such expeditions. Its use is happy. It suggests the object well in view, the nicely calculated distance, the steady aim that seldom missed its mark. The gang that "ranged" rarely returned empty-handed. On these excursions the favourite resting-place was some secluded nook overlooking the point of crossing of two or more highroads; the favourite place of refreshment, some busy wayside alehouse. Both were good to rest or refresh in, for at both the chances of effecting a capture were far more numerous than on the open road. The object of the gang in taking the road was not, however, so much what could be picked up by chance in the course of a day's march, as the execution of some preconcerted design upon a particular person or place. This brings us to the methods of pressing commonly adopted, which may be roughly summarised under the three heads of surprise, violence and the hunt. Frequently all three were combined; but as in the case of gangs operating on the waters of rivers or harbours, the essential element in all pre-arranged raids, attacks and predatory expeditions was the first-named element, surprise. In this respect the gangsmen were genuine "Peep-o'-Day Boys." The siege of Brighton is a notable case in point. The inhabitants of Brighton, better known in the days of the press-gang as Brighthelmstone, consisted largely of fisher-folk in respect to whom the Admiralty had been guilty of one of its rare oversights. For generations no call was made upon them to serve the king at sea. This accidental immunity in course of time came to be regarded by the Brighton fisherman as his birthright, and the misconception bred consequences. For one thing, it made him intolerably saucy. He boasted that no impress officer had power to take him, and he backed up the boast by openly insulting, and on more than one occasion violently assaulting the king's uniform. With all this he was a hardy, long-lived, lusty fellow, and as his numbers were never thinned by that active corrector of an excessive birth-rate, the press-gang, he speedily overstocked the town. An energetic worker while his two great harvests of herring and mackerel held out, he was at other times indolent, lazy and careless of the fact that his numerous progeny burdened the rates. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 31 Dec. 1804.] These unpleasing circumstances having been duly reported to the Admiralty, their Lordships decided that what the Brighton fisherman required to correct his lax principles and stiffen his backbone was a good hot press. They accordingly issued orders for an early raid to be made upon that promising nursery of man-o'-war's-men. The orders, which were of course secret, bore date the 3rd of July 1779, and were directed to Capt. Alms, who, as regulating officer at Shoreham, was likewise in charge of the gang at Newhaven under Lieut. Bradley, and of the gang at Littlehampton under Lieut. Breedon. At Shoreham there was also a tender, manned by an able crew. With these three gangs and the tender's crew at his back, Alms determined to lay siege to Brighton and teach the fishermen there a lesson they should not soon forget. But first, in order to render the success of the project doubly sure, he enlisted the aid of Major-General Sloper, Commandant at Lewes, who readily consented to lend a company of soldiers to assist in the execution of the design. These preparations were some little time in the making, and it was not until the Thursday immediately preceding the 24th of July that all was in readiness. On the night of that day, by preconcerted arrangement, the allied forces took the road--for the Littlehampton gang, a matter of some twenty miles--and at the first flush of dawn united on the outskirts of the sleeping town, where the soldiers were without loss of time so disposed as to cut off every avenue of escape. This done, the gangs split up and by devious ways, but with all expedition, concentrated their strength upon the quay, expecting to find there a large number of men making ready for the day's fishing. To their intense chagrin the quay was deserted. The night had been a tempestuous one, with heavy rain, and though the unfortunate gangsmen were soaked to the skin, the fishermen all lay dry in bed. Hearing the wind and rain, not a man turned out. By this time the few people who were abroad on necessary occasions had raised the alarm, and on every hand were heard loud cries of "Press-gang!" and the hurried barricading of doors. For ten hours "every man kept himself locked up and bolted." For ten hours Alms waited in vain upon the local Justice of the Peace for power to break and enter the fishermen's cottages. His repeated requests being refused, he was at length "under the necessity of quitting the town with only one man." So ended the siege of Brighton; but Bradley, on his way back to Newhaven, fell in with a gang of smugglers, of whom he pressed five. Brighton did not soon forget the terrors of that rain-swept morning. For many a long day her people were "very shy, and cautious of appearing in public." The salutary effects of the raid, however, did not extend to the fishermen it was intended to benefit. They became more insolent than ever, and a few years later marked their resentment of the attempt to press them by administering a sound thrashing to Mr. Midshipman Sealy, of the Shoreham rendezvous, whom they one day caught unawares. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1445-46--Letters of Capt. Alms.] The surprise tactics of the gang of course varied according to circumstances, and the form they took was sometimes highly ingenious. A not uncommon stratagem was the impersonation of a recruiting party beating up for volunteers. With cockades in their hats, drums rolling and fifes shrilling, the gangsmen, who of course had their arms concealed, marched ostentatiously through the high-street of some sizable country town and so into the market-place. Since nobody had anything to fear from a harmless recruiting party, people turned out in strength to see the sight and listen to the music. When they had in this way drawn as many as they could into the open, the gangsmen suddenly threw off their disguise and seized every pressable person they could lay hands on. Market-day was ill-adapted to these tactics. It brought too big a crowd together. A similar ruse was once practised with great success upon the inhabitants of Portsmouth by Capt. Bowen of the _Dreadnought_, in connection with a general press which the Admiralty had secretly ordered to be made in and about that town. Dockyard towns were not as a rule considered good pressing-grounds because of the drain of men set up by the ships of war fitting out there; but Bowen had certainly no reason to subscribe to that opinion. Late on the night of the 8th of March 1803, he landed a company of marines at Gosport for the purpose, as it was given out, of suppressing a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news spread rapidly, drawing crowds of people from their homes in anticipation of an exciting scrimmage. This gave Bowen the opportunity he counted upon. When the throngs had crossed Haslar Bridge he posted marines at the bridge-end, and as the disappointed people came pouring back the "jollies" pressed every man in the crowd. Five hundred are said to have been taken on this occasion, but as the nature of the service forbade discrimination at the moment of pressing, nearly one-half were next day discharged as unfit or exempt. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1057--Admiral Milbanke, 9 March 1803.] Sometimes, though not often, it was the gang that was surprised. All hands would perhaps be snug in bed after a long and trying day, when suddenly a thunderous knocking at the rendezvous door, and stentorian cries of: "Turn out! turn out there!" coupled with epithets here unproducible, would bring every man of them into the street in the turn of a handspike, half-dressed but fully armed and awake to the fact that a party of belated seamen was coming down the road. The sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering them over to the gang. The sailor's well-known partiality for drink was constantly turned to account by the astute gangsman. If a sailor himself, he laid aside his hanger or cudgel and played the game of "What ho! shipmate" at the cost of a can or two of flip, gently guiding his boon companion to the rendezvous when he had got him sufficiently corned. Failing these tactics, he adopted others equally effective. At Liverpool, where the seafaring element was always a large one, it was a common practice for the gangs to lie low for a time, thus inducing the sailor to believe himself safe from molestation. He immediately indulged in a desperate drinking bout and so put himself entirely in their power. Whether rolling about the town "very much in liquor," or "snugly moored in Sot's Bay," he was an easy victim. Another ineradicable weakness that often landed the sailor in the press-room was his propensity to indulge in "swank." Two jolly tars, who were fully protected and consequently believed themselves immune from the press, once bought a four-wheeled post-chaise and hired a painter in Long Acre to ornament it with anchors, masts, cannon and a variety of other objects emblematic of the sea. In this ornate vehicle they set out, behind six horses, with the intention of posting down to Alnwick, where their sweethearts lived. So impatient were they to get over the road that they could not be prevailed upon, at any of the numerous inns where they pulled up for refreshment, to stop long enough to have the wheels properly greased, crying out at the delay: "Avast there! she's had tar enough," and so on again. Just as they were making a triumphal entry into Newcastle-upon-Tyne the wheels took fire, and the chaise, saturated with the liquor they had spilt in the course of their mad drive, burst into flames fore and aft. The sailors bellowed lustily for help, whereupon the spectators ran to their assistance and by swamping the ship with buckets of water succeeded in putting out the fire. Now it happened that in the crowd drawn together by such an unusual occurrence there was an impress officer who was greatly shocked by the exhibition. He considered that the sailors had been guilty of unseemly behaviour, and on that ground had them pressed. Notwithstanding their protections they were kept. In his efforts to swell the returns of pressed men the gangsman was supposed--we may even go so far as to say enjoined--to use no more violence than was absolutely necessary to attain his end. The question of force thus resolved itself into one of the degree of resistance he encountered. Needless to say, he did not always knock a man down before bidding him stand in the king's name. Recourse to measures so extreme was not always necessary. Every sailor had not the pluck to fight, and even when he had both the pluck and the good-will, hard drinking, weary days of tramping, or long abstinence from food had perhaps sapped his strength, leaving him in no fit condition to hold his own in a scrap with the well-fed gangsman. The latter consequently had it pretty much his own way. A firm hand on the shoulder, or at the most a short, sharp tussle, and the man was his. But there were exceptions to this easy rule, as we shall see in our next chapter. Hunting the sailor was largely a matter of information, and unfortunately for his chances of escape informers were seldom wanting. Everywhere it was a game at hide-and-seek. Constables had orders to report him. Chapmen, drovers and soldiers, persons who were much on the road, kept a bright lookout for him. The crimp, habitually given to underhand practices, turned informer when prices for seamen ruled low in the service he usually catered for. His mistress loved him as long as his money lasted; when he had no more to throw away upon her she perfidiously betrayed him. And for all this there was a reason as simple as casting up the number of shillings in the pound. No matter how penniless the sailor himself might be, he was always worth that sum at the rendezvous. Twenty shillings was the reward paid for information leading to his apprehension as a straggler or a skulker, and it was largely on the strength of such informations, and often under the personal guidance of such detestable informers, that the gang went a-hunting. Apart from greed of gain, the motive most commonly underlying informations was either jealousy or spite. Women were the greatest sinners in the first respect. Let the sailorman concealed by a woman only so much as look with favour upon another, and his fate was sealed. She gave him away, or, what was more profitable, sold him without regret. There were as good fish in the sea as ever came out. Perhaps better. On the wings of spite and malice the escapades of youth often came home to roost after many years. Men who had run away to sea as lads, but had afterwards married and settled down, were informed on by evil-disposed persons who bore them some grudge, and torn from their families as having used the sea. Stephen Kemp, of Warbelton in Sussex, one of the many who suffered this fate, had indeed used the sea, but only for a single night on board a fishing-boat. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1445--Capt. Alms, 9 June 1777.] In face of these infamies it is good to read of how they dealt with informers at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There the role was one fraught with peculiar danger. Rewards were paid by the Collector of Customs, and when a Newcastle man went to the Customs-House to claim the price of some sailor's betrayal, the people set upon him and incontinently broke his head. One notorious receiver of such rewards was "nearly murther'd." Thereafter informers had to be paid in private places for fear of the mob, and so many persons fell under suspicion of playing the dastardly game that the regulating captain was besieged by applicants for "certificates of innocency." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Letters of Capt. Bover, 1777.] [Illustration: ONE OF THE RAREST OF PRESS-GANG RECORDS. A play-bill announcing the suspension of the Gang's operations on "Play Nights"; in the collection of Mr. A. M. Broadley, by whose kind permission it is reproduced.] Informations not infrequently took the form of anonymous communications addressed by the same hand to two different gangs at one and the same time, and when this was the case, and both gangs sallied forth in quest of the skulker, a collision was pretty sure to follow. Sometimes the encounter resolved itself into a running fight, in the course of which the poor sailor, who formed the bone of contention, was pressed and re-pressed several times over between his hiding-place and one or other of the rendezvous. Rivalry between gangs engaged in ordinary pressing led to many a stirring encounter and bloody fracas. A gang sent out by H.M.S. _Thetis_ was once attacked, while prowling about the waterside slums of Deptford, by "three or four different gangs, to the number of thirty men." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1502--Capt. Butcher, 29 Oct. 1782.] There was a greater demand for bandages than for sailors in Deptford during the rest of the night. The most extraordinary affair of this description to be met with in the annals of pressing is perhaps one that occurred early in the reign of Queen Anne. Amongst the men-of-war then lying at Spithead were the _Dorsetshire_, Capt. Butler commander, and the _Medway_. Hearing that some sailors were in hiding at a place a little distance beyond Gosport, Capt. Butler dispatched his 1st and 2nd lieutenants, in charge of thirty of his best men, with instructions to take them and bring them on board. It so happened that a strong gang was at the same time on shore from the _Medway_, presumably on the same errand, and this party the Dorsetshires, returning to their ship with the seamen they had taken, found posted in the Gosport road for the avowed purpose of re-pressing the pressed men. By a timely detour, however, they reached the waterside "without any mischief done." Meanwhile, a rumour had somehow reached the ears of Capt. Butler to the effect that a fight was in progress and his 1st lieutenant killed. He immediately took boat and hurried over to Gosport, where, to his relief, he found his people all safe in their boats, but on the Point, to use his own graphic words, "severall hundred People, some with drawn Swords, some with Spitts, others with Clubbs, Staves & Stretchers. Some cry'd 'One & All!' others cry'd 'Medways!' and some again swearing, cursing & banning that they would knock my People's Brains out. Off I went with my Barge to the Longboat," continues the gallant captain, "commanding them to weigh their grappling & goe with me aboard. In the meantime off came about twelve Boats full with the _Medway's_ men to lay my Longboat aboard, who surrounded us with Swords, Clubbs, Staves & divers Instruments, & nothing would do but all our Brains must be Knock't out. Finding how I defended the Longboat, they then undertook to attack myselfe and people, One of their Boats came upon the stern and made severall Blows at my Coxwain, and if it had not been for the Resolution I had taken to endure all these Abuses, I had Kill'd all those men with my own Hand; but this Boat in particular stuck close to me with only six men, and I kept a very good Eye upon her. All this time we were rowing out of the Harbour with these Boats about us as far as Portsmouth Point, my Coxwain wounded, myselfe and People dangerously assaulted with Stones which they brought from the Beech & threw at us, and as their Boats drop'd off I took my opportunity & seized ye Boat with the Six Men that had so attack'd me, and have secured them in Irons." With this the incident practically ended; for although the Medways retaliated by seizing and carrying off the _Dorsetshire's_ coxwain and a crew who ventured ashore next day with letters, the latter were speedily released; but for a week Capt. Butler--fiery old Trojan! who could have slain a whole boat's-crew with his own hand--remained a close prisoner on board his ship. "Should I but put my foot ashoar," we hear him growl, "I am murther'd that minute." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1467--Capt. Butler, 1 June 1705.] With certain exceptions presently to be noted, every man's hand was against the fugitive sailor, and this being so it followed as a matter of course that in his inveterate pursuit of him the gangsman found more honourable allies than that nefarious person, the man-selling informer. The class whom the sailor himself, in his contempt of the good feeding he never shared, nicknamed "big-bellied placemen"--the pompous mayors, the portly aldermen and the county magistrate who knew a good horse or hound but precious little law, were almost to a man the gangsman's coadjutors. Lavishly wined and dined at Admiralty expense, they urbanely "backed" the regulating captain's warrants, consistently winked at his glaring infractions of law and order, and with the most commendable loyalty imaginable did all in their power to forward His Majesty's service. Even the military, if rightly approached on their pinnacle of lofty superiority, now and then condescended to lend the gangsman a hand. Did not Sloper, Major-General and Commandant at Lewes, throw a whole company into the siege of Brighton? These post-prandial concessions on the part of bigwigs desirous of currying favour in high places on the whole told heavily against the sorely harassed object of the gangsman's quest, rendering it, amongst other things, extremely unsafe for him to indulge in those unconventional outbursts which, under happier conditions, so uniformly marked his jovial moods. At the playhouse, for example, he could not heave empty bottles or similar tokens of appreciation upon the stage without grave risk of incurring the fate that overtook Steven David, Samuel Jenkins and Thomas Williams, three sailors of Falmouth town who, merely because they adopted so unusual a mode of applauding a favourite, were by magisterial order handed over to Lieut. Box of H.M.S. _Blonde_, with a peremptory request that they should be transferred forthwith to that floating stage where the only recognised "turns" were those of the cat and the capstan. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Ballard, 13 Dec. 1806.] Luckily for the sailor and those of other callings who shared his liability to the press, the civil authorities did not range themselves on the gangsman's side with complete unanimity. Local considerations of trade, coupled with some faint conception of the hideous injustice the seafaring classes groaned under, and groaned in vain, here and there outweighed patriotism and dinners. Little by little a cantankerous spirit of opposition got abroad, and every now and then, at this point or at that, some mayor or alderman, obsessed by this spirit beyond his fellows and his time, seized such opportunities as office threw in his way to mark his disapproval of the wrongs the sailor suffered. Had this attitude been more general, or more consistent in itself, the press-gang would not have endured for a day. The role of Richard Yea and Nay was, however, the favourite one with urban authorities. Towns at first not "inclinable to allow a pressing," afterwards relented and took the gang to their bosom, or entertained it gladly for a time, only to cast it out with contumely. A lieutenant who was sent to Newcastle to press in 1702 found "no manner of encouragement there"; yet seventy-five years later the Tyneside city, thanks to the loyal co-operation of a long succession of mayors, and of such men as George Stephenson, sometime Deputy-Master of the Trinity House, had become one of the riskiest in the kingdom for the seafaring man who was a stranger within her gates. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Capt. Bover, 11 Aug. 1778.] The attitude of Poole differed in some respects from that of other towns. Her mayors and magistrates, while they did not actually oppose the pressing of seamen within the borough, would neither back the warrants nor lend the gangs their countenance. The reason advanced for this disloyal attitude was of the absurdest nature. Poole held that in order to press twenty men you were not at liberty to kill the twenty-first. That, in fact, was what had happened on board the _Maria_ brig as she came into port there, deeply laden with fish from the Banks, and the corporation very foolishly never forgot the trivial incident. It did not, of course, follow that the Poole sailor enjoyed freedom from the press. Far from it. What he did enjoy was a reputation that, if not all his own, was yet sufficiently so to be shared by few. Bred in that roughest of all schools, the Newfoundland cod fishery, he was an exceptionally tough nut to crack. "If Poole were a fish pool And the men of Poole fish, There'd be a pool for the devil And fish for his dish," was how the old jibe ran, and in this estimate of the Poole man's character the gangs fully concurred. They knew him well and liked him little, so when bent on pressing him they adopted no squeamish measures, but very wisely "trusted to the strength of their right arms for it." Some of their attempts to take him make strange reading. About eight o'clock on a certain winter's evening, Regulating Captain Walbeoff, accompanied by Lieut. Osmer, a midshipman and eight gangsmen, broke into the house of William Trim, a seafaring native of the place whom they knew to be at home and had resolved to press. Alarmed by the forcing of the door, and only too well aware of what it portended, Trim made for the stairs, where, turning upon his pursuers, he struck repeatedly and savagely at the midshipman, who headed them, with a red-hot poker which he had snatched out of the fire at the moment of his flight. He was, however, quickly overpowered, disarmed and dragged back into the lower room, where his captors threw him violently to the floor and with their hangers took effective measures to prevent his escape or further opposition. His sister happened to be in the house, and whilst this was going on the lieutenant brutally assaulted her, presumably because she wished to go to her brother's assistance. Meanwhile Trim's father, a man near seventy years of age, who lived only a stone's-throw away, hearing the uproar, and being told the gang had come for his son, ran to the house with the intention, as he afterwards declared, of persuading him to go quietly. Seeing him stretched upon the floor, he stooped to lift him to his feet, when one of the gang attacked him and stabbed him in the back. He fell bleeding beside the younger man, and was there beaten by a number of the gangsmen whilst the remainder dragged his son off to the press-room, whence he was in due course dispatched to the fleet at Spithead. The date of this brutal episode is 1804; the manner of it, "nothing more than what usually happened on such occasions" in the town of Poole. [Footnote _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers at Poole, 13 Aug. 1804.] For this deplorable state of things Poole had none but herself to thank. Had she, instead of merely refusing to back the warrants, taken effective measures to rid herself of the gang, that mischievous body would have soon left her in peace. Rochester wore the jewel of consistency in this respect. When Lieut. Brenton pressed a youth there who "appeared to be a seafaring man," but turned out to be an exempt city apprentice, he was promptly arrested and deprived of his sword, the mayor making no bones of telling him that his warrant was "useless in Rochester." With this broad hint he was discharged; but the people proved less lenient than the mayor, for they set about him and beat him unmercifully. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 301--Law Officers' Opinions, 1784-92, No. 42: Deposition of Lieut. Brenton.] Save on a single occasion, already incidentally referred to, civic Liverpool treated the gang with uniform kindness. In 1745, at a time when the rebels were reported to be within only four miles of the city, the mayor refused to back warrants for the pressing of sailors to protect the shipping in the river. His reason was a cogent one. The captains of the _Southsea Castle_, the _Mercury_ and the _Loo_, three ships of war then in the Mersey, had just recently "manned their boats with marines and impressed from the shore near fifty men," and the seafaring element of the town, always a formidable one, was up in arms because of it. This so intimidated the mayor that he dared not sanction further raids "for fear of being murder'd." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Letters of Capt. Amherst, Dec. 1745.] His dread of the armed sailor was not shared by Henry Alcock, sometime mayor of Waterford. That gentleman "often headed the press-gangs" in person. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Capt. Bennett, 13 Nov. 1780.] Deal objected to the press for reasons extending back to the reign of King John. As a member of the Cinque Ports that town had constantly supplied the kings and queens of the realm, from the time of Magna Charta downwards, with great numbers of able and sufficient seamen who, according to the ancient custom of the Five Ports, had been impressed and raised by the mayor and magistrates of the town, acting under orders from the Lord Warden, and not by irresponsible gangs from without. It was to these, and not to the press as such, that Deal objected. The introduction of gangs in her opinion bred disorder. Great disturbances, breaches of the peace, riots, tumults and even bloodshed attended their steps and made their presence in any peaceably disposed community highly undesirable. Within the memory of living man even, Deal had obliged no less than four hundred seamen to go on board the ships of the fleet, and she desired no more of those strangers who recently, incited by Admiral the Marquis of Carmarthen, had gone a-pressing in her streets and grievously wounded divers persons. [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic_, Anne, xxxvi: No. 24: Petition of the Mayor, Jurats and Commonalty of the Free Town and Borough of Deal.] In this commonsense view of the case Deal was ably supported by Dover, the premier Cinque Port. Dover, it is true, so far as we know never embodied her objections to the press in any humble petition to the Queen's Majesty. She chose instead a directer method, for when the lieutenant of the _Devonshire_ impressed six men belonging to a brigantine from Carolina in her streets, and attempted to carry them beyond the limits of the borough, "many people of Dover, in company with the Mayor thereof, assembled themselves together and would not permit the lieutenant to bring them away." The action angered the Lords Commissioners, who resolved to teach Dover a lesson. Orders were accordingly sent down to Capt. Dent, whose ship the _Shrewsbury_ man-o'-war was then in the Downs, directing him to send a gang ashore and press the first six good seamen they should meet with, taking care, however, since their Lordships did not wish to be too hard upon the town, that the men so pressed were bachelors and not householders. Lieut. O'Brien was entrusted with this delicate punitive mission. He returned on board after a campaign of only a few hours' duration, triumphantly bearing with him the stipulated hostages for Dover's future good behaviour--"six very good seamen, natives and inhabitants, and five of them bachelors." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1696--Capt. Dent, 24 Aug. 1743.] The sixth was of course a householder, a circumstance that made the town's punishment all the severer. Its effects were less salutary than the Admiralty had anticipated. True, both Dover and Deal thereafter withdrew their opposition to the press so far as to admit the gang within their borders; but they kept a watchful eye upon its doings, and every now and then the old spirit flamed out again at white heat, consuming the bonds of some poor devil who, like Alexander Hart, freeman of Dover, had been irregularly taken. On this occasion the mayor, backed by a posse of constables, himself broke open the press-room door. A similar incident, occurring a little later in the same year, so incensed Capt. Ball, who aptly enough was at the time in command of the _Nemesis_, that he roundly swore "to impress every seafaring man in Dover and make them repent of their impudence." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 301--Law Officers' Opinions, 1784-92, No. 44; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1507--Capt. Ball, 15 April 1791.] Where the magistrate had it most in his power to make or mar the fugitive sailor's chances was in connection with the familiar fiction that the Englishman's house is his castle. To hide a sailor was to steal the king's chattel--penalty, 5 Pounds forfeited to the parish; and if you were guilty of such a theft, or were with good reason suspected of being guilty, you found yourself in much the same case as the ordinary thief or the receiver of stolen goods. A search warrant could be sworn out before a magistrate, and your house ransacked from cellar to garret. Without such warrant, however, it could not be lawfully entered. In the heat of pressing forcible entry was nevertheless not unusual, and many an impress officer found himself involved in actions for trespass or damages in consequence of his own indiscretion or the excessive zeal of his gang. The defence set up by Lieut. Doyle, of Dublin, that the "Panel of the Door was Broke by Accident," would not go down in a court of law, however avidly it might be swallowed by the Board of Admiralty. More than this. The magistrate was by law empowered to seize all straggling seamen and landsmen and hand them over to the gangs for consignment to the fleet. The vagabond, as the unfortunate tramp of those days was commonly called, had thus a bad time of it. For him all roads led to Spithead. The same was true of persons who made themselves a public nuisance in other ways. By express magisterial order many answering to that description followed Francis Juniper of Cuckfield, "a very drunken, troublesome fellow, without a coat to his back," who was sent away lest he should become "chargeable to the parish." The magistrate in this way conferred a double benefit upon his country. He defended it against itself whilst helping it to defend itself against the French. Still, the latter benefit was not always above suspicion. The "ignorant zeal of simple justices," we are told, often impelled them to hand over to the gangs men whom "any old woman could see with half an eye to be properer objects of pity and charity than fit to serve His Majesty." "Send your myrmidons," was a form of summons familiar to every gang officer. As its tone implies, its source was magisterial, and when the officer received it he hastened with his gang to the Petty Sessions, the Assizes or the prison, and there took over, as an unearned increment of His Majesty's fleet, the person of some misdemeanant willing to exchange bridewell for the briny, or the manacled body of some convicted felon who preferred to swing in a hammock at sea rather than on the gallows ashore. A strangely assorted crew it was, this overflow of the jails that clanked slowly seawards, marshalled by the gang. Reprieves and commutations, if by no means universal in a confirmed hanging age, were yet common enough to invest it with an appalling sameness that was nevertheless an appalling variety. Able seamen sentenced for horse-stealing or rioting, town dwellers raided out of night-houses, impostors who simulated fits or played the maimed soldier, fishermen in the illicit brandy and tobacco line, gentlemen of the road, makers of "flash" notes and false coin, stealers of sheep, assaulters of women, pickpockets and murderers in one unmitigated throng went the way of the fleet and there sank their vices, their roguery, their crimes and their identity in the number of a mess. Boys were in that flock of jail-birds too--youths barely in their teens, guilty of such heinous offences as throwing stones at people who passed in boats upon the river, or of "playing during divine service on Sunday" and remaining impenitent and obdurate when confronted with all the "terrific apparatus of fetters, chains and dark cells" pertaining to a well-equipped city jail. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534, 1545--Capt. Barker, 1 March 1805, 20 Aug. 1809, and numerous instances.] The turning over of such young reprobates to the gang was one of the pleasing duties of the magistrate. CHAPTER VIII. AT GRIPS WITH THE GANG. When all avenues of escape were cut off and the sailor found himself face to face with the gang and imminent capture, he either surrendered his liberty at the word of command or staked it on the issue of a fight. His choice of the latter alternative was the proverbial turning of the worm, but of a worm that was no mean adversary. Fear of the gang, supposing him to entertain any, was thrown to the winds. Fear of the consequences--the clink, or maybe the gallows for a last land-fall--which had restrained him in less critical moments when he had both room to run and opportunity, sat lightly on him now. In red realism there flashed through his brain the example of some doughty sailor, the hero of many an anchor-watch and forecastle yarn, who had fought the gang to its last man and yet come off victor. The swift vision fired his blood and nerved his arm, and under its obsession he stood up to his would-be captors with all the dogged pluck for which he was famous when facing the enemy at sea. In contests of this description the weapon perhaps counted for as much as the man who wielded it, and as its nature depended largely upon circumstances and surroundings, the range of choice was generally wide enough to please the most elective taste. Pressing consequently introduced the gangsman to some strange weapons. Trim, the Poole sailor whose capture is narrated in the foregoing chapter, defended himself with a red-hot poker. In what may be termed domestic as opposed to public pressing, the use of this homely utensil as an impromptu liberty-preserver was not at all uncommon. Hot or cold, it proved a formidable weapon in the hands of a determined man, more especially when, as was at that time very commonly the case, it belonged to the ponderous cobiron or knobbed variety. Another weapon of recognised utility, particularly in the vicinity of docks, careening-stations and ship-yards, was the humble tar-mop. Consisting of a wooden handle some five or six feet in length, though of no great diameter, terminating in a ball of spun-yarn forming the actual mop, this implement, when new, was comparatively harmless. No serious blow could then be dealt with it; but once it had been used for "paying" a vessel's bottom and sides it underwent a change that rendered it truly formidable. The ball of ravellings forming the mop became then thoroughly, charged with tar or pitch and dried in a rough mass scarcely less heavy than lead. In this condition it was capable of inflicting a terrible blow, and many were the tussels decided by it. A remarkable instance of its effective use occurred at Ipswich in 1703, when a gang from the _Solebay_, rowing up the Orwell from Harwich, attempted to press the men engaged in re-paying a collier. They were immediately "struck down with Pitch-Mopps, to the great Peril of their Lives." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt. Aldred, 6 Jan. 1702-3.] The weapon to which the sailor was most partial, however, was the familiar capstan-bar. In it, as in its fellow the handspike, he found a whole armament. Its availability, whether on shipboard or at the waterside, its rough-and-ready nature, and above all its heft and general capacity for dealing a knock-down blow without inflicting necessarily fatal injuries, adapted it exactly to the sailor's requirements, defensive or the reverse. It was with a capstan-bar that Paul Jones, when hard pressed by a gang on board his ship at Liverpool, was reputed to have stretched three of his assailants dead on deck. Every sailor had heard of that glorious achievement and applauded it, the killing perhaps grudgingly excepted. So, too, did he applaud the hardihood of William Bingham, that far-famed north-country sailor who, adopting pistols as his weapon, negligently stuck a brace of them in his belt and walked the streets of Newcastle in open defiance of the gangs, none of which durst lay a hand on him till the unlucky day when, in a moment of criminal carelessness that could never be forgiven, he left his weapons at home and was haled to the press-room fighting, all too late, like a fiend incarnate. Not to enlarge on the endless variety of chance weapons, there remained those good old-standers the musket, the cutlass and the knife, each of which, in the sailor's grasp, played its part in the rough-and-tumble of pressing, and played it well. A case in point, familiar to every seaman, was the last fight put up by that famous Plymouth sailor, Emanuel Herbert, another fatalist who, like Bingham, believed in having two strings to his bow. He accordingly provided himself with both fuzee and hanger, and with these comforting bed-fellows retired to rest in an upper chamber of the public-house where he lodged, easy in the knowledge that whatever happened the door of his crib commanded the stairs. From this stronghold the gang invited him to come down. He returned the compliment by inviting them up, assuring them that he had a warm welcome in store for the first who should favour him with a visit. The ambiguity of the invitation appears to have been thrown away upon the gang, for "three of my people," says the officer who led them, "rushed up, and the gun missing fire, he immediately run one of them through the body with the hanger"--a mode of welcoming his visitors which resulted in Herbert's shifting his lodgings to Exeter jail, and in the wounded man's speedy death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1473--Capt. Brown, 4 July 1727.] Here was a serious contingency indeed; but whatever deterrent effect the fatal issue of this affair, as of many similar ones, may have had upon the sailor's use of lethal weapons when attacked by the gang, that effect was largely, if not altogether, neutralised by the upshot of the famous Broadfoot case, which, occurring some sixteen years later, gave the scales of justice a decided turn in the sailor's favour and robbed the killing of a gangsman of its only terror, the shadow of the gallows. The incident in question opened in Bristol river, with the boarding of a merchant-man by a tender's gang. As they came over the side Broadfoot met them, blunderbuss in hand. Being there to guard the ship, he bade them begone, and upon their disregarding the order, and closing in upon him with evident intent to take him, he clapped the blunderbuss, which was heavily charged with swanshot, to his shoulder and let fly into the midst of them. One of their number, Calahan by name, fell mortally wounded, and Broadfoot was in due course indicted for wilful murder. [Footnote: _Westminster Journal_, 30 April 1743.] How he was found not guilty on the ground that a warrant directed to the lieutenant gave the gang no power to take him, and that he was therefore justified in defending himself, was well known to every sailor in the kingdom. No jury thereafter ever found him guilty of a capital felony if by chance he killed a gangsman in self-defence. The worst he had to fear was a verdict of manslaughter--a circumstance that proved highly inspiriting to him in his frequent scraps with the gang. There was another aspect of the case, however, that came home to the sailor rather more intimately than the risk of being called upon to "do time" under conditions scarcely worse than those he habitually endured at sea. Suppose, instead of his killing the gangsman, the gangsman killed him? He recalled a case he had heard much palaver about. An able seaman, a perfect Tom Bowling of a fellow, brought to at an alehouse in the Borough--the old "Bull's Head" it was--having a mind to lie snug for a while, 'tween voyages. However, one day, being three sheets in the wind or thereabouts, he risked a run and was made a prize of, worse luck, by a press-gang that engaged him. Their boat lay at Battle Bridge in the Narrow Passage, and while they were bearing down upon her, with the sailor-chap in tow, what should Jack do but out with his knife and slip it into one of the gangers. 'Twas nothing much, a waistcoat wound at most, but the ganger resented the liberty, and swearing that no man should tap his claret for nix, he ups with his cudgel and fetches Jack a clip beside the head that lost him the number of his mess, for soon after he was discharged dead along of having his head broke. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Lieut. Slyford, 24 Nov. 1755. "Discharged dead," abbreviated to "DD," the regulation entry in the muster books against the names of persons deceased.] Risks of this sort raised grave issues for the sailor--issues to be well considered of in those serious moments that came to the most reckless on the wings of the wind or the lift of the waves at sea, what time drink and the gang were remote factors in the problem of life. But ashore! Ah! that was another matter. Life ashore was far too crowded, far too sweet for serious reflections. The absorbing business of pleasure left little room for thought, and the thoughts that came to the sailor later, when he had had his fling and was again afoot in search of a ship, decidedly favoured the killing of a gangsman, if need be, rather than the loss of his own life or of a berth. The prevalence of these sentiments rendered the taking of the sailor a dangerous business, particularly when he consorted in bands. In that part of the west country traversed by the great roads from Bristol to Liverpool, and having Stourbridge as its approximate centre, ambulatory bands proved very formidable. The presence of the rendezvous at Stourbridge accounted for this. Seamen travelled in strength because they feared it. Two gangs were stationed there under Capt. Beecher, and news of the approach of a large party of seamen from the south having one day been brought in, he at once made preparations for intercepting them. Lieut. Barnsley and his gang marched direct to Hoobrook, a couple of miles south of Kidderminster, a point the seamen had perforce to pass. His instructions were to wait there, picking up in the meantime such of the sailor party as lagged behind from footsoreness or fatigue, till joined by Lieut. Birchall and the other gang, when the two were to unite forces and press the main body. Through unforeseen circumstances, however, the plan miscarried. Birchall, who had taken a circuitous route, arrived late, whilst the band of sailors arrived early. They numbered, moreover, forty-six as against eleven gangsmen and two officers. Four to one was a temptation the sailors could not resist. They attacked the gangs with such ferocity that out of the thirteen only one man returned to the rendezvous with a whole skin. Luckily, there were no casualties on this occasion; but a few days later, while two of Barnsley's gangsmen were out on duty some little distance from the town, they were suddenly attacked by a couple of sailors, presumably members of the same band, who left one of them dead in the road. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Capt. Beecher, 12 July and 4 Aug. 1781.] Owing to its close proximity to the Thames, that remote suburb of eighteenth century London known as Stepney Fields was much frequented by armed bands of the above description, who successfully resisted all attempts to take them. The master-at-arms of the _Chatham_ man-o'-war, chancing once to pass that way, came in for exceedingly rough usage at their hands, and when next day a lieutenant from the same ship appeared upon the scene with a gang at his back and tried to press the ringleaders in that affair, they "swore by God he should not, and if he offered to lay hands on them, they would cut him down." With this threat they drew their cutlasses, slashed savagely at the lieutenant, and "made off through the Mobb which had gathered round them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2579--Capt. Townshend, 21 April 1743.] A spot not many miles distant from Stepney Fields was the scene of a singular fray many years later. His Majesty's ship _Squirrel_ happened at the time to be lying in Longreach, and her commander, Capt. Brawn, one day received intelligence that a number of sailors were to be met with in the town of Barking. He at once dispatched his 1st and 2nd lieutenants with a contingent of twenty-five men and several petty officers, to rout them out and take them. They reached Barking about nine o'clock in the evening, the month being July, and were not long in securing several of the skulkers, who with many of the male inhabitants of the place were at that hour congregated in public-houses, unsuspicious of danger. The sudden appearance in their midst of so large an armed force, however, coupled with the outcry and confusion inseparable from the pressing of a number of men, alarmed the townsfolk, who poured into the streets, rescued the pressed men, and would have inflicted summary punishment upon the intruders had not the senior officer, seeing his party hopelessly outnumbered, tactfully drawn off his force. This he did in good order and without serious hurt; but just as he and his men were congratulating themselves upon their escape, they were suddenly ambushed, at a point where their road ran between high banks, by a "large concourse of Irish haymakers, to the number of at least five hundred men, all armed with sabres [Footnote: So in the original, but "sabres" is perhaps an error for "scythes."] and pitchforks," who with wild cries and all the Irishman's native love of a shindy fell upon the unfortunate gangsmen and gave them a "most severe beating." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Brawn, 3 July 1803.] Attacks on the gang, made with deliberate intent to rescue pressed men from its custody, were by no means confined to Barking. The informer throve in the land, but notwithstanding his hostile activity the sailor everywhere had friends who possessed at least one cardinal virtue. They seldom hung back when he was in danger, or hesitated to strike a blow in his defence. There came into Limehouse Hole, on a certain day in the summer of 1709, a vessel called the _Martin_ galley. How many men were in her we do not learn; but whatever their number, there was amongst them one man who had either a special dread of the press or some more than usually urgent occasion for wishing to avoid it. Watching his opportunity, he slipped into one of the galley's boats, sculled her rapidly to land, and there leapt out--just as a press-gang hove in sight ahead! It was a dramatic moment. The sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob," says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, and being Pursued also by the Galley's men, who brought Cutlasses in the Boat with them to rescue their Prest Man, the Gang was at last forc'd to betake themselves to a Corn-lighter, where they might stand upon their Defence. The Galley's men could not get aboard, but lay with their Boat along the side of the Lighter, where they endeavouring to force in, and the Gang to keep them out, the Boat of a sudden oversett and some of the Men therein were Drown'd. Three of the Press-Gang were forc'd likewise into the Water, whereof 'tis said one is Drown'd and the other two in Irons in the New Prison. The remaining part of the Gang leapt into a Wherry, the Galley's men pursuing them, but, not gaining upon them, they gave over the Pursuit." The pressed man all this while was laughing in his sleeve. "He lay on the other side of the Lighter, in the Tender's boat, whence he made his escape." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1437--Capt. Aston, 10 Aug. 1709.] In their efforts to restore the freedom of the pressed man, the sailor's friends did not confine their attention exclusively to the gang. When they turned out in vindication of those rights which the sailor did not possess, they not infrequently found their diversion in wrecking the gang's headquarters or in making a determined, though generally futile, onslaught upon the tender. Respectable people, who had no particular reason to favour the sailor's cause, viewed these ebullitions of mingled rage and mischief with dismay, stigmatising those who so lightheartedly participated in them as the "lower classes" and the "mob." Few towns in the kingdom boasted--or reprobated, as the case might be--a more erratically festive mob than Leith. As far back as 1709 Bailie Cockburn had advised the inhabitants of that burgh to "oppose any impressor," and seizing the occasion of the "Impressure of an Apprentice Boy," had set them an example by arresting the pinnace of Her Majesty's ship _Rye_, together with her whole crew, thirteen in number, and keeping them in close confinement till the lad was given up. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2448--Capt. Shale, 4 Jan. 1708-9.] The worthy Bailie was in due time gathered unto his fathers, and with the growth of the century gangs came and went in endless succession, but neither the precept nor the example was ever forgotten in Leith. Much pressing was done there, but it was done almost entirely upon the water. To transfer the scene of action to the strand meant certain tumult, for there the whim of the mob was law. Now it pulled the gang-officer's house about his ears because he dared to press a shipwright; again, it stoned the gang viciously because they rescued some seamen from a wreck--and kept them. Between whiles it amused itself by cutting down the rendezvous flag-staff; and if nothing better offered, it split up into component parts, each of which became a greater terror than the whole. One night, when the watch had been set and all was quiet, a party of this description, only three in number, approached the rendezvous and respectfully requested leave to drink a last dram with some newly pressed men who were then in the cage, their quondam shipmates. Suspecting no ulterior design, the guard incautiously admitted them, whereupon they dashed a quantity of spirits on the fire, set the place in a blaze, and carried off the pressed men amid the hullabaloo that followed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1516-9--Letters of Capt. Brenton, 1797-8; Lieut. Pierie, 2 Feb. 1798.] If Leith did this sort of thing well, Greenock, her commercial rival on the Clyde, did it very much better; for where the Leith mob was but a sporadic thing, erupting from its slummy fastnesses only in response to rumour of chance amusement to be had or mischief to be done, Greenock held her mob always in hand, a perpetual menace to the gangsman did he dare to disregard the Clydeside ordinance in respect to pressing. That ordinance restricted pressing exclusively to the water; but it went further, for it laid it down as an inviolable rule that members of certain trades should not be pressed at all. It was with the Trades that the ordinance originated. There was little or no Greenock apart from the Trades. The will of the Trades was supreme. The coopers, carpenters, riggers, caulkers and seamen of the town ruled the burgh. Assembled in public meeting, they resolved unanimously "to stand by and support each other" in the event of a press; and having come to this decision they indited a trite letter to the magistrates, intimating in unequivocal terms that "if they countenanced the press, they must abide by the consequences," for once the Trades took the matter in hand "they could not say where they would stop." With the worthy burgesses laying down the law in this fashion, it is little wonder that the gangs "seldom dared to press ashore," or that they should have been able to take "only two coopers in ten months." For the Trades were as good as their word. The moment a case of prohibited pressing became known they took action. Alexander Weir, member of the Shipwrights' Society, was taken whilst returning from his "lawful employ," and immediately his mates, to the number of between three and four hundred, downed tools and marched to the rendezvous, where they peremptorily demanded his release. Have him they would, and if the gang-officer did not see fit to comply with their demand, not only should he never press another man in Greenock, but they would seize one of the armed vessels in the river, lay her alongside the tender, where Weir was confined, and take him out of her by force. Brenton was regulating captain there at the time, and to pacify the mob he promised to release the man--and broke his word. Thereupon the people "became very riotous and proceeded to burn everything that came in their way. About twelve o'clock they hauled one of the boats belonging to the rendezvous upon the Square and put her into the fire, but by the timely assistance of the officers and gangs, supported by the magistrates and a body of the Fencibles, the boat was recovered, though much damaged, and several of the ringleaders taken up and sent to prison." The affair did not end without bloodshed. "Lieut. Harrison, in defending himself, was under the necessity of running one of the rioters through the ribs." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1508--Letters of Capt. Brenton, 1793.] Though Bailie Cockburn once "arrested" the pinnace of a man-o'-war at Leith, the attempted burning of the Greenock press-boat is worthy of more than passing note as the only instance of that form of retaliation to be met with in the history of home pressing. In the American colonies, on the other hand, it was a common feature of demonstrations against the gang. Boston was specially notorious for that form of reprisal, and Governor Shirley, in one of his masterly dispatches, narrates at length, and with no little humour, how the mob on one occasion burnt with great éclat what they believed to be the press-boat, only to discover, when it was reduced to ashes, that it belonged to one of their own ringleaders. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 38l8--Shirley to the Admiralty, 1 Dec. 1747.] The threat of the Greenock artificers to lay alongside the tender and take out their man by force of arms was one for which there existed abundant, if by no means encouraging precedent. Long before, as early, indeed, as 1742, the keelmen frequenting Sunderland had set them an example in that respect by endeavouring, some hundreds strong, to haul the tender ashore--an attempt coupled with threats so dire that the officer in command trembled in his shoes lest he and his men should all "be made sacrifices of." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Allen, 13 March 1741-2.] Nothing so dreadful happened, however, for the attempt, like that made at Shoreham a few years later, when there "appear'd in Sight, from towards Brighthelmstone, about two or three Hundred Men arm'd with different Weapons, who came with an Intent to Attack the _Dispatch_ sloop," failed ignominiously, the attackers being routed on both occasions by a timely use of swivel guns and musketry. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Lieut. Barnsley, 25 March 1746.] Similar disaster overtook the organisers of the Tooley Street affair, of which one Taylor, lieutenant to Capt. William Boys of the _Royal Sovereign_, was the active cause. At the "Spread-Eagle" in Tooley Street he and his gang one evening pressed a privateersman--an insult keenly resented by the master of the ship. He accordingly sent off to the tender, whither the pressed man had been conveyed for security's sake, two wherries filled with armed seamen of the most piratical type. The fierce fight that ensued had a dramatic finish. "Two Pistols we took from them," says the narrator of the incident, in his quaint old style, "and three Cutlasses, and Six Men; but one of the Men took the Red Hott Poker out of the Fire, and our Men, having the Cutlasses, Cutt him and Kill'd him in Defence of themselves." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1488--Lieut. Taylor, 1 April 1757.] In attacks of this nature the fact that the tender was afloat told heavily in her favour, for unless temporarily hung up upon a mud-bank by the fall of the tide, she could only be got at by means of boats. With the rendezvous ashore the case was altogether different. Here you had a building in a public street, flaunting its purpose provocatively in your very face, and having a rear to guard as well as a front. For these reasons attacks on the rendezvous were generally attended with a greater measure of success than similar attempts directed against the tenders. The face of a pressed man had only to show itself at one of the stoutly barred windows, and immediately a crowd gathered. To the prisoner behind the bars this crowd was friendly, commiserating or chaffing him by turns; but to the gangsmen responsible for his being there it was invariably and uncompromisingly hostile, so much so that it needed only a carelessly uttered threat, or a thoughtlessly lifted hand, to fan the smouldering fires of hatred into a blaze. When this occurred, as it often did, things happened. Paving-stones hurtled through the curse-laden air, the windows flew in fragments, the door, assailed by overwhelming numbers, crashed in, and despite the stoutest resistance the gang could offer the pressed man was hustled out and carried off in triumph. The year 1755 witnessed a remarkable attack of this description upon the rendezvous at Deal, where a band of twenty-seven armed men made a sudden descent upon that obnoxious centre of activity and cut up the gang most grievously. As all wore masks and had their faces blackened, identification was out of the question. A reward of 200 Pounds, offered for proof of complicity in the outrage, elicited no information, and as a matter of fact its perpetrators were never discovered. In Capt. McCleverty's time the gang at Waterford was once very roughly handled whilst taking in a pressed man, and Mr. Mayor Alcock came hurrying down to learn what was amiss. He found the rendezvous beset by an angry and dangerous gathering. "Sir," said he to the captain, "have you no powder or shot in the house?" McCleverty assured him that he had. "Then, sir," cried the mayor, raising his voice so that all might hear, "do you make use of it, and I will support you." The crowd understood that argument and immediately dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Deposition of Lieut. M Kellop, 1780.] Had the Admiralty reasoned in similar terms with those who beat its gangsmen, converted its rendezvous into match-wood and carried off its pressed men, it would have quickly made itself as heartily feared as it was already hated; but in seeking to shore up an odious cause by pacific methods it laid its motives open to the gravest misconstruction. Prudence was construed into timidity, and with every abstention from lead the sailor's mobbish friends grew more daring and outrageous. One night in the winter of 1780, whilst Capt. Worth of the Liverpool rendezvous sat lamenting the temporary dearth of seamen, Lieut. Haygarth came rushing in with a rare piece of news. On the road from Lancaster, it was reported, there was a whole coach-load of sailors. The chance was too good to be lost, and instant steps were taken to intercept the travellers. The gangs turned out, fully armed, and took up their position at a strategic point, just outside the town, commanding the road by which the sailors had to pass. By and by along came the coach, the horses weary, the occupants nodding or asleep. In a trice they were surrounded. Some of the gangsmen sprang at the horses' heads, others threw themselves upon the drowsy passengers. Shouts, curses and the thud of blows broke the silence of the night. Then the coach rumbled on again, empty. Its late occupants, fifteen in number, sulkily followed on foot, surrounded by their captors, who, as soon as the town was reached, locked them into the press-room for the rest of the night, it being the captain's intention to put them on board the tender in the Mersey at break of day. In this, however, he was frustrated by a remarkable development in the situation. Unknown to him, the coach-load of seamen had been designed for the _Stag_ privateer, a vessel just on the point of sailing. News of their capture reaching the ship soon after their arrival in the town, Spence, her 1st lieutenant, at once roused out all his available men, armed them, to the number of eighty, with cutlass and pistol, and led them ashore. There all was quiet, favouring their design. The hour was still early, and the silent, swift march through the deserted streets attracted no attention and excited no alarm. At the rendezvous the opposition of the weary sentinels counted for little. It was quickly brushed aside, the strong-room door gave way beneath a few well-directed blows, and by the time Liverpool went to breakfast the _Stag_ privateer was standing out to sea, her crew not only complete, but ably supplemented by eight additional occupants of the press-room who had never, so far as is known, travelled in that commodious vehicle, the Lancaster coach. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7, 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 19.] The neighbouring city of Chester in 1803 matched this exploit by another of great audacity. Chester had long been noted for its hostility to the gang, and the fact that the local volunteer corps--the Royal Chester Artillery--was composed mainly of ropemakers, riggers, shipwrights and sailmakers who had enlisted for the sole purpose of evading the press, did not tend to allay existing friction. Hence, when Capt. Birchall brought over a gang from Liverpool because he could not form one in Chester itself, and when he further signalised his arrival by pressing Daniel Jackson, a well-known volunteer, matters at once came to an ugly head. The day happened to be a field-day, and as Birchall crossed the market square to wait upon the magistrates at the City Hall, he was "given to understand what might be expected in the evening," for one of the artillerymen, striking his piece, called out to his fellows: "Now for a running ball! There he goes!" with hissing, booing and execrations. At seven o'clock one of the gang rushed into the captain's lodgings with disquieting news. The volunteers were attacking the rendezvous. He hurried out, but by the time he arrived on the scene the mischief was already done. The enraged volunteers, after first driving the gang into the City Hall, had torn down the rendezvous colours and staff, and broken open the city jail and rescued their comrade, whom they were then in the act of carrying shoulder-high through the streets, the centre of a howling mob that even the magistrates feared to face. By request Birchall and his gang returned to Liverpool, counting themselves lucky to have escaped the "running ball" they had been threatened with earlier in the day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Birchall, 29 Dec. 1803.] Another town that gave the gang a hot reception was Whitby. As in the case of Chester the gang there was an importation, having been brought in from Tyneside by Lieuts. Atkinson and Oakes. As at Chester, too, a place of rendezvous had been procured with difficulty, for at first no landlord could be found courageous enough to let a house for so dangerous a purpose. At length, however, one Cooper was prevailed upon to take the risk, and the flag was hung out. This would seem to have been the only provocative act of which the gang was guilty. It sufficed. Anticipation did the rest; for just as in some individuals gratitude consists in a lively sense of favours to come, so the resentment of mobs sometimes avenges a wrong before it has been inflicted. On Saturday the 23rd of February 1793, at the hour of half-past seven in the evening, a mob of a thousand persons, of whom many were women, suddenly appeared before the rendezvous. The first intimation of what was about to happen came in the shape of a furious volley of brickbats and stones, which instantly demolished every window in the house, to the utter consternation of its inmates. Worse, however, was in store for them. An attempt to rush the place was temporarily frustrated by the determined opposition of the gang, who, fearing that all in the house would be murdered, succeeded in holding the mob at bay for an hour and a half; but at nine o'clock, several of the gangsmen having been in the meantime struck down and incapacitated by stones, which were rained upon the devoted building without cessation, the door at length gave way before an onslaught with capstan-bars, and the mob swarmed in unchecked. A scene of indescribable confusion and fury ensued. Savagely assaulted and mercilessly beaten, the gangsmen and the unfortunate landlord were thrown into the street more dead than alive, every article of furniture on the premises was reduced to fragments, and when the mob at length drew off, hoarsely jubilant over the destruction it had wrought, nothing remained of His Majesty's rendezvous save bare walls and gaping windows. Even these were more than the townsfolk could endure the sight of. Next evening they reappeared upon the scene, intending to finish what they had begun by pulling the house down or burning it to ashes; but the timely arrival of troops frustrating their design, they regretfully dispersed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2739--Lieut. Atkinson, 26 Feb. and 27 June 1793.] Out at sea the sailor, if he could not set the tune by running away from the gang, played up to it with great heartiness. To sink the press-boat was his first aim. With this end in view he held stolidly on his course, if under weigh, betraying his intention by no sign till the boat, manoeuvring to get alongside of him, was in the right position for him to strike. Then, all of a sudden, he showed his hand. Clapping his helm hard over, he dexterously ran the boat down, leaving the struggling gangsmen to make what shift they could for their lives. Many a knight of the hanger was sent to Davy Jones in this summary fashion, unloved in life and cursed in the article of death. The attempt to best the gang by a master-stroke of this description was not, it need hardly be said, attended with uniform success. A miss of an inch or two, and the boat was safe astern, pulling like mad to recover lost ground. In these circumstances the sailor recalled how he had once seen a block fall from aloft and smash a shipmate's head, and from this he argued that if a suitable object such as a heavy round-shot, or, better still, the ship's grindstone, were deftly dropped over the side at the psychological moment, it must either have a somewhat similar effect upon the gangsmen below or sink the boat by knocking a hole in her bottom. The case of the _John and Elizabeth_ of Sunderland, that redoubtable Holland pink whose people were "resolved sooner to dye than to be impressed," affords an admirable example of the successful application of this theory. As the _John and Elizabeth_ was running into Sunderland harbour one afternoon in February 1742, three press-boats, hidden under cover of the pier-head, suddenly darted out as she surged past that point and attempted to board her. They met with a remarkable repulse. For ten minutes, according to the official account of the affair, the air was filled with grindstones, four-pound shot, iron crows, handspikes, capstan-bars, boat-hooks, billets of wood and imprecations, and when it cleared there was not in any of the boats a man who did not bear upon his person some bloody trace of that terrible fusillade. They sheered off, but in the excitement of the moment and the mortification of defeat Midshipmen Clapp and Danton drew their pistols and fired into the jeering crew ranged along the vessel's gunwhale, "not knowing," as they afterwards pleaded, "that there was any balls in the pistols." Evidence to the contrary was quickly forthcoming. A man fell dead on the pink's deck, and before morning the two middies were safe under lock and key in that "dismal hole," Durham jail. It was a notable victory for the sailor and applied mechanics. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Allen, 13 March 1741-2, and enclosure.] The affair of the _King William_ Indiaman, a ship whose people kept the united boats'-crews of two men-of-war at bay for nearly twenty-four hours, carried the sailor's resistance to the press an appreciable step further and developed some surprising tactics. Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of a day in September 1742, two ships came into the Downs in close order. They had been expected earlier in the day, and both the _Shrewsbury_ frigate and the _Shark_ sloop were on the lookout for them. A shot from the former brought the headmost to an anchor, but the second, the _King William_, hauled her wind and stood away close to the Goodwins, out of range of the frigate's guns. Here, the tide being spent and the wind veering ahead, she was obliged to anchor, and the warships' boats were at once manned and dispatched to press her men. Against this eventuality the latter appear to have been primed "with Dutch courage," as the saying went, the manner of which was to broach a cask of rum and drink your fill. On the approach of the press-boats pandemonium broke loose. The maddened crew, brandishing their cutlasses and shouting defiance, assailed the on-coming boats with every description of missile they could lay hands on, not excepting that most dangerous of all casual ammunition, broken bottles. The _Shrewsbury's_ mate fell, seriously wounded, and finding themselves unable to face the terrible hail of missiles, the boats drew off. Night now came on, rendering further attempts temporarily impossible--a respite of which the Indiaman's crew availed themselves to confine the master and break open the arms-chest, which he had taken the precaution to nail down. With morning the boats returned to the attack. Three times they attempted to board, and as often were they repulsed by pistol and musketry fire. Upon this the _Shark_, acting under peremptory orders from the _Shrewsbury_, ran down to within half-gunshot of the Indiaman and fired a broadside into her, immediately afterwards repeating the dose on finding her still defiant. The ship then submitted and all her men were pressed save two. They had been killed by the _Shark's_ gun-fire. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1829--Capt. Goddard, 22 Sept. and 16 Oct., and his Deposition, 19 Oct. 1742.] With the appearance of the gang on the deck of his ship there was ushered in the last stage but one of the sailor's resistance to the press afloat. How, when this happened, all hands were mustered and the protected sheep separated from the unprotected goats, has been fully described in a previous chapter. These preliminaries at an end, "Now, my lads," said the gang officer, addressing the pressable contingent in the terms of his instructions, "I must tell you that you are at liberty, if you so choose, to enter His Majesty's service as volunteers. If you come in in that way, you will each receive the bounty now being paid, together with two months' advance wages before you go to sea. But if you don't choose to enter volunteerly, then I must take you against your wills" It was a hard saying, and many an old shellback--ay! and young one too--spat viciously when he heard it. Conceive the situation! Here were these poor fellows returning from a voyage which perhaps had cut them off from home and kindred, from all the ordinary comforts and pleasures of life, for months or maybe years; here were they, with the familiar cliffs and downs under their hungry eyes, suddenly confronted with an alternative of the cruellest description, a Hobson's choice that left them no option but to submit or fight. It was a heartbreaking predicament for men, and more especially for sailor-men, to be placed in, and if they sometimes rose to the occasion like men and did their best to heave the gang bodily into the sea, or to drive them out of the ship with such weapons as their hard situation and the sailor's Providence threw in their way--if they did these things in the gang's despite, they must surely be judged as outraged husbands, fathers and lovers rather than as disloyal subjects of an exacting king. They would have made but sorry man-o'-war's-men had they entertained the gang in any other way. Opposed to the service cutlass, the sailor's emergency weapon was but a poor tool to stake his liberty upon, and even though the numerical odds chanced to be in his favour he often learnt, in the course of his pitched battles with the gang, that the edge of a hanger is sharper than the corresponding part of a handspike. Lucky for him if, with his shipmates, he could then retreat to close quarters below or between decks, there to make a final stand for his brief spell of liberty ashore. This was his last ditch. Beyond it lay only surrender or death. The death of the sailor at the hands of the gang introduces us to a phase of pressing technically known as the accidental, wherein the accidents were of three kinds--casual, unavoidable, and "disagreeable." The casual accident was one that could be neither foreseen nor averted, as when Capt. Argles, returning to England on the breaking up of the Limerick rendezvous in 1814, was captured by an American privateer "well up the Bristol Channel," a place where no one ever dreamed of falling in with such an enemy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Argles, 17 Aug. 1814.] To the unavoidable accident every impress officer and agent was liable in the execution of his duty. It could thus be foreseen in the abstract, though not in the instance. Hence it could not be avoided. Wounds given and received in the heat and turmoil of pressing came under this head, provided they did not prove fatal. The accident "disagreeable" was peculiar to pressing. It consisted in the killing of a man, by whatever means and in whatever manner, whilst endeavouring to press him, and the immediate effect of the act, which was common enough, was to set up a remarkable contradiction in terms. The man killed was not the victim of the accident. The victim was the officer or gangsman who was responsible for striking him off the roll of His Majesty's pressable subjects, and who thus let himself in for the consequences, more or less disagreeable, which inevitably followed. While it was naturally the ambition of every officer engaged in pressing "to do the business without any disagreeable accident ensuing," he preferred, did fate ordain it otherwise, that the accident should happen at sea rather than on land, since it was on land that the most disagreeable consequences accrued to the unfortunate victim. These embraced flight and prolonged expatriation, or, in the alternative, arrest, preliminary detention in one of His Majesty's prisons, and subsequent trial at the Assizes. What the ultimate punishment might be was a minor, though still ponderable consideration, since, where naval officers or agents were concerned, the law was singularly capricious. [Footnote: As in Lacie's case, 25 Elizabeth, where a mortal wound having been inflicted at sea, whereof the party died on land, the prisoner was acquitted because neither the Admiralty nor a jury could inquire of it.] At sea, on the other hand, the conditions which on land rendered accidents of this nature so uniformly disagreeable, were almost entirely reversed. How and why this was so can be best explained by stating a case. The accident in point occurred in the year 1755, and is associated with the illustrious name of Rodney. The Seven Years War was at the time looming in the near future, and England's secret complicity in the causes of that tremendous struggle rendered necessary the placing of her Navy upon a footing adequate to the demands which it was foreseen would be very shortly made upon it. In common with a hundred other naval officers, Rodney, who was then in command of the _Prince George_ guardship at Portsmouth, had orders to proceed without loss of time to the raising of men. One of his lieutenants was accordingly sent to London, that happy hunting-ground of the impress officer, while two others, with picked crews at their backs, were put in charge of tenders to intercept homeward-bounds. This was near the end of May. [Illustration: ANNE MILLS. Who served on board the _Maidstone_ in 1740.] On the 1st of June, in the early morning, one of these tenders--the _Princess Augusta_, Lieut. Sax commander--fell in, off Portland Bill, with the _Britannia_, a Leghorn trader of considerable force. In response to a shot fired as an intimation that she was expected to lay-to and receive a gang on board, the master, hailing, desired permission to retain his crew intact till he should have passed that dangerous piece of navigation known as the Race. To this reasonable request Sax acceded and the ship held on her course, closely followed by the tender. By the time the Race was passed, however, the merchant-man's crew had come to a resolution. They should not be pressed by "such a pimping vessel" as the _Princess Augusta_. Accordingly, they first deprived the master of the command, and then, when again hailed by the tender, "swore they would lose their lives sooner than bring too." The Channel at this time swarmed with tenders, and to Sax's hint that they might just as well give in then and there as be pressed later on, they replied with defiant huzzas and the discharge of one of their maindeck guns. The tender was immediately laid alongside, but on the gang's attempting to board they encountered a resistance so fierce that Sax, thinking to bring the infuriated crew to their senses, ordered his people to fire upon them. Ralph Sturdy and John Debusk, armed with harpoons, and John Wilson, who had requisitioned the cook's spit as a weapon, fell dead before that volley. The rest, submitting without further ado, were at once confined below. Now, three questions of moment are raised by this accident: What became of the ship? what was done with the dead men? and what punishment was meted out to the lieutenant and his gang? The crew once secured under hatches, the safety of the ship became of course the first consideration. It was assured by a simple expedient. The gang remained on board and worked the vessel into Portsmouth harbour, where, after her hands had been taken out--Rodney the receiver--"men in lieu" were put on board, as explained in our chapter on pressing afloat, and with this make-shift crew she was navigated to her destination, in this instance the port of London. As persons killed at sea, the three sailors who lay dead on the ship's deck did not come within the jurisdiction of the coroner. That official's cognisance of such matters extended only to high-water mark when the tide was at flood, or to low-water mark when it was at ebb. Beyond those limits, seawards, all acts of violence done in great ships, and resulting in mayhem or the death of a man, fell within the sole purview and jurisdiction of the Station Admiral, who on this occasion happened to be Sir Edward Hawke, commander of the White Squadron at Portsmouth. Now Sir Edward was not less keenly alive to the importance of keeping such cases hidden from the public eye than were the Lords Commissioners. Hence he immediately gave orders that the bodies of the dead men should be taken "without St. Helens" and there committed to the deep. Instead of going to feed the Navy, the three sailors thus went to feed the fishes, and another stain on the service was washed out with a commendable absence of publicity and fuss. There still remained the lieutenant and his gang to be dealt with and brought to what, by another singular perversion of terms, was called justice. On shore, notwithstanding the lenient view taken of such accidents, an indictment of manslaughter, if not of murder, would have assuredly followed the offence; and though in the circumstances it is doubtful whether any jury would have found the culprits guilty of the capital crime, yet the alternative verdict, with its consequent imprisonment and disgrace, held out anything but a rosy prospect to the young officer who had still his second "swab" to win. That was where the advantage of accidents at sea came in. On shore the judiciary, however kindly disposed to the naval service, were painfully disinterested. At sea the scales of justice were held, none too meticulously, by brother officers who had the service at heart. Under the judicious direction of Admiral Osborn, who in the meantime had succeeded Sir Edward Hawke in the Portsmouth command, Lieut. Sax and his gang were consequently called upon to face no ordeal more terrible than an "inquiry into their proceedings and behaviour." Needless to say, they were unanimously exonerated, the court holding that the discharge of their duty fully justified them in the discharge of their muskets. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5925--Minutes at a Court-Martial held on board H.M.S. _Prince George_ at Portsmouth, 14 Nov. 1755. Precedent for the procedure in this case is found in _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 27.] When such disagreeable accidents had to be investigated, the disagreeable business was done--to purloin an apt phrase of Coke's--"without prying into them with eagles' eyes." But it is time to leave the trail of blood and turn to a more agreeable phase of pressing. CHAPTER IX. THE GANG AT PLAY. The reasons assigned for the pressing of men who ought never to have made the acquaintance of the warrant or the hanger were often as far-fetched as they are amusing. "You have no right to press a person of my distinction!" warmly protested an individual of the superior type when pounced upon by the gang. "Lor love yer! that's the wery reason we're a-pressin' of your worship," replied the grinning minions of the service. "We've such a set of black-guards aboard the tender yonder, we wants a toff like you to learn 'em manners." The quixotic idea of inculcating manners by means of the press infected others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed themselves on representing the _ne plus ultra_ of etiquette, but demanded that all who approached them should do so without sin either of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions; hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who through ignorance, crass stupidity, or malice aforethought flew prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson than the bum-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one of His Majesty's ships. For all such offenders the autocracy of the quarter-deck, from the rigid commander down to the very young gentleman newly joined, kept a jealous lookout, and many are the instances of punishment, swift and implacable, following the offence. Insulted dignity could of course take it out of the disrespectful fore-mastman with the rattan, the cat or the irons; but for the ill-mannered outsider, whether pertaining to sea or land, the recognised corrective was His Majesty's press. A solitary exception is found in the case of Henry Crabb of Chatham, a boatman who rejoiced in incurable lameness; rejoiced because, although there were many cripples on board the Queen's ships in his day, his infirmity was such as to leave him at liberty to ply for hire "when other men durst not for feare of being Imprest." He was an impudent, over-reaching knave, and Capt. Balchen, of the _Adventure_ man-o'-war, whose wife had suffered much from the fellow's abusive tongue and extortionate propensities, finding himself unable to press him, brought him to the capstan and there gave him "eleven lashes with a Catt of Nine Tailes." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Capt. Balchen, 10 March 1703-4.] A letter written in the early forties-a letter as breezy as the sea from which it was penned--gives us a striking picture of the old-time naval officer as a teacher of deportment. Cruising far down-Channel, Capt. Brett, of the _Anglesea_ man-o'-war, there fell in with a ship whose character puzzled him sorely. He consequently gave chase, but the wind falling light and night coming on, he lost her. Early next morning, as luck would have it, he picked her up again, and having now a "pretty breeze," he succeeded in drawing within range of her about two o'clock in the afternoon, when he fired a shot to bring her to. The strange sail doubtless feared that she was about to lose her hands, for instead of obeying the summons she trained her stern-chasers on the _Anglesea_ and for an hour and a half blazed away at her as fast as she could load. "They put a large marlinespike into one of their guns," the indignant captain tells us, "which struck the carriage of the chase gun upon our forecastle, dented it near two inches, then broke asunder and wounded one of the men in the leg, and had it come a yard higher, must infallibly have killed two or three. By all this behaviour I concluded she must be an English vessel taken by the Spaniards. However, when we came within a cable's length of him he brought to, so we run close under his stern in order to shoot a little berth to leeward of him, and at the same time bid them hoist their boats out. Our people, as is customary upon such occasions, were then all up upon the gunhill and in the shrouds, looking at him. Just as we came under his quarter he pointed a gun that was sticking out a little abaft his main-shrouds right at us, and put the match to it, but it happened very luckily that the gun blew. A fellow that was standing on the quarter-deck then took up a blunderbuss and presented it, which by its not going off must have missed fire. As it was almost impossible, they being stripp'd and bareheaded, besides having their faces besmeared with powder, for us to judge them by their looks, I concluded they must be a Parcell of Light-headed Frenchmen run mad, and thinking it by no means prudent to let them kill my men in such a ridiculous manner, I ordered the marines, who were standing upon the quarter-deck with their musquets shoulder'd, to fire upon them. As soon as they saw the musquets presented they fell flat upon the decks and by that means saved themselves from being kill'd. Some of our people at the same time fired a 9-pounder right into his quarter, upon which they immediately submitted. I own I never was more surprised in all my life to find that she was an English vessel, tho' my surprise was lessened a good deal when I came to see the master and all his fighting men so drunk as to be scarce capable of giving a rational answer to any question that was asked them. I was very glad to find that none of them were hurt; _but I found out the man who presented the blunderbuss, and upon his behaving saucily when I taxed him with it, I took him out of the vessel._" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1479--Capt. Brett, 17 April 1743. The captain's use of gender is philologically instructive. Not till later times, it seems, did ships lose the character of a "strong man armed" and take on, uniformly, the attributes of the skittish female.] [Illustration: SAILORS CAROUSING. From the mezzotint after J. Ibbetson.] So abhorrent a condiment was "sauce" to the naval palate, whether of officer or impress agent, that its use invariably brought its own punishment with it. "You are no gentleman!" said Gangsman Dibell to one Hartnell, a currier who accidentally jostled him whilst he was drinking in a Poole taproom. "No, nor you neither!" replied Hartnell. The retort cost him a most disagreeable experience. Dibell and his comrades collared him and dragged him off to the rendezvous, where he was locked up in the black-hole till the next day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Impress Officers at Poole, 13 Aug. 1804.] At Waterford Capt. Price went one better than this, for a man who was totally unfit for the service having one day shown him some trifling disrespect, the choleric old martinet promptly set the gang upon him and had him conveyed on board the tender, "where," says Lieut. Collingwood, writing a month later, "he has been eating the king's victuals ever since." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut. Collingwood, 18 March 1781.] Punishment enough, surely! One night at Londonderry, as Lieut. Watson was making his way down to the quay for the purpose of boarding the _Hope_ tender, of which he was commander, he accidentally ran against a couple of strangers. "Hallo! my lads," cried he, "who and what are you?" "I am what I am," replied one of them, insolently. The lieutenant, who had been dining, fired up at this and demanded to know if language such as that was proper to be addressed to a king's officer. "As you please," said he of the insolent tongue. "If you like it better, I'll say I'm a piece of a man." "So I see by your want of manners," retorted the lieutenant. "Come along with me, my brave piece! I know those who will make a whole man of you before they're done." With that he seized the fellow, meaning to take him to his boat, which lay near by, but the pressed man, watching his chance, tripped him up and made off. Next day there was a sequel. The lieutenant "was taken possession of by the Civil Power" on a charge of assault. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1531--Lieut. Watson, 27 Oct. 1804.] Another officer who met with base ingratitude from a pressed man whose manners he attempted to reform was Capt. Bethel of the _Phoenix_. At the Nore he was once grossly abused by the crew of a Customs-House boat, and in retaliation took one of their number and carried him to sea. Peremptory orders reaching him at one of the Scottish ports, however, he discharged the man and paid his passage south. He was immediately sued for false imprisonment and cast in heavy damages. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1493--Capt. Bethel, 29 Aug. 1762.] Capt. Brereton, of the _Falmouth_, was "had" in similar fashion by the master of an East-Indiaman whom he pressed at Manilla because of his insolence, and who afterwards, by a successful suit at law, let him in for 400 Pounds damages and costs. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1494--Capt. Brereton, 18 Oct. 1765.] This was turning the tables of etiquette on its professors with a vengeance. Such costly lessons in the art of politeness, however, did not in the least abash the naval officer or deter him from the continued inculcation of manners. Young fellows idly roystering on the river could not be permitted to miscall with impunity the gorgeous admiral passing in his twelve-oared barge, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 577--Admiral the Marquis of Carmarthen, 24 June 1710.] nor irate shipmasters who flouted the impress service of the Crown as a "pitiful" thing and its officers as "little scandalous creatures," be allowed to go scot-free. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2379--Capt. Robinson, 21 Feb. 1725-6.] At whatever cost, the dignity of the service must be maintained. Nowhere did the use of invective attain such extraordinary perfection as amongst those who plied their vocations on the country's busy waterways. Here "sauce" was reduced to a science and vituperation to a fine art. Thames watermen and Tyne keelmen in particular acquired an astounding proficiency in the choice and application of abusive epithets, but of the two the keelman carried off the palm. The wherryman, it is true, possessed a ripe vocabulary, but the fact that it embraced only a single dialect seriously handicapped him in his race with the keelman, who had no less than three to draw upon, all equally prolific. Between "keelish," "coblish" and "sheelish," the respective dialects of the north-country keelman, pilot and tradesman, he had at his command a source of supply unrivalled in vituperative richness, abundance and variety. With these at his tongue's end none could touch, much less outdo him in power and scope of abusive description. He became in consequence of these superior advantages so "insupportably impudent" that the only known cure for his complaint was to follow the prescription of Capt. Atkins of the _Panther_, and "take him as fast as you could ketch him"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1438--Capt. Atkins, 23 Dec. 1720.] but even this drastic method of curbing his tongue was robbed of much of its efficacy by the jealous care with which he was "protected." Failure to amain, that is, to douse your topsail or dip your colours when you meet with a ship of war--the marine equivalent for raising one's hat--constituted a gross contempt of the king's service. The custom was very ancient, King John having instituted it in the second year of his reign. At that time, and indeed for long after, the salute was obligatory, its omission entailing heavy penalties; [Footnote: A copy of the original proclamation may be seen in Lansdowne MSS., clxxi, f. 218, where it is also summarised in the following terms: _"Anno 2 regni Johannis regis: Frends not amaining at the j sumons but resisting the King his lieutenant, the L. Admirall or his lieutenant, to lose the ship and goods, & theire bodies to be imprisoned."_] but with the advent of the century of pressing another means of inspiring respect for the flag, now exacted as a courtesy rather than a right, came into vogue. The offending vessel paid for its omission in men. If you were anything but a king's ship, and flew a flag that only king's ships were entitled to fly, you were guilty, in the eyes of every right-seeing naval officer, of another piece of ill manners so gross as to be deserving of the severest punishment the press was capable of inflicting upon you. You might fly the "flag and Jack white, with a red cross (commonly called St. George's cross) passing quite through the same"; likewise the "ensign red, with the cross in a canton of white at the upper corner thereof, next to the staff"; but if you presumed to display His Majesty's Jack, commonly called the Union Jack, or any other of the various flags of command flown by ships of war or vessels employed in the naval service, swift retribution overtook you. Similarly, the inadvertent hoisting of your colours "wrong end uppermost," or in any other manner deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the service which permitted you to fly them, laid you open to reprisals of the most summary nature. Before you realised the heinousness of your offence, a gang boarded you and your best man or men were gone beyond recall. The joy of waterside weddings--occasions prolific in the display of wrong colours--was often turned into sorrow in this way. Inability to do the things you professed to do involved grave risk of making intimate acquaintance with the gang. If, for example, you were a skipper and navigated your vessel more like a 'prentice than a master hand, some one belonging to you was bound, in waters swarming with ships of war, to pay the piper sooner or later. "A few days ago," writes Capt. Archer of the _Isis_, "a ship called the _Jane_, Stewart master, ran on board of us in a most lubberly manner--for which, as is customary on such occasions, I took four of his people." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1448--Capt. Archer, 17 May 1795.] Ability to handle a musical instrument sometimes proved as fatal to one's liberty as inability to handle a ship. Queen Anne was directly responsible for this. Almost immediately after her accession she signed a warrant authorising the pressing of "drummers, fife and haut boys for sea and land." [Footnote: _Home Office Military Entry Books_, clxviii, f. 406.] Though the authorisation was only temporary, the practice thus set up continued long after its origin had been relegated to the scrap-heap of memory, and not only continued, but was interpreted in a sense much broader than its royal originator ever intended it should be. This tendency to take an ell in lieu of the stipulated inch was illustrated as early as 1705, when Lieut. Thomson, belonging to the _Lickfield_, chancing to meet one Richard Bullard, fiddler, "persuaded him to go as far as Woolwich with him, to play a tune or two to him and some friends who had a mind to dance, saying he would pay him for it"--which he did, when tired of dancing, by handing him over to the press-gang. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1467--Capt. Byron, 13 July 1705.] In 1781, again, a "stout lad of 17" was pressed at Waterford because, as a piper, he was considered likely to be "useful in amusing the new-raised men"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1501--Lieut. Collingwood, 18 March 1781.] and as late as 1807 a gang at Portsmouth, acting under orders from Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, took one Madden, a blind man, because of his "qualification of playing on the Irish bagpipes." His affliction saved him. He was discharged, and the amount of his pay and victualling was deducted from Sir Robert's wages as a caution to him to be more careful in future. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Sir Robert Bromley, 1 Dec. 1808.] Perhaps the oddest reasons ever adduced in justification of specific acts of pressing were those put forward in the cases of James Baily, a Gosport ferry-man who was pressed on account of his "great inactivity," and of John Conyear, exempt passenger on the packet-boat plying between Dartmouth and Poole, subjected to the same process because, as the officer responsible ingenuously put it when called to book for the act, if Conyear had not been on board, "another would, who might have been a proper person to serve His Majesty." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1451--Capt. Argles, 4 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2485--Capt. Scott, 13 March 1780.] An ironical interest attaches to the pressing of John Hagin, a youth of nineteen who cherished an ambition to go a-whaling. Tramping the riverside at Hull one day in search of a ship, he accidentally met one of the lieutenants employed in the local impress service, and mistaking him for the master of a Greenland ship, stepped up to him and asked him for a berth. "Berth?" said the obliging officer. "Come this way;" and he conducted the unsuspecting youth to the rendezvous. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Ackton, 23 March 1814.] Before you took a voyage for the benefit of your health in those days it was always advisable to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the cargo the vessel carried or intended to carry, otherwise you were liable to be let in for a longer voyage than health demanded. Richard Gooding of Bawdsey, in the county of Suffolk, a twenty-one-year-old yeoman who knew nothing of the iniquities practised in ships, in an evil hour acted on the advice of his apothecary and ran across to Holland for the sake of his health, which the infirmities of youth appear to have undermined. All went well until, on the return trip, just before Bawdsey Ferry hove in sight, down swooped a revenue cutter's boat with an urgent request that the master should open up his hatches and disclose what his hold contained. He demurred, alleging that it held nothing of interest to revenue men; but on their going below to see for themselves they discovered an appreciable quantity of gin. Thereupon the master wickedly declared Gooding to be the culprit, and he was pressed on suspicion of attempting to run a cargo of spirits. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1530--Capt. Broughton, 20 April 1803, and enclosure.] Into the operations of the gang this element of suspicion entered very largely, especially in the pressing of supposed sailors. To carry about on your person any of the well-known marks of the seafaring man was to invite certain disaster. When pressed, like so many others, because he was "in appearance very much like a sailor," John Teede protested vehemently that he had never been to sea in his life, and that all who said he had were unmitigated liars. "Strip him," said the officer, who had a short way with such cases. In a twinkling Teede's shirt was over his head and the sailor stood revealed. Devices emblematic of love and the sea covered both arms from shoulder to wrist. "You and I will lovers die, eh?" said the officer, with a twinkle, as he spelt out one of the amatory inscriptions. "Just so, John! I'll see to that. Next man!" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1522--Description of a Person calling himself John Teede, 28 Dec. 1799.] Bow-legged men ran the gravest of risks in this respect, and the goose of many a tailor was effectually cooked because of the damning fact, which no protestations of innocence of the sea could mitigate, that long confinement to the board had warped his legs into a fatal resemblance to those of a typical Jack-tar. Harwich once had a mayor who, after vowing that he would "never be guilty of saying there was no law for pressing sailors," as a convincing proof that he knew what was what, and was willing to provide it to the best of his ability, straightway sent out and pressed--a tailor! [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Capt. Allen, 26 March 1706.] The itinerant Jewish peddler who hawked his wares about the country suffered grievously on this account. However indisputably Hebraic his name, his accent and his nose might be, those evidences of nationality were Anglicised, so to speak, by the fact that his legs were the legs of a sailor, and the bandy appendages so characteristic of his race sooner or later brought the gang down upon him in full cry and landed him in the fleet. In the year 1780 the fishing town of Cromer was thrown into a state of acute excitement by the behaviour of a casual stranger--a great, bearded man of foreign aspect who, taking a lodging in the place, resorted daily to the beach, where he walked the sands "at low water mark," now writing with great assiduity in a book, again gesticulating wildly to the sea and the cliffs, whence the suspicious townsfolk, then all unused to "visitors" and their eccentricities, watched his antics in wonder and consternation. The principal inhabitants of the place, alarmed by his vagaries, constituted themselves a committee of safety, and with the parson at their head went down to interview him; and when, in response to their none too polite inquiries, he flatly refused to give any account of himself, they by common consent voted him a spy and a public menace, telling each other that he was undoubtedly engaged in drawing plans of the coast in order to facilitate' the landing of some enemy; for did not the legend run:-- "He who would Old England win, Must at Weybourn Hope begin?" and was not the "Hoop," as it was called locally, only a few miles to the northward? No time was to be lost. Post-haste they dispatched a messenger to Lieut. Brace at Yarmouth, begging him, if he would save his country from imminent danger, to lose not a moment in sending his gang to seize the suspect and nip his fell design in the bud. With this alarming request Brace promptly complied, and the stranger was dragged away to Yarmouth. Arraigned before the mayor, he with difficulty succeeded in convincing that functionary that he was nothing more dangerous than a stray agriculturist whom the Empress Catherine had sent over from Russia to study the English method of growing-turnips! [Footnote: _State Papers_, Russia, cv.--Lieut. Brace, 18 Aug. 1780.] The unhandsome treatment meted out to the inoffensive Russian is of a piece with the whole aspect of pressing by instigation, of which it is at once a specimen and a phase. The incentive here was suspicion; but in the fertile field of instigation motives flourished in forms as varied as the weaknesses of human nature. Thomas Onions, respectable burgess of Bridgnorth, engaged in working a trow from that place to Bristol, fell under suspicion owing to the mysterious disappearance of a portion of the cargo, which consisted of china. The rest of the crew being metaphorically as well as literally in the same boat, the consignee's agent, on the trow's arrival at Bristol, hinted at a more than alliterative connection between china and chests, which he was proceeding to search when Onions objected, very rightly urging that he had no warrant. "Is it a warrant you're wanting?" demanded the baffled agent. "Very well, we'll see if we cannot find one." With that he stepped ashore and hurried to the rendezvous, where he knew the officers, and within the hour the gang added Onions to the impress stock-pot. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Memorial of the Inhabitants and Burgesses of Bridgnorth, 12 March 1808.] Much the same motive led to the pressing of Charles M'Donald, a north-country youth of education and property. His mother wished him to enter the army, but his guardians, piqued by her insistence, "had him kidnapped on board the impress tender at Shields, under pretence of sending him on a visit." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Bland, 29 Nov. 1806, and enclosure.] An "independent fortune of fourteen hundred pounds," bequeathed to him by his "Aunt Elizabeth," was instrumental in launching John Stillwell of Clerkenwell upon a similar career. His step-mother and uncle desired to retain possession of the money, of which they were trustees; so they suborned the gang and the young man disappeared. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1539--Capt. Burton, 25 April 1806, and enclosure.] A more legitimate pastime of the gang was the pressing of incorrigible sons. George Clark of Birmingham and William Barnicle of Margate, the one a notorious thief, the other the despair of his family because of his drunken habits, were two out of many shipped abroad by this cheap but effectual means, the instigator of the gang being in each case the lad's own father. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Jeremiah Clark, 30 July 1806; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1547--Lieut. Dawe, 4 Sept. 1809.] The distracting problem, "What to do with our sons?" was in this way amazingly simplified. In thus utilising the gang as a means of retaliating upon those who incurred their displeasure, both naval officers and private individuals, had they been arraigned for the offence, could have pleaded in justification of their conduct the example of no less exalted a body than the Admiralty itself. The case of the bachelor seamen of Dover, pressed because of an official animus against that town, was as notorious as their Lordships' futile attempt to teach the Brighton fishermen respect for their betters, or their later orders to Capt. Culverhouse, of the Liverpool rendezvous, instructing him "to take all opportunities of impressing seafaring men belonging to the Isle of Man," as a punishment for the "extreme ill-conduct of the people of that Island to His Majesty's Officers on the Impress Service." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 3. 148--Admiralty Minutes, 11 Oct. 1803.] The Admiralty method of paying out anyone against whom you cherished a grudge possessed advantages which strongly commended it to the splenetic and the vindictive. For suppose you lay in wait for your enemy and beat or otherwise maltreated him: the chances were that he would either punish you himself or invoke the law to do it for him; while if you removed him by means of the garrot, the knife or the poisoned glass, no matter how discreetly the deed was done the hangman was pretty sure to get you sooner or later. But the gang--it was as safe as an epidemic! The fact was not lost upon the community. People in almost every station of life appreciated it at its true worth, and, encouraged by the example of the Admiralty, availed themselves of the gang as the handiest, speediest and safest of mediums for wiping out old scores. On shipboard, where life was more cramped and men consequently came into sharper contact than on shore, resentments were struck from daily intercourse like sparks from steel. Like sparks some died, impotent to harm their object; but others, cherished in bitterness of spirit through many a lonely watch, flashed into malicious action with that hoped-for opportunity, the coming of the gang. John Gray, carpenter of a merchant ship, in a moment of anger threatened to cut the skipper down with an axe. This happened under a West-Indian sun. Months afterwards, as the ship swung lazily into Bristol river and the gang came aboard, the skipper found his opportunity. Beckoning to the impress officer, he pointed to John Gray and said: "Take that man!" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 22 June 1808, and enclosure.] Gray never again lifted an axe on board a merchant vessel. Certain amenities which once passed between the master and the mate of the _Lady Shore_ serve to throw an even broader light upon the origin of quarrels at sea and the methods of settling them then in vogue. The _Lady Shore_ was on the passage home from Quebec when the master one day gave certain sailing directions which the mate, who was a sober, careful seaman, thought fit to disregard on the ground that the safety of the ship would be endangered if he followed them. The master, an irascible, drunken brute, at this flew into a passion and sought to ingraft his ideas of seamanship upon the mate through the medium of a handspike, with which he caught him a savage blow "just above the eye, cutting him about three inches in length." It was in mid-ocean that this lesson in navigation was administered. By the time Scilly shoved its nose above the horizon the skipper's "down" on the mate had reached an acute stage. His resentment of the latter's being the better seaman had now deepened into hatred, and to this, as the voyage neared its end, was added growing fear of prosecution. At this juncture a man-o'-war hove in sight and signalled an inspection of hands. "Get your chest on deck, Mr. Mate," cried the exultant skipper. "You are too much master here. It is time for us to part." Taken out of the ship as a pressed man, the mate was ultimately discharged by order of the Admiralty; but the skipper had his revenge. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Matthew Gill to Admiral Moorsom, 15 Jan. 1813.] A riot that occurred at King's Lynn in the year '55 affords a striking instance of the retaliatory use of the gang on shore. In the course of the disturbance mud and stones were thrown at the magistrates, who had come out to do what they could to quell it. Angered by so gross an indignity, they supplied the gang with information that led to the pressing of some sixty persons concerned in the tumult, but as these consisted mainly of "vagrants, gipsies, parish charges, maimed, halt and idiots," the magisterial resentment caused greater rejoicings at Lynn than it did at Spithead, where the sweepings of the borough were eventually deposited. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, 8 June 1755.] There is a decided smack of the modern about the use the gang was put to by the journeymen coopers of Bristol. Considering themselves underpaid, they threatened to go on strike unless the masters raised their wages. In this they were not entirely unanimous, however. One of their number stood out, refusing to join the combine; whereupon the rest summoned the gang and had the "blackleg" pressed for his contumacy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1542--Capt. Barker, 20 Aug. 1808, and enclosure.] In pressing William Taylor of Broadstairs the gang nipped in the bud as tender a romance as ever flourished in the shelter of the Kentish cliffs, which is saying not a little. Taylor was only a poor fisherman, and when he dared to make love to the pretty daughter of the Ramsgate Harbour-Master, that exalted individual, who entertained for the girl social ambitions in which fishermen's shacks had no place, resented his advances as insufferable impertinence. A word to Lieut. Leary, his friend at the local rendezvous, did the rest. Taylor disappeared, and though he was afterwards discharged from His Majesty's ship Utrecht on the score of his holding a Sea-Fencible's ticket, the remedy had worked its cure and the Harbour-Master was thenceforth free to marry his daughter where he would. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1450--Capt. Austen, 23 Sept. 1803.] So natural is the transition from love to hate that no apology is needed for introducing here the story of Sam Burrows, the ex-beadle of Chester who fell a victim to the harsher in much the same manner as Taylor did to the gentler passion. Burrows' evil genius was one Rev. Lucius Carey, an Irish clergyman--whether Anglican or Roman we know not, nor does it matter--who had contracted the unclerical habit of carrying pistols and too much liquor. In this condition he was found late one night knocking in a very violent manner at the door of the "Pied Bull," and swearing that, while none should keep him out, any who refused to assist him in breaking in should be shot down forthwith. Burrows, the ex-beadle, happened to be passing at the moment. He seized the drunken cleric and with the assistance of James Howell, one of the city watchmen, forcibly removed him to the watch-house, whence he was next day taken before the mayor and bound over to appear at the Sessions. Now it happened that certain members of the local press-gang were Carey's boon companions, so no sooner did he leave the presence of the mayor than he looked them up. That same evening Burrows was missing. Carey had found him a "hard bed," otherwise a berth on board a man-o'-war. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1532--Capt Birchall, 17 July 1804, and enclosures.] In the columns of the _Westminster Journal_, under date of both May 1743, we read of a sailor who, dying at Ringsend, was brought to Irishtown church-yard, near Dublin, for burial. "When they laid him on the ground," the narrative continues, "the coffin was observed to stir, on which he was taken up, and by giving him some nourishment he came to himself, and is likely to do well." Whether this sailor was ever pressed, either before or after his abortive decease, we are not informed; but there is on record at least one well-authenticated instance of that calamity overtaking a person who had passed the bourne whence none is supposed to return. In the year 1723 a young lad whose name has not been preserved, but who was at the time apprentice to a master sailmaker in London, set out from that city to visit his people, living at Sandwich. He appears to have travelled afoot, for, getting a "lift" on the road, he was carried into Deal, where he arrived late at night, and having no money was glad to share a bed with a seafaring man, the boatswain of an Indiaman then in the Downs. From this circumstance sprang the events which here follow. Along in the small hours of the night the lad awoke, and finding the room stuffy and day on the point of breaking, he rose and dressed, purposing to see the town in the cool of the morning. The catch of the door, however, refused to yield under his hand, and while he was endeavouring to undo it the noise he made awakened the boatswain, who told him that if he looked in his breeches pocket he would find a knife there with which he could lift the latch. Acting on this hint, the lad succeeded in opening the door, and thereupon went downstairs in accordance with his original intention. When he returned some half-hour later, as he did for the purpose of restoring the knife, which he had thoughtlessly slipped into his pocket, the bed was empty and the boatswain gone. Of this he thought nothing. The boatswain had talked, he remembered, of going off to his ship at an early hour, in order, as he had said, to call the hands for the washing down of the decks. The lad accordingly left the house and went his way to Sandwich, where, as already stated, his people lived. Meantime the old inn at Deal, and indeed the whole town, was thrown into a state of violent commotion by a most shocking discovery. Going about their morning duties at the inn, the maids had come to the bed in which the boatswain and the apprentice had slept, and to their horror found it saturated with blood. Drops of blood, together with marks of blood-stained hands and feet, were further discovered on the floor and the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and along the passage leading to the street, whence they could be distinctly traced to the waterside, not so very far away. Imagination, working upon these ghastly survivals of the hours of darkness, quickly reconstructed the crime which it was evident had been committed. The boatswain was known to have had money on him; but the youth, it was recalled, had begged his bed. It was therefore plain to the meanest understanding that the youth had murdered the boatswain for his money and thrown the body into the sea. At once that terrible precursor of judgment to come, the hue and cry was raised, and that night the footsore apprentice lay in Sandwich jail, a more than suspected felon, for his speedy capture had supplied what was taken to be conclusive evidence of his guilt. In his pocket they discovered the boatswain's knife, and both it and the lad's clothing were stained with blood. Asked whose blood it was, and how it came there, he made no answer. Asked was it the boatswain's knife, he answered, "Yes, it was," and therewith held his peace. In face of such evidence, and such an admission, he stood prejudged. His trial at the Assizes was a mere formality. The jury quickly found him guilty, and sentence of death was passed upon him. The day of execution came. Up to this point Fate had set her face steadfastly against our apprentice lad; but now, in the very hour and article of death, she suddenly relented and smiled upon him. The dislocating "drop" was in those days unknown. When you were hanged, you were hanged from a cart, which was suddenly whisked from under you, leaving you dangling in mid-air like a kind of death-fruit nearly, but not quite, ready to fall. Much depended on the executioner, and that grim functionary was in this case a raw hand, unused to his work, who bungled the job. The knot was ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was hurried away to a surgeon's and there copiously bled. And being young and virile, he revived. Trudging to Portsmouth some little time after, with the intention of for ever leaving a country to which he was legally dead, he fell in with one of the numerous press-gangs frequenting that road, and was sent on board a man-o'-war. There, in course of time, he rose to be master's mate, and in that capacity, whilst on the West-India station, was transferred to another ship. On this ship he met the surprise of his life--if life can be said to hold further surprises for one who has died and lived again. As he stepped on deck the first person he met was his old bed-fellow, the boatswain. The explanation of the amazing series of events which led up to this amazing meeting is very simple. On the evening of that fateful night at Deal the boatswain, who had been ailing, was let blood. In his sleep the bandage slipped and the wound reopened. Discovering his condition when awakened by the apprentice, he rose and left the house, intending to have the wound re-dressed by the barber-surgeon who had inflicted it, with more effect than discretion, some hours earlier. At the very door of the inn, however, he ran into the arms of a press-gang, by whom he was instantly seized and hurried on board ship. [Footnote: Watts, _Remarkable Events in the History of Man_, 1825.] CHAPTER X. WOMEN AND THE PRESS-GANG. The medieval writer who declared women to be "capable of disturbing the air and exciting tempests" was not indulging a mere quip at the expense of that limited storm area, his own domestic circle. He expressed what in his day, and indeed for long after, was a cardinal article of belief--that if you were so ill-advised as to take a woman to sea, she would surely upset the weather and play the mischief with the ship. To this ungallant superstition none subscribed more heartily than the sailor, though always, be it understood, with a mental reservation. Unlike many landsmen who held a similar belief, he limited the malign influence of the sex strictly to the high-seas, where, for that reason, he vastly preferred woman's room to her company; but once he was safe in port, woman in his opinion ceased to be dangerous, and he then vastly preferred her company to her room. For her companionship he had neither far to seek nor long to wait. It was a case of "Deal, Dover and Harwich, The devil gave his daughter in marriage." All naval seaports were full of women, and to prevent the supply from running short thoughtful parish officials--church-wardens and other well-meaning but sadly misguided people--added constantly to the number by consigning to such doubtful reformatories the undesirable females of their respective petty jurisdictions. The practice of admitting women on board the ships of the fleet, too--a practice as old as the Navy itself--though always forbidden, was universally connived at and tacitly sanctioned. Before the anchor of the returning man-of-war was let go a flotilla of boats surrounded her, deeply laden with pitiful creatures ready to sell themselves for a song and the chance of robbing their sailor lovers. No sooner did the boats lay alongside than the last vestige of Jack's superstitious dread of the malevolent sex went by the board, and discipline with it. Like monkeys the sailors swarmed into the boats, where each selected a mate, redeemed her from the grasping boatman's hands with money or blows according to the state of his finances or temper, and so brought his prize, save the mark! in triumph to the gangway. It was a point of honour, not to say of policy, with these poor creatures to supply their respective "husbands," as they termed them, with a drop of good-cheer; so at the gangway they were searched for concealed liquor. This was the only formality observed on such occasions, and as it was enforced in the most perfunctory manner imaginable, there was always plenty of drink going. Decency there was none. The couples passed below and the hell of the besotted broke loose between decks, where the orgies indulged in would have beggared the pen of a Balzac. [Footnote: Statement of Certain Immoral Practices, 1822.] During the earlier decades of the century these conditions, monstrous though they were, passed almost unchallenged, but as time wore on and their pernicious effects upon the _morale_ of the fleet became more and more appalling, the service produced men who contended strenuously, and in the end successfully, with a custom that, to say the least of it, did violence to every notion of decency and clean living. In 1746 the ship's company of the _Sunderland_ complained bitterly because not even their wives were "suffer'd to come aboard to see them." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. Brett, 22 Feb. 1745-6.] It was a sign of the times. By the year '78 the practice had been fined down to a point where, if a wherry with a woman in it were seen hovering in a suspicious manner about a ship of war, the boatman was immediately pressed and the woman turned on shore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Capt. Boteler, 18 April 1778.] Another twenty years, and the example of such men as Jervis, Nelson and Collingwood laid the evil for good and all. The seamen of the fleet themselves pronounced its requiescat when, drawing up certain "Rules and Orders" for their own guidance during the mutiny of '97, they ordained that "no woman shall be permitted to go on shore from any ship, but as many come in as pleases." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--A Detail of the Proceedings on Board the _Queen Charlotte_ in the Year 1797.] An unforeseen consequence of thus suppressing the sailor's impromptu liaisons was an alarming increase in the number of desertions. On shore love laughs at locksmiths; on shipboard it derided the boatswain's mate. To run and get caught meant at the worst "only a whipping bout," and, the sailor's hide being as tough as his heart was tender, he ran and took the consequences with all a sailor's stoicism. In this respect he was perhaps not singular. The woman in the case so often counts for more than the punishment she brings. Few of those who deserted their ships for amatory reasons had the luck--viewing the escapade from the sailor's standpoint--that attended the schoolmaster of the _Princess Louisa_. Going ashore at Plymouth to fetch his chest from the London wagon, he succumbed to the blandishments of an itinerant fiddler's wife, whom he chanced to meet in the husband's temporary absence, and was in consequence "no more heard of." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Boys, 5 April 1742.] Had it always been a case of the travelling woman, the sailor's flight in response to the voice of the charmer would seldom have landed him in the cells or exposed his back to the caress of the ship's cat. Where he was handicapped in his love flights was this. The haunt or home of his seducer was generally known to one or other of his officers, and when this was not the case there were often other women who gladly gave him away. "Captain Barrington, Sir," writes "Nancy of Deptford" to the commander of a man-o'-war in the Thames, "there is a Desarter of yours at the upper water Gate. Lives at the sine of the mantion house. He is an Irishman, gose by the name of Youe (Hugh) MackMullins, and is trying to Ruing a Wido and three Children, for he has Insenuated into the Old Woman's faver so far that she must Sartingly come to poverty, and you by Sarching the Cook's will find what I have related to be true and much oblidge the hole parrish of St. Pickles Deptford." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1495--Capt. Barrington, 22 Oct. 1771, enclosure.] A favourite resort of the amatory tar was that extra-parochial spot known as the Liberty of the Fleet, where the nuptial knot could be tied without the irksome formalities of banns or licence. The fact strongly commended it to the sailor and brought him to the precinct in great numbers. "I remember once on a time," says Keith, the notorious Fleet parson, "I was at a public-house at Ratcliffe, which was then full of Sailors and their Girls. There was fiddling, piping, jigging and eating. At length one of the Tars starts up and says: 'Damn ye, Jack! I'll be married just now; I will have my partner.' The joke took, and in less than two hours Ten Couples set out for the Flete. They returned in Coaches, five Women in each Coach; the Tars, some running before, some riding on the Coach Box, and others behind. The Cavalcade being over, the Couples went up into an upper Room, where they concluded the evening with great Jollity. The landlord said it was a common thing, when a Fleet comes in, to have 2 or 3 Hundred Marriages in a week's time among the Sailors." [Footnote: Keith, Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages, 1753.] In the "Press-Gang, or Love in Low Life," a play produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1755, Trueblue is pressed, not in, but out of the arms of his tearful Nancy. The situation is distressingly typical. The sailor's happiness was the gangsman's opportunity, however Nancy might suffer in consequence. For the average gangsman was as void of sentiment as an Admiralty warrant, pressing you with equal avidity and absence of feeling whether he caught you returning from a festival or a funeral. To this callosity of nature it was due that William Castle, a foreign denizen of Bristol who had the hardihood to incur the marital tie there, was called upon, as related elsewhere, to serve at sea in the very heyday of his honeymoon. Similarly, if four seamen belonging to the _Dundee_ Greenland whaler had not stolen ashore one night at Shields "to see some women," they would probably have gone down to their graves, seawards or landwards, under the pleasing illusion that the ganger was a man of like indulgent passions with themselves. The negation of love, as exemplified in that unsentimental individual, was thus brought home to many a seafaring man, long debarred from the society of the gentler sex, with startling abruptness and force. The pitiful case of the "Maidens Pressed," whose names are enrolled in the pages of Camden Hotten, [Footnote: Hotten, List of Persons of Quality, etc., who Went from England to the American Plantations.] is in no way connected with pressing for naval purposes. Those unfortunates were not victims of the gangsman's notorious hardness of heart, but of their own misdeeds. Like the female disciples of the "diving hand" stated by Lutterell [Footnote: Lutterell, Historical Relation of State Affairs, 12 March 1706.] to have been "sent away to follow the army," they were one and all criminals of the Moll Flanders type who "left their country for their country's good" under compulsion that differed widely, both in form and purpose, from that described in these pages. To assert, however, that women were never pressed, in the enigmatic sense of their being taken by the gang for the manning of the fleet, would be to do violence to the truth as we find it in naval and other records. As a matter of fact, the direct contrary was the case, and there were in the kingdom few gangs of which, at one time or another in their career, it could not be said, as Southey said of the gang at Bristol, that "they pressed a woman." The incident alluded to will be familiar to all who know the poet as distinguished from the Bard of Avon. It is found in the second "English Eclogue," under the caption of the "Grandmother's Tale," and has to do with the escapade, long famous in the more humorous annals of Southey's native city, of blear-eyed Moll, a collier's wife, a great, ugly creature whose voice was as gruff as a mastiff's bark, and who wore habitually a man's hat and coat, so that at a few yards' distance you were at a loss to know whether she was man or woman. "There was a merry story told of her, How when the press-gang came to take her husband As they were both in bed, she heard them coming, Drest John up in her nightcap, and herself Put on his clothes and went before the captain." A case of pressing on all-fours with this is said to have once occurred at Portsmouth. A number of sailors, alarmed by the rumoured approach of a gang while they were a-fairing, took it into their heads, so the story goes, to effect a partial exchange of clothing with their sweethearts, in the hope that the hasty shifting of garments would deceive the gang and so protect them from the press. It did. In their parti-garb make-up the women looked more sailorly than the sailors themselves. The gang consequently pressed them, and there were hilarious scenes at the rendezvous when the fair recruits were "regulated" and the ludicrous mistake brought to light. It was not only on shore, however, or on special occasions such as this, that women played the sailor. A naval commander, accounting to the Admiralty for his shortness of complement, attributes it mainly to sickness, partly to desertion, and incidentally to the discharge of one of the ship's company, "who was discovered to be a woman." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1503--Capt. Burney, 15 Feb. 1782.] His experience is capped by that of the master of the _Edmund and Mary_, a vessel engaged in carrying coals to Ipswich. Shrewdly suspecting one of his apprentices, a clever, active lad, to be other than what he seemed, he taxed him with the deception. Taken unawares, the lad burst into womanly tears and confessed himself to be the runaway daughter of a north-country widow. Disgrace had driven her to sea. [Footnote: _Naval Chronicle_, vol. xxx. 1813, p. 184.] These instances are far from being unique, for both in the navy and the mercantile marine the masquerading of women in male attire was a not uncommon occurrence. The incentives to the adoption of a mode of life so foreign to all the gentler traditions of the sex were various, though not inadequate to so surprising a change. Amongst them unhappiness at home, blighted virtue, the secret love of a sailor and an abnormal craving for adventure and the romantic life were perhaps the most common and the most powerful. The question of clothing presented little difficulty. Sailors' slops could be procured almost anywhere, and no questions asked. The effectual concealment of sex was not so easy, and when we consider the necessarily intimate relations subsisting between the members of a ship's crew, the narrowness of their environment, the danger of unconscious betrayal and the risks of accidental discovery, the wonder is that any woman, however masculine in appearance or skilled in the arts of deception, could ever have played so unnatural a part for any length of time without detection. The secret of her success perhaps lay mainly in two assisting circumstances. In theory there were no women at sea, and despite his occasional vices the sailor was of all men the most unsophisticated and simple-minded. Conspicuous among women who threw the dust of successful deception in the eyes of masters and shipmates is Mary Anne Talbot. Taking to the sea as a girl in order to "follow the fortunes" of a young naval officer for whom she had conceived a violent but unrequited affection, she was known afloat as John Taylor. In stature tall, angular and singularly lacking in the physical graces so characteristic of the average woman, she passed for years as a true shellback, her sex unsuspected and unquestioned. Accident at length revealed her secret. Wounded in an engagement, she was admitted to hospital in consequence of a shattered knee, and under the operating knife the identity of John Taylor merged into that of Mary Anne Talbot. [Footnote: Times, 4 Nov. 1799.] It is said, perhaps none too kindly or truthfully, that the lady doctor of the present day no sooner sets up in practice than she incontinently marries the medical man around the corner, and in many instances the sailor-girl of former days brought her career on the ocean wave to an equally romantic conclusion. However skilled in the art of navigation she might become, she experienced a constitutional difficulty in steering clear of matrimony. Maybe she steered for it. A romance of this description that occasioned no little stir in its day is associated with a name at one time famous in the West-India trade. Through bankruptcy the name suffered eclipse, and the unfortunate possessor of it retired to a remote neighbourhood, taking with him his two daughters, his sole remaining family. There he presently sank under his misfortunes. Left alone in the world, with scarce a penny-piece to call their own, the daughters resolved on a daring departure from the conventional paths of poverty. Making their way to Portsmouth, they there dressed themselves as sailors and in that capacity entered on board a man-o'-war bound for the West Indies. At the first reduction of Curaçoa, in 1798, as in subsequent naval engagements, both acquitted themselves like men. No suspicion of the part they were playing, and playing with such success, appears to have been aroused till a year or two later, when one of them, in a brush with the enemy, was wounded in the side. The surgeon's report terminated her career as a seaman. [Illustration: MARY ANNE TALBOT.] Meanwhile the other sister contracted tropical fever, and whilst lying ill was visited by one of the junior officers of the ship. Believing herself to be dying, she told him her secret, doubtless with a view to averting its discovery after death. He confessed that the news was no surprise to him. In fact, not only had he suspected her sex, he had so far persuaded himself of the truth of his suspicions as to fall in love with one of his own crew. The tonic effect of such avowals is well known. The fever-stricken patient recovered, and on the return of the ship to home waters the officer in question made his late foremast hand his wife. [Footnote: Naval Chronicle, vol. viii. 1802, p. 60.] Of all the veracious yarns that are told of girl-sailors, there is perhaps none more remarkable than the story of Rebecca Anne Johnson, the girl-sailor of Whitby. One night a hundred and some odd years ago a Mrs. Lesley, who kept the "Bull" inn in Halfmoon Alley, Bishopsgate Street, found at her door a handsome sailor-lad begging for food. He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours, he declared, and when plied with supper and questions by the kind-hearted but inquisitive old lady, he explained that he was an apprentice to the sea, and had run from his ship at Woolwich because of the mate's unduly basting him with a rope's-end. "What! you a 'prentice?" cried the landlady; and turning his face to the light, she subjected him to a scrutiny that read him through and through. Next day, at his own request, he was taken before the Lord Mayor, to whom he told his story. That he was a girl he freely admitted, and he accounted for his appearing in sailor rig by asserting that a brutal father had apprenticed him to the sea in his thirteenth year. More astounding still, the same unnatural parent had actually bound her, the sailor-girl's, mother, apprentice to the sea, and in that capacity she was not only pressed into the navy, but killed at the battle of Copenhagen, up to which time, though she had followed the sea for many years and borne this child in the meantime, her sex had never once been called in question. [Footnote: _Naval Chronicle_, vol. xx. 1808, p. 293.] While woman was thus invading man's province at sea, that universal feeder of the Navy, the pressgang, made little or no appeal to her as a sphere of activity. On Portland Island, it is true, Lieut. McKey, who commanded both the Sea-Fencibles and the press-gang there, rated his daughter as a midshipman; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 15 April 1805] but with this exception no woman is known to have added the hanger to her adornment. The three merry maids of Taunton, who as gangsmen put the Denny Bowl quarrymen to rout, were of course impostors. But if the ganger's life was not for woman, there was ample compensation for its loss in the wider activities the gang opened up for her. The gangsman was nothing if not practical. He took the poetic dictum that "men must work and women must weep"--a conception in his opinion too sentimentally onesided to be tolerated as one of the eternal verities of human existence--and improved upon it. By virtue of the rough-and-ready authority vested in him he abolished the distinction between toil and tears, decreeing instead that women should suffer both. "M'Gugan's wife?" growled Capt. Brenton, gang-master at Greenock, when the corporation of that town ventured to point out to him that M'Gugan's wife and children must inevitably come to want unless their bread-winner, recently pressed, were forthwith restored to them,--"_M'Gugan's wife is as able to get her bread as any woman in the town!_" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Brenton, 15 Jan. 1795.] For two hundred and fifty years, off and on--ever since, in fact, the press-masters of bluff King Hal denuded the Dorset coast of fishermen and drove the starving women of that region to sea in quest of food [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII_.: Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545.]--the press-gang had been laboriously teaching English housewives this very lesson, the simple economic truth that if they wanted bread for themselves and their families while their husbands were fagging for their country at sea, they must turn to and work for it. Yet in face of this fact here was M'Gugan's wife trying to shirk the common lot. It was monstrous! M'Gugan's wife ought really to have known better. The simplest calculation, had she cared to make it, would have shown her the utter futility of hoping to live on the munificent wage which a grateful country allowed to M'Gugan, less certain deductions for M'Gugan's slops and contingent sick-benefit, in return for his aid in protecting it from its enemies; and almost any parish official could have told her, what she ought in reason to have known already, that she was no longer merely M'Gugan's wife, dependent upon his exertions for the bread she ate, but a Daughter of the State and own sister to thousands of women to whom the gang in its passage brought toil and poverty, tears and shame--not, mark you, the shame of labour, if there be such a thing, but the bedraggled, gin-sodden shame of the street, or, in the scarce less dreadful alternative, the shame of the goodwife of the ballad who lamented her husband's absence because, worse luck, sundry of her bairns "were gotten quhan he was awa'." Lamentable as this state of things undoubtedly was, it was nevertheless one of the inevitables of pressing. You could not take forcibly one hundred husbands and fathers out of a community of five hundred souls, and pay that hundred husbands and fathers the barest pittance instead of a living wage, without condemning one hundred wives and mothers to hard labour on behalf of the three hundred children who hungered. Out of this hundred wives and mothers a certain percentage, again, lacked the ability to work, while a certain other percentage lacked the will. These recruited the ranks of the outcast, or with their families burdened the parish. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Memorial of the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor of the Parish of Portsmouth, 3 Dec 1793, and numerous instances.] The direct social and economic outcome of this mode of manning the Navy, coupled with the payment of a starvation wage, was thus threefold. It reversed the natural sex-incidence of labour; it fostered vice; it bred paupers. The first was a calamity personal to those who suffered it. The other two were national in their calamitous effects. In that great diurnal of the eighteenth-century navy, the Captains' Letters and Admirals' Dispatches, no volume can be opened without striking the broad trail of destitution, misery and heart-break, to mention no worse consequences, left by the gang. At nearly every turn of the page, indeed, we come upon recitals or petitions recalling vividly the exclamation involuntarily let fall by Pepys the tender-hearted when, standing over against the Tower late one summer's night, he watched by moonlight the pressed men sent away: "Lord! how some poor women did cry." A hundred years later and their heritors in sorrow are crying still. Now it is a bed-ridden mother bewailing her only son, "the principal prop and stay of her old age"; again a wife, left destitute "with three hopeful babes, and pregnant." And here, bringing up the rear of the sad procession--lending to it, moreover, a touch of humour in itself not far removed from tears--comes Lachlan M'Quarry. The gang have him, and amid the Stirling hills, where he was late an indweller, a motley gathering of kinsfolk mourn his loss--"me, his wife, two Small helpless Children, an Aged Mother who is Blind, an Aged Man who is lame and unfit for work, his father in Law, and a sister Insane, with his Mother in Law who is Infirm." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1454--The Humble Petition of Jullions Thomson, Spouse to Lachlan M'Quarry, 2 May 1812.] The fact is attested by the minister and elders of the parish, being otherwise unbelievable; and Lachlan is doubtless proportionately grieved to find himself at sea. Men whose wives "divorced" them through the medium of the gang--a not uncommon practice--experienced a similar grief. Besides the regular employment it so generously provided for wives bereft of their lawful support, the press-gang found for the women of the land many an odd job that bore no direct relation to the earning of their bread. When the mob demolished the Whitby rendezvous in '93, it was the industrious fishwives of the town who collected the stones used as ammunition on that occasion; and when, again, Lieut. M'Kenzie unwisely impressed an able seaman in the house of Joseph Hook, inn-keeper at Pill, it was none other than "Mrs. Hook, her daughter and female servant" who fell upon him and tore his uniform in shreds, thus facilitating the pressed man's escape "through a back way." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534--Lieut. M'Kenzie, 20 Oct. 1805.] The good people of Sunderland at one time indulged themselves in the use of a peculiar catch-phrase. Whenever any feat of more than ordinary daring came under their observation, they spoke of it as "a case of Dryden's sister." The saying originated in this way. The Sunderland gang pressed the mate of a vessel, one Michael Dryden, and confined him in the tender's hold. One night Dryden's sister, having in vain bribed the lieutenant in command to let him go, at the risk of her life smuggled some carpenter's tools on board under the very muzzles of the sentinel's muskets, and with these her brother and fifteen other men cut their way to freedom. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2740--Lieut. Atkinson, 24 June and 10 July 1798.] A tender lying in King Road, at the entrance to Bristol River, was the scene of another episode of the "Dryden's sister" type. Going ashore one morning, the lieutenant in command fell from the bank and broke his sword. It was an ill omen, for in his absence the hard fate of the twenty pressed men who lay in the tender's hold, "all handcuft to each other," made an irresistible appeal to two women, pressed men's wives, who had been with singular lack of caution admitted on board. Whilst the younger and prettier of the two cajoled the sentinel from his post, the elder and uglier secured an axe and a hatchet and passed them unobserved through the scuttle to the prisoners below, who on their part made such good use of them that when at length the lieutenant returned he found the cage empty and the birds flown. The shackles strewing the press-room bore eloquent testimony to the manner of their flight. The irons had been hacked asunder, some of them with as many as "six or seven Cutts." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 12 May 1759.] Never, surely, did the gang provide an odder job for any woman than the one it threw in the way of Richard Parker's wife. The story of his part in the historic mutiny at the Nore is common knowledge. Her's, being less familiar, will bear retelling. But first certain incidents in the life of the man himself, some of them hitherto unknown, call for brief narration. Born at Exeter in or about the year 1764, it is not till some nineteen years later, or, to be precise, the 5th of May 1783, that Richard Parker makes his debut in naval records. On that date he appears on board the _Mediator_ tender at Plymouth, in the capacity of a pressed man. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Ships' Musters, 1. 9307--Muster Book of H.M. Tender the _Mediator_.] The tender carried him to London, where in due course he was delivered up to the regulating officers, and by them turned over to the _Ganges_, Captain the Honourable James Lutterell. This was prior to the 30th of June 1783, the date of his official "appearance" on board that ship. On the _Ganges_ he served as a midshipman--a noteworthy fact [Footnote: Though one of rare occurrence, Parker's case was not altogether unique; for now and then a pressed man by some lucky chance "got his foot on the ladder," as Nelson put it, and succeeded in bettering himself. Admiral Sir David Mitchell, pressed as the master of a merchantman, is a notable example. Admiral Campbell, "Hawke's right hand at Quiberon," who entered the service as a substitute for a pressed man, is another; and James Clephen, pressed as a sea-going apprentice, became master's-mate of the Doris, and taking part in the cutting out of the Chevrette, a corvette of twenty guns, from Cameret Bay, in 1801, was for his gallantry on that occasion made a lieutenant, fought at Trafalgar and died a captain. On the other hand, John Norris, pressed at Gallions Reach out of a collier and "ordered to walk the quarter-deck as a midshipman," proved such a "laisie, sculking, idle fellow," and so "filled the sloop and men with vermin," that his promoter had serious thoughts of "turning him ashore."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1477--Capt. Bruce, undated letter, 1741.]--till the 4th of September following, when he was discharged to the _Bull-Dog_ sloop by order of Admiral Montagu. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Ships' Musters, 1. 10614--Muster Book of H.M.S. _Ganges_.] His transfer from the _Bull-Dog_ banished him from the quarter-deck and sowed within him the seeds of that discontent which fourteen years later made of him, as he himself expressed it, "a scape-goat for the sins of many." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5339--Dying Declaration of the Late Unfortunate Richard Parker, 28 June 1797.] He was now, for what reason we do not learn, rated as an ordinary seaman, and in that capacity he served till the 15th of June 1784, when he was discharged sick to Haslar Hospital. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Ships' Musters, 1. 10420, 10421--Muster Books of H.M. Sloop _Bull-Dog_.] At this point we lose track of him for a matter of nearly fourteen years, but on the 31st of March 1797, the year which brought his period of service to so tragic a conclusion, he suddenly reappears at the Leith rendezvous as a Quota Man for the county of Perth. Questioned as to his past, he told Brenton, then in charge of that rendezvous, "that he had been a petty officer or acting lieutenant on board the _Mediator_, Capt. James Lutterell, at the taking of five prizes in 1783, when he received a very large proportion of prize-money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1517--Capt. Brenton, 10 June 1797.] The inaccuracies evident on the face of this statement are unquestionably due to Brenton's defective recollection rather than to Parker's untruthfulness. Brenton wrote his report nearly two and a half months after the event. After a period of detention on board the tender at Leith, Parker, in company with other Quota and pressed men, was conveyed to the Nore in one of the revenue vessels occasionally utilised for that purpose, and there put on board the _Sandwich_, the flag-ship for that division of the fleet. At half-past nine on the morning of the 12th of May, upon the 2nd lieutenant's giving orders to "clear hawse," the ship's company got on the booms and gave three cheers, which were at once answered from the _Director_. They then reeved yard-ropes as a menace to those of the crew who would not join them, and trained the forecastle guns on the quarter-deck as a hint to the officers. The latter were presently put on shore, and that same day the mutineers unanimously chose Parker to be their "President" or leader. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5339--Court-Martial on Richard Parker: Deposition of Lieut. Justice.] The fact that he had been pressed in the first instance, and that after having served for a time in the capacity of a "quarter-deck young gentleman" he had been unceremoniously derated, singled him out for this distinction. There was amongst the mutineers, moreover, no other so eligible; for whatever Parker's faults, he was unquestionably a man of superior ability and far from inferior attainments. The reeving of yard-ropes was his idea, though he disclaimed it. An extraordinary mixture of tenderness and savagery, he wept when it was proposed to fire upon a runaway ship, the _Repulse_, but the next moment drove a crowbar into the muzzle of the already heavily shotted gun and bade the gunner "send her to hell where she belonged." "I'll make a beefsteak of you at the yard-arm" was his favourite threat. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5339--Court-Martial on Richard Parker: Depositions of Capt. John Wood, of H.M. Sloop _Hound_, William Livingston, boat-swain of the _Director_, and Thomas Barry, seaman on board the _Monmouth._] It was prophetic, for that way, as events quickly proved, lay the finish of his own career. At nine o'clock on the morning of the 30th of June Parker, convicted and sentenced to death after a fair trial, stood on the scaffold awaiting his now imminent end. The halter, greased to facilitate his passing, was already about his neck, and in one of his hands, which had been freed at his own request, he held a handkerchief borrowed for the occasion from one of the officers of the ship. This he suddenly dropped. It was the preconcerted signal, and as the fatal gun boomed out in response to it he thrust his hands into his pockets with great rapidity and jumped into mid-air, meeting his death without a tremor and with scarce a convulsion. Thanks to the clearness of the atmosphere and the facility with which the semaphores did their work that morning, the Admiralty learnt the news within seven minutes. [Footnote: Trial and Life of Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.] Now comes the woman's part in the drama on which the curtain rose with the pressing of Parker in '83, and fell, not with his execution at the yard-arm of the _Sandwich_, as one would suppose, but four days after that event. In one of his spells of idleness ashore Parker had married a Scotch girl, the daughter of an Aberdeenshire farmer--a tragic figure of a woman whose fate it was to be always too late. Hearing that her husband had taken the bounty, she set out with all speed for Leith, only to learn, upon her arrival there, that he was already on his way to the fleet. At Leith she tarried till rumours of his pending trial reached the north country. The magistrates would then have put her under arrest, designing to examine her, but the Admiralty, to whom Brenton reported their intention, vetoed the proceeding as superfluous. The case against Parker was already complete. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1517--Capt. Brenton, 15 June 1797, and endorsement.] Left free to follow the dictates of her tortured heart, the distracted woman posted south. Eating his last breakfast in the gun-room of the _Sandwich_, Parker talked affectionately of his wife, saying that he had made his will and left her a small estate he was heir to. Little did he dream that she was then within a few miles of him. The _Sandwich_ lay that morning above Blackstakes, the headmost ship of the fleet, and at the moment when Parker leapt from her cathead scaffold a boat containing his wife shot out into the stream. He was run up to the yard-arm before her very eyes. She was again too late. He hung there for an hour. Meantime, with a tenacity of purpose as touching as her devotion, the unhappy woman applied to the Admiral for the body of her husband. She was denied, and Parker's remains were committed to the new naval burial ground, beyond the Red-Barrier Gate leading to Minster. The burial took place at noon. By nightfall the grief-stricken woman had come to an amazing resolution. _She would steal the body_. Ten o'clock that night found her at the place of interment. Save for the presence of the sentinel at the adjoining Barrier Gate, the loneliness of the spot favoured her design, but a ten-foot palisade surrounded the grounds, and she had neither tools nor helpers. Unexpectedly three women came that way. To them she disclosed her purpose, praying them for the love of God to help her. Perhaps they were sailors' wives. Anyhow, they assented, and the four body-snatchers scaled the fence. [Illustration: MARY ANNE TALBOT. Dressed as a sailor.] The absence of tools, as it happened, presented no serious impediment to the execution of their design. The grave was a shallow one, the freshly turned mould loose and friable. Digging with their hands, they soon uncovered the coffin, which they then contrived to raise and hoist over the cemetery gates into the roadway, where they sat upon it to conceal it from chance passers-by till four o'clock in the morning. It was then daylight. The neighbouring drawbridge was let down, and, a fish-cart opportunely passing on its way to Rochester, the driver was prevailed upon to carry the "lady's box" into that town. A guinea served to allay his suspicions. Three days later a caravan drew up before the "Hoop and Horseshoe" tavern, in Queen Street, Little Tower Hill. A woman alighted--furtively, for it was now broad daylight, whereas she had planned to arrive while it was still dark. A watchman chanced to pass at the moment, and the woman's strange behaviour aroused his suspicions. Pulling aside the covering of the van, he looked in and saw there the rough coffin containing the body of Parker, which the driver of the caravan had carried up from Rochester for the sum of six guineas. Later in the day the magistrates sitting at Lambeth Street Police Court ordered its removal, and it was deposited in the vaults of Whitechapel church. [Footnote: Trial and Life of Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.] Full confirmation of this extraordinary story, should any doubt it, may be found in the registers of the church in question. Amongst the burials there we read this entry: "_July, 1797, Richard Parker, Sheerness, Kent, age 33. Cause of death, execution. This was Parker, the President of the Mutinous Delegates on board the fleet at the Nore. He was hanged on board H.M.S._ Sandwich _on the 30th day of June_." [Footnote: Burial Registers of St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, 1797.] CHAPTER XI. IN THE CLUTCH OF THE GANG. Once the gang had a man in its power, his immediate destination was either the rendezvous press-room or the tender employed as a substitute for that indispensable place of detention. The press-room, lock-up or "shut-up house," as it was variously termed, must not be confounded with the press-room at Newgate, where persons indicted for felony, and perversely refusing to plead, were pressed beneath weights till they complied with that necessary legal formality. From that historic cell the rendezvous press-room differed widely, both in nature and in use. Here the pressed men were confined pending their dispatch to His Majesty's ships. As a matter of course the place was strongly built, heavily barred and massively bolted, being in these respects merely a commonplace replica of the average bridewell. Where it differed from the bridewell was in its walls. Theoretically these were elastic. No matter how many they held, there was always room within them for more. As late as 1806 the press-room at Bristol consisted of a cell only eight feet square, and into this confined space sixteen men were frequently packed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 March 1806.] Nearly everywhere it was the same gruesome story. The sufferings of the pressed man went for nothing so long as the pressed man was kept. Provided only the bars were dependable and the bolts staunch, anything would do to "clap him up in." The town "cage" came in handy for the purpose; and when no other means of securing him could be found, he was thrust into the local prison like a common felon, often amidst surroundings unspeakably awful. According to the elder Wesley, no "seat of woe" on this side of the Bottomless Pit outrivalled Newgate except one. [Footnote: London Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1761.] The exception was Bristol jail. A filthy, evil-smelling hole, crowded with distempered prisoners without medical care, it was deservedly held in such dread as to "make all seamen fly the river" for fear of being pressed and committed to it. For when the eight-foot cell at the rendezvous would hold no more, Bristol pressed men were turned in here--to come out, if they survived the pestilential atmosphere of the place, either fever-stricken or pitiful, vermin-covered objects from whom even the hardened gangsman shrank with fear and loathing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 4 Aug. 1759.] Putting humane considerations entirely aside, it is well-nigh inconceivable that so costly an asset as the pressed man should ever have been exposed to such sanitary risks. The explanation doubtless lies in the enormous amount of pressing that was done. The number of men taken was in the aggregate so great that a life more or less was hardly worth considering. Of ancient use as a county jail, Gloucester Castle stood far higher in the pressed man's esteem as a place of detention than did its sister prison on the Avon. The reason is noteworthy. Richard Evans, for many years keeper there, possessed a magic palm. Rub it with silver in sufficient quantity, and the "street door of the gaol" opened before you at noonday, or, when at night all was as quiet as the keeper's conscience, a plank vanished from the roof of your cell, and as you stood lost in wonder at its disappearance there came snaking down through the hole thus providentially formed a rope by the aid of which, if you were a sailor or possessed of a sailor's agility and daring, it was feasible to make your escape over the ramparts of the castle, though they towered "most as high as the Monument." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 28 April and 26 May 1759.] In the absence of the gang on road or other extraneous duty the precautions taken for the safety of pressed men were often very inadequate, and this circumstance gave rise to many an impromptu rescue. Sometimes the local constable was commandeered as a temporary guard, and a story is told of how, the gang having once locked three pressed men into the cage at Isleworth and stationed the borough watchman over them, one Thomas Purser raised a mob, demolished the door of the cage, and set its delighted occupants free amid frenzied shouts of: "Pay away within, my lads! and we'll pay away without. Damn the constable! He has no warrant." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 99.] In strict accordance with the regulations governing, or supposed to govern, the keeping of rendezvous, the duration of the pressed man's confinement ought never to have exceeded four-and-twenty hours from the time of his capture; but as a matter of fact it often extended far beyond that limit. Everything depended on the gang. If men were brought in quickly, they were as quickly got rid of; but when they dribbled in in one's and two's, with perhaps intervals of days when nothing at all was doing, weeks sometimes elapsed before a batch of suitable size could be made ready and started on its journey to the ships. All this time the pressed man had to be fed, or, as they said in the service, subsisted or victualled, and for this purpose a sum varying from sixpence to ninepence a day, according to the cost of provisions, was allowed him. On this generous basis he was nourished for a hundred years or more, till one day early in the nineteenth century some half-score of gaunt, hungry wretches, cooped up for eight weary weeks in an East-coast press-room during the rigours of a severe winter, made the startling discovery that the time-honoured allowance was insufficient to keep soul and body together. They accordingly addressed a petition to the Admiralty, setting forth the cause and nature of their sufferings, and asking for a "rise." A dozen years earlier the petition would have been tossed aside as insolent and unworthy of consideration; but the sharp lesson of the Nore mutiny happened to be still fresh in their Lordships' memories, so with unprecedented generosity and haste they at once augmented the allowance, and that too for the whole kingdom, to fifteen-pence a day. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1546--Petition of the Pressed Men at King's Lynn, 27 Jan. 1809, and endorsement.] It was a red-letter day for the pressed man. A single stroke of the official pen had raised him from starvation to opulence, and thenceforward, when food was cheap and the purchasing power of the penny high, he regaled himself daily, as at Limerick in 1814, on such abundant fare as a pound of beef, seven and a half pounds of potatoes, a pint of milk, a quart of porter, a boiling of greens and a mess of oatmeal; or, if he happened to be a Catholic, on fish and butter twice a week instead of beef. The quantity of potatoes is worthy of remark. It was peculiar to Ireland, where the lower classes never used bread. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1455--Capt. Argles, 1 March 1814.] Though faring thus sumptuously at his country's expense, the pressed man did not always pass the days of his detention in unprofitable idleness. There were certain eventualities to be thought of and provided against. Sooner or later he must go before the "gent with the swabs" and be "regulated," that is to say, stripped to the waist, or further if that exacting officer deemed it advisable, and be critically examined for physical ailments and bodily defects. In this examination the local "saw-bones" would doubtless lend a hand, and to outwit the combined skill of both captain and surgeon was a point of honour with the pressed man if by any possibility it could be done. With this laudable end in view he devoted much of his enforced leisure to the rehearsal of such symptoms and the fabrication of such defects as were best calculated to make him a free man. For the sailor to deny his vocation was worse than useless. The ganger's shrewd code--"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint, be liars, and all liars be seamen"--effectually shut that door in his face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every stratagem in his power to impose"--that he was, in short, a cunning cheat whose most serious ailments were to be regarded with the least sympathy and the utmost suspicion. Yet in spite of this disquieting fact the old hand, whom long practice had made an adept at deception, and who, when he was so inclined, could simulate "complaints of a nature to baffle the skill of any professional man," [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1540--Capt. Barker, 5 Nov. 1807.] rarely if ever faced the ordeal of regulating without "trying it on." Often, indeed, he anticipated it. There was nothing like keeping his hand in. Fits were his great stand-by, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534--Capt. Barker, 11 Jan. 1805, and many instances.] and the time he chose for these convulsive turns was generally night, when he could count upon a full house and nothing to detract from the impressiveness of the show. Suddenly, at night, then, a weird, horribly inarticulate cry is heard issuing from the press-room, and at once all is uproar and confusion. Unable to make himself heard, much less to restore order, and fearing that murder is being done amongst the pressed men, the sentry hastily summons the officer, who rushes down, half-dressed, and hails the press-room. "Hullo! within there. What's wrong?" Swift silence. Then, "Man in a fit, sir," replies a quavering voice. "Out with him!" cries the officer. Immediately, the door being hurriedly unbarred, the "case" is handed out by his terrified companions, who are only too glad to be rid of him. To all appearances he is in a true epileptic state. In the light of the lantern, held conveniently near by one of the gangsmen, who have by this time turned out in various stages of undress, his features are seen to be strongly convulsed. His breathing is laboured and noisy, his head rolls incessantly from side to side. Foam tinged with blood oozes from between his gnashing teeth, flecking his lips and beard, and when his limbs are raised they fall back as rigid as iron. [Footnote: Almost the only symptom of _le grand mal_ which the sailor could not successfully counterfeit was the abnormal dilation of the pupils so characteristic of that complaint, and this difficulty he overcame by rolling his eyes up till the pupils were invisible.] After surveying him critically for a moment the officer, if he too is an old hand, quietly removes the candle from the lantern and with a deft turn of his wrist tips the boiling-hot contents of the tallow cup surrounding the flaming wick out upon the bare arm or exposed chest of the "case." When the fit was genuine, as of course it sometimes was, the test had no particular reviving effect; but if the man were shamming, as he probably was in spite of the great consistency of his symptoms, the chances were that, with all his nerve and foreknowledge of what was in store for him, the sudden biting of the fiery liquid into his naked flesh would bring him to his feet dancing with pain and cursing and banning to the utmost extent of his elastic vocabulary. When this happened, "Put him back," said the officer. "He'll do, alow or aloft." Going aloft at sea was the true epileptic's chief dread. And with good reason, for sooner or later it meant a fall, and death. In the meantime other enterprising members of the press-room community made ready for the scrutiny of the official eye in various ways, practising many devices for procuring a temporary disability and a permanent discharge. Some, horrible thought! "rubbed themselves with Cow Itch and Whipped themselves with Nettles to appear in Scabbs"; others "burnt themselves with oil of vitriol" to induce symptoms with difficulty distinguishable from those of scurvy, that disease of such dread omen to the fleet; whilst others emulated the passing of the poor consumptive of the canting epitaph, whose "legs it was that carried her off." Bad legs, indeed, ran a close race with fits in the pressed man's sprint for liberty. They were so easily induced, and so cheaply. The industrious application of the smallest copper coin procurable, the humble farthing or the halfpenny, speedily converted the most insignificant abrasion of the skin into a festering sore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 20 June 1741; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1544--Capt. Bowyer, 18 Dec. 1808; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1451--A. Clarke, Examining Surgeon at Dublin, 18 May 1807; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1517--Letters of Capt. Brenton, March and April 1797, and many instances.] Here and there a man of iron nerve, acting on the common belief that if you had lost a finger the Navy would have none of you, adopted a more heroic method of shaking off the clutch of the gang. Such a man was Samuel Caradine, some time inhabitant of Kendal. Committed to the House of Correction there as a preliminary to his being turned over to the fleet for crimes that he had done, he expressed a desire to bid farewell to his wife. She was sent for, and came, apparently not unprepared; for after she had greeted her man through the iron door of his cell, "he put his hand underneath, and she, with a mallet and chisel concealed for the purpose, struck off a finger and thumb to render him unfit for His Majesty's service." [Footnote: _Times_, 3 Nov. 1795.] A stout-hearted fellow named Browne, who hailed from Chester, would have made Caradine a fitting mate. "Being impressed into the sea service, he very violently determined, in order to extricate himself therefrom, to mutilate the thumb and a finger of his left hand; which he accomplished by repeatedly maiming them with an old hatchet that he had obtained for that purpose. He was immediately discharged." [Footnote: _Liverpool Advertiser_, 6 June 1777.] Such men as these were a substantial loss to the service. Fighting a gun shoulder to shoulder, what fearful execution would they not have wrought upon the "hereditary enemy"! It did not always do, however, to presume upon the loss of a forefinger, particularly if it were missing from the left hand. Capt. Barker, while he was regulating the press at Bristol, once had occasion to send into Ilchester for a couple of brace of convicts who had received the royal pardon on condition of their serving at sea. Near Shepton Mallet, on the return tramp, his gangsmen fell in with a party armed with sticks and knives, who "beat and cut them in a very cruel manner." They succeeded, however, in taking the ringleader, one Charles Biggen, and brought him in; but when Barker would have discharged the fellow because his left forefinger was wanting, the Admiralty brushed the customary rule aside and ordered him to be kept. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1528--Capt. Barker, 28 July 1803, and endorsement.] The main considerations entering into the dispatch of pressed men to the fleet, when at length their period of detention at headquarters came to an end, were economy, speed and safety. Transport was necessarily either by land or water, and in the case of seaport, river or canal towns, both modes were of course available. Gangs operating at a distance from the sea, or remote from a navigable river or canal, were from their very situation obliged to send their catch to market either wholly by land, or by land and water successively. Land transport, though always healthier, and in many instances speedier and cheaper than transport by water, was nevertheless much more risky. Pressed men therefore preferred it. The risks--rescue and desertion--were all in their favour. Hence, when they "offered chearfully to walk up," or down, as the case might be, the seeming magnanimity of the offer was never permitted to blind those in charge of them to the need for a strong attendant guard. [Footnote: In the spring of 1795 a body of Quota Men, some 130 strong, voluntarily marched from Liverpool to London, a distance of 182 miles, instead of travelling by coach as at first proposed. Though all had received the bounty and squandered it in debauchery, not a man deserted; and in their case the danger of rescue was of course absent. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1511--Capt. Bowen, 21 April 1795.] The men would have had to walk in any case, for transport by coach, though occasionally sanctioned, was an event of rare occurrence. A number procured in Berkshire were in 1756 forwarded to London "by the Reading machines," but this was an exceptional indulgence due to the state of their feet, which were already "blistered with travelling." Even with the precaution of a strong guard, there were parts of the country through which it was highly imprudent, if not altogether impracticable, to venture a party on foot. Of these the thirty-mile stretch of road between Kilkenny and Waterford, the nearest seaport, perhaps enjoyed the most unenviable reputation. No gang durst traverse it; and no body of pressed men, and more particularly of pressed Catholics, could ever have been conveyed even for so short a distance through a country inhabited by a fanatical and strongly disaffected people without courting certain bloodshed. The naval authorities in consequence left Kilkenny severely alone. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1529--Capt. Bowen, 12 Oct. 1803.] The sending of men overland from Appledore to Plymouth, a course frequently adopted to avoid the circuitous sea-route, was attended with similar risks. The hardy miners and quarrymen of the intervening moorlands loved nothing so much as knocking the gangsman on the head. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 22 Sept. 1805.] The attenuated neck of land between the Mersey and the Dee had an evil reputation for affairs of this description. Men pressed at Chester, and sent across the neck to the tenders or ships of war in the Mersey, seldom reached their destination unless attended by an exceptionally strong escort. The reason is briefly but graphically set forth by Capt. Ayscough, who dispatched three such men from Chester, under convoy of his entire gang, in 1780. "On the road thither," says he, "about seven miles from hence, at a village called Sutton, they were met by upwards of one Hundred Arm'd Seamen from Parkgate, belonging to different privateers at Liverpool. An Affray ensued, and the three Impress'd men were rescued by the Mobb, who Shot one of my Gang through the Body and wounded two others." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1446--Capt. Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] Parkgate, it will be recalled, was a notorious "nest of seamen." The alternative route to Liverpool, by passage-boat down the Dee, was both safer and cheaper. To send a pressed man that way, accompanied by two of the gang, cost only twelve-and-six. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Admiral Phillip, 14 Sept. 1804.] Mr. Midshipman Goodave and party, convoying pressed men from Lymington to Southampton, once met with an adventure in traversing the New Forest which, notwithstanding its tragic sequel, is not without its humorous side. They had left the little fishing village of Lepe some miles behind, and were just getting well into the Forest, when a cavalcade of mounted men, some thirty strong, all muffled in greatgoats and armed to the teeth, unexpectedly emerged from the wood and opened fire upon them. Believing it to be an attempt at rescue, the gang closed in about their prisoners, but when one of these was the first to fall, his arm shattered and an ear shot off, the gangsmen, perceiving their mistake, broke and fled in all directions. Not far, however. The smugglers, for such they were, quickly rounded them up and proceeded, not to shoot them, as the would-be fugitives anticipated, but to administer to them the "smugglers' oath." This they did by forcing them on their knees and compelling them, at the point of the pistol and with horrible execrations, to "wish their eyes might drop out if they told their officers which way they, the smugglers, were gone." Having extorted this unique pledge of secrecy as to their movements, they rode away into the Forest, unaware that Mr. Midshipman Goodave, snugly ensconced in the neighbouring ditch, had seen and heard all that passed--a piece of discretion on his part that later on brought at least one of the smugglers into distressing contact with the law. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 18: Informations of Shepherd Goodave, 1 Oct. 1779.] Just as the dangers of the sea sometimes rendered it safer to dispatch pressed men from seaport towns by land--as at Exmouth, where the entrance to the port was in certain weathers so hazardous as to bottle all shipping up, or shut it out, for days together--so the dangers peculiar to the land rendered it as often expedient to dispatch them from inland towns by water. This was the case at Stourbridge. Handed over to contractors responsible for their safe-keeping, the numerous seamen taken by the gangs in that town and vicinity were delivered on board the tenders in King Road, below Bristol--conveyed thither by water, at a cost of half a guinea per head. This sum included subsistence, which would appear to have been mainly by water also. To Liverpool, the alternative port of delivery, carriage could only be had by land, and the risks of land transit in that direction were so great as to be considered insuperable, to say nothing of the cost. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Letters of Capt. Beecher, 1780.] At ports such as Liverpool, Dublin and Hull, where His Majesty's ships made frequent calls, the readiest means of disposing of pressed men was of course to put them immediately on ship-board; but when no ship was thus available, or when, though available, she was bound foreign or on other prohibitive service, there was nothing for it, in the case of rendezvous lying so far afield as to render land transport impracticable, but to forward the harvest of the gangs by water. In this way there grew up a system of sea transport that centred from many distant and widely separated points of the kingdom upon those great entrepôts for pressed men, the Hamoaze, Spithead and the Nore. Now and then, for reasons of economy or expediency, men were shipped to these destinations as "passengers" on colliers and merchant vessels, their escort consisting of a petty officer and one or more gangsmen, according to the number to be safeguarded. Occasionally they had no escort at all, the masters being simply bound over to make good all losses arising from any cause save death, capture by an enemy's ship or the act of God. From King's Lynn to the Nore the rate per head, by this means of transport, was 2 Pounds, 15s., including victualling; from Hull, 2 Pounds 12s. 6d.; from Newcastle, 10s. 6d. The lower rates for the longer runs are explained by the fact that, shipping facilities being so much more numerous on the Humber and the Tyne, competition reduced the cost of carriage in proportion to its activity. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Phillip, 3 and 11 Aug. 1801; Admiral Pringle, 2 April 1795.] In spite of every precaution, such serious loss attended the shipping of men in this manner as to force the Admiralty back upon its own resources. Recourse was accordingly had, in the great majority of cases, to that handy auxiliary of the fleet, the hired tender. Tenders fell into two categories--cruising tenders, employed exclusively, or almost exclusively, in pressing afloat after the manner described in an earlier chapter, and tenders used for the double purpose of "keeping" men pressed on land and of conveying them to the fleet when their numbers grew to such proportions as to make a full and consequently dangerous ship. In theory, "any old unmasted hulk, unfit to send to sea, would answer to keep pressed men in." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Pringle, 2 April 1795.] In practice, the contrary was the case. Fitness for sea, combined with readiness to slip at short notice, was more essential than mere cubic capacity, since transhipment was thus avoided and the pressed man deprived of another chance of taking French leave. One all-important consideration, in the case of tenders employed for the storing and detention of pressed men prior to their dispatch to the fleet, was that the vessel should be able to lie afloat at low water; for if the fall of the tide left her high and dry, the risk of desertion, as well as of attack from the shore, was enormously increased. Whitehaven could make no use of man-storing tenders for this reason; and at the important centre of King's Lynn, which was really a receiving station for three counties, it was found "requisite to have always a vessel below the Deeps to keep pressed men aboard," since their escape or rescue by way of the flats was in any anchorage nearer the town a foregone conclusion. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1486--Capt. Baird, 27 Feb. 1755.] On board the tenders the comfort and health of the pressed man were no more studied than in the strong-rooms and prisons ashore. A part of the hold was required to be roughly but substantially partitioned off for his security, and on rare occasions this space was fitted with bunks; but as the men usually arrived "all very bare of necessaries"--except when pressed afloat, a case we are not now considering--any provision for the slinging of hammocks, or the spreading of bedding they did not possess, came to be looked upon as a superfluous and uncalled-for proceeding. Even the press-room was a rarity, save in tenders that had been long in the service. Down in the hold of the vessel, whither the men were turned like so many sheep as soon as they arrived on board, they perhaps found a rough platform of deal planks provided for them to lie on, and from this they were at liberty to extract such sorry comfort as they could during the weary days and nights of their incarceration. Other conveniences they had none. When this too was absent, as not infrequently happened, they were reduced to the necessity of "laying about on the Cables and Cask," suffering in consequence "more than can well be expressed." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. A'Court, 22 April 1741; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bover, 11 Feb. 1777, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] It is not too much to say that transported convicts had better treatment. Cooped up for weeks at a stretch in a space invariably crowded to excess, deprived almost entirely of light, exercise and fresh air, and poisoned with bad water and what Roderick Random so truthfully called the "noisome stench of the place," it is hardly surprising that on protracted voyages from such distant ports as Limerick or Leith the men should have "fallen sick very fast." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1444--Capt. Allen, 4 March 1771, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] Officers were, indeed, charged "to be very careful of the healths of the seamen" entrusted to their keeping; yet in spite of this most salutary regulation, so hopelessly bad were the conditions under which the men were habitually carried, and so slight was the effort made to ameliorate them, that few tenders reached their destination without a more or less serious outbreak of fever, small-pox or some other equally malignant distemper. Upon the fleet the effect was appalling. Sickly tenders could not but make sickly ships. If the material atmosphere of the tender's hold was bad, its moral atmosphere was unquestionably worse. Dark deeds were done here at times, and no man "peached" upon his fellows. Out of this deplorable state of things a remarkable legal proceeding once grew. Murder having been committed in the night, and none coming forward to implicate the offender, the coroner's jury, instead of returning their verdict against some person or persons unknown, found the entire occupants of the tender's hold, seventy-two in number, guilty of that crime. A warrant was actually issued for their apprehension, though never executed. To put the men on their trial was a useless step, since, in the circumstances, they would have been most assuredly acquitted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No. 20.] Just as assuredly any informer in their midst would have been murdered. The scale of victualling on board the tenders was supposed to be the same as on shore. "Full allowance daily" was the rule; and if the copper proved too small to serve all at one boiling, there were to be as many boilings as should be required to go round. Unhappily for the pressed man, there was a weevil in his daily bread. While it was the bounden duty of the master of the vessel to feed him properly, and of the officers to see that he was properly fed, "officers and masters generally understood each other too well in the pursery line." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral M'Bride, 19 March 1795.] Rations were consequently short, boilings deficient, and though the cabin went well content, the hold was the scene of bitter grumblings. Nor were these the only disabilities the pressed man laboured under. His officers proved a sore trial to him. The Earl of Pembroke, Lord High Admiral, foreseeing that this would be the case, directed that he should be "used with all possible tenderness and humanity." The order was little regarded. The callosity of Smollett's midshipman, who spat in the pressed man's face when he dared to complain of his sufferings, and roughly bade him die for aught he cared, was characteristic of the service. Hence a later regulation, with grim irony, gave directions for his burial. He was to be put out of the way, as soon as might be after the fatal conditions prevailing on board His Majesty's tenders had done their work, with as great a show of decency as could be extracted from the sum of ten shillings. Strictly speaking, it was not in the power of the tender's officers to mitigate the hardships of the pressed man's lot to any appreciable extent, let them be as humane as they might. For this the pressed man himself was largely to blame. An ungrateful rogue, his hide was as impervious to kindness as a duck's back to water. Supply him with slops [Footnote: The regulations stipulated that slops should be served out to all who needed them; but as their acceptance was held to set up a contract between the recipient and the Crown, the pressed man was not unnaturally averse from drawing upon such a source of supply as long as any chance of escape remained to him.] wherewith to cover his nakedness or shield him from the cold, and before the Sunday muster came round the garments had vanished--not into thin air, indeed, but in tobacco and rum, for which forbidden luxuries he invariably bartered them with the bumboat women who had the run of the vessel while she remained in harbour. Or allow him on deck to take the air and such exercise as could be got there, and the moment your back was turned he was away _sans congé_. Few of these runaways were as considerate as that Scotch humorist, William Ramsay, who was pressed at Leith for beating an informer and there put on board the tender. Seizing the first opportunity of absconding, "Sir," he wrote to the lieutenant in command, "I am so much attached to you for the good usage I have received at your hands, that I cannot think of venturing on board your ship again in the present state of affairs. I therefore leave this letter at my father's to inform you that I intend to slip out of the way." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1524.--Capt. Brenton, 20 Oct. 1800.] When that clever adventuress, Moll Flanders, found herself booked for transportation beyond the seas, her one desire, it will be recalled, was "to come back before she went." So it was with the pressed man. The idea of escape obsessed him--escape before he should be rated on shipboard and sent away to heaven only knew what remote quarter of the globe. It was for this reason that irons were so frequently added to his comforts. "Safe bind, safe find" was the golden rule on board His Majesty's tenders. How difficult it was for him to carry his cherished design into execution, and yet how easy, is brought home to us with surprising force by the catastrophe that befell the _Tasker_ tender. On the 23rd of May 1755 the _Tasker_ sailed out of the Mersey with a full cargo of pressed men designed for Spithead. She possessed no press-room, and as the men for that reason had the run of the hold, all hatches were securely battened down with the exception of the maindeck scuttle, an opening so small as to admit of the passage of but one man at a time. Her crew numbered thirty-eight, and elaborate precautions were taken for the safe-keeping of her restless human freight. So much is evident from the disposition of her guard, which was as follows:-- _(a)_ At the open scuttle two sentries, armed with pistol and cutlass. Orders, not to let too many men up at once. _(b)_ On the forecastle two sentries, armed with musket and bayonet. Orders, to fire on any pressed man who should attempt to swim away. _(c)_ On the poop one sentry, similarly armed, and having similar orders. _(d)_ On the quarter-deck, at the entrance to the great cabin, where the remaining arms were kept, one sentry, armed with cutlass and pistol. Orders, to let no pressed man come upon the quarter-deck. There were thus six armed sentinels stationed about the ship--ample to have nipped in the bud any attempt to seize the vessel, but for two serious errors of judgment on the part of the officer responsible for their disposition. These were, first, the discretionary power vested in the sentries at the scuttle; and, second, the inadequate guard, a solitary man, set for the defence of the great cabin and the arms it contained. Now let us see how these errors of judgment affected the situation. Either through stupidity, bribery or because they were rapidly making an offing, the sentries at the scuttle, as the day wore on, admitted a larger number of pressed men to the comparative freedom of the deck than was consistent with prudence. The number eventually swelled to fourteen--sturdy, determined fellows, the pick of the hold. One of them, having a fiddle, struck up a merry tune, the rest fell to dancing, the tender's crew who were off duty caught the infection and joined in, while the officers stood looking on, tolerantly amused and wholly unsuspicious of danger. Suddenly, just when the fun was at its height, a splash was heard, a cry of "Man overboard!" ran from lip to lip, and officers and crew rushed to the vessel's side. They were there, gazing into the sea, for only a minute or two, but by the time they turned their faces inboard again the fourteen determined men were masters of the ship. In the brief disciplinary interval they had overpowered the guard and looted the cabin of its store of arms. That night they carried the tender into Redwharf Bay and there bade her adieu. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 920--Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, 3 June 1755, and enclosures.] To pursue them in so mountainous a country would have been useless; to punish them, even had they been retaken, impossible. As unrated men they were neither mutineers nor deserters, [Footnote: By 4 & 5 Anne, cap. 6, pressed men could be apprehended and tried for desertion by virtue of the Queen's shilling having been forced upon them at the time they were pressed, but as the use of that coin fell into abeyance, so the Act in question became gradually a dead-letter. Hay, Murray, Lloyd, Pinfold and Jervis, Law Officers of the Crown, giving an opinion on this important point in 1756, held that "pressed men are not subject to the Articles (of War) until they are actually rated on board some of His Majesty's ships."--_Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1756-77, No. 3, Case 2.] and the seizure of the tender was at the worst a bloodless crime in which no one was hurt save an obdurate sentry, who was slashed over the head with a cutlass. The boldness of its inception and the anticlimaxical nature of its finish invest another exploit of this description with an interest all its own. This was the cutting out of the _Union_ tender from the river Tyne on the 12th April 1777. The commander, Lieut. Colville, having that day gone on shore for the "benefit of the air," and young Barker, the midshipman who was left in charge in his absence, having surreptitiously followed suit, the pressed men and volunteers, to the number of about forty, taking advantage of the opportunity thus presented, rose and seized the vessel, loaded the great guns, and by dint of threatening to sink any boat that should attempt to board them kept all comers, including the commander himself, at bay till nine o'clock in the evening. By that time night had fallen, so, with the wind blowing strong off-shore and an ebb-tide running, they cut the cables and stood out to sea. For three days nothing was heard of them, and North Shields, the scene of the exploit and the home of most of the runaways, was just on the point of giving the vessel up for lost when news came that she was safe. Influenced by one Benjamin Lamb, a pressed man of more than ordinary character, the rest had relinquished their original purpose of either crossing over to Holland or running the vessel ashore on some unfrequented part of the coast, and had instead carried her into Scarborough Bay, doubtless hoping to land there without interference and so make their way to Whitby or Hull. In this design, however, they were partly frustrated, for, a force having been hastily organised for their apprehension, they were waylaid as they came ashore and retaken to the number of twenty-two, the rest escaping. Lamb, discharged for his good offices in saving the tender, was offered a boatswain's place if he would re-enter; but for poor Colville the affair proved disastrous. Becoming demented, he attempted to shoot himself and had to be superseded. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1497--Capt. Bover, 13 April 1777, and enclosures.] All down through the century similar incidents, crowding thick and fast one upon another, relieved the humdrum routine of the pressed man's passage to the fleet, and either made his miserable life in a measure worth living or brought it to a summary conclusion. Of minor incidents, all tending to the same happy or unhappy end, there was no lack. Now he sweltered beneath a sun so hot as to cause the pitch to boil in the seams of the deck above his head; again, as when the _Boneta_ sloop, conveying pressed men from Liverpool to the Hamoaze in 1740, encountered "Bedds of two or three Acres bigg of Ice & of five or Six foot thicknesse, which struck her with such force 'twas enough to drive her bows well out," he "almost perished" from cold. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 8 Feb. 1739-40.] To-day it was broad farce. He held his sides with laughter to see the lieutenant of the tender he was in, mad with rage and drink, chase the steward round and round the mainmast with a loaded pistol, whilst the terrified hands, fearing for their lives, fled for refuge to the coalhole, the roundtops and the shore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1498--Complaint of the Master and Company of H. M. Hired Tender _Speedwell_, 21 Dec. 1778.] To-morrow it was tragedy. Some "little dirty privateer" swooped down upon him, as in the case of the _Admiral Spry_ tender from Waterford to Plymouth, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1500--Dickson, Surveyor of Customs at the Cove of Cork, April 1780.] and consigned him to what he dreaded infinitely more than any man-o'-war--a French prison; or contrary winds, swelling into a sudden gale, drove him a helpless wreck on to some treacherous coast, as they drove the _Rich Charlotte_ upon the Formby Sands in 1745, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Amherst, 4 Oct. 1745.] and there remorselessly drowned him. Provided he escaped such untoward accidents as death or capture by the enemy, sooner or later the pressed man arrived at the receiving station. Here another ordeal awaited him, and here also he made his last bid for freedom. Taking the form of a final survey or regulating, the ordeal the pressed man had now to face was no less thoroughgoing than its precursor at the rendezvous had in all probability been superficial and ineffective. Eyes saw deeper here, wits were sharper, and in this lay at once the pressed man's bane and salvation. For if genuinely unfit, the fact was speedily demonstrated; whereas if merely shamming, discovery overtook him with a certainty that wrote "finis" to his last hope. Nevertheless, for this ordeal, as for his earlier regulating at the rendezvous, the sailor who knew his book prepared himself with exacting care during the tedium of his voyage. No sooner was he mustered for survey, then, than the most extraordinary, impudent and in many instances transparent impostures were sprung upon his examiners. Deafness prevailed to an alarming extent, dumbness was by no means unknown. Men who fought desperately when the gang took them, or who played cards with great assiduity in the tender's hold, developed sudden paralysis of the arms. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1464--Capt. Bloyes, Jan. 1702-3; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Bennett, 26 Sept. 1711. An extraordinary instance of this form of malingering is cited in the "Naval Sketch-Book," 1826.] Legs which had been soundness itself at the rendezvous were now a putrefying mass of sores. The itch broke out again, virulent and from all accounts incurable. Fits returned with redoubled frequency and violence, the sane became demented or idiotic, and the most obviously British, losing the use of their mother tongue, swore with many gesticulatory _sacrés_ that they had no English, as indeed they had none for naval purposes. Looking at the miserable, disease-ridden crew, the uninitiated spectator was moved to tears of pity. Not so the naval officer. In France, when a prisoner of war, learning French there without a master, he had heard a saying that he now recalled to some purpose: _Vin de grain est plus doux que n'est pas vin de presse_--"Willing duties are sweeter than those that are extorted." The punning allusion to the press had tickled his fancy and fixed the significant truism in his memory. From it he now took his cue and proceeded to man his ship. So at length the pressed man, in spite of all his ruses and protestations, was rated and absorbed into that vast agglomeration of men and ships known as the fleet. Here he underwent a speedy metamorphosis. It was not that he lost his individuality and became a mere unit amongst thousands. Quite the contrary. Friends, creditors or next-of-kin, concocting petitions on his behalf, set forth in heart-rending terms the many disabilities he suffered from, together with many he did not, and prayed, with a fervour often reaching no deeper than their pockets, that he might be restored without delay to his bereaved and destitute family. Across the bottom right-hand corner of these petitions, conveniently upturned for that purpose, the Admiralty scrawled its initial order: "Let his case be stated." The immediate effect of this expenditure of Admiralty ink was magical. It promoted the subject of the petition from the ranks, so to speak, and raised him to the dignity of a "State the Case Man." He now became a person of consequence. The kindliest inquiries were made after his health. The state of his eyes, the state of his limbs, the state of his digestion were all stated with the utmost minuteness and prolixity. Reams of gilt-edged paper were squandered upon him; and by the time his case had been duly stated, restated, considered, reconsidered and finally decided, the poor fellow had perhaps voyaged round the world or by some mischance gone to the next. In the matter of exacting their pound of flesh the Lords Commissioners were veritable Shylocks. Neither supplications nor tears had power to move them, and though they sometimes relented, it was invariably for reasons of policy and in the best interests of the service. Men clearly shown to be protected they released. They could not go back upon their word unless some lucky quibble rendered it possible to traverse the obligation with honour. Unprotected subjects who were clearly unfit to eat the king's victuals they discharged--for substitutes. [Illustration: The Press Gang, or English Liberty Displayed.] The principle underlying their Lordships' gracious acceptance of substitutes for pressed men was beautifully simple. If as a pressed man you were fit to serve, but unwilling, you were worth at least two able-bodied men; if you were unfit, and hence unable to serve, you were worth at least one. This simple rule proved a source of great encouragement to the gangs, for however bad a man might be he was always worth a better. The extortions to which the Lords Commissioners lent themselves in this connection--three, and, as in the case of Joseph Sanders of Bristol, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1534--Capt. Barker, 4 Jan. 1805, and endorsement.] even four able-bodied men being exacted as substitutes--could only be termed iniquitous did we not know the duplicity, roguery and deep cunning with which they had to cope. Upon the poor, indeed, the practice entailed great hardship, particularly when the home had to be sacrificed in order to obtain the discharge of the bread-winner who had been instrumental in getting it together; but to the unscrupulous crimp and the shady attorney the sailor's misfortune brought only gain. Buying up "raw boys," or Irishmen who "came over for reasons they did not wish known"--rascally persons who could be had for a song--they substituted these for seasoned men who had been pressed, and immediately, having got the latter in their power, turned them over to merchant ships at a handsome profit. At Hull, on the other hand, substitutes were sought in open market. The bell-man there cried a reward for men to go in that capacity. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--George Crowle, Esq., M.P. for Hull, 28 Dec. 1739.] Even when the pressed man had procured his substitutes and obtained his coveted discharge, his liberty was far from assured. In theory exempt from the press for a period of at least twelve months, he was in reality not only liable to be re-pressed at any moment, but to be subjected to that process as often as he chose to free himself and the gang to take him. A Liverpool youth named William Crick a lad with expectations to the amount of "near 4000 Pounds," was in this way pressed and discharged by substitute three times in quick succession. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Rear-Admiral Child, 8 Aug. 1799.] Intending substitutes themselves not infrequently suffered the same fate ere they could carry out their intention. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Lieut. Leaver, 5 Jan. 1739-40, and numerous instances.] The discharging of a pressed man whose petition finally succeeded did not always prove to be the eminently simple matter it would seem. Time and tide waited for no man, least of all for the man who had the misfortune to be pressed, and in the interval between his appeal and the order for his release his ship, as already hinted, had perhaps put half the circumference of the globe between him and home; or when the crucial moment arrived, and he was summoned before his commander to learn the gratifying Admiralty decision, he made his salute in batches of two, three or even four men, each of whom protested vehemently that he was the original and only person to whom the order applied. An amusing attempt at "coming Cripplegate" in this manner occurred on board the _Lennox_ in 1711. A woman, who gave her name as Alice Williams, having petitioned for the release of her "brother," one John Williams, a pressed man then on board that ship, succeeded in her petition, and orders were sent down to the commander, Capt. Bennett, to give the man his discharge. He proceeded to do so, but to his amazement discovered, first, that he had no less than four John Williamses on board, all pressed men; second, that while each of the four claimed to be the man in question, three of the number had no sister, while the fourth confessed to one whose name was not Alice but "Percilly"; and, after long and patient investigation, third, that one of them had a wife named Alice, who, he being a foreigner domiciled by marriage, had "tould him she would gett him cleare" should he chance to fall into the hands of the press-gang. In this she failed, for he was kept. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1470--Capt. Bennett, 2 Dec. 1711.] Of the pressed man's smiling arrest for debts which he did not owe, and of his jocular seizure by sheriffs armed with writs of Habeas Corpus, the annals of his incorporation in the fleet furnish many instances. Arrest for fictitious debt was specially common. In every seaport town attorneys were to be found who made it their regular practice. Particularly was this true of Bristol. Good seamen were rarely pressed there for whom writs were not immediately issued on the score of debts of which they had never heard. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Admiral Philip, 5 Dec. 1801.] To warrant such arrest the debt had to exceed twenty pounds, and service, when the pressed man was already on shipboard, was by the hands of the Water Bailiff. The writ of Habeas Corpus was, in effect, the only legal check it was possible to oppose to the impudent pretensions and high-handed proceedings of the gang. While H.M.S. _Amaranth_ lay in dock in 1804 and her company were temporarily quartered on a hulk in Long Reach, two sheriff's officers, accompanied by a man named Cumberland, a tailor of Deptford, boarded the latter and served a writ on a seaman for debt. The first lieutenant, who was in charge at the time, refused to let the man go, saying he would first send to his captain, then at the dock, for orders, which he accordingly did. The intruders thereupon went over the side, Cumberland "speaking very insultingly." Just as the messenger returned with the captain's answer, however, they again put in an appearance, and the lieutenant hailed them and bade them come aboard. Cumberland complied. "I have orders from my captain," said the lieutenant, stepping up to him, "to press you." He did so, and had it not been that a writ of Habeas Corpus was immediately sworn out, the Deptford tailor would most certainly have exchanged his needle for a marlinespike. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1532--Lieut. Collett, 13 Feb. 1804.] Provocative as such redemptive measures were, and designedly so, they were as a rule allowed to pass unchallenged. The Lords Commissioners regretted the loss of the men, but thought "perhaps it would be as well to let them go." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 302--Law Officers' Opinions, 1783-95, No. 24.] For this complacent attitude on the part of his captors the pressed man had reason to hold the Law Officers of the Crown in grateful remembrance. As early as 1755 they gave it as their opinion--too little heeded--that to bring any matter connected with pressing to judicial trial would be "very imprudent." Later, with the lesson of twenty-two years' hard pressing before their eyes, they went still further, for they then advised that a subject so contentious, not to say so ill-defined in law, should be kept, if not altogether, at least as much as possible out of court. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 7. 298--Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 99; _Admiralty Records_ 7. 299--Law Officers' Opinions, 1756-77, No. 70.] CHAPTER XII. HOW THE GANG WENT OUT. Not until the year 1833 did belated Nemesis overtake the press-gang. It died the unmourned victim of its own enormities, and the manner of its passing forms the by no means least interesting chapter in its extraordinary career. Summarising the causes, direct and indirect, which led to the final scrapping of an engine that had been mainly instrumental in manning the fleet for a hundred years and more, and without which, whatever its imperfections, that fleet could in all human probability never have been manned at all, we find them to be substantially these:-- _(a)_ The demoralising effects of long-continued, violent and indiscriminate pressing upon the Fleet; _(b)_ Its injurious and exasperating effects upon Trade; _(c)_ Its antagonising effect upon the Nation; and _(d)_ Its enormous cost as compared with recruiting by the good-will of the People. Frederick the Great, it is related, being in one of his grim humours after the dearly bought victory of Czaslaw, invited the neighbouring peasantry to come and share the spoil of the carcases on the field of battle. They responded in great numbers; whereupon he, surrounding them, pressed three hundred of the most promising and "cloathed them immediately from the dead." [Footnote: _State Papers Foreign, Germany,_ vol. cccxl.--Robinson to Hyndford, 31 May 1742.] In this way, Ezekiel-like, he retrieved his losses; but to the regiments so completed the addition of these resurrection recruits proved demoralising to a degree, notwithstanding the Draconic nature of the Prussian discipline. In like manner the discipline used in the British fleet, while not less drastic, failed conspicuously to counteract the dry-rot introduced and fostered by the press-gang. In its efforts to maintain the Navy, indeed, that agency came near to proving its ruin. On the most lenient survey of the recruits it furnished, it cannot be denied that they were in the aggregate a desperately poor lot, unfitted both physically and morally for the tremendous task of protecting an island people from the attacks of powerful sea-going rivals. How bad they were, the epithets spontaneously applied to them by the outraged commanders upon whom they were foisted abundantly prove. Witness the following, taken at random from naval captains' letters extending over a hundred years:-- "Blackguards." "Sorry poor creatures that don't earn half the victuals they eat." "Sad, thievish creatures." "Not a rag left but what was of such a nature as had to be destroyed." "150 on board, the greatest part of them sorry fellows." "Poor ragged souls, and very small." "Miserable poor creatures, not a seaman amongst them, and the fleet in the same condition." "Unfit for service, and a nuisance to the ship." "Never so ill-manned a ship since I have been at sea. The worst set I ever saw." "Twenty-six poor souls, but three of them seamen. Ragged and half dead." "Landsmen, boys, incurables and cripples. Sad wretches great part of them are." "More fit for an hospital than the sea." "All the ragg-tagg that can be picked up." In this last phrase, "All the rag-tag that can be picked up," we have the key to the situation; for though orders to press "no aged, diseased or infirm persons, nor boys," were sufficiently explicit, yet in order to swell the returns, and to appease in some degree the fleet's insatiable greed for men, the gangs raked in recruits with a lack of discrimination that for the better part of a century made that fleet the most gigantic collection of human freaks and derelicts under the sun. Billingsley, commander of the _Ferme_, receiving seventy pressed men to complete his complement in 1708, discovers to his chagrin that thirteen are lame in the legs, five lame in the hands, and three almost blind. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1469--Capt. Billingsley, 5 May 1708.] Latham, commanding the _Bristol_, on the eve of sailing for the West Indies can muster only eighteen seamen amongst sixty-eight pressed men that day put on board of him. As for the rest, they are either sick, or too old or too young to be of service--"ragged wretches, bad of the itch, who have not the least pretensions to eat His Majesty's bread." Forty of the number had to be put ashore. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 161--Admiral Watson, 26 Feb. 1754.] Admiral Mostyn, boarding his flagship, the _Monarch_, "never in his life saw such a crew," though the _Monarch_ had an already sufficiently evil reputation in that respect, insomuch that whenever a scarecrow man-o'-war's man was seen ashore the derisive cry instantly went up: "There goes a _Monarch_!" So hopelessly bad was the company in this instance, it was found impossible to carry the ship to sea. "I don't know where they come from," observes the Admiral, hot with indignation, "but whoever was the officer who received them, he ought to be ashamed, for I never saw such except in the condemned hole at Newgate. I was three hours and a half mustering this scabby crew, and I should have imagined that the Scum of the Earth had been picked up for this ship." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Admiral Mostyn, 1 and 6 April 1755.] The vigorous protest prepares us for what Capt. Baird found on board the _Duke_ a few years later. The pressed men there exhibited such qualifications for sea duty as "fractured thigh-bone, idiocy, strained back and sickly, a discharged soldier, gout and sixty years old, rupture, deaf and foolish, fits, lame, rheumatic and incontinence of urine." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Baird, 22 May 1759.] That most reprehensible practice, the pressing of cripples for naval purposes, would appear to have had its origin in the unauthorised extension of an order issued by the Lord High Admiral, in 1704, to the effect that in the appointment of cooks to the Navy the Board should give preference to persons so afflicted. For the pressing of boys there existed even less warrant. Yet the practice was common, so much so that when, during the great famine of 1800, large numbers of youths flocked into Poole in search of the bread they could not obtain in the country, the gangs waylaid them and reaped a rich harvest. Two hundred was the toll on this occasion. As all were in a "very starving, ragged, filthy condition," the gangsmen stripped them, washed them thoroughly in the sea, clad them in second-hand clothing from the quay-side shops, and giving each one a knife, a spoon, a comb and a bit of soap, sent them on board the tenders contented and happy. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Capt. Boyle, 2 June 1801.] These lads were of course a cut above the "scum of the earth" so vigorously denounced by Admiral Mostyn. Beginning their career as powder-monkeys, a few years' licking into shape transformed them, as a rule, into splendid fighting material. The utter incapacity of the human refuse dumped into the fleet is justly stigmatised by one indignant commander, himself a patient long-sufferer in that respect, as a "scandalous abuse of the service." Six of these poor wretches had not the strength of one man. They could not be got upon deck in the night, or if by dint of the rope's-end they were at length routed out of their hammocks, they immediately developed the worst symptoms of the "waister"--seasickness and fear of that which is high. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Billop, 26 Oct. 1712.] Bruce, encountering dirty weather on the Irish coast, when in command of the _Hawke_, out of thirty-two pressed men "could not get above seven to go upon a yard to reef his courses," but was obliged to order his warrant officers and master aloft on that duty. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1477--Capt. Bruce, 6 Oct. 1741.] Belitha, of the _Scipio_, had but one man aboard him, out of a crew of forty-one, who was competent to stand his trick at the wheel; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. Belitha, 15 July 1746.] Bethell, of the _Phoenix_, had many who had "never seen a gun fired in their lives"; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Bethell, 21 Aug. 1759.] and Adams, of the _Bird-in-hand_, learnt the fallacy of the assertion that that _rara avis_ is worth two in the bush. Mustered for drill in small-arms, his men "knew no more how to handle them than a child." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Adams, 7 Oct. 1744.] For all their knowledge of that useful exercise they might have been Sea-Fencibles. Yet while ships were again and again prevented from putting to sea because, though their complements were numerically complete, they had only one or no seaman on board, and hence were unable to get their anchors or make sail; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1478--Capt. Boys, 14 April 1742; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1512--Capt. Bayly, 21 July 1796, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] while Bennett, of the _Lennox_, when applied to by the masters of eight outward-bound East-India ships for the loan of two hundred and fifty men to enable them to engage the French privateers by whom they were held up in the river of Shannon, dared not lend a single hand lest the pressed men, who formed the greater part of his crew, should rise and run away with the ship; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Capt. Bennett, 22 Sept. 1779.] Ambrose, of the _Rupert_, cruising off Cape Machichaco with a crew of "miserable poor wretches" whom he feared could be of "no manner of use or service" to him, after a short but sharp engagement of only an hour's duration captured, with the loss of but a single man, the largest privateer sailing out of San Sebastian--the _Duke of Vandome_, of twenty-six carriage guns and two hundred and two men, of whom twenty-nine were killed; [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Ambrose, 7 July and 26 Sept. 1741.] and Capt. Amherst, encountering a heavy gale in Barnstable Pool, off Appledore, would have lost his ship, the low-waisted, over-masted _Mortar_ sloop, had it not been for the nine men he was so lucky as to impress shortly before the gale. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1440--Capt. Amherst, 12 Dec. 1744.] Anson regarded pressed men with suspicion. When he sailed on his famous voyage round the world his ships contained only sixty-seven; but with his complement of five hundred reduced by sickness to two hundred and one, he was glad to add forty of those undesirables to their number out of the India-men at Wampoo. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1439--Capt. Anson, 18 Sept. 1740, and 7 Dec. 1742.] These, however, were seamen such as the gangs did not often pick up in England, where, as we have seen, the able seaman who was not fully protected avoided the press as he would a lee shore. In addition to the sweepings of the roads and slums, there were in His Majesty's ships many who trod the decks "wide betwixt the legs, as if they had the gyves on." Peculiar to the seafaring man, the tailor and the huckstering Jew, the gait of these individuals, who belonged mostly to the sailor class, was strongly accentuated by an adventitious circumstance having no necessary connection with Israelitish descent, the sartorial board or the rolling deep. They were in fact convicts who had but recently shed their irons, and who walked wide from force of habit. Reasons of policy rather than of mercy explained their presence in the fleet. The prisons of the country, numerous and insanitary though they were, could neither hold them all nor kill them; America would have no more of them; and penal settlements, those later garden cities of a harassed government, were as yet undreamt of. In these circumstances reprieved and pardoned convicts were bestowed in about equal proportions, according to their calling and election, upon the army and the navy. The practice was one of very respectable antiquity and antecedents. By a certain provision of the Feudal System a freeman who had committed a felony, or become hopelessly involved in debt, might purge himself of either by becoming a serf. So, at a later date, persons in the like predicament were permitted to exchange their fetters, whether of debt or iron, for the dear privilege of "spilling every drop of blood in their bodies" [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Convicts on board the _Stanislaus_ hulk, Woolwich, 18 May 1797.] on behalf of the sovereign whose clemency they enjoyed. Broken on the wheel of naval discipline, they "did very well in deep water." Nearer land they were given, like the jailbirds they were, to "hopping the twig." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 21 March 1776.] The insolvent debtor, who in the majority of cases had studied his pleasures more than his constitution, was perhaps an even less desirable recruit than his cousin the emancipated convict. In his letters to the Navy Board, Capt. Aston, R.N., relates how, immediately after the passing of the later Act [Footnote: 4 & 5 Anne, cap. 6.] for the freeing of such persons from their financial fetters, he "gave constant attendance for almost two years at the sittings of the Courts of Sessions in London and Surrey," lying in wait there for such debtors as should choose the sea. From the Queen's Bench Prison, the Clink, Marshalsea, Borough Compter, Poultry Compter, Wood Street Compter, Ludgate Prison and the Fleet, he obtained in that time a total of one hundred and thirty-two, to whom in every case the prest-shilling was paid. They were dear at the price. Bankrupt in pocket, stamina and health, they cumbered the ships to the despair of commanders and were never so welcome as when they ran away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1436--Letters of Capt. Aston, 1704-5.] The responsibility for jail-bird recruiting did not of course rest with the gangs. They saw the shady crew safe on board ship, that was all. Yet the odium of the thing was theirs. For not only did association with criminals lower the standard of pressing as the gangs practised it, it heightened the general disrepute in which they were held. For an institution whose hold upon the affections of the people was at the best positively negative, this was a serious matter. Every convict whom the gang safeguarded consequently drove another nail in the coffin preparing for it. The first and most lasting effect of the wholesale pumping of sewage into the fleet was to taint the ships with a taint far more deadly than mere ineptitude. A spirit of ominous restlessness prevailed. Slackness was everywhere observable, coupled with incipient insubordination which no discipline, however severe, could eradicate or correct. At critical moments the men could with difficulty be held to their duty. To hold them to quarters in '97, when engaging the enemy off Brest, the rattan and the rope's-end had to be unsparingly used. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Company of H.M.S. _Nymph_, 1797.] In no circumstances were they to be trusted. Given the slightest opening, they "ran" like water from a sieve. To counteract these dangerous tendencies the Marines were instituted. Drafted into the ships in thousands, they checked in a measure the surface symptoms of disaffection, but left the disease itself untouched. The fact was generally recognised, and it was no uncommon circumstance, when the number of pressed men present in a ship was large in proportion to the unpressed element, for both officers and marines to walk the deck day and night armed, fearful lest worse things should come upon them. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Capt. Bennett, 22 Sept. 1799, and Captains' Letters, _passim_.] What they anticipated was the mutiny of individual crews. But a greater calamity than this was in store for them. In the wholesale mutinies at Spithead and the Nore the blow fell with appalling suddenness, notwithstanding the fact that in one form or another it had been long foreseen. Fifty-five years had elapsed since Vernon, scenting danger from the existing mode of manning the fleet, had first sounded the alarm. He dreaded, he told the Lords Commissioners in so many words, the consequences that must sooner or later ensue from adherence to the press. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 578--Vice-Admiral Vernon, 27 Jan. 1742-3.] Though the utterance of one gifted with singularly clear prevision, the warning passed unheeded. Had it been made public, it would doubtless have met with the derision with which the voice of the national prophet is always hailed. Veiled as it was in service privacy, it moved their Lordships to neither comment nor action. Action, indeed, was out of the question. The Commissioners were helpless in the grip of a system from which, so far as human sagacity could then perceive, there was no way of escape. Let its issue be what it might, they could no more replace or reconstruct it than they could build ships of tinsel. Other warnings were not wanting. For some years before the catastrophic happenings of '97 there flowed in upon the Admiralty a thin but steady stream of petitions from the seamen of the fleet, each of them a rude echo of Vernon's sapient warning. To these, coming as they did from an unconsidered source, little if any significance was attached. Beyond the most perfunctory inquiry, in no case to be made public, they received scant attention. The sailor, it was thought, must have his grievances if he would be happy; and petitions were the recognised line for him to air them on. They were accordingly relegated to that limbo of distasteful and quickly forgotten things, their Lordships' pigeon-holes. Yet there was amongst these documents at least one which should have given the Heads of the Navy pause for serious thought. It was the petition of the seamen of H.M.S. _Shannon_, [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petition of the Ship's Company of the _Shannon_, 16 June 1796.] in which there was conveyed a threat that afterwards, when the mutiny at the Nore was at its height, under the leadership of a pressed man whose coadjutors were mainly pressed men, came within an ace of resolving itself in action. That threat concerned the desperate expedient of carrying the revolted ships into an enemy's port, and of there delivering them up. Had this been done--and only the Providence that watches over the destinies of nations prevented it--the act would have brought England to her knees. At a time like this, when England's worst enemies were emphatically the press-gangs which manned her fleet with the riff-raff of the nation and thus made national disaster not only possible but hourly imminent, the "old stander" and the volunteer were to her Navy what salt is to the sea, its perpetual salvation. Such men inculcated an example, created an _esprit de corps_, that infected even the vagrant and the jail-bird, to say nothing of the better-class seaman, taken mainly by gangs operating on the water, who was often content, when brought into contact with loyal men, to settle down and do his best for king and country. Amongst the pressed men, again, desertion and death made for the survival of the fittest, and in this residuum there was not wanting a certain savour. Subdued and quickened by man-o'-war discipline, they developed a dogged resolution, a super-capacity not altogether incompatible with degeneracy; and to crown all, the men who officered the resolute if disreputable crew were men in whose blood the salt of centuries tingled, men unrivalled for sea-sagacity, initiative and pluck. If they could not uphold the honour of the flag with the pressed man's unqualified aid, they did what was immeasurably greater. They upheld it in spite of him. Upon the trade of the nation the injury inflicted by the press-gang is rightly summed up in littles. Every able seaman, every callow apprentice taken out of or forcibly detained from a merchant vessel was, _ipso facto,_ a minute yet irretrievably substantial loss to commerce of one kind or another. Trade, it is true, did not succumb in consequence. Possessed of marvellous recuperative powers, she did not even languish to any perceptible degree. Nevertheless, the detriment was there, a steadily cumulative factor, and at the end of any given period of pressing the commerce of the nation, emasculated by these continuous if infinitesimal abstractions from its vitality, was substantially less in bulk, substantially less in pounds sterling, than if it had been allowed to run its course unhindered. British in name, but Teutonic in its resentments, trade came to regard these continual "pin-pricks" as an intolerable nuisance. It was not so much the loss that aroused her anger as the constant irritation she was subjected to. This she keenly resented, and the stream of her resentment, joining forces with its confluents the demoralisation of the Navy through pressing, the excessive cost of pressing and the antagonising effects of pressing upon the nation at large, contributed in no small degree to that final supersession of the press-gang which was in essence, if not in name, the beginning of Free Trade. To the people the impress was as an axe laid at the root of the tree. There was here no question, as with trade, of the mere loss of hands who could be replaced. Attacking the family in the person of its natural supporter and protector, the octopus system of which the gangs were the tentacles struck at the very foundations of domestic life and brought to thousands of households a poverty as bitter and a grief as poignant as death. If the people were slow to anger under the infliction it was because, in the first place, the gang had its advocates who, though they could not extol its virtues, since it had none, were yet able, and that with no small measure of success, to demonstrate to a people as insular in their prejudices as in their habitat that, but for the invincible Navy which the gang maintained for their protection, the hereditary enemy, the detested French, would most surely come and compel them one and all to subsist upon a diet of frogs. What could be seriously urged against the gang in face of an argument such as that? Patriotism, moreover, glowed with ardent flame. Fanned to twofold heat by natural hatred of the foreigner and his insolent challenge of insular superiority, it blinded the people to the truth that liberty of the subject is in reality nothing more than freedom from oppression. So, with the gang at their very doors, waiting to snatch away their husbands, their fathers and their sons, they carolled "Rule Britannia" and congratulated themselves on being a free people. The situation was unparalleled in its sardonic humour; and, as if this were not enough, the "Noodle of Newcastle," perceiving vacuously that something was still wanting, supplied the bathetic touch by giving out that the king, God bless him! could never prevail upon himself to break through the sacred liberties of his people save on the most urgent occasions. [Footnote: _Newcastle Papers_--Newcastle to Yorke, 27 Feb. 1749-50.] The process of correcting the defective vision of the nation was as gradual as the acquisition of the sea-power the nation had set as its goal, and as painful. In both processes the gang participated largely. To the fleet it acted as a rude feeder; to the people as a ruder specialist. Wielding the cutlass as its instrument, it slowly and painfully hewed away the scales from their eyes until it stood visualised for what it really was--the most atrocious agent of oppression the world has ever seen. For the operation the people should have been grateful. The nature of the thing they had cherished so blindly filled them with rage and incited them to violence. Two events now occurred to seal the fate of the gang and render its final supersession a mere matter of time rather than of debate or uncertainty. The mutiny at the Nore brought the people face to face with the appalling risks attendant on wholesale pressing, while the war with America, incurred for the sole purpose of upholding the right to press, taught them the lengths to which their rulers were still prepared to go in order to enslave them. In the former case their sympathies, though with the mutineers, were frozen at the fountain-head by fear of invasion and that supposititious diet of frogs. In the latter, as in the ancient quarrel between Admiralty and Trade, they went out to the party who not only abstained from pressing but paid the higher wages. While the average cost of 'listing a man "volunteerly" rarely exceeded the modest sum of 30s., the expense entailed through recruiting him by means of the press-gang ranged from 3s. 9d. per head in 1570 [Footnote: _State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth_, vol. lxxiii. f. 38: Estimate of Charge for Pressing 400 Mariners, 1570.] to 114 Pounds in 1756. Between these extremes his cost fluctuated in the most extraordinary manner. At Weymouth, in 1762, it was at least 100 Pounds; at Deal, in 1805, 32 Pounds odd; at Poole, in the same year, 80 Pounds. [Footnote: _London Chronicle_, 16-18 March, 1762; _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, 14 Feb. and 5 Aug. 1805.] From 1756 the average steadily declined until in 1795 it touched its eighteenth century minimum of about 6 Pounds. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 579--Average based on Admirals' Reports on Rendezvous, 1791-5.] A sharp upward tendency then developed, and in the short space of eight years it soared again to 20 Pounds. It was at this figure that Nelson, perhaps the greatest naval authority of his time, put it in 1803. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Up to this point we have considered only the prime cost of the pressed man. A secondary factor must now be introduced, for when you had got your man at an initial cost of 20 Pounds--a cost in itself out of all proportion to his value--you could never be sure of keeping him. Nelson calculated that during the war immediately preceding 1803 forty-two thousand seamen deserted from the fleet. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Assuming, with him, that every man of this enormous total was either a pressed man or had been procured at the cost of a pressed man, the loss entailed upon the nation by their desertion represented an outlay of 840,000 Pounds for raising them in the first instance, and, in the second, a further outlay of 840,000 Pounds for replacing them. In this estimate there is, however, a substantial error; for, approaching the question from another point of view, let us suppose, as we may safely do without overstraining the probabilities of the case, that out of every three men pressed at least one ran from his rating. Now the primary cost of pressing three men on the 20 Pound basis being 60 Pounds, it follows that in order to obtain their ultimate cost to the country we must add to that sum the outlay incurred in pressing another man in lieu of the one who ran. The total cost of the three men who ultimately remain to the fleet consequently works out at 80 Pounds; the cost of each at 26 Pounds, 13s. 4d. Hence Nelson's forty-two thousand deserters entailed upon the nation an actual expenditure, not of 1,680,000 Pounds, but of nearly two and a quarter millions. Another fact that emerges from a scrutiny of these remarkable figures is this. Whenever the number of volunteer additions to the fleet increased, the cost of pressing increased in like ratio; whenever the number of volunteers declined, the pressed man became proportionally cheaper. Periods in which the pressed man was scarce and dear thus synchronise with periods when the volunteer was plentiful; but scarcity of volunteers, reacting upon the gangs, and conducing to their greater activity, brought in pressed men in greater numbers in proportion to expenditure and so reduced the cost per head. In this logical though at first sight bewildering interrelation of the laws of supply and demand, we have in a nutshell the whole case for the cost of pressing as against the gang. Taking one year with another the century through, the impress service, on a moderate estimate, employed enough able-bodied men to man a first-rate ship of the line, and absorbed at least enough money to maintain her, while the average number of men raised, taking again one year with another, rarely if ever exceeded the number of men engaged in obtaining them. With tranquillity at length assured to the country, with trade in a state of high prosperity, the shipping tonnage of the nation rising by leaps and bounds and the fleet reduced to an inexigent peace footing, why incur the ruinous expense of pressing the seaman when, as was now the case, he could be had for the asking or the making? For Peace brought in her train both change and opportunity. The frantic dumping of all sorts and conditions of men into the fleet ceased. Necessity no longer called for it. No enemy hovered in the offing, to be perpetually outmanoeuvred or instantly engaged. Until that enemy could renew its strength, or time should call another into being, the mastery of the seas, the dear prize of a hundred years of strenuous struggle, remained secure. Our ships, maintained nevertheless as efficient fighting-machines, became schools of leisure wherein--a thing impossible amid the perpetual storm and stress of war--the young blood of the nation could be more gradually inured to the sea and tuned to fighting-pitch. Science had not yet linked hands with warfare. Steam, steel, the ironclad, the super-Dreadnought and the devastating cordite gun were still in the womb of the future; but the keels of a newer fleet were nevertheless already on the slips, and with the old order the press-gang, now for ever obsolete, went the way of all things useless. Its memory still survives. Those who despair of our military system, or of our lack of it, talk of conscription. They alone forget. A people who for a hundred years patiently endured conscription in its most cruel form will never again suffer it to be lightly inflicted upon them. APPENDIX ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO DEAR NEPEAN,--I enclose a little project for destroying the Enemy's Flatboats if they venture over to our Coast, which you may shew, if you please, to your Sea Lords as coming from some anonymous correspondent. If they can improve upon it so as to make it useful, I shall be glad of it; and if they think it good for nothing, and throw it in the fire, there is no harm done. As the conveying an Army must require a very great number of Boats, which must be very near each other, if many such vessels as I propose should get among them, they must necessarily commit great havoc. I cannot ascertain whether the blocks or logs of wood would be strong enough to throw the shot without bursting, or whether they would not throw the shot though they should burst. I think they would not burst, and so do some Officers of Artillery here; but that might be ascertained by experiment at any time. This sort of Fire-vessel will have the advantage of costing very little; and of being of no service to the Enemy should it fall into their hands. W. YOUNG. LEWES, 14 _Aug_. 1803. [Illustration: Admiral Young's Torpedo. From the Original Drawing at the Public Record Office.] _Secret_ "The success of an attempt to land an Army on an Enemy's Coast, whose Army is prepared to prevent it, will depend in a great degree on the regularity of the order in which the Boats, or Vessels, are arranged, that carry the Troops on Shore; everything therefore which contributes to the breaking of that order will so far contribute to render success more doubtful; especially if, in breaking the order, some of the Boats or Vessels are destroyed. For this purpose Fireships well managed will be found very useful; I should therefore think that, at all the King's Ports, and at all places where the Enemy may be expected to attempt a landing with Ships of War or other large Vessels, considerable quantities of materials for fitting Fireships according to the latest method should be kept ready to be put on board any small Vessels on the Enemy's approach; but, as such Vessels would have little or no effect on Gunboats or Flatboats, machines might be made for the purpose of destroying them, by shot, and by explosion. The Shot should be large, but as they will require to be thrown but a short distance, and will have only thin-sided Vessels to penetrate, Machines strong enough to resist the effort of the small quantity of Powder necessary to throw them may probably be made of wood; either by making several chambers in one thick Block, as No. 1, or one chamber at each end of a log as No. 2, which may be used either separately, or fastened together. The Vents should communicate with each other by means of quick Match, which should be very carefully covered to prevent its sustaining damage, or being moved by things carried about. Such Machines, properly loaded, may be kept in Fishing boats or other small vessels near the parts of the Coast where the Enemy may be expected to land; or in secure places, ready to be put on board when the Enemy are expected. The Chambers should be cut horizontally, and the Machine should be so placed in the Vessel as to have them about level with the surface of the water; under the Machine should be placed a considerable quantity of Gunpowder; and over it, large Stones, and bags of heavy shingle, and the whole may be covered with fishing nets, or any articles that may happen to be on board. Several fuses, or trains of Match, should communicate with the Machine, and with the powder under it, so managed as to ensure those which communicate with the Machine taking effect upon the others, that the shot may be thrown before the Vessel is blown up. The Match, or Fuses, should be carefully concealed to prevent their being seen if the Vessel should be boarded.... If these Vessels are placed in the front of the Enemy's Line, and not near the extremities of it, it would be scarcely possible for them to avoid the effects of the explosion unless, from some of them exploding too soon, the whole armament should stop. Every Machine would probably sink the Boat on each side of it, and so do considerable damage to others with the shot; and would kill and wound many men by the explosion and the fall of the stones.... As the success of these Vessels will depend entirely upon their not being suspected by the Enemy, the utmost secrecy must be observed in preparing the Machines and sending them to the places where they are to be kept. A few confidential men only should be employed to make them, and they should be so covered as to prevent any suspicion of their use, or of what they contain." INDEX Adams, Capt., _Admiral Spry_ tender, _Adventure_, H.M.S., Ages below eighteen and over fifty-five exempt, Alcock, Henry, Mayor of Waterford, Alms, Capt., _Amaranth_, H.M.S., Ambrose, Capt., Amherst, Capt, _Amphitrite_, H.M.S., Andover, the press-gang at, _Anglesea_, H.M.S., Anne, Queen, impresses foreign seamen, arms of press-gang under, drummers and fifers pressed for navy in her reign, sailors unwilling to serve, Anson, Admiral Lord, Anthony, John, pressed with two protections on him, Appledore, press-gang at, 72, Apprentices, exempt from impressment only in some circumstances, in North-country pressed because their indentures bore Scotch 14s. stamp instead of English 15s., Archer, Capt, Arms of the press-gang, _Assurance_, H.M.S., Aston, Capt, Atkinson, Lieut., Ayscough, Capt., Baily, James, a ferryman, pressed for his inactivity, Baird, Capt, Balchen, Capt., Ball, Capt., Banyan days, Bargemen impressed in thousands, Barker, Capt., regulating officer at Bristol, midshipman. Barking, the press-gang at, Barnicle, William, Barnsley, Lieut., Barrington, Capt., Bath, Bristol gang's fruitless attempt at, Bawdsey, _Beaufort_, East Indiaman, Beecher, Capt, Bennett, Capt, Bertie, Capt, Bethell, Capt, paid damages for wrongfully impressing, Bettesworth, John, claims privilege of granting private protections to Ryde and Portsmouth ferrymen, Biggen, Charles, Billingsley, Capt., Bingham, William, Birchall, Lieut., _Bird-in-hand_, H.M.S., Birmingham, sham gangs at, _Black Book_ of the Admiralty, Blackstone, Sir W., Blackwater, men working turf boats on, not exempt, _Blanche_, H.M.S., Blear-eyed Moll, _Blonde_, H.M.S., Boats for the press-gang, Boat steerers on whalers exempt from impressment, Boatswains, conditions of exemption, _Bonetta_ sloop, Boscawen, Capt., Boston, Mass., Bounty system, the, Bowen, Capt., Box, Lieut, Boys, Capt., Brace, Lieut., Bradley, Lieut, Brawn, Capt., Breedon, Lieut., Brenton, Capt. Jahleel, afterwards Vice-Admiral, Brenton, E. P., _Naval History_, Brenton, Lieut, Brereton, Capt., Brett, Capt, 110, Bridges a favourite haunt of the press-gang, Brighton, the press-gang at, Bristol, the press-gang at, Bristol jail as press-room, _Bristol_, H.M.S., _Britannia_ trading vessel, three of the crew shot in resisting the press-gang, the ship captured and taken to port, the affair not within the coroner's purview, the bodies buried at sea, court-martial acquits officers, Brixham, the press-gang at, Broadfoot case, the, Broadstairs fishermen, the press-gang at, Bromley, Capt. Sir Robert, Bullard, Richard, a fiddler persuaded to go to Woolwich to play and for payment was handed to the gang, _Bull-Dog_ sloop, Burchett, Josiah, _Observations on the Navy_, Burrows, Sam, Butler, Capt., Byron, Lord, Calahan, a gangsman, killed in attempting an arrest, Cambridge bargemen, press-gang among, Campbell, Admiral, Cape Breton, Caradine, Samuel, Carey, Rev. Lucius, Carmarthen, Admiral the Marquis of, Carolina, Carpenters, conditions of exemption, on warships on coast of Scotland could be replaced by shipwrights pressed from the yards, Carrying the ship up, Cartel ships, Castle, William, an alien, impressed on his honeymoon, Castleford, the press-gang at, Cawsand safe from the press-gang, Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh, _Centurion_, H.M.S., Anson's flagship, whose crew on their return had life-protection from the press, Chaplains, Charles II., Chatham, crimpage at, _Chatham_, H.M.S., Chester, the press-gang at _Chevrette_ corvette, Clapp, Midshipman, Clark, George, Clephen, James, _Clincher_ gun-brig, Cockburn, Bailie, of Leith, Cogbourne's electuary, Coke, Sir E., Collingwood, Admiral Lord, Lieut, Colvill, Admiral Lord, Colville, Lieut., Convoys, Conyear, John, Cooper, Josh, Cork, crimpage at, the press-gang at, Comet bomb ship, Cornwall, the press-gang in, Coversack, safe from the press-gang, Coventry, Mr. Commissioner, Coventry, sham gangs at, Cowes, press-gang at, Crabb, Henry, Crews depleted by the press-gang, Crick, William, Crimps, as sham gangsmen, Cromer, the suspicions of the inhabitants, bring the press-gang, to take a noted Russian, Crown Colonies, desertions in, Croydon, the press-gang around, Cruickshank, John, chaplain, Culverhouse, Capt., Customs, Board of, Dansays, Capt., Danton, Midshipman, Darby, Capt., Dartmouth, H.M.S., Dartmouth, press-gang at, Davidson, Samuel, of Newcastle, applies for life protection "DD," discharged dead, in muster books against names of persons deceased, Deal, press-gang at, cutters, Death of sailor in resisting impress, "accidental", Debusk, John, shot by the press-gang, on the Britannia, Dent, Capt., Deptford, the press-gang at, Desertion from the Navy, Devonshire, H.M.S., Dipping the flag, Director, H.M.S., Discipline in the Navy, Disinfecting a ship, Dispatch sloop, Dolan, Edward, Dominion and Laws of the Sea., See Justice, A., Dorsetshire, H.M.S., Douglas, Capt. Andrew, Dover, press-gang at, Downs, crimpage in the, press-gang in, Doyle, Lieut, Dreadnought, H.M.S., Drummers pressed for the Navy, Dryden, Michael, illegally pressed, Dryden's sister, Dublin, sham gangs at, the press-gang at, Duke, H.M.S., Duke of Vandome, H.M.S., Duncan case, the, Dundas, Henry, Dundonald, Lord, Autobiography, Dunkirk, H.M.S., Eccentricity leads to impressment, Eddystone lighthouse, building delayed through impressment of workmen, builders of the third, protected, keepers at, put inward-bound, ships' crews ashore, Edinburgh, press-gang at, Edmund and Mary Collier, Edward III. on the Navy, Elizabeth, Queen, Elizabeth ketch, Ely bargemen, press-gang among, Emergency crews of men unfit for pressing supplied to merchant-men by the crimps, Emergency men working on their own account, places of muster for, English Eclogues. See Southey, R., Evading the press-gang. See under Press-gang, How it was evaded., Evans, Richard, keeper of Gloucester Castle, Exemption from impressment, not a right, of foreigners, negroes not included, of landsmen only theoretical, property no qualification for exemption, of harvesters, of gentlemen, judged by appearances, below 18 and over 55 years, of apprentices dependent on circumstances, of merchant seamen dependent on circumstances, of masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters dependent on circumstances, of some of crew of whalers, of Thames wherrymen by quota system, of Tyne keelman by the same, of Severn and Wye trow-men by 10% levy, did not extend to turf boats on Shannon and Blackwater, special for four on each fishing vessel, and later for all engaged in taking, curing, and selling fish, of Worthing fishermen for a levy, of Scottish and Manx fishermen, on similar terms, worthless without a document of protection, Exeter, the press-gang at, _Falmouth_, H.M.S., Falmouth, press-gang at, Faversham, the press-gang at, _Ferme_, H.M.S., Ferries, a favourite haunt of the press-gang, _Feversham_, H.M.S., Fifers pressed for the Navy, Fire on ship board, Fisheries, carefully fostered, three fish days made compulsory, became a great nursery for seamen, few exemptions granted, at first special concessions only to the whale and cod fisheries, later only such number as the warrant specified might be taken, and these the Justices chose; in 1801 no person employed in taking, curing, or selling fish could be impressed, with their best men impressed, only small smacks could be worked, a quota system preferred by the fishermen of some ports, in Cornwall, the men turned tinners in the off-season, Flags, flying without authority, omission to dip, Fleet, Liberty of, Folkstone market-boats, Folkstone, press-gang at, Forcible entry by the press-gang illegal, Foreigners impressed, theoretically exempt, married to English wives considered naturalised, in emergency crews, Frederick the Great, Freeholders at one time exempt from impressment, _Fubbs_, H.M.S., Gage, Capt., _Galloper_, tender to the _Dreadnought_, _Ganges_, H.M.S., Garth, Dr., Gaydon, Lieut., Gentlemen exempt from the impress, but judged by appearance and manner, Gibbs, Capt., _Glory_, H.M.S., Gloucester, the press-gang at, Gloucester Castle used as press-room, the keeper's magic palm, Godalming, the press-gang at, Golden, John, Lord Mayor's bargeman, wrongfully impressed, Good, James, midshipman, Goodave, Midshipman, Gooding, Richard, Gosport, the press-gang at, Gravesend, the press-gang at, Gray, John, Great Yarmouth, press-gang at, Greenock, crimpage at, press-gang at, Trades Guild, Greenock ferries, the press-gang at, Greenwich Hospital, Grimsby, the press-gang at, Habeas Corpus, writs of, as means of arresting, and so freeing, pressed men for debts not owing, Half-pay officers, their projects and inventions, Hamoaze, the, an entrepôt for pressed men, Harpooners exempt from impressment, Harrison, Lieut., Hart, Alexander, _Harwich_, H.M.S., Haverfordwest, press-gang at, Hawke, Admiral Sir Edward, _Hawke_, H.M.S., Haygarth, Lieut., Health and illness, _Hector_, H.M.S., Herbert, Emanuel, _Hind_ armed sloop, _Historical Relation of State Affairs_. See Lutterell, N., Hogarth's "Stage Coach," Hook, Joseph, _Hope_ tender, Hotten, J. C., _List of Persons of Quality, etc., who went from England to the American Plantations_, Hull, press-gang at, Humber, the press-gang on, Hurst Castle, the press-gang at, Ilfracombe, the press-gang at, Impressment. See Pressed labour., Informers, Inland waterways and the gang at one time without the jurisdiction of the admirals, Innes, Capt, Ipswich, the press-gang at, _Isis_, H.M.S., Isle of Man fishermen, Jackson, Daniel, pressed from the Chester Volunteers, Jamaica, _Jason_, H.M.S., Jervis, John, Earl of St. Vincent, Jews, pressed on account of bandy legs, _John and Elizabeth_ pink, John, King, impressment under, Johnson, Rebecca Anne, Jones, Paul, Justice, A., _Dominion and Laws of the Sea_, Keith, A., parson of the Fleet, _Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages_, Kilkenny, the press-gang at, King's Lynn, press-gang at, Kingston, William, case of, _King William_, Indiaman, _Lady Shore_, the, Landsmen exempt only in theory, Latham, Capt., Law officers' opinions on pressing, Leave, stoppage of, Leeds, the press-gang at, Leith, crimpage at, press-gang at, _Lennox_, H.M.S., Letting, John, pressed with two protections on him, Lewis, Edward, chaplain, Libraries, ships', _Lichfield_, H.M.S., Licorne, H.M.S., Limehouse Hole, the press-gang at, Lindsay, Admiral the Earl of, _Instructions_, Linesmen on whalers exempt from impressment, Liskeard, the press-gang at, _List of Persons of Quality, etc., who went from England to the American Plantations_. See Hotten, J. C., _Litchfield_, H.M.S., Littlehampton, the press-gang at, Liverpool, crimpage at, press-gang at, Lodden Bridge, the press-gang at, London, the press-gang in, Londonderry, the press-gang at, Longcroft, Capt, _Loo_, H.M.S., Love, Henry, gets life protection as promised by Pitt and Dundas, Lowestoft, the press-gang at, Lulworth, Lundy Island, safe from the press-gang, but not to the sailors' liking, crews marooned on, Lutterell, N., _Historical Relation of State Affairs_, Capt. Hon. Jas., Lymington, the press-gang at, M'Bride, Admiral, M'Cleverty, Capt., M'Donald, Alexander, impressed under the age of twelve, Charles, M'Gugan's wife, M'Kenzie, Lieut., M'Quarry, Lachlan, Magna Carta, its provisions contrary to impressment, Mansfield, Lord, Margate, the press-gang at, _Maria_ brig, Marines, Marooned crews on Lundy Island, _Martin_ galley, _Mary_ smuggler, Masters, conditions of exemption, Mastery of the sea, a necessity for England, Mates, conditions of exemption, Medway, press-gang on, _Medway_, H.M.S., Men in lieu, Merchant seamen, conditions of exemption, unprotected when sleeping ashore, the most valuable asset to the Navy, Merchant service, hard conditions of crews, _Mercury_, H.M.S., Messenger, George, Mike, James, hanged for desertion, Moll Flanders, _Monarch_, H.M.S., _Monmouth_, H.M.S., _Monumenta Juridica_, Morals in the Navy, improved by Jervis, Nelson, and Collingwood, Moriarty, Capt, _Mortar_ sloop, Mostyn, Admiral, _Mediator_ tender, Mitchell, Admiral Sir D., Montagu, Admiral, Mousehole, safe from the press-gang, Moverty, Thomas, pressed, not having protection on him, Nancy of Deptford, _Naseby_, H.M.S., _Nassau_, H.M.S., _Naval History_. See Brenton, E. P., Navy, the growth of, in 18th century, natural sources of supply of crews, hard conditions of service in, discipline in, provisions in, comforts in, Negroes not exempt from impressment, Nelson, Admiral Lord, _Nemesis_, H.M.S., Newcastle-upon-Tyne, press-gang at, grand protection enjoyed by, New England, Newgate compared with the press-room, Newhaven, the press-gang at, Newland, safe from the press-gang, Newquay, safe from the press-gang, Nore, the press-gang at the, the mutiny at, an entrepôt for pressed-men, _Norfolk_, Indiaman, Norris, John, North Forland, press-gang at, _Nymph_, H.M.S., Oakley, Lieut., Oaks, Lieut., O'Brien, Lieut., _Observations on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc._ See Penrose, Admiral Sir V. C., _Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages._ See Keith, A., _Observations on the Navy._ See Burchett, J., Okehampton, the press-gang at, Onions, Thomas, _Orford_, H.M.S., Orkney fishermen, Osborne, Admiral, Osmer, Lieut., _Otter_ sloop, Oyster vessels, _Pallas_, H.M.S., Parker, Richard, president of the mutineers at the Nore, Parkgate, a resort of seamen, Paying off discharged entire crews, Paying the shot, Pay of sailors, deferred, Pembroke, Earl of, Lord High Admiral, Penrose, Admiral Sir V. C., _Observations on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc._, Pepys, S., Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, Petitions of seamen of the Fleet and others, _Phoenix_, H.M.S., Pill, a favourite haunt of sailors, and shunned by gangsmen, Pilots, Pitt, William, Plymouth, the press-gang at, Polpero, safe from the press-gang, Poole, press-gang at, mayor refuses to back press-warrants, Popham, Admiral Sir Home, his scheme for coast defence, Portland Bill, press-gang off, Portland Island, Portsmouth, desertions at, the press-gang at, Post-chaise, sailors in, Press-boats sunk at sea, Pressed labour (see also Press-gang), antiquity of, for civil occupations, for warfare, means of enforcing, contrary to the spirit of Magna Carta, penalties for resistance, derivation of the term, the classes from which drawn, exemptions from, necessity of, in English Navy, its crippling effect on trade, Press-gang, the why it was a necessity for the Navy, its services not needed by some captains, what it was, the official and the popular views, the class of men it was composed of, its quarters, landsmen joining the land force not to be pressed for sea service, ship-gangs entirely seamen, varying numbers in gang, the officers, the shore service the grave of promotion, general character of officers ashore, duties of the Regulating Captain, pay and road money, etc., perquisites, peculation, and bribery in the service, sham-gangs, the rendezvous, boat's arms, press warrant, whom the gang might take, primarily those who used the sea, later on trade suffers from the gang, exemption granted as an indulgence, the foreigner first exempted, but not if he had an English wife, and was soon assumed to have one, negroes not exempt, landsmen theoretically only, harvesters were exempt if holding a certificate, gentlemen exempt if dressed as such, only those proved to be between eighteen and fifty-five, the position of apprentices was uncertain, to press merchant seamen was resented by trade, masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters were exempt, colliers were exempt up to a certain proportion, ship protections did not count on shore, mate was not entitled to liberty unless registered at the rendezvous, harpooners were protected out of season on land or on colliers, the press-gang preyed upon its fellows, watermen, bargemen, and canal boat-dwellers were considered to use the see, Thames watermen and some others exempt if certain quota of men supplied, large numbers pressed from Ireland, fishermen indifferently protected, but fisheries fostered, all protected persons bound to carry their protection on them, an error in protection invalidated it, protections often disregarded, special protections, its activities afloat, the merchant seamen the principal quest, the chain of sea-gangs, the outer rings, frigates pressing for their own crews and armed sloops as tenders to ships of the line, and the vessels employed by regulating captains at the large ports, the inner ring of boat-gangs in harbour or on rivers; their methods., methods of pressing at sea, complications arising from pressing at sea, their varied success., and the right to search foreign vessels for English seamen, and convoys, and privateers, and smugglers, smuggling by, and ships in quarantine, and transports, and cartel ships, and pilots, how it was evaded, in the ship, with her or from her, or a combination, hiding on board from, evasions assisted by the skipper, and men in lieu and foreigners in emergency crews, pilots and fisherman taken by, when acting as emergency men, evaded by desertion from the ship, evaded by hiding on land and changing quarters, Cornwall dangerous for, safe retreats from, empowered to take Severn and Wye trow-men, unsuccessful efforts of, evaded by borrowed, forged, and American protections and by disguises, what it did ashore, the sailor betrayed by marked characteristics; sailors outnumbered on shore by the gang, its object the pressing of sailors who escaped the seagangs, its London rendezvous and taverns used. the inland distribution of, the class of places selected for operations of, the land-gangs necessarily ambulatory, its resting and refreshment places chosen for purposes of capture, the methods adopted, a hot press at Brighton, a ruse at Portsmouth, how the sailors' liking for drink was turned to account, the amount of violence used, outside assistance to, rivalry between gangs, assisted by mayors and county magistrates, assisted by the military, townsmen who sided with the sailors against, brutal behaviour of, at Poole, resisted at Deal and Dover, forcible entry by, illegal, magistrates consign vagabonds and disorderly persons to, how it was resisted, various weapons used against, gangs-men killed by sailors resisting them, sailors killed by gangsmen, by armed bands of seamen, by the populace in attempting to impress, pressed-men recaptured from, tenders attacked, rendezvous attacked, press-boats attacked and sunk, resistance when the press-gang had come abroad, the hardship of impressment on arrival from long voyage, the only means of resistance, a sailor's death in such case "accidental," casual, unavoidable, or disagreeable, a case in point, at play, humorous reason given for impressing a person, inculcating manners by means of the press, the respect due to naval officers, the outsider liable to be pressed for breach of naval etiquette, rudeness to the press-gang treated the same way, damages from officers for wrongful impressment, failure to dip the flag, or flying an unauthorised flag, might lead to pressing from that crew, unseamanlike management of a ship laid the crew open to pressing, pipers and fiddlers, etc., impressed, ridiculous reasons given for impressing, unsuspecting passenger in a smuggler declared owner of contraband and pressed, tattoo marks and bandy legs lead to pressing, any eccentricity sufficient to ensure the attention of the press-gang, used by trustees to keep heirs from their money, and by parents to rid them of incorrigible sons, used for purposes of retaliation, used by strikers to get rid of a "blackleg." used by stern parent to part his daughter and her lover, a drunken cleric's revenge by means of, by pressing a sailor, causes his late bedfellow to be hanged as his murderer, and women, of women and sailors in general, lack of sentiment in gangsmen, women impressed by, women masquerading as men to go to sea, women in the gang, the hardship brought on women by the gang, fostered vice and bred paupers, women who released sailors from the press-gang, the devotion of Richard Parker's wife, In the clutch of, the press-room, what it was; strongly built and small as it might be, could hold any number, Bristol gaol and Gloucester Castle used as press-rooms, inadequate precautions for retaining pressed men on the road, regulations for rendezvous, victualling in the press-room, regulating or examining for fitness for service, fabricated ailments and defects, dispatching pressed men to the fleet, tenders hired for transport of pressed men, comfort and health of pressed men on tenders, the victualling of pressed men on tenders, prevention of escape, an attempt to escape-with the Tasker tender escapes from, The Union tender cut out from the Tyne by the pressed men, various excitements aboard a final examination, petitions, substitutes, How the gang went out, causes of withdrawal of press-gang, the increasingly bad quality of the product, the spirit of restlessness and mutiny engendered, the injury to trade, only continued so long by the apathy of the people, the cost of impressing, Press-Gang, or Love in Low Life, The, Press warrants, forged, Presting, the original term and its meaning, Prest money, Price, Capt, Prince George guardship at Portsmouth, Princess Augusta, a letter of marque, Princess Augusta tender, Princess Louisa, H.M.S, Privateers, loss of seamen by, pressing from, recapture of pressed crew of, Prize money, Profane abuse of crews by officers, Protections, for masters, mates, boatswains, and carpenters, worthless, if the holder were ashore, bound to be always carried, slightest error in description invalidated, were often disregarded, special, for men in lieu, for crews of convoys and privateers expired on arrival in home waters, lent, bought, and exchanged, American, Provisions in the Navy, Quarantine, Queensferry, the press-gang at, Quota men, "R" for "run" in ships' books to denote deserter, Raleigh, Sir Walter, Ramsgate, the press-gang at, Reading, the press-gang at, Registration of seamen, Regulating, i.e. examination of pressed-men for fitness, ailments and defects fabricated or assumed, Regulating captains, character of a, Repulse, H.M.S., Rendezvous, attacked, regulations of, Rescue of pressed men from the gang, Reunion, H.M.S., Rhode Island, Rice, Richard II, Richards, John, midshipman, Richardson, Lieut, Right of search, Roberts, Capt. John, Rochester, the press-gang at, Rodney, Admiral Lord, Roebuck, H.M.S., Romsey, the press-gang at, Routh, Capt, _Royal Sovereign_, H.M.S., _Ruby_ gunship, Rudsdale, Lieut., Rum, _Rupert_, H.M.S., Russia, impressment in, Russian Navy, Ryde, the Lord of the Manor, claimed the privilege of private protections for his ferrymen to Portsmouth and Gosport, the press-gang at, _Rye_, H.M.S., Rye, the press-gang at, Sailor, the word disfavoured by Navy Board, a creature of contradictions, St. Ives, safe from the press-gang, St. Lawrence River, deserters in, St. Vincent, Earl of. See Jervis, J, Salisbury, the press-gang at, Sanders, Joseph, _Sandwich_, H.M.S., flag-ship at the Nore, Sax, Lieut, _Scipio_, H.M.S., Scott, John, pressed when his protection was lying in his coat beside him, Scottish fishermen, _Seahorse_, H.M.S., "Serving out slops," Severn trow-men, exempted from impress by 10% levy, Court of Exchequer rules the reverse, Seymour, Lieut., Sham gangs, _Shandois_ sloop, _Shannon_, H.M.S., Shannon, men working turf boats on, not exempt, _Shark_, sloop, "She" applied to a ship, a recent use, Sheerness, crimpage at, Shields, press-gang at, Ships, impressment of, Shipwrights in Scotch yards could be pressed as carpenters on warships, Shirley, Governor, Shoreham, the press-gang at, _Shrewsbury_, H.M.S., Shrewsbury, sham gangs at, Sloper, Major-General, Smeaton, John, Smugglers, crew of, pressed, unsuspecting passenger declared owner and pressed, _Solebay_, H.M.S., Southampton, the press-gang at, Southey, Robt, _English Eclogues_, _Southsea Castle_, H.M.S., Spithead, crimpage at, an entrepôt for pressed men, _Spy_ sloop of war, _Squirrel_, H.M.S., _Stag_, H.M.S., _Stag_ privateer, Stangate Creek, the fray at, Stephens, George, impressed at thirteen, Stephenson, George, Stepney Fields, press-gang at, Stillwell, John, Stourbridge, the press-gang at, Strike-me-blind. See Rice, Sturdy, Ralph, shot by the pressgang on the _Britannia_, Sunderland, press-gang at, Surgeons, Swansea, Tailors pressed on account of bandy legs, Talbot, Mary Anne, _Tasker_ tender, Tassell, William, a protected mate, pressed ashore, Taunton, Denny-Bowl quarry, near--three girls as sham gang, the press-gang at, Taylor, Lieut, Taylor, William, Teede, John, undone by tattoo marks, Tenders, attacked, hired for transport of pressed men, the health and comfort of pressed men on, their victualling, attempts to escape from and with, Thames, press-gang on the, wherrymen exempted by levy of one in five, _Thetis_, H.M.S., Thomson, Lieut, Thurlow, Lord, Ticket men. See Men in lieu, Tobacco, Trading classes the greatest sufferers from impressment, not without resentment, various trades gradually exempted, Tramps. See Vagabonds, Transports, Travelling, cost of, _Trial and Life of Richard Parker_, Trim, William, Trinity House, _Triton_ brig, _Triton_, Indiaman, Turning over of crews, Tyne keelman exempt from impress by levy--the men supplied being obtained by them by bounties, _Union_ tender, _Utrecht_, H.M.S., Vagabonds handed over to the press-gang, _Vanguard_, H.M.S., Vernon, Admiral, Victualling in the press-room, Virginia, Wages due to sailors to date of impressment, Walbeoff, Capt, Ward, Ned, _Wooden World Dissected_, Waterford, press-gang at, Watermen's language, Watson, Lieut, Watts, John, punished with 170 lashes, Weapons used against the press-gang, Weir, Alexander, Wellington, Duke of, Whalers, some of crew of, exempt from impressment, Whitby, the press-gang at, White, John, pressed at Bristol ninety yards from his vessel, Whitefoot, James, impressed at Bristol, Whitworth, Charles, Envoy to Russia, "Widows' men." Williams, John, _Willing Traveller_ smuggler, Wilson, John, shot by the press-gang on the _Britannia_, _Winchelsea_, H.M.S., Winstanley, London butcher, served as pressed man 16 years, _Wolf_ armed sloop, Women and the Press-gang, See also under Press-gang, "The Press-gang and Women." _Wooden World Dissected_. See Ward, Ned, Wool, illegal export of, Worth, Capt, Worthing fishermen, Wye trow-men exempted from impress by 10% levy, Court of Exchequer rules the reverse, Yarmouth Roads, the press-gang in, "Yellow Admirals." Yorke, Sol. Gen, Young, Admiral, his torpedo, 
60473	----	WEALTH AGAINST COMMONWEALTH BY HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD [Illustration] NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1894 Copyright, 1894, by Henry Demarest Lloyd. _All rights reserved._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. "THERE ARE NONE"--"THEY ARE LEGION" 1 II. CUT OFF FROM FIRE 9 III. PROHIBITION THAT PROHIBITS 20 IV. "SQUARE EATERS" 30 V. STRIKING OIL 38 VI. "NOT TO EXCEED HALF" 61 VII. "YOU ARE NOT TO REFINE" 73 VIII. "NO!" 84 IX. WHO PIPED AND WHO DANCED 104 X. CHEAPENING TRANSPORTATION 118 XI. SONG OF THE BARREL 128 XII. UNFINISHED MARCH TO THE SEA 152 XIII. PURCHASE OF PEACE 166 XIV. "I WANT TO MAKE OIL" 182 XV. SYMPATHETICAL CO-OPERATION 199 XVI. "TURN ANOTHER SCREW" 212 XVII. IN THE INTEREST OF ALL 227 XVIII. ORDINARY SUPPLY AND DEMAND 243 XIX. THROUGH THE WOMAN'S EYES 257 XX. TAKEN FROM THE JURY BY THE JUDGE 272 XXI. CRIME CHEAPER THAN COMPETITION 285 XXII. ANOTHER TALE OF TWO CITIES 299 XXIII. FREEDOM OF THE CITY 313 XXIV. HIGH FINANCE 326 XXV. A SUNDAY IN JUNE 341 XXVI. TOLEDO VICTOR 352 XXVII. "YOU ARE A--SENATOR" 369 XXVIII. FOR "OLD GLORY" AND AN--APPROPRIATION 389 XXIX. "THE COMMODITY IS NOT SO GOOD AS BEFORE"--_Coke_ 405 XXX. "TO GET ALL WE CAN" 420 XXXI. ALL THE WORLD UNDER ONE HAT 432 XXXII. "NOT BUSINESS" 455 XXXIII. THE SMOKELESS REBATE 474 XXXIV. THE OLD SELF-INTEREST 494 XXXV. AND THE NEW 516 APPENDIX--PARTIAL LIST OF TRADE COMBINATIONS, OR TRUSTS 537 INDEX 545 WEALTH AGAINST COMMONWEALTH CHAPTER I "THERE ARE NONE"--"THEY ARE LEGION" Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor. Never in this happy country or elsewhere--except in the Land of Miracle, where "they did all eat and were filled"--has there been enough of anything for the people. Never since time began have all the sons and daughters of men been all warm, and all filled, and all shod and roofed. Never yet have all the virgins, wise or foolish, been able to fill their lamps with oil. The world, enriched by thousands of generations of toilers and thinkers, has reached a fertility which can give every human being a plenty undreamed of even in the Utopias. But between this plenty ripening on the boughs of our civilization and the people hungering for it step the "cornerers," the syndicates, trusts, combinations, with the cry of "over-production"--too much of everything. Holding back the riches of earth, sea, and sky from their fellows who famish and freeze in the dark, they declare to them that there is too much light and warmth and food. They assert the right, for their private profit, to regulate the consumption by the people of the necessaries of life, and to control production, not by the needs of humanity, but by the desires of a few for dividends. The coal syndicate thinks there is too much coal. There is too much iron, too much lumber, too much flour--for this or that syndicate. The majority have never been able to buy enough of anything; but this minority have too much of everything to sell. Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty. "The splendid empire of Charles V.," says Motley, "was erected upon the grave of liberty." Our bignesses, cities, factories, monopolies, fortunes, which are our empires, are the obesities of an age gluttonous beyond its powers of digestion. Mankind are crowding upon each other in the centres, and struggling to keep each other out of the feast set by the new sciences and the new fellowships. Our size has got beyond both our science and our conscience. The vision of the railroad stockholder is not far-sighted enough to see into the office of the General Manager; the people cannot reach across even a ward of a city to rule their rulers; Captains of Industry "do not know" whether the men in the ranks are dying from lack of food and shelter; we cannot clean our cities nor our politics; the locomotive has more man-power than all the ballot-boxes, and mill-wheels wear out the hearts of workers unable to keep up beating time to their whirl. If mankind had gone on pursuing the ideals of the fighter, the time would necessarily have come when there would have been only a few, then only one, and then none left. This is what we are witnessing in the world of livelihoods. Our ideals of livelihood are ideals of mutual deglutition. We are rapidly reaching the stage where in each province only a few are left; that is the key to our times. Beyond the deep is another deep. This era is but a passing phase in the evolution of industrial Cæsars, and these Cæsars will be of a new type--corporate Cæsars. For those who like the perpetual motion of a debate in which neither of the disputants is looking at the same side of the shield, there are infinite satisfactions in the current controversy as to whether there is any such thing as "monopoly." "There are none," says one side. "They are legion," says the other. "The idea that there can be such a thing is absurd," says one, who with half a dozen associates controls the source, the price, the quality, the quantity of nine-tenths of a great necessary of life. But "There will soon be a trust for every production, and a master to fix the price for every necessity of life," said the Senator who framed the United States Anti-Trust Law. This difference as to facts is due to a difference in the definitions through which the facts are regarded. Those who say "there are none" hold with the Attorney-General of the United States and the decision he quotes from the highest Federal court which has yet passed on this question[1] that no one has a monopoly unless there is a "disability" or "restriction" imposed by law on all who would compete. A syndicate that had succeeded in bottling for sale all the air of the earth would not have a monopoly in this view, unless there were on the statute-books a law forbidding every one else from selling air. No others could get air to sell; the people could not get air to breathe, but there would be no monopoly because there is no "legal restriction" on breathing or selling the atmosphere. Excepting in the manufacture of postage-stamps, gold dollars, and a few other such cases of a "legal restriction," there are no monopolies according to this definition. It excludes the whole body of facts which the people include in their definition, and dismisses a great public question by a mere play on words. The other side of the shield was described by Judge Barrett, of the Supreme Court of New York. A monopoly he declared to be "any combination the tendency of which is to prevent competition in its broad and general sense, and to control and thus at will enhance prices to the detriment of the public.... Nor need it be permanent or complete. It is enough that it may be even temporarily and partially successful. The question in the end is, Does it inevitably tend to public injury?"[2] Those who insist that "there are none" are the fortunate ones who came up to the shield on its golden side. But common usage agrees with the language of Judge Barrett, because it exactly fits a fact which presses on common people heavily, and will grow heavier before it grows lighter. The committee of Congress investigating trusts in 1889 did not report any list of these combinations to control markets, "for the reason that new ones are constantly forming, and that old ones are constantly extending their relations so as to cover new branches of the business and invade new territories." It is true that such a list, like a dictionary, would begin to be wrong the moment it began to appear. But though only an instantaneous photograph of the whirlwind, it would give an idea, to be gained in no other way, of a movement shadowing two hemispheres. In an incredible number of the necessaries and luxuries of life, from meat to tombstones, some inner circle of the "fittest" has sought, and very often obtained, the sweet power which Judge Barrett found the sugar trust had: It "can close every refinery at will, close some and open others, limit the purchases of raw material (thus jeopardizing, and in a considerable degree controlling, its production), artificially limit the production of refined sugar, enhance the price to enrich themselves and their associates at the public expense, and depress the price when necessary to crush out and impoverish a foolhardy rival." Corners are "acute" attacks of that which combinations exhibit as chronic. First a corner, then a pool, then a trust, has often been the genesis. The last stage, when the trust throws off the forms of combination and returns to the simpler dress of corporations, is already well along. Some of the "sympathetical co-operations" on record have no doubt ceased to exist. But that they should have been attempted is one of the signs of the time, and these attempts are repeated again and again until success is reached. The line of development is from local to national, and from national to international. The amount of capital changes continually with the recrystallizations in progress. Not less than five hundred million dollars is in the coal combination, which our evidence shows to have flourished twenty-two years; that in oil has nearly if not quite two hundred millions; and the other combinations in which its members are leaders foot up hundreds of millions more. Hundreds of millions of dollars are united in the railroads and elevators of the Northwest against the wheat-growers. In cattle and meat there are not less than one hundred millions; in whiskey, thirty-five millions; and in beer a great deal more than that; in sugar, seventy-five millions; in leather, over a hundred millions; in gas, hundreds of millions. At this writing a union is being negotiated of all the piano-makers in the United States, to have a capital of fifty millions. Quite beyond ordinary comprehension is the magnitude of the syndicates, if there is more than one, which are going from city to city, consolidating all the gas-works, electric-lighting companies, street-railways in each into single properties, and consolidating these into vast estates for central corporations of capitalists, controlling from metropolitan offices the transportation of the people of scores of cities. Such a syndicate negotiating in December, 1892, for the control of the street-railways of Brooklyn, was said by the New York _Times_, "on absolute authority, to have subscribed $23,000,000 towards that end, before a single move had been made or a price set on a single share of stock." It was in the same hands as those busy later in gathering together the coal-mines of Nova Scotia and putting them under American control. There are in round numbers ten thousand millions of dollars claiming dividends and interest in the railroads of the United States. Every year they are more closely pooled. The public saw them marshalled, as by one hand, in the maintenance of the high passenger rates to the World's Fair in the summer of 1893. Many thousands of millions of dollars are represented in these centralizations. It is a vast sum, and yet is but a minority of our wealth. Laws against these combinations have been passed by Congress and by many of the States. There have been prosecutions under them by the State and Federal governments. The laws and the lawsuits have alike been futile. In a few cases names and form of organization have been changed, in consequence of legal pursuit. The whiskey, sugar, and oil trusts had to hang out new signs. But the thing itself, the will and the power to control markets, livelihoods, and liberties, and the toleration of this by the public--this remains unimpaired; in truth, facilitated by the greater secrecy and compactness which have been the only results of the appeal to law. The Attorney-General of the national government gives a large part of his annual report for 1893 to showing "what small basis there is for the popular impression" "that the aim and effect of this statute" (the Anti-Trust Law) "are to prohibit and prevent those aggregations of capital which are so common at the present day, and which sometimes are on so large a scale as to practically control all the branches of an extensive industry." This executive says of the action of the "co-ordinate" Legislature: "It would not be useful, even if it were possible, to ascertain the precise purposes of the framers of the statute." He is the officer charged with the duty of directing the prosecutions to enforce the law; but he declares that since, among other reasons, "all ownership of property is a monopoly, ... any literal application of the provisions of the statute is out of the question." Nothing has been accomplished by all these appeals to the legislatures and the courts, except to prove that the evil lies deeper than any public sentiment or public intelligence yet existent, and is stronger than any public power yet at call. What we call Monopoly is Business at the end of its journey. The concentration of wealth, the wiping out of the middle classes, are other names for it. To get it is, in the world of affairs, the chief end of man. There are no solitary truths, Goethe says, and monopoly--as the greatest business fact of our civilization, which gives to business what other ages gave to war and religion--is our greatest social, political, and moral fact. The men and women who do the work of the world have the right to the floor. Everywhere they are rising to "a point of information." They want to know how our labor and the gifts of nature are being ordered by those whom our ideals and consent have made Captains of Industry over us; how it is that we, who profess the religion of the Golden Rule and the political economy of service for service, come to divide our produce into incalculable power and pleasure for a few, and partial existence for the many who are the fountains of these powers and pleasures. This book is an attempt to help the people answer these questions. It has been quarried out of official records, and it is a venture in realism in the world of realities. Decisions of courts and of special tribunals like the Interstate Commerce Commission, verdicts of juries in civil and criminal cases, reports of committees of the State Legislatures and of Congress, oath-sworn testimony given in legal proceedings and in official inquiries, corrected by rebutting testimony and by cross-examination--such are the sources of information. One important exception is in the description of the operations of a great international combination in England, Germany, Holland, and elsewhere in Europe; this has had to be made from unofficial material. The people there are neither economically nor politically developed to the point we have reached in America, of using the legislative investigation and the powers of the courts to defend livelihoods and market rights, and enforce the social responsibilities of industrial power. Full and exact references are given throughout for the guidance of the investigator. The language of witnesses, judges, and official reports has been repeated verbatim, except for the avoidance of the surplusage and reduplication usual in such literature, and that, to permit the use of the dialogue form, the construction has been changed from the third person to the first in quotations from evidence. With these qualifications, wherever quotation marks have been used, the transcription is word for word. Evidence from such sources is more exact, circumstantial, and accurate than that upon which the mass of historical literature is founded. To give the full and official history of numbers of these combinations, which are nearly identical in inspiration, method, and result, would be repetition. Only one of them, therefore, has been treated in full--the oil trust. It is the most successful of all the attempts to put gifts of nature, entire industries, and world markets under one hat. Its originators claim this precedence. It was, one of its spokesmen says, "the parent of the trust system."[3] It is the best illustration of a movement which is itself but an illustration of the spirit of the age. CHAPTER II CUT OFF FROM FIRE Rome banished those who had been found to be public enemies by forbidding every one to give them fire and water. That was done by all to a few. In America it is done by a few to all. A small number of men are obtaining the power to forbid any but themselves to supply the people with fire in nearly every form known to modern life and industry, from matches to locomotives and electricity. They control our hard coal and much of the soft,[4] and stoves, furnaces, and steam and hot-water heaters; the governors on steam-boilers and the boilers; gas and gas-fixtures; natural gas and gas-pipes; electric lighting, and all the appurtenances. You cannot free yourself by changing from electricity to gas, or from the gas of the city to the gas of the fields. If you fly from kerosene to candles, you are still under the ban. The report adopted by the National Association of Stove Manufacturers, at the Thirteenth Annual Convention, 1884, said: "While it is true that iron is a dollar or two lower than last year, and that the cost of labor has also been reduced, your committee is confident that there is not a manufacturer present who can truthfully say he can afford to reduce the price of his goods." "It is a chronic case," the President said in 1888, "of too many stoves, and not enough people to buy them." The match company, by whose consent all the fires in the United States and Canada are lighted, was organized, as stated, by the Supreme Court of Michigan, for the purpose of controlling the manufacture and trade. Thirty-one manufacturers, owning substantially all the factories where matches were made in the United States, either went into the combination, or were purchased by the match company, and out of this number all were closed except about thirteen. One of the company, who has been a conspicuous candidate for a nomination to the presidency of the United States, testified that the price of matches was kept up to pay the large sums of money expended to exclude others from the match business, remove competition, buy up machinery and patents, and purchase other match factories. This was told in a suit between two stockholders on a question of their relative rights; but the court, of its own motion, declared the combination illegal, and took notice of the public interests involved.[5] "Such a vast combination is a menace to the public," said the court. "It is no answer to say that this monopoly has, in fact, reduced the price of friction-matches. That policy may have been necessary to crush competition. The fact exists that it rests in the discretion of this company at any time to raise the price to an exorbitant degree." "Indeed, it is doubtful if free government can long exist in a country where such enormous amounts of money are allowed to be accumulated in the vaults of corporations, to be used at discretion in controlling the property and business of the country against the interest of the public and that of the people, for the personal gain and aggrandizement of a few individuals." Within the last thirty years, 95 per cent. of the anthracite coal of America--practically the entire supply, it was reported by Congress in 1893--has passed from the ownership of private citizens, many thousands in number, into the possession of the railroads controlling the highways of the coal-fields. These railroads have been undergoing a similar process of consolidation, and are now the property of eight great corporations. This surrender of their property by the individual coal-mine owners is a continuing process, in operation at this moment, for the complete extinction of the "individual" and the independents in this field. It is destined, according to the report of Congress of 1893,[6] to end "in the entire absorption ... of the entire anthracite coal-fields and collieries by ... the common carriers." Anthracite coal is geographically a natural monopoly contained in three contiguous fields which, if laid close together, would not cover more than eight miles by sixty. But bituminous coal, although scattered in exhaustless measures all over the continent, is being similarly appropriated by the railroads, and its area is being similarly limited artificially by their interference. "Railroad syndicates," says the investigation of 1888,[7] "are buying all the best bituminous coal lands along their lines in Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and other Western States and Territories, no doubt with a view of levying tribute upon the people's fuel and the industrial fires of the country." Canada remains unannexed politically, but its best coal deposits have become a part of the United States. In 1892 a syndicate of American capitalists obtained the control of the principal bituminous coal-mines of Nova Scotia. Among them were men connected both with the anthracite pool and with the combination which seeks control of the oil market of Canada and of the United States. The process of consolidation is shown by official and judicial investigations to have been in progress in the bituminous fields at least as far back as 1871, with the same purposes, methods, and results as in the anthracite fields, though more slowly, on account of the greater number and vastness of the deposits. From Pennsylvania to the Pacific coast these are narrowed to the territory along the railroads, and narrowed there again to the mines owned or favored by the railroad managers. The investigations by Congress in 1888 and 1893 both state that the railroads of the country are similarly becoming the owners of our iron and timber lands, and both call upon the people to save themselves. A new law of industry is rising into view. Ownership of the highways ends in ownership of everything and everybody that must use the highways. The railroads compel private owners to sell them their mines or all the product by refusing to supply cars for their business, and by charging rates for the transportation of coal so high that every one but themselves loses money on every ton sent to market. When the railroads elect to have the output large, they furnish many cars; when they elect to have the output small, they furnish few cars; and when they elect that there shall be no output whatever, they furnish no cars. One of the few surviving independent coal producers, who is losing heavily on every ton he sends to market, but keeps on in the hope that the law will give him redress, was asked by a committee of Congress why he did not sell out and give up the business? He was willing, he said, to abide the time when his rights on the railroad could be judicially determined. There was another reason. "It might be considered a very sentimental one. I have spent, sir, considerable time and a large amount of energy and skill in building up my business, and I rather like to continue it." "In other words, you don't want to be forced to sell out?" "No, sir; I don't want to be forced to sell my product, any more than I want to be forced to sell my collieries."[8] Though coal is an article of commerce greater in volume than any other natural product in the United States carried on railroads, amounting to not less than 130,000,000 tons a year; and though the appliances for its transportation have been improved, and the cost cheapened every year, so that it can be handled with less cost and risk than almost any other class of freight, the startling fact appears in the litigations before the Interstate Commerce Commission and the investigations by Congress, that anthracite freight rates have been advanced instead of being decreased, are higher now than they were in 1879, and that coal is made by these confederated railroads to pay rates vastly higher than the average of all other high and low class freight, nearly double the rate on wheat or cotton. These high freight rates serve the double purpose of seeming to justify the high price of coal, and of killing off year by year the independent coal-producers. What the railroad coal-miner pays for freight returns to its other self, the railroad. What the independent coal-producer pays goes also to the railroad, his competitor. "This excess over just and reasonable rates of transportation constitutes an available fund by which they (the railroads) are enabled to crush out the competition of independent coal-producers."[9] By these means, as Congress found in 1888,[10] the railroad managers have forced the independent miners to sell to them or their friends at the price they chose to pay. They were the only possible buyers, because only they were sure of a supply of cars, and of freight rates at which they could live. The private operators thus being frozen out are able, as the investigation by the New York Legislature in 1878 showed, to produce coal more economically than the great companies, because not burdened with extravagant salaries, royalties, and leases, interest on fictitious bonded debts, and dividends on false capitalization of watered stock. By the laws of supply and demand they would compete out the unwieldy corporations, but these administer a superior political economy in their supply and demand of cars and freight rates. The unfittest, economically, survives. "The railroad companies engaged in mining and transporting coal are practically in a combination to control the output and fix the price.... They have a practical monopoly of the production, the transportation, and sale of anthracite coal."[11] This has been the finding in all the investigations for twenty years. "More than one, if not all, of the anthracite monopolies," Congress reported in 1888, "run several of their mines in the name of private operators to quiet the general clamor against carrying companies having a monopoly of mining also." The anthracite collieries of Pennsylvania could now produce 50,000,000 tons a year. The railroads restrict them to 40,000,000 or 41,000,000 tons,[12] nine or ten million tons less than they could furnish to ward off the frosts of winter and to speed the wheels of the world, and this creation of artificial winter has been in progress from the beginning of the combination. In the ten months between February and November, 1892, the price of coal in the East, as investigated by Congress in 1893,[13] was advanced by the coal railroads as much as $1.25 and $1.35 a ton on the kinds used by house-keepers, and the combinations, the report of Congress says, "exercise even a more baleful influence on the production and transportation of coal for the Western market." The extortion in the price fixed by the coal railroads was found by Congress, in 1888, to be an average of one dollar a ton--"considerably more than a dollar a ton"--on all consumed in the United States, or $39,000,000 in that year, and now $40,000,000 to $41,000,000 a year. The same investigation found that between 1873 and 1886 $200,000,000 more than a fair market price was taken from the public by this combination.[14] This in anthracite alone. How many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of millions more have been taken by the railroads which control the bituminous coal-fields from Pennsylvania to the Pacific, there are no adjudicated means of estimating. By the same power which has crushed out the independent coal-miner, the retailer in the cities has been reduced from a free man to an instrument to despoil his neighbors--with whom he is often a fellow-victim--for the benefit of absentee capitalists; he is hounded by detectives; by threats of cutting off his supply, is made a compulsory member of a secret oath-bound society to "maintain prices." "Combinations exist," says the Canadian report, "among coal-dealers in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and London. Detectives are employed and the dealers placed under surveillance.... Oaths of fidelity to the constitution and rules are required not only of the members, but also of their salesmen, and the oaths in the cases of these employés are made in some instances retroactive as well as prospective. All violations of oaths are adjudicated upon by the executive committee referred to, the penalties being heavy fines or expulsion.... In accordance with arrangements made with the American coal-dealers, those who were in default in membership, either from inability to pay fines or from other causes, were prevented from purchasing coal in the United States."[15] The retailer dare not tell his wrongs even in the committee-rooms of Congress. "Your committee," says the report of 1893 to Congress, "experienced great difficulty in obtaining testimony from retail coal-dealers, who apparently labor under fears of injury to their business in case they should appear and give evidence." "During the first forty years," Congress reported in 1888, "the mines were worked by individuals, just as are farms. The hundreds of employers were in active competition with each other for labor. The fundamental law of supply and demand alike governed all parties. As to engagement, employer and employé stood upon a common level of equality and manhood. Skill and industry upon the part of the miner assured to him steady work, fair wages, honest measurement, and humane treatment. Should these be denied by one employer many other employers were ready to give them. The miner had the same freedom as to engagement, the same reward for faithful service, and protection against injustice that the farm-hand possesses because of the competition between farmers employing hands.... This virtual combination of all employers into one syndicate has practically abolished competition between them as to wages; and gradually, but inexorably, the workmen have found themselves encoiled as by an anaconda until now they are powerless."[16] There was an investigation of the coal combination by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1871, the testimony taken in which showed that when, after a thirty days' strike by the men, a number of private coal-mine owners acceded to their terms, and wished to reopen their mines and send coal again to market, the railroads, by which alone they could get to market, raised their freights, as their men were still on strike, to three times the previous figures. These great corporations had determined not to yield to their men, and as they were mine-owners and coal-sellers as well as carriers, they refused to take coal for their competitors.... The result was that the price of coal was doubled, rising to $12 a ton; the resumption by the private mine-owners was stopped; and they, the workmen, and the consumer were all delivered over to the tender mercies of the six great companies.[17] The coal companies in the anthracite regions keep thousands of surplus laborers on hand to underbid each other for employment and for submission to all exactions; hold them purposely ignorant when the mines are to be worked and when closed, so that they cannot seek employment elsewhere; bind them as tenants by compulsion in the companies' houses, so that rent shall run against them, whether wages run on or not, and under leases by which they can be turned out with their wives and children on the mountain-side in midwinter if they strike; compel them to fill cars of larger capacity than agreed upon; make them buy their powder and other working outfit of the companies at an enormous advance on the cost; compel them to buy coal of the company at the company's price, and in many cases to buy a fixed quantity, more than they need; compel them to employ the doctor named by the company, and to pay him whether sick or well; "pluck" them at the company's stores, so that when pay-day comes around the company owes the men nothing, there being authentic cases where "sober, hard-working miners toiled for years or even a lifetime without having been able to draw a single dollar, or but a few dollars, in actual cash," in "debt until the day they died;" refuse to fix the wages in advance, but pay them upon some hocus-pocus sliding scale, varying with the selling price in New York, which the railroad slides to suit itself; and, most extraordinary of all, refuse to let the miners know the prices on which their living slides--a fraud, says the report of Congress, "on its face."[18] The companies dock the miners' output arbitrarily for slate and other impurities, and so can take from their men five to fifty tons more in every hundred than they pay for.[19] In order to keep the miners disciplined and the coal-market under-supplied, the railroads restrict work so that the miners often have to live for a month on what they can earn in six or eight days; and these restrictions are enforced upon their miners by withholding cars from them to fill, as upon competitors by withholding cars to go to market.[20] Labor organizations are forbidden, and the men intentionally provoked to strike, to affect the coal-market. The laboring population of the coal regions, finally, is kept "down" by special policemen enrolled under special laws, and often in violation of law, by the railroads and coal and iron companies practically when and in what numbers these companies choose. These coal and iron policemen are practically without responsibility to any one but their employers, are armed as the corporations see fit with army revolvers, or Winchester rifles, or both, are made detectives by statute, and not required to wear their shields. They provoke the people to riot, and then shoot them legally.[21] "By the percentage of wages," says the report of Congress, "by false measurements, by rents, stores, and other methods, the workman is virtually a chattel of the operator." It says, to summarize: "The carrier drives out both operator and owner, obtains the property, works the mine, 'disciplines' the miner, lowers wages by the importation of Huns and Italians, restricts the output, and advances the price of coal to the public. It is enabled to commit such wrongs upon individuals and the public by virtue of exercising absolute control of a public highway."[22] The people of Pennsylvania, in 1873, adopted a new Constitution. To put an end to the consolidation of all the anthracite coal lands into the hands of the railroads, this Constitution forbade common carriers to mine or manufacture articles for transportation over their lines, or to buy land except for carrying purposes. These provisions of the Constitution have been disobeyed "defiantly." "The railroads have defiantly gone on acquiring title to hundreds of thousands of acres of coal, as well as of neighboring agricultural lands." They have been "aggressively pursuing the joint business of carrying and mining coal." So far from quitting it, they "have increased their mining operations by extracting bituminous as well as anthracite."[23] Instead of enacting "appropriate legislation," as commanded by the new Constitution, to effectuate its prohibitions, the Legislature has passed laws to nullify the Constitution by preventing forever any escheat to the State of the immense area of lands unlawfully held by the railroads. Every effort breaking down to meet the evil by State action, failure was finally confessed by the passage in 1878, by the Pennsylvania Legislature, of a joint resolution asking Congress to legislate "for equity in the rates of freight." In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Law, and established the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce justice on the railway highways. The independent mine-owners of Pennsylvania appealed to it. Two years and a half were consumed in the proceedings. The Commission decided that the rates the railroad charged were unjust and unreasonable, and ordered them reduced.[24] But the decision has remained unenforced, and cannot be enforced. The railroads treat the Commission with the same contumely they visit on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, and two years after the decision Congress in 1893 found their rates to be 50 cents a ton higher than what the Commission had declared to be just and equitable.[25] The Interstate Commerce Law provides for the imprisonment in the penitentiary of those guilty of the crimes it covers. But the only conviction had under it has been of a shipper for discriminating against a railroad. CHAPTER III PROHIBITION THAT PROHIBITS That which governments have not yet been equal to has been accomplished by the private co-operation of a few citizens. They decree at their pleasure that in this town or that State no one shall manufacture alcohol, and they enforce the decree. Theirs is the only prohibition that prohibits. From the famous whiskey ring of 1874 to the pool of 1881 and the trust of 1887, and from the abandonment of that "trust" dress and the reorganization into one corporation in 1890 down to the present, this private regulation of the liquor traffic has gone on. It is a regulation of a good deal more than the liquor traffic. Through its control of alcohol it is a power over the arts and sciences, the manufacture and the preparation of medicines, and a power over politics. More than one chapter of our history exhibits the government itself holding to these rectifiers relations suggestive of anything but rectification. The report of the investigation by Congress in 1893 notes the fact that on the strength of a rumor that the internal-revenue tax was to be increased by Congress, the Trust raised its prices 25 cents a gallon. This would amount to a profit of $12,500,000 on its yearly output. By February, 1888, all the important distilleries in the Northern States--nearly eighty--were in the Trust, excepting two, the larger of which was in Chicago. The cases of these irreconcilable competitors were set for consideration, according to the _Chicago Tribune's_ report, at a private meeting of the trustees February 3d. In April the Chicago distillery firm published the fact that they had caught a spy of the Trust in their works. He had given them a confession in writing. In September it was discovered that the valve of a vat in this distillery had been tampered with in such a way as to have caused an explosion had it not been found out in time. The next month its owners made known that they had been offered and refused $1,000,000 from the Trust for their works. In December the country was startled by the news that this distillery had been the scene of an awful explosion of dynamite. All the buildings in the neighborhood were shaken and many panes of glass were broken. A jagged hole about three feet square was torn in the roof. There were 15,000 barrels of whiskey stored under the roof that was torn open, and if these had been ignited a terrible fire would have been added to the effect of the explosion. A package of dynamite which had failed to explode, though the fuse had been lighted, was found on the premises by the Chicago police. The Chicago representative of the whiskey combination ridiculed the idea that the Trust had had anything to do with this. "Such a thing," he said, "is contrary to the genius of a trust." The wholesale liquor-dealers threatened, at a conference in 1890 with the president of the Trust, to manufacture for themselves, to escape the advance which had been made in the price of high-wines. The president said, as reported in the _Wine and Spirit Gazette_: "I do not believe there is a spirits distillery in the country that you can buy. We own nearly all of them, and have at present seventy-eight idle distilleries." February 11, 1891, the explosion of December, 1888, was recalled by the unexpected arrest of the secretary of the combination in Chicago by the United States authorities. The Grand Jury of Cook County found an indictment, February 17th, against the prisoner. April 20th he was indicted by the Federal Grand Jury. The crime of which he was charged was attempting to bribe a government gauger to blow up the troublesome distillery. The gauger whom the secretary endeavored to enlist had been loyal to his trust, the government, and had made known to his superiors the offer and purpose of the bribe. If the explosion had been carried out 150 men at work in the distillery would have been destroyed. The evidence given Congress afterwards tended to show that part of the plan was that the bribed gauger who was to set and explode the infernal-machine was not to be allowed to survive to claim his reward and perhaps repent and tell. The fuse was fixed so that the explosion would be instantaneous instead of giving the time promised him to get out of the way. In a statement to the press, February 15th, the president of the Trust said, as the result of a conference of the trustees: "We have unanimously agreed to stand by the secretary." Early in June rumors were in circulation in New York that the Chicago independent had sold out; and soon after the confirmation of the report, with full details, was authoritatively published. June 8th the judge of the United States Court in Chicago quashed the Federal indictment, on the ground that it is not a crime under any of the United States laws for an internal-revenue officer to set fire to a distillery of his own volition and impulse, and that it is not a crime against the United States for another person to bribe him to do such an act. He held that the offender could be punished only through the State courts. The United States had property in the distillery to the extent of $800,000 due for taxes, which was a legal lien on the property; but the United States District Attorney and the judge could find no Federal law under which, for the gauger to destroy this property of the United States, or for the Whiskey Trust to bribe him to do so, it was a crime. When the indictments framed by the State Attorney of Chicago came before the State courts, three of the four were found defective and were quashed. The Chicago correspondent of the New York _World_ telegraphed that he had been told by the State Attorney, at the time the Federal proceedings were quashed, that of his four indictments he relied most upon that for conspiracy; "but in court yesterday the State Attorney let the charge of conspiracy fall to the ground because, as he said, there was not evidence enough to secure a conviction." "We haven't the evidence of the gauger; I don't know where he is," the State Attorney said. But this witness declared in a public letter in February, 1893, "Myself and others with positive evidence were always ready to testify, and I have the facts to-day." The judge of the State court held the motion to quash until July, and then announced that he would make no decision until August. He withheld his ruling until October. Then he held the secretary for trial on two counts, charging conspiracy to bribe the gauger and destroy the independent distillery; but remarked "informally," the newspapers said, that conviction would be difficult. When the case was called March 22, 1892, a delay was granted "until next Monday," to enable the prisoner's counsel to read the "bill of particulars" to find out what he was charged with. The secretary did not trouble himself to attend court. His case was not heard of again until June 24th, when he was released on a nolle prosequi entered by the State Attorney because the evidence was insufficient, and became a free man. That was the end. Owing to this success of State and United States attorneys in being unsuccessful, the people have never had an opportunity of hearing in court the evidence on which the Government acted in making the arrest, and on which the grand juries found the indictments. But the gauger through whom the secretary of the Trust had attempted to execute his plans was called as a witness before the Committee of Congress which investigated the Trust in 1893, and he told again the story of the infernal-machine. It was as follows, in his own words, omitting names and unnecessary details: "I was United States internal-revenue gauger from 1879 until after Mr. Cleveland's election, and I was reappointed in 1889, and have been continuously since that time. Late in December, 1890, I received a letter from the secretary of the whiskey combination at Peoria, telling me that he would like to meet me at the Grand Pacific Hotel on New-year's Day. I met him. He said, 'You may be able to do considerable good here; not only for us, but of considerable advantage to yourself. Your $1500 a year is nothing to what you would get by helping us. You can get $10,000 by assisting us in this thing; in fact, to make matters right, you could get in three months $25,000.'" The gauger reported this to his superiors, who told him to go on. "Be particular, and after every interview with him make a note of everything that passes between you while it is fresh in your mind." "I did that," the witness continued, "and I have the original notes in my pocket. There are the original notes," exhibiting them to the committee. "They have never left my possession. I have kept them on my person right along." After some correspondence and another interview, he met the secretary again January 25th. "Now," said the latter, "I can give you something which, if put under a cistern, will in three or four hours go off, and no person know what it was or who did it, and all the trouble that has been caused us will be stopped at once, the sufferings of many people stopped, and no loss to those folks, as they are well insured." "When I recovered from my surprise I asked if it was an explosive. He replied, 'No; a simple but effective thing which would shoot a ball into a tub through the bottom. You will have $10,000 for your work of placing this under a cistern of high-proof, either alcohol or spirits, or what is better than cash, 200 shares of stock.' I asked at what they sold. He said, 'Forty-seven, but it would be up ten points at once,' and I could profit by the raise. 'This will raise a big row.' 'Yes,' he said, 'one cistern well caught, all would go, and it would be right into the warehouse and stop everything at once. It is the most effective way to help us and make a clean job, and you having access to all parts of the distillery and unsuspected is why you could do it so easily.' He had then, in room 35, powder and four steel elongated balls, solid, turned, and with long points. The principal article, however, was a kind of yellowish liquid, which when exposed to sixty-five degrees temperature would produce a flame caused by evaporation. I remarked that there was probably no hurry about this thing, and he said, 'The sooner the better; you may be ordered away from here, and I am come all prepared; everything is ready to load, and that can be done quickly.'" The gauger reported all this to his superior and told him that "I proposed to take the infernal apparatus." His superior said, "Of course." "I then returned to Grand Pacific, room 35; found loading just completed and much material scattered about, oakum in can saturated slightly with kerosene and alcohol to give good start. The secretary said that three fuses were attached to the gun, one of which would go off under water. He had one steel shell which had been shot through three inches of wood in experimenting. He showed me particularly how to place can; to feel underneath for timbers; put it where ball will enter tub. Also, that in stopping over to meet the president of the combination to-morrow he would have a chance to buy up stock reasonably before our work caused the raise. He expected to buy 1000 shares. Friday, the 30th of January, I rather anticipated a visit from the secretary at my hotel, but I received a letter from him instead of a visit, and Judge Hart, the solicitor of the Internal-Revenue Department, who was there in Chicago, when he read the letter thought that the evidence was certainly conclusive." On Sunday, the 8th, the gauger surrendered the box containing the infernal-machine, which was sealed, to a high official who had come on from New York. "The reason why he came on is that the authorities would not believe my testimony. They did not think it was possible a gentleman in the secretary's position would undertake so heinous a crime, and they did not know but what I was a crank. On Monday, the 9th, I was instructed to write a letter. The thing was to arrest in a proper way. The next day I received a despatch: 'Will be at Pacific to-morrow (Wednesday) morning.' "Wednesday morning the secretary was arrested, as he was about to enter the hotel, by a deputy marshal, and conducted to the Marshal's office in the Government building. There was a bottle of this composition found in his grip. He had told me it would go off in three or four hours. I was in the anteroom of the city grand jury after the chemist had given his testimony. The chemist said that it was his opinion it would have or might have gone off in three seconds. Fire would cause the shooting of the ball, and the ball making a hole in the tub--alcohol or high-proof spirits--coming down, of course all would have gone up. It could not have helped it, and the explosion would have followed at once, not from the machine, but from the contents of the cistern. They are very explosive indeed, alcohol and high-proof spirits."[26] What the Government authorities thought of all this is shown in a letter which is spread upon the records of the Treasury Department. It is addressed by the Commissioner of Internal-Revenue to the gauger. After thanking him for his "highly commendable" conduct in relation to the bribe the Commissioner says to Mr. Thomas S. Dewar: "While your rejection of the offer was just what was expected from you, considering your official and personal standing, yet I realize that you have done more than simply reject the offer. You so conducted the affair as to place the guilty party, it is hoped, in a position in which he will be punished for this violation of law. The proposition was not only to attempt to corrupt an honest officer of the Government, but was to induce you, by the offer of a large sum of money, to commit a most heinous and inhuman act." No attempt was made by the representatives of the Trust before the committee to deny this testimony. They simply disclaimed any responsibility for what their associate and employé had done. "Whatever there was in that," testified the president of the Whiskey Trust, "was with the former secretary of this company, if there be anything of it."[27] The Trust increased the number of plants under its control from "nearly eighty" to eighty-one or eighty-two, the number reported by the investigation of Congress in 1893. Its annual production was then 50,000,000 gallons; about 7,500,000 gallons of it alcohol, 42,500,000 spirits. It is evident, says the report, that the company will soon have within its grasp the entire trade, and be able to dictate prices to consumers at pleasure. "How do you account for spirits going up and corn going down at the same time in two or three instances?" the treasurer was asked. "Simply because the distillers were getting in a position whereby they ran less than their capacity."[28] The experience of mankind has always found, as Lord Coke pointed out, that monopoly adulterates. The report of Congress states that unquestionably the largest part of the product of the combination finds its way into the open markets in the form of "compounded"--or artificial--bourbon and rye whiskeys, brandies, rums, gins, cordials. The testimony establishes the fact that about one half of the whiskey consumed in the country is of this compound product. These compounded liquors are supplied from the drug-stores to the sick as medicine. One of the expert witnesses summoned to explain the process of this adulteration appeared before the committee with two demijohns, one containing pure alcohol and the other spirits, and a number of bottles containing essential oils, essences, etc., with which he proposed to make some experiments. "The basis here, this white product, is what is known as 'spirits' in the trade. With the use of these essential oils and essences now before you any kind of imitation liquor can be produced at almost a moment's notice. My first experiment will be with Jamaica rum. I put a drop of Jamaica-rum essence into this white spirits, a few drops of coloring matter, and some sugar syrup. Try of it and smell of it. Does it smell like rum and taste like it? If they want to make it cheaper, they reduce it with water. I will reduce it with water, and you will now notice that the bead has disappeared from it. I will reproduce the bead by the use of bead oil. I put one drop in, and here is the result. Now, using rye-whiskey essence instead of Jamaica-rum essence, I will flavor this spirits. I will now put some prune juice into it to tone it. I will put some raisin oil in it to age it, and I will now commence to color it. This first exhibit" (holding it up before the committee) "is about the color of one-year-old whiskey that has been properly bonded. I will now color it so it will imitate a two-year-old whiskey. This is about the three-year-old now" (exhibiting it). "I will now give this the color of 'velvet whiskey,' which is sold as high as $4 a gallon" (exhibiting it). "The present price of spirits, to-day, I think, is $1.30 a gallon. The utilization of any of these essential oils and essences and coloring matter to make the transfer does not exceed a cost of one and a half cents a gallon. I am prepared to make imitations of any of these liquors at any time with this spirits basis--all the different whiskeys, Scotch and Irish whiskeys, the foreign gins and rums and brandies, after-dinner cordials and liqueurs. These materials as you have them exhibited before you of essential oils and essences are part and parcel of the stock in trade of every man in the United States of America who has got a rectifying license as a wholesale liquor dealer.... They are very generally and extensively in use throughout our entire country, in every hamlet and village, in all the branches of trade, the wholesale liquor dealer, the grocer having a liquor dealer's license, and retail druggists.... When a doctor prescribes French brandy, he expects to get a production which is a distillation of wine made from the grape. In that imitation brandy made from spirits and cognac oil he gets a crude product of corn, defeating entirely his purpose in the prescription. The same applies to gin, rum, and other articles wherever the imitations are found."[29] Some of the substances named by witnesses as occurring in the oils and essences used for this adulteration are sulphuric acid, prussic acid, fusel oil, creosote, nitro-benzol--all poisons, and some of them so virulent that a teaspoonful would kill. "I have been warned when in the employ of these people not to take the crude material into my mouth," said one of the witnesses. Another witness denied that there was any danger in the infinitesimal portions used of the flavoring matter. "The only result," said one of the members of the committee, "of the testimony and hearing of the committee will be to educate the public to the Trust methods. It will have no effect on the Trust." CHAPTER IV "SQUARE EATERS" "By Heaven, square eaters, more meat I say!" --_Beaumont and Fletcher._ A delegate to one of the millers' national conventions said, "We want cheaper wheat and dearer flour." The Canadian Parliament reports that "the Biscuit Association," which had been in existence six years, had kept up the prices of its products, "although the prices of the ingredients used have in that time very materially decreased." An Associated Press despatch from Chicago announced that at "a joint meeting of all the cracker bakers between Pittsburg and the Rocky Mountains, held this morning, it was unanimously agreed to advance the price of crackers." A "Bread Union" has been formed in London for the amalgamation of concerns controlling hundreds of shops. Its chairman instructed the stockholders that by concentrating a large number of shops under one management in any district it could "quickly stifle the opposition of any small unprincipled trader bent on reducing prices for competition purposes." The Dominion Parliament, in condemning the Grocers' Guild as "obnoxious to the public interest in limiting competition, in enhancing prices," pointed out that "no reasonable excuse exists for many of its arbitrary acts and agreements. The wholesale grocery trade had been for many years in a flourishing condition; failures were almost unknown." But though prosperous the grocers formed this guild, admitting some, proscribing others, and established by private legislation the profits they desired. The profits were "afterwards increased, and in no instance lowered, though values generally had fallen." At Minneapolis, the seat of the greatest flour-manufacturing industry in the world, the elevators and railroads have united against the wheat-growers in a way which does much to realize the dream of the miller, of "cheaper wheat and dearer flour." A committee of the Minnesota legislature investigated this combination in 1892. The majority stopped short of reporting that it fixed the prices of wheat, but admitted that some of the testimony tended that way, and that the evidence "would seem to establish" that one of the most powerful railroads had done so, and "had attempted to coerce compliance with its requirements in the matter of prices by threats to embarrass the business of local buyers."[30] A report from a minority of the same committee was more outspoken. It summarizes the evidence, which shows that the railroads and the elevator companies united to enforce a uniform price for wheat. This price was six and a quarter cents below what it should be. All the railroads adjusted their freight rates to the artificial "list-price," and though rivals, they all charged the same rates. The elevator companies, owning an aggregate of fifteen hundred elevators, had a common agent who sent word daily, by telegram and letter, to all wheat-buyers as to the price to be paid the farmers. The report calculates the amount thereby taken from the wheat-growers by the elevators at from four to five millions of dollars a year. The findings of this report were ratified by the adoption of its suggestions for a remedy. "There is," it said, "no agency but the State itself adequate to protect, now, the producer of wheat in Minnesota and the Northwest from the influence of this combine." It therefore recommended the erection and operation of elevators by the State. This was approved by the Legislature and by the Governor, appropriations were made, and the officials of the State went forward with the plan until the Supreme Court of the State stopped them on the ground of "unconstitutionality." That which we see the national associations of winter-wheat millers and spring-wheat millers, and the fish, and the egg, and the fruit, and the salt, and the preserves, and other combinations reaching out to do for a "free breakfast table," to put the "square meal" out of the reach of the "square eater," has been achieved to the last detail in sugar and meat. Every half-cent up or down in the price of sugar makes a loss or gain to the sugar combination at the rate of $20,000,000 a year. When it was capitalized for $50,000,000 it paid dividends of $5,000,000 a year. The value of the refineries in the combination was put by the New York Legislative Investigation of 1891 at $7,000,000. The Hon. Wm. Wilson, of the committee of Congress investigating trusts in 1888, and the framer of the tariff bill of 1893, in a public communication quoted figures showing that this Trust had a surplus of $10,000,000 at the end of 1888, after paying its 10 per cent. dividend. The profits for the next five and a half months were $13,000,000. This surplus of one year and net profits of less than half a year together amount to $23,000,000, nearly half the then nominal capital, and several times more than the real value of all the concerns, as given above. These profits so conservative a paper as the New York _Daily Commercial Bulletin_ called "plunder," and it reaffirmed that epithet when called to account. Stock was issued for this "fabulous valuation" of $50,000,000, put on this $7,000,000 of original value, and was made one of the specialties of the stock market. "There has been an enormous and widespread speculation in the certificates of the trust," says the report of the New York Senate. "It was plainly one of the chief purposes of the trust to provide for the issue of these certificates, affording thereby an opportunity for great speculation in them, obviously to the advantage of the persons managing the trust. The issue of $50,000,000 certificates was amply sufficient for a speculation of many hundreds of millions of dollars."[31] Since this investigation by the New York Legislature, the Sugar Trust has been reorganized into a single corporation. The capital of this is $75,000,000, all "water," since the value of the plants is fully covered by the bonds to the amount of $10,000,000. The actual value of the refineries in the Trust, excluding those which have been closed or dismantled, was investigated by the New York _World_, January 8, 1894, and put at $7,740,000. On this actual value of $7,740,000 in operation the Trust paid in regular and extra dividends in 1893 no less than $10,875,000, and acknowledged that there was in addition a surplus of $5,000,000 in the treasury. This was in addition to the interest on the $10,000,000 of bonds. When a farmer sells a steer, a lamb, or a hog, and the house-keeper buys a chop or roast, they enter a market which for the whole continent, and for all kinds of cattle and meats, is controlled by the combination of packers at Chicago known as "the Big Four."[32] This had its origin in the "evening" arrangement, made in 1873 by the railroads with preferred shippers, on the ostensible ground that these shippers could equalize or even the cattle traffic of the roads. They received $15 as "a commission" on every car-load of cattle shipped from the West to New York, no matter by whom shipped, whether they shipped it or had anything to do with it or not. The commission was later reduced to $10. They soon became large shippers of cattle; and with these margins in their favor "evening" was not difficult business.[33] By 1878 the dressed-beef business had become important. As the Evener Combine had concentrated the cattle trade at Chicago, the dressed-beef interest necessarily had its home at the same place. It is a curious fact that the Evener Combine ceased about the time the dressed-beef interest began its phenomenal career.[34] The committee appointed by the United States Senate to investigate the condition of the meat and cattle markets fixed upon St. Louis, Mo., and November 20, 1888, as the time and place of meeting, because the International Cattle Range Association and the Butchers' National Protective Association assembled at the same time and place. It was supposed that prominent members of these associations would avail themselves of the opportunity to appear before the committee. Some of them did testify frankly, but the presence of antagonistic influences, especially in the International Cattle Range Association, immediately became apparent, and industrious efforts were made to prevent the inquiries of the committee from affecting injuriously the dressed-beef interest at Chicago. The committee found that under the influence of the combination the price of cattle had gone down heavily. For instance: In January, 1884, the best grade of beef cattle sold at Chicago for $7.15 per hundred pounds, and in January, 1889, for $5.40; Northwestern range and Texas cattle sold in January, 1884, at $5.60, and in January, 1889, at $3.75; Texas and Indian cattle sold in 1884 at $4.75, the price declining to $2.50 in December, 1889. These are the highest Chicago prices for the months named. "So far has the centralizing process continued that for all practical purposes," the report says, "the market of that city dominates absolutely the price of beef cattle in the whole country. Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg are subsidiary to the Chicago market, and their prices are regulated and fixed by the great market on the lake."[35] This great business is practically in the hands of four establishments at Chicago. The largest houses have a capacity for slaughtering 3,500 cattle, 3,000 sheep, and 12,000 hogs every ten hours. When the Senate committee visited Chicago, it was found impossible to obtain the frank and full testimony of either the commission men doing business at the Union Stock Yards, or of the employés of the packing and dressed-beef houses. The former testified reluctantly, and were unquestionably under some sort of constraint as to their public declarations. In private they stated to the members of the committee that a combination certainly existed between the "Big Four;" but when put on the stand as witnesses they shuffled and prevaricated to such a degree as, in many cases, to excite commiseration. The committee reported that the overwhelming weight of testimony from witnesses of the highest character, and from all parts of the West, is to the effect that cattle-owners going with their cattle to the Chicago and Kansas City markets find no competition among buyers, and if they refuse to take the first bid are generally forced to accept a lower one. As to the effect upon retailers, local butchers, and consumers, it was admitted by the biggest of the Big Four "that they combined to fix the price of beef to the purchaser and consumer, so as to keep up the cost in their own interest."[36] They combined in opening shops and underselling the butchers of cattle at places all over the country, in order to force them to buy dressed meat. They combined in refusing to sell any meat to butchers at Washington, D.C., because the butchers had bid against them for contracts to supply with meats the Government institutions in the District of Columbia. The compulsion put upon local butchers is illustrated in the S---- case. The following telegram was sent from the office of one of the combination at Chicago to an agent in Pennsylvania: "Cannot allow S---- to continue killing live cattle. If he will not stop, make other arrangements, and make prices so can get his trade." S---- was a local butcher. He testified that he was approached by the agent with a proposition that he should sell dressed-beef. He refused, and was then informed that he would be broken up in business. Notwithstanding this threat, he continued to butcher, and made his purchases of cattle at Buffalo. From the time of his refusal to sell dressed-beef as proposed, he could not buy any meat from Chicago, and could not get any cars from the Erie Railroad to ship his cattle from Buffalo. He was boycotted for his refusal to discontinue killing cattle.[37] One of the combination, when testifying to this matter, disclaimed responsibility for the despatch, but stated that he did not think a butcher should be permitted to kill cattle and at the same time sell dressed-beef. "He could not serve both interests." "We have no hesitation in stating as our conclusion, from all the facts," says the report, "that a combination exists at Chicago between the principal dressed-beef and packing houses, which controls the market and fixes the price of beef cattle in their own interest." When pork is cheap, less beef is eaten. Beef monopoly must therefore widen into pork monopoly. This has happened. There is a combination between the pork-packers at Chicago and the large beef-packers. It began in 1886. The existence of such an arrangement was admitted by its most important member; and it is found to have seriously affected the prices of beef cattle, both to the producer and consumer. It was shown that one of the companies of the Big Four made in 1889 profits equal to 29 per cent. on its capital stock--which may, or may not, have been paid in--and this was not the largest of the companies. As to the idea that other capitalists might enter into competition with those now in possession, the report says: "The enormous capital of the great houses now dominating the market, which each year becomes larger, enables them to buy off all rivals." The favoritism on the highways, in which this power had its origin in 1873, has continued throughout to be its main stay. The railroads give rates to the dressed-beef men which they refuse to shippers of cattle, even though they ship by the train-load--"an unjust and indefensible discrimination by the railroads against the shipper of live cattle." The report says: "This is the spirit and controlling idea of the great monopolies which dominate the country.... No one factor has been more potent and active in effecting an entire revolution in the methods of marketing the meat supply of the United States than the railway transportation."[38] There have been discriminations by the common carriers of the ocean as well as by the railroads. The steamship companies exclude all other shippers, by selling all their capacity to the members of the beef combine, sometimes for months in advance. It is useless for any other shipper to apply. Property is monopoly, the Attorney-General of the United States says. Those who own the bread, meat, sugar, salt, can fix the price at which they will sell. They can refuse to sell. It is to these fellow-men we must pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." And when we have broken bread for the last time, we can get entrance to our "long home" only by paying "exorbitant" toll for our shrouds and our coffins to the "Undertakers'" and the "National Burial Case" associations.[39] CHAPTER V STRIKING OIL It was an American idea to "strike oil." Those who knew it as the "slime" of Genesis, or used it to stick together the bricks of the Tower of Babel, or knelt to it in the fire temples, were content to take it as it rose, the easy gift of nature, oozing forth on brook or spring. But the American struck it. The world, going into partial eclipse on account of the failing supply of whale oil, had its lamps all ready for the new light, and industries beyond number needed only an expansion of the supply. De Witt Clinton, with the same genius that gave us the Erie Canal, suggested as early as 1814 the use of petroleum for light. Reichenbach, the great German chemist, predicted in 1830 that petroleum would yield an illuminating oil equal to the finest. Inventors and money-makers kept up close with scientific investigators in France, Great Britain, and America. As early as 1845 the manufacture of coal-oil, both for light and other purposes, had become important in France. Selligue had made himself master of the secrets of petroleum. His name, says one of his chroniclers, "must forever remain inseparably connected with that of the manufacture of light from oil, and to his researches few have been able to add."[40] The name of this genius and benefactor of humanity has remained almost unknown, except within a small scientific world. He was a member of the French Academy, and almost every year between 1834 and 1848 he came to it with some new discovery. On one occasion he reminds his associates that he holds a patent, granted in 1832, for making illuminating oil from coal, and declares that the business can be developed to any extent which commerce or the arts may require. By 1845 he had unlocked nearly every one of the hidden places in which this extraordinary product has stored its wonders. He found out how to make illuminating oil, illuminating gas, lubricating oil, colors, paraffine for candles, fertilizers, solvents for resin for painters, healing washes, chemicals. He had three refineries in operation in the Department Saône-et-Loire, as described in the report of a committee of the French Academy in 1840. He exhibited his oils in the London Exhibition of 1851, and twelve years before, in the Parisian Industrial Exhibition of 1839, he had crude and refined oils and paraffine to show. "Among the most important objects of the exhibition," said its German historian, Von Hermann, "if they can be prepared economically." This Selligue accomplished. Between 1837 and 1843 he refined more than 4,000,000 pounds of oil, and 50 per cent. of his product was good illuminating oil. Before 1850, the Scotch had succeeded in getting petroleum, called shale oil, out of bituminous coal, had found how to refine it, and had perfected lamps in which it would burn. Joshua Merrill, the pioneer of oil refining in this country, with his partners, successfully refined petroleum at Waltham, Mass., where they established themselves in 1853. The American manufacturers were making kerosene as early as 1856 from Scotch coal,[41] imported at a cost of $20 to $25 a ton, and getting experts like Silliman to analyze petroleum, in the hope that somehow a supply of it might be got. By 1860 there were sixty-four of these manufactories in the United States. "A crowd of obscure inventors," says Felix Foucon, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, "with unremitting labors perfected the lamp--when it was premature to dream that illumination by mineral oil should become universal." All was ready, as the eminent English geologist, Binney, said, "for the start of the vast American petroleum trade." It was not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of petroleum, that hampered the American manufacturer before 1860.[42] The market, the capital, the consumer, the skilled labor, the inventions, and science were all waiting for "Colonel" Drake. With Drake's success in "striking oil" came to an end the period, lasting thousands of years, of fire temples, sweep and bucket, Seneca oil; and came to an end, also, the Arcadian simplicity of the old times--old though so recent--in which Professor Silliman could say, "It is not monopolized by any one, but is carried away freely by all who care to collect it." The oil age begins characteristically. As soon as Drake's well had made known its precious contents, horses began running, and telegrams flying, and money passing to get possession of the oil lands for the few who knew from those who did not know. The primitive days when "it was not monopolized by any one" were over. Thousands of derricks rose all over the territory, and oil scouts pushed with their compasses through the forests of the wilderness in all directions. Wells were bored all over Europe, as well as America, wherever traces of oil showed themselves, sometimes so close together that when one was pumped it would suck air from the other. As soon as the petroleum began to flow out of the ground, refineries started up at every available place. They were built near the wells, as at Titusville and Oil City, and near the centres of transportation, such as Pittsburg and Buffalo, and near the points of export, as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York. Numbers of little establishments appeared on the Jersey flats opposite New York. There was plenty of oil for every one; at one time in 1862 it was only ten cents a barrel. The means of refining it had long before been found by science and were open to all; and even poor men building little stills could year by year add on to their works, increase their capital, and acquire the self-confidence and independence of successful men. The business was one of the most attractive possible to capital. "There is no handsomer business than this is," said one of the great merchants of New York. "You can buy the (crude) oil one week, and sell it the next week refined, and you can imagine the quantity of business that can be done." Men who understood the business, he said, "if they had not the capital could get all of the money they wanted."[43] Whatever new processes and contrivances were needed the fertile American mind set about supplying. To carry the oil in bulk on the railroads tubs on flat cars were first used; but it was not long before the tub was made of iron instead of wood, and, laid on its side instead of bottom, became the tank of the cylinder car now so familiar. The fluid which lubricates so many other things on their way through the world is easily made to slip itself along to market. General S.D. Karns was the author,[44] in 1860, of the first suggestion of a pipe line. He planned only for oil to run down hill. Then Hutchinson, the inventor of the Hutchinson rotary pump, saw that oil could be forced through by pressure, and the idea of the pipe line was complete. The first successful pipe line, put down by Samuel Van Syckel,[45] of Titusville, in 1865, from Pithole to Miller's Farm, four miles, has grown into a net-work of thousands of miles, running through the streets of towns, across fields and door-yards, under and over and beside roads, with trunk lines which extend from the oil regions to Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, Baltimore, New York, Williamsport, Chicago, and the Ohio River. There was a free market for the oil as it came out of the wells and out of the refineries, and free competition between buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, manufacturers and traders. Industries auxiliary to the main ones flourished. Everywhere the scene was of expanding prosperity, with, of course, the inevitable percentage of ill-luck and miscalculation; but with the balance, on the whole, of such happy growth as freedom and the bounty of nature have always yielded when in partnership. The valleys of Pennsylvania changed into busy towns and oil fields. The highways were crowded, labor was well employed at good wages, new industries were starting up on all sides, and everything betokened the permanent creation of a new prosperity for the whole community, like that which came to California and the world with the discovery of gold. But shadows of sunset began to creep over the field in its morning time, and the strange spectacle came of widespread ruin in an industry prospering by great leaps. Wherever men moved to discover oil lands, to dig wells, to build refineries or pipe lines, to buy and sell the oil, or to move it to market, a blight fell upon them. The oil age began in 1860. As early as 1865 strange perturbations were felt, showing that some undiscovered body was pulling the others out of their regular orbits. Before the panic of 1873--days of buoyant general prosperity, with no commercial revulsion for a cause--the citizens of this industry began to suffer a wholesale loss of property and business among the refineries in New York, Pittsburg, Cleveland, and elsewhere, the wells of the oil valleys, and the markets at home and abroad. To the building of refineries succeeded the spectacle--a strange one for so new a business--of the abandonment and dismantling of refineries by the score. The market for oil, crude and refined, which had been a natural one, began to move erratically, by incalculable influences. It went down when it should have gone up according to all the known facts of the situation, and went up when it should have gone down. This sort of experience, defying ordinary calculations and virtues, made business men gamblers. "We began speculating in the hope that there would be a change some time or other for the better," testified one who had gone into the business among the first, and with ample capital and expert skill.[46] The fright among the people was proportionate to the work they had done and the value of what they were losing. Since the first well was sunk the wilderness had become a busy region, teeming with activity and endowed with wealth. In ten years the business had sprung up from nothing to a net product of 6,000,000 barrels of oil a year, using a capital of $200,000,000 and supporting a population of 60,000 people. The people were drilling one hundred new wells per month, at an average cost of $6000 each. They had devised the forms, and provided the financial institutions needed in a new business. They invented many new and ingenious mechanical contrivances. They had built up towns and cities, with schools, churches, lyceums, theatres, libraries, boards of trade. There were nine daily and eighteen weekly newspapers published in the region and supported by it. All this had been created in ten years, at a cost of untold millions in experiments and failures, and the more precious cost of sacrifice, suffering, toil, and life. The ripe fruit of all this wonderful development the men of the oil country saw being snatched away from them.[47] More than once during these lean years, as more than once later, the public alarm went to the verge of violent outbreak. This ruinous prosperity brought stolid Pennsylvania within sight of civil war in 1872, which was the principal subject before the Pennsylvania Legislature of that year, and forced Congress to make an official investigation. The New York Legislature followed Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature with an investigation in 1873. "There was great popular excitement.... It raged like a violent fever," was the description it heard of the state of things in Pennsylvania.[48] There were panics in oil speculation, bank failures, defalcations. Many committed suicide. Hundreds were driven into bankruptcy and insane asylums. Where every one else failed, out of this havoc and social disorder one little group of half a dozen men were rising to the power and wealth which have become the marvel of the world. The first of them came tardily into the field about 1862. He started a little refinery in Cleveland, hundreds of miles from the oil wells. The sixty and more manufacturers who had been able to plant themselves before 1860, when they had to distil coal into petroleum before they could refine petroleum into kerosene, had been multiplied into hundreds by the arrival of petroleum ready made from below. Some of the richest and most successful business men of the country had preceded him and were flourishing.[49] He had been a book-keeper, and then a partner, in a very small country-produce store in Cleveland. As described by his counsel some years later, he was a "man of brains and energy without money." With him were his brother and an English mechanic. The mechanic was bought out later, as all the expert skill needed could be got for wages, which were cheaper than dividends.[50] Two or three years later another partner was added, who began life as "a clerk in a country store,"[51] and had been in salt and lumber in the West. A young man, who had been in the oil region only eleven years, and for two of the eleven had been errand-boy and book-keeper in a mixed oil and merchandise business,[52] a lawyer, a railroad man, a cotton broker, a farm laborer who had become refiner, were admitted at various times into the ruling coterie. The revolution which revolved all the freemen of this industry down a vortex had no sooner begun than the public began to show its agitation through every organ. The spectacle of a few men at the centre of things, in offices rich with plate glass and velvet plush, singing a siren song which drew all their competitors to bankruptcy or insanity or other forms of "co-operation," did not progress, as it might have done a hundred years ago, unnoticed save by those who were the immediate sufferers. The new democracy began questioning the new wealth. Town meetings, organizations of trades and special interests, grand juries, committees of State legislatures and of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, the civil and criminal courts, have been in almost constant action and inquiry since and because. It was before the Committee of Commerce of the National House of Representatives in 1872 that the first authentic evidence was obtained of the cause of the singular ruin which was overwhelming so fair a field. This investigation in 1872 was suppressed after it had gone a little way. Congress said, Investigate. Another power said, Don't investigate. But it was not stopped until the people had found out that they and the production, refining, and transportation of their oil--the whole oil industry, not alone of the valleys where the petroleum was found, but of the districts where it was manufactured, and the markets where it was bought and sold, and the ports from which it was shipped abroad--had been made the subject of a secret "contract"[53] between certain citizens. The high contracting parties to this treaty for the disposal of an industrial province were, on one side, all the great railroad companies, without whose services the oil, crude or refined, could not be moved to refineries, markets, or ports of shipment on river, lake, or ocean. On the other side was a body of thirteen men, "not one of whom lived in the oil regions, or was an owner of oil wells or oil lands," who had associated themselves for the control of the oil business under the winning name of the South Improvement Company.[54] By this contract the railroads had agreed with this company of citizens as follows: 1. To double freight rates. 2. Not to charge them the increase. 3. To give them the increase collected from all competitors. 4. To make any other changes of rates necessary to guarantee their success in business. 5. To destroy their competitors by high freight rates. 6. To spy out the details of their competitors' business. The increase in rates in some cases was to be more than double.[55] These higher rates were to be ostensibly charged to all shippers, including the thirteen members of the South Improvement Company; but that fraternity only did not have to pay them really. All, or nearly all, the increase it paid was to be paid back again--a "rebate."[56] The increase paid by every one else--"on all transported by other parties"--was not paid back. It was to be kept, but not by the railroads. These were to hand that, too, over to the South Improvement Company. This secret arrangement made the actual rate of the South Improvement Company much lower--sometimes half, sometimes less than half, what all others paid. The railroad officials were not to collect these enhanced freight rates from the unsuspecting subjects of this "contract" to turn them into the treasury of the railroads. They were to give them over to the gentlemen who called themselves "South Improvement Company." The "principle" was that the railroad was not to get the benefit of the additional charge it made to the people. No matter how high the railroads put the rates to the community, not the railroads, but the Improvement Company, was to get the gain. The railroads bound themselves to charge every one else the highest nominal rates mentioned. "They shall not be less," was the stipulation. They might be more up to any point; but less they must not be.[57] The rate for carrying petroleum to Cleveland to be refined was to be advanced, for instance, to 80 cents a barrel. When paid by the South Improvement Company, 40 cents of the 80 were to be refunded to it; when paid by any one else, the 40 cents were not merely not to be refunded, but to be paid over to his competitor, this aspiring self-improvement company.[58] The charge on refined oil to Boston was increased to $3.07; and, in the same way, the South Improvement Company was to get back a rebate of $1.32 on every barrel it sent to Boston, and on every barrel any one else sent. The South Improvement Company was to receive sums ranging from 40 cents to $1.32, and averaging a dollar a barrel on all shipments, whether made by itself or by others. This would give the company an income of a dollar a day on every one of the 18,000 barrels then being produced daily, whether its members drilled for it, or piped it, or stored it, or refined it, or not. To pay money to the railroads for them to pay back was seen to be a waste of time, and it was agreed that the South Improvement Company for its members should deduct from the ostensible rate the amount to be refunded, and pay the railroads only the difference. Simplification could not go further. The South Improvement Company was not even to be put to the inconvenience of waiting for the railroads to collect and render to it the tribute exacted for its benefit from all the other shippers. It was given the right to figure out for its members what the tribute would amount to, and pay it to them out of the money they owed the railroads for freight, and then pay the railroad what was left, if there was any left.[59] The railroads agreed to supply them with all the information needed for thus figuring out the amount of this tribute, and to spy out for them besides other important details of their competitors' business. They agreed to make reports every day to the South Improvement Company of all the shipments by other persons, with full particulars as to how much was shipped, who shipped, and to whom, and so on.[60] The detective agency thus established by the railroads to spy out the business of a whole trade was to send its reports "daily to the principal office" of the thirteen gentlemen. If the railroads, forgetting their obligations to the thirteen disciples, made any reduction in any manner to anybody else, the company, as soon as it was found out, could deduct the same amount from its secret rate.[61] If the open rate to the public went down, the secret rate was to go down as much. For the looks of things, it was stipulated that any one else who could furnish an equal amount of transportation should have the same rates;[62] but the possibility that any one should ever be able to furnish an equal amount of transportation was fully taken care of in another section clinching it all. The railway managers, made kings of the road by the grant to them of the sovereign powers of the State, covenanted, in order to make their friends kings of light, that they would "maintain the business" of the South Improvement Company "against loss or injury by competition," so that it should be "a remunerative" and "a full and regular business," and pledged themselves to put the rates of freight up or down, as might be "necessary to overcome such competition."[63] Contracts to this effect, giving the South Improvement Company the sole right for five years to do business between the oil wells and the rest of the world, were made with it by the Erie, the New York Central, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Pennsylvania, the Atlantic and Great Western, and their connections, thus controlling the industry north, south, east, west, and abroad. The contracts in every case bound all the roads owned or leased by the railroads concerned.[64] The contracts were duly signed, sealed, and delivered. On the oil business of that year, as one of the members of the committee of Congress figured out from the testimony, the railroad managers could collect an increase of $7,500,000 in freights, of which they were to hand over to the South Improvement Company $6,000,000, and pay into the treasury of their employers--the railways--only $1,500,000. The contract was signed for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad by its vice-president, but this agreement to kill off a whole trade was too little or too usual to make any impression on his mind. When publicly interrogated about it he could not remember having seen or signed it.[65] "The effect of this contract," the vice-president of the Erie Railway Company was asked, "would have been a complete monopoly in the oil-carrying trade?" "Yes, sir; a complete monopoly."[66] Of the thirteen members of the South Improvement Company which was to be given this "complete monopoly," ten were found later to be active members of the oil trust. They were then seeking that control of the light of the world which it has obtained. Among these ten were the president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, and a majority of the directors of the oil trust into which the improvement company afterwards passed by transmigration. Any closer connection there could not be. One was the other. The ablest and most painstaking investigation which has ever been had in this country into the management of the railroads found and officially reported to the same effect: "The controlling spirits of both organizations being the same."[67] The freight rates were raised as agreed and without notice. Rumors had been heard of what was coming. The public would not believe anything so incredible. But the oil regions were electrified by the news, February 26, that telegrams had been sent from railroad headquarters to their freight agents advising them of new rates, to take effect immediately, making the cost of shipping oil as much again as it had been. The popular excitement which broke out on the same day and "raged like a violent fever" became a national sensation. The Titusville _Morning Herald_ of March 20, 1872, announces that "the railroads to the oil regions have already put up their New York freight from $1.25 to $2.84, an advance of over one hundred per cent." Asked what reason the railroads gave for increasing their rates, a shipper said, "They gave no reason; they telegraphed the local roads to put up the rates immediately." This advance, the superintendents of the railroads told complaining shippers, had been made under the direction of the South Improvement Company, and they had been instructed to make their monthly collections of oil freights from that concern. The evidence even seems to show that the South Improvement Company was so anxious for the dance of death to begin that it got the freight agents by personal influence to order the increased rates before the time agreed upon with the higher officials. Strenuous efforts were made to have the public believe that the contracts, though sealed, signed, delivered, and put into effect, as the advance in rates most practically demonstrated, had really not been put into effect. The quibbles with which the president of the South Improvement Company sought to give that impossible color to the affair before the committee of Congress drew upon him more than one stinging rebuke from the chairman of the committee. "During your whole examination there has not been a direct answer given to a question." "I wish to say to you," said the chairman, "that such equivocation is unworthy of you." The plea needs no answer, but if it did, the language of the railroad men themselves supplies one that cannot be bettered. To the representatives of the people, who had telegraphed them for information "at once, as the excitement is intense, and we fear violence and destruction of property," General McClellan, of the Atlantic and Great Western, replied that the contract was "cancelled;" President Clark, of the Lake Shore, that it was "formally abrogated and cancelled;" Chairman Homer Ramsdell, of the Erie, that it was "abrogated;" Vice-president Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, that it was "terminated officially;"[68] Vice-president Vanderbilt, of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, that it was "cancelled with all the railroads." Contracts that were not complete and in force would not need to be "cancelled" and "abrogated" and "terminated." These announcements were backed up by a telegram from the future head of the oil trust then incubating, in which he said of his company: "This company holds no contracts with the railroad companies."[69] But in 1879 its secretary, called upon by the Ohio Legislature to produce the contracts the company had with the railroads, showed, among others, one covering the very date of this denial in 1872.[70] Before Congress the South Improvement Company sought to shelter themselves behind the plea that "their calculation was to get all the refineries in the country into the company. There was no difference made, as far as we were concerned, in favor of or against any refinery; they were all to come in alike." How they "were all to be taken in" the contract itself showed. It bound the South Improvement Company "to expend large sums of money in the purchase of works for refining," and one of the reasons given by the railroads for making the contract was "to encourage the outlay." Upon what footing buyer and seller would meet in these purchases when the buyer had a secret arrangement like this with the owners of the sole way to and from wells, refineries, and markets, one does not need to be "a business man" to see. The would-be owners had a power to pry the property of the real owners out of their hands. One of the Cleveland manufacturers who had sold was asked why he did so by the New York Legislature. They had been very prosperous, he said; their profits had been $30,000 to $45,000 a year; but their prosperity had come to a sudden stop.[71] "From the time that it was well understood in the trade that the South Improvement Company had ... grappled the entire transportation of oil from the West to the seaboard ... we were all kind of paralyzed, perfectly paralyzed; we could not operate.... The South Improvement Company, or some one representing them, had a drawback of a dollar, sometimes seventy cents, sometimes more, sometimes less, and we were working against that difference."[72] It was a difference, he said, which destroyed their business. He went to the officials of the Erie and of the New York Central to try to get freight rates that would permit him to continue in business. "I got no satisfaction at all," he said; "I am too good a friend of yours," said the representative of the New York Central, "to advise you to have anything further to do with this oil trade." "Do you pretend that you won't carry for me at as cheap a rate as you will carry for anybody else?" "I am but human," the freight agent replied. He saw the man who was then busily organizing the South Improvement Company. He was non-committal. "I got no satisfaction, except 'You better sell, you better get clear.' Kind of _sub rosa_: 'Better sell out, no help for it.'" His firm was outside the charmed circle, and had to choose between selling and dying. Last of all, he had an interview with the president of the all-conquering oil company, in relation to the purchase of their works. "He was the only party that would buy. He offered me fifty cents on the dollar, on the construction account, and we sold out.... He made this expression, I remember: 'I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.'" For the works, which were producing $30,000 to $45,000 a year profit, and which they considered worth $150,000, they received $65,000. "Did you ascertain in the trade," he was asked, "what was the average rate that was paid for refineries?" "That was about the figure.... Fifty cents on the dollar." "It was that or nothing, was it not?" "That or nothing." The freight rates had been raised in February. This sale followed in three weeks. "I would not have sold out," he told the Legislature, "if I could have got a fair show with the railways. My business, instead of being an enterprise to buy and sell, became degraded into running after the railways and getting an equal chance with others."[73] "The only party that would buy" gave his explanation a few years later of the centralization of this business. "Some time in the year 1872," he swore, "when the refining business of the city of Cleveland was in the hands of a number of small refiners, and was unproductive of profit,[74] it was deemed advisable by many of the persons engaged therein, for the sake of economy, to concentrate the business, and associate their joint capital therein. The state of the business was such at that time that it could not be retained profitably at the city of Cleveland, by reason of the fact that points nearer the oil regions were enjoying privileges not shared by refiners at Cleveland, and could produce refined oil at a much less rate than could be done at this point. It was a well-understood fact at that time among refiners that some arrangement would have to be made to economize and concentrate the business, or ruinous losses would not only occur to the refiners themselves, but ultimately Cleveland, as a point of refining oil, would have to be abandoned. At that time those most prominently engaged in the business here consulted together, and as a result thereof several of the refiners conveyed" to his company, then as always the centre of the centralization, "their refineries, and had the option, in pay therefor, to take stock" in this company, "at par, or to take cash." This company, he continued, "had no agency in creating this state of things which made that change in the refining business necessary at that time, but the same was the natural result of the trade, nor did it in the negotiations which followed use any undue or unfair means, but in all cases, to the general satisfaction of those whose refineries were acquired, the full value thereof, either in stock or cash, was paid as the parties preferred."[75] The producers were not to fare any better than the refiners. The president of the South Improvement Company said to a representative of the oil regions substantially: "We want you producers to make out a correct statement of the average production of each well, and the exact cost per barrel to produce the oil. Then we propose to allow you a fair price for the oil." Within forty-eight hours after the freight rates were raised, according to programme, "the entire business of the oil regions," the Titusville _Herald_, March 20, 1872, reported, "became paralyzed. Oil went down to a point seventy cents below the cost of production. The boring of new wells is suspended, existing wells were shut down. The business in Cleveland stopped almost altogether. Thousands of men were thrown out of work." The people rose. Their uprising and its justification were described to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1873 by a brilliant "anti-monopolist," "a rising lawyer" of Franklin, Venango Co. The principal subject to which he called the attention of his fellow-members was the South Improvement Company, and the light it threw on the problems of livelihood and liberty. Quoting the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the Sanford case,[76] he said: "That is the law in Pennsylvania to-day. But in spite of this decision, and in spite of the law, we well know that almost every railroad in this State has been in the habit, and is to-day in the habit, of granting special privileges to individuals, to companies in which the directors of such railroads are interested, to particular business, and to particular localities. We well know that it is their habit to break down certain localities, and build up others, to break down certain men in business and to build up others, to monopolize certain business themselves by means of the numerous corporations which they own and control, and all this in spite of the law, in defiance of the law. "The South Improvement Company's scheme would give that corporation the monopoly of the entire oil business of this State, amounting to $20,000,000 a year. That corporation was created by the Pennsylvania Legislature along with at least twenty others, under the name of improvement companies, within a few years past, all of which corporations contain the names as original corporators of men who may be found in and about the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in Philadelphia, when not lobbying at Harrisburg. The railroads took but one of those charters which they got from the Legislature, and by means of that struck a deadly blow at one of the greatest interests of the State. Their scheme was contrary to law, but before the legal remedy could have been applied, the oil business would have lain prostrate at their feet, had it not been prevented by an uprising of the people, by the threatenings of a mob, if you please, by threatening to destroy property, and by actually commencing to destroy the property of the railroad company, and had the companies not cancelled the contract which Scott and Vanderbilt and others had entered into, I venture to say there would not have been one mile of railroad track left in the County of Venango--the people had come to that pitch of desperation.... Unless we can give the people a remedy for this evil of discriminations in freight, they will sooner or later take the remedy into their own hands."[77] Soon after this attorney for the people was promoted from the poor pay of patriotism to a salary equal to that of the President of the United States, and to the place of counsel for the principal members of the combination, whose inwardness he had descried with such hawk-eye powers of vision. Later, as their counsel, he drafted the famous trust agreement of 1882. The South Improvement Company was formed January 2d. The agreement with the railroads was evidently already worked out in its principal details, for the complicated contracts were formally signed, sealed, and delivered January 18th. The agreed increase of freights went into effect February 26th. The pacific insurrection of the people began with an impromptu mass-meeting at Titusville the next day, February 27th. Influential delegations, or committees, on transportation, legislation, conference with press, pipe lines, arresting of drilling, etc., were set to work by the organization thus spontaneously formed by the people. A complete embargo was placed on sales of oil at any price to the men who had made the hateful bargain with the railroads. The oil country was divided into sixteen districts, in each of which the producers elected a local committee, and over all these was an executive committee composed of representatives from the local committees--one from each. No oil was sold to be used within any district except to those buyers whom the local committee recommended; no oil was sold to be exported or refined outside the district, except to such buyers as the executive committee permitted. One cent a barrel was paid by each producer into a general fund for the expenses of the organization. Steps were taken to form a company with a capital of $1,000,000, subscribed by the producers, to advance money, on the security of their oil, to those producers who did not want to sell. Able lawyers were employed and sent with the committees to all the important capitals--Harrisburg, Washington, the offices of the railway companies. The flow of oil was checked, the activities of the oil world brought near a stop. Monday, March 15th, by the influence of the Washington committee, a resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Representative Scofield, ordering an investigation of the South Improvement Company. Immediately upon this the frightened participants cancelled the contracts. By the 26th of March the representatives of the people had secured a pledge in writing from the five great railroads concerned of "perfect equality," and "no rebates, drawbacks, or other arrangements," in favor of any one thereafter. March 30th, Congress began the investigation which brought to light the evidence of the contracts, and meanwhile the committees on legislation and pipe lines were securing from the Pennsylvania Legislature the repeal of the South Improvement Company charter, and the passage of a "so-called" Free Pipe Line law, discovered afterwards to be worthless on account of amendments shrewdly inserted by the enemy. It was an uprising of the people, passionate but intelligent and irresistible, if the virtue of the members held good. Until April 9th the non-intercourse policy was stiffly and successfully maintained. But by that time one man had been found among the people who was willing to betray the movement. This man, in consideration of an extra price, violating his producer's pledge, sold to some of those concerned in the South Improvement Company a large quantity of oil, as they at once took pains to let the people know. The seller hoped to ship it quietly, but, of course, the object in buying and paying this additional price was to have it shipped openly, and the members of the South Improvement Company insisted that it should be done so.[78] This treachery had the effect planned. Every one became suspicious that his neighbor would be the next deserter, and would get the price he would like to have for himself. To prevent a stampede, the leaders called a mass-meeting. Reports were made to it of what had been done in Congress, the Legislature, and the other railway offices; the telegrams already referred to were read affirming the cancellation of the contracts. Amid manifestations of tumultuous approbation and delight the embargo on the sale of oil was declared raised. "We do what we must," says Emerson, "and call it by the best name possible." The people, as every day since has shown, grasped the shell of victory to find within the kernel of defeat. The committee of Congress noticed when the contracts were afterwards shown to it, that though they had been so widely declared to be "cancelled," they had not been cancelled, but were as fresh--seals, stamps, signatures and all--as the day they were made. This little circumstance is descriptive of the whole proceeding. Both parties to this scheme to give the use of the highways as a privilege to a few, and through this privilege to make the pursuit of livelihood a privilege, theirs exclusively--the railroad officials on one side, and their beneficiaries of the South Improvement Company on the other--were resolute in their determination to carry out their purpose. All that follows of this story is but the recital of the sleuth-like tenacity with which this trail of fabulous wealth has been followed. The chorus of cancellation from the railroads came from those who had meant never to cancel, really. In their negotiations with the representatives of the people they had contested to the last the abandonment of the scheme. "Their friendliness" to it "was so apparent," the Committee of the Producers reported, "that we could expect little consideration at their hands,"[79] and the committee became satisfied that the railroads had made a new contract among themselves like that of the South Improvement Company, and to take its place. Its head frankly avowed before the Investigating Committee of Congress their intention of going ahead with the plan. "They are all convinced that, sooner or later, it will be necessary to organize upon the basis on which the South Improvement Company was organized, including both producers and refiners." This conviction has been faithfully lived up to. Under the name of the South Improvement Company the arrangement was ostentatiously abandoned, because to persist in it meant civil war in the oil country as the rising young anti-monopolist lawyer pointed out in the Constitutional Convention. Mark Twain, in describing the labors of the missionaries in the Sandwich Islands, says they were so successful that the vices of the natives no longer exist in name--only in reality. As every page will show, this contract no longer exists in name--only in reality. In the oil world, and in every other important department of our industrial life--in food, fuel, shelter, clothing, transportation,[80] this contract, in its various new shapes, has been kept steadily at work gerrymandering the livelihoods of the people. The men who had organized the South Improvement Company paid the public revolt the deference of denial, though not of desistance. The company had got a charter, organized under it, collected twenty per cent. of the subscription for stock, made contracts with the railroads, held meetings of the directors, who approved of the contracts and had received the benefits of the increase of freights made in pursuance of the agreement. This was shown by the testimony of its own officers.[81] But "the company never did a dollar's worth of business," the Secretary of the Light of the World told Congress,[82] and "there was never the slightest connection between the South Improvement Company and the Standard Oil Company," the president of the latter and the principal member of both said in an interview in the New York _World_, of March 29, 1890. "The South Improvement Company died in embryo. It was never completely organized, and never did any business. It was partly born, died, and was buried in 1872," etc. Still later, before a committee of the Legislature of New York, in 1888, he was asked about "the Southern Improvement Company." "There was such a company?" "I have heard of such a company." "Were you not in it?" "I was not."[83] So help me God! At almost the moment of this denial in New York, an associate in this and all his other kindred enterprises, asked before Congress who made up the South Improvement Company, named as among them the principal members of the great oil company, and most conspicuous of them all was the name of this denier.[84] The efficiency with which this "partly born" innocent lived his little hour, "not doing a dollar's worth of business," was told in a summary phrase by one of the managers of the Pennsylvania Railroad, describing the condition of the oil business in 1873:[85] "All other of our largest customers had failed." When the people of the oil regions made peace after their uprising it was, as they say, with "full assurance from the Washington committee that the throwing off the restrictions from trade will not embarrass their investigation (by Congress), but that the Sub-Committee of Commerce will, nevertheless, continue, as the principle involved, and not this particular case alone, is the object of the investigation."[86] The Committee of Commerce did not "continue." The principal witness, who had negotiated the contracts by which the railroads gave over the business of the oil regions to a few, refused in effect, beyond producing copies of the contract, to be a witness. Permission was given by the Committee of Congress during its first zeal to the Committee of Producers from Pennsylvania to copy the testimony as it was taken, but no official record of its discoveries exists. This transcript was published by the producers, and copies are possessed by a few fortunate collectors. The committee did not report, and in the archives of the national Capitol no scrap of the evidence taken is to be found. All has vanished into the bottomless darkness in which the monopoly of light loves to dwell. CHAPTER VI "NOT TO EXCEED HALF" Notwithstanding the ceremonial treaty of equal rights on the railroads to all, which had been secured by the uprising of the people against the South Improvement Company in 1872, the independents, one after the other, continued to be side-tracked by an unseen power. Four years later, on the 20th of July, 1876, their only two important survivors in Cleveland, frightened by the high death-rate of the business, and by a deepening pressure on themselves, answered a summons to come to the palace of the President of the Light of the World. The contract which was then made was afterwards produced in court.[87] It was called an "Agreement for an Adventure," in something like "the merry sport" in which the good Antonio gave a bond for a pound of his flesh. A few years after this "adventure" with his competitors and his efforts to have them closed by the courts, the President was asked if his trust had sought in any way to diminish the production of refineries in competition with it. "Oh no, sir," he replied. "Nothing of the kind?" "Oh no, sir."[88] He was asked the question again, and again the denial was repeated. "Done nothing of the sort?" "Not at all." But now he said, You must bind yourselves for ten years to refine only 85,000 barrels of oil a year.[89] They had refined 120,000 barrels the year before, and could have done 180,000, and were growing up with the country. "The prospects were much better for the future."[90] But they agreed. You must give me and my associates all the profits you make during this period above $35,000 a year, until we too have got $35,000 a year out of your business, and we will guarantee you $35,000 a year, if we let you run. They had made $41,000 the year before, but they agreed. You must divide with "us," after each has got $35,000 a year, all the additional profits. They had to put into this "adventure" all their buildings and machinery, valued at $61,760.42, all their time and attention, and $10,000 in cash, while their conquerors put in only $10,000 cash and no plant and no time. But they agreed to this demand for "half." You must stop refining altogether, and let us take out our $10,000 whenever we send you notice that through competition, or a decrease or change in the production of petroleum, Cleveland can "barely compete" with other places. You must sell the kerosene you manufacture, and buy the petroleum you make it of at the prices we fix. The combination could make the business unprofitable whenever it chose, and under the previous stipulation could close them up at its own pleasure, until the ten years had rolled by. But they agreed. You must resume again after any such suspension, and let us take half the profits whenever we give you notice. You must let us enter or withdraw, throw our $10,000 in or out, suspend or resume, again and again, as we choose! They agreed. You must make us monthly reports of all your transactions. You must not enlarge nor contract your works without our consent. They agreed. You must not go into the manufacture of petroleum, nor any other new business anywhere else in the world during this adventure! You must ship your products by such routes as we direct! They agreed. You must keep this adventure secret. Our name must not appear, and even if you all die, you must agree that we may continue the business in your name, or any other name we choose. "The firm name," as their counsel pointed out, "was to be kept up even when the members were mouldering in their graves. But the public were to understand that the business of that firm, as it had been conducted in the lifetime of those men, was still being carried on." You are to be thus tied up for ten years, limited at the best to half the profit on half your capacity, with a right in us to close you up altogether, or to close and resume whenever we choose, with no right in you to start or stop or withdraw. But we are to be left free, in our own refineries, to refine all the oil the market will take, and keep all the profit, and enlarge our works and extend our business. And, finally, you must put your hand and seal to a statement that you do this to "reconcile interests that have seemed to conflict" and "equalize the business," and that this agreement gives you your "due proportion thereof." This "free contract" two of the three men who were to make it knew nothing of until their consent was demanded. One of the partners had secretly been won over. Through him all preliminary negotiations had been conducted. "I was not consulted," testified one of the other two, until after the contract was "all drawn and prepared," and at first he refused to sign it. The plan was concocted "secretly and unknown to me." "I was at first opposed to the arrangement," declared the other.[91] But this was not all the contract. The President, who, as he testified, "conducted most of the negotiations," and "had been familiar with the dealings thereunder," supplemented the written documents with oral instructions:[92] You must not seem to be prosperous. You must not put on style,[93] he cautioned them; above all, you must not drive fast horses or have fine rigs; you must not even let your wives know of this arrangement.[94] A false account was opened on the books to conceal the nature and origin of this transaction from their own book-keepers. In the name of that account false and fictitious checks were drawn, bills made out, balances struck. A box was taken out at the Cleveland post-office--box 125--in the name of an imaginary "Mr. G.A. Mason," and through this box the correspondence of the "adventure" was carried on. Each of the three parties to the "adventure" continued to march and fight under its own flag as before. All possible pains were taken to conceal the fact that they had ceased competition with each other. They kept up every appearance to the public of being actively engaged in competitive business. The inevitable spy appears in this scene as in every other in the play. The "reconciler," to enforce the provisions that the "reconcilees" should not engage in business elsewhere, extended a system of espionage over them, and followed their movements, and kept watch what they did with their money, and made oath to the courts of the results of these "inquiries and investigations." The espionage continued after this. A year or two after this contract had been broken by the help of the courts, the then secretary of the great oil company, through an intermediary, approached the book-keeper of the firm which had been freed from the trust. "Would you not like to make some money?" "He inclined to let him believe he did want to make some money," his employer afterwards told Congress. "He came and told me about it. I requested that he continue and find out what information they wanted. He was to have had so much per year, but he was to have been paid a down payment; he got $25." "What service was he to render for that?" "I have a memorandum. There were so many things he was to do that I cannot carry it in my head." "One of the questions was, 'What was the result of last year's business?' The other was, 'A transcript of the daily shipments, with net prices received from the same; what is the cost for manufacturing outside of the crude; the kind of gasoline and naphtha made, and the net prices received for the same; what they do with tar and the percentages of the same; what per cent. of water white and what per cent. of Michigan water white; how much oil exported last year?' This information, as fast as received, to be mailed to Box 164, Cleveland post-office.... He (the book-keeper) made an affidavit of it, and I took the money back myself personally."[95] When orders came in for more oil than the limit put upon them, the "reconcilees," asserting their commercial manhood, went on refining to supply the demands of the public instead of the commands of the clique. They contended that they were not bound by the limitation, and in this were afterwards upheld by the court; but, meanwhile, they were called to account and frightened into another "reconciliation." He was present, the chief reconciler told the court, at the interview in which they "agreed to diminish their manufacture ... to bring the entire amount within the terms" of the contract. But again they began to refine to supply the needs of the people evidenced by the market demand. Then their supply of crude was shut off. Their suzerain owned the pipe line to Cleveland. When its escaping victims got around that difficulty, it took its "contract" to the courts. To shut these competitors down to half their capacity, and to reconcile and equalize interests by taking half of all they made on that was merely an incident, collateral to the grander plan, the vaster "adventure," of getting all the profits of that greater field out of which these competitors were barred altogether. Such contracts as these, its counsel said, were made with refiners all over the country. The chief profit of the adventure lay, not in the divided profits of the picayune business it let the vassals do, but in the undivided profits of the empire kept for itself. Why should the reconciler hurry with expensive lawyers into court for a summary injunction to prevent a "reconcilee" from making more oil, when the reconciler, who toiled not nor spun, was to get half of the gain of $2.05 on every barrel of it? Why, but that every "co-operative" barrel so made would displace in the markets a barrel, all the profits of which went to it. The "reconcilees" were called into court. A judge was asked to issue an injunction forbidding them to depart from the strict letter of the contract. They have been refining more than 85,000 barrels of oil a year, was the complaint. They "threaten to distil crude petroleum without regard to quantity."[96] They are "parties in rebellion," said the lawyers. The judge said, No. This is a contract in restraint of trade, and released those who were in its toils. The immediate effect of this "equalization" was an advance in the rates of profit. The year before the independent refiners had made a profit of only 34 cents a barrel.[97] The first year of the "adventure" the profits jumped up to $2.52 a barrel. The dividends rose from $41,000 to $222,047, while the production fell from 120,000 to 88,085 barrels. For the four years the average profit was $2.05 a barrel, or 500 per cent. advance. The lowest profit was $1.37. "Refined oil advanced to an average of $8 per barrel for that year" (1876), says the counsel of the trust.[98] These great winnings were made in the depth of the depression following the panic of 1873. While a world-compelling decline not only of prices but of profits, was in progress, the authors of this arrangement kept up kerosene to a point at which $630,691 was made in four years out of an investment of $81,000, half of which went to those who put in $10,000 and their power over freight agents. This "adventure," as was said by the Hon. Stanley Matthews, who appeared as counsel for the victimized refiners, was better than a gold-mine. It was a mint. Without giving any personal supervision or any time, without any expenditure except the insignificant investment of $10,000, made as a mere stalking-horse, these men took a share of the profits of "the party of the second part," which is not to be calculated by ordinary percentage, but by multiplications, over and over again, every year, of the money they put in it. By reducing the volume of business one-half, by increasing the profit from 34 cents a barrel to $2.05, the reconcilers pocketed $315,345.58 in four years, on an investment of $10,000, with no work. This was the fact. The theory with which the fact was hidden from the people is given to the New York Legislature in 1888. The principle on which the trust did business, its president said, was: "At a limited profit; a very small profit on an extremely large volume of business."[99] When its secretary was before Congress, he was asked about the operations of himself and his associates in these years, 1876, 1877, of wonderful profits. He had been participating during that time in not only this profit of $2.05 a barrel, but in divided profits rising to $3,000,000 in a year on $3,000,000 of capital, and in undivided profits which rolled up $3,500,000 of capital into $70,000,000 in five years. But he said: "The business during those years was so very close as to leave scarcely any margin of profit under the most advantageous circumstances."[100] The effect on the consumer appears from the statement in this case of one of the best-known producers and refiners in the oil regions, one intimately associated with the members of the combination. He showed that oil which was selling at twenty cents a gallon retail could be sold at a large profit at twelve cents a gallon. As to the effect on the working-man, the demand for labor declined, wages went down, and the number of unemployed increased. When there was competition in Cleveland the great company could not afford to have its skilled workmen idle, because they would seek employment with the other refineries; but now, having the refining business all in its own hands, when it was temporarily to its advantage to refine oil in Pittsburg, Oil City, or other points, in preference to Cleveland, it could with impunity let its hands remain idle in Cleveland, knowing that when it wanted them it could easily secure them, as there are no other refineries in Cleveland to employ them, and "that has been a very serious injury to working-men."[101] There was no pretence that the design of this contract was not to make oil scarce--_i.e._, dear. In the affidavit which was made in support of the injunction the principal reconciler showed that his company had restricted itself as much as it restricted these competitors. He urged as the reason why the contract had been made and why the courts should sustain it, that "the capacity of all the refineries in the United States is more than sufficient to supply the markets of the world, and if all the refineries were run to their full capacity they would refine at least twice as much oil as the markets of the world require; that this difference between the capacity of refineries and the demands of the market has existed for at least seven years past, and during that period the refineries" of his company "have not been run to ... exceed one-half of their capacity." When these surviving independents of Cleveland were forced into this adventure, in 1876, the source of the power which could compel "free" citizens in this age of individualism to execute such a bond was not known. The appalling mortality among the independents showed that something was seriously wrong. There was something, however, in this "Agreement for an Adventure" which pointed straight to it. That was a clause which guaranteed those who became vassals that they should have the same freight rates and get back the same rebates as the monopoly.[102] "Had the monopoly the power," said the Hon. Stanley Matthews, "to procure freights on better and more advantageous terms than the rest of the public engaged in the same business?... And if they had such power, how did it get it?... If this or any other corporation is allowed to exalt itself in this way and by these means above competition, it is also exalted above the law." The great lawyer, who soon afterwards became a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, could not answer the questions he raised. The facts were hidden in secret contracts with the railroads. As regards Cleveland, they did not come out until five years later, in 1885. It then became an adjudicated fact that in 1875, the year before this "Agreement for an Adventure," the Lake Shore Railroad had made a contract with the oil combination to drive these very competitors and all others out of business, just as the same road had done for the South Improvement Company in 1872. When they escaped from their "reconciler," they brought this railroad and the contract into court. The case was fought up to the Supreme Court. That tribunal found that the Lake Shore road had contracted with this company to carry its products ten cents per barrel cheaper than for any other customers. It showed that this made a difference to the victims of the "Adventure" equal to more than 21 per cent. a year on their capital. "The understanding," the court said, "was to keep the price _down_ for the favored customers, but _up_ for all the others, and the inevitable tendency and effect of this contract was to enable the Standard Oil Company to establish and maintain an overshadowing monopoly, to ruin all other operators, and drive them out of business." The course of the railroad the court declared to be one of "active participation in the unlawful purposes" of the oil company. The Lake Shore was to have all its business out of Cleveland, but, a competing railroad being built, the Lake Shore made a contract to give this new line a part of the plum, to induce it to unite in the policy of keeping freights _down_ for the favored customer, and _up_ for all others. When the President of the trust was asked afterwards by the New York Legislature if there had been no arrangement by which it got its transportation cheaper than others could, he replied, "No, sir." And later he reiterated that in their arrangements for freight there was "nothing peculiar."[103] But the Supreme Court of Ohio, in describing this arrangement, diversify the staid rhetoric of their legal deliverance with the unaffected exclamation: "How peculiar!" They declared the contract between the two railroads "void," and "not only contrary to a sound public policy, but to the lax demands of the commercial honesty and ordinary methods of business." They also pronounced the contract between the railroad and the oil company as "made to build up a monopoly," and as "unlawful."[104] The great lawyer, we have said, could not answer the questions he asked. The facts, we have said, were hidden in a secret contract. And yet the answers to the questions, the facts, had been all brought to the verge of disclosure by the investigation by Congress early in the same year, 1876. Although the investigation, in consequence of the "I object" of the Hon. Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland,[105] had been referred to the Committee of Commerce, and though the railroad and oil clique men would not answer, and the committee would not press them, there was a volunteer witness from Cleveland, who began to upset all the plans to smother. This willing witness was a Cleveland refiner, a shrewd man, as would easily be believed by those who knew that he was the brother of an organizer of the oil combination. He, too, had been a member of it, but for some reasons was now "out," and was one of the swimmers who felt themselves being drawn down. He betook himself for relief to Congress. He dodged no subpoenas, but, going before the Committee of Commerce, he began to tell more fully than any other witness had ever done, or had ever been able to do, the story of the relations between the combination and the railroads, which he knew of his personal knowledge. When he began talking in this free way to the public authorities, his former associates saw that they had underestimated his abilities as a refiner. They began to feel that it might be well to make some concessions to this particular brother, though not to the Brotherhood of Man. The investigation was summarily suspended,[106] and his testimony was spirited away. With the only power that could have interfered thus silenced, the surviving independents were corralled as we have described. This was done two short months after the first move was made, May 16th, for the investigation which might have saved the independents at Cleveland and elsewhere from the duress which drove men to death or adventures of reconciliation. All over the oil regions the combination has followed this policy of "not to exceed half."[107] Nineteen pages of the testimony of a member in the suit begun by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are taken up with the operations of one of its constituent companies in the purchase or leasing of competing refineries, many of which were shut down or pulled down. This witness could name only one refinery out of the score of independent concerns once flourishing in Pittsburg, which was not under its control.[108] "Dismantled," was the monotonous refrain of many of his answers to the questions as to what had been done with the refineries thus got under control. Asked why these works had been thus dismantled or shut down, he explained it variously as due to unfavorable location or worn-out machinery or some such disadvantage. If these works were so badly situated and so illy fitted for the business and so old, why did it purchase them? "Can you give good commercial reasons why it would buy all unprofitable junk?" he was asked.[109] "I cannot give any reason why they bought the works," was the helpless answer. From the beginning to the end the language used by the founders of the combination proves scarcity to have been their object. "There is a large number of refineries in the country--a great deal larger than is required for the manufacture of the oil produced in the country, or for the wants of the consumers in Europe and America," said one of the principal members in 1872.[110] This is almost identical with the language used in 1880 in the effort to enjoin Cleveland refiners who "threatened to distil." In 1887 we will see the same power putting its hand and seal to an agreement to enforce the doctrine that there was too much oil in the earth. In 1872 there were more refineries than were needed for the oil; in 1887 there was too much oil. The progression is significant. And down to the present pool with the Scotch refiners we will see the same men enforcing abroad, year by year, the same gospel of want.[111] "The producers in America are quite alive to the wisdom of not producing too much paraffine, and are already adopting measures to restrict it," said the chairman at the annual meeting of one of the principal Scotch companies.[112] CHAPTER VII "YOU ARE NOT TO REFINE" In the obituary column of the Cleveland _Herald_, of June 6, 1874, was given the news of the death of one of the pioneer manufacturers of Cleveland. He began the refining of petroleum in that city in 1860, several years before any of those who afterwards became the sovereigns of the business had left their railroad platforms, book-keeping stools, and lawyers' desks. He was married in the same year, and from that time until his death, in 1874, gave his whole life to his refinery and his family, and was successful with both. The _Herald_ said of him editorially: "He was well known in Cleveland and elsewhere as a business man of high character. He was a prominent member of the First Presbyterian Church, was at one time President of the Young Men's Christian Association, and was active in all enterprises of a religious and benevolent character. He was about forty years of age, and leaves a wife and three children." His enterprise had been "very profitable," his wife said afterwards in court, in narrating how she and her children fared after the death of the husband, father, and bread-winner. "My husband devoted his entire energies and life to the business from about 1860 to the time of his death, and had acquired through his name a large patronage. My husband went into debt just before his death," she continued, "for the first time in his life. For the interest of my fatherless children, as well as myself, I thought it my duty to continue the business. I took $75,000 of the $100,000 of stock, and continued from that time, 1874, until November, 1878, making handsome profits, during perhaps the hardest business years of the time since my husband had begun."[113] The business received from her the most thorough and faithful attention, and she maintained the prosperity her husband had founded by making a profit of about $25,000 a year. A representative of one of the oil combination came to her, she continued, "with a proposition that I should sell to them." This agent was "a brother manufacturer," who, but a short time before in a conference with her, had agreed that in view of the dangers which seemed to threaten them, he and she should mutually watch out for each other, and that no arrangement should be made by either without letting the other know. The next she saw of her ally he pounced upon her in her office with the news that he was in the oil combination, that the head of it had told him he meant to have control of the refining business if it took him ten years, but he hoped to have it in two. He went on to warm the woman's heart by the declaration that since he had become acquainted with the secrets of the organization he wondered that he and she had been able to hold out so long. After which preliminaries he proposed that she, too, should sell to it. With sagacity and spirit she declined point-blank to have any negotiation with him. She declined to deal with subordinates, and said she did not want to sell. The principal then called upon her at her residence. This was in 1878, and these were dark days for "outside" refiners. One by one they were sinking out of sight, and slipping under the yoke like the victims of the "reconciliation" and "equalization" described in the last chapter. For six years word had been passing from one frightened lip to another that they were all destined for the maw or the morgue, and the fulfilment of the word had been appalling. He knew the members of the oil combination, one of the best-known veterans of the oil region testified in this case, naming them; "I have heard some of them say, in substance, 'that they intended to wipe out all the refineries in the country except their own, and to control the entire refining business of the United States.'" "The big fish are going to eat the little fish," one of the big fish told a neighbor and competitor. When one of the little fish said he "would not sell and was not afraid," he was told, "You may not be afraid to have your head cut off, but your body will suffer!" The woman was brave with love and enthusiasm for the memory of her husband and the future of her children. She had had a great success, but she knew the sea she was swimming. She saw strong men going down on every side. She herself afterwards told in court of her great anxiety as she would hear of one refinery after another surrendering, feeling sure that that would eventually be the fate of her company. All that the witnesses just quoted had reported, all that was said of the same tenor by the witnesses before Congress in 1876, and much more, had been filling the hearts of the business men of Cleveland, Pittsburg, Titusville, New York, with a reign of terror ever since 1872. It was with a full realization of all this that she went down to her parlor to receive the great man of commerce, who passes the contribution-box for widows' mites outside the church as well as within. This gentleman was in her house in pursuance, practically, of his own motion. She did not want to sell; the suggestion of a sale had come from the other side. "I told him," the widow said to the judge, "that I realized that my company was entirely in the power" of his company. "All I can do," I said to him, "is to appeal to your honor as a gentleman, and to your sympathy, to do the best with me that you can. I beg of you to consider your wife in my position, left with this business and with fatherless children, and with a large indebtedness that my husband had just contracted for the first time in his life. I felt that I could not do without the income arising from this business, and I have taken it up and gone on, and been successful in the hardest years since my husband commenced." "I am aware," he replied, "of what you have done. My wife could never have accomplished so much." She had become alarmed, the woman of business resumed, because his company was "getting control of all the refineries in the country." He promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would stand by her. It should never be said, he cried, that he had wronged the widow of his fellow-refiner. "He agreed that I might retain whatever amount of stock I desired. He seemed to want only the control. I thought his feelings were such that I could trust him, and that he would deal honorably with me." This was the last she saw of him. He promised to come to see her during the negotiations, but did not do so. He promised to assist and advise her, but did not do so. He declined to conduct the negotiations with her in person as she requested, "stating to her," he said, in giving his version of the affair to the court, "that I knew nothing about her business or the mechanical appliances used in the same, and that I could not pursue any negotiations with her with reference to the same; but that if, after reflection, she desired to do so, some of our people familiar with the lubricating-oil business would take up the question with her.... When she responded, expressing her fears about the future of the business, stating that she could not get cars to transport sufficient oil, and other similar remarks, I stated to her that though we were using our cars, and required them in our own business, yet we would loan her any number she required, or do anything else in reason to assist her, and I saw no reason why she could not prosecute her business just as successfully in the future as in the past." This assurance to his widow-competitor that he would let her have cars was, of itself, enough to justify all her alarm, and show that there was no hope for her but in making the best surrender possible. It was proof positive that he did control the transportation, that the well-defined report that no one but he and his could get their business done by the railroad was true. Permission to go upon the highways by the favor of a competitor is too thin a plank for even a woman to be got to walk. Withdrawing from direct connection, but managing the affair to the end as he testifies, he sent back to her the agent she had refused to talk with. Negotiations were accordingly resumed perforce with this agent. He submitted to his principals a statement in her behalf of the value of the property, but did not waste time over the form of letting her see it, or consulting with her before submitting it in her name. This statement she never authorized, never heard of, and never read until it was produced in court against her.[114] One interesting feature of the contract which was the subject of the "adventure" described in the chapter "Not to Exceed Half" was repeated here. The representative who "took up this matter" with the widow carried on his bargaining in great part with the minor stockholders, one of whom claimed afterwards that all he had done was under her directions, and "to her entire satisfaction." But she was entirely unaware of either her "directions" or her "satisfaction." "He never had the slightest authority from me to represent me in any way in the sale."[115] Another of the minor stockholders also busied himself in representing her without her knowledge. On behalf of the widow agents were making figures, though she knew nothing of their agency or the figures. By these combined efforts a sale was finally concluded at figures which, though she owned seven-tenths of the property, she had never authorized, and were far below the only figures she had given as those she was willing to take. Compelled to deal with a subordinate against her will, fearing to remain in so hazardous an occupation, and yet needing for her children the income it brought her, this woman manufacturer's position was most harassing. All through, as her cashier and treasurer told the court, she was dissatisfied, felt that she was compelled to sell though she wanted to retain her property. "In my hearing," her confidential clerk said, "she declared she sold because she was compelled to do so." She told her fellow-stockholders that she had been informed by the agent who was dealing with her, that if they did not sell out it would only be a question of time before they would be forced to sell out, as he intended to place oil like that made by her company in the hands of all their agents, to undersell them and close them out. This decided them to sell. "Inasmuch as the managers of the Standard Oil Company appeared to have made up their minds to obtain this property, and not to give them the chance they had before in competition," the stockholders, as one of them testified, "concluded it better to sell the property at such price as they could then get, rather than to run the risk of a still greater loss in the future, not one of the stockholders desiring to part with the property at all, but rather choosing with fair competition to retain their interest in the property."[116] She had made 15 per cent. in the last six months, and, aside from these threats, the business looked prosperous, for the orders were becoming more numerous every day. But the widow could refuse to sell only by braving threats which had broken more than two out of three of all the men about her. She put upon the property a price warranted by its income, $200,000, which was adopted by the directors of the company in a formal motion authorizing a sale at that figure. But in her name a proposition was made by the agent to sell for $71,000. "I never heard of the figure of $71,000," she says, "and cannot imagine where it originated. The only proposition that was ever made was that of $200,000." What the stock was worth in her estimation and that of her employés who had inside knowledge is seen in the evidence of her confidential clerk. Though he was her nephew also, he had with difficulty, he says, bought stock at par. She had refused to sell at par to others. Now the only offer she could get was $60,000 for the works and good-will, the purchasers paying in addition the cash value of the material in stock, and at that price she had to let them go. She asked to be allowed to remain an owner to the extent of $15,000 in the business into which she and her husband had built their lives. "No outsider can have any interest in this concern," was the reply. The combination "has dallied as long as it will over this matter," its agent continued. "It must be settled up to-day or go." The power of this business to produce a profit of $25,000 a year was worth almost $400,000, according to the valuations maintained for the stock of the oil trust on the New York Stock Exchange by the men who bought out the widow. One hundred dollars in oil trust stock producing $12 a year has sold as high as $185. If $12 a year was worth $185, $25,000 a year was worth nearly $400,000. It was part of the agreement that the oil company should go on as before. "It was particularly enjoined," testified the cashier and treasurer, "that the sale should be kept a profound secret."[117] It was intended that the company should go on as before as far as the public was concerned. The purchasers agreed to continue to employ the hands already at work, but stipulated that not a word should be said to any one of them to reveal that the company was not as independent as it had been.[118] "And you are not to engage in the refining business," is the concluding phrase of an agreement between the oil combination and a once competitor whom it had forced to sell out in 1876.[119] "You are not to engage in refining," the same power said in 1877 to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and now to this widow: You must sign this bond not to go into business again for ten years. The bond is given in full in the record of the case. It put the widow under a forfeit of five thousand dollars for ten years, that-- "I will not directly, or indirectly, in any way, either alone or in company with any person, or as a share-holder in any corporation, engage in or in any way concern myself or allow knowingly any capital or moneys to be employed in the business or trade of refining, manufacturing, producing, piping, or dealing in petroleum, or any of its products, within the county of Cuyahoga, and State of Ohio, nor at any other place whatsoever."[120] Their secret of success, the president swore in this very case, is "the very large volume" of purchases, "long continuance in the business," "experience," "knowledge of all the avenues of trade," "skill of experienced employés," and so forth. But with all this they did not dare leave this middle-aged woman free to challenge them again on the field of competition. The purchase was made in the name of three members of the great oil company, and it was paid for by the check of that concern. Of these men one was among the "trustees" indicted and tried in 1885 for complicity in the plot to blow up a rival refinery, but let go by the judge. At the time the sale was concluded the widow refiner declared, "The obtaining of her stock was no better than stealing." When the papers were brought to her to sign she "hesitated," and said, "It is like signing my death-warrant. I believe it will prove my death-warrant." "The promises made by the president," she testifies, "were none of them fulfilled." Being only a woman, and not understanding "business," for all her brilliant success in stepping into her husband's place, and doing the double work of home-maker and bread-winner, the widow could not restrain herself from giving a most uncommercial piece of her mind to those who had got possession of her property for a sum which they would recover out of its profits in two or three years. She sent the following letter: "November 11, 1878, Monday Morning. "SIR,--When you left me at the time of our interview the other morning, after promising me so much, you said you had simply dropped the remarks you had for my thought. I can assure you I have thought much and long as I have waited and watched daily to see you fulfil those promises, and it is impossible for me to tell you how utterly astonished I am at the course you have pursued with me. Were it not for the knowledge I have that there is a God in heaven, and that you will be compelled to give an account for all the deeds done here, and there, in the presence of my husband, will have to confess whether you have wronged me and his fatherless children or not--were it not for this knowledge I could not endure it for a moment, the fact that a man, possessed of the millions that you are, will permit to be taken from a widow a business that had been the hard life work and pride of herself and husband, one that was paying the handsome profit of nearly twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, and give me in return what a paltry sum, that will net me less than three thousand dollars; and it is done in a manner that says, Take this or we will crush you out. And when, on account of the sacred associations connected with the business, and also the family name it bears, I plead that I may be permitted to retain a slight interest (you having promised the same at our interview), you then, in your cold, heartless manner, send me word that no outsider can hold a dollar's worth of stock in that concern. It seems strange to be called an outsider in a business that has been almost entirely our own and built up at the _cost_ it has to ourselves. It is impossible for us to find language to express our perfect indignation at such proceedings. We do not envy you in the least when this is made known in all its detail to the public. One of your own number admits that it is a great _moral_ wrong, but says as long as you can cover the points legally you think you are all right. I doubt, myself, very much the legality of all these things. But do not forget, my dear sir, that God will judge us morally, not legally, and should you offer him your entire monopoly, it will not make it any easier for you. I should not feel that I had done my entire duty unless, before I close, I drop a remark for your thoughts. In my poor way I have tried, by my life and example, with all those I have come in contact with in a business way, to persuade them to a higher, purer, and better life. I think there is no place in the world that one has such opportunities to work for good or evil as in a business life. I cannot tell you the sorrow it has caused me to have one of those in whom I have had the greatest hopes tell me, within the last few days, that it was enough to drive _honest_ men away from the Church of God, when professing Christians do as you have done by me." In reply to this she received a letter in which her charge that her business had been taken from her was repelled as "a most grievous wrong," and "a great injustice." She was reminded that two years before she had consulted with the writer and another member of the oil combination "as to selling out your interest, at which time you were desirous of selling at _considerably less price_, and upon time, than you have now received in cash, and which sale you would have been glad to have closed if you could have obtained satisfactory security for the deferred payments. As to the price paid for the property, it is certainly three times greater than the cost at which we could now construct equal or better facilities." The letter concluded with an offer to return the works upon the return of the money, or, if she preferred, to sell her one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred shares of the stock at the price that had been paid her. These propositions were left open to her for three days. The "cost of the works" is not the standard of value in such transactions. Six millions of dollars, according to a member of the committee of Congress which investigated the oil trust in 1888, is the value of the "works" on which they issued $90,000,000 of stock, which sold in the stock market at a valuation of $160,000,000. The offer to sell back the refinery was like the offer to let her have cars. To accept it was to pass openly and consciously into slavery. Two years before, when she was weak with grief, inexperience, and the fear that she might not succeed in her gallant task of paying her husband's debts and saving the livelihood of the children, she had thought of selling out at a sacrifice. They knew this because she had asked their advice, and now cheapened her down by reference to the valuation of that moment of despair. All the life energies of herself and her husband, the various advantages of position, the benefit of their pioneership since 1860, and of having established a place in so lucrative a business, all the good-will of customers, all the elements that contributed to the ability to earn the nearly $25,000 a year she was making, were brushed out of the bargain by the mere assertion of a figure at which it was alleged better works could be built. By the time the offer was made she had, moreover, put the sum she had received into such investments, she told the court, as she had been able to find, and the money to accept the offer was no longer in her hands. Indignant with these thoughts, and the massacred troop of hopes and ambitions that her brave heart had given birth to, she threw the letter into the fire, where it curled up into flames like those from which a Dives once begged for a drop of water. She never reappeared in the world of business, where she had found no chivalry to help a woman save her home, her husband's life-work, and her children. But when the men who had divided her property among them invoked the assistance of the law to complete the "equalization" told of in the previous chapter, she went into court and told her story to save her friends from ruin. There, under the gathering dust of years, this incident has remained buried in the document-room of the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County, until now brought forth to give the people a glimpse into what the real things are which our professors of market philosophy cover with their glittering generalities about the cost of production and the survival of the fittest. This episode and that of the "Agreement for an Adventure" in the preceding chapter have been written up by the author from the original papers on file in the Court of Common Pleas at Cleveland, which he visited for that purpose in 1891. Certified copies of the documents were procured from the clerk of the court. Lately, the astounding fact was ascertained that all the documents except two or three formal pleadings were gone from the records of the court. But for these certified copies there would now be no authentic record of these cases. This disappearance bears a strong likeness to the suppression of the investigation by the Committee of Commerce of Congress in 1872, and the theft of the testimony taken by the House Committee of Commerce[121] in 1876, and the mutilation of the transcript submitted to Congress in 1888 of the evidence taken in the Buffalo Explosion Case.[122] CHAPTER VIII "NO!" There has never been any real break in the plans revealed, "partly born," "and buried" in 1872. From then till now, in 1893, every fact that has come to the surface has shown them in full career. If they were buried, it was as seed is--for a larger crop of the same thing. The people had made peace, in 1872, on the pledge of "perfect equality" on the highways. Hardly had they got back to their work when they began to feel the pinch of privilege again. The Pennsylvania road alone is credited with any attempt to keep faith, and that only "for some months." "Gradually," as a committee of the people wrote to the managers of the Pennsylvania Railroad, "the persons constituting the South Improvement Company were placed by the roads in as favorable a position as to rates and facilities as had been stipulated in the original contract with that company."[123] As soon as pipe lines were proved practicable they were built as rapidly as pipes and men to put them in the ground could be had, but there was some lubricant by which they kept constantly slipping into bankruptcy. They were "frozen out," as one of their builders said, "summer as well as winter." By 1874, twenty pipe lines had been laid in the oil country. Eighty per cent. of them died off in that and the following year.[124] The mere pipes did not die, they are there yet; but the ownership of the many who had built them died. There were conservatives in the field to whom competition was as distasteful as to the socialists. To "overcome such competition," and to insure them "a full and regular" and "remunerative business" in pipe lines, in the language of the South Improvement Company contract, all that was needed was to put into operation the machinery of that contract which no longer existed--in name. The decease of the name was not an insuperable obstacle. In exact reproduction of the plan of 1872, the railroads, in October, 1874, advanced rates to the general ruin, but to the pool of lines owned by their old friends of the South Improvement Company they paid back a large rebate. That those who had such a railroad Lord Bountiful to fill their pockets should grow rich fast was a matter of course.[125] Getting this refund they got all the business. Oil, like other things, follows the line of least resistance, and will not flow through pipes where it has to pay when it can run free and get something to boot. Nobody could afford to buy oil except those who were in this deal. They could go into the market, and out of these bonuses could bid higher than any one else. They "could overbid in the producing regions, and undersell in the markets of the world."[126] This was not all. In the circular which announced the bounty to the pet pipes there was another surprise. It showed that the roads had agreed to carry crude oil to their friends' refineries at Pittsburg and Cleveland without charge from the wells, and to charge them no more for carrying back refined oil to the seaboard for export than was charged to refineries next door to the wells and hundreds of miles nearer the market. "Outside" refiners who had put themselves near the wells and the seaboard were to be denied the benefit of their business sagacity. The Cleveland refiners, whose location was superior only for the Western trade, were to be forced into a position of unnatural equality in the foreign trade. In short, the railroads undertook to pay, instead of being paid, for what they carried for these friends, and force them into an equality with manufacturers who had builded better than they. Evidently they who had contrived all this had their despondent moments, when they feared that its full beneficence would not be understood by a public unfamiliar with the "science of transportation." To the new rules was attached an explanation which asserted the right of the railroads to prevent persons and localities from enjoying the advantage of any facility they may possess, no matter how "real." "You will observe that under this system the rate is even and fair to all parties, preventing one locality taking advantage of its neighbor by reason of some alleged or real facility it may possess."[127] Meanwhile good society was shuddering at its reformers, and declaring that they meant to stop competition and "divide up property." "Do you do that in any business except oil?" the most distinguished railroad man of that day was asked. "Do you carry a raw product to a place 150 miles distant and back again to another point like that without charge, so as to put them on an equality?" To which he replied--it was he who could not remember that he had ever seen the South Improvement Company contract he signed in 1872--"I don't know."[128] "Could any more flagrant violation of every principle of railroad economy and natural justice be imagined than this?" the report of the New York Legislature asks.[129] An expert introduced by the railroads defended this arrangement. He insisted that all pipe lines had a chance to enter the pool and get the same refund.[130] But a witness from the pipe-line country, who was brought to New York to testify to the relations of the railroads and the oil combination, let out the truth. "Why didn't they go into the pool?" he was asked, in reference to one of the most important pipe lines. "Because they were not allowed to. They wanted to freeze them out. They were shut out from the market practically."[131] For these enterprises, as they failed one after the other, there was but one buyer--the group of gentlemen who called themselves the South Improvement Company in 1872, but now in the field of pipe-line activity had taken the name of United Pipe Line, since known as the National Transit Company, and then and now a part of the oil trust. "The United Pipe Line bought up the pipes as they became bankrupt one after another," testified the same friendly witness.[132] Then came a great railroad war in 1877. A fierce onslaught was made on the Pennsylvania Railroad by all the other trunk lines. In this affair, as in all dynastic wars, the public knew really nothing about what was being done or why. The newspapers were filled with the smoke of the battles of the railroad kings; but the newspapers did not tell, for they did not then know, that the railroads were but tools of conquest in the hands of greater men. The cause of the trouble was that the managers of the Pennsylvania Railroad had begun to reach out for the control of the oil trade. They had joined in the agreement in 1872 to give it to the oil combination, but now they wanted it for themselves. Through a mistletoe corporation--the Empire Transportation Company--they set to work building up a great business in oil cars, pipe lines, refineries. "We like competition; we like our competitors; we are neighbors and friends, and have been all these years," the president of the oil trust testified to the New York Legislature,[133] but he served notice upon this competitor to abandon the field.[134] He and his associates determined to do more than compel the great railroad to cease its competition. They determined to possess themselves of its entire oil outfit, though it was the greatest corporation then in America. This, the boldest stroke yet attempted, could be done only with the help of the other trunk lines, and that was got. The ruling officials of the New York Central, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading, the Atlantic and Great Western, the Lake Shore railroads, and their connections, were made to believe, or pretended to believe, that it was their duty to make an attack upon the Pennsylvania Railroad to force it to surrender.[135] "A demand," says the New York Legislative Committee of 1879, "which they"--the railroads--"joined hands with the Standard Oil Company and proceeded to enforce by a war of rates, which terminated successfully in October of that year" (1877).[136] The war was very bitter. Oil was carried at eight cents a barrel less than nothing by the Pennsylvania.[137] How low the rates were made by the railroads on the other side is not known. The Pennsylvania was the first to sue for peace. Twice its vice-president "went to Canossa," which was Cleveland. It got peace and absolution only by selling its refineries and pipe lines and mortgaging its oil cars to the oil combination. It "was left without the control of a foot of pipe line to gather, a tank to receive, or a still to refine a barrel of petroleum, and without the ability to secure the transportation of one, except at the will of men who live and whose interests lie in Ohio and New York."[138] It was only seven years since the buyers had organized with a capital of $1,000,000. Now they were able to give their check for over $3,000,000 for this one purchase. "I was surprised," said Mr. Vanderbilt to the New York Legislative Committee of 1878, speaking of this transaction, "at the amount of ready cash they were able to provide." They secured, in addition to the valuable pipe lines, oil cars, and refineries in New York and Pennsylvania, the more valuable pledge given by the Pennsylvania Railroad that it would never again enter the field of competition in refining, and also a contract giving the oil combination one-tenth of all the oil freights received by the Pennsylvania Railroad, whether from the combination or its competitors--an arrangement it succeeded in making as well with the New York Central, Lake Shore, and other railroads.[139] One of the earliest members of the oil combination was present at the meeting to consummate this purchase. Something over $3,000,000 of his and his associates' cash changed hands. The meeting was important enough to command the presence of a brigade of lawyers for the great corporations, and of the president, vice-president, and several directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and, representing the Poor Man's Light, the vice-president, the secretary, and five of the leading members of the combination, besides himself.[140] But when asked in court about it he could not remember any such meeting. Finally, he recalled "being at a meeting," but he could not remember when it was, or who was there, or what it was for, or whether any money was paid.[141] Three years later this transaction having been quoted against the combination in a way likely to affect the decision of a case in court,[142] the treasurer denied it likewise. "It is not true as stated ... directly or indirectly...."[143] Eight years later, when the exigencies of this suit of 1880, in Cleveland, had passed away, and a new exigency demanded a "revised version," the secretary of the combination told Congress that it was true.[144] "The pleasures of memory" are evidently for poets, not for such millionaires. That appears to be the only indulgence they cannot afford. The managers of the Pennsylvania road went back with the zeal of backsliders reconverted to their yoke in the service of the men who had given them this terrific whipping. They sent word to the independent refiners, whom they had secured as shippers by the pledge of 1872 of equal treatment, that equal rates and facilities could be given no longer. The producers and refiners did not sit down dumb under the death sentence. They begged for audience of their masters, masters of them because masters of the highway. The third vice-president, the official in charge of the freight business, was sent to meet them. "As you know," they began by reminding him, "we have been for the past year the largest shippers of petroleum the Pennsylvania Railroad has had." He acknowledged it. "Shall we, after the 1st of May, have as low a rate of freight as anybody else?" they then asked. "No," he said; "after the 1st of May we shall give the Standard Oil Company lower rates than to you." "How much discrimination will we have to submit to?" the poor "outsiders" asked. "I decline to tell you," was the reply. "How much business must we bring your road to get as good rates as the combination?" they then asked, and again-- "I decline to tell you," was the only answer they got. "If we will ship as much, will you give us as low freight rates?" "No." "We have been shipping over the Pennsylvania Railroad a year," they persisted, "why can we not continue?" "It would make them mad; they are the only people who can make peace between the railroads." "I think," said he, "you ought to fix it up with them. I am going over there this afternoon to talk with those people about this matter, and," he continued, "you will all be happy, and everything will work along very smoothly." "We gave him very distinctly to understand that we did not propose to enter into any 'fix up' where we would lose our identity, or sell out, or be under anybody else's thumb; we are willing to pay as high a rate of freight as anybody, and we want it as low as anybody has it," they told him. But the reply to all of it was, "You cannot have the same rate of freight." As the magnate of the railroad seemed to be determined not to permit them to move to market along his rails, one of the independents referred to a plan for a new pipe line then under consideration by them, the Equitable, as perhaps promising them the relief he refused. "Lay all the pipe lines you like," the vice-president retorted, with feeling, "and we will buy them up for old iron." The independents appealed from the third vice-president to the president; they had to beg repeatedly for a hearing before they got it. They came together in the June following, the independents coming on from New York for the purpose. Since their interview with the third vice-president rates had been advanced upon them, and not only that, but when they had oil ready to ship at those high freight rates, the railroad on one pretext or another refused them cars. One of them had contracts to deliver oil from his refinery in New York to go abroad. When he ordered the cars that were needed to take the crude oil to New York to be refined they were refused him. The ships lay idle at the docks, charging him heavy damages for every day of delay; at the wells his oil was running on the ground. "You had better go and arrange with the Standard Oil Company; I don't want to get into any trouble with them," the president said. "If you are business men, you will make an arrangement with them. I will do all in my power to bring it about." "We will never take our freight rates from them," they replied; "we are not willing to enter into any such arrangement." "Why don't you go to the other roads?" the president asked his suppliants. "We have done so. It's of no use. On the New York Central the cars are owned by the combination, and the Erie is in a like position. We have been shippers on the Pennsylvania Railroad a long, long while, and you ought to take care of us and give us all the cars we need. We are suffering very greatly for the want of them. Can we have the same rate that other shippers get?" "No." "If we ship the same amount of oil?" "No." "If you have not cars enough, will you, if we build cars, haul them?" "No. You will not have any peace or prosperity," continued the president, "until you make terms with the combination." Like the third vice-president he offered to intercede with them to get transportation over his own road for his own customers. Like men they refused the offer. "We were, of course, very indignant," one of them said, in relating this experience in court.[145] A little later a rich and expert refiner, who had sold out in 1876, made up his mind to try again. The Pennsylvania road had a new president by this time, but the old "no" was still in force. "When I was compelled to succumb I thought it was only temporarily, that the time would come when I could go into the business I was devoted to. I was in love with the business. I took a run across the water; I was tired and discouraged and used up in 1878, and was gone three or four months. I came back ready for work, and had the plan, specifications and estimates made for a refinery that would handle ten thousand barrels of oil in a day. I selected a site near three railroads and a river; I would have spent about five hundred thousand dollars, and probably a couple of hundred thousand more. I believed the time had arrived when the Pennsylvania Railroad would see their true interest as common carriers, and the interest of their stockholders, and the business interest of the City of Philadelphia. I called on the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad; I laid the plans before him, and told him I wanted to build a refinery of ten thousand barrels' capacity a day. I was almost on my knees begging him to allow me to do that. "'What is it you want?' he said. "'Simply to be put upon an equality with everybody else--especially the Standard Oil Company. I want you to agree with me that you will give me transportation of crude oil as low as you give it to anybody else for ten years, and then I will give you a written assurance that I will do this refining of ten thousand barrels of oil a day for ten years. Is not that an honest position for us to be in? I as a manufacturer, you the president of a railroad.' "'I cannot go into any such agreement.' "I saw the third vice-president. He said, in his frank way, 'That is not practicable, and you know the reason why.'"[146] After their interviews with the President and Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, these outsiders went to the officials of the other roads, only to hear the same "No!" from all.[147] At one time, to get oil to carry out their contracts and fill the vessels which were waiting at the docks and charging them damages for the delay, these refiners telegraphed to the oil regions offering the producers there ten cents above the market price if they could get oil to them over any of the roads to New York. They answered they could not get the cars, and none of them accepted the offer.[148] All the roads--as in 1872--were in league to "overcome" them. Thus, at a time when the entire movement of oil was at the rate of only 25,000 or 30,000 barrels a day, and the roads had cars enough to move 60,000 barrels a day, these independent refiners found themselves shut completely off from the highway.[149] The Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central, the Erie, and their branches and connections in and out of the oil regions, east and west, were as entirely closed to them as if a foreign enemy had seized the country and laid an embargo on their business--which was, indeed, just what had happened. The only difference between that kind of invasion and what had really come was, that "the dear people," as the president of the trust called them,[150] would have known they were in the hands of an enemy if he had come beating his drums loud enough, and firing off his two-thousand pounders often enough, and pricking them deep enough with his bayonets; but their wits are not yet up to knowing him when he comes among them disguised as an American citizen, although they see property destroyed and life lost and liberty thrown wherever he moves. There was enough virtue in Pennsylvania to begin a suit in the name of the State against the men who were using its franchises for such purposes, though there was not enough to push it to a decision. The Third Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, when examined as a witness in this suit, confirmed these statements about the interviews with himself and the president of the road in every particular about which he was questioned. "We stated to the outside refiners that we would make lower rates to the Standard Oil Company than they got; we declined to allow them to put cars of their own on the road."[151] His evidence fills seventy-six pages, closely printed, in the report of testimony. It was clear, full, and candid; remarkably so, considering that it supplied officially from the company's own records the facts, item by item, which proved that the management of the Pennsylvania Railroad had violated the Constitution of Pennsylvania and the common law, and had taken many millions of dollars from the people and from the corporation which employed them, and secretly, and for no consideration, had given them to strangers. This testimony is so important that it was reprinted substantially in full both by the "Hepburn" committee of the New York Legislature in 1879[152] and the Trust Investigating Committee of Congress in 1888.[153] As instances, it showed that in one case where the rate to the public was $1.15, this favored shipper was charged only 38 cents. In another case the trade generally had to pay $1.40 a barrel on crude petroleum, but the oil combination paid 88-1/2 cents. "And then the refined rate was 80 cents?" "80 cents net to the Standard." "And to all others?" "$1.44-1/2." "But there were no other outside shippers," he pleaded--how could there be? There was only one important member in Pennsylvania of the oil combination who could be caught with a subpoena. At his first appearance in court, on the witness stand, he took lofty ground. "I decline to answer."[154] Put on the stand again, he was asked: "Were you allowed a rebate amounting to 64-1/2 cents per barrel?" "No, sir; not to my knowledge."[155] Put on the third time and compelled to produce his books, he had to read aloud in court the entries showing the payment he had thus denied under oath. "There was a total allowance of 64-1/2 cents per barrel."[156] And then he shut up again--but too late; and to all other questions about his rebates said, gloomily, "I decline to answer." When the president of the oil trust was asked afterwards by the New York Legislature if some company or companies embraced within it had not enjoyed from railroads more favorable freight rates than outside refineries, he replied: "I do not recall anything of that kind." "You have heard of such things?" "I have heard much in the papers about it."[157] But at the time these rates were being made, one of his principal associates admitted that the president was the person who attended to the freight rates.[158] This was also put beyond a doubt in the Ohio investigation by the evidence of his first partner in the little oil refinery at Cleveland which had grown so great, he who had furnished the only mechanical and refining knowledge it had started with, and who had, until within a year, been a fellow-stockholder and director. "Do these contracts contain anything of the nature that would discriminate against the small refiners of the State?" "I think they did.... Up to the time I left the company the open rate was $1.40 to the seaboard. They"--the oil combination--"ship for 80 cents.... The president told me it was the rate at that time."[159] With every known avenue to the sea thus closed to them it certainly looked as if all was up with the "outsiders." But the men, who had too much American spunk to buy peace with dishonor by consenting to a "fix-up" under compulsion, had the wit to find out a loop-hole of temporary escape. They built tank boats for the canal, and thus succeeded in getting 200,000 barrels of oil to New York that summer before the canal closed.[160] Since then all chance of escape by the canal has been cut off. The railroads made a war of freight rates against it, and the only canal that connected the oil regions with the Erie canal route to the sea was dried up, and turned into a way for a railroad by a special act of the New York Legislature. The railroad so built has ever since been managed as one of the most diligent promoters of the policy of excluding the common people from the oil business. According to the funeral notices given out by the railroad officials and the members of the South Improvement Company this concern was dead, but in the quaint phrase of the producers it was really alive and hard at work, but "with a new suit of clothes and no name." These interviews between the independent refiners and the railroad officials of the three trunk lines form one of the most extraordinary scenes which have taken place between a government and its subjects since the era of modern democratic liberty. The railway officials are, in the world of the highway, the government. They hold their supreme power to tax commerce, and to open and close the highways, solely and altogether by grant of the State, and under the law of the common carrier. It is only by the exercise of the sovereign power of eminent domain to take the property of a private individual by force, without his consent, for public use--never for any other than public use--and only by the grant of the right to cross city streets and country roads that the railroads come into existence at all. This says nothing of the actual cash given to the railroad projectors by the government, which, in New York State alone, amounts to upwards of $40,000,000.[161] The independent refiners represent the people, claiming of the highway department of their government those equal rights which all citizens have as a birthright, and the government informs these citizens that their rights on the highways have been given as a private estate to certain friends of the ruling administration, much as William the Conqueror would give this rich abbey or that fertile manor to one of his pets. "We have no franchise that is not open to all," say the "trustees." "It is a free open market." "There is nothing peculiar to our companies." "It is as free as air." In truth they have had no less a franchise than, as in 1872, the excluding possession of all the great trunk-lines out of the oil country, and all their connections east and west, and this franchise has since widened until, in 1893, it reaches from ocean to ocean, and from gulf to gulf. Their franchise was meant to be as exclusive as if they had had from the government letters-patent in the old royal fashion of close monopolies in East Indian trade, or salt, or tobacco at home, giving them by name the sole right to use the roads, and forbidding all others, under pain of business death, from setting their foot on the highway. But with this difference: the exclusive franchise in the latter case would exist by law; but in this case it was created in defiance of law, exists in contempt of the law, and in its living the law dies daily. The refiners and producers who were pleading in this way with the railroads for a chance to live after May 1, never doubted but that, as they were told, and as their arrangements with the Pennsylvania road guaranteed, they were having and were to have at worst until that date, equal and impartial rates and facilities. Under this safe-conduct they parleyed for the future. But the Pennsylvania Railroad was at that moment negotiating with the oil combination to collect from the independents, under the guise of freight, 20 to 22-1/2 cents a barrel on all they sent to market, and pay it over to the combination. The payments were made to one of the rings within the oil ring, called the American Transfer Company. "It is the same instrumentality under a different name," said the counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce before the New York Legislature. The official of the Pennsylvania road who issued the order to take this money out of the treasury pleaded in excuse that proof had been given him that other roads were doing the same thing.[162] Receipted bills were brought to him, showing that the New York Central and the Erie had been "for many months" paying these men who called themselves American Transfer Company for having "protected" their oil business, sums ranging from 20 cents to 35 cents a barrel on all the oil those roads transported.[163] So deeply was the watch-dog of the Pennsylvania road's treasury affected by the proof that his company was doing less than the other roads, that he instructed the comptroller to give these men three months' back pay, which was done. Twenty cents a barrel was sent them out of all the oil freights collected by the Pennsylvania for the three months preceding, and thereafter the tribute was paid them monthly. Then it was increased to 22-1/2 cents a barrel. The same amount per barrel was refunded to them out of their own freight. They received this on all oil shipped by them, and also on all shipped by their competitors.[164] They who received this tribute pretended to the railroad officials that they "protected" the roads from losing business. The railroad men pretended to believe it. The way in which this revenue was given and got shows what a simple and easy thing modern business really is--not in any way the brain-racker political economists have persuaded themselves and us. The representative of the oil combination writes a bright, cheery letter; the representative of the Pennsylvania answers it, and there you are; 22-1/2 cents a barrel on millions of barrels flows out of the cash-box of the railroad into the cash-box of the combination. In one year, 1878, this tribute, at the rate of 22-1/2 cents on the 13,750,000 barrels of oil shipped by the three trunk-lines, must have amounted to $3,093,750. The American Transfer Company had a little capital of $100,000, and its receipts from this rebate in this one year would amount to dividends of 3093 per cent. annually; the capital of the oil combination which owned this Transfer Company was at this time $3,500,000. There are reasons to believe that some of the very railroad men who turned the money of the railroads over to the American Transfer Company were among its members. But if all the profit went to the combination, and none of it was for the railway officials through whom they got it, their revenue from that source alone would have paid in 1878 a dividend nearly equal to this capital of $3,500,000. In this device of the American Transfer Company we again see reappear in 1878, in high working vitality, the supposed corpse of the South Improvement Company of 1872. The American Transfer Company was ostensibly a pipe line, and the railroad officials met the exposure of their "nothing peculiar" dealings with it by asserting that the payment to it of 22-1/2 cents a barrel and more was for its service in collecting oil and delivering it to them; but the Third Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad admits that his road paid the money on oil which the American Transfer Company never handled. "This 22-1/2 cents (a barrel) paid the American Transfer Company is not restricted to oil that passed through their lines?" "No, sir; it is paid on all oil received and transported by us."[165] The American Transfer Company was not even a pipe line. By the Pennsylvania laws all incorporated pipe lines must report their operations and condition monthly to the State. But the publisher of the petroleum trade reports, and organizer of a bureau of information about petroleum, with offices in Oil City, London, and New York, issuing daily reports, testified that the American Transfer Company was not known in the oil regions at all as a pipe line. It published none of the statements required by law. "They do not," he said, "make any runs from the oil-wells." It had once been a pipe line, but "years ago it was merged in with other lines," and consolidated into the United Pipe Line, owned and operated by the combination.[166] When this arrangement was exposed to public view by the New York legislative investigation, the "expert" who appeared to explain it away in behalf of the railroads and their beneficiaries, paraded a false map of the pipe-line system, drawn and colored to make it seem that the American Transfer Company was a very important pipe-line.[167] This was the same "expert" who, as we saw, defended the pipe-line holocaust of 1874 by asserting that "all were to be taken in alike." There are three kinds of liars, an eminent judge of New York is fond of saying--liars, damned liars, and experts. When the assistant secretary of the oil combination was asked about this "transfer" company, he replied, "I don't know anything about the organization."[168] He had described himself to the committee as "a clamorer for dividends"; but he declared he knew nothing about an organization which was "transferring" him dividends at the rate of $3,093,750 a year on $100,000 of capital. Almost at the very moment of this denial, receipts were being produced in court in Pennsylvania which had been given by the cashier of himself and his associates to the railroads for this money.[169] Even if the independents succeeded in saving their oil from wasting on the ground, and got it into pipe lines, and had it refined, and were lucky enough to be given cars to carry it to the seaboard, they found that in leaving the oil regions they had not left behind the "no." Up to the very edge of the sea were the nets spread for them. Part of the bargain of 1872 had been that the brothers of the South Improvement Company should provide the terminal facilities at the seaboard.[170] Railroad companies are usually supposed to have their own yards, storehouses, wharves, and the like, and, as a matter of fact, the railroads had these. The agreement of 1872 that the South Improvement Company should furnish the terminal facilities meant--it was discovered by the New York Legislature in 1879--that such terminals as the road already had should be turned over to that concern, and that thereafter nobody should be allowed to build or use terminals except as it permitted. The New York Legislature found, in 1879, that the oil combination thus owned and controlled the oil terminal facilities of the four trunk-lines at New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. "They can use the power here given, and have used it to crush out opposition."[171] "Of course, there is in the Erie contract a statement that every shipper of oil over the road shall be treated with 'fairness' by the Standard Oil Company, and our attention was drawn to that," the counsel of the Chamber of Commerce said.... "In the first place, they have the exclusive shipment of oil, and therefore nobody could ship oil, and there was no oil handled for anybody else; but if the Erie Company should send some for somebody else, why, the sloop could not get to the dock, and the machinery at the dock would not and could not work by any possibility so as to get that oil out of that dock and into a ship (except at the end of a lawsuit)."[172] Evidently the "cancellation" of 1872 had not cancelled anything of substance. Indeed, the "no" of 1878 was wider than the embargo of 1872, for the fourth great trunk-line, the Baltimore and Ohio, was not one of the signatories then; but by 1878 it had, like all the others, closed its port to the people--farming it out as the old régime farmed out the right to tax provinces. He used to meet the president of the oil combination "frequently in the Erie office," a friend and subordinate has recalled.[173] Railroad offices are pleasant places to visit when such plums are to be gathered there as this of the sole right to the freedom of all ports and control of the commerce of three continents. Down to this writing, when the little group of independents who remain masters of their own refineries along Oil Creek seek to send their oil in bulk abroad, or to transship it at any one of the principal ports for other points on the coast, the same power still says the same "no" as twenty years ago.[174] CHAPTER IX WHO PIPED AND WHO DANCED Thus, by 1878, the independent producers and refiners found themselves caught in a battue like rabbits driven in for the sport of a Prince of Wales. If the richest person then in America--that artificial but very real person the Pennsylvania Railroad--could not keep its pipe lines, nobody could. The war for the union, which ended with its surrender in 1877, closed the pipe-line industry to the people. The unanimous "no" of all the railroads which followed completed the corral. Oil, when it got to market, found that those who had become the owners of the pipe lines were also the owners of most of the refineries, and so the only large buyers.[175] "Practically to-day there is but one buyer of crude oil for us.... We take our commodity to one buyer; we take the price he chooses to give us without redress, with no right of appeal."[176] Then the sole carrier--the pipe-line company--refused to take the oil into its pipes--the oil as it came out of the wells--unless first sold to its other self, the oil combination. This was called "immediate shipment." Forced to waste or sell his oil, the producer, under this compulsion, had to take what he could get.[177] The Hon. Lewis Emery, Jr., a member of the State Senate of Pennsylvania, gave the authorities of the State an account of the "immediate shipment" evolution of American market liberty. "We go down," he said, "to the office and stand in a line, sometimes half a day--people in a line reaching out into the street--sixty and seventy of us. When our turn comes we go in and ask them to buy, and they graciously will take it. I am an owner in six different companies, and we all suffer the same." To educate the producer to sell "always below the market," the Pipe Line let his oil spill itself on the ground for a few days. "We lost a considerable amount of oil, probably several thousand barrels," another producer said. "Will you state at what price as compared with the market price, whether above or below, you sold that oil?" "It was always below." Asked why he sold it below the market, he said: "Because the line would not run it until it was sold."[178] The hills of Pennsylvania began to growl and redden as in 1872. The Secretary of Internal Affairs was hung in effigy. Mass meetings were held--some tumultuous, others quiet; processions of masked men marched the streets, and groaned and hooted in front of the newspaper offices and the business places of the combination. In the morning the streets and sidewalks were frequently found placarded with cabalistic signs and letters, and occasionally printed proclamations and warnings. Most of the lending newspapers of the region had been either absolutely purchased by the oil combination or paid to keep silence. Others occasionally broke forth in violent articles advising the use of force.[179] In the McKean County field the people rose in rebellion. They got up a Phantom Party, in its provocation and spirit much like a phantom party which, contrary to law and order, boarded some ships in Boston harbor a century before. One thousand men, wrapped in white sheets, marched by night from Tarport to Bradford, the headquarters in that province of the sole buyer. Not a word was spoken. It was not enough to make the people sell under compulsion. A day came when the only buyer would not buy and the only piper would not pipe. This brought the Parker district to the verge of civil war. The citizens were in a state of terrible excitement; the pipe lines would not run oil unless it was sold; the only buyers--viz., the agents of the oil combination--would not buy oil, stating that they could not get cars; hundreds of wells were stopped to their great injury. Thousands more, whose owners were afraid to stop them for fear of damage by salt water, were pumping the oil on the ground. The leaders used all the influence they had to prevent an outbreak and destruction of railroad and pipe lines. The most important of them went over to the Allegheny Valley Railroad office and telegraphed to the president: "The refusal to run oil unless sold upon immediate shipment and of the railroad to furnish cars has created such a degree of excitement here that the most conservative part of the citizens will not be able to control the peace, and I fear that the scenes of last July will be repeated on an aggravated scale."[180] Three of the highest officials of the road sought an immediate interview with this leader of the producers. He warned them, and the Pennsylvania road which controlled their oil business, that unless immediate relief were furnished there would be an outbreak in the oil regions, because, as he told them, "The idea of a scarcity of cars on daily shipments of less than 30,000 barrels a day was such an absurd, barefaced pretence, that he could not expect men of ordinary intelligence to accept any excuses for the absence of cars, as the preceding fall, when business required, the railroads could carry day after day from 50,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil."[181] The warning was heeded. Thousands of empty cars, which the combination and its railroad allies had said couldn't be had anywhere, suddenly appeared hastening to Parker, blocking up the tracks in all directions, deranging the passenger business of the road. "They looked like mosquitoes coming out of a swamp." The sole buyer began buying again, and for the whole week, after having declared themselves unable to buy or move any, the railroads moved 50,000 barrels a day.[182] Producers under such rule saw their prices decrease and their land pass out of their possession, as was inevitable. Ten years later in the Ohio oil-field all the substantial features of the plan we saw culminate at Parker are to be found in full play. There, also, the oil combination, Congress was told, is the only purchaser, and it fixes the price to suit itself. The production of the Ohio fields was between 18,000 and 20,000 barrels a day, but it could easily produce between 30,000 and 32,000. Because the only buyer refused to take care of the oil, wells have been shut back. Wells, which if opened up would run 1000 or 2000 or even more, were shut in four days out of the week.[183] This culmination of 1878 made the people act. The producers were being ground to powder by the fact that an enemy had possession of their local pipes, their tankage, and their railways. "I am the unfortunate owner," said one of them, "of interests in nearly one hundred pumping wells. I have produced over half a million barrels of oil."[184] Oil was running out of the ground at the rate of 15,000,000 barrels a year, but the New York refiners who were in command of plenty of capital, said: "We don't dare build large refineries, for we don't know where we could get the oil."[185] At last the people organized the Tidewater Pipe Line. This was the first successful attempt to realize the idea often broached of a pipe line to the seaboard. It was the last hope of the "outsiders"--the "independents." "Nothing short of the ingenuity that is born of necessity and desperation" produced that pipe line. It was well contrived and well manned, and had plenty of money. It was organized in 1878, with a capital of $1,000,000, which increased in a few years to $5,000,000. It built a pipe from the oil regions to Williamsport--105 miles--on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, whence the oil was carried in cars by that company and over the Jersey Central to Philadelphia and New York. Unlimited capital and strategy did all that could be done against the Tidewater. At one place, to head it off, a strip of land barring its progress was bought entirely across a valley. It escaped by climbing the hills. At another point it had to cross under a railroad. The railroad officers forbade. Riding around, almost in despair, its engineer saw a culvert where there was no watercourse. It was for a right of passage which a farmer, whose land was cut in two by the railroad, had reserved in perpetuity for driving his cattle in safety to pasture. It did not take long to make a bargain with the farmer for permission to lay the pipe there. The pipe line was finished and ready to move oil about the 1st of June, 1879. On June 5th a meeting was held at Saratoga of representatives of the four trunk-line railroads and of members of the oil trust. The meeting decided that the new competitor should be fought to the death. The rate on oil, which had been $1.15 a barrel, was reduced to 80, then to 30, to 20, to 15 cents by the railroads, to make the business unprofitable enough to ruin this first attempt to pipe oil to the seaboard. Finally the roads carried a barrel, weighing 390 pounds, 400 miles for the combination for 10 cents or less.[186] The representative of the Tidewater offered to prove to Congress, in 1880, if it would order an investigation--which it would not--that "the announced and ostensible object of the conference at Saratoga was to destroy the credit of the Tidewater, and to enable the oil combination to buy up the new pipe line, and that a time was fixed by the combination within which it promised to secure the control of the pipe line--provided the trunk-lines would make the rates for carrying oil so low that all concerned in transportation would lose money.[187] There can be no doubt," he continued, "that, taking the avowed and ostensible object of the Saratoga meeting as the true one, it constituted, on the part of the willing participants, a criminal conspiracy of the most dangerous character." One of the chief officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad testified to the competition which his road had carried on with the Tidewater. "It certainly was fought," he said; "the rates were considerably reduced."[188] Rates were put down to points so low that the railroad men would never tell what they were. I have no knowledge--I have no recollection--was all the president and general freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad could be got to say, when before the Interstate Commerce Commission.[189] "Not enough to pay for the wheel grease," said the general freight agent.[190] The oil trust also cut the prices of pipeage by its local lines from 20 cents to 5 cents a barrel, turning cheapness into the enemy of cheapness. But the Tidewater was strong enough to withstand even so formidable an assault as this. As its business was small, its losses were small; but the railroads, making this war on it for the benefit of others, suffered heavily. The trunk-lines, it has been calculated, wilfully threw away profits equal to $10,000,000 a year for the sake of inflicting a loss of $100,000 on the pipe lines.[191] Enough revenue was lost to pay dividends of 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on the total capital of the roads. One effect that followed this reduction in rates was a corresponding decline in the price of oil at New York, in which the cost of freight is a constant element. The Committee of the New York Legislature found in the testimony it heard reason to believe that the members of the oil trust took advantage of their advance knowledge to sell at high prices, to those who did not know, all they would buy for future delivery. The "Hepburn" report of the New York Legislature of 1879 gives special prominence to the computations that $1,500,000 were the profits of this speculative deal.[192] The customers of the Tidewater, the independent refiners in Philadelphia, were charged by the Pennsylvania Railroad on oil that came through the Tidewater 15 cents a barrel for one mile of hauling. The utmost the law allowed them was half a cent a mile, and they were carrying oil 500 miles to New York for the same charge of 15 cents a barrel, and less. Under such pressure these independent refineries, which the Tidewater had been built to supply, sold out one after another. The Tidewater was then in the position of a great transporting company, that had spent a large amount of money to bring a great product to its Philadelphia terminus, and found that refining establishments which had been begging it to give them oil had become the cohorts of its opponent. To meet this the Tidewater built refineries of its own at Chester, and at Bayonne, New Jersey, on New York waters. When asked for a rate to another point, the Pennsylvania gave one that was three and four times as much as they would charge the oil trust, but added, "we cannot make a rate on the empty cars returning." That is, as it was interpreted, "we will carry the oil, but we will not permit the empty cars to come over the roads to get the oil. They must be taken on a wheelbarrow, or by canal, or by balloon."[193] The war went on. Attempts were made to seduce the officials of the Tidewater. A stockholder, who had been too poor to pay for his stock, received a large sum from the oil combination and began a vexatious suit for a receivership.[194] A minority forced their way into the offices of the company, and took violent possession of it by a "farcical, fraudulent, and void" election, as the court decided in annulling it. Its financial credit was attacked in the money market and by injunctions against its bonds. Affidavits were offered from members of the oil combination denying that they had had anything to do with these proceedings. In reference to these affidavits, the representative of the Tidewater reminded the court that that combination was a multifarious body. "One-half of them," he said, "do a thing, and the other half swear they know nothing about it. In pursuance of this Machiavelian policy, they have eight or ten gentlemen to conduct negotiations, and eight or ten to say they do not know anything about them." Then, with no visible cause, the capacity of the pipe fell below the demands upon it. This insufficient capacity was pleaded in court as one of the reasons why the pipe should be taken out of the hands of its owners. One day the cause was discovered--a plug of wood. Some mysterious hand had been set to drive a square block of wood into the pipe so as to cut down its capacity to one-third. The representative of the Tidewater declared in court his belief that this plug had been placed by "people on the other side who have made affidavits in this case." A similar deed, but much worse, as it might have cost many lives, was done during the contest with Toledo, nine years later.[195] The Tidewater was successful, but not successful enough. It owned 400 miles of pipe, including the 105 miles of the trunk-line, and had control of nearly 3,000,000 barrels of tankage. It did a great work for the people. "It was," the Philadelphia _Press_ said, in 1883, "the child of war. It has been a barrier between the producers and the monopoly which would crush them if it dared." While these words of exultation were being penned, a surrender was under negotiation. The Tidewater's managers were nearly worn out. These tactics of corrupting their officers, slandering their credit, buying up their customers, stealing their elections, garroting them with lawsuits founded on falsehoods, shutting them off the railroads, and plugging up their pipe in the dark, were too much. They entered into a pool. The two companies in the summer of 1883 "recognized" each other, as the trunk lines do, and agreed to divide the business in proportions, which would net the Tidewater $500,000 a year. The announcement that this pool had been forced on the Tidewater fell like a death-blow on the people of the oil regions. "The Tidewater," the Philadelphia _Press_ said, editorially, "will probably retain a nominal identity as a corporation, but its usefulness to the public and its claim to popular confidence and encouragement were extinguished the instant it consented to enter into alliance with the unscrupulous monopoly which resorts to that means of conciliating and bribing what it had failed to destroy." As was anticipated by the _Press_, the Tidewater retained its nominal identity, but that was all. Its surrender was admitted by its principal organizer, Mr. Franklin B. Gowen. The officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad have testified to it. "They made an arrangement of some kind, the conditions of which I never knew; one swallowed the other or both swallowed the other, or something, and settled up their difficulties,"[196] said the general freight agent. The president said: "The competition between these pipe lines ceased."[197] The attorney of the Tidewater was asked if there were any negotiations which resulted in a compromise of the differences with the oil combination. "If by differences," he replied, "you mean competition in trade, I answer the question, yes. That resulted in a written contract.... The purpose of the contract was to settle the rivalry in business between the two companies, each company to take a percentage of transportation and gathering, and each to do with the oil as it saw fit."[198] The treasurer of the Tidewater, who had been in its service since 1880, corroborated its attorney. A contract had been made between the two; the date of it was October 9, 1883. Copies of the contracts are in the author's possession. The Interstate Commerce Commission in 1892 judicially found the same fact. It says: "About December, 1883, the pipe lines, with the view of getting better rates, adjusted their differences, and the competition between them ceased. The pipe-line business appears then to have passed into the control of the National Transit Company."[199] All but 6 per cent. of the National Transit Company is owned by the oil trust. It formed practically one-third the imposing bulk of the $70,000,000 of the trust of 1882.[200] If anything can be made certain by human testimony this evidence proves that these pipe lines stopped competing in 1883. The witnesses are the men who negotiated the contract, and upon whose approval it depended. But when the president of the trust was asked under oath, in 1888, if there were any pipe lines to tide-water competing with it, he named, as "a competing company," "the Tidewater Pipe Line." "The Tidewater Company? Does that compete with your company?" "It does." "It is in opposition to it?" "It is in opposition to it."[201] In the same spirit he denied, in 1883, that he had anything to do with the company which had represented the oil trust in this "swallowing or something" of the Tidewater. This, the National Transit Company, was the most important member of the trust. Under its cover, by means like those described, from New York to West Virginia and Ohio, almost all the pipes for gathering and distributing oil have been brought into one ownership. Millions yearly of the earnings of this company were pooled with all the others in the trust, and the president was receiving his share of them four times a year. He was the sole attorney[202] authorized to sign contracts for the trustees, who thus held all the combined companies in a common control. These trustees, of whom he was the chief, not only controlled but owned as their personal property more than half the stock of every company represented. But these facts were not then known to the public. It was not intended that they should be known, as the struggle to conceal them from the New York Legislature five years later--in 1888--showed. "Have you any connection with the National Transit Company?" he was asked, after taking the oath. "I have not."[203] When the Tidewater passed under this alien control, Mr. Franklin B. Gowen severed all his connection with it. He did not hold himself for sale to any man who had money to pay fees. He stood at a height where the profession of law was immeasurably above prostitution in the temples of justice--the odious aspect in which the sacrifice of purity in the ancient temples of Aphrodite is reproduced in our courts. It would have been impossible for him to combine the functions of a great law reformer and procurer of judicial virtue for railroad corporation wreckers. He never forgot what some successful lawyers seem never to remember--that the lawyer is, as much as the judge, an officer of the court and of justice. While he lived he was proud to be recognized as the chief defender in the courts of the rights of those whom it was sought to crush in this industry, although he thus allied himself with the poor and heavy laden. He could have used his anti-monopoly eloquence as an advertisement of his value to monopoly; but he would not sell his soul to fill his stomach. His heart revolted against the wicked cruelty with which he saw the strong misuse the weak, and his penetrating vision saw clearly the ruin to which overgrown power and conscienceless greed were hurrying the liberties of his country. In his speech before the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1883, advocating a law to prevent the use of railway power by railway officials to redistribute the property of the people among their favorites, he said, speaking of what had been done in the oil regions of Pennsylvania: "If such a state of facts as I now call your attention to had been permitted by any government in Europe or Asia for a six months, instead of the sixteen years it has existed in this Commonwealth, the crown and sceptre of its ruler would have been ground into the dust, and yet the good, honest, patient, long-suffering people have submitted to it in this Commonwealth until the time has come that if we hold our peace the very stones will cry out. "I for one intend to submit to it no longer. You may say it is unwise for me to attack this wrong, but I have attacked it before and I will attack it again. If I could only throw off the other burdens that rest upon my shoulders, I would feel it to be my duty to preach resistance to this great wrong, as Peter the Hermit preached the crusade. I would go through this State from Lake Erie to the Delaware; I would go into every part of this Commonwealth and endeavor, by the plain recital of the facts, to raise up such a feeling and such a power as would make itself heard and felt, and by the fair, open, honest, and proper enforcement of the law, right the wrong, and teach the guilty authors of this infamous tyranny "'That truth remembered long: When once their slumbering passions waked, The peaceful are the strong.'" Mr. Gowen bravely fulfilled his pledge not to submit. His principal occupation became the championship in the courts and the Interstate Commerce Commission of those who were oppressed by this crushing power. His incorruptible lance was always in place, until the morning he was found dead in his room in Washington. The oil combination had, up to this time, sent all its oil east by rail as it had no pipe line, and its faithful fools, the railroads, therefore burned their fingers with joy to roast the Tidewater for so good a customer. But while the railroad officials were wasting their employers' property to destroy the combination's new competitor, its astute managers, seeing how good a thing pipe lines were, quietly built a system of their own to the seaboard. The railroads had helped them get hold of the pipe lines--had in repeated cases, as the Erie, the Atlantic and Great Western, the Pennsylvania, the Cleveland and Marietta did, allowed them to lay their pipes on the lands of the railroads--and were now to see the pipe lines used to replace the railroads in the transportation of oil. These oil men saw what the railroad men had not the wit to see--or else lacked the virtue to live up to--that the pipe line is an oil railway. It requires no cars and no locomotives; it moves oil without risk of fire or loss; it is very much cheaper than the ordinary railway, for this freight moves itself after being lifted up by pumps. The pipe line was the sure competitor of the railway, fated to be either its servant or master, as the railroad chose to use it or lose it. The railways sentimentally helped the trust to gather these rival transportation lines into its hands; then the trust, with the real genius of conquest, threw the railroads to one side. A system of trunk-line pipes was at once pushed vigorously to completion in all directions. While the members of the oil trust were building these pipe lines to take away the oil business of the railroads, the officials of the latter were giving them by rebates the money to do it with. At the expense of their own employers, the owners of the railroads, these freight agents and general managers presented to the monopoly, out of the freight earnings of the oil business, the money with which to build the pipe lines that would destroy that branch of the business of the roads. It was the Tidewater that proved the feasibility of trunk pipe lines. The trunk pipe lines the combination has built were in imitation. Extraordinary pains have been taken to sophisticate public opinion with regard to all these matters--for the ignorance of the public is the real capital of monopoly--and with great success. The history we have transcribed from the public records is refined by one of the combination into the following illuminant: "About 1879 or 1880 it was discovered that railways were inadequate to the task of getting oil to the seaboard as rapidly as needed. Combined capital and energy were equal to the emergency. No need to detail how it was done. To-day there reaches,"[204] etc., etc. It must have been on some such authority that this, from one of our leading religious journals, was founded: "Only by such union"--of the refiners--"could pipe lines have been laid from the oil wells to the tide-water, reducing to the smallest amount the cost of transportation."[205] An account of the pipe-line system in the New York _Sun_, of December 14, 1887, describing the operations of the great pumps that force the oil through the pipes, says: "Every time the piston of the engine passes forward and back a barrel of oil is sent seaward. A barrel of oil is forced on its way every seven seconds of every hour of the twenty-four. Every pulsation of the gigantic pumps that are throbbing ceaselessly day and night is known and numbered at headquarters in New York at the close of each day's business." This heart of a machine, beating at the headquarters in New York, and numbering its beats day and night, stands for thousands of hearts whose throbs of hope have been transmuted into this metallic substitute. This heart counts out a gold dollar for every drop of blood that used to run through the living breasts of the men who divined, projected, accomplished, and lost. CHAPTER X CHEAPENING TRANSPORTATION Through all the tangle of this piping and dancing one thread runs clear. The oil combination had up to this time been dependent on the railroads for transportation, but it emerged out of the fracas the principal transporter of oil, made so by the railroads. It now had two trunk pipe lines to the sea-coast--the one it had conquered and the one it had built--and the railroads had made it a present of both of them. The Tidewater--the first seaboard pipe line--had been built only because the Pennsylvania and other trunk lines had said "no" to every entreaty and demand of the oil regions for a road to the sea. That line the railroads had conquered for the combination, as they conquered for it the pipe lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877. The second seaboard pipe line was built by the combination with the railroads' money to take away the railroads' business, and best--or worst--of all, while the railroads were hard at work driving the Tidewater into its net. Such is the business genius of our "railroad kings." This campaign closed, the duty of the hour for the oil ring was to get rates advanced by rail as well as pipe. "Then they"--the pipe lines--"were anxious to get good paying rates,"[206] so that they could make a good thing out of the business of their own pipe and of the Tidewater which they had guaranteed $500,000 a year. The advent of the independent Tidewater had brought rates down. The restoration of exclusive control by its capture put rates up. But it was not enough for the oil combination to advance their own rates. It must induce the railroads to do the same. The railroads had furnished the means for the acquisition of both pipes, and they must now be got to drive business away from themselves to these competing oil railways. This would seem to be a delicate matter to achieve, but there was no trouble about it. "It is our pleasure to try to make oil cheap,"[207] the president of the oil trust told Congress, but it did not use its new facilities to take in hand at reduced cost the carriage of all oil, and give the industry the economic advantage of the pipe-line idea. Quite the contrary. It united with the railroads to increase the cost. Under this new blow the independent refiners and producers whom the Tidewater had been built to keep afloat grounded again. Then the railroads--the Pennsylvania especially--repented of what they had done to these their oldest customers, and sent ambassadors to them to renew the broken promises of 1872, that if they would rebuild they should forever have equal rates and fair treatment. One of the highest officials of the Pennsylvania was sent to them to say: We recognize our error in permitting your refineries to be abandoned and the traffic destroyed. We wish to build up and maintain independent refining in the oil regions. We will give you every encouragement. We will insure you equal rates, on which you can ship and live.[208] These invitations and guarantees were repeated and pressed. They were renewed by the officials of the Erie also: "You need have no hesitation in building up your business," said the officials of the Erie; "You shall have living rates."[209] The independents listened and believed. They rebuilt their works and prospered.[210] This meant the return of cheapness--cheapness of transportation over the railroads, to enable the refiners they had invited back to life to compete in the market--cheapness of light. Thereupon, incredible as it seems, the Pennsylvania and the other railroads were influenced to declare war again upon the men who had reinvested their money and their life energy in response to these solicitations. This new war began with a secret contract, in 1885, for an advance in rates against the independent refiners, who, in trustful reliance on the pledged faith of the railroads, had developed their capacity to 2,000,000 barrels a year.[211] This campaign has lasted from 1885 until the present writing, 1894. In it the pipe lines, the oil combination, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and all the other great carriers between the independents and their markets in New England, Europe, and Asia, have been mobilized into a fighting corps for the annihilation of the independents. This case illustrates nearly every phase of the story of our great monopoly: dearness instead of cheapness; willingness of the managers of transportation to deny transportation to whole trades and sections; administration of great properties like the Pennsylvania Railroad in direct opposition to the interests of the owners--to their great loss--for the benefit of favorites of the officials; great wealth thereby procured by destruction, as if by physical force, of wealth of others, not at all by creation of new wealth to be added to the general store; impossibility of survival in modern business of men who are merely honest, hard-working, competent, even though they have skill, capital, and customers; subjection of the majority of citizens and dollars to a small minority in numbers and riches; subservience of rulers of the people to a faction; last and most disheartening, the impotence of the special tribunal created to enforce the rights of the people on their highways. This secret contract of 1885 was thus described by the counsel of the refiners before the Interstate Commerce Commission: "It is a contract," he said, "so vicious and illegal that the Pennsylvania Railroad refuses to bring it into court for fear a disclosure of its terms might subject it to a criminal prosecution." The courts have never been allowed to see it, but its provisions are known. Some of them were admitted before the Interstate Commerce Commission to be what was charged, and others were described on the trial by the counsel of the independents from personal knowledge. By this contract the railroad and the oil combination bound themselves to advance rates, and to keep them the same by pipe and rail. In return for this pledge by the railroad not to compete it was guaranteed one-quarter--26 per cent.--of the oil business to the seaboard. The Pennsylvania Railroad made no attempt to deny that it had made this contract. It admitted that it had an arrangement "substantially the same as stated."[212] The combination was the largest shipper of oil, and yet it wanted freight rates advanced. It had pipe lines which could easily take to the seaboard all the oil that went thither, and yet it gave up a large part of the business to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad knew that the pipe line was a competitor for the carriage of oil, and yet allowed it to dictate an arrangement by which the railroad got only one-quarter of the business, and signed away its rights to win a larger share if it could. The railroad had persuaded the independent refiners to settle along its line by solemnly promising them fair and living rates, and yet now put its corporate seal to an agreement to make those rates whatever their enemy wanted them to be. Such was its honor. As for its shrewdness, that had at last brought it to this humiliation in a business where it had once been chief, of confining itself to this insignificant quarter of a restricted traffic instead of a competitive share of a traffic enlarged by freedom to the widest correspondence to the wants of the people. The mastery of the railroad men by the oil people was thorough. The latter did not agree to give the railroad one-quarter of their business. Not at all. All the traffic that came of itself to the railroad, or which its freight solicitors drummed up, must be put to the credit of the guarantee. All that was promised the railroad was that its total should amount to one-quarter of the whole traffic. All the rest the oil combination kept for itself. The contract went at once into vigorous operation. Freight rates to the seaboard, which had been 34 cents, and, as was proved before the Interstate Commerce Commission, were profitable, were advanced to 52 cents a barrel--an increase of one-half. The railroad and the pipe line made the raise in concert, as had been agreed, and when the rates were changed again it was to still higher figures. Why should the clique, which had its principal refineries at the seaboard--to which it had to transport large quantities of oil--scheme in this way to raise the rates of transportation? Because it paid this excessive rate on only a small part of its own shipments, and compelled its rivals to pay it on all of theirs. The independents had no pipe line of their own, but the combination sent its own oil east by its own pipe line, excepting only the quantity it needed to add to the shipments over the Pennsylvania to make good its guarantee to that railroad of one-quarter of the traffic. The cost of the pipe-line service to its owners is very small. When the manager of the pipe lines was before the Interstate Commerce Commission the lawyers of the railroads, as zealous for the oil combination, though it was not a party in the case, as for their own clients, fought through eleven pages of argument against having him compelled to tell the cost of pumping oil through the pipe to the seaboard; and when the Commission finally said, "Go on," all the general manager of the pipe lines had to say was, "I do not believe that it is possible to know."[213] Finally, he was cornered into an estimate that the cost of pumping was 6 or 7 cents a barrel. His questioner, who had been the organizer and manager of a great pipe line--the Tidewater--knew that oil had been pumped through for 4 cents a barrel, but he could not get his witness, who, no doubt, had done it still cheaper, to admit anything of the kind. The net effect of this pool with the railroad was that the oil combination succeeded in making its rivals pay 64 cents a barrel to reach the East and the seaboard, while it paid only 16[214]--except on the traffic guaranteed the Pennsylvania Railroad--a difference against competition of 48 cents a barrel, a difference not for cheapness. "It only costs the pipe line 7 cents," the independents explained to the Interstate Commerce Commission, "and the published rate is 52. They are willing to pay 52 or even 70 cents on some of their product if they can make the other people pay 52 upon the whole of theirs." So much of the contract as we have referred to was admitted. Why was it, then, the counsel for the railroad fought against showing it, even to the point of pleading that it might incriminate his client?[215] It was asserted, as of his personal knowledge, by the counsel of the independents that this was because another part of the bargain gave the proof that the rates which had been made under the agreement to put them up and keep them up were extortionate; that by a bargain within the bargain the oil combination carried oil for the railroad for the 280 miles for which they ran practically side by side, and for this charged it only 8 cents a barrel. The public, shipping either by the railroad or by the pipe line, had to pay 52 cents a barrel for 500 miles; but by this arrangement between themselves the two carriers would do business at 8 cents a barrel for 280 miles, at which rate the charge to the public to the seaboard should have been not quite 15 cents instead of 52 cents. The statement was also made that the oil combination, instead of giving the railroads the business it has guaranteed them, makes its obligation good by turning over to them periodically a check for the profits they would have had on hauling that amount of traffic. As the guarantee was made as a consideration for the maintenance of high freight rates, such a payment by it would amount, in cold fact, to paying those in charge of the highways a large bribe to deny the use of them to the people. This declaration of the provisions of the bargain was made by the counsel for the refiners seeking relief from the Interstate Commerce Commission. In his argument demanding the production of the document he said: "I have had it in my hand and read every word of it, and know exactly what it contains."[216] The sharpest legal struggle of the case was made on the demand that this paper be produced. The Commission decided that it was "wholly immaterial," although the chairman had previously said: "It seems to us that we cannot exclude this evidence." It was a document establishing interstate rates, and these are required by law to be published, and the Commission had always before this been liberal in compelling the production of papers which related to the making of rates.[217] The Commission had shortly before been threatened in this case by the counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad with extinction if it insisted upon evidence of the cost of piping oil which the oil combination refused to give. "It is possible that the powers of this Commission may be tested,"[218] bullied the counsel of the railroad. The members of the Commission laughed ostentatiously, but, for whatever reason, they gave the powerful corporations on trial no cause thereafter to "test their powers," which have slept while justice tarried, and the victims of this "contract" were kept under its harrow for three long years more, where they still lie. The tax levied upon the consumers of oil by this agreement for high freights amounts to millions a year. This agreement is at this writing still in force. There is reason to believe that similar arrangements exist with the other trunk-lines. The result is the surprising fact that "oil rates are very much higher than they were twelve years ago, and when there was no pipe-line competition!"[219] This is true also in the field of local pipeage--the transportation of the oil from the wells to refineries and railroads. Under the caption of "cheapening transportation" the counsel of the oil trust said, before the New York Legislature in 1888: "In 1872 the pipe-line system was in its infancy. A number of local lines existed. Their service was inefficient and expensive. There was no uniform rate. The united refiners undertook to unite and systemize this business. They purchased and consolidated the various little companies into what was long known as the United Pipe Line System. The first effect of this combination was a reduction of price of all local transportation to a uniform rate of at first 30, and soon after 20 cents per barrel."[220] "The united refiners" and "to unite and systemize" are smooth phrases, full of the unction of good-fellowship and political economy. When the "united refiners" took possession of the pipe lines which had been forced into bankruptcy or "co-operation," they did not reduce rates--they advanced them. "The uniform rate of 20 cents," for instance, is an advance of 300 per cent. on the rate of 5 cents made by the trust's pipe-line system during the war with the Tidewater, and over the similar rates made during the earlier pipe-line competition.[221] The nominal rate, Congress learned from one of the oil-country men, was 30 cents for that service, but by competition the actual rate was down to 5 or 10 cents. "They consolidated and placed it at 20 cents, and it has remained at 20 cents, I think, since the year 1876.... The whole process of transportation has been cheapened. Pipe that cost 45 cents a foot has in that time been got for 10 cents. The quality of the pipe was improved, so that there is not the leakage or the wastage. There are all those improvements and inventions that have cheapened it. We pay the same now as we did fifteen years ago. We have reduced the cost of our wells at least 50 per cent. They have reduced nothing."[222] From other sources, once in a while, facts have come to light showing how much less than cheap the local charge of 20 cents a barrel is. For instance, it was shown before Congress that a line which, with its feeders, had fifty miles of pipe, and cost $70,000, made a clear profit in its first six months of $40,000, charging sometimes less than this rate of 20 cents a barrel.[223] It is impossible to compute how much the defeat of legislation to regulate charges, or to allow the construction of competing lines, has cost the people. The Burdick Bill alone, to regulate prices of pipeage and storage in Pennsylvania, it was calculated by conservative men, would have saved at least $4,000,000 a year. The killing of it was in the interest of keeping up the high prices of the pipe lines, which finally rest in the price of oil. When the combination got possession of the pipe line to Buffalo, which others had built in spite of every obstacle it could interpose, it raised the rates of pipeage to 25 cents a barrel from 10 cents,[224] and as happened in Pennsylvania in 1885, the railroads to Buffalo in 1882 raised their rates simultaneously with the pipe line. Pittsburg had the same experience. When its independent pipe line was "united and systemized" by being torn up and converted into "old iron," as the Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad had told its projectors it would be, the rates of transportation for oil went up.[225] The same thing happened at Cleveland. At the rate at which the Lake Shore road carries oil from Cleveland to Chicago--357 miles for 38 cents a barrel--it should charge less than 15 cents for the 140 miles between Oil City and Cleveland; but as late as 1888 it charged 25 cents. Why? The effect of the railroad charge is that little oil comes by rail to Cleveland from the oil regions; it goes by the pipe line of those whom the Lake Shore has been "protecting" ever since the South Improvement contract of 1872. There have been 3,000,000 barrels of this business yearly. The railroad officials exercise their powers to drive traffic from the railroad to a competing line. Why? We can see why the combination, which, by the possession of this pipe line, is a competitor of the Lake Shore, should desire such an arrangement; but it exists by the act of the Lake Shore Railroad. Why? The theories of self-interest would lead one to expect that the stockholders of the road would find out why.[226] The pipe lines are the largest single item in the property of the oil combination. Here its control has been the most complete; and here the reduction of price has been least. This is a telltale fact, soon told and soon understood. CHAPTER XI SONG OF THE BARREL Genius could take so unspeakable a thing as a shirt and sing it into an immortal song, but a barrel--and an oil-barrel, greasy and ill-smelling--even genius could do nothing with that. But the barrel plays a leading rôle in the drama of the great monopoly. Out of it have flown shapes of evil that have infected private fortunes, the prosperity of more than one industry, the fiduciary honor of great men, the faithfulness of the Government to its citizens. Perhaps a part of what genius could do for the shirt--force a hearing for the wronged--may be done for this homely vessel of the struggling independent by the kindly solicitude of the people to learn every secret spring of the ruin of their brothers. The market--the barrel that went to market--the freight rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--the railway king who made the rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--the greater king who whispered behind to the railway king to make the rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--this is the house that Jack unbuilt. Such is the superiority of a simple business organization, where "evolution" has not carried the details of the industry out of sight of the owner, and where the master and man, buyer and seller, are in touch, that the independent refiners could overcome the tax imposed on them by this pooling of the pipe line and the railroads, and not only survive but prosper moderately. During the three years--from 1885 to 1888--following the first attack upon them under the contract just described, they state, in their appeal to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1888, they were "enabled by their advantages in the local markets to keep up, maintain, and even increase their business."[227] These "outsiders" shipped their oil largely in barrels because the trunk-lines had made it as nearly impossible as they could for them to ship in tank-cars. They, like all in the trade, could not live without access to the European market. Out of every hundred barrels of various kinds of products from the distillation of petroleum, forty are of an illuminating oil not good enough to be burned in this country. It must be sold in Europe or not sold at all; and a manufacturer who cannot get rid of 40 per cent. of his product must give up manufacturing. To destroy the barrel method of shipment would destroy those who could use no other; and to close their outlet to Europe would make it impossible for them to continue to manufacture for the home supply. The barrel was the only life-raft left to the sinking independent. They who had planned the secret pool of 1885 between the pipe line and the railroads, and the further advance of rates by both in 1888, now called upon the railroads to deliver a final stroke against the independents.[228] The railroads, when directed in previous years to say "no" to applications for transportation, and "no" to those who wanted the right to put their own tank-cars on the road, had obeyed; they obeyed again. A pretext for the suppression of the barrel was easily found. It was a poor one, but poor pretexts are better than none. When the future "trustees" of the "light of the world" were doing a small fraction of the business, they got the contract of 1872 from the railroads to "overcome" all their competitors, on the pretext of "increasing the trade."[229] When by this contract and those that followed it they had secured nine-tenths of the trade, they got the railroads to say "no" to the remaining one-tenth, on the pretext that they could not ship as much.[230] When the Interstate Commerce law declared it to be a crime for railroads to forbid persons the road because they could not ship as much as others, the combination had the railroads shut out its rivals, on the pretext that they did not use tank-cars,[231] although tank-cars "are worse than powder." When regular tank-cars were offered by its competitors for shipment--as to the Pacific coast--the combination introduced an inferior tank-car, of which it claimed, without warrant, as the courts afterwards held, that it owned the patent, and so obtained the sole right of way across the continent, on the pretext that other shippers did not use this poor car.[232] The pretext now used against the refiners of Pennsylvania was the passing phrase, "He must pay freight on barrels," in a decision of the Interstate Commerce Commission concerning Southern traffic. This decision had no relevancy to the oil business of the North. Six months went by after it was given with no intimation from any one that it related in any way to the situation in Pennsylvania, and to be so applied it had to be turned inside out and upside down. In the Rice case the Commission had decided that freight rates must be reduced on barrel shipments. This was, in the sharp language of the decision, to put an end to "the most unjust and injurious discrimination against barrel shippers in favor of tank shippers," a discrimination which the Commission has elsewhere said "inured mostly to the benefit of one powerful combination." In ordering this reduction it said: "Even then the shipper in barrels is at some disadvantage, for he must pay freight on barrels as well as on oil." By "must pay" the Commission meant "was paying." It was, as it afterwards protested, "rather a statement of a prevailing practice than a ruling."[233] And the remark furthermore concerned the trade in the South and Southwest alone, where special circumstances existed not found at the North. Six months after this decision the Pennsylvania and other Northern roads made these words, "He must pay freight on the barrels," the occasion of an increase of rates, which stopped the refineries of the independents. They were carrying free the heavy tanks--"the most undesirable business we do," in the language of their freight agent. They had been carrying the barrels of the independents free for twenty years. Now, continuing to carry the tank-cars free, they levied a prohibitory transportation tax on the barrels. To cap it all, they declared, in announcing the new rule, that it had been forced upon them by the Interstate Commerce Commission. But the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad is found admitting that it was the oil combination that dictated the move--"the seaboard refiners insisted." "Upon your decision" (in the Rice case) "being promulgated," he wrote the Interstate Commerce Commission, "the seaboard refiners insisted that we were bound to charge for packages," barrels, not tanks, "as well as for the oil."[234] The seaboard refiners were the members of the oil trust; the others at the seaboard had been wiped out years before by the help of the railroads. Though the Pennsylvania Railroad was not a party to the case before the Commission, though it had not been called upon to change its practice, which was what it ought to be, it did now change it from right to wrong. The Commission had ordered that discrimination between the barrel and the tank should cease. The Pennsylvania, which had not, strange to say, been practising that forbidden kind of discrimination, immediately resorted to it, and, stranger still, gave as its reason the order of the Commission against it. It must have been a keen eye that could find in a "qualified and incidental remark," as the Interstate Commerce Commission styles it, in such a decision, a command to charge for the weight of the barrels and increase freight rates; but such an eye there was--an eye that will never sleep as long as Naboth's vineyard belongs to Naboth. All the trunk-line railroads to the East took part in the new regulation--September 3, 1888--that freight must be paid thereafter on the weight of the barrels as well as on the oil itself, and at the same rate. This increased the cost of transportation to New York to 66 cents from 52 cents, and to other points proportionately. Freight rates on the oil of "the seaboard refiners" who shipped in tanks were left untouched. In the circulars announcing the change it was said to be done "in accordance with the directions of the Interstate Commerce Commission."[235] When the refiners whom this advance threatened with ruin wrote to expostulate, they got the same reply from all the railroad officials as from President Roberts of the Pennsylvania Railroad: "The advance in rates ... has been forced upon us by the Interstate Commerce Commission."[236] The Commission immediately called the responsible official of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was the leader in this move, "to a personal interview," "expressed their surprise," and suggested the withdrawal of the circular and of the increased rates. This was in August.[237] No attention was paid to this by the road. The Commission waited until October 10th, and then sent a formal communication to the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was followed by correspondence and personal conferences with him. The Commission pointed out that the statement of the circular was "misleading," "not true," "decidedly objectionable"; that the Commission had made no decision with reference to the rates of the Pennsylvania Railroad or the other Eastern lines; that its decision, applicable solely to the roads of the South or Southwest, had been that rates on barrels must be reduced, and that it was not right to use this as an excuse for increasing the rates on barrels. Finally, the Commission said that if it had made any ruling applicable to the Pennsylvania Railroad it would have been compelled to hold that its practice, of twenty years' standing, of carrying the barrels free, since it carried tanks free, was "just and proper," and that there was nothing to show that an advance in its rates was called for.[238] The Interstate Commerce Commission was the body specially created by Congress to interpret the Interstate Commerce Law. The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the common carriers under the orders of the Commission, and its managers were subjects of jurisdiction, not judges. But its method of running the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as if it were one of its limited trains, was now applied with equal confidence to the Interstate Commerce Commission. It insisted that it was itself, not the Commission, which was the judge of what the latter meant by its own decisions. The road continued the rates against which the Commission protested. The Commission demanded that the assertions that the new rule of charging for the barrels and the advance of rates was made "in accordance with the directions" of the Interstate Commerce Commission be withdrawn. The Pennsylvania road responded with another circular, in which it changed the form but repeated the substance. "The action referred to was taken for the purpose of conforming the practice of this company to the principles decided by the Interstate Commerce Commission." The Commission protested that it was not laying down any such "principles" but the corporation declared that that was what it "understood," and held to the advance made on that understanding.[239] To the almost weeping expostulations of the Commission in interviews and letters, to show that it had said nothing which could justify the action of the roads, the officials made not the slightest concession. "I did not consider it in that way," said one of them.[240] "That was their (the Commission's) view of the case, but it was not shared by us," said the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. "It was considered best to continue the practice," he said.[241] "Why did you not rescind the order?" he was asked before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "We understood their ruling to be a ruling for the whole country," he incorrigibly replied. The railway president studiously withheld any assurance that he would obey if the Commission issued a direct command, which it had not done, though it had the authority. "We would then take the subject up," he said. Change the order to comply with the ruling of the Interstate Commerce Commission the roads would not and did not.[242] All the roads to the seaboard and New England had made the order in concert, and together they maintained it. It was one hand, evidently, that moved them all, and though that hand moved them, for the benefit of a carrier rival of theirs--the pipe line of the trust--against their own customers, against their own employers, against the authority of the United States Government, all these railroad presidents and freight agents obeyed it with the docility of domestic animals. These officials were the loyal subjects of a higher power than that of the United States, higher even than that of their railway corporations. They serve the greatest sovereign of the modern world--the concentrated wealth, in whose court the presidents of railways and republics, kings, parliaments, and congresses are but lords in waiting. Thanks to the superior enterprise of their greater need, the independents of Oil City and Titusville had been able to survive the blows that had preceded, but this was too much. They had weathered the surrender in 1883 of the Tidewater Pipe Line, which had promised them freedom forever. Even the "contract" which made the allied pipe lines and the railroads in 1885 one, to tax them half as much again for transportation, had not broken them down. In spite of it they had been able "to maintain and increase their business."[243] But now they closed their works. The new attack had been shrewdly timed to spoil for them in that year--1888--the season of greatest activity in the export to Europe and Asia. They appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission. "The greater proportion of our refineries are idle."[244] "I have not a customer in the entire New England States. I have not had since the advance of last September." "How was it before the advance?" "I had a number of customers."[245] Labor, though, as always, the most silent, suffered the most. Three hundred coopers were thrown out of work in Titusville alone within a short time, and the loss of employment to the workmen in the refineries was still more serious. This was not because trade was bad. Exports were never greater than in 1889. Government statistics reveal as in a mirror what was being done. The exports of refined petroleum increased 21 per cent. in 1889 over 1888. But Perth Amboy, from which the independents shipped for the most part, showed a decrease of over 18-1/2 per cent. By the stroke of a freight agent's pen the business of these men was being taken from them, to be given to others. The general tide was rising, but their feet were sinking in a quicksand. The export business of Boston in oil was given to the "seaboard refiners" by the same stroke. Freights that had been $100 were now $174 to Boston, and $188 to New York. These rates were so high as to stop oil from going through. "The Nova Scotia trade," it was testified, "goes to New York, and from there by water, whereas they used to buy in Boston. Boston brokers will ship oil from New York and get it to Nova Scotia cheaper than if it went from Boston, whereas when we had the export rate we could compete in that market."[246] Two months later most of what remained of the business of the independents in New England was added to the gift of their foreign trade, which had already been made to the "seaboard refiners." By an order of October 25, 1888, the railroads made it known to these "pestilences," as the lawyers of the railroads called the independent refiners in court,[247] that they would not be allowed to send any more through shipments into New England. This was done, as in Ohio in 1879,[248] without the notice required by law, though in the meantime a Federal law had been passed requiring notice.[249] This order was the finishing touch in the task of using the freight tariff to prevent freight shipment. It shut the independents--the hunted shippers--out of over 150 towns in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, including Manchester, Burlington, Portland, Salem, in which they had built up a good business, and it made it impossible to reach these places except by paying high local rates--from station to station--which were not required of their competitor, who shipped on through rates. The railroads would take the oil of the independents for shipment, but would not tell them what the rates would be. In this, as in all the moves of this game, we see the railroad managers of a score of different roads, at points thousands of miles apart, taking the same step at the same time, like a hundred electric clocks ticking all over a great city to the tune of the clock at headquarters that makes and breaks their circuit. The independents were saved by a Canadian railroad from the destruction which American railroads had planned for them. The Grand Trunk gave them a rate by which they could still do some business in the upper part of New England, though to do this they had to ship the oil into Canada and back into the United States. The effect of this abolition of through rates in "cheapening" oil was that the people of Vermont, for instance, had to pay 2 cents a gallon more than any other place in New England.[250] While all access for others to New England was cut off, the "seaboard refiners," sending the oil in free tanks to the seaboard, transshipping it there into vessels by the facilities of "which they have a monopoly,"[251] easily made their own the business of their rivals in the 150 towns from which the latter were thus cut off. No one has been able to move all the railroads in this way, as one interlocking switch, to obey a law or accommodate the public. But it was done easily enough for this kind of work. Possession was got of the railway managers at the initial points, as was done so successfully in another case,[252] and all the other railway managers, as far as Boston, followed in their trail. Reproducing the tactics in Ohio in 1879, it was only against oil that this attack of the tariff was made. Other freight for export, of which there was a vast variety, continued to be carried to Boston at the same rate as before.[253] All the freight agent of the initial road had to do with the oil on its way to Europe was to pass it along to the next line. Whether, after leaving his road, it went by the way of Boston or that of New York made no difference to his road, and was in no way his affair. But it made a great deal of difference to those who wanted all the business of Europe and America for themselves, and we consequently find him serving them, and dis-serving his employer (the railroad), by charging 21 cents a barrel if the oil was going to Boston after leaving his line, but only 15-56/100 cents if it was going to New York. When asked if he thought he was justified as a railroad man under the law in making the charges for what he did vary according to what was done by the business after it left his hands, he refused to answer. "You will not answer?" "Not at present."[254] All the connecting and following roads are on record as having protested against the measures in which they followed the lead of the initial lines.[255] The freight agent of the West Shore Railroad declared that the prohibition of through shipments to the towns of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine "occurred simply through mistake;" but the mistake, he acknowledged, had never been corrected.[256] This "mistake" and that of September, which preceded it, put an end to a large business, amounting in 1888 to 900,000 barrels. The men, whom the railroads began to massacre after having pledged them full protection, saved a fraction of their trade in New England, as we have seen, only by taking refuge with a foreign railroad. The railroads against their will, as they swore, lost business as well as honor, but the mistake was not corrected. It would tax the imagination of a Cervantes to dream out a more fantastic tangle of sense and nonsense in quixotic combat than that which these highwaymen spun out of the principles of "scientific railroading." All that highway control could do to destroy the barrel shippers for the benefit of the tank shippers was done; and yet the barrel method is the safer and more profitable for the railroads.[257] The cars that carry oil in barrels can return loaded; the railroads have to haul the tank-cars back empty and pay mileage on them.[258] For a series of years on the Pennsylvania Railroad the damage from carrying oil in barrels was less than half the damage from the carrying of oil in tanks.[259] The general freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company tells the Interstate Commerce Commission that the carriage of oil in tank-cars "is the most undesirable business we do." He described a smash-up at New Brunswick where there was a collision with a line of tank-cars. The oil got on fire; it ran two squares, got into a sewer, overflowed the canal, which was then frozen over, and followed the ice a square or two beyond. Besides having to pay nearly five hundred thousand dollars damages for the destruction done, the railroad lost its bridge, which cost two or three hundred thousand dollars. It lost more money than it could make carrying oil for ten years. "I regard it," he said, "as worse than powder to carry; I would rather carry anything else than oil in tanks."[260] Barrel shipments being the best for the railroads, these princes of topsy-turvydom move heaven and earth to destroy them.[261] There was no end to the "mistakes" made by the railroads for the "self-renunciation" of their business, though this was in favor of those whose pipe line made them rivals. They charged more for kerosene in barrels than for other articles of more value, contradicting their own rule of charging what the traffic will bear. They let the combination carry sixty-two gallons in every tank free on the theory of leakage in transportation. "The practice," said the Commission, "is so obvious and palpable a discrimination that no discussion of it is necessary;" and they ordered it discontinued.[262] Though the railroads brought back the tanks free, for the return of the empty barrels they never forgot to charge. This charge was made so high that at one time it prohibited the return from all points.[263] "The monopoly uses a large number of barrels in New York City," the independents said to the Commission; "it is to its interest that empty second-hand barrels should not be returned to the inland refiner." When this was brought out the Pennsylvania and other railroads promised to make reparation, but had not done so years later when the case was still "hung up" in the Interstate Commerce Commission. It was not lack of capital or of diligence that made the independents use barrels instead of tanks; tanks were useless to them. All the oil terminal facilities of the railroads at the seaboard had been surrendered to the combination for its exclusive use.[264] These were the only places where tank-cars could be unloaded into steamers. "There are no facilities to which we, as outside refiners, have access to load bulk oil into vessels," and none where these refiners could send oil in tank-cars to be barrelled for shipment abroad.[265] No matter how many tank-cars and tank-vessels the independents might have provided, they could not have got them together. Between the two were the docks in the unrelenting grip which held solely for its private use the shipping facilities of these public carriers. Not even oil in barrels could the independents get through these oil docks. The Weehawken oil docks of the Erie road on New York harbor are the best in the world. The Erie Railroad has $920,760 invested in them, but only one shipper can use them either for tanks or barrels. The Western traffic manager of the Erie was asked: "Would you take a shipment there over the Erie road of independent oil consigned to the New York docks?" "No, sir."[266] The Pennsylvania Railroad refuses to haul tank-cars for the independents to any other point at New York than the terminals so controlled by the combination. It will not haul them to other docks of its own. It will not let oil be shipped over its line to the points at which it connects with other roads for other harbors, though it will take shipments of anything else than oil.[267] This amounts to a refusal to allow the independents to use tank-cars or tank-steamers. Practically the same policy is pursued by all the main trunk-lines. These independents could get rid of their export oil only by selling to the combination. Through its other self--the company which controls the terminals--it has kept an agent in the oil regions for years to buy for export this refined oil which its owners and makers could not export themselves. This is the "immediate shipment" of 1878 in another phase.[268] "You have to sell to the Standard Oil Company in order to get your oil shipped in bulk from Communipaw?" "Yes, sir." "The independent cannot get his oil into a bulk vessel at Communipaw?" "No, sir."[269] To meet these disclosures the Pennsylvania presented two affidavits. One was from its general freight agent that its tank-cars were offered freely to all; but it did not deny, for it could not deny, any of these facts about terminals, which explained why the flies did not walk into its parlor. The other affidavit was from the secretary of the corporation controlling the terminals for the oil combination, and it similarly declared that its accommodations were furnished "upon exactly the same terms to all." How long it had been doing so, or how long it would continue to do so, it did not state, as the independents pointed out to the Commission. If this were the truth instead of being, as the independents hinted, "evidently a situation that has been recently arranged for the purposes of this application"--to the Interstate Commerce Commission for further delay--why had none of the independents, dying for want of export facilities, resorted to it? This was not explained, for it could not be. The independents explained the situation to the Interstate Commerce Commission: "The inland refiner who intrusts his oil to a storage company at the seaboard with a view to exporting, puts himself completely into the power of such concern. The exactions that may be unfairly imposed in individual cases for 'loss by leakage,' 'dumping and mixing for off-color or off-test,' 'cost of water white oil for mixing,' 'tares,' 'tares guarantee,' 'commissions on sales,' 'interest on goods until loaded and paid for,' 'incidental expenses,' and many other known matters of charge, may amount to a partial confiscation of the cargo." The corporation which manages this monopoly of the terminals at Communipaw is a mysterious concern. Who own its stock, and what its relations with the railroad are, the Interstate Commerce Commission could not find out. Its president and treasurer were summoned to testify, but refused to attend. The manager of the oil combination's pipe lines stated that he knew of stock in the company that was owned by a member of the trust, though he afterwards qualified that he did not know it "positively."[270] The charge that this company was controlled by the monopoly was specifically made before the Interstate Commerce Commission and was not denied, and the Commission found that the oil combination "have a monopoly of those facilities to the exclusion of complainants."[271] It thus reported the same state of facts in 1892 as the New York Legislature in 1879. The barrel was therefore the fountain of life for the independent. Without barrels he could not get his oil on board ship for export, and without exporting he could not live and refine for the home market. The oil combination ships in barrels also. According to the figures given in this case by one of its "assistant managers" its shipments by barrel are very large. This testimony was introduced to make it appear cruel to insinuate that the difference between barrels and tanks was made by the railroads to favor it, since it as well as the independents used barrels. The Commission openly expressed its dissatisfaction with this evidence, and dismissed the subject by the conclusive observation that the combination gains more by the low tank-car rates than it loses by the high barrel rates.[272] For the independent, however, the difference in rates was almost all loss, for he at that time shipped mostly in barrels. The high prices it made for oil and for freights at Titusville and Oil City did not hurt the combination. It had only to close its refineries there and transfer their business for the time to its establishments elsewhere. This it did, keeping some of them idle for years.[273] Such was the story told to the Interstate Commerce Commission, in many hundred pages of testimony, by the refiners of Oil City and Titusville, who appealed to it for the justice "without expense, without delay, and without litigation" promised the people when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created.[274] The game, of which you have perhaps been able to get a dim idea from the printed page, the Commissioners saw played before them like chess with living figures. For years the principal subject of their official investigations had been the manoeuvres of the oil ring. They had been compelled by the law and the facts to condemn its relation with the railroads in language of stinging severity, as every court has done before which it has been brought. Better than any other men in the country, except the men in the ring, the Commissioners knew what was being done. They comprehended perfectly who the "seaboard refiners" were whose demand that their competitors should be shut out of Europe and New England was better law with the Pennsylvania Railroad than the decisions of the Commission. They needed no enlightenment as to the purpose of the secret contract between the members of the oil trust and the Pennsylvania, nor any instruction that the "pool" between the pipe line and the railroad was as hostile to the public interest as any pool between common carriers. The chairman of the Commission had openly hinted that the relations of the oil trust and the railroads were collusive, and that the spring from which they flowed was a secret contract.[275] It was shown to the Commission that at the same time the railroads advanced their rates the oil combination bid up the price of the raw material of the Titusville and Oil City refineries. This is called "advancing the premium."[276] The raise of the freight rate added 14 cents a barrel to the cost of production, and the increased price of oil put on 12 cents more, either item large enough to embarrass competition. The Interstate Commerce Commission in its decision recognized the practical simultaneity of the three movements to the disadvantage of the independent refiners: (1) the bidding up of the price of crude oil against them; (2) the new rule of charging for the weight of the barrel; and (3) the abrogation of the through rates to New England. These three things occurred in a period of about two months. This, the Commission says, lends color to the charge that there was concert of action between the combination and the railroad. The Commissioners in their sittings had seen that the counsel for the railroads did not pretend to bring forward any evidence to prove that their attack on the barrel shippers was just or proper. Although "the seaboard refiners," for whose pecuniary profit these things had been done, were not on trial, their witnesses, agents, and attorneys were in constant attendance, and kept close watch of the testimony and arguments. The Commission had its attention called specifically to the fact that the defence of the railroads on trial was being directed by the same "seaboard refiners" who had "insisted" that the railroads should violate the law. The counsel for the Erie road was frank enough to admit that it was they who had prompted that carrier in its litigation before the Commission. When the Erie appeared before the Commission to give "further testimony," its representative could not tell at whose request its application therefor had been made, and said he had known nothing about the matter until the day before. Three of the six witnesses then examined were from the offices of the oil trust, whose members had refused to come when summoned. The only subpoenas they obey are those issued from their own headquarters. The president of the oil combination's pipe lines--who is also the president of the steamship line in which its members are interested--and the vice-president of the pipe lines, and the president and the treasurer of the company which holds for the trust the monopoly of the terminal facilities, and the President of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad, and its vice-president, were all served with official notice to come and testify. But these gentlemen refused to appear. "It is for your honors," said the counsel for the refiners, suggestively, "to determine what obedience shall be paid to your subpoenas."[277] But the Commission did nothing. The defendant corporations, and their lawyers, officers, and witnesses, made no pretence of treating the Interstate Commerce Commission with anything more than a physical respect. The representatives of the railroad companies practically told the Commission that its decisions were subordinate to theirs, and that they knew better than it what its rulings meant. Witnesses refused to answer questions they found awkward, and the lawyers gave the court to understand that if it did what they did not like they would snuff it out. The Commission heard one of the refiners who was a petitioner before it assailed with coarse vituperation, described in open court as a "pestilence,"[278] because he had dared to write more than once to the railroads for the reduction of rates which would save him from destruction, and which the Commission had, not once, but half a dozen times, said the railroads ought to give to all. The Commission had itself, outrunning the complainants, been the first to "pointedly disapprove" the attempt to destroy the barrel shippers, and to call upon the railroads to rescind their action. This protest it had made repeatedly--first with the subalterns, then with the chief of the Pennsylvania Railroad, in personal interviews, letters, and finally in an official pamphlet, which was an appeal to the public to judge between it and the corporation. It had reiterated its protest in a formal decision rendered September 5, 1890, after deliberating seven months on the evidence and arguments. In this "they recalled the fact, now almost ancient history, that" the change was "pointedly disapproved by the Commission" when first made, and with lamentations noted that, though almost two years had passed, "the carriers have failed to comply with the suggestions there made. In charging for the weight of the barrels as well as the oil, the carriers that make use of both modes of transportation have disregarded the principles plainly and emphatically laid down by the Commission in the cases cited, and have paid no attention to the subsequent official memorandum explanatory of the decisions in those cases, but have persisted in maintaining a discrimination against barrel shippers. An order requiring the discontinuance of the discrimination has therefore become necessary."[279] An order has therefore become necessary. The Commission then ordered one road concerned in this separate case to "cease and desist" within thirty days. Although several cases affecting a number of refiners and a number of roads had been heard and submitted together, as practically one in traffic, territory, circumstances, and the main question, it confined its decision to the case which involved only one road, and that a subordinate. There the Commission stopped; and there it stuck for more than two years, from September 5, 1890, to November 14, 1892, refraining from a decision in the case of the principal offender, the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad is the representative carrier in the oil traffic. It controls all the oil business that passes over its lines, no matter how far away it originates. The initial road which led the attack on the barrel shippers is subsidiary to the Pennsylvania in the oil business, and the Pennsylvania controls its rates and regulations.[280] The Pennsylvania has been the head and front of the railroad attack on these men, and has been the open nullifier of the law and the Commission in this matter. It was the principal defendant on trial, and its case was identical with that of the others, except that it was the most flagrant; but no order would the Commission issue against it for two years. Wendell Phillips says: "There is no power in one State to resist such a giant as the Pennsylvania road. We have thirty-eight one-horse legislatures in this country; and we have a man like Tom Scott with three hundred and fifty millions in his hands, and if he walks through the States they have no power. Why, he need not move at all; if he smokes, as Grant does, a puff of the waste smoke out of his mouth upsets the legislatures." When the Commission had ordered a change of rates on barrels in the South, the Pennsylvania did the Commission the double disrespect of declaring that that order was binding upon itself against the protest of the Commission, and of using an order to reduce rates as an excuse for raising them. But now when the Commission, September 5, 1890, made a decision on the same point in a case arising in the territory and traffic in which the Pennsylvania was the chief carrier--a case, too, of a bunch of cases in which the Pennsylvania was a defendant--that road ignored it. The Commission, in the Rice, Robinson and Witherop case, in 1890, promulgated the very rule which the Pennsylvania Railroad established, which it had been following for twenty years, and which its officers before the Commission swore was the correct one, but the Pennsylvania refused now to accept and follow it. The road which was now ordered to go back to the correct practice, and which had perforce done so, was the initial road. The Pennsylvania had followed its initiative in adopting a "false" and "misleading" and "unwarranted" practice, but would not follow it in changing to the good. The attitude in which the Pennsylvania road and the Commission were thus placed towards each other was this: Shall the Pennsylvania Railroad be allowed to make a charge which the Commission volunteered to rebuke it for making, and which it had decided, in the parallel case of another road in the same situation, was altogether unwarranted and must cease? They stood thus facing each other more than two years. There was apparently no excuse for delay the Commission would not accept. At one time it granted postponement on the plea of a lawyer that his father was sick. More than the lawyer's father were sick; a whole community of business men were sick; the entire country was sick, its industry, law, politics, morals--all. The administration of justice was sick. If the facts had been uncertain, or the law undetermined, the course of justice would still have seemed cruelly sluggish; but here was a matter in which the facts and the law in question had been settled, and by the Commission itself, over and over again. The only thing remaining was that the Pennsylvania Railroad, as well as the road which was its next neighbor, must obey the law. The railroad against which the Interstate Commerce Commission decided in 1890 on this point joined the Pennsylvania at Irvineton and Corry. The Commission put the law into force on one side of those points, but for two years gave the Pennsylvania Railroad and others "rehearings" and other means of delay, and did not open its lips to say that the same law must reign on the other. The conduct of this corporation meant that it intended to respect neither the Interstate Commerce Commission nor the Interstate Commerce law; that it recognized the will of cliqued wealth as the supreme law; that the protestations of loyalty to the law and the Commission with which it accompanied its defiance of both were not offered as a disguise of respect, but were chosen as a method which would most embarrass the people's tribunal in upholding itself and the rights of the citizens. All that was needed by those who had contrived and were continuing the wrong was time--they had everything else. Time they got, and plenty of it. July 15, 1891, the refiners said to the Commission: "Two and one-half years have elapsed since these complaints were filed, and the end is not yet. We earnestly hoped that we had succeeded in convincing this Commission that this respondent was inflicting on complainants a great and unnecessary wrong, which merited the most speedy remedy and redress possible. If we have failed in this we are unable to ascribe the failure to a lack of evidence or promptness in presenting it. It was not thought possible that all this great length of time would be required to reach a conclusion in these matters, under all these circumstances, especially after the decision in the Rice, Robinson, and Witherop case (September 5, 1890). The enemies of the complainants could scarcely have found or wished for any more effectual way of injuring complainants than by a long delay of their cause. Further delay simply means further injury to complainants." The two years and a half have gone on to more than five years. A decision has been made, but the end is not yet. The delay prevented the injured men from going to any other tribunal with their complaint. They have succeeded in keeping alive, though barely alive, because the price of their raw material has declined a little, and given them a margin to cling to. This delay has denied them justice in the special tribunal they were invited to attend, and has also denied them the relief they could have got from other courts. The Commission heard all this urged by eloquent counsel. It heard the men who were being crushed tell how their refineries were being closed, their customers lost, their business wrecked, their labor idle, while the trade itself was growing larger than ever. It saw the statistics which proved it. But no practical relief have the independents of Oil City and Titusville been able to get from it. They have lost the business, lost the hopes of five years, lost the growth they would have made, lost five years of life. This delay of justice is awful, but it is not the end, for the decision, though it came at last in November, 1892, has brought no help. It required the roads to either carry the barrels free or furnish tank-cars to all shippers, and for the past ordered a refund of the freight charged on barrels to shippers who had been denied the use of tank-cars. More than five months after it was rendered the independents, in an appeal (April 20, 1893) to the Interstate Commerce Commission, called its attention to the fact that "none of the railroads in any one of the cases has as yet seen fit to obey any of its orders save such and to such extent as they found them advantageous to themselves, although the time for doing so has expired." More appalling still, it appeared, in an application made in March, 1893, by the Pennsylvania Railroad for a reopening of the case, that these years of litigation were but preliminary to further litigation. The counsel of the railroad, in the spirit in which it had previously warned the Commission that its powers "may be tested," now informed it that the road, if the application for further delay were not granted, would "await proceedings in the Circuit Court for enforcement of what it believed to be an erroneous order." And in another passage it referred to the proceedings before the Commission as being simply proceedings "in advance of any final determination of the case on its merits." Four years and a half had been consumed when, as the independents pleaded to the Commission, "it might reasonably have been expected that as many months would have sufficed," and yet these are only preliminary to "the final determination of the case on its merits." "The delay suffered has been despairing--killing," was the agonized cry of the independents in their plea to the Interstate Commerce Commission not to grant this new delay. "We pray that no more be permitted." But in November, 1893, more delay was permitted by granting another application of the Pennsylvania Railroad for "rehearing." This was limited to thirty days, but these have run into months, and "the end is not yet." Five years have now passed in this will-o'-the-wisp pursuit of justice "without delay." And another "outsider," who has been a suppliant since March, 1889,[281] before the Interstate Commerce Commission for the same relief--the free carriage of barrels where tanks are carried free--is still a suppliant in vain. The Commission consumed three years in hearings and rehearings, only to report itself unable to decide this and other important points raised by him. It was "a most perplexing inquiry," "we are not prepared to hold," "we desire to be made acquainted with the present situation," and "the results exhibited by recent experience." "No such intimation is intended," said the Commission, as that it is right for the roads to charge for barrels when they carried tanks free--not at all. "We simply refrain" from stopping the wrong, and "reserve further opinion for fuller information and more satisfactory inquiry." Perhaps, however, by "voluntary action"[282] the railroads which had contrived this wrong would be good enough to stop it, though the Commission was not good enough to order them to do so! The Commission held that the rates were "unlawful; but, for want of sufficient data, we do not undertake to point out the particular modifications and reductions which would satisfy the demands of justice."[283] "We are not now prepared to determine," "we feel unable to prescribe," "is not now decided," "reopened for further evidence and argument," are the phrases with which the Commission glided away from the settlement of other vital points as to which its intervention had been invoked for more than three years. Even when it directed the railroads to reduce their charge it added "to what extent the Commission does not now determine, and the cases will be held open for such further," etc. And there his case hangs even unto this day, for since this "not-now-decided" decision the "outsider" has never renewed his appeals to the Interstate Commerce Commission concerning these cases or others,[284] but, hopeless of redress, has let them go by default. The secret contract stands, but the barrel men survive, barely, despite monopoly, by changing to tank-cars, and getting a pipe-line and some terminals. They create seaboard facilities and persuade the Jersey Central to haul their tanks. To meet this road they lay the pipe now to be described, and, to escape railroads altogether, will build to New York, if not ruined meanwhile. CHAPTER XII UNFINISHED MARCH TO THE SEA Between May and December, Sherman made his march from Lookout Mountain to the sea, cutting the Confederacy in two. For thirty years the people of Pennsylvania have been trying to break a free way to the ocean through the Alleghanies and the oil combination, and in vain. For ten years the hope of independent outlet to the sea from the oil-fields of Pennsylvania lay prostrate under the blow of the surrender of the Tidewater. Twice the people have tried again, only each time to be headed off. The first of these two rallies collapsed in the shut-down of 1887; the second was stopped at the cannon's mouth by an armed force at Hancock, New York, in the year of peace, 1892. By 1887 the people of the oil regions had recovered from the shock of losing the independent Tidewater Pipe Line,[285] and began to make new plans for getting to the sea. By some means the committee to whom they had intrusted the management of the new enterprise was persuaded to go to New York to confer with the officers of the oil combination, who had measures of conciliation to propose that would make it unnecessary to build the new pipe lines. This committee, and finally the constituency it represented, were made to believe that the cause of the woes of the oil country was simply and only that there was too much oil--not that there were too many empty or half-filled lamps. They agreed to cut down their business one-half, and were lured away from the project of getting full prices on a full product. The outcome was the "shut-down" of 1887. The producers were persuaded it would bring back oil to a dollar a barrel--to stay there; but after a brief and unremunerative spurt in values, a reaction, lasting to the present, carried prices to a lower level than ever, and the producers found that the last state of those who let such spirits enter them is always worse than the first. Several times before this the oil producers had tried to imitate the policy of scarcity, which the most brilliant business successes are teaching to be the royal road to wealth. It is stated by the report of the General Council of the Petroleum Producers' Union[286] that the producers had twice entered into arrangements with the oil combination to lessen the product and regulate the price of crude petroleum, and that in each case the arrangement had been violated by the latter when it seemed about to become profitable to the producer. Hence, when invited to confer for a third venture of this sort, the Council declined to do so. But in 1887 the invitation, extended for the fourth time, was a third time accepted. The producers succeeded in the restriction, but they did not better their condition. These men gave the world the spectacle of the producers flirting with the solitary and supreme buyer of their product, in the belief that he would help them to raise their price against himself. The agreement which was made with the producers was shown before Congress.[287] The producers were bound for a year from November 1, 1887, "to produce at least 17,500 barrels of crude petroleum less per day," and to make it, if possible, "30,000 barrels less per day." In return for this the oil combination agreed to give the speculative profits on 6,000,000 barrels of oil--the profits on 5,000,000 for them, and on 1,000,000 for their laborers. This move of those who want petroleum cheap to make it dear is one of the equivocations of policy in which princes have always distinguished themselves. The need of the hour was to stop the building of the competing pipe line. That was accomplished by the scheme of the shut-down, which amused the producers, and, as subsequent prices proved, did not hurt the buyer of their oil; quite the contrary. Drills and pumps at once ceased their operations throughout the oil regions. Working-men were thrown out of employment, stores were closed, hundreds of families had to subsist on charity. One of the Broadway producers who made this bargain for the shut-down admitted to the committee of the New York Legislature that "the oil-producing interest was abnormally depressed," and "that there was great distress."[288] The agreement itself recites that the price of petroleum had been during the preceding year "largely below the cost at which it was produced." The people of the oil country went to work with desperation to enforce the policy of oil famine. Committees were formed among the well-drillers in each district, "whose duty," the formal papers of organization stated, "shall be to keep a lookout for and endeavor to prevent the drilling of wells." "We have no way of stopping those who want to drill wells," one of the officers of the organization said, "only by good, reasonable talk." The Well-drillers' Union appointed and paid one of their members to reason with people who insisted upon digging wells. It is not necessary to question the good faith of the assurance their officials gave Congress that his duties did not require the use of nitro-glycerine. But, "unofficially," nitro-glycerine was freely used to enforce the shut-down. Men who failed to feel the influence of the "good talk," and went on putting up machinery, and drilling wells, would find their derricks blown into kindling-wood. Referring to one of these occurrences, a member of the Well-drillers' Union told Congress it was a case where no permission had been granted by the union to drill. "Was the rig destroyed?" he was asked. "The derrick was blowed up by some kind of compound." The quantity of the "compound" was enough to shake windows six miles distant. The derrick and the machinery were "cheapened" into junk. "Did you ever know of a case of any man's derrick and apparatus being blown up in the oil region before the formation of this association?" one of the shut-downers was asked. "I could not say that I do."[289] The owner of the apparatus destroyed, it was stated by the press, had been repeatedly requested to join the shut-down, but had refused. There were several such occurrences, recalling the affairs at the Buffalo refinery in 1885.[290] When the people in Pennsylvania saw apostles of the gospel of making oil cheap enter into a bargain with them to make it scarce, it is not surprising that they should have become bewildered to the point of thinking that the noise of nitro-glycerine was "good talk," and should have sunk into the depression, monetary and moral, that alone could make such haggard faces rise among an honest laborious people. We have seen how the refiners who pass under the control of the trust are compelled to make monthly reports. The same perfectness of discipline appears at once among the producers in this shut-down. Every one of them had to make monthly reports of how much oil he had taken out of the earth. If the mobilization of industry goes on at the rate of recent years, it will not be long--not later, perhaps, than the end of the nineteenth century--before all producers, and all makers, will be sending monthly reports to New York of grain, cattle, iron, wool, lumber, leather, and the manufactures of them to trustees, whose "pleasure it is to try to make them"--the men as well as the commodities--"cheap." The supervision by means of these monthly reports was so close that over-production, however minute, was immediately known. If the owner of a well over-produced only the one-hundredth of a barrel, he got a notice to go slower.[291] To the producers engaged in it the result of the shut-down was that when their representatives at the end of it called on the oil combination in New York for the profits on the 5,000,000 barrels of oil set apart for them, as agreed, they were given a check for a sum between $200,000 and $250,000.[292] This was divided among those who had co-operated--nearly one thousand--in proportion to their share in the good work of making the supply of the light of the people so much "less per day." The drama of industry has not many scenes more striking than this of these men--the principal producers of the oil country, which had yielded in the thirty years up to this time more than 300,000,000 barrels of oil--going to the great syndicate in New York to buy the privilege of restricting the production of their own wells, thankfully accepting the scanty profits on a speculative deal in the oil exchange of 5,000,000 barrels, receiving with emotions of enthusiasm a check for a couple of hundred thousand dollars for a year's "co-operation" from the men who had made out of their product hundreds of millions. The shut-down was a great disappointment in prices. The average price of petroleum at the wells for October, the month before the shut-down, was 70-7/8 cents a barrel. The highest monthly price reached during the restriction was 93-5/8, in March, 1888. The average for October, 1888, the last month of the year originally agreed upon, was 90-5/8. By a subsequent understanding the restriction was continued until July, 1889. The price then was 95-1/8. At no time during the shut-down was the coveted dollar mark maintained, and it was barely touched in March, 1888, after which there was a sharp decline to 71-3/8 in June, with savage losses to "the lambs." High prices did not come until the accumulation of 6,000,000 barrels set aside "for the use" of the producers had been sold out. After that there were in the winter following--1889-90--a few months in which the price rose, as to $1.12-1/2 in November, 1889, but it sank the year following to 60-3/4 in December, 1890, and it continued to go down until crude oil reached 50 cents in October, 1892, the lowest point known since there was an oil market.[293] The men with whom the producers made their bargain, shrewder than they, and versed in the dynamics of the markets, knew that the effect of setting apart 6,000,000 barrels of oil would be ultimately depressive to prices, not stimulating. Not knowing when or at what price this vast amount would be unloaded, buyers, both for use and for speculation, would be made timid, and prices would be held in check. The shut-down produced a great gambling mania. Untold millions were lost by men in the oil country, who gambled on the exchanges to make the profits of the expected advance. Local panics, bank failures, ruin in all its shapes, were the escort of shame and loss which marched with the shut-down. Curiously enough, it was those who speculated for the rise who were the losers. There was against them an element which knew better than they what prices were going to be, for it made them. It is this ability of insiders to bet on a certainty which has been the destruction of the oil exchanges. From Pittsburg to New York they are now practically all dead. The amount of the reduction effected by the shut-down, independent of a natural decline which had set in some months before, has been estimated at 11,000,000 to 15,000,000 barrels. The production ran down from 25,798,000 barrels in 1886 to 21,478,883 in 1887, and 16,488,688 in 1888. In 1889 it was up to 21,487,435 again, and in 1890, 29,130,910. The price of light advanced. When the negotiations were in progress the producers were told that if the flow of oil glutting the market could be stopped the price of refined could be advanced, and that for every eighth of a cent a gallon advance in it the producers could expect an advance of 4 cents a barrel on their crude oil. Refined advanced during the shut-down to a price to correspond to which the crude should have risen to 96 cents a barrel. Instead, its price fell to 78 cents. The committee went to New York "to protest." Their New York ally said there was no change in the markets of the world. That they could get the price for the refined, but they did not propose to hold up the price of the crude. "If we could not do that, they could not help it." "He had refined to sell, and crude to buy?" "Yes, sir."[294] This shut-down, the New York _Tribune_ said, was "one of the most interesting economical experiments made in recent years." It was, as the New York _World_ said, "one of the largest restrictive movements ever attempted in commerce." The president of the trust, when examined on February 27, 1888, by the New York Legislature, as to the agreement for the shut-down, declared positively that nothing of the kind had been done. "There has been no such agreement?" he was asked. "Oh no, sir!... Oil has run freely all the time." "And no attempt to do that?" "No, sir."[295] He afterwards recalled these denials, and excused himself on the ground that as he had been in Europe when the arrangement was made he had known of it only "incidentally."[296] A "shut-down" on facts is as necessary to the success of the schemes for scarcity as a shut-down in oil. There are too many facts, as well as too much oil. "By advancing the price of the crude material you necessarily advance the price of the refined?" another of the combination was asked. "Yes, sir."[297] The average price of refined at New York for export was 6.75 cents a gallon in 1887. This rose to 7.50 in 1888, the highest average price for any year between 1885 and 1893.[298] The effect of the restriction--"one of the most extensive ever attempted in commerce"--was thus to make oil and light and all its other products scarcer and dearer. The producers really got no good. After the shut-down had been in progress five months, their committee issued an address congratulating them on the "glorious results" achieved in the fidelity with which the pledge of restriction had been kept, but continued, "But prices are not yet remunerative."[299] "We do not seem to have gotten it," one of the producers said to Congress, referring to the assistance they expected in an advance of the price to profitable figures.[300] No lasting gain came to any one unless to the monopoly, and it is possibly too soon to tell whether its gain will be "lasting." Part of the speculation was that the profits of 2,000,000 barrels, contributed equally by the combination and the producers, were to be distributed among the working-men affected by the loss of employment. Men who had been earning $12 a day received a dollar a day from this fund, and lay idle.[301] A blistering picture of the condition of the region is to be seen in the testimony of one of the producers. "The payments that you have made, or that your assembly has made, have been to individuals?" "Yes, sir." "State what the character of the occupation of the individuals thus relieved was in relation to the shut-in." "Pumpers and roustabout men who had families sick and impoverished. That was a source of relief to them, and we did not withhold it. It was in our community, and we thought we could well afford to allow them that." "For what did you pay them?" "For charity's sake." "Did you give them any occupation?" "We had it not to give; we gave them money instead."[302] This was the melancholy end of the great shut-down. But the people were not broken by their new failure. They did not lie long in the cul-de-sac into which they had been trapped. There is a magnificent reserve force of public spirit and love of liberty in the province of William Penn and the chosen State of Benjamin Franklin. The oil business has been a thirty years' war. The people have been whipped until one would suppose defeat had become part of their daily routine, but there have always been enough good men who did not know they were beaten to begin fighting again early the next morning. It was so when the independents of Pennsylvania took the pool of the oil trust's pipe lines and the railroads before the Interstate Commerce Commission, only to reap the unexpected demonstration that the tribunal created by Congress to prevent and punish discrimination was but one more theatre for litigation and delay.[303] Leaving their cause on the floor of the Interstate Commerce Commission, these men went forth for the seventy and seventh time to build a pipe line of their own, on which they are now busy. Their numbers, resources, and hopes are less, but their will and courage are undiminished. To-day, in northwestern and western Pennsylvania this small, determined body of men are going forward with a new campaign in their gallant struggle for the control of their own business. Their efforts have been, a friendly observer says, not too warmly, as heroic and noble and self-sacrificing as the uprising of a nation for independence. Of all this very little has been known outside the oil regions, for the reason that the newspapers there are mostly owned or controlled by the oil combination,[304] or fear its power. The last independent daily in northwestern Pennsylvania became neutral when the threat was made to place a rival in the field. With sympathy from but few of the home press, ridiculed by the "reptile" papers, and met at every turn by crushing opposition, and annoyances great and little from spies and condottieri, these men are, in 1894, working quietly and manfully to cut their way through to a free market and a right to live. Their new pipe line has been met with the same unrelenting, open, and covert warfare that made every previous march to the sea so weary. The railroads, the members of the oil combination, and every private interest these could influence have been united against them. As all through the history of the independent pipe lines, the officials of the railways have exhausted the possibilities of opposition. At Wilkes-barre, where a great net-work of tracks had to be got under, all the roads united to send seven lawyers into court to fight for injunctions against the single-handed counsel for the producers. They pleaded again the technicalities which had been invoked afresh at every crossing, although always brushed away by the judges, as they were here again. Though they have allowed their right of way to be used without charge for pipe lines which were to compete with them, the railroads refused to allow the independents to make a crossing, even though they had the legal right to cross. Not content with the champerty of collusive injunctions, they have resorted to physical force, and the pipe-layers of the independents have been confronted by hundreds of armed railroad employés. When they have dug trenches, the railroad men have filled them up as fast. Appeal to the courts has always given the right of way to the independents, but the tactics against them are renewed at every crossing because they cost them heart and money, and they have not the same unlimited supply of the latter as of the former. Their telegraph-poles have been cut down, lawyers and land-agents have been sent in advance of them to make leases of the farmers for a year or two of the land it was known they would want. For a few dollars earnest-money to bind the bargain, a great deal of land can be tied up in such ways. In some cases conditional offers would be made guaranteeing the owner five times as much as the independents would give, whatever that might be. Further to cripple them, a bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania Legislature and strongly pushed, repealing the law giving pipe-line companies the right of eminent domain. The Erie, which has let the combination lay its pipe lines upon its right of way, and bore there for oil,[305] has been conspicuous in its efforts to prevent the new pipe line from getting through. The line at last reached Hancock, New York; there it had to pass under the Erie Railroad bridge in the bed of the river. The last Saturday night in November, 1892, the quiet of Hancock was disturbed by the arrival of one hundred armed men, railroad employés, by special train. They unlimbered a cannon, established a day and night patrol, built a beacon to be fired as an appeal for reinforcements, put up barracks, and left twenty men to go into winter quarters. Dynamite was part of their armament, and they were equipped with grappling-irons, cant-hooks, and other tools to pull the pipe up if laid. Cannon are a part of the regular equipment of the combination, as they are used to perforate tanks in which the oil takes fire. To let the "independents" know what they were to expect the cannon was fired at ten o'clock at night, with a report that shook the people and the windows for miles about. These opponents of competition were willing and ready to kill though their rights were dubious, and there could be no pretence that full satisfaction could not be got through the courts if any wrong was done. For weeks Hancock remained in a state of armed occupation by a private military force. Referring to this demonstration with a private army at a moment of profound peace, the Buffalo _Express_ said of those responsible for it: "They continue to fight with their old weapons--incendiarism and riot." No case has been come across in which the railroads made any opposition in the courts to the oil trust crossing under their tracks with its pipe line. More than once the railroads have allowed this rival carrier to lay its pipes side by side with their rails. "Now, is your pipe line to New York laid upon the right of way of any railroad?" "It touches at times the Erie road, and crosses the Erie road." "Did you pay anything for that to them?" "No, sir." "Nothing?" "Nothing."[306] But never have the railroads failed to compel an independent pipe line to fight through the courts for every crossing it needed. It has made no difference how often or emphatically the law has sustained the right of the people to make such crossings. The next attempt would be resisted on the same ground, and with the same desperate determination "to overcome competition" for the favorite. The local line laid by the independents in 1892 between Coraopolis and Titusville had to pass under the Erie, the Lake Shore, the Pan Handle, the Western New York, and the Pennsylvania railroads, and in every case had to encounter needless litigation to do so. It was victorious, for the roads did not dare go to trial, though the managers, one after the other, to help cripple competition, spent the money of the stockholders in what was perfectly well known to be a hopeless opposition. A correspondent of the Bradford _Record_ wrote: "When the news reached Bradford that the Erie Railroad had sold her independence to the combination, that the latter might defeat honorable competition and continue to rob the people, that one hundred men and a cannon confronted the United States Pipe Line at Hancock, who could have censured the outraged producers of Bradford for blowing the great Kinzua viaduct out of the Kinzua valley? Who could blame the bankrupt producers of the oil country for destroying every dollar's worth of the combination's property wherever found? The people are getting desperate; they are ready, like the blind Samson, to pull down the pillars of the temple, even though they themselves fall crushed to death amid the ruins." These are wild, even wicked words, but is it not a portent that such words rise out of the heart of an honest community? This opposition, with show of force and threats of violence, was successful. In February, 1893, after months of facing the cannon and the private army which the railroad maintained for the oil combination, it was publicly announced by the president of the new pipe line that the route by Hancock must be abandoned. Many thousands of dollars and time worth even more were lost. "Suppose," said a daily paper of Binghamton, "that a body of laboring men had unlimbered a cannon and stationed armed men to suppress competition, what denunciation of the outrage there would have been!" A new way through Wilkes-barre was chosen after the retreat from Hancock, and by that route the independent producers and refiners, with hope long deferred, are now seeking to finish their march to the sea. The producers are poor men, and their resources for this unequal contest come from the sale of oil, and day by day the price of oil was depressed until it sank to the neighborhood of half a dollar a barrel. There has been some recovery since, but still the lowest prices of many years are being made, and the producers are finding the burden of their escape very heavy. "It is the honest belief of all oil men," says one of them, "that the low price of oil for the year is due to efforts to make the producer so poor that he cannot carry through his pipe line." This is the enterprise of the independent refiners as well as producers. Against these refiners, therefore, the market for refined oil also is manipulated. Very fantastic have been the operations of the "unchanging" laws of supply and demand under this manipulation. The independents found that in the export market of New York, in the spring of 1894, petroleum, just as it came from the pipe line crude from the nether earth, was quoted at a higher price a barrel than the same oil after it had gone through all the processes of refining and was aboard ship ready for the lamps of Europe or Asia.[307] To throw another obstacle in the way of the new line, the oil trust in 1893 began again the game of 1878, of refusing to relieve producers of their oil with its pipe lines. As in 1878, the oil was left to run to waste. Then, the object was to compel the producers to sell it "always below the market";[308] now, it was to force them to sign a contract not to patronize any other pipe lines. Producers who refused to sign this contract, in order to be free to join the new line when it was finished, were refused an outlet, and they had to pump their oil on the ground while appealing to the courts to compel this common carrier to do its duty.[309] When they applied for a mandamus the combination receded from its position without waiting for a trial. This has been a warfare on more than a new competitor; it is an attempt to suppress improvement and invention. A new idea in oil transportation, which promises a revolution in the industry, was hit upon by these independents. This was that pipe lines could be used to send refined oil long distances to market as well as crude. The announcement of their plans to do this was met with the ridicule of those who control the existing pipe lines to the seaboard and do not wish to see their old-fashioned methods of piping crude oil alone disturbed. But the independents went on with their idea. They have proved it practicable. Now, for the first time in the history of the oil industry, a pipe line transports oil ready for the lamp. Refined oil is piped from Titusville to Wilkes-barre with no loss of quality. Many hundred thousand barrels of it have been piped for nearly three hundred miles, and not a barrel has been rejected by the inspection, either at New York or its destination abroad. The success of the experiment proves that it can be piped to New York. The independents press on. Occasionally one of them, says a local journal, unhinged by the loss of property, commits suicide or is taken to an insane asylum, and another goes down out of sight in bankruptcy, but the others close the ranks and go on, and now about 4000 men, in a strongly organized association, are marching side by side towards the sea--the blue and free.[310] CHAPTER XIII PURCHASE OF PEACE Hunting about for tax-dodgers, it was discovered by the authorities of Pennsylvania some years ago that many foreign corporations were doing business within the limits of the Commonwealth and enjoying the protection of her laws, and at the same time not paying for it. Foremost among these delinquents stood the principal company in the oil combination with its mammoth capital, practically buying, refining and controlling nearly the entire oil production of the State, "and yet failing to pay one cent into the public treasury." So wrote the Auditor-General to his successor in 1882. The combination, beginning, like creation, with nothing, had grown, until in 1883 it was so rich that, according to the testimony of one of its members, it owned "between $40,000,000 and $50,000,000" in Pennsylvania alone.[311] But though doing business in Pennsylvania, and legally within the grasp of the taxing power, as decided by the courts, this company paid no taxes, and would not give the State the information called for by law as to its taxable property. It practised "voluntary taxation." "For eight years," Auditor-General Schell says, "it had been doing business in this Commonwealth, and had failed in all that time to file a single report." "It was not necessary for the department to call upon it to make reports." The law required these reports specifically and in details that could not be misunderstood, and that was notification enough. But year after year the Auditor-Generals, whose duty it was to collect due contribution from each taxpayer, made special demands upon this one for reports in compliance with the law, but with no effect. In 1878 William P. Schell became Auditor-General, and began, shortly after taking his oath, to see if he could find out what taxes were due from this concern, and how they could be collected. He sent official circulars to the company in 1878, 1879, 1880, but "there was no reply made at any time."[312] His predecessor had had the same experience. He then sent one of his force to Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York to investigate. Whenever he could get the names of persons familiar with the workings of the company he would visit them, to find himself usually "not much further ahead than when he started."[313] "It was impossible to get any information. Even the men we talked to deceived us. Men came to Harrisburg to give us information, and afterwards we found they were in the interests of the company."[314] The department found itself, the Auditor-General wrote to his successor, "foiled at all points, not only by the refusal of the company to respond to the notices sent to its officers, but also by the great reticence of all persons in any manner connected with or employed by the company." These efforts to find out the nature and character of the business of the company extended through two or three years. The first workable indication that the company was taxable in Pennsylvania came when the Governor of Ohio, in answer to inquiries, sent the Attorney-General a copy of the charter of the company. The Auditor-General wrote to the Governor and Auditor-General of New York and the Governor of Ohio for information. Letters were sent to the president and principal members of the company at Cleveland, Oil City, New York, and elsewhere. An answer was finally received from the company's attorney. He said that the company was not subject to taxation. The department replied the same day refusing to accept this view, and insisting on reports. Then the lawyer replied that the books and papers "were at Cleveland, and it would take some time to prepare reports." The Auditor-General offered to send his clerk to Cleveland "by first train," to prepare the reports for the company if assurance was given that he would be permitted to examine the books of the company when he got there. No reply to this request was ever received. Then telegrams were sent, several days in succession, asking for reports, offering more time if the company would agree to report within any reasonable time, and finally warning the company that if it did not comply with the law and file its reports the Auditor-General would act under the authority given him by the law, and charge it with taxes estimated on such "reasonable data" as he could procure. All the department could get were evasive letters or telegrams from the counsel in New York, such as "letter explaining on the way." The letter came with the valuable information that "the officers are out of the city, and the company will answer on their return." Another "reply" was: "I have failed to get replies from the absent officers."[315] No reports forthcoming, the Auditor-General at last, on the best information he could get, backed by affidavits which were placed on file in the archives of his office, calculated the taxes due from 1872 to 1881, with penalties, at $3,145,541.64. This was totalled on an estimate, supported by affidavit, that the profits of the company had been two to three millions a year from 1872 to 1876, and ten to twelve millions a year from 1876 to 1880, figures which what is now known show to have been near the truth. After fixing upon this amount, and before charging it against the company, the latter was given still another chance, and another. Two telegrams were sent notifying that the estimated tax would be entered up if "the refusal to report" was persisted in. The last telegram said: "Still hoping that reports will come from the company, so that we will have some data to act upon." No word of reply came. Then the Auditor-General formally entered the amount he had estimated on his books, as the law authorized him to do.[316] His investigations had consumed his entire term, and the filing of this estimate was almost his last official act. It is a fact of record that after all this, officers of the company, in seeking to have this estimate of taxes due set aside, stated in writing that "there was no neglect or refusal on the part of said company to furnish any report or information which could lawfully be required of it by any officer or under any law of the State of Pennsylvania."[317] Suit was now brought by the Attorney-General of the State to recover this tax, as was his duty, and then the company began to stir itself. To assist him in procuring and interpreting evidence the Attorney-General, who knew nothing of the oil business, obtained the services of a man who knew more about it than any one else in Pennsylvania. This person was a practical oil man. He was one of the leaders of the producers and refiners' association, which in the exciting times of 1872, when law and order in Pennsylvania stood on the edge of a crater, compelled the railroads to abandon the South Improvement scheme, "in name," and to give in writing the pledge that "all arrangements for the transportation of oil after this date shall be upon the basis of perfect equality to all," though he could not find a way to make them keep the pledge. He was prominent six years later in the uprising of the people when they found that all these promises were being broken, and all their rights on the highways being violated. It was largely through his influence that the producers determined to proceed against the oil combination as a criminal conspiracy, and procured the indictment of its principals in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, on charges of crime.[318] "When," as was said before the Pennsylvania Legislative Committee of 1883, "the doors of the penitentiary were gaping wide to receive them; when a true bill had been found before the Grand Jury; when, if they ever were in jeopardy before to-day, they were in jeopardy." He was chairman of the Committee on Transportation of the Oil Producers' Association, and was one of the "legal committee" of five who represented the producers in having the "anti-discrimination suits" brought and pushed against the Pennsylvania Railroad by the State in 1879. By these suits the discriminations and favoritisms, which, though known, it had till then been impossible to prove, were forced into the light as facts, and the evidence was furnished without which the indictments just referred to could not have been found. When the accused, frightened at last, succeeded in getting the aroused producers to agree not to push the criminal trial, in consideration of a solemn pledge that all secrecy and favoritism in transportation should be given up, he withdrew from the negotiations and would not sign the compromise. He had assisted the Congressional Committees of Commerce at Washington in 1872 and 1876 in their ill-starred investigations, and had been active in the effort to get another investigation begun in 1880. He had also been one of the principal witnesses before the New York Legislative investigation of 1879. For eighteen years he had been on this quest. With him the Attorney-General now arranged to get the evidence on which the State could support its claim for taxes. The members of the great corporation saw that they must act. In out-going Auditor-General Schell they had met the first officer of the people who was as determined to make them pay as they were not to pay. The policy of silence and nullification was abandoned. One of the members of the trust came in person to the State capital to see the Attorney-General. He made an unexpected overture. He volunteered to furnish the State with a full disclosure of the facts it needed to prove its claim. "I confess," said the Deputy Attorney-General, "that I little knew in what direction to cross-examine him."[319] He therefore sent for the expert who had been employed by the Attorney-General. The "trustee" protested against his presence; but the Deputy Attorney-General said that he had been employed by the State, and it would be necessary that he should take part. The representative of the trust, moved, as he afterwards testified, by the patriotic consideration that "the regular cumbersome way of taking oral testimony ... would result in great labor and expense to the State, and would be an obstruction and labor to us that could be avoided," made a suggestion that the State go to the trial of the case upon a statement of facts of their business which he and his associates would make. This offer to become a volunteer witness was agreed to, and the delinquent corporation and the State went into court with an "agreement as to facts." The Attorney-General reserved for the State the right to add to these facts, but did not at any time during the proceedings do so. His expert shrewdly foresaw that another defeat for the people was to be the result of this policy. "I objected very strenuously," he says. "It was my pet scheme to examine them orally in court or by commission, and I gave it up very reluctantly. I told the Attorney-General I could not believe those gentlemen were in earnest, that I knew I could ask a string of questions of any one of them which if answered would have given the case away to the State."[320] But the Attorney-General, the same who as counsel for the people, in 1879, against the members of the same corporation, led his clients to defeat, overruled him. The old campaigner saw the mistake of 1880 about to be repeated, and an agreement with the offenders substituted for trial and for the defeat of them he believed would follow. He determined to prevent the consummation of this second catastrophe. He sent his counsel to New York to the headquarters of the oil combination with a notice that he would not adhere to the bargain made by the Attorney-General at Harrisburg with reference to "the agreement of facts." "I propose to attack," was the message he sent.[321] He was to have received compensation from the State. He believed that this gave him an interest in the matter sufficient to gain a footing in the courts for action by himself independently of the Attorney-General. In pursuance of this idea, when the case came up for trial, he appeared with his private counsel ready to take part in the proceedings if permitted. The notice of attack was received "with surprise," but was met with a characteristic move. "I raised the question with him"--the counsel--"as to what possible motive" his client "had in the matter," the "trustee" testifies, "and as to whether it would not be better for him to desist from it; whether it would not be possible for us, if he was needing business, to find some position in which he could legitimately earn a living."[322] The lawyer replied that he had no right to treat on any such basis, and withdrew from all connection with the case. But this was the opening of a negotiation which through another lawyer "resulted," as the expert of the State afterwards confessed, "in peace between us." He had given notice that he meant to attack, and the "negotiation" which followed "was whether anybody would give me as much as there was in my contract with the State if I would not attack."[323] Meanwhile the Attorney-General marched gayly to another defeat of his client--the people--going into court with no other ammunition than the facts furnished by the men he was suing. He did not put his expert, nor the Auditor-General, nor his assistant, nor the men on whose information and affidavits the estimate had been made of taxes due, nor any one else on the stand. He was "perfectly satisfied," he says, "that these facts were true," and that the company were "in good faith doing exactly what they undertook to do--namely, to furnish me with all the information that was necessary to establish the Commonwealth case."[324] His method was as singular with the argument as with the testimony. He insisted, in opposition to the opinion of Auditor-General Schell, that such a corporation must pay taxes on all its capital stock, whether it represented property in the State or out of it. The court decided against him. It held that it was taxable "only on so much of its capital stock as was represented by the business and property of the company within the State." As to what the amount of this property and business within the State was the court took the facts furnished by the delinquent itself, as they were the only ones presented to it by the Attorney-General. The amount originally charged for taxes by Auditor-General Schell, who had forced the fighting, was $3,145,541.64. The Attorney-General, on his mistaken theory of the law and on the facts volunteered by those he was suing, had "split the difference" and sued for only $796,642.20. The court cut this down to $33,270.59, and on appeal this was still further reduced to $22,660.10.[325] This decision was not final or conclusive as to either the State or the company, both of whom afterwards sued out writs of error. The expert, who had been pushed to one side, at once determined to take what steps he could to reopen the case and mend the fortunes of the State. The moment the decision was announced he telegraphed the Attorney-General again for another conference, and was told to come to Philadelphia. He told the Attorney-General that he thought "the hope of the State to get the largest amount of money was to get a rehearing and let us have an oral examination." But the "satisfied" Attorney-General refused to do anything but carry the same argument and the same agreement of facts up to the Supreme Court. He refused to move for a new trial, and not only told his expert so, but told the "trustee" so. The trustee, by one of those coincidences which prove how much better it is to be born lucky than rich, happened to have come at the same time to stay in the same hotel with the Attorney-General. It was in vain that the expert pointed out omissions of property and facts which he thought "had not been clearly shown in the agreement as to facts," and afterwards other matters he had discovered. After the defeat of the State he prepared an affidavit containing additional facts. He employed an attorney in the preparation of this affidavit and a petition to the court to have the case reopened. His purpose was "to get another chance at this trial." "To get another trial?" "Anything." "Another hearing?" "Anything." Anything to prevent the miscarriage of this last attempt to "round up" the men he had been trying for nearly twenty years to bring to justice. The Attorney-General would not present this petition. After this, still before the final decision, he saw the Attorney-General again to renew his pressure for a change of policy. Three times he saw the Attorney-General to lay his additional facts before him, and urge that a different method of conducting the case be tried.[326] Some of the new points he raised the Attorney-General referred and deferred to the company he was pursuing, and "we showed him how they were fully included in the statement rendered by us to the State, and he (the Attorney-General) expressed his entire satisfaction with every point raised." Others of the new points the Attorney-General declared to be "immaterial."[327] The Attorney-General showed no wish to bring proof into the case of any facts except those furnished by the people being sued. Although the decision of the lower court had been a warning that the theory on which the State had gone into court was bad, and that the amount of taxes to be recovered depended on the amount of tangible property in the State, he refused to use the right he acknowledged he had--to call other witnesses, to put the men who had made the agreed statement of facts upon the stand, and cross-examine them. From the Attorney-General, who knew little of either the facts, as he confessed, or the law as the court declared it, who accepted their statements as gospel, and who asked them whether new facts offered him should be admitted into his side of the case against them, the company had nothing to fear. But this old opponent of theirs, whom the Attorney-General had employed, was at large, and was a dangerous man. He knew the facts; he had the right theory of the law; he was tremendously in earnest. The case had only got as far as the first decision of the lower court. There were still opportunities for all kinds of legal proceedings. By virtue of this contract he claimed such an interest in the proceedings as to give him a right to ask the courts to interfere. He might get a new trial and carry out his "pet scheme of oral examination." He might rouse the people as he had roused them before. He might interfere through the Legislature. He might raise a storm which could not be quieted until in this suit, or some other, his pet plan might be carried out, of getting these silent gentlemen into a witness-box. He considered himself to be in the service of the State. "I was under a contract with the State,"[328] he says. And we find the Attorney-General in close consultation with him in Philadelphia down to the very last day. The company sees that something must be done, and does it. Its "trustee" calls upon the expert at his hotel.[329] He renews the suggestion he had made in New York when word had been sent by the expert that he would not be bound by the agreement of facts, and "proposed to attack." He finds his man cast down, utterly discouraged by the decision of the lower court and the attitude of the Attorney-General. Time and again he had seen the people denied justice, and their enemies escape even so much as the necessity of appearing in court. He had seen, in every one of the proceedings against them, from 1872 to 1880, committees of Congress, State governors, judges of the Supreme courts, State legislatures, attorney-generals, railroad officials, every trustee of the people, wilt, like green leaves in a fire, before this flashing wealth. His resolution gave way. He was to have received, under his agreement with the Attorney-General, in salary and commissions, $23,000, or less, according to the amount recovered. That he saw fading out of sight in consequence of the, to him, inexplicable course of the Attorney-General. Every one else who had tried to stand up for the people against this power had gone down; why should he be quixotic and poor? "We want peace," the "trustee" said, and the, till then, faithful friend of the people sold him all he had of that commodity for $15,400, to be paid in instalments, and a salary of $5000 for a year. "I proposed to reopen it"--the case--"and I did not." "Why did you not?" "Simply because I was assured I should have just as much money out of the transaction as my original contract would have paid me." This confession made on the stand, under the strain of cross-examination in a civil suit in which he was a witness, startled the country with its first hint of the real cause of the failure of the great tax case, and led to an investigation by the Legislature of Pennsylvania.[330] The first payment was $7500. This was paid, not in a check, as is the usual method between business men in legitimate transactions, but in bank-notes--$500's or $1000's.[331] That this method of payment was inconvenient and unusual was shown by the statement of the recipient, that he went to the Chemical Bank and got a bank certificate for his $7500 of bank-notes. "Of course I did not carry that amount of money around with me.[332] Bank-notes and bank drafts, not the company's checks, were used in the succeeding payments also. "In sending him money to Titusville, where you had a bank account, why did you not send him a check on your own bank or draft?" "Well, there was nobody at Titusville who had any knowledge of the matter. It was not necessary to acquaint them with it," said the "trustee."[333] This representative of the company was diligent in business, as he understood business, and was always forehanded. He made the first moves and kept the lead. He went all the way to Harrisburg to meet the Attorney-General. He got control of the case by making the overture to volunteer testimony. He called first on the lawyer sent to New York with notice of "attack," called first on the State's expert in Philadelphia and New York, made the first suggestion for "peace," and got it "cheap."[334] But after he had bought "peace" the next interview is at the company's office. The other man must walk now. When put on the stand, the purchaser, of course, denied that this "purchase of peace" had anything to do with the case against his company, or with the suppression of the only expert in the employ of the State in that suit. "With reference to the tax case," he said, "the payment of this money had no bearing whatever." "Then why did you pay him the money?" "Well, I have already said, two or three times, that I paid him the money for the purpose of having him desist from further malicious attacks upon our company." The man of whom he had bought "peace" was not then engaged in any proceedings against "our company," except the tax case. He had been engaged in nothing for two years, since the proceedings of the Producers' Association in 1880. There were no other movements in prospect. The only war, actual or contemplated, was this tax war. Pressed through several pages of cross-examination, and challenged to name a single instance of war by this man upon them, at the time of the purchase of "peace," or since 1880, which would account for their willingness to pay him so large a sum, he was finally forced to say: "I cannot do it."[335] The Attorney-General, who had thought it unnecessary to collect more testimony by putting the defendants on the stand under oath, testified, of course, that there had been no suppression of testimony. The seller of peace himself, when he was afterwards brought to book before the Legislature, attempted to stand to a similar denial that he had in any way been unfaithful to his trust as the expert of the State and representative of the people. But he broke down. He was asked if his agreement with the company had any relation to this case. "Unquestionably. To all cases--this case and all others." "You were to do nothing further for the Commonwealth in this or any other case?" "Precisely." "If the Supreme Court had subsequently reversed the case, and it had gone back for a new trial, and had been tried before a jury, so that the company's officers could have been subpoenaed and compelled to testify, would you then, after receiving this money, have been at liberty to assist in getting that testimony together for the Commonwealth, and aiding the Commonwealth?" "I should say not." "You were free to do it prior to your arrangement?" "Certainly." "By whom was it"--the negotiation--"begun?" he was asked. "By the representative of the company," he replied, naming him.[336] When this bargain was arranged and the first payment made only an opinion had been filed. No judgment had been entered. There was still time to make any one of many moves. Reargument and new trial both were possible. These men seduced this representative of the people only to cast him aside, as seducers always do. They did not pay him "cash down" when they bought his "peace," but in instalments, and part of his pay was in the shape of $5000 for a year's service for which he was to do no work. This kept the whip-hand of him until the tax matter was finally settled and irrevocably past reopening. When that had been done they cast him off with scorching contumely. The secretary of the trust waved him into obloquy as a black-mailer. When the trustee who negotiated the "peace" was before the committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1883 which investigated this miscarriage of justice in the tax cases, he was asked if the man of whom he had bought "peace" had used the positions he had held in the producers' and other associations to further his own ends. He answered: "I think he would prostitute anything to further his own mercenary ends."[337] The committee of the Legislature appointed to investigate this "purchase of peace" furnishes in its report the facts we have recited, which were uncontradicted, but declares that the transactions they disclose "did not prejudice the rights of the Commonwealth," and that nobody had done anything wrong. An effort was made after the failure of the tax case to get the Attorney-General of the State to issue a warrant against the purchaser of peace, upon which he could have been held to trial in a criminal court for bribery and corrupt solicitation of a public officer. An affidavit charging the crime in the usual form was presented to the Attorney-General. There was by this time a new Attorney-General, but he ditched this move with the same skill for the management of his adversaries' case that his predecessor had exhibited in the tax suit. He demanded that affidavit be made by some one who could testify to the bribery of his personal knowledge before the committing magistrate. As the facts were known only to the two principals, and neither of them could be expected to come forward to make affidavit and application for his own commitment, the Attorney-General demanded the impossible.[338] The fact of bribery was publicly known by the confession under oath of one of these principals, and the Attorney-General had been presented with the affidavit of a citizen, prepared in due and regular form, upon which he could have proceeded to issue a warrant, as is done in the case of less powerful offenders. Failing with the Attorney-General to have this transaction taken into the courts, the effort was renewed with the committee the Legislature had appointed to investigate. It was asked to do as committees had done before--to send the case to a criminal court and let it be tried. The distinguished lawyer acting for the people before the committee offered to appear as a volunteer Attorney-General in the prosecution of the trustee. "There is not an honest jury," he said, "in the State of Pennsylvania which upon the testimony would not send him to the penitentiary for the crime of bribery."[339] The committee refused to send the matter to the courts. Upon the only occasion when the "Trustees" seemed in real danger of being brought in person and on specific charges to trial, criminally, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania saved them. In the Clarion County cases it took the unprecedented step of interfering with the criminal jurisdiction of the lower courts. It was in reference to this that Mr. Gowen said before the Committee of Commerce of Congress in 1880: "I was a member of the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, and I know that if that convention did anything effectively it was when it declared that the Supreme Court should not have original jurisdiction in criminal cases, and yet I have seen three judges of the Supreme Court lay their hands upon an indictment in a county court and hang it up." The effect of this interposition of the Supreme Court is summed up as follows in the history of the contest between the Producers' Union and their powerful antagonists: "This practically terminated the last legal proceeding conducted by the general council of the producers of petroleum." "It was the greatest violation of law," said Mr. Gowen before the Pennsylvania Legislative Committee, "ever committed in the Commonwealth."[340] That some such action might have been expected could be inferred from the remark in _Leading Cases Simplified_, by John D. Lawson, warning the student of the law of carriers "not to pay much heed to the decisions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania--at least, during the past ten or fifteen years. The Pennsylvania Railroad appears to run that tribunal with the same success that it does its own trains."[341] Some time after these events the purchaser of this peace gave some money to a hospital for cancers, and, in recognition of his philanthropy, was made its president. This hospital was for cancers of the body--not for moral cancers of the kind propagated for money by men who corrupt the Commonwealth. It would have been full expiation in the good old times of the priest and the baron Ruskin describes to donate to the cure of an evil a fraction of the profits of the culture of it. The newspapers in May, 1891, chronicled the opening of another pavilion of this hospital, and the delivery of "an interesting address" by the new president. One of the journals remarks that "this interest, combined with his well-known liberality in Church and humane matters generally, suggests a thought concerning the peculiar development on this line of many of our very rich men." But what the "thought" was the journalist did not go on to state. CHAPTER XIV "I WANT TO MAKE OIL" At this writing there is an old man named Samuel Van Syckel, over eighty years of age, partly paralyzed, but still vigorous, living in an obscure back street of Buffalo, very poor, though his fertile brain has helped to make millionaires of many others. Van Syckel's life has been one of ups and downs, possible only in the case of an adventurous mind seeking the golden-fleece in a new industry and in a new country. Of all the brave and ingenious men who have experimented, invented, and pioneered to realize for mankind all the surpassing possibilities of the coming oil age, he is one of the most notable. He had already made and lost one or two fortunes when we find him, about 1860, with a little still in Jersey City, making roof-tar. He was born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, the son of a farmer, and worked on the farm until he was of age, when he went into business. The panic of 1857 caught him with sails wing-a-wing, conducting all at once, and prosperously, grist-mills, linseed-oil mills, grain distilleries--these he had to take for a debt--several stores, cooper-shops, and two or three farms. He failed because he had gone security for others, but he paid 100 cents on the dollar, and went to New York City. There he became a member of the Corn Exchange, and opened a commission-house for the sale of produce. His country friends had such confidence in his honesty and judgment that within six months he had done a business of $400,000. But he discovered that of the 1500 members of the Exchange all but one had failed, and many of them several times. He saw that he was in a position where, through the inability of some other dealer to fulfil his contract, he might be swamped any day, and lose all he had himself and all the thousands intrusted to him by his friends. He had old-fashioned notions about losing friends' money, to himself or to any one else. He left the produce business. He went to making roof-tar in Jersey City, and in 1860 built one of the first refineries for making kerosene out of petroleum. When "Colonel" Drake, in 1859, found out that oil could be got by drilling, Van Syckel was one of those the new source of supply found waiting for it. He began refining in a small way, and, with an ardor which he has carried into everything he has done, he plunged into the study of new ways of refining the oil which then started to flow with embarrassing riches out of thousands of wells. The study of oil-refining became his passion, as, fortunately for us less gifted folk, the study of the effects of heat on clay, of sulphur on the gum of the caoutchouc-tree, of steam on the lid of the teakettle, were in their time passions with Palissy, Goodyear, and Watts. In the work of his life, forcing its secrets out of this difficult liquid, he has been very successful. Earthly reward the old inventor has none, but, sitting in his story-and-a-half cottage, what he mourns most is that he has been and is denied the opportunity of work. Tortured by restless and inventive energy, which age and disappointment and betrayal have not sufficed to snuff out, his continuous word is: "I want to make oil." When petroleum from the new wells began to come to New York, dozens of little stills were built all over the Jersey flats, many of them by Jews and Greeks. "Stills kept burning up all around," he says to his visitor. "Almost every day there was an explosion somewhere from the gases. I told my wife to give me my oldest clothes and send me my meals. I was going to find out all about this business. There was a pile of roofing-gravel under a shed by my stills. I went there and slept and ate, day and night, and watched the stills and the pipes, the gases, the oils, and all. All the sleep and rest I had for months was there. It was while watching these work that my greatest idea came to me, of making oil by a continuous process, so that I could feed in petroleum at one end and have kerosene running out at the other in an unceasing stream, day after day, without stopping the whole establishment, as the oil-refineries still do, every day or two, to cool off and clean up. By the old process, still in use, when the charge in the still of perhaps 1000 barrels had been refined, we had to draw the fires and wait perhaps ten hours--the best part of a day--for the still to cool off, so that the men could go in with iron chisels to chop it all loose and clean it out. This would take four or five men from four to six hours. The still would be idle for a day and a half, and then the same process would have to be gone through with again with every charge. All over the flats the Jews and Greeks kept burning up. The Common Council of Jersey City said we must stop refining. The rest joined a great combination to fight the Common Council, but I made up my mind to go where the oil was produced. I went to Titusville in 1865. I had all the money I could want. Some rich men told me to draw on them up to $100,000 for anything there was 'snacks in' for them." This was about the time the founders of the oil combination began in Cleveland, with "no money." "What makes I found in Titusville!" continued Van Syckel. "I went all up and down the creek. They were glad to get 65 gallons of kerosene out of 100 gallons of petroleum, while I could get 80. I think the head of the oil combination had a little still cocked up in the woods there--a one-horse, pig-pen kind of a place at the bend of the creek, a cobbled-up sort of a mud-hole, with a water-trough to bring the oil to the still. He was not there himself; he stayed in Cleveland. I didn't ever think anything about him then. I was 'way above him. I first saw him some years after, about 1872, in a refiner's office. He was talking up some scheme he had for a combination of refineries. He said he didn't want to have the market overstocked. He was just a common-looking kind of a man among the rest of us there. I saw, when I reached Titusville, that the most money was to be made in shipping oil. I made a dollar a barrel, and in six months I was $100,000 in pocket. The land speculation I wouldn't touch. It was wild. It scared me to see men sitting around on logs, and trading off little pieces of land for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was the first man to lay a pipe line to carry oil up and down the hills of Pennsylvania." "The first successful pipe line," says the United States Census Report of 1885, "was put down by Samuel Van Syckel, of Titusville, in 1865, and extended from Pithole to Miller's Farm, a distance of four miles."[342] "When I first came to the oil country all the oil had to be teamed from the wells to the railways, over roads with no bottom in wet weather. Sometimes a line of teams a mile long would be stuck in the mud. Often the teamsters would dump their load, worth $5 a barrel, and abandon it. Mules would get so discouraged that they would lie down and die in the roadway before they could be helped. The teamsters knew their power. They charged accordingly. They charged for looking at the oil to see how many barrels their teams could draw. They charged extra for every mud-hole they struck, and if the wagon-wheels went to the hubs they doubled their bills. I paid $2 to $4 a barrel for teaming, and was shipping 4000 barrels a week. The teamsters were making more money than the well-owners, and didn't care whether they hauled oil or not. All this set me to thinking. I hit on the pipe line idea, and announced that I would carry the oil by pipe from the wells to the railroad. That was too much for the people of the oil regions. Everybody laughed me down. Even my particular friends, with whom I used to take my meals at the hotel, jeered and gibed me so that I took to coming and going through the back door and through the kitchen, and ate by myself. 'Do you expect to put a girdle around the earth?' was the favorite sarcasm. I knew it would cost a great deal--$100,000 perhaps; but I had the money. I built it--two two-inch lines, side by side--between June and November in 1865, and turned the oil in. The pipe was a perfect success from the first barrel of oil that was pumped in. It flowed, just as I expected, up hill and down dale. The line was four miles long--from the Miller Farm to Pithole--with two or three branches. "Then the teamsters threatened to kill any one who worked on the pipe line or who used it. They would drive astraddle of it, dig down to it, put logging chains around it and pull it out of the ground, and leave the oil, worth $4 to $5 a barrel, running to waste out of the holes. I sent to New York for some carbines, hired 25 men to patrol the line, and put a stop to that. I put up the line as security for some debts owed by my partner, under an agreement that when its profits had paid the debt it was to be returned to me. The debt was wiped out in a few months, but I never got the line back.... I had no money left to sue for it. This was the end of my pipe line. It has grown into a system thousands of miles long, second in importance only to the railroad, and out of it many, many millions of profit have been made, but not a cent has it yielded me. Then I went to refining oil, and, with a partner, built one of the first big refineries in the oil regions. There has been no oil refined in this country since 1870 without the help of my improvements. Some I patented, some I did not. The refiners at Titusville were hard put to it for pure water. I drove pipes through the river into the second gravel under the river, and got the finest cold water there could be. This anticipated the 'driven wells' several years. I put steam into the stills" (this had been done before both by European and American refiners). "I found out how to burn the uncondensable gases. I showed one of my neighbors how to do this, and he saved $20 a day after that in his coal bills, but I got nothing for it. Each new thing I proposed, up would go everybody's hands and eyes, and oh, what a rumbling there would be! I never made money so fast as in this refinery. We did not use the continuous process. I had not patented it, and I had partners whom it would not have been right for me to experiment with. Our profits were over a dollar on every barrel. We sold our product as fast as we could make it. We made $125,000 in fifteen months, although we paid as high as $8 a barrel for crude. I worked like a slave to make good the loss of $100,000 in my pipe line. I worked and watched day and night, and knew I was beating them all making oil. My partners were church elders, who could never find words enough to express their indignation about the way my pipe line had been taken away from me, and so virtuous that they never smoked a cigar nor drank a drop. I got into no end of lawsuits with them, and I lost my property again. I sold a part interest in my patent to some one who was afterwards taken into this oil combination, and it now claims that they own all my patents. They have frightened off or bought off every one who has tried to use any of my inventions." The rest of the old man's story was told by him under oath in a suit he brought against members of the combination.[343] "The idea of continuous distillation, as it was suggested to me at Jersey City, was always in my brain ever since. I made an attempt to construct such works in 1876 under Mr. Cary. I run out of money. I had been robbed out of my pipe line that cost me $100,000, and my oil-refinery in which I had more than $100,000. Mr. Cary said he was going to build a little refinery. He said he had $10,000 that we might use in making oil in a continuous way. We got our lease and broke ground in 1876. We had not got very far--we got the pipe on the ground and some brick and one old-fashioned still--when" the representative of the oil combination, one of its principal members, "came on to the ground ... the 15th of December, 1876. He asked me if I would not take a salary and not build these works in opposition to them. I told him 'No.' Then he wanted I should take a life salary, one that would support me for life comfortably. I told him I did not want his salary; I wanted to build this refinery and make oil in a new continuous way. He then wanted me to let him build it. He said, 'We will build it for you.' I objected to this. He then said that I could make no money if I did refine oil. He also said if I did I could not ship it. He said he would say to me confidentially that they had made such arrangements with the railroads in reference to freight--in reference to getting cars--he knew I could make no money if I did make oil." Almost on the same day--May 14, 1888--on which Van Syckel was giving the jury this undisputed account, sustained by the judge and jury, of how the combination used "arrangements with the railroads" against its rivals, another pioneer, even more distinguished, was relating his almost identical experience before the committee of Congress investigating trusts, May 3, 1888. This was Joshua Merrill, "to whom," said S. Dana Hayes, State Chemist of Massachusetts, "more than to any one else, belongs the honor of bringing this manufacture to its present advanced state."[344] Merrill's inventions and successful labors are described in the United States Census Report on Petroleum, 1885. He was at work guessing the riddles of petroleum as long ago as 1854.[345] From 1866 to 1888 he and his partners ran a refinery at Boston. "What has become of it?" "We have recently dismantled it."[346] For several years their business had been unprofitable. There were two causes, he explained. One was that they made a better quality of oil than the average, at a cost which they could not recoup from the prices established in the market by poorer oils. The other cause was the extraordinary charges made against his firm by the railways in Boston which brought their crude. His firm had their own tank-cars, in which their crude oil came from Pennsylvania. From Olean to Boston his freight cost him the last few years 50 cents a barrel. From the depot in Boston, to get it over two miles of track to his refinery, cost him $10 a car, or about $1.25 a barrel. This was at the rate of about 42-1/2 cents a ton a mile. The average freight rate for the United States is about half a cent a ton a mile. His rate was an advance of 8400 per cent. on the average. He appealed to the Railroad Commission of Massachusetts. "We wrote to the commissioners that we thought the charge was very high, and they ought to interfere to have it reduced. But it was not done. "We made repeated efforts, personal solicitations, to the railroad officers, and to the railroad commissioners also, but it was the established rate."[347] Two roads participated in this charge of $10 for hauling a car two miles. One of these was the New York and New England road, whose haul was a mile and a half, and its charge $6. "Who was president of the New York and New England road?" The dismantled witness's experience had made him timid. "I do not know." "Do you not know," he was asked, "that one of the oil trustees is president?" "Yes, sir."[348] The same railroad is the principal New England link in the lines of circumvallation which the combination in coal, hard and soft, American and Nova Scotian, is drawing about the homes and industries of the country. His company sold their tank-cars to the oil combination, as "we no longer had any use for them."[349] "I was thirty-two years in the oil business," the veteran said, mournfully, as he left the stand. "It was the business of my life."[350] To return to Van Syckel. After his warning to the inventor that he could get no cars and make no money, even if his new idea proved a success, the representative of the combination invited Van Syckel to put himself in its hands. "He said they would furnish the money to test the invention and pay me all it was worth. I felt a little startled at the rebates, and I knew it before, but I did not know it was so bad as he had figured it out. I then asked him who of his company would agree to furnish me money to test the patent and to pay all it was worth. He asked me who I wanted to agree with. I then asked him if a man" (naming him) "that I had had more or less dealings with" (one of the trustees) "would agree to what he had said. He said he had no doubt he would. He said, 'We will go and see him, and go at his expense.' He said he would take the works off my hands at cost, and would satisfy my partner to stop building them if I would go to New York, and I think it was the next day when we went to New York." They went to the office of the member of the combination whom Van Syckel had said he would confide in. "He seemed to be very glad to see me, and very sorry to learn I had been so unfortunate in the oil regions. He then asked me what these patent works would cost in a small way to prove that oil could be successfully made under continuous distillation. I told him it could be done for about $10,000. He said they would give it, ... and if it proved a success they would give me $100,000. He said it was worth more. He would give me $125 a month to support my family during the time I was building and testing it. I said, 'Let us put what we have agreed upon in writing.' He begged off for a time. He said it could be done at Titusville just as well. He saw I was not quite satisfied being cut off in that way, so he took my hand and said he would give me his word and honor what they had agreed upon there should be put in writing at Titusville Monday morning. I did not want to press him any harder. I told him I would take the $125 a month until the thing was tested. If it proved a failure the whole thing should come back where it started from, and if it proved a success he was to pay me $100,000" (for the patents and the business). "He said we all understood it, then. I went home." Van Syckel called upon the Titusville member of the trust. "He begged off from me the same as the other did in New York; said they were pressed with business. He said they would fix it this afternoon, or words to that effect." Instead of building for him, as it had agreed, the combination, the moment he placed himself in its hands, destroyed the building he had already begun. "What did they do with the works when they bought them?" "They took the brick that was on the cars and hauled them to other places, I suppose, and I don't know where they threw the still. They kept that leased property during the five years for a junk-yard. I went the next day to see him, and pressed him about it the best I could. I could not accomplish anything; he appeared to be busy, or kept out of the way. I kept chasing to his office. I tried to catch him and talk over what I should depend on, where we were going to build; but he kept out of the way. He said he had not seen their folks. In July, 1879, more than three years after our contract in New York, he said they had had a meeting of all their wise-heads, and they had called in chemists, and they all unanimously agreed that oil could not be made by a continuous process, and gave that as a reason for not furnishing the money to build these works. I said, in reply, 'I am not responsible for the knowledge that the "oil combination" has for refining oil; neither would I exchange mine for all they have got combined. You said you would furnish me the money and build these works, and do as you had agreed to do.' I walked out. That was about the last I had to say to him on that subject." "Did you after that build, or undertake to build, an oil refinery to test your continuous process?" "Yes, sir; in connection with a German. He was going to build a small refinery. He said he would build it my way, if I would let him use it in the new way. He constructed it on that principle; but he was slow--he was a very slow man to deal with. We ran ... twenty days without stopping" (to clean out the stills). "And it actually ran that length of time?" "Yes, sir." "What became of these works?" "Hauled off to the junk-yard"--by one of the companies in the combination. It "bought them out after we just got them under way, and then tore them down and hauled them off." "You then brought them up to Buffalo, and tried to put them into the Solar Works?" "Yes, sir." "What became of those?" "They eventually went the same way." In court the combination claimed that Van Syckel's was an inferior process, but it had not left it to die the natural death of the inferior process. "And how about the expense of the two ways?" he was asked. "The same help that would make 1000 barrels the old way, to take three or four days, I would make in the new process in one day; the old way takes about a ton of coal more and gets less oil, and the oil is not near so good." No contradiction was offered by the defendants of any of these statements. Uncontradicted evidence showed that the new process was cheaper and produced better oil than the old processes. Stillmen from the Herman and Solar refineries, in which Van Syckel tried his new process after the combination refused to build for him, testified to the practical success of his method. "We must have run these continuous works for two months while I was there" (at the Solar).[351] "We kept Van Syckel's process running right along continuously for sixteen days" (at the Herman refinery).[352] "We did not have to clean out the patent stills, while by the old process they would have to be cleaned out about every day or thirty-six hours."[353] A number of residents of Titusville, dealers in oil and consumers, testified to the superiority of the illuminant Van Syckel produced. It burned much better than that made by the monopoly, several said. "The burning qualities was extraordinarily good." "It gave better satisfaction to my customers." "It did not gum the lamp-wicks, and did not smell."[354] This was done in spite of rusty and choked-up pipes, defective stills and apparatus. One of the owners of the Solar, who was a practical refiner and the overseer of the works, testified that he had seen Van Syckel's continuous process run successfully both in Titusville and Buffalo: "The result was much beyond my expectation." "How long did you run the works?" "I think about two weeks." "What was the cause of it stopping?" "The president of the company, also the treasurer, had been to New York two or three times; after the second or third visit he came back seemingly disgusted with the business; afraid of losing his money if he continued any longer, and quit." "Was there a mortgage upon your property?" "Yes, sir." It had been foreclosed, he said, in conclusion, by one of the leading members of the oil combination.[355] The only thing Van Syckel can do to carry out his part of the contract he does. He develops his invention. He is successful in his application to the United States patent-office. He made his contract with the combination in 1876, and got four patents thereafter in 1877, 1878, and 1879. "Well," it was said in court, "they are a large concern; they would make money out of this; I should think they would want it if it is such a good thing." "Why, my dear man, they have got a monopoly of the business, anyway," Van Syckel replied. "They don't care what kind of oil they sell; but they have got a plant that has cost them millions of dollars that they have got to change, and all that sort of thing, if they take my patent. That is the situation." He lived on the $125 a month while he was testing and proving the invention. In July, 1880, when four years of his life had been thus wasted, the allowance was changed, without notice or his consent, to $75 a month. The next month he was refused even that sum "unless I signed a receipt in full of all demands, and I walked out without it." His pipe line has become a part of the net-work of pipe lines of which the oil combination boasts. His refinery of 1869, one of the largest built in western Pennsylvania up to that time, passed into its hands. Three times in succession, after it refuses to build for him as it agreed, he arranges to put his idea of continuous distillation into use, and in each case the refinery in which he sets up his pipes and stills is bought up by it and destroyed. He is kept dangling for years by its policy of delay. Then his independent efforts are broken up; capitalists are made afraid of him. He can get no means for building new works. "Ever since I went into their hands," he said in court, "I have been just as I am now. I could not make oil; could not build a refinery; could not get anybody help me to do it; and here I have stood these last twelve years, and I want to be out. That is just where they want to keep me, so I cannot make any oil. It is the whole profit of the whole of it. They hold me to my contract, and they break theirs." When twelve years had gone by, and he found that they would neither build for him as agreed nor let any one else build for him, Van Syckel turned to the law and sued them for damages. On the trial all the facts as we have stated were admitted--the abandonment of the enterprise in consequence of the threats that he would not be allowed to ship and market his oil; the interviews in New York; the contract; the sale; Van Syckel's later efforts to make oil in other refineries; his success in producing better and cheaper oil; its popularity; the purchase and destruction of the works using the new method. Not a word of evidence was adduced in disproof. The judge and the jury found all these questions in Van Syckel's favor. The defence was twofold. It was admitted that the two representatives Van Syckel had dealt with had made the contract as he described it. The members of the combination did not deny that. But, they argued, it was not legally binding. "We simply concede," said these great men to the Court, "that they made a contract, but leaving it to the corporation itself to decide upon it.... There cannot be the slightest claim that the company was bound by a contract of that character." On this point they were defeated in the trial. Their second defence was that there were no damages. "The trouble is," they said, "that there are no damages sustained, no damages whatever sustained." They took the ground that his possessing a creative mind was the cause of Van Syckel's ruin, not their betrayal of him. "Mr. Van Syckel," they argued to the Court, sympathetically, "is an instance of what it means to get out a patent, and deal in patents--in nine cases out of ten. He was an inventive man. He has got out a good many patents. No question they were meritorious patents. And what is the result? Poverty, a broken heart, an enfeebled intellect, and a struggle now for the means of subsistence by this lawsuit. So that, if your honor please, there is nothing here from which we can determine what the original value of this patent was." The jury and the judge decided against them, and held there was a contract, legal and binding. That brought them face to face with the question of damages, and here the ruling of the judge saved them, as the decision of another judge saved other members of the combination in the criminal case in the same city, about the same time.[356] The judge ordered the jury to find the damages at six cents, and the jury--in the evolution of freedom juries appear to have become merely clerks of the Court--did so. "This direction of a verdict," said the Court to Van Syckel, "decides every other question of the case in your favor." Six cents damages for breach of such a contract, and in Buffalo $250 fine for conspiracy to blow up a rival refinery! Here are figures with which to begin a judicial price-list of the cost of immunity for crimes and wrongs. Lawyer Moot, Van Syckel's counsel, deferentially asked the Court to suggest where was the defect in the proof of damages. It would be "the wildest speculation and guesswork," the Court said, for the jury to attempt to compute the damages. "Then the Court is unable to suggest any particular defect in the proof?" The Court evaded the point of the counsel, and repeated in general terms that there was no testimony upon which a jury could assess damages. Those whom he was suing did not disprove that, by threats of making it impossible for him to get transportation, they had driven Van Syckel to abandon his own business, and make a contract with them by which they were to pay him $100,000 for his new process, if successful. The Court held the contract binding. They had not furnished the money and works to test the inventions as they had agreed to do; but he had nevertheless gone on and completed the invention, so that patents were granted for it by the government. He had tested the invention in other works, they failing him, and had proved it a success; they had thereupon purchased and destroyed these works; he was beggared, and nobody else under these circumstances could be induced to venture money on his invention. Upon these facts, judicially ascertained, the judge refused to let the jury compute the damages, and ordered them to find the damages "nominal," as another judge sentenced their associates in Buffalo to "nominal" punishment. "There are many things known to the law," said Parnell to the president of the Special Commission trying the Irish members of Parliament, "which are strange to a non-legal mind." This pioneer, inventor, and true Captain of Industry, real creator of wealth, has ever since had his neck bent to the pressure of hands too heavy for him. While all over the earth homes are brighter, knowledge is more easily got, and civilization forwarded, because of what his head has thought and his hands have done, he has retired to what is, in fact, a life of penal exile. He has been cut off from the darlings of his brain. Like the political prisoners of Siberia, he can eat and sleep and dress, but he cannot go into the world. His mind is at work there, in every factory and pipe line and lamp; but he must sit, unknown and unrewarded, in his pine cottage on unpaved Maurice Street, ploughed up in the prairies on the outskirts of Buffalo. Dearer than money to him, as to all such creative minds, would be the privilege of feeding the appealing activities of his brain with work. But he is banished from work. He has been set down outside the frontier of industry, and commanded never to return. No one dares buy or sell of him, nor adventure labor or money with him. He is an outcast. This is his greatest grief. The day I visited him he came into the sitting-room from the patch of garden behind the house. "I keep busy," he said, "to keep my mind off--anything to keep busy, if it is only pulling weeds." He is glad to see visitors. "I have been knocked out," he said, "so that nobody now comes to see me." His clear gray-blue eyes, tall, strong frame, firm mouth, large features and limbs, eager face, fit the facts of his career. He is one of the type of country-bred, hard-working American manhood of the last generation. There are no visionary lines in his face, as in his life there have been no impracticabilities, except his too great trustfulness. Gambling oil exchanges, wild oil-land speculations, inside "deals" with railroad freight agents, have never caught him. He has been a money-maker--not a money-taker. To-day, at eighty, the only thing he asks is that he may have the chance to work out his ideas. He talks patiently and courteously, with perfect intelligence and memory, but every once in a while breaks in with an outburst of what is evidently an unceasing refrain within--"I want to make oil." The diminutive room we are in is stark in its simplicity and poverty. A paragraph in the morning paper on the table tells of "a massive oaken case, similar to a bookcase," which one of the chief reapers where Van Syckel has sowed is having put into his stable in New York. "It has doors of polished oak, with brass hinges, and heavy plate-glass. The inside will be lined with purple plush, and, when completed, the bits which shine in the mouths of his trotters and coach-horses will be arranged inside of this magnificent case in rows, ready for use, as well as an appropriate ornament for the stable." It is better to be one of the king's horses than one of the king's men. But no words of envy pass his lips. He does not seem to repress them. He simply appears never to feel them. It chanced that as I left him, standing on the uppermost of the three wooden steps of his cottage, bleakness all about, "plain living" within, plain enough to satisfy the hardest climber for "high thinking," it chanced that his last words to me were--"I want to make oil," with an appeal to seek for him the opportunity so long denied. These words, plain and homely as they must seem to those who feed their appetite for the sublime and heroic with the highly varnished sayings of the battle-field and illustrious death-beds, will never cease to ring in my ears with a tone of greatness.[357] CHAPTER XV SYMPATHETICAL CO-OPERATION Some day, perhaps, when more of our story-readers have learned that there are things in the world quite as important as the frets, follies, and loves of boys and girls half-grown, more of our story-tellers will hold their magic mirror up to the full-pulsed life with which mankind throbs through the laboring years that stretch along after the short fever of mating is over. George Rice, coming from the Green Mountains of Vermont, entered the oil business twenty-nine years ago, when he and it were young. He was one of the first comers. Beginning as a producer in the Pithole region, in the days of its evanescent glory, in 1865, he prospered. Escaping the ruin which overtook those who stayed too long in that too quick sand, he was one of the first to develop the new field at Macksburg, Ohio, and to see the advantages of Marietta, on the Ohio River, as a point for refining. Crude oil could easily be brought from Ohio and Pennsylvania by barge down the Ohio River. The field he entered was unoccupied. He drove no one out, but built a new industry in a new place. In 1876 he had risen to the dignity of manufacturer, and had a refinery of a capacity of 500 barrels a week, and later of 2000 barrels. Owning wells, he produced, himself, a part of the crude which he refined. His position gave him access to all the markets by river and rail. Everything promised him fortune. His family took hold with him in the work of bread-winning. "The executive part of the business is done altogether by my family," he says. "One daughter keeps the books, another daughter does nine-tenths of the correspondence, and my son-in-law is the general manager."[358] One of the daughters was a witness in one of her father's cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "She discussed with counsel," said the New York _World_, "the knotty points involving tank-car rates, mileage, rebates, and the long and short haul as familiarly as any general freight agent present." Several other refiners, seeing the advantages of Marietta, had settled there. They who elected themselves to be trustees of the light of the world, thus having the advantages of the place pointed out to them by practical men, determined that Marietta must be theirs. They bought up some of the refiners. Then they stopped buying. Their representative there, afterwards a member of the trust, "told me distinctly that he had bought certain refineries in Marietta, but that he would not buy any more.... He had another way," he said, "of getting rid of them."[359] Of these "other ways" the independents were now to have a full exposition. In January, 1879, freight rates on oil were suddenly and without previous notice raised by the railroads leading out of Marietta, and by their connections. Some of the rates were doubled. The increase was only on oil. It was--in Ohio--only on oil shipped from Marietta; it was exacted only from the few refiners who had not been bought, because there were "other ways of getting rid of them."[360] This freight-tariff attack on the independent refiners was arranged by their powerful rival and the railroad managers at a secret conference, as the latter admitted. "Did you have any consultation or invite consultation with other manufacturers of oil at Marietta?" "No, sir."[361] When the representatives of the combination in this market were taxed by a dealer with getting the benefit of this manipulation of freight, "they laughed." All the railroads took part in the surprise. Curiously enough, the minds of the managers of a dozen roads acted simultaneously and identically, over thousands of miles of country--some, as they admitted, with suggestion, and some, as they testified, without suggestion--upon so precise a detail of their business as the rates on oil at one little point. "I did it at my own instance," said the freight agent of the Baltimore and Ohio. Freight officials of railways as far apart east, west, and south, and in interest, as the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Pennsylvania, and the Lake Shore, which had no direct connection with Marietta, and reached it only over other lines, stopped their "wars" to play their part in the move by raising the rate on oil only, and, most remarkable of all, to a figure at which neither they, nor the railroad connecting them with Marietta, nor (and this was the game they were gunning for) the independent refiners could do any business. From other points than Marietta, as Cleveland, Parkersburg, Pittsburg, and Wheeling, where the combination had refineries, but the Marietta independents had none, the railroads left the former rates unchanged.[362] Rice was "got rid of" at Columbus just as effectually as if Ruskin's "Money-bag Baron," successor of "the Crag Baron," stood across the road with a blunderbuss. His successful rival had but to let its Marietta refineries lie idle, and transfer to its refineries at Wheeling its Marietta business--and Rice's too. By the pooling of the earnings and of the control of all its refineries--the essential features of the combination--its business could be transferred from one point to another without loss. One locality or another could be subjected to ruinous conditions for the extermination of competitors, and the combination, no matter how large its works there, would prosper without check. It gets the same profit as before, but the competitor by its side is ruined. All its refineries along a given railroad can be closed by high rates made to "overcome competition," but profits do not cease. Their business is done elsewhere by its other refineries, and all the profits go into a pool for the common benefit. From Rice's point of view, Marietta was the storm-centre; but the evidence before the Ohio Legislative Investigation of 1879, before the Legislative Committee of New York of 1879, before Master in Chancery Sweitzer in Pennsylvania, and in the suit against the Lake Shore Railroad, showed that the low barometer there was part of a disturbance covering a wide area. The demonstration against the independent refiners of Marietta was only part of a wider web-spinning, in which those at all points--New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Oil City, Titusville, Buffalo, Rochester,[363] and Cleveland--were to be forced to "come in" as dependents, or sell out, as most of them did. That rates were not raised from points controlled by the combination is only part of the truth. At such places rates were lowered. This, like the increase of rates, was done at a secret conference with the oil combination and at its instance.[364] Where it had refineries the rates were to be low; the high rates were for points where it had competitors to be got rid of without the expense of buying them up. The independents knew nothing of the increase of freights prepared for them by the railroad managers and their great competitor until after, some time after, it had gone into effect. The railroad company gave notice to their rivals what the rates were to be, but withheld that information from them.[365] That was not all. Before the new rates were given all the old rates were cancelled. "For a few days," said an independent, "we could not obtain any rates at all. We had orders from our customers, but could not obtain any rates of freight." As to many places, the withholding of rates continued. "There's many places we can't obtain any rates to. They just say we sha'n't ship to these other places at any price."[366] When the Ohio Legislature undertook to investigate, it found that the railroad men professed a higher allegiance to their corporations than to the State. They refused to answer the questions of the committee, or evaded them. "I am working under orders from the general freight agent," said one of them, "and I don't feel authorized to answer that." The arguments of the committee that the orders of an employer could not supersede the duty of a citizen to his government, or the obligations of his oath as a witness, were wasted. "I will tell you just how I feel," said the witness to these representatives of an inferior power. "I am connected with the railroad company, and get my instructions from the general agent, and I am very careful about telling anybody else anything." The Legislature accepted the rank of "anybody else" to which it was assigned, and did not compel the witness to answer. To a question about the increase in freight: "I object," said another railroad officer, "to going into details about my own private business."[367] One peculiar thing about the action of the railroads was that it was an injury to themselves. The Baltimore and Ohio, for instance, by raising its rate, cut off its oil business with Marietta entirely. "What advantage is it, then?" the freight agent of the road over which the Baltimore and Ohio reached Marietta was asked. "There is no advantage.... We had revenue before this increase in rates, and none since." "What would be the inducement for her (the Baltimore and Ohio) to do it, then?" "That is a matter I am not competent to answer."[368] The railroad men testified positively that the increase affected all alike at Marietta. It was supposed even by those who thought they saw to the bottom of the manoeuvre that the combination would close its Marietta works temporarily, in order to seem to be equally affected with all the rest. It could do this with no loss whatever, since, as explained, no raise in rates had been made from Wheeling, Parkersburg, Pittsburg, Cleveland, where it was practically alone, and it could reach all its customers from those places as well as from Marietta. But the combination kept on filling orders from its refineries at Marietta at the old freight rates, while by its side the men it was hunting down sat idle because the discriminating rates of freight made it impossible for them to use the highways. It was so careless of appearances that oil ordered of its works at Parkersburg would be sent from the Marietta branch,[369] and at the old rate of 40 cents, while the other refineries could not ship because the rate to them was 65 cents; the increase at Marietta was not enforced against it, but only against the three independents--just as planned in the South Improvement scheme. The move was far-reaching--as far as Chicago, the rate to which was made $1.20 a barrel, instead of 90 cents a barrel. "Then they cut you off from the Western trade as well as this State?" "Yes, sir; almost entirely.... I was selling in Chicago, and it cut trade entirely off."[370] "Before the rates were changed did you run to your full capacity?" "Yes, sir; about that."[371] At one stroke the independents lost the business which it had cost them years of work to get. As the testimony of witness after witness showed, the merchants who had been their customers in Chicago, Columbus, and other places, now had to send their orders to those for whose benefit the railroad men had raised the rates. This sweeping change was not due to any change in their desire to sell, or of their old customers to buy. They could still make oil which was still wanted. But they were the victims of a competitor who had learned the secret of a more royal road to business supremacy than making a better thing, or selling it at a better price. Their better way was not to excel but to exclude. When their "secretary" was called before the Ohio Legislature, after this freight ambuscade had transferred the bulk of the business of the independent refineries at Marietta to him and his associates, he declared that the sole cause of their success was the "large mechanical contrivances" of the combination, its "economy," and its production of the "very best oil." "With an aggregation of capital, and a business experience, and a hold upon the channels of trade such as we have, it is idle to say that the small manufacturer can compete with us; and although that is an offensive term, 'squeezing out,' yet it has never been done by the conjunction of any railroads with us."[372] The small manufacturer did compete and flourish until these railroad men literally switched him out of the market. He competed and got his share of the business, until the men who wanted monopoly, finding that they had no monopoly of quality or price or business ability, resorted to the "large mechanical contrivance" of inducing the managers of the railroads to derail the independent, throwing him off the track by piling impassable freight tariffs in his way. The successful men secured their supremacy by preventing their competitors from entering the market at all. Instead of winning by "better" and "cheaper," they won by preventing any competitor from coming forward to test the questions of "better" and "cheaper." Their method of demonstrating superiority has been to prevent comparisons. All the independent refiners at Marietta, except Rice, died. "Most of those we received from have gone out of the business," a Cincinnati dealer told the Legislature. Some had fled; some had sold out.[373] Rice set himself to do two things: the first, to drag into the light of day and the public view the secrets of these "better methods"; and the second, to get new business in the place of what he had lost. He succeeded in both. It was in January that he had notice served upon him that he could no longer go to market. In two months he had the Ohio Legislature at work investigating this extraordinary administration of the highways. This was a great public service. It did not yield the fruit of immediate reform, but it did work which is the indispensable preliminary. It roused the people who were still asleep on these new issues, and were dreaming pleasant dreams that in George III. they had escaped from all tyrants forever, and that in the emancipation of the blacks they had freed all slaves forever. Rice knew that the Legislature were planting trees for posterity, and did not wait for help from them. He set about looking up markets where the public were free to choose and buy. He could not go West or East or North. He went South. The little family kept the refinery at Marietta running, and the father travelled about establishing new agencies in the South, and studying freight tariffs, railroad routes, and terminal facilities for loading and unloading and storing. In 1880, through all the storm and stress of these days, he was able to double the capacity of his refinery. Again he succeeded in building up a livelihood, and again his success was treated as trespass and invasion. His bitter experience in Ohio in 1879 proved to be but an apprenticeship for a still sterner struggle. Rice was getting most of his crude oil from Pennsylvania, through a little pipe line which brought it to the Alleghany. The pipe line was taken up by the oil trust.[374] This compelled him to turn to the Macksburg, Ohio, field for most of his petroleum. He had one tank-car, and he ran this back and forth faster than ever. Then came the next blow. The railroad over which he ran his tank-car doubled his freight to 35 cents a barrel, from 17-1/2. That was not all. The same railroad brought oil to the combination's Marietta refineries at 10 cents a barrel, while they charged him 35. That was not all. The railroad paid over to the combination 25 cents out of every 35 cents he paid for freight. If he had done all the oil business at Marietta, and his rival had put out all its fires and let its works stand empty, it would still have made 25 cents a barrel on the whole output. Rice found a just judge when he took this thing into court. "Abhorrent," "dangerous," "gross," "illegal and inexcusable abuse by a public trust," "an unparalleled wrong," are the terms in which Judge Baxter gave voice to his indignation as he ordered the removal of the receiver of the railroad who had made this arrangement with the combination, to enable it, as the judge said, "to crush Rice and his business."[375] In an interview, filling four columns of the New York _World_ of March 29, 1890, the head of the trust which would receive this rebate is reported to have made this attempt to reverse the facts of this and similar occurrences: "The railroad company proposed to our agent," he said. But the judge who heard all the evidence and rendered the decision, which has never been reversed or impaired, declared that it "compelled" the railroad to make the arrangement, "under a threat of building a pipe line for the conveyance of its oils and withdrawing its patronage." This arrangement was negotiated by the same agent of the oil combination who engineered the similar "transfer" scheme by which the trunk-line railroads gave it, in 1878, 20 to 35 cents a barrel out of the freights paid by its competitors in Pennsylvania, as already told.[376] "I reluctantly acquiesced," the receiver said, writing in confidence to his lawyer, anxious lest so acquiescing he had made himself legally liable. The interview describes the arrangement as an innocent thing: "A joint agreement for the transportation of oil." It was an agreement to prevent the transportation of oil by anybody else. Judge Baxter shows that it was a joint agreement, procured by threats, for the transportation of "$25 per day, clear money," from Rice's pockets into the pockets of the members of the trust for no service rendered, and without his knowledge or consent, and with the transparent purpose of transporting his business to their own refineries. Judge Baxter called it "discrimination so wanton and oppressive it could hardly have been accepted by an honest man, and a judge who would tolerate such a wrong or retain a receiver capable of perpetrating it, ought to be impeached and degraded from his position."[377] This matter was also passed upon by the Select Committee of the United States Senate on Interstate Commerce. "No comment," the committee say, "is needed upon this most impudent and outrageous proposition"--by the oil company to the railroad.[378] "Are you going to deny that story?" a great American statesman of the latter-day type was asked by one of his friends. "Not I," was the reply. "The story's false. When you find me taking the trouble to deny a thing, you can bet it's true!" This "agreement for the transportation of oil" had its calculated effect. It put a stop to the transportation of oil from the Ohio field by Rice over the railroad, just as the destruction by the same hands of the pipe line to the Alleghany had cut him off from access to the Pennsylvania oil-fields. He then built his own pipe line to the Ohio field. To lay this pipe it was necessary to cross the pipe line of his great rival. Rice had the pluck to do this without asking for a consent which would never have been given. His intrepidity carried its point, for, as he foresaw, they dared not cut his pipe for fear of reprisals. In turning to the South, after his expulsion from the Ohio and Western markets, the Marietta independent did but get out of one hornet's nest to sit down in another. His opponent was selling its oil there through a representative who, as he afterwards told Congress, "was very fortunate in competing." He thought it was "cheaper in the long-run to make the price cheap and be done with it, than to fritter away the time with a competitor in a little competition. I put the price down to the bone."[379] Rice, in the South, ran into the embrace of this gentleman who had the "exclusive control" of that territory, and whose method of calling the attention of trespassers to his right was to cut them "to the bone." The people and the dealers everywhere in the South were glad to see Rice. He found a deep discontent among consumers and merchants alike. They perhaps felt more clearly than they knew that business feudalism was not better, but worse, because newer, than military feudalism. This representative of the combination assured Congress that "99.9 of all the first-class merchants of the South were in close sympathetical co-operation with us in our whole history"--that is, out of every hundred "first-class merchants" only one-tenth of one merchant was not with them. This is a picturesque percentage. Rice's welcome among the people would not verify his opponent's estimate that his vassalage included all but one-tenth of one dealer in every hundred. From all parts came word of the anxiety of the merchants to escape from the power that held them fast. From Texas: "Most of our people are anxious to get clear." From Arkansas: "The merchants here would like to buy from some other." From Tennessee: "Can we make any permanent arrangement with you by which we can baffle such monopoly?" From Kentucky: "I dislike to submit to the unreasonable and arbitrary commands." From Mississippi: "It has gouged the people to such an extent that we wish to break it down and introduce some other oils." From Georgia, from different dealers: "They have the oil-dealers in this State so completely cooped in that they cannot move." "We are afraid."[380] As Rice went about the South selling oil the agents of the cutter "to the bone" would follow, and by threats, like those revealed in the correspondence described below, would coerce the dealers to repudiate their purchases. Telegrams would pour into the discouraged office at Marietta: "Don't ship oil ordered from your agent." "We hereby countermand orders given your agent yesterday." One telegram would often be signed by all the dealers in a town, though competitors, sometimes nearly a dozen of them, showing that they were united by some outside influence they had to obey.[381] Where the dealers were found too independent to accept dictation, belligerent and tactical cuts in price were proclaimed, not to make oil cheap, but to prevent its becoming permanently cheaper through free competition and an open market. Rice submitted to Congress letters covering pages of the Trust Report,[382] showing how he had been tracked through Tennessee, Missouri, Nebraska, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama. The railroads had been got to side-track and delay his cars, and the dealers terrorized into refusing to buy his oils, although they were cheaper. If the merchants in any place persisted in buying his oil they were undersold until they surrendered. When Rice was driven out prices were put back. So close was the watch kept of the battle by the generals of "co-operation" that when one of his agents got out of oil for a day or two, prices would be run up to bleed the public during the temporary opportunity. "On the strength of my not having any oil to-day," wrote one of Rice's dealers, "I am told they have popped up the price 3-1/2 cents."[383] The railroad officials did their best to make it true that "the poor ye have with you always." By mistake some oil meant for the combination was delivered to Rice's agent, and he discovered that it was paying only 88 cents a barrel, while he was charged $1.68, a difference of 80 cents a barrel for a distance of sixty-eight miles. "Could you stand such competition as that?" "No, sir. Before that I went up there and sold to every man in the place nearly. They were glad to see me in opposition.... I lost them, except one man who was so prejudiced that he would not buy from them." "Your business had been on the increase up to that time?" "Increasing rapidly.... I haul it in wagons now forty miles south of Manito." "The rates against you on that railroad are so high that you can for a distance of forty miles transport your oil by wagon and meet the competition better than you can by using their own road?" "Infinitely better."[384] CHAPTER XVI "TURN ANOTHER SCREW" A spy at one end of an institution proves that there is a tyrant at the other. Modern liberty has put an end to the use of spies in its government only to see it reappear in its business. Rice throughout the South was put under a surveillance which could hardly have been done better by Vidocq. One of the employés of the oil clique, having disclosed before the Interstate Commerce Commission that he knew to a barrel just how much Rice had shipped down the river to Memphis, was asked where he got the information. He got it from the agents who "attend to our business." "What have they to do with looking after Mr. Rice's business?... How do your agents tell the number of barrels he shipped in April, May, and June?" "See it arrive at the depot." "How often do your agents go to the depot to make the examination?" "They visit the depot once a day, not only for that purpose, but to look after the shipment of our own oil." "Do they keep a record of Mr. Rice's shipments?" "They send us word whenever they find that Mr. Rice has shipped a car-load of oil." "What do their statements show with respect to Mr. Rice's shipments besides that?" "They show the number of barrels received at any point shipped by Mr. Rice, or by anybody else." "How often are these statements sent to the company?" "Sent in monthly, I think." "It is from a similar monthly report that you get the statement that in July, August, and September, Mr. Rice shipped 602 barrels of oil to Nashville, is it?" "Yes, sir." "Have you similar agents at all points of destination?" "Yes, sir."[385] This has a familiar look. It is the espionage of the South Improvement Company contract, in operation sixteen years after it was "buried." When the representative of the oil combination appears in public with tabulated statements exhibiting to a barrel the business done by its competitors for any month of any year, at any place, he tells us too plainly to be mistaken that the "partly-born," completely "buried" iniquity, sired by the "sympathetical co-operation" of the trustees and their railroad associates of easy virtue, is alive and kicking--kicking a breach in the very foundations of the republic. A letter has found the light which was sent by the Louisville man who was so "fortunate in competing," immediately after he heard that one of "his" Nashville customers had received a shipment from the Marietta independent. It was addressed to the general freight agent of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. It complained that this shipment, of which the writer knew the exact date, quantity, destination, and charges, "slipped through on the usual fifth-class rate." "Please turn another screw," the model merchant concluded. What it meant "to turn another screw" became quickly manifest. Not daring to give the true explanation, none of the people implicated have ever been able to make a plausible explanation of the meaning of this letter. The railroad man to whom it was sent interpreted it when examined by Congress as meaning that he should equalize rates. But Congress asked him: "Is the commercial phrase for equalizing rates among railroad people 'turn another screw'?" He had to reply, helplessly, "I do not think it is." The sender before the same committee interpreted it as a request "to tighten up the machinery of their loose office."[386] Rice found out what the letter meant. "My rates were raised on that road over 50 per cent. in five days." "Was it necessary to turn on more than one screw in that direction to put a stop to your business?" "One was sufficient."[387] The rates to the combination remained unchanged. For five years--to 1886--they did not vary a mill. After the screw had been turned on, he who suggested it wrote to the offending merchants at Nashville, that if they persisted in bringing in this outside oil he would not only cut down the price of oil, but would enter into competition on all other articles sold in their grocery. He italicized this sentence: "_And certainly this competition will not be limited to coal-oil or any one article, and will not be limited to any one year._"[388] "Your co-operation or your life," says he. "Have you not frequently, as a shipper of oil, taken part in the competition with grocers and others in other business than oil, in order to force them to buy oil?" "Almost invariably I did that always."[389] "The expense and influence necessary for sustaining the market in this manner are altogether expended by us, and not by the representatives of outside oil," he further wrote. "Influence," as a fact of supply and demand, an element of price-making, is not mentioned in any political economy. And yet the "influence" by which certain men have got the highways shut to other shippers has made a mark as plain as the mountains of the moon on our civilization. "If we allow any one to operate in this manner," he continued, "in any one of our localities, it simply starts off others. And whatever trouble or expense it has given us in the past to prevent it we have found it to be, and still believe it to be, the only policy to pursue."[390] They "are threatening," his Nashville agent, after the screw was turned, wrote Rice, "to ruin us in our business."[391] The head of the Louisville "bone-cutters," when a witness before Congress during the trust investigation, stigmatized the action of his Nashville victims as "black-mail." They were "black-mailers" because they had sold a competitor's oil, and refused to continue to sell his own unless it was made as cheap or cheaper. Competition, when he practised it on others, was "sympathetical co-operation." Tried on him, it was "black-mail." "That man wanted us to pay him more than we paid the other jobbers"--_i.e._, he wanted them to meet the prices of competitors "because he thought we had the market sustained, and he could black-mail us into it. I bluffed him in language, and language is cheap."[392] The "language" that could produce an advance of freights of 50 per cent. in five days against a competitor was certainly "cheap" for the man whose rates remained unchanged, and who thereby absorbed his neighbor's vineyard. The inevitable result followed at last. Rice fought out the fight at Nashville seven years, from 1880 to 1887; then, defeated, he had to shut up his agency there. That was "evacuation day" at Nashville. It was among his oldest agencies, he told Congress, "and it was shut out entirely last year on account of the discriminations. I cannot get in there."[393] State inspection of oil and municipal ordinances about storage have been other "screws" that have been turned to get rid of competition. City councils passed ordinances forbidding oil in barrels to be stored, while allowing oil in tanks, which is very much more dangerous, as the records of oil fires and explosions show conclusively. His New Orleans agent wrote Rice concerning the manoeuvres of his pursuer: "He has been down here for some time, and has by his engineering, and in consequence of the city ordinances, cut me out of storage. As matters now stand, I would not be able to handle a single barrel of oil."[394] In Georgia the law was made so that the charge to the oil combination shipping in tank-cars was only half what it was to others who shipped in barrels. The State inspector's charge for oil in tanks was made 25 cents a barrel; for oil in barrels it was 50 cents a barrel. But as if that was not advantage enough, the inspector inspected the tanks at about two-thirds of their actual capacity. If an independent refiner sent 100 barrels of oil into the State, he would have to pay $50 for inspection, while the oil combination sending in the same would pay but 25 cents a barrel, and that on only 66-2/3 barrels, or $16 in all. This difference is a large commercial profit of itself, and would alone enable the one who received it to sell without loss at a price that would cripple all others. In this State the chief inspector had the power to appoint inspectors for the towns. He would name them only for the larger places, where the combination had storage tanks. This prevented independent refiners from shipping directly to the smaller markets in barrels, as they could not be inspected there, and if not inspected could not be sold.[395] All these manoeuvres of inspection helped to force the people to buy of only one dealer, to take what he supplied, and pay what he demanded. Why should an official appointed by the people, paid by them to protect them, thus use all his powers against them? Why? "State whether you had not in your employ the State inspector of oil and gave him a salary," the Louisville representative of the combination was asked by Congress. "Yes, sir."[396] Throughout the country the people of the States have been influenced to pass inspection laws to protect themselves, as they supposed, from bad oil, with its danger of explosion. But these inspection laws prove generally to be special legislation in disguise, operating directly to deprive the people of the benefit of that competition which would be a self-acting inspection. They are useful only as an additional illustration of the extent to which government is being used as an active partner by great business interests. Meanwhile any effort of the people to use their own forces through governments to better their condition, as by the ownership of municipal gas-works, street-railways, or national railroads and telegraphs, is sung to sleep with the lullaby about government best, government least. This second campaign had been a formidable affair--a worse was to follow; but it did not overcome the independent of Marietta. With all these odds against him, he made his way. Expelled from one place and another, like Memphis and Nashville, he found markets elsewhere. This was because the Southern people gave him market support along with their moral support. Co-operation of father and son and daughter made oil cheaper than the "sympathetical co-operation" opposing them, with its high salaries, idle refineries, and dead-heads. Rice had to pay no dividends on "trust" stock capitalized for fifteen times the value of the property. He did not, like every one of the trustees, demand for himself an income of millions a year from the consumer. He found margin enough for survival, and even something more than survival, between the cost of production and the market price. "In 1886 we were increasing our business very largely. Our rates were low enough so that we could compete in the general Southern market."[397] Upon this thrice-won prosperity fell now blow after blow from the same hand which had struck so heavily twice before. From 1886 to the present moment Rice and his family have been kept busier defending their right to live in business than in doing the business itself. Their old enemy has come at them for the third time, with every means of destruction that could be devised, from highway exclusion to attacks upon private character, given currency by all the powerful means at his command. The game of 1886 was that of 1879, but with many improvements gained from experience and progress of desire. His rates were doubled, sometimes almost tripled; in some cases as much as 333 per cent. Rates to his adversary were not raised at all. The raise was secret. Suspecting something wrong, he called on the railroad officer July 13th, and asked what rates were going to be. The latter replied that he "had not the list made out." But the next day he sent it in full to the combination. Rice could not get them until August 23d, six weeks later, and then not all of them. As in 1879 the new tariff was arranged at a conference with the favored shippers.[398] This was the first gun of a concerted attack. Rice was soon under fire from all parts of the field. One road after another raised his rates until it seemed as if the entire Southern market would be closed to him. While this was in progress the new Interstate Commerce Law passed by Congress--in part through the efforts of Rice--to prevent just such misuse of the highways, went into effect. But this did not halt the railway managers. A month after it was passed the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce was shown that discrimination was still going on, as it is still. At points as far apart as Louisville, New Orleans, Atlanta, St. Louis, and San Francisco switches were spiked against Rice, and the main lines barricaded of all the highways between the Ohio River, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico. In the face of the Interstate Commerce Act the roads raised his freights to points in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi in no case less than 29, and in some cases as high as 150, 168, and 212 per cent. more than was charged the oil combination. Where the latter would pay $100 freight, he, shipping the same amount to the same place, would sometimes pay $310--if he got it taken at all.[399] The general freight agent of one of the roads, when before the Interstate Commerce Commission, denied this. When confronted with written proof of it he could only say, "It is simply an error."[400] Rice shows that in some cases these discriminations made him pay four times as much freight, gallon for gallon, as the monopoly. The differences against him were so great that even the self-contained Interstate Commerce Commission has to call them "a vast discrepancy."[401] The power that pursued him manoeuvred against him, as if it were one track, all the railroads from Pennsylvania to Florida, from Ohio to Lake Superior and the Pacific coast. "Through its representative the oil combination was called before the Interstate Commerce Commission to explain its relation to this 'vast discrepancy.'" "Your company pays full rates?" "Pays the rates that I understand are the rates for everybody." "Pays what are known as open rates?" "Open rates; yes, sir."[402] That the increase of rates in 1886, like that of 1879, was made by the railroads against Rice, under the direction of his trade enemy, is confirmed by the unwilling testimony of the latter's representative before Congress. "I know I have been asked just informally by railroad men once or twice as to what answer they should make. They said, Here is a man--Rice, for instance--writing us that you are getting a lower rate." He was asked if he knew any reason, legal or moral, why the Louisville and Nashville Railroad should select his firm as the sole people in the United States. "No, sir," the witness replied; but then added, recovering himself, "I think they did because we were at the front."[403] The railroads bring the people they prefer "to the front," and then, because they are "at the front," make them the "sole people." Rice did not sleep under this new assault. He went to the Attorney-General of Ohio, and had those of the railroads which were Ohio corporations brought to judgment before the Supreme Court of Ohio, which revoked their action, and could, if it chose, have forfeited their charters. The Supreme Court found that these railroads had charged "discriminating rates," "strikingly excessive," which "tended to foster a monopoly," "actually excluded these competitors," "giving to the favored shippers absolute control."[404] Rice went to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to St. Louis, and Baltimore to see the officials of the railroads. He found that the roads to the South and West, which took his oil from the road which carried it out of Marietta, were willing to go back to the old rates if the connecting road would do so. But the general freight agent of that company would give him no satisfaction. He wrote, October 3d, to the president of the road over which he had done all his business for years. He got no answer. He wrote again October 11th, no answer; October 20th, no answer; November 14th, no answer. Rice had been paying this road nearly $10,000 a year for freight, sending all his oil over it. The road had used its rate-making power to hand over four-fifths of his business to another, but he has never been able to get so much as a formal acknowledgment of the receipt of his letters to the head of the road, asking that his petitions for restoration of his rights on the highway be considered. A part only of the letters and telegrams which he sent during these years--to get rates, to have his cars moved, to rectify unequal charges, to receive the same facilities and treatment others got--fill pages of close print in the Trust Report of the Congressional Committee of Manufactures of 1888. "Your time is a good deal occupied with correspondence, is it not?" "I should say so. If the rates had been more regular, I would not have had so much correspondence. It takes about all my time to look after rates."[405] Driven off his direct road to market, Rice set to hunting other ways. The Baltimore and Ohio, he found, was, though very roundabout, the only avenue left by which he could get his oils into Southern markets. He began to negotiate with it immediately, but it was not until several months later--the middle of November--that he succeeded in closing arrangements. To get to Chattanooga, Tennessee, over this route his oil had to travel 1186 miles as against 582 miles by the roads which had been closed to him, and yet the rate was lower over the more than double distance. Again, he could send a barrel of oil 1213 miles by the Baltimore and Ohio to Birmingham, Alabama, for $1.22, while the roads he had been using put his rate up to $2.26, although their line to Birmingham was only 685 miles. All the arrangements had been concluded to the mutual satisfaction of Rice and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. After this thorough discussion of four months, in which every point had been examined, Rice sends forward his first shipment December 1st. He is not a little elated to have blazed his way out of the trackless swamp in which he had been left by the other roads. His satisfaction is short enough. In about a fortnight--on December 15th--the then general freight agent of the Baltimore and Ohio telegraphed him that he could not be allowed to ship any more. "We will have to withdraw rates on oil to Southern points, as the various lines in interest"--the connections to which the Baltimore and Ohio delivered the oil for points beyond its own line, and which shared in the rates--"will not carry them out." This was stunning. It nullified the labor of months which had been spent in opening a way out of this blockade. It put the cup of ruin again to the lips of the family at Marietta, innocent of all offence but that of trying to make a living out of the industry of their choice, and asking no favors, only the right to travel the public highway on equal terms, and to stand in the open markets. The excuse given was heavy-laden with inaccuracy. Rice immediately found out by wire that the Piedmont Air Line, one of the most important of the connections, had not refused to carry at the agreed rate. Its traffic manager telegraphed the Baltimore and Ohio people to reconsider their action, and continue taking Rice's oil. When asked first by Rice, and afterwards by Congress, to name the lines which refused, as he alleged, to carry out the rates he had agreed upon, the general freight agent of the Baltimore and Ohio could not give one. He escaped from Congress by promising to send its committee, "within a day or two," all the correspondence with these other companies. Once out of the committee-room, he never sent a scrap of paper to redeem his promise, and the whole matter was lost sight of by the committee.[406] Rice, badly shattered, still sought and managed to find a few long-way-around routes. He presented to Congress in 1888 a table showing how he still managed to get to some of his markets. To Birmingham, Alabama--the direct route of 685 miles, as well as the Baltimore and Ohio, being closed to him--he shipped over seven different railroads forward and backward 1155 miles. The rates of all these roads added together made only $2.10 a barrel instead of $2.66, to which the shorter line had raised its price, for the purpose, as this comparison shows, not of getting revenue, but of cutting it off. To get into Nashville he had to go around 805 miles over five different lines instead of 502 miles, as usual, and still had a rate of $1.28 instead of $1.60. From 1880, the moment he turned to the Southern field, after the destruction of his business in the West, everything that railroad men's ingenuity could do was done to prevent him from becoming a successful manufacturer who might increase the amount to be shipped, open new markets, and steady the trade by making it move by many minds of different views and reasons instead of by one. In order barely to live he was kept writing, telegraphing, travelling, protesting, begging, litigating, worrying, and agitating by press, prosecutions, private and public, and by State and national investigation. The ingenuity of the railroad officials in chasing him down was wonderful. Nothing was too small if it would hurt. Sometimes the railroad made through rates so high that it was cheaper for him to ship his oil along by short stages, paying the local rates from place to place until it reached its destination. In this way he got a car from Cincinnati to Knoxville at the rate of 32 cents altogether, when, if it had been shipped at once all the way on the through rate, it would have cost 40 cents a hundred. The railroads have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, used up armies of gifted counsel, and spoiled tons of white paper with ink to argue out their right to charge more for short hauls than long hauls; but when some traffic manager wants to crush one of his employer's customers, no short-haul long-haul consistency stands in his way.[407] It was not enough to fix his rates at double what others paid. All kinds of mistakes were made about his shipments. Again and again these mistakes were repeated; nor were they, the Interstate Commerce Commission shows, corrected when pointed out.[408] One of the stock excuses made by railroad managers for giving preferential rates to their favorites is that they are the "largest shippers," and, consequently, "entitled to a wholesale rate." But when Rice was the largest shipper, as he was at New Orleans, they forgot to give him the benefit of this "principle." When Rice wrote, asking if a lower rate was not being made, the railroad agent replied: "Let me repeat that the rates furnished you are just as low as furnished anybody else." "This lacks accuracy," is the comment of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Wishing to know if the Louisville and Nashville would unite with other roads in making through rates to him, Rice asked the question of its freight agent. He replied: "I do not see that it is any of your business." "It was undoubtedly his business," the Interstate Commerce Commission says, sharply; "and his inquiry on the subject was not wanting either in civility or propriety." When Rice asked the same road for rates, the officials refused to give them to him, and persisted in their refusal.[409] Like Vanderbilt before the New York Legislative Committee, they seemed to think excuses to shippers were a substitute for transportation, and evidently thought they had done more than their duty in answering Rice's letters. But as the Commission dryly observes, their answers to Rice's letters did not relieve him of the injurious consequences. In attempting to explain these things to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the agent of the railroad said: "If I have not made myself clear, I--" "You have not," one of the Commission interrupted.[410] The refusal to give Rice these rates was an "illegal refusal," the Commission decided; "the obligation to give the rates ... was plain and unquestionable." This general freight agent was summoned by Congress to tell whether or not lower rates had been made to the oil combination than to their competitors. He refused to produce the books and papers called for by the subpoena. He had been ordered by the vice-president of the road, he said, to refuse. He declined to answer the questions of the committee. Recalled, he finally admitted the truth: "We gave them lower rates in some instances."[411] Rice took to the water whenever he could, as hunted animals do. The Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri were public highways that had not been made private property, with general agents or presidents to say "No" when asked permission to travel over them. He began to ship by river. The chairman of the Committee of Commerce rose in his seat in Congress to present favorably a bill to make it illegal to ship oil of less than 150 degrees fire-test on the passenger boats of inland waters. The reason ostentatiously given was public safety. But, as was at once pointed out in the press, the public safety required no such law. The test proposed was far above the requirement of safety. No State in its inspection laws stipulated for so high a test. Most of the States were satisfied with oil of 110 degrees fire-test; a few, like Ohio, went as high as 120 degrees. All but a very small proportion of the oil sent to Europe was only 110 degrees fire-test. The steamboat men did not want the law, and were all against it. There was no demand from the travelling public for such legislation. General Warner, member of Congress, said, in opposing the bill: "Petroleum which will stand a fire-test of 110 degrees is safer than baled cotton or baled hay, and as safe as whiskey or turpentine to be carried on steamers. What is the object, then? There can be but one, and I may as well assert it here, although I make no imputation whatever upon the Committee of Commerce, or any member of it. It will put the whole carrying trade of refined petroleum into the hands of the railroads and under the control of ... a monopoly which has the whole carrying trade in the oil business on railroads, and they will make it as impossible for refiners to exist along the lakes and the Ohio River as it is impossible for them now to exist on any of the railroads of the country." Why the trust, though it was the greatest shipper, should seek to close up channels of cheapness like the waterways was plain enough. They were highways where privilege was impossible. With its competitors shut off the railroads by privilege, and off the rivers by law, it would be competition proof. The United States authorities, too, moved against Rice, responsive to the same "pull" that made jumping-jacks for monopoly out of committees of commerce and railway kings. When the Mississippi River steamer _U.P. Schenck_ arrived at Vicksburg with 56 barrels of independent oil, the United States marshal came on board to serve a process summoning the officers and owners to answer to the charge of an alleged violation of law. Several steamboats were similarly "libelled." "We were threatened a great many times," the representative of the steamboat company told Congress.[412] The steamboat men were put to great expense and without proper cause. When the cases came to trial they were completely cleared in every instance. But the prosecution had done its work of harassing competition. The success of the campaign of 1879 in Ohio was now repeated over a wider field. The attack of 1886, "in a period of five months," Rice said before Congress, "shut up fourteen of my agencies out of twenty-four, and reduced the towns we had been selling in from seventy-three to thirty-four."[413] This was a loss in one year of 79 per cent., or about four-fifths of his business. CHAPTER XVII IN THE INTEREST OF ALL The difference in freights against Rice was so great, as the Interstate Commerce Commission found, after taking hundreds of pages of testimony, that he had to pay $600 to $1200, "or more," on the same quantity his opponent got through for $500. These discriminations were made, as the commissioners say, "on no principle.... Neither greater risks, greater expense, competition by water transportation, nor any other fact or circumstance brought forward in defence, nor all combined, can account for these differences."[414] The railroads had, of course, to give some reason, and they put forward the plea that it was much more expensive and dangerous to carry Rice's shipments, which were in barrels, than those of the combination, which were in tank-cars.[415] This excuse for charging him rates at which he could not ship at all did not stand examination by the Interstate Commerce Commission. But he did not wait for that. When he found the railroads were so fond of tank-cars, he set about getting them. He wrote the general freight agent and the president of the road that he would build tank-cars, and asked what his rate would be then; but he got no answer. He wrote other roads, but got no answer. He asked the general manager of the Queen City and Crescent Route the same question. After a correspondence of five months with him and other officials, in which he was shuttlecocked from one to another and back again, he had not only not succeeded in getting any tank-car rates, but at the end of that protracted exchange of letters the general manager wrote: "I was not aware that you had asked for rates on oil in tank-cars."[416] Rice wrote the Louisville and Nashville: "I will build immediately twenty tank-cars if you will guarantee me ... as low a net rate as accorded any other shipper." Commenting on his failure to get answers, the commissioners say: "Complainant did not succeed in obtaining rates. The denial of his right was plain, and stands unexcused.... What reason there may have been for it"--the refusal of rates--"we do not know, but find that they were not just or legal reasons."[417] How history is made! One of the reasons given by the solicitor of the oil trust[418] for its success is its use of the tank-car, with the obvious inference that its would-be competitors had no such enterprise. And Peckham, in his valuable and usually correct "Census Report on Petroleum," in 1885, says that the railroads require shippers to use tank-cars![419] Determined to keep in the field and to have tank-cars, if tank-cars were so popular with the railroad officials, Rice went to the leading manufacturers to have some built. He found they were glad to get his contract. After making arrangements at considerable trouble and expense to build him the cars, they telegraphed him that they had to give it up. Bankers, who had promised to advance them money on the security of the cars, backed out "on account of some supposed controversy which they claim you have had with the Standard Oil Company and various railroads in the West. They feared you could not use these cars to advantage if the railroads should be hostile to your interests."[420] Through the all-pervading system of espionage, to which cities[421] as well as individuals were subject, his plans had been discovered and thwarted. The espionage over shipments provided for by the South Improvement scheme has now extended to business between manufacturer and manufacturer. Why should it stop at unsealing private correspondence in the post-office in the European style, and making its contents known to those who need the information for the protection of their rights to the control of the markets? Rice, who was nothing if not indomitable, finally got ten cars from the Harrisburg works. But this supply was entirely inadequate, and he had to continue doing the bulk of his business in barrels. What a devil's tattoo the railroad men beat on these barrels of his! They made him pay full tariff rates on every pound weight of the oil and of the barrel, but they hauled free the iron tanks, which were the barrels of his rivals, and also gave them free the use of the flat-cars on which the tanks were carried.[422] Hauling the tanks free, on trucks furnished free, was not enough. The railroads hauled free of all charge a large part, often more than half, of the oil put into the tanks. In the exact phrase of the Interstate Commerce Commission, they made out their bills for freight to the oil combination "regardless of quantity." This is called "blind-billing." Of the 3000 tank-cars of the combination only two carried as little as 20,000 pounds; according to the official figures there were hundreds carrying more than 30,000 pounds, and the weight ran up to 44,250 pounds, but they were shipped at 20,000 pounds.[423] A statement put in evidence showed that shipments in tank-cars actually weighing 1,637,190 pounds had been given to the roads by the combination as weighing only 1,192,655 pounds. Cars whose loads weighed 44,250, 43,700, 43,500, 36,550 pounds were shipped as having on board only 20,000 pounds. At this rate more than one-quarter of the transportation was stolen. The stockholders of the road were paying an expensive staff of inspectors to detect attempts of shippers to put more in their cars than they paid for, but these shippers paid for three car-loads and shipped from four to six regularly, and were never called to account. This "blind-billing," the Commission said, was "specially oppressive." It was done by the roads in violation of their own rule. It had been mutually agreed among them, and given out to the public, "that tank-cars shall be taken at actual weight."[424] When Rice was trying to get the roads to allow him to use tank-cars, he asked how the charge on them was calculated. Of those that answered none answered right. None of them gave him the slightest intimation that there was any such practice as "blind-billing." On the contrary, they assured him he would have to pay for every pound he shipped. The Missouri Pacific replied with a "statement not warranted by the facts," as the Commission softly put it. They said they charged for the "actual weight," while, as the Commission shows, they made shipments "regardless of quantity." Rice asked the Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad for tank-car rates. "A tank-car is supposed to weigh (carry) 20,000 pounds; if it weighs more, then we will charge for it." At the same time the agent wrote Rice this, he was hauling cars containing 35,000 pounds "with no additional charge." "If this statement was made in good faith," the Commission says, "it is difficult to account for it, and it is not accounted for." "Had he (Rice) provided himself with cars for tank shipment, and been charged as he was told he would be, the discrimination against him would have put success in the traffic out of the question." When they wanted to turn some new screw in freight rates against Rice, the railroad officials would whip themselves around the stump by printing a new tariff sheet on a type-writer, and tacking it, perhaps, as one of the Interstate Commerce Commission said, on some back door in their offices. This they called "publishing" their rates, as required by the Interstate Commerce law. To Rice, asking for tank-car rates, they would send this printed sheet, showing that if he shipped by tank-car he must pay for every pound, and they held him off with this printed, official, and apparently authentic tariff, though shipping 44,000 for 20,000 pounds for the trust. This was done after the Interstate Commerce Act went into force.[425] One of these roads assured Rice that its rates had been fixed "by the special authority of the National Railway Commissioners." The fact was, as the Commission declares: "The Commission never investigated coal-oil rates, or gave special authority for their renewal; it never sanctioned any difference in the rates as between tank-car and barrel shipments, and had never, up to the date of this letter, had its attention called to them in any way."[426] The representative of the combination was called as a witness before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "We pay for exactly what is put in the tanks,"[427] he testified. "In fact, this was never done," says the Commission.[428] Even the railroad officials, who could go any length in "blind-billing" for him, could not "go it blind" on the witness-stand to the extent of supporting such a statement. "Our price per tank-car was not based on any capacity or weight; they have been made simply per tank-car."[429] "What, generally, is the object of false billing?" "I suppose to beat the railroad company."[430] In defence of the discrimination against the barrel shippers, a great deal has been made of danger from fire, damage to cars from leakage, and trouble of handling in the case of barrel shipments, but the best expert opinion which the Interstate Commerce Commission could get went against all these plausible pretences.[431] The manager of the tank line on the Pennsylvania roads showed that the risks were least when the transportation was in barrels. Another reason given for the lower rates on tanks was that they returned loaded with turpentine and cotton-seed oil from the South; but, as the Interstate Commerce Commission shows, this traffic was taken at rates so astonishingly low that it was of little profit;[432] and the commissioner of the Southern Railway and Steamship Association informed the Commission that the return freight business in cotton alone, brought back by the box-cars, to say nothing of other freight, was worth more than these back-loads of turpentine in the tank-cars.[433] It was, consequently, the box-car in which barrel shipments were made, and not the tanks, on which the railroad men should have given a better rate, according to their own reasoning. Turpentine and cotton-seed oil are worth three or four times more than kerosene, and it costs no more, no less, to haul one than the other; but the railroads would carry the cotton-seed oil and turpentine for one-third or one-fourth the rate they charged for kerosene. The Commission could not understand why the rates given by the roads on these back-loads of turpentine and cotton-seed oil were so low. "This charge, for some reason not satisfactorily explained to the Commission, is made astonishingly low when compared with the charge made upon petroleum, although the cotton-seed oil is much the more valuable article."[434] The newspapers of the South have contained many items of news indicating that the men who have made the oil markets theirs have similarly appropriated the best of the turpentine trade, but nothing is known through adjudicated testimony. The trustees of oil have always denied that there was any connection between them and the Cotton-seed Oil Trust, although the latter shipped its product in the oil trust's cars. The reasons, therefore, for the "extraordinarily low" rates made on the turpentine and cotton-seed oil shipped North in its tank-cars must remain, until further developments, where the Commission leaves it--"not satisfactorily explained." The railroads said they made the rates low for tanks because of the enticing prospects of these back-loads, in which there was no profit to speak of; but they extended these special rates to points from which there was no such back-loading.[435] Rice saw how the cost of sending his oil South could be reduced by bringing back-loads of turpentine at these "astonishingly low" rates. He found there was still turpentine in the South he could buy; but the railroads would not so much as answer his application for rates. "They absolutely refused." "Was this refusal since the Interstate Commerce decision in your case?" "Yes, sir; since that decision."[436] It might have been thought this would have been enough--hauling the tank itself free; furnishing the flat-cars free for many tanks; carrying free a quarter to a half, "or more." But there was more than this. The railroads paid the combination for putting its tank-cars on their lines. For every mile these cars were hauled, loaded or empty, the roads paid it a mileage varying from 3/4 to 1-1/2 cents. This mileage was of itself a handsome revenue, enough to pay a profit of 6 per cent. on its investment in the cars. But when Rice asked what the railroads would charge him for hauling back his empty tank-cars, he was not told that he would be paid for their use, as others were. He was told that he would be charged "generally a cent and a half a mile," or, "we make the usual mileage charge on return of empty tanks." "This last statement," the Interstate Commerce Commissioners say, "was not warranted by the facts."[437] The vessel which contains the oil of the combination "receives a hire coming and going," Mr. Rice's lawyer said before the Committee of Congress on Commerce; "that which contains Rice's oil pays a tax." When Rice tried to sell his oil on the Pacific coast he found that if he shipped in tank-cars he would have to pay $95 to bring the empty car back, which others got back free. The representative of the oil combination was questioned about all this by the Interstate Commerce Commission. "Are you allowed mileage on tank-cars?" "No, sir." "Neither way?" "Neither way."[438] But the railroad officials again could not "blind-bill" him as far as this. Asked what mileage they paid him, they replied: "Three-quarters of a cent a mile."[439] When the freight agents who did these queer things at the expense of their employers--_i.e._, their proper employers, the stockholders--were put on the stand before the Interstate Commerce Commission to explain, they cut a sorry figure. "It was an oversight," "a mistake," said one. Another could only ring confused changes on "I think it is an error.... I cannot tell why that is so.... It is simply an error.... I cannot tell."[440] There were never any errors, suppositions, oversights for Rice.[441] Referring to this, the Commission says, caustically: "The remarkable thing about the matter is that so many of these defendants should make the same mistake--a mistake, too, that it was antecedently so improbable any of them would make. The Louisville and Nashville, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Newport News and Mississippi Valley, and the Illinois Central companies are all found giving out the same erroneous information, and no one of them can tell how or why it happened to be done, much less how so many could contemporaneously, in dealing with the same subject, fall into so strange an error. It is to be noted, too, that it is not a subordinate agent or servant who makes the mistake in any instance, but it is the man at the head of the traffic department, and whose knowledge on the subject any inquirer would have a right to assume must be accurate. In no case is the error excused."[442] The cases in which Rice prosecuted the railroads before the Interstate Commerce Commission are among the most important that have been tried by the Commission. The charges made by Rice were conclusively proved, except as to some minor roads and circumstances. The Commission declared the rates that were charged him to be illegal and unjust, and a discrimination that must be stopped. It ordered the roads to discontinue using their power as common carriers to carry Rice's property into the possession of a rival. "The conclusion is irresistible that the rate sheets were not considerately made with a view to relative justice."[443] The facts of these discriminations--"unjust," "illegal," and "abhorrent"--are on the records as judicially and finally determined. But one of the combination said before the Pennsylvania Legislature, at Harrisburg, as reported in the Harrisburg _Patriot_, February 19, 1891: "I say to you all, in good faith, that since the passage of the Interstate Commerce law, and the introduction of that system, we have never taken a rebate. I mean we have taken no advantage over what any other shipper can get. I make the statement broadly, and I challenge the statement to the very utmost, and will pay the expenses of any litigation undertaken to try it." When it was found that this practice of charging the preferred shipper for only 20,000 pounds when it shipped 25,000, 30,000, 40,000, or 44,000, was going to be investigated by the Interstate Commerce Commission, there were intellects ready to meet the emergency. A pot of paint and a paint-brush furnished the shield of righteousness. Each car being known by its number, and only by its number, all the old numbers of the 3000 tank-cars of the oil trust were painted out, and new numbers painted on. Whether its mighty men left their luxurious palaces in New York, and stole about in person after dark, each with paint-pot and brush, or whether they asked employés to do such work, the evidence does not state. The device was simple, but it did. Rice was suing for his rights to use the highways before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and before the Supreme Court of Ohio, through the Attorney-General of the State, who had found the matter of sufficient importance to use his official power to institute suits in _quo-warranto_ against two railroads. It was necessary that evidence should be forthcoming in these suits to prove what his rate was in comparison with the others. The only way this could be done was by comparing the actual size of the cars with the size given in the freight bills, or manifests. The cars are known in the bills only by their numbers, and without its number no car could be identified. The report of Congress reprints the following from the testimony of the representative of the trust before the Interstate Commerce Commission: "Has there recently been any general change in the numbering of the cars?" "Yes, sir; there has been quite a general renumbering, repainting, and overhauling." "When did that change take place?" "I think it was commenced some time in July; it may have been later." The result of that renumbering made it practically impossible to identify any car as connected with any shipment made before that time. The cars were there, looking as fresh and innocent as good men who have donned robes of spotless white earned by the payment of generous pew-rent. The cars showed even to the unassisted eye, as the Interstate Commerce Commission said, how much larger they were than was pretended. There were still the accounts of the railroads, showing that these cars had been "blind-billed" as containing only 20,000 pounds, but the cars mentioned in the manifesto could no longer be identified with the cars on the tracks. The sin of "blind-billing" was washed out in paint. Rice went to the Interstate Commerce Commission with his complaint in this case in July. Immediately the repainting and renumbering took place. "It was commenced some time in July; it may have been later."[444] In such cases time is money, and more. "Seest thou a man diligent in business, he shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men." The members of this combination have many thousand tank-cars engaged in carrying their oil, and some of them have another kind of tank-car travelling about the country. Under the head of the "Gospel Car" the _Daily Statesman_, of Portland, Oregon, printed the following article, Sunday, December 13, 1891: "THE GOSPEL CAR.--The mission car 'Evangel' arrived yesterday, and was side-tracked on the penitentiary switch. A song service attracted many people during the morning. There will be services at 10.30 this morning, and in the afternoon, at 3 o'clock, a Sunday-school will be organized. This will be the first Sunday-school ever organized from the gospel car, which has been on the road since last spring. The 'Evangel' is sixty feet in length, ten feet wide, and seats nearly one hundred people. It is the generous gift of"--several New York millionaires, the most important of them belonging to the oil trust--" ... to the American Baptist Publication Society. The reverend gentleman who was in charge of the 'Evangel,'" the _Statesman_ continued, "will visit the smaller towns along the railway, and conduct evangelistic meetings in the car." One of these cars was in Chicago early in 1893, and was admiringly described by the Chicago press. Though corporations have no souls they are ready to help save the souls of others, for the railroads give these cars free hauling, and the messages and the packages of its occupants are franked by the telegraph and express companies. The contents of this tank-car are distributed by its donors to the people without money and without price. It is conceivable that by making it so "cheap" and by multiplying the "Evangel" into an evangelical tank line of thousands of cars, the donors might drive the churches, which have no tank-cars, out of the business, as they have done the tankless refiners, and ultimately add to their monopoly of the Light of the World that of the Light of the other World. Tho effect of all this on the family co-operation at Marietta does not need to be described. Its head told Congress that if he had had no difficulty in getting the same freight as others he could have run his refinery to its full capacity, and could have increased his works largely. "Are not your expenses less than theirs?" "Yes, sir.... I am running very moderately now.... One-third to one-half generally."[445] "I am virtually ruined," he says still later in a statement of his condition in a circular to the public, urging them to petition Congress to make the imperfect Interstate Commerce law operative. He is virtually ruined, though he has won his cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and that Federal tribunal has ordered the roads to give him his rights on the highways; but it has been a barren victory. His circular is entitled "My Experience Very Briefly Told." Its opening sentences give us in a phrase the secret of the significance of Rice's story, and dignify his appeal to the public. They show how thoroughly adversity had driven home into this plain man's mind a great civic truth which his fellow-citizens have not yet learned, probably because they have not yet had adversity enough. His solitary and fruitless, although successful, struggle taught him that the citizens of industry can no more maintain their rights acting singly than the citizens of government. He had learned that "competition," "supply and demand," "eternal laws of trade," were catchwords as impotent in the markets to give individuals their rights, if unassociated, as the incantations of royalty and loyalty, and law and order, to save people from their king until they made themselves a People. Persons fail; only a People can get and keep freedom. This Rice had begun to learn from his failure to enforce single-handed rights which all the courts declared were his, but which no court could secure. In his card to the people, he said: "I am fighting for my rights and for my existence (which happens to be in the interest of all) single-handed and alone, at my own expense and time lost.... I am here ... to do what I can to get the Interstate Commerce Act amended at this present session of the Fiftieth Congress, to cure existing evils, and all I ask is that you will take hold and assist me by your signature and approval to the enclosed petition. You are subject to the same influences, and now is your time, my fellow-countrymen, to come forward and assist a little to stop this nefarious work." "In the interest of all." This is exactly the relation which the struggle of this common citizen bears to the general welfare. The investigation by the Ohio Legislature in 1879;[446] the removal by the United States Court of the railroad receiver who agreed to pay the oil trust $25 out of every $35 freight collected from Rice;[447] the refund ordered by the Supreme Court of Ohio from a pipe-line company which had charged Rice 15 cents extra on every barrel he shipped to pay it to his competitors;[448] the successful prosecution, by the Attorney-General of Ohio before the Supreme Court, of the railroads discriminating against Rice;[449] the cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission from its beginning till now, involving hundreds of railroads, and decided, so far as it did decide, on almost every point in Rice's favor;[450] the disruption, as far as forms go, of the oil trust in Ohio by the Supreme Court of the State ousting corporations from the right to become members of such combinations and to pool their earnings therein;[451] the investigation of the oil trust by Congress in 1888 and 1889, devoted in large part to the various aspects of Rice's experience--these are some only of the public functions which had to be invoked in the ineffectual attempt to protect this one man on the high-road and in his livelihood, and they show how little his was merely a "private affair." When the amendment of the Interstate Commerce law was before Congress in 1889, eminent counsel were employed by Rice to explain the defects of the law to the committees, and petitions to Congress through his instrumentality were circulated all over the country, and numerously signed. Though a poor man, who could ill afford it, he gave time and money and attention, frequently spending weeks at Washington, discussing the subject with members, and presenting petitions. The act was amended in partial accordance with these petitions and recommendations. To obtain the elementary right of a stockholder, never withheld in the course of ordinary business--to vote and receive dividends on stock in the oil trust which the trustees had sold and he had bought in the open market--Rice had to sue through all the New York courts from 1888 to 1892. The Court of Appeals decided that there had been no lawful reason for the denial of his rights, and ordered that they be accorded him. This was another barren victory. The trust had meanwhile ostensibly been dissolved; but the dissolution has every appearance of being like that of its progenitor, the South Improvement Company, a dissolution "in name" only; not in reality. In place of the old trust certificates listed on the New York Stock Exchange, new certificates have been issued which were selling in the spring of 1894 at about the same quotation as the former ones. In this case the trust asked the New York courts to deny Rice his rights because he had in other matters, and as to other parties, appealed to other courts. His other suits had been against the railroads, not against the oil combination. He acted on the defensive, and went into court only to save himself from commercial strangulation. In all of them that went to trial he was successful, with but one or two exceptions. He was so successful that even the judges who heard his case and decided in his favor were moved to outbursts of unaffected indignation on the bench. The only result aimed at or procured was that the courts decreed that these common carriers must in the future give this citizen his legal rights on the railways; not that he must have the same rates as his opponent, but only that the difference in their favor shall not be "excessive," "illegal," "unjust." Because of this attempt to secure the fair use of the highways side by side with it, the trust pleaded in the Supreme Court of New York that his appeal to courts as a shipper was a reason why the courts should withhold his rights as a stockholder. In making this plea the trustees described themselves as having been for years persecuted by the independent of Marietta, and moistened the dry pages of their legal pleadings with appeals for the sympathy of the courts and the public. He has "diligently and persistently sought to become acquainted with" our "methods of business and private affairs;" "he has used efforts to injure" our "business"; "he is attempting to harass, injure, and annoy" us; "he has ever since ... 1876, when he first engaged in business, ... maintained a hostile attitude, and been engaged in hostile transactions and proceedings against" us, ... "for the purpose of injuring" us and our "business"; he "has been uninterruptedly prosecuting ... a series of litigations ... in the courts, as well as before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and before an investigating committee of Congress ... for the purpose of harassing and annoying" us.[452] And when in 1891 Rice was appealing to the Attorney-General of New York to bring suit in the name of the State against the oil combination in New York, like that which had been successfully brought in Ohio, he was publicly stigmatized in court as a "black-mailer" because he had once named a price at which he was willing to sell his refinery and quit. So the citizens of Nashville were called black-mailers for competing, and the citizens of Buffalo for bringing a criminal conspiracy to justice. It is this dancing attendance upon State legislatures, courts, attorney-generals, Congress, the Interstate Commerce Commission, as shown in this recital, which the modern American business man must add to Thrift, Industry, and Sobriety as a condition of survival. CHAPTER XVIII ORDINARY SUPPLY AND DEMAND "Do I understand you that they have not sought in any way to make the operations of refineries outside the trust so unprofitable that parties would either come into the trust or have to abandon the business--has anything of that sort been done?" "They have not; no, sir, they have not," was the triple negative of the president. "They" (the trustees) "have lived on good terms with what I may call their competitors?" "They have; and have to-day very pleasant relations with those gentlemen." "So far as you know," he was asked, "the product of the crude oil and the manufacture and sale of the refined oil has been absolutely left to the ordinary rules of supply and demand, has it not?" "It has."[453] In the winter of 1873 a young farmer living among the blue hills of Wyoming, in western New York, where he had been born and bred, was asked by a stranger from Rochester to help him in a search for oil lands. The old-fashioned quiet of the little community was agitated by the hope that the milk and honey of their valleys might be replaced by a more precious flow. The stranger and his son were prosperous oil refiners, but a little cloud, about the size of a "trustee's" hand, had crept into their sunshine. As they set about drilling a well on some "likely-looking" land they had leased, the stranger told the farmer why he was so anxious to strike oil for his own exclusive use. The reader is better prepared to understand his explanation than the then inexperienced agriculturist to whom he gave his confidence. It had begun to be difficult for him to get a full and regular supply of the crude petroleum for his works. There were restrictions, he said, about the shipments.[454] What that meant the young farmer was to learn for himself. There was no oil in Wyoming, and the refiner went back to Rochester, and, as so many others have done, sold the control of his works, the Vacuum, to the "successful men" of the combination, and stepped silently into the minority place. His Wyoming friend, Charles B. Matthews, had continued in his service, and when the Vacuum was sold he and two other of its employés made up their minds to go into the business of refining in Buffalo on their own account. They were under no obligations or contract to remain, and did not suppose themselves to have been sold along with the concern. They were capable men, and showed great business sense in their arrangements. Buffalo, by its connections by rail and the lake with the market, and its nearness to the oil supply, was a much better situation than Rochester or Cleveland. An independent refining company--the Atlas--was then constructing an independent pipe line from the oil regions to Buffalo. "This made Buffalo the best point for establishing refining industries in the country, with its canal and lake transportation for the products of the factory, and with a pipe line, in the hands of independents, from the crude oil wells to the city," said the Buffalo _Express_. Matthews had by this time had several years' experience in the business. Of the two with him, Albert was a laborer, who had worked his way up in the Vacuum refinery until he could run the stills, and had learned how to make oil. He and his thrifty wife had saved a few thousand dollars. He was ambitious. He had learned at school and in the army and at Fourth-of-July celebrations that America is a free country for all, and that there are no classes here, and that any workman may go to the top. Farmer Matthews had fed his boyhood with stories of country boys who had gone to the city and matured into business magnates. He and Albert pooled their visions and their savings, borrowed some money, and went to work. As for competition, though they knew it was close, they were not afraid but that they could hold their own in a fair fight, and of anything but a fair fight they never dreamed. "How are you going to get your crude oil?" Albert and Matthews were asked when they went to tell their employer what they were going to do. "From the Atlas pipe line." "You will wake up some day and find that there is no Atlas Oil Company. "We have ways," he continued, "of making money you know nothing about," using, singularly enough, the phraseology employed by a greater man in the interview with another would-be competitor.[455] "As gentlemen," he went on to say, "I respect you, but as to the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company I shall do all in my power to injure or destroy it."[456] Afterwards Albert alone was sent for. "Don't you think it would be better for you to leave these men, and have $20,000 deposited to your wife's credit than go with these parties?" "I went out with them in good faith, and I propose to stay." "It will be only a matter of a few days with the Buffalo institution at the furthest. We will crush them out, and you will lose what little you have got." Albert was shown an elaborate statement of the cost of making oil and its selling price, proving that there was no money in oil.[457] The record of dividends was produced in court afterwards. It showed that just before this--January 18, 1881--a dividend of 50 per cent. had been paid in one month.[458] Dividends of $300,000 had been paid in 1881 on the capital of $100,000. "No wonder they did not want competition," said the New York _World_. These negotiations had been with the son. Albert not yielding to this pressure, and pushing ahead with the construction of the rival stills, the father, who was in California, came back. At his request Albert again interrupted the work on the new refinery, which he alone of the partners could direct, and came from Buffalo to Rochester for an interview. "You have made a grand mistake," said his old employer, "by going out with those fellows.... The company will not last long.... The result will be, if you stay with them, you will lose all you have got in it.... We are going to commence suits against them. We will not only sue them, but serve an injunction on them and stop their work. The result of it is that when these suits commence, if you are in it, you will be responsible, and you have got a little money, and you will lose it all.... If you come back and work with us everything will be all right, and we will make everything satisfactory to you." "If I leave them it will leave them in bad shape," Albert urged. "That is just exactly what I want to do,"[459] his former employer replied. Albert began to weaken. "I had," he afterwards told in court, ... "about $6000 altogether, or a little more. They had reason to know that I had some property there."[460] This was all he had to show for the work of a lifetime, and it began to look as if it were fading away under these reiterated threats and warnings, which went on from March to June. Albert gave way. He went to his lawyer, Mr. Truesdale, of Rochester. "We have come," said his former employer, who accompanied him, "to see what disposition can be made of Al's property." "They are going to bust the company up," said Albert to his lawyer, when asked why he was going back to the Vacuum Company. "I am an indorser on one of its notes, and if I do not come back with the Vacuum, what property and money I have will be taken away from me." The lawyer was pressed to tell how Albert could get out of his arrangement with his company. They could not get along without him, and were not likely to discharge him. "If they won't release him or buy him out, the only other way," said the lawyer, "is to leave them, and take the consequences. If he has entered into a contract and violated it, I presume there will be a liability for damages as well as for the debts." "I think there is other ways for Albert to get out of it," said the representative of the Vacuum method in commerce and morals. "I see no way except to back out or sell out; no other honorable way," persisted the lawyer. "Suppose he should arrange the machinery so it would bust up or smash up, what would the consequences be?" "If negligently, carelessly, not purposely done, he would be only civilly liable for damages caused by his negligence; but if it was wilfully done, there would be a further criminal liability for malicious injury to the property of the company." "You wouldn't want me, would you," said the poor man to his late employer and friend, "to do anything to lay myself liable?" "You have been police justice," said the Vacuum man to the lawyer, "and have had some experience in criminal law. I would like to have you look up the law carefully on that point, and we will see you again."[461] Or, in effect: "See about how much crime we can commit," District Attorney Quinby paraphrased it afterwards to the jury. In a day or so the two managers of the Vacuum--father and son--came back again with Albert. "Have you looked up that matter, Mr. Truesdale?" asked they. "Yes, I have looked it up." "What do you think about it?" "My impression has not changed. Such a course would involve him in a criminal liability if he did it on purpose. Everybody who advised or counselled him in such a course would be equally liable with him. The consequences, if you follow that course, would be that you would get into State's prison. If he is an honest man he won't think of taking any such action as that. I advise him to keep out of any such thing." "Such things will have to be found out before they can be punished," was the Vacuum reply. "They will have to find him before they can do anything to him. We will take care of him." "Having in mind," said District Attorney Quinby to the jury, "what happened afterwards--that they should spirit him away." "The suggestion is altogether wrong," persisted the lawyer. "The action would certainly be very hazardous as well as wrong." On leaving, the elder of the two, evidently persisting in his plan, said to the lawyer, "If you want to communicate with Albert, you can do so through C.M."[462]--his son. These men were too careless to note that the lawyer they were talking to was not their lawyer, but Albert's. When they were brought to trial for the crime that followed, and Albert, repentant, told the truth, the lawyer was free to testify against them. "I am entirely willing," said Albert in court, "that Mr. George Truesdale shall state what took place. I withdraw any legal objections I might have." The accident which has let us see how the employés of a trust coolly debated with lawyers the policy of blowing up a competitor's works, is one of the few glimpses the American public will ever get into the relations of great legal lights and law-reformers with the mighty capitalists who wreck railroads and execute wholesale corruption of courts, legislatures, and trustees, and evade and transgress the laws with the sure march of those who know that indictments and bail-bonds and verdicts of "guilty" and the penitentiary are only for men not rich enough to plan crime "by advice of counsel." When such men went marauding through the treasury of a great railroad and the courts of an Empire State, we saw the greatest of law-reformers, with a host of legal luminaries, picketing and scouting for them. Every sound in nature is phonographed somewhere, as its waves strike, and Judgment Day will be rich with the revelations from these invisible rolls of the confidential conversations between "trustees" and counsel, who are not honorable lawyers as George Truesdale was, prostituting their functions as "officers of courts" into those of officers of crime. All these trips from Buffalo to Rochester for these interviews made bad breaks in the construction of the works of the new company at Buffalo. The partners, who were wholly dependent upon Albert's knowledge and experience for the building of the refinery, and running it when built, were mystified and alarmed. Time and again he ran away without a word to them, and all work would stop until he came back. When he was on hand his task did not prosper as if his heart were still in it. When one of the three stills of the refinery had been set up ready for use, and before any oil was run, Albert went up to Rochester again. At this rendezvous the sinister suggestion of "doing something" was repeated. "You go back to Buffalo and construct the pipes and stills so that they cannot make good oil, and then if you would give them a little scare ... they not knowing anything about the business ... you know how to do it." Swearing he would not consent, but already succumbing to this temptation, as he had given way to the threat of ruin, he replied as before: "I don't propose to do anything to make myself criminally liable."[463] At their suggestion he took a man they sent all through the new works, showing him how the stills had been constructed, how the oil was to be made, and all the details of the refinery.[464] The day came at last--long expected, delayed by these unaccountable absences--when the members of the new company were to have the happiness of seeing their enterprise set going. The one still that was ready was filled with crude oil. The morning of the start Albert weighted down the safety-valve with heavy iron, and packed it with plaster of Paris. "Fire this still," he said to his fireman, "as heavy as you possibly can." The fireman did as he was ordered. During the forenoon Albert came to him. "Damn it!" he said, "you ain't firing this still half. Fire this still! I want you to fire this still! You ain't got no fire under it!" He took the shovel himself and threw some coal in, although there was, as the fireman expressed it, "an inordinary fire." The fire-box grew cherry red.[465] Albert knew well enough what the next chapter in the history of his associates was likely to be. He had carried a dark-lantern into the still-room one day when he was superintendent of the Vacuum. "I was badly burned by the explosion," he testified before the coroner's jury investigating the explosion in Rochester, in 1887. There were four explosions in the Vacuum works while he was there. In the second, four men were burned. As one of them ran to get water, with his clothes burning, he set fire to the gas coming out of the sewer. Flames flashed all about him. "There's hell all around!" he exclaimed. The third explosion came from an overheated condensing-pipe, and destroyed one of the buildings. The fourth burned up three tanks. Remembering all this, he now took himself off to the grounds of the Atlas Company, out of harm's reach. The brickwork about the still cracked apart with the heat. But the "smash-up or something" had not been thoroughly arranged. Despite the heavy weight and the packing of plaster, the safety-valve lifted itself under the unusual pressure, and was a safety-valve yet. It was blown open, and a large mass of vapor rose and spread. This was the real accident: that the safety-valve broke loose instead of keeping the gases in to explode, as had been planned. The spreading vapor was not steam, as that had not been admitted to the still, but the gas of distilling petroleum, as inflammable as gunpowder. There was danger still, as great almost as that of explosion. A spark of fire, and it would have wrapped all within its reach in flames. The boiler fires were but twenty feet distant; not far from them the distilled oil was being gathered in the "tail-house"; near the tail-house stood the tanks of crude oil, hundreds of barrels of the fuel that conflagration loves--the kind of fuel the cooks use who, beginning with kerosene for kindling, make the whole house into a stove, and cook themselves and the family with the breakfast. The kindly wind of a June day carried the cloud of gas away from the fire until it passed out of sight. The unsuspecting, inexperienced men, whose lives and property had been at the mercy of explosion, knew nothing of their peril until years afterwards. The worst they knew then was that the "batch" of 200 barrels of petroleum was spoiled, and that Albert, the only practical man among them, was gone, leaving them crippled for a year. They waited for him, but he did not come. They looked for him, but could not find him. Matthews went to the depot night after night, sometimes at midnight, or later, to watch the trains, but Albert never came. "What would be the consequences?" Albert was asked afterwards in court, when he was telling about "the pretty heavy fires" he had made under the still--"what would be the consequences in case too hot fires were applied, and the gas should blow off the pipes and become ignited?" "The consequences would be that, if ignited, there would be a fire."[466] An Associated Press despatch from Louisville, Kentucky, June 30, 1890, describing an explosion in an oil refinery there, and the "five acres of fire" that followed, reproduces for us the picture which it had been planned to paint at Buffalo as part of the panorama of "the ordinary rules of supply and demand." A tank-car had been opened to run some oil out. As the workmen lifted the cap from the manhead of the tank a cloud of gas poured forth. It had been generated simply by the heat of the summer sun, without the aid of an "inordinary" hot fire. The men jumped and ran. Before they had taken a dozen steps the vapor, spreading over the ground and moving with the wind, had reached one of the sheds near by in which there was a fire. There was a flash. The men were bathed in a lake of fire. They ran with the flames streaming from them. At the infirmary their bodies were found to be charred in spots, literally roasted alive, and the flesh dropped off as their clothing was removed. Three men died and several were injured. Several years after the Buffalo explosion, when those convicted for their part in it were fighting for stay of proceedings, new trial, anything to escape sentence, and were trying by every means in their power to impress upon the public the altogether innocent character of the little incident at the works of their rival, something happened at their own works--the Vacuum in Rochester--which gave the people an appalling sense of the terrors of the new school of supply and demand. Naphtha is one of the by-products of petroleum distillation, and is used by the gas companies in the manufacture of the greased air they furnish under the name of gas. The Vacuum Company were selling their naphtha to the Rochester Gas Company. It was delivered to the gas company through a pipe line. On the afternoon of December 21, 1887, there was an explosion on Platt Street, Rochester, tearing away the pavement, shattering the basement of a building, and filling the air with missiles. In a few seconds another explosion occurred a short distance away, making a hole in the street several feet in diameter, from which came large volumes of smoke and flame. A third and fourth "bust-up" rapidly followed, and then a fifth, in the Clinton Flouring Mill, tearing away a considerable portion of the building, blowing off the roof and upper stories of the Jefferson Mill adjoining, and shattering the Washington Mill. The Jefferson and Clinton and Washington mills were burned to the ground. People were killed by flying débris, burned to death, smashed by falling walls, crippled by jumping from the upper stories of factories and mills on fire. "There is probably no chemical product," says Professor Joy, of Columbia College, "which has occasioned the loss of so many lives and the destruction of so much property as naphtha.... From its highly explosive and inflammable nature it has proved little better in the hands of ignorant people than so much gunpowder." "The counsel for the defence," said District Attorney Quinby, in summing up the case before the jury, "laughed at the idea of Matthews and his associates coming to Buffalo with a little money to compete. I congratulate him that instead of defending for conspiracy he is not here to-day pleading for the defendants' lives. If a person had been killed, and it had been under the advice and instruction of his clients, he would have been differently situated from what he is to-day. How well you men may be thankful that the gases from this still did not flow down and, becoming ignited, explode and kill the fireman! You ought to get down on your knees and thank your God that Providence prevented any such terrible thing as that for you." After the "bust-up" had been planned, and before it was done, one of the Vacuum managers went to New York, where the "trustees" for whom he was managing the company were. After the "bust-up" Albert heard by telegram from New York, as had been arranged, and went to meet his old employer. "What do you say to going down to Boston?" he was asked on his arrival. Later a man came in and was introduced by the name of one of the three trustees who purchased and directed the Vacuum. On leaving, this "trustee" said: "I will see you again if you do not go to Boston." He thus showed that he knew of the plan that Albert should be taken away, and that they should go to Boston. The manager of the Vacuum now gave the world a genuine illustration of the harmony of labor and capital. He couldn't let Albert out of his sight. They went to Boston on the Fall River boat. The representative of a hundred millions took the laborer into his own state-room, and at Boston carried him into the splendors of Young's Hotel, where he registered, naming himself "and friend," and they shared one bedroom. They went to church together, and to Nantasket Beach, his friend introducing Albert to those whom they met under an assumed name. "You don't want to be known here," he said, "and I will introduce you by the name of Milner." "That is the name I was known by while I was there." "Albert has nothing to fear," said District Attorney Quinby on his trial. "He had never been in Boston before in his life. He had no acquaintance there. There was no reason why he should be registered 'and friend' at the hotel. There was no reason, so far as he was concerned, that he should be introduced under a fictitious name, except that his employer had been schooled in the wonderful university known as" the oil combination. In Boston, on a Monday, on the Common, within sight of the equestrian statue of the Father of his Country, his former employer made a contract with Albert to pay him $1500 a year for doing nothing except staying away from Buffalo. "You won't have much to do, and you can stay here in Boston, and keep away from those fellows, and we will protect you." "Who's going to make up if those fellows come on and sue me for damages? Who will make up this loss that I have been going to by sacrificing my property?" "Leave that to me; I will fix that all right. You do just as I tell you, and you will come out all right.... Go wherever you like, stop where you like, and we will pay all your expenses while you are here."[467] Albert loafed about Boston several weeks, sometimes helping to roll a barrel of oil in the Vacuum's store. When he wanted money he asked for it and got it. He had once been a hard drinker. Destruction was as carelessly invited upon the soul of a poor brother as upon the lives and property of competitors. He hung around Boston and Rochester nearly a year. Then his old employer, who was in California, sent for him to come there to help in a fruit cannery, his salary continuing as before. From the moment he deserted his partners, as Judge Edward Hatch, the counsel for Matthews, stated in the civil suit for damages in this conspiracy, Albert "never earned enough to cover the end of your knife-blade with salt at your dinner. But they pay him, in salary and bonus, over $4000. Why? To get him away, and to stifle lawful, legitimate, and honest competition; to stifle that which brings into every poor man's home an article of necessity at a cheaper rate." He stayed in California a few months, and, finally, sickened of the disgraceful part he was playing, turned at bay, and gave notice that he was going to leave. "This is kind of sudden," the agent of his employers replied, but said he would write to the principal director in New York and advise that he release him. "You will give me time, won't you? You know it takes a couple of weeks or longer to do business from here to New York." Albert waited, and in time the word came from New York. "I have heard from these parties, and they are willing to release you."[468] Albert, who had put himself into the extraordinary position in which he was on the repeated pledges of the tempters that they would make it "all right" with him, and protect him from loss and harm, found that he had put his "trust in princes." When he came to settle he expected that those for whom he had sacrificed his honor, his property, and his career would make him some compensation. In answer to the question how much they ought to make up to him, he named $5000 or $10,000, which was certainly little enough, in view of the fact that the business he had sacrificed to them was one in which, as the Vacuum's career showed, $100 shares came to be worth $2666 each. But the representative of the trust declared he could not think of such a thing, and in full of all obligations gave him nothing but the balance due of the wages agreed on. Then he asked Albert to hold himself still further at their service. As they parted, he said: "Now we have settled up; now we are good friends.... If anything ever comes up in this matter I would like to have you stand by us.... We will see that you are paid all right, and give you $25 a day while we need your services." Albert replied that he did not feel under any obligations to the oil combination. "I do not know as my interest lays that way. I do not think I shall do anything to benefit them; they have injured me all that they can; they have switched me all around, all over the country; they have got me out of employ, not given me anything to do, which I sought to have them do. I do not think they have used me right, and I have sacrificed considerable money by this transaction, and you have always promised that it would be made good, and you have not done so."[469] CHAPTER XIX THROUGH THE WOMAN'S EYES Matthews knew nothing and suspected nothing about the worst part of the plot against him until Albert's lawyer, Mr. Truesdale, nearly four years later, was called upon to testify in the suit Matthews brought for damages against the Vacuum people. This suit was to recover from them for having enticed Albert away, and having persecuted Matthews with false and malicious suits; but Truesdale's evidence at once revealed that there had been a deeper damnation still in the conspiracy against him. Mr. Matthews, one day on the street in Buffalo, ran across Albert, who had just come back from California. "No man ever used another meaner than I have you," said the now repentant man to him, volunteering all the information he had, and agreeing to testify if called on. This revelation made the farmer-refiner a reformer. This was the public's business. If such things could be plotted and done with impunity by one man against another, there was an end forthwith of every liberty the republic boasted. Especially menacing was such a conspiracy when concerted by the rich fanatic of business against the poorer citizen to prevent the latter from disputing the claim that a great market was a private preserve, and that the right to trade in it is a privilege which "belongs to us."[470] Matthews could have used his discovery as an irresistible weapon to force his enemy to his knees, but he laid his evidence before the district attorney. This official presented it to the grand-jury, which found that the facts warranted indictments. When the first indictment was quashed on technical grounds a second grand-jury, sifting the facts, agreed with the first that the accused should be held to answer in the criminal courts. This was six years after the crime. The five persons indicted were the two former owners of the Vacuum, now the resident managers of it for the combination, and the three members of the oil trust, as the combination then called itself, who had bought the Vacuum for it, and had been elected by the trustees directors to manage it for them, and had so managed it even to the most picayune details. The case caught the ears of the world, not because crime was charged against men who had dazzled even the gold-filmed eyes of their epoch by the meteor-like flash of their flight from poverty into a larger share of "property"--the property of others--than any other group of millionaires had assimilated in an equal period; not for that, but because the charges of crime against these quickest-richest men were to be brought to trial. Members of the combination had been often accused; they had been indicted. This was the first time, as District Attorney Quinby said in his speech to the jury, that they had found a citizen honest enough and brave enough to stand up against them--the only one. "There is no man," he said, "so respected to-day in Buffalo as he for the method he has used to bring these men to justice." He succeeded in doing alone what the united producers of the oil regions failed to do, although their resources were infinitely greater. The people of the entire oil country failed utterly to do so much as get the members of the oil combination, when indicted for conspiracy in 1879, to come into court to be tried. All its principal men were indicted--the president, the vice-president, the secretary, the cashier, and others. They could not even be got to give bail. One of them had said when the indictments were found, that the case would never be tried, and it never has been. The Governor would not move to have those of the accused who were non-residents extradited, as he would have done, does daily, in the case of poor men, and the courts so tangled up the questions of procedure that the people withdrew, and left the indictments, as they remain to this day, on file in the Clarion County court, swinging like the body of some martyr on a road-side gibbet in the pagan days, polluting the air and mocking justice.[471] That the trust was thoroughly alarmed, and saw the necessity of rallying all its resources to save itself, was apparent from the formidable display with which it appeared in the court-room. Present with the five defendants, as if also on trial--a solid phalanx--were its president, the vice-president, the manager of its pipe-line system, the principal representatives of the trust in Buffalo, and many others. Their regular attorney of New York was present with two of the leading lawyers of Buffalo. Besides these there was a distinguished man from Rochester, reputed the ablest lawyer in western New York, whose voice is often heard in the Supreme Court at Washington. He had two important members of the Rochester bar as assistants, one of them in the summing up unmercifully scored by the District Attorney for fixing witnesses; and, not least, a well-known United States District Attorney, who made the convention speeches by which a distinguished citizen of Buffalo was nominated, successively and successfully, for Sheriff, Mayor, Governor, and President. The defendants come here, said the people's attorney, with the best legal talent the country affords, the best the profession can furnish; for the trust--"they are practically the defendants in this action--with its great wealth, has the choice of legal talent." Other eminent lawyers were also consulted, but were not present. Never was a weak defence made the most of with more skill than these gentlemen exhibited upon the trial.... But great as was the ability of the defence, Mr. George T. Quinby, the District Attorney, and his assistant, William L. Marcy, proved a match for them. Every political and moneyed influence that could be brought to bear was used to mislead the District Attorney, but all to no purpose. The jury could see that the complainant, Charles B. Matthews, did not get the indictment to sell out, otherwise he would have sold it out and not have insisted upon a trial. The fact that the case was on trial, at a cost of many thousands of dollars to the defendants, was conclusive upon that point. An emissary, trying to get Matthews to call off the District Attorney and to hush up this criminal prosecution, said the oil trust could "give him anything, even to being governor of a Western territory."[472] "You will have a chance," Matthews told the District Attorney, "to line the street from your house to the City Hall with gold bricks." But this public prosecutor had no price. He grasped the full scope of this extraordinary case, which involved not only a crime against persons and against the people, but against that true commerce of reciprocal and equal service on which alone the new civilization of humanity can rest. The room in the Buffalo court-house, where the case was being heard, was bright with the sunshine of a May day, putting out the shadows of indictments and verdicts lurking in corners and pigeon-holes. Although it was a criminal case, the on-looker saw, strange as it seemed, that whatever strain there was in the situation appeared to be felt least by the accused, and most by the public and the jury. The nearer the eyes of the on-looker travelled towards the prisoners, the lighter and brighter was the scene. Close to the accused sat a bench full of notables, evidently friends lending moral support. That the bench was occupied by men of importance was evident. They were supported by platoons of eminent counsel and detectives. Only the judge betrayed no consciousness of the presence of the herd of millionaires. The whisperings and pointings and namings by one spectator to another showed that the people's curiosity was greatly excited by the sight of the richest men in the country, if not in the world, with attendant millionaire esquires in or about the dock of a criminal court. On this particular day the notables and their suite had come in specially good-humor. Nods of kindly recognition went about and smiles rippled everywhere as, settled into their seats, they listened to the recital by the witnesses. It had been as good as a play to hear the working-man, Albert, tell on the stand how he had been bribed and threatened with ruin until he yielded to the suggestion that he should "bust up" the works of his friends, partners, and employers, and run away. There had been nothing funny to Albert in those threats: "We will ruin you," "We will crush you," "You will lose what little you have got left."[473] "Then the compensation you got was $300 and the pleasure of selling out your friends?" Albert was asked by one of the great lawyers.[474] Albert did not smile, but "they seemed to enjoy hugely," reported the press, "the idea that men could be bought so cheap." The eminent counsel of the prisoners took the cue from their clients, and treated the proceedings as a farce. When the State's Attorney was questioning his witnesses, they objected to his questions with laughs and sneers until he became indignant, and asked, with considerable emphasis, to have the joke explained to him--a need the jury also felt, as their verdict showed. When the Boston agent of the trust told that his instructions from headquarters were that if there was to be any selling at a loss to let the new competitor have the loss,[475] they all laughed again. So all the morning there had been fine sport in the court-room, and the good-humor had risen higher with every fresh incident in the entertainment until Albert's wife took her place in the witness-box. She, too, raised a laugh, but it was not she who laughed. Serious enough she was when taking her place on the witness-stand. She had to face these gentlemen, before whose hundreds of millions her husband's little venture had withered, but, as she herself afterwards said: "I wasn't afraid of them, but I was nervous. But as soon as I got talking I didn't care anything for them, although they all sat there in front, in a row, looking straight at me." The wife's story to the jury showed how such an adventure appeared when looked at and experienced from the woman's stand-point--the home-maker's and the home-keeper's--which the smiling row before her were as little able to grasp as the participants in a pigeon-shooting match to look upon that vision of flames, demons, and death-dealing thunder from the point of view of the hapless birds. A bright-faced, brown-eyed, pleasant-looking woman, as she took the stand she looked what she was--an artisan's honest wife. "My husband," she said, "had been employed in the Vacuum oil works at Rochester thirteen or fourteen years, and we had accumulated some property--mortgages and money and real estate. We moved to Buffalo, April 5, 1881, where he was superintending the building of the Buffalo works."[476] After Albert had yielded to the threats and the temptation, and had fixed the stills and the fires for an explosion, he fled without a word to his wife or his associates, hid, under an assumed name, in Boston, and then travelled over the continent for a year--from Buffalo to Boston, to Rochester, to San Francisco. "When you left Buffalo did you leave any word with Matthews where you were going?" "No, sir." "Or your wife?" "No, sir." While the wife was in Buffalo wondering what had become of her husband, he was in New York with his venerable ex-employer, getting lessons like the following in the secrets of building up a great commercial enterprise: "The best thing you can do, Albert," said the latter, "is to go and write a telegram, and tell your wife to go back to Rochester." "You'd better write it; I am a poor writer," said Albert. "No," he said; "I do not want to appear in this case at all. Write it so," he continued, "that she can move on the Fourth of July, and they can't attach her things."[477] The first word she got from her husband was this telegram to move between two days, and back to Rochester the dutiful woman packed herself and her things. "It was two or three weeks before I heard from him direct or knew just where he was," she said. "I asked Charles"--one of the two managers--"how Al was, and he said Al was all right." "Would he tell you where he was?" the State's Attorney asked. "No, sir; when I wrote to my husband I left the direction blank, and gave the letter to Charley. I got an answer through Charley."[478] For three weeks they would not let her know where her husband was. "Think of that," said the District Attorney. "She had to go and take her poor little letter to her husband, thinking, perhaps, if he was away from her tender care he might get to drinking, because he does drink some; but when with his wife they lived year in and year out without his tasting a drop; ... afraid that he might get to drinking, and that she could not watch over him.... It was a cruel thing to do." "C. told me to go to the real-estate agents," Albert's wife continued, "and try to sell our property and get it into money. He made out a list of real-estate agents from the city directory. I guess that is all he did about assisting me in the sale of the property." "I asked C. if my husband could not come home from Boston. I was sick. He said 'Yes.' Al came home and stayed a week or two. Then he went back to Boston. C. told me they did not want the Buffalo company to know where Al was."[479] Albert was a man infirm under temptation. The employer knew, by fourteen years' acquaintance, the weakness this man had acquired in his service in the army. He gave him idleness, money, temptation, and an assumed name to go to the devil with, if that agent of the trust was to be found in Boston. "You want to take good care of Al," said the good old man to his clerk in Boston, "and not let him get homesick. If he wants any money, let him have it." Albert travelled the broad way made smooth for him. "Of course I never went around with him," said the clerk, in a deposition; "a porter that I had was the party that went around with him in the evening. I would hear what was going on, and I could judge about the size of Al's head when he came around in the morning." With all Albert's faults he kept one dignity to the end which makes him tower above his seducers--the dignity of the laborer. A life's discipline in daily toil had made his whole fibre too honest to enjoy idleness, even at the rate of $1500 a year. He was free to come and go amid the gaudy joys of a great city, as irresponsible under the assumed name given him as if he wore the ring of Gyges. He had money for the asking, and boon companions. But the habit of a lifetime of honest, hard manual work was too deeply ingrained into the very substance of his nature for him to become a cheap American Faust, revelling in a pinchbeck paradise. This simple son of poverty had all his life handled only real things, and had at every point had the mind's native wantonness and riot checked by the hard surface which had calloused his hands, and the outer air which had cooled him as he worked. His were dreams of honest rest earned by honest work, and of family joys. The self-indulgence that was revealed by the "size of his head in the morning" was an animal exuberance that, as the result showed, did but stain the "rose-mesh of his flesh," and went no deeper. Albert could not stand the idleness of his Boston life. He went back to Rochester. "I want something to do." "What brings you here?" said his employer. "Go back." After hanging around the office in Boston a few weeks longer, the workman's nature reasserted itself again. He went back again to Rochester. "I want something to do." "We have not got anything for you to do just now," he was told. "You are all right."[480] Months of idleness were interrupted only by odd jobs, like superintending the digging of a ditch or the sinking of a salt-well. Time and again, though he was drawing his pay of $125 a month, he went, as he told the story in court, to repeat the plea for "something to do." Finally, the elder of the managers, who was in California, sent for him. He was to be made "an independent man," the new promise ran, but really, as the sequel showed, was, if possible, to be kept out of the way of too inquisitive juries and prosecuting attorneys. The wife, treated as a mere pawn in the game, protested vehemently. "I went down to the Vacuum Oil Company's office, and asked C. to give Al something else to do. I didn't want him to go to California. He said that there was not anything that he knew that he could do." "I don't want Al to go. I won't go. Give him something else to do." "I have nothing else."[481] She had to yield, and her husband left her to go to California. His employer persuaded Albert to buy a piece of land in California. "He seemed to be very anxious to locate me there."[482] Albert sent to his wife for the money, but the shrewd little woman sent only half. "I thought I would let him pay it out of his pay." With the same good sense the wife had not sold all the property when sent out alone among the real-estate men. "I did not sell the real estate," she said; "I thought there was too much expense."[483] She was not with her husband when the rupture came in California. The first news the anxious wife had of a change in her husband's affairs was when "Charley" came to her, as she was sitting one summer evening on the porch of a neighbor's house, and told her "Al" had quit them. "I do not know what to make of it," he continued: "I think he must be crazy or something."[484] It was not until his return that she learned the details of the painful experience he had been through. When it was heard that Albert, upon his return from California, had made restitution as far as he was able, by telling what he knew to the authorities, to aid them in bringing the principals in the crime to justice, there was consternation in the trust. One of its detectives had been captain of the company Albert was in during the Civil War. The captain now presented himself before Albert as he went to his work in Corry, Pennsylvania, where he had gone after his return from California, and became sociable rapidly. He had great plans for Albert, and came to the house to discuss them confidentially. Albert and his wife had been simple folks to start with, but they had learned a thing or two by this time. The captain's desire for confidential talk with his old comrade was so intense that it would have been rude in Albert's wife to thwart it. She packed off her daughter on an errand, and announced that she had a call up the street, and would leave them to themselves; but she did not add, as she might have done, that during her absence she would be represented by the Chief of Police, whose appetite for confidential communications was as keen as the captain's, but whose retiring disposition kept him in the dark seclusion of an adjoining room, with his ear to the crack of the door. "Wouldn't Albert like to go to Russia?" the captain asked his dear friend the private, whose existence he had never personally recognized when they were so close together during the Civil War. "If the Court will allow me to show by this witness," said the prosecuting attorney, "that the captain came there as a detective for the oil trust, and made a proposition, after the indictments were found, to Albert to flee the country, and go with him to Russia." One of the army of trust lawyers was instantly on his feet with "I object." The judge sustained him, and the testimony was shut out. Albert's wife kept close to his side, and held him steady. No, Albert did not care to go to Russia. Advertisements of an alum-mine in Corry then began to appear in newspapers where Albert's attention could be called to them. By a lucky chance the captain happened to know the capitalists whose boundless powers of enterprise could find full outlet only by developing the hitherto unsuspected resources of Corry for supplying the nations of the earth with alum. By a joyful coincidence, these capitalists wanted for superintendent of their bottomless alum-mines just such a man as the captain knew his dear Albert to be. Would Albert like to go to Italy to learn the true science of alum manufacture, and to show the effete monarchies how an American could disembowel the earth of its alum? Salary, $5000 and expenses. No, Albert had no unslaked ambition to go to Italy as superintendent of mines of alum, or green cheese, or any other lunar commodity. At least, Albert would take a drink? That poor Albert would do; and when he failed to come home at night his wife went up and down the streets seeking him. "A persistent effort had been made" by the trust, Mr. Matthews testified, "to get Albert out of the country. I was afraid they would get him away, as he might not be used in this case. Men had been sent there to get him drunk, and had debauched him."[485] Money was potent enough to persuade lawyers to make it a part of their professional duty to help in this. One of the trust's lawyers sat with Albert and its detective in the stall of a cheap saloon, and plied him with liquor to get from him some letters of Matthews' they wanted. "There they sat," said the keeper of the saloon; " ... they got what they called for, probably.... I couldn't tell how many drinks they got into Albert on that occasion; I think they drank there."[486] While this courtship was in progress with Albert in Pennsylvania, wires were being pulled to get him indicted in New York. The grand-jury of Rochester was asked to indict him for receiving stolen property in a watch trade he had made seven years before. This would have ruined him as a witness in the forthcoming criminal case against the members of the oil trust, but the grand-jury decided that there was no evidence on which to indict. When Adam Cleber, a stolid-looking German laborer, who worked in the same place with Albert in Corry, took the stand for the State at the close, an eager excitement filled the court-room. The State's Attorney was known to have his darkest sensation still in reserve. What it was he would not, of course, disclose in advance, but those hardly less familiar than he with the evidence hinted that the fertile genius of the captain, having exhausted itself in the ideas of the trips to Russia and Italy, had fallen back upon the genius of his superiors, and had arranged to have Albert go a-hunting, and get a "bust-up" as much as possible like the one he had been induced to attempt upon his employers and partners. "Did the captain tell you what he wanted you to do to Albert?" Cleber was asked. "Yes--" That was as far as Cleber got. "I object!" screamed one of the lawyers. "I propose to show that the captain made a request of this witness in regard to what he should do to Albert, and what he should come and swear to about Albert, there being no truth in the matter he wanted Cleber to swear to," the State's Attorney urged to the Court. The judge took the matter home for consideration over-night, and announced in the morning that he would not admit the evidence. It was acknowledged by one of the lawyers for the members of the trust on trial that he had employed the captain to get evidence for them; but the judge, instead of admitting Cleber's testimony, and leaving the question of its value to be settled by the jury, excluded it. In his closing speech District Attorney Quinby said: "Why, in Heaven's name, my friends, didn't you place the captain on this witness-stand? He would have been a feast for you and a feast for me. His ways have been curious and sinuous, his methods have been peculiar and corrupting, and they did not dare to put him on the stand because if they did he would have left it to go to prison. That is the reason. They know it." The brave and steadfast woman told her part of this story on the witness-stand. Her home had been broken up again and again. As she herself said afterwards: "I had to live with my carpets packed, and moved around like a gypsy." Her husband had been tempted to commit a crime which compelled him to lead the life of a fugitive. He had been spirited away and secreted; she had not been allowed to know where he was, and could communicate with him only through a third person; they had moved around, in her expressive phrase, until they had moved into two rooms; the savings of fifteen years' hard work were all gone, and the independent business, in which her husband had just got his footing, swept away. He and she faced the world with no other assets than their child and the palms of their hard-working hands. "Well, it's taken all we had," she says; "we've lost it all, but I'd rather it would be so than to have the money they have, and go about hiding and sneaking. I'd like money, but not so well as that. When I said to 'Charley,' 'I shall have to sell all my furniture'--'Oh, that's nothing.' And when I told him it had cost us $100 to pay the expenses of selling real estate--'That isn't much.' It wasn't much to them, but it was to us, who had made every dollar by hard work. Well, we'll have to do without the money, and just live along by honest work. We can live that way. We have had all this trouble and lost our money, and haven't made money enough to buy a calico dress." All the good that had come of this loss of savings and home and honor had gone to those at the bar of justice and their associates sitting in the tickled row before her. On the cross-examination, which was to crush the witness and her damaging testimony, the distinguished counsel, not content with all the suffering and loss already inflicted on this wife, tried to humiliate her still further, but the woman's wit of truth was too much for the lawyer's wit of wile. "Don't you recollect," the lawyer asked, "that you went to the house of the manager of the Vacuum, and that you saw him in the parlor, and that you asked him to take your husband back?" "I never asked him to take my husband back." "Then you did not ask him at the time and place I spoke of?" "I never asked him anywhere to take him back." "Don't you recollect upon that occasion being considerably affected, and asking him to take your husband back, and his speaking of the way in which he had left the company, which he characterized as shameful, and that you cried--shed tears?" "I never asked him to take him back. I recollect going there. I recollect I felt bad, because I was talked to so much about it. I had reason to feel bad. I am trying to tell the truth as near as I can." "Then what was the occasion of your bad feeling?" "It was because I thought we were going to lose everything, and would not have nothing left. That is what I felt bad for--was shedding tears for, if I did. I don't know as I did."[487] Then came the laugh. From millionaire to lesser millionaire went the enlarging laugh. The mighty cortege of the retained ex-judges, famous constitutional and criminal lawyers, detectives, camp-followers laughed. It was the laugh of hundreds of millions, and it clinked and tinkled and rang. As if every mouth were a bagful of gold, and as if every bag had burst, the golden notes of mirth filled the air, and struck the ceiling, and rolled over the floor, rebounded and fell and rose in mellow chimes of sound, and the golden rain dripped everywhere. Millions on millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of the coin of the republic, and in every coin a cackle. "Yes, they all laughed at me," the little woman told her friends; "it looked like such a great joke to them. Perhaps I did not tell it very well, but I told the truth." In closing the case the State's Attorney said to the jury: "A sorrow was placed on that woman's heart that can never be removed. One of the pathetic things in this case was that when this woman was on the stand, telling her little story, how they were afraid they might lose the few thousand dollars they had saved, the $6000 or $7000 they had been struggling for for fifteen years, these New York gentlemen with their millions laughed in her face at the idea of her being sorry to lose the pittance of $6000 or $7000. It was the only time in the case, really, I felt that these gentlemen were outraging common decency."[488] Some time after the trial was over, and sentence passed and satisfied, these men sent for Albert to come to Rochester. He went with witnesses. There in the office of a leading lawyer he was tempted with desperate propositions to do something or say something that would break the force with which these disclosures must act on public opinion. "They need not think," he replied, "that they can get me to make a false oath to let them out of a hole. I would not do it for all the combined wealth of the trust. When my wife was on the stand they laughed her in the face when she told about losing all we had. Do you suppose any man with a particle of American blood could have any love for them? I think as much of my wife and daughter as any of them of theirs, and I will do nothing to disgrace them." This hard-working and hard-living laborer and his wife had, by thirteen or fourteen years of toil and stinting, saved $6000. The laughers had in the same time saved about $300,000,000, and somebody else had done all the work. The poor man and his wife had been afraid that the $300,000,000 would devour the $6000. It said it would, and it had. Shall not they laugh who win? CHAPTER XX TAKEN FROM THE JURY BY THE JUDGE The District Attorney put the president of the light of the world on the stand. His evidence showed that the purchase of the three-quarter's interest in the Vacuum Company, sold because "there were restrictions in the shipments," was made by the three New York men on trial. "They are share-holders in the trust," he said. When they bought the stock they transferred it to the oil trust. He had known of the contemplated purchase. Having thus proved that the three indicted directors from New York on trial were members of the oil trust, and were managing the Vacuum for it, the District Attorney proceeded, in pursuance of a logical plan of inquiry, to bring before the jury what the trust was, and its relations to the companies it covered. "What is it ... if you know?" the District Attorney asked. The president, through his counsel, objected to the question. "What is the object of this?" the judge asked the District Attorney. The trust, the District Attorney explained, owns a majority of the stock of this Vacuum Company and others, and controls the manufacture in this country of substantially all the lubricating and illuminating oils. These defendants belonging to the trust, and "one of these being chairman of a committee of the trust, it was the desire and motive of the three to do away with competition, to destroy and ruin the competitive works in Buffalo." The Court asked the president of the trust if it was a manufacturing company. "It is not, your honor." The Court ruled out the question "What is it?" although in doing so he used language apparently contradicting his ruling, saying, in effect, that it was "quite immaterial what the objects or purposes of the oil trust are, unless these defendants are in some way interested so as to create a motive to do what it is claimed they did do." Again, when the District Attorney sought to ascertain in what other corporations engaged in the manufacture of oil in 1879, 1880, and 1881 the trustees on trial owned stock, it was objected to and the objection sustained, although the Court but a few moments before had said, "I will allow you to show everything these defendants have done upon the question of motive, ... to show what their business is, the companies they have stock in, whether it is an oil company or some other company--that is, any company engaged in the manufacture of oil that would come in competition with the Buffalo company...." The judge, declaring that he would admit such evidence, refused to admit it. What the District Attorney would have been able to uncover as to the responsibility of the "trustees" for what was done by the subordinate companies, the reader, freer than the jury in this case, can find out for himself. The nine trustees, of whom three were on trial, owned as their individual property more than half of this as of every establishment in the trust. They decided who were to be elected directors and officers of each company. They exercised full control over these officers when elected. They declared the dividends. The profits of all these shares are put into one purse, and distributed in quarterly dividends among the trustees in proportion to their interest in the trust--the purse-holder.[489] In the case of the Vacuum Company, accordingly, we find that the minutes of stockholders' meetings record the presence of members of the oil trust, in person and by proxy, representing a majority of the stock, electing the officers and directors, and declaring the dividends. How thorough and minute is the supervision over the vassal companies an employé, who had been in the service of the combination for several years in a confidential way, and "had access to every book and paper and their cipher arrangement," has told.[490] They "control every movement of every branch of their business." The subordinate companies "make a report every day of all their business.... They have blanks there on which they make a report of all their shipments, where shipped, and who shipped to, and all their purchases; and they report every month the exact percentage they have made out of their crude oil, of all the different products they get out of it. They report everything in detail." This was in 1879. Ten years later, in 1888, the testimony of the president shows that the system is the same. "They know the cost at every refinery. They get such reports once in thirty days; each report shows just what it has cost for everything.... Made out on regular blanks."[491] But when put on the stand in this case, in Buffalo, he had professed himself altogether ignorant of any such reports.[492] Asked if the Vacuum Company had made them, he replied: "I can't recall any such reports." Asked if it was obligatory upon the Vacuum Oil Company to make reports, he said: "I can't state." But the manager's testimony in the same case shows that the system of reports which his superior "could not recall" was in regular operation. "There are reports of sales of the Vacuum Oil Company made to certain parties in New York."[493] The three trustees who bought the control of the Vacuum stock did not keep it for themselves. They transferred it to the trust, and received for it shares in the trust. They were not stockholders in the Vacuum, but stockholders in the trust. It was the trust which was the real stockholder in the Vacuum. The profits on this Vacuum stock, therefore, went into the common fund in which the trust accumulated the profits of all its controlling ownerships in companies all over the country--all over the world. Every trustee shared in the profits of every company so controlled, whether in the United States or Europe or Asia. The president of the trust, now on the witness-stand, was a large participator in the profits of the Vacuum, because he was a large owner in the trust which possessed three-quarters of it. Similarly as to the three trustees indicted and on trial, and every other trustee.[494] The case was interwoven, notwithstanding the exclusion of this by the judge, with evidence that the three members of the trust on trial were the managers of the company for the trust, and were consulted habitually about the current details by the salaried agents. "After this purchase was made did you continue to represent the purchasers in the management of the affairs of the Vacuum Oil Company?" one of the three was asked. "I did." After the purchase of the Vacuum by the trust, Mr. Matthews, before he left to go into business on his own account, had to go to its office in New York half a dozen times, to see the New York directors when he wanted instructions. His testimony on this point covers thirty pages of the official testimony, and shows repeated interviews between him and the members of the trust about every kind of detail of the business of the Vacuum. When Matthews asked the manager of the Vacuum to give him more pay, the latter had told him to speak to one of the trustees--one of the three now on trial. "It will be as he says about it." Again, as to another matter, he said to Matthews: "I cannot tell you. There is no use for me to pretend that we run our business, for we do not."[495] This evidence must be sought in the original records of the case at Buffalo, as it is left out in the transcript furnished by the trust to the committee of Congress, which represents the case against the two local managers only. The Rochester manager, after the explosion, and at the time of sending for Albert to come to New York, telegraphed to his son: "Our views with regard to Albert confirmed." By whom? as Matthews' lawyer asked. The manager saw one of the three accused trustees in New York after he returned from the trip to Boston to hide Albert. "I told him that I had hired him," he testified. The trustee denied this, as the president denied the monthly reports. But he has himself furnished the evidence that his employé told the truth. In their answer in court to the allegations of the suit against them for damages, he and the other two trustees concerned in the Vacuum direction testified that they advised the Rochester managers "to endeavor to retain the said" Albert, ... "and after" he "had left the employment of the Vacuum Oil Company ... they further advised that he should be re-employed if it could be done by reasonable increase of his wages. They were afterwards informed that he had been re-employed." This shows they knew about the negotiations before, during, and after. They knew the man was to have more wages, though the increase was only $300 a year, and their income was millions yearly. When he had been gotten away they were informed of that too. The District Attorney knew all about this answer in the civil case, but under the statutes of New York it could not be used in a criminal prosecution against those who had made it. He put the trustee on the stand, and did his best to get him to tell the same story, but in vain. The body-guard of lawyers surrounding the great men who made the court-room a veritable curiosity-shop for the people of Buffalo, did a deal of acting throughout the trial to impress on the jury that the whole proceeding was a farce. They laughed and yawned and pooh-poohed, and sneered at the District Attorney's questions and points, and went through all kinds of dumb-shows of indignation and ennui that their clients should be so needlessly called on to waste priceless time. But this could not prevent their faces from lengthening as the story was told by witness after witness, as more than one observant reporter saw and noted. When the evidence was all in, and District Attorney Quinby had closed his case, the situation was desperate. There was no doubt about that. The great men of the trust on trial had been proved to be the actual directors of the Vacuum at every turn of its daily affairs. Before any evidence was introduced for the defence, one of the distinguished lawyers arose and moved the discharge of the three members of the trust, who were a majority of the Board of Directors of the Vacuum Company, and managed it for the trust. The prosecution were not taken unawares by the motion. The District Attorney's able assistant, William L. Marcy, had gathered all the precedents and equipped himself to resist the discharge. He and the District Attorney fought hard to have the principals in the company go to the jury with their agents, but in vain. Mr. Marcy pointed out that, as shown in the case of The People _vs._ Mather, "to charge partners as conspirators it is not necessary even to show that they were the original conspirators. It is sufficient if at a subsequent time they become party to it by accepting the benefits derived from the conspiracy. The case lays that down in exact terms." The Judge: "Must there not be an adoption?" Mr. Marcy: "That is an adoption--accepting the benefits." The Judge: "They may accept the benefits without knowing." Mr. Marcy: "Then the jury may infer that knowledge from all the circumstances. The jury are the tribunal to determine whether or not the parties had the knowledge." Mr. Marcy pointed out that there was everything to lead the jury to infer that these men were parties to the plan. "Where did the meetings of the Board of Directors take place? At Rochester, where the works are? No; at New York, where these men carried on their other business. The Rochester representatives dance in attendance wherever these New York parties desire them to go." He pointed out to the judge that the trustee whom Albert met in New York after the explosion knew of the plan to take him to Boston. He showed that the same trustee, when remonstrated with by Matthews for bringing patent suits without foundation, said that he intended to carry them on, and if he was beaten in one court, he would carry them to a higher court. Just in the same way the Rochester representative of the trust had said: "I will bring lawsuits against you. I will get an injunction against you." "When the Rochester manager," said Mr. Marcy, "hired Albert, he did not pretend to be able to make a bargain until he had been to New York and consulted about it. He was in New York before he telegraphed to him to come to New York. This significant fact points home the conspiracy upon the gentlemen who reside in New York." But the judge, and not the jury, rendered the verdict as to the three members of the trust on trial. He failed to remember or observe the law that leaves it to the jury to render the verdict. He announced that he had decided to grant the motion for their discharge. There was silence in the court-room for a moment. Then: "Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict as advised by the Court," came in sonorous tones from the clerk; "you find the defendants"--naming the three members of the oil trust at the bar--"not guilty of the crime, as charged in the indictment, so say you all." The jury looked scared at being addressed so peremptorily, but said nothing. "The New York men looked happy," said one of the observers, "but their Rochester associates and codefendants did not smile." Upon the discharge of the trustees, one of the Buffalo dailies said that whether there was any conspiracy at all is an undecided question, but it should be remembered that the oil trust and the Vacuum Oil Company "have been honorably acquitted of the charge of having anything to do with the matter. As the case now stands, it is simply The People against"--the two Rochester managers. Poor men! It was for this that they succumbed to the attacks of the oil trustees upon their business, sold them for $200,000 three-quarters of a concern which produced $300,000 in dividends in one year for the lucky conquerors, became vassals instead of masters in their own refinery. It was for $10,000 a year, divided into $6500 for one and $3500 for the other, that they undertook to fetch and carry for their suzerains, even to the gates of the penitentiary; and when discovery and conviction came, to bear in silence upon their own shoulders the guilt and shame from which others got only "more." The trial of the two remaining defendants proceeded. Neither of them took the stand. In a deposition the elder said it was Albert who had spoken about misplacing the pipes; but when asked what he said in reply to a suggestion, which no one better than he knew the significance of, he replied: "I made no reply to it, but I thought it would be a very scandalous proceeding."[496] Albert had told how, in conversation in California, his employer had described his plans with regard to Matthews. "We would have just got them fellows in a boat, right in the middle of the stream, and we would have tipped them two over, and drowned them, and you would have been all right."[497] "If I ever made such a remark," this defendant deposed, "it was in a playful humor. I am in the habit of making playful remarks." Witness after witness had to confess, under cross-examination, that his testimony had been written and rewritten by himself or the lawyer for the defence, and carefully conned before coming on the stand. The District Attorney asked one of these tutored witnesses why he had read over the written preparation of his testimony in the rotunda of the court-house just before going on the stand. "I read it over," he replied, lucidly, "for the simple reason of reading it over." "Just to practise in reading?" "Well, perhaps we might call it practice in reading."[498] "This preparation of the testimony," said the District Attorney to the jury, "which I stigmatize as infamous, this going to a witness and writing him down, and having him fix it, and write it over again, and keeping it in his mind, and reading it over, and so going on the stand, is not the way to try a lawsuit, in my mind. I write nothing down. I coach no witnesses. I want a witness to tell me his story. I put him on the stand and he tells me his story; but no writing down, no reading over. It is not right, and it is very liable to be very wrong." Several witnesses were introduced to prove that Matthews had offered to settle the criminal prosecution. He could not have done so had he wished to. The criminal case was in the hands of the State. Of the witnesses who made this charge against Matthews, one was a stockholder in the trust, another had been a stockholder in one of its pipe lines, and both had to admit on cross-examination that the occasion of his alleged agreeing to settle the case had been that they had gone to him for their friends, unsolicited by him and unexpected, to find out at what price he would sell his works to the combination." I was anxious to settle the criminal prosecution," said one of these ambassadors. "Anxious for whom?" asked the ever-ready District Attorney. "I should say--nobody," replied the witness, in confusion. "Mr. Matthews told him," said Mr. Hiram Benedict, one of the best-known citizens of Lockport, who was present, "that if they bought the capital stock of the company they could do what they chose with the civil suits, but with the criminal suit he had nothing to do; the people had that in charge."[499] The lawyers tried to make a jest of the whole proceeding, and affected to look upon the incidents of this rivalry with their powerful client as something too trivial to be noticed. "Is it a trivial matter," asked District Attorney Quinby, "that it shall be decided, once for all, in a court of justice, that in an alleged republic you and I shall not start a business which is a rival to some one else? That is the issue here, and yet the lawyers for the accused tell us it is trivial. It is the most important question that was ever left to a jury of twelve men in this or any country in this age of monopoly." The jury thought so too. The meaning of the policy of suppressing competition was skilfully described by Judge Edward Hatch, Mr. Matthews' counsel in the civil suit for damages, and here again the jury, representing the people, thought so too. "When a man or a corporation is in a position to control the market as to a given article, then everybody is within their power, and it rests with their conscience to determine what shall be the price. Every time you farmers at home, or your wives or daughters, take your oil-can, turn it up, fill your lamp, and then sit down to read by it, you can understand what is meant by this proposition to crush these men out.... It was a matter that not only these three men were interested in, but every person that lived in the community. Competition would run along to a point where you could get the oils that you use in your families, to grease your wagons, and to burn in your houses, or for any other purpose, at a price that should give the manufacturer a fair profit, and at the lowest possible price. On the other hand, if you leave that open to these parties to regulate as they saw fit, having a monopoly of the market, then you rest upon the conscience of a corporation and put your faith in a soulless individual." It is one of the few bright lines in this picture that whenever the people got a chance to make themselves heard, their utterance was always right and true. The four juries which passed upon the facts understood them, and had the moral standard by which to judge them aright. One of the trust's employés was put on the stand to break the effect of the evidence that the competition of the new works had put down the price of oil. "In the early part of 1881--the winter of 1881"--he said, "common oil was 5-1/2 cents a gallon"--this to prove that the reduction had preceded the appearance of the new refinery. He was confronted by the District Attorney with one of his own bills of oil sold in February, 1881. "That would seem to be a sale of 120 degrees oil at 12 cents a gallon," he confessed, and added, awkwardly, "I was asked as to the winter of 1881. That is not the winter of 1881 as I understand. I meant to speak from July, 1881, and so on."[500] The great lawyers held up to the ridicule of the jury the idea that the gases of distilling petroleum were dangerous. Matthews stated on the stand that he had seen this gas burn up derricks, property, and several men. The lawyers could not let anything so absurd go unchallenged. "Did it explode?" he was asked smartly. "Yes, sir." "And how did the 'explosion' burn up the men and property?" with a knowing look to the jury. "The gases crept quietly to the boilers, unobserved," said the witness, "and all at once the whole atmosphere was ablaze." The witnesses who tried to prove that no harm could have resulted from the tampering with the still broke down. One of them was the inspector of oils at the combination's refinery at Cleveland. He, too, had once been an independent refiner, but had passed under the yoke. He declared with every possible variation of phrase that there could not have been an explosion at the Buffalo works; but the District Attorney got out of him piecemeal admissions that the "escaping petroleum gases would be inflammable"; that "in a damp day you would expect them to settle close to the still"; that then, if they came in contact with fire, "you would have a large flash, and consume those vapors; if a person was in the vicinity he would burn." "I ask you if it would be a safe thing to fill a still with 175 barrels of petroleum, put under it an extremely hot fire, so that the front portion of the still is a cherry red, and a weighted safety-valve is blown off--would you consider that a safe thing to do?" "I would not." Still another of these witnesses ended, like Balaam, by saying just the opposite of what had been wanted of him. He testified that the escape of gases from the stills, and even their ignition, was a matter of no consequence--"it may occur at any time"--until he was cross-examined. It turned out then that his own works had been burned three times by the gases from distillation taking fire. "These gases," he had to admit, "took fire and burned the receiving-house. A man got burned up with it." "Are you willing," the District Attorney asked, sarcastically, "to go down to the Buffalo works and have them run some vapor, on a quiet day, on the ground, and let you stand in the middle of it and touch it off?" "I am not anxious to do that."[501] Every one looked to see Matthews crushed by the cross-examination, in accordance with the widely advertised promises of the counsel on the other side. "As he stood up to take the oath," said the New York _World_, "and confronted the men with whom he had been at sword's-point for six years, men of unlimited wealth and almost unlimited influence, and controlling the most gigantic monopoly of any age or any country, Charles B. Matthews looked, as a good observer said, what he proved himself to be, a fighter, who will never know when he is whipped. Hard knocks and a struggle of years against an all-powerful enemy have whitened his hair, and set firm, hard lines about his face. His eyes are deep-set under a protruding forehead and black, bushy lashes, and are dark, firm, and searching. His jet-black beard is luxuriant but coarse, his whole head and face bespeak the dogged persistence in following a foe that is characteristic of the man. He is tall, well built, and with those whom he knows to be friends he is kindly and almost jovial in his manner." He told his story, and the jury believed it. One of the most damaging portions of his testimony was that given to connect the New York members of the trust with the conspiracy by showing that they had the actual, practical, continuous management of the Vacuum in matters small as well as large. Matthews, when in their employ, was kept running to New York continually to see one or the other of them about some detail of the business. Seeking to break down the force of this testimony, the big gun of the legal battery opened on him. "But you did not see the name" of the oil combination "up over the office that you went into (in New York)?" "I do not think I ever saw the name over the office that I went into. I think that name is not often in view over where they do business." "What makes you think so?" "My experience and observation." "What experience and observation have you had?" "Do you want I should tell it all?" "No, you need not tell it all. We will let that go now." Matthews had been in their employ. He knew about the staff of lobbyists they keep to go from capital to capital as needed. For lack of evidence the jury was offered abuse of Matthews, spoken by the brilliant attorney on a shout which enabled the populace outside the court-house to hear his speech, and, as the verdict proved, deafened the jury to his eloquence. The jury preferred the view given by the District Attorney. "When I look upon the troubled face of Matthews," said District Attorney Quinby in his closing of the case, "I know what is coming upon his head. When I know the struggle he has gone through, the integrity that is in his heart, I would say to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant, you have withstood the powerful arm of this insatiable corporation. You stand to-day honored from one end of this land to the other.' ... I am proud that in the county of Erie has been born a gentleman who has had the bravery and fortitude he has shown." CHAPTER XXI CRIME CHEAPER THAN COMPETITION The jury was composed of nine farmers, one tailor, one store-keeper, and one railroad foreman. "So intelligent a jury," said the Buffalo _Express_, "is proof perfect that the verdict it returns is the only one warranted by the law and evidence." The jury found all the defendants guilty whom the court allowed them to try. The verdict, "Guilty as charged in the indictment," was given May 18, 1887. Every possibility of appeal and reversal was resorted to. The judge granted a stay, and this left the defendants unsentenced. A motion for a new trial postponed the day of fate until December 24, 1887. When the judge decided against the new trial an appeal was taken, and was carried through every court except the highest. Legal procedure in New York makes the courts a hunting preserve for those who can afford the luxuries of litigation. The law was changed by the Field code so that demurrers and counter-appeals, proceedings and ancillary proceedings, on technical points can be carried, one after another, from court to court, while the real point at issue has to wait untried below for the results of this interminable contest. By grace of this power to carry preliminary and technical questions from court to court, at the pleasure of quibbling and appealing lawyers and procrastinating judges, from courts of Oyer and Terminer to the Supreme Court at General Term, to the Court of Appeals, rich corporations and individuals are able to tire out altogether all ordinary opponents. It was only by help of very able and highly paid lawyers, officers of the courts and of justice, that the law of New York was "reformed," so that the technical parts of a case could be to such an extent disengaged from the main body, and sent forward and backward, up and down, through the whole series of appeals, consuming endless time and money, while poor men seeking justice kick their heels in the lowest courts. As the time for pronouncing sentence came on, petitions for mercy were circulated in Buffalo and Rochester. The members of the jury which had found the accused guilty were labored with separately to sign a recantation. Only six succumbed and signed a statement that the prisoners were found guilty, not because they had conspired to blow up their rival's refinery, but because they had enticed away Albert. This recantation was in the face of the judge's charge, which had made the plot to blow up the Buffalo works the chief and the important inquiry in this case, and the verdict had been given under the influence of this view of the case. Six of the jury saw the impropriety of making this statement after they had disbanded and passed from under the legal and moral restraints they felt when sitting under their oath of office, and refused to sign it. When the paper from the complaisant six jurors was handed in, the District Attorney said in court: "These jurors received money for making these affidavits. If required to do so I will prove the statement." He was not called upon to do so. "These affidavits," he said afterwards, "were procured for the purpose of influencing the Court to administer the lighter punishment, since they tended to show that the verdict was directed against the lighter offence. One of the jurors told me he had been offered money to sign one of these affidavits, and he knew of one juror who had received $10 for signing one." When the last possibility in the way of proceedings for a stay or for a new trial had been exhausted, except argument of an appeal in the Court of Appeals, which was known to be useless, sentence was pronounced. The penalty provided in the statutes was imprisonment for one year in the penitentiary, or a fine of $250, or both. The lawyers pleaded that the elder of the convicted men was old, that the younger had just returned from a wedding tour in Europe, that some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens of Rochester had petitioned for mercy, and that six of the jury had done likewise. Each was sentenced to pay a fine of $250. Notice of appeal was given by the convicted, and a year was consumed on both sides in preparations to fight the case to a bitter finish. But the appeal was abandoned. A new trial and new sentence might have ended worse. The fine was paid, and these employés of the trust, upon whose record as reputable and inoffensive citizens for all the years of their business career no shadow had fallen till they entered its employ, took thereby the place assigned them by the jury--that of convicts guilty of crime. Crime, it seems, may in this country be cheaper than competition. They who received the larger part of the benefit of the enticement of Albert, of the harassing litigation, of the damage done by the explosion, and of the bankruptcy which was finally produced by these means, went free of all punishment; and the employés found their crime but little less than a pastime. After his conviction, and before his sentence, one of the two married. His wedding was attended by many of the great men of the trust--magnates in the New York world of affairs and its affiliated interests. It glittered with gold and silver and precious stones which they sent to signify to the world that they stood sponsor for him. The case of some humble boycotters was then fresh in the public mind. Certain working-men, on strike, handed around printed circulars in the streets of New York, requesting people not to buy beer sold by their employer. In a few weeks from the time they dropped those circulars in the streets they were in the penitentiary at Sing Sing. It was shown on their trial that they were entirely ignorant of the fact that they were violating any of the laws of the State in what they did. It was shown on the trial of the oil men that they did know that the course they had in view was criminal, and were warned by a lawyer it might land them in prison. "It was very fortunate," said the New York _World_, "that they were not poor men convicted of stealing a ham." One of the reasons given by the judge for his leniency was that prominent citizens of Buffalo and Rochester had begged for mercy. "With the very highest respect for the judge," said the Buffalo _Express_, "as the _Express_ has often demonstrated, we must say that this is a mighty queer excuse. Three-fourths of those citizens are in one way or another identified in interest with the oil trust, as the judge could readily have ascertained, and their names on that petition were entitled to no more moral weight in the consideration of this case than the names of the two guilty men should have had if they had seen fit to sign it." The sentence raised a whirlwind of indignation. "As ridiculous as anything that could be imagined," said the Philadelphia _Ledger_. "It is high time," said the New York _World_, "that the lines were drawn between competition and conspiracy, between business and brigandage." Referring to the golden harvest of $300,000 dividends in one year on a capital of $100,000, representing an original investment of only $13,500, the _World_ said: "The monopoly of this sort of business is a very seductive thing. It is calculated to make men of more boldness than morals blow up factories, or do almost anything else to control the field." "It can afford to blow up a rival refinery every day in the year at that price," said the Erie _Dispatch_. "There have been conspiracies," said the Oil City _Blizzard_ (Pa.), "to injure the business of opposition concerns right here in Oil City, and the conspirators have never been punished." "It is--a light sentence," was the comment of the Buffalo _Commercial_. "Poor criminals," the Buffalo _Express_ declared, "may well wonder why rich ones are let off so easily. It is equivalent to deciding that wealth may securely indulge in that inexpensive sort of amusement as a mere pastime. Who's afraid?" it asked. "What conspirator 'in restraint' of trade is afraid of a $250 fine?" "Certain it is that no wealthy criminals convicted of such a crime ever before received from a court such a mockery of justice," was the verdict of the Springfield (Mass.) _Republican_. The facts of this case have not been carelessly examined or decided. Two grand-juries in succession passed upon the evidence and found it good enough for indictments. Two petit juries heard the evidence, both for and against, in the civil and criminal suits, and found it good enough--one jury for $20,000 damages, another for a verdict of criminally guilty. Seventy picked citizens have unanimously concurred in the decision "Guilty." And this scarlet letter the monopoly will always have to carry. "So surely as Matthews lives, and so long as he lives," District Attorney Quinby said in the criminal prosecution, "he will never again make another dollar upon a barrel of oil he may manufacture. The word has gone forth, right in this court-room, that this man shall be crushed, and he can never again run his works successfully. That is going to be one of the results of this case." The fulfilment of this prediction came swiftly. This sentence of ruin upon Matthews was executed before sentence was even pronounced upon the conspirators against him. He had been left crippled by the flight and corruption of his partner, the only practical oil man in the enterprise. When he tried to obtain some one to take his place, he could not get word of any one not connected with the oil combination. He did not dare to advertise, and knew no one in Buffalo he could venture to speak to. He had made contracts before opening the works, and was unable to fill them. The pipes had been laid wrong; it took him a year trying one way and another, and making a great many mistakes, to set them right. His third partner was frightened back into the employ of the oil combination by threatening litigation. Then came the suits to destroy, punctually as threatened.[502] "If one court does not sustain the patents, we will carry them up until you get enough of it," one of the trustees said to Matthews. One of the Rochester managers, in speaking of these suits, said: "I don't know as we will gain anything really, but we will embarrass them by bringing these suits, and, if it is necessary, we will bring them once a month; yes, we will bring them once a week." One, two, three, four, five suits came with injunctions. "Null and void" was the verdict of court after court on the worthless patents and pretended trade-marks on which he was sued. Matthews had to keep pushing his pursuers to trial. What they wanted was not decisions but delays, to ruin him by the waste of time and money.[503] "It cost me one-third of my time, and $25,000 or more to defend these suits." These suits were used to scare away his customers. "I was instructed," said the Boston representative of the combination, "to tell the customers that the Buffalo company were using their patents."[504] The sole legal victory the combination won was the recovery of six cents damages on a technical point. Matthews, on his side, took to the courts. He sued his persecutors as individuals and corporations. He pursued them civilly and criminally. He was successful in defending himself against their suits. All his suits were successful as far as he was able to carry them. One suit for damages produced a $20,000 verdict; another was for $250,000, on the still stronger evidence procured in the criminal trial. It took Matthews two years--from 1883 to 1885--to get his first case for damages for conspiracy to trial. All that time was consumed by his opponents in quibbles about procedure, technical objections, and motions for delay, appealing them from court to court. The judge, in taking from the jury afterwards the three trustees who had been brought to trial for conspiracy, declared that he could see no reason to believe that these suits had been brought without probable cause. But the jury before which the suit for damages was tried saw plenty of such reasons, and gave Matthews' company a verdict of $20,000 damages. The views of the judge and jury might have varied in the same way on the question of the guilt of the three members of the trust. Matthews woke up one morning to discover, as he had been told he would, that there was no Atlas Company to get his oil from. Corporations may have no souls, but they can love each other. The Erie Railroad killed the pipe line of the Atlas Company for the oil combination.[505] The courts had been kept busy granting injunctions against it on the motion of the Erie. These were invariably dissolved by the courts, but an application for a new one would always follow. At one time the lawyers had fifteen injunctions all ready in their hands to be sued out, one after the other, as fast as needed. The pipe line was finally destroyed by force. Where it crossed under the Erie road in the bed of a stream grappling-irons were fastened to it, and with an immense hawser a locomotive guarded by two freight cars full of men pulled it to pieces. The Atlas line and refinery became the "property" of their enemy. Matthews' supply of crude oil was not cut off immediately. He was tapered off. One of the superintendents of the Atlas testified in the suit for damages Matthews brought against the Atlas after it passed into the hands of the combination, that by the order of the manager of the refinery he mixed refuse oil with the crude which they sold to the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company. Finally the supply was shut off altogether. Matthews turned to the railroads connecting Buffalo with the oil country. They all put up their rates. At the increased rates they would not bring him enough to keep him going; they would not give him cars enough, and told him they would not let him put his own cars on the road. Even the lake steamers raised their rates against him. The farmer-refiner was taking his lesson in the course which had driven his first employer to dig oil-wells because "there were restrictions in the shipments." Cut off from a supply by either pipe or rail at Buffalo, Matthews made an alliance with the Keystone Refinery in the oil regions. War was now made upon the Keystone. It was finally ruined. Packs of lawyers were set upon Matthews, and they finally brought him down. An attorney appeared before a judge and made a motion that the property of Matthews' company be taken out of Matthews' hands and be placed in the charge of a receiver, as officer of the court, to secure a debt due a Buffalo bank. This done, the lawyer appeared before the judge who afterwards decided that $250 fine was punishment enough for criminal conspiracy, with an offer from the monopoly to pay $17,300 for the discontinuance of the suits for damages which Matthews had instituted, and $63,700 for all the other assets. The other creditors and all the stockholders opposed the motion, but the judge granted it. There were two suits. One had produced a verdict of $20,000, and the other one for $250,000 was brought on the new and much stronger evidence secured in the criminal trial. As to the value of the property, Matthews had brought his enterprise to the point where it was worth $20,000 a year. It was capable of producing many times that amount of profit. Had not Albert been enticed away, the new works would have yielded a profit of over $100,000 the first year. They had a capacity of 70 to 80 barrels a day of lubricating oil, and the profit was $5 to $6 a barrel at the time Matthews and Albert went into the business.[506] The judge, overruling a majority of the creditors, ordered the receiver to accept the offer. He gave as his reason for selling these damage suits that a criminal prosecution had already taken place for the same offences, and a person could not be punished twice for the same offence. As they had not yet been punished, this meant, if it meant anything, that the suits were to be sold out for this inconsiderable sum, and the guilty men were to get their punishment in the sentence he was to pass upon them in the criminal court. Three months later, before the same judge, these convicted agents stood up to receive their criminal sentence. The judge gave them the lightest sentence in his power, "nominal punishment." He did so, he was reported by the Buffalo press to have said, because "it has come to the attention of the court that civil suits have been brought to recover damages sustained by reason of the same overt acts. Large punitive damages are demanded in those actions. It is fundamental that a person cannot be punished twice for the same offence." The judge released them from the suits for damages because they were to be punished criminally. Then he released them from any but nominal punishment, because there had been suits for damages. One would infer that the civil suits for damages were in full career in the courts, to end possibly in hundreds of thousands of dollars' damages against the convicted. No one would infer what was the truth--and who should have remembered it so well as the judge, for it was he who had done it?--that the civil suits had been ordered sold. The judge had ordered his officer--the receiver--who had the luckless Matthews' affairs in his grip, not to try the cases, but to sell them. The suits had been ordered sold in February preceding, and they were as dead as--justice. But as all the technical formalities and slow proceedings needed to consummate the sale had not been completed when sentence was passed in May, the damages they might produce were made a reason for inflicting none but nominal punishment. The order of sale made it impossible that they should ever be tried. Of the money paid into court, nearly half--$30,000--went to the lawyers, and, crudest stroke of all, the attorney who had made the successful motion before the judge to take Matthews' property away, and to order the forced sale, got $5000. Matthews got nothing. Even his right to sue his destroyers had been sold to them on their own motion and at their own price. The crime was plotted in March, 1881. The participants were indicted in 1886. It took until May 15, 1887, to secure conviction. While sentence was still unpronounced Matthews' property was put into the hands of a receiver of the court, January 16, 1888; the property was sold by order of the court, February 17, 1888; sentence was pronounced May 8, 1888; the formalities of the sale were consummated July 11, 1888; and the sentence, coming last of all--the fine of $250--was executed May 1, 1889. Matthews had tried to make money in oil, and had failed; but his competition had forced those in control of the markets to increase the price to the producer, and he made light cheaper to the community. In Buffalo his enterprise had caused the price to drop to 6 cents from 12 and 18 cents, in Boston[507] to 8 cents from 20. Oil has never since been as high in Boston or Buffalo as before he challenged the monopoly. And he forced the struggle into the view of the public, and succeeded in putting on record in the archives of courts and legislatures and Congress a picture of the realities of modern commerce certain to exercise a profound influence in ripening the reform thought with which our air is charged into reform action. Nothing is so dramatic as fact, when you can find the fact. The treatment his church gave the brother, who had been the victim, as judicially declared, of a criminal conspiracy, is described in the following letter from Matthews: "BUFFALO, January 19, 1888. "MY DEAR FRIEND,--As your father was a clergyman, and as you feel an interest in church affairs, I think you will wish to know of my recent experiences. My church here is not a rich one, but we pay as much for church music as we do as salary to our pastor. Probably the wealthiest man in our church is an agent of the oil trust. He receives a salary of $18,000 per year, and keeps their retail store here, and has been a witness for them in important suits. He does not belong to our church, but is a trustee and treasurer of the Church, and is very kind to our pastor, whom he took last summer on quite an extended vacation trip in New England. But you know the class of men that usually become trustees in our city churches these days. "My pastor surprised me a few days ago by making a visit at my office, and telling me that as my term of office as member of the session expired soon, it might be best for me not to be a candidate for re-election, in view of what the newspapers had said about me, and the opposition there was. He said, however, that he personally felt friendly to me, and regarded me highly. He seemed to be embarrassed, but I quickly relieved the situation by saying that I had told my family some months before that I should not again hold a church office. I told the doctor he well knew I did not desire office in or out of the Church. True, the newspapers, under the influence of the oil trust, had ridiculed me as 'farmer Matthews from the country.' But why should my pastor mock me with such shallow pretences for reasons for church opposition to me? I had engaged in the oil business without the consent of the oil monopoly, and my pastor then and there told me my friends thought me foolhardy in doing so. I could hardly suppress my feelings on hearing this said by the man who baptized my children and ministers at the church altar. What could all this mean? I had only fought for my rights as an American citizen, as a manufacturer and shipper of oil. I had been sustained in every detail by the courts. I had convicted in our courts prominent men of conspiracy, little thinking that the subtle power of these men could come to dominate the Church itself. My feelings were intense, and words came thick and fast--all too tame to express my feelings. I told the doctor how I had struggled on from boyhood, and at middle age had accumulated a few thousand dollars, and in all these years had never sued a man or been sued, and that my struggle with the oil monopoly was for rights that no one worthy to be called a man dare to surrender. I told the doctor how I had been hounded, and my business beset by spies--that my friends had often told me I was in danger of assassination if I continued the fight in the courts. He, having done his errand, seemed uneasy, and anxious to go. I told him I had seen the rising and corrupting power of this trust in their control of our aldermen and courts, in state and national legislation. I could witness all this with comparative composure; but it made every drop of my blood hot to see them erect their altars for Mammon worship in the Church of the living God. I had seen the hard-won earnings of a lifetime swept away, and had hoped that at least one word of sympathy might come from the Church. If I had been robbed by old-fashioned highwaymen and the Church received none of the loot, church sympathy would have been hearty and abundant. But no; Sabbath after Sabbath our reverend doctor rises in the pulpit, and, at the regular time, says: 'Let us worship God in the gift of money.' Religion, divine worship, and money all seem to have a like meaning as they are alternately mentioned in our pulpit. My ancestors far back were church people, but this worshipping money, or worshipping God with money, is all new to me. It was not the acceptable worship required by Christ and taught by his disciples. After the conversation I had with my pastor that day I trudged home, but could not sleep that night. My heart was too full of sorrow as well as anger. I hope you will forgive me for writing you so long a letter. I have written much more than I intended to, but did not see where to stop. There are many things I wish you could see but not experience in the life of a business man nowadays. I want you to write often, as every word from a true friend is prized highly in these dark days for me." The action of the judge in this and another celebrated case was made an issue in the elections in New York in 1889. In June, 1882, the railroads in New York City, rather than pay the freight-handlers the 20 cents an hour they asked for, instead of 17 cents, brought the business of the city to a stop. They refused to employ their old men at that price, and did not supply their places. Trucks by thousands, heavy with merchandise, stood before the railroad freight-houses for days, waiting in vain to be unloaded. The trade of the metropolis was paralyzed, and the railroad officials sat serenely in their offices, letting the jam pile up until the freight-handlers were starved into accepting the wages they were offered, and commercial distress had made the business community desperate enough to tolerate that injustice, or any other iniquity, provided the "Goddess of Getting-on" were allowed to get on again. It was so clear that the price asked by the men was fair, and that the refusal of the railroads to set them at work and keep the channels of trade open was due to a purpose to manufacture such widespread loss and trouble that the public should be goaded into forgetfulness of the rights of the men, that public opinion forced the Attorney-General of the State to act. Re-enforced by able counsel, he applied for a peremptory writ of mandamus to compel the roads to resume operations. This motion came before this Buffalo judge, then sitting by assignment in New York. He kept the people waiting ten days, and then quashed and dismissed the petition. The decision of the Supreme Court, composed of judges of both parties, reversing his action, was unanimous, but the mischief he had done was by that time--January 17, 1883--long past mending. When he was nominated to be judge again, after his indecision and decision had swelled the dividends of the great railways of New York, the presiding officer of the convention which was to choose him to be their candidate was, by a coincidence, also the president of one of the great railway corporations which had been involved in the judicial proceeding of 1882. The judge's record was made one of the issues in the State election which followed the defeat of justice in Buffalo. He was nominated by the Republicans in 1889 for Judge of the Court of Appeals, the highest court in the State of New York, and the nomination was asserted by the New York _Times_, in a leading editorial, to have been procured by the oil trust. Its "influence was active," said the _Times_, "in securing the nomination of" this judge. " ... An attorney who has labored in its interests at Albany during the last two sessions of the Legislature was conspicuous among the men who did the work." The New York _Times_, the Buffalo _Courier_, the New York _Star_, the New York _World_, and other leading journals of the State retold the story of the trial, and declared that the judge's action in taking the case of the members of the trust from the jury, and the sentence he gave the convicted agents, made it clear that he was unfit to be a judge. The oil combination, the _World_ said, editorially, "have had agents busy this year trying to secure his elevation to the highest court in the State.... We say confidently that the history of the case establishes his conspicuous unfitness for a place on the bench of the Court of Appeals. He should be defeated, and with him the oppressive monopoly which is actively seeking his election." He was defeated with the rest of the ticket. District Attorney Quinby was re-elected several terms in succession. After their victory the people went to sleep, but not the sower of tares. At the election of 1890 the nomination of this judge to a seat on the bench was secured from both parties. For fourteen years, therefore--from 1890--a seat of the Supreme Court, one of the most important tribunals of justice in New York State, will be occupied by this judge, before whom must come many questions affecting oil transportation, electric lighting, natural gas and illuminating, street railways, banking, and other interests of the oil trust. Monopoly cannot be content with controlling its own business. It is the creature of the same law which has always driven the tyrant to control everything--government, art, literature, even private conversation. Any freedom, though seemingly the most remote from any possible bearing upon the tyrant, may--will grow from a little leak of liberty into a mighty flood, sweeping his palaces and dungeons away. The czar knows that if he lets his people have so much freedom as free talk in their sitting-rooms their talk will gather into a tornado. In all ages wealth, like all power, has found that it must rule all or nothing. Its destiny is rule or ruin, and rule is but a slower ruin. Hence we find it in America creeping higher every year up into the seats of control. Its lobbyists force the nomination of judges who will construe the laws as Power desires, and of senators who will get passed such laws as it wants for its judges to construe. The press, too, must be controlled by Power. During the criminal trial at Buffalo one of the oil combination's detectives was put on the stand. He was compelled to produce his written instructions from the counsel of the trust.[508] These had been given him at the office of the oil trust in New York. He forwarded his reports to its office in New York, and received his pay from the same place.[509] He sent his subordinates to get employment in Matthews' works, and through them obtained information from the inside. The monopoly paid one of these detectives $2.50 a day for spying, while he could earn only $1.50 a day for working. "I see here further," said the District Attorney, "'Why the _Express_ published the last complaint'"--in Matthews' suit for $250,000 damages. "Did he ask you to find out about that?" "He did." "That is, he wanted you to find out what arrangements were made with the Buffalo _Express_ to have the complaint published?" "Yes; the whole complaint. It covered the whole of the newspaper." "And do you know 'how many copies were taken by Matthews?' Did he tell you to find that out, too?" "Yes, sir."[510] CHAPTER XXII ANOTHER TALE OF TWO CITIES The South is the most American part of America. Close observers note as its especial characteristic the preservation of the original Anglo-Saxon types, which gave this country its first and deepest impress. The South is not yet so steeped as the North in the commercialism to which it is all of life to buy and sell, and its population, less affected by trade and immigration, remains more nearly American, as the fathers were American, than the parts of the country flooded by the full force of the modern tide. Only in the South is there record all through this history of a man "too prejudiced to buy" from those who claimed the sole right to sell. The merchants of Columbus, Mississippi, were buying their oil of the southern branch of the combination when they were offered a supply at cheaper prices by an independent refiner. They asked the combination to meet this competition of the market. This was refused. There were eleven firms there which sold oil in connection with other things. The combination "coolly informed us," wrote one of the firms to a journal of the trade, "that we were in their power, and could not buy oil from any one else, and that we should either pay such prices as they demanded or not sell oil. We immediately formed an association among ourselves and ordered from other parties. On receipt of our first car they immediately put the retail price below the cost per car lots, and for some time tried to whip us in that way, as we still declined to handle their oil. They then wrote offering to rebate to several of the larger firms if they would withdraw and leave the smaller ones to fight the battle alone. This proposition we declined, and they again tried the low-price dodge, their agent telling us that they would spend $10,000 to crush us out. This game they have now been trying for three years, and in that time we have not handled one gallon of their oil." As these devices, irresistible in more commercial civilizations, did not fool the brotherhood of Columbus, a special agent was sent to Columbus to carry on the war. "You can tell the Columbus merchants if this does not succeed we will have it out on other lines," the agent was instructed, in the strain of the letter to the merchant of Nashville.[511] "The battle has not fairly opened yet; sharpen up your sword, we mean war to the knife." And again: "We want Columbus squelched," was the word sent the agent from the headquarters at Louisville. He was ordered to start a grocery store in Columbus, to compete in their entire business with the "black-mailers." While the fight was on, and it was still hoped to conquer Columbus, the following was kept prominently before the people in the daily papers: "We desire to state that we did not establish an agency in Columbus to force the wholesale grocers to handle our oil." But seven years later the general in command of this department told Congress it was his practice to fight in that way. "Almost invariably I did that always."[512] "To threaten the people elsewhere with Columbus," the agent at Columbus was told, "will make them scat, as it were, and take our oil at any price." But the people of Columbus did not "scat." The new store had a complete stock of groceries. Prices on everything, including oil, were put "down to the bone." But one essential feature of the enterprise all the ingenuity and power of the invader could not furnish--customers. Goods were advertised at cost; alluring signs were hung out with daily variations; but the people would not buy. A few citizens who bought at the beginning, without understanding the plan of campaign, came out in the newspapers with cards of apology, and pledges that they would not repeat the mistake. Local bankers refused to honor the drafts of the enemy, threw out its accounts, and gave notice that they would advance no money to persons who bought at its store. The public opinion of Columbus so bitterly resented the attack upon the livelihood of its merchants, because they had dared to buy where they thought best, and so clearly saw that the subjugation of the merchants would be but the preliminary of a conquest of themselves, that any one seen within the doors of the odious store fell into instant and deep disgrace. "Their store is regarded as a pest-house," wrote one of the leading business men, "and few respectable people ever darken their doors, their trade being confined mostly to negroes. Their oil trade has dwindled down to almost nothing, and we are selling now to merchants in other towns who heretofore bought exclusively from them." At the first sign of aggression the merchants had given up competition, which they saw meant only mutual ruin, and had tied themselves together in an association. Now as the struggle widened the people did the same, and found a greater benefit and pleasure in co-operation than in keeping up the delusion of the "higgling of the market" where there was no market. The _Index_, of Columbus, printed an agreement signed by hundreds "of those who will sustain our home merchants in the struggle they are making.... It will receive many more signatures among our citizens.... The people have only to understand to properly decide in this matter between right and wrong." "You ask if the feeling is bitter against them in our 'community,'" one of the merchants wrote. "I can only liken it to the spirit which prevailed when the people of Boston emptied King George's taxed tea into Boston Harbor." Attempt was made to intimidate the press. Advertisements were discontinued because the papers supported the cause of the people. "If the agent," said the _Index_, of Columbus, "thought the cash that might be obtained for such advertisements could purchase the silence of this journal when it should speak, or its support in a wrong cause, he reckoned without his host." "The pledge" was signed by practically every man in the place. The country people about Columbus, when they came to town to sell produce and buy supplies, took back with them blanks of the agreement not to buy the obnoxious oil, and circulated them among their neighbors for signature. Agents were sent among these country people to win back their trade, but they could not be moved. The competition was made "war to the knife," and the knife "to the bone." It was a singular sight--this concentration of millions to "kill" these little men in this remote country town in far-off Mississippi. Nothing was too small to do. When one of the Columbus "rebels" bought oats for his trade, a competitive stock of the same kind of oats was hurried into Columbus, and these instructions sent with it: "Put your sign out. Rust-proof oats to arrive at 98 cents to $1 a bushel. This will kill him. The same signs should be posted about meats, sugar, coffee, etc." The plan of action of the Merchants' Association was simple: they declined to handle the enemy's oil at any price. "Then to have a stock of our own always on hand, ready to sell whenever we could at a profit, and hold in reserve whenever they put prices below cost; and in this way we have made it a losing business to them for over three years, and will continue to do so as long as they remain in our town.... When our association buys a car of oil, each member pays for and takes charge of an equal share, but the oil remains the property of the association; and should any member sell out before the others, he has the right to buy from them at cost, and the next car is not ordered until all are nearly sold out." It is "our pleasure to make oil cheap"; but a written proposition was made to the merchants that if they would repent and return, the price would be 20 cents a gallon, with a rebate to the loyal dealers. As this oil could be, and was being, laid down in Columbus at 12 cents a gallon, the proposition amounted to a request that the merchants join in imposing a tax on the people of 8 cents a gallon, which must be added to the retail price, and go to swell the profits of the "sympathetical co-operation." "Can any one," said the _Index_, "after knowing these facts, doubt that in a pecuniary point our merchants could have done better by surrendering the principle and joining the ring? But, at the same time, could any reasoning man (even viewing it in the light of policy alone) advise such a course?--one which, if adopted, would only open the door for other monopolies to enter and demand high prices on meat, flour, and the other necessaries of life, until our city becomes the highest market in the land. Let all good citizens, then, unite in a steady effort to resist the yoke which this monopoly is now trying to force upon us, and let us teach them and all others that our people are too loyal to each other and too intelligent to allow themselves to be made the instruments of their own destruction. "Remember, that should our merchants be forced to yield, the day of low prices will be a short one, and then these strangers, having accomplished their purpose and forced their yoke upon you and us, will return to their homes, and while rioting in the taxes wrung from you, with your own assistance, will laugh at you for allowing yourselves to be so easily duped, and, emboldened by their success in forcing upon you high-priced oil, will soon return to demand high prices on sugar, coffee, and every other article of trade." The nose for news of the American press scented out the novelty of a whole community acting as one man in successful resistance to those who had till then found nowhere any cohesive brotherliness to make a stand against them. The newspapers of the county took the matter up. It was absolutely the first time any method had been found that could prevail against the tactics of divide and conquer, which had been elsewhere irresistible. Public attention was fascinated by the revelation that a brotherhood to ravage the people turned impotent when the people were roused to meet it with their brotherhood of the commonwealth. There was in the spectacle a moral illumination--the light that never fails. Instead of becoming, as had been planned, a warning to all the people of the dire destruction to be visited upon any who dared to disobey, the encounter between the one-man power of united Columbus and the one-man power of hundreds of millions of dollars became every day more brilliantly a sign in the sky, showing all the people how the invasion of their industrial liberties could be changed into a ruin more complete than the retreat from Moscow. Scores of such assaults on the people had been won before. "What was being done at Columbus," said one of the papers, "is but what they have done before at Aberdeen, and at hundreds of other places North and South." But as despoilers always have to fear, one defeat may undo a lifetime of conquest. The success of the people of Columbus was teaching the people of the whole country, and of all markets, that their real enemy was not the oil trust, but the lack of trust in each other. The people were learning there was a magic in association more potent than the trick of combinations. The _Index_ proposed to the people of the South to join the citizens of Columbus, and make the fight general. "There is this about it: if there was concentrated action among the smaller cities and towns throughout even this section of the State, we would have no fear of the result. The oil trust may be too strong for a single small locality, but if a combination of a certain number of localities handling oil were effected, they would soon be forced to retire. Such a combination can be and should be brought about at once." The struggle at Columbus lasted three years. It had seemed unequal enough--a few thousands of dollars against hundreds of millions. But three years of this commercial warfare failed to break the spirit or resources of the brave--and wise because brave--people. The community never broke rank. They laughed when they were tempted with cheap coffee, flour, sugar, to join in the attempt to bankrupt their home merchants. They could see that the gift of forced cheapness, used to destroy natural cheapness, was a Trojan horse bearing within itself the deadliest form of dearness. Defeated, the oil lords gave up the contest, closed their store in Columbus, and left the people of that place free. "England," says Emerson, "reaches to the Alleghanies; America begins in Ohio." In the Western Reserve of Ohio, hive of abolitionists and Union soldiers, was the same spirit of America which, at Columbus, Mississippi, had defended its market rights as outposts of all other rights. It was only a few years ago discovered that the flames of the "burning springs" of the Caspian Sea, China, and America, whose torches kindled the lamp of history, were beacon-fires uncomprehended by a procession of civilizations, and waiting to light man to the knowledge that the earth beneath him was a city of domes, huge receivers storing up the products of vaster gas-retorts below. Man found that he need not wait for this spirit to come to him out of the "caverns measureless to man." He could go to it, as in oil, and, tapping the great tanks, could lead their flighty contents to homes and mills, to emerge there as light and warmth and power. Experience in oil had made ready skill and capital to use the new treasure. In a very few years thousands of miles of pipe were laid, and millions of capital invested in the natural-gas business, mainly in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The gas was found in the same general localities as oil, and the methods of procuring and distributing it were similar, and the similarity easily extended to the methods of administering this bounty of nature as "property." Toledo began to be supplied in 1887 with the new fuel through pipe lines by two companies. They obtained their franchises as competitors, but were soon found to be one in ownership, prices, and all details of management. The discovery that the two companies at Toledo were really one, and that one the evil one of the oil trust, aroused the apprehensions of the people, and these were increased by a number of circumstances. The Toledo companies got from the city as a free gift a franchise worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, on condition that they would supply Toledo before a certain date. But in the midst of the work of laying pipes they suspended operations, and declared that they would do nothing more unless the City Council fixed, at rates dictated by them, the prices the people were to pay. These rates were enough to pay not only a fair dividend, but to return in a few years every dollar of capital invested in lands, pipes, etc. Later they demanded another increase which, according to the sworn statement by their superintendent of the amount of gas supplied daily, would have amounted to $351,362.50 a year. They made the charges regardless of the ordinance, and used delay in furnishing gas as a means to make people willing to pay these illegal rates. Consumers seeking to renew their contracts were informed that the price would be doubled. The companies had assured the people that they should get their heat at half the price of coal; but when the bills were footed up, the gas in many cases cost more than coal. The companies refused to supply fuel to an oil refinery which had been built in Toledo in opposition to the trust refineries. The companies discriminated against some customers, and in favor of others. The power to say which manufacturer should have cheaper fuel than his competitor was a power to enact prosperity or ruin.[513] It was a power to force themselves into control of any business they desired to enter. Those who controlled these gas companies appeared in the Circuit Court of the city in a proceeding which alone contained warning enough to put any self-governing community on guard. The Court was asked to deny the right of farmers in Wood County to give a way over their lands to the Toledo, Findlay, and Springfield Railway, being built to give the independent oil-refiners and producers of the Ohio oil-field a route to market. The farmers in question had made leases to an oil corporation of the trust, giving only the specific right to bore for and pipe and store oil and gas. The farmers supposed that they had parted only with what they had signed away in the leases. They supposed they still owned their farms. When the new railroad sought the privilege of a right of way the farmers granted it. Suit was at once brought for an injunction to prevent this use of the land. According to the logic of the claim in these cases a farmer who has made such a lease could not build a road across his own farm without permission. "Most certainly not," was the reply made by one of the lawyers to the judge who asked if the farmer could do so. By occurrences like these an increasing number of influential citizens were convinced that the gas companies would hold a power over the comfort and daily life of the people not wise to surrender entire to any corporation. An agitation was begun for the supply of gas to the people by themselves acting through the municipality. Six thousand citizens sent a petition, in the session of 1887-88, to the Legislature to pass the necessary enabling act. There was a discussion of the project for two years. Public opinion grew more favorable every day. The citizens chartered a special train to carry a delegation to Columbus the day the pipe-line law came before the Senate. The Legislature in 1889 passed the law. It authorized the people of Toledo to issue bonds to the extent of $750,000 to buy gas land and build pipe lines. This legislation was, of course, bitterly opposed by the existing gas companies, and they demanded of the Legislature that before the law became operative it should be ratified by a three-fifths vote of the people. The friends of this scheme of municipal self-help and independence accepted the challenge. In the ensuing campaign the opposition to the people was officered by the president of one of the natural-gas companies, twice Governor of Ohio, afterwards United States Secretary of the Treasury. The natural-gas trustees of the City of Toledo in an official communication said: "There is reason to believe the money of the natural-gas companies was freely spent to defeat it." The act was ratified April, 1889, by a vote of 7002 for to 4199 against--"a vote," say the trustees, "in which the heavy taxpayers were largely acting with the majority."[514] Organized labor took an enthusiastic part in the work of this election. The Central Labor Union held a special meeting which filled the largest public hall. Men paraded the streets with banners favoring the policy of independence. The Knights of Labor held meetings to discuss the project, and the Central Council, representing all the assemblies in the city, passed unanimously resolutions appealing to all members of the order and all working-men to support no candidate who would not pledge himself to the city pipe line. At a meeting of the glassworkers it was resolved to be "the duty of every working-man to vote 'Yes' for the pipe line next Monday." "Many of us glassworkers," said the resolutions adopted, "have been employed in factories in the Ohio Valley, receiving their natural-gas fuel from a gigantic corporation similar to that which now supplies Toledo. We have seen our employers unfairly dealt with, and arbitrarily treated in the matter of making rates. Some of them were forced to go into the courts, to prevent the extortion of the piratical company who were bent on assessing each citizen and industry at the highest rate possible, irrespective of its effect on the industries or the wages of the employés. Many manufacturers were compelled to move their plants to the cheap gas-fields of Ohio and Indiana. The employés were compelled to break up their homes and emigrate, in order to follow their trade for a livelihood." The question came before the people again the next spring, when both the Republican and Democratic parties by acclamation renominated a natural-gas trustee, whose term was expiring, to succeed himself. At the election the vote was 8958 for, and only 58 against--a practically unanimous indorsement of the project by the people. Toledo now began to make history. "It is entirely safe to say," a well-known citizen declared in the Toledo _Blade_, "that in the history of this country no other people have been called to the experience which Toledo has been undergoing for the past year. Communities often are agitated and divided on questions of local policy; but no second case will be found in which a people, after settling such questions among themselves according to recognized rules, were confronted with warfare, bitter and persistent, such as this city is now called to meet, and at the hands of a combination wholly of non-residents, without the slightest proper voice in their domestic concerns." In every direct encounter with the "commons" the "lords" had been defeated--in the two years' debate which preceded the first appeal to the Legislature; in the Legislature, where the bill passed the House almost unanimously, and the Senate more than two to one; in the appeal to the voters; before the governor, who had been approached to cripple the enterprise of the municipality by naming unfriendly trustees. The gas companies had tried at each city election, after the Legislature acted in 1889, to seat in the City Council a majority in their interest; but the people, making the city pipe line the issue of the election, gave an overwhelming preponderance of their votes to the men pledged to see it through. "Strong and subtle opposition"[515] was then brought to bear on the Common Council to prevent it from passing the necessary ordinances; but, in spite of it, both branches of the Council voted them unanimously. A clearer case of the will of the people and of law and order there could not be. A free and intelligent community, in a matter of vital concern to its industrial freedom and business prosperity, after thorough discussion, in which all sides had been freely heard, had by constitutional proceedings decided by an overwhelming majority upon a policy altogether within its legal, moral, and contract rights. The ablest lawyers, writers, and financiers that money could hire had had it under the microscope to find some breach for attack, but had not been able to find a flaw. All was constitutional, legal, proper, and expedient. A glance at the contestants brings out in clear outlines some conditions of our modern development which have come upon us almost unawares. The City of Toledo was a vigorous community of 90,000 people; its opponent was a little group of men; but they controlled in one aggregation not less than $160,000,000, besides large affairs outside of this. The assessed valuations of the property of the people on which Toledo could levy taxation was, in 1889, but $33,200,000. The total income of the municipality was $961,101; that of a single member of the little group opposing them had been acknowledged to be $9,000,000 a year, and was believed by the best informed to be several times as much. This individual income was greater than the product of all the manufactories of the city, and three times greater than the combined wages of the workmen in these establishments. There were several members of the natural-gas syndicate who collected and disbursed every year more than the community. Toledo had about the same population as Kansas in 1856. The slave power of the South that assailed the liberties of the 90,000 in Kansas numbered millions, but the new power in the North, which in a short generation had grown so strong that it did not fear to attack the 90,000 freemen of Toledo, counted only nine names. The people could act only after public deliberation, and through the slow stages of municipal and State procedure. Their antagonist met in secret council, and devised plans executed by a single hand, armed with the aggregated power of hundreds of millions of dollars, and liable, if found illegal or criminal, to only "nominal" punishment, or only 6 cents damages.[516] At Columbus the struggle was with something very simple but extraordinarily difficult to overcome, as simple things often are--an obstinate, immovable, thoroughly angry public opinion, acting only through private voluntary means, its set will to exchange the fruits of its labor with whom and on what terms it pleased. There was absolutely no leverage to be got to bear upon the people of Columbus except by changing their feelings. Compulsion was out of the question. But at Toledo compulsion was possible. There the people had acted not through unofficial combination as at Columbus, but through the official machinery of the town and State. If the law could be turned against them by able counsel or compliant judges; if any smallest fault, however technical, could be found in the legislation of the State or the city or the practical administration of the official machinery provided for the natural-gas business of the city--if this could be done, the people of Toledo could be compelled, however little their will had changed, to see their enterprise of independence balked; this compulsion could be carried to the use of force if they resisted, and the militia of the State and the regular army could be brought into the conflict. Such is the prize of power which tempts--more than tempts, drives as by fate--our overgrown wealth to fortify itself by control of judges, governors, presidents, commanders-in-chief--all the agents of the supreme authority and force. Columbus was so local that its people were sufficient unto themselves. All they had to do was to keep on saying, We will not buy. But Toledo was a citizen of the great world of affairs and finance. It was part of London, New York, Chicago. Much of it was owned as an investment elsewhere. Sensitive nerves connected it with all the markets, especially the greatest of all--the money-market. It sold and bought and borrowed and lent far beyond its own border. What Wall Street gossips said about the people of Columbus would not make a dollar's difference to the whole town in a year, but a whisper started through the offices of the great capitalists in New York and abroad would flash back by wire to Toledo, and go like a quick poison through its industries and credit, private and public. "Private enterprise" could not afford to let the people of Toledo go forward with their public enterprise. Many millions had been invested in getting control of a business representing $200,000,000. Many towns and cities, as Fostoria, Sandusky, Fremont, Clyde, Bellevue, Norwalk, Perrysburgh, Tiffin, and Detroit, were being supplied with gas at a handsome profit. If Toledo should set a successful example of self-supply, it would find imitators on every side. The essence of "private enterprise" was that the people should get their gas from Captains of Industry, and pay them for their captaincy two or three times the real cost as profit, just as monarchical countries pay kings for kindly supplying the people with the government which really comes from the people. The essence of municipal supply was that the people should supply themselves at cost without profit, and without Captains of Industry, except as the people provided them. Toledo, in fine, proposed to keep step with the modern expansion of self-government, which finds that it can apply principles and methods of democracy to industry. It proposed to add another to many demonstrations already made, noticeably in this very department of gas supply to municipalities, of the truth that the ability to carry on the business of supplying the various wants of mankind is not a sort of divine right vouchsafed from on high to a few specially inspired and gifted priests of commerce, by whose intermediation alone can the mysteries of trade be operated; but, like the ability to govern and be governed, is one of the faculties common to mankind, capable of being administered of, by, and for the people, and not needing to be differentiated as the prerogative of one set of men. The Toledo experiment was another step forward in the world-wide movement for the abolition of millionaires--a movement upon which the millionaires look with unconcealed apprehension for the welfare of their fellow-beings. Mankind views with equanimity the expulsion of the profit-hunter from the businesses of carrying letters, minting coins, administering justice, maintaining highways, collecting taxes, in which millionaireism has been universally put an end to. It views with hopes of larger results the newer manifestations of the same tendency which in England have abolished millionaireism in telegraphs and parcel express; in Germany and France, Australia, and India have gone a long way towards the abolition of the millionaire in railroads; and in various cities and towns in Europe, America, and Australia have put up local signs, "No millionaires allowed here," by the municipalization of trade in water, gas, electricity, street-railways, baths, laundries, libraries, etc. The trust of millionaires was therefore fighting for a principle, and what will good men not sacrifice to principle! CHAPTER XXIII FREEDOM OF THE CITY Towns, like men, stamp themselves with marked traits. Toledo had an individuality which showed itself from the start. Its leading men clubbed together and borrowed money as early as 1832 to build one of the first railroads constructed west of the Alleghanies--the Erie and Kalamazoo, to connect Toledo and Adrian. When, in 1845, the steamboats on the lakes formed a combination, and discriminated against Toledo, the city through its council refused to submit, and appropriated $10,000 to get an independent boat to Buffalo. The city appropriated its credit and revenues to other important and costly enterprises, including four railroads, to keep it clear of the cruel mercies of private ownership of the highways. In 1889 it expended $200,000 to secure direct railway connections with the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio railways for competition in rates with the Lake Shore Railroad. As it had been authorized to do so by the State, the City Council of Toledo, April 29, 1889, ordered gas bonds to the amount of $75,000 sold, that work on the city pipe line might begin. Before proceeding with the enterprise confided to them, the natural-gas trustees gave the private companies an opportunity to save themselves from the competition of the city. They asked them in writing if they would agree to furnish gas cheaply for a term of years, or if they would sell their entire plant to the city? They did this, as they expressed it, as "an honorable effort ... to obtain cheaper gas without unnecessary expenditure, and without injury to established rights." After a delay of nearly a month a reply was received, refusing to enter into negotiations either for a reduction of charges or for the sale of the private plants to the city. The trustees then asked for a personal interview, but this was refused. Then when the city began preparations to sell its bonds, a cannonade was opened on it in the courts, the money-market, the gas-fields, the city government, the press, among the citizens, and everywhere. Injunctions were applied for in three courts, unsuccessfully in all instances. No injunction was ever granted in these or any other of the many suits brought for the purpose of enjoining the sale of the bonds. Courts will usually grant temporary injunctions awaiting a hearing on the merits when complainants will enter into ample bonds and indemnify defendants. But the parties instigating this litigation would not put up the necessary bonds. They thus could smirch the bonds without incurring any personal liability in so doing. An expensive array of lawyers was sent before the United States courts to prevent the issue of the bonds on the ground that they were illegal, and the law under which they were issued unconstitutional. The principle involved had been frequently discussed and always upheld both by the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Supreme Court of the United States.[517] "Does not your argument appear to be in conflict with the views of the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Supreme Court of the United States?" the judge asked. The counsel for the gas companies responded in substance: "If so, then so much the worse for the views of those courts." As it was through the suffrage that the people of Toledo were able to do this, the attack was widened from an attack on the enterprise to one upon the sovereignty of the citizens which made it possible. "Everybody votes in Ohio--in fact, too many people," said the lawyer who applied for an injunction against Toledo. If he had his way, he declared, there would be fewer voters, and he stigmatized the arguments of Toledo as those of John Most, the communist. "Unquestionably," decided Judge Jackson, "the Legislature may authorize a city to furnish light, or facilities for transportation, or water to its citizens, with or without cost, as the Legislature or city may determine.... Since the decision in Sharpless _vs._ Philadelphia it is no longer an open question whether municipalities may engage in enterprises such as the one contemplated by the act in question in this case. The act of January 22, 1889, authorizing the city of Toledo to issue bonds for natural-gas purposes, is clearly within the general scope of legislative power, is for a public use and purpose, and is not in contravention of any of the provisions of the constitution. The court being of the opinion that the legislation is valid, it follows, of course, that the injunction applied for must be refused."[518] When the news of Judge Jackson's decision was telegraphed to Toledo nothing less than the booming of cannon could express the joy of the citizens. They sent this message to the just judge: "One hundred guns were fired to-night by the citizens of Toledo in honor of your righteous decision to-day." Judge Jackson again upheld the bonds at Toledo, January 14, 1890, when he again dismissed the case against the city "for want of equity, at cost of complainants." The favorable decision by Judge Jackson, although an appeal was taken, made it possible for the city to sell the $75,000 bonds which had been issued by order of the Council. The bonds brought par, interest, and over $2000 premium. With the money thus procured the city's Board of Natural Gas Trustees began operations. Their opponents had spread far and loud among the voters before the election--among those who would be likely to buy the bonds, everywhere it would hurt--the assertion that all the territory that was good had been bought up by them, and the city's trustees would not be able to get any. One of the companies had no less than 140,000 acres of gas lands in its possession or under contract, at a cost in rentals and royalties of $100,000 a year.[519] But the city trustees, even with the small sum at their command, were able to secure at the very beginning wells with a capacity more than four times as great as the private companies had had when the latter began the investment of a million or more to lay their pipe lines to Toledo.[520] Together with this supply the city trustees got 650 acres about 35 miles from Toledo of as choice gas territory as there was in Ohio, almost all of it undrilled, and they had offers amounting to 5000 acres more within piping distance from the city. The city's trustees made their purchases with success, and received the laudations of their constituents for having got lands and wells at better prices than the private companies. August 26, 1889, after a decision in the United States courts that there was no ground on which to object to the issue of the bonds, the City Council voted the issue of the remaining $675,000. Defeated in the public debate which preceded the decision of Toledo to supply itself; defeated at the State Capitol; defeated at the polls of Toledo time and again--every time; defeated in the Common Council; defeated in the gas-fields; defeated in the courts of their own choosing, the opponents of the city, thorough as only the very good or the very bad can be, refused to submit. When the two corporations, in 1886, were seeking the franchise indispensable for doing business in Toledo, they said to the Board of Aldermen: "We ask no exclusive privilege.... We cannot have too many gas companies." They also said: "If the city desires to furnish its own gas, there is nothing in this ordinance to hinder it. We are ready and willing at any time to enter into competition with the city or any other company." They said, on the same occasion, in answer to apprehensions which had been expressed about the danger of putting the fuel supply of the city into the hands of a monopoly: "You can go before the Legislature and obtain the right to issue bonds for furnishing yourselves with gas." It was by these assurances the companies induced the Common Council to grant them gratuitously the very valuable franchises they were seeking. The right of the people to compete was not left to these assurances. It was specifically and formally asserted in the ordinance of July 5, 1887, fixing rates. This was the ordinance to procure which the gas company suspended its operations in mid-course, and declared it would not continue unless the prices which it wanted were made. The ordinance was, in fact, prepared by the company. It said: "Provided that nothing herein contained shall be construed as granting to existing companies any exclusive rights or privileges, or prevent any other company from furnishing natural gas to the citizens of said city." But the same learned counsel who, in behalf of the companies, had assured the city that "there was nothing in this ordinance to hinder it," went before the United States Court and pleaded that ordinance as good reason for the intervention of the Federal Government to prevent the city from going on with its enterprise. The only morning paper--an able advocate of the city pipe line--suddenly changed owners and opinions. Among its new directors were two of the lawyers of the trust opposing the city, a director in one of its companies, and, besides them, the manager, a contract editor from Pennsylvania. His sole conspicuity there had been won in turning against the people of the oil regions a paper which had been their stanchest defender. This Toledo daily, in its espousal of the cause of the city, had been firing hot shot like this against the oil combination: "It wants a monopoly of the natural-gas business. This is what it is driving at." Under its new management it roared like a sucking dove, thus: "It is fashionable with demagogues and men who are not capable of appreciating the worth of brains in business to howl against it"--the oil combination--"as a grasping, grinding monopoly." Just after the people had decided in favor of the pipe line, and only a few days before it changed owners, it had said: "All manner of influences were brought to bear to defeat this proposition.... All the plausible falsehoods that could be invented, and all the money that could be used, were industriously employed, but the people saw the situation in its true light, and the majority voted right." It now made the defeat of the city's pipe line the chief aim of its endeavors. In this work "no rule or principle recognized in decent journalism was respected." In all the history of Toledo no interest on its bonds had ever been defaulted or delayed; no principal ever unpaid at maturity. The city was prosperous, its growth steady; its debt growing less year by year in proportion to its population and wealth. Its bonds ranked among the choicest investments, and commanded a premium in the money-market.[521] But the credit and fair fame of the city were now over-whelmed with wholesale vituperation by this paper, and others elsewhere under similar control. Articles were carefully prepared for this purpose by skilled writers. These were then copied from one newspaper to another. By some arrangement insertion was obtained for them in financial journals in New York and in London, and in other foreign capitals. The Toledo organ declared that Toledo was an unsafe place for the investment of capital in any form. Its public affairs were said to be run by a set of "demagogues and speculators," whose administration was "piratical mob rule." The city pipe line was a "monstrous job," and the men who favored it were "a gang of throttlers and ravenous wolves." They were "blatant demagogues, who made great pretence of advancing the city's interest, but whose real aim is to enrich themselves at public expense." The bonds, which had been issued in due form by special authority of the Legislature, ratified by a vote of more than three-fifths of the citizens, and declared to be valid by the United States Court, were described as "chromos," "worthless rags," "bad medicine," "disfigured securities," "like rotten eggs, highly odorous goods," "but few persons at most can be found ignorant enough to buy them." The Mayor, City Auditor, Board of Natural Gas Trustees, united with a citizens' committee of the Board of Trade in a plan to promote the sale of the bonds direct to the people of Toledo through a financial institution of the highest standing. This action the paper described as "a scheme for gulling simples," "a blind pool," "an unpatented financial deadfall"; compared it with "gambling, pool-playing, and lottery selling." These grave charges were widely circulated throughout the country. Bankers and capitalists in other cities who received them had no means of knowing that they were not what they pretended to be--the honest if uncouth utterances of an independent press chastising the follies of its own constituency. Newspapers which supported the city's project were assailed as ruthlessly as the community and citizens. The _Blade_ was constantly referred to as "The Bladder." Another journal was given a nickname too vulgar to be printed here. One of the most prominent journals of Ohio was punished by the following paragraph, which is a fair sample of the literary style of monopoly: "That aged, acidulous addle-pate, the monkey-eyed, monkey-browed monogram of sarcasm, and spider-shanked, pigeon-witted public scold, Majah Bilgewater Bickham, and his backbiting, black-mailing, patent-medicine directory, the _Journal_." An old journalist and honorable citizen who wrote over his initials, "C.W.," a series of able and dignified letters in the _Blade_, which had a great influence in the formation of public opinion in favor of the pipe line, was assailed with "brutal falsifier," "hoary old reprobate," "senile old liar." Caricatures were published depicting the buyers of the bonds as "simple greens." When the County Court of Lucas County, following the United States Court, sustained the bonds on their merits, and did so on every point in question, because, as the judge stated, "the equities of the case are with the defendants," the organ falsely stated that judgment for the city was given "because the merits of the case are involved in a higher court." When a capitalist of New York, who had been an investor in the bonds of Toledo and a taxpayer there for twenty-five years--one of the streets of the city was named for him--bought $10,000 of the city pipe-line bonds, the paper attacked him by name in an article headed "Bunco Game," charging him with being a party to a bunco game in connection with "public till-tappers" for "roping Toledo citizens into buying doubtful securities." When the Sinking Fund Commissioners of Toledo very properly invested some of the city's money in the gas bonds, they were held up by name as "public till-tappers," "menials" of a "hungry horde" of "boodle politicians," accomplices of "plunderers of the public treasury," unable to withstand "the brutal threats and snaky entreaties of the corrupt gas ring." For one of the associate editors the position of Deputy State Inspector of Oil was obtained--an appointment which cost the Governor who made it many votes in the next election, and did much to defeat him. Such an appointment might give a versatile employé the chance to do double duty: as editor to brand as bad good men who could not be bought, and as inspector to brand as good bad oil for sale.[522] One of the means taken to defeat the pipe line was the publication of very discouraging accounts of the "failure" at Indianapolis, where the citizens had refused to give a natural-gas company belonging to the oil trust the franchise it demanded, and, forming an anti-monopoly trust, had undertaken to supply themselves. Some "influence" prevented the Common Council of Toledo from sending a committee to Indianapolis to investigate. A public-spirited citizen, prominent and successful in business, came forward, and at his own expense secured a full and accurate account of the experience of Indianapolis for the city. This proved that the people were getting their fuel gas at less than one-half what Toledo was paying. The contest against giving the Indianapolis franchise to a corporation of the trust had been a sharp one. Its success was due to the middle classes and the working-men, who stood together for freedom, incorruptible by all the powerful influences employed. "We will burn soft coal all our lives," one of their leaders told the Toledo committee, "rather than put ourselves in the power of such men." In Indiana the Legislature meets only once in two years, and when this issue arose had adjourned, and would not meet again for a year. The people, not being able to get authority for a municipal gas pipe line, went to work by voluntary co-operation. Every voting precinct in the city was organized and canvassed for the capital needed. The shares were $25 each, and they were bought up so rapidly that the entire amount--$550,000--was subscribed in sixteen days by 4700 persons, without a cent of cost to the city. When subscriptions to the amount of $550,000 had been raised, $600,000 more was borrowed on certificates of indebtedness. Gas lands were bought and 200 miles of pipe lines laid, all at a cost of about $1,200,000. The income in one year, during a part of which the system was still under construction, was $349,347. In the first year of complete operations the Indianapolis people's trust paid off $90,000 of the principal. The income for the year ending October 31, 1892, was $483,258.21, and the bonded debt has been paid. The stock, since January 1, 1893, has been paying dividends at the rate of 8 per cent. a year. A prominent citizen of Indianapolis, one of the State judges, told the Toledo papers, in an interview: "The private companies had their gas laid to the city and along the streets several months in advance of the Citizens' Trust, but it did them little good. Everybody said: 'I will wait for the Consumers' Trust.' 'Yes, but we will furnish you gas just as cheap,' said the Indianapolis company; 'why not take it of us?' To this the citizens replied: 'To take gas of you means cheap gas to-day, but high gas to-morrow.' And wait for the gas they all did." The charge to manufacturers was 2-1/2 cents a thousand feet, as against 8 cents, at that time charged at Toledo. There were 12,000 private consumers. Cooking-stoves in Indianapolis were about $12 a year, against $19.50 in Toledo. One of the representatives of the private company declared at a public meeting at Indianapolis that its charges were made such as to give a full return of all the invested capital in three years, as that was the probable life of the supply. A year after the inauguration of the Indianapolis movement a committee of the citizens at Dayton, who had risen against the extortionate prices charged them, investigated the condition of affairs at Indianapolis. They reported that Indianapolis had paid $200,000 on its bonded debt, and was getting ready to pay as much more. The Consumers' Trust supplied between 10,000 and 11,000 consumers, and spent $1,000,000 less than the Dayton private company spent to supply 3000 fewer consumers. The annual charge at Dayton was $54.80; at Indianapolis only $26.80--less than half. When facts like these were brought out, to the demolition of the fictions circulated in Toledo, the answer was characteristic. The "organ" could not deny the statements, but it fell upon the citizen through whose generosity the information had been got for the people, and assailed his private character in articles which, one of the daily papers declared, editorially, "would almost, if not quite, justify him in shooting their author on sight." This newspaper charged the city natural-gas trustees with being "rotten to the core," and with every variation of phrase possible to its exuberant rhetoric sounded the changes upon their official career as a "big steal," "fostered by deception, falsehood, and skull-duggery." It sought to intimidate the Legislature and the courts when they failed to enact or construe laws against the people. It said: "Law-makers, judges, and others may feel the force of this element when the proper time comes and political preferment is sought." It was money in pocket that facts like those of the experience of Indianapolis, Detroit, and other places should not be made known. Even ideas must not be allowed to reach the public mind. Professor Henry C. Adams, the well-known political economist, lectured in Toledo during this contest, in a University Extension Course, on "Public Commissions Considered as the Conservative Solution of the Monopoly Problem." The "organ" gave a synopsis of the lecturer's views, which is printed herewith in parallel columns, with a synopsis of what Mr. Adams really said, as revised by himself: WHAT THE ORGAN OF MONOPOLY REPORTED. | WHAT THE LECTURER REALLY SAID. | The lecturer made reference to Toledo |Professor Adams thought the as an unfavorable place to discuss |solution of the monopoly problem the matter of municipal control of |must be found either in public quasi-public business and competition |control or in public ownership. of municipalities with private |He advocated public control, and corporations. But he deprecated anything|held that the State and Federal in that line. He did not mention |railroad commissions should have particular instances, but broadly |a fair trial, that their hands condemned the policy pursued by this |should be strengthened by further city in matters of this kind, and his |and adequate legislation. He remarks had a visible effect on his |entertained the hope that this audience. He considered municipal |control and regulation would control of business enterprises the |ultimately protect the interests worst form of monopoly, as they began |of the public in a satisfactory by having the unfair advantage |manner. He was willing to admit, of the law-making power, and the |however, if this effort to secure tendency to corruption was greater |the needed public control by the than when individual enterprises were |aid of commissions and asking privileges. The audience |legislation should fail, then was much pleased with the lecturer. |public ownershipwas the only |remaining solution. He held that |in local monopoliesit may still |be wise to try the experiment of |public control by aid of |commissions. He said, however, |that if anything should be owned |and controlled by and for the |people it would be |street-railroads, gas and |waterworks. He admonished his |audience not to be misled by the |argument that municipal ownership |would be dangerous because of |undue political influence, for |the local monopolies under |private ownership were already in |politics, and in a most dangerous |manner. He observed facetiously |that he hesitated to discuss the |question before a of municipal |control orownership Toledo |audience. From the control of the markets to the control of the minds of a people--this is the line of march. So direct, persistent, and bold were the charges of corruptions rung day after day by this journal against all the officials concerned in the city gas enterprise that some people began to believe there must be truth in them. But when the community at last turned upon its maligners, and the grand-jury brought indictments against the active manager of the paper and his chief assistant for criminal libel upon the city's natural-gas trustees, the whole structure of their falsehood went down at a breath. They had no defence whatever. They made no attempt to justify their libels or even explain them. Their only defence was a series of motions to get the indicted editor cleared as not being responsible for what had appeared in the paper. Counsel labored over the contention that the accused was none of the things which the language of the law holds for libel. He was neither the "proprietor," "publisher," "editor," "printer," "author," nor a person "who uttered, gave, sold, or lent" a copy of the newspaper, but only the "manager." The employés gave testimony which would have been ludicrous but for the contempt it showed for court and community. The journalist who was the "managing editor" of the paper under the indicted chief editor was asked: "Who was the head of the paper when you entered upon your duties as managing editor?" "I do not know." "Who hired you as managing editor?" "I really can't say that I was hired at all." "Who employed you to come to Toledo?" The witness had been an employé in Pennsylvania of the editor on trial, and had followed the latter to Toledo to take the place of managing editor. "Nobody employed me." The son of the indicted editor had also followed his father to Toledo, and was employed on his paper. Asked for what purpose he came, he said: "I had no purpose in coming." The gentleman who had charge of the counting-room was asked who fixed his salary. "I regulate my own." The advertising manager declared: "I have no knowledge who is my superior." The accused had to let the case go to the jury without a spark of proof of the accusations which had filled the paper every day for months. He had no evidence to offer either that the charges were true, or that he believed them to be true. He stood self-confessed as having for years printed daily gross libels on citizens, officials, and community, as part of the tactics of a few outside men to prevent a free city from doing with its own means in its own affairs that which an overwhelming public opinion, and the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, and its present antagonists themselves, had all sustained its right to do. The agent of this wrong was found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail, with heavy costs and fine; like the unhappy agents at Buffalo--"made cheap" for others.[523] But sentence was suspended pending hearing of the motion for a new trial. This did not come up for a year. The court could find no error in the proceedings of the trial court, and could not sustain any of the objections made. But it found a point which even the lawyers had not hit on, and strained this far enough to grant the new trial. Then the convicted editor went before another judge--not the one who had tried him--pleaded guilty, and was fined, and so saved from jail. One of the last scenes in this Waterloo was the abandonment of the newspaper with which the corruption and intimidation of public opinion had been attempted. Failure was confessed by the sale of the paper, and it was bought by a journalist who had been especially prominent in the defence of the city, and against whom on that account a bitter warfare had been waged by the daily which now passed into his possession. The _Sunday Journal_ of Toledo, in commenting on the surrender, declared that the course of the organ had been one of the strongest factors of the success of the people. "In every possible way it slandered and outraged the city, where of necessity it looked for support. There could be but one result. Scores who had opposed the pipe line became its most ardent advocates purely in the general defence." CHAPTER XXIV HIGH FINANCE When Judge Jackson refused to enjoin the city from issuing its bonds an appeal was taken. The court and the lawyers of the city were promised that it would be carried up without delay. Months passed, and no use was made of the privilege of filing new pleadings and taking new testimony--that is, no use but to make the suits the basis for libels on Toledo and its bonds. Time ran on until the day was at hand for opening bids for the bonds. That was to be Wednesday. Then the counsel for the opposition notified the city that on Monday they would begin the taking of depositions. This was not then or afterwards done, but on the strength of the notification news despatches were sent over the country that the proceedings against the legality of the Toledo bonds were being "pressed." In consequence of this and other manoeuvres, when Wednesday came there were no bids. A hasty rally of some public-spirited capitalists at home, learning of the emergency, made up a subscription of $300,000. The names of the citizens who made this patriotic subscription were printed in the daily paper under the heading of "The Honor Roll." Only by extraordinary manoeuvres could the market for such securities offered by such a community have been thus killed in a time of great general and local prosperity, and extraordinary they were. What they were was formally and authoritatively ascertained by an investigation made by a committee appointed at a mass-meeting[524] of the citizens of Toledo called by the mayor, the Hon. J.K. Hamilton. The call ran: "For the first time in the history of Toledo, its general bonds, secured by the faith and property of the city, and bearing a fair rate of interest, have been offered, and only such of them sold as were taken at home by popular subscription. It is deemed desirable that under such circumstances the citizens of Toledo should meet together and determine what further steps should be taken to carry out the will of the people as expressed by 62 per cent. of the voters of the city. "It is believed that with proper effort a large additional popular subscription may be obtained, and thus notice given to the world that notwithstanding all opposition the citizens of Toledo have confidence in and will maintain the credit of this fair city, and that a great enterprise undertaken by its people will not be defeated by the machinations of private opposing interests, no matter how powerful and unscrupulous." The meeting appointed a committee of three--David Robinson, Jr., Frank J. Scott, and Albert E. Macomber--"to prepare and circulate throughout the financial circles of the country a pamphlet which shall set forth the case of the city of Toledo in its struggle against those who by anonymous circulars and other dishonorable ways have attempted to prevent the sale of the Toledo natural-gas bonds." This committee put the facts before the public in a very able pamphlet, "The City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds." In an official statement asked for by this committee the city natural-gas trustees say: "Skilled writers were employed to furnish articles for Eastern financial journals, to cast discredit on the bonds on the very grounds that had been set aside by Judge Jackson's decision. Not content with this open warfare, anonymous circulars were sent to leading investment agencies in the United States, warning them to beware of these bonds, as they were under the cloud of doubtful constitutionality and an impending lawsuit. When the day arrived for bidding for the bonds no bids were made. Agents of investors were present, who came to bid, but by some unknown and powerful influence they were induced not to put in their bids. The writers are not aware that any similar mode of striking at the credit of a whole community was ever before resorted to in this country. It is an insult and a wrong not only to this city, against which it is aimed, but to people of independence everywhere in the United States who have a common interest in the maintenance of the rights of all."[525] Press despatches impugning the validity of the bonds and misrepresenting the facts were sent all over the country. The anonymous circulars referred to were mailed to all the leading banks, investment agencies, capitalists, and newspapers. The New York _Mail and Express_ said: "It would be decidedly interesting to know who is responsible for the ... methods by which it was thought to prevent the city from undertaking the enterprise. A number of volunteer attorneys and correspondents deluged bankers and newspapers with letters warning them against the bonds which the city proposes to issue, on the ground that it had no right to issue them. The _Mail and Express_ received several communications of this kind." "Not only the financial centres of this country," say the city's natural-gas trustees in their official report for 1890, "but those of Europe were invaded with these circulars."[526] The circular was headed "Caveat Emptor." It contained twenty-four questions, and every one of the answers, except those which referred to matters of record and routine, like the date, amount, name, etc., of the bonds, was incorrect. What hurt the people of Toledo most, as it was most base and baseless, was its attack on their hitherto unquestioned credit and financial honor. Asking the question, "How does the credit of the city stand?" the circular answered: "Refunding has been going on ever since 1883. The bonded debt was greater at the beginning of 1889 than of 1888; bonds bearing interest at 8 per cent. will become due in three or four years. The mayor, in his last annual message, admits the inability of the city to pay much of these except the refunding." "Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike," the authors of this attempt to pull down an entire city managed, by the interweaving of such phrases as "ever since 1883," "bonded debt greater," "inability of the city to pay," to create by insinuation the feeling of financial distrust for which their greatest industry and ingenuity had been able to find not a particle of foundation. No modern municipality is asked or expected or desired "to pay much except the refunding." Capitalists would greatly prefer that even the refunding should not be carried on, but that the debt should run along at the original high rates of interest, which they regretfully see dwindling away. The circular failed to state that the city was borrowing money at 4 per cent. to pay off debts bearing 8 per cent. The insinuations of the circular could have been used of "the credit" of the United States, New York, Paris, London, Chicago, with the same appropriateness--with this exception, that Toledo's municipal financial credit was relatively to its resources on a sounder and more conservative basis than these much more highly financed cities. The circular did not state that the proportions of debt to population had been decreasing for many years past.[527] "Toledo has not two years' supply of gas," the circular said, "in all the territory acquired." The State Geologist, in his annual report for 1890, said that Toledo would have no gas to supply its pipe lines or citizens in 1891. In 1892 the city pipe line supplied gas to the value of $168,954.46. Three years have passed, Toledo wells still flow, and new ones are being found continually. "Whatever may have been his object," say the city gas trustees, "in volunteering such a statement, we know that so far in 1891 it is untrue, and that such positive declarations, based upon hypothetical conditions, are utterly unworthy of scientific pretensions."[528] The State Geologist also took part in his annual report in the debate between municipal control and private enterprise, siding altogether with the latter. The quantity of gas land owned by the city was put by the circular at 300 to 500 acres. The city had 650 acres. The circular declared the life of an ordinary well to be one to three years. There is no such limit. Referring to the quantity of gas land the city had, the circular asked and answered: "Cannot other territory be acquired? "Not in Northwestern Ohio, and not nearer than the gas fields of Indiana." This was untrue, for the gas trustees had already been offered, as stated, several thousands of acres of the best gas lands in addition to those they had bought. But the authors of the circular did their best to make it true. The city's natural-gas trustees say in their report for 1890: "As soon as the trustees were prepared to negotiate for gas wells and gas territory, the field swarmed with emissaries and agents of the Northwestern Ohio Natural Gas Company to compete with the trustees. In order to prove what had been previously stated, 'that Toledo could procure no gas territory,' no means were left untried; agents of that company even fraudulently represented themselves to the owners of gas property that they were connected with the gas trustees and working in their interest, and in some instances introducing themselves as the president of this board. Prices went up 1000 per cent. in some instances rather than let it fall into the hands of the trustees. A conspicuous officer of that company, as an excuse for paying an enormous sum of money for a gas well, is reported as saying, 'We did not want the gas well, but we had to buy it in order to keep Toledo from getting hold of it.'"[529] Referring to the private companies, "Are the people of the city already supplied with natural gas for public and private use?" the circular asked. "They are," it answered, and goes on: "Why does the city want to go into the natural-gas business, then?" "To boom the lands of real-estate speculators." This is a charge affecting the Legislature and Executive and State courts of Ohio, the courts of the United States, the people of Toledo, and all the members of their city government. Burke confessed that he did not know how to draw up an indictment against a whole people. That art has been acquired since his day. "Are these bonds of unquestionable validity?" this catechism of libel upon a community queries. "By no means. Prominent taxpayers have suits pending attacking the constitutionality of the act under which they are issued." "Have these cases," the last question ran, "ever been tried on their merits?" "They have not." They had been tried so far that the United States and State courts had refused on every ground urged to interfere with their issue and sale, declaring the legislation authorizing them to be valid. They had never been tried any further in the United States courts for a very good--or bad--reason. The "prominent taxpayers," after their defeat before Judge Jackson, took every possible means to prevent the case from reaching a final adjudication. The invariable rule of the United States Supreme Court has been to treat as final and conclusive the decisions of State courts as to such domestic issues. During the hundred years of its existence not a case can be found in which that court has overruled the fixed and received construction given to a State law by the courts of that State.[530] The only hope for the suit of the "prominent taxpayers" was, therefore, that the Supreme Court of the United States would for their special profit reverse the practice to which it had consistently adhered since the establishment of the government. What they really thought of their prospect of success in that effort they confessed when their case, no longer delayable, was upon the point of being reached. They who had been so "anxious to get to the case as soon as possible" refrained from printing the record, a condition precedent to putting the case on the docket of the United States Supreme Court. The city wanted the decision, and in order that the case might not be dismissed for this failure to print the record, and a decision upon the merits be thus prevented, the city's gas trustees advanced the money--$1100--to the court printer for printing the record. Pushed thus against their will to trial, when the day came on which they must rise to state their case the opponents of Toledo folded their tents and stole silently away. On the motion of their attorney the case was dismissed, against the protest of the city. They paid all the costs, including the money advanced by the city for printing the record. To their defeat all along the line they did not want to add a formal decision against them from the Supreme Court, which was inevitable. And they ran away to fight another day. Another purpose of these suits was confessed only a few weeks after this circular was issued. The existence of the suits was used to try to frighten the city's natural-gas trustees into accepting a "compromise." The compromise was that they should abandon the enterprise, sell out pipes and lands for a fraction of their worth, get their gas from the private company at higher rates, and put the city in its power for all time to come. "It will be three or four years before your case is through the Supreme Court," its representative told the natural-gas trustees, in urging them to accept. "You can't sell your bonds," he continued; "you have no money." The "compromise" was refused, but the city's pipe line had been delayed so long that the profits of the company for another twelvemonth were secure. The demonstration against the bonds in the United States Circuit Court had been followed by similar suits in the State courts. Here again the city was successful. It was upheld on every controverted ground--in the enabling act, in the vote of the people, in the appointment of the trustees by the governor, and in the issue of the city bonds. Appeal was taken here, as in the United States courts, and, as there, for delay, not for decision. To checkmate further use of this lawsuit to smother the law and cripple the city, the friends of the pipe line began a suit against the authorities to force an immediate decision from the Ohio Supreme Court as to the legality of the bonds. It was certainly, as was said in the press, "a curious state of things when the defendant is compelled to bring suit against himself because the plaintiff refuses to allow trial in his own case." These litigations, the circulars, the press, were only part of the campaign. One of the committees of the Common Council was brought under control, and induced to throw technical difficulties in the way of the sale of the bonds, which caused months of delay.[531] Effort was made to get the Governor to appoint natural-gas trustees hostile to the city, but failed. It was attempted, also without success, to get the Legislature to prevent the sale of the bonds at private sale. During all this controversy the city was most fortunate in receiving the needful authority from the State Legislature. This was due mainly to a faithful and able representative of Toledo in that body, the Hon. C.P. Griffin. He was offered every promise of political preferment and other allurements to betray his constituents, but he always remained faithful. Without his support the efforts of the city would have failed. His services amid great temptations deserve the grateful remembrance of the public. Some of the devices of "private enterprise" were childish enough. "A Business Men's Protest" was published, which proved under the microscope to have been largely signed by men whose names could not be found in the directory. A similarly formidable-looking remonstrance against the pipe-line bill was sent to the Legislature. It had 1426 names; of these 464 could not be found in the directory, and over 300 of the 962 remaining names signed the petition for the city's bill. Many of them avowed that when they had signed the "Remonstrance" it had a heading in favor of the pipe line, which must have been changed afterwards. As part of the tactics of misinformation, a report was published--in January, 1890--claiming to give the business of both the private companies; but the members of the Council Committee on Gas, when afterwards examining the books for the gas company, found that it gave the receipts of only one company. A paper was prepared by a citizens' meeting for circulation among the manufacturers to ascertain how much they would contribute towards the city pipe line; but when reported back to the meeting it had become, in some mysterious way, a paper asking the manufacturers how much they would advance to quite a different scheme, the effect of which would be to sell out the city pipe line or convert it into a manufacturers' line. These were the infantile methods of men who could not see the ludicrousness of the position they put themselves in by such efforts to keep a business which they were constantly declaring to be hazardous and unprofitable. Detectives appear in almost every scene of our story, and are as common in its plot as in any extravagant melodrama of the Bowery thirty years ago. To counteract the anonymous circulars the City Council sent a committee headed by Mayor Hamilton--the "War Mayor," one of the ablest lawyers of the city, upright and loyal at all times to Toledo--to visit the Eastern money-markets. The committee, in their official report, state that they were assured by responsible dealers in municipal securities in New York and Boston that they would bid for the entire amount to be sold. "We regret, however, to have to report that the powerful and influential parties who have on all occasions and in every way sought to obstruct and defeat the enterprise for which the proceeds of these bonds were to be used, in some way succeeded in inducing those who intended to purchase to withhold their bids--in fact, no matter how guarded our movements, we believe that every person or firm with whom we had interviews was reported to the agents of the Standard Oil Company, for in every instance where from our interviews we had encouragement that the bonds would be bid for, within a short time more or less influential agents of opponents interviewed these parties and succeeded in changing their minds." What a picture of "high finance," of the "beneficent inter-play of the forces of supply and demand," of the "marvellous perfection" with which capital moves under "natural laws" to carry its fertilizing influences where they are most needed! The officials of this free city compelled to sneak around in the open money-market under cover with "guarded movements," seeking buyers for its bonds as if they were stolen goods! About them a cloud of spies and detectives reporting every movement as if it were a crime to the little handful of trust millionaires in their grand building on Broadway! "They have entered the ---- Bank!" "They have just left ----'s office!" After each report the leash is slipped of a waiting sleuth, who flies away to run down the quarry. The gas trustees made public a letter and telegram they received from a prominent New York bank: "NEW YORK, November 27, 1889. "DEAR SIR,--A gentleman named" (naming a man who signs the certificates of the Standard Oil Trust as treasurer),[532] "introduced by the card of Mr. ----" (one of the richest men in New York not otherwise known as connected with the trust), "called on us to-day and stated that understanding that our firm was on the point of bidding on the Toledo bonds, etc., he would caution against the purchase, as they were not legal. Mr. ---- represented himself as coming from ----" (one of the companies of the oil combination), "and referred us to their lawyer for further information. Now as this may hurt the sale of the bonds we want to be cautious, and on Friday will make further inquiries, and will wire you accordingly. We may not care to hand in our bids on this account." The telegram sent on Friday is as follows: "NEW YORK, November 30th. "Fearing sale of bonds has been injured, will not bid at present." "That tells the story," said one of the trustees, "in a nut-shell." A local bank bid for $500,000 of the bonds, but did not sustain its bid. A reputable citizen, an ex-mayor, wrote for publication in one of the leading journals that he had been informed by a well-known banker there was reason to believe a banking firm which, in 1892, defaulted on its bid for bonds, had been indemnified by the opposition for the $5000 it thereby forfeited to the city, and for the profits it would have made from the sale of the bonds. With the city line crippled the gas company would pocket the profits on the sale of a million dollars' worth of gas a year. Five thousand dollars, or several times that, was a small insurance to pay for such a gain. This was the game of hide-and-seek played in Wall Street by detectives and financial stilettos against "simple greens," who thought supply and demand still rule values. This was the reality which the officials of Toledo found behind the outward aspect of its magnificent buildings, the benevolent millionaires who look out through their plate-glass, the grandiloquent generalizations of professors about "the money-market." The city was brought to the humiliation of seeing its officials meet in public session at an appointed hour to open bids it had invited from all the money centres for its bonds, only to have the news flashed all over the country that not a bid from abroad had been made. This opposition cost the city in one way and another not less than $1,000,000, according to the estimate of the city's natural-gas trustees. The feeling of the people was expressed in the following language in a circular sent out with the pamphlet report of the committee appointed in mass-meeting to make a statement of Toledo's case to the public: "We have seen the modern aggregation of corporations--trusts--suppress other corporations in the same line of business. But this Toledo contest is believed to be the first instance where private corporations--creatures of the State--have assumed to exercise monarchical powers over a portion of the State--one of its leading municipalities; to dictate the policy of its people; to seek to control the legislation as to the laws that should be enacted for such portion of the State; to bribe and intimidate the votes of such city at the polls; to attempt to subsidize the press by the most liberal expenditure of money; to at last purchase, out and out, a heretofore leading paper of the city, place its own managers and attorneys as directors, import one of its long-trained men as editor, and turn this paper into an engine of attack upon the city, an attack upon the city's honor and credit, characterized by the most unscrupulous misrepresentation and a perfect abandonment of all the amenities of civilized warfare." The Toledo public felt no doubt as to who were attacking it under the convenient anonymity of the two gas corporations. At a public conference, January 16, 1889, between the presidents of the private natural-gas companies and the people assembled in mass-meeting, the representative of the former said the only condition on which the members of the oil trust had been induced to interest themselves in natural-gas in Northwestern Ohio was that of absolute and unqualified control of the entire business through a majority of the stock of all the gas companies to be organized. "The trust is interested in companies engaged in supplying natural gas?" the president of the oil trust was asked by the New York Legislature about this time. "To a limited extent, yes." "Have they a majority interest in any of these companies?" "I think they have."[533] This was identically the arrangement by which the nine trustees owned as their private property the control of the oil business. At several later conferences with the city's trustees and the Common Council the gas companies were represented by one of the principal members of the oil combination, the ingenious gentleman who had managed the negotiations with the railroads by which, under the _alias_ of the American Transfer Company, the trust claimed and got a rebate of 20 to 35 cents a barrel,[534] not only on all oil it shipped, but on all shipped by its competitors. He was also its representative in the similar arrangement by which the Cleveland and Marietta Railroad agreed to carry its oil for 10 cents a barrel, to charge Rice 35 cents, and to pay it 25 out of every 35 cents Rice paid.[535] He had acted in the same interest throughout the gas field as well as in oil, and his pathway could be traced through one independent company after another, whose wrecks, like those in oil, are milestones. July 27, 1889, in an item originating in New York, in the _Tribune_, a friendly paper, and given an extensive circulation by news despatches sent to the leading papers in other cities, it was said that the representatives of the oil trust "in this city say emphatically that they will attack in the courts the right of the city to issue them"--the bonds. At the great meeting of the citizens, October 19, 1889, to organize a popular subscription to take the bonds killed in the money-market, the resolutions named the oil combination as the power responsible for the attacks on the city, and appealed to the people to observe that it, "no longer content with destroying individuals and associations which stand in the way of its moneyed interests, now rises to grapple with and destroy the rights of cities and states; we therefore ask all liberty-loving men to make common cause with us in the defence of the community against the aggression of colossal power." The aldermen and the Common Council of Toledo unanimously adopted resolutions, September 15, 1890, requesting the State and Federal courts to give decisions as promptly as possible in the suits pending against the validity of the natural-gas bonds. These bodies in their official utterance declared that the oil combination, "through its officers and agents in the city of Toledo and at many other points in the United States, has circulated false and malicious statements about the bonds of the city of Toledo issued for natural-gas purposes." The natural-gas trustees of the city say in their report for 1890: "These injunctions and circulars, although fathered in the first instance by non-resident taxpayers, and in the second by irresponsible or anonymous parties, were traced directly to the oil trust, a trust having a large number of corporations within its control, among which is the North-western Ohio Natural Gas Company, and to whom the city of Toledo may reasonably attribute a loss of more than a million of dollars already. What further financial embarrassment it may suffer in the future cannot be measured by the depravity and moral turpitude which its seeds have sown in our midst."[536] When the warfare against Toledo became a scandal ringing throughout the country and beyond, the organ of the trust in Toledo attempted to make it appear that the oil trust was not the party in interest. But there was open confession on the record. Its connection and its control were admitted by two representatives in conference with a committee appointed by the mayor at their request to discuss the situation.[537] They described the circumstances under which the members of the oil trust had gone into the project of the Toledo line and the project of the natural-gas business. One of the two stated that he came into it as its "more direct representative." The pipe line of the private gas company was built, he went on to say, by one of the principal corporations in the oil trust. At the same interview it was admitted that the oil trust owned 60 per cent. of the natural-gas company's stock. The people of Toledo did not surrender to this success of their enemies in the money-market. The bonds which calumny and espionage prevented them from selling at wholesale to the great capitalists of New York and Boston they took themselves at retail. The Legislature having given authority for such sales, a committee of one hundred had been appointed by the citizens' meeting, October 19, 1889, to canvass all the wards of the city for subscriptions to the gas bonds. "Gas Bond Pledges" were circulated, to which people subscribed according to their ability, in amounts ranging from $2 to $5000. The employés at the Wabash Railway's car shops sent in a list signed by fifty names for a total of $1102, an average of $22 each. The labor of two hundred men for a week without pay was offered the gas trustees as an earnest of the good-will of the people. Piece by piece the city's pipe line was pushed through. At a critical moment a shrewd and patriotic contractor saved the enterprise by building a large part of the line, and taking for his pay the bonds the banks would not take. In June, 1890, the public were gratified by the announcement that their trustees had secured the means "for the construction of three miles more," making eight miles in all, or nearly one-fourth the entire line. In August a contract was made for five miles more, and so the work went on, step after step. CHAPTER XXV A SUNDAY IN JUNE In the midst of the anxious discussion by the citizens of Toledo as to the character of the power which ruled them both by night and by day, the same question arose in the metropolitan religious press, but in its broader ethical aspects. After the petition of Toledo to be allowed to take the control of its light, heat, and power into its own hands had been laid before the Legislature, the _National Baptist_ of Philadelphia, in an article on the trusts, criticised them as the prophet Nathan would have done. It gave to that in oil, "of course, the bad pre-eminence in all this matter." "This corporation has, by ability, by boldness, by utter unscrupulousness, by the use of vast capital, managed to control every producer, every carrier, to say nothing of the legislatures and courts." The _Examiner_, the leading religious weekly of the Baptist denomination in New York, rose against this. "We can readily understand how there should be differences of opinion in the matter of these trusts, and their influence is a proper subject of discussion; but to make it the occasion of so unjust and intemperate an attack on Christian men of the highest excellence of character is something that was not expected from a paper bearing such a name. The four most prominent men in the oil trust are eminent Baptists, who honor their religious obligations, and contribute without stint to the noblest Christian and philanthropic objects.... All of them illustrate in their daily lives their reverence for living Christianity." The _National Baptist_ did not submit to this attempt to cite men's creeds to prevent judgment on their deeds. It quoted the reply Macaulay makes Milton give to the similar pleas urged for King Charles: "For his private virtues they are beside the question. If he oppress and extort all day, shall he be held blameless because he prayeth at night and morning?" It held to its ground, and cited against the trust the recorded evidence, but it declared it was "a marked breach of propriety for the _Examiner_ to bring their private character into the discussion." The _National Baptist_, going on to speak in praise of a series of lively cartoons in _Harper's Weekly_ on the Forty Thieves of the Trusts and similar subjects, said, with some sadness: "It will be a sorry spectacle if the secular papers shall be ranged on the side of justice and the human race, while the defence of monopoly shall be left to the so-called representatives of the religious press." Later, March 20, 1890, the _Examiner_ returned again to its discussion of the religious performances of the chiefs of the oil trust as a matter of public importance. Of one of them it said: "The prayer-meetings of the Fifth Avenue Church are on Wednesday evening, and no business man in the church is less likely to be absent from one of them than he. His wife and children, when they are in the city, come with him, and it is by no means an unusual thing for the whole family to take part, each of them occupying one or two minutes of time. He and they are at church every Sunday when in the city, and no husband and wife keep up the good old Baptist habit more faithfully of exchanging a kind word with the brethren and sisters after the regular services are over. He dresses plainly, and so do his family, and every one of them has a kind heart and a pleasant word for all. They are among the last to leave the church and the prayer-meeting. Now the question is, How is it, as things go, that a man possessing the great wealth imputed to him should have so warm a fraternity of feeling for the lowly in their temporal conditions? And is there not an example here that might well be imitated in all the churches of our Lord?" In an address on Corporations the reverend secretary of the Church Edifice Department of the Home Missionary Department of the Baptist Church followed the example of the leading Church journal. "The oil trust was," he said, "begun and carried on by Christian men.[538] They were Baptists, and, so far as the speaker knew, both the objects and the methods of the oil trust were praiseworthy." A clergyman of another denomination once called upon one of the great men of the trust to seek a subscription. "But," said the rich man, "I am not of your Church." "That does not matter," said the minister, "your money is orthodox." The secular press followed the example of the religious press in treating their public faithfulness to Church ceremonies as news of the day, and part of the record of their social functions. The New York correspondent of the Philadelphia _Daily Record_ wrote for the people of Philadelphia: "It is not often that a millionaire stands up to lead in prayer, but I heard the president of the oil combination make an excellent prayer the other evening. He is said to be worth $25,000,000, but he neither drinks nor uses tobacco, and he is a deacon in Dr. Armitage's church. He likes a fast horse, and has eleven horses in his stable here. Few men, however, lead plainer lives than he, and few put on less style. He gives liberally to unsectarian charities, but, he says, 'when it comes to Church work I always give to the Baptists--my own denomination--and to no other Church.'" A New York daily described the same trustee "as one of the few millionaires who devote much of their time to the improvement of the condition of others. When not called away by social or business engagements, you are pretty sure to find him at home evenings. Here, in his costly and well-equipped library, he receives his visitors, many of whom represent the various benevolent and religious undertakings in which he is interested. He has for years been a hearty supporter, financially and personally, of foreign-missionary work, and no layman, perhaps, is so well informed concerning the details of it. He has a personal acquaintance with many of the leading missionaries of the world, and his residence is frequently the scene of a gathering of these workers among the heathen. He is now devoting considerable attention to home-missionary work, a field which, he is convinced, presents splendid opportunities for Christian endeavor." Many descriptions have been given by the press, metropolitan and interior, of the success with which one of the trustees built up the largest Sunday-school in his city at the same time that he was building up the monopoly--leading the children of his competitors and customers to salvation with his left hand, while with his right he led their fathers in the opposite direction financially. The church where these men appear has had columns of admiring description in the leading daily papers of New York and other cities. "There are few wealthier congregations than this one," says a reporter of the New York _World_, though he adds, "the wealth is elsewhere more evenly divided." The trustee of the light of the world "is the magnate of the church, the centre around which all lesser millionaire lights revolve. Everybody stops to speak and shake hands with him. Everybody smiles upon him, this modest man of nearly $200,000,000." "It is amusing," says the Brooklyn _Eagle_, "to note the manner in which his neighbors watch him during the service. Quite a number of people loiter near the door to see him as he walks out of church." "They are worth a bit of careful study," says another paper of the trustees, "and no place is quite so convenient as when they are at church. Their interest in religion is as sincere as their belief in oil. From the moment they enter church until they leave they are examples that Christians of high and low degree might follow with profit." "They have made the most of both worlds," writes another journalist. The oil trust was criticised by the Rev. Washington Gladden at Chautauqua, in 1889. One of its prominent officials, as reported in a friendly journal, defended it as "a sound Christian institution; and all these communistic attacks are due entirely to the jealousy of those who cannot stand other people's prosperity."[539] "In Anniversary week" in Boston, in May, 1889, at the meeting of the American Baptist Education Society, the secretary said he had an announcement to make. "It had been whispered about," says the New York _Examiner_ of May 23, 1889, from whose friendly account we are quoting, "that something important was to occur at this meeting, and a breathless silence awaited the announcement. Holding up a letter, the secretary said that he had here a pledge from a princely giver to our educational causes, naming him (here he was interrupted by a tremendous cheer), of $600,000 for the proposed Chicago college.... This statement was followed by a perfect bedlam of applause, shouts, and waving of handkerchiefs. One brother on the platform was so excited that he flung his hat up into the air, and lost it among the audience." Eloquent speeches at once overflowed the lips of the leading men of the meeting, which was a delegate assembly. They sprang to their feet, one after the other, and mutually surpassed each other in praising God and the giver of this gift, which was equal to his income for a fortnight. "I scarcely dare trust myself to speak," said a doctor of divinity. "The coming to the front of such a princely giver--the man to lead.... It is the Lord's doing.... As an American, a Baptist, and a Christian I rejoice in this consummation. God has kept Chicago for us; I wonder at his patience." Another reverend doctor said: "The Lord hath done great things for us.... The man who has given this money is a godly man, who does God's will as far as he can find out what God's will is." The audience rose spontaneously and sang the Doxology. On motion the following telegram was sent, signed by the president of the society: "BOSTON, May 18, 1889. "The Baptist denomination, assembled at the first anniversary of the Education Society, have received with unparalleled enthusiasm and gratitude the announcement of your princely gift, and pledge their heartiest co-operation in the accomplishment of this magnificent enterprise." The name signed to this telegram happened to be the same as that of the divine with whom, when president of Brown University in 1841, one of the most devoted of the laborers for the freedom of the negro had a discussion which is perhaps the most pungent in the literature of the antislavery movement. On August 30, 1841, Henry C. Wright wrote to Edmund Quincy: "I once met the president of Brown University, in the presence of several friends, to converse on the subject of slavery. The conversation turned on the question: Can a slaveholder be a Christian? To bring it to a point, addressing myself to the doctor, I asked him, 'Can a man be a Christian and claim a right to sunder husbands and wives, parents and children, to compel men to work without wages, to forbid them to read the Bible, and buy and sell them, and who habitually does these things?' 'Yes,' answered the reverend doctor and president, 'provided he has the spirit of Christ.' 'Is it possible for a man to be governed by the spirit of Christ and claim a right to commit these atrocious deeds, and habitually commit them?' After some turning he answered, 'Yes, I believe he can.' 'Is there, then, one crime in all the catalogue of crimes which of itself would be evidence to you that a man had not the spirit of Christ?' I asked. 'Yes, thousands,' said the doctor. 'What?' I asked. 'Stealing,' said he. 'Stealing what, a sheep or a _man_?' I asked. The doctor took his hat and left the room, and appeared no more."[540] The Sunday following a special service was held in the churches throughout the country in behalf of further help in "the new educational crisis." Many eulogistic sermons were preached that day by the leading clergymen of the denomination. "And so," one of them is reported to have said, "when a crisis came God had a man ready to meet it.... An institution was bound to come, and unless a God-fearing man established it it was likely to be materialistic, agnostic.... In this emergency, and in God's providence, society raised up a man with a colossal fortune, and a heart as large as his fortune." "God," said the Chicago _Standard_, a religious weekly, "has guided us and provided us a leader and a giver, and so brought us out into a large place." Another of the trustees has poured into a Southern State hundreds of thousands of dollars for churches of various denominations, and millions for hotels of a more than Oriental magnificence. "There is no philanthropist," says an editor of that State, commenting on these expenditures, "who renders the world greater service than the man of enterprise." But "Western Pennsylvania," said the Pittsburg _Post_, "looks more with awe than pride at the liberal diffusion of its wealth in Florida improvements and Baptist universities." A daily paper of Richmond, Virginia, in an editorial commenting on a report that the hostlery glories of St. Augustine were to be repeated in Richmond, said: "We have naught to remark on the tyrant monopoly if some of its profits are to come in such a direction. We could forgive much that monopoly visits on the down-trodden, horny-handed son of toil if it would come with open pockets proclaiming the era of luxuriant accommodations for all those other millionaires whose money we want to see invested in Richmond." The next year after the Boston meeting the Church celebrated its "Anniversary week" in the city which was to be the seat of the new college. And the anniversary closed with a jubilee meeting, which filled the largest assembly room in America. "All the church-going people of Chicago must have attended," one of the daily papers said. It was addressed by the principal clergymen of the denomination from all parts of the country. Again, as at Boston, the centre of interest was the gift of a fortnight's income to the university. A telegram making the gift conclusive, since the conditions on which it was promised had been complied with, was read. Cheer after cheer rose from the assembly, and oratory and music expressed the emotion of the audience. The divine who made the closing speech declared that he needed ice on his head on account of the joyful excitement of the occasion. The cheers and the hand-clapping closed again, as at Boston, with the spirited singing of the Doxology. Not only in the religious press of all denominations, but in the worldly press, the topic was the best of "copy." The great dailies gave columns, and even pages, to the incident, and to the subsequent gift from the same source of larger sums. "Conspicuously providential," "princely," "grand," "munificent contribution," "man of God," were the phrases of praise. A writer in the New York _Independent_ said: "Your correspondent speaks from opportunities of personal observation in saying that pecuniary benefaction to a public cause seldom if ever, in his belief, flowed from a purer Christian source." The only recorded note of dissent came from a humbler source. Under the text, "I hate robbery as a burnt-offering," a weekly business journal said: "The endowment of an educational institution where the studies shall be limited to a single course, and that a primary course in commercial integrity, would be a still more advantageous outlet for superabundant capital. Such an institution would fill a crying want." It was the last Thursday in May, 1890, when this great representative convention of the Church from all parts of the United States celebrated the acceptance of this endowment. Even while the roll of the Doxology was still rising to the roof of the auditorium the plans were preparing for a performance at Fostoria the next Sunday, three days later, which had a profound effect upon Toledo, though just the opposite of what was expected. Fostoria, Ohio, is the home of the president of the principal natural-gas company in Ohio controlled by the oil trust and leader in the vendetta against Toledo. A wealthy miller erected in Fostoria in 1886 a flouring-mill, with a capacity of 1000 barrels a day. One of the inducements was a contract made with this manufacturer by the gas company, by which it bound itself to supply him with natural-gas at a price which would be one-fifth what coal would cost him, and to continue to supply him as long as it supplied any one. The manufacturer carried out his agreement by the expenditure of $150,000 for the erection of the mill, and by running it continually to its full capacity. His bills for gas he paid promptly every month. Relying upon the contract with the gas company, the mill was built for natural gas, and could use no other fuel. In February, 1890, the gas company, dissatisfied with the bargain it had made, demanded better terms. The milling company refused. On a Sunday morning in June, "when, if ever, come perfect days," a gang of men appeared, led by an officer of the gas company, and dug up and tore out the pipes supplying the mill with gas. Church bells of different denominations were scattering their sweet jangle of invitations to the sanctuary as the tramp of these banded men, issuing on their errand of force, mixed with the patter on the sidewalks of devout feet. Private grounds were unlawfully entered, property was destroyed, the peace broken, a day of love changed to one of hate, all the bonds of community cut asunder, and the people turned from the contemplation of divine goodness to gaze at shapes of greed and rage. Sunday is chosen for such deeds, since the help with which the pagan law, gift of heathen Rome, would interpose, cannot be invoked by the victims on Sunday, and because on Sunday Christian people go to church, and leave their property undefended. The peace-officers were summoned to arrest the invaders for violating the Sunday law, but before they could get on the ground the mischief was done. The pipes had all been excavated, the connections wrenched off, and the trench nearly filled up. The milling company began suit for $100,000 damages against the gas company,[541] but a private settlement was made, and the case has never been pressed to trial. The laborers who did the work of the Captains of Industry in this matter were tried and convicted at the County Court in July, but by no process did the law, which is "no respecter of persons," reach out towards the principals. This Fostoria incident occurred during the heat of the Toledo contest--June, 1890--while the city was pushing the sale of bonds for its emancipating pipe line by popular subscription and in odd lots. Notice had been already served on the people of Toledo at public conference, that despite contracts, charters, franchises, the private companies would not take any less price from Toledo than they demanded. In pursuance of this, after the council had fixed the price in accordance with its admitted right, a circular was sent out containing this significant threat: "If it"--the legally declared price--"is approved by our customers we will know what course to pursue." Even before the occurrence at Fostoria it had been definitely suggested to the people of Toledo that in case the council failed to accept the demand as to rates in making the new ordinance (July, 1890) the pipes would be so far removed as to cut off the supply on some Sunday when no legal help could be invoked. The possibility of this Sunday cut-off of the fuel supply of 15,000 consumers became a living topic of discussion, public and private, and was considered in all its bearings by the Toledo press. Calculations were made and published of the number of men it would require to take up the hundred miles or so of pipe in the streets of Toledo between dark and dark some holy Sabbath day. It was confessed, hopelessly, that they would be more than the police could handle. "Of course," as was said in the Toledo _Blade_ by a leading citizen, "such enterprise would involve a very remarkable degree of both lawlessness and desperation on the part of the managers. It would be a mode of withdrawal from trade quite unknown among sound business men. But then their processes have been peculiar from the start." It was nothing less than startling to Toledo, almost before the print on the types of these words was dry, to hear the news from Fostoria of the Sunday raid there. There were those who declared that the Sunday violence at Fostoria was deliberately done as a warning to Toledo. If it were a warning to them not to insist on the legal and equitable and contract right of their Common Council to fix the rates of gas, it was a failure. The council went forward and did its duty. If it were a warning to the people to redouble their labors to free themselves forever from the possibility of such thraldom as that in which Fostoria and other cities were enchained, it was a success. The people heard and heeded, and in ten months thereafter gas began to flow into the city through its own pipes. CHAPTER XXVI TOLEDO VICTOR It was remarkable to see the revival of the passion of freedom of 1776 and 1861 in the editorials, speeches, resolutions of public meetings, and the talk of the common people in Toledo as in Columbus. The example of "the heroic liberty-loving people of Boston" was held up in every aspect to fire the heart of Toledo not to be frightened into subjection to the foreign power that threatened them. To resist "the domination of an economic monarchy" was the appeal made in posters with which the town was placarded. "During all the time George III.'s soldiers were quartered in Boston that monarch did not spend as much money to bring the city to terms as has been spent in this effort to subjugate the city of Toledo," said Alderman Macomber. "A people like those of Toledo," said one of them in the press, "when once united and determined as they now are, cannot be subjugated by any combination of mercenaries yet known." "It is evident," the Toledo _Sunday Gazette_ said, "that the people of Toledo have come to a full realization of the truth that the money saved by the independent pipe line, though great, is a matter of little importance compared with the social and political issues involved. It would be a thousand times better," it continued, "to utterly bankrupt the city than permit the oil combination to win. The fight was not for the present alone, but it was for the present and future, and for all time to come. It was not for the people of Toledo alone, but it was for the whole Union, though God had chosen the people of Toledo for the struggle." The Cincinnati _Commercial-Gazette_ said, in its editorial columns: "In itself the Toledo enterprise is not a big one, but it will prove an object-lesson for the whole country. It will show the open door through which people may pass from under the yoke of a most gigantic, unscrupulous, and odious monopoly. And it will be surprising if this does not extend beyond gas and ultimately cover oil. We are only on the verge of a revolution that is as sure to come as that which followed the throwing overboard of a lot of tea in Boston Harbor. Neither the power nor the vulgarity of capital can long rule the people." Numerous letters of sympathy, congratulation, and indignation were received by the Toledo committee appointed by the citizens' mass-meeting to make a statement of their case to the people of the United States. There were letters from chairs of political economy in the universities, from scholars and students in history and politics, and from men in affairs and finance. The completion of the line to the city was not the completion of the enterprise. Mains had still to be laid in the streets, and house connections made. At every step, now as before, unrelenting opposition did all that could be conceived of--in the courts, the Legislature, the city government, the money-market--to block municipal self-help. Great numbers of the citizens desired to change from the private companies to the city. Over 7500 consumers were at one time, in 1891, calling upon the city to supply them.[542] The litigation which was kept up, and the defeat of the attempt of the city to sell its natural-gas bonds in the open market, had exhausted the funds at the disposal of the city trustees. But they showed a readiness of resource equal, with the help of the people, to all these emergencies, and proving that public enterprise can more than hold its own in the competition with private enterprise. Contractors were got to pipe the streets by sections, and take for pay the pledge of the income earned by the pipes so laid. In other cases people wanting the gas were willing to advance a part of the cost. The same contractor who had faith enough in the city to build the main line from the gas-fields and take the bonds while they were under fire volunteered in the same way to build the submerged lines across the Maumee River, and ten miles of mains within the city. This was done at a moment when otherwise the enterprise must have come to a stop, and the name of this patriotic contractor is given to the public by the trustees in their annual report with words of gratitude. The amount of bonds originally authorized was $750,000. The trustees, in consequence of the delays and enhanced cost caused by lawsuits and other tactics of opposition, had to incur a floating debt of $300,000. The council by ordinance directed the issue of bonds by the city to the amount of $120,000 to pay off part of this floating debt. The State Circuit Court refused to sustain this action of the council, but pointed out that all the city lacked was the authorization of the Legislature. This was the only decision against the city in all the litigations, and in this the State Court was afterwards overruled by the United States Circuit Court. A bill was accordingly introduced, giving the city the right to issue $300,000 in bonds for the floating debt, and $100,000 for the extension of the gas plant: wells, pipes, pumps--whatever was needed. A strong lobby immediately appeared in the State Capitol to defeat the bill. As part of its ammunition a pamphlet was circulated among the legislators, giving "Facts and Reasons" why the Legislature should not authorize the new issue of bonds. This pamphlet illustrates the easy virtue with which some lawyers dispose of themselves to those who have the money to pay them. Two of its strongest points were that the contracts for which the floating debt had been incurred were let without proper competition, and that the trustees had no power to make the contracts. This pamphlet was signed by two lawyers, one of whom, before these contracts were let, had given the trustees his written opinion supporting such contracts unqualifiedly. The representatives of the people were able to exhibit to the Legislature his written opinion stating that the trustees had the power to make the contracts, and had let them in compliance with the requirements of the statute as to bids. The pamphlet declared that the court, in granting the injunction against the issue of the $120,000 of bonds by the Common Council, had declared the claims which were to be paid by the proceeds of the bonds to be "illegal and invalid." This was untrue. The court had held only that the city had not the power to issue the bonds, and pointed out that the remedy was in new legislation by the State to remedy the want of power. Pursuing the tactics of defamation of the city and its authorities which had been used throughout this contest, the pamphlet said: "We are prepared to prove ... that the contractors put in their bids substantially as gambling transactions, at such excessive price that they thought they could take the risk of the illegality of the natural-gas proceedings, trusting that these illegal transactions would be permitted to pass without question, or that subsequent legislation would ratify these illegal acts; all, or nearly all, of the contracts were taken at prices more than double the fair cash value for all the work and material provided for; and all the work and materials, the claims for which now aggregate about $350,000, could have been obtained in the open market, under valid laws, upon proper terms of payment, for less than $250,000. We have the evidence within our control to establish that the work under some of these contracts was actually done for less than 40 per cent. of the amount named in the contract. In addition to these facts, we can establish, if permitted to offer evidence, that the certificates issued by the natural-gas trustees were, immediately after the conclusion of the contracts and before any litigation was had upon them, hawked about the streets of Toledo at from 60 to 75 cents on the dollar; and that the great majority of these certificates are now in the hands of speculators, who bought them at not to exceed 65 per cent. of their face value." The authors of these statements were at once challenged by the city's gas trustees to prove them. "We assert," the gas trustees said, in a formal challenge, "that you cannot establish the truth of those statements. We deny that the facts are as you state them to be, either in substance or in detail." This was signed by John E. Parsons, W.W. Jones, Reynold Voit, J.W. Greene, gas trustees, and Clarence Brown and Thomas H. Tracy, ex-gas-trustees. The city's trustees proposed that they and their accusers deposit $1000 on each side as a forfeit to abide the result of an inquiry by the three judges of the Court of Common Pleas, or any other disinterested arbitrators. They placed at the service of the accusers and the arbiters all the books, records, and employés of the city's gas department. The challenge was not accepted, and the authors of these attacks made no attempt to prove them. The Legislature disregarded them, and granted the city and the gas trustees all the additional power to issue bonds asked for. In a subsequent proceeding in the Federal courts--the issue involving the validity of these certificates--it was admitted, contrary to these allegations, that the prices were fair, and that the contracts were entered into in good faith, and the court held the certificates valid. The most serious crisis in the contest was still to come. In 1892 the gas wells of the city began to do what the people of the city will never do--surrender to the enemy. When the oil trust found, after years of opposition in the Legislature, the courts, and the gas-fields, that it had been helpless to prevent Toledo from getting ample tracts of excellent gas territory, with some of the largest gas wells in the field, and equal to the supply of the entire consumption, domestic and manufacturing, it turned to other tactics. All about this territory secured by Toledo and found so productive the private companies of the trust proceeded to buy or lease and to sink wells. The trust shut off all its own wells, except those adjacent to the city territory, and for two years drew exclusively from the wells nearest those of the city. When the city's line was completed to the wells the volume of gas was found to be largely reduced. It had been drawn off into the wells of the opposition. In the spring of 1892 the private companies resolved to put in pumps to strengthen the diminished natural pressure, but to prevent the city from doing the same thing. Then, with their pumps alone at work, the pressure could be so much further reduced as to render the Toledo pipe line valueless. To this end all efforts were directed. The newspapers were kept full of matter showing how impossible it was to pump gas, that all the money expended in pumps would be just so much wasted, and that the companies had canvassed the matter fully, but abandoned the idea. Column after column of inspired interviews filled the papers, all admonishing the city of Toledo not to commit such an act of folly as to put in gas pumps. Then application was made to enjoin the sale of the bonds authorized by the council and the Legislature for pumps. So month after month dragged along. The bonds remained unsold, and the pumps unobtainable. The injunction was refused both by the Court of Common Pleas and by the Circuit Court. But there was a right of appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court until the beginning of 1892. Boston bankers had subscribed for a large block of the bonds, but withdrew upon learning these facts. "It is possible for the contestants," the lawyers advised them, "to carry the matter to the Supreme Court. This, we understand, they propose to do." The simple assertion of a purpose to continue the litigation was enough to defeat the sale of the bonds. The payment of costs and lawyers' fees would be a very moderate price to pay for compelling the city's gas plant to go past midwinter without the pumps indispensable for its operation. One of the employés of the private pipe line, according to an account in one of the Toledo papers, declared to a reporter that "if we could not prevent the city from putting in a [pumping] plant any other way, we would blow it up with dynamite."[543] Any faithful employé familiar with the blowing up of derricks in the shut-down of 1887,[544] the explosion in the independent refinery at Buffalo,[545] and the "chemical war" waged by the whiskey trust against the "outsiders" in Chicago[546] might almost be pardoned for thinking this was "only good, reasonable talk." The oil monopoly is evangelical at one end and explosive at the other, and it has made both ends meet. The people of Toledo were thus prevented from getting the pumping facilities ready during the summer of 1892 for the work of the winter. Meanwhile its rival had been secretly pushing pumps for itself to completion, in the hope that it alone would be ready when cold weather came. This would mean a gain to it, at the city's expense, of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Late in August, 1892, the representatives of the city found that two powerful duplex gas pumps had been shipped to the gas-field, and were being put in place by the very opponents who had declared pumps impracticable. Public sentiment became aroused to the need for the immediate purchase of pumps to protect their wells. The city attempted to use its income from the sales of gas to buy pumps. An injunction was applied for and granted. This emergency was finally met by having the gas trustees hand over to the city authorities the accumulated earnings they were forbidden by the court to spend themselves. The city thereupon turned around and invested this money in the gas bonds. In this way the identical money the gas trustees could not use while it remained in their hands was made available to them by passing through the hands of the Sinking Fund Trustees, and coming back to them. Thus the natural-gas trustees were enabled to make a contract in September, 1892, for pumps to assist the flow of gas to the city. The gas pumps are a patented device. The private companies, wanting all the profit of everything, had had their pumps made at their own factory. The city made its contract directly with the owner of the patents. The result was that the city got its pumps in place in time to save the city pipe line, while its opponents were delayed by the inexperience of their own pump-makers. This was the most critical period in our history. Greed had again defeated itself. Had the opposition gone to the owner of the patents he would have been unable afterwards to take the city's contract and complete it in time, and the effort to make the city line valueless would have succeeded--for the time being, at least. The bonds in question were afterwards held valid by the Supreme Court. Toledo knew it was building wisely, and every day brought new proof that it had builded better than it knew. Its saving was great, but that was the least of its gains. It escaped tyranny and extortion and other wrongs which fell upon communities in plain sight, which had not the wit and virtue to establish their independence. When the city pipe line was opened in 1891 the city began supplying gas to its citizens at 8 cents a thousand for houses. The private companies were charging 12 cents a thousand, or 50 per cent. more. Profits were such at this charge of 12 cents a thousand feet that in some tracts single wells would repay the cost of the land every four days and two hours, or eighty-nine times a year. Since then the private corporations have raised their rate to 25 cents. The city continued the rates at 8 cents until December, 1892, when the rate was advanced to 15 cents. This advance would have been unnecessary but for the losses arising from the obstructions placed in the way of the city plant. The people of Toledo got their gas lands, pipe line, and street mains for an outlay of $1,181,743 up to the end of 1891,[547] and $1,294,467 up to the end of 1892. In the canvass before the election in 1889 their opponents declared that $4,000,000 would be required. Private enterprise cannot find rhetoric strong enough to express its contempt for the inefficiency, costliness, and despotisms of public enterprise. Private enterprise put at $6,000,000--twelve times the amount of the property they reported for taxation--the "capital" stock invested by the two natural-gas companies. The city pipe line was capitalized (bonded) at just what it cost--a little more than a million. The city trustees built a better pipe line than private enterprise had laid. The private line was of cheap iron of 14-feet lengths, while Toledo's was in 24-feet pieces. One of the private lines was laid with rubber joints and in shallow trenches, in many places of not more than plough depth. It leaked at almost every joint; its course could be traced across the fields by the smell of gas and the blighted line of vegetation. There were frequent explosions from the escaping gas; lives and property were much endangered. The city line was laid with lead joints, and had every device that engineering experience could suggest for its success, and was so constructed that it could be cleaned or repaired, and freed from liquids interfering with the flow of gas, without shutting off the supply--features the other pipe had not. The action of the city trustees had to endure the microscopic scrutiny of friend and foe. No one was able to show as to a single acre that the title was defective, or that it could have been bought for less, or to find any taint of a job in the construction of the pipe. A committee of the city council sat and probed for six weeks, but failed to find any evidence whatever to confirm the reported "irregularities." What Toledo will save in one year by the difference between the actual cost at which its people can supply themselves and the price the private companies would have charged, to pay dividends on $6,000,000 of "capital," is only part of the story. The profit of the city enterprise is to be estimated by its competitive effect upon the charge of the private companies. These have been kept down in Toledo much below the average of other towns, where they have been as high as 35 cents a thousand. If the city had not supplied a foot of gas this check on the private companies would make its pipe line still a good investment. The people, when it is in full operation, can pay the cost of the system complete out of the savings of a few years, then pay off the entire city debt, and have a large income left for public buildings, roads, parks. Or by reduction of price they can keep this sum in their pockets, where it will do quite as much for the general welfare as if it had been transferred to the bank accounts of non-residents. The city, at the end of 1891, had 3299-3/4 acres of gas land. In March, 1892, forty-five wells were giving over 50,000,000 cubic feet of gas, equal to 3500 tons of anthracite coal. Its income from the sale of gas was at the rate of $20,032 a month in winter, and $10,221 in summer. An investigation made in March, 1892, by a committee appointed by the mayor at the request of the city's gas trustees, showed that an income could be counted on ($180,000) ample to pay all expenses ($128,120), including interest, rentals, and the cost of drilling new wells, and provide a small fund annually ($51,880) for the extinction of the bonded debt. The committee said: "We believe that if the gas plant is properly managed upon prudent business principles and methods, that it can be made a profitable investment for the city and her people; that the class who will derive the greatest benefit is the laboring class, who pay rent or taxes upon their little homes, and to whom the matter of cheap fuel is quite an item in the total amount of annual expenses; and we believe it to be the duty of every good citizen to aid and encourage this class." These were the results with a charge of 8 cents a thousand. Gas to the amount of $167,899 had been sold up to August 1, 1892. Between November, 1891, and August, 1892, the city earned on the million invested the sum of $150,000, or nearly one-ninth of the cost of the plant, and this at the low price of 8 cents a thousand feet. Unobstructed by its enemies and at the price charged by the private companies, 20 cents a thousand, the city would pay for its entire plant in less than three years. To discourage the public from going forward with its pipe line the private companies "talked poor." In an interview in the public press the president of the principal company said it had paid but 9 per cent. in dividends in two and a half years. The net earnings were stated to be "about 4 per cent. per annum on the capital," $4,000,000;[548] for the smaller company they were figured out to be at the rate of a fraction less than 1 per cent. a year on its capital of $2,000,000.[549] "We feel sore and hurt about it," said the "direct representative" of the oil combination to the citizens' committee; "we have seen no good return from our money." "It has pretty nearly swamped us," said the president of the company. The citizens of Toledo were shrewd enough to ask themselves how long their antagonists would have been likely to remain in a business which paid only 3 per cent., and was as "hazardous" and "shortlived" as they pictured it to be. Careful estimates made by close students of the question calculated that of the $6,000,000 of paper capital "invested" in the two companies which supplied Toledo and other cities, $1,125,000 was the proportion of actual cash devoted to Toledo. The receipts upon this Toledo investment in the two and three-quarters years between the opening of the business and the date at which, by the contract with the city, the council was to make new rates (June 30, 1890), were, as nearly as can be calculated from the figures of their report, $1,300,000 greater than the expenses of the Toledo business. This is a profit of 115 per cent. In less than three years the total investment had been repaid by the profits, and, in addition, enough to have paid dividends of 5 per cent. a year. This was an estimate, but it was an estimate publicly made from the companies' figures, and by a responsible man. It remained unchallenged at a time when every cranny of fact and fiction was being rummaged for missiles to fling at the people. When the citizens' committee sought a reduction in price, the companies pointed to the small dividend their stockholders had had. In the face of the fact that they had received but a 3-per-cent. dividend the previous year, no business man, their spokesman said, could ask them to reduce their price. It is for such uses that shrewd men "water" stock. The surface of the capital is broadened, so that even large dividends can cover it only by being spread out very thin. This 3 per cent. a year was on $6,000,000 of dilution, representing a solid, at the most, of only $1,500,000. The balance sheets of the companies showed that the companies had paid small dividends for the additional reason that a large part of their receipts had been reinvested in lands, wells, and extensions of the pipes and plants. The people are often assured that these false figures of capitalization are merely romantic and do them no harm, because charges must be governed by the "laws of trade." One of the "laws of trade" that regulates the "market price" of such commodities as transportation, light, water, gas, furnished by the help of the public franchises, is the power of the public to regulate. This public power depends upon the public knowledge and the public disposition. To make the public believe that the profit of serving it has been only 3 per cent. a year, when it has been nearer 50 per cent., is to manipulate public opinion, the most potent of all the "laws of trade," for a competing supply cannot be got easily, often not at all. A committee of citizens were invited by the representatives of the gas companies to meet them to verify the statements of the companies as to the unprofitableness of the business, and the inexpediency of municipal self-supply. But when the committee wanted to know what had been the real cost of the private pipe lines, on the $6,000,000 nominal capital of which the people were expected to pay dividends, they could not get any satisfaction. The companies would only give an estimate. To the request for more definite information, the reply of both companies was, "We have not got the books of the contractors; we have never had them. We have no means of knowing the actual cost of the Toledo plant, or any books to show it.[550] We have no papers or documents in regard to the construction of this line." It came to light later that one of the companies in the oil trust had constructed the pipe line for the gas company, and at a price approximating the large figures claimed. The company that built this pipe line is a ring within the oil and gas ring, always on hand for such contracts and at like margins of profit, and it is owned almost wholly by the principals of the combination.[551] The people--mostly Ohioans--who took the minority 40 per cent. of stock of the gas company were really the "simple greens." All that was paid for this construction by those who were members both of the inside ring and the gas company came back to them; their associates in the minority paid, but got nothing back. It was from the latter came the profits of this contract to the insiders. The people of Dayton had a similar experience. Their natural-gas company demanded an advance to 25 cents a thousand, and met a committee of the people to prove that the demand was proper. But it would not let the people know what the actual investment was to make which good it sought to tax the people. The books containing the construction account were "not accessible." "The actual cost to construct the plant is what we most desired to know," the committee reported. As at Toledo, so at Dayton; all private enterprise would let its customer-subjects know was what it wanted them to pay; information to show what they ought to pay "was not accessible." What the profits were elsewhere can be guessed at from the fact that in Pennsylvania $36 a year was charged in most of the towns for cooking-stoves. In Toledo the charge was $19.50 a year. Almost every day after the pipe line had been decided on the people saw something done, showing how well founded their apprehensions had been. The power to discriminate in rates the people saw used by the private companies for selfish and anti-public purposes, precisely as they had foreseen it would be. When the fight for and against the city pipe line was on, one of the gas companies sought to enlist the strong men in their support by making them special rates, pursuing the tactics of divide and conquer. Manufacturers with influence useful in controlling public sentiment were conceded special rates. Others were given to understand that any lack of "loyalty" would be followed by punishment. So effective were these alternating methods of boodling and bulldozing that the council committee on gas, in a subsequent investigation, found it almost impossible to obtain any information from manufacturers as to their use of natural gas for fuel. What little they did secure was under injunctions of secrecy. The committee found that some were made to pay twice, some three, and some even four times as much as was paid by neighbors for like service. The only rule for charging seemed to be to favor those who had "influence." This was using municipal franchise just as the franchise of the highways had been used in their behalf by the railways. An assembly of divines could not be trusted with such power over their fellows. After the Fostoria incident the people of Toledo had another illustration given them of how wisely they had builded. The gas supply of the people of Columbus, Ohio, was shut off arbitrarily and suddenly in midwinter--January, 1891--and they were informed that the company would supply them with no more gas unless the City Council would raise the price to 25 cents a thousand feet from 10 cents. The gas had not failed. The caverns that discharge gas at 25 cents a thousand will let it come just as freely at 10 cents. The council had fixed the price at 10 cents, and the company had accepted it. The demand for a higher price was close upon an increase in the capital stock of the Columbus company from $1,000,000 to $1,750,000. More stock called for more dividends, and this was one way to get it--to strike this sudden blow, and then to say, after the manner of Silas Wegg, "Undone for double the money!" It was for the power to do this at Toledo, to preserve the power of doing it everywhere else, that hell and earth were being moved in Toledo to prevent the people from serving themselves and setting an example to the rest of America. In the same way the gas was turned off at Sidney, Ohio, and not turned on again until, upon the application of the mayor, the company was ordered to do it by the courts. "There is a great deal of suffering here," the press reported, "and it is feared that several deaths will result from exposure." The people did not fail to comprehend the significance of criticisms in the Toledo organ on the municipal water supply. Monopoly must go on conquering and to conquer, or be overborne by the ever-recuperating resentment which rises against it, freshened with each new day. Nature hates monopoly, says Emerson. The studied attack on the city water works was believed to be meant to prepare the people to intrust that as well as the gas supply to the trust's "sound business men" and "private enterprise." Finding that the council would not bend to the demands as to rates, and that the people were too resolute to be in any way diverted from their pipe line, Toledo was given some such doses as could be ventured upon of the Fostoria and Columbus medicine. The company shut gas off from those who would not pay the increased rate. It deprived public institutions of their fuel. It refused to supply gas to a new public school whose building was planned for natural gas. As the city's pipe line was not completed, the children had to go cold. The winter of 1891-2 was the first winter the city's pipe line was in operation. With the first cold snap, at the end of November, great distress and danger were brought upon the people by a lawless act, done secretly by some unknown person to the city's pipe line. One of the main pipes in the gas-field, through which flowed the product of two of the largest gas wells, was disconnected, so that its gas could no longer reach Toledo. Who did this was never discovered.[552] Defeat, final and irrevocable, crowned the unvarying series of defeat which the private companies had suffered everywhere and in everything--in public meetings, in the Legislature, in the gas-fields, at the polls, in the courts, in the sale of the bonds, and in the competition with the city. The City Council of Toledo, advised by its lawyers that it could recover damages from those responsible for the losses brought upon the city by the opposition to its pipe line, has had suit brought for that purpose. April 14, 1893, City Solicitor Read began proceedings to recover $1,000,000 damages from members of the oil combination and the various individuals who had been used as stalking-horses in the campaign. At the next meeting of the Common Council several citizens of the "influential" persuasion assisted the mayor in trying to coax and bully the council to abandon the suit, but without success. The council were threatened with a financial boycott to prevent the sale in future of any of the bonds of the city, but it refused to be terrorized. April 8, 1893, the natural-gas trustees of Toledo had the happiness of being able to give formal notice to the city auditor that no taxes need be levied to pay the interest on the gas bonds, as it "can easily be met from the revenues derived from the sale of natural gas." The city pipe line was on a paying basis at last. Toledo had vindicated its claim to be a free city. The completion of the enterprise had been delayed three years. A loss of not less than two million dollars had been laid on the city, but its victory was worth many times that. Toledo's victory showed the country, in full and successful detail, a plan of campaign of which Columbus had merely given a hint. It was not a local affair, but one of even more than national importance, for the oil combination has invaded four continents. This struggle and its results of good omen will pass into duly recorded history as a warning and an encouragement to people everywhere who wish to lead the life of the commonwealth. NOTE.--For the year ending December 31, 1893, the city trustees report that they sold gas to the amount of $139,066. The city owns 5433 acres of gas territory, and has 85 wells, 73 miles of pipe outside the city, and 91 miles in the city. Since the gas began to flow the sales have amounted to $388,540. Out of the receipts the debt has been reduced $60,000, besides refunding $67,000 to those who advanced the money for piping the streets. While doing this the plant has been considerably enlarged. The city accomplished this while charging the people but 15 cents a thousand, while the gas companies of the trust charged 25 cents a thousand. Had the city been permitted to act without obstruction, the cost of the gas plant would have been long since fully paid, and the price of gas made still lower.[553] CHAPTER XXVII "YOU ARE A--SENATOR" How to control the men who control the highways? The railroads have become the main rivers of trade and travel, and to control them has become one of our hardest problems in the field where politics and industry meet. The Duke of Wellington exhorted Parliament "not to forget, in legislating upon this subject, the old idea of the King's Highway." But here, as well as there, the little respect paid by the Legislature at first to this idea soon vanished. In England, as well as in America, the State, in giving some citizens the right, for their private profit, to take the property of others by force, legally, for railways, began by limiting strictly the power so acquired. Then, passing under the control of that which it had created, the State abandoned its attempts to control. Now the State is retracing its way, and for many years has been struggling painfully to recover its lost authority. In the first English charters there were the minutest regulations as to freight and passenger charges, and the right of citizens generally to put their own cars on the tracks was sacredly guarded. The railroads became too strong to submit to this, and the success with which the teachings of Adam Smith were applied to the abolition of the old-fashioned restraints on trade bred a furor against any social control of industry. These limitations were left out of new charters, and for fair play were revised out of the old charters. After a brief dream of this _laissez faire_, England began, in 1844, investigating and legislating, and, after nearly thirty years of experiments and failures, established the railway commission in 1873. This was a step forward, but has not proved the solvent it was expected to be. The expense of getting a decision from the commission and the courts to which the road can appeal from the commission has frightened people from making complaints. "A complainant," says Hadley, "is a marked man, and the commission cannot protect him against the vengeance of the railroads. A town fares no better ... even the [British] War Department is afraid. It has grievances, but it dares not make them public for fear of reprisals."[554] The course of events in the United States was much the same. The first railroad powers were carefully limited. The early charters regulated the charges, limited the profits, gave citizens the right to put their private carriages on the road, and reserved to the State the right to take possession of the railroad upon proper payment. But as early as 1846 the railroads had grown strong enough--in the revision of the Constitution of New York, for example--to secure an almost complete surrender of these public safe-guards.[555] But it was seen immediately in America, as in England, that the new institution could not be left in the uncontrolled hands of individuals. It created simultaneously two revolutions, each one of the most momentous in modern civilization. It made the steam-engine master in transportation, as it had already become in manufacturing. It made the public highways the private property of a few citizens. An agitation arose among the people--to-day stronger because more necessary than ever--and they began to seek what they have not yet found: means of regulating the relations between new rich and new poor, and protecting the private interests of all from the private interests of the few who had this double sovereignty. As early as 1857 New York established a commission for the regulation of the railways. But the railroads within a year procured a law abolishing it, bribing the leading commissioner to make no opposition in consideration of receiving from them $25,000, the whole amount of his salary for five years. "I was the attorney of the Erie Railway at that time; I specially used to attend to legislation that they desired to effect or oppose.... I remember the appointment of that commission.... We agreed that if they" (the leading railroad commissioner) "would not oppose the repeal of the law we would pay $25,000, and have done with the commission; it was embarrassing.... The law was repealed, and we paid the money, I think." "If the commission had been a useless one," said the counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce before the Legislative Committee, "the railroads would not have parted with their money to get rid of it."[556] Thirty of the States and Territories of the Union had established commissions or passed laws to regulate the railroads before Congress, in 1887, used its power under the Constitution to regulate commerce among the States, and passed the Interstate Commerce law, establishing the National Interstate Commerce Commission, in the hope that it might protect the people. Congress did not act until 1887, although for years different sections of the public, in their efforts to find a cure for the new evils which had come with the new good, had sought to set in action their representatives in Washington. The "Granger movement" of 1871, 1872, and 1873, with its "Granger legislation" by the States against the railroads, is one of the never-to-be-forgotten waves of public commotion over this problem which took on its acutest form in the oil regions. Illinois, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Iowa established railway commissions, or put stringent regulations on the statute-books at this time. Public opinion did not cease to demand action by the national government under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, and became clamorous. Petitions poured in by the hundreds, public meetings were held, chambers of commerce and boards of trade and anti-monopoly conventions passed resolutions of urgency. This was one of the main issues in the election of the 44th Congress. Representative Hopkins, of Pennsylvania, rose in his place in the House of Representatives on May 16, 1876, and asked unanimous consent to offer a resolution for the appointment of a committee of five to investigate the charges that "many industries are crippled and threatened with extreme prostration" by the discrimination of the railroads, and to report a bill for the regulation of interstate commerce. This was the first move to reopen in Congress the great question, first on the order of the day both in England and in America, which had been smothered by the Committee of Commerce of 1872. It required unanimous consent to bring the resolution before the House. "Instantly," said Representative Hopkins, in describing the occurrence afterwards,[557] "I heard the fatal words 'I object.' The objector was Mr. Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland." Other members appealed to Mr. Payne to withdraw his objection. The Speaker of the House: "Does the gentleman from Ohio withdraw his objection?" Mr. Payne: "I do not." In a private conference which followed between Representative Payne and Representative Hopkins, the former said, as Mr. Hopkins relates: "What he objected to in my resolution was the creation of a special committee; but if I would again offer it and ask that it be referred to the Committee of Commerce he would not object. I thought perhaps there was something reasonable in his objection. A special committee would probably require a clerk, which would be an expense. He looked to me so like a frugal Democrat, who had great confidence in the regular order of established committees and did not want the country to be taxed for clerks attending to the business of special committees--I say that he so impressed me that, as the record will show, I adopted his suggestion." When the Committee of Commerce to which the investigation was accordingly referred began its investigation, a member of the oil combination, not then, as later, a member of the Senate, took his seat by the ear of the chairman, who was from his State, "presiding," as the oil producers said in a public appeal, "behind the seat of the chairman."[558] The financial officer of the oil combination was called as a witness, but refused to answer the questions of the committee as to the operations of the company or its relations with the railroads. The vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad also refused to answer questions. On the plea of needing time to decide how to compel these witnesses to answer, the committee let the railroad vice-president go until he should be recalled. But the committee never decided, and the witnesses were never recalled. The committee never reported to Congress, made no complaint of the contempt of its witnesses, and the investigation of 1876, like that of 1872, came to a mute and inglorious end. When Representative Hopkins applied to the clerk of the committee for the testimony, he was told, to his amazement, that it could not be found. "Judge Reagan," he relates,[559] "who was a stanch friend of the bill"--for the regulation of the railroads--"and very earnest for the investigation, and who at the time was a member of the committee, told me that it had been stolen."[560] Eight years after "I object" the people of Ohio were a suppliant before the Senate of the United States. They believed that their dearest rights had been violated, and they prayed for redress to the only body which had power to give it. Officially by the voice of both Houses of the State Legislature and the governor, unofficially by the press, by the public appeals of leading men, by the petitions of citizens, press, leaders, and people, regardless of party, the commonwealth asserted that the greatest wrong possible in a republic had been done their members, and sued for restitution. They declared it to be their belief that against their will, as the result of violation of the laws, a man had taken their seat in the Senate of the United States who was not their senator, that they had been denied representation by the senator of their choice; and they demanded that, in accordance with immemorial usage, the evidence they had to offer should be examined, and their right of representation in the Senate of the United States restored to them, if it should be found to have been taken from them. After the Legislature had examined sixty-four witnesses, the Ohio House of Representatives resolved that "ample testimony was adduced to warrant the belief that ... the seat of Henry B. Payne in the United States Senate was purchased by the corrupt use of money." The Ohio Senate charged that "the election of Henry B. Payne as Senator of the United States from Ohio ... was procured and brought about by the corrupt use of money, ... and by other corrupt means and practices." Both Houses passed with these resolutions an urgent request for investigation by the Senate of the United States.[561] Mr. Payne's election by the Legislature was a thunder-clap to the people of Ohio. They did not know he was a candidate. Who was to be United States Senator was of course one of the issues in the election of the Ohio Legislature of 1884, and the Democratic voters who elected the majority of that Legislature had sent them to the State Capitol to make George H. Pendleton or Durbin Ward senator. One of the leading newspaper men of the State testified: "I went over the entire State during the campaign.... Out of the eighty-eight counties I attended fifty-four Democratic conventions and wrote them up, giving the sentiment of the people as nearly as I could, and during that entire canvass I never heard a candidate for the Legislature say that he was for Henry B. Payne for United States Senator; but every man I ever talked with was either for George H. Pendleton or General Ward. I think out of the Democratic candidates throughout the State I conversed with at least two-thirds of them."[562] As was afterwards stated before the Senate of the United States by the representatives of the people of Ohio, "He was in no wise publicly connected with the canvass for the Senate, nor had the most active, honorable, and best-posted politicians in the State heard his name in connection with the senatorial office until subsequent to the October election [of the Legislature]. He was absolutely without following."[563] The Democratic constituencies sent their legislators to vote for Pendleton and Ward, but between the receipt and the execution of this trust from the people a secret charm was put to work of such a potency that the people woke up to find that the representative who had betrayed them in Congress in 1876 was their senator, instead of one of their real leaders. The people had been digging oil wells for twenty years that all the value might flow into the bank accounts of a few interceptors; they had been building railroads and pipe lines that their business and property might be transported into the same hands; they had organized agitation and conducted a national anti-monopoly campaign all over the country, only to see the men who were to have been investigated take command of the inquiry. The people had had enough such experience not to be surprised that when they started to make a beloved leader senator it was their enemy who came out of the voting mill with the senatorial toga upon his shoulders. But terrible was the moral storm that broke forth out of the hearts of the people of Ohio. The votes they had thrown, like roses to garland the head of a hero, had been transformed as they went, by a black magic, into missiles of destruction, and had fallen upon him like the stones that slew Stephen. The press, without regard to party, gave voice to the popular wrath. Scores of the Democratic newspapers of Ohio went into mourning. One of them said: "The whole Democratic Legislature was made rotten by the money that was used to buy and sell the members like so many sheep." Many representative Democrats of the State privately and publicly declared their belief in the charges of corruption. Allen G. Thurman, who had been a senator and representative at Washington, said: "There is something that shocks me in the idea of crushing men like Pendleton and Ward, who have devoted the best portion of their lives to the maintenance of Democracy, by a combination against them of personal hatred and overgrown wealth.... I want to see all the Democrats have a fair chance according to their merits, and do not want to see a political cutthroat bossism inaugurated for the benefit of a close party corporation or syndicate." Again he said: "Syndicates purchase the people's agents, and honest men stand aghast."[564] It was the "irony of fate" that this Legislature, like the 44th Congress, had been specially elected to represent opposition to monopolies. Of course the Legislature that had done this thing was not to be persuaded, bullied, or shamed into any step towards exposure or reparation. But the people, usually so forgetful, nursed their wrath. They made the scandal the issue of the next State election, and put the Legislature into other hands. The new Legislature then forwarded formal charges to the Senate of the United States, and a demand for an investigation. The State of Ohio made its solemn accusation and prayer for an investigation through all the organs of utterance it had: the press of both parties; honored men, both Republican and Democratic; both Houses of the State Legislature and its senator whose seat was unchallenged--an aggregate representing a vast majority of the people of the State. The Hon. John Little and the Hon. Benjamin Butterworth, former Attorney-General of Ohio, both members of Congress, had been delegated to present the case of the State. They made formal charges, based on evidence given under oath or communicated in writing by reputable citizens, who were willing to testify under oath. None of the matter was presented on mere hearsay or rumor.[565] No charge was made to connect Senator Payne personally with the corruption. His denials and those of his friends of any participation by him were therefore mere evasions of the actual charge--that his election had been corruptly procured for him, not by him. The substance of their accusation, as contained in their statement and the papers forwarded by the Legislature, was as follows:[566] That among the chief managers of Mr. Payne's canvass, and those who controlled its financial operations, were four of the principal members in Ohio of the oil trust: its treasurer, the vice-president of one of its most important subordinate companies, its Cincinnati representative, and another--all of whom were named. That one of these four, naming him, who was given the financial management of the Payne campaign at Columbus, carried $65,000 with him, "next to his skin," to Columbus to use in the election, as he had stated to an intimate friend whose name would be given. That the cashier of the bank in Cleveland, where the treasurer of the oil combination kept one of his bank accounts, would testify that this money was procured on a check given by this treasurer of the oil trust to another of its officials, and passed over by him to its Cincinnati agent, who drew out the cash. That the back room used by the Payne manager at Columbus as his office displayed such large amounts of money in plain view that it looked like a bank, and that the employé who acted there as his clerk stated upon his return home that he had never seen so much money handled together in his life. That a prominent gentleman, going to the room used by the Payne managers for a "converter," had said that he saw "canvas bags and coin bags and cases for greenbacks littered and scattered around the room and on the table and on the floor ... with something green sticking out," which he found to be money. That members who had been earnest supporters of Pendleton were taken one by one by certain guides to this room which looked like a bank, and came out with an intense and suddenly developed dislike of civil-service reform (Mr. Pendleton's measure), and proceeded to vote for Mr. Payne; and that these conversions were uniformly attended with thrift, sudden, extensive, and so irreconcilable with their known means of making money as to be a matter of remark among their neighbors; and that "the reasons for the change (of vote) were kept mainly in this room, passed by delivery, and could be used to buy real estate." That this use of money in large amounts to procure the sudden conversions of Pendleton legislators to Payne would be shown by numerous witnesses, generally Democrats, several of them lawyers of great distinction and high ability. That the editor and proprietor of the principal Democratic journal in Ohio had stated, as was sworn to, that he had spent $100,000 to elect Payne, and that it cost a great deal of money to get those representatives and senators to vote for Payne, and they had to be bought. "It took money, and a good deal of it, to satisfy them," and he complained that the oil trust had not reciprocated in kind. This statement was made by one of his editorial writers, who after making it was discharged. The latter subsequently put it into the form of an affidavit. That Senator Pendleton would testify that more than enough of the legislators to give him the election had been pledged to him. That the number of members of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives who had been paid money to vote for Mr. Payne was so great that without their votes and influence his nomination would have been out of the question. That a legislator who had been violently opposed to Payne, then changed and became violently rich, had acknowledged that the treasurer of the oil trust, out of gratitude for what he had done, had "loaned" him several thousand dollars--"a case," said the representative of Ohio before the United States Senate, "of a man becoming well-to-do by borrowing money." That legislators who were so poor before the election that everything they had was mortgaged, and they had to beg or borrow funds for their election expenses, became so prosperous after their sudden conversion to Payne that they paid off their debts, rebuilt their houses, furnished them handsomely, deposited large amounts in the banks, or opened new bank accounts, bought more property, and that the reasons they gave for this new wealth were demonstrably untrue--or impossible. That a member of the Legislature, a State senator, had himself stated that he had received $5000 to vote for Payne,[567] and had offered the same amount to an associate if he would do the same; and that after the election this member opened a new bank account, depositing $2500 in his wife's name, who immediately transferred it to him. That another member of the Legislature, who changed suddenly after his election to the Legislature, and just before the caucus, from a warm advocacy of one of the recognized candidates to the support of Payne, when directly charged with having taken a bribe, did not deny it, but "became exceedingly sick, white as a sheet, and answered not. He went away and laid in bed two days." That, contrary to all the precedents of Ohio politics, the caucus of the majority party was not held until the night before election, so as to leave no time between the caucus and the election. That, also contrary to the precedents, the nomination was made, not, as usual, by open vote, but by secret ballot and without debate, on the demand of the Payne managers and contrary to the protests of the opponents, so that it could not be known to the public who the Payne men were. That this knowledge was made sure to the Payne managers, who were to pay for the votes, by the ingenious device of requiring each purchased legislator to use a coupon ballot furnished by them, the corresponding stub of which they kept. These legislators were not paid for their votes unless the torn edges of the coupon ballot voted by them corresponded with the edge of the stub in the possession of the managers. That responsible men would testify that they had received confessions from members of the Legislature that they had been bribed with money to vote for Mr. Payne. That two members of the Legislature who had been elected as anti-monopolists became supporters of Mr. Payne, and were heard discussing together the amount of money they had received, and quarrelling because one had received more than the other. That a member of the Legislature which was corrupted, standing on the floor of the Ohio House of Representatives, pointed out members who had been purchased to vote for Payne, saying: "These members were paid to vote in the senatorial fight," holding a little book in his hand in which he had the names and amounts; but although he made the charges openly and defiantly, and although the same charges were made in Republican and Democratic papers, no investigation was ordered. Three attempts to have an investigation made by the Legislature in which the bribery occurred failed. That a correspondent of a leading Cincinnati daily, sitting on the floor of the House, daily charged that the election was procured by bribery, talked about it generally, and dared the House to investigate or the accused to sue for libel, and that no such step was taken by either. That a memorandum of the names of the legislators who sold themselves, and the amounts they received, had been furnished from a responsible source. That on the eve of the election money was sent by draft to twenty-four of the Democratic candidates for the Legislature, with the promise of more the next day, and with the statement that thanks for both remittances were due to one of the prominent members of the oil trust, who was named, and two others of Payne's managers, "they paying most of it themselves." That before the election of the Legislature one of the Payne managers sent large sums of money amounting to $10,000, or $12,000, perhaps $13,500--the treasurer of the oil trust "and other wealthy Democrats contributed it-- ... into different parts of the State." That the managers of the election absented themselves from the State during the legislative investigation, and remained out of reach until it closed. That during the two and a half years which had passed since these specific charges of bribery had been put into circulation, there had been no demand for investigation on the part of those whose reputation and honor were concerned, but there had been a manifest effort to prevent investigation. That in addition to these offers of evidence the case against Mr. Payne would be greatly strengthened by new and additional testimony from responsible sources. Testimony was taken by the Legislature that an ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, afterwards Consul-General of the United States at Frankfort, Germany, had been in the room of Payne's manager, had seen that he was using money to procure the election, and had so told Mr. Payne before the election, and that Mr. Payne's reply--"You don't suppose I would endorse anything of that kind, do you?"--showed that he had understood the use of money referred to to be an improper use, thereby fastening upon Mr. Payne, if true, the knowledge that his agents were corrupting the Legislature. During this deluge of charges Mr. Payne made no denial. After the investigation had been ordered by the State Legislature, Senator Payne made an offer to the committee to submit all his private papers and books of accounts to their examination--an empty offer, because it was not charged that the corruption had been done by him, but for him by others. These latter made no such offer, but fled from the jurisdiction of the Legislature. When the representatives of the people of Ohio appeared before the committee of the United States Senate on elections, with the offer to prove under oath the foregoing charges, he remained voiceless. He did not rise in his place in the Senate to deny these accusations, as every other senator since the Senate began had done. He did not go before the committee, nor send before them any witness, or make any explanation. When the Senate committee decided to recommend the Senate not to investigate, and the representatives of Ohio begged the committee to reconsider, Senator Sherman declared that he heartily agreed with every word of the appeal, but Senator Payne still kept silent. The records of Congress show that his sole utterance or appearance in this matter in Congress was to make the motion that the papers forwarded by the Ohio Legislature should be sent, as was the routine, to the Committee on Elections. In doing this he did more than abstain from the utterance of a word which could be in any way construed as a demand for investigation. He delivered what was, in effect, an appeal to his fellow-senators not to investigate. He attacked the Legislature for sending the report of its investigation to Congress, characterizing "this proceeding--the transmission of the testimony here--as an attempt to circulate and give currency to baseless gossip and scandal, after everything substantial in the way of a charge had been discredited and disproved." In conclusion he left the matter to the committee "for such disposition of it as they may find to be in accordance with dignity and justice." The Legislature which made the investigation selected as the reason for ordering it the fact that a well-known citizen had just repeated in an open letter in the public prints the charges of bribery which had been made already hundreds of times. When this citizen was called upon to testify before the Legislature he stated that, as his information was derived from others, he had no personal proof to offer of his own knowledge that bribery had been committed. Referring to this, Mr. Payne said to his colleagues of the Senate: "Thus fell all that the investigation was originally based upon."[568] This was not true. The witness furnished the committee with the names of the men on whose authority he had spoken, and through whom evidence based on personal knowledge could be procured as to the truth of the charges.[569] Therefore the statement, "Thus fell all that the investigation was originally based upon," so far as it was believed by the senators, deceived them. The State Legislature could not compel the witnesses to testify. Only the United States Senate could do this, and it was deterred from doing so by this concealment of the fact that the investigation, instead of falling because of no basis, had struck firmer ground. The proffer of evidence was of such a character that, as has been well said, none of the lawyers of the Senate committee who voted against recommending investigation "would have failed to recommend thorough investigation of such an incident if it had been relevant to an alleged title set up against a private client."[570] But the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections--Senators Pugh, Saulsbury, Vance, and Eustis voting against Hoar and Frye--recommended the Senate not to investigate, and the Senate adopted this report. No one had expected this. The unbroken precedents of the Senate had made it a matter of course in public expectation that the investigation would be made. A convention of Ohio editors, sending a memorial for a reconsideration, said: "No instance has yet arisen in the history of the Senate where specific and well-supported charges of bribery in a senatorial election, preferred by the Legislature of a State, have not been promptly investigated by the Senate. In fact, so jealous has the Senate been of its own integrity and honor that it has heretofore promptly ordered investigations upon the memorials of citizens, and in other cases upon the memorial of individual members of a Legislature charging fraud in senatorial elections." In so doing the Senate, to adopt the language used by the chairman of the Committee on Elections, Senator Hoar, declared that "it is indifferent to the question whether its seats are to be in the future the subject of bargain and sale, or may be presented by a few millionaires as a compliment to a friend."[571] "This matter never can be quieted," said Senator Sherman in the debate in the Senate. "There are six or seven men who are known--I could name them--who, if they were brought before this Committee on Privileges and Elections, would settle this matter forever one way or the other in my judgment." The Senate decided that such a charge, accompanied by such offers of proof, did not deserve its attention. The trial of "even a criminal accusation," said the minority of the committee, "requires only the oath of the accuser who is justified if he have probable cause." The minority, Senators Hoar and Frye, further said: "It will not be questioned that in every one of these cases there is abundant probable cause which would justify a complaint, and compel a grand-jury or magistrate to issue process and make an investigation. Is the Senate to deny to the people of a great State, speaking through their Legislature and their representative citizens, the only opportunity for a hearing of this momentous case which can exist under the Constitution? The question now is not whether the case is proved--it is only whether it shall be inquired into. That has never yet been done. It cannot be done until the Senate issues its process. No unwilling witness has ever yet been compelled to testify; no process has gone out which should cross State lines. The Senate is now to determine, as the law of the present case, and as the precedent for all future cases, as to the great crime of bribery--a crime which poisons the waters of republican liberty in the fountain--that the circumstances which here appear are not enough to demand its attention. It will hardly be doubted that cases of purchase of seats in the Senate will multiply rapidly under the decision proposed by the majority of the committee."[572] The debate upon the recommendation of the committee not to investigate was impassioned. Senator Hoar said: "The adoption of this majority report ... will be the most unfortunate fact in the history of the Senate." When the vote of the Senate not to investigate was announced, Senator Edmunds turned to his neighbor in the Senate and summed up the verdict of posterity in these words: "This is a day of infamy for the Senate of the United States." The same Legislature which sent Senator Payne to the Senate defeated the bill to allow the Cleveland independent refiners to build a pipe line to furnish themselves with oil. The defeat of the bill was accomplished by a lobby whose work was so openly shameless that it was characterized by the Ohio press "as an indelible disgrace to the State." The bill was one of many attempts which have been made by the people of Ohio and Pennsylvania, without success, to get from their Legislature the right to build pipe lines. It has been tried to get laws to regulate the charges of the existing lines, but without success. The history of the pipe-line bills in these legislatures for the past ten years has been a monotonous record of an unavailing struggle of a majority of millions to apply legal and constitutional restraints to a minority of a few dozens. The means employed in the Ohio Legislature of 1885 to defeat a bill giving equality in pipe-line transportation to refiners in competition with the oil trust, which owned the existing pipe-lines, were of such a sort that that body has gone into the history of the State as the "Coal-oil Legislature." It is stated by Hudson, in his _Railways and the Republic_, that the Democratic agent of the bribery openly threatened to publish the list he had of the members of the Legislature he had purchased, and that in consequence of this threat proceedings which had been begun against him for outraging the House by appearing on the floor in a state of gross intoxication were abandoned.[573] In a debate about combinations in trade and industry--trusts--in the United States Senate in 1888, the sore scandal of this senatorial election of 1884 was disinterred. "If there be such a trust," said Senator Hoar, referring to the oil trust, "is it represented in the cabinet at this moment? Is it represented in the Senate? I want to know the facts about these five or six great trusts which are sufficient in their power to overthrow any government in Europe, if they existed in those nations, that should set itself against them--the coal, the sugar, the whiskey, the cotton, the fruit, the railroad transportation of this country, controlled by these giant chieftains." Senator Payne defended the oil trust and himself. "Even at this date," he said, "it seems that that company is represented as being guilty of all sorts of unlawful and improper things. Such allegations without proof to sustain them I regard as unworthy of an honorable man or an honorable senator.... The Standard Oil Company," he continued, "is a very remarkable and wonderful institution. It has accomplished within the last twenty years, as a commercial enterprise, what no other company or association of modern times has accomplished." He went on to declare that he "never had a dollar's interest in the company." But the charge which he and it would never allow to be investigated was that the company had a great many dollars' interest in him. "The majority of the stockholders are very liberal in their philanthropic contributions to charity and benevolent works," he pleaded; "but it contributed," he said, "not one dollar or one cent directly or indirectly to my election to this body." During the demand for investigation he uttered no such denial to be taken as a challenge. The senator made what Senator Hoar properly called a "very remarkable admission" concerning the part taken in elections by the oil combination. "When a candidate for the other House in 1871," Senator Payne said, "no association, no combination in my district did more to bring about my defeat, and went to so large an expense in money to accomplish it, as the Standard Oil Company." The oil trust, then, does take part in elections, and as a company spends larger sums of money than any other "institution, association, combination ... to accomplish the defeat" of candidates for Congress! Then Mr. Payne said: "There never has been a national election at which those two gentlemen--one of them was my own son--have not contributed very liberally." He named the two men who were, as Senator Hoar showed, among the most influential and important managers of his election to the Senate. Senator Hoar closed the debate with these unanswered and unanswerable words: "A senator who, when the governor of his State, when both branches of the Legislature of his State, complained to us that a seat in the United States Senate had been bought; when the other senator from the State rose and told us that that was the belief of a very large majority of the people of Ohio, without distinction of party, failed to rise in his place and ask for the investigation which would have put an end to those charges, if they had been unfounded, sheltering himself behind the technicalities which were found by some gentlemen on both sides of this chamber, that the investigation ought not to be made, but who could have had it by the slightest request on his part, and then remained dumb, I think should forever after hold his peace."[574] The election of this senator was meant to be only the prelude to his nomination and election as President of the United States. This was publicly and authoritatively declared by the men who were charged with having spent money to buy the Legislature for him. One of these was the proprietor of the most influential Democratic daily in Ohio, and that journal in a leading editorial, double leaded to make it more prominent, declared this to be the purpose of Payne's friends. The New York _Sun_ of May 27, 1884, followed, also in double-leaded editorials, under the caption in staring black type of the name of the Senator, and said: "Henry B. Payne is looming up grandly in the character of a possible and not altogether improbable successor to Mr. Tilden as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. The fact that the Ohio delegation at Chicago in July is sure to be solid for Payne is of peculiar importance and significancy. Everybody can see what it may amount to." Concurrently with these formal announcements came the news from all parts of Ohio that the Payne party were hard at work to control the election of the delegates who were to represent Ohio in the National Democratic Convention at Chicago in July. But the managers of this Presidential campaign found that they had gone too far. The election for senator had excited so fierce an anger over the whole country that it had become perfectly plain that Senator Payne was not "available." The education of the American public was still incomplete. It could see senatorships bought and endure it, but the Presidency--"not yet." The use this senator made of his seat throws light where none is needed. Again, in 1887, the great question of 1876 of the control of the highways came up before Congress. The agitation of nearly twenty years had come to a point. Thirty of the States and Territories of the Union had established commissions or passed laws to regulate the railroads. Congress had before it the Interstate Commerce bill forbidding discriminations, and creating the Interstate Commerce Commission as a special tribunal to prevent and punish the crime. There had been investigation, debates, amendments, meetings of conference committees of both Houses. It was proposed to "recommit" the bill to prevent its passage for an indefinite time. Mr. Payne voted "Yes." Then the question before the Senate is, Shall the bill become a law? Senator Payne's name is called. He votes: "No." It is the same question as in 1876, and the same vote. Against the investigation, first, and then the legislation, his word is: "I object." CHAPTER XXVIII FOR "OLD GLORY" AND AN--APPROPRIATION In 1891 Congress passed the Postal Subsidy law for paying a higher than the market rate of compensation to capitalists who would carry the mails in vessels built in America, of American materials, and manned by Americans. No contracts were made by the Post-office Department under the law for the mails between Europe and America, for there were no such capitalists and no such boats in that quarter. In May of the next year, 1892, a bill was whizzed through Congress almost without debate, in which the forms of the principal beneficiaries-to-be of the law of 1891 loomed into view. The subsidy law gave its bonus only to vessels that could fly the American flag because American built and manned. This new act exempted from these conditions the two principal steamers of the Inman, now the International, line--the _City of New York_ and the _City of Paris_--provided the company built two other steamers that fulfilled the requirements of the subsidy law. The sequel disclosed that their owners had a well-laid plan to build more than two other steamers to get the rich rewards of the subsidy law. The steamers and the company were not named. That was not needed. The bill was drawn with such limitations as to size, speed, ownership, etc., that these were the only two vessels which could come under its provisions. The bill was introduced in the House by a prominent Democrat, and in the Senate by a prominent Republican. It was passed by both Houses regardless of party distinctions. The Secretary of the Navy urged the bill upon the naval committees of Congress. He had begun to do so in his first report to Congress and subsequent communications, in which he referred by name to the vessels which were masked in this legislation. The head of the line and other owners were members of the oil combination. The president of the steamship company has been the president of the pipe-line branch of the oil trust--its largest single interest--from the time of its organization in 1881.[575] This exemption from the law was engineered through the Senate by one who had hitherto always been conspicuously strenuous in refusing to abate his opposition to admitting to American registry any ship not built in America, of American materials, by American labor, but who now had suffered some sea change. Ordinary citizens who want to get the profits of carrying the American mails must build their boats in American ship-yards; but the syndicate got members of Congress to grant them by law that which all others must earn. The enactment of the Postal Subsidy law and the exemption of these steamers by special law were the first two parts of a progressive programme. The third step was the negotiation of contracts with the Postmaster-General for the prizes of subsidy. Immediately upon the passage of this special legislation the Postmaster-General went through the necessary but empty parade of advertising for bids for a service for which there could be only one possible bidder. The awarding of contracts to the steamship company so "fortunate in competing" was announced in the press in October, 1892. The Postmaster-General dated the contracts 1895--three years ahead. They run for ten years from that time. An iron-clad, or, better than iron-clad, law-clad contract was thus secured, giving a complete monopoly of the mail business between America and Europe until A.D. 1905, five years into the twentieth century. The legislation of May contemplated the construction of two new boats. The contracts secured from the Postmaster-General showed that the line intended to build five, and obligated the government to pay subsidies to all of them, as well as to the two foreign-built steamers given by special legislation the right to fly the American flag. By these contracts the company, after the completion of its new steamers in about three years, will exclusively carry every bag of mail that leaves America for Europe. Meanwhile the mails are to be given to its two steamers now running, the _Paris_ and the _New York_, whenever they are in port. This has been frequently done in the past on account of their speed, but the compensation for this, under the law and the new contracts, has been made much greater than the price hitherto paid. With but one or two exceptions the mails on all the routes where subsidy is given--to South America, Havana, China, Europe--were carried before the subsidy law on the same ships as now. Except a very trifling saving in time, the only change the law has made here is that the gains of the carriers have been swelled at the cost of the taxpayers. The American shippers carrying the mails at the regular weight rates were making a profit. The Post-office, under the new deal, gets only what it has been getting--the carriage of the mails; but the steamship company gets a great deal more. This is the "pleasure of making it cheap" applied to the postal service. By this procession of moves the company secured profitable contracts ten years ahead on present ships, the _Paris_ and the _New York_--although these had not yet done as much as fly the American flag in compliance with the special legislation in their behalf--and on future ships that were not yet built or contracted for. All was in the future--the American registry for the _Paris_ and the _New York_, the building of the new steamers required by the special legislation. But one thing was got in hand, and was not in the future tense--the contract with the American Post-office, binding it to pay millions a year. The privileges conferred by this legislation were so valuable that, as Senator Frye stated in debate, its recipients to gain them were to forfeit $105,000 due them from the British Government. The American registry would be a capital advertisement to catch the American tourist. Travelling, says Emerson, is a fool's paradise, and the shifting population of that paradise would never stop to think out the fraud in the appeal to their patriotism. Much was made in the sentimental Senate of the privilege the law would give Americans of going abroad in their own ships under their own flag. The press was used shrewdly and widely to gain the favor of the public for these incursions into their Treasury. Pages of advertising, in the dress of news-matter, were put into prominent journals, telling in glowing phrases what a great thing Congress, the Postmaster-General, and the steamship company were doing for the people. The same editorial on the promised restoration of American maritime supremacy would appear as original in journals thousands of miles apart. As the panorama of journalism moved along with its daily shift any observer could see the methodical and business-like way in which the syndicate "inspired" the press. Articles about the "great steamship line" appeared on the same date in the papers of different cities, giving the same facts in the same order, and nearly the same words, following "copy" evidently supplied from a common source. One day these chimes all sing the immeasurable superiority of Southampton over Liverpool as a port for Americans; another day the unspeakable sagacity of the Postmaster-General in giving this company the mails is the tune; and again the ding-dong tells how, but for the syndicate and its subsidy, the American flag--"Old Glory"--would be seen no more on the seas. The average citizen who reads "his" paper is no doubt duly impressed. "Old Glory on the seas!" cried the excitable metropolitan editors. "The dear old flag!" "America again Queen of the seas!" "A new era is about to dawn on our long-neglected commerce!" Our long-absent flag is about to reappear, but not, as in the old days, as the symbol of a people's commerce. It signalizes the commerce of syndicates. The democratic idea of a chance for all has been abandoned for the aristocratic idea of the favored few. "Poor indeed in spirit must be the American," said the New York _Tribune_, "who will not hail with satisfaction and pride the early prospect of the reappearance of the flag in English, French, and Belgian ports." Poor, fortunately, it was replied, are many Americans in the spirit which taxes all the people out of an industry in which they once led the world, and then taxes them to give that same industry as an exclusive privilege to a syndicate--and such a syndicate! There was a rapturous chorus from the press because American materials and American labor are to be employed in the construction and use of the new vessels to be built for subsidies. When American labor was free to employ itself and American materials with no subsidies, American boats did absolutely the whole packet business between England and America.[576] Now American seamanship must remain content to be employed to such an extent and on such terms as may suit the interests of a few men, under whose captainship the once glorious expansion of our commerce on the seas is replaced by a system limited on every side. Limited by the expensiveness of entering the occupation: a special bill has to be passed through Congress in each case to confer the right to fly the American flag on ships bought abroad, and for this the merely legitimate expenses are heavy--trips to Washington, appearances before committees and departments, with expert representatives. Limited by their small number: instead of thousands building and running new ships, a score. Limited by their capital: great, it is still much less than the aggregate, if all had a chance. Limited by the narrowness of view and enterprise inevitable with a few, however capable: everybody knows more than anybody. Limited by the lack of diversity in opinion and interests: with many men of many minds, of varying forecasts and moods and gaits, the currents of industry are kept fuller and steadier than is possible under a clique rule. Limited by selfishness: the few will inevitably come to regard the ocean-carrying business as "belonging to us," like oil, and with their crushing wealth will treat as "black-mailers" intruders with new ships and new methods. Limited by the impossibility the subsidy system imposes upon the average citizen of competing against the government--against himself multiplied by all his fellow-citizens. Limited by corruption: when this subsidy bill was under discussion, Representative Blount, of Georgia,[577] called attention to the methods by which previous legislation of the same sort, "to build up the American merchant marine and increase the commerce of the country," had been sought from Congress. Quoting from the report made to Congress in 1874-75 by Representative Kasson, of Iowa, he showed that the Pacific Mail Company, to get a subsidy, had disbursed $703,000 among the members and officers of Congress and other persons influential in legislation. "Yankee maritime enterprise," this is called. The great captains, Bursley, Anthony, Delano, Dumaresq, Comstock, Eldridge, Nye, Marshall, Holdredge, Morgan, and other sturdy Americans who led the nautical world wherever speed, safety, and courage were called for, outsailing competition even from the land where "Blake and mighty Nelson fell"[578]--they had a manlier idea of enterprise than being supported at the public expense in floating poor-houses miscalled floating hotels. The few men who are the beneficiaries of taxes paid by the many will be powerful and shrewd enough to get other dispensations or benefits, post-office contracts, naval contracts, or modifications of the strict terms of their agreement, and with this help from the taxpayer they can do business at a figure which, though very remunerative to themselves, will drive the unaided citizen competitor out of the business. Honest citizens cannot ask for such favors. Poor men could not get them. It was the old spirit of rebate which sought and gave the preference. Nothing could make such legislation respectable but the extension of its benefits to all Americans owning such ships. But no such extension was contemplated. The law gave a privilege not to the American flag, but to the owners of the American flags of these two steamers. "There is little probability," Senator Frye was reported as saying, December 22, 1892, in the New York _Tribune_, friendly to him and to the policy of subsidy, "of the passage of any more laws giving the privilege of an American registry to vessels upon the building of which no American labor has been expended. The twin steamers _City of New York_ and _City of Paris_ have set a fashion of which they will be the only exponents." There is a pool of the steamers between America and Europe called the North Atlantic Steamship Association. At its meeting in December, 1892, this association discussed plans for reducing the number of trips, increasing passenger rates, withdrawing excursion rates to the World's Fair, and discontinuing the steerage traffic. This was duly followed by the announcement in March, 1893, for which it was presumably a preparation, that steerage traffic was renewed, but at an increase of rates. Passenger rates of the higher class have also been raised. Agreements to restrict the number of ships; pools to put up rates; steamship wars to destroy competitors; the use of "pull" to procure from the admiralty, sanitary, naval, immigration, and other governmental bureaus, here and abroad, regulations ostensibly for public convenience, really to make business, as nearly as can be, impossible for others; lobbies to buy legislation for private interests--all these may be expected to replace the magnificent and manly rivalries of the days when the unbribed flag floated on its own breath in every sea. Under the policy of subsidy--the policy of aristocracy, exclusion, scarcity, corruption, war, and loss of liberty--the contest for maritime and commercial supremacy becomes a contest between the subsidy lobbies in Washington and at Westminster, Paris, and Berlin. If the duke who is at the head of one of the great English steamship lines obtains an increase of subsidy, the maritime dukes in America will call on Congress not to shame itself by doing less for Americans than Parliament has done for Englishmen. If all the English and American lines pass under one ducal yoke--following the internationalization of other syndicated businesses of Great Britain and America--one hidden hand will manage for one purse the make-believe duel between Parliament and Congress, while the uninitiated people glare across the ocean at each other, and each inspired press calls on its government not to allow its commercial supremacy to be destroyed by vulgar and unpatriotic economy. In advocacy of subsidy--breeder of sea-dogs, naval contractors, of war, and of treasury-suckled syndicates to fan its flames--the Secretary of the Navy wrote to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce in this case, "A fleet of such cruisers would sweep an enemy's commerce from the ocean." All through the press, from New York to Texas and the Pacific coast, every possible change of phrase is rung to fire the American heart with "jingo" exhortations to subsidize private steamers so as to increase our fighting kennel. The "American idea" is that individuals as well as corporations, poor men as well as rich ones, small towns as well as large ones, one maritime State as well as another, should be encouraged to follow the sea. The old woman who thanked God, upon her first sight of the sea, that at last she had seen something there was enough of, lived before subsidies were invented and the sea shrank to be too small for all the people. The contracts made with the International Company bind the government to pay it $4.00 a mile for fifty-two trips a year (3162 miles each) between New York and Southampton for the ten years (1895-1905)--$657,696 a year, and $6,576,960 for the ten years; and the same rate a mile for the same number of trips a year (of 3350 miles each) between New York and Antwerp for ten years--$696,800 a year, and $6,968,000 for the ten years. This makes an income from the mails alone of $1,354,496 a year on the not-to-exceed $10,000,000 which the company will have invested. At the end of the ten years it will have received from these government contracts alone its whole investment, and more than one-third in addition. The American taxpayer will receive for his share the profit and pleasure of being forbidden to send his letters to Europe by faster and cheaper boats, when these appear, as they have already begun to do. The trial trips of new steamers of other lines show them to be faster than the vessels we have bound ourselves to. "The American principle" used to be to send all mails by the fastest ships. Now, to develop the "American merchant marine," we relieve it from all necessity of competing in speed, or anything else, with the foreign marine. With such legislation and contracts in hand, any syndicate could go to the banks and borrow at the lowest rates every cent of the millions it needed to carry out its plans. It need not invest a dollar of its own. Good enough "collateral" for borrowing would be this privilege--practically a capital of millions got from the government for nothing. Done for favored citizens, this is "the development of our national resources"; done for the whole people, it would be "socialism" or something more dreadful. Thus guaranteed dividends by the forced contributions of the American people, this company, if threatened with competition by other lines, old or new, can lower freights and fares to rates at which others cannot live. The subsidies are a reserve fund on which it can subsist while doing other business below cost. The vision of this will deter other capitalists from building vessels, as they have been frightened out of building tank-cars. The company can, by a war of rates, force the sale to it of such vessels as it wants out of the present Atlantic fleet. The scheme, which has progressed so smoothly through the various stages of the Postal Subsidy law--the exemption by special legislation of the two steamers from their foreign disabilities, the negotiation of the contracts for subsidies until A.D. 1905 for steamers yet unborn--is an entering wedge, the broad end of which may easily grow to be a monopoly of the transatlantic--and why not transpacific?--traffic and travel. And in future legislation, tariffs, and contracts, what bulwark of the people would avail against the Washington lobby of these combined syndicates of oil, natural gas, illuminating gas, coal, lead, linseed-oil, railroads, street-railroads, banks, ocean and lake steamships and whalebacks, iron and copper mines, steel mills, etc.? These beggars on horseback--the poor we will always have with us as long as we give such alms--are forever at the elbows of the secretaries, representatives, senators. The people who pay are at work in their fields, out of sight, scattered over thousands of miles. Having evaded, by the complaisance of Congress, the requirements of the subsidy law in the case of its two non-American steamers, the company sought to be relieved by the Secretary of the Treasury from the necessity of manning its boats with Americans, as stipulated by the law. It was unwilling to sacrifice the foreign captains in its employ, as the despatches said, "for the untried men of American citizenship," regardless that one of the strongest promises of the subsidy givers and takers was to recall to the sea the American citizenship banished thence. The company had already driven its foreign-built boats through the law, why not its foreign captains? It applied to the Treasury Department for permission to retain them. To furnish a ground for such a ruling, the foreign captains had given notice of their "intention" to become citizens. They could not become citizens for five years, and the courts hold that such a declaration does not meet the requirements of the law that the officers of United States vessels shall be citizens of the United States. The ruling asked for was refused by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Nettleton. The question was not dropped. Some months later (December 2, 1892) the Washington despatches of the Philadelphia _Ledger_ and the New York _Herald_ reported that "Secretary Foster of the Treasury is disposed to accede to the wishes of the company, if it can possibly be done within the law," and in the New York _Tribune_ we read that "he is inclined to the view that an exception might safely be made in this case." The raising of the American flag on these steamers--one at New York and the other at Southampton--in the spring of 1893, was made a state ceremony in both countries. The President of the United States came on specially from the capital to honor the occasion, though this had never been done before when the American flag was raised on vessels admitted to foreign registry. The American minister left the embassy at London to officiate at Southampton. The vessels were announced to be under American captains transferred from other ships owned by the same men. But the Society of American Marine Engineers and the Brotherhood of Steamboat Pilots discovered that other officers--the foreign engineers of the vessels--had been retained, though they were foreigners. The former began an agitation for the protection of their legal rights. Remonstrances from every important branch of the two societies from San Francisco to New York were forwarded to the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury of the new administration which had just gone into office. Counsel were employed to present their case. It was found that one of the last official acts of the out-going Secretary of the Treasury had been the order authorizing the issue of licenses to foreign engineers. Attempts to procure a copy of this order from the department have failed. Engineers have always been considered to be officers. If they are such, this exemption was a violation of the statutes of the United States which require that officers shall be American. It reversed all the decisions which hold that declaration of an intention to become a citizen does not make one legally a citizen, for that would give foreigners, as in this case, the advantages of citizenship without its duties; and indefinitely, for the intention might never be executed. The order of the Secretary makes a precedent upon which foreign captains may be employed--the objection being the same in either case--and their reappearance may therefore be confidently looked for. The appropriation once got, "Old Glory" is hauled down. An "American Seaman" wrote the New York _World_ that when he offered himself for employment on the boat which had just replaced with so much pomp the British flag with the American he was almost laughed at, and was told there had been ninety men on board that morning on the same errand. All got the same answer, "We don't want you. We employ all our hands on the other side." The articles circulated throughout the country to create public opinion in favor of these subsidies dwell much on the "glory" and advantage of having Americans in command of these vessels with a full American force under them. But the subsidy secured, we see these American vessels, which may be called upon to take part in a war with Great Britain, are manned by British engineers and British seamen. The lower compensation they are accustomed to will help keep down the cost of manning the other vessels to be built for the line. The secretary by whom this was done was he who, as president of a subordinate corporation of the oil combination, had been the commanding officer at the front in the great battle with Toledo.[579] When he was nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, Senator Payne made himself conspicuous by soliciting support among the Democrats for the confirmation of this Republican. "He could not be chosen to the Toledo Council from any ward to-day," said the New York _Times_, February 23, 1891, "so bitter is the feeling against him," and the same paper declared that his defeat in Ohio as a candidate for Congress in 1890 was entirely due to his connection with the oil combination. But though of so little political power that he could not command a majority of the votes in his own Congressional district, there was influence behind him which could get the head of his party and the government to put him in the seat illustrious with the memory of such men as Alexander Hamilton and Salmon P. Chase. "The objection to Governor Foster as Secretary of the Treasury, that he was an associate in business of the members of the great oil trust," said the New York _Press_, "President Harrison did not regard as serious enough to have any weight." It was pointed out by the Buffalo _Courier_ editorially, February 23, 1891, and other papers, that the oil trust, which Mr. Foster had been serving, "is not only a heavy exporter but a heavy importer, especially of tin plate, and is an extensive claimant for rebates of duty on the tin of cans in which oil is exported." An item of Associated Press news in December, 1892, says that the Secretary of the Treasury has just decided that the oil combination shall be paid by the Treasury a drawback of the duties it has paid on imported steel hoops for barrels in which it exports oil. "It isn't pleasant," said the New York _World_, editorially, February 23, 1891, "to have a Secretary of the Treasury who holds intimate relations with the oil trust." It is through the Secretary of the Treasury that the company receives the mail subsidies of millions a year. All the statistics and official publications with regard to the "decline of American shipping" and "foreign competition with American oil," and about the tariff, as on oil, coal, steel, tin, etc., and many other financial and commercial matters of pecuniary concern to them, are under the charge of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Treasury Department's Commissioner of Navigation, in 1892, sends circulars to the boards of trade and chambers of commerce all over the country, calling attention to the small amount of money paid by our government to American steamers for the mails, and advocating the establishment of a merchant marine and naval reserve on the principle adopted by Great Britain--_i.e._, the payment of subsidies. When Senator Hoar, speaking of the oil combination in the debate on the Payne case,[580] asked, sharply: "Is it represented in the Cabinet at this moment?" he referred to the Secretary of the Navy. Subsidy had not then insinuated itself into the policy of the government; but when that came, the uses of a Secretary of the Navy were clear enough. It was by the influence of the Secretary of the Navy that the subsidies for these steamships of the oil trust were got through Congress. It is the Secretary of the Navy who passes upon the speed of the ships receiving subsidies; and his findings are binding upon the Post-office Department which awards the contracts and upon the Treasury Department which pays. In the rush of the closing hours of the session of 1889-90 of the Fifty-first Congress, upon the urgent recommendation, made in person to the Naval Committee, of the same Secretary of the Navy who had pushed through the subsidy special legislation we have described, $1,000,000 was appropriated for the purchase of nickel ore. It is an emergency, said the senator who spoke for the Naval Committee to the Senate. The nickel was to be bought by the Secretary of the Navy; when and where was at his discretion. The ore was to be used for alloying steel in the manufacture of armor plate. The same Congress took off the duty of hundreds of dollars a ton on nickel imported. The only nickel mine of importance in America was then at Sudbury, Canada. In pressing the appropriation through Congress it was stated that the mine, like the steamship company subsidized later, was owned by "our citizens." After investigation in Cleveland, New York, Washington, and Canada, the _Daily News_ of Chicago declared that the appropriation of $1,000,000 and the abolition of the duty were done in the interest of members of the oil combination; that they were "our citizens" who were the owners of the nickel mine at Sudbury; that they had sent an able lobbyist to Washington to secure the legislation; and that, in anticipation of his success, the product of the mine had been withheld for a year from the market, until ore to the value of millions had accumulated. It was said that by April 1, 1890, there were 5000 tons on the dump, the duty on which, at the old rate, would have been $1,500,000. Whether these statements were correct or not--and in the absence of official investigation it is impossible to tell--the narrative answers fully the purpose of giving the uninitiated public an idea of the relations that may exist between public departments and private syndicates with great profit--but not to the department. The appropriation was passed September 29, 1890. The books of the Navy Department show that the Secretary thereupon made contracts with the Canadian Copper Company, by which, up to June 15th following, it sold the government $321,321.86 worth of nickel. A litigation arising among its stockholders in the spring of 1893 disclosed among them no less close a connection of the oil trust than the senator from Ohio who had served it in Congress from 1876 to 1891. The message of a Republican President in 1892 commended the special legislation in favor of the two steamers, and urged Congress not to fail to appropriate money to pay them their subsidies. The Democratic Postmaster-General, who now stands between the United States and these carriers of the foreign mails, is one of the firm of distinguished counsel who defended the interests of some of the owners of this steamship line in the conspiracy trial at Buffalo.[581] He is to give them the vouchers upon which the millions a year of subsidies are to be paid, and he may be called upon to consider new contracts. In the Presidential campaign of 1892 the head of the oil trust was prominent on one side figuring among the officers of great political mass-meetings in New York, while the associate referred to by Senator Hoar was the active manager of the political fortunes of the other party. This is not a solitary instance. The great man who testified twenty-one years ago that he was a Republican in Republican districts, a Democrat in Democratic districts, but everywhere an Erie man, has now an army of imitators. The people had this authoritatively explained to them while they were dazedly watching the speculation in sugar-trust stock in Wall Street and the Senate rise and fall with the manipulation of the sugar tariff in committee. The president of the sugar-trust, before a special committee of the United States Senate, testified that this "politics of business" was the custom of "every individual and corporation and firm, trust, or whatever you call it."[582] Asked if he contributed to the State campaign funds, he said: "We always do that.... In the State of New York, where the Democratic majority is between 40,000 and 50,000, we throw it their way. In the State of Massachusetts, where the Republican party is doubtful, they probably have the call.... Wherever there is a dominant party, wherever the majority is very large, that is the party that gets the contribution, because that is the party which controls the local matters"--which include the elections to Congress and the Presidential election.[583] Federal judges find the sugar trust not subject to the anti-trust law.[584] The Attorney-General has not got decisions in the suits against it for refusal to answer Census questions. Congress forces the people to buy sugar of it only, and at its price. The Secretary of the Treasury drafts for a committee of Congress a tariff like that the trust needs. Our President is the head of the "dominant party that gets the contribution," and he joins the sugar lobby by recommending, unofficially, legislation in its favor.[585] By what law gives it, and by what law does not take from it, the sugar trust can issue $85,000,000 of securities on $10,000,000 of property, and collect $28,000,000[586] a year of profits. Control of government, with its Presidents, Congress, Federal Judges, Attorney-Generals, and Cabinet Secretaries, would be a great prize. Probably none of the trust's "raw material" would be so cheaply bought as this if it could be purchased by campaign contributions of a few hundred thousand dollars. In an interview in the New York _Herald_ of March 25, 1894, the debonair president of the trust, to shame the objections of picayune souls, cries, "Who cares for a quarter of a cent a pound?" The answer is not far to seek. He does. CHAPTER XXIX "THE COMMODITY IS NOT SO GOOD AS BEFORE" --_Lord Coke._ Three hundred years ago Lord Coke, in the "Case of the Monopolies,"[587] declared these to be the inevitable result of monopoly: the price of the commodity will be raised; the commodity is not so good as before; it tends to the impoverishment of artisans, artificers, and others. In 1878 and 1879, when railway presidents were saying "No" to every application of the few remaining independents for passage along the road to market,[588] and the oil combination was supreme from the well to the lamp, a concerted protest was made against its oil by commercial bodies representing trade all over Europe. An international congress was held specially to consider means for the protection of the European consumer, by the interposition of the governments of Europe and America, or by commercial measures. In the archives of the State Department at Washington are the documents in which this episode can be read.[589] At this moment of triumph over all rivals, "even what was classed as superior brands was a poor article."[590] The English trade met in London, in January, 1879, and remonstrated. One of the delegates stated that a small dealer who bought of him had written, threatening to commit suicide on account of the trouble this poor oil was giving him.[591] The American consul at Antwerp, under date of February 19, 1879, called the attention of the State Department to the congress about to be held to consider the serious complaints which had been made of late against American refined petroleums. He gave the warning that unless there was an improvement the Belgian government would interfere for the protection of the people with regulations which would greatly embarrass the export trade from America. A bill was introduced into the German Reichstag to protect the people of Germany against the flood of bad oil from America. Against those dealing in oil dangerous to human safety it provided penalties from fines to loss of citizenship and penal servitude. At the congress which met at Bremen in February were represented all the European nations of any importance except France, which imports only crude, and does all its refining at home. It was an indignation meeting. The consul at Bremen wrote the State Department, under date of February 27, 1879, an account of it. It was "very important," he said. "Delegates were present from the chambers of commerce of Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Breslau, Christiania, Copenhagen, Danzig, Frankfort-on-Main, Hamburg, Königsberg, Lubeck, Mannheim, Nürnberg, Rostock, Rotterdam, Stettin, Trieste, Moscow, and Vienna." The "united refiners," to explain away the faults of their oil, sent a representative to the congress who was one of the inspectors of the State of New York, in the pay of the people, but using his official prestige in behalf of a private interest. The consul at Bremen names the two chief points made in the defence: First, that the refined oil was bad because half the crude then produced in America was from the Bradford field, "and is so different in quality from the so-called Parker oil that the same quality of refined oil cannot be made--at any rate, by the ordinary processes hitherto in use." Second, that the wicks in common use were poor. That the inferior quality of the Bradford oil was not the real reason was proved by the fact that the refined oil manufactured and exported by the refineries of the combination from the crude of the other fields deteriorated at the same time and as much.[592] The Bremen congress knew this. It was at this precise moment--though this the Bremen congress did not know--that the combination was tying up a great inventor and hauling his apparatus to the junk-yard to prevent the test of a new method for making better and cheaper oil.[593] Its members would have had the benefit of it if successful, but with the spirit which men who seek exclusive control always exhibit, they did not want to change. The congress declined to treat with any respect the excuses that were offered. It declared "that the complaints regarding the inferior quality of much of the petroleum recently received from America, and especially of the different brands of the" oil combination, were "fully justified." It consequently demanded from the American refiners, and especially from the oil combination, "First, that they give greater care to the refining of crude oil than they have recently done, in order that the petroleum may in the future be again as free as it formerly was from acids and heavy oils, that inferior qualities may no longer be shipped to Europe, and that the consumer may again receive the former customary good quality." The superiority of its barrels was specially mentioned by the head of the oil combination to explain why all competitors failed. "All its advantages," he said in court in Cleveland, "are legitimate business advantages, due to the very large volume of supplies which it purchases, its long continuance in the business, the experience it has thereby acquired, the knowledge of all the avenues of trade, the skill of experienced employés, the possession and use of all the latest and most valuable mechanical improvements, appliances, and processes for the distillation of crude oil, and in the manufacture of its own barrels, glue, etc., by reason of which it is enabled to put the oil on the market at a cost of manufacture much less than by others not having equal advantages." But the Bremen congress made a special attack on the "barrels" and "glue." It complained that "the continental petroleum trade has suffered heavy losses on account of inferior barrels," and demanded that the oil combination should "only use barrels of well-seasoned, air-dried, split (not sawed) white oak staves and heads." It even particularized that the barrels should be "painted with blue linseed-oil paint, and supplied with double, strong head-hoops," and "more carefully glued, and not filled until the glue is thoroughly dry." "They were substantially without competition," was said in explanation of the poor quality of the product sent to Europe, and also "to all parts of this country. The quality of the oil which they sent was not a matter of first-class importance for them to retain their business." It was "a negligence which came in a great measure from the absence of competition." This witness was asked by the lawyer of the combination if he meant the committee to understand that it "was committing suicide by furnishing a continuously deteriorating article of oil to the consumer." "They were not committing suicide, because they had the business in their own hands almost exclusively at that time."[594] This was in 1879, and the complaints of the quality of American oil sent abroad continue to this day. Export oil, the Interstate Commerce Commission say, in 1892, "is an inferior oil."[595] One of the means by which a market was found for American oil in Scotland was the lowering of the British requirements in 1879 as to quality, from a flash-test of 100° to one of 73°, so that the more explosive American oil, until then debarred, could be legally sold to the people of Great Britain. The oil made in Scotland was "a very superior article--very good indeed."[596] There were two ways of getting the market: to meet the Scotch manufacturer with as good an oil, or to induce the government to permit the sale of something inferior. The latter policy was adopted. The government was induced to permit the sale to private consumers of oil that would give off an inflammable gas at a temperature of 73°--a lower temperature than often exists in living-rooms. Meanwhile the government continued to insist upon oil that would stand a test of 105° for its own use in the navy and 145° in its light-houses. The absurdity of this legal test was proved by Mr. T. Graham Young, son of Mr. James Young, founder of the Scotch oil industry, in a letter to the Glasgow _Herald_ of May 12, 1894. He showed by the records that the year before there had been sixty days in London in which the temperature had gone above 73°. The government, that is, gave its sanction to the sale of oil which might explode at a heat below that ordinarily reached in an English summer! Commenting on the strange fact that the Scotch oil companies did not move against the change of test which had put them and the British consumer at the mercy of this explosive American oil, Mr. Young said: "It is generally understood that they are precluded from doing so by an agreement with the foreign producers. I hold a letter from one of the interested parties ... stating that for the above reason he could not discuss the matter." In discussing this matter, the Glasgow _Herald_ notes that even patient and poverty-struck India complains of the "very poor quality" of the oil sent there. The Scotch papers are continually printing indignant comments on this action of the British government, and wondering inquiries as to the influence by which so injurious a change in the regulations for public protection could have been effected. The Scotch manufacturers are continually agitating to have the coroners in England and Ireland, and the procurators-fiscal in Scotland, make particular inquiry in all cases of fatal lamp explosions into the flash-point of the oil and its origin--whether American or Scotch. At the December, 1892, meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry of Great Britain it was declared that about three hundred deaths a year occurred in England and Wales from lamp accidents, due to the explosiveness of the American oil sold under this reduction of the test. The agitation against this dangerous oil has been increasing in Great Britain year by year. The subject has been investigated by the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, which found that many serious accidents to life and property had resulted from the use of this oil, and at its meeting of May 14, 1894, the chamber voted to petition the government to raise the test again to 100°. The Manchester and Edinburgh chambers of commerce took similar action. A number of other bodies have taken the subject up, and the government has had to promise to make an inquiry. The statistics show that last year nearly one in five (19.3 per cent.) of the fires in London and more than one in eight (13.24 per cent.) of the fires in Liverpool came from kerosene. The oil used in those cities is principally the cheap American article sold under the lowered test of the English law. But in Glasgow, where most of the oil burned is that of the Scotch manufacturers, who, by agreement, sell no lower quality than 100° test, the number of fires from kerosene is less than two in a hundred (1.7 per cent.). At a meeting of representatives of the leading insurance companies of Edinburgh and Glasgow, June 20, 1894, experiments were made with the American, Russian, and Scotch oils. The American was found to be the most explosive, and some of it flashed at 69°. A lighted match thrown into this oil heated to 88° started an instantaneous blaze; thrown into Scotch oil it was extinguished. Experts testified that the cost of making the oil safe would be about a farthing a gallon, and that if the Americans, whose "self-interest" and "private enterprise" are not equal to a voluntary effort, were compelled by law to furnish a better illuminant, their profits would be greater, not less. A rich field for investigation is concealed beneath the elaborate system of State inspection, by which the people have sought to protect themselves from being tempted by deceptive prices to buy a sure death. We have seen in several places how the State inspectors are in the employ, at the same time, of the State and the seller, whom it is their duty to watch for the State.[597] Evidence abounds at every turn of the use of inspectors and inspection laws to embarrass and even suppress the smaller refiners. One of the latest instances is a new law in Tennessee, which puts special difficulties in the way of oil reaching the State by river, the avenue to which independent refiners are forced by the discriminations of the railroad. We saw an inspector of the State of New York appear at the Bremen congress as the avowed representative of the "united refineries," complaints of whose bad oils occasioned the congress. By one of those coincidences in which the world of cause and effect abounds, the Fire Marshal of Boston, in the same year in which Joshua Merrill described his fruitless efforts to continue the manufacture of a first-class oil,[598] found it necessary to warn the people against the dangerous stuff they were burning in their lamps. In his report in 1888 he called attention to the fact that one-tenth, nearly, of all the fires in Boston the preceding year had been caused by the explosion of kerosene or by its accidental combustion. He got samples of the oil used in a number of the places where fires had occurred from explosion, and had them analyzed by professors of the Institute of Technology in Boston and of the School of Mines of Columbia College in New York. They found them to be below the quality required by the State. Singularly enough, one of the State oil inspectors, examining similar samples, declared them to be above the standard of the State. The Boston _Herald_, discussing the matter, pointed out that the oil inspectors were paid by the owner of the oil. This, it said, placed inspectors practically under the oil combination, which has ways, it continued, of making things unpleasant for inspectors who make reports unsatisfactory to it. The fire marshal's conclusion in all the cases he investigated of these fires by explosion was: "I have felt warranted in every instance in attributing the blame to the inferior quality of kerosene used."[599] The European protest of 1879 followed close upon the success of the comprehensive campaign of 1878[600] "to overcome competition." The warning from the Fire Marshal of Boston in 1888 and the success of the movement, begun in 1885,[601] to shut the independents of Oil City and Titusville out of Boston and New England came close together. These are not coincidences merely. They are cause and effect. It is known that a practice has grown up among the oil inspectors of the States of allowing certain refiners to brand their own oil as they please, or letting it go to market unbranded. This permits the sale of unbranded and therefore illicit and presumably dangerous oil. Charges that inspectors in Iowa loaned their stencils to the oil combination to do its own branding were made formally in writing, in 1890, by one of the deputy inspectors, in the form required by law, to the governor of the State. The law provides that charges so made shall be investigated by the governor. No investigation was made, but the inspector was removed just as he was about to lay before a grand-jury documentary evidence of this and other violations of the law. This inspector declared publicly that inspectors were in the habit of leaving their official stencils with companies in the oil combination, and allowing them to put any brand they chose on any oil. He refused to continue this practice, nor would he brand barrels until they were filled. The representative of the combination in that State used every device except force, the inspector says, to induce him to conform to the practice. "Don't you know," this representative said, "that if you leave us your brand and get into trouble you will have the oil combination back of you? You will be taken care of." In his formal complaint to the governor, this inspector declared that this representative said in substance to him: "You are the only fool among the inspectors. We have the stencils of the inspectors at every other point where we want them." The law put upon the governor the duty to investigate upon receiving written complaint. But when written complaint was formally made, and that not by an ordinary citizen, but by one of the sworn officials of the State, the governor demanded that the inspector back up his charges with the affidavits of witnesses--that is, the governor demanded that the inspector, who had no power, should make the investigation. This put an end to the whole matter. The inspector could not make the investigation, and the governor would not. The same governor refused to allow the written charges to be seen, although they are public documents, and they remained invisible as long as he held office. Only a few weeks after the removal of this inspector, the State oil inspector was sued for heavy damages by the owner of a barn which had been burned down through the explosion of bad oil. The ground of the suit was that the inspector, having failed to inspect and condemn this oil, as he should have done, was liable on his bond to the State. The press of Iowa commented freely on the probable connection between destructive fires, like this one, and the custom of allowing the oil ring to inspect itself, by which it was given the opportunity to put inferior and dangerous oils on the market with the brand of the State on them as good. As far as the case has been carried, up to date, the Iowa courts have sustained the claim and held the inspector in damages. That which is an uninvestigated charge in Iowa is an officially ascertained fact in Minnesota. The demonstration in the latter case amounts practically to confirmation for the former, since the parties in interest, the motive, and the opportunity are identical. An investigation was made of the conduct of the State oil inspector by the Committee on Illuminating Oils of the Minnesota Senate, in 1891. The committee say in their report, which was adopted by the Senate: "The testimony further shows that stencils were left with different oil companies by the State inspector or his deputy, by which the companies caused their barrels containing oil to be branded by their own employés, without the supervision of any State official. It appears that after the arrangement for the payment of the inspectors' and deputies' salaries by the oil companies was made, the attitude of the inspector towards his duties may be summed up in a few words of his testimony: 'I am under no obligation to the State of Minnesota. The Standard Oil Company paid me.'"[602] The methods covered by the general phrases of the Minnesota Senate Committee were described in detail by a "commissioner" of the Omaha _Daily Bee_, which found the same things being done in Nebraska. The _Bee_ in 1891 made an elaborate investigation of the manner in which the oil inspection of Nebraska was executed. Its reporter passed incognito by the guardians of the portals of the warehouse of companies belonging to the oil trust in Omaha, and stood by while barrels were filled with uninspected oil and loaded on the cars for shipment to various points. That the people who bought the oil might know their lives were safe, each barrel bore the brand of approval provided by law, as follows: Approved. Flash Test 105° ........................... _State Inspector of Nebraska_. By ........................ _Deputy_. But there was no inspector present, and the barrels were all branded beforehand and while empty, in defiance of the law and public safety. The reporter stayed until the cars were loaded, the doors closed, and saw the trains pull out. It is from this warehouse that the greater part of the barrelled oil consumed in Nebraska is forwarded. At the warehouse of the same company in Nebraska City the reporter found the same thing going on, and there, too, he found the official stencil-plates of several of the State oil inspectors lying at hand on the tanks, waiting to be used at the pleasure of the employés of the company to brand the desired government guarantee on any oil, regardless of what it was. The Illinois _State Journal_ found the same practice permitted in Springfield by the oil inspector in February, 1894. The _Bee_ reporter describes how tanks, once branded, came and went, were filled and emptied and filled again for months, with no inspection of the oil in them. Often the tanks were not even branded. The Omaha _Daily Bee_ of November 24, 1891, gives a careful analysis of the recently amended inspection law of Nebraska. It shows that in many important points the law has been changed so as to put the safety of the people in the power of the combination which supplies almost all the oil used in the State. The standard required has been lowered. The liability to a charge of manslaughter for death resulting from bad oil has been changed to a liability for damages. The method of making the tests has been changed for the worse. No provision has been made for the protection of travellers by the inspection of oil used by the railroads, although accidents and serious ones, from the use of dangerous oil were frequent in the trains and at stations.[603] The _Bee_ said editorially of the oil combination that it had "managed, by its shrewdness in enacting this law, to make Nebraska the refuse tank for its rejected Eastern oil, and at the same time to crowd out of the State about all opposition." By means of this lowering of the test, oil that was too poor to pass in Iowa could be sent on to Nebraska and sold there. The _Bee_ gives instances where this was done. The _Bee_ continued its investigations in 1893. It declared, December 5, 1893, that the inspection law, imperfect at best, was "being still further annulled by the open defiance of the leading oil companies." It declared "the leading violator" to be one of the principal companies in the oil combination. In a later issue the _Bee_ printed the result of tests made for it of oils purchased in the principal towns of the State. In almost every such case these showed that oils which were below the test were being sold to the people as good under the guarantee of the State. Some of them were "as safe for household use as dynamite," the _Bee_ stated. It said editorially, December 15, 1893, that it had in its possession a letter from the secretary of the Iowa State Board of Health affirming that oil condemned by the State of Iowa is shipped to Nebraska. The oil inspector of the State made a vigorous denial, but the _Bee_ refused to withdraw its statements. Its tests, it said, had been made by competent chemists. A suit is now pending in San Francisco, brought by the New Zealand Fire Insurance Company against the oil combination. It is charged that it sold low-test oil, that its inflammability caused fire and destruction of a dwelling insured by the insurance company, which was compelled to pay the loss. Some power, certainly not originating among the people, has for years, in States where the inspection laws required a high quality of oil, been at work procuring a reduction of the test. In some cases this has been accomplished only after persistent lobbying for years, as in Michigan. The test in Michigan has been lowered by legislation, as in Nebraska, and with similar results. The reports of the Michigan State Board of Health show that as the standard was lowered, fires and deaths from explosions increased. The Detroit _Tribune_ of December 27, 1891, says that the reduction of the test in Michigan and Nebraska is due to the avarice of the producers (refiners) and nothing less than criminal carelessness of the legislators. The dangerous constituents of petroleum, such as naphtha and gasolene, are indistinguishable by the eye of the buyer from kerosene. They can be as easily mixed with it as hot and warm water with cold. These reductions of the test in various States permit mixtures more hazardous than dynamite to be sold to the people, lulled into reliance upon the State inspectors. "The advantage to the oil company," says the Detroit (Michigan) _Times_ of April 30, 1891, "is obvious. Naphtha and gasolene are worth, perhaps, three cents a gallon. Kerosene is worth three times as much. A test which allows one quart of kerosene and three quarts of gasolene to constitute a gallon of merchantable illuminating oil will enable a few more colleges to be endowed, though increasing the death-roll in a notable degree." One of the demands of those who are conducting the agitation, noticed elsewhere, for the admission of American oils free into Canada is that the standard of Canadian oil inspection be lowered. This, says the Hamilton (Ontario) _Spectator_, will open the Canadian market to the low-test and dangerous oils made by the American combination, and "restore the old order of lamp explosions, with the consequent loss of life and property." An unwritten chapter of this story is the experience of the Ohio oil producers, and the use of the inferior oil of the Ohio field to adulterate oils made from Pennsylvania petroleums. Lord Coke's dictum about the decrease of quality never had a more spectacular illustration than was given at Oil City and Titusville on Sunday, June 5, 1892. Oil Creek was high with rains. A dam burst and made the creek a flood. Its waters ate away the insufficient foundations of tanks, and rivers of naphtha and gasolene and kerosene overran the river of water for miles. A spark did the rest. Oil refineries took fire, tanks exploded. There were two raging seas--water beneath, fire above. Men, women, children, animals, property were swept along in their intermingled waves. From every overturned tank and blazing refinery fresh streams of oil flowed into the sea of flame, which climbed the hills for the victims the other sea could not reach. Those who escaped drowning breathed in a more dreadful death. It was a volcano and deluge in one. It was one of the most terrible catastrophes of our times. Even the scare-heads of the newspapers could not exaggerate its horrors. The governor of the State made a public appeal for help. The coroner's jury held an inquest at Oil City upon fifty-five bodies at one sitting. It declared the cause of the calamity to have been the gross carelessness of the owners and custodians of a tank of naphtha, in permitting it, while filled with 15,000 barrels of naphtha, to stand without proper protection from fire and water. The tank was shown, by the testimony, to have stood on sand within a few feet of the creek and without safeguard. It was shown that complaints had been made to the managers of the refinery, which was one of the subsidiary companies of the oil trust, about this tank and others before the disaster, but without avail. The coroner's jury laid the blame where it belonged--upon the company whose tank gave way. Its verdict said: "The naphtha which caused this awful destruction of life and property ... was stored in a tank located on the bank of Oil Creek, on the Cornplanter Farm, near McClintockville, where it was built about four years previous to this time. At the time of its construction the tank was from twenty to thirty feet from ordinary high-water mark in the creek, but this distance has been gradually reduced by the action of the water prior to this flood to between six and ten feet, and this flood further washed away the ground up to and under the tank, a distance of from fifteen to twenty feet. A part of the tank bottom, thus being left without support, tore out, allowing the naphtha to escape into the creek. The evidence of the watchman, James Marsh, shows that he realized danger from the undermining of the tank, for he made a feeble effort previous to this flood to protect it by throwing loose stones between the tank and the creek. The jury find from the evidence that all persons owning and having in custody this tank and its contents were guilty of gross carelessness in permitting it, while filled with naphtha, to stand without proper protection from fire and water." The company which owned this tank belonged to the oil combination. It was, strange to say, one of the tanks of the Keystone refinery, to which Matthews, the Buffalo independent, had turned for a supply of crude oil when all other sources failed,[604] and which had been thereupon bankrupted and taken into the combination seven years before. Here was one fruit of that victory over competition. The coroner's jury at Titusville reprobated in the strongest terms the folly of storing oil in tanks within reach of high-water. It called upon "citizens and officials, ... for the common good of all," to do what it said was "entirely practicable: to so locate and guard and construct oil-tanks and other receptacles of inflammable petroleum products that they cannot be floated away, or the contents floated out of them by water," and that "in case of flood and fire lives and private property cannot be endangered by them." Although here and all over the oil regions the business was under the control of one combination, and had been so since early in the seventies, the Titusville jury, less courageous than that of Oil City, declared that it could "attach no blame to any one in particular for the present loss of life," because this "custom of storing and manufacturing oil and its products, regardless of endangering the lives and property of others, had been allowed to grow up here as well as all over the oil regions." These verdicts have been followed by suits now pending in the Pennsylvania courts, claiming heavy damages from the oil combination as responsible for the disaster and the loss of life and property. The Oil City and Titusville disaster is but a provincial affair compared with the metropolitan avalanche of ruin which is all ready to move upon the cities on New York Bay from the refineries and tanks along its shores. Several condensed oceans of unignited fire are waiting for such accident as happens almost every day to some gas-works or refinery or tank-car. On creeks running into the East River, on bays opening from the New Jersey shore into the greater bay, in tanks whose contents would overlay the whole sheet of water from the Narrows to Hell Gate and Spuyten Duyvil, these volcanoes are dozing, and they are light sleepers. CHAPTER XXX "TO GET ALL WE CAN" Are the combinations, trusts, syndicates of modern industry organized scarcity or organized plenty? Dearness or cheapness? "They are doing their work cheaper," said one of the oil combination of himself and his associates, "than any rival organization can afford to do it, and that is their policy, and by that only will they survive."[605] "We think our American petroleum is a very cheap light. It is our pleasure to try to make it so," said its head.[606] "Our object has always been to reduce rates, and cheapen the product, and increase its consumption by making the lowest price possible to the consumer," said another.[607] Even if this were true-- But is it true? The then president of the United Pipe Lines of the oil combination, who was also president of a subordinate corporation, was a witness in 1879 in the suit brought by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His refinery, he stated, did nothing but make the oil. "It is taken and sold by another organization"--the oil combination. "We agree to take the same prices that they take for their oil. It is kind of pooled--the sale of the oil." The "agreement," he said, is "simply to hold up the price of refined oil, ... to get all we can for it ... under some arrangement by which they keep the price up to make a profit." Not only was the price fixed under the agreement "to get all we can," but the combination, as at Cleveland,[608] fixed the amount to be produced. The subordinate company was allowed to have nothing to do with the business--except to do the work, and to do only as much as its superior chose to permit. Other refiners, in the same investigation, were shown to be sufferers from the same kind of "grip." Asked what other concerns besides his of Oil City were in this arrangement, he named the principal ones of Titusville, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York. "These companies were all acting in concert, were they?" "So far as sales of refined oil were concerned, I think they were." Capitalists are usually supposed to be hard of heart and head, suspicious, great sticklers for "black and white," and careful to have all that is due them "nominated in the bond." This arrangement, by which this witness and his associates put themselves entirely at the disposal of others--as to how much they should manufacture, what freight they should pay, what price they should receive, etc.--was not in writing. "It is a verbal one."[609] The purchase of the refineries at Baltimore by the oil combination in 1877, under the name of the Baltimore United Oil Company, was immediately followed by an advance in price. The Baltimore _Sun_, in December, 1877, said: "The combination has already begun to exert its influence on the market. Oil for home consumption was yesterday quoted at 14 cents, having raised from 11-1/2 cents, the quotation on Wednesday. The combination will not make contracts ahead, which might be interpreted to mean an intended advance in price." In Buffalo the manager of one of the properties of the oil combination said in evidence: "My son is on a committee, he told me, that regulates the price of oil."[610] While the trust had the trade of Buffalo to itself, it held the price of oil at a high rate. "In Buffalo there were then no rival works," said State's Attorney Quinby to the jury who were trying its representatives for conspiracy against a competing refinery, "and we were paying for kerosene 18 cents a gallon. To-day, with the little Buffalo company in the market making kerosene, you can get it for 6 cents a gallon." This Buffalo competitor was a very modest affair, insignificant in capital and resources, but it cut down the price of oil as far away as Boston. It established there an agent who "went around" and "cut the prices down," and then the agent of the combination "went around and cut the prices further," as its Boston employé described it. He was instructed, he said, "to follow them down, ... only not to sell at a loss." Before this competitor came he had been selling oil as high as 20 cents a gallon. "We got the price down to 18 cents, and got down then, I believe, to 8 cents, so that I have been selling them since then at 8 cents."[611] Eight cents, then, was not at a loss--since he had been told "not to sell at a loss"--and yet these passionate pilgrims of cheapness had been making the Boston buyer pay 20 cents! "I have been selling since at 8 cents," he says. This testimony was given in 1886; the reduction to 8 cents from 20 was made in 1882. Four years' consumption of this oil had been given to the buyer in Boston at 8 cents a gallon instead of 20, in consequence of the entrance of so insignificant a competitor. When a member of the trust was testifying before the New York courts, he referred to the competition of the independent of Marietta as "his power for evil." Asked to define what he meant by his phrase "power for evil," he said, "It was to make prices that would be vexatious and harassing." He was asked if it harassed the oil trust, and the corporations connected with it, to have prices in any part of the country lower than they fixed. "Lower than a reasonable basis." "What they consider a reasonable basis?" "Yes."[612] That we can understand. But we cannot understand what the president of the trust meant when he said, "We like competition," for that would imply a natural proclivity for fellowship with the power of evil. "Who fixes the price of oil in New York?" was asked of one of the witnesses before the Interstate Commerce Commission at Washington. That was done, he said, by the selling agent of the oil combination. He "has the price marked in the New York Produce Exchange daily--the price at which they will sell oil."[613] When the vice-president of the company representing the trust in St. Louis and the Southwest was on the stand before the Interstate Commerce Commission, he was asked what was the price of oil in the territory in which he was operating. The price of oil in tank-cars, in Arkansas, he said, "is now and has been during about three years or more--since Mr. Rice commenced shipping by water to Little Rock--10 cents per gallon. The average price, independent of competition, which I suppose is what you want, in the State of Texas is about 13 cents per gallon in bulk, covering the whole State of Texas. The average price per barrel would be about 17 cents, and the average price in cases about 20 cents."[614] "Since Mr. Rice commenced shipping by water to Little Rock;" "the average price independent of competition in Texas"--these are telltale phrases. Where the combination was "independent of competition" the price was one-third greater. The committee of Congress which investigated trusts in 1889 gathered a great deal of sworn evidence--the details of which remained uncontradicted, and which were met only by general statements like those quoted at the head of this chapter--showing how extortionate prices had been charged until competition appeared, that in all cases a war of extermination had been made upon those competitors, and that when their business was destroyed prices were put up again. Losses in competitive wars were merely investments from which to draw dividends in perpetuity. The "cheapness" of the combination followed the cheapness of competitors, and was merely a feint, one of the approaches in a siege to overcome the inner citadel of cheapness, a strategic cheapness to-day on which to build dearness forever. This battle of prices is shown in a table covering fifty towns in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, for three to five years. The appearance of competitive oil, for instance, cut the prices of oil from 15 cents a gallon down to 10 in Paris, Texas; from 25 to 15 in Calvert, Texas; from 22 cents to 10 in Austin, Texas; from 16 to 5 in Little Rock, Arkansas--evidently a war price; from 16 to 8-1/2 in Huntsville, Alabama; from 16 to 8 in Memphis, Tennessee, and so on.[615] The committee of Congress submit pages of evidence of the reimposition of high prices the moment competition was killed off. If the combination found a rival dealer out of oil for only a day it "popped the prices up 3-1/2 cents."[616] "One day," wrote one of the dealers, "oil is up to 20 cents and over, and when any person attempts to import here, other than the vassals 'of the oil combination,' it is put down to 7 cents a gallon."[617] Prices were frequently put higher after the war than before. In the debate in the Canadian Parliament last year on the proposal to reduce the Canadian tariff, supported by a strong lobby from the American oil trust, it was shown by affidavits that at Selma, Alabama, oil was reduced during the "war" against outside refiners to 8 from 15 cents. After "competition was overcome," in the language of the South Improvement Company contract, the price was put up, not to 15 cents where it had been, but to 25 cents. In the same debate a large number of affidavits were exhibited showing how the price charged by the oil trust in America varied in places near each other in arbitrary and extraordinary ways, as 7 cents a gallon at Port Huron, Michigan, and 14-1/2 cents at Bay City, only a few miles distant. Under the rule of the trust prices are on a mechanical basis everywhere, from the retail markets to the seaboard, where the refined, the manufactured article, is quoted at a lower price than the crude, its raw material.[618] In the report of the tenth United States census in 1886, on the necessaries of life, the retail price of kerosene is given for thirty-five places. At a few of these there was competition; there the price was 12-1/2 to 15 cents a gallon. At all other points it ranged from 20 to 25 cents. Such a tax on the 400,000,000 gallons of oil consumed in this country is the only kind of income-tax that is "American." Application was made in May, 1894, by the Central Labor Union of New York City to the Attorney-General of the State to vacate the charter of the principal corporation in the oil trust. In the argument to support it, it was shown that New York consumers were then paying twice as much for their lamp-oil as the people of Philadelphia, and three times as much as the foreign consumer buying in New York for export. The trust, notwithstanding its powers of "producing the very best oil at the lowest possible price," compels dealers to sign away their rights to buy oil where they can buy it the cheapest or best. When opposition is encountered from any of the retailers in a town the plan of campaign of its "war" is very simple. Some one is found who is willing for hire to sell his oils at a cut price until the rest are made sick enough to surrender. Then contracts are made with all the dealers, binding them to buy of no one else, and prices are put up to a point at which a handsome profit is assured. After this competitors can find no dealer through whom to sell, and the consumer can get no oil but that of the monopoly. Price and quality are both thenceforth such as the combination chooses to make them. There are bargains in oil, but one party makes both sides of them. "We do not wish to ruin you without giving you another chance," said an agent of the combination gently to a merchant who persisted in selling opposition oil. "Look at this map; we have the country divided into districts. If you insist on war we will cut the prices in your territory to any necessary extent to destroy you, but we lose nothing. We simply make a corresponding advance in some other district. You lose everything. We cannot by any possibility lose anything." Only by thus contracting themselves out of their rights could these "free" merchants get oil with which to supply their customers. "Their agent," wrote a dealer of Hot Springs, Arkansas, "has made threats to some of our merchants that they must or shall buy oil from them and no one else, or if otherwise they would come here and ruin them--by fair means if they could, by underhand ways if necessary." Another firm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, wrote that the agent of the combination had called upon them and several of the other large dealers to make a "contract, ... and, failing to do so, in a short time he threatens opening a retail house," as at Columbus.[619] Another wrote, December 13, 1886, from Navasota that the monopoly "will not sell unless you sign an obligation to buy from them and them only."[620] This maintenance of prices until some "power for evil" appears with lower rates, then wars to kill, and raising of prices if the war ends in victory--these phenomena of cheapness continue to date. Many chapters could be filled with accounts of these wars of which record has been kept. To merely name the battle-fields would require pages. When the combination, through its agents, attacked Toledo in the courts for undertaking the municipal supply of natural gas, it "urged," as it is quoted in the language of the decision, "that the main object and primary purpose of the act is to enable the city to supply its individual inhabitants with fuel for private use and consumption at a cheaper rate than they can obtain it from other sources." The act of the Legislature gave Toledo "a power for evil." At Denver oil was sold at 25 cents a gallon until an independent company began refining the petroleum which abounds in the Rocky Mountain basin. During the Colorado war of 1892 all the familiar tactics--cut rates, espionage, and all--were employed. This continued after the dissolution of the trust as before, showing that its change of name and form meant no real change. In Pueblo and Colorado Springs the price was put down to 5 cents a gallon from 25 cents. In Denver the price was made 7 cents. Spotters followed the wagons of the independent company to spy out its customers, and get them, by threats or bribes, to sign away their right to buy where they could buy cheapest. The comments of the local press did credit to the inspiriting mountain air of the American Switzerland. The complaint recently filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission by a dealer of the Pacific coast charges that, among other discriminations injurious to the public, the rates between the Pacific coast and Colorado were so manipulated that the oil found in the Rocky Mountains and refined in Colorado could not be shipped to California and the other Pacific states. Consumers there had to buy the oil of the trust hauled all the way from Cleveland or Chicago. When an independent refiner ran the blockade into New York, in 1892, and began selling to the people from tank wagons, the price fell in New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City from 8 and 8-1/2 to 4 and 4-1/2 cents. The St. Louis _Chronicle_ of May 19, 1892, reports a reduction of the price of the best grade of oil to 5 cents a gallon--"the fortieth reduction," it says, made since an independent company "entered the field three years ago, at which time the price was 14-1/2 cents," as it would be still but for competition. War has been made on poor men, paralytics, boys, cripples, widows, any one who had the "business that belongs to us." An instance taken from abroad will be the last. The combination between the American and the Scotch refiners, formed several years ago, fixed the price of the principal product, scale, at threepence a pound in 1892. The break-up in that year was followed at once by a decline from threepence to twopence. This is a saving to the public of $1,000,000 a year. "All the relative products," says the London _Economist_, November 12, 1892, "have practically collapsed in value." Candles, for instance, declined 20 cents a dozen, "and the finer qualities were sold at the same rate as the commoner sorts." These are the facts, to fit the phrase of one of the monopoly who described to Congress how it "bridges it to the consumer at the lowest reasonable rate." The "bridge to the consumer" spans 1872 to 1894 and Europe and America, but it is not a bridge of cheapness.[621] To prove that oil is cheaper than it was is not to prove that it is cheap. Anything begins to be dear the moment the power to fix the price has been allowed to vest in one. The question whether our monopolies have made things cheap or dear in the past pales before the exciting query, What will they do in the future, when their power has become still greater, or has passed by death, descent, or sale into hands less shrewd and greedier? Such power never moves backward. Says President Andrews, of Brown University, in the article quoted below: "When a commodity is turned out under such conditions, cost no longer regulates the price. This is done quite arbitrarily for a time, the seller's whim being perhaps sobered a little by his memory of old competitive rates. Slowly caprice gives way to law; but it is a new law--that of man's need. Prices go higher and higher till demand, and hence profit, begins to fall off; and they then play about the line of what the market will bear, just as they used to about that of cost. The producer can be more or less exacting, according to the nature of the product. If it is a luxury, the new law may not greatly elevate prices above the old notch. If it is a necessity, he may bleed people to death." "At any reasonable price, say three or four times the present selling price of refined oil, it is the cheapest light in the world, and if the prices were advanced to 20 cents a gallon the sales would be as large as they are now at 7-1/2 cents," wrote Vice-president Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to the Pennsylvania Legislature, in 1881, opposing the Free Pipe Line bill. The possibilities here were touched upon by the New York committee of 1888: "What the trust's course would have been if, instead of increased production, it had been required to deal with the problem of a constantly diminishing or stationary volume of oil, is an interesting subject for speculation. Certain it is that the trust has the power to put up prices, even if it fails to exercise it. If, in the future, the field producing the commodity manufactured and sold by this combination of corporations shall fail to increase its present product, or shall return a diminished quantity, the oil trust will be able to fix the price of the product of its refineries in this country, if not in the world."[622] It was not great capital which put this industry in the possession of these enthusiasts for "all the little economies." The same universal forces of cheapness which have been at work everywhere have been at work upon the cost of the instrumentalities of production, and put machinery, transportation, raw material, and market agencies within reach of moderate capital. Such great capital is wasteful capital. It operates through agents at great distances, attenuating incentives to energy and care. Many practical men, real refiners, who have been forced to give up their business to refiners of railroad privileges, have testified to the same effect as the manufacturer who said to Congress in 1872: "I believe a refinery of 100 barrels can be run cheaper than the larger establishments."[623] If production on a natural scale, directed by the eye of the owner, were not more economical than production mobilized from the metropolis by salaried men hundreds of miles away, the independent refiners and producers of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio would not have been able to survive at all. It was said in one of the Buffalo papers by one of these independent refiners: "There are several well-equipped independent refineries in operation at the present time in Pennsylvania and Ohio oil-fields where the refiner has his own crude oil, his own pipe line, and produces his own natural gas for fuel purposes. It is needless to say that an experienced and skilful refiner operating under such favorable conditions can manufacture at less cost per barrel than any trust with a long list of pensioners and burdened with the control of two political parties and the maintenance of numerous city mansions, stock farms, and theological seminaries." NOTE.--The claims of the oil combination to the credit of having cheapened oil have been subjected by competent men to statistical tests. President Andrews, of Brown University, shows that from 1861 to 1872, inclusive--_i.e._, before any combination whatever existed--the net annual percentage of decrease in the price of refining oil and carrying it to tide-water--that is, the difference between the cost of the petroleum at the wells and of the refined at New York--was 10-4332/10000 cents; from 1873 to 1881, inclusive, the trust's infirm and formative period, the decrease was 7-8897/10000 cents; from 1882 to 1887, inclusive, the years of its full maturity and vigor, the decrease was only 2-2879/10000 cents.[624] The New York _Daily Commercial Bulletin_ (April 4, 1892) made a similar study with similar results. It finds that under competition in the refining of oil the difference between crude at the wells and refined oil at New York was reduced from 13.45 cents per gallon in 1872 to 6.02 cents per gallon in 1881; under the reign of the trust the difference was 5.84 in 1891--greater than in 1882, when the trust began operations, when it was only 5.77. It concludes: "It has been claimed that the oil trust has been a benefit to this county; that the economies which it has introduced in the transportation and refining of oil have been shared with the consumer, and that the enormous wealth which it has accumulated during the past ten years has been widely distributed. Not one of these claims has any substantial basis in fact." The comparisons of cheapness are made on the wholesale price at New York of "export oil"--an inferior, almost a refuse product. Its price must meet that made by the Russians. These comparisons, therefore, really shed no light on the price movements of oil going into consumption throughout the country. But the trust really gets the retail price on all its domestic output. A full statistical statement of the price movement in retail markets cannot be had; nor even of the wholesale, for the combination has lately adopted a policy of suppressing the wholesale quotations of the higher grades of oil for domestic consumption. Comparisons, therefore, built on the export price of this poor oil at New York, though good as far as they go, are of oils of a low illuminating power. Comparisons that would really show the part played by the combination as a true merchant--one who discovers and distributes abundance for all at a fair price for his service--can only be made by such illustrations as we have been giving from its utterances, plans, and actions. But for monopoly an average price of 5 cents a gallon could prevail throughout the United States, with a saving of hundreds of millions to the people. Trust prices are artificial prices, independent of supply and demand, and in their perfection superior even to panic. This is illustrated by the comparison below, made by Mr. Byron W. Holt: COMPARATIVE PRICES OF STAPLES DURING THE CURRENT DEPRESSION ------------------------------+---------------+-------------+------------- | | |Per cent. of |April 28, 1893 |July 20, 1894|Decline since | | |April 28, | | |1893 ------------------------------+---------------+-------------+------------- Wheat, No. 2, red | 0.76-3/8 | 0.56-1/2 | 26 Corn, No. 2, mixed | .50 | .47-1/2 | 5 Cotton, middling upland | .07-13/16 | .07-1/16 | 10 Wool, Ohio and Pennsylvania, X| .28 | .18 | 36 Pork, mess, new |21.00 |14.00 @ 14.25| 33 Butter, creamery | .30 @ 33 | .17 | 45 Sugar, raw, 96° | .03-15/16 @ 4| .03-3/16 | 18 Sugar, granulated | .05-1/16 | .04-5/16 | 15 Petroleum, refined, gal. | .0555 | .0515 | 7 Pig Iron, Bessemer, Chicago |14.50 @ 15.00 |11.25 @ 11.50| 23 Steel Rails, Chicago |30.00 @ 32.00 |25.00 @ 27.00| 16 Steel Beams, Chicago | .02 | .01-1/2 | 25 | | | | June 30, 1892 |June 30, 1894|June 30, 1892 Coal, Bituminous, Pittsburg |$ 1.07 | 0.86 | 20 Coal, Anthracite, New York | 4.15 | 4.15 | 00 ------------------------------+---------------+-------------+------------- The prices of four of these products--granulated sugar, petroleum, steel rails, and anthracite coal--are controlled by strong trusts. These prices have declined, since the beginning of the depression--about May 1, 1893--not quite 10 per cent. Prices of the other ten products have declined 24 per cent. Under free conditions prices of manufactured articles would decline faster than prices of farm products. Cost of production can be lowered faster in machine or factory products than in farm products. Under the influence of trusts the natural order is not only reversed, but prices of farm products have declined more than twice as fast as prices of factory or trust products. Trust influence is conspicuous in the cases of sugar and coal. The price of raw sugar, in which there is no trust, has declined 5 per cent. since June 30, 1891. The price of granulated has advanced 4 per cent. The president of the trust admitted to Congress in 1894 that it had advanced the price 3/8 of a cent a pound. Cost of refining has declined since 1891. There being no well-defined trust in bituminous coal, its price has declined 30 per cent. since 1891. The price of anthracite coal has advanced 2 per cent. in the same time, because the producers have "regulated" production. CHAPTER XXXI ALL THE WORLD UNDER ONE HAT "This business belongs to us." This was the reply the president of the oil combination made to a neighbor who was begging to be allowed to continue the refinery which he had successfully established before his tardier but more fortunate competitors had left their produce stores, lumber-yards, and book-keepers' stools. He could remember, the neighbor told the New York Legislature, before there was any such company as theirs, and when the president of the poor man's light was still in the commission business opposite him and his refinery. He described how the president left this commission business, and "commenced to build a refinery there of a small capacity.... He used to say to me, 'What is a good time to sell?' and 'What is a good time to hold?' as he said he thought I knew." The day came when the neighbor who had been first found that the last was to be first. He was making $21,000 to $22,000 a year, but he had "to sell or squeeze." He had several conversations with the new-comer who had been so successful in learning when it was "a good time to hold." To save his livelihood, "I did almost condescend to tease him," he testifies. But the only reply he could get was: We have freighting facilities no one else can get.[625] This business belongs to us. Any concern that starts in this business we have sufficient money to lay aside a fund to wipe it out. "They went on just as if it did belong to them, and there were others started before he did in it which I thought it belonged to quite as much as it did to him.... I am wiped out and made a poor man.... I think they are making a profit out of my ruin." His refinery had been giving him a profit of $21,000 to $22,000 a year. It had cost him $41,000, but he had to sell it for $15,000. This purchase of $41,000 for $15,000 was one of "the little economies" to which the trust ascribes its success. It was not a "good time to sell," but he sold. Part of the "squeeze" put upon him was the rebate given to the buyer. He could not have got the rebate if he had applied for it, but he would not apply for it. "I made application for lower freights, but not for any drawbacks; I did not suppose that was the right way to do business."[626] "This business belongs to us." This remark was not prophecy, but history. It was in 1878, and the claim had been already made good. The New York Legislature, in 1879, reported that the speaker and his associates had control of 90 or 95 per cent. of the industry. "It has absorbed and monopolized this great traffic, which ranks second on the list of exports of our country."[627] This conclusion was based on the evidence of officers and stockholders.[628] Their shadow grew no less. The Interstate Commerce Commission found in 1890 that they "manufacture nearly 90 per cent. of the petroleum and its products in the United States."[629] "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." For the perfection of this triumph no trifle has been disdained, from the well in the mountain to the peddler's cart in the city. The bargemen of the Alleghany, the coasters of the sea-shore, and the stern-wheelers of the Western rivers all had to go one way. "We drove out the shipments in the schooners from Baltimore and Washington, and we stopped almost the shipments by river down the Mississippi by boat," said one of the successful men. His plan had been so thorough as even to seek to "drive off the river schooners."[630] The last stage in their economic development--that in which the people of the oil region lose the ownership of the oil lands and become hired men--is already far along. Although at first the oil combination owned no oil lands to speak of--"It does not own any oil wells or land producing oil, and never did," its president said, in 1880; "an infinitesimal amount," he said later[631]--it has of late years, through corporations organized for that purpose, been a heavy buyer and leaser of the best oil lands in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, and the West. Monopoly anywhere must be monopoly everywhere. At the beginning it was enough to control the railways; by these the pipe lines, refineries, and markets were got. These were secured, only to find that it was vital to control the source of supply. The producers once gave an illustration of what it would be for the sole buyer to come to the market and find that the oil he must have was not on sale at his price.[632] "We have during the past year," one of the combination said, in 1891, before a committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, "invested a very large amount of money, and have induced our friends to come forward with new capital to engage in the business of producing oil."[633] By the policy of becoming producers the combination has changed its position from that of mere intermediary--though one as irresistible as a toll-gate keeper--to that of absolute owner. The spectre it has seen rise before it, of the producers organized as one seller to meet it as the only buyer, has been laid to rest. "We are pushing into every part of the world, and have been doing so," the president told the New York Legislature in 1888.[634] Their tank-steamers go to all the ports of Europe and Asia, and their tank-wagons are as familiarly seen in the cities of Great Britain and the Continent as of America. An agitation of extensive proportions was begun in 1893 in the press of Canada and in the Dominion Parliament to admit American oil at a lower duty. There was no popular demand for such a step. No general reduction of the tariff was proposed. The movement was simultaneous in the press of different parts of Canada, and it was promoted by papers as important as the Toronto _Globe_ and Montreal _Star_. It was resisted with desperation by the 20,000 persons who are employed in the Canadian oil industries, the growth of thirty-two years--"not a rich, gay, bloated population, rioting with the plunderings of the farmers, revelling in all kinds of luxuries, making merry with their friends," says a newspaper correspondent, who visited them in December, 1892, "but a hard-working community, in which all live comfortably; few are rich." This opposition was successful with the Dominion Parliament in that year, and it refused to admit American oil at a lower tax. But the finance minister then, by executive action, did in part what the Legislature had refused to do. By lowering the inspection duty and changing custom-house conditions he made a considerable reduction in the tax. The agitation to reduce the tariff was not relaxed, and was finally successful in 1894, when Parliament lowered the duties on oil, and to that extent surrendered the Canada producers and refiners to their American competitors. The Scotch refiners, some of whom have been in business forty years, have become as loyal subjects of an American ruler as of their own queen. They make only as much as he allows, and sell at the price he fixes. He has demanded year by year a greater proportion of their business.[635] In 1892 they were notified that they must reduce their output by 10 per cent.[636] The Scotch, anxious for the accelerating future, begged that the "arrangement" might be made for three years instead of one. But this was denied them. The agent from America who brought them their orders would promise no more than "to place the matter in a favorable light before his colleagues in America."[637] By October of that year the capital of the Scotch companies, held mainly by small investors, had shrunk $5,000,000 in value. But to this item the London _Economist_ adds the consolation that "that powerful organization"--the American--"has for years professed the kindliest feelings for the Scotch producers." Dr. Johnson said that much may be made of a Scotchman if caught young. The American caught him old. The disturbance fell heaviest, as always, on the working-men. "Reduction in wages is now being effected," writes the managing director of the oldest and largest of the Scotch companies in the _Economist_. "Another 10 per cent. reduction in miners' wages has been resolved upon," the _Economist_ announces in its issue of October 8, 1892. One of the causes that contributed to the downfall of the Scotch refiners was the fact that the British government reduced the test required for illuminating oil. This new regulation opened the British markets to a flood of cheap oil from America.[638] The Scotch oil is better made and more expensive. "We cannot tell," said a correspondent of the Glasgow _Herald_, "what powerful interest the American oil combination did not bring to bear on our government. The public had then no champion, and as a rule never have on these occasions." The unkindest cut of all is that it was from the Scotch manufacturers themselves that their American rival and ruler learned the secrets of the industry it is now absorbing on the instalment plan. In one of its publications it has told how its "experts visited the great shale works in Scotland, and studied their methods," and how "the consequence was that extensive works were erected."[639] The economic development of Germany is not so much behind that of Great Britain and America as to seem uninviting to the unhasting but unresting American. Some years ago enterprising German importers invested a large amount of capital in tank-steamers, because they thought these solved the problem of the transportation of petroleum. When the Americans refused to supply them any longer with oil for their steamers to carry, they saw that there was more in this problem than they had guessed. Importers who had no steamers found one day that American enterprise had secured practically all of them, and had very decided notions as to whom cargoes should be taken. The heads of two or three of the largest houses boarded a steamer for New York, and came back stockholders in a German-American company which controls most of the German business, as the Anglo-American company controls that of Great Britain. "If the great company with unlimited capital cares to lose money, it can drive us from the field," was the explanation of the head of one of the largest German concerns, as quoted in the Weser _Zeitung_. At the beginning of the next year some Holland firms were invited into the same shelter, and became the "fittest"; and then followed the Belgian and the Scandinavian countries. The Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_ of June 18, 1891, described the line of march: "One group of business men after another is thus made superfluous and pushed aside. First the wells, pumps, and refineries in America, then the American export trade, then the private freight vessels adapted for transportation of petroleum, then the European import trade, then the export trade from European ports, and, finally, this over-powerful company threatens to seize the entire retail trade in petroleum. It is a world monopoly." Hundreds of boatmen engaged in a flourishing river trade in Germany were driven out by tank-boats. If they had changed to tanks, they would have been dependent on their opponent for the oil to fill them. Importers in barrels were cut off by a change which the German government made in the tariff on barrels. The Americans were also helped by an increase in the German tariff on Russian oil of 50 per cent., which made it so much the more difficult for it to compete with American oil. As one way to kill competition where it still existed, all statistics were suddenly withheld by the German-American member of the trust. Neither exports nor imports were known except to the ruling company; all others were kept in the dark. This success in Germany has not been due to favoritism on the highways. The extraordinary discrimination on railroads in America would be impossible in Germany. With hardly an exception the railroads are under the supervision of the State, and are very carefully controlled. Even the private roads would not dare to give any but the open rates. In Austria-Hungary, formerly, secret rates were in full swing, but the system is now said to be destroyed. Prices have declined in Germany, and the people at large make few complaints except about the quality of the American oil. It has become more sooty than formerly. In the beginning it burns well, but it ends with giving a very poor light. This has been conjectured to be due to a mixture of the inferior Ohio oil with that of Pennsylvania; but "it cannot be proved," the German chronicler reports.[640] "The working people," says one of the Berlin papers, "will have to foot the bill, and the working people only. The well-to-do and rich of to-day can have other fuel and light, but to the oppressed working-man petroleum is as great a necessity as his potatoes." The German papers, in casting about for means of checkmating the increase of prices which they believe will result from the consummation of this monopoly, advocate the use of water-power and also wind-power to create electricity. The attention that has been attracted to the growth of this power does not come from the public at large, but from those directly interested and the sympathy and interest of the German "national economists." The latter point out that the present cheap prices are "war prices." They predict that as soon as the world monopoly is established and all territory is under complete control a rise of prices will take place. They are advocates of State monopoly as better than private monopoly. If State monopolies prevent free competition, at least they are able, they say, to give some compensation to those who are hurt. In the tobacco monopoly hundreds of millions were set aside by the German government for this purpose, but even that was not considered sufficient. But this monopoly is a private affair. It swallows the profits of all those whom it destroys. Numerous industries have been ruined--importers, ship-owners, brokers, local dealers, exporters, retailers, river boatmen, and numerous other trades--but no one receives indemnity. The public opinion of the government, the Reichstag, the national economists, the philanthropists, is active in support of the middle class, but in spite of all this a whole department of industry has been torn away from it. There are one or two "independents" in Germany whom, like the independents in America, the trust has not yet been able to crush, though it is turning the markets topsy-turvy for that purpose. The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of June 18, 1894, notes that the trust is selling refined oil in Europe at prices lower than those at which crude oil can be delivered from America. The Austrian journals have been chronicling the absorption of the principal refineries of Austria and Hungary by a combination, of which the Rothschilds are the most important members, as they are of that in Russia. This combination, which first appears in 1892, has by 1894 accumulated a reserve of 3,000,000 gulden on a capital of 1,000,000 gulden, and its profits for 1894 are expected to be 100 per cent. The Prager _Lloyd_ of April 26, 1894, giving these and other facts, adds that "the government of Austria as well as of Hungary takes the ground that if a petroleum monopoly is to be formed it should be in the hands of the State, not of a corporation, certainly not of a foreign corporation, least of all an American one." This remedy of a State monopoly as an alternative to private monopoly, as suggested in Austria and Germany, has as yet had few advocates in America. Our public opinion, so far as there is any public opinion, restricts itself to favoring recourse to anti-trust laws and to boycotting the monopoly and buying the oil of its competitors. But there are too few of these to go around, and they are shut out of most of the markets. The shrewd monopoly is itself the most diligent caterer to such American demand as there is for the "anti-monopoly" product. It does business under hundreds of assumed names, and employs salesmen at large salaries to push the sale of "opposition oil" in our disaffected provinces. With the news from Germany came the announcement that similar control had been obtained of the business of the firm at Venice which did most of the oil business of Italy, and a new company had been formed, of which the American "trustees" own a majority. In a letter sent to Minister Phelps, at Berlin, a resident representative of the American oil combination says, as quoted in the New York _Tribune_, October 5, 1891: "For the furtherance of our programme and as participators in the large European investment which this programme involves, we have sought and been fortunate enough to secure the co-operation of a coterie of well-known merchants, who have been long and prominently identified with the petroleum commerce of the Continent." The Società Italo-Americana del Petrolio (the Italian-American Oil Company) is in Italy what the concerns just described are in the countries to the north of it. The head of the oil combination was quoted by the New York _Tribune_ of July 1, 1891, as saying: "The cable despatches are substantially correct as regards our interest in the German and Italian companies." The French government a year ago lowered the tariff on petroleum one-half. This was followed, the French press reports, by the erection of a refinery by the American trust at Rouen, and the purchase by it of land in Marseilles, Cette, Bordeaux, and Havre for other refineries. The machinery needed was shipped from America. Large offices were opened at Paris by the American combination for the administration of the industry in France, which was to be concentrated into its hands like that of the rest of Europe. The sequel, if the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, a prominent German commercial paper, is correctly informed, is that the French refiners, as the Scotch did before them, have come to terms with the American trust. It has agreed not to start up its refineries in France, not to sell any refined oil in America for shipments to France, and not to allow any American outsiders to compete with the French refiners. There was a report in June, 1892, that a Dutch company had succeeded in refining petroleum in Sumatra, one of the possessions of the Netherlands' East India colonies, and selling it in India. The solicitor of the trust, asked about it by the New York _Times_, June 5, 1892, said, "It cannot be true." The oil combination, he continued, "has agents in the Netherlands' East India colonies and at Sumatra, and it would certainly have heard of this corporation and its competition if there was anything worth hearing." There are great oil-fields in Peru. Since the close of the war with Chili there has been an active development of them, and the commercial reports of San Francisco say that fuel oil is now being supplied from this source to our Pacific States. This has not been done by the Peruvians. It was an American who organized the oil industry of Peru. The principal company was formed by the same expert who went years ago from Pennsylvania to Russia to Americanize the oil interests of the Caucasus. After he had succeeded in that task he went to Peru. He died in the spring of 1894. At about the time of his death the newspapers, by a coincidence that arrests attention, chronicled the departure from New York of a well-known man who was going to Peru, as he stated in an interview, to look after the interests of the members of the oil trust. But there is no official information that they have any ownership or control there. When one of the officers of the combination was before Congress, in 1888, he was asked if there had been any negotiations by his associates with the Russian oil men. "We have never had any serious negotiations,"[641] he replied. The word "serious" was a slip. He withdrew it. "We have never had any" was his revision. Three years later the same official, in a speech to persuade the Pennsylvania Legislature that the pipe-line interests of the oil country did not need the regulation by the State then under debate, but were abundantly safeguarded by him and his associates, said: "It may not be amiss for me to say that we have had, at different times during the last several years, most flattering propositions from people who are identified with the Russian petroleum industry, to come there and join them in the development and introduction of that industry. We have declined these offers, gentlemen, always and to this day, and have held loyal to our relations to the American petroleum."[642] There had been negotiations, after all! The reports of the United States consul-general at Berlin, in 1891, transmitted many interesting articles from the German papers concerning the alliance which it was believed had been made between the Rothschilds and the American oil combination. A company managed by the great bankers has obtained a commanding position in the Russian oil business, and the American and the Russian were even then said to have divided the world between them. The Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_ said: "Heretofore the two petroleum speculators have marched apart, in order to get into their hands the two largest petroleum districts in the world. After this has been accomplished they unite to fight in unison, and to fix as they please the selling price for the whole world, which they divide between themselves. So an international speculating ring stands before the door, such as in like might and capital power has never before existed, and everywhere the intelligible fear prevails that within a short time the price of an article of use indispensable to all classes of people will rise with a bound, without its being possible for national legislation or control to raise any obstacles."[643] But some of the closest European observers have seen reasons from the beginning to believe that the Rothschilds are in the Russian oil business only as the agents of the American combination. This is freely asserted by the Continental press. The policy of the Rothschilds has been never to engage in commercial enterprise on their own account. The tactics used by the Rothschilds in oil have been an almost exact reproduction of those of the combination in America. From the first they gave the subject of freights their special attention. They showed no ability for new or independent undertakings, but they tried, to use the words of an Austrian-Hungarian consular report from Batoum in 1889, "following the example of the combination in the United States, to get the bulk of the Russian petroleum trade into their hands"; using the large money power at their command for speculation, freely advancing money for leases and delivery contracts, and specially acquiring all the available means of transportation. The experience of the people of Parker[644] is recalled by the statement that the Rothschild company would leave hundreds of cars loaded with petroleum on the tracks for weeks to prevent competitors from shipping and from filling their contracts. When the city of Batoum, in 1888, refused to allow it to lay pipes over the city lands to the harbor, it was with the enthusiastic approbation of the agitated citizens. The authorities gave as their reason that through large establishments of this kind the capitalists gained a monopoly, crushing out smaller producers to the disadvantage of all classes of the population. In the absence of official investigations, a free press, and civilized courts--that knowledge which is not only power but freedom--it is impossible for any one in Russia, or out of it, to know the truth as to the relations of the Rothschilds to the American monopoly. The latest news in the summer of 1894 is of a great combination of Russian and American oil interests, under the direction of the Russian Minister of Finance, for a division of territory, regulation of prices, and the like. Information of this was given to the world by that minister's official organ in November, 1893. Thus says the Hanover (Germany) _Courier_ of November 11th: "With the direct sanction of the Russian government the management of the enormous wealth that lies in the yearly production of Russian petroleum will be concentrated in the hands of a few firms.... The Russian government lends its hand for the formation of a trust that reaches over the ocean--a trust, under State protection, against the large mass of consumers. This is the newest acquisition of our departing century." It was announced that, in pursuance of this plan, the Russians were to be given exclusive control of certain Asiatic markets. The officers of the American combination are not easily reached by newspaper men. But when this news came long interviews with them were circulated in the press of the leading cities, dwelling upon the "Waterloo" defeat they had suffered, and reassuring the people with this evidence that there was, after all, "no monopoly." The Russian interests are dominated by the Rothschilds, and if the Rothschilds are, as these European observers declare, merely the agents of the Americans, even unsophisticated people can understand the cheerfulness with which the trustees in New York dilate on their Waterloo at the hands of their other self. Only this could make credible the report that the world has been divided with the Russians by our American "trustees," who never divide with anybody. In dividing with the Russians they are dividing with themselves. Though it is reported that discriminations by the government railroads of Russia were used to force the Russian producers into this international trust, still, at worst, every Russian producer was given by his government the right to enter the pool. But no similar right for the American producer is recognized by our trust. It admits only its own members. The others must "sell or squeeze." There is something in the world more cruel than Russian despotism--American "private enterprise." One of the conditions said to have been made by the Russian government is the natural one that the American trust, as it has agreed to do for the French, must protect its Russian allies from any competition from America. Extinction of the "independents" has therefore become more important than ever to the trust. The prize of victory over them is not only supremacy in this country, but on four other continents. This will explain the new zeal with which the suppression of the last vestige of American independence in this industry has been sought the last few months of 1893 and in 1894. Especially strenuous has been the renewal of the attack on the pipe line the independents are seeking to lay to tide-water, and which they have carried as far as Wilkes-barre.[645] That pipe line, as it is the last hope of the people, is the greatest menace to the monopoly. The independents, as they have shown by the fact of surviving, although they have to pay extraordinary freights and other charges from which the trust is free, can produce more cheaply than the would-be Lords of Industry, as free men always do.[646] By means of this pipe line, suspended though it is at Wilkes-barre, are now made the only independent exports of oil that go from America to Europe. Once let the "outsiders" with their line reach the sea-shore and its open roads to the coast of America and Europe, and it will be a long chase they will give their pursuers. Everything that can be brought to bear by market manipulation, litigation, and other means is now being done to prevent the extension of this line, and to bankrupt the men who are building it through much tribulation. The mechanical fixation of values, by which the refiners who use this line to export oil are compelled to meet a lower price for the refined in New York than can be got for the crude out of which it is made, has been already referred to, and, as shown above, the same prestidigitation of prices is being resorted to in Europe against the independents of Germany. Early in 1894 the independent refiners and producers resolved to consolidate with this pipe line some other lines owned by them in order to strengthen and perfect the system, and put it in better shape to be extended to tide-water. This consolidation was voted by a large majority both of stock and stockholders. But a formidable opposition to it was at once begun in the courts by injunction proceedings in behalf of one man, a subordinate stockholder in a corporation of which the control is owned, as he admitted in court, by members of the oil trust.[647] The real litigant behind him, the independents stated to the court, was the same that we have seen appear in almost every chapter of our story, with its brigades of lawyers. "An unlawful organization," the independents described it to the court, "exercising great and illegal powers, ... and bitterly and vindictively hostile to our business interests." They came into court one after the other and described the ruin which had been wrought among them, telling the story the reader has found in these pages. "It is our hope," they said, "when we once reach the salt-water that there will be no power there controlling the winds and the waves, the tides and the sun and moon, except the Power that controls everything. When we once are there the same forces that guide the ships of this monopoly to the farther shore will guide ours. The same winds that waft them will waft ours. There is freedom, there is hope, and there is the only chance of relief to this country.... Through three years of suffering and agony we have attempted to carry on our purpose.... You could have seen the blood-marks in the snow of the blood of the people who are working out their subscription as daily laborers on that line with nothing else to offer." The injunctions asked for by this opposition were granted by the lower court, but the independents took an appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. They first placed their petition for the rehearing in the hands of the chief-justice on Thursday, May 24th; on Monday, May 28th, the petition was renewed before the full court; on Thursday, May 31st, the court adjourned for the summer without taking any action upon the petition. The court in July agreed to hear the case at the opening of its next term, the first Monday of October. Section II. of Article I. of the Constitution of Pennsylvania says: "All courts shall be open, and every man, for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered, without sale, denial, or delay." To guard against the injustice which might arise by the granting of special injunctions by the lower courts--like that granted in this case--which might remain for months without remedy, the Legislature, in 1866, enacted a law which reads as follows: "In all cases in equity, in which a special injunction has been or shall be granted by any Court of Common Pleas, an appeal to the Supreme Court for the proper district shall be allowed, and all such appeals shall be heard by the Supreme Court in any district in which it may be in session." As if there had not been enough to try these men, misfortune marked them in other ways. The Bradford refinery of the president of their pipe line was visited by a destructive fire during these proceedings in court. The Associated Press despatches attributed the fire to "spontaneous combustion," whatever that may be. But in another newspaper an eye-witness described how he saw a man running about the works in a mysterious way just before the flames broke out. On the same day, by a coincidence, the main pipe of the independent line was cut, and the oil, which spouted out to the tree-tops, was set on fire at a point in a valley where the greatest possible damage would result, and the telegraph wires were simultaneously cut, so that prompt repairs or salvage of oil were impossible. The Almighty is said to favor the heaviest battalions, and accident, if there is such a thing, seems to have the same preference, as has been shown in many incidents in our history, such as the mishaps to the Tidewater pipe line, and the Toledo municipal gas line.[648] An intimation is given in the Continental press as to one of the motives under which the Russian government acted in promoting the alliance between the Russian and American oil men. It desired, it is said, to secure the influence of the powerful members of the oil combination in favor of certain plans for which Russia needed co-operation in America. There has been nothing for which the Russian government has so much needed "sympathetical co-operation" in America as for the ratification of the Extradition Treaty. The Russian government has obtained this ratification, and obtained it in a way which indicated that some irresistible but carefully concealed American influence was behind it. The New York _World_, in its editorial columns of May 25, 1894, made the suggestion that the power behind this treaty of shame was that of the oil trust, earning from the czar the last link in its chain of world monopoly. It asked if it was the influence of the oil combination that induced the Senate's consent to this "outrageous treaty." "Was this one of the conditions upon which that monopoly was permitted to secure its present concessions from Russia? Did it wield an influence in the Senate like that which the sugar trust has since exercised, though for an advantage of a different kind?" The Philadelphia _Press_ points out that the Russian government had long and unsuccessfully sought to obtain the ratification of this treaty, but at last got it quickly and quietly. Did the oil combination, it asks, "succeed in bartering the character of this country as a political sanctuary for the monopoly of the world's markets?" Seldom has any public measure been so universally and so indignantly condemned in America as was this proposal to use the powers of Anglo-Saxon justice to return men who were accused only, and were, therefore, legally innocent, to be tried without jury, counsel, publicity, or appeal. Never has public opinion availed less. The Federal executive refused even to delay the ratification in deference to the sentiment against it. Those who were active in the agitation against the treaty found something inexplicable in the unresting and unlistening relentlessness with which it was pushed through. Napoleon said that in fifty years Europe would be all Russian or all republican. Even he did not dream that republican America would become Russianized before Europe. The San Francisco _Call_ of March 3, 1894, discussing the report that a commercial treaty with China was under consideration at Washington, says the negotiation is in the interest of the oil combination. It warns the public that the trust is willing to reopen the opium trade in reciprocity to China for better terms for the admission of American petroleum. This free trade with China and Russia in the souls and bodies of Russians, Chinese, and Americans would add only another instance of the many manipulations of government which this combination has successfully attempted in all parts of the world--in the tariffs of France, Germany, Cuba, Canada, and our own country; in the raising or lowering of the governmental requirements as to explosiveness of oil sold the people in England and the United States, and in the subsidy legislation by which it got from Congress for its ocean steamers a privilege rigorously denied by law to all other citizens. In this the oil trust is but an illustration. What it has done scores of other combinations have accomplished, though not with equal genius. The Hon. John De Witt Warner, member of Congress from New York, has published a list of one hundred trusts which have been able to influence the tariff legislation of the country in their favor. The orgy of the sugar trust and Congress, out of which the tariff bill of 1894 was born, was in the plain view of all the people. "The appalling fact already disclosed," the New York _Daily Commercial Bulletin_, the most important commercial and financial daily in the United States, said in its editorial columns of June 4, 1894, "is that for some months past the sugar trust has been the government of the United States." The _Bulletin_ estimates that the profit to the trust of one detail of the tariff bill postponing the duty on raw sugar for six months will be $34,620,000. In all this our country is not singular. The governments of Europe are used as the instruments of profit for private enterprise to an extent which the people endure only because they do not understand it. The latest instance is one of the best. The _Investor's Review_ of London, England, in May, 1894, calls attention to the fact that upon the accession of Lord Rosebery to the Premiership of England the hitherto outspoken opposition of the War Office to the Maxim gun had become entirely silent, and the gun had been put into use in the army without competitive trial with other machine-guns, some of them its superiors. "This is an unfortunate fact for Lord Rosebery," says the _Investor's Review_, "because of his relationship to the Rothschilds." This great house, the _Review_ says, has "a strong pecuniary interest in the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Company," and his lordship's affinities to the house "have not in the past been confined to those of family relationship alone, but extend to community of interests on the stock exchange." The _Review_ therefore appeals to Lord Rosebery, for his own sake and the sake of the government "to prove by his deeds that he not only has had nothing to do with it, but will peremptory stop this crime." If not, the _Review_ hopes enough may be made of the scandal to overthrow Lord Rosebery's government, for it desires "to see a beginning made of the endeavor to purge Parliament of the guinea-pig director, the stock-gambler and punter, and the whole unclean brood of City 'bulls' and 'bears,' jobbers in patents, bribers and bribed, who help to degrade public life." We of America are most sovereign when we sit in Constitutional Convention by our representatives, and change the fundamental law as we will. The Constitutional Convention gives us the unique power of peaceful and perpetual revolution, to make bloody and spasmodic revolutions unnecessary. Of all the inventions of that ablest group of statesmen the world has seen--the founders of this government--this is the greatest. The people of the State of New York are holding a Constitutional Convention in 1894 to enlarge the garment of 1846 to fit the growth of half a century. In that half-century the revolution in society and industry which had been getting under headway ever since the steam-engine and competition were invented has come to its consummation. But the basic law of the Empire State has faced this new world as changeless as the sphinx. Nearly half the other states have made new constitutions, or amended the old ones to bring law into line with life. Pennsylvania forbids the common carrier to become the owner of coal-mines, or to consolidate with competing carriers, or to give preference to any citizen. Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, Colorado, and many other states have framed provisions to control the abuse of industrial and highway power. The State of Washington in its Constitution declares that "monopolies and trusts shall never be allowed in this State," and it forbids any association "for the purpose of fixing the price or limiting the production, or regulating the transportation of any product or commodity." The manual of the constitutions of the world prepared for the use of the New York convention shows that fifteen of the states of the Union have in one way or another recognized the revolution which has taken place in the industrial economy of the people, and sought to meet it with the necessary political safe-guards. When the delegates of the citizens of New York State meet in May, 1894, at Albany, in such a time to face such problems, the press notes that a large proportion of them are corporation lawyers. The place of president of the convention is secured by the chief counsel of the oil trust. He is in Albany to resist the application to the Attorney-General of the State to move for the forfeiture of the charter of the principal corporation in the trust, and on his way he plucks the presidency of the Constitutional Convention. "It is truly a momentous event," he says in his opening speech, "when the delegates of many millions of people gather together after an interval of fifty years almost, for the purpose of revising and amending the fundamental law of the State." The delegates thus momentously assembled, when they came to choose the officer who was to wield over them a power as great as that of the Speaker over the Federal House of Representatives, momentously selected the most conspicuous attorney of the most conspicuous embodiment of the forces with which the people are in conflict. The president found words of kindly reference for many great questions--of education, suffrage, city government, and the like--but for the great questions of social power which fifteen states have found serious enough for constitutional cognizance he had not a syllable. No plan or even suggestion, great or little, for the new Constitution can reach the convention direct. All must go to the appropriate committee, to be smothered or reported, as the case may be. There are thirty of these committees, and they are made up by the president of the convention, who also designates their chairmen. Each committee has its subject, and the subjects cover the bill of rights, the regulation of suffrage, the control of corporations, the election of judges, future amendments of the Constitution, and every other part of the organic law. Practically the work of the convention will be the work of the committees, and the committees are the work of one who is not only the attorney of the oil trust, but is a part of the trust, a member of the organization. "I happen to own one hundred shares in the Standard Oil Trust," he said in his argument in Albany before the Attorney-General in behalf of the trust. The trust has given formal notice that out of deference to public opinion and the decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and in pursuance of an agreement with the late Attorney-General of New York,[649] it had dissolved itself. But this distinguished member disregards the dissolution, for reasons of personal convenience, as he tells the Attorney-General. "I have never gone forward and claimed my aliquot share." The character of this trust, of which the president and organizer of the Constitutional Convention persists in being a member to the extent of refusing to be "dissolved" out of it, has been adjudicated. It was, the Supreme Court of Ohio said,[650] "organized for a purpose contrary to the policy of our laws. Its object was to establish a virtual monopoly ... throughout the entire country, and by which it might not merely control the production but the price at its pleasure. All such associations are contrary to the policy of our State and void." A similar judgment has been passed upon the trust by the judiciary of the State of which this president of the Constitutional Convention, besides being an officer of the courts, is a citizen. It was entered into, the Supreme Court of New York has said,[651] "for the purpose of forming a combination whose object was to restrict production, control prices, and suppress competition, and the agreement was therefore opposed to public policy and void." And a higher court, the highest in the State, the Court of Appeals, decided in the sugar-trust, case that a trust was in avoidance and disregard of the laws of the State. To the monopoly of oil, which was the starting-point, are being added by its proprietors, one after the other, as we have shown, a progressive series of other monopolies, from natural gas to iron. To these assets is now to be added our bill of rights. The long fingers of this power of mortmain reincarnate are long enough to reach from its counting-room to the Constitutional Convention. The new Magna Charta, to which the people look for help against void and unlawful combinations, is to be drafted by committees made up by the attorney of the chief of these void and unlawful combinations. The instrument which is to protect the people against monopoly will come to them only after every section has been exposed to the moulding touch of the greatest monopoly in history. "This business belongs to us," and theirs is the first and the last hand on the reins of the convention. The people can vote on the Constitution after it is made, but the trust will see it made. If the new Constitution is made so obnoxious that it is rejected, as that of 1867 was, the old Constitution will do for the next fifty years as for the last fifty. It is not monopoly that needs the revision. Is this the end? When before the Interstate Commerce Commission, the head of the combination was asked: "The properties included in your trust are distributed all over the United States, are they not?" "Oh, not all over the United States. They are distributed." "Are they not distributed, and are they not sufficiently numerous to meet the requirements of your business from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the northern boundary?" "Not yet."[652] The reply came in a tone and with a smile so significant that it was answered by a comprehending laugh from the whole room--judges, lawyers, reporters, spectators, and all. "Not yet!" CHAPTER XXXII "NOT BUSINESS" This "business success" is the greatest commercial and financial achievement of history. Its broad foundation was laid in the years from 1872 to 1879, the severest time of panic for others the world has known. A universal jaundice of ill-fortune has given its sallow complexion to every one else. From the Alleghanies to the Caucasus thousands of men have been somehow thrown out of work because so much new work has come to the world. "At the flash of a telegraphic message from Cleveland, Ohio," said the people of the oil regions in their appeal to the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1878, "hundreds of men have been thrown out of employment at a few hours' notice, and kept for weeks in a state of semi-starvation." These men filled up many of the insurrectionary ranks of the great railway strike of 1877, as the employés of the Pennsylvania Railway declared in a public communication at that time. The eight oil-producing counties of Pennsylvania were said by the general council of the petroleum producers, in a public address in 1879, to be "fast sinking beneath such financial distress that resistance to threatened bankruptcy or servitude could not long be made." They grew too poor to pay the counsel they employed to help them in the courts, the legislatures, and before the executive of Pennsylvania and Congress. "The universal complaint we find is the poverty of the people, not their unwillingness to give." "I am ashamed," said one of them in court, "to see our counsel every day on account of the beggarly amounts I have paid them. A large number of producers have subscribed that have not paid."[653] Men who were "frozen out" of their occupation in transporting or refining oil took to digging wells. "That is the only thing they have been allowed to do. They went on in a wild way, hunting new oil, and when they found it they would develop it rapidly." This made oil fall in price, and the more they produced the more they had to produce. The wages of labor kept going down. They were lower in 1888 than they were twenty-four years before. "A well-digger that I paid $6 a day and his expenses twenty-four years ago is now working for $40 a month. That is true of every department of the oil business so far as the wages of workmen are concerned." "We were $10,000,000 poorer at the end of 1887 than at the beginning," said the association of oil producers of Pennsylvania. Their executive committee the next year said the people were on "the verge of bankruptcy."[654] The railroads were no happier than the laborers, the producers, the manufacturers, or the merchants. As early as 1879 Vanderbilt II. declared that the oil business of the railroads--worth $30,000,000 a year--had been destroyed. "I think the business is gone."[655] In 1892 a number of refiners and producers of Pennsylvania, in a formal appeal to Governor Pattison, asked him to investigate the causes which were working "to the injurious depression if not the ultimate destruction of a great industry." In the same year mutterings of a turbulent discontent and threats of violence and the destruction of property, repeating those of 1872, were heard again in Pennsylvania and in Ohio, which had become an oil-producing State. "Many of the oil producers," a member of their protective association in Ohio said, in the spring of 1892, "are in a bad way. They are at that point that they don't know just where their next sack of flour is coming from, and I am not surprised at anything they may do." This area of low pressure, following the habit of American storms, made itself felt abroad in bankruptcies and falling wages from Scotland to Baku and beyond. Meanwhile the little nest-egg of nothing of the group which came into the field in 1862 grew to $1,000,000 in 1870; to $2,500,000 in 1872; to $3,500,000 in 1875; to $70,000,000 in 1882; and in 1887 to a capital of $90,000,000, which the New York Legislature reported in 1888, "according to the testimony of the trust's president," to be worth "not less than $148,000,000."[656] Before the trust was dissolved in name, in 1892, and the "trustees" betook themselves to the greater seclusion of separate corporations, acting in concert, its stock sold as high as 185, a valuation of $166,500,000 for the whole. Its dividends had been $10,800,000 a year for several years. These ducal incomes and the vaster sums accumulated as undivided profits made themselves visible in the progressive _embonpoint_ of the capitalization. In the six years (1876-81) preceding their taking the veil as trustees their net earnings added up the total of $55,000,000. In the next six years (to 1888) the dividends alone--not the net earnings--were more than $50,000,000.[657] These did not absorb their profits. In one year they spent $8,000,000 out of their profits for construction, besides making the regular payments to stockholders.[658] "All this vast wealth," the New York Legislature said, "is the growth of about twenty years; this property has more than doubled in value in six years, and with this increase the trust has made aggregate dividends during that period of over $50,000,000. It is one of the most active," the report continued, "and possibly the most formidable moneyed power on this continent."[659] "This is an immense property," says the Interstate Commerce Commission," ... and it gives an immense power which is capable of being so employed as to put all competitors at a great and perhaps ruinous disadvantage."[660] For the first time the New York investigation of 1888 revealed that it was only the beginning of the truth that these hundreds of millions were controlled by "trustees." It now became known that some one or more of the trustees owned personally more than half of every concern in the trust, and of the best ones owned all. "These eight trustees control all these ninety millions of property scattered over the United States?" the president of the trust was asked. "They have as trustees, and they have as individual owners both."[661] In corroboration of this testimony the trust furnished the New York Senate Committee of 1888 a "list of corporations, the stocks of which are wholly or partially held by the trustees of the Standard Oil Trust." In this list, under the head of "New York State," appears this: "Capital stock, $5,000,000. Standard Oil Company of New York, manufacturers of petroleum products. Standard Oil Trust ownership, entire."[662] But when the company was threatened with the forfeiture of its charter by the proceedings before the Attorney-General in May, 1894, its president made oath as follows: "The Standard Oil Company of New York never permitted its stock to be transferred to trustees."[663] Even this ownership by eight men is not the whole of the truth. The eight trustees have a ruling power within themselves. An examination of the personnel of the board at the beginning, middle, and end of its career as a board shows four men always there. This agrees with the remark reported in the press to have been made by the solicitor of the trust upon its ostensible dissolution in 1892: "A majority of the stock being held by four men." A friendly journal, the New York _Sun_, of April 25, 1889, in an editorial paragraph concerning the wealth of one of the trustees, said: "His regular income is twenty millions of dollars a year. That makes him the richest man in the United States--perhaps the very richest in the world." This is nearly three times the dividends paid in 1892 to all its stockholders by the Bank of England. The Bank of England has built up this earning power by two hundred years' work at the head of the finances of the greatest empire of history. This American wins thrice its dividend capability in less than a generation by contriving and managing an institution which he says does not do any business. Another entirely friendly paper, with sources of information of the very best, put his income two years later at $30,000,000 a year.[664] No denial of the _Sun's_ statement was attempted, and the _Sun_ never withdrew or modified its figures. Shortly after the secretary of the trust gave, in a public interview, a statement of the income of its principal members. That of one of them he put at $9,000,000 a year; his own at $3,000,000. This wealth is as much too vast for the average arithmetical comprehension as the size of the dog-star, 400 times larger than the sun. These incomes are sums which their fortunate owners could not count as they received them. If they did nothing but stand all day at the printing-presses of the Treasury Department while the millions came uncrinkled out in crisp one-dollar greenbacks, or worked only at catching the new dollars as they rolled out from the dies of the Mint, they could not count them. If they worked eight hours a day, and six days a week, and fifty-two weeks in the year, they could not count their money. The dollars would come faster than their fingers could catch them; the dollars would slip out of their clutch and fall to the floor, and, piling up and up, would reach their knees, their middle, their arms, their mouth, and Midas would be snuffed out in his own gold. Commodore Vanderbilt, Parton tells us, was forty-four years old before he was worth $400,000. In the next thirty years he increased this to over $100,000,000--perhaps twice that; no one knows. Vanderbilt had to multiply this nest-egg of his forty-fourth year 250 times, but one of these "trustees" will be a billionaire when he has turned himself over only ten times. Poor's _Railroad Manual_ shows these men and their associates to be presidents or directors in thousands of miles of railroads, valued at hundreds of millions. Their names were prominent in the railroad "deal" of 1892 and 1893, which had for its end to put the whole of New England under one hand, controlling both its land and water connections with the rest of the country. They stand at the receipt of custom at the railroad gates to the oil regions; to the coal-fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois; the copper, gold, and silver mines of the West; the iron mines of the West and South; the turpentine forests and the lumber regions and cotton fields; the food-producing areas of the Mississippi basin; the grazing lands of the plains. They are owners in the principal steamship line between America and Europe, and in the "whalebacks," which appear destined to drive other models out of the freight traffic of the lakes, and have begun to appear on the Eastern and Western oceans, to capture the carrying business of the world. Every dollar for the construction of a State building at the World's Fair was advanced by one of them, as the principal journal of the State announced, and it referred to him as "the man who breathes life into its East coast towns, and the lifting of his pen by his hand is like turning upsidedown the horn of plenty." They are "in" the best things--telegraphs, the gas supply of our large cities, street-railways, steel mills, ship-yards, Canadian and American iron mines, town sites. Ore dug out of their own iron mines at the head of Lake Superior is carried over their own railroad to their own furnaces and mills. It rolls along until that which began to move as ore lies at the docks of their ship-yards as a finished vessel, cut out of the mountains, as it were, at one cheap stroke, or is loaded in the cars in some perfected shape of steel, as steam radiators or what not. They feed entire mountain ranges into their mills with one hand, and with the other despatch the product in their own cars and ships to all markets. Betrayal, bankruptcy, broken hearts, and death have kept quick step with the march of the conquerors in iron as in oil. They are in the combination in anthracite coal, with which the acquisition by an American syndicate of the Nova Scotia coal deposits is closely connected. Theirs is the largest share in the natural-gas business in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Indiana, Illinois. They are in the combination which controls lead, from pig to white lead, and turpentine and linseed-oil and paints. "Its members," it was said in the application to the Attorney-General of New York, in 1894, for a forfeiture of one of their charters, "are now presidents and directors in 33,000 miles of road, one-fifth of the total mileage in the United States. Its surplus is invested in banking, in natural and manufacturing gas companies, in iron ore beds and coal beds and crude-oil production, in lead and zinc, in turpentine and cotton-seed oil, in steel, in jute manufacture, in ocean steamships, in palatial hotels, in street-railroads." Most of their interests are in public functions, railroads, pipe lines, telegraphs, postal contracts, steamers, municipal franchises, and the like; but it is impossible to know their full extent with our present crude means for enforcing the truth that property is power and that civilization endures no irresponsible anonymous power. The corporation is an agency by which the capitalist can do business in ambuscade. "They are all in our company," said the manager of a very important public agency, "but their names do not appear." It is not out of deference to the obsolete idea that such matters are private business that all the details of their possessions are not given, but only because they are not known. "There is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition," Daniel Webster said; but he spoke of eloquence, not of the perfected modern commerce. Selligue, the French genius to whose discoveries nothing of equal importance has been added, is not dignified with an entry in the encyclopædias or biographical dictionaries. For "Colonel" Drake, who struck oil, a pension had to be provided by his friends in the regions which he had filled with fountains of wealth. Mr. Van Syckel, who first proved the pipe line to be practicable, died in Buffalo, paralytic, helpless, and poor. The "age of oil" could not have come without the oil well and the drill and derrick, and these in America are the lineal descendants of the first salt well, drilled and whittled out of the rocks by the Ruffner brothers, in 1806, in the "Great Buffalo Lick" of the Kanawha. Their first "drill" was a great sycamore-tree, four feet through, hollowed out, set on end on the ground in the lick, and gradually lowered as the earth and stone within were dug away by a man inside. When they came to the rock, which they could not blast because it was under water, they hung a roughly-made iron drill by a rope to a spring pole and went inch by inch through the rock, "kicking down" the well. Metal tubes were not to be had, but the Yankee whittler solved the problem of tubing the well. Two slender strips of wood were whittled into two long, thin, half tubes, and tied together. This is the genesis of the bored "well" and the "drill and derrick."[665] It took eighteen months to accomplish this, but the wonder is that it was done at all "without preliminary study, previous experience or training, without precedent, in a newly-settled country without steam-power, machine-shop, skilled mechanics, suitable tools or materials." These almost-forgotten men, shrewd, patient, undauntable, were the pioneers of the skilful well-borers who have gone forth from the Kanawha wells all over the country to bore wells for irrigation on the Western plains, for cities, factories, and private use, for salt, for gas, for geological and mineralogical explorations, and for oil. "Billy Morris," of the Kanawha borings, invented a tool simple enough, but not so simple as to be described here, called the "slips" or "jars," which has done more for deep boring than anything except the steam-engine, and for which, considering the part played in the life of man by oil, gas, water, brine, and other wells, we are told he "deserves to be ranked with the inventors of the sewing-machine, reaper, and cotton-gin."[666] But "Uncle Billy" made a free gift to the well-diggers of the world of his invaluable "slips," and slipped into poverty and an unknown grave. To Joshua Merrill, more than to any one else, belongs the honor of bringing the manufacture of oil in America to its perfection.[667] He made better oil than any one else, and he loved his work. "I was thirty-two years in the oil business. It was the business of my life."[668] But he had to dismantle his refinery, and join the melancholy procession of two thousand years of scouts, inventors, pioneers, capitalists, and toilers who march behind the successful men. Yet, strange to say, these successful men did not discover the oil, nor how to "strike" it. They were not the lucky owners of oil lands. As late as 1888 they produced only 200 barrels a day--about 1 in every 3000--"an infinitesimal amount," their president said.[669] They did not invent any of the processes of refining. They did not devise the pipe line, and they did all they could to prevent the building[670] of the first pipe line to the seaboard, and to cripple the successful experiment of piping refined oil.[671] They own all the important refineries, and yet they have built very few. They did not project the tank-car system, which came before them,[672] and have used their irresistible power to prevent its general use on the railroads, and successfully.[673] They were not the first to enter the field in any department. They did not have as great capital or skill as their competitors.[674] They began their career in the wrong place--at Cleveland--out of the way of the wells and the principal markets, necessitating several hundred miles more of transportation for all of their product that was marketed in the East or Europe.[675] They had no process of refining oil which others had not, and no legitimate advantages over others.[676] They did not even invent the rebate. They made oil poor[677] and scarce[678] and dear.[679] The power to chalk down daily on the black-board of the New York Produce Exchange the price at which people in two hemispheres shall buy their light has followed these strokes of "cheapness": 1. Freight rates to the general public have been increased, often to double and more what is paid by a favored few.[680] 2. The construction has been resisted of new lines of transportation by rail,[681] 3. And pipe.[682] This has been done by litigation,[683] by influence, by violence,[684] even to the threatened use of cannon,[685] and by legislation, as in Ohio and Pennsylvania, to prevent the right of eminent domain from being given by "free pipe-line bills" to the people generally. 4. The cost of pipeage has been raised.[686] 5. Rivers and canals have been closed.[687] 6. Oil has been made to run to waste on the ground.[688] 7. The outflow of oil from the earth has been shut down.[689] 8. The outflow of human energy that sought to turn it to human use has been shut down by restricting the manufacture by the combination and by others, by contract,[690] dismantling,[691] and explosion.[692] 9. High fees have been maintained for inspection,[693] and the inspectors have been brought into equivocal relations with the monopoly.[694] 10. The general use of tank-cars and tank-steamers has been prevented.[695] 11. The people have been excluded from the free and equal use of the docks, storehouses, and other terminal facilities of the railroads in the great harbors of export.[696] 12. Inventors and their better processes have been smothered.[697] 13. Men have been paid more for spying than they could earn by working.[698] 14. "Killing delay" has been created in the administration of justice.[699] All are poorer--oil-producers, land-owners, all labor, all the railroads, all the refiners, merchants, all the consumers of oil--the whole people. Less oil has flowed, less light shone, and there has been less happiness and virtue. In every one of the few intervals, says Hudson, during which oil could flow freely to Pittsburg, all the businesses connected with it were active and expanding.[700] When the trust's secretary was asked for the proper name of the combination, his reply was: "The Lord only knows; I don't." "An indescribable thing," he said again.[701] "Do you understand the practical work of refining as a refiner?" he was asked. "I do not.... I have not been inside a refinery in ten years."[702] "Two mills a ton a mile for five hundred miles would be a dollar a ton?" "I am not able to demonstrate that proposition." "You have some arithmetical knowledge?" "I cannot answer that question."[703] He could not state what proportion of the oil trade is now controlled by the trust. He had never looked into that question. He did not know who knows these things.[704] "You own the pipe line to New York?" "Yes, sir." "What does it cost you to do business on that pipe line?" "I do not know anything about it.... I have never been in the oil regions but once in my life.... I am not a practical oil man.... For perhaps eight years I have given absolutely no attention to the details of our business."[705] Asked upon another occasion, before the Pennsylvania Legislature, about the accounts of the company when he was its secretary, he said: "I am not familiar with the accounts."[706] "I am a clamorer for dividends. That is the only function I have," said another trustee.[707] "When was your last rate given you, the rate at which you are now being carried (on the New York Central)?" "I could not tell."[708] The secretary had testified that this associate attended to getting the rates of freight; but the latter avowed that he could not remember "any rate" that he had paid "at any time." But a little later he who could not remember any rate he had ever paid was able to tell the committee, off-hand, the exact rate of freight on oil by steamer from Batoum in Russia to Liverpool, and knew the rate from the wells at Baku by rail to the sea at Batoum![709] "Had you ever been interested in the refinery of oil in any manner when you first became connected with the oil business?" another trustee was asked. "Never." "Or the production of oil?" "Never." He was a railroad man, and had been taken into the combination for his value as such; but when he was asked if he could tell any of the rates of freight his company had paid, he said: "I cannot."[710] "What is your business and where do you reside?" another of the trustees was asked by the State of New York. "I decline to answer any question until I can consult counsel."[711] "What is the capital stock?" was asked of another. "I do not know." "How much has the capital been increased since?" "I don't know." "Where are the meetings of the Standard Oil Company held?" "I don't know." "How many directors are there?" "I don't know." "Do they own any pipe lines?" "I don't know." "I don't know anything about the rates of transportation."[712] "What quantity of oil was exported by the different concerns with which you were connected from the port of New York in 1881?" the president was asked. "I do not know." "How many millions of barrels of oil were refined by such concerns in the vicinity of New York in 1881?" "I don't know how much was refined." "Did not the concern with which you were so connected purchase over 8,000,000 barrels of crude petroleum in 1881?" "I am unable to state." He was asked to give the name of one refinery in this country, running at the time (1883), not owned or substantially controlled by his concern. "I decline to answer."[713] He was asked if he would say the total profits of his trust's companies for the last year (1887) were not as much as $20,000,000. "I haven't the least knowledge on that subject."[714] Phrenologists are right. Memory is not to be ranked with the mental attributes of the highest importance. The head of the New York Central could not tell when a stock dividend of something like $46,000,000 had been declared on one of his railroads--and a $46,000,000 dividend is something worth remembering. "I don't know.... I don't remember."[715] It is lucky for the rest of us that these great men forget something. One of the chiefs of the oil combination was a witness in Cleveland in 1887 in a suit by the State of Ohio against certain railroads. "What business in connection with the oil business is done in the building in which the oil trust has its office in New York?" "I do not think I could state just what business is done in that building, I am sure." Asked on the witness-stand in the Buffalo explosion case when it was he formed the "trust" with $70,000,000 of capital, the president replied: "I am unable to state," and he could not say where its articles of agreement were, nor who has control of it. When questioned before the Interstate Commission he could not tell within $25,000,000 how much business they were doing a year.[716] These men keep no books. The whole arrangement is just a happy family, like Barnum's monkeys, birds, cats, dogs, and mice in the same cage. "It is a business of faith," one of the ruling four puts it. Another was asked about the by-laws under which he and his associates transacted their business. "I don't know that I have seen a copy," he replied, and as to where it was he was able only to "suppose."[717] When the committee of the Legislature called for the books recording the transactions of the trust and its attorneys and committees, there were practically none to produce. All there was in the way of a record of transactions of a magnitude beyond those of any other commercial institution in this country or the world were a few pages of formal entries from which nothing could be learned. The executive committee received and passed upon the disbursements of money by the treasurer, and the reports of sub-committees and of members, who had sweeping powers of attorney, by which these countless millions were kept rolling themselves up into more, but it never kept any records. "I have no knowledge of any formal record having been made," one of them said. The reports were "either verbal or on pieces of paper.... I think it was memorandums," he continued, and the memorandums were "undoubtedly destroyed." They were transcribed into the records of the trustees, he said, but the search of the committee showed that the transcription was a "skeleton," consisting mainly of the mere phrase, "Minutes of the executive committee approved." "The real minutes do not appear upon the book," Senator Ives, of the committee, said. "There is no book to produce?" "There is no book." "And there is no memorandum?" "There is no memorandum."[718] "Does the trust keep books?" the "president" was asked by Congress. "No, we have no system of book-keeping." On further pressure he said that the treasurer had "a record to know what money comes in." "You have never seen those books?" "I do not think I have ever seen those books." "Has any member of the nine" (trustees) "ever seen those books?" "I do not know that they have."[719] Simplicity is said to be always a characteristic of greatness. What could be simpler, and so greater, than this? The elements of success are only-- 1. Not to know anything about the business. 2. To keep no books. 3. To have "a record to know what money comes in," and 4. Never to look at it. Finally, the operations of these men have, in their own language, not been "business." Its secretary told Congress that the "trust" was "not a business corporation,"[720] and an associate declared in court that it "cannot do business." The report of the New York Legislature shows that on October 3, 1883, the president had by a formal instrument been made the attorney of the trust to sign and execute all the contracts made by it. The same instrument in express terms confirmed the execution of contracts heretofore signed by him, showing that he had been making contracts.[721] "Those gentlemen" (the members of the trust who hold its power of attorney) "do actually execute contracts involving pretty large amounts, sometimes without a formal resolution of the Board of Trustees, do they not?" one of them was asked. "Undoubtedly they do."[722] Following their employers, the lawyers in the Pennsylvania Tax case for the oil combination argued that its operations were not business within the meaning of the tax law. If the "no money" of 1862 has become the control, in one industry alone, of $160,000,000 in 1892 by methods that are not "business," what are they? NOTE.--The principal members of the oil combination were heard at great length in its defence before the committee of Congress investigating trusts in 1888.[723] Their testimony has been frequently used in our pages. But they felt that their case needed further elucidation, and asked the committee to hear them again. The committee declined to hear them again "explain or contradict," as they offered to do, but by printing their communication gave them the benefit of their denials and explanations.[724] Their offer was mainly to go again over the ground that the "South Improvement Company never did any business," that the combination "obtained no preferences" on the railroads, that they had cheapened transportation, improved machinery, made better oil at less cost, and so on. The chief officers and owners had been heard on all these points to the extent of hundreds of pages of testimony. But though it did not recall them to the witness-stand, the committee, in addition to printing their communication, printed most of the documentary evidence they desired to submit. This covered nearly two hundred pages more.[725] The examination, which any one can make, of this record discloses an interesting fact concerning the proof, and the trust's offer to prove, which can best be shown in parallel columns: TRUST'S OFFER TO PROVE. | THE PROOF. | It offered the evidence of the third|But the testimony of this witness vice-president of the Pennsylvania |states that his connection with Railroad to "show the South |the oil business of the Pennsylvania Improvement Company never did any |Railroad--the principal railroad in business, and its charter was |that scheme--did not begin until repealed in 1872." |1873.[726] | It offered the same evidence to |But this witness stated that his prove that the same rebates granted |road would give other shippers as it by the contract of October 17, |low rates as to the oil combination, 1877, "were also granted to every |"if they would guarantee the same shipper who contracted to do _all_ |quantity--not otherwise--under that his business over the Pennsylvania |contract";[727] and the contract Railroad." |itself states that no other shipper |should have the same rebate |--"commission," it is called--unless |his business gave the road "the same |amount of profit you realized from |our trade."[728] No shipper could get |the same rates by giving "all his |business." He must give "the same |quantity"--a totally different |proposition. | It offered the evidence taken in the|The evidence shows that this was Buffalo Explosion case, to show that|what was sworn to: "I have now a "C.B. Matthews testified falsely" |detective agency here" (Buffalo). "I in testifying that it was sworn to |employed L---- B----. At the time that the members of the oil |he was in my employ he was employed combination on trial employed |at the works of the Buffalo detectives in Matthews' refineries, |Lubricating Company" (Matthews' and that the detective was some time|company). "He made reports to me.... in Matthews' employ, and made his |I forwarded copies--one to New report to the lawyer of the trust, |York, one to Rochester.... The one and he got his pay from this lawyer.|forwarded to New York was addressed |to" (the lawyer of the oil |trust). "I met" (this lawyer, naming |him) "at New York City, at No. 44 |Broadway, which is the office of the" |(oil trust). "I received my pay from" |(him). "My instructions from" (him) |"were in writing."[729] | It offered "to prove that C.B. |This was what "was proved by a Matthews testified falsely in saying|witness," and referred to by that it was proved by a witness" |Matthews. that the Rochester representative of|"He" (the Rochester representative the oil combination said that the |of the oil combination) principal company in it "would sue |"said he thought they" (Matthews' Matthews once a month, or once a |company) "would not survive.... By week, if necessary, to squeeze him |the time they got through with all out." |the suits that they" (the oil |combination) "would bring, the |Buffalo Lubricating Company would |be pretty much used up.... He didn't |know as they would gain anything |really, but they would embarrass them |by bringing these suits, and if it |was necessary they would bring them |once a month--yes, they would bring |them once a week."[730] Similarly, throughout, the trust's offer to prove falls when confronted with its own proof. Many more instances could be given, but more than one instance is not needed. CHAPTER XXXIII THE SMOKELESS REBATE With searching intelligence, indomitable will, and a conscience which makes religion, patriotism, and the domestic virtues but subordinate paragraphs in a ritual of money worship, the mercantile mind flies its air-line to business supremacy. That entirely modern social arrangement--the private ownership of public highways--has introduced a new weapon into business warfare which means universal dominion to him who will use it with an iron hand. This weapon is the rebate, smokeless, noiseless, invisible, of extraordinary range, and the deadliest gun known to commercial warfare. It is not a lawful weapon. Like the explosive bullet, it is not recognized by the laws of war. It has to be used secretly. All the rates he got were a secret between himself and the railroads. "It has never been otherwise," testified one of the oil combination.[731] The Chevalier Bayard declared proudly, as he lay on his death-bed, that he had never given quarter to any one so degraded and unknightly as to use gunpowder. Every one would close in at once to destroy a market combatant who avowed that he employed this wicked projectile. The apparatus of the rebate is so simple that it looks less like a destroying angel than any weapon of offence ever known. The whole battery consists only of a pen and ink and some paper. The discharge is but the making of an entry--but the signing of a check. But when the man who commands this simple enginery directs it against a business competitor you can follow the track of wreckage like the path of a cyclone, by the ruins which lie bleaching in the air for years. The gentlemen who employ it give no evidence of being otherwise engaged than in their ordinary pursuits. They go about sedate and smiling, with seemingly friendly hands empty of all tools of death. But all about them as they will, as if it were only by wish of theirs which attendant spirits hastened to execute, rivals are blown out of the highways, busy mills and refineries turn to dust, hearts break, and strong men go mad or commit suicide or surrender their persons and their property to the skilful artillerists. "And in the actual practice of daily life," says Ruskin, "you will find that wherever there is secrecy, there is either guilt or danger." "When did you discover the fact that these rebates had been paid?" one of the victims was asked. "We never discovered it as a fact until the testimony was taken in 1879.... We always suspected it; but we never knew of it of our personal knowledge, and never would really have known it of our personal knowledge.... I had no idea of the iniquity that was going on."[732] Nothing so demolishing was ever so delicate and intangible as this, for its essence is but a union of the minds of a railroad official and some business friend, perhaps a silent partner, bent on business empire. The model merchant, fortunate in having a friend willing so to use a power sovereigns would not dare to use, walks the public way, strong in his secret, and smiles with triumph as all at whom he levels his invisible wand sicken and disappear. "He has the receipt of fern-seed. He walks invisible." Men who hunt their fellow-men with this concealed weapon always deny it, as they must. To use it has always been a sin, and has been made a crime in every civilized State. Under United States law it is, since 1887, an offence punishable with imprisonment in the penitentiary.[733] Moral ideals are not born in legislatures. When an act attains by a law the distinction of being made a crime, it is already well on its way to extinction. It is made infamous by law, because it has already become infamous before the conscience and honor of men. It was not the prohibition of highway privilege by the Constitution of Pennsylvania or the laws of the United States which made the rebate an iniquity. This legal volley is but a salute to the established conscience. The question most often pressed before all the many legislative and judicial inquests held upon the dead bodies which strew every field of the oil industry has been whether the extraordinary powers which the invention of the locomotive and the transformation of public highways into private property had given railways over the livelihoods of the people had been used to make it impossible for any but a preferred few to live. One of the successful men disposed of the evidence that these powers had been so used by styling it before the committee of Congress of 1888 as the "worst balderdash," and before the New York Legislative Committee of 1888 as "irresponsible newspaper statements," "a malignity and mendacity that is little short of devilishness." The secretary of the oil trust waved it away as "all this newspaper talk and flurry." The president knows nothing about the existence of such privileges, except that he has "heard much of it in the papers." And yet another of the trust in the _North American Review_ of February, 1883, similarly describes the accusation as "uncontradicted calumny," to which, he regrets to say, "several respectable journals and magazines lent themselves." After taking 3700 pages of evidence and sitting for months, the committee of 1879 of the New York Legislature said in their report: "The history of this corporation is a unique illustration of the possible outgrowth of the present system of railroad management in giving preferential rates, and also showing the colossal proportions to which monopoly can grow under the laws of this country.[734] ... The parties whom they have driven to the wall have had ample capital and equal ability in the prosecution of their business in all things save their ability to acquire facilities for transportation."[735] The committee of the Ohio Legislature which took the evidence of the treatment of the Marietta independents by the railroads[736] is, so far as the author knows, the only body of all the legislative and judicial tribunals that have been investigating for the past thirty years which has found the relations of the railroads and the oil combination to be proper. It used the words "public," "uniform," "in accordance with law," "equitable," "no special discriminations or privileges" to describe the conduct of the common carriers in that case. But in doing so it had to except from these exculpations the railroad which originated the attack on the independent refiners, and the rates of which controlled the others, as it was the initial road. It had also to admit that the oil combination had received "better rates," but defended them on the ground that its shipments were larger. These two exceptions are doors wide enough to admit every possibility of the rebate. The Secretary of State for Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania made an investigation in 1878 on the complaint of citizens. He reported to the Attorney-General that no case had been made out "beyond the ordinary province of individual redress." He was hung in effigy by the citizens, and the evidence he took remains, like that of the Ohio Committee of 1879, a valuable repository of facts from which students can draw their own conclusions. More than any others the wrongs of the oil industry provoked the investigations by Congress from 1872 to 1887, and caused the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and more than any others they have claimed the attention of the new law and the new court. The cases brought before it cover the oil business on practically every road of any importance in the United States--in New England, the Middle States, the West, the South, the Pacific coast; on the great East and West trunk roads--the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, the New York Central, and all their allied lines; on the transcontinental lines--the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific; on the steamship and railroad association controlling the South and Southwest. They show that from ocean to ocean, and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, wherever the American citizen seeks an opening in this industry, he finds it, like the deer forests and grouse moors of the old country, protected by game-keepers against him and the common herd. The terms in which the commission have described the preferences given the oil combination are not ambiguous: "Great difference in rates," "unjust discrimination," "intentional disregard of rights," "unexcused," "a vast discrepancy," "enormous," "illegal," "excessive,"[737] "extraordinary," "forbidden by the act to regulate commerce,"[738] "so obvious and palpable a discrimination that no discussion of it is necessary," "wholly indefensible," "patent and provoking discriminations for which no rational excuse is suggested," "obnoxious," "disparity ... absurd and inexcusable," "gross disproportions and inequalities,"[739] "long practised," "the most unjust and injurious discrimination ... and this discrimination inured mostly to the benefit of one powerful combination."[740] This was what the Interstate Commerce Commission found all along the record from 1887 to 1893. When one of those who got the benefits so characterized was before the New York Legislature in 1888, he said: "I know of no discrimination in the oil traffic of any kind since the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act." "Do you use any means for the purpose of avoiding the effect of that new law?" "None whatever."[741] But the people have found that the explicit prohibitions of the Interstate Commerce law were of no more protection to them than the equally explicit prohibitions given long before by the State constitutions and laws, the common law of the court, and by the still older common law of right, which the statute was created to enforce. The "unjust," "enormous," "illegal" differences in freights by which the public was excluded were got from the railroads after, as before, Congress, obedient to an aroused and universal demand, had passed a special statute and created a special tribunal to prevent and punish this special sort of crime. This is the adjudicated fact. This "uncontradicted calumny," "worst balderdash," "malignity and mendacity," "irresponsible newspaper statements" proves upon examination to be: 1. Testimony of unimpeached and in many cases uncontradicted witnesses, given under oath in legislative investigations and in court, subject to examination and cross-examination and rebuttal. 2. Reports of State legislative committees. 3. Copies of the contracts.[742] 4. Decision of courts, State and national.[743] The South Improvement plan of 1872 is still in unrelenting operation, according to the latest news. A case is now pending before the Interstate Commerce Commission,[744] in which charges of highway abuse even more sensational than any of those we have seen judicially proved are made against the thirty railroads by which the oil of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York reaches the Pacific coast. A San Francisco oil dealer is the petitioner for relief. He recites the discriminations given the oil combination on the Pacific coast before the Interstate Commerce law was enacted. These were admitted by the officials of the roads before the United States Pacific Railway Commission of 1887. The traffic managers of the Southern Pacific testified that the oil combination, "from the time it acquired the oil business on this coast, had lower rates than the general tariff provided, or than other shippers paid on coal oil."[745] The general freight agent of the Central Pacific Railroad admitted that his road had the same arrangement, and had accepted the business "at rates dictated" by the oil combination.[746] The general traffic manager of the Union Pacific Railroad said: "We have paid them a good deal in rebates." It was a "pretty large" preference. "What was the effect on the small dealer?" "I should think it would be embarrassing to the small shipper!"[747] When the Interstate Commerce law went into force the oil combination introduced a patented car for the transcontinental trade, which it claimed the sole right to use. Though the new car was to the disadvantage of the railroads, as it cost more to haul, the managers gave it lower rates than any other car and carried it back free, while they punished the shippers who gave them a lighter and better car by charging them $105 for carrying that back. The San Francisco complainant goes on to charge that a plan was concocted and put in operation by which rates were lowered whenever the combination wanted to fill its warehouses on the Pacific coast, and as soon as they were full were put back again. This lowering and raising of rates was "to the public sudden and unexpected."[748] It was known in advance only to the ring and the railroads. Before other shippers could take advantage of the low rates they would be raised again. The complaint recites that in pursuance of this plan, after the combination had transferred to the Pacific coast at the end of 1888 from its Eastern refineries all it needed for the next season's business, the railroads advanced the rates from 82-1/2 cents a hundred pounds to $1.25. The next May the railroads made a similar seesaw, and, he says, in December, 1892, "are still making ... such arbitrary and sudden reductions ... to the undue advantage" of the oil combination "and to the detriment and injury of all other shippers." The San Francisco merchant also charges that in the interest of the Eastern refineries of the combination rates are made to prevent the large product of the oil-fields and independent refineries of Colorado and Wyoming from reaching the Pacific coast, "which needs them to furnish fuel for its manufactories, as well as for light for its residents." Similarly we find the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad charging $105 for a car-load of cattle from Wyoming to Chicago, while for a car of 75 barrels of oil the freight would be $348. In connection with these charges the press published the telegrams, filling columns, which were said to have passed between the officials of the railroads and the oil combination in the negotiation of this arrangement. In one of these telegrams the freight agent of the Southern Pacific explains the new deal. "He" (the agent of the oil combination) "would stock up at the low rate, then notify the association of railroads when to advance." The advance or decline was to be "made at certain seasons of the year in accordance with this supply on hand." When the negotiation was finished and the plan was agreed to, a San Francisco agent of the oil combination is said to have telegraphed to its officers in New York: "I think we have managed this freight business pretty well from this long distance, especially when you think that we have secured the 90-cent rate with which to stock up from time to time." His telegram also discloses that the arrangement extended to lead and linseed-oil, showing, what is well known, that the combinations in these articles belong to the members of that in oil. These charges are, it is to be remembered, still unadjudicated, this published evidence is not yet substantiated. But the arrangement which is charged is in exact pursuance of that part of the South Improvement Company contract which bound the railroads to "lower or raise the gross rates of transportation ... for such times and to such extent as may be necessary to overcome ... competition."[749] And Attorney-General Olney has been publicly informed[750] that during the summer of 1894 oil rates between Pennsylvania and Colorado were put down from 75 cents a hundred to 25 cents, and a few weeks later raised again to the old rate. Another increase made the rates to Denver higher, for oil, than to the Pacific coast. He has been asked to ascertain, judicially, if this shuffling of rates was not made, like that complained of before the Interstate Commerce Commission, to allow the oil trust "to stock up at the old rate." His informants suggest that the same powers with which he has brought railway employés to trial for infractions of the Interstate Commerce law can be used against the railways. This is not all of the story. This patented car spoken of was a mere aggregation of old elements, as the courts held, and the patent was void. Advised by their lawyer that this would be the view the courts would have to take, competitors of the combination in the business of the Pacific coast, where they had been at the head until these new tricks of trade came in, introduced a car of their own of the same class. They thus became entitled to the same low rates and the same free return of the car as their powerful rival. This put them again on an equality in transportation. They had not been using these new cars long before two of them, shipped as usual from the East, failed to arrive. Their search for the missing cars put them in possession of the interesting information that a litigation, of which they had had no notice or knowledge whatever, had for some time been in progress, and was at that moment at the point of decision. As their interests had been entirely unrepresented, this decision would certainly have been against them, and would have forever made impossible the use of their cars on any railroad of the United States. This had been done by an apparently hostile litigation by the oil combination against the Southern Pacific Railroad. The former sued in the United States courts for an injunction to forbid the railroad from hauling the cars of the competitor, on the ground that they were an infringement on its own patented cars. No notice was given the persons most interested--the owners of the cars in question--whose business life was involved, and they were not at first made parties to the suit. The dummy defendant--the railroad--made no valid opposition, but with great condescension admitted that all the averments of its antagonist were true. The case was sent through the courts on a gallop to get a decision. After that the merchants whose cars were the object of the attack, as they had not been parties to the case, could not have it reopened, and it would stand against them without possibility of reversal. The firm found that a temporary injunction had been applied for and had been granted; that this had been followed by proceedings to make the injunction perpetual; that subpoenas had been issued, served, and returned, and an order had been obtained from the court for taking testimony. In place of the regular examiner of the court, a special examiner had been appointed; he had begun taking evidence the same day, and taking it privately. The testimony so taken had been sealed and filed. The railroad had made its answer December 2d, the testimony already taken was filed in court December 3d, making the case complete for decision by the judges. December 4th the firm heard for the first time of what was being done, and December 5th applied for the right to take part, which saved them. To get such cases ready for a hearing in the United States Circuit Court, where this was done, usually requires a year. But in this instance it was done in two weeks! Only just as the door of the court was closing irrevocably, as far as their rights were concerned, did the firm get inside, and secure leave to have their side represented. The whole fabric of the litigation fell at the first touch. The temporary injunction against the use of their car was dissolved, the permanent injunction was refused, the patent of the oil trust's car was declared worthless, and this decision was upheld by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in February, 1893.[751] Meanwhile their oil, side-tracked in the Mojave Desert and elsewhere, was being cooked to death, their customers were going elsewhere, and they were being put to loss and damages which they are now suing to have made good to them. "There are some equivocal circumstances in the case," said Judge Hoffman, dissolving the injunctions in 1890. He pointed out that the railroad made no objection to the injunction which deprived it of business. This "tends to corroborate suspicions," he said, suggested by other features of the case. The railroad persisted in remaining in the case to the end, after the real parties in interest came in, and, although codefendants with these parties, the road manoeuvred for the benefit of the other side in a way which the Court again said "had an equivocal appearance." The counsel for the firm, in his brief for the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, pointed out more causes for "suspicion." He showed the Court that the records of the case had been mutilated in many places. All the mutilations were in favor of the other side of the case. Who was the author of the mutilations was not shown, but it was shown that the record had been intrusted by the lower court to a representative of one of the oil trust, to be printed and delivered to the Court of Appeals. "It would be a very easy matter for a vicious attorney," said the lawyer of the independents, "under such circumstances, to make changes and alterations in the record that might not be noticed, but would nevertheless greatly prejudice the case." When the victims of the smokeless rebate used the only property many of them had left--their right of appeal to courts or Legislature or executive officials--they were showered with abuse, as people with "private grievances,"[752] "strikers and sore-heads," "black-mailers,"[753] "moss-backs," ... "naturally left in the lurch" ... "people who came forward with envy and jealousy of the success" of the oil combination,[754] "throttlers," "ravenous wolves," "hoary old reprobate," "senile old liar," "public till-tapper," "plunderers," "pestilence."[755] Such are a few of the blossoms of rhetoric with which those who sought their rights in courts or before the Legislature have been crowned. These witnesses have come forward all through the period between 1872 and 1892, and from every point of importance in the industry--New York, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Oil City, San Francisco, Titusville, Philadelphia, Marietta, Buffalo, Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, New Orleans. They have come from every province of the industry--the refineries, the oil fields, the pipe lines, railroads, the wholesale and retail markets. Bound together by no common tie of organization or partnership, they have, each and all, exactly the same kind of story to tell. The substance of their complaint--that one selected knot of men, members of one organization, were given, unlawfully, the control of the highways, to the exclusion and ruin of the people--has been sustained by the evidence taken by every official investigation, and by the decision of every court to which the facts have been submitted. As the counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce before the New York Legislative Committee of 1879 said: "Such a power makes it possible to the freight agents of the railways to constitute themselves special partners in every line of business in the United States, contributing as their share of capital to the business the ability to crush out rivals." Men who can choose which merchants, manufacturers, producers shall go to market and which stay at home, have a key that will unlock the door of every business house on the line; they know the combination of every safe. In their appeal to the executive of Pennsylvania, the Petroleum Producers' Union refer to the conduct of the railroad officials as "inexplicable upon any ordinary hypothesis, or under any known theory of railroad politics."[756] What the railroad managers did, we know; why they did it, has never been judicially demonstrated. One of the earliest intimations of the kind of lubricant used was given by the anti-monopoly leader of the people in the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania of 1872, who is now the legal leader of the oil combination. He said: "I am told that discriminations are now made to so great an extent as to be ruinous to certain companies unless the railroad companies' officers are given a bonus. That is the evil under which we labor. I do not know how to cure it, but it must be cured somehow." Again he said: "It is charged--I do not make the charge myself--but it is charged upon a railroad company running through the oil regions that it will not, without delay, transport oil delivered to the railroad station by the various pipe lines unless it is interested in the pipe line.... It is said that whenever a new pipe line is built, it is necessary that somebody connected with the particular railroad company shall be presented with stock in the pipe line; otherwise, it (the railroad company) will not furnish cars without tedious and unnecessary delay. This is a discrimination which should be stopped."[757] It is plain that the purpose of the discrimination was something more than to shunt the control of the trade--more than "to maintain the business" of the favorite. Ten cents a barrel difference would have done that, for, as the Supreme Court of Ohio pointed out, that alone amounted to a tax of 21 per cent. a year on the capital of the "outsiders."[758] When 10 cents was enough, why was the tax made 22-1/2 cents, 25 cents, 64-1/2 cents up to $1.10? Some railroad men are known to have been stockholders in the oil combination. "I think I owned--I guess I had $100,000 in it.... I don't know anything at all about it"--the company--the head of the New York Central admitted.[759] Who were the owners of certain shares of their capital stock these men have always refused to divulge. In giving in court a list of stockholders of one of their corporations one of the officers uncovered only three-quarters of the stock. Who held the other fourth he avowed he could not say, although the stock-book was in his custody.[760] The dividends were paid to the vice-president, and by him handed over to these veiled prophets. There was a similar mystery about the owners of about $2,000,000 of the National Transit stock, the concern which owns and manages the pipe lines. Asked for the names of the owners of this portion, the "secretary" said: "It is a private matter.... I decline to answer."[761] The president of this pipe-line branch also refused to give Congress this information.[762] This secrecy will couple itself at once in the mind of the investigator with the charges just quoted, that railroad officials had to be given backsheesh of pipe-line stock before their roads would carry the oil of the pipe lines. The United States Senate Committee which investigated the cattle and meat monopolies had a similar experience. Their report says: "The secretary of the Union Stockyards testified at Chicago that when the company was established the stock was subscribed by the railroads; but when asked to show his stock-books he declined, after consultation with the company's attorneys, and persisted in this refusal at Washington City. For the purposes of our investigation it was not considered necessary to ascertain in whose names the stock now stands, for we were satisfied that whatever the ownership it would not appear in the names of the railroad presidents, directors, and stockholders, who are the real owners.... The refusal of the secretary, under direction of his employers, to make public the list of stockholders must have been because of the fact that the same men own the stockyards and the railroads running to them, and they do not propose to submit their books to scrutiny because they dread the truth.... This extraordinary conduct on the part of the stockyards company is not alone in the chain of evidence which shows complicity between the stockyards and the railroads."[763] The smokeless rebate makes the secret of success in business to be not manufacture, but manufracture--breaking down with a strong hand the true makers of things. To those who can get the rebate it makes no difference who does the digging, building, mining, making, producing the million forms of the wealth they covet for themselves. They need only get control of the roads. All that they want of the wealth of others can be switched off the highways into their hands. To succeed, ambitious men must make themselves refiners of freight rates, distillers of discriminations, owners, not of lands, mines, and forests--not in the first place, at least--but of the railway officials through whose hands the produce must go to market; builders, not of manufactories, but of privileges; inventors only of schemes to keep for themselves the middle of the road and both sides of it; contrivers, not of competition, but of ways to tax the property of their competitors into their pockets. They need not make money; they can take it from those who have made it. In the United States the processes of business feudalization are moving more rapidly to the end than in any other country. In Chicago, the youngest of the great cities of the youngest of the great nations, there are fewer wholesale dry-goods stores in 1894 for a population of 1,600,000 than there were in 1860 for 112,172. In almost every one of the meteoric careers by which a few men in each trade are rising to supreme wealth, it will generally be found that to some privilege on the railed highways, accomplished by the rebate, is due the part of their rise which is extraordinary. A few cases of great wealth from the increased value of land, a few from remarkable inventions like the sewing-machine, are only exceptions. From using railroad power to give better rates to the larger man, it was an easy step to using it to make a favorite first a larger man, then the largest man, and finally the only man in the business. In meat and cattle we see men rising from poverty to great wealth. From being competitors, like other men, in the scramble, they get into the comfortable seat of control of the prices at which the farmer must sell cattle, and at which the people must buy meat.[764] Many other men had thrift, sobriety, industry, but only these had the rebate, and so only these are the "fittest in the struggle for existence." We find a merchant prince of the last generation in New York gathering into his hands a share of the dry-goods business of the country which appears entirely disproportionate to his ability and energy, great though these be. Is his secret a brain so much larger than his competitors' brains as his business is greater than theirs? The freight agent of the New York Central testified that he gave this man a special rate "to build up and develop their business." "They were languishing and suffering?" "To a great extent."[765] "This," said the counsel for the Chamber of Commerce of New York before the committee, "is deliberately making the rich richer and the poor poorer, by taxing the poor for the benefit of the rich through the instrumentality of the freight charge."[766] The officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad, by the use of rebates, handed over the State of Pennsylvania to three coal-dealers, each of whom had his territory, and was supreme in it, as would-be competitors found out when they undertook to ship coal into his market. They made a similar division of the iron and steel business. The rebate is the golden-rule of the "gospel of wealth." We have already seen that the secret of the few corporations which have become the owners of almost every acre of the anthracite coal of Pennsylvania was the rebate.[767] Along one of the most important lines out of Chicago grain dealers who had been buying and selling in an open market, building elevators, investing capital and life, found five years ago market and railroad and livelihood suddenly closed to them, and the work of thirty years brought to an untimely end. The United States Interstate Commerce Commission, and the United States District Attorneys co-operating with it, broke down in the attempt to compel the railroad men who gave these privileges of transportation, or the business men who received them, to testify or to produce their books. The United States grand-jury in Chicago, in December, 1890, proceeded against the shippers and the railroad men. All of them refused to tell the rates given or received, or to produce their books. Why do you refuse to answer? they were asked. Because to do so would incriminate us. Here, too, would-be successful men have gone gunning with the smokeless rebate for control of the wheat and corn and all the produce of the American farmer. Grain is fated to go the way that oil, hard coal, cattle, and meat have already gone. The farmer may remain the nominal owner of his farm under these circumstances, but he will be real owner of nothing but the piece of paper title. First the product of the farm; then the farm. In America rises the shadow of a coming land-ownership more concentrated, more cruel, with the impersonal cruelty of corporate anonymity, than any the world has yet seen. The grain broker who becomes, by favor of the general freight agent, the sole shipper and warehouseman of grain along a line of railroad, becomes thereby the sole buyer, and in the sole buyer of the produce we have the fast-growing germ of the future sole buyer of the land. "Petroleum is the victim to-day," said the address, in 1872, of the Petroleum Producers' Union "to all newspapers and boards of trade opposing monopoly.... Coal, iron, cotton, breadstuffs, or live-stock may be in the grasp of the monopoly to-morrow." The prediction is more than half fulfilled. "I ran away from home, and went to California," said a prominent grain merchant to the writer, "to escape being compelled to testify as to the freight rates I was paying. But these decisions that we cannot be forced to incriminate ourselves give me safe-conduct, and I am going home to take all the rebates I can get." This is what is going on to-day in the "division of property" in America. Our society is woven together by the steam shuttle that moves between its farms and dinner-tables, its cotton-fields and factories, thousands of miles apart, and the shuttle is crooked. Out of $800,000,000 paid yearly in this country for the carriage of freight, it was estimated in 1888, by one who knew, that $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 goes to favored shippers.[768] As the result of personal examination made as an expert for stockholders, he declared that one of the great trunk lines had in the last twenty years thus diverted to favorites of the managers $100,000,000 of the money of the stockholders. Besides his yachts and trotters, every Captain of Industry worth talking about keeps his stud of railway presidents and general freight agents. Public opinion, as yet only in the gristle in these new questions, turns upon first one and then another as the author of its troubles--the soulless corporation, the combination of corporations, railroad oppression, or what not. But the corporation is merely a cover, the combination of corporations an advantage, the private ownership of public highways an opportunity, and the rebate its perfect tool. The real actors are men; the real instrument, the control of their fellows by wealth, and the mainspring of the evil is the morals and economics which cipher that brothers produce wealth when they are only cheating each other out of birthrights. The success of the same men in Europe shows that railroad discrimination is not the essence of their power, though it has in America been the chief instrument. By their wealth and their willingness to use it in their way they have become supreme. Supreme even where, as in England and Germany, they had no such unjust and crushing preference on the highways as in America. Back of highway privilege, back of money power, back of trade supremacy gained by these two means must be reckoned, as the essence of this phenomenon, the morality--our morality--which not only allows but encourages men to do each other to death, provided only the weapon be a bargain and the arena a market. "Everything shall not go to market," says Emerson; but everything does go to market. The millionaire is the modern hero, says the New York _Evening Post_. The men who have found in the rebate the secret of business success--and there are more of them than the public guesses--have only extended a fiercer hand to the results all were aiming at. They have used the smokeless rebate because it was the best gun. But if that had not been ready to their hand, they would have taken the next best. The course of conquest might have been slower, but, unless checked by moral interventions, it would have reached the same end. If society is founded on the idea that property belongs to the strongest, these will sooner or later get all the property, by bargains or by battles according to "the spirit of the age." The highest State and national courts and the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States have sustained the people in the assertion of their rights, under the law, to come and go with free and equal rights on the highways. The judges have solemnly warned the guilty men that they must give up their "abhorrent" attempt to drive citizens out of the industries of their choice, and to add the property of the people to their vast estates. Although thus declared in the right by the highest judges of the law and the fact, the people are poor, defeated, and unsuccessful. Though thus warned by the authoritative voice of the ministers of right and justice that their purposes and practices are iniquitous and intolerable, the men who have determined that whole provinces of American industry shall be theirs, and theirs only, continue their warfare of extermination upon poor men with methods practically unchanged. They evade or defy the laws of the States and of the nation, and the decisions of the courts, State and national. Guided by the advice of the skilfullest lawyers, they persist in open violation, or make such changes in their procedure as will nullify statute and decision without danger to them. For thirty years the independents in the oil regions have had this reinforcement of the law, and for thirty years, in spite of it, their rights have been defiantly, continuously violated to the common ruin. The people spend their lives passing about from field or factory, or shop or office, to market, from market to court, from court to Legislature, from Legislature to printing-office. They are the type of the time, disturbed by the demand of the new tyranny of wealth for tribute from their daily labors, and forbidden to rest until out of their suffering a new liberty has been won--the industrial liberty, for which political and religious liberty wait for their full realization. CHAPTER XXXIV THE OLD SELF-INTEREST The corn of the coming harvest is growing so fast that, like the farmer standing at night in his fields, we can hear it snap and crackle. We have been fighting fire on the well-worn lines of old-fashioned politics and political economy, regulating corporations, and leaving competition to regulate itself. But the flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State and have bred individuals greater than themselves, and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master instead of servant, property in many necessaries of life becoming monopoly of the necessaries of life. We are still, in part, as Emerson says, in the quadruped state. Our industry is a fight of every man for himself. The prize we give the fittest is monopoly of the necessaries of life, and we leave these winners of the powers of life and death to wield them over us by the same "self-interest" with which they took them from us. In all this we see at work a "principle" which will go into the records as one of the historic mistakes of humanity. Institutions stand or fall by their philosophy, and the main doctrine of industry since Adam Smith has been the fallacy that the self-interest of the individual was a sufficient guide to the welfare of the individual and society. Heralded as a final truth of "science" this proves to have been nothing higher than a temporary formula for a passing problem. It was a reflection in words of the policy of the day. When the Middle Ages landed on the shores of the sixteenth century they broke ranks, and for three hundred years every one has been scurrying about to get what he could. Society was not highly developed enough to organize the exploration and subjugation of worlds of new things and ideas on any broader basis than private enterprise, personal adventure. People had to run away from each other and from the old ideas, nativities, guilds, to seize the prizes of the new sciences, the new land, the new liberties which make modern times. They did not go because the philosophers told them to. The philosophers saw them going and wrote it down in a book, and have believed themselves ever since to be the inventors of the division of labor and the discoverers of a new world of social science. But now we are touching elbows again, and the dream of these picnic centuries that the social can be made secondary to the individual is being chased out of our minds by the hard light of the crisis into which we are waking. "It is a law of business for each proprietor to pursue his own interest," said the committee of Congress which in 1893 investigated the coal combinations. "There is no hope for any of us, but the weakest must go first," is the golden rule of business.[769] There is no other field of human associations in which any such rule of action is allowed. The man who should apply in his family or his citizenship this "survival of the fittest" theory as it is practically professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct, as we do with monsters. To divide the supply of food between himself and his children according to their relative powers of calculation, to follow his conception of his own self-interest in any matter which the self-interest of all has taken charge of, to deal as he thinks best for himself with foreigners with whom his country is at war, would be a short road to the penitentiary or the gallows. In trade men have not yet risen to the level of the family life of the animals. The true law of business is that all must pursue the interest of all. In the law, the highest product of civilization, this has long been a commonplace. The safety of the people is the supreme law. We are in travail to bring industry up to this. Our century of the caprice of the individual as the law-giver of the common toil, to employ or disemploy, to start or stop, to open or close, to compete or combine, has been the disorder of the school while the master slept. The happiness, self-interest, or individuality of the whole is not more sacred than that of each, but it is greater. They are equal in quality, but in quantity they are greater. In the ultimate which the mathematician, the poet, the reformer projects the two will coincide. Our world, operated by individual motive, is the country of the Chinese fable, in which the inhabitants went on one leg. Yes, but an "enlightened self-interest"? The perfect self-interest of the perfect individual is an admirable conception, but it is still individual, and the world is social. The music of the spheres is not to be played on one string. Nature does nothing individually. All forces are paired like the sexes, and every particle of matter in the universe has to obey every other particle. When the individual has progressed to a perfect self-interest, there will be over against it, acting and reacting with it, a correspondingly perfect self-interest of the community. Meanwhile, we who are the creators of society have got the times out of joint, because, less experienced than the Creator of the balanced matter of earth, we have given the precedence to the powers on one side. As gods we are but half-grown. For a hundred years or so our economic theory has been one of industrial government by the self-interest of the individual. Political government by the self-interest of the individual we call anarchy. It is one of the paradoxes of public opinion that the people of America, least tolerant of this theory of anarchy in political government, lead in practising it in industry. Politically, we are civilized; industrially, not yet. Our century, given to this _laissez-faire_--"leave the individual alone; he will do what is best for himself, and what is best for him is best for all"--has done one good: it has put society at the mercy of its own ideals, and has produced an actual anarchy in industry which is horrifying us into a change of doctrines. We have not been able to see the people for the persons in it. But there is a people, and it is as different from a mere juxtaposition of persons as a globe of glass from the handful of sand out of which it was melted. It is becoming, socially, known to itself, with that self-consciousness which distinguishes the quick from the dead and the unborn. Every community, said Pascal, is a man, and every man, said Plato, is a community. There is a new self-interest--that of the "man called million," as Mazzini named him--and with this social motive the other, which has so long had its own way, has now to reckon. Mankind has gone astray following a truth seen only partially, but coronated as a whole truth. Many civilizations must worship good men as gods and follow the divinity of one and another before civilization sees that these are only single stars in a firmament of humanity. Our civilization has followed the self-interest of the individual to learn that it was but one of the complex forces of self-interest. The true _laissez-faire_ is, let the individual do what the individual can do best, and let the community do what the community can do best. The _laissez-faire_ of social self-interest, if true, cannot conflict with the individual self-interest, if true, but it must outrank it always. What we have called "free competition" has not been free, only freer than what went before. The free is still to come. The pressure we feel is notice to prepare for it. Civilization--the process of making men citizens in their relations to each other, by exacting of each that he give to all that which he receives from all--has reached only those forms of common effort which, because most general and most vital, first demanded its harmonizing touch. Men joining in the labors of the family, the mutual sacrifices of the club or the church in the union of forces for self-defence and for the gains of co-operation on the largest scale in labors of universal concern, like letter-carrying, have come to be so far civilized. History is condensed in the catchwords of the people. In the phrases of individual self-interest which have been the shibboleths of the main activities of our last hundred years were prophesied: the filling up of the Mississippi by the forest-destroying, self-seeking lumber companies of the North; the disintegration of the American family--among the rich by too little poverty, and among the poor by too much; the embezzlement of public highways and public franchises into private property; the devolution of the American merchants and manufacturers into the business dependants--and social and political dependants, therefore--of a few men in each great department of trade, from dry-goods to whiskey; the devolution of the free farmer into a tenant, and of the working-man into a fixture of the locomotive or the factory, forbidden to leave except by permission of his employer or the public; and that mêlée of injunctions, bayonets, idle men and idle machinery, rich man's fear of poor man and poor man's fear of starvation, we call trade and industry. Where the self-interest of the individual is allowed to be the rule both of social and personal action, the level of all is forced down to that of the lowest. Business excuses itself for the things it does--cuts in wages, exactions in hours, tricks of competition--on the plea that the merciful are compelled to follow the cruel. "It is pleaded as an excuse by those" (common carriers) "who desire to obey the" (Interstate Commerce) "law that self-preservation drives them to violate it because other carriers persist in doing so," says Senator Cullom. When the self-interest of society is made the standard the lowest must rise to the average. The one pulls down, the other up. That men's hearts are bad and that bad men will do bad things has a truth in it. But whatever the general average of morals, the anarchy which gives such individuals their head and leaves them to set the pace for all will produce infinitely worse results than a policy which applies mutual checks and inspirations. Bad kings make bad reigns, but monarchy is bad because it is arbitrary power, and that, whether it be political or industrial, makes even good men bad. A partial truth universally applied as this of self-interest has been is a universal error. Everything goes to defeat. Highways are used to prevent travel and traffic. Ownership of the means of production is sought in order to "shut down" production, and the means of plenty make famine. All follow self-interest to find that though they have created marvellous wealth it is not theirs. We pledge "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to establish the rule of the majority, and end by finding that the minority--a minority in morals, money, and men--are our masters whichever way we turn. We agonize over "economy," but sell all our grain and pork and oil and cotton at exchanges where we pay brokerage on a hundred or a thousand barrels or bushels or bales of wind to get one real one sold. These intolerabilities--sweat-shops where model merchants buy and sell the cast-off scarlet-fever skins of the poor, factory and mine where childhood is forbidden to become manhood and manhood is forbidden to die a natural death, mausoleums in which we bury the dead rich, slums in which we bury the living poor, coal pools with their manufacture of artificial winter--all these are the rule of private self-interest arrived at its destination. A really human life is impossible in our cities, but they cannot be reconstructed under the old self-interest. Chicago was rebuilt wrong after the fire. Able men pointed out the avenues to a wider and better municipal life, but they could not be opened through the private interpositions that blocked the way. The slaughter of railway men coupling cars was shown, in a debate in the United States Senate, to be twice as great as it would be if the men were in active service in war. But under the scramble for private gain our society on its railway side cannot develop the energy to introduce the improved appliances ready to hand which would save these lives, all young and vigorous. The cost of the change would be repaid in 100-per-cent. dividends every year by the money value alone to us of the men now killed and wounded. But we shall have to wait for a nobler arithmetic to give us investments so good as that. The lean kine of self-interest devour the fat kine. The railroad stockholder, idolater of self-interest, lets himself be robbed--like the stockholder of all the railroads in this story--either because he is too rich to mind, too feeble to make himself heard, or too much implicated elsewhere as principal in the same kind of depredation to care or dare to stir what he knows to be a universal scandal. He has become within himself the battle-ground of a troop of warring devils of selfishness; his selfishness as a stockholder clutched at the throat by his selfishness as a parasite, in some "inside deal," feeding on the stockholder; some rebate arrangement, fast-freight line, sleeping-car company, or what not. And, as like as not, upon this one's back is another devil of depredation from some inner ring within a ring. Torn at the vitals, the enlightened swinishness of our _leit-motif_ is hastening to throw itself into the sea. We are very poor. The striking feature of our economic condition is our poverty, not our wealth. We make ourselves "rich" by appropriating the property of others by methods which lessen the total property of all. Spain took such riches from America and grew poor. Modern wealth more and more resembles the winnings of speculators in bread during famine--worse, for to make the money it makes the famine. What we call cheapness shows itself to be unnatural fortunes for a very few, monstrous luxury for them and proportionate deprivation for the people, judges debauched, trustees dishonored, Congress and State legislatures insulted and defied, when not seduced, multitudes of honest men ruined and driven to despair, the common carrier made a mere instrument for the creation of a new baronage, an example set to hundreds of would-be commercial Cæsars to repeat this rapine in other industries and call it "business," a process set in operation all over the United States for the progressive extinction of the independence of laboring men, and all business men except the very rich, and their reduction to a state of vassalage to lords or squires in each department of trade and industry. All these--tears, ruin, dishonor, and treason--are the unmarked additions to the "price marked on the goods." Shall we buy cheap of Captain Kidd, and shut our ears to the agony that rustles in his silks? Shall we believe that Captain Kidd, who kills commerce by the act which enables him to sell at half-price, is a cheapener? Shall we preach and practise doctrines which make the Black Flag the emblem of success on the high seas of human interchange of service, and complain when we see mankind's argosies of hope and plenty shrink into private hoards of treasure, buried in selfish sands to be lost forever, even to cupidity? If this be cheapness, it comes by the grace of the seller, and that is the first shape of dearness, as security in society by the grace of the ruler is the first form of insecurity. The new wealth now administers estates of fabulous extent from metropolitan bureaus, and all the profits flow to men who know nothing of the real business out of which they are made. Red tape, complication, the hired man, conspiracy have taken the place of the watchful eye of the owner, the old-fashioned hand at the plough that must "hold or drive." We now have Captains of Industry, with a few aids, rearranging from office-chairs this or that industry, by mere contrivances of wit compelling the fruits of the labor of tens of thousands of their fellows, who never saw them, never heard of them, to be every day deposited unwilling and unwitting to their own credit at the bank; setting, as by necromancy, hundreds of properties, large and small, in a score of communities, to flying through invisible ways into their hands; sitting calm through all the hubbub raised in courts, legislatures, and public places, and by dictating letters and whispering words remaining the master magicians of the scene; defying, though private citizens, all the forces and authorities of a whole people; by the mere mastery of compelling brain, without putting hand to anything, opening or closing the earth's treasures of oil or coal or gas or copper or what not; pulling down or putting up great buildings, factories, towns themselves; moving men and their money this way and that; inserting their will as part of the law of life of the people--American, European, and Asiatic--and, against the protest of a whole civilization, making themselves, their methods and principles, its emblematic figures. Syndicates, by one stroke, get the power of selling dear on one side, and producing cheap on the other. Thus they keep themselves happy, prices high, and the people hungry. What model merchant could ask more? The dream of the king who wished that all his people had but one neck that he might decapitate them at one blow is realized to-day in this industrial garrote. The syndicate has but to turn its screw, and every neck begins to break. Prices paid to such intercepters are not an exchange of service; they are ransom paid by the people for their lives. The ability of the citizen to pay may fluctuate; what he must pay remains fixed, or advances like the rent of the Irish tenant to the absentee landlord until the community interfered. Those who have this power to draw the money from the people--from every railroad station, every street-car, every fireplace, every salt-cellar, every bread-pan, wash-board, and coal-scuttle--to their own safes have the further incentive to make this money worth the most possible. By contracting the issue of currency and contracting it again by hoarding it in their banks, safe-deposit vaults, and the government treasury, they can depress the prices of all that belongs to the people. Their own prices are fixed. These are "regular prices," established by price-lists. Given, as a ruling motive, the principles of business--to get the most and give the least; given the legal and economic, physical and mechanical control, possible under our present social arrangements, to the few over the many, and the certain end of all this, if unarrested, unreversed, can be nothing less than a return to chattel slavery. There may be some finer name, but the fact will not be finer. Between our present tolerance and our completed subjection the distance is not so far as that from the equality and simplicity of our Pilgrim Fathers to ourselves. Everything withers--even charity. Aristocratic benevolence spends a shrunken stream in comparison with democratic benevolence. In an address to the public, soliciting subscriptions, the Committee of the United Hospitals Association of New York said, in December, 1893: "The committee have found that, through the obliteration of old methods of individual competition by the establishment of large corporations and trusts in modern times, the income of such charitable institutions as are supported by the individual gifts of the benevolent has been seriously affected." Franklin pricked the bubble of the lottery by showing that to buy all the tickets and win all the prizes was to be most surely the loser. Our nascent common-sense begins to see that the many must always lose where all spend their lives trying to get more than they give, and that all lose when any lose. The welfare of all is more than the welfare of the many, the few, or the one. If the few or the one are not fine enough to accept this truth from sentiment or conscience, they can find other reasons as convincing, though not as amiable. From the old régime of France, the slave-holders of the South, the death-rate of tyrants, the fear of their brothers which the rich and the great of to-day are printing on their faces, in fugitive-slave treaties with Russia, and in the frowning arsenals and armories building in our cities for "law and order," they can learn how to spell self-interest. If all will sacrifice themselves, none need be sacrificed. But if one may sacrifice another, all are sacrificed. That is the difference between self-interest and other-self interest. In industry we have been substituting all the mean passions that can set man against man in place of the irresistible power of brotherhood. To tell us of the progressive sway of brotherhood in all human affairs is the sole message of history. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is not the phrase of a ritual of sentiment for the unapplied emotion of pious hours; it is the exact formula of the force to-day operating the greatest institutions man has established. It is as secular as sacred. Only by each neighbor giving the other every right of free thought, free movement, free representation which he demands for himself; only by calling every neighbor a friend, and literally laying down his life for his friend against foreign invasion or domestic tumult; only by the equalization which gives the vote to all and denies kingship to all, however strong or "fittest"--only thus is man establishing the community, the republic, which, with all its failings, is the highest because the realest application of the spirit of human brotherhood. Wonderful are the dividends of this investment. You are but one, and can give only yourself to America. You give free speech, and 65,000,000 of your countrymen will guard the freedom of your lips. Your single offer of your right arm puts 65,000,000 of sheltering arms about you. Does "business" pay such profits? Wealth will remain a secret unguessed by business until it has reincorporated itself under the law which reckons as the property of each one the total of all the possessions of all his neighbors. Society could not live a day, the Bishop of Peterborough said, if it put the principles of Christ into practice. There is no rarer gift than that of eyes to see what we see. Society is society, and lives its day solely by virtue of having put into actual routine and matter-of-fact application the principles of Christ and other bringers of the same message. Imperfect and faulty though the execution, it is these principles which are the family, the tribe, the sect, the club, the mutual-benefit society, the State, with their mutual services, forbearance, and guarantees. The principles of Christ are the cause and essence of society. They are not the ideal of which we dream; they are the applied means with which we are working out our real life in "the light of common day." They have not been so much revealed to us by our inspired ones as best seen and best said by them. Insurance for fire, accident, sickness, old age, death--the ills that flesh is heir to--has the same co-operation for its innermost forces. Limited now by the intervention of the selfishness of profit-seeking, it needs only to be freed from this, and added, as in New Zealand, to the growing list of the mutualities of the general welfare operated by the State to be seen as what it is. The golden rule is the original of every political constitution, written and unwritten, and all our reforms are but the pains with which we strive to improve the copy. In the worst governments and societies that have existed one good can be seen--so good that the horrors of them fall back into secondary places as extrinsic, accidental. That good is the ability of men to lead the life together. The more perfect monopoly makes itself the more does it bring into strong lights the greatest fact of our industry, of far more permanent value than the greed which has for the moment made itself the cynosure of all eyes. It makes this fair world more fair to consider the loyalties, intelligences, docilities of the multitudes who are guarding, developing, operating with the faithfulness of brothers and the keen interest of owners properties and industries in which brotherhood is not known and their title is not more than a tenancy at will. One of the largest stones in the arch of "consolidation," perhaps the key-stone, is that men have become so intelligent, so responsive and responsible, so co-operative that they can be intrusted in great masses with the care of vast properties owned entirely by others and with the operation of complicated processes, although but a slender cost of subsistence is awarded them out of fabulous profits. The spectacle of the million and more employés of the railroads of this country despatching trains, maintaining tracks, collecting fares and freights, and turning over hundreds of millions of net profits to the owners, not one in a thousand of whom would know how to do the simplest of these things for himself, is possible only where civilization has reached a high average of morals and culture. More and more the mills and mines and stores, and even the farms and forests, are being administered by others than the owners. The virtue of the people is taking the place Poor Richard thought only the eye of the owner could fill. If mankind, driven by their fears and the greed of others, can do so well, what will be their productivity and cheer when the "interest of all" sings them to their work? This new morality and new spring of wealth have been seized first by the appropriating ones among us. But, as has been in government, their intervention of greed is but a passing phase. Mankind belongs to itself, not to kings or monopolists, and will supersede the one as surely as the other with the institutions of democracy. Yes, Callicles, said Socrates, the greatest are usually the bad, for they have the power. If power could continue paternal and benign, mankind would not be rising through one emancipation after another into a progressive communion of equalities. The individual and society will always be wrestling with each other in a composition of forces. But to just the extent to which civilization prevails, society will be held as inviolable as the individual; not subordinate--indeed inaudible--as now in the counting-room and corporation-office. We have overworked the self-interest of the individual. The line of conflict between individual and social is a progressive one of the discovery of point after point in which the two are identical. Society thus passes from conflict to harmony, and on to another conflict. Civilization is the unceasing accretion of these social solutions. We fight out to an equilibrium, as in the abolition of human slavery; then upon this new level thus built up we enter upon the struggle for a new equilibrium, as now in the labor movement. The man for himself destroys himself and all men; only society can foster him and them. The greatest happiness of the greatest number is only the doctrine of self-interest writ large and made more dangerous by multitude. It is the self-interest of the majority, and this has written some of the unloveliest chapters of history. There have never been slaves more miserable than those of Sparta, where the State was the owner. American democracy prepares to repeat these distresses of the selfishness of the many, and gives notice to its railway employés of a new divine right--"the convenience of the public"--to which they must forego every right of manhood. No better definition of slave could be found than one who must work at the convenience of another. This is the position into which recent legal decisions and acts of the Federal executive force railway men. These speak in the name of Interstate Commerce, but their logic can be as easily applied by State judges to State commerce, and all working-men are manifestly as necessary, each in his function, to the convenience of the public as the men of the rail. The greatest happiness of all must be the formula. When Lamennais said, "I love my family more than myself, my village more than my family, my country more than my village, and mankind more than my country," he showed himself not only a good lover, but the only good arithmetician. Children yet, we run everything we do--love or war, work or leisure, religion or liberty--to excess. Every possibility of body and mind must be played upon till it is torn to pieces, as toys by children. Priests, voluptuaries, tyrants, knights, ascetics--in the long procession of fanatics a new-comer takes his place; he is called "the model merchant"--the cruelest fanatic in history. He is the product of ages given to progressive devotion to "trading." He is the high-priest of the latest idolatry, the self-worship of self-interest. Whirling-dervish of the market, self, friends, and family, body and soul, loves, hopes, and faith, all are sacrificed to seeing how many "turns" he can make before he drops dead. Trade began, Sir Henry Sumner Maine tells us, not within the family or community, but without. Its first appearances are on the neutral borderland between hostile tribes. There, in times of peace, they meet to trade, and think it no sin that "the buyer must beware," since the buyer is an enemy. Trade has spread thence, carrying with itself into family and State the poison of enmity. From the fatherhood of the old patriarchal life, where father and brother sold each other nothing, the world has chaffered along to the anarchy of a "free" trade which sells everything. One thing after another has passed out from under the régime of brotherhood and passed in under that of bargainhood. The ground we move on, the bodies we work with, and the necessaries we live by are all being "exchanged," by "rules fetched with cupidity from heartless schools," into the ownership of the Jacobs of mankind. By these rules the cunning are the good, and the weak and the tender the bad, and the good are to have all the goods and the weak are to have nothing. These rules give one the power to supply or deny work to thousands, and to use the starvation terms of the men he disemploys as the measure of the cost of subsistence of all workmen. This must be near the end. The very churches have become mercantilized, and are markets in which "prophets" are paid fancy prices--"always called of God," as Milton said, "but always to a greater benefice"--and worshippers buy and sell knee-room. Conceptions of duty take on a correspondingly unnatural complexion. The main exhortations the world gives beginners are how to "get on"--the getting on so ardently inculcated being to get, like the old-man-of-the-sea, on somebody's back. "If war fails you in the country where you are, you must go where there is war," said one of the successful men of the fourteenth century to a young knight who asked him for the Laws of Life. "I shall be perfectly satisfied with you," I heard one of the great business geniuses of America say to his son, "if you will only always go to bed at night worth more than when you got up in the morning." The system grows, as all systems do, more complicated, and gets further away from its first purposes of barter of real things and services. It goes more under the hands of men of apt selfishness, who push it further away from general comprehension and the general good. Tariffs, currencies, finances, freight-rate sheets, the laws, become instruments of privilege, and just in proportion become puzzles no people can decipher. "I have a right to buy my labor where I can buy it cheapest"--beginning as a protest against the selfish exclusions of antiquated trade-guilds outgrown by the new times--has at last come to mean, "I have a right to do anything to cheapen the labor I want to buy, even to destroying the family life of the people." When steaming kettles grew into beasts of burden and public highways dwindled into private property administered by private motives for private ends, all previous tendencies were intensified into a sudden whirl redistributing wealth and labors. It appears to have been the destiny of the railroad to begin and of oil to lubricate to its finish the last stage of this crazy commercialism. Business colors the modern world as war reddened the ancient world. Out of such delirium monsters are bred, and their excesses destroy the system that brought them forth. There is a strong suggestion of moral insanity in the unrelieved sameness of mood and unvarying repetition of one act in the life of the model merchant. Sane minds by an irresistible law alternate one tension with another. Only a lunatic is always smiling or always weeping or always clamoring for dividends. Eras show their last stages by producing men who sum up individually the morbid characteristics of the mass. When the crisis comes in which the gathering tendencies of generations shoot forward in the avalanche, there is born some group of men perfect for their function--good be it or bad. They need to take time for no second thought, and will not delay the unhalting reparations of nature by so much as the time given to one tear over the battle-field or the bargain. With their birth their mission is given them, whether it be the mission of Lucifer or Gabriel. This mission becomes their conscience. The righteous indignation that other men feel against sin these men feel against that which withstands them. Sincere as rattlesnakes, they are selfish with the unconsciousness possible to only the entirely commonplace, without the curiosity to question their times or the imagination to conceive the pain they inflict, and their every ideal is satisfied by the conventionalities of church, parlor, and counting-room. These men are the touchstones to wither the cant of an age. We preach "Do as you would be done by" in our churches, and "A fair exchange no robbery" in our counting-rooms, and "All citizens are equal as citizens" in courts and Congress. Just as we are in danger of believing that to say these things is to do them and be them, there come unto us these men, practical as granite and gravitation. Taking their cue not from our lips, but from our lives, they better the instruction, and, passing easily to the high seats at every table, prove that we are liars and hypocrites. Their only secret is that they do, better than we, the things we are all trying to do, but of which in our morning and evening prayers, seen of all men, we are continually making believe to pray: Good Lord, deliver us! When the hour strikes for such leaders, they come and pass as by a law of nature to the front. All follow them. It is their fate and ours that they must work out to the end the destiny interwoven of their own insatiate ambition and the false ideals of us who have created them and their opportunity. If our civilization is destroyed, as Macaulay predicted, it will not be by his barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above. Our great money-makers have sprung in one generation into seats of power kings do not know. The forces and the wealth are new, and have been the opportunity of new men. Without restraints of culture, experience, the pride, or even the inherited caution of class or rank, these men, intoxicated, think they are the wave instead of the float, and that they have created the business which has created them. To them science is but a never-ending répertoire of investments stored up by nature for the syndicates, government but a fountain of franchises, the nations but customers in squads, and a million the unit of a new arithmetic of wealth written for them. They claim a power without control, exercised through forms which make it secret, anonymous, and perpetual. The possibilities of its gratification have been widening before them without interruption since they began, and even at a thousand millions they will feel no satiation and will see no place to stop. They are gluttons of luxury and power, rough, unsocialized, believing that mankind must be kept terrorized. Powers of pity die out of them, because they work through agents and die in their agents, because what they do is not for themselves. Of gods, friends, learnings, of the uncomprehended civilization they overrun, they ask but one question: How much? What is a good time to sell? What is a good time to buy? The Church and the Capitol, incarnating the sacrifices and triumphs of a procession of martyrs and patriots since the dawn of freedom, are good enough for a money-changer's shop for them, and a market and shambles. Their heathen eyes see in the law and its consecrated officers nothing but an intelligence-office and hired men to help them burglarize the treasures accumulated for thousands of years at the altars of liberty and justice, that they may burn their marbles for the lime of commerce. By their windfall of new power they have been forced into the position of public enemies. Its new forms make them seem not to be within the jurisdiction of the social restraints which many ages of suffering have taught us to bind about the old powers of man over man. A fury of rule or ruin has always in the history of human affairs been a characteristic of the "strong men" whose fate it is to be in at the death of an expiring principle. The leaders who, two hundred years ago, would have been crazy with conquest, to-day are crazy with competition. To a dying era some man is always born to enfranchise it by revealing it to itself. Men repay such benefactors by turning to rend them. Most unhappy is the fate of him whose destiny it is to lead mankind too far in its own path. Such is the function of these men, such will be their lot, as that of those for whom they are building up these wizard wealths. Poor thinking means poor doing. In casting about for the cause of our industrial evils, public opinion has successively found it in "competition," "combination," the "corporations," "conspiracies," "trusts." But competition has ended in combination, and our new wealth takes as it chooses the form of corporation or trust, or corporation again, and with every change grows greater and worse. Under these kaleidoscopic masks we begin at last to see progressing to its terminus a steady consolidation, the end of which is one-man power. The conspiracy ends in one, and one cannot conspire with himself. When this solidification of many into one has been reached, we shall be at last face to face with the naked truth that it is not only the form but the fact of arbitrary power, of control without consent, of rule without representation that concerns us. Business motived by the self-interest of the individual runs into monopoly at every point it touches the social life--land monopoly, transportation monopoly, trade monopoly, political monopoly in all its forms, from contraction of the currency to corruption in office. The society in which in half a lifetime a man without a penny can become a hundred times a millionaire is as over-ripe, industrially, as was, politically, the Rome in which the most popular bully could lift himself from the ranks of the legion on to the throne of the Cæsars. Our rising issue is with business. Monopoly is business at the end of its journey. It has got there. The irrepressible conflict is now as distinctly with business as the issue so lately met was with slavery. Slavery went first only because it was the cruder form of business. Against the principles, and the men embodying them and pushing them to extremes--by which the powers of government, given by all for all, are used as franchises for personal aggrandizement; by which, in the same line, the common toil of all and the common gifts of nature, lands, forces, mines, sites, are turned from service to selfishness, and are made by one and the same stroke to give gluts to a few and impoverishment to the many--we must plan our campaign. The yacht of the millionaire incorporates a million days' labor which might have been given to abolishing the slums, and every day it runs the labor of hundreds of men is withdrawn from the production of helpful things for humanity, and each of us is equally guilty who directs to his own pleasure the labor he should turn to the wants of others. Our fanatic of wealth reverses the rule that serving mankind is the end and wealth an incident, and has made wealth the end and the service an accident, until he can finally justify crime itself if it is a means to the end--wealth--which has come to be the supreme good; and we follow him. It is an adjudicated fact of the business and social life of America that to receive the profits of crime and cherish the agents who commit it does not disqualify for fellowship in the most "solid" circles--financial, commercial, religious, or social. It illustrates what Ruskin calls the "morbid" character of modern business that the history of its most brilliant episodes must be studied in the vestibules of the penitentiary. The riches of the combinations are the winnings of a policy which, we have seen, has certain constant features. Property to the extent of uncounted millions has been changed from the possession of the many who owned it to the few who hold it: 1. Without the knowledge of the real owners. 2. Without their consent. 3. With no compensation to them for the value taken. 4. By falsehood, often under oath. 5. In violation of the law. Our civilization is builded on competition, and competition evolves itself crime--to so acute an infatuation has the lunacy of self-interest carried our dominant opinion. We are hurried far beyond the point of not listening to the new conscience which, pioneering in moral exploration, declares that conduct we think right because called "trade" is really lying, stealing, murder. "The definite result," Ruskin preaches, "of all our modern haste to be rich is assuredly and constantly the murder of a certain number of persons by our hands every year." To be unawakened by this new voice is bad enough, but we shut our ears even against the old conscience. We cannot deal with this unless we cleanse our hearts of all disordering rage. "The rarer action is in virtue rather than in vengeance." Our tyrants are our ideals incarnating themselves in men born to command. What these men are we have made them. All governments are representative governments; none of them more so than our government of industry. We go hopelessly astray if we seek the solution of our problems in the belief that our business rulers are worse men in kind than ourselves. Worse in degree; yes. It is a race to the bad, and the winners are the worst. A system in which the prizes go to meanness invariably marches with the meanest men at the head. But if any could be meaner than the meanest it would be they who run and fail and rail. Every idea finds its especially susceptible souls. These men are our most susceptible souls to the idea of individual self-interest. They have believed implicitly what we have taught, and have been the most faithful in trying to make the talent given them grow into ten talents. They rise superior to our half-hearted social corrections: publicity, private competition, all devices of market-opposition, private litigation, public investigation, legislation, and criminal prosecution--all. Their power is greater to-day than it was yesterday, and will be greater to-morrow. The public does not withhold its favor, but deals with them, protects them, refuses to treat their crimes as it treats those of the poor, and admits them to the highest places. The predominant mood is the more or less concealed regret of the citizens that they have not been able to conceive and execute the same lucky stroke or some other as profitable. The conclusion is irresistible that men so given the lead are the representatives of the real "spirit of the age," and that the protestants against them are not representative of our times--are at the best but intimators of times which may be. Two social energies have been in conflict, and the energy of reform has so far proved the weaker. We have chartered the self-interest of the individual as the rightful sovereign of conduct; we have taught that the scramble for profit is the best method of administering the riches of earth and the exchange of services. Only those can attack this system who attack its central principle, that strength gives the strong in the market the right to destroy his neighbor. Only as we have denied that right to the strong elsewhere have we made ourselves as civilized as we are. And we cannot make a change as long as our songs, customs, catchwords, and public opinions tell all to do the same thing if they can. Society, in each person of its multitudes, must recognize that the same principles of the interest of all being the rule of all, of the strong serving the weak, of the first being the last--"I am among you as one that serves"--which have given us the home where the weakest is the one surest of his rights and of the fullest service of the strongest, and have given us the republic in which all join their labor that the poorest may be fed, the weakest defended, and all educated and prospered, must be applied where men associate in common toil as wherever they associate. Not until then can the forces be reversed which generate those obnoxious persons--our fittest. Our system, so fair in its theory and so fertile in its happiness and prosperity in its first century, is now, following the fate of systems, becoming artificial, technical, corrupt; and, as always happens in human institutions, after noon, power is stealing from the many to the few. Believing wealth to be good, the people believed the wealthy to be good. But, again in history, power has intoxicated and hardened its possessors, and Pharaohs are bred in counting-rooms as they were in palaces. Their furniture must be banished to the world-garret, where lie the out-worn trappings of the guilds and slavery and other old lumber of human institutions. CHAPTER XXXV AND THE NEW We have given the prize of power to the strong, the cunning, the arithmetical, and we must expect nothing else but that they will use it cunningly and arithmetically. For what else can they suppose we gave it to them? If the power really flows from the people, and should be used for them; if its best administration can be got, as in government, only by the participation in it of men of all views and interests; if in the collision of all these, as in democracy, the better policy is progressively preponderant; if this is a policy which, with whatever defects, is better than that which can be evolved by narrower or more selfish or less multitudinous influences of persons or classes, then this power should be taken up by the people. "The mere conflict of private interests will never produce a well-ordered commonwealth of labor," says the author of the article on political economy in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. The failure of monarchy and feudalism and the visibly impending failure of our business system all reveal a law of nature. The harmony of things insists that that which is the source of power, wealth, and delight shall also be the ruler of it. That which is must also seem. It is the people from whom come the forces with which kings and millionaires ride the world, and until the people take their proper place in the seat of sovereignty, these pseudo owners--mere claimants and usurpers--will, by the very falsity and iniquity of their position, be pushed into deceit, tyranny, and cruelty, ending in downfall. Thousands of years' experience has proved that government must begin where it ends--with the people; that the general welfare demands that they who exercise the powers and they upon whom these are exercised must be the same, and that higher political ideals can be realized only through higher political forms. Myriads of experiments to get the substance of liberty out of the forms of tyranny, to believe in princes, to trust good men to do good as kings, have taught the inexorable truth that, in the economy of nature, form and substance must move together, and are as inextricably interdependent as are, within our experience, what we call matter and spirit. Identical is the lesson we are learning with regard to industrial power and property. We are calling upon their owners, as mankind called upon kings in their day, to be good and kind, wise and sweet, and we are calling in vain. We are asking them not to be what we have made them to be. We put power into their hands and ask them not to use it as power. If this power is a trust for the people, the people betrayed it when they made private estates out of it for individuals. If the spirit of power is to change, institutions must change as much. Liberty recast the old forms of government into the Republic, and it must remould our institutions of wealth into the Commonwealth. The question is not whether monopoly is to continue. The sun sets every night on a greater majority against it. We are face to face with the practical issue: Is it to go through ruin or reform? Can we forestall ruin by reform? If we wait to be forced by events we shall be astounded to find how much more radical they are than our utopias. Louis XVI. waited until 1793, and gave his head and all his investitures to the people who in 1789 asked only to sit at his feet and speak their mind. Unless we reform of our own free will, nature will reform us by force, as nature does. Our evil courses have already gone too far in producing misery, plagues, hatreds, national enervation. Already the leader is unable to lead, and has begun to drive with judges armed with bayonets and Gatling guns. History is the serial obituary of the men who thought they could drive men. Reform is the science and conscience with which mankind in its manhood overcomes temptations and escapes consequences by killing the germs. Ruin is already hard at work among us. Our libraries are full of the official inquiries and scientific interpretations which show how our master-motive is working decay in all our parts. The family crumbles into a competition between the father and the children whom he breeds to take his place in the factory, to unfit themselves to be fathers in their turn. A thorough, stalwart resimplification, a life governed by simple needs and loves, is the imperative want of the world. It will be accomplished: either self-conscious volition does it, or the slow wreck and decay of superfluous and unwholesome men and matters. The latter is the method of brutes and brute civilizations. The other is the method of man, so far as he is divine. Has not man, who has in personal reform risen above the brute method, come to the height at which he can achieve social reform in masses and by nations? We must learn; we can learn by reason. Why wait for the cruder teacher? We have a people like which none has ever existed before. We have millions capable of conscious co-operation. The time must come in social evolution when the people can organize the free-will to choose salvation which the individual has been cultivating for 1900 years, and can adopt a policy more dignified and more effective than leaving themselves to be kicked along the path of reform by the recoil of their own vices. We must bring the size of our morality up to the size of our cities, corporations, and combinations, or these will be brought down to fit our half-grown virtue. Industry and monopoly cannot live together. Our modern perfection of exchange and division of labor cannot last without equal perfection of morals and sympathy. Every one is living at the mercy of every one else in a way entirely peculiar to our times. Nothing is any longer made by a man; parts of things are made by parts of men, and become wholes by the luck of a good-humor which so far keeps men from flying asunder. It takes a whole company to make a match. A hundred men will easily produce a hundred million matches, but not one of them could make one match. No farm gets its plough from the cross-roads blacksmith, and no one in the chilled-steel factory knows the whole of the plough. The life of Boston hangs on a procession of reciprocities which must move, as steadily and sweetly as the roll of the planets, between its bakeries, the Falls of St. Anthony, and the valley of the Red River. Never was there a social machinery so delicate. Only on terms of love and justice can men endure contact so close. The break-down of all other civilizations has been a slow decay. It took the Northerners hundreds of years to march to the Tiber. They grew their way through the old society as the tree planting itself on a grave is found to have sent its roots along every fibre and muscle of the dead. Our world is not the simple thing theirs was, of little groups sufficient to themselves, if need be. New York would begin to die to-morrow if it were not for Illinois and Dakota. We cannot afford a revulsion in the hearts by whose union locomotives run, mills grind, factories make. Practical men are speculating to-day on the possibility that our civilization may some afternoon be flashed away by the tick of a telegraph. All these co-operations can be scattered by a word of hate too many, and we left, with no one who knows how to make a plough or a match, a civilization cut off as by the Roman curse from food and fire. Less sensitive civilizations than ours have burst apart. Liberty and monopoly cannot live together. What chance have we against the persistent coming and the easy coalescence of the confederated cliques, which aspire to say of all business, "This belongs to us," and whose members, though moving among us as brothers, are using against us, through the corporate forms we have given them, powers of invisibility, of entail and accumulation, unprecedented because impersonal and immortal, and, most peculiar of all, power to act as persons, as in the commission of crimes, with exemption from punishment as persons? Two classes study and practise politics and government: place hunters and privilege hunters. In a world of relativities like ours size of area has a great deal to do with the truth of principles. America has grown so big--and the tickets to be voted, and the powers of government, and the duties of citizens, and the profits of personal use of public functions have all grown so big--that the average citizen has broken down. No man can half understand or half operate the fulness of this big citizenship, except by giving his whole time to it. This the place hunter can do, and the privilege hunter. Government, therefore--municipal, State, national--is passing into the hands of these two classes, specialized for the functions of power by their appetite for the fruits of power. The power of citizenship is relinquished by those who do not and cannot know how to exercise it to those who can and do--by those who have a livelihood to make to those who make politics their livelihood. These specialists of the ward club, the primary, the campaign, the election, and office unite, by a law as irresistible as that of the sexes, with those who want all the goods of government--charters, contracts, rulings, permits. From this marriage it is easy to imagine that among some other people than ourselves, and in some other century than this, the off-spring might be the most formidable, elusive, unrestrained, impersonal, and cruel tyranny the world has yet seen. There might come a time when the policeman and the railroad president would equally show that they cared nothing for the citizen, individually or collectively, because aware that they and not he were the government. Certainly such an attempt to corner "the dear people" and the earth and the fulness thereof will break down. It is for us to decide whether we will let it go on till it breaks down of itself, dragging down to die, as a savage dies of his vice, the civilization it has gripped with its hundred hands; or whether, while we are still young, still virtuous, we will break it down, self-consciously, as the civilized man, reforming, crushes down the evil. If we cannot find a remedy, all that we love in the word America must die. It will be an awful price to pay if this attempt at government of the people, by the people, for the people must perish from off the face of the earth to prove to mankind that political brotherhood cannot survive where industrial brotherhood is denied. But the demonstration is worth even that. Aristotle's lost books of the Republics told the story of two hundred and fifty attempts at free government, and these were but some of the many that had to be melted down in the crucible of fate to teach Hamilton and Jefferson what they knew. Perhaps we must be melted by the same fierce flames to be a light to the feet of those who come after us. For as true as that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and that a nation half slave and half free cannot permanently endure, is it true that a people who are slaves to market-tyrants will surely come to be their slaves in all else, that all liberty begins to be lost when one liberty is lost, that a people half democratic and half plutocratic cannot permanently endure. The secret of the history we are about to make is not that the world is poorer or worse. It is richer and better. Its new wealth is too great for the old forms. The success and beauties of our old mutualities have made us ready for new mutualities. The wonder of to-day is the modern multiplication of products by the union of forces; the marvel of to-morrow will be the greater product which will follow when that which is co-operatively produced is co-operatively enjoyed. It is the spectacle of its concentration in the private fortunes of our day which reveals this wealth to its real makers--the whole people--and summons them to extend the manners and institutions of civilization to this new tribal relation. Whether the great change comes with peace or sword, freely through reform or by nature's involuntary forces, is a mere matter of detail, a question of convenience--not of the essence of the thing. The change will come. With reform, it may come to us. If with force, perhaps not to us. But it will come. The world is too full of amateurs who can play the golden rule as an aria with variations. All the runs and trills and transpositions have been done to death. All the "sayings" have been said. The only field for new effects is in epigrams of practice. Titillation of our sympathies has become a dissipation. We shed a daily tear over the misery of the slums as the toper takes his dram, and our liver becomes torpid with the floods of indignation and sentiment we have guzzled without converting them into their co-efficients of action. "Regenerate the individual" is a half-truth; the reorganization of the society which he makes and which makes him is the other half. Man alone cannot be a Christian. Institutions are applied beliefs. The love of liberty became liberty in America by clothing itself in the complicated group of structures known as the government of the United States. Love is a half-truth, and kissing is a good deal less than half of that. We need not kiss all our fellow-men, but we must do for them all we ask them to do for us--nothing less than the fullest performance of every power. To love our neighbor is to submit to the discipline and arrangement which make his life reach its best, and so do we best love ourselves. History has taught us nothing if not that men can continue to associate only by the laws of association. The golden rule is the first and last of these, but the first and last of the golden rule is that it can be operated only through laws, habits, forms, and institutions. The Constitution and laws of the United States are, however imperfectly, the translation into the language of politics of doing as you would be done by--the essence of equal rights and government by consent. To ask individuals to-day to lead by their single sacrifices the life of the brother in the world of business is as if the American colonist had been asked to lead by his individual enterprise the life of the citizen of a republic. That was made possible to him only by union with others. The business world is full of men who yearn to abandon its methods and live the love they feel; but to attempt to do so by themselves would be martyrdom, and that is "caviare to the general." "We admire martyrdom," Mazzini, the martyr, said, "but we do not recommend it." The change must be social, and its martyrdoms have already begun. The new self-interest will remain unenforced in business until we invent the forms by which the vast multitudes who have been gathered together in modern production can organize themselves into a people there as in government. Nothing but this institutionalization will save them from being scattered away from each other again, and it can be achieved only by such averaging and concessions and co-operations as are the price of all union. These will be gains, not losses. Soldiers become partners in invincibility by the discipline which adopts an average rate of march instead of compelling all to keep step with the fastest and stay with the strongest. Moralists tell men to love each other and the right. How, by doing what things, by leaving what undone, shall men love each other? What have the ethicals to say upon the morality of putting public highways in private hands, and of allowing these private hands to make a private and privileged use of them? If bad, will a mere "change of heart," uninstitutionalized, change them? New freedoms cannot be operated through the old forms of slavery. The ideals of Washington and Hamilton and Adams could not breathe under kingly rule. Idle to say they might. Under the mutual dependence of the inside and outside of things their change has all through history always been dual. Change of heart is no more redemption than hunger is dinner. We must have honesty, love, justice in the heart of the business world, but for these we must also have the forms which will fit them. These will be very different from those through which the intercourse of man with man in the exchange of services now moves to such ungracious ends. Forms of Asiatic and American government, of early institutions and to-day's, are not more different. The cardinal virtues cannot be established and kept at work in trade and on the highways with the old apparatus. In order that the spirit that gave rebates may go to stay, the rebate itself must go. If the private use of private ownership of highways is to go, the private ownership must go. There must be no private use of public power or public property. These are created by the common sacrifices of all, and can be rightfully used only for the common good of all--from all, by all, for all. All the grants and franchises that have been given to private hands for private profit are void in morals and void in that higher law which sets the copy for the laggard pens of legislatures and judges. "No private use of public powers" is but a threshold truth. The universe, says Emerson, is the property of every creature in it. No home so low it may not hope that out of its fledglings one may grow the hooked claw that will make him a millionaire. To any adventurer of spirit and prowess in the Italy of the Renaissance might come the possibility of butchering or poisoning his way to a castle or a throne. Such prizes of power made the peninsula a menagerie of tyrants, murderers, voluptuaries, and multitudes of misery. We got republican liberty by agreeing each with the other never to seek to become kings or lords or dukes. We can get industrial and economic liberty only by a like covenant never to let ourselves or any one else be millionaires. There can be no public prosperity without public virtue, and no public virtue without private virtue. But private cannot become public except by organization. Our attempts at control, regulation, are but the agitations of the Gracchi, evidencing the wrong, but not rising to the cure. We are waiting for some genius of good who will generalize into one body of doctrine our partial truths of reform, and will help us live the generalization. Never was mankind, across all lines of race, creed, and institutions, more nearly one in discontent and restless consciousness of new powers and a new hope and purpose, never more widely agitated by influences leading in one direction, never more nearly a committee of the whole on the question of the day. Never before were the means for flashing one thought into the minds of the million, and flashing that thought into action, what they are to-day. The good word or good deed of Chicago in the morning may be the inspiration of Calcutta before nightfall. The crusades were but an eddy in comparison with the universal tide waiting for another Peter the Hermit to lead us where the Man who is to rise again lies in the hands of the infidel. Our problem can be read from its good side or its bad, and must be read from both, as: Business has become a vice, and defeats us and itself; or, Humanity quickens its step to add to its fellowships the new brotherhood of labor. The next emancipation, like all emancipations, must destroy and build. The most constructive thinker in history said, Love one another; but he also drove the money-changers from the temple, and denounced the scribes and Pharisees, and has been busy for nineteen hundred years pulling down tenements unfit for the habitation of the soul. We see something new and something old. Old principles run into mania, a wicked old world bursting into suicidal explosion, as Carlyle said of the French Revolution. New loves, new capabilities, new institutions, created by the expansion of old ideals and new opportunities of human contact. Our love of those to whom we have been "introduced" is but unlocking a door through which all men will pass into our hearts. What makes men lovable is not the accident of our knowing them. It is that they are men. Before 1776 there were thirteen patriotisms in America. The bishops of Boswell's day had no ear for the lamentations of the victims of the slave-trade, but there came a new sympathy which rose superior to their divine displeasure that this commerce of Christian merchants should be attacked. We are coming to sympathize with the animals, and Queen Victoria contributes money to a hospital for the succor of decayed old gentlemen and lady cats. By-and-by royal hearts may widen to include men and women evicted in Ireland, or--worse fate--not evicted from Whitechapel. The spirit that defended the slave-trade now finds its last ditch behind the text, The poor ye have with you always. But a new sympathy rises again, like that which declared that the poor should be free of the slave-trade and slavery, and declares that the poor shall be freed from starvation of body, mind, and soul. Slave-trade, slavery, poverty; the form varies, but against them all runs the refusal of the human heart to be made happy at the cost of the misery of others, and its mathematical knowledge that its quotient of satisfactions will increase with the sum of the happiness of all. The word of the day is that we are about to civilize industry. Mankind is quivering with its purpose to make men fellow-citizens, brothers, lovers in industry, as it has done with them in government and family, which are also industry. We already have on our shelves the sciences--hygienic, industrial, political, ethical--to free the world almost at a stroke from war, accidents, disease, poverty, and their flowing vices and insanities. The men of these sciences are here at call praying for employment. The people, by the books they read, show themselves to be praying to have them put at work. If we who call ourselves civilization would for one average span devote to life-dealing the moneys, armies, and genius we now give to death-dealing, and would establish over the weaker peoples a protectorate of the United States of Europe and America, we would take a long step towards settling forever the vexed question of the site of the Garden of Eden. "Human nature," "monotony," and "individuality" are the lions which the reformer is always told will stop the way to a better world. "You cannot change human nature." There are two human natures--the human nature of Christ and of Judas; and Christ prevails. There is the human nature which seeks anonymity, secrecy, the fruits of power without its duties; and there is the human nature which rises against these and, province by province, is abolishing them from human affairs. Men have always been willing to die for their faith. The bad have died as bravely as the good, Charles I. with as smooth a front as Sir Harry Vane. In this readiness to die lies folded every loyalty of life. "You would make the world a dead level of monotony." Good society does not think it monotonous that all its women should at the same time dust the streets with long-tailed gowns, or that its men should meet every night in funereal black and identical cut, but it shrinks from the monotony of having all share in reforms which would equalize surfeit and starvation. "Good society" is still to come, and it will find some better definition of "monotony" than a fair share for all--a better definition of variety than too much for ourselves at the cost of too little for all others. Shall we choose the monotony of sharing with every one under George III. or Alexander II. the denial of all right to participate in the supreme power, or shall we choose the monotony of sharing with every fellow-citizen the right to become President?--the monotony of being forbidden to enter all the great livelihoods, some syndicate blocking each way with "This business belongs to us"? Or the monotony of a democracy, where every laborer has equal rights with all other citizens to decide upon the administration of the common toil for the common welfare, and an equal right with every other to rise to be a Captain of Industry? Such are the alternatives of "monotony." We have made an historic choice in one; now for the other. And "individuality." "You are going to destroy individuality." We can become individual only by submitting to be bound to others. We extend our freedom only by finding new laws to obey. Life outside the law is slavery on as many sides as there are disregarded laws. The locomotive off its tracks is not free. The more relations, ties, duties, the more "individual." The isolated man is the mere rudiment of an individual. But he who has become citizen, neighbor, friend, brother, son, husband, father, fellow-member, in one, is just by so many times individualized. Men's expanding powers of co-operation bring them to the conscious ability to unite for new benefits; but this extension of individuality is forbidden in the name of individuality. There are two individualities: that of the dullard, who submits to take his railroad transportation, his light, his coal, his salt, his reaping-machine at such prices and of such quality as arbitrary power forces upon him, and that of the shrewder man who, by an alliance of the individualities of all, supplies himself at his own price. Time carries us so easily we do not realize how fast we move. This social debate has gone far beyond the question whether change there must be. What shall the change be? is the subject all the world is discussing. Exposure of abuses no longer excites more than a languid interest. But every clear plan how things might be rearranged raises the people. Before every revolution marches a book--the _Contrat Social_, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. "Every man nowadays," says Emerson, "carries a revolution in his vest-pocket." The book which sells more copies than any other of our day abroad and at home, debated by all down to the boot-blacks as they sit on the curb-stones, is one calling men to draw from their success in insuring each other some of the necessaries of life the courage to move on to insure each other all the necessaries of life, bidding them abandon the self-defeating anarchy which puts railroad-wreckers at the head of railroads and famine-producers at the head of production, and inspiring them to share the common toil and the fruits of the toil under the ideals which make men Washingtons and Lincolns. You may question the importance of the plan; you cannot question the importance of its welcome. It shows the people gathering-points for the new constitution they know they must make. In nothing has liberty justified itself more thoroughly than in the resolute determination spreading among the American people to add industrial to political independence. It is the hope of the world that good has its effects as well as evil, and that on the whole, and in the long-run, the seed of the good will overgrow the evil. "Heaven has kindly given our blood a moral flow." Liberty breeds liberties, slavery breeds slaveries, but the liberties will be the strongest stock. If the political and religious liberties which the people of this country aspired to set up had in them the real sap and fibre of a better life than the world had yet known, it must certainly follow that they would quicken and strengthen the people for discovery and obedience in still higher realms. And just this has happened. Nowhere else has the new claim to tax without representation been so quickly detected, so intelligently scrutinized, and so bravely fought. Nowhere else has this spreading plague of selfishness and false doctrine found a people whose average and general life was pitched on so high a level that they instantly took the alarm at its claims over their lives and liberties. It has found a people so disciplined by the aspiration and achievement of political and religious rights that they are already possessed of a body of doctrine capable, by an easy extension, of refuting all the pretensions of the new absolutism. At the very beginning of this new democratic life among the nations it was understood that to be safe liberty must be complete on its industrial as well as on its political and religious sides. This is the American principle. "Give a man power over my subsistence," said Alexander Hamilton, "and he has power over the whole of my moral being." To submit to such a power gives only the alternative of death or degradation, and the high spirit of America preferred then, as it prefers now, the rule of right, which gives life. The mania of business has reached an acuter and extremer development in America than elsewhere, because nowhere else have bounteous nature and free institutions produced birthrights and pottages so well worth "swapping." But the follies and wickedness of business have nowhere been so sharply challenged as in free America. "Betake yourself to America," said Carlyle to a friend beginning a literary career; "there you can utter your freest thoughts in ways impossible here." It is to this stern wakefulness of a free people that the world owes it that more light has been thrown in America than in any other country on the processes of modern money-making. A free press, organ of a free people, has done invaluable service. The legislatures have pushed investigation after investigation into the ways in which large masses of the people have been deprived, for the benefit of single men or groups of men, of rights of subsistence and government. Through the courts the free people have pursued their depredators by civil and criminal process, by public and private prosecutions. Imperfect and corrupt, these agencies of press, courts, legislatures have often been; they have still done a work which has either been left undone altogether in other countries, or has been done with but a fraction of our thoroughness. It is due to them that there exists in the reports of legislative investigations, State and national, in the proceedings of lawsuits and criminal trials, in the files of the newspapers, a mass of information which cannot be found in any other community in the world. There is in these archives an accumulation of the raw material of tragedy, comedy, romance, ravellings of the vicissitudes of human life, and social and personal fate, which will feed the fires of whole generations of literary men when once they awake to the existence of these precious rolls. In these pigeon-holes are to be found keys of the present and clews to the future. As America has the newest and widest liberty, it is the stage where play the newest and widest forces of evil as well as good. America is at the front of the forward line of evolution. It has taken the lead in developing competition to the extreme form in which it destroys competition, and in superfining the processes of exchange of services into those of the acquisition of the property of others without service. The hope is that the old economic system we inherited has ripened so much more rapidly than the society and government we have created that the dead matter it deposits can be thrown off by our vigorous youth and health. "It is high time our bad wealth came to an end," says Emerson. It has grown into its monstrous forms so fast that the dullest eye can separate it from the Commonwealth, and the slowest mind comprehend its mischievousness. In making themselves free of arbitrary and corrupt power in government the Americans prepared themselves to be free in all else, and because foremost in political liberty they have the promise of being the first to realize industrial liberty--the trunk of a tree of which political liberty is the seed, and without which political liberty shrinks back into nothingness. "The art of Italy will blossom over our graves," Mazzini said when, with true insight, he saw that the first artistic, first literary task before the Italians was to make their country free. Art, literature, culture, religion, in America, are already beginning to feel the restrictive pressure which results from the domination of a selfish, self-indulgent, luxurious, and anti-social power. This power, mastering the markets of a civilization which gives its main energies to markets, passes without difficulty to the mastery of all the other activities. When churches, political campaigns, the expounding of the law, maintenance of schools and colleges, and family life itself all depend on money, they must become servile to the money power. Song, picture, sermon, decrees of court, and the union of hearts must pass constantly under stronger control of those who give their lives to trade and encourage everybody else to trade, confident that the issue of it all will be that they will hold as property, in exclusive possession, to be doled out on their own terms, the matter by which alone man can live, either materially or spiritually. In America, where the supreme political power and much of the government of church and college have been taken out of traditional hands and subjected to the changing determinations of popular will, it has inevitably resulted that the State, church, and school have passed under this mercantile aristocracy to a far greater extent than in other countries where stiffer régimes under other and older influences still stand. Our upper classes--elected, as always, by the equipoise of effort and opinion between them and the lower classes--are, under this commercial system, the men who trade best, who can control their features and their consciences so that they can always get more than they give, who can play with supply and demand so that at the end of the game all their brethren are their tributaries for life. It is the birthright-buying minds that, by the adoption of this ideal, we choose for our rulers. The progressive races have altered their ideals of kings with the indescribable advantage of being ruled by Washingtons and Lincolns and Gladstones instead of Caligulas and Pharaohs. We have now to make a similar step forward in another part of life. The previous changes expressed outwardly an inner change of heart. The reformer of to-day is simply he who, with quicker ear, detecting that another change of heart is going on, goes before. Another great change is working in the inner mind of man, and will surely be followed by incorporation in institutions and morals and manners. The social head and heart are both being persuaded that too many are idle--rich and poor; too many are hurt in body and soul--rich and poor; too many children are "exposed," as in the old Greek and Roman market-places; too many are starving within reach of too much fertile waste; too many passions of envy, greed, and hate are raging among rich and poor. There is too much left undone that ought to be done along the whole scale of life, from the lowest physical to the highest spiritual needs, from better roads to sweeter music and nobler worship. It cannot be long, historically speaking, before all this new sense and sentiment will issue in acts. All will be as zealously protected against the oppression of the cruel in their daily labor as now against oppression from invader or rioter, and will be as warmly cheered in liberty to grow to their fullest capabilities as laborers--_i.e._, users of matter for the purpose of the spirit--as they are now welcomed to the liberty of the citizen and the worshipper. Infinite is the fountain of our rights. We can have all the rights we will create. All the rights we will give we can have. The American people will save the liberties they have inherited by winning new ones to bequeath. With this will come fruits of new faculty almost beyond calculation. A new liberty will put an end to pauperism and millionairism and the crimes and death-rate born of both wretchednesses, just as the liberty of politics and religion put an end to martyrs and tyrants. The new liberty is identical in principle and purpose with the other; it is made inevitable by them. Those who love the liberties already won must open the door to the new, unless they wish to see them all take flight together. There can be no single liberty. Liberties go in clusters like the Pleiades. We must either regulate, or own, or destroy, perishing by the sword we take. The possibility of regulation is a dream. As long as this control of the necessaries of life and this wealth remain private with individuals, it is they who will regulate, not we. The policy of regulation, disguise it as we may, is but moving to a compromise and equilibrium within the evil all complain of. It is to accept the principle of the sovereignty of the self-interest of the individual and apply constitutional checks to it. The unprogressive nations palter in this method with monarchy. But the wits of America are equal to seeing that as with kingship and slavery so with poverty--the weeding must be done at the roots. Sir Henry Sumner Maine says mankind moves from status to contract; from society ruled by inherited customs to one ruled by agreement, varied according to circumstances. Present experience suggests the addition that the movement, like all in nature, is pendulous, and that mankind moves progressively from status to contract, and from this stage of contract to another status. We march and rest and march again. If our society is settling down to an interval of inertia, perhaps ages long, we must before night comes establish all in as much equality and comfort as possible. The aspirations are not new. We have had them since Plato. The knowledge of means for realizing them is not new. We have had it since Aristotle, and the history of civilization is but the record of the progressive embodiment of the ideals in institutions for the life together--sexual, social, spiritual. What is new in our moment is that mankind's accumulating forces are preparing for another step forward in this long processional realization of its best possible. Nothing so narrow as the mere governmentalizing of the means and processes of production. It is only the morally nerveless who ask government to do that which they will not rise to do. The conversion which is now working itself out within us, and perhaps is more nearly born than we suspect ("We shall not live to see slavery abolished," said Emerson, in 1859) is making itself felt on all sides of our life. In manners, in literature, in marriage, in church, in all, we see at work the saving ferment which is to make all things new by bringing them nearer to the old ideals. George Sand was revolted by the servile accent of the phrase of her day, "Madame est servie." Society has grown to the better fellowship her finer ear found wanting in these words, and is now told it is dinner, not madame or monsieur, that is served. We are to have, of course, great political changes. We are to apply the co-operative methods of the post-office and the public school to many other common toils, to all toils in which private sovereignty has become through monopoly a despotism over the public, and to all in which the association of the people and the organization of processes have been so far developed that the profit-hunting Captain of Industry may be replaced by the public-serving Captain of Industry. But we are to have much more. We are to have a private life of a new beauty, of which these are to be merely the mechanical exhibitions on the side of politics. We are to move among each other, able, by the methodical and agreed adherence of all, to do what the words of Lamennais mean, instead of being able, as now, in most things, to afford only an indulgence in feeling them. We are to be commoners, travellers to Altruria. We are to become fathers, mothers, for the spirit of the father and mother is not in us while we can say of any child it is not ours, and leave it in the grime. We are to become men, women, for to all about reinforcing us we shall insure full growth and thus insure it to ourselves. We are to become gentlemen, ladies, for we will not accept from another any service we are not willing to return in kind. We are to become honest, giving when we get, and getting with the knowledge and consent of all. We are to become rich, for we shall share in the wealth now latent in idle men and idle land, and in the fertility of work done by those who have ceased to withstand but stand with each other. As we walk our parks we already see that by saying "thine" to every neighbor we say "mine" of palaces, gardens, art, science, far beyond any possible to selfishness, even the selfishness of kings. We shall become patriots, for the heart will know why it thrills to the flag. Those folds wave the salute of a greater love than that of the man who will lay down his life for his friend. There floats the banner of the love of millions, who, though they do not know you and have never seen you, will die for you and are living for you, doing in a thousand services unto you as you would be done by. And the little patriotism, which is the love of the humanity fenced within our frontier will widen into the reciprocal service of all men. Generals were, merchants are, brothers will be, humanity's representative men. There is to be a people in industry, as in government. The same rising genius of democracy which discovered that mankind did not co-operate in the State to provide a few with palaces and king's-evil, is disclosing that men do not co-operate in trade for any other purpose than to mobilize the labor of all for the benefit of all, and that the only true guidance comes from those who are led, and the only valid titles from those who create. Very wide must be the emancipation of this new self-interest. If we free America we shall still be not free, for the financial, commercial, possessory powers of modern industrial life are organized internationally. If we rose to the full execution of the first, simplest, and most pressing need of our times and put an end to all private use of public powers, we should still be confronted by monopolies existing simply as private property, as in coal-mines, oil lands. It is not a verbal accident that science is the substance of the word conscience. We must know the right before we can do the right. When it comes to know the facts the human heart can no more endure monopoly than American slavery or Roman empire. The first step to a remedy is that the people care. If they know, they will care. To help them to know and care; to stimulate new hatred of evil, new love of the good, new sympathy for the victims of power, and, by enlarging its science, to quicken the old into a new conscience, this compilation of fact has been made. Democracy is not a lie. There live in the body of the commonalty the unexhausted virtue and the ever-refreshened strength which can rise equal to any problems of progress. In the hope of tapping some reserve of their powers of self-help this story is told to the people. APPENDIX PARTIAL LIST OF TRADE COMBINATIONS, OR TRUSTS, ACHIEVED OR ATTEMPTED, AND OF THE COMMODITIES COVERED BY THEM[770] I.--LIGHT, HEAT, AND POWER Boilers, for house heating. Candle-makers, Great Britain, United States. Coal: anthracite, bituminous. Coke. Electric: carbon points, 1885; candles,1888; electric goods, national, 1887; lighting, United States, Great Britain, 1882; light-fixtures, national, 1889. Gas: illuminating and fuel, local, sectional, national; fixtures, national; pipes, 1875; natural. Gasoline stoves, 1894. Governors of steam-boilers. Hot-water heaters, 1892. House furnaces, 1889. Kerosene, 1874. Kindling wood, Boston, 1891. Matches: United States; Great Britain; Canada; Sweden; international, 1894. Paraffine. Petroleum and its products, 1874. Radiators, steam and hot-water, Western, 1891. Scotch mineral oil, 1888. Steam and hot-water master fitters, national, 1889. Stearine. Stove-boards, zinc, national, 1890. Stoves and ranges, 1872. Stoves, vapor, national, 1884. II.--CHEMICALS Acids: acetic, citric, muriatic, nitric, sulphuric, American, 1889; oxalic, Great Britain, 1882. Alkali Union, England, 1888. Alkaloids, United States. Alum, sectional, 1889. Ammonia, 1889. Bismuth salts, United States. Bleaching-powder, England, 1888. Boracic acid, United States. Borax: United States; Great Britain, 1888. Chemical Union, England, 1890. Chloroform, United States. Drug manufacturers: United States; Canada, 1884. Iodine, England, 1890. Iodoform, United States, 1880. Lime, acetate of, 1891. Mercurials: as calomel, corrosive sublimate, etc., United States. Nitrates, Chili, 1884. Paris-green, 1889. Potash: bichromate of, Great Britain; bichloride of, United States; chlorate, prussiate, Great Britain, 1888. Quinine, international, 1893. Rochelle salts, United States. Saltpetre. Santonine, United States. Soda, bichromate, United States; carbonate, caustic, England, 1888; nitrate of, Chili and England, 1884. Strychnine. Sulphur, Italy. Ultramarine: United States; Germany, 1890. Vitriol, 1889. III.--METALS Aluminum, national, 1888. Barbed wire, 1881. Brass: sectional, 1884; rolled and sheet, sheet German silver, copper rivets and burrs, copper and German-silver wire, kerosene-oil burners and lamp trimmings, and braised brass tubing. Copper: cold, bolt, rolled, sheet, 1888; ore, Lake Superior, 1879; international, 1887; bath-tubs, boilers, sinks, and general ware, 1891; wire. Iron: founders; galvanized, national, 1875; malleable, national, 1882; manufacturers, Germany, 1887; nuts, 1884; ore, Germany, 1884, Atlantic coast, 1886, Michigan, 1882, Southern, 1884, Northwestern, 1887, Lake Superior, 1893; pig, Eastern, Southern, 1883, national, 1889; pipes, steam and gas, 1884; wrought iron, 1887; sheet, enamelled, Germany, 1893; structural, national, 1881; tubes, 1884; wire-cloth, national, 1882; Russian, 1893. Lead: pig, pipe; sheet-lead, 1888; white, national, 1884. Mica, national, 1887. Nickel. Quicksilver, California. Silver and lead smelters. Steel: armor-plate, Bessemer beams (in existence nearly thirty years), castings, 1894; galvanized; rails (see traffic and travel); rods, United States and Germany, 1888; rolling-mills. Tin: jobbers; American, national, 1883; English, 1889. Zinc. IV.--SOME OTHER INSTRUMENTS AND MATERIALS OF INDUSTRY Alcohol. Axes and axe-poles. Belting, leather, rubber. Blankets (press), American Papermakers' Felt and Jacket Association. Bobbins, spools, and shuttles, 1886, for cotton, woollen, silk, and linen mills. Bolts, 1884. Boxes, wooden, local, 1885; Western and Southern. Bridge-builders: Eastern, 1886; Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, 1889. Butchers' skewers and supplies, Western, 1889. Carpet yarns, Eastern, 1889. Cash-registers, national, 1890. Celluloid, lythoid, zylonite, Eastern, 1890. Chains, national, 1883. Color trust, Great Britain, 1889. Cordage: rope, twine, United States, 1875; England, 1892. Corks. Cotton duck, national, 1891. Cotton-seed oil, national, 1884. Creels, for cloth and woollen mills, national, 1893. Damasks, Pennsylvania, 1886. Emery wheels, national. Felting. Fibre, indurated, pails, bowls, measures, water-coolers, filters, etc., national, 1888. Files, 1875. Fire-brick, 1875. Fish-oil, menhaden, New England, 1885. Forge companies, national, 1889. Glass bottles: beer, United States, 1884; green glass, English bottle manufacturers, 1889. Glass: flint, Western, 1891; crown, cylinder, unpolished; plate, French, 1888; German, 1887; international, 1890; window, 1875; sectional, national, international, 1884. Glass, plate, Underwriters, 1894. Glue. Gutta-percha. Hardware manufacturers, 1884. Label printers. Leather: belting, national; board, national, 1891; hides, Northwestern, 1888; morocco, Eastern, 1886; patent, national, 1888; sole, 1893; Tanners' Association, 1882; Oak Harness Leather Tanners, national, 1890. Linen mills, Eastern, Western, 1892. Linseed oil: local, 1877; national, 1887; dealers, Canada, 1892. Manilla, international, 1887. Oil: lubricating, 1874; for curing leather; menhaden; safety burning oil for miners. Onyx, Mexican, 1890. Paper: local, sectional, national; bags, Eastern and Western, 1887; book and newspaper; boxes, national, 1883; card-board, 1890; flour sacks, 1887; straw; tissue, 1892; wrapping, Western, 1878, Eastern, 1881; writing, national, 1884. Papermakers' trust in Great Britain to check the operation of the Alkali trust, 1889; Papermakers' Felt and Jacket Association, national; rags, Eastern, 1883; wood-pulp, Western, 1890; New York, Canada, Eastern, 1891. Pitch, national, 1887 or earlier. Planes, carpenters'. Pumps, national, 1871. Rubber: belting, 1875; electric web goring (for shoes), national, 1893; gossamers, 1887; hose, 1875; importers, national, 1882; manufacturers, national, 1882; Brazil producers, 1890; stamps and stencils, national, 1893. Sandpaper, emery and emery cloth, flint, garnet, ruby, sand cloth, national, 1887. Saws, national, 1890. Scales. Screws: machine, 1887; wood, national, international. Seed Crushers' Union, England, 1889. Sewer pipe, 1875. Sewing-machines, 1885. Sewing-machine supplies, New York and New England, 1883. Spirits. Straw braid. Straw-board, 1887. Tacks, 1875. Talc mills, New York, 1893. Tar, national, 1886. Teasel, national, 1892. Textile manufacturers, Pennsylvania, 1886--embracing dress goods, ginghams, upholstery goods, woollens, yarns, chintzes, worsteds, damasks. Tools, edge, American Axe and Edged Tool Company, national, 1890. Turpentine, Southern, 1892. Type founders, national, 1888. Washers, 1884. Watch-cases, 1886. Well tools, for oil, gas, and artesian wells, 1889. Wood, excelsior, shavings for packing, national, 1889. Wooden-ware, 1883 or earlier. Woodworking machines, 1891. Wool felt. Wrenches, 1875. V.--TRAFFIC AND TRAVEL _The Road, Horse, and Wagon_ Bicycles, United States, 1893. Board of Trade formed to regulate prices. Bicycle tires. Bridge-builders, 1886. Buggy pails, fibre trust, national, 1888. Carriage builders, national, 1884. Carriage hardware, 1884. Harness dealers, manufacturers, national, 1886. Liverymen's Associations, local, 1884. Paving: asphalt, 1886; brick, Western, 1892; pitch, national, 1887. Road-making machines, Western, 1890. Saddlery Association, national, 1891. Saddle-trees, Indiana, Missouri, 1892. Wagons, local, 1886. Wheels, Western, 1889. Whips, national, 1892. _Shipping_ Ballast, Havana, 1882. Canal-boats, 1884. Cotton duck, sail-cloth, national, 1888. Ferries, New York and Brooklyn. Lake carriers, Hull pool, 1886. Lake Dock Trust. Marine insurance, 1883. Naval stores. Ocean steamers: European, Asiatic, and American; German steamship companies, 1894. Pilotage, New York, San Francisco. Steamboats: in the Cincinnati and New Orleans trade, 1884; forwarding lines along the Hudson River, 1891. _Railroads_ Car-axles, 1890. Car-springs, steel, national, 1887. Cars, freight and cattle. Elevators, grain, local, Western, 1887. Express companies. Locomotives: national, 1892; boiler flues, 1875; tires, national, 1892. Railroad: pools, freight and passenger, sectional, national; Eastern Railroad Association, of 800 railroads, to fight patents. Steel sleepers, 1885; steel rails, national. Street railways, local, sectional. VI.--BUILDING Asbestos, for paints, roofing, steam-pipe and boiler coverings, 1891. Beams and channels, iron and steel, national, 1875. Blinds: Northwestern, 1885; national, 1888. Brass, gas, plumbing, steam, water goods, 1884. Brick: local, sectional, 1884; Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Washington (State); pressed brick, 1890. Cement: Mississippi valley, 1883; Eastern, 1884; Northwestern, 1884. Cornice-makers, national, 1884. Doors: Northwestern, 1885; national, 1888. Fire engines, including hook and ladder trucks, hose-carriages, heaters, carts, stationary pumps, and other supplies, United States and Canada, 1892. Fire insurance. Glue, national, 1894. Gypsum stucco, Eastern, Northwestern, 1884. Hinges, 1875. Lime, Western, 1883. Lumber: California pine, 1883; California redwood, 1883; Chicago; Mississippi valley; Northwestern, 1880; Pacific coast, 1883; poplar, 1889; Puget Sound, 1883; yellow pine, Southern, 1890, Eastern, 1891; dealers, national, 1878. Nails: Pennsylvania, 1875; Western Association, 1882; Atlantic States Association, 1883. Paint. Plaster, national, 1891. Roofing: felt; iron; pitch, Vermont, national, 1887. Sanitary pottery. Sash, doors, and blinds, national. Sewer pipes, national, 1884. Stone: brown stone, Lake Superior, 1890, New York, 1884; cut-stone quarry owners, Western, 1892; free-stone; granite, national, 1891; limestone, rubble, and flag, Illinois, 1884; marble, Western dealers, 1885; Vermont marble quarries, 1889; sandstone, New York, 1883. Structural steel. Stucco, 1883. Varnish dealers, national, 1888. Wall-paper: national, 1879; international, 1882. VII.--FARM AND PLANTATION Agricultural implements, manufacturers, dealers, 1891. Binders, Harvester Trust, 1883. Churns, 1884. Corn-harvesters, national, 1892. Cotton bagging, 1888. Cotton presses, local, 1892. Drain tile, Indiana, 1894. Fencing, barbed wire, national, 1881. Fertilizers: 1888; guano; menhaden oil, New England, 1885; phosphate, South Carolina, 1887; Canada, 1890; Florida, 1891. Forks, national, 1890. Harrow manufacturers, national, 1890. Harvesting-machines, national, 1883. Hay-presses, national, 1889. Hay tools, Western and Northwestern, 1884. Hoes, national, 1890. Horse-brushes, prison-made, 1889. Jute grain bags, national, 1888. Mowers, national, 1883. Pails, fibre trust, national, 1888. Paris green. Ploughs, Northwestern, 1884. Rakes, national, 1890. Reapers, 1883. Scythe-makers, national, 1884. Shovels, national, 1890. Snath manufacturers, national, 1891. Threshing-machines, national, 1890, 1891. Twine, binding, 1887. Vehicles. VIII.--SCHOOL, LIBRARY, AND COUNTING-ROOM Blank-books, 1888. Envelopes, 1888. Lead-pencils, 1878. Lithographic printers, national, 1892. Novels (paper-covered "libraries"), 1890. School-books, national, 1884. School-furniture, national, 1892. Slates and slate-pencils, national, 1887. Subscription-books, local, sectional, 1892. Type-founders, national, 1888. Type-writers. Writing-paper, national, 1884. IX.--"THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD" Ammunition, 1883. Arms, 1883. Cartridges, national, 1883. Dynamite, Germany. Fireworks, national, 1890. Gunpowder, national, 1875. Guns, 1883. Shot-tower companies, national, 1873. X.--FOR THE PERSON Barbers, National Tonsorial Parlor Company, organized to establish barber-shops in all the large cities of the United States, 1890. Buttons. Calico, England, 1891. Clothes-brushes, prison-made, 1889. Coat and cloak manufacturers: New York, 1883; Chicago, 1893. Collars and cuffs, New York, 1890. Cotton: England, 1890; Fall River; Southern mills, 1881; thread (spool-cotton), 1888. Diamonds: mines in South Africa; dealers in Europe, 1889. Dress-goods, Pennsylvania, 1886. Furs. Ginghams, Pennsylvania, 1886. Gloves, New York. Hats: fur, 1885; woollen, national. Knit goods: New York, 1884; Western, 1889. Jewellers, national. Laundries: Chicago; Chinese Laundry Union, New York City, 1889; St. Louis, 1893. Pocket-knives, national, 1892. Ribbons, national, 1892. Rubber boots and shoes, national, 1882. Seal-skin, national, 1892. Shirts: Troy, New York City, 1890. Shoe: manufacturers, national, 1887; retailers, New England, 1885; national, 1886. Silk: manufacturers, international. France, England, Italy, Germany, 1888; sewing, national, 1887; ribbon, 1884. Trunks, national, 1892. Umbrellas, Eastern, 1891. Watch: manufacturers, makers and jewellers, national, 1886; National Association of Jobbers of American Watches and Cases, 1886. Woollens: manufacturers, 1882; worsteds, yarns, Pennsylvania, 1886. XI.--SMOKING AND DRINKING Beer, United States Brewers' Association, 1861. Champagne, New York City, 1889; France, 1891. Meerschaum pipes, New Jersey, 1892. Soda fountains, 1890. Spittoons, fibre trust, national, 1888. Tobacco and cigars, local, sectional, national, 1882; cigarettes, 1890. Waters, mineral, national, 1889. Whiskey and "domestic"--or artificial--brandy, rum, gin, and cordials made in imitation of the genuine. Wine-growers, California, 1889. XII.--"HOME, SWEET HOME" _In General_ Candles, coal, furnaces, gas, oil, matches, ranges, stoves, etc. (see Light, Heat, and Power). Carpets: Eastern, 1885; Brussels, in-grain, 1888. Chairs: cane, 1889; manufacturers, Western, 1880; seats, perforated, national, 1888. Furniture: national, 1883; Chicago manufacturers, 1886; retailers, New England, 1888; national, 1893. Hair-cloth, Rhode Island, 1893. Oil-cloth, table and stair, Oil-cloth Association, 1887. Pails, fibre trust, national, 1888. Soap, national, 1890. Upholsterers' felt. Upholstery goods, textile manufacturers, Pennsylvania, 1886. Window-shades, 1888. _The Kitchen_ Boilers. Bottles. Brooms, 1886. Brushes, scrubbing, prison-made, 1889. Chopping-bowls, wooden-ware, national, 1884. Crockery, national, 1883. Fruit-jars, 1891. Glass-ware, 1883. Hollow-ware, prison-made, 1888. Keelers, fibre trust, national, 1888. Kettles, prison-made, 1888. Lamp-chimneys, 1883. Measures, fibre trust, national, 1888. Pans and pots, prison-made, 1888. Potato-mashers, wooden-ware, national, 1884. Pottery, yellow-ware, national, 1889. Sinks, copper. Stamped-ware, national, 1882. Tin-ware: national, 1883; English, 1889. Water-coolers, filters, pails, fibre trust, national, 1888. Water-pails, wooden-ware, national, 1884. Wooden-ware, national, 1884. _Laundry_ Borax. Clothes-pins, New York, 1888. Clothes-wringers. Soap, national, 1890. Soda, 1884. Starch: Western, 1882; national, 1890. Washboards, New York, 1888. Wash-tubs, wooden-ware, national, 1884. Washing-machines, national, 1891. Water-tubs, fibre trust, national, 1888. Zinc, sheet, 1890. _Dining-room_ Butter-dishes, 1886. China, England, 1888. Glass table-ware, 1889. Plated-ware. Silver-plated ware. Silver-ware, national, 1892. Table cutlery, national, 1881. Table oil-cloth, national, 1888. Tables, extension-tables, national, 1893. _Parlor_ For carpets, furniture, upholstery, etc., see under "In General," above. Mantel lambrequin, wool felt, 1888. Music, books and instruments, Boston, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, 1892. Organs, local, sectional, 1889. Parlor frame manufacturers. Parlor furniture, Western Association, 1886. Pianos, local, sectional, 1889; national, 1893. Piano-covers, wool felt, 1888. Picture-frames, 1890. Rugs, Eastern, 1885. Table-covers, wool felt, 1888. Tapestries, Eastern, 1885. _Bath-room_ Bath-tubs (see "Copper"). Sanitary-ware, 1889. Sponges, Florida, New York, 1892. _Bedroom_ Chintzes, Pennsylvania, 1886. Looking-glass: French silvered plate-glass, 1888; German, national, 1887; international, 1890. Spring beds, national, 1890. Wire mattress: Northwestern, 1886; national, 1890. XIII.--"OUR DAILY BREAD" Bread, biscuit, crackers, local, sectional, national. Butter, local, 1889. Candy, local, national, 1884. Canned goods: Western, 1885; national, 1889; California canned fruit, 1891. Cider and vinegar, national, 1882. Coffee, Arbuckle trust, 1888. Corn-meal, Western, 1894. Cotton-seed oil. Dairy Association, national, 1893. Eggs, local, in United States and Canada. Fish: England, 1749 and before; New York and New England, 1892; salmon, Alaska, 1891; salmon canners of the Pacific coast, 1893; sardines, Eastern, 1885; international, 1890; sardine canneries, Canada, 1893. Flour: United States, National Millers' Association, 1883; winter wheat mills, national, 1888; spring wheat mills of the United States; millers of northeast England, 1889; rye flour, local, 1891; flour-mills of Utah and Colorado, 1892. Food Manufacturers' Association, United States, 1891. Fruit: bananas, Southern, 1888; California fruit-growers, 1892; cranberries, Cape Cod, 1888; England, 1884; Florida, 1889; foreign fruit, New York, 1884; Fruit-trade Association, New York, 1882; fruit-growers of the Eastern and Middle States against commission-merchants, 1887; preserves and jellies, Western, 1883; American Preservers' Company, 1889; prunes, California; strawberry-growers, Wisconsin, 1892; watermelons, Indiana, South Carolina, 1889. Grape-growers, northern Ohio, 1894. Grocers: wholesale, retail; local, sectional, national. Honey, local, 1888. Ice: local, sectional, 1883; artificial, Southern, 1889. Lard-refiners, Eastern, 1887. Meat and cattle: beef, mutton, pork; Butchers' National Protective Association; Chicago packers; Inter-mountain Stock-growers' Association, Utah, 1893; International Cattle Range Association; Live-stock Association, 1887; Northwest Texas Live-stock Association, 1878; Western Kansas Stock-growers' Association, 1883; Wyoming Stock-growers' Association, 1874. Milk: local, sectional, 1883; condensed milk, New York, Illinois, 1891. Oatmeal, 1885; Canada, 1887. Olive-oil. Oysters, local, 1890. Pea-nuts, 1888. Pickles, national, 1891. Produce: Produce Commission-merchants, eight large cities--North, South, East, West, 1883; West, 1888. Raisins, California, 1894. Rice-mills, Southern, 1888. Salt: rock; English Salt Union, 1888; international, United States and Canada, 1889; Canada, 1891. Sugar: Hawaii, 1876; United States, 1887. Glucose, national, 1883; international, 1891. Wine, California, 1894. XIV.--LIFE AND DEATH Artificial teeth, United States, 1889. Castor-oil, 1885. Cocoa-nut oil, American importers, 1881. Coffins, National Burial-case Association, 1884. Dental machines and supplies, United States, 1889. Drugs: importers; druggists, retail, sectional, national, 1883; wholesale, sectional, national, 1884; Canada, 1874; manufacturers, national, 1884. Ergot, 1891. Glycerine, New York, 1888. Life insurance, 1883, national, 1891. Patent medicines, national, 1884. Peppermint, local, 1887. Quinine, 1882. Tombstones, local, Brooklyn, Chicago, 1891. Vaseline. XV.--MISCELLANEOUS Athletic clubs, 1893, to reduce charges made by prize-fighters for exhibition. Base-ball, national, 1876. Billiard-tables and furniture, 1884. Bill-posters, United States, Canada, 1872. Dime museums, national, 1883. Landlords' Union, London, England, 1890. News-dealers, 1884; newspapers, Associated Press, United Press; sectional, national. Photographers, national, 1889. Playing-cards. Printers, show and job, 1893. Racing trust, jockey club, 1894. Retailers, 1891. Small retail store-keepers of Kansas City protest against mammoth department stores. Safes, national, 1892. Theatrical trust, Interstate Amusement Company, Springfield, Ill., 1894. Warehouses: Brooklyn, 1887; national, 1891. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Annual Report Attorney-General of the United States, 1893.] [Footnote 2: People of the State of New York _vs._ The North River Sugar Refining Company. Supreme Court of New York--at Circuit (January 9, 1889). New York Senate Trusts, 1889, p. 278.] [Footnote 3: _Combinations_, by S.C.T. Dodd, p. 19.] [Footnote 4: References: 1. Investigation by the Senate of Pennsylvania into the Anthracite Coal Difficulties, 1871. 2. Morris Run Coal Company _vs._ The Barclay Coal Company. Pennsylvania State Reports, Vol. 68, p. 173. 3. Report on the Coal Combination. New York Assembly Committee on Railroads, 1878. 4. Labor Troubles in Anthracite Regions, 1887-1888. House of Representatives, 50th Congress, Second Session. Report No. 4147. 5. New York Senate Investigation of the Coal Combination, 1892. 6. Alleged Coal Combination. House of Representatives, 52d Congress, 2d Session. Report No. 2278. January 18, 1893. 7. Coxe Brothers & Co. _vs._ The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, before the Interstate Commerce Commission. Report and Opinion of the Commission. 8. John C. Haddock _vs._ Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, before the Interstate Commerce Commission, 1890. 9. Hocking Valley Investigation. General Assembly of Ohio, 1885. 10. Trusts or Pools. Investigation by Legislature of Ohio, 1889. 11. Alleged Combinations in Manufactures, Trade, etc. Dominion House of Commons, 1888.] [Footnote 5: Richardson _vs._ Buhl _et al._ Michigan State Reports, vol. lxxvii., p. 632.] [Footnote 6: Page ii.] [Footnote 7: Page xxii.] [Footnote 8: Coal Combination, Congress, 1893. Testimony of John C. Haddock, pp. 242-261.] [Footnote 9: Same, p. iv.] [Footnote 10: Report, p. xlv.] [Footnote 11: Coal Combination, Congress, 1893, pp. iii., iv., vi.] [Footnote 12: Same, p. i.] [Footnote 13: Same. p. v.] [Footnote 14: Report, pp. xiv., xv., xlix.] [Footnote 15: Combinations, Canadian Parliament, 1888, pp. 5, 6, 7.] [Footnote 16: Report, p. lxx.] [Footnote 17: Investigation by the Senate of Pennsylvania into the Anthracite Coal Difficulties, 1871.] [Footnote 18: Report, pp. lxx., and following.] [Footnote 19: Same, p. lxxvi.] [Footnote 20: Same, p. lxxvii.] [Footnote 21: Report, pp. ix., xciv., and following.] [Footnote 22: Same, p. xlv.] [Footnote 23: Same, p. xiii.] [Footnote 24: Coxe case before Interstate Commerce Commission, Coal Combination, Congress, 1893, p. 183.] [Footnote 25: Same, p. v.] [Footnote 26: Whiskey Trust Investigation. Committee on the Judiciary Report, March 1, 1893. 52d Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Report No. 2601, p. 16 and following.] [Footnote 27: Same testimony, p. 28.] [Footnote 28: Whiskey Trust Investigation, Congress, 1893, p. 62.] [Footnote 29: Whiskey Trust Investigation, Congress, 1893, pp. 14, 15.] [Footnote 30: Report of the Investigating Committee appointed by the Legislature of Minnesota of 1891, to determine whether wheat was taken without inspection from a public elevator in Duluth. April 7, 1892, p. 11.] [Footnote 31: Trusts, New York Senate, 1891, pp. 9, 11.] [Footnote 32: Meat Products, United States Senate, 51st Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 829, 1890, p. 2.] [Footnote 33: New York Assembly, "Hepburn Report," 1879, p. 70.] [Footnote 34: Meat Products, United States Senate, 1890, p. 3.] [Footnote 35: Meat Products, United States Senate, 1890, pp. 1, 2.] [Footnote 36: Meat Products, United States Senate, 1890, p. 6.] [Footnote 37: Meat Products, United States Senate, 1890, Testimony, pp. 464, 465.] [Footnote 38: Meat Products, United States Senate, 1890.] [Footnote 39: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888. Combinations, Canadian Parliament, 1888.] [Footnote 40: F.H. Storer, _American Journal of Science_, vol. xxx., 1860.] [Footnote 41: Petroleum and Its Products, by S.F. Peckham, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 159.] [Footnote 42: Petroleum and Its Products, by S.F. Peckham, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 160.] [Footnote 43: Testimony of Simon Bernheimer, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3549 and following.] [Footnote 44: Petroleum and Its Products, by S.F. Peckham, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 93.] [Footnote 45: Same, p. 93.] [Footnote 46: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 214.] [Footnote 47: Titusville _Morning Herald_, March 20, 1872.] [Footnote 48: Testimony, Erie Investigation, New York Assembly, 1873, p. 418.] [Footnote 49: Testimony of Simon Bernheimer, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3548.] [Footnote 50: Testimony, Freight Discriminations, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 184-5.] [Footnote 51: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 304.] [Footnote 52: Testimony, Pennsylvania Tax Case, 1883, p. 486.] [Footnote 53: This contract is printed in full in Exhibits, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 418-51, and Trust Report, Congress, 1888, pp. 357-61.] [Footnote 54: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 353.] [Footnote 55: Art. 2, sec. 3.] [Footnote 56: Art. 2, sec. 4.] [Footnote 57: Art. 2, sec. 5.] [Footnote 58: Art. 2, Sec. 4.] [Footnote 59: The same.] [Footnote 60: Art. 2, Sec. 8.] [Footnote 61: Art. 2, Sec. 5.] [Footnote 62: Art. 3.] [Footnote 63: Art. 4.] [Footnote 64: Exhibits, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, pp. 418-51.] [Footnote 65: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 1566.] [Footnote 66: Testimony, Erie Investigation, New York Assembly, 1873, p. 300.] [Footnote 67: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 42.] [Footnote 68: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, Exhibits, p. 418.] [Footnote 69: Report of the Executive Committee of the Petroleum Producers' Union, 1872, p. 23.] [Footnote 70: Testimony, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, p. 237.] [Footnote 71: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2525.] [Footnote 72: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2527.] [Footnote 73: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 2525-35.] [Footnote 74: See ch. xxxii. for "the state of the business" "unproductive of profit."] [Footnote 75: Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._ Court of Common Pleas, Cuyahoga County, O. Affidavit of the President of the Standard Oil Company.] [Footnote 76: 11 Harris.] [Footnote 77: Debates of the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, 1873, v. 3, pp. 522-3.] [Footnote 78: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2766.] [Footnote 79: Report of Executive Committee of the Petroleum Producers' Union, 1872.] [Footnote 80: See ch. xxxiii.] [Footnote 81: Report Executive Committee Petroleum Producers' Union, 1872.] [Footnote 82: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 290.] [Footnote 83: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 420.] [Footnote 84: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 289.] [Footnote 85: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad Company _et al._, 1879, p. 707.] [Footnote 86: Report Executive Committee Petroleum Producers' Union, 1872.] [Footnote 87: Exhibit A, Answer of Defendants, Case of Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._, Cleveland, 1880.] [Footnote 88: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 385.] [Footnote 89: Exhibit A, Answer of Defendants, Case of Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._, Cleveland, 1880, Section 7.] [Footnote 90: Affidavits of the defendants.] [Footnote 91: Affidavits of the defendants.] [Footnote 92: Affidavits of the defendants.] [Footnote 93: Same.] [Footnote 94: Same.] [Footnote 95: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 547.] [Footnote 96: Petition for Relief and Injunction, Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._, etc.] [Footnote 97: Affidavits of the defendants.] [Footnote 98: _Combinations_, etc., S.C.T. Dodd, p. 25.] [Footnote 99: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 422.] [Footnote 100: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 772.] [Footnote 101: Affidavit of Levi T. Scofield.] [Footnote 102: Exhibit A, etc., Section 12.] [Footnote 103: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 388, 421.] [Footnote 104: Scofield _et al._ _vs._ Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company, 43 Ohio State Report, p. 571.] [Footnote 105: See ch. xxvii.] [Footnote 106: See ch. xxvii.] [Footnote 107: See Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 800.] [Footnote 108: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, Testimony, p. 472.] [Footnote 109: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1879, Testimony, p. 490.] [Footnote 110: Report Executive Committee Petroleum Producers' Union, 1872.] [Footnote 111: See ch. xxxi.] [Footnote 112: Glasgow _Herald_, June 16, 1892.] [Footnote 113: Affidavit, Oct. 18, 1880, Case of Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._, Cleveland, 1880.] [Footnote 114: Affidavit, Nov. 17, 1880.] [Footnote 115: Affidavit, Nov. 30, 1880.] [Footnote 116: Affidavit, May 1, 1880.] [Footnote 117: See chapter "Not to Exceed Half."] [Footnote 118: Affidavit, May 1, 1880.] [Footnote 119: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad Company _et al._, Testimony, p. 751.] [Footnote 120: Exhibit A, Affidavit, October 18, 1880.] [Footnote 121: See ch. xxvii.] [Footnote 122: See ch. xviii. and following.] [Footnote 123: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 363.] [Footnote 124: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 1693.] [Footnote 125: Rutter Circular, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 363.] [Footnote 126: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44.] [Footnote 127: Rutter Circular, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 363.] [Footnote 128: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 1596.] [Footnote 129: Same, Report, p. 43.] [Footnote 130: Same, Testimony, p. 3429.] [Footnote 131: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 2792-95.] [Footnote 132: Same, p. 2795.] [Footnote 133: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 445.] [Footnote 134: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 670.] [Footnote 135: Testimony of A.J. Cassatt, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 666, 669, 671.] [Footnote 136: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44.] [Footnote 137: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, etc., 1879, p. 665.] [Footnote 138: Appeal to the Executive of Pennsylvania, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 354.] [Footnote 139: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 735.] [Footnote 140: Same, p. 672.] [Footnote 141: Same, p. 460.] [Footnote 142: See ch. vi.] [Footnote 143: Standard Oil Company _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._ Affidavit of the treasurer of the Standard.] [Footnote 144: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 771-72.] [Footnote 145: For the full report of these remarkable interviews with the President and Third Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad see Testimony, Investigation Pennsylvania Secretary of Internal Affairs, 1878, pp. 47 _et seq._, 60 _et seq._; Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 160 _et seq._, 204 _et seq._, 237 _et seq._] [Footnote 146: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 225-26.] [Footnote 147: Testimony, Investigation, Pennsylvania Secretary of Internal Affairs, 1878, pp. 49, 59; Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 710, 3548-56; Exhibits, same, p. 176; Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 247.] [Footnote 148: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, p. 712.] [Footnote 149: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 720.] [Footnote 150: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 445.] [Footnote 151: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 725-26.] [Footnote 152: Exhibits, pp. 453-514.] [Footnote 153: Testimony, pp. 174-207.] [Footnote 154: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 11.] [Footnote 155: Same, p. 352.] [Footnote 156: Same, p. 510.] [Footnote 157: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 420.] [Footnote 158: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 374.] [Footnote 159: Testimony, Discriminations in Freight Rates, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 181-85.] [Footnote 160: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 800.] [Footnote 161: Exhibits, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 238-45.] [Footnote 162: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, Exhibits, pp. 479-514.] [Footnote 163: This was always denied by the New York Central. "I never heard of the American Transfer Company," Vanderbilt told the New York Legislature. "I don't know that we ever paid the American Transfer Company a dollar. If we did, I have no knowledge of it." New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 1577.] [Footnote 164: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, p. 702. Same, Exhibits Nos. 45-47, pp. 732-33.] [Footnote 165: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 691.] [Footnote 166: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 3666-69.] [Footnote 167: Same, p. 3959.] [Footnote 168: Same, p. 2664.] [Footnote 169: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 656-57.] [Footnote 170: Art. 1, sec. 4.] [Footnote 171: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 40-44.] [Footnote 172: Speech of Simon Sterne, counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce, before New York Assembly "Hepburn" Committee, 1879, p. 3964.] [Footnote 173: Testimony, same, p. 2772.] [Footnote 174: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 175: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44.] [Footnote 176: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 302, 314.] [Footnote 177: Testimony, same, Pipe Line Appendix, pp. 36-37; Investigation, Pennsylvania Secretary of Internal Affairs, 1878, pp. 19, 29.] [Footnote 178: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, etc., 1879, Pipe Line Appendix, pp. 36-37; Investigation, Pennsylvania Secretary of Internal Affairs, 1878, pp. 19, 29, 32, 42.] [Footnote 179: A History, etc. Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 690, 697, 705, 706.] [Footnote 180: Testimony of B.B. Campbell, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, pp. 298-99.] [Footnote 181: Same, p. 300.] [Footnote 182: Testimony of B.B. Campbell, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, p. 300.] [Footnote 183: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 78-79.] [Footnote 184: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 295.] [Footnote 185: Same, p. 212.] [Footnote 186: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 45.] [Footnote 187: Franklin B. Gowen, before House Committee of Commerce, Washington, Jan. 27, 1880.] [Footnote 188: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, before Interstate Commerce Commission, pp. 299-300.] [Footnote 189: Same, pp. 521, 539.] [Footnote 190: Same, p. 534.] [Footnote 191: Franklin B. Gowen, before House Committee of Commerce, Washington, Jan. 27, 1880.] [Footnote 192: Report, p. 45.] [Footnote 193: Franklin B. Gowen, before Pennsylvania House of Representatives Committee on Railroads, Feb. 13, 1883.] [Footnote 194: See ch. xiii.] [Footnote 195: See ch. xxvi.] [Footnote 196: Testimony of General Freight Agent of Pennsylvania Railroad (Logan, Emery, and Weaver _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad), McKean County Court of Common Pleas, 1889.] [Footnote 197: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, Deposition, pp. 531-34.] [Footnote 198: Samuel Van Syckel _vs._ Acme Oil Company, Supreme Court of New York, Buffalo, May, 1888, before Judge Childs; Deposition of David McKelvey.] [Footnote 199: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases; Interstate Commerce Commission reports, vol. v., pp. 4, 5.] [Footnote 200: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 572.] [Footnote 201: Same, pp. 389-99.] [Footnote 202: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 658.] [Footnote 203: Testimony, Corners, New York Senate, 1883, p. 925.] [Footnote 204: _Combinations_, by S.C.T. Dodd, p. 28.] [Footnote 205: New York _Independent_, March 17, 1893.] [Footnote 206: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, Nos. 153, 154, 163, Interstate Commerce Commission; Deposition of General Freight Agent Pennsylvania Railroad, pp. 531, 534.] [Footnote 207: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 389.] [Footnote 208: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 27.] [Footnote 209: Same, p. 28.] [Footnote 210: Same, p. 27.] [Footnote 211: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 17.] [Footnote 212: Answer of the Pennsylvania Railroad; Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 365.] [Footnote 213: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 256.] [Footnote 214: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, Petition and Complaint.] [Footnote 215: Same, Testimony, p. 367.] [Footnote 216: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 372.] [Footnote 217: Same, pp. 380, 382.] [Footnote 218: Same, p. 256.] [Footnote 219: National Oil Company, Limited, to Interstate Commerce Commission, March 30, 1893.] [Footnote 220: _Combinations: Their Uses and Abuses_, by S.C.T. Dodd, p. 26.] [Footnote 221: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3688.] [Footnote 222: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 71.] [Footnote 223: Same, p. 426.] [Footnote 224: Same, p. 425.] [Footnote 225: _The Railways and the Republic_, by J.F. Hudson, p. 83.] [Footnote 226: See pp. 69-70.] [Footnote 227: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, Nos. 153, 154, 163. Petition and Complaint, p. 4.] [Footnote 228: Interstate Commerce Commission, "In the Matter of Relative Tank and Barrel Rates on Oil," 1888. Letter of G.B. Roberts.] [Footnote 229: See ch. v.] [Footnote 230: See ch. viii.] [Footnote 231: See below, and ch. xvii.] [Footnote 232: See ch. xxxiii.] [Footnote 233: Rice, Robinson & Witherop case, Interstate Commerce Commission, 1890.] [Footnote 234: In the matter of Relative Tank and Barrel Rates on Oil. Letter of President Roberts, Interstate Commerce Commission reports, vol. ii., p. 365.] [Footnote 235: Interstate Commerce Commission reports, vol. ii., p. 365.] [Footnote 236: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases. Exhibits, pp. 6, 7, 10.] [Footnote 237: Interstate Commerce Commission reports, vol. ii., p. 365.] [Footnote 238: Interstate Commerce Commission reports, vol. ii., p. 365.] [Footnote 239: Same.] [Footnote 240: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 462.] [Footnote 241: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 542, 543.] [Footnote 242: Same, p. 542.] [Footnote 243: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases. Petition and Complaint.] [Footnote 244: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 44, 110, 393, 396.] [Footnote 245: Same, p. 401.] [Footnote 246: Same, p. 335.] [Footnote 247: See p. 145.] [Footnote 248: See ch. xv.] [Footnote 249: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 283-84.] [Footnote 250: Same, p. 283.] [Footnote 251: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol v., p. 415.] [Footnote 252: See chs. xv., xvi., xvii.] [Footnote 253: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 268-336.] [Footnote 254: Same, p. 476.] [Footnote 255: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 163, 461, 537.] [Footnote 256: Same, p. 267.] [Footnote 257: Same, p. 296.] [Footnote 258: Same, Testimony of General Freight Manager of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, pp. 161-62.] [Footnote 259: Same, Testimony of General Freight Agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, pp. 523, 537.] [Footnote 260: Testimony of General Freight Agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Nicolai and Brady _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, before Interstate Commerce Commission, Jan. 28, 1888.] [Footnote 261: The new rates prohibited the traffic. Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 97, 110, 139, 141, 146-48, 383-84, 393, 396, 397, 400, 401, 402.] [Footnote 262: Decision in Rice, Robinson, and Witherop case, Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. iv., p. 131.] [Footnote 263: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 283.] [Footnote 264: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44.] [Footnote 265: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 36.] [Footnote 266: Same, p. 270.] [Footnote 267: Same, p. 221.] [Footnote 268: See ch. viii.] [Footnote 269: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, Mr. Confer, June 17, 1891, p. 12.] [Footnote 270: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 237-38.] [Footnote 271: Same, Report and Opinion of the Commission.] [Footnote 272: Same.] [Footnote 273: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 127-28.] [Footnote 274: Report of Senate Select Committee, Interstate Commerce, 49th Congress, 1st Session, 1886, p. 214.] [Footnote 275: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, p. 252.] [Footnote 276: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 20, 45, 75, 128-29, 175-77.] [Footnote 277: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 304-5.] [Footnote 278: Same, p. 486.] [Footnote 279: Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. iv., p. 131.] [Footnote 280: Testimony, Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases, pp. 188, 193, 446, 466, 467.] [Footnote 281: See chs. xvi, and xvii.] [Footnote 282: Rice cases, Nos. 184, 185, 194. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol v., p. 193.] [Footnote 283: Same.] [Footnote 284: George Rice _vs._ The St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. _et al._, and same _vs._ Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway Co. _et al._ Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. v., p. 660.] [Footnote 285: See chap. ix.] [Footnote 286: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 695.] [Footnote 287: Same, p. 69.] [Footnote 288: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 449.] [Footnote 289: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 7, 19, 27, 28.] [Footnote 290: See ch. xviii.] [Footnote 291: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 64.] [Footnote 292: New York _Tribune_, June 29, 1889.] [Footnote 293: United States Department of the Interior. "Petroleum," by Joseph D. Weeks, p. 300. Annual Oil Supplement to _Oil City Derrick_, 1893 and 1894.] [Footnote 294: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 68.] [Footnote 295: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 387.] [Footnote 296: Same, p. 405.] [Footnote 297: Same, p. 449.] [Footnote 298: Annual Oil Supplement to _Oil City Derrick_, Jan. 2, 1893.] [Footnote 299: Trusts, Congress, 1888. p. 52.] [Footnote 300: Same, p. 67.] [Footnote 301: Same, p. 29.] [Footnote 302: Same, p. 65.] [Footnote 303: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 304: See ch. xxiii.] [Footnote 305: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3482.] [Footnote 306: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 330.] [Footnote 307: Testimony of P.M. Shannon, J.W. Lee, T.B. Westgate, in the case of J.J. Carter _vs._ Producers and Refiners' Oil Co., Ld., Court of Common Pleas, Crawford County, Pa., May, 1894.] [Footnote 308: See ch. viii.] [Footnote 309: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, _ex rel._ Bolard and Dale _vs._ National Transit Co., Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Pa., December, 1893.] [Footnote 310: See ch. xxxi.] [Footnote 311: Proceedings of Joint Committee Pennsylvania Legislature on Standard Oil Company and its Taxes, 1883, p. 527.] [Footnote 312: Proceedings of Joint Committee Pennsylvania Legislature on Standard Oil Company and its Taxes, 1883. Testimony of Auditor-General Schell, p. 11 _et seq._, pp. 394-95, and of Corporation Clerk, same, p. 58 _et seq._] [Footnote 313: Same, pp. 60, 61, 62.] [Footnote 314: Same, pp. 374, 383.] [Footnote 315: Proceedings of Joint Committee Pennsylvania Legislature on Standard Oil Company and its Taxes, 1883, pp. 68, 69, 70, 381.] [Footnote 316: Proceedings of Joint Committee Pennsylvania Legislature on Standard Oil Company and its Taxes, 1883, pp. 53, 70, 81-85.] [Footnote 317: Appeal of Standard Oil Company to the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, June 20, 1881.] [Footnote 318: Trusts, Congress, 1886, p. 707.] [Footnote 319: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 143, 196, 476.] [Footnote 320: Same, pp. 316-17.] [Footnote 321: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 229, 478.] [Footnote 322: Same, pp. 478-79.] [Footnote 323: Same, pp. 228-29.] [Footnote 324: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 163, 185.] [Footnote 325: Same, p. 631.] [Footnote 326: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 267-70, 762-63.] [Footnote 327: Same, pp. 310, 789.] [Footnote 328: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 640-43, 830.] [Footnote 329: Same, p. 231.] [Footnote 330: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 229-30, 284-95.] [Footnote 331: Same, p. 498.] [Footnote 332: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., p. 343.] [Footnote 333: Same, p. 500.] [Footnote 334: Same, pp. 339-41.] [Footnote 335: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 502-6.] [Footnote 336: Same, pp. 297, 310, 315, 327.] [Footnote 337: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., pp. 467, 521.] [Footnote 338: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., p. 661.] [Footnote 339: Same, F.B. Gowen, p. 650.] [Footnote 340: Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, etc., p. 713.] [Footnote 341: Hudson's _Railways and Republic_, p. 465.] [Footnote 342: "Petroleum and Its Products," by S.F. Peckham, Special Agent, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 93.] [Footnote 343: Samuel Van Syckel _vs._ Acme Oil Company. Tried in the Supreme Court at Buffalo, N.Y., May 14, 1888.] [Footnote 344: _The Early and Later History of Petroleum_, by J.G. Henry, 1873, p. 186.] [Footnote 345: "Petroleum and Its Products," by S.F. Peckham, Special Agent, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 9.] [Footnote 346: Trusts, Congress, 1888, Testimony of Joshua Merrill, p. 566.] [Footnote 347: Trusts, Congress, 1888, Testimony of Joshua Merrill, pp. 567-69.] [Footnote 348: Same, p. 568.] [Footnote 349: Same, p. 568.] [Footnote 350: Same, p. 570.] [Footnote 351: Supreme Court of New York: Samuel Van Syckel _vs._ Acme Oil Company. Tried at Buffalo, New York, May 14, 1888.] [Footnote 352: Testimony, same.] [Footnote 353: Testimony, same.] [Footnote 354: Supreme Court of New York: Samuel Van Syckel _vs._ Acme Oil Company. Tried at Buffalo, New York, May 14, 1888.] [Footnote 355: Testimony, same.] [Footnote 356: See ch. xxi.] [Footnote 357: Samuel Van Syckel died in Buffalo, March 3, 1894, aged 83.] [Footnote 358: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 573.] [Footnote 359: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, p. 28.] [Footnote 360: Testimony, same, pp. 5, 41, 42, 124, 141, 162, 166, 170.] [Footnote 361: Testimony, same, p. 129.] [Footnote 362: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 12, 34, 172.] [Footnote 363: See ch. xviii.] [Footnote 364: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, p. 129.] [Footnote 365: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 579.] [Footnote 366: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 33, 40-42.] [Footnote 367: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 49, 51, 56.] [Footnote 368: Same, pp. 159, 163.] [Footnote 369: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, p. 169.] [Footnote 370: Same, pp. 249-50.] [Footnote 371: Same, p. 250.] [Footnote 372: Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, p. 260.] [Footnote 373: Same, p. 116.] [Footnote 374: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 574.] [Footnote 375: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 577-78.] [Footnote 376: See ch. viii.] [Footnote 377: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 578. Hardy and another _vs._ Cleveland and Marietta Railroad _et al._, Circuit Court, Ohio, E.D., 1887. _Federal Reporter_, vol. xxxi., pp. 689-93.] [Footnote 378: 49th Congress, 1st Session, Report of the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, p. 199.] [Footnote 379: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 534, 535.] [Footnote 380: Same, pp. 730-38.] [Footnote 381: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 743.] [Footnote 382: Same, p. 729.] [Footnote 383: Same, p. 732.] [Footnote 384: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 416-20.] [Footnote 385: Testimony, Rice cases, Interstate Commerce Commission, Nos. 51-60, 1887, pp. 442-43.] [Footnote 386: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 524-30.] [Footnote 387: Same, p. 620.] [Footnote 388: Same, pp. 534-36.] [Footnote 389: Same, p. 533.] [Footnote 390: Same, p. 536.] [Footnote 391: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 729.] [Footnote 392: Same, p. 534.] [Footnote 393: Same, p. 730.] [Footnote 394: Same, p. 733.] [Footnote 395: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 735.] [Footnote 396: Same, p. 535.] [Footnote 397: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 578.] [Footnote 398: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 579-80.] [Footnote 399: Same, p. 584.] [Footnote 400: Testimony, Rice cases, Interstate Commerce Commission, Nos. 51-60, p. 147.] [Footnote 401: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 682-83.] [Footnote 402: Testimony, Rice cases, Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887, Nos. 51-60, p. 57.] [Footnote 403: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 529-32.] [Footnote 404: Supreme Court of Ohio: the State, _ex rel._, _vs._ The Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway Company. The State, _ex rel._, _vs._ The Cincinnati, Washington and Baltimore Railway Company, 47 Ohio State Reports, p. 130.] [Footnote 405: Testimony, Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, p. 384.] [Footnote 406: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 397, 398, 615-17.] [Footnote 407: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 622.] [Footnote 408: Same, pp. 586, 676. Testimony, Rice cases, Interstate Commerce Commission, Nos. 51-60, 1887, pp. 391-92.] [Footnote 409: Same, pp. 676-77.] [Footnote 410: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 119.] [Footnote 411: Trusts, Congress, 1880, p. 520.] [Footnote 412: Trusts, Congress, 1880, pp. 410-11.] [Footnote 413: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 599.] [Footnote 414: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 688-89.] [Footnote 415: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 416: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 607.] [Footnote 417: Same, p. 678.] [Footnote 418: _Combinations_, by S.C.T. Dodd, p. 29.] [Footnote 419: "Petroleum and Its Products," by S.F. Peckham, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 92.] [Footnote 420: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 614.] [Footnote 421: See ch. xxiv.] [Footnote 422: Testimony, Rice cases, Interstate Commerce Commission, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 144.] [Footnote 423: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 587, 675, 680. Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, pp. 487-88. For similar preferences to the palace cattle-car companies, see report on "Meat Products," United States Senate, 1890, p. 18.] [Footnote 424: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 477.] [Footnote 425: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 675, 679-87.] [Footnote 426: Same, p. 682.] [Footnote 427: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 47.] [Footnote 428: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 675.] [Footnote 429: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, pp. 108-9.] [Footnote 430: Same, p. 120.] [Footnote 431: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 432: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 674.] [Footnote 433: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 480.] [Footnote 434: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 674.] [Footnote 435: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 531-33.] [Footnote 436: Same, pp. 646-47.] [Footnote 437: Same, pp. 668-85.] [Footnote 438: Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, p. 65.] [Footnote 439: Same, p. 131.] [Footnote 440: Same, pp. 128-29, 143-47, 239.] [Footnote 441: Same, p. 109. Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 675-76.] [Footnote 442: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 688.] [Footnote 443: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 689.] [Footnote 444: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 598-99. Testimony, Rice cases, Nos. 51-60, 1887, p. 28.] [Footnote 445: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 622.] [Footnote 446: See p. 205.] [Footnote 447: See p. 206.] [Footnote 448: Brundred, _et al._ _vs._ Rice, decided November 1, 1892, 49 Ohio State Reports.] [Footnote 449: See p. 219.] [Footnote 450: For the decisions in these Rice cases see Interstate Commerce Commission Report, vol. i., p. 503; same, p. 722; vol. ii., p. 389; vol. iii., p. 186; vol. iv., p. 228; vol. v., p. 193, and same, p. 660.] [Footnote 451: The State of Ohio _ex rel._ David K. Watson, Attorney-General, _vs._ The Standard Oil Company, _N.E. Reporter_, vol. xxx., p. 279; 49 Ohio State Reports, p. 317.] [Footnote 452: Rice _vs._ Standard Oil Trust. New York Court of Appeals--Case on Appeal, 1888.] [Footnote 453: Testimony, Trusts, New York, 1888, pp. 385-87.] [Footnote 454: People of the State of New York _vs._ Everest _et al._ Court of Oyer and Terminer, Erie County, February, 1886, court stenographer's report. This item is omitted in the transcript of evidence furnished by the oil trust to the Committee of Congress investigating trusts in 1888. See Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 801.] [Footnote 455: See p. 52.] [Footnote 456: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 814, 882, 883.] [Footnote 457: Same, p. 815.] [Footnote 458: Court Stenographer's Report, p. 1135.] [Footnote 459: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 816.] [Footnote 460: Same, p. 816.] [Footnote 461: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 817, 872-74.] [Footnote 462: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 818, 873.] [Footnote 463: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 820.] [Footnote 464: See p. 64.] [Footnote 465: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 854.] [Footnote 466: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 826.] [Footnote 467: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 821-22.] [Footnote 468: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 824-25.] [Footnote 469: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 825-26.] [Footnote 470: See ch. xxxi.] [Footnote 471: History, etc., Petroleum Producers' Unions. Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 690-716.] [Footnote 472: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 942.] [Footnote 473: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 814-15.] [Footnote 474: Same, p. 834.] [Footnote 475: Same, p. 847.] [Footnote 476: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 842.] [Footnote 477: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 821.] [Footnote 478: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 842-43.] [Footnote 479: Same, pp. 843-44.] [Footnote 480: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 823.] [Footnote 481: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 844.] [Footnote 482: Same, p. 825.] [Footnote 483: Same, p. 845.] [Footnote 484: Same, p. 844.] [Footnote 485: Court Stenographer's Report, p. 2049. The last statement is omitted in the transcript furnished by the trust for the Congress Trust Report of 1888.] [Footnote 486: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 911.] [Footnote 487: Court Stenographer's Report, pp. 454-55.] [Footnote 488: Court Stenographer's Report, p. 2164.] [Footnote 489: Testimony, Rice cases, before Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887, Nos. 51-60, p. 367. Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 571, 577, 578, 579, 658. Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 295.] [Footnote 490: Testimony, Alleged Discriminations in Railroad Freights, Ohio House of Representatives, 1879, pp. 36-39.] [Footnote 491: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 410.] [Footnote 492: Court Stenographer's Report.] [Footnote 493: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 871.] [Footnote 494: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 456, 571.] [Footnote 495: Court Stenographer's Report, p. 892.] [Footnote 496: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 869.] [Footnote 497: Same, p. 825.] [Footnote 498: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 902.] [Footnote 499: Same, pp. 905-41.] [Footnote 500: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 939.] [Footnote 501: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 932-33, 937.] [Footnote 502: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 816.] [Footnote 503: See chs. xxii. to xxvi.] [Footnote 504: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 847.] [Footnote 505: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 424.] [Footnote 506: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 849.] [Footnote 507: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 847.] [Footnote 508: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 429, 894.] [Footnote 509: Same, p. 894.] [Footnote 510: Testimony, Stenographic Report, p. 895. This passage also is omitted in the transcript furnished the committee of Congress by the counsel of the trust.] [Footnote 511: See p. 214.] [Footnote 512: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 533; see also p. 734.] [Footnote 513: See ch. xxv.] [Footnote 514: Report of Citizens' Committee on City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, p. 5.] [Footnote 515: City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, p. 5.] [Footnote 516: Chs. xiv and xxi.] [Footnote 517: State, _ex rel._, _vs._ City of Toledo, 48th Ohio State Reports, p. 112.] [Footnote 518: _Federal Court Reporter_, vol. xxxix., pp. 651-54.] [Footnote 519: Report of the Northwestern Ohio Natural Gas Company, January 7, 1889.] [Footnote 520: Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, pp. 36-37.] [Footnote 521: City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, p. 3.] [Footnote 522: See ch. xxix.] [Footnote 523: See ch. xx.] [Footnote 524: October 19, 1889.] [Footnote 525: City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, pp. 6-7.] [Footnote 526: Annual Report of the Natural Gas Trustees, 1890, p. 9.] [Footnote 527: City of Toledo and Its Natural Gas Bonds, p. 3.] [Footnote 528: Toledo Natural Gas Trustees' Report, 1890, p. 7.] [Footnote 529: Annual Report of the Natural Gas Trustees, 1890, p. 8.] [Footnote 530: "Constitutional History as Seen in the Development of American Law." Lecture by D.H. Chamberlain. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.] [Footnote 531: Report of the Toledo Natural Gas Trustees, 1890, pp. 8-9.] [Footnote 532: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 659.] [Footnote 533: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 428.] [Footnote 534: See p. 99.] [Footnote 535: See p. 206.] [Footnote 536: Annual Report of Natural Gas Trustees, 1890, p. 9.] [Footnote 537: Toledo _Blade_, February 7 and 27, 1889.] [Footnote 538: New York _Sun_ of March 31, 1891.] [Footnote 539: New York _Tribune_, April 23, 1889.] [Footnote 540: From _Life of William Lloyd Garrison, Told by His Children_, vol. iii., ch. i., p. 12.] [Footnote 541: Petition of the Isaac Harter Company _vs._ the Northwestern Ohio Natural Gas Company, Court of Common Pleas, Seneca County, Ohio, June 16, 1890.] [Footnote 542: Annual Report of the Toledo Natural Gas Trustees, 1891, p. 6.] [Footnote 543: See p. 250 and ch. xxxi.] [Footnote 544: See p. 154.] [Footnote 545: See p. 250.] [Footnote 546: See p. 21.] [Footnote 547: Annual Report of the Natural Gas Trustees of Toledo, 1891, p. 4.] [Footnote 548: Report to Stockholders, Northwestern Natural Gas Company, January 7, 1889.] [Footnote 549: Report to Stockholders, Toledo Natural Gas Company, January, 1889.] [Footnote 550: See ch. xxxii.] [Footnote 551: See p. 113.] [Footnote 552: See chs. ix. and xxxi.] [Footnote 553: See ch. xxx.] [Footnote 554: _Railroad Transportation_, by Arthur T. Hadley. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1886.] [Footnote 555: Speech of Simon Sterne, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 98-118.] [Footnote 556: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 2723-24 and p. 3900.] [Footnote 557: New York _Herald_, January 19, 1884.] [Footnote 558: Appeal to the Executive of Pennsylvania by the Petroleum Producers' Union, 1878. Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 354.] [Footnote 559: New York _Herald_, January 19, 1884.] [Footnote 560: See ch. vii.] [Footnote 561: Report No. 1490, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, p. 1.] [Footnote 562: Testimony, Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio, 67th General Assembly, 1886, vol. lxxxii., p. 499.] [Footnote 563: Report No. 1490, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, p. 60.] [Footnote 564: Report No. 1490, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, pp. 77, 78.] [Footnote 565: Report No. 1490, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, p. 58.] [Footnote 566: Same, pp. 37, 40, 66; Miscellaneous Document No. 106, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, pp. 32, 46, 214, and _passim_.] [Footnote 567: Report No. 1490, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, p. 50.] [Footnote 568: Miscellaneous Document 106, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, p. 18.] [Footnote 569: Miscellaneous Document 106, United States Senate, 49th Congress, 1886, pp. 81-82.] [Footnote 570: _The Payne Bribery Case and the United States Senate_, by Albert H. Walker.] [Footnote 571: Minority Report of Senators Hoar and Frye, 49th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, No. 1490, p. 34.] [Footnote 572: Same, pp. 38, 39.] [Footnote 573: Hudson's _Railways and the Republic_, p. 467.] [Footnote 574: _Congressional Globe_, September 12, 1888, pp. 8520-8604.] [Footnote 575: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 395.] [Footnote 576: Speech of John M. Forbes, Boston, April 30, 1889.] [Footnote 577: Congress Record, 51st Congress, 2d Session, p. 3651.] [Footnote 578: Mr. John M. Forbes, in _Fossils, Free Ships, and Reform_.] [Footnote 579: See p. 307.] [Footnote 580: See p. 386.] [Footnote 581: See chs. xviii.-xxi.] [Footnote 582: Senate Report No. 485, 53d Congress, 2d Session, June 21, 1894.] [Footnote 583: Supplemental Report of Senator W.V. Allen, of the Senate Special Committee (ordered May 17, 1894) to Investigate Alleged Attempts at Bribery by the Sugar Trust.] [Footnote 584: United States _vs._ E.C. Knight & Co., _et al._ United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, March 26, 1894, 60 _Federal Reporter_, p. 34.] [Footnote 585: Letter of President Cleveland to Hon. W.L. Wilson, Chairman House Committee of Ways and Means, July 2, 1894, read to the House of Representatives July 18, 1894.] [Footnote 586: New York _Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin_, Sept. 21, 1893.] [Footnote 587: II. Coke, 84.] [Footnote 588: See ch. viii.] [Footnote 589: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, Exhibits, pp. 614-19.] [Footnote 590: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3678.] [Footnote 591: Same, p. 3683.] [Footnote 592: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 3684.] [Footnote 593: See ch. xiv., "I Want to Make Oil."] [Footnote 594: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, pp. 3683-94.] [Footnote 595: Titusville and Oil City Independents' cases. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. v., p. 415.] [Footnote 596: Testimony, New York Assembly, 1879, p. 3678.] [Footnote 597: See pp. 216, 320.] [Footnote 598: See p. 188.] [Footnote 599: Second Annual Report, Fire Marshal of Boston, May, 1888, p. 9.] [Footnote 600: See p. 84.] [Footnote 601: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 602: Journal of the Senate of Minnesota, March, 1891, p. 716.] [Footnote 603: Omaha _Daily Bee_, November 24, 27; December 5, 13, 21, 1891.] [Footnote 604: See p. 291.] [Footnote 605: Testimony, Corners, New York Senate, 1883, p. 670.] [Footnote 606: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 389.] [Footnote 607: Same, p. 317.] [Footnote 608: See p. 62.] [Footnote 609: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, pp. 369-85, 435, 534-35.] [Footnote 610: Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company _vs._ Everest _et al._ Supreme Court Erie Co., N.Y., 1886.] [Footnote 611: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 846-47.] [Footnote 612: Testimony in the case of George Rice _vs._ Trustees of the Standard Oil Trust, New York Court of Appeals, 1888.] [Footnote 613: Testimony, Independent Refiners' Associations _vs._ Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad Company _et al._, p. 401.] [Footnote 614: Testimony, George Rice _vs._ Louisville and Nashville Railroad _et al._, cases 51-60, p. 425.] [Footnote 615: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 609-10.] [Footnote 616: Same, p. 732.] [Footnote 617: Same, p. 735.] [Footnote 618: See chs. xii. and xxxi.] [Footnote 619: See ch. xxii.] [Footnote 620: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 734, 745.] [Footnote 621: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 372.] [Footnote 622: Report, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 12.] [Footnote 623: See ch. xi.] [Footnote 624: President E. Benjamin Andrews, of Brown University, "Trusts According to Official Investigation," _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, January, 1889, p. 146.] [Footnote 625: See ch. xiv.] [Footnote 626: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 2623-40.] [Footnote 627: Same, Report, p. 44.] [Footnote 628: Testimony, same, pp. 2615, 2696.] [Footnote 629: George Rice _vs._ Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad _et al._ Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. iv., p. 228.] [Footnote 630: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 528-29.] [Footnote 631: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 386, 425.] [Footnote 632: See pp. 56-57.] [Footnote 633: Before the Pennsylvania Legislature, Harrisburg, February 19, 1891. Harrisburg _Daily Patriot_, February 25, 1891.] [Footnote 634: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 422.] [Footnote 635: _Scotsman_, October 7, 1892.] [Footnote 636: _Pall Mall Gazette_, January 27, 1892.] [Footnote 637: _Standard_, Shoe Lane, January 26, 1892.] [Footnote 638: See p. 408.] [Footnote 639: _Combinations_, by S.C.T. Dodd, 1888, p. 31.] [Footnote 640: _Die Monopolisirung des Petroleum Handels und der Petroleum Industrie_, by E.F. Scemann. L. Simeon, Berlin.] [Footnote 641: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 792.] [Footnote 642: Harrisburg _Patriot_, February 25, 1891.] [Footnote 643: Translation from the Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_, June 12, 1891. Report of Consul-General Edwards, of Berlin.] [Footnote 644: See p. 106.] [Footnote 645: See ch. xii.] [Footnote 646: See chs. xi. and xxx.] [Footnote 647: Testimony of J.J. Carter in the case of J.J. Carter _vs._ Producers and Refiners' Oil Company, Limited. Court of Common Pleas, Crawford County, Pa., May Term, 1894.] [Footnote 648: See pp. 111, 366.] [Footnote 649: Affidavit of the President of the Standard Oil Company of New York before the Attorney-General, May, 1894.] [Footnote 650: State of Ohio _ex rel._ David K. Watson, Attorney-General, _vs._ Standard Oil Company of Ohio. 49 Ohio State Reports, p. 317.] [Footnote 651: Rice _vs._ Trustees of the Standard Oil Trust. Supreme Court, Special Term, Part I. Andrews, Judge. Reported in the New York _Law Journal_, April 26, 1894.] [Footnote 652: Testimony, Rice _vs._ Louisville and Nashville Railroad _et al._, before Interstate Commerce Committee, p. 366.] [Footnote 653: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 577.] [Footnote 654: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 18, 38, 65, 89, 111.] [Footnote 655: W.H. Vanderbilt, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 1597, 1669. Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 218.] [Footnote 656: Report, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 9.] [Footnote 657: Same, pp. 9, 10.] [Footnote 658: Testimony, Corners, New York Senate, 1883, p. 679.] [Footnote 659: Report, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 9, 10.] [Footnote 660: Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. i., p. 722.] [Footnote 661: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 398, 407, 411, 412, 415, 419-43, 594.] [Footnote 662: Same, p. 571.] [Footnote 663: Before the Attorney-General of New York. In the matter of the application of the Central Labor Union and others to the Attorney-General to have him apply to the Supreme Court for leave to begin action against the Standard Oil Company of New York to vacate the charter thereof. Affidavit, president Standard Oil Company, May, 1894.] [Footnote 664: New York _Mail and Express_, November 12, 1890.] [Footnote 665: Dr. J.P. Hale, of Charleston, West Virginia, in the volume prepared by Prof. M.L. Maury, and issued by the State Centennial Board, on the resources of the State. Quoted by S.F. Peckham, United States Census, 1885, p. 6.] [Footnote 666: _Petroleum and Its Products_, by S.F. Peckham, U.S. Census, 1885, p. 7.] [Footnote 667: S. Dana Hayes, quoted in Henry's _Early and Later History of Petroleum_, p. 186.] [Footnote 668: Testimony, Joshua Merrill, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 570.] [Footnote 669: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 386, 425.] [Footnote 670: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 82.] [Footnote 671: See p. 165.] [Footnote 672: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 258.] [Footnote 673: See chs. xi. and xvii.] [Footnote 674: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44. Testimony, same, pp. 2623, 2645. Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 223-26, 542, 543, 548.] [Footnote 675: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 43. Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 213.] [Footnote 676: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 712. Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 302.] [Footnote 677: See p. 405.] [Footnote 678: See pp. 61, 153.] [Footnote 679: See p. 420.] [Footnote 680: See pp. 49, 217.] [Footnote 681: See p. 306.] [Footnote 682: See p. 108.] [Footnote 683: See pp. 111, 291, 446.] [Footnote 684: See p. 291.] [Footnote 685: See p. 162.] [Footnote 686: See pp. 118-27.] [Footnote 687: See pp. 97, 224.] [Footnote 688: See pp. 106, 164.] [Footnote 689: See pp. 107, 154.] [Footnote 690: See pp. 62, 79.] [Footnote 691: See pp. 42, 72, 188.] [Footnote 692: See p. 251.] [Footnote 693: See p. 216.] [Footnote 694: See pp. 216, 413.] [Footnote 695: See pp. 189, 228, 437.] [Footnote 696: See pp. 102, 140.] [Footnote 697: See pp. 182-98.] [Footnote 698: See p. 298.] [Footnote 699: See pp. 149, 447.] [Footnote 700: _Railways and the Republic_, by J.F. Hudson, p. 77.] [Footnote 701: Testimony, Corners, New York Senate, 1883, pp. 637-42.] [Footnote 702: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 298.] [Footnote 703: Same, p. 784.] [Footnote 704: Same, p. 295.] [Footnote 705: Same, pp. 295, 778-80.] [Footnote 706: Investigation of Relations of Standard Oil Company to the State, 1883, p. 473.] [Footnote 707: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2665.] [Footnote 708: Same, p. 2667.] [Footnote 709: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 296, 322, 787, 788.] [Footnote 710: Same, p. 365.] [Footnote 711: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2603.] [Footnote 712: Same, pp. 2604-14.] [Footnote 713: Testimony, Corners, New York Senate, 1883, pp. 929, 931, 932.] [Footnote 714: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 417.] [Footnote 715: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 1636.] [Footnote 716: Testimony, Rice cases, 51-60, Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887, pp. 366, 368.] [Footnote 717: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 455, 577.] [Footnote 718: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, pp. 576-89.] [Footnote 719: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 391, 392.] [Footnote 720: Same, p. 294.] [Footnote 721: Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 658.] [Footnote 722: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 580.] [Footnote 723: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 266, 287, 314, 365, 387, 395, 526, 537, 565, 627, 768, 790, 799.] [Footnote 724: House of Representatives, 50th Congress, 2d Session. Report No. 4165, Part II., Appendix C, p. 33.] [Footnote 725: Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 174-210, 801-951.] [Footnote 726: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, printed in Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 195.] [Footnote 727: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, printed in Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 206.] [Footnote 728: Same, p. 208.] [Footnote 729: Testimony in Buffalo Explosion case, printed in Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 894.] [Footnote 730: Deposition of Albert N. Reynolds, Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company, Limited, vs. Everest & Everest. Supreme Court, New York, Erie County, City of Buffalo, August 29, 1884.] [Footnote 731: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2668.] [Footnote 732: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 215, 223, 226.] [Footnote 733: Interstate Commerce Law, sec. 10.] [Footnote 734: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 40-41.] [Footnote 735: New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 44.] [Footnote 736: See p. 202.] [Footnote 737: Rice _vs._ Louisville and Nashville Railroad _et al._ Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. i., p. 722. Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 675-84.] [Footnote 738: Scofield _vs._ Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. ii., p. 90.] [Footnote 739: Rice, Robinson and Witherop _vs._ Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._ Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, vol. iv., p. 131.] [Footnote 740: Same.] [Footnote 741: Testimony, Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, p. 597.] [Footnote 742: South Improvement Company, p. 45; American Transfer Company, p. 99; Rutter Circular, p. 85; Contract with Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877, p. 89; Contract with New York Central and Lake Shore and Michigan Central Railroads, 1875 and 1876; New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, Exhibits, p. 175; Contract with the Erie road, same, p. 573; Contract in the "Agreement for an Adventure" case, p. 62.] [Footnote 743: See pp. 69, 130, 146, 149, 151, 208, 219, 224, 239.] [Footnote 744: Wm. C. Bissel _vs._ Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company _et al._] [Footnote 745: Testimony, United States Pacific Railway Commission Report, 1887, p. 3301.] [Footnote 746: Same, p. 3581.] [Footnote 747: Same, pp. 1132-33.] [Footnote 748: Sec pp. 49, 200, 218.] [Footnote 749: See p. 48.] [Footnote 750: Titusville _World_, July 12, 1894.] [Footnote 751: Standard Oil Company _vs._ Southern Pacific Railroad and Whittier, Fuller & Co., 48 _Federal Reporter_, p. 109.] [Footnote 752: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, p. 2753.] [Footnote 753: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 333, 534.] [Footnote 754: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 2656-57.] [Footnote 755: See pp. 145, 319, 320.] [Footnote 756: Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 354.] [Footnote 757: Debates, Constitutional Convention to amend the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1872, vol. viii., pp. 261, 262.] [Footnote 758: See p. 69.] [Footnote 759: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 1314-15.] [Footnote 760: Testimony, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, p. 529.] [Footnote 761: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, pp. 367-68.] [Footnote 762: Same, p. 396.] [Footnote 763: Report of the United States Senate Committee on Meat Products, 51st Congress, 1st Session, 1890, No. 829, p. 18.] [Footnote 764: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 397, 781, 825, 924, 1383. United States Senate Report on Meat Products, p. 23.] [Footnote 765: Testimony, New York Assembly "Hepburn" Report, 1879, pp. 808-9.] [Footnote 766: Same, speech of Simon Sterne, p. 3996.] [Footnote 767: See pp. 13, 19.] [Footnote 768: Franklin B. Gowen, before the United States Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, March, 1888.] [Footnote 769: Testimony, Trusts, Congress, 1888, p. 215.] [Footnote 770: See page 4.] INDEX Abusive language, use of, 319, 485. Acme Oil Company, Samuel Van Syckel _vs._, 187. Adams, H.C., quoted on municipal monopolies, 322. Adulteration of liquors, 27. Advice of counsel, 249. Alcohol in industry and politics, 20. Allen, W.V., supplemental report on sugar-trust bribery, 404. American, early, refiners of petroleum, 39. American Transfer Company receives from 20 to 35 cents per barrel on all oil shipped by competitors, 99; the South Improvement Company reappears in, 100; false map of, before New York Legislature, 101. Andrews, E. Benjamin, on prices under monopoly, 428; on oil-trust prices, 430 _n._ Anonymous circulars, in war against Toledo, 327. Artificial liquors, 27. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad _et al._, William C. Bissell _vs._, 479. Atlantic and Great Western Railroad and South Improvement Company, 48, 50; war of 1877, 88. Attorney-General, of Pennsylvania, management of tax-case against Standard Oil Company by, 170-81; of United States, on monopoly, 37; report for 1893, 3, 6; cases against the sugar trust, 404. Austria, refineries of, consolidated, 439. Bad oil, 405-19. Baltimore and Ohio, and railroad war of 1877, 88; closes Baltimore to independent shippers, 102; withdraws rates, 221; freight agent escapes from Congress, 222. Baltimore closed to independent shippers by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 102; sale of refineries at, 421. Bank of England's income compared with an American millionaire's, 459. Bankers indemnified for withdrawing bids on Toledo bonds, 336. Bankruptcy of oil refineries in 1873, 60; 1879-92, 455-70. _Baptist_, the _National_, quoted, 341. Barrel shipments better for railroads than tanks, 138, 231; destroyed by railroads, 138. Barrett, Judge, defines monopoly, 3; on sugar trust, 3, 4. Batoum refuses Rothschild permission to lay pipe line, 443. Baxter, Judge, decision on rebates paid oil combination, 207. _Bee_, Omaha _Daily_, investigates oil inspection of Nebraska, 414. Beef, combination of packers of, 33, 36; price of, under combination, 35. Belgium, 437. Bernheimer, Simon, testimony as to abundance of capital for early refiners, 41. "Big Four" combination, 35. Binney, E.W., quoted, 40. Biscuit Association, 30. Bissell, William C., _vs._ Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad _et al._, 479. Black-mail, when competition is, 215. Blind-billing, 229; shippers benefited by, deny, 231. Blount, Representative, on subsidies and bribery, 394. Bolard & Dale _vs._ National Transit Company, 165. Bonds not to refine, 79, 80. Books, natural-gas companies will not show, 363; oil trust keeps none, 469. Boston, South Improvement Company rates to, 47; fire marshal on bad oil, 411; prices of oil reduced from 20 to 8 by competition, 422. Boycott, of butchers by packers' combination, 35; how working-men were punished for, 287. Boyle, P.C., Ohio _vs._, 324. Bread Union in London, 30. Bremen, Congress of Chambers of Commerce, 406. Bribery of jurors, 286; of Congress by Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 394. British government lowers test on oil, 436. Brooklyn, consolidation of street-railways, 5. Brundred _et al._ _vs._ Rice, 239. Buffalo, explosion in Matthews' refinery, 250; pipe line to, destroyed, 291; prices reduced by competition, 421. Buhl, Richardson _vs._, 10. _Bulletin_, New York _Daily Commercial_, on oil-trust prices, 430 _n._; on sugar trust, 32, 449. Burdick bill, Pennsylvania Legislature, 126. Burial Case, National Association, 37. Business, politics of, 403; "this belongs to us," 432; golden rule of, 495; runs into monopoly, 512. Butchers, independent, refused cars by Erie Railroad, 35; National Protective Association, 34. Butterworth, Benjamin, represents Ohio before the United States Senate in the Payne matter, 376. Buyer, the only, refuses to buy, 106; only one, in Ohio, 107. _Call_, San Francisco, on commercial treaty with China, 449. Campaign contributions from trusts, 403. Campbell, B.B., averts outbreak at Parker, 106. Canada oil interests attacked by American combination, 12; retail coal-dealers' associations, 15; Grocers' Guild, 30; Parliamentary debate on American oil prices, 424; Parliament reduces tariff in 1894, 435; finance minister favors American oil trust, 435. Canadian Copper Company, litigation among stockholders, 403. Canal, independent shippers escape by, 96; tank-boats for, 96; railroad war against, 97. Cancer, hospital for, endowed, 181. Capital, of combinations, 4; easy for early refiners to get, 41; of oil combination, 457. Carlyle, Thomas, on literary freedom in America, 529. Cars, refusal of, by railroads to independent shippers, 12, 91, 94, 106. Carter, J.J., _vs._ Producers' and Refiners' Oil Company, Limited, 164, 446. Cassatt, A.J., testimony concerning railroad war of 1877, 88; on lower rates to Standard Oil Company, 94, 472; on refusal of cars and rates, 94; on cheapness of oil, 428. Cattle combination, 5, 33; traffic, railroad preferences in, 33; decline in prices of, 34; shippers discriminated against by the railroads, 36. Cattle Range Association, International, 34. Census, United States, on petroleum, 39; sugar trust refuses to answer questions, 404. Charity decreases under monopoly, 502. Cheapness of oil, 420; under the trusts, 431 _n._; how produced, 464-65; analysis of, 500. Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, charges for oil and cattle compared, 481. Chicago, number of dry-goods stores in, in 1894, 488; Union Stock Yards, secrecy as to ownership of its stock, 487. China, commercial treaty with, 449. Church and wealth, 294. Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway, Ohio _vs._, 220; "mistakes," 234. Cincinnati, Washington and Baltimore Railway, Ohio _vs._, 220. Circulars, anonymous, in war against Toledo, 327. Clamorer for dividends, 101. Clarion County, Pennsylvania, indictment of members of Standard Oil Company, 170, 258; Supreme Court of Pennsylvania interferes, 180. Clark, Horace F., on South Improvement Company contract, 50. Cleveland, disadvantages of, for the oil business, 53, 464; starting-point of the founders of the oil combination, 44; South Improvement Company rates to, 46; pipe line to, 65; pioneer refiner, 73; crude oil carried to, free for oil combination, 85. Cleveland and Marietta Railroad, Handy _vs._, 206-8. Cleveland, President, on sugar tariff, 404. Clinton, De Witt, on petroleum, 38. Coal, combination, capital of, 4; in Nova Scotia, 5, 11, 461; State, national, and judicial investigations, 9; bituminous lands bought by railroads, 11; anthracite monopolized by railroads, 11, 14; freights on, higher in 1893 than in 1879, 13; independent producers crushed by railroad discriminations, 13; miners oppressed by coal companies, 16, 17; price of, advanced by combination, 14, 431 _n._; extortion of anthracite monopoly, 14; combination between American and Canadian dealers, 15; retail associations of dealers, 15; dealers terrorized, 15; miners, freedom under competition, 16; miners' strike in Pennsylvania in 1871, 16; policemen in Pennsylvania, 18. Coffin combination, 37. Coke, Lord, on monopolies, 405. Collusion between oil trust and railroads, 143, 482-4. Colorado, oil war in, 427; prevented by railroads from shipping its oil to Pacific States, 427, 481. Columbus, Miss., war on merchants of, 300; Ohio, gas shut off, 365. Combinations, capital of, 4. Communipaw, monopoly of terminals at, 142. Competition, impossible in the meat and cattle business, 36; oil combination likes, 87; when it is black-mail, 215; cuts price, 281, 294; power for evil, 422. Congress, investigation of South Improvement Company suppressed, 45; bribing by Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 394. Conspiracy, adoption of, 277. Constitutional amendments concerning trusts, 451; convention of New York, 1894, 451. Contract to restrict refining, 62; to shut down oil flow, 153; between dealers and the oil combination, 425. Corners, 4. Cotton-seed oil, rates on, 232. Court records gone in Cleveland, 83; mutilated transcript for Congress, 244, 267; records mutilated in California, 484. Coxe Brothers & Company _vs._ the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, 19. Cracker-bakers' meeting, 30. Dayton, experience with natural-gas company, 364. Deaths from bad oil, in Michigan, 416; in Great Britain from explosiveness of American oil, 410. Delay, before Interstate Commerce Commission, 147, 149, 150; in legal procedure in New York, 285; of Pennsylvania Supreme Court in acting on appeal of independents, 447. Democratic party and sugar trust, 404. Detectives and coal-dealers, 15; railroads as, 48; in Wall Street, 334. Detroit _Times_, on reduction of oil test, 416; _Tribune_, on reduction of oil test, 416. Dewar, Thomas S., letter of United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue to, 26. Discrimination in favor of oil combination, "wanton and oppressive," 207; of 333 per cent., 217; called "a vast discrepancy," 219; Supreme Court of Ohio on, 219; against Rice, Interstate Commerce Commission on, 227; charges of, sustained by Interstate Commerce Commission, 235; by natural-gas company in rates for gas, 365; no, by German railroads, 438; inures to the benefit of one powerful combination, 478. (See Freight Rates, Railroads, Rebates.) Dismantling of petroleum refineries, 42, 72; Joshua Merrill's refinery, 188. Disorder, public, in oil regions, 43, 54; in Pennsylvania, 1878, 105, 106; in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 456. Dividends of oil trust, 246; of sugar trust, 32, 33, 404. Dodd, S.C.T., on "parent of trust system," 8; in Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1872, 55; on pipe lines, 117; on pipe-line rates, 125; on bonuses to railroad officials, 486. Drake, E.L., strikes oil, 40; pensioned, 462. Dressed-beef men, railroad rates to, 36. Dynamite, and the whiskey trust, 21; in the "shut-down" of 1887, 154; threats of, against Toledo City pipe line, 357; oil that is as dangerous as, 416. Electricity, 9. Elevators, combination of Northwestern railroads with, 5, 31; State erection and operation of, recommended by Minnesota Legislature, 31. Embargo on sales of oil, 1872, 56. Emery, Jr., Hon. Lewis, testifies as to "immediate shipment," 104. Eminent domain, use of, by railroads, 97. Empire Transportation Company, 87. Engineers, Society of American Marine, protest against foreign engineers, 399. England oil trade meets to protest against poor American oil, 405. Equality, railroad idea of, 86. Erie Canal used by independent shippers, 96. Erie Railroad, refuses cars to independent butchers, 35; New York Legislature investigates, 43; and South Improvement Company, 48, 50; refuses rates to competitor of South Improvement Company, 52; railroad war of 1877, 88; its oil-cars owned by oil combination, 92; payments to American Transfer Company, 99; contract with Standard Oil Company, 102; renews broken promises of equal rates, 119; invites independent refiners to rebuild, 119; refuses to ship independent oil to seaboard, 140; sends armed force against independent pipe line, 161; gives land to oil trust's pipe lines, 162; destroys line by force, 291. "Evening" pool of cattle-shippers, 33. Everest _et al._, People of the State of N.Y. _vs._, 244. _Examiner_, The, quoted, 341, 345. Expert testifies about pipe-line pool, 86; false maps of American Transfer Company, 101. Explosions, in distillery, 21; during "shut-down," 154; in Buffalo refinery, 250; Louisville, 252; Rochester, 252. Explosiveness of petroleum gases, 282; of American oil compared with Scotch and Russian, 410. Extradition treaty between Russia and America, 448. False accounts, 64. Fellows _et al._ _vs._ Toledo _et al._, 314. Field code of New York, 285. Fires from bad oil, in Great Britain, 410; in Boston, 411; in Iowa, 413; in Michigan, 416; in San Francisco, 416; at Oil City and Titusville, June 5, 1892, 417; in Bradford refinery, 447. Fish, 32. Flour, dearer, wanted, 30. Forbes, John M., speech on free ships, 393. Foster, Charles, as Secretary of the Treasury favors retention of foreign captains, 398; issues license to foreign engineers, 399; his part in the war on Toledo, 400. Fostoria, Ohio, Sunday raid on the flour-mill, 348. Foucon, Felix, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 39. France, manufactures coal-oil in 1845, 38; government of, lowers oil tariff, 440; oil refiners of, make terms with American oil trust, 441. Free breakfast-table, 32. Freight rates on coal, 13; discriminations investigated by Ohio Legislature, 44; 8 cents a barrel less than nothing on oil, 88; rates advanced by pipe and rail, 122; rates increased at instance of oil combination, 132; rate 88 cents to oil combination, $1.68 to competitors, 210; increased 333 per cent. to one shipper, 217. (See Rebates, Discriminations.) Freight-handlers strike, 296. Fruit, 32. Frye, William P., on subsidy to International line, 391, 395. Furnaces, 9. Gas, 9; natural, 9, 305. Geologist, State, of Ohio, takes sides in Toledo contest, 329. Germany changes oil tariff, 437; the German-American Oil Company, 437; decline in prices, 438; independents in, 439. Gladden, Rev. Washington, on oil trust, 344. Good society, 527. Gospel Cars, 237. Government and monopoly, 311. Governors, steam-boiler, 9. Gowen, Franklin B., on war against Tidewater, 108, 110; admits surrender of Tidewater Pipe Line, 112; severs connection with Tidewater, 114; speech before Pennsylvania Legislature, 1883, 115; on Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 181; on yearly loss of railroad revenue by rebates, 491. Grand Trunk saves independent oil refiners, 136. Granger movement, 371. Great Britain, Railway Commission of 1873, 369; government lowers test of oil, 408. Griffin, C.P., representative of Toledo in State Legislature, 333. Grocers' Guild, Canadian Parliament on, 30. Haddock, John C., testimony of, 13. Hadley, A.T., on British railroads, 370. Hale, J.P., quoted, 462. Hamilton, Alexander, on power over subsistence, 529. Hancock, Erie stops independent pipe line, 162. Handy _vs._ Cleveland and Marietta Railroad, 206. Harter, the Isaac Harter Company _vs._ the Northwestern Ohio Natural-gas Company, 349. Hatch, Edward, quoted, 255, 281. Haul, long and short, 221, 222, 223. Heaters, hot-water and steam, 9. _Herald_, Boston, on relations of oil combination and State inspectors, 411. Hermann, Von, on Paris Exhibition of 1839, 39. Highway, ownership of, is ownership of all, 12. Hoar, George F., on oil trust in the President's Cabinet, 401. Holland, 437. Hopkins, Representative, moves for investigation of railroads by Congress, 372. Human nature, 526. Illinois Central Railroad, "mistakes," 234. Immediate shipment, 104. Improvement companies of Pennsylvania, 55. Income of members of oil trust, 459. _Independent_, the New York, quoted, 348. Independents, rates withdrawn from, by Pennsylvania Railroad, 90; Pennsylvania Railroad refuses cars to, 91; Pennsylvania Railroad increases rates to, 91; crushed by oil combination's use of railroad terminals, 102; promised equal rates again, 119; invited to rebuild by the railroads, 119; attacked by Pennsylvania Railroad after being invited to rebuild, 120; survive attack by railroad and oil-trust pool, 128; appeal to Interstate Commission, 1888, 128; discrimination against, 130; freight rates to, increased at suggestion of oil combination, 132; forced to close their works, 135; saved by Grand Trunk Railroad, 136; lose trade of New England, 1888, 136; forced to sell oil to combination, 140; prevented by railroads from using tank-cars, 140; exactions suffered by, at the seaboard, 141; appeal to Interstate Commerce Commission against delay, 148; lose five years' business, 149; get tank-cars and terminals, 151; project pipe line to the seaboard in 1887, 152; in 1892, 160; pipe line stopped by Erie cannon at Hancock, 162; survival of, delays Russian-American division of world's oil market, 445; delay of Pennsylvania Supreme Court in acting on appeal of, 447; in Germany, 439. Indianapolis People's Trust, 320. Individuality, 527 Industry, new law of, 12. Inspection, State, used to end competition, 215, 216. Inspectors, State, also in employ of those they inspect, 216, 411; of oils in New York represent oil combination in Bremen congress, 406; in Iowa, charged with allowing sellers to brand oil, 412; sued in Iowa for damages for passing bad oil, 413; in Minnesota, investigated by State Senate, 413; in Illinois, 415; in Nebraska, 414-16. International steamship line subsidized, 389-400. Interstate Commerce Commission, on coal rates, 13; Pennsylvania independent coal-mine operators appeal to, 19; decision on coal rates disregarded by the Pennsylvania railroads, 19; on pool of oil combination with Tidewater Pipe Line, 113; refuses to require production of secret contract between railroad and pipe line, 124; bullied by counsel of Pennsylvania Railroad, 124; orders reduction of freight rate on barrels in South, 130; decision misapplied by Pennsylvania Railroad, 131; interview with Pennsylvania Railroad officials, 132; correspondence with president of Pennsylvania railroad, 132; orders discrimination stopped, 139; on monopoly of terminal facilities, 142; chairman on collusive relations of oil trust and railroads, 143; witnesses refuse to appear before, 145; refrains from decision in case of Pennsylvania Railroad, 146; decision in Rice, Robinson, and Witherop case, 1890, 147; delays for two years decision against Pennsylvania Railroad, 147; grants Pennsylvania Railroad rehearings for two years, 148; railroads disobey orders of, 149; decision against Pennsylvania Railroad, 1892, 149; brings independents no help, 149; proceedings before, by railroads as only preliminary to litigation in the courts, 150; cannot decide after three years' hearings, 150; grants Pennsylvania Railroad further delay, 150; George Rice lets cases before, go by default, 151; theatre for litigation and delay, 160; calls discrimination "a vast discrepancy," 219; decides refusal to give rates "illegal," 224; on discriminations against Rice, 227; on "astonishingly low" rates, 232; on "mistakes" of railroads, 234; sustains charges of discrimination, 235; on control of industry by the oil combination, 433; on immense power of oil combination, 458; describes preferences given to the oil combination, 478. Interstate Commerce law, only conviction under, 19; disobeyed by railroad managers, 218; opposed by Senator Payne, 388; Senator Cullom on railroads' excuses for violating, 498. Investigation, of South Improvement Company by Congress, in 1872, not continued, 60; of railroad discriminations by Congress, suspended, 1876, 71; testimony stolen, 373. _Investors' Review_, of London, on English government jobbery, 450. Iowa, Governor of, refuses to investigate charges of violation of inspection law, 412. Iron, railroads buying iron lands, 12; interests of members of oil combination, 461. Italy, 440. Jackson, Judge H.E., sustains Toledo, 315. Joy, Professor, on explosiveness of naphtha, 253. Judge, Federal, quashes indictment against secretary of whiskey trust, 22; of Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, charged with violating the law, 181; fixes damages in Van Syckel's case at 6 cents, 195; excludes evidence against oil trust members, 268; rules out evidence concerning oil trust, 273; orders acquittal of members of oil trust, 278; how made, 296; decides anti-trust law not applicable to sugar trust, 404. Jurors bribed to petition for mercy, 286. Justice, delay of, 149. Kanawha salt-wells, 462. Karns, General S.D., suggests pipe-lines, 41. Keystone refinery, 291; causes Oil City disaster, 418. King's horses and king's men, 198. Knight, E.C., _et al._, United States _vs._, 404. _Laissez-faire_, true, 497. Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad and South Improvement Company, 48, 50; contract with the oil combination, 69; Scofield _et al._ _vs._, 70; railroad war of 1877, 88; contracts to give a tenth of all oil freights to oil combination, 89; gives its oil traffic to competing pipe line, 127. Lamennais quoted, 507. Lands, ownership changes, of coal, 11; of oil, 434. Laugh, the, 257-71. Law, Anti-trust, 3, 6, 404; Pennsylvania Free Pipe-Line, worthless, 57; delays of, 285; of oil inspection, how changed in Nebraska, 415. (See Interstate Commerce). Lawson, J.D., _Leading Cases Simplified_, 181. Lawsuits, threats of, 278, 289; to cripple competition, 290. Lawyers, officers of the court, 114; relations of, to law-breakers, 249; pamphlet against Toledo issued by, 354. Leases, oil and gas, rights claimed under, 306. Leather, 5. Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, Coxe Brothers & Co., _vs._, 19; railroad war of 1877, 88. Little, John, represents Ohio before the United States Senate in the Payne matter, 376. Locomotives, 9. Louisville and Nashville Railroad turns another screw, 213; "mistakes" of, 234. _Mail_, New York, on income of members of oil trust, 459. Mails, slower under subsidy, 397. Maine, Sir Henry Sumner, on trade, 507; on contract and status, 533. Marcy, W.L., in Buffalo explosion case, 259. Marietta, freight rates raised against refiners at, 200. Market, for oil, becomes erratic, 42; manipulation by oil trust, 104, 164, 420, 439; only one buyer, 104. Matches, 9; combination, Supreme Court of Michigan on, 10. Mather, People _vs._, 277. Matthews, C.B., experiences of, 243-98. Matthews, Hon. Stanley, 67; on the rebates of the oil combination, 69. Maxim gun, English War Office opposition to, silenced, 450. McClellan, Gen. G.B., on South Improvement Company contract, 50. Meat combination, 5; at Chicago, 33. Medicine, adulterated liquors for, 27. Merrill, Joshua, 39; testimony before Congress, 188; appeals to Railroad Commission of Massachusetts, 189; pioneer in oil, 463. Michigan State Board of Health on fires and deaths from bad oil, 416. Mileage paid to preferred shippers, 233. Millers' national conventions, 30. Millionaires, abolition of, 312, 524. Minnesota Legislature recommends State elevators, 31; Senate investigation of oil inspectors, 413. "Mistakes," by railroads not corrected, 138; always in favor of preferred shippers, 223, 234. Monopoly, defined by Federal courts, 3; Judge Barrett defines, 3; difference of definitions, 3, 6; defined by United States Attorney-General, 37; of Standard Oil Company, Supreme Court of Ohio on, 70; ignorance of the public is the real capital of, 117; must control all, 298; and government, 311; Lord Coke on, 405; E. Benjamin Andrews on price manipulation, 428; State, advocated by national economists in Germany, 438; of oil in Germany, 438; Ohio Supreme Court and New York Supreme Court pronounce Standard Oil Trust a, 453; and industry, 518; and liberty, 519. Monotony, 527. Monthly reports required by the oil combination, 62; from producers in "shut-down," 155; of competitors' shipments, 212. Morris, "Billy," inventor of the "slips," 463. Municipal enterprise better and cheaper than private, 360. Mutilation of court records, 83, 244, 267, 484. National Transit Company, 87; controls pipe-line business, 113, 114; owned by oil combination, 113; president of the oil combination denies connection with, 114; Bolard & Dale _vs._, 165; secrecy as to ownership of its stock, 487. Natural-gas company owned by Standard Oil Trust, 337. Navy, Secretary of, urges subsidy, 389; and nickel appropriation, 402; relations to subsidy, 402. Netherlands, East India colonies, 441. Nettleton, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, rules against retaining foreign captains, 398. New England, trade in, lost by independent refiners, 136. Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad, "mistakes," 234. Newspapers controlled by oil combination, 160. (See Press.) New York Central Railroad, and South Improvement Company, 48, 49; refuses rates to competitors of South Improvement Company, 52; war of 1877, 88; contracts to give a tenth of all oil freights to oil combination, 89; oil cars of, owned by oil combination, 92; payments to American Transfer Company, 99. New York, People of, _vs._ North River Sugar Refining Company, 3; refiners do not dare to build large refineries, 107; People of, _vs._ Everest _et al._, 244; legal procedure, 285; Railway Commission of 1857, 370; in danger from refineries and tanks, 419; Senate committee on oil trust and prices, 429; Constitution of 1846 on railroads, 370; Constitutional Convention of 1894, 451; "Hepburn" legislative investigation on rebates, 476. New York and New England Railroad, oil trustee president of, 189. New Zealand Fire Insurance Company sues for losses by bad oil, 416. Nickel appropriation, 402. North River Sugar Refining Company, People of New York _vs._, 3. Northwestern Natural-gas Company, the Isaac Harter Company _vs._, 349. Notice, freights raised without, 136, 200. "Not yet," president of the oil trust, 454. Nova Scotia coal-mines, consolidation of, by American syndicate, 5, 12, 461. Ohio, oil-field, oil combination the only buyer of oil in, 107; Supreme Court of, on discriminations, 219; State of, _vs._ Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway, 220; State of, _vs._ Cincinnati, Washington, and Baltimore Railway, 220; _vs._ Standard Oil Company, 239, 453; senatorial election of 1884, 373; Legislature demands investigation of the election of Senator Payne, 374; Legislature defeats free pipe-line bill, 385; State of, _vs._ City of Toledo, 314; State of, _vs._ P.C. Boyle, 324; distress among oil producers in 1892, 456; Legislative report of 1879 on relations of railroads and oil combination, 477. Ohio Oil Company _vs._ Toledo, Findlay and Springfield Railway, 306. Oil, Canada, 12; Canada producers attacked by American combination, 12. Oil City fire, June 5, 1892, 417. Oil combination, parent of trust system, 8; founders of, 44; and South Improvement Company the same, 49; president of, explains its origin, 53; contracts with competitors to limit production, 61, 65; requires monthly reports, 62; insists on secrecy, 63, 65, 79; use of spies by, 65, 298, 334; contract in restraint of trade, 66; profits of restraint of trade, 66, 67; restricts its capacity one-half, 68; rebates from the railroads, 69, 474-87; scarcity the object of, 72; control of transportation, 76; buys out its widow competitor, 78; puts her under bonds not to refine, 79; binds competitors not to refine, 79, 80; secret of success, testimony of president, 80; value of the "works" of, 82; issues $90,000,000 of stock on $6,000,000 of works, 82; buys oil plant of Pennsylvania Railroad, 88; owns oil cars of New York Central and Erie railroads, 92; member of, denies, then admits, rebates, 95; receipts from American Transfer Company, 100, 101; owns United Pipe Lines, 101; owns American Transfer Company, 101; controls railroads' oil terminal facilities, 102; uses railroad terminals to crush opposition, 102; forces producers to sell below the market, 104; will not pipe or buy oil, 106, 164; shuts back Ohio oil wells, 107; restricts production in Ohio, 107; the only buyer of oil in Ohio oil-fields, 107; and railroads fight the Tidewater Pipe Line, 108; cuts prices of pipeage, 109; speculates on its "advance knowledge" of cut in freight rates, 110; enters into pool with Tidewater Pipe Line, 112; owns National Transit Company, 113; had no pipe line to seaboard, 116; builds pipe line to seaboard, 116; builds pipe lines from rebates given it by railroads, 116, 118; and railroads advance rates, 118; secret contract of 1885 with Pennsylvania Railroad, 120; guarantees Pennsylvania Railroad 26 per cent. of the oil traffic, 121; and Pennsylvania Railroad advance rates, 122; pool with Pennsylvania Railroad, 123; advances pipe-line rates, 125, 126; Interstate Commerce Commission, on discrimination in favor of, 130; gets New England business of independents, 137; controls seaboard terminals of railroads, 142; keeps Oil City and Titusville refineries closed, 143; prompts railroad litigation before Interstate Commerce Commission, 144; makes contract with producers to shut down wells, 153; compels subordinate companies to make monthly reports, 155; opposes piping of refined oil, 165; owns $40,000,000 in 1883 in Pennsylvania, 166; Pennsylvania tax case, 166; Clarion County indictment, 170; member of, admits rebates, 188; president New York and New England Railroad is member of, 189; prevents trial of Van Syckel's process of refining, 191; member of, forecloses mortgage on Solar refinery, 193; "another way of getting rid" of competitors, 200; makes money by closing its refineries, 201; how its earnings are pooled, 201; its freight rates lowered while competitors' rates are raised, 202; gets rebate of 25 cents out of 35 cents in freight, paid by competitor, 206; not popular in the South, 209; competes with grocers, 214, 300; relations to State inspectors, 216, 413; denies receipt of discriminating rates, 219; Supreme Court of Ohio oil monopoly of, 220; denies blind-billing, 231; denies receipt of mileage, 234; denies discriminations, 235; pleasant relations with competitors, 243; dividends of, 246; political power of, 260, 372-404; and press, in Pennsylvania, 160; in Buffalo, 298; in Toledo, 317, 327; defeated in suits on patents, 290; brings suits to embarrass competitors, 290; buys from the court suits against itself, 293; refuses to meet competitive prices, 299; abandons suit against Toledo in United States Supreme Court, 331; detectives of, in Wall Street, 334; evangelical and explosive, 358; natural-gas companies, profits of, at Toledo, 362; spends money in elections, 386; members of, interested in subsidy legislation, 390; acts with both political parties, 403; defence before Bremen congress, 406; its success explained by the president, 407; has State inspectors in its pay, 411; restricts production, 420; buys Baltimore refineries, 421; binds dealers not to buy of its competitors, 425; oil made scarce by, 68, 420-29; price of oil under, 67, 420-29, 431 _n._; drives out schooners, 433; controls 90 per cent. of industry, 433; pushing into every part of the world, 434; owns no oil lands in 1880, 434; large buyer of oil lands, 434; favored by Canadian government, 435; in Germany, 437; sells refined oil in Europe cheaper than crude, 439; in France, 440; denial of negotiations with Russian oil-men, 442; admits negotiations with Russian oil-men, 442; reasons for war upon independents, 455; and Extradition Treaty with Russia, 448; prosperous during panic, 455; growth of capitalization of, 457; produces "infinitesimal amount" of oil, 463; not an inventor, producer, pioneer, or capitalist, 464; produces poverty, 464-65; principals of, not practical oil-men, 466, 467; members of, deny rebates, 476; secrecy as to ownership of certain shares, 487. Oil, regions, early prosperity of, 42, 43; public disorder in, 43; producers refuse to sell to members of South Improvement Company, 56; running on the ground, 91, 105, 106, 164; European congress on poor quality of American, 406; test of, lowered in Great Britain, 408; financial distress in 1879-92, 455-56. Pacific Mail Steamship Company, report on bribery of Congress by, 394. Pacific Railway officials admit rebates, 480. Packers' Combination at Chicago investigated by Congress, 33. Paint, to conceal numbers of tank-cars, 235. _Pall Mall Gazette_ on prices of refined and crude oil, 439. Panics in oil, 43. Parker district, on verge of civil war, 106. Pastor, visit from the, 294. Payne, Henry B., objects to investigation of railroads, 70, 372; election of, to the Senate of the United States, 374; candidate for President, 387; votes against Interstate Commerce Commission bill, 388; solicits Democratic votes in the Senate for confirmation of Republican nominee, 400. Peckham, S.F., United States Census report on petroleum, 39, 41; on railroads and tank-cars, 228. Pennsylvania, Constitution of 1873 disobeyed by the railroads, 18; Legislature nullifies Constitution in interest of railroads, 18; uprising of 1872, 54; Constitutional Convention, 1873, 54; Commonwealth of, _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 1879, 94; Secretary of Internal Affairs hung in effigy, 105; Attorney-General brings tax suit against Standard Oil Company, 169; Legislature investigates Standard Oil Company tax case, 176; Supreme Court of, delays hearing on appeal of independents, 447; Constitution on railroads, 451; Secretary of Internal Affairs on relations of railroads and oil combination, 477. Pennsylvania Railroad and South Improvement Company, 48; and Improvement Company charters, 55; put under bond not to refine, 79; keeps faith "some months," 84; reaches out for control of oil trade, 87; carries oil at eight cents a barrel less than nothing, 88; sells its refineries and pipe lines, 88; contracts to give a tenth of all oil freights to oil combination, 89; pledges not to compete with oil combination, 89; withdraws rates from independent refiners, 90; officials threaten independent pipe lines, 91; officials recommend "fix-up" with the oil combination to independent shippers, 90, 91; increases rates, refuses cars, to independent shippers, 91; refuses to haul cars owned by independent shippers, 92; refuses a business of ten thousand barrels of oil a day, 93; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania _vs._, 1879, 94; pays American Transfer Company three months' back pay, 99; refuses to furnish cars to oil producers, 106; officials testify to war on Tidewater Pipe Line, 109; discriminations against refineries using the Tidewater, 110; Titusville and Oil City Independent Refiners' Associations _vs._, 118, 165; renews broken promises of equal rates, 119; makes war on refiners it invited to rebuild, 120; secret contract of 1885, with oil combination, 120; guaranteed 26 per cent. of seaboard oil traffic by oil combination, 121; refuses to produce contract with oil combination, 121; and oil combination advance rail and pipe rates, 122; oil rates of, extortionate, 123; counsel of, bullies Interstate Commerce Commission, 124; perverts decision of Interstate Commerce Commission, 131; increases rates to barrel shippers, 131; ignores directions of Interstate Commerce Commission, 133-34; refuses to haul tank-cars for independents, 140; Interstate Commerce Commission delays for two years to enforce law against, 147; gets another rehearing from Interstate Commerce Commission, 150; said to run Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 181; divides the coal business of Pennsylvania among three dealers, 490. Perth Amboy, independent shipments from, 135. Peru, 441. Petroleum, combination in, 38-493; De Witt Clinton's suggestion, 38; early manufacture of, 38, 44; Reichenbach's prediction, 38; in exhibitions of 1839 and 1851, 39; early American refiners, 39; early American manufacturers ready for new supply of oil, 40; price of, in 1862, 40. Petroleum Producers' Union, report of General Council of, on attempts to lessen production of oil, 153. Phantom Party, in McKean County, 105. Philadelphia, Sharpless _vs._, 315. Phillips, Wendell, on Pennsylvania Railroad, 147. Piano-makers' combination, 5. Pilots, Brotherhood of Steamboat, protest against foreign engineers, 399. Pioneer refiner of Cleveland, 73. Pipe lines, origin of, 41; first laid by Van Syckel, 41; Pennsylvania Free Pipe Line law worthless, 57; to Cleveland, 65; number of, in 1874, 84; Eighty per cent. of, died in 1874-5, 84; pool of 1874, 86; frozen out, 87; bankrupt, bought up by oil trust, 87; Equitable Pipe Line proposed, 91; independent, threatened by Pennsylvania Railroad, 91; United Pipe Lines, owned by the oil combination, 101; industry closed to the people, 1877, 104; refuse to carry oil unless sold to oil combination, 104; of oil combination refuse to pipe, 106; Tidewater, first to seaboard, 107; rates cut by oil combination in war with Tidewater, 109; to seaboard not built first by the oil combination, 116; competitors of the railway, 116; New York _Sun_ on, 117; pool with railroads, 121; cost of service, 122; rates of, advanced by oil combination, 125, 126; profits of, 126; rates higher under the oil combination, 125, 126; independent, to seaboard projected in 1887, 152; in 1892, 160; oil combination lays, upon railroad right of way, 162; refuse to take oil, 1893, 164; independent, transport refined oil, 165; built by George Rice, 208; independent, destroyed by Erie Railroad by force, 291; Toledo builds better than private company, 360; bill for free, defeated by the Ohio Legislature, 385; independent, and Russian-American monopoly, 445; independent, consolidate in 1894, 446; independent, cut, 447. (See Tidewater Pipe Line). Policemen, coal and iron, 18. Politics of business, 403. Pool, steamship, 395; for sale of oil, 420. Poor's _Railroad Manual_, railroad interests of members of oil combination, 460. Pork, combination of packers of, 36. Postal subsidy law, passed, 389-400; payment under, 396; Postmaster-General makes subsidy contracts, 390; his relations to those who receive postal subsidies, 403. Poverty, abolition of, 526. Premium on oil advanced, 144. President of the oil combination denies contracts with railroads, 51; on "ways of making money you know nothing of," 52; the "only party that would buy," 52; offers 50 cents on the dollar, 52; explains its origin, 53; testifies about Southern Improvement Company, 59; member of South Improvement Company, 60; denies contracts to restrict competition, 61; testifies to "very small profit," 67; argues for restriction of production, 68; denies that it gets cheaper freights, 70; testifies as to secret of success, 80; testifies that it likes competition, 87; knew about freight rates, 96; cannot recall discriminating freight rates, 96; frequents office of Erie Railroad, 102; denies pool with the Tidewater Pipe Line, 113; sole attorney of the trust, 114; denies any connection with National Transit Company, 114; denies the "shut-down" of 1887, 158; described by Van Syckel, 184; interview about rebates on Rice's business, 207; on pleasant relations with competitors, 243; testifies the oil trust is not a manufacturing company, 272; testifies to reports by subordinate companies, 274; does not know about monthly reports by subordinate companies, 274; explains its success, 407; on its cheapness, 420; in the commission business, 432; on its ownership of oil lands, 434; its properties "not yet" sufficiently numerous, 454; testifies to shares in the trust owned by trustees individually, 458; "does not know," 467-68; made attorney of the trust, 470. President of the Standard Oil Company denies ownership of company by Standard Oil Trust, 458. Press, and oil combination, 160, 298, 317, 327; use of, to make subsidy popular, 392; Philadelphia, on Russian Extradition Treaty, 448. Price of oil advances under restraint of trade, 66, 67; under oil combination, 67, 420, 431 _n._; manipulated by oil combination, 104; in Ohio, 107; in New York and Europe, 164; higher for crude than for refined oil, 164; manipulation of, 210; lowered by competition, 281, 294; advances after Baltimore consolidation, 421; regulated by committee, 421; in New York, fixed by oil combination, 423; in Texas, independent of competition, 423; evidence gathered by Congress, 423-24; put higher after "wars" than before, 424; fixation of, 425; E. Benjamin Andrews on, 430 _n._; New York _Daily Commercial Bulletin_ on, 430 _n._; under trusts, 431 _n._; decline in Germany, 438; refined oil lower than crude, 439; under monopoly, 502. Private enterprise and public, 311. Producers of oil, and South Improvement Company, 54; organization in Pennsylvania, 56; embargo broken, 57; Union, report, 1872, 60; forced to sell oil to trust, 104; forced to sell below market price, 105; lose their land, 434. Producers and Refiners' Oil Company, Limited, Carter _vs._, 164, 446. Production restricted, 72; in Ohio, 107; at Oil City and Titusville, 143; by shut-down of 1887, 153, 157; cheapness of, 217, 429, 445. Profits of natural-gas company, at Toledo, 362. Property, "is monopoly," 37; of the combinations, 513. Prosperity, early, in oil regions, 42, 43. Public powers and property, private use of, 523. Publication of railroad tariff, how evaded, 230. Punishment nominal, 292. Quality, deterioration of, under monopoly, 405-19; of oil in Germany, 438. Quinby, District Attorney, 247-98. Railroads, northwestern, combination with elevators, 5; buying bituminous coal lands, 11; buying iron and timber lands, 12; refuse cars to independent coal shippers, 12; crushing independent coal producers, 13; monopolize anthracite coal, 11, 14; raise freights to prevent settlement of coal strike, 1871, 16; forbidden in Pennsylvania to own or operate coal-mines, 18; disregard Interstate Commerce Commission's decision on coal rates, 19; and elevators combined in Minnesota, 31; northwestern, coerce grain buyers, 31; northwestern, fix the price of wheat, 31; give discriminating rates to dressed-beef men, 36; contract with South Improvement Company, 45; contract to overcome competition for preferred shippers, 48; as detectives, 48; advance freight rates on oil 100 per cent., 50; grant special privileges to railroad directors, 54; lobbying at Harrisburg, 55; rebates to oil combination, 69; facilities controlled by oil combination, 76; carry crude oil to Cleveland for preferred shippers without charge, 85; force Cleveland refiners into unnatural equality, 85; how they equalize persons and places, 86; make war on Pennsylvania Railroad for oil combination, 87; of New York received $40,000,000 of public cash, 97; tribute paid by, to American Transfer Company, 99; pay American Transfer Company on oil not handled by it, 100; officials members of American Transfer Company, 100; oil terminal facilities transferred to oil combination, 101; fight Tidewater Pipe Line for the oil combination, 108; lose $10,000,000 in war against Tidewater Pipe Line, 109; will not tell how low rates were made against Tidewater Pipe Line, 109; give use of their lands to pipe lines of oil combination, 116; give oil combination money to build pipe lines, 116, 118; pool with pipe lines of the oil trust, 118; officials drive business from railroads to competing pipe line, 119, 134; broken pledges of, to independent refiners, 119; pool with pipe lines, 121; make war on barrel-shippers, 129, 132; carry tank-cars free, 131; increase freight rate on barrels, 131, 132; increase freight rates at instance of the oil combination, 132; raise freights without legal notice, 136, 218; vary rates according to destination beyond their lines, 137; mistakes not corrected, 138; destroy barrel shipments, 138; promises of reparation unfulfilled, 139; make rates that prohibit traffic, 139; surrender terminals to oil combination, 140, 142; relations with oil trust collusive, 143; litigation before Interstate Commerce Commission prompted by oil combination, 144; disobey Interstate Commerce Commission's decision, 149, 218; oppose new independent pipe line to seaboard, 160; give use of lands to pipe lines of the oil trust, 162; officials wasting stockholders' money in hopeless litigation, 163; force Joshua Merrill out of business, 189; consult with oil combination about raising rates against independents, 200; make rates that prohibit traffic at Marietta, 201, 203; refuse rates to Marietta refiners, 202; officials refuse to testify in Ohio in 1879, 202; increase rates 333 per cent. to one shipper, 217; deny discrimination, 218; make their favorites "sole people," 219; consult with preferred shippers as to freight rates to competitors, 219; refuse to answer letters of shippers, 220, 227; charge more for the shorter hauls, 221, 222, 223; "mistakes" for favored shippers, 223, 234; officials refuse to testify before Congress, 224; "illegal" refusal to give rates, 224, 227; refuse to answer questions about tank-car rates, 228; make charges regardless of quantity for preferred shippers, 229; haul tank-cars free for preferred shippers, 229; evasions of the law regarding publication of tariffs, 230; misstate tank-car rates to shippers, 230; make rates to preferred shippers "astonishingly low," 232; refuse to give rates, 233; pay preferred shippers mileage, 233; conceal mileage from independent shippers, 233; give Standard Oil Company 25 cents out of 35 cents freight paid by George Rice, 206; allegiance to the company, 203; construction aided by Toledo, 313; Commission of 1873, in Great Britain, 369; regulation, Duke of Wellington on, 369; and Constitution of New York of 1846, 370; British, A.T. Hadley on, 370; New York Commission of 1857, 370; procure abolition of New York Railway Commission of 1857, 371; State commissions to regulate, 371; officials refuse to answer questions of Congress, 373; prevent shipment of Colorado oil to Pacific states, 427; no discrimination on German, 438; Pennsylvania Constitution on, 451; lose the oil business worth $30,000,000 a year, 456; ownership of members of oil trust in, 460, 461; rates to oil combination secret, 474; preferences to oil combination described by the Interstate Commerce Commission, 478; officials admit rebates, 480; shut off shipments of Colorado and Wyoming oil, 481; collusive litigation between Southern Pacific Railroad and oil combination, 483; officials charged with receiving a bonus for giving rebates, 486; officials owners of stock in Chicago Union Stockyards, 487; tax the poor for the rich, 489; give $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 rebates out of $800,000,000 freights yearly, 491; excuses for violating Interstate Commerce law, 498; accidents to employés, 499; rights of employés, 506. Ramsdell, Homer, on South Improvement Company contract, 50. Reading Railroad and railroad war of 1877, 88. Rebates, to South Improvement Company, 46; equal to 21 per cent. a year on capital, 69; Ohio Supreme Court decision on, 69; to the oil combination, 69, 474-87; denied by president of the oil combination, 96; to Standard Oil Company, 96, 206; to American Transfer Company, 100; from railroads build pipe lines for oil combination, 116, 118; to oil combination admitted, 188; unknown to outside shippers, 475; giving or receiving, a penitentiary offence, 475; denied by members of the oil trust, 476; to oil combination, summary of evidence of, 479; admitted by officials of the Pacific railways, 480; to A.T. Stewart & Co., 489; given by Pennsylvania Railroad to three coal-dealers, 490; refusal of givers and takers to testify in Chicago, 490; $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year, 491. Refineries, petroleum, dismantling of, 42; oil, put under contract to limit production, 61, 65; shut down and pulled down, 71. Refiners, compelled to sell to South Improvement Company, 51; put under bonds not to refine, 79; New York, do not dare to build large refineries, 107. Refuse oil delivered to competitors, 291. Reichenbach on petroleum, 38. Reports by subordinate companies of oil trust, 274. Republican party and sugar trust, 404. Restriction, of competing refineries by oil combination, 61; of its capacity to one-half by the oil combination, 68; of production, by oil combination, 421; in Scotland, 435. Rice, George, 199-242; lets Interstate Commerce Commission cases go by default, 151; _vs._ Brundred _et al._, 239; cases before Interstate Commerce Commission, 239 _n._; _vs._ Standard Oil Trust, 241; _vs._ trustees of Standard Oil Trust, 453. Rice, Robinson, and Witherop case, 1890, before Interstate Commerce Commission, 147. Richardson _vs._ Buhl _et al._, 10. River, interference with shipments by, 224; shipments stopped by oil combination, 433; trade in Germany appropriated by oil trust, 437. Rochester, explosion in Vacuum refinery, 250, 252. Rosebery, Lord, comments of _Investors' Review_, 450. Rothschilds, position in Russian oil industry, 443. Ruffner Brothers, 462. Russia, American oil combination in, 442; every producer allowed to enter international trust, 444; Minister of Finance organizes combination with American oil trust, 444; why government of, favored American oil combination, 448; treaty with, 448. Rutter circular, 85. Salt, 32. Sanford case, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 54. Scandinavia, 437. Scarcity, the object of oil combination, 72; Oil City and Titusville refineries kept closed, 142. _Schenck, U.P._, libel against the, 225. Scofield, Representative, resolution for investigation of South Improvement Company, 56; W.C., Standard Oil Company _vs._, 61, 89; decision, 66; _et al._ _vs._ Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company, 70. Scotch refiners in 1850, 39; pool of, 72; make superior article, 408; precluded from discussing poor quality of American oil, 409; pool with Americans broken in 1892, 427; pool with American combination, 435; compelled to reduce production, 435; shrinkage of capital, 436. Scott, Thomas, on South Improvement Company contract, 50. Screw, turn another, 213. Seaboard, Tidewater, first pipe line to, 107. Seamen, American, not employed by American subsidized steamers, 400. Secrecy, insisted on by oil combination, 63, 65, 79; in the increase of freights, 218, 474; as to ownership of oil-trust stock, 487. Secretary, of oil combination, testifies before Ohio Legislature, 51; testifies to "scarcely any profits," 67; testifies to purchase of oil plant of Pennsylvania Railroad, 89; not a practical oil-man, 465; refused to give Congress names of owners of certain shares in its pipe lines, 487. Seemann, E.F., Die _Monopolisirung des Petroleum Handels und der Petroleum Industrie_, 438. Selligue, 38, 462. Senate, United States, the Payne scandal, 374-88. Sharpless _vs._ Philadelphia, 315. Shrouds, combination, 37. "Shut-down," of 1887, 72, 153; advances prices of kerosene, 158. Silliman, Professor Benjamin, analyzes petroleum, 39; on oil not monopolized, 40. Slave-trade, 525. Smith, Adam, 494. Socrates, the great are the bad, 506. South Improvement Company, investigated by Congress, 43, 45; investigation suppressed, 45; contract of railroads with, 45; rebates, 46; and oil combination, same, 49; to have complete monopoly, 49; compels refiners to sell to it, 51; contracts not cancelled, 57; charter repealed, 57; arrangement still exists "in reality," 58; President of Standard Oil Company on, 59; plan of, reproduced, 85; reappears in American Transfer Company, 100; espionage in operation in 1880, 213; charged to be now in operation in California, 479. South, oil combination not popular in the, 209. Southern Pacific Railroad Company and Whittier, Fuller & Co., Standard Oil Company _vs._, 484. Speculation, in sugar-trust stock, 32, 403; in oil, 42; by oil combination, on advance knowledge of freight reduction, 110; follows "shut-down" of 1887, 157. Spies, 65; watch shipments, 212; pay of, 298; in war on Toledo, 334. Standard Oil Company, interview with president of, concerning South Improvement Company, 59; president of, testifies about Southern Improvement Company, 59; _vs._ W.C. Scofield _et al._, 61, 89; decision, 65; contract with Lake Shore road decided to be "unlawful," 70; Supreme Court of Ohio on its monopoly, 70; and war of rates, 1877, 88; contracts for rebate of one-tenth of all oil freights, 89; lower rates by Pennsylvania Railroad to, 90, 94; freight rate of 38 cents to, 95; Erie contract with, 102; independents forced to sell to, 141; tax investigation, by Pennsylvania Legislature, 166; members of, indicted in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, 170; saved from trial by Supreme Court, 180; members of, object to taking witness-stand, 171; People of Ohio _vs._, 239; sued by Toledo for $1,000,000 damages, 367; spends money in elections, 386; Senator Payne on the, 386; pays State inspectors, 414; owned by Standard Oil Trust, 458; its president denies ownership by Standard Oil Trust, 458; application to Attorney-General of New York for forfeiture of charter of, 458; _vs._ Southern Pacific Railroad and Whittier, Fuller Co., 484. Standard Oil Trust, purchase of works of widow competitor by three trustees of, 80; dissolution of, 240; Rice _vs._, 241; and the Buffalo explosion, 253-98; not a manufacturing company, 272; members of, ordered acquitted by the judge, 272-84; trustees personally own majority of each company in, 273, 458; controls every movement of subordinate companies, 274; how it pools the control and profits of subordinate companies, 275; owns natural-gas companies, 337; counsel of, is president of the New York Constitutional Convention, 452; declared void by Supreme Court of New York, 453; People of Ohio _vs._, 453; Rice _vs._ Trustees of, 453; Supreme Court of Ohio pronounces it a monopoly, and void, 453; New York Legislature on formidable money power of, 457; dividends, 457; capital of, worth $148,000,000 in 1888, 457; Interstate Commerce Commission on immense power of, 458; keeps no books, 469; operations not business, 470; makes president its attorney, 470; executes large contracts through attorneys, 470; asks Congress to hear additional defence, 471; discrepancy between the facts and its evidence, 471; claims same rebates were granted to other shippers, 472; its offer to prove to Congress that C.B. Matthews testified falsely, 472; its employment of detectives admitted by latter, 472; its threats of litigation against competitors, 473; member of, denies rebates, 478. Steamship, discrimination in favor of meat combination, 37; pool, 395. Sterne, Simon, on oil terminals of Erie Railroad, 102; on railroads taxing poor for the rich, 489. Stewart, A.T., & Co., rebate to, 489. St. Louis, forty reductions in oil prices in three years, 427. Stock watering in natural-gas companies at Toledo, 363. Stock Yards, Chicago, Union, 34. Storage, ordinances for, used to overcome competition, 215. Storer, F.H., on Selligue, 38. Stoves, 9; Manufacturers, National Association, 10. Street-railways, Brooklyn, consolidation, 5. Strike of New York freight-handlers, 1882, 296. Subsidy, urged by Secretary of the Navy, 389; voted by Congressmen of both parties, 389; postal, 389-400; press used to popularize, 392; policy of limitations, 393; got by bribery, 394; advocated by United States Commissioner of Navigation, 401. Sugar trust, Judge Barrett's decision, 3, 4; investigation by New York Legislature, 32, 33; capital and dividends, 32, 33, 404; contributes to Republican and Democratic parties, 403; president testifies about campaign contributions, 403; securities and profits, 404; and government, 404; and anti-trust law, 404; president admits it has increased price, 431 _n._; and tariff bill of 1894, 449. Sumatra, 441. _Sun_, New York, on income of members of oil trust, 459. Suppression, of congressional investigation, 1872, 45, 60; 1876, 71; evidence in Cleveland, 83. Supreme Court of Ohio, decision on rebates, 69; of Pennsylvania, interferes to save members of Standard Oil Company from trial, 180; said to be run by Pennsylvania Railroad, 181; of New York, on Standard Oil Trust, 453. Survival of the unfittest, 14. Tank-boats for canal, 96. Tank-cars, origin of, 41; carried free by railroads, 131; less profitable to railroads than barrels, 138; free carriage of 62 gallons in each, 139; worse than powder, 139; prohibitory discrimination against competitors', 189; independent shippers cannot get rates, 228; of preferred shippers, hauled free by railroads, 229; numbers painted out, 235. Tank-steamers, German, refused oil, 437. Tariff, changes in Germany, 437; lowered in France, 440; and sugar trust, 404, 449; and trusts, John De Witt Warner on, 449. Taxes, oil combination refuses to pay, in Pennsylvania, 166. Terminal facilities, of railroads, controlled by oil combination, 102; surrendered by railroads to oil combination, 140, 142. Testimony, in Cleveland case disappears, 83; mutilated transcript for Congress of Buffalo explosion case, 244, 267, 298; taken in Congressional investigation of 1876 stolen, 373. Thurman, Allen G., on the election of Senator Payne, 376. Tidewater Pipe Line, organized, 107; rate of 10 cents per barrel made by railroads against, 108; plugged, 111; surrenders to the oil combination, 112. Timber lands, railroads buying, 12. Titusville fire, June 5, 1892, 417. Titusville and Oil City Independent Refiners' Associations _vs._ Pennsylvania Railroad _et al._, 118-65. Toledo, Findlay and Springfield Railway _vs._ Ohio Oil Company, 306. Toledo, war upon, 305-68; undertakes municipal supply of natural gas, 307; municipal aid to railroads, 313; People of Ohio _vs._, 314; Fellows _et al._ _vs._, 314; part of the oil combination in the war against, admitted, 339; city natural-gas line, financial results, 359-68; public enterprise builds better pipe line than private, 360; gas shut off, 366; brings suit against Standard Oil Company and others for $1,000,000 damages, 367. Treasurer, of oil combination, denies purchase of oil plant of Pennsylvania Railroad, 89. Treasury, Secretary of United States, business associate of oil combination, 400; orders it paid drawbacks, 401; Commissioner of Navigation, advocates subsidies, 401. Truesdale, George, testimony of, 246. Trust, anti, law, 3, 7, 404; oil combination, parent of system of, 8; in politics, 403; all contribute to campaign expenses, 403; prices, 429; prices of, superior to panic, 431 _n._; and tariff, 449. Turpentine, rates on, 232. Undertakers combination, 37. United Pipe Lines, buy bankrupt pipe lines, 87; owned by oil combination, 101, 125. United States, _vs._ E.C. Knight & Co. _et al._, 404; marshal libels river steamers, 225. United States Pipe Line forced to abandon Hancock route, 163; makes success of piping refined oil, 165; opposition to extension beyond Wilkes-barre, 445. Uprising in the oil regions, 1872, 55. Vanderbilt, Commodore Cornelius, wealth of, at 44, 460; William H., on South Improvement Company contract, 51; surprised by ready cash of oil combination, 88; never heard of American Transfer Company, 99 _n._ Van Syckel, Samuel, lays first pipe line, 41, 185; history and inventions of, 182-98; _vs._ Acme Oil Company, 187; gets United States patents for new process of refining, 193; given 6 cents damages by the judge, 195; dies in poverty, 462. Wagons cheaper than railroads, 211. Warner, A.J., on bill to regulate river shipments, 225. Warner, John De Witt, on trusts and tariff, 449. Washington, Constitution concerning trusts, 451. Wealth, concentrated, greatest sovereign, 134; of the combinations, certain features of, 513. Webster, Daniel, on extemporaneous acquisition, 462. Weehawken oil docks, 140. Well-drillers' Union and the "shut-down" of 1887, 154. Wellington, Duke of, on State and railroads, 369. Whalebacks, 460. Whiskey, ring of 1874, 20; trust, secretary of, arrested, 21. Widow, competitor of oil combination, 75; forced to sell, 77. Wilkes-barre railroads oppose independent pipe-line crossing, 161. Wilson, William L., on sugar trust, 32; President Cleveland to, 404. Witnesses, before United States Senate Committee investigating Chicago meat combination intimidated, 34; before committee of Congress refuse to testify, 60; refuse to appear before Interstate Commerce Commission, 145; railroad officials refuse to testify in Ohio, 202; railroad, refuse to testify before Congress, 224; coached, 279. Woman refiner, 73. Working-men, thrown out of work, 54, 68, 135, 154, 159, 455; punished for boycott, 287; of Toledo support city natural-gas pipe line, 308; in Toledo subscribe for city gas bonds, 340; reduction of wages in Scotland, 436; decline of wages in oil regions, 456. _World_, New York, on Russian Extradition Treaty, 448. Wright, Henry C., discussion on slavery, 346. Wyoming oil, railroads prevent shipments of, 481. Young, T. Graham, on British oil test, 409. THE END _By the Same Author_ A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES AGAINST MINERS OR, THE Story of Spring Valley AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MILLIONAIRES _Notices by the Press_ The Springfield (Mass.) _Republican_ (editorial). Those who keep note of passing events will not have forgotten the lock-out of coal miners at Spring Valley, Illinois, in the early months of 1889, and the sufferings of the families of the workmen in consequence. This sad story of corporate inhumanity has been effectively told by Henry D. Lloyd in a book entitled _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners_. It merits no less a volume than this. It is not an isolated case--an industrial phenomenon springing from conditions rarely repeated--but one of many similar cases, a part only of the whole story of coal mining in the United States. More than this, it is an aggravated illustration of the soullessness of the corporation in general, through the agency of which the bulk of the producing powers of the nation is working. Behind this legal fiction men hide and do deeds of grasping cruelty that disgrace manhood, and are fast bringing the industrial organism into contempt. In the case of Spring Valley, the directors and stockholders of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad and the Spring Valley Coal Company--controlled by the same men--are as responsible for the sufferings and death from starvation of miners in Spring Valley in 1889 as if they had all been personally present and assisted in the business of bringing men from a distance to work in their mines on assurance of steady employment, and then of locking them out without warning, to starve them into submission to lower wages, for the sake of higher profits on their stock. This is the conclusion of Mr. Lloyd, and we see no escape from it. If the corporation is to be considered an impersonality without moral responsibility, it will either have to go, or the industrial system which makes it an essential part will have to go. All the power of government, or wealth, or vested interests cannot maintain that system which, resting as our present system must on the charitable instincts of men, offers a way of escape from the responsibilities imposed thereby to the most powerful factors of the society. Against that system "the pulses of men will beat until they beat it down." What must be the condition of that society which allows the wealthy capitalists who starved these thousands of miners not only to go unpunished, but to move in the very highest circles of business power and social influence? And one of them in particular is to-day figuring upon representing the Democratic party of Pennsylvania in the United States Senate. The New York _Commercial Advertiser_ (editorial). It is to be remembered that Mr. Lloyd's book does not profess to be a dispassionate review of the situation. It is an indictment. The corporation's side should be given a fair hearing. But it must be heard soon. Mr. Lloyd's charges are too important, his formulation of them too worthy of respect to be treated with silent contempt. To ignore them is to confess their truth. Should such a reply be made, the readers of this column will be informed of it. _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners_ describes the poverty, the suffering, the utter misery among the miners in Spring Valley, Illinois, during the past year. In the simplicity and restraint of his style, and in the massing of his facts, Mr. Lloyd shows genuine literary power. There is no attempt at rhetoric in his narrative. He depends upon statements of facts, many of them incontrovertible, to rouse the hot indignation of his readers. If the story is true, and it bears every appearance of truth, the Spring Valley mine owners have been guilty of damnable treachery and cruelty to their fellow-men. Chicago _Herald_ (editorial). The _Herald_ commends to the attention of its readers the open letter in another column, from Henry D. Lloyd, addressed to various millionaires of New York, Chicago, and St. Paul. It contains what the _Herald_ believes to be the truth as to the Spring Valley scandal, and while in most respects it is a plain statement of facts, it is nevertheless one of the most powerful appeals for justice, and one of the most eloquent denunciations of wrong, which has come under the public eye in many a day. Mr. Lloyd's high character, his superb attainments, and his well-known philanthropy give force to the arraignment it might not otherwise possess. His letter is a history of a crime--a crime resulting, no doubt, from an infamous conspiracy--and the story leads naturally and inevitably to the conclusion which Mr. Lloyd avows, that there must be conspiracy laws for millionaires as well as for working-men. Civilization must be bottomed on justice, or it cannot endure. A society which permits such inhuman outrages as that at Spring Valley is either asleep or in an advanced stage of decay. The money god cannot crush out the lives of human beings with impunity. Let its devotees look well to the ground on which they stand. The wise and humane will be warned in time. The foolish and insatiate must be left to the stern judgment of their fellow-men, who must some day pass upon their act. The _Labor World_, London, England. What does Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who chants vulgar pæans to "Triumphant Democracy" say to such a book as this of Mr. Lloyd? This story of the robbery and betrayal of thousands of working miners in Illinois by a great millionaire corporation is one of the worst things we have read for a long time, and is a terribly scathing satire on American "democracy." Let us hear no more trash about "free" America as compared with down-trodden Europe. Both continents are down-trodden by the rich men who own the raw material out of which wealth is created by human labor. When the land of the United States is all absorbed by private persons, as it will be in twenty years' time, there will not be a pin to choose between America and Europe, so far as wage-workers are concerned. Wages may be higher in America, but the increased cost of living there will nearly equalize the condition of the two continents; while for swindling, lying, and merciless oppression many American capitalists leave their European brethren far behind. Mr. Lloyd's book, which is the first of a new "Bad Wealth Series," ought to open men's eyes to the fact that true freedom is impossible when a few men have a right to appropriate to themselves the raw material of the globe. Chicago _Daily Inter-Ocean_. Mr. Lloyd's reputation as a writer on economic questions is sustained in the manner of handling the usually dry statistical matter which tells the story of strikes and lock-outs. He makes the story interesting and often graphic, while he gives the facts and figures relating to the intricacy of contracts in a way to be easily understood by the ordinary reader. The book is a valuable compilation of the facts gathered relating to this shameless abuse of corporative power in Spring Valley. The _New Ideal_. Mr. Lloyd has been until recently on the editorial staff of the Chicago _Tribune_, and is now devoting his time to first-hand investigations into labor troubles. This book gives an account of a lock-out in one of the mining districts of Illinois, and is the more forcible and eloquent an arraignment of the "millionaires," as the statements are throughout verifiable. As Mr. Lloyd in effect says, professors of political economy do not come near enough to realities to discover such details as he portrays, and the working-men do not know how to bring them before public opinion. Hence the necessity of a mediator, who shall thoroughly investigate the facts and at the same time give them to the public, not in statistical reports, but in a form that compels its attention. Mr. Lloyd is a practised writer; no one can read this narrative without being profoundly moved, and for the directors and stockholders of the Spring Valley Coal Company (and, besides, of the Chicago and North-Western Railway, an aider and abettor of the nefarious business) the effect must be to set their blood on fire--so far as they are blessed (or unblessed) with any moral sensitiveness. Every thoughtful citizen--whether man or woman--should read this book, and have fully brought home to him or her the problems it suggests. It belongs to the literature both of fact and of power. The _Religio-Philosophical Journal_. Mr. Lloyd admits that Spring Valley and its miseries and wrongs were, at the beginning, but the conception and achievement of one or two of the leading owners of railroad and other companies who did the planning, secured the approval of the Board of Directors, and the active influence of the railroads through whom, by special freights, the business of competitors was stolen, coal land was bought, and the scheme was invented by which fortunes were to be made from working-men's necessities and the misuse of the powers of the common carrier. But none of the directors, none of the stockholders, who received the profits of the scheme, protested against it; on the contrary, all accepted unprotestingly their "share of the guilt and gilt." Mr. Lloyd gives a mass of facts and figures which prove, on the part of corporations employing men at Spring Valley, an amount of greed and heartlessness which seems incredible in an enlightened country. Mr. Lloyd is a literary artist as well as a man of deep feeling, and he combines felicity of diction with fervor and eloquence of expression, and writes with effectiveness and power. The book should be read by all who are interested in the labor question--the practical issue of the hour. Chicago _Times_. It is a pitiful story, a heart-breaking story, and Mr. Lloyd tells it with a great deal of force and earnestness. The _Dawn_. Can it be possible in these happier days among men who share the Christian civilization of the very eve of the twentieth century, that there can exist any analogy to this relentless war of savagery, this cruel and cowardly subjugation of a competitor, not in honest, open combat, but by taking advantage of a position to deny him food, shelter, and the very necessaries of life? For an answer, such as would bring indignant emotion to every heart not indurated by avarice of gold, and shame to every cheek not rendered incapable of blushing by hardened selfishness, we refer to the terrible facts, so calmly told with the severity of simple truth by Mr. Lloyd. Starved Rock and Spring Valley are not isolated instances. The malady is constitutional, not local. "The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint," may be said of our modern system of business. The _Nationalist_. In this age of strikes it is not always the workers who strike, as is indicated by the title of Mr. Lloyd's book. That brilliant and great-hearted journalist and publicist several months ago, in the shape of an open letter of several columns, printed in the Chicago _Herald_, told the story of the criminal and cold-blooded conspiracy of a group of enormously rich men against a body of honest and industrious workingmen. That letter he has made the basis of the present volume, which deserves a wide circulation among patriotic citizens of the United States. The strong and truthful words here uttered ought to ring throughout the land and arouse the people to a realizing sense of the greatest danger that has ever threatened our republic--the danger of its conversion into the worst of despotisms, that of rule by an irresponsible plutocracy. The Burlington _Hawkeye_. Mr. Lloyd proves every charge he makes, the testimony he brings forward being so presented as to leave no question as to its absolute correctness. In all the dark record of tyranny, cruelty, and brutality made by the coal barons of this country there is not a blacker chapter than that which tells of their crimes against the miners of Spring Valley in the year 1889. This is not the verdict of the "labor crank" alone; the people of Chicago and the whole of northern Illinois, in the press and pulpit and on the platform, have denounced the outrage, and the cooler judgment of to-day, when the lock-out is about worn out and the majority of the old miners are scattered all over the country, is in accord with the denunciation made by Mr. Lloyd. The _Rock Islander_, Rock Island, Ill. _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners, or the Story of Spring Valley._ The above is the title of a beautifully printed volume of 264 pages, by Henry D. Lloyd. Its prelude is the story of the starved Indians of Starved Rock, and it proceeds to parallel that by the starvation of labor by the millionaires. The story of Spring Valley is given in detail, with official proof of its truthfulness, and is graphically told by Mr. Lloyd. Its exposure of the oppressors of labor is terrific. It shows who they are; who has done this thing; how the town was boomed; how it was doomed; how the ghost of Starved Rock walks abroad; and how people are bought and enslaved in this boasted free country. It gives Governor Fifer a deserved slap for not going in person to the scene of starvation, and it roasts his military toady of the rich (Adjutant-General Vance) who was sent there by the governor to investigate, and whose report is proven to be a tissue of sneers at the poor, and falsehoods in regard to them and their situation. He quotes freely and approvingly from the report of Judge Gould and Mr. Wines, proving all that was claimed for the suffering there. He shows (page 66) that the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Company generously acknowledged the necessity for help by hiring a physician for its miners at Braceville, and sending supplies of necessaries for sick women and children to be given out by its agent there. He shows up the campaign of slander against Spring Valley, which was carried on through capitalistic newspapers and corporation tools; says the Spring Valley case is only a preliminary skirmish of capital against labor, and, after showing the first fruits, asks what the last will be. He closes with a chapter giving part of the moral. An appendix is added, showing what the millionaires said of themselves, and the replies by the miners and the press. Everybody should read this most remarkable and ably prepared story of the crime of capital upon labor. _Seed-Time_ (London), the organ of the New Fellowship. Perhaps the most striking of all the American object-lessons on the tendencies of capitalism has been given us by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, who has recently published a book entitled, _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners, or the Story of Spring Valley_. A more complete exposure of the tyranny and cruelty of capitalism has never before been made. Its great importance for us, however, lies in the fact that all the tyranny and wrong he witnessed and describes are but the natural outcomes of the principles of commercialism when those principles are carried to their logical conclusion, and capitalism has unchecked sway. Such terrible scenes do not occur everywhere, simply because capitalism is held in check by other social forces, and has not everywhere attained that full and unfettered development which discloses the evils which in its more undeveloped stage lie concealed. The _Twentieth Century_. It is a mind-agitating and heart-rending tale, and unless I am much mistaken the publication of it will create an epoch in economic thinking and social regeneration. What is the remedy for such crimes as Mr. Lloyd has exposed? The remedy will be found if open-minded persons will read such books as Mr. Lloyd's, and keep themselves informed as to what is being done to reduce a people to servitude. This single book ought to produce such a revulsion of feeling against the monstrous millionaires who perpetrated this awful crime that they would be looked upon by all decent people with abhorrence. If you will read Mr. Lloyd's book I think you will agree with me that if before long, as many persons believe, this county is to be deluged in the blood of revolution, the catastrophe will be brought on by condoning such crimes as that at Spring Valley; it will be brought on because you and I read such stories as this, and, knowing they are true, straightway forget all about them; it will be brought on because editors and preachers, and others who have the public ear, keep silent through negligence or fear of the rich who misrule the land. If people will not think, if they will not care, you may depend upon it that the price of their indifference will be slavery or war. From a letter to the _Twentieth Century_. Your article, and the extracts from Mr. Lloyd's book in your issue of June 12, portraying the outrageous injustice inflicted on the Spring Valley coal miners by the railway and coal-mining barons, was read before our club by Judge Frank T. Reid, of this city, a member of the club, at its regular weekly meeting, Monday, June 23. A resolution was unanimously passed and sent to the General Executive Board of the Nationalist clubs at Boston, requesting it to get up a memorial to the Government Bureau of Labor, petitioning that body to institute a special inquiry into the outrages; that this be done with a view of publishing these crimes to the whole country, under the proper authority, and also with the view of memorializing Congress for the government to work either all or part of the coal-mining industry on the same principle that it works the postal service, the government printing-office at Washington, and other industries, as the present method of running the coal mines by corporations has resulted, and will continue to result, in rioting and bloodshed, and imperils the very existence of society. We would suggest that copies of the memorial be sent to all the Nationalist clubs for signatures, and also to the Federated trades, Knights of Labor, and other organized bodies and to individuals. Might we also suggest that you kindly communicate with the Executive Board of Boston, and with our worthy and earnest brothers, Messrs. Bellamy, Bliss, and others? Yours fraternally, J.L. Johnson, _Secretary Nationalist Club_. Tacoma, Wash. #/ The _Open Court_. The story of Spring Valley will make every American citizen of healthy morals uncomfortable and ashamed.... A story which must be read, and the lesson of it heeded, or worse things come. The St. Louis _Republic_. A stirring account of the great mining strike, lock-out, and consequent misery at Spring Valley, Illinois, in 1888-89, the main features of which are still familiar to the reading public. Mr. Lloyd lays the blame where it belongs, and shows how the whole transaction worked to the profit of the plutocrats at the expense of their dupes--the enterprising thousands who believed in the promises made in booming the location. The booming of the town was followed by the dooming, and, as the _Republic_ and many other papers showed at the time, the action of the mine operators all through was "a cruel abuse of intellectual strength to use it to force weakness and ignorance into such a condition of helplessness." The author gives facts and figures, and his account of the matter is borne out by the news columns of the times. It is a sad story, and its truthfulness is a shameful comment upon the tendencies of our day. The Pittsburg _Labor Tribune_. _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners, or the Story of Spring Valley_, is a handsome edition of the important matter written by Henry D. Lloyd when the notable strike was on at the mines located at Spring Valley, Illinois. Our miner readers especially will read with satisfaction the vim and ability with which Mr. Lloyd handles the literary end of that eventful period, and will be pleased to know that he has issued the matter in consecutive form. The _Democrat_ (London). Bad as the social and industrial condition of Great Britain is, that of the United States threatens to become as bad or even worse unless the power of landlordism there is subjected to popular control. A striking instance of the rapid growth of monopoly and its ruinous effect on industry, as well as its atrocious tyranny over labor, is recorded in a striking little book by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, called _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners_. _Rights of Labor_ (Chicago). This narrative of the rapacity and greed of our coal barons we most earnestly commend to all our readers as a plain, clear statement of facts, admirably put; it deserves the widest circulation. New York _Herald_. This is one of the saddest, most enraging stories ever put on paper; of course the corporations protested, as corporations always do in such cases, that they were not to blame, but the awful facts cannot be denied or explained away. The _Herald_ expressed its mind editorially at the time. Now that the whole case is presented, the _Herald's_ readers can see how easily a scheming gang of heartless scoundrels can quickly reduce thousands of families to a condition worse than old-fashioned African slavery. Tacoma (Washington) _Globe_. Among the many books recently published on the labor question and the relations between the rich and the poor, none has excited a deeper interest than _A Strike of Millionaires against Miners_. Before the atrocities perpetrated in Spring Valley by the coal mining company, composed of some of the wealthiest men in the United States, the wrongs inflicted on the peasants in Ireland fade into insignificance. This book should have a wide reading, that all may know whither the nation is drifting. Boston _Herald_. The story of the labor disturbances at Spring Valley, Illinois, caused by a shut-down of the mines in 1888, is told by H.D. Lloyd in a thrilling presentation. In perusing the whole history, from the first alluring advertisements of the mining companies to the editorial comments in Chicago papers after the lock-out took place, a dweller in happier laboring regions will hardly believe that so much injustice could have been done in free America. The _Worker_ (Brisbane, Queensland). A simple but complete account of a terrible injustice. The _Christian Union_. Six or eight years ago there appeared in the _North American Review_ an article entitled "The Lords of Industry," by Henry D. Lloyd, which set forth with such power the nature and extent of the combinations to diminish production and increase prices that its author may be said to have initiated the anti-trust agitation of the last few years. Since that time he has gone on in the work thus begun, putting heart and soul into it. The _Strike of Millionaires against Miners_ carries perhaps less weight with our intellects than Mr. Lloyd's earlier work, but it appeals so strongly to our hearts that we are carried with him through the volume, and share with him his indignation over the wrongs he describes. * * * * * CONCORD, New Hampshire, _October 22, 1892_. DEAR MR. LLOYD,--I am reading the _Study_ you so kindly sent me. I have read most of it, including the "Word to Coal Miners," and what a "study!" What a lesson! What an apocalypse! Through it, "the voice of our brothers' blood cries to us from the ground," literally, and in tones scarcely ever heard before by human or heavenly ear! Would that you could peal out all the seven thunders of Patmos. I wish your work might outsell in number _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and _Robert Elsmere_ combined, till its note filled the earth as the waters the seas. Print the whole of this hasty testimony over my name, if it will be of service to the working man and woman. Faithfully and fraternally yours, for every good thought, word, and work, PARKER PILLSBURY. A BOOK FOR THE TIMES THE RAILWAYS AND THE REPUBLIC. By JAMES F. HUDSON. 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. The author studies carefully the evils of the system, inquires into the power of legislation to cure them, and describes the remedies which will preserve the usefulness of the railways, and at the same time protect legitimate investors.--_N.Y. Evening Post._ It is seldom the public is given a work at once so timely, so brave, and so able.... Mr. Hudson writes with the most exhaustive knowledge of his subject, and with an unusual ability in setting forth his ideas so that they are easily and clearly understood. There is hardly a more vigorous chapter in modern literature than that in which he discusses the rise and growth of the Standard Company.... The book is everywhere marked by unusual ability, accuracy, and fearlessness, which make it one of the most important contributions of the day to a subject which of necessity engages more and more attention every day. The political principles of the writer are thoroughly sound and practical.--_Boston Courier._ The subject is of such vital importance that no man or woman in the country should be ignorant about it.--_N.Y. Times._ Mr. Hudson writes in the interests of the people, calmly and without passion, as one who thoroughly understands his subject, and in harmony with many others who have dealt with the same problems.--_Critic_, N.Y. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK _For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage pre-paid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of price._ 
49912	----	Transcriber's Notes: Text originally marked up as bold is surrounded by =, text in italics by _. All footnotes can be found after the Appendix, before the Index. Obvious printer's errors have been remedied, a list of all other changes can be found at the end of the document. Note: There are many opening or closing quotation marks missing in the text. As in most instances, it is impossible to say where the quotation was meant to begin or end, those errors have not been corrected. Only instances where quotation marks were obviously missing or superfluous, were such added. Equally, "Employee/s" is found in various different spellings throughout the book; this inconsistency has been retained. THE EMPLOYMENTS OF WOMEN: A Cyclopædia of Woman's Work. BY VIRGINIA PENNY. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY WALKER, WISE, & COMPANY, 245 WASHINGTON STREET. 1863. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by VIRGINIA PENNY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TO WORTHY AND INDUSTRIOUS WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES, STRIVING TO EARN A LIVELIHOOD, This Book IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. It is very easy to obtain book after book on "The Sphere of Woman," "The Mission of Woman," and "The Influence of Woman." But to a practical mind it must be evident that good advice is not sufficient. That is very well, provided the reader is supplied with the comforts of life. But plans need to be devised, pursuits require to be opened, by which women can earn a respectable livelihood. It is the great want of the day. It is in order to meet that want that this work has been prepared. The few employments that have been open to women are more than full. To withdraw a number from the few markets of female labor already crowded to excess, by directing them to avenues where they are wanted, would thereby benefit both parties. At no time in our country's history have so many women been thrown upon their own exertions. A million of men are on the battle field, and thousands of women, formerly dependent on them, have lost or may lose their only support. Some of the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of soldiers, may take the vacancies created in business by their absence--others must seek new channels of labor. An exact estimate of woman as she has been, and now is, furnishes a problem difficult to solve. Biographies and histories merely furnish a clue to what she has been. Prejudice has exaggerated these portraitures. Woman as she now is, save in fiction and society, is scarcely known. The future position of woman is a matter of conjecture only. No mathematical nicety can be brought to bear upon the subject, for it is one not capable of data. More particularly is it difficult to define what her future condition in a business capacity will be. Man will have much to do with it, but woman more. I know of no work giving a true history of woman's condition in a business capacity. Socially, morally, mentally, and religiously, she is written about; but not as a working, every-day reality, in any other capacity than that pertaining to home life. It has been to me a matter of surprise that some one has not presented the subject in a practical way, that would serve as an index to the opening of new occupations, and present the feasibility of women engaging in many from which they are now debarred. It is strange there is no book on the subject, in any language, for it is a world-wide subject. Its roots are in the very basis of society--its ramifications as numerous as the nations of the earth--yes, as the individual members of the human family. The welfare of every man, woman, and child is involved in the subject. For who is entirely free from female influence--who is devoid of interest in the sex--who exists free from relationship, or any connection with woman? There is no man that is not involved in what affects woman, and the reverse is also true. It should therefore be a subject of paramount interest to all. Particularly does the subject appeal to the heart of woman. If she does not need to make a practical use of information on the subject, she will find its possession no disadvantage. It may assist her, from motives of friendship, or benevolent feelings, to advise and direct others. Is there any woman, not entirely devoid of all sensibility, but desires an amelioration in the condition of the working class of her sex--those who earn a mere pittance, scarce enough to keep body and soul together? The work of single women has never been very clearly defined. Those that are without means are often without any to guide them; and the limited avenues of employment open to women, and the fear of becoming a burden on others, have poisoned some of their best hours, and paralyzed some of their strongest powers. There is a large amount of female talent in the United States lying dormant for the want of cultivation, and there has been a large amount cultivated that is not brought into exercise for the want of definite plans and opportunities of making it available. It exists like an icicle, and requires the warmth of energy, thought, and independence to render it useful. It shrinks from forcing itself into notice, like the sensitive plant, and may live and die unseen and unknown. Widen, then, the theatre of action and enterprise to woman. Throw open productive fields of labor, and let her enter. Of those who speak so bitterly of women engaging in some pursuits now conducted by men, we would inquire, What would you have destitute single women and widows do, by which to earn their bread? You surely would not have women steal, that cannot obtain employment. What, then, can they do? Why may they not have free access to callings that will insure them a support? Those that oppose them, generally do so from selfish motives. Many men would banish women from the editor's and author's table, from the store, the manufactory, the workshop, the telegraph office, the printing case, and every other place, except the school room, sewing table, and kitchen. The false opinion that exists in regard to the occupations suitable for women must be changed ere women have free access to all those in which they may engage. Yet I would love to see thrown open to women the door of every trade and profession in which they are capable of working. "Women have not devoted their time and talents to mechanical arts, except to a very limited extent, and only within fifty years. How then could they be expected to equal men in proficiency, who have from the creation of the world been so employed, and who have had the advantage not only of their own exertions, but the experience of their fathers and forefathers to profit by? The superior mechanical talent of the United States is becoming known throughout the civilized world, and some of the work dictated by that talent is executed by women. Some persons complain that women would become more material--less spiritual--if engaged in manual labor. We think not, if it is of a kind suited to their nature. Contact with the world does not always wear out the fineness and delicacy that we love in woman. She does not necessarily lose that softness and gentleness that render her so lovely. A few women may by nature have a fondness for masculine pursuits; but the number of men that have from training and circumstances a partiality for feminine pursuits, is much greater. It has been estimated that there are 95,000 females earning a livelihood in New York city and its vicinity, by their labor, aside from those engaged in domestic pursuits; and I am confident there are at least 100,000 men in the same city engaged in pursuits well adapted to women. As women become more generally educated, their energies will be increased--their limits of thought expanded. They will seek employments consistent with honor and delicacy. They will desire the elevation of their sex, and do what they can to bring it about, regardless of the shafts of ridicule sent by selfish men and heartless women. "By elevating the standard and augmenting the compensation of woman's labor," a complete revolution would be wrought in the social and political standing of woman. Let woman once surmount the difficulties that now oppose her, and take her stand with dignified reserve, laboring and claiming what is her right as much as men--free labor and fair wages--and liberal men will applaud and admire her. As a friend of my sex, I have made investigations, and obtained statistics that show the business position of woman at present in the United States. I present such employments as have been, are, or may be pursued by them, and give what information I can obtain of each one. I may have omitted a few, and there may be some that are not yet recognized as a distinct business. I have made the study a speciality for three years, and spent an almost incredible amount of labor and money in doing so. I have visited factories, workshops, offices, and stores, for the purpose of seeing women at their vocations. I have gone through wind and snow, cold and rain. If I could have had the time and opportunity, I would have endeavored to see, also, something of their home-life. Much of the verbal information I give is impartial, as it has been given by those with whom I talked in a casual way, they not knowing I had any object in view; and frequently it was done in a respectful, yet off-hand way, when making purchases. I have often bought articles merely for an excuse to talk with people, and gain information on their occupations. I desire to present to those interested a clear and succinct view of the condition of business in the United States, the openings for entering into business, the vacancies women may fill and the crowded marts they may avoid, the qualifications needed for a selected pursuit, and the pursuits to which they are best adapted; also the probable result pecuniarily of each calling honorably pursued: in short, it is intended as a business manual for women. I wish to make it a practical work--useful, not ornamental. It is more a bringing together of facts, than a presentation of ideas--more a book of research than reflection. Yet the statements given are important, not merely as facts, but as being suggestive of things essential to or connected with occupations. The limits of each subject must necessarily be short, as I wish to form a volume to come within the reach of every one that would desire a copy. Any female who has in view the learning of any occupation mentioned in this book, would do well to go and see the process before making arrangements to that effect. And she should exercise her own judgment in making a practical use of that information. Many pursuits are now followed by women for which it was once thought they were incapable. My book is not sectional in its feelings. It is intended to benefit women of the North, South, East, and West of this vast Republic. In the large cities of the North, most working women are acquainted with others engaged in different occupations, and so may learn of places to be filled in them. In the South, a smaller number of women have been dependent on their own exertions, owing to the existence of slave-labor, and the comparative smallness of immigration. I strongly advocate the plan of every female having a practical knowledge of some occupation by which to earn a livelihood. How do men fare that are raised without being fitted for any trade or profession, particularly those in the humbler walks of life? They become our most common and ill-paid laborers. So it is with woman's work. If a female is not taught some regular occupation by which to earn a living, what can she do, when friends die, and she is without means? Even the labor that offers to men, situated as she is, is not at her disposal. No reproach should be cast upon any honest employment. The dignity and value of labor in the most menial occupation is superior to idleness or dependence upon others for the requirements of life. What destitute but industrious woman would not be glad to earn for herself a snug little cottage, to which she may resort in her old age, from the cares and conflicts of life; to enjoy the independence of a competency, earned by remunerative and well-applied labor? I will not be responsible for all the opinions advanced by those who have furnished me with information. The reader will often have to form her own deductions from the statements made. My work may not accomplish, by a great deal, the end proposed, but I hope it may be the means of securing, by honest industry, a livelihood to many now dependent and desponding. If it does not in itself accomplish any visible good, it may be the means of bringing forward some better method by which the desired end may be effected. It may perhaps impart information by which the philanthropic may best employ their time and means in advancing the welfare of others, by pointing out the wants of dependent women, and how best to meet those wants. It may open the way of usefulness to women of leisure and talents. If it saves any of my sex from an aimless and profitless life, I will feel that something has been done. In that way some may be kept from despair and sin. And it is certainly better to prevent evil than to cure it. Some have means, and if a plan were presented to them, they would engage in its execution. Connected with this subject is a fervent desire on the part of the writer to see houses of protection and comfort provided in our cities for respectable and industrious women when out of employment. Wealthy, benevolent people might build them, and appropriations be granted by the cities in which they are planted. Such a structure in each of our cities and towns would be a refuge to the weary, a home to the oppressed, a sanctuary to the stranger in a strange land. When the place of gaining information is not mentioned in this work, it will be understood that New York city was the place. It will be remembered that most of the information was obtained from October, 1859, to February, 1861. I hope much anxiety of mind, and uncertainty in the selection of a pursuit, will be prevented by my book, and many precious hours thereby saved for active, cheerful employment. If there should seem to be a want of practicability in any of the subjects I have treated upon, I think, after some reflection, it will disappear. Some of the employments presented may not find encouragement and proper compensation until our country becomes older, and calls for more variety in labor. I hope I may not hold out any unreasonable expectations of employment, or excite any hope that may not be realized. My ideas may appear vague and indefinite to some, but even such may perhaps pick out a few grains from the pile of chaff. But we must be doing, not saying--moving, not sitting--accomplishing something, not folding our hands in indolent ease. The active, restless spirit that pervades our people calls for action. It will not do to rest passive and let events take their own course. The progress of the age calls for earnest labor. INTRODUCTION. The great, urgent, universal wants of mankind, in all classes of society, are food, clothing, shelter, and fuel. After these come the comforts and luxuries pertaining to the condition of those in easy circumstances. Above and beyond these animal wants, but of nearly equal importance, are those relating to the mind--written and printed matter, oral instructions, as lectures and sermons, and the handiwork of the fine arts. These, in addition to health, freedom, and friends, comprise the greatest blessings man enjoys. I would add that the means of transit are necessary to make him entirely independent. Nearly all honest occupations are founded on these wants; but they have been divided and subdivided until their name is legion. The contents of this volume might be arranged in the same way that the articles exhibited in the Crystal Palace of London were, under the heads--Producer, Importer, Manufacturer, Designer, Inventor, and Proprietor. But we think the arrangement pursued, though rather irregular, may be quite as convenient. So great is the variety of subjects treated, that it is difficult to condense the contents in a smaller compass. The general difference in character and habits of those engaged in various occupations--their comparative morality and intelligence, the effects of a decline in wages, the effects of trades-unions, are all, more or less, involved in this subject of employments; also the opinions of the working classes on machinery and its results. Employments that have for their object the health, comfort, and protection of mankind--those that produce the necessaries and the luxuries of life--those for amusement and capable of being dispensed with--are all treated of to some extent. Numbers of women have been lost to society from the want of a systematic organization for their employment, and by a deficiency in the number of remunerative pursuits open to them. The destinies of thousands are daily perilled, mentally, morally, and physically, by the same cause. The disease has raised a great and turbulent cry; but, strange to say, few means, and they limited and inefficient, have been used as a cure. Indeed, a remedy has scarcely been devised. To open new and suitable occupations to women, and secure for them fair wages, would, I believe, be an effectual mode of relief. But to bring about a favorable change, not only must more occupations be opened to women, but, as Mr. Walker says, "employments of an equally indispensable character with those of the other sex." Many persons would be surprised to find the large number of people employed in such occupations as pertain only to civilized life--such as could be dispensed with in an emergency; and the small number employed in such occupations as really furnish us with the necessaries of life. In the first class, aside from those engaged in domestic duties and labors, the majority of women are employed. In the selection of a pursuit, it would be well to take into consideration what occupations are most likely to increase in this country. Those absolutely necessary for the preservation of life are permanent. Those essential to the health and comfort of mankind must be pursued by some. The steadiness of employment the year round should also be considered. Another item is the danger attending a trade, and the effects of the occupation on the health of the individual. A better compensation should be given to those prosecuting either a dangerous or unhealthy pursuit. There is at present more danger of women suffering from either an excess of work, or the entire want of it, than from any peculiarity pertaining to an occupation. A matter of some importance is the ability of an individual to furnish herself with the implements of a trade, goods for merchandizing, or the appurtenances of a profession, if she intends to conduct business on her own responsibility and at her own expense. If she has friends to advance her the money, she might perhaps make an arrangement to refund as she advances in business. It is a matter of doubt with us whether the labors of women are on an average less laborious than those of men. That they are generally performed indoors, is not saying anything in their favor as regards health. If we include domestic employments, we cannot say they are neater on an average. They may be better adapted to the constitution of the female sex, but the question arises, Are those in which women now engage, except domestic duties, more congenial to their taste, more acceptable to their feelings, more likely to develop their mental powers, and rightly direct their moral nature, than many others in which they might engage? We find that the class of workers, both men and women, having the most steady employments, are the most steady and reliable people. There are some employments in which it is well for a man and his wife to unite, as bankers, picture restorers, house painters, &c. There is probably as much diversity in the abilities of individual men to acquire a trade, as in those of women. We doubt not but women, generally, are as capable of acquiring a knowledge of any vocation as men, if they spend as much time and application in doing so. Could not women learn those occupations quite as thoroughly that require of men an apprenticeship of three, five, or seven years, if they could give the same time? We are confident the majority of women could, particularly those who have had equal advantages in the way of education and society with men engaged in the same pursuit. We think the time spent in acquiring a knowledge of different occupations is not at all proportioned to the variety of work and the skill required for proficiency in each. For instance, an occupation that could be learned in six months, must have three years' labor given; while an occupation that it requires twenty years to excel in, has the usual apprenticeship of three years. By the way, could not the most of those pursuits now requiring three years' time of serving be mastered in a shorter period? Supply and demand must ever regulate, to a great extent, the wages of women as well as men. We think, in the different departments of woman's labor, both physical and mental, there exists a want of harmony of labor done and the compensation; also, between the time given and the occupation. For instance, a gilder in a bookbindery gets $6 a week, or $1 a day of ten hours, which is equal to ten cents an hour. A girl, at most mechanical employments, receives, for her sixty hours' labor, $3 a week, which is equal to five cents an hour. A cook, who requires as much preparation as either, for ninety hours' labor will receive her board and washing, say $2, and $2 a week as wages, $4, equal to four and a half cents an hour. Confectioners' girls, in some of the best establishments in New York, spend seventeen, and some even eighteen hours, attending to their duties, and receive only $2, and board and washing, $4.50, equal to two and a half cents an hour. Some seamstresses sew fifteen hours a day, and earn but thirty cents, equal to two cents an hour, without board. Where there are discrepancies about the seasons for any particular kind of work, as given by different parties, it will usually be found to arise from some of the number being engaged in the wholesale business, selling to people from the South and West; others selling to city traders, or retail merchants selling to city customers. When there is a repetition of statements on the same subject, it will be observed that it arises from the information being given by different individuals. I have used the words girl and woman indiscriminately, except when mention is made of the age of the girls. I would take this opportunity of returning my thanks to all who have been so kind as to furnish me with any information, or directed me how to obtain it. Some errors will no doubt be observed by persons in their special branches of labor. By writing to the author, attention will hereafter be paid to the correction of such errors. NATURE OF THE CONTENTS. This work contains five hundred and thirty-three articles, more than five hundred of which are descriptions of the occupations in which women are, or may be engaged--the effect of each on the health--the rate of wages paid for those carried on in the United States--a comparison in the prices of male and female labor of the same kind--the length of time required to learn the business fully, and the time required to learn the part done by women--whether women are paid while learning--the qualifications needed--the prospect of future employment in each branch--the seasons best for work, and if in any season the women are thrown entirely out of work--the usual number of hours employed, and, if the working time exceeds ten hours, whether it could be shortened without serious loss of profit--and the comparative superiority or inferiority of women to men in each branch. Also, openings in the Southern States for certain branches of business--the prices of board for workwomen, and the remarks of employers--with a list of the occupations suitable for the afflicted. In addition are articles on unusual employments in the United States, England, France, and other countries--minor employments in the United States, England, and France. Also, a notice of the occupations in which no women are engaged in any country--those in which none are engaged in this country--those in which very few are engaged. HEADS OF SUBJECTS. Professional Women. Artists. Those in Mercantile Pursuits. Employments pertaining to Grain, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables. Raisers, Makers, Preparers, and Disposers of Articles of Food. Textile Manufacturers--Cotton, Linen, Woollen, Silk, Lace. Metal Manufacturers--Iron, Brass, Steel, Copper, Tin, Britannia, Silver, Silver Plating, Bronze, Gold. Miscellaneous Workers on Indian Goods, Inkstands, Lithoconia, Marble, Mineral Door-Knobs, Paper Cutting, Papier Maché, Pipes, Porcelain, Pottery, Stucco Work, Terra Cotta, and Transferring on Wood. Glass Manufacturers. China Decorators. Leather Manufacturers. Whalebone Workers. Brush Manufacturers. Ivory Cutters. Pearl Workers. Tortoise-Shell Workers. Gum-Elastic Manufacturers. Gutta-Percha Manufacturers. Hair Workers. Willow Ware. Wood Work. Agents. Manufacturers, and Colorers of Ladies' Apparel. Fitters, Cutters, and Sewers of Ladies' and Children's Wear. Upholsterers. Manufacturers of Books, Ink, Paper, and Pencils. Chemicals. Those who serve as a Communicating Medium between Employers and others. Those that contribute to the Comfort or Amusement of others. Mistresses and Domestics. Miscellaneous Occupations. Employments for the Afflicted. Unusual Employments. Minor Employments. Occupations in which no Women are engaged, &c. Openings in the South for certain branches of business. Prices of Board for Workwomen, and Remarks of Employers. Number of Work Hours. Extracts from the Census Report of 1860. Industrial Statistics of Paris. CONTENTS. =Professional Women.= PAGE 1. Amanuenses, 1 2. Astronomers, 1 3. Authors, 2 4. Bankers and Clerks, 7 5. Bible Readers, 5 6. Brokers, 8 7. Colonizationists, 9 8. Colportors, 9 9. Copyists, 10 10. Deaconesses, 11 11. Dentists, 14 12. Editresses, 14 13. Government Clerks, 16 14. Lawyers, 17 15. Lecturers, 18 16. Librarians, 19 17. Magazine Contributors, 21 18. Missionaries, 22 19. Medical Missionaries, 23 20. Physicians, 24 21. Preachers, 30 22. Proof Readers, 30 23. Publishers, 31 24. Readers to the Working Classes, 32 25. Reporters, 33 26. Reviewers, 34 27. Teachers, 36 28. Bookkeeping, 39 29. Calisthenics and Dancing, 41 30. Drawing and Painting, 41 31. Fancy Work, 42 32. Horsemanship, 42 33. Infant Schools, 43 34. Languages, 44 35. Music, 44 36. Navigation, 45 37. Swimming, 45 38. Translators, 45 Artists. 39. Actresses, 47 40. Aquaria Makers, 50 41. Architects, 51 42. Cameo Cutters, 52 43. Copperplate Engravers, 53 44. Daguerreans, 53 45. Design, Schools of, 55 46. Designers (Miscellaneous), 59 47. Calico Prints, 60 48. Wall Paper, 61 49. Draughtswomen, 61 50. Employés in the United States Mint, 61 51. Engravers and Chasers of Gold and Silver, 62 52. Equestrians and Gymnasts, 64 53. Etchers and Stamp Cutters, 65 54. Herbarium Makers, 65 55. Lapidaries, 66 56. Landscape Gardeners, 67 57. Lithographers, 68 58. Map Makers, 71 59. Medallists, 73 60. Modellers, 73 61. Modellers of Wax Figures, 74 62. Mineral Labellers, 75 63. Musicians, 75 64. Music Engravers, 77 65. Opera Performers, 77 66. Painters, 79 67. Animals, 81 68. Banners, 81 69. Crayon and Pastel, 81 70. Flowers and Fruit, 82 71. Fresco, 82 72. Historical, 82 73. Landscape, 82 74. Marine, 83 75. Miniature, 83 76. Panorama, 84 77. Portrait, 84 78. Water Colors, 85 79. Painters of Dial Plates, 85 80. Picture Restorers, 85 81. Piano Tuners, 86 82. Plaster Statuary, 87 83. Painters of Plates for Books, 88 84. Photographers, 90 85. Preparers of Scientific Plates, 94 86. Seal Engravers, 94 87. Sculptors, 94 88. Steel and other Engravers, 96 89. Bank Note, 97 90. Card, 98 91. Door Plate, 98 92. Map, 98 93. Pictorial and Heraldry, 99 94. Telegraph Operators, 100 95. Vocalists, 102 96. Wax Work, 102 97. Wood Engravers, 103 Mercantile Pursuits. 98. Merchants, 104 99. Bookkeepers, 106 100. Book Merchants, 108 101. China Merchants, 109 102. Clothiers, 110 103. Curiosity Dealers, 115 104. Druggists and Clerks, 115 105. Keepers of Fancy Stores, 119 106. Gentlemen's Furnishing Stores, 119 107. Furniture Sellers, 120 108. Grocers, 121 109. Junk Dealers, 122 110. Music Sellers, 122 111. Sellers of Artists' Materials, 123 112. Seeds, Roots, and Herbs, 124 113. Small Wares, 124 114. Tobacco, Snuff, and Cigars, 125 115. Saleswomen, 125 116. Street Sellers, 131 117. Toy Merchants, 134 118. Wall Paper, 134 119. Worn Clothes, 134 120. Variety Shops, 136 Employments pertaining to Grain, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables. 121. Agriculturists, 136 122. Bee Dealers, 137 123. Bird Importers and Raisers, 137 124. Bird and Animal Preservers, 138 125. Florists, 140 126. Flower Girls, 142 127. Fruit Growers, 142 128. Fruit Venders, 143 129. Gardeners, 144 130. Makers of Cordial, &c., 144 131. Root, Bark, and Seed Sellers, 145 132. Seed Envelopers and Herb Packers, 145 133. Sellers of Pets, 147 134. Wine Manufacturers and Grape Growers, 147 Raisers, Makers, Preparers, and Disposers of Articles of Food. 135. Bakers (Bread), 148 136. Brewers, 150 137. Candy Manufacturers, 150 138. Cheese Makers, 152 139. Coffee and Chocolate Packers, 153 140. Cracker Bakers, 154 141. Fancy Confectionery, 154 142. Fish women, 158 143. Macaroni, 159 144. Maple Sugar, 159 145. Market Women, 159 146. Meat Sellers, 161 147. Milk Sellers and Dairy Women, 162 148. Mince Meat, Apple Butter, &c., 163 149. Mustard Packers, 164 150. Oyster Sellers, 164 151. Pie Bakers, 164 152. Picklers of Oysters, 166 153. Poulterers, 166 154. Restaurant Keepers, 167 155. Sealed Provisions, 168 156. Sugar Boilers, 170 157. Tea Packers, 170 158. Vermicelli, 171 159. Vinegar, 171 160. Yeast, 172 Textile Manufactures. 161. COTTON MANUFACTURE, 172 162. Batting and Wadding, 175 163. Calicoes, 175 164. Canton Flannel, 176 165. Carpet Chains, 176 166. Cord, 177 167. Dyers, 177 168. Factory Operatives, 180 169. Gingham, 183 170. Hose, 184 171. Men's Wear, 186 172. Print Works, 186 173. Spinners, 189 174. Spool Cotton, 189 175. Tape, 190 176. Weavers, 190 177. LINEN MANUFACTURE, 191 178. Thread, 193 179. WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE, 194 180. Blankets, 195 181. Carpets, 195 182. Carpet Bags, 196 183. Cassimeres, 197 184. Cloths, 198 185. Coverlets, 201 186. Dry-Goods Refinishers, 201 187. Flannels, 201 188. Gloves, 203 Woollen, 205 189. Linseys, 205 190. Shawls, 207 191. Shoddy, 207 192. Yarn, 207 193. SILK MANUFACTURE, 208 194. Ribbons, 209 195. Sewing Silk, 210 196. LACE MANUFACTURE, 211 197. " Menders, 212 198. HAIR CLOTH MANUFACTURE, 213 Metal Manufactures. 199. IRON MANUFACTURE, 214 200. Files, 215 201. Guns, 215 202. Hinges, 215 203. Locks, 216 204. Nails, 217 205. Rivets, 217 206. Screws, 217 207. Skates, 218 208. Shovels, 218 209. Wire Workers, 218 BRASS MANUFACTURE, 219 210. Candlesticks, 219 211. Hooks and Eyes, 220 212. Lamps, 221 213. Pins, 221 214. Rings, 223 215. Scales, 223 216. Stair Rods, 224 217. STEEL MANUFACTURE, 224 218. Buckles, 224 219. Edge Tools, 225 220. Electrical Machines, 226 221. Fire Arms, 226 222. Knives and Forks, 226 223. Needles, 227 224. Pens, 228 225. Philosophical Apparatus, 229 226. Saws, 230 227. Scissors, 230 228. Spectacles, 230 229. Surgical Instruments, 232 230. Telescopes, 232 231. Thermometers, 232 232. COPPER MANUFACTURE, 232 233. TIN MANUFACTURE, 233 234. Lanterns, 233 235. BRITANNIA WARE, 234 236. SILVER MANUFACTURE, 234 237. Burnishers, 234 238. Thimbles, 236 239. SILVER PLATING, 237 240. BRONZE MANUFACTURE, 237 241. GOLD MANUFACTURE, 237 242. Assayers, 238 243. Enamellers, 238 244. Gold and Silver Leaf, 239 245. Jewellers' Findings, 240 246. Pencils, 241 247. Pens, 241 248. Watches, 242 249. Watch-Case Polishers, 244 250. Watch Chains, 246 251. Watch Jewels, 248 =Miscellaneous Works.= 248 252. Indian Goods, 248 253. Inkstands, 248 254. Lithoconia, 249 255. Marble Workers, 249 256. Mineral Door-Knobs, 250 257. Paper Cutters, 250 258. Papier-Maché Finishers, 250 259. Pipes, 251 260. Porcelain, 251 261. Pottery, 252 262. Stucco Work, 253 263. Terra Cotta 253 264. Transferrers on Wood, 253 265. =Glass Manufacture.= 253 266. Blowers, 255 267. Beads, 255 268. Cutters, 256 269. Embossers, 256 270. Enamellers, 256 271. Engravers, 257 272. Painters, 257 273. Stainers, 258 274. Watch Crystals, 259 275. =China Decorators and Burnishers.= 260 276. =Leather.= 261 277. Currying, 262 278. Harnesses, 262 279. Jewel and Instrument Cases, 263 280. Morocco Sewers, 263 281. Pocket Books, 264 282. Saddle Seats, 265 283. Tanning, 265 284. Trunks, 266 285. Whips, 266 286. =Whalebone Workers.= 267 287. =Brush Manufacturers.= 268 288. =Ivory Cutters and Workers.= 269 289. Combs, 271 290. Piano Keys, 271 291. Rulers (Paper), 272 292. =Pearl Workers.= 273 293. =Tortoise-Shell Workers.= 273 294. =Gum-Elastic Manufacture.= 274 295. Men's Clothing, 276 296. Shoes, 276 297. Toys, 276 298. =Gutta Percha Manufacture.= 277 299. =Hair Workers.= 277 299. Artists, 277 300. Dressers, 278 301. Dyers, 280 302. Growers, 281 303. Manufacturers, 281 304. Merchants, 281 305. =Willow Ware.= 282 Wood Work. 306. Carvers, 284 307. Kindling Wood, 285 308. Pattern Makers, 286 309. Rattan Splitters, 286 310. Cigar Boxes, 286 311. Turners, 287 Agents. 312. Express and other Conveyances, 287 313. General, 288 314. Literary, Book, and Newspaper, 289 315. Mercantile, 291 316. Pens, 291 317. Sewing Machines, 291 318. School, 292 319. Telegraph Instruments, 292 320. Washing Machines, 292 Manufacturers and Colorers of Ladies' Apparel. 321. Artificial Flowers, 292 322. Belts, 295 323. Bonnet Ruches, 295 324. Dress Trimmings, 296 325. Embroidery, 298 326. Feathers, 300 327. Hoop Skirts, 301 328. Muslin Sets, 304 329. Parasols and Umbrellas, 305 330. Sempstresses, 308 331. Sewing Machine Operatives, 310 Fur Workers. 332. Dyers, 312 333. Sewers, 312 Fitters, Cutters, and Sewers of Ladies' and Children's Wear. 334. Bonnets, 314 335. Bonnet Frames, 319 336. Bonnet Wire, 320 337. Children's Clothes, 321 338. Cloaks and Mantillas, 321 339. Costumes, 323 340. Dresses, 324 341. Dress Caps and Headdresses, 326 342. Fans, 328 343. Ladies' Under Wear, 329 344. Over Gaiters, 330 345. Patterns of Ladies' and Children's Clothes, 330 346. Shoes, 331 347. Stays, 334 Straw Workers. 348. Bleachers and Pressers, 335 349. Braiders, 336 350. Sewers, 337 Renovators. 351. Gentlemen's Wear, 339 352. Ladies' Wear, 340 Gentlemen's Clothing. 353. Army and Navy Uniform, 340 354. Buttons, 340 355. Canes, 342 356. Caps, 342 357. Coats, 345 358. Cravats, 345 359. Hats (Hat Braiders, 349), 345 360. Oil Clothing, 350 361. Pantaloons, 350 362. Regalias, 350 363. Shirts, 350 364. Suspenders, 354 365. Tailoresses, 355 366. Vests, 356 367. =Upholsterers.= 357 368. Beds, 358 369. Carpets, 358 370. Curled Hair Pullers, 359 371. Curtain Trimmings, 359 372. Furniture Goods, 360 373. Mattresses, 360 374. Venetian Blinds, 361 375. Window Shades, 361 Manufacturers of Books, Ink, Paper, and Pencils. 376. Book Folders, 363 377. Book Sewers, 365 378. Card Makers, 367 379. Card Stencillers, 369 380. Cover and Edge Gilders, 370 381. Electrotypers, 370 382. Envelope Makers, 370 383. Folders and Directors of Newspapers, 372 384. Ink, 373 385. Label Cutters, 373 386. Lead Pencils, 374 387. Operatives in Paper Factories, 374 388. Paper Bag Makers, 376 389. Box Makers, 376 390. Marblers, 379 391. Rulers, 379 392. Press Feeders, 380 393. Printers, 380 394. Sealing-Wax Makers, 385 395. Stereotypers, 385 396. Type Rubbers and Setters, 386 397. Wall-Paper Gilders, 387 398. =Chemicals.= 389 399. Baking Powder, 390 400. Bar Soap, 390 401. Blacking, 390 402. Candles, 391 403. Chalk, 392 404. Emery Paper, 392 405. Fancy Soap, 392 406. Fire Works, 392 407. Flavoring Extracts, 393 408. Glue, 394 409. Gunpowder, 394 410. Oils, 394 411. Paints, 394 412. Patent Medicines, 395 413. Pearlash, 395 414. Perfumery, 395 415. Quinine, 397 416. Salt, 397 417. Soda, 399 418. Starch, 399 419. White Lead, 400 420. Whiting, 400 Communicating Mediums between Employers and Others. 421. Assistants in Benevolent Institutions, 400 422. Commissioners of Deeds, 402 423. Housekeepers, 402 424. Keepers of Intelligence Offices, 403 425. Lighthouse Keepers, 405 426. Pawnbrokers, 406 427. Postmistresses, 407 428. Sewing-Machine Instructors, 408 429. Shepherdesses, 409 430. Toll Collectors, 409 Contributors to the Comfort or Amusement of Others. 431. Bathhouse Attendants, 409 432. Brace and Truss Makers, 410 433. Chiropodists, 411 434. Cuppers and Leechers, 413 435. Fishing-Tackle Preparers, 413 436. Fortune Tellers, 415 437. Guides and Door Attendants, 415 438. Lodging and Boarding House Keepers, 415 439. Makers of Artificial Eyes, 416 440. Limbs, 418 441. Teeth, 418 442. Nurses for the Sick, 419 443. Steamboat and Railroad Newsvenders, 421 444. Street Musicians, 421 445. Tavern Keepers, 422 446. Travelling Companions, 423 Mistresses and Domestics. 447. Mistresses, 423 448. Domestics, 424 449. Chambermaids, 426 450. Cooks, 428 451. Dining-Room Waiters, 429 452. Ladies' Maids, 430 453. Nurses for Children, 430 454. Saloon Attendants, 431 455. Washers, Ironers, and Manglers, 431 Miscellaneous Occupations, and Workers therein. 456. Backgammon-Board Finishers, 433 457. Balloon Makers, 433 458. Billiard-Table Finishers, 434 459. Bill Posters, 434 460. Block Cutters, 434 461. Boatwomen, 435 462. Bone Collectors, 435 463. Bottlers and Labellers, 435 465. Broom Makers, 436 464. Bronzers, 436 466. Canvas and Cotton Bag Makers, 437 467. Car and Carriage Painters, 438 468. Carriage Trimmers, 489 469. Chair Seaters, 440 470. China Menders, 441 471. Cigar Makers, 442 472. Cigar-End Finders, 444 473. Cinder Gatherers, 444 474. Clear Starchers, 444 475. Clock Makers, 444 476. Clothes-Pin Makers, 445 477. Clothes Repairers, 445 478. Cork Assorters and Sole Stitchers, 445 479. Daguerreotype Apparatus, 446 480. Feather Dressers, 447 481. Flag Makers, 447 482. Furniture Painters, 448 483. Gilders of Mirror Frames, 449 484. Globe Makers, 450 485. Hobby-Horse Finishers, 450 486. Horse Coverings, 451 487. House Painters, 452 488. Japanners, 452 489. Knitters, 454 490. Lace Bleachers, 457 491. Lacquerers, 458 492. Life Preservers, 458 493. Lucifer Matches, 458 494. Mat Makers, 460 495. Manufacturers of Musical Instruments, 460 Melodeons and Organs, 461 Pianos, 462 Seraphines, 463 496. Musical-String Makers, 463 497. Netters, 464 498. Oakum Pickers, 464 499. Paper Hangers, 465 500. Polishers, 465 501. Pin Finders, 465 502. Rag Cutters, 465 503. Rag Gatherers, 466 504. Rope and Twine Makers, 468 505. Sail and Awning Makers, 470 506. Shoe-Peg Makers, 470 507. Shroud Makers, 470 508. Sign Painters, 471 509. Snuff Packers, 472 510. Stencil Makers, 473 511. Street Sweepers, 473 512. Tip Gilders, 473 513. Tobacco Strippers, 474 514. Toy Makers, 475 515. Varnishers and Varnish Makers, 476 516. Water Carriers, 476 Employments for the Afflicted. 517. Blind Women, 477 518. Deaf Mutes, 477 519. The Lame, 477 Unusual Employments. 520. United States, 477 521. England, 478 522. France, 481 523. Other Countries, 482 Minor Employments. 524. United States, 484 525. England, 484 526. France, 485 527. =Occupations in which no Women are Engaged.= 486 528. None in the United States, 486 529. Very few, 486 530. OPENINGS IN THE SOUTH FOR CERTAIN branches of business, 487 531. PRICE OF BOARD FOR WORKWOMEN, AND REMARKS OF EMPLOYERS, 488 532. NUMBER OF WORK HOURS, 489 532. EXTRACTS FROM CENSUS REPORT OF 1860, in advance of publication, 490 =Industrial Statistics of Paris.= France, in 1848, 492 THE EMPLOYMENTS OF WOMEN. PROFESSIONAL, LITERARY, AND SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS. =1. Amanuenses.= Amanuenses are employed to write from dictation, generally by authors. Prescott, who was nearly blind for several years, employed one or more. Editors whose papers have an extensive circulation, sometimes require the services of an amanuensis. Female secretaries, or writers out of books, were not unusual in Rome. "Origen," says Eusebius, "had not only young men, but young women to transcribe his works, which they did with peculiar neatness." Some persons in London (whose employment, perhaps, scarcely brings them under this title, yet we know not where else to place them) make it a business to write letters for beggars, for which they are paid a small sum by each applicant. Amanuenses are usually employed by the week, month, or year. Some education is of course necessary, and will doubtless influence their pay. Experience increases their value still more; and those who have to exercise their brains, are of course best paid. I have been told by competent authority, that amanuenses are usually paid according to agreement; that authors of distinction can afford to pay a good price, and that the most common salary is $600. =2. Astronomers.= Maria Cunitz is mentioned as an astronomer of the seventeenth century in Germany. Miss Caroline Herschel discovered two moons and several comets. Miss Maria Mitchell, of Nantucket, Mass., discovered a new planet, and received, in consequence, a medal from the King of Denmark. She formerly observed for the Coast Survey, but was not officially recognized. She computes for the _Nautical Almanac_. She writes: "I know of no lady astronomers who are practical observers. Very good works have been written on the subject by women. An observing room is never warmed by a fire; and as a small part, at least, of the roof must be opened to the air, the exposure is according to the weather, as the observations must be made in clear evenings. I do not consider the danger to the health great. I know of no way in which astronomical observations can be made to pay women. They could, without doubt, make better observers than men, with the same amount of practice. The same delicacy of touch and of perception that makes them good at the needle, would make them efficient in the delicate manipulations of the micrometer. But I know of no man well paid as an observer only. There are always volunteer candidates in this department of an observatory. Women can make as good computations as men, and do their work more neatly; but here, also, the field is occupied by men, although, I think, never as volunteers without pay. I have no doubt many of the computations professedly made by men, are really the work of women employed as assistants. This has always been the case in the long and tedious computations made for astronomical objects in the early efforts of the science. My own observatory is wholly a private affair, and supported entirely by my own means, which are my daily earnings as computer to the _Nautical Almanac_. I employ no assistant." I am happy to say Miss Mitchell receives the same salary for the observations and reckonings of the _Nautical Almanac_ that would be given to a man. In 1856, at the Smithsonian Institute, a paper was read by Professor Foote, on the heat of the sun's rays; after which a paper by Mrs. Foote was read by Professor Henry, giving an account of experiments made by herself on the same subject. Miss Harriet Bouvier (now Mrs. Peterson) has written a very good work on astronomy for schools. Mrs. Somerville, a distinguished astronomer of England, has added much information to the science by her discoveries. "Miss Anne Sheepshanks, sister to the late astronomer, has been elected a fellow of the Astronomical Society." =3. Authors.= Many superior works of fiction have been written by ladies of America, some of which have been translated into the languages of Europe and introduced into those countries. Many of our fair countrywomen have distinguished themselves by their poetical effusions, and quite a number have published their poems in book form. Mrs. Everett Green, author of the "Lives of the Princesses of England," is now employed by the English Government upon state papers. Research into historical data, and the nice, careful arrangement of details, are well fitted to the patience of woman. Several years ago, Queen Victoria granted to Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Jamieson each $1,000 a year as pensions. These are not by any means the only instances of her liberality to literary women. During the year ending January, 1860, she granted pensions to thirteen ladies, either for literary merit of their own or that of some relative. The French Academy awarded to Madame Louisa Collet, in 1851, the prize of $1,000 for poetry; also one to Mlle. Ernestine Druet, a governess in a school at Paris. Mlle. Royer received the prize, a short time ago, from the University of Lausanne, for a philosophical essay. The labor of authors is not rewarded as well as other kinds of intellectual labor of the same extent: for instance, a physician or lawyer, with the same abilities, amount of learning, and application, would derive a greater reward pecuniarily. In the United States an author can retain the profits of his work a certain number of years, being at liberty to make any arrangement with his publisher he sees proper. In France and Russia he possesses the profits arising from the sale of his work during his life, and his heirs receive them during twenty years. The following is an extract from H. C. Carey's article on the Rewards of Authorship: "Mr. Irving stands, I imagine, at the head of living authors for the amount received for his books. The sums paid to the renowned Peter Parley must have been enormously great; but what has been their extent, I have no means of ascertaining. Mr. Mitchell, the geographer, has realized a handsome fortune from his school books. Professor Davies is understood to have received more than $50,000 from the series published by him. The Abbotts, Emerson, and numerous other authors engaged in the preparation of books for young persons and schools, are largely paid. Professor Anthon, we are informed, has received more than $60,000 for his series of classics. The French series of Mr. Bolmar has yielded him upward of $20,000. The school geography of Mr. Morse is stated to have yielded more than $20,000 to its author. A single medical book, of one octavo volume, is understood to have produced its authors $60,000, and a series of medical books has given its author probably $30,000. Mr. Downing's receipts from his books must have been very large. The two works of Miss Warner must have already yielded her from $12,000 to $15,000, and perhaps as much more. Mr. Headley is stated to have received about $40,000; and the few books of Ik Marvel have yielded him about $20,000. A single one, 'The Reveries of a Bachelor,' produced $4,000 in the first six months. Mrs. Stowe has been very largely paid. Miss Leslie's cookery and recipe books have paid her $12,000. Dr. Barnes is stated to have received more than $30,000 for the copyright of his religious works. Fanny Fern has probably received not less than $6,000 for the duodecimo volume published but six months since. Mr. Prescott was stated, several years since, to have received $90,000 from his books, and I have never seen it contradicted. According to the rate of compensation generally understood to be received by Mr. Bancroft, the present sale of each volume yields him more than $15,000, and he has the long period of forty-two years for future sale. Judge Story died, as has been stated, in the annual receipt of more than $8,000, and the amount has not, as it is understood, diminished. Mr. Webster's works in three years can scarcely have paid less than $25,000. Kent's 'Commentaries' are understood to have yielded to their author and his heirs more than $120,000; and if we add to this, for the remainder of the period, only one half of this sum, we shall obtain $180,000, or $45,000 as the compensation for a single octavo volume--a reward for literary labor unexampled in history." It is necessary that the reader, in considering the figures given, remember that the reputation of an author has much to do with the price paid by a publisher for manuscripts. The number of women authors is much greater than one unacquainted with the statistics in regard to the subject would suppose. "In 1847 Count Leopold Feni died at Padua, leaving a library entirely composed of works written by women in various languages, the number of volumes amounting to nearly thirty-two thousand. Whether the English and American lady writers were included in his list we do not know, but we wish some woman of taste and fortune, in our country, would make a similar collection." It is said that two thirds of the writers in _Chambers' Edinburgh Journal_ are women. Some of the writers of our best periodicals are women. The success of women in works of fiction is unquestioned. This class of books requires less time, less study, and less money, and rewards the authors pecuniarily better than any other kind of work, considering, of course, the comparatively small amount of application required. As the females of our land become more generally educated, and have more leisure for the cultivation of their minds, no doubt more attention will be devoted to literary effort. The easy, natural manner of female authors is a marked feature. Different motives prompt to authorship--love of fame, wealth, influence, and a desire to do good. Persons are generally prompted to write by feeling that they know more of some particular subject than most people, or something entirely unknown or unthought of by any one save themselves. Some collect and arrange information obtained from books, observation, or experience, or all combined. E. Hazen says: "The indispensable qualifications to make a writer are--a talent for literary composition, an accurate knowledge of language, and an acquaintance with the subject to be treated." Good health and freedom from care are necessary for one who would give him or herself up to the severities of mental labor. Dr. Wynne says: "With him whose occupation is either intellectual or sedentary, or both, the nervous energy necessary to digest food is already abstracted by the operations of the mind; and the meal taken under the circumstances is but partially digested and appropriated to the use of the body. The remainder acts as an irritant, and, if the practice be persevered in, terminates in dyspepsia, followed by that Protean train of nervous diseases which destroys the equanimity of mind, and finally terminates the life of so many of our most efficient and worthy business men, at the very time when their services are most valuable to their families and the community. The cares of business should be dismissed with the termination of the hours devoted to their pursuits, and their place supplied by those exercises or amusements which bring with them cheerfulness and exhilaration." Of all studies, the quiet and contemplative kind are most favorable to long life. Those of an exciting nature produce a reaction, sometimes, of the physical as well as intellectual powers. =5. Bible Readers.= An incalculable amount of good has been accomplished by this class of persons. The originator is Mrs. Raynard, the L. N. R. of the "Missing Link," "The Book and its Story," &c., who lived in London. "One hundred ladies have joined her as managers and superintendents. The ladies each select from among the uneducated class the best women they can find, and send them out to read Bibles and sell them to their own class. They have now two hundred such Bible women in England, Ireland, Scotland, and France, and they are meeting with unheard-of success. Mrs. Raynard told me they made soup for the poor in winter, and sold it to them very low, and in such a way that the poorest could have his bowlful for some trifling service; and while one is serving the soup, others serve them with portions of God's word. Then the lady superintendents have tea meetings without number, and sewing meetings, and clothing meetings. Beside, the ladies must first instruct their readers every week or day in the Scriptures, in teaching, in meekness, in manner, in helping the sick, and sympathizing with all suffering, and, above all, teach them to lean only on God. They must also pay the Bible women, who give up their time to this work, and keep an account with each one. These lady readers or superintendents in England publish a monthly of their own, conducted by dear Mrs. Raynard, so that they can all communicate with one another; and God sends them funds to the amount of $35,000 the year." A lady of Baltimore writes me: "The Maryland Bible Society employs three paid Bible readers--all women--at eight dollars per month each. These are purposely selected from the poorest class of pious women, because it is thought that persons of that class have readier access to the homes and hearts of the poor, beside the aid it affords to honest poverty. Independently of this Bible effort, another has originated from the London charity, unfolded in the 'Missing Link.'" The lady of Baltimore (Miss W.) wrote from the Maryland Bible, &c., through the _Word Witness_: "Just one year ago, I engaged a pious poor woman, at two dollars per week, to labor among the destitute, vicious poor--a class that could not be reached by ordinary methods of voluntary effort, dwelling in localities that ladies might not safely visit. The work was to humanize these people; to wash and clothe the children, and put them in Sabbath and public schools; to read and pray, and teach their mothers; and to relieve personal suffering. She has done a good work. Another woman has been employed in South Baltimore, in the same calling. Recently, the ladies of the First Presbyterian Church have formed a union, and raised the salary of one of these female colportors, and thus the experiment promises to expand itself into a permanent benevolent organization. I may say that the plan adopted, if vigorously and efficiently carried out, would rid our crowded alleys of half the suffering and nearly all the vices and impositions that now render them intolerable to the refined. On Christmas, I assisted to serve up a supper, provided by a good lady for the poorest of the poor. It was given in the district, and at the house of a widow, and under the care of our colportors. There were forty-eight women and children present, not ragged and hopeless, as they were one year ago, but tidy and bright, looking hopefully to the future, as though they felt there is kindness in the world. It was a pleasant sight to witness." The New York Female Auxiliary Bible Society now employs thirteen Bible readers. A brief but interesting account is given of them in the last report of that society, from which we copy: "From the reports of the Bible readers for only a part of the year, we find that they have paid more than seven thousand visits, gathered more than two hundred children into the Sunday school, sold and distributed Bibles, induced many to attend church, ministered to the wants of the destitute, established sewing schools, and, in more ways than we can enumerate, have gone about doing good." A Bible reader is now employed in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania Bible Society. =4. Bankers and Bankers' Clerks.= Before the existence of savings banks, the poor had no safe place of deposit, where they could receive interest, and whence they could withdraw their deposits at pleasure. If they loaned their money, there was no certainty of recovering it. If they tried to accumulate by saving what they had, it was not always secure from depredation. Consequently they were tempted to spend any surplus money they had, and often no forethought of the future could save them from anxiety and misery. Now, by industry and perseverance, they are enabled to accumulate something for contingencies--to provide against want, sickness, old age, and slackness of employment. The idea of a savings bank was originated by a woman--Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield. It is a most worthy institution, and deserving of support and patronage. Holding office in a bank is a very responsible situation. The numerous men defaulters that have disgraced themselves in the last few years, are sufficient proof that the temptation to appropriate unjustly is very great. It requires men and women of fixed principle, whose honor is dearer to them than life itself. We think women could very well manage savings banks. They could at any rate attend in the female department, and in some parts of Europe do. We find in the census of Great Britain two female bankers reported. In the _Englishwoman's Journal_ we read: "At St. Malo, a few years ago, the wife of a rich banker, during his absence, took her place at his desk amid the numerous clerks, received checks, and gave to the writer of this article French money in return. They are frequently found in offices, and often mainly conduct a husband's or a father's business." One of the Mrs. Rothschild, I have been told, even now spends two or three hours every day in her husband's banking house. Mrs. Mary Somerville says: "Three of the most beneficial systems of modern times are due to the benevolence of English ladies--the improvement of prison discipline, savings banks, and banks for lending small sums to the poor." Not many years ago a banking house was conducted by a lady in Nashville, Tenn. She was a widow, but had during her first husband's life attended to some of the duties of the bank, and accompanied her husband when he visited New York on business. She is now the wife of one of the late candidates for the highest office in this nation--that of chief magistrate. A lady was employed in a savings bank in Boston a few years back. A gentleman who has been cashier in a bank for many years writes me: "I have no doubt that women might be qualified for bank and brokers' clerks as well as men. In the offices of cashier and teller, they would have to come in contact with so many rough characters, I doubt whether it would do. I do not know the salaries paid in Europe, either in stores, shops, banks, or brokers' offices, but suppose it varies as it does in this country, according to the size of the city, the bank or broker's capital, the qualifications and character, and the situations the persons occupy. The cashier receives more than the teller; the teller often more than the clerk, and the clerks are graded. In large banks in the city of New York, the cashiers get from $4,000 to $6,000 per annum, while in the country banks they scarcely get half that amount. In the city their situations are very laborious, and very responsible, and many of them have been twenty-five or thirty years in the business before they got to be cashiers. Tellers receive in large cities from $2,500 to $3,000, and in small places from $1,200 to $2,000. Clerks get in New York banks from $600 to $3,000, taking the whole range from boys of seventeen to men of sixty with families and great experience. In smaller towns they receive from $300 to $2,500, taking the same range, many of them getting not more than $1,500 at any time during their lives. In stores and shops the salaries are much less, say not much over one half in very many instances; but persons in stores and shops have this advantage over bank clerks: when they learn the business, they are often taken into partnership with the proprietor, or they may set up in a similar business for themselves. But bank clerks have no such prospects before them. There may be salaries, in a few instances, over those mentioned, but very seldom; and on the other hand, some young men are placed in business sometimes without any remuneration for the first year. I would also state that the situation of bank clerk, although very much sought for, is certainly not desirable, as $1,200 or $1,500 will not support a family in any city of the United States, without the most rigid economy; and then they have little or nothing to lay up for a rainy day. Many bank clerks in this city are no better off now than they were twenty years ago, though they have lived poorly and economized all the time. So, in some respects, the store clerk or salesman has the advantage. One reason why young men prefer becoming bank clerks to mercantile clerks is, that they have more time for themselves. Say, they commence by seven o'clock in a store, and nine at bank; they get through by two or three o'clock in bank, and they have to work until night in a store.' =6. Brokers.= This is a business in which very few, if any, women engage without the aid of the other sex. We are not aware that any women are stock brokers, exchange brokers, or insurance brokers. We suppose women could not very well conduct the business without having to mix promiscuously with men on the street, and stop and talk with them in the most public places; and the delicacy of woman would forbid that. But the wife, the sister, or daughter of a broker might perhaps conduct the indoor business of the house, or keep the books at least. In Paris, where women are extensively employed in various departments of business, it would, perhaps, be more practicable for a woman to carry on the business than in this country. There are respects in which women of well-disciplined minds would be well suited for the vocation: they are their observance of order and method, and their close attention to details. =7. Colonizationists.= This is a business that would never have entered our minds for women to engage in, had it not been for the course pursued by Caroline Chisholm. Says the author of "Women and Work:" "Ask the emigrants who went out to Australia year after year, under the careful and wise system of Caroline Chisholm's colonization, how women can organize, and what professions they should fill. I think they would answer: As organizers of colonies, promoters of emigration, secretaries to colonies, &c." Many a husband and wife may thank her for the comforts of home life. Some years ago, Mrs. Farnum proposed taking from New York a shipload of women to California. The matter was laughed at and passed by; but if we may believe the reports that came from California of miners wanting wives, perhaps it would not have been a bad plan to have taken out a supply (in case they could have been had). In the early history of Virginia, women were brought over from England as wives for the men. "A society exists in England for the promotion of female emigration to Australia. Under the auspices of this society, about eleven hundred women, mostly distressed needlewomen, of respectable character, have been sent to Australia, where they find employment, and, we presume, the most of them, husbands." =8. Colportors.= "This is an important field of missionary labor in our own land, where women might be employed to great advantage--namely, as colportors, or distributors of tracts and books. The Boards of Publication now employ men only, whose services must be paid at a much higher rate than women would require. There are widows who need this employment for support, and single women who need employment for health, and many women would like this way of doing good. In every place, women would be found suitable and willing to undertake this profession. It is one exactly suited to them. It enters into their domestic circle of feelings and pursuits; and honorable women, not a few, would be found ready to engage in the work. A number of men would be needed to penetrate the wild places of our land; but throughout all the settled portions, women would be found the most effective agents. By this arrangement, a double gain would be secured. The talents of pious women, now allowed to be wasted on trifles, would be employed in the cause of moral improvement; and those men who now give up their time, often at a great pecuniary sacrifice, to the colportor's duty, would be at liberty to enter into other pursuits more beneficial to themselves and to society." Are there none among the gentler sex consecrated to the work of promoting the glory of God and the good of their fellow beings? Are none of those that owe all their privileges and blessings to the Bible, willing to make a sacrifice for its extension? Are all so selfish, that the desire of personal gratification is the ruling, the only object for which they live? a display in dress and style of living, the acquisition of property, or notoriety? Are these the only objects of woman's exertions? No: most women are too conscientious and unselfish to live for such a purpose. There are many that would gladly do what they could, but they have no definite plan in view. They know not exactly how to shape their course. If they were once started, they would neither lag nor faint in the race. Let such become colportors, deaconesses, physicians, painters, engravers, whatever best accords with their inclinations and abilities. Let them go forward. The mist will gradually disappear, the way be made clear, and they followed by others. It is best for one of strength and vigor to engage in the labors of a colportor. Walking from house to house all day is very fatiguing to persons not accustomed to being much on their feet. It requires a person that has at heart the good of her fellow beings, and is willing to converse with all classes and ages. It calls for a person of piety, and one of tact and judgment. =9. Copyists.= Law copying is done by young women in charge of the society in London for promoting the employment of women. Miss Rye, who is superintendent of the class, says: "Of course it took the writers some weeks to unlearn the usual feminine spider-legged fashion of inditing; some weeks more to decipher the solicitors' signs, contractions, and technical terms. We dare not pretend, in defending the opening of this trade to women, that there is here, as in printing, a deficiency of workers, a cry among the masters for more; or that woman's work here, as in the telegraph offices, is intrinsically more valuable than that of the other sex." In France, lawyers often employ women to copy for them, and a number of women are employed by the French Government to write. At Washington, ladies have been employed to copy, not only for congressmen as individuals, but to copy government documents; and received the same salaries as men. A friend told me many ladies are thus employed at Washington. She knows two who each receive salaries of $1,200 per annum. Miss N. says some ladies in Washington make from $500 to $600 a winter, copying speeches and other documents for members of Congress. She knew a lady who wrote all the year at a salary of $1,200. "In Cincinnati, some lawyers employ women as copyists, when the work can be sent from the office." Ladies employed by lawyers must write a very clear, round, legible hand; if any mistake is made, the writer must copy the manuscript anew. A young lady told me she used to write for a lawyer, and received three cents for every hundred words. One day she earned two dollars and a half. She wrote in the office of the lawyer. Many ladies, she says, are so employed in New York. Mrs. N., copyist, charges twelve and a half cents a page of foolscap, for copying, estimating her time at nine cents an hour. She writes mostly letters in English for foreigners, and receives twenty-five cents a letter, usually of one page and a half. She is very careful, she says, never to divulge the business of the individual for whom she writes--a something very essential. Mrs. Blunt used to earn in Washington $700 or $800 a year for copying. One copyist charged $5 per week if she wrote at home, and $6 if away from home. I find that in the Western cities the prices for copying vary from eight cents to thirty-one cents a page. Ladies are occasionally employed at the Smithsonian Institute for copying, and are paid 5 cents per 100 words. I believe in New York a very common price for copying is 4 cents per 100 words. Miss W., an English lady, copied music about three years ago, and sent it to London to be sold. She often earned $12 a week. =10. Deaconesses.= The order of deaconess was instituted at the same time as that of deacon, and corresponds in duty with that office. We read of deaconesses in the last chapter of Romans, Phoebe, Priscilla, Aquila, &c. The establishment of institutions for deaconesses affords a home to the unmarried women of our land, and widows without children, and furnishes them with such work as their health and previous employments fit them for. It carries out the principle, "Unity is strength." It is founded on that true spring of success--sympathy arising from similarity of circumstances and sameness of employment. Ministering to the sick and poor is so well adapted to women, that their time might be pleasantly as well as profitably spent. The desire in women to be employed is thus gratified, and the good of others as well as themselves thereby promoted. Those received as members would find it most harmonious to be of the same religion, and they should be willing to come under the regulations of the institution. Such an institution would have to be conducted by a person of discretion, piety, and wisdom. The members usually dress in uniform. Comfortable clothing is always furnished, boarding of course being provided in the establishment. The duties of deaconess in Protestant institutions are the same as those of sisters of charity in nunneries and convents. The institutions are usually commenced by public or private contributions, and some by both. When once firmly established, the members might receive a fair compensation for their services from the sick that are able and willing to pay. It might go to the support of the institution, and those who saw proper to devote themselves to teaching might throw their profits into the general fund. But such institutions should be secured on such a firm basis that those women who joined the order would ever be certain of a home, and of a kind and careful attendance in sickness and old age. If institutions are established in various parts of the United States, an inmate of one, if tired of remaining at that, might, by request, and after consideration by the principal, or a board of trustees, be permitted to remove to another. There are a number of institutions in Europe for preparing women for the duties of deaconess. The first institution of modern times was established by Pastor Fliedner, at Kaiserwerth, Germany. "It has for its object the training of deaconesses--that is, female students to take charge of the sick and the poor, and superintend hospitals, infant and industrial schools, and, in short, to be the educators and preservers of humanity." An association has lately been formed in London of this order. Its object "is the diffusion of sanitary knowledge and promotion of physical training." "In Russia, the system for the practical training of deaconesses has spread in all directions. In Paris, Strasbourg, Echallens (in Switzerland), Utrecht, and England, the institution exists." Kings have not thought it beneath them to assist in the support of such institutions. Miss Bremer mentions several going to Jerusalem to take charge of a hospital, which the King of Prussia founded at an expense of $50,000. We find two or three such institutions exist in the United States--one in New York, another in Pittsburg, and one in an incipient state in Baltimore. The one in New York is conducted by Sisters of the Holy Communion (Episcopalians). Five of them make their home at St. Luke's Hospital. One or two of the number are engaged in a parochial school connected with Dr. Muhlenberg's church. Those of the hospital nurse the sick during the day. They employ nurses to do the night nursing, except in very serious cases that require especial attention. Their dress is simple, black, with white collars and undersleeves, and, when in full dress, a Swiss muslin cap. They do not take vows like the nuns of the Roman Catholic church, nor do they give up all their property, but make a quarterly payment, according to their means. One devotes herself to the measuring out and dispensing of medicine. There is a hospital in Pittsburg in charge of some deaconesses from Kaiserwerth. They belong to the Evangelical Lutheran church. The institution was commenced by the Rev. W. A. Passavant, but is now incorporated by the State, and the "members are empowered to engage in all works of mercy, such as the care of the poor, sick, fatherless, insane, and the education of the ignorant and the orphan. The sisters live in community--dress simply, and generally alike, so as to avoid any unnecessary distinction and useless expenses. Applicants for admission go first for a month merely as visitors, and pay their own expenses going and returning. If both parties approve, they then enter on probation for three months, and afterward for nine months, or longer, as the institution may deem best. Then, if their purpose is still the same, they are received by a vote, according to the charter, as members. It is distinctly understood, that if a change in their views and purposes, or nearer or family duties require them to leave after this, they are at perfect liberty to do so, but always, only, after giving the institution a due notice of three months, unless such a notification is impossible from the circumstances of the case. Those who are preparing for the work among the sick learn the duties of an apothecary. All the sisters know how to mix medicines." Miss E. Blackwell says: "In the Catholic church the wants and talents of all classes are met. Single wealthy women become nuns, and so devote their riches and talents and time to good works. They associate with the most refined and best educated of both sexes. Poor single women find a home and social pleasures. It requires practical business habits to become even a successful sister of charity. They should enter with an active interest and zest into the duties of every-day life. These orders can never succeed well among Protestants, particularly until female physicians are introduced." The Minister of the Interior, writing from Italy to Mrs. Jameson, says: "Not only have we experienced the advantage of employing the sisters of charity in the prisons, in the supervision of the details, in distributing food, preparing medicines, and nursing the sick in the infirmaries; but we find that the influence of these ladies on the minds of the prisoners, when recovering from sickness, has been productive of the greatest benefit, as leading to permanent reform in many cases, and a better frame of mind always: for this reason, among others, we have given them every encouragement." Many young ladies of education, wealth, and influence would, on becoming pious, or when disappointed in their hopes and aspirations, be likely to join such societies. At such times, many are willing to give themselves up entirely to works of active benevolence. Such a life, of course, involves some self-denials. Bishop Potter warmly advocated the introduction of such orders, and delivered an address in favor of it. The Bishop of Exeter recommended the establishment of such orders in England, and an institution for deaconesses has been opened in London. =11. Dentists.= Some time ago, in New York, a few ladies prepared themselves for the practice of dentistry. We believe only one really practised, and she but a short time. We find her name in a New York directory as a dentist. It would be more agreeable to most ladies to have their teeth cleaned and plugged by a lady. They would not feel the same hesitancy in going alone at any time to a dentist of their own sex. Extracting teeth would require more nerve and strength than most ladies possess. Yet, if a woman has nerves sufficiently firm, and ability to control her sympathies, she may succeed. There are dental schools in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. A professor in the dental school at Philadelphia writes: "I would suggest that if any ladies desire to become efficient practitioners in some branches of dentistry, it would be better for them to apply to a reputable practitioner, and with time and attention become thoroughly familiar with those branches. In doing so they will prove to the world their capability, and the rest in time will follow. Dentistry has been humorously called a 'woman's profession.'" "There is nothing even in the surgical part of dentistry, to which she is not adapted. In this profession she will have a fair opportunity to foil her enemies and accusers; and her children's _teeth_ would not be set on edge without the possibility of instant relief. There is no mystery in the dental structure, which the turnkey, in her magic hand, could not _unlock_; and no terrible pain in tooth extraction, which her mystic power could not exceedingly mitigate." Most profit arising to dentists is from making and inserting artificial teeth. It is a lucrative business, when properly understood, and one which affords constant employment. =12. Editresses.= The most powerful instrument for disseminating general knowledge in the United States is the newspaper press. It does a great deal for promoting a love of letters; and the cheapness of the papers is such as to render them accessible to almost every one. The literature of the day penetrates the most remote corner of our country. Obscure, indeed, is the place that knows not the printer's power. Even in California, more than a year ago, there were published 81 newspapers. In New York city alone were published 154 newspapers, and 114 magazines. But this is not strange when we remember that no less than eighty languages are spoken there. A newspaper states that there are printed in Austria 10 newspapers, 14 in Africa, 24 in Spain, 20 in Portugal, 30 in Asia, 65 in Belgium, 85 in Denmark, 90 in Russia and Poland, 320 in other German States, 500 in Great Britain, and 1,800 in the United States. Taking merely newspaper and magazine literature into consideration, does not our republic offer inducements to intellectual culture? Does she not reward talent and encourage industry? Yes. Her general diffusion of knowledge and the learned men of her press give a positive reply. The dignity of man should be elevated, his affections purified, and his pursuits ennobled by the mighty influence of the press. Editors should live as ministers to the welfare of humanity. The aspiring character of our people and their thirst for knowledge will long make a heavy demand on the talent and taste of those who wield the editor's pen. There are several publications in the United States conducted exclusively by ladies; some in which the assistant editors are ladies; and a small number devoted to the interests of women alone. Several ladies have entered the editorial corps within the last few years. The Harpers, in their Magazine, state there are about six hundred literary and miscellaneous periodicals published in this country. If all the labor, as type setting, binding, &c., was done by women, what a fortunate thing it would be for many of the poor! I have been told that when an article is sent to a newspaper, and is known to have come from the brain and the pen of a woman, ten to one, her compensation will be smaller for it, and in many cases it will be rejected. There are a few exceptions. Fanny Fern, for instance, receives, we have seen it stated, at the rate of $100 a column from Mr. Bonner for a contribution to the _Ledger_. The sum total he will pay her for the amount he has engaged will be $6,000. Mrs. B. receives $600 for editing a monthly paper. Some time back contributors to the _Independent_ were paid $3 a column, and to the New York _Observer_ at the same rate. Mr. L. told me that a man is paid $20 a week for making out an index for the New York _Tribune_, which could be done by any lady with a cultivated and well disciplined mind. The man that was employed not long since had been a wood engraver, and had received no special training for his duties in the _Tribune_ office. The papers to be sent away are directed by machinery, which a lady could attend. Some one writes me the qualifications for his business are strength of mind and body. We think there is generally a heavy draft on either one or the other in every occupation successfully pursued, and in some on both. Émile Girardin was a French editress that died recently. Mrs. Johnson, of Edinburgh, was for years editress of the Inverness _Courier_, which was published in her husband's name. Miss Parkes conducts the _Englishwoman's Journal_. Mrs. Swisshelm edited the Pittsburg _Visitor_ with much vigor and ability. Mrs. Virginia L. French has charge of the literary department of a paper issued in Nashville, Tenn. Miss McDowell might have succeeded with the _Woman's Advocate_, if her noble efforts had been appreciated as they deserved. =13. Government Officers.= "Many Government offices could be creditably filled by intelligent and experienced women. Miss Wallace and Miss Thomas were employed as computers on the Coast Survey at Washington in 1854, with salaries each of $480, with perquisites making it $600. A man to do the same work would probably receive twice as much." "Mrs. Miller, at one time, was engaged in making observations of the weather--the thermometer, barometer, direction of winds, quantity of rain, &c., in which she was assisted by another person appointed by a society of which both sexes were members." Computations of this kind could be made at home. Mr. Blodgett, who had charge of the Smithsonian Institute in 1854, wrote: "The discussion of observations in physical science, meteorological observations particularly, has never been undertaken in a general manner until attempted in this department of the Smithsonian Institute, and I have found that accuracy and despatch require well-trained minds of great endurance. Only the best minds can successfully undertake scientific calculations and computations; and these must possess a sort of half masculine strength and endurance." Yet we would not offer this as a discouragement. If it has been done, it can be done again. "During Mr. Fillmore's administration, two women wrote for the Treasury Department at Washington, at salaries of twelve and fifteen hundred a year." Several ladies are employed in different parts of the United States for copying by registers of deeds; but the majority are relatives of the registers. In some towns of the East, however, other ladies than relatives are employed, who receive $1 per day for their services. Miss Olive Rose has performed the duties of the register of deeds, at Thomaston, Maine. She writes: "I was officially notified of the election, required to give bonds, &c. I am unable to state the exact amount of salary, as it is regulated by whatever business is done in the office. Perhaps it may average between $300 and $400 yearly." The Duchess of Leuchtenberg was elected to preside over the Imperial Academy of Science, in Russia, a few years ago. An acquaintance told me that in the warehouses at the London docks, silks, shawls, and such goods are exposed for sale, and many ladies go down in their carriages and purchase. If any female is suspected of concealing on her person goods that she has appropriated in the warehouse, the watchmen who guard the place remark they would like to detain her for a few minutes, and convey her to a room, where a woman is in attendance to search her. The present collector of customs at Philadelphia writes: "The only instance of employment of women in connection with the custom house here has been, while Liverpool steamers were coming to this port, some years ago, when one or two were employed to search female emigrants, to prevent smuggling on their persons. The employment was only for a day or two at a time, and is now discontinued." Some time ago it was feared that large quantities of precious stones and laces were concealed on the persons of some women, and so smuggled into New York. Consequently "two American female searchers were inaugurated in the revenue service as aids. They each receive $500 per annum, and are paid by the month. Men receive $1,095 (or $3 per day) for similar services. The qualifications needed are intelligence, tact, and integrity. They spend but one or two hours on the arrival of each steamer or passenger received from abroad." I think, in European countries, female police, who examine the persons and passports of women, receive the same salaries as men. =14. Lawyers.= We cannot question the right of woman to plead at the bar, but we doubt whether it would be for her good. She might study law, to discipline her mind and to store it with useful information. She might profitably spend, in that way, time which would otherwise be devoted to music, painting, or the languages. But the noisy scenes now witnessed in a court room are scarcely compatible with the reserve, quietude, and gentleness that characterize a woman of refinement. Theodore Parker said: "As yet, I believe, no woman acts as a lawyer; but I see no reason why the profession of law might not be followed by women as well as men. He must be rather an uncommon lawyer who thinks no feminine head could compete with him. Most lawyers that I have known are rather mechanics at law than attorneys or scholars at law; and, in the mechanical part, woman could do as well as man--could be as good a conveyancer, could follow precedents as carefully, and copy forms as nicely. I think her presence would mend the manners of the court--of the bench, not less than of the bar." A lady lawyer would not be without a precedent, for we read from a note in "Women Artists:" "Christina Pisani wrote a work which was published in Paris, 1498. It gives an account of the learned and famous Novella, the daughter of a professor of the law in the university of Bologna. She devoted herself to the same studies, and was distinguished for her scholarship. She conducted her father's cases; and, having as much beauty as learning, was wont to appear in court veiled." We suppose this is the same young lady of whom we read elsewhere: "At twenty-six she took the degree of doctor of laws, and began publicly to expound the laws of Justinian. At thirty she was elevated to a professor's chair, and taught the law to a crowd of scholars from all nations. Others of her sex have since filled professors' chairs in Bologna." While we would not encourage women to act publicly as counsellors at law, we would claim for them the privilege of acting as attorneys. Writing out deeds, mortgages, wills, and indentures, would be a pleasant occupation for such women as are qualified and fond of sedentary life. We know that the hearts of most women would prompt them to relieve the poor and oppressed: but might they not do it in some other way as efficiently as by pleading at the bar? If the weak seek their aid, let them bestow the benefit of their legal lore. If the helpless seek their protection, let them bring their information and counsel to bear upon the case, but not by public speaking. By personal effort, or by applying to the good of the other sex, they may accomplish much. If a woman involve herself in the intricacies of law, may she not lose those tender traits that endear her to the other sex, and in time discard those graces that render her gentle and lovely at home? The profession of the law is one suited to the inclinations, nature, and taste of but very few women. But if a lady will practise law, she will need great clearness of mind, a good insight into the motives of others, fearlessness in expressing her convictions of right, and ability in refraining from saying more than she should. =15. Lecturers.= Lecturing is addressing people through the sense of hearing; writing is addressing them through the sense of sight. An individual can address a larger number by the latter plan than the former. Many people that would not devote the time, trouble, and expense to investigate books, will give their twenty-five cents to hear a lecture on a given subject. Rev. Mr. Higginson says: "We forget that wonderful people, the Spanish Arabs, among whom women were public lecturers and secretaries of kings, while Christian Europe was sunk in darkness." "In Italy, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, it was not esteemed unfeminine for women to give lectures in public to crowded and admiring audiences. They were freely admitted members of learned societies, and were consulted by men of preëminent scientific attainments, as their equals in scholarship." Theodore Parker felt the importance of public lecturing, and expressed gratification that women were occupying the field so successfully. In the Female Medical College of Philadelphia, great attention is given to the study of physiology; and several graduates from that institution have lectured upon this subject, one or two of them with great success. It is thought best that a lecturer upon physiology should be a physician, all the branches of medical science being so intimately connected, that the separation of one from the whole is like the dismemberment of the human body, producing almost the same effect upon the severed member. "The field for competent female lecturers on physiological subjects is as broad as the nation, and promises a rich harvest for as many as can possibly be engaged in it, for the next half century." Dr. Gregory, of the New England Female Medical College, writes: "Some of the graduates of this college have lectured to ladies more or less on physiology, hygiene, &c., and with good success. One in particular has given courses of lectures, illustrated with the apparatus of the college, to the young ladies in our four State Normal Schools, with great satisfaction to the principals and pupils. One of our graduates is resident physician, and teacher and superintendent of health in the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where there are almost three hundred pupils." Other female seminaries throughout the country ought to be thus supplied. Among those who lecture on physiology are Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Johnson. In cities, a number of ladies might deliver lectures in private schools, academies, and colleges, on physiology and hygiene. Quite a number of ladies have delivered temperance lectures, and some were employed at one time by the State Temperance Society of New York. Lecturers of note receive from $50 to $500 for a single lecture, beside having their travelling expenses paid. When lecturing on their own responsibility, the entire proceeds are theirs, save expenses for room, gas, and (in winter) fuel. Lectures are most generally given before societies, that pay the lecturer a specified sum. Lucy Stone was paid $263 for her lectures in Bangor, Maine. Miss Dwight lectured on art, a few years ago, charging at first ten dollars for a series of six lectures, but afterward she reduced the price to five dollars. =16. Librarians.= There is a Woman's Library in New York. The object is to furnish women--particularly working women, who are not able to subscribe to other libraries--with a quiet and comfortable place to read in, during their leisure moments. A lady in Darby, Pennsylvania, attends a town library that was established in 1785. It has always been kept in the house of her family, and she has had no occasion to employ assistance outside of her family. In the Mercantile Library of New York, two ladies have charge of the reading room. One receives $200, and the other $250 a year. Lady librarians receive from one third to one half as much as men. The librarian says they are not physically so capable, and otherwise not so well qualified. They could always do the lighter work of a library. They are employed all the year, and spend about eight hours in the reading room. The secretary of the Apprentice's Library in Philadelphia writes: "Both our principal librarians are ladies, and we have two assistants of the same sex. The principals receive $308, and the assistants $90 each, per annum. The girls' library, in which one of the principals and the two assistants are employed, is open five afternoons in the week, from three to four hours each afternoon and evening. It is only lately we have employed a lady for a librarian for the boys' department, and we find the change to be a happy one. The boys are more respectful, more easily managed, and kept in better order than formerly, and the number of readers has increased." The gentleman who has charge of the public library in Boston writes: "We employ eleven American ladies, who do all the work of a library in its various branches, under the direction of the superintendent, and subject to revision by him or an able male assistant. Some cover and collate books, some go from place to place to get books, and some are occupied entirely with writing and copying catalogues, shelf lists, records, &c. The ladies are paid $7 per week. Some spend eight and some ten hours in the library. Much of the labor performed by males is the same as that performed by females; but in every instance, save one, paid for at higher rates. Why, I cannot say. The office of superintendent requires learning and experience. In Boston, the rate of wages for men is higher than for females. Ladies are paid pretty well here, in comparison with what they are paid for work elsewhere. Teachers are paid higher than in other places. A competent person soon learns the duties of a library, but experience adds to her value. Ladies are employed in preference to men because they are competent, because it is a good field for female labor, because they have a good influence on those who transact business with the library, and, I doubt not, because their work can be had at less rates than men's. Our schools are graded, and in schools of a given grade there are divisions. Of course a graduate from the highest division of the highest grade, other things being equal (that is talent, &c.), is the person for us. A qualified lady is as good for work as a qualified man. The work of a librarian cultivates the mind. All advantages, aside from education, depend upon the taste of the lady employed. If fond of reading and ambitious to excel, she can, by faithful application out of library hours, succeed. Three dollars is the lowest price for which a lady can be comfortably boarded in Boston." "In the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, a lady is permanently employed as librarian. She receives a salary of $500 per annum, and is employed six hours a day. The qualifications needed for the post are reading, writing, some knowledge of French, German, &c." =17. Magazine Contributors.= Some of our periodical literature is futile and unsatisfying. It is light and trivial in its nature. It may delight a few hours, but then follows the reaction--a dull and heavy sinking of the heart--a sluggish dreariness--a neglect of duty--a disdain for the actual realities of life. The prose of most magazines is only love dreams--the poetry froth. Such light nutriment is unfit for the souls of women--such ethereal diet can never satisfy the cravings of an immortal mind. But some improvement has taken place in part of our magazine literature, and a few of our reviews equal those of any country. Subjects are as numerous as the objects around us, and suited to all moods and diversities of mind. To the contributor, I would say: Your writing will be likely to find readers--whether it be grave or gay--sad or sprightly--witty or jovial; whether one making a draught on the imagination or the judgment; whether one displaying your own attainments, or calling to aid the opinions and acquirements of others; in short, one of thought, fancy, or facts. Your friends may like your ideas draped in poetry, or the more substantial dress of prose. One is like gold, the other like iron. One serves for ornament, the other for use. The true poet is a gifted person; a heaven-born talent does he or she possess. If you have good descriptive talents, you can write stories, laying the scenes in far-away countries that are not much known, and yet eliciting some interest. And as to the subjects of a moral caste, their name is legion. Magazine writing furnishes a palatable way of drawing attention to individual foibles, or furnishing a satire on the inconsistencies and exactions of society in general. If you attempt to write natural stories, let your scenes and events be such as occur in every-day life. It has been suggested that a good publication, like the _Atlantic Monthly_, conducted entirely by women, would do great good, but we fear it would not be supported. I was told, however, by the gentleman who has charge of _Harper's Magazine_, that two thirds of the articles are contributed by women, and they receive better prices than men would. The _Saturday Press_ says that _Harper's Magazine_ pays its writers $7.50 to $10 per page; the _Atlantic Monthly_, from $6 to 10; the _Knickerbocker_, $3, which is equal to $5 for _Harper_ and $6 for the _Atlantic_; the _North American Review_, $1.50 per page. The prices mentioned are said by one supposed to know, to be exaggerated, and made the exception, not the rule. Mr. H. C. Carey, in an article styled "Rewards of Authorship," writes: "I have now before me a statement from a single publisher, in which he says that to Messrs. Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, and Allston, his price was uniformly $50 for a poetical article, long or short--and his readers know that they were generally very short; in one case only fourteen lines. To numerous others, it was from $25 to $40. In one case he has paid $25 per page for prose. To Mr. Cooper he paid $1,800 for a novel, and $1,000 for a series of naval biographies, the author retaining the copyright for separate publication; and in such cases, if the work be good, its appearance in the magazine acts as the best of advertisements. To Mr. James, he paid $1,200 for a novel, leaving him also the copyright. For a single number of his journal, he has paid to authors $1,500." =18. Missionaries.= Miss Rice, a missionary in Constantinople, has a large school for girls. Some of her scholars live in Constantinople, but most of them are from abroad--different parts of Turkey and Western Asia. "In England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, females organize societies of their own, and send out teachers and readers of their own sex. Ladies in England have had a society there twenty-five years, expressly for sending out and sustaining single ladies to work for heathen women, and they have already themselves sent two hundred into the field, at a cost of many thousands of pounds. If any of the lady missionaries sent out by the ladies' society in England desire to leave the work within five years, they shall be at liberty to do so, but shall refund to that society the cost of sending them out." Mrs. Ellen B. Mason, a missionary of Burmah, is now in New York, endeavoring to obtain female missionaries to return with her. A lady (Mrs. Bigelow) was employed among the city missionaries in Boston, at a salary of $350. From the last reports of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the Old School Presbyterian, the Protestant Episcopal, the Methodist, and Dutch Reformed, we find 451 lady missionaries were supported by their Boards at the time of making out the reports. The American Board had in charge 185 among foreign nations, and among the Indians 41 = 226. Of those sent out by this Board, 26 are unmarried. The Old School Presbyterian has 78 among the Indians (33 unmarried), and among heathen 53 (3 of the number single) = 131. The Baptist Foreign Missions number 34 (none unmarried). The American Baptist Union require every lady and gentleman that go out as missionaries from their Board to marry before they go. The Dutch Reformed have 11 among foreign nations. The Protestant Episcopal have 26 foreign missionaries (all married). The Methodist 17 (2 unmarried). In a manual for the use of missionaries and missionary candidates in connection with the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, we find the laborers needed for the foreign field are: 1st, ordained ministers of the gospel; 2d, physicians; 3d, school teachers; 4th, printers; 5th, farmers and mechanics; 6th, unmarried female teachers. In referring to all the other classes but the first mentioned, it reads: "Though not called to preach the gospel, their Christian profession requires from them the same devotedness to the cause of Christ, according to the circumstances in which the providence of God has placed them, that is required from the ministers of the gospel. The application should be in writing, and the candidate should state briefly his age, education, employment, the length of time he has been a professor of religion, his motive and reasons for desiring to be a missionary, the field he prefers, and the state of his health. For a female this information may be given through a third person. No person will be appointed to the service of the Board until the executive committee have obtained as thorough a knowledge as possible of his or her character. For this purpose a personal acquaintance is very desirable. In all cases, written testimonials, full and explicit, must be forwarded." The treasurer of the Presbyterian Board said the salary depends on place and qualifications. The Treasurer of the Dutch Reformed Missions said a single lady receives from $300 to $400, according to her qualifications. Piety and a good common education are all that is necessary. They learn the language after arriving at their place of destination. None go without a certificate from a physician, saying they are free from organic disease. If their health fails so that they cannot recover, their passage home is paid, and they are supported for one year after. The minister connected with the Methodist Board said the salary depends on the places, and no particular preparation is requisite. They have many more applicants than they have places for. =19. Medical Missionaries.= An association in Philadelphia educates a limited number of ladies to go out as medical missionaries. Any information in regard to this association may be obtained from Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, 1418 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. The enterprise opens to such missionaries a wide field of usefulness, that cannot be reached in any other way. A number are now wanting in foreign countries. Rev. Mr. Dwight, writing from Constantinople in 1852, very highly commends the plan of giving to some female missionaries a medical education. He refers to the secluded lives of the females in oriental nations, to their ignorance, and the superstitious reverence felt by the people for those acquainted with diseases and their remedies. He thinks that in Constantinople, among all ranks of people, and even among the Mohammedans, a female physician would find constant practice, and gain an access to the female portion of the community that missionaries cannot. And, if pious, in the capacity of physician, she could do much to promote their spiritual welfare. A knowledge of the Turkish language would be indispensable; and some acquaintance with French and Italian, Dr. Dwight recommends. And it was thought by some of the missionaries in India, before the rebellion occurred, that medical missionary ladies could accomplish much good there, especially at Calcutta. Missionaries in various other countries have also given it as their opinion that a great deal of good might be done in heathen countries by medical ladies. =20. Physicians.= It is only within the last few years that women have received any preparation for the practice of medicine in our country. But it is now advancing in a way that is very gratifying to the friends of the cause, and is beginning to be appreciated by the people. Many of the most learned and talented men in the profession approve of women devoting themselves to the practice of medicine on their own sex and children. The mildness and amiability of woman, her modesty, her delicacy and refinement, all tend to make her acceptable at the bedside. Her quick insight into the ailments of others and her promptness in offering a remedy enhance her value. Some think the modesty and delicacy that should characterize a physician are lost to a lady in acquiring a knowledge of the profession. We would think not any more than by a gentleman. Why should the result be different? And surely a woman wants in her physician, whether male or female, a person of pure thoughts and feelings. Some say women have not firmness and nerve enough to perform surgical operations--that if they have, it is only animal force. What is it but animal force that gives the superiority to men (if they are superior)? Some say that such a profession may call woman among an objectionable class of people. "The fact that the practice of medicine draws its support from the miseries and sufferings of the world is no objection to its respectability. What profession is there that does not draw its support from some suffering, necessity, or disability?--unless it be that of the mountebank." Another objection urged is, that women lose their delicacy by the study and practice of anatomy under a male physician. This offensive feature is removed in the Female Medical College of Philadelphia, where that post has been filled by a woman for six or seven years. It is filled, writes one of the professors, to the full satisfaction, I believe, alike of the class and the faculty. In 1758, Anna Manzolini was professor of anatomy in Bologna. We believe, if a lady acquires a knowledge of medicine, it should be a thorough one. Undoubtedly too much strong medicine has been used in the United States, and that will account to some extent for the bad health of American women. Night practice and the inclemencies of the weather are the greatest difficulties a woman must contend with in the practice of medicine. If a lady has means, she can command a conveyance of her own. As to practising at night, she can have some one to accompany her, if in the city. If in a town, village, or the country, she will be likely to know who the people are, and have a conveyance sent for her. If a woman acquires a thorough knowledge of medicine, she can better promote the well-being and preserve the health of herself and children. No lady should undertake the practice of medicine unless she feels competent in every way to do so. If she does, let her enter with her soul into it, and keep constantly in view her object to relieve the suffering and bring health to the diseased. The practice of medicine is more renumerative than teaching. Mrs. Hale, who strongly advocates the practice of medicine by ladies, says: "Teachers grow out of fashion as they grow old; physicians, on the contrary, gain credit and reputation from length of practice." There is one department of medicine that we think belongs to women, and women alone. It is midwifery. In the feudal times many ladies of rank and wealth prescribed and measured out medicines for their tenants, and many women practised midwifery. It is proved by Dr. Saul Gregory, of Boston, founder of the New England Female Medical College, that the practice of male physicians in the department of midwifery is not only injurious, but destructive of human life. He writes: "I have within the past six months made an effort to ascertain the number of lady graduates, having written to the different schools where they have graduated. From the number certainly ascertained, with the addition of a probable number of others, I should say that there are at least two hundred graduated female physicians in the United States. The number from this (the New England Female Medical College) is thirty-four. The field is broad enough, of course, for many thousands; and to women of good natural abilities and suitable acquirements there is a prospect of success in all of the cities and large villages of the country. They will more readily find professional employment now and henceforward than they have during the past ten years, inasmuch as the idea of female medical practice has become more familiar to the public mind, and the custom is becoming gradually established. The tuition in medical colleges generally is from $60 to $80 a term. Board is from $2 to $4, according to circumstances. About $30 worth of medical books are needed. This college has a scholarship fund, affording free tuition to a large number of students from any part of the world." Dr. Gregory expresses our views in regard to more unoccupied women entering the profession of medicine, so much better than we could do, that we will transcribe what he says on the subject: "Man, the lord of creation, has the world before him, and can choose his profession or pursuit--war, politics, agriculture, commerce, mechanic arts, mercantile affairs (not excepting ribbon and tape), and a thousand vocations and diversions. There are said to be 40,000 physicians in the United States. 20,000 of these ought to give place to this number of women, and turn their attention to pursuits better adapted to their strong muscles and strong minds. In addition to providing for the self support of 20,000 or more women, this change would relieve that number of men, and secure to the country the benefit of their mental and manual industry--quite an item in our political economy and national wealth. Of course, this very desirable change cannot be brought about so suddenly as to create any great disturbance in the established order of things, even if the enterprise is carried forward with all possible vigor; so that physicians now in the field need not be greatly alarmed in prospect of female competition." We think, all diseases peculiar to women, or surgical operations on women requiring any exposure of person, should be treated and performed by women alone. Many a woman suffers for months, or years, and often a lifetime, because of that instinctive delicacy that makes her rather suffer than be treated by a male physician. Those that prepare themselves as physicians should be ladies of honor, education, and refinement. In most families, after the minister of the gospel, the physician holds the next highest place in the esteem of the members. Other subjects than those of medicine are often discussed, and the advice of a physician sought on matters of vital importance to those interested. The free, unembarrassed entrance of a physician into the sanctum of home, gives an opportunity of learning much that should be sacredly preserved in their own hearts. A lady physician needs firmness and dignity in the maintenance of her rights and opinions. When a woman is weak both in body and mind, timid and fearful, how much better can one of her own sex soothe her! It may be the nurse has not time, in a charitable, or even in a pay institution. But if her physician is a woman, well acquainted with her profession, and possessing discernment, sympathy, and some knowledge of the human heart, how readily may she read the inner as well as the outer wants of her patient! She will treat her gently and tenderly; and if the patient be a mother, the physician will see her family now and then, to relieve her patient's anxiety. If she is poor, she will speak to some of her rich patients, or acquaintances, to see that she is furnished with suitable employment when she is well. And so she will interest herself about those matters most male physicians would never think of, or, if they did, would consider beneath their attention. "In Paris, for a long period, women have studied medicine with the best physicians, who used them as supplements, to attend the poor and do some of the hospital practice." Two lady physicians became quite distinguished in Paris, and a hospital was in the entire charge of one. The statistics and professional reports of these ladies are now accepted by the best physicians in all countries. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell has lately established a hospital in New York city, where ladies studying medicine can have the benefits arising from the observation and experience acquired in a hospital. This has long been considered almost essential in the education of male students. In the same city is a preparatory school of medicine conducted by professors connected with the medical schools of the city. They give separate instruction to a class of ladies, who are admitted to the clinical teachings of two of the largest dispensaries in the city. These dispensaries furnish upwards of 60,000 cases of disease annually. In 1850, a charter was granted to the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. A college was commenced in Boston about the same time. Both of these schools are for females exclusively, and each has graduated about fifty pupils. In the Pennsylvania Medical University both sexes are received. In some branches the presence of mixed classes is embarrassing to both professors and pupils, and that free communication desirable for acquiring and imparting information is partially checked. This difficulty is done away in some female colleges by employing competent lady professors. In Europe, women are not permitted to receive instruction with the male students, but in hospital practice they have excellent opportunities of gaining information as nurses and physicians. I know of no pursuit that offers a more inviting field for educated women than the practice of medicine. The ability of woman to study and practice medicine has been satisfactorily demonstrated. Some ladies have graduated at both the allopathic and homoeopathic schools in Cleveland. The allopathic school in that place was the first to admit ladies. Different motives actuate ladies in the study of medicine. The wives of some manufacturers, planters, and others, who reside where medical advice is not easily obtained, study medicine that they may prescribe for their husbands' employées. Some study medicine that they may have something to rely upon in case other resources should fail them. Some teachers have studied that they may instruct their pupils in the laws of hygiene and remedies for disease. Quite a number of lady physicians are employed in female boarding schools. The benefit resulting from having the advice of a physician at any hour of the day or night is very great, and must relieve the superintendents of schools and absent parents from much anxiety. Some ladies prefer giving advice at their residences. A lady that devotes herself to a speciality should endeavor to keep posted in all the branches of her profession, so far as she can without neglecting to acquire all the information possible in her speciality. "In the United States there are 40,564 physicians, 191 surgeons, 5,132 apothecaries, 456 chemists, 923 dentists, 59 oculists, 59 patent medicine makers. There are 35 medical colleges, 230 professors, and about 5,000 students." Dr. Ann Preston, of the Pennsylvania Female Medical College, writes me: "Of those in practice who graduated with us, quite a number have found it very remunerative, and the prospect for others to secure practice is most encouraging, if they only possess the requisite qualifications. The desire to employ ladies as physicians is constantly extending, and my faith in the triumphant and extensive vindication of the movement deepens from year to year. There are openings in perhaps nearly all the cities and villages of our land--certainly in Eastern Pennsylvania; but in choosing a physician, people must have confidence in the sound judgment, good character, and professional ability of those they employ. A woman settling among strangers is more liable to suspicion than a man; and in such a case it takes _time_, and a long continuance in well doing, to become established in a lucrative practice. It also requires _means_; and unless these are abundant, it is much better for the lady physician to settle where she is already known and respected, and where, among her friends, she can live at small expense. Still, in one or two cases, our students have gone _successfully_ among strangers, earning enough to bear their expenses during the first two years. The cost of fitting a lady of moderate abilities for the practice of medicine varies. The whole cost of two or more courses of lectures and graduation is $175. Board here is from $3 to $5 a week for students, everything included. The needful text books would cost from $20 to $25; then travelling expenses, clothes, &c. I have known ladies commence with only one or two hundred dollars in advance, teach school during the summers, and graduate in three or four years. Sometimes these have come as beneficiaries. Still it is much more comfortable to have six or seven hundred to depend upon during the course of study. The time also varies, but we think no person should graduate who has not studied two years and upward. A large proportion of our graduates have studied medicine three years, and several have spent the next year in the hospital in New York. We are about opening a hospital here, which, in case of some, will obviate this necessity. I believe ladies in practice here generally make the charges common among men physicians; and several of them realize a handsome competence, and are gladdened by seeing, year by year, that prejudice is passing away, and that medicine is proving a fitting and glorious sphere for the exercise of woman's best powers." There are several regularly educated female physicians engaged in the practice of medicine in Philadelphia, some in New York, and some in Boston, with a few in other cities of the North, South, and West, and here and there scattered through towns, villages, and the country. There is an opening for one or two well-qualified physicians in New Orleans that can speak the Italian and Spanish languages. Many physicians find it an advantage to have a knowledge of the French and German languages, on account of the large foreign population in our country. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell writes: "It is very difficult by letter to answer your question about medical education. It is almost impossible for a lady to get a _good_ medical education without going to Europe. Philadelphia or Boston would give a woman the _legal right_ to practise medicine, and that is the chief value of what is given, for the exclusively theoretical instruction of those colleges could be as well obtained by reading and private tuition. New York can furnish much valuable practical instruction, but not the legal right. Between the two places, a student who will spend four years may become a respectable young physician, without going to Europe; but fully that period of time is necessary to pick up scattered knowledge, &c. A lady should be able to command $2,000 during the four years. She is otherwise very much crippled in her studies. There is a real necessity for women physicians; therefore, in course of time they will be created; but the imperfect efforts and most inadequate preparation of those who now study, rather retard the movement, and the creation of practice is a very slow thing." I called on Mrs. ----, M. D. She goes out at night when called--sometimes alone, sometimes takes her female student. She thinks there must be openings South and West, and that the prospect for lady physicians is very good. She supposes the cost of a medical education would be about $1,500. I called on Mrs. ----, M. D., who practises medicine, and often lectures on diseases and their remedies. She walks to see her patients, or rides in stages, but the majority come to her dwelling in office hours. She never goes out at night except where she is acquainted. She has a small number of students. She has a speciality, but does not confine herself to it. She attends several families by the year, charging, I think, $200 a year. She thinks many intelligent ladies might, if they would qualify themselves thoroughly, succeed in establishing themselves as physicians. =21. Preachers.= A friend once said "the professions of ministers and lawyers ought to accord. One is the interpreter of the divine law, the other of human law. A preacher is a lawyer for heaven." The promptings and workings of the human heart must be well understood by a minister. One in this holy office should not connive at the faults of her congregation, or give herself up to the acquirement of popular applause. We think one half the good accomplished in a church is done by the ladies of the church, particularly single women. And we know well that ministers are aware of this, and readily enlist the ladies of their congregations in good works. In old times, Angela de Foligno was celebrated as a teacher of theology. "In Spain, Isabella of Rosena converted Jews by her eloquent preaching, and commented upon the learned Scotus before cardinals and archbishops." In modern times, two or three ladies have studied theology, and preached with success. Mrs. Blackwell and Mrs. Jenkins are both said to be ladies of literary merit and genuine piety. Their mild, amiable, and lady-like deportment make them beloved by all who are sufficiently acquainted with to appreciate them. Some one writes: "It seems to me that woman, by her peculiar constitution, is better qualified to teach religion than by any merely intellectual discipline." Women are more susceptible to religious impressions than men. Two thirds of the communicants of our churches are of that sex. The Quakers, Shakers, and Methodists, we think, are the only denominations in which women speak in religious meetings. The founder of the Shakers was a woman--Ann Lee--who established her faith in 1776. =22. Proof Readers.= The reading of proof has become a regular branch of business. Many of the large houses in cities where publishing is done, employ persons expressly for this purpose. We think proof reading opens a charming prospect to the employment of cultivated women. Girls could just as well be trained to read manuscripts aloud, for proof readers to correct their first sheets by, as boys. A proprietor of one of the largest publishing houses in this country kindly furnished us a reply to the question, what are the duties of a proof reader, and are ladies ever so employed? Hoping it will not be considered a breach of courtesy to use the reply, we give it in the words of the writer: "Proof reading consists in the reading of proofs, marking the errors, and making the work typographically correct. A good proof reader ought to be a practical printer, as there are a thousand minute details which one can hardly learn except by daily experience at the composing case and imposing stone. In addition to this he should have more or less knowledge of various languages, ancient and modern, and be well informed in history, art, and science. Proof reading is considered the best situation in a printing office; and the most intelligent printers usually gain and hold these situations. We know of no case in which this duty is performed by a woman; the cases must be rare indeed in which one has had an opportunity to qualify her for performing its duties. Moreover, it is a position the duties of which must be performed in the printing office." It is true that proof reading must be done in the printing establishment; but separate rooms, we believe, are always provided for proof readers. So ladies need not be frightened by supposing they must do their reading in the composition room. One of the firm of the Boston Stereotype Foundry writes: "We employ but three young ladies to read proof, and pay from $3 to $5 per week. They are Americans, and work nine hours. At one time we employed women in the type-setting department, who received two thirds of the price paid to men. Women are paid less than men because they are _women_, and because plenty can be found. Women possessing a good English education can learn in two months--if apt, become expert. They commence at $3, and finally get $5. The prospect of employment is good for a few. Occasionally there is a dull time, which affords opportunity for a little sewing, &c. Unless very dull, the occupant retains her position and wages. Good workmen consider women an innovation. To sum up the whole matter in a few words, women (barring the heavy work) can perform the labor appertaining to proof reading and type setting as well as men." A lady told me that one of her daughters assists her father with his newspaper. She reads the proof, looks up articles he wants, helps select matter for the paper, and translates French stories for his paper. Her services are worth to him from $500 to $600 a year. On visiting the Bible House, I learned that a lady is there employed as proof reader. She corrects both in English and German. Four or five male proof readers are employed, but she is the only lady. She gets $5 or $6 a week. The principal proof reader gets $12 a week. "Accuracy, quickness of eye, thorough knowledge of orthography, grammar, and punctuation, with a knowledge of languages, and a vast deal of learning and general intelligence, are necessary for a proof reader. An intuitive perception, arising from this cultivation, enables one to detect errors immediately, often without knowing how and why." =23. Publishers.= We find in the census report of Great Britain, 923 women reported as booksellers and publishers. What the number of publishers alone is we cannot tell, nor do we know whether any of them conduct the business on their own responsibility, or whether they are widows, and have men to conduct the business for them. We know of two large publishing houses in New York that pay 10 cents on the dollar to an author for the manuscript of any book they see proper to publish; that is, for a book they will sell at retail for $1, and at wholesale for 60 cents, the author receives 10 cents, which gives the publisher 50 cents for getting up the book and running the risk of selling it. If the author incurs the expenses of getting the book up, they may allow 15 cents. They will pay no larger a percentage for any subsequent edition than for the first. But they will not undertake a book unless they think they can make money out of it. The same book might be printed and stereotype plates cast at 85 cents a volume. The author could then sell it for 65 cents a copy to the book merchants, and they would sell it at 90 cents a volume. After the first edition of one thousand, the author could probably get it printed at 40 cents on the volume less. If the book takes, the merchant may allow the author twelve to fifteen per cent. Some publishers purchase the copyrights of books they think may succeed, paying a specified sum, as agreed on with the author. Publishers calculate to have two out of every three books fail that are brought into market. Some publishers sell for authors on commission. The authors get up their own books, and the publisher sells, receiving forty per cent. from the retail price. He sells to the trade at a discount of from twenty-five to thirty-three per cent., according to amount and distance. The average discount would be thirty per cent. This leaves the publisher ten per cent. to transact all the business, advertise, &c. From the first edition the publisher will not be likely to derive any profit; but if the book takes, the publisher will make a handsome profit from the subsequent editions. =24. Readers to the Working Classes.= In China, at almost every store where cups of tea are sold, a number of men make it a business to read to those that come in to buy or drink tea. A gratuity is bestowed by such as feel disposed. The working classes that are not able to read and buy books, are thereby enabled to have the benefit of those that can. Now we do not see why the same principle may not be carried out in this country. Shakspearian readings, it is true, have been popular and fashionable for a few years. We have seen it stated that "seven of Fanny Kemble Butler's recent Shakspearian readings in New York city netted the fine sum of $6,000." Beside, lectures have been delivered and poems recited, mostly of the readers' composition. Now might not competent ladies make it useful to the working classes of their own sex, or even both sexes, to spend an evening, occasionally, in reading to them? Charging a small entrance fee, if there is a good attendance, would support the reader, and enlighten the audience. It would be better if the poor, hard-working classes had more elevating and refining amusements. We know of none better calculated to improve while it entertains than reading. Might it not be done in saloons?--properly qualified men in the gentlemen's department, and properly qualified women in the ladies' department. In our large cities, where time is so precious, many a lady, we doubt not, would give an additional sixpence to have a book she carries with her or the papers of the day read aloud while she eats her lunch. The only difficulty is, the prices paid would scarcely justify one sufficiently qualified for the undertaking. =25. Reporters.= This is rather a new arena for the exercise of female talent. A reporter must be a close observer of matters and things in general that pertain to individual or public affairs. A verbal or written account is furnished to the publication in which the reporter is interested. A reporter attends public assemblies of any kind, and writes down or stenographizes the proceedings of said assembly. In a city, places of amusement, lectures, political and church meetings, form subjects of interest to a newspaper reporter. Noting the proceedings of legislative and other legal assemblies forms the most regular and reliable employment. In London, there are seven publications that employ from ten to eighteen reporters each, during the meetings of Parliament. Two from each paper are always in attendance--one in the gallery of the House of Lords, and another in the gallery of the House of Commons. A reporter seldom remains more than two or three hours. His place is taken by another, while he writes out his notes and prepares them for the press. The reporters are well remunerated, and give very faithful reports. In the United States, the subscription price of even the very best papers, and their comparatively limited circulation, will not justify so great an expense for the reporter's department. Yet most good papers have one or two reporters. Not long since, a lady stenographer received $1,000 damages from a railroad company, for an accident that occurred on the car, which unfitted her for her calling, as it deprived her of the forefinger on her right hand. A lady reporter, in Boston, writes me: "The art of reporting needs constant drilling, like music, dancing, &c. Few women have the education and nerve for professional reporting." A lady teacher of phonography writes: "A person of common capacity could learn phonography in from four to six months, studying three hours per day; but to practise for reporting is quite another thing: that depends upon the unremitting industry of a person. I know of but two ladies whose business is reporting. It is hard work, but pays well." This lady also states that her terms of tuition are seventy-five cents per lesson of one hour. "Phonographers generally receive from ten to twenty dollars an hour; and it takes about five or six hours to write out what may be spoken in an hour, if done by one person. With an amanuensis, it takes about four hours of writing to one of speaking." Several ladies are acting in Ohio and Michigan as phonographic reporters. Mr. James T. Brady, in a public speech in New York, said: "Without disparagement to his friends who were here engaged in catching the extemporized words of the speaker, he really would be happy to see the day when women, who had the capacity, should be engaged in making reports." "Among the American Indians, the women, being present at councils, preserve in their memories the report of what passes, and repeat it to their children. They have traditions of treaties a hundred years back, which, when compared with our writings, are always exact." A telegraphic reporter told me a first-class reporter can earn from twenty-five to thirty dollars for three or four hours' labor. It requires a knowledge of stenography, of which there are several teachers in New York, and which can be learned in a short time. Some reporters are paid by the week; and some by the page of foolscap, which is considered, I think, as counting eighty words. Mr. B., a reporter of New York, had a sister in Washington with him, ten years ago, who attended the sittings of Congress, and took notes, and wrote them out fully. Her brother then revised and sent them to the press. Another lady attempted it for the _Tribune_, but was ridiculed, and very foolishly gave it up. I was told that Mrs. W., wife of a reporter for the _Tribune_, took notes of Dr. Chapin's sermon on Thanksgiving day, and made a report for the _Tribune_, with which the readers of the paper were well satisfied. The reply of Mr. Webster to Mr. Hayne was saved by Mrs. Gales, the wife of one of the Congressional reporters, by writing out her husband's short-hand notes, which he for the lack of time found it impossible to do. Otherwise that remarkable speech of an eminent orator would have been lost. Mr. L. remarked to me: "A reporter in New York has to move and write with railroad speed. Everything needs to be done with a rush; and so dense are crowds, that a woman would have to lay aside hoops to make her way." =26. Reviewers.= A reviewer of new books should be a rapid reader and of quick understanding. A reviewer should also be a person of judgment. The vast number of books now published might afford employment, and a good compensation, we suppose, to those so engaged. But too often publishers use a moneyed influence in giving a false reputation to their publications. Frequently the editors of magazines and newspapers are their own reviewers. We heartily wish that reviewers would endeavor to check the circulation of some of the light literature of the day. We refer not so much to that which is vapid--unsubstantial--wanting stamina--as that which is impure--immoral. Much is of a kind to open the floodgates of vice and crime. Stories cast in the old-fashioned mould of hair-breadth escapes, marvellous incidents, and impossible events, are less popular than formerly. No doubt much reading is done as a recreation--to forget one's self--to banish care--to unbend from severe study: let such reading at least be pure and chaste. Books undoubtedly exercise a great influence over the disposition, taste, and character; and reviewers have it much in their power to direct the general taste for books. They can do much toward forming a high and correct literary tone in society. The number of those who devote themselves to the review of new books in England is small--in the United States, still smaller. How they are paid I am unable to learn. =27. Teachers.= Teaching, in its various branches, would form a large volume; but we will endeavor to take as general, yet comprehensive, a view of the subject as our limits will permit. The instruction of youth has ever been an honorable and useful calling: in an enlightened and refined community an institution of the first class always stands high. The influence of a teacher over her pupils is almost unbounded. Pupils watch the looks and actions of their teachers with a closeness of observation surprising to those unaccustomed to children. A teacher should strive to be consistent, for any palpable inconsistency will greatly lessen the respect of scholars. There are many systems of teaching; many plans; many theories. Much may be learned from visiting schools, and selecting, for one's own use, such improvements as suggest themselves. But the most valuable assistant in teaching is a thorough and extensive knowledge of mental and moral philosophy. They bear directly on the subject. They will prove the best guides, if penetration and judgment, patience and perseverance are used in the application. There are laws governing mind just as there are laws governing matter. Learn the opinions and wishes of parents as far as possible, but always act independently. Never permit yourself to be trammelled by them. The European method of giving instruction is by lectures. The plan is used in the professional schools of our country, and to some extent in our colleges, but in our seminaries, academies, and high schools the method is seldom practised. The inability of a hearer to apply to a lecturer, in case the subject is not understood, or the meaning of the lecturer not rightly apprehended, renders the method as a general thing objectionable to the young and inexperienced. Where students are instructed by lectures, a thorough examination on the lectures should be made the day after, and an explanation given if any parts are not rightly understood. One difficulty with a lecturer to the young is likely to be in gaining their entire attention, and presenting ideas to them in a clear, forcible manner. In the majority of girls' schools no oral instruction is given. Recitations are heard from text books, and frequently the pupils are unable to understand what they, parrot-like, recite in class. We think a combination of the two plans mentioned is best; that is, for the teacher to deliver lectures on some subjects, and hear recitations from text books on others. The more oral instruction given by a competent instructor the better. A teacher needs ability to command order, to promote discipline, and work systematically. A teacher should endeavor to produce harmony and a proper balance among the mental faculties, while they are being expanded. No unnatural and undue prominence should be given to any one of the faculties. Too many exercise the memory only. Those studies that will be most serviceable to a pupil should be pursued. Religious principles, common sense, good health, and a uniformly cheerful disposition are necessary to make a good teacher. A teacher should well understand the springs of human action. Add to these, ability to discriminate, perfect command of temper, unwearied perseverance, patience that never flags, and tact for imparting knowledge, and you have the desiderata for a most excellent teacher. If there is any office in life that calls for the exercise of every virtue, it is that of a teacher. It is the most responsible office in life except that of parent. Teaching is a vocation peculiarly fitted to women, and will ever be open to women of superior talents and extensive attainments. In worth and dignity it is inferior to none of the professions of men. It is finally taking its place among the learned professions. Female education has been too superficial. A more thorough and extensive course is needed in most of our schools. Woman must be taught to think for herself, and to act for herself. She needs to depend more on her own abilities--requires more self-reliance. Miss Beecher maintains that there is no defect in temper, habits, manners, or in any intellectual and moral development, which cannot be remedied. There are said to be more than 2,000,000 of children in our land out of school, and requiring 100,000 teachers to supply them. We would not give the impression that if 100,000 ladies were to prepare themselves to teach, they would find 100,000 places awaiting them. No; we believe the supply now fully meets the demand; and we are sorry to see the impression being so often given by editors and others, that teachers are needed and in demand; because we think many ladies of limited means are thereby induced to spend what little they have in preparing themselves to be teachers; and when they are qualified, ten chances to one, if they get a school, it is only for three months out of the twelve, and that not regularly. A precarious subsistence is obtained, and, to those without homes, certainly a most unreliable one. We love to see ladies educated, and would gladly see them all qualified to teach; but we do not like to see inducements thrown out to qualify themselves, under the impression that there are hundreds of places vacant only because they cannot obtain teachers. There is no employment more uncertain than that of a teacher. Many causes tend to produce this. Among them are dissatisfaction on the part of teacher or people, low wages, the fluctuating condition of country schools at different seasons of the year, a large mass of people not knowing the advantages of an education, and the want of endowed institutions of learning. If a lady has sufficient capital to establish herself permanently as a teacher, she will be far more likely to succeed. As new places are settled and population advances there will no doubt be openings, but they will require teachers willing to endure the hardships and privations incident to a new country. Some lady teachers might get employment if they would go to the country, but the variety and excitement of the city they are not willing to relinquish. An active life is happiest, and none, if well filled, affords more constant employment than that of a teacher. Evening schools are established in most of our large cities, for the accommodation of those that labor through the day. In New York these schools are in session two hours, and a teacher receives one dollar an evening. Some lady teachers are employed in schools for the blind and for the deaf and dumb. In Germany, teachers are treated with a degree of respect and delicacy that should serve as a model to other countries. The acquisition of knowledge has long been too mechanical an operation. Girls are expected to receive as undoubted truths all they meet with in their school books. They are not taught to pause and consider if statements are grounded on certain or uncertain premises. They are not taught to exercise their own thoughts and judgment. School agencies in the large cities of the North are establishing branches in the South and West. Where there is no established organization of this kind, families and neighborhoods are often at a loss how to obtain a governess or teacher, while a teacher is equally at a loss to know of such situations as she desires. There is considerable difference in the character and qualifications of the teachers sent out by the different agencies of New York. Connected with these agencies might be a means of communication for obtaining amanuenses, copyists, and translators. Few parents are willing to intrust their children to those who are not trained for their business. The establishment of schools for the preparation of teachers is one of the great inventions of the age. There is one in almost every State. There was, and probably still is, an educational association, that centres in New York city, which has for its object the _free_ instruction of a limited number of young ladies desirous of preparing themselves for teachers. One of the institutions is in Dubuque, Iowa; the other in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The principal of the Normal School, New York, receives $600 a year, and he does not hear a single recitation. He spends five hours in the room every Saturday, which, for all the year of 48 weeks, equals 240 hours--nearly $3 an hour, merely for the light of his countenance. The number of governesses in England is very large. Their duties are more severe and their remuneration less than in any other country. In the United States, governesses receive higher salaries in the Southern than the Northern States, and are treated more like members of the family. The salaries of teachers are also higher, but it costs more to live in the South. One way in which so many men get situations as teachers to the exclusion of females, "may be attributed, in a degree, to favoritism of Odd Fellows' and other social and political bonds." As time advances, more attention will be given by the ladies to special branches of education. There will be professors of mathematics, languages, &c., just as there are in male institutions. Each one will cultivate most highly a knowledge of that science to which her talents and wishes incline. In the public schools of New York, there are thirty-nine gentlemen conducting the male departments, who receive a salary of $1,500 per year; while, of the lady principals of the female departments, there are only ten getting a salary of $800, the highest salary paid a lady in the public schools of New York. There are said to be 1,183 female teachers in New York city. In Louisville, Ky., the gentleman principals of the grammar schools receive a salary of $1,000 a year, the lady principals $650. In the male and female high schools, the principals receive $1,600 a year. The lady preceptress in the female high school has a salary of $900. The lady who teaches mathematics in the Female Presbyterian College of Louisville receives a salary of $900. In Chicago, the maximum salary of female teachers is $400 a year. In the Cleveland Female Seminary, in 1854, the lady teacher of rhetoric and English literature received a salary of $500 and board; of English branches, $500 and board; of history, $500 and board; of mathematics, $500 and board. We have seen it stated that female teachers are growing scarce in Maine, because the wages are so low. "At the New York Central College for students of both sexes, there is one female professor in the faculty, and she receives the same salary as the other members, and has the same voice." It is a manual labor school, where the same justice is not exercised in regard to the pupils, as the "male students get eight cents per hour for labor, females but four cents an hour." In the twelfth ward of New York city, the subject of paying lady teachers the same salaries as those of the other sex was agitated last winter: the result I did not hear. Higher prices are paid to lady teachers in Boston than any other city of the United States, except the cities of California, where ladies conducting the same branches as gentlemen receive as good salaries. The majority of teachers in San Francisco are ladies. In the United States there are 150,000 teachers in the public schools, and 4,000,000 scholars. "There is one scholar for every five free persons; in Great Britain there is one scholar to every eight persons; in France, one to every ten persons." According to an estimate made by Rev. T. W. Higginson, there are in fourteen of the United States, in all schools, both public and private, 152,339 male teachers, and 162,687 female teachers. In the New England States, according to his estimate, there are 45,619 male teachers, and 87,645 female teachers. In the Western States, settled mostly by New Englanders, we find the proportion of lady teachers greatest. We hope the number of lady teachers may increase in the different States in proportion to the increase of the population. In Brooklyn, L. I., there is a female seminary endowed by Mrs. Packer, which usually, we believe, has an attendance of between 300 and 400 pupils. "Matthew Vassar, Esq., of Poughkeepsie, it is said, has devoted a sum which will soon amount to $400,000 to the endowment of a college for girls in that city. He hopes to make it a rival of Yale, Brown, and Harvard. It is not to be free, but the tuition rates will be very low. In the plan provision is made for a library, cabinets, apparatus, galleries of art, botanical gardens, and the like. If well carried out, this institution may be a lasting monument to the wisdom and benevolence of Mr. Vassar." =28. Teachers of Bookkeeping.= In the catalogue of Comer's Commercial College, Boston, we find the following statement: "As an inducement to ladies to prepare themselves for mercantile employments, a discount of twenty per cent. from the terms for gentlemen is made, although the course of instruction is precisely the same." Twelve free scholarships have been founded in the institution for deserving cases of either sex. With all large commercial schools is now connected a separate department for ladies; and efforts are made by the principals to obtain situations for their pupils as they leave school. A letter from Misses McIntire and Kidder, Boston, states: "We have been engaged in preparing ladies for bookkeepers, saleswomen, &c., for the past ten years. It was at first difficult for ladies to obtain such situations; but as those who did succeed gave entire satisfaction, others were induced to give them a trial; and now they are very generally employed in our retail stores, at prices varying from four to eight dollars per week, and a few at a still higher salary. The time required for a person who has received a common English education, is from six weeks to three months. The terms for the complete course in bookkeeping, which embraces improvement in writing, with rapid methods of calculating interest and averaging accounts, are $14; and for bookkeeping only, $12; and three months' time is allowed. The chances for obtaining employment are very favorable, as more situations are opened to them every year. Each student is instructed separately and assistance rendered in obtaining employment. Bookkeepers are usually employed ten hours a day. The employment is not so unhealthy as needlework. Women are superior to men in faithfulness in the performance of duties." The principal of a mercantile college in Brooklyn says he thinks "many ladies might obtain employment as bookkeepers, if they would only properly qualify themselves for the duties. He had six or seven lady pupils that are now employed as bookkeepers in New York. Their compensation depends on their abilities and the amount of labor they have to perform. They are not so well paid as male bookkeepers. Much depends on the kind of friends a lady has to secure her a place. It is the same case with a young man. If he acquires a reputation for integrity and faithfulness, he may get even as much as $2,500; while one more obscure and unknown may be as competent, but not able to command more than one third as much. So, one may have to work but a few hours; another, from eight in the morning until twelve at night. Some have a great deal to do in some seasons, and but little in others; while some are kept nearly equally busy all the year." This gentleman charges $10 for instruction. Mr. D., who teaches writing, bookkeeping, and arithmetic, in New York, gives private instruction to ladies at his rooms. They are comfortably fitted up. He charges for bookkeeping, practical course of twenty lessons, $15; unlimited course, $25;--arithmetic, commercial course of twenty lessons, $10; of sixty lessons, $20. His charges for all branches required to prepare pupils practically for business are, for one month, two or three hours per day, $15; three months, $30; for twenty lessons in writing, public room, $10; private room, $15. Mr. B., of the firm of B. S. & Co., says a person of good abilities could learn bookkeeping in one month, by spending most of the day at it. His price for ladies is $25. It entitles them to an attendance at one of their branch schools, of which there are eight in the Northern and Western cities. They endeavor to secure places for those who learn bookkeeping with them. They also assist their pupils to open books when they have obtained situations. Millinery establishments, trimming and fancy stores, &c., are the kind that mostly employ women as bookkeepers. Many wives of business men learn bookkeeping, that they may keep their husbands' books. =29. Teachers of Gymnastics and Dancing.= Dancing, calisthenics, and gymnastics furnish excellent exercise for young people, and in many boarding and day schools for young ladies gymnastics are now taught. A lady teacher of calisthenics and gymnastics told me that in winter a fire is kept in the dressing room, and in very cold weather the practising room is warmed a little. Gymnastics are performed with apparatus. Calisthenics are arm exercises. The terms of this teacher are $6 for one month, $15 for three months, and $20 for six months' tuition. In New York and Philadelphia there are schools where instruction is given to girls as well as boys in gymnastic exercises. At one gymnasium in New York the terms are $16 a year for tuition, $10 for six months, and $7 for three months. At a ladies' gymnasium in Brooklyn, I was told by the instructress that her prices for tuition are $4 a quarter in summer, giving three lessons a week. A physician prescribes the kind and amount of exercise necessary. =30. Teachers of Drawing and Painting.= There is scarcely any branch of mechanical labor in which a knowledge of drawing is not an advantage. Correct drawing is essential to the success of an artist; but coloring is something very difficult and desirable, particularly the coloring of the flesh. It is indispensable to the portrait painter. A lady artist of some note told me that artists do not ground themselves in drawing as they should; that drawing tells almost the whole story of a picture: coloring only gives beauty and adds strength. She thinks there are many openings in the South and West for first-class teachers of drawing and painting. Miss G. received a salary of $800, as teacher of painting in the School of Arts in Baltimore. It is folly for any one to devote herself to art as a career, unless she has some genius and a fondness for it. Mrs. H., of Boston, the wife of the sculptor, has supported her family by painting and giving instruction in the art. Teachers in oil painting are well compensated, if they have pupils enough to occupy all their time. Prices vary in cities from fifty cents a lesson of one hour to two dollars. Art classes have been formed, both in New York and Philadelphia. Some artists receive pupils, but the time required for instruction renders it objectionable to most. Miss G. charges $15 a quarter of twenty-four lessons, two hours each. In ordinary times, she gives but one hour's instruction at a lesson. Miss J. charges $10 dollars for instruction in oriental painting. Mrs. C. was profitably engaged, in Providence, in teaching drawing and taking crayon portraits. One lady, who taught for several years with success, charged fifty cents a lesson, the pupils attending at her room. Those working in crayon in the New York school draw almost entirely from casts; those in the Philadelphia school, from plates. There is now a life school in New York, where instruction is given at $20 per quarter of eleven weeks--two lessons a week. For instruction in drawing from plates, $12 per quarter of eleven weeks. In some of our public schools, drawing is taught free of expense to the scholars. =31. Teachers of Fancy Work.= The accomplishments of women are useful in their times and places. Music and drawing are elegant accomplishments, the earliest as well as the most universal pastimes known. Those teachers of accomplishments that have acquired a reputation can command in a city a high price. At Madame D.'s, crochet work and embroidery are taught at 25 cents a lesson of one hour. Misses H., Philadelphia, give five lessons in leather work for $6, and charge, for giving instruction in wax fruit and flowers, paper and rice paper flowers, &c., $1 a lesson; in embroidery in silk, gold bullion, &c., $15 for twenty lessons--the same for hair flowers and bead work; for the arrangement of shells with mosses and grasses, $1 a lesson. Madame N., who teaches crochet work and fancy knitting, charges 50 cents an hour. One stitch can be learned by a quick person in an hour. She thinks there is plenty of that kind of work to supply all and even more hands than are so occupied. She employs a number, and pays by the piece. They work at home, and can earn from $3 to $4 a week. =32. Teachers of Horsemanship.= The prices of the riding school, New York, attended by the most aristocratic classes, are: 16 lessons, $20; 10 lessons, $15; 5 lessons, $8; single lessons, $2; road lesson, one pupil, $5; two or more pupils, each $3. For exercise riding, single ride, one hour, $1.50; single ride, half hour, $1. After taking 16 or more lessons, the prices are somewhat reduced. At another riding school in New York, the terms are: 20 lessons for gentlemen, $25; 20 lessons for ladies, $20; 10 lessons for gentlemen, $15; 10 lessons for ladies, $12; single lessons, $2. The rules are very good, and laid down in the circulars. At another riding school in New York the prices are: $20 for 20 lessons, $12 for 10 lessons, $7 for 5 lessons; single lessons, $1.50; road lessons, one person, $5; road lessons, three or more, each $3; 20 exercise rides for $15; evening rides for $1; road rides, 10 for $8; single, $1; road ride to a lady, $2.50. The regulations are very good. The expenses for keeping up a riding school are considerable; so it may not prove as profitable as the prices would seem to indicate. =33. Teachers of Infant Schools.= Teaching is interesting to those that love children. But I would say, let not those without patience and tenderness, or those whose feelings can in an hour change from the boiling to the freezing point, attempt to teach young children. In ordinary schools, young children are liable to be either cramped or stunted. If children must be placed at school early, let it be where they can exercise their little bodies frequently, and not be confined in school long at a time. To accomplish this, we think the infant school the most efficient. Lord Brougham gives it as his opinion that a child learns more the first eighteen months of its life than at any other period; and that it settles, in fact, at this early age, its mental capacity and future well-being. Mr. Babbington fixes the period of the first nine years as the seedtime of life. Some object to infant schools, on the ground that they divert the mind, and unfit it for continued and concentrated thought in after life. But we cannot think so, unless the course is pursued an unreasonable length of time. The first two years of a child's schooling may be passed profitably in an infant school; at any rate, if the child enters as early as six years of age. Indeed, we think the variety embodied in the infant-school system is one of its most pleasing and useful features. The minds of children cannot rest long on any one subject, any more than their bodies can retain the same posture long at a time. It stagnates thought, prevents boldness of spirit, and stunts the growth of a young child to sit quiet hour after hour. Some mothers send their children early to school to have them out of their way. Such children could be more pleasantly and more efficiently taught in an infant school than in any other. Yet, we are rather inclined to the opinion that a child should be taught the alphabet at home. Gentle but firm treatment is necessary for children, who need much sympathy and affection; and it therefore requires the greatest patience on the part of a teacher, in order to conduct an infant school successfully. Infant schools are scarce in the United States; but still they exist in some parts of New England. There was an infant school in Troy, some time ago (and perhaps it is still in existence), in connection with one of the public schools. The infant-school system has been partially adopted in some of the public schools of our Western cities; and the same system applied to Sabbath schools has been extensively and happily carried into effect, both in the South and West. There are several infant Sabbath schools, of which we know, numbering considerably over one hundred children. These schools are usually conducted by ladies. The exercises are varied, as in day schools, and consist generally of chanting responses, catechism, memorizing from cards, telling Bible stories, lecturing, explaining pictures, singing, &c. This order of exercises, sustained in a lively manner, cannot fail to interest children, and make the school room for them a happy and longed-for place. Nature itself points out the course to be pursued in the education of a child: first, physical training; second, moral training; and third, mental training. Mind and body are so closely united that an injury to one is resented by the other. One is placed as a protector to the other, and will not permit injury to its companion with impunity. =34. Teachers of Languages.= A knowledge of Latin is desirable for ladies that expect to devote much time to books. The study of it is fine discipline for the mind. The German and French are studied by many ladies: the French more for the purposes of light literature and conversation; the German by those that wish to dive into metaphysics. These languages are, both, useful to ladies engaged in stores: the French mostly in New York city and in the South; the German more at the North and West. In Italy, at different times from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, learned women occupied chairs in the universities, as professors of music, drawing, philosophy, mathematics, and the languages, both ancient and modern. The author of "Women and Work" says: "Women should teach languages and oratory. Aspasia taught rhetoric to Socrates. The voice of woman is more penetrating, distinct, delicate, and correct in delivering sounds than that of man, fitting her to teach both languages and oratory better." The prices paid for private instruction in the languages are higher than when received in a class, and run from 25 cents an hour to $1. A language is best taught by a native of the country in which said language is spoken. =35. Teachers of Music.= Vocal music is taught in most of our schools, and is required to be taught in the public schools of Germany and Prussia. In Germany, instrumental music is also taught free of charge. It is not uncommon to see a German mechanic performing on the piano. Instrumental music is probably the most expensive accomplishment attending the education of a young lady. Music is more generally cultivated in the United States than any other accomplishment. It is better appreciated by the mass, and, consequently, becomes more ingrafted in the national element. In a few years our musicians will probably equal the most celebrated of Europe. A skilful musician need never suffer in America. If competent to give instruction in music, there will be opportunities to do so in our cities. Most seminaries require one teacher of music, and often two or more. =36. Teachers of Navigation.= "One of the best and most popular teachers of navigation and nautical mathematics and astronomy in England is a lady, Mrs. Janet Taylor. Her classes are celebrated, and numerously attended by men who have been at sea as well as by youths preparing for the merchant service." Not long since, she received a gold medal and a premium of £50 annually from the British Government. =37. Teachers of Swimming.= There is a swimming school in Paris, containing as pupils ladies of all stations in life. Swimming schools for both sexes have been established in New York. In the one for ladies and girls instruction is given by one of their own sex, and a charge made of 25 cents a lesson. From the New York _Observer_ we copy an article: "A few years ago, a gentleman well known in the philanthropic world established a school in New Jersey, not far from New York, with the intention of making physical training a prominent part of his educational system. He began with his own children and a few others. The school has gradually grown until it numbers eighty pupils, both boys and girls. Every pupil at this school is a gymnast; every one can row a boat; and every one, down to the smallest girl, can swim. The boys and girls are formed into separate boat clubs, seven to each club, rowing six oars, with the seventh for coxswain. So they row races whenever the weather permits, and they do not mind a little rough weather. Every day, too, during the warm season, they all have a swim. The boys swim by themselves; and the girls, in suitable bathing dresses, go elsewhere, with a teacher. One year of such training and exercises will lay up stamina for a lifetime." A school has been commenced in New York for teaching swimming out of the water, by machinery. The prices are 25 cents a lesson in a class, and $1 a lesson for private instruction. =38. Translators.= Translations published in the United States are mostly made in England. Some languages are susceptible of a much more correct and graceful translation than others. It requires study to get the exact meaning of some authors, and taste and genius to convey that meaning. A literal interpretation will not always convey the meaning of an author as well as a looser translation getting more the spirit of the original. A person should have general information on the subject to be treated. A translator of history must be a good historian. It requires time to establish a reputation as a translator, but even a translator's career must have a beginning. Dr. G., who has charge of the editorial department of one of the most extensively circulated magazines in the United States, says translations from French and German are not so well liked in magazines as original matter, and anything to be translated for his magazine he does as a recreation from more serious duties. Owing to the international copyright law of England and France, a French author will send his manuscript over to England and have it rendered, securing the right to the translation. The translation often makes its appearance very nearly as soon as the original. Most of the valuable works in French have been translated. Mr. W. told me, however, that there are some scientific French works that might be rendered into English, and some on mechanics; but it would require some one acquainted with the subject, on account of the technical terms. Dr. G. thinks the chances a thousand against one that an individual could find constant employment translating. He has frequent applications from translators for work in that line. So we have reason to think translating is a very precarious occupation. The best way is to find some French book that will be popular in America, and translate it, and offer it to a publisher. Some translators look over catalogues of foreign books and examine such as they think will be likely to please. They take it to the publisher, who, if he thinks it will be available, gives the individual the task, if they can settle on satisfactory terms. A lady, who translates considerably, told me that she receives $5 a page for a finished translation from the French for magazines. Books are generally done for so much, according to the contract of the parties. The price charged for verbal translation would doubtless depend on the amount of time consumed; but for a written translation, the charge would be made by the page or volume. In most of the Government departments translators are employed, and their salaries are no doubt good. Interpreters are also employed in some of the courts, but they usually unite their occupation with that of copyist. In some private establishments interpreters are employed. Where there is sufficient business to occupy all the time of a lady, she would doubtless find her services as an interpreter lucrative. ARTISTIC PURSUITS, AND EMPLOYMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE FINE ARTS. =39. Actresses.= The circumstances under which a play-actor's life are seen are calculated to please the young and susceptible. They put a false estimate on the pleasures it affords. They are apt to forget that the moments in which performers appear on the stage all sparkling as the diamond sands and crystal pebbles of a brook, are the principal, perhaps the only bright ones of their lives. Many a sad spirit, many a broken heart is concealed under the glittering tinsel. We are not among those who denounce the theatre as a school of vice and infamy--nor could we conscientiously laud it as a school of virtue. We think the influence and effects depend very greatly upon the character of the plays; much, too, depends upon the individuals of the audience. There is no amusement that may not suffer in the abuse. Late hours, intoxicating drinks, and bad companions, in many cases form the curse of regular theatre-goers; and for these the plays (perhaps harmless in themselves) are charged with being demoralizing. Good plays have an intellectual fascination. We think the drama might be made more a school of instruction and innocent pastime--less a school of evil tendencies. In China and Japan, the female parts in theatrical performances are never executed by women. No women ever appeared on the stage of the Greeks or Romans. Even the female characters in Shakspeare were not represented by women in his time. The first lady that appeared on the stage took the parts of Juliet and Ophelia in 1660. The publicity attending the life of an actress makes it repulsive to many, and the egotism that the profession engenders is an objectionable feature. That there are good and virtuous people connected with the theatre we cannot for a moment question; but some of the men are worthless and dissipated, and many of the girls and women engage in it because they see no other way of earning their bread. Many a ballet girl has danced to support an infirm mother or orphan brothers and sisters. The roving life of an actress and want of home influences are not conducive to the growth of domestic virtues. Yet some actresses have married advantageously in Europe, and been respected in social life, not less for their virtues than their talents. The craving of admiration incident to the calling is apt to make an actress vain. Her fondness for excitement, and her consciousness of importance in the eyes of those who patronize her, furnish additional fuel to the fire. If she makes a failure, she may die of chagrin. Mr. B., a dramatic agent, thinks there is always a supply as soon as there is a demand for dramatic performers. They cannot enter and leave the profession, like any other. They must be actively engaged in it all the time, or leave it. Their talents must be carefully considered, and they placed in the company that requires them, and in such places as suit their talents. If a play in which they excel is to be performed in a distant city, they accompany the troupe to which they belong. A company consists of a combination of various talents. The number employed is not fluctuating, but they change their localities often; that is, go from city to city and town to town, shifting their place as seems best. They are compensated according to talent and proficiency--from $3 a week to $150. They are usually paid according to the contract made with them. I think the voice of actors when off the stage is peculiar. It is deep and hollow, as if trained to be thrown to a distance. By the drama two of the senses which afford most pleasure are entertained--the eye and the ear. Madame Celeste made $50,000 clear in this country; Essler, $70,000. The play, "Our American Cousin," is said to have cleared $40,000 in New York. Mr. P., a dramatic agent, told me that actresses are paid according to their position and talent. A ballet girl is paid from $3 to $6 a week, if by the season. Wallack pays $5 or $6. Utility people are paid from $6 to $10. Prices depend very much on who and what the people are, and the class of theatre by which they are employed. Those of the better class are paid from $25 to $60 a night. When they are not required they are not paid anything. In Europe, some of the theatres are open during the summer. In New York a paper has lately been commenced, devoted almost exclusively to the drama. "Our great star actors, Mr. Forrest or Miss Cushman, command their hundreds of dollars a night. The handsome Brignoli or the ponderous Amodio will not dispense their silver notes short of fabulous thousands of golden dollars per month. Those who try the life of an actor speedily discover that, of all hard-working men, few render more constant, wearing, unceasing labor for their money, than those who conscientiously do their duty in a theatre. Multitudinous and constantly varying requirements are made of an actor who has achieved a leading position. He _must_ be a linguist, an elocutionist, a fencer, a dancer, a boxer, a painter (for the proper coloring or 'making up' of his own face and figure is no small part of his art), a soldier (so far as a knowledge of military drill and the manual exercise is concerned); and he should be a singer, and a bit of an author. In a theatre where a drama unfamiliar to the company is produced every night, or in case of a new 'star,' who plays his own pieces, a day's work of an actor may be set down as follows: To learn by heart a part not exceeding six 'lengths' (a length is forty-two lines), attend rehearsal from ten to one or two, and act at night in one or two pieces. That is, six lengths new study, rehearsal, and playing at night, is what may be required of an actor for a day's work, without giving occasion for grumbling at the managers. There are many actors who, upon an urgent occasion, will study from ten to fifteen lengths in a day, besides attending to their other duties. This, however, is never required except in case of sudden sickness of another performer, or some similar extraordinary event. In provincial theatres the actors are worked much harder than in New York, and paid much less. The starring system universally prevails, which necessitates a constant succession of new plays, most of which have to be studied from night to night, as a play is not often acted two nights in succession in small cities. But when a piece has a successful 'run,' the actors have no new study for several weeks. Actors are usually engaged for certain lines of business; that is, each one engages to perform only such style of characters as he is best qualified to personate. The remuneration of actors comes next into consideration, and the scale has a wide range, from $3 a week up to $200 a night. This last sum was for years the demand of Mr. Edwin Forrest. Other stars are generally content with certain 'sharing terms;' that is, the gross receipts, after a certain specific amount has been deducted for the expenses of the theatre, are equally divided between the star and the manager. Thus, for example, if the expenses of the house are $300 per night, and the receipts $400, the lucky star and the fortunate manager pocket $50 each per night. This is the fairest basis on which to conduct the starring system, because, by this plan, the salaries of all the stock company are assured _first_, and the profit of the star depends on his own power of attracting the public to the theatre. In New York the salaries paid to stock actors are higher, on the average, than those in any other city in the United States. The managers ignore, to a great extent, the technical 'lines of business,' and engage the best artists that can be had, and then have plays especially written, in which each of their leading actors shall have a part suited to his peculiar powers. While this plan secures to the New York public the finest acting that can be seen in the country, it also entails upon the managers a salary list of dimensions that would swamp a provincial theatre in a single week. The leading actors, as Messrs. Lester, Blake, and Walcot, at Wallack's Theatre; Messrs. Jefferson, Jordan, and Pearson, at the Winter Garden; Messrs. Mark Smith and Vincent, at Laura Keene's Theatre, receive from $50 to $100 per week. Salaries for women are about half, or perhaps two thirds of what are paid to men holding corresponding positions. General utility men, supernumeraries, and ballet girls receive from $3 to $10 per week. When an unusual number of 'ladies of the ballet,' or supernumeraries of the other sex are required, on some extra occasion, they are specially engaged, at 50 cents a night, or sometimes for even less money. The salaries on the east side of the city, at the Bowery Theatre, are lower than on Broadway, the principal actors seldom receiving more than $35 or $40 per week, and the others are in proportion. In smaller cities, as Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, &c., the highest sum paid to a performer seldom exceeds $25 per week. Actors who have achieved a position which warrants them in demanding it, stipulate for a 'benefit' in addition to their salaries. On these occasions, a third or a half of the gross receipts of the evening is paid over to the performer, according as his agreement is for a 'third clear' or a 'half clear' benefit." =40. Aquaria Makers.= One of the most innocent and pleasing amusements that has attracted attention for some time is the making of aquaria. The cases are formed of plate glass, square, oblong, circular, or any shape to please the fancy of the owner. The glass is tightly sealed when joined. The aquaria are of two kinds: one is formed of salt water, and contains marine plants and animals; the other contains fresh water, and such plants and animals as are found in rivers and smaller streams. They form a beautiful addition to a garden, conservatory, or drawing room. Rocks form the foundation, and the soil on them furnishes subsistence to the plants. Zoophytes, mollusca, and fish form the inhabitants of the aquarium. Insects also find a place in this miniature "ocean or river garden." The size for parlors is from one foot to three in length. The largest aquaria in this country are now on exhibition at Barnum's Museum, New York. "They comprise over one thousand specimens of living animals and vegetation. In these tanks the water is seldom changed, the natural operations of the plants and animals keeping it always pure." They are made to order in New York, and we think might afford a pleasant pastime to some, and pecuniary profit to others. A work giving directions for making them has been published in New York. The author is a Mr. Butler, who has got up the mammoth aquaria in Barnum's Museum. There are two establishments in New York where they may be ordered, and specimens seen. "Before we leave the margin of the sea, we must just glance at the smaller occupations pursued there by women. The most considerable of these was once the gathering and burning of kelp; but chemical science has nearly put an end to that. There is still a great deal of raking and collecting going on. In some countries half the fields are manured with small fish and the offal of larger, and sea weeds and sand. Then there is the gathering of jet and amber, and various pebbles, and the polishing and working of them. The present rage for studies of marine creatures must afford employment to many women who have the shrewdness to avail themselves of it." =41. Architects.= We scarcely know to what extent this branch of business can come within the province of woman. Yet it is as practicable, perhaps, as some we mention. Civil architecture is the only one open to women. In this art we are as a people little more than novices; yet great improvements are going on. In a century's time, perhaps, the art in this country will have obtained the perfection of ancient nations. Properzia di Rossi, born in Bologna, 1490, is said to have furnished some admirable plans in architecture. The author of "Women Artists" mentions as designers in architecture, Madame Steenwyck, of the Dutch school, and Esther Juvenal, of Nuremberg. She also gives the name of a lady who was a practical architect in Rome, in the seventeenth century--Plautilla Brizio--who has left monuments of her excellence in that species of art. The villa Giraldi, near Rome, is the joint work of this lady and her brother. "The wife of Erwin von Steinbach materially assisted her husband in the erection of the famous Strasbourg cathedral; and within its walls a sculptured stone represents the husband and wife as consulting together on the plan." The most varied and general information is desirable for a first-class architect. A knowledge of drawing and the first principles of geometry are the most important requisites. Some architects select the materials for the building, which of course requires a knowledge of the different kinds and conditions of wood, their fitness for various parts of a building; also, the qualities of iron, stone, brick, and whatever goes toward making up the building. An architect should also select the most suitable site for the erection of the intended structure, which would be decided, to some extent, by the way in which it was to be used. He also should be able to judge the nature of the soil, and the way in which a want of fitness may be remedied. Then he must see that the foundation is securely laid; and, as the building progresses, that the workmen carry out the details of the plan which he furnishes. Much of this work seems unsuitable for women; but the making and executing of plans could be very well done by them. It would give exercise to their taste and inventive talents. Men employed in architectural drawing earn from $1.25 to $3 a day of ten hours. Miss H. told me of a wealthy lady in New York who is quite an architect by nature. Mrs. D. told me of a young lady of her acquaintance who is gifted with talents that would make a superior architect. She has planned several houses for her father, who has sold them at an advance of from $3,000 to $4,000, on account of the convenient arrangement of the rooms and their tasteful decoration. She displays exquisite taste in the selection and arrangement of furniture. She is withal economical in her expenditures. She is a close calculator of the cost of materials, and a great economist of space. =42. Cameo Cutters.= There are two kinds of cameo cutting--one with a lapidary's wheel, of hard stones, as the onyx and the sardonyx. The shell cameos are cut with small steel chisels, from the white portion of the shell, leaving the chocolate color for the background. The figures are in relief. The stone is prepared by the lapidary, and the artist arranges his design according to the capabilities of the stone. He makes a drawing in paper on an enlarged scale, and a model in wax of the exact size, and the latter is carefully compared with the stone, and such alterations made as the markings on the stone seem to require. The outline is then sketched on the surface, and cut with tools prepared for that purpose. After it has been properly cut, it is smoothed and polished. In Mrs. Lee's "Sculpture and Sculptors" we find an account of those that have engaged in cameo cutting in the United States. Mrs. Dubois, of New York, cut several cameo likenesses of her friends, and so well did she succeed that she went to Italy to acquire proficiency in the art; but the artist to whom she applied said he could teach her nothing--she had only to study the antique. John C. King, a sculptor of Boston, has also engaged in the art of cutting cameos; and Peter Stephenson, of Boston, had cut in 1853 between 600 and 700 cameo likenesses. He writes me: "Cameo cutting might be done by girls, especially the finishing process--polishing. When in Italy, some years ago, I employed girls to polish my cameos, and paid from 12 to 50 cents apiece. I think they earned about $1 a day. The employment is not unhealthy, but confining." Margaret Foley, formerly a member of the New England school of design, resided in Lowell, and cut cameos at $35 apiece. She was kept busy in filling orders. The Misses Withers, of Charleston, S. C., are said to cut cameo likenesses with beauty and skill. I saw Mr. L. a Frenchman, in New York, copying a likeness from a daguerreotype. He also copies from life. He learned the business in Paris. He charges $15 for those large enough for a breastpin, and which it requires him about three days to make; smaller ones are lower in price. He imports the stones, and furnishes without extra charge to those for whom he works. A good intaglio worker can make cameos, but a cameo worker cannot make intaglios. Some men can never learn the business. It would form a beautiful pastime and a profitable and refined occupation for a lady, if sufficient work could be obtained. =43. Copperplate Engravers.= In a hasty reading of "Women Artists," we find mention made of a number of ladies occupied at various times, in different European countries, as copperplate engravers: in the sixteenth century, one in Holland, and one in Italy; in the seventeenth century, Germany produced seven, France one, Spain one, and Italy three; in the eighteenth century, Italy two, France one, and Denmark one. It may have been that some escaped my notice. Mr. S. told me he knew a family of copperplate engravers; but the daughters are now married. I saw a lady who engraves on copper; she had an office in New York. She was willing to instruct a lady on these terms: after the pupil had acquired about six months' practice, she would allow her half for all the work she did in six months more; then she could be at liberty to work for herself. She thinks a year sufficient time to acquire a good knowledge and practice of card engraving. She had spent a year at it irregularly, having no instructor, but asking advice and assistance now and then. In that way she did not obtain the custom she would have done by being known to others. The patience and careful attention to details requisite, and the sedentary nature of engraving, render it a more suitable occupation for women than men. To make a good card engraver, an educated eye, a steady hand, and ability to form letters gracefully, are the principal requisites. A card engraver told me he knew a lady who assisted her husband in his work, that of copperplate engraving. As the people of the United States become wealthy, and cultivate a taste for the fine arts, engravers will be more patronized. There is a collection of old and choice copperplate engravings in the possession of Mr. Plassman, who has a school of art in New York; there is also such a collection at the Historical rooms in the same city. =44. Daguerreans.= The process consists in concentrating the light of the sun on a metal plate, so prepared by chemicals as to retain the impression of an image that falls upon it. The shadow catcher has become almost interwoven with the every-day realities of life. Prof. Draper speaks of daguerreotyping as introducing a beautiful work, in which "the fair sex may engage without compromising a single delicate quality of woman's nature." Some artists, not content with moving in the ordinary way from place to place, have cars built that roll on wheels and are drawn by horses. The daguerrean sleeps in his little home, and, on the road, far away from a good tavern, can even do his own cooking, or have it done, in his car. The business has also been carried on by men in small boats, floating down rivers and stopping at villages and farm houses. It requires taste and judgment both to make an operator and to color. Colorers of photographs could, if skilful and constantly employed, earn $30 a week in large cities. An operator, if busy, works from 9 to 5 o'clock in winter. A wonderful improvement has taken place in the daguerrean art since its discovery. A lady daguerrean and photographer writes me: "Ladies are employed in the business as operators, and to superintend; also to repaint and retouch photographs. With care in the use of chemicals, I do not consider it particularly unhealthy; less so, I think, than sewing by hand or machine. No person will do well for himself, herself, or patrons, who commences business without a good knowledge of it. The time of learning will depend upon the individual's knowledge of the sciences bearing on photography, and their talent for the business. It would vary from two weeks to three months. The labor of the learner is usually given while learning, and from $25 to $100 besides. Spring and fall are the best seasons, summer the poorest; but there is no time during the year in which there is not something to do. I operate and superintend in my own establishment, and hire a boy only, who does chores. The principal discomforts of the business are the heat to which we are exposed in summer (being usually and necessarily near the roof), the smell of chemicals (which do not unpleasantly affect any one), and the soiling of clothing, which is more unavoidable with women. The amount of business, and consequently the location, decide the profits of the business. As the business is attended with considerable expense, it is necessary, in order to make it pay, to seek a good location. It is profitable when a person is well established in a desirable location. I think ladies and children usually prefer a lady artist. Upon the whole, I think the business quite as suitable for women as men. There is generally more or less spare time, but a woman is most apt to occupy such time with fancy work or reading." A daguerrean writes: "Women are sometimes employed in the reception room to receive ladies--occasionally, in the operating room. They receive from $3 to $8, according to capacity and address. Men generally command better prices, because they can sometimes perform labor out of a woman's sphere, such as unpacking goods, carrying packages, and other jobs, not suitable for women. I think the business as healthy as any indoor business. It requires from six to twelve months to learn the duties of the operating room; for the reception room, from one to three weeks. Industry, patience, perseverance, shrewdness, and suavity of manners, are the necessary qualifications. Prospect for employment poor, as prices are reduced to almost nothing. All seasons are nearly alike. November and June are dull. Our women work in summer from seven A. M. to six P. M. The work averages about eight hours per day the year through. Men are superior in patience (?) and force of character. Women are easily discouraged, and liable to be petulant. In many instances, there is much running up and down stairs, which is harder on women than men. And there is too much standing for a woman's health." =45. Schools of Design.= Schools of design were established 444 B. C., for the purpose of improvement in making statuary. The arts declined when Europe was overrun by barbarous tribes, but in the eleventh century began to recover, and in 1350 several painters, sculptors, and architects formed an academy of design at Florence. In Paris there are seven schools of design for males, and two for females, supported by the city. There are seventy schools of design in Great Britain, and there is an annual exhibition of their work in London, where premiums are awarded. It is about twenty years since the schools were commenced in England. In 1854 nearly I,500 students had been educated in the School of Arts in Edinburgh. There are schools of design in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. The object of these schools is to give a knowledge of some industrial branches of the fine arts. "The greater part of the higher order of designs are practically unavailable, for want of knowledge, on the part of the designer, of the conditions of the particular manufacture in question. The economic possibility and aptitude are not studied; and hence, the manufacturers say, an enormous waste of thought, skill, and industry. This want supplied, a field of industry practically boundless would be opened to female artists, as well as artisans; and it would be an enlightened policy to look to this while the whole world seems to be opening its ports to our productions." Mrs. Alice B. Havens writes of the school of design in Philadelphia: "When novelty and jealousy shall have ceased to excite envy and suspicion among those who would keep our sex from honest independence, a wide sphere of employment will be opened by this and similar institutions to educate intelligent women; for surely, if English manufacturers are not content to be under the control of foreign influence, our own countrymen can never be." The largest class of wood engravers is in the school of New York; the largest for designing on wall paper, in Philadelphia. More time has been devoted to instruction in drawing in the New York than the Philadelphia school. Without some practice in drawing, nothing can be accomplished in either wood engraving or designing. Designing, in some of its branches, is taught in all of the schools. Designs for paper hangings, calicoes, and wood engraving receive most attention. Designs for carpets, silks, ribbons, furniture, lace, plated ware, silver, jewelry, &c., have received but little, if any attention--those for casts and moulds, no more. If women of taste and cultivation attain superiority in designing, we doubt not they will reap a very fair harvest for their work. Lithography, wood engraving, drawing and painting, are also taught in schools of design. There are now in the school of design, New York, between 200 and 300 pupils: some are wood engravers, some designers, and some painters. "The earnings of the pupils in the classes of drawing and engraving are as varied as their skill and experience, but are about the same as those of men who have been at those branches of art the same length of time. Engravers and designers are generally qualified to work on orders the second year of their practice. With industry and the use of their _whole time_ during school hours, pupils may expect an increase of about a $100 a year for several years. The income from the branches of art taught in the school must always be proportioned to the talent, experience, habits of application, and rapidity of hand shown by the artist. The engravers in the school who best understand drawing have the best work, and even the highest wages. The pupils have the entire benefit of their earnings." "At Lyons, France, the manufacture of divers stuffs absorbs the hands of thousands of men and women; but the men, only, enjoy the privilege of inventing combinations of forms and colors destined to inveigle the eyes of fashionable caprice." In the school of design, Philadelphia, a charge of $9 per quarter is made to amateur pupils for instruction, and a charge of $4 per quarter to professional pupils. In the school of design, New York, a charge of $4 per quarter is made to pupils who acquire instruction as an accomplishment: to those fitting for a profession, no charge is made. A lady teacher in the New England school of design had a salary of $400. We will copy an article placed at our disposal on the artistic employments of women in America. It was written by a former principal of the school of design in Boston: "The artistic employments of women in this country may be divided into three classes: 1st, those devoted to the fine arts; 2d, those engaged in designing and the business departments of the arts; 3d, teachers of drawing, painting, &c.--1. Under this head comparatively few will be found; the number, however, is fast increasing, and as avenues of sale for their works are found, I doubt not that there will be a marked improvement both in the quality of their work and in the amount paid for their labor. Most who pursue this department are confined to portrait painting or crayon portraits. I have seen beautiful portraits in colored crayons executed by ladies. I regret to say a comparatively small price was given, varying from $10 to $25, while works executed by men not a whit superior in any respect would command from $25 to $50, and even more.--2. _Designing, and the Business Department of the Art._ This admits of several divisions, and first we will take designing for textile materials. When women are engaged in the mills, their labor is very poorly paid for, compared with the payment made to the other sex. I know of about twenty women who are so engaged. The prices paid for their labor varies from $1 to $2 per day--men receiving from $800 to $1,200 and even $1,500 per annum. The difference here, however, is not so great, when the time given by the two to the necessary study is compared. Many of the male designers serve an apprenticeship varying from three to seven years before they are supposed to be fitted to take the situation of designer in a mill, and even this does not include the preliminary instruction in the school. Women, on the contrary, after a year or little more of study, enter the mill on equal terms with the prepared designer, his pay at the commencement of his engagement usually being from $1 to $1.50 per day. The employment of women at all in this department is almost a new thing, and is not yet countenanced to any great extent. Time, however, will remove all difficulties in the way, and, by steady perseverance I think woman will be able to show herself superior to man in this branch, because it is more in her own domain than in that of man. When the designs of women are presented to manufacturers and found acceptable, they will command a price equal to the designs of men. This I speak from experience, having disposed of designs for silver ware, printed coach linings, coach lace, paper for walls, calicoes, delaines, and muslins, and other articles of like nature. These have commanded the same price as the designs of men, but it is difficult at times to find a market for them. I remember presenting some designs to a manufacturer, about two years since, which were very much praised; but when I stated they were made by ladies, at first it was said to be impossible, and then they sunk in value, were wrong in the mechanical detail, were not adapted to the purpose for which they were intended; but, unfortunately for the truth of the latter statement, they were disposed of to another manufacturer in the same street, who had formed rather a different idea of the powers of women as compared with men. A second branch of business art is drawing for mechanical purposes and patent inventions. There are in this city many ladies who earn quite a handsome income by drawing for the patent office, patent agents, &c., the drawings chiefly linear mechanical ones, the remuneration varying according to ability. Some are paid by the piece, and others by the day. The day laborers earn from $1 to $2, and in two instances $2.25 and $2.50 per day. The price of work varies according to size, intricacy, finish, &c., the rate being nearly that which men receive, in some instances the same. This requires mechanical knowledge which is not very often possessed by women, but is a branch of study that would be found both pleasant and profitable, especially if they were prepared for it by an elementary course in the public schools. It is not a branch that admits of much display, and is therefore almost entirely neglected, or taught in such a way as to be utterly futile for all practical purposes. A third branch is architectural drawing. I know of but one instance of a woman pursuing this branch, which is both delightful, useful, and very profitable. Perhaps there is not any department of the fine arts to which woman might more successfully devote herself than to this. Such a devotion of woman's power would tend to abolish the gross deformities we so often see paraded before our eyes in the streets, in the form of buildings presenting every possible incongruity of shape and every perversion of the beauty of form. This requires much study, but would eventually repay for all the time and trouble that would be bestowed upon it. A fourth is wood and other engraving. This commands as high a price as men's labor, when brought into the market; but when women are employed in engraving establishments, the grossest injustice is shown them in the inequality of the payments made. A woman will receive, in the same place, for the same amount of labor, a sum not exceeding half of that paid to the men in the same employment. In England this department stands on a perfect equality as regards sex. The quality of the work being the test of price, it is the same to men as to women, if the quality is the same.--3. _Teachers of Drawing and Painting._ This is always most profitable when pursued independently of the schools. When it is so pursued, the rate of payment varies from $5 to $25 per quarter, for each pupil, excepting in the case of very small children, when the prices may be a trifle lower, but the same would be the case with men as with women. In most academies the service of teaching in this department is given by preference to women, and at the same price. When they are engaged simply as assistants, then a gross inequality begins. A man would be paid say $200 or $300 per annum for one half day a week--a woman $100 or $150 at most. The reason for this lies deeper than I can divine, but in other instances when a lower price is paid, it is generally the fault of the individual employed. There should, if possible (and I conceive it to be so), be a fixed rate for teaching a certain number of pupils, and so much more additional for every one added: this would give a general rate for all to make their demands upon. If more branches, or extended time, or any other demand was made upon the individual teaching, then they would have some standard whereby to regulate the extra charges. There is only one feature which requires to be somewhat changed, and that is a tendency to superficiality. Women oftentimes commence to teach before they themselves have taken more than the most elementary steps for their own improvement. Time will, however, regulate this deficiency; and as the resources of improvement open to all, those who devote themselves to the honorable employment of teaching will take all proper steps to fit themselves for the office.--There is no department of the fine arts--painting, sculpture, architecture, or manufacturing design--in which woman may not run an equal race with man, if she takes the same trouble and care to fit herself for it, and, when fitted, is faithful to her own interests and her profession. This will never be accomplished by schools of design as at present instituted, for they lose their character and become designing shops. This must be laid aside, and culture, with a general or specific object, be alone attended to for the time necessary to learn properly and thoroughly what they are about to practise. Men and women both, now expect to learn the art of designing fully in the course of six or twelve months. This can only be done to a limited extent, depending on the powers of the pupil, the mode of instruction, and the capacity of the teacher to win and to guide those committed to his or her care. If the profession is entered upon with unfitness and want of knowledge, then the prices of labor will be necessarily reduced to a low scale; if with fitness, and a certainty of our own capacity, we can demand 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.' The interests of this nation demand the production of native designs, and whenever her children are fully fitted to produce them, are competent to put their designs side by side with those of other nations and challenge a comparison, every other obstacle will dwindle into a shadow, and every difficulty that now stands in the way of woman's _natural_ place, in art at least, will be finally removed--to which end 'may God speed the plough.'" =46. Miscellaneous Designers.= Designing is a peculiar, and more a natural than a cultivated talent. A few years ago, Miss M. drew on stone for the New England Glass Company. She received $10 a page, which she could generally do in four days, working only four hours per day. Two men had at different times done the work for the company, one receiving less, and the other more than she. Misses L. and R. drew and designed in the carpet factory at Lowell. They received $1.25 per day. A young lady who designed at the Pacific Mills, in Lawrence, was said to receive $3 per day. Miss S., who had given but eighteen months' practice to drawing, designed for ground and painted glass, and received $6 per week. Designs for toys, dissected pictures, games, puzzles, &c., are an appropriate filling up of spare moments for a designer. I was told by an English seller of embroideries, that, in England, designing and making patterns for embroideries is a distinct business. He has been at it many years, and does not feel himself perfect yet. It is not made a distinct branch in this country yet, because there is not enough of it done. Here a few primary patterns can be arranged and rearranged so as to answer all the demands of trade. A great deal of money is expended on monuments, but there is a want of variety in the designs. A wide field is here opened to operators in this department. Some designers in Boston write me: "Only a few ladies are employed in our business, for there are not many who are willing to devote the time necessary to become proficient. Some are employed in Europe. The employment is not more unhealthy than sewing. Women are paid according to their proficiency, and earn from $3 to $15 per week. Women receive the same compensation as men, if they do the work as well and as fast, but they ordinarily cannot do either. They are not paid until they have spent two or three years learning. A combination of artistic and mechanical talent is required. The prospect for employment is good. There is not much variation in the seasons for work. Ten hours is the average time required. There are now as many in the business as can find lucrative or constant employment. It requires not less than five years, generally more, to be a fair general workman in this business. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia are about the only places where there is a demand for designers. A first-class education and cultivated taste are absolutely necessary to success." =47. Designers for Calico Prints.= This employment is well adapted to women. It requires taste and ingenuity. Its labors are light, but rather confining. A person of lively fancy and nice powers of discrimination succeeds best. The gay, rich, dark colors of winter clothing are not suitable for summer; nor are the light, delicate ones of summer suitable for winter clothing. This inviting field of labor, now that it is unbarred to woman, we hope will be well improved. Let her enter, and she will find sufficient to "reward a careful gleaner with a valuable sheaf or two." We do not speak of inventing and preparing designs for calico prints particularly, but of the general field for designers. Some proprietors engage a designer (here and there a lady) to stay at their establishments, and devote all their time to the preparing of designs--paying a fixed salary for the month, year, or any time specified. Some adopt the same plan in wall-paper establishments. The price generally paid for a design pattern for calicoes is from $1 to $3. =48. Designers for Wall Paper.= One of the most important branches of designing is that of preparing patterns for wall paper, fire screens, &c. In the report of the Philadelphia School of Design it is stated that one of the ladies of that school received $60 for a design some time ago. They seldom bring that much, and all designs prepared will not sell. The usual price for a good hall design is from $12 to $20; and of paper for a room, from $12 to $16. We fear it will be long before the beautiful designs of the French are equalled by Americans. Their taste must be more highly cultivated before such is the case. Mr. C., of New York, employs a designer (Frenchman), paying him $1,000 a year, who receives in another manufactory a salary of $3,000 a year. N. C. & Co. get some of their patterns from the school of design in Paris, because the French have more taste in designing, or, rather, that taste has been more cultivated. Brande gives the merits of designing as follows: "Every work of design is to be considered either in relation to the art that produced it, to the nature of its adaptation to the end sought, or to the nature of the end it is destined to serve; thus its beauty is dependent on the wisdom or excellence displayed in the design, in the fitness or propriety of the adaptation, and upon the utility of the end." =49. Draughtswomen.= There are several kinds of draughting, or drawing on stone: architectural, mechanical, letter, figure, and landscape. Very few women have undertaken draughting in any of its branches. But we do not see why it should be confined to men. We suppose the minds of some women are as well adapted to the business as those of some men. Our ideas of the fitness of women for architectural drawing are given under the article Architects. =50. Employés in the United States Mint.= A very interesting description of the employment of ladies in the United States Mint at Philadelphia will be found in _Godey's Lady's Book_, of August, 1852. Col. Snowden, Director of the Mint, writes to me as follows: "Women are employed to adjust the weight of the blanks or planchets, preparatory to the coinage--each piece for the gold coinage being separately weighed and adjusted. So also are the larger coins of silver; namely, the dollar and the half dollar. They are also employed in feeding the coining presses. There are about fifty women at present employed. This force is amply sufficient for our present operations, and for any additional amount of work that the mint may be called on to perform. The employments in which they are engaged are healthy and pleasant. Some years ago the women received seventy-five cents a day in the adjusting room, and eighty-five cents for those employed in the coining room. Since that time I have increased their per diem compensation to $1.10 in both departments. They are paid monthly. Men employed in labor of a similar character secure about $2.20 per day. A day's work is about ten hours; ordinarily the women do not work more than seven or eight hours; sometimes more, sometimes less, but never beyond ten hours. There are no other occupations in the mint, than where they are now employed, suitable for women. I am greatly in favor of employing women, and I have extended the employment of them as far as it is practicable. For adjusting the weight of coins, and attending or feeding the coining presses, I consider women as not inferior to men, except that they cannot endure work for as great a number of hours." The adjusting room is kept very close, as even the breath of a person may affect the gold dust. The windows are kept closed on that account all the year. Visitors are not permitted to enter this room. I have been told that the adjusters wear chamois dresses, which they change before leaving the mint. They are required to wash their hands and clean their nails before leaving the premises, lest gold dust should be in them. A great many applications are made for situations in the mint. None but a thoroughly honest person should occupy so responsible a place." =51. Engravers and Chasers of Gold and Silver.= I was told by a lady in Philadelphia, that had been engaged with her husband for some years in chasing the backs of gold watches, and had laid by quite a snug little fortune, that from $5 to $6 is paid for engraving a watch case. It requires many years to render one a competent gold or silver chaser--I think about five years. A general engraver told me he thought women could very well engrave jewelry, silver, and card plates. The superior taste of women could be exercised to advantage. He thinks a woman of good abilities could obtain sufficient practice to earn good wages at the expiration of six months. It is a very confining business, but one that pays well. It requires more skill in drawing than beauty of penmanship, though the last is a desirable item. A good engraver calculates to earn $1 an hour. The kinds most suitable for a lady are so clean that she need not have her clothes soiled by her work. Mr. C. knew a lady once in New York who was a beautiful engraver. She learned the business with her father. A watchmaker can soon learn to engrave, because he uses similar tools, and knows how to handle them. A person that can engrave watches could easily engrave coarser work. Engravers, when employed by the week, earn from $12 to $25; and $15 a week is a fair average of an engraver's wages. An engraver cannot well work more than nine hours a day. Ornamental engraving is done in some jewelry manufactories by women. Engraving is done with gravers, but chasing is executed with punches and a small hammer. Engraving is more on the surface than chasing. An article chased is indented on the inner side, one engraved is not. It requires some time to excel in chasing and engraving. There are two kinds of watch engraving--that of landscape and that of borders. I was told by an Englishman that some silver-plate chasing is done in England by women. A jeweler writes: "We occasionally employ women in engraving--on brass, and we do not find any difficulty. In this branch of business, we believe, they are more suitable than men." Mr. S., who engraves on gold, silver, and other bright metals, told me that a long time back all the engraving in his branch was done in England by women. It is light work. The designing is like a lawyer's work--hard on the brain. Most engravers in this country do their own designing. His father was the first engraver in New York. He takes apprentices for five years, not paying anything the first year, the second, $2 a week and clothing, and increases according to the attainments of the learner. There are two kinds of engraving in his branch: the line engraving can be done with one tool, the other kind requires several. He can obtain foreigners who can do both kinds (usually called mongrel engraving), and who would be glad to get work. Chasing and polishing are about as good mechanical pursuits as a woman can follow. Some silver chasing is done by filling the article with sand, and striking with proper tools; some is pressed with heavy machinery. Soft chasing is done on metals, but the chasing of plated ware requires some strength in the wrists, and is done before being plated. The patterns are placed before the workers. It requires a long time and application to acquire proficiency. More women could find employment as chasers, if they would apply themselves long and closely enough. A chaser, who employs eight girls in Providence in making and chasing jewelry, writes: "They earn from $4 to $5 per week, but men from $15 to $18. Women cannot do their work as well as men. Men spend from two to three years learning, women from one to two months. Spring and fall are the best seasons. The prospect of employment for women in this branch is good. There are other parts of the jewelry business in which women could be employed, and I think they will be. I prefer to employ women, because they are cheaper." A jewelry engraver writes: "In some branches of our style of engraving, women are employed in France and Germany. The occupation is sedentary. The average rate of workmen is $12. I think women could command the same prices as men. It requires about one year to learn. There are but few first-class engravers. A bold and steady hand, a ready and quick ingenuity, which would qualify a person to be a good draughtsman and designer, are the qualifications most needed for an engraver. About fifteen years ago there was no demand for engraving, but it is now on the increase, and considered a necessary finish to jewelry. About the Christmas holidays are the best seasons for work. Ten hours a day are required. In the Western and Southern States are openings--in large cities a surplus. I think, women are peculiarly adapted to engraving, but they would be likely to marry, and then we would have our trouble to repeat in teaching new learners." =52. Equestrians and Gymnasts.= In equestrian entertainments, much depends on the accessories. Without music, artificial light, and paintings, they would be rather tame. The principal requisites for a circus rider I take to be agility, grace, and fearlessness. Size and form have not so much to do in making a successful rider and gymnast as one would suppose. The athletic exercises require vigor and firmness of muscle. One should be trained from the earliest childhood. Children usually begin as early as three years old. In former times, these children were, many of them, picked up in the streets, and there is no doubt that these human waifs had a hard time of it; but now many of the professionals bring up their own children to the business. All the performers, in addition to their several "star" or "single" acts in the ring, are required to appear in any capacity assigned them in the scenic pieces and spectacles, and to attend the rehearsals of the same; also, to appear and remain on the stage in proper dresses, for the purpose of filling the scene, and giving a gay and animated appearance to the stage. Mr. Nixon's establishment, New York, being the most complete in the country, and being thoroughly systematized in every department, will serve as the best source from which to derive information concerning the routine duties required, and the weekly moneys paid there to circus performers. "The principal performers in Mr. Nixon's company are paid as follows: Ella Zoyara, equestrian, in addition to first-class passage from England and back for self and two servants, medical attendance for self and servants, carriage and horses whenever required, and a benefit every two weeks, receives per week $500; Mr. William Cooke, equestrian, manager, passages for self and wife from England and return, and per week, $500; James Robinson, equestrian, for self and three horses, $305; the Hanlon brothers, six persons, gymnasts, per week $300; Mr. Charlton, stilt walker, passage, &c., $125; Mr. Duverey, contortionist, passage, &c., $125; Mlle. Heloise, equestrienne, $100; Mlle. Clementine, equestrienne, $100; M. and Mad. Du Boch, equestrians, $100; Master Barclay, equestrian, ten years old, $75; Mr. Whitby, ringmaster and equestrian, $100; Mr. S. Stikney, equestrian and general performer, $100; Mr. J. Pentland, clown, $100; Mr. Ellingham, ringmaster and general performer, $40; Mr. Armstrong, equestrian and general performer, $40; W. Kincaid, do., $40; W. Pastor, do., $30; W. Bertine, do., $30; Brennan, do., $25; Niel, do., $25; F. Sylvester, do., $20; A. Sylvester, do., $20; W. Ward, slack rope and clown, $30; Prof. Yates, ballet master, $25; Mr. Stark, general performer, $25; S. Ruggles, $20; Davenport, $20; Foster, $20; Peterson, $20; four lady equestrians, per week, each $20; and twenty ballet girls and twenty supernumeraries." We extract from an English paper the following statement: "In Paris, no less than 15,000 persons were admitted yesterday, although the prices were doubled for the occasion, to witness the performance on the tight rope of a woman--Madame Blanche Saqui--who is entering her eighty-fifth year." =53. Etchers and Stamp Cutters.= In England, in the seventeenth century, Anna and Susannah Lister were regarded as having much skill in the noble art of etching. They illustrated a work on natural history written by their father. A century later, the Countess Lavinia Spencer and a Miss Hartley became noted for their skill in etching. Rosa Elizabeth Schwindel, of Leipsic, worked at the business of a stamp cutter in the beginning of the eighteenth century; and two Frenchwomen during the same century--M. A. de St. Urbin and E. Lesueur. =54. Herbarium Makers.= Herbariums are collections of dried plants. They are formed by gluing to sheets of paper the flowers and leaves of plants, after they have been pressed and dried. To botanists, they are useful; and a choice collection is a frail, but pretty ornament, for a centre table. The largest public herbaria are at Berlin, Paris, and London. It is supposed that some of them may contain as many as 60,000 species. There is not much of beauty or interest in such a collection, but for scientific purposes they may be valuable. It is not unusual to see them made of the plants and weeds of the sea; and a very pretty collection do they make, if got up with taste. A book has been lately printed containing plates, with explanations for making them into pictures and other fanciful arrangements. The making of herbariums of both earth and marine plants, would furnish a pleasant pastime to ladies of leisure, and a source of revenue, perhaps, to those who might wish to make it a matter of profit. =55. Lapidaries.= A skilful manipulation is necessary to the business of a lapidary. If woman has sufficient firmness of nerve to perform the duties of surgeon, we see not why she would not have for the cutting of precious stones. It is a business conducted on a limited scale and by few persons in this country. Mr. R., of New York, told me that a lady in Birmingham, England, had a large establishment, and employed women and girls to work for her. He knew of no lady that worked at the business in the United States, except one that used to be in an establishment on Broadway. The employment, he thinks, is not unhealthy. After a lady has learned, she would probably earn from $4 to $5 a week, working for others. He received $12 a week when working as a journeyman. He spent seven years as an apprentice in England, but he learned the manufacture of jewelry in connection. The prospect of employment depends much on the condition of the money market, but there is reason to think the business will increase as the country grows older. All seasons of the year are alike. Money matters only make a change. He says there are many books written on the precious stones and the art of cutting and polishing them. He mentioned a book by a lady of London on the subject. Mr. H., an importer and manufacturer of cornelian and other fancy goods, told me that grinding precious stones is very hard work. Men lie across wooden benches to apply the agate, cornelian, or whatever it may be, to the grindstone. There are eight grindstones, weighing twenty tons each, on one axle. The polishing is done by boys, who sit at small wooden wheels, some of which are covered with leather. Sometimes women do this work. As this method of grinding stones is done by water power, it is done more cheaply than by steam. In Germany, a man who works at precious stones or makes up jewelry at home, has his wife and daughters to assist him, and hires a peasant girl to do his housework. The women and girls make the fastenings for earrings, and file and polish the rings. He pays seventy cents a gross in Germany for them. He says, in the country and villages of northern Germany daughters are considered treasures, for they remain at home, and by their handiwork maintain themselves; but in the south of Germany, where there are no manufactures, girls are a burden on their parents. B., of Philadelphia, used to employ girls to set up jet, garnet, and turquoise for grinding; but those stones are now out of fashion, and so girls are not employed. He says an old lady, whose daughter is connected with the Home Mission, wished them to give instruction to her daughter in cutting stones, that she might, as a pastime, cut those brought by members of the family from the seashore and watering places. He thought it likely she would also teach the art in the Mission School. Cutting facets he thought pretty work for women. They can either sit or stand at the tables. There is nothing unhealthy in the grinding, as the stones are kept wet all the time. But the dust used in nipping glass and stones is injurious to the lungs. When a man has been nipping all day, his nostrils are nearly closed. The amount of work depends on fashion. There are seven establishments in Providence, and the work is done by steam. Some stones cannot be cut by steam machinery, as the wheel must every few seconds be graduated in motion. In hard times, the jewelry business and employments connected therewith are dull, as people dispense with superfluities. Southerners buy most jewelry, but now they do not indulge in such purchases. =56. Landscape Gardeners.= Mrs. R. often goes and looks at gardens, directs how to lay them out, and what to buy for them. She then orders the plants of others, and sells on commission, having them arranged according to her own taste, influenced by that of the purchaser. Her purchases are made of a German, living some distance from town, who can raise them cheaper than she could in the city. Her compensation, of course, varies greatly. A landscape gardener writes: "What a lady could do as landscape gardener at the West, I do not know. I am rather inclined to doubt her success at the East. It would require too much time and space to enter here into the details of what are required to constitute a landscape gardener: First, one must have a decided love for it, and a willingness to sacrifice much to the pleasure of the occupation. Nor can I say a great deal in favor of the profits. I have never been able to make a living by the profession, although I have often thought if I had gone to New York, or farther West, the case might have been different. In pages 381 and 382 of 'Country Life,' and in many other parts of the book, you will see what I consider essential to the making up and preparation of a landscape gardener, and better expressed than I can condense into a letter." Mr. C., of Massachusetts, writes: "I have never known a lady to undertake the profession of landscape gardening; and much of the labor which I find it necessary to perform, would be impossible for a lady. Still, there is much in which female taste would find abundant field for exertion, if the labor could be so divided as to make it profitable. My first work on any estate is to make an accurate topographical survey of the ground, and draw a plan of it in its natural state, and then proceed to make my designs for its arrangement; and when that is done, if required, I undertake the superintendence of the work at the ground. A lady would have to employ a surveyor, in the first place, and would labor under many disadvantages in directing the operations upon grounds; and, to judge from my own experience, the business could not be made profitable under such circumstances. Loudon's 'Encyclopædia of Gardening' will give the best directions I know of for the necessary operations of designing and executing plans, and Downing's work, with Sargent's appendix, comprises enough suggestions, on matters of taste, for the use of any person who is possessed of innate natural taste, without which I would advise no one to attempt to be a landscape gardener." =57. Lithographers.= The impression for chalk drawings is made by delicate manipulations with crayon pencils; for ink drawings, with steel pens and camel-hair brushes. It requires one skilled in the use of her pencil, for every stroke of the pencil or pen on the stone remains, and cannot be erased. Consequently, any defect on the stone is conveyed to every copy of the paper. In answer to a letter of inquiry, respecting the time necessary for preparation, the writer says: "A person who draws well upon paper would, I should think, with six months' practice on stone, become proficient. The process differs little from crayon drawing on paper; and the progress of pupils depends entirely on their previous attainments in drawing. The different kinds of lithography are black, chromo, and gold illuminated; also, lithography combined, or uncombined, with embossing. In a report of a British school of design, it is stated that the chromo-lithographic class for females "exhibit the commencement of a series of useful labors." An immense number of cheap lithographs are colored by women; such as are hung in taverns, country houses, sailors' homes, servants' rooms, &c. At Mr. C.'s establishment, I was told that in France the females are quite as successful as the male artists in lithography. He says lithographs require to be more highly colored than the colors we see in nature. Mr. C. thinks of sending to France for lithographers, as he cannot get enough in New York well qualified. A correct eye, skilful manipulation, and an appreciation of art are required to make one skilful in lithography. Germans excel, because they have so much patience. An American would become nervous at the slow work that they prosecute with the greatest pleasure. At Mr. C.'s they have a forewoman, who superintends the girls, who are paid by the quantity and kind of work they do. He finds that small girls are usually the best workers. Their fingers are more nimble, and they enter into it with more zeal. He thinks it best for them to commence at ten or twelve years of age. Prospect good for employment in that branch. The coloring of all the finest pictures is done by men. It requires some time to become sufficiently expert to earn much. Their girls earn from $3 to $7 a week. The work requires care, and is wearisome, because of sitting long and steadily. Mrs. P., Brooklyn, an English lady, learned to draw when eight years old, and studied lithography with a distinguished artist of London, who executed entirely with his left hand, having lost three fingers on his right when he was a child. She has spent twenty-two years in lithographing--seventeen of them in this country. She is probably the only lady professionally engaged in this business in the United States. She has earned almost constantly, I was told, from $12 to $30 a week. Lithographing is very lucrative to a skilful artist. The remuneration is better than women often receive for their handiwork. We believe some women could find employment in it, if they were prepared. Mrs. P. excels in architectural drawing. She thinks one must have the talent of an artist, and great practice with the pencil, to succeed. She has given instruction to several youths, but never to one of her own sex. One must be articled, and pass through a regular course of advancement, to follow it advantageously. To an apprentice, after two or three years' practice, a small premium is paid. She had one youth to learn of her, who, after four years' time, received $7 a week from her for his work. She thinks there will be employment to a few well qualified. She has always been kept busy. The employment is not more unhealthy than any other of a sedentary kind. Mr. M. says they have no difficulty in finding enough of crayon lithographers, but that there is more lithographic engraving done than crayon lithographing. It is done on stone with instruments, very much as engraving is done on copper. We have read "that an improved method of transferring copies of delicate copper and steel plate engravings to the surface of lithographic stone has been invented. One copy taken from the steel or copper plate, after being transferred to the stone, is capable of producing 3,000 prints." "Lithography, engraving, and especially engraving on wood, would gain in quality by passing from men's hands to the hands of women." "Lithographic works are produced which rival the finest engravings, and even surpass them, in the expression of certain subjects." The first lithography executed in the United States was in Boston, 1826. W. & S. used to employ girls to color lithographs, but found it did not pay. They paid from $4 to $5 a week to women, who did the common part of the work. Men did the finer parts, and earned from $12 to $25 a week; but only those who are expert, have artistic taste, and understand the business, can earn so much. French lithographs are prepared and the coloring done so much cheaper in Europe, they have ceased to have it done in New York. B., lithographer, Philadelphia, employs many ladies--about twenty--in the house. Some associate in companies, and take their work to the house of one of their number; but the greater part are educated women, who do not wish it known that they earn money by their labor: these carry the plates to their own homes (and even have them sent to the fashionable places of resort in summer), so that many a fair damsel trips along Chestnut street with a roll of something, which seems to be music, but is, in fact, work. The coarse handed take no part in this employment. Very few have ever attained the highest degree of proficiency in it. The most delicate work is done by men. Americans have most aptness for coloring, although the Germans excel in drawing on stone. Women seldom attempt the latter art. It requires long practice for girls to excel in coloring. Many grades of skill are required to color lithographs, and there is much difficulty in making all the copies exactly like the first. Some need a treatment so nearly approaching the artistic, that scarcely any one who has the skill can be found to give his labor for the price, which is necessarily limited. We gained no information as to the amount of wages paid to the colorists, but, judging from the price of a very beautiful specimen (29 cents), it must be sadly inadequate. The scientific societies are the main support of this business. The Government, indeed, gives very extensive orders, but there is always so much competition to obtain them, that the profit is small. Audubon was the greatest encourager of this branch of industry. This employment is very desirable in every respect for educated women; and although machinery for printing in colors is fast encroaching on it, yet it will long offer a field for female enterprise. Our informant employs from 100 to 300 hands, according to the prosperity of the times. A commercial crisis affects this as well as all other trades. One of the firm of the best lithographic establishment in New York, told me they pay their men for drawing on stone from $25 to $30 a week. The time required to learn lithography, he thought, would depend much on natural talent. A good knowledge of drawing is necessary. He thought men would soon get over the opposition of women entering the business; but they did not like the restraint of working where women are. They would soon become accustomed to it; and if they were women of the right kind, it might be a very beneficial restraint. But, as to that, women could do the work at home. Many Germans, well acquainted with the art, are engaged in crayoning. When they first come to this country, they work for lower wages than Americans, but after a while learn their value, and ask as much as any one else. On account of the low wages for which foreigners can usually be had, but few Americans have prepared themselves for this occupation. But when work is plenty, and the individual industrious and skilful, he can earn good wages. Seven eighths of the work done for this country is executed in New York. The agent of a lithographic company writes: "Drawing on stone could be done by women as well as men; and would open to them a very genteel and remunerative branch of business. The drawing is now done mostly by Germans and Frenchmen; but ladies who have a taste for drawing could soon learn this art. The usual price for such artists now is from $12 to $35 per week." Prof. P., of New York, gives instruction in lithography, charging $12 per quarter of eleven weeks--two lessons per week. Special arrangements are made with pupils who intend to devote themselves to the profession as artists or teachers. A gentleman remarked to me that Mr. S., a certain distinguished lithographer of this city (New York), would make an excellent teacher in that art. His forte is heads. A few strokes from his pencil always give a beautiful finish to a piece of work. =58. Map Makers.= Women could not well travel about to obtain information of localities for the making of maps, but nearly all the manual labor connected with the business would be very suitable for them. Lithographing maps is said to be a profitable branch of the art, and opens a field to competent women. Attending the machines for making impressions from the stones might very well be performed by women. "In Philadelphia, map coloring gives employment to about 175 females, some of whom display exquisite taste in this delicate art." There used to be 150 girls in New York painting maps, but there are very few now. Freedley tells of a map-manufacturing establishment in Philadelphia that "turns out 1,200 maps weekly. Connected with it are two lithographic printing offices, having twenty presses, and coloring rooms, in which 35 females are employed." I was told by a lady who had colored maps, that it is trying on the eyes and poorly compensated. A map maker said he was always most busy in the fall, and then employed from 12 to 16 women. In winter he employed about half that number, and they principally married women, who have worked for them several years. Mr. W. pays two of his best and most experienced lady workers a certain sum by the week, and they hire girls and women to work for them. The profits of these forewomen, aside from their own work, amount to $1.50 to $2 a week the year round. Girls receive $1.50 a week while learning. It requires from six months to one year to become proficient. Neatness, a steady hand, knowledge of colors, and fineness of touch, are the principal requisites for a good map colorist. It requires no artistic knowledge. An expeditious and experienced hand can earn $1 a day. There is at present a need of hands in New York, and a surplus in Philadelphia. All seasons are alike in this business, except as monetary affairs are concerned. All Mr. W.'s hands work in the house. They work about nine hours a day all the year, and never take maps home with them, as they are mostly large and heavy maps. Map making is mostly confined to Philadelphia and New York. None are made in the South and West. There is one map publisher reported in Richmond, but he has his maps made in New York. Mr. C. gives his maps to a map mounter, who employs a girl to sew the bindings on with a sewing machine. She is paid at the same rate as any other operator. The paper bindings are of course pasted on. Mr. C. employs one girl to paint the outlines, but all the other painting is done by stencil plates. Map coloring formerly gave employment to many females, but now it is very rare that a map is colored by hand. The stencilling process introduced by the Germans has superseded it, as they are thereby rendered cheaper. Girls used to earn 75 cents to $1 a day for painting maps. If girls would learn stencilling and work on their own responsibility, they might compete with the Germans. The process is very simple and soon learned. At Mr. H.'s, I saw a large room full of Germans stencilling. Men earn $8 or $9 a week, and do it faster and better than girls, as they have more strength. I saw one girl shading, who earned $1 a day. A map manufacturer writes me: "In map coloring I am compelled to employ men to a large extent. A curious fact is, that respectable middle-aged women, who have been coloring for years on piecework, make from $4 to $5 per week; while young men, comparatively unpractised, earn at the same prices, say from $9 to $10." A manufacturer who employs about 80 females, writes: "I employ women in pasting and putting down maps, who receive from $3 to $4 a week, being paid by the week, and working ten hours a day. The difference in prices of male and female labor is about one half. One can learn the business in a few weeks; the only qualifications requisite are sobriety and strength. The prospect for work in this branch is good. There is no difference in the seasons. Some parts of the work can be done more cheaply by women. A supply of hands can always be had. The women do their work less carefully than men." A map publisher in New Hampshire writes: "I employ 28 women and girls in binding, mounting, stitching, and coloring maps, and pay from $3 to $6 per week, working eight hours a day. The engraving is done by men, who receive from $6 to $20 per week. Women's labor can be learned in a few weeks, and is not so hard or difficult as men's. Engravers spend three years learning. I employ women to color, because they have better taste than men. Draughting surveys, engraving, and lithographing have never been attempted by women. New York is preferable as a locality." A gentleman in Boston writes: "We employ from four to eight women in our map-mounting department. They could not be employed in any other branch, which is varnishing and polishing all kinds of hard wood. There are a large number employed in New York, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. Pay varies from $3 to $5 per week--ten hours a day. We employ no men in this branch. There is something new to learn every day. Business is the same all the year. We pay our girls nothing while learning." A lithographer in Boston writes: "I employ women to color maps and pictures, paying by the piece, the workers earning from $3 to $6 per week. The employment is not unhealthy." =59. Medallists.= "Beatrice Hamerani worked at medallions, and in 1700 elaborated a large medallion of Pope Innocent XII., highly praised by Goethe." "Toward the end of the seventeenth century we hear of Madame Ravemann, who executed a beautiful medal, an exquisite specimen of cutting." In the school of design in New York, we saw two very creditable medallions, executed by one of the members of the school. =60. Modellers.= An ornamental designer and modeller writes me: "In England I attended my lady pupils at their own residences, except one to whom I gave instruction at my residence. One was the daughter of the Lord Mayor of the city, another the daughter-in-law of the Earl of H. Very few ladies learn any of the higher branches of art, except those that do so for recreation. A person that has some skill in drawing would, without the slightest doubt, soon acquire a knowledge of this beautiful art. Some persons have a natural gift for modelling, while others would not learn it with all the cultivation arising from education and good society. Probably the best source of employment in New York would be to design and model for the silversmiths--such as Ball & Black, Tiffany, &c. One of the most fertile departments in Europe to lady modellers is not carried on to any extent in this country--the making of fine pottery. The fingers, of course, must be soiled in modelling; but such an inconvenience is trifling compared with the pleasure of forming fruit, flowers, and foliage, or modelling the medallions of friends." The modelling of gas fixtures might afford employment to a small number of qualified women. We know of one establishment in Philadelphia where part of the designing for fixtures, lamps, and chandeliers, is done by a lady, and all the copying done for illustrated catalogues of those which are finished. She receives $6 a week, and goes about 9 o'clock A. M. and remains until 4 P. M. Mr P., at his school of art in New York, has a very large collection of casts. He gives instruction to boys and young men in modelling and drawing, charging 25 cents a lesson of 3 hours in the day or 2 in the evening. They are instructed in classes. Some of his casts are gigantic. In one of his rooms is a beautiful, but small model, in wax, for $300, representing a hunting scene. We have been told that some ladies in Germany model wax patterns for the ornamental work on china. Few tools are used by a modeller--the only ones are for the sharp and delicate parts that cannot be formed by the fingers. As clay does not shrink uniformly in drying it is moulded before drying in plaster of Paris, and a cast of the same material taken from that, which serves as a model for the workman. Some artists model in wax. Women might be employed in modelling ornamental and scroll work for brass founderies, &c., and get good wages. =61. Modellers of Wax Figures.= Catharine Questier, who lived in Amsterdam about 200 years ago, besides possessing many other accomplishments, was a modeller in wax. Joanna Sabina Preu, who lived in Germany not long after, was noted in the same way. A daughter of a Danish king also modelled in wax. "Professor Anna Manzalius, an Italian lady, modelled excellent portraits in the beginning of the eighteenth century." In England, in the early part of the eighteenth century, Mrs. Samore modelled figures and historical groups in wax. Mrs. Patience Wright, born in Bordentown, New Jersey, 1725, made a great many likenesses in wax. Some were full length and some were busts. They were mostly of the statesmen that were conspicuous in the American colonies at that time--yet some were of Englishmen, as she resided in London, after she became a widow, and supported her family by her handiwork. Her daughter, Mrs. Platt, modelled in wax in New York in 1787. I saw a maker of wax figures who said he had supported his family by his work, and thought a few others might make a living at it. One must be able to draw a model before undertaking wax figures. It requires good perceptive powers, ability to distinguish colors, and a peculiar taste. One must be able to work from life, and it is well to know how to do so from pictures. Mr. G., interested in Barnum's museum, told me that it was impossible to get such wax figures made in this country as they want. He spoke of the miserable imitations that are made, and thought a person well qualified would be patronized. Most of the groups in Barnum's museum were made by Mrs. Pelby, of Boston. Mr. Barnum wrote to Mr. Tussaud, whose mother made those so famous in London (and who is living now), to know if he would instruct some one to send to America; but he is not willing to give any one instruction. He employs persons to make the different parts; one set of workers make the bodies, another the heads, another the feet, &c. The world-famed group of his mother, Madame Tussaud, was first opened in Paris about 1770. After being exhibited in the large towns of Great Britain, it was taken to London, where it still remains. The figures are so life-like that now and then one is mistaken for a living person, while a person is as often mistaken in the group for one of the figures. More than forty persons are kept in charge of the exhibition. =62. Mineral Labellers and Arrangers.= A lady could not easily make collections of minerals, but she might find it an absorbing occupation to arrange and label them. Few ladies in our country have given any study to mineralogy, and very few would be competent to form cabinets. Yet, for those that are, we doubt not employment of that kind could be found. The individual wealth of our country has not been sufficient to enable many to make extensive collections. The most that exist are connected with universities and other institutions of learning. They have been collected at different times--in fact, mostly formed by single specimens, added now and then. Individual collections have been formed in the same way. Individuals add to the cabinets of their friends, as they have it in their power. The most extensive collections in the United States are at the Patent Office, Washington, and in the National Academy of Science, Philadelphia. Mr. H., a mineralogist from Berlin, says: "In Berne, Switzerland, a man and his wife are mineralogists. On the husband's death the wife will continue the business." It must require many years' study and an extensive knowledge of chemistry to become a superior mineralogist. I would think considerable time and capital were requisite for a mineralogist to establish himself. Mr. H. makes exchanges of minerals for others, receiving, I suppose, a commission for doing so. A geologist writes me: "No women are employed in my business. It requires one half of a lifetime to become fitted for the duties of a geologist. A knowledge of engineering, and most of the natural sciences, is needed. Draughting in the office is the only part suitable for women." =63. Musicians.= Madame Romeau says: "Few women have been engaged in musical compositions, and they have rarely undertaken important works. In painting and literature one is pre-occupied only with the work of the author. In music, it requires the coöperation of two persons--the composer, and the performer. Books and paintings act upon us without any intermediate objects, while the piece of the composer, to be understood, needs the flow of harmony noted on the paper in hieroglyphic signs, and must escape under the fingers from the instrument. It is necessary to animate the inert matter--to make it yield to the wish of the performer and reproduce the inspirations of the composer. Few women compose songs. A musician leads a different life from an artist, who lives in her studio and has few expenses. A musician must face the crowd, and hear its dissatisfaction, and smile at its applause. A cantatrice, or songstress, often travels from town to town like an actress." Some persons think none of the arts can be purely religious except music. "Mozart in music, and Raphael in colors, have taught us the spiritual ministry of the senses." A comparatively small quantity of music has been composed in the United States. The study of a lifetime is bestowed by very few on music. Some American ladies have gone to Europe to perfect their musical taste, and a few have acquired distinction. With musicians, as with vocalists--those who, in this country, have reaped the greatest profits in the shortest time were foreigners. Some were pianists, some flutists, some violinists--some one thing, and some another. The composition of music for soirées, fancy balls, masquerades, tableaux vivants, private theatricals, operas, dramas, musical farces, ballets, &c., might occupy all the spare time of musicians capable of composing. There is a circulating library in London of 42,000 volumes. There is, also, one in New York and one in Brooklyn. Subscribers to the one in Brooklyn pay in advance for one year $12, with the privilege of selecting from the catalogue $6 worth of music at the termination of the subscription; for six months, $6; for three months, $3; for a single piece worth less than $1, 6 cents per week; less than $2, 9 cents per week. Mr. G. thinks a lady can never become a good violinist, because it requires great strength in the right arm. The muscles of violinists are as rigid as a blacksmith's. I have heard that occasionally a pianist acquires such strength in his hands that he could almost prostrate you with one of his fingers. A gentleman told me, ladies could not become superior organists; that they cannot have sufficient power developed. It requires much strength of hands and feet. He remarked, the organist, at the church he attended, was a lady, but made no comments on her qualifications. I have known two lady organists, who were considered superior performers, and received as good salaries as gentlemen would have done. One received $500 for playing twice on Sabbath. On week days she gave instruction. I was told that she supported her whole family for years by her musical talents, and laid by money with which she purchased a comfortable dwelling in a city in New York State. The salaries of organists are small considering the amount of talent and practice required; but most organists teach music, or stand in music stores, or act as agents for manufacturers of musical instruments. "In the summer of 1860, among the Marblehead band of female shoe strikers in the procession at Lynn, Mass., was Miss Margaret Hammond, fifteen years old, who beat the drum in martial style the whole line of march." "In Ohio they have a lady drummer, who has received a diploma for her skill. Her name is Minerva Patterson, a daughter of Major Elisha Patterson, a wealthy farmer of Jersey, Licking Co." The French papers have given some insight to the prices paid great musicians, Malibran received in London, for every performance at Drury Lane, $750; Lablache, for singing twice, $750, and for a single lesson to Queen Victoria, $200. At a soirée in London Grisi received $1,200. Paganini charged $400 a lesson. "Herz and Thalberg each made about $60,000 in this country." There is a female musical society in London which gives concerts for benevolent objects. =64. Music Engravers and Folders.= Mr. L. engraves and prints music, and employs two ladies to fold it. There are but few music engravers. The smaller the number of persons in any one kind of business the higher the prices they can command. A lady in New Orleans engraves, whose husband is a music printer. It would require but two or three years to learn it. Some ingenuity, a knowledge of the value of notes in music, and judgment in the arrangement of them are necessary to make an engraver. In New Orleans, eight months are usually considered a year, I believe, in business arrangements. At a music engraver's the young man told me that he never heard of a woman engraving music in this country, but he knows that some do in Paris. The work they turn out, he added, is not good; it will not wear, because women have not sufficient strength in the wrist to engrave as deeply as a man. A person who engraves plates for music can earn from $3 to $5 a day. German work is considered the best, because the quality of the ink used is better. Music engraving is divided into two distinct branches--one is lettering and engraving the title page--the other is engraving the notes. No steam machinery has ever been invented for printing music, because the ink must all be put on the way the work is done. Music is one of the first things dispensed with in hard times. =65. Opera Performers.= The first opera of modern times was performed about the close of the fifteenth century. At the first introduction of the opera into France and England, it was much ridiculed by wits and critics. Voltaire, however, and others, came to its rescue, and with what success may be known, when it is acknowledged to be one of the favorite amusements of the fashionable world. The want of adaptedness of the opera to the English language has to a great extent excluded successful efforts at translation. Yet some operas have of late years been performed in English. "In Paris, the Italian opera is patronized by the Government, as a school of vocal music; and the managers are careful to maintain a complete and skilful company." In an opera, the music is the most important part, while at the theatre the music is subordinate to the play. The orchestra in some parts of the opera accompanies, and, in others, seems to respond to the sentiments of the piece. The operatic performance is not so warm, so impassioned, so abandoned, as that of the theatre. The trilling and sudden starting, so common in operas, is rather too artificial to please the unsophisticated. A conversational style is seldom used, but the words are expressed in a recitative style that is graceful and effective. In Germany, however, dialogue has been introduced. Good imitative powers are essential to success. The noble talent of music has been desecrated, in some operas, by the impure thoughts and language expressed. In the United States probably not more than thirty, out of the entire audience of several hundred, sufficiently understand the Italian, to follow the play without considerable effort; but it is so much of a pantomimic character that much is gained by the sense of sight. Much of the zest and interest are lost to those who are indifferent to the accessories. On this account, we suppose it can never become a favorite amusement with the generality of people. The French papers give some curious statements in regard to the salaries paid to great musical artists. We learn that Hummel left a fortune of $75,000, and twenty-six diamond rings, thirty-four snuff boxes, and one hundred and fourteen watches, which had been presented to him at various times. In modern days musicians are quite as extravagantly paid. Alboni and Mario get $400 every night they sing; Tamberlik, every time he sings a certain high note, demands $500; Madame Gazzaniga was paid $500 a night recently in Philadelphia; Lagrange, at Rio Janeiro, is now receiving a princely salary; and Piccolomini cost her manager over $5,000 a month; and these prices are said to be moderate, compared with those often paid in Europe to distinguished musical artists. At the opera house in Paris, for the present season, Mr. Colzado, the manager, pays as follows: to Tamberlik, for seventeen representations, $8,000; Alboni, $2,200 for seven representations; Mario, $15,000 for a season of five months; Grisi, $5,000 for two months; Madame Perer, $14,000 for the season; the Grazioni brothers, $15,400; Corsi, a baritone, $4,000; Galvani, $3,600; Nantin Didere, $4,000; Tecehini, $3,600; Mlle. de Ruda, $3,400. The chorus and orchestra cost for the season $17,600. "Parodi, the American prima donna, receives no less than $30,000 per annum, a larger salary than that paid to the President of the United States." "Miss Hensler, the American prima donna, has been engaged by the manager of La Scala for fifteen months, at the rate of $170 a month." "Sophie Curveth receives $2,500 a month, for eight representations; for every representation beyond eight in the month, $300 more." =66. Painters.= "Less prejudice exists against artists than teachers in France. They have privileges that teachers have not. Painting is considered the most desirable profession by parents for their daughters. The girl begins early in life to fit herself for her profession. The work is less severe than that of an author. Painting does not require such close application of mind, nor is it necessary to spend so much time in solitude, nor are the expense and anxiety so great as that of authorship. Gratuitous schools of art exist in Paris, where instruction is given principally in perspective. Most students prosecute the art in studios, paying from $4 to $6 a month. Most of them spend the whole day in the studios, from eight in the morning until six in the evening. The artist that instructs them visits the scholars only two or three times a week. The studio is a sort of mutual school, where pupils teach each other; they are of all ages. All conditions of society are represented. Three kinds of painting are done by them--face or portrait, landscape, and flowers. Most of the girls of the higher classes prefer landscape. Female artists compete with men, and wear their hair short. Few women like the physical fatigue of a painter's life. There is not the same play for coquetry in artists, as in singers or actors. It requires great perseverance for a female artist to acquire firmness of execution; she does not possess it to the same extent as man. Some artists are willing merely to copy paintings, paint portraits, and give lessons. The school of landscape painting is one well fitted for young and original talent. Women succeed in painting portraits; also, in painting flowers and fruit; very few have tried historical paintings." Painting is certainly a profitable employment for a lady artist of superior ability, if she can have enough to do. Miss F., New York, established a life school for lady artists. One subject is used at a time; the classes are limited--two classes--eight or ten pupils in each. Those that need instruction will pay $12 for twenty-two lessons; those without instruction, $6. There will be two sittings a week, of from three to four hours. A person of sensitive, nervous type, susceptible to every impression of a pleasant kind, is most likely to succeed as an artist. Mr. R. Peale told me that many ladies in Europe paint portraits. He considered it a higher style than landscape, or still life. He thinks painting itself not injurious to the health. The turpentine used is sanitary, and the white lead is deleterious only when taken into the lungs. What is inhaled in breathing can do no harm. Mr. Peale thought that the principal reason of artists being so poor in health, is because of their long and close confinement indoors. In painting the first coats are often applied by an assistant, employed by the artist; and in some cases, by the students of the artists. Miss Merrifield, of England, has written a work on the art of painting. A number of ladies in England, and in the United States, are winning a reputation as artists. The prospect to lady artists in the United States is very encouraging. Ladies are allowed the privilege, on proper application, to copy paintings in the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, the Düsseldorf, and the Bryant galleries, New York. According to the census of 1850, there were 2,093 male artists; but there are said to be not more than 600 or 700 superior artists in the United States. The patronage the best receive is such as to keep them well employed. A meagre support and a long life of labor are necessary to establish a reputation as an artist, even to one that has talent. But the way in which most of our first-class artists live, that are prudent and steady in their habits, and possess any business qualifications, contradicts the opinion, quite common, that an artist's life must always be one of self denial and poverty. We think artists fare as well as most people, and we do think it a life very inviting to the young ladies of our country. Those that have the time, the means, and the talents, will find it an absorbing, a fascinating employment. Women succeed best in painting pictures of their own sex, and of children. The more tender and delicate organizations are best suited to their talents. Most of our artists live in the metropolis, New York; the Western country is too new and crude. There are materials enough, but not much appreciation of talent. Besides there is less wealth, and another thing is, that artists must keep themselves where mention will now and then be made of their pictures, to bring them into notice, and where the most ready sale will be found for them. During the last few years a taste has been developed in St. Louis, that promises some golden fruit. A gallery of paintings has lately been opened there. Why is it that a talent for painting and poetry is so often combined? Is it that the quiet, contemplative state that produces poetical inspirations also favors the visible expression of beautiful thoughts? A poet painter is more frequently to be seen than a poet musician. One, I suppose, of a quick, lively disposition, and very impressible, might be more likely to possess musical talent than one of a quiet, thoughtful nature. But genius is not fettered by temperament. There is a society of female artists in London; the first public exhibition of their paintings took place in June, 1857. It is managed by a committee of eight ladies, and bound by twenty-three articles. A portrait painter writes: "The artist requires a high, well-developed anterior brain, a healthy body; and a brain and body well regulated and balanced; a love of the beautiful that inspires the character with patience and indomitable perseverance, and a contempt for applause; for 'art is long,' and, unless one is willing to 'scorn delights and live laborious days,' he can never meet with real success. If women can attain to excellence as artists, they can command the same remuneration as men receive. Art knows no sex." A professional artist remarked to me: "Amateur painters never attain excellency, because it requires not only talent, but constant application." I think if there is anything that should have its full value, it is a painting, because of the patience and perseverance necessary for an artist to excel, and the long and costly preparation requisite. It commands, too, a certain style of talent that many do not possess. In addition to this, those who can afford to buy paintings are those who can afford to pay a good price. =67. Animals.= We know of no artist in this country whose talents have been devoted to the painting of animals, and of but one lady, in any country, that has distinguished herself in that line--the far famed Rosa Bonheur. =68. Banners.= We saw an ornamental sign painter decorating a large flag. Stars are painted on the silk, and then sized and gilt. The flag was stretched on a frame like a piece of tapestry, but upright like an easel. Mr. M. had never known of any women being employed in the trade. He decorated banners for processions, political campaigns, &c. This is evidently a field for female industry. =69. Crayon and Pastel.= Crayon drawing seems to have been much in vogue in Italy in the seventeenth century; and we read of an Italian lady, as far back as 1700, devoting her time to pastel painting. The soft, light, dreamy effect given by the use of pastels, peculiarly fit the style for the portraits of ladies and children. Mrs. Dassel, of New York, was noted for her excellency in the use of pastels. Mrs. Hildreth, of Boston, is very successful in her crayon portraits. She charges from $30 to $40 a head. Mrs. M. A. Johnson, of Massachusetts, has spent some years working in crayon. "Her indefatigable patience in the execution of details, the fidelity of her likenesses, and the delicate perfection of finish in her pictures, are remarkable." Miss Clark received $20, and over, for crayon portraits in Boston, a few years ago. Before Miss Stebbins, of New York, became a sculptor, she drew crayon portraits, charging $50 per head. Her execution was said to be clear and forcible. =70. Flowers and Fruit.= During the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the present century, a number of lady artists have distinguished themselves in flower painting. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a few devoted themselves to it in Holland, Germany, Denmark, and France. For a few years past some American ladies have turned their attention to flower painting with marked success. A number in England have also obtained distinction. =71. Fresco.= The wife of an artist told me her husband knew of a fresco painter in England, whose daughter would assist him when he was hurried. But the lady thought working with men was objectionable. I heard of a young lady in New York, who assisted her father, by filling up the outlines, as he drew them on side walls. Mrs. Ellet states that Angelica Kauffman assisted her father in the interior decoration of a church, in Schwarzenberg. She painted, in fresco, the figures of the Twelve Apostles. Her success in an undertaking so difficult excited considerable attention. Mrs. N., wife of a fresco painter, thought the work unfit for women, because they would be compelled to work with men, and stand on platforms to work on ceilings; consequently are liable to exposure of person. They might paint the side walls, and let men paint the ceilings. =72. Historical.= But few ladies have devoted themselves to historical painting. The most lived during the latter part of the last century, and the commencement of the present. Catarina Vieira painted several church pictures, after the designs of her brother. =73. Landscape.= In the past century Holland gave to the world the largest number of female landscape painters. America and England bear away the palm for the present century. American scenery opens as wide a scope for the talent of the landscape painter as any on the globe. Mrs. ----, one of the first landscape painters of our country, thinks landscape requires more care and talent than portrait painting, but the latter pays best. She says there are some ladies in Boston, who are very good landscape painters. She thinks it would be very difficult for a young artist to become established in New York, without influential connections, and the means to keep her until she does become established; but would be more likely to succeed in cities in the South and West. She thinks there are good openings in Baltimore, for artists of every kind. She says art is much more encouraged in the United States during the last few years, and a good artist need not fear starving. The artists of New York have three receptions during the year. The object is to make known their paintings, with a view to selling. At the last annual sale of pictures for the New York Artists' Fund, $2,000 were received. Some artists copy a landscape exactly as they see it; some select the most beautiful parts of different landscapes, and combine them; and a few draw entirely from imagination. Good painters of scenes for theatres, I have been told, often receive from $25 to $40 per week. =74. Marine.= Some very good marine views have been executed in this country, but none by ladies. =75. Miniature Painters.= "We may run back as far as the twelfth century, and find a few miniature painters among the fair sex. Margaretta von Eyck devoted most of her time to painting miniatures, in the fifteenth century. In the seventeenth century, an Italian lady of Palermo distinguished herself as a painter in oils. Mrs. Wright, an English miniature painter, died in 1802; and Maria Conway was a noted miniature painter, living in London, who died in 1821. In the seventeenth century, Maria Rieger was employed to paint miniatures in the aristocratic circles of Germany. In the same century, a Swiss lady, Anna Wossar, began at the early age of thirteen to win a name in the same branch of painting. In the same century, almost every country in Europe gave birth to one." Mad. Goldbeck, of English birth; Mrs. Hill, of Boston; Miss C. Denning, of Plattsburg; Miss Anne Hall and Miss O'Hara, in New York, are the principal miniature painters in the United States. It was reported that Miss H. occasionally received as high as $500 for a miniature. Mrs. Hill received from $75 to $100 for a miniature. The popularity of photographs has caused many portrait and miniature painters to devote themselves to that branch of art. Some artists succeed in giving an ideal, _spirituel_ beauty, truly astonishing. I think it is more observable in miniatures on ivory than any other style. Mr. W. writes: "In the department of miniature painting women find profitable employment and are ofttimes very expert at the work. I know a lady in Washington who paints very beautiful miniatures, for which she receives from $10 to $15. This is very nearly the same rate paid to men. Woman's delicate sense of touch and facility of expression make it a branch for which she is especially fitted." =76. Panoramas=, we suppose, have pretty well paid their way, particularly the first that were exhibited; but we know not that any lady has ever engaged in this branch of painting. Mr. D., a scenic and panoramic artist, says the "decorative workshops" of Paris are 250 feet long, and 50 feet wide. The cloth for panoramas is laid on the floor, and the paint then applied, as it would run if hung up. There are galleries around the walls, some distance above, from which the artist may judge of the effect of his painting. Many dioramas are used, and might be colored by ladies. Panoramas have not been so common since Banvard painted his. Painting them does not always pay for the trouble and expense. It requires a certain order of talent for painting panoramas, and probably as high an order as any other. =77. Portrait.= "Lala, though not a native of Rome, exercised her profession in that city during the youth of Marcus Varo, painting portraits of women. Her pictures were better paid for than those of any other painter of her time. Portrait and character drawing have ever exercised the talents of the first-class artists." Mary Beale was a celebrated portrait painter, who lived in the reign of Charles II.; and Anna Killigrew painted the portraits of James II. and his queen. An artist told me that it requires the most intense mental application to bring out a variety in the expression of the countenances of some sitters, and difficult to seize the most happy expression. An ambrotype copy should be kept for the colorist to look at occasionally, while progressing with his work. He thinks seven hours a day enough for an artist, when his mind is exercised with his work. After so long an application, he might turn his attention advantageously to some style of painting more mechanical in its nature, that will be an occupation to his body and a relief to his mind. A portrait painter writes me in answer to some questions: "The artist's labor cannot well be intrusted to another. In France there are female portrait painters, who are said to execute such works with more delicacy and profit than men. The employment is not unhealthy, unless the laborer confines herself too long in a poorly ventilated room. Women are paid by the piece, when employed by artists. I would say, in general terms, why women are not better paid is owing, doubtless, to a very foolish idea that, in all respects, they are not so reliable. Perhaps a remnant of a more barbarous period has something to do with it. In inferior conditions of society women are always looked upon as inferior creatures. Women have done great things in art. See the career of Rosa Bonheur, Angelica Kauffman, Miss Sharp, of London, and, in our own country, Mrs. L. M. Spencer and Miss Hosmer." Some people are gifted with a love for, and success in, one style, and some in another. Our nation, composed as it is of representatives from all lands, will give fair play to the best powers of the portrait painter. Miss G. thinks a lady of talent, by close application, with an extensive respectable connection, can establish herself in New York as an artist, and earn a livelihood by the products of her pencil. She charges as much for a crayon portrait as for one in oil. She succeeds best in crayons. $60 is her price for a large portrait; $10 or $15 more, with hands. "Mademoiselle Rosée, born in Leyden, in 1632, deserves a place among eminent artists for the singularity of her talents. Instead of using colors, with oil or gum, she used silk for the delicate shading. It can hardly be understood how she managed to apply the fibres, and to imitate the flesh tints, blending and mellowing them so admirably. She thus painted portraits, as well as landscapes and architecture." =78. Water Colors.= Much improvement has taken place in this style of painting during the last few years. Fanny Corbeaux is mentioned as a superior English painter in water colors, of the present century. =79. Painters of Dial Plates.= This is rather an artistic employment, but poorly paid. All the clock faces used in the East are said to be painted by women. Men would not do it for the prices that are paid. In Boston is a large factory where a number of girls are employed in painting hard dial plates--that is, enamelled. I saw a Swiss lady in New York who paints silver-faced dial plates. She and a gentleman in Hoboken (she told me) are the only persons in this country who paint that style. The drying of hard dial plates she thought to be bad on the health, because of the great heat to which a person is exposed in placing the enamel in the furnace, and attending to it while there. Mixing the enamel could be done by women. When learning to paint dial plates in Switzerland, she paid $3 a week for instruction and board, but for a sleeping room separately. =80. Picture Restorers.= E. says he has been thirty years engaged in restoring paintings and engravings. He thinks it is more of a natural gift than anything else. He has made money by it. His sons, who have been ten years employed as draughtsmen, cannot succeed, with all the instruction he has given them. To succeed requires the talents and experience of an artist. He never adds paint when any is left, but merely restores it. If it is gone, he supplies it. B. says, restoring paintings is a work of all time. The prospect of a lady succeeding is poor. She cannot use the heavy iron (twenty-five pounds) necessary for ironing the lining on the picture. (But that part is merely mechanical work, and can be done by a man.) The greatest aim with most restorers is to imitate the old masters. Mrs. C., whose husband is a picture liner, says there is a great wear and tear of mind in that business. A restorer may injure a picture, and have it thrown upon his hands, and have to pay ten times its value. Restoring is the most difficult, lining the most laborious. She never heard of any one being taught. I should think a restorer would find it desirable, if not essential, to visit the galleries of Europe, and study the works of the old masters. The business requires considerable artistic taste and knowledge, but, in our large cities, may after a while present a field for qualified women. =81. Piano Tuners.= I think a piano tuner might form a class of ladies, and give instruction in the art. $1 is the usual price for tuning a piano in the city. One should have an acute sense of hearing, to succeed; and he should commence early to cultivate that sense. It is very necessary to know how to make a nice discrimination of sounds. Practice in that is best gained in a piano factory. Some could learn the principles in half a day. More depends on practice, and a native talent for it, than anything else. At Mr. W.'s is a very superior tuner, and he has been at it but a few months. It requires strength of wrist, and a rather long arm. The change of posture and strain on the back is considerable. There is not one good tuner in fifty. Mr. W. thinks a lady might be a tuner. He says it is not necessary that a person should know how to play on an instrument, but it is better. A tuner in his factory receives $3 a day. Regulating is done by the touch, tuning by the ear. If a lady could obtain the tuning of the pianos of her friends, they might speak to others, and in that way she might succeed in obtaining sufficient custom to make a very comfortable support. It might also bring out any musical talent the individual possesses. While piano tuners are learning, if they practise long at a time, they often experience a confusion of sounds, and are not able to distinguish correctly. I was told by another manufacturer, it is not at all necessary to be a player to make a good tuner, as the two are entirely distinct. There is a great difference in the abilities of tuners. There is much difference naturally in the sense of hearing in different individuals: there is much from training, there is much from the aptness of a pupil, and in the application. When they take a boy as an apprentice, they keep him at first to sweep the room, and go errands, and give him instruction, probably an hour at a time, in tuning. Longer time would confuse a learner. They have had a tuner for three years, that they can now send to tune pianos for concerts; but, a year ago, they could not. Two piano tuners (women) are mentioned in the census of Great Britain. Mr. W. had two or three ladies to learn piano tuning in his factory. They were music teachers, living in villages and the country, who could not engage a tuner oftener than once in two or three months, when the tuner would come around. He thinks ladies could not make very good tuners, because it requires great strength in the hand or wrist, and complete control of the key; for if the key is turned ever so slightly more than it should be, the wire will break. A manufacturer of musical instruments writes: "I think women could be placed in a situation profitable to themselves and the community by learning to tune pianos and melodeons, which I believe they have the skill and capacity to do. They would also find it profitable, in some places, to instruct juvenile classes of both sexes in sacred music." =82. Plaster Statuary.= The few women in this country who work in plaster of Paris, are, as far as we know, natives of other countries. There is an old Italian woman in Baltimore who makes and sells works in plaster. Casts are sometimes taken by women, but rarely. Casts of living persons are taken by having the individual breathe through iron tubes placed in the nostrils. Casts are also taken from reliefs, statues, and models. They require less care than the first mentioned. Fruit is imitated in this material, and colored exactly like the original. I saw a case that had been prepared by a lady for the rooms of the American Institute, New York. The librarian thought several collections might be disposed of to agricultural societies and farmers. It would pay well, and take but little time to learn. It would require a nice discernment of colors and shades, and neat, careful workmanship. In Brooklyn, I was told by a boy, that did not look to be more than 14 or 15 years of age, that he had been working in plaster of Paris for three years. His was the architectural branch. The first year he received $1.50 per week; next year, $2; and the next, $3. He thinks a woman could do any of the work. The moulds for some parts are made of wax and rosin; some of sulphur, and some of plaster of Paris. The moulds are tied together, and the liquid plaster poured in. It hardens in half an hour. Mr. W., a plaster of Paris worker, says the whole of the work could be done by women. Modelling requires practice in drawing, and a knowledge of geometrical figures. Inventive talent finds a ready field for exercise. A good moulder is paid $2.50 a day. The study of architectural ornaments and books much facilitates the advancement of the art. Modelling and casting are distinct branches. Most employers pay boys thirty-seven cents a day for casting; but to learn modelling, it is customary for the learner to pay a premium. Another maker of house ornaments said modelling could be learned in six months, and when a person has learned, he can earn from $3 to $5 a day of ten hours. One must know how to draw in order to model. Another proprietor told me he had thought of employing girls to break off the edges of architectural ornaments. They now have boys, and pay from $3 to $9 per week. Modellers can earn $2, $2.50, and $3 per day. He paid $2.50 a day, for a year, to one man. At a large store for the sale of plaster of Paris articles in New York, the proprietor, a gentlemanly Italian, said he would be willing to give instruction to a class of ladies in modelling, moulding, casting, and polishing. He would charge $2 for two hours' instruction, and thinks, after a lesson every day for three months, and some practice in the intervals, his pupils would have no difficulty in prosecuting the work alone. It soils the clothes very much. His daughter learned it, but prefers embroidery. One of the Pisani brothers told me that in Italy and Paris women work at the business. Much ornamental work is executed in alabaster, spar, composition, and plaster of Paris. None of them are unfit for women. A more desirable occupation, with the exception of its want of cleanliness, a woman could not engage in, than plaster of Paris modelling. An Italian plaster image maker in Boston writes me: "We employ about 60 women. Women are employed at this business in Florence, Rome, and Milan. I get about $10 per day, and pay women $3 per day, working ten hours. I pay both by the piece and by the day. As a general thing, we pay men better than women. It requires some genius and a lifetime to learn the business. The prospects for employment are good in Boston, and there is a pretty lively demand for hands. All the women I employ are Italians. Women are decidedly superior workers. The business can be carried on in any part of the United States. Women might be employed in taking casts from the dead, if they have sufficient nerve. I have a peculiar fancy for this branch of the work, and do not consider it unhealthy." =83. Painters of Plates for Books.= Hundreds of thousands of plates are annually colored in London, and some in this country. The neatness and patience of women fit them admirably for this work. It is an agreeable, but at present not a very constant or profitable employment. The coloring of lithographs in printing has done away with much hand coloring. The painting of stereoscopic plates has given employment to some ladies, and does not require much skill or taste. The gentleman who prepared stereoscopic plates for the Messrs. A., employed several ladies, to whom he paid on an average from $9 to $10 a week, working by the piece. Botanical plates are mostly colored by hand. The gentleman who prepares the fashion plates of the _Ladies' American Magazine_ employs women, paying from $4 to $7 a week, according to application and rapidity of execution. They work from eight till dark, in winter, and by the week, not the piece. It requires but a few weeks to learn. He has stereoscopic views also painted by women. They receive rather better prices, as it requires some artistic taste and more care. The universal complaint among employers is, that their best workwomen will get married and leave them. If women were better paid, employers would not be so likely to lose them. A few years ago, we saw a newspaper statement to this effect: When maps were colored by hand in New York, girls were paid from three cents to ten cents a sheet, and they earned from $3 to $5 a week. A few years back, it was estimated that there were two hundred female paint colorers at the top of the profession, who made excellent wages by coloring costly engravings. The colorers of plates in _Leslie's Magazine_ pay by the hundred or thousand. The first year, a learner is paid but little. If she succeeds right well in that time, she is then paid according to the quality and quantity of her work, earning from $3 to $5 per week. They must work in the shop, so the superintendent can see if it is properly done, or reject and have altered such plates as are not. All seasons are alike. A manufacturer of children's toy books told me he employed girls for coloring, paying by the piece. They earned each from $3 to $3.50 a week. They used stencil plates. He generally kept them employed all the year round, but the occupation is full. A German print colorer told me he employed thirty girls till the panic, paying by the piece from $3 to $3.50 a week. Stencil plates of varnished paper were used. He paid his workers from the first, and they could either sit or stand while at work. Another paint colorer told me his girls earned from $4 to $4.50 a week, for coloring the finest prints, working only in daylight. A manufacturer of valentines and children's toy books told me his girls painted valentines in winter, and toy books in summer. He pays two of his girls by the week $7 each, and none of the rest less than $4 a week. They work from nine to ten hours a day. The use of stencils by Germans has reduced the price of such work. He could get girls to do book coloring for $2 a week, but prefers to retain his old hands constantly. Most colorers of prints work at home. A getter up of gentlemen's fashion plates told me he pays ten cents for coloring a large sheet containing several figures, and the worker finding her own materials. No one could earn the salt of her bread at such rates. Another print colorer told me it requires from two to six weeks to learn, according to the ability of the learner. Sometimes he has Government work that must be done hurriedly. They have least work from New Year to March. Some print colorers pay by the week; $5 is a good price. I saw an engraving on the wall representing an English barnyard, for which the proprietor was paid $3 for coloring, while he pays the lady who does it, $2.25. Some ladies, he says, can earn from $10 to $12 a week. =84. Photographists and Colorists.= Mr. F. says they would employ good lady artists, if they could get them; but ladies do not succeed so well, because they do not have such an efficient course of training--do not go through the same gradations in a preparation for the work. They mostly employ men that are foreigners to color. A colorist of photographic views for stereoscopes says he pays a lady to color for him $6 a gross. English ladies color best. The firm with which he is connected cannot get their coloring done in New York, so have most of it done in London; and as work is cheaper, it costs them no more with the addition of transportation. At one photographic establishment in Philadelphia, the proprietor told us that several artists now devote their time to the coloring of photographs. He pays one lady at the rate of $12 a week. She is employed on the low-priced pictures, such as are sold for $5, exclusive of frame. The portraits range from $75 up. The lady painter is daughter of an English artist. She works all the hours of daylight, when required--sometimes only six hours. B. has at different times encouraged and employed female artists; has never met with any one who excelled, but does not doubt they might do so if properly trained. He had a lady partner in daguerreotyping and photographing. She was very poor when she commenced, but, while engaged in it, supported herself and children, and educated them, and left $3,000. He told me of two ladies making a handsome support by coloring photographs. His best pictures are painted by gentlemen artists. He thinks the taking of photographs not so suitable for women, because it is dirty work; that is, the nitrate of silver that gets on the fingers stains them like indelible ink--a small difficulty, I think, in the way of a woman that has a living to make. There are several ladies in Philadelphia who make their living by painting photographs. Some ladies have quitted the profession of teaching to become photographers. Ladies are sometimes employed in photographic galleries, to wait upon company, agree upon prices, deliver the work, and receive pay. For such services they are paid from $3 to $5 per week, according to the amount of business done. Photographers work from eight to ten hours. Some think the business unhealthy, because of the gases that arise from the combination of chemicals. Women that have had practice in drawing and painting can give a pretty and delicate touch in the coloring of photographs. L., photographist, employs two ladies to color photographs in water colors. He teaches it for $10. A good colorist, with constant employment, can earn from $10 to $15 a week. He thinks there are openings in the South. Some prefer water coloring to oil, because you can see the pictures in any light. Oils are better for large pictures that you see at a distance. Painting in water colors does not pay the artist so well as painting in oils. Misses E., New York, are busy all the time. They execute different styles of painting, but have lately found it more profitable to color photographs. They each earn from $12 to $15 per week coloring photographs, when busy. Their work is all brought to the house. They have had several offers to go South, and better prices than they receive in New York. Miss E., with whom I talked, thought if any ladies would learn thoroughly, and could not obtain painting to do, they could easily obtain situations as teachers of painting. I saw the wife of an artist who gives instruction in drawing and painting. She told me her husband is very conscientious and will not recommend any one to spend their time and money learning to draw and paint, if he finds they have not talent of that kind. Some people think they possess genius, and can excel in painting, even if they commence when thirty or more years of age; but it is best for an artist to commence early in life. The talent of some is developed in a shorter time than others. One may learn in three months what another could not in six. Her husband can advance an American pupil as far in two years as he did his German pupils in four. He thinks the Americans are more apt, and acquire more rapidly. She thought a lady would not find any difficulty in obtaining constant employment as a painter. Miss J., Philadelphia, has as much to do at coloring photographs as she wishes. It takes her about a day to color a small one, for which she receives $1. For those pictures on which there is more work, the prices are higher. The painting of ivorytypes is more expensive. An ivorytype the size of a $1 photograph would cost $10. Most photographers send their coloring out of the establishment to be done, and pay by the piece. In several States, women have been successfully engaged as daguerreans and photograph colorers. Some have travelled through the country, stopping in various towns to carry on their business. Some knowledge of chemistry is necessary for a photographer. One photographer writes: "Women are employed in every country where there are first-class galleries. It is unhealthy in the operating rooms, on account of the acids and poisons. We pay $4 a week to ladies to attend the show case and wait upon customers. We pay men $6 and $7, because they can do more by one third of the same kind of work than a woman. Any part of the business can be performed by a woman. We pay girls $4 from the commencement. They spend eight or ten hours at the gallery, but are not employed all the time. They are as comfortable as in their own parlors receiving visitors. Ladies prefer one of their own sex in the reception room. There is always demand for superior work in our line; consequently, a prospect of employment so long as the world stands. In Syracuse, fall and winter are the most busy seasons." Mr. A. says the occupation of portrait and miniature painters is gone since the discovery of the photographer's art. He thinks ladies are as capable of arriving at great excellence as men in painting, if they will only apply themselves as closely. Their knowledge of colors probably makes them excel in that respect. He teaches photographic coloring, charging $1 a lesson of one hour. A mechanical execution in coloring is gained in a short time, but a good photographist ought to be an experienced artist. Mr. R. told me his girls are engaged in painting and mounting. He pays one $7 a week, and the other $5. An individual that is bright, intelligent, and capable of rapid tuition, could learn in six months. They spend from eight to six o'clock in the gallery. They have but a few minutes recess at noon, as that is the most busy time. He prefers women for some parts of the work. Men are more powerful artists, give a better expression; women are more careful, and give a finer finish. I talked with a photographic colorist, who gives instruction to a few ladies in coloring, and employs four. He thinks women are generally better judges of colors than men, but some women never learn the shades. (I think, unless it arises from some physical defect, it is because they are not taught to distinguish colors when children. It is difficult to teach a person the careful use of any of the senses if they are neglected in childhood.) The work requires some artistic taste. A knowledge of drawing and colors, and a good education, are essential to success. A young lady in the business should be social in her nature, and of pleasing address. I would think an artist of any kind would need the talent of drawing to the surface the soul of his or her sitter, for much of the beauty of a picture depends upon expression. Mr. G. thinks water colors neater for ladies than oil. The employment is now in its infancy. The taste for photographs is increasing. There are now one hundred engaged in the business where fifteen years ago there was but one. Photographists are usually employed from nine to six, or from eight to five. The remuneration is good when constant employment can be had. The best locality is a growing place. The business would grow up with the place. The prices paid enable ladies to obtain boarding in houses that possess the comforts, and even the luxuries of life. Summer is the dullest season, but much depends on weather. French women generally succeed well in coloring. Some English ladies, also, do well. Mr. G. gives a lady colorer $12 a week. Mr. B., a photographist, writes: "Women are employed in my branch of art in England. I would like to find competent assistance, but have been unable to do so. The work is not unhealthy, but it is very trying to the eyes. I should think that in many respects the work would be well adapted to females, but think, from trials that I have made, that the mathematical precision of the work is a feature unfavorable to the feminine mind. Were I to find such assistance as I would be satisfied with, I would pay according to capacity and work. Thorough artistic education and natural talents are essential. In point of taste, as regards color and elegance, I think women might be superior; as regards precision and firmness of minute work, I am uncertain. It would require considerable time and patience to learn the art." One of the proprietors of a photographic establishment in Philadelphia writes: "I employ from two to four ladies in painting photographic pictures, and pay by the week from $3 to $6. They work eight hours a day. I pay men about twice as much, because the men, being longer at the business, work better and quicker. It requires several years' practice to gain a moderate acquaintance with this branch. It is our opinion, that women are well adapted for most branches of photographing, and for some they would be superior to men, provided always, that they bring to the work a certain degree of education, and some natural talent. We suppose the reason they are not more employed in this and similar pursuits, is, that young women of a certain degree of education, are seldom eager for any sort of employment. Besides, in this business, it requires years of earnest application to master it, and before this is accomplished, many marry. The employer feels little security in retaining a woman at the business after going through years of instruction, because in many, or most cases, they marry, and must attend to their domestic duties. With a man the reverse takes place. He becomes a better and more steady worker after marriage." "We have a great improvement in photography by its combination with lithography. By the process adopted, the object to be represented is photographed at once on the stone, and thus the intermediate operations are avoided." In times of excitement, like the present, when soldiers are going from their homes, there is much for the artists to do. =85. Preparers of Scientific Plates.= Mrs. B. has supported herself for some time by making drawings of fossils for works on geology. She is now doing one for a work on Niagara. It requires a great deal of care. It is very trying to the eyes as the engraver imitates every line made by the pencil, and a magnifying glass is of course much used for presenting enlarged views of the smallest fossils. I think she is paid by the piece or set, for the work. Of course this pursuit must be limited. =86. Seal Engravers.= Seal engraving is cutting in a precious stone, letters or a device. The cutting is done by means of a lathe and sharp cutting tools. Diamond dust and oil are used. The lathe is moved by treadles. The finer the work, the smaller the tools. Taste, good eyesight, and a knowledge of form are necessary. No pattern is used. The hand and eye must serve as guides. It would be a very pretty occupation for women, but would require time, patience, and practice. Seal engravers in New York earn from $10 to $12 per week, but the occupation there is filled. Mrs. Ellet, in her "Women Artists," mentions a Prussian and a German lady as being noted for their skill in cutting precious stones. A seal engraver told me he does not pay apprentices the first year, but the second year $2, and from that up, according to the abilities of the worker. It requires from four to seven years to learn all the branches thoroughly. Another engraver told me the business is not worth learning now that gum mucilage has done away with sealing wax, and consequently the use of seals. The designs for seals are usually taken from a heraldry book; always when for a coat of arms. Such seals are in greater demand in Europe. Seal engravers in this country do not have constant employment. They cut fancy seals when not otherwise occupied. The work can be done at night by a good light. =87. Sculptors.= Properzia di Rossi, Maria Domenica, Anna Maria Schurmann, Maria von Steinbach, Anne Seymour Damer, Falicie de Faveau, and in our own country and time Miss Lander, Harriet Hosmer, and Miss Stebbins, are among those who have proved the ability of woman to succeed in sculpture. Sculptors, it should be understood, seldom, if ever, labor with the chisel. They prepare models, which are made in a composition of clay or wax, and then superintend the imitation of these in marble. Sculpture is the chastest imitation of nature and the highest expression of the form and spirit of beauty known to art; and while woman is possessed of the finest sensibility and most exquisite perceptions, there can certainly be no reason why she should not succeed in it. Mr. Lagrange, in urging the establishment of Government schools of design in France, says: "Painting, engraving, and sculpture, encouraged as music and dancing are, promise equal success; they provide a more assured support in its being better acquired, and a more substantial renown, and especially a calmer and chaster existence. Painter, engraver, or sculptor, it is her _works_ alone that claim the public eye. Her person is sacred; no one dares to lift the veil that conceals her countenance; no one presumes to call upon her to courtesy to feeble applause. A young girl, chaste and pure, she may watch by the lonely hearthside; a wife, she may not see her smiles and caresses in dispute as the seal of a purchased rite; a mother, she may educate her children under a name they will never be tempted to despise. Exhibitions, open to everybody, will afford the public an opportunity to measure her talent or genius; critics will confine their attacks to her works; and praise, if she deserves it, will reach her eyes and ears in terms that she will be able to listen to or peruse without the accompaniment of a blush." Mrs. Wilson, wife of a physician living in Cincinnati, has executed busts of her husband and children that are said to be excellent likenesses. Mrs. Dubois, of New York, has sculptured in marble several specimens. Misses Lander and Stebbins, and Miss Hosmer, we believe, find their art lucrative. Sculptors should attend anatomical dissections; should learn the structure of the human frame, and the appearance of the muscles under the various conditions to which circumstances may subject them. Indeed the study of anatomy is essential to success. In sculpture, we closely imitate the parent, nature. The most superior specimens of statuary are said to be modelled after nature, as seen in the unlaced, unpinched, unaltered original--just as nature's own hand has chiselled. In sculpture, modelling is the inventive part of the work, and requires taste and genius; copying is a merely mechanical operation. A pursuit of this kind, if followed from the love of it, becomes a soul-engrossing study. Means or friends to rely upon, for at least two years, during the time of study, will be necessary in most cases; for if the artist is to support herself while she studies, only the highest earnestness can sustain her; but then those that are not in earnest should not undertake this art--for "it is better to pursue a frivolous trade in a serious manner, than a sublime art frivolously." Without very decided talent it will be some time before a sculptor comes sufficiently into notice to sustain herself entirely by the filling of orders. "Sculpture has become almost a fashion in Paris; but a woman finds it difficult to devote herself to studies pertaining to the art. Though greater in number than painters, they have accomplished scarcely any remarkable works." Many women who might not undertake sculpture, might learn to work in marble for sculptors. A marble worker in its various branches, writes me: "I think women might be very well employed in the lighter parts of finishing. I suppose they are not so employed, because there has not yet been any organized and extended effort made to introduce them into this line of business. I am not sure, but think it likely, women are employed to a limited extent in _chiselling_ marble in Italy and France. Miss Hosmer has done more than mould for others to copy. She has herself handled the mallet and chisel. The employment in general is healthy; but lettering, and indeed fine chiselling of any sort, requiring the eye to be brought near to the work, raises a dust, which is breathed into the lungs--though the injury is not very apparent till the lapse of years reveals it. The qualifications desirable are a good judgment, and eye for form, and a certain slight of hand. The prospect for marble workers is good in all departments." On the other hand, another writes: "Sculpture is too laborious for women, and if women practise the art, they hire all the work done." In Rome, two thousand women serve as models to painters and sculptors. =88. Steel and other Engravers.= Steel and copper engraving require a very good knowledge of drawing, and careful manipulation. A great advantage has been gained by substituting steel for copper plates. One beauty of steel engraving is that it can be done at home. Men like easy employments, and so have appropriated this one. An engraver must learn to convey the feelings of an artist. Lithography has seriously interfered with steel engraving, and photography has to some extent. There are very few journeymen engravers. Most go into business for themselves. Some women are employed in engraving copper cylinders for calico prints. Line and stipple are the most expensive engraving. Mezzotint is cheaper. Boys practise on copper, and do not work on anything valuable until they are able to engrave well. One reason that engravers do not like to take apprentices is, that they cannot do any thing under two or three years, of any value to their employer, but expect to be paid from the first. Besides, an engraver seldom has enough of such engraving as a learner can do to keep him constantly employed. Those who receive apprentices in New York take them for five years, and pay something from the first; but very few men in New York, in any branch of work, are willing to take apprentices. Much of the success of a learner depends on his inclination, taste, and individual exertion; and when he possesses these, they render him valuable to his master--so it proves a matter of mutual interest. All engraving is mechanical to a certain extent, but requires some artistic taste. In "Women Artists" we find the names of some ladies distinguished as engravers in Italy, France, Germany, and England, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Jane Taylor and her sisters paid their share of the family expenses by engraving. Miss Caroline Watson was an engraver of portraits to the queen in the reign of George III. Angelica Kauffman and Elizabeth Blackwell both engraved on steel. We read: "In London, recently, one accomplished female engraver has turned her steel plates into a pleasant country house, which she means to furnish with the proceeds of her delicate painting on glass." In Paris, during the last thirty years, quite a number of ladies have earned a livelihood by steel engraving, and several are now employed there in card engraving, and engraving fashion plates. There are some engravers in the South and West, but there are openings for more. A card, seal, medal, and door-plate engraver writes: "The usual number of hours for engravers are from eight to ten. The business may be learned in from one to two years, to be of use; but to learn thoroughly requires three or four years. The business generally pays well by jobs, and I see no reason why females may not engrave as successfully as males with the same application." =89. Bank Note Engravers.= "Steel engraving was first practised in England by the calico printers; but it was first employed for bank notes and for common designs by Jacob Perkins, of Newburyport, Mass." The American Bank Note Company, New York, employ about sixty girls, forty-seven of whom are engaged in printing or making impressions; the others in drying, assorting, and laying together the sheets to be placed under a hydraulic press. It requires but a few weeks to learn the part done by girls. Some are paid $3 and some $3.50 per week. They are mostly American girls. A lady told me that she heard a girl, who had been employed to cut up bank notes (done with scissors), say she often earned $9 a week. The company pay a boy $3 a week from commencement until through his apprenticeship, which is usually four or five years. Here a man can earn $100 a week, if a first-class bank note engraver; but in England not more than $10 or $12. There, however, paper money is but little used; a £5 note being the smallest in value. Bank note engraving is both mechanical and artistic. At the office of the National Bank Note Company, a gentleman showed me the various processes. He had often thought ladies would do well to learn bank note engraving. I saw two or three gentlemen engraving. The process is simple, but requires a good deal of patience and practice. Their girls are employed to place the sheet for an impression under a roller, and, after the impression is made, remove it. Some receive $3, and some $3.50 a week. It is dirty work, on account of the oil and ink used. Their girls wash every evening the blankets used on the cylinders. Bank-note engravers of the first order receive a salary of $4,000. Some receive from $2,000 to $3,000 per annum. Bank note engravers work but eight hours a day. Mr. M. thinks there would not be much difficulty, if a lady wanted to learn bank note engraving, from the prejudices of men, for some of them are not only just but generous. One of the gentlemen engraving knew several ladies in England that were bank note engravers. =90. Card Engravers.= I was told by a card engraver that it was not usual to pay a learner anything. He gives his apprentice only his board the first year. A card engraver may draw letters well, and not be able to write well, and _vice versa_. One should be steady and patient to draw and form letters, and possess some natural taste, to succeed. It requires also much practice. A card engraver can earn $5 a day, if he is industrious, and has sufficient work. A journeyman is paid in proportion to his abilities, from $5 to $25 per week. Some card engravers earn $2,000 a year, clear of all expenses. The older a city, the more engraving is done. In Europe, first-class merchants never use type cards, but engraved ones. =91. Door Plate Engravers.= I was told by a door plate engraver that a skilful person, who would apply himself closely, could learn the business, so that, at the end of one year, he could make a living. For door plate engraving, it is necessary to form letters well. The size of the letters for a given space must be divided by the eye. It requires great care, as one badly formed letter would spoil the whole plate. Engraving of any kind fatigues the back from stooping, and the eyes from straining. In door plate engraving the eyes suffer least fatigue. Of course less strength is necessary for plate engraving if the tools are of a good quality and in proper order. =92. Map Engravers.= Map engraving is divided into two kinds: the lettering and plain work. The last can be learned in six months by a person of taste and talent. The most that is needed is practice. A knowledge of drawing is not necessary for this branch. There is not much map engraving done in this country, because of the expense. Most is done in New York and Philadelphia. The best map engraving done in Paris is executed by ladies. There are also some ladies employed in map engraving in London, and card engraving is there quite common for ladies. =93. Picture and Heraldry Engravers.= Engraving pictures pays well--a man often earning $10 a day. A superior landscape engraver calculates to earn $2,500 a year. Mr. R. historical engraver, does the engraving for the _Cosmopolitan Art Journal_. He says: "In England, better prices are paid for historical engraving than here. Those who do the work receive less, but the employer has a greater profit than in the United States. More time is allowed the engraver in England to execute a piece of work." Mr. R. pays his hands from $7 to $10 a week, and the best historical engraver never gets in this country over $30 a week. In England the work hours of an engraver are nine; here seven. He says the art is dying out both here and in England. It is a something in which we can always be improving. Seven years was formerly the length of apprenticeship in England, and there an apprentice was paid nothing while learning; on the contrary, the parent usually pays a premium of £100. When an apprentice has finished, he will earn £1 a week, and continue to receive more according to his skill and ability. Some people send pictures from the United States to England to be engraved, saying they cannot do such work in this country as in England; while, if they would pay the same price, and allow the engravers as much time, it could be done just as well. Such an engraving as you would pay $150 for here, in England you would pay $200 for. In England it is customary for an engraver to confine himself to one style; for instance, in "Falstaff Mustering his Recruits," one engraver would do the wall, another the figures, and another the drapery. Mr. R. was paid only $2,000 for engraving "Falstaff Mustering his Recruits," and it took three men two years. The business is not unhealthy, and not injurious to the eyesight, although a glass must be used constantly. Mr. J., historical engraver, used to have persons employed that did the different parts of a picture, and he paid them each from $15 to $25 a week. He thinks, of those who learn metal engraving in Europe, not more than fifty per cent. pursue it as a vocation, and not above four per cent. attain perfection. Some engraving, both picture and letter, is done by etching, but the best and most expensive with a graver. Mr. J. M. Sartain writes in answer to a circular: "I have no females in my employment, because I work alone. To direct others or alter what they do wrong, takes longer than doing the whole work myself. Neither do I know of females being employed by others in my branch of business. But if I were willing to be troubled with the teaching of any one at all, I should choose a female. This is from my experience of the males I taught in times past. Women have the requisites more than men--patience, neatness, delicacy; and the occupation is as suitable for them as any other they are accustomed to adopt. An unmarried daughter of mine is about to learn from me, with a view to follow it as a profession. The chance of employment is however very limited, for the reason that the cost of printing plates separately necessitates, in an extensive class of pictorial embellishments, the use of woodcuts. This wood engraving is equally suited for females, and to a limited extent they are thus employed. The field in that branch is a wide one already, with a constantly increasing demand. In my own branch of engraving, the kind of skill required is that of _drawing_. The mere mechanical skill required in _any_ kind of engraving is easily attained; but the art of _drawing_ is the great thing, and positively demands aptitude and taste--at all events, quite close application and earnestness. _Skill in drawing_ is a key that admits to a wider range of arts than I can readily enumerate, and successful and profitable employment in any engraving depends on _that_. I am chairman of the committee on instruction of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in that capacity do all I can (as do also the other directors) to encourage female talent. We have seven or eight ladies among our students, and they _certainly_ are fully equal to the males in capacity for acquiring art. Some model, others only draw. The whole of our academy studies are gratuitous. For whatever branch of the fine arts is to be followed, the first requisite is _drawing_, and the next is _drawing_, and the third and last is _drawing_." Mr. B., heraldic chaser, says there are several processes in making heraldry plates, sketching, engraving, embossing, chasing, and burnishing. He used to employ girls to burnish. The making of patterns for heraldry is never taught in this country to women, as it would cause the labor of men so employed to depreciate. He pays a man from $15 to $20 a week for chasing. He charges $1 for finding the coat of arms of an individual or family. =94. Telegraph Operators.= A new source of employment has been opened by the invention of the electric telegraph. Most of the telegraphing in England is done by women, and in the United States a number of ladies are employed as operators. To a quick and intelligent mind it requires but a short time to learn. An English paper says: "Here women do the business better than men, because of the more undivided attention they pay to their duties; but considerable inconvenience is found to result from their ignorance of business terms, which causes them to make mistakes in the messages sent. However, a short course of previous instruction easily overcomes this impediment." We have been told that, in one telegraph office in London, several hundred women are employed. I hope the application of steam to the operations of the electric telegraph may not interfere with the entrance of women into the occupation. In New Lisbon, Ohio, a young woman was employed, a few years ago, as principal operator in a telegraph office, with the same salary received by the man who preceded her in that office. "I was told by her," writes my informant, "that several women were qualifying themselves, in Cleveland, for the same occupation." The ex-superintendent of a line writes: "I have long been persuaded that ultimately a large proportion of the telegraphists, employed exclusively for writing, would be females, both because of their usually reliable habits, their ability to abstract and concentrate thought upon their engagements, their greater patience and industry, and the economy of their wages. In offices where there is a large amount of business, and, consequently, much intercommunication with customers, I have supposed the arrangement would be to have a clerk to receive and deliver communications, and the corps of operators and writers, composed exclusively of females, in an adjoining or upper room, apart from public inspection. And to this arrangement, I think, there is at this time very little to oppose, except the antagonism naturally felt by male operators, who see in it a loss of employment to themselves, and a want of proper facilities for teaching and obtaining a complement, in number, of female telegraphists. Any female proficient in orthography, with an inclination to useful employment, would make a good telegraphist, and might readily command, under a system above indicated, a salary of from $300 to $500, and be profitable to her employers beyond the ordinary male telegraphists employed under the present arrangement of office. It is in operating by the Morse system that ladies are mostly or entirely employed. The Morse is the easiest. They telegraph in small towns, where there is not much to do, and the compensation is small." The Electric Telegraph Company in London suggests that women should be employed in preference to men, as working more rapidly. All the lady telegraphists we have heard of gave satisfaction to all parties concerned. To Mr. A., connected with the New York and Boston telegraph line, I am indebted for the following information: "Women are employed in operating the Morse instrument. They are paid from $6 to $25 per month, and are paid by the month. For the class of offices in which females are employed, about the same wages are paid both sexes. It requires from three to six weeks to learn, and nothing is paid while learning. The qualifications needed are a fair knowledge of orthography, arithmetic, geography, and ordinary mechanical ability. We may want a few operatives, say six annually. The employment is constant, and about ten hours a day are devoted to work. We employ about fifty women, and they only at small offices. Nearly all are American. The employment is comfortable. There are no parts of our occupation suitable for women in which they are not engaged. They are generally more attentive and trustworthy than men. The price they pay for board depends on the locality, say from $1.50 to $2 per week." =95. Vocalists.= This is an important and profitable employment--one that has secured to many a poor foreigner visiting this country a snug little fortune. We have only to cite the cases of Jenny Lind, Garcia, Sontag, Parodi, and Catherine Hays. It was stated in the New York _Tribune_ of December, 1853, that Catherine Hays had sent $50,000 to purchase an estate in Ireland. American talent is in some cases very highly cultivated; but we fear the Scripture verse applies to the substantial encouragement of native vocalists amongst us: "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house." Too much money and attention, we think, are lavished upon foreign vocalists, while home talent is depreciated. An American singer must often go to other countries and acquire a name, before she is received with eclat in her own. It may be that other countries have the same failing, but, we think, not to the same extent. Let us love American talent, and encourage it before every other. Adelaide Patti, Miss Hinckley, and Miss Kellogg are at present the most noted singers of American birth. Mr. C. told me, that in New York, lady singers receive from $100 to $400 per annum for singing in churches. One lady choir-singer of whom we knew, received $500 a year, singing twice on Sabbath. Not more than from twelve to fifteen lady singers in New York receive over $350. One lady in a fashionable church receives $1,000; but she is a widow, and somewhat favored. Another lady, leading the choir in a Broadway church, receives a salary of $1,000, I have been told. =96. Wax Work.= I called on two Italians that make wax fruit; their baskets vary in price from twenty-five cents to $2. It would take a day and a half to make a $2 basket. The Italian that could speak some English told me that when he goes out to work, he charges $2.50 a day; but to give lessons, he would charge $2 a day. He thought an individual might learn in eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen lessons, according to abilities and taste. Miss W., teacher of wax flowers, charges $1 a lesson, and thinks eight or ten lessons sufficient. She thinks in country places there would be openings for teachers. I think, where there are large seminaries, a teacher would do better. She says there is an opening in Troy. If a person has enough to do, it pays well. She makes by hand; they are more natural than those made by moulds. =97. Wood Engravers.= Much and long-continued toil is requisite for success in wood engraving. A great deal depends, also, on the talent of the individual. Wood engraving is a business adapted to women, as it requires mostly patience and application, and but little physical strength. Mechanical skill is the most that is requisite, yet, as in everything else, it bespeaks the soul and taste of the originator. "Women's nimble fingers, accustomed to wield the needle, lend themselves quite easily to minute operations in the use of small instruments and the almost imperceptible shades of manipulation that wood engraving exacts." As more publishing is done in our country, of course there will be a greater demand for wood engravers. A great many newspapers now contain a large number of woodcuts, as _Harper's Weekly_, _Frank Leslie's Illustrated News_, &c. Wood engraving has been called into use for Government reports and scientific works, aside from its extensive demands for periodical literature. A lady engaged in the business writes of a class in wood engraving: "The pupils vary so much in ability, application, perseverance, and in the number of hours devoted to it, that it is impossible to judge what any one may do who has not made a trial. My own experience is that the practice of wood engraving brings a sure return for all the outlay of time and trouble spent in acquiring the art. It would hardly be safe to rely entirely upon the proceeds of the second year; the third may make up for it. The best wood engraving is done in England and the United States. In classes of wood engraving in the schools of design in England, the students are required to produce the drawing as well as to engrave it." "For a quarter of a century past, many hundreds of young women, we are assured, have supported themselves by wood engraving, for which there is now a demand which no jealousy in the stronger sex can intercept. The effort to exclude women was made in this, as in other branches of art; but the interests of publishers and the public were more than a match for it." "In 1839, Charlotte Nesbit, Marianne Williams, Mary Byfield, Mary and Elizabeth Clint, held honorable positions among English wood engravers." Miss F., at Elmira, New York, carries on business for herself in wood engraving. She learned it at the Cooper Institute, four years ago. The pupils of that institute canvassed for work, some two and two, but she went alone, and principally in the lower part of the city. They visited publishers mostly--she went to manufacturers. She got an order for $500 worth of engraving at a gas-fixture manufactory. I have heard that ladies in the school of design, New York, receive the same price for wood engraving that men would receive. N. Orr, the wood engraver, thinks the prospect very good for a woman to earn a livelihood at it. He knows a lady who has not only supported herself but partially supported her parents by her work. For wood engraving, women usually receive as good prices as men. The business is increasing. There are none West, except a few in Cincinnati, and I believe a still smaller number in St. Louis and Chicago. A person that has any talent for it can earn a living at it in less than two years' practice. A knowledge of drawing is not essential, as the drawing is usually put on the wood by the designer. Mr. Orr takes apprentices, but pays nothing the first year. They are bound to him for five or six years. Some engravers require a premium. I have been told that designing requires a very different and much higher order of talent than wood engraving. One designer can do enough in a day to keep a man busy a week. New York is the principal city for wood engraving. I think most men, while engraving, stand; but all the ladies that I have seen at work sat. "A wood-engraving office in Cleveland employed three girls in 1845, at wages varying from $3 to $7 per week, according to the experience of each in the business, being the same that men receive in the same office." MERCANTILE PURSUITS. =98. Merchants.= Occasionally we hear such complaints as these: "Women who keep stores of their own ask higher for their goods than men, and saleswomen are less obliging than male clerks." Women, as a general thing, do not understand their business as well as men, and that is the reason they are not so well liked. Those inclined to be bold, may become pert; and those in poor health, peevish. "If women were more employed in stores," said Mr. P., "there would probably be less shopping, but as many goods sold. Young girls that go shopping to whisper in the ears of clerks, would then find something else to do." Woman has a power of adaptedness that fits her admirably for the vocation of a merchant. A friend remarked to me that Mr. Stewart, of New York, she thought, would employ women in his store, if a large number of fashionable and influential ladies would petition him to do so. If the retail merchants of our large cities and towns would combine and employ only saleswomen, how greatly would they promote the welfare of the nation! Young men would no longer waste their health, strength, and talents selling gloves, tape, and dress goods, but would cultivate the soil, or find openings as traders, speculators, mechanics, and manufacturers, in cities, towns, and villages of our Western country. They might do something more creditable to their physical powers, while they gave their half-starved sisters a chance to earn an honest livelihood. If ladies would patronize those stores only in which there were saleswomen, and influence their friends to do so, employers who now engage the service of salesmen would soon learn what was to their interest, and make a change. Promptness and regularity are desirable qualifications in a shopkeeper. The business brings those engaged into intercourse with all classes of people. Mrs. Dall makes this statement: "It is a singular fact that there are a great many more women in England in business for themselves than employed as tenders or clerks; while in America, the fact, at the present day, is directly the reverse." A lady who has lived in New York all her life said, if the merchants of the city would employ women, they could find twenty thousand to-morrow, ready and willing to enter their stores. In Paris large stores are owned and conducted by women, and even the importing and exporting of goods is in the hands of some. The tact and address of French women admirably fit them for shopkeepers. Many of the smaller fancy and variety stores in our cities are owned by women, that have by long-continued industry earned a competency. Lady merchants can to some extent control the taste of the community where they are; for such articles as they purchase and keep on hand will be likely to find sale. The taste of the best keepers of dry-goods and fancy stores, millinery establishments, and embroidery shops will be displayed in the dress of their patrons. To merchandize extensively, requires much experience and knowledge of business; but to those that are qualified it presents an extensive opening for enterprise. Barter, or the exchange of one kind of goods for another, is very common in the villages and towns of our country. The Gothscheer (Austrian) women often follow the trade of peddlers, and are absent from their homes many months, travelling about the country with staff in hand and a pack at their back. "Advertising and politeness are the main levers to get customers. Advertising will draw them; ability to fill their orders will satisfy them; and politeness will induce them to buy." Quick perceptive powers and judgment are also essential to the success of merchants. It is very desirable to have a good location for a store. A lady keeping a small dry-goods store told me she sells $100 worth of goods a week on an average. She has been nine years in the business, and constantly gaining trade. She likes rainy Saturday evenings, as she then sells most. She said one must use judgment in the amount of profit to be made on various articles. A person must regulate her prices by others. On some goods she can make but five per cent., and on some others fifty. Many of the fortunes in Boston are said to have been founded by women engaged in trade. And the ladies on Nantucket Island during the Revolutionary war conducted the business of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. A lady wrote, some years back, of some stores in one of our large cities: "The proprietors say they give from twenty-five to fifty per cent. more to the males than to the females of equal talent and capacity, but can give no reason why they should do it, except that it is the custom, and some parts of the business require more physical strength, as some articles are too heavy to be handled by women." Yet why not, we would ask, place women in the lighter departments, and pay them exactly what would be paid a man for the same work? The average wages of females in Philadelphia are $4.50 per week, though some get as high as $7 or $8, but very few above $6. In a few of the stores of New York and Philadelphia the business is conducted entirely by ladies. There is a school of commerce for women at Perth, France. We read an account some time ago of a colored woman on the Island of Hayti, who is a wholesale dealer in provisions, and worth from $15,000 to $20,000, that she has made by her own industry and business tact. She can neither read nor write, but trusts entirely to her memory. She sells on credit to retail dealers, and to girls whom she has trained. The merchants have such unlimited confidence in her, that they will trust her to any amount. Nearly all the commercial business of Hayti is done by women. =99. Bookkeepers.= The employment of female accountants is gradually extending in our cities. In female institutions of learning, and in benevolent institutions, lady bookkeepers might be very well employed. Indeed, we think, they would find no difficulty in obtaining situations. We know that many merchants would employ them, if they were properly qualified. We know of some that now occupy lucrative situations in fancy dry goods and millinery stores. We have no doubt but the books of most mercantile men would be more accurately kept, if their wives and daughters had charge of them. In all European countries women keep the books of the majority of retail stores. The books of nine tenths of the retail stores in Paris are kept by women. They are fenced in, and separated from the saleswomen by a framework of glass. A number of women are employed as accountants at hotels in Europe. There is a large school for instruction in bookkeeping in Paris, where the pupils are practically trained. An exchange of articles of a trivial nature, and a cheap coin of some kind, are used as a medium of circulation. At one of the largest wholesale warehouses in Boston, the head corresponding clerk is a young woman, who writes a beautiful, rapid hand, and fulfils the duties of the situation to the complete satisfaction of her liberal employer. A practical knowledge of arithmetic is necessary for bookkeeping and selling goods--two of the most inviting openings now presented to women of ordinary intelligence. The lady who keeps the books of T----'s skirt factory, New York, receives a salary of $400. Mr. M. prefers lady bookkeepers, because they are more particular in keeping accounts, and they are more patient in their calculations. They are, as a general thing, more honest and conscientious. Women are just as capable of becoming good financiers as men. Industry, honesty, and promptness, with the ability to write a plain, correct business letter, ability to calculate rapidly and correctly, with a knowledge of bookkeeping, certainly should insure a situation to a lady, where there is a vacancy. It is well, however, for those who have qualified themselves for bookkeeping, to obtain a certificate: it is a passport that will aid them in securing a place. The salaries of bookkeepers in New York run from $250 to $2,500. At a large store, where saleswomen were employed, I was told they find lady bookkeepers more accurate in their accounts, and not so likely to appropriate money that don't belong to them. Where a gentleman bookkeeper receives $15, a lady usually receives but $8. I know of one lady in Cleveland, assistant cashier, who received a salary of $300. An accountant in Boston replies to a circular sent him: "I think the employment as favorable to bodily health as any sedentary occupation; but in my particular line of business it is rather trying to the head, as it often requires close application and intense thought. Those who employ women here as clerks, undoubtedly pay them by the day, week, month, or year, where they have permanent situations; but for transient work, by the piece. Women can always be hired cheaper than men, as it costs them less to live. I am fifty years old, and have been figuring ever since I was sixteen; still, I learn something new about accounts every day. A woman would have to serve a long apprenticeship in accounts and on books, before she could do much in adjusting accounts. For a first-class bookkeeper, practical experience in accounts and bookkeeping of business of all kinds are necessary qualifications. I always prefer the early part of the day for work. My business is as good at one season of the year as another. I attend to business as it suits my pleasure--sometimes four or five hours, and sometimes twelve or fifteen, according to the nature and importance of the task, and depending oftentimes upon the length of it, and the time when it is wanted. As a general thing, men and women everywhere in the United States keep as far apart in business affairs as possible--it is the custom. The counting house, office, and place of business are not suitable for a female. I would state that I charge for making out accounts and adjusting books, as a general rule here in Boston, $10 per day, and sometimes more--never less. I have had all prices, from $10 to $50 per day, for one, two, and three months in succession. Sometimes I take a job by contract, say for $500, or some other specific sum, as may be agreed upon, according to the nature and value of the service rendered." =100. Book Merchants.= In many of the new towns springing up in the West, there are openings for booksellers. Many colleges and seminaries are being built up, thereby offering a still better market for the sale of school books. It would be well for those going into the business to ascertain, before doing so, what books are used in the literary institutions of the place. Some booksellers are so mean as to sell old-fashioned, out-of-date school books to country merchants, thereby clearing their own stock, and imposing their unsalable goods on others. No doubt, many established book merchants would be willing to trust, to such as they have confidence in, a stock of books to be sold on commission. When a sufficient sum is acquired, the individual can purchase a stock of her own. Many dry-goods merchants keep a few books, but when there is a sufficient sale of books, a store, if expenses are only cleared for a while, may gradually become a revenue of profit, and is likely to prove a permanent business, where discretion and industry are used. In London and Paris, women sell stationery, almanacs, memorandum books, diaries, and pocket books, on the streets. Public auctions of books are held frequently in cities and towns. Agents do much to extend a circulation of books. In large cities, merchants confine their stock of books to two or three kinds--as those of medicine, law, theology, or school books; but, as a general thing, miscellaneous books are kept. The trade sales which occur in Boston once, and in Philadelphia and New York twice a year, are only attended by booksellers. These sales last but a few days. The prices at which books sell at these auctions are considered a pretty fair criterion of their future worth. Miss H. told me of a Miss P., niece of Horace Mann, now living in Concord, N. H., who kept a bookstore in Boston, and imported books to fill orders, but was crushed by other book importers, because she was a woman. In many towns and cities, women keep small stores for the sale of stationery, magazines, newspapers, &c. "In large stationery stores, women might be employed to stamp initials on paper," with small hand presses made for the purpose. =101. China Merchants.= This business is peculiarly appropriate to women. Who so well able to handle china as careful women? Who so well able to judge what will look well on a table? It comes so entirely within their province, that the mind readily suggests the appropriateness. In Paris, most, if not all the china stores are kept by women. A lady china-dealer, on one of the avenues, told me that she sells considerable at night to working women, who cannot spare the time to go shopping in the day; also, to ladies living in cross streets near, who go out walking in the evenings with their husbands, and call to buy articles in her line. It does not require as many attendants in a china as in any other kind of store. A girl is more careful and steady, and can dust china better than a boy; but a boy answers best to take china home. She sells most about the holidays. It takes time to learn the business well. In an Eastern city, two ladies stood in their father's store, and so learned the business. They married brothers, and each opened china stores, which they attended, while their husbands engaged in other business. They are both widows now, but have raised and educated their children. A son and son-in-law of one conduct the business. They employ saleswomen, paying from $5 to $8 a week. They are now in search of two intelligent young women, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, to grow up to the business. They require a little more readiness in arithmetic, tact, and general business qualifications than they can easily meet with. From their experience they judge the employment to be healthy. A lady in a large china store on Broadway, New York, receives $5 a week. A lady in another store told me that lifting crockery causes quite a strain on the back, and should be done by men. A person gets very dusty who attends china. It requires lifting and dusting, and now and then must be washed--always when first taken out of the crate. Mrs. L. and her husband are English, and have been brought up to the business. She sells most about Christmas. She is on her feet all the time. To learn the names of all the articles sold in a large store, and their prices, and to exercise care in handling, requires patience. A china merchant writes: "Women are generally paid less than men. There is a difference of from $10 to $40 per month in favor of men, because (with few exceptions) women are not so well qualified to do business as men. It would take from six to eight months to learn to sell china. A clear head, common sense, and activity are the qualifications needed. Women are not more likely to be thrown out of employment than men, if as well qualified." A lady told me, the china is a slow business and seldom pays more than twenty-five per cent., but is a sure business for the cheaper kind of goods. The profit is not so much as for fancy articles of ladies' wear; but less is lost from the change of style. China merchants, she thought, seldom employ women; why, she could not tell. Mr. H., who employs a girl, paid her $1.50 a week and board the first year, then raised her wages to $7 a month. He thinks if more girls would qualify themselves for china stores they would be likely to find employment. A girl should commence young, but should know how to read and write, on account of taking orders. He thinks it best to get homely girls, rather advanced in age, to attend store, because the young and handsome ones will get married. He prefers girls, because they are more quiet and steady. Small articles of china he sends the girl home with; heavy articles he takes himself. A lady, whose ware was partly out of doors and partly in the house, said she had dusted it at least a dozen times through the day, and then it was covered with dust. Her breakage is considerable. She sells most about Christmas. Another china dealer told me, she sells most in spring, when people go to housekeeping. E. L., in the Five Points, sells most in summer, because her patrons are poor people, and in summer the men have most work, and their expenses are lighter--consequently the women have more money. Her stand is a good one, but she does not much more than make a living. The business requires some experience in buying and selling. Ladies sometimes come into the store to purchase articles they would not like to ask a man for. A girl keeping a china stand told me she sells most in spring and fall. She pays $3 a month for ground rent, but owns the shelter. She locks it at night, and it is perfectly secure, for her lock is different from all others. It does not take long to learn to sell common ware. She expects to sell all winter at her stand, and has to be on her feet all the time. She sells on an average from $2 to $3 worth a day. =102. Clothiers.= In London there are shops confined to the sale of nautical clothes, and some to the sale of theatrical attire. B.'s sewers (New York) earn from $2 to $10 per week--piece work, of course. Most of it is done by machine. Meritorious girls need never be out of work, said Mr. B.; yet he can always get plenty of hands. He has much of his work done in New Jersey. Some men make a business of taking it from establishments, and hire women all through the country to do it. There are two kinds of tailoring--custom and slop work. The last is subdivided into the cheap slop work and that of the best quality, and there are two kinds of establishments for this common work--that which is not better done perhaps than the other, but for which a better price is paid and received, and done by houses of standing and reputation. The other is done by extortionists, Jews and Germans, and patronized by their own class. As tailoring is done now, it does not require a regular apprenticeship as in bygone years, particularly for those who work by machine. I met a girl on the steps, seeking for work, who told me she makes $4 a week as operator, when she can get steady work. One of the proprietors of L. & B.'s clothing establishment told me some of their workmen earn from $8 to $10 a week, working by the piece. Much of their work is for California. They employ hands most of the year, as they work both for the home and foreign market. The great trouble is that the majority of tailoresses are inefficient. Some are widows, striving to support their children. Some have dissipated husbands, and are subject to constant interruption. Some have not the time to properly learn the trade, and, consequently, such workers cannot have that labor which pays best, however much they need it. The character of work done by applicants is judged of by turning to the book of their former employer, and seeing what prices were paid. In hard times, like these, employers try to retain those that are dependent on their labor for their bread. The foreman said, in good times, there is work enough for all the tailoresses in New York. They pay good operators $5 a week--a day of ten hours. All the summer work is done by machines. The pressing and basting is done by men. The foreman of the S. Brothers' establishment says the best place for tailoresses is in the West, where there are openings, and they can make money. The only trouble is, the poor have not money to go West. All their work is done by machines, and all given out. They do not give work more than six months in the year, and that barely keeps the girls while they are at work. P. & C. have their machines worked by hot condensed air. The operators receive from $4.50 to $6. Basters are only small girls, and earn from $2 to $3 a week. B. & Co., clothiers, give work out, and, of course, pay by the piece. Their most busy times are from October to March, and from April to September. They do Southern work. Some of the workers only earn $2.50 if they are slow, even if they are industrious and constantly at work. Some of their best hands can earn $6 a week, but are likely to be at least two months out of employment. The prospect for tailoresses is poor. I have heard that some good hands are wanted in Chicago. A great deal of clothing is sold there to people from the surrounding country and towns. B. does not require any deposit, but a girl must show her book from her other employers. They have thousands of applications for work. The reason more clothing is not made up out of the city is the difficulty in procuring such tailors' trimmings as they need just at the time they are wanted. Most clothing establishments keep a list of those that do not return work taken out, and send them to each other. On persons applying to the foremen, he turns to his book to see if the names are among the delinquents. He thinks girls in service are more certain of making a living, for they are paid from $1 to $2 a week for their work, and have their board, which would be from $1 to $3 a week, and a competent servant need not be out of employment; while slop work is very uncertain, and everything that is made goes for board and clothes. Many of these shop girls sleep half a dozen in a garret, on straw beds, without sufficient covering. Many might go to the country and the West and get employment, but they have not the means; and, if they had the means to go, might not have enough to come back, if they found it necessary. F. D. & Co., clothiers. Their girls earn from $3 to $6 per week, paid by the piece, and done at home. They give most of their work to men who have machines and employ operatives. The prospect for this kind of work is poor. Not more than two thirds of the hands in the city, in this department of labor, will be retained. When business is good they are able to keep their hands employed all the year, except for a few weeks when changing from thin to thick work, and _vice versa_. They sometimes give a girl work to do as a sample. A woman told me of three girls occupying the room above her, that have a sewing machine. Two baste and finish off, and one operates. They work day and night, and one she knows is even now earning $8 a week. They make flannel shirts, receiving 75 cents a dozen, without putting in the sleeves, working the button holes, or putting on the buttons. I saw a girl that receives 87 cents a dozen for making flannel shirts. We have seen it stated that a persons possessed of machines, who make up large quantities of clothing at very low prices, are enabled, by the speed at which they can work the machines, to produce sufficient to remunerate all the parties employed, at an average of $4 a week." One clothier in Albany, New York, pays $3 a week to his hands working eleven hours a a day. He furnishes work steadily through the fall, and pays men better wages, because they can do more work. The proprietor of a mammoth establishment in New York, D., writes: "We employ women in making pants, vests, shirts, and summer coats, both by the week and by the piece. When the sewers take work out, it is by the piece; but when the work is done in the shop, it is paid for by the week. The wages by the week range from $3 to $7. Women thoroughly educated in the trade can make about $6 per week, men about $9--their work is heavier. The number of branches in this trade, and the time of preparation for each, varies. We never receive learners. As the articles are of general use, good hands usually find employment. The work is brisk from November till March 1st, and from May till September 1st. The time of work could be shortened, but at the expense of the laborers' wages. In a city like ours, there is always a full supply of hands. About two thirds of our women are American. Women could not be employed to sell clothing to men." This firm employed, in February, 1860, five hundred hands in the shop, and eight hundred outside. In B. Brothers' establishment, "indoor work is paid by the week. An agent pays for the outdoor work by the piece. Those in the house average $5 per week. Men do heavier work and receive $7. Women make vests and pantaloons; men, coats. They work in the same room. The men do the pressing." (I expect it is a rule that they shall not speak to each other, for not one word did I hear any of them speak in the half hour I spent in the room.) "It requires about six months to learn the business. They do not take learners. An ability to sew well, and neatness with the work, are necessary. They sell most when the country is in a peaceful and prosperous condition. They sell most clothing to Western customers about the 1st of January, and to city retail stores about the 1st of February. They work ten hours a day. There is a surplus of hands in New York. They employ seventy in the house, and between 2,000 and 3,000 outside. The number of Americans is about 20 per cent." Great injustice is done by women in the country, in comfortable circumstances, who do the work at a very low price, merely to obtain pocket money. An English tailor in New York hires girls for making pants and coats. He pays one $4, one $3.50, and another $3, and they work from 7 A. M. to 7 P. M. There is no difference in the prices paid, except when the man's work is heavier. Spring and fall are the best seasons for work. Men can press better, because they have more strength; but women can stitch as well, if they have the experience. He kept one operator at $6 a week in busy times, and $3 in slack times, and another at $5 the year round. Some of the poor tailors in New York rent a room, occupy a spot themselves, and rent out the rest of the room to others at the same kind of work, charging fifty cents for seat room for a man and a girl to assist him; thirty-seven cents for a man alone. It is not easy to get good hand tailoresses, for most are employed on machines. One firm, that employ about five hundred hands, write they pay from $3 to $5 per week of ten hours a day, and that it requires two years to learn the trade. S. & D., manufacturers and venders of boys' clothing, write: "Their work is done by the piece, so much a garment, and wages run from $2 to $6 a week, of ten hours a day--of course, depending on the skill and hours of the worker. The relative wages between men and women are, as sewers, say for men, one third more; that is, as four for the women and six for the men. The business of a tailoress is numbered among the regular trades for women, and requires somewhat more than the average trade time, say one year. They excel as vest makers--a branch almost exclusively confined to them. There is no uniform usage in regard to pay. The requisites are good eyesight, average strength, and if taste be superadded, the better. Winter is the best season for those who work for wholesale venders. Women are most apt to be out of employment in summer. The demand is, at present, less than the supply. There is a surplus of vest makers, and a deficiency, if anywhere, in children's suit making. It is an occupation less suited to women than trades that require more nicety of touch and eye, such as designing or wood engraving. The majority of tailoresses in New York city are German and Irish." A firm engaged in the merchant tailoring and ready-made clothing business write: "The occupation is unhealthy, because the workers are constantly sitting. They earn from $2 to $4.50 per week, ten hours a day. We pay men better, because they are stronger and more capable, and have more experience. Men receive from $9 to $12. It requires four years for men to learn the business, and two years for women to learn it so as to earn $4 per week. The qualifications needed are common sense, good taste, and strong eyes. From March to January is the busy season; but good hands have work all the year." B. O. & S. "give their work out. Their trade is Southern. Their spring work begins 1st October, and continues until the last of March; and fall work begins in May, and lasts until September. They do not require a deposit, but a recommendation from the last employer, and give some work to applicants to do as a sample. Some is done by hand, some by machinery, Wages run from $3 up. Much of their work is done by Germans, whose wives assist them. It is sometimes difficult for them to get good hands. The foreman dismissed the Jews he found at work when he went there, for he thinks they are not reliable. Some get work out, but intrust it to others to do, and so it is poorly done. The foreman said many women spend a day or two out of every week running from shop to shop to get work. He has never lost anything by girls not returning goods. If they should keep them, they would soon be known at the different establishments, and have no place to go for work." In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, and Ohio, during the year ending June 1st, 1860, 36,155 males and 52,515 females were employed in making clothing. =103. Curiosity Dealers.= In large cities, a few persons may find employment in this way. To the business of selling coins, medals, buckles, old-time jewelry, &c., is usually added the sale of shells and foreign birds. The same persons might engage in the sale of stuffed birds and animals, marine plants, minerals, and other such articles as are suitable for placing in a museum. Many women on the streets of London sell coins, medals, &c. =104. Druggists and Druggists' Clerks.= Some knowledge of medicines and their nature is requisite to an attendant in a drug store. The business is light, and, to some, a pleasant one. In a large drug store, one of the clerks might be a young man, to attend to night prescriptions. The day business could easily be carried on by ladies, if they were qualified. Many articles sold by druggists require a chemical or mechanical combination. Schools for giving instruction in the art of preparing medicines are established in New York and Philadelphia. If enough ladies would unite to form a class, we have no doubt that separate instruction would be given them by the professors of pharmacy. We hope these schools will tend to prevent abuses in the prosecution of the drug business, as those persons will be most patronized who are known as graduates of these schools. Dyestuffs, paint, hair oils, &c., are sold by most druggists, besides the materials directly used in their business. The apothecary's business is more confined to the mixing and putting up of medicines, as prescribed by physicians. Girls that put up drugs are paid by the package, and earn from $2 to $5 per week. Most country physicians prepare and sell their own medicines. Censors in Great Britain visit the stores of druggists, and are required by law to destroy any medicines they consider not fit for use. In France the regulations are equally strict. In some parts of France and Germany, sisters of charity are employed to compound medicines, and some to administer them. Mrs. Jameson, in her "Communion of Labor," describes her visits to several hospitals in Europe, in charge of sisters of charity, where some of their number were employed to fill prescriptions, both homoeopathic and allopathic. I find that in most Roman Catholic institutions in this country, some sisters are set apart to perform the duties of druggists. In 1776, when Howard visited Lyons, he found "there were sisters who made up, as well as administered, all the medicines prescribed, for which purpose there were a laboratory and apothecary's shop, the neatest and most elegantly fitted up that can be conceived." Lord Brougham, in a speech at York, about two years ago, after eulogizing the Protestant sisters of charity as nurses, said: "They are the persons who make up, who distribute, who administer all the medicines; they are, as I can answer from my own knowledge practically in the matter, as well acquainted with the chemical preparations as the professional men themselves." In the preparation of fine chemicals in laboratories, women are sometimes employed. A druggist told me that a person in his business need never be idle. When not otherwise employed, he can be making tinctures, compounds, &c. It requires four or five years to become a competent druggist. The business is one on which hang the lives of its patrons. Some druggists put up their goods very neatly, and make them look beautiful; but often sacrifice, to do so, their medicinal properties. The standard of druggists is higher in Philadelphia than New York. In Philadelphia, many young men receive nothing for their services, while learning; but in New York, boys over fifteen are generally paid $100 the first year, and more afterward. Many of the best druggists will not make or sell patent medicines. In some new parts of the Western country, druggists unite their calling with something else; and are often but a poor excuse for druggists, deriving their profits mostly from nostrums. One in the business needs a retentive memory. In the census of Great Britain, three hundred and ten females are returned as druggists. Dr. Brandreth has his pills made at Sing Sing. He employs twelve females, and pays an average of $5 per week to each one. The widow of a deceased druggist and chemist told me that the receipts left by her husband she could easily dispose of for a thousand dollars. We have seen it stated that the average hours per day of a drug clerk are thirteen, and his wages $9. The neatness of women, their delicacy and attention to details, qualify them admirably for the drug business. At the Woman's Infirmary, New York, the apothecary's department is entirely in the hands of ladies. At St. Luke's, a lady of education and refinement (a sister of the Order of the Holy Communion) gives her services to the measuring out and dispensing of medicines. At Smith's homoeopathic pharmacy, the lady in attendance told me nearly the whole in their department of business is in the hands of females. They employ men, to press the plants and make tinctures; but the distilling of water and alcohol, the pulverizing, triturating and diluting, cleaning vials, corking, labelling, and stamping, are done by women. It requires neatness, exactness, and quickness, to succeed in putting up medicines. The girls, while at work, wear clothes that will not suffer from their labor, which is not the cleanest in the world. The proprietor of the establishment wrote me: "We employ six ladies, and prefer them to men, as their work is neater. We pay them from $3 to $6 per week, and they work from nine to ten hours. There is no difference in the seasons, as regards our employment. We pay women from the first; and they may learn the part done by them in from three to six months. As their work is essentially different from men's, we cannot make a comparison in the prices paid." At another homoeopathic pharmacy, I was told they employ a few girls to wash bottles, to put on labels, and place them in the boxes. They are paid from $3 to $3.50 a week. At a wholesale drug store, one of the proprietors told me they "employ a number of women, and pay by the piece, the workers earning from $3.50 to $6 per week. Different kinds of work have different prices. They pay from the first. Those who put up perfumery earn most. The greater part of the duties in a drug store can be performed by well qualified ladies as efficiently as by men." So few ladies are employed in that way, that they might feel timid about assuming the responsibilities of a drug store in a city. Yet, after they had spent two or three years in a store of others, where they were properly instructed, why need they feel any more responsibility in a drug store of their own? I was told that no drug broker and no retail druggist employs women. When employed, it is by those in the wholesale business. I called on a German widow keeping a retail drug store, but who employed a young man to attend the store. She regrets that she did not learn to compound of her husband. She can sell simple medicines, and buys all her own medicines. She had heard of one lady druggist, in Switzerland, that performed all the duties of a druggist, and one in Germany; but it is not common to see women in the business there. H. & R., druggists, employ women to put up patent medicines, and pay $4 or $5 per week. Mr. M., maker of patent medicines, employs some girls all the time. When busy, they pay from $6 to $8 a week, but at other times $3. It requires some experience to put up pills. The pills are mixed, rolled, and cut by men, as it is heavy work when done extensively. Their girls get $2.50 the first week of their work, and their wages are increased in proportion to their skill and abilities. Messrs. K. & K., wholesale druggists, employ a woman to put up Seidlitz powders, furnishing all the materials, and paying by the quantity. They pay her about $250 a year, but suppose she is assisted by some of her sisters at home. Mr. H. employs a woman to put up Seidlitz powders, paid for by the gross. A smart woman can earn from $1.25 to $1.50 a day. A measure is used, containing the right quantity for filling the papers. A house that makes extract of ginger, in Philadelphia, formerly employed women to put it up; but they now employ men and boys in preference, because of the work they can do at intervals, that women cannot do. I called at Mrs. S.'s drug store. The youth that stood behind the counter said drug stores kept by ladies, or where they are employed to dispense, would not be patronized by physicians. He said, if any trouble should occur, from want of knowledge or skill in putting up medicines, and the case was brought into court, the man that employed female dispensers would be punished. Many persons, he says, come to druggists for medical and surgical advice, that could not, and would not think of consulting a lady, even if she were competent to give advice. It would be as unsuitable as for women to shave men, as they do in Germany. I sent for the lady, though the clerk urged that she had a sick child, and could not leave it. I told her the object of my call. She very kindly talked with me, and gave me information, of which I will give a synopsis. She boarded for several years after she was married, and as she had nothing to occupy her time, she spent much of it in the drug store with her husband. Seven years ago he died, and she, by the advice of friends, continued the store. She has employed a young man only part of the time. She says it involves great responsibility, but she is, and feels just as responsible as a man, and would be held so in court; but is not any more liable to indictment, or prosecution, than a man. It is something that requires exactness. It will not do to trust entirely to the memory. She generally refers to the book for directions. A youth of good abilities can, in from six months to one year, put up prescriptions, and a boy, when taken into a drug store, is paid from $1.50 to $2 a week for six months. A druggist of New York writes: "There is but one college of pharmacy in the city of New York, where instruction would be given equally to ladies, if they desired it; although, as yet, none have ever presented themselves. Ladies have never been employed, to my knowledge, as druggists' clerks in this city, or elsewhere in the United States, nor, as I am of opinion, in Europe. In one instance, it was attempted in Philadelphia a few years since, by a leading druggist, with a view of economy, I believe; and although he professed to have engaged the ladies merely as saleswomen in the fancy goods department, they nevertheless were allowed to dispense medicines. It so happened that one of these made a mistake, in giving the wrong medicine, which resulted in the death of the patient, a lady of wealth and wide acquaintance, and the consequence was the ruin and destruction of the whole business of the druggist. This put an end to the experiment in Philadelphia." (This we extremely regret, but know that such accidents have occurred from the incompetency and carelessness of some young men and boys, with less disastrous results to the proprietor.) "The business," the writer adds, "is, in some respects, quite unsuited to females. It requires much real manual labor, its hours are long, and its constant, close confinement wears upon the strongest constitutions. I have myself lost my health at it, and I know of numerous others who have done the same." A lady physician writes: "I do not know whether women are anywhere employed as druggists' clerks. They are not either in France or England, where special education and license are required. I am not aware of any druggist here who would take a pupil, but I have no doubt one could be found." =105. Keepers of Fancy Stores.= A fancy store pays well when a good connection is established, but it takes time for that. Business is moving up street in New York, and of course fancy stores with it. Some unite millinery with the sale of fancy goods. The prices paid to those who stand in such stores, vary greatly. They are given under the head of Saleswomen. =106. Gentlemen's Furnishing Stores.= A great many women are employed in this business, and many more might be. The making of gentlemen's robes furnishes in itself quite a business in cities; also the making of cravats, collars, hemming handkerchiefs, and odd work to be done. Mrs. M. told me she has a girl that assists in the house, and stays in the store when not so occupied, and receives for her services $6 a month and her board. Madame P. pays $3 to each of her operators (ten hours a day), and to one superior operator $4. She pays $3.50 a week to a button-hole maker. That is made a separate branch of sewing. Fourteen is the usual number of button holes in a shirt, and some employers pay one cent apiece; some, one and a half; and for large ones, in which studs or sleeve buttons are worn, two cents apiece. Some men are very particular about the make and fit of their shirts. Madame P. gets $2.50 a dozen for shirts from a store down street, and $4.50 for shirts from a store up street. Ordered work pays best. Her great trouble is that she does not get constant employment. For awhile she sunk in her business from $4 to $5 a week. Mr. P. says, whenever business is dull in New York city, it is, of course, wherever work is done to supply the city. He takes learners in busy times. Mr. D., who employs 2,000 hands in his factory at New Haven, has discharged them all; also Mr. H., who employs 1,000; and Messrs. M. & H., who employ as many. He thinks, when business revives, there will be work enough for all in this line, and even more. Shirts are such an essential part of a man's wardrobe, that as long as men exist, shirts must be made. With the many improvements in sewing machines, Mr. P. has shirts, when cut out, given to the operator, and turned from the machine complete, with the exception of buttons and button holes. No basters are employed. All the felling is done by a feller, and all the hemming by a hemmer. He furnishes his operators with machines. He employs men to cut, because they do it faster than women. They cut with a knife twenty-four thicknesses of cloth. All factories furnish machines and needles. Troy is the great place for making shirt collars. The girls are paid by the piece in these factories, and the employers will not permit them to work more than eight hours a day, as they do not wish them to lose their health. A girl is not retained in these collar factories that cannot earn $7 a week--eight hours a day. The machines are moved by steam. =107. Furniture Sellers.= A French woman that keeps a new furniture store told me that her husband does most of the work, employing some men to help him. She only attends store in his absence. The lifting, repairing, and varnishing, she thought could not be done by women. Called in the store of a woman--a German Jew. Her husband is away most of the time. She has furniture made to fill orders, and, of course, employs several men to make the furniture. I think she sells on credit. I think women are better adapted to the keeping of house-furnishing than of house-furniture stores. I was told in a furniture store by a saleswoman, that she takes entire charge of the store, cuts and gives out damask for making furniture, orders the men, and keeps the books; for which she has a comfortable home with her employer, a widow lady, and $5 a week. She says it requires one to be amiable and obliging, to possess health and energy, and to be a good judge of human nature, to succeed in business; but thinks good conduct and sobriety will insure success in almost anything. The spring she finds best for selling furniture. Small profits and quick sales is her motto. She never credits. She regulates her prices according to circumstances, allowing herself what she considers a fair profit, and yet doing justice to the buyer. She goes into the store at seven in the morning, and remains until ten at night. Only a strong, well-built woman, can move furniture. A lady that keeps a furniture store told me she sold a great deal before the holidays, but will not sell much again until spring. On making inquiry of a lady that keeps a furniture store, about the business, she uttered these practical remarks: "Never credit in the furniture business, or your money and furniture are both gone. You may succeed, if you have an honest, reliable man to attend to the business for you. It is a money-paying business. You should have a man that can attend auction, and buy furniture, and repair and varnish it. Besides, you need a carman, to lift and move furniture in the store, and carry it home." We would state that a woman can just as well attend the sales of house furniture in New York, at residences, as men, and a carman can at any time be hired to move furniture. =108. Grocers.= The retail grocery business is one that many women can and do carry on. It is very common to see the wives of grocers in their stores. The store is generally connected with or beneath their dwelling--so that it is very convenient for the man, and the woman is saved from exposure to the weather, passing back and forth from the dwelling to the store. The business is light and generally profitable. Much depends upon selecting a stand. A good stand is not likely to be idle long. The fall, I was told, was a bad season for a retail grocery in New York. Many small groceries in New York are owned by men, whose wives attend the stores while they are at work. I saw a nice little grocer, whose husband is a tailor, and who works at his trade in a room back of the grocery. This seemed to be reversing the general order of things. The husbands of some grocer women keep stalls in the markets, and furnish the groceries of their wives with vegetables. I called in a neat grocery store and bought some apples. The lady in attendance says she never sells liquor, but all the groceries around there do. She goes to market at four in the morning to buy potatoes and apples for her grocery. The baker leaves her bread, and she goes every evening to a baker's and buys cakes. Bundles of kindling wood are sent her from the wood yard, and the milkman leaves her milk. She goes to Washington market for her meat, and to Vesey street for her tea. So she manages. She said, not a cent in the store had been gained dishonestly. A grocer woman told me that peddlers interfere seriously with her business. Besides, the baker next door had gone to selling milk and butter, from which she has always derived most profit. She has least sale after families have laid in their groceries in the fall. Rich people and those in moderate circumstances generally purchase their groceries in large quantities, it being more convenient and economical to do so; hence we find but few groceries in the best portions of a city. Of course a grocer woman must be much on her feet. Most groceries are open until ten o'clock at night. Mrs. A. says it is impossible for grocer women to make more than a living now, paying $6 and $7 a week for rent, and sometimes not clearing more than $3 a week. She opens at five in the morning, and closes at nine at night. She makes most in summer, because then she does not have to burn fuel, and can do with less candle light. What lifting is necessary, her son does when he comes to see her. There are too many small groceries in New York for any to thrive. I have been told that in the majority (even when attended by women) liquor is sold. What a crime, to make ferocious beasts of those who are stupid enough to buy ardent spirits! =109. Junk Dealers.= Junkmen go about New York with small wagons, across which is a rod. Over the rod are strung several cowbells of different sizes, and from it fly a number of various-colored strips. Junkmen are not the same as the rag gatherers, or dealers, but a blending of the two, as they buy on a very small scale, and sell again. Part of their rags they sell to shoddy manufacturers. A. B., a female junk-dealer, keeps a shop, where she buys and sells old metals and rags. The first she sells to a man who comes to the door and buys them; the others she sells at a store where rags are bought for making paper. She has no system in buying and selling--buying at the lowest prices she can, and selling at the highest. Another woman told me she buys white rags at three and a half cents per pound, and sells at four. She pays so much a pound for old metals, and sells at an advance. Other articles, as bottles, glass, bones, cold victuals, and grease, are disposed of by junkwomen. The damaged cotton picked up by old women is sold to junk dealers. =110. Music Sellers.= Mr. W. does not know of any ladies engaged in selling sheet music, but thinks there may be some in small towns. He thinks it would be a very suitable employment for them. I called in a music store, B--, where a lady was in attendance, and, in the course of conversation, learned she was the wife of the proprietor. According to her report, "it is an arduous business, and one that requires brains and musical talent. People will seldom purchase a piece of music until they hear it, and she must try the pianos before a person will purchase or hire. The business requires great patience. She and her husband keep their store open until ten o'clock at night. They do not sell so much when the weather is bad, nor in summer, when the people are out of the city. A lady so employed must be able to keep accounts, and, when she sells, must require good security, if she does not sell for cash. She must also be able to distinguish bad from good money." She says, "keepers of music stores will not employ women, however great their capabilities," but no reason could I obtain for it. I think it is something, where an opening offers, that would pay a woman well. I called at another music store in the same city, kept by a lady. She said: "She and her sister would not keep a music store, if they had not brothers in the business, for she did not consider it any more appropriate for a lady to keep pianos to sell than to keep a cabinet wareroom. The pianos sometimes need to be repaired and tuned, and no one can attend to that without knowing how a piano is constructed. (?) The mere selling of sheet music, she thought, might do well enough, but selling books would be better. She says it would not do well for a woman to tune pianos, as it requires considerable practice to make one competent." Why might not women acquire that practice? Her selfishness and fear of competition were very evident. It is desirable for a music seller to understand Italian, French, and German, as many of the songs used in our country are in those languages. Many pieces of music have two or three titles. It requires some time to learn to rightly perform the duties of a music seller. The selling of sheet music and the selling of pianos are separate branches, and a person in one may be totally ignorant of the other. The wholesale and retail departments are entirely distinct in large establishments. Clerks that attend in the piano department are expected to be able to play. A lady is now employed in a large piano store in New York to try the instruments for purchasers. A lady in New York stays in the store when her brother, Mr. D., is absent. He paid a boy $1.50 a week for some months while learning, then more. A person of ability could learn the business in six months' time, or less. Music is always arranged alphabetically on the shelves. A boy should be kept to climb the ladder. An extensive music seller in Boston writes: "In our direct employ is only one female--a cashier. Repeated losses of money, and cash continually over or above, induced us four years ago to adopt the plan of employing a female to receive the proceeds of sales. It has saved us a great deal of money, and lessened the temptation to the young men in the store. We would gladly employ more women, but the height of our shelves, and the unsuitableness of female apparel, prevent." Another music seller writes me: "Women are employed in our business, in Germany and France, and are there paid at the same rate as men. We do not employ ladies in our store, because those of their own sex will not buy from them." =111. Sellers of Artists' Materials.= The sale of paintings, engravings, and artists' materials, form of themselves a branch of business in large cities. I know of such a store in Philadelphia, kept by a lady. It must be a light and pleasant employment. In London there are seventy-nine print sellers. =112. Sellers of Seeds, Roots, and Herbs.= In agricultural and horticultural communities, there is always a demand for roots and seeds. A large number of seeds are raised and put in papers for sale by the Shakers. In stores for the sale of roots and seeds, growing plants in jars might be offered for sale, and evergreens, with their roots in dirt, enveloped by linen or sacking. Orders might be given, and filled, for forest and fruit trees. Bouquets, also, might be kept for sale. A man in New York hires a room about Christmas, and devotes himself exclusively to the sale of evergreens for Christmas trees. As field seeds are usually sold by the measure, and not put up in papers, women have no employment in that line. The proprietor of an agricultural warehouse and seed store writes: "Our seed and grain are put up by men and boys in the winter months. It is work that might be done by women." A lady botanic druggist told me, "there are families in the West that make a comfortable support by gathering herbs; but even the smallest children assist." Those plants that bear flowers she has gathered when they begin to bloom. Those engaged in gathering commence early in life, and gather those growing in their yards and the fields of the neighborhood. Another seller of botanic medicine says there are spring and fall herbs, and, of course, they must be gathered in their seasons. She has a man and his wife gathering herbs, who support their family of five children by it, and two girls of another family, who earn a livelihood by it. Ladies in the occupation of root, seed, and flower selling, would do well to keep garden tools for sale. =113. Sellers of Small Wares.= In England, the word "haberdasher" is applied to those who engage in the sale of cord, tape, pins, and such articles. In America there is no synonymous word--so we use the expression heading this article, which we have seen occasionally employed in the same way. The number of women in this business is legion. With many it is a suitable and successful employment. Those whose means will not permit them to engage in any more extensive business--who have a room well located in town, and not too much competition--can, with a small capital, commence a safe and light business. It requires but little effort, and, with enough customers, will well repay time and capital. Many a poor woman, unable to purchase the articles required, has obtained them to sell on commission, and, by industry and economy, earned sufficient, in the course of time, to purchase a stock of her own. I called on a lady that keeps a variety store. She sells gloves, handkerchiefs, suspenders, and such articles to gentlemen, and tape, buttons, &c., to ladies. She would rather sell to gentlemen. She has been keeping store thirty-five years. Her store is near the river, and she sells much to people coming from the ferry and off the boats. She thinks in the South and West there would be many good openings for such stores. Spring and fall, and during the holidays, are her best times for selling. I called in a small store: I was told by the lady that she did not much more than make a living. She depends much on her friends and acquaintances for custom. As they increase in number, which they do from year to year, her custom increases. She finds herself very closely confined at home by the business. She does not regulate her profits entirely by the value of the articles, for cheap goods sell best where she is, and she puts on a large profit. =114. Sellers of Snuff, Tobacco, and Cigars.= A lady, keeping a cigar store, said she makes only one third profit on her sales. Most people make one half, which, she says, is the usual profit on all goods. Snuff gives her the headache, when dealing it out, but she thinks she may get accustomed to it. She sells most from six o'clock in the morning until nine or ten; and then again in the evening. To know what manufactures of tobacco, snuff, and cigars are most popular, is important. Having acquaintances assists much, and they are the first patrons to one commencing business. A cigar store generally pays well in large cities, and, if well located, is sure to succeed. Fall and winter are the best seasons for selling cigars; in very warm weather no one cares to smoke. =115. Saleswomen.= Women are quite as capable by nature to sell dry goods as men, but are not trained so thoroughly, nor from so early an age. Suavity of manner and perfect control of temper are very desirable qualifications for a clerk. Care, judgment, and taste are requisite for success. A flow of speech and ability to show goods to advantage are also desirable. Some people urge that if females are employed as attendants in stores, they will be exposed to dangerous and demoralizing influences, and something is said about the corruption of female shopkeepers in Paris, by way of warning. Now, it so happens that the corruption spoken of does not exist among the store attendants in Paris, but among sempstresses. Saleswomen and bookkeepers there enjoy as a class a good reputation, but the same cannot be said of sempstresses. Sempstresses, we know from the rates paid them, and the accounts of travellers, cannot make enough to support themselves; but shopkeepers can. "One fifth of all the female criminals in Paris are sempstresses," says Madame Mallet. Some employers complain that women are too sociably inclined, too much disposed to chat, where several are employed in the same establishment. It may be true; but are they more so than men of the same age? The languid appearance of saleswomen, we think, arises from their being on their feet so constantly. It is injurious to a woman; and employers should allow them to be seated, when not waiting on customers. The number of skirts they must wear, and the weight of hoop skirts, does much to bring this about. The kind of ladies that saleswomen mostly see in first-class stores is calculated to improve and refine their manners, and give them a command of language. Besides, it renders them more particular in their attire. They want to dress and look well. Those acquainted with the art, say there are at least a hundred ways of putting up new goods. Some Jews hire a girl to stay in their store, and require her to sew, make hoop skirts, &c., when not waiting on customers. In the United States, women are employed in a variety of stores: dry goods, lace, and fancy stores are the most common. In Philadelphia they attend in nearly all the largest stores--Levy's, Sharpless's, and Evans's; besides, several hundred earn a subsistence as saleswomen in smaller stores. Close observation and much experience are needed to fulfil the duties, but the natural quickness of most women gives them a tact seldom equalled by men. The variety afforded by the occupation is pleasing, and the labors are light. The handling of gloves, tape, ribbon, &c., is undoubtedly best suited to the finer and smaller hands of women. The reason there are so many young men performing the duties of clerks and salesmen, is, that they are lazy, and do not want to perform hard work. Another reason is that the majority want to dress well and make a good appearance, but have no capital. The price paid for a girl to attend store would depend on the size, location, and kind of store, how much they sell, and the abilities of the girl. Lady clerks usually receive from $3 to $8 per week. The best seldom receive more than $6; while men receive from $6 to $12. The ladies are obliged to dress well, and to do so must retrench in other expenses, living in crowded attics or damp cellars, or on unwholesome food. Mr. M., Philadelphia, pays his girls from $3 to $6 per week, it depending altogether on their qualifications. In Bangor and Belfast, Maine, most of those who attend stores are women. They have also been much employed in Buffalo, New York, during the last few years. It is a regulation of some of the stores in New York and Philadelphia, that a salesman or woman shall not sit down to rest; and in some, if they do, they are fined. If there is nothing to do, they must take down the boxes and pull out the articles, then arrange them carefully in the boxes, as if they were closely occupied, to give the impression that much business is transacted in the establishment. In fancy stores on the avenues, New York, girls get from $2.50 to $4 a week. The stores are mostly open from 7 A. M. to 10 P. M. In some localities, most goods are sold in the evening. At a small dry-goods store, where I called to make a purchase, the lady told me she used to employ a girl, paying her $3 a week, without board. She was in the store from 7 A. M. till 9.30 P. M. A girl in a store on Sixth avenue told me, she and her companions get from $2 to $5 a week. They are there at eight in the morning, and remain until ten at night, and on Saturday until eleven or twelve. They are not allowed to sit down. A girl in a lace and embroidery store on Sixth avenue, New York, told me that girls get in such stores from $3.50 to $10, but they must make up laces when not waiting on customers. Some receive a percentage. Women are not paid as well as men, even in such stores. Time of learning depends on the individual. They are seldom paid anything for a few weeks. They have most to do in spring and fall; are in the store from 8 A. M. to 9 or 10 P. M. A lady told me she used to get $7 a week in a fancy store. At M.'s dry-goods store, New York, the superintendent told me they do not pay learners for one month. They have girls who have been in the store but a few weeks, that can do as well as those who have been in it for years. Some again are stupid, and they will not retain such. When girls are qualified, they pay from $1 to $10 a week. They prefer having ladies in the store, thinking they know best a lady's wants. They often have occasion to change--some get broken down and go away, some get tired, some get discouraged, some cannot be on their feet so long, some cannot please customers, some are not satisfactory to employers, &c.; so, many changes take place. The ladies all looked to be Americans. They are allowed to sit when there is nothing to do, and no customers in; which, I suspect, is rarely, if ever the case. I have been told the openings for saleswomen are better farther East than in New York. A lady told me she used to get $1 a day in R.'s store on Broadway, and the other saleswomen got the same price. Then she was on her feet nearly all the time. She was there at eight and staid till seven: all were expected to take their dinner and eat in the store. Mrs. H. told me she knew a lady that stood in a store on Chestnut street, Philadelphia, who received a salary of $800 a year. When girls first go into a store, they usually get $1 a week during the season (three months), then $1.50, and so increase. A pretty good knowledge of store keeping is acquired by a smart person in six months, and now ladies are relieved in large stores from the responsibility of making change. Many of the ladies in New York stores are Irish. American ladies are more engaged in making artificial flowers, bookfolding, &c. I was told rather a novel feature in the life of shop girls, viz.: that many board from home, for the sake of having company; and in addition to this, men, earning good wages, but of disreputable character, will often board in low houses, and ingratiate themselves into the favor of the girls, until they work the ruin of one or more. Mr. D. employs five ladies, and pays them from $3 to $5. He prefers ladies. When he takes beginners, he pays $1.50 a week, and better wages as they become more capable. He has paid $8, and even $9 a week. The ladies are in the store from eight to half past eight. He allows them to sit when no customers are in and there is nothing doing. A lady with whom I talked, and who had stood in a store on Catherine street, New York, finds the occupation very injurious, because of having to be on her feet so constantly, and its lasting from 7 A. M. until 9 P. M. In some stores they are obliged to remain until eleven, and even twelve, in busy seasons. On Grand and Catherine streets, New York, they keep open very late. She says, when the weather is dull, and there are but few customers, employers are apt to be cross and vent their bad feelings on the girls. And in those stores the girls cannot sit down to take a stitch for themselves; but, when there are no customers to wait on, they must make up undersleeves, capes, and caps for the store. She now keeps a millinery and fancy store, and pays her girls $5 a week, and the girls are in the store from seven to nine. They make up bonnets, when not waiting on customers, and so have a change of posture without a loss of time. She has a friend in a Broadway store, that receives $1 a day. A saleswoman should know how to make out accounts. Ability to speak the French and German languages is a most valuable acquisition to a saleswoman in our cities. One discouraging feature in the history of saleswomen is, that their wages are not advanced like those of men. In Detroit, Michigan, girls receive from $3 to $5 for standing in a store. "In Cleveland, in 1854, there was one dry-goods store where four lady clerks were employed at salaries from $200 to $350 per annum. In one shoe store a lady received a salary of $250; and one, in another shoe, store, $200. In a millinery and fancy dry-goods store, kept by ladies, fifteen girls were employed at from $4 to $6 per week. In another, kept by a gentleman, ten girls were employed at from $4 to $6 per week." In the same city, gentlemen clerks usually receive from $250 to $600 per annum. At a store on Grand street, New York, where a number of saleswomen are employed, the owner told me he takes girls in the spring and fall. He tries them for one month, and such as he finds he can make anything of he retains. He then pays them something, and increases their wages in proportion to their advancement. Some never rise above $3; but those who are ambitious and desirous to excel and make proportionate effort, he will pay higher. He has paid as high as $12 a week. A merchant keeping a large trimming store on Canal street, pays his women from $1.50 to $8 per week, and they are in the store from seven in the morning till dark. To wait in a store requires experience; and a lady, in getting a situation, should endeavor to do so through the influence of a merchant. It is very desirable to have a good location for a store. Mr. M. pays his saleswomen from $2 to $6, according to their qualifications. At a confectionery the woman told me she gives $6 a month and board and washing; but as she does not keep open on Sunday, the girl would have to go home Saturday night and stay till Monday. She would be kept busy all the time, from seven in the morning till eleven at night, waiting on customers, cleaning tables, washing plates, sweeping floors, &c. On most of the avenues in New York, merchants do not sell as much, nor receive such a profit, as on Broadway, and employ women because they can get them cheaper. In a small variety store, a lady told me she had paid $4 a week and board to one who had never stood in a store; but the lady was a friend. She remarked: "If a person has the inclination, a memory, and common sense, she can soon learn. Few are willing to take learners. American ladies are not ambitious enough to keep store. For one month in summer and one in winter there is little doing." A lady confectioner says: "It requires a very honest person to be in a confectionery, because small sums are being constantly received and no note taken of them. Girls are paid according to their capabilities from $2 to $5, and are in the store from 7 A. M. to 9, 10, 11, and even 12 P. M., in busy seasons, which are about the holidays. It requires some weeks to know the prices, where to place the articles, and how to make them appear to advantage." A merchant, who employs saleswomen, told me he thought women have a better sense of propriety and are more particular than men, but they lack judgment and promptness. He thinks women do very well as far as they go, but there is a boundary line in ability, beyond which women cannot pass. The gentleman referred to was indebted to his mother, who had kept the store he then owned, for his education and position in business. Mr. P., seller of ladies' trimmings, employs from twenty to twenty-five saleswomen, who knit and embroider for the store when not waiting on customers. A lady who waited in the store told me they change their position frequently, seldom sitting more than ten minutes at a time. Women are paid from $4 to $10 per week, and are in the store from half past 8 A. M. to half past 6 P. M. They pay from $2.50 to $3.50 for board. The business can be learned in from three to six months. While learning, they receive enough to pay their board. Industry and ambition are necessary for success. The prosperity of the business in the future depends on the fashion and the amount of money in circulation. Winter is the best season for the sale of goods. The women are mostly German; they succeed best in knitting, because they are brought up to it. There are openings in the business, West and South. A saleswoman told me her business is hard on the back, because of the standing, reaching up, and bending. She is paid $6 per week, her store companions $3, spending eleven hours in the store. A person of business qualifications requires only practice to make a saleswoman. She has often heard ladies complain of having to purchase small or fancy articles of men. She thought heavy dress goods could be better handled by men. She says dissatisfaction is likely to arise when an employer boards his work hands. Mrs. D., who keeps a fancy store, told me that fifteen or twenty years ago, it was a rare thing to see a saleswoman in a store in New York. She says nearly all of her saleswomen have relations dependent on them for support, and if they are thrown out of employment for a week it is a serious matter. She pays $5 a week to experienced saleswomen, and gives something to learners; all stay in the store ten hours. She thinks honesty, truthfulness, intelligence, good address, and a knowledge of human nature are the best qualifications. Spring and fall she finds the best seasons for selling goods, and thinks the occupation for a lady next best to teaching. A merchant in New Haven writes: "We employ from two to five women (all American) as clerks, paying from $3 to $6 per week. To learners we pay $2 per week. The employment of women is on the increase. My clerks are employed through the year, and work from ten to eleven hours per day. We employ women to save expense, and because we believe them most honest." A firm in Providence, who sell gloves, hosiery, &c., write: "We employ ten saleswomen on an average, and pay from $2 to $7 per week, ten hours a day. We pay $2 per week to learners. To learn thoroughly requires about six months' practice. We consider the prospect good of the occupation being opened to more women. One third of our hands we send off in summer and winter. We find women neater and more steady than men, but not so energetic." The proprietor of a large establishment in Philadelphia writes: "About thirty women are employed by us in selling dry goods. Their health generally improves by their active occupation, the proper ventilation of our warehouse, and the regular habits to which they become accustomed. Wages are from $1 to $10 per week; they are paid less than men because their time of work is shorter, their expenses are less, and their channels of usefulness more circumscribed. A lifetime is needed to learn the business thoroughly, although in five years much may be learned. Women are paid while learning. Quickness of intellect and of body, good temper, and pleasant manners are very essential. Women well instructed are generally permanent in an establishment. Our most busy seasons are from February to June, and September to December. In no season are saleswomen thrown out of employment. In winter they spend eight and a half hours in the store; in summer, nine hours. Seventy-five per cent. are of American parents. The work is fatiguing at times, but not wearing on the system. Another part of our occupation, in which women might be employed, if properly instructed, is bookkeeping. Women are deficient in generalizing, excellent in concentrativeness. Many of our saleswomen have been teachers, and some return to it. They have their evenings as their own from 6 P. M.; they have good moral boarding places, and a public library open gratuitously. About one half live with parents; the remainder board at from $2 to $2.50 per week, perhaps two persons occupying the same room." In Paris, France, young women in stores receive for their services their lodging, washing, and board, with from $40 to $80 per annum. =116. Street Sellers.= The number of women alone, in London, according to Mr. Mayhew's estimate, engaged in street sales, wives, widows, and single persons, is from 25,000 to 30,000. Girls and women form a large proportion of the street sellers, and earn from sixty-two cents to $1 a week. The comparative newness of our country, the smaller size of the cities, and the greater demand for manual labor have presented fewer calls for street sellers. We hope the time may never come when our streets will be thronged, as those of London are, with street venders, for we consider it not by any means an index of general prosperity. More especially do we hope the scanty pittance obtained by their labor, and the consequent privation and suffering, may never be the portion of any of our population willing to work for a support. All the wants of a great city can be supplied by the London street sellers. They are patronized mostly by those in the middle and lower walks of life. All the varieties imaginable are represented in their sale of articles. Both dressed and undressed food can be obtained of them. Home and foreign fruits and vegetables of all kinds have each their separate sales. Of the eatables and drinkables offered by them for sale, the solids consist of hot eels, pickled whelks, oysters, sheep's trotters, pea soup, fried fish, ham sandwiches, hot green peas, kidney puddings, boiled meat puddings, beef, mutton, kidney and eel pies, and baked potatoes. In each of these provisions the street poor find a midday or midnight meal. The pastry and confectionery which tempt the street eaters are tarts of rhubarb, currant, gooseberry, cherry, apple, damson, cranberry, and (so called) mince pies; plum dough and plum cake; lard, currant, almond, and many other kinds of cakes, as well as of tarts; gingerbread nuts and heart cakes; Chelsea buns, muffins, and crumpets; sweet stuff includes the second kind, of rocks, sticks, lozenges, candies, and hard cakes; the medicinal confectionery, of cough drops and horehound; and, lastly, the more novel and aristocratic luxury of street ices and strawberry cream, at two cents a glass (in Greenwich Park). The drinkables are tea, coffee, and cocoa; ginger beer, lemonade, Persian sherbet, and some highly colored beverages which have no specific name, but are introduced to the public as cooling drinks; hot elder cordial or wine; peppermint water; curds and whey; water; ice milk, and milk (just from the cow), in the parks. In addition to this information, most of which is derived from Mr. Mayhew's "London Labor and London Poor," we will devote the remainder of the article to information from the same author; and would do so in his words, were it not that we would like to condense as much as possible. For the substance, we acknowledge, therefore, our indebtedness to Mr. Mayhew. In the suburbs of London, some people spend their time collecting snails, worms, grasshoppers, caterpillars, toads, snakes, and lizards, which they sell in the city as food for birds. Some, in collecting frogs, which they sell to French families, at hotels and at hospitals. Some devote their time to the sale of coffee, beer, and baked potatoes. Some engage in the sale of coke, some of salt, and some of sand. Nor is literature forgotten by the street sellers. "There are," says Mr. M., "five houses in London that publish street literature, and six authors and poets that prepare such literature in prose or rhyme." Some streetsellers devote themselves to the hawking of dog collars, and some to the sale of rat poisons. Some collect the nests of wild birds and the eggs, and sell them. Some sell whips; and some, walking sticks; but these last articles, we believe, are sold only by men. In London, some women sell refuse fruits; some, water-colored pictures and cheap engravings; some, coins commemorating public events. Some engage in the sale of children's watches. Some sell implements belonging to a trade; for instance, tailors' implements. Some sell washerwomen's clothes lines, pegs, and props; or kitchen utensils, as tin ware, vegetable nets, kettle holders, &c. Some of the street sellers are blind, with having taxed their eyes too greatly in sewing for slop shops. Some women are co-workers with the men in the sale of crockery and glass ware. They go in pairs (generally husband and wife); some with a large basket between them, others with separate baskets. Some sell spar ornaments, and some, china ornaments; some, lace, and some, millinery; some, thread, tape, needles, &c. Quite a number sell women's second-hand apparel. Some sell umbrellas; some, men's suspenders, belts, and trouser straps. Others again will sell embroidery, stockings, gaiters, shoe laces, blacking, pipes, quack medicines, snuff, tobacco boxes, and cigar cases; and in winter some are seen carrying even kindling wood to sell. Some women sell dolls, spectacles, wash leather, china cement, razor paste, matches, or japanned ware. Some women carry sponge in baskets; they either sell it for money or exchange it for old clothes. A few sell musical instruments. Some offer guide books, play bills, newspapers, stationery, and jewelry. Rabbits, squirrels, parrots, and other kinds of birds are sold by them; and some dispose of dead game. Seeds, flowers, roots, and, about Christmas, evergreens, are sold in large numbers. In shops, some try to resell slops from kitchens, old glass, metal, or worn clothes, &c.; some, exhausted tea leaves, which they dispose of to those that dye and redye them to sell again.--We give this chapter, because it comprises all and many more than the sellers on our streets. The few engaged in street sales in our cities are mostly confined to old women, who sit at the corners, with stands on which rest store articles, tin ware, sweetmeats, and fruits, or a small lot of fancy articles. There are several stands of second-hand books and newspapers, or shelves of candy, kept by men, but the variety in the business is quite limited, compared with the cities of Europe. Mr. Mayhew thinks the majority of street sellers in London have been servants and mechanics that could not get employment. Some street sellers go on foot through the country during the summer, to sell at fairs and races. Many others get employment from the farmers in gathering vegetables and fruits for market, weeding gardens, picking hops, and assisting in haymaking and harvesting. In Paris, some women carry bread to sell, in baskets strapped to their backs. In New York, I saw two women with baskets of vegetables and fruit to sell. I spoke to one, who told me she earns sometimes as much as $1 a day, and sometimes but a few cents. In winter, it is not unusual to see girls with baskets of dried thyme, parsley, and sage, who sell it for culinary purposes. I talked with a woman who carried tin ware in a basket. She often does not earn fifty cents a day, and will be walking all day, not even going home at noon. She buys by the dozen, and so gets the articles a little cheaper. I inquired of a girl selling radishes how many she usually disposed of in a day. She takes them around only in the afternoon, and sometimes sells to the amount of $1.25. =117. Toy Merchants.= This is a business better suited to the natural nurses of children than to men. A handsome profit is derived from the sale of toys. The busy seasons with toy merchants and confectioners are about Christmas and New Year. Toys might be more extensively made in our country, thereby giving employment to many now without it. Women mostly stand in toy shops in New York. Even so small an item as the eyes of children's dolls produces a circulation of several thousand pounds in England. Several establishments in London are devoted exclusively to the manufacture of dolls. =118. Wall Paper Dealers.= Selling wall paper is a light, pretty business. In cities it affords a remunerative return; in towns and villages it is sold mostly by dry-goods merchants and druggists. The only objection I see to it is, that a step ladder must be used to get the paper down from the higher shelves; but a small boy might be used for that, and also for carrying paper home to purchasers. =119. Worn Clothes and Second-hand Furniture.= Mr. Mayhew tells us that in London thirty persons are engaged in the exclusive sale of second-hand boots and shoes. He mentions one man that, in 1855, was thought to take over £100 ($500) a day. Boots and shoes, too far gone to be repaired, are sold to Prussian-blue manufacturers--so nothing is lost. In Philadelphia, near Penn Square, may be seen ranged, on an open space, a large quantity of second-hand clothes, shoes, dresses, &c., for sale. The business, in this country, of buying and selling again worn clothes is mostly in the hands of the Jews--perhaps altogether. In all countries it is more or less a favorite business with them. The time is past when the Jew was prohibited in other countries from holding real estate; yet the Jews in all countries, so far as I know, generally retain their property in money, or invest it in something movable. Old clothes in our country are generally given in exchange for new china, glass ware, &c.; yet a number in the large cities pay money. In London all kinds of articles are given for them, and then they are taken to the old-clothes exchanges, where they are disposed of for money, principally to shopkeepers who deal in the sale of worn clothes. Some of these articles are made over, some made smaller, some turned, some changed in form; in fact, the greatest ingenuity is exercised to employ to advantage the articles used. Second-hand articles are not so much sold in this country as in older countries, where money is more difficult to get, and poverty greater. Boys' cloth caps and roundabouts, and women's shoes, are made of old coats and pants, so worn in parts as to be unsalable. Coats are also made of cloaks, bonnets of aprons, &c. Men's and women's apparel of all sorts is bought and sold by them. Old umbrellas and parasols are bought, repaired, and sold. Silk dresses, if unfit to be sold, are used for making children's hoods, facing coats, &c. The scraps are used for making quilts. Old woollen dresses, whose waists are much worn, are used for making wadded skirts. Tailors' and dress-makers' trimmings are sometimes purchased for a small sum, and used in making up girls' hoods, boys' caps, &c. In London, most of women's second-hand apparel is (as it should be) sold by women. It is customary for buyers to cry down every article offered them for sale or barter, but those they offer for sale are magnified into ten times their value. Many of the men who go through the streets of our cities buying old clothes or giving china ware in exchange for them, take them home and their wives repair them. I called at a second-hand variety store in Brooklyn. The woman says most people engaged in the business are foreigners. The business is not unhealthy. Clothes brought in are washed and done over, and their domestics are always healthy. Their business is very dull. Ten years ago it was quite brisk, but many stores of the kind have been opened in Brooklyn lately. She and her daughter go and look at any articles for sale; and if they think the person honest and the price suits, they will buy; so that, if any one should come and claim the clothes as being stolen, they could immediately take a policeman to the place where they got them. If articles are bought, they examine and put a price on them, and get the address of the individual. If they find they are not stolen, they then purchase. The poorest season for the business is midwinter. They keep their store open till ten o'clock at night. I was told at another store they sell most clothes in the evening to laborers' wives. In a store in New York, the lady says she buys her clothes of Jews that go about exchanging china for old clothes. It is very necessary that a good locality be fixed on, near a river or bay, on a thoroughfare, or in a neighborhood where many poor people live. One woman told me she employs two girls and three men to make over and do up worn clothes for her store. She pays her girls, each, thirty-one cents a day, and they work twelve hours. She sells most in the evening. At one place I was told that Mondays and Saturdays are their busiest days for selling. They sell most to the French, Irish, and negroes. Germans do not like to buy second-hand clothes. She regretted that in her present store she had not glass cases to keep the dust off her clothes. Her purchasing is mostly done among the rich, she says, and so it brings her a good class of customers. The keeper of a second-hand furniture store told me that she goes to auction herself and purchases. It is two or three years before the business pays. She will go to a dwelling and look at furniture before purchasing. It requires a man to do the lifting. She has old furniture repaired, chairs reseated, &c., before she attempts to sell them. =120. Variety Shops.= Variety shops, for the sale of coal, wood, kindling, candles, matches, and water, are frequently seen in the poor districts of cities. They are a great convenience to those whose means will not admit of their buying in large quantities. It costs them more to buy it in that way, yet the keeping of shops affords a subsistence to those who do. EMPLOYMENTS PERTAINING TO GRAIN, BIRDS, FLOWERS, FRUITS, AND VEGETABLES. =121. Agriculturists.= With industry and enterprise, what may not woman accomplish! We have heard of women in Western New York, Ohio, and Michigan, that not only carry on farms, but do the outdoor work, as tilling, reaping, &c. It is said that in countries where the physical labor of women in the open air is as great as that of men, their constitutions become as stout and capable of endurance. Agriculture is an employment safe and profitable, and capable of almost any extension in this country. There is a great difference usually between the theory and practice of farming. Many agricultural works and periodicals are published that abound in practical instruction. In grazing countries stock is raised, and the labor of the people is given to making butter and cheese. A variety of soil and difference of altitude produce different crops in the same latitude. In the United States the raising of hops is becoming a branch of national industry, and some women are employed to pick them. In England and France large numbers of women are employed to pick hops. In England, 52,000 acres of land are devoted to their cultivation. There is danger, in picking hops, of getting wet and taking cold, which acts upon the system very much the same as the ill effects of calomel. But if proper care is used, the work is not unhealthy. There is a people's college in New York State, where females are received as pupils as well as males. No doubt a horticultural department will be formed. We think it would be well if more women would devote themselves to agricultural and horticultural employments. Weeding gardens and attending dairies or poultry yards would each furnish work for more women than are now employed, and save women from running to the cities, which are already crowded to excess with applicants for work. Headley, in his "Adirondack Mountains," says: "Twenty miles from any settlement on Brown's Tract in Adirondack, Arnold and his family of thirteen children--twelve girls and a boy--live by their trafficking, by sporting, and cultivating the field. The agricultural part, however, is performed chiefly by females, who plough, sow, and rake equal to any farmer. Two of the girls threshed alone, with common flails, five hundred bushels of oats in one winter, while their father and mother were away trapping for marten. They frequently ride without bridle or even halter, guiding the horse by a motion or stroke of the hand. They are modest and retiring in their manners, and wild and timid as fawns among strangers." "On the west side of the Scioto, just below Columbus, there is planted a field of six hundred acres of bottom land. Twenty-five German girls follow the ploughs, and do the hoeing, for which they receive 62½ cents per day." There are two sisters in Ohio who manage a farm of three hundred acres; and two other sisters, near Media, Pennsylvania, that conduct as large a farm. =122. Bee Dealers.= A new species of bee, that builds in trees instead of hives, is about to be introduced by Government from Paraguay. In keeping bees there is no expense. The hives can easily be made at home, or purchased for a comparative trifle. Their food they seek themselves. "The bee mistresses gain a living by selling honey in many rural districts of England." Most of the honey used in the United States is collected in the South. That to be carried to the North is put in hogsheads. Merchants who buy it have small glass jars filled, which are sold in markets and groceries. =123. Bird Importers and Raisers.= There are establishments in most of the large cities of the United States for the sale of birds. The proprietors import and raise them. Most imported birds are from Germany. They are caught by the peasants living among the mountains, and sold for a trivial sum in small wooden cages. The favorite pet bird has long been the canary. In the South the mocking bird is common, and often seen caged. But few of our most beautiful birds bear domestication. Their wild, free nature unfits them for it. In Germany there is a class of men who make it a separate business to train birds to sing. The bullfinch is the kind most commonly taught--perhaps the only kind. They teach in bird classes of from four to seven members each. It is done by withholding food from them in the dark and playing on a bird organ or a flute. A gentleman told me, he thought few, if any, ladies could be repaid in making a business of bird raising; indeed, he had known several undertake it, but fail. He says, people like German birds best, because they learn earlier to sing; and, you know, a purchaser always wants to hear a bird sing before he buys it. At a bird importer's I priced birds. He asked for a male canary, $3; for a female, $1; an African parrot, $8; green parrot, $5; goldfinch, $3; and thrush, $2. Mrs. L., a German, who raises canaries, told me she could not support herself by raising birds, but she knows several men that do. She says the American birds are the longest lived--the imported die in about two years after reaching this country. Foreign birds are generally devoid of strength, and their limbs are apt to turn backward as they rest on the roosts. I suppose that arises from their being shut up in small cages during the long journey across the ocean, and many of them, being caught birds, cannot bear the confinement and cramped position. Another bird dealer attributed the fact of imported being less healthy than American birds, to their taking cold in crossing the ocean. American birds that are not mated may live fifteen or sixteen years. The breed, form, color, sex, and ability to sing determine their price. It is difficult to tell the age of canaries from their appearance. So one is liable to be imposed upon by unprincipled dealers, who prefer to sell old birds, particularly of the feminine gender. Birds are subject to a variety of diseases. Birds are cheapest in the fall, as it requires more to keep them in winter than summer, and many do not wish to be at that expense. Mrs. L. sells most in February, March, and April, the breeding season. Prices vary from $2 to $7. It does not take long to learn to raise birds, another bird raiser told me, when you know just how to feed them, and the proper temperature for them. She sells most in winter. =124. Bird and Animal Preservers.= I notice in the census of Great Britain three women returned as animal preservers; and I know there are some in Germany, three of whom are in Strasbourg. Bird stuffing is a trade in which but few can find employment. It would therefore be necessary to have something else to rely on in case that should fail. It is thought by some to be unhealthy, on account of the arsenic used--particularly to young people. The senior of a firm I called on had been engaged in it fifteen years without detriment to his health. Females mostly prepare the branches of trees, or other fanciful stands, on which the birds are placed. The frames are usually of wood or pasteboard, covered with moss. I called at Mr. B.'s, and saw a young man who works with him. He thinks the work is not unhealthy. It is an art in which there is always room for improvement. Mr. B., who has been at it thirty years, says he is always learning something new in regard to it, or making some discovery in the art. The eyes are manufactured in New York. To one practising the art a good eye for form is necessary, and an ability to imitate nature closely. The spring of the year is the best season; but all seasons answer. The only danger in summer is from insects. A bird stuffer told me he would teach the art to one or two persons for $50; but he thinks the prospect for employment poor. It is difficult to get birds to learn on in winter; but in summer plenty can be had. He has had acquaintances commence in New Orleans, St. Louis, and Chicago. The first two could not make a living. He knows of two young ladies that have learned it merely as a pastime. I called on a French lady, Mrs. L., who stuffs birds and animals. She taught the art to a barber, who made a great deal of money by it. He paid $150 for his instruction, spending every other day at it for two months. A Cuban, who owns seven hundred slaves, paid her the same amount. He wished to learn, that he might preserve birds he could obtain while travelling in various countries. She has received several letters from Boston requesting her to come there and stuff birds for a museum that is being commenced. She was the personation of health, but she complained that she suffered with rheumatism. She trembled much--she thought from rheumatism. May it not be that it is the result of arsenic that she has got into a pimple, or where the skin was broken? The work, of course, requires a firm hand. She showed me a parrot, done, she said, in one hour, for which she was to receive $3. A German book is written on the subject that contains directions. The information can be obtained in English from a little work called "Art Recreations." The ingredients are often sold in drug stores already mixed. It can be done at all seasons. Mrs. L. thinks one could become proficient in two months' constant practice. A gentleman went to California, and made a large collection of birds; stuffed them, and sent them to various European countries. In the four years he was at it he made $60,000. She sent six hundred to a museum in Paris a short time ago. She thinks St. Louis may present an opening. Mrs. L. knows a man who has been employed in stuffing birds and animals in the museum of Strasbourg from the age of fifteen to seventy-seven, and is a very corpulent man, being nearly as broad as he is long. That she gave as an indication of its healthfulness; but it may be that he is bloated from the arsenic, as it has that effect. She says even poor people will pay to have a pet bird stuffed, when they have not a dime to buy bread. =125. Florists.= The rearing of flowers has ever been a charming pastime to many of our sex. When the pleasure can be combined with profit, it is well. The cultivation of flowers is a taste whose beneficial results are not sufficiently appreciated. When the cares and troubles of life begin to press upon men and women, they are apt to neglect the cultivation of flowers, when it might absorb some of the cares that burden their hearts. Vines, roses, and ornamental fruit trees cost but a small sum, and yet how much they add to the beauty and comfort of a place! Most of the choice roses of our country are from cuttings imported from France. They are brought over in jars. Many, of course, die on the voyage. The variety is very great. The selling of roots, plants, and bouquets is quite remunerative in some places. Much depends on the knowledge and skill of the florist, the location of his gardens, and the fondness of the people in the community for flowers. It is a delightful business for a lady, if she has men to do the planting, digging, and other hard work. In Paris, there is a market devoted to the sale of flowers. In most of the markets of our large cities, are exposed for sale pot plants and bouquets, also shrubs and evergreens. A florist told me that he employs two women in winter to make up bouquets and wreaths for ladies going to evening and dinner parties, concerts, and other places of amusement. It requires taste and ingenuity. He pays each $5 per week. They can make up wreaths to look like artificial flowers. A woman on Long Island makes a living by raising flowers that are sold in New York. I was told that some lady has established a horticultural school on Long Island. Florists in and near cemeteries are apt to find sale for flowers and plants. Hence it is common to observe gardens and hot houses so located. I rode out to a florist's near Brooklyn. He says the business is not so good as it was, because the Germans in Hoboken raise flowers and sell bouquets for sixpence that he could not sell for twenty-five cents. The man does not send bouquets to the city, as it does not pay. Their profits are mostly derived from the sale of choice fruit trees raised at Flushing. They sell bouquets at their hot houses from a shilling up to $5. They derive most profit from flowers in winter. A florist's occupation is healthy, and affords much pleasure to one fond of flowers. Yet it requires close attention to business. In England it was formerly customary to serve a seven-years' apprenticeship at the business, but three or four years will answer very well, if an individual gives undivided attention to his business, and is with a superior florist. A knowledge of botany is necessary to a florist. It requires considerable taste to make up a bouquet, and therefore is very appropriate to women. A knowledge of colors and their artistic arrangement is essential; also a natural taste for flowers, and some patience. Making bouquets, wreaths, &c., is slow work. The stems of flowers for bouquets are cut very short, as most of the nutriment of the stem is lost to the succeeding ones by cutting long ones. Artificial stems are added to the natural ones, and are usually made of broom straw or ravelled matting. Mrs. F., the wife of a florist, says the wives of most florists assist their husbands in making up bouquets, wreaths, and baskets. She thinks, if a florist had enough to do to employ a lady, he would pay her $3 or $4 a week. She has often thought a small volume might be written on the flower business in New York. She says no one has an idea of the amount of money expended for flowers. Mr. D. used to send out $1,000 worth of flowers on New Year's morning. It is a very irregular employment. Some days she sells a great many for balls, parties, and funerals. One might learn to make bouquets, if they have taste and judgment, by a few months' practice. The flowers that are sold at different seasons vary greatly, and the value of them depends much on their age. Mrs. F. has sold a few baskets of flowers at $50 apiece. She sells many flowers for Roman Catholic churches about Easter. Mrs. R. says florists prefer to have men, because they can work in the garden or green house when not cutting or putting up flowers. The Germans have run the business down in New York. A florist named _Flower_ writes: "We employ from two to four women tying buds, hoeing, weeding, &c.; in winter they help about grafting. They are paid fifty cents a day, of ten hours. Women so employed are German born. The employment is healthy. Men get seventy-five cents a day, as they can do more work; but the principal reason for employing women is, that we can hire them cheaper and like them better for light work. Women could do all parts of our business, if they had a fair chance with men, and would improve the chance. One year would give a general knowledge, but five would be better. A good, sound constitution, and industrious habits, are the best qualifications. Women that want such work can find plenty of it; but outdoor work is too hard for American women." Another florist writes: "In Europe, where women are sometimes employed in fruit or vegetable gardens, their wages are usually about half a man's. Women (chiefly Germans) are employed in this country by farmers to pick fruit, vegetables, &c., by the quantity. At light work, done by contract, women, I believe, can make as much as men. Several years would be necessary to learn the business; some branches of it might be learned in a few weeks. The requisite most needed for women to work in green houses, is a change of fashion. Their dress unfits them altogether for moving about in crowded plant houses. Were their dress similar to the men's, I see no reason why they would not be equally useful in other departments as well as this. If that should ever happen, they would, in my opinion, be worth as much as men; for the work is mostly light, and ladies, having a natural taste for flowers, would soon learn it. If you have gone through green houses, you cannot but know the difficulty of doing so without breaking everything. Men, at this kind of work, are not fully employed in winter." A lady florist writes: "I sometimes think my nervous excitability is to some extent caused by an excess of electricity, derived from the earth or flowers with which I work." =126. Flower Girls.= Flowers are the mementoes of an earthly paradise. They are said to be "the alphabet of angels, whereby they write mysterious things"--the mysteries of God's love and goodness. Earth would be a wilderness without them. Girls sell flowers most profitably at opera houses, theatres, and other places of amusement. They buy of those who devote themselves to the raising of flowers, and arrange them into bouquets. A number dispose of flowers on Broadway; and, summer before last, I observed a French woman at the Atlantic ferry selling bouquets to people waiting for the boat. A florist told me he disposes of flowers to girls who make up bouquets and sell them. One of them pays $500 rent for her room. It yields a handsome profit when a person has a good stand. He would like a stand at the opera house, but a great many others are looking forward to it. Some pay for the privilege, others obtain it by being known to the managers. I was told by a man who supplies bouquets that he pays to florists from $8 to $10 a day for flowers, and then makes up his own bouquets. I have been told that at some hotels in Germany, girls pass around the table at dinner, and give bouquets. Such recipients as feel disposed, pay a small sum. =127. Fruit Growers.= If American women would only turn their attention to the cultivation of fruits and flowers for market, instead of giving it up to ignorant foreigners, how much better it would be! A few hundred dollars would make a very handsome beginning; and those who do not have so much at their disposal, could get their friends to advance it. At Shrewsbury and Lebanon, much fruit is put up by the Shakers, and sent to New York for sale. Women might have orchards, raise fruit, and send it to market. Mrs. D. owns a farm, and does not disdain to graft fruit trees, superintend their planting, gather fruit, send it to market, &c.; and she realizes a handsome profit. The grafting and budding of fruit trees might be done very well by women, and also the budding of ornamental shrubs. "Miss S. B. Anthony," says the Binghampton _Republican_, "resides at Rochester, and supports herself by raising raspberries from land given to her by her father." I have been told that on one acre of land near New York city a thousand dollars' worth of strawberries can be grown. In New Jersey and Delaware, women are employed to gather berries for market. If a lady is within a few miles of town, and has facilities for raising and sending fruit to market, she will not be likely to fail in meeting with ready sale. Berries bring a good price in the markets of a city. In Cincinnati, from May 21st to June 1st, 1847, 5,463 bushels of strawberries were sold, and near St. Louis is a gentleman that has some hundreds of acres of strawberries in cultivation to assist in supplying the St. Louis market. The drying of fruit affords employment, and generally well remunerates time so given, if carried on extensively. =128. Fruit Venders.= Flowers are formed to please the eye and indulge the fancy; but fruits are a healthy and important article of food. Some women sell fruit in market; some, at stalls in the street; some, in fruit shops or groceries; and some, from baskets, going from house to house. Most dispose of small fruit, such as berries--some wild and some cultivated. The ferries in large cities are very good stands for sellers of fruits and sweetmeats. Places of amusement and the entrance to cemeteries, are also. I talked to one apple woman, who says her business is a slavish one. Her stand was at the Atlantic ferry, New York. When she goes to her dinner, she gets the gate keeper to mind her stand. She earns, on an average, $1 a day. She rises, gets her breakfast, and starts to market by five o'clock. She remains at her stand until nine o'clock at night. She sells the greatest quantity of fruit in the spring and fall, when people are most apt to be making money, and so permit a little self-indulgence. She sells least in winter. I saw a woman on the street selling fruit and flowers. When she is out all day, she can generally earn from fifty cents to $1. Another fruit seller told me that she makes a good living. She has been at her stand eight years. She sells most fresh fruit in summer; and in winter, about the holidays, most dry fruit and nuts. In the coldest weather she remains in her basement, heated by a stove, where she stores her fruit at night. Her grapes are brought in on the cars, put up in pasteboard boxes. Her location is excellent, for the working class of people pass in the evening, returning from work, or in their promenades. I talked with an old woman at an apple stand, who told me she often sells $1 worth of articles in a day, but seldom makes a profit of more than half. She sells most fruit in summer, but most cigars, candy, and nuts in winter. She says there is a stand on every block, in that part of New York. Hers is a good location, because so many men pass. In wet weather, she does not sell much. She is shielded in winter, by sitting in a hall near, where she can keep an eye on her stand. She lives near, and while she goes home to dinner, her husband sells for her. An apple woman, in New York, told us, she has kept her stand in Washington park for seven years. She remains at it all the year. If any other fruit vender should trespass on her bounds, a policeman would soon send him or her off. Another old woman, keeping a fruit stand, told me she makes a comfortable living at it in summer; but in winter she stays in a confectionery store, and gets $10 a month and her board. At another fruit stand, on asking the old lady how she got on, she burst into tears, and replied, very poorly, scarcely made enough to keep her alive. A professional honor exists among fruit women, and a desire to sustain each other in their rights. A wholesale fruit dealer writes me that it takes from two to four years to learn the business, when carried on extensively. =129. Gardeners.= The strength and energy of people, in northern climates, have led them to excel in the rearing of fruit--not in imparting a more delicious flavor, but in the quantity, the fulness, and the size of the fruit. In the balmy air and under the sunny sky of the South, vegetation develops more rapidly and more luxuriantly. He who adds to the list of beautiful and fragrant flowers, or improves some variety of fruit, enlarging, or rendering it more luscious, will be remembered as a benefactor. Gardening is a pleasant and healthy occupation to those that love outdoor life. A woman can no more be healthful and beautiful without exercise in the open air, than a plant can when deprived of air and light. We learn, from Mr. Howitt's "Rural Life in England," that "there are on the outskirts of Nottingham, upward of five thousand gardens, each less than the tenth of an acre. The bulk of these are occupied by the working classes. These gardens are let at from half a penny to three halfpence per yard." German women are often employed, near cities, to weed gardens, gather vegetables, and other such work. "In Hereford, England, there are no fewer than six annual harvests, in each of which children are largely employed: 1, bark peeling; 2, hay; 3, corn, 4, hops; 5, potatoes; 6, apples; 7, acorns. Add to these, bird keeping in autumn and spring, potato setting and hop tying, and the incidental duties of baby nursing and errand going." =130. Makers of Cordial and Syrups.= Women who live in the country, and have small fruit, would find it pay well to make cordials, berry vinegars, &c. There are some establishments where it is made, and women are employed to gather the fruit. The people of the Southern States have depended on the North for these articles, but we presume a change will be wrought. The abundant growth of small fruit in the South will enable the South before long to meet the demand. We think there will be many openings of this kind, in the South and West, for many years to come. Some manufacturers of ginger wine, bitters, syrups, cordials, and grape wines, write: "In reply to your circular we say--We do not employ any women in our business, although we indirectly furnish employment for several hundred, during the various fruit seasons, in gathering most kinds of fruit, which we use in our business. Many of these fruits are wild, which we buy at a specified price. The gatherers control their own time, and their earnings will vary from fifty cents to $1 each, per day. It would probably require the labor of about six hundred for six months of each year, in gathering the amount of fruit which we use. But as we do not directly employ them, or know anything about the general business of those thus employed, we are unable to give further particulars." =131. Root, Bark, and Seed Gatherers.= When the grass is bowed by the sparkling dew, and the hills shrouded in mist, plants exhale most freely their sweet odors. They are then gathered and sold to manufacturers, who prepare from them oils, essences, and perfumeries. An old Quaker lady on Tenth street, Philadelphia, keeping an herb store, told me that she purchases her herbs mostly of men, but some women do bring them to sell. It requires a knowledge of botany to gather them, and the stage of the moon must be observed. Digging roots, and gathering plants, at all seasons, is a hard business. At another herb store, I learned that the prices paid gatherers depend much on the kind of herb, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the season when it is gathered. A woman may earn $1 a week, or she may earn as much as $10. The roots and herbs are bought by weight. Many are purchased fresh in market, but some of the gatherers dry them. They are sent from different parts of the Union to the cities and towns. One told me that she would rather purchase herbs and seed put up by women, for they are neater and more careful with their work. She sells most in spring and fall. An Indian doctress told me barks must be gathered in the spring and fall, when they are full of sap; and roots, when the leaves are faded or dead. She sometimes makes $20 worth of syrup in a day. She says the business requires some knowledge of plants, experience in the times of gathering, amount of drying, &c. =132. Seed Envelopers and Herb Packers.= In a seed store in Philadelphia, we found, they employ women in January and February, at $2.50 a week, to put seeds up in paper bags, seal them, and paste labels on. They go at eight in the morning, and remain until dark. At a large drug store in Philadelphia, we were told they employ nine women. They have seven distinct branches for the women, and separate apartments for each branch, consisting of weighing and putting up powders, sorting herbs and roots, putting up liquids, &c., &c. The women earn from $3 to $5 a week, and spend nine hours, from eight to six, having an hour at noon. In busy seasons they remain till eight or nine, and receive additional wages. There is nothing unhealthy in the business. They are paid $3 a week from the time they are taken to learn, and deduction made for absence. A seller of botanic medicines in Boston writes me: "He employs women in putting medicines in small packages for the retail trade, bottling the same, and labelling. He pays $5 a week to his women, and $3 a week while learning, the time for which is six months. Common sense, neatness, and integrity are the qualifications needed. The girls work from nine to ten hours. He will not employ any but American women. He pays men $8 or $9, because they can take them off, and put them upon work that girls cannot do. Women would be paid better if they were stronger, and did not need so much waiting upon in the way of lifting and arranging their work. Rainy days they want to stay at home, or, if they come, it takes half a day for them to dry their clothes. Men they can depend on in all weather. Women might keep their books, if their crinoline was not too extensive: that alone would bar them from the counting room. Women are inferior only in physical disabilities. Girls are good for nothing until after sixteen years of age; and nine in ten will get married as soon as they are fairly initiated in work--hence the time spent by women in acquiring a business education is to a certain extent lost--lost to their employers, but of assistance to them in the education of their children." Mr. P., botanic druggist says: "There are but three establishments in New York, for this business, and twelve women would be quite enough for them. They put up herbs in packages. One day's practice is enough for a smart person. The women are paid from $3 to $5 a week." At the United States Botanic Depot they employ one girl, and pay her $4 a week. She only works in daylight. Mr. J. L. employs two girls to put up botanic medicines. He has men to cork the bottles. They work ten months in the year. Nothing is done in December and January. They pay $4 a week, of ten hours a day. In Louisville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, few women are employed in this way. Some seedsmen and florists near Boston employ four ladies in enveloping seed. One of the ladies writes: "We presume more ladies are employed in Europe to put up seed than in this country. The employment is not unhealthy. We are paid 6 cents an hour, and work by the hour. To learn the part the women do, requires about two hours. Judgment is most needed. Employment of this kind is increasing, there is a demand for female labor in the seed department." A seedsman, in Rochester, writes: "We employ six women in making paper bags, paying 25 cents per hundred. Boys are employed at about the same wages. We have work from July to January. The girls take their work home. We use some boys, because their work benefits their families equally as much." =133. Sellers of Pets.= In Paris there are stores for the sale of dogs and cats. In London, the sale of dogs is mostly on the streets, or at the residence of the raiser. The aristocracy of England maintain 500,000 dogs and a large number of cats; consequently food must be provided for them. The sale of birds is common. Gold and silver fish, white rabbits, Guinea pigs, squirrels, tortoises, fawns, lambs, and goats, are sometimes sold in seed and flower stores. Flowers and birds are the favorite pets of ladies in the United States. Everything of this nature is sold to some extent in the markets and on the streets of our cities, but generally at the houses of those who devote themselves to the business. =134. Wine Manufacturers and Grape Growers.= Many persons are becoming interested in the culture of the grape; and some are spending time and money in experimenting. Longworth of Cincinnati has realized a fortune from his operations. Belle Britain says: "In Longworth's cellars are 700,000 bottles of wine. Mr. L. informed her (?) that we have in this country at least 5,000 varieties of the grape, and his vineyards yield from 600 to 700 gallons to the acre." The color of wine depends on the color of the grapes from which it is made. In several of the States, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Alabama, vineyards are flourishing, and many new ones are being planted out. The variety of soil and surface in our country is such that there is every probability of success. As yet, only two kinds have been much grown. No doubt a large number of women will, in the course of a few years, be employed in the cultivation of the vine and the manufacture of wine. One can soon learn, with a few instructions in each season, the proper culture of the vine. A great deal of the work in the vineyards of France and Switzerland is done by women. Women do better that men, because their fingers are smaller and more nimble. The want of intelligent culture has been the greatest barrier in the introduction of graperies into our country; but such is the number of foreigners now among us that have a practical knowledge of the business, we need fear no want of workmen. Many, too, have not been willing to invest capital in an uncertain enterprise. Wine manufacturers in Orange county, N. Y., write: "We have not employed women to any great extent in our business. There are some branches of the business in which women might be suitably and profitably employed, where those branches are extensively carried on. The bottling process, including cleaning of bottles, filling, putting on foil, labels, &c., could be done by women as well as men. Women could pick the grapes, and cull out the green and poor berries, and prepare them for the press. They are employed for this purpose in Europe. The reasons why we have not employed women in these branches are, we bottle not more than one sixth of our wine; we manufacture principally for church communion and medicinal purposes, and the principal demand for those purposes is by the gallon--consequently we send it out mostly in casks. (Some wine growers bottle all.) The men, whom we necessarily employ by the year or month in the cultivation of the ground, vines, &c., are of course employed in the season of the vintage, bottling, &c.; and in hurried times, such as the time of picking the grapes, we get such additional help as is easiest obtained, generally boys and girls, with sometimes women. Women are in such demand here for household labor, that, unless sought for at the proper time, March and the 1st of April, and hired for the year, it would be almost impossible to obtain them. The wages generally paid are from $5 to $7 per month, mostly $5 and $6." Another grape grower writes, in answer to a circular: "I do not employ female help in my business, except for a few weeks during the time of tying up the vines and in gathering the fruit, for which I pay 50 cents per day, without board. Women might be employed to quite an extent in this business, which is increasing in the country to a wonderful degree." RAISERS, MAKERS, PREPARERS, AND DISPOSERS OF ARTICLES OF FOOD. =135. Bread Bakers.= Nearly all the bakeries in New York are attended by women. I could not learn of any women being employed in bread bakeries to mix or bake, but they are in Germany and France. In France the bakehouse girls enter ovens heated often to 300°, and, it is stated, sometimes to even 400°. Bakerooms are usually of such great heat as to be injurious to the health of any but the strongest and stoutest. Some establishments have day and night bakers. The night bakers are up all night, and must have their bread ready by 5.30 A. M. The day bakers go in at 7, and turn out a batch of bread at 11 A. M. Bakers spend on an average seventeen hours at their work, and this no doubt accounts partly for the absence of women from the occupation in this country: seventeen hours out of the twenty-four are too many for any woman to be on her feet. In this country the bakers are robust, hearty-looking men, and mostly Germans. Their average wages are $6 a week. Some bakers have a scaly eruption produced by frequent contact of the skin with flour. Inhaling the flour in mixing bread I have heard is unhealthy. Some women might object to working in the same room with men, and baking is certainly very warm work in summer. In most European cities the price of bread is regulated by the Government. The cost of materials and the state of the market regulate the price. A fine is the penalty for a violation of the law. In this country, bakers regulate the price of bread by the kind and quality. No law is enforced specifying prices. Some years ago an attempt was made in New York to have bread sold by the weight, but the bakers all opposed it. They might have been tempted to put something heavy in the flour. In large cities some establishments are devoted to one branch only of the business. Baker's bread is more used in free than in slave States. In Northern cities some families prepare their bread, cakes, pies, and meats, and send them to bakeries, where for a small sum they are cooked. It saves a vast amount of labor. Some bakers use potatoes in making up wheat bread. I never knew of rice being used by bakers in this country, but know it is by some bakers in Paris. The modes of baking bread, and the kinds of bread used, vary not only in different, but in the same countries. "Some bakers give the impression their bread is made by women," said a lady in a bakery, to us, "but it is not. A woman could not make up two or three barrels of flour in a day. Men are just as neat bakers as women could be." At three bakeries I was told by the employers that they pay their girls who attend the shop $7 a month, and board them, but do not have their washing done. From several girls that stood in bakeries I learned that they received from $6 to $10 a month, and their board. Only one of the number got her washing done without extra expense. The girls were expected to keep the counters, waiters, jars, and floors clean. They must be in the bakery by 5 o'clock A. M., and stay until 10 P. M. Some women require the girls to sew when not waiting on customers, and some require them to sweep and keep the room clean, and some even to wash the shop windows. Girls that stand in bakeries receive no better compensation than house girls. A foreman of the baking department, generally receives $8 a week, and his boarding. Girls are usually paid from the time they enter. A knowledge of reading, writing, and figures is considered sufficient. I was told by one lady in a shop that girls attending bakeries usually receive from $8 to $10 a month, with board, and some, also, get their washing done. They are not required to keep the books for those terms, and the bakeries are few in number where female employees keep the books. I was told by an Irish woman that in Ireland there are few or no women attending bakeries and groceries. At one bakery a girl told me she finds it very bad to be on her feet all the time. She could not stay constantly in a bakery for one year at a time, she gets so weak from excitement and fatigue. She says most Germans keep their bakeries open on the Sabbath; but the Americans have too much respect for the day to do so. On Saturday night, bakeries are often open until 12 o'clock, and sometimes later. =136. Brewers.= I wrote to a lady, whose name I saw in a directory as a brewer. She replies: "You wish to know if I work at brewing, personally. I do not at present, but have done so, and worked hard the man's part; but my means are such now that I can do without. I have men employed, and a clerk, &c., &c. I am a widow, and superintend my business, and understand all that is connected with it. I suppose it is not necessary to dwell longer on the subject, as I am out of the working part now. I am sixty-two years of age." =137. Candy Manufacturers.= "There are three hundred confectionery manufacturers and retail dealers in New York city. Twelve establishments are devoted exclusively to the manufacture of candies. In some, as many as a hundred hands are employed in busy times. During the busy season, there are engaged in the manufacturing houses about five thousand persons of both sexes, though a very much larger number, probably some thousands, are indirectly supported by it, the paper-box makers being generally busily employed, and many children gaining a livelihood by hawking candies through the streets. The city of New York is the headquarters of the confectionery trade, supplying as much as all the rest of the Union together, and distributing the results of its industry to all parts of the United States, as well as to Canada, most of the West India Islands, Mexico, Chili, and many other places. It is estimated that fully $1,000,000 worth of confectionery is made annually in this city; and by that term we mean preparations of sugar, chocolate, jujube paste, &c., but exclude many articles such as ice creams, jellies, blancmanges, pastry, and other delicacies, which would sum up this amount to perhaps double. Two of the principal houses manufacture daily between them four thousand pounds of candies, at prices varying from 14 cents to 50 cents per pound, the average being about 20 cents." The coloring matter of foreign candies is generally showy, and of a poisonous nature. That of American manufacture is not of such brilliant and permanent colors, but more regard is paid to health in the selection of coloring matter. At confectioners' in London, classes of young ladies are taken and taught the art of making confectionery. Some candies are made by stretching over a hook, some must be shaken in a pan over a charcoal fire, and rolled on tables with marble tops. I was told at S. & P.'s (a wholesale house) that they are most busy from August 1st to 20th of December, and from March to June. They take learners for a week, to see if they are fit for the business, and if they are, reward them for their time. It takes but a short time to learn the part done by girls. They pay experienced girls from $3 to $6 a week. The girls work ten hours a day, and if longer, they are paid extra. Lately they have kept their girls until ten o'clock at night. It requires taste and invention to envelop fancy confectionery, but is not very reliable for constant employment. S. & P. employ ninety girls in busy times. At another place I was told they will not take Southern orders, for the Southerners will not buy, and have not the money to pay, if they would. The fancy candies go through three or four processes, and so the girls must work in the same room as the men who paint them. The girls sit while at work. R. pays by the month, and keeps his girls all the year. He says labor is more poorly compensated in New York, in proportion to the rates of living, than in any city in the Union. He thinks some girls should go from the cities into country places, and enter into service. H. says a person of any intelligence can learn in two or three months to paint candies. He used to employ girls to put gilding on, paying $2 a week--ten hours a day; but if a girl can paint well, she can earn $4 or $5 a week. He knows several German girls in the city that do. The candy flowers, he says, are made by hand, the fruit moulded. A lady confectioner told me that a woman who ornaments fancy candies is poorly paid, and it is dirty, sugary kind of work. Yet she acknowledged that candies must be kept on a clean table and handled by clean hands--otherwise they would not look well, and consequently not sell readily. The wives of German manufacturers do most of that kind of work. A confectioner told me, candy is never made in this country by women, but it is in England. He said the dust of the powdered sugar and the gases of the coal render it unhealthy. In large establishments most candy is made by steam. The making of candy he thought even too laborious for men. The teeth of candy manufacturers are often decayed from the frequent tasting of heated sugar. One candy manufacturer writes me: "We employ six girls in making candy, and do not think the business unhealthy. Wages range from $1.25 to $4.50 per week--ten hours a day. Men's wages are from $4.50 to $9. It requires from three to five years for men to learn. Women's part is learned in one year. The prospect of employment is good for a limited number. Fall is the best season, but they are always employed except during part of the winter. In some branches of the work women excel." At a manufactory of gum drops and candy rings, I saw a boy who receives $3 a week for making the rings, and a girl who receives $2.75 for picking gum drops, _i. e._, loosening the sugar in which they are incrusted while being made. They work from 7 A. M. to 6 P. M. =138. Cheesemakers.= A great deal of cheese is made in Central and Northern New York, and some in Ohio, Vermont, and West Massachusetts. Making cheese is a chemical operation, and requires experience. It is made in all civilized countries. I talked with an old gentleman who had been in the cheese business nearly all his life. He said a farmer's wife is the best help in cheese making. In making cheese, seven eighths of the work is done by women. A man usually places the cheese in the press, and removes it when it is dried sufficiently. The occupation is healthy. Women are paid from $1.75 to $2 a week and their board. Some people employ men, because they can go to work on the farm when not making cheese. The business can be learned in from six weeks to two months. When learning, girls give their work for instruction, but have their board. Neatness, good health, judgment, and common education, are desirable for a cheese maker. An individual must be able to reckon the pounds, weigh the salt, and regulate the temperature of the milk and curd by the thermometer. The first advice given by a lady who taught to make cheese was, "Keep your vessels clean." The prospect of employment in this branch of work is good, for it is difficult to obtain good cheesemakers. The best seasons are from the 1st of March to the last of November. The number of hours given by a girl to her work depends on the contract made--generally eight hours--sometimes ten. In most places cheesemakers have more leisure than house girls, but some employers expect them to do housework when not employed about the cheese. Some farmers hire girls who devote themselves exclusively to cheese making during the season for it. Some have the afternoon after the cheese is put in the press, and the jars, &c., are cleaned, until time to milk in the evening. The morning milking is usually done before breakfast, and the cheese made after breakfast. It requires until about two o'clock to get through. When cheese is put in a press, nothing further is necessary until it is ready to be removed. It remains in the press twenty-four hours. Most farmers have their cheese made on Sunday morning as on other days. The girls have Sunday afternoon or evening, according to contract. Some farmers do not make their cheese on Sunday, but retain the milk until Monday morning, and make it into butter. Women are best adapted to the work, and employed mostly because they can be got cheaper. The majority are Irish women. They are usually put on a footing by their employers, and eat at the same table. So little spinning and weaving are done now in the country, that the female members of farmers' families generally do the milking, unless the farmers have grown too wealthy and proud to have their wives and daughters so employed. Some dairymen make, with the aid of their families, all the cheese they use and sell. Milk should be drawn from a cow as rapidly as possible and while the cow is eating. One milker should be employed for every ten cows. Milk is very sensitive. Dairymen will make more by having the cream remain on the milk than by taking the cream off for churning, at the rate butter sells this winter (1861). Where the cream is used, an inexperienced hand would find it more troublesome to make cheese. Twenty-three million pounds of cheese were exported last year from the United States. American cheese is, in England, taking the place of English cheese. A German cheesemonger told me he makes the Limburg cheese--a preparation which has been known about eight years in this country. He was putting up some to send to New Orleans. It was very soft, and I thought the smell very offensive. He gets American cheese of a Yankee girl, to whom he pays $80 a year. She uses the milk of sixty cows. She works at it but eight months. During four months of the year but very little cheese is ever made. The arrangements of some cheesemakers for preparing the article are very complete. =139. Coffee and Chocolate Packers.= B. S. & W., Philadelphia, employ women in packing parcels of essence of coffee, spices, vermicelli, &c. They make paper cases, pour the article in through a funnel and ram it down, then label and pack the cases in boxes, which are nailed up ready for delivery. One or two persons obtain a livelihood by cutting the labels to paste on the boxes. They are paid fifteen cents a thousand for this work, and are able to support themselves by it. The women are paid by the piece, and earn from $2 to $6 per week. The work rooms are airy and comfortable. Females were formerly more employed than at present to put up coffee; but as coffee is now ground every day at most factories, and as it is considered best when just ground, less is put up than formerly. Messrs. L. & B., New York, employ girls to put the articles in papers, pasting labels on and sealing them. They work by the piece, and earn from $3 to $7 a week. The odor might be disagreeable to some, but persons get accustomed to it, and it is quite as healthy as most work. There are not over one hundred and fifty women so employed in the State of New York, yet such packing is generally done by women. It is customary to pay by the package. The girls change their dresses on coming to the workroom of L. & B. They do not work with the men, but with some boys who fill boxes with the same articles. L. & B.'s girls have employment all the year. They never have any difficulty in getting hands. I saw a man who makes up essence of coffee. A lady was assisting him to put it in papers. At another factory I was told they pay by the week, from $1.50 to $4, according to the industry, quickness, and practice of the worker. It is not unhealthy work. They give employment ten months of the year, but at present have little to do. It requires but a few weeks to become expert. In some establishments girls stand or sit, as they please, while at work; in others they are all required to assume constantly whichever posture the foreman directs. At W. & Son's two small girls are employed, who each receive $2.50 a week. There is one factory in Cincinnati, one in St. Louis, and one in Chicago. =140. Cracker Bakers.= At M.'s the young man said fancy crackers could be made by women. In making soda, oyster, and some other crackers, the dough is kneaded by machinery. In some establishments the dough is rolled out and conveyed to the oven by machinery. In a cracker bakery I was told the women might be employed in packing and selling crackers. It would not require all the time of one woman to pack for a large bakery. A cracker baker writes us: "We employ no women, and do not see that they could work to advantage in our business." Women could do all the work now done by men in this line, but I suppose considerable opposition would be experienced, except by ladies who have sufficient capital to carry on business for themselves. =141. Fancy Confectionery.= Most confectioners sell, in addition to their fancy candies, imported fruits; and a few keep cakes. Some also keep fruits preserved in brandy or their own juice; and some keep in addition pickles, oysters, sardines, &c. Some confectioners merely make sweetmeats--some sell them, and some both make and sell. In cities, confectioners usually furnish the refreshments for both public and private entertainments. A manufacturer of confectioneries in New York told me that in busy times he employs fifteen girls; but at that time (January, 1861) only half as many, for they have no Southern orders--the people in the South are doing without candies. The part done by girls requires no special training. He pays girls for their labor from the first. They pack, pick gums, envelop in fancy papers, fill boxes, &c. He pays $3 a week for those that have some experience, and keeps them ten hours a day. He gives the making and painting of fancy candies out to those that have families, and who do it at home. W., of Philadelphia, pays his girls, eight in number, $1.50 a week for the first two or three weeks, then from $3 to $4. Making common candy is said to be too hard for women. They assist in the finishing of fine candies, as rolling and covering chocolate nuts. They put the fancy candies in French envelopes, and cut the silvered or gilt paper that gives the finish. They can sit or stand as they please while at work, but while enveloping mostly sit. They work ten hours. It is rather a light business. M. employs fifty women in putting up and packing candies. He pays them, from the time they begin, $2 a week. They learn in two or three months. He pays then from $4 to $5 a week. A lady told me she was paid in one establishment $6 a month and board. A girl in a confectionery told me the prices usually paid girls are $7 or $8 a month, with board and washing, and the girl is expected to keep the accounts. A lady in another store said summer is the poorest season for confectioneries, as people do not like to eat candies, because it makes them thirsty; but in those confectioneries where soda water and lager beer are kept, there is more or less custom during the summer. They keep open till ten o'clock at night, and all day Sunday. Sunday is their most profitable day. She knows a girl that is paid $5 a month in the Bowery, with her board, or $7 without. To be kind and obliging, and have the faculty of pleasing the little folks, are the best qualifications for the business. Prices paid depend on the responsibility of the employed. Some that keep the books receive $5 a week without board, most others receive $1.50 or $1.75 per week and board. Judgment must be used in the selection of a stand. A lady who keeps a small confectionery and fruit store in Williamsburg, says she does not make much on cakes and bread, only half a cent on a loaf of bread. She says it is best not to trust any one for pay--that children often come and say they want so and so, their mother says she will pay on Saturday; but Saturday comes, and no pay; and if they go for the money, the parents will say, "Come again," and put it off from time to time, until they become discouraged, and give it up altogether. M--s, French confectionery and chocolate cream manufacturers, take learners at the proper season, which commences in August. They employ some girls to paint fancy candies. H. says one must commence at the very first step, and gradually advance--that to learn the business requires a long time. He pays four girls $5 or $6 a month each, and gives them their board, for selling confectioneries and waiting in his saloon. At S----'s confectionery I was told that the small fine candies are made by steam. They are made in pans, which are shaken back and forth over fires, the gas of which is very injurious, and cannot be carried off by flues. Their girls make so much noise, laughing and talking with the men, and waste so much time, that they are required to work on the first floor, the same as the store. They are paid from $1.50 to $2 a week. They are paid by the week, because they do their work better than if paid by the quantity; besides, it is less troublesome. They are paid for overwork (regular hours being ten), and some earn as much in that way as by regular wages. The girls pick gums, separate gum drops, put candy in boxes, &c. C. employs girls to paint, put up candies, and attend store, and pays $1.50 and $2 a week. Most of the painting is done by French and German men, who are paid from $10 to $12 a week. It requires a long time to acquire taste and experience; one, in fact, can be always improving. C. thinks girls are not likely to find constant employment in the kind of work he gives to females. A French confectioner told me he had employed a woman to make chocolate cream, paying $3 a week for ten hours a day, and could employ her all the year, as the demand for chocolate cream is very great. S. employed one girl to sell candy, paying $5 a week. She was at the store at 7.30 A. M., and remained till 6 P. M. in winter and 8 P. M. in summer. She did not keep the books, but washed the jars and case, and swept back of the counter, and dusted several times a day. Talked with a girl who stood in a confectionery store on Broadway. She knew a girl on Chatham street who received $12 a month and her board. She herself received $9 a month and her board, but not her washing. The proprietor told her she must sew for his family, when not waiting on customers. It seems that it is not an uncommon requisition. They have but few customers until about 11 o'clock, and he expected her to accomplish more sewing than a sempstress who gives all her time to it. The young lady is in the store by 7 o'clock in the morning, and remains until 11 o'clock at night. Any one wishing to commence a confectionery can learn from the wholesale dealer of whom she purchases how to regulate the prices of sweetmeats. Mrs. W. wants a girl to wait in her saloon, will give $8 a month, with her board and washing. She would be required to sew, when not waiting on customers, and would have to wash the jars and cases, keep the counter clean, and dust and arrange the articles in the window every morning. She would have to be in the store at seven, and remain until twelve (seventeen hours). In large confectioneries girls stand while picking gums used in making gum drops. They are mostly made in summer. There is now (December) a great demand for girls, as there always is about the holidays. Those now at work are kept three hours over time--from seven to ten--and paid extra. The chemicals used in making some confectioneries are unhealthy, but women have nothing to do with that, except in painting candy toys. A confectioner in Boston, who employs four American girls in attending store and making goods, writes: "We consider the occupation very healthy, never having had a case of sickness with girls while working at this business. Some are paid $3 and $4 per week, working ten hours a day; others by the quantity, averaging $1 per day. Male labor is paid for, according to the knowledge of the business, from $6 to $15. Girls could not do the work, and the work that women do it would not pay to have done by male labor. It requires a long time and a great deal of practice to learn the whole business, but that part done by women is learned in a few weeks. They are paid something while learning. Honesty, industry, and a good education are the most desirable qualifications. Spring and fall are our most busy seasons. In midwinter we do not have many at work. Retail stores require most help in summer. New York requires most hands, especially women; but the demands are now very small, the trouble at the South being the main cause. They are not strong enough to do some parts of the work. The large towns are best for our business." A lady in a fancy confectionery on Broadway told me she receives $8 a month and her board, and is paid by the month. She thinks many diseases are brought on women by having to stand so much, as they do in confectioneries, bakeries, and dry-good stores. Women that have stood in any kind of a store before, and have business qualifications, are paid while learning. There is never any difficulty about obtaining qualified hands. She finds the work very laborious, and complained of having to be in the confectionery and saloon from seven in the morning until twelve at night. In some saloons the attendants are up until 1 o'clock (eighteen hours!), and are on their feet most of the time. A confectioner in Concord, N. H., writes: "We employ from five to ten girls (because we find it most profitable) for helping make, rolling up, and packing lozenges and pipe candy. Also for standing in the confectionery. The work is very healthy. We pay about sixty-seven cents per day, and they work from six to ten hours. No man employed, except one who takes charge. There is a prospect for employment so long as children cry for lozenges. The girls are American, and work at all seasons. They are as well paid, according to the cost of living, as mechanics in this place. Women are superior to men in rolling up and packing lozenges. They pay for board $1.75 per week." =142. Fish Women.= In the United States, where every one has a right to fish in the rivers and lakes, there is a fair opening for those in this line of business. But it is only in the spring and fall that fish are much eaten. They are not considered healthy in the warm weather of summer. A pound of fish is said to be in nutritive power equal to eight pounds of potatoes. In the United States, according to the census report of 1850, there were engaged in fisheries 20,704 males and 429 females. The fishwomen of Philadelphia have long engaged in the selling of shad, and are to be seen in great numbers on the streets of the city, and even when not seen are likely to be heard crying fish. At one time they had a large market devoted exclusively to the sale of fish, but it became a nuisance, and the city authorities had it torn down; yet the women, possessed of strong local association, were not to be so routed. They are still seen sitting before their tables of fish in the neighborhood of where the market stood. Much money has been realized by the fishwomen, some of whom are said to own property of considerable value. What a lesson to patient industry! "From the time of Louis XIV. to the present, fish have been sold in Paris exclusively by women. They are now remarkable for the urbanity of their language and propriety of their conduct, having risen high in the scale of respectability during the last half century." "On the coasts of the department of Somme there are certain fish, the shrimps and 'vers marius,' which are exclusively reserved to the young girls and widows." On the coast of Great Britain thousands of women are employed in the herring, cod, mackerel, lobster, turbot, and pilchard fisheries. Women and children rub salt on the fish to be cured, with the hand. When cured, women pile them in stacks from four to five feet high, and as wide. Women are paid, at Newlyn, for this labor, 3_d._ an hour, and every sixth hour receive a glass of brandy and a piece of bread. Many are also employed in obtaining oysters and canning them; and on the return of whaling vessels, numbers of women assist in preparing the cargoes for market. In New York, fish are mostly sold by men, who drive about in a little wagon containing fish, and blow a horn, crying out now and then the kind of fish they have for sale. =143. Macaroni.= Macaroni is moulded and dried. Girls then pick out the whole sticks, and put them in boxes. The broken pieces are all thrown together in a barrel, then ground and moulded over. It is very easy work, and requires no learning. They are paid from $2 to $3.50 a week, working ten hours a day. The girls I saw, stood while at work. =144. Maple Sugar.= The cheapness of sugar made from sugar cane has almost annihilated the existence of maple sugar, except as a sweetmeat. The peculiar flavor of maple molasses and sugar makes them much loved by some people. The trees are tapped early in the spring, when the sap first rises. After sufficient water is collected, it is put on and boiled until of the consistence required. It is slow work and pays poorly, but can be performed by women capable of the heavy labor involved in carrying, lifting kettles, and stirring. =145. Market Women.= Mrs. Childs says, in her "History of Women," "On the seacoast of Borneo fleets of boats may be seen laden with provisions brought to market by women, who are screened from the sun by huge bamboo hats. In Egyptian cities, the country girls, closely veiled, are frequently employed in selling melons, pomegranates, eggs, poultry, &c." In the southern countries of Europe it is common to see women riding to market on donkeys, laden with marketing. We learn from "London Labor and London Poor," that there are 2,000 persons employed in the sale of greenstuff in the streets of London, as water-cresses, chickweed, groundsel, turf, and plantain. The cresses are eaten by people; the other articles are sold for birds. We may divide market women into two classes--those that raise or have raised the products they sell, and those that buy to sell again. The articles of the first are generally genuine and of fair price. Vegetables, poultry, eggs, and butter, with fruit, both green and dried, are carried to market, and there the market women, placing them on stalls or retaining them in their wagons, wait for purchasers. This class mostly supply the markets of towns and villages. Their articles are usually fresh and wholesome. There are thirteen markets in New York city where everything is obtained at the second or third remove from the producer. It is estimated that there are 1,300 huckster women attending the New York markets. The members of some families are engaged in the sale of different articles: one will sell eggs; another, vegetables; another, poultry, &c. It is said that better meat and vegetables are brought to Philadelphia than to New York markets. In New York there is a larger population requiring articles of a cheap kind. We think market women, considering their habits and modes of living, probably do as well in a pecuniary way as any other class of women. Their wants are few, their habits simple, and their occupation--though an exposed one--healthy. The variety of seeing new faces, and chatting with those similarly employed, yield more comfort and content than most women's work. They take in but a few pennies at a time, yet have their regular customers, and, in prosperous seasons, many besides. I will give an extract from my diary of a visit made to several of the New York markets: "I saw some women selling fruit; some, vegetables; and some, tripe and sausage. I judge, from the appearance of most dealers, it is not unhealthy. Most of the women were far advanced in life, particularly those who sold vegetables. They all complain that they do not sell so much since the commencement of the hard times. How is it? Do people buy less, and so eat less? or is less wasted in their kitchens? or are some unable to buy meat and vegetables at all? Here I would state the remark of a druggist: that, as times are hard, people do not indulge in so much rich food, nor in a surplus of it; consequently there is less sickness, and so little medicine sold that the druggists are discouraged. This druggist has since sold out, and moved to the country. Most of the market women looked to be Irish. One strong Irish woman told me that American women cannot bear the exposure in cold weather, and rent their stalls through the winter to men. They make their appearance in March with the flowers and early fruit. Butter is sold exclusively by men in Washington market, New York, and is more profitable than anything else. There is considerable difference in the class of custom in the different markets in New York; but the poor are usually more in number than the rich--so the markets frequented by them may receive as great a profit as where a smaller number of better customers attend. Some women regulate their sales to have a percentage, but many sell for what they can get, without regard to the amount of profit. I find those selling vegetables, buy of farmers who come early, and leave a supply for each seller in case she is not there. Any vegetables they may have left are locked up in boxes, or barrels, or covered over and left on the bench. The gates of the market house are closed and locked up at one o'clock every day except Saturday, with the exception of Washington and Fulton markets, which are open all day, and the first mentioned all night. Watchmen are about the markets at all hours of the day and night, and in some markets an extra fee is paid by the sellers to secure attention to their stalls. At two o'clock in the morning, Washington market is fully lighted, and the farmers begin to arrive to sell to grocers. The grocers usually buy from four to five in summer, and from four to six in winter. Boarding-house keepers mostly buy from seven to nine o'clock. Families buy during any of these hours, or later. All the markets are open by half past three. Fulton market is rather warmer than the others because of the stoves and ranges used for making coffee, cooking oysters, &c. Ladies do not come to market so much in winter as in spring and summer. I think the vocation of market selling must be very healthy, when the venders are comfortably clad, and have stoves, as many of them do. Market women live to a great age. Vegetables injured by frost or long keeping are sold at a lower price. As a general thing, less is sold in market during January and February, than any other months. In spring time the market presents the most inviting appearance, for the stalls are then freshly painted, and flowers and fruit exhibited to advantage on them. Mrs. B. told me that a woman who sold flowers in Fulton market had made a fortune at it. Some of these sellers let other women have flowers and fruit to take over the city to sell, and reap a profit in that way. One old lady told me she always made 12½ cents profit on her goods, they being pocket-knives, combs, &c. The stalls are sold or rented. One woman told me she paid 12½ cents a day for her stall; another, 9 cents; and this must be paid for even on days when they are absent from market. Another woman told me that she got a permit for the use of a stall in Washington market when it was first built, and not long since she sold it for $1,500, and the owner pays a tax of $2 a week besides. She paid $200 for the stall at which she stood in Fulton market, and pays a rent of 75 cents a week. She makes a living by selling smoked salt fish. The processes through which produce must pass from the producer to reach the consumer, might be avoided by permitting farmers to remain longer in the city, and furnishing them with a place for their teams and produce; but now they must all leave by ten o'clock, and can scarcely feel that they have a place to put anything down while they are in the city. In England are women who shell peas and beans at so much a quart. I have seen books, spectacles, canes, pocket-books, caps, shoes, hose, china, and even old clothes for sale on the streets, and around or in the market-houses of Philadelphia and New York. =146. Meat Sellers.= In markets and in meat shops of the United States, women may occasionally be seen selling meat. They are generally the wives or the daughters of butchers. They no doubt assist in cleaning tripe, and making sausage and souse. On the streets of London are nearly one thousand sellers of dogs' and cats' meat. Most of them are men. This meat is the flesh of old worn out horses, which are bought, killed, cut up, boiled, and sold by those who make it a business. Mrs. M. told me of a woman that sells meat in the New York market. She has made a fortune by it. She stands in market, and sells, and orders her hired men to cut it up as desired. Mr. W. told me that women are employed at the pork houses in Louisville, in putting up hogs' feet, to send to New Orleans. Less meat is sold in summer than winter. I have been told that curing meat is too heavy work for women, on account of the lifting. Besides, they would get wet from the brine used; but some German and English women do pickle meat, and some even buy and sell stock. The late census of Great Britain reports twenty-six thousand butcheresses. =147. Milk Dealers.= Kindness to animals always indicates something good in the heart. Life, in its every form, should be precious to us. Cows yield much less milk, and of an inferior quality, on the eastern than western continent. In Canada and some countries of Europe, the milk of goats is sold, and considerably used. In some parts of Rome it is customary for dairymen to drive their cows in every morning, and around to the houses of their customers, when the milkman draws from the cow into the vessel the desired quantity. In Belgium it is not uncommon to see milkmaids following their little wagons, containing vessels of milk, and drawn by dogs. Mayhew stated, in 1852, that in St. James's Park, London, eight cows were kept in summer to supply warm milk to purchasers; four in winter, and the number of street women engaged in the sale of curds, was one hundred. A lady called with me in a milk depot. The man has his milk brought in on the cars. Milkmen pay their women from $6 to $7 a month. They begin to milk about five in the morning, and the same hour in the afternoon, so that it may cool before being placed in the cans. Those hired to milk do house work or kitchen work in the intervals. When milking is done in the afternoon, the men that work on the farm, and the proprietor himself, assist. In some places where butter is made for market, the churning is done by horses and dogs. A milk dealer told me he sold to those who wished to sell again at cost price, four cents a quart; to other customers his price is six cents. At one depot, Williamsburg, the dealer was counting over an immense pile of pennies. His milk comes from New Jersey, seventy miles from New York. He crosses two rivers every night at twelve o'clock, to receive his milk at the Jersey depot. He sells at six cents a quart. To those who buy to sell again, his price is five cents a quart. He told me a separate freight agent is employed on some trains to take charge of the milk sent on the cars. Milk does not often sour while being brought in. Cream is brought in cans placed in large tubs of ice. He pays for freight, forty cents a can. Cream usually sells at twenty-five cents per quart. He sells twice as much milk in summer as in winter--he supposes, because it sours so easily. At shops, milk is usually sold at five cents; when delivered, at six cents. Milk is less rich in winter than summer. A milkman told me that in dairies in and near the city, men mostly milk. He mentioned one quite near a distillery. Women that take milk about in buckets to sell, have a cow of their own, and feed her on swill from the distillery, and slops from kitchens. The milk they sell is not healthy. Some of them buy a little good milk and mix with theirs. If a dairy woman's time is not entirely occupied with her business, she might in some places find it profitable to have an ice house, and send ice around with the same horse, wagon, and driver used for the sale of milk. Borden's condensed milk is boiled at a temperature of 112°, I think, and prepared in Connecticut. The American Solidified Milk Company, in New York, employ some girls in rolling, packing, and labelling. The superintendent writes: "The employment is healthy. Women receive from $7 to $8 per month, and their board. They spend twelve hours per day, including meal times, in the establishment. An intelligent person may learn in a week. There is a prospect of more being employed. All the girls we employ are Americans, except one. It is a very comfortable occupation. I find little difference between male and female labor. When I have hired men or youths, I have found them to be more habitually attentive, and less irritable; but women are usually neater. The women all board at a house, subject to the control of the Company. The price is $2.25 per week, washing included, and is paid for by the Company. The character of the house is unexceptionable, and the table is much better provided than that of most farmers living here." =148. Mince Meat and Apple Butter.= The preparation of mince meat might be performed by women. And it might be sold by them in stores where poultry, eggs, and butter are disposed of, or in clean, well-kept groceries. With a machine for cutting the meat, and another for paring the apples, it could be easily accomplished. Apple butter is an article that meets with ready sale in market. People that are very particular about their food only buy of those they know to be cleanly in their cooking. Stewing apple butter is laborious work. If a farmer has a cider press and an apple parer, much labor is saved in preparing the materials. In some places, apple butter is kept for sale in groceries, and in establishments for the sale of the products of the dairy. The apples that are partly decayed, and those picked off the ground, furnish an abundance from large orchards. And from orchards not accessible to market where defective fruit can be sold, there will be no want of a supply. It is sold by the pint or quart, or put up in jars holding more. =149. Mustard Packers.= Most of the mustard in this country has been imported, but some planters are now turning their time and attention to it. Mustard is cultivated to some extent for the oil pressed from its seed. Some factories exist in the United States. I have heard of a man in New York that used to be engaged extensively in grinding mustard with vinegar, and employed women to put it in jars, paying $3 a week. In some dry mustard factories women are employed to put the mustard in papers. A manufacturer of mustard writes: "Women are employed at some large establishments. The business is severe on persons with weak lungs, as a large quantity of steam or dust arises from packing. The work is paid for by the quantity, not the day. Women of good judgment would soon become mistresses of their work--in six months they would become good workwomen. They would probably spoil as much as their wages were worth for the first few days. When cholera and yellow fever are about, is the best time for the sale of mustard. Ten hours is the usual time for work, but in busy seasons the hands work longer." =150. Oyster Sellers.= I called on a woman who makes a living for herself and five little children by selling oysters. She sells most about tea time, and on until twelve o'clock. She thinks oysters are wholesome all the year. Physicians recommend them for their patients, and many can eat them when they cannot eat anything else. Of course a real oyster saloon can only be kept in places where fresh oysters can be had. Oysters are rather hard for a woman to open. In summer nothing is done. The room, vender, and oysters should be clean, to draw decent customers. It pays well; but too often, in small concerns, the profits are derived from the sale of liquor. At a little oyster shop the woman told me she barely made a living. She keeps boys to open the oysters. She supplies families with fresh oysters, and when she receives an order, prepares them for families and sends them to the house. =151. Pie Bakers.= "Many of the young Swabian girls of thirteen or fourteen years old are sent to Stuttgart to acquire music, or other branches of education, among which, household duties are generally included. A matron, who keeps a large establishment there, gives the instruction, which they voluntarily seek. They may often be seen returning from the bakeries, with a tray full of cakes and pies of their own making; and sometimes young gentlemen, for the sake of fun, stop them to buy samples of their cookery." The foundation of Miss Leslie's culinary knowledge was laid at a school of cookery in Philadelphia. In England, women make pastry for confectioneries. At the W. pie bakery I was told they employ women to prepare the fruit. They used to employ them to roll the dough; but they are not such fast workers as men. One man remarked, the shoulders ache from rolling by the time evening comes. The women are paid fifty cents a day, and board themselves. One woman boards with them, and receives $1.50 a week, with her board. M. & Co. pay their women five cents an hour, for preparing the fruit and making pies. They sell most to retail stores and hotels--consequently sell most in the spring and fall, when the largest number of strangers are in the city. They keep three wagons running part of the time, which start at six in summer, and, in busy seasons, sometimes do not get in to remain till twelve at night. When it rains or snows they do not sell so much, as those who sell at stands on the street are not out. The drivers come back several times during the day for pies, when very busy, and they mention how many are ordered. So the manager knows how many to have baked. They always sell most on Saturday, and I think sell least on Wednesdays and Thursdays. When the women work over ten hours, they are paid extra at the same rate, five cents an hour. C. and wife pay their best woman $9 a month with board and washing. It is her duty to roll out pastry, put the fruit in, and put the covers on. They employ some girls for $6 a month, to wash dishes, cook fruit, chop apples, pick dried fruit, &c. The work requires more strength than skill. There are only four large pie bakeries in New York. Madame L., who sells French pastry and confectionery, says very few women are employed in Paris, in making pastry, except for families. It requires too much strength and too long labor, to do so for a saloon. The saloons are usually open until twelve o'clock at night. At a bread bakery an attendant told me she prepares the fruit for pies, but the bakers prepare the crust, make and bake them. She says their men do that in the morning, when not otherwise employed, and it would not pay to have a woman for that purpose alone. Mrs. H. employs fifteen women. She pays $3.50 a month, with board and lodging, to those that slice apples and carry pies to and from the oven. Men place them in the oven and take them out. She pays $6.50 to those that roll out pastry and wash dishes, &c. She has three thousand pies made sometimes in one day. It requires more care to bake pies than bread. At another pie bakery, the lady told me she has the fruit prepared for pies in her kitchen and taken to the bakehouse, where they are made up by men, to save the women from working where the men are. She pays a woman for preparing fruit $5 a month and her board. In a pie bakery in New York, one of the attendants said in the old country women learn to bake pies and cakes for confectioners. They pay £30 for instruction, and spend two years' apprenticeship. They learn the whole process, including the stewing of fruit and preparing mince meat. In this country that is followed as a separate branch, and mostly done by women for bakers. She said in the bakery where she stood, girls were required, not only to wait on customers, but wash the counters, shelves, and windows of the store. The other attendant told me she found the smell of the pastry, and being so constantly on her feet, very injurious. They each receive $8 a month, and their board and washing. To succeed, a person should be quick in her motions and calculations, and a good judge of money. They are in the shop fifteen hours. In some bakeries the girls spend eighteen hours in the shop. The time could be shortened, if all the establishments of the kind would unite and make regulations to that effect; but it could not be done by one or two stores on account of the competition in the business. Such a store would lose its patronage. The majority of girls board with the bakers' families, on account of rising early to be in store. Summer is the poorest season on Broadway, as most of their customers are out of the city at that season; but in localities where the working classes are supplied, the summer is the best season, as most of them do not go to the expense of making up a fire to bake their bread and pastry. =152. Picklers of Oysters.= An oysterwoman told me that girls and women are employed at most places where oysters are put in cans to send away. They are paid by the gallon for opening the shells; and near New Haven, some girls make $4 a day. On the Great South Bay, they do not earn so much, as the oysters are smaller and rougher. It requires considerable practice to become expert, but not much physical strength. The business is considered healthy, and women are paid at the same rate as men. Miss B. told me that at Fair Haven some women are paid for opening oysters two and a half cents a quart. =153. Poulterers.= Much attention has been paid in this country, during the last ten years, to the breeding and feeding of poultry. All that read this will remember the hen fever that spread through our country a few years ago. Chinese chickens sold at from $40 to $100 a pair; and the usual price of one egg for a time was $5. The saving of feathers off poultry will be found profitable, for they bring a high price and ready sale. Poultry are best disposed of in large quantities at hotels, steamboats, and restaurants. Houses for poultry should be warm and tightly made. When there is a variety of poultry, each kind should be separately lodged. Plenty of space, water accessible, gravel, living plants and loose soil are the principal things to render poultry comfortable. The worms and insects obtained from the loose soil furnish them animal food, and sand or gravel is necessary to promote digestion. It is best not to draw poultry when preparing it for market, as it keeps longer when the air is excluded. In winter some farmers let their poultry freeze, and pack them in boxes of dry straw, and send them to market. They will keep so for two or three months. I was told of an old lady, back of New Albany, Ia., that has made several thousand dollars by the sale of poultry. The egg trade is a very extensive one. It requires a knowledge of the state of the market, and promptness in supplying its demand at the right time. Several establishments in Cincinnati entered largely into the business some years ago, and, we suppose, still continue it. Eggs are often shipped from Cincinnati to New Orleans and New York. "In France and England 6,000,000 eggs are used annually in preparing leather for gloves." In New York the poultry sold in market is mostly purchased from the wholesale commission merchants, who have stands in some parts of the market, or stores near the market. Poultry is there sold by the pound: chickens, 9 and 10 cents, and turkeys from 10 to 12 cents. It requires experience to learn the quality of poultry, but those in the business can judge of it by seeing the poultry when alive. The best time for selling is through the fall up to February. Some market women sell poultry in winter, and flowers in summer. Those who engage in raising poultry, could unite with it the raising of rabbits, pigeons, &c. About a hundred persons (mostly women) are employed in a henery near Paris, where thousands of chickens are annually hatched out by keeping eggs in rooms, heated by steam to a uniform temperature. =154. Restaurant Keepers.= In London and Paris, young and pretty women are employed in the best class of tobacco stores and in restaurants. This should not be so on account of the number, and often the character, of the men that resort to these shops. Indeed, we think it best not to employ them in any stores that men only frequent. Besides, the unseasonable hours that restaurants are kept open, make it objectionable for women. They are often not closed until midnight or after. In Great Britain girls and women are frequently employed as bar maids at inns. =155. Sealed Provisions, Pickles, and Sauces.= The plan is now almost universally adopted in the United States, of putting up fruit and vegetables in cans from which the air is excluded. It is one of the greatest inventions of the age for housekeepers. It saves labor and expense; and if well put up, the fruit and vegetables are as fresh and taste as natural as we have them in the growing season. Quite a number of large houses are engaged in the business in New York, and a few in Philadelphia. E. Philadelphia employs women to put pickles and preserved fruit in jars, sealing and labelling them. They can earn from $2.50 to $3 a week. They sit while at work. The season begins in July, and is over in October. K. & Co., New York, employ about a hundred females during the fruit season. The occupation consists in preparing the articles to be preserved; that is, peeling, seeding, washing, &c., labelling bottles, and painting cans. Those they employ are mostly Irish, and not capable of any very elevated position of labor. The fruit season lasts six months, after which only about thirty remain the rest of the year. The hours of labor are ten, and the compensation from $2.50 to $3 per week. In another establishment they employ only small girls, to whom they pay $2 per week, and occasionally $2.50. Mrs. Dall suggests that farmers' daughters put up candied fruits like those imported from France, which bear a good price and yield a handsome profit. Some women engage in making pickles on their own responsibility. Owners of gardens not convenient to market would find it profitable to put up fruits and vegetables, and to make pickles and sauces. The spices they would have to purchase; but if they had an orchard, they could make good vinegar. They could either sell the articles in the nearest large city, or pay a commission for the sale of them. Mr. D., in one of the New York markets, employs women for putting pickles in jars--gives $8 a month and board. The number of hours they are employed depends on the quantity of work they have on hand. B., New York, employs for six months from six to eight women; for four months, some twenty-five; and the remaining two months, from ninety to one hundred and twenty-five. B. has always had his work done in the city, but contemplates having it done hereafter in the country, as the articles will then be on the ground, and save the trouble of transportation. They send South. He thinks the South must for a long time be dependent on the North for pickles. They even furnish some of the pickle houses in Baltimore. They fear they will lose much because they have now no demand for pickles from the South, and they are likely to spoil by keeping. They are most busy in summer and fall. They keep some steady hands all the year. They find it difficult to get good hands, and pay learners from the first. Many girls go from New York in the summer, to the country, to put up pickles, gather berries, and weed gardens; and it pays them pretty well. B. pays his women fifty cents a day of ten hours. It is not unhealthy, and requires but a little time to learn. In this, as in most other mechanical work, practice makes perfect; consequently, experienced hands receive the preference. At most places men attend to fruit while it is being cooked. The preserving is mostly done in large kettles, around which pass pipes containing steam, encased by larger vessels. Lifting the kettles would be too heavy for women, when they contain, as in some cases, thirty-five gallons of fruit. And the steam used would require some one that knew a little of such matters, yet a smart woman could soon learn. M. & M. have their work done in the house, paying from $2.25 to $4. They can always get hands. W. & P. have their pickles, preserves, and sauces put up in the country. Their girls get from $3 to $6 a week. They employ two hundred girls, and take most of them from the city in the busy season from June to October. G. pays $3 a week. Any one that can use their hands can do it, and become expert in two or three months. Another pickler pays $2 per week. His wife does most of the work. Mrs. M. lives near Washington market. She employs some women to preserve, and some to put up pickles. Most of her preserves are put up by an old lady who does it at her own home. She pays her women from $2.50 to $4 a week. It requires long experience to become proficient. Nearly all the work is done in her house, and of course is done only in the summer. Her custom is mostly confined to the city. If she is preserving a very large quantity of fruit, she has a man to stir it. He spends most of his time taking purchased articles home. She uses only the best articles. She can always get enough hands. An extensive pickle manufacturer writes: "I employ women in packing pickles and all goods of the kind into glass--labelling, corking, making jellies, jams, &c., packing, labelling catsups, bottling syrups, &c. Women are so employed wherever these goods are manufactured. The employment is _healthy_--so much so that I have known invalids gain their health. I pay $3 per week--men $6 to $10; all work ten hours a day. Women can learn in from three to twelve months. Some learners receive $2, and some $2.50 per week. Quickness, neatness, and skill are required. Summer and fall are the busy seasons. The females are mostly young Irish, born in the United States. Women are superior in handiness, inferior in strength." A gentleman in the business writes from Newburyport: "I employ usually from eight to ten women. I pay eight cents per hour, and they work from four to seven hours. The men's work is worth more than women's, and entirely different from it. The prospect for this kind of work is good. There is no work in winter or early spring. Seaports are the best localities for the business. My women pay from $1.50 to $1.75 for respectable board." =156. Sugar Makers.= When the part of the sugar cane to be pressed, is cut, it is tied in bundles and drawn to the mill in wagons. It is deposited in heaps outside, and negro girls carry the bundles on their heads to the mill door. After the cane has been subjected to pressure by cylinders, to obtain the juice, it falls through an opening in the mill walls, and is carried off by negro women and spread in the sun, to dry for fuel. The work in sugar mills is very warm and heavy. The work in sugar refineries is very laborious, and requires the workers to be subjected to great heat. Several refiners have informed me that the business does not admit of the employment of women in any department. The business is said to be very trying on the constitution, and produces an unhealthy increase of flesh. It is said to be good for consumptives on account of the great nutriment in sugar. A sugar refiner died not long ago, whose salary received from the company amounted, I was told, to $25,000 per annum. I have thought there is one part of the work a woman might do--it is enveloping the sugar in paper cases. At a sugar refinery a man told us, some women are employed to make bags for containing char, _i. e._, burnt bones, and earn several dollars a week. The sewing is done by hand; making the bags requires but a short time, though it is heavy work. Most refiners buy theirs at bag factories, or have their men to make them. =157. Tea Packers.= A boy fitting himself to be a tea broker told me, the business is best in the spring, fall, and winter. The quality of tea is principally decided by smelling--which is done before it is moistened, by blowing on it with the breath and then putting it to the nostrils. Boiling water is then poured on it, and tasted. The boy said, it is a paying business. It is not healthy on account of the dust inhaled. It does not take more than a year to learn to judge of the quality of kinds of tea. Boys learning the business do not live long. They are paid $2, and $2.50 a week. In busy seasons, they sometimes work as late as nine o'clock. There are not many tea packers in the city, and one told me, most of them cannot make a living. We called on Mr. N., a teapacker, who charges for putting tea out of the large boxes, in which it is imported, into canisters and packages, according to the way in which it is put up; whether in paper covers, or canisters of lead or tin. The facing or labelling varies some. He says, packing could be done by girls. He employs men and boys, paying the boys from $2 to $4 a week. There are only two tea packing establishments in New York, and not more than one in any other large city. It is not at all unhealthy. Packing is done most in spring and fall. Mr. N. thinks it would be best to have the girls work in separate apartments from the men. He complains of the want of promptness in girls. A tea packer of Boston writes: "I employ from six to ten girls to cover and line boxes, &c. They are American, of Irish descent. There is nothing in the business, that the girls do, that can be considered unhealthy. Wages run from $2.50 to $3 per week. It does not take a long time to learn, and full wages are paid while learning. I employ my help the year round, though less hours are used for a day's work during the winter. Ten is the number of working hours during the summer, spring, and autumn; and eight, during the winter months." In London, a number of men and women, principally women, buy exhausted tea leaves of the female servants and sell them at establishments, where they are dried, and a fresh green color given them by a copper preparation. They are sold for new tea. The quantity so renewed is thought to amount to 78,000 lbs. annually. The Chinese women assist in gathering tea leaves and drying them, but men do the packing. =158. Vermicelli.= Vermicelli is moulded by passing through a machine and being laid on frames until the next day to partially dry. Then girls cut it in short pieces, and twist it. The twisting requires a little art acquired by practice. They receive from $2 to $3.50 a week. It is cruel for females to be kept on their feet all day while at work, when they might sit. At a factory I saw a French lady, the wife of the proprietor, cutting and twisting vermicelli. A young Frenchman was at work, who told us he was paid 75 cents a day; but women, he said, would not be paid as much, because he had to attend to the machinery. The lady sat, as girls in factories should do if they wish. =159. Vinegar.= A plant is now grown from which vinegar is made. "In addition to the consumption of vinegar in culinary uses and the preparation of preserved food, it is indispensable in several branches of manufacture, as in the dressing of morocco leather, and in dye and print works." The labor of making vinegar is too hard and heavy for women. The handling of barrels, changing of liquids, and constant exposure to heat and cold, without cessation of labor, are too great for the female frame to sustain. The workers often pass from a temperature varying from 92° to 105°, to one of extreme coldness." A Boston vinegar manufacturer, writes: "Women are never employed in making vinegar in large quantities. They are not adapted to the occupation. It does not agree with some constitutions. It requires but a short time to learn the business. The prospect for future employment is poor." Some women make vinegar from parings of fruit, tea leaves, &c., for family use. =160. Yeast.= A manufacturer of yeast powders writes: "There is but a small part of the work that women can do. It requires the strong, muscular arm of a man to do most of it." We know women are sometimes employed for putting up the powders, and are paid by the number of packages. TEXTILE MANUFACTURES. =161. Cotton Manufacturers.= Only so far back as 1789, doubts were entertained whether cotton could be cultivated in the United States, while now the amount of calicoes annually produced in the United States is supposed to equal twenty millions of yards. "The number of females employed in the various factories of Lowell, in which textile fabrics are produced, will exceed 12,000. Those engaged in weaving can earn, upon an average, from $2.50 to $4 per week. Those who labor as spinners and spoolers make only from seventy-five cents to $2, but they are generally very young." In the cotton mill at Cannelton, Ind., there were "in 1854, about 200 females. They worked by the job, and their pay was the same as would be given to men for the same work. They earned from $1 to $5.50 per week." We believe, in the majority of factories, the plan of paying some hands by the piece, and some by the week, is adopted. B., manufacturer, told me quite a number of his weavers earn from $5 to $6 a week, being paid by the piece. It requires two or three months to get in the way of weaving well. His hands are busy all the year. His factory is in New Jersey, twenty-five miles from New York. The laws of New Jersey prohibit the employment of operatives more than twelve hours out of the twenty-four, but some evade it. The law, also, forbids the employment of children under ten years of age. The smaller children are engaged in spinning, and not so well paid. It requires but a short time to learn to attend the spinning machinery. There is generally a full supply of weavers to be had, because it pays well. Manufacturers usually have their work done in the country, because living, and consequently labor, are cheaper there. A cotton manufacturer in Rhode Island, who employs about 100 operatives, writes: "I pay both by the piece and the week. When by the week, from $4 to $5. When by the piece, the women are paid at the same rate as the men, but the men are able to make from fifty cents to $1 per week more. It requires from three to six months, to learn. Girls are paid while learning, if they grow up with us. They are employed through the year, and work sixty-nine hours per week, twelve hours per day for five days, nine hours on Saturday. All classes of laborers must work during mill hours. Women keep the rooms and machinery neater than men. About seven eighths of the women employed in our mill are Americans; one half would be the nearer proportion in mills generally in this section, three fourths in some instances. There are other parts that women might be employed in, but the custom has not been introduced in our section, on account of their dress. They pay from $1.50 to $1.75 for board, and are all in private families." The Lawrence Manufacturing Company, at Lowell, write: "Women are employed in carding, spinning, dressing, and weaving. The employment is not unhealthy, and they earn from $1 to $4 a week, clear of board, according to capability and skill--average, say, $2 per week. They work eleven hours a day; men average about eighty cents a day clear of board; their work is altogether too hard for women. The women learn in from one to three months. They are paid, usually, $1 a week, besides their board, while learning. The qualifications needed are respectable character and ordinary capacity. They are employed all the year round. The scarcity of hands is greater in the departments requiring most skill; there is an abundance of inferior sort. We employ 1,300 women; perhaps one third are Americans. They are employed in all branches where it is expedient. The Americans are well informed; the Irish, improving, though low in the scale of intelligence. They have churches, evening schools, and lectures. Work stops at 6.30 and 7 o'clock. They live in boarding houses under our care, well regulated, respectable and comfortable, and pay $1.25 per week." At the New York mills, "361 adult and 99 minor females are employed in the manufacture of fine shirtings and cottonades. Wages of adults are $3.99, and minors, $2.12½ per week. Price of board, $1.50. They work 12 hours per day." The Naunkeag Steam Cotton Company, Mass., "employ 400, and pay by the week, from $2.50 to $3. Those that do piecework, earn on an average, $3.50 per week; six months will enable intelligent hands to earn three fourths pay. Their board is paid for two weeks, while learning, then they receive what they earn. Desirable hands find steady work; they are employed all the year; they work eleven hours a day. We prefer women, because neater and more reliable. They have more time for improvement than is made available. Board, $1.50 to $1.75. Good boarding houses are provided." At Kingston, Rhode Island, a man employing nine girls, pays by the yard, and the girls earn from $4 to $6 per week. Men receive the same wages as women. They work from sun up to sun down, except at meal times. If other mills ran but ten hours, they would. They have work all the year. Hands are rather scarce in that State. All are American. They prefer it to general housework. Women are the best in mills for light work. Female operatives pay $1.50 for board, lodging, and washing. The Jackson Manufacturing Company of New Haven writes: "Women are employed in the various branches belonging to a cotton mill. Average wages of our females are $2.30, and board money $1.25, making $3.55 per week received by them. Some females in our employ earn eighty cents per day; average price of male labor, about eighty-four cents per day. Women are paid less, because they cannot do such work as is done by men. In regard to the time required to learn to do the work in the different departments, much depends upon the dispositions of the learners. Six months would ordinarily be sufficient time to render one competent. Women are usually allowed their board while learning. A good character and good health are needed. There is much changing among help during the spring and summer months, say for four months in the year; but we almost invariably keep our supply good. Our working hours are eleven and a quarter per day. With the exception of our weaving department, but little work is done on Saturday afternoons aside from cleaning, so that our working hours will not average over ten and a half per day. By giving a suitable notice to the overseer, it is so arranged that the help can be absent from their work one day of a month. The largest proportion of American help is found in the weaving and dressing departments. We have in our employ 140 men, 310 females, about one half American. We have good boarding houses, carefully watched, and kept clean in all respects. Our American help are quite intelligent, also some of the foreign. Some of our help attend school during the winter months. Board $1.25 per week--the keeper of the house not paying rent. The houses will each accommodate about twenty persons comfortably." Another manufacturing company pay from $2 to $4 per week, mostly by the piece. The work can be learned in three or four months. Their hands are paid small wages while learning. They have constant employment. They usually work twelve hours per day; three fourths American. From a manufacturer in Gilford, New Hampshire, we learn he employs forty women, who work by the piece, and whose average pay is $3 per week. They work eleven hours. Females are paid the same as men for the same kind of work. Some parts of the business can be learned in one day, others ten, and some hands will learn in one day what others would not in ten. Work at all seasons; spring and fall most busy. It pays better than housework. Board of males, $2.50; females, $1.25 to $1.50. A manufacturer in New York writes: "I employ about twenty women in weaving, twenty-five in spinning, spooling and other branches; boys and girls from fifteen to twenty each, and ten men. Women average about $2.50 per week. Women are paid the same price as men. Weavers earn about $3.50 per week. My mill runs twelve hours per day, the year round. Women are mostly American. The girls have an hour for each meal." A medical man has stated, that the health of operatives is promoted by occupying rooms with large windows on each side of the room, so that the sunlight will penetrate the apartments during the entire day. And those rooms with white walls are more healthy and better for the eyes than those with colored walls. =162. Batting.= A manufacturer of cotton batting writes: "Women are employed in our factory to tend machinery. They are employed in Europe. It is only unhealthy from being indoor work. We pay, per week, for best hands, $2 and board. They work twelve hours. I think there is a surplus of hands at this time. The work is light and does not require an expenditure of strength. The work is as comfortable as any can be. All parts will not answer for women. Board $1.42. Men are paid $1 more than women, but perform a different part of the work. Learners usually command wages after two weeks. The summer is the most profitable time to manufacture." =163. Calicoes.= Calico takes its name from Calicot, a town in Malabar, where the art has been practised with great success from time immemorial. Calico printing is the art of producing figured patterns upon cotton. They are transferred to its surface by blocks, or engraved by copper cylinders, by which the colors are directly printed, or by which a substance having an affinity for both the stuff and coloring matter is employed, which is called a mordant. "In England, calico printing employs a vast number of children of both sexes, who have to mix and grind the colors for the adult workpeople, and are commonly called turners. The usual hours of labor are twelve, including meal time; but as the children generally work the same time as the adults, it is by no means uncommon in all districts for children of five and six years old to be kept at work fourteen and even sixteen hours consecutively. They begin to work generally about their eighth year, as in Birmingham and Sheffield, but often earlier." Calico is printed mostly in Lowell, Philadelphia, Saco, Dover, and some other towns. A manufacturing company of lawns and calicoes in Providence, R. I., write: "We employ fifty women in stitching, folding, and tracing pantograph designs. The employment is healthy. We pay from fifty cents to sixty-seven cents per day of ten hours. We have one woman who does a man's work at folding, and is paid a man's wages--$1 per day. The time to learn the business is according to natural ability; very soon with ordinary capacity, say, two weeks. Cool weather is the best for work, but the women are not thrown out of employment at any season. We have more applicants than we can accommodate. The light, clean work, is best for women; the rough and heavy for men. We adopt female labor as far as practicable. Ordinary board is from $2 to $2.50 per week." =164. Canton Flannels.= A manufacturer of Canton flannels in Holden, Mass., writes: "We employ from twenty to twenty-five women in spinning, spooling, drawing, and speeder tending, warping and weaving. We like them because they are neater, and more reliable, and the work is better adapted to females. They earn from fifty cents to $1 per day of twelve hours. Women are paid the same as men, except the overseers, who get from $1.25 to $1.67 per day. It requires from one week to four to learn the business. We sometimes pay their board while learning, if they are attentive to work. It is as reliable as any business. There is no difference in seasons; we work the year round. The time could not be shortened. In weaving there is no surplus of hands. I would say, that with the present prospects for business, it would be well for many of the females in want of employment to learn to weave. They can make from $4 to $6 a week, but mostly average $4.75. It is healthy work. The labor is not hard, but confining; and the girls are generally happy and contented. Three fourths of ours are Americans." =165. Carpet Chains.= We were told that in the manufacture of carpet chain, "women are employed in spooling. We saw women employed in weaving various kinds of binding for carpets, webbing for girths, reins, and harness. The hours of labor are nominally ten, which, indeed, seems reasonable, in Philadelphia; but in the suburbs, and some parts of New England, both men and women work fifteen hours. Our informant uses no artificial light on the premises, and when the daylight fails, his workpeople leave off labor. The wages are the usual fifty cents a day. Steady hands are kept in work the year round; but unskilful workwomen are dismissed after fair trial. Men earn double what women earn, though they do not produce double the work, nor do it any better. When machinery is used, women frequently require assistance from a workman." =166. Cord.= C., of Philadelphia, manufacturer of black and white cord, employs about thirty women in spooling, twisting, balling, and making into skeins. He keeps his hands all the year. He did not permit us to see them, saying they object to being seen by strangers, on the ground that they are "en deshabille." We can bear witness to the probability of this statement, for almost all the women we have seen at work are very untidily clad, and dirty; indeed, in the present total disregard of cleanliness in the workrooms, if they wore better clothes, they would spoil more than they can afford. Ought not employers and workwomen to consider this subject, since it undoubtedly degrades a female, even in her own estimation, as in that of others, to be habitually in what is mildly qualified "deshabille?" The spoolers receive the highest wages, viz., $5 per week; the other hands from $2 to $5. The _fine_ cord is made farther East, as it can there be produced cheaper; the _coarser_ can be made in Philadelphia, at a lower rate. Mr. J., of New York, employs six women, two of them earn $7 each--the others less. It is paid for by the quantity. Prospect for work, good. There are but five factories in New York city, but they do seven eighths of the city business. In Philadelphia most is made. It takes but two or three months to learn. They give employment all the year, and learners receive something from the first. =167. Dyers and Bleachers.= Dyeing may be divided into seven branches: 1, calico and cotton; 2, fur; 3, fustian; 4, leather; 5, linen; 6, silk; 7, wool and woollen. Silk and wool are of animal origin, and require different treatment in dyeing from substances of a vegetable nature, such as cotton and flax. All the various colors and shades of dyed goods were originally derived from the combination of the four simple colors--blue, red, yellow, and black. Cotton is more easily dyed than linen, and the colors are brighter. Much of what is said under "Print Works" will apply to this subject. They are so similar, a distinction is scarcely necessary. In large manufacturing cities, dyers usually confine themselves to one kind of goods, as wool or silk, and some to certain colors. Dye houses, in other than manufacturing cities and towns, are mostly for the coloring of goods that are worn, or new goods that have been damaged. A great deal of dyeing is done in our large cities. Frequently, persons going into mourning have articles of dress dyed. Steam has taken the place mostly of hard labor. When goods have been well dyed, a casual observer could not detect it. Permanency of color is a desirable item in dyeing. Some women make a living by keeping a little shop, where they receive goods to be colored, and have the work done at dye houses, making, of course, a profit. There is generally a dye house connected with every large factory of woollen goods. A girl who was employed in a dye house says the work is far from being neat. The work of most of the girls is light. It is to put letters or figures on the articles sent, and when dyed, fold and tie them up, and place the numbers on. In the dye house where she was, one girl received $3.50--the others, each, $3 per week. They worked ten hours a day. One girl was employed in finishing the goods--that is, running them over a heated cylinder to smooth and dry them. She says the floors of dye houses are so wet that women would find it not only filthy, but injurious. Mr. Y. says women are not employed in the mechanical department of his dye and print establishment--that the business requires the workers to stand in liquids, and the atmosphere is very damp. A woman would be liable to suffer from exposure of that kind. A girl employed at another place to mark goods, told me she received $3 per week. Was told at C.'s dye house that he employs four girls, paying $3, and $3.50 a week. They put numbers on goods, and do other work of that kind. They work ten hours. A cotton goods bleacher and dyer told me the work was too wet and dirty for women. Most of the winding of cotton for dyeing is done by machinery. By steam power one person could do ten times as much as by a wheel. At one place they paid thirty-five cents for basting together two pieces of cloth eight yards long to be bleached; and a woman could earn from seventy-five cents to $3 per day; but the work could not last long. We called at a dyer and bleacher's. He said: "Very few women are employed in dyeing in this country, but in the old country they are. He has seen them at it in Scotland, and there it is rather better paid than most women's work. They are also employed in bleaching, both by chemicals and exposure to the sun. It is not unhealthy, although in a dye house a person must be wet from the knees down. By wearing thick boots, and leggings of India rubber, they would not be likely to suffer. Occasionally, dyers get some of the chemicals they use into sores on their hands and feet, which may injure them some, but not seriously. He says the work must be done in a certain time, and so they cannot be particular about keeping their feet dry. He pays old women for hanking cotton 37½ cents a score, and so they may earn $2.25 a week." There are mechanical modes of printing textile fabrics. In the Staten Island Dye and Print Works, "there are a good many women and children employed. The latter are principally confined to the printing department, each of the sixty printers engaged there being allowed a child for the purpose of adjusting or distributing the color evenly, previous to the application of the block. The rate of wages paid in this establishment is, we understand, as follows: the printers and block makers are paid by the piece, and when in full work can earn from $60 to $70 a month; the dyers and other workmen receive from 37½ cents to $1.25 a day; the women $6 to $12 a month, and the children from $6 to $8." A dyer writes: "Women are sometimes employed in the finishing department, and are mostly paid by the day. Spring and fall are the busy seasons." One in Walpole, Mass., writes: "I think more than an ordinary degree of intelligence is required for the business, because of the thought and observation necessary." A dyer in Buffalo, N. Y., writes: "I employ two, and sometimes three women. Women are employed in basting work together, and in finishing it after it is dyed. In some places they have charge of the office, and receive and deliver goods. For a healthy person it is not injurious. In finishing, the individual is on his or her feet all the time. I pay from $1.75 to $5 per week, and hands work from ten to sixteen hours. The time could not be shortened, owing to the nature of the business, and the loss during the winter. The comfort and remuneration of the part done by women is very good. Women of equal intelligence with men do better, as it is of female apparel the business mostly consists. In winter they have considerable unoccupied time they could devote to mental improvement." The proprietor of the Chelsea Dye House writes: "We employ about seventy-five women to wash, iron, and finish dyed goods. About one eighth are Americans. It is not unhealthy, to my knowledge, or in my experience. Average pay is $3.50 per week. Those that work by the piece can earn from $3.50 to $6 per week of eleven hours per day. Women are paid all which the business they do will afford. It requires a woman of fair capacity a few weeks to learn. Work is constant for good hands. Work is nearly uniform through the seasons. Large cities are the best localities for business. They pay about $1.75 per week for board in private families of their own standing." A member of a firm at Astoria, L. I., writes: "We employ from seventy-five to one hundred women in washing and dyeing yarns and cloth. We know them to be so employed in Berlin, Prussia. The employment is not unhealthy. We pay by the week from $4 to $5. They work ten hours. We pay men $7 per week for the same work that the females are employed at, because they do more. It requires about four years to learn fully that portion of work done by females. They are paid $2 per week while learning. A good public school education is needed, and temperate, steady habits. The prospects for females are good--eventually they will supersede the men in one branch of the business. The spring and fall seasons are the best. The winter is not so good. About two months in the summer our works are partially stopped. There is a surplus of dyers in Lowell, Mass. We employ women in preference to men, because we believe them to be more intelligent than men--especially emigrants. About two thirds are Americans. They have evening schools, lectures, and church services. Those that board pay about $1.50 per week." =168. Factory Operatives.= The larger number of operatives in our manufactures are females. They are of all ages. They do not remain so permanently in our factories as in those of older countries. They make skilful and active workers. The factory operatives of this country are more favorably situated than those of most countries. Most of them have wholesome food and comfortable homes, or boarding houses. They are not confined in factories from early childhood until they lie down to take their last, long sleep; consequently, they are not stunted and deformed, and prematurely old. The activity and variety attending life in the city are likely to produce great restlessness, and insatiable thirst for excitement. This must be checked, or its results may be ruinous. Vent of the feelings is harmless; wholesome amusements, recreation so far as is possible in the quiet of the country, reading good books, and social intercourse with the virtuous and worthy, will form a good substitute for this artificial excitement. So greatly is the manufacture of materials into cloth, and cloth into goods, facilitated by machinery, that wool taken from the sheep's back to-day, can be worn as clothing to-morrow. The number of factories has greatly increased since the introduction of machinery; nor is it strange, for goods have become cheaper and the demand is greater. The materials for manufacturing are abundant in this country; but the want of workmen acquainted with this business, and the want of capital, have prevented some branches of American manufacture from equalling those of older countries. The improvements in machinery for removing dust and floating cotton in the work rooms, no doubt renders it more healthy than it was. "In proof of his assertion that factory labor shortens life, Dr. Jarrold deposed, that having examined, in the schools, all the children whose fathers had ever worked, or were still working in factories, he found that from one third to one fourth were fatherless." "Out of about two thousand children and young persons taken promiscuously, who were carefully examined in 1832, two hundred were deformed. These were factory operatives." These statements refer to operatives in England. Some women are employed in the manufactories of Birmingham, England, as overseers in the departments where women work, but the number is small, and in our country it is still more uncommon. Cotton and woollen goods are extensively manufactured in the New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania. A gentleman told me that a little more than a year ago, as he came from Vermont, he saw a young man in the cars with about twenty girls, that he was bringing down from Canada to a cotton factory in Massachusetts. The manufacturers had offered a bonus of $5 apiece for girls, and to pay their travelling expenses, and this young man was making a business of it. He says, in busy seasons there is a scarcity of hands in the New England factories. We believe that when men and women do the same kind of work, such as weaving, and are paid by the quantity, no difference is made in their wages. In comparing returns from several factories in Massachusetts, I find weavers earn in them from $4 to $5.50 per week; warpers, $3 to $5; dotters, $3 to $4. Irish women, by working for less wages, have pushed American women out of factories. In Lowell, a few years back, nearly all the operatives were young American girls from the country. Many worked from the most honorable, self-denying motives; some to educate younger members of the family, some to assist widowed mothers or hard-working fathers, some to lay by a sum to support themselves in old age, and some to acquire the means for obtaining a more extensive school education. A manufacturer of printing cloths, Reading, Pennsylvania, writes: "In all countries where there are cotton mills, women are employed as weavers, fly and drawing tenders, spoolers, warpers, dressers, and cloth pickers. The work is not more unhealthy than any indoor employment. Workers earn from $2.25 to $6. Men and women are paid the same for the same kind of work. Our kind of work may be destroyed a year or so by the unsettled state of the country--otherwise it is good. The hands work about eleven hours at present prices, one hour less would reduce wages about 10 per cent. There are openings in cotton mills along the Hudson River, and farther East, and a surplus of hands in mechanical towns inland. The work is lighter than most of womanly employments. Women are superior in attending faithfully to their work, and are more easily managed than men. Board is from $1.50 to $1.75 per week, and is much better than their homes would be, if they were the daughters of day laborers, as many of them are. I would say further, in our branch of business women are treated in all respects as regards their work the same as men, paid the same, and under the same rules and restraint. In our dressing department the women make from $6 to $8, while the men make from $8 to $10, with the same machine at the same price. There are but few mills that employ women dressers, except in Pennsylvania. They are not strong enough; but here the descendants of the old Dutch stock are more masculinely developed, and are taking the place of the men in this branch." A gentleman who has been manufacturing cotton cloth in North Adams, Massachusetts, between twenty and thirty years, writes: "We employ women and girls in our mill. Some of the work requires constant stepping and walking. Wages for spinning girls, $2.50 to $3 per week; for boys the same, for spooling; from $2.75 to $3 for speeder and drawer tenders; $3 for warpers, or $4; all the rates of labor include the board. Farther East, women are employed as dressers, earning from $4 to $6 per week. Weaving is paid for by the piece--most other work by the week, as it cannot so well be let by the piece. To learn to spin on the throstle frames requires from six to eight weeks. The qualifications desired in an applicant are expertness, good behavior, ability to read and write, industry, and a desire to be useful to the employer. In midsummer, hands are most scarce. Good workers are never thrown out of employment except during panics. In this place (North Adams), hands usually work from twelve to twelve and a half hours; Saturdays we close at four o'clock in summer. Farther East, a number of operators work eleven hours; some, twelve; and some, even twelve and a half. The legislature of the General Government is, and has been for many years, against encouraging the industry of the country. Whatever revenue laws would promote the making of iron, wool, cotton, or cutlery, would assist and support agriculture, the making of shoes, and all other branches of labor. The cotton mills can merely subsist. The hours could not be shortened. Those employed in watching, warming, oiling up, superintending, repairing, &c., have the same hours. There has been a demand for hands everywhere in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and adjoining States. Women are more orderly, more easily governed, and more cleanly than men. Their slim fingers enable them to be more expert. They are more attentive, as a general thing, where the labor requires only looking after, creating no fatigue, except that which arises from close attention. For these reasons women are preferable. Their labor is somewhat cheaper than men's of the same age. In Western Massachusetts, about three fourths are American women; in Eastern Massachusetts about one half are, and the other half foreigners. The women have good boarding houses, and live and dress well. Here, a hand can leave his employer by giving two weeks' notice; farther East, four weeks' notice is required. In both places, effort is made to spare them at once, if they desire it. My American work people are above mediocrity; the others, rather below. Children under fifteen years of age are required by law to be kept out of the mills for at least three months in the year, to attend school; more if the parents choose, as the schools are free. Employers, as a general thing, press and urge the children to school, as intelligent hands are worth more than ignorant ones. For good board, women pay $1.50 per week; with lodging and washing, $2. Many hands lay up sums in the savings banks; very many more might do so, if they chose. Good female spinners, speeder tenders, spoolers, warpers, twisters-in, and weavers are always rather scarce. They command from $3 to $6 per week. Widow women, with families of girls to support, can get a good living by such work, and lay up some money if they try." Hitherto few manufactories have been established in the Southern United States: but now that the South will depend more on its own resources, no doubt manufactories of cotton goods will be built up very rapidly. From "Northern Profits and Southern Wealth," we make an extract: "One third of the hands employed in factories at the East are females. At the South, female labor is taking the same direction. At the North, this element of labor is supplied by immigration in nearly its whole extent--a very large proportion of the females employed in the factories being Irish. The Eagle mills in Georgia have one hundred and thirty-six looms, and employ seventy girls, who earn 50 cents to $1 per day. The operatives in all these factories are white people, chiefly girls and boys, from twelve to twenty years of age. On an average they are better paid and worked easier than is usually the case in the North. Country girls from the pine forests, as green and awkward as it is possible to find them, soon become skilful operatives; and ere they have been in the mills a year, they are able to earn from $4 to $6 a week. They are only required to work ten hours a day. Particular attention is paid to the character of the operatives, and in some mills none are received but those having testimonials of good moral character and industrious habits. Churches and Sabbath schools are also attached to several of the manufactories, so that the religious training of the operatives may be properly attended to. In 1860, 45,315 males and 73,605 females were employed in cotton factories. The woollen manufacturers employed as operatives in 1860, 28,780 males and 20,120 females. =169. Gingham.= From the Manchester Gingham Manufactory, we learn 149 American women are there employed in weaving, winding, spooling, piecing, drawing, reeling, and spinning. "Spinners' maximum is sixty cents per day. Weavers receive twenty-six and eighteen cents per cut. Women receive for winding ten cents per cut, nine cents for spooling, forty cents per day for piecing, for drawing $2.50 per week, and for reeling 1¼ and 1½ cents per doff. We pay the same to men and women for the same kind of work. They are usually about two months learning. Prospect for work is very good. We make a staple article. Summer is the best season; we have steady work the year round. Hands work sixty-nine hours during six days--twelve hours, five days; and nine on Saturday. There is some demand for them; we prefer women for weaving. They pay for board $1.40 per week." The agent of the Gingham Mills, in Clinton, Mass., in reply to a letter seeking information, says: "We employ four hundred females, young and old, in the various branches of cotton manufacture. They are paid from forty cents to $1.25, according to skill and ability; they work 11½ hours. They are paid partly by the piece, and partly by the day. By the piece, and for the same kind of work, women receive as much as men. Some branches are learned very quickly, and some slowly, according to capacity. Women are paid while learning, much to our loss. Ordinary intelligence and complete use of the physical faculties are necessary qualifications. We work at all seasons. The women are very careful to select their times for absence, visiting, &c., when we are preparing the winter style of goods, which are of darker colors, and possibly less profitable to them. They are sure to come back during the manufacture of lighter styles. It is clearly a womanly way of doing business, but _the men do the same_. The kinds of work women do in mills do not require the strength of men, and so women are employed. It is cheapest to employ women; because, if we employed only men, half the village would be idle. Boys can do all the work that the females do. We have four hundred males also. One third are American. In weaving, where men's and women's work is most justly and fully compared, men do the most and the best in quality. In other branches there is no decided difference. Board $1.50 per week; the houses are of good moral character, and very comfortable." =170. Hosiers.= The invention of machinery for making hose is ascribed to William Lee, of England, 1589. Some trace the invention of knit stockings to Spain. The number of hands employed in the manufacture of hose in Saxony amounts to 45,000. Cotton, woollen, linen, and silk are the kinds of hose common to us. The manufacture of hose worn by Americans is mostly English. The amount of capital required, and the small number of good operatives in our country, cause the products of some of our manufactures to be of an inferior quality. Years back knitting was much done, particularly in the country, but the general use of machinery has superseded the knitting needle. In our large cities, the great amount of hosiery worn might make the sale of hose and half hose a payable business. In making cotton and woollen hose, some children wind the cotton, some join the seams, and others sew them on the boards, to put them in shape. We called to see Aiken's knitting machine. It is quite an ingenious affair; price, $65. I think if any two women would buy one, and one should knit, while the other formed the feet and finished them off, it would pay better than sewing. Large quantities of hosiery are made in Germantown, Pa. It gives employment to many women, who, at their houses, finish them off. The United States Government have usually obtained their clothing, shoes, hats, and socks for the army and navy at Philadelphia, but since the war commenced, most of the clothing has been made up in New York. The manufacture of hosiery is very limited in New York. At the principal hosiery establishment we were told they only employ women to seam that are the wives of the weavers, and they do the work at home. It is very poor pay, and is done almost altogether by English women who have been brought up to the business. It would not pay a person to learn it. An English stocking weaver told me that he does theatrical work, as it pays best. He has known two women from his own country that wove hosiery in the United States. One did journey work with her husband in New York. She earned from $4 to $5 per week. Such work is paid for by the piece or dozen. The work pays poorly. A woman cannot earn at it more than thirty-seven or fifty cents a day, being paid eighteen cents a dozen for seaming socks. To seam shirts and drawers pays better, six cents being paid for each article. Weaving stockings by hand looms will not pay in this country--they can be imported so cheaply. It is rather light work. Work done by steam power is not so neat; the selvages are not well made, and the goods must be cut and sewed in seams. Many women are employed in hosiery manufactures where steam is used. A stocking manufacturer in Lake Village, N. H., writes: "Seven hundred girls and married women are employed in this village to make stockings. Wages run from 50 cents to $1 per day of ten hours; some are paid by the day, others by the piece. Men's work, being harder, is better paid. It requires from three to five weeks to learn. Women have their board paid while learning. Spring, summer, and autumn are the best seasons for work. Some work at the business to maintain their families; others, because they have nothing to do. All are Americans. They pay for board from $1.25 to $1.50 per week." A manufacturer writes: "We employ twenty-five females in the mill, and from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five who take work to their homes. Nine tenths are Americans. We pay from $3.50 to $6 per week. It requires but a short time to learn in some departments. They are paid from the time of entering the factory as a learner. It is considered a permanent business. Men and women do not work on the same branches." At the Troy hosiery manufactory, "sixty women are employed in tending knitting machines, winding yarn, and sewing by hand and by machines. The employment is healthy. Their wages run from $3 to $6 per week, average $4.50. They work mostly by the piece, a few by the week. Males and females usually work side by side, and the wages are alike. They are continually learning, from 18 years old to 40. The prospect is good for future employment, and the employment in factories is generally constant. They work twelve hours per day. If shorter time was universal, it would not affect the profits. About one half are Americans. The rooms are well ventilated, and the temperature from sixty to seventy degrees summer and winter." =171. Men's Wear.= A gentleman in Darby, Penn., writes: "Women are employed in factories equally with men, throughout this section of country, as weavers. They are paid just as well, for the same kind of labor. The employment, for aught I can see, is entirely healthy. They receive from $18 to $25 per month of four weeks. They are paid by the piece. It requires about three months to learn weaving, dependent upon the facility with which the learners acquire knowledge. Learners are never paid while receiving instruction; but on the other hand, they more often pay their companions for the privilege of being taught. Industrious habits and quickness of perception are essential to complete success. By a law of Pennsylvania, sixty hours constitute a week's labor in factories. There is neither a demand nor surplus of hands at present, though a number of factories are in course of erection in this section of country; but they will doubtless be filled as soon as ready, for American women especially prefer factory to household labor. About one half our hands are American. Women have more stability of character than men, and are generally superior to them in the neatness with which they bring the cloth from the looms. Board for operatives is from $8 to $9 per month." =172. Print Works.= The Calico Print Works, New Hampshire, report: "We employ about 24 girls. The employment is healthy. We pay girls about fourteen years old, thirty-three cents a day for 10½ hours in summer; in winter they work till dark, averaging ten hours. To girls about twenty years old, we pay fifty cents per day. The men and women do different work. The prospect of future employment is good. Hands work all the year the same. The price of good board is from $1.25 to $1.50 per week." The agent of the Pacific Print Works, Lawrence, Mass., gives the following reply to inquiries: "We employ one thousand women in carding, spinning, spooling, warping, and weaving, on sewing machines, sewing by hand, measuring, knotting, ticketing, &c. The employment is generally healthy, but the workers are more or less exposed to bad air and to dust. They are paid from twenty-five cents to $1 per day, according to age or skill. They work from ten to eleven hours per day. Some work but 5½ days, from choice. It would doubtless be a pecuniary loss to shorten the hours. Women are as well paid here, generally, as men, when comparative strength and power of endurance are considered. It requires from three to twelve months to learn. While learning, they usually receive enough to pay their board. The more strength and intelligence they have, the better. The prospect for this employment is good. They work during all seasons. Women are not usually as well fitted as men to attend large machines, but are better for smaller ones. From three hundred to four hundred of our women are continual readers of our library. They pay $1.50 per week for board. It is as good, for the class of people to be accommodated, as any I ever saw." The agent of the print works, Manchester, N. H., writes: "Women are employed in all departments. They average sixty-five cents a day, and work eleven hours. They are paid by the piece, and at the same rate as the men. It requires from one to four weeks to learn. This kind of business is increasing. There is a demand all through New England for female labor in our branch of business. We employ 1,200, and three fourths are American. They are more steady than men. Some of our girls go West to teach, and some teach here. They have separate boarding houses, and pay $1.37 per week, including washing and lights. The houses are kept with as much order as any female school. No operative is received until they certify that they will comply with the regulations," a copy of which we examined, and found to be very good. From the print works at Haverstraw, N. Y., we receive the following information: "Women are employed in sewing, measuring calico, and in the engraving department, in running the pantograph machines, which dispense entirely with hand engraving, die making, and machine engraving. Women are employed in England, but only partially in other European countries. The women earn from $2 to $4 per week. Men receive double the pay of women: I know of no reason but usage. Only a few weeks are necessary to become proficient in our work, except in the engraving department. Men serve seven years to learn the art of engraving and printing. Women learn to trace by the pantograph in three months; become proficient in one year. Ability and good judgment are necessary. The prospect for the employment of females is good in many other departments, particularly _designing_. We are decided that females could successfully acquire the art and trade of designing and drawing patterns for calico. Wages of males for this work are from $10 to $40 per week--few at the former, more at $20. Ten hours constitute a day. The time could be shortened an hour or two without loss. We employ about forty females, because their labor is cheaper, and they are more reliable. We find women superior in all branches in which they are employed. The trade society forbids their employment in other parts of the work. Ability to read and write are indispensable in some departments. Men pay for board, $3; women, $1.50." The Suffolk print works pay by the piece, and average eighty cents per day. One of the proprietors at the print works in Pawtucket, Mass., writes: "Women are employed in tracing pantograph designs, and receive from fifty to sixty-seven cents per day. We have one woman who does a man's work at folding, and is paid a man's wages. The work is soon learned, with ordinary capacity. A good physical condition is needed. There is prospect for employment as long as calicoes are used. Cool seasons are the best for work--in very warm weather, work is suspended a short time. We employ fifty. The work is light and clean. The number of American women is very small. We adopt female labor as soon as the aid of machinery renders it practicable. Men are superior in strength and endurance. A locality is desirable where a free circulation of air is furnished on all sides. For ordinary board, women pay $2.50." The agent of the Fall River print works writes: "We pay women by the piece. They earn from $18 to $20 a month; have work the year round. For five days in the week they work 10½ hours; on Saturday, 8½. We employ women because they can do more and cost less than men. Localities are sought where there is a good supply of soft water. Board from $2 to $2.50." A lawn manufacturer in Lodi, N. J., writes: "We employ women in engraving, in stitching, and in finishing goods. The work is very healthy. We pay women $5 per week for engraving; from $2.50 to $5 for other branches. The work can be learned in from four to five weeks. The business is increasing. The women are never out of work. One half are Americans. Women are employed ten hours a day; on Saturday, eight. Women are employed, to help the village along. Very comfortable board, $5 per month." The proprietor of some works in Rhode Island writes me: "We employ about twenty women and girls in measuring cloth, sewing the ends together for bleaching and fulling, knotting the ends of the pieces of cloth when folded; also in engraving copper rolls for printing calicoes, with a pantograph engraving machine. The prices vary from $1 per week to $3 and over, working ten hours a day. For the same work, females are paid the same as males. The work is easily learned. Women are paid while learning. Women will be more employed in future. Work is constant, so far as seasons go. There is probably no other branch of this work, in which women may be employed, than those in which they are. Where women are employed they are as valuable as males. Board of women, $1.50 per week." "In the calico mills of Great Britain, girls grind and mix the colors. They are called teerers. They begin at five years of age, and labor twelve hours a day, sometimes sixteen; and are kept late into the night to prepare for the following day." =173. Spinners.= "Each of the workmen at present employed in a cotton mill superintends as much work as could have been executed by two hundred or three hundred workmen sixty or seventy years ago; and yet, instead of being diminished, the numbers have increased even in a still greater proportion." Again, we read that "a single person can spin as much cotton in Lowell in an hour, as could three thousand Hindoos, by whom at one time cotton cloth was principally manufactured." The wages of cotton spinners in Paris are only from twenty to forty cents per day of twelve hours. We read in the _Monthly Review_, that "the masters of mills are unanimous in asserting that girls, and they alone are trained to flax spinning, never become expert artists, if they begin to learn after eleven." The small particles set loose in spinning affect respiration, and in the course of time do so very seriously. In many parts of Europe women carry portable distaffs, and spin as they walk. Two kinds of wheels are used for spinning--one for spinning cotton, tow, and wool--the other is used for flax. Steam machinery is mostly used for spinning cotton. The prices usually paid spinners will be found under factory operatives. I inquired of a girl spooling cotton for a weaver of coverlets, what wages she received. She replied: "$1.50 a week, working five hours a day." =174. Spool Cotton.= A manufacturer at Fall River, Mass., writes: "We employ twenty women in spooling thread, and preparing it for market. The average pay is $3 per week, and they work eleven hours per day. It requires from one to two months to become expert. When learning, they are paid for what they do carefully. The qualifications needed are neatness, and dexterity in their manipulations. They are employed at all seasons. The demand and supply of work people are about equal. We employ twenty females, because the work is adapted to them, and they are quicker in motion than men. They pay $1.75 per week for board." =175. Tape.= At W.'s, New York, I saw several women weaving tape for hoop skirts. They looked dirty and sad enough. They earn from $2 to $3.50 a week. It does not require long to learn, but they must stand all the time. W. finds it difficult to get good workers. The incessant hum of the machinery in such a low-roofed room would deafen me. I think it must affect the nerves of females. He pays a learner the first month $1.50 a week. After that, if she is competent, she will receive full wages. At the Graham Buildings, I saw the girls putting up tape for skirts. They earn from $3 to $4. The weavers earn from $4 to $6. It requires but a few days to learn to weave, and but a few hours to learn to measure and tie up tape. Most of the girls were Irish. Sixty were employed, and received work all the year. =176. Weavers.= Weaving is an occupation that was followed by all classes of women in primitive ages. The story of Penelope's shroud has been read as far as Homer is known. In Africa spinning is mostly done by women, and the weaving by men. The invention of machinery has very much done away with manual weaving. Fifty years back all woollen and most of cotton goods were made in that way. Some jeans, coarse flannel, rag carpets, coverlets, and other similar articles are still woven by hand. Now, shawls, dress goods, gloves, hosiery, fine carpets, cassimere, and cloth in all its varieties, are woven by machinery. The uniting of threads, and a constant attention to the machinery, are all that is necessary. The wages vary according to the places, the capabilities of the operatives, the goods woven, and the price of living. "A practical working machine is now in activity, weaving silk by the motive power of electricity. It is applied at Lyons and St. Etienne to the Jacquard loom." Children are extensively employed in Great Britain as drawers to weavers. "The great majority of hand-loom cotton weavers work in cellars, sufficiently lighted to enable them to throw the shuttle, but cheerless, because seldom visited by the sun. The reason cellars are chosen is that cotton, unlike silk, requires to be woven damp. The air, therefore, must be cool and moist, instead of warm and dry." In Philadelphia, the average payment of female weavers is from $2.50 to $4 per week. Spinners and spoolers make but from 75 cents to $2. They are generally unskilful adults or very young girls. The number of female operatives engaged in the manufacture of textile fabrics in Philadelphia exceeds twelve thousand. A manufacturer in Providence writes me: "We do not consider weaving particularly unhealthy. We pay on an average $1 per day, by the piece. They work eleven hours a day; the time could not be shortened. Men spend from three to twelve months learning; women, from three to six weeks. Women are not paid while learning; men are. All seasons are alike. There is always a demand for weavers. We employ twenty-two women, one fourth are American; they are not inferior to men as weavers. Men pay $2 for good board; women, $1.75." A manufacturer of negro cloth in Connecticut writes: "The employment is very healthy. We pay weavers from $3.75 to $5 per week, and some make more by the piece. We pay men and women the same for their labor. Some parts are learned by women in two or three weeks. We generally pay women while learning. We sometimes stop a few days, in July and August, for water. They work eleven hours and a half, except Saturday; then from eight to ten hours. The time could be shortened by adding extra help and looms, equal to difference of time. We prefer women, because they weave more than men. All Americans. They are superior to men in tying knots. Good board, $1.25." A manufacturer of cotton cloths for calicoes writes: "Women and girls are employed in power-loom weaving. Weaving requires a little more labor and skill than the other departments. None under sixteen years are allowed to weave. Women are so employed over New England, much of New York, and Pennsylvania, but mostly in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. There is always a demand for girl weavers. It requires from one to three months to learn to weave. They will continue to grow more expert for three years. They weave by the cut from thirty to forty pounds. The wages of an expert weaver are from $4 to $6 per week; board, $1.50 per week. Men weavers are paid per cut the same. An expert weaver attends four looms, weaving from 150 to 160 yards per day. Seamers generally pay their way at the end of four weeks. The employment is not thought unhealthy. * * * * * =177. Linen Manufacture.= Very little flax has been raised in this country. The quantity grown was mostly for the seed and the fibre. Ireland grows and exports large quantities. The soil is not adapted to its growth. It is the result of the most severe labor and high culture. In France, almost every peasant woman has a flax plot. She tends its growth, reaps, dresses, spins, bleaches, and weaves it herself. Some women are there employed in rotting flax and hemp. Generally, the manufacturers of flax goods confine themselves to special departments. Some take the raw flax, and convert it into yarn, and then stop. Some take the yarn and weave it, and when woven, bleach it; and some only take the unbleached woven cloth, and bleach it. In D. & Co.'s establishment in Ireland, all the departments are combined. Eight thousand people are dependent on this firm for support. Of these, four hundred females are employed in spinning and weaving flax. Hand-loom linen weaving is carried on chiefly in the north of Ireland, and, for the most part, made subsidiary to other employments--therefore, not the sole dependence of families. Women are employed in flax mills, in this country, England, and Canada West. A manufacturer writes from a village in New York: "The business is healthy, and women can do any part of the work, as well as men. Here, men receive from $9 to $14 per month. While learning, I pay my men $11 per month, and board them. The work is done in cold weather, away from the fire, and requires strong, healthy persons, warmly clad. The business is increasing in this country. The best season for work is from October till May, and sometimes later. It is not heavy work. I would pay women $5 a month and board, while learning; but to men would pay $11 a month and board." (Justice!) The treasurer of the Boston flax mills writes: "Dear Madam, women are employed on the different machines in preparing the stock, and in spinning and weaving. They are employed largely in England, Scotland, and Ireland, but not much in the United States. They are paid from fifty to seventy-five cents a day, and from fifty cents to $1 for piecework. Ordinary female hands are paid about one half as much as men of the same stamp; best workwomen about two thirds of same grade of men. Men are employed where it would be too difficult and laborious for women. For most work, a very short time is needed to learn; for the higher grades, often many months or years, according to capacity of worker. Common hands can earn fifty cents at once, and we would pay about that, or more, while learning the better description of work; but should not continue it, if they did not improve. A quick eye and hand, and a desire to give satisfaction, are the best qualifications. The prospect for employment in this branch is good. All the year work is furnished. Average time through the year for work is ten hours forty minutes. It is probable that a mill, where all hands were interested to do their best, would turn off as much work in ten hours as a similar mill would in eleven or twelve hours, where the hands were indifferent or careless. There are but few linen mills in this country, and probably in none of them is there a superfluity of good hands. We employ one hundred and twenty women and children. The work is different from that of the men. Our workwomen are mostly foreigners--Scotch, English, and some Irish. There is as much comfort in this occupation as laboring people would expect. The women pursue different branches. We find a great difference in the capacity of different women, but cannot suggest any superiority or inferiority as regards sexes. The general intellect among our women is very fair for foreigners, but would not be considered remarkable for Americans. Their evenings are their own, although there have been times, occasionally, when we have worked till nine o'clock, paying, of course, for extra work. The mill has a good library, and there is usually evening school in winter for those who wish to attend." =178. Sewing Thread.= A manufacturer in Andover, Massachusetts, writes: "We employ about one hundred women, who receive about $3 per week, working eleven hours per day. Women are sometimes paid while learning. Morality, industry, and intelligence best fit them for their work. They work at all seasons. Very few are Americans. Women are inferior only in strength to men pursuing the same branch." The secretary of the American Linen Thread Company writes: "We employ about sixty women in spinning, twisting, reeling, rolling, skeining, &c. Those that work by the week receive $3; those by the piece, more or less. Women do the lightest work, and are paid about half as much as men. There is a prospect of this branch of labor increasing. They have work all the year. Those that are paid by the day work twelve hours. The time could not be shortened without serious loss. Most are foreigners. Board, $1.50 to $2." A member of a firm in Schenectady writes: "We have thirty women in our flax and tow factory, because they are best adapted to the work. The work is healthy. We pay from $3 to $4.50 per week, working twelve hours per day. The working time could not be shortened. A superintendent would require from two to three years to learn. A girl, say sixteen years old, would require about a year. Learners receive half wages. Summer is the best season, but they have work all the year. There is no surplus of female workers in the business. Two thirds of our women are American, one third English. Women could not perform that part of the work done by men, and _vice versa_. One third board, and pay $1.50 per week. The Americans have a common school education, and are intelligent. The larger ones are teachers in Sabbath schools; the smaller ones scholars. The best localities are in the Northern and Western States."--SHOE THREAD. A manufacturer told me, most or all the flax used for shoe thread in this country is imported. "The greater part of the shoe thread used in the United States is spun by machinery, at Leeds, in England, from Russian flax." The flax of this country is not fine enough; and, for bleaching, the climate of this country and Scotland is too changeable. If the bleachers succeed in getting it of a pure white, they extract the substance--the life of the plant--so that it will not retain its strength. Flax is not much attended to in this country, but it is because the tariff is so low that no encouragement is given to manufacturers. Pennsylvania makes more woven goods of coarse linen than any other State, and Philadelphia more than any other city. Labor is so cheap in Europe, that linen can be made there more cheaply than here. Mr. A. employs a number of small girls in his mills for winding the thread into balls, as it is imported in skeins, and pays them from $1.50 to $2 a week. They work only in daylight. He thinks the occupation is well filled. Most factories of the kind are in small towns where living is cheap. * * * * * =179. Woollen Manufacture.= Women and children are not so much employed in the woollen as in other manufactures, owing to the severe labor required in some of the processes. Wool growing is increasing in the United States, particularly in Texas. We doubt not but many woollen manufactures will spring up when business revives. We called on the widow of a wool puller, to ascertain what the business is, and learned that it consists in steeping sheep skins in lime water, then rinsing them in clean water, then removing the wool from the skin, and packing it in bales to send away. The daughter of a wool puller in Utica writes: "Part of the work of a wool puller could be performed by women--that of removing the wool from the skin, and sorting it according to the quality. In Gloucester, England, women were at one time employed as wool pullers. The business is healthy, owing to the presence of disinfectants employed in manufacturing. It could be made respectable and remunerative." A wool puller in Buffalo writes: "I employ some girls in sewing sheep skins. They are paid by the piece, and earn $4.50 a week. Board, $2. It requires a week for a woman to learn her part--a lifetime for a man to learn his. A steady hand and good eyesight are essential. There must be work of this kind as long as boots and shoes are fashionable. The most busy seasons are fall, winter, and spring. The best location is where sheep are raised and bark to be had." People employed in the making of cloth are wool sorters and pickers, scourers, carders, slubbers, spinners, warpers, sizers, weavers, burlers, boilers, millers, giggers or dressers, croppers, singers, fuzers, glossers, drawers, and packers. Some of these are women. I am sorry to say that carding--the most unhealthy process of all--is performed almost exclusively by women, and at low prices. =180. Blankets.= "Blankets were first made at Bristol, England, by a poor weaver named Thomas Blanket, who gave his name to this peculiar manufacture of woollen cloths." One hundred and twenty-two women are reported in the census of Great Britain for 1850, as blanket manufacturers. A blanket manufacturer in New Hampshire writes: "Women are employed in carding, weaving, and binding. The work is not unhealthy. Average wages are seventy cents per day of eleven hours, and they are paid by the piece. Women receive about two thirds of the wages of men, because they do less laborious work. It requires from one week to three months to learn. They are paid small wages while learning. The manufacture of blankets will increase. Business is the same at all seasons. There is a demand for hands in many of the manufacturing villages, and a surplus in country towns. We have twenty women, all American. They do light work faster than men. They pay for board twenty-one cents per day, in private families." =181. Carpets.= Mr. Lagrange writes: "The carpets of Smyrna and Caramania, so widely esteemed, are evidence of what woman's genius can produce. They are all woven by feminine hands." In 1858 there were 2,500 persons employed in the manufacture of carpets in and near Philadelphia. Ingrain and Venetian are the kinds mostly made there, but some of a very cheap quality are also manufactured. Those made at Hartford and Lowell are all worsted goods. The business, we believe, has been a successful and lucrative one. It is said that much carpeting is sold in this country, as English, that is in reality American. Our finest carpets are imported. I visited Mr. H.'s carpet factory, New York city, and saw the entire process, from putting the wool in to its coming out in various kinds of carpeting, ingrain, velvet, Brussels, tapestry, &c. From that manufactory we have the following report: "Females tend carding, spinning, spooling, weaving, and other machines, in the manufacture of carpeting. The employment is not unhealthy. The branch of manufacture and the capacities of females vary the wages from 50 cents to $1 per day of eleven hours. Three fourths work by the piece. Males and females are not employed at the same kind of work. The time required to learn any branch of the carpet trade depends on the natural talent and application of the learner. Many never become proficient enough to pursue the business profitably. The prices paid to learners depend on their success. Health, natural talent, and application are essential. The prospect of employment in the business is good. They have work the whole year, except during unusual depressions of the trade. Whether the work time of eleven hours could be shortened would depend on the profit on the quantity produced in ten hours, compared with that produced in eleven hours. There is no demand for female labor at the present time. We employ from 500 to 600 females, because their labor is cheaper. About one third are Americans. The comfort and remuneration is better than the average of other employments in this city. They are employed by us in all branches they can be. Females perform some branches better than men. They have free evening schools, libraries, lectures, and churches in abundance. About one half board. The majority board in private families, the comfort depending generally on the price paid." Carpet manufacturers in Wrentham, Massachusetts, write: "We employ women in winding yarn. It is unhealthy only because of sitting so steadily. Women average $14 per month, and are paid by the piece. They work ten hours a day. It requires but a few weeks to learn the business. Women are paid something while learning. They are employed all the year. We employ eight, because the work is better adapted to them. All the workwomen are foreigners. Men, as a general thing, do not want to be confined to indoor work, unless the wages are high. Good board can be had at $1.50 per week." A gentleman, who was once superintendent of the carpet factory at Lowell, informed me all the weavers were females, when he was there, and earned from $3.50 to $4.00 on an average. They had about thirty pickers (females), whose business it was to pick the knots and loose wool off the carpets. =182. Carpet Bags.= K. & M., carpet-bag makers, have a factory in Newark. The carpet bags are sewed up and the buttons put in by machines. The lining is put in by hand. It is piecework, and the girls earn from $3 to $6 a week. It requires but a short time to become sufficiently expert to make it pay. The busiest times are from February 1st to June, and from the middle of July to the 1st of November. One of the proprietors thinks the prospect to learners is good, for the business will extend. It has increased five hundredfold in the last five years. Their girls are mostly Americans. Making trunk covers is piecework. The linings could be put in trunks and valises and the varnish put on by girls. The linings could be better put in valises than trunks by women, as they are lighter and less difficult to handle. At H.'s carpet-bag factory, I was told they employ seventy girls, and make from ninety to one hundred dozen bags a day. They keep their hands all the year, with the exception of three weeks. Some work by machine and some by hand. They take learners when busy. A smart girl can learn in making two or three dozen bags--of course, is not paid while learning. They used to allow a few hands, accustomed to the work, to give instruction to learners, having the profits of their work for their time. Those that work by machine can earn from $3 to $4.50; hand sewers from $3 to $6. These work by the piece. Those paid by the week work ten hours, and earn from $2.50 to $5. The gentleman thinks the prospect for learners to enter the business is poor. I think differently, if the statement that he made is true, that there are no manufacturers West or South. A regulation that struck me as being very unjust was, that if a girl learns in their factory and goes elsewhere to seek work, she cannot be taken into their factory again, unless she makes eight or ten dozen bags for them without pay. A manufacturer of carpet and oil-cloth bags writes: "We pay by the piece, and women earn from $4 to $6 per week, working ten hours a day. Women can learn in one month, if skilful with the needle. Spring and fall are the best seasons, but we find work for our hands through the winter. They work at home." =183. Cassimere.= A manufacturer of cassimere in New Hampshire writes: "We pay mostly by the week, $3.50, working eleven hours a day. We pay the same to women as men. It requires from two to twelve weeks to learn. They are paid what they can earn while learning. There is no surplus of workwomen in this branch of labor. Our girls board in families, and pay $1.34 per week." A manufacturer in Vermont says: "Twenty women are employed by me. They are all American or English. They are paid according to the amount of work they do. Girls that weave make $3, besides board. Some are paid by the yard, and some by the week. They are paid as much as men for the same kind of work. It usually takes four weeks to learn to weave. Learners give their time. Work is performed ten hours a day all the year. Women prefer factory to housework. They pay $1.50 per week for board." A manufacturer in New Hampshire writes: "We pay from $2.50 to $4.50 per week. For the work that women can do in our establishment, they are worth more than men, as they can work quicker. Women soon learn to weave, but for the first six months they are not worth more than half pay. The prospect for future employment is good. The best seasons for work are spring, summer, and fall. They are usually employed ten hours a day. We employ none but American women. Some parts of our business are suitable for women, but we can get boys cheaper. Board $1.25 per week." B. Brothers, of Proctorsville, Vermont, write: "We employ from thirty to forty American women in preference to men, because the work is more suitable for them. Prospects for increase of employment in this line are very flattering. The women average $2.50 per week with board. They work twelve hours a day, and can be employed all the year. They are superior in all respects to men. If they were not, we should employ men. Their facilities for mental and moral culture are good. Women are paid less than men, on account of the work being light. Board $1.50 per week." The Globe Woollen Company (Utica, New York) write: "Our women, seventy-five in number, earn from $3 to $6 a week, and are paid both by the piece and week. Men and women work together in the weaving room. It requires but a few days to learn to weave, although experience is valuable, both on account of wages and excellence of production. Mental and physical ability ought to be combined to insure success. The prospect for future employment is good. Continual employment is given. Our hands work 12 hours each day, Saturdays 10½. One fourth are Americans, and they live and dress well. The demand for labor is good all through the country. There is no part of our business where women could be advantageously introduced, where not now employed. The women have all the facilities a city affords for mental and aesthetic culture." =184. Cloths.= A manufacturer of gray cloth in Vermont writes: "Women are employed at spinning, carding, burling, and weaving. We have ten, because they are more easily obtained than men. We pay women from $2 to $3.50 per week, and board them. They work twelve hours per day. The work done by men requires more than double the experience of that performed by women. Women can learn in four weeks, men in sixteen. Women are paid half wages while learning. They are busy except in the winter. All board with me." C. & Sons, of T., N. Y., write: "Experienced hands receive $3.75 per week--inexperienced $3--board included. Women are not employed at the same work as men. It requires two years to learn our business--six months for women. We adopt the ten-hour system. There is no difference in seasons as to work, except in case of low water. Our labor yields sufficient to keep them until they find an opportunity to marry. They have a good library--ten periodicals every week. They pay for board from $1.50 to $1.75 per week." A manufacturer in Derby, Conn., writes: "We employ about fifteen women, because they are cheaper and more easily obtained; but many are now using male weavers. They earn from $3 to $6 per week, and are paid both ways. They work eleven hours. To work ten instead of eleven hours, we would lose that amount of the product of those who work by the day. I think there is a demand for such labor all through New England, and I do not know where there is a surplus of such help. We have had but few whose parents were born in America. Women might be employed on shearing machines. They are not, because it is as easy getting boys. Women have less strength and endurance, and are less constant at work, but quicker in motion and less liable to bad habits. Board for females from $2.25 to $2.50 per week." A manufacturing company of satinets and printing cloths, Troy, N. Y., give the following information: "We pay from $2.50 to $6 per week, average $4.50. Men and women get the same wages for the same work. Women learn in from two to four weeks. At best it is but partially learned. Some are paid while learning, and some are not. There is now, and always will be full employment. We furnish steady work all the year. The hands work twelve hours per day. The time could be shortened, but the workers would lose by it. There is a demand for female labor of this kind in Cohoes, N. Y. We have sixty-nine women, and one half are Americans. They are well fed and dress better than any other class of working people. Women are more steady and neater than men. They are all Protestant, and their intelligence is about the average. They pay $1.50 per week for good board." The Monsoon Woollen Co., Mass., say: "We pay fourteen mills per yard for weaving. The women make just the same as the men, and perform the same kind of work. They earn on an average eighty-three cents per day of twelve hours. The work can be done without apprenticeship. The prospect is that our business will be on the increase for years. Our help are employed the year round: three quarters are Americans. They have their evenings after seven o'clock. They pay $2 per week for board." The agent of Shady Lee Mills, R. I., writes: "Women are employed in woollen mills in England, Germany, France, and this country. They are paid in our mill by the piece, and earn $5 per week on an average. Women weavers earn as much as men. It takes a lifetime to learn; some learn better than others. Learners are paid. The business is improving daily. Women work all the year round, unless broken down. They work twelve hours a day. The time could not be shortened. The supply of hands about equals the demand in this manufacture. We employ seventy-five women, because they are better for weavers. Nearly all our work people can read and write. Board $1.75." Mr. H., a manufacturer in Massachusetts, writes: He "pays from $14 to $18 a month, working by the piece. While learning they are paid for what they do. They can earn fair wages after two weeks' experience. They work thirteen hours a day, and are employed through the year. There is no surplus of weavers. He employs twenty-five, because they are better adapted to the work. Women are superior in hand work. Board $6 a month." A satinet manufacturer in Maine, writes: "Our women weave by the cut and earn about $6 per week. A person can get an insight of the business in a few years; but to get a thorough knowledge requires at least the English term of apprenticeship--seven years. Women are paid half price while learning. Summer is the best season, but our women are employed the year round. They work twelve hours--which is the usual time here, and less would be a loss. Women are handier than men, and can be boarded for less. We have churches in the village and a good moral influence. Board $1.50 per week; comforts quite equal to those of their homes." Manufacturers in Pittsfield, Mass., inform us "they have a number of women employed in weaving and sewing, mostly weaving. The employment is considered healthy, and the condition of weavers is entirely comfortable, as this is, of course, for the interest of the employers as well as the employées. The average time of work is thirteen hours. The wages paid them is from $4 per week to $6. They are paid by the yard, and their earnings depend upon their attention, activity, and capability. They are paid $3 a week while learning. Women weavers earn quite as much as men, and can stand the confinement as well, if not better. We have no difficulty in keeping our looms supplied, and frequently have applications which we are obliged to reject. We employ sixty women, nearly one half Americans. In this place they have every advantage for moral and mental culture. Those who have parents or friends working in the establishment usually live with them; and those who have not, live at our boarding house, which is as comfortable and well regulated as any house in the country. The price charged for board is from $1.25 to $1.50 per week." A company in North Berwick, Me., writes: "We pay both ways; when by the week, from $2.50 to $4. Males and females do not perform the same kind of work with us. The time of learning varies with the capacities of the women. Some of our hands have been with us more than ten years. Seasons alike. They work eleven hours. We employ twenty-five women, because it is more economical. Not one of our women will do housework. Our employées are Yankee girls--can all read and write; and, so far as we know, converse intelligently on general subjects. They have their evenings and a portion of each Saturday. Board $1.33 ¹/3 per week." We would add that every cotton and woollen manufacturer from whom we have heard, expresses the opinion that their occupation is healthy. All, we believe, pay some hands by the week and some by the piece, and most pay men and women at the same rate for the same kind of work. It will be observed that the rates paid for labor decrease the farther you go North, but that board is also something less. =185. Coverlets.= A manufacturer of woollen coverlets in Allentown, Penn., answers inquiries in regard to prices paid, &c., as follows: "I employ eight American girls for spooling wool and cotton yarn in my coverlet manufactory, and pay two cents per pound. They earn from $2 to $2.50 per week. I pay girls the same as boys. The prospect for increase of work is good. There is a surplus of hands here. I prefer girls, as they have more patience than boys." =186. Dry Goods Refinishers.= A. & Co. employ women when busy to put up dress goods, cravats, ribbons, &c. They pay $3 a week. I was told by a satinet printer and refinisher, that he employs one woman to sew the ends of the cloth together. She does it with a machine, and earns $5 a week, working ten hours a day. The coloring matter rubs off on the hands. S. employs some women, and pays $3 a week. He gives them about eight months' employment. During two months in summer and two in winter, there is not enough doing to employ them. He says some women, like some men, know nothing but how to eat. He finds it difficult to get women of intelligence and judgment to do his work. (I should think he would, for such wages.) The girls fold, label, and pack. There are but three large houses of the kind in New York. At another place we saw a girl who gets $3 a week for such work--ten hours a day. =187. Flannels.= Flannels differ much in color and quality. Employers are unanimous in pronouncing the work healthy. If the sum paid foreign countries for flannels and blankets were invested in manufactories in our country, it would give employment to many, and tend to encourage home industry. A flannel manufacturer in Stockport, New York, writes: "We employ women at weaving and spooling. Women and girls are paid mostly by the piece, and earn from $3 to $5 per week. No males are employed at the same work as females. It usually takes about a week to learn to weave. We do not pay learners. We will increase the number of women as we increase our product. All seasons are alike as respects employment. Our hands work twelve hours per day. The time could not be shortened without loss to both employer and employed. We have about forty females, and prefer them, as it gives the whole family work. Eight tenths are American. The work is as light and comfortable as any in the mill. There is no other work suitable than that in which they are now engaged. All our women can read and write, and are already quite intelligent, particularly the Americans. We do not employ many under sixteen years of age, and those younger are usually sent to school a part of the year. Board is $6 per month in good, respectable families." A manufacturer in Dover, Maine, replies to a circular asking information: "I employ women as weavers, carders, spoolers, and one as a warper-on to draw the web. Women earn from $2.75 to $5 per week, eleven hours per day. Weavers are paid by the piece. I pay men from 83 cents to $1.50 per day. Women do the lighter and easier work. Some parts are not adapted to women, that is one reason why we pay less, and perhaps custom has something to do with the prices of labor. Women learn their part in from one to six weeks, but it requires some years of experience to be a manufacturer. For some kinds of work we pay from the beginning; for others, after one or two weeks. The prospect is fair; work, constant. In large manufacturing places, there is a demand for labor of this kind. Women are employed because they work cheaper. Women do their kind of work better than men. Our women are Americans, and appear to enjoy life well. They have the early morning and evening, and the Sabbath for themselves. More than one half are church members. Those that have relations living near the factory, board with them, and pay $1.50 per week." A manufacturer in Conway, Massachusetts, writes: "We employ women in weaving, burling, sewing, and numbering flannels. They receive from 50 cents to $1 per day of twelve hours. Women doing the same kind of labor as men receive the same price. It requires from one to four weeks to learn. If our business does not pay better in future than the past, we had better stop. In the more difficult part of our work there is a demand for hands. Men make better work than women. One fourth are American. Board, $1.50, to $1.75." A manufacturer in Morgantown, New York, writes: "The employment is as healthy as any indoor work. The wages average about $5 per week, they being paid by the piece. It takes about four years to learn the business, so as to conduct it in its several branches. I pay their expenses while learning. The best season is the fall. Work lasts ten hours--if obliged to run longer, we pay extra. We think women more to be depended on than men. We have no department suitable for women but what is filled by them. Board, $2 a week--quite good. In the cities board is seldom over $2 per week for workwomen. The rent and price of provisions are too high to keep a boarding house as it should be on such terms. Our wages may be lower in the country, but expenses are much lower also, and consequently the laborer is able to save more money." Manufacturers in Keene, N. H., write: "We pay one half $3, the other, $3.80 per week, twelve hours a day. We pay the same to both sexes when the quantity and quality are the same. A carder will learn in one month, a weaver in three months. The qualities wanted are industry, sobriety, perseverance, constructiveness, and amiability. All seasons alike good. To shorten the time of thirteen hours would be a loss to both parties. All branches are well supplied with workers. Women have more patience, tact, neatness, and are more reliable than men. All our women are well fed, well clothed, well housed, and some possess the luxuries, and even elegancies of life. We have six places of worship, a public library, book stores, and newspapers in abundance. Board, $1.50." =188. Gloves.= Kid, silk, cotton, and woollen are the kinds of gloves most used. They differ much in quality. Kid and leather are most numerous. The price of labor, the difficulty in obtaining the best kid, and the want of experienced workmen, are such that the finest kid gloves have not been made in the United States. An immense number of kid gloves are annually imported. In Paris, women are paid from sixty cents to $1 a dozen for sewing gloves. The French excel in the manufacture of kid gloves. French workmen are very economical in cutting out the kid. In France 375,000 dozens of skins are cut into gloves every year. Nearly 3,500 female glove sewers are employed in Vienna. Immense quantities of buckskin gloves and mittens are made in Johnstown and Gloversville, New York. "Most American manufactures have been introduced by sending the goods into the country by peddlers, or the manufacturers themselves selling them in that way. This trade was commenced so." The manufacture of buckskin gloves and mittens is mostly confined to small towns and the country. The cutting is done by men. The sewing is given out to those who do the work at home, and receive for their labor from $1 to $6 per week. It requires but a few weeks to learn. A manufacturer of kid and buckskin gloves, in Philadelphia, has all his sewing done by hand. He will not use machines for cutting out and sewing, as it would throw many of his workwomen out of employment. Those who are neat and intelligent obtain a very good livelihood by it. They take the work home, and earn $6 a week or more; beginners only $1.50 or $2. The kid is imported from South America, and not so fine as French kid. A glove manufacturer, New York, who lived in Johnstown eighteen years, told me that "girls can earn at glove sewing from $3 to $6 a week. Those who board in the families of their employers receive less, because of their board. Many gloves are made up by farmers' daughters at home, both by hand and machine. A good sewer would not find it difficult to make gloves. Most of the gloves made in factories are stitched by machines. Singer's and Grover & Baker's are preferred. Handworkers do not receive quite so good wages. Women used to cut out gloves with scissors, but now men cut them by striking with a hammer a tool the shape of a glove. The plan is preferred, because of being cheaper. The knowledge of dressing kid seems to be lost to foreigners in coming over the ocean." A manufacturer in Springfield, Mass., writes: "We employ some women in making buckskin gloves and mittens. Some work by the piece, and some by the week, and earn from $3 to $5. Those who work by the week spend ten hours, sewing. It takes females from two hours to four weeks to learn. Patience, perseverance, and taste are needed by learners. The best season for work is from February to November. They are out of work about two months at times. Most are Americans. They can use a needle better than a man." A glover in Salem writes: "Our women sew by hand, and earn $3 per week. Men spend three years in learning--women six months. The prospect for work is poor, as importation is destroying the business." A manufacturer at Gloversville writes: "Women earn from $3 to $5 a week, ten hours a day. Males get as much again as women. A smart woman will learn in eight months. Prospect of work in the future is good." Manufacturers in Broadalbin, N. Y., write me they employ twelve American women at the shop, and about one hundred out of the shop, finishing up. When paid by the week, they receive from $2 to $4.50, and work ten hours a day. The comparison in prices in male and female labor is about $2 to $1, for the reason that it requires more strength, labor, and skill to perform the man's part. Men spend two or three years in learning--women, six months. Punctuality, sobriety, and a liberal education, together with a steady nerve, will insure success in our business. (Some one else suggests, mechanical talent.) As long as there are feet to wear moccasins, and hands to wear gloves, our kind of business must thrive. Board in neat and commodious houses, $2 for women." A glover in New Hampshire writes: "Women sew by the piece for me; most have families, do their own work, and sew when they can--so I cannot say how much they would earn, if they sewed constantly. A man would have to spend from two to four years qualifying himself to superintend; the part done by women can be learned in from two to six weeks. Summer is the best season, but good workers have constant employment. All are Americans. Any locality is good where water power may be had. Ladies pay for board from $1.50 to $1.70 per week." Another in Perth, N. Y., says: "Some of our workers use sewing machines; others fit and prepare the goods for them. They earn from $3 to $4.75. The male and female labor is different in our establishment. I think the business permanent. Best time for work is from 1st of March to 1st of November. They work all daylight, except at meal times. When a certain amount of work is required in a given time, the women are apt to overwork themselves and slight the work. The wives and daughters of mechanics and farmers do the piecework at their homes. All Americans. Board, from $1.75 to $2." "At Gloversville the men cut, and machines do the sewing. Five pair of mits and two pair of gloves are a heavy days work. Gloves are worth 75 cents per day to cut; and to make from 12½ cents for a light article, to 18 cents for heavy ones."--_Woollen Gloves._ I was told by a man who employed eight girls to crochet woollen gloves for him, that he pays fifty cents a dozen pairs. He makes over five cents profit on a pair when selling to the wholesale stores; and in retailing, nine cents a pair. He says a right expeditious girl can make one dozen pairs a day. He employs his girls all the year. Most that attempt to learn find their progress so slow that they get discouraged, and give it up. It is best to learn early in life. The Germans excel. =189. Linseys.= An agent for a manufacturing company of linseys and flannels in Rhode Island, writes: "I employ fifty-eight women in spooling yarn and weaving, and pay from $3 to $5 a week. Our men are paid $1 per day, because they are able to do more. Men run three looms; girls, two. The organs that manufacture vitality in women are not allowed, by lacing strings, to attain more than two thirds their natural size. If nature could have her way with them, especially when young, they would earn more in the weaving shop than men, because they are naturally quicker and smarter. They are paid something while learning, which requires three months. Good female workers have always been scarce since I have been in the business--twenty years. We might employ more, if we could get them. April, May, and June are the most busy seasons. They work twelve hours. To shorten the time two hours would make one sixth difference, which the work people would not be willing to lose. We have more families than single help. Those who board pay from $1.75 to $2.25 per week. The boarding houses have to be helped by us, to enable them to take boarders at these prices." Mr. T., writing from Rhode Island, mentions, in addition to the branches stated above as performed by women, that of warping. He informs us, the work is not more unhealthy than housework, but complains that his women are careless, in bad weather, going to and from the mill. "Wages, when running full time, average from $3.75 to $6 per week. Weavers are paid by the yard, spoolers by the bunch, warpers by the web, and extra hands by the week. Men's wages are from 75 cents to $1.25 per day, but men's board is from 50 to 75 cents per week more. The prospect for work in the future depends upon the state of the country. Spring and summer are the best seasons for work. From March 20th to October 20th, the hands work from seven to seven; from October to March, until 8 P. M. Their wages are according to the number of yards woven; so of course it is to their interest, as well as our own, to run full time. We find male labor scarcer than female. Most of our hands are Americans. Our mills are well ventilated and well warmed. The company have a boarding house under their own supervision, but the women are at liberty to board in private families, and some do. The majority of young ladies in our employ are farmers' daughters, not really compelled to work, but prefer to do it, and in most instances use the means for obtaining an education. Instrumental music is taught in a seminary near the mill, by a young lady, who obtained her education with the means gained by working in this mill. We have from one to three nights every week devoted to literary societies, reading circles, &c., in all of which, the ladies from this and neighboring mills take an active part. Some eight or ten who worked at the mill during the summer are now attending school. Board $2.25 for men; $1.75 for women." The proprietor of the Kenyon mills, R. I., writes: "Probably one half the operatives in mills, in this part of the world, are women. Weavers are paid by the yard, and earn from $3 to $6 per week. Men are generally hired by the day. An intelligent woman will be able to run her loom after two or three weeks' practice. It is common to put learners on looms with experienced weavers for two or three weeks. From 20th March to 20th September, my working time is from sunrise to sunset, the remainder of the year, until eight o'clock in the evening. My weavers prefer to work full time as they are paid by the yard. There is generally a demand for good weavers in this part of the country all the year. Weavers make most money in summer. Large mills are being supplied with foreign help. Very few Americans are willing to work with them. Women are employed in mills on all kinds of work which they can do, and are preferred because they are more steady. Nearly all my mill girls are daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, and have had a fair common school education. Several of my weavers take newspapers or other periodicals, and carry them into the mill to read, when they can do so without interfering with their work. Some take sewing or knitting. Board $1.75 for women; $2.25 for men. If we did not keep comfortable boarding houses, our help would find employment in other places. Any smart, good girls, who want work, need have no hesitation in coming to Rhode Island to look for work in mills." =190. Woollen Shawls.= The secretary of the Waterloo Woollen Shawl Company writes: "Women are employed by us in weaving, carding, &c. The work is not unhealthy. It is paid for mostly by the piece, and hands earn from $2.50 to $3 per week. Most of them earn as much as males; and some, more. They are employed twelve hours. Skill, industry, and good character are necessary. The prospect of future employment is good. There is no difference in the seasons for work. In weaving there is no surplus. We employ two hundred and fifty women, because they do better work than men. We employ but very few young girls, and they generally work at home under the eyes of parents, and attend school at least four months in the year." =191. Shoddy.= At flock or shoddy manufactories, girls are employed to separate rags of different qualities and colors, and to cut the seams and buttons off. The rags are placed in machines and cut to pieces, then put in other machines that grind them to flocks. From them satinet is made. Women are paid so much one hundred pounds, and earn from $1.50 to $3 per week. They are busy all the year. It is dirty work, and, I think, unwholesome on account of the dust. Boys attend the machinery for cutting and grinding, and are paid about the same wages as the girls, and probably a little more. Girls could just as well attend the machines. Modern improvements have made wool shoddy susceptible of receiving a fine dye, and it is made into cloth for soldiers' and sailors' uniforms, and for pilot coats; into blanketing, drugget, stair and other carpeting, and into very beautiful table covers. A manufacturer of wool shoddy in Massachusetts writes: "I employ Irish women at $3 per week, of eleven hours a day in winter and twelve in summer. Men receive $6 per week. Women cannot perform their labor. It requires two weeks to learn. They receive small wages the first two or three weeks. The business is probably permanent. The work is hard. Women do best for picking and sorting stock and tending cards. They pay $1.50 a week for Irish fare." =192. Yarn.= A manufacturer of stocking yarn, in Spring Valley, New York, writes: "Girls are employed in twisting and reeling yarn. The employment is not unhealthy. We pay some by the piece, and some by the week; those by the week receive $2.50. The wages are the same for men and women. To learn the whole business requires from three to five years; that part done by girls, from one to two months. They are paid while learning. The prospect of employment is as good as that of business generally. Our girls work the year round; they work eleven hours. To shorten the time would be a disadvantage to us, and a loss in wages to the hands. Boys would do for us, but are not so easily governed. The work is easy and comfortable." A yarn manufacturer in Stoughton, Mass., writes me: "I pay $2 per week, and furnish board to those that twist and card. The labor of the women is much cleaner and easier than that of the men. Men receive from $1 to $1.75 per day, board included. I charge them $2.50 per week--women $1.75. Much of the men's labor requires strength, knowledge, and skill. It requires two or three months to learn it well. Women work, on an average, eleven hours and a half. I should like the ten-hour system, but cannot adopt it, unless others do the same. The supply of hands is adequate to the demand. Ladies have done some parts of our work, now performed by men, and have received equal wages; but the labor being hard, and women's dress being inconvenient, we have abandoned the plan." * * * * * =193. Silk Manufacture.= The duty on raw silk is so very great that it will not do to import it into the United States for manufacture. We suppose, if a duty in proportion to their value were levied on silk and linen goods, we would no longer be so dependent on other nations for these articles. Or if a reduction were made on the duty of the raw material, capitalists would establish silk manufactures in the United States. Individual failures here are attributed by some to ignorance and want of experience; by others, to the nature of the climate. The support afforded by our Government to the culture of silk has been very fickle--to-day encouraged, to-morrow neglected. The experiments that have been made prove the feasibility of growing the mulberry, and raising the silkworm in this climate. The silk produced was of good quality, and, but for imperfect implements and want of experience, might have done well. The cheapness of labor in older countries affords an advantage that we have not. Most of the raw silk manufactured in the United States comes from China. The women there rear silkworms; they also reel and weave the silk. Not many years back silk winding was done by men in England. "In the silk factories in France, there are two unwholesome processes entirely carried on by women: the first is the drawing of the cocoons, when the hands must be kept constantly in boiling water, and the odor of the putrefying insects constantly fills the lungs; the second is carding the floss, the fine lint of which affects the bronchial tubes. Six out of every eight women employed, die in a few months. Healthy young girls from the mountains soon develop tubercular consumption; and, to complete the dreadful tale, they are kept upon the lowest wages, being paid only twenty cents, where a man would earn sixty." "One silk manufacturer in Valencia, Spain, gives employment to 170 women and young girls." In Lyons, France, many women are employed in the silk manufacture, for particulars of which see _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Feb. 15th, 1860. Silk weavers mostly work in attics, where they can have the best light to distinguish shades of colors, and where the silk, which moisture would damage, can be kept perfectly dry. In Spitalfields, the silk manufacture is mostly carried on by the workmen at their homes, their families assisting. Each child has his own branch, and the wife hers. It is the same case in the making of lace, artificial flowers, embroidery, straw braiding, &c. The strength of silk is greater than that of cotton, flax, or wool. Machinery is now employed for winding the silk off of cocoons, but formerly it was done by hand. Mrs. O. told us her husband employs a few girls to spool silk, which he dyes for a large dress trimming manufactory next door. The girls earn from $2 to $3 a week. The pasting of patterns of floss silk upon cards was done by men a few years ago in England, but women, after great effort, have succeeded in gaining the work, so much more suitable for them. "A lady in Jefferson county, Ia., has made herself a handsome silk dress from cocoons of her own raising." A manufacturer of silk goods in Paterson, N. J., writes: "We mostly employ girls from twelve to eighteen. The work is not unhealthy. Average pay is $3 per week. To learn, a girl must be about twelve years of age; it takes about two months. Pay begins after two weeks. To learn, one should be smart with her hands, and careful with the material. There is a good prospect ahead for weavers. All seasons are good, except during a panic. They work twelve hours. The time could not be shortened conveniently. If other States worked less time, we could too. We employ a hundred girls and twenty-five boys. Seventy-five per cent. are American. Board, $1.75. Women could be employed more extensively in weaving. Men are employed upon the spinners, women in winding, &c." =194. Ribbons.= In England, formerly, a woman was not at all engaged in ribbon weaving, as the men thought it an encroachment on their sphere of labor; nor were they even allowed to wind silk preparatory to its use in weaving. Manufacturers of ribbon in West Newton, Massachusetts, write: "We employ from forty to eighty women, and prefer them to men in all departments they are fitted for. They are paid by the week, and earn from $2 to $6, according to the value of their work. It requires from six months to a year to learn the business. Women are paid something while learning. Good character and fair capacity are needed. Our women work eleven hours. If the time was reduced to ten, the loss would be the use of machinery. There is a surplus of hands in New York, by reason of immigration. Women are inferior in mechanical skill, superior in steadiness." =195. Sewing Silk.= The first factory for spinning silk in this country was established in Northampton, Massachusetts. There are 156 hands in Massachusetts, engaged in the manufacture of sewing silk. Two other factories have been established since then in Paterson, New Jersey; one for the manufacture of the raw silk, and the other the manufacture of sewing silks, fringes, gimps, and tassels. There is a manufactory in Mansfield, Connecticut, and one in Newport, Kentucky. Most of the sewing silk used in this country under the name of Italian silk is made by American manufacturers. An agent for the manufacture of twist in Paterson, New Jersey, told me their best hands do not earn over $3.50 a week and work eleven hours. They try girls, that wish to learn, two weeks, and if they find them fitted for the work, pay $1 a week. There is no danger from the machinery as in cotton factories, nor has it the unhealthy tendency of cotton, as there are no particles flying from the material like the lint that flies from cotton. It does not require an apt person long to learn. The girls stand all the time. They have to watch the machinery, and tie the threads that break. The agent said, in the Eastern States girls are paid better in silk factories, but they are more competent workers. There some earn from sixty to eighty cents per day. The work is neat and clean. Some manufacturers of sewing machine silk and twist write me from Boston: "We employ fifty women winding and twisting silk. They work eleven hours in winter and twelve in summer, and earn from $3 to $6 per week. Some are paid by the piece and some by the week. Men are paid from $1 to $2.50 a day. Integrity and activity are wanted. The prospect for future employment is good. They work at all seasons. One fourth are Americans. No parts of our occupation are suitable for women but those in which they are engaged." A sewing silk manufacturer in Paterson, N. J., writes: "Our women are engaged in winding and doubling the raw silk and finishing, in skeins and on spools, the dyed material. The work is generally considered healthy. Many children, boys and girls, from ten years and upward, are employed--say forty per cent. of the whole force of help; children at $1 per week--women at $3 and $4. They work sixty-nine hours to the week. State rights prevent the shortening of the time. Each State makes its own laws on the subject, and no unanimity exists. Males and females are employed up to a certain age, say fifteen years, indiscriminately; girls always preferred. The time of learning depends upon the quickness of the hand; some learn in two or three days, some again can scarcely learn at all. The rule of the trade is not to pay learners. It depends on circumstances whether we pay. In brisk times we have about sixty (including children)--women about forty--perhaps less. About half are Americans. Crinoline is in the way to prevent women from performing other parts of the labor. Women are cheaper. Men could not be got, and could scarcely do the work, if they could. Yet no particular qualifications are required. The prospect for an increase of this manufacture depends upon congressmen and the tariff. The best seasons are immediately after the New Year's and Fourth of July holidays." In France, some girls are employed to wind the raw silk from cocoons, and some spin it into skeins of silk. In Dublin, many women are employed in the winding and picking of silk used in making poplin. Near Algiers is an orphan asylum, from which a large number of girls have been apprenticed to a gentleman who owns a silk winding mill in the vicinity. The girls work twelve hours a day. * * * * * =196. Lace Makers.= Large numbers of women are employed in lace making in Belgium, France, Ireland, and England. A normal lace school was established in Dublin in 1847. Lace makers are very closely confined, and in busy times many spend from twelve to twenty hours at their work. Lace making requires care, quickness, and dexterity. Rev. Mr. Hanson mentions the fact that, in Liverpool, there are three Roman Catholic institutions aided by the Privy Council for the industrial training of girls: one, attended by forty pupils, is a laundry; another is a lace school, attended by one hundred and sixty-six; the third, attended by twenty-six, trains domestic servants. Lace making is so injurious to the eyes that, at forty, very few can carry it on without spectacles. In England the process of winding is conducted by young women, while boys are mostly employed as lace threaders. Their condition is a wretched one. Women are mostly employed as lace runners or embroiderers. Mending, drawing, pearling, and joining are mostly done by young children. An interesting account of the business is given in Charlotte Elizabeth's story of the "Lace Runners": "It is proved by unquestionable evidence, that in lace making it is customary for children to work at the age of four or five and six years; and instances are found in which a child, only _two_ years old, was set to work by the side of its mother." The present condition of most of the laboring classes in England is far more depressing and exhausting than the slavery that exists among the colored population of the United States. "The powers of production of a machine for making laces are to hand labor nearly as 30,000 to 5." C. says he and his wife are the only makers of hand lace in the United States, and he has been nine years in the business here. He says, making the figures is most difficult; and he showed me one figure he asked but twenty-eight cents for, that he stated it would require a day and a half to make. I wish I had offered to buy it. He employs a number of girls to put the figures on some kind of a foundation for collars, sleeves, and capes. They also transfer, mend lace, and do other such work. He says, making figures does not pay as well as the other parts, and it would not pay for the salt you use on your potatoes. He does not have lace made, except now and then a figure that cannot be obtained, to fill out a piece that is being transferred or altered, and for which the lady is willing to pay a good price. He says laces are made so much cheaper in the old country, that when imported, paying even a duty of twenty or twenty-five per cent., they are sold as cheap as those he makes. He says he pays his girls nearly twice as much as they are paid in Europe. His report I thought contradictory, and supposed he feared competition. I was told by an English woman, who had been accustomed to making lace from six years of age until the last ten, that it takes seven or eight years to learn lace making in all its parts. She says there are twenty-one processes gone through with in making every kind but pillow lace, in which there are but five processes. When she was a child, none but common laces were made in France, and the making of their finest laces they learned from the English, who went over to France. =197. Lace Menders.= I called on M. W., a lace mender. "In New York, she has received from one store, Mme. G.'s, from $20 to $25 a week for work. She thinks in a few years very little work will be ordered from the stores; it will be done by those who make a business of it. The stores derive a handsome profit. She did a piece for one store for $3, that she knows the lady paid $5 for having done; and another piece at $3, that the lady paid $10 for--the storekeeper having such profits for nothing but merely sending it to the lace transferrer. She makes a comfortable living, but works at night as well as through the day. It has injured her eyes and made her nervous. She has had two little girls learning to mend, alter, and transfer lace; one received her board and clothing for her work for three years. One girl, that spent two years with her, is now obtaining a livelihood by her work. She thinks if a bright, steady girl of thirteen should spend two years at it, and then have friends to start her in business, she would be well able to support herself. Lace mending is a separate branch from lace making. In England, if a person can obtain the names of one or two wealthy families, it will at once establish them in business. In doing up lace, little girls can put the pins in the edges to keep it in place until dried. C. and Mme. G., she says, pay her as her customers would, but she prefers establishing herself, and does not so well like store work. Her customers recommend her to their friends, and so she will gradually become known. Lace mending is a nice, clean, respectable business, and can be done at home." * * * * * =198. Hair Cloth Manufacture.= "There is some competition in the sale of foreign and domestic hair cloth. The American is of a better quality, and on that ground only are manufacturers able to compete with foreigners, the duty on hair cloth being low. When the hair has been separated from the short hair used for curling, it goes into the more delicate fingers of the hair drawers, who sort it into lengths, each length corresponding to the width of the cloth to be woven. We have seldom seen any mechanical operation requiring more dexterity or constant attention than this. The girls engaged in this work make from $3 to $3.50, and sometimes $4 a week. The weaving is done by hand looms, each worked by two girls--one to handle the hook (answering the purpose of a shuttle), and the other to serve the hair. The prices paid for weaving vary from twenty to thirty-two cents per yard. The average, including plain and figured cloth, is twenty-four cents. A fair average day's work is four or five yards. But this requires two hands, you must remember; so that perhaps a fair estimate of the wages of hair cloth weavers would be from fifty to sixty-two and a half cents per day. The labor is severe, and we should think it impossible, without injury to the health, for young women to work at it more than two thirds of the time." At a hair-cloth manufactory in New York, I was told they employ one hundred girls. The proprietor says they have work all the year. He never knew a woman at the business that could not find employment. The first month they do not receive anything for their work, but after that can earn from $3 to $5 per week. It is paid for by the yard. The more practice a worker has, the better she succeeds. I think it must be dirty work. Another manufacturer told me it does not require long to learn to weave hair cloth, but some time to do it well. He pays $5 per week, but their time is not limited to ten hours. The girls, I saw, were pale and filthy. He thinks the business is likely to extend, and, consequently, the prospect of employment to women in that field of labor is good. He keeps his girls all the year. The Providence Hair Cloth Co. write: "Women are employed in weaving our hair cloth. Every hair has to be put in separately by the fingers of the girl. The only disadvantage to the health of the girl is the close application in sitting so long. We pay our girls thirteen cents per yard for weaving. It requires about two weeks or one month before a girl becomes sufficiently accustomed to the work to weave on full speed. We pay them while learning. No qualifications needed, only general neatness and upright moral character. All seasons are alike. We work only ten hours. Thirty girls have each one loom with which to work; one girl mends the cloth, and three shave and trim the same--making thirty-four in all. One half are American. Women are in all respects superior to men in weaving--same as in cotton looms." METAL MANUFACTURES. =199. Iron.= "The great heat to be endured and the severe muscular power required, preclude women from the manufacture of iron goods. They are not directly employed, and to a small extent indirectly. We think when women have to perform what is unquestionably man's work, it lowers the standard of female character instead of elevating, and nothing is more disagreeable than to be constantly employed at labor uncongenial to one's nature." From the United States census we learn that in 1850 there were engaged in the manufacture of pig iron 20,298 males, 150 females; in the manufacture of casting iron, 23,541 males, 48 females; in the manufacture of wrought iron, 16,110 males, 138 females. We do not know exactly how these women were employed. The work in rolling mills is very severe and the heat intense. The men have their limbs cased in tin sheaths above their knees. The vast capital required to develop the mineral resources of a country, and the comparative newness of our country, have hitherto prevented more than a partial development of its resources. Many women are employed in dressing and sorting ore in Great Britain. =200. Files.= The notches in files are made by a chisel acted on by a hammer held in the hand. The edge thrown up in making the notch assists the workman in putting the chisel in the right place, and keeping it there while he cuts the next notch. "It is peculiar that hitherto no machine has been constituted, capable of producing files which rival those cut by the human hand." From a manufacturer in Massachusetts, we learn that "he employs from four to six girls in cutting fine work files, cleaning, and wrapping up, &c. They are largely employed in England. The work is considered healthy. They receive from $3 to $4.50 per week of ten hours a day. Men and women are paid equal wages for the same kind of work. It requires from six months to two years to learn. The prospect for a small number in each factory is good. There is work every day in the year. It is quite a new business in this country. Women are neater and more particular with their work than men. They could do some other parts that are suitable for them, but they would soil their hands too much." A file manufacturer writes me: "Women are paid by the piece in cutlery--in other departments by the day; when by the piece, they receive as much as men; when by the day, one half. It would require three or four years to learn. Most women cannot cut any but small files as well as men, as they have not sufficient muscular power in the hands and fingers. Women are taught in Sheffield, England, by their fathers and brothers, and have what they earn. Good eyesight and stout nerves are the requisites for a learner. No prospect of employment in our business at present. The best localities for manufactures are where files are wanted, in New England and the middle States." =201. Guns.= One manufacturer writes: "I hardly know whether the work could be done by women. It is difficult to learn and hard to practise." A gunsmith told me, guns could be polished by women. They are polished by hand. A manufacturer of guns writes: "I have no women employed in my factory. It is not common for them to work at this business in America, although many of them are employed by gun makers in foreign countries." =202. Hinges.= A manufacturer of hinges writes: "We employ no women in our manufactory. There are portions of the work that might be done by females as well as male labor. Still we have not adopted the plan." A manufacturer writes from New Britain, Connecticut: "We employ women in packing goods, and making brass hinges, and pay from thirty-eight to sixty-five cents per day of ten hours. We formerly paid women $1.50 per day. We now get the same amount done by girls for sixty-five cents. We employ them because the work is light, and we can get it done at that price. The part done by women requires one month to learn. The prospect for this work in future is good. Spring and fall are the best seasons, but our hands are employed the year round. Other parts of the work could be done by women if they were willing, but the work is dirty. They are superior to men in the same branch, as they handle the work quicker, and are, as a general thing, more steady and reliable. The housework here is mostly done by Irish girls, while American girls prefer working in shops, even at less wages. There are many other branches of our work that might be done by females, for which we pay men $1 and $1.25 per day; but the work is rather dirty, and few here would do it, as they can have cleaner work, and we have never sought that kind of help on that account." =203. Locks.= "The Newark Lock Company" employ eight American girls in packing hardware. They are paid by the week, from $3 to $5, and average half the pay of men, who do more laborious work. Women spend six or eight months learning. Activity and neatness are desirable qualities. Women excel in both qualities. We expect to double our business in a year or two. The women work ten hours per day, and have steady employment. Two thirds of all the locks used in the United States are made in the five large lock manufactories of Connecticut. The best locality is near the great emporium, and on tide water, to save freight. Board $2.50." The secretary of the Eagle Lock Company writes: "We employ from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men, and only twenty girls. Our work is not suitable for females, except to pack our locks in paper ready for market. They work by the piece, and can earn from $10 to $25 per month, according to how they employ themselves. They are mostly daughters of men employed by us, and board at home. They are all Yankee girls. We only work ten hours, unless business is driving." "Hardware manufacturers in Cromwell, Connecticut, pay eight women from 50 to 62½ cents per day for packing. They work ten hours a day. The work can be learned in one month. The prospect of work in future is good. Board $1.62 per week." Manufacturers in N. Britain write: "We pay by the day from 50 to 60 cents, ten hours' work. Women are not generally better paid than they now are, because they compete with each other so much in the light, easy, and clean branches of labor, and meet competition in light work from boys. Their time of learning is from six months to a year, and half never learn. They are paid while learning. An eye for putting up work true to the square, and quick fingers, are the most essential qualifications. The business is constantly increasing. Work is the same, or nearly so, at all seasons. Girls employed by us have every personal comfort and convenience that is possible, and are paid as much as men for the same labor. Most of our work is more or less greasy and dirty from iron and brass filings. Girls usually have less natural _mechanical_ intelligence, we think. It may be, however, that the want is from their inexperience in mechanical branches. Our impressions are that New England is the place for manufacturing small wares, requiring great activity and industry. Our workers have the use of a public library and lectures free. Board, $7 to $8 per month--thirty to thirty-one days." A manufacturer of trunk castors, in Massachusetts, writes me that he once employed girls to paint castors, and put them in packages for the dealers. =204. Nails.= Making wrought nails is too hard work for women. A manufacturing company of nails, in Boston, write me there are no women employed in the nail factories of New England. The work is exceedingly heavy. Another manufacturing company write, they have never known of women being employed in making nails in any country. But we know that in France, women are employed in turning the wheel in making nails, and at Sedgley, E., and the neighboring villages, the number of girls employed in nail making considerably exceeds that of the boys. In England, the part done by girls is attending machinery that splits iron into the proper widths for nails. =205. Rivets.= A manufacturer writes: "We believe no manufacturer employs women in our particular branch of industry. The business requires great strength and exposure to furnaces." The writer suggests that in _iron moulding_, perhaps a new career might be opened for women. "Innumerable small castings are now being made, such as buckles, eyes, rings, &c., for harness making. As this work is exceedingly light, requiring skilful manipulation, it might be within the scope of women to undertake this branch of industry." The casting is dangerous. The mixture of gases in the hot metal sometimes produces a blowing--that is, the metal is thrown into the air, falling oftentimes on the workers, penetrating their clothes and burning them. A woman's clothes would be unsuitable for this work. The moulding is very light, easy work, and we think as suitable for women as most mechanical labor. =206. Screws.= The processes in making screws are forging, turning up, nicking, worming, and tipping. The cutting and polishing of screws, in Birmingham, are chiefly done by women. The machinery used requires care and delicacy. =207. Skates.= Skate manufacturers in Maine write: "We employ from ten to twelve ladies to stitch skate leathers, for about two months in the year, November and December. They are paid by the piece, and average 50 cents a day. All are Americans. Board, $1.50 per week. In the New England States, more American women are employed than foreigners, particularly in country towns." =208. Shovels.= A shovel manufacturer says he employs boys to clean the handles, by holding them as they run over emery belts. He pays the boys $3 a week. For varnishing the iron part of the shovel he pays 10 cents a dozen, and "yesterday a youth was able to do twenty-one dozen." This branch of work, we think, might be done by strong women. =209. Wire Workers.= I was told at a wire manufactory, New York, that women are never employed to draw wire. If it be true that wire drawers are a very rough, coarse set of men, it is well girls do not work in the establishments; as the work is such, we presume, that all must be employed in the same apartments. The labor of drawing is such that the hands of the men become almost like iron. Mr. S., Philadelphia, employs a woman to weave fine wire. She learned it in her native country, Scotland. She also sews pieces of fine wire cloth together. She receives $5 a week, and seldom works ten hours a day. Most men and women engaged in wire work are English or Irish, who learned the trade in their own country. I was told it requires some years to attain excellence. Weaving requires considerable strength in both upper and lower limbs. Men wire workers are paid from $1.50 to $2.50 a day. Mr. C., New York, employs a number of women weavers and seamers. They are paid $4 a week. Formerly their girls would want a day to go to a picnic, to get ready for a party, or help their mothers at home. The steam would have to be stopped unless they could get hands to fill their places during the time, which was very difficult and often could not be done. For a while their women gave them so much trouble, they had to stop the machinery altogether. It caused him such annoyance that some of the female members of his family learned, and are now employed. He employs women to cover steel for hoop skirts, and pays $3 a week. A few women are employed at wire weaving in Cincinnati. The wiring and making of bird cages seems to me a field of industry open to female hands. They can be made in any place, and the work is light. Wire could be woven in fenders by women, I think. Mr. C., maker of patent rat traps, employed a number of girls to lace the wires. Some he paid by the week, some by the piece. They mostly earned $3 a week. A small girl could learn it in two weeks. I saw a manufacturer of wire stands for cloaks, mantillas, &c. He employs a few ladies to dress them, paying 25 cents apiece. One of his hands is very expeditious and can cover six in a day. Those that know nothing of the work, he employs in making skirts only, and of course make less. February, March, August, September, and October are the busy months. There are only three places in New York where the work is done. A wire maker, in Lowell, writes: "I employed a girl four years ago in wire weaving, that gave unqualified satisfaction. She left, to obtain a college education. I paid by the piece when I employed her, and at the same rates as I paid men. She used to earn $1 a day, and even did so while attending school; but of course worked before and after school--probably seven or eight hours a day. Most of my work is too laborious for women; but some wire workers that make meal sieves, corn parchers, &c., can, and I believe do, employ them to advantage, by reason of the price of labor being much less for women than men. This kind of business is limited. There are not more than one hundred and fifty men and women, probably, working at the business in New England. A maker of sieves, and wire goods in general, writes from Worcester, Massachusetts: "The business is quite healthy compared with needle work. I employ six women, who earn from $4 to $5 per week of ten hours a day. Men earn from $7.50 to $12. Some goods we manufacture will not justify us in paying women higher prices. (The women should not do it. They would then have to employ men and pay better prices, when women could come in and claim equal wages.) Our kind of work they learn in a few weeks. There will be no falling off, in future, of this work. Most girls like the work. Board, $2 per week in families." A wire manufacturer in Belleville, New Jersey, writes: "We employ females in sewing and winding wire. The employment is not unhealthy. We pay from $2.50 to $4.50 per week. Learners receive $2.50 per week. Board, $2 to $2.50. Men in our establishment average $2 per day. I would say that in some branches of our business, women might take the place of men." * * * * * =Brass Manufacture.= In some branches of the brass manufacture women are not at all employed--in a few others, they are. At a brass bell foundery, we were told the work is not healthy, and is too heavy for women. =210. Candlesticks.= A manufacturer of candlesticks in Vermont "employs from three to four women, because they are better adapted to the work than men. He pays by the piece, from $13 to $15 per month, and employs them the year round. Women are paid as well as men or boys at the same kind of work. It requires from three to five years to learn the business--from one to two years, that part done by women. Women are paid small wages while learning. It is a clean, comfortable business. There are no parts of our work suitable for women in which they are not employed." =211. Hooks and Eyes.= The agent of the Waterbury Hook and Eye Company says: "The hooks and eyes are given out to families to put on cards, for which they are paid by the gross. It pays poorly--probably not more for a child than 50 cents a week. The country and villages around supply plenty of girls for the factories. In good times the hands in the factories are kept employed all the year. We employ three females to pack our finished light work, which is as neat and healthy work as can be in any pleasant factory--pay is $3.50 to $4.50 per week of sixty hours. No males are employed on similar work. Supply and demand regulate prices. Only a short time is required by a competent girl to learn to do our work properly; and pay commences when they commence. Every good qualification which 'flesh is heir to' is needed to make the _right_ sort of help. Prospect for employing more females than heretofore is not flattering. Girls are preferable for any light, neat, tasty work. Ours are Americans, and I believe as comfortable and happy as people are likely to be on this sinful globe. I doubt if much of our other work can be done by females. A place nearest to a large market, where good air and water prevail and means of living are reasonable, is the most desirable place to locate a factory, ordinarily. Churches, schools, libraries, lectures, &c., afford ample means and opportunity for mental and moral culture, for those who work ten hours a day, and can board for $2 a week, and are free from any special cares or anxieties." N. S. & Co., North Britain, write: "We employ nine women to make paper boxes, and pack hooks and eyes. They earn from 60 cents to $1 per day of ten hours, but are paid by the piece. The men earn from $1.15 to $3 per day; but their work is different from the women's. The women learn their part in two or three weeks. Industry and self-respect are the most desirable qualities. The prospect for future employment is good. They work all the year. Board, $2 per week." =212. Lamps.= Mr. J. "used to employ girls to cement the glass body on the marble stand, and the top of the body on the metal through which the wick passes. He also employed them in papering to send away. The prospect for workers is poor, because the business is limited. He paid his girls $3.50 a week. No manufactories in the West or South." In 1860 the manufacture of coal-oil lamps formed the principal business of sixteen companies, who employed 2,150 men and 400 women and boys." =213. Pins.= The pins made in the United States are not so high priced as English pins. They have not until lately been so well finished. In pin making in England, the drawing and cutting of the wire, the cutting of the heads from the coils, and the trimming are mostly performed by men; the other operations, by women and children. Sometimes, in trimming the pins, a man, his wife, and child work together. For pickling and trimming the pins the price usually paid is two cents a pound. A skilful and industrious worker can head 20,000 pins per day, for which in England they are paid about 30 cents of our money. Pin heading is very sedentary work, and children seven or eight years of age are often kept at it for twelve or thirteen hours, with merely time for hasty meals. Girls at Sedgley and Warrington begin as early as five years of age to work in the pin factories. It is said that at Wiltenhall they are treated with much cruelty, if at all refractory. In Sedgley more women are employed than men, and receive the same treatment. The secretary of the American Pin Company at Waterbury, Connecticut, writes: "Women are employed in tending machines, and in sticking and packing pins, and packing hooks and eyes, and making paper boxes. The work is not unhealthy. The lowest wages by the week is $3.25 while they are learning; afterward $3.50 and $3.75 per week, ten hours a day. Some work by the piece, and earn from $14 to $21 per month. The supply of woman's labor is equal to the demand, at the prices we pay. We work through the year, generally without stopping, except for the holidays. Our average number is fifty. Girls can do the work as well or better than boys, that could be hired at the same price. Most are Americans. They have their Sundays, holidays, and evenings--also a public library and institute lectures at a very small cost--besides religious privileges afforded by six churches. Board, $1.50 to $2 per week." The Albany Company, at Cohoes, sends the following information: "Women, and girls not younger than twelve years of age, are employed in sticking, folding, wrapping, &c. The same work is done in England and Germany. Wages from $6 to $20 per month, working twelve hours a day. Those having had the most practice can usually do the work faster and better, consequently obtain higher wages. They receive pay while learning. The qualifications most desirable are care, attention, and activity. The business is not likely to increase greatly, as the work is mostly done by machinery and the demand for the article is limited. We are busy at all seasons except in extremely hot or cold weather. The hands work twelve hours--by so doing they obtain higher wages. We have more applicants than we wish. We employ from twelve to fifteen, because they can do the work more readily than men. The work is light, and the condition of the women quite equal to that of women otherwise employed to obtain the necessities of life." The agent of the Howe Manufacturing Company, in Connecticut, reports: "Our work is all done by the piece. The earnings of the workwomen vary according to their skill, diligence, and the number of hours spent at work. Average in April last, $11.09--in four weeks. Highest earnings of one individual $22.09 (equal to $5.54 per week). Small girls earn from $1 to $1.50 per week, and work six or eight hours. Men and women do not perform the same kind of labor in our establishment. Why all persons are not paid equally for equal labor, I do not feel competent to explain. A knowledge of our work is soon acquired. Learners are paid for what they do. A good character and reputation, honesty, fidelity, common mechanical ability, and diligence are desirable qualifications. We generally find the hands we want in our own immediate neighborhood. Our work is considered desirable, and much sought for. In all seasons the hands are equally employed, except dry seasons, when we are short of water to drive our machinery. Our _stock_ hands generally stay with us till they get married or lay up so much money that they are able to get along with less labor, or become too old or infirm to work to advantage. Some have stayed with us over twenty years, many over ten years. The number of hours for work is discretionary. We seldom request industrious hands to work more hours than they choose. Our hands sometimes work twelve or fourteen hours, at their pleasure. Small girls, of whom we employ but five or six, seldom work ten hours. The number of women and girls employed in our establishment heretofore has been variable, averaging perhaps thirty. We are using improved machinery, which has already reduced the number, and will reduce it still more. Our work is peculiarly adapted to female labor. Nearly all our hands are American born. In twenty-two years' business, we have seldom, if ever, had an adult woman employed who was unable to sign her name to the pay roll. Our adult women have the churches and lyceum lectures, which I believe they generally attend. Their time for reading, for the most part, will be evenings and Sundays. Small girls can attend our district school free of cost." A manufacturer, in Seymour, Connecticut, writes: "We pay from $3 to $4 per week. We employ no men in sticking and packing, and, if we were not particular as to whom we employ, we could reduce the amount of our monthly pay roll a large per cent. It requires very little practice to learn the part of our business done by women, and in most cases we pay them full wages upon entering the mill. No special qualifications are needed. The kind of business we pursue will always be carried on, but of course can never become very common. No difference in the seasons, and the girls are never thrown out of employment. Under the present regulations they work eleven hours, and the time could not well be shortened, as that would tend to derange the other departments of our business. We have but ten employed at present, but in the course of a few days expect to have about twenty. They are employed because they are peculiarly qualified for the business, and on account of the lower rate of wages as compared with the labor of men. We employ women in all cases when the work is suitable for them. Women as employed by us are superior to men, being more expert and active. The New England States are doubtless the best locality for our business. The females employed by us are all intelligent and of good mental ability." =214. Rings.= The American Brass Ring Co. "employ twenty women at presses, in packing, &c. They are all foreigners. Board, $1.50 per week. The work is not unhealthy. Women are paid fifty cents a day of ten hours. Women are paid $2 a week for four weeks while learning. The prospect of future employment is no better than the business now offers." =215. Scales.= H. T., manufacturer of scales and weights, Philadelphia, Penn., writes: "We employ women in making metallic weights. The work is not unhealthy. They earn from $4 to $6 per week. No comparison in the price of labor. Women can make as much as men, if they are willing. It requires almost a lifetime to learn the business; but the part the women work at requires but a day or two. We pay learners. No extraordinary qualifications are needed. A good prospect for increase of employment. No difference in seasons. They work from four to ten hours. Women cannot be employed at our heaviest work, on account of the great physical strength required." I was told at F. & M.'s, New York, that the beams of the scales could be burnished by women. It is done with steel instruments. I suppose the pans could also be burnished by them. Burnishing the back of the plates could be done by women also, but it is somewhat dirty work. Women would have to work in the room with the men, for while the foreman was employed, he would like to keep an eye on the employees. The work is rather heavy for women, but not more so than some in which they are engaged. =216. Stair Rods.= A manufacturer of plated stair rods told me "he employs a woman to burnish the rods. She can make from $4 to $7 a week, not working more than ten hours a day, being paid from fifty cents to $1 a hundred. It is work hard on the chest, but he thinks not hard on the eyes. He had one lady who did it at home. In large establishments, rods are now burnished by machinery. The polishing of stair rods is very hard work, and requires strong, stout lads." Another stair-rod manufacturer told me "he has employed a boy to tie up stair rods, but would employ a girl and pay the same price, $1 per day." * * * * * =217. Steel Manufacture.= No women are employed in the conversion of iron into steel in this or any other country. It is rough, heavy work. It requires great physical strength, and is unsuitable for a woman. No women are employed in the manufacture of axes in this country. It is rough, coarse work, and done by stout, strong men. In one of the largest cutlery establishments in the United States they employ six hundred men, but no females; except six, for wrapping up goods. In the finishing of metals there are three branches: turning, filing, and setting up. In turning, jagged particles of metal fly off, and often enter the eyes of the workers, doing them great injury. Goggles of magnetized iron might be used to prevent this. The magnetized wash is used to prevent the filings from getting down the throats of grinders and polishers. For learning the two parts, turning and filing, four years of apprenticeship are served. The turning requires more skill than physical strength. It might be done by women that were willing to serve so long an apprenticeship. =218. Buckles.= G. Brothers, of Waterbury, employ six women in riveting and other light work on bell clasps. They write: "The girls earn from $3 to $5 per week, ten hours a day. The labor of women is paid twenty-five per cent. less than that of males, because they are not able to do as heavy work. It requires about three months to learn the part of males or females. Our branch of trade is not increasing. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons, but the women are not thrown out of employment during the year. They are superior in light work. Board, $2 per week." A manufacturer in Attleboro' writes: "I employ from twelve to fifteen at packing, at light press work, &c. They are paid from four to six cents per hour. Women are not paid higher, because they are not worth more. I pay men from seven to twenty-five cents per hour. The time of learning depends on the ingenuity of the employed. They have steady work most of the time. They are full-blooded Yankees--have a good deal of fun when the boss is out, and work in a pleasant room. The labor is easy, and they are satisfied with the remuneration. (Perhaps because they can do no better!) A healthy climate, convenience to market and to places where the raw material is made, are advantages. All New-England girls have the advantages of a good education in the common branches." A manufacturer in Middletown, Conn., replies: "Girls are employed by me, springing in the tongues of buckles and packing them--also making paper boxes. They earn from forty cents to $1 per day, being paid by the piece. Their employment is not so heavy or laborious as that of males. It takes from six months to one year to earn full wages. Women will probably always be employed in these branches. Good box makers are always in demand. We employ thirty--all Americans. The balance of my work is rather objectionable for women, unless it be foreign or second-class girls. Women are usually more neat than men. Either water or railroad communication is desirable in seeking a locality. Board, about $2 per week. There was never so great a demand for female help in this part of the country as at the present time. They have started a shirt manufactory about nine miles from here, and are in want of girls; but the greatest trouble there is to find boarding places at reasonable rates." The West Haven Co. report "the employment to be very healthy by giving exercise to the limbs. The pay is from seventy-five cents to $1.50 per day--average $1. Some learn the business in two days, some in two weeks. The hands are paid from the first, and are seventeen in number, all Americans. Women are superior in this branch, because they are quicker with their fingers." =219. Edge Tools.= The Humphreysville Edge Tool Manufacturing Co. inform me they do not employ females. For polishing they hire strong, rough boys, that they can get cheap, who stand while at work, and stoop over the articles, which produces a strain on the back and compression of the chest. Many find it so injurious they have to give it up, and the majority of those who do keep at it do not last long. The majority of the metal workers in Birmingham do their work at home. Each member of the family has his particular part to perform. An English writer says: "In various branches of the hardware manufacture, both in Birmingham and Sheffield, women may be seen by hundreds in some places, comfortably secluded from the male workers; in others, working side by side with them at the same mechanical process. They are never given to intoxication, and rarely, if ever, to strikes; and it may be very much the absence of these propensities that has recommended them so largely to the notice of the employer. In London the practice is gaining ground." =220. Electrical Machines.= From the office of Davis & Kidder's magneto-electric machines we receive the following intelligence: "We employ women in covering wire, spools, sewing velvet, papering boxes, &c., &c. They earn from $12 to $24 per month, and are paid by the month. Women are paid nearly one half as much as men--can form no reason why women are not as well paid. It requires about three months for females to learn; they are paid while learning. All it requires is energy. There is no prospect at all for future employment in this branch. We employ our hands through the year; do not deduct from their wages when absent for a week. They work ten hours a day. We employ four, because the work is light and better suited for them than males. All Americans. Those in my employ are well educated. Board in respectable families, $2.50." C. Brothers, of New York, employ two girls for the same kind of work. They pay one $5 a week, ten hours a day--the small girl $3. They have had them but six months, but expect to keep them all the year. Mr. C. thinks the business is so limited that the prospect is poor for learners. =221. Fire Arms.= From the Arms Manufacturing Co., Chicopee, Mass., we receive the following information: "We employ women in burnishing plated ware. The employment is not unhealthy. We pay generally by the piece. Some are paid about eighty cents per day. There is a prospect for steady employment for the few we have, and for no more. They are in no season entirely out of work. Ten hours a day are devoted to work when paid for by the week. All Americans. Easy work and much sought after. Women are inferior in point of strength, superior in cheapness." Sharp's Rifle Co. write: "We employ from ten to thirty women in making cartridges and inspecting primers. We pay about $1 each day, as the business requires good skill and care, and is hazardous. It is generally piece work. Males do the heaviest part of the work, and are paid $1.25 to $1.50 per day. If an individual is skilful, it requires but a short time to learn. Hands are paid while learning. Prospect good of future employment. We have constant work for ten. They are usually employed nine hours. All Americans. They appear very comfortable, and are quite tidy. No other parts of our occupation are suitable for women. Women are superior in forming and folding. $2.50 per week is the price of board." =222. Knives and Forks.= The metals used for knives and forks are iron, steel, and silver, according to use or expense. The dust that arises from the grinding of steel knives, coats the lungs with stone. A German manufacturer of small cutlery told me that in large establishments in some European countries, women put the rivets in the handles of knives, and polish the handles of ivory and pearl. In the grinding of penknives and razors the inclination of the body forward is greater than in any other branch; hence, while less injurious in regard to the amount of dust than the fork and needle branches, they are fraught with greater evil from the position of the body alone. Articles of cutlery are glossed by holding them to a wooden wheel, on which is emery powder. They are polished by holding them to a wheel covered with leather, charged with crocus. Both of these processes are within the range of woman's toil. In a cutlery establishment, I was told the work was too hard for women. The polishing of their cutlery is done by machinery. The Hardware Manufacturing Company, Berlin, Conn., write: "We employ one hundred and forty men, making shelf hardware, and five or six girls to pack it up. They get from fifty to seventy-five cents a day, work ten hours, and all live at home. The work of papering up the goods is light, and requires little skill. The other part of the work about our factory is too severe for women." The Empire Knife Company, Conn., "employ four girls in packing and sharpening. They are paid by the day (ten hours), and earn from $3 to $4 per week. Women receive about the wages of men. It requires from six months to one year to learn. Women are paid while learning. The prospect of future employment is fair. The comparative comfort and remuneration of the work are good. Comfortable board, $3 a week." A company in Northfield, Conn., inform us: "It requires from three to five years to learn the men's part of the work. Some of the women work by the piece, and some by the day, receiving from $3 to $5 per week. The same price would be paid to men. The prospect of future employment is good. They work throughout the year. Women are superior in quickness. A locality should be fixed on where good water power may be had." =223. Needles.= Most of the needles used in Europe and America are manufactured at Redditch, fourteen miles from Birmingham, where there are about a dozen very large factories. The number manufactured in Redditch amounts to about seventy million per week. The process is a very long and painful one. The drilling is done by young women. The constrained posture and rigid gaze of the women on the eyes of the needles as they drill, is distressing. It requires a perfect steadiness of hand. In addition to this, the small channel observed on each side of the eye is made by women with a suitable file. The picking out of defective needles, and laying perfect ones with the heads one way and the points another, is performed by children. Dr. G. C. Holland writes: "We candidly admit that the physical evils produced by needle grinding exceed all that imagination has pictured." The needle grinders in England are said to be ignorant and dissipated. One half can neither read nor write. The dust which is evolved in the process of needle grinding, contains a much larger amount of steel than is produced by any other grinding. Mr. Aiken, inventor of the knitting machine, has the machines and needles both manufactured. He says "he supposes he could teach women to do most of the work on needles, if he would give the time and trouble. He pays $1 per day to hands in the needle room." In the manufacture of Bartlett's sewing-machine needles, but a few small girls are employed, at from $1 to $1.50 per week, for smoothing the eye by running an oiled thread through it. Formerly they employed girls to perforate the eye, but it is now done by machinery. A manufacturer of knitting needles writes us: "The winter season is the best for work, and the Eastern States furnish the best localities for manufactories." A maker of sewing-machine needles told me the tools are rather heavy, files and a lathe being used. They pay a boy of fourteen years $3 a week, and one of eighteen, $5.50. C. employs girls to envelop and label needles. They earn from $3 to $4 a week, and do it at home. It takes a long time to become expert. They are paid from the first, but not much. The business is limited. They could have it done for less in England, but prefer to put labels on for parties in this country, who want to be considered manufacturers. G. & B. employ some girls to label and paper needles they import. They pay two cents and a half for putting the labels on forty papers. The labelling is done in the latter part of winter and early spring. =224. Pens= (STEEL AND QUILL). A thousand million steel pens are said to be produced annually at Birmingham, England. We are indebted to some writer in an English paper for a description of the part taken by women in the manufacture of Gillott's pen in Birmingham. The number of women employed in his factory is four hundred. "If not altogether manufactured by woman, she has had, by far, more to do in its manufacture than men. He may have forged and rolled the metal, but she cut it from the sheet, gave it its semi-cylindrical form, stamped it, ground it on a wheel to make it flexible, split it, helped to polish it, and finally packed it in a box, or sewed it upon a card in readiness for the market. And whoever wishes to see her thus employed, may find her seated in an airy and comfortable chamber, with two hundred or three hundred companions similarly engaged--all healthy and merry, and singing at their work, while pens in all stages are clicking and glittering through their fingers at the rate of something like one hundred gross a day, each." An attempt has been made to manufacture steel pens in this country, but, I think, as yet without success. The makers of the Washington medallion pen had some girls to come from England to work for them, but found they could not keep up the factory, because of the prices they had to pay for labor. The duty on steel pens is thirty per cent., yet they can be imported for less than it would cost to make them here. Some one writes to the editor of the _Englishwoman's Journal_ as follows: "Madam, I have been told that quill pens made by hand are far superior to those made by machinery, and are therefore used in some of the principal offices of London. Besides which, very many persons are unable to write except with quill pens; rejecting the best and most expensive ones made of any kind of metal. Might not the making of them be a suitable occupation for some young women, who, from lameness or other infirmities, might be unable to follow a more active life?" In New York, some quills are made into pens by machinery, but women, we believe, are not employed. =225. Philosophical Apparatus.= K., in Brooklyn, told me that in the old country it is customary to spend seven years learning to make philosophical apparatus, but in this country boys do not like to be apprenticed so long. The business is not fast enough for Americans. It requires close and constant application. The burnishing is quite hard work. The occupation has a tendency to render one intellectual and scientific. Most young men leave it to become physicians and preachers. Dr. McG., of China, is one of the number. The work is mostly done by lathe, but the polishing by hand. I think women could do it, if they were brought up to it. Instruments are made in Europe, and imported for less than they could be made in the United States. Business is now very slack. K. used to have several apprentices, that he boarded and paid $1 a week during the first year. The next year he increased their wages to $1 a week more, the next year another $1, &c. In small establishments an instrument is carried through all its processes by the same workman. The business is done in the United States on so small a scale as not to afford a sufficient subdivision to furnish any part suitable for women. P. does not know of any women being employed in this country in this trade. He thinks there is much of it they could do, and in process of time it will be done in the United States. In France and England, there are many women who learn with their fathers and husbands, and work with them. Many women are employed in making small compasses, that require a nice adjustment and care in pasting, but a separate room would be necessary, and that he has not. A manufacturer of nautical instruments writes me, he does not know of women being employed in any part of his business in any portion of the world. The brass on philosophical instruments is polished by hand, but a manufacturer told me he would not have even the polishing done by inexperienced hands, as they are very particular with the finishing off of their work. =226. Saws.= A saw maker says, in England women are employed in lacquering the handles and polishing the blades of saws. An Englishman, who did a very extensive business in New York, employed girls in the same way, but he failed in business, and none have been employed since. W. pays boys for such work $2.50 a week. Another informant writes me that in England women are employed in the saw manufactories. =227. Scissors.= In France, women are employed in the manufacture of cutlery. The blades of scissors are polished by women on lathes supplied with emery powder and oil, and subsequently on lathes supplied with crocus. =228. Spectacles.= S. says there are women in England and France who make spectacle frames for them. He employs a woman to grind the glasses of spectacles. She can earn $15 a week, and has earned $23 a week by taking work home with her to do at night. On Nassau street, I saw a French lady who grinds glasses for spectacles on a lathe. She works from nine to five o'clock, and earns about $9 a week. There is not the danger some might apprehend of glass flying into the eyes while at work. Yet it requires great care and skill. I called at a manufactory of silver-plated spectacles and saw the whole process. Several parts are done by women. One was shaping the frames for the eyes, another setting them up, another preparing them to solder, another soldering, and three others were scouring. The soldering must be uncomfortable in warm weather. The employment, I suppose, is not more unhealthy than any other of a mechanical nature. One girl told me she earned seventy-five cents per day. They are paid by the quantity. She said the rest could earn as much, if they were industrious. One considerably older, at another branch, said she could earn $4 a week. It would not require more than a few weeks, I think, to learn any branch pursued by women--to learn all the parts performed by women, would require six months or more, even for an apt and skilful pupil. A spectacle maker, J., said a smart person could learn to make silver spectacles in a year, but it would require something longer to learn to make gold ones, as gold is a more difficult metal to melt and work than silver. An apprentice is not paid the first year, because of the metal he wastes. To learn it, one should at first look on and see how the work is done. A manufacturer of spectacles writes: "Women might make and repair spectacles. The heavier parts of the business require foot lathes to be worked, where skirts would be out of place, but the most could be done by hand in making spectacles." (We have seen several women at foot lathes, polishing watch cases--so the use of foot lathes need not be an objection with women.) A spectacle importer writes: "We use a great many spectacle glasses, and in their manufacture in England females are generally employed. In France and Germany the women do the same kind of work." P., in Meriden, Conn., writes: "We employ women in making spectacles. The work is not more unhealthy than any other labor in shops. Most are paid by the piece--those who work by the week usually receive $4, and work ten hours a day. They receive about three fourths the price of male labor, because they perform the lighter work. They earn their board in one week--get good wages in eight. They usually do about the same amount of work through the year. We employ about fifty, because they are more active on light work, and can be had for less wages. Most are Americans. Girls prefer this to housework, and make better wages. The nearer New York, the lower are freights; the farther from New York, the more permanent our help. Good sense and religious principle prevail among them. Those who board pay $2.25 per week." A manufacturer in Brooklyn, of fine gilt, silver, plated, and German silver spectacles, writes: "The employment is healthy. Young girls earn $2 per week, older ones from $3 to $6. They are generally paid by the piece. Girls and boys earn about the same wages, but those who have spent years to acquire the trade are entitled to better prices. A smart girl or boy will learn in the course of six months to do a specific part. Wages are usually paid from the time they commence. A fair share of common sense and willingness to labor are the principal requisites. As long as people grow old, and need spectacles, they will be manufactured. Our work continues about the same through the season. They work ten hours a day. In burnishing, the demand is pretty good. We employ ten women, because they can do the parts of work required better than boys or men. Half are American. We find women rather more ready and apt than men. It is advantageous to be in or near the great markets. Board, $2." I was told by an English maker of spectacle frames, that most spectacles are made in France and Germany. Men and women are paid in England 37½ cents a dozen for grinding the best quality of glasses. The makers of frames should know how to make figures, to put them on the frames. Women would be most likely to find employment as grinders of glasses in New York, and no doubt a small number could get work of that kind. Gold and silver frames are polished on a lathe with leather and rouge. Common frames are burnished with agate and steel. It is done more quickly, and is cheaper than polishing. Most spectacle frames of a common quality are made in the country, because it can be done by water power, and more cheaply. =229. Surgical Instruments.= T., manufacturer, told me that some steel surgical instruments are burnished by hand. He thinks there is not enough in that line of business to do, to justify women in learning. He said the polishing of surgical instruments could be done by women. It requires judgment and experience, but is simple, requiring the worker merely to hold the instrument on lathes and turn every few seconds; but burnishing requires more strength. I was told that perhaps women are employed in polishing silver surgical instruments. =230. Telescopes.= G., an optician, says much of the light work in making telescopes might be done by women. They could French-polish the wooden frames, lacquer the brass work, and grind the glasses, if properly instructed. He thinks making microscopes is more suitable for them. =231. Thermometers.= The construction of the thermometer is quite simple. Women, if taught, could put the parts together, and mark the scales. I have been told that some girls are employed in Rochester, New York, in marking the scales. The same remarks will apply to the barometer. * * * * * =232. Copper and Zinc Manufacture.= So far as we can learn, no women are employed in copper and zinc mines, or in the making of copperas. Twenty-five women are employed in packing copper powder flasks, by the Waterbury Manufacturing Company, and making percussion caps. One fourth of them are American. They earn from $3 to $4 per week, and the work is reported not unhealthy. The women are paid about one half as much as men. It does not require long to learn, and learners are paid something during their apprenticeship. Ten hours are devoted to work. All seasons are alike. The agent says the women do better for light work than men, but require more watching. =233. Tin Manufacture.= A youth, that was working in a tin shop for a widow, whose husband had been a tinner, told me that a female relative of his, who lived about one hundred years ago in Ireland, could do all the various parts of work as well as a man. She learned the trade regularly. Women are paid nearly as well as men for such labor in the old countries, but cannot work so fast. He says, even now in Europe a few women learn the trade of a tinner. It requires four years to learn it thoroughly in all its branches, because there is such a variety. One or two branches may be learned perfectly in a short time; so may several be learned indifferently in the same period; just as a violinist may know how to play a few tunes very well, but cannot play any others; or may know how to play a great many indifferently, but none perfectly. In England, where women are employed in tin shops to solder, they receive for this work their board and thirty-seven cents a day. =234. Lanterns.= I visited a large tin establishment in Brooklyn, and saw the girls at work; some soldering the corners of the lanterns, some assorting the pieces, some putting glass in the sides, some fastening conductors' lamps in the framework, with plaster of Paris, and some enveloping them to send away. There is nothing unhealthy in the work. The smoke of the charcoal stoves used in soldering is carried off by pipes. Girls putting glass in the tin frames, sometimes get their fingers cut. The girls all wear aprons. The plaster of Paris part of the work is very dirty. The girls earn from $2.50 to $4.50. They are all employed at first in papering, as it is termed--that is, putting the articles in papers ready to be packed; and receive, for a few weeks, $2.50 a week, then more, according to ability and industry. Some are paid by the week and some by the piece; they work ten hours. Girls prefer mechanical labor to domestic service, because they have the evenings to themselves. It requires but a few weeks for a girl of ordinary abilities to learn the part she is to perform. The proprietor said he could have a hundred times as many girls as he has, if he had employment for them. But few American women will work in factories with men. Most women are neater with their work than men. At a lantern manufactory in New York, I was told they employ eight or ten girls to cement the metal parts on the glass, to varnish, to wash and wipe and paper them. They are paid $3.50 a week. =235. Britannia Ware.= Some Britannia is burnished by hand, and some by lathe. Women occasionally do the first kind. * * * * * =236. Silver.= "The artisan who forms certain articles of gold and silver is called, indifferently, a goldsmith or silversmith. The former denomination is most commonly employed in England, and the latter in the United States." A manufacturer of silver ware in Providence, Rhode Island, writes: "We do not employ women, and for the same reason that females are not employed in machine shops." Chinese women do filagree work. A lady told me she had seen it done in a factory near Paris, by women. =237. Burnishers.= At M.'s, Philadelphia, they employ from thirty to fifty women on plated ware; would employ more if they had room for them to work. They spend three months learning, and receive no wages during that time. They then earn from $3 to $6 per week, according to skill and industry. They work by the piece. Another set of women are employed in scouring the ware. It is wet, dirty work, and the women receive somewhat higher wages. The burnishers work in a light, comfortable room. The scourers work in a cellar. The business of burnishing is not hard on the eyes; nor would it be on the chest, M. thinks, if the burnishers sat upright, which they could do if they chose. We were told by some one else, that the demand for laborers in that field is very limited in Philadelphia. I was told by a silversmith in New York, that a good burnisher can earn from $5 to $7 a week, and he thought it took about a year to learn to become a good worker. Burnishing is a laborious and perfectly mechanical process. With some, the stooping posture is found trying to the breast, and constantly poring over the bright surface is injurious to the eyes. The business is poorly paid, and a silversmith can employ but a very small number of burnishers, but manufacturers of plated ware employ more. F. employs two girls for burnishing silver ware, who can earn from $5 to $9 per week. It is piece work, and does not require long to learn. C. L. pays burnishers from $3 to $6 a week. At a manufactory of silver service for Roman Catholic churches, I was told they are most busy just before Christmas and Easter. They pay by the week, because it is less trouble, and to them cheapest, as many of the articles they make are small. They pay from $2 to $5 a week. Y., in New York, who employs a number in burnishing silver ware, told me he pays learners nothing for a month, then by the piece. A good burnisher could earn from $5 to $7 a week. The prices are better than are generally paid to women for mechanical work. A lady burnisher told me she likes the work because it can be done at home. She thinks the work not injurious to the eyes. To learners she pays nothing for two months, then $1 a week, and so increases as the learner advances. At the end of a year, the learner is considered proficient. Silver platers mostly employ their operatives in factories. Silver ware requires more taste and neatness than plated ware, and pays better. It is like vest making. One that can make good ones, gets a good compensation; but those who slight their work are paid proportionately. A good burnisher can earn $6 and upward. Mrs. ---- thinks after a while there will be manufactories of plated ware in the South and West. I saw a man making silver and brass faucets. The burnishing is first done with steel, then with agate. It requires some strength, but a woman of muscular force could do it. The majority of burnishers work upon plated ware, as less silver is used since plated ware has been brought to its present state of perfection. M. pays by the piece. A woman receives from $4 to $7 per week, according to competency and industry. It requires from two to four months to learn. The large cities, or places where the goods are manufactured, are the best for burnishers. The work soils clothes, so girls generally change their dresses or wear large aprons. Spring and fall are busy seasons. Hollow ware is generally burnished by men, as it requires more strength. At H.'s, I saw a few women scouring the ware with sand, and nineteen burnishing. They earn from $3 to $6 a week. A man in B., that does hand plating, employs girls to burnish, and pays them by the piece. They can earn from 75 cents to $1.50 per day; they work at home. In New York there are some ladies who teach burnishing, and at some establishments a premium is paid for learning. In some large factories, girls are paid by the week from $3 to $5. C. pays by the piece, and from the first, but a girl cannot earn more than $1 a week for two or three months. It requires from four to six months to become a burnisher. The prospect for learners is good, because girls will get married, and so leave vacancies. The business is increasing. Good burnishers earn from $4 to $12 a week. He employed a girl to stay in his office and burnish, paying her according to what she did, from $1 to $1.25 a day. Women, he remarked, receive the same price for burnishing that men do. (He may pay them so, but I know all do not.) About the holidays are the most busy times. There are not two months in the year a good burnisher cannot get employment. Merchants are slack longer than manufacturers. C. is a practical plater, and not so much at the mercy of his employés as those that are not. His burnishers begin on knives and forks, as they are most simple. A burnisher told me it is not customary to pay a learner during the first two months. Most burnishers wear a shield. He thinks it is not bad on the eyes unless done at night. A northern light is best for judging of the work, just as a northern light is best for seeing the imperfections of a painting. About four months of the year, January, February, July, and August, burnishers find it difficult to get work, except in very large establishments, where they are kept busy all the time. A man working at coach lamps told me girls used to be employed in the factory to burnish plates, and received $3 per week. The Porter Britannia and Plate Co., Conn., "employ women in burnishing, washing and packing. They earn from $3 to $5 per week. Men and women have the same price for their work, but men earn from 50 to 75 per cent. more, because they accomplish more. Men and women spend three months learning. Women could not endure more than ten hours such work. The supply rather exceeds the demand generally. On many accounts, women are preferable. They are superior in care and nicety of execution. The labor is too exhausting for tropical climates. There are some parts of the occupation suitable for women in which they are not now employed." Information from three other establishments corresponds with that given. Silversmiths in New Orleans write me, February, 1861: "Women are much employed in Europe as well as in this country, burnishing silver ware. It is not in the least unhealthy. Most are paid by the piece, and here some receive as high as $50 a month. For silver burnishing, women are paid the same as men. The time of learning depends greatly upon capacity--usually about six months. There is a very slight prospect, at present, of employment. The best season for work is winter; there is none in the summer. In the higher branches of such work, women acquire superior skill." =238. Thimbles.= P. was kind enough to make an entire silver thimble, that I might see the process. The whole of the work could be done by women, but no women in any country are employed at it, so far as he knows. I was told by one or two other thimble makers, that no women are ever employed in that branch of business. It is usual for a boy to serve an apprenticeship of four years. While doing some parts of the labor the workers sit, and while doing other parts they stand. The polishing is done on a lathe, and there is not enough of it to furnish work for a separate person, except in very large establishments, and even then it is so connected with the other processes that it could not be well divided. There are not so many thimbles sold now as formerly, because of the sewing machines that are used. There are not more than from eight to twelve thimble makers in the United States. There are none South or West of Philadelphia. * * * * * =239. Silver Plating.= Women cannot well do the close or hand plating. It is done by soldering and ironing. Door plates are made in this way. Electro-plating is done with a battery. The business includes a variety of work, and requires some knowledge of chemicals, but could be learned by an intelligent person in a short time. The Americans are noted for excellence in this department. H. knew a lady plater in Connecticut, and a very good one she was. I have been told women are employed in silvering metals in France. * * * * * =240. Bronze.= Some statuettes are made of the finer metals, gold and silver, while busts are made of other simple metals, as copper, iron, zinc, lead, &c. They are generally made, however, of the mixed metals. It requires some years' experience to make bronze statuettes. Women are employed in France, in ornamental bronze work. Mlle. de Faveau has succeeded in having a bronze statue of St. Michael cast entirely whole, instead of in portions. It is the resuscitation of a lost art. * * * * * =241. Gold and Jewelry Manufactures.= Those that manufacture jewelry in the United States form a small body. The articles sold by different houses vary as much in price and quality as any other kind of goods. Jewellers often have connected with their business persons who work in ivory, jet, hair, and such materials. "Felicie de Faveau, as a worker in jewels, bronze, gold, and silver, as a designer of monuments and mediæval furniture, stands without approach." Much common jewelry is made in Rhode Island, and women are employed to some extent in its manufacture. The New England Jewelry Company in Providence employ women to solder, and pay $4 a week, ten hours a day. It does not take long to learn. They have work usually all the year. In the Eastern manufactories, women suffer some from dust, on account of their working in the same rooms where the men are employed at the machinery. In the manufacture of jewelry, the fumes of charcoal are usually permitted to fill the workshop; and the fusion of saltpetre, alum, and salt, used in dry coloring, induces general nervousness and pain in the head and chest. This has been to some extent remedied, by having pipes that carry off the fumes partially, or it may be, in whole. There are many departments in the jewelry line that might be successfully filled by women: the sale of jewelry is one. It requires several years for one to become well acquainted with the jewelry business, and that is longer than many women are willing to spend in fitting themselves for business. Mr. B. said: "One to set jewels should be able to mount them. But few people make setting a separate business. When he learned, a woman was not at all employed by jewellers in this country. He pays some of his workers $10 a week, ten hours a day." A jewelry manufacturer in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, writes: "Women are employed in the manufacture of jewelry--also in casing and packing the same for market. The work is not more injurious than weaving or sewing. They are paid about the same as men. Some pay by the piece, some by the hour. Women are not paid as well as men, because they cannot do all parts. The time of learning depends upon their ingenuity. Some may learn in one week, others in four. They are paid while learning. Women are employed in the lighter branches because they are quicker. The advantage of a locality is in having natural water power, in a community where there is plenty of capital, and the capitalists are willing to invest in the business." Some manufacturing jewellers told me "they pay from $3 to $8 per week to their women. They work ten hours a day. The time of learning is six months, but, as in every thing else, much depends on the capacity, aptitude, and particular genius of the learner. More women could be employed in this business, if properly qualified. All their women are Germans. New York is the best place for selling jewelry, but other places are as good for manufacturing." =242. Gold Assayers.= Assaying by acids and other reagents could be done by women. Tests are now imported, but most assayers prefer to make their own tests. Assaying requires patience, a knowledge of metals, and endurance of heat. It also requires instruction and considerable experience. Some assayers move from place to place wherever new mines are discovered, and reap the benefit of their skill and knowledge. A gold refiner informs me "that his business is mostly heavy fire work, requiring the most able men. None of it is sufficiently light for females." I find, however, that women are reported in the census of Great Britain as gold and silver refiners, cutters, and workers. =243. Enamellers.= The experience, taste, delicacy of touch, and fineness of finish required, make the art of enamelling one very suitable for women. The richness of coloring and exquisite workmanship render some specimens very beautiful. Simple metals are mostly used as a base. I saw a man enamelling jewelry, who told me he employs small girls to enamel, paying from $2 to $3 a week. It requires but two weeks to learn. I saw some jewelry that had been enamelled in Germany by women. In France, women are employed as enamellers, at from 8 to 16 cents a day. "Gold of the standard quality is the best metal to enamel on, as it imparts something of its own glow to the ground, and assists materially the richness and delicacy of the coloring, particularly in the flesh tints. Copper gives a cold greenish hue to the enamel ground, but it is more commonly used than gold on account of its cheapness. For large enamels it is necessary to use copper, as they require a heat which would melt plates of gold." A highly polished enamel is passed through the fire a number of times in the process of painting; otherwise it would be impossible to imitate any great delicacy of tint--as the colors are considerably changed by burning. "As the plates are every time subjected to a high red heat, it is obvious that enamels must be the most durable of all kinds of paintings." At an enamel factory for lining metal vessels with a porcelain coating, I saw a woman who has been employed for four years to mix enamel in the consistency of buckwheat dough, and pour it into vessels to form an enamel lining. The articles are then baked in a furnace that the enamel may harden. She stands while employed. She goes at half past seven in the morning, has half an hour at noon, and returns and works until four, for which she is paid $4 a week. She has a sister-in-law in Williamsburg that does the same kind of work. It is not at all unhealthy. =244. Gold and Silver Leaf.= The iron hammers used for beating gold leaf are very heavy. For the first beating, hammers weighing twelve pounds are used; for the second beating, hammers weighing six or eight pounds. Strong women could perform the second beating of gold leaf, but I do not know that they ever do--I think never in the United States. Lads serving as apprentices receive $1.50 a week for six weeks, then $2 a week for a time, and then more, according to ability and industry. A goldbeater told me a youth could get a pretty good insight into the business in a year or two, but the usual time of apprenticeship is either three or four years. Goldbeaters earn from $1.50 to $2 a day. We visited several gold-leaf manufactories, and found more uniformity in the time of learning and the prices paid than in any other branch of business. It requires from two to twelve weeks to learn to book gold leaf, depending on the abilities of the learner and the requirements of the establishment. Six weeks is the length of time usually given. It can be learned in two days, but requires practice to become expert. The girls are not paid while learning, as the materials are costly, and the quantity wasted comes to as much or more than the learner's services are worth. The standard price for laying gold leaf is one cent and a half a book. Bookers can earn from $2.50 to $5 a week, according to skill and expedition. The tools of a worker are very simple. I think, most of the women employed in the gold leaf factories of New York are Americans. Gold leaf is so light that even a breath of air will move it. In some factories, the booking is done in a room with the doors and windows closed--consequently the room is very warm in summer. The seasons of the year do not affect this business like most others. The demand for gold leaf regulates the supply. Where business is not systematically conducted, the beaters will sometimes not have the leaf ready to book, and so the girls must lose their time waiting; and in some cases the men's work is retarded by the absence of the bookers. All the manufacturers I talked with thought the prospect good of employment to learners. K. & Co. take learners in the spring, but will not take them unless they can insure them work when the six weeks of learning have expired. Neatness is required. No talking is allowed in the work room, as merely a drop of water falling from the lips might spoil from $3 to $4 worth of leaf. The leaf is weighed when given to the booker and when returned, so there is no opening for dishonesty. W. employs his hands all the year. The girls always sit while at work. Lightness and delicacy of hand are required. The prospect of employment is tolerable, but most prefer to retain those they teach, as there is much difference in the style and expedition. In some shops great care is taken with learners, and they acquire proportionate proficiency. We think this a very neat and genteel employment. It requires honest workers with nimble fingers. There are but very few manufactories South and West. =245. Jewellers' Findings.= D. & Co. manufacture tags for all kinds of goods. They employ girls and women in the country to string their tags, because they can do it in their spare moments, and consequently work cheaply. It pretty much takes the place of knitting, and a person could not earn more than twenty-five cents a day at it. They so employ thirty or forty persons. They also engage a number in box making. It requires care and neatness to make small boxes for jewelry. Workers are paid by the piece, and can earn from twenty-five cents to $1.25 a day, but those who earn the latter amount work from five in the morning until ten at night. This work is mostly done in families. D. & Co. are very strict in their regulations, and particular in the kind of work people they employ. =246. Pencils.= In Williamsburg, Mass., two women are employed in making gold and silver pencil cases. H., of New York, employs one girl for engine turning--an ornamental dotted work common on pencil and watch cases. He employs her by the week, and pays $3. She works ten hours a day. It requires but a few days for one of ordinary intelligence to learn. It is sedentary, but not unhealthy. He has employed nine women: they cannot do the work as well as men, but cheaper. He would employ boys, but they are so fond of changing their employment, and so anxious to engage in one that will advance them, that it is difficult to keep them at that work. It is very clean work. There is no prospect of future employment, as one woman can keep up with twelve other workers, and so very few are needed. Women have to work in the same room with the men, on account of the foreman having to regulate the machinery if it gets out of order. =247. Pens.= I saw a gold-pen manufacturer in Brooklyn. He will take ten or twelve learners shortly, and pay them from the commencement. He must have honest girls, for a dishonest girl will take $5 or $10 worth of gold at a time, frequently without its being missed. He will have a separate apartment for his girls. The best hands can earn from $5 to $6 a week, working ten hours a day. It requires only about a month to learn, but practice greatly improves and expedites work. He thought the prospect rather poor for learners. The part done by men could be done by women, but it is dirty work. That done by women is rather neat work. W., of Brooklyn, employs a number of girls in watch-case polishing and in finishing off pens. The majority are Americans. Some are paid by the piece, and some by the week. They work ten hours a day, and have employment all the year. Some girls learn the art in a short time, and some never. Some girls are paid while learning as much as $2.50 a week. W. thinks the prospect good of employment in that branch. He wanted several girls more. From the nimbleness of their fingers they can do their work better than men. More gold pens are made in this country than steel ones. A jeweller said learners should be paid from the first, and you may know he is not much of a man who would be willing to receive a woman's work for nothing. On Nassau street, N. Y., I saw a manufacturer who employs girls for stoning, frosting, and polishing pens. They are paid by the quantity, and can earn from $3 to $5 a week. They stand at a lathe while polishing. The only trouble is that their dress is likely to catch on the wheel. That might be remedied by wearing Turkish costume without hoops. It requires care and some judgment to do the frosting. They are paid something while learning, and in two or three months receive full wages. When business is good, the factory is going all the year. To make a good finisher requires that the individual have some mechanical talent and be a good penman. Some never succeed. In stoning and frosting, girls sit. The finishers are men, and the stooping required sometimes produces consumption. So many gold pen cases are not used now as formerly--probably not more than one tenth as many. Gutta percha has become a substitute. N. employed women seven or eight years ago in polishing, stoning, and pointing pens, and paid $5 a week of ten hours a day. Manufacturers in Williamsburg, Mass., write: "We employ women to make gold pens, pen holders, and jewelry, and pay from $3 to $4 per week--some by the piece and some by the week. It requires from one to three years to learn, according to the part they do. They are paid small wages while learning. We wish honesty and ingenuity in our workers. The business is permanent. Work is given at all seasons of the year. The hands work eleven and a quarter hours per day. We employ from ten to twelve women, because they can do the work equally as well as men, at about one third the price. Half are Americans. No other parts of the occupation are suitable for women than those in which we employ them. Help once settled in the country, if married, are likely to be permanent--in cities, _vice versa_, changing about. Our workmen have a fine reading room. Board, $1.50 for women, $2.50 for men." =248. Watches.= A watch is said to consist of 992 pieces. We have seen it stated that two hundred persons are employed in the entire process of making a watch, and that, with the exception of the watch finishers (who put the parts together), not one of the workmen could perform any but his own specific part. In Switzerland, families, for generation after generation, devote themselves to making particular parts of watches. Women have proved their ability to execute the most delicate parts. Twenty thousand Swiss women earn a comfortable livelihood by watch making. They make the movements, but men mostly put them together. I think a few women work as finishers. We quote from the _Englishwoman's Review_: "Geneva has always refused to employ women, and has now totally lost the watch trade. None of the Geneva watches, so called, come from that part of Switzerland, but are manufactured elsewhere, and principally in the canton of Neufchatel, where women have been employed from the first." Mr. Bennett, of London, "states facts relative to the mental culture of both sexes, which is deemed requisite in Switzerland to prepare the intellect, the eye, and the hand for watch manufacture, and he refers to the salubrious dwellings of the operatives." A traveller states: "We see women at the head of some of the heaviest manufactories of Switzerland and France, particularly in the watch and jewelry line." In England, women have been until lately excluded from watch making by men, but some are now employed in one establishment in London and in several of the provincial towns. "There is a manufactory at Christchurch, England, where five hundred women are employed in making the interior chains for chronometers. They are preferred to men, on account of their being naturally more dexterous with their fingers, and therefore being found to require less training." From the November number of the _Knickerbocker_ we quote: "All imported watches are made by hand, the American watches being the only ones made by machinery in a single establishment by connected and uniform processes. The Waltham watches have fewer parts and are more easily kept in order than any others; and are warranted for ten years by the manufacturers. They have over one hundred artisans employed, more than half of whom are women." The manufactory occupies a space more than half an acre in extent. Hand labor is cheaper in Europe than this country, but American watches are cheaper, because made by machinery. Making the cases is a distinct branch from the interior work, and furnishes employment to some women. Cleaning watches would form a pretty and suitable employment for women. I was told of some Swiss women living in Camden, New Jersey, that make the inside work of watches very prettily and very accurately. A manufacturer of chronometers in Boston writes: "We employ women in cutting the teeth of watch and chronometer wheels, polishing, &c. They are generally employed by the week or year, and work nine or ten hours a day. Women might be employed in large establishments in merely cleaning or polishing the parts of watches repaired, without putting them together; and they might learn to do it in a short time, a few months perhaps. We pay our women for such work from $4 to $6 a week, according to their capacity. The qualifications needed are delicacy of touch, patience, and great carefulness. The employment will be very limited. Work is steady the year round. The principal objection to employing women is that they are very apt to marry just as they become skilful enough to be reliable; therefore, what does not require long apprenticeship or a great expense to learn, is most desirable for them. A good degree of intelligence is indispensable. The more, of course, the better." We would add to the requisites for a watchmaker, patience and ingenuity. The secretary of the American Watch Company at Waltham writes: "Women are employed at our factory. The employment is entirely healthy. We pay from $4 to $7 per week for intelligent girls, and women's average pay is $5. About half are paid by the piece. Men earn about double the wages of women, because, first, they do more difficult work, are more ingenious, more thoughtful and contriving, more reliant on themselves in matters of mechanics, are stronger, and therefore worth more, though not perhaps double, as an average; second, because it is the custom to pay women less than men for the same labor. Women and girls are paid from $2.50 to $4 per week during the first four months, while they are learning the particular part of our business we set them at. The requisites are a good common-school education, general intelligence, and quickness; light, small hands are best. The business is new to the country. We work every working day in the year, without detriment to the health of women, who seem to endure their labor as well as men. We work ten hours a day. There is little demand for labor in the watch-making business generally in this country, but we think women could be taught successfully the art of watch making, so as to be able at least to earn a living as watch repairers. We employ seventy-five women out of two hundred hands, and because there are many parts of our work they can do _equally_ well with men; but it is generally light and simple work, for which no high degree of mechanical skill is requisite. Nine tenths are American born. Our hands are all made perfectly comfortable in their labor. We employ female labor, where we can, as being cheaper; but we find women do not reach the posts where a high degree of skill is needed, as of course they do not those for which their strength is insufficient. They have abundant facilities for mental culture in the evenings. About half live with parents or relatives; the rest board, and pay from $2 to $3 a week, according to quality." =249. Watch Case and Jewelry Polishers.= Quite a number of women are employed in polishing watch cases, and a few in polishing jewelry. It requires some time to learn to do the finest work, and some can never learn. The polishing of good gold is done by hand and the lathe--common jewelry, by the lathe alone. A good polisher can earn $1 a day of ten hours' work. C. & Co. employ girls, because they do not have to pay them so high, and they do it as well. B. & H., who have a factory in Jersey City, employ a number of lady polishers. The rouge renders it dirty work, but not unhealthy. Very good hands can earn $7 or $8 a week. They employ four sisters, French girls, who have bought a farm for their parents. They have generally paid $23 a week to the four sisters. The prospect for learners is good. They generally pay by the week, and have their hands work ten hours a day. They take learners, and pay something from the first. It requires two years' practice to become very good polishers. They prefer to make an agreement with the learner to retain her some time, as the material is costly, and considerable is wasted by a learner. In good times they have work steadily all the year. Polishers can either sit or stand while at work. Burnishing and polishing are different. Burnishing is done with steel, polishing with buffs. Plated ware is burnished, silver and gold are polished. S. thinks several girls might, in busy times, find employment in polishing jewelry. He often advertises for workers, but receives few answers. It requires two or three years to learn, and four or five to become perfect workers. In Germany and France, girls have polished jewelry for many years. In the Southern and Western U. States, there are no manufactories of any extent. They have not the machinery for such work. What little is made and repaired is done in the jeweller's shop, or above his store. F. & P. employ small girls about thirteen years old to polish, paying $1.50 per week, while learning. It requires about a year for young girls to become expert. We were told women are the best polishers of jewelry. A maker of gold buttons, who has employed girls to polish, paid $2 a week to small girls, and $3 to older and more experienced hands. The girls are also employed in putting them up. Care is needed in polishing, that the work be evenly done. A watch-case polisher told me a woman cannot earn more than $2 or $3 a week at polishing. (It may be all he pays.) Mrs. C. is teaching a girl to polish watch cases. She boards her, and pays her $30 the first year, and furnishes her with a certain number of dresses. A good polisher may earn from $6 to $8 a week. She told me a lady in Philadelphia, that she taught, is making $27 a week. C. has most of his polishing done by a lady. He pays boys he takes as apprentices, $2.25 a week, from the first. He says a good lady polisher can earn $1 a day. He pays his men from $10 to $15 a week, because they do more, and do it better than women. In good seasons there is so much polishing to do that experienced hands are very much hurried. The work is not confined to seasons. It does not require long to learn to polish. Such work is mostly done in New York, but considerable is done in the small towns around. At S.'s we saw a girl polishing, who told us she received $1 a day. She says there a girl spends six months learning. For three months she receives nothing, after that $3 a week. At B.'s, the lathes are moved by steam, but have treadles also, that the work may not cease when the engine or machinery is out of order. Less and less watch work is done by hand in the United States every year, owing no doubt to the large number imported and the increased use of machinery. The work in the business has fallen to European rates. A good polisher has been earning $6 or $7 a week, but very few can do so now, and the prospect of employment is poor for a learner. Some years ago he employed a lady at $15 a week, for fitting movements to the case. The sister of a watch-case maker and importer, in Brooklyn, told me that she worked at the business some years ago, and received seventy-five cents apiece for polishing watch cases--now but fifty cents is paid. The lady often polished four cases in a day of ten hours, and so earned $3. In the European countries, some years back, a man was paid $1 for making a watch case; in the United States, $5. Prices have fallen greatly in the United States for this kind of work, because the duty on imported goods is so low. She says the work is not very clean, because the oil and rouge get on your clothes and person. Everybody should wear working clothes, if their labor is such as to soil them. The motion of the foot in moving the lathe tries the back greatly. When the polishing is done by steam, it is not so. As men and women are paid by the piece, women receive as good wages. A smart person can learn to polish in a few days, but to learn it thoroughly would require three months. Women are paid in this country while learning, but in Europe they are not. In prosperous times, work is good all the year. In summer, work is done for the North; in winter, for the South. A locality in or near a large city is preferable. Prices vary in different establishments. Usually, where the best quality of work is done, the best prices are paid the work people--where cheaper work is done, lower wages are paid. The usual price paid to girls as polishers, when they are employed by the week, is $6--a better remuneration for mechanical labor than most women receive. =250. Watch Chains.= In Birmingham, several hundred women are employed in making chains, and we suppose fifty or more in this country. The gold wire is prepared and drawn out by men, as it requires too much strength for women. All the work after that is performed by women. The wire is cut into pieces of the right length, then bent into the proper form by means of a die worked by a hand press; each link is then soldered together by means of a jet of gas, a blowpipe, and a tiny piece of solder, when it is finished by polishing. D. & S., Philadelphia, employ three girls in soldering. The wages of the girls vary from $3.50 to $8 a week. They work ten hours a day. It is not an unhealthy business, D. and S. think, and can be learned in two months. M. F. & Co., New York, employ girls in soldering and polishing chains. Those that solder earn from $3 to $8 a week. Some of the girls are paid by the week, and some by the inch. It can be pretty well learned in three months. After two or three weeks they are able to earn about $2 a week. To those girls who instruct learners they give the profits of the learners. Polishing is not clean work, but the women can generally earn more at it. They earn from $3 to $9 a week. They work ten hours a day, when paid by the week, in summer; but in winter, not so long. The building is never lighted. The women have a separate apartment to work in, and change their clothes on entering and leaving the work room; and the polishers tie up their heads, to prevent their hair being covered with rouge. The girls wear the same clothes every day while at work, that they may not carry away any gold. The proprietors sell their waste scraps for $8,000 a year. They require boys to spend five years learning the business, taking them at the age of 16, and retaining them until 21. Men that learn a trade expect to follow it until death. M. thinks women will not spend long learning a trade, for nearly all women look forward to something else than working all their lives at a trade. The heat and fumes of gas used in chain making are said to render the occupation unhealthy, but an extensive manufacturer assured me that the fumes are not inhaled, as the flame is blown from the worker, and that it is not more unhealthy than any other sedentary occupation. I would have thought the minuteness of the particles composing some chains would be trying on the eyes, but the girls said not. The chain makers sit while at work. In summer they cannot sit near an open window, lest any of the gold be blown away. Chain making looked to be very nice, delicate work, requiring care, judgment, and some skill. The Europeans have not got to using steam in any part of the process, and are astonished at the superiority of the American chains. There are no manufactories West or South. I was told at Tiffany's, the making of some kinds of chains can be learned in two or three years, while other kinds require five years. S., at Tiffany's, told me he was the first person that introduced women into the manufacture of jewelry in New York. The hands at chain making receive $1.50 a week at first--as they become more skilful, they receive more. The average payment is $5 a week. They have one woman who has been at the business six years, and earns $8 a week. Another manufacturer told me chain making is not unhealthy. It requires a year to learn to do polishing well, and during that time a learner can earn only from $1.75 to $2 a week. While polishing at a lathe, workers stand. Men do most polishing now. They do it by machinery propelled by steam, and one man can accomplish as much in a day as a woman by a treadle lathe can do in two weeks. Manufacturers in Providence write me, "their girls, from six to fifteen in number, work at home, and are paid by the piece. They earn $1 a day of ten hours on an average. They do not employ men in that department of the business. It requires men five years to learn the business--females to solder, thirty days. Good eyesight is necessary. The business will probably increase with growth of country and increase of wealth. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons. They are all American." Some manufacturer in New York writes: "The work is not more unhealthy than any other so sedentary. It is generally paid for by the piece, the workers earning from $2 to $8 per week. The men average from $10 to $12. Men spend seven years learning--girls, one. Quickness of motion, perseverance, and attention are desirable qualities. The prospect for work in future is moderate. The busy seasons are spring and fall. In July, August, January, and February, the women are employed. We have from thirty to forty females, because the work is light." =251. Watch Jewels.= I called on a Swiss lady who sets jewels in watches. She supports her family by it, but complains of a scarcity of work, because watchmakers can import their jewels at four shillings a dozen from Switzerland, and set them themselves. MISCELLANEOUS WORK. =252. Indian Goods.= Any one that has ever visited Niagara, knows something of the immense quantity of Indian goods offered for sale. Moccasins and reticules (made of buckskin, and ornamented with beads), pincushions, baskets, &c. (made of birch-wood, and ornamented with figures and flowers of party-colored porcupine quills), can be had. Fans of feathers and a thousand little fancy articles may be bought in a dozen different shapes at Niagara. The Indians make most of them, but quite a number are made by fairer hands. The duty on goods purchased in Her Majesty's realm, and brought into the States, is ten per cent. So, if a person is careful of his purse, or disposed to encourage home manufactures, he had as well purchase on the American side. On most of the steamboats and cars of the Western waters, while in port or at the depot, genuine Indian women may be seen, with (we suppose) genuine Indian articles for sale. =253. Inkstands.= Manufacturers of inkstands in Connecticut write: "We employ from twelve to fifteen American women in painting, varnishing, and bronzing inkstands, and pay from fifty to sixty cents per day of ten hours. Females do not perform the same kind of labor that the males do. The wages of women are less, because there is a surplus in consequence of there being so little diversity in female employment. The occupation is learned in from one to two years. That part done by females may be learned in one month. They are paid while learning. Some mechanical ingenuity is required. The business will depend on general commercial prosperity. Summer and fall are the most busy seasons. No cessation of employment during the year. The other parts of the work are too laborious for women. Our location is preferable, as we have water power and are convenient to market. Board, $1.75 per week." =254. Lithoconia=, or artificial stone, is being used as a substitute for terra cotta, papier-maché, &c. It is composed of mineral substances, and is insoluble in water. It is used for making photograph frames, busts, and statuary, and for architectural purposes. It is made in Roxbury, Mass. The proprietor and inventor writes: "I employ fourteen women in manufacturing and finishing lithoconia photograph frames. Their wages average $5 a week, ten hours a day. Some are paid by the piece, and some by the day. Men earn from $1 to $2 per day. Women learn in from one to four weeks. Cultivation of the eye and finger, and great neatness are desirable in a learner. Girls accustomed to drawing or fine needle work answer well. The prospect of more work is good. My women work the year round. Women, I think, are more reliable than men; that is, if told to do a work in a certain way, they will do it. Men are more apt to experiment in a new business. Women might be employed in gilding the frames. We have twelve men in New York doing that for us now. My girls pay from $1.75 to $2 per week for board. I hear no complaint of their houses; but, judging from my Scotch experience, the accommodations in Scotland are far superior in an intellectual point of view; but so far as pies and doughnuts go, American boarding houses have the advantage." =255. Marble Workers.= The rough parts of marble working are wet, dirty, and laborious, but not the finishing. Constant standing on the feet, and having the hands wet much of the time, would not do for very delicate females. A marble worker writes: "Sawing marble is heavy and wet work, and performed in the night as well as the day. I do not see that women could be employed at it to any advantage." Theodore Parker mentioned seeing a woman, in a marble yard in Paris, sawing marble. I have been told that in Italy whole families engage in chiselling the beautiful marble ornaments brought to this country. As a stone cutter, Charlotte Rebecca Schild, of Hanau, worked in Paris. Miss McD. told me that she got situations for two girls with a marble cutter in Hollidaysburg to do the fine part of marble chiselling. =256. Mineral Door Knobs.= Manufacturers of mineral door knobs write: "We have women to make mineral door knobs, and to pack locks. They are paid by the piece, and average $5 per week. They work from nine to ten hours a day. It requires six months to learn. The prospect for further employment is small. Seasons make no difference in the work. We find men better adapted to the work. Our business affords little or no opportunity for the employment of women to advantage. We have about two hundred women in busy seasons. When men and women are employed in the same department, they talk too much." =257. Paper Cutters.= We read in "Women Artists" of a Dutch lady, "Joanna Koertin Block, who produced from paper very beautiful cuttings. All that the engraver accomplishes with the burin, she was able to do with the scissors. Country scenes, marine views, animals, flowers, with portraits of perfect resemblance, she executed in a marvellous manner." "Mrs. Dards opened a new exhibition with flower paintings in the richest colors. They were exact imitations of nature, done with fish bones." =258. Papier-Maché Finishers.= Papier-maché is made of paper ground into a pulp, and bleached if necessary. It is moulded into various forms. It has been cast into figures of life size. It is made into mouldings for the ornamental parts of bronzes. It is lighter, more lasting, and less brittle than plaster. It can be colored or gilt. Another article of the same name is made by gluing and pressing together, very powerfully, sheets of prepared paper until they acquire the thickness of pasteboard. They must be shaped while moist into the articles desired. When dry, they will be very hard and firm. They must be covered with japan, or other varnish, and may be beautifully painted with flowers, birds, landscapes, &c. Workboxes, portfolios, waiters, miniature cases, clock faces, and many other beautiful articles may be made of it. The varnishing, painting, and inlaying is done by women in the factories of England. Papier-maché manufacturers in Boston write: "We employ women in pressing and painting. The work is healthy. We pay $4 per week of ten hours a day. Men and women do not perform the same kind of work. We pay learners $2.50 the first month, $3 the second, $3.50 the third, and $4 afterward. The prospect of future employment is good. We find women have not a mechanical eye. Board, $2 per week." =259. Pipes.= Meerschaum means "foam of the sea." The pipes are made from earth found in the island of Samos. They are light, porous, and not easily broken. Some pipes are sold as genuine that are made from the clay left after forming and cutting the real pipes, but are of an inferior quality. A manufacturer of meerschaum pipes told me he employs a woman to polish the pipes. It is done by hand. She is paid $1.25 a dozen, and can do two or three dozen a day, but they have not enough of work to give her more than a dozen a week. A maker of white clay pipes told me: "The clay is brought from England. Nimbleness of fingers is most that is required for success. There is not much of that kind of work done now in our country, because pipes are imported from Germany for what the labor costs here. They are retailed at one penny apiece. Women used to make them here, and do now in European countries. They can do all parts of the work. Putting them in the furnace and baking them is warm work, but not more so than any other baking. The work is paid for according to the number of pipes made. A woman can earn about fifty cents a day for moulding, yet a man can earn $5 a day, because he can mould faster, and also attend the furnace." Besides, the man owns the tools and furnace, which do not cost a great deal, and I suppose would last a lifetime. We have seen it stated that white clay smoking pipes are made in Philadelphia by one person, who recently sent to England to procure additional assistance. =260. Porcelain.= Porcelain partakes of the nature of both earthenware and glass. It is a connecting link between the two. Few men are willing to run the risk of establishing porcelain and china-ware manufactories in this country, for they have nearly all proved failures. The porcelain of China and Japan is harder and more durable than that manufactured in Europe, but in beauty of form and elegance of design the European excels. Our best articles of household ware are mostly from England, those of an ornamental kind from France. Much of the work in a porcelain factory could be done by women, such as cutting the porcelain with wires, moulding the articles with a press, and washing them over with dissolved porcelain to produce a gloss. They could also bake them. Some do decorate and burnish them. (See China Decorators.) Women and children are employed in Cornwall, England, in preparing clay from china stone to be used by porcelain manufacturers, paper makers, and calico dressers. Miss B. told me that, much of the fine lacework seen on Dresden china is executed by women. It is very beautiful and delicate. At Greenpoint, L. I., the proprietor once employed girls, but now employs boys in preference. The men earn about $10 a week on an average for their work, being paid by the piece. The best of materials for making porcelain are found in this country, particularly in New Hampshire, where porcelain, parian, and enamel flint are manufactured. Porcelain earths are also found at Wilmington, Del., near Philadelphia, and in Alabama and Texas. =261. Pottery and Earthenware.= "In Africa, in the manufacture of common earthen vessels for domestic use, the women are as skilful as the men." In the making of stone and earthenware, women could, if properly instructed, perform most of the processes: those of throwing, turning, attaching handles, &c. Pressing might perhaps tax their strength, and burning prove rather warm work. In Germany, where the finer clay is used, women tramp the clay with their feet, and cut it with wires to remove any small stones it may contain. One of the disagreeable parts that fall to women in the potteries of Great Britain is that of washing and straining the clay. For turning large articles it requires men of a peculiar make. They must be tall and have long arms, to enable them to reach to the bottom of the vessels as they are being turned. Small articles made by the hand are stronger than those formed by pressing. The construction and management of wheels differ in Germany, England, and the United States. The materials for making earthenware are obtained in almost every part of the globe. At an earthenware factory I was told they pay $2.50 a week to a boy the first year he is learning, and increase that according to ability and industry. Flower pots are paid for by the piece, and a man can earn from $1.50 to $5 a day. At C. & M.'s factory I saw girls and women at work. Some were treading the lathe. It was done with the right foot only, and must be very fatiguing. I noticed the hoops of the girls were very much in the way. The girls receive one third as much as the men working at the wheels, which is generally $3 a week for the girls. A woman cutting claws of the clay with a hand press, told me she is paid by the piece, and can earn about $4 a week. She can sit while at work. It requires strength of hand. In another room girls were cutting clay with a wire, kneading with the hand, and giving it to the potter, and, when the vessel is turned, taking it off the wheel and placing it on a board to be baked. They are paid fifty cents a day. In another room a woman was employed dressing the ware, that is, selecting any that is imperfect and removing any surplus clay that may have been accidentally left on, and setting aside any too defective for sale. She receives about $3 a week. The proprietors have been thinking of getting girls in place of some of the boys who are wild and difficult to manage. A firm in East Boston write: "We employ four girls, paying $3.50 a week. Girls are more generally employed in the old countries at potteries than in this, but women will eventually be more employed here in that way. Pottery is now in its infancy in this country. My girls work ten hours. The employment is not unhealthy. My girls are all English. We employ them to do light work only, that boys would do, if we had no women. Board, $2.50. We employ them all the year. Spring and fall are the best seasons for work. We hope to live to see the time when we shall have twenty women and four men, instead of _vice versa_, as they are more steady and less expensive." =262. Stucco Work.= "Women are not employed at this trade in this country; in England there are some instances, but rarely. It is not unhealthy. The time spent in learning depends altogether on the taste and natural talent of the learner. Boys generally serve from three to five years. For ordinary work the qualifications need not be of a very high order; but for moulding, &c., a knowledge of drawing is essentially necessary. Summer and fall are the best seasons for this work. Ten hours a day are the usual number. Women may be employed at trimming and cleaning ornaments--also at making moulds for casting the same." Rosina Pflauder, in Salzburg, assisted her husband in stucco work. =263. Terra Cotta.= The list of articles made of this substance is comprised under two heads, vases and garden pots, and ornaments for architecture. A Gothic church was built of it in 1842 at Lever Bridge, England. The pulpit, reading desk, benches, organ screen, and the whole of the decorations were made of terra cotta. In the making of figures, women could do all except moulding. The finishing up would be suitable and pretty work for them. "Mlle. de Faveau has been peculiarly successful in her adaptation of terra cotta to artistic purposes." =264. Transferrers on Wood.= We do not know whether a distinct class of people engage in this business, or whether it is considered a branch of cabinet work. It is a light, pleasant business, and if there is sufficient demand for it, women would do well to engage in it. GLASS MANUFACTURERS. =265. Glass Manufacture.= All the materials for making good glass exist in the United States, and a great deal of glassware is made from them. The largest manufactures are in different parts of Massachusetts and in Pittsburg. The best glass for windows and mirrors is imported. I think glass making is not altogether suitable for women on account of the great heat, and necessity there would be for mixing with men, and men there must be. Yet it need not be so in all departments. Of the different kinds of ornamental window glass are enamelled, embossed, etched, painted, white, and colored. At a glass factory in Greenpoint, I saw some girls employed in breaking off the rough edges of mustard cruets, cementing the metal tops on, wiping them clean, and wrapping them up. They also cemented the tops on glass lamps. Occasionally they are employed to tramp with their feet and knead with their hands the English clay of which the vessels are made for holding the materials that are fused to form glass. In a factory I saw a girl washing glass, for which she is paid $3 a week--a day of ten hours. Two others were tying up glass, and were paid $4 a week of ten hours a day. At one factory in the East, they employ some girls to do the rough grinding, making stoppers for bottles, &c. People who silver mirrors are very seriously affected by the fumes of mercury, and more by the touch of the substance. A trembling disease is produced, which carries off its victims early in life. In France, some women are employed in this work. In blowing, moulding, and pressing glass, women of strong lungs and ability to sustain great heat could be employed. Casting glass requires greater physical strength than generally falls to the lot of women. A glass-bottle manufacturer in Stoddard, N. H., writes: "I employ twelve women willowing demijohns. They are paid by the piece, and can make about $3 per week, and board themselves. Men and women are paid the same. The work can be learned in from four to five weeks. They are paid at the same rate while learning. Half are Americans. Price of board here, $1.25." The Bay State Glass Co. "employ seventeen women for selecting and papering ware. They are paid by the week, from $3 to $5. It requires from one week to one month to learn. The prospect for employment depends somewhat upon the secession movement. The women are employed the year round, and work ten hours a day. Board, $1.50 to $2 a week." The Suffolk Glass Co. inform us they "employ one girl in capping lamps, &c. The work affords plenty of air and exercise. Their girl is paid by the day, and earns $4 a week, working ten hours a day. The work done by women could not be given to men. The reason they employ a woman is that women are employed by others for the same work. Men could accomplish much more in their work, but not enough to pay the difference in their wages. Boys are sometimes employed for such work. Women receive $2 while learning. Spring and fall are the busy seasons, but work is furnished all the year. Board, $2 to $2.50." The Union Glass Co., Boston, write: "We employ women in assorting the different qualities of ware, in cementing glass and brass parts together, and in cleaning glass. Their average pay is $3.50 per week, ten hours a day. There is no comparison in the prices of male and female labor, as they do not perform the same kind. The laws of supply and demand regulate pay, excepting that very valuable women get twenty-five to fifty per cent. extra pay. Men spend from seven years to a lifetime learning the business--women a year or so to learn the best paid kind of labor. There is little chance of women rising above $5 per week, as they perform only a certain department of labor. There is generally constant employment to good hands all the year. We employ fifteen, because it is customary and found expedient. Men can be employed at a better profit in other departments. Remuneration twenty-five to fifty per cent. less than men would require. The glass manufacture is carried on chiefly in the New England and Middle States." =266. Blowers.= I called in a factory where men were blowing glass bells to color and gild for Christmas trees. The man, a German, said in Germany women make them. The women there earn fifty cents a week at it, while men earn $2, though they do the work no better, and no more of it. There a person can live as well on $3 a week as on $10 here. =267. Beads.= Beads are made to a limited extent in this country, but nearly all are of French or German manufacture. Some cheap beads are made of potato and colored, and some made in imitation of coral. E. employs girls to make baskets, headdresses, &c., of beads. They cannot earn more than $2.50 a week of ten hours a day. He has most of it done in winter. Another gentleman, who has beads made into bracelets, necklaces, &c., gives the work mostly to married ladies, who do it in their leisure hours, and to school girls. They do so, because they can get it done more cheaply than if they employed those who do it to earn a living. They pay for such work by the gross, and a person could not earn over $3 a week at it. Putting the necklaces on cards is done by some ladies they employ by the week. Spring and winter are the busy seasons. The importation and selling of beads have formed quite a business in New York for some years. G. judges from the appearance of the applicants whether they are to be trusted with materials, takes an account of the kind and quantity given, and the address of the applicant, requiring them to be returned in a week's time. B. has children's coral bracelets and armlets made up, for which he employs two English girls, who each earn $1 a day at their work. =268. Cutters or Grinders.= It requires strength, firmness of nerve, and cultivation of eye to grind glass. One man told me he spent seven years learning the business in England. In this country, apprentices seldom spend more than three or four years at it, but do not of course learn it so thoroughly. A glass cutter told me that two girls, daughters of his boss in Jersey City, made drops for chandeliers. They were ground on a lapidary's wheel. As drops are no longer fashionable, they are not made. They also cut stones for breastpins. Glass cutters in New York earn from $9 to $10 per week. Glass cutting could be done by women. No women in this country have yet engaged in it. It is not very neat work, as the wet sand will of course get over the clothes. The number of straps and wheels is very numerous, and if any women desire to engage in it, we would advise them to lay aside hoops and don the Bloomer costume. Grinding is tiresome to the lower limbs, which are kept in motion, like a person operating on a sewing machine. It requires taste and ingenuity, as the figures of an experienced workman must be made by the eye, no pattern being used. Apprentices usually receive $2 a week the first year, $3 the next, $4 the next, and so on. =269. Embossers.= In preparing gas and lamp globes to emboss, they are first covered with a dark-colored substance. Girls then trace figures on them with a chemical which corrodes the glass. The tracing is learned in a few hours, and could be done without much practice. At a glass factory, I saw a girl who received $2 a week for tracing. Those who have worked at it for some time become very expeditious, and do piece work. They receive fifty cents a dozen, and a fast hand can do two dozen a day. The operatives work nine hours. =270. Enamellers.= A glass stainer and enameller in Utica writes: "In reply to your circular, I give what information I can. My daughters assist me in staining and enamelling glass. Their wages are worth from $5 to $8 each. Learners are paid from $2 to $4. To learn the work requires from three to five years. Spring and fall are the most busy times. The business will increase. I consider eight hours a day long enough for women to spend at this kind of work, as they have to be on their feet most of the time, but men can work ten hours. All parts are suitable for women except drawing (?) and the heavy parts of the work." A large manufacturer of enamelled glass told me that in England hundreds of women are employed in enamelling glass. He employs a number in Newark, N. J., paying by the week from $4 to $5. He thinks it not more unhealthy than working in any other paint. He thinks the opinion existing that the business is prejudicial to health, arises mostly from the girls being so very careless of themselves. One should be as careful in that work as in any other. He said he knew girls working at it in England for eighteen years, who never suffered any bad effects from it. It requires but a short time to learn to put the enamel on, but some time to acquire proficiency. He and his partner expect to increase the manufacture of it, but think of using a machine that will do away with women's work in applying the enamel. He complained that their girls lacked promptness. They keep them employed all the year. They work nine hours in summer, and eight in winter. He thinks a few women with artistic taste might learn etching, and execute their own designs. He would be willing to pay a good lady designer $8 or $10 a week--yet he pays his men for that work from $12 to $15. (!!!) He thinks, in a factory, a lady so employed would find it most pleasant to have a separate apartment. My opinion is that one or two lady designers and a few enamellers might find employment in this line. M. says enamelling is very deleterious. The enamel is made of three fourths lead and a fine sand, with a small quantity of tin. It is of a softer nature than glass, and is applied with stencil plates and brushes. As the enamel dries a dust arises, which is inhaled, and is more or less injurious to the lungs, producing something like the painter's colic. It also affects the eyes some. A glass stainer in Boston, who employs some women to enamel, writes "he pays them by the day, and they earn from $4 to $6 per week. They receive as much as men would for the same class of work. It requires but a few days to learn enamelling; eight or nine years for glass staining. He sometimes pays part or two thirds wages to learners. The prospect for future employment is uncertain, as little of the above work is done in this country. To get near the materials is an item in selecting a location." =271. Engravers.= An engraver on glass told me there are only from ten to thirteen glass engravers in New York. In Bohemia, whole families engrave glass; and women do so in other parts of Europe also. A good glass engraver is paid $3 a day. =272. Painters.= Painting on glass was practised by nuns and monks some ages back. H. said he used to employ ladies to paint on glass. His wife would give instruction in painting and transferring on glass, for $20--$10 to be paid on entering, the other $10 when the learner feels that she is thorough. To paint on glass, one must understand colors, as opaque paints would not answer. One must have some knowledge of shades to attain excellency in decorative painting. Embellished glass is cheaper than stained glass, and does not require a furnace; yet if burned, has the pigment rendered more durable. In England, many wealthy ladies buy traced glass and paints, and color and shade it. Pictures transferred on glass can be finely finished up and burnt. Painted glass is more brilliant than stained. H. thinks to learn the art is a safe investment. He thought a few ladies might learn painting and transferring on glass, Grecian painting, and wax flowers, and turn it to account by travelling through the country, stopping in small towns, exhibiting and selling specimens and giving instruction. Painting glass need not be merely a source of amusement, but prove an art of utility. H. spoke of some people as speculators--not practitioners in the art (such I would say he would make of ladies). He thinks, among connections and at fairs a lady might meet with ready sale for painted glass. The pieces could be framed to hang at a window or place on a table. Painted glass is less costly than stained glass. A glass gilder can easily earn $2 a day. Women can do the filling in with very little instruction. It would probably take several months' practice to learn to form the letters perfectly. =273. Stainers.= Stained glass is now generally used for churches, and to some extent for dwellings. The Germans are the most successful in staining glass. There are two kinds of stained glass--the pot metal, the coloring substances of which are fused in the glass and then burnt. The pictures of the other kind are formed of small pieces, each one painted separately, burnt, and united with blacklead. Frequently a window is formed of hundreds of these pieces. A picture of stained glass looks on the right side like a rich oil painting on canvas. I have been told there are 18,000 shades of stained glass. G. charges $6 a square foot for stained glass of a fine kind. There is a lady in England, that fills large orders for the stained glass windows of churches and cathedrals. Madame Bodichon writes as follows of a convent of Carmelite nuns she visited at Mans, France: "By the direction of the sisters, glass windows of all sorts, and in every stage of progress, were shown to us by an intelligent young man--one of the artists in the employ of the convent. He told us there were twenty-seven employés, two of them German artists; but the sisters arrange everything, carry on all the immense correspondence, and execute orders not only for France, but for America, Rome, and England, and other countries. Three of the nuns are occupied in painting upon glass themselves, but the principal part of the work is done by the artists, under the direction of the ladies." It requires a person of artistic skill and taste to excel in staining glass, and the work is best appreciated by people acquainted with art. It would require at least three or four years to learn the art well. A knowledge of other styles of painting is not of much assistance. The paint must be put on very thickly, but very evenly. There seems to be a combination of arts in the business to one who performs all the parts. A man must be enough of a glazier to cut glass, enough of a chemist to understand the colors to be used and the length of time the glass should be exposed to heat, enough of a designer to prepare his own patterns, and enough of an artist to color with taste. A man can earn at least $18 or $20 a week, who is proficient in the art. The business has increased greatly during the last few years in the United States, and is continuing to increase. Much of the stained glass used in the United States is of home manufacture. The designs for stained glass are usually made by the proprietor of an establishment. Skill in drawing is very desirable for any one working at the business. The art is one that affords exercise for inventive talent, artistic skill, and good taste. In a few glass-staining establishments, girls do the tracing. It requires an apprenticeship of four years to learn the grinding, enamelling, and staining of glass. A boy is usually paid $1.50 a week the first year, but he is expected to grind colors, clean brushes, go errands, &c. An employer informed me he pays from $1 to $3 a day to men for staining glass. S. spent about seven years in England learning the business. He painted a window not long ago for $5,000. He does his own designing. He says it would not pay to have separate designers. He is acquainted with some secret in coloring, that he would not impart for a great deal. Great progress has been made in the art in this country during the last few years. It requires more skill than painting on canvas. =274. Watch Crystals.= M. told us there are two kinds of watch crystals made in this country: the English and Dutch. The English are the best. The Dutch make them in a cheaper way. Men bend, cut out, and clip them. Females grind the edges. The Dutch can be known from the English by a more sudden rounding near the edges, while the English round from the centre equally. In Williamsburg, German women can be seen at work in watch crystal factories. B. told me he used to "employ girls to grind and polish glasses. They were paid $3 a week--ten hours a day. It requires but two or three weeks to learn, and during that time they are not paid, because of the time lost in giving instruction and the material wasted. Now it is all done by Germans, and Americans need not expect to get in." V. confirmed the statement. He says it is mostly done by German families, and the women that are hired are never paid over $3 a week. It is light and steady work, and they are employed all the year, and do not work in the same apartment as men. In some of the factories of Europe, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty women are employed. CHINA DECORATORS. =275. China Decorators.= We find that in France, some years back, many females earned a livelihood by painting on porcelain. During the last century, a Madame Gerard, "who possessed a large fortune, had a hotel furnished with facilities for painting Sevres. Her splendid cupboards of polished mahogany were gilded and bronzed, and their contents looked like a rich collection for the gratification of taste rather than for sale. She purchased some pieces for sixty and eighty louis d'ors. A pair of vases, not very large, painted with sacred subjects, sold for 26,000 livres." "There are two distinct methods of painting in use for china and earthenware: one is transferred to the bisque, and is the method by which the ordinary painted ware is produced; and the other transferred on the glaze." In the former process, women called transferrers and cutters are employed. The cutter trims away the superfluous paper around the pattern, which the transferrer applies to the ware, and rubs with flannel to produce an impression. She then washes the paper off, and the ware is ready for the hardening kiln. Women are excluded from that department termed ground laying, though, from the care and lightness of touch required, it is very suitable. In Staffordshire, E., great opposition was made some years back to women becoming decorators, and even now they are not permitted to use a hand rest. In France, and to a limited extent in England, decorating, gilding, and burnishing are done by women. This is probably one reason that imported China is cheaper. Most of those in France and England who attain respectable skill in decorating, are the wives or daughters of working manufacturers. Besides the mechanical skill, it requires a very exact knowledge of the effects of the coloring matters employed, as they are much changed by being burnt. Decorating is certainly a beautiful employment for women, but few in this country have the opportunity and are willing to apply themselves long enough to learn the art. At K.'s china warerooms, Philadelphia, I was told, no establishments of any size in the United States are engaged in the decoration of china, because they can get it done more cheaply in England and France. K. employs Englishmen to do what decorating he wishes to have done. He employs women to burnish. The following contradictory statement I found in the "Manufactures of Philadelphia:" "Decorating porcelain and china ware, which had been imported plain, is done in one establishment in Philadelphia to an amount exceeding $75,000 per annum." At H.'s, New York, I saw women burnishing china. It is merely a mechanical operation, consisting in rubbing the gilding with agate, after being burnt. The girls earn from $3.50 to $4.00 a week. It requires care and physical strength. One girl was cleaning superfluous paint off the china. Women might learn to make impressions for letters, flowers, and other patterns. I saw an English lady in New York decorating china. A lady took lessons of either her or her husband, to teach in the school of design. S. employs one woman for painting, and fifteen for burnishing china. China decorating is usually paid for by the piece. Mixing the colors for china painting is not more unhealthy than mixing them for canvas, and putting them on not more so than any other sedentary occupation. A French decorator told me that in Paris he gave private instruction to some ladies who learned it for a pastime, and a few who made a business of it. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans are the only places where china is painted in the United States. L. thinks a person of taste and abilities could learn in one year, earning nothing during the time, and after that earn from $5 to $10 a week. He pays his burnishers $3 a week. Another decorator told me he pays his burnishers (girls) from $2 to $2.50 a week. The foreman of a large establishment in New York told me that it requires several years to learn to decorate perfectly. Most decorators design their own patterns, and usually earn $12 a week. He says, in busy seasons it is difficult to get enough of good burnishers. His girls work only in daylight, and earn from $3 to $5 a week. They are busy all the year--most so three months before New Year. It requires three months' practice to become a good burnisher. A learner receives $1 a week from the time she commences to learn burnishing: he thinks it is not hard on the eyes. The work is paid for by the piece. If there was a higher protective duty, more decorating would be done in the United States. LEATHER. =276. Leather.= A leather dresser, somewhere in New York State, writes: "Leather dressing is a disagreeable, wet business, fit only for men. After leather is dressed, all the other work can be done by women. We cut by measure and by pattern. A person cutting and making should earn one hundred per cent. Women can cut, make, and sell as well as men, I suppose even better." =277. Currying.= The currying of skins might be done by women. Cutting it of the desired thickness, soaking it in water, and working it with a small stone, cleaning it with a brush, and, in the drying shed, applying oil and tallow, would not require very long practice for one of any mechanical talent. The skin is softened by being doubled and washed with a grooved board. It is then carefully shaved, and worked again, after which it is blackened and grained. The work would require some strength, but not more than the ordinary process of washing clothes. All the work must be performed standing. The process of converting the skins of sheep, lambs, and kids into soft leather, is called tawing, and is somewhat lighter work than currying; yet the leather requires much stretching and rubbing. I am sure the work would not be more, if so offensive, as morocco sewing. =278. Harness.= A harness maker told me that a lady who stitches harness of the best quality, can earn from $1.25 to $1.50 a day. He pays $1 a set for stitching the blinds. The perforations are made by a man, and they are stitched by hand. Not a great many are engaged in it, and he thinks the prospect good of learners obtaining employment. Many earn $6 or $7 a week. He employs two women all the year. A person that can sew well, can learn in two or three weeks. It requires some instruction. A maker of horse collars told me his women stitch collars by machine; formerly by hand. He pays six cents a pair. The wife of one of his workmen stitches twelve an hour, with one of Howe's machines. B. employs from fifty to seventy-five girls to make fancy harness, horse blankets, and coach tassels. Fancy bridles he has stitched by Singer's machine. Good operators can earn from $5 to $7 a week, and for leather work are paid by the week. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons. The fashions of fancy leather work change. One gentleman, who employs many girls in making harness trimmings, says the cloth pieces are made by hand, the leather by machinery. In Newark, Bridgeport, and New Haven, much of the stitching for the South is done by machines, and women are employed. The English harness is considered the best, and is done by hand. In England, men called "bridle cutters" get large quantities of bridles to make up, and employ from one hundred to two hundred girls to do the stitching. A lady who has quite an establishment in New York, and employs a number of work people, told me that she pays them each from $2 to $6 a week. She thinks machine operating is trying on the health, but not so bad as sewing with a needle. She pays by the week. Women do as well as men, except for heavy work. The trade can be learned in a few weeks. She pays learners something. Her hands have work all the year, but are most busy from October till the end of December. They work ten hours. She prefers men for most of the work. She would like American women, but cannot get them. She says girls think more of having a beau than laying up a few dollars in a bank, and consequently spend all they make on dress. A manufacturer writes: "Working on leather is considered very healthy. I employ thirteen women in the manufacture of fancy bridles, riding and driving reins, riding martingales, &c. They average $1 per day. Three of them run stitching machines. All are paid by the piece, except one, who does the overseeing and writing. We think the girls receive as good pay as the men. Considerable practice is necessary to do the work well. Learners are paid for all work that is sufficiently well done to be salable. Good judgment, accurate eye, and nimble fingers, best fit one for the occupation. As our business is wholesale, it depends upon orders. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons. Sometimes the women are entirely out of work for a short time in winter. They never work over ten hours. We will not employ foreigners." =279. Jewel and Instrument Cases.= At a manufactory, I was told they employ some girls, paying by the piece. The girls can earn $4.50 to $5 a week, of ten hours a day. It does not require long to learn. In busy seasons it is difficult to get good hands, and they have to advertise frequently. At another place, the proprietor told me he used to employ girls who earned $4 or $5 a week, but he prefers boys, because they can do all parts of the work. At a manufactory of morocco and velvet jewel cases, the man told me he pays girls $4.50 and $5 a week, of ten hours a day. In busy seasons it is difficult to get good hands. =280. Morocco Sewers.= At a morocco manufactory, I was told by the proprietor, a German, that he employs girls, paying twelve cents a dozen, and they can sew from five to twelve dozen a day. He wants hands, and of course would speak favorably of the occupation. He says they can have work all the year except one or two weeks. At an American manufacturer's, I was told it is wet, dirty work, and requires considerable time and practice to learn to do it quickly. After working at it constantly four or five years, a good hand may be able to earn from $5 to $7 a week. Most of it is done in the families of tanners. Some women undertake it, but give it up because they do it so slowly it will not pay. The man said nearly or quite all who work at it are Germans, and the wives and daughters of those in the business. They are paid twelve cents a dozen. The occupation he thinks is full in New York, for women. Beginners are apt to hurt their fingers, as needles are used, the sides of which are triangular. Sewing five skins a day is considered very good work. Dr. Wynne says: "Exhalations from animal substances, which are very offensive to the senses, more especially to that of smell, not only appear to be in most instances innoxious, but often of absolute advantage in affording a protection from disease." Most morocco is made in Philadelphia, none South or West. S. employs sixteen women, and pays good hands from $4 to $5 per week. He thinks there are at least two hundred morocco sewers in Philadelphia. It does not take long to learn. He pays from the first. They have work all the year, but the prospect for learners is poor. At A.'s, Philadelphia, I saw some women sewing up goat skins, which were to be tanned. It is extremely disagreeable work, as the skins are wet and smell offensively. The women are paid twelve cents a dozen, and find their own thread. A steady hand can earn from $3.50 to $6 a week, and can always find work. They are most busy in spring and fall. A morocco dresser writes: "He pays by the piece, and his women each earn about seventy-five cents a day. A woman can learn in two or three weeks. The prospect for future employment is very poor, as skins are mostly tanned now without sewing. A location must always be had where pure water is abundant." =281. Pocket Books.= One man told me he employs a woman to make portemonaies, paying $5 a week. On Broadway a firm employs four or five women, paying from $3 to $6 a week. It requires but two or three months to learn the business. The women sew with a machine, paste morocco on, and varnish some parts. C. pays his girls from $3.50 to $4 a week. At another place one of the firm told me their girls earn $3, $4, and $5 a week. It is piece work, and requires but three or four weeks to learn. A smart girl can earn $2 the first week. The busy seasons are spring and fall. They find it difficult to get enough good hands in those seasons. The business is mostly confined to New York and Philadelphia. A manufacturer in New York told me, about two hundred women are employed in making pocket books, &c., in that city. He pays $4.50 a week, but they have a certain quantity to do in that time. It requires but a short time to learn to do the stitching only (which he has done by hand), but about a year to learn to do all parts. He pays $2 a week while they are learning, and then he increases at the rate of twenty-five cents a week after a few months, and at the end of the year some are earning $3; some $3.25. Neatness in cutting and fitting the parts together is desirable. He keeps his hands employed all the year. There is a scarcity of good hands, but an abundance of indifferent ones. A manufacturer in Maine writes: "We employ from eight to twelve American girls. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $12 to $16 per month. Boys earn about the same as girls. They are paid while learning, if the work is well done. It requires about a year to become proficient." =282. Saddle Seats.= In Philadelphia, I was told at a large saddle store that they employ women to stitch saddles, paying from fifty cents apiece for common ones to $1.25 for those of a better quality. At a large saddle and harness manufactory in New York, I was told they employ women to stitch by the machine and by hand. They are paid by the day, as there is a variety of work, and their girls are not confined to exclusive branches. In prosperous times their hands are employed most of the year. Spring and fall are the best seasons for work. There are small factories in most of the Southern and Western cities. The hand sewers earn but $3 and $5 a week; a few operators can make $6. At S. & M.'s they employ about twenty women in the different branches, and, when business is good, have work all the year. It does not require long to learn. They are paid by the week, from $3 to $4. Prospect dull. This kind of work is mostly done in Newark. =283. Tanning.= Leather can now be tanned by a chemical process in a few days. Leather has been made so thin, and received so high a polish, that it has been used for making bonnets in Paris. Buckskin is used for making many articles in this country. Shoulder braces, drawers, shirts and gloves, are made of it. A tanner writes: "I know of no country where this business exists in which females are employed, unless perhaps in some of the smaller German States, where female service is not deemed incompatible with the services of the ox and the horse. The tanning business in all its departments is laborious and offensive, and although not unhealthy, is dirty and disagreeable, requiring a great amount of muscular power. I know of no employment less congenial to the taste of women, or less suited to their elevation. Morocco is polished by hand, and in some places is done by women. A tanner writes: "It requires strong and healthy men to perform _any part_ of a tanner's trade, and they do not get very highly paid at that. The business is decidedly dirty, and oftentimes very disagreeable, not fit for women in any particular. In order to conduct the business successfully, one needs to be located by a good stream of water, or where it can be easily obtained, plenty of bark, and not far from market." Among the Cossacks, some women are employed in tanning. =284. Trunks.= A trunk maker said he thought women could not well put the tacks in trunks, because the trunks are first put together, and are heavy lifting; but I think it could be done by them. Putting the linings in trunks could certainly be done by women. The man referred to said he thought some women are employed in a large trunk factory in Newark, because the proprietors thought they could get their work done cheaper, and he hoped they failed, because of their motive. The employment of women, he urged, cuts down men's labor, and so all labor is reduced below its worth, just as it is now in England. There a woman must neglect her home duties, to help make a living. If women, he added, were paid at the same rate as men, and so there was a fair competition, he would not object to women being employed. =285. Whips.= V., of New York, says he and his partner have whips manufactured in Westfield, Mass., and some in the House of Refuge, Charlestown. Westfield is the principal manufacturing place for whips in the United States. The daughters of farmers for miles around the town braid lashes. The covers are put on the handles by machines attended by girls. That part is usually done in factories. The part called buttons is also made by girls, and done by hand. Girls can earn from $3 to $5 a week. They receive about three fourths the price paid men, because the work is not so laborious. It requires from three to nine months to learn, according to the skill of the person. They are paid what they can earn while learning. They have been able to keep their hands employed all the year, but fear they cannot this winter (1860). In 1857, there were probably but one half the working class able to obtain employment. The prospect for work in this line is better than in most others, for the whip market has increased twofold in the last ten years, and is likely to extend. The work done at home is piece work, and that done in shops is usually so. The business suffers in hard times, for people then think they can dispense with whips. V. said the Philadelphians and Yankees have different views in regard to woman's labor. The Yankees know they can get it done cheaper by women, and the Philadelphians think they cannot get it so well done by women. The American Whip Company write "they employ eighty females; about one half are American, and one half Irish. Women are employed in any department where they can labor with propriety and advantage. The prospect is that the business will always continue as good as now. All seasons answer equally well for the work. During working hours, one of the women often reads aloud for the benefit of the others in the room. Board, $2 per week." "The reason why women are employed at making whips is, the work being light, they can do as much as a man, and competition compels the employer to get his work done for the lowest wages." P. & S., in Philadelphia, employ some girls to braid lashes. It requires about six weeks to learn. Some earn $3, and some $4 a week, working from nine to ten hours, but are paid by the dozen. All their girls are Americans, as are the generality of females in this business. "In London," says Mayhew, "the cane sellers are sometimes about two hundred in number, on a fine Sunday, in the summer, and on no day are there fewer than thirty sellers of whips in the streets, and sometimes--not often--one hundred." The branch of finishing in whip making has been entered by women in Birmingham, England, and created some opposition. Sellers of large, coarse whips usually frequent market houses--those with fancy whips stand on the sidewalks. WHALEBONE WORKERS. =286. Whalebone Workers.= The natural color of whalebone is nearly the same as gray limestone rock. The black ones we buy are colored. Whalebone is exported from New York. About four hundred American vessels are employed in whaling, and about ten thousand men. Enough whalebone can be prepared in one factory to supply the whole United States, I was told by one of the proprietors of a whalebone factory. He paid a boy $2 a week for tying up whalebone for parasols and umbrellas (which work could be done by a girl). Small holes are punched by machinery in the ends of bones to be used for stays. A woman runs a thread through, and ties them in bunches. She is paid one cent a bunch, and, as she ties up five hundred or six hundred a week, earns $5 or $6. At another factory, I was told they employ girls and women in tying up some whalebones and stringing others. They sit while at work, and are paid by the week, working ten hours a day. They keep their hands all the year, but are most busy in the fall. Tying up whalebones looks simple, but it requires practice to become expert, and requires discrimination to select the indifferent from the salable. The woman we saw earns $4.50, but she has been at it several years, and is very expert. Women seldom earn more than $3. Girls might polish the bones--a something I saw a boy doing. BRUSH MANUFACTURERS. =287. Brush Manufacturers.= Women have from the earliest period been employed in making brushes. In France, women are employed in preparing bristles for brushes, bleaching, washing, straightening, and assorting them. If they are so employed in this country it is at Lansingburg, N. Y. Indeed the finer bristles are all imported. The process of preparing bristles is simple, merely washing them and placing them in a preparation of sulphur to bleach them. "The great art in making brushes for artists is so to arrange the hairs that their ends may be made to converge to a fine point when moistened and drawn between the lips; and it is said that females are more successful than men in preparing the small and delicate pencils." In shaving brushes the bristles must be so arranged as to form a cone. This requires skill, and commands handsome wages. A large number of bristles are imported from Germany, Russia, and a considerable quantity from France; yet the United States furnish some. We think the owners of pork houses, and farmers in the Southern and Western States, would find the saving of bristles to justify the trouble of doing so, as they bring a good price. In this country, the process in making finer brushes, called drawing, is mostly done by women. The heavier kind of brushes is seldom made by women. Persons working in horn, wood, whalebone, ivory, gutta percha, pearl, &c., prepare the handles. Few if any brush makers have them prepared in their own establishments. I called on a brush maker whose manufactory is in Boston. The clerk says they never have any difficulty in getting plenty of good hands. They work by the piece. He says, if you advertise there, you are sure to have hundreds of applicants, many of whom are already in business, but hope to get better wages for the same amount of work, or less work for the same wages. A manufacturer told me that he employs boys, who do piecework and earn from $5 to $10 a week, but thinks he will employ girls, as he could get drawers for from $3 to $4 per week. The girls sit while at this work. H., a maker of tooth, nail, and hair brushes, told me his is the only tooth brush manufactory in the United States. His girls looked clean and orderly, and had intelligent faces. Those working in the house were of Irish extraction--those who worked at home, Americans. Most of them attend night school. H. finds his girls more careless about their work Monday morning than at any other time. He attributes it to their talking and thinking of what they saw and heard the day before. Those that sew well he finds work best for him. (I expect that principle generally holds good--those that work well in one business are likely to in another, because they are industrious and give their attention to it.) If the work is not well done, he takes it out and makes them do it over. As it is done by the piece, it of course is their own loss. They engage in trepanning, wiring, and trimming brushes. The trepanning and wiring are done altogether by women in England. They are paid by the piece, those wiring and trepanning earn from $3 to $4. The lady that trims earns $6 a week. The work is very neat and well adapted to women. It requires about three months to learn. Women are paid something while learning. Care and nicety must be used to fill the little cavities in the brush with bristles closely and firmly. The business is not good, on account of competition in the manufacture with European countries, where labor is cheaper. Women cannot polish the ivory well, as it is done by hand and is very hard work. Women are superior in the branches pursued by them. $2.50 is the usually price paid by workwomen for board in New York. A brush maker in Philadelphia writes: "I pay from eighteen to twenty cents per thousand holes. No men employed by us in this branch. Boys spend four or five years at this trade. Girls spend six months learning one branch. The prospect for more work of this kind is poor. Our women are all Americans, and work the year round. Women are superior in their branch." P. & M. employ girls to make ostrich feather dusters, and they earn from $4 to $6 per week. They have had employment all the year. While at work the girls can sit or stand, as they please. Their girls also paint the handles. A manufacturer of ostrich feather dusters told me, he pays girls from $2 to $3 a week for coloring and putting the feathers in handles. They can always get enough of hands. The girls work in daylight only. IVORY CUTTERS AND WORKERS. =288. Ivory Workers.= Ivory is generally turned in a lathe--a machine that differs some in size and shape, according to the material worked. Ivory, wood, and metal can be cut by it into almost any shape. The ivory nut is now much used as a substitute for animal ivory. In a store for the sale of ivory goods, the lady in attendance told me some of their articles are imported from Germany, and some they have made. In Germany, some women are employed in ivory carving. The lady thought it could not be done to any extent in this country, because labor is so high. (But if men can afford to do it, pray, why cannot women?) The carving is done with steel instruments, and requires considerable strength. "Barbara Helena Lange, of Germany, earned celebrity in the seventeenth century, by engraving on copper, and carving figures in ivory and alabaster." "Barbara Julia Preisler was skilled in various branches of art; could model in wax, and work in ivory and alabaster, and added painting and copper engraving to the list of her accomplishments." H. & F. have four or five girls to count and pack their ivory goods, but none to polish. An ivory worker in Providence writes: "Women are employed in carving and turning in Russia, and carving in England. I can say for myself, that I have known many women to transact the business equal to the smartest in the trade in England, when the husband is deceased, and the widow has been left to support a large family, and they have never failed to do so creditably. I know of but two in this country, one in Providence, R. I.; the other in Westfield, Mass. They earn from $4 to $6 a week. The labor is light for women, and they could earn the same as men. Carving could be learned in six months, turning in one year. To be able to superintend, two years' practice is required. The prospect for employment is not flattering. In this country, women work eight hours; men, ten. In England, France, and Scotland, they work eleven hours. In New York, principals could employ twenty-five carvers and one hundred turners, and I can see no objection to employing women. Women excel in the business, if to their taste. Large cities or manufacturing districts are the best localities. They must have cultivated minds, or they are not suitable for the business, as it is necessary to invent and execute new styles and patterns." In Connecticut, some hundreds of families labor in the ivory comb manufactories, and are paid per week $4.50, and by the piece earn from $5 to $6 a week. An ivory turner in Essex, Conn., writes: "I usually employ two girls; one packing goods, the other on fancy turning. They earn from $10 to $20 per month. My help consists mostly of men. The work is very healthy. It is piece work. The girls earn $1 per day of ten hours. They are paid by the piece, the same price as men, and earn as much. A learner receives $1 per week and board. A woman can do nearly as much as a man after working one year or more. The work is very clean and easy. A girl to succeed should be active, intelligent, and ingenious." A gentleman who has ornaments made of vegetable ivory, told me he could hire Germans to turn them for him at from seventy-five cents to $1 a day. =289. Combs.= The comb is an article of primitive date, and has been frequently found in use among nations when first visited by civilized men. Madame de B. told me she had frequently seen women in Europe, making, mending, and polishing combs of tortoise shell, bone, and ivory. In Leominster, in 1853, 264 men were employed in the comb factory, at an average of $7 per week, board $2.50--women at an average of $3 a week, board $1.50. A firm in Lancaster, Penn., write: "We employ seven women, because they are better adapted to the work. They are paid by the week, from $2 to $3.50, and work ten hours a day. They do not perform the same kind of work as men. Boys are apprentices until twenty-one years of age--females spend but a few weeks learning. All seasons are alike. Women do the light work best. Board, $1.25." Some manufacturers of ivory combs write: "Our establishment, which has been in operation over thirty years, formerly gave employment to a large number of female operatives; but of late years, so many labor-saving machines have been introduced, that the number employed is very small. At present, less than a dozen women are engaged in our factory, while we employ some forty men. We expect all who are employed by us to work eleven hours each day, except Saturdays during the winter, when we close before sundown. Most of our girls work by the piece, and earn from 70 cents to $1 per day. To the others we pay $4 per week. The time required to learn the business varies with the character of the work--in some cases two months, in others not more than one week. The only qualifications needed are carefulness, activity, and common sense. The work is light, and not particularly unhealthy. The only reason why it should be unhealthy at all, is its sedentary nature. Board, from $1.75 to $2 per week. We have uniformly, since the commencement of our business, refused to employ any but American girls of known good moral character. There have been few or none of them that have not possessed a good common-school education, and some of them have enjoyed and well improved the advantages of such schools as those at South Hadley, Pittsfield, and New Haven. It is a source of gratification and pride to us, that we are able at present to call to mind no less than seven of our operatives who have married clergymen; one is now a missionary at the Sandwich Islands, and numbers of them are respected and useful members of society." A manufacturer of horn or bone combs writes: "The part assigned to women is the staining and the bending or shaping of the comb. The business is healthy." =290. Piano Keys.= I cannot learn of any women being employed in sawing piano keys, but I think they could do it, if they were properly instructed, and they certainly could polish them. The turning of the ivory in the sun to bleach is usually performed by a boy, and occupies several hours a day. The assorting of piano keys and putting them in small paper boxes could certainly be performed by women, but I was told it requires considerable experience and judgment. The sharps are made of ebony, sawed by circular wheels moved by steam. When large blocks have been sawed into smaller pieces, women could then saw them into keys. It would only require care. The noise of the machinery and the black dust flying might be disagreeable at first. A manufacturer of piano keys writes: "No women are employed in the piano key department of our business, and none are employed by other manufacturers, to our knowledge. We suppose the reason is, that most of the labor in this department is either quite severe or dirty, wet, and unpleasant. Assorting and matching the ivory requires so long a time to learn, that we cannot afford to hire any person for less than two years. Girls are generally unwilling to engage to remain so long, especially if they are at an age when their judgment and discretion make their services really valuable." A Massachusetts manufacturer of piano forte, melodeon, and organ keys writes: "I employ a lady bookkeeper, but my business in the manufacture of keys for musical instruments is such that it requires men alone, although the work is very light and clean." =291. Rules.= The materials for rules are ivory and wood. The prices of rules have fallen during the last few years--so the profits are less. A rule manufacturer in Vermont writes: "We employ women graduating rules by machinery and stamping on the figures. We pay 7 cents per hour. Women are paid proportionately while learning. Common sense and a slight knowledge of arithmetic are the only qualifications needed. They work all the year, ten hours a day. All are American. Women are quite as rapid as men, and, in application, better." A manufacturer in Connecticut writes: "I employ but one woman, and she takes the work home. It is paid for by the piece. There are many parts suitable for women, but it is more profitable to employ men. The great demand for female labor in the domestic employments in this section of the country is becoming intolerable, on account of the general desire to obtain employment in the factories." The machines are small and easily worked, for making lines and figures on rules. The rivets of rules might, I think, be inserted by women. I was told, men employed in working at rule manufacture are paid $8, and some $9 a week. The ruler stands while at work. PEARL WORKERS. =292. Pearl Workers.= At S.'s, we saw a man grinding the outer and rougher coat off of pearl shells. It requires some strength, as it is done on a stone wheel moved by steam, the shell being kept in its place by a wooden rod held on it. It is wet and dirty work. The water is cold, too, even in winter, for warm water would soon become cold on account of the rapid motion of the wheel; and it would not do to heat the pearl, as it would cause it to split. The polishing was done on a wheel covered with leather, and could as well be done by a girl as a boy. S. had never known women to work in pearl, except to make paper cutters, and then only in Germany. The inlaying of pearl is in some places done by women. A worker in pearl writes me: "The pearl button branch is separate from the pearl shell work. In the first, females are employed; in the latter, they are not, as it is unhealthy and laborious. In Birmingham, England, where pearl buttons are almost exclusively manufactured, upward of two thousand hands are employed. Pearl buttons are made in Newark and Philadelphia." A manufacturer of pearl buttons in Philadelphia writes: "I employ women in finishing, and pay from $2 to $3 a week. It requires from one to three weeks to learn. The prospect of the business increasing is good. The work is regular, and the hours ten a day. I employ women because they are cheaper." To polish pearl buttons is very simple--merely placing the button in a pair of tongs, and holding it against three revolving wheels successively. The carving of pearl is wrist work, and S. thought women have not sufficient strength in their wrists to do it; but I think many have. TORTOISE-SHELL WORKERS. =293. Tortoise-Shell Workers.= Shell is made into clock cases, cigar cases, card cases, writing desks, and other such articles, but is most used for combs. In Brooklyn, a manufacturer of shell combs told me they had several times thought of employing women, Gutta percha and vulcanized india rubber have become, to some extent, a substitute for tortoise shell. On tortoise-shell combs the light carving might be done by women; the heavy cutting requires more strength. The sawing out of the figures is suitable for women. The finishing could also be done by them. To learn the finishing would not require a person of ordinary talent more than a week, and either of the other processes probably not more than six or eight weeks. Workers could earn from $6 to $7 a week, if they could have constant employment. The business is very dependent on fashion. P. & B. used to employ girls in rounding the teeth of shell side-combs, and paid each $4; but gutta-percha combs have done away with shell ones. A worker of shell combs told me he had employed girls, paying some by the piece and some by the week. They earned from $3 to $6 per week. It requires about six months to learn carving and sawing--polishing, not so long. Care, judgment, and a good idea of form and proportion, are necessary. The business is now very dull. The style of carving on combs is very different from that worn a few years back. It is now of a heavier kind, and the work not so suitable for women. GUM ELASTIC MANUFACTURE. =294. Gum Elastic Manufacture.= "In nearly all the manufacturing branches of this business, females are employed. After the articles are moulded, females join them; also paint the toys, pack the combs in boxes, &c. In most establishments they are employed the whole year, while some only retain a small proportion during the dull season, which is in the winter. All are paid by the piece, varying from $4 to $7 per week. They learn very quickly, and are paid for what they do as soon as they commence, although it takes six months or one year's practice to equal the best workers. The manufacturing is almost exclusively confined to the country, and, as a class, the women are in no way exceptionable, many of them being considerably cultivated. There are plenty found to learn the business, and it gives employment to several thousand." In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, 1,825 males and 1,058 females were employed, in the year ending June 1st, 1860, in making india rubber goods. I talked with one of the most extensive gum elastic manufacturers in the United States, for the purpose of gaining some idea of the number of female operatives in that department, their wages, if the occupation is unhealthy, &c. This manufacturer has realized millions from his business; and, after repeated efforts to learn how his women were paid, I succeeded in learning that those who work out of the house are paid by the piece, and earn only from $2 to $3 a week, working from dawn until midnight. Some worked in the establishment, going at 7.30 A. M., and working until 6 P. M., receiving about the same wages. They were employed in making suspenders. More women are employed in the shoe department than any other. The hard india rubber goods are labelled and packed by women in some manufactories; but most of the making is done by men. At a city in Western Massachusetts, ten girls were employed by one man, at an average of $2.50 each per week, to mend imperfections in india rubber goods. I went to Harlem, and was permitted with my attendant to go through the manufactory and see the process of making up a variety of india rubber goods. Some of the girls are paid by the piece, and some by the week. They earn from $4 to $6 a week. It does not require a girl of good sense more than from one to four weeks to learn. I inquired of one of the proprietors and three of the foremen, if they thought it unhealthy. The proprietor said, not; but the foremen were not very positive in their assertions. I inquired of a girl in the sewing room. She said she found it so in the cementing room, and had secured work in the sewing room on that account. She attributed it to the evaporation of the camphene, and the flying of the powder, made of pulverized soapstone and flour. The odor, no doubt, is very disagreeable at first to most workers. One foreman said he thought it would not be well for a consumptive person to confine him or herself to that kind of work. One of the proprietors said, if a nice, genteel-looking girl comes along, they will take her as a learner, even if they do not wish a learner, that they may have good hands when they need them. They have a great many applications. They used to take learners, and permit old hands to instruct them, paying them for the time spent in doing so. They are most busy in the spring and fall, but have something to do all the year. Those in the first cementing room were working at large tables, and stood. They were paid fifteen cents for cementing the seams of a gentleman's coat, and some at that work make $1 a day of ten hours' labor. Most of the girls prefer to stand while at work. They were very neat, quiet, and good looking. In the second room we saw women making rubber cushions, small tubes, &c. One of the girls making tubes said she was paid by the hundred, and could not earn $1 a day. All in the second and third room sat. In the third room the ladies were finishing off coats, sewing in the sleeves, binding, and putting on buttons. Most india rubber factories are in New Jersey. There are none in the West or South. =295. Men's Clothing.= The Rubber Clothing Company at Beverly, Mass., "employ from seventy-five to one hundred women. They report the work as being light, and therefore requiring nimble fingers. Their girls are paid both by the piece and week, and earn from $3 to $6 per week, usually working ten hours a day. One half are American. Women are paid as well as men in this branch. It requires four weeks to learn. Prospect of future work is good. Activity and intelligence are needed. The work is very easy, and is given at all seasons. Girls are usually not so steady at work as men. Board, $2 per week." The superintendent of the American Hard Rubber Company writes: "We employ ten women in making hard india rubber goods. We prefer them on account of their small fingers. It is piece work, and women are paid from $4 to $6 per week, ten hours a day. Our women could not do the work of men, who have to be mechanics, having learned a trade. Men receive about thirty-three cents more per day than women. The time required for men to learn our business it is impossible to answer. Women can learn sufficient in four weeks to earn seventy-five cents per day. Carefulness and nimble fingers are necessary. The business is new, but the prospects for the future good as could be counted upon in any ordinary business. The business is not sufficiently extended to furnish a particular set of people depending upon it with labor. Some of our women are quite intelligent and refined. There is a good library connected with the factory, and on Sunday they have ready access to church." =296. Shoes.= The application of india rubber to the making of boots and shoes originated in the United States. B. & S. "employ seventy-five girls, who earn from $3 to $6 a week. They are employed all the year, and it is not unhealthy." The business has been on the decrease for two years. The treasurer of the Boston Shoe Co. informs me: "The company employ about seventy-five women, who work by the piece. The employment is not unhealthy. Average wages from seventy five cents to $1.25 per day, of eight or ten hours. Our women earn full as much as men, in comparison with the work done. Three fourths are American. A smart girl will learn in a couple of weeks to make from fifty to seventy-five cents per day; in two or three months, she can earn full wages. The prospect of future employment is fair. The fall of the year is the most busy season. Good board, $2 per week." =297. Toys.= The New York Rubber Co. write: "We employ women in making and ornamenting toys. Little of the work is done in other countries. The girls earn from $3 to $8 per week, but are paid by the piece. Men and women do not perform the same kind of work. In a few weeks learners earn $3; in a few months, $5 or $6. They have work at all seasons. The work is pleasant. Board, $2." GUTTA PERCHA MANUFACTURE. =298. Gutta Percha Manufacture.= A manufacturer of gutta-percha goods told me that the firm to which he belongs employ twenty-five girls. One of their girls earns $1 a day, making handles. The others close the seams of coats, and other articles of dress, with cement. Some work by the piece, and some by the week. When by the week, they are paid $3.50 and $4; and those by the piece earn about the same. He thinks, if it is unhealthy, it is because the sulphur used opens the pores and renders the person liable to take cold. I visited a gutta-percha comb manufactory. The girls receive $2 a week, while learning. They can learn in a few days. They polish and pack the combs. They work ten hours a day, and receive $4. Few of them get $4.50. The employer thinks there may be more work in that line hereafter. A woman acquainted with machinery could superintend the machine that cuts the teeth of the comb. Rounding the teeth is done by men, but could be performed by women. I was told there is a manufactory at Stratton, L. I., where seventy women are employed. HAIR WORKERS. =299. Artists.= The making of hair ornaments is a distinct branch of labor. Some very beautiful and ingenious pieces of workmanship have been executed. Bracelets, earrings, breastpins, and guards are the most common articles. The work is nicely adapted to the nimble fingers of women, whether engaged in it for pastime or profit. A foreign lady, that does ornamental hair work, told me that it is a right profitable business to one that can do it well, but American women have not patience to learn to do it in a superior manner. A hair jeweller in Philadelphia told me he employs six girls--all Americans, and he thinks they do better than foreigners. He pays a girl seventy-five cents a week, for three or four weeks. By that time she has learned enough to earn $3 or $4 a week. Formerly he required a girl to spend two years learning, and paid her nothing during the time. He mentioned one firm that required three years' apprenticeship. But the girls often became discouraged, and went at something else. Now the business is not so much of a secret. He has now and then paid as high as $12 a week, for a hand that was very ingenious and successful. They pay high for their designs. The gentleman had paid $50, the week previous, for a design. His girls all work in the establishment, and spend about nine hours at their work. It is done altogether by hand. The only disadvantage attending it is the confinement that pertains to it, or any other employment of that kind. An artist on Fifth street gives work out of the house. The average rate of wages he pays is $4 a week. Hair artists, when employed by the week, receive from $4 to $5. At S.'s, New York, they pay a good hand from $4 to $5 a week, ten hours a day. A person of good abilities can learn most of the patterns in three weeks. An ornamental hair worker told me she charges fifty cents a lesson of an hour. A lady was taking lessons who had recently married a jeweller, and was going to Louisiana to live. A good price can be got for such work in the South, for Southerners have had all such work done in the North. A German, who made very pretty ornamental hair work in New York, told me he charges from $25 to $50 for teaching the art--those that wish to learn in a short time, and so require much of his attention, pay $100. It can be very well learned in six months. He pays $10 a week to good hands. The work is the same at all seasons. Strong eyes, nimble fingers, and a clear head are the essentials for a learner. =300. Dressers.= The business of a barber was performed by females among the Romans, about the time of the Christian era. I have read that there are now women barbers in Paris, Normandy, England, and Western Africa. In the reign of Louis XIV. it was not unusual for ladies of rank and wealth to dress the whiskers of their favorite friends. Both men and women are engaged in the United States in the business of dressing ladies' hair. We think women most suitable for it, and should be patronized to the exclusion of men. The business requires practice and taste. Some ladies of wealth have their dressing maids to learn the art and perform that office of the toilet. Most hair dressers charge 50 cents to $1.50 for dressing the hair. The price is regulated by the style in which it is done and the reputation of the dresser. The demands for a hair dresser are sometimes such, in a fashionable season, that a lady must have her hair dressed as early as noon, to wear to the opera at 8, or to a party at 10 P. M. Mrs. W., New York, charges 50 cents for dressing hair, 75 for shampooing and dressing, and $1 if she sends out. She never sends any one out to dress hair where she is not acquainted. She thinks there are about 200 hair dressers in New York. At an establishment in Broadway they give instruction in hair dressing--price, $1 a lesson. A person of ordinary abilities can learn to dress hair plainly in three or four lessons. C. says he thinks more women could find employment as hair dressers in New York; but I think, from the number of signs I saw, no demand can exist. He thinks it strange that they do not make engagements by the week, as they do in the cities of the old countries, where there are 200 or 300 in every large city that go out daily to the houses of their customers. I have since learned that there are some in New York that do. Mrs. G. goes out by the week, and receives $3 per week. She makes such engagements for the morning only, as she is likely to be called in the afternoon to prepare ladies for parties. From the middle of June until September she is at Saratoga. C. had a woman four years learning the styles of dressing and making up hair. The third year he paid her $4 a week, and the fourth year $5 a week. He says it requires so long to learn it that women generally get discouraged and go at something else. Women employed by the week to dress hair receive from $4 to $5. A lady told me she charges 50 cents a lesson, and a person can learn in from fourteen to twenty lessons. Two years' time is generally given to learn hair work in all its branches, weaving, mounting, &c. It takes time and capital to establish a business for one's self, as hair is a costly article. I saw one lady who teaches hair dressing for $10. A young woman told me it requires two weeks of constant practice to become a hair dresser. Nearly everything at it is done in winter. Practice makes perfect. The best plan is to get regular customers, and go to their houses every day, including Sunday, for which it is usual to charge from $1.50 a week up, for one head. She charges 50 cents a lesson. Some chambermaids at hotels take a few lessons, to enable them to dress hair plainly. For shampooing, most of which is done in summer, she charges 50 cents; for braiding front hair, 50 cents; and with the back hair, 75 cents. Miss S. told me many female hair dressers board with the family of the employer, because of being up late at night, and receive their board and $10 a month and up. For weaving hair her mother pays 6 cents per yard; for the finer kind, 12 cents per yard. Her mother earns from $1.75 to $2 per day. A person that can weave and make front pieces can get work at any time. There are only three months dull time in a city--June, July, and August. Some ladies pay a hair dresser $10 a month for dressing the hair every day but Sunday, when a separate and higher charge is made. For dressing a bride entirely, $5 is charged. One needs taste and ability to please; at any rate, one must be civil and obliging. Fashionable watering places present the best openings. Saratoga and Newport present favorable ones, at the first of which there is but one permanent hair dresser. D., hair dresser and wig maker, requires learners to be bound for four years. The first year he gives a girl her board, lodging, washing, and $4 a month. The next year he gives the same, with an increase of $1 a month; and so continues that increase each succeeding year until the apprenticeship expires. He gives to journeywomen their dinner, supper, and $4 a week. The business is not confined to regular hours, on account of hair dressing, which is done mostly in the evening. He charges 50 cents for dressing a lady's hair at his rooms, and $1 at her house. A Frenchman, under Fifth Avenue Hotel, pays $5 a week to a girl who receives the pay of his customers. She is there at 8, and can leave at dark. He charges 75 cents a head at the saloon, and at the ladies' residences the same. He has rooms fitted up, and has many customers from the hotel. He employs three girls, paying them one half of what they earn. He keeps but one there constantly. The other two live near, and when he needs their services he sends for them. He is going to teach hair dressing, and charge $1 a lesson; forty or fifty (?) lessons are usually taken, according to the extent it is learned. Mrs. B. told me men teach ladies wig making, but ladies give instruction mostly in hair dressing to those of their own sex. It is usual to pay learners something after a few months' or a year's practice. Those that work for others get most to do in winter. Those that have establishments of their own can of course work all the time. Most employers pay by the week. Mrs. Dall has the following sentence in her "Woman's Right to Labor:" "I think there is room in Boston for an establishment from which a woman could come to a sickroom, to shave the heated head or cut the beard of the dying; a place where women's and children's wants could be attended to, without necessary contact with men." =301. Dyers.= B. will want some nice women to dye ladies' hair. Now he has it done by men. He wants but one at first--one who has worked with hair--for instance, a lady's maid would be most suitable. She must not be afraid to color her hands, or to work. When not working at that, she will spend her time making wigs. He will teach her how to do both, and, if she proves herself competent, he will give her fair wages. For two or three weeks he will board her and pay all her expenses. Then he will pay her $5 a week. He will take another when needed, and so increase the number as he has occasion. He employs some women to put up hair dye and perfumery, and pays $3 a week. =302. Growers.= Dr. Gardner says: "At Caen, in France, there is a market, whither young girls resort, and stand hour after hour, with their flowing hair, rich and glossy, deriving additional lustre from the contrast with their naked shoulders. This is the resort of the merchant barbers, some of whom come even from England. The merchants pass along among them, examine the color, texture, evenness, and other qualities of the beautiful fleece, haggle for a sou, and finally buy. The hair then, after being cut as closely as possible to the head, is weighed and paid for, and the girl goes home to let another suit grow out for shearing time." =303. Manufacturers.= The woman at S.'s says they have constant application to receive hands, and have to turn a great many away. They have trouble to get good workers. The girls will not take time to learn to do their work perfectly. They ought to spend some years learning. At C.'s, they employ a number of women in making wigs, scalps, and toupees, who can earn from $4 to $5 a week. It requires six months to learn that branch. At another place I was told it requires but a few weeks to learn to make wigs only. Workers at it earn from $3 to $5. This branch of work is profitable. Mrs. R. told me that those who make wigs can be at work all the year, but hair dressing is mostly confined to seasons. In different stores, the wages of employées vary. It is well for a person to learn all the branches, if she has time, so that if one fails her, she can take up another. Her work is mostly done in the country--no doubt because she can get it done more cheaply. Weaving hair pays best. It is paid for by the yard, and generally done at the home of the worker. If done in the house, it is most likely to be paid for by the week, and ten--the usual number of working hours--spent at it. American women form a majority in the business. It is a good business, for a small capital, when living near the importers. It is extending West and South. A hair manufacturer in Rochester writes: "The occupation is permanent, and my employées have work at all seasons. There is a demand in many places for workers in this line." A hair manufacturer in Newburyport, Massachusetts, who has three women braiding hair for jewelry, and making wigs, pays by the day, of ten hours. They receive from $3 to $8 per week, and work the same at all seasons. =304. Merchants.= Most of the hair made up in this country is bought in France and Italy. The price paid for each head of hair ranges from one to five francs, according to its weight and beauty. From one of the cyclopædias we learn, that 200,000 pounds of women's hair is annually sold in France; that the price paid for it is usually six cents an ounce." "Whether dark or light, the hair purchased by the dealer is so closely scrutinized, that he can discriminate between the German and French article by the smell alone; nay, he even claims the power, 'when his nose is in,' of distinguishing accurately between the English, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scotch commodities." WILLOW WARE. =305. Willow Ware.= Great quantities of willow ware have been imported from France, but of late years some attention has been paid to the growing of it near Philadelphia. Our climate is said to be well adapted to its growth, and the willow raised to be of a superior quality. Willow grows in damp places. Most basket makers buy the willow, and split it themselves. All the most tasteful and elegant baskets used in this country are imported from France. Basket making is one of the principal employments engaged in by the blind. It requires some strength, but more skill and practice. A basket maker's tools can be bought for $5, and last a lifetime. On looking for women basket makers in Philadelphia, we found a German widow, who could not make herself understood in English, but my companion conversed with her in German, and learned that she had supported herself and son for six years, by making baskets for the trade. She buys the willow ready for use at seven cents a pound. She sells small round baskets, with covers and handles, at $2.25 a dozen. She looked very poor, but clean, and had evidently a room to sleep in besides the one we saw, where she works and cooks. A German woman, in New York, making small fancy baskets on blocks, told me she could earn from fifty cents to $1 per day. Her husband dyes the willow. A German woman asked me $1.50 for a basket she had paid fifty cents for making--at that rate her profits were considerable. I met a German boy with baskets, who said he could make from seventy-five cents to $1 a day by his work. His father, mother, and sisters also work at the trade. I saw a woman who merely colors willow. She could make a comfortable living at it, if she could give all her time to it; but she cannot, as she has two small children, and must give part of her time to them. In Williamsburg, I had a long talk with a basket maker. He says it is best for an apprentice to learn basket making of a practical worker who has not many hands, and who will give instruction himself. He can give the more time to his learners. He spent seven years learning the trade in England. It requires knowledge of form to make the baskets of a handsome shape. He showed me a book giving directions how to proportion baskets. He thinks a right smart person might learn the business in two years, when they could earn from $10 to $15 a week. The basket makers have a society in New York that discourages the work of women in that line, by not allowing its members to sell to any store for which a woman works. The excuse is, it throws men out of work. Yet the man told me that there are probably not more than two hundred basket makers in the United States, and that it is a good business. He has more work than he can do. (Oh, what injustice to woman!) The Dutch, he says, make baskets at a lower price than the members of the society, and consequently they are discountenanced by the members. Inexperienced or careless workers are apt to cut their hands with the willow while at work. A woman who sells baskets told me that basket making is a poor business now. A man that worked for her during the summer said that, working from early in the morning till late at night, he could not make more than $4.50 a week, and if his wife had not worked out, they could not have made a living. She says the duty on willow is high, and transporters ask any price they please, as it occupies considerable room, and does not pay very well as freight. When American supplies are brought in, it is cheaper. The women that supply her do the lighter parts of the work; and their husbands, the heavier. A willow ware manufacturer in Waterbury, Vermont, writes: "The work is light and healthy. It is paid for by the piece. Women are paid less, because they are not so strong, and can live cheaper. It requires about one year to learn the business. Learners are paid by the week, about $2. Ingenuity and some taste are needed for a basket maker. A great many women might advantageously learn the trade, if they would. They can work at it all the year. We should like to employ a few girls to learn the trade and make baskets, but have been unable to do so yet, as it is very difficult finding help enough to do housework in this vicinity." A German, who learned his trade with the basket maker of his Majesty, in Dresden, replies to a circular asking information on willow work: "Women are employed at this trade at several places in Germany. They are paid by the piece. In this country, if they are able to finish the work as well as men, they are usually paid the same wages. Coarse work can be learned in much less time than fine. It is in some places the custom to have five persons to make a basket, each doing a separate part. I think the prospects for work good. Women can make the finer work quicker than men, but men succeed best in making coarse work." WOOD WORK. =306. Carvers.= The word "carver" is rather extensive in its application, being applied alike to one who cuts stone, wood, or metal. Carvers of stone and metal we treat of elsewhere. The art of carving is quite ancient. There are five kinds of wood carving: house, ship, toy, furniture, and pattern making; to these we may add the cutting of wooden letters for ornamental signs. Pattern making is the reverse of architectural carving: the first being in bas relief; the other, alto. Architectural carving is mostly done in pine, occasionally in oak. Ship carvers cut figure heads for vessels; some of this carving is done in oak, some in pine. For some kinds of carving the design is drawn on paper and cut out; then it is placed on the block, which is prepared of a proper thickness, and the outline drawn with a pencil. The portions of wood outside the design are then cut off with carving implements. The plan of marking the wood is not practised by all carvers. It may be that it is used for beginners only. Ingenuity in planning and skilful drawing are desirable qualifications for a carver. The tools used by carvers are very simple, being merely a hammer, and gouges of different sizes. When the wood is carved, it is smoothed with sand paper, then gilded or painted and varnished. During an apprenticeship, the usual sum paid a boy is $2.50 a week the first year, and more afterward. A journeyman can usually earn $1.50 or $1.75 a day of ten hours. It requires three years to learn the trade. "In wood sculpture, all that belongs to its simple ornament might receive a special grace from the inspiration of women." We have seen architectural and ship carving done by women; and it is our belief that almost any and every kind of carving could be done by them, if the wood were properly prepared, and they were carefully instructed. Some kinds of carving require considerable muscular strength. An architectural carver writes: "Our employment is healthy. Part of our business is suitable for women, but there is not enough in our establishment to keep one constantly employed." A carver told me that furniture carving is sometimes done by women. Though it is done in harder wood than most other kinds, it does not involve the lifting of heavy blocks, like architectural carving. The widow of a ship carver carries on the business in New York. Her son told me that eight persons could do all the work necessary for that city. There are a few ship carvers in Boston and Philadelphia, but none in the South or West. (Would not New Orleans present a good opening?) A. told me, a boy in learning ship carving is apprenticed for five or six years. He receives $1.50 a week for the first year, then $2, and after that $2.50, but no more. A carver told me that he had an Englishman working for him, that showed him some work done by his daughter, which was superior. He knows the wives of some carvers who finish the work of their husbands by rubbing it with sand paper. "Louisa Raldan, of Seville, was known as an excellent sculptor in wood." "Anna Maria Schurmann, of Sweden, carved busts in wood." "Anna Tessala, an artist of the Dutch school, was eminent as a skilful carver in wood." "Properzia di Rossi, an Italian sculptress, carved on a peachstone the crucifixion of our Saviour." Many toys are made in Germany by women and children. They are purchased very cheaply, we know, from their low prices in this country. Mrs. Dall says: "I would direct the attention of young women to the Swiss carving of paper knives, bread plates, salad spoons, ornamental figures, jewel boxes, and so on. On account of the care required in the transportation, these articles bring large prices; and I feel quite sure that many an idle girl might win a pleasant fame through such trifles." Articles might be cut of wood, as mementos of some great event or pleasant association. The small wooden cages, in which we see canaries for sale, were made by women in Germany. There labor is cheaper, and they probably receive only two or three cents for a cage, while in this country they could not be made for less than a shilling. I saw some pretty wooden toys, made in Switzerland by the shepherds while watching their flocks, and some which were made by women. It is a favorite pastime with them in the evening, when the family is gathered around the hearthstone. The small carved boards, used for the support of music in pianos, are carved by a delicate saw, moving perpendicularly and driven by steam. The carver has the pattern marked on the board, and moves it under the saw, as the workman does the back of shell combs. One species of carving common in Europe is that of saints and virgins for small churches. =307. Kindling Wood.= Some little boys putting kindling wood into bundles told me they are paid fifteen cents a hundred bundles, and can do from two hundred and fifty to three hundred in a day of ten hours. Most of them take the strings home at night and tie them, to save time in the day. Girls could do it, but they would be liable to accident from the carelessness of those at work. =308. Pattern Makers.= The wife of a pattern maker told me it requires ingenuity, patience, and a knowledge of drawing to become a pattern maker. C. thought general pattern making would not do for a woman, as it would require planing, cutting, and turning wood. He said some of the finer parts of pattern making, as forming models on a small scale for the patent office, could be done by a woman who is qualified. It would require a knowledge of arithmetical proportions, ability to turn a lathe properly, and aptness at catching the ideas of others. A gentleman who makes models for the patent office, patterns for machinery, steam and gas fittings, &c., writes: "The varnishing might be done by women, but in most shops there would not be enough to keep one at work all the time." S. told me that a part of the work of pattern making could be done by women, but it would be advisable they should have a separate apartment in founderies. The variety of ornamental iron work is so great that it affords scope for inventive talent. We suppose the business of pattern making is not more laborious and is very similar to block cutting. If women were prepared for some branches of this business, we doubt not it would prove remunerative and furnish steady employment. A pattern maker writes from Hartford: "We do our own draughting, but there is considerable done independent of a shop. For such work we pay $2 a day. A knowledge of geometry and mathematics is a prerequisite." =309. Rattan Splitters.= Formerly, rattan was thrown from the ships that landed in New York, as something useless; now it sells at from four to nine cents a pound. The centre of the rattan is used for hoop skirts. The outside is split off by a strange-looking machine. The strips are then shaved thin by another machine, for making chair seats and ornamenting buggies. They are bleached in a close room with ignited sulphur. The refuse is used in some way in the manufacture of gas--also for making coarse mats and filling beds. At N.'s factory, I saw girls shaving rattan. The work was dusty--one sat, but the others stood. The girls had merely to attend to the strips as they ran through small machines moved by steam. Each girl received fifty cents a day of ten hours, for her services. In Fitchburg, Mass., fifty girls are so employed. =310. Segar Boxes.= I called in a segar-box factory where the man had four boys at work. The trade requires care, and some ability to calculate proportions. The work consists in driving small nails, gluing on tape, planing the edges, and similar labor. Women could do it, and I expect do in Germany. If boys from ten to fifteen years of age can, why cannot girls? After two months, a boy earns something. Two of the boys had been working at the trade two years, and were earning each $3 a week. The wood is cedar, and so easily managed. =311. Turners.= I saw the process of wood turning. The flying of the chips I thought disagreeable. The trade can be learned in three years very well. A boy learning is paid $2.50 a week, the first year; the next year, $3; the next, increased fifty cents more, and so on. A good hand can earn from $1.75 to $2 a day. Some women do the turning of small wooden articles in France, and quite a number are employed in bone and horn turning in the old country, which is not so hard. Turning is more nearly perfect than most mechanical operations, and consequently is employed in all those branches susceptible of its use. In most work of this nature the article operated on is stationary, and the machinery in motion; but in turning, the article is kept in motion, the tool merely pressed upon it by the hand. "There is said to be but little difference in the management of turning different substances. The principal thing to be attended to is to adapt the velocity of the motion to the nature of the material." Rosa Bonheur, when a girl, was apprenticed to a dress maker, whose husband was a turner. His lathe stood in an adjoining room. Rosa delighted to slip away from her work and employ herself at the turner's lathe. The making of bone and wooden handles for canes and umbrellas could be done by women. Removing the surface of the bone is dirty work, and requires some strength. The polishing could be done by a girl. The bones are bought at glue factories, slaughter houses, &c. In New York, for a small new bone, two and a half cents is paid; for a large one, five cents. AGENTS. =312. Express and other Conveyances.= We saw a description, a short time ago, by some traveller in Scotland, of ladies acting in the capacity of railroad officials; that is, one sold tickets, another collected them, and a third was telegraphing at a station. I have been told that some of the ticket agents in Boston are women. Women are also employed at some of the railway stations in France and Germany, not only to sell tickets, but to guard the stations and crossings. I have heard that on those roads where women are switch tenders no accident has ever occurred. "In Paris, omnibus conductors submit their way bills at the transfer offices to women for inspection and ratification. Women book you for a seat in the diligence. Women let donkeys for rides at Montmorency, and saddle them too." The St. Louis _Republican_ mentions that there is one feature about the steamer _Illinois Belle_, of peculiar attractiveness--a lady clerk. "Look at her bills of lading, and 'Mary J. Patterson, Clerk,' will be seen traced in a delicate and very neat style of chirography. A lady clerk on a Western steamer! It speaks strongly of our moral progress." =313. General Agents.= "The walks of business become more manifold and extended as the luxuries of civilization and the skill of human inventions become more multiplied and more widely displayed. Every description of commercial, mechanical, and executive business excited and created by the new wants and new imaginations of advancing society, will call for the creation and extension of new agencies to accomplish the labor which they must demand. Thus the variety and number of business agencies of every kind must spread out in a constant increase." We think there is great imposition practised by some people who secure lady agents, and we would advise ladies who can undertake an agency to learn something of the parties who would employ, and the character of the article, before they engage in any undertaking of the kind. A conscientious agent is likely to have her interests suffer by a want of honor in those whom she represents. With a liberal discount on the retail price of most goods, agents might be enabled to make a handsome return for their services. I saw a man that manufactures indelible ink, and employs agents to sell it and stencil plates. He allows them half they receive. One lady in Boston, he said, made $20 one day. I think it probable it was in a large school. Ladies, he says, will not stay long at it, because it tires them very much to go up stairs a great deal. An agent should be one that can talk well and has tact and judgment. She should select those parts of a city where she will be most likely to meet with success. If her article is something for ladies' use, let her go where the best dwellings are. If it is something for universal use, if she selects but part of a city, the largest quantity will probably be sold in those parts most densely populated. A manufacturer of fancy soaps and perfumery told me he has employed ladies as agents to go around selling those articles. Some have cleared $2 a day. He allows one hundred percentage. C., of Boston, manufacturer of needle threaders, wick pullers, and pencil sharpeners, offers a liberal discount to agents; but we presume it would require some Yankee tact to make the sales amount to much. He states that some of their agents make from $200 to $300 a month. A stencil cutter in New Haven writes: "I have made tools for ladies to do the work of making embroidery stencils. It is necessary to travel to sell them. One lady may make the work at home, and another sell it. One young man, whom I furnished with tools, told me that he sold $14 worth of plates in five hours." Dr. B. employs twenty ladies making shoulder braces, and pays them from $3 to $4 a week. The sewing is done by hand. He allows lady agents to have the braces at $1 a pair, which can be retailed at $2 a pair. Boarding agencies have become common in some of the large cities. Some agents charge the keepers of boarding houses a percentage for every boarder sent them, but do not charge the applicant. In some offices a person records his name and pays $2, for which he has the privileges of the office one year. The boarding-house keeper pays a percentage to the agent in proportion to the rate of board, without regard to the length of time the boarders remain. One agency charges $2 for registering a name, and fifty cents for each boarder it secures. Some agents in New York have purchased articles of every kind on commission for Southerners, receiving a commission from both parties. Southern ladies have always preferred New York goods, but we suppose they will now wish to patronize their own people. =314. Literary, Book, and Newspaper Agents.= By literary agents we mean those that are willing to take the compositions of others, review, correct, prune, polish, mend, and present them for publication. We suppose there are not a great many ladies, in our country, of sufficient experience in this way to be prepared for the business, and probably a smaller number that would wish to undertake it. Yet, we think, to a competent and reliable lady, it might yield a handsome profit. We know there are a few gentlemen so engaged. Proof readers are sometimes employed by authors for this purpose, or some literary friend of ability does it as an accommodation. Ladies have been agents more for magazines than standard works. Indeed, only new books claim the privilege of having their merits set forth by agents. In towns and cities, ladies could act as agents without any difficulty. The business, of course, requires one to be on her feet a great deal. In sparsely settled portions of the country, it could not be so easily done. Yet we were told in New York of an educated lady that wished to earn a livelihood, and, not seeing any other way open, she became a book agent. She got a horse and buggy, and rode through the country, and was very successful. She met with a young lady who was very anxious to join her. They made a great deal of money, and wrote a book of their travels. There are said to be many book and paper agents in New York city--both men and women--and they are paid the same percentage. The time of work is confined to daylight. If newspaper advertisements for book agents can be relied on, we suppose the business would pay well. We can scarcely glance over the columns of a newspaper without finding a call for agents to present the merits of some new work, with the promise that, if active and diligent, the individual will clear from $30 to $100 per month. It requires judgment, taste, and a knowledge of what is popular in the book market. I was told by the editor of a ladies' magazine, that he pays his agents fifty cents on the dollar, and would be glad to secure the services of more lady agents. He stated that one of his lady agents in Brooklyn obtained in two weeks twenty subscribers, so making $12.50. Some sell books on subscription, but if the books are printed, the surest and most speedy way is to deliver the book and receive the money, when the individual decides to buy. A lady who earns her living as a book and newspaper agent, told me that she gets a percentage for the agency of books and papers. She has been an agent eight years in New York. Her health is poor, and she thinks it is from being out in all kinds of weather. She does not go to every house, but calls on one friend, who recommends her to another--so that she has as many to visit as she can. She says the qualifications needed are health, tact, judgment, courage, pleasing address, perseverance, with faith in the work, and in God. Ladies are more likely to be well received than men, but cannot walk as much. She prefers the agency of books, because she then gets the money, gives the book, and that is the last of it. But there is a responsibility attending the agency of papers. The editor may require pre-payment for his magazine. If he is not an honorable man, he may discontinue his magazine during the year, and not refund what is due to his subscribers. The agent is then blamed, as well as the editor, when it may be totally out of her power to remedy the matter, or to have prevented it. A lady news agent, that has a good location and a small circulating library, told me she has occupied the place for several years, and so has regular customers. She does it to aid her husband in supporting and educating their children, but thinks an individual could earn for self alone a comfortable living by keeping a news depot. In the large cities of the North are newspaper agents (men) who solicit advertisements, for which they receive a commission from editors. There is a Miss S. in New York, who makes a very good living by obtaining advertisements for the principal city papers. She goes to stores and offices, and solicits advertisements of business men, for which she receives a percentage from the conductors of the papers. =315. Mercantile Agents.= At the office of a mercantile agency on Broadway, New York, one hundred young men are employed in writing. Why could not women do it? An agent who travels for C.'s paper-hanging manufactory, exhibiting specimens and getting orders, and has a commission also from another house for another kind of business, makes $4,000 a year. Ladies were employed writing for one mercantile agency in Boston one winter. =316. Pens.= The inventor of Prince's Protean pen thinks a lady would do well to act as agent for the sale of his pens. A man who was agent made $3,000 a year, but he could not stand such exertion over a year. His pen is so constructed as to furnish a flow of ink for ten consecutive hours. It is very convenient in travelling, on account of the ink being in the case. Physicians would find it very convenient. An agent would receive a very good allowance; for instance, a $5 pen she would receive for $3; one style of $4 pen for $2.50, and another style for $2.25. Mr. Snow, of Hartford, an importer of steel pens, offers to pay $2 a day to all agents who sell five gross of pens per day, at the list of prices furnished, and at the same rate for any larger quantity. =317. Sewing Machines.= H., manufacturer of low-priced sewing machines in Newburyport, Massachusetts, desires to secure some local and travelling agents. In his circular he says: "In order to ascertain who would prove an efficient and reliable agent, we have concluded that each applicant shall sell thirty days on commission; and after that time, if he proves as before stated, and prefers it to a commission, we will pay him a salary of from $30 to $80 a month, according to capabilities, and travelling expenses. The commission allowed will be thirty-three and one third per cent, on the machines sold." We know nothing of the merits or demerits of the machine, but give it as a criterion by which to judge what sewing-machine agents may expect in the way of remuneration. The manufacturer of the universal hemmer, which can be attached to any sewing machine, retails them at $2.50, but to agents a deduction is made of seventy-five cents. (It probably costs ten cents apiece to make them.) They require agents to buy what they wish to sell. It being a cash business, they have few lady agents. Their agents confine themselves to towns, on account of the time that would be consumed in travelling through the country. At a manufactory of children's spring horses, I saw a lady employed to sell the horses and make saddles for them. Some she stitched by hand, and some quilted and stitched by machine. She got $6 a week. =318. School Agents.= A lady properly qualified might, we think, conduct a school agency. As there are few school agencies in New York, we suppose it must be a business that pays. The prejudice that will probably be created by the difficulties in our country, will no doubt open the way for the preparation and employment of slave State ladies as teachers in their own States, and consequently one or more agencies in the South will be needed. The terms of one of the best agencies we know of, are as follows: "To principals who have their schools registered for the purpose of obtaining scholars by making known the terms, locality, and advantages of their schools, a fee of $5 is charged; and for each yearly renewal, $2; and for the introduction of each pupil into a registered school, where the board and tuition does not amount to $120 per annum, the fee is $5. When over that amount and under $160, $7, &c. For the registration of a teacher, in advance, $2. When the situation is obtained, and the remuneration is under $1,000, three per cent. If $1,000 and over, five per cent. When desired to examine and personally assume the responsibility of selecting teachers for important positions, an additional fee of from $3 to $5 will be charged." =319. Telegraph Instruments.= A manufacturer of telegraphic instruments in Boston writes: "We do not employ women in the mechanical part of our business, but we employ them as agents to sell our instruments for medical use. They fit themselves as lecturers by studying the science, and travel about lecturing, giving instruction, selling machines, &c. A very handsome income is derived therefrom." =320. Washing Machines.= At a washing machine establishment, I was told they make a deduction of twenty per cent. to agents who sell for them; but to agents who sell for themselves and buy six or more, they make a deduction of thirty per cent. MANUFACTURERS AND COLORERS OF LADIES' APPAREL. =321. Artificial Flowers.= As in everything else, the price for making artificial flowers is very much regulated by the quality and taste displayed. Many flowers made in the United States are equal in beauty and delicacy of finish to genuine Paris flowers, but they are mostly made by French women, and so are in reality French flowers. In France, the preparation of the materials used in the manufacture, forms several distinct branches of trade, and the quality of the flowers depends in a great measure upon the care used in the getting up of these materials. The modes of coloring flowers are exceedingly various. The materials used in the United States are mostly imported from Paris. Some stores in New York are confined to the sale of materials for artificial florists. There are said to be between sixty and seventy flower manufacturers in New York, and about a dozen in Philadelphia. I have been told there are probably 10,000 women and children employed in making flowers in New York: I know there is great competition in the business. The work is mostly done by women and children, who receive as wages from $1 to $6 per week. It requires care and patience, united with good taste and much experience, to succeed in this pretty art. There are said to be about twenty processes in the making of artificial flowers. The employment is one easily affected, consequently fluctuating. The New York manufacturers have sold large quantities of American flowers to Southern merchants, but have had no orders lately. In New York, flower peps are made by men and boys. A man at the work said it requires some time to learn to do all the parts. Boys, he said, do some parts that girls cannot well do; but from my observation, girls and women could as well do it all as workers of the other sex. One maker of flower peps told me that at one time he employed girls, but found they had not strength enough to cut the wires. To cut the wires might be hard, but they could get accustomed to it; at any rate, they could dip the pistils and stamens into the coloring matter and place them in the frames to dry. H. told me he employs about 600 women and 400 men in his business, that of making flowers and dressing ornamental feathers. The women earn from $4 to $12 a week; the average is from $6 to $7. They only work eight hours in winter. There are several distinct branches, and it requires longer to learn some than others. The washing and dyeing of feathers is done by men, the curling and dressing by women. A few of his women are French. He thinks it a business that must increase as the country grows older. T. imports all his flowers, but employs one girl to mount them, that is, make them into clusters, wreaths, &c. Not more than one in eight or ten of those employed in the city in making artificial flowers devotes herself to mounting them. It requires excellent taste and some ingenuity. He pays by the week, from $8 to $10. I called on a German lady who makes artificial flowers of paper and coarse muslin. She arranges them in wreaths, and sells them to decorate small stores, particularly German book stores. She and her daughter make a comfortable living at it. It requires long practice in the artificial flower business to earn good wages, and very good wages are earned at only a small number of establishments. The trickery of mean people in every occupation, it is desirable to avoid. In this business much is said to be practised. One of the unprincipled acts referred to is this: Learners are told they must spend six months acquiring the trade, and during that time will receive nothing, but after that get fair wages. One branch is learned in a week or ten days, but the apprentices remain, according to agreement, six months doing the same kind of work, when they are dismissed on the plea there is no work to give them, and new apprentices are taken. Some will keep their apprentices at but one branch of work for a year or two, so reaping the benefit of their work, without giving the instruction they promise. Girls who have served several years at artificial flower making can seldom earn over $3.50 or $4 a week. G. & K., one of the oldest and most extensive firms in New York, prefer to take girls from thirteen to fifteen years of age. Older girls are not satisfied with such wages as learners receive. While learning, for the first month, they are paid $2; after that, by the week, according to what they can do. They teach their girls all the different parts, and they make the finest French flowers. They give their girls work all the year, and they earn from $1 to $6 a week. In summer, they work ten hours; in winter, nine and a half. In this, as in every business, the best hands are most sure to obtain employment. Mrs. P. thinks only little girls should learn it, as it takes a great while to acquire proficiency. She and her partner pay fifty cents a week for two months to a learner, then $1 a week for a time, and then increase according to what is done. They usually give employment all the year. They pay altogether by the week, wages running from $2 to $5. At another manufactory, I found the arrangements the same, the girls working nine and a half hours in winter, and ten hours in summer. At another place I was told that it was best for a learner to begin at ten years of age. By the time she is eighteen, she will be able to make $4 or $5 a week. In some of the first-class houses for the sale of fine French flowers, a few superior hands may earn $6 and $7 per week; but for common flowers, particularly in the cheap establishments, the prices paid are very low. It is said to be common among some manufacturers of flowers to mix in a few imported ones with their own, and sell them all as foreign flowers. At another place, I found the same arrangement, fifty cents a week for a learner; $4 a week is the price paid for a very good hand. At an importer and manufacturer of flower materials, I was told their season commences about the first of February. It requires but two or three weeks' practice to earn something--then learners are paid by the piece. Their girls make centres. They manufacture stamps and veins. At a clean-looking place, where the flowers were of a superior quality, I was told their girls earn from $2 to $7. At a Frenchman's, I was told, in two months a smart girl could begin to make fine French flowers. He pays nothing for two months; after that, seventy-five cents a week, and increases that as the worker acquires speed and proficiency. A good worker, he said, can earn $9 (?) a week. His girls work nine hours a day. They make all parts and different kinds of flowers. Some girls never learn to make flowers. At another place, the girls, I was told, are paid nothing for three months, but at the end of that time are paid $5. They learn all the branches. Workers are paid by the piece, earning from seventy-five cents to $6 a week. It requires taste and a peculiar aptitude. =322. Belts.= B. & H. have ladies' and children's belts made, dolls dressed, fans trimmed, &c. Their business is wholesale. They manufacture for houses here that sell to the Southern trade. They have employed at some seasons from twenty-five to fifty girls. The belt trade is merely making the goods into belts. A person that can sew neatly can learn belt making in a day. The girls earn from $3 to $4 per week, and are paid by the piece. The belt room is superintended by a man. The busiest time for belt making and for trimming in the wholesale business, is in July and August, January, February and March. Spring work begins in January and ends the first of June, and fall work the first of August and ends the first of December. Their hands have work most of the year. They have a variety of work done; so if there is not enough of one kind for their hands, they put them to doing something else. They pay by the gross. The sewing must be done by hand. The business is confined mostly to New York. When business is good, the foreman will allow those he knows to take work home, and get their mothers and sisters to help them. The factory is in Newark. It is difficult to get girls to go there from New York. =323. Bonnet Ruches.= At some factories, ruches are made entirely by machinery. They are not as well nor as neatly put together, and do not sell as high as those made by hand. It does not require long for a girl with any brains to learn, but she should commence when young, and gradually rise to the more difficult processes. A manufacturer told me girls must be at it a year before they are good pressers. For making ruches he pays by the week, from $1 to $4.50. Ruche makers are not apt to be out of employment more than from two to four weeks. P., New York, told us his workers are of all nations. Some work by the week, sewing ten hours a day. Girls sit in his factory while at work, but stand in most places. Standing is thought to be the easiest position, as it allows of change. He told us that some girls earn as high as $6 a week. It is piece work. Joining, sewing, and pressing are done by females, fluting by men and boys. It is best for females that wish to learn the business to commence quite early, say when twelve or fourteen years of age. P. thinks it would not be advisable to introduce more workers into the occupation but I would advise any one desiring to learn the trade to make further inquiries into the condition of the business. T., of Philadelphia, who has been in the business a great many years, employs over one hundred females. =324. Dress Trimmings.= In London, many women and children are employed in making dress trimmings. The children wind the quills, and the women wind the silk on reels, and weave it, knit covers for fancy buttons, make fringes, tassels, buttons, and other trimmings. In this country most of such work is done by women and girls, the majority of whom are Germans, as are also the proprietors. They are the best for hand work, but English trimming makers are best for power looms. All large cities contain more or less manufacturers of dress trimmings, but the business is mostly confined to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Many who manufacture, also keep for sale the different varieties of sewing and embroidery silk, zephyr wool, patterns, and canvas, braid, and such articles. It is only within the last twenty-five years that fringes and tassels have been manufactured in this country, but quite a number of houses are now engaged in it. The goods are said to equal those of Europe. "There are over 1,000 hands employed in this branch in New York, at least three fourths of whom are females. Girls at reeling earn $2.50; at braiding, $3.30; and at weaving, from $4 to $6." I called at a factory where eighty girls are employed. They earn from $1 to $6 per week, doing both day and night work. No girl, the foreman said, can earn $1 a day of ten hours at that work. When the snow is on the ground, the girls can take work home with them to do at night, instead of remaining at the factory. He says there are different seasons for different kinds of trimmings, as buttons, fringes, gimps, &c., and the styles of these trimmings change. Work is slack in the early part of the winter for a few weeks. It would take three or four years to learn all the branches perfectly. Some sit and some stand while at work. At a manufactory in New York, I was told the season begins in September and lasts through the winter. Their hands earn from $3 to $5 per week. There is an over supply of hands in New York. At another place I was told the work is nearly always paid for by the piece. Their hands earn from $3 to $5 per week. Men receive from $7 to $10. Women's part can be learned in from four to six weeks, and learners are paid if they do not spoil too much material. June, July, December, and January are dull months. In busy seasons good hands are very scarce. The clerk of Messrs. B.'s factory told us the wages vary greatly. We glanced over the account book, with his permission, and observed that the lowest wages were about $1 a week, and the highest $4. It is piece work, and they will not promise employment all the year. He says, if a girl that learns cannot earn something in a year, she is not worth having. Their work is for wholesale houses. At one place I was told the girls work nine hours a day, and receive $4 a week--six months learning. After the first week they were paid $1.50 a week for six months. They make up a stock when not doing ordered work. N. employs from fifty to one hundred women, and sometimes more. They can learn in fourteen days. He pays from the first, and pays by the week, they working from six to six, having an hour at noon. It requires but a few weeks to learn one branch. One girl told me she works by the piece, and sometimes earns from $3 to $6 a week. She works from seven in the morning till gaslight. Girls, when reeling and braiding, stand. To those engaged in this kind of work, there is employment all the year to twenty-five out of every hundred; the rest are occupied from July to January. When paid by the week they seldom receive more than $4, though by taking it home and working more hours they sometimes make $5. Prices in this kind of work have fallen considerably in the last few years. I have been told by a manufacturer that the class so employed is usually of not so elevated a character as some others. The prices paid and work given for so short a time, prevent the best class of workers from entering the business. M--s, Philadelphia, employ about seventy females, including bookkeepers, saleswomen, and trimming makers. In the dull seasons their operatives are not likely to be thrown out of work, as the wholesale dealers will always require them. The workers are paid by the piece, according to the degree of perfection they have attained. When a girl presents herself for employment, the foreman immediately sets her to work on some easy kind of trimming, but she receives no wages until her work is fit for sale. The loss of time on her part and the risk of materials on the part of the employer constitute the apprenticeship. A smart girl will of course soon be able to earn something, and has always the stimulus of increasing her gains. The class of girls in the store seemed to be superior to those in the workroom, more intelligent and refined. The workrooms were large and airy. The weavers, button makers, &c., work from eight to ten hours a day. Another proprietor said a person to learn the business should go to a small place, where only a few are employed--not to a factory, as they will not be troubled with learners in a factory. Some of his hands work slowly, but execute in a superior manner; others work rapidly, but make the article in an inferior manner. At another manufacturer's, one of the firm told me a good hand can earn from $5 to $6 a week, ten hours a day, when times are good. They pay, after a learner has spent a week at it, according to what she can accomplish. The prospect for work is good, but he would not advise a lady to learn it; he thinks millinery better. In a town not far from New York, where he lived, a milliner could earn $20 a month and her board. Crocheting pays better. For crocheting the heads of silk fringes, a girl may earn $5 a week. I saw the agent of a lady who has trimmings manufactured. He says girls spend about two weeks learning, and are then paid by the week, from $1 to $4. He thinks the prospect for work very poor at present, for their work has been for the South almost exclusively, and now the Southerners will not purchase, particularly as such articles can be dispensed with. They have employed hands all the year, but are most busy spring and fall. The busy season commences in February. A manufacturer told me he pays his learners $2 a week for a time. His girls have work most of the year. Good hands can earn $5 a week. Some of his hands take work home with them to do in the evening. From the arrangement of the conveniences in the room, I think the air must be not only offensive but unwholesome. I observed this in two or three other workrooms. At another factory, I was told it takes but four weeks to learn, and girls during that time are paid fifty cents a week. Girls earn from $3 to $5. One man told me he pays as soon as the work is done well enough to sell. The largest manufactory in the world of dress trimmings, curtain trimmings, carriage laces, and military goods, is that of W. H. Horstman & Sons, Philadelphia. They employ four hundred hands, the majority of whom are females. In R.'s dress-trimming manufactory, Philadelphia, seventy females are employed, at an average of $2.75 a week. =325. Embroideries.= Embroidery was a favorite employment of the ladies of ancient times. In the days of Grecian prosperity it was a pastime among all ranks of ladies, and in the middle ages it was no less popular. The French excel in embroidery. Much of the embroidery sold in New York is done in Ireland. "A French manufacturer has invented a process of applying the electric spark to piercing designs on paper for embroidery." There now exists a machine by which one lady can accomplish as much as fifteen hand embroiderers. There are one hundred and fifty needles attached, all of which can be in use at the same time. By it the most difficult patterns can be executed. Many of the machines are now in operation in Germany, France, Switzerland, and England. "The canton of Neufchatel employs more than 3,500 females in hand embroidery, but this branch of the trade is principally carried on in the eastern parts of Switzerland, where manual labor is extremely cheap." In 1851, 250,000 females were employed in Great Britain in muslin embroidery, and the larger number of the women did the work at their own homes. About a million and a half of dollars then passed out of the United States in payment for a portion of this embroidery. We would be pleased to see a greater demand for these articles from a home, and less from a foreign market. The increased facilities for stamping impressions on the muslin, and the consequent cheapness of doing so, tends to render the business more lucrative to those employed. The prices earned depend on the skill and experience of the worker. Embroidery may be divided into two kinds, cloth and muslin. The first is used for thick goods, furniture covers, ottomans, chair seats, tapestry, &c. The other kind consists in the embroidery of ladies' caps, collars, handkerchiefs, and other light articles of apparel. The materials used are cotton, linen, silk, and silver and gold thread. Embroidery is paid for by the piece, according to the quality of the material and the amount of work. For stamping muslin to embroider, four, six, and eight cents a yard are paid, according to the width and style of pattern. Some stamping is done with wooden plates, some with copper plates, and some by a paper impression. The wooden plates cost from fifty cents to $2.50. Metal tools for stamping cost more. It would be well, in establishments where embroidery is kept for sale, to keep patterns on hand for braiding, needlework, and embroidery. Such patterns have met with a ready sale, and always will, when such a pastime is fashionable. I find fifty cents a lesson is the usual price paid for instruction in embroidery, and a person accustomed to using the needle can learn in a few lessons. One lady told me she charged twenty-five cents a lesson. An embroiderer told us but little of such work is done now. A good deal of money was made at it, when fashionable for outer garments and for children's flannel skirts. A gentleman that has such work done told me that good medallion workers would find employment. B., who employs some embroiderers, thinks there is not a surplus of such labor. He could employ more hands. He pays by the piece, from $3 to $7 a week. Taste and skill with the needle are required. Embroidery pays poorly--one could not make a living at it now, unless they had constant work, and were rapid with the needle: very few in New York depend on it for a livelihood. D., a gold and silver embroiderer, thinks a person of ordinary abilities could not get to embroidering well in less than one year's practice. He pays something after a few weeks--as soon as the work is done well enough to sell. Many Germans and French have taken the custom. The Germans do it for less, and consequently root out other embroiderers. So there is not much prospect for work in New York. He has considerable done for cap makers and flag makers, who send South and West. He pays his girls from $4 to $5 a week, and they work from eight to six o'clock. I was told at another place that gold and silver embroidery pays well. The lady that works for W. earns $25 a week. A man writes: "You are aware that women are unable to make the very finest kind of needle embroidery, and that wherever the highest skill is required, men are needed?" We are aware there are some womanish men in France that embroider, but we must have facts before we are convinced that women cannot equal men in embroidering. A young lady, keeping an embroidery store in New York, told me her father cuts stencil plates with chemicals for embroiderers. In some establishments they are cut by steam power. Her father made wooden plates, but it would not pay. It takes but a short time to learn stamping, which pays better than embroidering. Those that do embroidery cheapest, get most to do. The greater part of it is done in winter evenings, as a pastime by ladies. Many ladies have stamping done before they go to the country in the summer, and embroider while they are in the country, putting out their plain sewing. Ladies that embroider, generally do their own stamping. M. knows one lady that embroiders for two or three stores, and makes a very good living. But she thinks very few have enough embroidering to do to occupy all their time. The Broadway stores have considerable embroidery ordered, and get very good prices; but their embroiderers, I have been told, are not better paid than those of other people. Some stores give it to ladies who do it for pocket money. Some of these ladies talk about embroidering for their friends, but, lo and behold! they expect their friends to pay them. It requires considerable practice in embroidery to keep the stitches even, and properly shape the leaves and flowers. A French woman told me she used to get $1.20 a day for embroidering fine collars in Paris. =326. Feathers.= Mrs. M., Philadelphia, has served an apprenticeship of five years at dressing and dyeing feathers, and is now (and has been for fifty years) able to perform every part of it herself, including the preparation of the dyes. She employs women, but they do not give themselves the time or trouble to learn enough of it to carry it on on their own account, but are satisfied to acquire enough of it to enable them to earn a day's wages. From the information obtained from this veteran, we concluded that this trade can be very well carried on by women alone; and farther, that there will always be considerable demand for feathers and plumes, at least in large cities. Ladies' plumes pay best. She prepares plumes for the military. At a feather store in New York, the lady said the season commences in May. Learners are paid $1.50 the first week, and, if they become good workers, may in a few months earn as much as $6 a week. Mrs. D. says she would like to teach some one the business, and establish them where she is. She would turn over her custom to them. She would do so for $200. Her location is a good one. She would instruct how to curl, mend, sew, and color the lighter shades, for $5. She says it is not unhealthy, but requires one to be much on her feet. Taste, both native and cultivated, are required for success. I saw turkey feathers made into a light, delicate plume, and those of geese into flowers. Some feathers from the tails of roosters formed large, dark, rich-looking plumes for children's hats. This I mention to show what the poultry of our own barnyards can produce. Mrs. D.'s work was not confined to the feathers of domestic poultry. In dull seasons she prepares feathers for busy seasons. Connected with her business might be the making and selling of artificial flowers and head dresses. She says a superior feather worker can earn $6 a week, and a few even $8. Mrs. N. told me she takes learners, paying $1 a week for one month, then more if the worker is worth it, and so on. She will not teach to dye. All the American feathers used in the United States are sent from New York. A colorer and curler of fancy feathers told me it does not require more than a few weeks to learn, if you can see the process constantly during that time. It is easier to learn to curl than dye. To dye feathers on a small scale is troublesome, for if you have a feather to be dyed one color, another of a different shade, &c., you must mix up just enough coloring matter for each one. A lady, that would learn the business well, might make a living at it in the South or West. =327. Hoop Skirts.= There are now hundreds of women employed in the manufacture of hoop skirts, that will, when the fashion ceases, be thrown out of employment. What resource will they have? It may be that some other fashion will spring up requiring their services, but we doubt it. D. & S., New York, employ from 600 to 1,000, and once had 1,500 girls working for them. They have large well-aired rooms. We passed through and saw their girls at work. They were neat, well dressed, and cheerful looking. Nine tenths are Americans. Most of the girls have homes. D. & S. have established a free library of two thousand volumes for the girls, but owing to the negligence in not returning books taken out, they lost so many that the library is no longer accessible to them. The trade of D. & S. is Southern. Their girls earn from $4 to $8 per week, and work 9½ hours a day in winter. The girls can change their position frequently. Women are superior to men for this kind of work. While learning, girls receive enough to pay their board. The continuance of this occupation depends entirely on fashion. S. thinks the fashion as likely to last as the wearing of bonnets. Most of the small establishments in this business have been absorbed by the large ones. From December to April are the best seasons for work; from June to September the most slack. T., a large manufacturer, says the average pay is from $4 to $4.50. His forewoman earns $400 a year. Some girls are dull, and some are smart--so the time of learning depends much on that. They pay the girls something from the time they begin to learn. They work ten hours a day. As a general thing the girls and women spend all the money they can spare for dress. The firm have thought of establishing a savings bank in connection with their manufactory, for the benefit of their workwomen, but have never yet found time. Some they pay by the piece; some, by the day; and others, by the week, or year. Some seasons they employ about one thousand work people, of whom nine hundred and fifty are women and girls. I saw, at a factory, some girls covering wire for hoops. The machinery was very ingenious. They are paid $3, and a few $3.50. They have to stand all the time, and watch their work constantly. They work ten hours. The man can always get enough of hands. It requires but a short time to learn. They have work all the year. The spooling, respooling, and covering, are all done by women. Girls can earn from $2 to $6 a week, working ten hours. I saw an old woman who spools cotton for covering hoop skirts. She receives five cents a score, and cords six scores a day, earning thirty cents. At a factory I was told the girls work by the piece, and get from $4 to $5 per week. Owing to the want of proper management on the part of the proprietor, I found the girls do not have work steadily. Sometimes they get out of clasps, or tape, or hoops, and cannot get them immediately, because of their distance from the stores. At B.'s hoop-skirt factory, he told me he pays from $2 to $7 a week to his girls, and he employs between two hundred and three hundred. It takes but a few days to learn. The season commences about the middle of November. The twelve o'clock bell rang, and I heard one girl say: "Let's swallow our dinner, and, when we have time, chew it." I called at A.'s factory. He has about two hundred girls, and they receive from $2 to $5 a week--working ten hours a day. They were nice, bright-looking girls. More hoop skirts are manufactured in New York than in any other city. I was in a factory where hoop skirts were woven by hand. The weaver girl we spoke to, said she did not get tired now, but did when she commenced. The girls are paid by the piece, and a good weaver, when industrious, can earn $1 a day. They do not sell so many as formerly. At O.'s, they have employed two hundred girls, but discharged one hundred the day before, and the girls earn from $3 to $4. Last year they sold more than ever before. They pay from the time a learner enters, but of course the pay is small for a time. They begin at the lowest branches and gradually rise. Those at machines sit, and those at frames stand. Some skirts excel in elegance of shape, some in durability, and some in elasticity. Many improvements have been made since their introduction into this country. The prices paid were better at first than since there has been so much competition. At S.'s factory, I was told the girls are paid every Saturday night. They are not paid while learning, but, when they have learned, can earn from $3 to $5 per week. Some of their girls take their work home. The amount of work depends on the market. So they cannot tell what amount will be done next spring. They are making up to send to New Orleans. Prices have fallen for this work, and so a smaller number are employed than formerly. Spring and fall are, of course, the best seasons for work. The bindings are sewed on by machines, and operatives get about $5 per week. A. writes from Massachusetts: "Women are employed in Europe in making hoop skirts, principally in London and Paris. In our country they earn from $4 to $6 a week. I pay my men higher wages, on account of the labor they perform, requiring more exercise both of body and mind. The work of a woman can be learned in a week or ten days, but constant practice for months gives greater skill and success. The employment is very neat and clean, and gives exercise to the whole system. Women are quicker in motion than men, and their powers of endurance greater. A sound mind in a sound body, and ambition to excel, together with a tolerable love of money, are qualifications necessary to render a girl desirable in this business." This branch of business has given employment to upward of twenty thousand women in the city of New York, and States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The business is usually suspended for the winter months. In New York city there is always a surplus of girls seeking labor; they are daughters of the poorer classes, and live in tenement houses, in close quarters--are shabbily clad, and their wages go to support perhaps a drunken father, or a widowed mother and fatherless children. This class of girls contrast sadly in looks and health with country girls, accustomed to breathe the free air of heaven. Their flattened chests, pale faces, and scanty wardrobe tell too plainly of the competition of labor among girls in that great city. I am told by manufacturers, in New York, that the daily applications of girls for employment, at their counting houses, is a source of annoyance, and that they are obliged to paste placards on their doors to avoid them. This business can be best prosecuted in localities where the materials can be purchased, and near markets where they are sold. The fact that workwomen are not paid as well as men, is owing to competition. In New England, men laborers are scarce, but women compete with each other. "Board, $2 for ladies, $3 for men." A manufacturer in Connecticut, employing from fifty to one hundred, writes he "pays from $3 to $4 per week. The best seasons for work are from Jan. 1st to April 1st, and from June 1st to Nov. 1st. They work eleven hours per day. Women are superior to men, in the more ready use of their fingers. Board, $1.50 to $2. Quickness and dexterity are qualities most needed." O. & C., Connecticut, write, their girls, "above one hundred and twenty, work by the piece, and earn from fifty cents to $1.12 per day, in proportion to their skill and industry. A very few in one branch earn more. Living on fashion, is of course uncertain. Business months, May, June, October, November, and December. Women are generally inferior in construction and skill. Board, $1.75 to $2.50." Manufacturers in Ashfield, Mass., write: "We employ about one hundred and twenty women. The greater part of them do the work at their own homes. Some baste the work together, some work the sewing machines, some draw the bastings, and others sew on the buttons and finish the work. Our work is all done by the piece. Those who work the machines can easily earn eighty-three cents a day of ten hours--the others earn from thirty-three to fifty cents, according to age, activity, and capacity. We pay men $1 a day for cutting the work and packing the goods. Neatness and despatch are desirable for workers; and for operatives, sufficient ingenuity to keep the machines in good order and condition. The work is as comfortable and pleasant, perhaps, as any employment whatever. Board, $1.50." I find some firms work ten hours, some eleven. =328. Muslin Sets.= Many girls are employed in large cities in making up lace goods, as collars, undersleeves, &c. S. employs two women to make up undersleeves, caps, &c., and pays from $3 to $5 per week to each. They stay from 8 to 6 o'clock. There are too many in that business who are not well qualified. Very few are Americans. Miss A. used to make up sets, and earned $10 a week often (piecework), before the Southern trade became so poor. Girls earn from $3 to $5 a week for this kind of work. It is cut and prepared by a forewoman. Some women sell lace goods on the streets of London. I called on a man who employs a number of girls to make crape collars. He says experienced hands can earn from $20 to $26 a month. They work by the piece. It does not require long to learn. Mrs. H. called on a Frenchman who advertised for hands for that purpose. He offered her $1.50 a dozen for making ornamented ones. =329. Parasols and Umbrellas.= The parasol was used by the ancients more in religious ceremonies than as a protection from the sun. In some of the warmest countries, they are as much used by men as women. The manufacture of parasols and umbrellas is quite extensively carried on in this country, and is one that pays pretty well. At S.'s umbrella manufactory, Philadelphia, great numbers of women are employed--one hundred and seventy-five in his principal establishment, and nearly as many in its branches, and some at their homes. They make and sew on the covers, and are paid by the piece, according to the material and workmanship. It requires about six weeks to learn umbrella making. The girls we saw leaving the premises looked tidy and cheerful. S. remarked that those who live at a distance from the workshop, generally arrive earlier than those who live near. He thinks, if they would abstain from excessive use of tea and coffee, they would enjoy better health. They used to employ Americans principally, but now have foreigners, mostly Irish. They can come and go during work hours as they please. Last summer there were twelve hundred females, in Philadelphia, engaged in making umbrellas and parasols. In most umbrella factories in New York, girls are paid eight, nine, and ten cents an umbrella. For silk umbrellas, they receive only two cents more than for cotton ones. Parasols range in price from four to twenty-four cents, according to size, style, and quality of material. Old hands, in some houses, take apprentices for two or three weeks, and receive the proceeds of their work for the time given in instructing them. March, April, and May are the busiest months for making city parasols; and August, September, and October for umbrellas. Where I purchased an umbrella in New York, the man said he employed two women in spring and one in winter to work. The parasol work pays best. His girls earn, when making parasols, from $5 to $6 per week; but umbrellas seldom pay more than half that. The wholesale parasol work commences about the middle of December, but his, being retail for the city, does not begin until May. A girl in the trade told me that umbrella sewers can earn from $2 to $6 per week. Of course they have not work all the year steadily. She is paid to stay in the store, and is expected to spend any unoccupied moments in sewing for the shop. An umbrella maker told me his girls earn from $2 to $6, according to the kind and quantity of work they do. He thinks the occupation well filled. In New York city, in 1853, there was one parasol and umbrella firm that employed two hundred and fifty girls, and their average wages were $4 a week. In the umbrella business the work is invariably paid for by the piece. A gentleman told me that girls in that branch of work become very immoral from association with men while at work; but in large establishments the females have a separate workroom, and there is no need of their ever seeing any man while at work, except the foreman. (Why might they not have a forewoman?) S. Brothers say their girls earn from $2 to $8 a week. They keep them employed most of the year--their best hands all the year. Most of the work is done at the factories, but some girls run up the covers at home, and come to the factory to put them on the frames. I was told that in Philadelphia, work can be done as well for lower prices, because living is cheaper. My experience as to the price of living was to the contrary. I talked with one girl who had been making umbrellas seven years, but thinks she will die of consumption in less than two years, from the long and close confinement; but I think the detriment to health arises more from the dust and coloring matter that rubs off the umbrella muslin, particularly in summer, when the coloring matter is absorbed freely by the openness of the pores. A manufacturer told me his hands could earn from $4 to $6 a week. A learner must spend three weeks without remuneration; then she is paid according to the quality and amount of work done. About one fourth of his girls are Americans, that have worked out, but desire to do something they think more respectable. His hands have work all the year, with the exception of six weeks. The busy time commences in January. Most of his girls run them up at home, but put them on the frames at the factory. S., New York, says the business is bad in July, and part of August--also in February. In his factory, some tailoresses, and girls that sew for milliners and dress makers, get employment until the busy seasons of their trades come round. His women get for sewing from $2 to $3 a week; those that cut get from $5 to $8. It requires about two weeks to learn the business. A good use of the needle is necessary in a sewer, and economy in the use of the cloth for a cutter. The business is likely to increase. In busy seasons there is often a demand for good hands. In Paterson, Newark, and other towns where the Irish prevail, they usurp the labor even in umbrella making. In New York city a foreign influence predominates, and many Irish have come into the business there within the last year. The importation from England of umbrellas (like almost everything else) is less and less every year. Some manufacturers have the hemming done by machines. S. will not, because it throws many women out of employment. A Broadway manufacturer informs me he pays the ladies who attend his store, each $5 per week--those who sew are paid by the piece, and average $4.50 per week. He pays while learning, the time of which is one month. A good maker will always find employment. The best season is from January to June. Those who attend store are there from 8½ until 7 P. M. A manufacturer in New York, who employs eighty girls, informs me "he pays by the piece, and each earns about $4 per week. Spring is the most busy season. Men and women pursue different branches. Board, $1.50 to $2." An extensive manufacturer, a Jew, in New York, complained to me that women do not stick to one trade. He has often had women who have been sempstresses, cap makers, &c. Some, too, will not remain long at this work--they want to go at something else. Now, I would ask what a woman is to do, when her trade gives her work but part of the year, and her wages for that are merely enough to keep her alive during that time? Is she to be blamed for going to another trade in the interval? No--she is to be commended for her prudence and good sense. Do men confine themselves to one trade, if they find they can do better in another? The proprietor said he would not receive any applicants but those that are of good families and bring certificates of character. He pays by the dozen, and his women earn from $3 to $4 per week. Some parts of the work, he says, is done by machinery that women cannot manage. They receive enough to pay their board while learning. A woman that has been a milliner has acquired a skill with her needle, a smoothness and softness of touch, that enables her to become a very good umbrella maker. Such a one is best fitted for sewing on silk umbrellas. One that has been a tailoress and accustomed to sewing on heavy cloths is deficient in fineness of touch, and cannot succeed so well. The secretary of the Waterloo Company writes: "The girls of the factory are all paid by the piece, and earn from $3 to $5 per week. Men receive $1.25 per day, and are practical mechanics. The work of the females is easy, and requires little or no experience. Work hours average ten, the year through. The women are all American. Men's board, $3; girls', $2.50." A manufacturer in Concord, New Hampshire, "pays his girls from $10 to $12 a month. Women can learn their part in from one to three months. The best seasons for work are spring and summer--the poorest, winter. Board, $6 a month." Manufacturers in Boston write: "We employ one woman the whole year in cutting out covers of umbrellas and parasols, and pay her $6.50 a week the year round--to another, who performs the same kind of work, in busy times, say from November 1st to July 1st, we pay $5.50. A superintendent, who gives out and receives back the work and keeps the pay roll, receives $5.50 part of the year, and $4.50 the other part. From March 1st to July 1st we employ thirty girls to sew up covers and put on frames, and pay by the piece. They average $4 per week. We keep ten girls, for this kind of work, through the winter. It takes four or five years for men to learn the business; women well versed in the use of the needle, two or three years. From December 1st to March 1st, some of our women work on furs, or upholstery, and some are unable to obtain any kind of work. The supply is more than the demand, particularly this year. As a location for this business, the advantages are in favor of New York, because of the large market, and on account of the principal part of the material being made there. Most of our hands board with relations or friends, because they find it difficult to get boarding places at such prices as they are able to pay. Board, from $1.75 to $3.00." Umbrella stitchers in New Britain, Connecticut, "have some girls tending machines, to whom they pay from 50 to 75 cents per day of ten hours. They have some to sort and pack goods. Women can do the light work somewhat cheaper than men, and are somewhat quicker. No other parts of the work are suited to their strength and dress." =330. Sempstresses.= In 1845, there were in New York ten thousand sempstresses, and now there are probably many more. "The following are the prices for which a majority of these females are compelled to work--they being such as are paid by the large depots for shirts and clothing, on Chatham street and elsewhere:--For making common white and checked shirts, six cents each; common flannel undershirts the same. These are cut in such a manner as to make ten seams in two pairs of sleeves. A common fast sempstress can make two of these shirts per day. Sometimes, very swift hands, working from sunrise till midnight, can make three. This is equal to seventy-five cents a week (allowing nothing for holidays, sickness, accidents, being out of work, &c.) for the first class, and $1.12½ for the others. Good cotton shirts, with linen bosoms, neatly stitched, are made for twenty-five cents. A good sempstress will thus earn $1.50 a week by constant labor. Fine linen shirts, with plaited bosoms, which cannot be made by the very best hand in less than fifteen or eighteen hours' steady work, are paid fifty cents each. Ordinary hands can make one shirt of this kind in two days. Duck trousers, overalls, &c., eight or ten cents each; drawers and undershirts, both flannel and cotton, from six to eight cents at the ordinary shops, and 12½ cents at the best. One garment is a day's work for some, others can make two. Satinet, cassimere, and broadcloth, sometimes with gaiter bottoms and lined, from eighteen to thirty cents--the latter price paid only for work of the very best quality. Good hands make one a day. Their coats are made for from 25 to 37½ cents apiece. Heavy pilot-cloth coats, with three pockets, $1 each. A coat of this kind cannot be made under three days. Cloth roundabouts and pea jackets, twenty-five to fifty cents. These can be made in two days." In a large town, in Massachusetts, we read, not many months past, of overalls being made at thirty-seven cents per dozen, or three cents a pair, and shirts at forty-eight cents per dozen, or four cents apiece. When the times are hard, prices fall from their usually low standard. Our hearts sicken within us as we read the prices paid needlewomen. The trifling remuneration and wasted health of most needlewomen is a bitter reflection on those who employ them. Some clothing merchants and cap and shirt makers pay their women such prices as enable them to live--better than those mentioned above. They are houses of a more respectable class, that have a position, and deal with a more liberal class of people. The occupation of sempstress is crowded to overflowing in New York. In business times it is impossible to get a working person to leave New York, but in hard times they are very willing to go. One firm told me that they often have applications for operators and sempstresses in busy seasons, but then they will not leave; and when the times are dull there is no demand, and they cannot. The supply of labor has been greater than the demand, and hence the competition that has arisen among clothing merchants, and the low price of made clothing as sold in slop shops. The use of sewing machines has to some extent done away with sewing by hand. Many a woman has been thrown out of employment by it, to which many of our newspapers can testify, and have borne witness during the past two years. We have heard of some slop shops in large cities offering to pay the highest wages to good shirt makers, each applicant to take a shirt and make it for nothing, as a sample of her sewing. From one hundred to two hundred, perhaps, apply, and, of course, that many shirts are made. It meets the demand of the unprincipled shopkeeper, and he has, perhaps, employment for a dozen or more. A man that has a ladies' furnishing store, told me he pays girls that sew neatly by hand 37½ cents a day. Many clothing merchants have their work done in the country, because they can have it done more cheaply. The sewing done by French linen makers is very beautiful. The majority of sempstresses have no time they can call their own. Those that sew twelve or fourteen out of the twenty-four hours, without any relatives or friends even to be protectors for them, and often in bad health, have no time for mental improvement or social intercourse. "The habits of the sempstress are indicated by the neck suddenly bending forward, and the arms being, even in walking, considerably bent forward, or folded more or less upward from the elbows." =331. Sewing Machine Operatives.= There has probably been no invention in which so large a number of persons have realized fortunes as the sewing machine. All the first manufacturers of them have amassed money. In the United States 150,000 sewing machines are in use. Miss P. says, a sewing machine and baster do the work of ten hand sewers and five basters. We hear of some sewing machines in London, each of which can accomplish as much as fifteen pairs of human hands. At several highly respectable establishments we were told their operatives earn from $4 to $7 a week, according to the abilities of the operative, the kind of machine, and the style of work. In houses of lower standing, operatives earn from $3 to $5. I was told of one man who hires a number of girls to work on machines at $2.20 a week. At Y. & Co.'s, operatives earn from $2.50 to $4. Machine stitchers of leather generally get $6 a week. The usual number of hours for operatives is ten. I have been told that the secret of its being so difficult to get basters is, they are paid poor wages. A clothing merchant in the Bowery says he has a family working for him that earn $28, and sometimes $30 per week. They use two machines. The machine-made clothing for men sells at about the same price as hand-made, and is generally liked as well by purchasers. We think, the sewing of ladies done by machine does not pay quite so well as hand sewing; but if we sewed for a living, we would give the machine the preference, because of its rapid execution. C., who employs about four hundred hands, says their dull season begins the 4th of July. L., who sells sewing machines, told me he frequently has applications for operatives to go into clothing manufactories. G. & B. occasionally have applications from other places, but always give the choice to those who have learned with them. L. thinks the employment of operatives will not amount to anything as a permanent reliance out of cities. He thinks in one or two years the sewing machine will be used in almost every family--as much domesticated as the wash tub. In cities where clothing, bagging, &c., are made in large quantities, of course, there will be a demand for some. L., superintendent of E. S.'s machines, employs from three to twelve ladies, and pays from $5 to $10 a week. They stay from eight to ten hours. A lady, who hires sewing machines, and sends out operatives, told me she charges $2 a day for a machine and operative, sending both, and giving twelve hours' time, or from $1.25 to $1.50 for an operator only, according to the number of hours given. If they are hired for a week or more, the prices are still lower. I think the usual hire of a machine only is $2 a day. A man that hires machines told me that he rents for from $3 to $5 per month, keeping the machine in repair during the time, if it is not badly used. Singer's principal machine is a strong, heavy one, most suitable for cloth, and requires much strength to work long at a time. According to D., a clothing merchant, a woman with one of Singer's machines can do all the stitching of twelve pairs of cloth pantaloons in a day; and a coat that formerly required two days to make by hand, can now be made in one sixth of a day. W., agent of W. & W.'s machine, says the lady that has charge of L. & S.'s sewing department, told him ladies prefer to have their sewing done by machines, and that B. will not have his mantillas made by hand. He told me of a woman that takes in $30 a week with the aid of two girls, to whom she pays $6 a week each, leaving the profit of $18 a week; and of another who makes $8 a week with her machine. Now that machines are more plentiful, work done by them is not so well paid. The sellers of machines say it is not unhealthy. Some people suppose the machine to be much more injurious than the needle, if worked as long and constantly. The tax on the muscles of the lower limbs and the weaker parts of the system is certainly very great; yet those with treadles are thought by some to be less injurious than those moved by steam. I talked with a lady keeping a depository connected with an influential church for the supplying of poor women with work. She thinks sewing machines are very injurious--says a girl of seventeen will give out in three or five years at most. It produces a pain first in the hips, and the jar affects the nerves; and the sameness of the stitch on white or black goods produces a constant strain of the eye. She mentioned a young woman who came a few days before to get sewing, who had worked at B.'s five years on a machine, and her sight had so failed her that she cannot see to work now by gaslight. She was but twenty-three, but looked to be thirty years of age. Sewing by machine, I have been told, injures some kinds of goods. The needle being large, threads of the cloth are liable to be broken. Changing the kind and quality of goods in operating injures a machine. The utility and profit of sewing machines have to a great extent been usurped by Jew men, that are tailors and cap makers. I have heard that many respectable men in New York, after coming home from business, spend nearly or quite all the evening in operating on machines, doing the family sewing that has been cut and basted ready to stitch. What can we say of such effeminacy and meanness, when done by those that are able to give such work to poor women? A lady remarked to me: "When sewing machines were invented, it was said new occupations would be opened to women as the machine came in use, and deprived some of a livelihood; but it is eight years since, and I have not heard of one." The sewing machine has certainly thrown many women out of employment. Those who are able to purchase one may get along. It is in this as in every other branch of labor--a capital, however small, is an assistance in business. One advantage always gained by machinery is that it enables the poor to purchase more cheaply the materials used by them. Freemasons often buy machines for the widows they help to support. In some of the large manufactories of Dublin, where sewing machines are used, from fifty to two hundred women are employed. FUR WORKERS. =332. Dyers.= Dyeing furs is wet and dirty work, and the odor is very disagreeable. I was told by a lady that girls at such work can earn $4 a week, or if by the piece, from $5 to $6. There are very few indeed at it. She thinks it not unhealthy. She sometimes cleans furs, mostly ermine, with a powder of some kind. In the fur business, people must sell enough in three months to keep them the other nine months of the year. In the summer they take time to examine, purchase, and make up furs. C., a fur dyer and dresser, told me he once employed an Englishwoman to flesh fine skins--_i. e._, take off the flesh that adheres to a skin when removed from an animal. It is done with a sharp knife. She earned as much as a man, $1.50 a day. But men object to working with women in that business; and no American women, to his knowledge, know how to do it. =333. Sewers.= From conversations with a number of fur dealers in Philadelphia and New York, I find the rate of wages for sewers runs from $2.25 a week to $8. Forewomen get good wages. Some sewers and liners are paid by the piece, and some by the week. Those who work by the week are paid for extra hours. A small number of the women employed in New York are English, but the majority are Germans, who have learned the business in their own country. In Germany most of the men learn to sew, and most of the men engaged in the fur business know how. Quite a number in New York are married women, whose husbands are connected with the business. Furs are sold only in the fall and winter, but made up in the summer. In a few places they give work all the year to a small number of workers, but the majority do not give work more than six months, from May to December. Some fur sewers have another trade for the other six months, as hat binding, &c. It does not require long for a good sewer to learn--from one week to six. There are some kinds of fancy fur sewing that require rather longer. No women are employed in preparing the skins: that is done at different establishments, generally in the suburbs, and exclusively by male hands. The usual number of hours of sewers employed by the day is ten; but many of those who sew by the piece take work home with them to do at night, and so are enabled to earn considerably more. Men working in the fur business in New York earn from $8 to $12 per week. The quilting for linings is done by machines, but the linings are sewed in by hand. Liners are generally better paid than sewers, and earn from $6 to $10. In extensive establishments, a cutter and a certain number of sewers and liners confine themselves to one kind of fur. Some furriers pay their learners enough to board them; some do not pay anything. I think the supply of hands in New York is equal to the demand. The best workers, of course, are most sure of employment. New York is the great fur depot of the United States, but some business is also done in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Furs are sent from St. Louis and Chicago to be made up in New York, and part of them returned to be sold in those cities. Those that sew furs at home can most conveniently take learners. There are a number of middlemen in the fur business, who get work from the stores and make a profit by employing women to do it at lower wages. Mrs. G., an importer and manufacturer, cuts her own furs, particularly ermine and sable. She says furs are sometimes cut in Germany by women, but people in this country think a woman cannot properly cut them. Work at the fur business in England is said to pay better than any other. G--s, the largest firm in New York, write: "We pay women from $2.50 to $6 per week. Some work by the week, some by the piece. Men get about double wages, but their work requires more physical strength. Men do the cutting and matching, and it requires several years to be a good workman. Sewers receive about half price while learning. Some women can learn all that is necessary in a few months. The prospect of employment is not so good as heretofore. The women work the year around. Work hours are 9½. Board, $2 to $2.50 per week." Most furriers report the employment healthy, but it is not, on account of the dust and loose hairs flying, for persons predisposed to consumption. A furrier in New York writes: "I pay mostly by the piece. It takes about one year and a half for women to learn the parts they do. The amount of work hereafter depends some upon fashion and the weather. The best seasons for work are from May until February. We could not shorten the hours of work unless the business had a longer season. Board, from $1.50 to $2." A furrier in Boston writes: "Women are employed for sewing and lining furs here, in England and France, and partially in Germany, Russia, &c. Week hands get from $4 to $4.50, ten hours a day; others, from $2 to $6. Business in future is uncertain. I am busy from July to Christmas. The best location for the business is where furs are fashionable." A fur dealer in New York, who employs from 10 to 15 women, gives the following answers to questions concerning the fur business: "The work is very easy, and not unhealthy. I pay women from $3 to $6 per week, ten hours a day. They are as well paid as males, in proportion to the amount of work done. Any apt female can learn in three months, and is always paid by me $2.50 per week while learning. The business is better and there is more of it every year. Work is steady from May to December; very little at other times. The comfort and remuneration of the employment is satisfactory among working classes. Women are more capable of handling a needle for light, fine work than men. The colder the climate, the better the location for business, provided people have money to buy furs." In some establishments where men and women work in the same departments, they are allowed to talk while at work; but the practice, some complain, is not conducive to good morals. The character of the people and conversation, however, would decide that. FITTERS, CUTTERS, AND SEWERS OF LADIES' AND CHILDREN'S WEAR. =334. Bonnets.= The making of silk, crape, velvet, and other fancy bonnets gives employment to many females. Connected with this is the bleaching of straw, Leghorn, and hair bonnets. In large cities this is a separate branch of business. The making and selling of bonnets has long been one of the few employments open to women in the United States. If a milliner gets a good run of fashionable custom, she can do well. Most proprietors of millinery establishments make a handsome profit on their goods, but some of the girls employed receive but a scanty pittance. I have been told that in Holland men milliners are common. From a newspaper we take this pithy article: "A stranger in Mexico is struck with the appearance of the milliners' shops, where twenty or thirty stout men with mustaches are employed in making muslin gowns, caps, and artificial flowers." The cruelty exercised by some milliners and dress makers toward those in their employ, by requiring of them too long and severe application, is very great. Many girls suffer, as the effects, diseases of the spine and the eyes. "In the case of the milliners and dress makers in the London Metropolitan Unions, during the year 1839, as shown by the mortuary register, out of fifty-two deceased, forty-two only had attained the age of twenty-five; and the average of thirty-three, who had died of disease of the lungs, was twenty-eight." But the length of time required of their employés by milliners and dress makers in London is longer than in the United States. A number of women are engaged in the sale of millinery on the streets of London. Girls usually spend from six months to a year learning the millinery business. Unless a girl has taste and talent, she is not likely to be benefited even by a year's apprenticeship, for it is rarely the case that they are instructed in any but the mechanical work. No pains are taken to instruct them in what is becoming or stylish, what shades are most harmonious, how to make a graceful bow, and turn a well-trimmed end, to arrange a face trimming, and render attractive the _tout-ensemble_. A hundred small minutiæ are essential to a first-class trimmer, among which is a nice discrimination of colors and shades. A knowledge of the languages is, in cities, desirable for milliners' saleswomen. A love of dress is said to be created by working at such articles. Many bad effects must result from the indulgence of such a taste by those who receive the small wages of most girls working at the millinery and dress-making business. Over four hundred women are employed in the large straw-goods and millinery establishments in Philadelphia. W. had, in 1854, three hundred girls making and trimming bonnets, and twenty-six in the store as saleswomen. They were paid from $2.50 to $6 per week. W. & L., his successors, employ about twenty-five women constantly all the year, and about one hundred and twenty-five on an average of six months in the year. Their best workers and saleswomen receive about $1 a day; some get a little more, and some rather less. The business has increased greatly during the last few years. The only kind made by that firm are silk and fancy bonnets. One of the firm told me that the largest establishments of fancy bonnets in Paris employ only about fifty women. They have girls spend three months learning, and pay nothing during the time. A girl does well to earn seventy-five cents a day. Six years ago a good worker could earn $8 or $9 a week. C., Philadelphia, employs twenty-six girls in the store and millinery department, and pays about $4 a week, according to their capacity and diligence. Learners spend six months with him. Some time ago I saw it stated that there are "450 millinery establishments in New York city, and 1,800 milliners working in shops, and 900 at home;--35,000 silk and velvet bonnets are turned out of the workshops of New York city, in the three months of the fall, and the five months of what is known as the spring trade." "Of straw bonnets, one million two hundred thousand are sold annually to the milliners of New York for their trade alone." A tasteful and dexterous trimmer can generally secure a good place and fair wages, but the majority of milliner girls are apt to be out of employment, except in the spring and fall. Most in the millinery business are Americans; yet French, German, and English are well represented. The prices paid for bonnets vary greatly in New York, according to the locality and establishment from which they are obtained. No one who has not priced them could believe the difference would be so great for bonnets of the same material and make, merely because purchased on such a street or at such a store. The milliner girls of New York are said to be good looking. The time milliners and dress makers spend at their work is such as to preclude (except in a few first-class establishments) any time for exercise and mental culture. Their wages are so low that they could not indulge in any recreation if they had the time. Those girls that live at home can afford to do work cheaper generally than others. Such girls are drawbacks to those who pay their board. Western merchants do not purchase as much as formerly in New York, because milliners have gone West. Southerners have purchased, until lately, nearly all their bonnets at the North. There are, or will be openings in the South for milliners. In 1845, "apprentices at the millinery business in New York gave one year to learn, boarded themselves, and, in some of the most aristocratic establishments, had to pay a bonus." Now it is different. The time given is usually six months, and an apprentice receives her board for her work. Mrs. S., Broadway, employs about fifty hands in the busy season--all American girls, very genteel looking. It requires six months to learn. They are not paid during the time; and, after that, are paid according to abilities. I called in one establishment where there were two girls employed, American. They received each $6 a week. A milliner told me she wanted a first-class workwoman, and would pay from $6 to $7 a week, according to her swiftness and taste. I called in a small store of dry and fancy goods, with which was connected a millinery. The young lady waited on customers, and, in the intervals, trimmed bonnets for the store. She received $1 a day, and is at the store by half past seven, and leaves at nine at night. She lives near, so she goes home to her dinner and supper. A lady told me of a Miss M., on Canal street, who commenced the millinery business five years ago with twenty dollars, and is now worth $3,000. A milliner in New York told me she could, by piecework, sewing early and late, make $7 per week. Mrs. T. has learners spend six months, during which time they are not paid. After that she gives them from $3 to $7, according to competency. The number of hours spent in the store depends on the agreement of the parties. One can best learn where there are vacancies by inquiring at the millinery shops and of girls working at the business. At a fashionable millinery, on Broadway, the lady in the showroom told me the girls receive from $3 to $12, working ten hours a day. There is one that selects, arranges, and invents, who receives $12 per week. A surplus of indifferent hands can always be obtained. Sometimes good hands fail to get employment, because in busy times some indifferent hands are engaged, and it is difficult to get rid of them. She has had to turn away many nice-looking girls seeking for work. On back streets and avenues in New York, women work longer, and the stores are kept open later than on Broadway. On Division street, large cases of bonnets are exposed for sale in summer on the sidewalks. In the poorer portions of a city, people live much and sell mostly out of doors. Their crowded apartments and the high price of rent account for it. D., on Broadway, informs me that he knows of an invention connected with his business--the sale of straw goods--that will throw ten thousand people, mostly men, out of employment. He says his girls spend all they make on dress. He has two forewomen, to each of whom he pays $500 a year. They never save a cent. He had one to whom he paid $1,000, but she never laid by a dollar. Women, he thinks, have not as much originality of thought as men. They seldom invent. He would give $1,000 a year to a woman that would think for him, and originate styles, and combine and arrange the trimmings of his bonnets with taste. He walks on Broadway, and studies the fashion of bonnets; but none of his women ever do. (Perhaps they have no time.) Women, he thinks, never acquire such proficiency as men. They advance to a certain degree in the art, and ever after are stationary. He thinks it is partly because the majority look forward to marrying, and partly because they are so constituted that they are not susceptible of acquiring the highest degree of excellence. (I fear that D. does not consider that women have not had as much time nor so many opportunities for improving themselves as men, nor have they as much to stimulate them.) He pays women from $3 to $8 per week. His girls spend four months learning. B., another Broadway bonnet-dealer, told me "good workwomen could at any time find employment by going to the country towns around, but they do not like to go from the city. Milliners often come to the city, and spend two weeks trying to get hands, and then pay them more than they are worth to go. His forewoman directs some of the trimmings, but part are left to the taste of the girls. His is a wholesale business, and he trims many bonnets before sending them away. Some of his girls earn on an average $7--a forewoman more. The occupation is not entirely filled by good hands, and pays well. He employs his hands about eight months." One of the proprietors of a straw-goods warehouse told me "his women earn from $6 to $10 (average $7 a week), ten hours a day. The season commences December 1st, and runs to March 15th, and again from July 1st to September 1st. Taste, industry, and imitative powers are the qualities most needed. He employs about sixty in the busy season. When that is over, some go to millinery shops and work, some to the country, and some to towns in the surrounding States. The girls that work in cheap shops are mostly Germans, and earn from $2 to $4. Some women, while learning, receive their board for their work. By quilling ruches and such work, if not by their bonnet work, they can earn their board. He does not pay learners, because the waste of materials amounts to the worth of their work. Girls of Irish parentage often make good milliners, and display very good taste in trimming." A Boston milliner writes: "The wages of the women I employ vary from $3 to $15 per week, of ten hours a day, according to the amount of custom they can bring, and their aptness for the business. There are comparatively few persons that make good milliners. As a milliner, one must have good taste and nimble fingers; as a saleswoman, she needs to understand human nature, have activity, an honest heart, and good disposition. The best seasons are from March to July, and from September to January." A lady in Reading, Pa., who employs girls, informs me "she pays $3 a week, ten hours a day, to some; to others, $1.50, but the latter she boards. A knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic is desirable." A milliner in Auburn, N. Y., pays from $2.50 to $5 per week, of ten hours a day. A girl spends six months learning, if she boards herself; one year, if boarded by her employer. The dull months are July, August, January, and February. A lady in Poughkeepsie writes "she gives from $2.50 to $3.50 and board to some, and from $4 to $4.50 and dinner to those who lodge and otherwise board themselves. It requires one year and a half to learn the business thoroughly, and during the time they receive only board. None should learn millinery except those who have homes, or design to carry on the business. Her girls work from 7 A. M. to 7 P. M. The business is easy and pleasant to the industrious and to those who can sit much. Out of work hours, they have time for study, attendance on lectures, meetings, &c. Board, $2." Millinery is often carried on in connection with some other business, in small towns. A lady who combines millinery and book selling, in Easton, Pa., furnishes board and pays from $1.50 to $2 per week, of twelve hours per day, to her girls. She pays about one half the price of male wages. If they spend six months learning, she pays their board. Two or three first-class milliners could find employment in Sacramento, California. =335. Bonnet Frames.= Bonnets, of course, are worn in all civilized countries, and as long as bonnets are worn there must be bonnet frames. Several hundred women are employed in bonnet-frame making in New York. K. employs two hundred girls, and H. one hundred and fifty. The time of learning is from two weeks to two months, but some never learn. The more practice a worker has, the better she succeeds. Learners are paid nothing. Some women working at the trade, take learners for their labor. Workers earn from $2 to $12 a week, but it is a rare thing any earn the last-mentioned sum. Fast hands, to work constantly from 6 A. M. till 10 P. M., sometimes can. The usual price, in all respectable establishments, is fifty cents a dozen. In busy seasons there is sometimes a scarcity of hands. There are no factories South and West, consequently they present openings for the business. Apprentices generally commence in March. The busy seasons are from January to June, and from August to December. Some houses are not busy until in February, and their fall business lasts till January. The art of making the wire part of the frames is learned in six weeks. The crowns are made by machinery attended by women. Some manufacturers have all their women to work in the establishments, but the majority have the work taken home. H. says "the business is the same, so far as confinement is involved, as making up clothes at home. The girls come two or three times a week for their work; so they have that much walking. The prospect of work to competent hands is good. He has a great many to reply to his advertisements for learners, but for hands he has lately advertised seven times and got but five. Some leave the business for places as saleswomen in millinery establishments; but that is more uncertain, for it is more difficult to retain the same place long. It requires a year to learn thoroughly. It is necessary that the work be uniformly done; for instance, one hundred and twenty bonnet frames should be so uniform that one would not differ from another. Buckram frames are used to shape them on. The wages paid, he said, vary as much as the rainbow. They range from $2.50 to $8. He knows one woman that earns $10 a week now and then. He sends goods away to California, and other parts of the Union. He also manufactures for the city trade. The season for work to send away commences about the 20th of January, and ends about the middle of May; the fall season begins 20th July, and ends 15th December. The city trade gives work in the intervals. A girl of intelligence and ability can make enough to keep her when out of work. Some employers keep their hands all the time, for the sake of having them the next season. The girls employed in the business are mostly Irish and Americans. He boarded some of his girls, but they would associate with the servants. What was said before them was repeated to the servants, and _vice versa_. They got the impression that he was making money off their board, though he charged but $2 a week. He thinks the result of large numbers of girls congregating in the same house is bad. The influence of one depraved one may be exerted over every fourteen good ones, and discontent and rebellion be the consequence. Few persons are willing to board working girls, because the remuneration is small, and the girls are expected to be furnished with nearly the same advantages as higher-priced boarders. Those that work in their rooms are about the house nearly all the time, and all expect the privilege of using the laundry for doing their washing." =336. Bonnet Wire.= At a bonnet-wire factory, I was told but little of the work could be done by women; but, if my eyesight did not deceive me, it could all be done by women. Covering the wire was done on a steam-power machine, which only required attention. The spooling is done by females, and also tying it up, when covered, into bunches of twenty yards each. A manufacturer of bonnet wire writes: "We employ some girls, and pay from $3 to $3.50 per week, of twelve hours a day. Females cannot do all parts of the work. It requires from one to four weeks to learn, and they receive while learning enough to pay their board. The business is best nine months of the year, during fall, winter, and spring. We prefer girls to boys, for such work as they can do. Board, from $1.50 to $2." =337. Children's Clothes.= Quite a number of stores are devoted to the sale of children's clothes in large cities. A handsome profit is generally made by the merchant. At Mrs. C.'s, between three hundred and four hundred females find employment in making up children's clothing of all kinds (mostly infants'); also under-garments for ladies. A large assortment is constantly kept on hand, and they are ever busy filling orders; giving employment about nine months in the year to all, and to some the year round. The work is mostly done by hand, and to sew neatly is the only requirement. The work is all cut in the establishment and given out, being piecework. The sewers earn from $3 to $6 per week; cutters, the last-mentioned sum. Aside from these, a few girls are employed in the establishment, who wait upon customers, and sew when they have leisure. =338. Cloaks and Mantillas.= Mayhew says: "In London, the workwomen for good shops, that get fair or tolerably fair wages, and execute good work, can make _six_ average-sized mantles in a week, _working from ten to twelve hours a day_; but the slop workers, by toiling from thirteen to sixteen hours, will make _nine_ such mantles in a week." At a wholesale store, Philadelphia, where sixty women are employed, I was told they earn from $3 to $6 per week. The head cutter has $6, the assistant, $5. When the work is finished at the wholesale houses, the good hands can find work at the retail houses. The best and most steady hands are kept in work all the year. Miss S., New York, has her stitching and seaming done by machines. She pays $5 a week to a good operator. She does her own cutting. The prospect of employment to learners is good, even in the city, in prosperous times. She has sold a great deal to Southern ladies stopping at the hotels. She estimates one machine to do as much as seven sewers. M. pays his girls $5 a week, and they work in daylight only. A cutter designs, and consequently should have taste, judgment, and experience. A good cutter can earn from $7 to $10 a week, and usually has one assistant, who superintends the girls while at work. Several mantilla manufacturers have failed, and he could get fifty thousand mantilla makers to-day. G. & Co. make for wholesale houses. They pay by the piece, and a girl can earn $4 a week, taking work home with her at night. It requires from six weeks to three months to learn. Nothing is paid during that time. Mrs. M., who makes mantillas for S., Broadway, says she takes learners, but they do not learn anything, for most they do is to pick out basting threads, run errands, &c. Good sewers can make from $3 to $5 per week, ten hours a day. Cutters can earn from $6 to $7. She thinks the prospect for a few, that would properly qualify themselves, would be good in the South or West, provided they find openings, take hands from New York, and be willing to incur some expense for a short time. In Richmond, Savannah, and Charleston, it has been almost impossible to get good hands. S. wanted a woman cutter, and would pay from $8 to $10 for a competent one. His work is done mostly in the house, and continues all the year. It is almost entirely done by machine. B--s (German Jews) employ German girls mostly. They prefer to keep old hands that have been with them several years. They think German girls most industrious, and love best to make money. American girls, B. charged (I think unjustly) with working just enough to get along, and spending all their spare time promenading. According to his account, cutters earn from $15 to $20 a week. He employs his girls most of the year. The occupation of mantilla making, he says, is more than filled in New York. Board, $2.50 to $3. At H.'s wholesale mantilla depot, I was told it is best to learn to make mantillas with those who sew for the mantilla merchants. Some of their girls sew in the building, some take their work home. If they do not know applicants for work, they require some one as security, who has property or is in business for himself. A gentleman told me that, not long since, he saw an advertisement by a mantilla manufacturer for men to make mantillas and cloaks. A manufacturer in Boston writes me he "employs seventy-five women, and pays them mostly by the piece; some receive as high as $12 per week, average $6. They are paid by the piece from the first; but until they acquire dexterity, they can earn but $3 or less per week. Cloak and mantilla making is constantly increasing, like the ready-made clothing business. The busy seasons are from February to July, and from September to December. Many are out of employment about three months in the year. As sellers of goods, he finds men better qualified, because of having been educated from children with views to business. The New England States are the best for manufacturing, as in other localities it is more difficult to obtain female help. Board, from $2 to $3." Another cloak maker in Boston writes: "I employ from twenty to thirty women (mostly American), and pay by the day. They work nine hours a day, and receive from $4 to $10 a week. A good sewer, with taste, will learn in six months. Some learners I pay, some I do not. Spring and autumn are the most busy seasons. The girls are not out of employment two months. I employ three ladies as saleswomen. Board, from $2 to $5 a week." A cloak and mantilla maker in New Haven writes me "he employs twenty-five American girls, and pays by the week, from $4 to $8. He pays learners when they have spent six months at the trade. His girls are principally farmers' daughters, who are rapidly taking the place of men in stores. Board, $2.25 to $3.50." A manufacturer in Providence writes: "I employ women in making and trimming bonnets, making cloaks and mantillas, and as saleswomen in my store. I pay by the week, from $3 to $8--average, $4.75--ten hours a day. Six months is the time usually spent in learning either trade. In January, February, July, and August, some of my workers are out of employment. All are Americans, and pay for board from $2 to $2.50." P., of Providence, "employs about twenty girls making dresses and cloaks, whose wages depend upon their ability as sewers; average price per week, about $4." =339. Costumes.= P. pays his girls (five in number), each, $3 a week. They work from eight to five o'clock. He has no difficulty in getting hands. Anybody that can sew can make costumes, but it requires taste for the design and arrangement of such as his--theatrical. B.'s girls sew at the house, 9½ hours in winter, and the best earn from $3 to $4 a week. Their costumes are theatrical, and are very slightly put together. A slow, careful sewer would not answer for them. They want their work done so that it will rip up easily. They have many costumes on hand for sale. They have a lady cutter. They give employment but four months, and they are in winter. W., employed in both flag and costume making, has been in the business since 1822, and employs six girls all the year. Flags, costumes, &c., used in the South, have always been ordered in New York, so there will be some openings in the South for such work. W. pays $3 and $4 a week to his best hands, and has his sewing done in the house. His work is of a superior quality, and, consequently, commands a good price. He employs only correct and fast sewers. He thinks there are openings for girls of good moral character, properly qualified. A lady cutting out costumes told me that it requires judgment to make the two halves alike--sleeves, for instance; also to know in how short a time an article can be made up, where and how to get workers, &c. It is difficult to get good hands, and some of the materials are costly--so they do not like to give work to any one they do not know. A spangler receives from them 62½ cents a day. Mrs. T. employs a number of hands, paying $3 a week to those that work in the house--ten hours a day. Those that take their work home are, of course, paid by the piece. She does all her own cutting out. It requires ability to fit, ingenuity to design, and taste to execute. Spangling pays best. She had a lady tinselling and spangling for her, that made a good living at it. She does opera and theatrical work, mostly. She makes some ball costumes also. Equestrian work she does not like, as it is pretty much made up of horse trappings. The prospect for those who would learn it well, she thinks very good. She finds it difficult to get superior workers. The girls that sew for costumers are mostly those who prefer that to going out to do housework, because they can have their evenings as their own. It is usual to have a costumer travel with an opera troupe, who directs and superintends the making up of costumes, and dresses the prima donna before she makes her appearance on the stage. Mrs. S. takes learners, paying them half price for two or three months, while learning. She makes up most after Thanksgiving, for the Christmas festivities; but in summer she makes up some ball costumes, and apparel and drapery for tableaux, and operas at watering places. She has from one to two hundred women and girls sewing for her at different times. Frequently she is very much hurried, and must employ a great many to assist, for bills announcing operas are often out before the costume is brought to her. At W.'s, they pay $3 a week--ten hours a day--and are most busy about Christmas. =340. Dresses.= In Germany, many dress makers are men, and there is one on Broadway, New York. France is the fountain head of fashion for ladies' dress. Most of the fashions, however, are Americanized when introduced into this country. Dress is, to some extent, an index to the mind of the wearer. Judgment and good taste are the best guides. Several things are to be taken into consideration--age, complexion, proportion, means, station, comfort, and decorum. A lady, with command of a full purse, can dress as she pleases. Rich and elegant clothing, appropriately made, is an ornament, and well becomes those that can afford it. With a scant purse, a lady cannot dress very handsomely, yet she may always observe neatness and propriety of costume. A passion for dress is apt to betray an empty mind or great vanity. Much of the beauty of a dress depends on its tasteful make. If the figure is bad, it improves it. If good, it adds to the beauty of the figure, which is one of the most impressive modifications of beauty. In dress making, a lady has only to establish a reputation as a successful fitter and fashionable trimmer, and she will be sure of a run of custom and handsome profits. I am sorry to say, in the majority of dress-making establishments, no reliance can be placed on the word of the principals, in regard to the time work will be finished. While many of those at the head of dress-making establishments are realizing dazzling profits, the poor sempstress, working in busy times from twelve to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, receives the generous allowance of from $1.50 to $4.50 a week. But few, and those only of much skill, taste, and dexterity, ever gain better prices. Fitters and forewomen, in some places, gain from $4 to $7 per week. I believe it is generally thought men fit better than women, so many ladies have their basques and riding habits made at tailors' establishments. We do not see why the plan used by tailors, of fitting by measure, is not more generally applied to dress fitting. Dress making is more fatiguing than millinery work, because you have to sit at it more steadily and there is more sameness in it. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons. Those who can secure sewing in good families, and have some decent place to go in the intervals, are better off than most others. They receive from 50 cents to $1.25 per day and their dinner. It would probably require a little time to become known; and one, to succeed, must know how to do all parts, from the fitting to the finishing off; so it requires skill and a thorough knowledge of the business. A lady who sews by the day told me she often gets her system out of order by the different food of the several families she is in, and the different times of taking it. We think there are no regular hours for those who work by the day in New York. The length of the day depends on the mercy of the employer. "Dress makers in Boston, some years ago, adopted the ten-hour system, and now average $1.25 per day. Previously they received but 75 cents or $1." The demand for dress makers in the Northern and Eastern States is fully met, but throughout the South and West there are openings, here and there, for good dress makers. There is probably no occupation in which there are so many incompetent persons as that of dress making. Many persons take it up without having learned the trade at all, and many who become reduced in circumstances immediately resort to it without any preparation, and are destitute, not only of experience, but of skill, ingenuity, and taste. In New York, the conditions on which apprentices are taken vary greatly. Some pay nothing for six months, and even receive $10 or $15 for instruction. The girls are kept at making up skirts, sewing up sleeves, and such plain work, and so learn nothing during the time. Some are taken for a year, and boarded during that time for their work. Some live at home, and are paid from $1.50 to $2.50 for their work. Some are taken for two years, to learn the trade thoroughly, and work from eight to twelve hours a day. Some apprentices have not the ability to become good fitters and sewers, and are destitute of artistic taste; but women seldom change from one employment to another on discovering their incompetency. The majority, probably, have not the time or means of doing so. Miss B. says those who sew for dress makers receive from $2.50 to $4 a week, working ten hours a day. Apprentices that can sew right well when they commence, receive at some houses $2 a week for six months, but they are not taught to fit unless the employer is a conscientious woman and there is a special contract. When the busy season is over, the inferior hands are turned off without an hour's warning. It is desirable to get a good class of customers, that the pay will be sure, and that the dress maker may know what to rely on. Some dress makers in New York have kept the patterns of ladies in the South, and made their dresses for years. If a slight change was needed, for instance, the length increased, or the waist made smaller, or _vice versa_, the lady wrote accordingly. Miss B. never works for servants. They do not pay as well, and are just as particular as their mistresses. She never works for a stranger, unless recommended by one of her customers. Mrs. C. told me that a girl of fair abilities can learn dress making in six months. The first three months she does not pay anything, but the last three $1 a week. After they have learned she pays according to their taste, skill, and industry. One girl, that has good taste in trimming and finishing off, she pays $4 a week; another, that sews well and is industrious, but deficient in taste, she pays $2. They all live at home. Those girls that live at home are often willing to work for less than the ordinary wages, as they are not at the greatest of all expenses--boarding. They work from seven in the morning until six, having an hour at noon. They prefer it to the hours of some of the Broadway shops, which are usually from eight to seven. By the first arrangement they are enabled to get home early and go to any place of amusement. Miss H. told me that three years ago she earned $7 per week, ten hours a day, sewing for a French lady on Broadway, who had a great run of Southern custom. There were many strangers in the city at the time. "Servant girls seldom pay over $1 for making a dress; yet 10,000 servant girls in New York city, will have from three to six and eight new dresses a year." At Wilson's Industrial School, New York, some of the older girls are taught dress making. =341. Dress Caps and Head Dresses.= The making of ladies' dress caps is an extensive and important branch of business. The rates at which they are now put together, enable most ladies to buy them already made. In large cities there are separate establishments for the sale of them, but in smaller towns they are sold at milliner shops. Much taste should be, and generally is, exercised in this department of business. In London, on the streets, the caps and bonnets exposed for sale are placed in inverted umbrellas. On summing up what was told me by eight manufacturers of dress caps and head dresses, I find the prices they pay the women who sew for them, run from $2 a week to $10--the average $4. Some pay by the week, but most by the piece, which is usually most profitable to the worker, and most satisfactory to both parties. Superior hands prefer to work by the piece, and, when working for first-class stores, earn from $6 to $8 per week. There is a scarcity of good hands in New York, and I would advise some ladies to learn. Taste, and swiftness of fingers are required. The finer and more delicate the hands of a worker the better. Some are employed all the year, but the majority are not. The busy season begins in January and lasts till the middle of May, and begins in September and lasts till the middle of October, when city work usually commences. Some houses, in the intervals, make up for the city trade. The South has depended almost entirely on the North for the supply of these articles. There will be openings in the South for establishments of the kind. One keeper of a large fancy store said to me, there are not more than ten first-class makers of dress caps in New York. He thought the Irish succeed, many of whom learn in the convents of their own country to use the needle well. Hands employed by the week usually work ten hours a day. Most people prefer to employ the hands they have had. The best place for learning is in a shop confined to the city trade. Mrs. D. devotes herself to making up caps for the dead, but employs sewers to make ladies' dress caps. It requires time to get to making them tastefully and rapidly. An experienced hand can earn from $4 to $6 a week, piecework. It is thought three months' time is necessary for learning, and during that time a girl cannot earn over $1 a week. Mrs. D. says some can earn but eight or nine cents a day while learning, and become discouraged and give it up. She will not trust any but experienced hands, on account of the loss of materials, for when badly cut, they cannot be altered into anything else, and, when they have to be ripped, lose their stiffening, and are only fit for the scrap bag. They can soon judge of hands by their appearance, the way they sew, and knowing for whom they have worked, and the kind of work that house turns out. They always require reference or deposit. They keep their hands all the year, making caps part of the year to send away, and the remainder of the year for city trade. Ladies' dress caps have been superseded to a great extent by fancy head dresses and flowers. Miss C., Broadway, told me her best hands earn, by the piece, from $6 to $7 per week. It requires three months to learn the business. Learners, that have some knowledge of sewing, receive from her $1 a week. Judgment, in size, form, and manner of putting together, is desirable. The busy seasons are spring and fall. There is rather a deficiency of good hands in New York, and in busy seasons it is sometimes difficult to get enough of indifferent hands. The French are very successful, on account of their cultivated taste. I was told that Mme. D. employs two Austrian girls that invent beautiful styles of head dresses. Mr. D. says the person that has the taste and ingenuity to invent pleasing styles will receive a good price. He had to pay $4 a dozen more for a new style of head dresses imported not long ago from Paris, merely because it was of a new design. He playfully remarked: "Fancy goods must bring fancy prices." A woman that has lived in Paris, and been engaged in the business there, and accustomed to observing the fashions and inventing them, would receive a high salary. He pays from $6 to $9 a week, according to qualifications. The abilities and taste of a person have much to do with the time of learning--six months are usually given. He pays $3 a week to smart learners. He sells rather more goods in fall, as ladies are then preparing for balls and parties. He prefers to have foreigners to work for him, as he is himself a foreigner. His store girls leave at 6 P. M. Those that board pay $3 a week. In most stores for the sale of ladies' fancy articles, the ladies in attendance make up such articles, when not waiting on customers. From a larger establishment, the superintendent sent me the following report: "Women earn from $4 to $10 per week, being paid by the piece. It requires from three months to one year to learn the business. After six weeks, the hands are paid a small trifle. Women are employed about eight months in the year, but first-class hands find employment always. In busy seasons the work must be done--so hands cannot limit themselves to time, but must be employed late and early. The demand for first-class hands is great, and enough cannot be found. I employ from one hundred and fifty to two hundred on an average. Most of my hands are foreigners, and married women that live at home." =342. Fans.= In most ages, and in most countries, the fan has been used as much by gentlemen as ladies. In Japan, everybody carries a fan. "In M. Duveleroy's fan establishment--the largest in Paris--each fan, from the commonest to the most costly, passes through fifteen hands before it is ready for use and the retailer." The palm-leaf fans, which have been so much in vogue for years past, are made to some extent in the Eastern States. Fans are sometimes made of feathers. Peacock, duck, turkey, and those of small birds are employed. As in other manufactures, the capital required, the risk run, the want of operatives acquainted with the business, and the comparative highness of wages have hitherto debarred any one from undertaking the manufacture of fans extensively in the United States. Taste is necessary for a fan maker. A man that has been making fans for two years in New York, told me he took it up from repairing fans. He cannot keep materials enough on hand, because suitable feathers are high and difficult to get. He is raising some peacocks and white turkeys, that he may have the feathers for making fans. The women he employed last year he paid by the piece, and they earned from $5 to $6 per week. He will employ more women in the course of a year or two. =343. Ladies' Under-Wear.= A sempstress in New York can seldom earn more than seventy-five cents a day--fifty is the more usual sum. At Mrs. C. & Co.'s, all the work is done by hand. They employ by the week and by the piece. They will not allow goods to be taken out unless they know the person to be reliable, because they find it difficult to get work back at the time promised. They sell most articles made up, about Christmas, and in the spring. People do not have half so much sewing done out as they used to, because so many own sewing machines, and they are not willing to pay the same prices that they formerly did. Some women that live and dress well in New York, take in sewing to obtain pinmoney. She mentioned one lady that came dressed in her elegant furs and point lace, and got sewing, she said, for a sick young friend; but when she came back, she said the friend was not able to do it, and so she did it herself, and would like to have more. She lived in style on ---- street. The cutters of under-wear, who are competent and responsible, can earn $6 per week, and even more, but it requires considerable experience. A lady that has sewing done told me that nothing pays so poorly as white work. She requires a sample of work and a deposit from any one that takes sewing out, to the amount of the value of the article. A lady that has most beautiful under-wear made up for ladies in New York and in the South, told me her Southern orders have all ceased. Her work is mostly done by hand. She has a forewoman that bastes and cuts. She has not less than ten or twelve applicants every day for work. Some of her hands earn $5 or $6 a week, and others work just as long and do not earn $3. Some of her workers can earn $4 by embroidering, but sewing generally pays best. She pays her operator by the piece--so much a yard. When she had Southern orders, she sent goods by express, and the express collected the money on the goods. If the money was not paid by those who had ordered the goods, the express would not deliver them, but returned them. They were responsible for their return, in case they were not paid for. In the first place, something was paid for transmitting and collecting; in the latter, for transmitting both ways. Many ladies used to send their measures and directions, and she would make up accordingly. She finds bridal apparel most profitable. In large cities there is a small demand for the costume of artists, sea bathers, and practisers of gymnastics. At the Employment House, B., I was told they have more applications than they can attend to, for plain sewing; but fine sewing it is more difficult to get done. Fine sewing pays for itself very well, but coarse does not. At L. & T.'s, New York, they have every branch done, and pay sewers by hand as good prices as operators. A right neat and fast sempstress can earn $6 a week: it is piecework. Operators can earn $5 or $6. Part of the work is done in the building, and part is given out. At first they found it difficult to get superior sewers, but they have plenty now. They have sometimes employed 375 hands. About half their women are Americans. It is usual for the forewoman to do the cutting, and she can earn from $6 to $12. When they pay by the week, the girls work from 8 A. M. to 6 P. M., and have three fourths of an hour at noon. They pay by the week for making mantillas and cloaks. It is most profitable to the employées to pay by the piece. Their customers can rely on their work, and are willing to pay a good price for hand sewing. A lady that supplies under-wear told me that she finds it difficult to obtain any one that is reliable to give her work to--one that she can be sure will do her work well at the proper time. She pays those that work in the house $3 a week, of ten hours a day. Neatness, care, and expedition, she requires of her hands. There is an abundance of indifferent hands, but a scarcity of superior ones. =344. Over Gaiters.= R., Philadelphia, employs fifty girls. Some of the gaiters are made by sewing machines, and some are stitched by hand. Makers earn from $3 to $5 a week. Most of the work is done in the establishment--some is taken out. =345. Patterns.= In large cities there is a constant call for a supply of new patterns; consequently stores are kept for the purpose of cutting and selling them. A dress and cloak making establishment is frequently connected with them. The sale of patterns to dress and cloak makers in the South and West is considerable--greater, perhaps, than that in the city. T., and Mme. D., are the leaders of this branch in New York. Mme. D. has in pattern making mostly young girls. A large room of young girls requires but two or three ladies to assist and direct. It takes but little time to learn. She does not pay until they have learned, and then pays young girls $1 a week and upward. T., son of the editor of the _Bon Ton_, told me their fashion magazines have a circulation of three thousand, mostly among milliners and dress makers. The plates are colored in Paris. Leslie's and Godey's plates are colored in this country. T.'s takes six French publications devoted to the fashions. They look over plates and select such styles as they think will be popular. They have a lady in Paris who writes to them from there, describing the fashions. They employ a lady in connection with their pattern making who, by looking at the plates, is able to cut out a mantle, sleeve, &c., exactly like the plates. Some ladies could never learn to do so. They employ ladies, both in pattern cutting and dress making, and pay from $3 to $5 per week--to a competent forewoman, $10 and $15. Women are paid small wages while learning. Their business is advancing--has advanced most during the last few years. Their trade is Eastern, Western, and Southern--mostly Southern. Their girls are employed from 8 A. M. to 6 P. M.; having an hour at noon. In the pattern business, there are just about enough of hands in New York. Spring and fall are the busy seasons. E. G. says the busy season commences the middle of January, when she is willing to receive learners. She gives instruction for nothing for one month; after that, she pays $2.50 a week, if successful, and continues to increase salary according to the abilities of the individual. A good hand can earn $5 per week, working ten hours a day. Another lady told me that in pattern making she gives instruction two months, paying nothing, but then they can earn $2.50, and, as they become more expert, can earn $3, $3.50, and $4. They are paid by the week, and it would be impossible to pay by the piece. It requires practice to become an expert cutter. She prefers, for pattern cutting, young girls from twelve to fifteen years old. In large cities, some women go around to cut patterns, sell stays, embroidery, &c. =346. Shoes.= The business of making and selling shoes opens a wide field of employment to women. The fashion, a few years back, of ladies making their own shoes, raged like a fever. Those that had leisure did so with economy, as the lasts and implements for working cost only $3, and the materials for a pair of shoes from sixty cents to $1. Afterward no further expense was needed but the materials. The fitting of shoes is basting, stitching, and putting them together. Fitting is generally done by females, and is so simple that children can work at it. A good deal of this work is done in families at the East. Crimping and bottoming are done altogether by men. Some firms in cities confine themselves to importing and dealing in shoe-manufacturers' tools, materials, &c. In Massachusetts, most of the shoes are made in country towns, where living is much cheaper than in the cities; and the business in cities is very much absorbed by foreigners, that can live much cheaper than Americans. The principal defect in ready-made shoes is their imperfect shape. It would be well for every adult to have a last made the exact shape of his or her foot, and keep it at the shoemaker's. "The application of machinery to the manufacture of shoes has made so vast a difference in the ease and rapidity of their production that those engaged in the business can scarcely realize the advantage they possess, and before they are aware of it they are in the way of creating a surplus. The effect of this change in their production will be to lessen the number of manufacturers and operatives." Says a writer in the _Pennsylvania Inquirer_: "Individuals that are prominent in the shoe business assert that about 2,000 females are employed in Philadelphia in binding shoes or sewing uppers; but they do not obtain steady work, and the average of their wages is only $75 to $100 per annum." Four thousand two hundred men are employed in Philadelphia in making women's shoes. Might not a large part of that work be done by women? Yes; the cutting, binding, stitching--indeed, the entire making of ladies' shoes might be done by women. Most of the stitching is now done by machines. The most depressed trades in New York, in 1845, were those of shoe and shirt making. From the New York _Tribune_ of May, 1853, we take the subjoined extract: "The binding of children's shoes is paid for at the rate of two pairs for three cents, or eighteen cents a dozen pair; while for the full size, five cents a pair. Now a first-rate hand may succeed, by the closest application--say from fourteen to seventeen hours a day, if uninterrupted by domestic cares--in making, during the week, four dozen pairs, for which, after delivery and approval, she will be paid $2.40, that being the maximum paid, and representing the value of not less than eighty hours' labor; and from this miserable dole the cost of light and fire is to be deducted. We are not prepared to say this sum is never exceeded, as some houses may pay a slight advance on these prices; but it is more than sufficient for us to know that this is _above_ the average that hundreds of women and girls in this city (New York) are earning from that source." We have seen it stated, elsewhere, that good shoebinders, in New York, usually earn from $4 to $7 a week. I talked with a shoe fitter in New York, who works for a large and fashionable store and employs a number of hands. Some of her operators have $6 a week, and have better wages than hand workers, because they can do more work in the same time. As sewing machines become cheaper, wages for work done by them will fall. Shoemakers made more money before ladies wore heels on their shoes, as they wore out more. Mrs. I., a shoe fitter, told me that she pays one of her hands $7, another $6, and none less than $4. It requires about six months for most women to learn the trade. The business is one that will extend. Spring and fall are the best seasons for work. Her hands usually spend but nine hours a day at labor, as stitching shoes is heavy work. Men usually do the cutting in the back of the store, and receive better wages than the women. The cutting is done by hand. Her workers pay $2.50 for board. There is a scarcity of good operators on uppers. Plenty of indifferent hands can be had at any time. She says American women are too fond of pleasure and dress. They make money, and then must have a day or two to rest. She was an Irish woman. The journeymen shoemakers of New York have an association for regulating prices and hours of work, and a lady branch was started, but has become extinct. A shoebinder in Brooklyn told me that he employs a number of girls, paying his operatives $3, $4, $5, and some even $6 per week. The machines have taken work from many, and lowered the prices of those that do it by hand. To make fancy shoes requires taste and judgment. The late strikes have given us, through the newspapers, some reliable information in regard to the starving rates paid for work, and wages have been somewhat increased by it. I heard a shoemaker say he knew one sewer that received forty cents for a week's work, stitching sixty pairs of gaiters. Two cents is what some of the Massachusetts women received for binding a pair of boots. Yet the consumer must pay as high for boots and shoes as ever. The reason given is, that leather costs more than formerly--a statement we are led to doubt when considering the increased facilities for tanning. An intelligent shoe fitter told me the prices of work were formerly much higher than now. The work that would formerly have brought fifty cents is now not paid more than twenty-five cents. Mrs. B. says well-dressed women sometimes come and bring what they say is a sample of their work. A few pairs will be given them to make, which they will bring in poorly stitched. She thinks any one in the shoe-making business that does her work well can always find employment. "In Ohio, several women are employed as shoemakers, and others are working independently and successfully, evincing both taste and ability in their elegant and substantial work." A manufacturer in Albany, N. Y., writes: "I employ ten women running sewing machines, binding by hand, and stitching with wax-thread and awl. I pay mostly by the piece, and my hands earn from $2 to $5 per week. Women cannot do men's labor in our branch. Learners are paid what they earn. Mechanical talent is a desirable qualification. The prospect for extension of the business is necessarily poor. Prison work is interfering much with our craft. Women can have steady work, if employers manage prudently. Women that work with awl and wax thread are mostly foreign." The returns of 1860 give 56,039 males and 24,978 females employed in making boots and shoes in New England; and in all the States, 96,287 males and 31,140 females. In Dublin, about five hundred women are employed in eight of the large establishments of that city in boot closing, and earn on an average eight shillings per week, of nine hours a day. =347. Stays and Corsets.= At Mrs. B.'s, Philadelphia, I was told women are paid by the dozen for making corsets, and earn from $2 to $3 a week. They mostly take their work home. At a place in New York, I was told they have sewing machines, and they pay operators $4 a week, working from 7½ A. M. to 7½ P. M. Those that sew for them by hand do not earn so much. It is difficult to get enough of good hands; so the lady thought there must be openings for competent workers. Girls get $4 a week for basting. Their girls are of all nations. Every store, she remarked, has its own way of doing business. It takes some time to learn to do all parts, as a girl usually works at some special part. A man does the cutting. One corset maker thinks it a valuable gift to be able to fit well. She considers corsets necessary to the preservation of health. American children, by their restlessness, counteract the effects of their rapid growth. Miss C. told me those that work for wholesale houses can, if good hands, find work all the year. They are paid by the piece, and can earn from $3 to $6. It requires three or four years to learn all parts. Her girls cannot take their work home. Few are willing to take learners. At another place, I was told a good operator can get $6 a week. They sell most women corsets of French and German make. The French fit American ladies nearly as well as those made to order, but the German do not. At another place, I was told it requires but a short time to learn. There are but few manufactories in this country. The imported corsets are mostly sold, because cheapest. The basters get $3 a week, ten hours a day, and operators $4, and $4.50, according to abilities. Mrs. B. thinks it difficult to become a good fitter. She employs men to cut, put bones and eyelets in, and press. Anybody that can sew well can soon take up corset making. All her sewing is done by hand. She sends her work to the country, because she can get it done more cheaply. The work pays poorly. She says the form is retained much longer by wearing corsets. A lady who employs women to stitch corsets for her by hand, pays from $2.50 to $3.50 a week--ten working hours a day. It requires six months to learn, and a just eye, a knowledge of figure, and an ability to sew by hand and stitch by machine, to succeed. She says most corset employers in New York are French, and employés Irish. She thought, if a lady has good apartments in a genteel part of the city, she may do well. Mrs. B., who has been twenty-three years carrying on the business on Broadway, says she has applications constantly, but finds it difficult to obtain competent workmen. Men are practical corset makers, and do the cutting. They are better able to cut the goods, so as to make a handsome fit. They receive better wages than women. It is a business as much to be learned as cutting gentlemen's coats. She pays both by the piece and week, and her hands receive from $3 to $8. Some of the stitching is done by machinery--some by hand. It requires about the same time to learn corset as dress making. Learners receive from her from $1.50 to $2 per week. She thinks the supply of hands just equal to the demand. She employs from 100 to 150 hands. They are mostly from Great Britain. The business is dependent on fashion. Spring and fall are the busy seasons. In summer, she does not sell so much, because ladies are then out of town; but the employés can work all the year, and do so, as she keeps a stock on hand. Corsets are more worn now than a few years back. A manufacturer in Boston writes: "I employ ten American women in sewing on corsets. They work by the piece, and average sixty cents per day. The prospect of future employment is not flattering. Board, $2.25." Another manufacturer in Boston "pays from $3 to $4.50, and says it is all he can afford to pay. His hands work ten hours a day. The prospect for this work is good. July and August are the dullest months. He has found women equal to men in all branches of business they conduct. Board, $2.50." STRAW WORKERS. =348. Bleachers and Pressers.= I called in a place where I saw the pressing of bonnets and children's hats. The rims of the hats were pressed by a woman with a large iron, the crowns by a man with an iron attached to a lever fastened in a frame. It is all piecework, and some can earn from $4 to $5 a week. I have been told that Mrs. K., New York, employs women pressers. The iron is not so heavy for bonnet pressing as for hats, but requires too much strength for a woman. Shaping straw bonnets is done by women--that is, placing them on blocks and pinning them around the edge, after they have been bleached, until they acquire shape. A man pressing straw hats, told me he is paid 5 cents a hat, and can press sixty in ten hours. The time for learning either to sew or bleach, I find, is usually six weeks. Mrs. M. pays learners nothing for six weeks. Her busy seasons are from October to last of November, and from December to spring. It is all piecework, and her girls earn from $3 to $4. A bleacher of straw hats employs a lady at $5 per week to alter and wire bonnets, after they have been bleached, which is done by her own family. She works ten hours a day. The work is mostly confined to spring and fall. The bleaching process is very deleterious, owing to the sulphur used. It produces a loss of vitality and shortens life. A stout, healthy man, in the course of a year, becomes quite pale and thin. The bleaching does not require all the time of any one. The bonnets and hats are put into the bleaching room, and, when they have become white, are taken out. =349. Braiders.= The following is from the New York _Tribune_, of 1845: "The Amazonia braid weavers--a large and ill-paid class of working females--begin work at seven in the morning, and continue until seven in the evening, with no intermission save to swallow a hasty morsel. They earn, when in full employment, $2 and $2.50 a week. Out of this, they must pay their board and washing (for they have no time to wash their own clothes), medical and other incidental expenses, and purchase their clothes--to say nothing of the total absence of all healthy recreation, and of all mental and moral culture, which such a condition necessarily implies. They have, many of them, no rooms of their own, but board with some poor family, sleeping anyhow, and anywhere. For these accommodations they pay $1.50 per week, some of the lowest and filthiest boarding houses charging as low as $1 per week. The living here must be imagined." At Foxboro', Franklin, Middleboro', and Nantucket, Mass., are straw manufactories. "In 1855, 6,000,000 straw hats and bonnets were made in Massachusetts, giving employment to ten thousand of her people." Rye straw is raised in all the New England States. It is cut, soaked in water (I think split), and then dried. It is sold by the pound--then braided by women and children for 10 or 12 cents a day. It is mostly done in farmers' families, who are at but little expense for living. In this state, it is mostly sold to merchants or agents, who sell it at manufactories, where it is trimmed by machinery, and then sewed. It is then shaped into bonnets, wired, pressed, and bleached, the crowns are lined with paper, and they are packed ready for exportation. The women earn on an average $5 a week. In England, wheat straw is raised, which is inferior to rye straw. N. says the largest straw-bonnet establishments of England are not as large as those of the United States. For making straw hats in Philadelphia, men receive $7.50 a week, and women $4.50. Philadelphia is said to spend $6,000,000 annually in the manufacture of straw goods. At H.'s, New York, they employ from fifty to one hundred hands. It is usual to have learners six weeks for nothing, and then pay full wages, if they prove competent. Work is given about ten months. They are paid by the piece, and can earn from $4 to $6 per week. In December, they begin to make up hats and bonnets for spring. A milliner told me she pays her braiders by the yard. Some earn $4 a week, and some even $5. They work at home. The summer season is over by September. H. writes: "In my opinion the best arranged industrial establishment is the Union Straw Works at Foxboro', Mass. High wages, cushioned arm-chairs, a literary society which carries on the lyceum lectures of the town, are all far above any of our factories. The proprietor would not call it a factory, to make it more attractive. Out of three hundred operatives, sometimes, seventy-five have been teachers." =350. Sewers.= Mrs. K. employs about seventy-five girls for bleaching and sewing braid and straw bonnets. She pays some $3, some $3.50, and some $4 a week. They work ten hours. All live at home, but bring their dinners. She bleaches by the old-fashioned process with sulphur, and has men to do the pressing. N. & Co. employ about one hundred and twenty-five on an average six months, and about twenty-five all the year. The bonnet business has increased very much during the last few years. At B.'s, I was told the wholesale work for the South begins in November; but the city work, the last of March, and continues to July. It is light work, and does not require close application of the eyes. Machinery can never be used for sewing straw, because long stitches answer, and straw is too brittle. Persons of a nervous temperament are often the most intellectual. Such females make good straw sewers. It requires a peculiar adaptability, as every other occupation does. Everybody cannot learn to sing or to paint--just so some cannot make good straw sewers. He thinks most young workpeople in New York do not live at home, and considers obedience to parents and observance of the Sabbath the foundation of success in life. B--s, of Connecticut, write: "Women are employed in this country, and in Italy, France, and England, in sewing straw. Our girls (150) are mostly paid by the piece, and earn from $3 to $7 per week. They also trim straw hats. They spend four weeks as learners, and are paid $2 a week while learning. To be a fast sewer is the most important requisite. The prospect of a continuance of this work is good. The busy season is from September to June. The best locations are near New York and Boston." "About 200 persons are employed in the straw factory at Nantucket. Some of the operatives are daughters of the leading men of the town, and make $5 a week at the business." A firm at Middleboro', Mass., write: "We employ 850 women, and have them in preference to men, because they are more dexterous with the needle. They receive from 30 cents to $1.62 per day, and are paid mostly by the piece. Women are paid five eighths what the men receive, but could not perform their labor even at the same price. Learners make enough to pay their board the first three weeks. Good mechanical talent is needed in a learner. They have work about nine months in the year--generally stop July, August, and November. Nine tenths are Americans; seven eighths live at home. A large number of them are not dependent upon labor for a living. Board, $2 to $2.25." From a factory in Wrentham, Mass., we have the following report: "We employ during the winter season, in the factory, from seventy-five to one hundred females, and in families who work at home about six hundred, whose pay is not so good by about one third. Some of our workers are paid by the piece--some by the hour. Most of them can earn $1 a day, twelve hours being a day for females. Men are paid 15 cents an hour; good help extra, and poor, less. They work ten hours. For the part done by women, we pay the same price from the first, but their work is not received until it is well done. A person is employed to give them instruction; five or six weeks' practice mostly makes a good sewer of one who can learn at all. During this time most girls earn half wages. To good help we usually give work nine months in the year. Busy seasons from December 1st till June 1st, and from July 15th to October 1st. The rest of the year, work is given out at reduced prices--sufficient to earn about half wages. All American women. It is desirable for manufacturers to be near New York city, so as to keep posted on styles. Many ladies choose this business after teaching school for years. Most of our hands come from Maine, and board in houses provided for them, paying $2 a week." Another straw manufacturer informs me "the girls in straw shops earn more than in most other kinds of business, they being, as a general thing, smarter girls, and such as would not work in cotton and other large mills. Their work varies much, as the styles and materials change." A firm employing about eighty American girls write: "They are paid according to their skill and smartness, from $2.50 to $10 per week. Two thirds work by the piece--half will earn $5 to $6.50--average about $4.50 per week. Male labor will average double. It cannot be done by females--they are not strong enough. The reason of women's being paid low wages is the surplus of female labor. They cannot be hired to do housework--it is too confining. It requires one month, more or less, according to taste and genius, to learn the work. Good references as to character are required, and some skill with the needle, and an idea of form. Busy from December to June, and from August to November. We do nothing for about three months. Hands hired by the week are paid extra for overwork. If we could not give them the amount of work they have, the _best_ help would go elsewhere. There is always plenty of help in this branch in New York, and they get work done for much less, but by a different caste of girls. In the New England States, girls are generally brought up to work, whether rich or poor, and we can get help from the best families, well educated and intelligent--while in some States we could not find them. Board, $2.25 to $2.50." A straw firm in Franklin, Mass., write: "We employ about 400 females--60 of them in our manufactory--the remainder work at their homes. The former have the privilege of working from 6 A. M. to 9 P. M.; but as they work by the piece, they are not confined to any particular time. The latter accommodate themselves. Few get less than 80 cents per diem, and many can earn over $1--some over $1.50. All are paid by the piece, except overseers. Males and females are never employed in the same kind of labor. Females make and trim bonnets and hats--males bleach, block, and press them, which is too laborious work for females. Some years would be required to learn to conduct the straw business successfully. Some females will make a very good bonnet or hat after a few weeks' practice. Others take a longer time, and a few will never make a good bonnet. Our practice is to pay all while learning. The qualifications required by us are a good character, good health, skill in the use of the needle, and a desire to acquire proficiency. The supply of hands is always greater than the demand. All the females employed in straw factories are American. Our girls have access to a good library, lectures, &c. Those employed in manufacturing board at $2.25 per week, including washing. Boarding houses attached to the different straw manufactories in this town are of good character and comfortable." RENOVATORS. =351. Gentlemen's Wear.= A dyer and scourer of gentlemen's clothing told me she charges 37 cents for scouring and pressing a pair of pantaloons; 75 cents for a coat, and $1 for an overcoat. A woman could make a comfortable living at it if she had constant employment. =352. Ladies' Wear.= The cleaning of kid gloves saves quite an item in the purses of the wearers. Wooden frames, the shape and size of gloves, are used for drying them on. The renovating of silk shawls, dresses, and other goods is best done by the French. They are sometimes made to look almost as bright and clean as if they were new. Woollen goods, too, that will not bear washing, are beautifully cleaned by those that rightly understand the business. All that profess to, by the way, do not. Prices vary, of course, according to goods, places, and renovators. Women are mostly engaged in this business. A cleaner of kid gloves writes: "I employ some women with pens and needles at $3 per week, working from four to six hours per day. Cool weather is the best for work, but they are employed all the year." Mrs. C. told me that her husband and his men clean most gloves in winter; they can clean them in two days. I noticed they are free from any offensive odor. They pass through the hands several times. She charges individuals 12½ cents a pair--storekeepers less. She has been many years at it. They used to send a wagon and collect them from the stores, but their business does not warrant it now--so they send a messenger. As many have attempted that do not thoroughly understand it, the business has been injured. GENTLEMEN'S CLOTHING. =353. Army and Navy Uniform.= Our Government might do something toward bringing about a reform in the prices paid women. If those who have clothing made for the men of the army and navy would pay good prices to men of standing, that pay their workwomen well, we think some good might be done. At any rate, they would set a good example. =354. Buttons.= The making of buttons is chiefly done by women, and affords employment for a great many. The proportion of women to men in this branch of industry is six to one. Some kinds of buttons are made by hand, but most by machinery, moved by steam. The manufacture of cloth for buttons is a distinct branch of business. It was estimated in 1851 that five thousand persons were employed in Birmingham in the manufacture of buttons of different kinds, more than half of whom were women and children. In the manufacture of buttons a variety of hands are employed--piercers, cutters, stampers, gilders, and varnishers. "In a factory employing five men and thirty females, from six to seven hundred gross of buttons can be turned out daily." I called in a factory where buttons were made of vegetable ivory. I think all the work could be done by women, but it is a trade, and requires three years to learn all the parts. One man might be needed to put the machinery in order when it would get out of repair. Boys that polish buttons are paid from $2 to $3 a week. Polishing looks simple, but, no doubt, requires practice. A little girl, whose father makes common horn buttons, says he employs some small girls who, by presses, cut out the buttons and make the perforations. They are paid seven cents for a thousand. Her parents assort them. H. & C., manufacturers of cloth and gilt buttons, say it requires some weeks to learn to chase the gilt buttons, which are done with small metal tools and a hammer. Chasers are paid by the piece, working ten hours a day, and some can earn $1 a day. Those that make cloth buttons work by the week, eleven hours a day. They pay nothing while the person is learning. They think the prospect of employment in that branch is good. (I think it must be, for it is a manufacture likely to extend.) They employ their hands all the year. The girls sit while at work. S. has girls to do most of the work in making men's coat buttons. They cut out the iron and cloth with machines, and also cover the buttons with machines. The girls require but a few weeks to learn. They are paid from $1.75 to $3 a week. Some of the girls are not more than twelve years of age. The average of the oldest girls is $2.75. They work ten hours. Learners are paid half wages. Good eyesight and smart fingers are needed. The gilding of brass buttons is called water gilding, though no water is used. The mercury and nitric acid used in gilding metal buttons renders the business pernicious to the health, the fumes of the nitric acid affecting the lungs, and the mercury producing its peculiar disease. A manufacturer of tin buttons writes: "Our women earn from 75 cents to $1 per day, and are paid by the piece. It requires but little practice to learn. All are American girls from neighboring families." A manufacturer in Middlefield, Conn., writes: "We employ from twenty-five to thirty girls in cutting, drilling, sorting, and packing buttons. They work by the piece, and average $15 per month. While learning they are paid $1 per week, and their board. They have regular work, and pay for board $1.50 per week. The prospect for an increase of the manufacture is fair." A button company in Waterbury write: "Our hands receive $3 and upward, as they are worth. The business is good when times are good. The majority are Americans. Spring and fall are the best seasons." A buttonmaker in Morrisville, Pa., writes: "We pay our girls by the gross, and they earn from $1 to $4 per week. Men earn from $3 to $9. The women's work is lighter. Beginners are paid small wages. The prospect of future work is poor. Seasons make no difference in the work." =355. Canes.= Walking canes could be painted and varnished by women. I have been told that, in France, women are employed in making ivory, gold, whalebone, and wire heads for canes. Mrs. F. makes whalebone heads for canes. She offered to teach me how for $20. P. says he pays from $6 to $100 a dozen for the heads of canes--ivory, silver, and gold. The work is mostly done by Germans. The business will not pay except in large cities. There are only six in the business in New York, which is the main depot. He sells most to Southerners and Canadians. The business requires a regular apprenticeship. Making and putting on the heads could be done by women, if they were instructed, but there would not be enough of it to justify more than a few in learning. The South offers the best opening. =356. Caps.= Cap makers receive very different prices for their work, depending on the quality of the material and work, and the house for which the work is done. There are between eight hundred and one thousand cap makers in Philadelphia. They are said to average $3 a week. Freedley says: "In Philadelphia, there are a large number of concerns occupied exclusively in making caps; those of cloth constituting the chief part of the business, though plush, silk, glazed, and other caps are also made. The cap manufacture employs a large number of females, whose wages in the business will average about $4 per week. Sewing machines are largely employed; being, in fact, indispensable in consequence of the expansion of the trade. The annual production is about $400,000." A few years ago there were five thousand cap makers in New York city. Many of the cheap caps in New York are furnished by Jews, who get them done very cheaply. They not only do much to supply the home demand for caps, but export large quantities. They sell some caps for from $1 to $1.50 a dozen. B. pays his cap makers, some $5, some $6 a week. When business is dull the work is divided, so that all hands are retained, and have something to do. Caps are mostly made by German men on sewing machines. Some Germans take fifty or sixty dozen a week from a store, and employ girls to make them up. They are middlemen, and cut out the goods. In New York, almost every branch of business seems to have its own locality--that of the hat and cap manufacturers is on the lower part of Broadway. A good hand can earn about $3.50 a week of 10 hours a day, or by working fifteen or sixteen hours, which many of them do, can earn $8 or $9. Working girls generally receive about $3 a week. They pay $2 for board. The remaining $1 is almost consumed in shoes. Nearly all are at times out of employment. In New York, by constant labor, fifteen or sixteen hours a day, some cap makers can earn only from fourteen to twenty-five cents. "We were told by an old lady who has lived by this kind of work a long time, that when she begins at sunrise, and works till midnight, she can earn fourteen cents a day. A large majority of these women are American born, from the great middle class of life, many of whom have once been in comfortable, and even affluent circumstances, and have been reduced by the death or bankruptcy of husbands and relatives, and other causes, to such straits. Many of them are the wives of shipmasters, and other officers of vessels. Others are the widows of mechanics and poor men, and have children, and mothers and fathers, &c., to support by their needle. Many have drunken husbands to add to their burdens and afflictions, and to darken every faint gleam of sunshine that domestic affection throws even into the humblest abode. Others have sick and bedridden husbands or children, or perhaps have to endure the agony of receiving home a fallen daughter, or an outlawed son, suddenly checked in his career of vice." S., of S. & Co., told me they take learners when they can make good use of them. The business, some time back, in New York, was over done, but for the last three or four years the supply has not more than met the demand. It is piecework. A first-class hand can, in busy seasons, make $10, but many are not swift with the needle, and cannot earn more than $3 a week. They give out some of their work. All that can be, he has done by machines. R. & H. have their caps made by machines. It is piecework, and a good hand can earn from $6 to $9 a week. In a cloth and fancy cap store, I was told the girls earn $4, $5, and $6 a week. Few people are willing to take learners, as the season, six weeks, is nearly consumed by the time the trade is learned, and the instructor gets nothing for his time and trouble. Children's fancy caps cannot be made by machine. They are usually piecework. To make them requires taste. Six weeks is the length of time usually given to learning the trade. A.'s caps are made by machines. Good hands earn $5, $6, and $7. His hands are busy only in spring. He takes learners at that time, and pays from the first, $2 or $3 a week. D., formerly a cap maker, told me that P--s have some of their caps made on Blackwell's Island, by the convicts. B. told me the greater part of the cap is made by sewing machines tended by men, but the finishing, lining, &c., is done by women, either at home or on the premises. They are paid by the dozen, and can earn from $5 to $6 a week. Some have received even more, but as the work was taken home, it cannot be known with certainty that one person did it all. The first year they work at caps of an inferior quality, for which they receive fifty cents a dozen; girls of average ability, can then take the better kind of cap, and of course the wages increase according to the degree of proficiency. A cap maker told me, good hands can have steady work all the year. The best season for work is when manufacturing for the fall trade, which is generally in the months of June, July, August, September, and part of October, and, for the spring trade, in March and April. Another told me he pays by the dozen, and his hands earn from $4 to $7 a week. A maker of cap fronts, New York, told me he pays his girls from $3 to $7, working ten hours a day. From July to November are the best seasons--May and June the poorest months. Cutting out is done by hand, and requires too much strength for women. Some men cut out fifty dozen caps a day. It is done with a knife of a peculiar shape, and several thicknesses of the cloth are out at once. Women are not so employed where the business is done on a large scale. Some cutters earn $24 a week. A cutter should have taste and skill, as he is also expected to design patterns. The English style for caps is sometimes adopted, and the most of gentlemen's clothing is of the English style, in New York; but the ladies prefer French fashions for themselves. An extensive manufacturer of cap fronts and other trimmings, in New York, writes: "I have about twenty-five females employed, the majority of whom sew at home. The occupation is perfectly healthy, easy, and comfortable. I pay by the piece, and the workers earn from $3 to $6 per week. Any woman that can sew and has ordinary intelligence can learn it in three hours. There is no prospect for increase, but constant employment for those already engaged. Spring and fall are the busy seasons, but employment is given all the year. I can always get ten times the help I require in this branch: four or five years ago we paid much better wages, but competition regulates (unfortunately) the scale of wages. Experience tells me women are inferior to men employées, in regard to promptness in coming to the shop, and in having the articles completed at stated times, when required for shipment. But I find them superior to men in refinement, temperance, decorum, attachment to the interest of their employers, &c., when unmixed with the male sex. I formerly employed women on sewing machines, and when first started in that branch, they made from $8 to $10 per week, although, since the last three years, goods are sold so much cheaper, as to reduce the wages from $5 to $8." In Detroit, Mich., cap makers get from five to twenty-three cents a cap for making, and can earn from $2 to $4 per week. =357. Coats.= We were told by one that ought to know, that many of the gentlemen's coats seen on Broadway are made by women. We believe that women of intelligence and judgment, if properly instructed, could make the greater part, if not the whole of gentlemen's coats. Much of the tailors' work of New York is distributed through the country, because it can be made cheaper. Many men make it a business, as agents, to distribute, collect, and pay for such work. Men press seams and sew the heaviest cloth, because they have more strength. What magnificent buildings there are in New York devoted to the sale of gentlemen's wear! But to think they are made of the sinews and muscles and tears and sighs of hard-working women, and to see the clerks in the stores, with nothing to do but receive and wait on customers, while those poor girls on the fifth floor are toiling from early morn to dark to earn less than one half of those clerks! What a hard life most women lead! =358. Cravats.= W. & D. usually employ fifty hands. Part of the work is done in the store, on the fourth and fifth floors. Cravats pay well, and a good hand can earn from $6 to $18 a week, piecework. Most of their work is done by machine and finished by hand. Those of their hands who take work home, do it when not occupied with home duties. The gentleman with whom I talked, thought a person would not be able to support herself by that kind of work alone. They have been able to keep their hands all the year. Another cravat maker told me he has employed hands all the year, and had most of his cravats made by machines. A great many have been made in Baltimore. M. & Co. give some work out and have some done at the store. They are most busy in spring and fall, but keep some hands all the year. They can always get plenty of hands. They take learners, and pay from the first, but not so much, of course. Week workers earn from $4 to $5--ten hours a day in summer, rather less in winter. Those that work by the piece can earn from $8 to $9, for they work faster at home and sew in the evenings. Part of their work is done by machine and part by hand. They usually import the material. Most of this work is confined to New York, and has been a separate branch but a few years. In Detroit, girls earn from $2.50 to $3.50 a week making cravats. =359. Hats.= We will give an extract from "The Art and Industry of the Crystal Palace": "In the manufacture of hats in the United States, there are twenty-four thousand persons employed: one half of them are men, and the remainder women. The consumption of straw hats amounts to about $1,500,000, about half of which are imported. The capital invested in the hatting trade in this country is little short of $8,000,000. The number of trimmers in New York are four hundred. There is no branch of industry in which the rate of wages is so fluctuating; no trade reflecting so faithfully the depressed or prosperous condition of the country. There are between fifty and sixty finishing shops in New York. There is no general understanding between the shops as to a fixed rate of payment. It is a peculiarity of the trade, that a person seeking employment never addresses himself to the principal; he goes direct to the foreman." Silk and felt hats are most worn in the United States. We find there is great objection by the workmen to the use of machinery. Some factories confine their work exclusively to the making of hat bodies. The manufacture of hatters' trimmings forms, in large cities, a distinct branch of business. "In C.'s hat manufactory, in London, fifteen hundred hands are employed, two hundred of whom are females. Among the processes by which a beaver hat is produced, women and girls are there employed in the following: Plucking the beaver skins; cropping off the fur; sorting various kinds of wool; plucking and cutting rabbits' wool; shearing the nap of the blocked hat (in some instances); picking out defective fibres of fur; and trimming." Women in our country could be employed in bowing the fur, pressing it with a hatter's basket, folding it in a damp cloth, rolling, rubbing, working it with the hands, and dipping it in hot water. The last operation is a very warm one. As it is, we know of no department in which they are employed, except that of carding, binding, lining, trimming, and tip gilding. Binding and lining are much done by them. The work is light, genteel, and rather profitable, and can be done at home. When done in factories, the workers cannot be so neat, on account of the dust, the large number of operatives in a room, and the coloring matter that rubs off the hats. All employers have reported it healthy, and I suppose it is as much so as any sedentary occupation, unless from causes mentioned in the preceding sentence. A hatter in Philadelphia told us he employs girls to line and bind men's hats. They are paid 75 cents a dozen for felt hats, and $1.25 for silk hats. Girls can earn as much as $6 a week at it. It requires a couple of months' apprenticeship. There is work for steady hands all the year. We have seen it stated that "hat trimmers in Philadelphia average $3.50 per week. They number from eight hundred to one thousand females. Hat binders usually spend six weeks learning their trade." The war department, about two years ago, closed a contract with S., of Philadelphia, to furnish sixteen thousand felt hats for the army, at $2.75 each. They make all qualities of hats at P.'s, Brooklyn, from those at 75 cents a dozen to those at $50 a dozen. The linings of the cheapest felt hats are put in by machines operated on by steam, the others by hand. I saw girls also laying gold leaf on muslin, which was stamped by a machine, forming the ornamental work and figures seen in the crown lining of cheap hats. These workers were called tip gilders. All except the box makers and tip gilders sit while at work. Girls at lining and binding can earn from $2.50 to $7. (I think he set his last mark high.) It is piecework, as everything, I believe, in that line is. Some girls have worked in P.'s factory eight years or more. The business is learned in a short time. Operators are paid at the same rate as hand sewers; but if any difference is made, it is in favor of operators. For hand workers, care and ability to sew well are the principal requisites. The hands have work all the year, but in midsummer and midwinter may do only three fourths of the usual quantity for a week or two. Hatters who manufacture in Brooklyn and sell in New York, told me they employ five hundred women, who are paid by the piece. Those that sew receive from $5 to $6, machine operatives from $8 to $9. A knowledge of sewing and taste, in finishing hats, is desirable. The business will extend. Three times as many hats are sold as fifteen years ago. Some parts of hat making are performed by machinery that could not be managed by women. The West and Northwest of the United States present good openings for this business. Manufactories, of course, must be where there is plenty of water. At a hatter's in New York, I was told that they pay 14 cents for trimming a hat of any kind, coarse or fine, silk or felt; but sometimes pay only 10 cents. Their binder often makes $7 a week. At B.'s, New York, the girls earn from $5 to $7, and are paid by the piece. They sew in the establishment. Sewing the crowns in and wires on of plush hats is a distinct business from trimming, yet one in which they employ some women. It pays rather better than the other part of women's work, but requires great care and neatness. Sewing the leather linings in hats is the least profitable part. More women might find employment in hat work. A lady said to me she has an acquaintance that sometimes earns $2.50 a day at trimming hats. (?) L. employs some girls for trimming in the spring and fall. It is piecework, and some earn $9 a week. It is sometimes difficult to get very good hands. There are some factories in the West, but none in the South. Another hatter told me he pays 12½ cents for trimming a hat. He has noticed that the swiftest are the best workers. A hatter told me a smart trimmer could earn from $8 to $10 a week, six months of the year; but not more than $3 the other six months, because work is slack. A salesman in D.'s store told me a brisk hand can trim a dozen hats a day. The children's hats they have trimmed for the wholesale trade are not so neatly and carefully done as those for the retail trade. In selling a single hat, a purchaser examines closely, and if there is any defect, condemns it. The occupation is well filled in New York, and the work requires care, taste, and expedition. D. has constant employment for his hands; but for four months they have not as much as the hands wish, yet enough to yield most about $4. The women work above the store, because the blocks are there. They are allowed to take home and sew in the evening the linings of those hats that have the rims faced with leather. The plan is, generally, for a learner to spend six weeks' apprenticeship with an experienced hand, giving her work for instruction received. At Sing Sing prison, New York, of the one hundred and fifty female convicts, a majority are employed in binding hats, at 15 cents a dozen, made by the male convicts. The usual price in St. Louis is 14½ cents a hat. At this rate, a lady can bind and line in a day a number amounting to from $1 to $1.25. There are two hat factories in St. Louis, but they are not enough to supply the demand. A firm in Danbury write us, they "employ from seventy-five to one hundred women trimming hats. They pay by the piece, and their hands average $5 per week. Males average $9 a week. By the rules of trade, males spend four years learning; females, five weeks. Women are not paid while learning. The prospect for a continuance of the business is good. The busy seasons are from July 1st to April 1st. Time of work does not exceed ten hours. The majority are Americans. There are advantages in being near the great centre of trade in this country, New York. Board, $2." A firm manufacturing wool hats in the same place--Danbury--write they "employ ten Irish women in a card room, and sixty Yankee girls in trimming hats. The first receive $3 per week, the others $5.50. Women in the card room work ten hours. The American girls are intelligent and pretty." Another wool-hat manufacturer in Connecticut writes: "My women earn $1 each per day, on an average. It takes male operatives two years to learn. Work, on an average, ten months in the year. Board, $2." A firm in Milford, Conn., write: "Women earn from $3 to $7 per week. The reason why women are not better paid, is because the supply is greater than the demand. The employment will last as long as people wear hats. Fall and winter are the best seasons for work. The nearer you get to the market, the better the location." In reply to a letter, a firm employing from sixty to eighty women give the following intelligence: "The females employed by us are generally from fourteen to twenty-one years of age. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $4 to $9 per week. The labor of women is entirely distinct from that of men. It takes a good needlewoman about two months to become proficient. Women give their labor to the person who instructs them, from two to eight weeks. The business is good six or eight months. The rest of the year, they average about one half of what they can do. Busy times are from January 1st to May 1st, and from July 1st to November 1st. The demand is about equal to the supply, except in very busy times, when we could employ more; but I think there are plenty, as an increased supply would tend to lower prices. Most of our women are foreigners. The proximity to large cities is advantageous to this business, as the goods are mostly sold in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, &c. I should say there is little difference between the women employed in hat manufactories and others who have to earn a livelihood, such as dress makers, tailoresses, &c. Board, from $1.75 to $2. There is an objection amongst boarding-house keepers to females generally, and strangers frequently have great difficulty in obtaining good board. This is certainly the fault of their own sex." A wool-hat firm in Yonkers, N. Y., write they pay by the piece, and workers earn from $5 to $7. Male and female labor do not compete. A gentleman and his son, in New York, who import and manufacture children's fancy hats, write me they pay from $5 to $12 a week, according to ability. Women are paid while learning, the time for which depends upon capacity and taste. There is regular employment with them in all months but June and December. Good operatives are always in demand. Large cities are the best localities. HAT BRAIDERS, &c. Most hats called "palm leaf" are made of straw grown in the Northern States. P. & Co., of Boston, write me: "The occupation of braiding hats is one that employs the odd moments and hours of almost every Yankee farmer's sons and daughters, throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire, from one year's end to the other. We employ women, but not exclusively, and pay by the piece, from $1 to $1.50 per dozen. A wide-a-wake Yankee girl or boy, with nimble fingers, will learn in a few hours." A manufacturer in New Hampshire, employing "from 300 to 400, pays by the piece, and his workers earn from $6 to $8 per month. They learn generally when children, by seeing others braid. The future prospect is not flattering, as the demand for palm-leaf hats is decreasing. The braiders work at home." $60,000 worth of palm-leaf hats were annually manufactured at Nashua, N. H., a few years ago. C. told me they never employ women, except, in winter, to bind and put the oil-silk lining in gentlemen's straw hats, for the spring trade of the South. For the work they pay 12½ cents a dozen. A woman can do from six to ten dozen a day. The best workers find employment. The prospect of obtaining work to those who may learn is good. B. thinks but few American girls are employed in trimming straw hats. He pays by the piece, and some earn as much as $5 per week. They should spend about one month learning, and they do well to earn their board during that time. =360. Oil Clothing.= I was told at L. & Co.'s oil clothing depot, that they have their sewing done by women at their homes. It is done by machines. They do not require any deposit. Since the panic, a number of girls and women have come in and offered to do their work at under prices. The oiling is done after the goods are made up. The garments are laid on tables, and the oil applied with brushes. The clothes are then hung on frames to dry, and it requires six months. Oiling the goods is greasy, dirty work, but might be done by strong women. The work is not at all unhealthy. L. & Co. sell $150,000 suits a year. Their best sewers can make up six or eight dozen shirts a week, for some of which they are paid $1 a dozen, and for others, $1.25. The manufacture of oiled goods is confined to New York. =361. Pantaloons.= In making pantaloons, as in most other tailor's work, what is most neatly done commands the best prices. Custom work pays best. Making pantaloons is not quite so remunerative as making vests. The prices paid in cities by good-class tailors for making summer pantaloons, runs from 75 cents to $1.25. For winter goods the prices are higher, ranging from $1 a pair to $1.50. Some tailors have their pantaloons made by men, and some even employ men to make their vests. =362. Regalias.= "Five American women are employed at Chicopee, Mass., in stitching military goods. They are paid by the piece. They never get their work perfect. Learners are paid something. Men are preferable, because it takes too much time to wait on women. There will be work as long as there are wars." A regalia maker, in New York, told me her girls earn from $3 to $5 a week. The sewing is done by hand. Those who embroider in silk receive about the same; those with gold and silver thread, something more. =363. Shirts.= "Women who make shirts by hand, are paid for fine shirts from eighteen cents apiece to $1. Those who make at the lowest prices appear to have no other mission on earth but to sew up bleached muslin into shirts. The only time which they economize is their sleeping time; and their food is economized for them by circumstances over which it would appear they have but little control. In some instances we have been informed, that where there are two or three or more women or girls engaged in this enterprise of making shirts to enable gentlemen to appear respectable in society, they absolutely divide the night season into watches, so that the claims of sleep may not snatch from the grasp of the shirt manufacturers an iota of their rights. In this way, by working about twenty hours a day, the amazing sum of $2.50, and sometimes $3, is earned per week. Sewing machines have so reduced the amount of labor required for shirts, as well as the price, that they can in some places only earn twenty-five cents by working twelve hours; and they cannot get steady employment even at these prices." Between 2,000 and 3,000 women are supposed to be engaged in shirt making in Philadelphia. Competition has depressed prices fearfully low. A shirt maker in that city told me he pays by the week. He gives the bodies out, and they are done by hand; the collars and bosoms by machines. They are cut out by men with knives, and the cloth is from twenty-four to thirty-six thicknesses. They pay basters now mostly by the piece. B., of the same city, who carries on general shirt making, puts the plain parts out in the country to be done. It, of course, costs less than the finishing off. Good workers can earn from $3 to $4 a week for plain sewing--more for fine. At a shirt-bosom manufactory in Philadelphia, P., the proprietor, told me he has the bosoms and collars made by machinery, employing seventeen girls all the year. Some establishments employ them only in the busy season, spring and fall. His women earn from $3 to $5 a week. To one machine are employed three girls: one to cut out, one to baste, and one to stitch. The fine plaits of bosoms are laid by machinery. Cutters and button-hole makers are better paid than basters and stitchers. A shirt maker told me in New York (December, 1860), that the only houses there supplying the article were those that made up for the California market. Operators, good ones, he said, usually earn $1 a day, of nine hours in winter, and ten in summer. Those that work at home can earn more, because they do more. On Dey street, I was told by a gentleman that he has shirts made in Connecticut, and he often finds it difficult to get good hands. He has shirts cut out with scissors. He used to employ a forewoman to cut and superintend. Most shirts sold in the South, West, and California, have been made at the North. New York, Troy, and New Haven are the principal places. Operators usually earn $1 a day, of eleven hours; but as the work is generally paid for by the piece, they may earn only from fifty cents to $1. Making button holes is a distinct branch. He pays half a cent apiece for those of ordinary size, and one cent for the larger ones of the wrists. In good times he employs girls all the year. The spring sale commences in January, the fall sale in July. S., another manufacturer, has common drawers and shirts made by machine. A brisk hand can make two dozen pair of drawers a day, and are paid fifty cents a dozen (?) He keeps workers in prosperous times all the year. A lady who makes shirts by hand told me she could barely make a living, though her work is done for customers. She does most in spring and summer. The trimmings she makes by machine. Madame P. pays eighty cents for making a shirt, except the bosom, which is imported. She does her own cutting by hand. A shirt maker says girls that can finish a shirt neatly get $3 a week of ten or eleven hours a day. Work of that kind is not confined to seasons. J. has most work to do in summer. The girls are paid by the piece, and can earn from $3 to $4. His are made by machine, but finished off by hand. He has girls of all kinds; idle and industrious, easy of temper and obstinate; in short, the variety always to be met with in help. A lady told me she cuts shirts by measure, and has a variety of styles. She pays an old lady fifty cents a day for basting, and from $5 to $6 a week to an operator. The neatness of machine sewing depends much on the way in which the basting is done. W. told me his basters earn from $3 to $4; operators from $5 to $6; button-hole makers from $4 to $6. He gives employment all the year. No demand, except in busy seasons for good operators, and they can be obtained by advertising. The owner of a shirt-collar manufactory and laundry said his collars were stitched by machines, and the operators earn from $3 to $9 per week. It is piece work. The washers are paid by the hundred dozen. Six weeks, I believe, is the time usually given by one that can sew neatly, to learn the trade. At L. & G.'s, I was told the best seasons in the wholesale trade are spring and fall; but in the retail trade there is little difference. Men and boys cut out with a knife, and are able to cut through seventy-two thicknesses of cloth. Women have not the strength to cut such quantities. The prospect is fair for good hands. There is a superabundance of indifferent hands. Their best sewers are English. Many of them are married women. They used to employ young girls, but they wasted material and were not steady at work. They have lost much by women that would come and take out a dozen shirts to make, and never return them. On inquiring at the place where the women said they lived, they would find they had never been there. Few, except the Jews, require a deposit. It is difficult to obtain one from sewers of the value of the material taken out. They could obtain one hundred and fifty hands any day by advertising. Button-hole makers earn $5 a week; some operators, $9. A factory in New Haven employs eight hundred women; two hundred work in the establishment, the others work out. The indoor work is done by machines. The other is finishing off, and is sent through the country. It consists in gathering and sewing in the sleeves, felling down the facing around them, stitching on wristbands, sewing in the bosoms, putting on the collar, and working the button-holes, for which they receive ten cents a shirt. A firm of shirt manufacturers in Troy, N. Y., write: "We employ from three hundred to four hundred women; some with sewing machines, some with needles, and others in various kinds of labor connected with our manufacturing. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $3 to $10 a week. While learning they are paid according to what they do. Spring and fall are the best seasons, but they have some employment all the year. The supply is fully equal to the demand in this locality. About half are Americans; board, $2 to $2.50." Another firm in the same place writes: "We employ four hundred, and pay from $5 to $10 per week to about one hundred hands, and from $3 to $7 to those who do not depend upon it for a livelihood. Women spend a few months learning; men, years. Midwinter and summer are the best seasons for work." A shirt-collar firm in Troy write: "In reply to yours we would state, we are employing in and outside of our manufactory, from six to eight hundred women, in running, turning, stitching, banding, marking, and boxing gentlemen's collars. Most of our workwomen are Americans, and live with parents or relatives. Those boarding pay from $1.75 to $3 per week. Many of our workwomen are very intelligent. All are required to be steady and industrious. Some parts of our business can be learned in two or three weeks, while other parts will take as many months; but each one is paid while learning. Our work is all done by the piece, and women earn from $5 to $8 per week during business seasons, which are summer and winter. They are usually thrown out of employment one month during the fall, and one in spring. The employment requires from eight to nine hours per day, in our manufactory. The making of gentlemen's collars must increase in proportion to the increase of the male population of our country; and, as styles are becoming more and more varied, this also must tend to increase the manufacture. There is, however, no demand for help in any department of the business, yet. We have but five or six women in all our establishment who are required to stand upon their feet while at work. All others can make their positions quite comfortable. We employ but few men (from five to eight), and they are in departments which women could not fill; nor could men well fill the women's department." Manufacturers in Boston write: "The prospect of future employment is good. Our women (fifty in number) are nearly all Americans. There is no competition between male and female labor in this branch, which, probably, is the cause of women receiving less wages. The work is healthy, only as it involves want of fresh air and exercise. Girls in the shop are paid from $4 to $7 per week, and work from nine to ten hours. Good sewers are getting scarcer every year. We are always ready to employ a really good hand--one who can do nice work. There is a growing demand for articles of all kinds. There are a great many women unable to sew well, who compete with each other for the work given out by the slop shops." Shirt makers in Ithaca, New York, write: "The work is very healthy in well ventilated establishments. What we employ men for, women cannot do as well. There is a demand for collar finishers, a surplus of machine operatives." Shirt manufacturers in Watertown, Conn., write: "We employ in our establishment from twelve to twenty girls and women, all Americans. They work in winter about nine hours; in summer, ten. Most of them work on sewing machines, and can earn from $4 to $5 per week. For board they pay $2 per week. There is no season of the year when our work is entirely stopped." L., in Lynn, Mass., engaged in custom-shirt manufacturing, writes: "I pay fifty cents apiece for making shirts, and $4.50 per week for a machine girl. My workwomen are widows and married women, and they average five shirts or $2.50 per week, besides their house work. But a woman that makes five shirts a week cannot have much spare time." A lady in Massachusetts, who has shirts made to order, informs me she pays by the piece, and her girls earn from fifty to seventy-five cents a day. She employs the most skilful. She says the nature of the employment is such that no woman could enjoy health long, who did nothing else, and the wages are so small that anyone must work all the time to make a living; hence the work does not suit any, except those who have homes and have recourse to this as a secondary employment. The demand for the articles in the market is limited, and she has never been able to carry it on in a wholesale manner except by the aid of friends whose sympathy has created a demand for the work. =364. Suspenders.= J., New York, says his girls can earn from $4 to $5, and are paid by the piece. There are but four suspender factories in the United States, of any size. The factories at the east are mostly supplied by the daughters of farmers from the vicinity. The one in Easthampton is of the best standing. The girls are intelligent and well behaved. Board too is lower. They like to employ families, father, mother, sons, and daughters. A suspender maker, in New York, told me he buys the woven goods, then cuts it the right length, and shapes the leather for the ends, which his wife sews on. I expect, from the appearance of their room, they earn but a meagre subsistence. The agent of the American Suspender Co., at Waterbury, told me "they employ a large number of girls to spool, weave, and pack. The straps are sewed on by farmers' daughters, who take them home. They are paid for by the gross. They earn less than weavers, who can make from $4 to $6 a week. They have had constant work until this fall (1860). The bindings are sewed on by hand. It requires some time to become a good weaver. A man serves a regular apprenticeship--women will learn for ten years, if they continue. Ingenuity and mechanical talent are desirable. A learner is not paid while in with another weaver. The amount of employment in future depends on European competition. The hands work ten hours a day, and they employ about fifty women, one fourth of whom are American. Women are superior to men in activity, and will handle thread much better than men. Board, $1.75." =365. Tailoresses.= The tailors of London have a pension society. All the tailors' work of this country might be performed by women. It is most suitable for them. Some say women cannot do the nice sewing of a coat. Give them the same training, and pay them the same wages as men, and we are confident they can. All of the clothes sold in the slop shops of cities are made by women. Many can sew beautifully, but have not learned the art of cutting out. This they will find an important part of their trade. It will greatly assist those who make boys' clothes. It is ascertained that at least 4,800 females are supplied with work by the ready-made clothing establishments of Philadelphia, which enables each industrious sewer to earn from $1.25 to $5 per week. A large number of women are now engaged in making clothes for the soldiers. At most large clothing establishments, work is done both by hand and machine. Some is done in the house, but most is given out. At O.'s, New York, they employ a large number. The majority are Americans, but some are Germans, and a few Irish. The foreman finds those that are dependent on their work for a living, do their work better than those that merely do it for pocket money. The best work is always best paid. A good hand can earn $3 per week. They work by the piece. Some women hire a room and employ girls to work for them. S. says the principal reason that women do not get as good prices as men, is that they do not learn to do their work so well. He spent five years learning, but a girl expects to learn it in so many weeks, or months, at most; but many women that sew for a support are very poor, and cannot afford to spend much time learning. T. pays his women from $5 to $10 a week, according to the work they do. R. says girls do not feel the interest in their work they should. They forget that three minutes lost by twenty girls amounts to an hour. If a procession is passing, they think it very hard if they cannot have ten or fifteen minutes to look out of the windows. The girls that sew earn from $3 to $4.50, except those who fasten the ends of threads and take out basting threads, who receive $2.50. They all work ten hours. They have some who take their work home, and are paid by the piece. Those that do their work best have the highest prices, and are most sure of having constant employment. Some of their women become mere machines, and that in his opinion was a recommendation. They have no life or spirit, but plod on day after day in the same way. Such, when they do their work neatly and thoroughly, he thinks most reliable. They find it difficult to get their work well done. It is computed by Dr. L. that one thousand needlewomen fall victims annually to overwork at the needle. A city missionary told me that he knew of many sempstresses that spent sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, stitching. I was told in D. & B.'s clothing store, that the women who sew by hand, earn from $3 to $4 per week. P. measures and cuts, and he employs women to operate on machines, paying from $3 to $4 per week, working from 8 to 7 o'clock. It is done under Mrs. P.'s supervision. The work is mostly for boys. They give work out, and of course pay by the piece. Their most busy times are from October to March, and from April to September. They do Southern work. L. & Co. make boys' clothing, and pay by the piece. They require a deposit from those that are doubtful. If business is good, they give work all the year. He thinks there is enough of work, in busy times, for all the tailoresses in the city. The best way to learn is to receive instruction from journeymen who employ hands and take learners. Some require an apprenticeship of three months, and some of six months, in children's clothing. The busy season commences November 1st and runs to March 1st, and from March to September 1st. =366. Vests.= First class vest makers receive better prices than women in the other departments of tailoring, and are more sure of work. Superior hands can earn from $4 to $5 a week. Clothing, cap makers and shoe binders are often crowded together from forty to fifty in a room, where it is stitch, stitch, stitch from daylight to sundown. Some slop shops in New York pay only fifteen cents for making a vest, and only ten cents for pantaloons!!! There are over nine thousand tailoresses doing custom work in New York, and of these 7,400 are vestmakers. UPHOLSTERERS. =367. Upholsterers.= Some branches of upholstery are hard work in consequence of the heaviness of the materials. At some upholsterers in Philadelphia, when a girl applies for work, she is taught during a fortnight, and receives enough to pay her board--usually $1.50 per week. At the end of this time, if found faithful and diligent, she is put upon full wages, $3.50 a week. In this trade there is the serious drawback of remaining a great part of the year unemployed, as it is only in the spring and fall that the business is brisk. Men usually put up tapestry, and lay down heavy carpets. The price to girls by upholsterers is about on a par with other work done by females. H., Philadelphia, employs several women. The forewoman receives $5.50 per week; the next best hand, $5; the less proficient, from $2 to $5. The business requires a good amount of intelligence, and about a year's application to acquire it. H. is not exacting as to the number of hours his operatives work. When business is slack they have easy times. He employs his good hands all the year. In one of the principal importing and manufacturing upholsteries and carpet establishments in New York about seventy females are employed. They make up a great many lace and damask curtains, and are under the supervision of a forewoman. Seventeen sewing machines are kept, though most of the sewing is done by hand. Any person that can sew well can do all the work, as it is cut out and prepared. With a very few exceptions all are paid by the week, receiving from $3 to $4, working ten hours a day. The piece workers can sometimes earn $5. They are employed the whole year. An upholsterer told me that his work is done to order, and consequently the measure for beds, mattresses, curtains, &c., is always taken. There are many women in Boston, I have been informed, working in sofa, chair, and lounge manufactories that earn from $1 to $1.50 a day. A firm in Boston writes: "I employ women to sew and attend sales, and pay from $3 to $4 a week. Men are paid two thirds more than women, because it is the fashion. It requires three months to learn. A knowledge of the needle and figures is desirable. Learners are paid. Females work nine hours and a half. Some parts of our work are in wood, and too heavy for women; the rest they can do better than men. Board, $2 to $4. A firm in Boston, "employing two women to make sofa cushions, pay them $4 each per week, working from eight to ten hours a day. They pay women less than men, because female help is generally cheaper. Men spend three years learning; women, one month. Learners have their board paid. The prospect for work is good. Spring and autumn are the most busy seasons, but they have work all the year." Another firm in the same place write they "employ fifteen women, pay by the piece, and their hands earn $5 per week. The prospect for work is good, but there are plenty of hands there." =368. Beds.= At a feather store I was told feathers for stuffing beds are bought from merchants, who employ agents to travel through the country, and buy them up. They get their feathers from the West. Live geese feathers are the best. All imported are from Russia. It requires great experience to buy feathers. At another store I was told feathers must be baked to render them light--otherwise they are flat and heavy. The salesman never knew of a woman being employed in baking--thinks it not suitable, for the down gets in the mouth and nostrils, as the feathers must be constantly stirred. In the spring and fall, when most people go to housekeeping, most beds are sold. =369. Carpets.= Two thirds of the inhabitants of Saxony are employed in weaving. It requires from two to three years to become a good carpet weaver. To prepare warp and rags for rag carpets is very suitable, but the weaving is rather hard for women. Mrs. W. says it does not require a great deal of strength to weave rag carpets, when the loom is a good one and in proper order. In weaving, both the arms and lower limbs are exercised, particularly the latter. She wove when she was only thirteen years old. The exercise tends to develop the chest. The price for weaving in small places is from 12½ to 18 cents a yard. She knew one lady that often wove fourteen yards a day, amounting to $1.75; but her health failed, and she changed her occupation. I called in a weaver's, in Brooklyn. He charges 18¾ cents per yard for weaving, and can weave from eighteen to twenty yards a day. Some rags are much more difficult to manage than others. The dust from the rags in spooling and weaving must be disagreeable. When not working for customers he makes carpets to keep on hand for sale. He buys the rags of old women, who get the scraps at tailors' shops every Monday morning, and cut them into strips, then wind and sell them at $7.50 a hundred pounds. The women are mostly Germans, and make a scanty living at it. In the Old Ladies' Home, Brooklyn, some of the inmates pass part of their time in preparing rags for weaving. Some old women buy of junk dealers the rags they sell to weavers. A woman whose husband was a carpet weaver in New York, continues the business since his death, employing two old men to weave. She charges eighteen cents a yard for weaving. She says that kind of weaving could never be done by machinery, as it would pull the rags all to pieces. She buys listing and cloth of old women who get it from the tailors and bring it around to sell. She pays twelve cents a pound for listing, six for cloth. She cuts them herself. A weaver told me he charges eighteen cents a yard. He buys pieces of cloth from the tailors for making up a stock to keep on hand. A pile of listing lay on the floor, for which he had paid nine cents a pound. He can weave from eight to sixteen yards a day. I have seen the average price of weaving carpets stated at nine cents a yard. The dust that flies in preparing carpet rags is disagreeable, and injurious to the eyes and lungs. =370. Curled Hair Pullers.= Hair pullers are mostly Irish women, the wives of foreigners and laboring men. A few are women of a better class reduced in circumstances. In Philadelphia, at the shop of a kind old man, I saw women picking hair for mattresses. He pays two cents a pound for picking. The women earn from forty to sixty cents a day. The dust that flies from the hair is injurious to the lungs, and the constant watching is trying to the eyes. At one curled hair factory in New York I saw women employed at one cent a pound, at another two cents. A smart woman can pick twenty-five or thirty a day. An upholsterer in Boston writes: "We have women to sew, pick hair, &c. We pay by the piece. Men receive one third better pay than women. Women receive less, because they have not brass enough to ask more. Any woman can do our work. The prospect of work in our line is very fair. We have twenty women who work all the time. The demand for hands is small, surplus large. Large cities are best for our trade. Board, $2.50." =371. Curtain Trimmings.= I saw two girls, in New York, who work at the trade. Their employer does not pay learners for two weeks, then according to what they do. Some are paid by the week, and some by the piece. The last plan pays best. The girls earn from $3 to $5 per week, some even as much as $7. Plenty of hands can always be had. They have most work in summer. At another place I was told it takes three or four months to learn. Good hands can earn then from $4 to $5. Mrs. B., in New York, told me her girls work by the piece, making curtain trimmings, and earn from $5 to $6 a week. They work from 6 A. M. until 7 P. M. They can learn it in a few weeks. At Y.'s, in New York, I saw a plain, genteel-looking woman engaged in making tassels. She pays $2 a week for board--washing extra. She spoke very well of her employer, for whom she had worked twelve years. She mentioned an old lady upstairs who had been in his employ twenty years. He has fifteen women in the tassel department, and fifteen making gimps and fringes. Some of the hands are paid by the piece, and some by the week--ten hours a day. They are paid every two weeks on Saturday afternoon. In the old country women make twisted cord, but not in this. Cordmakers are on their feet all the time. Y.'s women get from $2 to $5 per week, ten hours a day. Men get from $6 to $9. It requires six months to learn, and learners receive $1.50 per week. In winter, just before the holidays, is the best time for work; but Y.'s hands have employment all the time. When not filling orders, they make stock work. They have a great many applications for work. =372. Furniture Goods.= "At Seymour, Conn., are manufactured brocatelles and cotalines, a fabric composed of silk and linen, or cotton, and used for furniture draperies and carriage linings. Each loom is worked by a girl, who requires very little previous experience to manage it perfectly. There are about 60 persons employed at present in the work, two thirds of whom are females from the age of fourteen upward. The rate of wages paid by the company is higher than that given by the neighboring factories, the nature of the work requiring a superior degree of skill and intelligence." =373. Mattresses.= A girl engaged in making mattresses told us they are mostly sewed up by machines, and operators earn from $3 to $6, working ten hours a day. In some factories women sew the mattresses, and boys and men prepare the hair and fill them. A mattress seller told me he employs girls to make mattresses in the spring and fall, paying $3 a week, of ten hours a day. One bed furnisher told me her work is mostly done by old ladies. She says some girls down street earn $6 a week, making mattresses. One large manufacturer told me that his is piecework, and some of his girls earn from $8 to $12 a week. He furnishes the sewing machines. In April and May, he finds it difficult to get enough of hands. At another large store, I was told they pay from $6 to $7 a week to good operators, and have their work done in the building. At another large bed and mattress store, I was told they pay women for making ticks with machines from $4 to $5 a week. It is not very steady work. At another place they occupied a room back of the store, and earned from $4 to $6 a week. A firm in Nashua, N. H., write me "they employ fourteen American women in making mattresses, cushions, &c., and pay from $3 to $3.50 a week, including board, and work ten hours a day. Men are paid about $5 a week, and do different work from the women. Some of the hands are employed all the year. There is no great demand for mattress makers at present anywhere. Board, $2." =374. Venetian Blinds.= At W.'s Venetian blind manufactory, in Philadelphia, I was told they generally employ several women. They earn about $3 a week, and take their sewing home. The work is sewing tapes on the main pieces to support the slats. The business is best in the spring, from January to May, and is good in the fall, but they endeavor to furnish some employment all the year to their girls, who are American. A manufacturer of Venetian blinds in Boston employs some women in writing, sewing, laying out work, &c. They are mostly paid by the piece, and earn from $3 to $6 per week. Male and female labor is not of the same kind in his establishment. Men spend two years learning; women, one month. The last part of spring and the first part of summer are best for work. He could easily find more sewers, if he had employment for them. He finds them cheaper and more suitable for the work than men. The means of mental and moral culture are those common to the residents of Boston. =375. Window Shades.= At an establishment in Philadelphia, a few women are employed in the busy seasons, spring and fall, in laying the gilding on the borders of linen shades. They earn from $1.50 to $3.00 per week. The painted linen window shades (landscapes, buildings, &c.) are executed entirely by men, who receive $12 a week wages. Our informant said these men could paint (I think) 6 pair a day. I am sure there is no reason why a lady could not paint landscapes and other ornamental work on shades, if they would only qualify themselves. It would probably require two or three years' practice to acquire proficiency, for a person unaccustomed to painting of any kind. The design of common ones is invented as the painter proceeds, as he has no pattern to work from. It requires a knowledge of colors, and some taste and ingenuity. A man is paid from $1.50 to $2 a day. K., New York, has a number of women stencilling shades. The women earn about $4 a week. B., New York, usually employs two girls in putting elastic over the bands of pulleys and tying them up, for which they each receive $4 a week. I saw a girl in New York, engaged in stencilling. She is paid by the piece, and can earn $6 or $7 a week, when she has constant employment. It does not take long to learn. I called at a factory where they pay three cents a piece for painting the centres of common shades. It is done with cloths. They pay $2 a piece for fine ones. The fine ones have the principal parts drawn before being painted. A smart man can earn $20 a week at that work, but shades are not much used now. At a store on Broadway, they used to employ girls for painting shades and putting on the gilding. They had American girls mostly. German men are mostly employed at that work. If American men learn this business, they have so much energy and ambition they are soon able to get an establishment of their own, and then employ foreigners, many of whom work for less, to obtain employment, and then cannot raise their prices, and so are apt ever to retain a subordinate position. Their girls worked in the room with the men, but it was a large room, and they worked at the far end. Part of the work ought to be done by men. They had one woman that put on the flowing colors and earned $9 a week. But they found it necessary to have the girls wear Bloomer costume, to prevent their dresses touching the shade while painting; but they would not even then consent to lay down their hoops, and as their skirts would touch the painting and injure it, they altogether abandoned the employment of females. L., New York, told me he met with great opposition when he first employed women to gild window curtains, and he could not have held out if his house had not been established and he very firm. He lost one or more of his customers by doing so. The work is very suitable for women. L.'s men and women work in the same apartment, but the men are required to be very respectful. The women have a dressing room attached to their workroom. They move about on their feet all the time, while at work. Men put size on, but women could do it. The women receive $5 a week, and never work over ten hours. The work can be learned in a day. The Southerners are doing without fancy goods now, so the trade is very poor. L. has saved about $1,000 the past year by employing women. Men are in such haste to get through their work, that they are careless and waste the gold leaf. A window-shade manufacturer in Boston, who employs some girls in stencilling, informs me by letter that "he pays by the piece from $3 to $6 per week. A smart, active girl can earn more than a man of medium abilities. Cleanliness and endurance are the most essential qualifications. The prospect for continuance is as good as that of any other fancy business. Best seasons for work are from March to July, and October to January, but at other times hands can make enough to pay their board. They work from seven to twelve hours; for over hours, are paid extra. Board, $2.50; (washing extra) but they have not a room alone." One shade manufacturer writes: "There are parts of my work that could be done by girls as well as men, but their style of dress is not adapted to it." Another in Boston writes: "I would employ women, if my shop was convenient, as I could get them for less price than men. Men are paid thirty-three per cent. more than women: one reason is they are capable of more endurance. We work ten hours in summer, eight in winter." Another firm in the same city employs from four to eight women, paying from $3 to $6 per week, working from nine to ten hours a day. Six months is the average time given by a learner. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons." _Wire Window Shades._ Mrs. C. said a lady used to paint wire shades for her husband. He also employed men. He has most work done in summer. It requires care to keep from filling the niches with paint. Miss ---- acquired boldness and freedom of execution in oil painting by the practice. Rapidity and lightness of touch were also acquired. Her hand had got a stiff, cramped feeling, from painting on canvas constantly. The price paid for shades depends on the fineness of the cloth, the size, and design. Miss S. says her father has the landscape painting done by Germans, and pays good prices. It is paid for by the square foot. He charges $2 a square foot, for a shade in the frame, ready to put in the window. The artists take them to their studios. Germans are preferred because they work most rapidly. One makes a great deal of money, but he works late at night and on Sundays. Several coats of paint are put on before the landscape is painted. Some copy engravings, but enlarge the scale. They make to order. The business is increasing. He sends a great many to the South, particularly Havana and Baltimore. MANUFACTURERS OF BOOKS, INK, PAPER, AND PENCILS. =376. Bookfolders.= I know of no work in a bookbindery that could not be performed by intelligent women that were properly instructed. Forwarding, marbling, gilding, stamping, and finishing could be done by them, in addition to presswork, folding, gathering, and sewing. The female bookfolders of New York number several thousand. The women in Philadelphia binderies are between 1,000 and 2,000. The most bookfolding and sewing, out of New York, are done in Washington and Philadelphia, and some in Cincinnati. The busy seasons for book makers are from September to January, and from March to July. In this business there is a union among the men regulating prices, hours, &c. There is a great difference in the character of the binderies in New York--every shade and grade is to be found. In seeing the size and comfort of the workrooms, and the manners and conversation of the employer, it would not be very difficult to judge of the pay and condition of the workgirls. The trade is well filled, and, no doubt, with quite as many women of worth, self-respect, and education, as any other. At the Bible House, Tract House, Methodist Book Concern, and Harper's, New York, the faces of the workers are bright and cheerful. Every precaution is taken to secure only those who are respectable, and the associations surrounding them are calculated to elevate, rather than degrade. Most of them are able to pay enough for their board to secure the right kind of home associations. These establishments, except in emergencies like the present, retain their hands all the year; while those in a majority of other houses fluctuate with their business and are unoccupied three or four months in the year. Bookfolding is paid for by the 1,000 sheets, depending on the size of the sheet and the number of times it is folded. A good, fast folder can earn from 50 cents to 65 cents a day, whether folding with a machine or by hand. A few can earn as much as $6 per week. Folding and collating pay the best of woman's work. Collating is usually paid for at 20 cents an hour. Men in bookbinderies get from $8 to $20 per week. Some employers are much more kind and intelligent than others. Some bookbinders in New York impose on girls by taking them to learn the business, requiring that they stay from six weeks to six months to do so, and paying nothing during that time. During the most of the time their work is efficient, and they earn money for their employers. When the time has expired they are turned off, and others taken on. Some bookbinders employ those who will do their work at a very cheap rate, often thus exposing them to influences that are pernicious. Favoritism is often shown by employers and foremen. At H.'s, 200 women and girls are employed in folding, sewing, and gilding. Either of the branches is light and pleasant, and soon learned, after which the remuneration depends upon the abilities of the learner. Their hours are from 7-½ to 6, but it is piece work. All of his workpeople are temperance people. The work of bookbinders is not more unhealthy than any other indoor work. At the Tract House they take a few girls to learn to fold, and have them work until they earn $6 before they pay anything. An English woman told me that she used to earn $7 a week, as forewoman, but they never allowed her to be absent a day. A publisher in Philadelphia employs about fifty girls in his bindery, but complains that as soon as they make a few dollars they will take a holiday to spend it. He says the better he pays the girls in his bindery, the more they are absent from their work and the more difficult are they to manage. That, I think, arises from defective moral training. We know that people of right principle (both men and women), whose wages enable them to dress comfortably, and provide wholesome food and well ventilated, healthy apartments, are not only better able to work well and constantly, but do so. It stands to reason they should. If the poor cannot make a proper use of their scanty compensation, they are more to be pitied than blamed, for we know well they have nothing to spare. The manufacture of blank-books is an important branch of business. A blank-book manufacturer in Troy writes: "I pay both ways, and the wages are from $3 to $4.50 per week. Men's wages are from $6 to $12, but their work is different and heavier. Women's part of the work is learned in from six weeks to one year. A ready hand and quick eye are wanted by a learner. Busiest time from December to July. There is a surplus of hands, so far as I know. When men work at the women's branches (which is very seldom), they do it more substantially." In France women do much of the work in blank-book binderies. In M. Maitre's book bindery, Dijon, France, "No apprentice, boy or girl, is received until after they have made their premier communion, and received a certificate that they can both read and write, and also a medical certificate of vaccination. The workpeople are thus of a respectable class. The young children of most of the married women are either sent out to nurse in the country, according to the very common custom of France, or else the married pair form one household with the grand parents." =377. Book Sewers.= "Trades in general require a large share of mechanical ingenuity, in combination with strength, mathematical skill, and other qualifications. Strength is requisite to the success of a bookbinder." Women employed in sewing are paid by the piece, and as soon as they are competent, which requires but a few days, are paid according to their application from $3.50 to $7 per week. The work of women in binderies is clean, and about as comfortable and remunerative as any other of a mechanical nature. At the Methodist Book Concern we saw girls folding, gathering, sewing, putting plates in books, gilding the covers, and feeding the presses. They were well dressed and intelligent looking, and evidently felt an interest in the welfare of the establishment. The majority were Americans. The superintendent told us, "girls earn, in the sewing department, from $3 to $9 per week. A good sewer can earn, without difficulty, from $5 to $5.50 per week. They have about thirty, most of whom work by the piece. They have one strong woman who sometimes earns $10 a week. They never work over ten hours, as the house is only open for work that long. The folding and enveloping of tracts and papers admit of a change of posture. There is no similarity in the male and female labor. The comparison in prices is about one-half to one-third. It requires a lifetime to learn a man's branch; an intelligent woman can learn hers in a week. The result of a bookbinder's work is not for a day, but for all time. Bookbinders have more constant employment than those in most other trades. The work is most dull in summer. There is constant employment in New York for first-class hands, and always a surplus of second-class. Large cities offer the best localities--those in the South and West will probably furnish many openings to publishers." A. & S. employ girls to fold, stitch, and sew. They are paid by the piece (customary), and earn from $3 to $5 per week. Sewers can earn more than folders and stitchers--say from $5 to $7. They work until six o'clock and commence when they please, as they are paid by the quantity. A bookbinder told me his girls work from seven to six o'clock. He gives work all the year. They are paid by the piece, and can earn from $5 to $6 a week. I have been told folders and sewers are taken as learners only where the cheapest work is done. At some binderies three cents 100 is paid for folding, three cents for sewing, and six cents for stitching. At some places five cents 100 is paid for folding 12mo. sheets. The proportion of hands employed in the different branches of bookbinding is somewhat as follows: About two thirds are folders, one sixth gatherers, and one sixth sewers. A process has been invented by which books can be strongly bound without sewing. I fear it may be the means of throwing many sewers out of employment. At W.'s bookbindery I was told they sometimes take learners. They expect them to stay six months, and pay them half that they can earn during that time. They pay workers by the piece, and they can earn from $4 to $6 a week. Some of the girls are employed to remove the covers from old books and magazines that are to be rebound. M., who does the printing of the A.'s, informs me that his girls work by the piece, and average over $4 per week. His learners receive one half their earnings--the teacher the other half. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons, but the women are never entirely out of employment. There is no surplus of good hands, but many imperfect ones. He employs from 125 to 150. The superintendent at H.'s told me that the girls in the sewing-room earn from $3.50 to $8. He says their women are intelligent and lady-like, and would adorn the best society. They change their dresses when they come to work, and then before leaving. If they are at all hurried in their work, their hands, both men and women, come early and stay late of their own free will. Males average $10, females over $4. The reason of the difference is, that men serve an apprenticeship of five or seven years--women five or seven weeks. The former are the mechanics; the latter merely assistants. The latter cheapen the labor of the former, without having the strength or physical ability to perform their work. (I cannot see how it should be so when the branches performed are entirely distinct.) The foreman at B.'s told me a very brisk worker can earn $6 a week, but few do. They do not average over eight hours a day. They never light their building. S.'s girls, in good times, are employed all the year. He pays by the piece, and his girls earn from $3 to $5. In most small book binderies in New York men and girls work in the same room. A girl at the Tract House told me they pay better for sewing there than in most other places, and have work all the year, in ordinary times. A printer boy told me his sister earns, in a bindery, from $8 to $10 a week. D. has newspapers printed and folded, and pays his women for folding from $4 to $5 a week. A manufacturer in New York, having a bindery in New Jersey, pays his girls mostly $3.50 a week, besides their board and washing. He boards them, and he is very particular in having them attend church on the Sabbath, and keeping an oversight of their morals and habits. Most of the binding done South and West is that of blank books. There is not so much machinery at the South and West as at the North. F. says the binding of blank books pays best. A good folder may earn $6 a week, but a sewer not so much. The majority of both do not earn more than $4. They pay from the first. One woman can stitch enough to keep three men employed. So there are not as many women employed in factories where blank books are made, as where printed books are. I was told on Fulton street, at a blank-book manufactory, that their girls earn from $5 to $7. They give steady work all the year. The binding of blank books pays best. They have one girl that sometimes earns $9 a week. At jobbing houses girls generally earn $6 a week, when paid by the week for binding. =378. Card Makers.= For about eleven hundred years women have been more or less employed in the manufacture of cards. At N.'s, New York, I saw two girls who each earn $6 a week, and work only in daylight, and have work all the year. I went through D. & Co.'s work rooms, and saw the process of making playing cards. A large number of girls were at work, who receive average wages of $4 per week. It requires six months to learn well. They do not like to take any learners with whose character they are unacquainted; for many, when they have learned, will go off where they can get better pay. Six girls that learned with him last summer were drawn off by an employer who offered them twenty-five cents a week more; but when his busy time was over, they came back crying to be taken in again. So he made a rule that none should be taken back that once leave. (Do not men go where they get the best prices?) They keep all their hands at work, because many of them represent three or four others, who are dependent on their labor for bread. They give work all the year, and pay a learner according to what she accomplishes. They sometimes find it difficult to get good hands. They will not take hands from another employer unless they bring a note saying they have been honorably discharged. It is to avoid getting bad and dishonest workers. (If employers in that line of business, or any other, should agree never to receive hands from each other's places of business, it would cast workers entirely at the mercy of employers.) D. says their regulations are strict. I thought the girls looked to be comfortably situated. Some were cutting cards, some assorting, some counting, and some enveloping. Nearly all sat. He thinks the business so limited that it is not likely to furnish employment to many more. He says girls working at bookbinding and hoop skirts are out of employment a great deal; two thirds of the hoop-skirt makers are now out of employment. S. & P. make fancy and business cards. S. told me he pays his most experienced girls $3.50 a week. Learners receive $2.50 a week for four weeks--after that, according to activity and capability. He has hundreds of applicants, and always selects those who seem most destitute. They work ten hours a day. He has had some girls several years. To the small girls he pays less. He often has two or three girls from the same family. Foreign goods are so much preferred by Americans that they put French labels on some. _Visiting Cards._ A., New York, employs two girls to put up visiting cards, and pays $3 and $3.50 per week. It does not require any time to learn. He now uses a machine for cutting that does the work of several girls. I was told by a very obliging girl, working in a visiting-card manufactory in New York, that to some the occupation is unhealthy, because of the lead inhaled, which injures the lungs. In that factory learners are paid $2 a week. It requires but a week to learn to cut the cards, which is done with a small hand press. The girl knew of two places in the city where the work was paid for by the piece; but in that factory they were mostly paid by the week, receiving $3.50 and $4, working ten hours a day. It requires from four to six weeks to learn. Nimbleness of fingers and ability to count are the most desirable qualifications. They have work all the year, except in November and December. They sit while cutting, assorting, and packing. This work is confined to women, as they are best adapted to it. Those in the brushing room stand. Several hundred girls are employed in New York in the card business. =379. Card Stencillers and Painters.= A stencil engraver told me he cannot use acids in his work, because his lungs are weak, and it is very injurious. The business is dull in winter, but good in spring and fall. It pays very well when there is enough to do. His work has to be done hurriedly, as it is generally for merchants who are going to ship goods, and frequently do not order the plates until the barrels are headed and the boxes are nailed. The making of embroidery stencil plates, he thinks, would do better for a woman, and that could be done without any regard to seasons. A visiting-card writer told me he charges $1 a package of fifty-two for plain marking. Mrs. H. saw the advertisement of one who writes one hundred cards for $1. I. G., who makes show cards, says a boy for filling the letters is paid six cents a sheet. For designing, a person could get twenty-four cents a sheet. He could both design and fill thirty a day, so earning $1.87½. He knows that the merchants of the South used to purchase their cards in New York, and so there must be openings in the South for writers of show cards, and probably in the West. It requires about one year to learn to design well, and two weeks to learn to fill in neatly. Employees are paid by the piece. I was told that card painting must be done by women, judging from the prices paid--some cards costing but twelve cents a piece. I am sure women could do all the work. Making the letters is very simple, and filling them up is a mere mechanical operation. They can earn, I am confident, over $2 a day, if they have enough of work. It is peculiarly adapted to women, and some of them should learn it. I saw the wife of a German stencil engraver, who assists her husband by cutting out with scissors the parts that form the letters. He is paid three cents a letter. He can cut forty letters in two or three hours. A coat of wax is laid on the plate, and an instrument used for working out the letters, figures, or design, then an acid poured on, and when it has stood for a time removed with the wax. It can then be cut out with scissors, or into large letters and figures with other tools. Writing plates are cut by hand, as they can be most neatly and delicately done in that way. They are twice as high in price as stencil plates. S., who manufactures show cards, has several times thought of employing women. They could with a brush fill the outlines, which is now done by men, who earn from $2.50 to $18 a week. It would require about a year to acquire proficiency in drawing the outlines of the letters and using the brush to fill them. He thinks it a very suitable business for women, and will probably employ some before long. =380. Cover and Edge Gilders.= I think burnishing the edges of books could be done by women after they are put in the frames, but considerable strength is required in the preparatory processes of shaving and screwing up. The burnishing is done with agates. I doubt whether it requires more strength than many other things women do. Laying gold leaf on the edges could certainly be done by them. Men that gild the edges of books receive from $7 to $9 a week. Men will not fold or stitch, because it does not pay well enough. G. says gilding the covers of books requires a longer apprenticeship than either folding or sewing; and at H.'s, workers are paid at first eight cents an hour, afterward ten cents an hour. It being piecework, the girls are not strictly confined to hours. Book and card edge-gilding is done both in England and France by women. =381. Electrotypers.= Electrotyping is now more used than stereotyping by those who expect to have many editions of a work published. It costs but little more than stereotyping, and is either four or six times as durable, I forget which. 2,000,000 impressions can be taken from an electrotype plate, but only 800,000 from a stereotype plate. A boy learning the business receives $4 a week the first year, and after that more. A journeyman receives $2 a day, and some $2.50. A journeyman told us he had spent seven years at it, and he felt that he had yet much to learn; in fact, a person could be always learning. Electrotyping would be a useful and profitable occupation for women. An apprenticeship of three or four years is given to it. =382. Envelope Makers.= At B. & G.'s, New York, girls work by the piece all the year in busy times, and can earn from $3 to $6. Most of those who get in factories, do so through the influence of friends or acquaintances in or connected with the establishment. Their business is increasing. They keep their girls all the year. They give lessons in the busy months, August and September, February and March, and pay from the first. A good hand can earn from $3 to $5. P. & Co. usually employ sixty girls. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $4 to $4.50 a week. The envelopes are made by machines, attended by women. They employ five or six girls making envelopes by hand, as they have not machines of some sizes. P. thinks the occupation is full. They have employed their girls all the year. They used to take learners, and give the teachers their profits. My companion, Mrs. F., inquired if envelopes could not be more easily made where the paper is manufactured. He replied, they could not, because paper (and, I believe, all other goods) are delivered free of freight in New York, and he can make more by being here in the centre of trade, than if he had to send his goods here to be sold, and employ some one to sell them. He prefers the girls that can be obtained in the villages and country, for he thinks them more honest and truthful. He thinks the grade of morals altogether superior in the country to that of the city. He spoke of the want of moral obligation in the lower classes, arising from the want of proper instruction, and the lower you descend the worse you find it. The makers of boxes for containing envelopes they got were such a common set, that they instructed some nice American girls how to make them, and now employ them. He says the box makers are a common set. So I have heard bookbinders, umbrella makers, and hoop-skirt workers spoken of. But I frequently hear one trade speak disparagingly of another. W. told me their girls are paid so much a thousand. The envelopes are cut by a machine attended by a man. They are folded by a machine managed by two women, who of course stand. They are pasted and enveloped by girls who sit. The girls earn from $3 to $5 a week. It requires but two or three weeks to acquire the trade. A learner is paid nothing. The envelopes are tipped or gummed by a girl, who stands. This is the most difficult part of the work done by women, and pays best. There are eight factories in New York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Connecticut. Nine tenths of the business is done in New York. There are probably between two hundred and three hundred girls employed in the business in that city. W. requires references. Some employers are particular in their selection of hands--others advertise, and take them as they come. 2,700 envelopes have been made in an hour by machinery. A manufacturer in Massachusetts writes: "The work is considered particularly healthy. Girls from 12 years up are employed, and earn from thirty-three to seventy-five cents a day of ten hours. Men are paid from $1 to $2.75 per day. Two are machinists, two overseers, and two cutters of envelopes. Women are not strong enough for this kind of work. Some parts can be learned in a month, some in six months, and in others it requires a year to excel. We give the same employment and pay through the year, whether our profits are larger or smaller. I employ about sixty, one sixth of whom are American. The work is light, and we have constant applications from girls, who prefer this to any other manufacturing business in town. Board, $1.50." =383. Folders and Directors of Newspapers.= The lady at F. & W.'s who directs the papers for them, says the business has been followed by women in New York for fifteen years. I called at the office of the _Independent_, and saw one of the editors, who, on learning my business, kindly invited me into the room where the young ladies were employed in directing strips of paper to envelop newspapers. It is a pretty business, and well adapted to women. Some learn it easily, and some never learn it. Dr. C. remarked: "A person may have a willing mind, but not an obedient hand." They had one young lady who spent five months at it, and then gave it up, because she could not succeed. It requires a peculiar aptitude, aside from an expeditious movement of the pen. It was followed more by women eight or nine years ago than now. Many ladies would like to get employment of the kind, but cannot. I think all the young ladies in the _Independent_ office were American, and were certainly very pretty and lady-like. They have a separate room to write in. They spend about eight hours directing envelopes for papers to send away. One earns $6 a week, another $5, and another $4. The one that first came is permitted to have as much work as she can do. The next has what she leaves, and the third the remainder. The objections made by some men to employing ladies are that they do not like to have women work in the same room where they are. They feel under more restraint, and not so free to say what they please. Such a restraint may be a wholesome one. Many women make the same objection in regard to working with men. Again, if a lady does not work as they wish, or is idle, they do not like to correct her, because women are more quick to resent. The last excuse is a poor one. They also waste much time by having their beaux call on them. Some urge they find a boy more useful, because they can put him to doing something else, when he is not busy writing. In the _Tribune_ office, men are employed because they can do it more rapidly. It is said some direct eight hundred envelopes in an hour. In some offices the girls are expected to seal the papers, but not in all. At the Cosmopolitan Art Association, I saw a lady that is employed in directing the _Art Journals_ that are sent by mail. The covers are put on by a boy. She receives $9 a week, and spends about eight hours writing. At the rooms of the A. C. Association, we saw three ladies directing envelopes for the report of the society. The Association issues a monthly magazine, and at the time of its issue employs the same ladies for the purpose of enveloping and directing them. At other times they employ but one. She has been there ten years, and is very efficient. She attends to the books containing the names of subscribers, assists the treasurer sometimes, writes letters for the secretary, and makes herself generally useful in that way. All the ladies complained of women being so poorly paid. The one who has been there ten years says, for the $350 a year she gets, they could not secure a young man's services for less than $700 or $800. The others are paid 63 cents per thousand for directing, and ten cents per hundred for sealing and directing. =384. Ink.= A large quantity of writing and printing ink is used in this country. There are factories for making each kind. Making printing ink is hard and dirty work, unsuitable for women. Some persons cut stencil plates and make indelible ink, and employ agents to sell the ink and plates. Indelible, and all writing inks, could be made and bottled by women. Care should be taken that the acids used do not touch the flesh. Common clothes should be worn while at work, as both the ingredients and compound are of a kind to injure clothes. A maker of writing ink in New York, employs three girls in summer for bottling and labelling, and pays $3.50, working from seven till dark. He never employed any in winter, but if his business extends, he will employ his girls all the year, paying the same price in winter. He has found it difficult to get good hands. The prospect for learners is poor. A manufacturer of ink writes: "I have never yet employed female help, though I am satisfied that most of the work in my laboratory might be as well done by women as men. The employment is not unhealthy. My men work ten hours a day, and are paid by the month." =385. Label Cutters.= At P. Brothers', I was told some of their labels are cut by hand, and some by machinery. The first are square or oblong, the others are of different shapes. Those cut with shears are most neatly done. For cutting by hand the price is one cent per hundred. They take them home. A lady and her two daughters, who work for them, often receive $50 a month. Those cut by machinery could not well be cut by women. It requires practice to make one expert. B. pays a girl by the hundred to cut labels at home. He would employ a girl to cut and attend his store, paying $3 a week from the first, but she must not be absent a day. If her health is such that she cannot always be there, he does not want her. He had one three and a half years, who was absent only ten days during that time. S. says cutting labels is always piecework, and a good worker can earn from $4 to $6 a week. He gives them out, and they are cut by hand. Common ones, for spices, mustard, &c., are cut by machinery. It does not require long to become expert. The business is always dull in December and January. =386. Lead Pencils.= The young man at the agency for the sale of Faber's pencils, says they are made at Steinway, Germany, and he thinks women there are employed in varnishing the wood of the pencils and tying them up. The pencils are either painted or the simple wood varnished. "A man in New York is reported to have made $60,000 by selling lead pencils about the streets at a penny a piece, and safely investing his profits." Some large pencils, such as are used by carpenters, were some time back made in Massachusetts. The writing part of lead pencils is made of lead and clay, mixed, pressed, and burnt. The wooden part is in two pieces that are united when the lead is put in. In Germany each man has his own part to do. Children do some parts of it, such as joining the wood. =387. Operatives in Paper Factories.= Paper is of various qualities and colors, and is adapted to different purposes. At least one half of the operatives in paper factories in the United States are females, amounting to several thousand. Water power is used in some paper mills, but in most large mills steam is used. Women are employed in paper mills to sift, sort, and cut up rags. It is dusty, disagreeable work, and we presume not particularly healthy, as much of the dust is no doubt inhaled. In some factories, women attend the picking and cutting machines and calenders. They are also employed for hanging, laying off, reeling, folding, assorting, counting, enveloping, and labelling the paper. The inability to meet fully the demand for rags in the manufacture of paper has led to experimenting with a variety of articles. One agent for the sale of paper made in New Jersey, and the foreman of the same establishment, told me their girls get from $2.50 to $3 a week. The majority receive $2.50. Part work six consecutive hours, have a rest of one hour, then six consecutive hours more, that is from six at night till seven in the MORNING, HAVING ONE HOUR AT MIDNIGHT; THE OTHER HALF FROM 7 A. M. till 6 P. M., having an hour at noon. The day and night workers take week about. They board for $1.50 a week. In Lee, Mass., women get $3.50 and $4, and the men twice as much. Women are paid best in the ruling department. In the paper factories in New York, women receive from $3 to $5 per week. Paper maker's girls, $1.50 to $2.50 per week. S. says, in some paper factories girls are able to earn $6 a week. All the labor in paper mills, except attending to the fires and machinery, could be done by women. All manufacturers report the occupation as healthy, except one in South Adams, who states that small pox is sometimes taken from the rags--_not often_. A paper manufacturer in Lee, Mass., writes: "Women are employed in all countries where paper is made. The time of learning depends upon their skill and developments in certain directions in the business. They are usually paid by the piece. Men are paid more because their labor is greater. Boys learn the business in about five years, girls in about one year. In learning they generally receive enough to pay their board. They work at all seasons--sometimes have nothing to do in July. There is a demand for hands in the loft, a surplus in the rag room." The New England Roofing Co. manufacture a felt, which is similar to sheathing paper, but made of a fine stock. They employ six females in sorting rags and other materials for the felt, and pay from $3 to $5 per week, one half the price of males. They work eleven hours, and pay $2 per week for board. A manufacturer of wrapping and wall paper, in Connecticut, writes "he employs a few females, and pays fifty cents per day of from eight to ten hours. He prefers them because most economical. Those working by the piece can earn from fifty to seventy-five cents per day. He pays men $1 per day for doing like work. They require less attention, and can perform other work when wanted, that is not suitable for females to perform. He usually pays beginners the same as others when they work by the day. His most busy time is when there is most water for power. An active person can usually earn as much in from six to eight hours as a house girl is paid for a full day's work." A manufacturer at Niagara Falls "employs between forty and fifty women, paying each from $2.50 to $4 per week, without board. They are paid about one half less than men, because boys would do. The prospect of employment is good. They are most busy in summer, although they run the whole year, day and night (except Sunday). They are twelve hours on, and twelve hours off. Board, $1.25 to $1.75. A firm in South Adams, Mass., write me: "We pay by the piece and the day. The prices for female labor, we think, compared with work done, better than for male. It requires no time to learn to cut rags, but experienced hands can earn more wages. For finishing, from four to six months are given. Women are paid while learning. We employ women always, when they can do the labor. Women are superior in the neatness with which they do their work. New England, and such States as have abundance of clear _spring water_, are the best. Board, from $1.25 to $2 per week. We think, perhaps, that at present the business of paper making is pretty fully supplied with laborers, male and female, in this section of the country, yet _good_ help finds ready employment, at fair wages." Manufacturers of bank-note paper, in Lee, Mass., inform me by mail, they "pay by the piece, to women, from $3 to $4.50 per week. It would require five years for a man to learn the business, so as to properly superintend it. That portion done by women can be learned in one month." A newspaper manufacturer in Taunton, Mass., writes: "Fifty or sixty women are employed by me, in manufacturing cotton goods and newspaper. I pay by the piece and the week, from $2.50 to $6 per week, depending on the age. I give equal pay to both sexes for the same work. They are employed the year round, and work eleven hours on the average. The climate of New England is best adapted to indoor labor." Paper manufacturers in Dalton write: "We pay women by the piece, from $12 to $16 per month, and they have work all the year. No men are employed for the same kind of work. For other branches of the business, men are paid from $25 to $35 per month. Women are paid while learning for what they accomplish. The prospect for work is good. We employ women because they are cheaper. They pay for board $1.25." A firm in Russell, Mass., write: "We employ from forty to fifty; one tenth are Americans. They can all live comfortably and earn good wages. New England is the best part of this country for fine paper mills, on account of the purity of the water. Board, $1.50 to $1.75." =388. Paper-Bag Makers.= At a paper-bag factory in Brooklyn, the man pays from $1.50 to $2 a week to his girls. They work ten hours. The work is all done by hand. The bags are considered better than those made by machinery. He has twenty-six girls at work. Some he pays by the quantity; for some kinds, twenty cents a hundred; for some, thirty-seven cents. Those that work by the piece have a forewoman, with whom he makes a contract. She cleared $14 one week. It takes but a week to learn. Work is furnished all the year. Some have worked for him five years. Paper-bag manufacturers in Watertown, Mass., write: "We employ six women in tending bag machines, and pay seventy cents per day of ten and a half hours. To males we pay one third more. It requires about one month to learn, and all that is necessary are care and application. Summer and fall are the best seasons, but they can have work the year round. We will not have any but American girls. Women are more accustomed to sitting, but cannot keep the machine in order. Their dress is objectionable, particularly their hoops, which take up much room, and are in danger of getting in the machinery." =389. Paper-Box Makers.= Though this may seem a trivial business, it is one very extensively carried on. Every size and shape is called for. The most are made, we suppose, in New York and Philadelphia, as greater demands exist there, owing to the variety and quantity of goods manufactured and offered for sale. Boxes are almost entirely made by women. I think most of the men in this trade in New York are Germans. The occupation for women is pretty well filled. The bandbox manufacture is a distinct branch. Some women, who make small match boxes, receive but one cent for thirty boxes. At a place in New York where seventeen girls are employed, I was told they are paid by the piece, and some can earn as much as $5 a week. The calling can be learned in three or four weeks. At one place, where they make bandboxes also, the girls earn from $2 to $5. At another, they earn from $2.50 to $5. Some seasons of the year are better than others. They have mostly American girls. It is sometimes difficult to get good hands. They keep their hands all the year. Spring and fall are the most busy seasons. Very little sewing is ever done--mostly cutting and pasting. In some large factories, machinery is used for much of the work. K. employs a number of hands all the year. They work by the piece (customary plan), and earn from $1.50 to $6. They are paid $1.50 per week from the time they begin to learn. He thinks there are not more than from five hundred to six hundred females in New York employed in his branch. There were three hundred in Philadelphia about fifteen months ago. One paper-box maker told me he pays fifty cents a hundred, and a smart girl can make one hundred and fifty in a day. He gives employment all the year; his brother, in the spring and fall. The work is always, I think, cut out by a man. B.'s girls are paid by the piece, and earn about $4 a week. While learning, his girls are paid $2 a week. It requires but two or three months to become skilful. I noticed the girls in some work rooms sat, and some stood. I was told those making small boxes sit, but those making large boxes stand, because of the time consumed in rising to reach the parts needed to be joined. Learners work with F. fourteen days for nothing, and then are paid by the hundred. Some can accomplish more than others in the same time, because they are quicker with their fingers and apply themselves more closely. In putting on labels, it is best to stand, as it can be done more expeditiously. It is best for girls to learn where the cheap kind of boxes are to be made. Those that make fine boxes are seldom willing to take learners, because of the materials that are wasted in learning. Good hands can get work all the year; indifferent hands are likely to get out of employment for one or two months. The girls in the trade are mostly Irish and German. For three months, the past year, F. was out of hands. He deserved to be all the time, for his factory was on the fifth floor, and the steps of the open wood kind. So girls must have been very much exposed in going up and down stairs, as every flight of stairs led to a floor on which men were at work. At C.'s, I was told his best workers earn from $4 to $6 a week, and are paid by the gross. They never work over ten hours, as his work is of a large kind. In some factories, where the boxes made are small, the girls are allowed to take work home with them to do in the evening. He keeps his best hands all the year. He requires two weeks of learners, and then pays them according to the amount of work done. Another box maker gives his work to three or four families in an adjoining city. His workers earn from $3 to $4 per week. A girl sewing small bandboxes told me she is paid six cents a dozen, and can usually sew ten dozen a day. It takes but a week to learn. They are most busy in spring and fall. In pasting, girls can earn from $4 to $5 a week. The girls sewing, sat; those pasting, stood. At another factory I was told April and September are their most busy months, and then they take learners. Most box makers have steady work. If they are not making boxes for one branch of trade, they are for another--confectioners, candle makers, &c. The business is increasing. Girls can earn from $3 to $7. There are openings in New Orleans. It is difficult to get good hands in busy times. It takes some time to become expert. A boy remarked to me that paper-box makers are a hard set; but I find there is considerable jealousy and envy existing between some members of the different trades, and consequently always make some allowance for what I hear. A firm of paper-box manufacturers in Connecticut write: "Women are employed by us to run machinery, making paper boxes, &c. It is healthy, clean, neat work. Average wages are seventy-eight cents per day, including board. Our male help are employed at some laborious work, which females could not perform. Average price paid men is $1.25 per day, of eleven hours. No time is required to learn the paper-box business, but practice makes it more remunerative. There are advantages in being in large cities; but, having no market near, we prefer the country, on the ground of better advantages for our help, and its being easier to procure trusty, intelligent girls to labor. Our women have constant employment, and are superior to men in their work. Most of them are well suited for making good wives, being from eighteen to twenty-five years of age. Board, $1.75." B., of Philadelphia, writes: "We pay women from $2.50 to $5 per week, working by the piece. Men's wages are double, as they generally have families. Neatness and to be good sewers are desirable. They generally have work the year round. The demand is greatest in Philadelphia, New York, and the Eastern States. We employ them because of their ability to use the needle. Women are superior in their own branch." A manufacturer of hook-and-eye and button boxes writes: "We employ twelve women, and pay by the piece, from $4 to $6 a week. Women's wages are low, because of the competition in the article manufactured. Time of learning depends upon the natural skill of the learner--one can learn for years. The prospect for a continuance of this work is good. The price, and fittedness for the work, recommend women to us." =390. Paper Marblers.= I saw the process of marbling--something very suitable for women, if they would properly qualify themselves for it. The young man said a paper marbler in Philadelphia used to employ some women to assist him, but he had to mix their paints. A paper marbler in Boston writes: "I do not know of any females being employed as marblers of book edges in the United States. Some are employed in marbling paper for the covers and linings of books." =391. Paper Rulers.= In ruling paper for blank books and ledgers, females are employed in some establishments to feed the machine. It is not difficult to learn, though there are not many willing to take learners, as considerable paper must be wasted before they can become proficient. Only a few weeks are required, and they are seldom paid while learning. $4 a week is a fair average for female workers. Very closely connected with this branch is that of paging blank books. It may be learned in from ten to twelve days. This is a limited business, and would not justify many in learning. K. thinks thirty girls would supply the demand for the whole United States. The most busy season is from the first of July to the last of October, and they seldom refuse any applicants during this season. March and April are also busy months. About half the hands are retained through the dull season. The girls earn from $5 to $6 a week; the forewoman something more. All are required to be orderly and respectable, and there are no associations that would have an immoral tendency. A journeyman paper ruler in Boston writes: "There are a few girls employed in this city at ruling, _i. e._, where they feed on the paper, watch the work, fixing it when it requires attention, &c. The paper is trimmed for them, it being hard work, and requiring a man's strength to do it. The wages are from $3 to $4.50 per week--$3.75 about the average--and when they board away from home, pay $2 to $2.25 per week. I work by the piece, and make sometimes $10, sometimes $16 per week; can make $12 and $13 per week well enough, nine hours to the day. One disadvantage females have, is, that some of them are inclined to marry when a good opportunity is offered. I wish to be understood that this is a disadvantage only as keeping down the price of female labor. The young man learns his trade, then he marries. He does not quit the shop, but still improves in skill in his trade. The female, when she marries, bids farewell to the shop and her trade. Nine or ten hours a day is as long as girls work at our trade here. One great objection girls have to our trade is, they do not like to soil their hands with the ruling ink, and one cannot get through much ruling without soiling their hands more or less." =392. Press Feeders.= "The number of women who feed power presses in printing offices in Philadelphia may number one hundred and fifty. They can earn, upon an average, $4 per week." At the Methodist Book Concern, New York, they pay to press feeders the usual price, $4 per week. It requires about six months to become a good press feeder. When work is scarce, they retain all their hands, if possible, but work a less number of hours, and pay in proportion. At a blank-book manufactory I was told their girls are paid $6 a week for feeding. Their girls think they make poor wages when they earn but ten cents an hour. Some embossers, in Boston, who employ thirty women in binding and press feeding, write: "They pay both by the week and by the piece. Their women, on an average, earn $5 per week. Female labor is thirty-three per cent. cheaper than men's, and the part done by women is too effeminate for men. Women spend from one to two months learning. Prospect of employment in this branch is good. The women work ten hours. They are out of employment in summer. Board, $1.50 to $2.50." At a printing office where from forty to fifty women were employed, I was told the girls were mostly German, because the foreman was a German. It requires four weeks to learn. They work ten hours a day, and are never thrown out of employment. The demand seems to be fully met in New York. =393. Printers.= "In 1476, Fra Domenico da Pistoya and Fra Pietro da Pisa, the spiritual directors of a Dominican convent, established a printing press within its walls; the nuns served as compositors, and many works of considerable value issued from this press between 1476 and 1484, when, Bartolomeo da Pistoya dying, the nuns ceased their labors." In the Victoria Printing Office, of London, all the compositors' work is done by women. The Printers' Unions in the United States have done all they could to prevent women from entering the occupation and obtaining employment. Men's employments in the cities, they say, are now filled, and if women enter, men's wages will fall. They do fall, at any rate, because women will work for less than men. To obviate this difficulty, I would suggest that more men engage in agricultural and other occupations that will take them out of the cities. At present, the war demands large numbers. A printer told me that type setting could be carried on more easily by women in towns and villages than in cities, where men are slaves to the Unions. In the latest rules of the Printers' Union, New York, a printer is not prohibited from working in the office with a woman. Yet few publishers are willing to employ them, because it is supposed they are employed for less wages. At a printers' convention, held recently in Springfield, Ill., the following resolutions were adopted: "Whereas, the employment of females in printing offices, as compositors, has, wherever adopted, been found a decided benefit, both as regards the moral tendencies inculcated and the dependence to be placed in their constant presence and attendance upon the duties required of them, and as a means of opening a wider field of remunerative labor to a deserving class of society; therefore, be it resolved, That the Association recommend to its members the employment of females in their offices, wherever and whenever practicable." Printing is mostly paid for by the thousand ems. More is paid for printing from manuscript than for reprint. Newspaper is paid rather higher than book printing, and morning papers more than evening. Much has been said of the unhealthiness of a printer's work. The majority of causes that render it so are not confined to the occupation itself. Some printers must work during the night. Their habits become irregular, and many run into dissipation. The rooms occupied by some are poorly ventilated, and so poorly lighted as even in the day to require artificial light, which helps to absorb the oxygen of the atmosphere. When type are heated they emit an odor that affects respiration, and will in the course of time paralyze the hand. But there is no necessity for using them when heated. The standing position of compositors weakens the organs of digestion; but compositors can as well sit as stand. Stools may occasionally be seen in the offices of men. Bending over the stone to correct is not more tiresome than bending over cloth when sewing. A good education and general intelligence are necessary for a printer. A gentleman connected with a printing office remarked to me that printers generally possess much desultory information, but have not their faculties more fully developed than people in most other trades. Women's fineness of touch and quickness of motion will fit them for type setting. "They might be instructed, not merely to compose and distribute, but to correct, make up, impose forms, and prepare the type completely for the press or stereotype foundery." A man should be employed to carry the chases to the press room. When the pressman has had the type inked and used them, he should have the form washed and returned to the compositors' room. When women have had as much experience as men in the printing business, they will be fair competitors. In most large cities, and even towns, many are now employed in type setting; but they are much scattered, and consequently not much is known of them. In Boston, women have been engaged in type setting for nearly thirty years, in New York eight years, and in Philadelphia five years. More girls are employed as type setters in Boston than any other city of the United States. They set type for nearly all the large periodicals. They are paid less than men; but some earn $8 a week. F., of Boston, who employs some women as type setters, writes: "I pay twenty cents per thousand ems, which averages to a good hand about $6 or $7 per week. It requires about six months to learn type setting. I pay my learners, because I consider it to my advantage in the long run to do so. Type setters with an ordinary education will improve as they progress. In a few years, women will work in many branches that to-day would be termed innovation. I consider winter the best season for printing books and periodicals. On account of neatness and taste, women are well suited for the ornamental branches of printing." The proprietors of a printing house in Boston, who have some thought of employing females, write me: "The printing business is considered rather unhealthy, on account of its being both mental and physical. It requires from two to three years to become good workmen at our business for males, and would take about the same time for females, although our business is now classed composition room and press room, and females are sometimes employed in other offices in both rooms. Our business does not vary much, except in the month of August, when it is generally dull. Our number of hours for work are ten, the year through. Our business is not considered very laborious, and females make from $4 to $8 per week. Men are generally superior to women in education and judgment. The printing business is almost a school for learning. Board, from $1.50 to $2.50." The largest number of printers in New York are employed on books and periodicals. I think it likely there are more Americans employed in the book-making trade in New York than any other trade. From an article on "Printers," in the New York _Tribune_ of April, 1853, we extract the following: "We estimate the services of a competent young woman at type setting as worth in this city $2 per week, after a fortnight--$4 per week, after three months--$6 per week, after a year--$8, after two years. Every compositor on the _Tribune_ at work at the case has thirty-seven cents per thousand ems, and thirty cents per hour for steady time." The present price required by members of the New York Typographical Union for newspaper work, when employed by the week, is $12--ten hours constituting a day's work. For book and job work $11 is required. At the _Day Book_ office I saw one of the editors, who thinks women do not correct so well as men, and they want self-reliance. Besides, they cannot lift the forms. Men are paid better for these reasons. He thinks more women might very advantageously be employed in setting type for papers. Job printing he thinks not so well adapted to them, because of the variety in the work, and the judgment and self-reliance required. Two of the girls in the _Day Book_ office have with their earnings bought their mother a home in the country. Their girls are more intelligent, have more pride, and dress better than most working girls. To set type requires more intelligence than most shop girls possess. The foreman of the same paper writes: "We employ ten women, whose exclusive business is type setting. Seven are American women. I deem the employment of type setting unhealthy, but not more injurious to women than it is to men. We pay women twenty cents per thousand ems. Men receive thirty-one cents per thousand ems in our office. Women are not as competent to do all kinds of work as men, particularly in a newspaper office; hence the difference in wages. The time of learning depends almost wholly on the aptitude of the new beginner. Some persons (men as well as women) would or could not learn the business in a lifetime. Women have been paid while learning in this office. A knowledge of the English language, and a disposition to improve that knowledge on all suitable occasions, are the principal requisites. The general order of intellect did not amount to much, when we first tried the experiment; those who have worked steady have improved wonderfully. They work ten hours per day. Average wages $6.50 per week in this office. With proper training and instruction, they would be competent to do any portion of the work not requiring too much physical exertion. The best seasons for a printer's work depend almost wholly on circumstances. Large cities are the best places for the printer who wishes to have steady employment." T., of New York, told me "he employed girls for a while, and would have retained them if he could have had time to attend to the composition department. He paid his girls the same price he did his men. He thinks it strange that more broken-down ministers and worn-out school teachers do not turn to type setting, as it is learned in a very short time, requires intelligence, and demands no outlay of muscle. On the principle that a stout muscular man should be a blacksmith, and a small delicate one a watchmaker, a woman should be a type setter. A girl should begin when young. Women are no more thrown with men in type setting than in feeding presses. In all large establishments, type setting and press work are done in separate rooms." I think if some lady teachers would learn the art of printing and get places as forewomen, they could from girls obtain as much work as a foreman does from boys; but he thinks it difficult for a foreman to be exacting with women, particularly with those who are old enough to be sensitive and self-willed. He thinks, "in New York, women are not so much employed in intelligent occupations as in Boston. In the cities printers make most all their profits off two-thirders, as they are called--boys who have not attained their majority, and do their work as well for much less than journeymen. His son, a boy of sixteen, earns from $5 to $6 a week as type setter." H., in New York, employs three girls. They get $6 a week of ten hours a day. They can sit if they choose. They have a room to work in, separate from the men. At W.'s, opposite, a youth told me a fast worker could earn $8 a week. The girls there were working in the same room with the men. J., of Philadelphia, said he used to employ women to print his labels, but they demanded $6 a week, and men he could get for $9. He told the women they were cutting their throats in asking so much. He said women should not expect as high wages as men, even if they did their work as well, and as much of it, for they would thereby displace men; and besides, you could not order women about as you could men. B., editor of the Pittsburg _Commercial Journal_, employs six girls as compositors. Connected with his office are two journeymen, who set type after 6 P. M., reporting telegraphic and local news. All type setting should be done by women in the day, unless they board very near, or in the house of the printing office, because of the exposure of going home late at night. Three fourths of the work of a printing office could be done by women. Afternoon and weekly papers could be very well printed by ladies, as they are printed in the day. One of B.'s lady compositors receives $7 a week, another $6, and the others $4 and $3.50. They work eight or nine hours a day; and to a learner they pay $1.50 a week, until she can set type correctly--then more; and in two years she will be very nearly or quite perfect in the art. It requires quickness of eye and finger to succeed. At the office of the Detroit _Daily Democrat_, girls as apprentices are paid from $3 to $4 per week, and those advanced twenty-five cents per thousand ems. "The compositors' office of the _Ohio Farmer_, at Cleveland, has four apprentice girls. Compensation light at present, but after the first year they will have the same that journeymen are receiving in this place, _i. e._, twenty-five cents per thousand ems." A lady learning to set type in Indiana writes: "I think the reason of the printers objecting to my learning was that I was not required to run of errands, or, in other words, be the 'devil' of the office, as boys are who learn the printing business. Besides, my compensation is better than theirs, in consequence of my ability to do more than they. I receive my board and $50 a year while learning; after that, journeyman's wages by the week or by the thousand ems, as I prefer. In this time I can learn to do all, except the press work, making up, &c. The girls employed as type setters in the office receive $3 per week while learning." I have been told that in Rochester, Buffalo, and New Haven, printing is done more cheaply than in New York, and some publishers send their printing to those towns to have it done. A great deal of raised printing is done for the blind in the United States, but women do not work at that. Printers were wanted some time back in Charleston, S. C., and when affairs become settled in the South, we doubt not there will be many openings for printers. An institution has been founded in Edinburg for teaching girls the art of printing. Monsieur P. says in many of the villages of France it is difficult to get printers. He proposes that a certain number of girls be qualified for the work, as women are well suited to such work, and it is of a kind that pleases those who have tried it. =394. Sealing-Wax Makers.= D., sealing-wax, ink, and mucilage manufacturer, employs two girls in putting up carmine ink and gum mucilage, also in rolling, stamping, and boxing sealing wax. To one he pays $5 a week, to the other $4. He employs his girls all the year. Making sealing wax is too heavy work for women, D. thought, and there is not much demand for the kind used in sealing letters. Self-sealing envelopes and mucilage have done away with both wafers and wax. In the United States, one pound is sold where formerly one ton was sold. Had the use of wafers increased with correspondence, it would have been an extensive business; but the making and baking of wafers, D. thought, was too heavy work for women. I expect it is not more so than making and baking bread. But little ink is made in the South and West. C. said women could not make sealing wax, because of the danger of being about the fire. I suggested there is not more than in cooking. He said lifting the vessels is very heavy. =395. Stereotypers.= All the first plates in this country were moulded by a Mrs. Watts, the wife of an Englishman, who introduced the art from London. Stereotyping could be learned by women. It is an interesting employment, but requires intelligence and judgment. In stereotyping, one department of labor is that of correcting metal plates. If a letter is wanting, a type is soldered in the plate. If any of the letters or spaces are filled with superfluous metal, it is removed. I think stereotyping an occupation well adapted to skilful and educated women. It requires an apprenticeship of three or four years. =396. Type Rubbers and Setters.= At P. & Co.'s, I saw the whole process of type making. They employ some women to rub type, and some to set them up. The setters earn from $1.50 to $2 a week. It is very simple, but there is much difference in the quantity done by different individuals. A careful and rapid manipulation is desirable for the worker, as it is paid for by the number of types set up. The rubbers are paid by the pound, and earn from $8 to $9 a week. Some people can rub 2,000 types in an hour. The fingers become hardened. P. & Co. do not employ many American girls, for American girls do not like such dirty work, and most of them dislike to work where men are. Breaking off the jets is in some places done by women. It is a mechanical operation for removing the inequalities of the metal, caused by the imperfect chasing of the moulds. It requires a very rapid movement of the hand, but is not a laborious operation. It is said that some fast workers can break off 5,000 in an hour. Girls are employed at type rubbing and setting, in the same room with men. Type are cut of a soft metal, from which copper moulds are taken for forming printers' type. It requires a steady hand, a correct eye, and some practice to cut them, but not much strength. It could be done by women. B. thinks the work is not unhealthy. I suppose the same objection as regards health might be made to breaking off the jets, type rubbing, and type setting, that is often made to the business of a compositor--that the lead in the metal has a tendency to paralyze the arm; but I have never heard the objection offered. B. does not pay learners. Prospect for employment tolerable. When times are good, he keeps girls all the year. They are paid by the quantity. The little girls can earn $2.50 each, and some of the larger girls, who are very expert, can earn $4.50. Girls always sit in rubbing type. In setting up, I think they can sit or stand, as they please. There will be a demand for type so long as books and papers are printed. I suppose there will now be an opening in the South for type founderies. W. takes learners, and pays by the quantity from the first. All his women sit while at work. It is not healthy work, because of the lead floating in the atmosphere being inhaled. He can always get hands by advertising. Setters get about $2.50 a week, and rubbers $3, and $3.50. C. says, if type rubbers are industrious and attentive, they can earn from $3 to $7 a week. Rubbing pays better than setting, but is quite laborious. Setters earn from $2 to $3.50, and are generally small girls. They are always paid by the quantity. It does not require long to learn. The prospect is good for employment. In ordinary times they are employed all the year. At H.'s, I was told that girls are never taught rubbing until they have learned setting, as rubbing pays best, and it is not fair to give a learner the advantage of an old hand. Setters cannot earn more than $2.50 a week; rubbers, from $4 to $6. He gives work all the year. Some of his girls are always absent on Monday. He thinks there are from 700 to 800 girls in founderies in New York. His girls earn from $3 to $6 a week. Printers, he says, are always first to suffer in a panic. A type founder in Buffalo, writes: "I employ fifteen American girls in finishing type, and pay by the piece. They earn from $3 to $5 per week. One day is sufficient to learn, and nimble fingers greatly assist. Seasons make no difference with the work. The work is easy in a warm room in winter." The proprietors of the Boston Type Foundery sent me the following intelligence by mail: "We employ about twenty women in breaking, rubbing, and setting type. The metallic dust from the type is considered unwholesome. We pay by the piece. The girls are from ten to twenty years of age, and average from $1 to $6 per week, working from six to nine hours. But a short time is required to learn the parts, except rubbing, which occupies some months. They are paid while learning. All other parts of our business, except those mentioned, are too severe for women. The prospect for a continuance of work is tolerable." =397. Wall Paper Gilders.= Most of the wall paper used in the United States for many years past has been made in Philadelphia, and I believe it is still thought to produce the best qualities. There are three modes of impressing wall paper: one by printing, another by stencilling, and the third by painting with a brush. In the cheapest paper, the outlines are printed and the colors put on by stencil plates. For printing, large blocks are used that are cut by hand, and for each color a separate block must be used. This work forms a separate occupation, that of a block cutter. For the finest papers, the outlines are printed, and then filled by the use of the brush. The ailments of colorers of wall paper arise principally from the coloring matter, much of which is very poisonous. "By laboring upon arsenical paper in the finishing department, small tumors are produced, and some have to change their occupation in consequence." At H.'s store, Philadelphia, the young man told me they employ girls from twelve to sixteen years of age, for putting gilding on paper. They work ten hours, and earn from $3.50 to $4.50 a week. They merely lay gilding on, which is fastened by the pressure of machinery. Some manufacturers have the gilding put on with a size. At C.'s, New York, the foreman told me they employ two girls, at $3 a week each. A powder is sprinkled on by boys, which, by the way, could be done by girls. The girls then lay the gold leaf on the powder. A machine then passes over the gold leaf, making an impression by a die, of the pattern desired. Another branch of labor in which they employed girls for a time, was the rolling of paper for the store. It requires a peculiar tact acquired by practice only. They are paid seven cents for 100 rolls, each roll containing eight yards. It would take a brisk and careful hand to become at all expert three months, at which time she could earn about sixty cents a day, of ten hours' work. At the end of three months more she would, perhaps, be able to earn an additional twenty cents a day. It makes the fingers very sore, as considerable force is thrown into the tips of the fingers. Some fingers cannot become hardened to it, and the individual has to give it up. C----'s have work all the year, except a week in summer, and one in winter, and when the machinery is out of repair. They have most to do in winter, getting their paper ready for spring sale, and to send away to the West and South. It is not unhealthy labor. Many girls might be employed in departments now occupied by boys. At N. C. & Co.'s, I was told by a young German that from one hundred to one hundred and fifty boys are employed in that building, but no women or girls. There are several parts that could be done by women. The common paper is rolled by machinery, the fine by hand. In one factory in Boston, girls are employed to roll, and in one in some other part of Massachusetts. Paper stainers in Nashua, New Hampshire, write: "Women are employed in coloring and finishing papers. The work is healthy, though all cannot use green. We pay some by the week and some by the day: $3 per week for day hands. It requires two or three months to learn. A light hand, quick motions, &c., are desirable qualifications. The prospect of employment is the same as all other branches of manufacture. Warm weather is our most busy season. The hands spend a few weeks in the country in midsummer. We employ from twenty to twenty-five women, and they work ten hours a day. They have the advantages of libraries, religious services, &c., and pay for board $1.50 per week." A wall-paper manufacturer, in Boston, writes: "The different kinds of work and a fair knowledge of the manufacture of paper hangings must be seen to be appreciated. For one to be capable of taking charge of a manufactory in my line, he must devote many years of close application, and must be a man of fine taste, in order to get up a _taking_ style of goods, as the success of the business, in a great measure, depends upon that, coupled with a fine finish. The perfection of the manufacture may be all that could be desired, but if the arrangement of the shadings of the colors were faulty, there would be a very limited sale of them. A woman might perhaps make a color mixer (as we call them), if the work was not too hard and too dirty. We employ three girls to roll paper. It is light work, and they are paid from $2 to $4 per week--day hands, ten hours. The time to learn depends upon the capacity of the learner--say a month. The women are not out of employment long. The women are mostly foreign, and can make a comfortable living if they choose. Women have not sufficient strength for some parts of our work." CHEMICALS. =398. Chemicals.= One chemist wrote me that some part of the work in the manufacture of chemicals is wet and disagreeable. Another writes that "women are not employed in that branch in this country, but may possibly be employed in England, Germany, and France; but if at all, only to a small extent. The employment is not generally unhealthy. To learn it in all its details, a pretty thorough knowledge of chemistry ought to be acquired. But a short time is required to learn the ordinary part of the business. The prospect of the employment of women is slight, but your inquiries have, however, suggested the idea and possibility of employing women to a small extent. Men in chemical works are employed at all seasons, and constantly for eleven hours per day. No particular locality has advantage over another, except its proximity to market. Uneducated persons, of ordinary intellect, can be employed to some extent in the labor." Another informant writes: "The manufacture of those chemicals most largely used in the arts, requires laborious work. It is, besides, rather severe on the clothes and hands, and is entirely unsuitable for women. There is, perhaps, room for the employment of women in the manufacture of the finer chemicals, but rather in the way of putting up than in the manufacture itself. We are not engaged in this branch. The demand for pure chemicals is so very limited, that only regularly educated chemists engage in the business, and they do most of the nice work themselves. There is nothing to hinder women from studying practical chemistry, but there are few chances for educated chemists; and there are more than men enough to take all the places that are to be filled." A manufacturer of acids writes: "We employ no female labor in our establishment, it being heavy work, not suitable for them." The present style of female dress would be inconvenient, if not dangerous, in the preparation of such chemicals as require the operator to be near the fire. This difficulty, however, could be obviated. =399. Baking Powders.= D. employs girls to put up baking powders, spices, &c. It is piecework. A very brisk hand can earn $5 a week, but few can do so. They work longest in summer days. They like to close early enough to give their girls time to get home before it is very late. Mechanical talent only is necessary. =400. Bar and Soft Soap.= Large quantities of soap are made in the United States. That sold in groceries is made mostly in towns or the country. It is hardened by muriate of soda, and called bar soap. That used by people in the country is generally of their own make, and called soft soap. In New York, we observed in some groceries barrels of soft soap of a very light color, almost white. Vegetable substances were used previous to the invention of soap, for washing the person and garments. A plant growing in California is said to yield a very good substitute. Some kinds of earth, mixed with lye ashes, have been used. Making soap in large quantities would be very heavy work for women. A machine has been invented for cutting soap into bars, which will doubtless in time do away with the primitive plan of cutting it with wires. At a soap factory, a man told us that women are never employed in factories in making coarse soap. Attending the kettles could not be well done by them. The only part that could be done would be cutting it in bars, but that is rather too hard, on account of the strain and change of position. It is cut with wire after it has become hard. =401. Blacking.= In London, in 1852, there were, by Mayhew's estimate, one hundred and fifty women and girls selling cake blacking. M., manufacturer, Philadelphia, occupies a four-story granite-fronted building. He employs about fifty women in making tin boxes, filling them with blacking in paste, and labelling them. It requires but a few weeks for a smart girl to acquire dexterity. We saw the women at work in two large rooms (each being the whole floor of the house). They looked cheerful, though somewhat grimy. They work ten hours, and earn about $3 a week. The steady hands are kept in work the year round. The tin boxes pass, almost with the swiftness of thought, through eight hands, three of these operations being performed by steam machinery, tended by women. The boxes are soldered by men, who receive $6 per week. It was once done by women, but is right warm work, particularly in summer. All stood while at work, except the women sorting bands. The premises had been rendered as healthy as possible. All the small pipes of the soldering stoves led into one large pipe, which carries off the fumes of the coal; and a cylinder has been made to confine a white powder which is used in the business, and which formerly floated through the atmosphere of the work rooms. The women are sometimes employed in bottling ink, and earn from $2 to $3 a week, working about the usual time--ten hours. =402. Candles.= Candles are made of different materials, of which wax, tallow, and spermaceti are most common. Some candle makers employ women to prepare the wax for candles. Candle manufacturers write us: "Women are never employed in our business, and we never heard of their being so employed. We consider the work too heavy, and too cold. The principal part of the work is done in winter, and the manufacturing rooms must be kept cold. Women were at one time employed in cutting and preparing the wick for candles; but since the introduction of machinery, that part is dispensed with." A manufacturer writes from another city: "Men sometimes work all night, at the season when the nights are long. The only place, I think, where there can be a demand for female labor in my branch, is where there are no men." Another informant writes: "I think women could not be to any considerable extent employed in making soap and candles, for several reasons: 1st. It is for the most part a heavy business, requiring more than female strength. 2d. It is objectionable on account of the dirt, which is the result of coming in contact with tallow, &c." Another says: "Our plan for moulding is too heavy for women to work at." At an oil and candle manufactory, New York, I was told they used to employ some women in putting wicks into moulds, drawing candles, and packing them. Machinery is so much used now, that women cannot do as much of it as they did. Besides, candles are not used so much as they were, owing to the introduction of gas and various oils. They paid their girls $4 a week. They now employ one woman in putting the wicks in moulds for wax candles, and drawing and packing them. J. employs two women in making sperm candles, but they have been at it twenty years. They each get $4 a week. M--s, New York, write: "We employ six women in making and packing candles. They are so employed in France and England, and very likely in Germany. The work is not unhealthy. Our women are paid from $2.50 to $4 per week, of ten hours a day. They are generally paid by the week, though sometimes by the piece. Men's wages are from $9 to $12. We know of no reason why women are paid less, except that it is the general custom. It requires from two to three weeks to learn. Women are paid while learning. Dexterity of the hands is the best qualification for a worker. The occupation is gradually decreasing. There is no material difference in the seasons for work. Women are sometimes thrown out of employment in the summer months. We employ women because they are more nimble fingered than men, and female labor is cheaper. Workwomen are more apt to get in trouble among themselves, where many are employed, and are more difficult to control. We have generally found them more careless and less uniform in their work than men; so much so, that their employment is constantly diminishing in our work, being replaced by machinery. We find them in no way superior to men, except their nimble fingers." We place against this the preliminary report to the United States Census of 1860, where one hundred and forty-two women are returned as being employed in soap and candle manufactures. =403. Chalk.= I saw a man making prepared chalk. He sometimes employs small girls to put it in boxes, and pays from seventy-five cents to $2 per week. They work ten hours a day. There is nothing unhealthy in it. He thinks there are but few manufacturers of it, and consequently there is not much prospect for employment. =404. Emery Paper.= G. would be willing to employ girls to pack and tie up emery paper, paying $3.50 a week. It is dirty work, on account of the glue that is used, and is very severe on the fingers, causing the blood to flow often, and unfortunately does not harden the fingers by practice. =405. Fancy Soaps.= Some of the fancy soaps of American manufacture are equal to any in the world. Those of Bazin, Philadelphia, are considered best. Those of Jules Hauel and Harrison are nearly equal. There are other manufacturers of fancy soap in the United States. On Spruce street, Philadelphia, is a place where they employ girls to put up fancy soaps, and pay by the piece, from $2 to $5 per week. L., New York, employs girls by the week, for from $2 to $3.50. It requires practice to put up either soap or perfumery. They are most busy in spring and fall. None made South or West. L. has lost the custom of shop girls by the hard times. They have no money now to spend for fancy soap and hair oil. =406. Fire Works.= Two hundred and eleven females are reported in the census of Great Britain as being employed in making fire works. S. & Co., New York, employ ten or twelve women for pasting the paper covers on fire works, but not for filling with powder. All the work is done in daylight. They are paid something while learning, and then from $3 to $5 a week. For overwork, they are paid by the hour. Their factory is in Greenville, N. J. There is one in Cincinnati, one in Boston, and one in Philadelphia. Girls sit while at work. The prospect for learners is good. S. & Co. are most busy in spring and summer but able to keep their hands employed all the year. They have a great many children employed on Long Island, in making torpedoes, who cannot earn more than $1.50 a week. =407. Flavoring Extracts.= Manufacturers in Rochester write: "We have about twenty women engaged in putting up and packing perfumery, &c., and pay from $2 to $3 per week. A smart girl will learn in a week. Quickness of movement and steadiness of habit are the best qualifications. The prospect of work in this line is good. They are employed all the year, and work ten hours a day." C., of Boston, employs a number, "because they can work cheaper than men. They are paid by the day or week, according to their experience. Good workers earn 50 cents a day, of nine hours. To thoroughly understand the business requires a lifetime. Women's part of the work is learned in six months. Women are paid while learning. All seasons are alike. The work is easy, and the pay good. Board, $1.50." H. C. & Co., of Boston say: "In compliance with your wishes, we give below answers to your inquiries. We manufacture perfumery, cooking extracts, hair oils, &c. We employ females to bottle and label them. We pay by the amount of labor done, and the average earnings are about $4 per week. Why women are not generally better paid is a difficult question to answer. We think, however, the argument is good that they do not as a general thing have family expenses to bear. If they were taxed (are not those that own property?) and also bore a proportionate share of family expenses, there is no good reason why they should not have the same pay for the same labor as males. (Have not the majority of workwomen some one dependent upon them, even with their scanty wages?) The work may be learned in a few weeks. An aptness and tact to handle small bottles, to tie ribbons, and cut corks quickly, best fit one for this work. There is a constant demand for the kind of goods we manufacture. Our females work ten hours a day, and their employment is steady. The work is clean and comfortable; the remuneration, we think, just. Women are superior to men, from being quicker in their movements and displaying better taste. Board, $2.50." Other manufacturers in Boston write: "We employ ten American women, because they do the work cheaper than men could. We pay by the piece. They earn $6 a week, and receive three fourths of the wages of men. They are paid $3 per week while learning. Women are inferior in business capacity, superior in details. Board, $3 per week." =408. Glue.= Glue is made from the parings of hides, and refuse leather. First they are put in alkaline water to be cleaned, and then boiled in large vessels. The liquid is poured off from the gelatine which coats the vessel and forms in sheets. I think women might spread the substance on nets in drying rooms, and, when dry, cut it and pack it. It is cut by wires having handles, which are held in the hand, to assist in pressing the wire with more force across the glue. S. employs several girls, who earn from $3 to $6 per week. He pays by the gross. Most of the girls have been with him ever since he commenced manufacturing, eight years ago. =409. Gunpowder.= The agent of the Hazard Gunpowder Company told me they employ at the manufacture as many of the widows and children of those killed by explosions as they can, in making linen covers for kegs, and putting gunpowder in envelopes, and cutting labels, and putting on them. D. writes to an acquaintance for us: "We employ women at times in labelling canisters, and then only two." =410. Oils.= A manufacturer of machine oil says a lady that understands the business could give men orders, and keep the office, and so carry on the business; but the work is too warm for women, and too laborious. It is certainly greasy work, and therefore hard on clothes. A manufacturer of oil writes me "he thinks the business not at all suitable for women: the only part that could be done by them is such as pertains to the office, which would be the same as that of other merchants." The manufacture of hair oils forms an extensive business. A manufacturer of linseed oil told me he could employ a woman to remove the seed from the bags, after the oil has been pressed out, but it would be greasy work. Some oil manufacturers told me they would employ girls to put oil in bottles for sewing machines. They would also be willing to employ female agents to sell oil for sewing machines. If a lady could sell twelve bottles a day, at 25 cents a bottle, she could make $1.75. =411. Paints.= Oil paint is so disagreeable to handle and put up in such large quantities that it is unsuitable work for women. An English workman in B. & I.'s factory told us that women are employed in the paint factories in London and Hull as extensively as men. What they do we could not exactly learn, except that they put the powder for paint in cans, and label them. The man said the business is pernicious to the health. Ex-Mayor T. employed some women in his color factory at Manhattanville to label. At O.'s Philadelphia, a few women are employed in moulding the cakes of water paints, and stamping them, and in tubing and packing fine oil paints. A paint manufacturer in Brooklyn writes: "The only way we can employ females is at putting up paint dry in six-pound boxes or in cans. This last is ground in oil. We have generally employed boys for this purpose, but I think females would suit better, provided they were kept by themselves. If this could be done, we might be able to employ from four to five hands. The work is rather unhealthy, as it affects the lungs. We pay one woman $4 per week, working ten hours a day. It requires a week to learn. We do not work for four months in winter. Cleanliness and tact are necessary for putting up goods. Women would attend to their work better than boys." =412. Patent Medicines.= Women are very extensively employed in putting up patent medicines. At H.'s, Philadelphia, where extract of ginger is made, they once employed women in the summer. They prefer boys and men, because in intervals men and boys can do other work that women cannot. Women were only employed by them to put up, seal, and label. Where H.'s bitters are made, women are employed to envelop, seal, and label, and paid according to the industry and skill of the workers. They receive from $3 to $4 a week. Dr. Ayres, I have been told, has his medicine put up by females in Canada, because he can have it done there more cheaply, although a duty of 15 per cent. is paid for importing. =413. Pearlash.= Women could make pearlash in the country, where large quantities of wood are burned in clearing off land, and would no doubt find it pay very well for the trouble. =414. Perfumery.= Perfumeries have been used in oriental countries from the most remote ages. The finest and most costly perfumes are still brought from the East. They were much used in England about the time of Queen Elizabeth. The essential oil of plants confers their odors. This oil may be obtained by expression, infusion, or distillation. In some cases, it may be pressed out of the cellular structure that contains it. Roses and such plants are mostly steeped in water, but some plants are steeped in wine and similar substances. There is a difference in oils obtained from different parts of the same plant; for instance, the leaves, flowers, and fruit of the orange tree yield distinct oils. The perfumeries of France have the best reputation of any others. Considerable perfumery is manufactured in this country, that meets with a ready sale at a good profit. At J. H.'s, Philadelphia, the woman who superintends others employed in putting up perfumery, told me that the hands work three months before they are paid. They then receive from $1.50 to $5 a week. It would require two years, she thinks, to acquire proficiency. J. H. finds employment for his hands all the year round. The girls cut kid for the tops, tie them on, label the bottles, lay them in cotton in small boxes, and then put them in large boxes ready for nailing and sending away. The girls each perform the entire process. It is not divided into separate branches. Sometimes they are employed in putting up fine soaps. The labels are all imported from France. They sit while employed, and spend from ten to twelve hours at it, according to the work on hand. R. says some perfumery is made by machinery and some by hand. He thinks a woman should spend from six months to one year learning to put up perfumery, as it must be done very neatly. He pays his girls, while learning, $2.50 a week, and after that according to ability and industry. The business is now dull, for people cannot afford to indulge in luxuries. At P.'s perfumery manufactory, I learned that the girls work from 7½ to 6, and earn from $2 to $8 per week--the average, $3.50. They are mostly Americans. Spring and fall are the best seasons, but they keep them all the year. They have many applications, but are often puzzled to get enough of good hands. Girls do better than men for putting up perfumery. It requires some taste. Poor workers are very destructive, for the articles of which some perfumeries are made are very costly. There are employed in packing fancy soap and preparing perfumery, between six hundred and seven hundred girls, in New York; average wages, $4. A manufacturer of hair oil pays his men from $10 to $15 per week. Good taste and a quick hand are the requisites. Near a city is the best location. At H.'s perfumery and fancy soap manufactory, one of the firm told me they "import" Frenchmen to make the perfumery, who impart to them the secret, and they furnish the materials. Their busy season commences in January. They pay their girls from the first, but not much until they get to working well. It requires some time to become expert and tasteful in putting up perfumery. They are paid by the piece (customary plan), but do not work over ten hours, as it is all done at the factory. They can earn from $3 to $9 a week. They keep their hands all the year, but in busy times employ extra hands. They employ a number of girls in making boxes, who earn about $3 a week. P. & F. employ one woman, paying $3.50 a week. P. told me such work is usually paid for by the gross, and workers earn about $4.50. The business is likely to increase. No manufactures West or South. It requires six months to become expert. Vacancies are often occurring among the hands. Some are employed in label cutting some in filling bottles, corking, tying, labelling, and boxing, while others envelop and seal the soap. They sit most of the time, but change their position every little while. There is but one establishment of the kind west of Philadelphia, and that is in Cincinnati. =415. Quinine.= At P. & W.'s laboratory, Philadelphia, they employ a number of girls in weighing and putting up quinine, calomel, &c., to send away. The girls work eight hours in winter and nine in summer, and receive from $3 to $9 a week. The employment is thought not to be healthy. It changes the fairest complexion to a sallow, just as the taking of the medicine would. The air of the room where we sat, and where the girls were corking, sealing, enveloping, and labelling, was strongly impregnated with the quinine. It was so offensive that I could not rid myself of the taste for several hours after I left the room. In one apartment a man and woman were weighing the article. The woman wore a bandage over her mouth and a muslin cap on her head, and spectacles with large, dark, convex frames, to prevent the quinine from getting in her eyes, as it turns the white of the eye yellow. The women had each their own apartment of labor. They looked as healthy as you generally see, but I do not know how they may have looked when they commenced working there. The lady who accompanied me, said her friend had fallen off very much and lost the beauty of her complexion while working there during the last two years. =416. Salt.= "In certain cities, especially at Dieppe, France, women have the business of carrying salt; it is a monopoly which has belonged to them from time immemorial. They form a corporation, have a syndic, and salt in the sack cannot, in this city, be transported from the vessel to the depots or warehouses by any but them." According to the statistics of the salt manufacture in 1850, there were 2,699 males employed and 87 females in the United States. Water from the ocean, lakes, and salt springs, I suppose, could be boiled by women. A rock-salt manufacturer writes: "Women might do some of our work better than a man; but one man can tend the hopper and tie as fast as another can fill. The best salt for dairy purposes is imported, and therefore a seaport is the best place for our business." A manufacturer in Barnstable, Mass., writes: "Women are not employed in my branch of industry, as far as my knowledge extends, _in making salt_; but, when it is ground for table use, women are sometimes employed _in making the bags_ to put the salt in. They formerly made good wages in this business; but, since sewing machines have come into almost general use, the price of labor has fallen, and I am not posted as to the price now paid, as most of the ground salt and the bags are manufactured in Boston. Working with salt is very healthy. We manufacture our salt between the 1st of April and the last of October, by solar evaporation; but very little if any salt can be made in this way after the latter month, as the sun runs too low for salt making. Our works are provided with covers, which require too hard labor for women to shove on as rain approaches, and to be opened every fair day. Women can, and occasionally do lend a hand in this business; but it is too laborious. Then, the salt has to be taken out by men with shovels, and this is too hard labor for women. They might assist in drawing the water from one room to another, by simply taking out and putting in plugs; but under a hot summer's sun, we think our business entirely unsuitable for them. In the winter, we manufacture epsom salts; but even this work we consider too laborious for women." A salt manufacturer in South Yarmouth, Maine, writes: "I believe women are employed in the mills in Boston for grinding salt, in making the bags, putting it up, &c., for table use. Otherwise, the service is too hard." Manufacturers in Syracuse, N. Y., say "they have but a limited number of women employed in making sacks. The most of their sacks are furnished by the manufacturing establishments." Salt clarifiers in Burlington, Vt., write: "We employ one woman, because it is cheaper to do so. We pay her $4 per week--a man we would have to pay $6. The work is healthy, and women's part soon learned. Spring and summer are the best seasons. The prospect for work in this line is good. Board, $1.70 per week." A gentleman in the salt business at Geddes, N. Y., writes: "There used to be employed far more women than now in making bags to hold dairy or bag salt. Now, sewing machines have entirely superseded them in this branch of our business. During the summer season, formerly, there were from one hundred to three hundred women at bag making. There are now, say one hundred or more women engaged in packing and filling the barrels with salt. They are all foreigners. It is dirty, heavy, and laborious work, and not suitable for women, but is extremely healthy. No difference is made in the price paid men and women, all being paid by the piece, and earning from 75 cents to $1 per day. A strong woman can learn very soon. The amount of work, probably, will not change much in future. The work is done only in the summer season. A large proportion of all the salt made in this country is made here. The annual product of our salt springs is about seven million bushels salt, produced at an expense for _labor_ of not less than ten cents per bushel. Nearly all is paid to men, Irish and Dutch getting the most of it. A very small part of the work, if any, is adapted to women. Most of our women workers are the wives or mothers of men and boys who fasten hoops on barrels. Most of the salt at Syracuse, N. Y., is made by boiling down the water that springs from artesian wells. At Turk's Island, salt is made by simply digging vats in the meadow and throwing the water into them. As it rarely rains there for a number of months, they require no covering to their works, and have only to take out the salt and stack it up when it is made." =417. Soda.= I find that in factories of this kind, girls are not employed in this country, except for putting the article in papers. They are paid from twelve to sixteen cents per hundred, according to the size. At a factory I saw many at work. They looked very neat. All wore clean calico dresses, and snow-white handkerchiefs over their heads, to prevent the soda from lodging in their hair. They must inhale considerable of it, as the atmosphere was strongly impregnated. One of the workers told me they are paid eighteen cents per hundred packages, which were rather large. A box contained sixty packages. Some are able to put up as many as seven hundred packages a day. The proprietor and one of the girls said it was not unhealthy work; but it is my impression that it is, if worked at constantly. It requires but a week to get in the way of doing it, and expertness is gained by practice. They work all the year, but sometimes there is not much to do. They are most busy in spring and fall. Some of the hands live near; so, in slack times, if the proprietor receives an order to be filled, he sends immediately for his girls. At another factory, I was told September and October are the most busy months for their hands. They cannot send much away in winter, because the rivers are closed and railroad freight is high. Soda, I was told, is more used in the South than saleratus. Some of their girls are paid by the week, and some by the box. They earn from $3 to $4. The gentleman said the dust was disagreeable, but not unhealthy. Their girls stand while at work. =418. Starch.= A large number of plants and vegetable substances contain starch. Wheat, potatoes, rice, and maize are the principal. It is also found in the seeds and stems of plants. It is not soluble in cold water, consequently may be easily washed out of any vegetable substance. For those from which it cannot be so removed chemical decomposition may be employed. Manufacturers write us: "The making of starch is hard and unsuitable work for females; but girls are employed to put up the starch in papers and label it, receiving from thirty-seven to seventy-five cents a day, according to what the worker accomplishes." The following intelligence we received from the Oswego factory: "We employ from fifteen to twenty women, because we find them more attentive than boys. They paste labels on packages of starch, and receive thirty-seven and a half cents per day, of from eight to ten hours. A smart girl can learn in a few hours. The prospect of employment in future is good. They are paid the same that boys would be, and have work the year round. There are no parts suitable for women, in which they are not engaged. Board, $1.25 to $1.50." =419. White Lead.= At the store of a white lead manufacturer, I was told they employ a number of girls, when busy, to label the tin cans. The making of white lead is unhealthy, and, I suppose, very disagreeable work. Women are employed in England in the manufacture of white lead. =420. Whiting.= This article is used for cleaning silver, and one preparation of it for the face. There are not more than from twelve to twenty women at the work in the United States. B. used to employ women, and paid by the pound. The women earned about $3 a week, of ten hours. They were employed merely in putting up the article. COMMUNICATING MEDIUMS BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND OTHERS. =421. Assistants in Public and Benevolent Institutions.= There is a wide field of usefulness open to ladies, as matrons in charitable institutions. Blessed is the influence a woman exerts as a matron, if she is a kind, good woman. Her responsibilities are great, but a consciousness of the vast amount of good she may accomplish should reconcile her to them. The discharge of her duties will often cast her in the society of visitors, many of whom are refined and educated people. In _reformatory institutions for children_, a matron may do incalculable good. _The female department of almshouses, lunatic asylums, hospitals, prisons, workhouses, and all other public and charitable institutions_, should be in the hands of women. They can exert a better influence. They know better the wants of their sister women. They can enter into their feelings. They can check familiarities with the male inmates, and exert more influence when temptation is offered. In short, they are women, and know a woman's heart. _Orphan, and deaf and dumb asylums, houses of refuge, eye and ear infirmaries, schools for imbecile children, and all such places_, should be managed by women, as far as practicable. The managers of the home department of such institutions should be firm and efficient, yet kind hearted. Nor should merely the filling of these offices be given to women, but there should be a number of lady visitors to coöperate with the managers. They can often suggest many improvements for the comfort and health of the inmates, that would escape the notice of men. I was told by a friend, now deceased, who took an active part in establishing and advancing benevolent institutions, that she found it very difficult to obtain matrons, seamstresses, and tailoresses, willing and competent to instruct the inmates of the institutions in their various branches of labor. She thought it would be well to instruct women so thoroughly in their business that they might efficiently impart a knowledge of it to others. She thought there should be a house where women and girls could be properly prepared to perform the duties of cooks, nurses, and house servants. A lady friend suggested that many of the situations in the public institutions of New York might be filled by some of the women who are now keeping boarding houses, and so, the pressure in that quarter being removed, there would be fairer and fuller play to those that are left in the occupation. A principal reason of the order and cleanliness of the workhouses in Holland, is the attention and humanity of the governesses; for each house has four, who take charge of the inspection, and have their names painted in the room. For the moral management of convicts, men are systematically trained in some countries of Europe. In the hospitals, prisons, and reformatory institutions of England, supported by the government, women are employed. They are even eligible as overseers of the poor. The President of the Board of Public Institutions in New York city furnished me with answers to questions in regard to the women employed therein, as follows: "Women are employed as matrons, nurses, and laborers in this city, and on Blackwell's and Randall's islands. They receive from $5 per month to $430 per annum, and are paid by the month. The labor performed, properly belongs to women, although we employ some men for part of the same labor, but their pay is about the same. There is no need of an apprenticeship to become familiar with their employments, and the only special qualifications are health and strength. There is no difference as to seasons with us. They work only as many hours as are necessary. The demand for those occupying this position grows out of the number of the destitute and criminal thrown on our hands. About twenty-five per cent. employed are Americans. We employ women in all work for which they are suited. The more intelligent are selected for the most responsible positions. If so disposed, they have ample time for mental and moral culture. They live where they labor, and their places of residence are comfortable." Each of the janitresses of the public schools of New York receives a salary of from $100 to $400 per annum. At the Tombs of New York, a woman has charge of the department where the female convicts are. At a meeting of ladies in Dublin, for the employment of women, Mr. McFarlane said that "for the last twenty-five years, the Grangegorman Penitentiary had been under the management of a lady, and it had been most admirably conducted." =422. Commissioners of Deeds.= There are about two hundred in the city of New York, and, with a moderate run of custom, each can make several hundred dollars per annum. Their duties are very light, and, I have been told, could as well be performed by women as men. =423. Housekeepers.= A kind, yet decided manner, will more effectually govern a household than fretting and scolding. A portion of time should be regularly set aside for servants to feel as their own. It will often prove a matter of economy to those who exact work of them. Those of principle will work more diligently. Everybody needs some rest. Gain the good will and confidence of servants, and they will reward you in the labor of their stronger muscles. But avoid familiarity, by all means. Much of the long, wearing toil of servants might be avoided by consideration and management on the part of a housekeeper. Domestics labor hard, and much of the comfort of a family depends on them. Do not accuse on suspicion those in your employ of doing or having done wrong. Be careful of the reputation of others, particularly dependent females. A man of standing, to whom I expressed the desire that more occupations should be opened to women, expressed the wish that our domestics should be Americans, and of a more intelligent class. An effort should be made to elevate the standard of servants, he said, to induce more respectable and intelligent women to enter domestic service. Those engaged in it, he thought, should find something else to do, and will be pushed out as a more competent class enter. I would prefer to see our present class of servants fit themselves better for the discharge of their duties, and American girls enter occupations of a more refined and exalted nature. The same gentleman referred to, stated that his servants each receive $2 a week, dress handsomely, and lay by money. (?) They do better for themselves, he remarked, than the girls in his bookbindery. In some of the convents of France, the sisters go through a course of training to prepare them for the duties of housekeepers, and are then sent to take charge of religious and charitable institutions connected with their church. Why might not some such plan be pursued by Protestants? Says an English review: "In Germany, the employment of women in the offices of house-steward, maitre d'hotel, butler or lackey, sanctioned by universal custom, is not considered so incompatible as it would be with us, with the other branches of a first-rate establishment." =424. Keepers of Intelligence Offices.= Intelligence offices are established for the purpose of giving information to or respecting persons seeking employment. They are individual enterprises. From fifty cents to $1 is paid by an applicant for information of persons desiring one of such capacity as they seek to fill. The same price is paid by the person seeking an assistant or domestic. Most offices are limited to supplying domestics; but one or more might be established for the supply of seamstresses, saleswomen, milliners, dress makers, &c. Girls often find it an advantage to apply at an office, if they have not friends to interest themselves and secure them situations. But they should be particular to know the character of the office they patronize. A lady remarked to me, if a girl was willing to spend a year in a family where she could be well instructed for her work, she could then be sure of a good home and fair wages. Servant girls are universally complained of at the North. Many of them are very exacting. Most are raw Irish girls, who think, when they come to this country, everybody is equal. Consequently, they do not know their places as they do in the old country, where there are distinct grades in society. Another thing that makes some so trifling is that such swarms come, and they are so ignorant, and many of them so corrupt, that they instigate each other. I was told, by the keeper of an intelligence office, that girls and women always ask more than they expect to get. Some cooks get as high as $20 a month. They are mostly French and German. Now and then he has a good American. He has a lady in attendance that can speak French and German. His terms are fifty cents a month from the employer, and the same from the employée. It gives the privileges of the office for one or two months. Few are willing to go to the country. Many girls come from the country that do not know where to board. The keeper of the office sends them to a cheap but respectable house. His office is open from eight to five. To employers he sends a blank certificate of character, to be filled when the servant leaves. There is a Protestant office in Philadelphia, and one or more in New York. At an intelligence office on Grand street, where girls pay fifty cents and the employer fifty cents, the girl has the privilege of being supplied with places for two months, if she remains on trial the time specified by agreement with her various employers. If not, she forfeits the privilege. This office had a servants' home connected with it, that is, a boarding house for servants out of employ. The girls paid $2 a week. A training school was connected with this, in which the servants received instructions in cooking and the various details of housekeeping. The cooking of the boarding house was done by some of the number. He failed in his enterprise, he said, from want of capital. One has been in operation in England for eight years very successfully, connected with which is a training school. They have few Americans to apply for places; for Americans like lighter work, as nursing, sewing, being lady's maid, &c. In summer there is a scarcity of girls, for they go to the country and watering places to cook and do housework. In the fall they flock to the city, and there are more applicants than situations. At some offices the privilege is accorded for three months, and at some only one month. A lady who keeps an office in Williamsburg told me, when the girls come to her, she takes their names and qualifications. She receives the calls of ladies wanting girls, and also records their wants. After five o'clock, and on Saturday after two o'clock, the office is closed, and she then compares the wants of employers and employées, and makes out a corresponding list. Next day she sends girls to their places. I could have got a lady's maid for $5 a month with board and lodging. I saw a lady securing a nurse for her child at the same price. Fifty cents is the fee for the privilege of her office for three months. She furnishes girls during that time until the mistress is satisfied; and the girl pays the same, and is furnished with places for three months until she is satisfied. She does not require references from her girls, but sends the lady to the last employer of the girl. I called at Mrs. Y.'s office, New York. Girls, she says, get different prices in different States. In wealthy States, as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Southern States, they get good prices. In Cincinnati, and the States of Wisconsin and New Jersey, poor prices. She sends many from the city to every part of the United States. People write to her, inclosing the money for the girl's passage. She then buys her a ticket and provisions, and sends her on; but the arrangement is always for a year or six months, as people are not willing to incur the expense of paying the passage of a girl for less time. She could get many more places for girls, if they would go to the country; but they do not wish to go, and, if dissatisfied, be at the expense of returning. The girl may be deceived, by finding there are twice as many in the family as represented, or the work is much harder. Mrs. Y. learns the character of a girl that applies to her, and then registers it in her book. So ladies applying for a girl have from her the true character. She has no difficulty in finding places for her girls. She is always busy but on a rainy day. People object to having an intelligence office near them, as the girls are inclined to stand about the door. It is said that the majority of the keepers of intelligence offices furnish the best places to those by whom they are bribed. A few years ago, the number of white female servants in New York city was estimated at 100,000, that of Boston 50,000, Philadelphia 30,000, and Baltimore 20,000. There is a lady in Boston who goes around among her friends and secures to them good domestics, receiving some compensation for her services--I think, fifty cents a domestic. When the influence of servants over children is considered, I think parents cannot be too careful in the selection of their servants; and to obtain good ones, they should be willing to pay a fair price. There is a waste of time to girls sitting in offices, and a risk run of being sent, by a person of whose moral character they know nothing, to a house that may prove the wreck of their virtue. At a boarding house and intelligence office for workwomen, the lady told me they charge $2 a week for board, allowing the privilege of the wash room, and of sitting in the parlor in the evening, which is warmed and contains a piano. To those who cannot pay as much as this, they charge from $1 to $1.25, giving them rooms in the attic. They have been applied to often for persons of a higher class than usually frequent intelligence offices, but only until since the times have been so hard have they had such applicants. I was told, at another office, they seldom have American girls apply for places, except as house girls, and they are mostly girls who have worked in factories. They send girls to California and all parts of the United States, and they have some who travel through Europe in the capacity of ladies' maids. Their office is open from nine to five o'clock. When a girl is sent for from another place, the money is sent by express and a receipt taken, or by mail, and a receipt taken at the post office. One of a high order for cultivated women, who desire places as bookkeepers, copyists, secretaries, &c., is quite necessary. We would suggest the establishment of such an office for furnishing female workers to different parts of the United States, where they are wanted in the higher branches of woman's labor. It would confer a blessing on virtuous and industrious women, and be an accommodation to employers. A paper devoted to the same interests might do much good also; but we think it doubtful whether it would pay its way. =425. Lighthouse Keepers.= Miss H. told me of two young women whose father keeps a lighthouse, but he is very feeble and infirm. They attend the lights, and often row out, if they see a wreck, and do what they can to rescue the passengers. We observed this newspaper paragraph a few years back: "A Mrs. Lydia Smith has been appointed assistant keeper of the lighthouse at Manitou Island (Michigan) at $250 per annum." "They have a Grace Darling at Bridgeport, Conn. On the night of the 13th inst., Miss Moore, an accomplished young lady, the daughter of the keeper of the lighthouse on Fairweather Island, just below Bridgeport, heard cries for help at a distance from the shore, and determined that an effort should be made to rescue whom it might be. It was too dark to tell the direction or the distance, but, summoning two young men to her aid, she launched the boat belonging to the lighthouse, and ordered them to pull out in the direction of the cries, herself holding the tiller. About two miles out in the Sound, they found a sailboat capsized, and clinging to it were two men nearly exhausted. One of them was entirely helpless, and with great difficulty got in the boat; but both were finally rescued from death by the courage and efforts of this brave girl, and brought safely to shore. Mr. Moore, the keeper of the lighthouse, has been for some time afflicted with ill health, and when unable to see to the details of his office, this daughter assumes the entire management, and, through the lonely watches of the night, it is her fair hand that trims and tends the beacon that guides the mariner safely on his way." =426. Pawnbrokers.= I suppose this business requires a general knowledge of the value of goods. Some pawnbrokers profess to make liberal advances, but a very heavy percentage is usually charged. Indeed, some pawnbrokers extort an incredible interest on money loaned to the poor. S., an intelligent Irish pawnbroker, into whose office I went to ask something of the business, told me he never knew of but one woman in the business. She was nominally a widow, and employed a young man to stay in the shop. When women are employed in pawnbrokers' establishments, it is nearly always as auxiliaries, being the wife, sister, or daughter of the keeper. He thinks it not a suitable business for a woman, as the class of people that come require a strong man to deal with them, who can use their slang language, and drive them away if they become very rude. No doubt, many go to pawn what they have when under the influence of liquor, or to pawn their clothes to get liquor. The broker retains what is pawned for a year, if it is not redeemed in less time. It is then sold at auction. There is a law that permits it. His shelves were filled with bundles, on which were pinned numbered papers. Another pawnbroker told me that the fashion and quality of goods decide the price put on them, particularly wearing apparel. There may be a difference in the value estimation of pawnbrokers, just as there is in different establishments where the same kind of new goods are sold. I saw the name of a female pawnbroker in a business directory, and called. I did not see her, but the young man who was employed to assist her in attending the store said they have most business to do in summer, and that it is a business requiring experience. They pay on articles taken to them what they will be likely to sell for at auction. They must make some allowance for what they may lose on the article. They charge at the rate of twenty-five per cent. for a year's time, which is as long as anything pawned is kept. They lose more on clothes than other goods. They allow a depositor to draw any sum of less amount than the estimated value of an article; and when the article is redeemed, a percentage is paid on the amount of the money drawn, and not on the full value of the article. =427. Postmistresses.= There are (1854) 128 postmistresses in the United States. They receive the same salaries that postmasters do. The clerks in post offices sometimes count at the rate of sixty letters a minute. There are 29,000 post offices in the United States, ninety clerks in Chicago, and, I think, nearly three hundred in New York. Might not a large number of these be women? I have read that it is in contemplation to place in the general post office in London a number of lady clerks. I called on Mrs. W., who was for nearly two years at the ladies' window in the general post office, New York. Very few approved of a lady being there. She found some advantages, but many disadvantages, arising from her position. In the first place, it yielded her and her child a support, the salary being $600. She was treated with respect by all the attachés of the office except two--one of whom was immediately dismissed, and the other removed. But the class of women who go to the general post office constantly for letters, are of a kind a respectable woman would not like to come in contact with. The majority receive letters under fictitious names. Some of them were very impudent to her. And sometimes men would come to the window and insist on her getting the letters of their lady friends for them. Besides, there were about fifty clerks immediately around her, and altogether in the office between two hundred and three hundred. They were men of all classes and nations. The office is one influenced by political motives, and a man has the advantage as candidate by gaining the votes of his friends. She says she was kind and courteous, but found it necessary to be very decided, and keep at a distance from every one. The men in the office did not like it, because they had to guard their tongues. She remained there from 8.30 A. M. to 4.30 P. M., and was on her feet all the time, with the exception of a few minutes. There were no conveniences or comforts for a woman. So she suffered severely from the effects. She thinks the plan of employing ladies in the post offices of towns and villages might be done more easily. Even here it might be done more advantageously, if the office was situated farther up street, the regulations were different, and a number of ladies were employed instead of but one. A lady could not well use a ladder to reach down letters from the upper boxes. A young man did that for her. For a postmistress we might enumerate the qualifications of quickness of eye, strict integrity, a retentive memory, and patient industry. "Unmarried females only can hold the office of postmistress. They are appointed, give bonds, and are commissioned in the same manner as postmasters, and receive the same compensation. There is, however, a larger number of females, generally the wives and daughters of postmasters, employed as assistants; but as the latter are appointed and paid by the postmasters themselves, to whom alone they are responsible, their names are not recorded on the government books." =428. Sewing-Machine Instructors.= In many of the stores of New York, where sewing machines are sold, we notice that many of those who give instructions to buyers of machines are men. Shame on the men that teach women to sew! When such is the case, to what may not a woman resort for earning a livelihood? Shame on the man that engages in such an effeminate employment, save he who is deformed and cannot engage in harder work! Shame, I say, on the man seen at a sewing machine, or with a needle in his hand! Surely the muscles and bones and sinews of men were never given for such a purpose. W. & W. employ five young ladies as instructors on machines, paying each of them over $6 a week. They have one to sell thread, and two to go about the city adjusting machines. It is something difficult to do, as it requires almost the mechanical talent of a machinist. They have no applications for instructors on sewing machines out of the city, but have for some in the city. They employ females because the purchasers of machines are generally ladies. G. & B. employ a lady for adjusting machines, as they find ladies prefer one of their own sex for the purpose. I was told at S.'s, by the bookkeeper, they do not employ female instructors. They used to employ both young men and young ladies, but they spent so much time talking to each other, that they found it necessary to dispense with either the one or the other. So they gave up the girls eighteen months ago, and have not employed any since. They paid girls $4 a week from the time they took them, and increased their wages to $5 or $6. Many of the women earned $6. They worked, on an average, ten hours a day. Ladies are employed in Boston to sell machines. The ladies of New York (said a young man selling machines) prefer to buy of a gentleman. (?) Yet, he thinks the crying sin of civilization is, not furnishing remunerative employment to women. Simply learning to sew with a machine is by no means difficult, though the time required depends very much upon the abilities of the learner. Some become proficient in all its accomplishments of hemming, tucking, gathering, preparing work for the machine, &c., in from three to six months, while others do not become efficient workers in less than a year. The time required to learn depends very much on the machine used, as some are more complicated than others; and a thorough knowledge of the machine is desirable for every good worker. It is more difficult to learn to operate on one kind of machine after learning on some other kind. By paying $1.50, a person can receive six lessons on sewing machines at S.'s. At W. & W.'s, and at G. & B.'s, purchasers and those who cannot pay are taught free of charge. Some people charge $3 for teaching to operate. L. & W. will teach any one to operate who buys a machine, but they charge others $2. =429. Shepherdesses.= Boys who keep sheep in Scotland, knit while so employed. Girls and women who tend sheep, might perhaps do the same. Sheep are being raised to considerable extent in Texas, and the raising of them is on the increase in the Western States, but we do not know that females have ever been employed in this country to tend sheep. =430. Toll Collectors.= It is not unusual to see women receiving toll at the gates, but they are mostly foreigners, or poor widows, or the wives of the gatekeepers. CONTRIBUTORS TO THE COMFORT OR AMUSEMENT OF OTHERS. =431. Bathhouse Attendants.= There are some people that cannot afford to have bathhouses in their dwellings, and for such it is well there are houses where, for twenty-five cents, they may enjoy the luxury of a bath. Particularly is it well for hard-working people, on whom the dust and perspiration collect, and who are refreshed and rendered more healthy by frequent baths. Where a bathhouse is used for women alone--there being no department for men--we think it might be owned and superintended by a lady, just like any other branch of business. Females, of course, would be in attendance to wait on those that frequent the bath rooms. Quite a number are employed at water-cure establishments, which are open for patients at all seasons of the year. Not only does cleanliness promote comfort, but it is conducive to health. Many of the diseases of the poor arise from a want of cleanliness. Even the morals are improved, and the mind freed as it were from its cobwebs. Most medicinal baths should be superintended by some one that has a knowledge of medicine and the human system. And those employed, if unacquainted with the business, should be particular in observing directions given. For baths, a person should have means to fit up rooms neatly, and enough to live on until their establishment becomes known. I called on the wife of a gentleman who has electro-magnetic baths administered. He is a physician, and gives medical advice as to the kind of bath required. He does not give much medicine, thinking the article that would be prescribed had better be administered externally in the form of a bath. The baths are $3 for a single one; $10 for four. More people take the baths in summer than winter. After a vapor bath the system is stimulated, not relaxed; it is then better prepared for the reception of medicine. The charge at one establishment I know to be 50 cents a bath, or $5 for twelve. In New York, I saw the People's Washing and Bathing Establishment, which was put up by some philanthropic citizens, for the benefit of the poor. A man is employed to take charge of it; and in summer, several women attend to bathers, and some wash and iron towels. They pay $3 a week to a bath attendant, and from $3 to $3.50 to washers and ironers. They have had 1,500 bathers a day, in summer. For a bath in a small room and one towel, six cents are charged; for better accommodations, twelve cents. A swimming bath for boys is attached, and a charge made of three cents a swim of half an hour. =432. Brace and Truss Makers.= I went to M. & Co.'s, New York, who are surgical and anatomical mechanicians, inventors, and manufacturers. They want to employ several good female workers. They will not take any to learn, because it requires time to teach them; yet a person of moderate abilities, that can sew neatly, can learn in a few days, or weeks at most, to do the cutting out and stitching. Part of the stitching is done by hand, and part by machinery. The workwomen are paid $3 a week, and work ten hours. At L.'s truss and bandage institute, I learned that he employs a number at $3 a week. He cannot get as many good hands as he wants. He drew several hands from his former employer by paying them a little more. His wife does the fitting for ladies. A truss maker in Middletown, Conn., pays his women by the piece, and they earn from $3 to $4 per week. A., Brooklyn, pays a girl that sews neatly, but has never worked at the business, $3 a week. Any one that can sew well or operate on a machine, can do the mechanical work. He pays experienced hands over $3, according to what they do. His girls work but nine hours a day. Manufacturers of surgical apparatus in Boston write: "We employ women in sewing exclusively, generally about twenty, and all American. The work is not more unhealthy than any sewing. We consider any steady sewing, and the consequent confinement, more or less injurious. Average wages, perhaps $4 per week--something depends upon capabilities, however. Some have earned $6 per week, though such cases are exceptions. All our work is done by the piece. Females are paid about half the price of males. There appears to be an ample supply of female labor. On this basis, prices, details, &c., are governed accordingly. That portion of the work done by males, it takes three years to learn; that done by women, three months, presuming they were good sewers at the start. Learners are paid the same as old hands. Of course, they are slower, and accumulate less until well learned. To be a neat sewer and possess some mechanical skill will prepare one for this employment. We are seldom idle more than two weeks in the year. The male portion of our work would be no more adapted to women than horse shoeing. Our hands work from eight to twelve hours each day, and have none too much time for the improvement of their minds, considering they must be occupied more or less upon their own private sewing in addition to their business." A truss maker in Boston writes: "I pay by the week, from $4 to$6 to women; to men, from $7 to $12, because they can do more. They work from nine to ten hours. All are Americans. It requires from three to six months to learn. Some portions of the steel work would not be suitable for women. Board, $2 per week." "W. & F. employ eight women for making braces, bandages, &c. They pay $3 a week to those who are employed by the week. Those that work by the piece can earn from $4 to $6, and sometimes by overwork $7 a week. Their work is steady in good times, and they are able to employ their girls all the year. All sew by hand but one, and she receives but $4 as an operator. The business is mostly confined to cities." =433. Chiropodists.= W., of the firm of L. & W., was quite a gentlemanly man in his manners, conversation, and dress. He mentioned three women, each in different cities, engaged in this occupation. He thinks his pursuit preferable to dentistry. Both depend on the class of patients. To follow the calling professionally requires a knowledge of anatomy and surgery. There is a great deal of charlatanism practised by some in the calling. A knowledge of how to extract corns is not sufficient. Bunions, inverted nails, &c., require scientific treatment. He charges $1 for removing one corn, fifty cents apiece for two, and proportionately less for three or more. There are a great many itinerant doctors. If any individual fits himself properly for the calling, he may, after three or four years, in a large city, living from hand to mouth during the time, succeed in establishing a name and gaining respectable practice. The number of ladies suffering from corns has not decreased, judging from his experience. Men are more liable to have corns than women, because of more severe and constant exercise. He thinks it would not do for women to work at men's feet. I think it would not be more agreeable to a woman to have a man work at her feet; and as far as propriety goes, one is no better than the other. He would discourage any lady friend of his from undertaking the business. I called on Mme. K., a French lady. Her father is a chiropodist in Paris, and what she knows of the business she learned from seeing him. She found it unpleasant at first, but now she does not mind it. She goes to the house of the patient for the same price as she operates at her own room, namely, fifty cents a corn. She has as much to do as she wants. She thinks, in other places there are openings, and a woman that thoroughly understands the business is in every way as fit and capable as a man. She knows of but one other lady in the business in this country, and she is quite aged. She thinks, by three months' study and practice with a skilful operator, one might do very well to commence for herself. She would as soon operate on a gentleman's as a lady's foot. It might be well for one commencing to practice to travel, or get custom in several towns and villages in the same vicinity. I think she would instruct any one for a satisfactory compensation. A chiropodist says, as long as people are fools enough to abuse their feet, the prospect for his employment is good. L. is the oldest practitioner in the United States, and has practised in New York for twenty years. He would be willing to instruct pupils, charging $100 for each student. He would give thorough and systematic instruction, and teach to make the material used. People have not had much confidence in ladies, because of their deficiency in surgical skill. Incompetent persons have injured the business. Times do not affect the amount of practice. There are openings in Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago. Many ladies come to L. to have their finger nails trimmed, polished, and tinted. They would no doubt be as willing to have a competent lady. =434. Cuppers and Leechers.= This business is sometimes connected with that of a barber. But in cities, some women engage in it, and, no doubt, are as competent as men. Indeed, for their own sex and children they are better fitted. Mrs. A., a cupper and leecher, told me the best way to obtain custom is to form the acquaintance of some of the best physicians, as they will then recommend you but you must always be ready to attend their patients, or they forget you. Her father was a physician, and in that way she learned the treatment of leeches. It is well to get into the favor of persons that serve as leechers at the infirmaries--they may be willing to instruct you. The Germans have killed the business in New York. Some charge but twenty-five cents for cupping, and proportionately low for leeching. Leeching is sooner learned than cupping, but there is much less of both done than formerly. Homoeopathy has interfered with their use. She used to be out all day and up all night, but now she seldom has a call; and yet she must be always at home, and ready for a call. She never goes to take a cup of tea with a friend, and is frequently called out of church. Leeching and cupping require a steady hand, and ability to use the scarificator. A person in the business must go into all kinds of sickness, without even asking what it is. Accidents give considerable custom, and in the sickly season there is most. It has become common for lads in apothecary shops to be sent out to apply leeches. When they are to be applied to any hidden part of a lady, a female leecher, of course, is preferable. Mrs. A. charges twenty-five cents a leech, if more than one is applied--if not, thirty-seven cents. For cupping she charges $1. One lady in New York charges not less than $1 apiece for applying leeches, and in some cases more. Mrs. L. thinks a lady could not make a living at the business in New York, because the Germans have killed the trade by working at half price, and, as might be supposed, do not properly understand it. A good location should be fixed upon for an office. A cupper and leecher is expected to go in all weather, and in all hours of the day and night, and in any kind of sickness. Most of it is done in fall and winter, because there is then most inflammation. Judgment must be used in the quantity of blood to be drawn. A leecher should be a good judge of the quality of leeches, and the proper treatment of them. Particular attention should be paid to the directions of the doctor in applying leeches. Mrs. L. says there is an opening for a cupper and leecher in Albany, N. Y. A friend of hers there had to pay exorbitantly for the services of a leecher. =435. Fishing-Tackle Preparers.= In Philadelphia, I was told at the store where most fishing tackle is sold, that one woman is employed by them in fastening small hooks, with silk thread, on the end of worm gut. Large hooks are prepared in the same way for other kinds of fishing. It would seem that few women know of the existence of that kind of work in Philadelphia, for when the proprietor advertises for a female hand, he never has any applicants. It is clean, healthy work, and the materials can be easily carried home. Fifty cents a day a woman earns at it, but a man $1. There is but a small demand for fishing tackle in Philadelphia, but in New York the trade is much more important. C., of New York, says most engaged in this work are English women. A fast and correct worker can earn $6 a week at it. They are paid for by the dozen. He finds women more honest than men, and therefore prefers them. Men will steal some of the line or some of the hooks. For making flies, a superior hand may earn $8 a week. Something of a mechanical turn is all that is necessary to make a good workman. They have more work of that kind done than any house in New York, and pay a better price to have it well done. Nets pay very poorly, because all the large nets are now made by machinery, and the smaller ones are made by infirm people, who do it to keep employed as much as for the compensation. When the coarse netting is done by machinery, it can be obtained at 12½ cents a fathom, and a fathom of the same kind done by hand would require a day. The peculiar system of the business is that the work is all done in winter, and the goods sold in summer. It is a luxury, and consequently dispensed with when times are hard. C. pays for putting hooks on the lines by the gross. The silk lines are manufactured in England. G. & B. employ four women who work at home in making fishing tackle and artificial flies. They are made in winter. An experienced hand can obtain $15 a week, working from six in the morning till ten at night. He thinks, there are so few in the business, workers would not give instruction without good pay. A woman may possibly earn $4 a week making nets. They employ Irishmen to weave the silk worm gut on the hooks. The three or four large fishing-tackle establishments in New York could furnish all that is needed for the United States. Mrs. R., who makes artificial flies and fishing tackle, says she has now and then earned $9 a week--a difference of $6 in the report of the clerk. But there is considerable difference in the amount of work of the different kinds; and as they are paid for by the gross, some kinds of work pay better than others. There is now considerable competition in this work, because of the many that are out of employment. Girls apply at the store, offering to do the work at forty-two cents a gross. None are prepared South or West--so there may be openings before long in St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, &c. Making artificial flies is mostly in the hands of Irishmen. =436. Fortune Tellers.= In London is a class of men and women called Druynackers, that take goods around in baskets to sell, and profess to tell fortunes. This magic power gives them influence over many silly girls, that are tempted to buy of them on that account. We cannot believe that God would vouchsafe to a mortal the power to foretell future events--to unite the present and future--time and eternity. The constitution of all nature and the teachings of the Bible confute such a belief. "The veil," says some one, "which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy. Seek not to raise the veil therefore, for sadness might be seen to shade the brow that fancy had arrayed in smiles of gladness." Wherever there are people tempted to pry into the future, there will be some to take advantage of it. Many a fortune teller sells her soul to Satan for the power of imposing the belief that she reveals future events. The prices charged by fortune tellers for their services vary from 25 cents to $5. =437. Guides and Door Attendants.= "In Paris, the box offices of all the theatres are tended by women--not only those of the evening, but those open during the day for the sale of reserved places. The box openers and audience seaters are women." "The proprietor of the London Adelphi advertised, at the opening of the last season, that his box openers, check takers, and so on, would all be women." We have seen it stated that in some of the Roman Catholic churches in Paris, ladies of the congregation pass around the plates to take up a collection. Women in some of the old countries are occupied as doorkeepers at museums and galleries of paintings. In Great Britain, many of the door attendants are females, where the houses are occupied by several families, as is often the case. In England, some women are employed as pew openers. To come nearer home. Those who have visited the Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia, will remember the pleasant face of the janitress who receives the tickets of the visitors, and that an obliging young woman checked the canes and parasols. In New York, most of the picture galleries have female doorkeepers. =438. Lodging and Boarding House Keepers.= Patience, a spirit of forgiveness, and an ability to overlook faults, are very necessary for gliding along smoothly in this difficult and often ungrateful calling. A cheerful disposition, too, is almost indispensable, for everybody likes smiles better than frowns. A love of society is desirable. It is a principle that has been wisely implanted in the human heart, and one that affords numerous and important advantages to mankind. It is one that tends to produce a desire for the comfort and happiness of those around. Yet too great a fondness for society may cause a neglect of duty and a love of gossipping. It is sometimes the case that light, frivolous talk and too great fondness for excitement characterize the keepers and inmates of a boarding house. Yet such, of course, is not always the case. Keeping a boarding house is an office that will give to one of a kind and benevolent nature a good opportunity of exercising her native qualities. Sympathy closely binds such to the unfortunate, and pleasures are doubled by participating with others. Whether those who keep boarding houses happen to have by nature more idle curiosity than others, or whether the business is one calculated to create and foster such a quality, I cannot say, but favor the latter opinion. The tempers of those who keep boarding houses are apt to be very much tried. They need great firmness and uniformity in deportment. The price paid for boarding is usually proportioned to the comforts enjoyed, but not always. In early times, houses of entertainment for travellers were kept mostly by women. In a region of country where hunting and fishing are good, or the scenery fine, and the roads pleasant, ladies often accommodate, for the summer and autumn, families from the city. It is a very general fashion for people in the cities to go during the warmest weather to the country, seaside, or springs. Boarding house keepers usually find it most profitable to keep a large house, as only one kitchen and parlor are needed, and many other expenses attending a house are proportionately diminished. Good boarding houses for workwomen are scarce in all large cities, particularly New York. Most keepers of boarding houses prefer men, because they are less about the house. I have been told that it is very difficult for work girls to get board in well kept houses. I think several respectable boarding houses should be established in large cities by wealthy and influential ladies, or religious societies, for working women. In New York are some houses where none but merchants' clerks board. Why might not one or more be established for shop girls? A list, as given by employers, of the prices paid by work girls for their board, I will annex at the close of this work; but I would add that comfortable rooms and wholesome food cannot be furnished _in cities_ at these prices, and afford a reasonable profit to the keepers of the houses. And I would further say, the prices paid women for their labor does not enable them to pay higher rates for their board. =439. Makers of Artificial Eyes.= The science of supplying defects in the physique is such that an artificial man can almost be manufactured. Artificial teeth, hair, eyes, ears, noses, chins, palates, arms, hands, and legs, are some of the missing parts of the frame that can be supplied. In the census report of Great Britain for 1850, we find four women under the head of artificial limb and eye makers. G., of New York, knows two or three ladies in Paris, and one in London, that are engaged in making the whites of glass eyes. G. may be able to give employment to a lady in making the white of the eyes, in a few months. It is done by blowing the glass, and requires but a short time to learn. He says he would pay a woman well for the work. I called at D.'s, a manufacturer of glass eyes, and saw D.'s son, a youth about eighteen years of age. He says there are but two other makers of glass eyes in the United States, and only two or three in London. D. spent fourteen years in London and Dublin, manufacturing eyes at the infirmaries, and giving them away. He did it to get in practice. He prefers to insert the eyes himself. They move as a natural eye does, and certainly were very natural in color. He sells them at from $10 to $20. Some physicians furnish their patients with them, charging $60 or $70 for one, and so making a handsome profit. When a person that does not understand the form of the glass eye and the anatomy of the human eye inserts one, the inside of the eye is liable to become inflamed, and proud flesh is formed. D. spent a fortune experimenting. It requires an extensive knowledge of chemicals, and the effect produced on them by heat. A small furnace is used for burning the colors, in the glass. Some people would give thousands of dollars to know the chemicals used, and their proportions. The young man says his father has never even imparted to him the information. Some people that wear glass eyes take them out at night. D. judges of the shape and size required by merely looking at the remaining eye of the individual. We think a competent person in this business might establish himself at the South. I called on an Englishman who has been at the business twenty years in New York. He is over sixty years of age, and has been in the business fifty years; learned it with his father in London. He had a number of certificates on his walls. He says a woman would go into a decline directly, if exposed to the heat of a furnace in baking eyes. It is necessary to stay in the oven while the change is taking place in the chemicals. In summer it is intolerable. His son would not continue the business on that account. He says the French eyes are made of glass, covered with porcelain, and break easily; the white is made by being blown. The English are not blown, and are made entirely of porcelain. He says they will not break unless very cold water is applied in bathing the eyes (a common fashion in the United States). He has had eyes worn for a year without being taken out. He takes the dimensions of the eye by fitting in different sized ones. If an eye is too small, it will slip out, fall, and break. It requires long experience to become proficient in making glass eyes; but it is a beautiful art, and not inappropriate to competent women. =440. Artificial Limbs.= We had thought, perhaps, a few women could be employed in this vocation, and accordingly addressed a circular to a gentleman so occupied. He thinks no women are engaged in this business in the United States or any other country; but says they could be, and the reason they are not is, there is not enough of the kind of work connected with it, that could be done by women, to employ them. "It requires some men one year to learn, some five years, and some never can learn. It depends on natural ability and skill. The qualifications required are skill, judgment, sobriety, morality, pleasing address, dignity, imitation, industry, love of the beautiful, and anatomy. The prospect of work is good; superior workmen will succeed. The best seasons for work are from September 1st to July 1st. There is a demand for the work in California. Large seaport towns are not good localities--patients generally charity cases. Inland cities surrounded by a populous country, the best localities--patients better able to pay." =441. Artificial Teeth.= It is said that 3,000,000 artificial teeth are made in the United States annually. The materials are all found in the United States. Each tooth passes through ten different processes. I called at J. & W.'s, Philadelphia. They employ sixty-two girls, all American. They pay a learner, after two or three weeks' practice, according to the quality and quantity of her work. Their girls earn from $1.50 to $7 per week; average $4.50. They have but one hand earning $7. They would be glad to get more such at the same price, for it is difficult to get good hands. They have to turn away a great many applicants. The prospect is good to learners. They keep their hands all the year. The business has advanced rapidly during the last few years, and is likely to continue increasing. There are constant improvements in the business. Consequently a hand may be always improving. They will not receive a girl without reference, or credentials of moral character. They do not want any but intelligent girls, for the hand is guided by the mind. There are three or four processes carried on in different rooms. They work at the establishment, and never carry work home, unless a mother or sister is sick and requires their attention. It is a light, genteel business; and one well adapted to women of some education and intelligence. A lady in the cars told me she knew a lady who received $7 a week for making teeth in Baltimore. She came to Philadelphia, but could not get as good wages; so she returned to Baltimore. The New York Teeth Manufacturing Company pay from $3 to $5 a week. Learners are paid $2.50 a week, from the first, for six months; and then, if competent, paid more. The work is not unhealthy. Men average $10, but their branch is different; the work is heavier. It requires about two months to learn, in one department. Neither men nor women are often taught more than one branch. All seasons are alike, and they are never out of work. The supply of hands is greater than the demand everywhere. Small hands, nimble fingers, and good eyesight are important to a worker. In the establishment of R., New York, four processes in the making of artificial teeth are performed by women. Some branches require a longer time to learn than others. It takes six months to learn any one perfectly. R. pays $3 a week to his learners, and $5 a week to experienced workers. Careful manipulation is the most that is needed. Judging from the increase in the last five years, the prospect for employment is excellent; yet the openings in New York are limited. Women are the best workers, but some prefer men. The only manufacturers are in New York, Philadelphia, Hartford, and Bridgeport. It is desirable to have careful workers. B. had a girl ruin $500 worth of teeth for him. The parts performed by women are cleaning the moulds, setting the pins, filling the moulds with the tooth materials, and trimming, and putting on the pink color answering the place of gums; also placing them on slides preparatory to baking and carding. =442. Nurses for the Sick.= Attention to this subject has been awakened during the last few years, by the heroic conduct of Miss Florence Nightingale and the ladies who went with her to the Crimea to wait on the sick and wounded. When the people of England proposed making some testimonial of regard to Florence Nightingale, she proposed that, with the means expended in doing so, they should establish an institution for the training of nurses. We would not fail to notice a fact that reflects much credit on Miss Anne M. Andrews, of Syracuse, N. Y. While the yellow fever raged in Norfolk, Va., she left her home and went alone to Norfolk, devoting her time and services to the sick of all conditions. She received the medal that is usually awarded to a physician on such occasions, and the citizens talked of placing a statue in a conspicuous part of their city, as a memorial of her goodness and their indebtedness. In Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Halle, hospitals have been established for the education of nurses. In Germany, there has been one for many years. A number of good ladies connected with that institution are now in Pittsburg, where they form an order of deaconesses. Some take care of the sick, and some have charge of an orphan asylum. St. Luke's Hospital, New York, is under Episcopal supervision, and connected with it is an order of Protestant deaconesses, who attend the sick. Most of the hospitals in this country have been established by the Roman Catholic Church, and are under its guidance. We think Protestant hospitals for the sick are greatly needed, especially in the Western and Southern cities--Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. It may be that some exist in those cities; but, if so, we think they must be quite limited in extent. Asylums for sick children are established in some of our largest cities. A number exist in Europe. A nurse should have a kind, sympathizing nature, good health, strong nerves, great powers of endurance, ability to sit up all night, and bear exposure to extremes of temperature. In addition, she needs a good memory, that she may give the right medicine at the proper time. If she has not, she should commit to paper such orders, and consult them frequently. A long and thorough training is needed by an attendant on the sick. Great self-control is necessary, for many persons are very impatient in sickness. A bright, cheerful spirit should be cultivated. A sweet voice is pleasant in a nurse, because a sick person is sensitively alive to the smallest matters. It requires a woman of education, consideration, and delicacy of feeling, to be an acceptable nurse to people of refinement; and such a one must become attached to those she serves, if treated kindly. To make a kind and sympathizing nurse, one must have waited, in sickness, upon those she loved dearly. A nurse should use the precaution of wearing camphor, or something of that nature, on her person, particularly where there is contagious fever. The room should be large and well ventilated, and preventives used to keep the infectious air from spreading. A better class of women are employed to wait on the sick than formerly. The infirmary for women, established by Dr. Blackwell, in New York, is designed partly as a school for nurses. There is also an institution in Philadelphia for training them. Nurses earn from $4 to $10 a week. Some wait only on male patients, some only on ladies; some attend incurables, but the most serve in general sickness. Mrs. B. gets $7 and sometimes $8 a week and her board for monthly nursing. She knows some that get $10 a week. She stays in the room with the lady and her infant, and takes care of and waits on them. When food is to be prepared, the child's clothes washed, or anything of that kind done, she rings a bell and gives orders to a servant. Mrs. B., another ladies' nurse, charges from $8 to $10 a week, according to the amount of rest she loses at night. She told me that most good physicians keep a list of the best nurses. A nurse is expected to be able to make all the nice dishes required by her patient. In most small places, she is not expected to have the assistance of any one else, unless the sickness is very protracted, or the patient is delirious. In some places, a nurse is expected to close the eyes of the dying, and wash them after death, and perform any other service of that nature. But it is not uncommon for an undertaker's wife to be sent for to perform these duties, and take a measure for a shroud. For these services she is paid from $3 to $5. A nurse runs the risk of contracting a contagious disease; but, if the system is in a good condition, there is not much danger. As long as people are sick, which will be as long as there are any, nurses will be employed. Of course, there is most to do in sickly seasons. I called on Mrs. P., who charges $5 a week for her services. She does all that is required for the patient, except give medical advice. She would rather wait on men than women, as they are sure either to pay better wages or make presents. As she has had children of her own, and raised them all, she feels competent to take care of children in sickness. It is well for a woman to have a home to go to, when relieved from the labor and anxiety of nursing. =443. Steamboat and Railroad News Venders.= Boys and men are much more frequently engaged in the sale of newspapers, than women and girls. They are more disposed to sell edibles. We have seen some little girls selling papers on the streets of New York and Philadelphia; but we do not remember ever to have seen women selling papers at railroad depots or on steamboats, though many are seen with baskets of sweetmeats. Many, perhaps, cannot read, and do not wish to sell papers with whose contents they are unacquainted. Others may think they will be less likely to make any profit by their sale. Some women sell papers at stands on the streets of New York, and about the hotel doors. I saw a newspaper boy with an armful of _Ledgers_. He had sixty that he had bought at three and a half cents apiece, and was selling at four cents apiece. A girl that sells newspapers at the door of a hotel on Broadway, told me that she and her mother take turns about in being at the stand, and the profits of their joint sales are from 50 cents to $1 a day. She has several Sunday customers, to whose houses she takes ordered papers. =444. Street Musicians.= Organ grinders and street harpers have ever found a fair representation in the softer sex. Such representation is, however, among our foreign population--German and Italian, mostly. Last summer, in the streets of Philadelphia, might be seen, from day to day, a German woman with an organ on her back, and a baby in a hand-wagon, going from street to street, stopping now and then under a window to play. And in New York was another, whose organ was placed in a small barrow, which she wheeled through the streets of the city. We have seen two old women going through the streets of New York, one playing an organ, the other a tambourine; and a few days since, we observed one drawing very creditable music from a violin. Girls in the Swiss costume are sometimes seen walking from place to place, with a harp and tambourine. Some people say that, by the encouragement of street musicians, we encourage idleness. Most such people would treat a musician with scorn, and close the door in their faces, but step out where they could enjoy the music and save their pennies; or they would stand behind closed shutters, that their neighbors might not think them capable of having such vulgar taste as listening to a street musician. Now, we may encourage a disposition to roam, but scarcely idleness. This propensity to roam may be unfavorable to the cultivation of business habits; but the class of listless Italians who engage in it could never become business people. In the first place, harpers, violinists, and flutists must depend on their own skill and knowledge of music, to perform. They must prepare for their particular vocation, as others do. Those who play on organs, harmonias, and similar instruments, where no knowledge of music is necessary, we must admit, require no training; but walking, as most musicians do, from eight to twenty miles a day, is in itself laborious. We have been told that in New York most street musicians are employed by two or three individuals, who furnish the instruments, and allow the carriers to have so much of the proceeds. In older countries, there is a greater variety in the instruments used by street musicians. "There are sometimes fifty persons engaged in the sale of second-hand musical instruments on the streets of London." =445. Tavern Keepers.= The keeping of taverns in small villages, or on the roadside in the country, furnishes some with the means of gaining a livelihood. Women engaged in this business should be wives whose husbands can attend to receiving travellers, settling bills, ordering horses, and such duties, or widows with sons old enough to do so. It is laborious enough for a woman to superintend the table and bed rooms, and the man must be in wretched health, or good for nothing, that cannot attend to the outdoor duties. Much money has been accumulated by some people keeping taverns in the Western country, where fifty cents is the usual price for a meal. Indeed, the accommodations are often such that a person cannot be rendered comfortable, and yet the price paid would command all the comforts of a good boarding house in a large town. It is the same case with the hotels, or saloons, at some railroad depots. At others an abundance of life's good things is furnished. The tavern keepers of London have a pension society. =446. Travelling Companions.= Travelling alone, is most favorable to thought, but not to pleasure. How much more we enjoy a lovely scene in nature, or the novel and brilliant sentiments of an author, when in company with one to whom we can talk freely! Good conversational powers, and an ability to appreciate the beautiful, are desirable in a travelling companion. Conversation should flow in a free, easy, unrestrained current. Will it not promote the entertainment and edification of rational, responsible, and immortal beings, to engage in wholesome conversation--to exchange sentiments in regard to books and the improvements of the age--to learn of the heavens above and the earth beneath? In talking with strangers, might not much be learned of their various countries, and a thousand things pertaining to them? Conversation exercises the imagination, gives play to a talent of invention, and strengthens the reasoning faculty. It sharpens thought as fermentation does wine. It tends, also, to restore the diseased imagination of the secluded and morbidly sensitive. MISTRESSES AND DOMESTICS. =447. Mistresses.= We scarcely know that it is in place to say anything to this large and influential class of ladies. Yet, as we treat of servants, and endeavor to impress their duty upon them, we hope we may be excused for saying a few words to those who have charge of them. From the relation existing between a mistress and her servants, the mistress is supposed to have had superior mental and moral advantages. Then let that strongest of all incentives, a good example, be given. In some cases, the only good influence likely to be exerted over the servant, is by the mistress. No woman of right feelings can look upon her servants as mere beasts of burden. She knows and feels that they have souls, and are accountable beings; that each one is capable of extremes of misery and happiness. Should they not therefore receive kind and careful instruction in what is right? If the same regular system of domestic service were employed in this country that exists in Europe, housekeepers would be saved much labor. There, each department, even of kitchen labor, is distinct, and a servant is promoted according to her industry and improvement. But the expense of a large number of servants is one that most people in our country feel unable to support. Difficulties often arise from labor being required of servants that they have not stipulated to perform; and no definite understanding as to the extent of the privilege of receiving visitors is likely to prove a source of trouble. The thousand petty annoyances to which a mistress is subject, renders it necessary that she have a perfect command of her temper. A mistress must make great allowance for ignorance of what is right and wrong, for untamed passions, strong appetites, unimproved reason, and want of self-control. Many domestics are foreigners--ignorant, dull, and unacquainted with our language. We are sorry to say some mistresses expect their servants to be faultless, when they themselves, with their superior advantages, ar e not so. Mistresses are responsible, to some extent, for the spiritual, as well as the mental and physical good of their servants. They are in charge of immortal souls. The tendency of their influence and example must be either elevating or depressing. The quiet of the Sabbath, we think, might be granted to those in most departments of domestic labor. Cooks, we think, might prepare a dinner on Saturday, to be served cold on Sunday, with tea, if the weather be cold, or the habits of the people require it. Sabbaths have been called "milestones in the journey of life," and has not the poor cook, steaming over the fire day after day, need to count the milestones in the journey of her toilsome life? Says Mrs. Graves, in her "Woman in America:" "Is it not strange, that, among all the societies of the day, not one should have been formed for the intellectual and moral improvement of domestic servants, and for instructing them in household employments?" At the House of Protection, a Roman Catholic institution, New York, girls and women of good character, out of employment, or strangers in the city, are received on application. The girls are taught to wash, iron, do housework, sew, and embroider. Would that the Protestants would imitate this noble charity more fully! I am happy to add that in connection with the Child's Nursery (a Protestant institution), Fifty-first street, New York, has been commenced a servants' school. Young girls taken into the institution receive a year's instruction in washing, ironing, house cleaning, and sewing. =448. Domestics.= We think an important work of benevolence presents itself in Free States. It is providing homes for servant girls, when they are out of employment or sick. Many of them are in a strange land, unacquainted with the language and the ways of the people. When sick, some of them are immediately sent off by their mistresses to save the trouble of waiting on them. The negroes of the Slave States, when sick, are (if they have kind masters and mistresses) as tenderly cared for as any member of the family, and are never without a home in health or in sickness. That lonely and wretched feeling of having no place to consider home, is not their experience. Connected with this subject, arises one to which we have never yet given much attention, but which forces itself on our mind as one calling for attention from the benevolent: it is the establishment of institutions for the afflicted portion of the colored population, both in Slave and Free States. We refer to the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the insane. We know of no separate institution for such, and no arrangement whatever, with the exception of limited arrangements for the insane, in connection with institutions for white people. Now and then we hear people advocate the old plan of binding orphans and destitute children. Whether that would be advantageous, would depend altogether on the kind of people to whom they were bound. Some servants soon fail, and are not fit for service more than a few years. It arises mostly from their exposure to cold and dampness without being properly clothed and fed, and sometimes from a too free indulgence in the pleasures of the palate, particularly that of the consuming liquid which burns out life and sense. The hard work that most Irish women can perform, and the large number in this country, have made them the most numerous domestics in the Free States. They are generally employed as maids of all work. I think the number of American girls going into service is increasing. The majority of white female domestics in this country are single women, from sixteen to thirty-five years of age. In Providence, R. I., a census was taken in 1855, stating, among other particulars, the number of American families having servants, the number in foreign families, and the aggregate; but the number of white domestics has never been fully taken in the United States, even when collecting statistics for the census. A short time ago, we counted in the New York _Herald_ eight columns of situations wanted, three fourths of which were by female domestics. It shows what a surplus there is of domestics in the cities, that no doubt could find situations through the country, and in the villages. The majority of female domestics would rather starve in New York than go to the country, or even little towns around for fair wages. I think it arises from the fear that they will not find associates. A social feeling is natural, but should be controlled by circumstances. With many, the great drawback is the fear that they may not be able to have the privileges of their own particular church; and still another is that they may not find the place to which they go, or are sent, exactly what it is represented to be, and the expense that would be incurred by a return. Domestics are more respected in the country, and treated more as members of the family, than domestics in towns. The preference is usually given, in towns and cities, to domestics from the country, because of their superior strength and better health. "For a person to be a good servant, there are three requisites: first, she must have professional skill in her calling; secondly, she must be a good woman; thirdly, she must have feelings of kindliness and regard to her master and mistress." In 1853, domestics were receiving wages in San Francisco proportioned to the prices paid for everything else. Cooks got $100 a month, and board; house servants, from $35 to $70, and board. Chambermaids $40 to $70, and board. Prices have fallen since 1853 in California, but good female domestics can now earn there from $25 to $30 a month besides board. "In most towns through our country domestics get from $1.25 to $2.50 a week, and board. We give the rates of wages of domestics in New York (1857) at the intelligence offices. Maids of all work, very raw, $4 per month; average, $5; good, $6 to $7. Chambermaids--good, $6. Cooks--good, $7 to $8--extra $12 to $16. Laundresses $8 to $10. The cooks who obtain the highest rates, sometimes reaching $20, are employed mostly in hotels or private families, in New York. Five or six years' education in a restaurant, during which period the pupil is supporting herself, will thus often add seventy-five per cent. to the market value." I have had numberless statements from different parts of Free States that it was almost impossible to obtain good domestics. I have just taken up a paper in which I read: "Female domestics are scarce in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and obtain employment readily at good prices in almost all the river towns." More particularly are female domestics scarce, where there are factories. Girls, especially American girls, prefer to work in factories to being servants, as they think it more honorable, and it secures to them more time--in short, they are more their own mistresses. =449. Chambermaids.= "Of the 200,000 female servants in England, the largest in number, the shortest in life, and of course the worst paid are the general housemaids, or unhappy servants of all work." Chambermaids in the United States may be classed under three heads: those in hotels, those in private families, and those on steamboats. The business of a chambermaid in a hotel, or on a steamboat, is an occupation affording variety in frequent change of faces. Of course, prices and conditions are stipulated for. Many get $20 a month, and do the washing of the boat, that is, the table and bed linen. Others get $25, $30, and $35 a month. On small boats, they are expected to do the washing of the boat, but in some cases have a woman hired while in port to assist them. On large boats, or small packet boats, there are generally two chambermaids. The first chambermaid attends to receiving lady passengers, seeing that they are furnished with berths, and giving them such attention as they need. She cleans the state rooms, and wakes any lady passengers that are to land in the night. The second chambermaid does the washing and ironing. In some cases, the washing is sent up from the boats, while in port, to laundries. But clothes are thought to be injured in that way, and the plan is not so popular as while the novelty lasted. Most of the rivers of the United States are either too low to be navigable, or are frozen over, part of the year; so, constant employment in that way cannot be found. The first chambermaid on the steamboat E. received $20 a month. Her business was to wait on the ladies. She had several hours' time that she could devote to sewing for herself. The second chambermaid did the washing of the boat, and received $15 per month. A steamboat chambermaid told me she averages $20 a month (and board, of course); but, in addition to her services as chambermaid, is required to do the washing for the boat; that is, the sheets, table linen, and towels. In families, the prices for chambermaids are about the same as at hotels, and of course the duties are pretty much the same, except that in families all of a chambermaid's time is expected. In a hotel, a chambermaid is often through her work in the early part of the afternoon, and has several hours as her own. We think it advisable for a servant to keep a place with good people, even if her wages are less, rather than with more selfish and more remunerative people. The first mentioned would feel an interest in, and be more ready and willing to do for a servant in sickness or distress. Besides, they would be more apt to keep a watch over her welfare, should circumstances intervene to bring about a separation. It does not answer well for servants to move about much from place to place; it is likely to create suspicion of unfaithfulness or want of qualification. Yet, if they are not comfortable and satisfied, I would advise them to move, if confident they have a prospect of bettering their condition. The usual wages of chambermaids in cities are from $1.50 to $2.50 per week. In the Northern cities, white chambermaids are rather better paid than in Southern, as colored servants are preferred in the South. For doing housework by the day women receive in New York, fifty, seventy-five cents, and $1; for cleaning stores, they often receive $1.25 per day. Tidy, honest American girls will not find much difficulty in getting situations. If every family in New York city would take a girl, and either instruct her thoroughly or have her instructed in one branch of domestic service, there would not be such universal complaint of bad servants. In Paris, men are employed in some hotels as chambermaids. In a newspaper, we met with the following paragraph some time ago; "Females are so scarce in some of the interior towns of California, that men have to be employed to do the chamberwork." =450. Cooks.= I know of several benevolent institutions in Philadelphia and New York where poor women are furnished with employment. From most of them sewing is given out; but, in a few, housework is given to those who cannot sew. A school of cookery is now in operation in London. The object is to give instruction, gratis, to the lower classes, in preparing the most common articles of food in general use. It was established by Miss Burdett Coutts. To acquire the higher branches of the art requires much time and practice. Much of the nutriment of food is lost in cooking. Health depends much on the kind of food eaten, and the way in which it is prepared. Simple diet is most healthy; yet what contributes to the nourishment of one person may not to another. Persons can better learn what is nutritious and beneficial to them in health than it were possible for an Æsculapius to prescribe. Eating too hastily and too hurriedly, when the mind is excited and agitated, is one cause of bad health. The modes of preparing food, in the most wholesome way, should be a matter of study and interest to all engaged in a matter where health is so much at stake. Articles of food that contribute to the nourishment of every part of the body should be used. Children should have not only wholesome food, but as much as nature craves, when the system is in a state of health. A morbid appetite, of course, should be regulated. Some cooks devote themselves exclusively to the making and baking of pastry. At hotels they command a good price. In New York and Philadelphia, cooks receive from $1.50 to $5 a week, but in the small towns adjoining do not get more than from $1 to $1.50. Much of the success of servants will depend upon themselves. They may rest assured they will be able to please most families if they are good-natured, honest, truthful, active, and willing to do what they can. They will need patience. They should consider there are many trials, cares, and griefs attendant on those occupying a more responsible station. Punctuality is a desirable item in a cook. A skilful cook, of taste and experience, can, at any time, for reasonable wages, obtain a situation in one of the Northern cities. Hotel cooks are most frequently in demand, and receive from $12 to $25. A woman who cooks for a saloon frequented by gentlemen only, in a business part of New York, told me that she goes at 8 in the morning and remains, generally, until 2 o'clock next morning, when she goes home. She is paid $12 a month for her work, having her meals besides. A colored man, a public cook, told me he employs two or three women to assist him in getting up parties. He pays them from $6 to $7 a week. He loans plate for parties, charging for plated knives twenty-five cents a dozen, and the same price for forks, and thirty-seven or fifty cents for a basket. He keeps some articles, but hires most from another party. Sometimes he will receive three or four orders a day; then again he may not have one for two weeks. It is a very irregular business. He prepares lunches for bankers and political men, mostly; but finds it inconvenient, as these lunches are often given in their offices, and he prepares the dishes at home, and must have them warm when served up. In some offices, he can have an apartment for that purpose; in others, he cannot. A colored woman, who goes on a propeller in summer, and does the cooking for ten men, told me she receives $19 a month. The boats at New York seldom stop running longer than three months in the year. She thinks the trouble in New York is, you cannot have one kind of work regularly. In Germany, most of the women, in every class of society, learn to cook. In Stuttgart, a wealthy man died, leaving a certain sum, the interest of which goes to a given number of the best hotel cooks, to teach a limited number of young women the art. In some cities in Germany, ladies pay something to pastry cooks at hotels and restaurants for instruction in cooking. =451. Dining-Room Waiters.= It would be well, had we such laws as England, for the protection and rights of servants. There, a servant cannot have her character scandalized, her good name maligned, or her faithfulness as a servant belied. Neither may a servant say aught that is false against her mistress. Scandalizing becomes, oftentimes, a curse in our Free States, and consequently self-respect, with servants, becomes, to a great extent, a defunct virtue. Nor is the fault confined to one party. Both are often culpable--mistress and servant. A good character is the best capital a servant can possess. Servants have an opportunity of improving themselves, and gaining much practical information from intercourse with their mistresses while in the discharge of their duties. If worthy American girls would get situations as domestics in respectable families, they would be likely to fare better than by working in shops; for they would lay by more money, secure the interests and good wishes of their employers, and be more certain of lasting employment. A servant should be active and quick in motion, to perform well the duties of a waiter. In 1854, from seventeen to twenty-four white girls were employed as dining-room waiters at the Delavan House, Albany, N. Y. Their wages were from $5 to $7, in one or two cases $8, a calendar month. The wages of men for similar service were from $14 to $20. The ages of the women were from seventeen to twenty-four. They dressed uniformly in calico, and were under a head waiter--a man. At that time, women had been employed at the establishment about two years and a half. The result was entirely satisfactory in every respect. A gentleman inquired of the proprietor, after he had employed them two years, if there was any inferiority to men's service, and was informed there was not any. They were more quiet than men, and less troublesome. In this time, only four had left the house of their own accord, and then to be married. When more hands were needed, there was no difficulty in getting them. It was apprehended that improprieties might occur, from the gallantries of the gentlemen. No difficulty of the kind had been experienced. It was suggested that it might be otherwise in a liquor house. In April, 1860, we had a few lines from the proprietor of the Delavan House, saying he found women would not answer for first-class hotels, where the crowd is very great, as the work is too severe. He changed the plan of having them in 1858. =452. Ladies' Maids.= Some of the most wealthy or self-indulgent ladies have a female attendant to dress and wait on them, but it is not so common in the United States as in older and more wealthy countries. In Slave States, a colored woman, graceful and good natured, is often set apart from the family servants for this purpose. The difficulty that attends the taking of a colored servant in travelling, sometimes calls for a white attendant to act in this capacity. The business is light, and brings good wages. A maid should endeavor to secure a place with a lady that is amiable and patient. She will find ability to perform the services of a lady's hair dresser a valuable acquisition. =453. Nurses for Children.= None should enter this occupation unless they have a love for children. It requires affection and patience. Added to this, is needed a degree of mild firmness that children find it difficult to resist. It requires strength too, and a lady had better, if possible, furnish a grown nurse for her child. Nurses receive as wages from $1 to $1.25 per week. Wet nurses receive higher wages. Being able to speak the French and German languages correctly, is in some places a desirable qualification. Fashionable and educated people, who desire to have their children early instructed in the languages, are willing to pay a better price for such a nurse. The habit of nursing children is indicated, in both mothers and nursery maids, by the right shoulder being larger and more elevated than the left. C. thinks it would be well for young American girls to devote themselves to domestic service--thinks it a misplaced pride which prevents their doing so. Many would certainly be much better off in every respect than they now are, and, if their affairs were well conducted, would save money. =454. Saloon Attendants.= "This class of labor is performed by young men and girls. Although the girls are preferred in some places, and do make most excellent waitresses, their remuneration is not as high as that paid to men. In some cases the men get as high as $14 a month; in most cases, however, they do not receive more than $12 a month. The girls get paid from $8 to $10 a month, varying according to experience. The hours employed do not exceed, in most cases, ten per day. These rates are exclusive of board and lodging. Where lodgings are not provided, an allowance is made for the purpose." The ladies that T. employs in his saloon, board in the International--a hotel connected with the saloon and confectionery. He pays them $6 a month, besides their board. M., Broadway, pays those that stay in his confectionery $12 a month, and their board. In the northern part of France, women are employed on some of the packet boats as table waiters. They are young and pretty, and misconduct among them is very rare. =455. Washers, Ironers, and Manglers.= The plan of washing by steam is said to have been practised many years back in France. There were, some years ago, over 300 different models of washing machines at the Patent Office in Washington. Some families have their washing done by hand, some by machinery, and some at laundries. Where washing, ironing, and mangling are carried on extensively, it is mostly by men, but _women are employed to do the labor_. It is thought by some that clothes are injured when washed at laundries. We do not know whether it originates from the plan of washing, or the carelessness of those employed. In New York is a public washing house, where, for four cents an hour, steam, water, and troughs can be used for washing clothes. At the same price, the privileges of the wringing machine, the drying room, and the ironing room are granted. A mangler costs from $50 to $100. Those that are operated on by steam cost more, and are often used in laundries. A woman told me that she is paid fifteen cents a dozen for mangling sheets and table cloths. She can mangle eight or nine dozen pieces a day, and so earn from $1.20 to $1.25. It takes but a very short time to become expert. Strong arms and a strong back are more necessary than anything else. She could work her mangle all day, but it would be a hard day's work. She has much work in summer, before people go to the country. The prices given for family washing and ironing by the dozen, range from fifty cents to $1. Others make arrangements by the parcel, at so much a week or month. Those employed in ironing receive good wages. Where new shirts are done up for stores, the best prices are given. A woman employed in an establishment of the kind in Cincinnati, told me that she received for her work, which was ironing the bosoms of new shirts for stores, $7 a week. She ironed thirty or forty a day, averaging one, I think, every twelve minutes. I called on Mrs. S., who has a laundry. Women in that branch are well paid, both principals and employées. Some of the laundry keepers in New York go down to Castle Garden and get fresh emigrant girls. They give them their board until they can wash right well (for about four weeks), then pay them by the week or the piece. If by the week, $6 a month and their board, or allow them $1.50 a week to pay their board. They instruct some hands in ironing, if they need hands in that department. When qualified, they pay three cents a shirt for ironing; or, if by the week, 4.75. It is most satisfactory generally to both parties to pay by the piece. The best doers up of muslin and cotton goods are the French. New shirts are sent from Boston, Philadelphia, &c., to New York, to be done up. The openings for ironers are good, and the work pays well. A right active, skilful hand can iron fifty shirts a day, and so earn $1.50. When women are employed by the week, they are required to iron twenty-five shirts a day, and, if brisk, may get through by one or two o'clock. Mrs. S. charges $1.50 a dozen for store shirts, and $1 for others. Washers earn $12 a month; ironers, $21; and starchers, $14. The girls employed in laundries are mostly Irish, with strong muscular power. A shirt manufacturer told me that ironers of new shirts are much needed. He cannot obtain enough. Ironers can learn the business in three months. Ironers earn from $5 to $8 per week. I called on A. G., who charges from $1 to $1.50 a dozen for doing up new shirts, according to the quality and the work on them. She pays her ironers from $10 to $12 a month. I called at B.'s laundry. The proprietor and his family are Americans. They do only store shirts. They employ more than one hundred hands, who are boarded and paid by the month. Learners receive their board. Ironers are paid best. Those that work fast get through earliest in the day, each one having a certain number to do. I called at another laundry, where I was told all the girls receive $1.75 per week for board money. While learning, they are paid their board money, and more, if their services are worth it. The washers are paid $12 a month, and ironers from $10 to $25, boarding themselves. Some are fast, and some are slow; some smart, and some stupid. The ironers are paid 2¼ cents a piece for common shirts, 2½ for fine ones. The proprietor says experienced ironers are so scarce, you never find a good one in an intelligence office. If a laundryman fails, a good ironer can go to another laundry and get a place at once. At another place, I was told their washers receive $5 a month and their board. Ironers are paid by the month, and required to do so many in that time. She corroborated the statement of the other that a good ironer need never want a place. I heard a washerwoman say that, as the system is very much relaxed by washing, the vapor from the suds and soiled clothes renders it unhealthy. H. pays ironers $10 a month and board; $1.75 a week. Some he boards in his own house. An ironer is expected to iron from twenty to thirty a day, according to the contract. It requires a long time to iron well. Almost all washers and ironers are Irish girls--they are stronger and quicker in their motions. He has washing done only for the New York stores, because the time and trouble of going to steamboats for those from other places and returning them, are more than he wishes. MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS, AND WORKERS THEREIN. =456. Backgammon-Board Finishers.= We called at L.'s backgammon-board manufactory, and saw a girl about thirteen years old, who has worked at the business for one year. She pastes the morocco on the back of the boards, and lays the gold leaf on, which is passed under a press, and receives, from a man who has charge of it, the ornamental gilding. They used to employ girls, and paid $4 a week, working from 7 to 6 o'clock--eleven hours. L. does not take learners--it is too much trouble. K. used to employ girls in finishing boards, but those he had were not steady and reliable. =457. Balloon Makers.= Large balloons are stitched up by sewing machines. Prof. L.'s required several days' work. Prof. W.'s sister and niece make both cotton and silk balloons. They have the substance put on the silk by men with a brush. They think that part of the work would be rather hard on women, because of the stooping and bending. =458. Billiard-Table Finishers.= I saw G., who employs one woman to make and put on the billiard bags at the corners and sides. He pays her such wages for her work that she can by industry earn $1.50 a day. He does not know of any woman that makes it a regular business, but thinks, if a woman could engage all that kind of work to be had at the billiard manufactories in New York city, it would be a good business, and probably pay about $3 a day. It is very easy work, and would require but a few weeks' practice. Besides, it would not require any capital, as the manufacturers furnish the materials. They pay twenty-five cents for making a cover of unbleached domestic, when two seams are sewed and it is hemmed at the ends. The cloth that is fastened on the table could not be put on by a woman, as it requires too much strength. Netting the bags is done by hand. I was told by a manufacturer that two women could do all the work for New York. =459. Bill Posters.= This is a business confined to cities. W. heard of one woman that went through New York distributing circulars for some benevolent institution. I do not see why a woman might not be so employed. An immense quantity of waste paper is sold in London to grocers, butchers, fishmongers, poulterers, and others that need paper for wrapping up the articles they sell to purchasers. =460. Block Cutters.= Block cutters prepare blocks of wood for the coloring of wall paper. A block about eighteen inches square and two inches thick is made perfectly smooth. The pattern is then traced on it with a lead pencil. It is then cut with chisels, which are of all sizes and many shapes. Each one, as required, is driven into the wood with a mallet. It requires considerable physical strength, but is remunerative when sufficient orders are given to keep one constantly employed. Each color, and even shade, in wall paper, requires a separate block. It is the same case where wooden blocks are used for printing calicoes. The wall-paper establishments in Philadelphia are the most extensive in the United States. A lady in Philadelphia, engaged in the business, told me that she got about $10 a week, working ten hours a day, but that she had not orders enough to keep her constantly employed. At N. & C.'s paper-hanging factory, New York, they employ six male block cutters, who earn from $2 to $2.25 a day. A boy, when apprenticed to a block cutter, receives $2.50 a week the first year, $3 the next, $4 the next, and $5 the last. There are probably from sixty to one hundred block cutters in New York city. Block letters, we were told, are made by machinery. A gentleman in Maine writes: "There are but very few females in this section who work at block cutting (blocks for printing oil carpets); but three or four in this State, I think. I have none with me excepting my wife. It is a branch of business that females cannot carry on alone, as the most of it requires considerable labor that women are not able to perform." In the census returns of Great Britain for 1850, we find four women under the head of block cutters. =461. Boatwomen.= In the countries of Europe, it is not unusual to see women employed as rowers of boats, on the lakes and rivers. On the lakes of Scotland, made famous by the poetry and fiction of Sir Walter Scott, women are seen waiting in their little boats to take passengers out on the lakes. In the sealochs of Scotland, fisherwomen manage their own boats. In Germany, women also ply the oar. In the United States, it is seldom done; but I think Miss Murray, in her Travels, mentions being rowed upon a lake in New York State by a woman. Some of the Indian women, of the Arctic regions, are noted for their skill in the management of a boat; and some of the women of the Polynesian Islands are distinguished in the same way. In the census of Great Britain for 1850, in class eight, and third division (Carriers on Canals), are reported 1,708 bargewomen over twenty years of age, and 525 under that age. =462. Bone Collectors.= Some collectors of bones sell them to people who make soup of them, and sell it to the poor at a penny a bowl. Some sell their bones to soap manufacturers, who boil them to obtain the marrow and oily substance, and then sell them to button makers, or makers of cane and whip handles. Some sell them to glue manufacturers, who boil them to obtain the gelatine for making glue. Some have establishments where they are ground and sold as a fertilizer for the soil. Some bone gatherers give toys to children for collecting bones. I saw a girl gathering some, who told me she sold them at fifteen cents a half bushel. She gathers sometimes half a bushel a day, and sometimes more. A boy told me he got thirty cents a bushel for bones; and another, that he got one cent a pound. The profit must be great of those who sell them again, judging from the price paid by the makers of cane handles. Yet it may be, so much is not paid by manufacturers for those taken from the street as for new ones. =463. Bottlers and Labellers.= In large establishments where wine, porter, ale, or beer is corked, women could, and in some places do, have the job. When it is done from day to day, it affords a reliable resource. The payment is generally, I believe, by the dozen or hundred bottles. "In one house or more, in London, are seen from one hundred to one hundred and fifty women bottling pickles all day long, at the charge of sixpence a score of bottles, at which an industrious woman, without any extra exertion, will earn her two shillings a day." In establishments for the sale of patent medicines and other articles of a similar nature, women are employed. I saw a man bottling lager beer by hand. He is paid $15 a month, and full board. For labelling, another received $6 a month, and full board. In Europe, where women do such work, they wear wooden shoes to keep their feet dry. A woman could as well cork as a man, when it is done by hand, and, no doubt, could use the machines employed for corking. A large manufacturer of hair restorative employs two girls to put it up, and pays from $3 to $4 a week. A brewer writes that "women might be employed in the bottling department, cleaning, filling, corking, &c., but the proportion would be small in comparison with the number of men at work." A woman that buys and sells empty bottles says she and her husband made a comfortable living at it. If they make three cents profit on a dozen they do well. They send a wagon to hotels, groceries, and private houses, if the number is sufficient to justify it. They find a ready sale for their bottles. The bottles must be washed clean before they will buy them. I was told at the office of Mrs. W.'s S. Syrup, that girls are paid by the week, from $5 to $6. R., in putting up his Ready Relief, employs several girls to fill bottles, cork and label them. They earn from $3 to $6 a week. They are paid by the quantity, and the work is all done in daylight. Until the last few days they have had work all the year round. S. employs from five to ten girls, and pays from $4 to $5 a week for bottling medicines and putting up Seidlitz powders. He keeps his hands all the year. They can either sit or stand. He does not know of any women being so employed South or West. L. employs three, and pays $5 a week, ten hours a day. One is employed in putting up Seidlitz powders--the others in bottling. All three work at the store. K. employs three girls to put up Seidlitz powders, perfumery, &c. He pays from $3 to $3.50 a week. B. & M., stove-polish manufacturers, employ girls to put up the polish in papers. The paper is folded on a wooden block and pasted, then withdrawn, and the polish put in and sealed. =464. Broom Makers.= C. employs a girl to paint the handles of brooms, paying $4 a week, of ten hours a day. After New Year is the most busy season. It requires but a short time to learn. A man can earn at broom making $1.25 to $1.75 a day. At some of the broom factories girls are employed to assort the broom by laying perfect pieces of a certain length in one pile, and those shorter in another, &c. Only strong, robust women could perform the entire process of broom making. =465. Bronzes.= When a bronze appearance is desired for some metals, bronze powders are used. I have been told that a patent has been granted for the making of them. Parties that we think competent to know tell us that "bronze powders are made in very few establishments in this country, and they think women and boys, much more than men, are both here and in Europe engaged in the making and working of bronze. They suggest that manufacturers, printers, japanners, and all who have operatives engaged in handling bronze powders should, in _all cases_, see that their people are protected, by gauze, sponge, or some sort of screen over the mouth and nostrils, from inhaling the fine particles that arise and impregnate the atmosphere where the powders are handled, and which are liable to cause serious injury to those who inhale them. The same might also be said of Dutch metal or gold leaf used in gilding house paper and other things." Magnetic masks are used by some grinders and polishers to prevent iron filings from passing down their throats. We suppose they would answer also for bronzers. Men oppose the introduction of women into the business. I saw three sisters bronzing in New York. They told me each receives $5 a week, and works about nine hours a day. It requires but a few months' practice to become perfect, and seemed to be an easy business. The young ladies employed at it looked genteel enough to grace any calling. Men get $10 a week. Women do it just as well, if not a little better, and accomplish just as much, yet receive only $5. I called in the store of the Ornamental Iron Works, New York. The young man says they employ about twenty-five German bronzers. It is a work easily done, and would require but a short time to learn. Women could just as well do it as men. If women were employed, it would be desirable to have a separate room for them to work in. Their men work ten hours a day, and receive from $1.50 to $2 a day. =466. Canvas and Cotton Bag Makers.= The firm of B. E. C. & Co. employ about forty females during the whole year, and seventy during the summer. Men cut out the bags. The folding and turning is done by little girls, who receive, some $1.50 per week, and some more, while the sewing is done by machines, for which the operators receive $4.50 per week. I do not remember what the spoolers were paid. This business is confined exclusively to seaports or river cities, and is not very extensive. The usual time required is ten hours. For extra work, girls receive double wages. C. & Co. have certain regulations, requiring morality and order. The girls were more cheerful, neat, and genteel-looking than the general run of work girls. They have a dressing room, where each one has a peg for her bonnet and shawl, and a small box in which to lay her dinner. They have washbowls and all the conveniences needed. Spring and fall are their most busy times, but they are able to keep their hands all the year in prosperous times. They are always busy just before the sailing of vessels, as they supply many vessels with bags to carry grain. They are well located for their business, being immediately on the river. The prospect for learners C. thinks very good, as bags are considered almost as essential as boats; and now they can be purchased so cheaply they are used for purposes to which they were never applied before. V. employs fifteen girls all the year, and sometimes extra help. Some girls get $3.50, and some $4 a week, of ten hours a day. Most of their machines are propelled by hot air. They never have any trouble in getting hands. There are a few bag factories in the West. W. & O. make cotton bags for flour, seed, grain, &c. We saw the girls sewing on machines moved by steam. They are paid $3 a week, ten hours a day. Their girls are not punctual, and are so often absent that they find it necessary to employ more hands than they want, that they may not get out of a supply. I met an old woman with bolts of heavy unbleached cotton, who was going to make up bags, sewing them with the needle. She receives seventy-five cents for one hundred bags. A bag manufacturer in Boston writes: "We pay by the week; girls, from $3 to $4--men, $7.25. The men's branch requires from six to twelve months to become proficient and reliable. Women require about one week. Perseverance and industry are needed by workers. Business in future is dubious. Winter and spring are the best seasons, but we are generally employed ten months out of the year. The hands work ten hours, unless driven up by brisk trade, when extra wages are paid _pro rata_. They receive all the comforts which women of this class require, viz., sufficient to live upon, with a small surplus for the priest, and to send to 'ould Ireland.' The labor of the men and women are entirely dissimilar. The advantages have been entirely in favor of the city of Boston; but from present indications, I fear that this business, if done at all, will be done in the cities of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans. The women can scarcely read; none can write. They can have free access to the city library and free evening schools. Board, $1.25--mostly whole families in one room." =467. Carriage and Car Painters.= At a very large car establishment in New York, I was told that when they take boys to learn ornamental painting, they pay $2.40 a week the first year. After that, eight cents a day more, the next year; and so continue until the apprenticeship expires. Three or four years are usually given. We saw a foreman ornamenting the side of a car to be sent to Liverpool, who was taken by the firm when a penniless boy. He now has $3,000 deposited with his employers, drawing a handsome interest. The painters are paid twenty-five cents an hour while ornamenting cars, and omnibuses. They do their work better than when paid by the piece. They prefer Germans, as they have more taste, and are more easily obtained. Miss H. knew a young lady that painted a cutter. Her father was a coach painter, and she painted in oils on canvas. A lady, if she would give time and attention, might become an ornamental painter of carriages, omnibuses, and cars. E. G. & Co., car builders, in Troy, write: "There are some portions of our ornamental painting women might be instructed to perform, that would be suitable for them, and, if proficient, they could make good wages at it." =468. Carriage Trimmers.= I was told by G., a carriage maker, that women usually make the cushions and trimmings for carriages. At a railroad-car and omnibus factory, the trimmer told me the work was too hard for women. The sewing is all done by hand. Much wax must be used on the thread, and a machine will not draw the threads tight enough. A shield of leather is worn on the little finger. I have read that "landscape painters, upholsterers, and trimmers of cars and carriages receive from $1.50 to $2 per day, of ten hours, in New York and New Jersey. Women are not generally employed; but they are occasionally serviceable in preparing the hair for seats, by which they could make, at steady employment, from $3 to $5 per week." B., at his carriage manufactory, said he intends employing two women to make curtains for his carriages. He now employs a girl to make covers for them. He thinks the curtains and much of the lining might be stitched by a machine. He thinks women might make fair wages at it--say, $4 or $5 a week. A carriage maker in Boston writes me: "I employ female labor only to the amount of about $50 a year. It is done by the piece, and a woman who is tolerably smart with her needle can in a very short time learn to do it, and can earn from eight to ten cents an hour. The work is irregular, a large portion of it coming in the months of April, May, and June, and sometimes requiring to be done at short notice." Car builders in Albany, N. Y., write: "Dear Madam--In reply to your inquiries, would say that, out of seventy-five to eighty hands employed by us, two only are women. One has charge of a sewing machine, the other picks curled hair. They have constant employment, at $5 a week." Carriage makers in Syracuse reply to a circular, saying: "We employ one lady to run the sewing machine in making leather and cloth tops for carriages. The work is healthy. We pay from $3 to $4 per week, of ten hours a day. Girls receive from one third to one half as much as men. It requires about two months to learn. Learners receive from $2 to $2.50 per week. The prospect for more such work to women is increasing. The employment is steady. There is a demand for women capable of good, heavy stitching." C--s, of New Haven, write: "We employ about twelve women in carriage trimming, running sewing machines, &c. Good wages are earned--from $5 to $9 per week, of ten hours a day. We pay mostly by the week. At the same kind of work our girls earn as much as men. The main part of their business being sewing, women are preferable at the same wages as men. In two days any ordinary person can learn to use a sewing machine; but to learn all parts of the business would require from two to three months' time. Girls receive a small compensation while learning. They are never out of employment, except in hard times, like the past winter. Two thirds are American girls. The girls employed by us are intelligent and happy; earning good wages, and always have work when we are doing anything. Board, $2.50." =469. Chair Seaters.= The putting of seats in chairs, the material being of cane, hickory, flags, willow, and corn husks, is carried on very often in orphan asylums, institutions for the blind, or for the deaf and dumb, and in penitentiaries. There is a large establishment in Worcester, Mass., where women are employed. At the House of Refuge, on Randall's Island, I saw the boys seating chairs with rattan. It is learned in three months. It is very severe on the fingers at first. In a small second-hand furniture store, I saw a woman seating chairs with cane. I stepped in and inquired of the woman how long it required to learn the work. She said she learned it in one day, of a German who kept a furniture store next door, and who wished her to work for him. She could seat two chairs in a day, and earn by doing so a dollar. For such a chair as she would be paid sixty-two cents the cane would cost twelve cents, leaving her a profit of fifty cents a chair for her work. It cuts the fingers some. She has most family work in winter; but her husband can always get enough for her from the stores. Another German woman seating chairs said she could seat three in a day. She charged fifty cents apiece for ordinary chairs. At a chair-seating factory, I saw several girls caning chairs for the proprietor, who receives orders from stores. We were told that it is always piecework. Some girls earn from sixty to seventy-five cents a day. They have work all the year. The girls were very clean-looking. They stood while at work. A girl told us it would take but three weeks to learn. Work is most apt to be slack in January, February, August, and September. The work is mostly done by German women. At another factory, I was told the prospect for work is very good. The man said, three years ago he had more work for his women than they could do. They are not paid while learning, and have work the same all the year. His best hands can earn $4 or $5 a week. The work is always paid for by the piece. The superintendent of the Monroe County Penitentiary, N. Y., writes: "We employ our female convicts at the manufacture of both flag and cane chair seats. They are equally adapted to the employment of women; the flag seats, however, cannot be made except near a chair manufactory, because of the expense of transporting the frames upon which they are made. The cane-seat frames can be easily transported; but the market is overstocked, and has been for years. They are made in many Northern and more Eastern prisons, and are made by both sexes. At the Albany (N. Y.) Prison, the females are employed at cane-chair seating, and at some part of the manufacture of shoes. At the Erie County Penitentiary, Buffalo, N. Y., the female convicts are employed at cane chair seating and packing hardware, manufactured by the male convicts; and at the Onondago County Penitentiary, Syracuse, caning chair seats. New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are the only States, probably, having county prisons, where the convicts are regularly employed. Cane seating is a business employing many females (free labor) in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and is well adapted to girls and women of the lower grades of intelligence; and the same is applicable to flag seating. They can earn, on an average, about thirty cents per day. The business may be acquired in a few days--say, thirty." The proprietor of the Oswego chair factory writes: "I have in my employ about forty women and girls in the cane-seating department. An attentive worker, possessing ordinary skill, can earn about fifty cents per day, of ten hours. Young persons of either sex are much more sprightly at the work than older persons." By a chair manufacturer in Fitchburg, Mass., several hundreds of women, girls, and children are employed in seating chairs, which they do at home. =470. China Menders.= All parts of this work are very suitable for women. Covering and repairing fans, mending china, wax dolls, works of virtu, &c., require care and taste. Connected with this might be the mending of jewelry, card cases, work boxes, and other ornaments of the toilet. A china mender told me he estimates his time at twenty-five cents an hour. His prices vary, according to the quality of the article, and the time and care required. He sells the composition for cementing at twenty-five cents a bottle. His work was beautifully done. I talked with another china mender and glass driller. After the fourth of July he goes to the country and mends ware. Some learn his business in a short time. He charges $10 to teach to make cement, drill, and mend articles. He thinks, in Boston, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn, there are probably openings. He says money can be made at the business by advertising, and having some one to go for the articles and collect the money. He is recommended by one customer to another, and so has enough to do; yet, from the want of capital, barely makes a living. If he could get a place in a china store, ladies could get their china mended there, and the store would give him some. He makes between thirty and forty kinds of cement. Some of them stand water. If a lady would learn, he would pay her $3 a week for her services. =471. Cigar Makers.= At F.'s, Philadelphia, we were told that girls who make cigars are usually idle; but when we afterward saw the rapid motion of their fingers, we felt disposed to doubt the charge. Habits of order, temperance, industry, and the _reverse_, are said to run in some trades. F. had heard some employer lamenting that there is no such thing as a sober reed-cutter. May not the flavor of tobacco, in making cigars, produce an excitement that craves some artificial stimulus? We think it would not be strange if it did; but have no means of ascertaining, and hope that it does not. Bending over was the only item mentioned by F. as being uncomfortable or injurious in the work. "In Philadelphia, the whole number of employés, journeymen and girls, engaged in making cigars, is fully four thousand. The average labor expended upon each thousand cigars costs $3.50, and the average cost of each thousand cigars is $8." In Philadelphia, many Americans work at the business; but in New York, almost all are Germans. In Germany, many women make cigars. A cigar maker told me that some women find the odor too strong; and even men with weak lungs are likely to have the consumption, if they work at it long. He pays women the same price as men, and he pays according to the quality and the workmanship--$2, $3, $4, $5, and $6 per thousand. Quickness in the use of the fingers is necessary. He has never known women to make the finest cigars. At K.'s, New York, I saw some bright, pleasant-looking girls at work. They are paid six cents a hundred. One girl told me she generally made thirteen hundred a day--seventy-eight cents. Women receive the same rates of wages as men. The son of the proprietor told me he had thought the work not altogether healthy; for the men you see working at the business are pale and thin. His father's girls are kept busy all the year. Girls generally make from $3 to $4 a week. There are enough of girls at it in New York, though there are but few places where girls are employed. The atmosphere almost stifled me, the tobacco scent was so strong. I inquired of a girl if she thought it unhealthy. She said no--that when she first came there, her head ached all the time, and she had constant nausea of the stomach; but now she never notices the smell of the tobacco, and does not feel any bad effects. She said she had learned to make cigars in three weeks; another girl said she learned it in one week. In summer, when the days are long, a girl earns most. A bundler is paid the best price, as she receives six cents a hundred. It is very dirty work. A cigar dealer told me he pays from $2 up to $6 per thousand. A man can make two hundred per day, and so earn from 40 cents to $1.20. He thinks it not unhealthy, where there is a circulation of air. The rapidity in making cigars depends much on the quality of the tobacco. Some leaves are not so well dried, nor so fine and perfect, as others. Such, of course, require a longer time to make. D., New York, says women mostly make the quality called sixes; and he knows that, farther East, in making that kind they often earn $1 a day. They can make the common ones more rapidly than men. He attributes the inability of women to make fine cigars to the want of instruction. Men do not like to teach them, because they are afraid of the competition that may be created, causing them to lose work or have to do it at lower wages. Now and then a woman may be found who makes cigars equal to any man. It requires a knowledge of tobacco, to select the different kinds for the various grades. Some judgment and intelligence are needed to cut the leaf economically, and to select tobacco of proper strength for making various brands. It is usual for a boy to serve three years, who is paid about $30 a year, and boarded. He has boys fifteen years of age working for him as journeymen. He says cigar makers in New York earn from $6 to $15 per week. Good hands can usually find employment. It can easily be learned in one year. All seasons are favorable for the work. From five hundred to fifteen hundred cigars are made in a day, according to the expertness of the manipulator and the kind of tobacco. Machines have not as yet been found to work well. The machine cigars are finished at the end by hand. He remarked that machines never can succeed so well as men, until they have the brains of men. A very nice widow, who kept a cigar store in New York, told me that many more women are employed in making cigars in Philadelphia than in New York; but the cigars made and sold there are mostly of the cheap kind, selling for two or three cents apiece. Six months' practice is required by a learner, to become perfect. Careful and rapid movement of the fingers, and ability to use the left hand, are desirable. I would suggest that a few smart women learn of a competent workman to make the best quality, and instruct several of their own sex. I find the making of cigars is paid for, altogether, by the thousand, and cigar makers earn from $3 to $18 a week. The usual price paid for a thousand cigars is $5, and a fast worker can make fifteen hundred a day. =472. Cigar-End Finders.= Mayhew says: "There are, strictly speaking, none who make a living by picking up the ends of cigars thrown away as useless by the smokers in the streets; but there are very many who employ themselves, from time to time, in collecting them. How they are disposed of, is unknown; but it is supposed that they are resold to some of the large manufacturers of cigars, and go to form a component part of a new stock of the best Havanas. There are five persons, residing in different parts of London, who are known to purchase cigar ends. In Naples, the sale of cigar ends is a regular street traffic. In Paris, the ends thus collected are sold as cheap tobacco to the poor. In the low lodging-houses of London, the ends, when dried, are cut up and sold to such of their fellow lodgers as are anxious to enjoy their pipe at the cheapest possible rate." =473. Cinder Gatherers.= I saw some girls gathering cinders. They burn them at home, after washing them. One pailful lasts from one and a half to two days. The larger girls gather two pails a day, generally; the smaller girls each gather one. =474. Clear Starchers.= The doing up of muslin, in large cities, has made for itself a separate calling. Where there is constant employment, it pays well. Mrs. N. charges from sixteen to twenty-five cents for doing up a set of muslin. She does most of the work herself, as she feels responsible for the way in which it is done, and would be afraid a stranger might tear or burn the muslin. When she has not enough to do, she fills up her time crocheting for the stores. I think the best locations must be in a part of the city where the best residences are. =475. Clock Makers.= The amount and variety of wooden clocks manufactured in this country are very great. The low price at which they sell, puts it in the power of almost every one to purchase. Clock-case and clock-movement making are two distinct branches. Connecticut is the only State in which clock movements are made; but there are many shops all over the North in which the cases are manufactured. In 1845, there were twenty establishments in New York city, in which the cases were made. "Wages of clock makers are poor. Women are occasionally employed in painting the cases of clocks, painting the dials, and making part of the movements." The New Haven Clock Company employ women to paint the glass tablets, and in lettering, or putting the figures on the dial, at which work they can earn from 90 cents to $1 per day, of ten hours. They also use quite a number in making trimmings, and the lighter part of the movements, at which they earn about seventy-five cents per day. All their work is done by the piece. The time necessary to learn depends much on the intelligence and aptness of the person. Manufacturers of clock dials in Farmington, Conn., write: "We employ twelve American women figuring clock dials. The spirit of turpentine used is unhealthy to some. They are paid by the piece, and average $2.50, with board. Men are not employed in the same department. It requires about four weeks to learn, and learners are furnished with board. The amount of employment in future is indefinite. Fall, winter, and spring are the best seasons for work; but constant employment is given by us. Board, $2." =476. Clothes-Pin Makers.= A clothes-pin manufacturer in Vermont writes: "Women are employed in packing clothes pins, and are paid from 25 to 50 cents per day, usually working ten hours. Our women are Americans. The clothes-pin business should be carried on in a sparsely settled community, where timber can be obtained at cheap rates." =477. Clothes Repairers.= We have seen it suggested that shops for repairing, remodelling, and remaking ladies' clothes, would, in large cities, if conducted by competent persons, probably yield a support. The mending of ladies' shoes, and mending second-hand ones to sell again, could employ the time of a number. =478. Cork Assorters and Sole Stitchers.= The principal use made of cork in this country is for bottle stoppers. It is also used in making cork soles for shoes. Cork is mostly imported from Spain, Portugal, and the south of France, in large blocks, and cut in the shapes wanted. A member of a large cork-cutting company at the East writes: "In France, Spain, and Portugal, women are employed to a limited extent in cutting the smaller description of corks, and a few are also employed in England, but not to any extent." He thinks the employment not suitable for women, and says none are employed in this country. But from the public reports of the city of his residence, I find women are employed as cork cutters in that city. At one establishment, we saw men at work cutting corks. There did not appear any objection to women employing themselves in this trade. A good deal of practice is required. S., of New York, cuts by machine, and employs six girls to assort. He pays 50 cents a day, of ten hours. At another cork store, I was told they employ boys and girls to assort, who receive from $2 to $3 a week. The coverings of cork soles are put on by women with sewing machines. A good hand, we were told, can make eight dozen pairs a day, and is paid eighteen cents a dozen. I suppose it requires at least a day to cut out and baste on the covering of that number; so the compensation is not as great as one might at first suppose. Some can baste five dozen a day, and could stitch from twelve to twenty dozen a day. Girls are paid 10 cents a dozen for basting, and 6 cents per dozen for stitching them on machines. A cork-sole manufacturer in the upper part of the city, pays for basting covers on, 10 cents a dozen. Some women baste five or six dozen a day. It requires care and a little skill. If not properly done, it is almost impossible to stitch them correctly. He pays 6 cents a dozen for stitching, and an operator can stitch from twelve to twenty dozen a day. He has often sold two hundred dozen in a year. =479. Daguerreotype Apparatus.= In most large cities, daguerreotype apparatus is manufactured. A maker of daguerreotype cases and materials told me that his girls earn from 50 to 75 cents a day, the latter being the highest price ever paid. S., whose factory is in New Haven, employs about one hundred and fifty girls. It is piecework. The business is increasing, but still is so limited that it cannot furnish employment for a great many. No difficulty is found in getting hands, as there are a great many girls in New Haven. No factory in the South or West. New York is the depot for everything made in a limited quantity, and for everything new in style. G. Brothers have given work all the year until lately. It is piecework. Girls earn from $4 to $6 a week. It does not take a smart girl more than eight days to learn. The busy time commences in April. It is an increasing business. The foreman at A.'s factory said a nice, steady, cleanly girl, that has sufficient dignity to command respect, can always get work. One that is not very sensitive to ridicule, and independent in the performance of duty, will be sure to succeed in that establishment; for so many learners are taken in and need supervision, that such a one is sure to be prized. He has seventy-five girls. It requires but a week to learn, and the girl that instructs gets the profit of that week's labor. In some branches they stand, in some they sit. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $2 to $6 a week. Some of their girls learn bookbinding; so, when there is much to do in that line, they find it difficult to get hands. The manufacture of daguerreotype apparatus is increasing; so the prospect for learners is good. Most of his hands have work all the year. He has found many work girls very trifling. (No wonder, with such training, and so little encouragement to do right.) They have all their photograph pictures colored by ladies in New York, except the glass ones. It pays well, and is done at home. I think some lady would do well to learn to color the glass ones. No manufactories West or South. A firm in Waterbury write: "We employ twelve women making daguerreotype mattings, &c. We prefer them, because men work better with a few women to work with them. We pay by the piece. They earn $3 per week, ten hours a day. They are paid the same as male labor in the same business. It requires one month to learn. Activity and common sense are all that is necessary for a learner. The majority are Americans, and pay for board $1.75 per week." =480. Feather Dressers.= Those that purify the feathers of beds, also renovate the hair and moss of mattresses. A gentleman told me he thought the business of a feather dresser too hard for a woman. Carrying bags of feathers, weighing them, assorting and filling other bags, he considered too heavy. Feathers are cleaned by steam. Some people, to renovate feathers, place them in the sun for a few days in summer, and then bake them. There is never any need of renovating feathers, if they are properly cured at first. =481. Flag Makers.= At A.'s, New York, the young man said it requires about a year to learn the business thoroughly. The hands employed in the house are paid by the week, and receive $4. They work from half-past seven to six o'clock, having an hour at noon. Those working out of the house are paid by the piece. They do not always have enough of good hands. They do not require the girls to invent designs, but like to have them quick to understand and execute any particular device or new pattern. To sew well and rapidly are the principal qualifications. He thinks about two hundred women are employed in this way in summer, but not more than fifty in winter. The sewing and embroidering are confined exclusively to females. The cutting is mostly done by those who carry on the business, whether men or women. Learners receive a compensation of $2 per week while learning, after which they receive from $4 to $6 per week. Some employers require their hands to spend six months at it as learners; but any one that can sew neatly, and has taste, could as well make a flag, after it is cut out and basted, as a bedquilt. The most busy seasons are spring, summer, and fall. When employed by the week, the hours are ten. The business is pretty well filled. Probably the most flags are made for vessels, and the next most for military and other processions. A flag maker told me he employs some girls and women, paying from thirty-seven to fifty cents a day, of ten hours, to those working in his rooms. Those that work at home, often earn seventy-five cents, as they sew in the evening also, and are paid by the piece. He does all his cutting. He has most work to do in summer and in political campaigns. In winter, vessels are laid up, and consequently no flags are wanted for them. Most work is done in seaports. More is probably done in Boston than any other city. In Philadelphia, flag stitching is done by machines. He will not have it done so, because it will throw women out of employment, and their pay is small enough at best. He takes those that can sew, and pays from the first. He complains that most women are mere machines, and display no intelligence in their work. (Query: Whose fault is it?) Mrs. McF. pays her girls $3 a week, of nine and a half hours. She employs eight now (January, 1861), but sixteen in summer. In summer she makes flags for vessels, but in winter she has made national flags. When she wants any intricate pattern prepared, she employs a regular designer, but cuts the goods herself. Ability to draw well is a great assistance to a flag maker. She does all her own cutting, even to the letters that are placed on her flags. Her forewoman sometimes assists in cutting the figures. She works some for a house in Mobile that sells flags. It requires taste and ingenuity to succeed, but a good sewer can soon do the mechanical part. She has been in the business nineteen years. We suppose there are some openings in the South for this business. =482. Furniture Painters.= F., who confines his business to the ornamenting of furniture, says it requires taste and a knowledge of colors. He thinks the Americans excel the Europeans in applying ornament to works of utility. He has a man of twenty-five that he employed when a boy in his store. He observed that he had such talents as would make him a good ornamental painter, so he gave him instruction. The first year he paid him $4 a week; the next, $6; and now he earns from $12 to $20. The young man invents when F. has given him an idea of the style he wishes. A manufacturer of enamelled furniture said no women are employed in enamelling, to his knowledge; that lifting and turning the furniture about would be too heavy for women. So it would; but they might have a man to do that. Another one told us he did not know of any women employed in enamelling furniture; but with a knowledge of painting, they might be. Men often earn $20 a week at it. A manufacturer of chairs told me that he pays ornamenters (men) from $9 to $18 a week, of ten hours a day. The men sit while painting them. A girl must have a natural taste for such work to succeed. The coloring requires experience. The French and Germans do most of it. It is piecework. A girl, no doubt, could get work, if she were competent. The Heywood Chair Company write: "We employ women to some extent in ornamenting chairs. The work is not considered especially unhealthy. We pay by the piece, and our women earn from $5 to $6 per week, averaging ten hours a day, the year round. There is no difference in the prices between the two sexes. Six months' apprenticeship is required, at $3 per week. Nimbleness, neatness, taste, and a true eye are needed in a worker. In ordinary times, there is no difference in the amount of work. We employ women, because they will do the same work better, faster, and cheaper than men. We would employ more, if they could perform other parts of the work. Women are inferior in strength to men, superior in manual dexterity, neatness, and taste. All are Americans. We can hardly speak with confidence of any considerable opening for female labor in our business. Most of our work requires skilled mechanics, or hard, rough bone and muscle. We have for five or six years employed all the females we could find room or work for, and can see no chance for any increase." According to the census of 1860, the number of hands employed in the New England, Middle, and Western States, in _making_ furniture, were 21,953 males and 1,880 females. =483. Gilders of Mirror Frames.= About the same arrangements are made with apprentices in this as in other trades. In the old country, women do as much of the work in all its branches as men; but in this country, the custom of women working in shops with men is not so common, and consequently some females that learned it in the old country will not engage in it, because of having to work with the men. I have been informed that in Dublin there are at least forty women employed in gilding--some in business for themselves. A good male worker earns $12 a week. Gilders calculate to make twenty cents an hour, the most usual price for good hands in all trades. In some trades men are paid twenty-five, some twenty, some eighteen, and in some but fifteen cents an hour. Gilders that manufacture frames for mirrors and artists, are most likely to have work all the year. In most shops there is a slack time just after New Year, and after the Fourth of July. It is a very close, confining business, in summer, while laying the gold leaf on, as it is so light it is apt to fly, and should be done in a close room. It is not at all unhealthy. Most of the work is done standing; but, I think, in gilding, women are permitted to sit. A German that sells ornamental furniture, thinks women might do the gilding on furniture. G. employs a number of girls in gilding oval frames. They earn, on an average, from $4 to $4.50. It requires but a short time to learn the business. B. used to employ some for the same purpose, paying $4, $5, and $6 a week. I think this work preferable for women to most mechanical employments, and, no doubt, in a few years many will be so occupied. I was told by a gilder that women are employed, because they can be had cheaper than men, seldom, if ever, receiving over $5 a week, of ten hours a day; and they have no knowledge of the business, except the one department in which they work. The frames are sold cheaply for photographs. There are no extensive gilders in the South or West, except one in Cincinnati, and one in Chicago. In the mirror and picture frame departments, there are now a great many stores that cut up the business of the large establishments, and the times are hard--so the business is dull. Not more than forty women in New York city are employed in gilding frames, and twenty of them are at G.'s. A gilder in New Hampshire writes: "It depends upon how much painted work there is in the same room whether the occupation is unhealthy. As far as my observation goes, women are as good workers at this business as men." One in Massachusetts writes: "My wife sometimes does my gilding, which is no harder than sewing. The carver's daughter in Essex, near here, did all his gilding for ten years." Gilders in Boston write: "We employ a girl to burnish, and pay from $3 to $5 per week, ten hours a day. Men get from $9 to $12. Fall and spring are the most busy seasons. Most of the cities northeast of Baltimore are good for this work. Board, $2 to $3." =484. Globe Makers.= H., manufacturer of school apparatus in Connecticut, writes: "From four to six women are employed by us, in the construction of globes and other articles. Some are paid by the piece, and some by the week, and earn from $3 to $5 per week, ten hours a day. Women receive less than one half the wages of men. They do not perform the same kind of labor. Women are employed at the lighter work, requiring less strength, but an even amount of skill. The abundance of the supply of labor prevents the increase of wages. Learners are paid, and it requires but a few weeks to succeed. A nicety of eye and readiness of hand are necessary for a worker. The prospect of employment is good, but limited. The winter is best for the work, but hands are occupied at all seasons. The employment is pleasant, and as well paid as any in this vicinity. Women are employed in all parts of the work suitable for them. The work is best adapted to the Eastern States. All our employés are Americans, and live at home. Board here, $2 a week." =485. Hobby Horse Finishers.= In summer time, Mr. ---- has children's carriages trimmed by women. They are paid by the piece, and earn from $3 to $4 a week. At B.'s they are employed all the year. The horses and carriages could be painted by women, and the manes, tails, saddles and bridles could be put on by them. At C.'s, one lady is employed for trimming children's carriages--$5 a week--ten hours a day. She sews by machine. C.'s busy season for children's carriages, is from February to November, and he employs his hands the rest of the time at hobby horses. He says there is one factory in Columbus, two in Chicago. He thinks there are good openings (1860) in Richmond and Petersburg, Va., for they sell many there. He thinks wrong must succumb to right--that there is no justice in withholding from women their proper compensation for labor, and the time will come when the prejudice will be done away that now exists on that subject. =486. Horse Coverings.= I was told, at a store in Philadelphia, they pay twenty-five cents a piece for ordinary blankets and linens, and a woman can make from three to four a day. One, on which was considerable chain stitching, the storekeeper paid $2 for making, and he thought a woman could make one in a day. A saddle and harness maker, New York, told me the prospect of getting such work is good. The wives of his workmen make his blankets, and can earn from $1 to $1.50 a day, as he pays thirty-seven cents a blanket. Another one told me his girls earn from $4 to $6 a week at such work; and another rated the payments still higher, from $1.25 to $1.50 a day. At a large store on Broadway, I was told all the work is given to one woman, who employs other women to help her. Her workers can earn $4 a week, if industrious. They make horse linens and blankets, and rosettes for head ornaments. Netting for horses is made by hand, in a large establishment near New York. L. L. & Co. pay for the coarsest blankets twenty cents apiece, and a woman can make two a day. For some they pay as high as from $4 to $5. A very swift sewer could make one such in little over two days--consequently her day's wages would be $2. So the prices vary according to style. The chain stitch, so much used for ornamenting, is done by hand, because in that way the edges of the cloth can be more neatly and securely turned under. L. L. & Co. employ ladies, who in their turn employ others. The coarse heavy blankets are generally lined, and the work is mostly done by Irish women. They are most busy on blankets from June to January, and on linen from February 1st to May 1st. Linen covers are used on horses in stables, as flies annoy horses much where they are standing quiet. Out of doors, nets answer, because they are kept in motion by the horse. When busy, L. & L. employ about one hundred girls. The business is growing. The blankets are mostly used in the country. The manufacture of them is confined principally to New York and Boston. Those in the cities are different in style; indeed, each city has its own style. Many are made in Chicago. The rosettes pay very well, but it requires a long time to become expert. One lady they employ earns occasionally $50 a week. Tassels are paid for by the piece, and girls can earn from $2 to $4. Tassel making requires some time to learn perfectly. Cloth goods are confined to seasons, and consequently occupations in which they are involved are confined to seasons. Styles of trimming are apt to change. A man who makes blankets for a large wholesale house, employs from one hundred to two hundred women. They earn from $3 to $7 a week. The stitching is done by machine, but the ornamental part by hand. Men do all the cutting. He has paid as high as $100 for one pattern of blankets and ornaments. There are no blankets made in the South or West, except here and there a saddler's wife will make a few. In Williamsburg, I saw a number of women in the basement of the employer's residence. They looked sad, and the rooms were small, damp, and filthy. The employer told me most of his stitching is done by machine. Anybody that can sew tolerably well, and has strength, can do it. Women seldom, if ever, cut them out; but I think they could. A manufacturer in Brooklyn writes: "We employ women for making horse clothing, who are paid by the piece, and earn from seventy-five cents to $1 per day. Spring and fall are the best seasons for work. We have no difficulty in procuring hands." =487. House Painters.= The tools of a painter cost but little. Women might be employed in glazing, and in painting the inside work of houses. Their ingenuity and taste might be successfully exercised in embellishing walls and ornamenting doors. The style for doors, called graining, would be particularly appropriate. The business could be best carried on by men and women in partnership, as the outdoor work is most suitable for men. An apprenticeship should be served of two or three years. The work would pay well. Most of it is done in spring. A woman would need to make some change in her style of dress. The Bloomer would probably be best--at any rate, hoops should be laid aside. The vocation presents a very good opening to women, who could best engage in it, at first, in towns and villages. =488. Japanners.= Japanning is one of the few arts that had its origin in a heathen country. It is now practised in all civilized countries. Many metal articles are japanned--as tea trays, candlesticks, &c. Wood is also japanned. In a late report of one of the schools of design in England, we observed on the list of female students the names of two japanners. Care, and ability to stand, are all that are required for success, to those doing the plain painting; but some taste is required for ornamental japanning. There is a good prospect for employment, as the tin trade has been increasing rapidly in the last two years, and is likely to, as our country grows older, and depends less on other countries for a supply. California has created quite a demand in the last few years, and it is supplied mostly from New York. M., in New York, told us he and his partner employ some women to japan. They pay from $3 to $4 a week. They have one woman to do the ornamental work, painting flowers and gilding. To ornamental painters they pay from $10 to $15 a week. They had a man to whom they often paid $15 a week. Most of the men that have been employed in ornamental japanning have gone to painting clocks, which pays better. They sometimes find it difficult to get hands--so if some women could take it up, they would be likely to find employment. The painters design as they paint, not using a pattern. Japanning of the heavy kind could not be done by women. The pieces are too heavy to lift. B., an ornamental japanner, used to employ women to put on the pearl scraps, but now employs boys, because he can get them cheaper and take them as apprentices. He can send them on errands and make use of them in that way. He pays an apprentice $1.50 a week for one year, then increases at the rate of fifty cents a week the next year, and so on. B. thinks no women are employed at it. Women are employed at such work in Paris. Japanning, he thinks, is not unhealthy, although the ovens into which japanners must pass are often heated to 260°. The spirits of tar used in japanning renders it healthy, and consumptives go frequently into japanning furnaces, feeling that they are benefited by it. At a firm of japanners, the boy told me they employ an artist to come and paint for them. They once had a lady that painted landscapes and flowers on piano boards in oils. They were not baked in a furnace afterward, but the oil permitted to dry, as with a painting on canvas. S. used to employ women in making pearl piecework, but it is not much used now. For painting clocks, not more than six cents a piece is paid for many. Men are so rapid that they can make money, but women could not earn more than $2.50 a week. Some men earn $25 a week, and formerly even $35, at painting the finer clocks; but there are now so many in the business that wages have fallen, though the business is increasing. At a tin manufactory in Williamsburg, I saw two girls employed in tying up goods, and seven girls employed in putting the first coat of paint on tin ware--grounding, it is called. They are paid from $1.25 up. One woman they have earns $6 a week. She is an English woman, and has been at the business nearly all her life. She is quick and skilful. A boy who paints flowers on tin ware, after the first coat is put on by the girls, gets $1 a day for his work. Japanning is done in England by women. Many women are employed through the country, in the Eastern States, in making tin canisters, &c., and some in japanning; but japanners carry their work into ovens, which he thought would be too hard for women. Yet he thinks doing so is not unhealthy. If the employment is unhealthy, it arises from the evaporation of the turpentine in the paint. The unhealthiness of the common painter's business arises from the turpentine, in evaporating, carrying off with it white lead, but no white lead is employed on the tin ware. Girls are paid by the week. Men, for graining, a style resembling the graining of wood, and in fact being the same except on a different material, received $2.50 per day. Male labor is twice or three times as high in their establishment. Why women are not better paid the man could not answer, but, like many other men with whom I have talked, thought it unjust they were not paid at the same rate as men. Their girls are employed all the year. They work ten hours a day. They were mostly Americans, and miserably dressed. The work soils their clothes greatly. They wore old skirts over their dresses to work in. I think some men and boys work in the same room with them. The fine work could be well done by them, if they would take time to learn it efficiently, for it requires taste, ingenuity, and delicacy of touch. At an ornamental japanner's, I was told it requires three or four years to learn the business well. A good workman earns from $12 to $18 a week. It is piecework. =489. Knitters.= The knitting done by machinery is not so soft, so warm, or so durable as that done by hand. It is almost impossible to obtain ladies' hand-knit hose in cities. Gentlemen's are sometimes made by the Shakers, and bring a very high price. We have no doubt but some old ladies might even now find it profitable to knit to order, or supply some store where their goods would be brought forward and disposed of to those who can appreciate the difference between machine and hand knitting. The Germans are famous knitters. "The peasant women of the Channel Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, &c., knit a great deal. They are seldom, if ever, without the materials for this occupation. On the way to and from market, and at other times, knitting forms their almost constant employment." A knitting machine has been invented in Seneca, N. Y., that is said to knit a perfect stocking in less than five minutes. Aiken's knitting machines are very popular. We have thought ladies would do well to try them, and devote themselves to making up hosiery. We doubt not but it would pay very well. The cloth is knit in a straight piece, and another lady cuts it into shape and sews into the articles wanted. A machine has been invented by Mr. Aiken, also, for toeing and heeling socks. A manufacturer of knit goods writes: "We employ about twenty hands, one half of whom are girls. Their wages are from $3 to $5 per week, except when working by the piece. Those who run the knitting machines are paid by the piece, and earn from 75 cents to $1 per day. Males receive from $1 to $1.75 per day. The work done by them is generally harder, and such as females could not well do. To effectually superintend the knitting business would require at least five years. The part performed by females can be learned in six months. They are paid while learning, from $2.75 to $3 per week. The business is overdone at present; although there is always a demand in our section of country for girls. They work regularly throughout the year, twelve hours in summer, ten in winter. It would be better for all parties to run their mills only ten hours per day, and thus tend to keep down the production, and so keep up the prices to a fair profit. Those tending sewing machines are generally married, or widows with children, and in general support their families. Their machines are repaired by a foreman, but with a little practice they can learn to do it themselves. In other branches generally pursued by girls, they earn sufficient to dress well, but seldom accumulate. A location is preferred in some thickly settled place, on account of getting sewing done by hand, as all the goods are finished off by hand. After working twelve hours a day, they will be necessarily rather too much fatigued to go through any mental processes otherwise than reading a novel. If all the mills of all descriptions would work ten hours only, and establish evening schools, and request all to attend, it would greatly elevate them in the social scale. But selfishness rules, and where one manufacturer would agree to this arrangement, two would not. Board, $1.50 per week, including washing." A hose manufacturer in Holderness writes: "We employ about sixty females in the mill. Work is given out to three hundred. Almost all are American. Their wages are from $3 to $6 per week. The wages in the knitting department are not much less for women than men. Women learn the knitting so as to earn good pay in three months. Women are paid $2 per week for the first four weeks; after that, by the piece. A learner should be steady and quick with her fingers. The employment is healthy, as the knitters sit only about half the time. We run all the year eleven hours a day. There is not female help enough. We are trying women where men have been employed. I think women are in some respects superior workers to men." Manufacturers of seamless hosiery, in Connecticut, write they "pay from $3 to $5 per week, eleven hours a day--that it requires from six to eight weeks to learn--that their hands have access to libraries; and board is for men $3, for women $2." At Cohoes, N. Y., is a manufactory of shirts, drawers, &c. I have a letter from the company saying: "We employ two hundred and fifty women, and pay from 40 cents to $1 per day. Some are paid by the piece, and some by the week. Men receive from 75 cents to $2.50 per day, of twelve hours. The reason why they obtain better wages is that they do work which women cannot do. (Query: Do not the women perform work that men cannot do?) Men are continually learning. Women can learn to perform certain work in a few days. The best qualifications are soundness of mind and body, activity, steadiness, quick perception, and a desire to make money. The business is increasing yearly. Occasionally, in the winter, the mills stop for a month. There is at present (October, 1860) a surplus of labor. Board, $1.75 to $2." At L.'s knitting factory, in Brooklyn, the foreman told me there are six machines in operation, each of which cost between $5,000 and $6,000. The articles made by them are softer than any knitting done by machine I have seen; but it may be owing to the quality of the wool: I cannot say. Those working at machines stand, the others sit. The machine operators receive from $1.50 to $3.50: those in the finishing room are paid by the piece, and earn from $2 to $5. A foreman superintends the work and puts the machinery in order. A woman of good abilities can learn in three months, if the factory is in a position to put her forward. From May to December is the best time for work. Double price is paid the hands for night work in busy times. They prefer American girls, because they are neater. A manufacturer of factory supplies, in Massachusetts, writes: "We employ thirty women in knitting loom harnesses. The work is not more unhealthy than any employment that requires one to sit all the time. They are paid by the piece. The employment is sure so long as cotton manufacturing is good. The work is equally good all seasons. Board, $1.62 to $2.25 per week." The secretary of the Waterbury Knitting Company writes: "We employ one hundred hands, at from 50 cents to $1 per day, working twelve hours in summer, ten in winter. Women are paid as well or better than men of the same age; working by the piece, they are paid the same. The women are not thrown out of work at any season. Women are inferior in mechanical genius. We are obliged to keep a man to every fifteen women to overlook them. A woman will run a knitting machine for seven years, and never be able to straighten a needle, or knit the cloth slack or tight. A boy or man will learn to oversee a whole room in half that time. Women cannot be made to think or act for themselves in the least thing, or in any case to rely on their own judgment. This is equally true of the stupid Irish, German, and English, and of the more acute Yankee. Women are superior perhaps in good looks." S., of Enfield, N. H., has his daughter write: "I use three of Aikens's knitting machines, and other machinery for making yarn. The wool is first made into yarn and then knit into webbing, and marked for heeling and toeing. It is then divided into dozens, and distributed around the country to be heeled and toed, in which branch we employ usually five hundred American women. We pay $1 a dozen for heeling and toeing; for tending the machine, $2 per week, of eleven hours a day. Women are paid less, because they are not usually as strong as men, and therefore cannot do the same work, or, if the same kind, not so great an amount in a limited time. Men can be employed by paying them what they require, and as they are considered, or rather seem to consider themselves the 'lords of creation,' they demand higher wages than women. In four weeks the females can perform their part without trouble. Learners receive their board. The prospect is good for the same number employed as at present. The summer season is the best for work. If at any time there is a want of work, it is in January and February." =490. Lace Bleachers.= Mrs. L. spent five years learning the business in Paris. A girl that spent two years learning with her, is now doing well in the business in St. Louis. She prefers to take learners a week on trial. She charges from $1 to $1.50 a pair for curtains. The French are the most successful in that line. She often has thirty or more pair from a hotel and other large houses. One can make a good living at it. L. says the work is unhealthy, particularly while the vapor of the chemicals is warm. The curtains are not wrung out, but the water pressed out with the hands. The dirt, of course, is first washed out. It requires strength to handle the goods. Curtains are put on frames to dry, and women, he says, are not strong enough. It requires strength to get the extra starch out, as it is done by squeezing. It is surprising how many objections, as regards health and physical strength required, can be presented by selfish men, who do not wish women to engage in their occupations. None but those who have had occasion to test the matter would believe it possible that the majority of men are so selfish and unjust in this respect. Another man told me he does all the washing and drying himself, because he is responsible for the goods, and is not willing to trust them to strangers. He charges $1 a pair, except for a very large size. Different kinds of laces require different methods of washing and ironing. =491. Lacquerers.= Lacquering is warm work, and in summer is done in rooms the temperature of which is over 200°. M. thought women could be employed in burnishing, lacquering, polishing, and bronzing. Girls were at one time employed in lacquering gas fixtures on William street, New York; but they were dismissed, because they did not prove steady and efficient workers. The process previous to lacquering, called dipping, is dirty work. It requires but a short time to learn to lacquer. F. told me that in France women do all the fine lacquering, and they do it much better than men can. They take it home with them to do; and the same plan could be followed in this country, and probably will be before long. The finest lacquering, such as ormolu clocks, &c., is done with gold dust. The varnish must be put on evenly. It requires care and delicacy of touch. Most of the gas fixtures sold as brass are merely zinc gilded, and then lacquered--the bronzed part the same metal, bronzed. Zinc can be bought at six cents a pound--brass is thirty cents a pound. Mathematical instruments, daguerreotype cases, and gas fixtures are lacquered. A man earns from $8 to $10 a week, working ten hours a day. Lacquering, I was told, is not unhealthy, and a person can sit two or three feet from the fire while at work. A firm in New York, manufacturing gas fixtures, wrote to us as follows: "Lacquering is a suitable occupation for women; but we do not employ them, because men are considered more reliable as to regularity of hours, and are more easily managed. Women can be made equally good lacquerers with the men; but when employed by us, some years since, we found, with few exceptions, that they produced inferior work, owing, as we think, to want of application. Women are employed in similar establishments to ours in England and, we learn, in Boston. The employment is not unhealthy. They are paid by the week in England. It requires from three to five years to learn the business. Steady application and a good eye for colors will make a good lacquerer." =492. Life Preservers.= R. employs two women to stitch his life preservers with a sewing machine, and pays the usual price of operatives. None are made South or West. (Would not New Orleans offer an opening?) =493. Lucifer Matches.= This is a business that has been largely entered into in New York. The making and selling of matches have furnished employment for hundreds and thousands of boys and girls in all our large cities. The making of matches is a dangerous employment. Its unhealthy tendency (owing to the use of sulphur), and the long period of twelve, and even fourteen hours' confinement, no doubt serve to account for the sad and woe-begone faces of the poor little operators. At a match factory where I stopped, girls are paid three cents a gross for cutting matches and filling boxes. Some can do as many as forty gross a day; but very few can. It is best for girls to commence early in life, and most do so. Some girls earn as much as $5 to $6 per week, if we may believe the proprietor's statement. Girls are paid for filling the frames in which they are to be dipped, sixty-two cents 100 frames, each frame containing 1,500 double, or 3,000 single matches. The factory is open from seven in the morning to ten at night. The business for women and girls is not crowded. Most learners become discouraged and leave it, because it is so long before they can become expert enough to earn fair wages. It is not as healthy, he says, as some occupations. I should think not, judging from his sallow face, and the pale, spiritless faces of all I have seen in the match factories. He buys bundles of sticks, ready to cut for matches, of those who make it a business to prepare them. They are cut by hand. He pays twenty-five cents a bunch, and a man can cut a bunch in five minutes. They never stop work, except in December and January. A brisk hand can earn from $5 to $7 a week. They make from twenty to forty different kinds of matches, to suit all climates. At the store of this manufacturer, the bookkeeper told me that, if a person has a tooth extracted, the phosphorus will be absorbed by the jaw bone and cause it to decay, if the individual works in the factory before the gum is entirely well. A lady told me she knows a girl that earns $6 a week in a match factory. In H.'s factory, I saw small girls and boys putting matches in the frames to be dipped. They are paid sixty cents 100 frames, containing 1,500 double matches. They can seldom fill more than 85 frames a day. They commence work at 6½ in winter, and work until 8; in summer, they commence at 6, and work until 7½. They are not obliged to work all the time, as they are paid by the piece; but with the exception of an hour at noon, which all have the privilege of taking, they no doubt work the full time. They were poor, dirty-looking children. In the room where the boxes were filled, large girls worked. Most match makers are Germans and Irish. A manufacturer told me that he now employs boys only--that girls he found so wild he could not manage them. He says some of his girls used to earn $5 a week. He thinks none but strong, healthy persons should work at the business, as the fumes of sulphur are injurious. A manufacturer in Vermont writes: "Women are employed to pack matches. They are paid by the thousand, and their wages amount to fifty cents per day, of ten hours, after they get accustomed to it. Women's work in this department is lighter than men's--so will not yield as good wages. A learner will gain the trade in about six months. An increase of this business is not flattering. No difference in the seasons for work. Women are more nimble in the use of their fingers, and consequently succeed better in this kind of work." =494. Mat Makers.= Door mats are made of sea grass, corn husks, worsted, manilla, hemp, and cocoa-nut fibre. At the largest manufactory in the United States, I saw the process of making several kinds. No girls or women were employed. The superintendent told us it was too heavy work for women. In one establishment in Philadelphia, girls are employed as tenders, which is merely picking the substance to be woven--jute, hemp, or wool--into bunches of the right thickness, and handing to the weaver. Some of their mat weavers earn $14 a week--boys, from $1.50 to $3. Mats are sometimes made by women of osier, rushes, and straw. =495. Manufacturers of Musical Instruments.= The manufacture of different musical instruments is engaged in as so many distinct branches of business. Musical instruments are usually classed as follows: 1. Wind instruments, of wood or metal. 2. Stringed instruments. 3. Keyed instruments. 4. Instruments of percussion. 5. Automatic instruments. 6. Miscellaneous articles in connection with musical instruments. On wind instruments made of wood and ornamented with metals, as flutes, clarionets, &c., women might be employed to polish the metal. Those that are all metal, as horns, trumpets, &c., are polished in making, and could not well be divided into a separate branch of work. Of stringed instruments, the ornamental part, as painting, inlaying of pearl, &c., would be very pretty work for women of taste. The smaller strings could be covered by women. Of keyed instruments, some of the smaller and finer work would be very suitable for women. In instruments of percussion, the drum and tambourine are probably the only instruments presenting a field for woman's work. Of automatic instruments, mechanical organs are the only ones, I think, at which women do work. I cannot learn that women are employed in making musical boxes, which are imported from Switzerland, Germany, and France. Women are employed to some extent, in other countries, in the manufacture of musical instruments. Z. thinks the reason women are not employed in the manufacture of musical instruments in this country is, that they do not understand the business.--1. _Wind Instruments._ Women might polish the metal on flutes, and even paint the woodwork. I was told by a manufacturer in New York, whose factory is in Connecticut, that he once employed women in that way, but they did not succeed, because they did not try.--2. _Stringed Instruments._ I called on L., engaged in the manufacture of harps. There are but two harp manufacturers in the United States. Ladies might do the gilding and ornamental painting on harps. Sizing is put on, and then gold leaf laid on, and smoothed down with a small brush. The varnishing could be very well done by women. The same kind of work is executed on guitar frames, of which a number are made in the United States. The painting is done as on enamelled furniture. L. employs an Englishman to do the gilding and ornamental painting. The other manufacturer, B., thinks there is no part of the work in making harps that could be done by a lady. The ornamental part is done by the varnisher, and varnishing requires much strength. It requires a regular apprenticeship, and some artistic taste. So few harps are made in this country, that it would not pay a woman to learn. He was evidently opposed to women having anything to do with the business.--3. _Keyed Instruments. Accordions._ In making accordions women could put on the keys and kid, and do so in Germany. Accordions are nearly all imported, because they can be made more cheaply in Europe than in this country. L., Philadelphia, says he is in partnership with his brother in Germany, who has musical instruments made there, and employs a number of women and girls.--_Melodeons._ C., New York, manufacturer, says he does not know of any women being employed in the making of melodeons; but much of the work, I am sure, could be done by women. Cutting the keys, polishing, gluing them on the board, and fastening the hammers on, are done by hand, and the work is as suitable for women as men. Men receive for such work, $2 a day. Women properly trained, and with a good ear for music could also tune the instruments. Men who do so, earn about $3 a day. A manufacturer of melodeons writes: "We do not employ women, but think larger firms might."--_Organs._ I was told by a manufacturer that in Germany some women assist their husbands in making the action, but there is lighter work and more of it in piano actions. J., another organ builder, told me that in England, in some organ factories, women are employed to gild the pipes. In making the organs turned by a crank, used in some churches in England, women, he said, are employed in putting the pins in the cylinders. They are made on the same principle as the music box. J. seldom makes more than one of these organs in a year, and I think he is the only one in the United States that does make them. Mrs. Dall says "there are women, who strain silk in fluting, across the old-fashioned workbag, or parlor organ front." =Pianos.= In England, the men engaged in making piano actions used to do much of the work at home, and their wives and daughters would assist them. In the United States, each branch in the making of pianos is now done separately, except in very large establishments, and consequently most of the work is done at home by the workmen. At a factory in New York, an apprentice, nearly out of his time, told me that an individual to learn the business is bound, and must remain until of age. Otherwise he could not get a certificate, and is not likely to find employment without one. An apprentice receives $3 a week the first year, $4 the second year, and more afterward if he is bright and quick to learn. A journeyman receives from $10 to $12 a week for his work. At W.'s piano manufactory, New York, we were kindly permitted to pass through and see the entire process of making. Among other parts that I thought could be done by women, were those of varnishing and polishing. This work forms a separate branch of itself, and requires an apprenticeship of three or four years. It looked to be very simple. The pianos are first rubbed with pumice stone, to render them smooth and susceptible of a polish, then with rotten stone. Rubbing with pumice stone all day might be too laborious, except for a very strong woman; but the other process is feasible for any woman of moderate health. Indeed, the finest polish could be better given by women than men, because it is done by the naked hand, and the softer the hand the better. The ornamenting of the sounding boards could be done by women that know anything of painting, and also the gilding on the inside top and outside front. I asked an old Frenchman, doing that kind of work, how long it would require to learn. He said he had been at it fifty years, and had not learned it perfectly yet. It is pretty work, and very suitable for a woman of taste. The delicacy of woman's touch, with some knowledge of drawing and painting, would enable her to succeed. Covering wire, and putting it in, is another branch that might be done by women. Bleaching ivory for the keys, cutting them, and gluing them on, are also within woman's range. Cutting leather and buckskin, and gluing it on the hammers, are very light and simple work. Another branch suitable for women is regulating the tone of pianos. Men, said W., would oppose women working at the piano business in large establishments, but a man would not be likely to suffer inconvenience from employing women in his own house to do the part he carries on. If he were independent of his business it would be better. At ----'s, New York, a manufacturer of pianoforte actions, I saw two girls at work. It is very nice, clean work. Part of the time they stand, and the remainder they sit. One is paid $3 a week, and the other less. The young man who showed us through the factory, said much of the work in making pianoforte action that is now done by men could be done by women. D----'s girls looked to be Americans. They have work all the year. It mostly consists in covering hammers. A manufacturer of pianofortes writes: "Our men are paid both by the piece and by the week, according to the departments in which they are engaged. The time of learning is from five to seven years for men. Apprentices (boys) are paid from 25 cents to $1 per day, beginning with the first amount, and increasing from year to year. In some departments, physical strength is required, in others, aptness and ready tact--in others, a cultivated musical ear. The prospect for future employment is very fine in all branches for men--in some, equally good for women. The majority of workmen are below mediocrity, as compared with most all others in manufacturing." A manufacturer in Meredith, N. H., writes: "We once employed a lady in our key and action department. She was the wife of one of our workmen. She earned as much as her husband, and in every respect did her work as well. She learned her trade in half the time it took her husband to learn the same. Theirs was jobwork; the two earned about $3 per day. She did her housework besides. I think there might be many ladies employed in our business, to the advantage of all concerned. We expect to test the matter further by employing some in our varnish rooms soon." =Seraphines.= A manufacturer writes: "I think women might be employed to advantage in some parts of the work, and in any part of it, if they could adopt a different style of dress, something like the Bloomer. The long dress with hoops, as now worn, must be an insurmountable barrier against their entering many employments. It is injurious to health, and prevents a proper development of form." =496. Musical String Makers.= The manufacture of strings for musical instruments is carried on as a separate branch. A German violin maker told me that women are employed in Germany in winding wire for guitar strings. I find they are also in a factory in Connecticut, and the manufacturer said they could earn as high as $9 a week. It is rather severe on the fingers, but that can be avoided to some extent by wearing a glove finger. In New York, it is mostly done by Germans and French, who have taken the trade from Americans. The preparing of catgut from the intestines of sheep and goats, and making it into strings, is carried on mostly in Germany, and some women are employed at that. Most metal strings are of steel, and covered with fine wire of other metals. Mrs. Z., whose husband, when living, manufactured covered strings for musical instruments, told me, she and her daughters had often assisted in covering guitar strings and the lighter piano strings. She thinks a person of good abilities could learn it in from two to four weeks, with an attentive instructor. She usually rested against a bench while employed. A good worker will earn from $3 to $5 per week. She has never heard of any but English and German women being engaged in it. In some of the up town shops the machinery is moved by steam, but it does not answer so well, because it is not so easily slackened or checked. Harp strings and the larger piano strings cannot be made by women, because of the strength and firmness required. =497. Netters.= Netting is now generally done by machinery. Seines are mostly made in that way. When by hand, it is done by old people, who receive a very inadequate compensation for their labor. The nets so much used for horses are mostly made in a large factory near the city of New York. In England, woollen netting is used by some gardeners for the protection of the bloom of fruit trees from frost. They are also used to prevent birds destroying currants, cherries, raspberries, and other small fruit. The making of purses of different kinds, and of hammocks, have employed a small number of people. Net and seine manufacturers in Gloucester write me: "We employ one hundred women who work at their homes, and are paid by the piece. It requires a year to learn. From October to June are the best seasons for our trade. A few that we employ to work by the week spend ten hours a day at it. The comfort of the occupation is good, but the pay poor. We think women better company than men. Health and strength are the best qualifications for our work." A net and twine company in Boston write: "We employ women for converting twine into netting. It is mostly job work, and they have cash for what they earn. The comparative prices of men and women are the same as those of factories in general. It requires about as long to learn as it takes a woman to learn to knit stockings. The business is good as long as the sea furnishes fish and mankind eat them. The employment of women in the work is a providential necessity. Nearly all ours are American. Women are quicker in their work--men stronger. Our women have the leisure that belongs to nearly all manual occupations." =498. Oakum Pickers.= Perhaps some one reading this book may not know what oakum is. It is old rope, pulled to pieces until it is soft and pliable, like the original material, and used for the purpose of corking vessels. Ten years ago, the picking was done by hand, and many women employed. Now, this work is mostly done by machinery in this country, and very few women are employed. In some factories, women are employed in teazing, that is, untwisting the pieces of rope that are not pulled to pieces by passing through the machinery the first time. They are paid so much per hundred pounds, and do not earn more than $2 a week. It is dirty, disagreeable work. A firm in Maine write: "We have seen females, both young and old, at work in oakum mills in the State of New Jersey. In England (we believe) all oakum is made in their almshouses, consequently a part by females. The business is healthy. We use many boys that do work which might be done by females; but we prefer the boys." =499. Paper Hangers.= An English lady, who has spent much time in various parts of Europe, told me she had known of women being engaged in paper hanging in small towns. I believe it is customary, when papering a room, to have one person put the paste on, and another put it up. We are confident women could do the first-mentioned part of the work. =500. Polishers.= Women are employed in France in polishing furniture. They are mostly the wives of cabinet makers. It requires art to do it that some can never learn. A person must be able to put the gum shellac on evenly. A woman in London earned a very good living by applying French polish to the furniture of cabinet makers. A French woman that polished furniture in Paris, told me that the work is hard on the fingers, and one could not learn it in less than a year. A piano manufacturer told me that women could be profitably employed in polishing pianos. It is better learned by women than men, he thought. It is tedious, however, and requires patience. I have been told that the finest polish is imparted to furniture by the naked hand, and the softer and finer the hand the better. For that reason, women are employed in France to polish piano cases with the palms of their hands, and, when not employed, wear kid gloves to keep their hands soft and smooth. =501. Pure Finders.= The finders of dog pure constitute a small class in this country; but Mr. Mayhew thinks in the city of London there are between two hundred and three hundred constantly employed. It is used for dressing leather and kid, and sold at from sixteen to twenty cents a bucketful. In our country, it is probably carried on with bone grubbing and rag gathering. =502. Rag Cutters.= I find nearly all rag cutters are Irish, and they are mostly old women or young girls. The girls usually earn about 75 cents or $1 a week. I called at a rag dealer's, and was told by a woman that one cent a pound is paid for cutting the seams off, taking the linings out, and removing the buttons. A woman can earn, she says, from $2 to $2.50 a week. It is not unhealthy. They grow fat on it. Theirs are mostly old women, and all are Irish. For assorting they are paid by the week, and receive $2.75. They work from seven to five in winter; in summer, ten hours. The keeper of the wareroom sells his rags for making paper, and sends many to Europe. The women work all the year. No other kind of work could be done by women in that business, as the only other is packing in bales, and that, of course, must be done by men. The warerooms close at six; so the women have the evenings for themselves. P., a rag dealer, says he buys and sells according to the quality of the rags. It is customary to pay by the week for sorting rags. Some get $2, and some $2.50. Cutting the seams off is paid for by the pound. The odor was extremely offensive (it was a damp day); but the man said it was not unhealthy, unless the rags are worked with in a close room; then the dust is apt to affect the eyes. Occasionally the small pox is taken from rags. I called at a rag dealer's, and was told by a filthy, squalid, barefooted girl at work, that for cutting up rags a penny a pound is paid. She was assorting. For that work, hands are paid twenty-five cents a day, and their board. It is very dirty work. The dust and sand must affect the eyes and lungs. Some men can cut as many as thirty-five pounds a day. Men are paid twice as much as women for assorting. I inquired why. I was told by a young junk dealer, standing by, that they could pick twice as much in the same time, the truth of which the reader can decide as well as I. Some men earn at it, he said, $6 a week. A woman, who seemed to have some interest in the place, remarked the girls have work all the year. Called at the door of a large wareroom, where I saw men assorting waste paper to be sold for the purpose of being made into new paper. =503. Rag Gatherers.= The chiffoniers or rag gatherers of Paris are said to number about 6,000; those of London about 800 or 1,000. The chiffonier in Paris can collect only from eight in the evening until early next morning, as the streets are all swept before six o'clock in the morning, as after that time until eight in the evening the citizens are passing. A few in Paris have realized fortunes; but we suspect the most, in all countries, barely gain a subsistence. They all lead a hard and gloomy life. In the United States, most of the rags collected are converted into paper. Some are sold at shoddy manufactories, and those unfit for either shoddy or paper are spread over corn land, or used as a fertilizer for hops. One of the most handsome buildings on Broadway is said to be owned by a man that commenced life in the petty business of a rag collector. So much for economy and industry! Most of the rag pickers in New York live in the Five Points, and near the Central Park. Scarcely any person that has seen the old women rag pickers of New York in rain and snow, cold and driving winds, partially clad, can ever deny that a woman is capable of very hard and degrading labor, when driven to it by want. Rag picking and rag assorting are distinct branches. Rag pickers make the most, and are chiefly Germans. The number of rag gatherers in New York is very great, and the majority of them are women. I never observe the face of an American or French woman. Rag gatherers have each their own province, and none of the rest dare intrude. The majority do not confine themselves to picking up rags only, but bones and bits of metal and glass. Some even carry a basket in which they gather waste vegetables or putrid meat, or the trimmings of uncooked meat, which they feed on themselves, or give to a pet pig, or trade with some neighbor better off that has a cow. When the rag collectors reach their homes, they assort the articles they have collected. They separate the rags into clean and dirty (the last they wash), into linen and woollen, and the paper into clean and dirty, white and colored. The life led by rag gatherers is very laborious, as they must spend all the hours of daylight on their feet, walking many miles. Their earnings are so scanty that they must be out in all kinds of weather. The enormous rent they pay for wretched accommodations is a disgrace to the landlords. Many of them sleep a dozen in a room, on the bare floor. By the most rigid economy and unremitting industry, a few are enabled to lay by a small sum for old age, or purchase a little cottage and a plot of ground, when they change their filthy occupation for a more healthy and agreeable one, that of raising vegetables for the market. If I had to make a living on the streets of New York, I would prefer carrying a wheel around to grind knives and scissors, or putting window-glass in, to collecting rags, for the work of neither is so filthy. The children of rag gatherers begin very early to follow the pursuit of their parents. I saw some children one day picking rags, that told me they received two cents a pound. They were at the dirt heaps where carts of dirt from town had been emptied. They sometimes gather forty pounds each a day. They cannot do so well in winter. I saw a rag collector who starts at five in the morning, and is gathering rags until eight in the evening. She eats nothing during the time. She was German. Her father and mother also gather rags. Her father sells them at two cents a pound. She did not know how many pounds she gathered, but said she got three large bags full every day in good weather. I saw other collectors, who told me they gather each from ten to thirty pounds a day. Some families succeed in gathering from fifty cents to $1.50 worth a day, in good weather and good seasons. "The prices paid for the staple articles of their trade, purchased exclusively by middlemen, are: bones, 36 cents per bushel; rags, whether linen or woollen, $1 per cwt.; paper, $1 per cwt.; and these sell them again to the down-town customers, the rags at $2.50 to $3.50; the paper at $1.25 to $1.50; with a proportionate advance on bones, and all the articles in the junk business." =504. Rope and Twine Makers.= Ropes are made of the fibres of various plants, and particular kinds of grasses, and the fibres of the cocoanut cover. Hair from the manes and tails of horses is also used. Hemp and flax are most common in the United States. The simplest mode of making rope is under long sheds. After the material is spun into yarn, it is doubled or trebled, and twisted. Ropes for the rigging of vessels employ a large number of men. The great variety and amount of cordage used make it an extensive trade. Ropes are now manufactured in some places by steam. A small number of women are employed in rope making. S. & M., Philadelphia, employ about fifty female hands. Some are engaged in spinning, and a dexterous woman will keep from forty to fifty spindles in constant motion, some at carding, some at balling. The last-named operation is the only one in which the women can sit while at work. They work ten hours, and earn from $1.50 (for young girls), to $5 a week (for the experienced frame spinners). The last mentioned are mostly English, Scotch, or Irish women, who have followed the trade from childhood. It requires long practice to command the highest wages. A good steady hand is much valued, and is not liable to be thrown out of work. Water power is used with the machinery. W., New York, employs them in his manufactory for spooling only. A manufacturer on Long Island writes: "I pay my hands $1 a week, for the first four weeks; then $1.50 a week, for the next four weeks; and for the four weeks following, $2 per week; and so increase their wages till I allow them $3.50 per week. I employ mostly boys and girls. I pay them the same, regardless of sex. They work from ten to twelve hours, and are employed all the year. Board, $1.25 to $1.50 per week. At eighteen, my boys learn a trade. I pay my hands well and use them well. I do not receive children under twelve years of age. I encourage them in going to school before and after they work in my factory." There are only two factories of this kind in New York city that employ women. The proprietor of the largest gave me the following items: "I employ thirteen girls and women (mostly Irish) in spooling, twisting, &c. Most are paid by the week. Women receive $3.50; girls, from $1.15 to $3.50. The time of learning is one, two, or three weeks, according to the kind of work, and the ability of the girl. The prospect is poor for more learners. My girls work ten hours a day, and have employment the year round. There are enough of hands in New York. Some of the minor parts could be performed by women, that are not, but not enough to give many employment. Cities are the best for selling the article, country the best for making. Men do not perform the same kind of work women do. Women are best suited to their branches. Boys could be got to do the work of the girls for as low wages. Indeed, most boys work for less in New York than girls." We think the last assertion a mistake on the part of H. The agent of the Royal River Yarn and Twine Company writes: "We consider our employment healthy. It proves so. Take, for instance, a certain number, at random, of different ages, employed in cotton mills, and compare with the same number, taken in the same way, from farm neighborhoods, and you will find more sickness and death among farmers' daughters." (This is rather a startling statement, but we are not prepared to disprove it.) He adds: "The regularity in exercise, taking meals, and resting, accounts, I think, for the steady employment in cotton mills, and the like, being so conducive to health. I have been engaged as a machinist, &c., about a cotton mill, for thirty-five years; and, according to my observation, more girls improve their health, taking ordinary care of themselves, than otherwise. Part of our hands are paid by the week, and part by the piece. They have from $2 to $4.50 per week, new hands having only $2. It takes from three months to two years to learn. Common sense and industrious habits are the only qualifications needed. Spring and summer are the best seasons, but work is furnished continuously the year round. Our girls go home now and then to spend a few weeks, visit, fix their clothing, &c. To shorten their time would be rather a disadvantage, as capital invested must pay, or no encouragement would be given to invest more. Demand for hands is steady; and if a surplus, it is on the neatest and lightest kind of work. Women are neater, steadier, and more active than men. Our girls make the best of housewives. Overseers, agents, and business men marry them, and we may look around and see, in some that have worked in mills, the brightest and best mothers of the land. The faculties of the mind are quickened by the busy hum and movement of machinery. Board, $1.50, respectable and comfortable. Parties not regarding that, would not have respectable help." =505. Sail and Awning Makers.= I think it would require considerable strength and long practice to make sails, but not more than some occupations in which women are engaged. L. sometimes employs women to run the binding on awnings, paying 2 and 2½ cents a yard. He thinks no women are employed in the United States in making sails. They worked at tents during the Mexican war, but now only men are employed. S. knows that, in France, women make the lightest kind of sails. In Russia, sails are made by women. A sail maker in a large maritime city writes: "Some women are employed in sail making in Massachusetts. It is a healthy trade, and men spend three years learning it. A sail maker needs a tough constitution and steady habits. Some parts of the work are suitable for women. The best locations are on the lakes or in seaport towns." An awning manufacturer told me he employs girls in summer, and pays from $4 to $5 a week, of ten hours a day. They work by hand, and bind and put on fringe. T. employs some girls for binding. They can earn from $3 to $4 a week when constantly employed. He usually pays by the week, and has it done in his shop. A sail maker in Connecticut writes: "Women are employed at sail making in France. A knowledge of arithmetic and draughting are essential. The work is done at all seasons. The occupation is filled. It is usual to spend four years as an apprentice. The best locations are in seaports or river towns. I think the occupation is too laborious for women." =506. Shoe-Peg Makers.= A shoe-peg manufacturing association, in New Hampshire, furnish me a report of the work they have done by women, as follows: "Women are employed only to feed the machine with prepared blocks, and sorting pegs after they are split. The work is light, and well adapted to the physical capacity of girls and women. They can do the work just as well as young men and boys, and perhaps a little quicker. Wages are perhaps two thirds as much as that of men in the same branches. Two hundred women would do all the work, in their several departments, in the business, for the whole of North and South America. We employ sixteen in our mill, at $3.50 per week, including board, which is called about $1.75. Men are not employed in the same branches. A part could be learned in one month--nearly half of it would require from six to twelve months. Girls are paid $3 a week, while learning. Nothing needed but ready and quick application. They work eleven hours. Each hour less would be more than a private loss. All are Americans." =507. Shroud Makers.= There is something repulsive in death--the shroud--the cap--the coffin--the sunken eyes--the still hands and ghastly face. Death is fearful, even in its mildest forms. And yet how we yearn for rest--how we long for quiet! How we pant for that glorious freedom from anxiety and care, that awaits the just in heaven! The change of the chrysalis to the butterfly, of the seed to the plant, of the earth beneath our feet, and the heavens above--the very consciousness within us, all proclaim unmistakably the truth that the spirit will not die--that it is immortal. There are duties connected with the house of mourning that afflicted friends and relatives have not the heart to perform. These, therefore, devolve upon persons interested in the dead, or hired attendants. Closing the eyes, washing the body, making the shroud and putting it on, are in some cases performed by the hired nurse, but generally making the shroud is done by the undertaker's wife. Some undertakers keep shrouds in their shops ready for sale. In large cities, an undertaker's wife is in many cases sent for by the nurse, to assist in laying out the dead, and receives, as a compensation, from $3 to $5. The wife of an undertaker told me that she lines the coffins for her husband. They buy their caps already made, of an old lady who brings them around. Mr. ----, an undertaker, is always willing to dress the remains of any but those who have died of small pox. He charges $3 to wash and dress a corpse, $5 with shaving. An undertaker told me he knew women could be employed in plaiting the folds of silk in coffins, and making coffin pillows. The wholesale trade send away large quantities of shrouds and caps, and so have many made up. A man in Newark, who devotes himself exclusively to making shrouds, employs several women. In England, some undertakers employ women to make up mourning suits. =508. Sign Painters.= Sign painting requires a long, steady, and regular apprenticeship. It requires also a correct eye and a steady hand. In large cities, sign and ornamental painting can be made a distinct branch of painting; but in a town or village it is combined with carriage or house painting, as one individual seldom has enough sign and ornamental painting to keep him constantly occupied. It is not more necessary for a painter to know how to mix the paints, and use judgment and taste in the selection of colors, than to form letters according to geometrical proportions. A painter must measure, more by the eye than a rule, the size and arrangement of letters in a given space. Good painters receive $3, $4, and $5 a day for their work, but generally are paid by the piece. When paid by the week, and they work regularly, they receive from $12 to $15 a week. Mrs. K., New York, says in Dublin there are many families that devote themselves to sign painting, but she knows of none in this country except her own. She employs a man to grind paints, put up signs, &c.,--also to paint out-of-door signs, that is, such as must be painted on the building. Her two daughters paint all the signs that are to be put up. Some of the large signs above stores in New York have been painted by them. They are paid as good prices as men. She thinks an individual should commence early to learn. Her daughters received their instruction and advice from their father. In that way they acquired maturity of judgment and nicety of hand. Judgment needs to be exercised in regard to size and space, and artistic taste in ornamenting. A sign painter told me that superior workers can earn from $3 to $15 a day, if they have sufficient employment. Many house and other painters, in cities, profess to paint signs, but in reality have it done. Germans do much of it in New York, because they do it cheaply, but many of them do not execute their work well. It is customary to have an apprentice three years, and pay the usual terms, $2.50 a week, the first year. A boy, during the first year, mostly grinds paints, goes errands, &c. Spring is the most busy season. Painting in oils is not neat work. A sign and carriage painter writes me: "The work is unhealthy on account of the poisonous vapors and dust. It requires two or three years to learn, and one must have a great deal of practice. A common education, natural taste, and a correct eye are the qualifications needed. Many parts of it are very easy and pleasant. Some parts might be done by women." The business pays best in large towns and cities. An ornamental painter writes me: "Women are employed in sign painting in England, France, Germany, and Belgium. The time required to learn would depend on the taste or genius of the individual. The qualifications requisite are those of an artist in a less degree." B., an emblematic sign painter, thinks the employment very suitable for females, but supposes there are better openings in other cities than New York. It requires two or three years to learn all the different branches well. During the first year a learner could not support herself, but after that could, if she had a taste for it, was industrious, and received enough orders to keep her busy. =509. Snuff Packers.= At a snuff factory, I saw two women putting up snuff. The women color the bladders for holding snuff, in tobacco water, pack, cap, label, varnish, and wrap them. They are weighed after being packed, and women are paid at the rate of one cent a pound. Women always stand in packing. They can earn from $5 to $6 a week, and have work all the year. The woman with whom we conversed was a sensible American, who told us her health had failed greatly during the nine years she had worked in snuff. While working in the snuff, women wear caps, but are so covered with it that they might be mistaken for bags of snuff. Of course, a great deal is inhaled. Both the women I saw complained of difficulty in breathing, particularly when they lie down at night. One said, when suffering great oppression she would vomit, and throw up snuff as fresh in taste and smell as before it was inhaled. For packing snuff in jars, they are paid by the week, $4.50, and, for putting it in bottles still less. Men are mostly employed in packing snuff. =510. Stencil Makers.= A stencil-plate maker told me that cutting the plates could be done by women, but it would require a strong, stout woman to hammer the plates after they are cool. In learning, a boy receives $2 a week. There are very few stencil cutters in the South and West. People send North for their plates, or get them cut by travelling peddlers, who are not allowed now in the South. The price of stencil plates has fallen very greatly. Such as would have sold for $5 a few years ago, can now be had for fifty cents. I saw a lady who cut stencil plates. She wanted an agent to sell her plates and ink. =511. Street Sweepers.= The girls seen in New York sweeping the crossings in winter, are not paid by the city, but receive, now and then, from a passer by, a penny for their labor. If enough of strong men were employed by the city, and properly paid, it would serve to diminish the $13,000,000 annually spent in New York for preventable sickness, where thirty-one die every day more than in Philadelphia, while its natural advantages are greater. In Paris, women are employed as street sweepers. =512. Tip Gilders.= Most hats and caps are made in New York city. There are six establishments in the city devoted to tip gilding, and morocco cutting and rolling, and four girls, on an average, in each. The girls put the sizing and gold leaf on, and, when the impression is made, brush the loose gold leaf off. A man in the business told me he sometimes finds it difficult to get a good hand, and always prefers to teach a girl. He pays from $2 to $6 a week. The men cut the morocco for linings, and girls roll down the edge by running it through a small machine. =513. Tobacco Strippers.= In tobacco factories, women are generally employed to strip the leaves from the stems. Smoking tobacco is cut in machines, and put in papers of different sizes. But little chewing tobacco is prepared in the Southern and Western States, though some factories have commenced it in the West during the last few years. Some leaf tobacco is put up in the South by slaves. In the West it is difficult to get hands, but in New York there is a surplus, though they are the very dregs of society. A. told me the women he employs are mostly Irish, and of low origin. They are generally old women, not fit for much else, and they are quite as poorly paid as in any other branch of labor. The part done by women is not unhealthy, though some of the parts done by men in close rooms are thought to be unhealthy. H. pays by the pound for stripping, and the girls earn from $2 to $4 a week. They sit while at work. In packing they stand, because they can do more. He employs his hands all the year. For packing tobacco in papers and boxes the girls are paid by the paper, and earn about the same as the strippers. The work is dirty, and the hands change their clothes when they come and go. It requires some time to acquire expertness. H. considers tobacco very healthy, if not taken inwardly to excess. He says tobacco workers never have fevers. (?) I went through G.'s factory. I never saw females engaged in such degrading work, and so uncomfortably situated, in all my life. It is far worse than rag picking. A tier of bunks (two on a side), in dark, narrow rooms, the centre filled with hogsheads of tobacco, a hatchway, and machinery made up the furniture of the place. The air was so close and strong, that I was almost stifled during the short time I spent there. The floor was covered with filth and waste tobacco. In the lower bunks, in one room, it was with difficulty I could discover the features of the old women and neglected children, at work. A forewoman had the superintendence, who assisted the workers in weighing the tobacco, and keeping an account of the amount given each. They were mostly Irish. It is very filthy, disagreeable work. Their tobacco strippers are paid fifty cents one hundred pounds. They strip from twenty to fifty pounds a day, earning from $1 to $3 a week. The majority have no homes, but hire lodgings at thirty-seven cents a week, and buy something to eat. They work from seven to half past five or six, having half an hour at noon. At C.'s, the rooms were not so dark, cramped, and uncomfortable as at G.'s. They employ seventy-five women and children. The forewoman told me that a smart hand, working in good leaf, and having constant employment, can earn from $3 to $5 a week. They are paid two cents for three pounds. The packers, if active and skilful, can earn more. At a place on Greenwich street, they pay thirty-five cents per hundred pounds for stripping, and a woman may earn from $1 to $4 a week at it. At packing they can earn from $3 to $6. At L.'s, they employ one hundred and twenty-five girls and women. At packing their girls can earn from $4.25 to $9 a week, working only in daylight. Strippers can earn from $1.50 to $3.50, and are mostly old widow women with children. The foreman thinks it most healthy for packers to stand, as they are thereby saved from stooping. He tries to get the best class of girls he can, but he finds it impossible to secure the services of American girls. I am glad American girls object to working in the filthy weed. The girls at L.'s have employment all the year. M. pays forty cents per hundred pounds for stripping. His strippers earn from thirty to forty cents a day. Some packers are able to earn $1 a day. They have work all the year. Tobacconists in Albany write: "We employ women in papering tobacco, and pay by the dozen, the hands earning from $3 to $5 per week. They work ten hours a day, the year through." A tobacconist in Hartford "pays his women by the week, $3.50, for stripping tobacco. They work ten hours a day. It requires but a few weeks to learn the work done by women." B----'s, of Boston, write: "We always have employment for women, in stripping and papering tobacco, and other light work. They are employed, also, in making cigars. By some physicians the work is considered healthy. We pay by the week, from $3 to $5, working ten hours a day. The men who make cigars are mostly foreigners, thoroughly acquainted with their business, a kind of work which requires a regular apprenticeship to learn. The women never give their time to learn, and we cannot afford to teach them, on account of the low price of goods made in Germany, shipped here by millions. Hence, the men, in their part of the business, earn from $6 to $15 per week. Learners receive their board. It would be much better if a tariff, excluding cheap cigars, were passed. The comfort and remuneration are as good as any branch of female industry. Board, $2 to $3." =514. Toy Makers.= The thousand and one inventions for amusing children have given exercise to a variety of talents. Any particular style of toy follows the fashion of the world--it passes away, and another takes its place. Pewter toys are made in New York, tin toys in Philadelphia and Connecticut. The reason more toys are not made in this country is the high price of labor and living. Children's drums are made both in the city and country. N. & Co., manufacturers of military and toy drums in Massachusetts, write: "We employ one woman only in our factory, who makes the straps for drums. She works by the piece, and earns $1 a day, boarding herself." A manufacturer of pewter toys, in New York, employs ten or twelve boys. He pays $1.75 per week, of ten hours a day. He could use girls just as well, but prefers boys. I called at a manufactory of tin ware. The proprietor makes tin toys, and employs some women to paint them. The work has to be done on the premises, as the articles have to be subjected to heat after they are painted. The girls work ten hours a day, and are paid $3 a week. H., New York, makes small boats and vessels. They range in price from 37 cents to $30. The highest priced are perfect in all their parts. He pays a woman $80 a year for stitching by machine the edges of the sails. B., manufacturer of mechanical toys, employs twenty girls in soldering and painting. The painting is done by stencils. It requires but a short time to learn. Good hands earn from $2.50 to $4 per week. There are two departments in the manufacture of dolls--making and painting. D. employs women out of the house to make bodies for dolls--muslin stuffed with wadding. G., New York, pays his girls about $4 per week for dressing dolls. At a large store in New York, I was told they employ a number of girls for dressing dolls, paying from $3 to $4 per week. They pay by the piece, according to the size, and style of dress. In busy seasons, the girls are allowed to take some dolls home and dress them in the evening. Doll dressing requires taste, expertness, ingenuity, and economy in cutting the materials. Their room is superintended by a lady. At a store for the sale of fancy goods, on inquiring about the canton-flannel rabbits, mice, &c., I was told they give them to a school girl in Brooklyn to make. She makes them out of school hours, and earns $1.50 per week. They are sewed by a machine, because it can be done faster. The treasurer of a firm manufacturing Yankee notions, in Providence, writes they have six women employed in labelling and packing light goods, who earn from $3 to $6 per week, of ten hours a day. It requires about four weeks to learn to do the work. There is no difference in seasons. What work women do at all they do as well as men. Some places are better than others for this style of manufacture. =515. Varnishers and Varnish Makers.= In France, women are employed as varnishers of furniture. At some varnish factories, women are employed to separate the good from the imperfect gum, and I think are paid the usual price of woman's work, 50 cents a day. Women might make spirit varnish. Copal varnish has to be boiled, and is liable to take fire. As it requires much strength to stir it, women could not very well make it. The varnishing of pianos could be done by women. A manufacturer of musical instruments told me a solution, one constituent of which is pulverized marble, has been made for varnishing, that is very substantial. A knife can be broken against it, after it has become hardened on furniture. It will probably be used very extensively. =516. Water Carriers.= "Everywhere on the banks of the Nile, the poorer sort of women may be seen bringing up water from the river, in pitchers, on their heads or shoulders." There are from one hundred to one hundred and fifty water carriers in London, but they are mostly or all men. EMPLOYMENTS FOR THE AFFLICTED. =517. Blind Women.= Many blind persons are employed as follows: Attendants in blind institutions, authors, basket makers, bead workers, broom makers, brush makers, carpet and rug weavers, chair seaters, flower and fruit venders, governesses, hair and moss pickers, hucksters, knitters, match sellers, mattress makers, milk sellers, music teachers, netters, newspaper and book agents, paper-box makers, seamstresses, stationers, straw braiders, teachers, umbrella sewers, washerwomen, willow workers. We think they usually engage in their work with pleasure and profit. Fortunately the tools employed in the occupations of the blind do not cost much. So if the blind have a thorough knowledge of some pursuit, and means to keep them until they are established and able to secure constant work, they may feel sure of a comfortable livelihood. Their occupations are of a kind to furnish them with most constant employment in a city. Though the compensation for each article is small, yet, when one's time is fully occupied, the aggregate is considerable. =518. Deaf Mutes.= Deaf mutes can engage in most branches of book making, fancy work, sewing, shoe making, teach drawing, and teach those afflicted like themselves. =519. The Lame.= The lame can braid straw, color photographs, copy, cut labels, edit papers, embroider, engrave, make mats, make pens, model, paint, sew--indeed, do almost anything. Lameness is no excuse for idleness. What do lame men do? None of them, that have any self-respect, beg or sit idle because they are lame. UNUSUAL EMPLOYMENTS. =520. United States.= Last summer, a lady ascended alone in a balloon, from Palace Garden, N. Y. She went up once in a balloon filled with hot air. She received part of the profits derived from the admittance fees, and the keeper of the garden the other portion, neither of which were very large. Several women have gone up with their husbands. We take the following items from the summary of the San Francisco _Alta California_, of December 5th: "At the recent election, two women were elected to fill office in Placer County--one as justice of the peace, and the other as constable. Each received one vote in the precinct, and there was no opposition." It is seldom that a lady's exertions are called forth as were those of Mrs. Patton, wife of the captain of the ship _Neptune's Car_. Yet, it goes to confirm what we have stated in some other place, that any valuable information acquired will always come in use. We will quote the extract as we saw it in a newspaper, copied from a San Francisco letter: "Fifty days ago, Captain Patton was attacked with the brain fever, and for the last twenty-five days has been blind. Previous to his illness, he had put the first mate off duty on account of his incompetency. After the captain's illness, the second mate took charge of the ship, but he did not understand navigation. The first mate wrote Mrs. Patton a letter, reminding her of the dangers of the coast, and of the great responsibility she had assumed, and offered to take charge of the ship; but she stood by the decision of her husband and declined the offer. She worked up the reckoning every day, and brought the ship safely into port. During all this time she acted as nurse to the captain. She studied medicine to learn how to treat his case, and shaved his head, and by competent care and watchfulness kept him alive. She said that for fifty nights she had not undressed herself. Few women could have done so much and done it so well. She was at once navigator, nurse, and physician, and protector of the property intrusted to her husband." The Geneva _Courier_ notices the appearance in that village "of a strong-armed, strong-backed, and, of course, strong-minded woman, in charge of a canal boat, of which she is owner and captain. She is of German origin, and manages her craft with great ability." In New York, I saw a woman driving a bread wagon, one rolling a wheelbarrow, and another drawing a similar wagon filled with ashes. A few women are employed in charcoal burning in New Jersey. =521. England.= In looking over the census of Great Britain, for 1850, we are surprised to find that in some of those occupations most suitable for women, as physicians, music composers, teachers of mathematics, macaroni packers, mask makers, honey dealers, lecturers, reporters, and spice merchants, not one female is reported; while, in occupations altogether unsuitable, many women are employed--in some, even hundreds. No doubt many of these women, perhaps a majority, and in some occupations it may be all, are the widows of men who have been engaged in the business, and who employ others to do the work. In some of the other occupations, the women probably do only the lighter work, under the direction of the masters or competent foremen. Circumstances, as regards occupation, certainly do much to influence the fate of every one. But in no respect is there a greater need of reform, than in the proper appreciation of employments by the sexes. Men have, in bygone times, seized upon the lightest and most lucrative occupations, and by custom still retain them. The most laborious and disagreeable work is left for women, and what is still worse, they are paid only from one third to one half as much as men, doing the same kind of work. Of the occupations that strike us as odd for women, in the census of Great Britain, are makers of agricultural implements, anchor smiths, barge women, barge boat builders, bell hangers, bedstead makers, bill stickers, blacksmiths, brass manufacturers, brick makers, bristle manufacturers, builders, carpenters, case (packing) makers, chimney sweepers, coke burners, commercial travellers, engine and machinery makers, ferriers, goldbeaters, grindstone cutters, gun makers, hawkers, hemp manufacturers, hinge makers, nail manufacturers, oil refiners, paper hangers, parasol and umbrella stick manufacturers, peat cutters, plasterers, potato merchants, railway-station attendants, razor makers, ring-chain makers, rivet makers, rope makers, saddle-tree makers, sail makers, scale makers, sawyers, scavengers, sextons, ship agents, ship builders, small steel-ware manufacturers, snuff and tobacco manufacturers, spade makers, spar cutters, spirit and wine merchants, stone breakers, stone quarriers, stove, grate, and range makers, sugar refiners, surgical-instrument makers, timber merchants, timber choppers and benders, tin manufacturers, trunk makers, turners, turpentine manufacturers, undertakers, vermin destroyers, well sinkers, wheelwrights, white-metal manufacturers, wine manufacturers, wood dealers, and zinc manufacturers. In the furniture trade of Great Britain, 5,763 women are employed, while 7,479 are engaged in conveyance. I would also add, that in Great Britain, women have been, and still are, to some extent, employed in coal, copper, iron, lead, manganese, salt, tin, and other mineral mines. Of those for men extremely inappropriate, are reported three hundred and sixty-six dress makers, and sixty-one embroiderers. "In the reign of George II. (says Mrs. Childs), the minister of Clerkenwell was chosen by a majority of women. The office of champion has frequently been held by a woman, and was so at the coronation of George I. The office of grand chamberlain, in 1822, was filled by two women; and that of clerk of the crown, in the court of king's bench, has been granted to a female. The celebrated Anne, Countess of Pembroke, held the hereditary office of sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in person, sitting on the bench of the judges. In ancient councils, mention is made of deaconesses; and in an edition of the New Testament printed in 1574, a woman is spoken of as minister of a church." Miss Betsy Miller has for years commanded the Scotch brig, Cleotus. Her father commanded a vessel plying between England and France. After his wife died, the daughter frequently accompanied him. On his death, being without a home on land, she took command of the vessel, and remained in the capacity of captain several years. An English correspondent of an American paper writes: "Walking, lately, near some white-lead works, about the hour of closing, we observed the sudden egress of about a hundred women from the establishment, all Irish, and all decently clad and well conducted. On inquiry, we found that they are employed continuously in the works, piling the lead for oxidation, and in various other processes, not by any means coming under the denomination of light labor." A few years ago, a singular death occurred in England. It was that of a woman, who, owing to harsh treatment from her parents when a child, left her home at the age of eight, dressed in boy's clothes, got work as a boy, learned the trade of a mason, and worked at it until about middle age, when the business was changed for that of a beer house, in which occupation the individual continued until her death, at the age of sixty. She always dressed as a man. When quite young, she was very industrious and hard-working. Many of the large houses and tall chimneys in Manchester and Salford were built by her. "The 7,000 women returned in the census under the head of miners, are, no doubt, for the most part, the dressers of the ores in the Cornish and Welsh mines. The work is dirty, but not too laborious; less laborious than the work which may perhaps be included under the same head--the supplying porcelain clay from the same regions of country. Travellers in Devonshire and Cornwall are familiar with the ugly scenery of hillsides where turf is taken up, and the series of clay pits is overflowing, and the plastered women are stirring the mess, or sifting and straining, or drying or moulding the refined clay. The mineral interest is, however, one of the smallest in the schedule of female industry; and it is likely to contract, rather than expand--except the labor of sorting the ores." In Great Britain, some women work in alabaster, and some in alum mines. In what is called the Black country, some women are employed on the pit banks, and some about the furnace yards. A London paper says: "Melton and its neighborhood can boast of three public characters, which, perhaps, no other can; namely, two independent ladies, who have taken out game certificates, and who enter the field, and can bring down the game equal to any sportsman, as well as those indulging in fishing, hunting over the country with hounds, &c. The third is a female blacksmith, a daughter of Mr. William Hinman, who is such an adept at shoeing a horse or working at the anvil, as to cause universal excitement. It was but the other day that she took off the old shoes of a horse, pared the feet, and fitted the shoes at the fire, and affixed them in the most scientific manner possible, and in considerably less time than her father could, who is called one of the quickest shoers in Melton." Some women are employed as kelp burners in Great Britain; and some, as bathers, manage the bathing machines used on the coast. In the census of Great Britain are reported some women as hack proprietors. =522. France.= A Paris correspondent of the New York _Times_ writes: "My washerwoman is a man. He lives in the Rue Blanc, and any one may see him up to his elbows in soap suds, or ironing frills on bosoms. His wife is a wood sawyer." It is not unusual, in the public gardens of Germany, and on the broad sidewalks of the Boulevards in Paris, for men and women to hire a chair for a sou to a passer by who wishes to rest. In France, some women are engaged in cutting and drying seaweeds, and some in making wooden shoes. "In the department of Somme, France, women alone have the right to go into the fields and gather stones to repair the roads. In the cantons where peat is dug, the privilege of loading and unloading the boats which carry it is given them. At Cistal, in Provence, women alone have been authorized to sell the water which was brought from a fountain some distance from the city. No man could be a carrier of water. In other parts, to women is given the transport of trunks, valises, clothes bags, and effects for the use of travellers on packets. These resources are momentary. Accorded by one mayor, they can be withdrawn by another." "In Paris, women cry the rate of exchange, after Bourse hours." They also "undertake the moving of furniture, agree with you as to price, and you find them quite as responsible as men." The author of "Parisian Sights and French Principles" mentions a number of female employments rather novel to Americans: "I will say nothing of their laboring in the field, their driving huge carts through the streets of Paris, and other rude labors which soon rub out of them all feminine softness; but confine myself to the more agreeable duties which they have here usurped from men. Indeed, a man is but a secondary being in the scale of French civilization. The 'dames à comptoir' are as essential to the success of a Parisian _café_ as the cook himself. More hats are donned at their shrines than before the most brilliant belles of the metropolis. My boot maker, or the head of the establishment, is a woman; my porter is of the same sex, older in years and worse in looks; my butcher, milkman, and the old-clothes man, newsboy, and rag gatherer beneath my window, ditto. They are waiters at the baths, doorkeepers at the theatres, ticket sellers, fiddlers, chair letters of the churches; they figure in every revolution, and have a tongue and arms in every fight; in short, they are at the bottom and top of everything in France." In the Hotel des Invalides, at Paris, is Lieutenant Madame Brulow, who entered in 1799, and has been there ever since. Her father, brothers, and husband were soldiers, and were all killed in battle; at the age of twenty she was a widow and a mother. She joined the French army at Corsica, where she behaved very bravely; but was disabled for service by the bursting of a bomb while in the discharge of her duties as sergeant. She is a woman of chaste manners and correct principles. She dresses in the uniform of the Invalides. Louis XVIII. conferred on her the rank of second lieutenant, and by the present Napoleon she was made a member of the society of the Legion of Honor. A female soldier, whose history is similar to Madame Brulow's, died near Paris, a short time since, at the age of eighty-seven. She was a dragoon, and served in Italy, Germany, and Spain, in all the campaigns of the French, from 1793 to 1812. When Bonaparte was first consul, he expressed a wish to see her, and she was kindly received by him at St. Cloud. She received many wounds in battle, and had four horses killed under her. We find the following article, taken from Galignani's _Messenger_: "In consequence of the success obtained by Madame Isabella in breaking horses for the Russian army, the French Minister of War authorized her to proceed, officially, before a commission of generals and superior officers of cavalry, to a practical demonstration of the method, on a certain number of young cavalry horses. After twenty days' training, the horses were so perfectly broken in, that the Minister no longer hesitated to enter into an arrangement with Madame Isabella to introduce her system into all the imperial schools of cavalry, beginning with that of Saumur." =523. Other Countries.= Professor Ingraham, in his "Pillar of Fire," describing the Hebrews at work in Egypt, says: "The men that carried brick to the smoothly swept ground where they were to be dried, delivered them to women, who, many hundreds in number, placed them side by side on the earth in rows--a lighter task than that of the men. The borders of this busy plain, where it touched the fields of stubble wheat, were thronged with women and children gathering straw for the men who mixed the clay." "The Egyptian ladies," says the same writer, "employed much of their time with the needle, and either with their own hands, or by the agency of their maidens, they embroidered, wove, spun, and did needlework." Herodotus says: "It was expected of the virgins consecrated to the service of the Egyptian temples to gather flowers for the altars, to feed the sacred birds, and daily to fill the vases with pure, fresh water from the Nile." During the middle ages, "women preached in public, supported controversies, published and defended theses, filled the chairs of philosophy and law, harangued the popes in Latin, wrote Greek, and read Hebrew. Nuns wrote poetry, women of rank became divines, and young girls publicly exhorted Christian princes to take up arms for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre." "In the Greek island of Hinnin, the inhabitants gain a livelihood by obtaining sponges for the Turkish baths; and no girl is allowed to marry till she has proved her dexterity by bringing up from the sea a certain quantity of this marketable article." The wife of the Burmese governor was observed, by some Englishmen, to superintend the building of her husband's ship. "In many of the South Sea islands, women assist in the construction of the buildings appropriated to common use. Sometimes a woman of distinction may be seen carrying a heavy stone for the foundation of a building, while a stout attendant carries the light feathered staff to denote her rank." "In Genoa there are marriage brokers, who have pocketbooks filled with the names of marriageable girls of different classes, with an account of their fortunes, personal attractions, &c. When they succeed in arranging connections, they have two or three per cent. commission on the portion. The contract is often drawn up before the parties have seen each other. If a man dislikes the appearance or manners of his future partner, he may break off the match, on condition of paying the brokerage and other expenses." In the "Art Student in Munich," we find this passage: "You know, in Germany, your neighbor's dresses by meeting the laundresses bearing them home through the streets upon tall poles, like gay pennons." "In Munich, a servant girl will be sent around with a number of advertisements and a paste pot, and pastes up the advertisements at the corners of the streets throughout the city." "At Homburg, Germany, four, six, or eight girls, according to the season, dip the water from the spring, by taking three tumblers by the handles in each hand, and filling them without stopping, and supplying those in waiting, so fast that there is no crowd and no jostling and impatience." Mrs. Nicolson says: "Many a poor widow have I seen in Ireland, with some little son or daughter, spreading manure, by moonlight, over her scanty patch of ground; or, before the rising of the sun, going out, with her wisp about her forehead and basket to her back, to gather her turf or potatoes." "In the elevated, cold, dry regions of Thibet, the goats are furnished with a fine down or hair-like wool under the coarse, common outer wool. The long hairs are picked out, the remainder washed out in nice water, and then handspun by women." "In some African tribes, it is common for the women to unite with the men in hunting the lion and the leopard." During the reign of Anne of Austria, the French women often appeared at the head of political factions, wearing scarfs that designated the party to which they belonged. Swords and harps, violins and cuirasses, were seen together in the same saloon. There was a regiment created under the name of mademoiselle. "During the late war, Polish women assisted the men in erecting fortifications, and one of the outworks was called the 'lunette of the women,' because it was built entirely by their hands. The Countess Plater raised and equipped a regiment of five or six hundred Lithuanians at her own expense; and she was uniformly at their head, encouraging them by her brave example in every battle. The women proposed to form three companies of their own sex, to share the fatigues and perils of the army; but their countrymen, wishing to employ their energies in a manner less dangerous, distributed them among the hospitals to attend the wounded." "In the army of the King of Siam, one corps particularly attracts the attention of strangers, which is a battalion of the king's guard, composed of women. This battalion consists of four hundred women, chosen from among the handsomest and most robust girls in the country. They receive excellent pay, and their discipline is perfect. They are admitted to serve at the age of thirteen, and are placed in the army of reserve at twenty-five. From that period they no longer serve about the king's person, but are employed to guard the royal palaces and crown lands." MINOR EMPLOYMENTS. =524. United States.= A little boy told me he used to catch butterflies, and sell them in New York at a penny apiece for canary birds. Sometimes he would get one hundred a day; and at other times, not as many a week. Some women are seen on the streets of our large cities, selling baskets, brushes, sponges, and wash leather--and many with baskets containing tape, cord, pins, &c. Some women buy waste paper to sell to grocers, butchers, fishmongers, and such others as would use it for wrapping. A few resort to levees and warehouses to seek the scraps of waste cotton that are lost by the removal of bales. Some collect ashes, separate the cinders, wash and sell them; while some collect wood scattered about lumber yards, and catch that drifting in rivers. =525. England.= Some children on the streets of London are employed in the sale of fly-papers. Some sell paper cuttings to ornament ceilings. Sand is sold on the streets for scouring and for birds--also gravel for birds. Some women, in London, go around and buy the skins of rabbits and hares to sell again, and some keep little shops where they buy kitchen stuff, grease, and dripping. In England, women are hired to pick currants and gooseberries, put up fruit, weed gardens, bind grain, pick hops, and sometimes even to cut hay and dig potatoes. On the streets of London, some women sell conundrums and playbills, which are pinned to a large screen, and a number sell stationery. In old countries nothing is lost. Use is found for every article, even when no longer of value for its original purpose. For instance, old tin kettles and coal scuttles, we learn from Mr. Babbage, are cut up for the bottoms and bands of trunks, and by manufacturing chemists in preparing a black dye used by calico printers. In some cities of the old countries, every variety of second-hand miscellaneous articles are sold in shops, from a Jew's harp to a bedstead. In London, Mayhew says: "Among the mudlarks may be seen many old women, and it is indeed pitiable to behold them, especially during the winter, bent nearly double with age and infirmity, paddling and groping among the wet mud for small pieces of coal, chips of wood, copper nails that drop out of the sheathing of vessels, or any sort of refuse washed up by the tide. These women always have with them an old basket, or an old tin kettle, in which they put whatever they may chance to find. It usually takes them the whole tide to fill the receptacle, but, when filled, it is as much as the feeble old creatures are able to carry home." Little girls, too, eagerly press into the mud as the tide recedes, to secure what trifles they can, by which to gain bread. =526. France.= In France, many women are employed in vineyards to pick grapes, tie up the vines, &c. L. told me he had seen women in France employed in preparing a kind of fuel made of clay mixed in water, cast in moulds, and dried. Females are employed by some of the merchants in Paris to carry goods home for purchasers. One of the most flourishing of the minor street trades of Paris is that in fried potatoes, invented some twenty-five years ago by a man that made his fortune at the business. A few years back might have been seen in the grounds of the Tuileries an old woman with a long stick, drawing off the surface of the water the feathers that loosened and fell from the swans that floated on the ponds. That old woman sold the feathers to buy bread. =527. Occupations in which no Women are employed.= I have received information from persons saying women are never engaged in their branches of business, which are the following: Architectural Ornamentation, Bonedust, Buckets, Carriage painting, Copperas ("hard and unsuitable"), Currying, Drug Mills ("only fit for able-bodied men"), Edge Tools ("not adapted to the sex"), Emery Paper, Flour Mills, Glazier's Diamonds, Gunpowder ("dangerous"), India Rubber Belting, Magnesia, Melodeons, Mercantile Agencies, Metallic Furniture, Oil, Oil Cloth, Organ building, Paint Mills, Pattern making (of wood), Pearlash ("unsuitable"), Philosophical Instruments (except Globes), Pine Furniture, Pork packing, Reed making, Rivets, Roll covering, Seed crushing ("requires able bodied men"), Sellers of License, Ship Crackers, Shot and Lead ("dangerous and unhealthy"), Shovels, Slate, Spools, Starch ("too hard"), Steel-letter cutting, Stone quarrying, Street-lamp lighting, Sulphur ("unhealthy"), Superphosphate of Lime ("requires too much muscular strength"), Surveyors' and Engineers' Instruments, Tanning, Tinfoil, Trowels, Vinegar, Wholesale Fruit dealing, Wire drawing, Wool combing, and Zinc manufacture. =528. None in the United States.= There are no women employed in any capacity in connection with mining and shipping coal in our country. Neither could any branch of the business be well placed under their supervision, for very nearly all the labor is performed by foreigners of the most low and illiterate class. None are employed in Baggage transportation, Bleaching, Brokers' Offices, Chemical Works, Cutlery, Furniture moving, Glue drying, Gun making, Iron Works, Landscape gardening, Lead Pencils, Sail making, Savings Banks, Silvering Mirrors, Tending Sheep, and Wood carving. =529. Very few employed.= Attending in offices of ladies' physicians, Charcoal burning, China painting, Chiropody, Clock Work, Lacquering, Marble Work, Mirror Frames, Sign painting, Stencil cutting, and Stone Ware. "As a curious incident of the growing availability of female labor, Vermont returns four females engaged in ship building, and Virginia reports two so employed." Mrs. Swisshelm is an inspector of lumber, receiving a salary of $500 per annum. Mrs. N. Smith was recently elected mayoress in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the first time that office was ever filled by a lady. We have been told of a Miss D., who furnishes houses, receiving a stipulated sum for the exercise of her taste and judgment, and the time and trouble of making purchases. In the Southern States, a few colored women are employed about sugar mills, and many in gathering cotton. I suppose that in some countries women may be, and probably are employed in the preparation of isinglass and gelatine; also, in collecting cochineal, and gathering rice and coffee. =530. The South.= There will be openings in the South for business in the following branches: Artificial Eyes, Limbs, and Teeth. Artificial Flowers. Bags (Cotton and Paper). Baskets. Belts (Ladies'). Bonnets. Bonnet Ruches. Bonnet Frames. Books. Braces and Trusses. Brushes. Buttons. Candles (from the tallow tree of South Carolina and Georgia). Candy. Canes. Caps. Card Printing and Stencilling. Carpets. Carriage Trimmings. Car and Carriage Ornamenting. China. Cigars. Cloaks and Mantillas. Clocks. Clothing. Cord. Cordage and Twine. Cutlery. Daguerreotype Apparatus, &c. Designs. Drawings (Architectural, &c.). Dress Caps. Dress Trimmings. Embroideries. Envelopes. Factory Work. Fancy Stores. Feather Dressing. Fishing Tackle. Furniture. Gilding. Gold Chains. Gold Pens. Gold and Silver Leaf. Grape Growing. Gum-Elastic Goods. Hair Dressing and Manufacturing. Hardware. Hats. Hoop Skirts. Horse Coverings. Ink. Jewelry. Labels. Lamps. Lapidaries' Work. Laundries. Lead. Leather. Life Preservers. Lithographing. Maps. Matches. Military Goods. Needle and Thread Stores. Oils. Paper Boxes. Patterns (Ladies' and Children's). Plated Ware. Paints. Painting and Staining of Glass. Perfumery. Photography. Practising Medicine. Picture Restoring. Pipes. Places of Summer Resort. Porcelain. Potash. Pottery. Printing. Rag Collecting. Sealed Provisions. Sewing-Machine Labor. Shoes. Shot. Soda and Saleratus. Spectacles. Stair Rods. Steel Engraving. Straw Working. Surgical Instruments. Suspenders. Tailors' Work. Tape. Tobacco Stripping and Packing. Toys. Types. Umbrellas and Parasols. Under Wear. Wall Paper. Watches. Willow Growing. Window Shades. Wood Engraving. There will be openings in St. Louis and Chicago for fur sewers. There has been a demand for mill girls in Rhode Island. There is a surplus now of workers in cotton mills, but not of operatives in woollen mills. A gentleman in Middletown, Conn., wrote me a boarding house for work girls is wanted there. Makers of ladies' dress caps and ironers of new shirts have been scarce in New York city. =531. Prices of Board for Workwomen, and Remarks of Employers.= Aside from the prices of board for workwomen as mentioned in different parts of this work, I have intelligence from employers in one hundred and fifteen towns and cities of the Eastern States, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. These places number: Maine 4, New Hampshire 13, Vermont 4, Massachusetts 34, Rhode Island 5, Connecticut 29, New York 19, Pennsylvania 5, and New Jersey 2. Of the places in Maine, prices of board for women run from $1.33 ¹/3 to $1.50 a week. In New Hampshire, they make the same range. In Vermont, the price is given, of all places, at $1.50. In Rhode Island, from $1.50 to $3. In Connecticut, from $1.42. to $3. Massachusetts, from $1.25 to $4. New York, $1.50 to $3.50. Pennsylvania, $1.50 to $5. New Jersey, $1.25 to $1.75. The difference in board is something between a small town and a city in any State. The largest number of employers in cities give, as the most common prices, from $1.50 to $3 per week. Lights and washing are sometimes included in these prices, but washing very seldom--fuel in the rooms of the boarders, never. Employers write the boarding houses of their workmen are comfortable and respectable. We hope they are so, and wish that as much could be said of all. But we must acknowledge that we feel disposed to question the comfort of the majority of those for which such prices are paid in cities as mentioned by the employers. In villages and towns, board could be had at such rates. But we are confident it would be impossible to furnish sufficient wholesome food and clean, well ventilated lodging rooms, at the rates mostly specified in cities, where rent and provisions are high, with any profit to the keepers of the houses. Some employers assert that women can live cheaper than men. They cannot, in most places, to have as good accommodations; and when they can, the difference is slight. So a just proportion in wages is not observed, even with such a plea. Most men in industrial avocations receive $1.50 a day (many $2); women, from 50 cents to $1--most generally the former price. In France, a workman usually receives 60 cents a day; a woman, over 30 cents. So women do not receive even as good wages, in proportion to men, in the United States, as in France. In Lyons, France, women have always been paid for work performed in the same proportion as men. Most hand seamstresses receive starvation prices in both countries. In most industrial employments in Dublin, Ireland, women receive six English shillings a week, for their work of ten hours a day. Yet on the dusty and disagreeable labor of sorting and picking rags, some are enabled to earn eight shillings a week, but they are paid by the piece. School children in Dublin, as well as the working classes, usually take Monday for a holiday. Nor is it confined to Dublin. In France and England, Monday is made a day of freedom from work, and of reckless dissipation, with a large portion of the working people. In most occupations open to women, the times for work are usually not more than six months in the year, while men's extend the year round. Some employers write their women have more time than inclination for mental improvement--that all their time is at their disposal, except those hours employed in the factory, workshop, or store, which run from ten to seventeen hours. A woman's wardrobe requires some hours' attention; and the more limited her means, the more time is needed to keep it in repair. We think employers could do much good by learning the condition of their work people--what their habits and home comforts are; and would recommend to those disposed to learn something of the results, to read a work called "The Successful Merchant." I have heard there is a great laxity of morals in some of the establishments of New York, where men and women are employed. Proprietors and foremen of correct principles could do much to prevent this. Much, too, might be avoided by a careful selection of work people. I learn from one employer that one of his workwomen reads aloud to the others while at work. It is an admirable plan, but, where machinery is employed, could not be adopted, because of the noise. The best policy for any government is a protection of home produce and manufactures--a policy that it is desirable to see carried out more fully in our country. It will be observed that the farther we go south, as a general thing, the better are the prices paid for labor. Living, however, is somewhat higher. So what is gained in one way is lost in another. A majority of workwomen in this country are foreigners. In New York, I have heard the opinion expressed that there are in that city fifteen foreign workwomen where there is one American. One source of trouble among workwomen is the indifferent way in which they execute their work, arising from the want of proper instruction, the want of application, or a careless habit they acquire. Another failing is stopping often when at work. A misfortune with many workwomen is that they have not the physical strength to do much work, to do it constantly, or to do it fast. =532. Number of Work Hours.= In France, the number of work hours is 12; in England, 10; and in most of the United States, 10. In some of the United States there are no laws regulating the number of work hours; and in some States, where such laws do exist, they are evaded. =533. Extracts from the Census Report for 1860.= In advance of publication, Mr. Kennedy, Superintendent of the United States Census Report, writes: "The whole number, approximately, of females employed in the various branches of manufacture, is 285,000. The following are approximations to the average wages paid in New York and New England. Monthly wages of females employed in making "Boots and shoes, $11 25 Clothing, 12 00 Cotton goods, 13 30 Woollen, 16 00 Paper boxes, 14 30 Umbrellas, &c. 13 38 Book folding, 15 38 Printing, 13 65 Millinery, 17 47 Ladies' mantillas, &c. 16 00 Hoop skirts, 14 00" APPENDIX. INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS OF PARIS, IN 1848. -------------------+------------------------------------------------------ OCCUPATIONS. |Number of Men. | |Number of Women. | | |Minimum of Men's Wages per Day. | | | |Maximum of Men's Wages per Day. | | | | |Minimum of Women's | | | | | Wages per Day. | | | | | |Maximum of Women's | | | | | | Wages per Day. | | | | | | |Months when Work | | | | | | | is slack. -------------------+-------+-------+----+------+----+-----+---------------- | | | ct | $ ct | ct |cents| -------------------+-------+-------+----+------+----+-----+---------------- Makers of | 217 | 51 | 40 | 1 00 | 15 | 35 |Jan. Feb. Aug. Accordions | | | | | | | Sculptors in | 51 | 14 | 40 | 1 20 | 30 | 45 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Alabaster Night | | | | | | | Lamps, and Wicks | | | | | | | Makers of Matches | 184 | 357 | 25 | 1 00 | 12 | 60 |May. Jun. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Manufacturers of | 83 | 4 | 45 | 0 80 | 30 | .. |Jun. Jul. Aug. Starch and | | | | | | | Spongers of | | | | | | | Cloths | | | | | | | Dressers of | 491 | 325 | 25 | 1 00 | 20 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Jan. Woven Goods, | | | | | | | Silver and Copper| | | | | | | Dressers and | 31 | 3 | 50 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Drawers of Gold | | | | | | | Gunsmiths | 492 | 8 | 30 | 1 10 | .. | 35 |Jun. Jul. May. | | | | | | | Mar. Makers of Scales | 205 | 2 | 60 | 1 10 | .. | .. |Jan. Feb. Aug. and Weights | | | | | | | Whalebone Splitters| 96 | 42 | 20 | 1 00 | ave. 29 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Bandage and Truss | 278 | 404 | 50 | 0 83 | 60 |2 00 |Jan. Feb. and Makers | | | | | | | part of Dec. Beaters of Gold | 195 | 377 | 50 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. and Silver | | | | | | | Polishers of | 1,091 | 784 | 30 | 2 00 | 15 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Steel Jewelry | | | | | | | Mourning Jewelry | 170 | 54 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. False Jewelry | 1,507 | 456 | 25 | 1 60 | 16 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Fine Jewelry | 2,942 | 637 | 20 | 2 40 | .. | 48 |Jul. Aug. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Garnishers of | 83 | 4 | 50 | 1 10 | 20 | 40 |Jan. Feb. and Jewels | | | | | | | part of Jul. Manufacturers of | 216 | 9 | 40 | 2 00 | 30 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Implements for | | | | | | | Billiards | | | | | | | Toy Manufacturers | 641 | 1,345 | 25 | 1 20 | 10 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Mar. | | | | | | | Apr. Bleachers of Woven | 65 | 275 | 50 | 1 00 | 10 | 55 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Goods | | | | | | | part of Sep. Washerwomen | 36 | 7,491 | 40 | 0 70 | 20 | 60 |Aug. Jul. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Wood Workers | 43 | 20 | 40 | 1 00 | 15 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Cap Makers | 1,068 | 1,565 | 18 | 1 00 | 8 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Jul. | | | | | | | part of Aug. Makers of Hooks | 127 | 75 | 60 | 1 00 | 20 | 35 |Jan. and part and Eyes, and | | | | | | | of Feb. Buckles | | | | | | | Makers of Wax and | 186 | 113 | 40 | 1 00 | 15 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Tallow Candles | | | | | | | Bakers | 1,996 | 643 | 25 | 0 60 | 30 and a loaf of bread | | | | | | | every day. | | | | | | | Jun. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Sep. Embroiderers of | 7 | 876 | 60 | 0 80 | 15 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Bags and Purses | | | | | | | and Aug. Button Makers, | 405 | 185 | 40 | 1 20 | 18 | 40 |Dec. to Feb., Horn, Pearl, &c. | | | | | | | being most | | | | | | | of 3 months. Button Makers, | 716 | 522 | 30 | 1 20 | 10 | 60 |Jan. Feb. and Cloth and Metal | | | | | | | part of Jul. | | | | | | | and Aug. Bricks, Tiles, | 497 | 27 | 40 | 2 80 | 25 | 60 |Commence in Nov. and Pipes for | | | | | | | and end in Mar. Chimneys | | | | | | | Book Stitchers | 183 | 678 | 20 | 1 00 | 20 | 65 | Tapestry | 14 | 969 | 70 | 1 20 | 15 | 70 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Embroiderers | | | | | | | Embroiderers | 43 | 3,746 | 60 | 3 00 | 10 |1 00 |Jul. Aug., part | | | | | | | of Jan. Feb. Manufacturers of | 2,515 | 27 | 45 | 2 00 | 25 | 70 |Most active in Bronze | | | | | | | Oct. Nov. Dec. Bronze Carvers | 752 | 6 | 30 | 1 25 | 30 | .. | " " " Bronze Gilders | 343 | 24 | 50 | 1 20 | 30 | 55 |Oct. Nov. Dec. Bronze Founders | 1,178 | 1 | 40 | 1 40 | 27 | .. | " " " Bronze Mounters | 32 | 11 | 40 | 0 70 | 25 | 70 |Sept. Oct. Nov. Bronze Finishers | 333 | 2 | 30 | 1 20 | 40 | .. |Oct. Nov. Dec. Bronze Turners | 164 | 4 | 30 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Sept. Oct. Nov. Bronze Varnishers | 168 | 233 | 40 | 1 40 | 25 |1 00 |Oct. Nov. Dec. Makers of Common | 365 | 163 | 35 | 1 00 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Brushes | | | | | | | Aug. Makers of Fine | 371 | 421 | 30 | 1 20 | 15 | 60 | " " " Brushes | | | | | | | Coffee Toasters | 37 | 22 | 30 | 1 00 | 30 | 40 |Jun. Jul. Contractors for | 193 | 45 | 40 | 0 80 | 25 | 55 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Washrooms and | | | | | | | Apr. Public Washing | | | | | | | Houses | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 24 | 10 | 55 | 1 00 | 30 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Dials for Watches| | | | | | | and Clocks | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 989 | 57 | 40 | 2 00 | 25 | 60 |Jan. Feb. part Mouldings for | | | | | | | of Jul. Aug. Gilt Frames | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 114 | 30 | 33 | 0 80 | 25 | 40 |Jan. Jul. Cotton Canvas | | | | | | | Cane and | 796 | 84 | 35 | 1 40 | 20 | 55 |Jan. Feb. Dec. Whip Makers | | | | | | | July. Cane Chair Seaters | 10 | 169 | 35 | 0 80 | 15 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Makers of Gum | 259 | 310 | 50 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jun. Elastic Works | | | | | | | Coachmakers | 3,685 | 2 | 30 | 1 60 | $2 40 a month each and | | | | | boarded. Jul. Aug. Sep. Makers of Playing | 160 | 97 | 45 | 1 00 | 20 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Cards | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 210 | 121 | 30 | 1 30 | 20 | 45 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Pasteboard and | | | | | | | Cards, | | | | | | | Glazed Paper | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 569 | 1,357 | 40 | 1 20 | 6 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Pasteboard Boxes | | | | | | | Jul. Makers of Men's and| 81 | 3,929 | 30 | 1 20 | 10 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Boy's Caps | | | | | | | Aug. Manufacturers of | 786 | 1,133 | 30 | 1 80 | 10 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Shawls | | | | | | | Mounters and | 173 | 1,974 | 30 | 2 00 | 15 |1 00 |Work slack six Trimmers of | | | | | | | months, from Straw Hats | | | | | | | Jun. to Nov. Weavers of Braid | 12 | 108 | 50 | 0 70 | 20 | 60 | " " " for Straw Bonnets| | | | | | | Bleachers and | 117 | 101 | 40 | 1 40 | 20 | 60 |July to Jan. Pressers of | | | | | | | Straw Hats | | | | | | | Hat Makers | 2,829 | 1,158 | 30 | 2 40 | 15 |1 00 |Jul. Aug. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Meat Sellers | 629 | 72 | 10 | 0 80 | $30 to $160 per year for | | | | | female accountants. | | | | | | | Jun. Jul. Aug. Manufacturers of | 162 | 82 | 30 | 1 00 | 20 | 35 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Articles for | | | | | | | Dec. Hunting | | | | | | | Embroiderers of | 9 | 174 | 60 | 1 00 | 25 | 80 |Jan. Feb. and Church Ornaments | | | | | | | part of Mar. Coppersmith | .... | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | wife of patron | | | | | | | Makers of Woven and| 728 | 1,154 | 20 | 0 90 | 10 | 50 |Dec. Jul. Aug. Knit Shoes | | | | | | | part of Mar. Hair Preparers, | 678 | 280 | 30 | 1 40 | 15 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Dressers, | | | | | | | Wig Makers, &c. | | | | | | | Washers and | 27 | 44 | 50 | 0 70 | 12 | 40 |Dec. and Jan. Assorters of Rags| | | | | | | Chocolate Makers | 266 | 122 | 45 | 1 10 | 20 | 55 |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Sept. Manufacturers of | 86 | 45 | 25 | 0 80 | 20 | 40 | " " " Blacking and | | | | | | | Varnish | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 57 | 23 | 40 | 0 80 | 30 | 40 |Jul. Aug. Wafers and | | | | | | | Sealing Wax | | | | | | | Chasers and | 330 | 21 | 50 | 1 40 | 30 |1 20 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Engravers | | | | | | | Feb. Makers of Bells | 40 | 2 | 50 | 1 20 | 30 | .. |Jan. Feb. and and Clock Bells | | | | | | | part of Mar. Nailmakers | 347 | 33 | 40 | 1 40 | 20 | 25 |Jan. Jul. Aug. Print Colorers | 18 | 626 | 45 | 0 70 | 20 | 60 | " " " Makers of Women's | 1 | 1,301 | .. | 1 00 | 10 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Clothing | | | | | | | Aug. Confectioners | 367 | 284 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jun. to Sep. Makers of | 75 | 45 | 30 | 0 80 | 20 | 40 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Nutritious | | | | | | | Sep. Conserves | | | | | | | Rope Makers | 392 | 5 | 15 | 0 80 | 25 | 40 |From Dec. | | | | | | | to Feb. Boot and Shoe |13,553 | 6,713 | 15 | 1 80 | 8 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Makers | | | | | | | Aug. Makers of Shoes | 7,511 | 1,555 | 20 | 1 82 | 12 | 70 | " " " to Order | | | | | | | Curriers | 2,170 | 189 | 30 | 2 00 | 10 | 30 | " " " Corset Makers | 38 | 2,810 | 40 | 1 00 | 10 | 80 |Jul. Aug. Sep. | | | | | | | and part | | | | | | | of Jan. Costumers | 37 | 47 | 60 | 1 00 | 20 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Sep. Makers of Colors | 510 | 12 | 40 | 1 10 | 30 | 50 |Nov. Dec, Jan. and Varnish | | | | | | | Feb. Knife Makers | 503 | 39 | 25 | 1 60 | 25 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Mantua Makers | .. | 5,287 | .. | .. | 10 | 80 |Jul. Aug. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Makers of Flannels | 404 | 215 | 30 | 0 70 |1 00|1 80 |Jan. Feb. Mar. and Blankets | | | | | | | Makers of Crayons | 65 | 21 | 35 | 0 90 | 20 | 40 | " " " Curd and Cheese | 53 | 30 | 40 | 0 60 | 20 | 40 |Nov. Dec. Jan. Makers | | | | | | | Feb. Makers of | 43 | 68 | 45 | 0 90 | 15 | 90 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Horse-hair Goods | | | | | | | Dressers and | 145 | 72 | 40 | 0 SO | 25 | 50 |Dec. Jan. Liners of Horse | | | | | | | Hair | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 38 | 8 | 60 | 0 70 | 30 | .. |Jan. Feb. Jul. Razor Leather | | | | | | | Varnished Leather | 175 | 9 | 60 | 1 00 | 30 | 40 |Jun. Jul. Daguerreotypists | 34 | 8 | 60 | 1 00 | 40 | .. |Jan. Feb. Mar. Pinkers of Shawls | 12 | 32 | 45 | 0 70 | 20 | 45 |Jun. Jul. and Woven Goods | | | | | | | Makers, Hookers, | 1 | 817 | .. | 0 70 | 12 | 70 |Jun. Jul. Aug. and Washers | | | | | | | Sep. of Laces | | | | | | | Makers of | 63 | 20 | 50 | 2 00 | 35 | 40 |Jul. Aug. Sep. Artificial Teeth | | | | | | | Designers for | 579 | 43 | 50 | 4 00 | .. | 40 |Jul. Aug. Feb. Manufacturers | | | | | | | Mar. Designers for | 173 | 46 | 50 | 2 40 | 20 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Embroidery | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 294 | 13 | 30 | 0 90 | 30 | 45 |Jul. Aug. Sep. Distilled Liquors| | | | | | | and Sirups | | | | | | | Gilders and | 442 | 163 | 40 | 2 00 | 20 | 50 |Jul. Jan. Feb. Silverers of Ware| | | | | | | and Jewelry | | | | | | | Wood Gilders | 773 | 257 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Gilders of Edges | 95 | 72 | 50 | 1 20 | 39 | .. | " " " " of Paper and | | | | | | | Parchment | | | | | | | Mineral and other | 177 | 12 | 40 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Nov. to Feb. Gaseous Waters | | | | | | | Women make | | | | | | | powders for | | | | | | | gaseous waters. Furniture Makers | 8,459 | 90 | 25 | 2 00 | 25 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Writers and | 54 | 11 | 70 | 1 60 | 20 | 80 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Designers for | | | | | | | Lithographs | | | | | | | Publishers of | 356 | 464 | 50 | 2 40 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Images and | | | | | | | Aug. Engravings | | | | | | | Manufacturers and | 240 | 113 | 40 | 2 00 | 30 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Painters of | | | | | | | Enamelled Ware | | | | | | | Makers of False | 19 | 14 | 50 | 1 00 | 30 | 50 | " " " Stones and | | | | | | | Enamels | | | | | | | Makers of | 93 | 408 | 55 | 2 50 | 20 | 40 | " " " Artificial Eyes, | | | | | | | Porcelain | | | | | | | Buttons, & Glass | | | | | | | Links | | | | | | | Makers of Writing | 85 | 11 | 40 | 0 55 | 15 | 40 |Jan. Aug. and Printing Ink | | | | | | | Fancy Inkstands | 150 | 12 | 50 | 1 00 | 12 | 40 | and Toilet | | | | | | | Articles | | | | | | | Grocers, | 851 | 24 | 40 | 0 90 | 30 | 45 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Manufacturing | | | | | | | Sep. Makers of Military | 1,649 | 2,254 | 25 | 1 40 | 10 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Equipments | | | | | | | Embossers | 337 | 74 | 40 | 1 60 | 30 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Stampers and | 220 | 9 | 40 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Engravers of | | | | | | | and part of Moulds for | | | | | | | Mar. Goldware | | | | | | | & Jewelry | | | | | | | Pewterers | 102 | 17 | 50 | 1 00 | 30 | .. |Jan. Feb. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Fan Makers. There | 252 | 264 | 40 | 1 20 | 12 |1 00 |Jun. Jul. Aug. are several | | | | | | | branches | | | | | | | Makers of Chairs | 1,673 | 53 | 45 | 1 60 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Mar. and Arm Chairs | | | | | | | Makers of Sheet | 84 | 14 | 40 | 1 00 | 25 | 35 |Apr. May. Jun. Pewter | | | | | | | Jul. Makers of Wax | 21 | 13 | 70 | 1 20 | 25 | 40 |Mar. Jun. Jul. Figures | | | | | | | Aug. Spinners, Dressers,| 47 | 113 | 30 | 1 00 | 20 | 40 |Jan. Jun. Jul. and Twisters of | | | | | | | Silk | | | | | | | Spinners and | 578 | 1,334 | 35 | 1 00 | 18 | 45 |Jan. Jul. Aug. Twisters of | | | | | | | Cotton | | | | | | | Spinners and | 445 | 452 | 50 | 1 20 | 14 | 60 |Apr. May. Jun. Twisters of Wool | | | | | | | Makers of | 414 | 5,063 | 40 | 1 20 | 12 | 80 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Artificial | | | | | | | Jan. Flowers | | | | | | | Metal Melters | 1,785 | 4 | 60 | 2 30 | 40 | .. |Jan. Feb. Suet and Tallow | 80 | 3 | 50 | 1 40 | 25 | 30 |From a month Melters | | | | | | | to | | | | | | | six weeks in | | | | | | | summer. Melters and | 624 | 133 | 50 | 2 00 | 25 | 50 |Aug. Sep. Engravers of | | | | | | | Stamps and Metal | | | | | | | Plates | | | | | | | Block Makers | 130 | 21 | 50 | 0 90 | 25 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Sep. Fur Dealers and | 232 | 399 | 50 | 1 80 | 12 | 60 |Mar. Apr. May. Dressers | | | | | | | Jun. Jul. & | | | | | | | part of Aug. Old Clothes Women | .. | 50 | .. | .. | 12 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Mar. | | | | | | | Aug. Sheath Makers | 341 | 70 | 30 | 1 20 | 20 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Makers of Kid | 1,045 | 873 | 40 | 1 20 | 15 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Gloves | | | | | | | Sep. Makers of Cloth | 19 | 203 | 40 | 1 00 | 8 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Gloves | | | | | | | Stampers and | 136 | 39 | 40 | 2 40 | 20 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Printers of | | | | | | | Stuffs and | | | | | | | Garments | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jan. Feb. Gelatine and Glue | 78 | 35 | .. | 0 60 | 20 | 35 |Jan. Feb. Nov. Makers | | | | | | | Dec. Makers of Cloth | 751 | 369 | 20 | 1 20 | 20 | 40 |Apr. Aug. Sep. for Under Vests | | | | | | | Jan. Carvers and Gem | 165 | 17 | 60 | 1 60 | 35 | 60 |Jan. Feb. and Engravers | | | | | | | parts of Jul. | | | | | | | and Aug. Mould Engravers | 68 | 10 | 60 | 1 40 | .. | 30 |Jan. Feb. Copper Plate | 226 | 62 | 60 | 2 00 | 25 | 70 |Jul. Aug. Engravers | | | | | | | Engravers on Wood | 160 | 6 | 60 | 2 00 | 60 |1 00 |Jan. Feb. and on Metal | | | | | | | for Printing | | | | | | | Engravers on Wood | 154 | 11 | 40 | 1 10 | .. | 30 |Jul. Aug. Sep. for Impressions | | | | | | | on Stuff and | | | | | | | Printed Papers | | | | | | | Engravers on Metals| 205 | 7 | 30 | 1 60 | 40 | 70 |Jun. Jul. Aug. for Seals and | | | | | | | Clocks | | | | | | | Legging Makers | 73 | 206 | 40 | 1 00 | 20 | 60 |Aug. Sep. Makers of Clocks | 1,826 | 155 | 35 | 2 50 | 12 |1 00 |Jun. Jul. Aug. and Clock | | | | | | | Trimmings | | | | | | | Lithographic and | 1,909 | 186 | 30 | 7 00 | 20 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Copperplate | | | | | | | Sep. Printers | | | | | | | Cloth Printers | 316 | 45 | 40 | 2 00 | 25 | 55 | " " " " Type Printers | 4,053 | 304 | 60 | 3 00 | 10 | 80 | " " " " Makers of Surgical | 247 | 14 | 40 | 1 40 | 40 | .. |Jan. Feb. Sep. Instruments | | | | | | | Makers of Musical | 71 | 4 | 50 | 1 10 | 30 | 70 |Business most Wind Instruments | | | | | | | active in Oct. | | | | | | | Nov. Copper Musical | 461 | 1 | 45 | 1 60 | 55 | .. |Slack in Jun. Instruments | | | | | | | Jul. Aug. Sep. Makers of False | 192 | 26 | 50 | 2 00 | 30 | 80 |Jul. Jan. Feb. Jewels | | | | | | | Makers of Fine | 416 | 65 | 20 | 2 50 | 35 |1 00 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Jewels | | | | | | | Makers of Lamps | 1,856 | 24 | 40 | 1 60 | 25 | 60 |May. Jun. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Makers of Coach | 142 | 6 | 50 | 1 40 | 30 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Lamps | | | | | | | Lapidaries | 112 | 10 | 60 | 1 40 | 25 | 35 |Jan. Feb. Mar. | | | | | | | Jul. Box Makers and | 1,089 | 2 | 20 | 1 20 | 30 | .. | " " " " Packers | | | | | | | Makers of Letters | 95 | 7 | 55 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Dec. Jan. in Relief | | | | | | | Cork Makers | 159 | 53 | 50 | 1 00 | 20 | 40 |Dec. Jan. Feb. File Makers | 418 | 10 | 60 | 2 40 | 25 | 60 |Jan. Contractors for | 80 | 8,974 | 45 | 1 10 | 3 | 80 |Jul. Aug, Jan. Linen Drapery | | | | | | | Feb. Manufacturers of | 80 | 2,312 | .. | .. | 12 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Linen Drapery | | | | | | | Aug. Design Readers | 121 | 99 | 50 | 1 00 | 30 | 70 |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Jan. Makers of Bed | 257 | 410 | 40 | 1 20 | 16 | 80 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Clothing | | | | | | | Mar. Makers of | 336 | 44 | 40 | 1 20 | 12 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Spectacle Frames | | | | | | | Trunk Makers | 210 | 73 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Dec. Jan. Feb. | | | | | | | Mar. Cutters of Marble | 574 | 45 | 80 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Mar. for Furniture | | | | | | | Cutters of Marble | 933 | 23 | 50 | 1 60 | 30 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Dec. for Buildings | | | | | | | Horse Farriers | 346 | 2 | 30 | 1 30 | 30 | .. |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Sep. Veneerers and | 306 | 34 | 40 | 1 40 | 30 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Carvers | | | | | | | Aug. Alum Leather | 164 | 1 | 40 | 0 80 | .. | .. | Dressers | | | | | | | Looms for Weaving | 176 | 21 | 50 | 1 20 | 25 | 30 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Trellis Makers | 50 | 3 | 40 | 1 00 | | | Wives of patrons | | | | | | | Looking-Glass | 515 | 96 | 40 | 1 40 | 20 | 55 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Makers | | | | | | | Milliners | 24 | 2,354 | 50 | 0 90 | 20 |1 00 |Jul. Aug. Sep. | | | | | | | Feb. Makers of Watch | 57 | 20 | 20 | 1 00 | 25 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Cases | | | | | | | Makers of Mosaic | 51 | 2 | 50 | 1 30 | .. |1 00 |Jun. Jul. and Work | | | | | | | part of Aug. Plaster and | 155 | 4 | 30 | 1 20 | .. | 30 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Composition | | | | | | | Aug. Moulders | | | | | | | Makers of | 266 | 3 | 60 | 1 70 | .. | 30 |Jan. Feb. Mouldings, | | | | | | | Copper Pipes, | | | | | | | and Show Cases | | | | | | | Makers of Eyelet | 223 | 85 | 35 | 1 20 | 15 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Holes, | | | | | | | Percussion Caps, | | | | | | | Pen Holders, &c. | | | | | | | Makers of | 1,634 | 101 | 40 | 3 20 | 30 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Instruments of | | | | | | | Aug. Precision and | | | | | | | Spectacles | | | | | | | Makers of | 544 | 59 | 40 | 2 00 | 25 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Sept. Silver-Plated | | | | | | | Ware | | | | | | | Makers of Silver | 328 | 81 | 40 | 1 30 | 30 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Trinkets and | | | | | | | Aug. Jewelry | | | | | | | Manufacturers of | 541 | 188 | 40 | 1 60 | 28 | 60 |Jul. Aug. and Gold Plate | | | | | | | part of Jan. | | | | | | | and Feb. Organ Manufacturers| 401 | 2 | 40 | 2 00 | .. | .. | Wives of patrons | | | | | | | Wadding Makers | 104 | 122 | 25 | 0 90 | 20 | 40 |Commences in | | | | | | | Feb. ends | | | | | | | in Jul. Mat Makers | 57 | 91 | 30 | 0 90 | 8 | 35 |Commences in | | | | | | | May, ends in | | | | | | | Sep. Makers of Paper | 40 | 120 | 30 | 0 90 | 10 | 45 |Jan. Jul. Aug. Bags, &c. | | | | | | | Makers of Fancy | 114 | 129 | 50 | 1 20 | 20 | 30 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Papers | | | | | | | Makers of Wall | 1,855 | 93 | 30 | 2 00 | 20 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Paper | | | | | | | and part of | | | | | | | Sep. Makers of Parasols | 601 | 742 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jul. Sep. Jan. and Umbrellas | | | | | | | Feb. Perfumers | 349 | 366 | 30 | 2 00 | 15 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Sep. Makers of Lace | 2,545 | 6,046 | 20 | 1 20 | 5 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Embroidery | | | | | | | Aug. Novelty | 1,142 | 2,331 | 20 | 1 20 | 8 | 80 | " " " " Embroiderers | | | | | | | Embroiderers for | 473 | 941 | 30 | 1 00 | 12 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Furniture | | | | | | | Feb. Chenille | 37 | 69 | 40 | 0 90 | 30 | 80 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Embroiderers | | | | | | | Military | 160 | 589 | 25 | 0 80 | 10 | 40 |Jul. Aug. and Embroiderers | | | | | | | part of Jan. | | | | | | | and Feb. Furniture and Coach| 198 | 114 | 30 | 1 00 | 12 | 50 |Jul. Aug. and Embroiderers | | | | | | | Jan. False and Fine | 108 | 387 | 35 | 0 90 | 25 | 70 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Embroiderers | | | | | | | Feb. Embroiderers of | 367 | 1,615 | 25 | 1 00 | 5 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Braces and | | | | | | | Garters | | | | | | | Makers of | 92 | 59 | 45 | 1 40 | 25 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Nutritious Pastry| | | | | | | Sep. Pastry Cooks | 973 | 60 | 20 | 1 10 | 30 | 45 | " " " " Skinners and | 644 | 15 | 40 | 1 20 | 25 | 30 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Morocco Dressers | | | | | | | Makers of Articles | 0 | 25 | 30 | 1 00 | 20 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Oct. for Fishing | | | | | | | Nov. Dec. Comb Manufacturers | 585 | 210 | 40 | 1 20 | 15 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Wool Combers | 694 | 194 | 30 | 1 00 | 25 | 35 |Apr. May. House Painters | 5,213 | 15 | 30 | 2 00 | 25 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Nov. | | | | | | | Dec. Manufacturers of | 202 | 63 | 25 | 0 80 | 15 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Plush | | | | | | | Makers of False | 56 | 154 | 60 | 2 00 | 20 | 40 |Jan. Feb. and Pearls and Pearl | | | | | | | part of Dec. Flowers | | | | | | | Stringers and | .... | 52 | .. | .. | 15 | 40 |Jan. Feb. and Mounters of | | | | | | | part of Mar. Pearls | | | | | | | Makers of Painters'| 114 | 129 | 50 | 1 20 | 20 | 30 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Pencils and | | | | | | | Brushes | | | | | | | Polishers of Gold | 52 | 4 | 30 | 1 40 | 30 | .. |Jan. Feb. part & Daguerreotypes | | | | | | | of July and | | | | | | | Aug. Plaiters and | 170 | 492 | 30 | 0 60 | 10 | 35 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Winders of | | | | | | | Cotton, Wool, | | | | | | | and Cashmere | | | | | | | Plaiters and | 44 | 277 | 40 | 1 00 | 15 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Winders of silk | | | | | | | Plumbers, Pump, & | 1,014 | 2 | 40 | 1 40 | .. | .. |Dec. Jan. Feb. Fountain Makers | | | | | | | Wives of patrons | | | | | | | Feather Dressers | 78 | 533 | 40 | 1 00 | 20 | 60 |Jan. Jul. Makers of Feather | 120 | 28 | 50 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Jul. Jan. Feb. Brooms | | | | | | | Makers of Quill | 55 | 44 | 50 | 1 40 | 15 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Pens | | | | | | | Cutters and | 91 | 505 | 40 | 1 20 | 15 | 50 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Preparers of Hair| | | | | | | for Hatters | | | | | | | Polishers and | 23 | 284 | 50 | 0 90 | 15 | 65 |Jan, Feb. Jul. Burnishers of | | | | | | | Aug. Gold and Jewelry | | | | | | | Decorators of | 1,641 | 1,010 | 40 | 2 40 | 20 |4 00 |Jan. Feb. part Porcelain | | | | | | | of Mar. Makers, Moulders, | 155 | 9 | 50 | 3 00 | 30 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Polishers, and | | | | | | | Menders of | | | | | | | Porcelain | | | | | | | Portfolios and | 506 | 307 | 25 | 1 30 | 20 | 55 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Articles of | | | | | | | Morocco | | | | | | | Makers of Articles | 330 | 20 | 25 | 1 60 | 25 | 40 |Jul. Aug. Jan. of Earthenware, | | | | | | | Feb. Stoneware, and | | | | | | | China | | | | | | | Pewterers | 337 | 84 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Preparers of | 15 | 20 | 60 | 1 20 | 12 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Animals | | | | | | | Makers of Chemical | 138 | 20 | 60 | 1 10 | 25 | 30 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Products | | | | | | | Makers of | 108 | 75 | 85 | 1 00 | 20 | 55 |Jul. Aug. Pharmaceutical | | | | | | | Products | | | | | | | Makers of Ironware | 226 | 5 | 30 | 1 00 | 25 | .. |Jan. Feb. Jul. Articles | | | | | | | Aug. Refiners of Sugar | 425 | 5 | 30 | 1 20 | 30 | .. |About six weeks | | | | | | | work is slack. Makers of Registers| 43 | 123 | 60 | 1 20 | 20 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Makers of Rulers, | 39 | 12 | 60 | 1 00 | 35 | 60 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Easels, &c. | | | | | | | Paper Rulers | 35 | 143 | 30 | 0 70 | 30 | 50 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Bookbinders | 939 | 807 | 25 | 1 20 | 20 | 60 |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Sep. Borers of Jewelry | .. | 30 | .. | .. | 20 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Mar. | | | | | | | Jul. Ribbon Makers | 19 | 30 | 60 | 0 70 | 35 | 45 |Jan. Feb, and | | | | | | | part of Jul. Makers of Wooden | 60 | 34 | 50 | 1 00 | 15 | 40 |Mar. May. Jun. Shoes | | | | | | | Jul. Aug, Sep. Ebony Sculptors | 471 | 3 | 40 | 1 60 | 25 | 60 |Jan. Feb, Mar. (for Furniture) | | | | | | | Modern Sculptors | 448 | 15 | 40 | 2 00 | 30 | 40 |Jan. Feb. some in Bronze | | | | | | | report. Others | | | | | | | say, Jul. Aug. Wood Carvers | 424 | 39 | 30 | 1 40 | 30 | 45 |Jun. Jul. Aug. Saddle and Harness | 1,347 | 142 | 30 | 1 20 | 12 | 40 |Dec. Jan. Jul. Makers and | | | | | | | Aug. Furnishers | | | | | | | Saddle Belts and | 124 | 80 | 40 | 1 00 | 15 | 50 |Jan. Feb. Dec. Girdles | | | | | | | Saddle Spurs, | 447 | 28 | 40 | 1 60 | 20 | 50 |Three months, Plates, and | | | | | | | part in winter Ironware for | | | | | | | and part in Harnesses, &c. | | | | | | | summer. Mechanical | 959 | 16 | 30 | 1 40 | 30 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Locksmiths | | | | | | | Locks for Furniture| 760 | 7 | 60 | 1 40 | 20 | 50 | " " Settings for Jewels| 46 | 2 | 50 | 1 20 | .. | .. |Jul. Aug. Jan. Wives of patrons | | | | | | | Feb. Makers of Spar | 10 | 63 | 50 | 0 60 | 8 | 40 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Ornaments | | | | | | | Makers of Coach | 118 | 11 | 40 | 3 00 | 20 | 40 | " " " Blinds | | | | | | | Makers of Tinctures| 184 | 11 | 40 | 1 20 | 25 | 30 |Dec. Jan. Toy Manufacturers | 1,404 | 174 | 30 | 1 40 | 15 | 70 |Jan. Feb. Jul. Makers of Toy | 264 | 6 | 40 | 1 20 | 15 | 25 |Jun. Jul. Aug, Umbrellas | | | | | | | Jan. Edge Tool Makers | 854 | 2 | 30 | 1 40 | .. | 40 |Jan. Feb. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Tailors |11,066 |10,769 | 15 | 1 60 | 10 | 90 |Jul. Aug. Jan. | | | | | | | Feb. Tailors who work | 6,660 | 2,947 | 30 | 1 60 | 10 | 90 |1st July to by Measure | | | | | | | middle of Sep. | | | | | | | and 1st Jan. | | | | | | | to middle of | | | | | | | March. Carpet Clippers | 20 | 15 | 50 | 80 | 30 | 35 |Feb. March and Drawers | | | | | | | Upholsterers | 1,832 | 1,797 | 40 | 3 00 | 15 | 70 |Jun. Jul. Aug. | | | | | | | Sep. Dyers of Thread | 149 | 20 | 40 | 1 10 | 30 | 60 |Jul. Aug. and Woven Goods | | | | | | | Dyers, Scourers | 523 | 510 | 40 | 1 20 | 20 |1 00 |Jan. Feb. Jul. | | | | | | | Aug. Dyers of Skins for | 149 | 20 | 40 | 1 10 | 30 | 60 |Jul. Aug. Gloves | | | | | | | Makers of Cloths | 462 | 431 | 30 | 1 20 | 7 | 40 |Jul. Jan. for Robes, | | | | | | | Buttons, | | | | | | | Furniture | | | | | | | Makers of Oil Paper| 144 | 30 | 30 | 1 40 | 25 | 40 |Feb. and part and Cloth | | | | | | | of Jan. Metal Varnishers, | 300 | 111 | 40 | 1 40 | 20 | 40 |Dec. Jan. Feb. Painters, | | | | | | | Mar. Gilders, and | | | | | | | Silverers | | | | | | | Constructors and | 357 | 86 | 35 | 2 00 | 15 | 30 |Jan. Feb. Dec. Decorators of | | | | | | | Tombs | | | | | | | Metal Turners | 646 | 12 | 40 | 1 20 | 36 | .. |Jan. Feb. Mar, | | | | | | | and part of | | | | | | | July. Wood Turners | 361 | 7 | 25 | 1 10 | 30 | | " " " " " Turners of Wood | 316 | 11 | 30 | 1 00 | 30 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Furniture | | | | | | | Chair Turners | 665 | 234 | 30 | 1 20 | 15 | 50 | " " " Makers of Metal | 411 | 43 | 60 | 1 80 | 25 | 60 |Jan. Feb. Traps | | | | | | | Seamless Bags of | 20 | 29 | 30 | 0 70 | 20 | 35 |Jan. Aug. Sep. Hemp and Flax | | | | | | | Basket Makers | 231 | 27 | 18 | 1 20 | 30 | 40 |Dec. Jan. Feb. | | | | | | | and part of | | | | | | | Aug. Glass Blowers | 76 | 6 | 30 | 1 00 | .. | 40 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Painters and | 103 | 35 | 30 |2 00[A]|20 | 50 | " " " Gilders of Glass | | | | | | | Glass and Crystal | 327 | 8 | 60 | 2 00 | 25 | 40 |Jul. Aug. Jan. Cutters, | | | | | | | Engravers and | | | | | | | Polishers | | | | | | | Makers of Glass | 13 | 90 | 60 | 1 00 | 20 | 40 |Jan. Feb. Mar. Beads | | | | | | | Vinegar Makers | 60 | 3 | 40 | 0 90 | 30 | .. |One has $80 per | | | | | | | annum, board | | | | | | | and lodging. | | | | | | | Jun. Jul. Aug. Makers of Morocco | 296 | 356 | 40 | 1 40 | 10 | 50 |Jul. Aug. Jan. for Hats, &c. | | | | | | | Feb. -------------------+-------+-------+----+------+----+-----+--------------- [A] Some, employed in painting church windows, get $2. REMARKS ON PRECEDING TABLES. Employed in the thirteen groups of _industrials_, 112,891 women; 7,851 girls, of whom 869 were under 12--rest from 12 to 16. To every two men employed, one woman. Women more numerous than men in the manufacture of garments and materials for them. None employed in the laborious occupations. Equal in fancy wares. Highest wages of women per day, 20 francs, least 15 centimes--average, 1 franc 63 centimes. 950 women's salaries less than 60 centimes. 626 " higher than 3 francs. The bulk, or 100,050 " range between the two extremes. Extremely low salaries are exceptional. Thus only two were so low as 15 centimes, and one of these workers was aged sixty-eight, and the other seventy-one. Women's wages are rather over half what the wages of men are.[A] [A] 5 centimes are equal to about one cent of our money, and a franc is equal to about 20 cents. THE END. Transcriber's notes: In "By giving a suitable notice to the overseer, it is so arranged that the help can be absent from their work one day or a month." or was changed into of. In "Another lady told me that in pattern making she gives instruction two months, paying nothing, but then they can earn $2.50, and, as they become more expert, can earn $3, $3.50, and $4.", $ was added before the figure of 3.50. The name of the inventor of the knitting machine mentioned several times in this book (Mr. Aiken) was spelled "Aikens" on occasion; this was corrected except in the one instance which was a quotation from another document. In "In the department of Sonne, France, women alone have the right to go into the fields", Sonne was changed into Somme. In "Many of the young Swabian girls of thirteen or fourteen years old are sent to Stuttgard", Stuttgard was changed into Stuttgart. There are many opening or closing quotation marks missing in the text. As in most instances, it is impossible to say where the quotation was meant to begin or end, those errors have not been corrected. Only in the following two instances were quotation marks removed: --In >"Mrs. B., who has been twenty-three years carrying on the business on Broadway, says "she has applications constantly, but finds it difficult to obtain competent workmen."<, opening quotation mark before Mrs. B. (lacking a closing quotation mark, and since text indicates only indirect quotation) was removed. --In >The war department, about two years ago, closed a contract with S., of Philadelphia, to furnish sixteen thousand felt hats for the army, at $2.75 each."<, closing quotation mark was removed as erroneous. "Employee/s" is found in various different spellings throughout the book; this inconsistency has been retained. In the table in the Appendix, formatting was removed from the headers, headers were abbreviated (cents to ct), names of months were abbreviated, and conjunctions and commas etc. removed from the lists of months to keep the information readable. 
42766	----	REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO INVESTIGATE THE Railroad Riots IN JULY, 1877. _Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878._ HARRISBURG: LANE S. HART, STATE PRINTER. 1878. Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Missing words, dialect spellings, and inconsistencies have been retained as printed. LEG. DOC.] No. 29. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO INVESTIGATE THE RAILROAD RIOTS IN JULY, 1877. _Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878._ Mr. Reyburn, from the committee appointed to investigate the causes of the riots in July last, made a report; which was read as follows, viz: _To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania_: The committee appointed on the 3d day of February last, by virtue of a concurrent resolution of your honorable bodies, which resolution reads as follows, viz: "_Resolved_, That a committee consisting of five members of the House of Representatives and three Senators, none of whom shall be from any of the counties in which said riots occurred, be appointed, whose duty it shall be to examine into all the circumstances attending the late disturbance of the peace in certain parts of the Commonwealth, known as the railroad riots, and endeavor, if possible, to ascertain the causes, and by what authority the troops of the State were called out, for what purpose, and the service and conduct of the same; and said committee shall have power, in pursuing their investigations, to send for persons and papers, examine witnesses under oath or affirmation, administer oaths, and employ a competent phonographer to take all the proceedings of the committee, and the testimony; the committee shall report in full, in writing, to the Senate and House of Representatives within twenty days, &c.," Beg leave to submit the following report, viz: On the 4th day of February, 1878, the committee met at Harrisburg, and organized by the election of William M. Lindsey as chairman, Samuel B. Collins as clerk and stenographer, and J. J. Cromer as sergeant-at-arms. At said meeting it was also decided to commence taking testimony, first at Pittsburgh, that being the point where the first, and by far the most serious, riots occurred. Your committee arrived at Pittsburgh at half-past eleven, P.M., February 5th, and on the 6th instant met at the orphans' court-room in said city, the authorities having kindly tendered the use of the same to the committee for the purposes of the investigation, and discussed the manner in which the testimony should be taken, and what class of witnesses should be subpoenaed, whereupon it was decided that the chairman should conduct the examination of the witnesses generally on behalf of the committee, and that all citizens who knew any facts of importance should be subpoenaed to testify and to furnish to the committee the names of those known to possess valuable information. The taking of testimony was commenced on February 7th, and proceeded with as promptly as possible. After a =week's continuous work it became evident to the committee that they could not accomplish the work required of them and report within the time named in the above resolution. They therefore returned to the capital and presented to your honorable body a preliminary report setting forth what they had done, and what was still necessary to be done to complete the work required of them, when the following resolution was adopted by the Senate and House of Representatives: _Resolved, (if the Senate concur)_, That the joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, appointed to investigate the late railroad riots, etc., be and are hereby authorized to pursue their investigations according to the plan indicated in their preliminary report, and that to this end an extension of time over and above the limitation of twenty days of the resolution under which they are acting be given and granted under this direction, that the committee make a full and thorough inquiry, and report as soon as practicable. The committee afterwards took testimony at Harrisburg, at Philadelphia, at Scranton, and at Reading, and have made as thorough an investigation of the matter submitted to them as they reasonably could. As the result of the testimony taken, your committee is of the opinion that the following state of facts has been proved, viz: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some time after the panic in 1873, reduced the wages of its employés ten per cent., and on account of the general decline in business made another reduction of ten per cent., which took effect on the 1st day of June, A.D. 1877; these reductions to apply to all employés, from the president of the company down to those whose wages by the month or otherwise amounted to one dollar per day or less. These reductions applied not only to the Pennsylvania railroad proper, but also to the roads which were run by the Pennsylvania Company, a corporation controlling several railroads, including the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad and the Pan Handle railroad, each having one of its _termini_ at Pittsburgh, and running these railroads in connection with the Pennsylvania railroad, and all being practically under one management. These were not the only railroads in the country to reduce the wages of employés, a reduction of ten per cent. having gone into effect on the New York Central railway on the 1st day of July, A.D. 1877, and a similar reduction on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad on the 16th day of July, A.D. 1877; your committee having no information as to whether or not any prior reduction had been made by the last named roads. In consequence of these reductions of wages a great deal of dissatisfaction was produced among the employés of the roads, especially those known as trainmen, consisting of freight engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, and flagmen. These employés had consulted together in relation to the question of wages, and as the result of these consultations, a committee had been appointed some time the latter part of May, composed principally of engineers, who waited on Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and stated the position of the men and their alleged grievances. Colonel Scott talked frankly with the committee, and stated the position of the railroad company, which was, in substance, that in consequence of the depression in all branches of trade, commerce, and manufactures throughout the country, the business of the company had so fallen off that it became a matter of necessity to reduce the wages of the employés, and, that as soon as the business of the company would warrant it the wages would be increased. The committee expressed their satisfaction at the statement made by Colonel Scott, and said they would go back to Pittsburgh and report the same to the employés, and that everything would be satisfactory and all right thereafter. The committee retired, and soon returned with their views set forth in writing, and signed by them, stating that their conference with Colonel Scott had proved satisfactory, and that his propositions were acceptable to the committee. No complaint as to wages was made thereafter by any of the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company or of the Pennsylvania Company to any of the proper officers until after the strike of July 19th. Immediately after the order for the ten per cent. reduction, to go into effect on June 1st, 1877, was issued, the employés of the different railroads having their termini at Pittsburgh, commenced agitating the question of a strike on account of said reduction, which agitation resulted in the organization of "The Train Men's Union," a secret, oath-bound society, the declared object of which was the protection of its members, in all lawful ways, by combination, but more particularly to bring the railroad companies to terms by all striking on a given day, and leaving the railroads with no men of experience to run the trains. The first meeting to organize a lodge of the society was held in Allegheny City, on the 2d day of June, A.D. 1877, and the first person to take the oath of membership was R. A. Ammon, better known as "Boss Ammon," then a brakeman on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, who had been in the employ of the company about nine months. Boss Ammon seems to have been the leading spirit of the society, and he was immediately appointed as general organizer, to go out and organize branches of the Union on all the leading trunk lines of the country, especially on those centering at Pittsburgh. In a short time the Union was in full working order on the Pennsylvania railroad, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, the New York Central railroad, the Erie railway, and the Atlantic and Great Western railway, and some others, and a general strike by the members of the Union was arranged to take place on the 27th of June, A.D. 1877, at twelve o'clock, noon. The report of the committee of engineers of the result of their conference with Colonel Scott was not satisfactory to the members of the Union, they believing, or at least saying, that the engineers were only looking after their own interests and taking care of themselves, and therefore the action of the committee did not arrest the preparations going on within the Union for the proposed strike. Allegheny City was the headquarters of the organization, and it was here that the general arrangements for the operations of the Union were perfected, the members claiming that at least three fourths of all the train men, whose headquarters were at the two cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, belonged to the organization. The proposed strike on the 27th of June was to take place on the Pennsylvania railroad, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, the Allegheny Valley railroad, Pan Handle railroad, and the branches of the roads named, the Union having been more thoroughly and better organized on these roads than on any others, and the movements were to be directed from Allegheny City. Other roads were to be brought into the strike as fast as possible, so as to make it general and comprehensive. In accordance with this plan of operations, on Sunday, June 24th, some forty members of the Union were sent out on the different lines centering at Pittsburgh, to notify the members on these roads of the time for the strike to take place, and to make the necessary arrangements to make it a success. On Monday night, June 25th, a meeting of the members of the Union on the Pan Handle division was held, and it was there developed that a portion of them were dissatisfied with the proposed strike, and trouble ensued on this account. It was also ascertained that some member or members had divulged the plans of the Union to the railroad officials, and that the latter were taking measures to counteract and defeat the strike. The moving spirits saw at once that with divided counsels, and their plans known to the railroad officials, the strike, if commenced, would prove a failure, and measures were at once adopted to prevent it from taking place by writing and sending word to all points possible in the short time left. The strike did not take place on the 27th, and the members of the Union felt as if they had met with a defeat, which left a sore spot in their bosoms, and which rankled for a long time. It may be well to state here that the subsequent strike on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the 16th of July, and the strike at Pittsburgh, on July 19th, was not a strike of the Trainmen's Union, nor did the Union, as an organization, have anything to do with either, there having been no meeting of the society either at Pittsburgh or Allegheny City, after the 27th of June, 1877, up to that time. The main and almost the only grounds for the proposed strike was the ten per cent. reduction of wages, although some complaint was made of the abuse of power and overbearing actions of the minor railroad officials. Some time in July, 1877, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company issued an order that all freight trains from Pittsburgh east to Derry should be run as "double-headers," the order to take effect on the 19th of that month. A so called "double-header" consists of thirty four cars, and is hauled by two engines, a single train consisting of seventeen cars, hauled by one engine. This was one of the measures of economy adopted by the company in consequence of the great reduction in business, caused by the financial situation of the country, and the reduced rates at which the business was done, caused by the great competition of the different railroads to secure business, and would enable the company to dispense with the services of one half of their freight conductors, brakemen, and flagmen on the Pittsburgh division of the road between that place and Derry, as only one set of men, aside from the engineers and firemen, were used on a "double-header." One engine could haul the same train from Derry to Philadelphia that it took two engines to haul from Pittsburgh to Derry. "Double-headers" had been previously run between these two points, especially coal trains, but no general order for all freight trains to run as "double-headers" had ever before been issued. In selecting men to discharge under the order to run "double-headers," single men, and men who had been the shortest time in the employ of the company, were chosen, and the men with families, and old men, were kept so far as they could be. Quite a number of men had been discharged by the company prior to this time, some for cause, and more on account of the decrease in business since the panic of 1873; and the company had still in its employ many more men than could be employed at full time, keeping them along and allowing them each to work a portion of the time, probably believing in the old adage that "half a loaf is better than no bread." Robert Pitcairn, the general agent and superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania railroad, had leave of absence for a short time, to commence on the 19th of July, and that morning he left for the east with his family, over the Pennsylvania railroad, no complaint, as he says, having been made to the officers of the company by the men, on account of the order to run "double-headers," and he having no knowledge or suspicion that any trouble was brewing or expected. The early morning freight trains left Pittsburgh as "double-headers," but when the time (8.40 A.M.) came for the next train to leave, the men (two brakemen and one flagman) refused to go out on a "double-header," and the train did not go. The conductor notified the dispatcher that the men had struck, and the dispatcher undertook to find men who would go, but all the train men refused. He then made up two crews from the yard men, and gave orders for the engine to back down and couple on the train, when the striking men, led by one Andrew Hice, threw coupling pins and other missiles at the brakeman who was attempting to couple on the engine, one of which hit him, and, in the words of one witness, he had to run for his life. There was some twenty or twenty-five men in the crowd at this time; all men in the employ of the railroad company. The strikers took possession of the switches over which the trains would have to move, and refused to let any train pass out, and their number was from this time gradually increased by the addition of the men who came in on freight trains, who were induced to join the strikers as fast as they came in. Between ten and eleven o'clock, A.M., David M. Watt, chief clerk of the Pittsburgh division, who was acting in place of Mr. Pitcairn in his absence, went to the mayor's office and asked for ten policemen to be sent up to the yard of the company, to protect the men who were willing to go out on the trains, and arrest any one who should commit a breach of the peace, telling the mayor that, in his opinion, ten good men, with his (the mayor's) presence, would be sufficient for the purpose. The mayor answered that he did not have the men; that the day force, with the exception of nine men, had some time previously been discharged by the action of the city council, and he could not send the night force, and also refused to go himself, saying he had other business, and it was not necessary for him to be there. He said, however, that they might get some of the discharged men to go, if Mr. Watt would become responsible for their pay, to which Mr. Watt assented, and the ten men were found, sent out under charge of Officer Charles McGovern. This force went along with Mr. Watt to the Twenty-eighth street crossing, the scene of the difficulty, and five of the police were placed at one switch just above Twenty-eighth street, and Officer McGovern with the balance took possession of a switch just below Twenty-eighth street. An engine was there ready to back down and couple on to the train, and Mr. Watt gave orders to one of his men to open the switch, so the engine could run down on the proper track, but the man refused, saying he was afraid he would be injured by the strikers if he did so. Mr. Watt then stepped up and said "I will open the switch," when a brakeman by the name of Davis stepped in front of him, and said "boys we might as well die right here," and made some demonstrations. At this moment a man named McCall, standing behind Davis, struck Mr. Watt in the eye; that ended the attempt to open the switch at that time. After some difficulty and considerable chasing, McCall was arrested by the police, and taken to the lock-up. At this time, between twelve and one o'clock, P.M., there was about one hundred persons in the crowd, about one half of which were mere spectators. Twenty-five or thirty of the strikers attempted to prevent McCall's arrest by dodging around in the way, and by coaxing the police to let him alone. A few stones were thrown, but no very serious efforts were made beyond this by the strikers at this time. Soon after this, Mr. Watt sent one of his men to the mayor's office for fifty more policemen, and in answer to this call some five or six men came out about one, P.M., in charge of Officer White. With these men, Mr. Watt went out to the stock-yards, at Torrens station, a distance of five and one tenth miles from the Union depot, to see if the stock trains at that place, which had been some time loaded, could be got off. At this place there was a large crowd of persons, a large portion of whom were either present employés of the railroad company or were discharged men, and others were unknown to the railroad officials. One train of stock was coupled on by the yard engine, and run out by stratagem before the crowd were aware that it was an attempt to send the train east, and this was the last freight train that was forwarded, until after the troubles were over. About four, P.M., another attempt to move a stock train from Torrens was made, but the engineers all refused to undertake to couple on to the train, as they had all been threatened by the strikers, and were afraid of their lives, and at any move made by the engineer the crowd would interfere, so that the crew gave up their trains. Mr. Watt returned to Pittsburgh, and the stock was unloaded. Mr. Watt, on his return to Pittsburgh, went again to the mayor's office, about five, P.M., and asked for one hundred or one hundred and fifty police. The mayor was not in, having gone, as he testified, to Castle Shannon, to see his wife, who was sick. The mayor's clerk was at the office, and informed Mr. Watt that the men could not be furnished, that the day force of nine men in all were all busy, that the night force, which consisted of one hundred and twenty-two men, were not yet on duty, and could not be spared to be sent out to the scene of the disturbances, as they must be kept in the thicker portions of the city, and advised Mr. Watt to call on the sheriff of the county for assistance. On Friday morning, July 20, A. J. Cassatt sent David Stewart, of Pittsburgh, to invite the mayor to come to the Union depot, as he wished to consult him in regard to the situation, and had sent a carriage to convey him to the depot. The mayor replied that he would have nothing to do with it; the whole matter was taken out of his hands; they had no business to bring troops there. Mr. Stewart asked him if he would see Mr. Cassatt, if he would bring him down to the mayor's office. His answer was: "No, I will have nothing to do with it," and he turned and left. It will be noticed that this was some time before any troops were brought there, and a day and a half before the Philadelphia troops arrived. This ended the call, by the railroad officials, on the mayor for assistance to disperse the crowd interfering with their property, although, on that day, warrants were placed in the hands of the police for the arrest of some fifteen or twenty of the ringleaders of the strike, and after this time there does not appear to have been any very serious attempt made by the mayor or police to assist in quelling the riots. The whole extra force raised by the mayor, as testified to by J. J. Davis, clerk of the chief of police, for whom bills were sent in for pay, was twenty-nine men. During the afternoon of the 19th of July, one or two attempts were made to start freight trains from Twenty-eighth street, but when the engine was started some of the crowd would step in front of it, swing their hands, and the engineer would leave his engine, and soon all efforts to start trains from this place were abandoned for that day. Although the engineers and firemen and some of the conductors and brakemen professed to be willing to run at any time, yet, on the slightest demonstration being made by any of the strikers, they would abandon their engines and trains without making one decent effort to do their duty. The railroad officials claimed that they had plenty of men willing to run out the trains if they only had the opportunity, but when the opportunity was made for them the men did not care to take advantage of it. In the meantime the crowd was increasing at Twenty-eighth street, and Mr. Watt, after he left the mayor's office, went to the sheriff's office, and not finding him there drove to his residence, but he was not there. It was ascertained that he would be back in the course of the evening, and Mr. Watt returned to his own office. The crowd had so increased at the Twenty-eighth street crossing that they had full possession of the railroad tracks there, and the yard engines could not be moved to transfer the cars in the yard from place to place, and orders were given to the engineers to put up their engines. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, P.M., Mr. Watt started for the sheriff's residence, and on his way called at the office of Honorable John Scott, solicitor for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, to have that gentleman go with him. The sheriff was at home, and they called on him for protection for the property of the company, and advised him of all that had taken place up to that time. The sheriff went with them to the outer depot, near Twenty-sixth street, where they found General Pearson, who had come to Mr. Pitcairn's office to ascertain the condition of affairs, so as to report the same to Adjutant General Latta, who had telegraphed him from Philadelphia, making inquiry if he knew anything of the disturbances on the Pennsylvania railroad. Governor Hartranft was at that time out of the State, and somewhere in the West, on his way to California, and before going had given instructions to Adjutant General Latta, that in case of trouble requiring the presence of the military, he must, on the requisition of the proper civil authorities, assume the responsibility, and act as occasion demanded. A little after midnight the sheriff, together with General Pearson, Mr. Watt, and some fifteen or twenty railroad employés, walked out to Twenty-eighth street, and there getting up on a gondola or flat car so as to be above the crowd, addressed them, advising them to disperse and go to their homes, stating to them his duty in case they refused. The crowd refused to disperse, and hooted and yelled at the sheriff, and fired pistol shots in the air while he was addressing them. They told the sheriff to go home, that they were not going to allow any freight trains to leave until the difficulty between them and the railroad company was settled, that the mayor and policemen were on their side, and that prominent citizens had offered to assist them in provisions and money to carry on the strike. It should be here stated that there is no proof that any such offers of assistance were actually made, except that tradesmen with whom the strikers were dealing offered to trust them until they got work again, and one prominent citizen, whose name was used by the mob, came forward testified that he had never made any such offer. Some of the mob also read messages purporting to come from other places, urging them to hold their ground, and assistance in men and means would be sent them. There is no means of ascertaining whether these messages were really sent as they purported to be, or were only bogus ones, used for the purpose of firing up the mob, and inducing them to hold out in their purpose. They were probably bogus, and they, without doubt, produced the effect intended by their authors. At this time the crowd numbered some two hundred men and boys, and was composed of some railroad men, some discharged men, quite a number of mill men, (that is men from the iron mills, glass factories, &c.,) and some strangers as they were called by the witnesses, repulsive, hard looking men, probably tramps and criminals, who always flock to a scene of disturbance like vultures to the carrion. The sheriff, as he testifies, becoming satisfied that he could not raise force sufficient to control the crowd, made a call on the Governor, by telegraph, for military to suppress the riot. The sheriff at this time had made no effort whatever to raise a posse to disperse the mob, and in view of subsequent developments it is probable that such an effort would have been futile. The copy of the telegram of the sheriff to the Governor is given in the report of the Adjutant General for 1877, as are also copies of all other telegrams sent and received by him during the troubles, and most of them in the evidence taken by your committee, and therefore they need not be copied here. In view of the absence of the Governor, the telegram was also sent to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and the Adjutant General, the one to the latter reaching him at Lancaster on his way to Harrisburg. General Latta immediately telegraphed General Pearson, who held the rank of major general, and commanded the Sixth division, National Guard, with headquarters at Pittsburgh, to assume charge of the military situation, place one regiment on duty, and if he found one regiment not sufficiently strong, to order out the balance of the division and to report generally. General Pearson immediately ordered out the Eighteenth regiment, Colonel P. N. Guthrie, and this order was soon followed by one ordering out the Fourteenth regiment, Colonel Gray, the Nineteenth regiment, Colonel Howard, and Hutchinson's battery in command of Captain Breck. These orders were responded to very slowly, as it was in the night time, and the men were scattered about the city, and some companies were made up of men at some little towns outside of the city. Colonel Guthrie resides at East Liberty, and received his orders about half past four, A.M., on the 20th. He at once notified his officers, and they notified the men, but as it was too early to be able to get messengers the colonel had to go personally to the officers and it was about twelve o'clock, noon, when the regiment reported at the Union depot hotel two hundred and fifty strong. This regiment was ordered out to Torrens Station to protect property and clear the track at the stock yards, and on its arrival there, at half past one, found a crowd of from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred persons assembled. The regiment had no difficulty in getting into proper position, and Colonel Guthrie then lay in position waiting further orders. It was understood between General Pearson and Colonel Guthrie that the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments and the battery should clear the track at Twenty-eighth street, and protect the men on the trains in getting them started, and that Colonel Guthrie should clear the track at Torrens and protect the trains in passing that place. The Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments assembled very slowly, and it was not until about five P.M., that General Brown, commanding the brigade, got together three or four companies, and these not half full, and marched out to Twenty-eighth street. Before taking a position there, he received orders from General Pearson to return to the Union depot, as he had not force sufficient to accomplish anything, and accordingly he returned with his command. In the meantime, General Pearson, fearing that the majority of the men in these regiments sympathized with the strikers, telegraphed Adjutant General Latta to that effect, and suggested that troops from Philadelphia should be sent on, and gave it as his opinion that two thousand troops would be needed to disperse the mob, as it was now (six thirty-five, P.M.,) very large (four thousand to five thousand men) and increasing hourly. General Latta at once telegraphed Major General Brinton, commanding the First division of the National Guard, at Philadelphia, to get his command ready to move to Pittsburgh. General Brinton received this order in the evening, and at two o'clock on the morning of the 21st he had six hundred men at the railroad depot ready to start. At Harrisburg, General Brinton received some ammunition and two Gatling guns, and reached Pittsburgh at one, P.M., and reported to General Latta at the Union depot hotel, and there distributed twenty rounds of ammunition to his men. In order to understand the situation of things and the future movements of the troops, a description of the depots, buildings, tracks, and surroundings of the Pennsylvania railroad property at Pittsburgh is here necessary. The Union depot was situated between Seventh and Eighth streets, and from this place the line of the railroad ran eastwardly, at the foot of a steep bluff, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high on the right, and with Liberty street on the left. There were a great number of tracks running side by side out to and some distance beyond Twenty-eighth street, with numerous switches in order that the tracks might be used conveniently, and many of these tracks were filled with cars, passenger and baggage cars near the depot, and freight cars further out. The outer depot, lower round house, machine shops, &c., were situated at and near Twenty-sixth street, about a mile from the Union depot, some other shops were scattered along there to Twenty-eighth street, near which street was what was called the upper round-house. From Twenty-eighth street down to the Union depot the tracks were several feet higher than Liberty street, and a strong wall was built up at the side of Liberty street to support the embankment and keep it from caving into the street. At Twenty-eighth street there was a crossing much used, the bluff not being as steep or as high here as it is further down, and the hill is ascended by a diagonal road or path from the crossing. About two o'clock, A.M., of the 21st, the Nineteenth regiment and Breck's battery were sent out to Twenty-eighth street, the battery to take a position at the foot of the bluff, near the crossing, and the regiment a position on the side hill, a little above and commanding the crossing. About four, A.M., of the same day, the Fourteenth regiment was sent out, and ordered to take a position higher up the hill, and above the Nineteenth regiment, and the orders given by General Pearson were to hold this position, and keep the Twenty-eighth street crossing and the tracks in the vicinity clear of the crowd. This Twenty-eighth street crossing was the gathering point of the mob, and but very little effort seems to have been made during the day (the 21st) to carry out General Pearson's order. A few times in the forenoon one or two companies were ordered down, across the tracks at the crossing, and back again, and for the time would clear away the crowd in their immediate path, but as no effort was made to hold the crossing, nor to clear the tracks on each side of it, the effort amounted to nothing, and when the soldiers went back to their position on the hill the crowd would again resume possession of the ground cleared. The soldiers also fraternized with the mob. Most of the time their arms were stacked, and they were mingled indiscriminately with the crowd, lying about on the ground talking with them, and when, about four, P.M., the Philadelphia troops were marched out to Twenty-eighth street, a dense crowd filled the Twenty-eighth street crossing and vicinity, and was so mixed up with soldiers that no lines of regiments or companies could be observed, and it was with difficulty that soldiers could be discovered at all. On the morning of the 20th warrants had been issued for the arrest of some fifteen or twenty of the ringleaders of the strikers, and were placed in the hands of police officer McGovern and his men to be executed. His orders were not to attempt to execute the warrants in the crowd, as they were excited, and a collision might be provoked, and if arrests were made at all they must be made quietly. If the opportunity for quiet arrests occurred, it was not taken advantage of, for no arrests were made, and no attempts seem to have been made to spot the men, or ascertain their whereabouts, or to do anything towards executing the warrants while they were in the hands of the officers. On the morning of the 21st, bench warrants for the arrest of the same persons were issued by Judge Ewing, and these were placed in the hands of Constable Richardson, who called on the sheriff for a posse to assist in making the arrests. The sheriff sent out ten of his deputies to raise a posse for the purpose, and the deputies claim they were vigilant and thorough in their efforts to find men willing to serve, but were unable to raise any considerable number of persons. All sorts of excuses were made, and not over ten persons in all responded. No peremptory summons or call, such as it was his right and duty to make, was ever issued by the sheriff, and, as testified by him, when he reached the Union depot with his deputies and posse, a short time before the Philadelphia troops arrived, all but six of his posse had left. On Saturday it is the custom for the different mills and shops at Pittsburgh and vicinity to shut down about noon, or soon after; and on that eventful Saturday, July 21st, those in the neighborhood of the Twenty-eighth street crossing saw the crowd at that point suddenly and largely increased soon after the hour for shutting down the mills. A prominent manufacturer of Pittsburgh was at the Union depot on Saturday, about the time of the arrival of the Philadelphia troops, and had a talk with Mr. A. J. Cassatt, third vice president of the Pennsylvania railroad, and, in this conversation, told him that Saturday was an idle day with their workmen in Pittsburgh, and that it would be great wisdom in him to wait until Monday, when the laboring men would be at their work, before attempting to open their road; that it was natural that their home troops should sympathize with the strikers, and they could not be fully depended on in case of a riot. Mr. Cassatt refused to give any directions to delay the movements of the military, saying they had already lost a great deal of time, and it was the duty of the government to put them in possession of their property at once. General Brinton, with his command, arrived at Pittsburgh at three, P.M., and, after being furnished with coffee and sandwiches at the Union depot, were formed and marched out along the tracks to the Twenty-eighth street crossing. Before starting from the depot, General Brinton gave orders that the mob must not be fired upon, even if they spat in the soldiers' faces, but if they were attacked, however, they must defend themselves. The plan adopted for the afternoon's operations was for a portion of the Philadelphia troops to take possession of the premises of the railroad company at and in the vicinity of Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth streets, where the freight trains that had been prepared to send out stood, and clear this portion of the tracks from the crowd, so that when the tracks and switches at Twenty-eighth street were cleared and put in possession of the company, the trains could at once be moved, as the engineers and men were said to be ready to start with the trains. The balance of the Philadelphia troops were to move up to Twenty-eighth street and coöperate with the Pittsburg troops in clearing the tracks at that point, and when this was done the trains were to be started, and after a few trains had been run out it was believed that the strike would be broken up; that the strikers would see the futility of trying to resist the law when backed up by the military, and would give up the contest. The sheriff and his deputies (he had no posse to speak of) started from the Union depot towards Twenty-eighth street, to execute the warrants in the hands of Constable Richardson, a little in advance of the Philadelphia troops, but were delayed on the way out, somewhat, by looking after men, and before arriving at Twenty-eighth street, were overtaken by the troops, but no arrests were made by them. The second division, in command of Brigadier General E. De. C. Loud, was left on Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth streets, with orders to disperse the crowd at that point and protect the employés in starting the trains. The order was promptly executed by throwing out skirmish lines and clearing the tracks in the vicinity of the trains. The first division brigade, under the command of General E. W. Mathews, and the battery of Gatling guns, all under command of General Brinton, marched out to near the Twenty-eighth street crossing. The command marched out by column far into the crowd as far as possible, and then General Brinton gave the command to wheel into line by the right flank, which brought one line lengthwise of the tracks, below the Twenty-eighth street crossing, facing Liberty street, and another line was formed parallel with the first, on the opposite side of the tracks facing the hill. The crowd was ordered to disperse by the sheriff, and he was answered by hoots, jeers, and rough language. The move made by the troops had cleared the tracks between the two lines, and the crowd now began forcing itself down from Twenty-eighth street, between the lines formed each side of the tracks. General Brinton ordered two companies to form across the tracks at right angles with the two lines already formed, and between them, facing Twenty-eighth street, and to march up and press the crowd back and clear the crossing. The sheriff and his deputies had been in front up to this time, but they now took a position in rear of the two companies. General Pearson had been with the command until this time, when, seeing the size of the crowd, and its determination, he went back to Mr. Pitcairn's office to telegraph General Latta, for the purpose of having more troops ordered to the place. The two companies, in carrying out their orders, marched up against the crowd, with their pieces "arms port," and endeavored to press them back in this way, but no impression could be made on them. General Mathews, at this juncture, seeing, as he said, that the mob was firm and determined, and would not bear temporizing with, gave his men orders to load. The two companies were then ordered to charge bayonets; many of their guns were seized and some of the bayonets nearly twisted off, but no impression was made on the crowd. While these movements were being made, the mob was becoming more and more noisy, defiant, and boisterous, and were throwing stones and other missiles at the troops, several of the latter having been hit, and one or two seriously injured. Several pistol shots were also fired by the crowd, and immediately after the pistol shots the troops commenced firing on the mob. The firing was scattering, commencing at a point near where the pistol firing took place, and running along the line in a desultory manner, until it became almost a volley for a moment. The officers ordered the firing to cease, and stopped it very soon. There is a conflict in the evidence as to whether or not an order was given the troops to fire, but the great weight of the testimony is that no such order was given. The most of those who testify that such an order was given, say it was given by General Pearson, but General Pearson was not present when the firing took place, but was at the superintendent's office. Every person, however, from General Pearson down, who have given an opinion on the subject, say that an order to fire was justified and should have been given, and the officers in command say that the order would have been given very soon. The firing had the effect to disperse the crowd at once, they scattering in all directions, and leaving the troops in full possession of the Twenty-eighth street crossing and the tracks in the vicinity. Several persons were killed and wounded, and as is usually the case, a number of innocent people suffered. The coroner held inquests on the bodies of twenty-two persons in all, the most of whom were killed by the soldiers at this time at Twenty-eighth street, but a few were killed the following night and Sunday morning at or near Twenty-sixth street. The number cannot be ascertained with any certainty, but several were seriously injured. It is believed, by those best situated to know the facts, that a number of the mob were secretly disposed of or taken care of by their friends, and whose names have never been given. If men had been ready and willing to man the trains, they could have been sent out after the dispersal of the crowd, but the occurrence at Twenty-eighth street seems to have thrown everybody into confusion, and, as usual, the engineers and train men were glad to find some excuse for not going. No attempt seems to have been made to move the trains, which were supposed to be ready at Twenty-sixth street, and the cars remained there until they and their contents were burned. The troops remained on the ground from the time of the firing about five, P M., until about dusk, when they were ordered, by General Pearson, to move into the lower round-house and machine-shop, near Twenty-sixth street, and remain for the night, as all attempts to move trains had been abandoned, and the troops needed rest and food. The crowd had come together again gradually, in the vicinity of the Twenty-eighth street crossing, but whenever the troops made any move towards them, they would scatter, and when the troops marched into the lower round house and machine shop, the mob took possession of, and had full sway again at the crossing. General Pearson had ordered the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments to go down and take possession of the transfer depot as it was called, about two hundred yards below the lower round house, and these regiments marched down there about the time that General Brinton's command went into the round house and machine shop. Colonel Gray, at request of Colonel Howard, assumed command at the transfer depot, and held possession until about ten P.M., when General Brown came and told Colonel Gray that the place was untenable, and could not be held; that he had information which made it necessary for them to get out, and ordered the command to go to the Union depot. Colonel Gray had been disgusted at the order to leave the side hill above the Twenty-eighth street crossing, thinking it a great mistake, and was also disgusted at the order to move down to the Union depot. Colonel Gray, received orders from General Brown to disband his command, and at once called around him his officers, and protested against it. Said it was a disgrace to do so, with the mob in force in the vicinity, and a disgrace to desert the Philadelphia troops, but the order was obeyed, and the men dispersed to their homes, carrying their guns with them; about eleven P.M., General Brown testified, that leading citizens and military men advised him that it was best to disband these troops, that their being kept under arms aggravated and exasperated the mob, and that this advice coincided with his opinion, and therefore the order was given. About two hundred men were present at the time they were disbanded, nearly as many more having left from time to time, during the day and evening, and it is General Brown's opinion, that they were absent on account of their sympathy with the strikers, and not on account of fear. When these troops marched down to the transfer depot, the mob did not jeer or rail at them, as they did at all times at the Philadelphia troops, and it does not seem from the evidence, that anything had been done by them to aggravate or exasperate the mob in the least. General Pearson entered the round house with General Brinton's command, and left them about half past eight, to see about getting provisions for the men, who had received no regular meal since leaving Philadelphia. They had been furnished with coffee and sandwiches at Altoona, and the same at Pittsburgh. On leaving, General Pearson gave General Brinton orders to hold the position until he returned, which he thought would be within an hour. On reaching Union depot General Pearson was informed that the mob was very much exasperated against him, as they held him responsible for the firing on them by the troops, and was advised by General Latta and others that his presence would still further aggravate the crowd, and that he had better retire to some place of safety until the excitement was over, which advice was followed, and he therefore did not return to General Brinton. The effort to provision General Brinton's troops was a failure, as the mob seized, used, and destroyed the food which was sent out for the purpose. The round house and machine shop overlooked Liberty street on one side, on the other side were the tracks, many of them filled with cars, and near the machine shop were piles of lumber and materials used in repairs. Pickets were put out on this side of the machine shop so as to prevent the mob from taking shelter behind the piles of lumber, and firing on the troops from these places. The mob had broken into two or three gun stores in the city between eight and nine o'clock that evening, and had, by this means, secured guns and ammunition, and soon after dark commenced firing on the round house and machine shops, firing in at the windows and at any soldiers they could get sight of, one of the mob firing an explosive bullet, which the troops could see explode every time it struck anything in their vicinity. Two of the soldiers were wounded, one in the arm and one in the leg, during the night, which is all the casualties that occurred among them until after they left the round house and shop in the morning. About ten o'clock P.M., the mob began setting fire to the cars, and running them down the track nearest the round house, in order, if possible, to set it on fire, and thus drive out the troops. From some distance above Twenty-eighth street to below Twenty-sixth street it is down grade, and the cars will run of their own gravitation, on being started, down to and below the buildings in which the troops were located. The first car fired was a car of coal, and, after being set on fire, it was started on the down grade with one of the mob on it, and he, on arriving at the round house, broke up the car and stopped it. Other cars were fired and run down against the first one, and there was soon a string of fire the whole length of the shops on the side next the tracks. The round house was well supplied with water, and the troops were enabled to keep the fire from communicating with the buildings during the night. About one o'clock, on the morning of the 22d, (Sunday,) it was discovered that the mob had a field piece on Liberty street, ready to fire on the round house. By General Brinton's orders his men were stationed at the windows ready to fire, and the mob were notified to abandon the gun and not attempt to fire it, or they would be fired on. They paid no attention to the warning, and when one of them was seen with the lanyard in his hand ready to discharge the piece, orders were given the troops to fire, and several of the mob fell, and the rest ran away. Several attempts were made by the mob during the night to creep up and discharge the gun, but the soldiers kept close watch on it and allowed them no opportunity to do so. General Brinton succeeded in communicating with General Latta during the night by sending out one of his men, Sergeant Joseph F. Wilson, who, by disguising himself, succeeded in getting out and back twice, but would not undertake it again. He brought orders from General Latta to hold on as long as possible, that Guthrie had been ordered to report to him, and ought to reach him at five or six o'clock, but if compelled to escape at last, to do so to the eastward, to take Penn avenue if possible, and make for Colonel Guthrie, at Torrens. The scout, Wilson, brought in the last dispatch about two o'clock, A.M., the 22d, and this was the last communication that reached General Brinton while in the round house. The ordeal through which these men passed that night was fearful. Tired, hungry, worn out, surrounded by a mob of infuriated men, yelling like demons, fire on nearly all sides of them, suffocated and blinded by smoke, with no chance to rest, and but little knowledge of what efforts were being made for their relief, with orders not to fire on the mob unless in necessary self defense, the wonder is that they were not totally demoralized; but the evidence of all the officers is that the men behaved like veterans, obeyed all orders cheerfully and with promptness, and during the whole night but one company manifested any spirit of insubordination, and these proposed to lay down their arms and quit, as they were not allowed to use them on the mob, while the latter were taking every opportunity of shooting down the soldiers. This insubordination was quickly brought to an end as soon as the attention of the proper officer was called to it, and when the troops marched out in the morning, no one could tell by their actions which of the men had wavered during the night. About half-past seven, Sunday morning, the 22d instant, the machine shop caught fire in many places, the roof of the round house also was on fire, and it became necessary to evacuate the buildings. The two Napoleon guns could not be removed, and were spiked, and about eight, A.M., the command marched out into the street in good, order, taking their Gatling guns with them. The mob scattered in every direction at sight of the troops coming out, and no attempt was made to molest the soldiers until they began their march eastward by Penn avenue, in pursuance of the orders received from General Latta. After marching two or three squares, the troops were harassed by a fire in their rear. They were fired at from second story windows, from the corners of the streets, and from every place where one of the mob could fire from under cover so as to be safe himself from a return fire. They were also fired at from a police station, where eight or ten policemen stood in uniform, as they passed, and when they were a convenient distance from the station, shots were fired at them from the crowd there assembled. It is hard to believe charges of this kind, but the evidence is too positive and circumstantial to leave room for doubt. At one point, just before reaching the United States arsenal, there was some confusion among the men in the rear of the column, caused by an attack by the mob that was following up, and a halt was made, and the Gatling guns used on the attacking party, which dispersed them, and this ended all attacks on the troops. In this retreat, three of the soldiers were killed and several wounded, one of whom, Lieutenant Ashe, died a few days afterwards, at the United States arsenal. On arriving at the arsenal several of the soldiers climbed over the fence, into the grounds, and General Brinton called on the commandant, Major Buffington, for leave to feed and shelter his troops there. General Brinton and Major Buffington disagreed as to what occurred between them at that time, which question of veracity the purposes of this report does not require us to decide, but General Brinton is corroborated by the testimony of one of his officers, and Major Buffington has no corroborating witness. The result of the conference was, that General Brinton and his well men went on, and his wounded were left, and well cared for, at the arsenal. General Brinton, hearing nothing from Colonel Guthrie, continued his march out to and through Sharpsburg, and finally brought up in the vicinity of the work-house, and encamped on the grounds near that institution, where he was furnished with rations for his men, and gave them a chance to get the rest they so much needed. These rations reached General Brinton's command during Sunday afternoon, through the personal exertions of A. J. Cassatt, who, from the time of the occupation of the round-house by the troops, had been unwearied in his endeavors to get provisions to them. The command was also furnished with blankets and other necessary camp equipments, by Colonel Thomas A. Scott, who had also been vigilant in looking after the welfare of the men, and all necessary transportation needed on their behalf, after their departure from Philadelphia, unprepared for a campaign, on account of the brief notice given them. To these two gentlemen, the friends of the National Guard owe a debt of gratitude for the personal interest taken by them, at all times, during the campaign, to render any service that lay in their power to make the men comfortable. The destruction of the railroad property by the mob had been continued all night, the cars and goods contained in them that could not be carried off being burned as fast as they could be broken open, the goods thrown out and the cars set on fire. Crowds of men, women, and children were engaged in the work of pillage, and everything portable, of any value, was seized as fast as thrown from the cars, and carried away and secreted. One feature of the mob at Pittsburgh is new in this country. A large number of women were in the crowd at Twenty-eighth street, on Saturday, the 21st instant, and according to testimony, they talked to the sheriff, and others who tried to get the crowd to disperse, worse than the men, used viler epithets, and more indecent language, and did everything in their power to influence and excite the mob to resistance. They also, during Saturday night and Sunday, brought out tea and coffee for the men engaged in the destruction of property, and were the most active in carrying away the goods taken from the cars. This work of pillage and destruction continued all day Sunday, and the actual destruction was participated in by only thirty to fifty men, the citizens in the meantime standing looking helplessly on, and no effort made to stay the damage by the bystanders. There was a very large crowd in the vicinity of the burning, who were supposed to be in sympathy with the destruction, and this probably deterred anyone from interfering to put a stop to it. The police, on Sunday, arrested some seventy-five persons who were carrying off goods, the arrests being made some distance from the place where the articles were taken. Those arrested were taken before Deputy Mayor Butler, and most of them were by him discharged. This seems to be all that the police did to restrain the rioting that day, and it is in evidence that one policeman in uniform got into one of the cars and threw goods out to the mob. On Saturday morning, General Latta had sent written orders by Captain Aull to General Brinton, for the latter to make a junction with Colonel Guthrie, at Torrens, and with the whole force to march to Pittsburgh, and fearing that Captain Aull might fail to reach General Brinton, the order was read to Colonel Norris, who volunteered to go in search of General Brinton. Colonel Norris, in company with J. M. Stewart, overtook General Brinton's command a little beyond Sharpsburg, and they both testify that Colonel Norris told General Brinton that Captain Aull had been sent by General Latta in search of him with orders, and communicated to him, (General Brinton,) the substance of the orders, and that General Brinton refused to go back, saying that his men had been fired at from houses, street crossings, and police stations, and were almost famished for want of food, and he was going into the open country where he could intrench and defend himself, and procure food for his men, but that if he received positive orders he might return. General Brinton and several of his officers testify that although Colonel Norris visited him at the time and place stated, yet that he delivered no orders whatever, and stated that his errand was to find out where the command was. In regard to these counter-statements your committee will have something to say under the head of "conduct of the militia." It is proper to state here, however, that the written order given to Captain Aull to take to General Brinton was not delivered to him till the 1st day of August, a week from its date. Soon after the first car was set on fire, Saturday night, the alarm of fire was given, and the firemen with their engines at once turned out and arrived in the vicinity of the fire about eleven o'clock, but were not allowed to attempt to stop the destruction of the railroad company property. They tried several times to lay their hose, so as to play on the fire, but the mob cut their hose and threatened them with death if they persisted. Some of the police testify that they cleared away the mob at one place and notified the firemen that they were ready to protect them if they would go to work and put out the fire; but the firemen deny this, and testify that no such offer was made, and that at no time did they see half a dozen police together. In view of the general failure of the police to do what must be considered their duty in regard to the rioters, during the whole time of the trouble, they need not think it strange if the majority of people are inclined to believe the statements of the firemen. The officers of the fire department testify that the firemen were well organized at the place of danger, ready to do their duty at all times, and that this department was the only one in the city that was organized trying to do its duty during the time of the riot. The firemen, after some remonstrance on the part of a portion of the rioters, were allowed to save private property, and to this fact may be ascribed the safety of a good portion of the city; for the fire from the railroad property communicated to the adjoining property of individuals, and but for the labors of the firemen there must have been a very extensive conflagration throughout Pittsburgh. The destruction of property did not cease until about five o'clock, P.M., on Sunday, the 22d, and then only when the limit of the corporation property had been reached at Seventh street by the destruction of the Union depot, Union depot hotel, and the grain elevator. The latter did not belong to the railroad company, but it was believed by the mob to be owned by a corporation, and therefore it was doomed to destruction with the rest. Several times during the day--Sunday--the cry of "police" was made by some one in the crowd, and whenever this was done the mob would scatter in all directions, but as soon as it was ascertained to be a false alarm they would again return to the work of destruction. It was demonstrated also that whenever any citizen gave a determined and positive order to any of the mob it was usually obeyed. A notice had been published in the Sunday morning papers, and had also been given out in the various churches, that a meeting of the citizens would be held at the old city hall, at noon, for the purpose of organizing to protect the city. Some citizens met at the old city hall, according to notice, but there seemed to be no head to the movement, and it adjourned to meet at the new city hall immediately. At this place a committee of safety was appointed, and a sort of an organization for defense commenced, but in the language of a prominent witness engaged in the movement: "They were all day doing very little; there was no head anywhere; the mayor did nothing, and seemed to be powerless, and the sheriff had run away. The mayor seemed to be confused; he ran around some, but really did nothing." A nucleus for an organization of the responsible citizens of the city was formed, however, which on the following day developed into vigorous action, and the best men of the city came forward and subscribed liberally to a fund to pay an extra police force, and pledged themselves to subscribe any amount necessary to put the city in a complete state of defense against the mob element. Some sixty thousand dollars was actually subscribed, of which about fifteen thousand dollars was used to pay the extra police force called into existence by the action of the citizens during the emergency. About four to five o'clock, P.M., a body of fifty or sixty men, composed of professional and business men, were organized under the lead of Doctor Donnelly, and armed at first with ax-helves, and afterwards with some old muskets and no ammunition, and with white handkerchiefs on their left arms, appeared at the scene of the trouble, near the Union depot and elevator, but it was too late to save these buildings, as they were already burned. The crowd gave way to this force, but as the destruction was completed here but little could be accomplished. The doctor ordered the mob to take hold and tear down a fence so as to stop the spread of the fire, and they obeyed orders. There was such an apathy among the citizens, that it took all the day to raise this force led by Doctor Donnelly, and after being on the ground a short time, and finding nothing for them to do, they disbanded. During the day (Sunday) a car load of whisky or high wines was broken open by the mob, and they drank very freely of it, and towards night, at the time the Union depot and elevator were burned, most of the active rioters were so drunk as to be unable to continue the work of destruction, if they had been so disposed. Whisky had done good service in this case, if never before. The fatigue consequent upon the labors of Saturday night and Sunday was also producing its effect upon the rioters, and taken in connection with the fact, that most of them must have been filled to satiety with rioting and destruction of property, shows a good cause for the waning of the riot on Sunday afternoon. A few of the rioters, between five and six o'clock, P.M., went to the Duquesne depot, (the property of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,) at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, with the intention of burning it and the cars in the vicinity. One car was set on fire and an attempt made to set the depot on fire, but some six or eight of the citizens' safety committee arrived there about the time the rioters did, and they interfered at once to put a stop to destruction, and had no difficulty in doing so, as the rioters desisted and left as soon as they saw any authority exerted in opposition to their schemes. The Eighteenth regiment (Colonel Guthrie) had remained at Torrens station, keeping the track clear at that point, and waiting for the expected trains. The crowd at that place numbered about fifteen hundred men, composed of mill men, some railroad men, boys, roughs, and tramps. The passenger trains were allowed to run by the mob, but between Pittsburgh and Torrens they were filled to overflowing by the roughest of the crowd, who traveled backwards and forwards between those places on the trains at their pleasure, and no one dared to interfere with them. They even climbed on the engine and tender, and roofs of the cars, and controlled the movements of the trains whenever they chose so to do between those two points. At Torrens, the crowd would occasionally become demonstrative and defiant, and Colonel Guthrie was obliged to charge bayonets on them several times, and each time had no difficulty in dispersing them. Twice he ordered his men to load in presence of the crowd, and this of itself dispersed them. Colonel Guthrie's troops were not allowed to fraternize with the mob, but were kept entirely aloof from them, and this regiment does not seem to have become demoralized, as the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments were. About four o'clock, P.M., Sunday, Colonel Guthrie, hearing that the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments had been disbanded, and being unable to ascertain the exact condition of affairs at Pittsburgh, went there and consulted with General Latta, and his regiment was ordered to march to that place, where they arrived about dark, and, of course, too late to be of any service in stopping the destruction of property, which had all taken place before their arrival. They marched to the armory and stayed all night, and on Monday forenoon, the Twenty-third, together with the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments, which had been ordered to reassemble that morning, marched through the principal streets of the city for the purpose of overawing any riotous disposition that might still remain in those who had been engaged in the work of destruction the day before. Colonel Guthrie assumed command of the division, his commission being older than Colonel Gray's or Colonel Howard's, and when General Brown wished to assume command Colonel Guthrie refused to recognize his authority, on account of the manner in which he had managed matters on Saturday, the 21st. On Saturday night, a few of the leading citizens had suggested to the mayor that it would be well to call out all of the old police force that had been discharged, and in accordance with this suggestion the chief of police caused a notice to be published, calling on them to report at his office and they would be assigned to duty. During the day several reported and were employed, and afterwards most of the old force were taken back and assigned to duty for a time. This extra force, together with the force of citizens organized for the purpose, patrolled the city that Sunday night, and succeeding nights, until the danger had passed. From the first commencement of the strike, the strikers had the active sympathy of a large portion of the people of Pittsburgh. The citizens had a bitter feeling against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on account of, as they believed, an unjust discrimination by the railroad company against them in freight rates, which made it very difficult for their manufacturers to compete successfully with manufacturers further west, and this feeling had existed and been intensified for years, and pervaded all classes. A large portion of the people also believed that the railroad company was not dealing fairly by its men in making the last reduction in wages, and the tradesmen with whom the trainmen dealt also had a direct sympathy with the men in this reduction, for its results would affect their pockets. The large class of laborers in the different mills, manufactories, mines, and other industries in Pittsburgh and vicinity, were also strongly in sympathy with the railroad strikers, considering the cause of the railroad men their cause, as their wages had also been reduced for the same causes as were those of the railroad men, and they were not only willing but anxious to make a common fight against the corporations. This feeling of aversion to the railroad company and sympathy with the strikers was indulged in by the Pittsburgh troops to the same extent that it was by the other classes, and as many of them had friends and relatives in the mob, it is not much to be wondered at that they did not show much anxiety to assist in dispersing the crowd and enforcing the law. With the repulse of the attempt to set fire to the Duquesne depot ended all active efforts by the mob to destroy property, and after that Sunday night no mob of any size was again assembled, although it was several days before complete order was fully restored, as the people had lost confidence in all the laboring men, and no one knew who to trust or what to expect from others on account of the extent to which the demoralization had gone. About sixteen hundred cars, (mostly freight,) including passenger and baggage cars, with such of their contents as were not carried away by the thieves; one hundred and twenty-six locomotives, and all the shops' materials and buildings, except one or two small ones, of the railroad company, from above Twenty-eighth street to the Union depot, were burned on that Saturday night and Sunday. It has been estimated, by a competent person, that the damage, including loss of property and loss of business, consequent upon the interruption of business, which was inflicted by the mob, at Pittsburgh alone, was $5,000,000. This may be a large estimate, but if the consequential damages could be correctly arrived at, the total damage would fall but little short of the figures given. The actual loss of property by the railroad company alone, not including the freight they were transporting, is estimated at two million dollars, by the officers of the company, from actual figures made. The authorities of Allegheny county adopted thorough measures to ascertain the extent of the loss of property, and to that end appointed a committee to investigate claims of those claiming damage. One hundred and sixty-nine claims were settled by the committee, that is, the amount of each claim of this number was adjusted and agreed upon by the committee and the parties, and the total amount thus adjusted is about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and all this is strictly private property. Some persons refused to adjust the amount of their claims with the committee, among which is the claim of the elevator company, amounting to the sum of two hundred thousand dollars. Property that was stolen was also recovered and returned to the railroad company, amounting in value to at least sixty thousand dollars. The tracks from Union depot out to and beyond Twenty-eighth street were nearly all ruined by the fire, the rails being warped and twisted and the ties burned; they were also covered with the debris of the burned cars, and it was about a week after the destruction, or until July 30th, before the railroad company were enabled to get their trains all running regularly again over this portion of the track. During the troubles of the 20th and 21st, efforts were made by the strikers to come to an understanding or compromise with the railroad officials, and a committee to confer with the officials was appointed. Some time on Friday, the 20th, the committee met Mr. Pitcairn, the superintendent of the Pittsburgh division, and presented him with a written statement of the demand made by the strikers, of which the following is a copy, viz: "BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS, PITTSBURGH DIVISION, NO. 50, PITTSBURGH, PA., _July 20, 1877_. _To the Superintendent Western Division, Pennsylvania Railroad_: _First._ We, the undersigned committee appointed by the employés of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, do hereby demand from the said company, through the proper officers of said company, the wages as per department of engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, and flagmen as received prior to June 1, 1877. _Second._ That each and every employé that has been dismissed for taking part or parts in said strikes to be restored to their respective positions. _Third._ That the classification of each of said department be abolished now and forever hereafter. _Fourth._ That engineers and conductors receive the wages as received by said engineers and conductors of the highest class prior to June 1, 1877. _Fifth._ That the running of double trains be abolished, excepting coal trains. _Sixth._ That each and every engine, whether road or shifting, shall have its own fireman. Respectfully submitted to you for immediate consideration. J. S. MCCAULEY, D. H. NEWHARD, JOHN SHANA, G. HARRIS, J. P. KESSLER, _Committee_." Mr. Pitcairn informed the committee, that these terms could not be accepted by the railroad company, and that he could not send such a proposition to Colonel Scott, the president of the company, and the negotiations were broken off. An attempt was made on Sunday, by some of the citizens, to induce the railroad officials to submit some proposition for a compromise to the strikers, but the officials refused, saying that the men had taken the law into their own hands, and that no proposition could be made to them until their property was restored, and all opposition had ceased, and that it was now a matter of law, and the State authorities must settle the question with the men first. The propositions embraced in the papers submitted by the committee of engineers, proposed that the railroad company should make concessions that had never been asked before. The first and second explain themselves fully, and had been grounds of complaint before. The third, requiring the abolishment of the classification of conductors and engineers, had never been a ground of complaint by the men. The conductors were divided into three classes: The first of which received a certain rate of pay per month the first year of service; an addition of ten per cent. for the second year, and another addition of the ten per cent. for the third year. The engineers were divided into four classes, and received an advance of ten per cent. for each year of service after the first until the fourth class was reached. This classification was adopted at the request of the men themselves, some years previous, and no complaint in regard to it had ever reached the officers of the company. This principle of classification had been practiced by other railroads, and has worked well, and is a good rule for both the men and the railroads, as its tendency is to secure and retain better men to run the trains. The fourth proposition, if accepted, would have placed the new, inexperienced men on the same footing as the men of experience, and to give them at once the highest wages paid the older and more experienced men. The fifth proposition was for the railroad company to back down and rescind the order made to run double-headers and the sixth that the company should employ a fireman on all shifting engines, a place where they are not usually needed, as the engine is not engaged in steady work, and the engineer can do his own firing without trouble or over-work. No proposition of compromise was submitted to the strikers on the part of the railroad company, and what would have been the result if one had been made, it is useless to speculate about. As tending to show the feeling of the people of Pittsburgh on the subject of the difficulties between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and its employés and in regard to the strike, some copies of editorials from several of the newspapers of the city, written and published at the time of the strike, have been inserted in the evidence accompanying their report. More space has been given to the history of the riots at Pittsburgh than to any other place, as it was here the troubles first commenced in this State; here was the greatest loss of life, and it was here that, by far, the greatest destruction of property took place. We turn now to Allegheny City, just across the river from Pittsburgh, and the termini of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, the Allegheny Valley railroad, the Pan Handle railroad, and the Connellsville division of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. On Friday morning, July 20th, the freight conductors and brakemen on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad refused to go out with their trains, and the railroad officers, fearing trouble, sent up to the mayor's office for some policemen to preserve the peace, and ten were sent them. The mayor was not at his office at the time, but, on his return, he immediately went up to the depot to look after the troubles himself. At the time the mayor arrived on the ground there was a crowd of two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty men assembled and no man could be found to man the trains. One engineer came out with his engine, which was surrounded by the crowd, but no violence was used and there is no evidence of any threats being made at the time, but he returned with his engine to the round house. After this time no attempt to run a freight train was made on this road until the troubles were all over and the men had given up the strike. The strikers here were under the leadership of one R. A. Ammon, better known as Boss Ammon, and declared their intention to use no violence to prevent trains from running; that if the railroad company could get "scabs" (as the strikers called any man who was willing to work during a strike) to run their trains, they were willing the trains should run, but as the company was unable to find men willing to go out on the trains, the good intentions of the strikers were not tested. As this road was run directly in connection with the Pennsylvania railroad on the general western through traffic, it was but little object to force the freight trains out as long as the Pennsylvania railroad was blockaded, and, hence, no effort was made, after the first day, to run freight trains. The main efforts were in the direction of keeping the peace and preventing the destruction of property. The strikers declared their intentions to keep the peace, and prevent the destruction of property, and not interfere with the running of passenger trains, and they were told that so long as they did this in good faith, they would not be interfered with. Mayor Phillips immediately ordered out all his police to patrol the city, organized an extra force of citizens, and swore them in, made a requisition on the Secretary of War for five hundred guns, and got them, and placed them in the hands of the citizens, and generally had everything so well organized and arranged that any attempt at a riot could have been met and quelled at once. It was rumored that the mob had broken, or was going to break, into the armory and get the guns (about forty) stored there, and the mayor at once sent and had the guns all removed to a place of safety. It was also rumored that the mob from Pittsburgh intended to come over into Allegheny City, and destroy the railroad property there, and the mayor had the bridges all guarded by armed men, with two field pieces at the principal ones, which he was enabled to get, and there being no balls with them, he caused them to be loaded with square iron burs, an inch or so in size. The city had fifty-five policemen, and these were kept on duty as much of the time as it was possible for men to be out, and no opportunity was given any of the Pittsburgh mob to cross over to Allegheny. At the time it was alleged that the Pittsburgh mob was coming to Allegheny City, to destroy the property of the railroad company there, an arrangement was made with Ammon and his men to take the freight cars out of the city, which was accordingly done, and ten miles of cars were hauled out from the city some miles, and stowed away on the side tracks, until the troubles were over, when the same men brought them back and turned them over, in good order, to the railroad authorities. It was also arranged with Ammon and his men, that as long as the men behaved themselves and protected the property of the company, no soldier should be brought there to interfere with them, and if, at any time, they found themselves unable to preserve the peace and take care of the property, they were to notify the mayor, who would then furnish a force to preserve order. The mayor also, at the commencement of the troubles, sent his policemen around to notify the saloon-keepers, and others, to close their bars, and sell no strong drink to any one, and afterwards sent the force around to see that the order was obeyed. Although not legally binding, the order was very generally observed, and no trouble was experienced on account of the crowd using strong drink. The mayor had notices posted throughout the city that, if necessity required it, ten taps of the bell was to be the signal for the general assembling of the citizens at a given place for defense, which signal, fortunately, was not required to be given. Mayor Phillips considered himself as the chief peace officer of the city, and if the sheriff or military had been called on for assistance, he did not consider either or both superseded him, but that it would have been his duty to have cooperated with them to the full extent of his power. "Boss" Ammon and his party, which consisted of about one hundred railroad men and a crowd of two or three hundred outsiders, roughs, and laborers, continued to run the Pittsburgh division of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago road until Tuesday evening, the 24th instant, at which time Governor Hartranft arrived from the West. When Ammon heard that the Governor was on the train, coming to Pittsburgh, he telegraphed him, welcoming him to the State, and assuring him a safe passage. On the Governor's arrival he was met by Ammon and introduced to the crowd, and gave them a short talk, counseling obedience to the laws, which was well received. It was now felt by all that the strike must come to an end immediately; that there was a man at the head of affairs who knew his duty and would not be trifled with, and that all parties would be fairly and justly treated. Boss Ammon immediately made arrangements to turn over the railroad to the proper authorities, he seeing very clearly that the proper time to do so had now come, and that further delay was dangerous. Some of his men could not agree with him that it was best to make terms while they could, and, at a meeting of the men, he was hissed, and they refused to hear him speak. Thus fell from his position of boss the man who, with only eleven months' experience as a brakeman, for four or five days successfully ran one division of a great railroad. It has by some been considered an extraordinary performance for a young man of twenty-five, with the small experience he had, to control the men he did, and keep the passenger trains running regularly without accident on such a railroad; but when the circumstances are considered it is nothing wonderful. In the first place, a mob or crowd are always willing to follow any person who has nerve, and is willing to assume the responsibility and take the lead. Ammon had the nerve; was naturally shrewd and sharp, and knew how to control men, and they had been used to look up to him as the organizer of the Trainmen's Union. The mob always wants a dictator, and in Ammon they had one. In the next place, the great railroads of the country are so organized, and their trains are run by such a regular system in connection with the telegraph, that the trains can be run for days without a break if the superintendent should abandon the road entirely. Ammon was a king so long as he led in the direction the crowd wished to go; when he undertook to put on the brakes and get them to reason about their situation, and ran counter to their opinions, he was dethroned with as little ceremony or compunction as one school boy shows in knocking off the hat of another. Human nature is the same everywhere; in politics, society, or with the mob, the leader must go in the direction his followers would have him go, or he is replaced for one more subservient. From Wednesday, the 25th of July, the officers of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad began to be able to get control of their road, and in a few days all the trains were running regularly. The other railroads running into Allegheny City had nearly the same difficulty with their men as did the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, and their trains for a few days were not regularly run, but they got along without any rioting or destruction of property, and were soon able to start all their trains again. On Friday, July 20th, the freight conductors and brakemen on the Pennsylvania railroad, at Philadelphia, began to be uneasy, and on Saturday, the 21st, a strike was in full operation among them. They gathered in crowds at the yards of the company where the freight trains were made up to start out, and they, as in other places, were joined by a large crowd of idle men, tramps, and vagabonds, such as are found around a large city, and who scent out a chance for trouble or a riot, as a crow scents carrion. The officials called on Mayor Stokley for policemen to keep the peace, and protect the property of the company. The mayor at once acted vigorously; sent out his police with orders to disperse any crowd that might gather on the grounds of the railroad company, and, on advising with the citizens, he was authorized to call out an extra force, which he did at once. His action was so thorough and efficient, that no serious interruption of traffic was experienced at that place, although crowds of rough men had gathered to the number of two or three thousand, and at one time, as estimated, to the number of four thousand to five thousand. They were dispersed by the prompt and vigorous action of the police, who would charge into the crowd, using their clubs freely and scattered them at once. It was the policy of the mayor not to allow a mob to collect, and this prevented a serious rioting. To Mayor Stokley and his police force, the State, as well as the city of Philadelphia, is greatly indebted, and to their efforts may be ascribed the salvation of that city from the disgraceful scenes enacted at Pittsburg. On Saturday, July 21st, an uneasiness among the trainmen at Harrisburg and Scranton was observed, which, within the following two or three days, ripened into a strike. The first crowd which gathered in Harrisburg was on Saturday evening, the 21st of July, at the Pennsylvania railroad depot, to prevent the shipping of ammunition to Pittsburgh. The mayor was notified about ten o'clock, P.M., of what was going on, and he immediately sent for the chief of police, to make arrangements to meet the threatened danger. A lieutenant of police and another policeman being the only members of the force then available for prompt service, were sent to the scene of the trouble, and, by arrangement, arrested a man and started for the mayor's office with him, to draw the crowd from the depot. This ruse proved successful, and the ammunition was shipped before the crowd returned. Some three hundred or four hundred persons followed the policemen with their prisoner to the mayor's office, and, on their arrival there, the mayor went out and asked them to disperse, when about one half of the crowd left. The person arrested then appeared at the door, and informed the crowd that he had been arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and the balance of them dispersed. On Sunday, the 22d, the trainmen, whose head-quarters were at Harrisburg, struck, and in consequence thereof a large crowd gathered on the common, and listened to harangues from some of their number, among whom was an insane man from the lunatic asylum. From the common, the mob went to the Pennsylvania railroad depot, and prevented a train from going out, and the mayor, having notice of their movements, appeared upon the scene and found some boys uncoupling an engine from the train, which the mayor put a stop to, and requested the engineer to move on, which he refused to do, giving as an excuse that he was told there were obstructions on the track a short distance out of town. The crowd at this time was composed of all kinds of citizens, good, bad, and indifferent, and they soon dispersed, and no violence took place. On Monday, the 23d, the mob gathered in large force about the railroad premises, and there being a larger number of roughs and tramps, became more turbulent and interfered with the running of the trains. The mayor consulted the leading men about raising a posse to assist the police, there being only seventeen in the service of the city, and it was determined to raise a force of citizens, to be called the "law and order posse," who were to assemble at the mayor's office, on a given signal from the court-house bell. The sheriff of the county was at Atlantic City at the commencement of the trouble, and was telegraphed to when matters began to assume a serious aspect, and he arrived at Harrisburg on the evening of the 23d. At this time the mob had increased largely, and was becoming demonstrative. The sheriff was informed as to what measures had been taken so far, and the mayor requested him to take charge of the situation and control the movements generally, which the sheriff assented to, and at once prepared a proclamation, ordering all good citizens to turn out and assist in enforcing law and order, which proclamation was published in the papers the next morning. In the evening of the 23d a portion of the mob had gone to Aultmeyer's gun store, on Second street, and demanded admittance, and the proprietor had opened the doors to them. Word was sent to the mayor of the occurrence, and he took his police and repaired to the place immediately. He found the store full of men and boys, who had helped themselves to guns and knives. The mayor formed his police in front of the store and went in and talked with them, and after a little parleying they delivered up the weapons they had seized and left. About eleven o'clock, P.M., the mob gathered in large numbers on Market street, where it crosses the railroad, and working up Market street they broke into two or three stores. The signal for the assembling of the citizens was given, and they assembled immediately at the corner of Third and Market streets to the number of three hundred to four hundred, together with the sheriff, the mayor, and the police. The sheriff being a man of considerable military experience, had caused the citizens to adopt company and regimental organizations, by reason of which they were more quickly assembled and more easily handled and moved. The sheriff and mayor went down to the mob and ordered them to disperse, which they refused to do, and then the police and citizens, armed with pistols and clubs, were marched toward the mob, the police and mayor at the head of the column. The mob numbered from seven hundred to one thousand, and two thirds of them dispersed on seeing the force marching against them, but some two hundred stood their ground. The force in command of the mayor and sheriff marched into this body, using their clubs freely, and completely dispersed them without firing a shot. Several of the rioters were arrested at the time, and quite a number during the week; in all some forty-five or fifty of the leaders were arrested, many of them being taken in their beds that night. This determination on the part of the civil authorities, backed by the citizens, broke the spirit of the mob, and they did not again assemble in any great number, or commit any further breaches of the peace, although the citizens' organization was kept up for several days, and a special force of some fifty men was employed to be on the watch for some time, and until matters became quiet throughout the State. The whole number of citizens enrolled was about fifteen hundred, and more than one thousand were out on a parade at one time. On receiving news of the uneasiness manifested at Harrisburg, General Latta, then at Pittsburgh, telegraphed Major General J. K. Sigfried, commanding Fourth division National Guard, with head-quarters at Pottsville, to put the City Grays, of Harrisburg, on duty at the arsenal at once, and order his whole division under arms, and move to Harrisburg. He also received a similar telegram from Governor Hartranft, from Medicine Bow, Wyoming Territory. The telegrams were dated July 22d. General Sigfried had, on the previous day, as a precautionary measure, ordered Captain Maloney, of the Harrisburg City Grays, to ship his arms and ammunition to the State arsenal, located just outside of the city, and to stay there and guard the same, to prevent it from falling into the hands of any mob that might undertake to capture it. General Sigfried arrived at Harrisburg with nine companies of the Seventh and Eighth regiments on the 23d, and was there joined by eight other companies, making a force under his command of some eight hundred men. These troops were stationed at the arsenal at the time the mob was dispersed by the police and sheriff's posse, on the night of the 23d, but were not called on by the civil authorities, they evidently understanding their duty, which was to attempt to enforce the law by the means within their power, before calling on the military for assistance. Had this been done as promptly in some other places, much expense to the State might have been saved, and the riot nipped in the bud, instead of being allowed to become strong and organized, while waiting for troops to arrive. The mayor testified that when the disturbance first commenced the citizens were lukewarm, and seemed to have considerable sympathy with the strikers, but as soon as affairs began to assume a serious aspect, they came forward and enrolled themselves freely in the law and order posse, and urged prompt and vigorous action, and by so doing they no doubt prevented the enacting at this place of the terrible destruction of life and property which took place in other localities. At Reading, on Saturday, July 21st, the idle men began to gather in small bodies and talk of strikes, and showed a disposition to interfere with railroad property, but no overt act was committed until Sunday the 22d. The mob at this place was composed primarily of discharged employés of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, who had been discharged in the month of April preceding. The officers of that road learning that the society called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers intended to make the company trouble, commenced preparing for it, and when in April the engineers demanded an advance in wages of twenty per centum, they were notified that any person who belonged to the brotherhood could not remain in the employ of the company unless he severed his connection with that society, and that, as the society was a beneficial one, and had a fund for its members to draw on in ease of sickness, the company would establish such a fund for its engineers. In consequence of this demand, and the circular of the company, some four hundred engineers, firemen, and brakemen left the service of the company, whose places were filled by promoting firemen and hiring new men, and those coming from other roads who held certificates of competency and good behavior. Many of these men who left the employ of the company had remained in and about Reading, and on hearing of the riots at Pittsburgh, thought it would be a good time to take their revenge on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and these, with other idle men, composed the nucleus of the mob, and were, as in other places, soon joined by all the tramps and criminals in the vicinity. None of the regular employés of the railroad company struck at that time, nor were they engaged in the riots. On Sunday trains were interfered with near the depot, and one or two cars burned, and on Sunday night, the 22d, the Lebanon Valley railroad bridge, which is a very high one, crossing the Schuylkill at Reading, and costing a large sum of money, was burned. On the evening of July 22d, Adjutant General Latta telegraphed to Major General William J. Bolton, commanding the Second division National Guard, with head-quarters at Norristown, to concentrate the Sixteenth regiment, under arms, at once at Norristown, and the Fourth regiment, at Allentown, which was done as soon as possible, and the Fourth regiment, General Reeder, reported on the morning of the 23d, that all the companies were in hand except company A, which was in the hands of the mob at Reading. At 3.50, P.M., of that day, J. E. Wootten, general manager of the Reading Railroad Company, telegraphed General Bolton, that they were in need of protection at Reading, and asked that General Reeder be sent to that place with his command, which request was complied with, and General Reeder ordered to proceed to Reading at once. General Reeder, with the Fourth regiment, Colonel Good, arrived at Reading about seven o'clock, P.M., of the 23d, and instead of finding the mob in possession of the depot of the Philadelphia and Reading railroad, as he expected, found it in possession of a squad of the coal and iron police. The mob had had pretty much its own way all day, and had stopped the running of all freight trains, and interfered with the passenger trains. The sheriff of the county, George R. Yorgey, who was out of the city, had been telegraphed to by the chief of police, in regard to the trouble, and having been furnished an extra train, arrived in the city about five, A.M., of the 23d. On his arrival, he refused to take any steps to raise a posse, although men were offered him by the railroad officials, and the only step taken by him to disperse the rioters, and preserve order during the troubles, was to issue a proclamation at night, on the 23d, requesting all good citizens to remain at their homes. When the chief executive officer of the county, so fails in his duty, it is no wonder that mobs become defiant and destroy life and property. The mayor was absent from the city, and the chief of police, Peter Cullen, was the only civil officer who did any thing to preserve order. He, with the police force of twenty-seven men, did all that men could do under the circumstances. On Sunday night, with a few police, he tried to prevent the burning of the cars, and stopped it after a short time. On Monday, with his force he cleared the crossing at Seventh and Penn streets, so that the street cars and people could pass, although the crowd numbered several thousands. He also sent out his men to raise a posse of two hundred men among the citizens, but they all refused, and laughed at the police, and he did not consider that he had the authority to summon them or order them out. The police force was still at the Penn street crossing when General Reeder arrived at the depot. The railroad officials requested General Reeder to move into the railroad cut to release a train that was in the hands of the mob, and as that was on the direct route to Penn street crossing, the point to which he wished to go with his force, he commenced his march through the cut. The cut is some three squares long; the banks about thirty feet high at the highest place, and at the ends tapering down to nothing, with streets crossing it by bridges in two places, and walks at each side near the top of the bank, with a stone wall down the face of the bank, and a parapet three or four feet high to protect the walks. On nearing the cut, General Reeder's force was met by a large crowd hooting and jeering at the soldiers, and throwing stones, and the General, seeing the temper of the mob, ordered his musicians to the rear and his men to lead. The mob gave away, but as the troops entered the cut the mob, which lined both sides of the cut, began to throw brickbats, paving stones, and other missiles down on them, which the soldiers bore until they were two thirds of the way through the cut, when one or two pistol shots were fired at them, and one soldier fired his piece in the air, which was followed by scattering shots, and then by a regular volley, and firing was kept up until they reached the Penn street crossing, where the police were stationed. Of the two hundred and fifty-three soldiers only about fifty escaped being hurt, but none were seriously injured. Of the crowd eleven were killed, and over fifty wounded, two of the killed and some of the wounded being mere lookers on, and not engaged in the riots. It being so dark that no one could be readily distinguished, seven of the policemen who were in line across the railroad at the Penn street crossing were wounded by the fire of the troops, some of them quite seriously, but they all recovered. This collision broke the spirit of the mob, and no destruction took place after that at this place. But the mob was threatening for several days, so much so that five companies of the Sixteenth regiment were immediately sent to General Reeder, from Norristown. This did not improve the condition of affairs, as the men of the Sixteenth regiment openly fraternized with the rioters, and declared their intention, in case of further trouble, of siding with them, and furnished them with ammunition. This soon destroyed the morale of the Fourth regiment, and General Reeder asked leave to move them to Allentown, which was granted, and General Bolton started for Reading on a special train, after giving orders for the movement and disposition of the balance of the men of his division. On arriving at Reading he found matters rather quiet at the depot, with the Sixteenth regiment in possession. The authorities fearing trouble that night, and the police having been out that day again trying to raise extra men for the force, and failing, General Bolton telegraphed to General Reeder, who was at Temple station, six miles distant, to return at once with the Fourth regiment; to which General Reeder answered that "the men positively refused to return to Reading to-night; the regiment and company officers are perfectly helpless;" and from Colonel Good: "The men of the Fourth positively refuse to return to-night; I can't get twenty-five men," and General Bolton finally ordered General Reeder to rendezvous at Allentown and await further orders. It is enough to say that three hundred United States troops arrived that day at Reading, and no further serious trouble was apprehended or occurred; that General Bolton ordered the Sixteenth regiment to return to Norristown; but company I mutinied and refused to return, and was disbanded in dishonor by the general. He afterwards issued an order to disband companies C, D, E, and H, of the Sixteenth regiment, subject to the approval of the Governor, for general insubordination and mutinous conduct while under orders. At Scranton, the railroad men began to feel the effects of the strikes in other places, and on Monday, the 23d of July, rumors were circulated that a strike was to be inaugurated on the roads running through that place. Mayor R. H. McKune was at Ocean Grove, and seeing the accounts of the troubles at Pittsburgh in the newspapers, hurried home, where he arrived on the evening of the 23d. On the 24th, he tried to get the city council together to prepare for the emergency, as the strike, according to rumor, was to take place the next day, the 25th; but the council were opposed to doing anything in that direction, and refused to take any action. On Wednesday, the 25th, a committee of trainmen waited on the superintendent of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad, and informed him that no trains would be allowed to leave, except the engine with a mail car. The superintendent asked the mayor for a force to protect the trains, but the regular police force of the city had been reduced to ten men, which was entirely insufficient, and the superintendent was advised to run the mail cars for the present, and not undertake to move regular trains until more assistance could be got, which advice was finally followed. On the 26th of July, the miners of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company held a meeting at the Round woods, at which from six thousand to eight thousand persons were present, and a committee was appointed to confer with the general manager in regard to wages, and the crowds began to gather in the streets. The mayor called an advisory committee of seven of the leading citizens, on Thursday morning, the 26th, and it was agreed to raise and swear in a special police force of the citizens, to act during the emergency, which arrangement was carried out, and quite a number of them raised that day, and placed under the command of officers who had seen service in the army. A room was procured at the company store, as it was called, for this special force to meet and organize in, and meetings were held and necessary arrangements made to meet any emergency. The miners had resolved to quit work and not allow the mines to be pumped, and there was great danger that they would be flooded and immense damage inflicted. On Sunday, the 29th, the authorities met a committee of the miners and represented to them that the damage of flooding the mines would--a great portion of it--fall on them, as the mines could not then be worked for a long time if once flooded, and it was finally concluded that the pumps might be worked, so that on Monday the pumps were generally going again. On Monday the city council met, and resolved that no necessity existed for special police, and that none would be paid by the city. The mayor on that day sent for the executive committee of the trainmen, and informed them that on Tuesday, the 31st, it was proposed to start the regular trains at nine, A.M., and if resisted the mayor would use all the force at his command to put the trains through. In the afternoon the trainmen had a meeting and resolved, by a large majority, to resume work, and by evening of that day all fears of any further trouble had passed. The special force of citizens which had been sworn in were armed partly with Remington rifles and partly with muskets, and it was arranged that they should assemble at headquarters on a given signal through the church bells. Wednesday morning, August 1st, a meeting of the laboring men of the vicinity was held at the silk-works, a mile or so below the city, at which some seven thousand or eight thousand men were present. Accounts conflict as to the purpose of this meeting, some contending that it was called to hear a report of some committee, and some that no object was specified in the call, which was by word of mouth from man to man. No committee made any report, but a letter was read by some demagogue, purporting to be written by W. W. Scranton, general manager of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, saying that he meant to have the men at work for fifty cents a day, and when they died bury them in a culm pile. Mr. Scranton denies having written any such letter, but it answered the purpose of its author by inflaming the minds of those at the meeting, and they broke up with the cry, "let us clean out the company's shops." About half-past ten, A.M., the mayor was informed that a crowd of men was coming up from the silk-works. The mayor, with a friend, started out to see what was the trouble, and on his way notified some of the special police to meet at head-quarters. On arriving at the corner of Lackawanna and Washington avenues, they saw a crowd of from three to four thousand coming up the latter street, and swarming about the machine and other shops, and about the railroad. The mayor went down into the crowd, which opened for him, and he went as far as the machine shop, and turned and came back to the roadway of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western shops. He had said to them: "Boys, you are doing wrong; you must disperse and go home." On arriving at the roadway, a company of one hundred and fifty or two hundred, who had been driving the men from the shops, and beating and maltreating them, came along, and the leader asked who that was. On being told it was the mayor, he said, "kill the son of a bitch; he has no business here," and immediately two shots were fired, and the mayor was struck between the shoulders by a club, or some heavy weapon, so hard as to cause hemorrhage of the lungs; a stone struck him in the small of the back, and several persons struck him with sticks. Several friends gathered about the mayor, and Father Dunn, a Catholic priest, came along to assist him. He was slipped out under the railroad bridge and toward Lackawanna avenue, followed by the crowd. The mayor had, before entering the crowd, given orders to have the signal given for the assembling of the extra police force, which order had not been executed, but word had been passed to a number of men, and when he got back to the avenue, he saw a body of them coming down towards him. At this point the mayor was hit by some heavy instrument, which broke his jaw and knocked him senseless for a time, but he went a short distance down the street and back again to where the mob and extra force of citizens were just about to meet. The mob, on leaving the machine shops, had cried out, "now let's clean out Lackawanna avenue," (the principal street of the city.) "Let's clean out the town." The force of citizens--about fifty in number--were passing Washington avenue just as the mob came up it and struck Lackawanna avenue, and they closed in behind the citizens and on both sides of the street around them; then a large number of stones and other missiles were thrown at the special police, with cries of "kill them; take their guns from them," and similar threats, and shortly two or three pistol shots were fired by the mob, and then the order was given the citizens to fire, which was immediately done, and three of the ringleaders killed the first fire. This dispersed the mob, which fled in every direction. The citizens gathered again at the company store to the number of two hundred, and a policeman soon reported the crowd gathering again. The mayor, at the head of twenty-five of his men, immediately went to the crowd and ordered them to disperse, which order they obeyed. This force of citizens kept up their vigilance, not allowing any crowd to gather until the troops arrived on August 2d, and took charge of the military affairs at that place. A great deal of ill feeling and dissatisfaction still existed among the miners and mill men, but no open outbreak occurred, and before the troops left that section quiet and order was fully restored. Too much praise cannot be awarded the mayor and citizens' special police force of Scranton for the admirable organization they created, and for the prompt and vigorous measures taken when the emergency arrived. Had the action of the city council been approved and its advice taken, no special police force would have been raised, or had there been timidity among them when called out, Scranton would, no doubt, have suffered as badly as did Pittsburgh; for nowhere in the State was there a harder set of men than at Scranton and vicinity, many of the Molly Maguires, driven out of Schuylkill county, having gathered in and about that city, besides the scores of other hard cases who had been there for years. Riotous demonstrations were made at several other points in the State, but none of them assumed any great magnitude, except at Altoona and a few places in the anthracite coal region, and the occurrences at these places being described in the movements of the military as reported in the report of the Adjutant General for the year 1877, and being so similar to those that took place at the points particularly described herein, except as to magnitude, it is not deemed necessary to further notice them in this report. Your committee has not thought it necessary to give a detailed account of the general movements of troops, except so far as they relate to the troubles at some particular point, where the same was necessary to a correct idea of all the circumstances occurring at such point, these general movements being all detailed fully in the Adjutant General's report above referred to. As it is made the duty of your committee to report "by what authority the troops of the State were called out, for what purpose, and the service and conduct of the same," we approach this part of our labors with considerable diffidence, on account of the peculiar situation of affairs at many of the points to which troops were sent; the fact that this kind of service was new to most of them, and that, unaccustomed as our people are to the use of the military to enforce the laws, the opportunities for forming a correct judgment are few, and the chances for being mistaken are many. It is perhaps easy, after a thing has happened, to criticise the actions of those engaged in the transaction, to point out where they failed, and to say where they ought to have done different, but if the theories of the critic had been tested by actual experience, he too might have produced no better results than did those he criticises. Bearing this in mind, and endeavoring to treat the whole subject fairly and conscientiously, we proceed to give our views upon this part of the matter under consideration. And first, the troops of the State were called out, in the first instance, by orders from James W. Latta, Adjutant General of the State, on a call from the sheriff of Allegheny county, the orders being signed by him, the Adjutant General, the Governor's name not being attached thereto, the Governor, as before stated, being absent from the State. He, with his family, started for California on the 16th of July, and before leaving had a conference with the Attorney General, Adjutant General, and Secretary of the Commonwealth, as to whether there was any reason why he should not go. It was agreed by all, that everything in the State was quiet at the time, and no prospects of any disturbance, and that there was no reason whatever, why he should not take the contemplated trip. Before leaving, however, he instructed Adjutant General Latta that if there was any trouble in his absence he should exercise the authority vested in the Commander-in-Chief, in accordance with the same rule and principles previously established, which were that on a call from the sheriff of a county for troops to assist in enforcing the law, the military should only be sent after he became satisfied that the sheriff had exhausted his powers and authority to suppress the disorder, and that the lawless element was too strong to be controlled by the civil authorities. General Latta, after directing General Pearson, at Pittsburgh, to order out one regiment, and to take command of the military situation, reported what had occurred, and his order to General Pearson, to the Governor, which dispatch reached the latter at Antelope, on the Union Pacific railroad, July 20, before noon, which was answered by the Governor from Cheyenne, at half past one, P.M., the same day, directing General Latta to "order promptly all troops necessary to support the sheriff in protecting moving trains on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and go to Pittsburgh and keep supervision of all troops ordered out." From this time communication by telegraph was kept up by the Governor until his return, and all troops were ordered out in pursuance to general orders given by him. The Governor received a telegram from C. N. Farr, his private secretary, and General Latta, at 2.20, P.M., the 20th instant, that everything was going on well, and the riot would be suppressed, and for him to go on. He accordingly pursued his journey to Salt Lake City, where he received a telegram Saturday evening, the 21st, at nine o'clock, giving an account of the collision between the troops and the mob at Pittsburgh, when he immediately procured a special train, and started on his return. These facts show that the troops were called out by the proper authority of the State, on a requisition of the civil authorities of the locality where the troops were to be sent. We believe that neither the mayor of Pittsburgh, nor the sheriff of Allegheny county, had exhausted their powers under the law to disperse the mob before calling for troops, and that under the rules adopted by the commander-in-chief the steps prerequisite to ordering out the troops had not been properly taken by the civil authorities. The purpose for which the troops were called out was to assist the civil authorities in enforcing the law, and preserving the public peace, and it was at no time supposed by any one of the military officers that they superseded the civil power, although at some places they were obliged to act in the absence of the civil officers, the latter having run away, or refused to do anything to suppress the riotous disturbances. The service and conduct of the troops was generally good, considering the circumstances under which they went into service, except in a few instances, which will be more particularly specified hereafter. It should be remembered that never before were the militia of the State placed in so trying a position as that in which they were placed in July last. Rarely, if ever, were regular soldiers placed in more trying circumstances. Called upon without a moment's warning, they left their homes, with but little or no preparation, and hastened to the scene of the troubles. Nothing had occurred to give the people of the State or the railroad officials any indications of an outbreak at that time, but all at once the storm burst upon the city of Pittsburgh, and threatened its destruction. In this emergency the National Guard was called out, and most of the commands arrived at the scene of the troubles with great promptness, and there met a foe more formidable than they had any expectation of meeting. The active National Guard of the Commonwealth, being made up of volunteers from the people of the locality in which the military organization exists, is usually composed of all classes of the citizens of the locality, and the members of the military will, therefore, naturally be impressed with all the feelings of the community in which they reside, and be infected with any spirit of resistance to constituted authority that may exist among any great class of their neighbors. Hence it is that this guard cannot be always relied upon to do its full duty in case of troubles at home, requiring the intervention of the military. Not being brought up to the profession of soldiers, and the officers being their friends and neighbors, and when at home being no better and having no more authority than themselves, they are sometimes loth to obey orders when these orders run contrary to their wishes and inclinations. The military discipline, which comes from actual service, is wanting, and being accustomed to do their own thinking, having an opinion on all matters that come before them, and freely expressing it, it is very hard to come down to the condition of executing orders without a why or wherefore, even in ordinary cases; but when it comes to using their weapons against their friends, neighbors, and perhaps relatives, it is not to be wondered at if they sometimes waver in their duty. Every member of the active National Guard ought, however, to be taught that as a soldier it is his duty to obey the orders of his superior officers without question; that in case of a mob or riot in his neighborhood, strong enough to defy the civil authority, the organization of which he is a member is the first to be called upon, and that this aid to the civil powers is one of the principal duties which devolve upon him, and one of the principal reasons for maintaining such an organization. Taking into account the difficulty of overcoming these natural feelings of men, a large majority of the troops called out in July last may be said to have behaved nobly. General Pearson has been severely censured for having (as was alleged) given the command to the troops at Twenty-eighth street to fire on the mob, and the troops have also been denounced for the firing which occurred at that point. Your committee have found, from the evidence, that General Pearson did not give the orders to fire, but we are of the opinion that he would have been justified in so doing, and that if he had been present at the time, he would not have been justified in withholding such an order for a moment later than the firing actually occurred. Neither can any blame be attached to the troops themselves. They had been pelted with clubs, stones, and other missiles by the mob, and this was continually growing more severe, when some persons in the mob fired pistols into the ranks of the men, and others were trying to wrench their guns from their hands, and it had become a question of submission to the mob on their part, or to fire in self-defense before a gun was discharged by them. As it is usually the case in such occurrences, some innocent persons were killed and others injured, but for this the soldiers were not to blame. Being where they ought not to be, their presence whether so intended or not encouraged the mob, and the soldiers could not in such a crowd distinguish friend from foe. Spectators ought to keep away from such mobs at all times and not let their curiosity get the better of their judgment and discretion. It has been questioned whether it was a wise movement to order General Brinton's command into the round-house and shops on the evening of the 21st. The move itself we do not care to criticise, but having been made, we think a stronger picket guard should have been thrown out, all approaches more thoroughly guarded, communication kept up with the Union depot, where the supplies of ammunition and food were stored, and whenever the mob began to assemble in the neighborhood a sufficient force should have been ordered out to disperse them, which could have been done with the means at General Brinton's command. The great mistake was made by General Pearson in ordering General Brinton not to allow his men to fire on the mob when they began to re-assemble, and showed their murderous disposition by firing on the troops, and the other measures taken by them in the early evening. General Brinton asked for leave to fire on the mob when they began to assemble around the round house and fire on his men, but General Pearson would not allow it. It was of no use to march out for the purpose of dispersing such a mob unless the men were allowed to fire, if necessary, as blood had been shed, the mob had become enraged by this and emboldened by the position and apparent inactivity of the troops, and nothing but the most severe measures would now be sufficient to overawe and disperse them. General Pearson was evidently intimidated by the denunciation which he received, at the hands of the press and people of Pittsburgh, as the supposed author of the order to fire on the mob at Twenty-eighth street. In his evidence he states that if he had given the command to fire at Twenty-eighth street, and it had not been followed by the frightful destruction of property which ensued, he would have been tried, convicted, and hung for murder, such was the sentiment of the people of Pittsburgh at that time. We think he should have taken vigorous measures against the mob after the occurrences at Twenty-eighth street, and not have allowed it to assemble again in that vicinity, and that he ought not to have left the round house at the time he did. For what occurred after that time he is blameless, for on reaching the Union Depot Hotel he was practically relieved from his command by General Latta. We think this was a mistake also; that it was giving way to the sentiment still prevailing in Pittsburgh that the attempt to disperse the mob at Twenty-eighth street was wrong, and the killing of the persons at that place nothing less than murder. The military had commenced a move to accomplish a certain purpose under the lead of the sheriff, and as his posse; a collision had occurred, the sheriff had left, the mayor refused to cooperate with the sheriff or military, and it was the duty of the military officers to carry out the movement, (to wit: dispersing the mob,) in a vigorous manner, and not in any way be swayed from their duty by the sentiment above spoken of. We think the order given by General Latta, sent by Sergeant Wilson to General Brinton in the round house, which closed as follows, viz: "If compelled to escape at last, do so to the eastward; take Penn avenue if possible, and make for Guthrie, at Torrens," was a mistake. Some question has arisen as to the right of General Latta to give orders to General Brinton at all. We think that it is enough to say that General Latta was directed by the commander-in-chief to "go to Pittsburgh and keep supervision of all troops ordered out;" that he went there in pursuance of these directions, issued orders as if he understood himself to be at the head of military affairs after General Pearson left, was so recognized by all, and his orders obeyed as if coming from the commander-in-chief, and that, therefore, he cannot escape the responsibility of any orders issued by him, or the failure to take such steps as a military commander should have taken under the circumstances. If General Brinton was to leave the round house he should have been ordered to the Union depot, where he could have fed his men, and received a supply of ammunition, and from there he could have taken the most available position to disperse the mob and protect property. Of General Brinton's ability to have made this movement, if so ordered at any time, there can be no doubt. Life would probably have been sacrificed in making such a move, but law and order must be upheld, even at the sacrifice of the lives of such persons as composed that lawless mob, or those who innocently mingled with it. The loss of life on the part of the troops could not have been greater than it was by pursuing the course afterwards taken, and it probably would have been much less, as mobs are always cowardly, and every demonstration made against this mob after the collision at Twenty-eighth street by any persons having authority, either civil or military, scattered it. Colonel Guthrie, with the Eighteenth regiment, should have been ordered from Torrens to Pittsburgh Saturday night, and the only excuse we can conceive for not doing this promptly, without waiting for the troops from Walls Station, is the fear that being Pittsburgh men they would refuse to obey any orders which would bring them in collision with the mob. This is not sufficient excuse. The proper order should have been given, as this regiment had not shown any insubordination, was not allowed to mix or talk with the mob, and would no doubt have obeyed all orders. The conduct of the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments has been severely criticised by some, but many considerations are to be taken into account in coming to a just conclusion in regard to these men. The mob was made up in part of their neighbors and their fellow-laborers, and it was hard for them to take up arms to assist the sheriff in enforcing the law as against men having so much of their sympathy. This accounts for their dilatory movements in assembling when first called out, and the failure to report of many of their men. Their officers were to blame for allowing them to mingle with the mob, or rather for allowing the mob to mingle with them, and for the lack of strict discipline on Saturday, the 21st of July. Neither the officers nor men were to blame for their mismanagement on the night of the 21st, General Brown being alone responsible for that order. This conduct of General Brown was unaccountable, until it was ascertained that he had been for some time previous suffering from severe physical ailments which had seriously affected his mind, and that he was not responsible for a failure in judgment at the time. It is no wonder the order called forth the indignant protest of Colonel Gray, but coming as it did from a superior officer, it was reluctantly obeyed. These regiments were afterwards sent to the coal fields, and there acquitted themselves like true soldiers. As to the dispute between Colonel Norris and General Brinton, it is important only in treating of the conduct of General Brinton. The Adjutant General, in his evidence before your committee, stated that his duty was to assemble the troops, and that the command devolved upon the senior major general, (in the absence of the commander-in-chief,) who was General A. L. Pearson. He further stated that when General Pearson came to the Union depot hotel, before relieving him of his command, he was particular to ask him if he had left General Brinton in command, and that General Pearson replied that he had left him in full command. If General Brinton was in command, he had a right to act on his own judgment. But while General Latta's statement is correct when applied to him as Adjutant General, yet it must be remembered that he had assumed to act for the commander-in-chief, and gave orders to General Brinton during the night, and assumed the direction of the troops. It is evident that General Brinton considered himself bound to obey the orders of the Adjutant General, and we take it for granted that he was. The important question then is, did General Brinton disobey the orders of General Latta? It is clearly proven and conceded by all parties that General Brinton did not receive the written order given to Captain Aull to convey to him until the 1st day of August, a week or more after it was dated. Colonel Norris says in his testimony that he did not deliver it as an order to General Brinton; that he did not consider he had a right to do so, but that he told him that Captain Aull was on the way to him with an order from General Latta, and communicated to him the substance of the order. He further said General Brinton said he might return if he got positive orders to do so. This remark shows that General Brinton did not receive it as an order. And further, Captain Aull not reaching General Brinton during the day, in the evening he sent Major Baugh, a member of his staff, to the Adjutant General's head-quarters, at the Monongahela House, for orders. The Adjutant General gave Major Baugh a written order, which he delivered to General Brinton, who obeyed it promptly. If Colonel Norris had reported it to General Brinton as an order coming from General Latta, and General Brinton had received it as such, he would not have sent to head-quarters for orders, as he did. As your committee understand the evidence, all that Colonel Norris claims is, that he told General Brinton that Captain Aull had an order for him, and communicated the substance of it to him, and that General Brinton understood it. True, that in this he is disputed by General Brinton, but it is not necessary for your committee to settle this question of veracity between them. The only question for us to settle is, did General Brinton disobey the order? We do not think that he did. Colonel Norris does not say he gave him the order. He simply told him Captain Aull had an order, giving him the substance of it. General Brinton, it seems, did not consider it his duty to act until the order reached him. Captain Aull not reaching him, he did what was very proper, sent to head-quarters for orders. General Brinton has been censured for going so far out from the city, and not staying in its immediate vicinity. No one in his position could be expected to do differently. Ordered into the round house, not allowed to fire on the mob which was gathering around with the avowed purpose of killing his men, hooted at by the same mob which cheered the Pittsburgh troops, the Pittsburgh troops disbanded at a time when the mob had surrounded and besieged the shops in which his command was stationed, fired at from the windows of the houses, street corners, and even from a police station, not an official (except the sheriff) or citizen of the place to come near him at any time, or express a word of sympathy or encouragement in the disagreeable and delicate duty he was bound to perform, and after all, rebuffed at the United States arsenal, where he expected aid and sympathy, he had good reason to believe he was not wanted in the city, and needs no excuse for putting a reasonable distance between his command and that place. The Sixteenth regiment seems to have been the most unreliable of all the regiments called on for service during the time of the troubles. Company I was disbanded in dishonor, for insubordination, cowardice, and mutinous conduct in disobeying orders and furnishing ammunition to rioters at Reading, by Major General Bolton, and he afterwards disbanded companies C, D, E, and H for mutinous conduct, subject to the approval of the Governor. The bad conduct of these companies commenced before they left home, in refusing at first to go aboard the cars, and continued until they got back again. The Fourth regiment, after having a serious collision with the mob at Reading, and behaving like men through that trouble, became badly demoralized by the action of the above named companies of the Sixteenth regiment, and, for a day or two, was entirely unreliable, but afterwards recovered its morale and did good service. A squad of some fifteen or twenty men, of General Brinton's division, (company and regiment not known,) which failed to report in time to leave with him for Pittsburgh, afterwards came on and were stopped near Altoona, and being unable to go further came back to a short distance above Harrisburg, and then left the cars to pass that place on foot by a circuitous route, as it was reported that the mob was in possession of the railroad, and would allow no soldiers to pass through. This squad stopped at some place across the river from Harrisburg. Some two hundred to two hundred and fifty men and boys, on the 23d of July, went across the river and came back escorting this squad of soldiers, a lot of boys carrying their guns, and they were taken to some place near the railroad, fed and afterwards put on the cars for Philadelphia. Such an isolated instance as this ought not to condemn the command to which it belongs, but it is discreditable to those engaged in it, and, it is learned, a court-martial has been ordered to sit on their case. The National Guard of the Commonwealth is a necessity, and in a State like ours, with large numbers of illiterate and unprincipled men concentrated in certain localities, many of whom are foreigners, and imbued with the spirit of foreign communism, which is spreading in this country, the Guard must occasionally be called on as a posse to assist in enforcing the law; but it never should be called on until all other means are tried and exhausted. It has become too common to call on the Governor for troops, in ease of a mob, and the experience of the summer of 1877, demonstrates that in any community where the civil authorities and the citizens wish the law enforced, and act together harmoniously and vigorously, order may be maintained and mobs dispersed without the intervention of the military. At Philadelphia, large and angry mobs were dispersed by the police, which, if allowed to have been together for a day or two, would have become so strong, as to defy the ordinary authorities, and the result would have been riot and destruction. It was the same at Harrisburg, and also at Scranton, except at the latter place the city council refused to cooperate with the mayor and citizens, but notwithstanding this disadvantage, the wisdom of the measures of the mayor was vindicated at the first collision with the mob. It is but just to the people of Pittsburgh to say that the above places had the example of the latter place before them, and had learned the danger of temporizing or in any way sympathizing with anything like a mob, however just they may believe their original demands to be. In conclusion your committee adopt the following clause of the Governor's message, which fully coincides with their views, viz: "I have been thus solicitous to present the conditions of a militia campaign, because the conduct of our troops during the late crisis has elicited every variety of criticism, from mild censure to absolute condemnation, and because there has grown up in Pennsylvania a spirit of caviling at its militia, in marked contrast with the kindly feeling and pride manifested by other States towards their citizen soldiery. Now, that a temperate review of the facts may be made, I believe it will not be considered a partial judgment to say that during the conduct of the State troops during the late strike was, upon the whole, commendable and creditable. In Pittsburgh before a final decision, many considerations must modify our judgment. The conditions were not purely military. It was not simply a question of preserving a body of soldiery intact, of holding a position or defeating an enemy. Expecting to march into a friendly community, whose moral support would be cheerfully given them, they entered a practically hostile city, were denounced and threatened by press and people, and attacked by men who lurked in the security of a sympathetic crowd, and used women and children as shields and instruments. If, under such circumstances, their action lacked the energy and severity that purely military canons would have justified, it cannot be a matter of surprise, that having so long been accustomed to peace, they were unable to comprehend at once the sudden conditions of war. As it was, though not executed with the skilled precision of regular troops, the movement accomplished its purpose, and the failure to move the freight trains out of the city, to which more than any fact the subsequent burning is attributed, was the result of the want of cooperation of an adequate and competent police, and the desertion, at the critical moment, of the railroad employés. "The behavior of the Pittsburgh troops, in a military sense, is without excuse; but was it any worse than the defection of officers and men in the regular army, who, in 1861, deserted their comrades in arms to join the communities in which they were born and bred? Such things are not military, they are political or social; and it cannot be expected that they should be judged by the severest military code. It was, in fact, the temporary excitement of unthinking men, carried away by the universal clamor around them. For that reason, when the burst of passion was over, I re-instated them; otherwise, new troops would have had to be enlisted, while these might be trusted to have a keener sense of duty, from a desire to retrieve their fame. In the case of the Philadelphia troops, although disheartened by being placed on the defensive, and a part of the command demoralized by a too precipitate retreat, the general steadiness and obedience to orders, under comparative hardships, and in real danger, show them to have been composed of the best of soldiery material. The failure to subdue a city in insurrection against the laws is not to be attributed to the want of courage, capacity, or fidelity in the officers and men, but to a natural disinclination to take life indiscriminately, and the uncertainty as to how far, under the laws, they could exercise a purely military discretion. For myself, I have every confidence in the Guard, and shall not hesitate, if another occasion should unhappily arise, to rely upon its fidelity and courage. The after service of the Guard, when assembled together, prepared for active campaigning, was all that could be desired. The fact that as many answered the call for a service likely to be long and dangerous, as assembled in the pleasant encampment at the centennial, is conclusive proof of the general zeal and fidelity of the troops." The causes which led to the riots are, in the opinion of your committee, as follows, to wit: The riots grew out of the strike of the railroad men, and the strikers themselves were the protest of the laborer against the system by which his wages were arbitrarily fixed and lowered by his employer without consultation with him, and without his consent. There are many other causes that combined to bring about the strikes, but the cause mentioned underlies the whole question, and it is the foundation of all the trouble. Instead of capital and labor working together in harmony, as their community of interests would dictate, a conflict has been growing up between them, which, if not averted or discontinued, will lead to more serious troubles than any that have yet occurred, and which must result, as all such conflicts do, in the defeat of the labor interests and in consequence thereof placing labor at a still greater disadvantage than it now occupies. This conflict has been engendered and kept up by demagogues who, for their own advantage, seek to control the votes of the laboring men for base and partisan motives and who, in order to more surely secure their ends, profess to be the only and true friends of the laborer, and persistently misrepresent the capitalist. It is much easier to move a body of men (which, like a large portion of the laboring class, has but little time to investigate the problem of the true position of labor and capital towards each other) by appealing to passion and prejudice, and in this respect your demagogue knows the material he has to work upon and allows no scruples of either honesty or modesty to restrain him. He is the leading spirit in organizing and keeping up so-called labor organizations of one kind or another, and which organizations, as heretofore managed in this country, have never resulted in any advantage to the men in whose ostensible interests they are gotten up, but, on the contrary, have inflicted untold damage on them. The demagogue likes to be appointed to some position in the labor organizations, and is not slow in suggesting a traveling agent or lecturer, with some supposed duty, where he can travel about the country, living at his ease on the fruits of the hard labor of his comrades, and spending freely the money that is as freely furnished him. Why cannot the laboring men of the country see through the flimsy disguise of these men, and look at them as they are, the leeches and vampires who prey upon the life-blood of the interest they profess to befriend. There are men in all parties who have, or claim to have, some reputation as statesmen, who are not above the arts of the common demagogue, and who seem at times to be running a race with him to see which can stoop to the lowest tricks to secure the votes of the dear laborer. By the efforts of these men, and the tricks they practice, this conflict has been brought on. But the capitalist himself has not been blameless; instead of, in the common phrase, meeting his workmen half-way, and trying to come to a fair understanding with them, he has put himself on his dignity, and has placed all the blame of the results brought about by the demagogue upon the laborer himself. He must remember that the laborer is human, with hopes and aspirations as well as passions and prejudices, and that it is much better to cultivate the former by fair, frank, and courteous treatment, than to inflame the latter by the opposite course. The laborer believes, as he has a right to believe, that his wishes should be sometimes consulted, and that he should be recognized as one of the parties to the contract, and as such, fully consulted whenever the same is to be changed or abrogated. We believe it is in the power of the capitalist who is an employer of men, by fair, frank, and just treatment of his employés, not only in the immediate question of wages, but also in looking after their social and educational interests, to completely undermine and destroy the occupation and influence of the demagogue spoken of, and create that mutual trust and friendship which ought to exist between labor and capital, and thereby put an end to the frequently recurring strikes which inflict such serious damage on the business of the country, and do no man or set of men the least particle of good. Many instances of the favorable results following such action might be given, but we will only refer to one instance, which occurred in Yorkshire, England. Titus Salt, whose father was a woolen manufacturer at Bradford, in Yorkshire, at the age of twenty-one years, started out in business for himself, by hiring a small mill and one or two men, who, with himself, did the work of the establishment, and so diligently and wisely were his affairs managed that in a few years he found himself doing a successful and rapidly increasing business, and by a lucky discovery of the value of the wool of the Alpaca sheep, and its manufacture in dress goods, he soon acquired a fortune. This necessitated the enlargement of his mill, and to do this the more conveniently, he moved some two miles from town and erected a large manufactory, in which he gave employment to some four thousand operatives. Having been a laboring man himself, he knew the needs and wants of the laborer, and he accordingly erected neat and convenient cottages for the use of his employés, which were rented to them at a moderate rental, with the privilege of buying to those who were able, thus assisting them to procure a home of their own, and giving them a substantial interest in the success of the business they were employed in. He also caused to be erected churches which all could attend, and also school-houses, wherein every child could receive a good and thorough education. A public park was laid out and completed, bath-houses built, and clubs and lyceums established, Mr. Salt taking the lead and encouraging his people to carry out and sustain these institutions. In a short time a thriving town was built up which was named Saltaire, in honor of its founder, and here the laborer has an opportunity to enjoy himself like other human beings, with no thought of occasion for strikes, the employer or capitalist and employés all feeling a common interest in the fortunes of their place, and with none of the jealousies or prejudices now commonly existing between these two classes. Mr. Salt has been created a baronet, but this can add no additional honor to the name of a man who has successfully solved the problem of the true relations between labor and capital, and who has taught the capitalist to what noble duties it is possible to devote himself, and the laborer, that the barrier between the sympathies of the master who employs and overlooks, and the man who works, may be broken down in other and better ways than by hostile combination. Such a town as Saltaire, with its neat cottages, pleasant parks, clean streets, fine churches and schools, where labor is respected, and intemperance banished, is a better monument than any made of marble or stone, and will perpetuate the name of its founder more surely and completely than if he had made a fortune by grinding down his human help to the last farthing, and then on his death-bed bequeathing it to some public institution. The immediate cause of the first strike which took place in Pennsylvania, in July, 1877, to wit: that at Pittsburgh, July 19th, was the order by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to run "double-headers" from that place to Derry. This order of itself, had there been no previous reductions of wages or dismissals of men on account of the depression in business, would probably have caused no strike, but following so soon after the second reduction, while the ill feeling engendered thereby was still having its effect on the men, together with the spirit of independence and probably recklessness which was brought about by the organization of the Trainmen's Union, with its general plan for a strike on the 27th of June, and the feeling of uneasiness and dissatisfaction existing among the laboring men of the country generally, caused by the want of labor and the low price thereof as compared with a few years previous, all together combined to set in motion this strike, which was followed by results so disastrous as to be forever memorable in the history of the State, results unforeseen and unanticipated at the commencement by the actors therein. The few trainmen who refused to take out the freight trains on the morning of July 19th, while not intending or wishing to cause any destruction of property or loss of life by their action, still cannot escape the primary responsibility of the fearful scenes enacted at Pittsburgh during the few following days. The order which the railroad company made was one it had a right to make, and if the men did not wish to work under the order, they had a right to refuse to do so. So far there can be no question among reasonable men. The order having been promulgated several days before it was to go into effect, gave the men plenty of time to consider its effect, and if they did not wish to go out on double-headers, fair treatment would have dictated that they should have given the officers of the company reasonable notice of their decision prior to the time at which the order was to take effect, but this did not comport with the intentions of the men. They not only did not intend to work themselves under that order, but they did not propose to allow those who might be willing to accept service of the company on the double-header trains to do so, and when they combined together and raised their hands to prevent other men from working, they committed an act for which there can be no excuse. It was hard for them to see not only their wages cut down, but also to see an order issued, which, if carried out, would result in the discharge of one half of their number, at a time when work was not to be had, but this does not justify, and cannot excuse their interference with the right of a corporation to take such measures as it may think most beneficial for its own interest, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others, and especially can it be no excuse for one man, or set of men, who do not wish to work under certain regulations, to interfere with those who are willing to do so. The property of all citizens must be protected, and the laws must be enforced, and those who undertake to interfere with the one, or stand in the way of the enforcement of the other, must learn, however severe the lesson, that these things cannot be tolerated in a land of liberty and of law, and that however much trouble and expense they may succeed in inflicting on the subjects of their spite, in the end law and order will triumph, and those who stand in the way are those who suffer the most. Every violation of law, if suppressed or punished, is done so at the expense of the community where the violation occurs, and the greater the violation the greater the expense. This expense must be met by taxation, and as taxation is so arranged as to reach every member of the community, the result of this, therefore, is that the person who creates a disturbance or commits a crime which requires the intervention of the officers of the law, is forced to pay from his own pocket a portion of the expense incurred in its vindication. The practice of a little arithmetic ought to convince any one that violating the law is a very expensive luxury, besides bringing him into disgrace and subjecting him to a penalty. This argument is not intended for the professional criminal, as it is not expected that he can be reached by any argument, but it is hoped that it may reach those who usually intend to be law-abiding citizens, and whose fortunes are affected by the good or evil fortune of the community in which they reside, and that this class may be induced to pause and consider before they attempt to use unlawful means to redress any grievances, however great it may seem to them. The destruction of property, although it may belong to a corporation, results in a direct loss to the labor of the country. It is conceded that all property and capital is created or produced by labor, and, therefore, any absolute loss, by the destruction of either, must, in the end, fall upon the laborer. The argument sometimes used, that if property is destroyed its replacement gives employment to the laborer, and that, therefore, it is a benefit to him, is fallacious, for the reason that the capital necessary to pay for the reproduction of the property destroyed must be originally created by labor. The capitalist who loses his property by fire is much less able to furnish employment than he was before, and if this destruction overtakes the property of a whole community, capital to replace what is lost must be drawn from some other locality by borrowing, and while times may seem prosperous during the time the re-building is being done, yet there has been an actual loss to the community, which, sooner or later, must be felt. The draining of capital from one place, to any great extent, causes its loss to be felt there, and there is no way in which the destruction of property, in one place, can be made good there, without the loss being felt somewhere, and in the end most fully and completely realized at the locality where it occurred. The effects of such destruction of property may be temporarily prevented by bringing capital from other localities, as before suggested, and business affairs may, for a time, seem even more prosperous than ever; but when the capital thus brought is to be repaid, comes the re-action, and the loss is felt even worse than it would have been had no such borrowing have taken place. Witness the city of Chicago, as a notable instance in the recent history of the country. The buildings destroyed by the great fire at that place were speedily rebuilt, a good portion being done by borrowed capital, and it was really surprising to see with what amazing rapidity the losses seemed to be replaced, and the city rise, as the phrase goes, "Phoenix like from its ashes." Business went on, seemingly, as brisk as ever, and it was boastingly proclaimed that Chicago beat any city on the continent in recuperating power, and that it was a greater city than before the fire. But pay day must come. The property destroyed had been replaced, but not by the creation of capital by labor. The seeming wealth had no substantial foundation, the re-growth having been too rapid to come from this source, and how stands that city to-day? The city treasury bankrupt, with a very serious question arising whether the municipal government can be maintained much longer, and private bankruptcy on every hand, for the pay day has come to considerable of the indebtedness, and the shift of borrowing cannot be resorted to forever. The lesson to be drawn by the striking laborers of Pittsburgh, from this illustration is obvious, and it should be taken to heart and pondered on by all labor organizations throughout the country, lest, by their unwise and hasty action, they may strike a blow which will re-act on themselves with treble the force with which it is aimed at some corporation or capitalist. It may be expected that an opinion will be given as to whether or not the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were justified in making the reduction in wages of ten per cent. on June 11, 1877, and, ordinarily, the question might be answered that this, or any other, corporation or individual has the right to pay such wages as it or he pleases, and to require such services for the money paid as it or he may choose. This rule must be received with considerable modification, in the case of a great corporation, receiving special privileges from the State, and employing thousands of men, scattered from one end of the State to another. If such corporation should execute a written contract with all of its employés on taking them into its service, specifying fully and particularly the hours and service required from them, the length of time for which each was hired, and the causes for which he could be discharged, no one would claim that they could vary the terms of that contract, without the assent of the employé. From the manner of the employment of the railroad employés in this country, and especially of the trainmen, there is in good faith an implied contract that the employé shall continue to receive the wages the company is at that time paying for the particular duty which he discharges, until the price is changed by mutual consent, and that his term of service shall continue as long as he behaves himself well and performs the services required of men in his position. This ought to be, and is in equity the implied contract between the parties, although not legally enforceable. But the railroad employé has a right to expect such treatment by the company into whose employ he enters. He is required to be on hand whenever called for, to give his entire attention to the business of the corporation, and he settles down with his family in such place as will make it most convenient for him to attend to the business of the company. His whole services are theirs, his arrangements are all made with reference to their business, and when he is discharged, without any reasonable cause, without any prior notice, or his wages reduced while his labor is not reduced, and, as is sometimes the case, increased without his consent, and the order for that purpose made without consulting him in any manner, he has a right to find fault. He is like a soldier, whose whole time has been spent in the service. His occupation is more dangerous than that followed by others, and the kind of services he has to perform unfits him for other duties, and railroad officers should always take these facts into consideration in dealing with him. The wages of the trainmen, after the reduction in June, 1877, were as follows, to wit; Freight conductors: first class, two dollars and twelve cents per day; second class, one dollar and ninety-one cents per day; brakemen, one dollar and forty-five cents per day, and the day's work averaged from seven hours and twenty-five minutes, the shortest time, to eight hours and thirty-five minutes, the longest time. These wages were good wages for the amount of labor performed per day, and if the men could make full time, would amount to thirty-eight dollars and seventy cents per month for brakemen, and fifty-five dollars and twelve cents for first class conductors. This was higher wages than the same class of men could get in other employments and seemed to be, as stated by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some twenty per cent. higher than the wages paid in other lines of business, the company intending to keep the wages of its men about so much more than is paid in other occupations on account of the risk taken by the trainmen. It is claimed by the railroad officials that the depression in freight traffic on the railroads, both in amount and in price, required a consequent reduction in the expenses of the railroads, and the reduction of June, 1877, they asserted to be justifiable, under all the circumstances, and it is the opinion of your committee that, if before it had gone into effect, the men had been made fully acquainted with the reasons for the step taken, and the necessity of it, in short, treated as if they were reasonable men and entitled to consideration, very much of the dissatisfaction would not have existed, and the country might possibly have been spared the troublous scenes through which it passed at that time. No doubt the fact that a strike of the trainmen of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had taken place at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the 16th of July, and was gaining strength and headway, had its influence in determining the trainmen of the Pennsylvania railroad, at Pittsburgh, to commence their strike at that place, and, in consequence thereof, a much less grievance was needed than would otherwise have sufficed, as an excuse for their action. The fact, also, that the trainmen on other railroads were rapidly following suit, and stopping the running of freight trains on such roads, encouraged the men to persist in their course to stand out and prevent, by force, trains from being run on the Pennsylvania railroad. There seemed at this time to be an epidemic of strikes running through the country, not only among the railroad men, but among all classes of laborers, and this helped to precipitate and bring about strikes at all the places about which this report will treat. The general feeling of uneasiness existing among the laboring classes of the country before mentioned, and the sympathy felt by these classes for each other made them very susceptible to anything which affected their fellow laborers, and, to use a medical phrase, the labor system was in a good condition to receive the epidemic which was spreading over the country, and in a very poor condition to resist and throw off the disease. The strike once inaugurated at Pittsburgh, was strengthened and encouraged by the sympathy the strikers received from nearly all classes of the citizens, and more especially by the sympathy shown by the city officials. Had the community frowned on the attempt of the strikers to prevent, by force, the running of freight trains, as it should have been done, and had the civil authorities shown a firm determination to enforce the law at the outset, as it was their sworn duty to do, there can be no doubt but the mob would have been dispersed without bloodshed and riot, as it was in Philadelphia, Scranton, and other places. Philadelphia and Scranton are particularly mentioned, for at these places there is a much larger proportion of the turbulent class than at Pittsburgh, and consequently a great deal more of the material of which riotous mobs are composed. When any community winks at a small violation of the law, by any person, and more especially by a combination of persons, it is laying the foundation for trouble and difficulty. A crowd of people assembled for the purpose of accomplishing, however worthy, a purpose in a questionable manner, is very easily converted into a riot, and when a crowd proposed to carry out an unlawful object by violence it soon becomes an uncontrollable mob, if encouraged in its purposes by the sympathy, either expressed or passive, of the community and the civil authorities. The small show of force made by the police in the spasmodic manner, it was on July 19th and 20th, was worse than if no police force had ever appeared on the ground, for the strikers knew they had nothing to fear from them, and the lawless characters, who had begun to gather around, construed this action as a sort of license to do what they chose as long as they interfered with nothing but railroad interests. The refusal of the mayor to go to the scene of the disturbance himself, when specially requested to do so, and to raise a special police to meet the emergency, is inexplicable on any theory of a wish on his part to do his duty and enforce the law, and when contrasted with the vigorous measures taken by the mayor of the sister city of Allegheny, and of nearly every other place in which riots occurred, must be most humiliating to the people who elected such a man as their chief magistrate. Had he shown a proper appreciation of his duty by going to the grounds of the railroad company when requested, he would have known better the extent of the troubles threatened, and if determined to enforce the law, could have prepared to do so by swearing in special policemen, as was done in all other places. If he chose to rely on a subordinate to do what was manifestly his duty, and that subordinate failed from any cause, either incapacity or sympathy with the mob, to appreciate the danger, and take measures to prepare for it, the responsibility must still rest on him. His evidence, that he received reports from his officers through the night of the 19th and 20th, that all was quiet, is belied by all the testimony in the case. When a call was first made by the railroad officials for ten policemen, and for his personal presence, followed in a short time by a call for fifty policemen, and that by a call for one hundred and fifty, most men would have concluded that all was not quiet, even if the police should report to the contrary. This taken in connection with the fact that the morning papers of the 20th, contained the call of the sheriff on the Governor for troops, and the orders for the troops to assemble, and that this was done only after an appeal, soon after midnight, by the sheriff in person to the crowd to disperse, and their answer to him by blasphemy, and hooting, and yelling, and other indignities would leave the people generally to believe that the mayor had willfully shut his eyes to what was transpiring on the premises of the railroad company. Very blind or confiding policemen they must have been that night of the 19th and 20th, and very confiding was the mayor to go to Castle Shannon, a distance of six miles, and let matters take care of themselves. The mayor, to excuse himself for doing nothing after the sheriff made a call for the troops, says that he considered himself superseded by the sheriff and by the military. It has usually been considered that the military was subordinate to the civil authority, and that the clause of the Constitution, which reads: "The military shall, in all cases, and at all times, be in strict subordination to the civil power," means something, and was placed in the Constitution for a purpose. If the construction of the law, given by the mayor, is to prevail, people have been very much mistaken in their understanding of what is the law, and that all the military need do, under the mayor's dispensation, is to get some authority to call them out, and then, as they supersede the civil authority, they have full control, and can decide for themselves, when the necessity for their services has ceased, and can, therefore, take charge of the affairs of the community as long as any ambitious officer may elect. It is a new doctrine, this of the mayor's, in this country, and he must excuse this committee if they fail to take any stock in it. The other excuse given by the mayor for his inaction, to wit: That the men (meaning the sheriff and military officers,) who had charge of matters after the 19th, were narrow gauge men, and he could not coöperate with them in their views, and the measures necessary to be taken in the emergency, is also untenable. It does not appear that he ever consulted with these men, or any one of them, in regard to what should be done, while it does appear that he was sought after, and frequent attempts made to consult with him by the railroad officials, until they learned that nothing could be expected of him. If his excuse for neglecting his duty in the matters within his immediate jurisdiction, (to wit: Keeping the peace, dispersing a mob, and enforcing the law in the city of which he was chief executive officer,) is a valid one, the others might, with the same propriety, claim that his gauge did not suit them, and, therefore, they could not coöperate with him, to keep the peace in his bailiwick, and refuse to do anything, and the mob allowed to have its own way. If the officers referred to were superior to the mayor, he should have done what he could to coöperate with them, in dispersing the mob, and suppressing the riot, and on them would rest the responsibility for the measures they adopted; if they were not superior to him, then even he will not claim that he had a right to do nothing. All peace officers (and the military when called out to suppress a riot, is only a posse for the peace officers) are expected, and it is their duty, to coöperate for the purpose of keeping the peace. An officer, willing and anxious to do his duty, will never object to do what he can to enforce the law because some other officer or officers are trying to assist in the same object, even if they do not consult him, while one who is looking for some excuse for evading his duty is very apt to find one that will satisfy himself, although it may be satisfy no one else. Mayor McCarthy, at any time on the 19th day of July, at the head of a determined posse of fifty men, could have dispersed the strikers, and allowed trains to go out, and the trains once running, the strikers would have given up the contest. On the 20th of July, the mayor, with one hundred men, could have dispersed the crowd, and by the arrest of a few ringleaders broken the strength of the strike. These statements are made on the supposition that the mayor had been in earnest, and acted with the vigor that characterized several of the mayors who were called upon for the same duty in their respective cities at nearly the same time. The mob knows instinctively the feelings of the bystanders and officers, and a little encouragement makes it very bold, while a determination to enforce the law by a few brave officers will cause the same mob to disperse, for it is an old and true saying that mobs are cowardly. This report has already stated, as a matter of fact, proved by the evidence before the committee, that all classes of the citizens of Pittsburgh sympathized with the trainmen in their strike. Some of the citizens claim this is hardly true, but most of them admit it, but deny that any of them sympathized with the riotous conduct of the mob and the destruction of property by it. The best description of the feeling of that community was given by Sheriff Fife, who testified that there was a general sympathy with the strikers; the entire laboring class sympathized with them; the merchants sympathized with them to a certain extent; that the responsible portion of the people of Pittsburgh were not in sympathy with the riot, but that it took a certain amount of riot to bring them to their senses. That this sympathy with the strikers pervaded the whole community does not admit of a reasonable doubt. There may have been, and no doubt were persons who did not sympathize, but they were isolated cases, and so few as to be of no use in controlling or directing public sentiment. There are a great many evidences of this aside from the direct testimony of most of the witnesses who were asked the question. The fact that Sheriff Fife testifies to that he did not undertake to raise a posse to disperse the mob before calling on the Governor for troops, as it would have been folly to have tried it in the city for he knew the feeling of the people, he might possibly have raised a posse in the country, if he had had time, is one evidence. On Saturday, the 21st, he sent out twenty deputies to raise a posse to assist in arresting the ringleaders, and they did not raise an average of one each, after, as they testify, making a vigorous effort. The action of the Pittsburgh troops, also shows that the same feeling of sympathy pervaded them, and the actions of the mayor and police show conclusively the same thing, so far as they were concerned. The editorials in the newspapers of the city show as strongly as any evidence can, where the sympathy of the community was, these being the best exponents of public sentiment when not repudiated by the people. The prejudice among the shippers over the Pennsylvania railroad against that company on account of the alleged discrimination in freight against them, caused them also to sympathize with the trainmen, and the general feeling was, after the commencement of the strike, to let the company take care of itself. No one can doubt that the existence of this feeling in the community was well known to the strikers, and that it encouraged them to hold out in their purposes and make them more bold in their adoption of measures to resist the company, and prevent by force any freight trains from leaving Pittsburgh. This feeling of boldness and confidence in disregarding the law communicated itself to the new comers in the crowd, many of them being the worst criminals and tramps, until the mob became so confident that they could do as they pleased, that they did not believe any serious attempt would be made to disperse them, until the railroad company had yielded to the demand of the strikers, and that if such an attempt should be made they could easily repel it. None of the citizens had the remotest idea that the strike would culminate in any serious riot or destruction of property, neither did the strikers themselves expect this would be the result, but the resistance to law once started, the original movers soon lost all control of the movement, and the consequences were such as to astonish the most reckless among them. No one could have foreseen the result, and the experience of the people of Pittsburgh, with strikes prior to that time, had not been such as to lead them to anticipate anything serious in this case. There being many manufacturing establishments in and around that place, employing a large number of men, strikes were quite familiar to them, but as they were usually confined to the men of one establishment, or one branch of trade, they were arranged without serious disturbance of the public peace, and no one realized the danger in winking at the course of the strikers in this case. No strike had ever before taken place under such favorable circumstances to make trouble. Never before were so many of the resident laborers out of work, never before was the country so filled with tramps to flock to such a scene of disturbance, never before was the laboring class of the whole country so ready to join in a move of that kind, and never before were the civil authorities of the city so utterly incompetent to deal with such an outbreak, or if not incompetent, then criminally negligent, in not making an earnest effort to enforce the law. The railroad riots of 1877, have by some been called an insurrection, for the reason that strikes occurred at nearly the same time on several of the main trunk lines of the country, that several Governors of States issued proclamations warning the rioters to disperse, &c., some of them calling on the President of the United States for troops to assist the civil authorities in dispersing the mobs and enforcing the law, and the large number of men engaged in these troubles in the different parts of the county. Insurrection is defined to be "a rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of law in a city or State; a rebellion; a revolt." The railroad riots in Pennsylvania were not a rising against civil or political authority; in their origin were not intended by their movers as an open and active opposition to the execution of the law. Most of the riots were the result of the strikes by a portion of the railroad men, the strikes being intended to bring the railroad officers to a compromise with the strikers, of the differences between them. In some places the men merely proposed to quit work, and not interfere with the running of trains by any men the railroad authorities could get; in other places they would not allow other men to work in their places, nor railroad officials to send out freight trains, if in their power to prevent. It was in no case an uprising against the law as such, but a combination of men to assert an illegal right as between them and the railroad company. There was no organized movement throughout the country, no pre-arranged plan of the trainmen to prevent the running of freight trains by violence or combination, understanding or agreement between the men on any one railroad and the men on another. Each strike was independent of those on other roads, each having a local cause particularly its own. As before stated, there was a sort of an epidemic of strikes running through the laboring classes of the country, more particularly those in the employ of large corporations, caused by the great depression of business, which followed the panic of 1873, by means whereof many men were thrown out of work, and the wages of those who could get work were reduced to correspond with the reduction in the prices of all commodities and the reduced amount of business to be done. Each strike, except at Reading, although commenced originally by men then at work for a railroad or some other corporation, to carry out their own purposes, was soon joined by all the idlers and vagabonds in the vicinity, and these being by far the largest in number, soon took the movement out of the hands of the originators and carried it clear beyond anything they ever anticipated. The vagabonds having no object but plunder, and having no particular interest in anything else, were ready to resort to violent measures to accomplish their object. The immediate cause of the strike at Pittsburgh was not similar to any other that has come to the knowledge of this committee, it being the order to run double-headers. No such cause existed anywhere else, and, therefore, the troubles there could not be considered as a part of any general understanding between trainmen. At Reading, the railroad men were not engaged in any strike, nor did they take any part in the riots there. The troubles there were caused solely by idle men, who had some time previously been discharged from the employ of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and for the purpose of venting their spite on the company. At Scranton, although there had been a strike of the railroad men, this had been adjusted, and the men were at work again, when the riots occurred, the riots being engaged in by the idle men and striking miners and mill men. If a riot, growing out of any of these isolated movements, is to be called an insurrection, or if these movements, altogether, are to rise to the dignity of an insurrection, then the word must be given a new definition, for as it now stands, there must have been some pre-concerted arrangement between the men at the different points, to resist the laws of the country, or the move at some point must have been for the purpose of resisting constituted authority, and not the mere purpose of forcing railroad companies, or any other corporations, to come to terms with the strikers, by obstructing the business of the railroad or other corporation. No pre-concerted arrangement of any kind has been proved before your committee, although such persons as might be supposed to know the fact, if it existed at all, were subpoenaed and testified before us, and all of them positively deny that there was any concert of action whatever, among the trainmen, for a strike after the 27th of June, and a local cause for the different strikes in Pennsylvania is given by them all. It has been asserted by many that no rioting or destruction of property would have taken place at Pittsburgh, if the troops had not been called out, and had not fired on the mob. The trifling with the mob, at this place, by the civil authorities, and the sympathy shown by the citizens, with the original strikers, had emboldened and encouraged it to such an extent, that when the Philadelphia troops arrived on the ground, it had, no doubt, got beyond the control of the civil power, as then constituted, and there can be no doubt of the necessity for the presence of those troops. Such mobs as that at the Twenty-eighth street crossing, on Saturday evening, July 21st, at the time the Philadelphia troops were marched out there, would never have dispersed without making serious trouble, troops or no troops. How long it would take a mob to disperse and melt away of its own accord, which on Thursday numbered from fifty to two hundred men, on Friday from five hundred to fifteen hundred, and on Saturday from two thousand in the morning to seven or eight thousand in the afternoon, and which was growing all the time more turbulent and excited, we leave for the advocates of the do nothing policy to determine if they can. The firing on the mob by the troops, and the subsequent inaction precipitated and aggravated its action, but did not create the riots. When a great line of public travel and traffic like the Pennsylvania railroad is blockaded by a mob, the public interests suffer more than the railroad interests, and every day that it is allowed to continue, damages the community to the extent of thousands of dollars, and it was the duty of the local civil authorities to adopt the most vigorous measures to break the blockade, but if instead of doing this, they temporize with the mob until, in consequence thereof, it becomes too strong to be suppressed by them, and the troops of the State are called on for assistance, the latter cannot be said to have caused the riots, or held responsible for the consequences of an honest effort to enforce the law. If the rioting was caused by the calling out of the troops, and their subsequent actions, then the claim that that was an insurrection falls to the ground, and if there was an insurrection, then the troops cannot have been the cause of the rioting, as the two positions are inconsistent, although held and advocated by a number of prominent men. All of which is respectfully submitted. JOHN E. REYBURN, _Chairman_. E. D. YUTZY, W. L. TORBERT, _Committee of the Senate_. W. M. LINDSEY, _Chairman Joint Committee_. D. C. LARRABEE, A. F. ENGELBERT, SAMU'L W. MEANS, P. P. DEWEES, _Committee of the House_. Laid on the table. PROCEEDINGS AND TESTIMONY. SENATE COMMITTEE ROOM, HARRISBURG, _February 4, 1878_. The committee met and organized by the election of the following officers: W. M. Lindsey, _Chairman_. Samuel B. Collins, _Clerk and Stenographer_. J. J. Cromer, _Sergeant-at-Arms_. ---- ----, _Messenger_. Adjourned to meet in Pittsburgh, an the 6th instant. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, February 6, 1878_. The committee met at half past ten o'clock, A.M., this day, in the orphans' court room, city of Pittsburgh. The roll of members being called, it was found that all the members were present. The committee engaged in a consultation as to the mode of procedure in taking testimony--as to whether the sessions of the committee should be public, and as to whether counsel should be admitted to represent parties who might be summoned as witnesses. G. H. Geyer, Esquire, counsel for the county commissioners, was invited before the committee for the purpose of ascertaining what the commissioners desired; also W. B. Rogers, Esquire, counsel for the city of Allegheny, was invited before the committee for the same purpose. The county commissioners in person also appeared before the committee. The committee was waited upon by Mr. Johnson, a member of the chamber of commerce, who gave information that the chamber had appointed a committee, of which he had been elected chairman, for the purpose of giving aid in obtaining information relative to matters being investigated by the committee. On behalf of the chamber of commerce, he also tendered the use of their hall for the sittings of the committee. Upon motion of Senator Reyburn, it was ordered that a session should be held this afternoon, from three to six o'clock. Adjourned. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, February 6, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at three o'clock, P.M., this day. The debate was resumed, as to the mode of procedure in taking testimony. Upon motion of Senator Reyburn, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Lindsey, was selected to conduct the examination of witnesses on behalf of the committee. Adjourned. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _February 7, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee met at ten o'clock, A.M., this day. The committee proceeded to the examination of witnesses. The first witness called was: John Scott, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I am still a citizen of Pittsburgh, although I have been attending to my business for the last three months in Philadelphia. Q. What is your official relation to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. At present I am the general solicitor of the company. Q. What was it in July last? A. I was then what was called the general counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, resident at Pittsburgh. Q. Can you tell the committee whether, prior to July last, there were any differences existing between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and its employés? A. On that subject I have no personal knowledge. Any differences, if they did exist, between the employés and the company were known to the operating officers of the company, over whom I have no control. I only know it as a matter of public history, as other persons. Q. Were you present at the disturbances of the peace within the city of Pittsburgh in July last? A. I was during a portion of those disturbances, but not during all of them. If it is desired that I should give you a connected statement of what I did see, I would begin with where my personal knowledge of the transactions commenced. Q. That is what the committee desire? A. On the morning of Thursday--that week in which the disturbances occurred--I cannot recollect the date--on that morning there was no appearance of disturbance. I state this from the fact that Mr. Pitcairn, the superintendent of the western division, and I live within a very short distance of each other. We take trains at the same station, and when I went there that morning I found him there with his family, preparing to go, for a visit of some length, to Long Branch. The strike which had occurred on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the subject of conversation between us during the few moments that we were together there, and I know, at that moment, he had not the most remote apprehension of any disturbance. I came into town on the train, and knew nothing of any disturbance until about noon, when I heard of the assault having been made upon Mr. Watt. I did not see it, or I would narrate it. Q. Who was Mr. Watt? A. He was the chief clerk, or assistant to Mr. Pitcairn. About nine o'clock that evening I received a dispatch, stating that Messrs. Hampton and Dalzell, the local solicitors, who took charge of the local business, were absent from the city, and requesting me to come to the outer depot. I did so. I got off at the Twenty-eighth street station. There was quite a large crowd of people at that station. Just when I got off, an engine was coming up from the direction of the Union depot. I do not know from whence it had started. Immediately, there was a cry that it must be stopped, and there was a rush of a large number of that crowd towards the engine. It did stop, and a loud halloo went up from that crowd. Q. Who composed that crowd, so far as you observed? A. That I cannot tell. My point was to reach the outer depot, and I spent no more time there than was necessary. At the outer depot I found that Mr. Pitcairn had not yet reached the city, although he had been telegraphed for. I found Mr. Watt there, his assistant, and learned from him the extent to which the disturbance had gone. That he can give you personally. Finding from that statement that a call had been made upon the mayor for assistance to regain the property of the company, and that it had been ineffectual, I went up to my office for the purpose of looking at the act of Assembly passed in 1877, and also the law providing for calling out the military by the Governor. I spent some time in doing that, leaving word for Mr. Watt to come to my office, so we might call upon the sheriff for the purpose of dispersing the mob, and regaining possession of the company's property. He came up in a short time, and we rode to the sheriff's residence, and woke him up out of bed. Q. Where is his residence? A. In Washington street, between Wylie and Fifth avenue. Q. What time was that? A. That was, probably, between ten--no I am not certain about the hour--about ten or eleven o'clock. I stated to the sheriff that the property of the company was in the possession of a large number of the employés and of citizens--the information was that--I had no personal knowledge of it--Mr. Watt was with me--and that an effort had been made, through the mayor, to regain possession, which had not succeeded, and that we called upon him, as officers of the company, to ask him to go to the outer depot and exert his power, as sheriff of the county, to disperse the crowd assembled there, and to restore possession to the company of its property. I said I came as counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and, that as it would probably be one of the most delicate exercises of power he could be called upon to make, I insisted he should send for his own counsel to accompany him, as if he found his power insufficient to disperse the mob, and to restore to the company possession of its property, we would ask him further to advise the Governor, so he might exercise his power, if he found it necessary. The sheriff replied that Mr. Carnahan was his counsel, and that he resided at East Liberty, and that he could not get him in time to go to the depot. He went for a deputy, who lived across the street--Mr. Haymaker, I think--and we all drove to the outer depot, on the way finding Mr. Pitcairn, who had arrived in a train from the East. When we reached the outer depot, General Pearson was there. He had been apprized by the Adjutant General. The sheriff was again informed of the desire of the company to obtain possession of its property, and have the crowd dispersed. Q. Can you give the date of this? A. I have said this was on the Thursday preceding the actual burning and destruction. As a matter of memory, my recollection is that it was the 19th, although I am cautious about dates, as I have not a good recollection about dates. The sheriff then went out with General Pearson to Twenty-eighth street. I did not go with him. He came back after the lapse of probably three quarters of an hour, reporting that he found himself unable to disperse the mob, and that he could get no force to enable him to disperse it. I then said to the sheriff that it was a question for him to determine whether he had exhausted his power for the protection of the company's property. He said he had exhausted it, and that he had made up his mind to ask the Governor to call out the troops to disperse the mob. At his request, I wrote a dispatch to the Governor, and submitted it to him, General Pearson, being present as I understood, acting as his counsel at the time. Some requests had come to send a dispatch to the Lieutenant Governor. I was satisfied that it was not such an occasion as authorized the Lieutenant Governor to act; but public information in the newspapers being that the Governor was absent from the Commonwealth, I suggested to the sheriff, as a matter of prudence, that a dispatch should be sent to the executive office, at Harrisburg, addressed to the Governor; that a copy of it should be sent to the Secretary of State, who was then in Beaver, we understood, with information that it had been sent to executive office; that another copy should be sent to the Adjutant General, who was understood to be in Philadelphia, and that the Lieutenant Governor should be informed of the fact that such a dispatch had been sent to the Governor, that he might have that information, and, if he had the authority to act, might exercise it. Q. Who signed that dispatch? A. The sheriff. Q. At what time? A. That was in the neighborhood of twelve o'clock that night. I am giving my judgment about those hours. Those dispatches signed by the sheriff were sent. There was a great deal of telegraphing that evening there, between myself and the officials of the railroad company, Mr. Pitcairn and others, the details of which I cannot now recollect. In the course of several hours after that dispatches were received from Mr. Quay and the Adjutant General by the Sheriff, informing him that the Governor had ordered out the troops. Dispatches were also received there by General Pearson, from the Adjutant General, giving him the same information. I cannot give the hour of those dispatches; but I know before we left the office, probably about five o'clock in the morning--four or five o'clock, perhaps--the sheriff and General Pearson had both received dispatches to the effect that the Governor had ordered out the military to the assistance of the sheriff, and that General Pearson had drawn an order, in pursuance of those dispatches, for one of his own regiments of this city to turn out. Probably about five or six o'clock that morning several of us left the office and went to bed at the Union depot. That was Friday morning. Now as to the actual progress of the strike. What occurred at the outer depot during Friday, I believe, I have no personal knowledge, and I do not know that I had any intercourse with any of the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and not, probably, with the military officers, until about four or five o'clock that evening. There was delay in the military responding to the general's orders. Some information reached our office, where I was engaged in other business in the office of the Penn company, that General Pearson was about to open the tracks with the military, and was starting for that purpose from Union depot. Mr. Thaw and I went up there together. When we arrived, there was a company ready to go to Twenty-eighth street. Mr. Cassatt was there, one of the vice-presidents of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I do not know what was said when I got there; but in some way my opinion was asked as to the propriety of the movement. Somebody asked me, I do not know who. There were a great many people around the dispatcher's office, where General Pearson was. I was asked the question. I said in reply, that as an officer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company I had no opinion at all to give, that the civil power of the country having been called upon, and the sheriff having been called upon, and the military being there with General Pearson in command of them, I certainly would not give any instructions that would interfere with the discretion either of the sheriff or of General Pearson. I might reply, as a citizen of Pittsburgh, that there was no need of repeating the old maximum, which had got very trite, that there was no use in firing blank shot at a mob; but that when they were ready to strike, they should do it effectually, and disperse the mob. The General stated to me there the force he had, some sixty men in that company and a battery called Breck's Battery, the remainder of his force was at Torrens station. He also stated he had a number of men then at Twenty-eighth street. Q. What is the distance of Torrens station from Twenty-eight street? A. Out to East Liberty is four miles, and Torrens station is probably a quarter of a mile beyond that. From the length of time that had elapsed, and a number of the men not having responded, I felt satisfied it would be prudent to have more troops before striking, and I so telegraphed to Philadelphia. General Pearson, at that point, said: I believe I could take this battery up there and open the track at that point, but it would be with very great sacrifice of life. Q. To whom did you telegraph to Philadelphia? A. To the president of the road--Colonel Scott. I said in that dispatch, from the dilatory way in which the troops were coming, I thought that the troops ought to come from some other quarter than from Pittsburgh. General Pearson was evidently reluctant to sacrifice life, even if he could open the road by doing so, and wished Mr. Thaw and myself, as officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, to sign a request asking him to delay his movement. I refused to do so, saying that I would not control his discretion as a military man--that what should be done, at that time, should be left to him to decide. I left then and went out home that evening, and staid at home Friday night and saw nothing more of the riot than a passenger would see in passing out through the large crowd assembled at and about Twenty-eight street. I cannot estimate the number there, but the road was blocked and the hill was largely covered, when we went out on Friday evening. I returned to the city on Saturday morning, but did not see what transpired along the Pennsylvania railroad during that morning, as I was busy in my own office at Tenth and Penn streets. There was a great deal of communicating back and forth between the officials of the road, between Philadelphia and here, and west of this point, in reference to the strike. I was not present when the troops arrived from Philadelphia. I was pursuing my business in my department that evening until I went over to go out to my home, at Shady Side. The train I took was delayed, the firing having already commenced at Twenty-eight street. Word had come by telegraph, before that train started, that the firing had occurred. I went out in that train, through a dense crowd, both of civil and military men, at Twenty-eight street; and I was at my home during that night. The firing began that night, probably about eight or nine o'clock. I came into the city the next morning, and went to the Union Depot Hotel with some ladies who had been left on the train that could not get in the night before. It is not necessary for me to say what occurred. I found a place of safety for them. I found that the Union Depot Hotel was not a safe place at that time. I saw at that time the fire progressing up, but I was not any nearer to the scene of the riot at that time than the Union Depot Hotel. Secretary Quay and Adjutant General Latta were in the Union Depot Hotel making preparations to leave it. Q. State the distance of your residence from the Union depot. A. The station where I get off is a fraction over three miles from the Union Depot Hotel, and my residence is probably four or five hundred yards from the station. Q. State whether at this time there was any rioting nearer to the Union depot than Twenty-eighth street, at the time you speak about when General Latta and Secretary Quay were in the Union Depot Hotel. A. The fire had progressed, and was then progressing on this side of Twenty-eighth street up toward the Union Depot Hotel. I cannot say where the fire first originated, but looking up Liberty street from the Union Depot Hotel, when I was there, I should say the fire was then some six or seven blocks from the Union Depot Hotel. I could see it distinctly spreading across the street. I was not at the scene of the riot during Sunday; I was with the officers of the railroad company in Allegheny City, in conference as to the best mode of preventing further trouble, destruction, and rioting over portions of the road west of Pittsburgh. I do not know that I can give any further information in giving my personal knowledge of what I saw of the actual disturbances. Q. Have you any knowledge as to what was done by the railroad company after that time? A. In the way of suppressing the riot? Q. Yes. A. I might state upon that subject, that upon Saturday afternoon, while the officers of the western lines were in Allegheny City, a committee of citizens--at least a committee appointed at a citizens' meeting--a representative of Bishop Twigg--one of his clergymen, whose name I do not recollect--and Reverend Mr. Scoville, of the Presbyterian Church, and James I. Bennett, came to see what we could do in the way of suppressing the riot, and asking that some concession should be made to the men on the road. We replied to them substantially, that so far as the railroad company was concerned, we thought the mob had done about its worst. This was when the Union depot was burning--at least Mr. Thaw and I were on the hill a short time before, and saw the fire so near that we supposed it was then burning. We said it had now ceased to be a question between the railroad company and the employés, and was one between the public authorities and the mob, between government and anarchy, and that so far as we had anything to do with the question, we were now in an utterly defenseless position, and we thought, being in that position, if we were to make the concessions which had been demanded in the beginning, we would be breaking down the only barrier between anarchy and their property, and that now the question for the citizens to determine was whether they would make any effort to stop that lawlessness which would next reach them after it had spent its fury on the railroad company. So far as the efforts to stop the rioting by negotiations or compromising with the men were concerned, I had no direct connection with them. That occurred between others--friends of the road, the general management, and the representatives of the men--and I knew of them only in a general way, from hearing what was said by the officers, which was substantially, that while the men were in the position of law breakers, and holding control of the company's property, we could not yield to the demands extorted by that kind of violence; but that, if things were restored to their normal condition, the company was perfectly willing to meet the men, and negotiate with them in regard to this matter just as in regard to any other difference. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Upon this Thursday you speak of, you say you found, at a certain stage, that the road was in possession of the mob--substantially a mob--that then you went to the sheriff, and then, with him, to the depot, and found General Pearson there. Now, can you state to us who called for, or who sent for the militia--who called upon the State Government? A. I have already stated that the call for the militia was made by Sheriff Fife, after he had gone out with General Pearson, and endeavored to disperse the mob at Twenty-eighth street. He then came back and reported his inability to do so, and that he had no further power at his command, and announced his decision that he would call upon the Governor, and, at his request, I wrote a dispatch to the Governor, announcing his conclusion, and asking for the Governor's aid. Q. At the request of the sheriff? A. Yes; he signed that dispatch sent to the Governor. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you call upon the mayor for assistance before you called upon the sheriff? A. I did not personally. Mr. Watt informed me he did. He can give you that. Q. Was General Pearson connected with the sheriff's office at that time as a deputy? A. I don't know. Q. You stated he was counsel for the sheriff? A. Oh, no. I stated to the sheriff that I was calling upon him as counsel for the railroad company, and I insisted that he ought to have his own counsel to guide him in determining his duty in this emergency; but, saying that Mr. Carnahan was his regular counsel, and that he could not send for him, he went to the depot without him, with a deputy named Haymaker. When we reached the depot General Pearson was there, saying he had been requested by the Adjutant General to be there. When Sheriff Fife saw him there, he turned to me and said: "Mr. Scott, I know him, and for this occasion I will be governed by his counsel." General Pearson was not there as a deputy or a clerk, but in obedience to the dispatch of the Adjutant General, and the sheriff, finding him there, was governed by his counsel at that time. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Have you any knowledge as to who sent for the troops at Philadelphia, who ordered them here? A. I have no other knowledge of it than that which came in the dispatches that night, which was that the Adjutant General had ordered them. A dispatch came from Mr. Quay saying that the Governor had ordered out the militia. Q. The Philadelphia troops of the First division? A. I have no actual knowledge as to who ordered them out, except in a general way; the Adjutant General was here afterwards, and when those troops came it was my understanding, derived from my intercourse with General Latta and all the others, that the military had been ordered out by the Adjutant General, he being the military officer of the State under the Governor. In speaking of all this, I am giving what occurred by the dispatches in the outer depot while I was there. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Can you give the extent of the destruction of the railroad property by the fire? A. I cannot, with any accuracy. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Approximately? A. I have been informed that the officers of the road are yet engaged in making up a full statement of the losses of the company, and any estimate I might make would be so entirely unreliable that, if it is important to the committee, I prefer sending for those who have that subject in charge. Q. Can you give the extent of the burning, the destruction of property in general? A. My statement would be simply from observation--that the burning of property commenced at or very near the station of Lawrenceville. Q. How far from the Union depot? A. I would suppose a mile and a quarter or a mile and a half. That is an estimate. I do not know, I may be wrong about that. It is the second stopping place out from the Union depot. The destruction on the track, of cars that were there, and buildings extending from Lawrenceville all along past the Union depot and embracing property of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad Company, on Seventh street, in this city, the number of cars burnt, the number of locomotives destroyed or disabled, the value of the goods in those cars, and the value of the buildings that were destroyed, and the injury done on the road are all matters of computation upon which my estimate would not be worth anything. It will have to be obtained from actual examination of those who inspected them. By Mr. Means: Q. Was the first burning of cars or of buildings? A. I cannot say, except as a matter of public information. I was not present. I have already stated I was at Shady Side on Saturday evening, when the fire commenced. Q. Have you any knowledge about what time that fire commenced? A. I saw the light in the evening about nine or ten o'clock, and sent my son in to ascertain the state of things. Q. Of your own knowledge you do not know whether it was a car that was first burned or a building? A. Of my own knowledge I cannot say at what point the fire began, or by whom it was kindled. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Can you state of your own knowledge what classes of men composed the rioters during the burning. Whether the mob was composed of railroad employés or of others than those, and if of others, of what class? A. That would be in part my personal knowledge, but I could not give an answer to that without confounding together my personal knowledge and matters of information. I will give the result, if you wish it. Q. State it? A. The first difficulties, which were brought on by the employés of the company taking possession of the engines and trains, were, so far as I could judge, or saw, exclusively by those who had been railroad employés up to that point. The action which Mr. Pitcairn took with reference to that when they took that possession I cannot state. Things went on, with a great crowd accumulating from that Thursday morning, and while I say, as a lawyer, that there was a riot and mob there from Thursday morning down until the firing began, with a crowd constantly accumulating, as it would on account of any disturbance that had occurred, yet there seemed to be a feeling that it was not that kind of a riot or mob that called for the interposition of a very vigorous public sentiment to put it down; but, when the military were brought for the purpose of regaining possession of the property, and the collision was actually brought on, I can say that the mob was made up of a great many other people than railroad employés. I did not see them, nor was actually among them so I could identify any of the railroad employés, or any persons outside, but from my knowledge of the immense crowd which was assembled at Twenty-eight street as I went in and out, there were undoubtedly a great many other than railroad employés about the scene of violence, and I have no doubt participating in it. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You say that while the employés were in possession of the cars of the company, there seemed to be no such riot as required the intervention of public sentiment to put it down? A. I did not intend to say that, but that while it was confined to railroad employés public sentiment did not seem to manifest itself as requiring any decided interposition to put that down. In other words, I am bound in candor to say, when asked for it, that public sentiment here very clearly distinguished between the act of breaking the law on the part of the employés in taking possession of the railroad property, and stopping commerce at this point, and the act of rioting and incendiarism which followed in consequence of that initial breaking of the law. Q. That is, that public sentiment did not assert itself vigorously against the employés taking possession of the cars and engines prior to the actual outbreak and destruction of property? A. That is what I mean. Q. In other words, public sentiment sympathized with the rioters? A. I am a citizen of Pittsburgh, and here along with the rest of them, am bound to say that the newspapers pretty fairly reflected the public sentiment in what they said. If you wish to see what it was, instead of asking my opinion, owing to my relation with the railroad company, if you will take the editorials of the various morning and evening newspapers from the 19th of July, from the day on which this thing occurred, down until some days after the actual firing occurred, I think you will find that the editors evidently tried to reflect the public sentiment, and I think they succeeded pretty well in doing it. If you wish to get that you had better ask the sheriff what responses the people made to him when he asked them to become part of his _posse_. I did not hear what was said, but the sheriff knows. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did the sheriff succeed in raising a _posse comitatus?_ A. He said to us in the Union depot he could not, and reported to me the next morning that he could not do it. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Have you any knowledge whether the mayor tried to subdue the riot or assist the sheriff in trying to subdue the riot? A. I have not any personal knowledge of the mayor's action. Q. Was he in the city during the time, or not? A. Not to my personal knowledge, again. I did make one effort to have accomplished what I thought would have conduced somewhat to the public peace that afternoon, Saturday afternoon. That is the only fact within my own knowledge. About one o'clock, Saturday, seeing a large number of people attracted to the depot, and knowing that a large number of operatives were free from work that afternoon, I thought it a measure of precaution for the mayor to close the drinking saloons in the city. I drew up a paper, stating this fact, as politely as I could, and that paper was signed by Mr. Thaw and Mr. McCullough, officers of the company, and I took it over and had Secretary Quay and Adjutant General Latta sign it also, and then sent it up to the mayor, and the messenger reported to me that he had left it at the mayor's office in the hands of his chief clerk, I think he said; I never heard any more of it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who was that messenger? A. His name I cannot give you, but I placed it in the hands of D. H. Rudy; he can give you the name of the messenger who sent it up. That is the answer that I got, that he left it in the mayor's office. What was done with it I do not know. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Do you know whether he complied with it or not? A. I can only say that the drinking saloons were not closed, and I did not see any proclamation closing them. Q. So if you were not a citizen of Pittsburgh, do you suppose you would think that the mayor had done his duty, as an officer ought to, at that particular time? A. Being a citizen of Pittsburgh, I cannot put myself in the position of not being one. I will have to leave you to judge. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. At the time you first spoke of meeting the crowd of employés, and their taking possession of the engines on Thursday--the first outbreak you spoke of what was done on the part of the railroad company to ascertain the cause of that commotion? A. I did not understand that there was any secret about the causes of it all. I am giving now the public understanding. My understanding was simply this: That an order had been made--Mr. Pitcairn can tell you more fully about that--an order requiring the running of, what are called double header trains--two engines to one train, and some of the employés alleged that that imposed on them additional work without additional pay. I believe that is the short of it, and rather than comply with it, they struck. I understood that was made the cause of beginning the disturbances here. Q. Did you or any one, on behalf of the railroad company, communicate with those men? A. I did not. I understood the operating officers did, but I cannot tell what occurred between them. * * * * * Robert Pitcairn, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your residence? A. Shady Side. Q. What is your official connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. General agent or superintendent of the Pittsburgh division. Q. How long have you held that position? A. I came here the last time in the spring of 1865. I have been here three times. Since that spring I have been superintendent of the division. Q. Now give us your statement about the riots. Tell us whether there were any differences of opinion or disagreements between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the employés prior to the 20th of July last. A. There were no more differences than there have been since the road has been opened. There have always been differences. Q. Was there any difference existing at that time? A. No more than heretofore. The company reduced the wages of all officers and employés ten per cent. in June. Q. Of 1877? A. Yes. There was a good deal of friction and complaint. Committees called upon me, and committees from the different divisions of the road visited Mr. Scott, the president, and had conferences with him on the subject. They complained because of the reduction. He explained that the cause of it was the condition of the country, and that as soon as business would become brighter, that then the company would entertain their petitions and would act fairly with them, when the committee, as they informed me, as Colonel Scott and others informed me, professed their satisfaction, and said there would be no trouble, but that they would work harmoniously. Q. That was on what date? A. I cannot remember the date; it was after the ten per cent. reduction. Q. What was the date of that? A. I think it was in June--May or June. Q. Was there any further reduction after that time, and prior to the riot? A. There was no reduction in wages. Q. Was there an increase of duty or work placed upon the employés? A. That is a question of opinion altogether. The company for many years back--the officers have been trying all in their power to economically manage the road, loading the engines to their full capacity and making them up differently. There is hardly a year passes, but that some of the officers finds some way of more economically running the road. There was an order given to make up what we call double-headers between Pittsburgh and Derry. Since the road has been opened we have always run double-headed, and sometimes three engines ahead and one behind, between Altoona and Conemaugh. The object in running the double-headers to Derry was for the purpose of making the trains go through to Philadelphia without being divided; that is, it takes two engines to haul a train from Pittsburgh to Derry, whether two engines ahead or behind, or two separate trains; and to avoid the delay of running two separate trains to Derry, one ahead waiting for the other, we put two engines in front of the trains, when one engine cuts the train going to Conemaugh, and the one put behind goes down to Altoona, and goes through from there. Q. What was the date of that order? A. The order of running double-headers on all through trains was the morning of Thursday, but we had always run double-headers between Pittsburgh and Derry, perhaps from one half to two thirds. The order was to take effect on that Thursday, and was to make them all double-headers. Q. Did the men make any complaint about that order? A. They made no complaint. Q. To you or to any other officer of the road? A. Not that I am aware of. Up to that time we always considered the double-headers a question of economy. Q. Did that order require the discharge of any number of men, or did it not? A. It did. Q. By that order you could run your trains with a less number of men? A. We could run them with a less number of conductors and brakemen, but not of engineers and firemen. As many double-headers as we had would take off one single crew of conductors and brakemen each. Q. You heard no complaint about that order? A. Not that I am aware of; but the men were always complaining about something. Q. That was on Thursday. What was the first riotous occurrence showing that the men were dissatisfied after the issuing of that order? A. I had leave of absence on Thursday morning to go to Philadelphia. For a few days previous I had asked the men--asked the subordinate officers--as I always do when I see them, if there is any trouble. I was assured then that our men were more satisfied and loyal than they had been, and I was perfectly free in my mind in going away on Thursday morning. I left in the day express on the Thursday morning when the trouble began. Q. How far did you go before receiving intelligence of the trouble? A. When I reached Altoona I got a telegram from Mr. Watt, who represented me here, saying that a few of the men, after the train I was on had left, had refused to go out on the double-headers, and that they were trying to create a disturbance, and saying what action he had taken, and that his idea was that it would be all right, and for me not to stop off but to go on, that the matter would be all right. Q. What hour did you receive that? A. About twelve twenty, when I reached Altoona. I had no train to return on and I thought I would go on the day express and think over the subject, and when I reached Lewistown I made up my mind that I would return. So I arranged for my family, who were accompanying me, to go on, and I returned on the fast line from Lewistown, reaching here at eleven thirty. Q. In the evening? A. Yes; eleven twenty-five. On my way west I telegraphed to my subordinate officers to meet me in Pittsburgh. I intended to get off at the outer depot, Twenty-eighth street, but there was a large crowd there, and I came to Union depot, and walked up to where my office then was, at Twenty-sixth street, and on my way I met a carriage with the Honorable John Scott and Mr. Watt and the sheriff. I got in the carriage and went to my office, at Twenty-sixth street, and there found my subordinate officers, and General Pearson was there. Q. Who were your subordinate officers? A. Joseph Fox, road foreman; John Major, road foreman; David Garrett, assistant trainmaster; Edward Pitcairn, trainmaster; Joseph McCabe, general dispatcher. Mr. Scott, the sheriff, and all the parties there were consulting and talking together, when the sheriff made up his mind to go up to Twenty-eighth street, where the crowd was interfering and preventing trains from running. I wanted to go up and talk to the men, when my subordinates prevented me, and said there was no use of my going up, because none of our men were there. Few, if any, of our own men were there. It was a crowd. They persuaded me to remain, while the sheriff and General Pearson went up to Twenty-eighth street. They came back and reported the result of their attempt to disperse the crowd, when the communications, as stated by Mr. Scott---- Q. What did the sheriff and General Pearson report to you? A. They said they went up and went to the crowd and called to the crowd to disperse and go to their homes, and they made no impression, and received nothing but vulgar abuse. Q. Did they go alone? A. Unless one or two of my men went with them. One or two went with them. Q. At what hour was that? A. About twelve o'clock, Thursday night. Q. What then occurred? A. Then came the communications to the different parties. The Governor, and Mr. Quay, and Lieutenant Governor Latta, and Adjutant General Latta, and then came the replies, and the message to General Pearson to order out one of the regiments, I think, which he did. By Senator Yutzy: Q. From whom did this order come? A. Adjutant General Latta. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time did he receive that dispatch from General Latta? A. Between twelve and half past four in the morning. I think the order calling out the troops came after the Governor's message. All left the office about half past four. General Pearson, who had written his orders about the regiment before, and I parted at the Union depot. General Pearson went down town, and Mr. Scott, Mr. Watt, and myself went to the Union depot hotel for the purpose of retiring. Q. When you came in from Altoona did you notice the disturbance at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes. Q. To what extent? A. It was dark, and I could not see any of the crowd. I do not know how many were there. Q. What was the crowd doing then? A. Yelling--talking loud. Q. Were they stopping trains? A. I do not know; they did not stop our train. I went to bed; but it was not five minutes until I received another telegram, and another, pertaining to the business of the road. So I got up. There were a number of messages from President Scott and the general superintendent. They had an idea we could move the trains in the morning, and were giving different orders about stock and different things. Q. Did you make any effort to move a train on Friday morning? A. We were continually making efforts; we never ceased. Q. What effort did you make to move the trains on Friday morning? A. The efforts to move the trains on Friday morning were, securing the crews and firing up the engines, and having everything ready to move when we could get through the crowd. Q. Did you succeed in securing the crews? A. Yes. Q. Were they new men, or old employés? A. Old employés. I want you to bear in mind, that in starting the trains, the crews were always there, professing their readiness to go out, and at no time had we not sufficient crews to take the whole number of cars out. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Who stopped you from running the trains? A. The crowd. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What was the crowd? A. I did not know them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Any of your own men? A. I was about continually, and I do not think I ever saw over three or four of my own men in any crowd, if you leave out the sub-officers. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. On Friday morning you had crews enough to start all the trains; did you give orders to start? A. To be ready to start. Q. But you did not give any order to start? A. No. Q. For what reasons? A. To get assistance to keep the crowd off our property. Q. Did you think at that time that the crowd was so large that the trains could not run through it? A. Not without killing them. They had charge of the switches there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The crowd had? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you think if a train had started you could have run it through the crowd, and gone on--in your opinion? A. If the crowd had not turned the switches. The switchmen were there, but under the management of the crowd. Q. Did you go up there where that crowd was Friday morning, to see, of your own knowledge, whether the trains could run through or not? A. On Friday morning we had a crowd at two points, Twenty-eighth street and at Torrens station. To both places I went. Q. How large a crowd was at Twenty-eighth street that morning--Friday morning? A. On Friday morning, to connect my story, I went up with General Pearson at Twenty-eighth street, and he talked to the crowd. I think the sheriff was along. Q. How large a crowd did you find there? A. I never was at Twenty-eighth street that evening. Q. On Friday morning? A. I have very little idea about the numbers of a crowd--it was a very large crowd. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was your road-way blocked up? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were any of your men among that crowd--your employés? A. As I said before, I never recognized, I would be safe in saying half a dozen of our men that I knew. Q. From Twenty-eighth street did you go out to Torrens? A. Yes. Q. How large a crowd was there? A. I would say six hundred or a thousand. There was a crowd. I have no idea what number a crowd is. Q. Did you find any of the railroad employés among that crowd? A. I found one man that I knew as an employé, but I cannot name him. He talked to me, that is the reason I remember him. Q. Were any of the switches turned, at that time, at Torrens? A. None, to my knowledge. Q. The track was clear at that time, so that the trains could have run through if they had allowed it? A. Not to my personal knowledge. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Who seemed to be directing the crowd. That is, the mob? A. There seemed to be an understanding, from the remarks made by the crowd, that they had sufficient force to prevent the trains going out. As for example: At Torrens a party told me it was bread or blood, and they could get any number of men to come up and prevent the running through of any train until the matter was arranged with them. Q. Was that man an employé of the road? A. He was, but I do not remember his name. Q. What position did he hold on the road? A. A train man. He may have been a flag man. I thought I knew his name, and came down to see a party arrested, but it was not the man. I have not seen him since. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were those threats made by the crowd or by this one man? A. By a single man. Q. Were the threats made about preventing the running of the trains by employés or others? A. By outsiders. They could not get enough employés to stop the trains. By Mr. Dewees: Q. When you doubled up the trains, how many men did you relieve. That is, on the morning of the Thursday that this outbreak occurred? A. If there were ten single trains and I doubled up, I saved five conductors and five flagmen and ten brakemen. Q. What became of those men? A. They were suspended. Q. Was anything said to them, that they were suspended for a certain time, or were they just dropped? A. Those crews were not suspended, but that many men, and a great many more, because the business had gone down, were suspended, and we were choosing the married men and the old men. The old men and the married men were chosen, in preference to the single men. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. But by suspension do you mean discharge, or do you mean suspension temporarily? A. They were given to understand that there was no more work. By Mr. Dewees: Q. This was one of the causes, this doubling up, as I understood you to say, that created the dissatisfaction here at this point? A. That is what they say. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you not only reduce your crews, so far as the conductors and brakemen and flagmen were concerned, one half of a train, if it was sent out as a double-header? A. One half of the trains we were running single between Pittsburgh and Derry. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were any of the discharged men among the crowd at Twenty-eighth street or at Torren's station that morning? A. Yes; I saw quite a number of men who had been discharged for cause as well as suspended on account of the reduction. Q. You deemed it unsafe from that time on to start your trains, from the time you visited Twenty-eighth street and Torren's station that morning? A. The sheriff and General Pearson--the sheriff ordered the crowd to disperse and General Pearson, in fact, made a calm and warning speech, and told them what his orders were, that the military had been ordered out and what the consequences would be, and coaxed and pleaded with them to disperse before the military came up that had been ordered out. Q. What time did the military come up? A. In regard to the time of any of those occurrences, from Thursday until it was all over I was not in bed, and it is kind of cloudy in my mind as to the different hours; but as to the hour, I should say that this was about twelve or one o'clock, Friday. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When the military came at the crowd? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many companies came on the ground at that time? A. First one company--they were very straggling. Q. Who commanded the first company that came? A. I do not know. Q. It was under the general direction of General Pearson? A. Yes. Q. At what point were they stationed? A. That I cannot tell. On Friday--I cannot tell. I do not remember if there were any soldiers at Twenty-eighth street. I cannot tell. Friday night the Pittsburgh troops were brought out. Q. What time did the first burning or destruction of property by fire commence? A. Friday night the troops were stationed at Torrens. Q. What time did the first burning commence? A. I do not know that--I cannot say. Q. Do you know where it commenced? A. Only from hearsay. A great deal occurred between Friday night and Saturday night. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. When the sheriff and General Pearson went to the mob, was the mayor of the city, at that time, acting in conjunction with them? A. I never saw the mayor. Q. You do not know whether he issued a proclamation or assisted in any way whatever? A. No. Q. You do not know whether he took an active part in the matter of suppressing the riot? A. No. Q. Was he called on? A. Only Mr. Watt informed me on Thursday morning, and then the sheriff was called Thursday evening. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was called first? A. The mayor, according to my information. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. He did not respond? A. Mr. Watt will tell you that. Q. You have no personal knowledge about that? A. No; it was before I arrived on Thursday night. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you know when the first call was made on the sheriff, of your own knowledge? A. Thursday night. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he respond? A. Yes--in my office. Q. With a force? A. He had one man. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who was the man with him? A. I did not know him. Q. Do you know what effort he made to secure a force? A. Only what he told me. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you there when the dispatch was sent for troops--the first dispatch, when the sheriff made up his mind to call upon the military? A. Yes, sir. Q. What time was that? A. It was about twelve o'clock Thursday night. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The call upon the mayor and on the sheriff was not made until after you returned? A. The call on the mayor was made on Thursday morning and the call on the sheriff was made on Thursday evening. Q. Had you become satisfied then that you could not run your trains on account of the mob which had assembled? A. Yes; I knew we could not run the trains. By Senator Yutzy: Q. With safety? A. No way. Q. Did this ten per cent. reduction apply to all the officers and employés of the railroad company? A. All the officers and employés, except those who got one dollar a day or less, either by the month or day--the track men getting ten cents an hour for ten hours. All above one dollar were reduced. By Senator Torbert: Q. That took effect on the 1st of June? A. I think so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It applied to the general superintendent? A. He told me so. It applied to me. Q. To the president of the company? A. I believe so. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. In regard to the dispatch which you received from Mr. Watt--did you receive any other dispatch except the one you received at Altoona, asking you to come back, or which caused you to make up your mind to return? A. No. Q. After you got back you say the crowd had assembled--had there been any attempt by the crowd to prevent trains from running? A. They told me so--no trains went out. Q. At what time was any train stopped? A. The first double headers went out from Pittsburgh all right--they were not troubled. Q. At what hour? A. From three o'clock in the morning up to nine o'clock or eight o'clock in the morning. Q. What trains were first prevented from leaving regularly on time? A. The trains that should have left between eight and nine o'clock. Q. A freight train? A. Yes, sir. Q. That was prevented from leaving? A. The crew on that train would not go out. Q. It was not the crowd that prevented that first train from leaving? A. I was not there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Could you have got back any sooner? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You say the crew of that train would not go out. Were they discharged then when they refused to obey orders? A. After I got home, I had too little control, and wanted to get along as well as I could. Q. Do you know what your officers did when that crew refused to go? A. I understood that they had either to go out or be discharged. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. I was endeavoring to ascertain the first time that the crowd interfered? A. I was not here, but you can get that testimony if you want it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Can you give any idea of the loss to property that occurred through this riot? A. No; not of my own knowledge. I have no idea. The bills are coming in every day. Q. About what was it in round numbers--the loss sustained by the company? A. I have my own idea. Q. Who can give us the figures? A. I suppose our controller or one of the vice presidents could give them as estimated up to to-day. By Mr. Dewees: Q. How many cars and engines did you lose? A. We lost one hundred and four engines, and about sixteen hundred cars. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The engines would average what? A. I do not think the engines are all re-built yet. Q. The cars are about how much? A. About $800 a piece. By Mr. Dewees: Q. On the freight cars could any of the iron be re-placed? A. I might say no. Of course, occasionally, a wheel or two might be an exception, but none could be used again. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who is your controller? A. R. W. Downing, of Philadelphia. Q. He can give us an approximate estimate? A. He or one of our vice presidents. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You were here when the troops arrived from Philadelphia? A. Yes; I saw all the movements of the troops. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Tell us now the movements of the troops, the Pittsburgh troops first, and then the Philadelphia troops? A. The Pittsburgh troops--most of them--were moved at night. One regiment was moved or went up the hill east from here on the arch of the hill, and then came down on Twenty-eighth street, so as to come down on the crowd. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When was this? A. On Saturday morning. General Pearson ordered the battery to be taken up to the same place. It was loaded in the cars at the Union depot, and I was requested to move it up about two or three o'clock in the morning, to get there when the troops would be there. About two and one half or three o'clock, I had just gone to bed when they told me that they would not take the gondolas with the guns up. Q. The men would not? A. That is it. I went down and saw the men, and asked them why they would not do it, and they told me they were afraid of the crowd, that they would like to oblige me. I said if you don't take those trucks up, I will have to discharge you. They told me that they would like to do it, but their lives were threatened. They would not do it, so I had to take them up myself. I went up to Twenty-eighth street with the guns, and then I saw this large crowd. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Were you interfered with when you took up the gondolas? A. No one said anything to me at the Union depot, only they kind of crowded around. When I got to Twenty-eighth street, they made a kind of rush, and when they saw I was running the engine, I expected them to attack me, but they did not. They did not say anything to me, only kind of crowded around. They got on the tank and saw no one but myself, and did not say anything. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Who got on? A. The crowd. Q. Employés of the railroad? A. I did not recognize them as railroad men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Give us the detailed movements, now, of the troops? A. We brought the troops to Twenty-eight street with the battery on Saturday morning, and at the same time there was a regiment at Torrens. General Pearson and the sheriff and I went to those two places at different times to see what we could do. At Torrens that regiment, apparently, had the mob under control, that is they would not crowd around the tracks. The military seemed to be by themselves, while at Twenty-eighth street they were all mixed up--the military and the mob. Then I received word that General Brinton's command was coming on Friday night or Saturday morning. They ought to have arrived about noon; but did not get here until about four o'clock. They arrived at the Union depot about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon. We unloaded them, and got some coffee and sandwiches, and word was given to them to march to Twenty-eighth street, and clear the tracks. Q. Who gave the order? A. Some of the military. Mr. Cassatt, who arrived here on Friday, directed me to get two crews together, that General Brinton's command would clear the tracks, and that I could slip the trains out, and that everything, then, would go all right. Then General Brinton's command commenced to march, and the sheriff came up with about twenty members of his posse, and I urged him to hurry up and get there before the troops, and that if any of our men were there, I would talk to them, and perhaps prevent trouble. I went up. The crowd kept coming in on us all the way from the Union depot, so we took a large crowd up there. The crowd followed us up. We were so delayed in warning the crowd to get away that they came up close to us, and when we got to Twenty-eighth street, General Pearson was there, and the sheriff and his posse ahead of the military. The sheriff, I think, attempted to arrest one man who was very noisy, and then there was a general rumpus, and I was thrown back by the crowd and got in among the military companies, who had formed on Twenty-eighth street. They formed up and down on the north side, and up and down on the south side, and brought a company up between Then a man threw me back, and the company coming up the street allowed me to get in between. They went up, I suppose, to disperse the mob. Q. Who threw you back? A. I do not know; he was a great big man; he was a friend of mine, I know; it was not an attempt to hurt me. This company moved up, and dispersed the mob, and the command was given to charge bayonets, and put the bayonets between the people so as not to hurt them. Q. Who gave that command? A. I do not know. By Senator Reyburn: Q. The object was not to use force, but to try and press the crowd back? A. That is it. They were going to push them away. Then the crowd commenced cheering, and I saw two or three bayonets twisted off, and then a lot of stones were thrown at the military. General Pearson came back to me then, and said he was going to the office--was going to get more troops. He then went away. I could not get out. Then they commenced firing. Q. What time was that? A. About five o'clock on Saturday afternoon. I could not get out until the firing was all over and the crowd dispersed. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were not shots fired from the crowd before the firing commenced? A. Yes; two shots were fired. I was near to the men. Q. Fired at the military? A. Yes; and stones came around and clouded the horizon. Q. Before there was any firing by the military? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was any command given to fire? A. No; all the officers I saw were begging the men not to fire. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When the soldiers went up they did not attempt to injure the crowd? Were any of the soldiers hit and wounded at that time, before the firing--before they attempted to fire? A. I saw two or three wounded right around me. Q. Before that firing began? A. Yes, sir. Q. In other words, they attempted to do it without using force. Just by pressing back the crowd? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Will you describe the crowd? Who composed it? A. The crowd immediately around Twenty-eighth street, on the track, were workingmen--mill men. The other men, from their appearance on the hillside, were citizens. A great many people that I knew. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Women and children? A. I saw no children, but some women. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Mixed in with the crowd? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Close to the railroad? A. They were apparently urging on the men. Some women were on the railroad. Q. Encouraging the men? A. They were yelling, and in through the men. There were very few women that I saw. They were all laughing and jeering at the soldiers. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long did the militia stand fire from the mob? Stand those stones and clubs before they fired? A. Then the company moved up and got in the crowd, and there was a man in the crowd hallooed shoot, and two pistol shots and a great many stones followed, and then the soldiers commenced firing, and then there was shooting just that quick. Q. Was any order given for the soldiers to shoot? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was it a scattering fire, or did it appear to be a volley? A. It was in every way and in every direction. By Mr. Dewees: Q. When those stones were fired, you were among the military? A. I was among the military, in the hollow square. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Proceed with the military movements? A. They dispersed the crowd by the firing, and as soon as I got out, I went down to my office, at Twenty-sixth street. I there found General Pearson, and I reported to Mr. Cassatt what had been done. He was talking to General Pearson, and General Pearson was writing telegrams to General Latta at the Union depot. Then General Pearson and General Brinton were discussing what to do next, and whether Twenty-eighth street was a proper position for them to take, or to go up the hill or to come into the shops--what they had best do with the men. General Pearson was telegraphing for orders. They decided they would come into the shops, in order to get under shelter. The crowd was congregated around my office, and around the shops. General Pearson told me he would stay there, and as he had had nothing to eat that day, asked if I would send up some provisions: I told him I would go down to the Union depot and send all the provisions I could. So Mr. Cassatt and myself went to the Union depot, and I tried to get provisions up to the soldiers, but they were all confiscated by the crowd before they got any. I then went up to the room where General Latta and staff were. All this time the drums were beating, and crowd after crowd was moving up toward Twenty-sixth street. Mr. Cassatt said we were powerless to do anything, and directed me, or rather relieved me altogether of any--he said I had no business in Pittsburgh. All the time, during Friday and Saturday, one after another had come to me and said I had better leave. At the Union depot, they had got a report that I had given the order for the troops to fire. They had a coffin and a rope for General Pearson. All these reports were spreading about. Numbers of people told me to leave, and Mr. Cassatt directed me to leave. I afterwards left in company with Mr. Watt and Mr. Cassatt. Q. Where did you go? A. We loafed around the outskirts, and then went to Blairsville and reported, and made our head-quarters there at the Blairsville intersection. There I remained until I received word from Mr. Garrett that some of the old men wanted to see me to see if the matter could not be arranged, and to see if the trains could not be moved. Q. When was it that you received that word? A. On Tuesday. I was informed that some of the old men wanted to see me, and had other messages that I should come, and I came down to Pittsburgh. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you meet any of the men? A. I met the men. Q. To what number? A. About eight or ten. Q. What proposition did they make? A. None. On Friday a committee of the men met me, making a certain proposition. Q. You did not meet them until Friday after you came back? A. I mean I met them the Friday of the trouble. I told them I could not possibly send such a paper to Mr. Scott. Then this other committee met me on Wednesday after I came back. I met that committee, and instead of what I expected, they brought out the old proposition. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What was the nature of that? A. It was that no double headers, and full crews, and, I think, twenty per cent. advance. It was everything. I have got the paper. There are about four, or five, or six demands. By Mr. Means: Q. You have that paper? A. Yes, sir. Adjourned to meet again at three o'clock, P.M. SAME DAY. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, THURSDAY, _February 8, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at three o'clock, P.M., and continued taking of testimony. Robert Pitcairn, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Commence with the troops at the round-house, and tell us what troops were quartered there, and give a detailed statement of the movements of the troops from that point during the continuance of the riot? A. I said that the Philadelphia troops had dispersed the crowd, and that made an opening for me to get to my office, where I found Mr. Cassett and General Pearson. General Pearson was telegraphing for more troops to come up. General Brinton arrived just behind me, and reported to General Pearson the result, that the troops had fired without orders, and what had been done. Then there was a consultation as to the disposition of the troops, whether they should go up the hill or remain an Twenty-eighth street, or come in to the round-house. They were asking our opinion. I remember, they asked Mr. Cassatt's opinion. I told Mr. Cassatt that I did not think he had any opinion. I remained there, and Mr. Cassatt with me. Before I left they decided that they were going to take the shops and the round-house to protect their men. I left, promising to send provisions, and went to the Union depot where I remained until some time in the night, and then went to Blairsville. When I left Mr. Cassatt, we had word that Brinton had gone to the Allegheny side, by the West Penn. That was what induced me to go to Blairsville. Not knowing where to go to, I felt that was my head-quarters for the time, we being compelled to run trains over the West Penn. Q. When did you arrive at Blairsville? A. On Monday morning. Q. When did General Brinton's command arrive there? A. I think that afternoon or evening. It might have been the next morning, but I think it was that evening. The next day, though, I was ordered to remain at Blairsville. I met this committee. Train-master Geyer wanted me to come down. I came down Tuesday, I think, or it might have been Wednesday morning, but I met the committee with the confidence that everything was going to be settled, but they brought this paper out that I told you was presented to me at Pittsburg, and with the committee that met me, instead of being very old men that we considered loyal men, there were some members of the committee who were among the suspended men. Nevertheless, I communicated the whole petition to President Scott, and asked for a reply. Mr. Scott's reply was in substance what Senator Scott told you was their reply to the citizens here, namely: that the welfare of the country would not allow him to give way to the men at the present time; that there were other interests involved, and that if they would go to work to start the trains again he would be glad to receive them. The conference with that committee amounted to nothing. The fact of the matter was, I was caught in a trap. I came down to see my old loyal men, and found suspended men, who, in an official way, I could not deal with, not being in our employ. A question was put to me this morning about the number of men suspended. I do not know how many suspended men we had at that time. I then came to Pittsburgh. I had orders to repair the damage, and try to get the main track through to the Union depot as quickly as possible, to gather up the force then scattered through the city, and the men who had gone to their homes, to repair the track and get to Union depot as quickly as possible. I went to the mayor, and asked him if we would commence work there if he would give protection. He said he would. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What day was that? A. I think Thursday. I was gathering up the men, but was cautioned by some of the citizens not to go out and work too brash in the beginning--not to take too many men about the ruins to clear them off, but to commence moderately, explaining the feeling of the city, how matters were not quiet there, and that delayed me some days. I met Governor Hartranft at Blairsville before I left, going to Harrisburg. After he came here we got a large force. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you recollect the day he arrived here? A. As I have said, it was all one day to me. He came here with a force, and we went to work with a large force and commenced repairing the damage. On the Sabbath after--that was the Sabbath after the Sabbath succeeding the Saturday of the fight, we arranged to move our trains, and we then had force enough to move all the trains, as we had during all the time, with the exception that this time the men asked for the military to be sent with each train, to get them through the coal regions, and through Johnstown. That matter was arranged with Governor Hartranft to send a lot of soldiers with the men, to get them through the different points where we had trouble. I think it was the first or second train that went out from Pittsburgh on that Sabbath evening that was wrecked at Spring Hill, by a switch being removed by some parties while the train was passing over. From that Saturday night or Monday morning next, we gradually sent more trains and more trains, until we got our road running as heretofore, and gradually repaired the damages. Governor Hartranft stayed here a few days, and the committees urged them to stay until, at least, he left for Scranton. By Mr. Means: Q. You stated that when you commenced work you commenced with a small force, and that after Governor Hartranft arrived with the troops, then you increased your force? A. Yes, sir; to as many men as we could work. Q. Did you feel perfectly safe, after the Governor arrived with the troops, in going to work? A. Yes. We had a large body of men. Q. It was under their protection that you felt safe? A. It was only under their protection. Q. Did you feel safe from another demonstration of the railroad employés, or from any other source? A. I have no hesitation in saying that we were never afraid of our own men. So far as our own men striking we were not afraid. We were perfectly able to manage our own men, so far as our own employés were concerned, if you took away from us the men suspended. But I do not pretend to say that we were not afraid of the party or parties they brought. But I know nothing about that, of my own personal knowledge. I say this: We always had enough men to move our trains, if other parties had not come in. Who they were brought by, I do not know. Q. Your own men would never have given you any trouble, had not outsiders interfered? A. I say that, but do not pretend to say who brought them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It was General Brinton's command which was present when the military dispersed the crowd by their fire. Was not any portion of General Pearson's command present? A. General Pearson's command was at Twenty-eighth street. There were very few of the soldiers and some of the officers at Twenty-eighth street. The battery I had taken up on Saturday morning and some few men were there, and General Pearson's command was on the hill. Q. Can you tell me why they did not hold their position that they then occupied--the militia. What necessity was there for retiring to the round house? A. I knew what they thought--it was that they were coming under cover to prevent them from being struck. I was not a military man. However, I know what I should have done. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What motives actuated them, after dispersing the crowd, in retiring their troops to the flat position of the street? A. After dispersing the crowd, immediately the crowd--not that crowd, perhaps, but other crowds came back in front of my office--a great crowd. They were marching by and gathering from all quarters. By dispersing the crowd, I mean they all ran away, and then they commenced immediately coming back, and I had pretty hard work to come down to the office. The crowds were coming up the railway as I was coming down to the Union depot. All I can say is, they said that the reason for going to the round house was to get under cover. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was any effort made by the military to drive back that crowd when they commenced to reassemble? A. I was in the office at that time. Q. Only General Brinton's command went into the round-house? A. General Pearson's command, I think, was dispersed, but I do not know it. I know this, that there were there soldiers that came with General Brinton's command, because some of them came down to the Union depot with messages. Q. Had any property been fired or burned at that time? A. Up to the time that I left no property had been burned. By Mr. Means: Q. Would it not have been natural, under military discipline, for the military to have held their position when they had obtained a position? A. I think they ought to have gone up on the hill. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. When you returned from Blairsville, you said you expected to meet your old employés. Now, during all these negotiations, were the old men and the married men, that you have spoken of as being retained in your employ, engaged in this riot? A. Not to my personal knowledge or observation. The majority of them were running. Q. Did they make any complaint or any demand upon the company of any kind? A. The general remarks of these men then were that they had nothing to do with this riot. Some of them said they ought to have the ten per cent. put back, but all deprecated this trouble, and said they had nothing to do with it. Q. Were they ready to go to work at all times when you wanted them? A. They always professed to be, but we never tried them to Sunday night, and then they wanted protection, and when we gave them protection they went out. The following is the paper of the committee appointed by the employés making certain demands, to which I have already alluded in my testimony: BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS, PITTSBURGH DIVISION, NO. 50, PITTSBURGH, PA., _July 20, 1877_. _To the Superintendent Western Division Pennsylvania Railroad_: _First._ We, the undersigned committee, appointed by the employés of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, do hereby demand from the said company, through the proper officers of said company, the wages as per departments of engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, and flagmen as received prior to June 1, 1877. _Second._ That each and every employé that has been dismissed for taking part or parts in said strikes, to be restored to their respective positions. _Third._ That the classification of each said department be abolished now and forever hereafter. _Fourth._ That engineers and conductors receive the wages as received by said engineers and conductors of the highest class prior to June 1, 1877. _Fifth._ That the running of double trains be abolished, excepting coal trains. _Sixth._ That each and every engine, whether road or shifting, shall have its own fireman. Respectfully submitted to you for immediate consideration. J. S. MCCAULEY, D. H. NEWHARD, JOHN SHANA, G. HARRIS, JOHN P. KESSLER, _Committee_. In regard to the classification mentioned in the paper, I will say this, that there is no classification in brakemen or flagmen. When you come to the conductors, they receive a certain rate, which I do not remember, for the first year, and ten per cent. over that for the second, and ten per cent. over that for the third, where they remain so long conductors. Now come the engineers. When promoted from firemen to engineers, they receive a certain rate, and the second year ten per cent. more, and the third year ten per cent. more, and the fourth year ten per cent. more--four classifications. That arrangement was made at their request, some four years ago, perhaps longer. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. These men were men who would have been suspended under the orders to run double-headers? A. No. These men had taken such an active part previous to this Saturday, that I do not think they would have been kept in our employ, but we had no opportunity to discharge them. * * * * * David M. Watt, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At East Liberty, on the line of the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. You are in the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. Yes; in the capacity of chief clerk of the Pittsburg division. Q. How long have you been employed in that capacity? A. It will be fourteen years in July next. Q. You were filling the place of Mr. Pitcairn on the Thursday before the riot occurred? A. Yes; during his absence. Q. Have you any knowledge of any disagreements between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and their employés prior to that date? A. There are continually matters coming up for settlement in the superintendent's office. Q. But disagreements leading to the riots? A. There were none to my knowledge. Had there been, I should have known it. Q. Had there been any reduction in wages? A. Yes; a reduction of ten per cent., which had been notified in May, to take effect on all the employés from and after June 1. By Senator Yutzy: Q. All employés? A. Except those whose pay amounted to one dollar per day, or who were paid by the month, and whose pay amounted to the rate of one dollar per day or less. Q. Did that cause any complaint from the employés? A. We were compelled to reduce our force on account of the condition of business. The volume of traffic governs the amount of wages, and the number of men we work. We had more men than we had the opportunity to give full time to. It was decided to reduce the force after the 1st of June, and the idea was to select the older men, and the men who by their services had proven themselves good and capable. To retain these and let the single men go, so as to give the married men a chance to make all the time we could afford to give them in the running of the traffic. It was also decided to run all the trains double-headers. A portion of them had been running for years as double-headers, but a notice was issued in July, advising all the employés that on and after a certain date--July 19, was the date fixed upon--all trains to and from Derry would be run as double trains. No complaint in the interval, between the date of the issuing of the order and the date upon which it was to go into effect, had been made at the superintendent's office, to either the superintendent or myself. Nor had there been any, so far as we had knowledge, to any of the subordinate officers, such as train-masters and others. Some of the men complained, of course, at not having work. It was a mooted question as to who would be the ones to go off. Q. What date was that order to go into effect? A. Upon July 19; Thursday. Mr. Pitcairn had arranged to go east on Thursday, July 19, in the day express, and I came to town, reaching the office about eight and a half o'clock in the morning, and up to that time no trouble had occurred, nor was any anticipated by the train-masters nor any one in our employ. About the time the eight-forty's--the extras--were to leave, the dispatcher came to the office and reported that some of the men had refused to go out. I made inquiry as to the reason of their refusal, and was told that they refused to go out on account of its being a double-header. Conductor Ryan was the man whose train did not go out. In the making up of his train he was ready to go out, but his men refused to go. I then instructed the dispatcher to call upon all the men on the road, with those out at the train-men's room. He called upon, I believe, some twenty-five men, brakemen, who refused to go out. They gave different reasons, some because they were double-headers, and some because they would not go if others did not go. Mr. Garrett, the assistant train-master, came in on the train that reaches there about nine o'clock. I sent for him, and told him what had been reported to me, and asked him to go out and see the men and see what they wanted, and report. Mr. Garrett, and Mr. McCabe, and Mr. Hunter, dispatchers, all three tried to induce the men to go out, but these twenty-five that had first refused got the balance to join them in refusing to man the trains. Mr. Garrett, I believe, requested Mr. McCabe, the general yard dispatcher, to make up a crew from the yard brakemen to man that train. Conductor Ryan was at all times ready to go out, and the engineers belonging to that train professed a readiness to run. We had a number of conductors there ready to run, and Conductor Gordon was the man who was going to take the train out after Mr. McCabe had secured the crew among his yard men. The crew, in making up their train, were assaulted with stones, and links, and pins, and driven from the train by a number of those men who had first refused to go out. I found that we were unable to get the train out. Then it came time for the nine-forty's to go out. In the meantime the crowd had increased somewhat, and they had taken possession of the switch which is west of Twenty-eighth street, leading on to the main track, over which a train to go east would have to be moved. It was reported to me that they would not allow the engine to go over that switch. The crowd was increasing. I then started, after a consultation with Mr. Garrett and other men there, to call upon the mayor. I asked that he should protect us in the movement of our trains, by removing from Twenty-eighth street, or that immediate neighborhood, those parties interfering with the switches. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you call in person upon the mayor? A. I did; between ten and eleven o'clock. I drove to the mayor's office, and stated the trouble to him, and called upon him in the name of the company for protection. He replied that he had no force. Q. Mayor McCarthy? A. Yes; he said that the day-light force had been taken off, probably, about the 1st of July, and that he had nothing but the night force. I asked him to give me the front office force. He said he could not send them away. I told him I must have protection of some kind. He said that he might send out and gather up a force. He wanted to know how many men I wanted. I told him if he would send up ten men in uniform, that with our own force from the depot, if he could go up to the ground with me, and I had a buggy to take him, I thought the trouble would be all over before twelve o'clock. I thought the simple fact of his presence, without the police, would disperse the crowd there at that time. He refused to go, saying that he could not leave the office. I rather urged the matter upon him. The mayor then said he had been sick, and was not fit to go. He gathered a force of some ten men, I believe, and sent officer Charles McGovern, one of the front office men, in charge of them. They were to report at the Union depot, and be moved from there by a passenger car to run especially to Twenty-eighth street. Before the force was sent, the question was asked of me, who was to pay for the men. Q. By whom? A. The question was suggested by Mr. O'Mora, and addressed to the mayor. The mayor then addressed me, and desired to know whether I was in a position to assume the expense. I told him certainly, that I must have protection, and that if he could not give the force, and I must pay for it, I was then ready, and would become responsible for the payment of the men. I went to the outer depot, and got there a few minutes before the squad of police arrived. I walked up to Twenty-eighth street, in company with one of the dispatchers, I think McCabe, and was then advised that we could not turn the switch, that those parties held the switch, and would not allow the engine to back down. The engineer was John Sweeny, and the conductor was S. K. Moore. We wanted to take the engine down to couple on to a draft of cars to take them out on the Wilkensburg siding. I directed Moore to turn the switch. He refused, saying to me that he was afraid, that there were men there to shoot him the moment he attempted to turn the switch. I replied: "Very good, I will turn the switch," and I made a step forward for the purpose of getting to the switch, when the crowd gathered around me, and a brakeman by the name of D. D. Davis, who, I believe, at the time was in the employ of the Pan Handle road, or else a discharged employé from there--he was not in our employ--jumped in front of me, and waving his hand, or his hat, called out: "Boys, we will die right here." I placed my hand upon his coat, and called upon officer McGovern to arrest him. While my hand was upon his coat, some one delivered a blow, and hit me in the eye. That was from behind this man Davis. Immediately an attempt was made on the part of the police officers to arrest him. Others interested with him were throwing themselves in the way of the police officers to prevent the capture, but he was finally captured, and taken to the station-house. Prior to that time, however, I had reported to Mr. Pitcairn on the day express east that there was trouble, but that I did not anticipate it would amount to a great deal, and that he need not hurry home, unless further advised by me. The first place I could reach him was at Altoona. After having been struck, and finding the crowd increasing, and determined to prevent the running of the trains, I made a still further report, stating the condition of things, and he came back to Pittsburgh on the next train on which he could reach here, the fast line west that night. After I was struck, I believe I directed Mr. Smith to write a message, either in my name, or in Mr. Pitcairn's, I do not recollect, and addressed to the mayor, calling upon him for an additional force of not less than fifty men. It may have been a portion of those men who came up on the Atlantic express, six or eight, in charge of William J. White. Mr. Garrett reported from Torrens an immense crowd gathered there. I went up on the Atlantic with this police force to try to endeavor to get the stock. There were forty-six cars, all loaded with stock, waiting for this train to come out. We expected every moment to get some train started. Mr. Garrett had made an arrangement to side track some train coming west, and to take the engines and turn them at Torrens, and go east with the stock. They were there interfered with by quite a large crowd, who notified the employés on the trains that had come west that they must not couple to or touch the cars, intimidating them and threatening that they would be killed, or that something would happen. Q. Who composed that crowd? A. A number of railroad employés of our road and other roads and parties I didn't know, but supposed them to be not railroad men. Q. Who seemed to be leading the crowd at Torrens? A. A man who had been in our employ until the morning of Thursday--Andrew Hice. He notified the parties that he would be damned if any stock should move there, and that no train should pass there until the matter was settled. Q. Was he an engineer? A. He had been at one time a conductor on the road. Up until that Thursday morning he was in the employ of the company as a flagman. I might here state that when I directed Mr. Garrett to go out and see the men, he was told to notify all those employés who were called upon, and who refused to go out, that they might consider themselves as discharged. One party was paid off immediately; the others had not come for their pay, and nothing was said about paying or reporting them discharged until after the troubles were over. Q. Did you have any conversation with those men yourself at that time? A. Which men? Q. With that crowd--those leaders? A. I did have a conversation at Twenty-eighth street, before going to Torrens. I called upon the crowd to disperse and leave the ground of the company, that we proposed to move our trains, and did not desire to have any trouble. Q. Did they make any demands at that time, and if so, what were the nature of those demands? A. They did not. They simply said it was a question of bread or blood with them. At Torrens I had a conversation with the engineers and conductors of the trains coming west, and tried to persuade them to couple on to the stock and go ahead. They, however, refused, and gave as a reason, that they were afraid for their lives to do so. Mr. Thomas Scott, day stock agent at East Liberty, and the dispatcher both said to the crews that they would couple the cars if they would back the engines; but the crews were too much intimidated to do that. Mr. Garrett started with those engines to go east, and was to stop at Wilkensburg to take there a draft of twenty-two to thirty-two freight cars, and start for Derry with them. He and I had an understanding that I would attempt to get the stock from there somehow. I was to advise him after he left whether he might expect it. We gave it out that the stock was to be unloaded, and the shifting engine at the station, there for the purpose of shifting around the yard, backed down against the stock, and, that being coupled to the train, they started at once, and before they discovered what we were after, the train was out of reach, and this train that Mr. Garrett had taken east stopped and took on the stock at Walls. This was the last stock that we got away from East Liberty. East Liberty is four and five tenths miles, and Torrens is half a mile further east. I staid at Torrens waiting the movements of a train from Pittsburgh--the train that should come out in the afternoon. An attempt was made about four o'clock to move that train. A crowd interfered after the engines had started, and the engineers left their engines, and the crews gave up the trains. I then came back to Pittsburgh and went to the office, and made a still further report to Mr. Pitcairn. I then drove again to the mayor's office. I met Captain Bachelor at the office. He wanted to know if he could do me any service. Q. He called in the capacity of a private citizen? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Who is he? A. The president of the Mason's bank. I found, on inquiry, that the mayor was not about when I got to his office. I was informed by his clerk, Mr. Metzgar, that he had gone out to Castle Shannon in the afternoon. That his wife was sick, and that he had gone to see her. I then asked whether anything could be done to call out the night force, fearing from the way the crowd was increasing that there might be considerable trouble. They said they could not send the police force out there and leave the balance of the city unprotected. I then drove up here to the sheriff's office--or rather the captain drove up--and found all closed here. I then drove to the sheriff's residence, on Washington street, and they replied that he was out of the city, but was expected back during the evening. I then went back to the office, and found that we could not make any movement that night, though we held the crews ready to go in case we had a chance to move. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What night was this? A. It was on Thursday night. I reported the condition of affairs to Mr. John Scott, who had called at the office on his way into town, in pursuance of a message from the east, to consult with Mr. Pitcairn. During that night, and before twelve o'clock, the crowd was accumulating, and had entire possession of the tracks at Twenty-eighth street, so that we were unable to move even the engines engaged in the yard transfer work. The engineers had all been notified to put up their engines, and go into the house, and the movement of stock was interfered with. The movement of stock from the western roads--some was turned back. There seemed to be some trouble among the parties themselves as to whether the stock should go on or be sent back. I called at the office of the Pennsylvania company, to get the Honorable John Scott to go with me, and we called upon the sheriff in the name of the company for protection, and stated all that had been done up to that time. The sheriff got his deputy, who lived across the way, and we all drove out to the outer depot. On the way out we saw Mr. Pitcairn walking up, and took him in and rode to the outer depot--I think a little after twelve o'clock, midnight; the sheriff, after a consultation, went with General Pearson and some twenty or thirty men of our employés, myself among the number, to Twenty-eighth street. He there mounted upon a plank leading up on to a gondola, so that his head was above the crowd, and addressed them, advising them to leave and go to their homes, stating what his duty would be in case they did not go. He was greeted with all sorts of vile abuse, and told to go home. I will not repeat the language. He found he could do nothing there with them. He was jeered at, and while he was addressing the crowd pistol shots were fired in the air. That crowd was composed of some few railroad men, but the majority were not railroad men--a great number of them were mill men, and some of them with no occupation at all. Q. How large was the crowd at that time? A. I should judge in the neighborhood of two hundred men. The sheriff then went back to the superintendent's office, and entered into communication with Harrisburg and other points, sending the telegrams as described by Mr. Scott. There was no other attempt made that night to move anything, except stock to the stockyard from the connecting lines. Q. What occurred on Friday morning? A. We had crews brought in from Derry--that is the train-masters. They came in as passengers, ready to take the trains east. The majority of the engineers, up to this time, had professed their entire willingness to run at any and all times, but the crowd, on Friday, had increased to such an extent that it was not deemed prudent to attempt to start the trains without some protection afforded to the men running them, at least through the crowd. Very little was done during Friday, except the movement of stock. Friday night the troops were moved, the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments, I believe, to the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street. I expected on Saturday morning that we would start our trains without much trouble. I believe they took almost complete and entire possession of Twenty-eighth street and the switches that we needed to get our trains out. Q. That is the troops took possession? A. Yes; they had full possession of Twenty-eighth street on Saturday morning. Q. And all the switches you needed to get your trains out? A. Yes. But the crowd assembled in very large numbers, and it was not long before the crowd had possession of them, and all the ground. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Driving the troops off? A. There was no conflict at all. The troops were stationed, one regiment on the hillside, probably some two hundred feet back from the line of the railroad, with their arms stacked, and another regiment was stationed on the road leading up to the hospital grounds, east of Twenty-eighth street, with their arms stacked, and a few men were on the crossing. By Mr. Means: Q. I want to know if those troops left their arms stacked while the crowd was still accumulating? A. The crowd was in and about there. Do you mean whether or not the crowd could have taken possession of any of those arms without interference? Q. No; but whether while the crowd was still accumulating the troops had their arms stacked? A. The crowd was accumulating, and continued accumulating up to the time of the firing. Q. And the arms were still stacked? A. Yes, sir; while I was there. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. That is Friday evening? A. No; Saturday morning. Mr. Pitcairn, and Mr. Cassett, and General Pearson, and other officers were at the Union depot. I remained at Twenty-sixth street, awaiting any instruction that might be sent me. I was advised by Mr. Pitcairn to hold myself in readiness to move some trains on Saturday afternoon--that the sheriff and posse were coming up the track, and that they would be followed by the troops, and that he expected that the crowd would be dispersed, and that we would be furnished a sufficient guard to place upon each one of those trains to move them out beyond Torrens, or to any other point where we might expect trouble. I waited, and met them as they came up. They were followed by quite a large concourse of persons. The troops held the track about opposite Twenty-fifth street, and there the Second brigade of the Philadelphia troops was left. I do not now remember the name of the general in command. However I was left with him. The First brigade moved on to Twenty-eighth street. This Second brigade threw out a skirmish line across the entire yard, with instructions from the general to drive back everybody. It was General Loud. He threw out a skirmish line and drove all parties west a sufficient distance for us to couple together all our cars and to make up our trains to go out. Q. Drove them towards the city, you mean? A. Yes; quite a crowd of the transfer clerks, and some of our engineers, and oil men, and repair men were on the tops of the cars, who claimed to be employés, and had business there. General Loud sent an officer to me and asked if they were to remain there or whether we wanted them. I told him that we did not want anybody within a certain distance. When we had made attempts, prior to that, to couple up the trains, the links and pins all along had been taken out. I went down and advised the transfer clerks to go into the office, and I told the officer that when any of our men had business to be inside, they should be let through, and I told them that if we wanted them we could advise them. After having cleared off that space, we heard firing. I looked up in the direction of Twenty-eighth street, and saw a crowd coming down, a portion of them coming down towards where I was, right opposite the mouth of Twenty-sixth street. Seeing the crowd coming, I had the gate thrown open--the gate that closes the shops and the exit gate on Liberty street thrown open--and directed colonel, some one of the Greys, to throw a body across to prevent them going down the space he had cleared, and that we could turn them out at that point out on Twenty-sixth street. That firing occurred about five o'clock. When I speak of time in my testimony, I speak altogether of railroad time. There was no further attempt made that night to start trains. The excitement was so great, and it was quite late, so the men refused to go for fear of being thrown off the track at some point on the road. I believe that brings me up to the time of the firing. Q. You had a space sufficient cleared to enable you to get your cars out? A. Our engines were backed down from the round-house on to those tracks that the trains were standing on. We had cleared off a space there from the side hill to the line of the "transfer" clear of anyone and everyone. Q. What prevented you from moving out your trains at that time? A. The men got frightened at the firing, and started off. They were afraid that if they made an attempt at that time in that excitement that they would be thrown from the track. Q. Where were the militia then? A. General Loud was still in his position between Twenty-sixth street, and, I should judge, Twenty-fourth. The First division was at Twenty-eighth street, and a considerable portion of the crowd was between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth streets, between the two bodies of troops. I asked the colonel in charge of this Grey regiment not to allow his men to fire on the crowd coming down, that they could be turned out at Twenty-sixth street, and that some of our men were there who were all right. He got in front of his men and cautioned them. He first gave the command to a captain to have his men load their pieces. That was done, and then he cautioned his men, saying it was a very delicate matter, indeed, and that the men should be very careful, and that when there was any necessity for any firing that the men must remember that he would give the command. Q. How long did the troops remain stationed as you have described? A. I cannot answer that as to time. I went to the office and there saw General Pearson and General Brinton, and some of the others in consultation. They were all close around the shops, and they then turned and moved into the shops. I suppose it was then about six o'clock. Q. Where did the troops stay during the night? A. I was not there during the night. Q. Do you know from your own knowledge? A. They stayed in what we call the lower round-house and lock-shops. Q. What troops stayed there? A. I understand the Philadelphia troops, General Brinton's command, and the two pieces belonging to the battery here were taken into the round-house. The Fourteenth regiment had been stationed at the transfer building. The reason, I think, for their going into the shops, as I understood it, was that the men who were there had come without any preparation, and as there were to be no trains run out that night, they would go into the shops to be as comfortable as possible. Q. Was any further effort made during that night to start any trains? A. We were unable to make any efforts further. Q. Can you tell us what became of the crowd during the night? A. The crowd around the buildings accumulated so that in front of the office, at the corner of Twenty-sixth and Liberty, and for some distance on either side of it--that being the head-quarters--the office--they had taken possession of Mr. Pitcairn's office for the head-quarters--the crowd was very dense, and packed down Twenty-sixth street, probably half way to Penn, and on Liberty street, in every direction, for a square--an immense crowd of people yelling with rage against the troops. Q. How many would you judge were there at that time? A. Not less than five thousand people. Q. Did they remain in force during all the night? A. I was not there during all the time, but I understood they were constantly accumulating. Q. Until Sunday morning? A. Yes, sir. Q. How large was the crowd on Sunday morning? A. I cannot answer that. I was on the side hill early on Sunday morning, and I could see immense crowds in all directions moving up Liberty street. Q. Can you tell us what the result of that firing, at the point cleared, was as to loss of life? A. I am not prepared to answer that. If you will remember, I was stationed at Twenty-sixth street, and was not at Twenty-eighth street. At the time of the firing, I was with the second brigade of General Brinton's division. There passed me, and were taken into our office, several soldiers belonging to the First regiment, and a boy who was shot down. I should judge a boy about twelve or fourteen years of age. There were two men carrying him. Quite a number of wounded soldiers were taken to the office, and they sent for Doctor Hamilton. Q. Can you state what efforts were made, after the troops were taken into the round-house and the shops, by the officers of the militia to drive back the crowd and disperse it there that night or Sunday morning, or during the day of Sunday? A. When they went into the round-house, I understood they would keep under cover. I do not think, from all I understood, it was the intention of the troops to come into any collision. They felt that they were brought there to protect the movement of trains, and that there would be a guard go out on each train, after having obtained possession of the Twenty-eighth street switches. Q. What time did the firing of cars commence by the mob? A. I cannot answer that from my own knowledge. I believe in the neighborhood of ten o'clock. Q. Saturday night? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was any attempt made by the officers of the troops, or by the civil authorities, either of the county or city, to prevent that, and to drive back the crowd when they began to fire the cars and destroy property? A. I cannot answer that. I did not see any. Q. By any of the authorities? A. I did not see any. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Did it appear that the citizens were in sympathy with the strikers? A. I am a Pittsburgher. Q. But I ask were the citizens in sympathy with the strikers? By Senator Yutzy: I think, Mr. Chairman, that that question ought to be modified. All the citizens were not present. By the witness: A. If you asked me the question whether or not the citizens, or any number of them, came to me and offered their assistance, then I might answer the question. The crowd certainly manifested no disposition to assist in the running of trains. The crowd, of course, was in sympathy. I speak of those who were present at Twenty-eighth street and Twenty-sixth street, on Liberty street, fronting the office, and I should say there were none at all in sympathy with the railroad company, but the soldiers. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. But that does not answer my question. I desire to know whether the citizens were not in sympathy with the strikers? By Senator Yutzy: I repeat, Mr. Chairman, that I do not think this question should be put to the witness. I move that the committee retire for a few moments' consultation. This motion being agreed to, the committee retired. Upon returning, the chairman of the committee announced to the witness that the question would not be pressed for the present. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time did the first firing occur? A. In the neighborhood of five o'clock. It was, probably, a few minutes after five o'clock. Q. But when did the first firing occur--that is, when was the fire first kindled by the mob? A. In the neighborhood of ten o'clock. Q. Was any effort made by the railroad company, during the night, to prevent the firing and destruction of property? A. I would hardly know how to answer that. The railroad employés that we had considered loyal and ready to run, when we desired them to go on the trains, had gone to their homes, it not being deemed prudent to run any trains that night. I left the outer depot in the neighborhood of seven o'clock, to go down to the Union depot for supper, and to arrange for the sending of supper for General Pearson's staff, and General Brinton's staff, and all his brigade generals' staff. I went to the Union depot with Mr. Pitcairn and Mr. Cassatt, and, I think, Colonel Smith, on engine forty-five. At that time the military were in possession of the shops and round-house, and I did not anticipate that anything would be done until daylight. The firing of the cars was, I understand, up at Lawrenceville, or just within sight of there, and the cars were dropped down, and the switches so turned that they would run towards the round-house--the burning cars, these, of course, would communicate to other cars. Q. Would the cars run themselves? A. It is down grade from East Liberty to Lawrenceville, and there a moderate down grade until about Twenty-sixth street, where there is a short level space, probably, two or three squares, and then there is an up grade west of that point until you reach about opposite St. Bridget's church, where again it is down grade, so that a car started from the east would run towards the round-house, and a car started from the west end of the yard would run toward the round-house. Q. Do you know how long the troops remained in the round-house? A. I understand they left between five and six o'clock that morning. Q. Sunday morning? A. Yes. Q. You were not present there? A. No. Q. You do not know what occurred from your own knowledge? A. Except from what I saw from the hillside. Q. You were present during the day--Sunday? A. No. Q. Were you where you could see the movement of the rioters? A. Not after four o'clock, Sunday morning. Q. How long did the riotous proceedings continue--in other words, when did the mob disperse and cease their burning and destruction of property? A. I left town on Sunday night at nine o'clock, and I understand they were still riotous. Of my own knowledge I know nothing after that time. Our head-quarters were at Blairsville intersection. Q. When did you first get control of your road and property at this point? A. Mr. Pitcairn came west from Blairsville intersection on Wednesday, July 25, I think on the Johnstown accommodation. We were then running our through connections over the West Penn Division, from Allegheny city to Blairsville intersection, and on the main line as far as East Liberty, our mail trains, and our passenger trains, and our Uniontown express over the south-west road. Q. Were you present when the troops fired upon the crowd? If so, state all the circumstances that took place at that time? A. I have already said that I was not at Twenty-eighth street at the time of the firing, but was with General Loud at Twenty-sixth street. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You know nothing then as to what transpired at Twenty-eighth street? A. Except by seeing the crowd running, and hearing the firing, which was of an irregular character--not a volley at all. By Mr. Means: Q. The firing was something like the firing of a skirmish line? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who composed the crowd at that time? Were they railroad employés or stragglers in general, or were there any other persons in the vicinity mixed with the crowd to any extent? A. There was quite a very large number of lookers on, stationed on the hill side above--men, women, and children, scattered all along, probably for a distance of fifty thousand feet. Q. How close were they to the persons carrying on the riot? A. Probably from a hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above them. And at Twenty-eighth street, and east and west of Twenty-eighth street, and covering all of the tracks before the troops came up, there were many people. All our trains passing--we were running all the accommodation trains east and west--were boarded at Twenty-eighth street by the crowd, who filled them up, and ran through the cars, and piled upon the engines, so as to seriously interfere with the men in the performance of their duties. The crowd, many through curiosity, went upon the trains in such force that it was useless for any of our men to attempt to collect fare. The engines were perfectly black, both in front of the engine and the tank and the platform. A great number of those men got on and would go through the trains to see who was in them, before they would let them proceed. Q. Were the passenger trains interfered with by the mob? A. All were stopped at Twenty-eighth street, and the mob went through and examined each and every train for soldiers. Q. And then allowed them to go on? A. Sometimes it was a very serious question. If we had not had some engineers determined that they were going to try to get their trains through, they would have cut the passenger trains off and allowed nothing but mail cars to go. By Mr. Means: Q. On the 23d of July, did the sheriff not throw a guard around the burned district? A. I was stationed then at Blairsville Intersection, and I cannot answer that question of my own knowledge. Q. Then you do not know whether on or after the 23d day of July the railroad company could or could not have had entire control, if they had seen fit? A. Most decidedly they could not, simply for the fact that they could not get beyond Lawrenceville station. Q. But did not the sheriff throw a guard around the burned district? A. I don't know. I was not in the city on the 23d of July. But the tracks were all burned between Thirty-third street, or Lawrenceville, and the Union depot. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, FRIDAY, _February 8, 1878_. MORNING SESSION. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at ten o'clock, A.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. The first witness examined was: * * * * * Norman M. Smith, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside and what your official connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company is? A. I reside in the Twenty-second ward of Pittsburgh. I am manager of the Pittsburgh transfer station. Q. How long have you filled that position? A. About twelve and a half years. Q. State to the committee, in your own way, what the causes were that led to the riot, or what the disagreements were between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and their employés, and give the history of what you saw. A. My position was not such that I can speak from personal observation as to the causes. Of course, I understood them to be the ten per cent. reduction, which had taken place on the 1st of June, and after that the increased running of double-headers on freight trains. I understood these to be the causes. My more immediate connection with the trouble commenced on the morning of Thursday, July 19. About nine o'clock that morning my foreman came to me, and informed me that there was difficulty in getting out our east bound freights--that the train men had refused to go out, unless the trains stopped running as double-headers. I went from my office up to the outer depot, and there found that the crews had refused to run. Shortly after that I met Mr. Garrett, the assistant train master, and Mr. McCabe, the general dispatcher, and they informed me that they were going to the transfer station to detail our yard crews to run along the road. I remained there long enough to see one of the crews arrive. They came and attempted to couple a caboose car on one of the engines. A brakeman by the name of Gerry was making the coupling, when he was attacked by a number of train men, and driven away with a shower of stones, and links, and coupling-pins. I saw him struck. A further effort to remove the train was not made. About a quarter before twelve, I walked up to the outer depot again, and just at that moment a car came up with some ten or a dozen policemen. I then met Mr. Watt, and walked with him and the policemen up to Twenty-eighth street. A yard engine was standing on the switch there, and an attempt was made to get it out. Mr. Watt instructed a conductor named Moore to turn the switch, in order to let the engine out. Moore declined to do it, giving as his reason that he had been threatened with violence if he did so. Mr. Watt then made the attempt to turn the switch himself. Just at that moment, a man standing there raised his hand, perhaps with his hat in it, and said: "Come on, boys, we will die right here." Mr. Watt directed an officer to arrest him, and at that moment he was struck, by a man named McCullough, in the eye. The policemen made a rush on McCullough, and, after being interfered with by his friends, he was arrested. Mr. Watt then requested me to go to the telegraph office, and telegraph to Mayor McCarthy for fifty additional policemen. I sent a message, as near as I recollect, in these words: "Please send fifty additional policemen at once," and signed Mr. Watt's name to it. That message went a quarter before one, Philadelphia time. I then returned to Twenty-eighth street, and remained there perhaps two hours, and then returned to my office about three o'clock, and then returned to the outer depot. An additional police force of perhaps five or six men had responded to the call for fifty. A train was made up, two engines were attached to it, and it was ready to move. When the order was given to go ahead, a number of strikers got in front, and signaled it to stop, when it commenced moving. One of the engineers whistled down brakes, and the train stopped. There was some wrangling there, and the engineer of the forward engine, a man named Woodward, got off the engine, and was immediately greeted with cheers by the crowd, and made a hero of. I had an engagement at the house then, and left. I did not return until the next morning. The next morning I found the crowd still at Twenty-eighth street, and the condition of the yard the same as the night before. No trains had been moved. About eleven o'clock, a committee of employés at the transfer station came to the office, and informed us that they intended to strike, unless the ten per cent. was restored. We told them we could only submit their demand to those in authority over us, that we had no function in the matter at all. The committee retired to discuss the matter with their fellow workmen. About twelve o'clock, perhaps a little before, a committee from the strikers--a committee of brakemen, I am told--I was not present at the time--came to the men, and made a speech to them, and told them if they would strike, they would protect them, and guarantee places after the strike was over. A majority of our men then went with this committee that came down in the direction of Twenty-eighth street. I remained on the platform, and saw such of the men as I could, and I found those I talked with were opposed to striking, and ready to go to work; and one by one the men who had gone off with the committee returned, or a number of them. These men said they were led into the thing against their wishes and judgment, and that they were ready to work. Of course, they did not like the reduction, but they must work if they could get it. I told them to leave their names with the foreman, directed him to take them, and told them as soon as they had given their names to return to their homes, and that as soon as we wanted them we would send for them. Our work, of course, had stopped with the stopping of the trains. I remained about the office until four o'clock in the afternoon, and then went to the Union depot. I there met Mr. Pitcairn, and he requested me to remain with him. Shortly after my arrival there, I found that a section of artillery and a portion of the Nineteenth regiment had reported for duty. The Eighteenth regiment, under Colonel Guthrie, I had seen going east on a passenger train, about noon, on the way, I ascertained, to Torrens station. Breck's two guns and the Nineteenth regiment were ready for orders. We started out Liberty street. After we had gone a square or so, we halted, and I heard Senator Scott, and Mr. Thaw, and Mr. Cassatt, and Mr. Pitcairn, and General Pearson in consultation. Certain of these gentlemen deprecated the movement of the troops at that time, thinking that the number was not sufficient to meet the strikers then at Twenty-eighth street, and fearing a precipitation of the conflict. After this consultation, those troops were recalled, and brought on to the platform of the Union depot. A number of us, Mr. Pitcairn, Mr. Cassatt, General Pearson, Mr. Watt, and myself, and, perhaps, others, I do not recollect now, discussed the matter there, and General Pearson said that he would await the arrival of the Fourteenth regiment. When that came, probably about nine o'clock, on Friday the 20th, he proposed moving out the tracks to Twenty-eighth street, and hauling his guns after him. I objected to the movement, and was asked the reasons for my objection. I stated them to be, that I thought that at eight or nine o'clock that night the crowd would be very large, and that the movement would be a mistake. I suggested, instead of that movement, to wait until about three o'clock in the morning, when the crowd would be at a minimum, and then move out Bedford avenue with the Fourteenth regiment, and so give time for the Nineteenth regiment to arrive by the time the ground was cleared by the Fourteenth. Then, if the crowd did not go away, to drive them away, and occupy the hill and crossing, and keep them clear. Then, I thought, we could start the trains. After considerable discussion, that plan was adopted. I remained at the Union depot, and met Adjutant General Latta when he arrived. Q. What time did he arrive? A. On the fast line, that came in about twelve o'clock Friday night--may be a few minutes later. General Latta was advised of the proposed movement, and was particular in his inquiries in regard to it. He first hesitated in authorizing it, fearing a precipitation of the conflict. We argued that the probability of a conflict would be avoided by making that movement; that perhaps there would only be a couple of hundred men there and that we could occupy the place without difficulty, and once in control could keep it without further trouble. After the facts were presented, he declined to interfere with General Pearson's arrangement. About two o'clock, the Fourteenth regiment was ordered to return to the city, with the understanding that as soon as they got to a certain point they were to turn and go out Bedford avenue. Before this, however, I was directed to arrange to have two gondola cars to mount the guns on, and to have two engines to push them up. I was to man them and run them up on parallel tracks, with the Nineteenth regiment supporting them. I went to the depot master, and requested him to get the gondolas, and asked him how many engines he had. He replied that he had one yard shifter. I told him to order out two engines for the Pacific express, and told him I had authority from Mr. Pitcairn to give the order. The engines were ordered out, but the mob refused to allow but one to go. The Fourteenth regiment had started out Bedford avenue. After my return, I started out the track, and went up through the ravine there west of Twenty-eighth street, overlooking the location of the mob, then I passed the Pest house and met the Fourteenth regiment on Bedford avenue, and turned them through the ravine east of the Pest house, explaining the topography of the hill to the commanding officer, telling him how to deploy his regiment. We then moved forward in regimental front. We started a few people on the hill, and they ran down the track. Just as we got to the lower bench of the hill the battery and the Nineteenth regiment arrived on the ground. The crossing was occupied and cleared. We then returned to the Union depot to prepare some provision for the troops. About seven o'clock we started out, Mr. Pitcairn, General Pearson, myself, and others. At Twenty-eighth street we halted, and I called General Pearson's attention to the hill, and the general location. We had some consultation about it, and General Pearson admitted that it was a position to be occupied and held. He then went to the other side of the tank of the engine, and directed somebody to hold the hill and allow nobody to go on it, and to keep the crossings clear, and to allow nobody to come on them. We then went on to Torren's station, to Colonel Guthrie's camp. He gave his orders, and he then said he would return to the city and await the arrival of the Philadelphia troops. The first detachment arrived at one o'clock, and the second about half past two o'clock. They were given a lunch there, and at about four o'clock, perhaps a little after, we started out the tracks. Sheriff Fife, with a posse of perhaps twelve or fifteen men, marched ahead of the column some distance, with warrants for the arrest of certain parties who were supposed to be ringleaders, and Mr. Pitcairn and myself accompanied the sheriff to point out these men. When we came opposite the transfer station, I pointed out a couple of avenues leading in from Liberty street, and said it might be well to guard them, and we made a detail to guard that place. The rest of the column then moved on. We saw, directly, that the hill side, instead of being kept clear was covered with people, and also the crossings. The troops marched up with the First regiment--I think the regiment of Colonel Benson--in advance, and on Twenty-eighth street came into line. Colonel Benson then formed two sides of a square, making the north and south sides of the square, and two companies came up in company front and formed the first side of the square, facing east. The Gatling guns took position in the rear of the east side of the square. Before this square had been formed, Mr. Pitcairn and myself went with the sheriff among the crowd, but were unable to find the parties for whom the sheriff held warrants. We had some discussion there with the strikers, and General Pearson, I observed, passed us going up the hill where the Pittsburgh troops seemed to have been formed. After the square had been formed, we gave up our discussion with those people, and Mr. Pitcairn and myself sat down on some plank about the center of the square. General Pearson passed us and made some remarks. I forget his words. He referred to the thing looking serious, that more troops should be had, and said he was going to telegraph General Latta, and left us, starting in the direction of the telegraph office. Q. What time was that? A. That was about five o'clock. Mr. Pitcairn and myself were chatting together about the situation, when my attention was called to an attempt made by the company that formed the east side of the square to press the crowd back. They formed with arms across, and tried to push the crowd back, but the mob grasped the muskets of some of them. The troops found they could not make any impression, and then the order was given to charge bayonets. Q. Who gave that order? A. I do not know. I simply heard the order given. The troops came to a charge bayonets on the mob. Then I recollect seeing one man--one of the mob with a musket in one hand draw a pistol with the other, and fire, and I saw a man fall--whether he was dodging only or whether he was struck, I do not know. At the same moment one or two other pistol shots were fired, and then a volley of stones and pieces of clinker came from the hill on the sides of the square. A number of the troops were struck down. Several of them fell within two or three feet of me. Then one or two shots were fired from the muskets, and others followed, and a fusillade was kept up for a couple of minutes. Mr. Pitcairn and myself were still sitting there, and I said to him it would be prudent to lie down. We kept close for a moment or two, and as soon as the crowd broke we walked to the north side of the square, and I told a lieutenant there, who was in command of a company, perhaps, that he had better make a right wheel, and drive some people out who had got behind a gondola car loaded with coal there. I believe he acted on my suggestion. At the first firing the crowd had broken and run in every direction. Mr. Pitcairn and myself then returned to his office. There I found General Pearson, and I judged, by his surprise, that I gave him the first intimation he had of the firing. Shortly after Mr. Cassatt came into the room. A few minutes after a gentleman on General Brinton's staff. I think Colonel Wilson came in. He was directed to tell General Brinton to report. General Brinton reported, and, after some consultation, General Brinton suggested a move into the round-house. I think I objected, but to no avail, because, as he said, the mob was driven away and he could go into the round-house and get shelter for his men and give them some rest, and that he could protect the property of the company in case of an attack just as well from the round-house as from the position he then occupied. I said to Mr. Pitcairn that I thought it was a great mistake--that the hill should be occupied; but General Brinton and General Pearson, of course, were the military officers who were in charge of the situation, and for the time the railroad officers had relinquished all control. We remained there some time, and the question of supplies came up--of provision for those men--and Mr. Pitcairn, Mr. Watt, Mr. Cassatt, and myself got on an engine and went to the Union depot, and gave orders for provisions. Those provisions were loaded up and started to the outer depot, and I afterwards understood were captured by the mob. We remained at the Union depot that evening. About ten o'clock a person came and told me I had better leave. I asked for his reason, and he said that the mob were then at Saint Fulvia's church, at Fourteenth and Liberty streets, on their way to the Union depot, and said they were going to hang Mr. Cassatt, Mr. Pitcairn, Mr. Watt, and me. I did not place much reliance on the report, but it was afterwards verified that the mob was there and moving down in that direction. The other three gentlemen went away. I was in a different part of the hotel at the time, and remained there some time, but several friends came to me and urged me to leave. I went out through the front door of the depot, and when I got near the elevator, true enough the mob did come, but I do not know what for. I then got into a carriage and drove to my house. Q. What time was that? A. About a quarter after ten o'clock on Saturday night. I locate the time from the fact that after I got to my home, I threw myself on the bed, and my wife came to me and said the fire alarm was striking from box sixty-four. I said it was the outer depot, and it would be a big fire in a few minutes, but I did not want to be disturbed. I looked at my watch, and it was a quarter to eleven. Shortly afterward I was again awakened to come and look at the fire. I saw at once that it was the oil cars. I slept a few minutes, and then went to the stock yards. At Torrens station I met Colonel Guthrie, and there we chatted a while, and then I returned to the city. Probably about seven or eight o'clock, I am not sure about the hour, in walking up the track, I met some of our clerks, and they told me that my office was on fire, and that everything was burned, and there was no use to go up. I went up far enough to see the fire there, which was then extending, and I went then to the west end of the Union depot in the endeavor to get a few men together to throw some cars off the track to block it. I feared they would set fire to cars, and run them down the track to burn the depot. I got a number of men together and left them in charge of it. They succeeded afterwards in throwing some cars off, and blocking all the tracks but two. The reason of my leaving was, that I recollected that the night before, Saturday night, I had been requested by General Latta to remove a lot of ammunition which had been stored in the store-room at the east end of the Union depot--some twenty or thirty thousand rounds, perhaps more. I had gone there the evening before with a few gentlemen, and loaded this ammunition up on baggage hoppers, and stored it away in the cellar. I thought of the ammunition, and knew it was important to be saved. I left the parties at the cars and went to General Latta, and asked if any arrangement had been made to get the ammunition out. He said, "yes," that he had requested Captain Breck to attend to it, and that he was then at it, but he asked me to go and see if I could render him any assistance. I went to Captain Breck, and found he was making some effort in that direction. I offered him my services, but he said that he had all the assistance that he required, except that he had no wagon. I then went to a livery stable right opposite the depot and got a large express wagon and had it brought over, and Captain Breck said he had ample assistance to load the ammunition up and get it out. Shortly after I went to the Monongahela house, to which General Latta's head-quarter's had been removed. Q. Was that ammunition for the troops? A. It had been brought out with General Brinton's command. Q. What time did it arrive? A. It arrived with the troops that came on Saturday afternoon. It remained in the store-room, into which they put it first, until nine o'clock Saturday night, when those gentlemen and myself loaded it up and took it down into the cellar of the hotel. I went to the Monongahela house. I was anxious to see Mr. Cassatt and Mr. Pitcairn. I found Mr. Cassatt there. Previous to this, information had been received of General Brinton's retiring--that he had gone east, and then we heard he was in the Allegheny cemetery. The question of provisions was uppermost in the mind of everybody for those men, and orders were sent to Allegheny for the different bakers to prepare sandwiches, and get all the provisions ready they could. Mr. Scott, the stock agent at East Liberty, came to the hotel about noon, and said that Colonel Guthrie was anxious about ammunition--that he had but little, and had divided what he had with the Philadelphia troops stopped at Wall's station. I wrote out an order on Captain Breck to give to Mr. Scott what ammunition he wanted, and took it to General Latta, who signed it. I knew Colonel Guthrie's position in regard to ammunition, and in about a quarter of an hour I followed Mr. Scott to the Union depot. I found him, and he said that the party with whom he had come in the buggy to get this ammunition had become demoralized and left, at any rate he could not get the ammunition. I think that was the reason he gave. I walked through the depot, and went to the place where the ammunition was stored, and I found it all remaining there; none of it was removed. I walked on the platform, and found the upper end on fire. I came down and walked through the lower part of the depot, and then up stairs through the hotel. I saw very few people--scarcely anybody. I then returned through the crowd, who were dragging every sort of property away from the robbed cars--got through them, and returned to the Monongahela house. General Latta then expressed an anxiety to form a junction between those troops at Wall's station and General Brinton's command, since ascertained to be in the vicinity of Sharpsburg, and expressed an additional anxiety in regard to the question of provisions. After consultation, I volunteered to do what I could to effect a junction between the two commands. Colonel Guthrie had returned from Torrens station, in citizens dress, to consult with General Latta, as he was unable to make any communication with him because the wires were burned. It was decided that I should take a buggy and communicate between those two detachments, and make what effort I could to get provisions. Mr. Cassatt was to take the north side of the river with a provision wagon, and get through the best he could, and I was to take the south side of the river and get through the best I could. I was to remain at General Brinton's camp until I heard from Mr. Cassatt. An order was also given to Colonel Guthrie to bring his regiment from Torrens station into the city. They thought, perhaps, that that regiment could stop the further burning. That regiment had remained solid and intact through the whole trouble. Q. What time were these orders given? A. About three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. I drove, then, first out to Torrens, and left Major Sellers there, and returned to my house, and changed my clothes, and then started for General Brinton's camp. I went across the Sharpsburg bridge, and then returned and took the river road. Being unacquainted with the location of General Brinton's command, I stopped at a hotel on the road, and endeavored to make some inquiries. I was not interfered with. In consequence of some replies I got, I went on to Aetna, and there ascertained the exact locality of General Brinton, and met Mr. Campbell Herron, of the firm of Spang, Chalfant, & Co., of the large works there. I explained to him the state of the troops in regard to food, and asked if he could help me. He sent for his manager, and directed that everything in the company's store should be turned over to my order. I arranged with the manager that provisions should be loaded up as soon as it was dark, and hauled out to the camp. I then went on to Claremont, and found General Brinton in camp at that point. I told General Brinton that I had orders from General Latta to effect a junction, if possible, between his command and the detachment of his division at Wall's station, under the command of Colonel Rogers. After talking the matter over, we concluded we had best bring them across from Walls, by the way of the Fairview ferry. General Brinton was to take a detachment at daylight to the ferry, and seize the boat, and hold it until we appeared on the opposite bank. I waited there, awaiting word from Mr. Cassatt. At ten o'clock a citizen of Allegheny came from Walls with word for me from Mr. Cassatt. I then started for Walls Station, distant some eighteen miles from that point. I returned by way of Sharpsburg bridge. I lost my way and got in Barren valley, but finally got on the right road again, and reached Walls station about two o'clock in the morning. I found some men there, and supposed it was a picket post of the troops, but found instead it was some men there, who, I suppose, were railroad men or miners. After some parleying with them, they permitted me to go to the house of one of the passenger conductors of the road, and from him I ascertained that the troops had gone to Blairsville. While talking to them, this party had taken my horse and buggy, but after some difficulty I got it back again, and returned to Claremont, and got there about six and a half o'clock, in the morning. I then found that the First brigade of General Brinton's division was loaded on cars, and was just then pulling out on the way to Blairsville. They had been instructed during my absence to report there. I remained until they were all loaded up, and then returned to my home, changed my clothes, and returned to the city. On my arrival at home, I was told that my neighbors had held a meeting, and had organized a vigilance committee, and placed me in command, and I spent the day in obtaining arms and ammunition for the committee. I remained on duty with that committee for the next week, patrolling the streets--twenty miles of streets. On Friday morning or Saturday, about sun rise, I was on the picket post at Torrens station, and there met Governor Hartranft and the troops returning to Pittsburgh. I remained on duty with my patrol. The next Sunday morning I was sent for by Mr. Pitcairn. He told me that he expected to commence moving trains that day, and wanted me to get ready. I got a force of clerks together, and we commenced starting trains, and in a few weeks things resumed there normal condition. Q. Did you endeavour to ascertain whether the outbreak on Thursday was the result of a pre-arranged plan among the railroad employés or not? A. I made no effort to ascertain that. From observation, I think there was a plan in course of arrangement, but I think the execution of it was premature on their part. I believe they did not strike here intentionally, but that it was precipitated by the crews that first refused to go that morning. Q. What facts have led you to that conclusions? A. I know from newspaper reports, and from rumors among the employés, that they were organizing a union of some description, to oppose this reduction. I simply have it from general rumor--from report. Q. Have you ever succeeded in getting anything from the employés themselves--any statement from them that would lead you to that conclusion? A. Nothing that I can re-call. I have heard them talking among themselves, saying that they would be organized by and by--some passing remark of that description, but nothing very tangible. Q. Did this commence prior to the issuing of the order to run double-headers? A. My impression is that it was started with the reduction in pay--the order for it. The order for double-headers affected only the Pennsylvania railroad, but, that for the reduction in pay was general--affecting all the roads. Q. Have you succeeded in gathering any facts from the men, or from any reliable source, to show whether or not there was any understanding among the men on Thursday morning, in relation to a general strike? A. I have not, but from my observation, I should think the thing was not understood at all. It was started by one crew and the others gradually came in. Q. Can you give us the names of the parties for whom the warrants were issued? A. I cannot now. It is a matter of record in this court-house. I think they were bench warrants. Q. What reply did the mayor make to the telegram that was sent calling for fifty more policemen? A. I do not know of a reply of any description. If there had been any reply made it would have come to Mr. Watts. I signed his name. Q. Explain to us the condition of the crowd at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon, when the orders were given to form this junction between Brinton's men and Colonel Roger's men--the crowd about the depot, and from that point out to Lawrenceville? A. I went out on this side of the city. I did not pass up the railroad. At the Union depot, when I was there, there was a crowd of half drunken men and women dragging and hauling away every sort of plunder they could lay their hands on. I saw nobody that claims respectability among the crowd committing any depredation. Of course there were some lookers on. Q. Was the riot still progressing--was the plundering and burning still going on? A. It was at its heights. The fire was then at the east end of the shed, at the Union depot, and by the time I crossed the Ewalt street bridge I looked back and saw the elevator in flames. After that it burned all the way down to Seventh avenue. They were still burning and destroying property and carrying things away. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What kind of property? A. For instance, I saw a woman dragging a sack of salt, another woman a bag of flour in a wheelbarrow, and a great many others carrying leaf tobacco, and some rolling tierces of lard--railroad goods in general--the products of the west going east. Q. Was it all railroad property? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Freight? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Can you tell us whether, at that time, there was any reason to apprehend further destruction of property, not only of the railroad company, but of the city itself? A. There were certainly such reasons. It looked then as if half the city would be burned. Q. State whether or not you recognized any of the train men among the crowd assembled at Twenty-eighth street? A. At what time? Q. On Saturday, I refer to particularly, but at any time during the progress of the riot? A. I know of but one man thus far that I have been able to recognize, and I know their faces. For instance, I can generally tell an employé of the road here--in a great many cases. But I do not know them all by name. There are one or two now under indictment that I have not seen since the riot. I expect to recognize one when I am called on to give my testimony. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know of any requisition being made on the mayor of Pittsburgh or the sheriff of the county for a force to protect the company's property prior to the arrival of the military, and if so, did either of them respond to the call made? A. The only requisition that I know of, to my personal knowledge, was the telegram that I sent myself, that I spoke of before, in which I requested the mayor, in Mr. Watt's name, to send fifty additional policemen at once. From the number of policemen we had that afternoon, I should judge that perhaps eight or ten came. I know of no other requisition of my own knowledge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You know of no requisition being made on the sheriff, of your own personal knowledge? A. I do not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How large was the vigilance committee that was organized--that you were at the head of? A. There were a number of them. Mine was only one of the number. I had, I should judge, over a hundred men immediately under my command. Some were armed with their own arms. Q. When was this committee organized? A. The first meeting was held on Sunday evening. I was absent, but I was informed the following morning that they had held a meeting, and we were under arms that day. Q. Monday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were there any other such vigilance committees organized? A. Yes. One was formed on my right and another on my left, in the East End, and I am told there were others in the city. By Mr. Means: Q. You have stated that you were advised to go away for safety? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was it a railroad employé or was it railroad employés, or a citizen or citizens that advised you and Mr. Pitcairn to leave the city? A. I do not know who advised Mr. Pitcairn. The advice was given to me by myself. I was not with Mr. Pitcairn at the time. To my recollection, I think the notice was given to me by Mr. Elder, the night depot master. Q. A railroad employé? A. Yes. Various of my friends and citizens generally, advised me to leave afterwards. Q. They considered your life in danger, if you remained? A. Yes. I had notice sent to my house that I had better leave the city. They said they were going to burn the house. Q. Was the intimation that Mr. Pitcairn's life was in danger along with the rest? A. Yes; Mr. Pitcairn's, Mr. Watt's, Mr. Cassatt's, and mine. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was any attempt made to interfere with your property or to burn your house? A. Nothing. Q. The mob did not go there? A. It was too far away. By Mr. Means: Q. It was said that they would very likely take your life if you did not go away? A. Yes. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Who were the men that interfered with Gerry. Do you know them? A. I think I do; but I am not prepared to say. One of the men, I think, is still in the criminal court. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You stated that General Pearson gave orders to keep the hill clear, and to let no one on the tracks. At that time was any one besides the military on the hill side? A. Nobody except the military--not more than half a dozen. Probably the people living up there were passing up and down; but there was no crowd congregated there at all. I am unable to say to whom the order was given. He was on one side of the tank, and I was on the other. I presume it was some officer in charge; but who it was I cannot say. Q. The object of the order was to keep the mob of people from congregating on the hill side? A. Yes; and on the tracks. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the name of the person to whom the order was given to move the ammunition. A. That was Captain Breck--E. Y. Breck, commander of the Pittsburgh battery. Q. Can you give the reason why he did not move it? A. I cannot. I was not present long enough to ascertain. Q. Could it have been moved at that time without much danger? A. I think it could. He may have had reasons or difficulties that I know nothing about. He was on the ground all the time, and had a better opportunity of judging than I had. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What troops were on the hill when General Pearson gave the orders to keep the hillside clear? A. I am not positive about that, but I think the Fourteenth regiment was on the hill, and the Nineteenth regiment on the track, and the battery was on the flat just above the track. * * * * * Joseph McCabe sworn _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Twentieth ward. Q. State whether you are connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and if so, in what capacity? A. I am the general yard dispatcher at Pittsburgh. Q. As such, what are your duties? A. I make up trains and see that they go out properly. Q. Were you on duty on the 19th of July last? A. Yes. Q. You may go on and give a statement of what occurred, beginning with Thursday morning? A. On the morning of the 19th of July I was in the western part of the yard. I saw that the train did not move at the proper time, and went to the middle of the yard, at Twenty-sixth street, to ascertain why it did not go. The yard dispatcher there and assistant train master told me that some of the men had refused to go out. I and Mr. Hunter, then yard dispatcher, went to the men and asked them if they would go out, and all that we would go to, said they would not go out on the double-headers. Q. About how many men did you see? A. All that we could find. We went into the caboose cars. Q. All refused to go out on the double-headers? A. Yes; except the first train. The conductor was willing to go out, but not the crew. Q. What classes of men refused--conductors and brakemen? A. Yes; they refused to go, and I went then to get up the yard crews to put on, and brakemen to go in the place of conductors. I got an engine out. We were just going to make a coupling. I had got two crews and brought them up, and I had told a brakeman named W. S. Gerry to couple the engine. He made an effort to do so, and while doing so, they threw at him with pins and links and stones. One of the pins struck him on the side, and he had to run for his life to the Philadelphia fast passenger train, which was standing on the track where he was, and he jumped on it. Had it not been for that they would have been very apt to have caught him. Q. Who threw those missiles? A. I cannot say who threw them, but the whole crowd apparently made a rush. Q. How large was the crowd? A. Not over twenty. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they train men? A. Yes. Q. What time was that? A. It must have been between nine and ten o'clock. Q. Thursday? A. Yes. Q. The crowd was composed of about twenty men? A. Yes. Q. Who were those men? A. Some of them I don't know the names of. Some are up in court, and they are now trying them. One of them is "over the river." Q. Name as many as you can? A. One was Andrew Hice; another Alonzo Milliner, and several more of them. I can't just remember their names now. Q. Were they all railroad employés? A. As far as I saw, they were at that time. Q. Men in actual employment at that time? A. Yes. Q. Were there any men there at that time who had previously been discharged? A. None that I know of. Q. What was the next incident that occurred that came under your observation? A. The next thing, I went to Twenty-eighth street with Mr. Watt, and tried to get engine seven hundred and eighty-five out--Conductor S. K. Moore. Q. What time was that? A. Pretty close to twelve o'clock. I told him to bring his engine out, and he told me that they would not allow him to turn the switch. Q. Who do you mean by "they?" A. He said all of them--the crowd. They would not let him turn the switch. Mr. Watt said he would turn it. While he was stooping to turn it, one of them struck him. They arrested him, and after they arrested him I turned the switch and brought the engine out on the track and down the yard, and coupled her to sixteen cars, and sent her to Wilkinsburg with them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was that the same crowd that had assembled about ten o'clock? A. Yes; it was Twenty-sixth street, and they went to Twenty-eighth street. The second engine was at Twenty-eighth street. It was the same crowd. Q. Had it increased in numbers? A. Yes; in the meantime. Q. Who were the men that joined them? Were they railroad employés too? A. I cannot say. Afterwards I went to the west end of the yard with another engine. I had the dispatcher at the west end to get sixteen cars on another track, and I went there with another engine at about the time the Atlantic express should leave the depot. We got that train out, and that was the last. Q. What time did that train go out? A. It left Seventeenth street about one-five. I got to Twenty-eighth street before I ought to. The engineers left their engines there at Twenty-sixth street after we had got the trains ready to go. The mob got in front, and the first engineer blew down brakes, and got off. Then the second engineer did the same. The assistant engineer came to me and asked what he was going to do. I said I didn't know. He said he would run that engine if anybody else would. The road foreman came up, and I told him what Mr. Phillips had said, and he got on one engine and Phillips got on another. Then some person hallooed: "If you move that engine we will blow your brains out." Then they did not start. They all went out. There were about sixteen policemen there, but they could not apparently do anything with them. Q. How many men got in front? A. Suppose forty or fifty. Q. Were they all railroad employés? A. I don't think they were. Q. Who composed the balance of the crowd? A. I am not able to say. Q. What time was that? A. I can't say that positively, either. Q. As near as you can tell? A. Somewhere about twelve o'clock. Q. Thursday? A. Yes. Q. You say that some policemen came up there? A. About sixteen. Q. Who was at the head of the police? A. I can't say who. Q. Just explain what effort they made to disperse the mob? A. We got the train ready to start, and five or six of them got on one engine and the same on the other, and the balance of them got on the train. At Twenty-eighth street they arrested McCullough. Q. Who made the arrest? A. Four or five of them had hold of him. Q. Policemen? A. Yes. By Senator Torbert: Q. He was the person that struck Mr. Watt? A. I suppose so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was not any attack made on the crowd by the policemen? A. They tried to get them away. Q. How? With their clubs? A. No. By pushing them with their hands, I suppose. Q. What was done next? A. The balance of the day the men could not do anything. The crowd appeared to increase all the time. Q. Did you have any conversation with those men that refused to go at first to ascertain their reasons for their refusal? A. I asked what their reason was for not going, and they allowed that they would not run on double-headers. Q. All gave that as their reason? A. Yes. Q. Had you any knowledge before Thursday morning that such a refusal would be made? A. No; I didn't have the slightest idea until I went up that morning from the west end of the yard. Q. Did you talk with the men to find out whether there was any prearranged plan to strike that morning? A. I did not ask them anything about it. They might have had an idea of striking, but I don't think the time was set. That being the morning that the double-headers was to go out, they picked on that morning very suddenly. Q. When was that order first promulgated or known to the men? A. I don't remember the date. I think it must have been a few days before that, but I can't say how many. Q. Had you heard anything said by the men about the order prior to that morning? A. No. Whatever they did do in the matter, they kept among themselves. Q. Were you on the ground during the day of Friday? A. Yes. Q. Relate to us what occurred. Had double-headers been run before that day on the road? A. Yes; the Union and National lines were double-headers, and our coal trains were double-headers. Some trains, such as coal trains between Derry--they were running them double for a number of years. Q. Had you run through freight trains as double-headers before Thursday? A. Yes; the Union and National lines. Q. That morning, the order to run double-headers on all freight trains went into effect? A. Yes. Q. That required the discharge of a number of men, did it not? A. I don't know whether they intended to discharge them or suspend them temporarily. Q. Were any of those men who were suspended or not retained in the employ of the company among that crowd of twenty that you spoke of? A. Not that I remember of seeing. Q. That crowd of twenty was composed of men retained in the employ of the company? A. Principally, but there might have been some others scattered among them. Q. How are those men paid--the brakemen and conductors--by the hour, or the day, or the month? A. They are paid by the day. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What do you mean by the day? A. In the yard a day of twelve hours constitutes a day--eleven hours--they get paid extra for the meal hour. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And over hours? A. In the yard. I simply sent a message again, telling them to await at Rochester, and to send an escort of men down the road to receive me. Q. To whom did you direct it? A. To Colonel Carpenter, at Rochester. I expected he would be at Rochester. He was the commanding officer of the troops. When I got to Rochester, I went up and found he had not arrived--that the division had not arrived. I immediately telegraphed for it to move immediately down. I found it was at Greenville, and I gave the direction again to the officer in charge, not specifying any person in particular. In about an hour, after several attempts to get messages or several attempts to get answers, I went again for an answer, and after the instrument fluttering for half a minute, and all communication being suspended for half an hour, I got a message saying that the troops were at dinner, and would move immediately after dinner. Q. What time was that? A. Twelve o'clock, on Sunday. In the meantime, I had communication with General Latta. He told me to address him again at Union Depot hotel, and in the next communication to address him at the Monongahela house. Up to three o'clock he remained, I believe, at Union Depot hotel. All the communications I had from him were at the Union Depot hotel. Hearing that the Philadelphia troops had left the round-house and left the city, and fearing for my own ammunition, which the mob around me threatened to burn---- Q. At Rochester? A. Yes; but which I afterwards saved by going out and stating in a loud voice, that I had thrown it all in the river half an hour ago. I concluded to let the division remain at Greenville, and ordered it to remain there. Q. What time did you give that order? A. Probably about half past twelve, as near as I can remember. Q. On Sunday? A. Yes. Q. To whom was it addressed? A. I forget whether it was addressed to Colonel Carpenter or not. I think it was to the officer in command of the troops there. Q. Did it reach Colonel Carpenter? A. Yes; delivered by the agent there. Then I telegraphed to General Latta, that I was going to Greenville. At three o'clock I started for Greenville, but didn't reach there until ten o'clock the next morning, having to go to Ohio. I went to the troops, but I didn't have any communications from General Latta, and fearing that my ammunition would be entirely destroyed at Rochester, I thought it best to try to form the division at some other point, and so I ordered them home. Then I started to meet the Governor, knowing he was coming from Chicago, but not meeting him, I returned immediately to Greenville, and ordered Colonel Carpenter to re-assemble the whole division at Franklin, and by Friday night I had everybody and everything in camp, and in so fair a way, that I was confident I could handle them, and ordered a movement for Saturday morning to Pittsburgh, which no person knew. I had received a communication from the Governor on Saturday night, to know when I would move, which I answered, that he might expect me shortly, at any time. After starting at Franklin, on the way, I received a dispatch from him or from General Latta, who I don't remember, saying he didn't think it was safe for me to come to Pittsburgh with the small amount of ammunition I had. I answered back, I was on the way, and unless I received peremptory orders, I would be in Pittsburgh that night. I came there Saturday night; as soon as I came, the Governor came down--it was raining fearfully--and said he wanted me to open the road on Monday, and for me to select what troops I wanted to use, and that night or the next morning, I selected Colonel Carpenter's regiment for the work, and the Governor sent for me, and said he wanted all the stock trains moved out that day. The stock trains were moved out on Sunday, and the freight trains on Monday, without particular opposition. Q. Will you give us the time when Colonel Carpenter's regiment reached Greenville? A. All the regiment didn't reach Greenville. Some of the companies kept back in Meadville. Having only one train, one engine, and one engineer under our control, the officers decided very wisely, as I should have done, to remain there until the division should be concentrated, and then move down together. The whole division was not concentrated at Greenville. There was a company from Ridgway, one from Corry, one company from Union, two companies from Meadville, and there was one company from Clarion county, which was not ordered out, because it was so far away at the time. Q. The order you sent for Colonel Carpenter to go to Rochester--do you know whether he received that order or not? A. I didn't send it directly to Colonel Carpenter, for at no time was I certain Colonel Carpenter was there; but to the officer in charge of the troops. I was not certain my adjutant general was there. Q. The North East company, and the Erie company, and the Conneautville company were at Greenville? A. If I remember right, the North East company, under Captain Orton; Captains Riddle and Curtiss's company, of Erie; Captain Rupert, of Conneautville; Captain Kreps, of Greenville; Captain Fruit, of Jefferson; Captain Dight, of Pine Grove; and Captain Wright, of Mercer--eight or nine companies. Q. What day did they assemble at Greenville? A. They probably got there Sunday morning--possibly some of them Saturday night. Q. Did Colonel Carpenter, who was in command there, receive your orders to move to Rochester? A. He received the orders to move to Rochester, because he replied that the men were at dinner, and that as soon as dinner was over they would move. Q. Did he receive any orders from you before that? A. No; I don't think I sent him direct orders before that. The orders I sent before were from Chicago to Colonel Clarke to move the division to Rochester. Q. Then it was three or four o'clock on Sunday afternoon when you sent the order to him to form? A. No; about twelve and a half o'clock. Q. Then he had no time to start? A. No; they were about starting out the depot when I got my order not to start. Q. Did you approve of his course in remaining at Greenville? A. I did. Captain Riddle wanted to move down right away with all the men they had, but some of the rest didn't want to go, and Colonel Carpenter said to me that he had got into somewhat of a trouble about moving, and asked if I approved of his action, and I said perfectly--I didn't expect the division to move until it was in shape to take care of itself, and I entirely approve of your course. I went to Riddle, and called him to one side, and said this thing has gone further than I expected, and I don't want any more trouble. I didn't want the division to move down without being strong enough, although we had men enough I am confident, if we had ammunition, to wipe the whole city of Pittsburgh right out. Q. Would it have been proper for him, with the nine companies he had, in case they were there early on Sunday morning, at Greenville--would it have been proper for him, as a military officer, to have gone on with them to Rochester? A. No. If the division had got into a fight, he would have been the officer to handle the division, if I was not present. He never got the orders from me until I ordered him at twelve o'clock, and then I had reason to believe he was going to move immediately. The troops had been in Greenville for a day, and they were scattered around, and visiting in saloons and hotels. The men had to support themselves the best they could, and they could not keep them together, even by companies. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How do the brakemen get paid, and the conductors? A. They get paid by the trip. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In case they are delayed on the trip, are the men not paid extra for the time they are delayed? A. Generally, when they are delayed any ways long, the conductor refers his case to the train master, and if he approves of it, they get paid extra. Q. Did the men retained in the employ of the company and the discharged men have any communication with each other on the morning of Thursday, that you know of? A. Not that I have any knowledge of. Q. Did they not have a secret organization? A. I believe they have an order called the Train Men's Union. Q. Do you know the object of that organization? A. No; I do not. Q. Do you know whether those twenty men assembled there were members of that organization or not? A. I don't know. I have an idea that they were. Q. Were there any double-headers that succeeded in starting that morning of Thursday? A. No; not from Pittsburgh. Q. What time was the first train regularly to start? A. Eight-forty. Q. Can you tell us whether between the hour of twelve, midnight, and eight-forty, any double-headers left on Thursday morning. A. The four o'clock trains went out double. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many went out at four o'clock? A. All, I believe. Q. Were you on the ground on Friday? A. Yes; I was around there. Q. How was the crowd on Friday morning? A. It appeared to increase all the time. Q. How large was it on Friday morning? A. I can't exactly say how large. They were coming and going all the time. Q. Give us an estimate? A. In the neighborhood of a couple of thousand. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were they noisy? A. Some of them were and some of them were not. Q. Were they making threats? A. I just occasionally heard them making threats. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How had it been there during the night? A. Some of them were there all night stopping everything, so that we could not get along. The engines would stop. Q. Were they noisy and boisterous? A. The western engines coming up with the live stock were stopped and sent back on the same track. Q. Was the crowd on Friday morning composed of the same men as on Thursday--were the same men leading the crowd? A. I cannot say whether they were leading it or not; the crowd was so big they were all mixed up through it. Q. Did you see any of the same men in the crowd on Friday? A. I don't remember that I did. Some of the leaders of the crowd there on Thursday night had gone to Lawrenceville on Friday. Q. Did you have any conversation with the train men on Friday about starting the trains. A. No. Q. Did you try to raise any crew on Friday? A. We had a yard crew still there and two or three crews already to go out, provided they would let them go. Q. Were you able to take any trains out on Friday, or if not, what hindered them from going out? A. The mob at Twenty-eighth street---- Q. Were you able to take any trains out on Friday? A. No; on account of the crowd at Twenty-eighth street making threats to the men--what they would do. Q. State the condition of the crowd during the day, whether it was increasing or not, and whether it was demonstrative and boisterous or not? A. Later in the day it appeared to increase. Q. Did they allow the passenger cars to pass? A. They allowed them to go. Some of them were stopped, but they let them pass afterwards. Q. What means did they take to stop those trains? A. Some of them would halloo and make threats, and others would get up and spring on the engines, and the engineers would have to stop to see what was the matter. Q. Did they turn any of the switches? A. Not that I remember of. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. They just piled on the trains? A. Yes; they filled the engines and cars. Q. Did they attempt any violence on the men running the trains during the day of Friday by throwing stones or clubs? A. Not there, they didn't. Q. Did they anywhere along the road? A. I don't know whether they did outside of Pittsburgh or not. We didn't move anything on Friday except live stock. They agreed that we might move that, but nothing else. Q. You say the live stock was moved? A. Yes; on Friday. First in the morning--then they stopped it. Then Mr. Garrett, the train master, and me went up and saw them, and he talked to them. There was a big run of stock coming off the Fort Wayne road, and some of them said they would let him have one engine to haul it. He said that they ought to know better, that one engine was not sufficient, and they agreed to let him have two. So we got engines enough to move the stock to East Liberty. Q. They said you could have one engine. Who was it that told this to Mr. Garrett? A. I don't know who it was. Q. Did you hear the conversation between the men and Mr. Garrett? A. I was with him in the crowd. We had to go right into it like a wedge. Q. Were they railroad men? A. Some of them were railroad men. Q. Men then in the employ of the company, or who had been up to the morning of Thursday? A. Yes; they were still in the employ of the company, so far as I know. Q. They were the spokesmen for the crowd, were they? A. One of them was the spokesmen. We asked for the spokesman when we went there. Q. Who was that man? A. I don't remember now who he was. Q. An engineer, conductor, or brakeman? A. I think he was a brakeman. Q. What is Mr. Garrett's first name? A. His name is David Garrett. By Mr. Means: Q. At Twenty-eighth street, did the mob of men stop the train going east? A. They stopped everything. Q. Who did that? A. I don't know whether it was by employés or others. Q. They prevented the engines from connecting with your stock trains? A. Yes; sometimes they told the engineers to go on back. Q. They sent the engines back? A. Yes; they were sent right back on going out the track, and sent in again on coming out the track. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Describe the crowd during Friday night? A. I was not there during that night. Q. Were you there during Saturday morning? A. Yes. Q. Describe things then? A. Early in the morning there was not such a very large crowd, but towards evening, just before the soldiers came up---- Q. How large was it in the morning early? A. I don't suppose there were over two hundred people. Q. What time was that? A. About seven o'clock--that is outside of the soldiers. The Fourteenth and Eighteenth regiments were there then, I believe. In the evening along about five o'clock, at the time the firing began, in the neighborhood of the railroad, and in the streets there were from five to seven thousand people. Q. Who composed that crowd then--what class of men? A. They appeared to be all classes. Q. Railroad employés? A. Railroad and mill men, and I guess a few of every kind. Q. When you refer to the crowd of five thousand, do you mean to say that all of that crowd were riotous or engaged in riotous conduct? A. I don't mean to say that. Q. You say that a portion of them were lookers-on? A. Yes. Q. How many were actually engaged in the riot at that time? A. I cannot say. They were scattered around here and there and everywhere. Q. Was there any division or separation between the rioters and the crowd that was looking on? A. I guess they were scattered through the crowd everywhere around the railroad. Q. Down on the railroad were any persons looking on--were they along the railroad track, or were they back on the hill? A. They were standing on the hill and on the railroad track, too. Some of them might be railroad men of other roads, and I never know it. Q. Were there any women and children mixed up with the crowd? A. There were some on the street and hill-side. Q. That crowd had been accumulating all day I suppose? A. Yes. Q. How was it in regard to any boisterous or noisy demonstrations? A. I would say that some of them were pretty boisterous. Some of them would be about half tight, and were raising a little excitement here and among themselves. Q. When did the crowd begin to get demonstrative or boisterous, at what time in the day? A. Along about twelve o'clock probably, and about five it got worse. The work shops and all the mills, as a general thing, shut down about three o'clock on Saturday. I suppose that helped to increase the crowd. Q. Were you among the crowd during Saturday night? A. No. Q. Were you present at Twenty-eighth street when the firing of the soldiers took place? A. I was between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth streets when they began to shoot--about half way. Q. You were in sight so that you could see? A. Yes. Q. Did you hear any orders given to fire? A. No; I was not near enough to hear, but I saw one or two missiles thrown from the hillside and the shooting began after that. Q. By whom were the missiles thrown? A. I cannot say that; they came from the thick part of the crowd on the hillside. Q. Was there any firing before the missiles were thrown? A. I don't remember; it was a little after. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did it appear to be pistol shots or musketry? A. I cannot tell. Q. Were any shots fired from the hill? A. I cannot tell whether they came from the hill or from the soldiers. There were some scattering shots, and then a kind of general volley. Q. Were those shots pistol shots or musket shots? A. I cannot tell. Q. What effect did the firing have upon the crowd? A. It appeared to drive them back for a while. Q. Which way did they go? A. They scattered in all directions--some went north, south, east, and west--in every direction--the best way they could get out. Q. Did it clear the track? A. It cleared the track for a while. Q. For what distance? A. Near down to Twenty-eighth street--that is about the only place that was obstructed. Q. When did the mob begin to reassemble after that? A. It took place somewhere along about six o'clock, I suppose. I was not there. Q. When were you there next? A. Sunday morning when I came in everything was on fire--was burning--seven and a half o'clock. Q. How far? A. To Twenty-eighth street. Q. From what point? A. What we call the south yard--the tracks south of the main track between Lawrenceville and Twenty-eighth street--they were burning, and they were burning the upper round-house then. I was along on the hill side, within sight of the track, from seven and a half that morning until eight o'clock that night. Q. Where were the soldiers or troops? A. They had left there then, and went into the work-house, I believe. They left the round-house between five and six o'clock in the morning. Q. What took place during the day of Sunday--how large was the crowd Sunday morning? A. The crowd that was burning? Q. Engaged in actual riotous conduct? A. There were these right in the yard--there appeared to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand people. I cannot tell whether they all belonged to the crowd or not. They appeared to be following after it--breaking the cars open and taking out what they wanted, and then setting fire to them. Q. Who was breaking open the cars? A. I cannot tell who they were. Q. Did you go to see? A. I didn't go near enough to recognize any of them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. From their appearance could you form any idea as to whether they were railroad men or not? A. I could not tell. Q. Was there nothing to distinguish them? A. No. Q. Who was engaged in firing the cars at that time? A. I cannot tell that. Q. Were they setting the cars on fire with torches and fire brands? A. Yes. Wherever there was a gap they would carry the fire over the gap to the next place. Q. Did you make any effort to see who those men were? A. I could not tell who they were. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What kind of men were they? A. They were rough looking men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How near did you go? A. I was a hundred feet or so from them. I heard that detectives were there. Some of them told me, in fact, that they understood detectives were among them watching them. Q. Did you see any of your men among the crowd on Sunday morning? A. No; I did not. Adjourned to meet at three o'clock, P.M. SAME DAY. ORPHAN'S COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, FRIDAY, _February 8, 1878_--3 P.M. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at three, P.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. The first witness examined was * * * * * William Ryan, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Fifteenth ward of the city of Pittsburgh. Q. Are you in the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. Yes. Q. How long have you been in their employ, and in what capacity? A. I cannot state the precise date when I entered the service of the company; but I judge it is between eight and ten years. Q. In what capacity were you employed in July last? A. As freight conductor. Q. Between what points? A. Pittsburgh and Derry, or between Pittsburgh and Conemaugh. Q. You were a conductor on trains that ran double-headers? A. Yes. Q. How long have you been running on trains that run in that way? A. I cannot tell the length of time precisely, but I was running them from the time they started--that is, from the time they started to run through freight as double. Q. About how long? A. I cannot tell. Q. Two or three years? A. I hardly fancy it could be that long. I should say a year. Q. Were you at the depot or about the depot on the morning of the 19th--Thursday morning? A. Yes. Q. Was that your morning for going out as conductor of the train? A. It was my train that should have started out. It was my morning. Q. What was your time for going out? A. If I recollect right, it was eight-forty. Q. Did you start that morning or make any attempt to start? A. We made every preparation to start, with the exception of coupling up the train. I examined the train as I was going into the yard. I thought the men were rather long in getting the engine out. I started up, and on going to the train men's room met two of my brakemen, and asked the cause of the delay. They told me they didn't intend to go out. I asked the reason. They said they had either quit or struck--I don't recollect. I asked what their object was in striking. They said they didn't intend to run on double-headers--that they were not making any more than a living at that time, and that by running double-headers, it would cause some of them to be dismissed or suspended. That they didn't know who it would be, and as they had the advantage at that time, they would make the best use of it they could. Q. Those were your brakemen? A. Yes. Q. What were their names? A. One was named John Vensel and the other I cannot give his first name. In giving in his time, I always gave it as M. Martin. Q. What time had you this conversation with them? A. I judge about nine o'clock. Q. They said that some of them would be dismissed? A. Yes. Q. Did you have any further conversation with them? A. I did. Q. What about? A. I tried to advise them not to strike, and showed them the folly of it. I told them that the times were hard at present and that freight was very slack, and that the company was trying to economize and that their chances were just as good as mine. I advised them to stay. They claimed "no," that they had determined to quit, and were going to do it or had done it. I notified the dispatcher then that the men had quit, and asked what I was to do. He told me to remain, and that he would provide men for me. He went around and made an effort to get men but could not get them. I then asked permission to go to dinner, and I went, and came back about twelve or one. There was no change in the affair at all, everything remained just as it had been. Q. Where did these men go when they refused to go out on the train? A. In the yard. Q. They did not go home? A. No; they remained in the yard up to the time I left, and I saw them there in the afternoon. Q. Were there any other men about at that time? A. Yes; men were continually coming in off the road. Q. How many men were there when you left to go to dinner? A. I should judge about eighteen or twenty men at that time. Q. Did you have any conversation with any other men? A. With my flagman. Q. What did he say? A. He thought as the rest did, that now was the time to strike or quit, and that they all had concluded to do it, and that all my conversation with him would not change his ideas a particle. Q. What men were coming in? A. The men off the regular freight trains kept coming in there during the day. Q. They joined the other men? A. Yes; and swelled the crowd. Q. Did you talk with those men to find out whether they had arranged for this strike previously? A. I did not. I blamed them for it, but they denied it. Whether they had made an arrangement or not for that day, I don't know. Q. They denied an arrangement? A. Yes. Q. How many of them denied it? A. Two or three of them I think denied it. They had made an arrangement previous to this to strike, but from some cause or other it was not carried into effect, and my being a non-union man, I concluded that they had arranged it in such a way that the responsibility would fall on me, and in case it would be a failure I would be the man discharged, and that the union men would not suffer. That was the opinion I formed that morning. Q. How long previous had they made this arrangement? A. A month or two months before. Q. What prevented the carrying of the arrangement into effect? A. I do not know. When a railroad man came to me, and requested me to join them, I told them I could not do it; that my opinion was different from theirs with reference to strikes; that I did not feel justified in doing it. He asked me if I had any injury. I told him I could not say. He said: "I am going to strike to-morrow." I went as far as Derry, and laid over two or three hours. The only person there I saw by himself was the dispatcher. I went to him and told him in confidence that these men were going to strike. Q. When was that? A. It was previous to this affair of the men going out--a month or two months. By Senator Reyburn: Q. After the reduction of ten per cent.? A. Yes. I told the dispatcher that these men had come to the conclusion to strike, and told him I wanted to let it be known--that two thirds of them were not friends of mine, and it would only cause me trouble by their going out, and I would notify the proper officers in time to give them a chance to prevent in case it should occur. I returned to the city that morning with the train. Coming in, I wondered how to get at the superintendent's office without being seen. I did not care about being known, and after putting the train away, I concluded I would go out on the accommodation, but I met one of my men, and I got into conversation with him, and I asked him if he knew anything about it. He said he did, and he said it had fallen through. I asked him if he was positive of it, he said he was--that he knew it had. I told him I was very glad to hear it. Says he, I am not. I concluded then not to go out. I made inquiries among other men, and found it to be the fact, that they had concluded not to strike at the time appointed. Q. Did this man give you any reasons? A. He did not. Q. Who was he? A. His name was Sloan. Q. Did you hear any other conversation or learn anything of any other union or organization to strike from that morning until the 19th? A. No. Q. Had you any knowledge that your men would not go out until you met them--those two men? A. None whatever. Q. How long before that morning was it known to the men that the order had been issued to run double-headers? A. It was known in six hours, I should judge, to all the men on the line after the order was posted on the bulletin boards. Q. When was it posted? A. I cannot give the date, but fancy it was posted twenty-four hours before the order should have gone into effect. Q. Did you discover that it produced any commotion among the men? A. Not more so than at other times. There was general dissatisfaction among the men on account of the double trains. Of course it increased it somewhat. There were several trains running before this order was issued, but when this order would go into effect it would make all trains double, and this would cause them to feel more dissatisfied. Q. After you returned from your dinner on Friday, how large a crowd did you find in the yard? A. I judge about twenty men--twenty-five--probably more. Q. All railroad employés? A. I cannot say that, but the greater portion of them at that time were railroad employés. The crowd gradually increased until evening. Q. Did you have any conversation with the men after you returned from your dinner? A. With some of them. Q. About going out? A. I spoke to them, and asked them who had organized it, and what they were going to do about it. They said they did not know, that they had quit because the rest had, and intended to see it through. Q. Was there any effort made that afternoon to start the trains? A. I believe not that afternoon to my knowledge. Q. When was the first effort made to start the trains, to your knowledge? A. Thursday morning. Q. Was there none made on Friday morning, to your knowledge? A. I think not. Q. Or during the day Friday? A. An effort was made, I think, in the afternoon of Friday. Q. Were you present when that effort was made? A. I was. Q. How large was the crowd at that time? A. I cannot tell the number, but it was a very large crowd. Q. Composed of employés of your railroad, and of the different roads? A. Almost all classes of men were there. Q. Who seemed to be the leaders, at that time, of the crowd? A. It would be a very difficult matter for me to say. In fact they all seemed to lead--where one would go, the rest would follow. Q. Do you mean helter-skelter? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did there seem to be any leader who was taking charge of the riot? A. In the beginning there was one man that seemed to take the lead--on the morning of Thursday, but after that I lost all trace of him. Q. Who was he? A. His name was Hice. I was in the telegraph office on Thursday morning, after the strike occurred, talking to the train runner. He came up, after the conversation with me, and I saw him in the act of trying to couple an engine on to some caboose cars. They failed to do so on account of the throwing of stones and other missiles. Q. What time was that? A. I judge about ten o'clock--along there somewhere. Q. Thursday? A. Yes. Q. Was that the first violence that was used? A. The first I saw. Q. Who were those persons who were throwing the stones? A. I cannot say who they were. Q. How many composed the crowd at that time? A. I fancy some fifteen or eighteen men that I saw there, but might have been more. Q. Were they all railroad employés? A. I cannot say that. Q. Were those brakemen who had refused to go out with you among them? A. That I cannot say. I was not close enough to see whether my men were among them or not. Q. On Friday afternoon, when the attempt was made to start the train, will you tell us what occurred then? A. As near as I can recollect, the train was made up, and it was pulled up out of the freight yard. I don't know whether the caboose car was coupled or not. I cannot recollect, but I saw the train start as though it was going to go out. I saw men run in front of the engines to stop them, and I saw the parties get off of them, and the train then was backed into the yard after that. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was that on Friday? A. I cannot say whether it was Thursday afternoon or Friday, but it was one of those two days. It seems to me it was Thursday afternoon--the same day. Q. When the resistance was made there, was it a combined resistance of all the men, or did only two or three seem to be leading the others? A. It was a general rush, a swinging of hands, and a yelling and hooting. Q. Were any missiles thrown of any kind? A. Not that I saw. Q. Was any violence used towards those who were trying to take the train out? A. Not that I saw. Q. Were any threats made to the loyal men who were willing to work? A. I was not close enough to hear the conversation. Q. Were you threatened at any time if you did not leave the yard? A. Not directly. Two or three men came to me, and asked me if I was going out. I told them yes, if I could get a crew, and one of them intimated to me that I had better not go, or words to that effect--that they did not want to hurt me, or something like that. That was about all. Q. Whom did you report to when your men refused to go out? A. The dispatcher. Q. What is his name? A. William Hunter. Q. How many trains were to go out at that hour--eight-forty? A. I think mine was the only one at that time, with the exception of the single train going on the branch. Q. When were the next trains to start? A. The next, I believe, would have been eleven o'clock--no; the next would have been nine-forty. Q. Do you know whether the conductors of those trains were all prepared to start them or not? A. I believe one of them was there. Q. Did you have any talk with him? A. I did. Q. Was he willing to go? A. No; he was not. Q. He was among the strikers? A. Yes. Q. Were the engineers willing to go? A. That I do not know. One of them came to me and ask if I was going out, and I told him yes, if I could get a crew. He turned around and walked away, and did not say anything more to me about it. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What was this conductor's name? A. Meredith. Q. You said that two or three men came and asked you if you were going out, and you said yes, if you could get a crew, and that then they intimated it would be well for you if you did not. Who were these men? A. One was D. W. Davis. The other name I do not recollect. Q. What was his position at that time? A. A brakeman, I believe. Q. Had he been discharged or was he still in the employ of the company? A. He was in the employ of the company up to that morning, so far as I know. Q. Do you know where he is now? A. No. Q. Has he been in the employ of the company since? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. The other's name you do not remember? A. I don't remember at all. Q. Where is this Conductor Meredith? A. I think he is in some part of Kentucky. Q. How many men did you have as trainmen for one train? A. Three. Q. Besides yourself, and aside from the engineer and fireman? A. Yes. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have any fear of violence from the employés of the road if you started out? A. Well, I had a fear, but no serious fear. I did not think that they would kill me. Q. You did not believe on the morning of the riot that they would do so? A. No; besides I was determined to protect myself in the best way I could. * * * * * John Plender, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I am living at Walls station. Q. Are you in the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. Yes, sir; I am running a passenger engine--the "accommodation"--as engineer. Q. Were you in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. Between what points? A. Between Walls and Pittsburgh. Q. What is the distance of Walls from Pittsburgh? A. Sixteen miles. Q. How often do you make your trips? A. I make three round trips a day. Q. Were you at the Union depot on Thursday morning, the 19th? A. I came in that morning from Walls, at eight-fifteen. Q. What time did you go out? A. At twelve-five. Q. Where were you between eight-fifteen and twelve-five? A. In the round-house, at work on my engine. Q. When did you first learn that any men had refused to go out on their trains? A. I suppose it was half-past nine when one of the men told me. It was an engineer that told me. Q. Was he one that had refused to go out? A. No; he had just come in. Q. Did you learn anything more about it between that time and twelve o'clock? A. No. The "Yioughiougheny" came in, and he told me that there was a strike. Q. What then took place? A. That was all that took place between him and me. Q. Did you remain in the round-house? A. I remained in there until eleven o'clock, when I backed out, and came down and took out the train. Q. Were you interfered with in any way? A. No. Q. Did you have any conversation with the strikers that day? A. Not until evening. Q. Whom did you see in the evening? A. I had no conversation, no more than a man stopped me at Twenty-eighth street, and asked me what I was hauling. Q. Were you coming in or going out? A. I was going out on the last trip, at eleven-forty. I told him I was hauling an accommodation train. He told me I could go on, and he got down off the engine. Q. Did they stop you? A. No; they were all standing there, and when I came up--we all have to stop there--he got on the engine. Q. At what point? A. At Twenty-eighth street. Q. How many were standing there then? A. Quite a number--I suppose about thirty-five or forty of them. Q. Did you know any of them? A. I knew him. It was dark, and I couldn't see who the rest were. Q. What was the name of that man? A. D. W. Davis, I think. Q. Did he say anything more to you? A. No; nothing more. He said it was all right, that I could go on, after I told him what I was hauling. Q. What was the manner of the crowd at that time as to their being boisterous or demonstrative? A. Indeed, I could not tell you. We just stop for a couple of minutes, and sometimes not that long. Q. You had no conversation with any other excepting the one who got on your engine? A. That is all. He was discharged off this road a couple of times, and off the Pan-Handle, I believe. Q. Why was he discharged? A. I cannot tell. Q. Where did he live? A. Somewhere about Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did you learn that day, or any time after that, when these parties resolved to strike? A. No. Q. Did you know of any preconceived plan of striking? A. No; I did not. Q. Do you know whether they have a secret organization or not? A. All I heard of was the Train Men's Union--that is all I know of. Q. What is the object of that? A. That I cannot tell you. I never was in any of their meetings, and know nothing about it. Q. Do you know whether there was any other organization? A. The Engineers' Brotherhood. Q. What is the object of that? A. That I cannot tell you. It is something I never belonged to. Q. Did you come in on your regular trip in the morning? A. Yes. Q. Were you molested in any way? A. No. Q. Did you go out on time and come in on time all day Friday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Without being molested? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you run on Saturday? A. Until eight-fifteen, Saturday night. Q. What stopped you then? A. I did not go out at eleven-forty, because I could not get out at eleven-forty. Q. Why? A. The fire was too hot. Q. I suppose you didn't go out for a week or so then? A. I went to work on Tuesday. Q. At what time? A. I think I went out at six-five on Tuesday night. Q. Was there still a crowd about then? A. Yes. Q. How large about? A. I cannot tell how large the crowd was. Q. Had the work commenced then, by the company, in clearing off the tracks--the _debris_? A. Indeed, I cannot tell you whether it had or not. Q. Were you interfered with in any way on Tuesday night when you went out? A. Not on Tuesday night. Q. What was the mob doing at that time on Tuesday night? A. The mob was cleared away then, on Tuesday, partly. Q. Partly, you say? A. From Thirty-third street. It was as far as we could get. I went to work on Tuesday after the Sunday of the fire. Q. You run your trains regularly up to Saturday night? A. Yes; we came in at eight-fifteen. Q. Were you there when any of the demonstrations were made by the crowd in firing or throwing stones? A. No. Q. You were not about Twenty-eighth street then? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see any interference? A. I saw the interfering on Thursday with the Union Line that they were trying to take out. Q. Stopping of the train? A. Yes. Q. Was there any violence or assaulting of the engineer, or any train men of that train? A. No; the crowd just got in front of the engines, and sprung on them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Who were those men? A. They were other men than railroad men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you know any of those men who got on your train? A. No. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Couldn't you guess from their appearance what their trades or occupations were? A. No. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did they get on and off the engine as if they were men used to being around the cars? A. No; some of them would get off and fall, and some of them would get off pretty good. By Mr. Means: Q. Were they sober or not? A. I could not tell that. * * * * * W. A. Kirk, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At Wilkensburg. Q. What is your connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. I am a conductor on the Wilkensburg accommodation. Q. Were you a conductor in July last? A. Yes. Q. How far is Wilkensburg from Pittsburgh? A. Seven miles. Q. How many trips do you make between these points a day? A. Five round trips. Q. What is your time for leaving? A. The first trip in the morning we leave Wilkensburg at six-fifty-four, and get there at night at ten-fifteen. Q. What time do you get to Pittsburgh? A. Seven-thirty first, and leave at nine-forty, going out on the last trip. Q. On the morning of July 19th, were you disturbed in coming in or going out? A. No. Q. When did you first learn of any difficulty or any strike? A. When I came as far as Twenty-eighth street with the twelve-five train--coming in on that trip--with the train due at the depot at that time. I then heard of it. I had heard remarks of a strike, but heard nothing definite until I came in on that trip. Q. What occurred on Friday? A. I saw men standing around there on Friday, I did not see anything at all, except seeing men standing around. Q. Were you molested in any way? A. Not on Friday. I did not see anything unusual on Friday. No; I was not molested on Thursday in any shape, but on Friday they were around by hundreds. Parties that I did not know where they came from, and we could not do anything with them. They would get on the trains, and we could not do anything with them. They did pretty much as they pleased, and I saw that we had better keep quiet. They were riding between Twenty-eighth street and Lawrenceville and Torren's station, during Friday. They were just riding when it suited them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What did they seem to be? A. They seemed to be mill men, as much as any thing else, from their appearance. They seemed to work somewhere where the sun did not strike them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. They refused to pay fare? A. Yes; they paid nothing. On Saturday morning, coming in on the first trip, I did not see any of them. I had the usual run of passengers in that morning. Going out at nine-forty, I got a crowd on that covered the engine, and tank, and train, and every place. After I left Twenty-eighth street, I made up my mind between there and Lawrenceville that I would not go any further until I had got those parties off. I got to Lawrenceville, and went to the engine, and got a big coal pick, and then went to them, and said the first man that refuses to get off here, I am going to stick the coal pick in him. I found that they all got off, and seeing that I had it my own way with those on the engine, I thought I would try it with the others on the train. I did try it on them, and so pulled on to Millvale, when I did not have anybody on that did not pay any fare, and I kept that up all day Saturday, except one trip. On the half-past three trip, they were a little too thick. I threw them off, and knocked them off the train, and drove them off the engine with the pick. At Liberty, coming in on the twelve o'clock trip that day, I was about five minutes putting them off there. A crowd of them got on at Torrens. I got them all off, that did not pay any fare. My crew stood by me very well. During the whole trouble, if I had had a few more men on the train--I only had two of a crew--I could have cleaned them out all the time. I was not molested or troubled at all by the railroad men--that is on the train, in that way. I was told at Liberty, on Saturday night, that I could not run the train out the city there by one railroad man and one other. Q. Who was the railroad man? A. His name was Hice, and the name of the other was Smith. Q. Smith was not a railroad man? A. No. Q. Do you know what his occupation is? A. A one-horse stock dealer. He went around the country buying up calves. I do not know what he is doing now. He is under indictment at present. Q. Was Hice in the employ of the company at that time? A. He was when the riot commenced. He has not been since. Q. You say you ran your train without carrying passengers that refused to pay fare except once. What day was that? A. It was Friday that I could not do anything with them. Q. Did you attempt on that day to eject those men? A. I did, but I concluded it was not going to be very healthy, and I gave it up. They would not get off, and made all sorts of threats. I did not know any of them that made the threats. They threatened that if there was any putting off, they would be the parties to do it, and I would be the one to go off. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Can you tell us any of the occurrences of the riot? A. I cannot, for I was just simply running on the train. I did not stop. The firing that took place at Twenty-eighth street occurred while I was out on a trip. They held me at Lawrenceville until it was all over and quiet, so that the track was clear when I came down. When I came in, there were not many there, but there was a big crowd there when I went out. I ran my train every trip except the last one, Saturday night. I went for information to the telegraph office, but could not get any, and I kept the train out there and did not make the last trip. Q. During all the excitement you were free to run in and out? A. Except a little detention waiting for the crowds to open. They would always get out of the road. Nothing was said to me by any person--by any employé, except this man Hice. He asked me once if I did not think I had better stop, and I told him I did not think I had, that I would go on as long as there was a track to run on, and make the trips, if I could. Q. Did you have any conversation with any of these men except Hice, or did you hear any of the strikers talking? A. Two or three railroad men--I do not know their names--went out on my train at three o'clock on Thursday afternoon; they were going out home. I asked them what the trouble was, but I got but little satisfaction out of them, no more than they were swearing at the double-headers; that was all I could hear. Q. They were not taking part in the riot? A. No; they said they were not going out, but they had nothing to do with the trouble. I think they went home, for I would see them still out down there when I went out. They were not in the crowds at all. * * * * * Frederick Fleck, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. At Spring Hill, on the line of the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am a locomotive engineer. Q. Were you so engaged during the riots in July? A. I was. Q. Can you give the committee any information upon the occurrences that came under your observation? A. On the morning of Thursday, the 19th, I started out on my usual time, at seven-twenty, with a coal train. I ran what is called the Pittsburgh coal train--making two round trips from Pittsburgh to Brinton's about eleven miles out. We left in the morning without any indication or sign of trouble on the road. Everything appeared to be going on as usual. There was no intimation of any trouble. Coming in on the road, about East Liberty or Torrens, we usually met the trains going out--the eight-forty's. We did not meet them. We should have passed them between those points. We did not know what was the matter, but thought there was some delay or no freight; but when we came to Torrens, some of the men about the stock-yards, by signs in this manner, [indicating,] showed there was a strike, as we understood; but we knew nothing definite until we got to Lawrenceville, and there ascertained there was a strike. We usually cut the engine loose on running by the upper round-house. There was a conductor came on the engine, and asked me if I was going out. I told him I certainly was, that I had no reason why I should not go out. He said the boys were on a strike, and they did not propose to let anybody go out. By Mr. Means: Q. Who was that conductor? A. His name was Leech Reynolds. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was he an employé of the railroad company? A. He was a conductor at that time. Q. Do you know where he resides? A. I think he then resided in the Twelfth ward. I did not pay any attention to him, whatever, and the train was dropped past, and I pushed on to the west end of the yard, as usual. I believe there were no objections to putting trains away that came in. Q. Is Reynolds living in Pittsburgh now? A. I think he is, although he is not employed at present. I paid no attention to the threats. I asked what would be the consequence if I did go out, and he said that I would get my neck broke. I smiled. I told him I did not know--that it was pretty hard to break, as it was short and thick. I went on to Lawrenceville with the engine and crew. We carry four men on that train. It is a train that does a great deal of work, and we require two flagmen. There was a great deal of work to be done on that train, as it is a double train, and we take local traffic. At Lawrenceville I started to go down the track, when the conductor and crew left the engine. I said, boys are you not going out? They concluded not to go out, that they did not want to be black sheep. I told them that I did not know that the double-header business interfered with us, and it was only a question of double-headers, so far as I knew. Nevertheless, they concluded not to go out. I then took the engine down, and reported that there was no crew to go out. This was about eleven o'clock on Thursday morning. In the meantime, there was some scuffling about there. I saw men rush back and forward, and there were some policemen there. I did not know what the trouble was, and went down to make some inquiries from Mr. Fox. I asked what the matter was, and was told that they were trying to arrest a man that had struck Mr. Watt. They had got hold of him, but he was limber as an eel. The engine was taken into the round-house. About two or three o'clock that afternoon, an attempt was made to take the double train out--what is called the Union Line. Conductor France was to take it out. He asked me what to do about the matter. I said he ought to judge for himself--you know your business--but, if I were you, I would attempt to take the train out, and if they won't let you, then you have done your duty. He is a rather bold, brave fellow, and sometimes would go further than other men would. He said, I have got shooting-irons, and if they stop me I may hurt somebody. They coupled up the train, but they were stopped at the lower round-house. There were some parleying there, and some difficulty. A crowd was there, of twenty or thirty or forty, stretched along from Twenty-sixth to Twenty-eighth street. Q. Who were this crowd? A. They were railroad men--I can hardly tell who they were--principally railroad men at that time. The order was given to start the train. I think Mr. Watt was there, and the engineers made an effort to start, but the crowd got in front and commenced swinging their hands, and I saw one man flourishing a revolver. I think his name was Harris. They stopped them, and the engineers got off, and the firemen, and the train did not move. That was on Thursday, about three o'clock. On Thursday evening the engineers called a meeting over Clark's hotel, and I went to see what action would be taken in regard to the strike. Up to that time I understood the engineers had not taken any part--that they were a kind of silent party, looking on. They met and discussed the matter _pro_ and _con_ for some time. The older men advised not to have anything to do with the matter, that it was a conductors' and brakemen's fight, and that they should be left to fight it out themselves; but some time previous to this, there had been a reduction of ten per cent., and the engineers had sent a committee to Philadelphia to the general office, to see what could be done about it. The committee returned, and they had accepted the reduction in good faith. I told the meeting that the men had consented to take the reduction, and that so far as the double-headers were concerned, they had run them before, and that there was no objection--that it did not require any less engineers or firemen to run the double-headers, and that it did not effect us in that respect, but before the meeting broke up some men came in under the influence of liquor, and got a little noisy, and the thing dropped until Friday morning. On Friday morning they had another meeting, and I also went to that. The older engineers thought that we could keep the men out of it--the engineers and firemen--but it appeared to be determined on the part of the majority of the freight engineers and firemen to go into the matter, and the meeting was postponed until three o'clock. They did not come to any conclusion. The majority of the men there that morning were opposed to the strike. They concluded to have another meeting in the afternoon; and I saw, with a few others, that a resolution would be adopted that they would go for the strike, so I did not go, and I advised some of the younger men that I knew, not to go near the meeting. This was at Engineers' hall. About one o'clock they had organized the meeting, but I was not down there. They sent a sub-committee to come up and take me down by force to the meeting. I refused to go. Then they organized and concluded to go into the Trainmen's Union, and they went into it, and went into the strike--that is the majority of our freight men--engineers. Up to that time I did not know of any organized committee or anything else waiting on the officers, and I told our men in the morning you cannot consistently demand anything until you see the officers and have a refusal. I told them you have not made any request, and you are going into this thing without making any request, and that you have violated the law at the start, and you cannot expect to be successful; but they said that the iron was hot, and that they were going to strike. So after that time until the trouble was over, I had nothing to do with the men. I staid there until Saturday evening, ready to go out. In fact on Saturday my engine was fired up and ready to go out. I never refused to go out because I had never quit the service of the company. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What kind of a meeting was this? A. It was meeting of engineers and firemen. Q. A secret organization? A. No; it was an open meeting. Q. Participated in by men belonging to this organization and others? A. By the brakemen, conductors, engineers, and firemen, and all those that wished to be there. On Saturday evening the troops came up, and I was back and forward to the shops. I was up on Twenty-eighth street, but I saw no violent demonstrations, although there was a big crowd there. I suppose, though, if there had been any effort on Friday or Saturday, to send trains out, there would have been violence. Plenty of revolvers and fire-arms were displayed there, by plenty of men outside of railroad men. By Mr. Means: Q. Was it railroad men who flourished and displayed the revolvers and fire-arms? A. I think the majority were outsiders. Q. Were they citizens of the city of Pittsburgh, or strangers? A. I don't know. I suppose they were citizens from the East End--from the east of the city. There were thieves, and robbers, and rogues, and tramps there from the whole country. Q. Were they citizens of Pittsburgh, or were they strangers? A. I think the majority of them were outside of the railroad employés. Whether they were glass-blowers, or puddlers, or citizens of any other occupation, I could not tell. The Pittsburgh troops were on good terms with the mob. Some were giving them muskets, and marching up and down with the mob, and eating hard-tack with them, and there was a good feeling, generally, between them. The report came that the troops were coming from Philadelphia, and that there would quite likely be trouble with them, because they were strangers here, and would not know the position of things here, but would obey orders. From that, I inferred that the Pittsburgh soldiers had not exactly obeyed orders. I only inferred that. This was the kind of tone or feeling around there. When the Philadelphia troops came marching up through the yard, my engine was out. I think that General Pearson was there at the same time that the Philadelphia troops came up from Twenty-eighth street. I think that General Pearson was, and I am positive about Mr. Cassatt. He said to me: Fred., are you willing to go out? I said: Certainly. I have never refused to go out. Certainly, on condition that the mob is dispersed. I would not like to run through it. I don't want to hurt anybody. He said: We don't want to send anybody out, until the mob is dispersed. I thought that if there was any determination displayed on the part of the troops, the mob would go away. Shortly after that, I was at the upper end of the lower round-house, half way between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth streets. After the troops got up there, somebody made a speech--some one of the officers, or somebody--made a little speech, warning the people to go away, and disperse. I couldn't hear exactly what was said. Then I saw some of the soldiers come down shortly after that, and one of them, particularly, had the whole side of his face knocked off by a brick. They were the Philadelphia troops. Some of the others came down sick. I don't know whether they were sunstruck, or what kind of struck, but they were weak about the knees, some of them. Then, by and by, I heard a little bit of musketry rattling, and then heard them shoot in every direction, and saw the crowd dispersing in every direction--some running up the hill, and some up the railroad, and some down Twenty-eighth street. In a short time, nobody was there. The troops came down to the round-house, and were quartered there, with the Gatling gun put in position, off Twenty-eighth street. I heard one of the officers of the troops saying, that they could not stand it much longer--that they were yelled at and struck--that they had not come to Pittsburgh to hurt anybody, but that they couldn't stand it much longer. But General Brinton told them, in my hearing, that they shouldn't shoot at all. They had barricaded Twenty-eighth street. The troops were barricaded there. Guards were posted properly, I suppose; but they had no rations, and a good many of the men commenced to complain about something to eat--that they had only had a small lunch since they had left Altoona, or somewhere. Somebody remarked, that they would open up the Gatling gun on the mob, if it didn't quit throwing the stones and missiles at the men. This was about six o'clock. The General came, and said, I don't want a man to shoot, without the barricades are broken in. Stand back, and don't use any violence. I won't allow any shooting to be done, without, it is in self-defense. I remained there until half past eight or nine o'clock. The mob had gathered so thick that it was almost impossible to get through. From Penn up to Liberty, and from Twenty-sixth up to Twenty-eighth streets, there was a solid mass of people. At that time, the old telegraph office was shot into, and stones were thrown into it, and the only thing that prevented them from shooting everybody there, was simply because the street was so much lower, and they had to shoot up, and the balls struck in the ceiling. One or two of the soldiers were struck in the back by missiles, or with stones in the face. One of the officers was struck, and it kind of riled him. By that time, an order came to send to Union depot to take the fast line out. Nobody was about. They had the engine, but no engineer. Mr. White asked me to go down. I said I would, if I could. I tried to get out at the rear of the shops, but the mob would not let me out. An officer was called up to pass me out of the round-house. I said, if you let me out between the office and the old round-house, I can jump off the wall, and get down. Previous to this time, it was generally thought, in the crowd outside, that Mr. Pitcairn and some of the officers, (Mr. Watt,) were in the office--in the outer depot office. It appeared that there was an antipathy against these men, and they wanted to get at them. Some remarks were made that they had coffins for them, and others said: Get them out of there. Just such threats the mob would make. They seemed to have made up their minds that those men had ordered the double-headers, or the reduction, and they were going to take their revenge out of them. They were instructed so (the mob was) by the railroad men. I thought that they were up there. I didn't know they were away. I thought they were there. Then I jumped off the wall. In the act of jumping, I was fired at. I suppose some ten or twelve balls were fired at me by some men there who had no love for me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who fired? A. The mob outside. I got out of the crowd and into the Union depot. I found then that it was countermanded--that the fast line was not to go out. I went into the depot, and I don't know who I found, now--but I found out that the train was not to go. I found Mr. Pitcairn there, and I told him I thought it was not a wholesome place for him, that he had better leave. I told him I thought that some of the men were disposed to do him some personal damage if they came across him, and from the way in which the mob or the crowd felt, I didn't think it would be very well for anybody to get in their way at that time. About nine o'clock there was somebody came and asked for volunteers to take an engine out to the outer depot, to take provisions up to the troops. I told them I would, and I waited for some time, and then I found out that they had come to the conclusion that it would not be safe to go up. I heard no more of it until morning. I staid with the engine during that whole night, and saw the fires getting brighter and brighter, and coming closer down. I staid there at Union depot until eleven o'clock Sunday, when I drew the fires out of the engine and left her standing there by the orders of the depot-master, and went home by the way of the Fifth avenue street cars. While waiting for dinner, my brother-in-law heard a train, and I went out on the road, and I saw a train coming backward. I gave a slight signal and the engineer stopped. It was not very hard to stop a train then. The conductor inquired what I wanted; he said that he was going out as far as Walls. I said I would like to go. It seemed that some of the troops were coming in and came as far as Torrens, and were ordered back. I went to bed early in the afternoon after getting there. I came in on Monday, and was at our head-quarters at Fast Liberty. I thought our foreman was there. I reported for duty. About noon he asked me to run the Walls accommodation train. I said, certainly, I will run the train. I run it--no, I did not go out that trip, for the man who had the engine refused to get off, although he had asked in the first place to get off. When I came he refused to give it up. He pulled out a pistol and displayed it, and refused to give the engine up, yet he had asked in the first place to be relieved. So I told Mr. Whetman, our foreman of the round-house. Well, says he, let him run it, but he told me sometime ago, that he was tired and wanted to be relieved. I remained there until afternoon, when I got orders to take the engine. I went down again, and said, I have orders to take this engine. So I took her and run her sometime--I run her that night from Thirty-third street to Walls and back on regular trips. But I didn't make the last trip. In the morning I came in at the usual time. When I came in, it appears that a committee had waited on Mr. Whetman, and told him to take me off that engine. I believe the man Reynolds told him that they would not allow me to run the engine. Then Mr. Henry took the engine and run one round trip, when Mr. Blender took her. But before this, I was to go to Lawrenceville to take a train down to find a committee of men to have a conference about the thing. Mr. Garrett got on the engine. I asked where I was to go at East Liberty. John Shires and McCullough, who were on, were both of this committee, and Mr. Garrett told me that these parties wanted to go down for this conference. Shires spoke up and said, we will give you orders where we want you to go--we are running this road now. In fact I did not know who was running it. I had nothing to say. Five or six more parties got on, and we came to Pittsburgh. Shires gave me orders to go on down. Things went on so all that week. No train went out until the following Sunday, when I was ordered to take the yard engine at Torrens, and load some stock. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who was Shires? A. He was a conductor on a shifting engine at that time. On Sunday we loaded some stock at Torrens I took the engine that usually did that work. Nobody was on her. I examined the fire and water, and found all right, and went to move the engine, when the engineer that had been on her came up and asked me what I was going to do. I said I had orders to run this engine. He said, I am running this engine. I said all right, and got off, and reported to Mr. Whetman. He said that the man had refused to move the stock; but said he would move passenger cars. He was not willing to move stock. He went down to the man and talked to him; but it appeared it had no effect. He would not do it. He came back and said, I want you to take that engine. I went down and tried to persuade the man. He was a man of family, and I thought he had better sense. I said to him this thing is all broken up, and it was a mistake from the start. This stock ought to be loaded, and I said you are taking revenge out of innocent parties. I said I don't know who will provide for your family if you are out of work, and I am confident if you won't work now they won't give you work when you want it. He said they would have to take him. He would not take the stock, so I took the engine and loaded the stock. Q. Did they resist? A. No; I had no crew then; so Mr. Scott, the agent at the stock-yards, and Mr. Gummey, volunteered to couple the cars and do the work. So he, and I, and Mr. Scott did the work. We loaded three or four double trains that afternoon. Q. What class of men were engaged in the riot when it first broke out? A. Well, so far as I know, I think it was caused by one man only refusing to go out--the flagman of that train. Q. Of what train? A. Of the eight-forty. Q. On Thursday morning? A. Yes; and I think the rest fell in kind of spontaneously as they came in off the road. Q. Have you been able to gather anything from the men, showing that they had a pre-arranged plan for a strike that morning? A. Not that particular strike. I understood a month or so before, that the Trainmen's Union had organized a strike for a certain time, but I don't remember the day or date. I know there was such talk among the men, that there would be a strike that day among the brakemen and conductors. There was nothing of the kind among the engineers, that I know of, because had the engineers held meetings at other places, I would have heard them speak of it. Previous to that time there was nothing among the engineers and firemen; but, the day passed over, and there was no strike; and, of this strike on Thursday, the 19th, I heard nothing of it--I knew nothing of it, and our crew knew nothing of it--at least they said nothing to me, and it appeared to be a surprise to them when we came in. Railroad men sometimes are very communicative; they generally let one know, directly or indirectly, what is in the wind. They generally know one among the other. Q. Had they any secret organization? A. I don't know what this Trainmen's Union is. It was a new thing to me. I heard of it, that is all. I believe that such an organization existed, and had for some time. Q. Do you know the objects of the organization? A. I don't really know--I never heard particularly--only from the talk of the men It was kind of protective or like all labor organizations--something of that kind--to unite the men together, and get them to act in unity. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was it of a beneficial character? A. No. Q. It was not like the engineers' organization. A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. It had no connection with it? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I suppose it is secret? A. I think it is. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At the meeting you spoke of, did the engineers and firemen agree to go into that union? A. I understood so, but I don't know it. Q. Do you know whether the Engineers' Brotherhood assisted or encouraged this strike of the Trainmen's Union? A. I don't know that they did. If they did, they violated their obligations. They might have been in sympathy. Q. They took no formal action in the matter? A. No; not up to that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You have stated that the strike was commenced by one man refusing to go out? A. As far as I understand. Q. At what time was the first effort made to prevent men from going out who were willing to go? A. As far as I know--I was out on the road at that time that this refusal was made--that occurred sometime about eight o'clock in the morning. I left Pittsburgh at seven-twenty, and didn't get back until eleven o'clock. What transpired in the meantime, I cannot tell you. I know nothing about it, only from hearsay. Q. Do you know, of your own knowledge, whether it was discharged men or men in the employ of the company who would prevent others from going out, either by persuasion or by force? A. I don't know that. I know that sometime in the afternoon, when that attempt was made at three o'clock, or thereabouts, there were employés and non-employés among the party. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And some of them had been in the service of the company and discharged? A. Yes; and some that had never been in the service. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you hear any talk about men coming from a distance? A. It was generally supposed--at the time of the fire and riot, I was at Union Depot, and I saw them carrying off goods--hauling them off by wagon loads and wheelbarrow loads--men, women, and children--it was generally supposed that all the thieves that could get here in two days, from all the country around, had got here; and I suppose, everybody thought that the property had better be carried off than be burned. Q. Can you give the name of the flagman who first refused to go out? A. No. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Do you know whether the strike was confined to freight men entirely? A. I think so; although some of the passenger men may have been in sympathy with them. William Ryan, recalled: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Please state whether it was discharged men, or whether it was men who were then in the employ of the railroad company who first prevented the trains from going out, either by persuasion or by interference? A. As far as I could see it was men still in the employ of the company. On the morning that this occurred they conversed about it. I suppose in that way they persuaded them not to go out. Q. Was it known then what men would be discharged under this order? A. No, sir; it was a mystery to all. Q. Can you give us the name of the flagman who refused to go out first? A. Harris, his name was. I gave his name in as Gus. Whether it was proper or not, I don't know. * * * * * John Alexander, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your occupation? A. I am an engineer. Q. In whose employ were you in July last? A. In the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Q. As a freight engineer? A. As a passenger engineer. Q. On what train? A. On the Walls accommodation. Q. At what hours did you leave the Union depot? A. In the morning, on the first trip, at six-twenty, and on the last trip leaving Pittsburgh, at five-twenty. Q. What time did you arrive at Pittsburgh in the morning? A. Eight-twenty-five. Q. State whether you were interfered with on the morning of July 19? A. I was not. Q. When did you first learn there was any disturbance among the men? A. About four o'clock that afternoon. Q. How did you learn it? A. I was coming down to go out on the five-twenty trip, and when I came to the round-house, above Twenty-eighth street, I saw a crowd of boys there. I asked what was going on--I asked somebody that I was acquainted with, and was told that the freight men were on a strike. That was, as near as I can tell, about four o'clock. Q. Who told you that? A. Robert Hardy. Q. Do you know whether he was among the strikers? A. I don't know. Q. How large a crowd was assembled there? A. I suppose about fifty persons. I thought that somebody was hurt by the Johnstown accommodation. It was just such a crowd as gathers when an accident takes place. Q. Were they boisterous and noisy? A. No; I didn't go into the crowd. Q. Did you have any conversation with any of the men? A. Nothing further than ascertaining what was going on. I went down to the lower round-house after my engine. Q. Did you go out that night? A. I did. Q. Were you interfered with? A. Not in the least--further than having to run carefully through the crowd. Q. Were you present during the riotous conduct, on any of those days from Thursday morning? A. I made my usual trips on Thursday and on Friday without any trouble, any more than this crowd getting on and off the engine between Torrens and Pittsburgh. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What kind of men were those? A. The majority of them were not railroad men. They didn't appear to be accustomed to riding trains. Q. Did they talk? A. Only among themselves. Q. What seemed to be their object? A. They had no object, that I could see. Q. Merely curiosity? A. More curiosity than anything else. Q. Have you any knowledge of new facts not related by the other engineers or conductors here who have testified? A. Nothing. They have filled up all I can say. Q. Can you give us any new light, as to the organization of the men or their plans of action, or the names of the prominent strikers? A. I don't know the names of many of them. Q. What do you know about the causes of the riot? A. Nothing, only the double-headers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you permitted to run the passenger trains without interference? A. Until Saturday night. Q. How about the freight trains. Were they permitted to run? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. They were stopped? A. Except when I passed through with the train. I was not there. I didn't see the freight trains from that Thursday until the Sunday after running. I was aware of the fact that there was a suspension of business. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What was the difficulty with the passenger trains on Saturday night? A. Coming in from the five-twenty trip, they told us that we couldn't go out again. Some men got on the engine and told me so. Q. Do you know where those men were from? A. I don't know. It was night, and I didn't pay much attention to their appearance. Q. Were they miners, or mill men, or tramps, or railroad men? A. They were not railroad men; they didn't talk like it, or look like it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear any threats? A. They only told me I was not to go out again. Q, They only complained about the orders for running double-headers? A. Yes. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. These men gave no reasons for refusing to allow you to go out again on Saturday night? A. No; I suppose they thought I knew. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the men know of any reason why the double-headers were to be run? A. I was not running freight. Q. You know nothing about freight? A. It was about that order I heard them talking. Adjourned until to-morrow, at three o'clock, P.M. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, SATURDAY, _February 9, 1878_ Pursuant to adjournment, the committee assembled at three o'clock, P.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. The first witness examined was * * * * * Archibald Jeffrey, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 32 Anderson street. Q. How long have you resided there? A. Going on three years. Q. What is your business? A. I am a machinist. Q. Were you in the vicinity of the disorders that occurred, commencing on the 19th day of July last--that day or at any time following? A. I was out there on the 22d--I believe that is Saturday evening. Q. At what point? A. About Twenty-eighth street. Q. Tell us what you saw there? A. There was a great deal of noise around there for awhile. Q. Made by whom? A. I can't just exactly tell who. Q. There was a crowd there? A. Yes. Q. Composed of what classes? A. Of most every class. Q. How large a crowd was there? A. I have no idea--I suppose a thousand or fifteen hundred men--I suppose so. Q. How long before the burning was it that you speak about? A. I went out there in the evening about five o'clock--along there--and I think the burning commenced about ten and a half o'clock. Q. What was the conduct of the crowd at five or six o'clock, when you went there first? A. That was after the shooting had been done out there. Q. After the firing by the militia, you mean? A. Yes. Q. What was the condition of the crowd at that time? A. There was a lot of talking going on about the soldiers; but not being interested in the thing at all, I didn't pay much attention to it. Q. What kind of talk was it? A. They appeared to be angry about the soldiers firing at the crowd. Q. Where was the crowd assembled then? A. About Twenty-eighth street, near the crossing. Q. Did you see anybody set fire to any car or building, or anything in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street? A. I did see one man. He was the only man. Q. Who was he? A. Matthew Marshall. Q. What time was that? A. It was in the afterpart of the night. I can't say exactly. Q. What was it he fired? A. A car of coke. Q. Where was the car standing? A. On the track, about two squares above Twenty-eighth street. Q. Just describe how he did it; where he got his fire; how it took place? A. I don't know where he got his fire. When I noticed him first he was in the car. He had a bunch of shavings, and was in a sitting down position, and appeared to me to be kindling a fire. When the fire got kindled he jumped out. I saw him fifteen or twenty minutes afterwards. He was the only person I know of. Q. Did you speak to him? A. No. Q. Was anybody with him? A. I didn't notice anybody with him. Q. What was the result of the kindling of the fire? A. If there had been no other fire it would have burnt that car up; but there was fire all around. Q. Other cars were then on fire? A. Yes; burning at the same time. Q. What has become of Mr. Marshall? A. He is in prison--over the river. Q. At whose instigation was he arrested? A. I can't say that myself. Q. You were not present when the firing took place by the militia? A. No. Q. Did you see any other fires kindled? A. I don't believe I did. Q. Describe whether there were other fires going on then, and how they were kindled, and what the mob were doing, and describe all the circumstances that took place at that time? A. There appeared to me to be a gang of men. I don't know who they were--whether railroaders or not. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did they seem to have any organized leaders, or were they directed by anybody? A. It appeared to me they had at that time. Q. Were they not running helter-skelter? A. They were ordering each other around. I can't say whether they had an organization or not. Q. Did it strike you that they had? A. It did, at that time. Q. That it was an organization? A. Yes. By Mr. Means: Q. An organization without a head--do you mean to say that? A. It appeared to me at that time that it was an organization, but I don't say it positively myself. Q. Was there any particular party to command it? A. Yes; it looked to me so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What did the crowd seem to be aiming at, at that time--was it the destruction of property? A. I can't say that. There was a great deal of destruction and thieving going on. Q. Pillage and plunder? A. Yes. Q. What was said by the rioters? A. I can't state. Q. Was this firing confined entirely to railroad property? A. It was at that time. Q. Was there any attempt made by any one, so far as you saw, to fire private property? A. No. Q. It seemed to be confined entirely to railroad property? A. Yes. Q. This man Marshall you spoke of, was entirely alone when you saw him fire the car? A. So far as I know. Q. Nobody seemed to be acting in concert with him? A. No. Q. Did this coke car stand entirely alone? A. It stood in a train. They kept running cars down, six or seven at a time, against each other. This came down with the rest of them. Q. Describe that. The firing of this car would communicate to others? A. Yes. Q. After the car was fired, was it put in motion? A. Not that I noticed. Q. When you speak of running cars down, where were they running them from? A. From out the road some place. I think it is down grade this way. Q. Did the cars stop at Twenty-eighth street? A. Above Twenty-eighth street. Q. Near the round-house? A. The round-house is on Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did the cars stop near the round-house? A. Yes. Q. Where were the troops then? A. I suppose they were in one of the round-houses. Q. Do you know that to be a fact? A. I walked down, and the guard was standing there. I suppose so. Q. The cars that were run down, then, would stop somewhere near the round-house? A. Yes. Q. Was there any effort made to fire the round-house, that you saw? A. No; I didn't get near enough. Q. Was there any attack being made upon the round-house by the mob at that time? A. I can't say that there was. Not that I know of. Q. Was there anything said by the mob about the soldiers being quartered in the round-house? A. Not that I can remember. Q. How long were you there? A. I went out in the evening about six or seven o'clock, along there. I stayed along Liberty street and was once or twice on the railroad, and saw Marshall, and along Liberty street at four or five o'clock in the morning. Q. How close to the mob? A. I was twice, once or twice, upon the railroad. Q. At what point on the railroad? A. Just about where I saw this man. Q. How far from the mob? A. That just appeared to be--I stood along the edge of the railroad, and this car was on the second or third track, off the edge of the railroad. Q. How many rods or feet from the mob? A. Not more than five or six rods--something like that. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. You were in the crowd, were you? A. No; not just in the crowd. I was standing looking at them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were within five or six rods? A. Yes. Q. Was the crowd noisy and boisterous? A. Yes. Q. What did they appear to be saying? A. I paid no attention to that. Q. Did you hear them say anything? A. I could hear them say a good bit, but it is a long time ago. Q. What did they appear to be doing? A. Dragging things off. Q. What? A. Goods and things. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was this man Marshall a railroad man or an outsider? A. I never knew him to be a railroad man. Q. Do you know anything about him at all--you knew the man? A. Yes. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Where did he reside? A. He lived in the First ward, Allegheny, some place. Q. Had you known him for years? A. Yes. Q. He had lived in Allegheny for some time? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was his business? A. He was a machinist. Q. In whose employ was he at that time? A. I don't know. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What were you doing there--what led you to go there? A. I heard of the excitement, and I went down town and went out to see it. Q. It was curiosity? A. Yes. Q. Did you say that other cars were burning when this man Marshall fired this coke car? A. Yes. Q. At that time? A. Yes. Q. It was not the first car burned? A. No. By Mr. Means: Q. Were you there when the first car was fired? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What kind of things were they dragging off--merchandise from the cars? A. Yes. Q. Were any railroad men among that party? A. I don't know. I didn't know anybody but the one man. Q. Did they have the appearance of railroad men--familiar with tracks and with getting on and going about cars? A. I can't say that. Q. You could not judge anything from their actions? A. No. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. How long was Marshall sent to the penitentiary for? A. Six years, I believe. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In whose employ were you at that time? A. In the employ of McIntosh, Hemphill & Co. Q. Where are their works located? A. Twelfth and Pike. By Mr. Dewees: Q. How far were the other cars that were burning from this one? A. They were close. There were cars all around, I suppose within thirty, or forty, or fifty feet. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. The crowd of spectators was not interfering with property? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were there until five o'clock in the morning? A. About that time. Q. How large was the crowd there during the night--take an average.--I mean the crowd engaged in burning or pillaging or plundering? A. I couldn't just give an idea. Q. What is your opinion as to how large the crowd was--a thousand men or five thousand or ten thousand? A. Two or three thousand. Q. You mean that were about in the vicinity, and seemed to be taking part in the destruction of property? A. If I were to give an estimate I would give you something that I don't know. Q. Was there any effort made to stop the destruction of property during the night? A. Not that I know of. Q. Was there any interference with it by any person? A. Not that I saw. Q. They were running things there themselves during the entire night? A. It appeared so to me. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You did not see any soldiers, except the guard at the round-house? A. I saw the guard and two or three standing there with him. Q. There were none active in trying to beat back the crowd? A. No. * * * * * Thomas M. King, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In Verona borough. Q. You are officially connected with the Allegheny Valley Railroad--in what capacity? A. I am superintendent of the river division. Q. Did you occupy that position in July last? A. Yes. Q. State whether there were any differences between the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company and their employés, existing prior to the 19th day of July last? A. There was some dissatisfaction among the men in regard to the ten per cent. reduction, but they all appeared to accept it. Q. When was the ten per cent. reduction made? A. The 1st of June. Q. To what classes of employés did that apply? A. To all classes receiving over a dollar a day. Q. And to the officers, from the president down? A. Yes. Q. There was some complaint at the time? A. Some dissatisfaction. Q. Between the 1st of June and the 19th of July, was there any organization among the men, so far as you could learn, or any pre-arranged plan to strike? A. There was nothing positive. I understood that quite a number of the men were joining what was called the Trainmen's Union. Q. Did you know the object of the Trainmen's Union. A. Of my own knowledge I did not. I understood it was being organized for the purpose of organizing a strike. Q. Did you, as superintendent, have any communication with the men that you understood were joining the organization in relation to it? A. A short time before the strike, three or four of our men, I understood, were very active in it, and I think I suspended one or two temporarily, and talked to some others about it. My information just previous to the strike led me to suppose that our men were not going to stand by it, or were withdrawing--that they would not go into the strike. Q. Did you get that information from conversation with your men? A. Yes. Q. With what class of employés? A. Conductors and engineers. Q. What class seemed to be most dissatisfied with the reduction? A. Generally those of the lower grade of pay--such as brakemen; that class of men. Q. When did the first strike occur on your road? A. I think on Monday morning, the 23d, I believe. Q. What class of men struck first? A. I would qualify the other statement by stating that on Saturday, about ten o'clock, I got a message stating that the shop men had held a meeting and determined not to work any longer without the ten per cent. was restored. We went out and called the men together, and Mr. Shinn, our vice president, made a speech, and explained the situation to them, and they held a meeting and agreed to stand by the reduction and go to work again. That was the first difficulty we had. On Monday, I think was the first refusal, on the part of the train men, to perform service. Q. What was said and done to get the men to resume work? A. On Monday, I went down with an empty train, and turned up Pike street. There they drew up, and I went on to the shops. We had a street engine that far. After getting to the Thirty-fourth street station, I was surprised to see a road engine standing there. I imagined, at once, there was going to be a difficulty, and I got off the engine and walked up to the round-house, and there was quite a large number of our men congregated there. I spoke to them, and asked them what this meant. None of them made any reply. I told them that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company had made some arrangement with their men, and that, of course, we would be governed by any arrangement made on the trunk lines. I told them they were foolish to go into the strike in the midst of the excitement--that it would do them no good. I then asked one of the engineers to go on the express engine standing there, and take her out. I got no reply. I said: "Boys, I am very sorry you are acting badly, and if you don't take the engine out, I will have to take her myself." I got on the engine and took her out, and made a coupling on a train and started. In the meantime, one of the firemen came down and got on with me. By the time I got up to the round-house, one of the engineers came and took the engine from me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You don't mean took it forcibly? A. Oh, no. I went back to the men, and by that time quite a crowd was gathered around, and there was a great deal of excitement. There were a great many people around that I never saw before. The men said they were going to call a meeting. I told them as a great many strangers, apparently, were around, I would sooner they would go away from the shops, and call their meeting at some other place where they could do it quietly. They did so, and concluded that they would not go to work. I succeeded in running all the trains that day that I cared about running. Q. How did you accomplish that? A. By working myself, and by calling on the dispatchers and two or three of the engineers. The next day a great many strangers were in our yard, apparently influencing our men. I sent for some of our men, and told them that I could not understand their conduct, that we had always endeavored to treat them kindly and squarely, then they said it was not their fault, that they were forced into it, and were doing what they did by intimidation; that it would be as much as their lives were worth to undertake to run those trains. By Tuesday noon I had a great deal of difficulty in getting the passenger trains to run. The men would be scared off and desert them. I gave the men notice on Tuesday afternoon, at three o'clock, that if they wanted the _onus_ of stopping all the passenger trains on our road, they would have to do it--that we would not be justified in undertaking to run trains and run the risk of having an accident occur to them by their refusing to perform their duty. Q. What action did they take then? A. They called a meeting about four o'clock. I sent up to that meeting and asked them to send me down a man to take out the passengers that had come into the city that morning, so that we could get them home. I could not get any person to do that, and had to do it myself. I took the train out. That evening there was a committee waited on me with a proposal that they would run two of our trains--would select the crew to take charge of them. I had been unable to get any protection whatever either from the military or civil authorities. Q. Did they carry out that arrangement? A. I sent a request to the committee of public safety, and had also gone and seen General Brown, personally, to get some protection for our shops, and also some ammunition for a company that we had at Verona guarding our property there. General Brown said he could give me no assistance, whatever, and so far as his ammunition was concerned, he had but very few cartridges for his command. He, however, gave me forty, and an order to gather up the company at Verona, and place them on duty there. He said he could not allow any troops to be sent out of the city at all, as he deemed it of more importance to keep them in the city than to send them on the outskirts. From Mr. Thaw, I learned also, that the committee of public safety had declined to send any persons. After the men had made their proposal, I notified them that I would give them an answer in the morning, and started up to the east end and saw Mr. Shinn, our vice president, and submitted their proposal to him, and explained the position we were in--that we could get no protection either from the civil or military authorities, and that if our men were willing to work, I thought it would be prudent, on our part, to submit to the men until such times as the authorities could regain control. He agreed with me, and authorized me to let the men take charge of the trains and run them, so as not to stop the United States mails. The trains were run under the charge of the men for two days--Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, we took charge of the trains ourselves again. We ran the passenger trains on Friday and on Saturday--all we desired to, and notified the men on Saturday that we proposed to commence running trains on Monday. And I advised all the men that desired to retain their positions, and who wanted to go to work again, that if they would come down on Monday and take their trains they could do so. Q. How many responded on Monday? A. We had some difficulty up until two o'clock, and I was compelled to employ a few new men. After that, the men saw that we were determined, to start the business on the road again, and the majority came in, and we had all the men we wanted. Q. Did you have any assistance from the military at any time? A. Yes. Q. When was it? A. I think on Thursday night. I went down to General Brown, and got an order from him to bring the company that was at Verona, doing duty there, to Forty-third street. He also sent a detail of cavalry from the city, and we took charge of the road on Friday morning, and started our trains. Q. I understand it was on Tuesday you made the application to him. A. On Monday night and Tuesday both. Q. The troops were refused? A. Yes. Q. When was it you made application to the citizen's protective committee? A. On Tuesday, Mr. Paul came to me, and told me. He said: "Mr. King, you are running a great risk. There is a great deal of excitement, and I have heard a great many threats, not only against you, but your road." I think it was at nine o'clock in the morning--between nine and ten. I said to him: "Mr. Paul, you see the condition of things here. If you can do anything with the committee of public safety, I think you should go and explain our position to them." He remarked to me that he had heard some threats among the men on Butler street, about burning the bridges and destroying property, and, also, some threats against me personalty, on account of my having been running trains out. The men were afraid to take them at the station, on account of the threats made against them. I could not get the trains run out, but as soon as I would get out of the city limits, an engineer would come forward, and relieve me. In that way, we were enabled to keep the passenger trains going. Q. Who was Mr. Paul? A. He was a neighbor of mine, living at Verona--of the firm of Metcalf, Paul & Co.--a member of that firm. Q. Did you see any of the committee of public safety? A. No. I was very busy, watching our property, and could not get down town during the day. Everybody was excited, and there were a good many outsiders around. Q. Did Mr. Paul report to you after seeing the committee? A. Yes. Q. Do you know who he saw of the committee of public safety? A. He did tell me, but I don't recollect now. I think he went in before the committee, and made a speech to them, and explained the situation--at least, that is my recollection. Q. What kind of assistance was the committee of public safety rendering at that time? A. I can't answer that. They were organizing the citizens into companies, for the purpose of protecting the city. Q. Mutual protection? A. Yes. The night I drove out to see Mr. Shinn the whole city appeared to be patrolled. It was midnight, and I was halted at almost every corner. The citizens were all apparently out. Q. Were they armed? A. Yes. Q. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, were your men all at work? A. Yes. Q. What time did the shopmen quit work on Saturday? A. At the usual hour. Q. What is that hour? A. Half past five in the evening. Mr. Shinn was there at half past two or three, and called the men together, and made a speech. I left then, and I think they all returned to work. Q. Did I understand you to say that all the trains, both passenger and freight, were running on Saturday? A. Yes; we sent out the night trains on Saturday evening, after the trouble had commenced. Q. Was the same order issued by your company that was issued by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, as to running double headers? A. There was no necessity for it on our road. Q. The only reduction in any way was the ten per cent. reduction, on the 1st of June, on your road? A. Yes. Q. Had you any reason to apprehend any strike, prior to the breaking out of the one here among your men? A. No; I had an assurance from quite a number that they would not go into the strike. Q. Did you receive any order from Colonel Grey upon Captain Patterson to furnish you with men? A. I think that is the order I referred to. I went and saw General Brown, and he gave me an order to Captain Patterson, to get the men together and report for duty at Verona shops. Q. On Tuesday? A. Yes; I am not sure whether it was Monday night or Tuesday. My recollection is, it was Monday night, but probably it was Tuesday. Q. Did he give you the order when you first saw him--the first time he was called upon? A. I was to see him two or three times during that period, and I am not positive about it. I think it was the second time; it may have been the first. I am not positive. Q. Did he make any refusal the first time you saw him? A. I explained to him, that we had a guard of seventy-five men, that we had organized ourselves at Verona, among whom were some of the Verona company, but they had no ammunition. I think that the General said to me, if I could get that company together, he would let it remain, but he could not send any troops from the city hall. Q. Did he state his reasons? A. He deemed it more important to keep the command together than to separate them. Q. Did you make any application to the mayor or sheriff of the county for aid? A. No; we did not need it until after the riot. It was only from the desire to protect our men who were willing to work. And I had been advised on Monday or Tuesday of some incendiary speech, made among the miners, and I looked for some trouble among them. Q. Was any of the property of the Allegheny Valley railroad destroyed? A. Nothing but a baggage car at Union depot and the tracks running in front of the round-house where we approached Union depot. Q. Had you any number of cars there at the time the burning occurred? A. I think we had about two hundred south of Forty-third street. Q. Were any of them laden with freight? A. Some with ore; the merchandise cars I removed Sunday night myself. Word was sent to me that the men were going to burn the freight station. Q. Were you interfered with in any way? A. No. Q. In the interviews you had with your men before the strike--between the 1st of June and the strike--what reasons did the men give for their anticipated strike? Q. They were dissatisfied with the reduction of wages. There had been one the previous year or so, and this one coming in that time, made them very much dissatisfied. Q. How long before was the other reduction? A. I think in 1874 or 1875. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is it not a habit for the men, when their wages are reduced, to complain? A. Oh, yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was it deemed necessary on the part of the company to make that reduction? A. The board of directors thought so. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Had there been a falling off in business? A. The business was very irregular and spurty. Sometimes we were running all the trains we could, and then they would drop off. And rates were not so good as they had been. Q. From your position, you should judge that was the reason why the reduction was made? A. I should judge it was a necessity on the part of the management to do it, on account of the condition of the trade of the country. Q. There had been strikes in other parts of the country before this trouble occurred here--for instance, at Martinsburg? A. I believe so--from newspaper reports. Q. Did you have any consultation with the railroad authorities when this occurred--or did you take any measures to avert this? A. So far as we were concerned, we did not anticipate it. Q. You had no anticipation of any trouble on your road? A. There had been some talk in regard to the train men's union, that it was for the purpose of getting up a strike. But many of our men, I understood, were withdrawing from it, and would not lend themselves to anything of the kind. For that reason I did not anticipate any trouble among our men. Q. Do you know whether there was any aid asked of or any consultation held with the authorities before the strike came about? A. I cannot answer that. I was not in the city that day. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How did the business that the road was doing for three months prior to June 1st, when the reduction was made in wages, compare with the same three months of the year before? A. My recollection is that our average may have been a little heavier, but I am not positive about that. Q. In the three months preceding June, 1877. A. Yes; our business is spasmodic. It is the oil business. A part of the year they are doing a good business, and then it drops off to nothing. Q. How did the prices for the carrying of freight compare in 1877 with those in 1876? A. I cannot answer that. I did not make the rates. Q. Had there been any change in rates, so far as you know? A. My impression is that the rates in 1877 were lower than in 1876. I want to say here, that our shifting engines handling freight on the street had been interfered with two or three times during Saturday morning by the crowd going down Twenty-eighth street, and sent back. I walked out the street, from Eleventh street to Forty-third--between eleven and twelve o'clock. I saw that there was a very considerable excitement among the people, and a good deal of feeling. From there I went up on to Twenty-eighth street, where the strikers were in possession of the track. I saw but very few people there that I knew. Some faces were familiar to me. I came back to the office, and got a report about the action of the men at the shop, and went out there at half-past two o'clock, and on my return I walked up to the Pennsylvania railroad shops, and found the troops were moving out. I went in through the yard, and followed in the rear of the column. After the troops reached the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street, I got up on a car right in the rear of them, and I watched their movements--the formation of the command. The crossings were cleared. I saw a few stones thrown among the crowd, and I saw a man with a cap on--saw him draw a pistol, and fire into the troops. Q. Do you know who it was? A. No. Q. Do you know whether he was a railroad man or not? A. I cannot answer that. When the company struck the crowd on the crossing there was a recoil like jumping up against a rock. There did not appear to be any give to it. Then there was a struggle, and some of the men reached for the muskets, and two or three of the soldiers pulled back and brought their muskets to a charge, and three or four shots were fired. Q. By the troops? A. Yes; and then there appeared to be a volley from the entire command--a rattling fire--starting at the front rank and breaking back to the rear. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean by the entire command? A. The head commenced firing, and then it run back on the wings. It was an irregular roll of musketry. I got off the car, and fell back after the firing ceased. My position was somewhat exposed. Q. Did you hear any command to fire? A. I do not think there was any command given. Q. You were in a position to hear it? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many shots were fired by the crowd before the militia began to fire? A. I only saw one. I saw some stones thrown. Q. Was a volley of stones thrown in among the militia, or was it scattering? A. Scattering. Q. From what point were the stones thrown? A. They appeared to come from the hill side--in the vicinity of the watch-box, near the crossing. Q. What was the effect of the firing of the stones among the militia--was there any damage done to life or limb? A. I noticed a sergeant of one of the Philadelphia companies with a bad cut on the face. He came back with his face shattered. The thing came very quick. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear any command to cease firing? A. I did not. I went to the rear of the cars I was standing on, and the soldiers were breaking back in my direction, and I did not notice what was going on in front after that. There was just one volley. The soldiers just emptied their muskets. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the result of the volley? A. A panic on the hill side--every person ran from the hill side and the crossing. Q. It dispersed the crowd, did it? A. Yes. Q. In what direction did they retire? A. In all directions. Q. What became of the soldier's then? A. I left the crossing, and went from there to the telegraph office, and wrote some messages to the freight depot and shops, directing them to put on a heavy guard during the night. While I was there Mr. Watt came in, and told me that the mob had started for the arsenal. I telegraphed to the commandant to take care of our shops, and advised him to be on his guard. The message was delivered within five or ten minutes after it was sent. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was any actual violence used by the strikers to prevent the trains running on your road? A. Our men were threatened. Q. But there was no actual violence? A. No. By Mr. Dewees: Q. When you were running that engine yourself, what was the mob composed of--men that had been in your employ, or in the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, or tramps? Describe the crowd? A. They were strangers to me. I do not know them. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. I understood you to say that application was made to the civil authorities. What do you mean by that? A. I did not say that application had been made to the civil authorities. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If you were present when the first firing occurred, I wish you would give us a description of it--what it was started by, and what the condition of the crowd was at that time? A. I was at the corner of Penn and Twelfth streets when the alarm was struck, 10.40 o'clock by city time, or a few minutes later. I saw a flash in the sky and heard the alarm, and hurried on up Penn street. I knew what it meant. There were some oil cars stored in the Pennsylvania yard at the time, and I saw it was the flash of an oil fire. I think about Twentieth street the fire commenced. I then went about a square, and I heard a torpedo explode, and I got to the next corner and saw the fire on Penn street, and on the side street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. A railroad torpedo, you mean? A. Yes; it made a noise similar to that. The engines were driving fast at the time. I went to the vicinity of the coke yards, and remained there until half past two or three o'clock in the morning. Q. Did you go with the engines during this time? A. No, I was walking. When I got up there, they were dropping the cars down to the cars that had already been set on fire--quite a crowd was around. The burning of the cars appeared to have commenced. People were passing with their arms full of dry goods and things of that kind. As fast as the cars were dropped down, they were set fire to. Every few minutes there would be a panic among them, and they would flee like wolves or sheep, but seeing that there was no danger, they would come back again. I remained there until three o'clock, and then walked to the shops to see if everything was quiet there. After I got there, I got a message from Colonel McKee, of the Oil City command, stating that he was on his way, but had no ammunition. I telegraphed to General Latta, and asked him where it could be got at some point on the road, before reaching the city. I did not get any answer. The wires were interrupted between the city and our place, and at four and a half o'clock, I started down to Union depot, to hunt up General Latta. Q. On Sunday morning? A. Yes, sir; I met a great many people coming from the vicinity of the Pennsylvania yards, all having more or less plunder. A great many of them were in liquor. I got to Union depot, I believe, at six and a half o'clock. I went up to General Latta, after getting to Union depot, and he told me he had some ammunition, and would give me some after a bit, for Colonel McKee's command. He appeared to be very much exercised over the condition of the troops at the round-house at that time. A short time after, Captain Breck came in and reported that General Brinton had broken cover and started for the country. I think he told General Latta and one or two others sitting in the hotel at the time. The general and the captain went up stairs, and after that I did not see them. I remained in the vicinity of our shops and the Union depot until twelve o'clock Sunday, and then went up among the mob. I went to see what the character of the crowd was, and to see if I knew any of them. There appeared to me to be about seventy-five or one hundred and fifty men that were organized. One man, particularly, I noticed with black whiskers with a stick in his hand that appeared to be the leader. They would go on and destroy a lot of cars and then meet apparently to consult. He would wave his stick, the mob would follow, and do as he directed. I saw them setting fire to the cars there. Such a hard looking set of people I never saw before. I did not recognize anybody that I had ever seen. Quite a number of them appeared to be in liquor. They had cleaned out everything down as far as what is called the "brewery switches." Q. About what street is that? A. About Fifteenth or Sixteenth street. One of them got up on a car and made a speech, and declared that, as near as I could judge from their actions--I could not hear their words--that the Union depot would be the next point affected. Two cars loaded with plunder were got into position and set fire to, and shoved up over the hill and down to the other cars on the other side. As fast as the gang appeared to make an advance, the plunderers kept ahead of them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did these men appear to be railroad men? A. No, sir; they were not railroad men. They looked to me like roughs of the lowest description. They had the vilest countenances I ever saw. One man, I noticed, was so intoxicated that he could hardly stand on his legs, but he would go in among the cars and do what a sober man could not do. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you make any effort to find out who the black-whiskered man was? A. I recognized him as the leader of the party, and I would know his face again. If I should ever see him, I would recognize him. They appeared determined to drop the burning cars into the depot, and I went down and threw an engine off the track, and blocked the track so that they could not do that. A great many people were around at the time, and it was thought that by the time they reached the depot they would not have the courage to come in there. The police were there, and I did not think that they would undertake to fire it. Q. How many police were there at that time? A. Fifteen or twenty. They retired right in front of the mob. Q. When they reached Union depot, how many did the mob number, that were actually engaged in the burning? A. I cannot answer that. A great many people were around in the vicinity, and in the streets, and on the hill side, and all around--a great many people were there. Q. You spoke of about seventy-five or a hundred? A. They were followed by an army of plunderers. This gang appeared to be the center, and as they went along, the plunderers demolished everything that came in their way. After they found they could not drop any cars into the depot they walked right into the office, at the north end of the depot, and knocked the windows out, and presently there was a flash there, and in a few minutes the shed was on fire. After the depot was fired, I walked to Forty-third street to see how things were going. I returned after the elevator took fire. I saw from that position that it was on fire, and I commenced to have grave doubts whether they could check it--whether they could prevent the lower end of the town from burning. Q. Did this gang of men fire property below the depot, or did that catch from the depot? A. I was not in the vicinity of the depot when the property on the other side was fired, and I cannot answer that, nor when the elevator was fired. By Senator Reyburn: Q. When you came back did you see this same gang? A. The crowd was scattered then. The elevator was on fire, and the Pan Handle yards were on fire. I got word then that they were going to attack our property, and I started right to the shops, and took an engine and removed what property we had. * * * * * David Garrett, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Twentieth ward of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am an assistant train master. Q. Of the Pennsylvania railroad? A. Yes. Q. Did you occupy that position in July last? A. Yes. Q. State what knowledge you have as to any dissatisfaction among the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in regard to wages prior to the 19th of July last? A. I have no knowledge more than any person would have who has his wages reduced. The men spoke about the reduction of their wages, that it was a little hard. They talked to me about the order. I told them that we were all in the same fix, and tried to point out to them that the reduction was general--that the business of the company had become reduced, and I supposed that they thought it was necessary to make a reduction. Most of the men that I talked to on the subject seemed to be satisfied. They didn't feel good about it, but they didn't say that they would offer any resistance to a reduction, or that they would strike, or anything of that sort. Q. That was after the ten per cent. reduction? A. Yes; they talked about it some. Of course we had heard about the troubles on the Baltimore and Ohio, and had heard about the Trainmen's Union, and also heard about men withdrawing from that, and also about its being bursted up. What I think the cause of the trouble was the very light business that was doing. Then in June, when the reduction was made, we found we had a large surplus of men, and we reduced the force to suit about the volume of business doing then. In doing that, we had regard to the condition of the men. Those who were married we tried to retain, and those who had been a long time in the service we tried to retain, and occasionally if we had a man who could get along at something else, or who was in particularly good circumstances, we would discharge him, in order to keep some man who was not so well favored. That threw some men out of employment. Then on the 16th of July--that was the morning on which the new arrangement was to go into effect--the running of double-headers. That is, instead of taking two trains from Pittsburgh to Derry, with seventeen cars, we would run one train with thirty-four cars. Q. Was the order issued on the 16th? A. It was to take effect on the 19th. The order had been issued some time previously, and posted on the bulletin boards where the men could see it. When this order was posted up, the men would come, and I saw them looking at the bulletin boards. No one expressed any dissatisfaction. There had been some talk among the men that it would dispense with the services of quite a number, which, of course, we admitted it would, and the more so, from the fact that while formerly we were running men from Conemaugh, the company found it inconvenient to run trains to Conemaugh, and were making Derry the dividing point. We were running from Pittsburgh to Derry and back again. That would give the smaller portion of the run to the men on this end of the road, and, of course, a smaller number of men were required. But to fix that, the day previous to the strike I went out to Derry, and there had a consultation with Mr. Edward Pitcairn, who is the train master at Derry. We saw the difficulty, and tried to provide for it, by taking seven or eight crews, of four men to a crew, to run between Derry and Altoona. As we were getting along with a less number of men, at the other end they would require a greater number of men. That was on Wednesday, the day preceding the riot. We had the thing all arranged, as I thought. I came into Pittsburgh the next morning about nine o'clock, when one of the dispatchers told me on my arrival, that one of the trains had not gone out. I asked him the reason, and he said that the brakemen had refused to go out on the train. I asked him the number of men he had asked to go out, and he said quite a number--eighteen or twenty, perhaps more. I told him I would go out and talk with the men about the matter. I felt about that, that we had a large surplus of men, and if only a portion of the men were insubordinate and refused to run, it would relieve us from embarrassment. I had no idea that it would extend beyond that. I went out and found eighteen or twenty men, and asked them if they had any objections to go out. Some just declined to go out on double trains, and others said nothing. Of the men present, I couldn't get any to go. The conductors were willing to go. I conferred then with Mr. McCabe, and he suggested that we should get some of the yard men to man the trains. We called on several of them, and finally got three to go as brakemen. Preparation was made to start the train. I walked some distance in advance of the engine that was to take the train, and met some men coming along that seemed to be somewhat demonstrative, and among them one man very violent--one now undergoing his trial. He remarked to me--I said something about the switches--I cannot remember now what--and he remarked to me that no trains would go out, or something to that effect. I asked why, and he said that they had resolved not to let anything go out. I remonstrated with him, and said: "Hice, you have a perfect right to refuse to go out if you don't want to go out, but you have no right to interfere with others." He said it had got to be a question of bread or blood, and that they were going to resist. I left him, and then came to attend to some other matter towards the switches. I heard something behind me and turned around, and saw a considerable confusion. I saw links and pins being hurled at these yard men on the train. I saw one of them struck. I saw a link or pin falling from his person, and saw it hit him. I also saw men going on the engine. I came forward then and found no person on the engine at all, and found that the men we had expected to run the train all driven away. I found that we were defeated in getting the train out. It was not worth while to parley with the men at all. We had no force at all--no police at all--or not very strong. I went to the office of Mr. Watt, who was acting in the place of Mr. Pitcairn, who was absent, and it was suggested that inasmuch as a large quantity of live stock was at East Liberty, and it was important to get that away, that I should go there and anticipate any power that might be coming west, and put the cars away, and take the power and send the live stock away from East Liberty. I immediately did that, and went there on the first train I met. I went to Torrens, and at East Liberty I met a coal train, and I stopped the train and went to the conductor and told him what I wanted. I told him to put his cars in there and to take a train of live stock from East Liberty. I didn't tell him anything about the trouble in Pittsburgh. He went away and conferred with some person, and then came and told me that he declined to do that. I left him go. I then went to Torrens, not wishing to lose any time, and while there received a message from the superintendent's office telling me that two engines were on the way there and would soon arrive--two engines westward. I then received another message to make haste, that Hice and his crowd had started for Torrens to interfere with the live stock. I made all the haste I could. I went down to Gray's switches, and there waited the arrival of the two engines, took the cars from them, crossed the engines coming west over to the other track, adjusted the switches, and went on down. When I got down there, Hice and his party had just arrived. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How did they get there? A. I don't know. The distance is not very great. I don't know what time they started, and I don't know by what route. I rather think they walked up the track to Torrens. At that time, when we got back, the party was there and surrounding the engines. I got up on one of the engines and asked the engine man what was wrong. He said he couldn't take the stock. They said that their lives had been threatened if they moved the stock. I telegraphed to Pittsburgh, stating the situation of affairs, and that we couldn't do anything at all without we had more protection, and Pittsburgh told me, after a bit, that more police were coming--that there would be fifteen of them. They had made a requisition, I understood, upon the mayor, and that fifteen police were to come up. They were to come up on the Atlantic express, I think. About the time the Atlantic express was due, I went out to where the engines were standing, and backed up against the stock. I didn't tell the crowd or any person that I had information of any assistance coming, but I just remarked to them that we proposed now to commence moving that stock, and that those who were in no way concerned with the railroad, or who had no interest in the matter, except as lookers-on--that I would take it as a favor if they would retire, and give us room to work. There was a large crowd there. Just at that time, this same man Hice called out, they are going to bring the militia--the Duquesne Grays. He immediately called out and said, I want four good men. They came up to him, and he said, I want you to go to Pittsburgh and get out two thousand mill men. Four young men started--a couple of them were, I think, our own men, and a couple were not in our service. I can't say who they were. One little thing occurred before this conversation with Hice--before the Atlantic express came. I had gone some distance east to the telegraph office, and I found Hice there, and I got into conversation again about it, and I told him: "Hice, be careful not to do anything you will be sorry for." He said it is a question of bread or blood, and said, if I go to the penitentiary I can get bread and water, and that is about all I can get now. I saw it was no use to talk to him, and I left him. When the express came along it didn't have the force on that I expected. It had some men, but not enough for the emergency. A great many men came up on the train. We found that we couldn't move the stock. Mr. Watt had come up, and I called his attention to the situation. I suggested that we should move some of the stock by deceiving the men. That I would get two engines, and say I couldn't move the stock, and I might as well go on back, and that under pretense of shifting the stock on to the siding he should get it past the crowd, and run it to some point on the road--to Spring Hill, and that there I would take it with those two engines, and that, in the meantime, if he couldn't do that, that I would couple to a train of cars that had been brought from Wilkinsburg in the morning, and take it as far as Spring Hill, and if the stock didn't come would take it on through. After we started from Torrens with the engines, I told the conductor and men what I wanted to do--to couple on to the train at Wilkinsburg. The men seemed to have a little fear that the crowd would overtake us before we could get the train out. However, I told them to hurry up, and I succeeded in getting it out. We took it on as far as Spring Hill, and, while the engines were taking fuel and water, I told them to remain until I came back and gave a signal, and I walked on to Walls to ascertain whether or not the stock was coming. When I got to Walls I learned from Mr. Watt the stock was coming. I then went back, and, when the stock arrived, coupled on, and sent it out. That was the last train moved, and it was done by deceiving the men. I then returned to Pittsburgh. It was pretty near night. I found the crowd at Torrens was indignant at us deceiving them in moving the stock. Some of the stock couldn't be moved, and had to be unloaded. I then came to Pittsburgh, and I found that while I had been away that they had a great deal of trouble in the Pittsburgh yard. But I don't know anything that occurred in Pittsburgh that day from the time I left until six or seven o'clock that night. But I remained there then all that night. Q. As train master, tell us how the traffic on your road for the three months prior to June 1, compared with the traffic during the same time of the year previous? A. I can give my impression, that it was very much below the corresponding period of the year previous. My impression is, it was below. Of course, in that, I may be mistaken. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You judge from the number of trains and the amount of stuff you hauled? A. Yes; our trade is peculiar. There are times when the through freight may be heavy, but at points east of Pittsburgh, the coal and other local business may be very light. We will start from Pittsburgh with an unusually heavy business, but it won't aggregate nearly as much when it arrives at Altoona, as on other occasions, when we start from Pittsburgh with a comparatively light business. I was present at the time of the firing of the troops, but about that, what I can say is about what Mr. King has said. Q. If you were present at that time, however, you may state what you saw? A. I was at Union depot when the troops arrived. I went to the outer depot, two blocks west of Twenty-eighth street. We kept ourselves advised by wire as to about the time the troops would move from Union depot to Twenty-eighth street. We were expecting that they would clear the track, and that then, if possible, we would get the trains started. We had a crew in readiness to go just as soon as they got protection enough to start. I remained on some gondolas there until the troops, with the Gatling gun, passed along up the track. Then I followed up. I didn't intend to go very close, but got much nearer than I had intended, and so got near enough to see the movements of the troops. I saw them form on Twenty-eighth street into what is called a square, and saw the confusion that Mr. King spoke about. I heard the shots very soon after that. I thought at first it was blank cartridges, but soon learned such was not the case. Q. Have you any idea as to how many were hurt? A. Seven, eight, or ten--and some killed. Q. You saw this yourself? A. I didn't see any myself. I saw them carrying people away very soon afterwards. I saw afterwards the man that Mr. King mentioned as having been hit in the face by a stone before the firing. While I was in the superintendent's office, after the firing, a report came that they were going to attack the arsenal, and also the superintendent's office. I afterwards went home and got my supper and returned. When returning, the mass of people at Twenty-eighth street was enormous. They were solid on both sides of the track. By the way, some soldiers were there, enough to keep the men off the track. I had intended to go up and walk to the superintendent's office, but found I couldn't do it with safety. I thought they possibly might want me, and I intended to go. I went to Union depot, and made an arrangement to get to the office. After that, I learned that the military had charge of everything. I staid at Union depot until ten o'clock, and left on the last train that went out. That was on Saturday night. About three or four o'clock in the morning I was awakened by a great deal of noise and hallowing, and saw a great many roughs passing my place, and heard wagons passing. Q. Did they seem to be coming in wagons from a distance? A. Yes; various wagons went past my house. It was three or four o'clock in the morning. It was getting daylight; and during all that day the people were carrying plunder past our house; and those same wagons returned during the afternoon loaded. I remained at home on Sunday, for the reason that they said they were going to commence at East Liberty and burn everything to Pittsburgh, and I thought that possibly my house might be burned. Q. If you had succeeded in starting a train from Pittsburgh, would it have been able to get ten miles away. A. All the trains that we started previous to, say, nine or nine and a half o'clock on Thursday, went through--went through all right. Q. What do you mean by through? A. To the destination, wherever it was. By Senator Yutzy: Q. During this time, before the military arrived, was there any considerable effort made on the part of the police to protect you and your men and property? A. No, sir; nothing at all equal to the emergency. Q. What number of policemen were there in force, at any time, to protect you? A. I cannot say that I ever saw a dozen. A small force of police were brought to the outer depot on Thursday, but it was after I had gone to Torrens, and I remained away the remainder of the day. It was after the time that we were trying to get out another train, when the men refused to let it go, and when Mr. Watt was struck. Q. What were the police doing all this time? A. I suppose the police were too weak in numbers. By Senator Reyburn: Q. When you saw them they were inadequate to the emergency? A. Yes; altogether. Q. Up to Saturday night, any train that could have been started would have gone through to its destination? A. No; only on Thursday. After Thursday, I think, no freight train could have gone through, because all the trains were stopped; and even the passenger trains were stopped at East Liberty and Lawrenceville. Q. From the information that the railroad authorities had, they could not have run trains through to their destination? A. I don't think so, after Thursday. The men allowed our trains to come west, but as fast as they came west they prevented them from going east. Adjourned until Monday morning, at ten o'clock. PITTSBURGH, MONDAY, _February 11, 1878, 10 o'clock_, A.M. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM. Pursuant to adjournment the committee re-assembled at ten o'clock, A.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * Charles McGovern, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. On Boyd street, in the Sixth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. Were you on the police force of the city of Pittsburgh, in last July? A. I was. Q. In what capacity? A. I was a detective. Q. Were you in the city on the 19th day of July? A. I was. That was Thursday. Q. Were you employed by the mayor as a special detective? A. I was serving under his administration. Q. Had you any communication with the mayor on that day with reference to the disturbance of the peace? A. I had. Q. State what it was? A. A little after eleven o'clock on Thursday, the 19th day of July, Mr. Watt came to the mayor's office and had a conversation with the mayor, and after he was through the mayor called me in. It was my week in the office. We took our turns in the office. He instructed me to gather what men I could find and go out to Twenty-eighth street--that there was some trouble with the railroad employés out there on account of a strike. The week before that our police force had been reduced from two hundred and thirty-six men to one hundred and twenty, I think. That left us without any men in the day time at all, except six men that were employed in the office as detectives, and one man on Fifth street, and two specials, I believe; but on this day it happened that the men that had been dropped from the rolls were in the City hall for the purpose of getting their money. I told the mayor that I could not get a sufficient number of men to go out there to amount to anything, if there was any serious trouble, but that a number of these men were there, and that I could raise a squad from them if necessary. So failing to find the necessary number of our men--who were in bed at this time because they were on duty at night--I gathered ten men belonging to the force that had been dropped, and started out to the Union depot. Mr. Watt met us there and took us out to the crossing at Twenty-eighth street. He had some two or three of his own men there. When I got out there he told me what we were brought there for--that there was a strike in progress, and he anticipated some trouble with the employés--that is they would likely resist the running of trains. We were moved out to Twenty-eighth street, and at Twenty-eighth street, or a little this side of the street--that is, west--there is a switch. He told me he was going to move the trains, and I sent the men to protect those switches, and to see they were not interfered with by the strikers. I divided the men into two squads, and sent one squad to the western switch and took charge of the other myself. Q. How many men were there in a squad? A. Five; I had ten men and myself. Quite a number of the people there were boys, and there didn't appear to be much excitement just then. Q. What time was that? A. A little before twelve o'clock. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What were they, railroad men? A. Yes; a number of them. Some I knew. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Could you mention their names? A. One I recollect now. I knew him to be a railroad man. I had a conversation with him. It was Samuel Muckle. I talked with him. The leading men of them seemed to be disposed to keep the peace. They didn't want any trouble with the police. We didn't anticipate much trouble then. Q. How many were there? A. One hundred were there, but a number of those were spectators, who had just come from curiosity. Q. How many were engaged in the strike? A. I can only judge of the number actively engaged in the strike, from the number of persons that interfered with the first arrest that we made. That occurred when Mr. Watt attempted to open the switch to let the train out. That is where the first trouble commenced. As soon as he did that, a man named McCall, and another man named Davis, both of whom have been tried in the courts since--they jumped on to the switch, and one of them struck Mr. Watt. When I saw that, I was at the other switch. I ran down, and after considerable trouble, we succeeded in arresting McCall and in taking him down to the watch-house. Then probably there were fifteen or twenty persons that appeared to take an active part in preventing McCall from being arrested. They seemed to be very anxious to have us let him go. There were a number of stones thrown, and some of my officers were hit. I saw a number of stones thrown, and it was principally the work of boys. The railroad men wanted to persuade us to let him go, but we finally got him down to the watch-house. He resisted very stoutly. None of the railroad men attempted to use violence at that time. Q. You placed him in the lock-up? A. Yes; at the Twelfth ward station. Q. How many of your men remained there on the ground? A. After we locked him up we came right back there again. Q. What occurred then? A. Mr. Watt left then and went to get more men. Along about one o'clock, I judge, there were some five or six men came, in charge of officer White, of the mayor's force, and went on out to East Liberty, and my impression is that Mr. Watt went with them. Q. How many men were with officer White? A. Five or six men--also men dropped from the rolls. Then three or four--probably more--there may have been ten--came to my assistance and remained with me at the crossing. Q. How long did you remain at the crossing? A. Until about three o'clock. In the meantime there did not appear to be any effort made on the part of the railroad authorities to move any more trains after this assault at the switch, and my impression was at the time that they had given the matter up just then. There seemed to be a general disposition on the part of the railroad employés--the men not on strike--to rest easy, as it were. They didn't want to work. I heard the men talking with each other. They did not appear to make any effort to work. Those not engaged in the strike actively--they seemed to be in sympathy with those in the strike. Q. What was the condition of the crowd there from one o'clock up to three o'clock? A. It kept on increasing. Q. How was it as to being demonstrative or boisterous? A. There was no trouble there after this assault on Mr. Watt, because no effort was made on the part of the railroad officials to run out trains. Q. Where did you go when you left there? A. I telegraphed to the chief, in town, from the Twelfth ward station, that things were at a stand-still; that there was no attempt on the part of the railroad men to run out trains, and that the men were still stationed at the crossing, and he instructed me to place the men in charge of officer Fowler, and to come in to the central office. I did so after three o'clock. Q. Did you go out again? A. Not that afternoon. Q. Did you receive any further instructions? A. Not that day. The men remained there that day and night--all night. Q. Were you present when Mr. Watt came to consult with the mayor? A. I was in the office. Q. Did you hear the conversation? A. No. Q. What did Mr. Watt tell you that time in the presence of the mayor? A. I do not think the mayor was present at that time. It was in regard to what I was going out there for. He told me a few of the men were on a strike, and that they would probably undertake to interfere with the running of the trains, but he did not anticipate any serious trouble. He thought that a few men would be sufficient. He did not think it would amount to anything, and said that the presence of a few men would stop the whole thing. He looked on it very lightly at that time. Q. After Mr. Watt went away it was that Mayor McCarthy gave you instructions? A. Yes. Q. What did he tell you to do? A. He told me to collect as many men as I could get. Q. Of the force on duty? A. There was no force on duty. Q. From what source were you to collect them? A. He told me to get as many men as I could get. He meant the office men. But they were only on duty at night, and at this time none of them were about except the chief of detectives, Mr. O'Mara, who was busy, I believe. I so reported to the mayor. I told him I could get a number of the men who were dropped from the rolls. He told me to go ahead and get them. Q. How many of those men were there then? A. I suppose there may have been twenty or twenty-five. Q. You selected ten of them? A. I thought that would be a sufficient number on account of what Mr. Watt had told me. Q. You could have got more if you had wanted them? A. Yes; I did get more afterwards. I think ten more came out. Of course we could not get those men and bring them into service as our men in actual service, because those men had been dropped from the rolls, and it was only those willing to go on duty or not. Q. But plenty of them were willing to go? A. Yes; they showed a willingness to go. Q. When you got to Twenty-eighth street, how many men were engaged there then in preventing the trains from moving? A. The first intimation I had of any men, who were going to prevent trains from running, was when Mr. Watt was assaulted, and then I should judge that those men actively engaged, numbered, probably, ten or fifteen--that seemed to be the leaders. Q. When you undertook to arrest McCall, how many men took his part? A. I suppose ten or fifteen of those men gathered around us, and wanted us to let him go. Q. Did you arrest all of those who undertook to take McCall's part? A. They did not use any violence at all. McCall appealed to them, and asked them not to allow him to be arrested, that they were there for the purpose of preventing the trains from running, and that they were not surely going to allow him to go to the watch-house, but there was not a man of them that attempted to interfere with the officers. The only interference was some stones thrown from the hill-side around. I saw some of them thrown, and most of them by boys. Q. I understand, after you returned from the lock-up, you found the crowd still assembled at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes. Q. How large was it then? A. It was increased then, I estimate, to about the number of two hundred people, women, and children, and boys, and men. Q. What were they doing at that time? A. They were just standing around there chatting and talking among themselves. The excitement was still increasing. Q. No effort was made to start the trains from that time until three o'clock? A. When those men came from the office--the second force--Mr. Watt went up to Torren's station. I believe there was no person there that appeared to make any effort to do anything. Mr. Fox, the chief of the Pennsylvania railroad police was there, and I was under his instructions to do anything he wanted done. From that time, until I left, no effort was made on their part to run out trains east. There was an attempt made after I left to run trains out, but of course I did not see that. Q. Did you command the crowd to disperse? A. We undertook to keep the crowd off the tracks, but our force was not sufficient. As soon as we would get one track cleared, they would come in on the other. It would have required at two or three o'clock--it would have required a hundred men to clear the tracks, and do it effectually, and I did not have the necessary force to do it with. They appeared to loiter around there talking, and the crowd kept on increasing. Q. Did you get any further instructions after you returned to the city and reported to the chief of police? A. I got no further instructions, I remember, from the chief; he instructed me to turn the force over to officer Fowler, and report at the city hall. Q. Do you know, of your own knowledge, what were the movements of the police force there during the balance of the day? A. During the balance of the day the force was increased to, I think, at Twenty-eighth street, thirty men--twenty-five or thirty men--during the evening. They remained on duty all night. Q. Was there any effort made to run out trains during the afternoon of Thursday? A. I believe there was. Q. Were you not on an engine, and were you not driven off? A. I was not; the officers can be got here that went on that engine. Q. Will you tell us who they were? A. Officer Saul Coulston and officer Robert Fowler. Q. Did you have any further connection with the movements of the police? A. Not in the capacity of commander or leader. Q. Were you present at any of the disturbances after that? A. I went through it all, backward and forward, around the city, in the capacity of an officer. Q. Were the police, to your knowledge, reinforced in the morning of the 20th--Friday morning. A. No, sir; the police force was not reinforced until Tuesday morning--the following Tuesday--that is, were not organized. Then the regular force was filled up and organized by the committee of safety. But a number of the men who were called on on Monday and Sunday responded. But the regular organization did not take place until Tuesday. Q. They responded whenever the calls were made? A. A number of them responded on Sunday, after the fire was going on. Q. Was there any difficulty, so far as you know, in reinforcing the police force? A. I know, from my own experience, that there was considerable difficulty in bringing the men dropped from the rolls when there was no trouble,--in bringing them to the front after the trouble commenced. A great many of them objected to going on duty. Q. Why? A. I suppose they looked on it in this way. I inferred this from the tone of their conversation--that they were discharged--that the councils had thought proper to dispense with their services when there was no trouble, and that, when they were in trouble they did not propose to put their heads into the halter. I know one of them left my squad--or two of them. One of them did not reflect that he might be taken to where he would get hurt or get hit with a stone. He left and the other left. Q. What reason did he give? A. He simply left. By Senator Reyburn: Q. These men were not organized at all? A. They had been dropped from the rolls the week previous. They were not bound in any way to the city. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did not a demand have to be made on them? A. No, sir; I simply told them. Those that wanted to go, fell into line, and marched out as volunteers. By Mr. Means: Q. They could leave as soon as they wanted? A. Yes; the same as any other citizens. They were not under pay--not under pay at all. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you not have the right from the mayor to demand them to go with you? A. I did not know I had a right any more than I could command you to assist me. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you get such instructions from the mayor? A. At the time we went out we did not expect any such trouble. Q. But did the mayor give you instructions to demand them to go with you? A. He did not think of it, and I did not either. I thought that the presence, as Mr. Watt told me--that the presence of five or six men would have the desired effect. Q. Did you make any report to the mayor, during the afternoon? A. I reported to the chief of police. Q. That is the only report you made? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who was he? A. Philip Demmel. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know of an order, given by the mayor to his officers, to compel men to serve on the police force, during those troubles? A. I do not know of any order of that kind. I know of orders given by the mayor to summon all the men that had been dropped from the rolls, and to get them organized with the men we had, and go on duty. A number of them responded. That was on Sunday. Q. What do you mean by summoned? A. Just notified them. Q. Compelling them to serve? A. I did not understand it as compulsory at all. I did not think it was. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It was simply a call for volunteers to go out? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you state to them anything about their pay--as to how they would be paid? A. I do not know as I stated anything to them probably the first day, but the understanding was after they got out there that Mr. Watt was responsible for the pay of these men. Q. The mayor did not make any call on the night police to go out there at all on Thursday? A. Not on Thursday. The night men were not there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. There was no effort made, that you know of, to get the night men out there? A. There was no apparent necessity at that time. The night force went on duty on Friday night, and they remained on duty in and around the city hall until the trouble was all over. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean by that? A. Going out in squads from the city hall wherever they were required to go. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did they serve during the day on Friday? A. I do not recollect that they did. I cannot say that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did they serve during the day Saturday? A. I think they were on duty from Friday night until the trouble was all over. That is my impression. I cannot be positive, however. Q. The night force numbered one hundred and twenty? A. One hundred and sixteen men we had left for the whole city. Q. Were any of that number detailed to go to the depot or to that section of the city? A. On Thursday? Q. Yes; or on Friday or on Saturday? A. The men were on duty continually Friday, and on Saturday all the men were out. Q. Where? A. In the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street, and along where the trouble was. Q. How many were at Twenty-eighth street on Saturday? A. I cannot say. Q. How many on Friday? A. That I cannot say. I suppose the chief would know. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You were on duty that day? A. I was on duty continuously from that time until the trouble was over. Q. When you talked with those men, what reason did they give you. You have said you talked with one? A. They assigned as a reason for striking that it was on account of the double-headers, slim pay, and so forth. That the men were starving, and all that kind of thing, and that now they proposed to reduce the force, and compel one crew to run two trains, and they did not propose to do it. Various reasons were assigned. Q. Did he express any intention to use violence? A. He did not. He and a number of the others had considerable influence over the men, and no violence was to be used at all. It seemed that the men not in the strike were in sympathy with those that were, and that no trains would be run out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When was this? A. It was after Mr. Watt was struck. Q. Did he take any part with them? A. No, sir. Q. How many men were arrested in that crowd on Thursday in the vicinity of the trouble? A. McCall was the only one I arrested. I left about three o'clock. While I was there no other act was committed by any person in the party, and no effort was made by the railroad to run out trains, and we were simply there under the instruction of the railroad men. Q. You do not know of any others being arrested that day in that vicinity? A. I do not. Q. Nor on Friday in that vicinity to your knowledge? A. On Friday morning, I think, the military was out with the sheriff and his posse. Q. But answer my question? A. No. Q. On Saturday? A. On Saturday, no, not on Saturday. The military were in charge of the railroad property on Saturday. Q. Did you or any other officer that you know of have a warrant in his hands for the arrest of some ten or twelve men? A. Yes; I had a warrant for the arrest of ten or twelve men that were interfering with the railroad employés. Q. You had the names of those parties? A. Before the warrants were served they were re-called from me. Q. By whom? A. The information was taken away by the attorneys of the railroad company. Q. Did they recall them? A. Yes. Q. From you? A. Not the warrants; but I was notified by the mayor that the information was taken from the office, and that the matter was placed in the hands of the sheriff. Q. Did he instruct you to return the warrants? A. The warrants were null and void then when the information was taken away. The warrants were transferred to the sheriff. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you hear anybody make any threats against the railroad officers? A. Well, Davis jumped on the switch, and swore that no trains should go out, that he would die in his tracks first. Those were the only threats I heard on Thursday. Q. Were those directed against the railroad officers or any of their employés? A. The threats were against the running out of the trains. Q. Do you know anybody going to the officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and advising them to leave the city for fear that they would suffer violence? A. Not to my own knowledge. Q. You did not hear anybody make such threats? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When did you first get the warrants for the arrest of those men--what day was it? A. It seems to me the warrants were issued on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, but I am not positive about that. I can refer to the warrants and see. Q. How long did you hold them before you got notice that the information was withdrawn. A. I think the warrants were held by me--I am not positive about the time that they were issued to me--but it seems to me that the warrants were in my hands; just one day and night. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were not your instructions to quietly take those men? A. My instructions were to quietly take those men up. They were my instructions. At the time the warrants were issued there was considerable excitement, and the instructions I got in relation to it were that after the excitement allayed somewhat, the warrants could be quietly served without bringing about a conflict, and owing to the pretty slim police force, it was considered wise to wait until the trouble would be over. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who gave you those instructions? A. The mayor--the chief of detectives, I think it was. I do not say the mayor, but one of my superior officers, I know it was. Q. Who was the chief of detectives at that time? A. Mr. O'Mara, I believe. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Your instructions were to wait until the excitement was allayed? A. Yes. Q. And not to go after your men that night after the men had retired to their homes, and take them up quietly, and take them to the station house? A. My impression is, that the men did not retire to their homes on that day or night; the crowd kept there all night, or staid around the tracks at Twenty-eighth street, and also at Torrens station. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was any effort made by the police to disperse the crowd during the night? A. I was not there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Could you at any time have taken the men out of the crowd with your force? A. If they had resisted I could not, I know. Q. Could you not have quietly slipped up and taken them? A. Those men I had warrants for were employés of the road, and I did not know anything about their being in any crowd, but it appears they were active leaders. I did not know they were in any crowd, but owing to the state of excitement at the time, it was considered advisable to wait until the excitement was allayed before arresting those men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who made the information against those men? A. I think it was Mr. Watt. That is my impression. The information was drawn by Messrs. Hampton and Dalzell, and sworn to by Mr. Watt. * * * * * Roger O'Mara, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 267 Webster avenue. Q. What was your business in July last? A. I was chief of detectives of the city of Pittsburgh. Q. Were you in the city on the 10th of July? A. Yes. Q. State what knowledge you have of any disturbance of the peace on that day? A. The first knowledge I had, Mr. Watt came to the mayor's office that morning. I was in the office at the time. He stated that there was a disturbance, that the men were on a strike, and he wanted to get some officers to go out with him. Our force was reduced shortly before that, and no men were on duty in the day time. We only had one hundred and twenty men, and ten were lamp watchers, and ten were at the station-houses. One hundred and one in all were left for police duty. Q. State what occurred? A. I asked Mr. Watt how many men he thought would do, and he said about ten men. I had the men gathered up from those men who were dropped from the rolls, and brought them in there, and told Officer Fowler to take charge of them, and to go with Mr. Watt. I afterwards asked the mayor, and he told me that Mr. McGovern should be placed in charge. I then sent him on up. Q. Did you have any difficulty in getting the men you wanted? A. I gathered them in about five minutes. I just asked for ten, and got them. Q. Plenty of others were willing to go? A. I suppose so. Q. Was anything said between Mr. Watt and the mayor about the pay of the men? A. Mr. Watt told me he would pay the men. Q. Who introduced that subject of pay? A. I do not know. I told him these men are not on the force, but we could gather them up if he agreed to pay them. Q. They went then? A. Yes; in charge of McGovern. Q. State what occurred from the time that they went away--whether any report was made to you or not? A. I understood about the trouble. McGovern told me about arresting this party after he came back. Q. Was any report made to you of what occurred? A. I had a conversation with him after he came back. Q. At what time? A. About four o'clock on Thursday. Q. What did he state to you when he came back? A. He told me he had arrested that party--that Mr. Watt went to turn the switch, and somebody hit him, and he arrested him, and put him in the Twelfth ward station-house. Information was afterwards made against some ten parties. Q. What time was that? A. I think on Thursday afternoon, after this arrest. Q. You say against some ten parties? A. Yes, sir. Q. In whose hands were the warrants placed? A. They were given to me first. A lawyer in Mr. Hampton's office was here. He had them drawn up. I gave the warrants to McGovern. On account of the excitement we proposed to locate the parties in their houses, and to get them there. But the next morning a young man in Hampton's office came in and told me not to make the arrests until further orders. I thought then that the men were going to work, perhaps. I then told McGovern not to make the arrests. Q. Do you state you told McGovern not to arrest the men, but to get them at their houses? A. Yes. Q. How many policemen do you think you could have gathered up that afternoon for duty? A. I have no idea how many. A good many of them were about there just at the time that Mr. Watt came in and said he wanted some. We might have gotten thirty then. More went out afterwards. Q. Who sent them out? A. I do not know. But I understood, however, more men were wanted, and they were sent out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. These men that were picked up--these men that had been dropped from the rolls, did they go out on the ground in uniform, or did they go out in citizen's dress? A. I guess some in uniform and some in citizen's dress. I cannot say whether they were in uniform or not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were they armed as usual with maces? A. I cannot say that. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Usually when you send out a squad, don't you arm them with maces? A. Yes; but these men were not on the rolls, and I just gathered them up, and sent them out as quickly as possible. Q. If not armed, they would not have been of much use? A. No; not of much use, if there was much disturbance, without arms. Q. You do not know whether they were armed or not? A. I do not, because I did not go out with them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any call made on the night force for it? A. I do not think there was that night. Q. They were on duty regularly on Thursday evening, I suppose? A. Throughout the city, yes. Q. The one hundred and one men were on service throughout the city proper? A. On Thursday night, yes. Q. None of them went to the scene of this disturbance? A. Not to my knowledge, except the men on in that district. Q. How many men were regularly stationed in that district? A. I suppose about ten men were on in that district--the third district--from the Union depot to Twenty-eighth street. The lieutenant in charge of the district may have had his men there. Q. Who had charge of that district? A. Henry Coates, I think. I think he had charge of it. Q. Were any of them sent out there on Friday morning--any of the night force? A. I do not think they were, to my knowledge. Q. Or during the day Friday, at any time? A. I do not know that they were. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Were you at the scene of the disturbance at any time during the trouble? A. I was out there on Sunday morning early, along the line on Liberty street. There was a good deal of trouble about the city, and we were gathering the police in and sending them out throughout the city. We were afraid that the mob would break into the gun shops. The excitement was so great that I thought they might attempt to break into places, and so I gathered the men up and sent them to different places. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If the mayor had made a call for policemen on Thursday afternoon, how many men could he have raised? A. I do not know. I have no idea. Q. Would there have been any difficulty in raising any number of policemen, do you think? A. There might have been some. That call was made through the Sunday papers, and a good many responded. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How many officers and men does the night force consist of? A. The whole force was one hundred and twenty men--nine of them were engaged in the station-houses, and ten of them watched lamps--patrolmen, detectives, and all. That was for the whole city. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many men were discharged from the day force? A. One hundred and sixteen men were discharged. Our whole force consisted of two hundred and thirty-six men, all told. The appropriation ran out, and we had to knock the men off. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What reason was given by the officer for not serving the warrants? He had them one night, had he not? A. We did not get the houses all located. It seems they were out that night, and we could not get them served, and the next morning we were ordered not to serve them. The case was put into the hands of the sheriff on Friday, I think. By Senator Yutzy: Q. While you had those warrants for the arrest of those ten men, could you not have arrested them? A. I do not think, with the few men we could have got, that we could have arrested them out there, on account of those men out there. It might have made the thing worse if we had attempted to arrest them on the ground. I thought it was better to arrest them away from there. Q. Did you attempt to locate them at their homes that night--you did not go to their homes? A. No; we did not go to their homes, but we got information from the parties who made the information. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you have any arrangement to watch those men? A. From all accounts, the men seemed to be in the crowd. We had no one watching their houses that night, because we did not find out that night were they all lived. Q. Did you not have men to watch these men or follow them around? A. No, sir; not to my knowledge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Didn't you see some of these men out there on Friday? A. I did not. I was not out there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How did you expect to know that these men went to their homes, if you did not follow them or have them watched? A. The warrants were withdrawn before we located the men. Q. What efforts were you making to locate them? A. We were making inquiries from parties who knew them. Q. Were you trying all the time to find out where they were? A. We asked the parties who made the information. We wanted to locate them all, and to make the arrests. We did not expect to arrest them in the crowd. We thought we could not do it there. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Did you have any spotters out in the crowd at all? A. Several of the officers there saw the different parties, and what they did. Or, if information was made against them, we had them arrested and tried. Some of them are not tried yet. Any of the officers who knew any men, or saw them do anything, afterwards made information against them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. The officers reported to you, did they? A. Some of them. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You being the chief of detectives, did you send any men out to spot those parties? A. No, sir; after Friday, the thing was taken out of our hands. If any party gave information in regard to what was done, we would have them arrested. The detectives were out. We made inquiries of people as to what they saw other people do. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was it not on Saturday morning that you considered the complaint withdrawn upon which the warrants were based? A. I think on Friday, it was, that I was notified to hold them until further orders. Q. Was it not on Saturday morning instead of on Friday morning? A. My recollection is, that it was Friday. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you present at any time during the destruction of the property of the railroad company by fire? A. I was along the line Sunday morning, in Liberty street. I drove along with the mayor in a buggy. My mother and sister both lived back of the Union depot, and they were burned out. I tried to help them get their things away. Q. During the fire, were you ever called on by the chief of the fire department, or by anybody connected with the fire department, to protect them in their attempts to put out the fire? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know of any other officer of the police force being called upon to assist them? A. No. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you take any measures to prevent this destruction? A. We could not do anything after the first firing was done. With what police force we had, we could do nothing at all. They commenced breaking into houses, and gun stores, &c., and we tried to prevent them from doing that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see them breaking into any gun stores? A. Yes; on Penn street I saw a couple of men breaking into a pawn shop. I heard of the mob coming, and I hurried up the officers, and placed men in front of different gun stores, but on Wood street they got into one in spite of the men. Before that, we had notified the different parties to put their guns away, that the excitement was very great, and that the soldiers had fired upon the men, and that they would be apt to break into places to try to get arms. I notified the different parties to put their goods away that the mob should not get them. Q. Who composed that crowd--did you recognize any of them? A. They seemed to be working men--men that came from the south side. One squad that came from the south side--I saw them going down the street--a couple of young men--the same that I saw marching down Penn street. Some of them have been arrested since. Q. You think the men were principally from the south side who broke into the gun stores? A. About the time that they broke into them, at different places, I had squads of men. On Fifth street a couple of young men came down firing off guns, and I went to the mayor's office for more men, and I was not there two minutes when word came that Brown's gun store was broke into. I then got some men and placed them in front of the door. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you succeed in keeping the crowd out then? A. Yes; but it was not much good then, for the things were gone. They had ransacked the place. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What time was that? A. It was on Saturday night. It was just about dusk when this party came down, and went in on Liberty street and on Penn street. I was going up that way towards Twenty-eighth street, when I saw this mob coming down. I followed on down to see what they proposed to do. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You had no men stationed about any of these gun stores before they broke into them? A. Yes, sir; at Brown's, on Wood street. Q. Were they uniformed men? A. Yes; on the regular city force. I sent them to the places where I thought they were most needed, and I tried to prevent the mob from getting fire-arms. * * * * * Charles McGovern, re-called. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were those men that you took to Twenty-eighth street dressed in uniform? A. No; just a few of them had vests on with uniform buttons on. And all of them that had badges about them, I had them place them on their coats in order to show that they were officers. Q. Were there any that had neither vests nor badges among them? A. I think there were. Some of them did not happen to have anything with which to show that they were officers. Q. Were they armed in any way? A. No. Q. They had no maces? A. No; they were taken out in a hurry from the city hall--just taken out on the spur of the moment. Q. What time were those warrants placed in your hands for the arrest of those parties? A. My recollection of the warrants--I could very easily give you a definite answer if I had time to go to the office and refer to my memoranda. Then I could tell you. But I think it was Friday. That is my impression. I think it was Friday morning or Thursday afternoon. Q. How long did you keep them in your possession? A. A day, I think, and a night. That is my impression. Q. Did you make any effort to arrest the parties? A. We were so busy on other matters that there was no effort made, any more than to make inquiries and locating the parties. We did not anticipate any trouble in getting them after the excitement was somewhat allayed. Q. Did you go to their houses during the time that you had the warrants? A. No. Q. Did you try to spot the men among the crowd? A. No; I cannot say that I did, because it was a secondary consideration in regard to those men. The information was interfering with railroad employés, and we considered it a light matter towards what was going on at Twenty-eighth street--the riotous proceedings. We were kept busy that day and night trying to keep order. Q. Those men were all participating in the riot as leaders when you first went out there? A. I do not know that of my own knowledge, but I, of course, inferred it from the fact of the information made against them. Q. Did you know any of the ten or twelve men that stood around, trying to prevent the arrest of McCall? A. None of them tried to prevent the arrest of McCall. I knew some of them by face and a few by name. Q. Were any of those men's names included in those warrants? A. I believe they were, but I did not have those warrants at the time. Q. You did not get them until that evening or the next morning? A. I think it was the next morning. Q. Then you did not go up to arrest them when you got the warrants? A. Not immediately. It was considered a matter of judgment at the office by the mayor, and, of course, I was under his instructions. Q. You followed the mayor's instructions? A. Not specially his instructions, but chief O'Mara's instructions. I considered it would be easier to serve them afterwards than at the present time. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. When you summoned those men to go out, you did not provide them with maces and equipments as you usually do? A. The police force of this city provide everything for themselves. If they want to carry a pistol, they must provide it. Our maces we buy, and our clothes we buy. The city supplies nothing. At one time the city supplied those things, but now we have got to supply all those things ourselves. We did not think it would be necessary to have them armed at that time. Q. At the time of a row, if the men are armed, it is all right, and if they are not armed, it is all right, too? A. It was a sudden summons, and nobody understood the extent of it. Of course, the gentleman who summoned us, said he did not anticipate any serious trouble at all; that he thought that our official appearance would be sufficient; that the presence of the officers there would be all that was necessary. Q. But you, as an officer, did not exactly believe in official appearance, without something to knock down with in case of a row? A. In case of a riot we ought to be provided with arms; but there was no riot at that time, nor did we anticipate any. [A paper exhibited to witness.] Q. State whether this is the information made upon which the warrants were issued? A. I never saw it. Q. What did you do with the warrants? A. They are still in the office. Q. You returned them to the mayor? A. No; they are still in the closet at the office. I think they are there yet. I may have destroyed them. Q. Do you know the date of the warrants? A. I cannot remember the date. I told you I thought it was Thursday evening or Friday; that would be the 19th or 20th. * * * * * John J. Davis, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 114, Sixteenth street, on the south side. Q. What was your business in July last? A. I was clerk to the chief of police. Q. Where were you on the 19th day of July--Thursday? A. At the mayor's office, and at the railroad. Q. State if you have any knowledge of the disturbances that occurred? A. I was not at the railroad during the time of the disturbances. Q. Did you receive information of them? A. We got a second dispatch, or rather a young man came from the ticket office asking for fifty men. I was present in the office at the time. Q. What time did you receive that dispatch? A. Between twelve and one o'clock. Q. By whom was it signed? A. I cannot say now. It was brought by a young man at the ticket office? Q. You mean the railroad ticket office? A. Yes, sir. Q. Asking for fifty men? A. Yes, sir. Q. To whom was it addressed? A. To the mayor. I started out and hunted up all the men I could find, and during my progress I saw the mayor, and he gave me orders to hunt up all the men I could, both the old men and the men that had been dropped. I met him on Fifth avenue. Q. Did you inform him of the dispatch? A. I did, and he ordered me to hunt up all the men I could possibly find. Q. How many did you get? A. In the neighborhood of twenty-five or twenty-eight that afternoon. I can not say exactly. Q. What did you do with them? A. Some went out on a train, and some walked out. I went out with one squad, with Mr. White. We saw Mr. Watt, and he suggested the sending of the men to Torrens station, six or eight of them; the balance of them stayed at Twenty-eighth street. Q. What time did you meet the mayor on Fifth avenue? A. I suppose five minutes after the dispatch came. I started out and went down to the station-house to see if any officers were there, but I found none there. I then went two squares, and on my way coming back, I met the mayor on Fifth avenue. It was not over five or ten minutes. Q. You informed him about the dispatch calling for fifty men? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where was he during the rest of that afternoon? A. As I stated before, I went to Twenty-eighth street, and stayed there all that afternoon. Q. Did you have any communication with him that afternoon? A. No; everything was quiet at Twenty-eighth street that afternoon. My instructions were to communicate if anything was wrong. I went to Torrens station about four o'clock. Quite a crowd was there. Q. What was the crowd doing? A. They were watching to see if any trains would go out. It was curiosity. Q. How many were there? A. One hundred or one hundred and fifty, while I was there. Q. Of whom was this crowd composed? A. Of laboring men, and railroad men, and business men, and women and children. Q. All mixed together? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were the railroad men noisy and boisterous? A. Not that I saw. Q. Were they stopping the trains? Q. The only one I saw stopped was at Twenty-eighth street. Q. What time was that? A. I heard the men saying it was three-forty, schedule time. Q. They stopped it? A. They started out, and three or four officers were put on the engine. After they started, some parties got on the track and waved their hands, and the engine stopped and the engineer jumped off. The officers were still on the engine after the engineer got off. Q. You simply called for volunteers when you went out to hunt up those men? A. Only one man refused to go. Q. Was any demand made on the night force that afternoon? A. The mayor instructed me to hunt up all the men I could find, both the men on duty and the men dropped, and I did so. Q. The men on regular duty went out, did they? A. Those that I found. At that time we only had one hundred and twenty men, including lamp-washers and station-house keepers. Q. How many men did you get that afternoon on actual duty--the night force? A. To my best recollection, five or six, but I won't be positive. I only sent in the bill for the men not on regular duty--twenty-nine the company paid for--for those men on duty we sent in no bill at all. It was only for the men not paid by the city. Q. How long were those men on duty there? A. Until morning. They reported at the office between seven and seven and a half o'clock. Q. Friday morning? A. Yes, sir. Q. All of them? A. Some went home for breakfast. Q. Were they sent on duty again? A. They were sent out to the depot in the morning, but they came back and said they were not wanted, that Officer Fox had all the men he wanted. Q. Who was he? A. He has charge of the officers around the depot. By Senator Reyburn: Q. He is an employé of the railroad? A. I think so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did he tell you that he had all the men that they wanted? A. The men I sent up to the depot reported that to me. Q. Who reported that? A. Officer William Johnson. Several of them, I think. Officer Crosby. The men came back and they said that they were not wanted. He kept three at the depot, M. A. Davis, Matthew Goddard, and Ernest Ehring. Q. Where was the mayor during the night? A. When I came back in the evening, about seven o'clock, I brought the men to supper, and after they had supper, I sent them out again, and I went to the office. I am not positive whether I saw the mayor there or not. I am not positive about that. The next time I saw him, was in the neighborhood of twelve o'clock, at the office. Q. Thursday night? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where did he remain during the balance of the night? A. In the office. I stayed there also all night. Q. Were you out during the night? A. I went out and stayed until about ten o'clock, and then I came back. Q. Did the mayor have any communication with the men out there during the night? A. Not that I know of. Q. Where was the chief of police during the night? A. I cannot say that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say you sent the men back on Friday. Where did you instruct them to go--to the Union depot or to Twenty-eighth street? A. To the Union depot. I directed them to ask if they were wanted, and they came back and said that they were told that they were not wanted; that they had all the men they wanted. Q. Do you know where the mayor was on Friday? A. I cannot answer that, because I was at Twenty-eighth street, almost all day on Friday. My instructions were to go there, and if I saw a disturbance, to telegraph immediately to the city to the office. Q. You did not see him on the ground at any time? A. No--not on Thursday nor on Friday. By Senator Reyburn: Q. While you were there, on Friday, did you see any effort made to take possession of the tracks? A. No; no effort was made at all. Q. You saw no disturbance at all on Friday? A. No. Q. Or Saturday? A. No disturbance, until after the trouble about the firing. Q. Was any effort made during Friday to run out trains? A. Not while I was there--not on Friday. Q. The crowd was there? A. Quite a crowd was gathered there. They appeared to be going and coming all day. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You saw no effort made on Friday. How long were you there on Friday? A. I suppose I was there three quarters of the day--walking all along, and seeing what was going on. Q. There might have been an effort made, and you not have seen it? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. It appeared to be an orderly assemblage? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What were they doing? A. Standing together and chatting--talking. Q. Standing there all day? A. They appeared to be coming and going. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the subject of conversation appear to be the stopping of the trains? A. I did not hear them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What were they there for? A. For curiosity, I suppose. Q. Where is this William Johnson that you spoke of? A. He is on the police force now. Q. What is Crosby's first name? A. George. * * * * * Philip Demmel, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 26 Twelfth street, in the south side. Q. What was your business during last July? A. I was chief of the police of Pittsburgh. Q. State whether any knowledge was brought to you in regard to the disturbance at Twenty-eighth street, on the 19th of July, and if so, state what time it was. A. I came to the office sometime after dinner, and went into the mayor's office, and I was told that some of the railroad employés had gone on a strike at about Twenty-eighth street, and that Mr. Watt had sent for some policemen, and that about ten or a dozen had been sent out in charge of Detective McGovern. A short time after a dispatch came in signed by Mr. Watt, asking for fifty more men. I went on the street myself then. Our police force, of course, was in bed. They did duty at night. I went on the street, and saw a few of those discharged men, and asked them to go. Some went and some did not. I did not hear anything more of it until evening, when I came in from supper. They reported then that one man had been arrested, and after that everything was quiet. The men got their suppers, and we sent them out again. There were only a few that would not go. In the morning they came back--those who were on duty all night--and some of them said that the railroad officers had got as many men as they thought sufficient, and that the military was called out. It was thought at the mayor's office then that the services of the police would not be needed any longer. Q. That the services of the police would not be needed any longer, you say? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did the mayor say that? A. I do not remember that the mayor said that, but---- Q. That was the decision you came to? A. Yes, sir. Q. After a consultation with the mayor, was it? A. I cannot recollect any direct consultation with the mayor. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Was he there? A. Yes, sir; but I am satisfied that he was of the same opinion. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did Officer McGovern report to the mayor during the afternoon? A. I believe he came in before the rest came for supper, and reported this disturbance--about a man being arrested for striking Mr. Watt, and he then reported all quiet after that. Q: Did he report to you by telegraph? A. No; yes--I believe they did telegraph this arrest first from the Twelfth ward station. Q. You have arrangements at the station-house to receive reports from all parts of the city, have you not? A. From eight different parts of the city--yes, sir. Q. From that portion of the city? A. Yes, sir; there is a station-house within two blocks of Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did you receive any report from Officer McGovern during the afternoon? A. Yes, sir. Q. What was the nature of it? A. That all was quiet--that this man had been arrested for striking Mr. Watt. Q. Was there a dispatch sent you, or communicated to you from Mr. Watt during the afternoon, that he wanted fifty more men? A. Yes, sir. Q. What time was that? A. I do not remember--perhaps an hour after the first squad of police went out. Q. What did you do? A. I stated that before. I went out on the street, and saw some of the discharged men. Q. Did you raise the fifty men you wanted? A. No, sir; I did not raise twenty men. I did not raise seven men, no more than that. Q. Could you not have got fifty men at that time? A. No. Q. Did you make any call on the night force? A. No. Q. Did you make any call for police--any demand for a posse of police? A. Of the regular force? Q. Or any force? A. I simply went on the street, and around Fifth avenue and Smithfield street, and asked these men if they would go. Q. Did you have any conversation with the mayor? A. I think the mayor handed me this dispatch. Q. Did he make any call for a posse of police? A. No; no more than telling me to do as I did--to see if I could get the men. Q. Did he tell you how the men were to be paid? A. I do not know. That was one objection with these men. They wanted to know about their pay, and whether it was going to be a regular thing. I could not satisfy them about that, and they did not care much about going. Q. You just went around and hunted up the men that would go voluntarily of their own accord? A. Yes; after getting this report from the Twelfth ward station-house. We thought that fifty men would hardly be necessary anyhow; but we could not have raised them if we had wanted them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you not have got them if you had commanded them? A. We could not command them any more than I could command you. Q. Could not the mayor have commanded them? A. He had no right to command them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. He did not tell you to command any men to serve. A. No. By Mr. Dewees: Q. What was the reason you could not get these men to go out? A. Well, we had a reduction of our force a short time before, and some of these men thought that they were not treated right, and when I asked them to go out, they wanted to know if they would be placed on the force permanently. Of course I could not satisfy them, and they did not want to go. By Mr. Means: Q. At any time you were there, did the firemen call on you to assist them? A. I saw the firemen only on Sunday, and it was understood then that the mob would not allow them to put water on the property. Q. Did they ask the police officers to help them? A. I do not know that they did. I was out there with the mayor, and we had too few men. The firemen would change their place time after time as the fire came down. A man came and said that they wanted to throw water on the fire, indicating a car burning, and the mayor said: "All right, we will protect you." We immediately formed the men to protect them, but afterwards they did not throw water on that fire at all. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where was the mayor during Thursday afternoon? A. I saw him in the office, I think, once or twice. Q. Where was he during Thursday night? A. I think in the office. Q. Did you receive any instructions from him during the night? A. I went to him during Thursday night to place one of our lieutenants in charge over the force at Twenty-eighth street--Lieutenant Coates. It was his suggestion, I believe. Q. At the mayor's suggestion? A. Yes; or mine, and he agreed with it. Q. What time was that? A. About supper time. Q. Where was he during the day Friday? A. I remember seeing him in the office. Q. Did you receive any instructions from him during the day in regard to this disturbance at Twenty-eighth street? A. No; there was no disturbance there during that day. There was a crowd there, and the military were there. Q. Where was the mayor during Friday night? A. I cannot answer that. Q. Where was he on Saturday? A. On Saturday he was in the office. In and out as usual. At the time we got the report of the firing he was in the office, I know, because he sent for me and asked me to take a couple of men out Penn avenue, and close all the saloons in the vicinity of this disturbance. Q. What time was that? A. I think along about four o'clock. Q. Four o'clock on Saturday he asked you to take two men out and close all the saloons in what district? A. You mean what police district? Q. Yes. A. The third police district. Q. Extending over how much space? A. Over the city in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street. We closed all the saloons there from Thirtieth to Twenty-fourth street. We then came in and sent another squad out to close the balance. Q. How far? A. Down to Eleventh street. Q. Had you received any instructions from him during the day, (Saturday before this,) in regard to the disturbance out there? A. No. Q. The saloons had been open out there until three or four o'clock on Saturday? A. Yes; they were open at the time we went there. Q. What time did you arrive there? A. I can't tell. It was immediately after hearing of the firing. We walked up Liberty street as fast as we could. Q. You went with the two men, and saw that your orders were executed? A. We went in and asked these men, and told them it was the request of the mayor to have them close their saloons. Q. Did they comply? A. Most generally. Q. During the day, Sunday, did you receive any orders from the mayor? A. No; except I was out with him at the scene of action in the afternoon. The mayor was out there before daylight, and I was out there myself. I came in about six or seven o'clock, and got my breakfast, and went out at ten o'clock, and then I found the mayor there. Q. Did you receive any orders during Sunday night from the mayor? A. Nothing, except about handling the police, in trying to prevent the mob getting into those stores. Q. What did you do to prevent that? A. They called some of the south side police over, and had them doing duty around in places where they anticipated there might be a break made, but there was considerable damage done before the police arrived. Q. What damage was done before the police arrived? A. A couple of stores were gutted, on Penn avenue and on Liberty street. Q. What kind of stores? A. The one on Penn avenue was a pawnbroker's and the one on Liberty street was a gun shop. Q. Do you know who broke open the stores? A. Since then I know of one party that was a leader in it. But I do not know the others. Q. Were any policemen in the vicinity at the time? A. No; at that time there were no police on duty. They didn't go on duty until eight o'clock. Q. Were any policemen on duty throughout the city during the day, Friday? A. No. Q. During the day, Saturday, throughout the city, I mean? A. No. Q. They were not on duty until eight o'clock, Saturday night? A. No. Q. Then these stores were broken open before eight o'clock? A. Yes; that is, the first two. Q. When there were no policemen on duty? A. Yes. Q. When did the mayor put on any day force, or was there any day force on Sunday? A. On Saturday night I put a notice, by the order of the mayor, into two of the Sunday papers, to have all those ex-policemen report at eleven o'clock on Sunday, but got very few reports. Q. How many reports did you get? A. I do not remember now--not probably over fifteen or twenty reported in time. Q. Were they placed on duty during Sunday? A. Yes. Q. Were there any policemen on duty throughout the city on Sunday? A. Yes. Q. How many? A. Well, the third district had some of the south side police on duty on Sunday night, in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street, and the police there I brought in on Sunday morning, and got their breakfasts, and sent them out again. Some of them strayed off, of course. Q. As chief of police, can you not give us the number of policemen on duty during Sunday, in the whole city? A. I do not think there were more than eighty. That is, we got more men on as it grew later in the day. Q. This notice you placed in the papers was merely a request for the discharged police force to report at eleven o'clock? A. Yes; I had the orders, and I think the mayor had consulted with the committee of safety, or some one who assured him they would be responsible for the pay of the police, and would see that the police stayed on. Q. What time did you get that notice into the papers? A. It was given to the papers on Saturday night. Q. Was it published in the evening editions? A. It was published in the _Globe_ and _Leader_ of Sunday morning. Q. By whom was the notice signed? A. By myself. Q. As chief of police? A. Yes. Q. You say you got very few reports? A. Very few; that is, at eleven o'clock. Q. During Sunday night how many police did you have on duty? A. I had all the old force, and I expect, perhaps, about forty or fifty of the discharged men. Q. That would make about one hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty men during Sunday night? A. Yes. Q. How many did you have on duty during the day--Monday? A. Well, those policemen came reporting in one after another from Sunday until Tuesday, and they never went off duty at anytime from Sunday night, from the time they went on, until about Wednesday, I guess. Q. Where did the mayor spend the day--Sunday? A. Along Liberty street, part of the day. By Senator Reyburn: Q. About the scene of the riot? A. Right there. Q. What was he doing there? A. All he could to prevent the depredations. He was with the police; but we could not do anything. He went to Union depot and made a speech to the mob; but that did not have any effect. They stoned him, and he had to get out. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time was that? A. I do not have any distinct recollection of any time that day. It was, perhaps, half an hour previous to the burning of Union depot. Q. Was he out there on Sunday when the fire was going on? A. Yes. Q. The fire commenced out beyond Twenty-eighth street and worked down this way? A. Yes. Q. How many men were engaged in burning cars, or in the actual destruction of property there, during Sunday? A. That is a hard matter for me to say. The track in some places--I suppose there are three or four or five rows--and the freight cars were packed in alongside of one another, and on the top of those cars and in between them, there was a crowd of people all the time. Some of them may not have had a hand in doing any damage, but I think that most everybody that was on the track--of course there were some spectators that didn't have any hand in it--but the majority of the people there would break open a car or gut a car whenever they could. I could not say how many, but a great many, three hundred or four hundred anyhow. Q. Were those men armed? Had they weapons? A. I didn't see any weapons except a few revolvers. Q. As chief of police, I ask you if you do not think you could have taken one hundred policemen, with their maces, or the weapons that they usually carry, and have thrown them across the track there, and driven back that crowd? A. No. Q. Why not? A. Because the crowd was on all sides, and I would not know how to form the men to do that to have a solid line. The crowd was along the track and in between the cars as much as five hundred or six hundred yards at a time, and they would come rushing in and yelling every way, from below and above. Q. I ask you if, in your judgment, you do not think that you could have taken one hundred policemen and stationed them across the track in front of Union depot, from the hill down to the block of buildings, and have driven back the crowd as they came up? A. If I had had one hundred men there that might have been accomplished. I did try it with what men I had. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How many men did you have? A. Not more than fifteen or sixteen together at one time. The policemen, of course, got around among the people, or the mob, and we could not find them. Q. It was not possible to keep them together? A. I could not keep them together. In order to get at the men, the policemen would have to divide, and it was such a big mob, we could not keep them together. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Could you not have formed at some cross street, say Fifteenth or Sixteenth street, and then have resisted the crowd and kept them back? A. On the street? Q. Yes? A. Well, the crowd on the street was not so unruly as those on the railroad. Q. But Sixteenth street runs up to the railroad. Now, could you not have formed the men at Sixteenth street and thrown them across the railroad, with one wing running out towards the hill, and then have kept the crowd back? A. No; because you could not have got the mob together at any one point--because the mob most all the time extended five hundred or six hundred yards. Q. To what point did the mob extend, coming towards the city? A. Nearly into Union depot. Q. Then could you not have formed at Union depot and kept them back? A. It would have taken a great many more men than that. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was any effort made at all to get control of this crowd at any time during the disturbance? A. Yes. Q. With your fifteen or sixteen men, you mean? A. Sometimes we had twenty--all the men we had, or that could be got together--perhaps, sometimes, twenty-five or thirty men. They would be getting in among the mob and trying to drive them back. Q. Had the police authorities no organization or no arrangement to keep the crowd from coming, or did they allow people to come from all directions when they knew a disturbance of this kind was going on--did you have any organization at all? A. Not a very good organization. The men went out there in the morning, and they had been up all night, and they were tired, and it would have been impossible to keep the crowd back. They flocked in from all parts of the city, and from the country for miles around. By Mr. Englebert: Q. In other words, you really had not any organization of the police force? A. When I went up there, our men were scattered. I took them on the railroad several times, but was unable to do any good. I took them on the railroad in a body, but they could not be kept there any time without being separated. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was any effort made to make any arrests, during this disturbance, of parties engaged in the riot? A. On Sunday morning, we arrested about one hundred and thirty--that was the beginning of the fire--when they began to pillage the freight cars. Q. Did you arrest any of the parties that were pillaging? A. We arrested them coming away with goods. Q. What did you do with them? A. We brought them down in the morning, in the "black maria," to the Central station, but Deputy Mayor Butler, I believe, discharged most of them, and fined some of them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you know how many were fined? A. I cannot tell. I did not stay to the hearing myself. Q. What is Mr. Butler's first name? A. Joseph. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Your people took these men up, going away with goods? A. Yes. We put them in the Twelfth Ward station, and then put them in the "black maria," and brought them to the Central station, and heard them there. Mayor McCarthy was up all night, and he was tired, and he deputized Deputy Mayor Butler to hear them. Q. And he discharged them? A. Yes; he discharged a good many of them. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Do you know whether those people were citizens of Pittsburgh, or people that had just run in? A. Some were citizens of Pittsburgh and some were strangers. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the mayor or anybody else say to you, at any time, that it was necessary for the railroad officials to get out of town--that their lives were in jeopardy. A. I never heard any such expression coming from the mayor. Q. That it was necessary for the railroad officials to get out of town--that their lives were in jeopardy? Was that said to you by the mayor or by anybody else? A. I am satisfied that I didn't hear any expression like that coming from the mayor, but I heard talk like that on the street. Q. From whom? A. Most any of the crowd that would be congregated together would be talking about this thing. Q. Citizens of Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. Could you name any of them? A. Not now. It was the general talk. General Pearson, I guess, was named in such talk more often than the railroad officers. Q. But you heard that talk about the railroad officials? A. Yes; that it would not be safe for them to show up. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. One question about this plundering and thieving: Were those parties discharged the same day that they were arrested--on Sunday? A. The same day--Sunday. Q. Then the arrests amounted virtually to nothing? A. Yes; except in saving the property of the company, or whoever it belonged to. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was the mayor present when you offered protection to the firemen, at the fire engine, when they proposed to throw water on those burning cars? A. Yes; the mayor was present. One of the firemen asked him, if he would protect them, and he said yes, and the fireman said, that is what we want. Then they made the attachment, but did not throw any water afterward on the fire. Q. Did they make any proposal to the mayor, to take an active part himself--to hold the nozzle? A. No; I do not think they did. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Why did they not throw the water? A. Because, I suppose, they were intimidated. Q. But when you gave them the protection they asked, did they not make an effort to throw the water? A. No. Q. Did the mob make a rush? A. No; no more than following the engine. Q. What reason did they give for not throwing the water? A. I do not know. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who had charge of the engine at that point? A. I do not know; I do not know what engine it was. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Did the firemen throw water on private property when it was burning? A. All the time. Q. But not on the railroad property? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you know who the man was who asked protection from the mayor? A. I do not know. Q. Did the mob interfere with private property at any time? A. Not during that day. They did attempt to during that night and also during Sunday night. Q. What attempts were made on Sunday night? A. The American house, I think, or some place near it, was gutted, but by that time we had a pretty good force, and we went there and drove them away and arrested some of them. Q. Who had command there? A. Lieutenant Coates. Q. He had no trouble in beating the crowd away? A. He had some trouble, but he did it. Q. How many men had he? A. I went there afterwards, and we had, I suppose, some forty men there. Q. After the railroad property was destroyed--by that time you had a pretty good police force? A. Yes; the men were reporting during the day. By Mr. Dewees: Q. You stated you had sixteen policemen at Union depot? A. I stated I had sixteen in line. Q. Where were the balance of your police at that time? A. They were scattered among the mob. Q. The whole police of the city were there? A. No, sir; all I could gather up at that time were there. Q. Are you still the chief of police? A. No, sir; there is another administration. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have you a police commission or police committee, that have any special duty in taking charge of the police or in regulating the police? A. No, sir; it is the mayor that has that power here. Adjourned to meet at three o'clock, P.M. AFTERNOON SESSION. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _Monday, February 11, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at three o'clock, P.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. The first witness examined was-- * * * * * Henry Metzgar, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Eighth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. What official position did you hold in the city last July? A. I was the mayor's clerk. Q. What knowledge had you on Thursday of any disturbance among the railroad employés? A. I think my first knowledge was on Wednesday, but to get at the data I would request to send for the information made against Thomas McCall. [A paper exhibited to witness.] Q. Is that a copy of the information? A. Yes. On Thursday, the 19th, Mr. Watt came into the office, and asked for a number of policemen. As to the exact number I don't know, I didn't exactly hear the number, but I understood he wanted ten policemen to go out on the Pennsylvania railroad. The mayor went out with me to the chief of detectives, and they got a number of policemen, and arranged them up in line, and I think I asked Mr. Watt how many he wanted, and he said ten. One or more of them then stepped out of the ranks. Ten policemen went out, I believe, to the railroad. About twelve o'clock of that day we received a telegram, asking, I think, for fifty policemen additional. Q. From whom? A. To the best of my recollection the telegram was from Mr. Watt. I immediately went out and hunted some of the policemen who had been discharged--I hunted them up, and several of the officers went out and hunted them up. I notified a number myself to report at the office for duty at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's depot. How many reported I don't know. It not being my special duty, I paid no attention to it. But I know a number of them reported. Where they went to I don't know personally. About four o'clock that evening, the mayor asked me if there was any news from the Twelfth ward. I told him I could telegraph to the Twelfth ward and see. We did so, and the report came from the station that all was quiet. Q. The Twelfth ward takes in this district at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes; the mayor then left the office to go to Castle Shannon where his family is, as I believed, for the night. About that time--about five o'clock, Mr. Watt came in and asked for from fifty to a hundred additional policemen. I told him I didn't know where we could get them--that all we had for effective duty was ninety men, and, in the absence of the mayor, I couldn't take away the policemen from all portions of the city, for the purpose of protecting the property of the railroad company. Mr. Watt said to me, what will I do. I said, I don't know--the only thing--if you have a fear of any danger to your property--you had better call upon the sheriff, and the sheriff can call a _posse comitatus_ to protect the property if there is any danger. Mr. Watt said he would do so. That is the last I saw of him until some time after the riot. No--the next morning--the morning of the 20th--he came in, and made this information against Thomas McCall. The mayor, at the time, said to him, that our police force was very limited, and in making those arrests we would have to make quiet arrests. The warrants were placed in the hands of the officers, for the purpose of ascertaining where those parties lived, and to find out who they were, and all about them. For the most part, they were strangers, as far as we knew. Officer McGovern had the warrants. The next morning Mr. Houseman, of the firm of Hampton & Dalzell, came into the office, and asked me how many of the parties had been arrested. I told him I didn't know that any were arrested. That the mayor's instructions were to proceed quietly. He said, can you give me this information. I said, no, it is part of the record, and cannot go out of our hands. He then asked for the names of the parties against whom the information was brought, and he copied the names, and as he was going out he said, I am instructed by Mr. Hampton to tell you folks not to execute these warrants. I said, very well--this is a matter entirely in your own hands. I went out with him to the officer, and told the officer to produce his warrants. He produced them, and I told him, you are instructed by Mr. Hampton, through Mr. Houseman, not to execute them. He said, that was all right. That is all I know, unless some special question may arise. Q. How many policemen had been discharged prior to Thursday? A. One hundred and sixteen. Q. How long had they been discharged before that? A. They were discharged, I think, sometime about the latter part of June, or may be the 1st of July. I am not certain as to the date. Q. Had you any knowledge of any anticipated outbreak or strike by the men before it was communicated to you by Mr. Watt? A. Not the slightest. And at that time we had no idea there was going to be any such trouble at all, as we have had sometimes in this city. Q. You were present when Mr. Watt asked the mayor to furnish him with the police? A. I was in the office. Q. You heard the mayor's reply? A. He went out with Mr. Watt and instructed the chief of police to get the men. Q. Did Mr. Watt have to promise to pay the men before the mayor gave that instruction? A. I believe something was said about pay. These men, you see, were not on the pay-rolls of the city. The regular men were in bed or scattered all over the city. These men happened to be there that day, being paid off. Q. Did the mayor require Mr. Watt to become responsible for their pay? A. I believe something was said about the railroad company--that it would have to pay the men, as no provision was made by the city for their pay. I think very few of these men were on the regular force. Q. Did the mayor make that a condition before he instructed you to send out for the men? A. He never instructed me to send out for anybody. Q. Who did he instruct? A. Either the chief of detectives or the chief of police--I cannot remember which. Q. Did he make any order at that time, calling out policemen? A. Not as I know of. Q. These men went out as volunteers? A. Yes; in that sense. They were men who had been discharged. They went out under the control of Officer Charles McGovern. Q. They volunteered to go? A. We had no right to make a demand on them as a police force. They were not in the employ of the city. Q. When the telegram came to you calling for fifty policemen, what effort did you make to get them? A. We hunted them up as well as we could. A great many of these men wouldn't go because they were incensed at the city for discharging them, but a number of them did respond. Q. You hunted up as many as you could get to go willingly? A. Yes. Q. How many? A. About thirty-five. It not being my special business, I didn't pay much attention to it. Q. Did you notify the mayor of that call for fifty additional police? A. Yes; he sent us out, and says, go hunt them up. Q. How many did you get? A. I think about thirty-five. I never burdened my mind specially with that. Q. Did you get another call from the railroad company? A. I have no recollection of another call, except when Mr. Watt came and said he wanted from fifty to one hundred men additional. Q. Did you communicate that to the mayor? A. I did when he came into the city, at eight o'clock on that evening. Q. What evening? A. Thursday evening. Q. What did the mayor say? A. He said he didn't know where he could get the policemen. Our intention in calling the police was simply to protect property from getting stolen. Q. Did he make a demand upon the citizens of the city to join the police force at any time? A. We made a demand--certainly we did. Q. When? A. On Sunday night, for instance, when I made a call upon the citizens to volunteer to protect the water works of the city. Q. Had you made any demand prior to that Sunday night? A. I cannot say. I know of that for a fact. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What demand? A. He said, how many people will volunteer to protect the water-works of the city, and I ask for volunteers. As I understood, they intended to burn them down. Out of some two hundred men, four responded, I think. He said he understood they were in danger. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. But he summoned no posse from the citizens of the city during the riots, did he? A. I don't know that he did. Q. How many of those discharged policemen were at the city hall on Thursday when those ten men went out? A. I cannot say how many were there. They were in and out, being paid off. I cannot say how many. Quite a number of them, I know. Q. How many could you have got to go out there at that time, do you think? A. We got all we could. Q. To go voluntarily? A. Yes; I know, personally, I used every exertion I could, and I know Mr. Davis was out hunting up men. Q. Were you out there during the riots at any time? A. I was out on Friday. Q. At what point? A. At Twenty-eighth street. Q. How large a crowd was there? A. At the time I was there I suppose probably a thousand people were there. Q. How many were engaged in the riotous proceedings? A. None that I saw. Q. What were they doing at that time? A. They were assembled there listening to a speech made by Doctor Donnelly, counseling moderation, and advising those not connected with the railroad to go home and attend to their own business. Some other speeches were made by one or two more. Q. What was the effect of the speech upon the crowd? A. I don't know that it had any effect. It had no special effect particularly one way or another. Q. Did they listen to it? A. Yes. Q. Did they make any response to it in any way? A. Some response was made to Doctor Donnelly when he counseled those having no business there to go home. Some of them made some remarks from the outside of the crowd--that is enough now, you just stop there; and things of that kind. Q. What time did the mayor return from Castle Shannon? A. Shortly after eight o'clock. It may have been eight and a half o'clock. Q. Where did he remain during the night? A. In the office, I think. Q. All night? A. I can't say, for I didn't stay there. Q. Where was the mayor Friday, during the day? A. In and out the office all day, so far as I know. I know he was there. Q. Was any effort made to increase the police force on Friday? A. Not that I know of. Q. Nor on Saturday? A. No. Q. When were the discharged men placed back on the police force? A. They were not placed back on the police force until Monday. I think Monday a number of them reported for duty. A committee of councils, or councils held a session on Sunday morning; but there was so much confusion that nothing was done. The police force was not replaced until Monday or Tuesday; that is, the additional men. By Mr. Means: Q. Where is the mayor at the present time? A. In Philadelphia, I believe. He has left a note that he would be home to-morrow. Q. What was said about these men being paid? A. There was some conversation about the railroad company--that it would have to pay these men, because the men were not on the pay-rolls of the city at the time. Q. Did the mayor make that inquiry of Mr. Watt, as to who would pay? A. I know there was some conversation on that subject. Q. Did or did not the mayor say to you that it was necessary for the officers of the railroad to go out of town, that their lives were in jeopardy? A. No. Q. Did anybody else say so? A. No. Q. Did you ever hear it said? A. No; only after the riots. I understood they left town for fear of that, and I was rather astonished to find that some of them had been out of town. Q. Did anybody there state to you that General Pearson had better go out of town? A. No. Q. Did you know of his being out of town? A. No. Q. Did you know of any of those railroad officers being out of town? A. No; only subsequently. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did any of the citizens call upon the mayor, requesting him to put on an additional force? A. Well, I guess--I do not know that. They did not up to Saturday afternoon, until the time of this firing. Q. Didn't they do it on Friday? A. No. Q. On Saturday? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did they offer to become responsible for the payment of the additional police? A. When? Q. Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? A. I never heard of it at all. I never heard any such an offer made. The committee of public safety afterwards agreed to pay a certain number of men on the police force from that time until the end of the year. Q. When did they make that proposition? A. I think Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, but it was after all the trouble had occurred, so far as I know anything of it. Q. You know nothing of any such offer having been made on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? A. No. Q. Were you with the mayor during those days? A. Off and on, Friday and Saturday. On Sunday I was at the central station until twelve o'clock, noon. We had about one hundred and twenty-five prisoners there Sunday morning, and it took all my attention until noon that day to get through with the business. Q. What were they arrested for? A. For carrying away property, and stuff, and various things, and disorderly conduct. One thing and another of that kind. Q. For larceny and disorderly conduct? A. Yes, sir. Q. Before whom were they taken? A. Before Deputy Mayor Butler. Q. What was done with those persons? A. Some were fined, and some were held for court, and some were discharged. A great many were discharged, as one of the officers came down with the report that the jailor said that he could not hold them or keep them. Q. What persons were they who were arrested? A. I cannot say. Most of those names are fictitious. Q. Did you get their residences? A. No; the residences were not taken. Q. How many did you hold for court? A. That I cannot say. Q. Did you keep a record of it? A. Yes; there is a record of it. Q. Have you the record now in your office? A. I do not know whether it is there now. I passed the record out of my hands to the comptroller of the city. Q. How many were fined? A. Quite a number. Q. Did they pay their fines? A. Some of them did and some went to jail. Q. How many went to jail? A. That I cannot say. Q. Can't you make an estimate? A. I really could not, because you can imagine that morning I had not much stomach for anything to keep facts and figures. It is just a general idea. Everything was in such terrible confusion. Q. How large were the fines? A. From three to five dollars. Q. You say you cannot tell who those men were, or where they resided? A. No; they were people I never saw before. Q. Those who were committed to jail. Did you ever ascertain afterward who they were and where they came from? A. I did not. Q. Did you ever make any effort? A. I never did. The police made efforts afterwards to try to ascertain, I believe, who they were, but I do not know what they did, or whether they did anything or not. Q. Can't you tell something about what class of people they were from their dress? A. They all looked to be of the poorer class of people, but what they were or who they were I cannot say. Q. Can't you tell whether they were tramps or railroad men or people of the poorer class? A. Some were tramps--I know that. I have a recollection of that. I don't think there were any railroad men. There may have been a few, but a very few, though. They were generally of the poorer class of people, picking up plunder. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they Pittsburghers? A. That I cannot say. I never saw them before, and have never seen them since. By Mr. Means: Q. When those policemen were sent out there, was there any arrangement made by Mr. Watt, or any other person, to keep the time of the men while in service? A. I had nothing to do with that. That was a matter for the clerk of the chief of police to attend to. I know that Mr. Watt, or somebody, sent down a check to pay them. Q. Have you any recollection of a party of eighty sent to the work-house? A. I remember a party of forty-six sent there. They came here from Cumberland, and were arrested on the arrival of the train here. Q. What train? A. On the Connellsville railroad. Q. Those were all sent up in a body? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. When was that? A. On the 23d or 24th of July. * * * * * R. H. Fife, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you sheriff of Allegheny county last July? A. Yes. Q. How long have you been sheriff? A. Two years the first Monday of last January. Q. State what knowledge you have of the disturbance of the peace that commenced on the 19th of July last? A. On the 19th of July last I had been out of the city during a part of that day, and came home late in the evening. I went to my house, and remained there until sometime in the night. I had been sleeping, I think. About eleven o'clock, between that and twelve o'clock---- Q. Thursday night? A. Yes. Mr. Scott--that is Mr. John Scott--Mr. Watt, and another gentleman--I do not recollect his name--came to the house. I came down and admitted them into the parlor. They told me of the trouble they had--that Mr. Watt had been assaulted, and that a large crowd was out there. They wished me to go out and see what I could do. I told them I would go, and I put my coat on, and called one of my deputies--Mr. Haymaker--and we started down to Union depot. There we met General Pearson, and he went with us out to one of the offices--I do not know just what office--and then General Pearson and Mr. Watt--I think Mr. Watt went along, or some other gentleman connected with the railroad--and I went up to Twenty-eighth street. Q. What time did you arrive at Twenty-eighth street? A. It was after the middle of the night--between twelve and one o'clock. There was a large crowd of rough people there. But probably I am a little ahead of my story when I speak of Twenty-eighth street. On my road up from the depot to Twenty-eighth street, the cars on the siding there, and on the tracks that were not filled with merchandise, appeared to be all filled with people. A number of them were in there sleeping, and others were in there carousing. All the cars appeared to be full. At Twenty-eighth street, I asked why that assemblage of people were there, and they said they were on a strike, and that they proposed to stop the freight trains from going out, and that they had stopped them. I told them they were acting contrary to the law, and that they must disperse. The reply was, "go to hell you gray-headed old son of a bitch," that and other pet names of similar character. I then repeated the order that they must disperse, and that if I had not the power to do it, that I would have to try to get power sufficient to do it. They then replied, that General Pearson and I both might go to hell, that they had the mayor and his force on their side, and that Mr. T. C. Jenkins had agreed to give them one thousand barrels of flour to stand out, and that Mr. Alexander King had agreed to give them a thousand dollars. I told them they did not know those gentlemen as well as I did, or they would not talk that way. They said they knew them, and that we had better take a walk. About this time there was a diversion in the crowd. A courier came with a piece of paper--I did not have it in my hand, I did not get to see it--but a large number of them ran across, and they read the communication aloud. It read something in this way: "Hold your position until to-morrow morning, and we will send five hundred coal miners to assist you." It purported to come from the Monongahela Valley. They then assembled back. I was up on a pile of lumber talking to them, and I commenced to talk again, but, after this, they were far more abusive than before. The language would not do to repeat. In a short time another courier came with another communication, representing to come from Wilkes-Barre, that parties there would be here to assist them as soon as they could. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were these people you spoke of, railroad men? A. Not many of them. A portion of them were, but not many. They were the bad elements of society from all parts of the city, and from some parts of the county, in connection with thieves and blackguards from other parts of the country. A great many strangers were there. I made that remark to one of the railroad officials, that the crowd was not composed entirely of our people, and he differed with me, and I gave this answer at the time--I said "These are not our people, for I claim to know as many men in Allegheny county as any other man in it, and they are strangers here that I never saw." Some females were there, or ladies, the worst I ever saw. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You speak now of Thursday night? A. Yes; my first introduction to the crowd. I remained some time, trying to get them to disperse. They did not offer me any violence, but refused to go, and said they would die there sooner than they would be driven off. One man there, who appeared to be a leader, had served two terms in the penitentiary. I knew him by sight. He appeared to be a leader. He was not a railroad man, and I do not think ever had been. Q. What was his name? A. He was killed on Saturday morning, by the Philadelphia soldiers, and, probably, I had better not name him. He amused himself up to Saturday morning annoying everybody, and was shot on Saturday morning. I became satisfied, that no force I had or could convene could hold that crowd there then, or the crowd that would likely be there in the morning. So I telegraphed to the Governor. Q. What time was that? A. It was after midnight. I suppose, about two o'clock. Q. Friday morning? A. Yes; I suppose so. I cannot give the exact time. By Senator Reyburn: Q. It was during that night? A. Yes; about two o'clock. I telegraphed to the Secretary of the Commonwealth and to the Adjutant General. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Have you copies of those telegrams? A. I think I have in my safe. Q. I wish you would give us copies of them? A. I will do so. I received an answer sometime after that that he had ordered General Pearson to call out one regiment of volunteers to assist in putting down the riot. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was this from? A. I think from Secretary Quay or the Adjutant General. General Pearson then was ordered to call out the regiment here--the Duquesne Greys. They were called out to be in readiness at a certain hour in the morning. Afterwards I walked down to the city hall, and found about thirty men there, and a number of them were trying to get home as fast as they could. About thirty of them I saw in uniform at the city hall. During the forenoon of Friday, I went with General Pearson and some others, out through the mob or crowd at Twenty-eighth street, and along the line up to Twenty-eighth street, and up to Torrens station. There was a large crowd also, and very boisterous, and apparently very determined. I talked to them, and urged them to disperse, but they hooted and jeered. They did not use quite so bad language, but there was plenty of it, as they had done the night before. They told me they would wade in blood to their knees before they would disperse, and that it was blood or bread with them. I also read a proclamation to them, purporting to come from the Governor, and they hooted and jeered at that, and said they did not care, that they were going to stop those trains and had stopped them. It was then about eleven o'clock, and they said at that hour the railroads over the whole country are stopped. General Pearson attempted to address them, but they hooted and jeered at him. I believe he offered to buy a car load of bread and bring it out to them if they would disperse, but they said it was blood or bread with them, and they would not disperse. One young man that appeared to act as spokesman of the crowd while General Pearson was talking to them--I went to him, and asked him why he was acting in the way he was, and why this crowd was here. I am going to give you his answer: He said the Pennsylvania Railroad Company has two ends, one in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. We have determined on a strike, and in Philadelphia they have a strong police force, and they are with the railroad, but in Pittsburgh they have a weak force, and it is a mining and manufacturing district, and we can get all the help we want from the laboring elements, and we have determined to make the strike here. I said to him: "Are you a railroader?" he said "No. I am a laboring man and not a railroader." I then asked him his name. He said: "It might be John Smith and might be John Jones, but I am not here to tell you what it is." I said: "Where do you live?" He said "In the eastern part of the State." I advised him to go home, and not engage in this bad business, but he said he intended to see it through or leave his corpse here. I might say, at East Liberty I warned them to disperse, the crowd, and when they refused to disperse, I warned the women and children to disperse--that the military would be there in a short time, and probably somebody would be hurt. I warned all having no part in the riot to get out of the road. The women answered me that they were there to urge the men on to do what they wanted. Who the women were I do not know, but they answered me in that way. That was in the forenoon of Friday. About noon there was a request sent to me to send some of my deputies with the railroad officials. I understood they were going to try to move the trains on Friday afternoon. I detached Major Boyce, and told him to take as many of my deputies as were necessary, and go down to Union depot. He started after a while, and came back, and it was reported to me that they had decided not to move any trains that afternoon. Consequently, he was not needed, he said. On Saturday--the forenoon of Saturday--I was called on by James Richardson, a constable--I do not know in what ward he is constable--I generally see him here in the Second ward--he is an old constable for many years in the city--he called on me and said that he had some warrants to arrest some parties who were leaders of the riot, issued by Judge Ewing, president judge of our court of common pleas No. 2, and that he wished me to go with him and take what assistance I could, to assist him in arresting some of the leaders of the mob. I immediately detailed ten of my deputies to go out and try to raise a _posse_. They started out and reported to me about one o'clock, and they had some eight or ten men with them. Q. On Saturday? A. Yes; some of them appeared willing to go provided they were paid in advance, and others were willing to go--that is, appeared willing to go--under any consideration. We started and went down as far as Union depot, and I think by the time I got there with this _posse_ my deputies had got up; they had all forsaken me and escaped except about six. We met Mr. Pitcairn there, and some of the other railroad officers. They told me they wished me to assist Mr. Richardson in arresting those parties, and that a division or a regiment, I do not know which they called it, of soldiers from Philadelphia would protect me. I went up with Mr. Richardson and Mr. Pitcairn, and another gentleman whom I saw giving his testimony here the other day; I do not know his name. We went up to Twenty-eighth street, and Mr. Pitcairn told me when we got to Twenty-eighth street, that he could not see the parties for whom the warrants were issued. I replied to him, that then my duty in that respect was ended. If he could not point them out that I could not arrest them; that I did not know them. I had seen the list of names, and I did not know any of them. I passed through the crowd, and they hooted and jeered at me for a mile, I suppose, but they offered me no violence. I went clear through the crowd and came and turned back through a portion of it. The military were bringing up a Gatling gun and placing it in position. I came back to the side of the Gatling gun. The military were formed into what I would call three sides of a hollow square. Shortly after that, or previous to that I might say, as we passed up, General Pearson was at my side, and a man who appeared to be a kind of leader of the crowd was on our right. He was very noisy and very boisterous, and God damning Pearson for bringing out his double-headers, and General Pearson just pointed at him and said, "That man will cause trouble after a little, I am afraid." The man saw him pointing. In some little time he came me--he forced himself through the lines of the military and came to me--and said, what had I against him? I said I had nothing against him, so long as he behaved himself. He asked what General Pearson had against him. I said I did not know. I did not hear him say anything against him. He said he was a friend of Pearson's, and had nothing against him, but that he was God damned if he was going to be pointed out that way in the crowd, that he had friends enough there to wipe us both out. I told him to get out. He said he would not go. I put my hands on his shoulders, and he was then thrown through to the crowd by one of the officers, He there became very noisy. The military came up through the crowd in front with arms apart, and the crowd stood still, refusing to get back. The soldiers were then ordered to charge bayonets. Then somebody cried out in the crowd to hold their position. They came up at a charge bayonets; but a number of their guns were seized by the mob, as you might call it, and at this time, any number of stones were thrown. I saw one soldier get struck with a piece of coal on the forehead, just peeling his forehead, and he fell to his knees. About the same time there were three or four pistol shots fired from the crowd into the ranks of the soldiers, and, as I said before, any quantity of stones and clubs were thrown. Then the firing commenced by the soldiers, and it ran along around two sides of the square. It was a kind of running fire without an order to fire. It put me in mind of a pack of shooting crackers, when you set one end on fire one report would follow another. Some parties were killed and a great many ran away. I waited some half hour or more there. The soldiers then retired towards the round-house, and I returned to my home. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time did this firing occur? A. In the afternoon about I should judge between four and five o'clock. I think it was near five o'clock. Q. Did you remain home during the night? A. I did not. I came down to my office, and remained there. Q. Go on and relate your movements during the balance of the night, and Sunday and Sunday night. A. All that night, and Sunday and Sunday night, I remained in the court-house here. I was useless and powerless, and they were hunting me to murder me. On Monday morning, I went to my office door, and a drunken creature was leaning there, with a revolver in his right hand, hunting for the sheriff. I asked him what he wanted with him. He said, I want to see him. I said you can take a good look at him now, and, with that, I took him by the collar, and kicked him down the steps. I have not seen him since. I might have stated, that on Thursday night, (the first night I went out into the crowd,) there were shots fired when General Pearson and I went out there first. I do not know whether they were fired at any person in particular. I think that they were intended to alarm more than anything else. Q. When Mr. Scott came to your house, on Thursday night, to inform you of the riotous proceedings, did he advise you to consult with your counsel before going out? A. No; he said it probably would be necessary, before I got through, to see my counsel. I told him that I could not see him then, that he had returned to his home, in the Nineteenth ward, Pittsburgh, and it would be impossible for me to see him at that hour of the night. I told him I would see him at an early hour in the morning. Q. Did he tell you why it would be necessary? A. No; I do not think he did, particularly--not to my recollection. He said if I became satisfied, in my own mind, that I had not sufficient force to remove the crowd, that it would be my duty to call on the Governor for aid, and he wished me to be satisfied in my own mind. Q. How many of your deputies did you take with you that night? A. Only one--Mr. Haymaker. Q. Did you call for any posse that night? A. Not that night. Q. You did not call for any posse before telegraphing to the Governor? A. No; I did not. I will say this here, that although I was called on that night, I was aware pretty generally what was going on in regard to the strike previous to that. It could be heard on the street--parties were saying--the strike before this had occurred in other parts of the United States--and they would say it will be here--it will be here in a day or two. I could hear the remarks passed. Not only that, but every avenue of the city, for a week before, had been crowded. There was a very considerable travel by strangers coming to the city. The city was full of strangers at the time. There was no railroad or wagon road but what you could find on it a class of people traveling that you had never seen or heard of at all before, and they were coming into the city. The city was full of them. This I have not heard any other person remark but myself, but it is the fact of the case. On all the railroad trains you could see men coming in, riding on the tenders, or on the cow-catchers, or any way at all--on the steps, or any way. Q. What days? A. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I will give another little fact. This morning a lady came to my office, asking me to solicit transportation for her over the Pennsylvania railroad to Philadelphia. She wished to get a pass. I asked her why, and she said that she had a son living in Chester county who had come here and mixed himself in with the riots, and had laid out and slept out until he had got a cold, and that he now was dying with consumption, and she was poor, and wished me to solicit the Pennsylvania railroad company to give her a pass to go and see him before he died. She lives here, and her son is married and lives in Chester county. She lives nearly across the street from where I do. But I didn't know she had this son, though. Q. As soon as you returned on Thursday night from Twenty-eighth street, you telegraphed to the Governor? A. Yes, sir. Q. Had you become satisfied, then, that it was necessary to call out the troops? A. Yes, sir; I had. The riot had assumed--although there had been no actual outbreak, except the striking of Mr. Watt--had assumed such proportions then, that it would have been folly for me to attempt in this city to have got a posse to remove the crowd. I might, if I had had time, have got the rural districts of this county to assist me--I might have got a force there, but then it would have been a worse slaughter than what it was. But in this city it would have been folly for me to try it. I knew the feeling of the people. Q. Did you make any effort on Friday forenoon to raise a posse? A. I did not. I viewed it in this way. That, when I had called on the State authorities, and the State authorities had responded, that that relieved me of that responsibility of calling a posse. In fact, I considered the idea of a sheriff of any county calling out a posse almost as an obsolete piece of law to-day. The time was, when the military were under the control of the sheriff, but it is not so now. Q. Do you know what the law is in regard to calling out the militia to suppress a riot? A. I have read the acts of assembly. Q. You knew what they were? A. Yes. Q. You knew what was necessary for you, as sheriff, to do before calling the militia? A. Well, any citizen can call on the Governor for aid--any responsible party. Q. But you knew what was necessary for you to do as sheriff? A. I think I did. I might have been mistaken. Q. You thought that you laid sufficient ground for calling on the Governor, did you? A. Yes; this riot had assumed such proportions at that time--it had gone so far, and such a crowd was there, of all the rough elements of society, that no posse, raised inside of three or four days--and then it would have had to be collected from all parts of the county--could have removed it. Q. How large was the crowd that night? A. Well, I cannot tell you that, because the cars not loaded with freight, as I said before, were all occupied. Some had four or five in, and some ten or twelve in. I cannot tell how many cars were full. At Twenty-eighth street, I judge that a thousand persons were there at that time, and all along, from Union depot to Twenty-eighth street, they were scattered. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Those cars you saw the men in, were they regular freight cars or caboose cars? A. I saw them in both. One thing other I wish to impress on the committee, and that is this: I see that other evidence--by reading it in the papers--places those warrants for the arrest of those parties on Saturday, in my hands. It is not the case. They were in the hands of James Richardson, the constable, and I was only acting as a guard to assist him. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was he not appointed as one of your deputies? A. No; I told him I would go myself, and give him some of my men to assist him. I took thirteen of my regular deputies and myself to assist him, and some other men not regularly connected with the office. The names of some of them I cannot recollect. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Would it then have been possible to have arrested those men? A. No, sir; not unless the military had done it. Probably, General Brinton might have been able, but I do not know. There was about a mile of a solid packed mob. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. On Saturday? A. Yes; the day we had the warrants. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Friday? A. On Friday there was a large crowd. It was continually increasing. It increased from Thursday, and kept on increasing all the time, on Friday and Saturday. Q. Were they all taking a part? A. No; a portion were lookers on, but the sympathy appeared to be all with the strikers. But I must say, that I did not see many of those strikers. After we had gone out to Torrens station, I asked Mr. Pitcairn how many men he knew in those two crowds, at Twenty-eighth street and Torrens station, as belonging to the road. After studying awhile, he said: "Well, really, I think I only know four." By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You say the sympathy of all those gathered around was with the strikers? A. It appeared to be. Q. How extensive was that sympathy--to what extent was it carried among the people? A. It was very extensive. In fact, I do hardly know any person whose sympathy was not with them. It went so far that on Saturday night, after the firing, parties were coming to my house and telling my family that they would be murdered or burned out before morning. My wife became alarmed, and in the street where I lived she could not get protection in any house. They would not let her in. Q. Why? A. Because they blamed me for being at the head of the soldiers, and for causing the killing of innocent parties. That was the reason they gave her--that they did not think they would be safe in letting her in. Q. What street is that? A. Washington street, Pittsburgh. By Senator Reyburn: Q. On Thursday or Friday was this crowd boisterous or destroying things? A. They were not destroying things. On Friday they were stopping all the trains coming in--stopping trains, and then hooking on locomotives and running the cattle cars, for instance, to Torrens station, and letting the cattle out in the field. In fact, Mr. Pitcairn will remember that we were ordered out of the locomotive that we were on, to let them run cattle out. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Not on Thursday and Friday, but after the firing occurred, how was the sympathy? A. I think the sympathy was with the strikers from the first. I feel satisfied it was. But I am only giving you my own opinion. By Senator Reyburn: Q. But you give that opinion, having formed it after intercourse with the people, and after being in the crowd? A. Yes; I talked with a great many of them, and they appeared to think it was a hardship to reduce the wages and the numbers of the men, and also, once in a while, they would bring in this freight discrimination question. Q. If you had had the warrants on Thursday night, could you have arrested those parties? A. If I had had a posse of two hundred or two hundred and fifty I probably could have arrested them, but probably there would have been somebody killed. I believe on Thursday morning if I had had the number of police that Mayor McCarthy had, I could have arrested the leaders, and put in prison the disorderly parties, and that then the trouble would not have assumed the proportions it did. That is only my own idea of it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Could it have been done on Thursday? A. As I said before, I was out of Pittsburgh part of Thursday. I was called away on business. Q. But from the time you became acquainted with the difficulty first? A. On Thursday morning I saw the crowd gathering around, and I think then if I had had a force and had been called on to anything with the force that Mayor McCarthy had, I think I could have done some good, but on Thursday night at one o'clock, I do not think it could have been done. Q. When those messages were brought in and read to the crowd as coming from other parties, were there any messages sent out to them in reply? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. No responses were made to them? A. There was considerable cheering. Q. But were any answers sent? A. No. Q. Did those messages come in answer to messages that had been sent out? A. I cannot answer that. I have given you about the purport of the messages. Probably if General Pearson shall be called he might recollect the purport a little distincter than I have. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were those telegrams? A. I think not. I didn't so understand it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There appeared to be an organization? A. It looked to me in that light very much. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You stated one was from Wilkes-Barre? A. Yes, and one from the Monongahela valley, and there was also one from Mansfield--that the coal miners there would be in in the morning. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Had you knowledge of any organization prior to this time? A. Nothing that I could assert with any distinctness--nothing only rumor--while I firmly believe there was. Now I will give you another fact or instance to corroborate my theory: Some five weeks after the riot I was in St. Paul, and the mayor of St. Paul had gathered up thirteen tramps in a cave on the bank of the Mississippi river. I was at the hearing, and each one had a traveling sack or satchel, and they examined these satchels and there were goods like silk handkerchiefs, and so forth, in them. The mayor asked them where they got them, and they said, at Pittsburgh at the time of the riot, "How did you know there was going to be a riot there." "Oh! we knew it, and we were there." If you will telegraph to the mayor at St. Paul he will substantiate the fact. Q. In regard to the extent of this sympathy with the strikers that you spoke of, I would like you to explain a little more upon that subject as to the extent of it, and as to what classes of people sympathized with the strikers? A. The whole laboring class, so far as I know, were with the strikers in their sympathy. Q. The entire laboring class? A. Yes; I think so. Do not understand me to say that they were in sympathy with the riot. They were in sympathy with the men on account of their wages being reduced. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. With the railroad strikers? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. But they were not opposed to the railroad company? A. I do not know that, but it was just this way that the railroad men had their sympathy. Then there was another sympathy of the merchants to a certain extent with these men. They believed they were not paid right, and that the railroad company were not doing---- Q. Among what class of merchants? A. Our better class. Q. The entire classes? A. No; but a portion of them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was it sympathy with the strikers, or only prejudice against the railroad company? A. I think they had sympathy and prejudice both. Q. Do you think that any responsible portion of the people of Pittsburgh, whether laboring men or others, sympathized with the rioters after the difficulty had become a riot? A. No; I think not. I would say here, that the responsible portion of the people of Pittsburgh were not in sympathy with the riot, but I would say, further, that it took a certain amount of riot to bring them to their senses. Something has been said in regard to seeing my solicitor. On Friday morning, I did see him at an early hour, and stated to him all I had done, and what I had done, and he advised me that I had done just exactly what he would have advised me to do. He stayed with me nearly all day Friday and Saturday. Before going up to Union depot in company with him, I walked down the street, looking for a posse to go along, and among other places we dropped in, was Air. Hampton's office. They two consulted, and both decided that I had acted in the right way. I am only satisfying you in regard to that. Those gentlemen, both, can be had at any time. The following are the telegrams referred to in the foregoing testimony of Sheriff Fife: PITTSBURGH, _July 19, '77_. To Hon. JOHN LATTA, _Lieutenant Governor of Penn'a._: I have forwarded the following dispatch to his Excellency Governor Hartranft, at Harrisburg. Learning that he is absent from the State, I forward it also to you for such action as you may deem your duty and powers render proper. Signed R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff of Allegheny county_. * * * * * Following is the dispatch above alluded to: PITTSBURGH, _July 19, 1878_. HON. JOHN F. HARTRANFT, _Governor of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg_: A tumult, riot, and mob exist on the Pennsylvania railroad at East Liberty and in the Twelfth ward of Pittsburgh. Large assemblages of people are upon the railroad, and the movement of freight trains, either east or west, is prevented by intimidation and violence, molesting and obstructing the engineers and other employés of the railroad company in the discharge of their duties. As the sheriff of the county, I have endeavored to suppress the riot, and have not adequate means at my command to do so, and I, therefore, request you to exercise your authority in calling out the military to suppress the same. R. H. FIFE, (Copy.) _Sheriff of Allegheny county_. * * * * * BEAVER, PA., _July 20, 3:35, A.M._ R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff_: Your telegram received. I have telegraphed the Adjutant General. M. S. QUAY, _Secretary Commonwealth_. * * * * * HARRISBURG, _July 20, 2:11, A.M._ R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff Allegheny county Pa._: Gen. Latta will be here in an hour, and means taken to assist you if necessary. C. N. FARR, JR., _Private Secretary_. * * * * * HARRISBURG, _July 20, 2:30, A.M._ R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff Allegheny county, Pa._: The Constitution gives me no power to act in the matter. The Governor alone has the power. His law officer, Attorney General Lear, can be reached either at Harrisburg or Doylestown. JOHN LATTA, _Lieut. Gov._ * * * * * LANCASTER, PA., _3:17, A.M._ R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff Allegheny county, Pa._: Have ordered General Pearson to place a regiment on duty to aid you in suppressing disorder. JAMES W. LATTA, (Copy.) _Adjutant General_. * * * * * Hugh Y. Boyce, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were a deputy sheriff in July last? A. Yes. Q. You reside where? A. No. 551 Fifth avenue. Q. State to us what knowledge you have of the disturbance, and when it commenced--give us a statement of the facts? A. Coming in on Friday morning, from attending a sale, I met the sheriff and General Pearson, on Grant street or on Liberty street. I told the sheriff I was going to the office, and I asked where he was going, and he said he was going out the Pennsylvania railroad a short distance. I asked him if he wished me to go along, and he said he did. Then the sheriff and Mr. Pitcairn and General Pearson and myself went to Torrens station. The sheriff there addressed the crowd, as also did General Pearson. They gave some good advice, but they took no notice of it. Q. How did you go out? A. On a locomotive. Q. How large a crowd was there? A. Five or six hundred--I couldn't tell. Q. What class of people were there? A. A pretty hard class. Q. Railroad men? A. Some were railroad men, but they were not all railroad men. Q. What were they doing? A. Standing in groups talking, on the railroad track, and by the side of the railroad track. Q. Were you interfered with in going out? A. No; except the crowd hallooed at us as we went along. Q. How large a crowd was at Twenty-eighth street? A. I cannot say that--perhaps four or five hundred. Q. What response did those men make to the sheriff's admonitions? A. They said they would have bread or blood. Q. Anything else? A. Nothing; but they used very bad language. Q. They refused to disperse, did they? A. Yes; General Pearson made a neat, handsome little speech to them, but they paid no attention to it, nor to the sheriff either. Q. Did you return without any interference? A. Yes. Q. What occurred next? A. The next was on Saturday. In the morning, sometime, the sheriff called me into the office, and told me to get up some men to report at the Pennsylvania railroad depot. Q. Did you go? A. Yes. Q. How many were with you? A. I think about fifteen or sixteen; I am not certain about that. Q. Tell us what took place? A. This was on Friday afternoon. We went out that afternoon to the depot. They wanted some assistance in moving some trains. After I went there, they concluded not to move any, and I returned to the office; and on Saturday I went again, with Constable James Richardson, probably about one o'clock. Q. With how many men? A. Seventeen or eighteen men? Q. Who collected the men? A. The most of them belonged to the sheriff's office. Q. Did you try to collect a posse? A. Yes; but I found it very hard work. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say it was hard work. Why? A. Because the men didn't seem to be willing to give us their assistance. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What did they say when they were asked to go? A. They said they would sooner go out and help the rioters. Q. Did you get that response from any considerable number? A. A few would answer in that way; others said that they had enough to do to attend to their own business. Q. What class of men did you call on? A. I called on citizens and on constables. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did any constables refuse to go? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What excuse did they make? A. They didn't wish to go out to get shot. Q. What class of men said that they would sooner go out and help the rioters? A. Well, laboring men. Q. You say you called on constables and citizens. Citizens is a very broad term. Did you call on any professional men? A. No. Q. On business men? A. Yes. Q. What response did they make? A. That they had to attend to their own business, and couldn't leave on account of it--it being a busy day on Saturday. Q. You got to the depot about one o'clock? A. I think so. Q. Was any crowd about Union depot there? A. Yes; and soldiers, too. Q. Were there any riotous proceedings around the depot at that time? A. Not at that time, but a crowd was there, but they didn't appear to be specially riotous at that time. Q. Did you move down to Twenty-eighth street with the sheriff, ahead of the militia? A. We did. Q. You formed one of the sheriff's posse? A. Yes. Q. There were about sixteen of you? A. About eighteen. There may have been more. Q. Were you armed? A. No; some of them had revolvers. I had one. Q. You had no weapons in view? A. No. Q. What took place at Twenty-eighth street? A. There was quite a large crowd of people there--rioters. Q. What were they doing? A. Talking, and hallooing, and making a great noise. Q. Had they begun to destroy property in any way? A. Not when we went there--at least not when I was there. Q. What did the sheriff do? A. The sheriff advised them to disperse and go home. Q. Advised them or commanded them? A. Commanded them. Q. What response was made? A. Nothing but vile language, and throwing stones, and brickbats, &c. Q. Were those stones thrown at the sheriff's posse or at the militia? A. Promiscuously--all around in that neighborhood. Q. Did they hit any of the sheriffs posse? A. Yes. Q. Were any of them injured? A. Not materially. Q. Were any pistols fired? A. Yes. Q. How many shots were fired before the militia fired? A. There may have been five or six. Q. To what extent were the missiles thrown? A. There was quite a shower of stones and brickbats. Q. Was any command given to the militia to fire? A. Not that I heard. I heard the command to charge bayonets, but no command to fire. Q. Was the command to charge bayonets obeyed? A. Yes. Q. Did they drive back the crowd? A. A very short distance. Q. Did they drive them as long as they continued to charge? A. Yes; they cleared the tracks. Q. And drove them as far as they desired to? A. I presume so, just at that time. Quite a number of the crowd--several of them--tried to take the muskets out of the hands of the soldiers. Q. How did the firing by the militia commence--was it one shot--one shot or a volley? A. One shot, and then another shot, and then two or three shots every second. Q. A rattling volley? A. Yes. Q. Was it regular? A. Yes. Q. What effect did that have on the crowd? A. It drove them away for the time being. Q. Where did they assemble afterwards? A. In different places down below Penn street and up on the hill. Q. Did the crowd assemble between the depot and where the militia were then stationed? A. I don't know. Q. What became of you? A. After the firing was over, probably three quarters of an hour, I came in Penn avenue. Q. Did the posse remain together? A. When the firing commenced we were standing immediately in front. It was too warm to stand there very long. Q. Did the firing disperse the sheriff's posse, too? A. Yes; it was a rather peculiar place to stand there. Q. Do you know how many were killed there that evening? A. I don't know the exact number now. Q. Had you any knowledge of any pre-arranged purpose among those men to strike on that day? A. I had not--only what you might judge from the crowds gathering there occasionally, at the corners, and on the railroad tracks, and different places. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any talk of striking among those men that gathered in crowds before the strike? A. Yes; you could hear a great deal of talk about a strike, but nothing was said as to the time when it was going to take place. Q. How long before this strike? A. On Tuesday and Wednesday. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who was the talk among? A. Among the laboring classes--among the men that worked in the mills, and the glass houses, &c., and railroad men. Q. Did you hear it before the news of the strike on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad? A. No. Q. It was not until after that that you heard talk of striking? A. No. Q. Prior to that you had heard nothing that would lead you to believe there was an organization for the purpose? A. No. Q. That was the subject of conversation, I suppose, among all classes--to some extent? A. Yes; it was. * * * * * Conrad Upperman, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In Penn avenue, between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets. Q. What was your occupation? A. I was night foreman in the round-house. Q. Were you on duty on Thursday night? A. I was. Q. State whether there was any disturbance about the round-house on that night. A. There was none about the round-house at all. The only disturbances there were, took place out on the track, about Twenty-eighth street. Q. What kind of a disturbance was it? A. The railroad men and the others were combined--but they were not doing anything, except standing there in groups. Q. During the night was the crowd noisy and boisterous? A. Somewhat. Q. You were in sight of them? A. I was among them nearly all the time. On Thursday night, between eight and nine o'clock, I attempted to get out an engine to haul some stock, and I thought it was useless to attempt it without first seeing whether they would allow us to haul it. Mr. Watt told me in the office that they would allow us to haul the stock; but when I got among them they didn't seem very favorable to allowing it. So we talked to them some time, and at last they agreed that we could haul the stock. I brought the engine out myself; but before I could get her across Twenty-eighth street four or five hundred called out to me and hallowed--called out to me to take her back; but I got her across Twenty-eighth street, and, after talking to them, they got quiet, and agreed that I could haul the stock, provided a committee could go on the engine to see that we would not haul anything else. I then got two engineers, one to fire the engine, and one to run it, and they took the stock up that night; but a little later in the night a Pan Handle train came along, and that raised a terrible howl there about the stock, and they cut the engine loose; but at last they let the stock go as far as Lawrenceville, and then we got an engine to haul it away. In fact, they went along on the train. Q. What complaints did the men make in your conversations with them? A. They complained about the double-headers; that they would take a great many of them off; that it would take their work away at any rate, and they thought they might as well fight it. Q. Were you in the round-house on Saturday night? A. I was. Q. Were you present when the firing occurred on Saturday afternoon? A. No; I went home at six o'clock in the morning to take some sleep. I then went to the round-house between seven and eight o'clock. When I got there the soldiers were just entering. After they had got themselves stationed there, it was not long until the outside parties commenced firing into the round-house. Q. With what? A. With musketry. Q. The rioters? A. Yes; between eleven and twelve o'clock that night. There was a board pile between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets, and a good many of them got in behind that, and they just rattled volley after volley into the round-house. I was standing there; but I thought it was too hot, and went to the other side. I then remained in the round-house until about twelve o'clock, and then told an officer that I would go out. He said I had better see General Brinton first, that I might do him some good. I saw General Brinton; but he had nothing to say, and I said nothing to him. I started to go out the back way of the carpenter shop; but there was a lot of rioters there, and we thought that it would not be safe, so we came on back to where the superintendent's office stood, and he proposed that I might go out the gate at Twenty-sixth street, and that he would tell his soldiers not to fire on me. The firing was going on at Twenty-sixth street. I got out then and went on home. Q. Were you molested by the rioters? A. Not then; but on Friday night or Saturday morning, between twelve and one o'clock, we were getting out two passenger engines to go east. It was not my business to know what the engines were going to haul. I got orders to get them out, and I went out in the street then and got two engineers and firemen, but a man came in and gave us to understand that the engines couldn't go, and I knew it was no use to argue the point with them, because there were four or five hundred of them there on Twenty-eighth street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was that man a railroader? A. Not at that time. I believe he had been suspended. He is in the work-house now. Then we had two engines coming west on the fast line that same night, and we cut one engine off and took the accommodation engine at Wall's, and let the accommodation engine bring the train in, and let the other engine go back to Altoona; but we found they had her blocked. I went to Twenty-eighth street, and they were pretty noisy at that time. Some of them came to me, and asked what kind of a hand I was taking in the matter. I told them I was not taking any more hand in it than I ought to, and they told me if I didn't get out right quick they would shoot me so full of holes that I couldn't get away. I found it was pretty hot, and I got away. On Friday morning, when the troops came there, there was not over twenty or thirty men at Twenty-eighth street. They seemed to go away, but after that, of course, they commenced gathering in groups, and I noticed the troops were not there very long until they were among them themselves. I noticed that morning, before I went home, that they were walking together in the street, our own men and the soldiers. I thought there was no use for those soldiers there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What morning was that? A. Saturday morning. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What troops were those? A. The Pittsburgh troops. I was there Thursday night and Friday night and Saturday night until one o'clock. Q. At Twenty-eighth street, were the same men there all the time from Thursday until Saturday--until the firing of the troops? A. Yes; they were nearly about the same crowd. Of course, the crowd increased. On Friday night four or five thousand of them were there, but the crowd was orderly, and I never saw them molest anybody unless you wanted to do something--then they would drive you back. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Would it have been possible for the police to have made any arrests at that time? A. I went out and looked at the crowd. I looked over the crowd and I thought if there were any police there they could have arrested the whole of them. Q. Could a force of fifty good police have dispersed the mob? A. They could on Thursday afternoon, when the first double-header was stopped. I think only about from twenty to twenty-five men were interfering with that train at all. It was just this way: I stood and looked on, but I had nothing to do with it. It was daylight, and I was on at night. There were four police on each engine, and a road foreman was on an engine, and the engineers and firemen, but they didn't seem to pull her out. I didn't see anybody with anything in their hands, but was informed that there were parties with links and pins in their hands, ready to throw in case they did start. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know of any engineers or firemen being driven off their engines when there were policemen with them on the train? A. I cannot say that I do. They got off, though. Q. Did the police get off too? A. They did, yes. Q. You didn't see them driven off? A. No, they hooted and hallooed a good bit. Q. They got off--no links were thrown and no assaults were made? A. Not when I was looking. Q. How many police were on the engines? A. Four on the first, and I think four on the second. Q. They got off on account of the threats? A. That is the only reason I would know for their getting off. * * * * * C. A. Fife, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You are the son of Sheriff Fife? A. Yes. Q. Were you in the sheriff's office on Thursday, the 19th of July? A. Yes. Q. Was there any call upon the sheriff during that day for assistance in putting down the disturbance at Twenty-eighth street? A. Not during that day, I do not think. Q. During the evening? A. I believe so, but I was not home. Q. You were not out with him? A. No. Q. Were you out with him on Friday? A. I was at Union depot on Friday. Q. Was there any disturbance there? A. No, sir. Q. Were you out on Saturday? A. Yes. Q. At what time? A. I was there when the militia went out, in the afternoon. Q. Were you a member of the sheriff's posse? A. Yes. Q. Tell us what occurred there? A. We walked into the crowd. The crowd would open for us to walk in, and then close around us. Q. At what point was that? A. Twenty-eighth street. Q. The militia were immediately in your rear. A. Yes. Q. What did the sheriff say to the crowd? A. He asked them to disperse. Q. What response did they make? A. I cannot say that. They hooted, and hallooed, and used vile language, and threw stones. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They did not disperse? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who were the stones thrown at? A. Both at the militia and us, but I cannot say exactly. Q. Were any guns or pistols fired at you? A. I heard pistol shots, but cannot say who they were fired at. Q. Before the firing from the soldiers? A. Yes. Q. Was there any command given to fire? A. Not that I heard. Q. Where were you during Saturday night, after the shooting? A. I was around through town here--no place in particular. Q. Were you at your home? A. Yes; then I was out on the hill above Twenty-eighth street. Q. Was there anybody that offered violence to you? A. No. Q. Was any attempt made to burn the house of the sheriff? A. I did not see anybody there, but I heard that there had been parties at the house. Q. You saw nobody there? A. I did not get home until near morning. I was out on the hill at Twenty-eighth street. Q. Were any threats made that you heard? A. I did not hear any, but I heard of them. Q. Did you assist on Saturday in raising that posse? A. I tried to get some parties. Q. What efforts did you make? A. I asked several parties to go out with us. Q. What replies did you get? A. I was refused wherever I asked anybody. Q. What class of men did you call on? A. I do not exactly remember now who I did ask--parties I would see around the court-house. Q. You did not succeed in getting anybody? A. No. At this point the committee adjourned until to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _Tuesday, February 12, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at ten o'clock, A.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. The first witness examined was: * * * * * Alexander E. McCandless, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. On Centre avenue, in this city. Q. What is your profession? A. I am a physician. Q. State whether you were connected with the fire department last July? A. I was a fire commissioner. Q. What are the duties of the fire commissioners? A. They are elected by city councils to take care of the fire department, and to elect the force, and to run it, and they have general supervision over the expenditure of the money. Q. Do they control the movements of the fire department in case of a fire? A. We have a chief engineer for that purpose. Q. What was done by the fire department during the riot for the purpose of protecting the city or railroad companies' property from fire? A. The first alarm of fire was struck about eleven o'clock on Saturday night, after the cars were set fire to. The fire department responded as soon as the alarm was struck, and started out to the fire, No. 7 engine, I believe, being the first on the way. At that time, I was on top of the hill overlooking the outer depot. I heard the alarm struck, and I heard the engine start, and then I heard the shouts of the mob, and could hear the gong of the engine as it was running. I then heard the engine stop, and could hear the oaths of the men all distinctly. Afterwards I went down into the crowd, and as the other engines came up, I saw them stopped by the mob there, who swore that if we did lay any hose, they would cut the hose, and shoot the drivers, and all that kind of a thing. The mob would not allow the fire department to put a drop of water on the company's property, and all that night we did not get to throw any. The following night when private property caught fire they allowed us to throw water on it, and did not interfere. Q. Was private property protected pretty generally? A. As well as it could be done, but it was so extensive that we could not protect it altogether; we had the force of the fire department cut down on account of the appropriations not being sufficient to run it a short time before that, and the result was that we were short of men. Q. Was the private property fired by the mob, or did it catch from the railroad company's fire? A. I cannot state that of my own knowledge. Q. What seemed to be the disposition of the mob? A. They were wild--perfectly mad, and appeared to want to burn everything or anything, especially the railroad property. Q. This is Saturday night you speak of? A. That evening--Saturday evening--we did not get to throw any water. But the chief engineer can give fuller details than I can about that. Q. Did you call on the mayor for protection in any way for your fire department? A. Not personally, but the chief of the department, I think, did. Q. Was the fire department protected by the police? A. No. Q. During Saturday night or the day of Sunday? A. Not that I know of. We were the only department that kept up any organization in this city at that time. Q. You say you did keep up your organization? A. Yes, perfectly, and we followed the line of the fire all the way down Liberty street clear to Union depot. Q. During the entire riot you preserved your organization? A. Yes. I was attacked once near the grain elevator. I was directing a stream of water on the hotel opposite, and they thought I wanted to put water on the elevator, and they attacked me; but I got away, as I was on horseback. Q. If your fire department had been protected by the police, could you have controlled the fire? A. We could at the inception of it--when they started burning the cars. Only one car was lit at that time. Q. The fire department, you say, is under the control of a chief engineer? A. Yes; he has supreme control of the fire department, and in case of a large fire he is assisted by the commissioners. Q. Is he subject to the order of the mayor? A. No; he is not. He has nothing to do with the mayor. Q. He is subject to the orders of the commissioners? A. Yes; he is directed by them, but he has supreme control of the fire department. If he wants the assistance of the commissioners he sends an alarm for them. Q. In case the fire department needs protection, to whom ought you to look for that protection? A. I suppose to the head of the police department of the city. Q. Do you know, of your own knowledge, whether any demand was made upon the chief of police for protection? A. Not of my own knowledge. Q. Is the fire department a paid department? A. Yes. Q. Did you see the fire when it first started? A. I saw the first of it--the first torch applied to the first car. Q. Where was that car standing? A. Beyond the round-house. And I thought they had an engine up there. They would fire one car and start it, and fire another car and start it, and fire another car and start it. Q. Can you give us the street where it was? A. I think they were all above Twenty-eighth street--the cars that were started. Q. You thought they had an engine to start the cars? A. I thought so--either that or a large gang of men. They started so rapidly. Q. When those cars came down, where did they stop after they were started? A. They came down--the whole yard was packed with cars down below the round-house, and they had the switches so arranged that they ran down to the round-house. They were trying to burn out the soldiers. It was very plain what their motive was. Q. The motive, at first, was not to destroy the railroad company's property, but to burn out the soldiers? A. That was the motive, to my mind, as I viewed it from the hill. Q. What were those first cars loaded with? A. I cannot tell that. Q. With oil? A. No; they were freight cars first that were fired. Afterwards they started the oil cars down. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. As the fire progressed on Sunday morning, what seemed to be the motive? A. It was general destruction then. They started the oil cars early Sunday morning. Q. What time did the troops get out of the round-house? A. I did not see them come out. I only know from newspaper reports. Q. Did you see the mob as it approached the depot with torches, and the burning of Union depot? A. No; I was at work on another part of the fire. Q. How large was the mob during Sunday? A. It would be hard to form an estimate. It was an immense crowd, for squares on Liberty street, breaking cars open and stealing--ten thousand or fifteen thousand anyway--just streaming back over the hill, taking the things away. Thousands of them were carrying away everything imaginable, and going to the south side with them. They passed my house--crowds of them. Q. Who were ahead--the men with the torches or the plundering posse? A. The torches were first. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In what manner did the mob interfere with your men? A. They would not let them get to the fire. Q. They stopped your men? A. Yes; they just got ahead in front of the horses and caught the horses by the head, and swore they would shoot the drivers if they would go any further. Q. But they did not assault your men? A. They interfered in every way they could. One of our men caught a man going along with a sword-cane punching holes in the hose, and he knocked him down, and took it away from him. They have that cane now. Q. Did you not have one of your fire engines in position to play on the fire when the police offered to protect you from the mob, but your men did not then play on the fire? A. The chief engineer can tell you that. I was not present when that occurred. * * * * * Samuel M. Evans, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At 190 Fourth avenue. Q. What was your official connection with the fire department in July last? A. I was the chief engineer. Q. How long have you occupied that position? A. Since last May. I was the assistant chief for two years, and the engineer of a company before that, and the foreman of a company before that. I then resigned for sometime, and was then elected engineer afterwards, and was then elected assistant chief engineer, and then elected chief. Q. State when the first alarm of fire was given? A. On Saturday night, about eleven o'clock. Q. From whence did the fire proceed--what part of the city? A. The corner of Twenty-sixth and Penn streets--it was there the box struck. Q. What did you do? A. When the alarm came I was in bed. They fetched my wagon to me, and I went out there, and when I got to Eleventh street--driving there--they got in my way--certain parties--and called out: "You son of a bitch, don't lay any hose--you son of a bitch." But I said to them, "you can go to hell;" and I started on. It was on the street, and I went at a pretty rapid gait. When I got out as far as the "Independent" house, Mr. Coates, one of the fire commissioners, said to me: "Sam, drive in here, quick." I drove then into the engine house, and then went to Twenty-eighth and Liberty streets where the mob was. I looked up and saw the fire. It was a car--it appeared to be an oil tank car. At first, No. 7 was between Twenty-second and Twenty-third streets on the right side of Penn, in the gutter. They had no fire in the engine, and I said: "Where's your fire?" And they told me they had put a pistol to the head of the fireman, and made him draw the fire. I told the engineer then to turn her around and take her down to the house and to fire up again. They went to the house, and I told them to stand there so as to be ready to go into service if we could get into service. Then they came up with a big gun on wheels--a cannon--pulling it along on the street. After they got up to where a few hose carriages were, they came to Twenty-third street--and I said, "what is the matter?" And all they said was to point the gun at us and said: "If you don't get out of that we'll blow you to hell." I said we had better come down here than go there. While I was standing there, an alarm came from East Liberty. I went out there, and when I went out there I thought probably it was the stock-yards, but I found it was a solitary house away down on Negley's run, a mile or a mile and a half from the railroad. Then I told the engine company at East Liberty to stay there in case they would burn Mr. Pitcairn's house, or set the stock-yards on fire, and that we would manage to get along without them. So they did not come in. Then I came in, and I think at eight minutes after three it was, when they sent a signal in that the fire was out. There was a big crowd on Liberty street, and somebody asked me to let them lay a line of hose to save Mr. Hardie's stable, and some property belonging to Mr. Denny. I told the foreman then of hose company No. 1, to lay a line of hose up Liberty street from Thirty-first street, and that if any stables got on fire, or any private property, to throw water on it. Then four men stopped me with guns, and asked me what I was going to do, and I said I was going to lay a line of hose; and they said, not a God damned line of hose. But I said to them that I was going to save private property, and then they said, that I could throw water on that, "but that if you throw any water on the company's fire we will shoot you and cut your hose," and everything else. While coming in they were carrying goods away from the cars. Everybody you would see, had a bundle on their shoulders or their heads. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What time of night was this? A. Between three and four o'clock in the morning. I came down to Twenty-third street, but we could not go into service at all. They were shooting at that time out of the machine shop and the round-house. Q. Who were shooting? A. The soldiers, and the others were shooting out of the board pile. Q. Firing at the round-house? A. Yes; they took this gun and planted it in the street to shoot into the round-house, and these men in the round-house, when they would go to sight this gun, would shoot them. They had this gun loaded with links and pins belonging to the railroad company. After the fire started, I think it could have been stopped before it set the round-house on fire. I think at that time it could have been stopped, because in the morning, about six or seven o'clock, they commenced running down the wall--a crowd of them--and then pushed the cars up along the Allegheny Valley track, and when they would come to a car afire--one man I noticed particularly jump up on a car, and stop it alongside of another car afire. Then when it would catch fire they would open the brakes, and let it go down to the round-house. Then they threw something out of the round-house, and stopped the cars there, and then they got to throwing water out of the round-house on the cars. I was down on the corner of Twenty-third street when two rough looking customers came down, and asked me where the place to stop the water off was. They said they are throwing water out of the round-house. I told them to go to the head of Twenty-sixth street on Liberty, and that they would see a big iron plate in the middle of the street, and that they should lift that up, and put their hands down and stop it off. They said they will pick us off, and they wanted to know if there was no place in Penn street to stop the water off. I said no. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You knew they could not stop it off? A. Yes; I knew they were rioters, and if they went where I told them they would shoot them, perhaps. Q. You did not give the information for the purpose of getting the water stopped off. A. No; I knew that they could not stop it off. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were these two men strangers? A. Yes. Q. You are very well acquainted about Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. Did this crowd--all of them--seem to be citizens? A. Some of them did, and some did not. Q. What were the citizens doing? A. Standing there--a great many of them--but they were afraid to speak or to do anything for fear of getting hurt--those that felt like stopping it. A good many were arrested. I saw the "black maria" very busy taking men down to the station-house, and I asked the policemen how many were arrested, and they said one hundred and thirty or one hundred and forty, for stealing, and in the morning I asked a man what they did with them, and he said that the mayor had fined them three dollars and costs, and let them go. I said they were all thieves, and he said that nobody was there to identify the property. I said it was not necessary to identify stolen property. Q. Did he get the three dollars out of them? A. That is what the policeman said--three dollars and costs. Q. He did not let them go until he got that? A. That is what he told me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What time was the round-house set on fire? A. About seven o'clock in the morning. Q. How was it fired? A. From cars on the Allegheny Valley railroad. Q. Is that on Liberty street? A. Yes; the track is on top of the wall until you come to a little piece on this side of Twenty-sixth street, and then it comes down and gets level with the payment--between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth streets it begins to get on a level with the payment. These cars were stopped between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets. One fireman told me--a fireman of Engine Company 8, in Philadelphia--that he got the water ready to throw, or was handling the line, when he said there was a car loaded with liquor in it burning, and it ran down into the cellar of the round-house, or the shop on the other side, and that that was what drove them out so that they could not do anything. When that liquor, burning, ran down into the cellar, it set the buildings on fire. Q. Did any of your engines play on the fire on the railroad? A. No; they would not let us. And we had as much as we could do after the fire started. As fast as the fire would come along we would move the engines down. Q. How many engines had you? A. Eleven of my own, and the chief engineer of Allegheny came over and fetched me three. Q. They would not allow you to play on the railroad property. A. No. Q. Did you ask protection from the mayor? A. I do not know that I saw him but once. He and Roger O'Mara came up Penn street in a buggy, and turned out Liberty, and then O'Mara came back some way without the mayor. Q. Did you ask for protection? A. No; I did not see anybody to ask. Q. Do you know of any protection given to you by the police? A. No protection at all, sir. If I could have got protection when I first went out to the fire, we could have kept the other cars from burning. We could have pulled them away sufficiently far to stop the oil tanks from setting any of the rest afire, and kept them cooled off. Q. Do you think that the police force of the city could have protected you so that you could have played on the fire? A. If they had not been demoralized, they could. If they had had a police like the New York police, they could have kept the crowd back. Q. How many men would it have taken to protect you sufficiently? A. After the fire got started, it would have taken right smart, but before that I think that one hundred and fifty or two hundred men could have stopped the whole thing, because police can do more than soldiers. Q. We have testimony that the police offered to give protection to one engine? A. Let the police come up and name the engine. I saw that in the papers. Q. Do you know the parties referred to? A. Motts and Goldsmith. They came out in the papers and said they went to one man named Kennedy, and told them that they would give protection, but I went and asked them, and they said that they never came to them at all. Q. These gentlemen will testify to that? A. Yes; I can have them at any time at all. I will fetch them to you. None of them came to me; and I am the proper person to come to for a purpose of that kind. By Senator Reyburn. Q. Were you about on Thursday or Friday? A. No. Q. You say that a couple of hundred or one hundred and fifty policemen could have driven the crowd back? A. On Saturday, one hundred and fifty policemen, well armed, and staying together, could have moved the crowd away so that they could have moved the trains. Q. But you were not there? A. Not until Saturday night, when the alarm was given. Q. On Saturday and Sunday morning, when you were there, were the police doing anything to prevent the pillaging? A. After I came back from East Liberty, I saw the police arresting people for stealing. The "black maria" was busy taking them down to the station--the Twelfth ward station--and then running them down to the Central station. Q. From what you saw, do you think it would have been possible for the police to have stopped it? A. It would have been impossible for what was there to have stopped the mob. They could catch the people when carrying things off. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you a witness before the grand jury? A. No; this is the first time I have been called upon. By Mr. Englebert: Q. Did you see any of the soldiers? A. Yes; about the round-house. As soon as the soldiers went out of the round-house we went into service, and kept right on then. We could not go into service before, because they were firing both from the round-house and from the board-pile--the rioters. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When the soldiers came out of the round-house, did they come out in ranks? A. Yes. As soon as they came down on to Penn street, I noticed a squad on each side watching the houses and buildings and alleys, and the men with the Gatling gun were watching behind. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they well handled and marching orderly, or were they demoralized? A. No. They marched out orderly. You could not have told from the way they looked that anything was the matter. I expected to see them come out and run every way, and I was astonished. When they began coming out everybody ran from them, but when they saw them come out in good order, and keep in a good line, then they began to stand still again--the people did. * * * * * Samuel A. Muckle, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Twenty-third ward, Pittsburgh, at the present time. Q. Where were you residing in July last? A. In the Fourth ward, Allegheny city. Q. What business were you engaged in all that time? A. No business at all at that time. I was employed by the railroad before that. Q. What position did you hold on the railroad before that? A. Conductor. Q. Of what road? A. The Pan Handle. Q. Passenger or freight? A. Freight, at that time. Q. Was there any pre-arranged plan among the railroad men for a strike? A. None that I know of--if you speak of the strike that occurred in July. Q. Yes? A. None that I know of. Q. Was there any arrangement being made among the men for a strike to take place then or any other time? A. We had an organization here at that time, called the Trainmen's Union. Of course, if I have to answer all these questions, I am willing to answer them, if they do not conflict with this organization. Of course, I went into that organization, and I am under an obligation. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Oath bound? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It is a secret organization? A. So far as our own business is concerned. Q. As far as you can, you will give us what information you have upon the causes of this riot, and whether it was pre-arranged among the men? A. The organization is not in existence to-day, but I still feel myself duty bound to the organization. I will answer this. There was a union called the Trainmen's Union--an organization--and there was a talk of a strike in June. It was to have taken place on the 27th day of June. That fell through, and with the strike in July, we had no business of that kind. Q. What induced the men to arrange for a strike on the 27th of June? A. This organization was gotten up for the benefit of the railroad men--for their own protection--for to protect them in anything that might be brought up. Q. What class of railroad men? A. The transportation department entirely. Q. Including conductors and brakemen? A. Yes; and engineers and firemen. Q. Did it include any passenger conductors and brakemen? A. Yes. Q. The whole? A. Yes; when I speak of transportation, I include the whole transportation department. Q. Was it the ten per cent. reduction made on the 1st of June that induced the men to arrange for that strike? A. I do not know that it was positively that, more than some other grievances that might be brought up. It was organized more for the protection of ourselves in any grievances that might be brought up. Of course, the ten per cent. would be included. Q. Were there any other grievances except that ten per cent. reduction? A. Not at that time. Q. Had the men any grievances or complaints to make outside of that, when it was talked of that a strike should take place on the 27th of June? A. I believe there were. Q. What were they? A. In regard to the classification of engineers and the amount of pay they received, &c.; that was something I did not particularly understand at that time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The object of the brotherhood was to abolish this classification? A. The object was to protect themselves. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They considered this grading unjust? A. Yes; they considered it unjust, which it certainly was. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You did not organize a strike for the 27th of June in regard to any future grievance. A. No. Q. It was the ten per cent. reduction and the classification of engines that induced you to arrange that strike for the 27th of June? A. Yes. Q. In arranging for a strike, what did the railroad men propose to do--stop all trains--just simply quit work? A. In case of their striking, they simply proposed quitting work themselves--standing still or going to their homes, or wherever they wished to go. I never heard of any arrangement made as to what they would do. By Mr. Means: Q. Were any resolutions passed in your body to stop trains? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were there any resolutions to interfere with the men who desired to work? A. No. Q. You said it fell through. What broke off that arrangement to strike on the 27th of June? A. It was because it was generally thought it was not solid enough; it was not worked in the right way. Q. How extensive was the arrangement--how wide did it extend? A. I did not think it was very extensive; at least, I did not think it was very solid. Q. Do you know how many organizations this Trainmen's Union had in existence--how many lodges? A. I am not prepared to say; I do not know. Q. Did it include all the trunk lines? A. I think it did. Q. Did it include all the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. It included all those who joined the order. Q. What other roads? A. Most all the roads out of Pittsburgh; in fact, I guess all the other main roads. Q. Where did that union originate? A. I believe in Pittsburgh. Q. When was it abandoned? A. Previous to the strike. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Then there was no organization at the time of the strike. A. No; we had no meeting for some time previous to the strike. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. For how long previous? A. Not within a week, and that was very small. The meeting called last was called without the approval of the right party in this union. His attention was called to a poster struck up on a telegraph pole by a certain party, and I rather think it was put up just as a burlesque in the first place. There had not been a regular meeting for some time previous to the strike. Q. Can you tell what induced them to abandon the union? A. I have my own idea, but I don't know whether I am right. My impression always was that the railroad men, in connection with the Trainmen's Union, were afraid to attempt it for fear of being discharged from the road. I claim it was lack of nerve on the part of the men. I was discharged myself after the first trainmen's meeting I ever attended, and I am satisfied I would still be a union man if there had been any men with me. Q. When did you first learn of the strike on Thursday, July 19? A. In the neighborhood of eleven o'clock, in the forenoon. Q. Had you any intimation of it before that? A. Not in the least. In fact I was surprised, and I didn't believe such a thing was going on until I walked to Twenty-eighth street, and saw it to be a fact. Q. When you got there who did you find there? A. A few railroad men, and I believe a few policemen were there, and some citizens. Q. How many railroad men were there? A. I cannot tell you that--I suppose twenty or thirty or forty or fifty. A great many of those men I didn't know. Q. What road were those men working on at that time? A. I think the majority of them belonged to the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. What were they doing? A. They didn't appear to be doing anything. They just appeared to be standing around talking. Q. Was there any effort made to move any trains while you were there? A. Not at that time. Q. Were any made in your presence? A. Not just in my presence. I believe they undertook--that is only hearsay--but I could see from Twenty-eighth street down towards where they started the trains west of Twenty-eighth street, and I think on Friday I saw a few engines apparently coupled to trains. Whether they intended to go out is more than I can tell of my own knowledge. I know they didn't go out. Q. Did you see anybody try to start a train on Thursday? A. No, sir; I didn't see anybody try to start a train during the trouble. Q. Were you there during Thursday night? A. I was not there during any night. Q. What was the object of the men assembling at that point? A. From the understanding I had from the men, after talking with a few of the men, it was that they had struck against the double-headers. Q. Were those men members of the Trainmen's union? A. Some of them. Q. Why were they assembled in force on the track? A. That is more than I can tell what their motive was. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What did they say about it? A. Nothing particularly--nothing more than that they had struck. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you talk with them? A. I talked with some few of the men I knew. Q. Did you admonish them that it was wrong to be assembled in such large numbers there? A. No. Q. Was anything said about that? A. Not that I know of. I was not in a very good humor just as I got up there. I had been insulted just before I reached Twenty-eighth street. Q. By whom? A. By Mr. Watt. When I reached there there were only a few of those parties that I knew. Q. The Trainmen's Union, at that time, was not in existence? A. They had not had a meeting for some time previous. Q. Did they have any meetings after that? A. Not that I know of. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was the organization formally disbanded? A. It just died out. They had no meetings called of the order. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. When did this union start, to your knowledge? A. It was about the latter part of May, I think, or the 1st of June. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. As a member of the organization, what action would your organization have taken in reference to that unlawful assemblage there? A. My idea is that they would have discountenanced anything of the kind--any burning, or pillaging, or anything of that kind. Q. Or any interference with trains? A. That is more than I can tell. I cannot tell anything about what men will do after getting started. Q. Would your organization have any means of disciplining the members of it who interfered with the movements of the trains? A. Most certainly. Our order had a head. By Mr. Means: Q. You mean to say, in your organization, according to the rules and regulations of it, if they struck, they passed resolutions that no trains should go out? A. I didn't say anything of the kind. Q. Was it the intention of the men to interfere with the movement of the trains? A. Not to the best of my knowledge. I never heard any such resolution, and I never heard any person speak of it that way. Q. Do you know any of the men that did interfere with the movement of the trains who belonged to the union? [Witness did not answer.] By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In that arrangement to strike on the 27th of June--how extensive was that strike to be--how far was it to extend--what roads was it to include? A. It included the roads running out of Pittsburgh, so far as I know. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. What roads are they? A. The Pennsylvania railroad, the Pan-Handle, the Fort Wayne and Chicago, the Allegheny Valley, and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Q. Was the Baltimore and Ohio not included? A. I cannot say particularly. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was your organization notified of this strike that took place on Thursday, the 19th? A. No, sir; no more than what I told you, that I was met on the corner of Eleventh street, near the Rush house, and told of it, in the neighborhood of eleven o'clock. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You said you were discharged on account of being a union man? A. I am positive of it--at least the message I received bore nearly about the same words, but not just in that way. Q. That, of course, was a grievance? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did your Trainmen's Union include the employés of the Baltimore and Ohio road? A. Yes. Q. Was that strike in pursuance of an arrangement made in your union? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. Was that formally communicated to your union here--the strike that occurred there? A. No; nothing more than hearsay on the street. Q. Did the members of your union make any effort to have those parties disperse and go to their homes during Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? A. Not that I know of--no more than I did myself. Q. What did you do in relation to it? A. I did take some men out of the crowd at Twenty-eighth street, men that belonged to the Pan-Handle road. At Twenty-eighth street, that day, I was met by this Watt. He says to me, I want you to leave this property. Watt was the man; but I didn't know him only by sight. I thought, of course, he was an employé of the company. He said, I want you to leave the company's ground, and I asked him who he was. He replied that it didn't make any difference who he was, that he knew who I was, and my motive for being there. I said if he knew my motive he knew my business better than I did, for I hardly knew myself what I was there for. And after trying to give me a bluff, as I call it, that he was Mr. Watt, and employed by the road, I went up towards Twenty-eighth street, and there understood that they were going to send for what they called the Pan Handle roughs to head this trouble. I knew the great majority of those men--between eighty and a hundred of them were discharged off the Pan Handle road, and had been discharged prior to this strike. The majority of them were in town; some had left town; but a great many of them were here, and they were pretty lucky if they could get one meal a day. I didn't want to see any of them get into further trouble, and when I heard this I was afraid that some of those men would enter into this thing through persuasion. I went to them singly, and took some half a dozen out of the crowd, one at a time, and told them not to have anything to do with the affair. I said, I have been discharged from the Pan Handle, and you, and there will be nothing in this of any benefit at all. I took out six or eight men from different parties that had belonged to the Pan Handle railroad. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What did they mean by sending for the Pan Handle roughs? A. They thought that a few men of that road were rougher than anybody else, or had more pluck. I don't know--it was a rumor I heard. By Mr. Means: Q. Those men you spoke to went with you willingly out of the crowd? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you on the ground of the Pennsylvania railroad, or on public ground? A. It was on their ground. I was walking right up the track. After this man was going to bounce me, I walked up to Twenty-eighth street, and I told him I thought I would have the privilege of standing there on the street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What do you mean by bouncing you? A. Why, if I had weakened a little, I suppose he would have thrown me off. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you there during the day, Sunday? A. I was not. I was not on the ground at all after Saturday evening--after one of our engineers was wounded very badly. I helped to carry him up Liberty street on a shutter. I was not on the ground afterwards. Q. Did you see any considerable number of the Pan-Handle men or employés in the crowd? A. Not a great many. Q. Who seemed to be the leaders of the crowd? A. That is more than I can tell you. Q. What business are you engaged in now? A. Not any. Q. Do you reside in the city? A. Yes. Q. You are still out of employment? A. Yes; and likely to remain out so long as some of these men hold their positions on the roads. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What position did you hold in this organization? A. I was the president. Q. You know nothing of this organization being in existence at that time on any roads except those that ran out of Pittsburgh? A. At which time? Q. At the time the strike was contemplated, in June? A. They might have been contemplating such a thing, but the organization at that time, in June, was not so extensive as it got to be afterwards. Q. Then it did increase afterwards and extend? A. Yes. Q. Do you know whether it did exist on other roads in June? A. I don't know. Q. You think it started here and spread? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say it started here? A. Yes; I believe so. It was first organized here. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Were you here at its birth? A. Yes; and I have no objection either as to being at the first meeting. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was it beneficial? A. It had not got that far along, but it would have been, probably. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was it the object of this organization to control the railroad companies, as to wages and running regulations? A. The object, no doubt, of the organization was to protect themselves, no matter what grievances might be brought up, if based on good authority. The union would attend to them in its own way, whatever it might be. Q. In what way did they propose to protect themselves? A. That would have to be brought up before the order before they could tell that. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Then there was no definite plan by which the railroad companies were to be controlled or coerced into coming to terms with the union? A. No. Q. That was left to be determined as circumstances might arise? A. That is it exactly. By Mr. Means: Q. You said, a while ago, that this last meeting you spoke of was not regularly called? A. No. Q. You would have been the proper person to call it? A. Yes. Q. It was not done at your instance? A. If it had been called it would have been through me. I had nothing to do with this poster on the telegraph pole; but after being on the pole for a half day, I concluded, rather than dupe the men, to let them meet, but nothing was done. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Do you know how many members of this organization there were in Pittsburgh at the time of the contemplated strike in June? A. I don't know. Q. Do you know how many divisions there were in this city? A. No. Q. Have you any idea? A. In Pittsburgh? Q. Yes? A. Three or four in Pittsburgh--three, I think. Q. How many members belonged to the division you were connected with? A. That is a question I cannot answer--I cannot tell. Q. Can you give an approximate estimate of the number in Pittsburgh, at that time? A. Four or five hundred. Q. Was there not an understanding in the union, that whenever there were differences between the train men and the railroad companies, that the railroad companies were to be brought to terms by the members of the union, by striking on some particular day, without any notice to the companies, so that all traffic would be stopped? A. I don't know of anything of that kind. Q. Was there not some such talk, that that would be the most effectual way of bringing the companies to terms? A. There was a great deal of wild talk among the men. Q. There was no such proposal made in the union? A. No. Q. And no definite plan was adopted by the union to act upon the railroad companies in any way? A. No. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. When any men wanted to become members of the organization, did they have to pay any initiation fees or dues? A. They would have had to in course of time, but, up to that time, it was more a charitable institution than anything else. Anybody that had five cents or a quarter, and wanted to give it, could give it. Q. There was no specific sum at that time? A. No. Q. Nor since? A. The union is not in existence. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What do you mean by a strike--a railroad strike--what is the usual custom--what do you mean by it? A. What I have always understood by a strike, is the men quitting work. Q. You understand that they are all to quit? A. Most undoubtedly. Q. For the purpose of stopping traffic--the running of trains? A. If that would stop it--most undoubtedly. Q. Is it customary, in railroad strikes, for the men who quit work, to stop others from working, by violence or otherwise? A. I have never seen it--by violence. Q. Only by persuasion? A. Only by persuasion. I have heard about a great many men being stopped, but, if our railroad men would get up and testify--I have heard railroad men claim that they wanted to work, but there was not one of them, that was not in the mire just as deep, while the thing was going on. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You mean the trainmen? A. Certainly. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What class of men did you take into your organization? A. Men belonging to the transportation department. Q. No outsiders--no mill men? A. I believe not. Q. Had you a constitution and by-laws? A. Yes. Q. Have you got them in your possession? A. I have not. Q. Who has? A. That is more than I can say. Q. You don't know. A. No. Q. Have you a copy of them? A. I have not. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Can you give us the names of any men that would be willing to appear before our committee, and give information about the strike or their grievances? A. Yes; an engineer by the name of John Hassler, residing on Wood street, the second or third door to the left of Bidwell. I think he would be an important witness; also, an engineer by the name of William Robb. He lives in the lower part of Allegheny somewhere, but I cannot tell his residence exactly. By Mr. Means: Q. You say that the union does not exist now. Do you know of any other organization that is organized to produce the same effect. A. No; no more than what has always been in existence. The locomotive engineers, of course, have their union. * * * * * G. Gilbert Follensbee, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In Pittsburgh. Q. Where is your place of business? A. On Fifth avenue--No. 42. Q. What is it? A. I am in the clothing business. Q. In company with some other gentlemen, did you call on the mayor during the disturbance in July last; and, if so, give us the circumstances? A. On the evening of the 21st of July, (Saturday,) between seven and eight o'clock, I heard that parties had got into some gun stores, and I went to my friend Mr. Bown, and then found Mr. Edward Myers; and after talking a while, we thought it would be prudent to see the mayor, and tell him that we thought it would be prudent to get a posse, and come down and protect Mr. Bown's gunshop. We saw the mayor, and said: "You are probably aware that some gun stores have been broken into;" and we implored him to send a posse to protect the gun stores. Q. What reply did he make? A. I do not remember his reply, but he seemed to be very indifferent, and I implored him, for God's sake, to do something, and that we three would volunteer, and that probably with fifty men or less we could protect Mr. Bown's store. Q. Did you offer to be sworn in? A. I volunteered to be one of the posse. Q. What reply did he make to that? A. I do not remember. Q. Did he say in response to your application--did he say whether he had the policemen or not, or did he make any excuse that he could not raise them? A. No; I do not think he made any reply in regard to his police. I was aware that his police were small and scattered around the city, and my idea was to have him swear in some of us as special police. Q. Did he refuse to swear you in as special police? A. He did not take any action in the matter. Q. Did he send anybody to the store? A. Not that I am aware of. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the mob come there? A. Yes; Mr. Bown left his store and came to my store, and while there, we heard the mob. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long before the mob came down had you made this call upon the mayor? A. Two hours, at least--two hours--an hour and a half or two hours. Before the mob got there, I went back to Mr. Bown's store, and asked him if there was no place to secrete the arms, and they took them down into the cellar and vault and secreted a good many of them. Q. Did you see the mob? A. Yes; I saw the mob in the store, but not in front of the store, because we had gone in the rear private way. We could see the store full of people--probably one hundred to one hundred and fifty were in the store. Q. What class of men were they? A. They did not seem to me to be any particularly riot element, so far as appearances were concerned. They did not look like tramps or roughs. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you suppose they were citizens of Pittsburgh? A. I suppose so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did they take away any more arms than they wanted themselves? A. I do not think they left any. Q. Was there any ammunition in the store? A. I was so informed. Q. What was done with that? A. They took the ammunition too. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was the mayor aware of those arms and that ammunition in the store? A. It was the most prominent gun store in the city. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Could any force of determined men have stopped the riot? A. I am only speaking about that gun shop, and I think that from thirty to fifty determined men could have prevented the riot at that place. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were willing to be one of them? A. I said so. Q. Did you tell him you wanted a force to guard that gun store? A. Yes; I said for God's sake do something to protect that gun store. I looked at it this way: That it would be terribly fatal if the mob were to get in and get guns and ammunition. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the major know who you were? A. Intimately. Q. You are intimately acquainted with him? A. Yes. * * * * * William H. Bown, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your business? A. I belong to the firm of James Bown & Son. Our place of business is located on Wood street, and our business is cutlery and guns and revolvers, and all kinds of sportsmen's articles. Q. Do you keep ammunition, also? A. Yes; powder and shot and caps and wads. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Fixed ammunition, also? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What efforts did you make to secure protection during the riot? A. My father went to see the mayor, with Mr. Follensbee. He went early in the day to Mt. Washington, to see a shooting match. We were not aware of any excitement in the city, but word came to me. In the afternoon I saw a telegraphic dispatch from some one about the mayor. It was the mayor's clerk that brought it down--setting forth that there was a mob organized to break into the different gun stores that evening. I judge between five and six o'clock that came down. He wanted me to remove all our arms. I said that it was so late in the day that I did not know where to place them--that we had a large number, but that, nevertheless, we would try to remove all we possibly could. I then got both the porters and took the arms out of the windows, and a lot of ammunition, cartridges, and cans of powder, and I got some paper and covered over it, to convey the impression to those passing along that we were about cleaning the window, and I left the paper there to disguise it. I had not commenced to take out the arms in the cases. We had two cases that run about sixty feet long. I went to supper, and about six o'clock, when I came back, I found six policemen at the store, but the mayor's clerk came down about seven o'clock, and said they were required at the Central station. Shortly after that father came. He could not get into the front, from the fact that we had the wire across and the screens put up, and I had also gone out and got a couple of scantlings, and put them against the doors, and braced them against the counters. I did not anticipate that they would break in the large glass windows. We had commenced to take down the arms and put them in the magazine, which we have in the cellar, where we keep the powder, and we got down, I should judge about forty, and were kept pretty busy in getting them down, when the large alarm bell struck and I heard the glass go. I came up the stairs, and when I got to the top I found they had knocked the lock off, and I immediately went down, but I could not find the key. I was in my shirt sleeves at the time, but I closed the bolt and put out the gas and came up stairs, and just as I came up I met two parties right at my desk--I had a desk where I do my correspondence--and one of them says, "why in the hell don't you turn up the gas?" I suppose he took me for one of the party who came in. I passed him and went on up stairs, and stayed there until after the racket was over. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where was the mob? A. On the lower floor; of course they came up stairs, and then I went up to the third floor. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was their manner as to being boisterous or demonstrative? A. When they came in there, I thought bedlam had broken loose. Q. What class of men were they? A. What we term from the south side--I judge workingmen. They would just come to the cases and break them in. A few of them had old muskets. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That they brought with them? A. Yes; and one party was very kind, and left his and took a new gun. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. After these policemen were taken up to the central station, did any of them return? A. That I cannot say, but I understood from those that came in after the mob went away, that they were out there, but the mob was too large for them to handle. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Did the mayor's clerk come down and order those policemen to report? A. Yes. Q. Did he take them away from your store? A. Yes; at that time everything was quiet about the city. Q. He had notified you that there would be an attempt made? A. It was reported that there would be an attempt made on the different gun stores. Q. Yet he took these policemen away? A. Yes; because at that time there was no excitement at the lower end of the city. Q. Did they return before you were driven out of the store by the mob? A. I did not see them; but I cannot say. Q. But were they ordered back for duty before this mob came? A. I understood that, but I did not see them. I was in the store at the time, and did not come down, because I thought discretion was the better part of valor. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You saw that dispatch? A. Yes. Q. Who was it signed by? A. I did not notice. I think a fictitious name was to it. I did not notice any name to it, particularly. It was the mayor's clerk. It was late, and all our help had gone off, and the boys had gone to supper, and I was alone, with the two porters. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. How many guns and pistols were taken out of your store? A. Something over four hundred. They took everything--carving knives, butcher knives, and forks, and ammunition, and cutlery--everything they could take. * * * * * E. A. Myers, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At No. 60 Liberty street. Q. Where is your place of business? A. No. 145 Wood street. Q. You are connected with the office of---- A. I am connected with the of the _Post_. Q. Relate what occurred when you went to the mayor? A. I may say that Mr. Bown, senior, came over to my place, and he and Mr. Folensbee went with me up to the mayor, to notify him to send policemen down. After we went there, the mayor at first said he was unable to send any assistance, as the police were scattered through the city, but he would do the best he could. We went to Mr. Johnston's gun shop, a short distance above the mayor's office, and staid there awhile, and came down to the mayor's office, and then walked down to Mr. Bown's establishment, and remained there sometime, without the police coming. Then Mr. Bown and myself went back again, but on the way we met them coming up--we met them coming up--some six or eight of the police--coming; and there were at least six or eight policemen there during the disturbance. The crowd that came up, I don't think, at first numbered over seventy-five or eighty--half grown boys. There seemed to be half a dozen armed with muskets, but a large crowd was collected around the streets. Q. What effort did the policemen make to drive them back? A. Nothing, whatever; but they staid there. I spoke to the mayor's clerk; I said there were not enough of them to do anything, but they staid there. Q. Was the crowd armed when they came there? A. They apparently had a few muskets and guns with them, as far as I could tell. Q. Did you offer your services, as a policeman, to the mayor? A. Not as policeman specially, but I offered to do anything that I could to defend the place--not to the mayor, but to Mr. Bown. Mr. Follensbee, I believe, did. Q. Mr. Follensbee did? A. Yes; my impression at that time was, that fifteen or twenty determined persons could have stopped the whole rumpus in front of Mr. Bown's place. Q. Did the mayor make any demand on the citizens for help? A. Not that I know of. The mayor told me that his police force was scattered around so that he was unable to get together enough to be of any special service. But they did, however, gather up six or eight of them, and they came down here. * * * * * Joseph S. Haymaker, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At Laurel station, on the Fort Wayne railroad. Q. State what you know of the riot that began on the 19th of July? A. I believe it was on Saturday--I think that was the 20th of July--that I came up to the city. I had been home sick for almost two months before that time. I went out to Twenty-eighth street, and at the time I went there I found a very considerable crowd of men there. I knew a very few of them. The great majority of them seemed to be strangers. I say this from the fact that owing to my political knowledge in the city, having made many political speeches here, I had gotten to know a great many men. When I came to Twenty-eighth street that afternoon, about two o'clock, I found a large number of men--probably from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred--right across the railroad track at Twenty-eighth street. I met some men I knew, and we were talking over the probability of a difficulty between the troops and the strikers; and these men, or one of them, said there was no danger of the soldiers firing on them--that the people of the State of Pennsylvania were with the strikers in this matter. Whilst we were talking in that way, the Philadelphia soldiers came up the railroad. I was asked the question two or three time, whether or not I thought the soldiers would fire on the citizens, and I said I would not trust them, and, so far as I am concerned, I am going to get out of the road. They are strangers here, and if ordered to fire will fire. If they don't, they are not good soldiers. I was standing then right in front of what they called the sand-house. Three or four gentlemen were there at the time with me, and John Cluley, the painter. I said to them: now, I have had a little military experience during the last war, and I said we will get out of this and go down the hill-side. I got them to go with me. The Philadelphia men came up, and formed on both sides of the track, clearing the track by forming a square, open at the lower end. At this time I was on the hill-side, about eighty or ninety feet, probably one hundred feet, above where they had formed. In that formation of the square there was a portion of a company--I suppose about twenty or twenty-five men--that had yellow plumes in their hats--Philadelphia men--who were swung off from the left of the square, and tried to force back the mob from Twenty-eighth street. Failing in that, then a company was brought up from the lower end of the square--brought right up between the two lines in this way, [illustrating,] right past where the Gatling guns were stationed, and brought face to face with the mob. They marched up until they were within probably twenty-five or thirty feet of the mob, and then halted for about a second. At that time I noticed the sheriff's posse standing in front of where they were standing, trying to get the mob to move back. Then these men moved at a charge bayonet, and went right up to the mob, and I saw several of the mob catch the bayonets and push them down. Then I saw three or four stones thrown from the little watch-house. These stones were thrown right through into this company coming up. Then I heard a pistol shot fired, and probably two or three seconds after that three or four other pistols shots were fired just like that, [illustrating,] and then I saw two or three of the soldiers go down. Then the stones began to fly down along the line, in among the soldiers, and the firing first began right across the railroad track. I don't know what company or regiment it was, but they had black feathers. They were right in front of this square, and the first musket firing began there. I noticed that. Then I heard, probably a dozen of boys hallo shoot! shoot! down along the line, then the pistol shots began, and the musket shots began, and I got down in a ditch behind where I was, and staid there until it was all over. By Senator Yutzy: Q. This call of shoot, shoot, where did it come from? A. I won't be sure about that. I saw some of the officers strike up the guns with their swords, and I saw some pulling of the men backwards inside the square. Then, just right after that, there was a general volley right along the line. Q. A volley or a scattering fire? A. File firing--each man for himself. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you hear any order given by any officer to fire? A. No; nor do I believe any order was given. I say that, for the reason that, had there been an order or command given, there would have been simultaneous firing, but it seemed to me, when the fighting commenced, that everybody was taking care of himself. By Senator Reyburn: Q. That is, they were protecting themselves from something that was going to injure them? A. No; but as fast as a man got his gun loaded he would fire, and as fast as the others could get a brick they would throw it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What effect did the firing of the soldiers produce on the crowd? A. Right by me, on my right hand an old man, and a little girl on my left hand, were shot dead. I got into the ditch, and I know it was full--the ditch. By Mr. Means: Q. It was not a regular volley of musketry? A. No; it was every fellow for himself. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you know how many persons were killed there? A. No; but when I came up from the ditch--it is not a regular ditch, but a wash down the hillside--when I raised up, somebody else was shot, and I got down again. When I raised up the second time everything was quiet. I looked down over the bank, and several men were lying there dead. Q. You say that an old gentleman was killed? A. Yes. Q. And that a little girl was killed? A. No; she was shot right through the knee, and I pulled her down into the ditch and tied a handkerchief around her leg. There was a physician there--I think Dr. Schnatterly, of Bellevue, and he took charge of her, and I heard she died that night. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. This crowd standing there--what business did they have there? A. They had no business there. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Had you any business there? A. None at all; but I had never seen a strike before, and I went up to see what it looked like. Right down along the railroad there was probably ten feet of ground, or twelve feet--right along the railroad, in front of the troops, occupied by a class of men that I had never seen in the city of Pittsburgh before--ragged looking and dirty looking. There is one thing about Pittsburgh people, that you can tell them on the street--at least, I think, I can. I walking along the street, if a man comes from Philadelphia or any other place, I think I can tell him. In other words, I know he don't belong here. I don't know the reason why, but we get to notice our own people, and I say that that crowd of people along there I never saw before. They looked here [illustrating] like people that I never saw before. I believe them to be strangers not only to Pittsburgh and Allegheny county, but to Western Pennsylvania, and, in fact, to the State of Pennsylvania. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How large was that crowd? A. There were five hundred or more of them fronting the railroad. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There is a kind of a platform there? A. The road runs along six feet below the bank, and then the bank runs back about fifty feet, and then the hill commences for one hundred or one and fifty feet above that. Q. Did this crowd throw stones? A. Yes; and just here I will give another reason why I believe that crowd to be strangers in the city of Pittsburgh. The most of our men here--our laboring men--wear dark clothes, but I saw men in that crowd with light pantaloons, and yellow pantaloons, and two men with velveteen coats, and those men seemed to me to be making the most noise down in front of the soldiers. At that time, in my mind, I thought they were tramps. Of course, I can't say that of the whole crowd, but I say that the men making the demonstrations were men of that class. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did that fire from the militia disperse the crowd? A. Yes; in firing, very unfortunately, they fired over the heads of the people there, and killed the people above. If they had lowered their guns eight inches they would have killed a class of men that we could very well get rid of. Q. Did they disperse? A. Yes. Q. In what direction? A. Some went up the hill-side, and the mob in front of Twenty-eighth street, ran down Twenty-eighth street to Penn. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the soldiers attempt to shoot at them as they ran up the bank? A. Yes; I suppose the firing lasted a minute and a half. The soldiers began firing right down the line, and probably some of them fired four or five shots. When the crowd broke, they ran up among the people on the hill-side, and some of them ran into the ditch where I was. The rest of them went on up the hill-side. I noticed one thing, that the old soldiers dropped flat down when the firing commenced, while the others ran. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean the old soldiers in the crowd? A. I mean that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you think that force of soldiers, with twenty rounds of ammunition, could have held their position and kept the crowd off during the night? A. Not as strangers, they could not do it. I mean this--had that force been posted as to the situation here, they could have done that--they could have kept the mob off with half their number; but not being acquainted, I think they did about the only thing they could do. The only thing lacking under the circumstances--I have had my own opinion since that time as to what I think I would have done, without any more knowledge of military affairs than I learned in the army, and I would have taken charge of this ditch that I was in, and have put the men in there for the purpose of controlling the round-house and the tracks below. But then there was a danger to be taken into consideration, that along the hill above this ditch, there were houses on the hill-side occupied by railroad men and by strikers, and by men in sympathy with them, so there would have been a danger there, because there would have been firing from the rear--in other words, if people had gone on the hill-side, and opened fire down from the hill-side, they would have had to abandon the ditch--or, on the other hand--my idea of the matter would have been to have picketed Penn avenue and Liberty street very heavily, and have kept those streets clear, from Twenty-eighth street clear down. When you consider that a crowd or a mob is always cowardly, so that the firing of eight or ten men into it will break it, I really believe that the best plan would have been to have picketed Penn avenue and Liberty street--to have kept these streets clear, and then if necessary, to have picketed the upper side of the railroad track, which would have formed a square of pickets, whereby to preserve the cars. Yet, at the same time, I will say that these picket lines would have been subjected to a fire from both sides--from the hill-side above, and from the houses below. I went home on the six o'clock train that evening. Q. Could General Brinton have taken his troops then, and marched them down towards the Union depot, and kept the crowd back, or kept the crowd above? A. No; but the mistake that General Brinton made was this, that when he began firing he should have kept it up. Q. How long? A. Until every man in the city of Pittsburgh was willing to stop. Q. Do you think, in your judgment, with the number of men they had, with twenty rounds of ammunition, and with more ammunition over in the Union depot, that they could have maintained their ground there and kept up the firing, and kept the mob back, and kept up communications with Union depot, in order to replenish their ammunition? A. If he had continued his firing from the time the firing began at Twenty-eighth street, most undoubtedly he could. But after that, when General Brinton got into the round-house, where there are open windows--the house is perfectly round--at that time he was at the mercy of every building. Q. But I am speaking of the time before he went into the round-house, and after the crowd had dispersed--at that time had he continued firing, could he have maintained his position and kept the crowd away? A. Yes; fifty men armed as those men were armed--because I noticed that every time a gun struck, it tore a hole like that. [Illustrating.] Following that mob would have dispersed them. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Would not that have caused great loss of life? A. Undoubtedly--if they had fired low. Q. What is your avocation now? A. I am a lawyer by profession. Q. You practice at the bar here in this city? A. Yes. Q. From your experience in the army, and from what you saw of the conduct of the troops at Twenty-eighth street, would you say that their conduct was good as military men? A. No, sir; not a bit of it. Every man that fired first should have been taken out and shot. In other words, I mean that there was not a particle of discipline. I say that for this reason: There was no order given to fire by any officer. I believe that to be the fact, because I was on the hill side not more than sixty or eighty feet away from where the firing began, and I had been there some two hours before the firing did begin. I was standing there wondering how the men were going to clear the tracks, and when the fight began I was listening very closely in order to hear what command would be given by the officer in command. Then this fuss began with three or four pistol shots, and then the bricks and stones were thrown, and then more pistol shots, and then it was every man for himself. So far as those soldiers were concerned, I have said since, and believe it to be a fact, that it was one mob armed against another mob not armed. Q. Was not the conduct of those soldiers as good as could be expected from militia men? A. I do not know that. I have seen militia men during the war that would walk up to the scratch, and stay there. The great trouble with militia men is that they fire too high. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you think there was any real necessity for calling on the militia for assistance here? A. I would not like to give any opinion about that. I know that the sheriff started out a lot of his deputies to get a lot of lawyers out here, and the lawyers went out--of the back windows, and every other way they could get out. I never believed that the sheriff exhausted all his power. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You believe, then, it was necessary to call out the military--that the difficulty had got beyond the control of the civil authorities? A. I believe that. I believe it was necessary to call out the military--but to use them. In explanation of that, I would say this: that even after the military were here, that the city of Pittsburgh was panic struck, and that young men were taken up on the streets and were furnished with arms, privately by the different banks, to go in and guard the banks, because, on the Monday night following the burning, it was rumored on the streets--on Fifth avenue, and on Wood, and on Smithfield streets--that the banks were to be attacked that night, and I know of several banks in the city that were guarded by young men picked up throughout the city. I believe it to be a fact, that, had the trouble lasted two days longer, there would have been a vacation of the city by the women and the children in the city of Pittsburgh. I believe they would have gotten out of town. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You state you spoke to some people about the probability of the troops firing on the crowd. Who were those people? A. I cannot recollect. Q. Were they part of the crowd--the strikers? A. No. At this point the committee adjourned to meet at three o'clock this afternoon. AFTERNOON SESSION. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM. PITTSBURGH, _Tuesday, February 12, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment the committee re-assembled at three o'clock, P.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * Joseph S. Haymaker, _recalled_. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What sympathy did the rioters seem to get from the surrounding crowds of spectators? A. Do you mean on Saturday? Q. Yes. A. I can hardly say; I was one of the party myself. Do you mean after they were fired into? Q. From that time until Monday. A. On Saturday, the 20th of July, the general feeling seemed to be, up to the time of the firing, that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company had not done exactly what was right with their employés. Q. To what extent did that feeling exist in the community? A. I cannot say about the community, because I was at my home sick for six weeks before that time. I can only speak of the crowd that was there at the same time I was. So far as that was concerned, I suppose they felt about as I did, that as they were getting pretty good pay for their shipments, and everything of that kind, it seemed to be kind of rough, to cut down their wages so much. It was a kind of general feeling, that the railroad company had not done exactly what was right with their employés, but I found nobody who could give me a definite explanation of the reason why the people of Pittsburgh should be against the railroad company--that is, I could not find anybody who could give me any reason why there should be any strike between the people of the city and the railroad company, on account of the way the railroad company had treated their employés; but immediately after the fire was over, I did not hear any question of that kind raised. The prevailing question was how we were going to get out of the trouble we were in. Q. In your judgment, would it not have been proper for the officer in command of the military force, at five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, to have given the command to fire? A. I most undoubtedly think it would have been. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There was sufficient provocation to justify the giving of that command? A. Yes; my recollection is, I heard an order given by some officer, commanding either a company or a regiment of the Philadelphia soldiers up at the front of the line that was formed there--an order given to those men to disperse and go back, and I think he gave the order in this way: "Now," he says, "why don't you men go back?" It was half a minute after that when I heard the first pistol shot fired, and then from that the firing began. I think, that when the order was given to go back and clear the tracks, that he would have been justified in ordering the men to fire, although I heard no order to fire. Q. And followed up the firing until he dispersed the crowd? A. I believe that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What troops were on the ground at that time? A. I do not know. I simply know this. That certain troops or uniformed men came up the Pennsylvania railroad from the depot, and formed in line in front of the upper round-house, at the corner of Twenty-eighth street, and at that time some of our Pittsburgh soldiers were on the hill side above--some of our Allegheny county soldiers on the hill side above. Q. But those on the railroad were Philadelphia troops? A. I believed them to be from Philadelphia. Q. Do you know anything about the conduct of the Pittsburgh troops called out here during that day, or any time during the riot? A. No; except this far, that when I came up to Twenty-eighth street, and before the Philadelphia soldiers came up there, I walked across Twenty-eighth street, up the hill side, where there was part of a company--part of one of the western Pennsylvania companies, or a Pittsburgh company, I do not know which it was, and when I got to the top of the hill side I was a good deal out of breath---- Q. After the firing? A. Before the firing--probably an hour before. There was one of the private soldiers belonging to some company--I do not know any thing about him. He had a uniform on, and I asked him the question: "How long have you been here?" and he said, "since last night." I said, "how long are you going to stay here?" and he says, "I don't know." I said, "you may likely be called upon to clear the tracks down there;" and he said, "they may call on me, and they may call pretty damn loud before they will clear the tracks." At the same time, I looked in the man's face, and I thought he might be called upon to all eternity before he would do anything reasonable. The company, at that time, was scattered--standing all around. Q. Was this company far from the mob? A. Probably one hundred feet--probably one hundred and fifty feet. Q. Were their arms stacked? A. Yes; I know that after the firing, one dead soldier was carried down from about the spot where I had been talking to this man, down to the Twenty-eighth street crossing. Q. Were the men with their guns where they were stacked? A. Some of them were down on the railroad track, and some were on the hill-side, and some were around their guns, and some were back towards the hospital. By Mr. Means: Q. Didn't you say those were Philadelphia troops up at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes; that is, I understood that. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You spoke about those strange men you thought were strangers in Pittsburgh, that had come from a distance. Have you any knowledge of people coming to Pittsburgh at any time previous to the 19th of July? A. I can say this in reference to that, but as a lawyer I would say that part of it is hearsay evidence, that is, I do not know it to be a fact myself. I live below Pittsburgh, about seven miles, on the Fort Wayne road, at Laurel station, and I know from the time I went down last spring, we had much trouble with tramps. Probably two or three, or four or five, or six or seven, would be there every day. But about four days before this trouble--it was on the Friday before this trouble--at that time I was not at home sick--I recollect my wife saying to me, that "we have had no tramps down here for the last few days," and I said, "they will come back again," and until after the rioting and the burning here, we had but one tramp at our house, until the third day after--that was on Sunday. Then they began to come back every day. I have heard others of my neighbors say the same thing. And almost every night, looking from my library towards the river, I could see along the river bank that these tramps would have fires, and I have seen, when I would come down to the train in the morning--I have seen as high as fifteen or twenty around these fires. But for two or three days before the riot--that is, before the burning here, and for one or two days after that time, I noticed very few of those fires, if any, and we were not troubled with these tramps at our house; and after the trouble was all over, it made such an impression on me, that I loaded a double-barreled shot gun, and told my wife how to use it, and told her if they came around not to do anything for them. I did not consider them fit subjects for charity. * * * * * James Bown, _sworn with the uplifted hand_. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your business, and where is your place of business? A. Nos. 136 and 138 Wood street, Pittsburgh. Q. What kind of business do you carry on? A. It is the cutlery business--guns and sporting goods in general--manufacturing. Q. I wish you to state what efforts you made to protect your store on the night of the 21st--Saturday night. You went to see the mayor. What efforts did you make? A. I was absent from the city until about seven and a half o'clock that evening, and when I came to the store I found it was shut up. I met my second son there, and I asked him what the trouble was. Well, he said the mob had broken into some of the pawnbrokers, up in the Fifth ward, and also into one of our competitor's. I asked him where my other son was, and he said at the back end of the store. I got into the back yard and went into the store and found them there making preparations to take some of the valuable guns into the cellar--into the vault. It looked as if things were serious. I said, "I will go out and look around, and see what the trouble is." They commenced to put away the goods as fast as they could. Of course they had to use great judgment about taking the fine guns into the cellar. I was away perhaps half an hour. As soon as I went out into the alley, I met Mr. Follensbee and Mr. Myers. I said, "Things look serious around here." The mayor's clerk was there, Mr. Metzgar, and perhaps half a dozen people were congregated in the alley. He said, "Gentlemen, you had better disperse. We would rather not have anybody around here, so as not to excite anybody." I told him it was a good suggestion, and Mr. Myers and Mr. Follensbee and myself went into our yard. It was then pretty near dark. I said, "Let us go up to Smithfield street, and see what they are doing." I understood there was quite a crowd in front of Mr. Johnston's, another competitor of our's. We went up the alley and then turned to the left and went down towards Sixth avenue. An immense crowd was in front of this gun store, but had done no damage. Several policemen were in front of the store. In going through the crowd several sang out, "Let's go down to Bown's, and clean him out." I said, "That sounds pretty loud, and we had better go and see if the mayor won't send back some police." We came back to the mayor's office, and there the mayor was, standing outside. I went up to him, and addressed him as "Mac." I am rather familiar with him. I said, "We require some extra police down there, as they are going down to our store to clean us out." He said, "I will do all I can for you," and said that a good many police were up at Mr. Johnston's. I said, "It is necessary to act quick and prompt, as the crowd is now moving, and it won't take them long to come there." Mr. Follensbee spoke up, and said, "I will be one of fifty special police." I do not think he made any reply to that, but he said, "I will send some down." With that I left, and came down to the store again. Some people were in front of the store, and I think among them, perhaps, were two or three policemen--I think there were. I was more interested in securing the things just at that time, so I went into the store again, and the boys were still working, taking down the guns. They had got the pistols--the greater portion of them--into a safe we had, and Mr. Follensbee suggested to me to come around to Fifth avenue to his store. I went back through Mr. Carter's store, and went with him into his store. I was not in there two minutes until an immense rush of people came past the store, and they shoved the doors to. I said, "Open the doors, I want to see what the trouble is." I was running across the street when a friend of mine said, "There is no use in your going; they have got in." I knew a road coming through another gentleman's store and through Mr. Carter's store, and got into the back yard. The crowd was then in the store and securing all the things as fast as they could. Then Mr. Follensbee followed after me. Of course, he remonstrated outside as well he could. Everything was barricaded up so that we could not get in. I will tell you one thing that occurred there. A negro had got at my private desk and got open the drawers, and was pulling out the things, and had got among the postage stamps when we hallooed at him. The language we used was pretty severe, and he dropped everything and ran. In a few minutes, as soon as things were quieted down, we got a policeman--we tapped for him to come and open a window, and we got in. Of course, then the destruction had taken place. Q. How long after you made that call on the mayor was it that they broke into the store? A. Not over fifteen to twenty minutes. Q. Did he send any policemen down? A. Some were there in front, but I cannot say how many. Some came after the thing was over, but whether they were outside, I do not know. Q. He made no reply when Mr. Follensbee offered to do special duty? A. No reply at all. Q. Nor did he make any demand on the citizens? A. No. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Those parties took away general plunder, did they? A. Yes. Q. They did not come specially for guns? A. They took everything--knives and pistols and spoons and forks and carving knives and fishing tackle, and everything they could. Q. It was simply a party bent on plunder? A. Yes; it was just a mob. I do not charge it on the strikers. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you ever get track of any of those guns. A. We got four out of the lot--those were left by parties--men that came out with three or four and just handed them to us. They preserved them for us. Q. You never got track where they went? A. No; we had a good many guns with marks on them--numbers, and some guns--a special kind of guns--that there are very few of here. By Senator Yutzy: Q. About four hundred of them? A. Yes. Q. And a great variety of other things? A. Yes. Q. You recovered none of the guns? A. No. * * * * * B. K. Walton, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were one of the deputy sheriffs in July last? A. Yes. Q. State whether you were in the city during Thursday, the 19th, and during Friday. A. I cannot say as to Thursday or Friday--I do not think that I was. I was on Saturday. Q. State to us just what connection you had with the riotous proceedings? A. On Saturday I was one among the deputies instructed by the sheriff to get up a posse. I went along several of the streets and asked several parties to come up. Some said they would come and some said they would not. However, not more than one or two came. We went on up to Union depot to the railroad and from there went up with the military to Twenty-eighth street. There appeared to be a crowd on both sides of the railroad, and along the railroad, as we went up. There was a great deal of turmoil and noise. We were not up there more than a few minutes until the firing commenced. Stones and pieces of bricks were thrown before the firing commenced. Q. Where did you try to raise a posse? A. In the streets here. Q. To what class of men did you go? A. To most anybody that we could get hold of--citizens of Pittsburgh. Q. What responses did you get usually? A. Some said they would not go under any consideration and others promised to go, but did not come when the time came. Q. How many did you succeed in getting? A. Out of ten or fifteen that promised to come, I think only one or two came. Q. Did you go outside of the city in trying to raise the posse? A. No. Q. How many did you say there were of you that went ahead of the military? A. I think there were from twelve to eighteen of us ahead of the militia from Union depot up to Twenty-eighth street. Q. When the crowd began to throw stones, was it at you or the militia? A. It appeared to be at the militia altogether. Q. Were any of the sheriff's posse hit? A. Not to my own knowledge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was not the sheriff struck himself? A. Not that I saw. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Whereabouts did the sheriff's posse stand when the stones began to be thrown? A. Some were on Twenty-eighth street, and part of the party were on this side a little piece, not more than ten or twelve feet apart. Q. In front of the militia? A. Yes. Q. Where were you when the militia fired? A. On the crossing at Twenty-eighth street. Part of the crowd had got in between me and most of the others and the militia. We got mixed up at that time. Q. Did the militia fire towards you? A. The first firing appeared to be up the hill, and the second up the railroad where we were standing. Q. Where did you go then? A. I got behind a car. Q. Where did the balance of the party go to? A. I do not know where they all went to. Some were where I was. Q. Did you call on any of the constables to go out with you? A. I do not believe I did myself. Q. Were you out during Sunday? A. Not in connection with the office; but I was out myself. Q. Did you see the fire? A. Yes; I was on the hill pretty much all day above the Union depot. Q. What time did you get on the ground? A. I came over in the morning about nine o'clock. I live just above the top of the hill. Q. How far had the fire approached towards the city at that time? A. A considerable distance below the round-house. Q. How many men were engaged in burning and running down the cars then? A. A great many of them. Q. Two or three hundred? A. Yes; more than that. Q. How many policemen would it have taken to have driven them away at that time? A. I do not think there were enough in the city at that time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did the sheriff command the mob to disperse before the firing? A. I believe he did; but I was not up with him the first time he was up. Q. What effort was made by the sheriff and his posse, or deputies, to clear the track before the military came up? A. They tried to get them off the track--they talked to some of them, but they appeared to want to get at the military. When we got to the crossing, part of the party got away, and that is how a part of the mob got in between us and the military. Q. Were you close to the military when the firing commenced? A. Within ten or twelve feet, I think. Q. Did you hear any command given to fire? A. None whatever. Q. If there had been a command given you would have heard it? A. I think so--I was close enough. There appeared to be a good deal of noise going on at the time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were not with the sheriff on Friday night when he went up to Twenty-eighth street? A. No. Q. Do you know whether he made any effort that night to raise a posse or not? A. I do not know of my own knowledge. I was not in the city on Friday night? Q. Did you see the crowd on Saturday morning? A. Yes. Q. How large was it on Saturday morning? A. A great many people were there. Q. Do you think a well organized police force would have been able to have driven away the crowd on Saturday morning? A. I do not know about that. It would have depended on circumstances altogether. It would have taken a pretty good force to have driven them away. Q. Do you think it would have been possible to have gathered a posse in and about the city--if the sheriff had started out on Saturday morning and made an effort, could he have collected a posse sufficiently large to have driven away the crowd? A. The Saturday morning we were out? Q. By sending out deputies through the county, do you think he could have collected a posse, or not? A. If all were of the same opinion as the people in town, I do not think he could have got a posse. It would have been pretty hard work. Q. How was the feeling outside the city, so far as you know? A. Outside I do not know. In the city, the feeling appeared to be with the strikers altogether. Q. Here in the city? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you say all the citizens? A. No; I do not say that; but those I had any conversation with--those men I tried to get to go up there. * * * * * Soloman Coulson, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your occupation? A. I am doing nothing. At the time of this riot I was a police officer. My occupation is a brick-maker. Q. What office did you fill at the time of the trouble? A. I was what is called a roundsman here in this city--walking pretty much all over. I wore no uniform. I traveled into different places in the city. Q. Where were you on Thursday morning? A. I was at home in bed. Q. When did you first learn of the disturbance? A. About one o'clock in the afternoon. Q. What took place? A. I went to Twenty-eighth street where the disturbance was, and found detective McGovern there in charge of a posse of men. A great many railroaders were standing around, not doing anything. Along about three-forty o'clock, they made up a freight train to go out called a double-header--two engines attached to the train. Orders were given by somebody, I don't know who, that four policemen should go on each one of those locomotives. I was, myself, on one locomotive. The engine I was on, a reporter got on. He asked me if there was any danger, and I told him I thought there was, and he got off. They pulled out this train, I guess, about ten or twelve feet, and I didn't see anybody going to stop it. I thought they could very easily have taken it out at that time. I saw a man get on the track and throw his hands up, and with that they stopped, and the engineers and firemen jumped off. The police then on the engines insisted on going ahead. I did, for myself. The last man I saw getting off was a fireman. I said what are you getting off for, and he said he had got to do it. Q. Did they refuse to go on when you insisted? A. That man--he was a fireman or an engineer--I cannot tell which--he was doing both. Q. It was when that man threw himself in front of the train? A. One man did it. I think he is in jail now. That evening we had this man McCall in the Twelfth ward station, and there was a rumor that the mob was going to attack the Twelfth ward station and rescue him. I went to that station, and took that man McCall and marched down, putting twenty policemen behind us. We passed through the crowd, and nothing was said, and got down a few squares when there happened to be a friend of mine sitting in a car, and he hallooed at me and said, "For God's sake get in the car." The street was blocked. The car was stopped at the corner of Twenty-fourth and Penn, and we got in with our prisoner. Some of the crowd caught up with us. I had a revolver. One fellow put up a revolver at my ear when I struck him over the face with mine. We still kept on going, and we took our prisoner to the Central station. I didn't get back again that night. I was there again on the 21st, Saturday, and about eleven o'clock that night--Saturday night--I saw this burning. I was on Smithfield street at the time, and met a great many men coming down with goods. The feeling was not good towards me on account of this man McCall. I met a couple of parties with rolls of cloth, and we arrested them, and by morning we had more than a hundred in there for carrying off stuff. On Sunday morning, after the Philadelphia troops left--and before they did leave--we had that man in jail that I saw shooting into them with a breech-loading rifle. I went up to the round-house, and made a search there. I heard Chief Evans state that he saw whisky running into the cellar of the round-house. I don't know where there is a cellar to the round-house, but there is a cellar to the carpenter shop. Q. Is the carpenter-shop not one part of the round-house? A. The carpenter-shop is on the right, and there was a space of thirty or forty feet between them. The Philadelphia troops I saw leave the round-house. They came out and formed, and went off. Q. How did they come out? A. In a body, in regular marching order. Q. Where was the crowd when they came out? A. Very scarce. Q. Where had the crowd gone to? A. Dispersed and secreted themselves in buildings and every place. I went as far as Seventeenth street--the crowd had started, too--then the fire had not got that far. It was about the middle of the day. We stopped there, and during the time we were there undertook to prevent parties from breaking open the cars and setting them on fire, which we did succeed in stopping some. Afterwards I saw men dropping coal down below the track, and rolling barrels of oil down and setting them on fire. They were strangers to me. We couldn't get the force apparently together. If we had got them together at that time, a hundred men would have subdued the riot at that time, because it was apparently the work of boys. There were not as many men as boys, but the force had got scattered. Q. What time did the troops come out of the round-house? A. Near seven or eight o'clock. Q. Not many of the crowd were there at that time? A. No. Q. Was any burning going on at that time? A. I saw the first car fired to drive the Philadelphia troops out. It was a car on the Valley track. It was set on fire, and a wheel of it was chocked. They dropped other cars down against it, and they caught on fire, until it got pretty hot. But this carpenter-shop didn't take fire for some time. I helped to shove some cars away back from the entrance leading in between the round-house and the carpenter-shop. Those cars didn't catch on fire. Q. They kept dropping those cars down all night? A. Yes. Q. Did they remain near the round-house? A. They kept back towards Twenty-seventh street. They had a gun there. A man named Stewart I saw carried away from there dead. He was apparently a railroader. He had a watch with that name on it. I went to see the gun, and if they had ever fired it, it never would have hurt anybody in the round-house--if they had ever fired it. The wall is too high there. Q. What was it that caused that crowd to be scattered? Was it fear of fire from the soldiers? A. I reckon that was it. Q. After the soldiers got away, did the crowd re-assemble? A. No; not there. Q. Were the burning cars below there? A. Yes. Q. They were still going on down with the burning and the pillaging? A. Yes. Q. They marched in regular order--the troops you saw? A. In every good order. Q. Suppose they had formed in line, at that time, and marched on the crowd what would have been the effect? A. They would have got the best of the crowd because I didn't see many around there. Q. Could they have driven the crowd away from the burning cars? A. I think they could. By Senator Reyburn: Q. And restored order? A. I don't know about that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who directed you to go out there first? A. The mayor--to the best of my knowledge and belief. Q. Did you have anybody with you? A. No. Q. Did you see the mayor before going? A. I saw him that day before going. Q. Where? A. At the city hall, in his office. Q. Were you on regular duty that day? A. I was on other duty that day--I was on a little special duty that day, but was detailed and sent to where this trouble was supposed to be. I was to meet the men where I was going. About this Officer Motts. On Saturday night the mayor was in the Twelfth ward, and shortly after I went there I saw him there, and on Sunday morning. On Sunday he was on the railroad. I was standing alone, and he came to me and said to me, for God's sake get some men, you can stop them from breaking into these cars. I went towards the crowd, but there was no use for one man--but I did. They then commenced to hurl stones. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What was the crowd--boys? A. Yes; and some men were among them. They were all getting pretty drunk then. Q. You say the mayor was there attending to his duties? A. Yes; using all the efforts he could to stop the riot; but we could not get the men together. Our force had been cut down, and it was impossible to get the men together. I asked men to stand alongside of me, but as soon as you would turn your head around again they were gone. In relation to Johnston and Bown's gun shops--I was at both places. At Johnston's, a demand was made for guns, and they gave them some muskets. I don't think that Johnston's was broke in. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They gave them? A. That was what was said. I know I took a musket with a bayonet on from a fellow, and gave it back to the store. I was sent by the mayor's clerk to Bown's--some eight of us--but there were no uniformed men among us; we were in citizen's clothes. It was a hard matter to tell what they wanted; but eight of us went there at the time. Then this party came along Wood street, and they had a drum with them, and some of them had muskets with bayonets on, and others had revolvers, and others, what I took to be a large rammer, and they commenced ramming against the door. Officer Downey was one of the first officers to the store. I got in with him. They were then carrying out the stuff, and we took several guns from them and handed them back. They were still carrying out the stuff, and it was impossible to prevent them breaking in, because the force was not strong enough. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you armed? A. No; no more than we usually carried--our pocket revolvers. Q. Had you maces? A. The men that were there were not in the habit of carrying maces. I suppose they had billies and revolvers. The proper course to save Bown's store would have been to let eight or nine men get in there and arm them, and then keep them out there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did this crowd seem to be bent on plunder? A. Principally on plunder; I don't think that many of those guns taken out there ever went into the riot. Q. Did they carry off pretty much everything? A. Yes; according to the looks of the shelves and show cases. There were a couple of men arrested for stealing from that establishment, that are now doing terms in the western penitentiary. By Mr. Englebert: Q. Did you recognize them as any particular class of men? A. I did not; their faces to me were apparently strange--they apparently looked like workingmen. A great many thieves were among them, and some, I know, have had to leave the city since, or we would have had them. Q. You don't know where they were from? A. Those I speak of? Q. Yes? A. I do; yes, from Pittsburgh. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. They have left the city entirely? A. Yes. Q. You were about the city a good deal attending to your duties, and you know a large part of the population? A. I do. Q. That crowd of men that went out there on Saturday and Sunday--was the crowd composed of men about the city? A. No; they were pretty much all strangers; the biggest portion of them were strange men. By Senator Reyburn: Q. In your duties as a roundsman, had you noticed any unusual influx of strangers into the town? A. I had--a great many. We had a large crowd of them, I believe from Cumberland--in the neighborhood of twenty-five or thirty--that is, one batch, and I took notice of others. Q. Sufficient to attract the attention of the police authorities? A. It would have attracted my attention, and I have been following up that business for my living for eight or nine years. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. When did these men come into the city first? A. The first I noticed of them was on Saturday night, when I got into the Twelfth ward. To show you that there were a great many people that didn't belong in the city, I arrested some nine or ten up there that night, and among that nine or ten, eight of them belonged to Allegheny, and their faces were all strange to me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. This party from Cumberland--when did they come? A. I can't remember. Q. After or before the fire? A. I can't be positive which. By Mr. Dewees: Q. You said there was no cellar under this round-house? A. There was no cellar, but I found a turn-table in the middle of it. Q. How deep is a round-house generally dug out--from the top of the rails down? A. It is on a level, but it has got to be so deep for the turn-table. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The carpenter shop was connected with it? A. Yes. Q. And the superintendent's office and car shops? A. Yes. Q. Didn't they all have cellars under them? A. The office might have had a cellar--I know the office had. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. When you went out there on Thursday afternoon, what class of men were there? A. Principally railroaders. Q. How many were there? A. One hundred and fifty, or more than that. I knew a great many of them. Q. Could the trains have been run out that afternoon, if the engineers and firemen had gone? A. Yes; they could have taken this train out I was on--I don't know how far, though. They had four policemen on each engine to protect the engineers and firemen, and from what I understood, there were men to be put along on the train to protect the brakemen. Q. You were out again on Friday? A. No; not until Saturday. I remained there until Sunday morning, about eight o'clock. Q. How large a posse could you have raised in the city to go out there and restore order, if the mayor had made a call, or a demand for a posse? A. It would have depended on how much time you would have given me. Q. In a day? A. I might have got in the neighborhood of one hundred men. There were but one hundred and twenty men, and some of them were there. Q. But from any class of men in the city--if he had just called for a posse from any source--for extra men? A. He could not have got many at that time. Wherever I went, to judge from the talk, the people were all in sympathy with the mob. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Do you mean the tax-payers? A. I suppose so. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. But the mayor made no call, so far as you know, for a posse? A. I saw him trying to get men together on different occasions. Q. But he made no official demand? A. Not that I know of. By Senator Reyburn: Q. He made no effort to increase his police force by swearing in extra men? A. I believe he did as quick as he could do it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. When did he do it? A. In a couple or three days--may be two days. By Senator Yutzy: Q. After the riot? A. Shorty after the riot. I think he did it as quickly as he could get the men together. I think he tried all he could to prevent this riot, which he don't get the credit for here. He ordered me on Sunday morning to go to the fire department, about one o'clock, and I went in search of the chief, in company with another officer, Motts. He did the talking. I didn't talk to him myself. We went to look for the chief, and could not find him. We went down to Twenty-first street and Penn street, and we saw a foreman there--I believe, in fact, several of the fire department were there, and we requested them to come and play on the fire, that the mayor had sufficient force, and that he would protect them, and the answer I don't remember, but I know they didn't come up and play on the fire. They were not going to run the danger. Q. What firemen did you see? A. Motts can tell you. Several were standing there. Q. What ones were standing there? A. Different ones. A man named Kennedy was there, and one named Miller. Q. Do you know where those two men are now? A. I suppose they are still on the fire department. The mayor at that time had dispatched from the Twelfth ward station for police, and had got, I guess, sixty or may be more. I know that many, for I knew the lieutenant that came up. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Were the round-house and those shops very hot when you went in? A. No; No cars were burning there yet. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Was the fire department near there--some of them? A. Yes; close up. Q. If they had played on the burning cars could they have prevented those buildings from getting on fire? A. I think they could have prevented it. Q. Were you ready to give protection then? A. The mayor was there, and his force, and those were the orders. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. When you went inside of the round-house were the doors still intact. A. They were. I could not see any fire about them. Q. How many engines were in there at that time? A. I can't be certain. A number were in there at that time--a great many. They were shoved in the stalls. There would, apparently, be one in each. Q. You think you examined those doors, do you? A. I was close to the doors, and if there had been any fire--in case of a fire I would have seen it. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Was the upper round-house burning then? A. I believe it was pretty much burned at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where did the troops come out of the round-house? A. I saw a portion of them come out of the entrance on Twenty-sixth street, and I think a portion of them came out of the rear end of the carpenter shop. I saw some twenty-five or thirty come out. * * * * * Thomas Hastings, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your business? A. I not doing anything at present. Q. What were you doing in July last? A. I was a police officer. Q. What connection had you with the efforts to suppress the riot? A. I did everything, so far as I could, at that time. I didn't know much about it until Saturday evening. Our time for going on duty was eight o'clock in the evening. I went on at seven o'clock, and had orders from the lieutenant to go down and notify each tavern-keeper to close his saloon, at the request of the mayor. I did so, and we were distributed in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street. There was a large crowd at Twenty-eighth street and Twenty-sixth street, and the crowd increased up to eleven o'clock. Q. What time did you receive orders to close the saloons? A. About seven o'clock in the evening. Q. In the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street? A. All along Penn street. I went up about eleven o'clock, and stayed looking around for a while at Twenty-eighth street, and then came down as far as Twenty-sixth street, and went back again, and just as I got at the corner of Twenty-eighth and Penn streets I saw the fire, and I ran up Liberty street and saw a car of oil. I then ran down and pulled the alarm, and just as I pulled the alarm I was thrown out in the street. Just then the mayor passed me, and asked me what the car was, and I told him it was a car of oil. He asked me if I pulled the alarm, and I said yes. I didn't see any engine coming. I went down then to the Twelfth ward station-house, and I asked the captain if he had pulled the alarm, and he said he had tried to, but couldn't. I then went down a little piece, and saw an engine and the Independence hose carriage standing at Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth street. Somebody made a remark that they would not let them come up any further--that they had threatened to shoot them. I stayed around there all that night, and on Sunday morning, after the Philadelphia troops left---- Q. Did you see the Philadelphia troops come out of the round-house? A. I saw what they called the Philadelphia troops. Q. Where did they come out? A. They were in this round-house and in the carpenter shop. They appeared to come out of the west end of the carpenter shop. Q. On to what street? A. On to Liberty, and then down Twenty-fifth street to Penn. Some were deployed as skirmishers, at the head of the column. They appeared to be pretty well frightened. Q. Were they marching in good order? A. Yes; but they appeared to be pretty well scared. Q. They marched regularly, did they? A. Yes. Q. Was any attack made on them? A. Not to my knowledge--so far as I saw. I only stayed a few minutes, and went over into the round-house and carpenter shop. I went into, I believe, where D. O. Shater had his office, on the east end of the round-house. I went in there, and went in through the round-house into the carpenter shop. Q. Were you on duty during the week prior to the riot? A. Yes. Q. Did you learn of any arrangement among the men for the strike? A. I knew nothing of it until I got out of bed on Thursday, that was the first I heard of it. Q. What time did you get up? A. I generally got up about four or five o'clock. Q. What did you learn then? A. I learned that there was a strike, or that there was going to be a strike. Q. Who informed you? A. I don't remember. Some railroad man. Q. What did he say about it? A. That there had been a strike, or was going to be a strike. Q. You knew of no pre-arranged plan for a strike? A. No. Q. Had you noticed any influx of strangers into the city prior to that time? A. I had noticed a great many. Q. What class of men? A. They appeared to be tramps--fellows hunting for work, but who didn't want it. Q. Any more than there had been previously? A. Yes; that week there had been a great many traveling back and forward on the streets. Q. A great many all the time are traveling, are they not? A. Not as many as that week, I don't think. Q. Did you have any conversation with those tramps? A. No. Q. What do you do with the tramps who come into the city here? A. We don't do anything at present. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What was the first day you noticed more tramps than usual? A. It appeared to be the beginning of the week of the riot--for six or eight days previous. Q. You noticed it before the strike commenced? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You did not do anything with those tramps who gathered and collected? A. We had not for some time. Q. You allowed them to come in and go away when they choose? A. Yes. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Where had you noticed this extra influx of tramps? A. I had noticed it on Penn street, particularly. A great many were going in and out. They would ask me where there was a place to stay over night, or if they could stay at the station-house, and I always directed them to the Young Men's Home. Q. Did they come there in larger numbers than usual--that is, in larger crowds than six or eight or ten? A. Sometimes I would see one or two, and then six, and they increased to as high as eight in a party. Q. In a party? A. In a bunch. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How soon were you up to the round-house after the troops vacated it? A. In eight or ten minutes. Q. Did you go through the round-house or the shops? A. Yes. Q. Were any of those buildings on fire? A. The machine shop was on fire--thirty or forty feet on the east side--that is, sixty feet from the east end of the round-house. Q. Do you know anything about any oil cars that were dropped down on the Pennsylvania railroad towards the round-house? A. I know that oil cars were dropped down there. Q. At what time? A. They were afire when I saw them. I don't know how close to the round-house they went. Q. How were they stopped? A. I think they were bumped against other cars. Q. You don't know of any obstructions placed on the tracks that prevented them from running clear to the round house? A. No. Q. Was there much heat in the round-house when you got there, soon after the troops left? A. The machine shop was on fire. How long it had been burning before, I cannot say. It was burning when I went into D. O. Shafer's office. Q. Had any of the troops been in this machine shop? A. I can't say; some had been shooting out of the bell tower that night. Q. Of the machine shop? A. Yes, sir; the round-house was not on fire, nor the carpenter shop. Q. What has been your avocation for the last eight or ten years? A. I have been a railroad man up to within three years. Q. Have you ever been a conductor on passenger trains? A. No. Q. On freight trains? A. I have been a conductor on freight. Q. Had you any conversation with freight conductors up to the time of the riot, or before that time in relation to any contemplated strike? A. No. Q. Or with any men belonging to the Trainmen's Union? A. No; I never took any stock in that union. Q. Did you see the troops retiring from the round-house? A. Not until they came up on Penn street. Q. Did you see them fired at? A. Not on Penn street. I saw a man who is in jail now, firing from the corner of Twenty-sixth and Penn streets. Q. At the troops? A. Yes. Q. Did you see any whisky running into any of those buildings on fire? A. I saw two cars of high wines on fire. They had stopped them in front of the superintendent's office, and they were throwing water out of the windows to put the fire out. When I went up there I saw it was high wines. Q. Could that have run into the cellar of the buildings or the superintendent's office? A. It would have taken a good bit, for the stone sill was eight or ten inches from the ground, and it would take a great deal to run in there, though a barrel might have rolled in through the window. Q. Where is the battery room under the superintendent's office? A. It is in the west corner of the building--in the cellar. Q. Is it below the grade of the Allegheny Valley track? A. I am not sure. Yes; it is below, the bottom part of it, but along the window sill, I think, it is five or six inches, may be more. Q. It is below the grade of the railroad track? A. The inside of it is, but the outside is about six or eight inches above the ground. I would have to send up to be sure about it. * * * * * William Coats, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you connected with the fire department of the city of Pittsburgh last July? A. I am one of the fire commissioners of the city of Pittsburgh. Q. State the organization of that department last July? A. We had eleven steam fire engine companies and two hose companies and three trucks in the city of Pittsburgh last July, and an average of about seven men to a company. But we didn't have a full force on. Our appropriations ran short, and we were compelled to put off some twenty-two men just previous to the riot. Q. How many men had you at that time? A. One hundred and four, telegraph operators and all--a working force of about ninety-eight men. Q. They are a paid force, are they? A. Yes. Q. State what aid they rendered in putting out the fire? A. The first alarm, the night of the riot, occurred on the 21st of July, I think--I am not positive--and was sent in about fifteen minutes after ten o'clock. I was then at engine house No. 7, on Penn avenue, near the corner of Twenty-third street. There were three companies that answered that alarm, and one hose company and one truck. The department was stopped on the street, between Twenty-third and Twenty-eighth street. The crowd caught the horses of No. 7 engine, and drew the fire out of the engine, and made the men pull into the sidewalk. The department did no service on Saturday night, but they went into service when the Philadelphia troops vacated the round-house, on Sunday morning at seven o'clock. Our men went there then; and, if you will allow me, I will tell you why they did not go into service before. Q. We want to know it? A. The people would not allow them to. Q. That is the mob? A. Yes; but we considered them in service from the time the alarm struck, though they didn't throw any water. We couldn't get to the round-house building, or to where the fire started, because the mob stopped us. They made the assistant chief engineer get out of his buggy. I sent off the second signal myself from No. 7 engine house when they commenced to fire cars down about Twentieth street. In the meantime, an alarm came in from East Liberty, and we thought it was the cattle yards there. From the corner of Twenty-second and Liberty streets, we laid a line of hose, but they commenced to cut it as soon as we laid it, and they made us take it up again. A fellow put a pistol to my ear and said, take that up. Q. Did you know the fellow who did that? A. No. I have not seen him since. We reeled the hose up. There was no use in getting it out. We could only get into service when the Philadelphia troops came out of the round-house on Sunday morning. Q. What kind of service did you render during the day? A. We saved this town from burning down. I don't suppose that ever a body of men worked harder than the Pittsburgh fire department. We did not have a man who was not at his post from ten o'clock on Saturday night until eight o'clock on Monday morning. It was the only body of men in Pittsburgh organized. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They were ready to do their duty? A. They did their duty. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You say they saved the city? How? A. In the first place, when we went into service, opposite the round-house or the machine-shops, there were a lot of frames or tenement houses that were on fire. Well, we put out this fire, and we kept on following the fire down Liberty street, and kept the buildings wetted down. The fire was very intense--very hot, and it was a continual fight with fire all the way down Liberty street. Q. The crowd of rioters and pillagers were ahead of you? A. Sometimes they were ahead, and sometimes along with us; sometimes the rioters kept ahead of the fire, and sometimes they were among us. Q. They didn't break open the cars and pillage them until the fire started along? A. There were places on Liberty street where no man could have stood, even to wet the houses down, and where they couldn't have pillaged, because it was too hot, and occasionally along Liberty street there were a lot of coal dumps and some oil bins, and where that occurred the heat was very intense. We had to keep things wetted all the time. Along there the pillagers would sometimes be very plenty. Q. I suppose all the private property burned caught from the heat of the railroad cars? A. Yes; the only private property that was burned was on Washington street. Q. Did those houses catch fire, or were they set on fire? A. They caught from the Union depot. Q. You saved the private property here by wetting down the buildings? A. Yes. Q. Did you receive any protection from the police force? A. No; we did not. Q. At any time? A. No; not to my knowledge. Q. You were with the department? A. I was. Q. At any time did you receive any protection from the police? A. No. Q. If you had been protected by the police, could you have cut the fire and stopped it? A. We could, at any place. Q. How many men would it have taken to protect you? A. I think twenty-five or fifty men, at the outside, could have stopped that burning on Sunday morning. I say that, because there could have been no mistakes. Because, if they had shot some of them down, they could not have made any mistakes. They had no business there. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you see the mayor there during the day? A. I saw the mayor there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was the mayor making any effort to keep back the crowd? A. I did not see any force of policemen that day, but the mayor appeared to be moving up and down Liberty street. I saw him talking to the rioters. By Mr. Means: Q. After the Philadelphia troops left the round-house, how long was it before it was on fire? A. It was, I think, on fire when they left, because we went up there right away. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say that the round-house was on fire, but we have evidence that it was not? A. The offices that stood between were certainly on fire, because I worked that stream myself, and the heat got so intense at one time, that we had to move the engine away. The round-house could not help being on fire, for that oil sent down would have put anything on fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see the troops come out? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were the burning cars around there? A. They had been sending down the burning cars sometime before. Q. Then it was afire when they came out? A. As soon as the troops came out, the chief engineer ordered some apparatus there, and we went there at once. There was almost an entire square on Liberty street, all lumber yards and frame shanties, on fire. And this machine shop was on fire. I am not positive about the two round-houses at that time. I was working there myself. Q. How many men, do you judge, were engaged in this burning? A. I cannot tell you that--a great many. Q. Actively engaged--that is, I want to distinguish between the persons standing around in crowds on the pavements looking on, and the parties actively engaged in the burning? A. When I was down on Liberty street, there appeared to be a great many people on the railroad track. Of course, they were pillaging then--it was plain--any person could see it. Every now and then you could see the flames bursting out from the cars. Q. Did you see this crowd--was it an organized effort to follow up the burning--did it seem to be followed systematically? A. Yes; I think it was organized. Q. Can you form any idea as to how many were actively engaged? A. I cannot. I was not on the railroad track that day. Men and women and everything else were on the railroad track. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Behind the fire? A. Yes; but they kept in front, too. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They were pillaging and carrying the things away? A. Yes; I got down to Eleventh street, and went to the Pan-Handle railroad yard, and they were breaking the cars open and setting the things on fire. I said to them, don't do it, or you will set the city on fire, and they said they did not care a damn if they did. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you know those men? A. No; I never saw them before or since. On Saturday evening I was sitting in front of the engine house, and some men came up in front and said, "If there is a fire to-night, I suppose you will turn out." I said, "Certainly," when he said, "If you turn out there will be trouble. We will cut your hose and smash your apparatus." By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he talk as if he came to warn you for that purpose? A. Yes; he talked as if he came for the purpose of letting us know that. There was a great deal of feeling that night. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you have none of your engines in service before the troops left? A. No. Q. You played on neither private property nor railroad property? A. No. Q. Were the crowd generally disorderly? A. Yes. Q. Making threats? A. O, yes; that they would kill the firemen, and one thing and another? By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Did you see a proclamation or any official document of the mayor of the city of Pittsburgh ordering the rum shops and drinking saloons to be closed on Saturday or Sunday? A. I do not know of seeing it. If a proclamation was issued on Saturday, I was not in the city on Saturday afternoon. Q. Or any proclamation ordering the crowd to disperse? A. I did not. Q. No proclamation calling for a police force? A. No. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see the shooting on Saturday night? A. No; what occurred in the evening I didn't see. I was up there in the morning, but out of the city in the afternoon. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If a determined effort had been made on Thursday by the mayor with the police force that he had at hand, could he have dispersed the crowd? A. I do not know of any reason why he should not. Q. On Friday, do you think so? A. Yes. Q. Could he on Saturday, up until the time of the arrival of the militia? A. It could not have been done on Saturday morning, because the mill men had all commenced to gather. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you think he could have quelled the trouble without calling on the militia--that the police force could have suppressed the riot? A. That is something I do not pretend to answer. The militia were called out a day or two previous to that. But I think this, that it was unfortunate for this shooting to have occurred in Pittsburgh. My sympathies were with the strikers, but not up to the point of rioting. Q. You say you thought on Saturday morning the crowd could not have been dispersed without the militia? A. No. Q. By the police force? A. No. Q. Could the mayor or the sheriff have raised a posse, either in the city or in the county, including both, sufficient to have dispersed the crowd? A. I think that the mayor of any city of the size of the city of Pittsburgh ought to be able, with his police force, to break up any assemblage of men. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. After the sheriff called upon the Governor for troops, didn't that intensify the feeling in Pittsburgh? A. It did. I do not think that there was any necessity for that, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State what efforts were made to start trains that day? A. On Friday afternoon no effort was made. The passenger trains came in on Saturday morning. The troops were mixed with the crowd, and no effort was made to start trains, I went to Allegheny City, and learned of the shooting while coming across the river. I happened to be away when the fun commenced. At this point the committee adjourned to meet to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock. MORNING SESSION. ORPHANS' COURT ROOM, PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, February 13, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee assembled at ten o'clock A.M., this day, and continued taking of testimony. The first witness examined was: * * * * * Henry Coates, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you a member of the fire department last July? A. No; I was a member of the police force. Q. What position did you hold? A. I was a lieutenant. Q. How many men did you have control of? A. I had forty men that night of Saturday. Q. Where were you on Thursday? A. Sleeping. We had no day force in the city at that time. Q. Were you not around during the day, Thursday? A. No. Q. Where were you on Friday? A. In bed. Q. During the night of Thursday, where were you? A. On duty from Eleventh street to Thirty-third street. Q. Taking in Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes. Q. Was there any disturbance--any overt act? A. No; but there was a collection of people. Sometimes there would not be over thirty or forty. Q. What class of people? A. Railroaders, particularly. Q. What was the conduct of the people? A. They were quiet. There was no trouble at all. Q. Did they remain there? A. They would pass up and down, talking among themselves. Q. Hid you have any conversation with them? A. No. Q. Did you ask them why they were there? A. No; it was not an infrequent occurrence to see men there. It is a principal street to go up to go to work. Q. On Friday night how large was the crowd? A. One hundred or so. Q. Were they railroad men on Friday night? A. Yes; principally. They appeared to be very quiet talking among themselves. Q. What were they saying? A. That they did not let me hear. Q. Did you report to the chief of police or the mayor? A. I made a report every morning. Q. You reported that crowd to him? A. Yes. Q. But received no orders? A. No; no orders to disperse them or anything else. Q. Were the saloons open in that part of the city during Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Were they closed at all? A. I ordered them to close on Saturday evening. Q. At what time? A. About eight o'clock. Q. During Saturday night, describe what took place? A. I do not know that I can. Q. You were not on duty during the firing? A. No; that took place before we went on duty. Q. How large was the crowd? A. They began to come--three or four hundred--or two hundred--squads coming from different places all during Saturday night and Sunday morning. Nearly everybody in the city was in that neighborhood--or the biggest part of them. Q. What time did the burning commence? A. In the neighborhood of ten and half or a quarter to eleven o'clock. A crowd had congregated around the fire-alarm box, and would not let the men pull it. Q. Where did the fire break out first? A. I was about Twenty-eighth street when it broke out. I should judge between Thirty-first and Thirty-second street on the railroad. Q. What was set on fire? A. Oil, from the appearance of the smoke. Q. What did they do with the cars after they set them on fire? A. They cut them loose and ran them. Q. How many men were engaged in that? A. I cannot say that at all. Q. Were you near the round-house during the night? A. Yes; with the mayor of the city. I went to Twenty-seventh street, and passed the round-house, and tried to get in a place where it was reported a lady was shot--opposite the round-house. That was after the firing had taken place--about eleven o'clock. Q. Did you succeed in getting in? A. No; it was in a small saloon, and I had notified them in the early part of the evening to close, and for that reason they would not let us in. Q. Were you there on Sunday morning? A. Yes; until after the troops left. Q. Did you see them march out? A. Yes. Q. Where did they come out? A. On Twenty-sixth street--out of the gate. Q. Did they march in good order? A. Yes. Q. Were they fired upon? A. Not in our neighborhood. Q. By the crowd? A. No. Q. How large a crowd was there or around there when they marched out? A. I saw one citizen. Q. Did you know him? A. Yes. Q. Who was he? A. Captain ---- McMunn. There had been quite a crowd before they filed on to Penn street, but they all broke. Q. They broke when they saw the troops? A. Yes; the cry was raised when they came out that they were going down to the Union depot, and the mob undertook to get down and cut them off. Q. The mob broke and ran towards the river? A. Any place where they could run away. Q. You mean to say that the mob ran from the military, when they came out? A. They did. Q. How long was it before the mob re-assembled? A. I did not see them re-assemble. Q. Were you there during the day? A. Shortly after that I had to come to the central station and take charge of the prisoners we had arrested. Q. How many prisoners did you have arrested up there? A. I cannot say the number. Q. Can you give us an estimate? A. About seventy-five, I suppose. Q. What were they arrested for? A. For having goods in their possession--cloth, and everything they could get hold of. Q. Did you take them before the mayor? A. Before Acting-Mayor Butler. Q. What did he do with them? A. Some of them were dismissed, and some were sent to jail, and some were fined. Q. Some were dismissed? A. Yes. Q. Why? A. That I cannot tell you. Q. Was there no evidence against them? A. Evidence of having goods in their possession, certainly. We arrested some of them with guns. Q. Muskets? A. Yes, and shot guns. Q. Were any of those dismissed? A. That I cannot say. Q. About how many of those were dismissed? A. That I cannot tell you. Q. What time did you return to the scene of the riot? A. After getting through with the prisoners, I was then ordered by the mayor to report to the chief engineer of the fire department for duty. Q. What did you do? A. I did all I could. Being an engineer by trade, I took spells at running an engine and worked with them after the neighborhood of seven o'clock that evening. Q. Were you interfered with by the mob? A. I was not. Q. Whereabouts did you work? A. Generally at the engine. Q. At what points? A. Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth, and Seventeenth and Sixteenth streets. And from there I went with the fuel wagon. Q. Did you receive any assistance from the police? A. They were there, and doing all they could, but the police was small at that time. Q. Were you at the Union depot when it was set on fire? A. No. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Those goods--what became of them? A. They were turned over to the commissioners, I understood. Q. They were goods taken out the cars? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Why were those prisoners taken before Deputy Mayor Butler? A. I cannot answer that question. Q. Where did he sit? A. In the central station, where we usually held the mayor's court. Q. The mayor's office? A. It is the central station-house. Q. Where the mayor holds his court? A. Yes. Q. Where was Mayor McCarthy at that time? A. I cannot tell you that. Q. You say the police gave the fire department assistance and protection? A. I say they assisted, so far as I saw. * * * * * William J. Kennedy, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is your occupation? A. Foreman of engine company No. 3. Q. Did you occupy that position last July? A. Yes. Q. State what part you took in putting out the fire that occurred on the night of the 21st--Saturday night? A. It was eleven o'clock and twenty minutes when the alarm came first. We started out the house, but we were stopped at the grain elevator. But we got through that crowd, and got on to Penn street, when they began firing at us or at our horses. Q. How many shots were fired? A. I cannot tell that. It was just firing here and there along the street. Q. With pistols and guns? A. With all kinds of arms. Q. How long was that kept up? A. All night until daylight. Q. Go on and tell us what occurred? A. We turned on to Liberty street, and at Twenty-first and Liberty they hit me with something, and surrounded the horses. Then we turned on to Penn again, but they wouldn't let us move, so we went towards the river and tried to go down to get up further, but they were waiting there. They had some old muskets and carbines and other things, and if we just moved the horses they would come. We changed to different places from one block to another, but they wouldn't let us lay a line, and wouldn't let us throw any water except private property was in danger. We didn't throw any water until after the troops went out of the round-house in the morning. Q. Were you present when they went out of the round-house? A. Yes. Q. Were you at the round-house after they left? A. Yes. Q. Was it on fire? A. Yes. They had to come out. The fire got under them. Q. Under what part of the round-house? A. I don't know what part of it, but they set it on fire from Liberty street. They had a hose there, and were throwing water all night. They ran the cars down and tried to set it on fire, but it was all right until the fire got under them. Q. You say the troops had hose, and kept the fire out until it got under them and drove them out? A. Yes. Q. Do you know of any oil that was run under them? A. I don't know that. All I know is, that some liquor was there burning. Q. How soon did you get to the round-house, after the troops left? A. As soon as we could. Q. How extensive was the fire then in the round-house? A. It was big, and there were lumber yards across the street all afire. Q. Was the carpenter shop on fire? A. I don't know whether the carpenter shop was or not. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were any buildings attached to the round-house on fire, or buildings near it? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How large was the crowd when the troops came out? A. I don't know how large. Q. What did the crowd do when the troops marched out? A. They were taking a walk--nobody interfered with the troops. Everybody tried to get out of their road. Q. And get away? A. Yes. Q. In what direction did the crowd go? A. I don't know. Q. The crowd didn't attempt to attack the troops? A. No. Q. During the day--Sunday and Sunday night--were you interfered with by the crowd in throwing water? A. Yes--frequently. Q. To what extent? A. Different parties kept coming constantly, so that we couldn't do anything. They said: "Don't you throw any water on the railroad property, or we will blow the heads off of you." It was not just one man, but they kept reminding you of it all the time. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They allowed you to play on private property? A. Yes; I turned a stream on the cars at Union depot, when I suppose twenty revolvers were shot at me. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you call on the police force for protection? A. I would have had to call a good while before I would have got any. I didn't see many of them. Q. Did they offer any protection to you? A. Not to me, they didn't. Q. Did Officer Daniel Motts speak to you at any time, offering to protect you? A. He spoke to me several times during the night, but never offered me any protection. There was no occasion to offer me any, as both the chiefs were there. Q. And he didn't offer you any protection? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he give you any protection? A. Not that I know of. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did he tell you, if you would commence playing on a certain point, that the police would protect you? A. He didn't. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did any police officer? A. No. By Mr. Means: Q. In your examination, you have stated that you went to the round-house as soon as you could, after the troops left? A. Yes; and went into service. Q. How long was it after the troops left until you got playing upon the fire at the round-house? A. I cannot tell you exactly, but it was very quick? Q. Half an hour? A. No; it was not ten minutes until we were throwing water. Q. Then the fire had made considerable progress in the round-house? A. Yes; and across the street in the lumber yards. Q. Do you know, of your own personal knowledge, that the fire department did call upon the mayor for protection? A. I cannot say. I saw the mayor there in a buggy. Q. He didn't offer you any protection? A. Not that I know of. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you think, with the fire department, you could have cut the fire and stopped it during Sunday, if you had had protection? A. I don't know whether we could have stopped it, it was on fire in too many different places; but I think we could have picked out twenty-five men and saved Union depot from burning. Q. Do you mean you could have prevented the mob from firing it? A. Yes. Q. With twenty-five policemen? A. With twenty-five good men of any kind. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you mean that it could have been stopped at that time and place? A. Yes. Q. And that you could have prevented the spreading of the fire? A. Yes; if I had had that number of determined men. Q. Did you see those parties who set Union depot on fire? A. No. Q. Was there no effort made when they set the sheds on fire to tear the sheds down and stop the fire? A. Not that I saw--not by the police, that I saw. We did all we could. We kept following up the fire. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there no effort made during the day, Sunday, to stop the progress of those men in setting fire to the cars and the depot? A. That I cannot say. Q. You were not present when the mayor made a speech to the crowd? A. No. * * * * * John M. Miller, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. On Second avenue. Q. What was your connection with the fire department in July last? A. I was an engineer. Q. What time did you go to the scene of the fire? A. About twenty minutes after eleven o'clock. Q. Saturday night? A. Yes. Q. Were you interfered with by the crowd? A. We were fired at and told to go slow, you sons of bitches, all the way, but nobody struck us. I don't know whether they fired at us or not, but our foreman, I believe, was struck in the back. Q. Did they strike any of your horses? A. That I cannot tell. I was behind the engine. Q. Where did you commence work? A. We were off with the engine about a square from the fire, and commenced work first at Twenty-sixth street. I don't know where they had the hose placed. They told us not to throw on the railroad property, or they would cut our hose, and they tried to prevent me putting on my suction hose. We had to talk to them, and tell them we were not going to play on the railroad property before they would allow us to make any attachment at all. Q. How long did you remain at work playing on the fire? A. We returned home at ten o'clock Monday morning, I think it was. Q. During the day, Sunday, were you interfered with by the mob? A. They spoke to us, and a drunken fellow told us, if we played on the railroad property, that they would blow our heads off. Q. Were you protected by the police? A. The police was a disorganized body--no two of them were together, I don't believe. I never saw over two together the whole day. Q. Did you call on the police for protection? A. I didn't. Q. Did the police offer you any protection? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did Officer Daniel Motts say anything to you at any time? A. Daniel Motts and a man named Coulston came to us before the round-house caught on fire, about one o'clock that night, and asked us what we were standing there for, and not throwing any water. I said that the mob wouldn't allow us, and they said, I believe, they would protect us. I said, I am not the proper person, as the chief is here, and as we have orders to stand here and wait further orders. But the way they spoke to me, I thought it was in a joking way, because the only protection they could offer wouldn't have amounted to anything. I told them I was not the proper person, that the chief was there. Q. Did they ask you to play upon any particular point of the fire, and say they would protect you? A. No; they didn't. The cars were burning above the round-house at the time, but the round-house was not burning at the time. Q. Did you see the troops come out? A. No; but I saw them after they came out. Q. How soon did you get up there after the troops went out? A. In about twenty minutes or twenty-five minutes. Q. Was the round-house on fire when you got there? A. It was burning bad. Q. Was it burning before they came out? A. Yes; that is what chased them out. I understood afterwards that they came out of the carpenter shop. Q. Was the carpenter shop burned afterwards? A. That I cannot say. We were ordered away below that again. Q. What became of the crowd when the troops came out? A. They ran pell mell, and fell over each other. The troops could have marched down Liberty street and drove them. The mob were cowards when daylight shown on them. They had plenty of guns, but not much ammunition for them. They were drunk, and that was what gave courage to the most of them. Q. Those drunken men, when daylight came, what became of them? A. They staggered off, and went to sleep or something. They had plenty of liquor. Q. How many were engaged in firing the cars during the day--Sunday? A. Not over ten or twelve men. Some of them were boys fourteen or fifteen years of age. The most conspicuous man was a man with one arm. Q. Were you close? A. I was; at Twenty-first and Liberty street. Q. Did you follow down with your department? A. When the fire broke out down below amongst the cars we were ordered further down. We went then to Twelfth and Liberty streets, that is from Twenty-first to Twelfth. Q. Was any effort made by either the police or the militia or any person to stop this gang who were firing the cars? A. None at all. There were plenty of people outside in sympathy with those who were setting fire, and who were handing drinks up to them, and some women were carrying coffee, and handing it to them? Q. What class of women? A. They looked like Irish women. Q. What classes of men were about that day who appeared to be in sympathy with them? A. It generally was the Irish. Most every person that spoke to us about not playing on the fire was Irish, that is, had the brogue on the tongue. Q. Were they railroad men, or did they belong to any particular class in the city. Mill men, or any particular class of people? A. I didn't recognize any of them that I knew personally. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You say they were handing coffee up to those people. It must have been made in the vicinity of the fire? A. Yes; or else carried some distance. It appeared to be hot coffee. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where was the mayor during the day Sunday? A. I cannot say; I didn't see him at all. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. After the soldiers marched out the round-house, if they had torn up the track, would it have prevented any further firing west? A. Previous to the round-house being set on fire? Q. Afterwards? A. It would; but they would have followed on down. Q. But couldn't the soldiers have checked them there? A. Yes; I think the soldiers could have cleared the whole track after daylight on Sunday, cleared the whole track. Q. The soldiers or the mayor's posse? A. I don't know about the mayor's posse. They didn't appear to be so much afraid of the posse as of the guns. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understand you to say that no attempt was made by either the civil authorities or the military authorities to stop the fire on Sunday, or to clear the track? A. There was no attempt at all. Q. Of course, you cannot tell what would have been the result, if an attempt had been made--it is a mere matter of opinion as to what would have been the result? A. I believe so; but that is my opinion. I feel certain that they could. Q. You spoke of the police force not being organized. What was the organization of the fire department? A. The organization of the fire department was perfect. All the men were at their posts all the time, ready to do what they were ordered to do. Q. How many were at their posts? A. All the men that were on the force. The force had been reduced, but some of the men that had been put off were helping. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You say those members of the department that had been put off didn't refuse to assist you? A. Not at all! By Mr. Lindsey? Q. How many men were discharged from the fire department? A. Some twenty-two. Q. How many of those men came back to your assistance? A. Through the whole department I cannot say, but of our company I saw a couple of them. Of course, they had their favorite companies. And then there were plenty of volunteers of the old members of the volunteer department. Q. Who appoints the fire commissioners? A. They are elected by city councils. Q. They have control of the fire department? A. Yes. Q. State whether the fire commissioners are subject to the control of any higher body? A. I don't think they are. I think they are given full power. Q. Do you know what the law is in regard to that? A. I don't. I have never examined it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What appeared to be the disposition of the crowd surrounding that fire--did they appear to be in sympathy with the rioters? A. That I cannot say. Q. Some of the crowd were gathered there out of curiosity? A. I would have them all around the engine. It was a regular hum, just like bees--everybody seemed to be talking. Q. Was there any general expression against the soldiery? A. I believe there was, after they fired on the mob. I believe some classes of men had a feeling against the soldiers, but I believe the better class of citizens had not. Q. You say the soldiers could have cleared the tracks and dispersed the mob, when they came out of the round-house? A. They could--if they had opened with the Gatling guns, there would not have been a soul in sight for fifteen squares. Q. Do you know whether the officers of the soldiery in the round-house had any communication with anybody outside, during the night? A. I don't think they had, to my knowledge. Q. None of them were passing back and forth, between the round-house and outside? A. That I cannot say. I was not close enough to it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. The soldiers had no means of knowing that the crowd had become dispersed, or weakened, or drunken? A. I don't think they had. I think the soldiers thought the whole community was against them. If they had known that they could have come out, and drove the mob down, I think they would have done it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Officer Coulston has testified, that the round-house was not on fire where the troops came out--that he went through the building. Could he have gone through those buildings soon after the troops evacuated them? A. He couldn't. He might have gone into the carpenter shop, or the paint shop, but the flames were coming out of all the windows of the round-house. Nobody could have lived there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Could a man have got on to the engines as they stood in the stalls? A. He might, in one part by the carpenter shop, but I don't think he could have lived in any part of it, on account of the heat. * * * * * Daniel J. Eckels, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 135 Second avenue. Q. Were you connected with the fire department in July last? A. Yes. Q. What position did you hold? A. I was engineer of company No. 2. Q. State when you arrived at the fire, and how long you remained there? A. Probably between twelve and one o'clock on Sunday morning. We could not go into service. We waited there on the street by the Independence engine-house. We stayed at the fire until after the troops came out of the round-house. Q. During the day--Sunday? A. Yes. Q. And Sunday night? A. Yes. Q. Until Monday morning? A. Yes. Q. Were you assisted by the police force at any time? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did you see any policemen about there? A. I cannot say that I did; but I did hear that at one place where we were working the mayor was around, but I did not see him. Q. Did you see Mayor McCarthy at any time? A. Not that I know of. Q. Was any attempt made during the entire day of Sunday to stop the men who were engaged in the burning? A. Not that I know of. * * * * * J. F. Rivers, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. On Mulberry street, above Twenty-fifth. Q. What is your business? A. I had been a detective in the employ of the city of Pittsburgh previous to July 12. Q. What position did you hold at the time of the riot? A. I held no position; but I lived within three squares of the scene, and consequently had considerable interest in the riot. I was away from the city; but I came back on Friday evening. I heard that there was a strike among the railroad men, and, as I knew a great many of them, I was very much interested in their behalf. I went up to the upper round-house on Saturday morning, and there I saw a great many railroad men, and a good many outsiders, that I knew were attracted there for, probably, the same reason I was. They were very orderly, and I saw no trouble there. It did not look as though there was going to be any trouble. I came down to the city and saw the troops at Union depot towards noon, and went up to my home, and saw the troops up on the hill. I paid no more attention to it until towards evening, when I heard the troops had fired upon the crowd. Then I went up there. I was trying to find my two boys. The crowd was then gathering to the number of thousands, and the people were very much excited, and expressed themselves that the troops ought to be cleaned out, and all such language as that. I went away from there, and towards dark I went out towards Twenty-fifth street, and saw the troops had been moved from the Twenty-eighth street position to the round-house, or square-house. The carpenter shop is on one side of Twenty-sixth street, and the round-house and office of the assistant superintendent is on the left hand side opposite. The round-house is a little back of the office, and the outer circle of the round-house comes on the line of Liberty street, and there is a railroad track in front of it belonging to the Valley Railroad Company. The crowd was in front of there; the soldiers were in the round-house and in the carpenter shop. The crowd was there, and probably thirty men were jeering at the soldiers. I did not know any of them; but I went in among the men and I said, "boys, if those men come out you will have to go away, as you do not have any business here." I said, "these men are strangers, and you ought to treat them differently." They said, "we will have them out if we have got to roast them out." I felt some interest in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and in the interest of good behavior I come down the street, and tried to find some railroad officers to communicate my belief that there would be a fire and trouble. I tried to find some of the railroad officers, but could not do it. It was then after dark--after night. I went towards my home, and I met the crowd on Liberty street going to Union depot. I went up to one man I knew, who was tried in court last week, and I said "the railroad company has conceded to the demands of their employés." I had understood something of that sort. He said "it was too damned thin," and went into the depot, and a short time after there was an alarm of fire. At the corner of Twenty-fifth and Penn avenue the Independence apparatus was stopped by men pointing pistols, and saying if they proceeded any further they would kill their horses. I spoke to the parties that did that loud talking, and they said it did not make any difference--that they had no right to go up and throw water on the railroad property. I said: "These men are responding to a call, and they must obey, and you should not interfere with them." I then went away to see the extent of the fire. I went to Twenty-eighth street, and between there and Twenty-ninth, on Liberty, I saw the burning cars running down the grade towards the Twenty-eighth street crossing. But a switch was turned wrong or something, and the cars ran off the track. They set fire to what is known as the sand-house, and that is the first building that caught fire, and from that the fire communicated to the upper round-house, I think. The fire burned very slow. It appeared to me to be started by people that wanted to plunder, which they did, for they carried out great quantities of goods that day and the next day. The fire burned very slow--I never saw a fire burn so slow in my life. I did not see whether the fire department went into service that night or not. Next morning I saw the troops as they came up Liberty street on to Twenty-fifth, and marched out Penn avenue. I did not see much of any mob at that time. Then the fire department went into service. I saw no person particularly setting things on fire, but I saw two men coming from under a car off the track, in front of the round-house, just at Twenty-sixth street. The car was loaded with liquor, and just shortly after they came out and went away the car caught fire, and then the round-house and the shop and the offices and all caught fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Before or after the troops came out? A. A portion of it--the square shop that they came out of was set on fire afterwards. The building was L shaped, and there was a fire in the rear of it, and there might have been a fire--but I won't be positive--but there might have been a fire in the L that ran towards the road, but none in the L on Liberty street when they came out; and they had made some efforts to protect themselves against fire, because I discovered some leather hose, that the railroad company had in the premises, after the troops came out. The fire then kept burning down gradually on Liberty street down the railroad, and the people kept carrying off the goods all day Sunday. Down at the Union depot--previous to that catching fire--I was in there, and saw that the parties had moved as many of the goods as they could, and I saw no person trying to stop them. They set the depot master's office on fire, and then a burning car was run down into the depot, and that fired it. I saw the troops marching down Twenty-fifth street towards Penn, and saw them march up Penn. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Can you tell us what portion of the round-house, or the buildings attached to it, were on fire when they left? A. I do not know, but there might have been a fire in the rear of the round-house--the portion of it that is next to the main line might have been afire--and as I said before, this L of the carpenter shop might have been afire previous to the vacation, but I do not know it; but, from my recollection of it, the fire burned so slow that there must have been a fire in there before they got out, because when it caught from the burning car on Liberty street, the whole building appeared to be enveloped at once. Q. Did you see the troops fired on as they went out? A. I saw one man fire, I think, twice. He attempted to run into my yard, and I kicked him out, and I said "if you want to fire on those men go out and do it, but you cannot do it here." He ran out and shot at them with a pistol. Somebody returned the fire, and he quit following them any further. Q. Did you know him? A. No; I never saw him before. I know a great many men here; but I knew very few men that took part in the riot. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You were around through the crowd? A. Yes. Q. And could judge of the crowd? A. The men I saw jeering the soldiers penned in there, I did not know any of them, nor I do not think they knew me, because I think if they had known I was an officer, or had been one, I think they would have made it lively for me, because I have the idea that they would have thought I was there in the line of my business. I did not know any of them. But this man, Richardson, that was tried last week, I saw him and spoke to him about half past nine o'clock on Saturday night, and told him that the railroad company had conceded to the wishes of the men, and he said that was too damned thin, and went on. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In your experience as a detective in this city, you have gained an extensive knowledge of the people? A. Yes. Q. And from the general appearance of that mob you think they were strangers, and did not belong in the city. A. Yes; that is, the ringleaders. I was at one time on the Pennsylvania railroad, a number of years ago, and in consequence of that, I know a great many railroad men, employés of the road, and I saw none of them engaged in this riot. When I first went up there, in the morning, I saw a great many I knew, railroad men, but they were all quiet and orderly. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you have any conversation with them as to the reasons or causes that led to the strike? A. Yes; their grievances were, as far as they told me, that they had been required to put on double-headers, and the reduction in the number of their men that they would lose so many men, as they called it, in a crew. Q. Did they express any intention of using violence? A. Not that I heard. I did not hear a man say a word that would tend to show he was going to use any violence. I remarked to four or five of them standing together: "If the mayor sends his police here and orders you fellows away from here, you have no business here on this property, and you must go." By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What day was that? A. On Saturday morning, about ten o'clock. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear any of those railroad men speak of a preconcerted arrangement for a general strike through the country? A. I never did. Q. At that time? A. No. Q. Nor since? A. No. * * * * * Michael Hannigan, _sworn with uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 45, Grant street. Q. What was your business in July last. A. I was acting foreman of engine company No. 2. Q. What time did you visit the scene of the riot? A. Between one and two o'clock on Sunday morning. Q. At what point did you stop first? A. We answered box No. 62, and then the chief gave us orders to stop at Twenty-third and Penn, and not make any attachment until we got further orders. Q. How large was the crowd at that time? A. A great many men were scattered along the street as we were going to the box. The fire was down as far as Twenty-third street by that time. By daylight it got warm at Twenty-third and Liberty, and the chief got permission from the mob to lay a line of hose so that a foundry there might not take fire. We afterwards went to Twenty-sixth street, but could not get across there as the soldiers were firing across Twenty-sixth street. Q. What time was that? A. An hour after we were at Twenty-third street. Q. After daylight? A. Yes. Q. Did you visit the round-house after the troops left? A. It was impossible for anybody to go there. The upper building was completely burned when we went into service. It is a square building. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Attached to or in close proximity to the round-house? A. Yes. The roof had fallen in when we laid the line of hose. That was in ten minutes after the soldiers had left the round-house. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long before the round-house was consumed by fire? A. I cannot tell you that. Q. Did the soldiers march out in good order? A. I did not see the soldiers except at a distance. Q. Did you remain on duty during the day Sunday? A. Yes; and up until Monday morning at ten o'clock. Q. Had the fire stopped when you left? A. Yes, We were on Washington street. Q. What stopped the crowd from plundering and burning? A. I do not know that. Q. After they fired Union depot, did they fire any other property? A. There was a depot fired on the west side. Q. How far down towards the city did the crowd come? A. It was down there on Seventh avenue. Q. How large a crowd was on Seventh avenue? A. From the Rush House down to Seventh avenue--ten thousand men--you could hardly get through. Q. Were there any police there to arrest the crowd? A. I did not see any. Q. Did you see the crowd when they dispersed from that point? A. No. Q. Were you assisted at any time during the fire by the police? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you protected? A. No. Q. Did you ask for protection? A. No; the mob had a cannon planted at Twenty-seventh street, pointed right at the engine, and they said if you play on the railroad property we will raise you. We did not want to be raised. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Who made those threats? A. That I can not tell you. Q. Was any effort made by the mob to set fire to private property, that you saw? A. I did not see any of that. Q. On Sunday night they had finished all the railroad property? A. I think the last they set afire was that depot on Grant street. Q. What became of the mob after that time? A. I do not know, but I heard several citizens express themselves that they were getting tired of this work. We were then on Bedford avenue. They said they were going too far with it. Q. Citizens said that? A. Yes. Q. What citizens made those remarks? A. I do not recollect. Q. Where were the mob during Sunday night? A. I did not see any of the mob at the time we went out. I saw a great many people on the street. We had to go very slow. They were using all kinds of threats. Q. When you left, on Monday morning, was everything quiet? A. Everything was quiet then. Q. Where had these people gone? A. I do not know. Q. Did you see the mayor about at any time? A. Once, at the corner of Twentieth and Liberty streets, standing against a gas post. Q. What time was that? A. In the afternoon--I do not recollect the hour. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know whether the round-house was on fire when the military left it? A. Yes; at least that building was. Q. How long after the military left did you go to the round-house? A. While I walked from the corner of Twenty-fourth up to Twenty-sixth street. * * * * * Colonel D. L. Smith, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the city of Allegheny. Q. Do you hold any official position? A. I am one of the aldermen of that city. Q. Where were you at the time of the riots in July last? A. I was at my home in Allegheny city. Q. What occurred there in regard to the riots, that you have any knowledge of? A. About half past five o'clock in the evening, on the day that the soldiers fired in the crowd, my office boy came to my office and reported to me in great excitement, that the soldiers had fired on and killed a number of the citizens. I then went to the scene of the trouble, and remained there until about eight o'clock in the evening. Q. What time did you get there? A. At six o'clock. The troops had just gone into the round-house as I got there. I returned to my office after eight o'clock, and when the cars were fired at eleven o'clock, I saw the light and heard the alarm, and immediately went to the scene, and remained there until four o'clock in the morning. I then returned home, and remained at home until one o'clock, and then came to Pittsburgh again and remained until nine o'clock. Q. What did you observe? A. One or two wounded men being carried from the ground. I observed a disorganized mass of people standing in groups, numbering perhaps six or eight hundred, discussing the fire and passing their comments on it. Q. This crowd of people you saw there--of what class was it composed? A. There were some few railroad employés, but the most of them I recognized as mill hands from the different rolling-mills. I knew many of them personally. Q. A portion of them from your city? A. Yes; attracted by excitement to the fire. Some remained there. Q. What were those mill hands doing when you went there? A. Discussing the question involved in the railroad strikes, and some of them were using threats. One man remarked, if the firing went on, that there wouldn't be a dollar's worth of railroad property left in the county of Allegheny at nine o'clock the next morning. Quite a number of persons I recognized as persons I knew to be workingmen from other sections. I know a great many of the Pittsburgh workingmen. Q. You say from other sections? A. I judged them to be miners and mill hands, attracted here from outlying counties--attracted by news of the riot; in fact, in conversation with some, they informed me they had come from different places. Q. From communities within a short distance of the city? A. Yes. Q. Were that class of men taking part in the disturbance? A. At that time there was no disturbance. It was very peaceful, except the grumbling. But at eleven o'clock, I was on the railroad track, and I noticed three men breaking into and taking the contents of a car. Q. Did you know who those men were? A. No; they appeared to be workingmen, and some of them appeared to be familiar with handling cars from the manner in which they proceeded to open the cars. I went down and remonstrated with them, and they treated me very civilly--didn't seem to take as an insult my interference. I remarked that the railroad company would not be the sufferer. They paid no particular attention, and I told them, you men will certainly be punished for this. I told them I was a magistrate, and had come in my official capacity to try and quell the disturbance; but they paid no attention. There was no riot at that time. They went peaceably about it. Q. Did they get the goods out? A. Yes; they threw them out promiscuously. The greater number of goods were carried away by girls about sixteen years of age and by boys up to twenty years of age. The goods were carried away by residents of the immediate neighborhood. I then went up to where they were setting fire to the oil cars, and there were probably not more than eight or ten men engaged in that. Q. Who were they? A. I do not know. They seemed to be workingmen from their garb. I knew them to be workingmen, and several of them I knew were familiar with operating railroads, from the fact that they knew how to open the switches, and run the cars into position, and they handled the cars with the experience of practical mechanics. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you mean they were railroad men? A. Certainly; some of them. At this time probably twenty cars were on fire, and there were not over one hundred and fifty persons altogether on the railroad tracks. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What hour was this? A. Twelve o'clock on Saturday night. Just then a man came from the crowd of rioters--there was a crowd collected in front of the round-house for the purpose of fighting the militia--and he jumped on to a flat car and drew a sword--he had a belt around him, but had no uniform--and he immediately ordered them to stop burning the cars and pillaging the trains, saying that they had come not to burn and pillage, but to fight the military. Q. Who was he? A. He was evidently a leader, but I did not know him. He was from the party that came from Birmingham. Immediately when he jumped on that car, somebody hallooed "police," and in five minutes there was not a man left on the railroad track. The cry of "police" cleared the whole thing out, and any two police officers could have preserved the peace. Q. You think that a small force of police there could have straightened things up? A. At no time more than twenty men were engaged in the burning. Q. How long did you stay? A. Until four o'clock in the morning. Q. You say those carrying off the goods were mostly children? A. They were mostly young--girls and boys. At one o'clock in the morning I passed the police station on Penn street, in the immediate vicinity, and the police officers were arresting every person passing with goods and there was no resistance. They had perfect control. A mob amounting to not more than five hundred persons was standing near, and they had a cannon commanding the round-house, but the soldiers had covered it with their arms, and had killed one or two of the rioters. The mob engaged in fighting the soldiers were not engaged in the burning and pillaging. I went among them. One of them called me by name. I knew his face. He said, "Alderman, don't go down that way; they will shoot you." But I said, "No," and passed on through them. I said to him, "You had better go home," when he said that they had come for the purpose of fighting the militia, and were going to fight them. Q. What time was that? A. About four o'clock. It was just breaking day. Q. Now, this mob gathered around in the vicinity of the round-house--what was that mob composed of? A. I recognized that mob as composed nearly all of people who were working men from the south side of the river. Q. That is, Birmingham? A. Yes; some few of them were citizens that I knew. And I would state that some few were armed, but showed no disposition to violence except that they had an antipathy to the soldiers that had fired on their relatives. I mention this fact to show that there should be a distinction between the rioters proper and the plunderers. They didn't seem to be acting in concert. A posse of police of twenty men could have protected all the property that night. Q. Did you hear any body state that the rioters or the mob had prevented the fire department from throwing water on the railroad property? A. I did not. But I have no doubt they would have prevented it, from the disposition of the mob. I didn't see any person setting fire to the Union depot. I took my stand at the elevator. I met one of the clerks belonging to the company, and he told me that they had refused to let them take their books out. I said, come back with me, and I will take them out. So I went back and stationed myself at the elevator, to save it, if I could, by my presence there, and by calling a _posse comitatus_. But I could not get any person to serve. The sheds below Union depot were then taking fire, and two or three men came, and wanted to go into the elevator. I told them not to go in. At this time not less than twenty thousand people were there--men, women, and children--but there was no rioting, and there were not more than eight or ten or a score of men engaged in spreading the fire at that time. They seemed to be peaceable. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean the men who were setting things on fire? A. Yes; they went to it deliberately'. Q. You spoke about raising a _posse comitatus_? A. I tried to raise it. I called on a gentleman from Allegheny, named Gray. I summoned him to my assistance, but he refused to act, but said if I could get ten more he would do so. I afterwards saw some other parties, but while they deprecated the burning, they said it was worth their lives to interfere. I then went with Mr. Gray down to where the men were running the burning cars, and tried to reason with them. At that time probably twenty men were engaged in that, besides the persons engaged in carrying the things off. And by that time they had gotten into liquor, and were pretty well intoxicated. On Sunday afternoon I also tried to raise a _posse comitatus_. I called on some citizens that I knew, but they were afraid to do anything, alleging that the military and police should do it. Q. What reasons did they give? A. That they did not want to jeopardize their lives. Q. Was the elevator set on fire while you were there? A. No; I left, and supposed the elevator was safe, and went down to Seventh avenue, where the depot of the Pan Handle road was just being set on fire. I remained there some time, and then went to Allegheny to get my supper, and came back. While crossing the bridge, I noticed the fire coming from the elevator. I remained in the vicinity of the fire until between nine and ten o'clock that night, and at that time there was no further spreading of the destruction. The citizens, in the meantime, had organized a police, and there had, apparently, been a number of arrests made. Q. As soon as the police began making arrests, the citizens took the matter into their own hands, and the destruction ceased? A. Yes; and that is what convinced me that a posse of twenty policemen could have prevented the destruction. But at any time during Saturday night, if a police officer had gone into the crowd to arrest a man, the mob would have interfered with him--I am satisfied of that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. When you told those persons to stop setting fire, did they obey your orders? A. On Saturday night they paid no attention, but they didn't interfere with me. Q. You asserted your authority as far you could? A. As far as I could, and they respected my authority when I asserted it resolutely. Then they gave way. I went to Allegheny to try to summon a _posse comitatus_, but I found it collected, and I then repaired to the mayor's office, in Allegheny, and took part with them for the protection of our city. In our city, I may say, that no destruction occurred. The railroad men took possession of the railroad property there. I think they took possession first on Thursday evening. Nothing was destroyed. The railroad men--those I conversed with--said that they had determined to protect the railroad property against any mob. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What did they say was their object in taking possession of the railroad property? A. Well--my office seems to be a general receptacle for persons of diverse opinions. Some of these railroad men came to me with their complaints. I was told their grievances, and that their purpose was merely the restoration of the ten per cent. reduction. Q. Those were employés of what railroad? A. The Pittsburgh, Port Wayne and Chicago road. They admitted their actions were contrary to law, and that they might be amenable, but still they asserted their assumed right to stop the running of trains until their demands were complied with. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You say they asserted their right to stop the trains? A. An assumed right. They supposed they had such a right. Some of them supposed, ignorantly, that they had such a right--a great many of them honestly believed that. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did they claim that they had any right to set themselves up against the authorities? A. No; at no time; as they construed the laws of the Commonwealth, they did not want to set themselves up against them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know what the feeling was in this city when the strike broke out? A. I know that the people of the city of Pittsburgh almost universally condemned the reduction of the salaries of the railroad men at that time. The strikers knew that they had the sympathies of the people of Allegheny county--of all classes--in their efforts to have a living rate of wages restored to them, and thousands of people not engaged in the strike, on that Saturday afternoon, in July last, were gathered in the vicinity of the Pennsylvania railroad workshops, not for the purpose of violating any law, but either from motives of sympathy with the strikers or prompted by curiosity to witness the military. It may be inferred, that at least one half of those people were women and children, and these, without warning, were fired into and many of them killed or wounded. Of course, this caused universal indignation and condemnation, and was the occasion of all the subsequent troubles and destruction. A pacific course pursued towards these men would have avoided the catastrophe that followed. The first great blunder in dealing with the strikers in Pittsburgh, was in the attempt to operate the road by the use of a military force, instead of using the troops to preserve order and to keep the peace. Q. You say that the sympathies of the people of Pittsburgh were with the strikers or with the railroad employés and against the reduction of their wages. Do you mean as long as no overt act was committed? Or what did they regard as an overt act? A. They would have regarded as an overt act the destruction of property. Q. Did they regard the stopping of trains as an overt act? A. I think that certain classes of people did not regard the stopping of the trains an overt act, but they would have regarded the forcible taking of men from the trains--men who were willing to work--or the preventing them from working, as an overt act. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Will you tell us what you did in your own city--tell us how you managed the trouble there? A. The authorities of Allegheny managed the strikers differently--in a different way from that pursued in Pittsburgh. Several days prior to the burning in Pittsburgh, the strikers took possession of the railroad tracks, and the workshops of the Pennsylvania company operating the Pittsburgh, Port Wayne and Chicago railroad. They threw up breast-works, and held armed possession of the railroad property, and even took possession of, and regulated the running of passenger trains and the United States mail trains. At all interviews, they insisted that it was not their intention to destroy property, but to protect the railroad property, and that they wouldn't commit any overt act in violation of law, as they understood it. Many of them believed they were not violating any law, and assumed that they had a right to accomplish the object they had in view, by the method they then were pursuing. The authorities and the citizens of Allegheny City knew that they were dealing with a powerful, intelligent, and well organized body of men, who were determined and resolute in their purposes. To have attempted to force those men from their position, would have precipitated the same troubles that culminated in Pittsburgh a few days subsequently. So the citizens appealed to the better judgment of those strikers, they reasoned with them, and instead of irritating them, or attempting to force them, they permitted them to have their own way, believing that the railroad officials and their employés, would, in a few days, adjust all differences. This policy, under the circumstances, proved to be a wise one, as when danger came, and when the mob were burning and destroying in Pittsburgh, the strikers in Allegheny actually removed all the rolling stock out of the way of danger, and volunteered to assist the organized citizens in protecting the depots and workshops, and all other railroad property in the city of Allegheny. Had the same policy been pursued in Pittsburgh, there would have been no destruction of property. Q. You were in the army. What position in the army did you hold during the late war? A. In 1861--in May, 1861--1 enlisted as a soldier, and was elected lieutenant of my company, and went out as a member of the Second Virginia regiment, as lieutenant, and afterwards became captain of my company. Q. Was it a Union regiment? A. Yes. We went to Wheeling to protect the people, and our services were accepted by the people of West Virginia. On the 19th of February, 1862, I was appointed commissary assistant by the Secretary of War, and that position I held until about the 1st day of September, 1862, when I was assigned to duty as chief commissary of the Twelfth army corps. About the 15th of March, 1863, I was assigned to duty as chief commissary of the Fifth army corps, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, on General Meade's staff. Q. How long did you occupy that position? A. Until I was mustered out of the service, or until the corps was disbanded, in September, 1865. I remained in service until March, 1866. Q. What business have you been engaged in since the war? A. For the last eight years I have been an alderman of the city of Allegheny. The year before that, 1 was a member of the Legislature. Q. From the time you left the army until you were elected a member of the Legislature what business were you engaged in? A. 1 was following my occupation as a scrivener. Q. Where did you reside before going into the army? A. From the year 1836, until I went into the army, in this county. Q. What business were you engaged in? A. When I went into the army I was chief clerk in the county commissioners' office of Allegheny county. Prior to that I was a clerk in a store. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Something has been said about picketing the railroad track where the riot occurred. Now, taking into consideration the number of cars around there, how many troops would it have taken to reasonably picket the track and the ground there in possession of the mob? A. The ground in possession of the mob, from the round-house out to Lawrenceville, I think could have been sufficiently picketed by one hundred men on both sides. At no time were more than one hundred persons on the ground from twelve o'clock that night until four o'clock in the morning, from the round-house out to Two Mile run. I consider that the movement of the military into the round-house, at the time, was a good one, but they should have picketed the railroad, and all the approaches to the round-house. To have retired on the bluff, above the railroad tracks, would have been a military blunder, for if they were not strong enough to protect themselves where the cars and buildings afforded them shelter, they certainly could not have held a position on the hill face, where they could have been attacked from the open fields above them, and been within easy range of masked or rifle shots from the houses fronting on Liberty street. No officer of any military experience would have selected that hill face to bivouac his troops, under the circumstances then existing, but the retreat of two regiments of well armed and equipped soldiers, commanded by officers of undoubted courage, and large military experience in the face of a disorganized mob, was certainly a inexplicable blunder. Q. You did not see the crowd before it was fired into and dispersed by the military? A. I did not. I only arrived there afterward. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Now in your judgment, as a military man, do you think that there was any necessity for calling on the military to quell this riot? A. I do not. I honestly believe that if the authorities of the county or Allegheny, or the city of Pittsburgh, had summoned a sufficient _posse comitatus_, they could have preserved the peace. They might not have been able to run the railroad cars, but the peace could have been preserved without calling the military. By Senator Reyburn: Q. From your observations during this disturbance, what opinion have you of the conduct of the officers and those in charge of the military? A. I was not brought in contact with them, except with Colonel Gray, of one of our regiments, after the firing. I went to where he had bivouacked on the railroad track, and he had one hundred and twenty men with him at the time. He said he was there for the purpose of obeying orders, and that his men would stay by him. He had no orders at that time. I asked him particularly whether he had any orders, and he said he had none. I asked him whether he thought he could preserve the peace, and he said he could. I think he said that the firing on the people was a mistake, and was done without orders, but if I had been there I would have ordered the mob to disperse, and then fired on them with blank cartridges. Q. From your knowledge of these men as soldiers during the war, do you think they were competent or incompetent men? A. I know General Pearson well. I knew him in the army, and I know what his military record was in the army, and there is no young officer in the United States service who has a prouder record as a brave, a careful, and discreet soldier. He served in our own corps, and I had daily opportunity of knowing what his military services and military abilities were, and his record in the army was certainty vary creditable to him. I also knew General Brinton in our corps, and I know that his record is equally good. By Mr. Means: Q. They were good soldiers, ready to obey orders at all times? A. Yes; and had those two officers had the management of this affair, without being amenable to superiors, much of the destruction would have been avoided. Q. You mean Generals Pearson and Brinton? A. Yes; they had, to my certain knowledge, years of experience in the army--active experience as soldiers. Adjourned. MORNING SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, February 20, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at ten o'clock, A.M. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All the members present except Messrs. Reyburn and Torbert. * * * * * Daniel Corbus, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: Examined by Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. New Brighton, Beaver county. Q. How long have you resided there? A. I was born there in 1839. Q. What is your business? A. Wire drawer by trade. Q. State whether you were in Pittsburgh when the disturbances of last July first broke out? A. I was not there at the breaking out of it. I arrived here the same day, about a quarter past one, I suppose--Liberty street. Q. State what you saw and heard? A. Saturday night the news was very exciting out home, and Sunday morning at eleven o'clock I took the express and arrive I here at the city--Federal street--about twelve o'clock I should judge it was. Came over to Fifth street and got my dinner. Went to the market-house and saw a crowd of people there. Went down to see what was going on, and found it was a peace convention. Q. A what? A. A peace convention. Q. At what point was that? A. It was some place near the old City Hall--I should judge it was. It was in the street. I went from there up Liberty street until I met the fire. I couldn't state how far it was from the Union depot--how many squares it was; but I stopped at the first crossing below the last car that was on fire. I staid there until a car load of spirits exploded, and the flames ran down from there about a hundred feet. Q. Where was this explosion--at what point? A. It was on the railroad in a railroad car. Q. What street? A. It was on Liberty street--I should judge that was the street that the cars go out of. I am not well enough acquainted to state positively--it was on the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. Was that on the Allegheny Valley track? A. No, sir; on the Pennsylvania tracks. Q. Near what cross street? A. That I am not well enough informed to know, but I should judge it was four squares above the Union depot, right up the track. Q. Four squares? A. Yes; four squares. Q. Go on now? A. While standing there looking at the flames going on, I made a remark to some person: "Ain't they going to try to stop it?" and he said, "no, we don't care anything whether it is stopped or not." I hadn't staid there long until I heard the gong of a hose carriage. The crowd didn't seem disposed to give way or do anything--just standing in the road. I asked the crowd if they would stand back and let the hose carriage come in. I was a perfect stranger to every person around. There was a movement made in the crowd, and the hose carriage came up. Says I, "do you want any assistance?" says he, "yes." Says I, "give me the end of the hose and I will make the attachment." He was taking it off the reel and one man jumped from the reel and went to the plug, and him and I made the attachment. The reel started on--there was barrels being rolled down this street, and everything was in confusion, and no person seemed to make any effort to check anything. I seen that the hose were in danger of being blocked, and I told some parties who were rolling some barrels down, "stop that! put that barrel in here." They stopped. I took the barrel out of their hands, and rolled it into the gutter. I staid there for ten minutes afterwards, when one of my companions came along, and says he, "let us get out of here." We walked on down do the Union depot, passed the Union depot and went up to, I should judge it would be Washington street, from the description given--not being well acquainted with the streets--and stepped into a segar store, got some segars, and told the proprietor of the store, says I, "I think you had better move." And says he, "no, I don't think there is any danger." Says I, "in a couple of hours you will be burned out--they ain't making any effort up there to stop it." I went out, passed around on to the side of the hill above the Union depot, where I had a view of the whole transaction that was going on; just seen the burners going along and doing just as they pleased, having everything in their own hands. I was on the side of the hill when the office beyond the shed attached to the Union depot building was set on fire. Q. Did you see it set on fire? A. I seen a man go into the building, and in a few minutes I seen the flames coming out. Q. Do you know the man? A. No, sir; I was too far away. The smoke coming up over the hill, I moved around and came back, then down to the Union depot by the same route I had went up, and there stopped by the elevator. As I came by the Union depot, I saw, I suppose, twenty armed men leaving it, some with parts of uniform on, some with caps, and some with pants, and others with citizens overcoats. They were going through the gangway to the hill, passing out of the side entrance to the gangway that runs across the Pan-Handle road on to the hill. I stood down by the elevator, and saw the parties making their escape from the upper stories of the Union depot, and then I got in conversation with a gentleman about it. Says I, "I suppose they will be satisfied when that is burned." "No;" says he, "we won't be satisfied until this elevator is down." Says I, "do you intend to burn this?" Says he, "everything in these monopolies has got to burn"--he made use of that expression. Says he, "I am a citizen here, and I own property, and I expect to help pay for it." Says I, "this is not railroad property." Says he, "it don't make a damned bit of difference, it has got to come down; it is a monopoly, and we are tired of it." Q. Did you know that man? A. I am personally acquainted with him, but I would rather not give his name publicly. Q. I think we ought to have his name? A. I would give it to you privately. He is a friend of mine from boyhood up. I can give you his name, and you can have him before you. I would like to be excused from giving his name publicly. Q. What kind of a citizen is he--what is his business standing? A. He is a machinist, and of good character, so far as I know. Q. How long has he resided in the city of Pittsburgh? A. I suppose he must have resided in this neighborhood for twenty years. Q. Does he work in the railroad shops as a machinist? A. No, sir; one of the city shops. Q. How old a man is he? A. I suppose he would be between thirty-five and forty years. About near my age. We were boys together when we were in Brighton, and he came to the city. Q. A man of family? A. Yes; he is a man of family. Q. He said he expected to help pay for it? A. He says, "I expect to help pay for it." Q. Did he set fire then to the elevator? A. Oh! no, sir. Q. Who did fire that? A. I do not know. Q. Did he take any part? A. No; he didn't seem to take any part. He seemed to know and understand what was going to be done, though. Q. Was he leading or giving directions in any way to the crowd? A. No, sir. He stood with me in the crowd back. He seemed to know certain parties that were in it, although he mentioned no names. Q. Did he say where the parties were from that were in it? A. Yes; he made that remark--said he, "Our shop boys came home this morning tired out with the night's work." Q. With Saturday night's work, did he allude to? A. Yes, sir. Q. Our shop boys? A. Yes, sir. Q. What shop was that he alluded to? A. Jones & Laughus, I believe--the American iron works. Q. How many men do the American iron works employ, do you know? A. I can only give an estimate of the reports--from one thousand five hundred to two thousand. They are very large works. I have been through them. Q. When he said, "our boys came home tired out from last night's work," what work did he allude to? A. The conversation was on this burning altogether--on the destruction of the property. My inference was that it was the work we had witnessed. Q. Were you talking about any other subject at the time? A. No, sir; nothing but the disturbance then in progress. Q. Did you see any attempt while you were there to destroy or set fire to individual property? A. No; I did not. Q. When you arrived at the scene of the riot, how large a crowd was there? A. On the streets--it would be impossible to judge the number. Q. Engaged in actual burning and rioting? A. I think twenty-five good men would have cleaned the crowd out. Q. I asked you how large the crowd was? A. Averaging from three to five hundred, not over that--boys--young fellows. Q. Did you see any efforts made by anybody to stop the burning? A. No, sir; not an effort. Q. See any policemen around there? A. I saw two or three policemen about two squares below, but none in the immediate neighborhood of the burning. Q. Did you see the sheriff or any posse about? A. I did not--no person in authority, or any person using any authority. Q. When you attempted to make the connection, were you interfered with in any way? A. No, sir; not in the least. Q. When you undertook to stop the rolling down of barrels, what seemed to be the feeling in the crowd? A. They just stopped and let me have my own way. Q. Obeyed orders? A. Obeyed orders. Q. Did you make any effort to stop those that were setting fire to property and burning? A. No, sir; I did not; I held back from them on account of not being a citizen of the town. Q. The crowd that was standing around, of whom were they composed? A. They seemed to be composed of the better class of citizens of the two cities, you could see--quiet, orderly. Q. Were there any women and children among them in the crowd? A. Yes; there were a great number. Q. Did you see any business men of the city standing about? A. No, sir; I can't say that I did. I am not well enough acquainted with the business men of the city to know whether there was any in the crowd or not. Q. Did you see the mayor? A. I haven't seen the mayor to know him since 1860; I probably would not know him on the street. Q. Did you find any difficulty in getting into the city that day, from New Brighton, Beaver county? A. No, sir; I found no difficulty at all. Trains came in on time. At the Allegheny depot the strikers boarded the train and run it to Federal street station, and said they would not run it over to Pittsburgh. Q. Did the trains go out on the roads leading west? A. Yes; they went out whenever Boss Amnion, as he was called, said that train should go. Q. He allowed the passenger trains to run? A. No interference, so far as I know, in regard to passenger trains. I had no trouble at all in getting home. Q. Did you see anything of General Latta that day? A. I did not; I am not personally acquainted with him: probably might have seen him, and not known him. Q. Were you at the city hall that day or any other day? A. I was at the city hall at seven o'clock, Monday morning. Q. Who was there? A. I can say that the mayor was not there, as I heard him inquired for half a dozen times. The rest were strangers to me. Q. Did you see the chief of police or any of the officials there? A. Not to my knowledge--there was not. I made inquiry for the chief of police--if the chief of police was in, and I was told he was not. Q. What class of people were there? A. They seemed to be employés around there, or some persons that seem to be well acquainted with the office; they were sitting there. Q. Tell us what you heard said there? A. I went into the chief of police's office--the left hand entrance going into the city hall--and seen one gentlemen that I was slightly acquainted with, Mr. Carrigan, and spoke to him. He got up and went out. There were two or three gentlemen--strangers--I got into conversation with them about it, and one of them, a large, tall man, with heavy black whiskers, says he, "We won't be satisfied here until this track is torn up to the point." He brought his fist down; says he, "We have been imposed on long enough." Q. Until the track was torn up to the point--what track did he refer to? A. He mentioned the Liberty street track? Q. What was referred to by the word "point?" A. I suppose it is the old Duquesne depot on the point. Q. At the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela? A. Yes, sir. Q. He referred to the Liberty street track? A. Referred to the Liberty street track to be torn up to satisfy the citizens. Q. Who was the man? A. I can't name him. He was a stranger to me. Q. Do you know where he belonged? A. I do not know, but judged from his conversation that he belonged to the city of Pittsburgh, from the manner in which he used that expression. Q. What else did you hear said there? A. People were commenting about it in general terms. I came down Sunday night, after the fire had got cooled down somewhat. I went to the Saint James hotel, opposite the Union depot, to take a look. I went out of curiosity, and got in over the hot coals, so as to have it said that I ate a meal in the Saint James while it was hot. I walked all around the burned district; that is, the elevator, Union depot, and Pan Handle yard, watched the firemen, went down to where the firemen were playing on the ruins, and came down then through what is known as the metal yard, and there I heard a conversation amongst the men. I couldn't tell you the exact number, but I should think there was a hundred and fifty congregated around there, some of them dead drunk, and some half drunk, and some of them drunk enough to go any place. I heard them say: "We must go to this place. There is no police, and they won't interfere with us any way." Q. What place did he refer to? A. I don't know what place they referred to. I thought it was a rather dangerous place for me, being without any arms, any more than natural fists, and I didn't stay any longer. Q. Did you hear any conversation, while at the city hall, from the mayor's clerks in reference to the riot and burning? A. No; I don't know as I did. There was a gentleman came in there, and inquired for the mayor. Says he: "There is a big lot of miners coming down here," and, says he, "we don't know what to do." He inquired where he was, and wanted something done to stop them. No person seemed to know what to do. Q. How long did you remain at the city hall? A. I remained there until Monday evening--at the city hall? Q. Yes? A. Probably I was there an hour. Q. Was the mayor away all the time that you were there? A. I didn't hear of the mayor coming in while I was there at all. He might have went to his office while I was in there. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. What time were you at the city hall? A. I should judge about seven o'clock in the morning--Monday morning. Q. When you went into the tobacco store, and told this man he had better be moving, what reply did he make? A. Says he: "I think not. They won't let it come down this far will they?" By Mr. Dewees: Q. How did you happen to be here? A. I came up on purpose to see it. Heard of it at home, and came up. Q. On purpose to see the riot? A. On purpose to see what was going on, like hundreds of others. By Mr. Means: Q. This man that was in the city hall that said they would not be satisfied until the track was torn up down to the point--was he dressed in citizen's clothes? A. Yes; I judged by his dress and conversation that he was a resident of the place. Q. Did the other men make any reply when he made that remark? A. No; no reply was made. Q. You would take him then to be a citizen of Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. How many men from Beaver county came up? A. Indeed, I could hardly state--I should judge a hundred or one hundred and fifty. Q. At the same time? A. Yes; and some of them were railroad men down there, and were interested here. Q. Were they with you at the time you had the conversation with that man? A. No, sir; at that time I was by myself. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You spoke about some armed men you saw going up the hill--did you ascertain who they were? A. No, sir; I did not. I was told they were some Philadelphia men that had been left in there. Q. Left in the depot? A. Left in the depot as a guard. Q. How were they uniformed? A. Some had caps on, some pants--I would judge they belonged to the soldiers, on account of the weapons they had in their hands--they were breech-loaders. Q. Did they make any effort to prevent any destruction of property? A. In what way. Q. You spoke about marching along the hill, or up the hill? A. When I spoke about them they were escaping from the Union depot. At that time the flames were coming in from the shed. They were going over the hill towards the reservoir. Q. This man you had the conversation with down at the municipal hall, at the office of the chief of police, did he appear to be connected with the office there in any way? A. Well, indeed I can't say. He was in this office, and I struck up a conversation with him. I don't know how we got to talking about it. I spoke to Mr. Carrigan, the only one I knew. He went out, and there was no other person I had conversation with but him, and he seemed to be at home. Q. Do you know where Mr. Carrigan lives? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is Carrigan's name? A. I can't tell you that. Q. Does he live here in Pittsburgh? A. I believe he does. Q. Can you give his place of business or residence? A. No, sir; I can't do that. I met him on special duty at one time--he appeared to be connected with the detective force at one time here. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Can you name any gentlemen that came up from Beaver with you? A. Mr. Robinson. Q. What is his first name? A. Hugh Robinson. Q. Any other? A. Mr. Edgar. Q. Mr. Edgar--what is his first name? A. John P. Q. Who else? A. Mr. Jagger. Q. What is his first name? A. Fred. Q. All these men were with you on the ground? A. They were scattered through the crowd. I was separated from them pretty much all the time. Only just occasionally we would meet. Q. Are they from the town of Beaver? A. New Brighton. Q. Any others? A. There was Major Henry, from Beaver, and Mr. Macomber, of Beaver Falls file works. * * * * * Doctor Edward Donnelly, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: Examined of Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Reside at 62 Stevenson street. My office is 133 Grand street. Q. You are a practicing physician in city? A. Yes, sir. Q. Just go on and make a brief statement of what you saw in relation to the riots? A. My first knowledge of the riots was on Saturday, the 21st of July, about an hour or so previous to the arrival of the troops from the east. I was induced to go to Twenty-eighth street, hearing that there was a large concourse of people assemble there, and they were there for the purpose of preventing any trains leaving the city--any freight trains, and having the dread of riots before my eyes--I had seen other riots in Philadelphia, in 1844--I apprehended that there might be some little difficulty, and as I have some influence with the Irish portion of the people of the city, I thought it my duty to go there, and try to induce them to leave the place, and not enter into any measures that would tend to criminate themselves or break the laws of the country. That was the reason I went there. When I arrived at the ground--I drove out in my buggy--when I arrived there, I found about fifteen hundred people. I presume, assembled--fifteen hundred to two thousand, and several companies of soldiers--the Fourteenth regiment, Greys, I believe, some of them, and the Nineteenth. I am not sure that there was any Greys there--I think it was the Fourteenth and the Nineteenth regiments. I saw Colonel Grey's command on the side of the hill, and I inquired of him who had charge of the troops here, as they were in rather a disorderly condition, I consider, in a military point of view. They were mingling freely with the crowd in groups here and there, and seemed to have no order or discipline amongst them. They told me General Brown had command; and I then went down amongst the crowd on the railroad track, where Twenty-eighth street intersects the road, and I met General Brown, and inquired of him if he was in command of the troops. He said he was. Said I, "you are not in military uniform--you have no uniform on." He was dressed as a citizen. I thought it was a very remarkable thing. He then asked me if I would make a speech to the crowd, so as to disperse them, or induce them to disperse, and leave the track free for the cars to go out--engines and so on. I told him that I did not think it was my place, but if it would be of any benefit I would certainly do so; and he said "yes," he thought it would be necessary, because there was troops coming from Philadelphia and Easton; that the railroad company had sent for troops to disperse any mob that would attempt to interfere with the running of trains; and, perhaps, it would be best, in order to prevent any disturbance, for me to address the crowd to that effect. I hesitated somewhat, and inquired then before I consented. Said I, "who is the leader of the strikers?" Said he "there he is," pointing to a tall man that was very busy in the crowd, making motions with his fingers to his companions--that is, trainmen, firemen, and engineers. Said I "call him here and see what he says about my addressing this crowd." This man was called, and he also thought it advisable for me to do so--they did not want any disturbance, and they would like the crowd to disperse--they could manage this business themselves without any outsiders; and at this solicitation of Brown, and this chief man amongst the strikers, I got up on the steps of a small oil house, that is fronting the round-house--standing there yet--and I addressed the crowd present, and what I said on that day to them was published in the afternoon paper--in the _Leader_--I have a copy of it here. I told them that it was necessary for them to disperse--if you would like to here the exact words I would read them for you. Q. Is it lengthy? A. No, sir; it is very short. It was so to the point at the time that I thought it best to preserve it, and this is copied from the _Leader_ of the 21st, the afternoon of the-day of the occurrence, and this address was delivered about one hour before the arrival of the troops. The reporter says he addressed--that is. Doctor Donnelly--addressed the strikers as his fellow-countrymen. I did so because I have been in the habit of addressing Irishmen in public meetings, and it was more of a habit than anything else. Instead of saying "fellow-citizens," I said countrymen; not because they were all Irish, but because it is a habit I had in using that term, and exhorted them not to resort to violence. "No striker," he said, "had ever yet succeeded where violence was resorted to. Violence was invariably met with violence, and ended in the discomfiture of the strikers. It was opposed and contrary to the fundamental laws of the land. He entreated them to maintain law and order. To reflect before taking any rash step, and to remember that law-breakers must, in the natural course of things, suffer. He urged them to be prudent upon the arrival of the troops from the east. The troops from Philadelphia, said he, and the troops from Easton and elsewhere are not to you like the Duquesne Greys or the Fourteenth regiment or the Nineteenth regiment. They are not, I might say, your brothers. You cannot go to them and take their hands and say to them, 'how are you, Jim?' or 'how are you, Tom' or 'how is it with you, Patrick?' These men will come here strangers to you, and they will come here regarding you as we regarded the rebels during the rebellion, and there will be no friendly feeling between you and them. For this reason, I implore you, for God's sake, to stand back when they arrive. To stand off and allow your leaders, who hold the throttle of this movement, to deal with them. For this reason I implore those of you who have no business here to go home to your families. It is your duty to do so. It is your duty to them, to your country, and to the laws of your country. Leave the matter in the hands of your leaders, who know what is for the best, better than you do, and you will leave it in good hands. I have been assured of this. I have been informed by the men who are leading this strike that they will exercise the greatest caution and forbearance when the soldiers arrive, and I entreat you to stand back, and let them manage the thing in their own way." That was the import of it. Q. Were you near Twenty-eighth street when you made that? A. I was right amongst them, sir. Q. At Twenty-eighth street? A. At Twenty-eighth street and the round-house. The crowd was between the round-house and myself--some fifteen hundred or two thousand, including; soldiers and all. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. It was on the steps of the watch-box? A. I was on the steps of a small building where oil is kept. The steps are high up, and I had a good location and a good view of the surroundings. They listened very patiently, and as there was a great number of women and children among them, I deemed it my duty to warn them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Before you go on, state to us what effect this address had upon them? A. It seemed to have a good effect upon them as far as the women and children, and a great number of men retired and went away; and there was a kindly feeling apparent amongst the people and amongst the soldiers that were there. There was no evidence of violence, nor none apprehended, except when the troops would arrive from the cast. The only fear that appeared to exist amongst the bystanders and those I conversed with, was a conflict between the eastern troops and the people. Q. Were the troops--the soldiers of the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments--mixed up with the crowd at that time? A. Yes; there was neither order nor discipline amongst them. Q. Did they have their arms with them? A. They had some arms on the ground. Some had them with them and some were stacked in different places along the side of the hill and at the bottom of the hill. Q. Were they dressed in uniform? A. Yes; with the exception of General Brown, who was in citizen's dress, and he was the commander-in-chief. I inquired for General Pearson. I understood he was with the Philadelphia troops. Q. Go on, now, Doctor. A. My address seemed to have considerable influence with the strikers and trainmen and others; and they had their meeting-place on Penn street, near Twenty-eighth. I think it was over a segar store; and I was requested to meet them that afternoon. I did so, and they delegated me to wait on the officials of the road to make terms, to put an end to any further disturbances. They requested me to see Mr. Thaw. I think he is an official of the road, one of the vice presidents, if I am not mistaken--William Thaw, I think his name is, and Mr. McCullough and Mr. Layng. I went to Mr. Thaw's house two or three times, but was unable to find him. I then went to Allegheny, and met Mr. Layng and Colonel McCullough, and told them what the strikers wanted, and endeavored to persuade them to meet the strikers or to make some promise that would put an end to further difficulty and trouble, or the shooting of people or destruction of property. They were both together, and I conversed with them, and I gave them the terms the strikers had authorized me to make. I took it from the strikers and wrote it down in pencil at the time, and it is here--the terms they wished me to propose to the officers of the road, to Mr. Thaw and Colonel Scott, if he was in town. After informing these gentlemen what the strikers demanded, they told me they could do nothing in the matter whatever--it was above their power to do anything. Q. You may read what the strikers demanded. A. This is what they demanded: "Authorized by strikers to visit Colonel McCullough and Mr. Layng to effect a compromise on the basis of taking off double-headers; same wages as prior to June 1, 1877; each man to receive his position prior to strike." Q. Retain his position prior to strike--receive or retain? A. They said receive at that time--"classification of engines done away with; each engineer to receive first-class wages, same as prior to June 1, 1877; each engine, road or shifting, to have own fireman"--that was the conditions on which they wished to make a compromise with the officials of the road, and by all means to endeavor to have them meet them, so as to make some kind of a compromise. Their great object seemed to be to have a conference with the officials. Q. What time did you get that proposition? A. It was in the afternoon of Saturday. Q. Before the collision with the troops? A. It was after the collision. I had not heard of the collision at that time. I had been hunting Mr. Thaw in the afternoon, and then had gone to Allegheny, and I had to procure the aid of a gentleman to go with me to learn where Mr. McCullough and Mr. Layng lived. Q. Did you get the proposition before the collision from the strikers? A. The strikers gave me the proposition previous to the collision, I think. Q. What time did you present it? A. I presented it--it must have been, perhaps, four o'clock or five--it was in the afternoon. Q. What response did you get--reply? A. They told me they could do nothing at all in the matter, nor did they seemed disposed to do anything. They conversed about the matter as indifferently as if it was a thing on the other side of the Atlantic--took no interest in it, but referred me to President Scott. Q. Did you return to Twenty-eighth street that night again--Saturday night? A. I did, sir; went there several times. I reported the interview, and they said they would try to meet the officers--they would meet the officers at East Liberty, and that they had sent out word to some of the officers--I think Mr. Pitcairn and some other officers--to meet them at East Liberty, and they had gone out there. This was late in the evening. They had gone out to East Liberty, but they could get no satisfaction out of the officers there; and they had also telegraphed to Mr. Scott, president of the road, and had received no answer, and that they had used every means in their power to make some compromise with the officers of the road, but had failed. Q. Were you present when the fire occurred and the first car was fired? A. No, sir; I was not present at any firing. I was pretty late that evening out at Twenty-eighth street, and there was an immense concourse of people all along Liberty street for several squares, but, as I had my horse with me I did not go amongst them at all on the tracks. I merely reported my interview between myself and Colonel McCullough and Mr. Layng, and I then went home. Q. Your effort was particularly confined to adjusting the compromise and difficulty between the strikers and the railroad? A. Railroad officials at that time. Q. Did you have any negotiations with the mayor about additional policemen? A. That Saturday I had not. On Saturday I had not, but on the next morning, Sunday morning, I was very active, indeed, to endeavor to raise and organize a vigilance committee for the purpose of suppressing the riot and saving the property of the railroad company, and other property; dreading that the city would be set on fire and plundered by mobs. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. These railroad officials you called to see in Allegheny--General McCullough and Thaw and Layng--what railroad company are they connected with? Pennsylvania Central? A. They are all connected with the same company. I presume they represent the Cleveland and Cincinnati--that western part of the Pennsylvania Central. Q. Pennsylvania Company--not the Pennsylvania Central? A. I didn't know that there was any difference. Mr. Thaw is certainly connected with the Pennsylvania Central. I think he is one of the vice presidents. Q. The Pennsylvania Company managed the road west of Pittsburgh? A. I don't really know what their positions were. I was solicited by these men to interview them, supposing that they were the proper authorities in the matter. Mr. Thaw was proper authority in the absence of Colonel Scott or other officials that could not be found. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What success did you meet with in trying to organize a force on Sunday morning? A. On Sunday morning the citizens met near the old city hall and formed a kind of organization there, and finally adjourned to the new city hall, and there we organized a committee of safety, composed of citizens, to take measures to assist the mayor--employ a force of policemen, as he was very deficient in a police force at the time, and had but a few men on duty; and the object was to organize a strong police force to aid and assist the mayor in suppressing the riot, which then had become very alarming. We were all day nearly in doing a very little. The citizens seemed to be panic stricken, and there seemed to be no head at all in the city amongst the officials or amongst the people. The mayor seemed to be powerless. The sheriff, I believe, had ran away, and, in fact, we seemed to have no city government for the protection of the city or the people. Q. What did the mayor do in the way of assisting in this organization? A. The mayor--he didn't do a great deal, he seemed to be running around at one thing and another, and he seemed to be so confused and incapable of organizing anything, that he really did do nothing. I understood there was two companies of troops come down from up the Monongahela in charge of an old army companion of mine. I suggested that he had better try to get those two companies, and take them down where the riot was going on, and do something. We found that these troops had returned again, and they were not there, and we came back again, and, finding that the riot was still going on and nothing being done, he authorized me to collect as many citizens as I possibly could, and go down there and see if we could suppress the disturbance, and I organized about sixty men, composed partly of lawyers, a few physicians, and other gentlemen, who were determined to use every effort to suppress the disturbance; and we first armed ourselves with axe handles, which a gentleman on Wood street procured for us out of his store. I considered that didn't look very military, and somebody suggested that there were rifles at the Western University, up on Diamond street, and we concluded to make a raid on the university. We did so, with the sanction of the mayor, and we got the rifles, and then there was no ammunition, and we put the bayonets on them, and with a company of sixty men, and myself as the colonel--I had been commissioned by the mayor to act as such--we marched down to the scene of the riot and arson, each gentleman had a white handkerchief tied on his arm to distinguish them from the rest of the crowd that was there assembled--it may look very ludicrous just now, but it was a very serious matter then. We marched down amongst them, and the crowd sort of stood to one side and let us pass through. I arranged the men on each side of Liberty street, where I supposed they were going to set lire to the large stores. At that time the grain elevator had been destroyed, and the property adjoining the metal yard, adjoining this large ware-house, was also on fire. There was a fence running from the middle yard up to one of the stores, I proposed to some of the rioters present to tear that fence down and save that property, two or three of them said, well, what do you want, I said we didn't want private property destroyed, so a gang of them went over and tore the fence down, and the flames didn't extend any further in that direction. After staying there some time, and seeing that there was no evidence of breaking into stores or setting fire to private property, we retired; that is, we retreated to the city hall, and stacked our arms in the building, and dispersed for the night. The next morning we were not organized again, the city seemed pretty quiet, and the crowd had understood that the citizens were taking an active part in protecting the city. Q. Let me ask you a question there. Supposing you had arrived with your regiment--you say you were a commissioned colonel--suppose you had arrived on the ground before the fire reached the Union depot, do you think that you could have kept the mob back and prevented the firing of the Union depot with that body? A. I do think that if I had been authorized and given me fifty or sixty good men, that understood their duty, and were obedient to orders and had loaded rifles before that depot burned, it could have been saved. I went there and tried to save that depot, and took Bishop Tuigg with me to go out there, thinking that there might be a number of our countrymen there engaged in that, and that he would have some influence with them, to save the property of the company, and save the building. I stood on the platform of a car with the bishop, and he first addressed them, and in looking over the crowd, I found that the crowd were not Irishmen. As we soon discovered, they began throwing iron ore and other missiles at the bishop's head, which no good Catholic would do, unless he was an Orangeman. I also addressed them, and a burly fellow came up and said, get down from here, Doctor, we are going to set fire to this, and I considered it most prudent to get down. With fifty good men, I would have cleared that place in a very few minutes. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know that man that came up to you? A. I would know him if I ever saw him. I felt very vindictive towards him at that moment. I did try to save an engine by pulling a fellow off who would not allow the engineer to try to run it off. I pulled him off and said let that man take the engine off. He was drunk at the time, and he said something to me, but anyhow they kept the engine there until it was burned. If the officials even of the depot--if the officials of the road, or the employés of the road, had any courage at all on Monday, they could have saved that building. There was no trouble about it, because the outside people were perfectly indifferent, looking on and affording no resistance. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Supposing the officials connected with the road there had made an effort to have driven them back, what effect would that have had upon the crowd? A. The crowd that was there at that time could have been easily driven away. Q. Would it have excited them worse? A. I think not. I think the citizens were all disposed at that time to aid to enforce law and order. It was the feeling. That was on Sunday, mind you. On Sunday afternoon at that time I believe every citizen was disposed to enforce law and order, and that the rioting element would not have had any chance whatever, and they would not have been supported. Q. How many were actually engaged in the arson and rioting at that time? A. From my looking at them and looking amongst them, and as they were assembled together to listen to what we had to say, I don't think there was fifty men really. Q. Engaged in the riot? A. I don't think there was that many, because they were dispersed amongst the crowd of people, and you could only tell the bad element amongst them by their appearance, and by their dress, and by their half drunken condition. Q. Had you any talk with the mayor during the day, Sunday, about sending out a posse of policemen there? A. I had talked with the mayor on several occasions. I urged him to try to organize a force, and I asked him several times very plainly why he had not arrested these rioters, I mean the strikers, the head of them, that were inciting riot, and he said that he had done his duty in that respect, but that he had been superseded Ivy Mr. Hampton and Dalzell, and other persons connected with the railroad, in taking it out of his hands, and placing the authority in the hands of the sheriff, and that he would let them manage the matter--something to that effect--and that seemed to be his principal reason for not having acted more energetically--that the officers of the road had taken the matter out of his hands. Q. He was out there during the day Sunday looking over the crowd? A. I didn't see him out there, I think, unless he was there, and I didn't see him. I was going to say that these are some of the strikers who sent the communication [indicating a paper] to the mayor and myself. This is addressed to the Honorable Mr. McCarthy and Doctor Donnelly. Metzgar was chief clerk of the mayor at that time, and this communication was sent. I had been soliciting these strikers to aid us in suppressing the riot, to enter in with us, and make their appearance amongst us, to show that they were not in favor of pillaging, burning, &c. This is addressed to the Honorable M. J. McCarthy: "Have gone to the Twenty-sixth street, with Cunningham, of the strikers, with McKeon. Say they will try to go down at once to new city hall to join you, and will do my best." That is underlined: "Will do my very best. Tell Donnelly, if they come, see that they get instructions." That is, I was to go down with the force, at that time, with proper instructions. That is the name of the gentleman, I can hardly make it out, it is very peculiar writing, "W. N. Riddle," I should think it was. He was to aid and assist us, with his strikers, to suppress these disturbances. Q. Riddle--was this the man that requested you---- A. That was not the man. That man I could never find afterwards. He was a tall man, a thin spare-faced man, a very active man, he seemed to have some influence over them. One of the strikers gave me that, [indicating paper.] I understood it was from a principal one of them, at the time. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. How long did it take you to raise that force of yours? A. It took me all day. 1 never saw such apathy or cowardice among the citizens. Q. They did not appear to be anxious? A. Men that should have done their duty, as citizens, were promenading Fifth avenue, and it was very difficult to get citizens. I must say to the credit of the bar, that they did their duty. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Will you give us the names of some of the lawyers that were members of that company? A. Colonel Haymaker was one of them, Mr. Harper was another--there was quite a number, Dr. Sutton was one, he was second in command. I have the names of most of them. Q. I believe you find lawyers and doctors among the best citizens, as a general thing? A. We do our duty, if we can. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you have got fifty or sixty good men, with rifles and ammunition, at the time that you and Bishop Tuigg went up to remonstrate with the mob? A. We could not--not at that time. We had been ineffectual all day to organize a company, and there was no arms to be had yet; there was troops at the old city hall, but there seemed to be nobody in command to do anything, to take the responsibility, there seemed to be really no person at the head of anything. By Mr. Means: Q. This whole machine appeared to have no head? A. Yes; it appeared, as I said before, it appeared that the mayor was indifferent. He said that it was the railroad company that was running this thing, and he would let them run it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say there was troops at the city hall. How many, and who were they--what organization? A. There was part of a company of the Nineteenth regiment--a company there of the Nineteenth regiment. I forget who had charge of them. I know the gentleman very well, but I cannot think of his name. He went out afterwards in command of one of the regiments to the east from here. A tall, nice-looking young man. He had charge of the regiment. Howard, I think it was--Hartley Howard, I think, was the gentleman. By Mr. Means: Q. Had the mayor intimated to you that the railroad officials had taken this matter into their own hands? A. They had interfered with him in executing an order. They had interfered in arresting some man. He had not acted as promptly as they thought. It appears that Mr. Hampton and Dalzell--I think he used the names jointly--had taken these writs from him and given them into the hands of the sheriff. By Mr. Means: Q. And that he would not interfere? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You said a while ago that the sheriff had run away. How did you know he had run away? A. He was not to be found anywhere. I had not seen him that day. I heard he had left. They had threatened to burn his house, and he had left the city. As the sheriff is a man subject to heart disease, I presume it was his duty not to risk his life amongst them. I heard there was a strong feeling against him, and he had left. I had not seen the sheriff after that day. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What day was this you were speaking of? A. That was on Sunday. Q. Did you see him there on Saturday with the troops? A. No, sir; I did see the sheriff on Saturday. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You stated in your speech to the people that you had been informed by those who led the strike that they would manage the matter prudently, so as to have no trouble. Who were those parties that informed you they were leading the strike? Can you give us the names? A. I can ascertain the names of some of them, but I don't know the names now. I don't remember them. There was one little man very active. His brother keeps a drug store at the corner of Twenty-eighth and Penn streets. He seemed to be very active amongst them. Q. Do you know his name? A. No, sir; I can find out his name. I can find out the names of several of them. I think I have them written down. This gent--I thought his name was attached to that paper--was a city man, very active. He seemed to be the leading spirit amongst them, but I found he was the man that brought that document there. Q. He is not the one that signed it? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How do you account for the apathy or cowardice that existed in the city about going out to take steps to stop this? A. The only way I can account for it is that there was a feeling amongst the people that these men had been treated very unjustly by the railroad company; that it had reduced their wages down to a starvation point, and that they had been treated unjustly. There has been a feeling here more or less ever since I have been in Pittsburgh--twelve years--since the war, against the railroad company, on account of its unjust actions against the mercantile interests of Pittsburgh. There has always been more or less of that kind of feeling against the company, as I told the Governor in my interview with him on the Sunday night that he was here. That feeling has existed against Tom Scott and the railroad company. The overbearing manner of their officials, and their want of making any compromise whatever, or showing any disposition whatever to compromise with their employés; that has been the feeling engendered in this city for years. Q. How extensive is that disposition? A. It is amongst almost the whole class of people, intelligent as well as ignorant, that feeling has existed. Q. The business men and professional men? A. The business men--many of the business men--have been bitter enemies of the road on account of the discrimination in freights that has existed. That feeling has permeated the whole community--it permeated the whole community, and I had that same feeling and that same antagonism to the road myself. As I told the Governor, Tom Scott should come down from his empyrean and mingle amongst the people, and he should assert his right of being Governor of the State, and not Tom Scott. Q. What reply did the Governor make? A. The Governor made one of his bland smiles. By Senator Yutzy: Q. He is a good listener? A. Yes; that was up in the hotel where he stopped the Sunday night. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In your negotiations, mingling with the strikers and endeavoring to adjust matters, did you ascertain the reason or the cause of the strike? A. This was the cause that I stated, just what is set forth in this paper, [indicating paper,] that was the cause, and that was what they wanted, an adjustment on that basis. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did any one sign that paper setting forth their grievances? A. Only I had a meeting with them. I wrote down what they wanted. Q. You wrote that down yourself? A. They would not permit anybody, they had confidence in me or they wouldn't have entrusted me. They saw I was disposed to do what was right. I acted prudently with them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were any of the strikers, that is the railroad employés, who first struck, engaged in this arson, burning, and pillaging? A. The persons whom I saw engaged in this arson business, and the crowd that I addressed on Sunday were rioters. They appeared to me to be all strangers. They were not really citizens of Pittsburgh. They appeared to me to be all strangers. There was no strikers. I saw none of the strikers that I knew, whose countenances I would remember amongst the rioters. They appeared to keep aloof. They appeared to keep away, and when we wanted to find them or have any conversation with them, we had our meeting down at their place. The bishop and the delegation of citizens from this committee of public safety, went down to meet them away down at their head-quarters, at Twenty-eighth street, where we had a conference with them. They were perfectly powerless, yet disposed to do all they could to save the property and suppress the riot. Q. Who were the men engaged in this arson and burning? A. That is more than I can tell you who they were. They appeared to be a class of men I had never seen before. Q. Were they mill men? A. Many of them looked like laboring men. Most of them were young men, reckless young fellows, half drunk, and of a class you would call roughs, which you will find always around cities and places where there is anything going on, you don't know who they are--they appeared to be all young men. Q. From the works about the city? A. They might have been; I don't know. I couldn't recognize them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Didn't one recognize and call to you "Doctor, get down from that?" A. They knew me well enough--these men knew me well enough. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Told you to get down from there, and said they were going to burn that car? A. Yes; they had made up their minds to burn the depot. Q. Did he say that? A. No, sir; I judged that. That was our effort to save the depot. I induced the bishop to go down myself. Q. In the practice of your profession, have you become acquainted, more or less, with the laboring men about the city? A. Yes; I have. I am a great deal amongst them--factories, mills, and all around the neighborhood. I have a great deal of intercourse with that class of people as a surgeon amongst them. Q. Did you recognize any of that class in this crowd? A. I didn't recognize--yes, I recognized two men, that I have since endeavored to find, who were amongst the rioters--that was the only two. Q. On Sunday? A. Yes; they were there present, and one of them, when I was addressing the crowd, made the remark to me that they wouldn't put confidence in any man, no matter what he said, and that man I would know again. He was one of them, and he was an aider and abettor. I have gone frequently around the depot since; and I think he was employed by the company. I would know him if I was to see him. The other man, that threw the piece of iron ore at my head, I would know him. I have never met him. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know whether any of your command--of your company had been called upon by the sheriff to join his posse to suppress the riot the day before, or at any time. A. I don't know whether they ever had or not. I don't think the sheriff was about on Sunday. Q. The day before? A. I don't know whether he was Saturday night or not. I don't know, sir, anything about the sheriff and his posse. There was no sheriff or posse that I saw at all. * * * * * Captain P. Grallisath, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you at the Union depot at any time during the riots of July last--first you may state where you reside? A. No. 660 Diamond street. Q. What is your business? A. Tavern. Q. Keep hotel? A. No; tavern--restaurant. Q. State whether you were at the Union hotel or not, and what time it was? A. I was at the Union depot about half past two in the afternoon. Q. Of what day? A. On Saturday. I think it was. Q. When the Philadelphia troops arrived? A. I got notice from my colonel, who is captain of the Black Hussars, who sent a man to me with a note that one of his men lost a cap on the road, and for me to bring him one. I went out myself and met them at the depot there--the Black Hussars, and I saw--I suppose it was the First regiment or Second Philadelphia--the infantry getting ready to march out the track; and I was talking to my colonel, and asking him how things goes, and what he came on here for. Says he: "I don't know." He says: "I suppose we came on here to keep peace here in Pittsburgh." I staid there with him for about an hour and a half. I told him, says I: "Colonel, you better come down to my house. There is nothing going on here. It is all nonsense to remain here. Leave your men here and come down with me;" and so he did. Q. What was the Colonel's name? A. Captain Chues, of the Black Hussars. He was my colonel in the army. We went down home and got something to eat and a few glasses of beer, and all at once an orderly sent word to say: "Captain hurry up, they are firing on front." I went out with him to the depot, and staid there until dark with him. They had charge of the ammunition from General Brinton, at the Union depot. I staid there until dark, and the infantry was out, and a great many people passing along Liberty street, and hollering and cheering over to the boys, but they didn't take any notice. I told the colonel, says I, "never mind, just leave them talk and mind their own business." So they did, I says, "colonel, I am going home. I will be back again in a short time." I had to see how business was at home. Everything was upside down in the city. I came back about eight o'clock, and went to the depot again, and I found there was nobody there. I asked where they were, and they said they were in the round-house. I could not go out there, because I was alone myself, and I understood they were at the same time in the Union depot, up stairs--all of them--hid up. Q. Who did you understand that from? A. I had it from Major Howard, of the Fourteenth regiment, whose company was there stationed in the Union depot. This was after this. Q. Did he say that all the Black Hussars---- A. He says "they are not there." Then I went back home again in the street cars, and I see a great mob making raids on the bonds for whisky--anything they could find--nearly opposite the street car where I was in. I went home. About twelve o'clock I went to the depot again. I thought it was the best thing for me to see where these boys are. Q. The Hussars? A. Yes. I went out with one of my men to find out where they were. I saw General Howard, of the Fourteenth regiment, right at the gate where the train comes in. I went to him. Says I, "Do you know anything about the Black Hussars." Says he, "Captain, I don't." Says I, "Are they in the round-house." Says he, "I don't know anything about it." I went out over where the ammunition was, and didn't see anybody except two or three watchmen around with lanterns. I ask them where they were, and they said they didn't know, that they must be in the round-house. I couldn't believe it, because I know Colonel Clines ain't going to block himself up in a cage. Says I, "If I can't find them, there is no use for me to go out in the round-house." I went home again, and couldn't get any satisfaction. All at once, Sergeant Wilder, from Philadelphia, orderly sergeant of the company of Black Hussars, about half-past two o'clock in the morning, I was sitting on the bed, and he asked some policeman where my house was, and he told him he didn't know. Everybody knows me, where my house is, especially policemen, and he says he didn't know where Captain Gallisath lived. He passed my house two or three times before he could find it. All at once, he asked somebody, and they told him, and he rang the bell, and I was sitting on the bed. I was not going to undress until I heard some news. A darkey, he showed him the road. He came up and told me the whole thing as it stands. Says he, "We are in the Union depot, and I don't know how to get out." I got all my boys up, and said they should throw out every stitch of clothes they had in their possession. I went out and took them all out in two squads over the hill. They couldn't get through Liberty street. Q. You gave them citizens' clothes? A. All my own and all my men's. Q. For the Hussars to go out in disguise? A. Yes; I kept them there for three days at my house. Q. How many of them? A. There was sixteen or seventeen. I think there was seventeen. I kept them there until I got word from General Brinton, and I took them over to the West Penn road, and sent them home. General Pearson, I suppose, gave them a pass. The Black Hussars were on the road to Philadelphia, and were telegraphed to come back to the junction again. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. There were sixteen or seventeen? A. Yes. Q. Did they have arms? A. Nothing but sabers. Q. Where were their guns? A. They had none. Q. Did they have guns when they came in from Philadelphia? A. Nothing at all but sabers. Q. They were placed in the Union depot to guard the ammunition, Captain Clines at the head? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was that all that came there Saturday--Saturday afternoon--sixteen in number? A. That is all they had, seventeen--I suppose it was seventeen--I had them in my house. They had nothing but sabers. They had no carbines nor pistols nor anything. Q. Where did they leave the ammunition when they came out? A. The ammunition was at the same place still--and burned up too. Q. In the Union depot? A. That is the report that I heard afterwards, that it was set afire on Sunday. Q. They didn't bring the ammunition out with them? A. General Brinton gave Captain Clines orders to take charge of the ammunition, so they could ship it to the front, but they never came back again, the Philadelphia troops. Q. General Brinton didn't come back again? A. No; they were up in the round-house, and Sunday morning went away to the other side of the river. Q. Captain Clines left the ammunition in the depot? A. The understanding was, that they were cut off from General Brinton, and nobody knew the ammunition was in there, except himself and his boys. Q. Do you know whether he left it there in the depot or not? A. I am very well satisfied he couldn't take it away. I heard the cartridges cracking around there on Sunday when they burned up. General Brinton had no ammunition, whatever, when he was cut off, and he couldn't get none--not what he brought from Philadelphia. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did Captain Clines and his command carry anything away from there? A. They left their sabers there when I took them up the hill, but they got them back afterwards, and I shipped them to Philadelphia my own self. Q. How far do you live from Union depot? A. Three squares and a half. Q. What street? A. Diamond. Q. How many people were there along Diamond street when you took these clothes out? A. Nobody--everything quiet. Q. Couldn't these Black Hussars have marched out and down to your house? A. They couldn't march from Union depot on Liberty street, they had to go around the hill and over the Pan-Handle road by the tunnel and back here--that is where the nigger took them around. Q. In citizens dress? A. I sent the clothes out. They went in two squads. We hadn't so many clothes to dress them all at once, the mob was waiting for them to come out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You are a military man, and have had a great deal of experience in the army. In your opinion, could these sixteen men have cut their way out with their sabers? A. No, sir; they couldn't. Q. Why not? A. I couldn't see how. They didn't know the road, nor anything. They were strangers. Q. If they had had a guide? A. I don't see how they could do it with sabers, when the mob was standing outside with stones and pistols. What did them sixteen men want to do with sabers. Q. Was there a large crowd? A. There was a big crowd there. They couldn't, I am satisfied. I wouldn't have risked it, and I wouldn't be afraid if I were acquainted in the city, and know my road. Q. If you had had sixteen men well armed---- A. Yes; well armed, that is all right; but they were not. Q. Were there no arms there. Were there not some stacks of muskets? A. They had nothing but their sabers, that is all. I saw them all. They had nothing but their pocket knives. Some of them had no knives, because they went away so quick, they didn't know where they were going, and they thought they were going a few miles outside of Philadelphia. Q. Do you know whether there was any effort made to take any provisions or ammunition to the troops in the round-house on Saturday night? A. Not as I know of. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. These Black Hussars are generally intended as cavalry, are they not? A. Yes; they are all mounted. Q. The general cry was against the Philadelphia soldiers. That intimidated these men, did it? A. I heard them hollering in the street for to kill them--in Liberty street. Q. That is a good way to intimidate a person, isn't it? A. Oh! yes; I was right with them. I suppose they would if they could. A man says to me, what I got business to do with the Philadelphia troops, keeping conversation with them. I told him that is my business. Q. What business you had with them? A. Yes. I said that is my business. Q. They didn't pretend to interfere with you--did they? A. I suppose they would, if they could. I don't know, I wasn't afraid. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was it known to the crowd that these Black Hussars were quartered in your house? Did the crowd know that the Black Hussars were in your house? A. No; not that Sunday. They found it out on Monday, though. The people came in the house keeping very nice, quiet conversation with them. I never heard a wrong word on Wednesday. The house was crowded, and they were sitting around with them, drinking beer. It was all right; very nice, quiet conversation. Q. The Black Hussars did? A. Our Pittsburgh friends treated them very kind. * * * * * Robert B. Carnahan, being duly _sworn_, was examined as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside, Mr. Carnahan? A. I reside in Pittsburgh, Nineteenth ward. We call it the east end here. Q. Practicing attorney? A. Practicing attorney. Q. Solicitor for the sheriff, I believe? A. Yes; I am at this time, and have been for two years past. Q. Just state what you know of the movements of the sheriff during the riots of July last? A. At the time of the first disturbance, which occurred on Thursday evening, it was preceding the Saturday on which---- Q. That was the 19th--Thursday evening, the 19th? A. Yes; the 19th. I knew nothing whatever of anything the sheriff had done, or had been called on to do. I was informed the next morning that during the night of Thursday the sheriff had been called on by the solicitor of one of the railroads--Mr. Scott--by some of the railroad officials, during the night, and that he had been at Twenty-eighth street during that night, but I knew nothing of it personally. My residence is five miles--nearly six miles--from here, though in the city of Pittsburgh, and I was not sent for that night. The next day I became acquainted with what had been done, but I think I did not see the sheriff at all. He was out at Torrens station during a considerable portion of the day, with the railroad officers, and I don't remember to have seen him that day. I think he had been up pretty much all the night before, and was out, away from his office, the greater part of Friday, and I don't think I saw him at all on Friday. On Saturday morning I saw the sheriff, and had a full conference with him in his office. The sheriff submitted to me what he had done. Gave me an account of his meeting the rioters on Thursday night, and of his being out at Torrens station on Friday, where I think he was a considerable part of the day--at one place or the other--at least, I did not find him during business hours; and of his notification of the Governor that he was not able to deal, in his opinion, with the rioters or mob that had obstructed the running of the trains. Of course, I made inquiry as to the magnitude of the gatherings, to learn something about their threatening, hostile character. In fact, had known myself, personally, coming in on the road, that the trains were detained. I said to him that I entirely approved, as a matter of law, of what he had done in notifying the Governor to send on troops. The view I had of the act of 1864, I think it is, was that the Governor, on reliable information from any quarter where there was insurrection that the legal authorities were not able to deal with, might call out the troops, and I approved of that; but on Saturday morning the attorneys of the Pennsylvania railroad went into the court of common pleas No. 2, and obtained warrants for the arrest of a number of persons--my recollection is, fifteen in number--who were charged as leaders of this riotous movement. I think the warrants were addressed to a constable of the name of Richardson, and the solicitors of the road made a demand on the sheriff that morning for a _posse comitatus_ to attend the arresting officers, and support him in the discharge of that duty. This took place sometime in the morning, at or after eleven o'clock in the morning--it was after eleven o'clock, I think--and I advised the sheriff to assemble a _posse comitatus_--as large a number of men as he could obtain--that three or four hundred would not be too large, and it was understood, at that time, that troops would arrive that evening. They would arrive here at twelve o'clock, or about twelve o'clock, perhaps earlier than twelve, on a train that arrived here between eleven and twelve o'clock, and it was understood the arrangement was, that the civil authorities were to make these arrests, the constable supported by the sheriff and his _posse comitatus_, and that the military were to be on the ground. There was, indeed, very little time for obtaining a _posse comitatus_ at that time, but the sheriff sent out his deputies, some fifteen or sixteen of them, with instructions to bring in a _posse comitatus_. There was not time to write out summonses and serve them in any way, but I said to him that it would be a sufficient demand upon a person to attend if given verbally, that it was better to have a written notice, if there was time, which there was not then--less than an hour to do it all in. These deputies went out, some fourteen or fifteen of them, but they severally came in and reported at an interval of an hour, or an hour and a half--it was nearly one o'clock--and the result was, I think, but two men were obtained. I remember of one man being brought into the office who was very much alarmed. The sheriff asked him if he was willing to go. He said he was not willing to go; he was afraid to go. The sheriff reproached him with cowardice, and said he did not want that kind of a fellow to attend him. I think not more than two men were obtained. Sometime between twelve and one--I think nearer one than twelve--the sheriff, with his own deputies, went up to the Union depot. I think all his deputies, with the exception of one or two, perhaps, who were not then in the city. Every deputy he had in the city attended him, including his two sons and his brother, and they went up to the Union depot, and I think the constable was with him. I am not entirely sure about that. I attended them myself up as far as the Union depot. I know we went there, and some of the military had arrived there from Philadelphia at that time, but I think not all of them. I know nothing more as to what occurred on that afternoon, for I was not at Twenty-eighth street when the firing took place, and my personal knowledge ends with this, that the sheriff himself personally went. I cannot relate about anything that took place on Saturday night, or after that time, for I was not in that part of the city, but was at home. Q. Do you know when it was that she sheriff made the call on the Governor for troops to support him? A. I only know from what he told me himself, and what I have heard others say, and what I have seen printed--it must have been on Thursday night, the 19th. Q. In your opinion, had the sheriff then exhausted his powers and resources to cope with the mob? A. I, of course, cannot judge that; that is a question of fact. I can only judge of it from what other people have told me. I can judge from what I personally have seen of this mob myself, coming in on the train every day, for these trains had been delayed for two or three days. The freight trains were accumulating, and had been detained for some days before that or some time before that--at least one day--one whole day, if not another. I should judge from the crowds I saw assembled about the trains myself, and from descriptions of them by others, that it was not possible for the sheriff with any _posse comitatus_ that he could obtain to deal with them, and I will tell you on what I found my opinion. This was a combination, I may say, of what we call here in Pittsburgh, the striking element. I don't think any man will say that he found a preponderance of the railroad men in their assemblages about Twenty-eighth street, or the Union depot, or other places on the road. Everybody out of work who belonged to what we call the striking population, were directed by sympathy or opinion towards these people. It was not a body of railroad men alone, and I don't think that the larger part of them were railroad men--the iron workers, the people who work in rolling mills, and the people who work in the various branches of industry, were all in sympathy with them, so far as I observed, and so far as my knowledge, derived from others, extends, and it was a sort of massing of the striking element here. The strike of the Pennsylvania railroad men being simply the occasion that brought them together. Q. Let me ask you another question: In your judgment, had the sheriff at that time, under the act of 1864, laid the grounds for calling on the Governor for aid? A. I don't remember--I have not the act of 1864 before me, and I don't remember whether it defines any ground. My recollection is, that the act itself does not define more than in general terms, at least, the ground upon which the executive aid maybe invoked. I was satisfied of this, and I think Senator Scott was. I know from his conversations with me that it was such a gathering, with such a purpose, and with such a determination that, at least, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company did not expect to deal with them without military forces to aid them, and I think that that was the prevalent impression. One of the sheriffs deputies told me that, though he had served in the army three years, he never had encountered any danger that alarmed him like the danger he expected to encounter here. He was a man willing to do his duty. It was a mob that inspired some terror, even at that time. Before any blood was shed, there was a general apprehension of trouble. I have seen many strikes here of coal diggers, of men engaged in iron mills and glass houses, and the various departments of industry. In fact, we have been a good deal accustomed to them, but there had never before been very much actual, positive mischief coming from them, and I never before saw a mob the people were afraid of, before that one in this city. However, I must say I saw but little of it until Saturday, and then the soldiers had been called out under the command of General Pearson, and some Philadelphia soldiers had arrived. On Saturday, the feeling was angry, it was threatening and severe. Q. What preparations is it necessary for the sheriff to make, or what are his duties under the laws of the State of Pennsylvania before calling on the Governor for aid? A. Well, gentlemen, I think the law on that subject has been very much changed by the act of 1864. That is here. I would like to refer you to it. I think very radical changes were made in the law relative to calling out the militia, by the act of 1864, that has been much adverted to lately. I think it establishes a very different system. Q. From that heretofore in practice? A. I think so. I think it is altogether different. As I understand that law, it is not necessary at all that the sheriff should notify the Governor. It might be done by the mayor, or alderman, or even by any citizen. The Governor himself judges of the sufficiency. Q. As you understand the law, is it necessary for the sheriff to make an effort to obtain a _posse comitatus_ before calling on the Governor? A. I certainly would think the sheriff, the principal peace officer of the county, ought to make some effort to get a _posse comitatus_ to control that riot; but there are cases where the riot has taken such proportions, as I think this one had--I do not regard it as local at all, for it extended from the Mississippi to the Atlantic--there are such cases where no _posse comitatus_ could deal with them at all. Q. At the time the sheriff made the call on the Governor, was it not principally local? A. As to that I cannot speak from personal knowledge. What has been told to me was, in substance, this: That when the sheriff first met the gathering at Twenty-eighth street, there was a large collection of people, numbering, I don't know how many, but one or two thousand people, and this was in the middle of the night--towards eleven o'clock at night. They were gathered there. They insulted the sheriff, threw all sorts of reproaches upon him, blasphemy and obscenity of the very worst character were employed--this I don't know personally, but it has been told to me--and threats were made. Now, it is a question upon which you can judge as well as I, whether, when a crowd can be brought together at that hour of the night--a crowd greatly in excess of all the railroad men in this part of the country--whether any collection of citizens you might obtain, would be able to successfully disperse them, and it is a question very hard to determine. Q. Would it, in your judgment, be the duty of the sheriff to make an effort to obtain a posse before calling on the Governor? A. Unless the effort was plainly fruitless, I would not understand the law to require him to do a thing that is plainly unnecessary. If an armed force would come into the county which the sheriff evidently could not deal with citizens, especially without arms, I would not think it necessary to expose himself to any sacrifice of life. If the disturbance were local, I think he ought to make a serious effort to disperse it, before calling on the Governor. The law, as I understand it, and the only law in force on this subject, is the act of 1864, which was passed during the war--during the time of the rebellion, and when there were disturbances in different parts of this State. I understand it authorizes the Governor to call out the militia, on any information that satisfies his mind, whether it is of an official character or not. It is in these terms: "When an invasion of, or insurrection in, the State is made or threatened, or a tumult, riot, or mob shall exist, the commander-in-chief shall call upon the militia to repel or suppress the same, and may order our divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions, or companies, or may order to be detached parts or companies thereof, or any number of men to be drafted therefrom, and may cause officers to be detailed, sufficient with those attached to the troops to organize the forces." That was not the law until 1864. At one period in Pennsylvania, when the military were called out, they were to be under the command of the sheriffs. That was changed by the act of 1857--I am not entirely sure about that--it was about that time, and in case of an insurrection, application was to be made to a judge, and so forth. But it will be observed that that law seems to supply all existing legislation on the subject, and applies to cases of insurrection, invasion, mobs, tumults, and riots, and also authorized the Governor when these exist, to call them out, though it don't prescribe on what terms or conditions he shall call them out. I take it that if you, Mr. Chairman, or any gentleman in whom the Governor had confidence, were to communicate with him information that a mob or tumult existed, and it was necessary to call out forces to deal with them, he would be perfectly authorized in calling out the militia, whether his information is of official character or not. Q. Did you communicate your views, as you have given them to us, to Sheriff Fife? A. Yes; I said I approved of what he had done. He had sent these telegrams on Thursday night, and as I stated to you, I didn't see him until afternoon. Q. You approved of what he had done? A. I approved of what he had done, and I think that view was the view of Mr. Scott, the solicitor of the railroad, and I think of everybody that were cognizant of the fact. At a later period, during the week succeeding the destruction of the property, the various railroads here--the Fort Wayne and Chicago, the Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and the Allegheny Valley, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Charleston and Virginia road sent written demands to the sheriff, setting forth that a tumultuous body of men were holding their property, and threatening to destroy it, and calling upon him to protect the property. The sheriff made a demand for aid upon General Brown, who was in command of the Sixth division, having succeeded General Pearson, who had been relieved, to enable him to protect this property. I cannot give you the views the military had of their duty here---- Q. We will take the evidence of the military men? A. There is a communication, and a copy of the communication, written by myself, and sent to General Brown, in fact, it is the original letter, which I have here, to General Brown, making a demand, and I have a copy of his reply. The sheriff, at the same time, or before that time, had constituted General James S. Negley his deputy, for the purpose of preserving the public peace and dispersing the rioters. General Negley was recruiting a body of men to act in preserving the peace. It was said he had several hundred men, and the sheriff, after consultation, clothed him with all the civil character which the sheriff himself had in dealing with these disturbances. Q. What time was that done? A. That was done somewhere about the 25th of July. It is about the date of this letter. [Indicating.] This letter will, perhaps, explain about what the sheriff's views of duty were, if you will permit me to read it. Q. I don't see hardly how that would be necessary, because he called upon the Governor as commander-in-chief to send troops? A. But the Governor was not here with his troops. Q. Well, he ordered his troops out? A. There were no troops here at that time, except the Sixth regiment. General Brinton had been here on Saturday, but he had left with his troops. There were no troops here, except the Sixth division, commanded then by General Brown, and composed of the Fourteenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth regiments. Q. Is this of a character to give directions to General Brown or asking him for aid? A. Asking him for aid. Q. I think it would be proper to have it read. The witness then read the following communication: SHERIFF'S OFFICE, PITTSBURGH, _July 26, 1877_. _To GENERAL JOSEPH BROWN, in command of the Sixth Division National Guard of Pennsylvania_: SIR: I have the honor to enclose to you copies of the following communications, addressed to me under date of the 25th and 26th days of July, inst., by Messrs. Hampton and Dalzell, solicitors for the Pennsylvania company, operating the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago railway, and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh railroad; also by the same parties, solicitors of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway Company; also by the same parties, solicitors of the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railroad Company, and by Welty McCullough, solicitor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company and the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad Company, representing, in substance, that the property of the respective railway companies is in immediate and constant danger of destruction at the hands of a body of rioters and disaffected workmen, which may at any time become a mob, and which said companies believe has an intention of destroying said property. I beg leave to inform you that since the present disturbances began I have made efforts to summon a _posse comitatus_ to suppress the unlawful and riotous proceedings of the persons referred to in the enclosed communications, but have been hereto unsuccessful in procuring the services of any considerable number of men willing to come to my aid as a _posse comitatus_. My consequent inability to disperse the unlawful assemblages referred to (or some of them) has been communicated to the Governor, who has ordered out the military power of the State for that purpose. I cannot protect the property referred to without your aid. Can you give it? I am well persuaded that no mere civil force that I can raise can protect this property. If you can give me the aid of your military force please inform in writing immediately. Yours respectfully, R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff_. Signed by the sheriff. It was dated the 26th, and the answer of General Brown came two days afterwards, July 28th, and is as follows: [Official Business.] HEADQUARTERS SIXTH DIVISION, NATIONAL GUARD, PENNSYLVANIA. (Copy.) PITTSBURGH, _July 28, 1877_. Hon. R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff Allegheny county, Pennsylvania_: SIR: Yours of date 25th instant came to hand July 26, at 7.20, P.M., in which you request the aid of the National Guard of Pennsylvania to protect the property of the several railroad companies centering in the city of Pittsburgh, now threatened by mobs. You will, wherever there may be any riotous proceedings, bring all the powers with which you are clothed to disperse the rioters. After you have made such effort and are overpowered, your _posse comitatus_ completely driven from the ground, then I am ready and fully able to assist you, and am now ready to assist you, when assured your power is exhausted. Very respectfully, _Joseph Brown_, _Brigadier General commanding Sixth Division N.G.P._ Received July 28, 1877, at 9.30, A.M. I sent a verbal message to ask General Brown whether he thought it was his duty to wait until the _posse comitatus_ was completely driven from the ground. If his duty was merely to bury the dead, we could get somebody to do that as well as him. Q. This is dated the 28th? A. It was after any actual destruction of property, and this railroad property was still held by the rioters, and they wouldn't allow trains to move. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. It was a week after the Saturday? A. It was just a week. The Governor hadn't arrived with his troops, and didn't arrive until some days afterwards--the next week. Q. What troops did General Brown have under his control? A. General Brown had under his control the Fourteenth regiment and the Eighteenth regiment and the Nineteenth regiment, Pennsylvania National Guards, all raised in and about this place. Q. Do you know how many of them were on duty at that time? A. I cannot say how many were on duty, except from what I have heard, but I have heard the number estimated, and I think I have heard military men say some three or four hundred altogether. General Brown's head-quarters was less than one square from the court-house, and we could get no answer from him at all until two days afterwards. He says in his reply he received the communication, twenty minutes past seven, P.M., on the 26th. After waiting two days he replied, and replied in the manner set forth. Q. I wish you to state where Sheriff Fife was on Sunday, during the riot, so far as you know? A. Sheriff Fife was in the city, at home, as I have learned. Q. During the day, Sunday? A. The whole day Sunday. I have never heard he was out of the city at all. Q. Did you see him any time during Sunday in the city? A. I didn't see him any time during the day, but I saw him on Monday, the next day. It was reported that the sheriff had been killed--it was telegraphed all over the country. I saw the sheriff on Monday, was in his company, and in his office. As to the sheriff himself, I may say this about it, that I personally advised the sheriff, when he went up on Saturday, to constitute a deputy to take charge of this force. The sheriff had, three times during the year preceding, been at the point of death with heart disease, and I don't think he was in a fit condition to go at all, but he insisted on going, and did go, both on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I know nothing more, gentlemen, that I can tell you about this. At this point the committee adjourned until three o'clock, this afternoon. AFTERNOON SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, February 20, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee met at three o'clock. All present except Messrs. Means, Reyburn, and Torbert. * * * * * William N. Riddle, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the city of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business? A. Cashier of the Penn Rank. Q. State whether you had any negotiations or any conference with the strikers during the riots of July last, and if so, what it was? A. I had conversations with the strikers on, I think, Friday before the riot, and Sunday of the riot. Q. State what the conference was on Friday--that is, you mean Friday, the 21st of July? A. Friday before the riot. The conversation was at East Liberty, with the strikers. I went there to see about some stock that had been consigned to us. While there, I got in conversation with them. They seemed to demand their rights of the railroad, but they didn't want to inconvenience any stock dealers there, nor anybody else--didn't seem to want to interfere with the business--wanted their rights--seemed peaceable enough to me on Sunday. I suppose the paper that is here--that is what I am to testify--in regard to that, (the paper referred to by the witness is the paper written to W. C. McCarthy, and will be found in the testimony of Doctor Donnelly,) I was requested, I think, by Major McCarthy, after the citizens meeting on Sunday, at the city hall, to go to Twenty-eighth street and see if I could make any arrangements, or see what the feeling was out among the strikers. I went there, and found this man Cunningham--I don't say it was him, it was a man that was pointed out to me as Cunningham. He said he was willing to go down and join Captain McMunn, and help us citizens suppress the mob. Then this paper was to go to the mayor. I met some one on the corner who said he was going there, and he, this man Cunningham said, would deliver the note properly, and he sent this note to the mayor. This man Cunningham said, that he also thought the Pennsylvania railroad had treated them wrong, but that he was very much opposed to the destruction of property, and that he was willing to join with the citizens, and go down and help suppress the mob then going on--I suppose they were at that time. I couldn't state what hour this was. They must have been in and about the Union depot and elevator. Q. Who is the man Cunningham. Do you know about his history? A. I know nothing at all. Never saw him before or since this day. Wouldn't know him now. Q. Was he a railroad man? Q. He was a brakeman or engineer on the railroad--one of the strikers said to be at the meeting at the city hall. I cannot testify that that was the man. Q. This is the note you sent to the mayor after the conversation with Cunningham? A. Yes. Q. Will you read this, so the reporter can take it down? "HONORABLE W. C. MCCARTHY: I have gone to Twenty-sixth street. Cunningham, of the strikers, with Captain McMunn, say they will try to go down at once to new city hall to join you. I will do my best. Tell Doctor Donnelly; and if they come, see that they get instructions." "Instructions" meant--I suppose that means get instruction where to go. Q. Do you know whether this was delivered to the mayor or not? A. That I cannot say. Q. What time did you send this to him? A. That I wouldn't like to say. I suppose it was about four o'clock in the afternoon--Sunday afternoon. Q. Who is Captain McMunn? A. He was also a prominent man among the strikers. He made a speech at the city hall that is recorded. A very good hearted man. I knew him before. Q. What was his situation on the railroad; do you know? A. I don't. Q. Was he in the employ of the railroad company at the time the strike broke out? A. I cannot say that he was then. I was always led to believe he was before. I used to live at the Union depot, and I know most of these people by sight. I have seen him several times, and talked to him on the street since the riot. Q. Do you know whether he is in the employ of the company now or not? A. I don't, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you understand from the conference you had with Cunningham that the strikers would unite with good citizens to suppress the riot and disperse the mob? A. Yes; that some of the strikers would--the ones inclined peaceably? Q. What did Mayor McCarthy say in reply to this note? Did you ever learn? A. I never got an answer. In fact, I don't think I ever asked, because when I came down the people had all gone up to the depot--all that seemed to want to join. In fact I am positive I never said anything about it afterwards. I suppose if they had gone there they would have been assigned to proper places. Q. Were they to act in conjunction with Doctor Donnelly and his armed force? A. Yes; that was the understanding. I think Captain McMunn told me to go to this man Cunningham, and that he would help us. Q. They were to join Doctor Donnelly? A. Yes. Q. Did they ever join Doctor Donnelly? A. That I can't say. I don't know. They might have joined without my knowing it. Q. State, if you know, what efforts were made by the city authorities to get a force to suppress the riot and disperse the mob? A. At what particular time, or do you mean in general? Q. At any time during the riots--during the violence? A. I can tell you very briefly--it would have to be---- Q. Only what you know of your own personal knowledge what effort was made by the mayor and his subordinates to suppress the riots and disperse the mob? A. I only know that in the morning I went to the mayor and asked--early in the morning---- Q. The day it commenced? A. On Saturday. I was in Allegheny that night. I went to the mayor early in the morning, and asked him if there was anything that could be done--asked him if he couldn't get a few extra police by issuing a call for extra police. Q. That is the mayor of Pittsburgh? A. Mayor McCarthy; yes, sir. He said the police committee were then in session up stairs. I asked him if he would allow me to go up, and request them to issue a call and guarantee their payment. He said, I might. I went up and stated the case, and they said to me, that they had authorized the mayor to employ a certain number, which I don't know now, of police. I went to the mayor and asked him if he would--after that there was a meeting at the city hall, pretty shortly after that--I asked the mayor if he could get any extra police. He said, he couldn't get them, he had tried, and couldn't get them. I joined the mayor after that, and went to the city hall meeting. Going down Fifth avenue, I asked the mayor if he was going to make an attempt to get additional police, as he had been authorized by the police committee. He said he was, but who was going to guarantee the payment of this money. I told him we would fix that part of it, if that was all the hang there was to it. We got to the city hall meeting, went on and got partly through. If I remember right, I said I would be one of so many that would pay the police, if he felt backward about employing them. Then I know after that, he made an attempt to get men, and succeeded, I don't how far, but he got a few, at least, later in the day. I asked him if he was going to send out police, and he said he had not been asked to do so. Q. Send them to the scene of the riots? A. Yes; I am a friend of Mayor McCarthy, and I am simply testifying as a citizen. I think there is very much of a mix somewheres--who it belongs to or where it rests--it ought to be placed somewhere. There is a very decided mix. Q. I wish to ask you another question. Do you know what efforts were made by the sheriff and his subordinates or the county authorities to suppress the riot? A. I don't know anything about that, nothing at all except hearsay. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Had you had any talk with Mayor McCarthy before Sunday? A. No, sir; not on this subject. * * * * * Reverend Sylvester F. Scoville, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you at the citizen's meeting on Sunday? A. I arrived just at the close of it. Q. What occurred then? A. I had been appointed a member of the citizens' committee. I went with them to city hall, and from that went in carriages to the mob. Q. Who accompanied you? A. Bishop Tuigg, a father of the catholic church, whose name I have forgotten--Mr. Bennett, I think his name is J. I. Bennett--Mr. J. Parker, junior, and others, whose names I forget at the moment. There were two carriages. Doctor Donnelly, I remember him distinctly, he was there. Our contact with the mob was very brief. Railings were torn from the fence on Liberty street; but we made our way to the end of the platform of the car--the rear platform of the car. One of the gentlemen sought to call the people to order, and introduced Bishop Tuigg, who endeavoured to address them. They listened for a few moments, and then interrupted with questions. After a few moments further they began to throw clinkers or pieces of iron, and we were warned by apparent friends to withdraw, with the words, "It is growing very hot here." Other ineffectual attempts were made to address the meeting. After withdrawing we proceeded to Twenty-sixth street, with a view of meeting the strikers, and attempting to dissociate them from the rioters, with the hope that they would assist in suppressing the riot. It was impossible to find the leaders. One or two, who seemed to have some influence, were finally seen. Then the citizens' committee went to visit the railroad authorities at a private house in Allegheny. Q. What was said to the strikers that you found, and what did the strikers say? A. Those who were found disclaimed any sympathy with the riot, and they were appealed to do what they could to suppress it. Q. Did they seem willing to help in suppressing the arson and riot that was then going on? A. They made no motion in that direction, but there were very few--they were so scattered here and there. So far as I could see, all that was accomplished by that committee was to direct the attention of the few to the efforts that were going on in the city to organize a force. The character of the rioters appeared to me to be such as belonged to people habitually in Pittsburgh. I saw no evidence of their being strangers. Q. What class of people were they? A. By their dress and language, they were laborers. Q. Laborers from the factories, and rolling-mills, &c.? A. I should think so. Yes, sir. Q. Were there no railroad employés that were actually engaged in the arson and burning and riot? A. I recognized none whom I knew as railroad employés, but it was evident that somebody that understood the management of engines were there, and the crowd was not wholly confined to those whose dress looked like laboring men. They seemed to have no wish to injure anything but the railroad, and clamored to know whether any proposition came directly from the chief of the road, Mr. Scott, and when they found no such proposition was to be given to them, they would not listen to any other. Q. What time was it that you visited the scene of the riot? A. From half past two to three. Do you wish to know anything in regard to the interview with the authorities? Q. Yes; I would like to have you relate the interview with the city authorities? A. I mean with the railroad authorities. Q. Relate the interview with the railroad authorities? A. By the time we had arrived at the private house, in Allegheny, the depot was in flames, and I think also the elevator. So that they answered in a word, that all the mischief had been done which they could sustain, and they had no proposition for a compromise to make, and it is just to say, that they would have said the same if they had other interests. They plead also the general interest of the community as a reason for not treating with those in rebellion against the authorities. I know nothing whatever in regard to the conduct of the city authorities, except what could be observed from the outside of the building--the city hall--the new city hall--from five to seven o'clock--the formation of the companies--they went up to the scene of the riot, and their return, which I witnessed, that was all. Q. Companies of citizens? A. Citizens--young men mainly. Mr. McCune, and myself, and some others were with the mayor at the time of the issuance of the first proclamation, reading, I think, in this way: "Veterans, to the rescue. Meet at city hall at ten o'clock," I think, "the citizens will follow you." By Senator Yutzy: Q. Whose proclamation was that? A. Written, I think, by myself, at the instance of the mayor. That was on Monday. There was no citizens' meeting then, that I knew of. This proclamation was designed to meet the necessity which came upon us, through the information of other persons coming from a distance--a boat load down the Monongahela, and the cars full from McKeesport. That was very soon afterward superceded by another notice, and General Negley took the whole charge from that. I was engaged in visiting the wounded. That is all I know in regard to it, except these expressions of opinion I heard here and there. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many were actually engaged in the burning and riot, when you were out at the scene of the riot? A. At the time we were there, before the firing of the depot, the multitude was in an elongated form, stretching up the railway, so that all were not visible at any one point. But those that were visible to us, would number anywhere from two to three hundred who seemed actually participating, while towards the city there was a large crowd. Q. Bystanders and lookers on? A. Yes; many of whom I recognized as our citizens, and persons of standing in the community. Many statements have been made with regard to the ease of checking the multitude at that point, which are certainly hard to prove. No small force could have stopped them at that time--that is, of course, in my judgment. I know very little about such things. Some boys were in the multitude, and several of them evidently under the influence of drink, and fainting from exhaustion and excitement. But the most of them were stalwart men, under most powerful excitement. Q. Under the influence of spirits? A. We could see that only in a few cases, of course, where it come to such evidence that they were overcome by it. It is evident, there were a number of boys who were on the point of falling, from exposure to the sun. Q. Were these two or three hundred that you speak of armed, so far as you could see? A. We saw no arms. The engine that was near us--there seemed to be an effort of some to move it; but, if I understood rightly, those who wished to remove the engine were pulled down from it, and not suffered to move it. Q. Who had called the meeting that appointed you a committee? A. The notice I received and read from the pulpit was signed J. I. Burnett, but his name was crossed out, as though he desired it to be impersonal--written hurriedly on a piece of paper with a pencil. I announced, at the time, that "this notice comes to me without signature, and I am unable to say in whose name it is." Q. Was that read in the pulpit of the churches pretty generally? A. I am not advised as to that. Q. At what hour? A. At the close of the service. Q. Morning service--that would be about twelve o'clock? A. Yes; about twelve o'clock. Q. How large was the gathering of the citizens at the meeting? A. I came just at its close, but I suppose, from the area they occupied in the street, that it was from one hundred and fifty to two hundred. Q. This appointment of this committee was with a view of trying to stop the arson and riot by peaceable measures? A. Conciliation--yes. Our effort with the railroad authorities was based upon previous efforts to dissociate the rioters from the strikers, and remove that cause of complaint, and the only proposition that was made was whether they could make any proposition. Q. Did you report back to the citizens' meeting? A. We started for the citizens' meeting. We arrived shortly before its close, but for what reason, I could not understand, our chairman made no report. Probably because there was nothing to report--nothing that had been done, or could be done. Q. How soon after you came back was it before the citizens began to organize into companies for the purpose of protection? A. Almost within half an hour. While we were standing on the verge of the assembled crowd, they began to form in line, and march to the city hall. I remember the person who headed the column. Q. Were these companies armed that night? A. They were armed when they reached the city hall. Q. With what? A. With muskets, as I understood, taken from the armory of the university, as I was afterwards told, without ammunition. Q. How many citizens were there in arms that night do you think? A. Do you mean at night or at that time? Q. At that time? A. At that time, I saw probably a hundred. Q. Did it increase in number? A. No; it seemed to diminish. Going down to the Duquesne depot, at nine o'clock, I was told that quite a large number had come originally to guard the depot, but all had dispersed, except six. * * * * * Frank Haymaker, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: Examined by Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Part of the time in the city and part of the time at Laurel station, four miles below the city. Q. A deputy of Sheriff Fife's? A. Yes, sir. Q. State whether you accompanied Sheriff Fife to Twenty-eighth street, on the night of Thursday, the 19th of July last, and what took place there? A. On the 18th of the month, I went to the country. On the 19th I got back. I heard they were striking in town here, and there were a good many men got on the cars coming in along, and they were talking considerably about it on the road coming in--talking that they were coming in to take part in the strike. That was on Thursday, the 19th of the month. I noticed men along the road, on the road coming in, and some of them yelled at those parties who got on the train to send them out grub--they had been out for some time, and hadn't had anything to eat. They were out at East Liberty. I came in town. Didn't notice much of a crowd in the city. That was late in the evening, and I went to bed that evening about nine o'clock. I think it was about two o'clock I was wakened by Sheriff Fife himself. He said they wished us to go to Twenty-eighth street. We got in a carriage and went to Mr. Pitcairn's office, and from there we went out to where there was a considerable of a crowd gathered. Q. What occurred there--what was said by the sheriff and done. A. The sheriff talked to them, and he told them what the result of it would be, and they would have to go away. If they did not, he would have to send for the military. He said he would use all the power that he could, but, he said, if they would not disperse he would have to send for the military. They hooted him and hissed him and gave him a great deal of bad language while I was there. I turned around and came back to Pitcairn's office, and he told me he would not need me any longer, I might go home. I went home and went to bed. Q. Did he make any attempt to arrest anybody that night? A. No, sir; not that I know. They were not doing anything at the time we went out there, any more than standing there. Q. Were they interfering with the trains that were passing? A. No, sir. I believe they said, though, that they would not--they were not going to let any more trains go out, or something to that effect. Q. The sheriff made no attempt to disperse the crowd that night, did he? A. No, sir; the two of us--I don't think there was much use of us making any attempt. Q. Did he make any attempt to raise a posse? A. He told me he could not find any other of his deputies--he had sent for several of them, but they were not at home, or something of that kind. He said I was all the one he could find. Q. Did he call upon citizens to go out? A. That night? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; not to my knowledge--he did not. Q. Do you know when he sent to the Governor for troops? A. These men that came for him, told him all they wanted of him, was to go out and make a demand of the crowd to disperse. Q. Who told him that? A. I believe it was Mr. Scott told him that. Q. Did you hear him tell him that? A. Yes, sir; I am not certain it was Mr. Scott, but I think it was. Q. Was it one of the railroad officials? A. It was one of the railroad officials and one of the men that came for the sheriff. Q. When did the sheriff call on the Governor to furnish him with troops? A. That night, sir. Q. After he returned? A. After he returned. Q. And before morning? A. And before morning; yes, sir. Q. State whether you were with him at any other time? A. On Friday I was out--Friday morning--to serve some writs, and didn't get back until pretty late in the morning. When I got in, he told me he wanted me to go along out to Twenty-eighth street. Q. That was the next day? A. Yes; that was on Friday. We two went down to the depot. The militia was gathered there. We stood there several hours. I think he came to the conclusion not to go out on that day. He told us we could go home again--would not go out before the next day. The next day I was out some place attending to some business in my district, and came back. He told me that the rest of the deputies were all out and they wanted men to go to Twenty-eighth street. That was the day before--that was on Friday, I think it was Friday--he attempted to raise a posse, I would not be certain. He said the rest of the deputies were all through town trying to get a posse to go and assist in making arrests, and told me he wanted me to go out and raise all the men I could--if I could find any, to bring them in. I went out and met a good many men that I knew, and some that I was not acquainted with, anymore than I knew their faces, and spoke to them about going out, and none of them would go. Q. Where did you go to raise a posse? A. I went around through the city. Q. On what streets? A. I believe all the time I was on Fifth street. Q. What class of men did you ask to go? A. Just any man at all that I thought there was any show of getting. Q. Did you ask any of the business men? A. I don't remember that I did. Q. Who did you ask--anybody you met in the street? A. Yes, sir. Q. You didn't ask strangers, did you? A. There are a great many men in the city that their faces are familiar, but I don't know their names. Q. Any citizens? A. Yes, sir; any citizens I met. Q. What replies did you get. A. Some of them stated they didn't want to have anything to do with fighting against the workingmen, other men said, damned if they wanted to go out there to get killed, and such replies as that. Q. Did you demand--make a demand on them to go? A. Yes, sir. Q. And they absolutely refused? A. They absolutely refused. Q. What was done with those men that refused? A. I never knew of anything being done to them. Q. Was any report of it made to the court? A. Not that I know of. Q. Nor no arrests made? A. No. Q. State in what way the demand was made? A. Well, sir, I just made a verbal demand. Q. In what words? A. I asked if they would go out, and assist in making arrests at Twenty-eighth street. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you say to any of them that you commanded them as a peace officer--you demanded their assistance as a posse to assist in suppressing the riot? A. No, sir; I believe I didn't. Q. It was a mere request, then, and not a command? A. I suppose it was. Q. And they declined? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you go outside of the city in search of men? A. No, sir. Q. Did you call upon professional men? A. Yes, sir. Q. What class of professional men? A. Attorneys. Q. Did you succeed in getting any? A. They just laughed at me. Q. Did you call on any physicians? A. I believe not. Q. Any dentists? A. Not that I know of. We don't go to that class of men. Q. I believe you cannot state anything but what has already been stated? A. I believe not, sir. I have not heard---- Q. We have had a great many witnesses on that subject? A. I don't think I can enlighten you any on that subject. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. The sheriff issued no proclamation? A. Not that I know of. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did the sheriff go out himself, and command men to join him in putting down the riot? A. I couldn't state that, whether he did or didn't. I was not in the office much. I was away in the morning, and when I came back, he requested me to go out. Q. What were his directions to you? A. His directions were to go out in town, and get all the men I could to assist in making arrests in Twenty-eighth street. He said there was three or four men there they had warrants for, and they expected trouble, and wanted a posse. Q. Didn't tell you to make your demands, or what language to use, nor gave you no written summons. A. Nothing more than what I have told you. * * * * * James H. Fife, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Allegheny City. Q. Brother of Sheriff Fife, of Allegheny county? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you with your brother at any time during the riots of July last? A. I was with him on Saturday. Q. With him on Saturday? A. Yes, sir; went with him from the Union depot up to Twenty-eighth street. Q. What time did you meet him at the Union depot? A. I think about two o'clock, as near as I can recollect. Q. Go on and state what took place from that time on. A. There was considerable delay, at least I thought so, before we made a start to go from the depot to Twenty-eighth street. There appeared to be a delay with the military. They had not all arrived at the one time, and those that had, had to have something to eat, before they were ready to go on. There appeared to be considerable delay. I think it was near four o'clock before a start was made from the depot--somewheres between three and four o'clock. The sheriff and I think seventeen assistants were in advance of the military, and marched up the railroad street in that way. I understood the object that we were taken for was to assist Constable Richardson in making some arrests. I understood that there was an order issued from court to arrest some ten or eleven of the ring-leaders of the strikers, and we were to assist Richardson in making the rescue, and the military, as I understood it at the time, was to protect us. I walked with my brother the greater part of the way. We went two by two, in advance of the military. We reached the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street, and the crowd was so dense it was with difficulty that we could get through it. We worked our way on up to Twenty-eighth street. I stood about the center of the street for a considerable length of time, at Twenty-eighth street, where the railroad crosses. You have heard the statements made in regard to the disposition that was made of the military there, and my own views are just the same. They were put into what is termed a hollow square, and then what followed after that---- Q. Did you find any of the men you went to arrest? A. No, sir; my understanding before we started, and on the way there, and afterwards, was, that Mr. Pitcairn was to point out the men to this Constable Richardson, but I have never seen Mr. Pitcairn but once since, and that was before your honorable body, and I saw no men pointed out. There was no attempt made to arrest that I know of, and I think it was very well that it was so. Q. When you got to a certain point, the crowd resisted your further progress? A. It was an impossibility to get through, that was just about it. They were there in large numbers. In front of us appeared to be one dense mass of people, for a square or more, and on either side. Of course they gave away to the military, to a certain extent, up to Twenty-eighth street, and there the military halted, and appeared not able to go any further. Q. When the hollow square was formed, where was the sheriff's posse? A. The sheriff was just--the last place I saw him was just at what we would call the corner of this hollow square, on the left hand side as you go up. His posse was--the principal part of them--right in front among the crowd--immediately in front. I know that was my position, and there was several others, I noticed, that went with us, that were within a few feet of me at the time the order to charge bayonets was made. I was, perhaps, no further than to that wall, [indicating about fifteen feet,] from where I am sitting to where the charge was made. Q. Was any attack made upon the sheriff's posse? A. None that I know of. I was looking for it; but there was nothing of the kind made. We were distinguished by a badge, so that we could have been known by any person. Q. Did the sheriff say anything to the crowd? A. He tried to; but the noise was so great I don't think he was heard, only by a very few in the immediate neighborhood. Q. What did he say? A. I don't know really what he did say. I could see that he was talking; but I don't know what he did say. He was perhaps twenty (20) feet from me. Q. Was any attack made on the military by the crowd? A. Yes; I presume you gentlemen were up there and can understand me. Just where Twenty-eighth street crosses the railroad there is a road which leads diagonally up the hill to the hospital. Just where that road connects with Twenty-eighth street there was a gate that was hung to close up that road. That gate was swung back, about two parts that way, and here was a pile of stones behind it--between it and this fence. There were two men standing behind that gate, and from the time that these men attempted to make a charge, these men commenced throwing stones at the military. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The stones came from the right and front of the military? A. Yes; and there was quite a number of pieces of coal and other missiles thrown from the front or from this side here. These two men that throwed them were behind this gate. Q. This gate is east of the street, isn't it--Twenty-eighth street? A. East of the street; it is to close that road that runs up the hill to the hospital. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. They commenced throwing when the military got in reach? A. No, sir; not until the time the charge of bayonets was made. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where was it on Twenty-eighth street? A. Just at the edge of it. Q. Just reaching the street? A. Yes, sir. I saw the two soldiers that were struck with missiles. One of them was knocked down. He got up in a minute. When he dropped his cap had dropped off, and when he got up he held his gun in his left hand this way, butt on the street, and he was wiping his face so, [indicating] it was bleeding very profusely. The other one didn't fall; he was struck some place about the shoulder. These are the only two that I saw that I knew to be struck, and it was over in that neighborhood where these two were struck that the firing commenced, the firing was in that direction, over towards the hill. I didn't see any stone thrown immediately in front, but there was coal and other missiles--pieces of sticks and things of that kind. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Have you any new facts to communicate to us that have not been gone through? A. I don't know that I have, unless there will be some question occurring to you. Q. Do you know what efforts were made by the mayor to suppress the riots? A. I know nothing about that, only from hearsay. Q. You live in Allegheny City? A. Yes; I live in Allegheny City. I live on Anderson street--that is, at the far end of the bridge. Q. Was there any riot over there? A. We didn't permit it over there. Q. Was there any strike? A. Yes; there was a strike, and the railroad, as I understood it, and to all appearance, was in the possession of the strikers. There was no destruction of property. Q. How large a crowd of strikers was together at any one time? A. At one time, I suppose, I saw two or three or four hundred together at the outer depot. Q. What day was that? A. That was on Sunday. They didn't appear to destroy any property, everything appeared to be just at a stand-still. There was men standing talking, and didn't appear to molest anybody. Q. What preparations were made by the city authorities of Allegheny City, to protect themselves and to keep down the riot? A. Meetings of the citizens were called at the public square--the mayor's office--and of course there was a great deal of talk like there is at all these kind of meetings, and a good many propositions made, but the one that was adopted, was, that they should organize the citizens into a military force, and did it, so that General Lesieur--General Lesieur was the colonel of the round-head regiment during the late trouble. He is now a practicing physician in Allegheny City. Q. What time was it organized? A. Sunday afternoon or Monday afternoon, the time of the troublest times, anyhow. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Go on? A. To let you know a part of what was done, I live adjacent to the bridge. There was a piece of artillery planted there, and sixteen men, armed with muskets, stood there as a guard for a week, every night, and I was informed it was so down at the other bridges, and the street cars that run over that line, many of them, were stopped just at the end of the bridge, and one of these military would look in to see who was in. There was persons coming, as I understood, from a distance here, roughs and rowdies, &c., and the object was that they shouldn't come in Allegheny City--they had to go back on this side. Q. How long did that crowd continue there at the outer depot--of strikers? A. I don't know the length of time it continued; there was more or less of them there for several days, until the thing got settled. Q. What was done by the mayor and his subordinates prior to the citizens' meeting in Allegheny City--Mayor Philips? A. Well, I don't know precisely what was done, it is only from hearsay, and that, of course, is not evidence. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was this meeting called by the mayor? A. Called by the mayor, as I understood. Q. Organized a force? A. Yes, sir. I don't know the number, but the number is quite small, compared with this city. I saw myself, on Sabbath day, a policeman stop two persons that were carrying stuff away, that afternoon, they had got from some of the cars here. It was plunder. They stopped them and took them with them, I presume to the lock-up. I don't know, but I suppose so. Q. Plunder and all? A. Plunder and all. A question has been raised here frequently about who gave orders to fire up there. I think I was in a position that I would have known. Q. That is, at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes; I heard no order given by any one, and during the time the firing was in progress, I saw a man that was represented, that I understood to be General Brinton, trying, apparently, to stop it. He was using his sword this way, [indicating,] under their guns, to get them to shoot up or quit. That was the idea conveyed to my mind. Q. I would like to ask you another question or two in relation to this citizens' meeting in Allegheny City. Were the people generally in Allegheny City unwilling to respond, or did they willingly respond to the call of the mayor, and organize themselves into a military organization. A. I think so--all that was needed. I think there was no difficulty there. Q. How large was the response--was the meeting in response to the mayor's call? A. This thing of fixing numbers is kind of guess work. I don't know. There was two or three hundred, perhaps, when I saw them. I think, if you would call Mayor Philips, he could give you that perhaps better than I could. Q. Was there anybody who refused, to your knowledge? A. I don't know of a single one that refused in Allegheny City--I don't know of any. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did Mayor Philips take active measures to raise a force for the purpose of preventing or suppressing violence and riot? A. I so understood that he did. Q. He did his duty well? A. I think so; and the evidence of it is, that he had his men at these bridges, guarding them, and keeping them there for a week, a piece of artillery and twelve or sixteen men at every bridge. * * * * * George Olnhausen, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Over on the south side, on Carson street. Q. What is your business? A. Window glass business. Q. Were you a member of any of the military companies? A. Yes; pay-master of the Fourteenth regiment. Q. On the ground or scene of the riots? A. Yes; I was there. Q. What day first? A. It was on Saturday. We started on Friday afternoon, or rather Saturday morning, to go up there, about four or five o'clock. Q. Were you there before the arrival of the Philadelphia troops? A. Yes; we arrived about three or four o'clock. Q. Colonel Gray and the entire Fourteenth regiment? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was he there on Saturday? A. Yes, sir. Q. In command of his regiment? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many men did he have on arrival? A. On arrival we had twenty-seven officers and one hundred and seventy-eight men on Twenty-eighth street. Q. How long were you on duty there before the arrival of General Brinton and his troops. A. I think when we got there it was between four and five o'clock, and stayed there until Brinton came. It was, I think, perhaps two or three o'clock; I think somewheres near that time. Q. Was anything said or done by Colonel Gray about clearing the track before the arrival of General Brinton? A. Yes. In the morning when we first got there there was a little excitement--it didn't amount to really very much, but by ten or eleven or twelve o'clock, one, &c., it got on worse all the time; that is, there was a great many more men got there, and Colonel Gray sent me down--I think it was between two and three o'clock--to give Colonel Hartley Howard his compliments, and said, if they would cooperate with them he would clean that track. Colonel Howard acknowledged the compliments, and said he didn't think it was proper to do that. Q. What regiment did Colonel Gray command? A. The Nineteenth. Q. Where was he stationed then? A. He was laying just about this gate Mr. Fife spoke about here a little while ago. Q. Where abouts was the Fourteenth regiment then? A. Right up on the hill. Q. Commanding the hill? A. Commanding the hill--that is, we were laying there. I went and reported the matter to the colonel, that Colonel Howard didn't think it was justifiable in doing that, and that ended the matter. Q. Which officer was senior in command then, Colonel Gray or Colonel Howard? A. Colonel Gray is senior in command. Colonel Gray sent down that word. I don't suppose that he meant or wanted to shoot or use any extra force, just simply wanted to get them to go away from the track; at least that is my impression. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was the message in the form of an order to Colonel Howard from Colonel Gray? A. No, sir; I don't think it was in the form of an order. Just simply stating, that, if he would cooperate, they would clear the track together. At that time we had four or five companies, and just as soon as one company would march by they would rush in again, and kept on that way all the time, from ten o'clock until the afternoon. It was very annoying, because the men were very nearly played out. Q. You may state what condition Colonel Gray's regiment was in, as to obeying orders, and whether it was disposed to obey orders. A. The majority of the men were. Of course, there were some few that were in sympathy with the strikers. In fact, almost everybody in Pittsburgh was in sympathy with the strikers. Q. How many of Colonel Gray's regiment was in sympathy with the strikers? A. I should judge there would be about thirty-two. Q. That couldn't be depended upon in case of an attack on the mob? A. I suppose there might not have been that many, not quite thirty-two you couldn't depend on, but there was thirty-two missing that night, and I didn't hear of any of them being shot, and I suppose they must have gone away. Q. They skulked, in military parlance? A. Yes; that was generally the case. I would also state, that when we were disbanded at the Union depot we had twenty-eight officers and one hundred and forty-six men. We had one officer more. Q. When were you disbanded? A. It was about eleven o'clock Saturday afternoon. Q. For what purpose--why did you disband? A. So far as I can learn, as General Brinton gave the orders to Colonel Gray, Colonel Gray gave it to the officers and his men, and he disbanded--staff officers. Q. I would like the general to explain what he means by disband. A. He meant that we should go to our homes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Broke ranks for the evening? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you re-assembled the next morning? A. No, sir; we didn't re-assemble the next morning. I was over, and a great many of the other officers were over, to see what we could do, but we didn't re-assemble. Q. To whom did you communicate these facts? A. I communicated them to a number of persons. By Senator Clark: Q. Will you give the names of those persons? A. I want to state this fact right here, that I understand this committee to be appointed for the purpose of investigating this transaction. Now, with all due respect to the committee, my idea is, that the committee is appointed for the purpose of investigating the facts. Q. As a regiment you were not re-organized until Monday morning? A. Yes, sir; a great many of the officers were there, and I suppose a great many of the men. Everything was so exciting we could not get them together. Q. While you were on the hill, during Saturday, did your soldiers mingle among the rioters, or did they preserve order? A. They preserved order. There was a few that would get leave of absence to go down street for something or other--very few. Q. Did they remain in ranks. A. Remained in ranks. Q. You staid there until what hour? A. We all remained there until the Philadelphia regiments were coming up there, and I got instructions from Colonel Grey to have the troops got ready to move. Q. At what time did you abandon the hill? A. I think we received orders to move down there about six o'clock. I guess, perhaps, a little later than that--perhaps a little earlier--I am not positive. We marched down there. Q. Down where? A. Down the hill, on to the railroad track at Twenty-eighth street, and then down to the transfer depot, and stayed there until eleven o'clock, or near eleven--half past ten, anyway. Q. Did you hold your position on the hill until six o'clock---- Senator Yutzy: On Saturday, at the time of the firing? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did the Nineteenth regiment remain on the hill? A. They were laying below us at the gate. Q. Did they hold their position until six o'clock? A. There was some of them did, and some of them did not. Q. How far is the transfer depot from the round-house. A. I think the transfer depot is on Sixteenth street--six or eight blocks. Q. Where were the mob when you marched down to the transfer depot? A. They were mostly all down along the railroad, at Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did you meet with any resistance in marching down? A. No, sir. Q. Where were they when you disbanded, at eleven o'clock? A. They were most everywhere then, because, it seemed to me, that all the workmen from the south side, Allegheny City, Sharpsburg, and all from the country had come in here, and so far as I could learn, they were going to clean out the Philadelphia troops. Q. Had the burning commenced when you disbanded? A. No, sir; not that I know of. When I got home, I could see over that they were burning--that was about twelve o'clock. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Your regiment was resting on the hill, in good order. What position did they have during the day. Were they at rest--stacked arms? A. Yes, sir; stacked arms, and we had a guard there. Q. Your men laid close by the arms? A. Close by the arms. 0. When you broke ranks down by the Union depot, did you have orders to re-assemble at any time? A. No, sir; we did not. Q. Who gave the order to break ranks? A. Colonel Grey gave orders to his regiment. So far as I could learn, General Brown gave him the orders. Q. Did they take their arms to the armory, or did they go away, each one taking his own gun home with him? A. Yes, sir; we were not marched to the armory. Q. Broke ranks right there at the depot? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any mob there at the depot? A. Yes, sir; they were running all up and down the street, yelling and shouting. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was there any effort made by your regiment on the 19th to clear the crossing, or keep it clear that day? A. We were there from three or four o'clock in the morning and until the Philadelphians came in that day, and kept it clear. Q. How happened there to be such a large---- A. That is to say, suppose this was the track. We would go and clear this off, and then they would get in behind us, shouting and howling and cursing. It kept three or four companies going there all day. Q. Did you undertake to hold possession of the crossing of the track any distance there at the crossing, or merely clear it off and fall back? A. Then they would rush in behind us, and we would have to send another company. Q. How happened there to be such a large crowd on the crossing at the time the Philadelphia troops marched up? A. I think our regiment had orders--that is the companies--had orders to fall back and let the Philadelphians in. Our orders were, so far as I can remember, that we were to go on a train, and go out. Q. How long previous to the Philadelphia troops coming up there had you fallen back? A. I suppose it was about a minute. Q. Some testify that the mob was mixed up with the troops there near the crossing, and on the side of the hill? A. They were only mixed up in that way, just as I told you. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The troops were mixed in the crowd? A. Yes; mixing in the crowd. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. How; were they on good terms--the crowd and the troops? A. They didn't say anything. Some of them said they were going to clean out the militia, we didn't take any notice of that at all. Q. No particular hard feeling by the crowd against your troops? A. No, sir. Q. They showed considerable feeling against the Philadelphia troops--it was supposed that they would clear the crossing there. A. They were, of course, from Philadelphia, and they didn't like them--that was about it. Q. Could not the force you had there--these two regiments--could not that crossing there, and the immediate neighborhood, been kept clear entirely by the force you had there? A. I think they could. That is very hard to tell. We didn't know what might have happened. Q. Were the efforts of the officers directed in that way--to keep it clear? A. Yes; of course some of our men were in sympathy with the strikers, but if we were to take away two or three regiments, away to different cities or somewhere out away from Pittsburgh, 1 think they could pretty nearly clean out a city of this size. Q. You don't think they were as firm in their duty as they would have been in some other city? A. Yes. Q. They were a little more tender of the people they were dealing with? A. Yes; they were friends and relatives. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Fraternize with the people--with the crowd? A. I think if you would take the Fourteenth regiment out, in fact, even in another riot, they would do their duty. All of our officers were men in the army during the war except one or two. It is like all these other things that are unexpected, and like in the war at first; they were all demoralized, and didn't stand up as well as they did in the last part of the war. Q. Was the military at any time deployed on the railroad track, and any attempt made to drive them off the track in both directions? A. That was done all the time--they were kept off most of the time. Q. Were the military deployed along the track of the railroad? A. Yes; marched back and forward. Q. Were they stationed with a skirmish line? A. Not that I know of. Q. In your opinion, as a military man, couldn't that mob or crowd have been kept off the track by deploying the men along the track as a skirmish line, or, say two skirmish lines, one on each side of the track? A. No, sir; I don't think it could, unless you did some shooting. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Could it have been done by doing some shooting? A. If they had shot everybody that came they couldn't have got on. Q. Could a skirmish line have maintained its position and kept the crowd back? A. I don't think they could by shooting, for the reason men, women, and children would come in, and they couldn't have kept it clear--not kept the whole track clear. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The reason I asked him that, was that he said the companies marched over on the railroad and they would fall in behind. I want to know if the military had been deployed with two skirmish lines, why they couldn't have kept the crowd away? A. There was too many people. Q. Were the people armed? A. No, sir; not that I saw. They all might have had revolvers and such things as that, but they had no guns. Q. Did all that crowd appear to be violent and riotous, or were there a great many there that were simply there out of curiosity? A. Yes; there was a great many out of curiosity--three or four that were working for me. Q. How many hundred men do you think there were there that were riotous or disposed to be lawless? A. I should judge--of course it is a pretty hard thing to tell--there was a great many, indeed--two thousand, anyhow. Q. What proportion of that crowd were disposed to be riotous or lawless? A. There might have been five hundred in the first place, but after the shooting commenced all were or pretty nearly all. By Mr. Dewees: Q. At any time before the Philadelphia troops came, could you have or could the military have dispersed the mob at any time? A. I think they could, yes. * * * * * James I. Bennett, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside, Mr. Bennett? A. Allegheny city is my residence. Q. Where is your business? A. In Pittsburgh. Q. And what is it? A. Manufacturing of iron nails, &c. Q. Been engaged in the business a long time? A. Twenty years or more. About twenty years. Q. What is your firm name? A. Graff, Bennett & Co. Q. Were you in the city during the riots of July last? A. I was. Q. Just give us a statement of what you saw, the hour and date commencing---- A. I was not in the riots. I was in the city, but I was not up to the depot until Sunday--until Sunday afternoon. I didn't feel very much concerned. Saturday is generally a busy day with us, but Saturday afternoon I became anxious about the matter. I had been accustomed to be in a good many of these quarrels with laboring men, and supposed the thing would be adjusted; but on coming home on Saturday evening, from what I heard, learned of the condition of affairs, I became considerably alarmed and very much concerned. I live down that side of the river at my residence, about three miles. After going home, I hitched up my buggy, and came back to the city. When I came into the city, the crowd was just coming, I think, out of Bowers' store. They had cleaned out a gun store--hardware store, on Third street. The first intimation I had of that was seeing a man with a gun, and I asked him what was going on. I was satisfied that he had no business with the gun. He told me there was a large crowd of men had been into Bowers' store and broken it open and taken all the arms that they could get there, and that they were marching then to the railroad. At one point I turned around my horse and buggy and drove back to Mr. Thaw's house, which is on Fifth street. I went to Mr. Thaw's house and I called him out, and we talked about the matter. Thaw didn't appear to be alarmed; he said he was going to his business. He thought there was no danger. I went up again to Third street and Fifth street, and was satisfied in my mind that there was a great deal of trouble, or was likely to be a great deal, and I went back to Mr. Thaw. He spoke of the military coming in, and he thought there was enough to protect. I advised him not to go up to the offices of the Fort Wayne road at all. I think I went back to Mr. Thaw's house the third time, and he then appeared to be very much more concerned and alarmed this time. I think one of his neighbors came down that had been up there. I left him then, and on my way home, in Allegheny city, I went to Mr. McCullough's house. We sat until perhaps eleven o'clock, talking together. Mr. McCullough at first felt entirely satisfied that the military would be sufficient to prevent any serious damage. I felt very much concerned, and advised him to be very careful and not put himself in the way of danger or any trouble. Q. Who is Mr. McCullough? A. Mr. McCullough is vice president of the Pennsylvania Company. He is managing man of the Pennsylvania Company's lines. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I would like you to state what the Pennsylvania lines were? A. The leased lines west of this. Q. Pennsylvania Central? A. Their offices are altogether; but they are connecting lines. I live in Allegheny city, and I felt concerned---- Q. What is Mr. McCollough's first name? A. J. M. He told me there was a regiment coming up on the line of the road that night, and that there was a sufficient number of troops coming in that would prevent any trouble. He felt secure; but, as I said before, I did not. I told him that there was trouble certain ahead, and I felt very much concerned from what I could learn all around, that there was gathering into our city a very bad set of men, and it was hard to tell what the consequences might be. I left him, and started home about eleven o'clock, or perhaps a little after eleven. I got down to Strawberry lane, which is below the shops of the Fort Wayne road. I drove right into a crowd, I presume, of several thousand persons. I had come up that way that night, and there was no person there. Q. The evening before? A. That same evening. There were no parties there when I came up, and I drove in and called some of them to know what it meant. I was considerably taken aback, coming unexpected into it, and they told me they were waiting for a train of soldiers that were coming up. Three or four came out that knew me, and said, "Don't you go away;" says I, "Why?" Says he, "they have rifle pits just above there, and if the train comes in you will be in the line of their fire," and I was in sight of my house and my family was there, and I could see the situation, and drove rapidly past them, after inquiring what was going on there. When I came to the bridge crossing, perhaps, a quarter of a mile below there, as I drove up there, there appeared to be sentinels stationed along the line of the railroad across this bridge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At what point was this? A. A quarter of a mile below this place where they were waiting. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. On the line of the Fort Wayne and Chicago? A. They were there patrolling the streets with their guns, as orderly as any soldiers. They were all very sober and polite men, nothing like rioters, and ladies from the adjoining neighborhood had come down to the bridge to see--that was the only place they could see anything--and about the time they expected the train in, these men had gone up to them and asked them to retire back behind the hill, lest a stray shot would reach them. There appeared to be a perfect organization. Q. What bridge? A. This was a bridge in Allegheny City, below the outer depot of the Fort Wayne. Q. Bridge across the railroad? A. Bridge across the railroad. There appeared to be an entirely perfect organization on that side of the river. They were armed, and were sober men. Some of them knew me--they all knew me--I could not name a great many of them, but most of them knew me. Q. Were they railroad men--employés? A. There were a great many of them employés. I was told by other persons they were employés. I could not tell certain, but I made an inquiry, and was told that a great many of those men were employés of the railroad company, and this organization appeared to me to be very perfect, and they were very orderly, and appeared to be very systematic. There was no fighting in this tremendous crowd above. The crowd was there, but they were orderly--no quarreling nor fighting going on. Q. Were they all men that were in that crowd? A. No; there was a great many boys, but the most of them were men. I think the great majority of them were men. I stayed there until about twelve o'clock at night, about half past twelve or one, and the report came down about the firing on this side, and the burning of the round-house, and the soldiers having been burned up. We were all very much alarmed. I could do nothing but stay at home, seeing the crowd there, and not knowing what was coming, but in the morning I came to town--on Sunday morning. I stopped in Allegheny, and saw one or two gentlemen, and got them to go over with me. I went to Mr. Barr's office at the _Post_, but he was not there. He had been there, but had gone out to the outer depot of the Pennsylvania railroad. I went around and saw some other parties, and went down to the _Chronicle_ office. Mr. Sieblich was there, and, I think, the _Dispatch_ people. At the office there were posters out, one for a public meeting of the citizens at twelve o'clock--at half past twelve, at the old city hall, notices of which were then sent to the different churches, that there would be a citizens' meeting--to be read from the pulpits in that neighborhood. There was a large number of churches in the neighborhood There were no citizens but what were extremely anxious to do anything and everything they could do, but they appeared to be paralyzed, and did not know what to do. The reports came in that the military had gone, and that the mob had everything in their own hands, and no one appeared to know just how things stood. That meeting came together, and they adjourned to the mayor's office. I understood that there was a reason for that: that the city hall then was used as an armory, and they had adjourned, as they did not think it was prudent to open that. Some gentlemen I was talking to had made a suggestion that we should go and see Bishop Tuigg, and some other parties who would go out, and see what persuasion would do, and there was no man that was more extensively known than Bishop Tuigg. He said he would do so, and they proposed to get another minister that he would nominate himself to go along with him. At our meeting in the mayor's office, the minister of the First church, Mr. Scoville, was at the meeting, and Mr. Scoville accompanied Bishop Tuigg. Mr. Parke and some other gentlemen went up. At this time the fire had got down--it had burned all the way down to the old market-house--that is a few squares above the depot. We went up, and he addressed these people. By Senator Yutzy. Q. Who addressed them? A. Bishop Tuigg. He did everything he could to get these people to desist. I saw a few there that I knew of our own people, and these I do say were not engaged in burning. After that, we went up to try and find the engineers of the railroad--locomotive engineers. We went up to see them. We got some of the citizens to go to their houses and tell them that we would meet them. We went up there, and were not able to meet any, but two or three of them at a time came in, and Mr. Slagle remained there. Bishop Tuigg and the Reverend Scoville and I went over there to Allegheny City to see the officials of the Pennsylvania Company and Pennsylvania railroad. Mr. Cassatt was there, Mr. Thaw, Mr. McCullough, and their solicitor, Senator Scott. We talked with them upon the subject, but previous to that I had gone down to the Monongahela house, and had met Mr. Cassatt there, and I think Mr. Quay, and a number of gentlemen that were there. I took him in my buggy and took him across to Allegheny City. Q. Mr. Cassatt? A. And left him there with the other gentlemen connected with the railroad. Q. What is Mr. Thaw's first name? A. William Thaw. Q. What is his official position? A. He is also connected with the Pennsylvania Company, in charge of the leased lines of the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. In what capacity? A. I think he is vice president. Q. Mr. Cassatt is connected with what road? A. Connected with the Pennsylvania Central. Q. And Mr. Thaw with the Pennsylvania? A. Mr. Thaw with the Pennsylvania. Mr. Cassatt was at the Monongahela house, and these gentlemen had connection with the two roads running together. He said he would like to go over. I said I would take him over, and took him in my open buggy, which he did not appear to relish very well just at that moment, but really there was no danger. I went down and crossed the lower bridge, and over into the street where Mr. Layng is living. I do not think we saw fifty people. The people had gone up to the fire. Allegheny City was at that time as quiet as it is on any Sabbath day, outside of the immediate neighborhood of the depot. I met no person on Sunday who was not just as anxious as they could be to do anything and everything they could to put down the rebellion, as I called it, for as I have said, I never could recognize it as a riot or anything else than an uprising of the people. On our own side of the river it was comparative quietness, but these men were settled on having their own way. If they had not commenced it before, it was not likely that they could organize as quickly and as thoroughly as they had done. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the result of the interview with Cassatt and McCullough and Thaw? A. I think Bishop Tuigg asked them to make some concessions to those parties, which they declined to make. I think the bishop's idea was to have some little concession made, and the difficulty might be adjusted as between the men and them. That was declined on their part. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What reason did they give? A. The reason, so far as I understood it at the time it was given, was this: That they would not make any arrangement with men that were in open rebellion against law, and everything of that kind--could not recognize anything of that kind. Q. What did your committee do then? A. We came back to the city again, and there was a meeting in the afternoon, and I was at the mayor's office again in the afternoon. The mayor appeared to be entirely powerless. He had no police to do anything with, that amounted to anything. After that we then went to work and organized a citizens' meeting, which was perfected on the next Monday morning, and everything was done by those men that could be done. I do not think I ever saw men work more earnestly in trying to protect the city, and railroad, and everything else. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. At whose instance was the citizens' meeting organized--who were the movers in it? A. The first I recollect of it was the bulletin boards that were put out on Sunday--that was as soon as the citizens could be got together. Q. What bulletin boards? A. The bulletin boards of the _Post_, and, I think, the _Dispatch_, the _Commercial_ and _Gazette_, and I think the _Chronicle_ and _Leader_. They are nearly all in that neighborhood. I think Mr. Barr was at the organization of the meeting. He was at the meeting they had on Sunday and Monday morning. The citizens were called together again and adjourned until Monday morning. There were a good many of our leading manufacturers that were out of the city, their families were out in the country, and they had gone out on Saturday. Q. How long did that crowd you speak of in Allegheny City, that you ran into on Saturday nights--how long had that crowd remained in force there? A. They were there I think nearly all that night. They were away the next morning. When I came up the next morning they were not there, that is, there was no crowd in comparison to what had been there--perhaps not more than usual there. Q. There were some there? A. There were some few that were there. They had possession then of the trains. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The strikers had? A. The strikers had possession of the trains on Sunday morning. They were in possession there at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many were engaged in actual riot and arson out at Twenty-eighth street, when you were there with the bishop? A. I do not think it was so far as Twenty-eighth street--it was within a few squares of the depot. It would be impossible for any one to say how many were actually engaged in it, but the whole railway connection, so far as you could see, was filled with people on both sides of it--the street on both sides of the railway track. The number that was engaged in it appeared to be but few compared with the great crowd that was there--very few. Q. What class was the crowd that was there composed of? A. The citizens you speak of along the street? Q. Yes? A. There appeared to be a general outpouring from the entire city--every person. They were attracted there from every place. Q. By curiosity? A. Yes, sir. Q. They were lookers-on? A. They were lookers-on. Q. Was there a crowd of sympathizers around, immediately around these parties that were engaged in actual riot and arson? A. There were some that were sympathizers, but so far as my own knowledge went, men of any standing expressed no sympathy with them. A great many of the workingmen felt that the railroad was oppressing these men, and they were in sympathy with them--that is not taking any part in it. There were a great many of our laboring men that were there in their Sunday clothes that were taking no part, but walking around, and a great many of them absolutely appeared to me to be alarmed and frightened. That paralyzed them--not doing anything. I begged of the men, for their own sakes, to try and stop that, and they felt as though their lives were at stake in doing it. They were afraid to say a word; did not know who was their friend or enemy. The men appeared to be going on in a quiet way without saying much to anybody, except this crowd that was before us--we were right in the immediate neighborhood of the burning--as rough a looking set of characters as I ever saw. I have no desire to get amongst such a crowd again very soon. Q. Were these men laborers or men that you had ever seen in and about Pittsburgh? A. I could not say that any I saw in the burning were men I ever saw before--could not say that they were men I ever saw before. Q. Could you tell from their dress what class of people they were? A. It would be very hard to tell that. I saw a great many of our own men walking around looking on that were employed with us at our mills. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have you an extensive acquaintance with the laboring men? A. I know a great many of them by sight, and where they work. At the two mills were employed six or seven hundred men, one way or another; and back and forwards I have become quite familiar with them, without knowing their names. Indeed, all the laboring men about the mills, as a general rule they know me by sight, and I know a great many that have worked with us, that are not working with us now, among the better class of mill men and laboring men about the mills. I do not think they were engaged. We have some men engaged with us that are very bad men. Q. What was it that alarmed you on Saturday and made you apprehensive of the future on Saturday afternoon? A. What alarmed me first was this, when I began to make an inquiry--that our mills all stopped on Saturday from eleven to twelve o'clock, and the men about the mills had from one to two o'clock. They usually dressed, and generally we see them about in the city, and they are free from any employment. You can imagine the number of laboring men there are about the city; and that, as a rule, would apply to nearly all branches of manufacture. Q. From your knowledge of the city and manufacturing establishments, give us an estimate of the number of laborers that would be out of employment and at leisure on Saturday afternoon. A. I could not give you an estimate. I should say you could count it at thousands, though--thousands of men that would be unemployed at that time. Q. Have you any idea of the number of thousands of laborers employed in and about Pittsburgh? A. I could not give any correct estimate of that. Q. Have you had experience before with strikers? Has there been strikes? A. I have had a great deal to do with them at one time and another in our own business--men that we had employed ourselves. Q. Is it a thing of very frequent occurrence--strikes among laboring men? A. It is a common thing, but not so very frequent, these large strikes--what we would call large strikes, where the mill hands in all the mills strike. We frequently have difficulties of that kind in our own mill when it does not occur in any others--upon a particular branch of the business; something of that kind. We have had a number of very large strikes here in the city where all the rolling mills were stopped at one time. Q. And it was your experience with the strikes, and knowing the number of men that would be idle Saturday afternoon, that made you apprehensive of the result? A. That made me apprehensive; because these men were idle. They were all idle, and a great many of them are men. For instance, to explain more fully to you: A man comes along and he wants labor. We have our labor bosses. We do not inquire into his character, or anything else. If we need a man badly we put him in. He may be one of the worst men possible, and we may have quite a number of these men about our mills without knowing it. Tramps may come into our town, and if it is a time that labor is a little scarce, we might have fifty of them about us without knowing it--if they behave themselves just whilst they are employed. Bad men may come in and settle down upon us in that way. Q. Had you been up at the scene of the riot before Sunday? A. No, sir; I had not been there before that. Q. Did you at any time during the riot have any talk with the rioters themselves, or the railroad employés, to ascertain their grievances, or the causes of the strike? A. Not on the Pennsylvania railroad; but I did on the other side of the river, with them over there. Q. Go on and give us the facts. A. I had on the Fort Wayne and Chicago. I was among these men at the shops. I went over there one night or two in the shops with those men, talking to them, and they claimed that the railroad company had ground them down; that their wages were such that they could not live. That was their real grievance, and they wanted their wages restored. And they complained of a large portion of the men unnecessarily being thrown out of employment by doubling up the trains. That was the complaint. They had their unions--there are unions existing among the laboring men in our mills. Puddlers have their unions, and we have what is called "The Amalgamated Iron Works Union," which embraces nearly all. The railroad employés had their unions. These unions are all in sympathy with each other, and as a rule, will aid each other. There would be a sympathy existing among these men of all classes, for they felt that they were oppressed by the railroad company; and, as I say, they had the sympathy of the other workingmen of nearly every class--there can be no question of that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Are these unions secret organizations? A. Yes, sir; I think they are all secret organizations. I have never known any that were not secret organizations. I was there with them, and after some time Mr. McCullough--I don't recollect what day it was--I was with Mr. McCullough, at his office, to get information. Telegraphs were coming there, and I went there to get the news--to see what was going on along the road. Mr. McCullough had not seen any of the men of his own road. I got a gentleman to go and see them and tell them that I thought there should be an interview between them and Mr. McCullough, and I arranged that interview. I think there was one engineer, a fireman, a brakeman, and a conductor--there were four, and they agreed to meet Mr. McCullough, and I went with them and made the arrangement to meet at B. F. Jones' house in Allegheny City. Mr. McCullough came there and met them, and Mr. Layng also. They had a conversation there. Q. Give us the summary of that conversation? A. They stated to Mr. McCullough what the grievances were with regard to what the hands wanted. A portion of them denied that they had anything to do with the strike. Q. That was after the Sunday? A. This was after the Sunday of the burning. Mr. McCullough talked with them, and the interview was a very pleasant one. Mr. McCullough said he would do all that he could to have everything made right and satisfactory to them whenever the property was once placed in their hands, but whilst they stood out and kept them from their property he could not do anything at all. I told these men--I said to them afterwards that Mr. McCullough was right in his position; that they were in violation of law, and they claimed they were there, and they were not interfering with anybody nor anything, nor had they purposed to interfere with anybody. I told them that their simple presence was enough to show that they were in sympathy with these people. They might almost as well be guilty as to be doing what they were doing. I went down and talked to a number of the engineers with regard to the matter. As a rule, they were vary reticent and very careful about giving any expression at all. Q. Did they claim a right to stop trains--interfere with trains? A. Of course, they didn't to me. They were men of too good sense. They denied having anything to do with it. It was always somebody else. As I said, they were there giving countenance. Q. How did these people define a strike? A. They said this was not a strike of the engineers. This was a strike of the firemen--the firemen and brakemen, I believe. They threw it on them. I thought things were settled, and they were going to work. I came up and said, "Boys, how is it, I thought you were going to work" They said they were going to have a meeting, and asked me to go with them. I said I would go. They said they were going to have it then. I went down to the meeting in the Odd Fellows' Hall, and went in with them, and was there, and they denied that it was them solely. They said the engineers had as much to do with it as they had--just the same--and that they were encouraging them. I stated to them, then, that I would do all I could to have their pay made right, but there was only one way to do it, that I could see, and that was to report themselves ready for work, and take their positions, and after the road was once running, and in order, then the citizens would see to it that their case was properly represented, and that they would be more likely to get their rights in that way than in any other. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At this time they had possession of the railroad property? A. They disclaimed having possession of the property. They would not admit that fact. They appeared to understand that that was in violation of the law. Q. Was that the fact? A. This was the fact--there was no doubt of that. You could not get any of them to admit it, though. Q. Did they understand that they had no right to interfere with the running of trains, or with any other employé who desired to work? A. They denied interfering with any employé. There never was a man yet that said he interfered with any one--never got an admission of that kind from any one. They said if a man wanted to go to work, there was his engine. At the same time, Mr. Layng, superintendent of the road, whilst he was but a few squares from the depot, I think he didn't care about going over to the railroad at that time, I met them the same day, and they went and reported themselves to the officers at the outer depot, and went to work. Q. From the interviews that you had with the railroad employés, what did you gather as being the cause--the real cause of the strike? A. From all I could gather from the employés in one way or another, my impression is that it was an organization. That perhaps the strike was a little sooner than was intended. It was a regular organization, intending to make a general strike throughout the whole country at the same time, and it was not the intention to be commenced at Pittsburgh. I think it was all over our country. We might call it an insurrection of these people to take possession and enforce their demands on the people. They then knew that the other labor organizations were in sympathy with them. Q. What led you to that conclusion? A. From the fact that these uprisings at Fort Wayne and Chicago and St. Louis, and on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio and Altoona and Harrisburg and Philadelphia. If it had been of an ordinary character, it would have had no influence, except where it originated. Q. Did you ascertain from the men that there was any communication between the rioters here and the rioters at the other places you have mentioned? A. I think one told me that they were in possession of the telegraph lines, and knew all that was going on, and one stated to me at one time something like this: He says, "We knew what was going on, because one of the men with us is an operator, who stood outside of the window, and he could hear the instrument and could tell us what was going over the line." I think they had possession of the telegraph line, and a good many were operators. Q. He told you they knew what was going on--that was between the authorities, &c., in reference to the matter; but did he say that they had any communication through the rioters themselves by telegraph? A. No; I do not know that any one admitted anything of the kind. They were very careful in making any admissions. These men you will find, so far as the law was concerned, they really understood that as well as any other class of men, where they are liable and where they are not. Q. The strikes at Fort Wayne and Chicago and Altoona and Philadelphia that you have mentioned, were not until after the strike here--were they? A. I think it was almost simultaneous--it was very nearly the same time--on the Sunday following right along--immediately on the heels of it, and I should think it was all during two or three days. Q. Do you know what days the strike was at its height in Chicago? A. No. Q. Nor Fort Wayne? A. I have no recollection now of just when this was, for I took no note of that. Q. Nor in Philadelphia? A. Nor in Philadelphia. I think it was unfortunate that they attempted to start these trains out--these double-headers here on Saturday. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Why? A. Because there were so many men loose--the laboring men of our town--you may say that certainly four fifths of the laboring men were unemployed after twelve or one o'clock, and that is the best reason I could give you for it. If I was going to do anything to a crowd, I should have postponed it until these men were at work. I think it was unfortunate, because, as I stated before, we all knew of the existence of these organizations, and we knew that these men that were in these organizations were all in sympathy, the one with the other. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was the fact that there would be so large a number of unemployed men on Saturday afternoon, known to the railroad officers? A. I do not know that of my own knowledge. Mr. James Park, I think, told me that he had remonstrated with some of the railroad officials--I think he had spoken to Mr. Cassatt on the subject. Q. Did you have any conversation? A. I had no conversation on the subject, because I was engaged and busy on Saturday, and was not alarmed in regard to this. Mr. Park's manufacturing establishment was in the immediate vicinity of the trouble, and you might say he was in it. He was located right in it, and he was there, and I think what I say in regard to that, will be the testimony of every manufacturer in the city. I believe if the thing had been left until Monday or Tuesday, that the probabilities are that men would be generally about their employment at one thing or another, that there might have been no burning here at all. We might have had trouble and loss of life, and things of that kind. Why I say I think there was an organization, when I went home on Saturday night, coming up after dark, they were expecting this train in. These men certainly knew that train was coming with soldiers, and they were prepared to meet them. They were orderly--a quarter of a mile below, at the bridge--there appeared to be entirely too much order for a riot. When there is a riot, they generally do things up very quickly, without regard to who is in the way. These men were orderly and systematic. By Senator Yutzy: Q. This train you speak of--was that train from Erie? A. I think that was the Erie train. Mr. McCullough told me he expected that train in. I was informed that they had no ammunition or anything of that kind. Q. These men you conversed with gave as a reason for their strike that the wages were so low they could not live? A. That was the general complaint. Q. Do you know what they were actually getting? A. I did know, and I had it from the railroad officials--I had it from them, but I have forgotten what it was. Q. Were any of them getting less than a dollar a day--trainmen? A. I think they were paid by the trip, but I do not recollect that any of them were getting less than that. I would not speak positively in regard to that. It may be possible. I have a memorandum of that in my pocket-book. I never expected to be called before a committee, or I would have saved some of these things that I had. It may be I have something here that will enable me to answer that question. Q. If you find it hereafter you can send it to us, and we can attach it to your testimony. A. It was a copy of a telegraph--you asked me a question; it would have answered it. It was a copy of a telegraph I had sent to Mr. McCullough on the subject, and his reply to it, but I think that, supposing that the thing was ended, my impression is that I have destroyed it. Q. Have you anything else to communicate, Mr. Bennett? A. Nothing; but I would bear testimony to the fact that the citizens of Pittsburgh appeared to be anxious to do everything they could to put down this riot, and there was no sympathy with the rioters--none whatever. Q. You had a good deal to do in raising the force of citizens to put down the riot? A. I had, perhaps. The first move, I told you, was on Sunday. A good many of my most intimate acquaintances were among the rolling mills, and quite a large number of them were out of the city. I sent for Mr. Park. Q. Did you meet with any opposition in your efforts to raise the men? A. Not a single instance. Upon the contrary, every man I saw was anxious to do anything, and were willing and did go up there at the risk of their lives, to do everything they could do, and no man I met anywhere at all, among my own acquaintances, but what were ready to do anything they would deem in reason, to try to stop it; and I think it was stopped by the citizens at last. I was not present, but from what I heard afterwards, the citizens prevented the burning of the Fort Wayne depot. Q. Was there any move by the citizens prior to Sunday morning? A. Not that I know of. I have no knowledge of any--no recollection of any now. It was early Sunday morning that they set fire to things in the first place, and the citizens appeared to be completely paralyzed. I saw men coming along, carrying provisions, bacon, hams, and articles that they had taken from the cars they had broken open--carrying them away back two or three miles into the country, and I saw them walking along the streets, and it appeared to me that people were afraid to say a word to them. They were alarmed--they did not know what to make of it. It appeared to come upon them like a clap of thunder--they were unprepared for it in any way. I never saw men labor more earnestly, and labor harder to try to do their whole duty than that citizens' committee did. It was through their individual efforts that there was an additional police, and it was by private subscription to pay these men, that they were put upon the force. Our city was in a helpless condition, and these bad men, of which we have a large number around the city--they knew exactly what the police force was, better than we did. Q. Did you know the police force had been reduced in the city, and, if so, when were you informed of that fact? A. I had no knowledge that our city was in so helpless a condition. I was amazed when I heard it. Q. Was it known to the business men--I mean generally--that your city was in such a condition, in regard to the police force? A. I do not think they generally understood the matter. They might have been under the impression that there was a reduction of police, but so few---- Q. Was it the subject of conversation when it became known? A. Of course it was, and the very moment it was discovered, they sought to apply the remedy by making contributions of money themselves, to have the force put on, and agreeing to pay for it. Q. Did you have any talk with the mayor yourself in relation to that subject? A. 1 did, at his office. He told me then that he had no power to do anything, but expressed a willingness and a desire to do anything he could, and I do not think that any suggestion I made to him, he ever refused to do anything it was in his power to do. Q. What day was that? A. I had a conversation with him on Sunday, and again on Monday, and as I met him at different times, I would have a talk with the mayor. Q. Was it known to you that the mayor had full authority and control over the police, to increase the number of police, or to call out--was it known to you that he had the same authority that the sheriff had in calling out the police? A. No, sir; it was not. Q. Did he make any proclamation calling for police? A. He made some proclamation. I cannot tell you what it was--do not recollect what it was. Q. Did you ever examine to see what powers are given to the mayor by your city charter? A. I did not in regard to Allegheny City. After Sunday, I was more with Mayor Phillips, and more on that side than I was on this. I believe Colonel Scott telegraphed to me himself, and said that they would commence laying the tracks, if their men would be protected, and I went to Mr. Shinn and got him to send an answer to him that they would be, and I would lay the matter before the committee the next morning. Immediately on the committee convening, I brought the matter before them, and the committee answered Colonel Scott that they would be protected. I went out of the committee myself, and started up to meet Mr. Pitcairn at the office of Mr. Layng, and stated to Mr. Layng in regard to that telegram, and my own impression that they should put the men on to work to feel their way, and if they were interfered with to withdraw them, that I believed that before night would come that they would have more men than they would know what to do with, and that was the result. I spoke of being out on Sunday and not seeing any of the officials of the railroad at all. I think they did right. I do not think it would have been prudent for them to be there. I advised those I knew to keep away. You could not tell to what extent this excitement would lead a man, nor you could not tell how bad men were. They might have been seriously injured, if not killed, if any one of them had gone into a crowd of that kind. Q. Would the presence of the railroad officials have tended to exasperate the crowd, do you think? A. Yes, sir. I don't think it would have been safe for them to have been there. I think it would have exasperated them. Q. Where was Adjutant Latta during the day--Sunday? A. I think he was at the Monongahela house, with Cassatt--I think he was there. Q. Until what hour? A. I was introduced to him when I took Mr. Cassatt across to Allegheny City. It must have been between eleven and twelve o'clock. I left him there, and I was not back to the Monongahela house after that. I learned they had gone down the river to Beaver. I think General Latta was along. There was a number of gentlemen there. Mr. Cassatt was anxious in regard to the soldiers that they had. I did not know the condition of them, nor did he--how these men that had come from Philadelphia were. He appeared to be under the impression that they had got out, and had neither provision nor ammunition, and I said that I could fix a way that they could have the supplies--that there were parties in Allegheny who would attend to that. I went down on Monday to Mr. Ray, and he sent them out provisions, and told me afterwards that they had removed their head-quarters, and he had followed them up to Blairsville, and had delivered them cooked provisions. Q. Who is Mr. Ray? A. He is a grocer on Liberty street. Q. In Allegheny City? A. No, sir; Pittsburgh. Q. Would it have been prudent for the Adjutant General to have remained in the city during the day, Sunday? A. To have gone into the crowd? Q. Yes; or remained in the city? A. I do not think there would have been a hair of his head harmed. Q. Would it have been prudent for the other State officials? A. If they had remained at the Monongahela house they would not have been disturbed. Q. If the Adjutant General had gone to the scene of the riot, would he have been disturbed? A. I think there would have been danger. Any man went in at the peril of his life--any officer went in single-handed, alone. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You have a very extensive knowledge of what transpired here during the riots. I want to know whether, in your opinion, there was a disposition on the part of the city and county authorities to protect property and to suppress the riot. If so, could they have done so? A. I have not any doubt in my own mind, but the---- Q. Not the citizens. I am speaking of the city and county officials? A. In regard to the county officials, I was not with them. So far as my knowledge goes, I was acquainted, at the time, from talking as I would with Mr. Barr, or Slagle, or any of the gentlemen, and I believe they were all anxious to try to prevent any loss of life or property, and do all that was in their power. Q. And could they have done so, if they had made a vigorous effort to do so--protect the property and prevent the lawlessness? A. After the riot got started they could not have done it. If we had the full force we would have only had about two hundred policemen, and they would not have been able to have done very much, and the sheriff could not have done very much by calling upon the people and telling them that he wanted them to stop. Nothing but imperiling their lives. They would keep away from him. I do not think he had much chance of doing anything. Q. It is only a matter of opinion? A. You could readily understand that those men, with the force that they could command, would be small in comparison. After the firing I have no doubt the report that there was ten or twenty killed, where there was one, did create a fearful excitement, and I do not think any sheriff of any county could have done anything at all that would have stopped it, after it had once got started as it had on Sunday morning. By Mr. Englebert: Q. Did you take any active steps prior to Saturday evening? A. No, sir; I did not really feel very uneasy about the matter until Saturday afternoon, when I learned--I was not taking much interest in the matter, and I got very much this way--the railroad people, this was a matter they were tending to, but that there was going to be any riot--there might be some quarreling, fighting, or something of that kind, but I didn't expect there was going to be anything of the magnitude it was. On Saturday, I felt concerned about the matter, and the reason for being concerned was, that I knew that the manufacturing establishments were idle, and the men were off work, and that they were there, and if you have had anything to do with iron men, you know they are a class of men who are easily excited. Q. You, as a business man, would have closed up all business at that time, under this state of excitement? A. As a business man, when I found it was necessary to get the military in there, I would not have undertaken to have done that on Saturday afternoon. I would have waited until the men were employed on Monday, or Tuesday, and then there would not be the danger that there was in doing it on Saturday. Q. The majority of men being off, of course there was great travel on the streets? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You felt satisfied and easy that there would not be any disturbance up to Saturday--why did you feel easy and satisfied that there would be no trouble up to Saturday? A. I understood that the military were here, and that would intimidate them. I was tending to my own business, and really. I had not gone out at all to see what was going on on the railroad, although we have a mill opposite, within a mile, perhaps, of the outer depot, across the river, and I came back and forward and everything was quiet; but when I heard of the loss of life and of the firing, which, I think took place on Saturday, and the men coming across and going into the gun shops in the town, breaking them open and destroying them, then I felt that there was danger, because there is this fact: there is a large number of men that were through the war that are not afraid as those who have never smelled powder--they are not very much afraid of it, and they are brave men, and if you understood that there is danger, they say "we know," and you cannot do anything with them. The idea was this: The first I heard of it that they had shot into a crowd, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately. These men are men who are ready to believe anything of the kind, and they will believe what is said among themselves quicker than they would from you or me or anybody else on the outside. They were excited and exasperated, and then you cannot control them, but the men about our mills are not bad men, all of them. We have bad men there and they will get into the mills, but I do not think there is a better class of men anywhere than in Pittsburgh. My own theory is, that these tramps along the line of the railroad had a knowledge of this strike, and might have been congregating in here for two weeks, and these men are always ready to apply the torch at any moment. They came in here and got into it. I think a great many of the railroad men had nothing to do, and had no idea whatever of getting anything but their wages--no idea of any loss of life or destruction of property; but when they got in there they had no control of this thing, and they did not know themselves whether the men that had been in the lodge room, perhaps, were with them or against them. The people were paralyzed at the magnitude of this thing. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You have a general acquaintance and knowledge of the manufacturing interests of this State. Is there a larger proportion of employés in the manufactories and mining in this vicinity than there is elsewhere in this State? A. I think there is; I am not familiar with any place where the proportion is so large as it is just here in our city. * * * * * J. Howard Logan being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you live? A. Lincoln avenue, Allegheny. Q. What is your occupation? A. 1 have a foundry in New Brighton. Doing business in Pittsburgh. Q. State whether you were with Doctor Donnelly on Sunday, the 22d of July? A. I went to the meeting at the old city hall, in Market street, four o'clock, Sunday afternoon, and joined the citizens' organization to go up and stop the riot and firing. We had great trouble getting arms. At first we went to the university, and failed to get them there. Then went down and got pick-handles from a hardware store on Wood street. After that we were marched up to the university again, but failed to get them, and from there we went to one of the armories of the Fourteenth regiment or Nineteenth, and failed to get any arms there. We marched back again to the university, and we got some old rusty muskets, with bayonets. There were plenty of men willing to go; but being marched around from one place to another they dropped off. We got these old muskets, and had about a hundred. We marched down to the mayor's office, and from there we went up Liberty street to Wood, right into the midst of the crowd, and attempted to form a line right across Liberty street, at the edge of the crowd; but we were surrounded, individually, and failed to do that. Doctor Donnelly, who was leading, seemed to have lost control of the men, and seemed to be very much excited. We stayed there about ten minutes without accomplishing anything, except having pistols at our heads all around, and nothing to defend ourselves with but these rusty muskets. Q. Without any ammunition? A. Without any ammunition or anything else. Probably one or two of the party, or a few of them, had revolvers, but the majority of us had not. Q. What did you do then? A. We got started, and about half of the company went out, and the balance of us turned around and came out then, feeling that we were whipped. Q. Then you had not the means to cope--arms or weapons to cope with the crowd? A. No, sir. There were a number lost their muskets in wrestling with the crowd, but they were willing to fight or do anything to hold on to them, but we were powerless because we had nothing to defend ourselves with. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were the muskets wrenched from their hands? A. In some cases they were. Q. Did your men fight them, or use the bayonet? A. Didn't use the bayonets. We held on to them, and pulled them away. It was very fortunate for us that there were no pistol shots fired, or we would all have been cut to pieces, because all the crowd were armed, and we were not. Q. If you had had a bold, deliberate leader, and been well armed, could you have accomplished anything in the way of driving away the crowd? A. We might have done something just at that place, but we did not have more than enough to protect that one spot which we were at. Q. Where was that? A. That was on Liberty street, just in front of the elevator. Q. In front of the elevator? A. Yes; down from the elevator. Q. What time was it? A. About six o'clock. Q. Sunday evening? A. Between five and six. Q. Was there any trouble in raising a company of citizens at that time? A. No, sir; there were more than we had arms for--more ready to go than we could get muskets for, and some, when we could get these imperfect muskets, were afraid to go into the crowd with them. When we came down from there we deposited what arms we had in the mayor's office, in charge of a policeman there, and some of them scattered and went to the depot--the Duquesne depot--and others to the depots or upon the street, individually. Q. What did you do Sunday night yourself? A. I went over to Allegheny; found the citizens were organizing there and about starting out to guard the bridges. I went with a party to the railroad bridge and was there that night. I had a revolver with me then. Q. The railroad bridge? A. The railroad bridge across the Allegheny river at the Fort Wayne road. Q. Was that well guarded by citizens? A. There was about fifteen or twenty, armed with muskets and revolvers. Q. What class of citizens? A. There were several policemen and some officers and men from Allegheny. Q. Were you molested during the night? A. No, sir; the orders were from the mayor to stop every person coming over that bridge, and let no one pass. We turned a great many men coming over there--we turned them back, and made them go around to the other bridges. Q. Allowed nobody to pass? A. Allowed no person except a few whom the policemen recognized as living right near there, and were respectable people. Any person we didn't know we made them go back. * * * * * James I. Bennett, being recalled, testified as follows: The Witness. Our city is surrounded by large mining interests, in which thousands of men are engaged, and they come in on the trains Saturday to do their marketing and other trading. When we learned of all this thing--of what was going on Sunday--they came in a distance of four or five or six miles, and perhaps there might have been thousands of these men that came in on Sunday and on Monday. The works were nearly all stopped, and these men were flowing in here in any number, and I think only for the organization that the citizens had themselves perfected on Monday, that I do not know what the consequences might have been later in the week, but they saw that there was a preparation to meet them, and the thing was stopped. At this point the committee adjourned until to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock. PITTSBURGH, _Thursday, February 21, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at ten o'clock, A.M., Mr. Lindsey in the chair, and continued the taking of testimony. All members present except Senator Reyburn. * * * * * John H. Webster, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Twenty-fourth ward, south side. Q. What is your business? A. Machinist. Q. What firm are you at work for--Jones & Laughlin? A. American Iron Works. Q. Were you at work for them last July? A. I have worked for them for over twelve years. Q. Were you at the scene of the riots, near the Union depot, on Saturday? A. No, sir. Q. Were you on Saturday night? A. No, sir. Q. Were you on Sunday? A. I was on a hill immediately above. Q. On Sunday? A. Yes; got there about ten o'clock. I suppose it was somewhere in the neighborhood of ten o'clock. Q. That was your first appearance in the vicinity of the riots? A. First appearance. Q. How large a crowd was there, when you got there Sunday? A. There was an immense crowd. Q. Of what class of people was the crowd composed principally? A. All classes. Q. Were there railroad employés there? A. I couldn't say whether there was or not. Q. Were there mill men and factory men and employés in the shops about Pittsburgh there? A. Not that I seen of upon the hill where I was. I don't know what was done on the track, I was away up top of the hill. Q. How long did you remain up at the top of the hill? A. I followed the firing down until the Union depot got fired, then it got too warm for me, and I came away. Q. Were you down near the track when you followed the firing along? A. I was up on the hill. Q. Were you near the elevator? A. Coming down I passed the elevator, and got on Liberty street, and the crowd made a rush, and came near knocking me down. I got down near the corner of Penn street and stayed there, and watched the Union depot burn. Q. Did you have any conversation with those that were engaged in burning? A. When I first made my way on the upper part of the hill, there was a number of young men lying on the ground under a fence, a tree, or something, and I asked one of them--he appeared to be lively, he was lying, kicking, and looked as though he was hard at work. Says I, "When is this thing going to stop?" Says he, "At the elevator." Says I, "You ain't gone that far." Says he, "Yes, that has got to come down, too;" and I left him, after talking a few minutes about that. Q. Who was he? A. I don't know who he was. Q. Strangers? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where did you go? A. I went on from there down to look at the firing, and see all that could be seen. Q. When you arrived at the elevator, did you have any conversation with anybody there? A. Oh, yes; had a conversation with almost everybody--talking to each other. Q. Did you say that the elevator was going to be burned? A. I told several parties what this party had told me on the hill, that he allowed it would come to the elevator, and I began to think there was a good deal of truth in it, because the Union depot was on fire. Q. Did you see Daniel Corbus near the elevator? A. I met him at the corner of Fifth and Fulton streets, and we walked down together. I told him what these parties had told me--they were going to burn down the elevator, that was a damn monopoly, too. Q. Did you say to Daniel Corbus that the elevator had got to be burned--that it was a monopoly, and had got to be burned? A. I didn't tell him that, because I was taking no active part in it. Q. Did you tell him that the other party said it was a damn monopoly, and had got to come down. A. Yes, sir. The railroad officials had stock in it, and they were death on railroads. Q. You had no participation at all in what was going on? A. No, sir; just went over to see the fire, and to see what was going on. Q. How many were with this fellow that made this remark to you? A. There was some four or five of them laying there, I think. Q. Was this fellow intoxicated, did you think? A. He appeared to be perfectly sober. Q. What for a dressed man was he? How was he dressed? A. From the appearance of him--he was not dressed any better than I am just at the present time--dirty. Q. Did his dress indicate a railroad employé or a factory man? A. I couldn't judge that from his dress. Couldn't say what he was by that--by his dress. Q. He was dressed like a laboring man? A. Yes; he was dressed like a workingman. Q. What time did you leave the depot or elevator? A. I left when I was standing on Liberty street. I left the time the Union depot fell. Q. About what time in the afternoon was that? A. Somewhere very near six o'clock. Q. Did you go back again? A. No, sir; stayed home all night. I overheard a couple of gentlemen saying that a committee had been talking to the crowd, and gotten the promise not to burn the elevator. I thought the firing had stopped there. * * * * * Irvin K. Campbell, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Ninth ward, Allegheny City. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am a foreman of the hinge factory of Lewis, Oliver & Philips. Q. How long have you occupied that position? A. About three years--possibly four. Between three and four. Q. Were you near the scene of the riots any time during July last, in any of the days and nights? A. I heard of the firing on the citizens about six o'clock, and I came up on what we call the Cleveland train, and got to Twenty-eighth street, probably at eight o'clock. Q. What was? A. That was on Saturday evening--the evening after the firing. Q. Twenty-eighth street? What time? A. It was probably half past eight o'clock. Q. When you got there how much of a crowd did you find there? A. There was not much of a crowd when I was there. The troops had gone into the round-house, and I inquired why they went in, and received no satisfactory answer. I supposed I was acquainted with some of the troops that went in, and inquired for Colonel Howard, of the Nineteenth. I was acquainted with Mr. Howard, and served in the same regiment in the army, and talked of going in and advising Colonel Howard to get out of the round-house, and was advised not to go in; that the men were scared enough to shoot any man. Q. Who advised you this? A. Alderman Conlan, of the Ninth ward, said they were scared bad enough to shoot any man. I came out--I just stepped--probably had one foot inside of the fence where you go into the round-house track--going into the round-house at Twenty-eighth street. I went down Liberty street, and there was two shots fired. I was with a gentleman named Joseph Steen, son-in-law of Mr. Bown's, on Third street. I spoke then and said something about firing out there when there was no occasion for it. I don't mind what my conversation was, but kept on down the street, and heard no more firing until I got down a little ways, and I heard several rambling shots fired. At this time there was no organization, or any crowd to amount to anything. I had been up to the hospital in the meantime to see if there was anybody hurt that I knew. I formerly worked for the railroad company there, and was a little interested to see if there was anybody killed or wounded that I was acquainted with. Q. Where were those shots fired from? A. They were fired from one of the windows of what we call the round-house for passenger engines--the round-house this way. You might call it the Twenty-eighth street round-house. Q. Were there any soldiers there? A. I presume there was. I couldn't see from the outside. Q. You didn't know whether they were soldiers or part of the mob? A. I knew there were none of the mob in there at that time. They were soldiers I knew, but I did not see them. Q. Was there any burning going on at that time? A. No burning at that time. 1 think after I came from there down the street I heard burning talked of; and, if I recollect right, I heard it intimated before I left Twenty-eighth street. I think that was my reason for wishing to see Colonel Howard, to advise these men to come out. Q. By whom did you hear it talked of? A. I couldn't tell. Although I formerly worked on the railroad, I didn't see a man there that I was acquainted with. Q. Was it the rioters that were talking about the burning? A. At that time you couldn't tell who was rioters. They stood around in crowds of four, or five, or a dozen. The only active rioters I noticed was when the way passenger came in I seen probably five or six men that looked liked brakesmen on the road run up to uncouple the engines, and the engineer, Tom Wilson, told them that the car behind him had one horse in, and asked them to let him take it on through--there was no ammunition, or provision, or anything of that kind. I listened to some of the arguments whether they would side-track the freight car or allow it to go through, and they finally told Wilson to back and they took the train into the Union depot. Q. Mow long did you remain there? A. I was in the vicinity of the crossing probably ten minutes--not long. The train moved down, and I started to go towards my home. Q. What time did you get home? A. I came down Penn street with this Mr. Steen, son-in-law of Mr. Bown's, and we heard of the trouble at Mr. Bown's hardware store, and we stopped there for a few minutes--we stopped there probably three quarters of an hour. I don't recollect, positively, how long, but when I left there I got over in Allegheny, and in time to make the late train, and got down to the Ninth ward. The train, at that time, left Allegheny sometime after eleven o'clock. Q. When you got to Bown's store, had the rabble been in and ransacked things? A. They had been in and ransacked things and had gone off. They had apparently taken things that were of no account at all, so far as the riot was concerned. Q. Were there any rioters still around the store? A. No rioters at all. The police were standing in front of the store and refused to let us in, and I explained that Mr. Steen was son-in-law of Mr. Bown's and wanted to see if the family was hurt. Q. Did you see any police up at the crossing near the scene of the riots? A. Not on Saturday afternoon. Q. How many came up on the train from the Ninth ward of Allegheny City with you? A. There was quite a number. The word came down that there had been firing up there, and parties killed and wounded--I could not tell positively how many I came up with--two parties with me. Q. Did any of the men from your works come up? A. Not that I know of--there was none came up with me. Q. Were there any of the men at these works that came up and remained and participated, to your knowledge? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. Are you well acquainted with the laboring men about the city? A. I am in the neighborhood in which I reside. Q. Did you see any that you knew in that vicinity? A. Not one--didn't see a man taking an active part in the riot that I knew. I was pretty well acquainted with both sides, and I thought that there was something strange about that--men that were supposed to be easy led by excitement of the kind--and I rather wondered at it. The only man I noticed making any resistance, was one man who said he was a son of a bitch from Brownstone. Q. That is in the vicinity of the iron works? A. On the south side. That was on Sunday, near the elevator. Q. He was near the elevator? A. Yes, sir. Q. He was engaged in the riot? A. He said he had been at it all night and all day, and was nearly done out, and at the time I seen him he had a keg--I forget whether it was wine or beer, but he was very liberal with it, giving it to any parties that wanted it, urging them to turn in and help, that he was tired. Q. What time did you return on Sunday to the scene of the riot? A. It might have been half past eight or nine. We could see the smoke from down where I lived. That was the first I knew of the burning, when I got up next morning, and came up to see what was burning. I got to Twentieth street about the time, or just before the police made their appearance there to stop the burning of cars. Q. How far had the fire progressed towards the depot when you got there? A. I am not positive the street, exactly, but it was in the neighborhood of Twentieth street. Q. Was there any effort made by the police or any other parties to stop it there? A. In the vicinity of Twentieth street, the police came along the wall that holds the embankment the tracks are laid on, and drove parties away from the cars. Just as the fire would catch a car, the rabble, composed of all parties, not rioters, but thieves or whatever you choose to call them, they would break into a car and commence carrying the things off--men, women, and children. The police drove the parties off the wall. Some of them fell down, and one, I noticed, got hurt, and, apparently, the police at that time had possession, and I thought it was going to stop, but in a short time I noticed smoke starting up below, further down, and the police went down that way. Q. How many policemen were there? A. I am not positive of the number, but there must have been twenty or thirty, the mayor at the head of the police. Q. The mayor at the head of them? A. That is my recollection. I am almost positive of that, because I know the mayor by sight when I see him. Q. Did they succeed in clearing the track and driving them away from that point? A. There was five or six tracks in that vicinity. They entirely cleared them on the side next to Liberty street, but there was at least six tracks there, and most of the tracks had trains laying on them. Smoke started over a little further amongst some of the other cars. Q. Did the rioters make any resistance to the police? A. Not any that I noticed. Some, according to their creed or nationality, held on longer to their goods. Q. What nationality seemed to hold on the longest? A. I must say that the Germans carried the heaviest loads. I noticed that, and commented on it coming up in a street car, that the Germans had the heaviest loads. I mean no disrespect to anybody. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. About what time was it that the police cleared the crowd off the wall? A. It might have been half-past ten or eleven. Q. On Sunday? A. On Sunday, but I could not be positive; during the excitement there I was paying more attention to what I could see, and wondering what would turn up next. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you remain there during the entire day? A. I remained on the Pittsburgh side until probably six o'clock in the afternoon. I then heard they were organizing in Allegheny, and that is the side I lived on, and that there was likely to be trouble over there, and I went over to the other side. The elevator was partially burned down when I left the ground. Q. Did you see any further efforts of the policemen after eleven o'clock to stop the riot and stop the fire? A. After that time the police appeared to be scattered in squads. I did not see them in one body after that. I believe they were distributed around after that. I seen a few policemen after that, but not in a body. At the time I lost sight of the policemen I started to go up to see the condition of the round-house. From there I went up to Thirty-third street--I had formerly lived up in that neighborhood--and then down to what they call Lawrenceville, and back down to the Union depot in that direction. I will just say that I met Captain McMunn on Twenty-sixth street coming down, and inquired of him if there was any effort being made to stop it, and my recollection is that he said they had made a proposition to try and organize the employés and try to stop it, but it had not been entertained. I would not say that on oath, but I think so. Q. Captain McMunn? A. Yes; he was one of the strikers. Another employé standing looking at the engine in the morning was Robert Aitchison, known on the road as old Bobby Aitchison. He was lamenting about the destruction, and finding fault, and said it was wrong, and he told me he was sure the railroad men had nothing to do with it. Q. What is Mr. Aitchison's first name? A. Robert. Q. That is the old man? A. That is the old man. At the time I speak of seeing Aitchison, he was standing where he could see the engine he had formerly run--engine 281. I was acquainted with him, and had fired the engine myself at one time. This act was rather impressed upon my memory more than any other things that occurred. Q. Did you go close to the men that were engaged in the arson and riot during the day, Sunday, so as to ascertain who they were--that is, the leaders in the burning, I mean? A. I could not recognize any man, but they were what I would call roughs--hard cases, desperate men, most of them. I was told that some, I think, were men that had been--I do not know what the best word is--proscribed, or whatever you choose to call it, been discharged from one railroad, and got a situation on another, and been discharged from there, by this last company receiving a letter. There are a great many men in this country now, that, if they are discharged on the Fort Wayne road, they come to the Pennsylvania railroad, and that company will discharge them, and give no reason for it. There are a great many of this kind in the country to-day, that are desperate men, ready to do anything at all. I have no doubt that some of the leaders in this movement were men of that kind, because the men that were engaged in the riot, were used to railroading, because they could not have run these cars in and burned the round-house as they did. If they had been men belonging to the Pennsylvania railroad, I would have recognized them. I was standing by the elevator when the firemen attempted to throw water on there. I was close by the hose when somebody cut the hose, and the water went over the crowd. I received some of it myself. Q. When you got back to Allegheny City, you said they were organized there--how large was the crowd there? A. It was probably six or half past, when I got back there. There was no complete organization--they were just gathering. Q. At what point? A. The center appeared to be, that I noticed, near the round-houses of the Fort Wayne road. I noticed parties there that were employés in the shops, and probably there might have been some on the road, but some that I knew belonged to the shops. Q. Did the crowd increase there? A. The crowd increased there, but I did not stay there. I kept on down to my own home. Q. Remained at home during the night--Sunday night? A. I remained at home all night--was not outside. Q. Monday morning did you return? A. Monday morning I reported at the works, and we organized there, and I was placed in charge of a patrol or guard we had round the company's works. Q. For protecting the works? A. For protecting the works and do what we could for the whole neighborhood. Q. Did your men all join in that organization? A. Just what was asked. They did not make an indiscriminate thing of it. We just selected men and placed them on guard, and kept them on all night, and let them off in the morning, but were ready for a call at any time. Q. Were the men all willing to unite in such a scheme of protection? A. All that I seen--I heard no objection. Q. If there is anything else you can enlighten us on state it? I do not think of any further question to ask. A. I will just say that the first night we were on we arrested two different parties down there. The first one was on Pike street, Pittsburgh. We found him skulking around the works. I inquired what his business was, and he said he heard there was going to be fun down there, and he came down to see it, and gave no excuse--said he didn't intend to do anything, but he heard there was going to be fun; and there was a lot of freight cars laying full of freight. We put the fear in him a little, and let him go--didn't keep him. By Mr. Means: Q. There were two arrested? A. I arrested another--that was a boy about sixteen or eighteen. I found him laying in a metal pile. He gave the same excuse. He heard there was going to be fun down there, and he came down to see it. We found out that he lived a mile or two back in the country from our neighborhood. Q. The first man lived in Pike street? A. He said so. He gave his name there, and the young man, too. Q. How far is that from the destruction of the property? A. It is right in the vicinity--down a little. Pike street and Sixteenth street, I think that is in the vicinity of Zug's mill, out along Penn, between Penn and the river. The city was full of men at that time, that, while the excitement was up, they wanted to see what was going on. There was a great many outsiders that were tramps, I suppose. They appeared to be strangers. It appears this strike had been talked of for sometime, and the tramps appeared to understand it, and they appeared to be gathered in for the spoil. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you observe, during the time of this destruction, whether there were two separate classes of individuals, one destroying the property and breaking up cars, and the others carrying away? A. I noticed that there were men destroying that appeared not to do it for personal gain. Just appeared fonder of destruction than anything else. Q. Did you think that either of these two parties--the parties carrying away, and the parties breaking up the cars, were citizens? A. The parties carrying away were citizens, but just appeared to be carrying away because it was there to be had, and wanted to get it. Q. Those who broke up cars, did they appear to be citizens, too? A. I could not say about that. The reason that I suppose these parties that carried away were citizens was because they were all making for different localities, and I have every reason to believe they were citizens from some of the things they were carrying away, such as rolling away barrels of flour, and rolling away barrels of lard. Q. Looked as if they had a place to put it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Would these goods have been consumed by the fire, had they not been carried off? A. That was the excuse which some of them gave for it. There were some that would be ashamed to steal that were carrying the things off. Q. Because they were being destroyed by the fire? A. Because they would be destroyed any way. Q. You said you had no difficulty in getting citizens to volunteer and organize into bodies to assist in suppressing the riot or keeping the peace? A. There was no riot in Allegheny. Q. You said they were willing to organize? A. They were very ready. Q. Did the citizens generally express a willingness to go elsewhere, where there was riot or lawlessness besides in their own locality? A. That question I do not think was brought up at all. I heard nothing of the kind mentioned. I know citizens of Allegheny, that they were in Pittsburgh, and took an active part in organizing to put down this riot. * * * * * Captain W. J. Glenn, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside at Mansfield, about five miles out of the city--west of the city. Q. You belong to the National Guard? A. Yes, sir. Q. Captain of a company? A. I command company K, of the Fourteenth regiment. Q. When were you called upon--called out? A. I received an order to report my company at head-quarters from Pittsburgh on the 20th day of July. I think was the date--on Friday. Q. To report your company in Pittsburgh? A. Yes; at the head-quarters of the regiment. Q. From where did you receive the order? A. Lieutenant Colonel Glenn, commanding the regiment, in the absence of Colonel Gray. Q. Did you report as ordered? A. I did, sir. Q. At what time did you report at head-quarters, and with how many men? A. I reported at the Union depot at seven o'clock--I think it was about seven o'clock--with twenty-one men. Q. How many men composed your company? A. I had forty men on my roll--thirty-nine men. Q. Did you have any difficulty in getting your men together? A. I had difficulty in getting them together from the fact that they are scattered. I live in a country town. The majority I got word to reported promptly. There was a few exceptions that I knew of that were restrained from coming by their friends that thought differently. Q. Restrained from coming by friends who were opposed to putting down the riot? A. As they said, they were opposed to fighting the workingmen; that is it. Q. What was done Friday night after you reported at the Union depot? A. The first thing we did was to partake of a very excellent supper in Union depot, and then staid at the Union depot until sometime early in the morning. Two o'clock, perhaps, at the Union depot. Q. What time in the morning? A. Until about two, I think. I would not say for certain. Q. Where did you go then? A. We marched to Twenty-eighth street, by a circuitous route, by the way of Wylie avenue and Webster avenue, I think, are the streets, and then down on the hill to Twenty-eighth street--to the hill above Twenty-eighth street, right opposite. Q. Were you joined by any other companies; if so, state what? A. We there met our regiment--we there found the Nineteenth regiment, and a battery called the Hutchinson battery, that I understood had gone out on the train. Q. How long did you remain there? A. We remained in about the same position all day, with the exception of details that were made to go down to the crossing, until about five o'clock in the evening, I think it was. We marched to the transfer station--perhaps later than that. Q. What was done then, after you arrived at the transfer? A. We stayed there until ten o'clock at night, then we were ordered to the Union depot, and about eleven o'clock--I think it was near eleven o'clock--we were ordered to go to our armories. Q. Where were the armories? A. Our armory is at Mansfield. Q. Did you go? A. There was an eleven o'clock train--11.02--which starts for Mansfield. I took that train and went to Mansfield. Q. How long did you remain there? A. I remained until Monday. Q. Called into action again Monday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Reported, where? A. I reported at the Central armory, Pittsburgh. Q. During the day on Saturday, while occupying the hill, you had a view of the track, and the scene of the riot, did you not? A. Yes, sir; I had. Q. How large was the crowd during Saturday--and what was their--were they demonstrative or not? A. Very much so, and the crowd was very large. They seemed to increase after three o'clock. Q. Was any attempt made by the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments during Saturday, to drive the crowd from the tracks? A. Yes; I was, with my company, several times ordered to go down to the track, and clear the crossing at Twenty-eighth street, which I did, and it was immediately filled up again by some on the other side. My company being small, would, of course, sweep but a small space of the ground. Q. Tell us in what manner you cleared the crossing. A. I marched company front across the track towards the river, and then I would wheel from the left to right, and marched back again, asking the crowd to get off the track, which they would do reluctantly, but I had no trouble. Q. At a charge bayonet? A. I do not think I came to a charge bayonet at all. Q. Just simply marched through and back? A. Yes; at a carry. Q. In what order was your company drawn up--in two lines? A. Sometimes in double rank, and sometimes in single rank. Q. Would you sweep the track the width of your company? A. There was generally two companies detailed. One would be passing, perhaps east, keeping the crowd towards East Liberty, and the other would face the river. Q. Were there any other companies of your own regiment there? A. Where--on the track? Q. Yes? A. My regiment was on the hill, with the exceptions---- Q. Was your regiment on there? A. I believe I said in my testimony, that the Fourteenth regiment marched that way in a circuitous route, while the Nineteenth went out the other way. I reported to my colonel, who was then in command--Colonel Gray. Q. Was there any resistance to your attempt at clearing the track? A. There was some little said. They were obstinate, some of them, and considerably mean about it, and would not go away, as we were marched up, but a few words would make them go away, but they would go round, and get on the track again. Q. Were they stopping trains? A. No, sir; I did not see them stop any trains there. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. During the time while you were not engaged in clearing the crossing, in what position were the companies of the Fourteenth regiment stationed, up on the top of the hill? A. We were in what I would call line of battle, on the face of the hill. Q. Was the crowd mingling with the regiment--mixed up with the regiment? A. With very few exceptions. I mind, during the day, talking to several citizens, but I did not consider them rioters. Q. While you were stationed in line of battle, on the brow of the hill, where was the Nineteenth regiment stationed? A. The Nineteenth was to our front and right in advance, on the road that leads up to the hospital. Q. What position were they in during the day? A. My recollection is, they were in line the same as we were, with the exception of this: that we were detailed a guard. Q. There was something said by some of the witnesses about the mob and the troops being mixed up indiscriminately. Did you see anything of that kind? A. I do not think I would say that. Q. There seemed to be a friendly feeling? A. There was no picket line out, to keep it entirely clear. The orders were to keep the crowd away, and not to mingle with the men. Still there was no pickets put out, and no driving them away. I heard some remarks made to the men: "You won't shoot workingmen." Q. Were there any efforts made that day to form any line, by either of the regiments, or both of them, to form a line, so as to keep the mob off from the tracks? What I mean is, to occupy the vicinity of the track, so as to keep the crowd off from it? A. I have said, already, that my company---- Q. You were marched down and marched back, and took your position with the regiment again? There was no effort made to keep the track clear at any place, except the crossing? A. No, sir; because they would go right on the track again. Q. There was no effort made to string out a line, so as to keep the crowd from the track? A. Only at the crossing, sir. Q. Where were you at the time General Brinton's troops came up there? A. I was a very short distance from that little watch-house at Twenty-eighth street, at the foot of the hill--the base of the hill. Perhaps twenty-five yards from where the company was. Q. In full view of what was going on? A. Yes; Colonel Gray, I heard him get the order from General Brown to send a company down to support Breck's battery. He turned around and ordered me to take my company out, and also ordered another captain to report to me, and we went down the hill and supported the battery. Q. The battery was near the crossing at that time? A. Yes; very near the crossing. Q. What did you see as General Brinton came up the track? Were there any deputies in advance of them? A. Yes; the sheriff and his posse was there, and General Pearson, I believe. Q. State the occurrence as you saw it, just immediately preceding and including the firing on the mob? A. There was a company came up the track--at least one company, I say--there were, perhaps, two. They came up company front. The regiment--the First Pennsylvania regiment, I believe--came up by flank, the sheriff in front. The railroad came this way [indicating] and they met the troops and the sheriff. Q. Advanced to meet them part way? A. Yes; they were going out to see. The troops were stopped--the sheriff was--and I saw him talking, but could not state what he said, be cause there was a very loud clamor and talk from the hillside then, about that time. There was quite a crowd accumulated on the hill, immediately in my rear and right and left. The crowd ran that way to see what was going on--men, women, and children--and it became very noisy; they were crying to the mob, as I call it, to hold the fort. Q. Men, women, and children, that were spectators, crying to the mob to hold the fort? A. Yes; "Stand to your post, &c.," and they appeared to obey the command, for they stood pretty solidly, and the sheriff appeared to become so mixed up with the crowd that I could not tell where he was. The only front I saw was these Black Hussars, I think they call them, came right up and told them to go back and came to an arms port, and finally to a charge bayonet, and in the meantime Colonel Benson got his regiment to a front about faced his rear rank, and marched out across the railroad with the rear facing my company, and they formed, what some have termed, a hollow square. It was simply the front facing one way and the rank about facing and marching across the railroad, and that cleared the tracks, and the rear was protected by another battalion, and these troops in front tried to come on through--that was their order as I understood it--they were to forward, and it was hard work for them to go forward very fast. Just about that time, demonstrations became very lively, clubs were flying, stones, coal, and pieces of iron ore. There was a difficulty about this time over some soldier, that some man had got the bayonet, or something, and at least one pistol shot was fired from the mob into the troops, and somebody there--some soldier--he was carried away--I do not know whether he was shot or not, but just then there was firing commenced on the right of the third rank of the First regiment. Q. How far distant from you was that first firing by the troops? A. It was not very far--I suppose twenty yards. Q. What order did you hear given by any of the commanding officers there? A. I heard no order, except this captain commanding the front company to forward. Q. That is all the orders you heard given? A. That is all I heard given. Q. Heard no order to fire? A. There was not any order to fire, to the best of my knowledge. I was paying strict attention and I could have heard it if the battalion had heard it. Q. What was the effect of the firing--what was the result? A. There was a general clearing out of that mob for about ten minutes--five or ten minutes. Q. They scattered and left that neighborhood? A. Yes, sir; the firing commenced, and the troops appeared not to understand exactly where their enemies was. They fired too much towards where your humble servant was, I thought, and I undertook to help them to stop the firing, and the companies were fronted down Twenty-eighth street. Q. The time this firing commenced, was the crowd all about, on each side of this body of troops that were coming up the track--they were each side of them--the crowd was all about on each side of your company? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were scattered all about there? A. Yes; they became very thick in a very short time. Q. Then the crowd scattered after the firing? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any attempt made to prevent their gathering again there by any of the troops? A. Nothing more. When they would go to come up again they were ordered to right and prepare to fire, and that scattered them. Some of the mob kept on throwing stones and clubs from behind cars until this company wheeled to the left and faced the river, so as they could see behind the cars. Q. How long before General Brinton's command left the ground there? A. After the firing; 1 do not think it was over half an hour. I cannot remember the exact time. Q. After his command left the ground you stayed there some little time--your regiment? A. My regiment did. I went up on the hill to my regiment. Q. Was there any effort made by the Fourteenth or Nineteenth regiment, after General Brinton left, to keep the crowd from the crossing? A. My regiment was not at the crossing at all. Q. Was any effort made by either of the commands to prevent their gathering there again? A. Yes; the troops from Philadelphia went that way, and they would go up above, further towards East Liberty, and congregate in the street again--in Twenty-eighth street--immediately after that and would make demonstrations. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That is not answering the question. Did the Fourteenth or Nineteenth make any effort? A. I said no--the Fourteenth regiment did not. I do not know about the Nineteenth. I did not see them. We were not down on the track; we were on the hill. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You kept your position on the hill. After the firing you went back there? A. Yes, sir. Q. On Monday you say you came back to the city and reported with your command. Where were you sent then--on what duty? A. We stayed at the central armory for several days, then we were ordered to the court-house. Q. There was nothing of any importance occurred? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was your company the only company of your regiment at the crossing at Twenty-eighth street and the railroad? A. No, sir; there were others. Q. Was the whole regiment there at any one time? A. No, sir; at no one time. Q. How many companies were there of your regiment at one time? A. I think mostly we had two companies at a time. Q. And the balance of the regiment were up on the hill? A. Or if there was only one company the cavalry company would support us. Q. What was the strength of your regiment about that time? A. I do not remember the figures. There were two or three companies had not yet reported. Q. Never did report? A. Yes; they had not yet reported on Saturday. One company had reported, and was still at the Union depot, up the river. Another company was kept up the Allegheny railroad by orders. Q. Can you form an estimate of the strength of your regiment on Saturday? A. I did know the figures. I think there were two hundred, perhaps, or one hundred and fifty. Q. After the firing on the Philadelphia troops, you rejoined your regiment on the hill--your company? A. Yes; General Brinton relieved me, and told me he would support that battery, and I could be relieved, and I reported to my colonel by my sergeant, and he ordered me up on the hill again. Q. Bid you take the battery with you? A. No, sir; General Brinton said he would support the battery. Company C, Captain Nesbitt, was ordered to go down the hill with me. Q. Did you get any order after this firing, and after the Philadelphia troops had entered the round-house, to clear the tracks with your regiment? A. No, sir. Q. There was no effort made? A. We marched down through the crowd to the transfer station, after the Philadelphia troops left to go to the round-house. Q. Where is this transfer station? A. It was two hundred yards or so outside of the round-house. That is my recollection of the distance--perhaps two hundred yards. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. From there you went to the Union depot? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was the track clear down to the Union depot? A. No, sir; there were parties of men standing along here and there. Q. They gave way so that you could march through? A. Yes; they didn't molest us. Some remarks made that we were not the Philadelphians, etc. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the mob appear to discriminate between the Philadelphia troops and the Pittsburgh troops. A. There appeared to be a feeling against the Philadelphia troops. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did there appear to be any feeling on the part of your regiment men against the Philadelphia troops? A. No, sir; I heard no such remarks made. Q. That feeling was expressed in the mob? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. The one soldier would respect another? A. We knew they were soldiers and obeyed orders. Q. That was our training in the army? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you in the late war, captain? A. Yes, sir. Q. What position did you hold there? A. I was captain of company E, Sixty-first Pennsylvania regiment. Q. Served how long? A. Three years. By Senator Yutzy: Q. If you had deployed your regiment, or probably both your regiment and the Nineteenth, too, along the line of the railroad forming a line on each side of the track, could you have kept the crowd and mob away from the railroad with the force you had there? A. If I had been ordered to do so, I think so, certainly. We would have tried hard anyway. * * * * * General Joseph Brown, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business? A. Hardware merchant. Q. A member of the National Guard? A. No, sir; not a member of it now. My time expired on November 1st or 2d. Q. 1877? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you in July, 1877? A. Yes, sir. Q. And what position did you hold? A. Brigadier General. Q. What regiments were under your command? A. The Fourteenth and the Nineteenth. Q. Did you receive any orders, and if so, what were they in relation to the riots of July? A. Yes; on the Friday morning I came to the city, about ten o'clock, I presume, and passing by the city hall, I saw the troops. Q. Friday morning, the 20th? A. Yes. I went into the city hall, and found that the Eighteenth regiment, of my brigade--one of the regiments of my brigade--had received orders to go out to the depot, that there was trouble there. I went up with them, as far as the depot, and they went out to the end from there. General Pearson ordered me to get out my other two regiments, and I did so as quickly as possible. Q. What regiments were they? A. The Fourteenth and the Nineteenth. About three o'clock I got about one hundred men--I do not remember now which companies they were--which regiments--but I started to go to the outer depot with a battery of two guns, and after I started, about three squares, or two squares, I suppose, I got orders to return, that the force was not strong enough. Q. From whom? A. From General Pearson. I returned and saw General Pearson. The idea was to get more troops before they could do anything. We were ordered to lay by until during the morning of the next day, and go out to the outer depot--to this place where the rioters were supposed to be. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What time was this? A. This was along in the evening about five o'clock. Q. What hour did you get the orders to remain at rest until morning? A. About that same time--about four o'clock. We considered which would be the best way to get the upper hand of the rioters. I supposed they were in full force. About four o'clock, I suppose, I went out with the Fourth regiment, up through the city. Q. About four o'clock in the evening? A. Four o'clock in the morning--Saturday morning--and we occupied the ground immediately back of the depot. Q. Of the Union depot? A. No, sir; at this outer Twenty-eighth street crossing. We there met General Pearson, with Hutchinson's battery and the Nineteenth regiment, and I deployed them--placed the battery fronting on Twenty-eighth street and the regiment up on the side of the hill, in front of the Fourteenth regiment. Q. Define fully the position of the battery--was it on the railroad track? A. The battery was right at the railroad track, on a space probably as wide as this room. Q. At the side of the track? A. Yes; and pointing down toward the depot--towards the other depot. Q. How many pieces? A. Two pieces. I placed two companies on the crossing at Twenty-eighth street there, and kept them there for an hour at a time, I believe, to keep the track clear--to keep everything in order. Q. You had one company to relieve the other? A. Two companies to relieve each other from each regiment--two companies from each regiment. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Alternately from each regiment? A. Yes; alternately from each regiment. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Well? A. We cleared the ground every time that there was any gathering, apparently, upon the track. There might be a few persons--fifteen or twenty persons, probably--on the track at that time. The companies would move across--probably there might be more--they would move across the track and clear it off entirely. At about the time the Philadelphia troops came through, I had the place cleared off thoroughly, and had Doctor Donnelly make a speech to the people there, and tried to tell them about the trouble that they were getting into. He made a few remarks there, and while he was making the speech I cleared the whole place off thoroughly. Then I remained about there. I was in my citizen's clothes all this time. Q. You were in citizen's clothes? A. Yes. I came up to the city--I live about a mile and a half below the city--my uniform was at home. I was in citizen's clothes and, of course, they did not know me so well--the men who were about me. I suppose there was one hundred and fifty to two hundred men. Q. You mean of the mob--the crowd? A. Yes, sir. Q. You say you cleared the track completely, before the Philadelphia troops arrived at the crossing--by what means or disposition of your troops did you do so? A. The two companies of one of the regiments. Q. Tell me how you did that? A. By forming in line and moving them back down the street, back of the crossing. Q. Threw your companies across the street, and across the railroad track, and drawing them down Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes; across over the railroad track, and passed on back to where these brick houses came up. Part of the column was there, the other was across the other way. Therefore we had them all on this side, except what was on the hill. Q. In your efforts to keep the crossing clear, what course did you pursue? A. Just merely to march--whenever I would see a few men on the track, I would move these troops across there. Q. March across company front? A. Yes; division front, and clear the track off. Q. Then march back? A. March the other side of the track again--up on the track all the time. They were on the track next to the hill--they were in line from this brick building across all the way, and whenever they would get in the rear of the soldiers they would fall back. Q. During this time, the balance of your regiment reserved, was up on the hill--how far from the crossing? A. Probably seventy-five yards. Q. The whole brigade? A. The two regiments. Q. Not over seventy-five yards away from the crossing? A. Yes, sir. Q. They were not on the brow of the hill? A. The Fourteenth regiment was up on the brow of the hill, probably seventy-five or eighty yards from the railroad track, and the Nineteenth regiment was down on the road, within twenty yards of the track. At about half past one to two o'clock, I went into the Union depot to see General Pearson, what he was going to do. The Philadelphia troops were in there lunching at the time. I thought that they were so long in there, I would go in to see what was going on, and make calculations what I should do. I saw General Pearson, and he told me we would do nothing at all, except to go out on two trains, that they were there ready for us to go out on. Q. He said you were not to do anything at all, except to go out with those trains? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time was this? A. It was, I suppose, one or two o'clock. I cannot tell the time. While I was in there, he told me this was all he had to do--to get on these two trains to go out there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you make any further effort to keep the track clear? A. Yes; the track was kept clear, until the Philadelphia troops came out, and there was such a rush of people, and gathering when they arrived at the depot, that it was utterly impossible to keep them from surrounding. Q. Did you understand, from what Pearson said to you then, that he had countermanded the order to keep the track clear? A. Oh, no; the track was being kept clear. Q. To do nothing but that--to take out these trains? A. To take out these trains. Q. Were you in the immediate vicinity, when the firing took place? A. Yes; I suppose twenty or thirty yards--well I was at the guns at the time--five or ten yards away from them. Q. Was General Pearson there? A. I did not see him. Q. Who was in command of the troops that came up--the Philadelphia troops--at that time? A. General Pearson, I thought, was in command of the troops--he was in command. Q. Was he present? A. That I could not say. Q. Was Brinton present? A. Yes; all I know is--I was watching everything as close as I could--the general outline of thousands of people at the time, and I was trying to watch it as much as I could, to see how the thing was going to get on, and the first things I saw was the firing, when the stones were thrown. Q. The first thing you saw was the firing after the stones were thrown? A. Yes; after the stones were thrown. Q. Did you see the sheriff in front of the military? A. I saw him there. Q. With a posse? A. Yes; with twelve or fifteen men. Q. Were they assaulted by the mob? A. Not that I saw. Q. Any stones or missiles thrown at them? A. Oh, no; they were thrown at them--the stones were thrown at the military. Q. Were any of the military injured before the firing took place? A. There might have been. I do not know. They say there was. I do not know. Q. Did you hear any command given to fire? A. No, sir; the first I heard was the firing. Q. Were you in a position where you could have heard the command to fire if there had been one given? A. I guess the noise was so great, the hooting and yelling was so great, I could not have heard. Q. What was the effect of the firing? A. The people all ran. Q. Scattered? A. Scattered in every direction--there was not a man about at all, except one man I saw standing there, and he did not seem to pay any attention at all to us. Q. Did you make any effort after this firing to keep the track clear? A. No, sir. Q. Was there any effort made by any of the military to keep the track clear? A. They rested a short time on the track, and whilst they were resting Colonel Glenn showed me an order, signed by General Pearson, for his regiment to move down to some place at the depot--one of the sheds. Q. You saw an order from General Pearson to Colonel Glenn? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was it directed to colonel or to you? A. It was directed to Colonel Glenn and Colonel Howard, the same. Q. That was the 19th? A. Yes; I received one, may be six o'clock. Q. You did receive an order from General Pearson? A. Yes; at six o'clock. Q. There was no effort made then to prevent the crowd or mob from re-assembling? A. They did assemble two or three times, and the soldiers would raise their guns. Q. They were persuaded away by military persuasion? A. Yes; by military persuasion. Q. Was any effort made by your brigade to rescue the Philadelphia troops while they were in the round-house? A. They were very nearly three to our one, I suppose. Two to one anyhow. Q. You mean there were three times as many of the Philadelphia troops? A. Yes, sir. Q. Would not your force have added to the strength of their force if you had re-inforced them? A. We did not receive any such orders to relieve them. Q. Who was in chief command during all this time of your troops? A. General Pearson was chief in command of the round-house until I found out after dark some time that he had left. Q. You found he had left? Had you any superior officer present then? A. Nobody except General Brinton. Q. Did you receive any orders from him? A. No, sir. Q. And if he had been disposed to give you orders---- A. I do not know whether he could have got out or not. There was no trouble until after he fired and killed those citizens. Then there was a great feeling against him, of course. Q. In the absence of any superior officer, did you consider yourself chief in command of your troops, or the brigade? A. No, sir; I did not. I commanded what troops I had. Q. You considered yourself justified in exercising your own discretion in any military movement after that? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then what did you do? A. About ten or eleven o'clock I received word that the crowd was so very great, and the excitement so terrible, that it would be hardly worth my while to do anything. Q. You got such information? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who did you get this information from? A. Different persons. Q. In your judgment, did you think it was useless to attempt to drive away the mob? A. It was at that time with what troops I had. Q. How many troops had you then? A. I suppose I had one hundred and fifty or one hundred and seventy-five. Q. Of the two regiments? A. Yes, sir. Q. What had become of the balance of your troops? A. Some of them had left. Q. By orders? A. No, sir; not by orders. Q. By any orders that you know of? A. No, sir. Q. Do you mean to say that they had deserted? A. They left. There was quite a large number left. Q. Were they missing? A. They were among the missing. Q. That was not more than about one fourth of your command--one hundred and fifty men? A. One hundred and seventy-five men was not much more than one fourth. Q. Any of your officers missing--subordinates? A. No; I could not say that. Q. How many hours had you been in active service and on duty? A. From the morning previous--say ten o'clock--until Saturday evening. Q. From ten o'clock Friday until ten o'clock Saturday evening? A. I was up continuously until Sunday at noon. Q. Your troops were in active service all that time? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were they provisioned regularly? A. They were to a certain extent. Grub was brought to them in baskets. It was regular feeding. Q. Not regular rations? A. Yes, sir. Q. You did not suffer from want of rations, however? A. They did not to a certain extent. Q. How did you account for the absence of the names of your men? A. I suppose it might have been in sympathy with the movement. Q. With the mob movement? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. It was not out of fear the desertion took place? A. No; I do not think it was. Q. Did you regard the conduct of your subordinate officers commendable during those troubles? A. They all did their duty. I do not know of any to-day but what stayed there. Q. Rank and file, do you think their conduct commendable as soldiers? A. There were some few that left. There was not a full gathering of the command at the first start of it. Q. Those that deserted you or left, was their conduct commendable? A. I did not say it was. Q. The conduct of those that remained was good as soldiers? A. Oh, yes. Q. Had a great portion of your command seen service? A. Well, yes; I think a good many of them--quite a large number of them had seen service. Q. What experience had you in active military service during the last war, or any other war? A. About nearly three years. Q. Active service? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what capacity? A. I was captain adjutant, major, lieutenant colonel. Q. What regiment? A. The One Hundred and Second and One Hundred and Fifth Pennsylvania. Q. Heavy artillery? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long did you remain at the Union depot with your command? A. Until about, I suppose, it was eleven o'clock. Q. On Saturday night? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then what did you do? A. I received messages from different persons who came there to see me. They stated to me that they thought I had better disband my command. That was on Saturday evening about eleven o'clock, I suppose. Q. Will you name some of those persons? A. No, I could not. Q. Gave you gratuitous advice? A. Yes; just talked to me. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were they citizens? A. Yes; citizens and military besides. Q. What military men? A. Captain Macfarland was one military man that I remember distinctly. Q. Was he under your command? A. He was not out with his command. Q. Any other military men? A. I do not know, there was quite a number of persons there. We talked the matter over. Q. Did you receive any orders from General Pearson, or from any of your superior officers? A. No. Q. You took the responsibility of disbanding them without orders from your superiors? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You considered yourself supreme in command at that time? A. Yes; I considered I was in command of all the troops that were there. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Why did you think it was best to disband your troops at that time--what reasons? A. We did not have enough to compete with the crowd that was surrounding us--that was about the whole thing. Q. Was that all the reason that was given? A. That we were not sufficient. Q. Not able to compete with the crowd? A. Yes, sir. Q. And therefore you should disband entirely? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You said you considered yourself superior in command at that time? A. Of the post where I was. Q. Where was General Pearson? A. That I could not tell you. Q. Had you any communication with him? A. I heard that General Pearson had left. Q. You heard he had left? A. Yes, sir. Q. When did you receive the last communication from him? A. The last communication I received from him was at the Union depot when I went in there--noon sometime, or near two o'clock. Q. Where was Adjutant General Latta at that time? A. I suppose he was at the Union depot hotel. Q. At what time? A. At all this time I suppose he was there. Q. Eleven o'clock Saturday night? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you receive any communication or order from him? A. No, sir. Q. Did you send for any? A. No, sir. Q. Did you understand that he was acting commander-in-chief of the forces? A. I only understood he was acting adjutant general, and that the orders emanated from him as from some higher authority. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you know at that time that the adjutant general was in the Union depot? A. I had an impression that he was. Q. Did you make any effort before you disbanded to see him? A. No, sir. Q. Knowing him to be there, or believing him to be there? A. No, sir; I did not make any effort to see him. At this time I suppose that the mob was gathered in such great crowds it would be advisable for the military to be out of the road of the mob so as not to get their ill will. Q. In your military experience, in your judgment, could you have taken a position and intrenched yourself and held your ground against the mob during the night? A. Oh, no. Q. Nowhere in the vicinity? A. No, sir; unless I had been in the round-house. Q. Could you not have marched out away from there and held your body? A. They would have suffered great loss to have marched away. Q. You did march to the depot, did you not, the Union depot? A. Oh, yes. Q. Were you interfered with in any way? A. No, sir; not much. Q. Marched all the way down the track? A. Yes, sir. It would not have been advisable to march down the street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you have taken a position in the Union depot, and used it as a fortification to defend yourself against the mob? A. There was no mob at the Union depot. Q. Why could you not have held the position then? A. At the Union depot, the idea was to get away so as we would not get the ill will of these men; that they would probably disperse at this time. Q. Did I understand you, that you disbanded for fear of exasperating the mob? A. Yes--with this number of troops that I had. Q. Was it your opinion that that was the way to disperse the mob, by the military disbanding? A. I thought it was probably the best way. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you receive any order from. General Pearson, after the firing at Twenty-eighth street? A. I received one order. Q. What was that? A. For to adjourn these two regiments to this depot. Q. The transfer depot? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you to take your regiments to the transfer depot? A. Yes, sir. The colonels of the regiments had already received the orders sometime previous, and they did not want to move until they saw me, and they showed me the order. Q. In that order, did he tell you to hold your position? A. As long as possible, I believe. Q. To take your regiments to the transfer depot, and to hold that? A. Yes, sir. Q. And at eleven o'clock you marched down? A. We marched down as a command down there. Q. You disbanded at the transfer depot? A. We disbanded, and the men got away the best they could. Q. Left the transfer depot? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Were these orders addressed to you, or to the colonel? A. Addressed to me, and the orders addressed to the colonels of the regiments, too. Q. Of the same purport? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you consider that they had superceded you by the order? A. I did not know what was the matter. Q. Did it not look to you like it? A. Yes; it did look to me very strange for them to receive a written order. Q. You, as a military man, of course, felt aggrieved at that? A. No, sir. I said that they could obey the order cheerfully, and I marched down to the depot with them. Q. You did not consider that under your order? A. Things were mixed up so I did not know. Q. Which way which? A. Which way which, and I obeyed the order. Afterwards I received this order. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Received by the same order? A. Yes, sir. Q. When you left the transfer depot, did your men go in a body, together, or did they strike out? A. Each came away by himself. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you called--did you call your men together after that? A. Yes; we did on Monday morning, and I reported to the mayor whatever he wished me to do. I took one company up on Second avenue, and dispersed a crowd that were coming here on boats in large crowds. There must have been towards three hundred. Q. How long did you remain in service? A. I remained in service then half a month, or three weeks. On Wednesday night Governor Hartranft passed through here, and he gave me an order to assume command of the troops here, and I did so. I went over to the Union depot in Allegheny, and I had them turn over the property to me at the Fort Wayne road. Q. Maintained order there, did you? A. I had no troops there. I only went over as a citizen, and I put on my citizen's clothes, and went over there and talked to them. The second--I believe they turned over their property to me. I called out Mr. Cassatt, I think--not Mr. Cassatt, but the agent of the Fort Wayne road. Q. Pitcairn? A. Not Pitcairn. The agent of the Fort Wayne road--I forget his name now. I told him the cars and property were there, and he could do as he pleased with them. That the crowd had given them to me. That I turned them over to him. Q. There was no further trouble here about the city? A. No, sir; there was no further trouble. * * * * * Henry King being duly _affirmed_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where is your residence? A. In Allegheny City. Q. And what is your business? A. Furnace man, engaged in the manufacture of pig iron, interested in the manufacture of pig iron. Q. I wish you would state, Mr. King, all the facts in relation to the riot here, that came under your observation--that you know personally yourself? A. On this side of the river I do not know so much about what was going on. I was over here, of course, every day attending to my business, and I got glimpses of this matter once in a while. I think probably that I had better first state as to the origin. I think that is what my testimony probably would have the most weight in. Q. That is what we called you to find out about? A. At one time, from 1849 to 1855, I was engaged in railroading. First as a civil engineer; next as a mechanical engineer; and had made acquaintance of many railroad men--pretty extended--a great many were of the men who are railroading at the present day, and were railroading previous to this strike and during the strike, and for a length of time previous to the strike were men I was acquainted with, and I, perhaps, knew as much about their grievances as they did themselves, or what they considered their grievances. They talked to me very freely, most of them, and I told several of my acquaintances in the city here that I thought there would be a great deal of trouble amongst railroad men; that there seemed to me to be a great deal of dissatisfaction. Q. When was that? A. This was in the early part of last summer, commencing in May perhaps. These men talked to me a great deal. I traveled a great deal on the railroad, and these men talked freely to me. I felt pretty confident from what they told me that there would be a great deal of trouble; there appeared to be a great amount of dissatisfaction. Q. You communicated that to your acquaintances in the city? A. Yes; my business connections. Q. Business men? A. Yes; business men. Some believed and some didn't believe, of course. I felt very confident there would be a great deal of trouble, and was satisfied, too, that it was not going to be a local matter, but would be very general, and it proved so. Q. On what did you base your opinion, if anything? A. As to whether it would be general? Q. Yes? A. From the manner in which these men spoke about what they considered grievances. I didn't wholly agree with them on that. Q. What did they consider as their grievances? A. Reduction of pay; that seemed to be the chief complaint. Q. They complained of the reduction? A. Complained very bitterly about that. Q. Did you talk with the men on different roads--did you converse with men on different roads? A. Yes; on several different roads. Q. What roads? A. There were some on the Pennsylvania railroad; some on the Pittsburgh and Fort Wayne road; some on the Cleveland and Pittsburgh run, and also some men on the Atlantic and Great Western road. Q. Did you ever converse with any of the employés on the Baltimore and Ohio road? A. No, sir; I had no acquaintances amongst these men. That is a road I travel on very little. Didn't go out of my way to hunt up any information; it all came to me incidentally. Q. Were all these roads reducing the wages of their employés? A. It was so reported to me--it was so talked among the men. Q. How was it throughout the country? Did you know, of your own knowledge, that the leading railroads throughout the whole country were reducing the wages of the employés? A. Speaking of it in a general way, I have no authority, except newspaper account, that wages were being very generally reduced. Q. Speaking then of your own knowledge, you simply speak of roads leading in and out of Pittsburgh? A. My knowledge in this particular is from the employés of the road. Q. And your conversation was with the employés of the roads leading in and out of Pittsburgh? A. Mostly roads leading in and out of Pittsburgh. I may say wholly so, with the exception of the Atlantic and Great Western. Q. In conversation with these men did they mention, or did you find out from them, that there was any organization among them? A. Oh! yes; I knew of an organization--the Trainmen's Union--I knew there was such an organization as that. Q. As the Trainmen's Union? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you know the object and purpose of that organization? A. Yes; they talked to me that there were several objects they wished to accomplish by that organization. We had a great many discussions about the thing. The only object they had, of course, was to make an organization that they thought would be sufficiently strong to enable them to have something to say about the rate of pay. Another was to re-instate some men who had been discharge for cause. Q. Did you gather from these conversations that their object was to force the railroads to pay them the wages which they demanded? A. They expected to put it to that as a finality. They expected to resort to that before giving it up. Q. Did you talk with them--did they state to you how they intended to force the railroad? A. Well, by stopping work and stopping business. Q. Themselves only? A. They talked about it, that they would stop themselves, and they would stop others. Of course, I expressed my opinions. Everybody said what they pleased. I told them it was every persons right to stop work. If the work did not suit them they had a perfect right to quit, and to go off; but whatever they did, not to do anything they would be sorry for afterwards, because the matter would be settled, undoubtedly, sooner or later, and they had better not do anything they would afterwards have cause to regret. As I said before, they would have a perfect right to stop work, but they had no right to interfere with others. Q. Did they claim that they had the right to interfere with others? A. They did not claim they had a right, but they claimed the ability to do that. Q. And their purpose of doing it? A. Well, they expected to do that. Q. Did they say anything to you or did they expect to ally other classes of laboring men with them? A. No; they did not care about having any help from outside parties; at least if they did, there was no intimation of that kind to me. They expected to accomplish it themselves. I have no knowledge of their making any effort whatever to induce other trades unions--I do not know that they made any effort to have others coöperate with them; if they did, I do not know of it. Q. This intercourse you had with the men, and from talking, led you to be apprehensive of the results? A. Yes; I felt very confident---- Q. Did you communicate that very freely to your acquaintances here? A. With my more intimate business acquaintances the matter was talked over pretty freely. Q. Did you have any communication with the railroad officials in regard to it? A. No; I supposed them capable of taking care of their own business. I fortified myself in regard to the strike. I have occasion to have a great deal of freight moved, and I put myself in a condition against any strike. Q. In what way? A. In getting in a good supply. If the strike had continued a month it would not have hurt me, anything more than I could not have shipped anything away. I had plenty of raw material on hand--it answered a very good purpose, too. Q. Did you communicate these facts and your apprehensions to the city officials, any of them, of Pittsburgh? A. No, sir. Q. Or the county officials? A. No, sir; I only talked with parties who were interested in the same manner that I am myself and others, perhaps, I am well acquainted with, in the same line of business, by fortifying in the way of getting in plenty of raw material. I was so certain it would come to pass, that I advised it all the time. Q. Did you gather facts enough to enable you to determine when this strike would probably take place? A. Yes; I had a very good idea when it would come. I do not know that I could see that my idea was so clear upon that, that I could fix the hour or perhaps the day, but I think I could have named a time of ten days that it would have occurred within that time. I could have done that, perhaps, twenty days before the strike occurred. Q. Did you, in any conversation with these railroad men, have any talk with them about the wages they were receiving, and whether it was adequate for their support? A. Yes; that was talked about considerably. Q. In the business that you are engaged in you employed a large number of laborers? A. Yes, sir. Q. How did their wages compare with the wages of your men? A. If they had steady employment--if they had been employed each and every day--the wages they had would have been sufficient, and would have compared very favorably with the employment in other lines of business--in other departments. As I looked upon it, the prime cause of the trouble was that there were more men than there was work for, and they undertook to make a little work divide around amongst a great many men, and that, of course, made a small amount of pay for each one. In many other businesses, an employer so situated would have--I know I should have discharged my men down until I had full employment for those that were retained. By Senator Yutzy: Q. From that I would infer that it was not the pay, but it was the time they were making? A. They did not make enough time. Q. Had they made full time they would have made ample pay? A. Perhaps satisfactory. By Mr. Englebert: Q. Has not that been the case in all business for the last year? A. I think that some employers have made the same mistake as the railroad men. It was out of the goodness of their hearts that they kept men about that they had not employment for. I would either give them work or not give them work. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In your opinion, it is bad policy to keep men working on half time? A. It is very bad policy. Q. That was the policy adopted by the railroad company? A. It seems to have been. By Mr. Means: Q. I simply want to know this: Did the railroad officials believe that half a loaf was better than no bread? A. I have heard them talk that way. I think the railroad officials took that view. Q. That half a loaf was better than no bread? A. Yes, sir; but as opinions are going, I would say, a man had better go and try to make a whole loaf somewhere else, than hang around and make a half loaf. Q. Suppose he could not get the work? A. There is a way where there is a will. I never kept a man half employed. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you visit the scene of the riot at any time during its progress? A. Yes, sir; Sunday I was up in that part of the city. I did not go up to where it was said to be the worst, but far enough to see all that I cared about seeing. Q. What class of men were engaged in the actual burning and pillage so far as---- A. So far as I observed, and judging by appearance, it was about the class of men you see going backwards and forwards on the railroads and thoroughfares, known as tramps. Q. Did you see any of the railroad employés with whom you had conversations before and were acquainted? A. I saw some there; yes, sir. They appeared to be lookers-on only. Q. Not engaged in the actual arson and riot? A. No, sir; I did not see one of them that had anything except what appeared to belong to him. Q. Were any engaged in burning and setting afire? A. Not that I saw--none that I had any acquaintance with. Q. Did you meet any of them to have conversation with them on that day? A. Yes; Sunday I saw a great many of them. Q. How did they talk then? A. They appeared to regret very much that there was any destruction of property. Q. Have you talked with them since any? A. Yes: I talked--I believe three days out of six I am more or less on the railroads, and acquainted with a great many railroad men. It has pretty much ceased to be the subject of conversation now, but for a time afterwards it was the principal topic. Q. Did you ascertain from them, or from any reliable source, whether they had anything to do with the attack that was made on the Philadelphia troops at Twenty-eighth street on Sunday, when the firing took place? A. I have never seen any of them that acknowledged having anything to do with making that attack on the troops. They spoke of it as the attack having been made by--well, tramps and roughs they called them. There was a pretty strong organization among the men on the north side of the river to prevent any force coming over to shoot the Pennsylvania boys, or, as they termed them, P.R.R. boys. That is the way they talked about it. They did not propose to have anybody coming in there to shoot them down. That was a pretty thoroughly organized force. Q. That is, to stop the trains having troops in? A. Yes; and they were expected in with troops. That occurred in the immediate neighborhood where I live. The whole region was patrolled. Q. Patrolled by the railroad men? A. By the railroad men; yes, sir. Q. Did you learn from these men where the first strike was to be made? A. No. They talked of it as though it would be a general uprising throughout the whole country. They did not designate any particular place. Q. You did not get the particulars? A. I never heard the particular place designated as to how it would start, but simply it would be a strike; that they would all quit work; not work themselves nor allow others to work, and block travel and traffic in that way, expecting as the result it would bring the managers of railroads to their terms. Q. You travel on the roads a great deal you say, and have a great deal of shipping? A. Yes, sir. Q. From your knowledge was there a less amount of work to be done on the railroads by the men than there had been formerly? A. There appeared to be a very decided falling off in through traffic; the local traffic is holding its own, perhaps; furnace work and mineral traffic appeared to be about the same as it had been. Q. It was in the through traffic that there was a falling off? A. Principally in the through traffic. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was in command of this armed force you speak of that was on the other side of the river? A. I never heard the commander's name mentioned. Those men whom I met in the street in my neighborhood said that their commander says so and so, and requested citizens to keep away--that the trains were about due--that the commander says so and so. I do not know who the commander was. Q. They had apparently an organization? A. They had apparently an organization, and obeyed instructions, perhaps, as well as the soldiers on this side. Q. What train had that reference to? A. The Erie train. Q. With troops? A. The train that was expected to arrive with troops. Q. What steps did this armed force take to prevent trains from coming from Erie to assist the military? A. The plan that they had proposed was to give the signal to that train and stop it. Q. But if that was not heeded? A. They had a rifle pit shortly above there, and if the train had not heeded the signals they would have undoubtedly fired into it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was the man who was called Boss Ammon--was he in command of that force? A. I did not hear Ammon's name mentioned in connection with the matter to any extent until the day following. I know that Ammon was not installed in the dispatcher's office on that side until the Sunday. This attempt to stop the Erie train was on Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon Ammon was installed as head man in the dispatcher's office. I did not hear that name. I have no recollection of hearing his name mentioned in connection with the matter at all, until some time during the forenoon of Sunday. I had heard of a man of that name; but did not know he was in this part of the country at all. I did not know who their commander was Saturday night. The name was not mentioned, except as I spoke of, as our commander says so and so, and requested people to keep out of the way in a certain locality in the immediate vicinity of the station. Q. What time did that organization first show itself in Allegheny to stop trains with troops? A. That was on Saturday night. Q. When was the first freight train stopped? A. Friday; I think it was Friday morning. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Did you see any trenches dug along the road? A. Strawberry lane; yes, sir. Q. What was the object of that? A. To intercept the Erie train in the event of their disobeying the signal. Q. Were they along the road, or across the road? A. Parallel with the road. Q. Where is Strawberry lane? A. It is in the Ninth ward of Allegheny City--one of the lower wards. Q. Who put in the rifle pits? A. The railroaders--strikers. Q. This mob? A. It did not partake of the nature of a mob over there. It was a very thoroughly organized force--armed and equipped. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many railroad men did you converse with, do you think, that led you to form your conclusions? A. On the different roads, perhaps fifty men. Q. What class of men principally? A. They were conductors and engineers, chiefly, I talked with. Q. Any brakemen? A. With many brakemen. Q. Fifty men on the different roads that you have mentioned before--you mentioned the roads? A. Yes, sir. Q. When did that restlessness begin to show itself among the men? A. Began to manifest itself in the latter part of May. By Mr. Dewees: Q. The persons that dug that trench, were they Allegheny railroad men or were they tramps? What do you suppose they were? A. Most of them were railroad men. There did not seem to be many tramps connected with those men over there. These men were acting on their own account, and did not ask anybody to help them. They said they were working for the right, and appeared to be very earnest. They were very orderly. Q. Things were done systematically? A. Things were done very systematically. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Were these men in the employ of the railroad company or were they discharged men? A. There were a few discharged men. Of course I do not know how many of them were discharged, but from their talk I got the impression that there were some six or eight that had been discharged. Q. That was a part of the grievances? A. Yes; that was the object--to have them re-instated. They made that one of the conditions--of those men going to work again. I was amongst these men a great deal during the time that they were discharging them and reducing the work. I was very desirous that they should go to work, for as long as they were not at work it brought a class of people in our part of the city that I did not want to have around there. I knew if they went to work, and the trains were moved--I talked with them whenever I could--they would all gather about me. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You say you thought you could have named within ten days of when the strike would take place. Did you hear anything about the proposed strike of the 27th of June that was talked about by the Trainmen's Union? A. Yes, sir. Q. You heard them talk about that? A. I heard them talk about that. Q. Did you hear the railroad men fix that time or talk about that time as there would likely be a strike? A. There seemed to be a difference of opinion in their views as to that being the right time. They would talk of it in that way--some thought it would be a good time, and others did not. Q. Did you ever hear them name any special day, or any particular time when there would likely be a strike, or when there would probably be a strike? A. After the 27th of June they felt pretty certain that it would be sometime not far from the middle of July. They talked like this. They wanted the money for the work that had been done during the month of June before they struck. If they had their money in their pocket it would be fortifying themselves. Q. What time was the pay day of the railroad company? A. I believe the usual pay day--of course it varies along the line of the road--I think on most of the roads they commence paying sometime from the seventh to the tenth, and go along various places until they get paid. Q. You supposed from that that probably if the strike occurred it would probably occur pretty soon after they got their pay? A. As soon as the men along the line of the road had been paid off. Q. Was there anything done by the railroad men on your side of the river that you know of towards organizing for the strike, or committing any overt act until after the strike occurred here? A. I think the trains had been moving regularly up to that time. Q. It did not really break out there--no overt act was done nor any trains prevented from going out until the Saturday after the Thursday it broke out on this side? A. It broke out here on Thursday, and I think the first there was Friday morning. Q. Were you talking or did you talk on this Thursday or Friday with those classes of railroad men you had previously had conversation with, in regard to what was going on? A. On Friday I had some talk. I went out on a train that leaves here at nine o'clock in the morning, on the Fort Wayne road, and had considerable talk with some of the freight train conductors. Q. What did they say about the difficulties that had occurred here? A. There is a schedule of quite a number of freights following immediately after that passenger train, and of course they talked about the strike being in fact over here, and talked with some of the men at the station before the train left there. I was on the lookout to see whether the trains were moving out, and the trains appeared to be ready to go out. When I got some thirty-five or forty miles up the road, the conductor on the train I was on told me that the freights that would follow immediately after the nine o'clock train, had been intercepted, and that the strike had organized. Q. As this strike finally did take place, there was no general understanding on all the roads that it should take place on each railroad on a certain day, that you found out. It did not actually take place on the different roads on the same day? A. No; I do not think the strike became general throughout the country until, perhaps, three--it may have been four--days after its first commencement. The first general demonstration was on the Baltimore and Ohio road. Q. You heard nothing in any of these conversations of any fixed day after the 27th of June--any date named? A. As I said early in my testimony here, I do not know that I could fix the hour or the day, but I think I could have named the time within ten days, from the information I had in talking with the various employés, and that was, to wait until the payments had been pretty generally made on all the roads throughout the country--that seemed to be the time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did the railroad strikers in Allegheny City, on the Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad, show any disposition to destroy property or commit any violence or illegal acts except stopping the trains? A. No, sir; there was a great effort made upon their part to preserve all property--railroad property and private property. Q. They made efforts to prevent the destruction of property? A. Yes, sir. Q. Private property and railroad property? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what way or what efforts did they make? A. On Sunday afternoon the report became current over there that these destructionists--I do not know what else to call them--were coming to Allegheny, and the railroad men talked amongst themselves like this: That this is the employment we are living on, and it shall not be destroyed; we will take care of it. The trade of the road is such there that from the upper end, or what is known as the outer depot, cars and locomotives and everything--I suppose they run twenty miles up--laying on the tracks, and within a very brief space of time there was some fourteen or fifteen miles of locomotives taken entirely out. Q. By the strikers? A. Yes, sir. Q. To protect them? A. Yes; and they did protect them most effectually. Many of those cars were loaded with very valuable merchandise, and there was an armed force of these strikers who protected these cars--regularly stood guard over them--fourteen or fifteen miles of cars--every day and every night, relieved regularly. Q. Did you see them or any of them commit any illegal acts--railroad men? A. I suppose that would have been an illegal--would have been considered an illegal act to stop that train. Q. Didn't they stop other trains--freight trains? A. The regular trains were stopped. Q. Forcibly? A. Not forcibly. They seemed to be stopped at the dispatcher's office. If they got a permit they would allow them to pass. If a train went out with a permit they would not trouble it. Q. Did they take forcible possession of the dispatcher's office? A. I do not know whether it was forcible or not, they seemed to have possession of it. Q. Did they use any violence towards men that were willing to run trains? A. I did not hear of an instance of intimidation. Q. Do you know of any effort being made to have trainmen take out trains? A. I do not think there was any effort made. They appeared to be all of one mind about that. Q. Did the strikers say they would prevent them from going out by violence? A. I think I heard some talk that would amount to about that. Passenger trains were allowed to come and go as they had done before. A good many of the passenger trains stopped at the dispatcher's office to get a permit that would enable them to pass other localities where the strikers were congregated. Q. That would be called, in railroad parlance, orders? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who was the dispatcher during the riots there? A. Ammon was known as dispatcher. Q. He took possession of the dispatcher's office? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was he the man that issued these orders? A. I think the orders were signed with his name. I never saw any of the orders. I heard the passenger train conductor speaking of them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. He was general superintendent and dispatcher both? A. Yes; he seemed to be the principal man on that side. I have thought of that matter frequently since then, and it appeared to me that it was a fortunate circumstance that these men were willing to recognize some man as a head, if they had not done that matters would have been worse than they were. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Did the mayor of Allegheny City send a relief guard? A. I heard that he did. I do not know that I ever saw it. Q. You do not know that as a fact? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was not the force that he organized in other parts of Allegheny City at the bridges? A. I suppose that is where his force was employed chiefly. Q. Was there a general disposition manifested on the part of the citizens to quiet the troubles? A. Yes; all the talk was with a view to get to work again. Q. I am speaking of the citizens? A. All the citizens desired to have these men go to work, so far as I talked with any of them. * * * * * Colonel P. N. Guthrie, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside at East Liberty, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business at the present time? A. I am a book-keeper in the Exchange National Bank. Q. How long have you held that position? A. About twelve years. Q. Are you a member of the National Guard? A. I am Colonel of the Eighteenth regiment. Q. How long have you held that position? A. Since 1874. I think my commission dates 1874. Q. Just state to us now what orders you received, and when you first received them, and from whom, in relation to the riot last summer? A. Well, on Friday morning, about half past four o'clock, I was awakened by a knock, and received an order, a telegraphic order, from General Pearson, informing me that by orders of the Governor, my regiment was ordered out for service, and ordered me to report at seven o'clock, at the Union Depot hotel. I have one company whose head-quarters is at East Liberty, where I reside, some five miles out. I notified them by hunting up the captain, and then came into town, sent off, the best way I knew how, to get my officers together, and notified them. They notified their subordinate officers, and assembled the regiment. It was too late to get any orders in the newspapers, they had all gone to press. It was too early to find messengers, and the work had to be all done by carrying messages from man to man, by the corporals and sergeants of companies. My command was ready at half past eleven o'clock, and by a little after twelve I was at the Union Depot hotel. Q. With how many men? A. I had then about two hundred and twenty-five men. Q. How many men have you in all the regiment? A. I have about three hundred and twenty-six uniformed men. Well, the regiment was formed in my armory. There was present, Major General Pearson, commanding the division, and the sheriff of the county. When I deemed that I had sufficient men for service, I marched down to the Union Depot hotel, accompanied by the sheriff. At that time I thought that my regiment was the only regiment ordered into service, and had the direction of military affairs, and so far as my regiment was concerned was with me. I had my own ideas what should be done, but when I got to the Union Depot hotel, Major General Pearson had ordered out the division, which made me a subordinate officer. My regiment was then ordered out to the stock-yards, five miles and a half from here, where I remained until Sunday night on duty. Q. What time did you arrive at the stock-yards? A. Torrens station--that is the stock-yards. I arrived there about half past one o'clock. We remained at the Union Depot hotel, waiting there for a consultation between General Pearson, the railroad officials, and myself, as to what was the best course to be pursued. My regiment was finally ordered out to the stock-yards, with the understanding that the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments would soon report, and they be sent to Twenty-eighth street. Upon their arrival at Twenty-eighth street, trains were immediately to be started. Sending me to the stock-yards was to secure the passage of trains through and beyond the stock-yards. Q. That was the result of your consultation there at the depot? A. That was the result of the decision of Major General Pearson. My opinion was that I should go to Twenty-eighth street, and the Fourteenth and Nineteenth go to the stock-yards. I believe no interference with the trains had been made at the stock-yards, and up to that time. If there had been, I don't know it, and there certainly had been interference at Twenty-eighth street. Q. You desired to stop at Twenty-eighth street? A. I desired to stop at Twenty-eighth street. I could have taken possession there without any trouble, I think, at that time. Q. In going out to Torrens, were you interfered with on the route? A. Not at all. There were about two hundred or three hundred men at Twenty-eighth street--I guess twelve hundred or thirteen hundred when I got there. Q. You went out on the train, did you? A. Went out on the train. Q. Did you have any trouble or meet with any resistance in disembarking your command? A. I had one company at East Liberty that I had ordered at once to Torrens station, and they had taken possession of the platforms there, and we disembarked from the cars without any trouble whatever, or any demonstration of any kind--not even noise. Everything was quiet and still. At this point the committee adjourned until three o'clock, this afternoon. AFTERNOON SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Thursday, February 21, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at three o'clock, P.M. Mr. Lindsey in the chair, and continued the taking of testimony. All members present except Senator Reyburn. * * * * * Colonel P. N. Guthrie, resumed: Q. When we adjourned you had got at Torrens station. I wish you would state to us how large a crowd you found there, what the appearance of the crowd was, and so on, and give your movements from that time? A. When I got to Torrens station I found at least twelve hundred men there, composed of strikers, and the crowd and mob--not a mob--lookers on. I had no trouble in getting into position, no trouble of any kind. Was not greeted with hisses, noise, or demonstration of any kind whatever. As soon as I got my command in the position I wanted them in, I brought them to a rest. Then I went around on the tracks to see what the condition of affairs was. I found, as I stated before, that the mob contained two elements there--strikers and lookers on. I sent for the man who was represented to me to be a leader among the strikers, had him brought down to my position, and had a long conversation with him. I informed him that I had been sent out there with orders from General Pearson to see that all trains passed through the stock-yards. It was my duty to keep the tracks clear, and keep the crowd from interfering with the passage of trains, &c. I didn't want to have any trouble or any disturbance of any kind; but the moment a train approached there it was going to go through. He told me that the strikers had no intention, no disposition to interfere with the passage of the trains, that the Pennsylvania railroad might send all the trains through they had got. He said they could not send any through because they could not get the men to man them; but if they could, they could send them through; they didn't intend to interfere. I told him I was glad to hear that, that it would probably make things a great deal easier, because if the crowd interfered outside of the strikers a man would have less hesitation in dealing with them. This conversation with this leader of the strikers occurred immediately after I got there, as soon as I got my command into a position and gave the command rest. Almost immediately after, and during my conversation with this man, a train came up to the stock-yards from Pittsburgh. That was a freight train or a passenger train--I have forgotten. I did not probably look at that time; but I think it was a freight train; but that train was loaded down with roughs on the cars, and platforms of the cars, the engine, cow-catcher, and every available space. I think the train was crowded with the most infernal lot of scoundrels that a man ever saw. I do not think that they were strikers entirely, though. There were a great many men from Pittsburgh that I recognized; but there was a large element on that train I could not account for at all. They became very noisy and offensive. All of them got off that train and crowded on to any trains that were stationary there--cars standing on the track, which brought them within a very few feet of my regiment. Their remarks became so offensive to me that I was afraid that if it was allowed to continue it might bring about trouble. I had the bayonets fixed on my guns, and I charged bayonets on this crowd. They broke and fled away, and got some distance off. In the interval I formed my men in another position more satisfactory to me--got them on the street, and in what we call column of companies. Before, I was in line of battle. I remained in that position for some time. I would say here that the understanding between General Pearson and myself, when I went to the stock-yards, was that the trains would be sent out immediately. I urged it upon General Pearson. I believed it was the best thing then, and I believe so now, that a train should have been started, that if one train could have got through, all the rest would have followed, and even one train would have broken the force of the strike; but I waited and waited and waited in position there until the men could stand it no longer. The crowd three times during my stay at the stock-yards annoyed me, and crowded close on my lines, and became somewhat demonstrative, so much so that I was afraid to allow the thing to continue, and I charged bayonets. Every time I charged bayonets the crowd dispersed, and twice I loaded the guns in the presence of the mob, and the moment the guns were loaded the crowd fled and dispersed; but would return almost immediately after. As soon as the crowd would go away from my front I would take the cartridges out of the guns to prevent the men from recklessly firing and bringing about any conflict between the troops and the crowd. That continued time after time during my whole stay at the stock-yards. These men were easily driven away by me. At any appearance I would make of a disposition to fire upon them or use force against them, the mob would disperse--the crowd would disperse, because it was hardly a mob. I could not see that they were armed at all. If they were armed they had pistols--they had no guns of any kind. Q. Had they thrown any missiles? A. The second time I charged on them, they began throwing, but it didn't amount to anything--no more than five or six men were engaged. One man who stood on the top of the cars--a man known as Monkey John, a man who has since been tried by the courts here--was the most offensive in the whole crowd. He expressed a great desire on his part to split my head open, but he didn't try it. He was within a few feet of me, and I was strongly tempted to split his head open, but I thought I had better not. During the time I remained at the stock-yards, I was frequently visited by General Pearson, and to all of my inquiries, why trains had not started out, his answer was, the troops were not ready in the town, and hadn't been able to get possession of Twenty-eighth street, which brings me back to my original assertion, that, if the first troops had gone to Twenty-eighth street, we might have had the trains moving. General Pearson, every time he came out, was accompanied by some of the railroad officials, and all of them seemed to be very anxious with regard to my ability to hold that place; but I told them there was no mob in front of me, only a crowd, that might become a mob if they got the upper hand, and so long as they didn't have the upper hand they were a crowd. That was the state of affairs until the arrival of the troops from Philadelphia. At the time they arrived, General Pearson informed me that as soon as they got into the Union Depot hotel they would be disembarked, and brought out to Twenty-eighth street, and placed in position at Twenty-eighth street, and the Fourteenth, and Nineteenth, and Breck's battery would be sent out to me, and the trains moved. I waited until nearly two o'clock that night, (Saturday,) waiting for trains, and waiting for information. Not a train appeared, and not a word of official information reached me until Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, about half past two o'clock, I received a communication from James W. Latta, Adjutant General, which was the first information I had that General Pearson was not in command, and that General Latta was directing affairs--informing me that ammunition would be sent out to me by wagon, under the charge of an officer of the staff. Upon the arrival of that ammunition, I would be joined by troops from Walls station, and, when that junction was formed, I was to march into town to the relief of General Brinton, besieged in the round-house. I prepared my men for marching, and waited the arrival of the ammunition. Sometime after that the ammunition arrived, and I am not able to state the time exactly, because my watch had run down, and everybody else's around. When the ammunition reached me, an order also came with it, stating that the troops at Walls station were without ammunition, that the engineer was unable to bring the train in, and they could not make a movement until they had ammunition. That all the approaches to the city from Walls station were crowded by rioters. That all points along the railroad, suitable for their purpose, was in possession of the rioters--a fact which I demonstrated afterwards by sending men out of my own command to determine whether that was the case or not. I received orders also to send ammunition by wagon out to these men. As soon as that ammunition was received, they were directed to continue to march in to me, and, when they joined me, I was directed to complete the movement as ordered in my first dispatch. I hired a wagon, and sent a squad of men out with it. They had to take a roundabout way to get there. I sent, I think, five thousand rounds of ammunition out to these men. Time was passing away very rapidly, and it was nearly ten o'clock before these men got to Walls station with that ammunition. Q. Ten o'clock on what day? A. On Sunday morning. In the meantime I had made up my mind that the Walls station troops could not get in. About five o'clock I had made up my mind that the troops from Walls station could not get in to me in time to make the junction and march in to the relief of General Brinton, and I sent Captain Aull, of my regiment, in to General Latta, with instructions to tell him that, in my opinion, these forces couldn't join me, and to countermand the order so far as Walls station troops were concerned, and order me into the city. On the way in to General Latta, Captain Aull witnessed the leaving of the round-house by General Brinton's command. He conveyed that information to General Latta. General Latta then sat down and wrote an order to General Brinton, ordering him to unite with me at the stock-yards, and sent a copy of that order out to me. Of course that prevented me acting on my own responsibility, and I was compelled to remain at the stock-yards. The order reached General Brinton, and General Brinton refused to join me--at all events he didn't join me. I waited there until about twelve o'clock, and I was satisfied then that it was not General Brinton's intention to come to me--that he had left the city, and he didn't intend to return. I then made up my mind I would go into town and see myself what was going on. In all this time I hadn't one word of official information concerning what was going on in town. Colonel Smith came to my camp on Sunday morning, and gave me the first information of the state of affairs in Pittsburgh. Of course I could see a dim light in town, but the extent of what had occurred I didn't understand--I could hardly believe--and I could hardly believe that the large force of well drilled men under General Brinton could not control any mob that might be brought against them. At twelve o'clock and about ten minutes, these troops from Walls station came down to Torrens station. Q. Twelve o'clock Sunday night? A. Twelve o'clock noon on Sunday. At that time I knew, from the officers I had sent out after Brinton, that Brinton was not going to come back to Pittsburgh. I had official information from the staff of the Sixth division that the Fourteenth regiment and the Nineteenth had been disbanded by General Brown, and there was no military force in the city of Pittsburgh. I didn't deem that the troops from Walls station were of any assistance to me whatever, at that time. I thought they were a great hinderance to my efforts. I ordered them back to Walls station, and to go from there to Blairsville, which would be, I thought, almost necessary that Brinton should make a junction. 1 didn't see how he was to get home unless he did go to Blairsville in some way or another. I then came into town to see how affairs stood. I went to the Union Depot hotel; reached the Union Depot hotel just about the time it had been fired--it was then in a blaze, commencing to burn, though the fire was not thoroughly under way. I went to the end of the building, and I saw some fifty or sixty men on the tracks engaged in burning and pillaging. I think at that time that twenty-five good men could have checked that whole business. There was a large crowd in the open space in front of the Union Depot hotel, and a large crowd on Liberty street. I went through the crowd in front of the hotel, and went through the crowd on Liberty street, and I am satisfied there were not men enough in the Sixth division to stop that burning. The crowd on Liberty street and in the space in front of the Union Depot hotel was merely lookers-on, but it only needed a demonstration of some kind against them to have made every one of those men, or nearly every one of those men, part and parcel of that mob engaged in pillaging and burning. They would have gone to the defense of those men without any question. I satisfied myself of this matter pretty thoroughly. I was not hasty about it--calmly went through that crowd and heard them talk, and knew exactly what they meant. They were men that were not disposed to take upon themselves to burn or pillage, because there was no necessity, since they had other men to do it for them. Q. Were you in military uniform? A. No, sir; I was not. I could never have got into town with a military uniform on. I came into town not only disguised, but in a great measure hidden. I did that for the reason that men that joined my command, within a few moments of leaving, had told me of being stopped on the way themselves. They had to take a roundabout way to go out to the camp. I saw on my way in there were crowds of men everywhere who would have put a stop to any person coming into town in uniform. I went to the Union Depot hotel for the purpose of finding General Latta, and discover what was being done and what had been done. The moment I got there I saw for myself what had been done by the rioters, but what the military authorities were doing, of course, I couldn't ascertain until I had found General Latta. 1 hunted around through the town and found General Latta at the Monongahela House. He was regretting very much, at that time, that General Brinton had gone out of the city instead of going out to me or coming into the city. He was powerless to do anything, he had no troops under his command except my own regiment. I went to my armory, and I sent out to Colonel Smith and the adjutant general of the Fourth brigade instructions to my regiment to march into town. Through some delay on the part of Captain Aull, the regiment was delayed about two hours. They reached here about dark. Q. By what route? A. They came in on Fifth avenue, the only route they could have gotten into town. The crowd was very large on Penn avenue. Notwithstanding, they came into town, I believe, without any demonstrations of any kind against them whatever; marched down to the armory. We remained there on duty continually. Colonel Howard came in and he brought his regiment together. Colonel Gray, of the Fourteenth, got his regiment together. On Monday morning the three regiments were here in the city of Pittsburgh ready for duty, and on Monday morning, the three regiments, I believe, paraded through the streets. Colonel Howard's and my own regiment paraded together. I think I remember, after going back to the armory, seeing Colonel Gray's regiment return to the armory after their parade. I am not certain about that, but I think I did. Those two regiments returned to their armory, were ready, and could have been assembled had anybody taken the trouble to order them--could have been assembled in a very short time. On Monday morning, I believed that I was in command of the troops of the Sixth division. I certainly was in command of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth regiments, because Colonel Howard was then in my armory with his regiment and had agreed to obey orders under me. General Brown came in and assumed command on Monday morning, and I refused to recognize or obey any orders from him. He remonstrated, but I insisted that I wouldn't obey his orders. I was in command of the troops, and I intended to handle them, and he went out and various men came in and thought it was a very serious thing to have dissensions in the military at that time--the city was apparently in the hands of the mob, and it would be better for the military to proceed as a military body, without any dissensions in rank. After listening to them, I agreed to serve under General Brown, and I so notified him. From that time until the troops were ordered to Luzerne, and until we returned, I served immediately under the command of Brigadier General Brown. That is the outline of my service. Q. Did you receive any orders from General Brown to disband your regiment at any time? A. On the 31st of July, about one o'clock in the afternoon, General Brown sent an officer of his staff to my head-quarters, requesting my presence at his head-quarters. I think it was the 31st of July. I went up to General Brown's head-quarters, and he gave me a verbal order to dismiss my regiment. I asked him by what authority the regiment was disbanded. He said he had just come from the Governor's head-quarters, or he had received an official communication from the Governor's head-quarters, I have forgotten which. At all events, the orders were from his superior officers that my regiment, and also Colonel Gray's and Colonel Howard's were to be disbanded. I think he had sent to Colonel Howard and Colonel Gray also. I determined that I wouldn't disband my regiment, and I couldn't see why the Sixth division should be dismissed when the Governor was rapidly assembling all the troops of the State in this city. Could not understand it, and felt there was a mistake of some kind about it. I went back to the armory. That afternoon I paraded my regiment, and before I got through the parade I had official knowledge that the Sixth division was to go to the coal regions, which demonstrates fully to my mind that there had been a mistake made somewhere, or there never was a communication of the Governor's that the Sixth division should be dismissed at all. So far as official knowledge of what took place in the city of Pittsburgh on Friday after half-past one o'clock, and on Saturday until six o'clock, I know nothing at all. I was not present with my regiment and knew nothing at all about it, except on Sunday afternoon, when I came in myself. With the burning of the elevator on Sunday afternoon, I think all danger of a mob had passed. The men had got all the whisky they could get hold of, and the whisky had worked its effect on these men. The burning and pillaging of this city was stopped by the giving out of whisky, and with the natural working of the whisky on the human body. The men were dead drunk. On Monday morning there was no mob in the city of Pittsburgh that I could see, though the railroad property and trains were in the possession of the strikers, and remained so until the arrival of Governor Hartranft with the national guard. Q. What day was that? A. I do not remember what day that was; that was probably the 25th or 26th of July--it was later than that. I cannot state the date of his arrival. They were here on the 31st of July. I remember that, because I went to out to see General Brinton on that day. Q. Did you have any trouble in assembling your regiment--in getting them together? A. When they were first ordered out? Q. Yes. A. Oh, I had a great deal. Q. What I mean is, were the men willing to serve? A. Oh, yes; no trouble of that kind in my regiment whatever. The only trouble was in getting hold of the men. Q. Was there any disposition among your men to aid or sympathize with the strikers? A. Not a bit, sir. Q. Could you have depended on them, do you think, for any emergency? A. Depended on them for any emergency whatever. I had no trouble of that kind. I never gave a thought of trouble of that kind. I had no personal worry or annoyance with the men in my regiment. I do not believe there was much of that thing in any of the other regiments. Q. How much, or under what circumstances, would you deem it proper for an officer under command, in the face of a mob, to give the order to fire. That is, how much resistance on the part of the mob, or demonstration on their part, before an officer would be justifiable in firing, or giving the word of command to his men to fire? A. I would hesitate some before I would give an order to fire, unless there was a shot fired. The firing of a gun or pistol into the ranks of my men would, I believe, justify me in giving an order to fire, and I would at once do it. A man in command of troops has to judge a good deal of the disposition of the crowd, as he can see it. I can hardly tell you exactly what I mean. Sometimes you find a crowd in front of you good-natured, meaning no harm, and you generally find among the crowd a lot of men who are working the mischief--see an element of that kind in a crowd. I do not think an officer is justified in hesitating at all, because these men can soon influence a crowd to do as they want to. If a crowd attempted to seize hold of the guns of my command, I should certainly give an order to fire. I would not give the order recklessly to fire. I would give the crowd time to get out of the way, by simply announcing to them that I would fire if the crowd did not disperse. If they had been firing into me, and committing acts imperiling the lives of my men, I do not know that I would give them that warning. These are little things a man would have to judge of as they occurred. I believe an overt act committed by a mob justifies the officer who commands the troops to fire. Q. Would the hurling of missiles into your men by the mob be a provocation sufficient to justify the commander giving an order to fire? A. I believe it would, but the commander would consider the previous acts of the mob and all the conditions of it, the character of it, and the character of the people in it, &c. I believe whenever a mob in the presence of the military does damage to the military that the military are justified in doing damage to the mob, and doing it right quick. Q. And use the necessary efforts to disperse the mob? A. Yes; fire at them, and do it quickly, and do enough of it to prevent them ever coming back. I do not believe a man in command of troops has any right to act rashly, and would hesitate some before he would do a thing of that kind. My idea of the military has always been that they are subordinate until the sheriff is satisfied he can do nothing--that then they step in and act quickly. Probably there would be no demonstration against the military if the military officer would inform the mob that if they did not disperse within a certain time, he would fire upon them, and if necessary, load in the presence of the mob, and ninety-nine times out of one hundred, I believe, there would be no mob by the time they got loaded. Q. Did the mob flee or disperse before your men every time you gave the order to load? A. They scattered every time. I had no trouble at all with the mob--I did not consider that I had a mob in front of me. I simply had a large crowd, which I believe would have been a mob if they could have got the upper hand in any way. Q. You ordered to charge bayonets once or twice? A. Three times. Q. In the charge bayonets, did the crowd stand until your men came close to them? A. No, sir; they fled in a good natured way. Laughed--no trouble at all to get rid of them. My object only was to prevent them coming too close. If the men get close enough some men in the crowd might feel like taking a musket away, and that would bring about a disturbance. It is better to prevent anything of that kind than to allow it to come and then act afterwards. Q. Your object was to preserve the military character of your regiment? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Keep the troops and the mob separate? A. Yes. I never let the mob in with my troops at all, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You were in active service during the last war, were you not? A. I was. Q. In what capacity? A. I went out in the service as second lieutenant, and came back a major--filled all the intermediate ranks. Q. How long were you in the service? A. Three years and seven months. Q. You were speaking about taking command of the three regiments--the regiments commanded by Colonel Howard and Colonel Gray--did you take command by virtue of your seniority over them? A. I would, but I do not think I spoke of taking command of the three regiments, as I had not seen Colonel Gray. I do not know what he would do if he had been dismissed by General Brown. I suppose he would think General Brown had his reasons for that. Colonel Howard had voluntarily offered to join with me, and I did assume command. I had no conversation with Colonel Gray at that time, nor for weeks afterwards. I did say that on Monday, when Colonel Gray and myself were parading the streets, that, to the best of my knowledge, as we were returning, I saw Colonel Gray out with his regiment doing the same thing. That continued during the time we remained in our armory afterwards. In other words, I am satisfied that the Fourteenth regiment was organized and ready for duty on Monday. Q. After they had been dismissed by General Brown? A. Yes, sir. Q. You say you refused to receive orders from General Brown on Monday? A. I did. Q. Give us the reason for that? A. My reason for that was, that General Brown had dismissed his command, and when he dismissed his command, his authority ceased over them until he re-organized. The act of re-organizing or bringing together the Nineteenth regiment, was a personal matter on the part of Colonel Howard; General Brown had nothing to do with that; it was between Colonel Howard and myself, until General Brown got a brigade together. He could not command me. One regiment does not need a brigadier general and a colonel to command it; there would be a conflict of authority at once; those were my reasons. Q. Did you not regard him as your superior officer, if you were the only man in his brigade? A. I would regard him as my superior officer. I believe I could have done better service than he. I was willing to take the responsibility. I think that is the trouble with all the National Guard--there are too many officers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And not enough men? A. And not enough men. Q. Was there any reason you had for disobeying his orders or receiving orders from him? A. There was. I believe that General Brown has been suffering from sickness more or less. He was physically weak, and I did not believe was fully equal to the fatigues and annoyance of the command. I had no disposition to ignore General Brown, but I did think that in the great excitement of that day I could have handled my regiments better without being hindered by orders from brigadier generals. Q. In other words, you regarded him incapacitated for his position in consequence of his illness and mental distress? A. I did. Q. And that would justify you? A. That would have been my defense if I had got into any trouble. Q. If it had not been that, as a disciplinarian and a military man, you would have considered it your duty to obey? A. I would. I considered General Brown, under ordinary circumstances, was fully competent for his command; a braver man, I know, never breathed than General Brown--possesses every quality for bravery. His military capacity can hardly be doubted, when a man has filled the various commands that he had in the army. Q. That is, when he is in good health? A. When he is in good health, he is a good man. Q. Did you see anything of General Brinton's command during this trouble, up to the time the collision occurred at Twenty-eighth street? A. I saw nothing of any troops, except my own regiment, until Sunday night or Monday morning, when I came to town. I saw the troops of General Brinton in the cars, as the passed the stock-yards on their way to Pittsburgh. That is all I saw of them. Q. As an officer of experience in the army and active service, did you think it was prudent for General Brinton to retire to the round-house when he did? A. I would not like to have done it. If I had had command enough to have guarded every approach to the round-house, and to have had a guard around the round-house, for the purpose of allowing one portion to sleep while the other was on duty, I might have taken the round-house. Q. For the reserves? A. Yes, for the reserves; but under no circumstances would I go into the round-house, without I was certain that every approach to the round-house was thoroughly and properly guarded, and, if it was going to take too many men to guard the approaches to the round-house, I would not go into it then. Q. Where would you have stationed your men? A. The hill side there furnished an excellent position. Men could have slept there, and with a small portion of them guarding it, and been free from attack. They could have been free from danger. I like to be out in the open air myself, where I can swing free and clear. Q. Could you have intrenched yourself on the hill side, so as to make the position secure and safe? A. I do not think it needed any--it is naturally a strong position. If it was necessary they could have gone to the top of the hill, and nothing could have come in there. A very small force would have guarded any approach. It would not be likely that anybody would have crawled up there. Q. If there would have been an assault made, would not the troops have been exposed without entrenchments? A. Not to any extent. Men could have hidden behind a house here and there, and might have taken advantage of the inequalities of the ground, and no large body could have got there. Q. That hillside is terraced with ravines and wash-outs, which would have given your men as much protection as the enemy? A. Just as much, and with the advantage that a man in command of the troops would have the selection of the ground. I never walked over the ground particularly--I walk by there twice a day, and I am familiar with the appearance of the hill. What the number of inequalities of the ground are, I do not know, but it is a hill, at all events, and the mob would come from below. Q. The hill would have been the most eligible position for the force From your knowledge of the Union depot, would that have served as a fortification for General Brown's command to repel the mob, in case they had made an attack on the depot? A. To go down to the Union depot? Q. For instance, if they were in the depot? A. Oh, no; I think not. I do not think that depot was a desirable place for any defense, because there was too much space between there and the transfer station, where General Brown was, but the Union depot was certainly the only place where these troops could get supplies, and it would have been a good thing to have kept that space open, between the Union depot and General Brown. I do not think that the force could have scattered them to the extent that you speak of, defending the Union Depot hotel and transfer station and the round-house. I do not think they had enough men for it. Q. Was there any available position between the transfer station and the Union depot, where he could have entrenched himself and secured a position? A. The hillside was there. I think there was too much space between Twenty-eighth street and the Union depot for General Brinton to have attempted to protect all that line of property. He had not enough for that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Could he, with his men stationed at the Union depot, have gone out and driven off any crowd of men that might attempt to set fire to the cars and thus keep the space clear by sallying from the Union depot. A. I think he could; and, if it was necessary for him to go into any house, I would have preferred taking the whole command down to the Union depot, than going into the round-house and transfer station. Q. And then guarded it as far out as you could? A. Yes, sir. Q. The reason for that would have been that the supplies were all at the Union depot? A. All at the Union depot. Q. And the ammunition? A. The ammunition was there. However, I do not think that General Brinton knew anything about the ammunition, where that was, or anything about it, when he went into the round-house, and neither do I believe that General Brinton anticipated any trouble when he went into the round-house. Firing upon the mob and dispersing it, he was left without any disposition for some time, and then he went into the round-house. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know whether General Brinton received the order from General Latta, to join you at the stock-yards? A. No; I can only answer that by hearsay. Q. Did he report that he received that order? A. Yes, he does. The adjutant general in his report states that Colonel Norris and Colonel Stewart went out to deliver an order to General Brinton. General Brinton in his report states that at a certain time, Colonel Norris did join; he did not state whether Colonel Norris gave him, or what answer he gave Colonel Norris; but the two put together, demonstrate pretty clearly that he did receive an order. Q. Was there anything to prevent General Brinton from joining you at the stock-yards? A. Nothing at all, except, probably he might have not known the way out, but he could have found that by inquiring. There was not even that excuse, because he had an officer of the Sixth division with him, I believe, showing him the way. Q. In his retreat or march from the city to Blairsville, how far did he pass from you, from the stock-yards, how near? A. He was going away from me within fifteen minutes of the time he left the round-house--about fifteen minutes' march from the round-house he came to the junction of the Sharpsburg and East Liberty roads. The East Liberty led to the right and the Sharpsburg road to the left. He took the road to the left, so he was going away from me all the time after he got to where these two roads united. General Brinton did not get this order that General Latta speaks of in his report and that Colonel Norris carried to him--he did not get that order, and Colonel Norris did not join him until he got to the Sharpsburg bridge. Q. Until he got to it--he received it before he crossed the river? A. I think he did. This is only hearsay on my part. I do know that General Brinton had not received that order until he got to the Sharpsburg bridge, because Captain Aull of my regiment had a copy of the order. He had the written order. Colonel Norris had a verbal copy. Stewart and Norris reached General Brinton. Captain Aull did not. Captain Aull was in uniform, and had not the same facilities for passing through crowds that the other two men had who were in citizens' clothes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In the absence of the commander-in-chief, who is the senior? A. The next officer of the line, the senior officer? Q. Who is he--what person would be the next? A. In these troops out here I believe General Pearson would be in command. Q. Of the troops of the State who would be? A. The Governor is the commander-in-chief. After the Governor, the next senior major general. I believe the senior major general was General Dobson or General Osborne. I have forgotten which. After him comes General Pearson in order of seniority, and after all the major generals had been exhausted the brigadier generals would come in; then the colonels. Q. Is there any other person except the Governor as commander-in-chief who has authority to call out the militia? A. I think not. That is a matter of law, and that I am not exactly able to give an opinion upon. My understanding as a military officer is that no one but the Governor can call the troops out. I certainly would hesitate a long time before I would obey an order from anybody else. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In the absence of the Governor from the State is there any one that could call out the troops? A. Unless he left orders with his adjutant general. Q. Can he delegate that power as commander-in-chief to any person? A. That is another fine legal point. I will say this: That if the Governor is absent and an order came signed by order of the commander-in-chief, James W. Latta, Adjutant General, I should obey it. It is not my business to know whether the Governor is present or not. The order the official---- Q. He might exercise his powers as commander-in-chief out of the State, and without the exercise of the power from him, could any other person exercise that power of commander-in-chief? A. No, sir; there is no power can order out the militia but the Governor. Q. Is there such a thing as a Governor _pro tem._ in the absence of the Governor? A. I do not think there is such a thing as a Governor _pro tem._ Q. The Lieutenant Governor, would he exercise the functions of Governor in case of the death of the Governor? A. Of course in event of his death he becomes Governor at once. I do not understand that anybody can exercise the functions of the Governor but the Governor. That is a little bit of teaching I learned in the Democratic party when I was a very little bit of a fellow, and never forgot it. We have a respect for law and authority in our party. Q. Is there anything else you can enlighten us on in regard to the military movements of the mob that you can think of? A. There is nothing that I can say, except to give an opinion about the character of this mob, and the sufficiency of the military, and civil authorities, &c. I looked around very closely into this matter, and I am perfectly satisfied, in my own mind, that this mob was not to be dealt with by a trifling force. I do not believe it was in the power of the civil authorities to have put it down. I do not believe it was within the power of the small military force that was first called out to have put it down. It ceased to be a riot and got to be an insurrection almost instantly. The time was very short that intervened between the mob and the insurrection. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What distinction do you make between a mob and an insurrection? A. I believe that a mob is an uprising in a locality, either here or anywhere else--a small uprising that is within the power of the sheriff to look after. The sheriff, with what posse he might get together, may attempt to restore peace, and, failing in that, call out the local military. I make the dividing line as to when it becomes an insurrection when the executive of the state is compelled to interfere. If the sheriff and the Eighteenth regiment and the Fourteenth regiment and the Nineteenth regiment had put down that thing and restored peace and order, and placed the cars of the railroad in the hands of the company, I would have called it a riot. Q. And then the difference between a mob and an insurrection is in strength and power? A. Strength and power. If they overcome the local authorities and the State authorities have to interfere, then it is an insurrection. The sheriff is one arm of the executive. If he cannot quell it, then the executive himself has to come in. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When you first arrived at the Union depot, that was on---- A. Friday, at noon. Q. Would it have required a large force to disperse the mob then? A. It would not--not at Twenty-eighth street. I did not get off the cars at Twenty-eighth street; and I did not go up to Twenty-eighth street; and I did not know what the disposition of the crowd was; and I do not know what was back there--what could be seen--but those that could be seen certainly did not appear over two hundred or two hundred and fifty men. Q. If there had been active measures taken on Friday or Saturday, could not that mob have been dispersed and the rioting suppressed? A. I believe it could on Friday. I do not believe it could on Saturday. On Friday it could, because the strikers were determined themselves not to go to work, and some of them were rioters. There is no doubt about it; because some of them had interfered with the civil authorities, and a great portion of them were simply determined that they would not work, and they would not furnish any assistance to the Pennsylvania railroad in running their trains. For that reason, I believe the trains ought to have been started at once. I believe if a train had been started, the backbone of the thing would have been broken. I believe so to-day; but it was impossible to move trains, because you could not get men to man them. They were afraid of the strikers. It was not necessary for a striker to go up and stick a pistol at a man's head, or say, "I will shoot you." Some of them would give a wink and lift a finger, which would be just as effectual as if they had shot at you. I saw one striker go on the back part of an engine tender of a locomotive and take hold of a brake that was there. The engineer attempted to start the train. He just lifted his finger and the engineer never moved that train. Q. If these trainmen that were willing to run had received the protection either of the military or civil authorities, could they not have run out these trains, and do you not think they would have been run out? A. I think everybody got all the protection it was possible to give them. The Pennsylvania railroad were not prepared to run these trains, and they knew what the riot was, and what it would amount to more than we did. I knew no reason why troops should be called out on the morning I was called out. Never heard of a disturbance of any kind. After the military had been called out, then affairs had progressed so far that to have started a train from Twenty-eighth street would have required to place upon that train a large force of military to protect it. You could have moved it, probably to the stock-yards, and through the stock-yards, because there was a military force to protect it there, but as soon as they got a little west, why something might be thrown upon the track--a demonstration made of some kind that would block the cars up. There was no certainty it could go very far after it had started. But for the reason that there had been no demonstration made at any point, I believe if the train had been started, it could have gone through; not that it was in the power of the small force, civil or military, to put down the strikers, had they determined to resist, because there were too many of those strikers and fellow helpers in the mob. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You think there was a necessity for calling on the military? A. Oh, undoubtedly. There is no question about it in my mind. The only thing I find to regret was that the military did not have proper information as to what it meant. I am but an humble citizen of the city of Pittsburgh, and I know nothing about the strike on the Pennsylvania railroad, and what led to it, and what it meant. I went down to Union depot, and until I met General Pearson, or the sheriff, I knew no reason why the military should be called out. When I got back I could see why. There was a demonstration against law and order. Q. There was a necessity? A. There was a necessity, for the evidence proved that. * * * * * Colonel Joseph H. Gray, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside, Colonel? A. I reside in Pittsburgh, East End. Q. What is your official position in the National Guard? A. I am colonel of the Fourteenth regiment. Q. Were you in the war of the late rebellion? A. Yes, sir. Q. What rank did you hold? A. I was orderly sergeant of a company in the One Hundred and Fifth Pennsylvania regiment. Q. How long were you in the army? A. I went in in 1861, and remained in the service until the battle of Fair Oaks, where I was laid up from service. Q. State when you received the orders calling you into service in July last--what day it was and what time? A. I was not present. I had left Thursday morning and gone to the country, fourteen miles, and on Friday the order reached head-quarters for Colonel Glenn to assemble the regiment, about noon or after dinner some time. Q. Was he lieutenant colonel? A. Yes; lieutenant colonel. About Friday evening I heard that there was trouble in the city, and that the military was called out, and I also heard that the men could not be depended on--that they were not going to respond. Citizens from East Liberty came up. I jumped in my buggy and started to the city, and I met one company at East Liberty. I stopped there and, to my astonishment, found that the company had been assembled, and that a large majority of the company had responded to the call, and were ready for service, in their armory. I spoke a few words to the captain and told him to remain there until I came from the city, and he requested me to telegraph him immediately, and send him some orders. I stopped at my home, and put on my fatigue uniform, and came to the city, and went to the central armory and found there my adjutant, and that Lieutenant Colonel Glenn had taken what men had assembled there--there are three companies who have their armories there--and he had taken them to the Union Depot hotel. I immediately went there and reported for duty to General Brown. I inquired of my officers as to the number of men that had reported for duty, and then I had six companies in the city and four in the country. I inquired whether Captain Shof had been ordered out at East Liberty--he told me not. I went to the dispatcher's office, at the end of the hotel, and telegraphed to those companies to report to me immediately, at the Union Depot hotel. However, at that time they could not very well get in, and I changed the order to report to me on the first morning train coming into the city. About 7 o'clock Captain Nesbitt came up and Captain Glenn, of Mansfield, reported with their companies. That was Friday evening. It was six o'clock when I came to the Union depot, and they arrived at seven. I went out to the dispatcher's office the second time, to order Captain Perchman in. I then met, for the first time, General Pearson and told him what I proposed doing, and he said that he preferred that Captain Perchman should remain in his armory there for the present, and Colonel Moore, as chief of staff, told me he had communicated with Captain Perchman to this effect, that he should go and get his men rations and remain there, so that I then turned my attention to having my men fed. I asked the gentleman in charge of the depot if he had any cars in the ... he should run them down, so that I could put my men into them for the night, until further orders. He immediately had cars run down. I did that because I wanted to get my men--there was a great deal of talking on the platform around the depot about the future operations. General Latta had just come in, and there was a good deal of excitement, and I did not want my men to know anything about it. I put them in the cars and kept them there until three o'clock, in the morning. Then I received an order, about twelve or one o'clock, to take my command, at three o'clock, sharp, to Twenty-eighth street, by way of Webster avenue. I marched out of the Union depot precisely at three o'clock, and General Brown and Colonel Smith and another gentleman. We went to Twenty-eighth street by a circuitous route, and took a position on the hill side center, opposite Twenty-eighth street, in line. There we remained during the day. I should say about nine o'clock, perhaps between eight and nine o'clock, General Brown sent his adjutant to me, asking the detail of one or two companies--I think he said fifty men. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That was on Saturday? A. That was on Saturday morning. I sent two companies to the foot of the hill, and they were on duty there for an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, and they were relieved by two other companies. Q. From your regiment? A. Yes, sir; during the forenoon I sent a request to General Brown that my two companies should be relieved. They had all been down, and I asked that they be relieved by the Nineteenth regiment. I thought we were doing more than our share of duty, and for other reasons I asked to be relieved. Q. You speak here of Colonel Glenn? A. Lieutenant Colonel Glenn. He assembled my regiment in the city, and reported to the Union depot. Q. You say you were accompanied by Colonel Smith? A. Colonel Smith. Q. What regiment? A. He is connected with another regiment. Q. During the day, what companies were on duty at the foot of the hill? A. They were not under my command. I never knew what orders they had that were detailed. I do not know to-day what their orders were. I know what duty they were performing. I was never down on the railroad myself until I was ordered off the hill. We were there when the Philadelphia troops came there, and we were witnesses of the conflict. About two o'clock in the afternoon I received an order--I think it was about that time--the only order I received from the time I had got an order to go to Twenty-eighth street--I received an order to have my command in readiness to move, at a moment's notice, on board a train. I immediately sent my commissary, Captain Wallace, to provide rations. While there was no explanation of that order, I understood his meaning that we should take charge of a freight train. I had the provisions there. The captain got the provisions at Twenty-eighth street, three days' rations, and we remained, momentarily expecting an order to move down the hill and get on board a train. At the time that the Philadelphia troops came out---- Q. Before you come to that--did I understand you to say that you had no knowledge of what orders those companies had that were detailed, and sent down to the crossing of the railroad? A. They were detailed away from my command, and I had no knowledge of what was to be done. Q. Who did they report to? A. They reported to General Brown. I know what duty they were performing there--could see it all. I might just say here that I had great apprehensions of the whole matter. They were not the impressions I had since. Those were what I had then. I want to say this: that I gave orders distinctly and positively that my men should not be allowed to talk with, or in any way have any conversation with, the strikers, and I say, also, that that order was positive. Of course, men sometimes were away; it was a pretty hot day, and they had to go for water, and occasionally, perhaps, they talked; but I do not think my orders were violated at all in any respect. I stayed with my men all day long watching their behavior, and at this time I received an order to get my men ready to go on a train. I felt pleased at this, for I thought those who were at the head of affairs understood the situation. I had my doubts before that whether they did. Though we did not go on the train, we were there, ready to go on after the firing was over. Q. Give us the circumstances of the affair; how it occurred--you were present there at the time, were you not?--as briefly as you can? A. I would say, first, that the Philadelphia troops came out in as grand style as ever men went to any duty, and their position was good. There can be no exceptions taken to the position. They moved up the tracks. My recollection of the matter is that there was one company in advance of the First regiment. I did not know it was the First regiment at that time. I know that from the report. They moved, and they were formed in line and marched to the left to the round-house, cleared the tracks, and then the rear rank was about faced, and cleared the track, leaving an open space. Two other companies were brought up, and a Gatling gun brought up to that space, and the company in advance marched right into the crowd. They were as determined men as ever stood before anybody. I looked very earnestly, and with a good deal of solicitation, when the stones were thrown and pistol shots fired. I could not see whether there was many or not. There was a great deal of confusion, and the firing began and was kept up--a continuous firing. Q. You say that pistol shots were fired from the mob? A. Yes, sir. Q. And stones thrown from the mob and other missiles? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any firing from the troops before that? A. There was not a shot fired until after they were attacked. The first thing I saw--I knew it was coming. I was not disappointed a particle in regard to the whole matter--the company charge bayonets on the crowd, and the first thing I saw was a man in the mob take hold of a gun, and one man wrenched the gun away from him, and struck him with the bayonet with a good deal of force. Q. That is, one of the soldiers? A. Yes; and then the pistol shots were fired. It was all done in a moment, and then the fire began by the soldiers. Q. Was there any command given to fire? A. It was too far away for hearing the command; but I may say it was effectually done, and if that was so, it was only a pity the command had not been given. Q. Was it a volley or was it a scattering fire? A. It was a scattering fire, but it extended all along the line. We were immediately in front of the rear rank that faced to the rear, and received a good share of the fire. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there a rush made by the mob towards the troops before the firing began? A. The thing had been gathering momentum from ten o'clock. It was not a mob--the mob in front--that I was afraid of at all. It was the feeling that existed there, apparently strong outside, and when the mills closed that afternoon, it seemed to me they just came up there in hundreds. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Rolling mills, iron mills, and so forth? A. Yes, sir; the crowd accumulated rapidly. They were going and coming all the time, and they were there in force. Q. The mill hands are generally at leisure on Saturday afternoon? A. I think they came right out of the mills, when they closed down. A great many, perhaps, came there out of curiosity, but there was a great many added to the mob down on Twenty-eighth street. The crowd increased rapidly at that time. Q. From what you saw, would you consider an order to fire justifiable? A. Yes, sir. Q. What took place after that? A. The crowd ran away. Those that were on the hill side came up and devoted themselves to the carrying away of the wounded for a time. The Philadelphia troops moved up and took their position by the crossing, at Twenty-eighth street, and placed their Gatling gun in position there, and I ordered my companies, Captain Glenn and Captain Nesbitt, up in line of battalion. The crowd down the road, that had been there, collected again. However, they did not make any attempt to force themselves on to the railroad. The Philadelphia troops would strike terror into the crowd and they would run away for a time, and then would find there was no danger, and then they would come back. Q. When did you go after that? A. Five or six o'clock, after quiet had been restored, and the wounded had all been carried away, I received an order from General Pearson, to assist Colonel Howard, in moving Breck's guns to the round-house, and then go to the transfer office, and hold it against any attack. I sent that order--it was a written order--with my adjutant, to General Brown, who was with Colonel Howard, on my right and front, and reported to him that I was ready to move, in obedience to the order. However, I want to say, that was very reluctantly done. Q. What was reluctantly done? A. That movement by me. That was done, because their officers and their commands were there. Captain Breck came to me at that time, and said he had such an order, and asked me if I would not see General Pearson, and protest against the matter. I said to him that there were my men immediately in my line, and he commenced to explain the situation that he could be in, and I said to him, "Captain, I won't allow any discussion of that kind here." I told him to step to one side, and this order reached me, just at that time, and after I read the order, I found Captain Breck was waiting and I went to him. He asked me if I had concluded to do anything in the matter, and I said to him, we will obey the order. I felt then it was a great mistake. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. For what reason? A. I did not think we had any business down on Twenty-eighth street. Q. You went down to obey the order? A. We obeyed the order. However, just immediately at that time the Philadelphia troops began moving into the round-house, commencing on the left, and moving in all the way up, and Captain Breck took this battery, and then went away, and left me on the hill. When I moved up they were all in the round-house, and the mob was pressing down this track. I moved down the hill. Had to go down by a flank movement. I anticipated trouble then, because I knew by their actions--they hooted and jeered and taunted the soldiers--the Philadelphians--as they went away. I anticipated trouble. However, we marched down by the gate-way, and marched through the crowd, and to the transfer station. Upon my arrival at the transfer station, I took a view of the station myself. Colonel Howard came and asked me in regard to the matter. Colonel Howard asked me if I would take command of the station. I told him General Brown was here, and he was in authority. I told him that I would throw out pickets on my front. The transfer station was separated by tracks in between. Colonel Howard was on the side next to the hill, and I was on Liberty street, and I told him I would take care of my side; that he could dispose of his own troops. We remained there, and the most of them went and laid down to sleep. It was dark, and most of my men, except those on duty, went to sleep. During the night General Brown came to me, and said that the place was untenable, and he advised me to get out of it. We commenced to consult about the matter, and I told him there was no trouble there, that it was a good place to rest, and that if we got into any trouble we could get out of it. A short time afterwards he and Colonel Howard came back, and I had the situation in my own mind, and had sent my officers out on the hill side, and at that very time I had sent Doctor McCandless, surgeon on my staff. He was well acquainted with the hill side in that part of town. I sent him up there to look at the situation--it is a very ragged hill--to see in case there was a necessity to pick out the best way, of a return by the way of the hill side to my old position on the hill side. When General Brown and Colonel Howard came to me, I told them what I had done, that I expected that our position was such we could not do any fighting, but we could from the hill side, and I had sent officers out to select a way by which we could get out, if necessary. There was no immediate danger. About ten o'clock General Brown came to me again, and said we must get out. He had information that we must leave that place. Says I, "General Brown, you cannot persuade me to leave this, I will obey your orders, but I do not see any necessity for leaving this position at this time." He immediately ordered me to take my command, and go to the Union depot. I formed my command, and we started, but the road was full of cars, and we had to go out the best way we could. We got out into the open track below, and when I got out there, I halted the advance of the regiment, re-formed and marched into the Union depot in good order. Q. Will you please tell me about how far it is from the transfer station to the round-house, where the Philadelphia troops were? A. From the transfer station? Q. From where you were stationed? A. I have very little knowledge as to the location of that transfer depot. I never passed through there, except going east on the train at night, but I do not think it is very far, probably two hundred yards. Q. That is where you were stationed, about two hundred yards from the round-house? A. I should think so. That is my idea of the distance there. When I arrived at the Union depot, I was pretty disgusted with the thing--had been all day, for that matter. After I re-formed my men, I had expected to get some rations. I knew my commissary was there getting some, and I sent an officer to inquire and find out. General Brown, I went to him, and asked him for orders, and to my utter astonishment he told me I could dismiss my command. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you obey him? A. Not then. I called around my officers--those that were nearest to me--surrounded the general, and protested in the strongest terms that I was allowed to, in regard to the matter, that it was a disgrace to the officers and men that I had there willing to do their duty; that it was a disgrace also to desert the Philadelphia troops. The general was a little startled at my talk, and he says, "You remain here a few minutes, and I will see you again." He left me, and I did not see him again. By Mr. Means: Q. I would like to know where and when your regiment was disbanded? A. When and where it was disbanded. It was disbanded a few minutes before eleven o'clock at the Union Depot hotel, by myself, in obedience to General Brown's order. And I want to say this in regard to that matter: After I remained there awhile, I went up to the office of the Union Depot hotel, and inquired for General Pearson, and they told me that the general was not there. I inquired for General Latta, and they told me he was not there. I wondered where he could have gone to, and I saw Mr. Murdock, who is one of the officers, and he made the same reply; and I had great confidence in him. Q. Your head-quarters is here at the market-house, isn't it? A. I had my head-quarters at my office. That is, our armory. Q. Your regiment was not brought there, then, as a regiment, and disbanded? A. Not that night. No, sir; because I had four companies who had to go home by railroad. Q. Were any of the companies brought down here and disbanded? A. That night? Q. Yes, sir? A. No, sir. I directed my staff officers to notify the commanding officers of companies that their services were not needed, and to take their men to the armories and dismiss them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What the captain wishes to get at is, did your men break ranks there at the Union depot? A. I had a company in the next day at ten o'clock. Q. They marched out by companies? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. What I want to get at is this: If your regiment was disbanded at the Union depot; and after that, did you not have command of them as a regiment? A. Well, sir, I dismissed my regiment at the Union depot. I also sent word to the companies who had to leave the city--I had four companies--that they were perfectly safe, and they better not go away till morning. Q. What did they do with their arms, when you dismissed them? A. They took them home, except one company; they could not get away that night, and stayed there. At ten the next day, I had three companies that went out on the eleven o'clock train. By Mr. Means: Q. The companies that left lived in the rural districts; they took their arms with them to their homes? A. I think they all did, so far as I know, except one company. Q. And they remained in the city? A. That company was a home company, and remained at the Union depot until ten o'clock next day, before it left. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many rounds of ammunition had you? A. I think we had about eight or ten rounds to a man. It was not very equally divided, but we averaged that during the morning. We had received our ammunition, our share of the ammunition, by requisition, a few weeks before that time, and had sent out to the arsenal, and they had not received it, and it was left at Captain Fox's armory, in Lawrenceville, and on that morning, I think that we hadn't enough, and I sent out a wagon and had a box of a thousand rounds brought in, and it was carried up from the crossing to my regiment, and a great many of the strikers came up to see what kind it was, and that was the only time that any of them was up there in any considerable number. That is, if there were any up there, they were strikers away from the fold. They came up, and I allowed them to remain there until the ammunition was distributed and issued, so that they could see what it was. Then I ordered them down the hill and they went. A few minutes after that one of their number, I presume him to be one of their number, came up and commenced to me about our being there, and I asked him who he was, and he said he was a striker, and that they were armed and that they were going to fight for their rights. Q. This was on Saturday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Before the Philadelphia troops came out there? A. Yes, sir; he said they were armed and they were going to fight for their rights. I heard him, and told him if that was all the business they had up there he had better get down the hill, or I would arrest him. He left. That is the only man I talked to that day outside of my own regiment. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you know who that man was? A. No; I did not know him. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. At the time your dismissed your troops at the Union Depot hotel, about eleven o'clock, was the whole number with you that you took out in the morning? A. No, sir; there was not. Q. What had become of those that were not there? A. I dismissed some men early in the day of Saturday morning, men whom I think were not in a condition to do service there under the circumstances. Q. For what reason? A. There was two of them got something to drink and got drunk. I think they were drunk, and I relieved them from duty and sent them away. That was one thing I had great care about. I believe that a commander is responsible for the morality of his men, and I was looking after that particularly on that occasion. Q. How many less men did you have at night? A. I had between thirty and forty. Q. That were missing--some of those went off on their own account? A. No, sir. I dismissed one company entire. I had one company after the firing of the troops--a great many of the killed and wounded were killed immediately in front of my line, and I saw the men raising their guns to fire, and I ordered my men to lie down, and I think I saved the lives of some of them by so doing. Immediately after that there was a great deal of excitement, and the crowd down on the hill side came rushing back and got in the rear of my line. I ordered the captains to examine the men to see that they had not loaded their arms. I did not anticipate that that was the end of it, but I wanted to know whether any of my men had loaded their arms under the excitement, and I found it was reported that some of them had. I saw some myself, and this company--the lieutenant had an altercation and tussle, and took a gun--the man refused to obey, and the lieutenant took hold of the gun and took it from him. It created a panic in the company, and they ran back of the line for a few yards, and I sent Colonel Glenn to see what the trouble was, and the men were a good deal excited. Afterwards the captain came to me and I sent an order to have them remain there in that position, and the captain came to me afterwards and asked me to order them back into the line, which I refused to do. I determined to send them home. I dismissed twenty-eight men in one company. I want to say that I believe I did these men a great injustice. Some of these men tried to get back here at night. I did not know the circumstances, and I supposed that under the excitement of the firing that they had run back. And when the matter was explained to me afterwards, I believe I did them a great injustice. I know I did, because they did service after worthy of all praise. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did any of your men straggle off and desert? A. Some men went away--not many. Q. How many men had you at night, or about how many, when you dismissed the regiment? A. I had about one hundred and forty-six men and twenty-seven officers. I had my men counted before I dismissed them. I was not deceived in regard to them from first to last. Q. What was the captain's name of that company you sent off? A. Captain Graham. Q. Were they veterans as a general thing--had seen service? A. Which? Q. These men in the company. A. I could not answer that; some of them were, I know that. All my officers are old veterans, except one. Q. You have seen service in the war? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what capacity did you serve in the army? A. Orderly sergeant. Q. For how long were you in the service? A. From September, 1861, until the last day of May, 1861. Q. When you were wounded? A. Yes, sir. Q. What explanation did you have from General Brown for disbanding the regiment or dismissing the regiment at that time? A. There was no explanation of it at that time. Q. Did you think that that order of General Brown's to dismiss the regiment could be justified on any grounds? A. No, sir. Q. You dismissed your regiment upon that order, simply because you consider it your duty to do so. You obeyed orders? A. Yes; I obeyed orders. Q. Where was the Nineteenth regiment at that time? A. I only saw one of the officers of the Nineteenth regiment at the Union depot, and that was Captain Bingham. * * * * * General A. L. Pearson, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I live in the city, sir. Q. What is your profession? A. I am a member of the bar of this city. Q. Member of the National Guard? A. Yes; I command the Sixth division National Guard. Q. With what rank? A. The rank of major general. Q. Were you in the late war of the rebellion? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long? A. I entered the service in the beginning of 1862, as captain, and went through the intermediate ranks of major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and was afterwards brevetted brigadier and major general--commanded a brigade at the end of the war. Q. Were you in the city on the 19th of July last? A. Yes, sir; I was. Q. State when you first heard of the disturbance among the railroad employés, and your connection with it thereafter? A. On the evening of the 19th July--Thursday, I believe--I was going home-I live just at the Allegheny arsenal--I live on Thirty-ninth, just directly opposite the Allegheny arsenal--going out in the street car, and I observed numbers of men standing up along the railroad. At that time I knew there was no difficulty. Had not heard of any strike or any disturbance of any kind or character. I suppose I retired about half-past nine o'clock. In the neighborhood of ten, or probably half-past, a carriage drove up to my door, and the bell rang, and I went to the door and found a telegraph dispatch from General Latta, asking if I knew anything relative to the disturbance on the Pennsylvania railroad. The messenger who was in the carriage requested me to go with him. Who the gentleman was I do not know. I went with him. Q. What time was the message received at the office? A. That is what I cannot tell you. Q. Did not notice that? A. I did not notice it. I supposed it had just been received, and brought directly from the office to my residence. I received it probably a few minutes after ten--between ten and eleven. I got in the carriage and accompanied the gentleman down to Mr. Pitcairn's office, which is at the corner of Twenty-sixth and Liberty avenue. When I got there I think Mr. Scott was present, who was the solicitor of the road, and several other gentlemen. They told me about the difficulties, and stated that they had sent to Sheriff Fife. At that time I knew of no difficulties. Did not know there were any troubles at all, and I waited a long time, and I presume it was in the neighborhood of twelve o'clock when Sheriff Fife arrived, and they talked over the situation of affairs, and at the request of the sheriff I accompanied him to Twenty-eighth street, walking up the track. Q. Twelve o'clock at night? A. I suppose in the neighborhood of twelve o'clock in the night. When we arrived in the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street, several shots were fired--not at us, however. They were fired, I presume, in the air, at least, nobody was hurt, and we went in among the crowd, and the sheriff mounted a little pile of lumber or so, and told this crowd who he was, and was answered with most outrageous language. He told them he was there as a law officer of the county, and insisted upon them dispersing. Told them the consequences of their illegal acts. After he had spoken sometime, some one, who evidently was leader of the party, cried out, "Why, you can go and bring your posse, we don't care a damn for you or your posse. Mayor McCarthy and his police are with us." Then they mentioned the name of some merchant who had promised them a thousand barrels of flour, and another gentleman who promised them one thousand dollars if they would continue. After they had made these remarks, two or three of the fellows took me one side, and told me about a man named McCall, who had been arrested for striking Mr. Watt, and wanted to know if I would defend him next morning at the mayor's office at ten o'clock. I told them if it was necessary; that I was an attorney, and I would go with them, and advised them to leave the railroad property at that time. Talked to them quietly, and promised to meet them the next morning to defend this fellow who had struck Mr. Watt. Sheriff Fife still talked with the crowd. The crowd was very large, and, while he was talking, one or two, maybe three, dispatches--whether they were telegraphic dispatches or not, I do not know--but they received one or two, and probably three dispatches. Q. The mob? A. The mob; and as some person would announce the fact that they received these dispatches they would run hurriedly with a lantern, and he would read it out. They said we don't care a damn for you, or your posse, to-morrow at eleven o'clock we will stop every road in the Commonwealth. There will not be a railroad train run to-morrow after eleven o'clock. Their language was simply outrageous. One or two women in the party were, if anything, worse than the men, and extended invitations to the sheriff which he did not accept at that time. Whether he has or not, I don't know. No such invitations were extended to me, however. At that time I was treated very civil, indeed. They treated me very nicely with the exception of the boisterous language which had been used more directly to the sheriff. Finding nothing could be done they insisted upon remaining where they were, and stopping the trains. We walked down to the telegraph office where we had left, and there in consultation with Mr. Scott and others who were present, the sheriff sent communications to the Governor, to the Lieutenant Governor, to the Adjutant General, and Mr. Quay, and whether he sent to any other State officers or not I can't say. He hesitated at first in regard to writing these communications, and said he would prefer to have his attorney. Says he: "I can't reach Mr. Carnochan, but I will submit and ask your advice in regard to this matter." Q. That is, addressing himself to you? A. Addressing himself to me. I told him I was very free to confess that after having heard what had been said by the mob at Twenty-eighth street, and the fact that there was not a single police officer to be seen in that neighborhood, although large crowds had congregated there, that it was more than likely that what they said in regard to the mayor was true, that everything looked very serious, that he had but one duty to perform, and that was to call out his _posse comitatus_, and in view of the fact that everything looked so badly just then, that I would not hesitate, were I the sheriff of the county, under the circumstances, to notify the Adjutant General of the true state of affairs. He then sent the telegraphic dispatches as I have stated. Q. By whom were they written? A. That is what I cannot tell you, sir. They were sent, I know, by the sheriff. They were not written by myself, and I do not think they were written by Sheriff Fife. Q. Were they written by Mr. Scott, the solicitor? A. I think it is more than probable that Mr. Scott wrote the dispatches. When I knew he was going to send the dispatches I had other things to think about. I knew my command was scattered, and I would have a good deal of work to get them out if I was so ordered. Q. Who first suggested the calling out of the militia in that conversation? A. That would be hard to tell. The conversation was a general one. Probably there were half a dozen gentlemen present at that meeting. Q. Between yourself and the sheriff? A. There was Mr. Scott was there, and I think Mr. Watt and the sheriff, and two or three other railroad officials, and myself. The dispatches were sent. I telegraphed General Latta that I was then at the telegraph office, and subject to any orders that he might send. At about three o'clock, probably half past three o'clock in the morning, I received a telegraphic communication--order from General Latta--ordering me to place one regiment--ordering out one regiment for duty. Upon that order I telegraphed Colonel Guthrie, who resided at the East End, telling him I had ordered out his regiment--the Eighteenth regiment. I came down to the city and stopped one or two of the newspaper presses, and got my order--I think it was in the _Gazette_ and the _Dispatch_--calling upon the Eighteenth regiment to assemble at their armory at six o'clock in the morning, and report at the Union depot at seven. My adjutant was out of town, and I had no means of reaching any members of my staff; but having telegraphed Colonel Guthrie, I fortunately met him early on the following morning, and he had been at work from the time he had received my dispatch in getting his men together. From the fact that his regiment was scattered all over town, it was almost impossible for him to have access to the members of his command, and they did not report at the hour named, to wit: seven o'clock in the morning, but at about twelve o'clock. Colonel Guthrie reported at the Union Depot hotel. I deemed it then--at that time, at Torrens station, where the stock-yards were--there was a large number of sheds, and a great many cattle congregated there, and a large crowd had been there, and I considered it was the principal point of attack--that there was more danger to be apprehended there than any place else. I consequently sent Guthrie and his command to Torrens station by rail. I had telegraphed General Latta of the situation of affairs, and suggested the propriety of calling out the remainder of my division, and received an answer thereto, with orders to that effect. General Brown lived at McKee's, some distance below the city, and I had no means of communicating. I consequently issued my orders directly to the regimental commanders, Colonel Gray and Colonel Howard; also, instructing Captain Breck to report with two pieces of artillery. Late in the afternoon of Friday, probably in the neighborhood of half past three o'clock, Captain Breck reported with his two pieces of artillery, and Colonel Howard reported with but a very few men--I suppose, all told, not fifty from his regiment. I then ordered Colonel Howard and Captain Breck, with his two pieces of artillery, to take their position on Liberty avenue, with the expectation of moving out to Twenty-eighth street. Mr. Thaw, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Cassatt, and one or two other gentlemen, met at the office of Mr. Butler, who was the depot master, and wanted to know whether I could clear Twenty-eighth street with the number of men I then had--that was about seventy-five. I told them there was no doubt about my---- Q. What time was that? A. That was at four o'clock. I told them there was no doubt about my ability to clear the tracks, at that time, with the number of men. That I had already ordered them to start, to go out Liberty avenue to Twenty-eighth street, and up Twenty-eighth, and take possession of the tracks at that point. I had no doubt of my ability to clear the tracks, at that time, but I was compelled to say that it would be at a fearful loss of life, a thing that I preferred to avert, if possible. Mr. Thaw and Mr. Scott both expostulated, and asked if I would send an aid, and stop the troops from going at that time, which I did. They halted at the Catholic church, and we then talked the matter over. Mr. Cassatt thought it much better to go out and take possession of the property then, even if there should be a trouble. I told them, then, that I could go and take possession of the track, that I thought, from the feeling that was existing then, it would be impossible for me, with seventy-five men, to hold the position. I would clear the tracks, but I would not promise to hold the position at that locality. After considerable conversation, believing it better to avert bloodshed and loss of life, and, acting upon the suggestion of Mr. William Thaw and Mr. Scott, I re-called the troops, and brought them into the Union depot, but, in the meantime, I had visited Torrens station, in company with the sheriff, and he there had spoken to the crowd, and commanded and demanded that they should disperse. They treated him with a very great deal of disrespect, hurling all sorts of outrageous epithets at him, and, seeing quite a number in the crowd whom I knew, not by name, but whom I knew, I thought if I would talk to them I might have some influence, and I got up on a tender, and spoke to them. It just had the opposite effect. They said, we don't care a damn for you or your troops. One man in particular said, "I have been in the army for four years, and many of us have been, and we are going to have bread or blood, and we will wade up to our waists in blood before this thing is over." I told them that was the language generally used by fellows who ran away. There was a good many women and children, and I begged that they would go away. We then returned to Twenty-eighth street, and I again spoke to the crowd there, with a like result. After the troops had been re-called into the Union Depot hotel, it was suggested that, inasmuch as very many of the men of my division were workingmen, who, probably, had fathers or brothers who were directly interested in the railroads, being employés of the road, that their sympathies would be with those that were opposing law and order, that some other troops should be called, and Mr. Cassatt suggested that a Philadelphia regiment be sent for. I telegraphed to General Latta what had been suggested, and, in answer thereto, he asked what I thought of affairs. I told him, from the situation of affairs, that I thought it would be much better to bring additional troops here, and that we ought not to have less than two thousand. That there was but one way to avoid the shedding of blood and loss of life, and that was to overawe the strikers and rioters by an appearance of strength. Acting upon that suggestion, I think General Brinton's command was ordered here. In the evening, I received a telegraphic dispatch from General Latta, stating that he had ordered General Brinton's division to report to me. I received a dispatch from General Brinton, stating that he would leave at one o'clock with eighteen hundred men, fully armed and equipped. At that time, Colonel Gray had reported with the Fourteenth regiment at the Union depot, and a considerable number of the Nineteenth regiment--Colonel Howard's regiment--had also reported, swelling the entire strength of the division to the neighborhood, probably, of six hundred men. Of that number Colonel Guthrie, probably, had two hundred, and over, men at Torrens station. Anticipating the arrival of General Brinton early on Saturday morning before daylight, I ordered Colonel Gray, and Colonel Howard, and Captain Breck to have their men under arms, and ready for any movement I might suggest. Q. On Saturday morning? A. Yes, sir; and I think about two-thirty o'clock that morning, I sent Colonel Gray out, taking a circuitous route--taking Bedford avenue, so as to strike the top of the hill directly opposite Twenty-eighth street, with orders to deploy on the summit of the hill, and move down, and giving him time to get to that locality. I had taken out Breck's two guns upon gondola cars and what troops of the Nineteenth had reported under Colonel Howard, and just as we reached Twenty-eighth street, Colonel Gray's regiment could be seen coming down from the summit of the hill, and moving down towards the pieces. At that time there were not many men there--not many of the mob. We disembarked Captain Breck's guns, and placed them in position, facing Twenty-eighth street, and commanding that position. Colonel Gray moved his command down, probably half way down the hill and halted. Colonel Howard took possession of the railroad tracks, and I walked up to meet Colonel Gray's command, and found half a dozen men who had evidently been posted there, and we drove them off the hill. We pushed the crowd back clear to the westerly track, and I told them then and there, that the Philadelphia troops had been ordered here, and that we had no blank ammunition, that these men were all sworn into the service, that they had but one duty to perform, and that was to obey orders, and that they were there in opposition to the law, and that they must leave. Q. The mob was there in opposition? A. The mob was there in opposition to the law, and they must leave the tracks, that they had no right there, and that the orders that I would give to my troops would be to keep the hill side clear, and the tracks open for the passage of any trains the railroad officials might see fit to send. There was considerable howling at that time, and some of them spoke about wanting bread, and says I, "If you want bread, if you will go away from there, I will send you a car load of bread. I will furnish you with all the bread you want, if you go away and let these tracks alone." The tracks then were comparatively clear. There was no person on the hill side with the exception of the troops. I then gave directions to General Brown, who had command of the infantry portion of the division, to keep the hill side clear, and allow no person upon the track, and to hold it in the position until he received further orders from me. He spoke of the fact that Twenty-eighth street was a public street, and that the public had a right to use it. I told him that was a matter he had no concern about whatever. I had the responsibility of closing up that street, and I gave him an order to keep the hill side clear, and the people off the track, and anything he might do to carry out that order I would be responsible for, and he would be doing what would place him in no false position. I then jumped on the locomotive, and returned to the Union Depot hotel. During this time numbers of people had come to me to expostulate with me for calling out the troops. I told them that was a matter in which I had no concern whatever; I was merely obeying orders. I was a sworn officer of the Commonwealth, and that every officer and every man in my command had filed their oaths to obey orders. I was there to obey orders, and anything that might happen would not be upon my shoulders, but upon those who were breaking the laws. I received telegrams from General Brinton from various points on his route to Pittsburgh from Philadelphia. When he reached Pittsburgh, it was then in the neighborhood of two o'clock. He had about five hundred and fifty men and two Gatling guns, and I think twenty thousand rounds of extra ammunition. Upon his arrival, we furnished his command--they came in two sections--when the first section arrived, we furnished the troops of that section with such rations as we could procure, which was nothing more or less than a sandwich and cup of coffee, and probably thirty minutes after the second section arrived, and we furnished the troops in that section with sandwiches and coffee. We took the ammunition and placed it in the small building near the track, and I then took General Brinton out and had a consultation with General Latta, who was then in the Union Depot hotel. He wanted to know what my plans were, and I told him, and he asked me the question, "Do you still think that it is better to overawe the mob with the large number of troops?" And I told him, certainly I did, and General Latta agreed with me. Says he, "I think you are pursuing a wise policy. We will try to avert the shedding of blood and loss of life if possible." He then wanted me to show General Brinton the situation of affairs, and I drew a small plot of Twenty-eighth street and the hill, and the track, the round-house, &c. And General Latta asked me, "Who will you send out with General Brinton to show him the situation?" I told him I had better go out myself. We started out the tracks, taking the two Gatling guns by hand. At that time a large crowd was congregated in the neighborhood of the Union Depot hotel, many of them looking over the fences, and others had got inside, and were mingling with the troops, but we pushed out the tracks, and in the neighborhood of Twenty-fourth street there was quite a crowd lining the tracks, standing on the cars, occupying the side of the hill. Probably at that time there was in the neighborhood of one thousand five hundred or two thousand cars laden with all kinds of goods there, and I suggested to General Brinton the propriety of leaving a portion of his troops to guard his flank and rear, as well as to protect the cars, which he did. I think that was probably General Loud's brigade, consisting probably of three hundred men. They were deployed over that locality clear up to the lower round-house. We pushed on with the balance of the troops, headed by the sheriff and his posse. When we got to Twenty-eighth street, instead of finding the tracks clear, and the hill side clear of people, there was one dense mass of humanity, men, women, and children--the hill side was crowded with people. I could not see Colonel Gray's regiment, the Fourteenth. I found a small portion of the Nineteenth occupying the right hand track of the railroad, and the entire tracks in possession of the mob. As we went up the track the sheriff was received with all manner of derisive shouts, calling him all sorts of names. I was received in a like manner, but the crowd seemed to know me very well by name. They pointed me out, and everything that a dirty, low man could say was said. At that time one of the mob pushed through the line of soldiers and struck at one of the officers--whether it was General Brinton, or General Mathews, who commanded one of his brigades, I don't know. Q. What did he strike with? A. Struck him with his fist. I got the fellow by the shoulder and quickly pushed him towards the sheriff. Says I, "Here is a fellow that will make trouble; take charge of this man." The sheriff pushed him into the midst of his posse. At that time there was a fellow standing upon my right, just off the railroad tracks, and he was doing a good deal of loud talking and making all sorts of threats. I pointed him out to the sheriff, and says I, "Here is another fellow you had better arrest; he will make trouble." I pushed through the mob and started up the hillside to find where General Brown was--to find where the Fourteenth regiment was, and the remainder of the Nineteenth was. I found Colonel Howard, who commanded the Nineteenth regiment, occupying a position on a private road leading to the West Pennsylvania hospital, and asked him the question what he was doing there. He said he had been ordered to report there, and, says he, "I am sorry to say you can place but little dependence upon the troops of your division, and some of the men have thrown down their arms and others have left, and I fear the situation very much;" and spoke in like terms--says he, "I think the Fourteenth regiment is in the same position." I then gave orders to Colonel Howard to move his command in such a position that they would be of some use in case of attack, which he immediately proceeded to do. I then came down, pushed through the mob, and having heard this information from Colonel Howard of the situation of affairs, and finding General Brown was not to be found, I did not see him, and did not know where he was--had not seen him that day at all--and finding the hill side occupied with people, the tracks in complete possession of the mob, the troops outnumbered in a very large degree, I concluded it was my duty then to notify General Latta of the state of affairs, and to ask that additional troops be sent for. I knew that four divisions had been ordered under arms prior to that--General White's, General Huidekoper's, General Gallagher's, and probably General Bolton's, had been ordered under arms prior to that. As I pushed through the mob I found that General Brinton had deployed, by what command I cannot state. But one single line of his troops occupied a portion of the westerly track. There was a single rank facing the hill side, and as I passed down the company was moving up from his rear and moving directly up the tracks towards Twenty-eighth street. I left my station there with Major Evans, walked down the tracks, entered the telegraph office at the corner of Twenty-sixth and Liberty avenue, and telegraphed General Latta of the situation of affairs, asking if he would immediately telegraph to the Fourth division commanders and order them at once. Probably that had hardly taken place, and in looking out of the window I found a man carrying a boy across his arms with his legs dangling down. I remarked to Major Evans that I feared there had been a conflict. He went out and came back with the report that a boy had been sun-struck. Just then I heard a cry on Liberty avenue, and looking out of the window I found the dead and wounded being carried past, and the crowd rushing down to the workshops of the railroad. At that instant Mr. Cassatt came in. He had been up in the cupola of one of the workshops, and had seen the firing and was the first to communicate the fact to me that the firing had taken place. I had not even heard the reports of the muskets. I presume the noise of the ticking of the telegraphic instruments and the steam which was up in half a dozen locomotives in the adjoining round-house was such that I did not hear the explosion of the pieces. Mr. Cassatt stated that as the mob was rushing round Twenty-eighth street and down Liberty, towards the round-houses, he feared destruction of property. The round-houses were filled with locomotives, the workshops filled full of valuable machinery, and the tracks lined with cars laden with all sorts of valuables of every kind and character, and stated that he feared that property would be destroyed. I had sent word to General Brinton asking him, if necessary, to send a staff officer to me or communicate in person. He came in in a moment or two, stating that he had cleared the tracks; that the mob had fired upon his troops; that many of the men had been knocked down by stones and pieces of iron, and without orders his troops had fired into the crowd; that the tracks were cleared, and that he was ready, and if they had any trains to send them out. It was then stated by some of the railroad officials that they had no crews to send out trains, and Brinton suggested that in as much as nothing could be done that night, and his men were almost in a famished condition, that they be brought into the round-houses or workshops. I then stated that it was the only thing to be done to save the property of the road. I issued orders to General Brinton to bring his troops in and to occupy the round-house, and I sent direct communications to Colonel Howard and Colonel Gray ordering them to bring their regiments in and take possession of the transfer offices, which were long wooden sheds, extending from Twenty-third, I think, to Twenty-fourth street. My orders were obeyed. Captain Breck brought two pieces of his battery in and placed them in position, facing Twenty-sixth street. Brinton's two Gatling guns were brought in and placed in a like position. The gates fronting Twenty-eighth street were closed, and everything at that time in as good a condition as could possibly be. Mr. Pitcairn, superintendent of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, who had been an observer of all the Twenty-eighth street troubles, came in, and I suggested the propriety that they should go down and send out rations from the depot hotel. They said they would, and they started off for that purpose. Towards evening an express wagon came up. General Brinton and his staff was occupying the second story, then, of the telegraph office, and I had my station there. We were congratulating ourselves upon the fact that we were going to have at least one decent meal. We could see the express wagon coming up with the supper, and just at that time the crowd made a rush upon the wagon and took entire possession, and instead of supper we got broken dishes through the windows, which did not add much to the good feeling existing in the building at that time. And after that an Irishman--I know he was an Irishman by the cut of his jib and his language--drove up on a bob-tailed, lantern-jawed horse and made a very inflammatory speech to the mob right in front of the gate. It was a very ludicrous speech, and the mob seemed to take it as such, because one of them pulled off a piece of board off a fence and struck the horse over the back, and the last we could see of this Irish orator he was going down Liberty avenue. Then a few shots were fired through the windows, and stones thrown, and General Brinton insisted upon firing into the crowd with his Gatling guns. I expostulated with him, telling him the situation was not serious enough to use his guns at that time, because then on Liberty avenue, directly in connection with where we were, there were very few of the rioters. Down Twenty-sixth and up there probably there were a thousand men, women, and children congregated, and particularly women and children, and as his officers would go up to his Gatling guns the active rioters who were on Liberty avenue would get behind the stone wall, leaving Twenty-sixth street exposed. I ran out and called attention to the fact. Says I, "If you fire now instead of killing these people that should be killed, you will kill a large number of women and children who are merely idle spectators," and gave direct orders to one of the officers not to fire that gun. They apparently cooled down and returned into the building, and the thing was repeated. I then gave orders again that until the affairs became more desperate that there was no occasion to use the Gatling gun, because the active rioters would not be injured--that merely women and children would be knocked down in the streets. At eight o'clock--in the neighborhood of eight and nine o'clock--General Brinton had been complaining during this time of the half-famished condition of his troops, and I knew the fact that they were in a half-famished condition, and I knew my own troops were no better off. My commissary--the officer who attended to the commissary of my division--was at Torrens station. General Brinton was at the Union depot, and he asked me the question, "Can you not go down and try to get some provisions of some kind to carry to my troops?" Says I, "I think I can." At that time everything was apparently quiet, and, accompanied by the members of my staff, we started down the railroad track, leaving General Brinton in command at that place, leaving him with orders to hold the position. Q. Where was Cassatt? A. Mr. Cassatt had, long before this, gone to the Union Depot hotel. I do not think any of the railroad employés were there at all. Q. What time was it you started? A. I think it was between eight and nine o'clock that night. We started down the tracks, and when we reached the depot---- Q. Were you dressed in uniform? A. Yes; my entire staff was in uniform. All had our swords and everything. When we reached the depot, everything was silent as a graveyard in and about the depot, and we passed down and entered the Union Depot hotel. We went up to General Latta's room, and there found General Latta, Colonel Quay, and Mr. Farr, the Governor's private secretary, Colonel Norris, of the Governor's staff, and several other gentlemen. There seemed to be a very great deal of surprise manifested at the fact that we had got through the crowd and reached the Union depot. I had established my head-quarters there at the beginning of the entire affair, and it was then suggested that, inasmuch as the rioters had blamed me for ordering the firing and killing the citizens, that my remaining in further command of the troops would only aggravate affairs, and that was doing a very material injury to the troops, and it was stated by some one in the room that the rioters had gone through the hotel looking for me. That they had gone from the cellar to the roof, and if found, I and any with me, would be hanged. I thought the threat was an idle one, and wanted to know what they wanted me to do. At that time we could hear bodies of men marching up with drums and fifes, and hear them shouting. Q. What room was that? A. General Latta's room, at the Union Depot hotel. And then General Latta suggested me--he asked the question--and says he, "Is General Brinton in command out at the round-house." Says I, "He is." Says he, "Then I think the best thing we can do for the situation of affairs and the protection of your troops, and to try and quell this disturbance, is for you to go away from here. If you do not go, you will be hanged." I told him there was a sufficient number of us there to make a hanging very agreeable to all, and I did not think there was much danger; if any one was hanged, somebody would be hurt. He said it was no time to use any levity; the situation was very serious, and my life was not worth a penny, and that my remaining in command of the troops was doing an injury; that I had been blamed for the whole thing. I asked him what he wanted me to do. Q. What time was that in the evening? A. It was between nine and ten o'clock. Q. Saturday night? A. Saturday night. Says I, "What do you want me to do? Do you wish me to change my head-quarters? If so, will I go to the Monongahela house?" "No; you will just be as bad off there as here," and then Major Evans, of my staff, spoke up, and said, "General Latta, if you insist that this ought to be done, let General Pearson come to my house." General Latta said, "Yes; that is the very thing to do." I had never been at Major Evans' house, but knew it was in the neighborhood. The address was taken by General Latta, and I think by Mr. Farr, of the Governor's staff. At that time, Mr. Dalzell, one of the attorneys of the road, came into the room, and I spoke to him, and I spoke to Quay. Says I, "Mr. Quay, do you think I ought to leave this place?" Says he: "I certainly do. The situation of affairs is such in the manner in which you are blamed for this, that you are doing an injury to the troops;" and others of the Governor's staff spoke up in the same way. Says I, "Very well, I take this as an order, but before I go I will leave you three members of the staff." I left my brother, Mr. Murray, and Major Steen, stating that I would be prepared to perform any duty. That these officers knew where I could be found, and anything they wished done, I would do. Major Evans and myself left. There was no possible way of getting out front, and we crossed a small bridge, and went up over the hill-side, and reached Major Evans' house. At that time there had not been a car fired, and there had been no torch communicated to anything--buildings or cars. Q. Where was Major Evans' house? A. Major Evans' house is situated in what is known as Oakland. I do not know what street he does live on. Q. What distance from the Union depot? A. I suppose it is in the neighborhood of a mile and a half. We reached Mayor Evans' house, and I then sent him over to find out, if he could ascertain anything about my family. I had heard my house was ransacked, and I know that my daughter had been driven away. She drove down in an open buggy after the firing. Came down to Twenty-sixth street and the round-house, where the troops were, drove through the mob, and tried to get some communication from me. It had been reported that I was shot. It was impossible to get any communication with her, and the mob drove her off. I sent Major Evans over to see if he could find out anything about my family. While he was gone, Colonel Moore and my brother came out for me to give him an order for ammunition at the Allegheny arsenal. The ammunition had been stored there and could not be taken out, except by my order. I gave the necessary orders. At that time everything was quiet. They started away with the orders for ammunition. Subsequently Major Evans came in and reported that so far as he could learn everything was quiet. At about ten o'clock, Sunday morning, I was wakened up and told of the fact that the rioters and mob had set fire to the cars and burned out the round-house, and I immediately sent a written communication to General Latta, by Major Evans, stating that I had heard what had taken place, and desired to receive some instructions from him. That I was ready to perform any service, and to do any duty, and to go any place, and suggested the propriety of immediately telegraphing the Governor for his return. Probably about one or two--it might have been after that--Sunday afternoon I received a verbal reply by Major Evans stating that General Latta had stated for me to remain where I was until I got further orders. My appearance then would only aggravate matters and do more harm than good, and for Major Evans to report on the Monday following. I sent Major Evans in on the Monday morning, and at the same time General Latta had left. I believe he did not see him. I know nothing at all about the situation of affairs from that time up. Q. How long did you remain at Major Evans'? A. I remained several days there, and the family being a strange family to me--had never seen his family. I knew the major very well--and having received intelligence that there was a likelihood of the major's house being mobbed, and not desiring to put them in a situation of that kind, I left Major Evans' house. Subsequent to that--of course, when I left the Union Depot hotel, I looked upon that as being virtually a relief from my command, and found, by reading the daily papers, that General Brown had assumed command of the division. I think it was the 1st of August--a number of days subsequent, anyhow--I received an official communication from the Governor, instructing me to hold my command in readiness to move at an hour not later than eight o'clock, and to go up to Luzerne coal regions, where difficulties were apprehended. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you go? A. At that time I found that the division had been ordered to disband--verbal orders had been given by General Brown to disband the troops, and by accident I was at Colonel Guthrie's head-quarters, and I suggested the propriety of him not disbanding just at that time, and he concluded that he would not. That he would have a street parade of his regiment that evening. I returned to my head-quarters, and when I returned, I got orders from the Governor, ordering me to have my division in readiness to start off at an hour not later than eight o'clock. I immediately communicated with various officers of the division, and at the hour indicated I was ready to move with the entire command. Transportation could not be procured at that time, and we did not leave until the neighborhood of twelve o'clock--started off with, I think, one thousand and thirty-five men, and went to Luzerne county. Do you desire me to give an account of how we proceeded there, and what took place? Q. You might state whether the mob went to your house in search of you? A. Of my own personal knowledge, of course, I do not know. From what I have heard, they did go. Q. You ordered Colonel Gray and Colonel Howard to move their commands to the transfer station, I believe you said? A. Yes, sir; I did that, because I considered it my duty to put these men in positions I considered the most dangerous--they were my own troops. The transfer sheds were long, low frame buildings, extending probably in the neighborhood of a square, open and unprotected, and I thought it was my duty at least to expose my own troops much more than strangers who were coming here from a long distance. I placed General Brinton's command in brick buildings. Q. Was it General Brinton's suggestion, or because you deemed it the best position, that you placed him in the round-house? A. I found that no trains were to be run at all, that it would be mere and utter foolishness to keep General Brinton's troops standing upon the railroad tracks, and to place them upon the hill side would be exposing that command to danger, as all the hill side and all the buildings on it were filled up by railroaders, I believe, and consequently, to place General Brinton's command on the hill side would subject them to any troubles that might occur from the railroaders living above them, and of the mob getting round on top. Then, the further fact that the mob would have taken possession of the round-house and used the cars as barricades, and he could do nothing. He suggested the propriety of bringing them into the round-house, and giving them some chance to rest, and getting them provisions; and I say now, that knowing all the facts of the case, if the thing was to be done over again to-morrow, I would do exactly what was done. To have placed them in any other position than that in which they were placed, would have been a piece of folly that I would not be guilty of. A man that would have taken troops and placed them upon the hill side, under the situation of affairs, I would characterize as an ass, and not worthy of commanding troops. Q. Would it not have been better to have retired the troops to the Union depot, inasmuch as there were no trains to be moved that night? A. It would have been a great deal pleasanter to the troops, but it would have given entire possession of the cars, round-houses, workshops, locomotives, and the entire moving machinery of the Pennsylvania railroad--placed it entirely in the hands of the mob. Q. Could you not have sent out detachments to have driven away any mob that might have gathered for the purpose of burning buildings? A. That might have been done in an open field, but the fact that the railroad tracks ran along Liberty avenue, are probably ten or twelve feet above the grade on Liberty avenue, and then on the right of the tracks is a hill side, and Brinton did not bring one thousand eight hundred men, Brinton brought about six hundred men, and Colonel Guthrie was at Torrens, and to have scattered the few men out along the railroad tracks--men who did not know the situation of affairs, and did not know the general locality of the ground, they would be subject to all sorts of annoyance, and could be shot down at pleasure by those people. There is one thing the committee must understand, that this mob did not only congregate at Twenty-eighth street. They formed in position on the south side; that they came over in a compact body by regiments. They formed in different localities in Allegheny City, and different places, and they were all marched to a given point, and to have sent a few troops along the line of the track they could have picked them up, one by one, and carried them off body and breeches. There was but one thing to do, and it was to take possession of the buildings, and the only mistake that was made was General Brinton's not calling out his pickets and shooting down the people, as they should have been shot down, and the property would have been saved, and if it had been saved, General Brinton and others would have been hanged for murder, because the feeling in this community at that time was such that if it had not been for the fact that the railroad property had been burned down, and private property had been taken and robbed, and private buildings burned down, there was no officer in command of troops safe, and his life was not worth a penny. The feeling in the community was such that I have no hesitancy in saying indictments would have been found and the officers convicted of manslaughter. By Mr. Means: Q. Is there no similarity between this riot, and the military force meeting the enemy in the field of battle? A. Certainly not. Meeting an enemy on a field of battle, you go there to kill. The more you kill, and the quicker you do it, the better; but in this instance you had a division of six hundred men--my division was six hundred men. Colonel Guthrie was at Torrens, surrounded by a mob. The balance of my troops were at Twenty-eighth street, and here you had men who had fathers and brothers and relatives mingled in the crowd of rioters, and it was very natural for them to have a feeling that to fire then and kill these men, was like shooting their own relatives. The sympathy of the people, the sympathy of the troops, my own sympathy, was with the strikers proper. We all felt that those men were not receiving enough wages. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You say you meet an enemy on a field of battle, and you go there to kill. What was the purpose of the troops in going out to Twenty-eighth street? A. The purpose of the troops was to try to preserve order and preserve peace. There would be no difficulty of us going out there and commencing to shoot if that had been an enemy. The first thing we would have done, would be to throw out a skirmish line and commence to shoot. Q. You were to preserve the peace at all hazards--if necessary to preserve the peace to call, you are justifiable in doing it? A. Certainly. Q. When an attack is made upon your troops with clubs and stones, and firing into your troops, are you not justified in killing? A. My opinion may be different from a great many other military men. I look at it in this way: when troops are officered, it is the duty of the officers to do the thinking. If every man that carries a musket has a right to think and shoot just as he thinks, there is no occasion to have any officers at all, because, when we started out from the Union Depot hotel these Philadelphia men were insulted long before they arrived. Colonel Guthrie was insulted at Torrens, and if each man had carried out his own thoughts and commenced to shoot, it would have showed a great want of discipline. Q. Would not the commanding officer be justifiable in giving the command to fire? A. Most undoubtedly so. He would not only be justifiable, but it would be his duty so to do, and I have no hesitancy in saying, from what I have learned from the manner in which General Brinton's troops were received and treated, and the shots that were fired at them, the stones that were hurled at them, and the fact that these men were knocked down, it was his duty to have given the order to fire, and if I had been there I would have had no hesitancy in giving the order. Q. What I understand you to say is, that there was not a public sentiment that would have justified the commanding officer in giving that command to kill? A. The sentiment afterwards showed that the sentiment was directly against the firing. Q. Do you mean to say that the civil authorities, the civil arm of the government, would not have protected the military officer in giving a command to fire under circumstances of the attack made there at Twenty-eighth street on the militia? A. I have got to answer that in a twofold capacity. As a lawyer, I believe that the courts would most undoubtedly have sustained the officer. I believe that the mayor and his police were in direct opposition to the troops--after having heard the crowd state that the mayor and his police were in sympathy with them, and finding that no arrests had been made, and knowing the fact that upon every occasion that mayor's police were only too anxious to protect men up for disorderly conduct, that there was not a police officer to be found at Twenty-eighth street, and that no arrests had been made, although there was any number of chances to arrest for disorderly conduct and other offenses--finding that none of those officers were there, I had no other way to think that these men had said truly, that Mayor McCarthy and his police were in sympathy with the mob. I telegraphed Mayor McCarthy after the troops had been taken into the round-house--I telegraphed him, and I told him I thought his presence there might be the means of saving life. I believe then, and I believe now, that if Mayor McCarthy had come at that time and talked to the crowd, something might have been done. There was then a terrible feeling against the troops, and no feeling against the police. I believed then, and I believe now, that if he had responded to my telegraph, many valuable lives might have been saved. There was no sympathy extended to the troops by anybody outside of the sheriff and his posse. The sheriff and his posse were the only ones that gave any aid or assistance to the troops. He did all that he knew how and all that he could. Q. Did you have any communication with the sheriff, after the firing at Twenty-eighth street? A. No, sir; I did not see the sheriff after that. Q. Do you know where he went? A. I have no idea. Q. You were in communication with him up to that time? A. Certainly; he was at the head of the troops. Q. And you, as commanding officer, were to protect him in making his arrests? A. Yes; he was armed with warrants from Judge Young to arrest certain parties therein named, and we went out with him. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You speak of an order you received from General Latta. Did that order purport to be signed by order of the Governor, sent by him as Adjutant General? A. No, sir; it was not by order of the Governor; it was a telegraphic communication, ordering me to order out one regiment. Q. Was it official? A. I think so. I have not got it, because they were destroyed at the Union depot. I think the Adjutant General's report shows all those telegrams. I think that gives all the telegrams that passed. Q. Did you, at any time, give an order to the troops to fire? A. I am sorry to say that I did not. I am sorry to say I was not there when the occasion required such an order. If I had been there, I would have given the order, and in such a manner that the active rioters would receive their reward of merit. They deserved it, and they ought to have had it. I am only sorry to say I was not there. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You said the people expostulated with you about calling out the troops. What people were they that came to you and expostulated? A. Oh, very early in the morning. Of course, the Friday morning papers had the order, and people came to me, at the Union Depot hotel, and say, "You ought not to do this thing; these men are workingmen; they have their rights." Q. Were there many of them--more than two or three? A. I was stopped on the street by women--respectable women. I was stopped in the streets by business men of the place. Q. Business men of the place expostulated with you? A. Yes; and after the firing, men came to me and insisted upon my taking the troops out of the round-house. I want to say this in regard--there may be an impression in regard to the manner in which the Sixth division responded to my order--that it may not be known to the committee that we have no direct way of calling out the troops--that is, by any alarm--not by a fire alarm or anything of that kind. An officer has to hunt up his officers, and they, in turn, have got to hunt up their men, who are scattered all over through two cities, and when I notified Colonel Guthrie, I found him early in the morning and he was hard at work, and they responded as promptly as any regiment could possibly respond. There was no way to get his men together any sooner than they did. They went to Torrens station, as per order, and I believe remained intact until the 6th or 7th day of September. I do not know of them having disbanded for a single instant, from the time that they were first called out, until the end of the trouble in Luzerne county, and the Fourteenth regiment, as I have subsequently learned, performed their service as well as a regiment could. They had been ordered to disband, contrary to the wishes of Colonel Gray and his officers, and nearly obeyed an order made by a superior officer. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You knew nothing of the command which General Brown gave? A. No, sir; there are officers who heard the command and know all about that. Q. He did it upon his own responsibility? A. Certainly. Had General Brown carried out the instructions he received at Twenty-eighty street, and kept the hill side and the tracks clear, with the plans I had adopted of taking General Brinton out, and letting him occupy the position, and sending a portion of General Brown's command to Colonel Guthrie, and used a portion for the taking out of trains, I think there would have been no subsequent troubles. Instead of that we found the ground entirely occupied and in possession of the rioters and sympathizers, and the result was just as you know. Q. Could the destruction of property have been prevented by any other distribution of the troops that night, do you think? A. I presume, had we known the fact that the rioters had converted themselves from men to devils, and had concluded to roast everybody alive, and gone into it in the manner in which they did, that something might have been done. Of course, no one could anticipate the fact that those men would send burning flames of oil down upon the troops in the round-house. No man living could ever think of such a thing. At this point the committee adjourned until ten o'clock, to-morrow morning. MORNING SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Friday, February 22, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at ten o'clock. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present. * * * * * Mayor W. C. McCarthy, _affirmed_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where is your residence? A. My residence is 95, Robert street, Eleventh ward. Q. What official position did you hold in this city last July? A. I was mayor of the city. Q. How long had you occupied that position? A. Since the 1st day of February, 1875--the last time--I occupied it before. Q. When did you first learn of any disturbance at the Pennsylvania railroad? A. On Thursday, the 19th of July, in the forenoon. Q. About what time? A. That I am not able to say, but I suppose it was in the early forenoon. Q. How did you learn of the fact? A. Mr. Watt came to me in the mayor's office, asking me if I could furnish him with ten men. I told him no. By and by--before I come to that, I will give you the police force and the disposition of it. Every person connected with the police force consisted entirely of one hundred and twenty, having a supervision over twenty-seven square miles. Five of them were simply lamp watchmen, leaving one hundred and fifteen policemen. They were divided as follows: One captain, one chief, two turn-keys at the central station, eight station-house keepers, eight front office men. These eight men were all the men we had in daylight, all told, the rest were put on night duty. One night watchman at the city hall, two roundsmen. These roundsmen are men who perambulate the whole city, for the purpose of having an eye to the different police, that they were attending to their duty, and we had one corner man--a man stationed at the corner of Fifth avenue and Smithfield street--and nine lieutenants, and eighty-two patrolmen. These eighty-two patrolmen are men whose metes and bounds were set out to travel. We had one hundred and fifteen police of all kinds, classes, and individuals. Q. How much ground was covered by each one of these patrolmen? A. Some less and some more, if you knew the city I think you would know it. Well, take for instance, starting at the corner of Fourth avenue and Smithfield street, go following the cars down to the river; downwards, go down Fourth avenue in that direction and you cross Wood street, and you cross Market street, and you come to Ferry street, then you go along Ferry street, which may be called the lower end of town, to Second, then you reverse and come up this way, you come to Smithfield street, and you walk up to the corner of Fourth avenue and Smithfield street, the place of beginning, a route that really would be too much for two men, one man had to do it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How much ground would a man have to cover taking in all the side streets? A. He would have to cover six squares, and extraordinarily large squares at that, and I think that it would take him over twenty minutes to rapidly walk it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. These police were night watchmen then all of them? A. Yes, sir. Q. Had you before that had any day police? A. Oh, yes. Previous to that, altogether the whole police force of policemen, including ten lamp-watchmen, consisted of two hundred and twenty-six men, and in consequence of the heavy taxation, and the absolute inability of the treasurer to pay for the policemen, they were compelled to cut it down one hundred and eleven men, or rather one hundred and sixteen men altogether--I am talking about policemen, I leave the lamp watchmen out--and then there was a deficiency of sixteen to eighteen thousand dollars for the year. Q. When was that done? A. That was done on the 1st of July, or thereabouts, maybe a little before that. Q. You may state what occurred when Mr. Watt came to your office, on Thursday, the 19th? A. Mr. Watt came and stated that he wanted ten men. I told him I couldn't furnish him ten men. I would furnish him with what we could, but if he would pay for them, we could pick up some of those discharged policemen who were not employed, and he very promptly answered that he would pay for them. So I told Detective McGovern and some others to take what they could, and all our own men, and fill up with the idle policemen, and that the policemen would be paid by Mr. Watt. Mr. Watt requested me to go up with them, which I declined to do. I couldn't see any reason why the mayor of the city of Pittsburgh should go to the Pennsylvania depot to take cognizance of a disturbance that only required ten men, in his own opinion, and I sent a very faithful and one of the best officers in charge of the men, Detective McGovern, a very clear-headed man. Q. What did he say as to the extent of the disturbance up there? A. He made no remarks about that. Q. Did you ask him anything about it? A. No, sir. Gave him what he asked for. Q. Was any report made to you by Officer McGovern. A. Oh, yes. We had reports all the time from that until this morning. Officer McGovern reported to me--I cannot say whether it was McGovern, or who it was--but the first intimation I had of any violence was a report come to me that a man by the name of McCall had struck Mr. Watt; that he was arrested and taken to the station-house by the police. Then I heard afterwards from this time out--what I have got to say about Thursday will be hearsay. You can produce evidence and substantiate whatever I may say--I heard there was a train somewhere about three o'clock to go out, and the police aboard the train told the engineer they would protect him. The track was clear, and the engineer refused to go on, and got down and left the engine in the possession of the police. Q. What police was on the train? A. That was in the afternoon. Q. What police was on the train? A. I cannot exactly tell you, but I think that Mr. Motts, Mr. Coulson, and some others were there. Q. How did you obtain this information? A. From the police. Q. An official report from the police? A. Oh, no. We didn't have that much red tape about these things. The only red tape we had was the morning report of the different lieutenants. I can produce the men; I suppose you will want them to verify it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They would report to the lieutenant would they? A. No; they were in charge of Mr. Watt. The truth is, these men are under the control of the officers of the Pennsylvania railroad, and I felt it my duty to send as many men as I could there, who were paid by the city, and the others had to be paid by the railroad company, as I told you, but all the men we had in July was nine men. Q. Did you send any of those nine men? A. Oh, yes; McGovern and White and some more of them--I am a little mixed; and there was another order given for men as I understand. I started Mr. Davis to get them, but on that I am not so clear--I am a little mixed on that; Mr. Davis, however, can tell. He told me he met me on Fifth avenue and told me an order had come for more men, and I started then from Fifth avenue to get them. Q. Did you receive any word from Mr. Watt after he left you with the ten police? A. Directly from Mr. Watt? Q. Yes, sir. A. No; not a word. Q. Did you receive any telegram from him calling for fifteen more men or twenty-five more men? A. I didn't receive anything of the kind; but I guess that must be the word Mr. Davis speaks about when he says he met me on Fifth avenue, and I told him to get the men. Q. Didn't your clerks or any of your subordinates notify you that such a telegram had been received from Mr. Watt? A. I don't know what Mr. Davis says he told me on Fifth avenue. Q. For fifty men? A. No, sir; I took supper at Castle Shannon. I left at a quarter to five, and came back at eight, and then there were some persons from the Pennsylvania had been there for policemen, and the Pennsylvania railroad got all the policemen they wanted. They got so many that they sent back word that they did not want any more. Q. Did they send any such word to you personally? A. No; I can prove it. Q. I want just what they said about--the next that took place between you and the officers? A. I got no communication directly from the officers of the Pennsylvania, from the time Mr. Watt had been there in the forenoon. Q. Did you receive any telegram from Mr. Watt calling for fifty police? A. I didn't. Q. Were you notified by your clerks or subordinates that such a telegram had been received at your office? A. Not in the shape you put it. Q. Did you see Mr. Watt after he left with the ten men? A. No, sir; I don't think that I did. I have no recollection of it whatever. I don't believe I did. Q. Where were you from eight o'clock Thursday night, during the balance of the night? A. I was at the office, and in the neighborhood. Q. Were any reports made to you during the night, from the policemen? A. Yes, sir. Q. In regard to the situation? A. Yes; that everything was quiet. Q. From what men? A. I cannot name them, but I can bring the men here who were there to testify. Let me tell you what the police told me--the men that were out there. Q. It is hearsay evidence. I think it is hardly proper? A. Hear my statement, then, for your own guidance. Q. I understand you to say that you didn't receive any dispatch from Mr. Watt, calling for fifty men, nor it was not communicated about in that form? A. No, sir; it was not. Nothing of that kind occurred. He may have sent a dispatch, but I think I can very conscientiously affirm that I never saw it. Q. Do you allow your clerks to act upon intelligence received at the office, without instructions from you? A. Most undoubtedly. When I am away a riot or disturbance ought not to be going along until I come back. They know the general rules I act upon. Q. Communications, in the shape of letters and dispatches, are they placed on file in your office, when received in your absence? A. No, sir; not placed on file at any time. They are attended to and thrown away. Q. Attended to by your clerks? A. Yes; the chief of police and the clerks. If I am up in the Eleventh ward, they would have to wait an hour and a half until I got down. Q. If a dispatch was received at your office, notifying you of a disturbance in one part of the city, and you are in another part of the city? A. It would be attended to. Q. It would be attended to without notifying you of the fact? A. Yes, sir. Q. You have telegraphic communications to all parts of the city, I suppose--stations? A. With the station-house. We have got one station-house in the Thirty-sixth ward, Thirtieth ward, one in the Twenty-first, and one in the Second, or rather the telegraph is in the Third, one in the Eleventh, one in the Twelfth, and one in the Fourteenth, one in the Seventeenth, and one in the Nineteenth. Q. Did you receive any reports during the night--Thursday night? A. Yes; and everything was quiet. Q. What officer had charge of that part of the city near Twenty-eighth street--what police officer? A. Lieutenant Coates had. Q. Did you receive any reports from him during the night? A. I do not know that I did. Q. Were there any affidavits made before you against parties--against any disorderly conduct? A. There was on Friday forenoon. Q. Did you issue warrants for that? A. Yes, sir. Q. For how many? A. Well, I guess there was eight or nine, maybe more--I have forgotten. Q. In whose hands were those warrants placed to execute? A. I cannot tell distinctly, but I think it was in the hands of Mr. McGovern. Q. Did he execute the warrants? What instructions did you give him about that? A. I told him that in consequence of the calling out of the soldiers that the public mind excited, and it would be very dangerous to act as we usually acted, and for him to be exceedingly cautious, and cause no disturbance. Q. When you placed the warrants in his hands, what instructions did you give him? A. That is what I gave him. Q. Had the soldiers been called out? A. Yes; I was perfectly astonished when I took up the newspapers. Here was a whole lot of telegraphic dispatches, that had been flying from one end of the State to the other. Q. On Thursday morning or Friday morning? A. On Friday morning. Q. You did not tell him to make the arrests? A. Absolutely? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; I knew too much for that. The policemen at any time create a riot in the street by going at it brashly, and after the soldiers were in it, I thought it very dangerous. Q. Why? A. Because they were under the control of men who were rather of the narrow gauge pattern, about 2×3. They were men who knew no law but the law of force, and had no knowledge that truculent defiance always begets truculent defiance. Had the force been in the hands of men who thought with Coleridge, when he said: "He prayeth well who loveth well, Both man, and bird, and beast." Had it been in the hands of men, who had any idea like Coleridge, there would not have been a life lost, nor a dollar of property destroyed, in my deliberate opinion. By Mr. Means: Q. You speak of those two or three, do you allude to the military now? A. I allude to the men assuming charge--that had control of the force after I was displaced by the military and counsel. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you not have charge of these in the beginning of the riot or disturbance? A. No, sir. Q. Why not? A. Because Mr. Watt came over and asked for ten men, and they were given to him. Q. He asked you to go out, didn't he? A. Yes, sir. Q. You refused? A. I did, for the reason that I could see no reason from anything he said that the mayor should start out to take charge of ten men, and control it--it must have been a very small affair. Q. You received notice that another call had been made by Mr. Watt, didn't you? A. No, sir; I have reason to believe, from what I heard--that Mr. Davis informs me--that I told him to go ahead and send them. Q. Didn't Mr. Watt inform you that your presence could do a good deal towards quelling the disturbance there? A. Not that I can remember. Q. Would not it have had that effect, in your opinion? A. Indeed, I do not know. I think a disturbance that in Mr. Watt's opinion only required ten men, didn't require the city to go there in the person of the mayor, because it was a very slight affair, as he represented it--it made no impression upon me. Q. A man, such as Mr. Coleridge described in that quotation you have made, would have had that effect? A. No, sir; he would have been called upon, and if he had been asked to call for troops, it would have come in. Let me say about calling for troops, that if Mr. Mackey and Mr. Hartranft--but I should say Governor Hartranft and Mr. Mackey--had been in Harrisburg, there would not have been a troop brought here, and peace would have been preserved, but, unfortunately, neither of these two gentlemen were there. Let me tell you, sir, we had a puddler's strike here, and that I had some hand in, and the peace of the city was preserved; and notwithstanding the peace of the city was preserved all the time, some person, I don't know who, sent a request to the Governor for troops, that the peace of the city was disturbed and it could not be preserved. Mr. Hartranft did not know what to do, so he sent for Mr. Mackey. Mr. Mackey came to him and told him, says he, "Wait a few minutes, and I will let you know what to do." Mr. Mackey told him---- Q. Are you testifying to facts within your knowledge? A. Within my knowledge. Mr. Mackey telegraphed to a gentlemen that I know very well, as to what the condition of affairs was. The gentleman telegraphed back that it was idle and futile to send soldiers here, and it would only create a disturbance. They could keep them away. They were kept away, and there was not a man killed, and not a dollar's worth of property destroyed. Q. When was that? A. It was two years ago. Q. You say that you acted in attempting to keep and preserve the peace here and keep down violence until superseded by the military? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is not the military always in subjection to the civil authorities? A. The Constitution says so, but the facts of the case are otherwise. Q. Had you not entire authority and control, at all times, within the limits and jurisdiction of the city? A. Not when the sheriff comes to the front. He is the chief peace officer of the county, and has the whole county at his beck and nod. The mayor is simply the city. Q. Is not it the duty of other head officers to coöperate with the sheriff? A. That depends upon circumstances. I could not coöperate with the sheriff, because the matter was under control of men who were acting entirely different from any way that I would have acted in the case, and I could not assume responsibility in a state of facts that I believe would lead to what was the ultimate result. Q. Is not your power as magistrate, within the city limits, identical with those of the sheriff? A. They are. Q. What hindered you from acting then? A. Because the sheriff took possession of the case, and called upon the troops. Had the sheriff come to consult me, instead of going to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's office, and assumed control in calling for troops, the result would have been different. But I was thrown aside. I didn't suit. Q. You were asked to go up to the scene of the disturbance, were you not? A. No, sir. Q. Didn't Mr. Watt ask you? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did he at ten o'clock, on Thursday, ask you to go to the scene of the disturbance? A. He did. Q. And you refused to go? A. Yes, for the reason that I told you, that he asked for ten men, and I knew no reason--when he got all the men he asked for, and it was only ten men--I didn't see any reason why the mayor should go up there. Q. Did you go up to the scene of the disturbance at any time during Friday? A. No, sir. Q. Friday night? A. No, sir. Q. Saturday? A. No, sir. Q. Saturday night? A. Yes, sir. Q. At what time? A. Well, I think when I got out there, it must have been ten o'clock. Q. What did you find there? A. I found a howling mob, many of them armed. Q. Did you know that this firing was going on all this time between ten o'clock Thursday and ten o'clock Saturday night, when you went to the scene of the disturbance? A. I knew nothing of the disturbance at all. I heard that the soldiers had fired upon the crowd. Q. You knew that there were crowds there, didn't you? A. Yes, sir. Q. You knew they prevented freights from running? A. I did not. Q. You know that they prevented freight trains from going out? A. No, sir; I believe the fact is otherwise. I believe the fact is that after the police got possession of a train, on Thursday afternoon, that the engineer deserted, and that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company didn't attempt to put another freight out--that is what I heard. Q. That is hearsay, isn't it? A. That is, and I guess it is very true, too. Q. You had come out then to see? A. No, sir; I didn't. Q. On Friday, did you increase your police force any? A. No, sir. Q. Did you increase them any on Friday night? A. No, sir. Q. On Saturday? A. No, sir. Q. Saturday night? A. Saturday night, when we heard of the shooting I directed the officers to go round and inform the proprietors of the gun shops of what had taken place, and to put themselves in a state of defense, and to get their arms out of the road; for they might be assailed, and directed the chief of police to insert an advertisement in the Sunday papers, calling upon the discharged policemen to appear at the mayor's office for duty. My idea of that was that there might be a necessity for these men performing police duty in the streets. I had no idea, until at that time, that where the city and county authorities had a thousand men under their command, in the Twelfth ward, that any policemen would be required or needed on the property of the Pennsylvania railroad, but I did think there would be very great excitement, and it would be necessary to have a force on the streets, not knowing what would happen, and I directed a call to be made for an immediate meeting of the police committee, on Sunday morning. Q. Were the day force placed back on duty on Sunday morning? A. Let me go on, as nigh as I can, in a chronological order of events. My mind, as to hours, after I got in the Twelfth ward and saw the state of affairs there, is a blank. I could not give you an hour from that time up to Monday morning, but I was on deck all that time. I went up to the Twelfth ward, saw a crowd there, and mixed in among them. Had a talk with quite a number of them, and tried to dissuade them from acts of violence and disorder, but I was talking to a lot of crazy men. Words were nowhere. Somewhere, as nigh as I can guess, I was in front of the Twelfth ward station-house, immediately above Twenty-sixth street or Penn avenue, and I was too late. It struck me then that there must be some cars set on fire. I left there and went up to the corner of Liberty and Twenty-fifth street, and saw a car on fire immediately above Twenty-fifth street. I looked at the situation, and turned back to the corner of Twenty-eighth and Penn streets, and I there met a policeman, who I think was Mr. Scribner. Says I, "Has the box been pulled?" Says he, "No; the crowd won't let us, but the alarm has been sent down to the police telegraph." I then waited there a very, very long time, expecting the fire department to come. When I stayed there long enough, and hearing nothing of the fire department, I came to the conclusion that the message sent by the police telegraph had failed. By this time Alderman Barclay was along side of a police officer, and a large man, whom I knew by sight, but not by name, and I said to the alderman, says I, "Can't we send an alarm in on this box." The alderman said, "We can try it." He went, I think, into the drug store and got a key, and four of us went to the box, and nobody interfered with us--there were very few up at that corner, and the alderman opened the box, and this man, I believe, he pulled it. We waited another long time--a very long time--and heard nothing of the fire department. Then I began to make inquiries, and I ascertained that a portion of the fire department had come up Penn avenue, and for reasons satisfactory to themselves, had stopped immediately below the Independence engine house, on Penn avenue, somewhere about Twenty-first or Twentieth street--I cannot give you the number--and that they had been stopped there, and were afraid to go on. I do not know what reason they had--they had some reason. I then went to the station-house; but, by the by, I may say here, when I left the lower end of the city the mob was still going through the streets, and I should have stated before, chronologically--what I forgot--that I issued orders by telegraph, and the men met at eight o'clock in the evening, at the station-house, after having lit the lamps. Q. Saturday evening? A. Saturday evening. I ordered all the policemen from the first, second, fourth, seventh, eighth, ninth districts, to leave their station-houses, and to come at once to the central station, as soon as the men would come to the station-house. These men came between eight and nine o'clock, most of them nine o'clock, may be later. Some of them had to walk a distance of two miles, and they were put on duty immediately through the streets, and when I thought that I could leave things safely to the direction of the police, I went to the Twelfth ward to see how things were standing. That was the position of matters. When I found that the fire department had not or could not come, I went to the station-house--the Twelfth ward station-house--and telegraphed down to the central station to send up all the police that could be spared. That was done, and as these policemen came up, two or three or four or five or six, &c.--there was a great quantity of stealing going on. Q. How many policemen came up? A. I will get at that in a few minutes. As they came there was a great deal of stealing going on, and as fast as they came to the station-house, I started them out on to Penn street, to arrest the people that were carrying off goods. They continued at that work until such times as I thought I had enough policemen to assist the firemen, at which time possibly I may have had fifty or sixty, may be forty. I do not suppose I had over forty or fifty. When I thought I had enough to protect the firemen, I told officer Coulston to go to the fire department and tell them that we now had police sufficient, I thought, to protect them, and to come on, and we would do the best we could. Coulston started off with that message. After a lapse of sufficient time he came back and told me he had informed the parties in charge, of my message, that they replied to them that they would not move until they were ordered by the chief of the fire department and the fire commissioners, and I supposed, that at that time I may have had, all told, fifty or sixty--about fifty policemen--the fifth district and the sixth district had not been called in. The fifth district and the Lawrenceville district immediately adjoining the point where the Allegheny Valley railroad runs through, they were not called in because I supposed they would have as much to do in their own districts. The sixth district was not called in because Torrens station and the stock-yards were in that district, and I thought it altogether likely that the police of these two districts would be wanted to take care of things there for the reason I have given you. Q. How long did you keep those policemen there in the Twelfth ward? A. They were kept there until their regular time of going on duty. Q. What time was that? A. Well, the regular time was six o'clock, but they were there long after that. Q. Sunday morning? A. Yes, sir. I will tell you about that. I stayed up there until somewhere in the neighborhood of daylight. The soldiers, I had supposed, that had taken refuge in the houses there, that their strategy was to stay until daylight would come, and then they would come out upon the railroad track and take possession. That is what I supposed--nobody communicated to me what they would do. Q. Did you make any effort to communicate with General Brinton or General Pearson? A. No, sir; I did not. I thought those gentlemen had the matter in their own hands, and didn't want any advice from me; and about daylight, or thereabouts, I came down town, and somewhere in the neighborhood of seven o'clock, or thereabouts, it might have been a little after seven--might have been half an hour, but I just name that at random, approximate it--I received a telegraphic dispatch from the Twelfth ward station that the soldiers were on Penn avenue, marching past the Twelfth ward station-house. That struck me that it was an admirable strategic movement. I thought they had come off the railroad property with their full strength, five hundred or six hundred strong, to march through the streets, to intimidate the crowd, and I was highly delighted at that idea, and I requested Mr. Davis to go and get a buggy that we might go up and witness the effect of it. He came with the buggy, and we both started out, and after we got a considerable distance up town, in the neighborhood of the Twelfth ward, I received information that these men were retreating from the city--six hundred armed men. It sent my heart down about my thighs. I could not understand it. I could not believe it. Then the idea struck me that these men were not retreating from the city, but they were following a line of march by which they had two roads to go to East Liberty. I thought they were going either one of those two roads to join the forces out there, and possibly to come in together. When I got as far as the car stables, in Lawrenceville, just about Forty-second street, I think, I bethought myself it was hardly worth while to make that horse pull two hundred and ten pounds unnecessarily, and I stopped the buggy and got out. I told Mr. Davis to go on after the troops, and not to return until he knew where they had gone to. They might have gone by Stanton avenue to East Liberty, from the upper side of the cemetery, or they might have gone by the Morning side road up to the Sharpsburg bridge. I told him to go on, and not give it up until he could locate them, and then to come back to the Twelfth ward station-house, and report to me, and I then got in a street car at the car stables and came down to the Twelfth ward station-house. Then I telegraphed down to the central station to detain all the police that were there, and send them to the Twelfth ward, and I got tired waiting on Mr. Davis, and knowing that the police committee was to meet, I went over to where the firemen were at work, for the purpose of seeing the chief engineer, and concert with him some plan of action by which I could assist them. I could not find the chief engineer, high nor low. I asked the firemen where he was, and they didn't know, and I took that the work upon the fire--this was not on the railroad property, but on the opposite side of Liberty street where they were at work. I thought the work was ineffective, and I spoke to the firemen about it, and they told me the reason of it was that the water in the basin was low. I thought that a little strange, because it was a rule with the water department, with which I had been connected a great many years, to always have it full on Sunday, but I determined to see about that. Failing to see the chief engineer, I could not waste my time in hunting him, and I came down town. On my way down, I met the superintendent of the water-works, and I says to him, "Jim, the firemen complain they cannot work effectively up in the Twelfth ward, because there is no water in the basin," I think that is the way I put it to him. Says he "I think they are mistaken; the basin is full of water." I think it was at Eleventh street I met him. I came down to the central station, and, on the pavement, I met the secretary of the fire commission, Mr. Case. I says to him, "Frank, the firemen tell me that there is no water in the basin"--I meant a small quantity of water in the basin--"I saw Jim Atkinson on my way down, and he tells me the basin is full. You take my buggy at once, and go up and tell them that the basin is full, that they need not be afraid of the supply of water, and you leave the buggy at Rosewell's stables." He departed, and I suppose gave my message. Q. What time did the fire commence on Saturday night? A. It is a guess with me, but I think it must have been about eleven o'clock. I don't think I am far wrong. Q. You stayed there during the night? A. Yes; I was going through the crowd during the whole night. Q. When you got fifty policemen, did you make any effort with those policemen to drive the crowd from the cars that were burning? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Your efforts were simply confined to arresting men that were carrying off plunder? A. Yes, sir. Q. Your policemen armed? A. Some are and some are not. Q. They are all armed with maces, I suppose? A. Yes; they all have maces. Q. Why didn't you make some effort to stop the burning? A. Because, in my judgment, it could not be done. Q. How many men would it have taken to have stopped that that night? A. Lord knows! I can't tell. I think it would have taken a good many. Near a thousand men cooped themselves up in some houses, and cooped all those men up in those houses after having done the firing. It was yielding to the mob. It was just saying plainly, that the mob was stronger than the soldiers, and that forty or fifty policemen, who had never been in a disturbance of this nature or kind, would simply have been suicidal? Q. After coming to the central station, Sunday morning, did you return again? A. Yes, sir; I did. Q. What hour? A. That I could not tell you. As I told you before, I took no note of time. It was after I had seen the police committee, and had talked with some of the citizens, with regard to a citizens' meeting, I went up on. Q. During the day, on Sunday, how many policemen had you in the vicinity of the riot? A. That I can't tell. I did not suppose, that all told, so far as I could guess or know, there were not more than thirty or forty. Q. Did you make any demand to recruit your police--demand upon men to serve on the police? A. That had been done by advertisement in the Sunday morning papers, by the chief of police? Q. Did you issue an order calling on men, demanding them to join your police force? A. Which, on Sunday? Q. At any time? A. Nothing, except that on Saturday morning for the police. Q. It was in the shape of a request, was it not? A. Yes; it was an order. Q. It was not a command such as would be a command under the laws of the Commonwealth? A. I don't think it was. I didn't see it. I didn't look for it. Q. It was placed in the papers by your clerk? A. By the chief of police. Q. When you went to the scene of the riot on Saturday night, did you use efforts yourself to suppress the riot or stop it? A. I went into the crowd and talked with them, but I might as well have talked to the moon. Q. Who did you talk with? A. There were several that I talked to that I did not know. I only met one man that I did know, and he had been a lieutenant of police. Q. He was engaged in rioting? A. He was there with the crowd and very muddled. Q. How long before that had he been lieutenant of police? A. He had been lieutenant of police, I suppose, as near as I can judge, some three weeks before. Q. And discharged under the order discharging the day force? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you meet any other persons that had been members of the police force? A. No; not in that position? Q. What replies did you get from the men when admonishing them to desist? A. Everybody was filled with the idea that the troops the citizens causelessly, and that had excited the indignation and made men wild. It was a fearful sentiment on Saturday night. Q. I understood you to state that the reason why you did not go to the Twelfth ward during the Friday and Saturday before, was that you had been superseded by the military? A. Yes; and because I was perfectly satisfied that the influence that controlled would be disastrous, and that I could not prevent it, and I was not going to permit myself to be compromised by it. Q. You did go to the scene on Saturday night? A. I did. Q. Or rather on Sunday? A. I did. Q. Had you gone there on Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday morning, and made use of the police that you had under your command, could you not have prevented the disturbance? A. Permit me to say again that it was impossible for me to have any connection with the men who had charge of that, because I could not control them. They are men that would not listen to me, and that I could have no influence with. Q. Whom do you refer to? A. I refer to the leading officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Q. You had control of your police force, hadn't you? A. I had. Q. You have control of the affairs of the city. A. Yes, sir. Q. And the organization of the police? A. Yes, sir. Q. You could have control of the force--you are the peace officer of the city? A. Yes, sir; and there is the sheriff. Q. Why did not you then assert your rights as peace officer? A. Because I recognized the fact that I have no right to come in conflict with the sheriff and the military. I was utterly hostile to their movements and to their plan of operations, and I felt satisfied that it could have no other end than the end that was reached. I, surely, under those circumstances, would have been of no more use than a painted ship upon a painted sea. They would not listen to me. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you go to them and talk with them, or did you try and see whether you could cooperate with them in any manner? A. No, sir; I knew the men. That was enough for me. Q. Do I understand you to say that there was an antagonism between you and the sheriff of the county? A. It could not be otherwise in this matter, because they had adopted a plan of action that I could have nothing at all to do with. Q. Were you called on first by the railroad officials? A. Yes; and gave them all they wanted, and gave them so many men--I will prove to you that they said they didn't want them. Q. You were asked to go to the scene of the disturbance? A. Yes; we have talked that matter over several times. Q. Did you receive any communication from Mr. Scott, the solicitor of the road, on Thursday? A. I did not. Q. On Friday? A. I did not. Q. Did he make a request to you that you would order the saloons of the city closed? A. I got a document on Saturday afternoon--I don't know, some time on Saturday it was, according to my recollection--it was by Mr. Thaw, I think by Mr. McCullough, and I think by Mr. Quay, and I think by Mr. Latta, requesting me to request the saloons to be closed, which request, on my part, was complied with. Q. At what time? A. That I could not say. I had no right to compel the closing of them--none whatever. I could only request. Q. You had a riot and disorder in the city then. Do I understand that you had no right to order the saloons closed? A. No, sir; I have no right to order them closed, under any circumstances, except upon Sunday or upon election days. Then the laws forbid them to be open. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you have any knowledge of the disturbance, and the extent of the disturbance during Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, out in the vicinity of the Union depot, on the railroad? A. I did not know of any disturbance occurring. Q. During any of those days? A. None of those days, except what I told you as having occurred on Thursday. I had reason to believe that there was no disturbance from Thursday afternoon until Saturday afternoon. Q. Didn't you know of a large collection of people in that vicinity? A. Oh, yes, sir. I knew they were coming there--went there to see the soldiers--what was going on. People went there as they would to a county fair or a boat race, to see what was to be seen. Men with their families, women with their children, even children in their arms, went there from curiosity. Q. Don't you know that there was a large crowd there before the military arrived? A. No, sir. Q. No knowledge of that? A. No knowledge of what we would call a large crowd. I know there was quite a crowd there on Thursday. I know from what I am told, there was a crowd there at the time of the alleged disturbance with Mr. Watt and Mr. McCall. Q. Hadn't you been told by citizens and others, that there was a large crowd there--likely to be trouble? A. No, sir. Q. Hadn't any idea? A. I had an idea that there was to be trouble, because when the military came out they were subject to the thousand contingencies that would produce disturbance. Q. Had you any intimation of trouble before the military were ordered out? A. As much as I told you occurred on Friday, after the arrest by the police of this man who was alleged to have struck Mr. Watt. Think there was no disturbance after that during the whole of Thursday night, and to Friday morning, when the police were dismissed. Q. Did you go to any trouble to ascertain the extent of that disturbance, on the first disturbance on Thursday? A. Of course, I knew the extent of it from what the police told me. Q. You were shortly informed of what was going on--made all efforts necessary to ascertain? A. It came to me without an effort. Q. Didn't require any effort to ascertain? A. No, sir; I inquired what going on, and ascertained what was going on. Q. Didn't your police inform you that the mob had overpowered the police, and also the railroad authorities, on Thursday? A. Why, no! they didn't overpower them. I proved that here. They were not overpowered. Q. They had every control of their railroad and their rolling stock without interference? A. I will prove it to you by the police. Q. I want to know what you were informed of the situation of affairs--what you know of your own knowledge? A. I was not there. I don't know anything of my own knowledge. I can tell you what can be proved by the police. Q. I ask you the question, what reports you got from your officers? A. That everything was quiet and peaceable after the arrest of McCall. Q. Did you receive any reports from your officers on Friday, that everything was quiet? A. On Friday morning I received word that the police had been dismissed by the Pennsylvania railroad men. Q. Who informed you of that fact? A. I can't tell you. Q. An officer of your force? A. I presume so; in fact it must have been; that state of facts I can prove here and demonstrate. Q. Did you at any time deem it necessary to increase your force of police? A. Yes, sir. Q. But did you do so? A. Done what I could to increase. Q. To what extent did you increase your force? A. It was increased upwards of one hundred men, by the order of the committee of public safety, and after I got about one hundred, their orders were that I should increase the force to three hundred, but I came to the conclusion that that number of men were not needed, and I didn't employ any more. I suppose we had altogether about two hundred and forty or two hundred and fifty men. Q. Did you increase your police force before you were ordered to do so by the public committee? A. Yes; to the extent of ordering the police who were unemployed to report to the city hall for duty on Sunday forenoon. A portion of them came, not many. They considered they had been very badly treated, and they did not care about risking their lives under those circumstances. Q. Could you have demanded citizens to serve as police on your force? A. Yes, sir. Q. And did you do so? A. No, sir. Q. Did you have all you needed? A. No, sir. Q. Why did not you make this demand? A. Because I had no time to do it. My time was fully occupied. I had met several gentlemen in the morning, and they called a citizens' meeting for the forenoon, and I expected them to make arrangements to go out, in what we might call, in a non-legal way, in a posse, but instead of doing that they thought it more advisable to send a number of gentlemen up to address the crowd. Q. Who thought so? A. The meeting. Q. Citizens' meeting? A. Yes, sir; they were there and addressed the crowd from the upper end of the platform of the Union depot, but it was of no avail, talking was of no use. Then they were to have a meeting in the afternoon. I came down to that meeting and met the committee at the city hall, talked a little there, and then they adjourned to meet on Market street, and there was considerable talk. Doctor Donnelly was there, he was one of the spokesmen, and he talked there about having offered, with the permission of the mayor, a company. He is slightly mistaken as to having formed a company; it was I who formed it. Q. A military company with arms? A. No, sir; a company of citizens. Q. Armed citizens? A. They were not armed. They had nothing. Q. You subsequently armed them, didn't you? A. Yes, sir. To properly understand the spirit with which I was actuated, with permission of the committee, I will read two extracts, one from the _Post_ of Monday, and one from the _Gazette_ of Monday morning, these extracts are not literally reported, but to show the spirit that was there, and with permission of the committee, I will read them. Q. Are they long? A. No, sir; they are not long. This is from the _Post_ of Monday, July 23, 1877. Q. An editorial? A. A local report. This is the extract: "An enterprising individual here endeavored to throw cold water on the spirit of the meeting, by saying they needed a thousand men; but he was suppressed. Mayor McCarthy rushed to the stand, and said there was no use of any more fooling. 'Let all who wanted to save their city fall into line, and go at once to the mayor's office, and be sworn in as extra policemen. The fire was spreading, and the incendiaries were still at work, and we must act now.'" Then the reporter puts in this: "This suited the meeting, and a portion of the meeting formed in line, and, under head of the mayor, marched off." That is from the _Post_. Q. Before you go any further, did you command that force? A. I led them; went at their head. I will give you a history of that. Q. As commander of them? A. Yes; they were not going into action. There is a history about this, which I will give you after reading this. This is from the _Gazette_ of Monday, July 23, an extract: "There was now a loud call for the mayor, who was in the crowd. He stepped to the front, and said, 'The city is on fire. There is no time to be lost. I want every man, who is ready to help me, to go up here to join this band to go and put down incendiaries.' Mr. Henry Pilipps, junior, said, 'Let us go to the city hall at once, and be perfectly organized as a vigilance committee, and let the mayor swear his policemen in.' The mayor then said, 'I can swear them in now,' and suiting the action to the word, the mayor made his way to one end of the crowd, and countermarched through them. The ranks were quickly filled up, as soon as the movement was understood. The meeting adjourned to call of the chair, and the company proceeded up Fifth avenue." Now this company that I formed there. Doctor Donnelly was present, and he had been spoken of as a fit person to command. I intended to have taken them down Diamond alley to Gregg's store, and arm them with axe-handles or pick-handles, or whatever could be got; but the large majority of them were indisposed to do that, and we started off to the university building, across the way here, and two or three portions of the building were broken in in search of some drilling arms that the cadets in the university use. After a considerable waste of time there, they couldn't get the arms. We succeeded in getting them into line again, and we marched off to Gregg's. Mr. Gregg opened the door, and the line formed outside in the street, and some men went into the store, and they carried enough of those ax-handles to arm the crowd. When that was done, I turned them over to Doctor Donnelly. In anticipation of the formation of this company, I had given orders for a number of police to collect at the city hall, to the end that they would lead this company and precede them, and in that position go and attack the rioters. When I had put Doctor Donnelly in charge, I told him to bring his men to the city hall, and I would give him a police force to precede them and march at their head to go to the scene of the riot. I don't know whether the Doctor understood me or not; but his police force did go. His company didn't go to the city hall, and right here, permit me to say that you have heard a great deal about fifty men squelching this mob, and a hundred determined men. I suppose Doctor Donnelly thought he had determined men, and he didn't go for police assistance. Possibly he expected he could accomplish it all without the aid of police. He went; he was repulsed horse, foot, and dragoon. The next thing I saw of them they came to the city hall in a demoralized condition. I said to the doctor when he came there, says I, "Doctor, keep your men here. I understand that there is a company of soldiers on a steamboat at the lock. You and I will go up and see if we can get them." He got into the buggy, and we went up there. We saw the lady of the house at the lock, and she told me that these men had had orders to go into camp at the poor farm. We came back to the city hall, and was informed that Doctor Donnelly's troops had gone to their supper, and would be back after supper. After supper there came some eight or ten of them--they were there ready for action. That was all that came back, and so you see what fifty determined men could do. Q. Did this company of Doctor Donnelly's go up there armed with anything else but pick handles? A. I don't know. I think that after I left them ready to come to the city hall, that they went some place and got some arms, because they came back to the mayor's office with some instruments---- Q. Muskets? A. I guess there were some muskets the university had used. I know the university authorities created quite a disturbance about their not being returned to them. Q. You spoke about different parties coming there to suppress this riot. Who were those parties, besides your officers--I mean outside of the city authorities? A. This meeting of the citizens. Q. Who else? A. I don't know any others. Q. The sheriff and the county authorities? A. I saw nothing of them on Sunday. Q. You were speaking of those parties attempting command or change of affairs in trying to suppress the riots. Did you have reference to the citizens' committee? A. No, sir. Q. Was it the sheriff's posse? A. I have reference to the county authorities, the Pennsylvania railroad, and the military. Q. Then what was it you had reference to--the citizens? A. No, sir. Q. Nor Doctor Donnelly's command? A. I think Doctor Donnelly's command went in good faith, to do what they could--they were not able. Q. You said you were utterly hostile to all those parties in their efforts? A. I said I was hostile to their plan of operations, because I didn't think it was called for at the time it was done, because I believed it would end in disaster, which it did. Q. Did you make any effort to have any conference with these parties to agree on some plan that would be effected? A. No, sir; they went to work independent of me, and had called out the troops without consulting me at all. I was at my office all night waiting if anything would occur, and I knew nothing of this movement to call troops out until I saw the dispatches on Friday morning. Q. Do I understand you that because they did not consult you, you put yourself in hostility to all these parties? A. If you understand me that way, you understand me entirely wrong. Q. I want to know that? A. I have time and again here to-day stated that I was utterly hostile to their plan of operations, and that I had nothing to do with them, because I knew I would be powerless with these men. Q. You made no effort to see them or converse with them, and had no conference with them? A. No, sir. Q. Made no attempt to have any conference with them? A. No, sir; I did not. I am satisfied they did not want me. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was it not your duty as mayor of the city, to take charge, notwithstanding these men, and if they put themselves in your way, to take them and make them behave themselves? A. No; I could not do that. The sheriff is the leading officer. Q. Here among the powers, I find set forth is, "To prevent riots, noises, disturbances, or disorderly assemblages--" that is a part of your powers. A. I will show you something stronger than that there. That is very weak--wishy-washy. Do not understand me as being offensive--you have got a pretty good-natured face, and I like to talk to you. There it is, "The mayor of the city, shall be its executive officer, and the conservator of its peace. He shall have and exercise within the city limits, the powers conferred on sheriffs of counties, to suppress disorder, and keep the peace. Q. That is what I meant. Was it not part of your duty to take charge yourself, as mayor? A. Not under the circumstances. I had been superseded by the power that had the whole county at its beck, who had without my knowledge, and, as I thought, entirely unnecessary, laid out a plan of action I could have nothing at all to do with. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I would like at this point, for the mayor to explain why he considered himself superseded, having acted without his knowledge. A. Why I considered I had been superseded? Q. You say that they acted without your knowledge. I want to know why you considered yourself superseded? A. I did not consider myself superseded because they acted without my knowledge. If I said anything of that kind I have been misunderstood. I have time and again tried to express myself upon that point, and that is this, that the sheriff of the county, together with the military, had taken possession of this matter, and superseded the mayor. Q. Had you been so informed? A. I was superseded by the dismissal of the police on Friday morning, and the taking possession by soldiers who had been called out by the State authorities. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you know the fact of your own knowledge that the police had been dismissed? A. I know that fact from the statement of the police--made to me and to the office. Q. That is the only way you know that? A. Yes, sir. Q. You received no intelligence of that fact from the railroad officials? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Is it their prerogative to dismiss the police, or have you got control of them? A. They were under control of the railroad authorities. They directed them where to go, and according to their orders they went. Q. Have they got control, equal to yourself, with any police in this city? A. Under the circumstances they had. Q. You delegated that power to them? A. They were sent there for that purpose, to do just as they said for them to do. Q. You delegated the power to the railroad officials to have charge of these men? A. I cannot say that I delegated them, because there were not over four or five that were under my control. Q. Did you consider, under all the circumstances, that the railroad officials or anybody else had the right to dismiss police without consulting you, or had any control over them? A. Under those circumstances, I did. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was that dismissal anything more than a mere taking of those warrants from the hands of the police, and putting them in the hands of the sheriff? A. There was nothing of the kind took place, and now understand me: policemen, at the suggestion of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, were sent there during the afternoon and the night. They were there under the control of the railroad authorities, and when the railroad authorities did not want them any more, they dismissed them, which was on Friday morning. Q. You understand they gave them a formal dismissal, and told them their services were not needed to keep the peace any longer? A. I do not know in what form it was done. Q. Was it not merely taking warrants from their hands, and telling these policemen they would put the warrants that were in their hands for execution into the hands of the sheriff to execute--was not that all the dismissal there was? A. At that time no warrants had been issued. Q. On Friday? A. On Friday morning, when the police were dismissed by the railroad authorities, no warrants had been issued--no information had been made. Q. After their dismissal, did you think then you had no further occasion to keep the police force there? A. Not because they were dismissed, but because I had been superseded by the military and the county. Q. I want to know why you thought you were superseded--were you so informed by either of those parties, either the sheriff or the mayor, or anybody acting for them? A. No, sir; I was not informed by them. Q. Why did you consider yourself superseded? Simply because they took action to suppress the riot? A. They took possession of the whole business. There was no room for me. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Would not your police force which you could have gathered together have been some assistance to them in keeping the peace? A. If the sheriff had asked me for the police as a posse to help him I could have given a hundred men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I want to ask you this question, if you think that you can be superseded by the military? A. If I am not? Q. Yes; can you be superseded by the military in your powers and duties? A. If I had charge they would not supersede me. Q. Is it not your duty to take charge? A. That duty had been performed by the sheriff. Q. Is it not your duty to take charge of your police and put down any riots or disturbance within the city limits, regardless of any power on earth? A. No, sir; in the event that the sheriff does not interfere, it would be. If I got possession first I would hold. Q. Were you not called upon first by the railroad officials? A. I was called upon first by the railroad officials to furnish them with ten men. Q. And you acted? A. Yes, sir. Q. Why did you not keep control? A. Because they had taken it out of my hands by dismissing the police, calling upon the sheriff, and the sheriff called upon the State for troops. Q. Then I understand you to say that the sheriff superseded you, in your judgment? A. That is what I said a dozen times. Q. Did the military supersede you? A. Certainly they did. Q. I want to know if you think the military can supersede you? A. Mr. Chairman, you are getting too hair-splitting here. If I had charge the military could not supersede me--it would not be in their power. Q. Did you not have charge at the commencement? A. At the commencement I had, but on Friday morning I was thrown to the dogs. In the night they had sent for the sheriff. They did not come down to the mayor's office, where I was ready and waiting to hear what was going on there the whole night, but they went for the sheriff and they took him out. Q. Did they not telegraph you for fifty more additional police? A. Did I not tell you half a dozen times that I knew nothing about that--I received no dispatch--how often must I repeat that? Q. Was it not received at your office? A. I was told that they sent there for more men, and that they got them. Q. Did they get fifty more policemen that they called for? A. No, sir. Wait a moment, and I will prove to you that at supper time--after supper--they sent word from the outer depot to the inner depot that they would not furnish transportation to the policemen that went there--they had enough, and they did not want any more. Q. You did not send them the fifty policemen? A. I do not know anything at all about it. They got all they wanted. Q. Now, in not getting them, they called upon the sheriff? A. No, sir. I will prove to you they got all they wanted. They said they wanted no more, and they would not furnish transportation to the men at the Union depot; but if these men wanted to go they would have to walk. Q. They did not get the fifty policemen. You have stated they sent for fifty policemen, and they did not get them? A. I do not know that they sent for fifty policemen, but I have a moral conviction they sent for more men. How many I do not know. It may have been fifty. I have a moral conviction that more men were sent to them than they wanted, for they said so. Whether it was fifty men, I do not know. I do not think it was fifty. Q. You were not at your office, and did not receive that dispatch calling for fifty men? A. I was not at the office from quarter to five in the afternoon until eight in the evening. From eight in the evening I was there all night. Q. I understand your position, Mr. McCarthy, to be this: that you may be superseded by the sheriff of the county, but not by the military? A. No, sir; that is not my position, by a long slap. My position is that the military were sent here at the request of the sheriff--that the sheriff took possession of the business, and that the police were dismissed, and then I had nothing more to do with them. That is my position. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. That is, when the sheriff takes possession that then there is no further call on you or any further duty for you to perform--is that the position? A. Under the circumstances as they existed at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Why, then, did you assume command on Saturday evening? A. Because I had reason to believe from what I saw that outside of the railroad property there was work to be done. Q. It was not then for the purpose of protecting the railroad property that you acted on Saturday? A. My good conscience, didn't the railroad company and the sheriff have one thousand men right on that ground, or thereabouts. Q. It was not for that purpose, then, but it was for the purpose of protecting the city you acted on Saturday? A. Yes; outside of that. Q. What time was the information made by Mr. Watt before you on which the warrants were issued for these nine or ten men? A. Sometime during Friday forenoon. Q. Made by Mr. Watt? A. I do not know. May be it was. Q. Warrants were immediately issued, were they? A. Yes, sir. Q. Placed in the hands of your policemen? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long were they kept by the policemen? A. Until Saturday morning. Q. And no arrests were made? A. No arrests were made. Q. And then what was done with them? A. They came there and wanted to take the information away--the law authorities--I think Mr. Housey was one of them. We would not give them the information--would not let go of that. Then they wanted the names of the men who were implicated in it for the purpose of getting out bench warrants, and they got the names. We gave them to them. Q. Why were these men not arrested on Friday? A. Because a troubled state of feeling had been existing in the community by calling out the troops, and I instructed the policemen to be very cautious, and if they made any arrests, an arrest any time before the meeting of the grand jury would be sufficient, simply for the purposes of this information. Q. Did you not understand these persons were the leaders in the disturbances on Twenty-eighth street? A. I would understand they were engaged in it. Q. That was the charge contained in the affidavit, was it not? A. No, no; it was not a charge. I think that the information was made under an act of Assembly, passed within the last two or three years, about people interfering with the running of trains. I think that was it, though I am not quite sure. Q. Would it not have been better to have made these arrests as soon as possible, before the arrival of the military? A. No, sir; I think, under the circumstances, it would have been a very bad move to have made these arrests. I was conscious, at the time I gave the warrants to the officer, that it was a dangerous thing, on account of the public excitement that had been created by calling out the troops, and I told him to be very cautious about what he would do, and I was satisfied he would be cautious, as to rush pell-mell, right up there, and snatch these men right out, would have created a disturbance at once. At least, I thought so. Q. On Saturday night, when you went out and ordered all the police you could get, consistently, to the Twelfth ward, I understand you to say that it was not for the purpose of protecting the railroad property, but to protect the city particularly? A. I conceived that the railroad property had eight hundred or nine hundred--at least eight hundred men there, for that purpose. Q. You took these policemen, you say, to arrest men that were carrying off railroad property? A. Presumed to be railroad property. Q. Or carrying off plunder? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many did they arrest? A. I could not tell you. I suppose there may have been about a hundred. Q. What was done with these men? A. They were taken to the station-house, and Alderman Butler, I believe, who was in charge--I was not in charge for a week; I had something else to do--I believe they came to the conclusion that they could not be convicted of larceny, from not being able to identify what goods they had. All things were thrown together in the hurry of the moment, and they could not identify them nor the goods, and I believe they came to the conclusion that an action of larceny would not lie, and it would be troublesome to prove it, and he fined them. Q. How many of them did he fine? A. Indeed, I cannot tell. I never looked to see. Q. Did he discharge any of them? A. That I do not know. I had too much to do, to look after them. Q. Was any record made of it? A. Oh! yes; they have their names down in the watch-house docket. Q. You never examined the record? A. No, sir; I never examined it because it was a trifling matter compared with other things that had to be done, and I paid no attention to it. Q. Had you any intimation from any source prior to the appearance of Mr. Watt on Thursday at your office of an outbreak among the railroad employés? A. No, sir; but on the contrary, I happened to know from the president of the Trainmen's Union that when he was told that, eleven o'clock that day, he disputed the accuracy of the statement. He knew nothing of it, but when he was assured in such a way that he thought there must be something in it, he left the corner of Eleventh and Liberty streets for Twenty-eighth street, to know what the facts were. He himself did not believe it. Q. You had no reason at all to anticipate anything of the kind? A. No; I never dreamed that there would be an outbreak such as there was. Q. That there would be a strike at all on the railroad? A. Oh, no; had no idea of it at all. I very seldom come in contact with railroad men. Q. In the conversations that you had with the men who went out in the Twelfth ward, did they give you any reasons for the outbreak and the strike? A. No, sir; never entered into a critical examination of the question there at that time. Q. Your conversation with them was simply in relation to---- A. What was occurring at the moment. I think from all I could gather from the railroad men, that they were averse to what took place. Q. Had you noticed any influx of people in the city, prior to this time--within a few days? A. No, sir; I had not, but there was one thing struck me with surprise, that I did not know the faces of vast numbers of people. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and I know an immense number of faces. I almost think I can tell a Pittsburgher when I see him, but on that day there were vast numbers of people I could not recognize. I got into close quarters with them twice. By the by, I have not told you that I came in contact with them at the head of the platform of the Union depot, but, like Doctor Donnelly's men, in about ten seconds I was placed _hors du combat_. They invited me to take a little walk--one fellow struck me. A good man in the crowd interfered, and told me they did not want to hurt me, but if I stayed there I would have to take the consequence. I looked around at Officer Jones, who went into the crowd with me, and I saw him looking pretty black, and he made up his mind to the situation, and he left. He came over to me, and says, "Mayor, you had better get out of this." I was disposed to kick. I did not feel very afraid of them. I am not a man of courage. He gave me a nudge, says he, "Get out quick." And I thought I had better go. With that the mob picked me up and carried me from the head of the platform and landed me out in front of the depot, and Alderman O'Donnell and Dan Hall, and four or five policemen then came up, and I was led into the Union depot. Q. What time was that? A. I cannot tell the time--it was when the mob was coming down the Pennsylvania railroad yard, smashing up cars and things. Q. Some time Sunday? A. I got a little angry, and lost my head. I did not care what I did, and Jones and I, and two or three others, I do not know who they were, went in. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I would like to ask a few more questions in regard to the sheriff and military superseding the mayor? A. Never ending and always beginning. Do you expect to put me in the hole, Mr. Yutzy? Q. Not at all. I would like to know why you considered yourself superseded by any other authorities here in the city, the disturbance having commenced? A. I have tried to impress that upon you half a dozen times. Q. Were you informed, by either of those parties, that you were not needed? A. I have told you two or three times _no_, and I shall have to continue answering it _no_ every time you ask me. Q. Did you not consider it your duty to make an effort to suppress the riot and disturbance after they had made an effort to do so? A. After they had made an effort and abandoned it, I did make an effort. Q. During the time you were making that effort, did you not consider it your duty also, as chief officer of the city, to suppress any riot or disturbance? A. I think I told you several times. Q. Answer that question? A. I say I have already told you several times, that they pursued a course so diametrically opposed to anything I would have done or could have approved of, and having a firm conviction that no persuasion of mine could alter the determination of the authorities who had it in charge, that I could not interfere. Q. You made no effort, then, to disperse or suppress the riot? A. No, sir. Q. After they had made an effort? A. After they had made an effort, I did. Q. During the time they were making an effort? A. No, sir. Q. Made no effort? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. And not until after they had failed, in your judgment? A. Yes, sir. What more evidence would you want than that everybody had run away--they had left. I do not charge the soldiers with running away--do not understand that. I meant among the men who said the Philadelphia troops murdered the people there. I am not among those men. I believe they were murdered, but the Philadelphia troops are not responsible for it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. During the time that the sheriff or the State authorities were making an effort to suppress this riot and disperse the mob, was it not your duty, just as much as if they had not been here, to preserve the peace, and make every effort in your power to the same end? A. I have already answered that question half a dozen times. I answered it a moment ago. Q. Will you please answer that, yes or no. A. Under the circumstances, I do not think that I had anything to do with it. Q. I would like you to answer that question. It may not be so very material, but I would like to have that question answered, yes or no? A. I have answered it? Q. Can you answer it, yes or no. A. I have already answered it. Under the circumstances, I do not think so. Q. The sheriff and the military, or even the United States Government, attempting to suppress a riot unless there was military law declared, did you not consider it your duty to make every effort in your power to preserve the peace and prevent any disturbance in your city? A. I would consider it my duty to do so if there was nothing to interfere with me. Q. Was there anybody interfering with your duties by any manner of means? A. I have already said that I considered I was relieved by the sheriff and the State authorities. Q. Did they interfere with you? A. It just comes down to this; that is my platform, and that is what I believe, and you happen to think differently. Q. I wish to ask you the question whether they interfered with you by any manner of means in the performance of your duties? A. They did not. Q. And still you suspended your operations or your efforts to suppress this riot and keep the peace? A. Because these gentlemen superseded me and took possession. Q. In what way did they supersede you? A. By dismissing the police that they had in charge, the railroad men, and by the sheriff going there and performing his duties as sheriff, and by calling out the State troops. Q. Who dismissed these police? A. The railroad men. Q. Are you subordinate to the railroad authorities? A. No, sir; I am not subordinate to them, not by a long slap. There cannot be two kings where I am one. Q. Still you regarded the railroad company as superseding you when they dismissed your police? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did they supersede you at any time--the railroad authorities? A. Why, certainly they did. Q. By calling upon the sheriff? A. By the sheriff undertaking to order the crowd to disperse at Twenty-eighth street, and then immediately coming to the conclusion that the civil power had become exhausted, and then sending a dispatch by Senator Scott calling for the troops, and the troops being ordered out--that superseded me, suspended me. I went over that a dozen times. I am on this stand doing the swearing, and I am swearing for myself. Q. I would not ask you any question that I did not think was a proper one? A. I don't think that, but we differ. Q. There appears to be a conflict of authority in this matter between the city and the county and the State authorities? A. Not a particle of conflict of authority. I took pretty good care that there should be no conflict. When the county and the military and the railroad authority undertook to follow a course which I would have nothing to do with, that I could not approve of, that I believed would end in disaster, as it did, I stepped aside and let them have their way, because I could not control these men. Q. We want to know where the responsibility should rest--which of those authorities should have taken command? A. You have a right to form your opinion from the evidence before you. I have given my evidence, what I thought about the matter. Q. For that reason I ask you the question whether you considered yourself superseded by other authorities, and should refrain from making any effort? A. I have told you I thought so, and gave you my reasons for it. Q. During the pillage and the carrying away of goods at the Union depot and in that vicinity, from the railroad, did you see any of the citizens carrying away any of those goods? A. Oh, yes; there must have been citizens--they must have been citizens--it was not the fellows who were stealing that there was any danger from. It was the fellows standing around with their hands in their pockets. Q. Did you know anyone in particular who was carrying away goods there? A. I did not. Q. Did you see any of the policemen carrying away any goods? A. I did not; and don't believe they did. Q. Did you see any of them taking cigars or anything of that kind? A. Yes; I know what you are coming at now; I had forgotten all about it. We have not been going on chronology, we have been switching off. I saw a number of police throwing what I supposed to be segars, in fact I might say I know, to the mob. The circumstances were these. Q. Thrown by the police to the mob? A. O, yes; precisely that and nothing else. You will remember that I said that I telegraphed to detain the policemen, and send them up there on Sunday morning. I got up there pretty late, and the policemen were waiting on me. I hadn't much confidence in any person we had, because I knew that the retreat and dispersal of the soldiers had emboldened the disorderly, and they thought when the soldiers would leave the mob, that the citizens had no chance, and the community were demoralized. I got about twenty policemen, I think, and I thought it would be a good thing to put them to light work and put a little spirit in them. I took them around and told them to go up the wall and drive those thieves away. I didn't get on the wall, I walked down alongside the wall to witness their operations. As soon as the police mounted the wall and the thieves saw them--I kept down with the police the great body of them; I followed on the street and they upon the wall, and the wall was clear for a very few minutes, and I happened to turn my eye up, and I saw a policeman with a bundle of those soft felt hats that are piled on top of one another, and he was throwing them down to the crowd in the street, and I rushed up for him, and shook my fist at him, and used some choice Italian, and then he stopped, and after talking a little string to him I turned, and down the line I saw a couple of policemen jump into a car and throw things out--they were cigars--and they threw things down to the crowd. I rushed down there and bellowed like a mad bull at them, and they stopped finally, but the moral effect of their previous conduct was gone, and the crowd mounted the hill like so many rats, and that was the end of that business. The men engaged in that were two lieutenants, and I am free to say there were not two better men in the force, but they lost their heads; they were completely surrounded by fire, and they thought those things would burn up, and as they would be burned up they just thought they might mollify the crowd--a very mistaken idea--by throwing these things to the crowd. It was from no desire to help the mob, but they had ignored the moral principle involved that they had no right to touch anything, except for the sole and only purpose of preserving it for its owner, and no other purpose. They had forgotten that part of their catechism. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In other words, the police were demoralized as well as the citizens? A. At that moment they were. I don't think these men would ever do a thing of that kind again. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was done with those policemen for that act? A. I dropped them. I could not do anything else. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Discharged them? A. Yes, sir. Q. Are they on the force now? A. That I can't say. I do not know anything about the present force? Q. Did you discharge them permanently? A. They left, certainly, and were never on again. They were on again for some days afterwards, for I had too many things to attend to, to attend to them just at once. I pitied the men, because I knew them to be good men, and I am very confident they will never do so again. It took the starch out of me. I was demoralized by it. There are some things you haven't asked me questions about. There was some talk here the other day about protection to the fire department. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There has been some testimony that citizens, about the time they were breaking into these gun stores, came and offered to be sworn--state what you know about that? A. That was by Follensbee. Mr. Follensbee came there and offered. He came to the office very much demoralized. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Just state the fact whether he offered his services, and then whether you accepted or not, and then give the reason why you didn't accept him? A. I don't know whether he offered his services or not. There were more men, during these two or three hours that I was assigning these men to duty--there were more men who came in there, in the capacity of military strategists, than would be enough to run the United States and Confederate army during the rebellion, and I was annoyed to death with every man coming in there who had some plan. I could not get my wits together. This Mr. Follensbee came there. I have no recollection personally of what he said, but I do know that he was very sadly demoralized with something stronger than I am going to take now. He is a good gentleman, as honest a man as ever lived. Q. You did not swear him in? A. No. Q. Was that the reason why you did not? A. Oh, yes. Q. Did any other gentlemen with him offer their services? A. Not that I know of. There was so many people came in and talked about so many things, and how this, that, and the other thing could be done, that I thought of getting a stuffed club to beat them out with. Q. Did you send any policemen to Mr. Bown's store? A. Undoubtedly. I suppose there was a dozen there. They were over-powered by the momentum of the mob, and Lieutenant Chalfant was knocked down, as I was told by the policemen a few days afterwards, when we began to gather up our wits. I was told that some of the policemen that were there tried to keep the pavement clear, and took out their pistols, and citizens who were there requested them to put them up, and not use them--that they would be murdered. Q. Just state what you know--what came under your own observation? A. Nothing came under my observation there. You won't know how to probe this thing, unless I told you what can be shown. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I am inclined to think that anything in the police officers' reports--the police officers reporting to you, in an official capacity--would be testimony? A. Now, about Follensbee. The city clerk was down in front of Mr. Bown's, and there was not a very great many people. They had been trying to keep the people moving. Mr. Follensbee was standing there, and the city clerk appeared to go that way---- Q. We have had the city clerk's report of that, from himself, which is much better evidence than coming from a second party. All we want to know, is just what came under your observation, and what was officially reported to you by your policemen? A. I sent men there, and I know they went there. Q. You say you sent about a dozen policemen there? A. I suppose there must have been a dozen, and I know, from the report of the police to me, that they endeavored to keep the crowd back, and did keep the crowd back, and that one man in the crowd counted one, two, three, four, and up to ten--they are no count, and the whole crowd made a rush at them, and Lieutenant Chalfant was knocked down, and the momentum of the crowd carried the crowd out of sight. They had thrown stones at the heads of them, and broken the windows. Q. You didn't make any effort to get any greater number of policemen to send there? A. We had to ... half a dozen places at the same time. We just done the best we could, and possibly might have done better, if there had not been so many strategists coming there to bother us. Q. Did you send any policemen to protect the fire companies? A. Why, yes, sir. Q. Whom did you send? A. I was there myself, with fifteen policemen. Q. Whom did you offer assistance to? A. Let me tell you. Q. Just answer the question? A. We can get to that better. Q. Whom did you offer assistance to? A. To the man in charge. Q. Who was he? A. I don't know what his name was. Q. What street was it? A. It was, as I think, at the corner of Twentieth and Liberty. You can't understand this, unless you let me tell the story. Q. At what time? A. I can't give you any hour. I know nothing of time. Q. You offered assistance to the man in charge. What was he doing? A. He was throwing water on French's spring works. You better let me tell the story. You are cutting it up. Q. What did he say? A. He says to me, says he, "I won't do it--I am not going to risk my life--if you want to take charge of this thing you can do it." Q. He was throwing water at that time without any molestation from the mob? A. Certainly; and the police was stationed across the street to protect them. Whether they would have stood fire or not, I can't tell. Q. What assistance did you offer him? A. The police that were there within thirty feet of me. Q. If he was not molested by the mob at that time, he wanted no further assistance? A. You won't let me tell this story straight. If you let me commence at the beginning you will understand it. Q. Did you offer assistance at any other time than the one you speak of now? A. I told you that I offered assistance on Saturday night, and it was refused. Q. To whom did you offer the assistance on Saturday night? A. I sent Officer Coulson to the fire department to tell them to come and aid the police. Q. We have had Officer Coulson and his story? A. On Sunday morning, when the fire had crossed Liberty street, I went to hunt the chief of the fire department, and could not find him, to concert measures with him. That is the time I talked about the water arrangement. Then a man connected with the Pennsylvania railroad came to me, and says he, "If I get an engine at the corner of Twentieth street to throw water on the railroad cars will you have the police force there to protect me?" Says I, "I will." I immediately went and I gathered about fifteen policemen, as nigh as I can guess, and had them at the corner of Twentieth street. I think it is at the lower end of French's spring works. I had them there a very long time, and no engine appeared. John Coyle, a member of the bar here, came along and spoke to me, and I said to him, says I, "John"--I told him the facts--"come along with me, I want to hunt this thing up," and we went up to find the chief, and we didn't find him. We found Commissioner Coates, the man that had a pistol at his head and lived to tell the tale. He said he had an engine. I left Mr. Coyle and came down. Coyle went about his business; and I saw an engine coming down one of the cross-streets--Penn street--and I went over to see where it was going, and it went away down town. I went back to where I had the police stationed waiting for the engine to come. After a very great delay, the engine came and attached to a fire plug; but instead of throwing water upon the burning cars, opposite to this street where we were, he commenced throwing upon French's spring works. Then Mr. Houseman I think it is--the gentleman who had made the request of me--I went to him and said something to him, and he came back to me and said, "These men won't do anything. You come and see what you can do." I went over to him, and the answer he made was he was not going to risk his life, but if I wanted to take charge of it I could do so. But I didn't do so. Then the police--they were few in number, and not able to do anything--I just told them to go and do what they could. Then I went down town, and knew the result of the citizens' meeting. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You said you did not agree, nor could not agree with the plan adopted by the sheriff and the troops, or the officers of the troops, in charge of matters, and at the same time the directions you gave your police was to be careful, and not excite the crowd, and not make these arrests. Are we to infer from that, that your plan was that you must not oppose force to them, you must handle them gingerly and tenderly. Is that what we must infer? A. No, sir; every occasion presents its own line of action. Q. The troops and the sheriff were trying to oppose the crowd by force and stop the riot, and you say you did not agree with their plan of action? A. I don't. I think that the military force is only to be used in case of the very last resort. Q. In ordering your policemen not to make these arrests, are we to infer---- A. Infer and understand this, that in ordering these policemen to be careful how they made arrests, it was after I had considered I had been superseded, and I wanted them to make the arrests when they made them in such a way as not to create any disturbance. Q. Are we to infer from your evidence upon that point that your manner of managing such a mob would be to give way to them, and not oppose force to the crowd? A. I have said nothing, I think, to indicate that. Q. What would be your plan in such a case? A. I would have policemen to do it. I don't think the policemen would create such a truculent feeling as an arrest by the use of military. Q. You think then that the police are the proper force to use on such occasions? A. Until you ascertain you can do nothing with them, until all other means have failed, and then, and not till then, are the military to be used. Q. Did you attempt at any time on Sunday to gather your police force in a body so as to have an organized force large enough to accomplish something? A. I could not get any force on Sunday large enough. Q. You got fifteen--you say there was fifty or sixty policemen--did you undertake to gather that body? A. I did not say there was fifty or sixty policemen. I am talking now about the night before. Q. I think the question was asked you how many there was about there on Sunday? A. I could not tell how many were there. I know only a small body of them could be got together, and then they began to collect the men who had went home in the morning before we knew that the soldiers had been withdrawn--they began to gather in before dark--then we had a pretty good force, and then with such assistance as citizens gave, we broke the back of the riot--we knocked them right and left. Q. Hadn't whisky helped a good deal at that time to place them _hors du combat_? A. I don't know about it myself, I do not drink it. Q. I did not ask you as a connoisseur. A. I think it had the effect to make the crowd vicious. I thought so when I was in their hands. Q. This Sunday night and Monday morning was when you first began to regain some control there? A. We got control--from dark on Sunday evening we had control. Q. The mob had kind of petered out then? A. Yes, and they had been licked out by the police and citizens. Q. Where had there been any set-to where the mob had been licked--at what place? A. At the Fort Wayne depot, at the intersection of Tenth and Liberty street. Q. What police had had the set-to with the crowd at the Fort Wayne depot? A. There was eight or ten policemen went there when the car was afire, and they put that out, and they were assisted by citizens also. Q. How large a crowd did they find to contend with? A. I don't know, it was an accomplished fact. The mob began to break in stores, and commenced at the corner opposite to Tenth on Liberty street, and the police and the mob had the battle there. Q. How many police were there engaged in that battle? A. There was a considerable number. Q. Do you know how large a crowd there was there? A. I am told the streets are full. Q. What kind of a crowd was it? A. Breaking into stores. Q. The same crowd that had been burning cars? A. I don't know. Q. What was it composed of--this crowd running about the streets? A. They were composed of men and boys. We had another battle with them at Seventeenth. Q. This crowd that was plundering was easily dispersed at any time? A. Easy. They were not people to be afraid of. Q. Who were the people to be afraid of? A. Those standing around doing nothing. Q. Was there an apparent organization among them? A. I don't know. Q. Could you judge? A. I don't know whether there was an organization; there appeared to be a common feeling. I was astonished from the fact that I didn't know them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. They appeared to be strangers? A. They were strangers to me, I did not recognize them. Q. In your intimate acquaintance with the people, you would take them to be people from elsewhere? A. I thought I knew the people about Pittsburgh, but I didn't know these. I don't want to swear that they were strangers. I don't know that I know. I was recognized, and I thought I ought to recognize a great many of them. Q. Those that were engaged in the act of rioting and police? A. I am speaking more especially of those who captured me in the railroad yard, and carried me out in front of the depot. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. They did that systematically, did they? A. Oh, yes; carried me right out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you, at any time during the riots, employ your night force in the day time? A. Such of them as we could get. Understand this, my idea of this matter was that the soldiers, having possession of the railroad property, were cooped up for the night, and that when daylight would appear they would go out into the open ground, and take possession of things. My idea was, they went into this place to prevent being pushed back during the night. The great body of the police force went off at six o'clock in the morning. I, supposing that the police would have nothing to do, except to do street duty under this excitement, and had instructed the chief of police to call upon the discharged policemen, supposing that he could get plenty of them, but that expectation was not realized, and not expecting that the soldiers would leave the city at the time they did, had given no orders to keep the night policemen on duty that morning; but when I found that the soldiers had all dispersed, I telegraphed down to the central station to detain such policemen as were there--and there were some there--and they were detained, and they were on duty all day. Q. Did you make any effort to re-assemble the night police after you ascertained they had left? A. Could not do it. Q. Did you make any effort? A. Could not do it. Q. Could not you find them? A. You couldn't get a man to go after them--the great body of them--until night would come. You would get them just as soon by waiting until they came on duty. Q. Didn't you have the address in your mind? A. Yes; and knew where they lived. We had plenty to do without doing that. Q. Any more important duty to perform than to get these men to assemble? A. That would depend altogether upon what the man in charge thought. I thought the most important duty was to have the police up there--all we could get--and let them do what they could. Q. Without calling on the night police? A. If we had means of calling on the night force to gather them in, it would have been done, but, to do so, we would have had to abandon everything else for the time being. Possibly, that might have been as well, though. When I went to the corner of Seventh and Grant streets, I found the firemen playing there, and the police having charge of the ropes--keeping the crowd away from them. Q. Did you employ all your powers during these riots, regardless of any other efforts adopted to subdue the riots, in preserving the peace? A. What do you call during the riots? Q. The time from Thursday until Sunday? A. Because I didn't think there was any riot before five o'clock on Saturday. Mr. Lindsey: That question requires a direct answer--yes or no. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you exhaust all your powers during the riots, irrespective of these other parties? A. I say there was no riot until four or five o'clock in the morning, when the soldiers charged bayonets on the crowd. Q. Including all within the time from Thursday until Monday, did you exhaust---- A. I knew of no riots until the soldiers charged bayonets on the people. I have answered that question a dozen of times. Q. Answer it yes or no? A. I will not answer it yes or no. All my powers were exhausted in preserving the peace so far as I thought I could exercise them. That is the answer to that question. Q. Have you any call--is there any call to assemble the police, by telegraph or otherwise? A. We have a police telegraph from each station-house. We send messages on it every day. Q. There is no particular call by which you assemble your police? A. There is no alarm. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I want to ask the mayor a question in connection with his answer to this. He says he used all his powers in preserving the peace, so far as he could exercise them. Was there anything to prevent you from exercising your powers as mayor? A. Yes; the ground had been occupied by the State military and the sheriff, and occupied in a way that it was utterly impossible for me to act with them. Q. And it was the only thing that prevented you from exercising your powers? A. I will say that there was a party went down to the depot--the Duquesne depot--Sunday afternoon, stating he was going to set it afire. That man was arrested by the police, assisted by some citizens, and taken to the lock-up. Q. You know that there was an assemblage of men at or near Twenty-eighth street during the day, on Friday, don't you? A. I presume there was, or Mr. Watt would not have come down there and asked for police? Q. For the purpose of protecting trains going out? A. No, sir; I didn't know that. I don't think I knew that. Q. For what purpose were they assembled there, so far as you know? A. I only knew about them from Mr. Watt, and what he told me, I have forgotten now. Q. You have forgotten what he told you? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you take any measures to ascertain what the purpose of the assemblage was? A. I think Mr. Watt must have told me what it was, and I judge so. The first thing I heard after the police went there, was that a man had struck Mr. Watt. Q. I want to know if you don't know that during the day on Friday, and during the day Saturday, there was a large assemblage of men at or near Twenty-eighth street? A. I knew that by common report, and hearing the police talk. Q. Was not that an unlawful assemblage of men? A. It may have been an unlawful assemblage of men. Q. Didn't you know it was an unlawful assemblage of men? A. I don't know, I presume it would have been an unlawful assemblage. I presume that they were there for an unlawful purpose. Q. You did not take any pains to disperse that assemblage? A. Have I not answered that question a dozen times? Q. What is your answer? Did you take any measures to disperse that assemblage? A. I didn't for the reason that I have given you--for the reason I repeated a dozen times to different other questions, in different forms. There is a good deal more I would like to tell you. Q. You say on Thursday you sent police officers there, and they got on a train, and they attempted to run that train out? A. And couldn't run it out. Q. Why didn't they run it out? A. Because the engineer stepped down and out. Q. Why did he step down and out? A. Because he wanted to. Q. Was there any men taken by force? A. Oh, no. Q. Was there a crowd there at that time? A. I suppose there were a great many people there. I have no doubt there was. Q. Don't you think it was an unlawful assemblage, and that it was your duty, as mayor, to have gone there, and have dispersed that crowd? A. The police were there preserving the peace. They were there and preserved the peace to such an extent, that the police say that they were on that train, and that train could go out. There was nothing to hinder it, if the engineer had stuck to his post; but, instead of that, he stepped off his engine, and left the police in charge. That is the report of the police to me? Q. Wasn't it your duty to disperse that crowd there, as mayor of the city? A. No; because I knew nothing of the details of that, at this time; because Mr. Watt got all the police that he needed, and they got more than they wanted--said they had more than they wanted, and they had the direction of them there, and the presumption is that the police did just what they wanted them to, and the only breach of the peace that occurred there was that of which Mr. McCall was arrested for--striking Mr. Watt--and taken to the station. Q. Was not the train uncoupled? When they attempted to start that train, didn't they rush on and uncouple the cars? A. I guess you are talking about the trains they attempted to run early in the morning, before the police came there. That is what I think. It was on that occasion that Mr. Watt came down after the ten policemen. Q. Didn't Mr. Watt tell you of the circumstances? A. I suppose he did. Q. Didn't you have knowledge then that there had been a riot, or, at least, a disorderly crowd there, and wasn't it your duty then to protect those people? A. And for the purpose of doing that, Mr. Watt came and asked for a certain number of policemen--for what he thought was sufficient--and they were soon there? Q. And still you allowed that crowd to remain there? A. That is not a fair way to put it. Q. I want to get at the reasons that actuated you? A. I didn't know anything of the nature of that crowd. I knew nothing more at the time than that Mr. Watt wanted ten men, and ten men was sufficient to control it. That was sufficient. They were there, and there was only one breach of the peace, and that man was arrested, and when this train, between three and four o'clock, undertook to be run out, it could have been run out. Q. Did the crowd intimidate the engineer in any way, do you know? A. I understood the police that he was not intimidated--that he could have gone out with the train, if he thought proper. They were there to protect him in so doing. They told me he could have gone out, if he had chosen. I don't know who he is, anything about him. I guess it was the last effort made to run a train out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you consider at any time until the military arrived that the crowd that assembled there was an illegal crowd? A. Oh, no; I didn't think it amounted to shucks. Q. You consider there was no riot or mob nor illegal assemblage at any time before the military arrived? A. I knew that there were men in a crowd. Q. Answer that question now. You consider there was no illegal assemblage, mob, or riot previous to the arrival of the military? A. I think that in the ordinary acceptation of the word mob and riot, there was no mob and riot previous to the military coming there. Q. Or illegal assemblage of people? A. I think any persons that go on the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's ground, don't obey their lawful orders and proper orders, that it is an unlawful assemblage. Q. Was there any illegal assemblage? A. I have no doubt there was. Q. Were you aware of that? A. I must have been aware. It could not have been otherwise. Q. Did you make any efforts to disperse them? A. Yes; I gave the Pennsylvania Railroad Company all the police they asked for. Q. Did you drive them off? A. I don't think they were driven off, but the Pennsylvania railroad got all the police they asked for. Q. You didn't give them the officer they asked for? A. In asking for me? Q. Yes; you? A. No; I was not going up to head ten policemen. Q. You required them to pay the police also? A. No, sir; you put your statement too broad. These policemen--we took what policemen we could belonging to the city and filled up with the others who were not in the pay of the city. Q. And those others were paid? A. I think there must have been about twenty-nine policemen outside of such of the city folks as were considered. Q. The extras were paid off by the Pennsylvania railroad? A. Yes; they were paid by them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You didn't call on any of the night force to go at that time? A. No, sir; we couldn't do that. Nothing but the most imperative necessity would require that. We only had patrolmen to cover twenty-seven square miles. At the riot on Saturday night every man was called in from the first, second, fourth, seventh, eighth, and ninth districts; they were left entirely unprotected. At this point the committee adjourned until this afternoon, at two o'clock. AFTERNOON SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Friday, February 22, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, in the orphans' court room at three o'clock, P.M., Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present. * * * * * R. L. Hamilton, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 810 Penn avenue. Q. What is your business? A. I am a clerk for the water-works of the city of Pittsburgh--clerk of the water-works. I believe it is called, sometimes, clerk of the water extension committee. Q. How long have you held that position? A. I have held the position of clerk of the water-works since February, 1876--February 4, I believe. Q. Where is your office? A. City hall. Third floor of the city hall. Municipal hall as it is called. Q. State whether you were at or in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street, on Saturday the 21st day of July? A. I was. Q. When the firing occurred? A. I was in the vicinity at the time of the firing. Q. Where were you--what was your position? A. I can hardly understand the question. Q. Where were you in relation to where the troops stood--explain the situation you occupied? A. At the time of the firing I was running. Q. Which direction? A. Well, towards Liberty street and Twenty-ninth street, to get a brick house between me and the troops. Q. Go on, and relate what you saw, commencing at the time you arrived at, or in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street? A. To explain the question, there was a meeting of the water committee called for Monday evening, and some two or three members of the water committee lived out in that direction. I started at that notice, and at two o'clock I arrived at Twenty-eighth street. I went up Twenty-eighth street to the Pennsylvania railroad tracks, and when there, I was informed that the Philadelphia troops were about to come out, and I waited to see them until sometime after four o'clock. These troops came out headed by the sheriff and several citizens of Pittsburgh, and after they had formed themselves in position, the sheriff commenced speaking to the crowd, and I couldn't hear what he was saying from where I was standing, and I got on a coal truck where I thought I could hear what he was saying. When I was on this truck, one company of the Philadelphia troops--the troops, at that time, were formed in two lines facing the hill, that is, the line next me was facing the hill. I wouldn't say positively about the line nearest the hill. I was near the round-house. There was one company of the Philadelphia troops brought up in single rank, they marched up very quietly until they got to the switch below Twenty-eighth street. They were met by the crowd, that is, a crowd of men that refused to go any further. There were orders given very quietly, and another company, with black plumes on their hats, came up, and this first company was put in double rank. They tried to force the crowd back, and the order was given to charge bayonets. The officers of the Philadelphia troops were in the rear of those two companies, they were charged up on the track, and after sometime, there was an order given to fire by the different officers of the Philadelphia troops. Q. I wish you would now repeat what you said, beginning with the order which was given to charge bayonets, commencing about there, and repeat what you said? A. After the second company had been brought up--the company with dark plumes on their hats, I cannot tell what the uniform was--after that, there was an order given to charge bayonets, and it was a very short time after this order to charge bayonets--that was only given to the two companies, the other files were standing, the rest of the Philadelphia troops were standing in two lines on each side of the railroad track--after that order given to charge bayonets, almost immediately, I heard the command given by several officers of Philadelphia companies, that is, I suppose they were from Philadelphia. I don't know them personally, but from their uniform, and from the position in which they were. The order to fire was given by several men in the uniform of officers of that regiment. Q. Where did you stand during this time? A. I stood on a truck loaded with coal. The left of the railroad tracks going out almost immediately in front of the sand-house of the Pennsylvania railroad, this side of Twenty-eighth street. Q. How far from the tracks? A. I could have stooped down and touched three of the militia with my hands, by stooping. Q. How far were you from them at the time the order to charge bayonets was given? A. I was in the same position. I had not left that position from the time I got up there to see what was said by the sheriff until I heard the order given. Q. What officers gave the order to charge bayonets? A. I couldn't say. I heard, but I couldn't say how it was given. The orders at that time were given very low. It was not to the whole regiment. Q. From what direction did the order come? A. Right from the rear of the two companies that were marched up the track, and they were not charging when the order was given. Q. How did they have their arms when the order to charge bayonets was given? A. The two companies, I think the whole of them, were at carry arms, from what I know of the present tactics. Q. Were any of them at arms port? A. Some of them in the charging parties had their guns at arms port--some of the charging party. Q. Did you hear that command given? A. No, sir; I didn't hear that command given, but I know now that some of them had their guns at arms port, because I remember the guns being in the position of arms port--some of them. A party directly in front of me were at carry arms. Q. They were standing still? A. Yes. They were in line. I think they were at a carry, so far as I can remember. I cannot swear positively as to that. Q. When you heard the command given to charge bayonets, how close were those two companies to the mob? A. Just as close as they could get. Q. And the mob resisted them? A. Yes, sir. Q. When the order was given to charge bayonets, did the two companies obey the order. A. Part of them did. I could see them lunge with their bayonets--try to force them back. Q. Did the crowd resist that charge? A. Some of them did; yes, sir. Q. And attempted to pull---- A. I heard parties say that if they would let them out in any way, they would be glad to do so. It was the crowd back of them that was holding them in. Others resisted. Q. Did they try to pull the bayonets off the guns? A. I saw them wrenching with the guns. Saw them wrenching the guns, and heard remarks made by different parties in front of the party charging bayonets that if they would give them room to get back they didn't want to interfere. I heard these remarks made from where I was. Q. And the command to fire, you say, was given by captains? A. I don't know about captains. I say officers of the Philadelphia companies that the word "fire" was given by. Q. By officers of companies? A. Company officers is what I say the word was given by. Q. And not by field officers? A. I wouldn't know that the field officers were with that regiment, but I knew from the position---- By Mr. Reyburn: Q. You mean from the position they occupied, they were company officers? A. I suppose they were company officers. They were in the rear of the two ranks facing me. Q. Had any stones and missiles been thrown at the soldiers before the command to charge bayonets was given? A. I cannot say positively as to before the command to charge bayonets was given. Q. Were any thrown at the troops before the command to fire was given? Were there any shots fired by the crowd before the command to fire was given? A. Not that I either saw or heard--not before the command to fire. Q. Missiles had been thrown? A. They had been thrown--I saw them thrown. Q. Were any of the soldiers hurt? A. Not that I saw. I saw one of the officers--I supposed to be a field officer--saw him hit, and it staggered him, but he didn't seem to be hurt--kind of shoved him to one side--it seemed to be a piece of a board or piece of wood--something like a block of wood--it was thrown from the hill side, and hit one of the officers. I saw that myself--not thrown from the hill side, but from what they call the watch-box--it is a watch-box. It was thrown from the back of that by a boy. Q. You saw the boy? A. It was a young fellow about sixteen or seventeen years of age, from what I could judge from his appearance. Q. When the firing commenced, you ran? A. I ran before the firing commenced. I was back of what they call the Hill house. Q. Did you run before the command was given? A. No, sir; I didn't. Whenever I heard the command given, I thought I had no business there, and I got out of the road, that is one thing that made me so positive the command was given. My idea of getting out of the road was on account of that command to fire. Q. In what words--was there more than one command? A. There was no more than one command. The word fire was given by different men in uniform. They were standing not in the rear, but in front of the line of militia that was right in front of me. I heard that from more than one voice. Q. In what words was the command given? A. The command I speak of as given by those parties, was the word "fire." Q. Addressed to any particular person? A. Not by those parties--just "fire." Q. How do you know who gave that command? A. I could hear them; I don't suppose I was six feet from some of them. Q. Could you pick out the men who gave the command? A. That gave the word fire? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; I couldn't. Q. Then you don't know who it was that gave the command? A. That gave these commands? No, sir. Q. You say it came from officers in command of a company? A. It came from what I supposed by the position they held--they were strangers to me. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Couldn't you distinguish the officers from the private? A. I thought I could. It was what I consider officers. I didn't pay that much attention. I had no idea there was going to be such a command given, and paid no attention to officers nor privates. These parties had no guns. Whether they were captains or lieutenants, or what, I couldn't say. Q. You wouldn't pretend to say what man it was gave the command, or pick out the man? A. That gave this command I speak of? No, sir. Q. You could only tell the direction in which the words came? A. If they had been Pittsburgh troops had been there, I suppose I could have told every man of them. I could not point out the men if they were brought before me now. Q. Could you see the man who uttered the words? A. Yes, sir. Q. So as to pick him out? A. I could, provided I had seen enough of the man. I couldn't remember him now. I believe if I could see the man that I first heard these words "fire" from; if I would have seen him the next morning, I could point him out. I don't remember of having seen him since, and I don't know that I could point him out if he was here. Q. How was he dressed? A. Dressed in a gray uniform? He was in full uniform, with gold lace on it. Q. What rank did his uniform indicate? A. I didn't pay that much attention to him to find out what his rank was. The militia uniform is so badly mixed, I could hardly tell what the man's rank would be. The uniform seemed to be about the same in all the officers. I didn't pay any attention to these troops as regards that. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Had he a plume, the same as the privates? A. I couldn't say. Q. Didn't notice? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How many officers did you hear give this command to fire? A. I couldn't say exactly. I suppose seven or eight. Q. All gave the command to fire? A. Yes, sir; that is, I heard it in that many different voices; I couldn't say how many officers, but in that many different voices. Q. Not at one and the same time? A. Not at one and the same time. Q. Did any other words precede the word "fire?" A. Not by the officers I speak of. Q. Nothing but simply "fire?" A. Simply "fire." By Senator Reyburn: Q. You are sure they didn't say not to fire, and you only heard the word "fire?" A. I am sure of the parties I speak of. Q. That they were not cautioning their men not to fire on the crowd? A. No, sir; I am sure of that. Q. Couldn't you have made a mistake, and only heard the last word? A. Not from the position I was. The parties may have been mistaken in regard to where they got their order. Q. When they were ordered to charge bayonets, what was the command given to charge bayonets? A. As I spoke before, the command was given, that I could hear the command but couldn't hear what was said to the troops. It was given to two companies in a low tone of voice, but what I understood to be "charge bayonets," and a charge bayonets was immediately made after this order. It was in a low tone of voice. Q. Not as a military officer ought to give a command? A. Not as I would suppose a military officer should give a command. I am not posted in regard to how they should give it. Q. He didn't say it as though he meant business? A. It looked very much like it. Q. He gave it in a low tone of voice? A. Just gave it in a low tone of voice to those two companies--it was a command to those two companies. Q. When he gave the command fire, did he speak it distinctly as though he meant exactly what he said? A. Who are you speaking of? Q. The officers that gave the command? A. Yes; they spoke it distinctly. Q. As though they meant exactly what they said? A. I supposed from that they meant it, that is the reason I got out of the road. I thought they meant what they said. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What position did those officers occupy when this command to fire was given. The officers I speak of giving the word "fire?" A. They were in front of the command. Q. In front of the rank? A. In front of the rank. There was no room for them in place else. Q. You are sure they were in front of the rank? A. Yes, sir. Q. Seven or eight of them, you say? A. If you will allow me to explain about the officers. Six, seven, or eight. There was two ranks of troops, stretching from the switch at Twenty-eighth street down the track in two ranks, and those two companies were at the upper end. What I supposed to be the general officers were in the rear of those two officers, and the other officers were scattered down along. There was two lines. There was seven or eight not scattered along, because they were over near to what I considered to be the generals. Q. They were in front of the rank? A. The line was facing this way. [Illustrating.] There was no officers outside of this rank [indicating] that I could see, and there was no room in this rank, because here is a truck--a coal truck. I stood from where I could stoop down and touch the soldiers. Q. Wouldn't you suppose this was a pretty bad place for an officer to stand? A. I should think it was. By Senator Yutzy: Q. These officers stood between the mob and their men? A. No, sir. Q. They were behind the men? A. What I consider the mob was at the switch at Twenty-eighth street. That was the switch here. [Illustrating.] The Philadelphia troops were formed in two ranks. There was the two companies coming up here, [indicating,] one in single file, and when they got to the switch the men stopped them. They were in single line. This company was brought up between the two lines, forcing every person out, keeping that part of the track clear. They succeeded until they got to this switch. When they got to the switch one company was not successful in driving them back. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You said the officers were in front of the men, did you mean those men that were standing in line? The officers were in front of them, was the ones you speak of? A. Yes, sir. Q. It was these officers gave the command to fire? A. These officers I was speaking of. Q. It was not the men that were marching up to clear the crowd--I mean marching towards the crowd? A. It was not those officers I heard. Q. It was the bystanders? Those officers had nothing to do with those companies? A. No, sir; not with those two companies up the track--no, sir. Q. Did the companies commanded by the officers who gave the command, fire? A. I didn't wait to see. Q. You don't know that they did fire? A. Not from my own knowledge, but from the parties wounded and killed, I would suppose so. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. How long after the command was given did you hear the firing? A. I got back of this house before I heard any firing. Q. What distance was you from the crowd, where you stood, when the command was given, when the firing began? A. I suppose I would be a distance about forty yards, before I heard any firing. Q. After the command to fire was given, you retreated to the oil-house? A. I got the oil-house between me and the Philadelphia troops. Q. How far was that from where you stood when the command was given? A. I think it was forty yards from where I stood on the track. Q. How long after you got to the oil-house, did you hear the firing? A. I could hardly tell--it was a very short time. I don't think you could count a minute. Q. You think you were not behind the oil-house one minute before the firing began? A. Until I heard the firing. Q. You started as soon as ever you heard the command to fire? A. Just as soon as I could get off the track. As soon as I heard the command "fire," I commenced my way back in this crowd on the track, just as quick as I could get off and run. Q. About how long did it take you to get through that crowd and behind the oil-house? A. Didn't take me very long. I was not very long getting there, I know that. Q. A minute? A. I do not think I was a minute getting off the track. I was over a minute getting behind the oil-house. Q. You were there not over a minute before you heard the firing? A. I am sure of that. Q. Do you think it was two minutes after the order to fire was given, before the firing began? A. I think so; yes, sir. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Where did these stones and missiles come from? A. The things I saw thrown were right from back of what we call a switch-tender's shanty. There is a little shanty we call the switch-tender's shanty. It was parties standing back of that--I could see it from where I was standing--most of them that were thrown. Q. How much of a shower of stones was it? A. There was no shower. There was not even a slight storm. It was not what I would call a shower of stones. Q. Only two or three stones thrown? A. There might have been--I guess I saw six or seven. There were lumps of mud and pieces of wood. I do not think I saw a stone. I did see mud--that is, hard mud seemed to be taken from the side of the hill. Q. Did you see one of those soldiers fall, in the ranks that marched down there? A. Yes, sir; there was one of them fell, and they picked him up, and took him into the hospital grounds. He was sun-struck, or something of that kind. Q. How do you know he was sun-struck? A. That is what some of his comrades claimed. Before they got to Twenty-eighth street this man dropped. He seemed to be a Jew, from his looks. The boys used the expression: "Let the damned Jew lay there." The railroaders got water for him, and bathed him. Q. Have you ever told anybody that you heard the firing there, and heard the command given to fire? A. I was a witness in the criminal court, in the murder case against General Pearson. Q. Have you told anybody outside that you heard the command to fire given? A. I believe I did. Q. Have you told persons you heard General Pearson give the command to fire? A. Not in direct words. Q. Have you not stated several times, on the street corners, to different parties, that you heard General Pearson give the command to fire? A. No, sir; I do not think I ever did--not in those words. Q. Did you ever state to anybody that you had heard the commanders of companies give the command to fire, before stating it here? A. I do not know. I forget exactly just what words my testimony was in the court. Q. I am not asking you what testimony you gave in the court. Have you ever stated to any person before to-day, outside of the court, or anywhere, that you heard officers of companies give the command to fire? A. I believe I have. Yes, sir. Q. And you have stated that you heard General Pearson give the command to fire? A. Not in those words. Q. What do you mean by "Not in those words?" A. I think the order to fire emanated from General Pearson, but I never said, in direct words, that General Pearson gave the order to fire. Q. It was only a supposition of yours? A. No; it was from the remark that I have sworn--I heard General Pearson give this--my remark was that General Pearson had turned around to other officers, with whom I am not acquainted, and used the expression, "Your men to fire;" but I did not say he had coupled those words with "Order your men to fire." Q. Did you hear him say those words? A. I have sworn. Yes, sir. Q. To whom? A. As I told you, I was not acquainted with the officers to whom he addressed himself. He was speaking to parties in gray uniform. He was standing almost immediately in his rear. Q. He said, "Your men to fire?" A. Yes, sir. Q. How far were you from him? A. I suppose I would be--I could hardly judge the distance--I would take it to be about ten feet or so. Q. Did he speak it in a low tone? A. It was not very loud. It was not a low tone. Q. Was there a good deal of noise and confusion about at that time? A. Oh, considerable, just in certain localities. Q. The crowd was boisterous, were they not? A. To a certain extent. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You did not hear any command given to fire, positively, by General Pearson? A. No, sir; I never said so. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How do you account for the long interval of time intervening between the command to fire and the firing. A. I could not say. Q. Did they load after the command to fire was given? A. I could not say. Q. Did you see them load? A. No, sir; I did not see them fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There was nothing preparatory at all, to this word fire. A. No, sir; I thought it very strange myself, at the time the command to fire was given. They were not even ready. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say you heard General Pearson speak to those officers, and said something about firing. You do not know whether he said not allow the men to fire, or to fire? A. No, sir. Q. How long after he made this remark to those officers did the command to fire come from those officers, and did it come from those same officers he was talking to? A. I could not say whether it came from the same officers he was talking to. There were about fifteen or twenty of them in the crowd. I cannot say who he was addressing. It was started from that crowd, and carried by others still further down the line. Q. How long after that was that order given to fire? A. I do not think it was a minute. I cannot recollect the time. Q. How far was General Pearson from the place when he had this conversation with those officers--how far was he from the position where those officers did give the command to fire? A. I can hardly know. Q. The word passed along the line? A. It was passed by parties in front. Q. How far did it pass until it got to those officers that did give the command? A. It did not pass any further than, I suppose, seven or eight feet. Q. The officers were pretty thick, were they not? A. Yes, sir; very thick. By Mr. Means: Q. General Pearson appeared to stand at the head of the column? A. He stood in the rear of the two companies that were charging up the track between the two lines and the side of the track. Q. It appears from your testimony that the firing was sometime after the command to fire was given. A. Yes; it was sometime. I had time enough to get away. Q. Do you think that this firing was in consequence of the order to fire? A. I did not wait to see anything about that. As soon as I heard the word "fire," I thought that was enough for me. Q. Have you ever had any military experience in the army? A. No, sir; never in the army. I served two or three years in the militia. Q. Ever practiced firing any in the militia? A. Some little. Q. How long after the command to fire was given do you discharge your piece? A. If in position to fire, we generally pulled as quick as we could get it off. Q. When this firing began, was it a volley, or was it a scattering fire? A. It was kind of mixed, I thought. I did not think it was what I considered a volley from a number of men that were present. Q. Was it a scattering fire that lasted some little time? A. The firing was kept up. Scattering fire was kept up for three or four minutes. Q. The first fire? A. The first volley, though not what I consider a volley from the number of men that were present. It sounded more like a volley than a scattering fire--the first fire. After that it was a scattering fire. Q. There appeared to be a number of simultaneous discharges of muskets? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any one else present there where you stood that heard and saw what you said, or was likely to see and hear? A. There were plenty there that could have seen. Q. Any one that you know? A. No, sir: no person that I know. I was not paying much attention to who was standing around me. No person that I knew of was in that locality at that time. Q. Did you see the arms loaded at any time? A. No, sir. * * * * * J. G. McConnell, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in the Nineteenth ward, city of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your profession? A. Practicing law. Q. State whether you were at or in the vicinity of the elevator on the 22d of July last, about the time it was burned? A. I was, sir. Q. What time did you arrive at that place? A. I arrived there just about the time that the fire was taking hold of the elevator. Q. Just about the time the fire was taking hold of the elevator? A. Just about the time the inside of the elevator---- Q. Were there any policemen there at the time? A. No, sir; I did not see any. Q. Did any come there? A. Not that I saw. Q. Did you send for any? A. Not at that time, sir. Q. Afterwards did you? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see who set the elevator on fire? A. I did not. Q. And how it caught? A. No, sir; but after the elevator was on fire. The person who gave you that information has not given you the correct information. After the elevator was on fire some little time, I was standing on Eleventh street, probably halfway between Penn and Liberty. While standing there, a man came up alongside of me and stood there. I did not say anything, and directly there was another man joined him. The first one was a short thick-set man, with a light colored moustache and imperial and light hair; a man I should say weighing about one hundred and sixty-five pounds, probably about five feet eight inches in height. The person who joined him was somewhat taller, nearly six feet in height, and they got into a conversation. They were evidently well acquainted with each other; and then the short thick man made a remark. Says he, "The elevator makes a very handsome fire." I spoke up and said I thought it was a very great shame and outrage that property should be destroyed, and this man turned around and said, "What is it your business?" I told him it was my business to a certain extent, as I was solicitor for the elevator company. I said to him that I thought the firemen ought to turn their hose on it. I then went to see Mr. Evans, and asked him if he could turn the hose on, and he informed me that it was impossible to do so. He had been deterred by the mob, and they had cut his hose, or threatened to cut his hose, and some man had put a revolver to his head; that he had two streams on, but had to take them off. I walked down pretty close to Penn avenue and these two men were still standing there. I stopped opposite them and they were still in conversation. The short thick-set man turned around to the other one and in a whisper made this remark to him, "Has the Pan Handle bridge been set fire to yet?" The other one says, "No, I think not." He said, "Somebody ought to send a party to do that;" and I then, left and went down towards Wayne street, went down to the river, went down the river, came up towards Fifth avenue, and on Thursday or Friday subsequent to the destruction of the elevator, on my way out home, in the evening, about half past four o'clock, passing the ruins of the Union Depot hotel, I saw this man standing there--this short thick-set man. There was a policeman standing on the corner. I went up to the policeman and pointed this man out and said, "That man, I think, was a ring leader in the riot. If you will arrest him, I will make information against him." The policeman did not reply, but walked up towards the avenue. Q. Do you know the policeman? A. No, sir; I did not take notice of his number. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see the grain elevator set on fire? A. No, sir; I was standing out in front, and from where I stood the burning apparently began at the back side, towards the Pan Handle side of the road, towards the Washington street bridge. Q. How many policemen did you see around the vicinity at that time? A. Did not see any. Q. The only one you saw was on this bridge? A. I did not see any at all that day--that evening. Q. When was it you saw this policeman? A. Thursday or Friday, subsequent to the destruction. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you make any report of the policeman who refused? A. No, sir; only to the officers of the elevator company. Q. Did they make any effort to find out who the policeman was, afterwards? A. I do not know, sir--that is, I made no official report to the company. I just reported it to one or two of the officers, and their instructions were, if I recognized the party, to report it, and if I recognized the party I saw on Monday evening to report it. Q. You made no report of that policeman to the mayor of his refusal to act? A. No, sir; if I had known his number I certainly should; but I did not know his number. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You did not hear enough of the conversation between those men, to find out whether there was an organization? A. None, whatever. I did not hear sufficient of that. I believe that is all the conversation I heard in regard to the matter. There was a remark made that rather implied I had better get out of the way, and I stood over by the engine. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. These men were both strangers to you, the short man and the large one? A. They were men who were working. I evidently took them to be mill men about the city here. I do not think they were strangers in the city at all, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they railroad men? A. I do not think so. I could not judge from their appearance. Just from their appearance, I took them to be men working about some of the mills or about some heavy employment in the city. I judged that more from their general appearance and from their hands. I noticed one man put up his fist. He had a very large heavy fist, and it looked like a work-man's fist. Q. That was Thursday or Friday subsequent to the burning, that you met this other man? A. Yes; Thursday or Friday? Q. What time of day was it you met him? A. I think it was about half past four in the afternoon. I left my office to go home, and it took me, I suppose, eight or nine minutes to walk up to where the Union Depot hotel stood at that time. Probably I stood around there ten minutes looking at the ruins, and it was just as I was moving off--probably it was about five o'clock. * * * * * Doctor James B. Murdock, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Please state where you reside? A. I reside on Centre avenue, No. 99. Up over the hill from the railroad--over that side of the hill--back from it. Q. A practicing physician in the city of Pittsburgh? A. Practicing physician and surgeon. Q. State what knowledge you have of the late riots? A. When I heard I was to be subpoenaed here, I wrote down what I know about it, and perhaps that would be the quickest way of telling. My first knowledge of the riot was on the evening of the day of the riot, the 21st of July, about half past five o'clock in the afternoon, when I was returning to my office from my calls, and one of my neighbors came running to me in a hurried manner, and stated that a little boy had been shot and needed my services. I accompanied the messenger to a drug store in the vicinity of my house, and on my way there this messenger informed me how it happened, and told me the boy had been sitting on the hill side above the Twenty-eighth street crossing, and that he also was there, and that there was a volley of musketry fired from the soldiers, who were down on the railroad track, and that the little boy had screamed out---- Q. I hardly think this comes within the scope of our investigation, unless you can give us the number of persons killed and wounded. That might be within the scope of our investigation; but testimony as to the persons that were wounded is hardly within the scope of our investigation? A. I do not know what I was subpoenaed here for. I was one of the surgeons in charge of the wounded at the West Pennsylvania hospital. Q. State the number that were brought there wounded? A. There were seven wounded men brought there that evening. Q. How many soldiers? A. Two soldiers. One of them wounded with a stone and the other sun-struck. Q. Who were the other parties? A. I do not know who they were. They were citizens--I do not know whether they were citizens or not. They were strangers to me. Q. Do you know the number that were killed in that fire? A. No, sir; I do not. Q. You know nothing, I suppose, as to the wounded, except those that were brought to the West Penn Hospital? A. Only just this little boy. I saw from there the attack on the round-house during the night. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Did you see the firing of the cars when it commenced? A. I saw the whole of that attack. Q. You might give us a description of that? A. The grade is down from Thirty-third to Twenty-eighth, and the cars ran from their own gravity. When they were let go they would run. The first car came down between ten and eleven, and it was run down the grade, and when it got opposite the round-house it seemed to run off the track. You could observe it from the hospital grounds. Soon after that a whole train of cars, loaded with coke, came down the track, and struck this first one. We could hear the collision. It stopped near the round-house. They continued the passing down of fired cars from the vicinity of Lawrenceville, until I left the hospital, about two o'clock in the morning, and the cars were burning there, and the sand-house was then on fire, when I left. Q. From your position you could not see who done the firing? A. No, sir; but I could see in front of the hospital grounds when a car would stop, as it sometimes would in its descent, there would be people take hold of it, and push it on down towards the round-house. I observe that those who did that pushing were nearly all boys, fourteen to sixteen or seventeen years of age. Q. Twenty-five engaged in it? A. I do not think I saw over twenty-five at this place. I could not see where the cars were started from, I could see them just as they were passing the hospital grounds. Q. How large a crowd was gathered there? A. On my way to the hospital there was an immense crowd. I had to go through Liberty street, but just at the Twenty-eighth street crossing and down on the track, as you may say, Twenty-eighth to Twenty-ninth street, there was not a hundred people visible. There were a great many on the side hill looking down. Q. Were you present on Sunday? A. Yes, sir. I saw the burning of the Union depot and the elevator. There is one circumstance that I, perhaps, might state to the committee if it is of interest. I do not know that it is, though. On my way around through the city, I saw a great deal of the plunder being carried off, and on Gazzam's hill Sunday morning, at eleven o'clock, I saw a boy some twelve years of age who seemed to be gazing over in the direction of the railroad. I asked him what he was looking at. He said that the round-house had been burned last night and that the depot and the elevator was going to be burned to-night. I asked him how he knew that. He said his father had told him he had been out all last night was going out to-night. Q. Did you ascertain who he was? A. No, sir; I did not. I did not think anything of it at the time. I did not think anything of it. When it occurred I remembered then of that statement. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you notice any firing by the mob, musketry or pistols, at the troops in the round-house? A. No, sir; I did not see any. By Mr. Means: Q. You do not know whether this boy's father was an employé of the Pennsylvania railroad or not, that told you that the elevator and the other buildings were to be burned? A. No, sir; the boy was in a part of the city where it would not be likely that an employé of the company would live. Q. You do not know who the boy was? A. No, sir; did not pay enough attention to it at that time. * * * * * J. R. McCune, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Fourteenth ward, this city. Q. What is your business? A. I am president of the Union National Bank. Q. Were you at the scene of the riots at any time during their progress? A. I saw the burning--partly saw it on Sunday for the first. I was not at the scene of the riots prior to Sunday, and know very little or most nothing of my own knowledge--prior to Sunday. Q. You may state what efforts you made in connection with others to suppress the riot on Sunday, and stop the pillaging and plundering? A. I came down town on Sunday morning in conference with some other citizens, and thought it desirable to call a meeting of citizens. I then learned for the first time that the troops had left the city, and there were placards posted on the bulletin boards calling a meeting of citizens, I think, at twelve o'clock. I participated in that meeting, and was appointed on a committee to take such action as was deemed advisable. The committee was a large one, and adjourned to the council chamber, and it was there determined to appoint a sub-committee to visit the scene of destruction, and take whatever action seemed judicious. I think our duties were not restricted. I went with that committee, but cannot say that we effected much of anything. I believe that has been detailed to you before how the committee went up there, and got on a platform of a car, and Bishop Tuigg undertook to address the audience. Q. Doctor Scovill's testimony in regard to that was correct? A. So far as I saw. The doctor was immediately along side of me on the platform of the car. After leaving, there the committee was divided, and went to different points, one of which being to ascertain, if possible, if the railroad strikers were actively engaged in this burning, and we endeavored to hunt up the railroad men. We went up as far as Twentieth street, and interviewed railroad men wherever we could find them. They, I believe, universally disclaimed all participation in the riot. That is in the burning. Q. In the destruction of property? A. In the destruction of property. That was a point we inquired into particularly. Q. Did they state who was engaged in the destruction of property? A. My recollection is that they generally professed not to know. They promised to coöperate with us in efforts to stop the burning. Q. Did they do that--did they coöperate? A. I don't know how much they did in that direction. There was some of them came down to attend the meeting, and this committee reported to an adjourned meeting that was to be held, I think, at four o'clock in the afternoon. The committee returned, and stated briefly what had been done and the condition of affairs, and I think we suggested that there would be a large increase of the police force. The mayor was present, and the committee authorized him to employ as many policemen as they could get--five hundred if he could obtain them--and a number of gentlemen present pledged themselves for the payment of this police force. Q. At four o'clock Sunday afternoon? A. Yes; four o'clock Sunday afternoon, and there was also a sort of militia force organized, of which Mayor McCarthy told you this morning. Q. This suggestion of employing five hundred police was made to the mayor, was it? A. I don't remember from where the suggestion emanated. It seemed to be the unanimous wish of those present. Q. Did you so inform the mayor of that week? A. Yes; and the question was raised as to how they were to be paid, and quite a number of citizens there pledged themselves for the payment, and the mayor was asked if that would be satisfactory, and he said it was entirely so. Q. Did the mayor issue any call, or any command, or summon any posse of citizens as a police force? A. Immediately a call was made for citizens to unite with the mayor, and I think there was quite a force congregated together, and started to procure such arms as were available. Q. That was the request made, was it? A. I am not able to recall whether the request was made by the mayor. It was suggested from some source, and matters were done under a good deal of excitement. There was not much formality about that. Q. Doctor Donnelly's command was organized at that time? A. Donnelly had charge of it. An hour afterwards or so there were some others that repaired to the Duquesne depot. There are others can tell you more about that than I. The next morning I was at the mayor's office, when a sort of militia force was organized. Q. How large a force was organized? A. It is difficult to tell; I could only guess at it. There were, perhaps, two hundred. Q. Composed of citizens? A. Of citizens; yes, sir. Q. Under whose command. A. I think General Negley was made commander of them, temporarily. There was a telegram there from the burgess of Elizabeth, stating that a party of roughs or rioters were en route to the city by steamer, and this force went down there to meet them when they would arrive. Also during that morning there was a meeting of citizens convened, for the purpose of organizing a committee of safety. This meeting, held on Sunday, did not organize any permanent committee. On Monday there was a permanent committee organized, of which I was a member. Q. How large a crowd was there during the day Monday, or was there any? A. On Monday? Q. Yes? A. The streets were full of people. I think, possibly, I never have seen so many people in the streets, unless it was during the time of an immense convention. Q. What class of people? A. I could not undertake to say, sir. Seemed to me that everybody was there. There were comparatively few of them that I was acquainted with. Q. This body of rioters, were they in force on Monday? A. Thought there were a great many very rough looking characters on the street--that I had never seen so many. Q. Were there any attacks made upon any property or persons, on Monday? A. No, sir; not that I remember. I cannot re-call any. Q. Were the business places open on Monday, throughout the city? A. I think a good many were opened--some were closed. There was a great deal of fear expressed. Q. Among the citizens? A. Yes; the committee of public safety began immediately to organize a military force. They organized a force of infantry, and they organized a company of horsemen, and got them under way as rapidly as possible. Q. To patrol the streets? A. Yes; to go outside of the city limits, and endeavor to guard against any turbulence anywhere, or any organizations that might show themselves. Q. Were you up about the railroad works any, during Monday? A. I think I was not. No, sir; I was not at the scene of the burning on Monday. Q. This crowd in the streets on Monday, did it seem to be just a promiscuous crowd everywhere on the streets, or was there an organization of men--roughs about? A. There was nothing to enable me to determine that there was an organization. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was the crowd attracted by curiosity to see what was going on? A. It was largely so, I think--attracted by curiosity, although it seemed to me there were an immense number of strange faces amongst them. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You had no trouble in preserving the peace after Monday morning? A. The peace was preserved on Monday without trouble, because I think these organizations had a very wholesome effect. The committee of public safety then formally instructed the mayor to increase his police force. He had instructions to employ twenty additional men, and under that authority he did employ, I think, one hundred and thirty men, whom the committee on public safety paid. Q. For how long a time did he keep these men employed? A. A portion of them were discharged about ten days thereafter--perhaps in all the half of them--and the remainder were continued for forty or fifty days. I would state that the committee of public safety and other citizens united in a paper, whereby they pledged themselves to pay all expenses that might be incurred by this committee, without any limit whatever, and that we subsequently obtained specific subscriptions to the amount of about fifty thousand dollars. Q. How much of that was expended in the operation? A. I can't say positively, but a small portion of it, probably fifteen thousand dollars. Q. And after the organization of that committee of public safety, the peace was preserved from that time forward? A. Yes, sir; how much the committee had to do with it is a question I could not determine. Q. Did the people unite heartily in carrying out the suggestions made by that committee? A. Yes; I think the committee had no cause of complaint. They had the sympathy and coöperation of the community generally. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You know nothing of the causes leading to the riot? A. Nothing; no, sir; nothing but what is patent to everybody. I had no special facilities for learning anything. Everybody had their own opinion. I was not on the ground prior to Sunday. Q. Do you know whether this mounted citizens' police force went out of the city, and patrolled the streets leading to the city? A. That is my impression. I was not with them, but I think they did. Q. Along the lines of the Pan Handle railroad. A. Yes; we were a good deal concerned about the Pan Handle road. There were rumors come to the committee that there was very imminent danger of them burning the cars in the tunnel and other points out the Pan Handle road. I think, however, you can glean the facts pertaining to the committee better from Mr. Johnson, who is chairman of that committee. He has examined the minutes, I think, and has charged his memory with the details. Q. Do you know whether any men were arrested or not that attempted to come in on that road by this citizens' police force? A. No, sir; my opinion is very vague on that point. Q. Was not there some disturbance on Monday on some of your streets here in the city? A. There was a good deal of turbulence all over the city. I remember one instance now. The committee was sent after some guns, and while they were being brought down Market street there was a halt made. They stopped the gun carriages, and somebody went up and boldly spiked the guns, which created a good deal of excitement for the moment. Q. The crowd spiked the guns? A. Spiked the guns. Q. How many guns? A. There were three of them, I think. Q. What battery did they belong to? A. I can't answer. I am not up on military affairs. Q. Was not there some disturbance on Fifth avenue there that day? A. There were disturbances, more or less, in many parts of the city. The city was disordered that day--decidedly disorderly. Q. There was an effort made by the citizens generally, to suppress everything of that kind on Monday? A. Yes; there was a decided effort made by the citizens. Q. An organized effort? A. Yes; the committee of public safety, organized for this special purpose. They acted promptly and vigorously. Q. Do you know of any disturbance at Limerick, south side, on that day? A. I cannot recollect it. Q. Do you know of any disturbance on Second Avenue park? A. No, sir; I cannot of my own personal knowledge--I cannot recollect. * * * * * Robert Atchison, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 873 Penn avenue. Q. What is your occupation? A. Engineer. Q. On what railroad? A. P.R.R. Q. Pennsylvania? A. Yes, sir. Q. Are you in the employ of the Pennsylvania Company now? A. I am. Q. Were you in July last, the 19th of July? A. I have been employed on the road for seventeen years, in the capacity of engineer. If it is necessary, I will just state what I know about it, if it is in evidence. On the morning of Thursday, 19th July, I think it was, the trains were all to be run double. I took out the first train. I was called at three o'clock in the morning, to take out the first train, and there was no trouble then, nor knew of any trouble. We went out--went to Derry. Q. What hour did you leave? A. I left at three o'clock in the morning, and got to Derry about seven, and returned. Coming back, before I got to the city, the other side of Walls station, I remarked to my fireman, that I thought there must be a wreck on the road. We had met no freights. We should have met some east of that, several miles. But paid no attention much to it, until I came in sight of Walls station. The accommodation is due there, then, twelve-forty, and I just remarked that if there was a wreck, I suppose they could run the accommodation round, as they often did, in such cases. When I came down--the conductor lives just a little way below--he got on my engine and rode down with me, and I asked him what was the matter, there was nothing out. He just made the remark, that the boys would not let anything go out this morning. That is the first intimation I had of anything, or I believe even the crews. They did not seem to know anything about it. Q. What time was that? A. It was about twelve-forty. We came on to the city unmolested by any person, until we came to Torrens station, that is a little way from East Liberty. There was a crowd there, but didn't seem to be doing anything--nobody was doing anything. We had some work to do, to put some cars in or something, and I just remarked to the crowd that was on the other side, says I, "What's going on here?" Says one, "Lots of fun." Mr. Garrett, the train master, gave the signal to me, and we went on, and came down to Twenty-eighth street, and what astonished me more than anything else was the crowd that was there, and the few people that I knew. They were strangers to me. At Twenty-eighth street I could not recognize but a few of our own men. They were all strangers to me. I passed on down with the train, took it to the west end of the yard, and put it away, and backed up my engine to the round-house, and put it in the round-house, and went home. Then I hadn't had any dinner--it was nearly three o'clock. I went home to dinner, and I didn't come up that afternoon, I don't think, again. I was up the next day around, but there was nothing going out, and the way we were running--some one remarked to me, I could not tell who it was--says he, "Go ahead, you can go in, but you can't go out." Says I, "Never mind, it is not my turn to go out." Q. Were you put on Friday? A. Yes; I was about. Q. Was you ready to take out your train? A. I was ready, and came up there on Friday. One of the officers remarked to me, there was nothing going out. It seemed to be this way: that if they got a train ready and the engine, there was no crew, and if you got a crew, there was no engine or anything else there. Some of the officers remarked to me that the Philadelphia soldiers were coming in, and everything would go on then as usual. I think I went home, and I didn't come back again that night. In the morning--Saturday morning, six o'clock--I was sent for to come up and go out. I believe before I had my breakfast. As soon as I got breakfast I went out, but I didn't see nothing for me to go out on, and I stood around there until eleven o'clock on Saturday, I think eleven or twelve, and I then just remarked to the foreman--I think it was the foreman, in the round-house--that I was going down home, and that if they wanted me, to send a watchman down to me, I would be at home--I would not be away from home. I said to my family, I believed I would go to bed and take some sleep, for I might have to come out to-night. I suppose it was fortunate for me I was not up in the crowd at the time of the shooting. I might have been there. Q. Were you ready at all times to take out your train? A. Provided everything had been all right I would. I would not like the idea of starting out there on Sunday morning. I didn't think I would like to take out a train then. Q. Thought there was too big a crowd to get through? A. I didn't feel like it. Q. You were ready to go if the track was clear? A. Yes; oh, yes. Q. Had you heard, prior to your information at Walls, anything about the strike? A. Never had the least intimation, because I do not think it was a pre-arranged matter at all. It did not seem to me that anybody seemed to know. No; I knew nothing about it, and nobody else seemed to know anything about it. The order was given on Wednesday, I think, that all trains would be run double from Thursday. That seemed to be a kind of sticker on some of them. They didn't care much whether they started or not, and some of them that morning, on the eight-forty train, refused to go out. They didn't care whether they went out or not, and just quit. Q. There had been no pre-arranged plan for a strike to take place at that time? A. Not that I had ever heard of. Q. Had there been any arrangement made for a strike at or near that time? A. Not to my knowledge. Not among the engineers, or so far as I know. Q. Did you know of the existence of what was called the Trainmen's Union? A. I did not at that time. Q. Had no knowledge of that? A. Had no knowledge nor no idea of anything of the kind going on. Q. Had you talked with the conductors or brakesmen--had intercourse with them? A. Oh, yes; there was never one of them mentioned anything of the kind to me, nothing of the kind at all. In fact, I don't have as much intercourse with the trainmen on the road as we did formerly when they had no caboose. Of late years they have been running cabooses, and they generally congregate there themselves. Q. Engineers congregate more on their engine? A. Yes; all the time train men go back in the caboose. Q. You have an organization among the engineers? A. There is an organization existing. Q. Is that for engineers especially? A. Especially, yes. Q. Was there any talk of that kind in that organization that you know of--of striking? A. Not a particle, not at the time. Q. During the progress of the depredations or burning on Sunday were you present? A. I was; I live close by. Q. What class of men were engaged in active arson and destruction of property--burning? A. It appears to me the roughest class of people I ever saw. They appeared to be all strangers to me. I was present when the alarm of fire was struck. I was at the corner of Twenty-sixth street, right opposite the round-house, where the soldiers were. I was coming down, I guess it was ten o'clock or near eleven, and the firemen responded to the alarm, and came up Penn avenue a little above my house, and they was stopped by the crowd. They told them they could not go any further. I was across the street. I heard one man say, "I will shoot the horse, and if you undertake to go, I will shoot you." They ran across the street, and came right beside me, and I heard them say they would have them out of there if they would have to burn them out. I just said, said I, "my God, men, don't set anything on fire here, you will burn it all up," and the answer he made was, "Go to hell, you son of a bitch." That was the very words he made use of. I thought the least I could say was the best, as I was by myself. Q. Were there any railroad men engaged during the day Sunday? A. I didn't see one railroad man to my knowledge, not an employé of the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. Men that had been discharged, did you see any of that kind? A. I did not see any of the kind. Q. What did you, in connection with other railroad men, do to try and stop this? A. We did not do very much, for we could not. It seemed as though everybody was intimidated, and felt himself afraid to undertake to do anything. I did, I know, as one by myself. I do not think, in a crowd of men, it would have been useless to try to stop the burning at nine o'clock in the morning. Q. Sunday morning? A. Sunday morning. The whole yard was in flames. Q. Did you have any communication with the committee that was sent up from Harrisburg? A. I did; I believe I did. Q. State what that was? A. General Brown came to me in the morning--about five o'clock. Q. Sunday morning? A. Sunday morning; and said to me--he wanted to know where this committee of railroad men was. I told him that I did not know where it was, but, says I, maybe I could find some of them. If we could get past Twenty-sixth street we might get some of them; but you can't pass through, they are shooting us there. Says he, tell them to come down to the Union depot, that I am authorized to give the men what they ask. There was a party went down there, and they could not find General Brown or any one else. Q. Who was it went down? A. I went down for one, and I didn't mind who else went down, it was impossible to get one of that committee, because they were scattered all through the city. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you on this committee of safety or any sub-committee, appointed by them, to go and confer with the strikers at any time. A. No, I do not think--I think we went down. There was a committee of safety come up there, and I think Captain McMunn and myself and some of our ward boys, several of us, went down. Q. As railroad men? A. As railroad men, we went down. I got into the crowd down here, right below the elevator there, tried to find the leading man of the citizens' committee, and they got to shooting, and the crowd ran down there. There was a tremendous crowd there, and carried us along with them. I do not think there was any use to try to do anything at all. Q. You said you would not like to have attempted to get out with that train on Saturday? A. No; I would not. Q. Did you apprehend any danger from any one? A. None. I would not have apprehended any danger, I think, from anybody but from outsiders. Q. Not from the railroad men? A. Not from the railroad men. I did not think that they would interfere with me. Q. Did you hear any threats of violence from the railroad men or engineers or any railroad strikers? A. No; not to me at all. Q. From any one else? A. I did from outsiders--remarks--but I didn't know who they were--that the first man that would attempt to go out had better hunt his coffin. Q. You saw the handling of cars and engines by the rioters during the destruction of property there in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street and at the depot--did these men handle the cars and engines as if they had been accustomed to handling cars and engines? A. I didn't see anybody handling an engine. After the soldiers went into the round-house, I never went up near the place, that is, further than going up some of the side streets to look over the burning. All the engines were further up, at Twenty-eighth street. I was not up there. Q. You saw none of the mob taking engines and running them on the track? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see them handling the cars and switches? A. I did not. Q. You were speaking of an association of engineers. Is that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any coöperation or action between that association and the Trainmen's Union at any time that you know of? A. I do not think there was any of any account? Q. If there was, you would know it? A. I believe I should know it. There was a disposition on the part of all the men, when the strike had occurred, to stand out for their ten per cent. That was their object. Q. That is, you mean all the trainmen, and engineers as well? A. Yes, sir. Q. Are you a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers? A. I was. I believe the order in this vicinity has disappeared. Q. That association was got up for protection--a charitable institution for those that were connected with it? A. Nothing to interfere with the railroad. Q. If there had been any coöperation between the Trainmen's Union, or any connection between them and your association, you would likely know something about it. A. Yes; there was this, so far as the ten per cent. went. That I believe was all after the burning. I do not think there was any connection with it before. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any coöperation or pre-arranged plan to strike for the purpose of securing this ten per cent.? A. No, sir; not at all. The trouble had originated not until after there had been a committee to see Mr. Scott; but the thing had dropped, and I had heard nothing of it from the time that committee reported, and I do not remember the report they made, either. Q. Was there a general dissatisfaction and complaint on the part of the railroad employés on account of this reduction of pay? A. There was. That seemed to be a great deal of the trouble. They were dissatisfied with the pay they were getting. Q. In your opinion, did that lead to the strike and trouble here? A. I do not think it did. No, sir; I do not think so. Q. What was it that led to the disturbance? A. I do not think that would lead to it, because if the committee of engineers went to see the general officers, and they didn't get satisfaction, or claimed that the business that they were doing could not pay it, the men would have waited until such time as they would. They claimed that they were in pretty close quarters financially, but as soon as business would warrant, why they would restore it. Q. What led to immediate troubles here? What was the immediate cause? A. Running these double trains. Q. Double-headers, as they were called? A. Double-headers, as we called them. Q. Why was there less objection to running double-headers? A. In the first place it is very disagreeable for the men, and they consider it dangerous for one thing, and in running these trains it cuts a good many of them out of employment. Q. Reduce the force of train men, not engineers? A. Not of engineers, of trainmen. Q. Wherein consisted the danger of running double-headers? A. In the first place you hold just twice as many cars, and you don't have any more men on the train to hold them. Brakemen would hold thirty-four cars with two engines, and seventeen cars with one. If these trains get started they are pretty hard to manage. Q. Did you have these engines at the head of the trains at all times, or did you have one in the front and one in the rear? A. At the head all the time, they consider it safer that way to run them than to run one behind. Going through these up and down grades and turning is liable to break. Q. The only danger there was in not having the same number of brakesmen to the same number of cars as you do when you run the single train? A. That would have helped the matter considerably, I believe. Q. There was no other danger? A. There was no other danger. Q. Could not that danger have been counteracted by having less trains? A. They would not think that was safer. Q. Would not there have been less danger by taking two trains and making one, and running them on the track--less danger of collisions than if you had to have two trains instead of one? A. There is more danger running this double train than the single trains, because they are harder to manage. Q. You can handle a train more readily? A. Yes; check it up quicker. You can check a train much quicker--a light train than a heavy one--and they are less liable to break in the dark and in the fog. In the fog you can't tell whether they are broken or not. They might stop, and the hind part run into the front part, which has been frequently done. * * * * * J. F. Cluley, _sworn_. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where do you live? A. Centre avenue, city. Q. What is your business? A. Painter. Q. Go on and state what you know in relation to the riots of last July? A. On the Saturday, probably about half-past two, I went up to the depot and went in, and the Philadelphia soldiers were about starting out. I got up to Twenty-eighth street probably half an hour before they did. Everything was quiet there--at Twenty-eighth street. There was a company keeping the street clear--a company of troops. Q. Who was that company commanded by? A. I do not know. It looked like a cavalry company on foot from the trimmings on their clothes. As soon as the Philadelphia troops came up the mob closed round, and commenced hooting and hollering. Q. Go on and state what took place there? A. I suppose I had been up there probably twenty minutes, when they formed a double line and cleared the track. I was throwed over toward the round-house. I went round the cars at Twenty-eighth street, probably two hundred feet up the hill. There was a ravine coming down there, and I got outside of it. I don't mind how long I had been in there before the troops formed. At that time they had swept the tracks, and there was two or three lines formed outside the tracks. The troops had done some manoeuvering, they had marched up right against the track. At that time Twentieth street was blocked, and they marched, and the crowd did not get away, and they stepped back and made a bayonet charge. It seems to me after they had marched up against them I saw some men stagger, but I was too far off. About the time they made the bayonet charge there was a stone or three or four stones came from the direction of the hospital, and a pistol shot fired. By Senator Reyburn: Q. From the direction of the hospital? A. There is a watch-box there--it was not more than three stones, I think, they throwed. It was done just about the time the bayonet charge was made, and then there was a pistol shot about the same time. Q. From the crowd? A. It was generally in that direction; I suppose it was in the crowd. Then the firing was done just after. Q. Did you hear any command to fire? A. No; I was two hundred feet back. I was in a position that I could see the whole thing take place. Q. Did the men fire as if they had received a command? A. It appeared to be a scattered fire. As soon as they commenced firing, I started up on the hill. Some one called out they were firing blank cartridges, and I seen the dust flying around, and I threw myself down like everybody else. There was a man shot within the length of this room from me, and killed--a man named Ray, I think. I then started down hill, and when I was coming down I saw a man on the far side of Twenty-eighth street swing round a freight car, and throw into the company--he threw three or four stones or some missiles in among them, the last, when I was down almost to the track, and I thought every stone I seen throwed, I thought they would fire. Q. Was it before they had fired? A. After the firing, he swung around, and seemed to be inviting them, I thought, to do something. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Inviting the soldiers? A. It looked as though he was. He was holding on to the iron rod on the car, and was swinging on in front of them. He was a large man, about six feet, very genteelly dressed--more so than the common run of them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. This man you saw swinging on round there, trying to make an effort to exasperate them? A. It looked as though he was inviting them. Q. It looked as though he was trying to exasperate them? A. It looked as though he was inviting them to fire. I crossed the track ten minutes after the firing was over. The soldiers seemed to be laying huddled together. This stone throwing was right in among them. Q. Did you see any of the soldiers struck down by missiles before the firing took place? A. When the first advance was made, I thought I saw one of them stagger. I cannot tell whether they were hit. After they made the bayonet charge the parties took their hands and threw the guns up. Q. What was the appearance of the class of men that threw the stones? A. This I think was a half grown boy that threw the missiles from the back of the house. Q. A boy? A. It looked to me. Three or four have grown boys there. Q. Did you see any men there throwing stones? A. I don't recollect of seeing any stones throwed, except at this watch-box, until I saw this man, after the firing was all over. The track was perfectly clear when I crossed. Q. What was the character of the crowd immediately in front of the military, or near the military? A. Rough looking. I had seen the same crowd around for two or three days. I had been out and in on the railroad. I had seen them at ... street and Twenty-eighth street, for two or three days. Q. Would you take them to be citizens of Harrisburg? A. Yes, sir; not as a general thing. I know some of the conductors of the trains remarked to me that everybody was going in and nobody was coming out--all the tramps come in town and none going out. Q. These men--would you take them to be what is generally denominated tramps? A. Not all of them. Generally a pretty rough looking set. On the hill side there was plenty of women and children. Q. I mean in the immediate vicinity of where the troubles were? A. These were a rough looking set of men. I won't say they were all tramps. They were a rough looking set of men. I noticed them before the military came up. There was no disturbance at all until after the military came up. They were all quiet. Q. They resisted the military, when they came up? A. After they formed a line and made a charge. Q. They resisted the military before the firing? A. Yes; they stood right like a wall. The military marched up, and they didn't give the least bit. Then they stepped back a piece or two, and made a bayonet charge. I was not close enough to hear any orders given. * * * * * C. H. Armstrong, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Thirty-second street. Q. What is your occupation? A. Coal business. Q. Where is your office? A. Liberty street, between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth. Q. Were you at your office on the 19th--Thursday, 19th of July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. How large a crowd of men was there gathered about there during Thursday? A. There was quite a large crowd there during Thursday morning. Towards the afternoon a great number had come up to see the strikers. There was very few railroad men among the crowd. Q. What class of men were there? A. Parties that lived around the railroad there, just come up to see the excitement. Q. Where they demonstrative? A. No, sir; they were not. They were all talking about double-headers, I do not know what they meant, and I asked them, and they told me about putting two engines on a long train. Q. How large a crowd was there at any one time during the day, Thursday? A. I guess three or four hundred--in the afternoon about four o'clock. Q. Did they remain there during the night, Thursday? A. Yes; I was up there about twelve o'clock, and there was a few men there--about thirty remained there during the night waiting for trains to go out. Q. How many on Friday? A. There was seven or eight hundred. They were expecting the soldiers in that evening. Were also expecting the Harrisburg men up that evening. They did not come up. I went down Saturday morning and went down the railroad from our house. I saw the Harrisburg soldiers there on the side of the hill and also down by the railroad. Q. How large was it Saturday? A. I don't know how large it was; the streets were just jammed and the side of the hill on Twenty-eighth street. Q. Was you present when the firing took place? A. Yes; I was up on the side of the hill about seventy yards from where the troops were. Q. Did you see troops as they marched up? A. Yes; I saw them before they left the Union depot. Saw them get their cartridges before they left there. Q. Did you go up ahead of them? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you have any talk with the mob? A. Yes, sir; I talked with some of the railroad men. Q. Tell them that the troops were coming? A. Told them that the Philadelphia troops were coming. Q. What did they say? A. They said that they were not afraid of that; as long as they didn't hurt them, they would not hurt them. Q. Was the sheriff's posse ahead of the line? A. Yes; I recognized a few of them, I believe the sheriff was ahead, and, I think, Deputy Sheriff Steward, and, I think, Mr. Pitcairn was also ahead of them. He was walking beside Sheriff Fife. Q. Did you see any stones or missiles thrown by the crowd at the soldiers? A. Yes; about the time they were charging bayonets. Q. Was there any pistols fired by the crowd? A. There was one or two fired. A pistol about the center of Twenty-eighth street; held it over, and shot down the road. By that time there were stone throwing. There were two cannons, and there was some boys started to throw stones, and one of them hit a soldier against a car, and the moment he fell they started firing. He threw up his arm about the time they charged bayonets--the crowd was throwing the bayonets up. The crowd catched hold of the bayonets, and threw the guns up to save themselves. Q. Did you hear any command given by any of the officers to fire? A. No, sir; I did not. I heard them charge bayonets. I heard that command, and I heard them give their military manoeuvres, but I heard no command to fire at all. Q. Did you remain there during the night--Saturday night? A. Yes; I was there until Sunday, at dinner time. Q. What time did the mob begin to fire the cars? A. At half past ten o'clock. Q. Do you know who set the first on fire? A. No, sir; I could not say, I heard them say it was small boys done it. It was right back of our office it first started. The time I saw it there was first one car on fire, and they started to run oil cars down against it. Q. Were you there during the time, Thursday or Friday, when the police force came out? A. They were there. I did not see them come up, they were up there when I was there. Q. How many policemen? A. I do not know how many there was, only about ten or twelve, I think. I think there was only three or four on Thursday. Q. Did they make any efforts to disperse the mob? A. Not as I saw. Q. Did they assist in trying to start the train? A. I did not see them trying to do that at all. Q. Do you know who was in charge of the police? A. No, sir; I could not say. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You heard the command given by the officers to charge bayonets? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you remain in the same position after you heard that command until after the firing commenced? A. No, sir; I did not, after the first volley was fired. Q. But from the time you heard the command given to charge bayonets up to the time of the firing, were you still in the same position? A. Yes; I was in the same position. Q. If there had been a command given by the officers to fire, you think you would have heard it? A. I think so. I heard most of the other commands and the manoeuvres they went through before they charged bayonets. Q. You heard that distinctly? A. I heard the order to carry arms, shoulder arms---- Q. Arms port? A. I do not know whether I heard arms port or not. Q. How long after the command was given to charge bayonets before the firing commenced? A. About two minutes. It was a different body of men that came up through the hollow-square. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How did they fire. Did they fire altogether, as if they were ordered to fire? A. The parties next to the cars. The men in their company did the first shooting, and they shot very low. At the same time those in front shot higher. Q. They commenced? A. Commenced right where these men fell. Q. On the road? A. No; that was, I run back against the car--a lot of flat cars filled with coal. Q. Was this the line that was formed parallel with the railroad tracks, on the right towards the hill side? A. No; towards the round-house. Q. There is where the first shot was fired? A. Yes, sir. A man standing near the end of the cars fell, and just as he fell, they just put their guns up and shot. Q. Did you notice in what direction they fired? A. Towards the hill. Q. Over the heads of the other line? A. Yes, over the heads; I could see the dirt fly; the party in front of them shot. Q. Did they appear to fire in the direction of where the missiles and stones came from? A. The missiles came right in front of this other body of men that shot towards the side of the hill. The stones were right at the foot of the hill, and they shot up on the side of the hill. The boys that threw the stones, were down at the foot of the hill, right back of the tracks. There was two cannons there, and those boys were right among them throwing. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you say the troops came out of the round-house, Sunday? A. I didn't say they came out of the round-house; I say they passed Twenty-eighth street. I was on the corner of Twenty-eighth and Penn when they passed. Q. Was anybody shooting at them? A. I saw one man following them up as they came down Twenty-eighth street. Q. He followed them up? A. Followed them so far as I could see, about the middle of Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth. I was afraid they would shoot at me. Q. What did he do while he was following up? A. Threatened to shoot several times--threatened to shoot on an alley in Twenty-eighth street. We put up our hands at him. He got up again and followed them at Penn street. I got back of a sign and I believe he shot after he got a piece further up. Q. You didn't see him fire? A. No. Q. He had a gun? A. A breech-loader. Q. Musket? A. It was one of those breech-loaders. I saw him throw it up and examine the cartridges. Q. Did you know the man? A. No; I knew he wore a linen coat and a white straw hat. Q. Was it a rifle or a shot gun? A. Yes; regular musket, called breech-loaders, something similar to what the militia have. At this point the committee adjourned, to meet at the arsenal, at half-past eight o'clock, this evening. ALLEGHENY ARSENAL, FRIDAY EVENING, _February 22, 1878_. The committee met pursuant to adjournment, at the United States Arsenal, at half-past eight o'clock. All members present. * * * * * Major A. R. Buffington, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. First state your rank and official position here under the United States Government? A. Major ordnance United States Army, commanding Allegheny arsenal--commandant Allegheny arsenal--which ever way you choose to put it. Q. If you will go on and get at the facts, probably it will be as easy as any other way to come at a statement of the facts that came within your knowledge? A. I presume what you want from me are simple facts. You want no opinions, nor anything else--my knowledge of the riot. I have here three or four little notes addressed to me: _July 21, 5, P.M._ Major BUFFINGTON, _Commanding U.S. Arsenal_: The troops of the first division, after having been fired at by the rioters, returned the fire, killing and wounding a number. It is said the rioters will take the arsenal, and take the arms and ammunition. It may be a rumor; I will give it to you for what it is worth. It would be well for you to be on your guard. (Signed) A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_. Q. What time did you receive that note? A. I received that note somewhere about six o'clock. It is dated five-thirty, P.M., July 21, about half an hour afterwards--about six o'clock, I should judge. Previous to this, I would state that three gentlemen came here from the city--came to my quarters--and informed me in substance the same thing, before this was received--perhaps an hour. Was received somewhere about that time. That was the first notice I had of it. Q. Who were those gentlemen? A. Their names I don't know. They were strangers to me, and they introduced themselves. I have forgotten their names. Q. Were they citizens of Pittsburgh? A. Yes, sir; and when they came they were very much afraid that the mob would see their vehicle out in front of the gate, and they immediately left and went away on that account, saying they were afraid their vehicle would be recognized, and they were afraid of the mob. This word I mention was brought to me by Doctor Speers, of Pittsburgh, in a buggy, and he also was very much afraid of the mob. Cautioned me saying anything about it; that they would spot me, or something to that purpose. I also received this one. Here is a copy of that one written in the handwriting of General Latta. This was handed through the picket fence, which is by my quarters, to a young lady visiting my house at that time, with a request to give it to me, which she did. She refused to take it, and told him to take it to the guard-house, and he expressed a fear about taking it to the guard-house, and insisted on her taking it. In addition, I received this one. It is headed, "O.D. 7, 21--7th month 21st day. "COMMANDANT ARSENAL: Mob has started to the arsenal for the purpose of taking arms. Serious trouble at Twenty-eighth street between them and military. (Signed) "J. M. or T. M. KING, _Superintendent_." I believe he is superintendent of the Allegheny Valley railroad. Having received information from those gentlemen previous to those notes, I immediately took steps to receive the mob if they should come out there. Lieutenant Lyon was staying over there. He came to the office, and I told him to tell my sergeant to go out quietly and couple the six pounder guns, have one of them brought down to the inside of the gate, as you come in. I had but one box of ammunition. All my men had Springfield rifles, and I had a part of a box of ammunition for them--I had plenty of ammunition, but none of that kind. My sergeant got some for my men, and I gave him some general instructions to guard and close the gates, and lock them, and let no one in without my knowledge. These preparations were carried on, and we got in readiness, and matters remained so until night came on, and there was no signs of anybody coming, and at night I thought I would go out in the street and see what was going on. Lieutenant Lyon, I believe, went with me. We struck down street and consulted with various people. Very few people know me here. I went out in the street and talked with a few of them. In a field below here--about two squares--is a new livery stable, and over that building there was some sort of a meeting going on, and we went to the door. They had sentries at the door. There was quite a concourse of citizens around. We could not get in, and we waited there until they came out. They were cheering inside, and somebody making speeches. Presently they came out, about twenty armed with some muskets they had gotten out of an armory below here somewhere--half-grown boys they were, and a few men--and filed off down street cheered by the populace surrounding them, and one man along side of me fired a musket in the air, and that is all that I saw. I didn't see any disposition of any of them to come here at all, and I returned, telling Lieutenant Lyon I had no doubt they would come out here, but I did not anticipate any trouble with them at all, and instructed the men to keep in their quarters with their clothing on--to lie down with their clothing on, ready at a moment's call. Between ten and eleven o'clock I heard drums beating down street, and I concluded the rioters were coming. I went out, and the men were turned out and placed up here behind that building, where they could not be seen, and by that time the mob had got at the gate. There was nobody there except a sentry and that six pounder gun there. I went out in citizen's dress. They were yelling and screaming about the gate. As I approached, one of them said, "Here comes the commanding officer, we will talk to him." I walked up to the gate, too--the gate is armed with open pickets--they stopped their noise, and I said, "Boys, what is the matter?" They said, "A party of Philadelphia troops have fired into a crowd down here and killed a lot of women and children, and we come to get arms; we want to fight them." I says, "I cannot give you any arms." I said, "I cannot help you, it is impossible for me to help you." He said women and children had been shot down, and I said, "It was a sad thing, but it is impossible for me to help you." "We don't want you, we want that gun." I ignored that request, and kept talking quiet to them. They seemed to be peaceable enough, except one man, and I imagined he was slightly intoxicated. "I know there are only twenty men in the place, and if twenty-five will join me we scale the walls." He abused them for not following. Presently one of them said, "He talks well, come on." Finally the better disposed of them called the others off, and they went up the street a short distance and returned again. This belligerent fellow staid near the gate and called for volunteers. There was nobody there except myself and the sentry. I kept the men out of sight, for I didn't wish to flourish a red handkerchief in the face of the bull. I was determined to exhaust all peaceable means. They came back again, and about the time they got opposite the gate, a cry of fire was raised, and an alarm struck on the bell, and they all raised the cry of fire, and they went off down the street. This man who was calling for volunteers, says he, "The guns are spiked, we will all go;" and they all went off again. That is my knowledge of the mob. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What stores of ammunition were here at that time that the mob could have got if they had entered? A. We have here many buildings full of ordinance stores. We had for years, and have yet, something like thirty-six or forty thousand stand of arms. Don't put these down as the exact figures. We had a great many thousand stand of arms, and two magazines full of powder and ammunition, prepared and partially prepared for service; that is, the powder in the shells, the powder in the cartridges, two large magazines full. We have there, in fact, two of them full, and another partially so in the upper park. Besides these arms I speak of, we have many thousand stands of arms, revolvers, carbines, muskets, and all sorts of things. We have many large warehouses here. There is one there, [indicating,] and here is one, [indicating,] and one on the other side of the street; above that are the magazines. We have got a great deal of property here, valuable property, too, but we had no small arm ammunition except some of the old style ammunition--a lot of the old style paper cartridges which I had broken up. The arms we had are mostly loaders, except fifty breech-loading muskets, and my men here are armed with caliber fifty. A year before the riot began I was impressed with the dangerous position of this place, and I drew the attention of the authorities in Washington to it. There is a map showing the arsenal, [indicating.] That is Butler street. There, you see, are four buildings called temporary magazines. Those are wooden buildings. There are a great mass of breech-loading ammunition in there, partially prepared for service. There is one magazine, and there is the other one. There is Penn avenue--it is called a pike there. A man might have thrown a lighted cigar over and set fire to this place. I drew the attention of my chief to it, and called particular attention to this dangerous place. He saw the importance of it, and ordered me to break up the ammunition and otherwise get rid of it. Fortunately, all that was cleared out before the riot began. These magazines were all full, and the small arm ammunition I had broken up. Here the shops are below the work-shops, on a plateau just below this, and here is the road over which you came. Here is a sort of open space, and nothing but a low wall here with a picket. Right opposite, there is another gate leading into the upper park. My men were here, and this part is utterly defenseless, and in that place were a number of cannon. The mob would have cleaned me out here. There is not a man there, but a man in charge of the magazine, and twenty men, you see, would be a small force to defend it. It is not a fortified place, it is the same as houses surrounded by a wall with a wooden picket fence. The mob could push it over and come in, and there would be no trouble about it. Q. Not a very strong fortification? A. It is utterly defenseless; but, at the same time, I was not afraid the mob would do me any injury. Q. How many cannon had you that they could have taken and moved off? A. I don't know how many are in that shed. I have five or six pieces which I call in current service. Those pieces are mounted. Those are six-pounder guns, and there is plenty of ammunition which could be used for that purpose in those magazines. I had one of them on this side, [indicating,] and one on the other side. As mobs generally do, they always come where the danger is. Here was those six-pounder guns, with canister. The only hostile demonstration they made was to rush for the gate, but I merely raised my hands, and says, that won't do, and they stopped instantly. To show what the state of affairs was here, and my information of what was going on, sometime on Saturday night I received this communication from General Latta, addressed to the commanding officer, United States arsenal, Pittsburgh, without date, or anything else. He says: "Have you communicated with General Government about prospects of attack on your arsenal. (Signed) "GEN. LATTA." That was sometime late in the night. I don't know whether it was before the mob came or not. Here is the reply I sent to him: "UNITED STATES ARSENAL, _July 21_. "JAMES W. LATTA: In reply to your pencil note, without date, I have to say I have not communicated with General Government about prospects of attack on me, and shall not until such a course is necessary." I had no communication with Washington, and none with the State authorities, except just what I showed you. They didn't advise me about what was going on. I knew nothing but just what you see here, except to give them all the assistance I could, and, by a strange mistake, I gave them all the defense I had. Here is a communication: "HEAD-QUARTERS SIXTH DIVISION, PITTSBURGH, _July 21, 1877, 11.30, P.M._ "Major E. R. BUFFINGTON: It is of the utmost importance that I should have two hundred rounds metallic ball cartridges. Please deliver them to Colonel Moore. In case I have none in store, I will deliver you the order of the Secretary of War to-morrow. (Signed) "A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_." To explain, the State had here some ammunition which I had been giving to them as they wanted all along, and we had given it all out. General Pearson had been informed that there was no more here belonging to the State, but he said if he had none to give him some, and he would get authority from Washington. Down here is the note of the man in charge of the magazines. This is dated eleven-thirty, P.M. It did not come to me till long afterwards. I sent them with a guard to the upper park with instructions to tell the magazine man to give them if they had any of the State stores, and to tell this gentleman that I had none except a part of a box for my own men. It was just nine hundred rounds, and the guard carried the written order, and down to the bottom, pasted to it, is: "_July 22, '77._--4.20 A.M." You see how late it was in the morning. "Deliver to General Pearson's messengers eight hundred and sixty center prime metallic ball cartridges United States property, there being no ball cartridges belonging to the State at this arsenal. (Signed) "JAMES FITZSIMMONS." By mistake, the State troops got all the cartridges I had. My men got forty out of the nine hundred. Each man had two rounds simply. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do I understand you to say that you had no ammunition for any of your arms? A. I had not a round of ammunition suitable for any arm I had in here, for the simple reason that we are in profound peace, surrounded by friends. Since the Frankford arsenal got making metallic cartridges, we had a few rounds here for the use of my men, in case we wanted to shoot. We had a few blank cartridges. We had cannon ammunition, but all the small arm ammunition was broken up and powder taken out of it and balls thrown into the lead pile. We did not have any for arms we had here except, perhaps, a few cartridges for revolvers, which I issued afterwards to the citizens in the town to defend the city--two or three days afterwards. Q. You have some muzzle loaders? A. All the muskets are muzzle loaders except---- Q. And no ammunition for them? A. No; we had powder and ball. I had paper cartridges made for the committee since that, as the controller will tell you. They came to get muskets, and I had cartridges made. Q. You may state to what extent you supplied the citizens with ammunition? A. Well, to quite a large extent. This is a statement which I have made up for General Negley. He represents the committee of safety. Here are fifty Cosmopolitan carbines; three hundred and ninety-nine Springfield rifled muskets; fifty Remington revolvers; fifty cavalry sabers; forty-nine belt holsters; forty-seven pistol pouches; forty-seven cavalry saber belts; fifty carbine slings; forty-eight carbine slings swivels; two hundred bayonet scabbards; one hundred and ninety cap pouches; two hundred cartridge boxes; two hundred cartridge-box belts; two hundred and fifteen waist belts; two hundred waist-belt plaits; fifty bridles--curb bridles; forty-nine holsters and straps; fifty saddles; fifty saddle bags; fifty saddle blankets; thirty-eight pounds of buckshot; four hundred and eighty-three musket percussion caps. These were to make buck and ball cartridges. Those were returned back to me since then. These are to be added: One hundred and twenty-six Springfield rifled muskets, caliber fifty-eight; twenty-six Remington revolvers, caliber forty-four; thirteen Whitney revolvers, caliber thirty-six; six cavalry sabers, thirty-nine pistol holsters, sixty cap pouches, eighteen waist belts, thirty-three waist belt plaits. That was to the committee of safety; besides that, to the mayor of Allegheny City I issued--I am not sure--I think it was three hundred muskets, and powder, and balls, and buckshot, and cartridge paper for making cartridges. Q. These cartridges were not paper, buck, and ball? A. Oh, no; just the material I had, which was the balls and the powder. In order to get the powder, I broke up cannon ammunition--one pound cartridges--broke it up. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you witness any of the scenes of Sunday, the 22d. A. Yes; for a very short time. Q. Tell us what you saw on Sunday? A. By these papers I was nearly all night. I went to bed to get some rest, and was in bed when I heard firing down this street. That is what first wakened me was the sound of firing down the street. Otherwise, before that it was perfectly peaceable and quiet. That officer had his twenty men out on this side of that building, for Sunday morning inspection, and he had just dismissed them, and hearing this firing down street, I jumped out of bed, and got into my pantaloons, and put my night shirt in my breeches, and got my coat on, and rushed out of the room, and before I got out I saw that, from the exclamations of those in the house, there were a number of men running through the grounds. Whoever they were, they were unauthorizedly coming in without any permission, and when I appeared on the grounds, there were a number of soldiers inside, how many, I do not know, and as I opened the door, the firing had ceased. I started towards the gate, and upon looking around in this direction, I saw Lieutenant Lyons coming towards my quarters, and an officer coming towards my house, and I turned to meet him. As he came up, I said to him, "You must take your men right out, sir; there is no protection here for you." He answered, "You have walls." "Yes," I said, "we have walls," raising my hand that way. He says, "Have you any suggestion to make." I said, "None, sir; except to organize your men and assault them." I supposed there was some fight going on, from what I saw and heard. That is all the words passed between me and the officer--who he was I do not know. He had a blouse coat, and looked like a second lieutenant. It does not matter who he was; under the circumstances there was no time, at that time, for wasting words, in my estimation. My orders were orders that were peremptory. I ordered him and his men out. As I told him these last words he started towards the gate, and I immediately turned and went towards the building, where a wounded man was brought in. Says I, "I will take care of the wounded." I called my men, and ordered him taken to the hospital. There was a man lying inside of the gate, one of my men bathing his temples. I asked what was the matter. He did not know. I called my man and instructed him to take him to the hospital. I went to the gate, and I saw nothing there, except a few citizens--workingmen in their Sunday clothes--going to church. I did not see an armed man anywhere. Brinton and his command had gone up the street in the meantime, and left the arsenal. In a few moments I was joined by Lieutenant Lyon, and I authorized him to go immediately for a surgeon for these wounded men, and he went down to Doctor Robinson's office, which is one square below, and brought Doctor Robinson in immediately, by a private entrance, to save time. I went to the hospital--there was no signs of any riot in the street, or anything of the kind--I went to the hospital, and there saw Doctor Robinson, who referred to Lieutenant Ash, and said his leg must come off, but I prefer to have some surgeon to consult with. I suggested to him Doctor Lemoyne, and he agreed to that, and I went to my quarters and wrote Doctor Lemoyne a note, telling him, in the letter, Doctor Robinson had been called in, and that he wished to consult with him, and I sent one of my own horses and a messenger into the city, for Doctor Lemoyne, and he came out. He lives, maybe, three miles from here. In the meantime, the wounded had the attention of Doctor Robinson and his partner, Doctor Evans. Doctor Lemoyne soon came, accompanied by Doctor Reed, and then the wounded had the attention of all four of them. That is all I saw. As to the condition of the Philadelphia men, Lieutenant Lyon can tell more than I can, because he saw the whole thing. The stragglers were inside here; were kept here, and fed, and taken care of until Tuesday evening, and they were clothed like my men. They were so demoralized that one of them, it was reported, could not eat, and in order to divert their minds, Lieutenant Lyon put them to work--they were so afraid they would be shot by somebody. Lieutenant Ash died here, and his brother and his wife were here at the time he died. Q. When did he die? A. Died on Tuesday about two o'clock. Q. What become of the other wounded man that was brought in? A. The other wounded man was playing possum. There was not anything the matter with him. When he went to the hospital he was lying on a bed, and I said, "what is the matter with you?" He did not answer. Says I, "get up, we do not want anybody in the hospital except sick men." The other men wounded themselves getting over the pickets. They came over the pickets, and I am satisfied they wounded themselves in getting over the pickets. One man had a wound in the center of the hand, which he said was caused by a piece of shell. I think he put his hand on a picket of the fence, and one man had his pantaloons torn. They had some little scratches on them. In a few minutes they got out, and went to the works with the other men. There was only one wounded man, that was Lieutenant Ash. One man was wounded down street here, and ran into the Catholic church--Corporal Ash--and a few days ago he came in here to see me. He was shot in the abdomen, and strange to say he got well. Those were the only wounded men down street here. Q. You did not know, at the time that this soldier approached you, that it was General Brinton? A. No; I do not know who it was. It did not make any difference who he was. As I wrote afterwards to Washington, they virtually forced my guard. It is a very different thing for a man outside and a man inside. I know what the place is, and it is presumed that I ought to know how to take care of it; and, in addition to that, I am responsible to the civil authority for every act of mine which comes in conflict with it. I am amenable, in other words, to the civil authorities, and it seems to me I ought to know beforehand what I am doing before I enter into a fight--to know what is going on. I shall certainly take care to do so. Suppose I had opened on some of those men; they would have had me up here for murder, sure, the next day. If it had once begun, it would have been a serious business. I questioned my guard. I said to him, when did you hear that firing--when that firing began, did you see anything in the streets? "No," he said, "there was a small boy in front, a newspaper boy, and I asked him to look down the street, and he said he saw no one. That is the fire that got me out." I said, "were there any shots fired after you heard that?" He said, "there was not a shot fired while the men were here at all." I did not hear a shot fired after I left my quarters, until along sometimes afterwards, way down below here somewhere. Some man--so it was reported, and I believe it was so--some man shot two of them with the same shot, from behind the cemetery wall, or somewhere near there. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If that mob on Saturday night had made an attempt to enter your grounds here, would you have considered you were justifiable in resisting it with any amount of force? A. Unmistakably. I had it there ready to use, and the beck of my hand would have brought my men there. Q. Did you know this officer that approached you and asked permission to bring his men inside? A. He did not ask any permission--just as I have reported to you. The words were no more or less than just what I have said. The mere fact of his being there revealed to me that he had come there for that purpose. I did not wait for any request at all. The mere presence of himself and his men was sufficient for me. I took my action from what I saw. Q. How many men were inside of the grounds? A. That I do not know. Lieutenant Lyon can answer that better than I can. Q. The number of men that stayed here? A. The number of men that stayed here were eight besides Lieutenant Ash. These men I kept--afterwards, when I saw the command was gone, these men, I allowed them to stay in because I would not send them out in the streets. I told the men to join the command, but the command moved off, and these men were allowed to remain in, and were fed and kept. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any formal demand made by any officer of the militia to be admitted, or request to be admitted here? A. None, sir; except just what I told you. * * * * * Lieutenant M. W. Lyon, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Just state your rank? A. First lieutenant of ordinance. Q. Stationed at---- A. Allegheny arsenal. Q. State what came under your observation here on the morning of the 22d--Sunday morning? A. We have Sunday morning inspection about eight o'clock. I finished the inspection, and returned to my quarters and had hold of the door, when I heard the firing down street. I turned to look out to see what it was, when I heard a yell and a lot of men running over the wall--jumping over the wall. I ran up to the gate in that direction. I thought they were the mob. Soldiers were running. I thought it was our own guard. When I got as far as that large warehouse, I met this officer, and I took him to Major Buffington's quarters. Q. Did you know who the officer was? A. No, sir; there were several officers, and the only way I now know it was General Brinton, is the fact, that some of them say that he wore a blouse, and he was the only one that had a blouse. The others were in full dress uniform. Q. Did he state to you what he wanted? A. No; he seemed to be commanding officer, and I took him to the major's quarters. He was in a great hurry. There were several officers with him. Q. What was the result of his interview with Major Buffington? A. As the major says, he made the remark to him, as he stated in his statement, and after that this officer, with the other officers, walked toward the entrance and went out, and I followed more leisurely. When we arrived there, they were bringing in the wounded, and the major told them all the wounded they had they might leave, and he ordered those that were bringing them in, to re-join the company--these eight men came in under the pretense that they were wounded, excepting one man, who had brought--I think he helped carry Lieutenant Ash in, and the major told him he would have to join his command, and he went to the gate and found the command had moved on, and he came to me and said he would willingly hide anywhere. He would hide in the coal-shed. He had never fired a gun off in his life, and only belonged to the militia three weeks. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the general commanding leave his command, in your opinion--the man that wore the blouse--had he left his command, and come in here for protection? A. I do not think he came in here for protection. Q. What brought him here? A. He came in to see if he could get admittance for his troops. Q. Did General Brinton then move on with his command? A. As far as I know. I went down with some of these men that were carrying the wounded, to show them the direction to the hospital; then I returned to the gate to go for Doctor Robinson, and I do not think they stopped there more than a minute. Q. Did you see any mob following in the rear? A. There was none, I am quite positive. When I went to the gate, there was a man who keeps a beer saloon standing at the gate, and he said there was only one man following, and he gave the name of this one man. I went up to him and asked him, and he immediately stopped talking, and he said he did not know the man's name. Q. When you went for Doctor Robinson, did you see any of the mob? A. I saw no mob. I saw quite a number of people in the street that had come out of curiosity, hearing the firing, but they had no arms with them at all. Q. Did you have any conversation with these wounded men to ascertain how they were wounded? A. Oh! yes; I asked them all how they were wounded. One man said that they kept firing away from the middle of the street. They had two cannons, and loaded them up with glass and nails--little toy cannons. He said he got struck that way two or three times. Q. How long after Lieutenant Ash was brought into the hospital was it before Doctor Robinson arrived? A. I should think it was not more than five minutes, because I did not go down all the way to the hospital--the hospital is halfway between here and the guard-house, and I went immediately back to the gate, and went down to Thirty-seventh street, where Doctor Robinson lives, and he was sitting in his chair, reading the morning paper, and he came with me immediately, and I did not think it was more than five minutes, certainly not more than ten. Q. How long was it before Doctor Lemoyne arrived? A. I do not think he came until about two hours afterwards. Q. Was there any amputation performed? A. No, sir; they tried to perform an amputation, but Lieutenant Ash was not strong enough. Q. Did you learn where he was wounded--where he was when he was shot? A. I never could learn. I did not ask him, because the doctors did not want him to have any conversation. Q. You do not know how far he had been carried? A. No, sir; it was my impression he was shot near Thirty-seventh street. Some of the men said he was shot near the round-house. Lieutenant Dermott, who was stationed at the university here as assistant professor in engineering, he was up here while these wounded men were in the arsenal, and together we went over to the commissary where their cartridge boxes were, and I found the cartridges they had in their boxes, and they all averaged twenty rounds a piece, and one man he had forty. Some had less than twenty. Q. Of the soldiers? A. Of those eight that were here. I asked him--he was an old man. In fact, he had been wounded in the hand at the battle of Gettysburg, he said. When they were passing them around, there were several extra cartridge boxes, and he took one. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you in the vicinity of the crossing of Twenty-eighth street and the railroad, the scene of the riot, on Saturday? A. Yes, sir. Q. At the time the military arrived there? A. I was not there the time the military arrived there. I was there about an hour before they arrived. I was talking with Captain Breck. He had two six-pounder guns, and I told him they were not of much use. He ought to have Gatling guns. He said the Philadelphia troops did have a pair of them. I waited until my patience was exhausted, and I came home. Q. Did you see any of the movements of the military in that vicinity, or while you were there? A. They made no movement while I was there. They simply remained stationary where they were. There were some on the hill side with their arms all stacked. Q. None at the crossing of the railroad, were there? A. I am not positive about that. At any rate, I did not keep account of them. They could get across the track very readily, for I went across. I do not think there were any there. I think they were mostly on the hill, and those had their guns stacked, but they were down at the crossing and on Twenty-eighth street, talking with the people, about the same as though they were going to have a party. Q. That is, the soldiers were away from their command? A. Yes, sir. Q. Mingling with the crowd? A. Yes, sir. Q. In conversation with them? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any considerable number of them with their arms where they were stacked? A. They were stacked there, and there were several sentinels along the line where the arms were stacked, but the men, as a rule, had their guns stacked. Q. They had broken ranks? A. They had broken ranks. Q. Did you see them make any effort to keep any portion of the track clear? A. Not while I was there; no, sir. Q. How long were you there. A. I was there three quarters of an hour, perhaps an hour. Q. Did you see any portion of the military in ranks? A. I saw no portion of them drawn up in line of battle, or anything like it; no, sir; or company front either. I think the only men I saw, were those that were without arms, walking up and down with the crowd, talking to them, and the sentinels on post over the stacked arms. Q. They appeared to be the only ones on duty? A. They appeared to be the only ones on duty at that time. Q. As the militia were passing here, did they throw away their arms or ammunition? A. Well, not that I saw, except that Major Buffington found a case filled with cartridges belonging to the Gatling guns. At this point the committee adjourned until to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock. PITTSBURGH, _Saturday, February 23, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at half-past ten, in the orphans' court room, Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All the members present. * * * * * O. Phillips, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence and your official position in July last, and then go on and give us the facts? A. My residence is 344 Ridge avenue, Allegheny. I was mayor of the city for the last three years, up to January, 1878. Q. Of the city of Allegheny? A. Yes; of the city of Allegheny. Q. Just commence and give us a statement in your own way, chronologically--give us the facts? A. On Thursday or Friday, the 19th or 20th of July last, I had been over in Pittsburgh during the day, and went back to my office in the afternoon, and there I found that the railroad officials of the Pennsylvania company had sent up the office for police assistance, stating that a crowd of men were interfering with the running of trains near the outer depot, and that Chief of Police Ross and ten or twelve policemen had gone down there. Q. The outer depot of the Fort Wayne road? A. Yes; I jumped in a horse car and went down there myself, deeming it my duty to go and see what was the trouble, and when I got to the outer depot I saw a number of men walking up and down the track, and quite a large number of men at Strawberry lane. I noticed a locomotive pass me and go down. It was interrupted or stopped by some men climbing up on the engine, and gesticulating in a threatening way, but what they said I do not know, but the engine stopped, and returned to the round-house. I went down then to where this crowd of men was, and saw it was a very large assemblage--several hundreds--and the police force were an atom, a mere drop in the bucket. Some of the men wanted to talk to me about their troubles. I told them, as mayor of the city, I had nothing to do with that. I was simply there as a representative of peace and good order, and spoke to the men, cautioning prudence, asking them if they realized the seriousness of what they were doing. I noticed that a man by the name of Robert Ammon was recognized as their ring-leader. He came up to me and introduced himself as having known me at my factory, on the South Side, and said he would like to talk to me. I stepped aside to converse with him, and while we were talking, men would come up and say: "What shall we do now, Bob?" He would say: "Stand aside, I do not want to be interrupted." He told me he had been an employé of the railroad company six weeks or two months before that, but had been discharged, and since that he had been around the country organizing Trainmen's Unions. He told me he had influence to stop these troubles; that if he had sent a telegram to Martinsburg the troubles would have been stopped. He said it was not worth while to go to the railroad men; he asked me to make a speech to the men; I told him that was not my style. The men gave me their assurance they would protect the railroad property, both day and night, and when they could not do anything further they would send to me for police. I then left my officers quietly mingling with these men, and then I went back to the mayor's office, which was on Thursday or Friday, I am not sure which, or Saturday. Word came to me that some of the supposed strikers had gone to one of the military organizations in Allegheny, and had taken thirty or forty arms, and had taken them down towards where the men were on a strike, and they expected to come up in a short time and remove the guns from Captain Bigham's armory, a company of the Nineteenth regiment. I went over there, and, assisted by the postmaster of Allegheny, and two or three of my police, we carried over thirty or forty arms and ammunition and placed them in our watch-house. A messenger came up hurriedly and said that the crowd were coming up to take these guns from me. My force were all out in the districts, and I then had the locks and bayonets taken off these muskets, so that if they got the guns they would be of no service to them. On Sunday, the day of the serious trouble, I had Knapp's battery taken out of the armory, by some of the battery men, under the command of Captain Walker, and these guns, four field pieces, were loaded with small square iron nuts. We had not any ammunition. We had blank cartridges but no balls, and I had these things loaded, and then, assisted by citizens, armed with axe handles and wagon spokes, I had gotten from one of the wagon-yards, and their old fowling pieces, and everything of the sort. They posted these guns at the Allegheny end of the bridges. I had been notified that the mob were coming over Sunday afternoon and Sunday night to burn the Allegheny shops, and release the inmates from the penitentiary. I notified the warden of that fact, and he kept his force on day and night, heavily armed, for a number of days. I selected two or three gentlemen of cool judgment and discretion, and those on horseback, and went to Pittsburgh and rode around among the rioters on this Sunday night to try and find out which bridge they proposed to come over, and then hurry back and notify me, and my intention was to concentrate all these field pieces at that bridge and stop them. I had taken the police pretty much away from the city of Allegheny and put them at the bridges, and sent squads of private citizens to patrol the streets. My force consisted of about fifty-five men. I kept the police on both day and night, until their strength was exhausted, and they could not stand it any more. On Monday I telegraphed the Secretary of War, and asked permission to draw five hundred muskets from the arsenal. That permission was granted, and I sent out two wagons, guarded by twenty-five or thirty veteran soldiers, and they went and brought me the guns. I called a special meeting of councils on that same day, and asked permission to increase the police force, which permission was granted me. I swore in a hundred special policemen, and armed them with maces. A hundred of those veteran soldiers were armed with Springfield muskets, and we made our own ammunition and cartridges, with either five or six buckshot. A hundred veterans were in reserve in the armory, to come out along with the citizens at ten taps of the big bell. The employés sent me word there were so many tramps coming over that they could not protect railroad property, and asked for police assistance, and I detailed a squad of policemen, and guarded all the crossings from Irwin avenue to Strawberry lane, and kept the crowd back. There was a meeting of these railroad employés in Allegheny, to which they asked me to attend. I was very kindly treated by them, and quite a number of them would come to my office and confer with me. I received a communication from the railroad officials, Mr. Thaw, General McCollough, indorsed by Mr. Quay and Mr. Latta, and asked me to close the liquor saloons. I requested the chief and one or two officers to go around and close them, and they did. I do not know whether I had the power, but I thought the emergency required it should be done, and I ordered them closed, and I sent officers to see that they were kept closed. When the Governor came through, he sent for me, and I went to see him at his car, and he asked me what protection I had, and I told him just as I have related to you, and told him I did not want any military until I was completely overpowered, and that I thought I could protect the city, and if I could not, I would call on him, and he said he would send me a thousand effective men. I had submitted to the railroad employés in Allegheny that if they would go down and bring these ten miles of stuff they had run down the road--all this stuff--to Allegheny, and take the eastern bound over to Pittsburgh, &c., I would see that their wages were paid, and then I would take the road off their hands. The railroad company had declined to receive the road until the stuff was brought back. On the day proposed to raise the blockade, I went down to the depot with thirty picked policemen, and when I got there in the dispatcher's office, there were seven or eight hundred people, or more. I stepped upon a pile of railroad ties, and ordered all the men that did not belong to the railroad to step on the other side of the railroad track. Said that they would settle their difficulties without outside assistance, and at least four of the men went on that side of the track. There were private detectives going through them, and they would ask, "Who is that man?" and they told him it was Mayor Phillips, of Allegheny. I then proposed to the men, employés of the company, to go down and bring up the first draft of cars, knowing that if we would get the first draft up, the back-bone of the trouble would be broken; and they all got up in a hurrah and got the first draft up, and then all the stuff was brought up. Q. Then you turned it over to the railroad company? A. Yes; the railroad company took it after the stuff had been brought up. I know little or nothing of the trouble that took place in Pittsburgh. Q. What day was that that you brought up this stuff? A. Several days afterwards. I cannot tell you the date. I do not exactly remember the date. On Sunday, the day of the burning, there was a committee of railroad strikers met Mr. Layng at my house, that Sunday morning, and had a conference with him, and agreed to take care of the property of the company, and they did it well and manfully. Q. The first day you went out and met the crowd of several hundred, were they composed entirely of railroad employés? A. No, sir; they were not. Very few appeared to be railroad men. Q. What class of men were in the crowd? A. Workingmen--rough-looking men--men that I did not know. Q. After the railroad employés agreed with you that they would protect the railroad property, did they permit the crowd of roughs to remain with them? A. No, sir; because they sent me word that the roughs were coming there, and they were apprehensive there would be trouble, and wanted policemen, and they guarded all this property, until at last they said they were tired and worn out, and asked me to protect this ten miles of property down below. I had not any authority to go outside of the city with police, but the railroad company agreed to pay, and I sent a police force ten or twelve miles down the road, and protected the property until the troubles were over. Q. Do you know anything of the crowd trying to prevent, or making preparations to prevent, trains from coming in with soldiers on the Pittsburgh and Erie road? A. We were notified there that none of the soldiers would be allowed to come in that way. Some of the men intimated to the effect that they would be stopped. It was in the early part of the troubles. Q. Notified by railroad employés? A. Some of the men notified the police, and the police told me. I do not remember exactly how. I told the men we would not have any military over there as long as we could do without them. A squad of men came up and said United States soldiers had come there, and it was contrary to the contract. I told them that that was answered simply, and that the United States Government would send their troops when, and how, and where they pleased, but I had seen the military authorities of Pittsburgh, and asked them not to send any troops to Allegheny until I called for them. I thought I could protect the city. I was assisted by the people of Allegheny all I could ask for. Q. Under what circumstances or condition of this order would you consider yourself justifiable in calling on the Governor to send you troops? A. Well, sir, when I went down that day, and I felt I could not control the multitude, and they attempted any threatening, I proposed to fight them. I would not give up without. I had armed the police with revolvers and maces. I had something myself, and when we could not fight, I proposed to call on the military, and not till then. By Mr. Means: Q. You determined to make a fight before you called on the military? A. That is the English of it. Q. And to head the police yourself? A. I did, sir. I head them all the time. I thought that was my place. Q. In case of a ... occurring in any part of the city, did you regard it as your duty to visit the point and ascertain? A. Yes. I was up day and night for a week, and I was nearly worn out. I kept the battery in camp in the city hall yard. Kept them there day and night, and had these veteran soldiers sleep on the floor of city hall, so that we could call on them at any moment. Q. Would you consider it your duty to have called out a posse of citizens, and to exhaust your power in that direction, before calling on the State for military aid. A. Most decidedly. I had arranged and published hand-bills all over the city, that at ten taps of the bell the citizens of Allegheny were to come forward to protect their firesides and homes. I swore in a goodly number of them to go on duty. Q. You did swear them in? A. Quite a large number of them. Q. Do you regard your authority and powers subordinate to those of the sheriff of the county--within the limits of your city, I mean? A. No, sir. I thought I was the chief executive, and the man the people looked to. Q. You regard yourself as superior within the limits of the city? A. Yes, sir. Q. Would you have allowed yourself to have been superseded by the sheriff in authority or power? A. That is pretty hard to answer. I do not think I would. I thought I was placed there to protect the city by the people, and I would try to do that. Q. You would do your duty as long as anybody else would? A. That is my idea. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. As far as the military is concerned: if you had called for the military, you would have considered it was your duty to give general supervision and direction, within the limits of the city, in putting down the disturbance? A. I would have done all I could. I would have assisted the military all in my power. Q. You regard the military subordinate to the civil authorities? A. I think so; yes, sir. Q. Did Robert Ammon tell you how many lodges of Trainmen's Unions he had established? A. I do not remember the number, sir, but he said a goodly number? Q. Did he tell you on what roads he had established them? A. He told me he had been on different roads. Eastern and western roads, if I remember rightly. Q. Did he tell you the object of that Union? A. As I gathered, it was to see about regulating the wages--to control--to compel--that is the substance of it. A very hurried conversation we had, and a good deal of excitement at the time. Q. Did he say that there was a pre-arranged plan for a strike at this time. A. Yes, and if I remember rightly, it came a little premature--a little too soon. Q. Did he say that he had direction of the different strikes? A. He said that if he sent a telegram to Martinsburg the strike would stop, and if he would turn over his hand here, the thing would be stopped. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Does anything more of importance occur to you? A. I only visited Pittsburgh once during the riot, and that was that Sunday afternoon, and made a statement to the citizens that the railroad men had agreed to protect the property. I stayed in my own place. Q. Did you have any talk with any of the other strikers besides Ammon about their places? A. No, sir. I talked with a great many of the employés. I attended their meetings. Q. What reason did they give for going on a strike at that time? A. I did not hear any reason. I did not understand the strike was coming from them at that time. Q. They were on a strike? A. That, on account of the wages, they could not live on what they were getting. Q. That was the reason they struck, because the wages were not high enough? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you hear any other cause of complaint from the men that struck? A. No, sir; that was the substance of it. Q. Did you learn what reductions had been made in the wages of these men? A. No; I did not. They told me their troubles. I listened to them quietly and politely, but did not think it was what I was for. I told them I was simply a representative of peace and good order, and protect their property as well as my own. By Senator Yutzy: Q. There appears in a statement made by Boss Ammon, a report made public in the _Leader_ of January 28. He says: "Meanwhile prominent citizens came forward and supplied me with arms and ammunition for my men." Do you know anything about that? A. I deny it, sir, _in toto_--emphatically--that any prominent citizens gave arms to any of the men there. They helped themselves to arms--somebody did--at this armory. I just related how I was afraid they were going to help themselves to some more, and I got them myself, and carried them to the watch-house. Q. Do you know whether there was any coöperation between Bob Ammon and the railroad officials during these troubles, working together? A. I do not know of my own knowledge. I would say I do not know a thing about it, and I did not believe there was anything of the sort--work together in harmony? Q. Yes? A. Not a bit of it. Q. Here is a statement he makes in regard to you: "I pledged my honor that they would be guilty of no violence, and they heartily and unanimously seconded my pledge. The mayor expressed his satisfaction at the aspect of affairs, and ordered the police off the ground. The train dispatcher wished to retain ten policemen as a guard for the property, and the question was referred to me whether they should remain or not. I put it to the men, and they responded 'Do as you please about that, Bob; you're boss now, and we'll follow where you lead.'" Mayor Phillips said to them: "If you are determined to strike, I beg to state that I have known Mr. Ammon from his childhood, and have full confidence in his honor and judgment, and I don't think he would give you any wrong advice?" A. That is stuff. I did not know Bob Ammon more than five minutes before that. He introduced himself to me, and he was a young man. I could not express satisfaction with men who were doing wrong and breaking the laws of the city. That would not do. I emphatically deny the whole thing. * * * * * Thomas Furlong, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside, Mr. Furlong? A. I reside in Oil City, Venango county. Q. Were you in the city of Pittsburgh in July last? A. I was. Q. Were you present at the scene of the riots during any of the days? A. I was. I arrived in the city of Pittsburgh on Friday morning, about nine o'clock, and remained here after that during the riot. Q. I wish you would state, Mr. Furlong, what knowledge you have of any of the police of the city of Philadelphia having fired upon any of the troops, the soldiers? A. Well, while working in my capacity of detective officer, I was called to Philadelphia--the city of Philadelphia--to get evidence in regard to certain things that occurred during the riot. While there, I received information that some of the mayor's police had fired on the Philadelphia soldiers during their retreat on Sunday morning, on Butler street, on the morning of the 22. Q. What did you learn in relation to it? A. I saw one gentleman in Philadelphia that said he would swear he saw a uniformed police officer fire at the Philadelphia from the curbstone or from the pavement. Q. Who was this gentleman? A. I disremember his name now. I have his name and all the facts. Q. Do you know where he lives? A. I do know where he can be found. He lives in Philadelphia. Mr. Lindsey: I think we hardly ought to take his testimony--what this gentleman said. We ought to have the gentleman himself. You can go on and state what you found out yourself about the truth, either in admissions that the police may have made in your presence, or from facts that you have dug up, that is, in relation to the matter you may state, and not what the gent said. A. All the evidence that I obtained in that line in reference to the matter came in that way. It is hearsay evidence. There has never been information made against this party. Q. Against the policeman? A. Against the policeman charged with having done this shooting. For that reason I didn't bring these records along. I should have brought those records if there had been information made against him, and I saw no police officers fire at the Philadelphia soldiers myself. Q. Have you any other evidence to show that a policeman fired upon the Philadelphia soldiers except what was told to you by the gentleman that you spoke of in Philadelphia? A. I have interviewed the other gentleman upon the same subject, and the statement of this first gentleman--Philadelphia gentleman--has been corroborated by other parties. There is a police officer in the city at the present time, a member of the force now, that saw a police officer, who was a police officer at that time, on the 22d of July, saw him engaged in supplying ammunition to be fired at the Philadelphia soldiers. Q. Can you give us the name of that police officer? A. I could give you the name of that police officer and the name of the man that supplied the ammunition. I would rather not do it, though. I have been working in connection with our council. * * * * * F. S. Bissell, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in the Eighteenth ward. Q. What is you business? A. Foundry business. Q. Please state what you saw and heard of the riot, in a brief way? A. I will state briefly, that about, I think, after twelve o'clock, on Sunday, I had learned what had transpired in the city.--I live quite a distance out--and I came to the city and walked down Liberty street, and saw the wrecking, and went down past the Union depot, and waited, I suppose, ten or fifteen minutes there, went around towards Adam's Express depot, saw what transpired there, although I was on the outskirts of the crowd, and although I didn't mingle in the crowd, and learned from some parties that a meeting was to be held at the city hall, for the purpose of rallying a number of citizens to quell the riot or insurrection. After a number of ineffectual efforts to get a body of citizens together, I went with a few parties down to the Duquesne depot. I made up my mind that that would be the next place burned. Q. Please state where the Duquesne depot is? A. Duquesne depot is at the foot of Liberty street, on the river, at lower end, fronting on the Monongahela. Q. What road is the depot on? A. The Pennsylvania depot--it is the old Pennsylvania depot. Q. Go on Mr. Bissell? A. During the afternoon we arrested two parties there in the act of firing--one in the act of firing a car, and the other inquiring how to get into the depot--how to set it on fire. I state this briefly--these parties have been tried. I remained around there all the afternoon, until ten o'clock that night, and about six or half-past six, along about there, after the elevator had burned or was about falling, a wagon came very rapidly down street--it was one of the express wagons--and informed some one there that the next attempt would be that depot, that the mob were surging that way. I then started with a few citizens, Mr. Little and McCandless and others, to get a cable to stretch around that building, our object being to keep back the crowd, and allow nobody inside that line if possible, so as to distinguish who the parties might be who would come to burn it. We got a few of the young men who belonged to the military--belonged to some of the militia companies--to stand guard inside of the rope during the night, and some other persons living at that place. There was nothing particularly transpired after that that I know of. We stayed there until half-past ten, or about that, and then went home. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How many men went with you to the Duquesne depot? A. We started from the city hall. That was the organization that we called Doctor Donnelly's brigade. They had marched up street, and I think there was about a dozen of us remained at the depot, and we made up our minds to stay there. This was on Sunday afternoon. We expended our breath in trying to impress upon the citizens around about there, that if they burned that depot, it would burn their property. Q. Was there a large crowd of people then in that vicinity? A. Quite a large crowd. I suppose somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand or more scattered around. There is a pretty large extent of ground. Q. Did many participate in riotous conduct there? A. No, sir; it seemed to be a few parties. They were pretty much all under the influence of liquor. Q. Many of this crowd were there from curiosity? A. A good many, I have no doubt. The report was, that they were coming down towards the Duquesne depot, and the next place would likely be the Duquesne depot and the bridges. That was only, doubtless, the opinions of the people. Q. These men you arrested there in the act of applying the torch to the depot and the cars you speak of, were they accompanied by any considerable number of men appearing to be participating in it? A. A few sympathizers, and men who were standing out there appeared to be sympathizers. That was the party who was arrested by Doctor Dixon. He was tried. Q. Was he a citizen of the place? A. I think he lived down on the south side, somewhere. Q. The other man, was he a citizen of the city? A. I couldn't say. I don't know anything about him. Q. Have both of those men been tried? A. They have, sir. I think they have been tried. Q. Were there any police in the vicinity at the time you were stationed there? A. No, sir; I didn't see any. We clubbed together, a number of us then, and made up a little purse and hired a few police. Q. Private police? A. No; only to look after the building at night, and help us arrest anybody that should attempt to burn. Q. Were those men sworn in by you men as special police? A. I think they had belonged to the police force--the men who had been discharged, owing to the inadequacy of the funds to meet bills. Q. Did you have any conversation with the mayor in regard to these policemen? A. No, sir; I had no conversation myself. We put down what we could pay, and paid it when we were called upon. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you go down to the scene of the riot and burning on Sunday? A. Sunday afternoon a good deal of the firing had been done before I got to the city, and walked on down Liberty street past the wrecking--just made a pretty quick trip. Q. What kind of people were engaged? A. Some of them appeared to be about as rough a crowd as I ever saw. Q. Was there much of a crowd actively engaged? A. I thought so. Down about the Union depot there was an immense crowd of people carrying off all sorts of baggage--seemed to be more engaged at that than anything else, outside of the firemen. Q. Would it have been impossible for a force of men to have stopped that? A. I don't think it would have been possible. I didn't see how. I think women would have been shot--a great many innocent people. People were panic stricken, and every thing seemed to be upside down. Q. Wild? A. Yes. * * * * * Thomas Furlong, _re-called_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Mr. Furlong, were you at the Twenty-eighth street crossing at the time the firing occurred? A. I was. Q. I wish you would go on and state what you saw there? A. I was at Twenty-eighth street nearly all day on Saturday, the 21st. I was there at the time the train came in from the east, bearing the Philadelphia soldiers. I followed the train from Twenty-eighth street down to the Union depot, and when I got down there, I found the Philadelphia soldiers had gotten out of the cars and were at lunch on the platform, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches. I had some conversation with them, and finally they fell into line and were marched up the railroad track back towards Twenty-eighth street. I started to go up with them, walking near the head of the column. The sheriff was first in front of the troops with a squad of men, and I was ordered to keep away from the head of the column by some of the sheriffs men. I walked faster than they did--they made rather slow progress. I got up to Twenty-eighth street perhaps ten minutes or thereabouts, before the head of the column reached there. There was a great crowd of people congregated at Twenty-eighth street, and below, and on the hill all around there--a terrible crowd of people. As soon as the soldiers got in sight of this crowd, they commenced shouting, jeering, swearing, using abusive and profane language, and the closer the soldiers got to them the more boisterous the crowd grew. The soldiers came advancing slowly until the head of the column got almost to where Twenty-eighth street crosses the railroad track. The crowd didn't give way, they just stood there blockading the crossing. It was a solid mass of people. The soldiers walked right up against them, and I was standing, at that time, in the neighborhood of forty feet below the lower side of Twenty-eighth street, on the east side of the track, on the right hand side of the track going out of the depot, standing close by the track, but about forty feet below the watch box that is situated there. There was a young man--I don't know his name, I never saw him--nor have seen him since, although I looked for him a good deal, too--standing within about three feet of where I was, at the time the soldiers marched up against this crowd. He picked up some stones--he had some stones gathered up--a little pile of stones. He picked up these stones, and commenced to throw down into the soldiers. I remonstrated with him, told him he ought not to do it, the soldiers would be likely to fire up there. He replied, they daresn't shoot. He then pulled a revolver out of his hip pocket and fired down towards the soldiers. When I saw him point his revolver, and I followed the direction at that time, there was just a shower of missiles and stones of one kind or another. Every person appeared to be throwing something; and from the other side of the track they were throwing coal. The coal just appeared to be raising off the cars and dropping on the soldiers. This man fired two shots out of his pistol. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he shoot as if he was taking aim? A. Yes he aimed toward the soldiers. I couldn't see that he took deliberate aim at any particular person, but he fired down into the troops. Q. He didn't fire up into the air? A. No, sir. We were standing on an elevated position. We were above the soldiers, standing, perhaps, three feet higher than the soldiers were standing. I don't see how he could have fired down there, without hurting some of the soldiers or citizens, or some of the mob. The people were so thick down there. There was another man standing behind this watch-box, and he also fired into the crowd, with a revolver. Q. How many shots were fired by the mob, before there was any firing from the soldiers? A. I saw smoke come from behind this watch-box. I thought at the time it was some person. I saw a man there, this man wore a cap, and from where I was standing, I could see him very plainly in looking that way, and I thought he was shooting. I could see the smoke, but there was so much noise, that I could not hear the report of the pistol. I saw two shots fired by this man, immediately in front of me, and before the report of his last shot quit ringing in my ears, the soldiers commenced firing. Q. Did you hear any command given to the soldiers to fire? A. I didn't; I stood there for, I suppose, a minute and a half after the mob threw coal, and stones, clubs, and missiles of that kind, at the soldiers, and I was very much afraid that the soldiers wouldn't fire. I was afraid that they were going to lay down their guns, and not fire. I wanted to see them fire. I was afraid they would lay their guns down, and not fire. In fact, I was very glad to hear them commence firing. Q. What effect did the firing by the soldiers have upon the mob? A. It scattered that mob quicker than any mob I ever saw scattered before in my life. The first shot that was fired, I thought the ball came pretty close to where I was. I could hear it whistle, and I laid down. The crowd was so that I did not consider it safe to run, and I dropped down on my face right where I was standing, and I laid there until the firing ceased, and when I got up, there was no rioter to be seen anyplace; that is, in that immediate vicinity. Q. Where did they go to? A. There was a ditch or a washout; there was a ridge running diagonally down the hill off Twenty-eighth street then, and there was an old water course alongside of this ridge, in some places that was several feet deep, and they piled in there and laid down on the side of the hill, and behind coal cars and behind houses, and they got just wherever they could. Q. How long was the crowd in re-assembling. A. Well. I remained there. This firing occurred shortly after five o'clock in the afternoon--it couldn't have been quarter after five--I think it was hardly that late--five or ten minutes after five o'clock, perhaps--along there--and I remained there on the ground until after six o'clock, and the crowd hadn't re-assembled on the crossing, while I was there. A very large crowd gathered down on Liberty and Twenty-eighth street, down on Penn and Twenty-eighth, and in that neighborhood, there was large crowds of people, but they didn't come to where the soldiers were--kept away from the soldiers. The soldiers, after the firing was over, they threw out a guard line, and took possession of the track, and didn't allow parties to walk up or down the track. By Mr. Means: Q. The soldiers had entire control of the track? A. They had entire control of the track at that time; yes, sir. I came down town and got my supper, and after that I went to Twenty-eighth street. At that time the soldiers were in the round-house, so I was informed. Q. Was this picket line still out? A. No; I didn't find any picket. I did not go up the railroad track. I went up Penn street at that time. I was not up on the railroad track, and I could not say whether there was a picket line on the railroad track or not, at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If you were present at any of the efforts made by the railroad company to start their trains, you might state what occurred on Friday and Saturday? A. On Friday I was up there all day, in the vicinity of Twenty-eighth street--in the neighborhood, back and forward--and I saw a number of engines making steam, and heard, from time to time, that they were going to start trains out, and also heard the railroad strikers say that they couldn't take any trains out. They were not going to permit any trains to go out--any double-headers. I saw no trains go out, that is, no freight trains. Saturday morning I saw a few cars of stock. They came over, I believe, from Allegheny, and were taken out to the stock-yards. There must have been, at least, a couple of hundred men on top of the cars. Q. What class of men? A. They appeared to be strikers. I didn't know the men. They appeared to me like railroad men, and a good many of them were strangers to me. The cars were just covered with them--as many as could possibly get on. I recollect that Monkey John Richardson, as they called him, was on the train. I think it was his crowd. He seemed to have control of the party. Q. It was run by the strikers themselves? A. I believe that the train was run by the strikers; yes, sir. * * * * * J. P. Moore, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the city. Q. Are you a member of the National Guard? A. Yes, sir; adjutant general, Sixth division, for the last three years. Q. Adjutant, Sixth division? A. Yes, sir. Q. It is not necessary to go over the whole history; General Pearson has given us a full history. I would like you to state what occurred on Saturday, beginning with the arrival of the Philadelphia troops, and state what came to your knowledge. Give us a full history of what occurred after that time? A. I accompanied General Pearson with the Philadelphia troops as far as the outer round-house. Upon our arrival there, General Pearson had notice of the displacement of the troops he had posted at three o'clock in the morning. Q. What troops were those? A. The Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments, and Breck's battery. He immediately went to the crossing, and taking Major Evans with us, we went up to Colonel Howard--not seeing General Brown--and inquired the reason of the displacement of the Nineteenth regiment from the position he placed it in in the morning. The general was not satisfied with the answer of Colonel Howard, and returned, and found as we were coming down, that the sheriff was addressing the people, or notifying them to leave the scene. The Nineteenth was in the hospital grounds. On our arrival at Twenty-eighth street, the general directed me to remain with General Brinton, and he went to the telegraph office--Mr. Pitcairn's office--and telegraph communication with the Adjutant General was established. General Brinton then formed the First regiment, one line facing towards the hill and one towards Liberty street, and directed the company in grey uniform, one of which I think was the Weccacoe Legion, and a portion of the Washington Greys, to clear the people from between the ranks. They started on that movement, followed by the two Gatling guns, and went up with the two guns as far as Twenty-eighth street, when they came as far as crossing of Twenty-eighth street. In order to move the crowd back, the Legion endeavored to make a wheel to the left. In making that wheel, the order was given to charge bayonets, and the front rank came to an arms port; the rear rank stepped back about a pace, the crowd being so dense in front of them, that the men in the front rank could not get to the position of charge bayonets. The rear rank kept back about a pace, and they came to the charge. Q. Who gave the order to charge bayonets? A. I am not certain whether it was General Matthews or not. I heard General Matthews give the order to load, but I could not say whether it was General Matthews or a company officer that gave the command to charge. At the same instant, a man by the name of Horn, who was about three files from the left of the company, stooped down and passed through the front rank, raised up and struck at General Brinton, and at the same instant a pistol shot was fired either by the man Horn or a man immediately in his rear. Stones were hurled, and one of the men of the--I cannot say whether he belonged to the Greys or the Weccacoe Legion, but it was one of the party that was charging--was struck on the shoulder and knocked against one of the Gatling guns. There had been no firing done by the troops at that time, but the crowd outside were hurling epithets at the soldiers, and asking, "Why don't you shoot, you sons of bitches. Why don't you shoot?" By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did they shoot or fire? A. Some of them said: "Why don't you fire? Why don't you shoot;" and some of them said: "Shoot, you sons of bitches! Why don't you shoot," General Brinton gave the order to cease firing a very few moments afterwards. There was one point I wished to call your attention to--this man of the Weccacoe Legion--and I believe he is the same man Doctor Murdock spoke of yesterday--that man firing his piece three times after instructions; wiping the blood out of his eyes, loaded and fired his piece. Q. Where was he struck? A. He was struck about the head, and blood was running down over his face. Q. Then he wiped the blood out of his eyes and fired his piece afterwards? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was the command to fire given by any of the officers? A. I think it was. Q. What ones? A. I could not designate the officer. I heard the word fire so frequently between the parties outside casting their anathemas at the soldiers. As I understood, the order came from an officer; but I could not distinguish which one it was. I heard the order to load very distinctly. Q. Did you hear the order from an officer to fire? A. I did so. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Which men fired? These men endeavoring to press back the crowd, did they fire? You say they wheeled to clear the crowd off Twenty-eighth street; did they fire into this crowd? A. I think not, sir. Q. Where did the firing come from? A. From the First regiment. Q. They were standing back by the cars, were they? A. One line here--it was standing towards Liberty street, and the other facing towards the hill. Q. The two ranks--the one in front facing to the right, and the rear facing to the left? A. I think the front rank was facing towards Liberty street. I think they were moved out by the left flank from Union depot. Q. The front rank would be facing towards the hillside and the rear rank facing towards Liberty street? A. I think not, sir. They marched left and front. Their proper front would be by left face. They were marched out that way; consequently the front rank would face towards Liberty street. Q. The other rank would face towards the hill? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where did this firing come from--the front rank, facing the hill? A. The rank facing the hill fired. The first shots that were fired from the front rank were fired towards Liberty street, and they turned round then and commenced firing in another direction, over their heads and through the files of officers, and General Brinton gave the order to cease firing, with Colonel Benson and Major Lazarus. Colonel Stewart, of the Governor's staff, who was then in citizen's clothes at that time, came down and volunteered to assist in anything which was to be done. Major Fife and myself went down the line and assisted in stopping the firing. Q. Did they fire as if they had been commanded or ordered to fire? A. The first round or so evidenced that fact to me. Immediately after the firing, I received an order from General Pearson to take one half a regiment of General Loud's brigade. I reported to General Brinton the order on General Loud, and he informed me he had seen General Pearson, and the matter was arranged. I asked him where General Pearson was, and he said he was in Pitcairn's office. Q. You say General Pearson ordered you to take a portion of the regiment? A. To the Union depot. I reported to Brinton for an order on General Loud. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Where was General Pearson at the time the firing took place? A. He was in Pitcairn's office. Q. He was not present? A. No, sir; there was no officer of the division at Twenty-eighth street, except myself at the crossing. The cars were taken out for the removal of the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments--an order had been issued to that effect. The train was taken out and left about, maybe, one hundred and fifty feet below Twenty-eighth street. Immediately at the end of the train, I left Major Dickson, Captain Denney, of Colonel Guthrie's staff, Major Fife, and Major Stroff. Major Evans went over to the Nineteenth regiment. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You say General Pearson was in Pitcairn's office? A. Yes, sir. Q. He was not there at all--how far is that from where the firing was? A. About eleven hundred feet, according to my estimate of it. There was not an officer of the sixth division there except myself. Q. Then it was impossible for him to have given the order? A. He did not give any order to fire. General Brinton left immediately after the firing to see General Pearson in answer to an inquiry which was brought by Major Evans to him in regard to the firing. When I received this order I started to report to General Brinton to get the order spoken of a few moments ago, and I met General Brinton at the--going into the office of Mr. Pitcairn, and received from him the information that General Pearson was in Pitcairn's office. The first authentic information that General Pearson had of the firing was what I communicated to him in Pitcairn's office. Q. What was the reason given for you sending this portion of the regiment--it was not sent anywhere, was it--to the Union depot? A. There was no reason assigned. It had been arranged not to send that half regiment to the Union depot. I asked for General Pearson, and went to ascertain the cause of it, and the general said it was not necessary and directed me to remain there. At the request of General Brinton, he was going to bring the Philadelphia troops into the building, and a little after six o'clock they commenced to come in. * * * * * James Park, junior, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Will you please give us your residence and business? A. My residence is Allegheny city. My business is manufacturer of steel and copper. Q. I wish you to state now, in your own way, what knowledge you have of the riots that occurred in July last, and the efforts made to suppress them? A. Some days previous to the Saturday when the riot was started, I was aware of the strike on the part of the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. On Saturday, the 21st of July, I believe it was, I was at the Pennsylvania railroad depot at the time of the arrival of the Pennsylvania regiments---- By Senator Reyburn: Q. Philadelphia regiments? A. Philadelphia, I mean, sir. I was there when they disembarked, and during the time they were engaged in taking their lunch. I felt very greatly exercised in reference to the whole matter, fearing that, with the small force of military, in the event of anything that would precipitate firing upon the people, very disastrous consequences might follow. Seeing Mr. Cassatt on the back porch of the hotel building, I went up to him, and cautioned him with some earnestness. I told him that Saturday was an idle day with our workingmen, and I thought I knew the temper of our men pretty well. Sunday would be an idle day, and it would be great wisdom on his part not to attempt to do anything until the following Monday. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What hour was that? A. It was about four o'clock, as near as I can recollect. Q. Before the troops went out? A. Before they marched out. I told him it was very natural for our home military to feel some sympathy, if it were ever so little, in behalf of those who were termed strikers, and that they ought not to expect to place full dependence upon their efficiency in case of anything like a riot. He referred to the Philadelphia regiment as being composed of men who would not fire over the heads of the mob in case of any mob being started, but I told him that in case of necessity for firing that he ought not to have less than ten thousand men, and that I doubted with that force whether he would be able, in case of firing upon the people, to quell the mob that might be precipitated upon us from the firing of the militia, but at all events not to do anything with less than five thousand men. He said in reply that they must have their property. That if the State authorities will not give them possession of it they will call upon the general Government. He took out his watch and said they had now lost an hour and a half's time, meaning that the military should have been marched from the hotel to the place where the great crowd was congregated an hour and a half before the time which I am speaking of. I left for Allegheny just after talking to Mr. Cassatt, and went to my home on a matter of business--to see my son--and came back, taking the car up Penn avenue, and leaving the car at Thirtieth street. Just as I left the car the volley of firing took place. There was an immense crowd of people on the side of the hill. From the number that fell, I supposed there were a very great many killed, but it turned out afterwards that two thirds who fell had fallen to roll into a ditch that was cut on the other side of the road running up the hill, to save themselves. I thought it strange that the firing took place upon the people on the hillside. I could not see, from where I stood, what was going on close to the military, but it struck me, I recollect, at that time, as being very strange that the firing should be made about the line of the angle of the slope of the hill. I don't know that I can say anything more on that point. I went to my works, and I found great excitement all over that region of the city. I went to crowds of men, women, and children, warning them to go into their houses, for the reason that a little while before there was a good deal of commotion on Penn avenue, near Twenty-eighth street, and I thought giving evidence that some fighting was going on that might reach up into the neighborhood of these crowds of people, but I found that, with all my efforts, I did not accomplish anything, people still remained, and a great many run in that direction, just as people will. I cannot account for it, but no doubt gentlemen are well aware of the fact, just as I am, that people will do that thoughtlessly. My own son, who was just by my side the moment the firing took place, ran and got probably a hundred feet from me before I checked him. I told him he must not go in that direction at all. He came to his mind in a minute, and said he did not think what he was doing. I state this just to show how easy it is for a crowd of people to congregate where there is any excitement, particularly when the military are about. I went to my residence in Allegheny and heard nothing at all what was going on, supposing everything was quiet, and that there was no disturbance. Nor did I know that there was anything in the way of burning of property until Sunday morning. My partner, Mr. Charles L. Caldwell, came to my house and said he thought I better come to the city; that something ought to be done; that the Pennsylvania railroad property was being destroyed, and there ought to be some effort in the way of getting up organizations to arrest the work of the mob. He told me to go to the Chamber of Commerce; that James I. Bennett and others would meet me there. We repaired to the Chamber of Commerce and found the door closed, and we went to the printing office, and finally stopped at the office of the _Pittsburgh Post_, meeting Mr. Barr and Mr. Wakes, I think it was, and prepared for a meeting that we had bulletined to take place at twelve o'clock at the city hall, on Market street. That meeting was very well attended. A great many people on the way from church noticed the announcement on the bulletin boards, and repaired to the place of meeting. I felt very proud, on that occasion, of the people of Pittsburgh, and ever since that day, when away from home, I have registered from Pittsburgh, a thing I never did before. I always registered in Europe, and in this country, from Allegheny. Ever since that I have registered from Pittsburgh, and always will do so. I found wealthy men at that meeting, who pledged all that they were worth--not five thousand or ten thousand dollars--but all that they were worth, to put down the mob. John Moorhead, John Harper, John Slagle, and John R. McCuen signed a pledge that they would pay their proportion of all the necessary expenses to check that mob. A committee of twenty-five, I think, was appointed to meet at two or three o'clock at the mayor's office, city hall. This meeting I speak of was at the old city hall. That committee of twenty-five convened and appointed a committee to go to the mob and try to bring it to reason. There were no preparations to do it then, on the part of the citizens, but it was thought that the committee might appeal to them and stay the conflagration and destruction of property. That committee did go there, and went into the midst of the mob, and did appeal to them. I thought that they had about checked the matter, and that the Union depot would be saved, but the committee went from there to meet with some of the men who were on a strike. The committee met a number of them--I was present during all this time, and I know what the committee did, and do not state from hearsay--the committee met quite a number of the railroad men, who were there at that time--the strikers--and found them to express very great regret at the destruction of property. We proposed to them that they would attend an adjourned meeting, at the old city hall, to take place at three o'clock, or half past three o'clock, and proposed that they would organize and assist the citizens in saving the property. They talked very nicely about it, and one of their number--I think two of their number--attended that meeting. He was authorized to get up an organization of those men who were then termed strikers. I was a little too busy for some days to notice, but I believe they did make an effort in that direction. Then this committee of public safety went to work on Monday. I am speaking now of what took place on Sabbath afternoon. On Monday, Pittsburgh was certainly in a very deplorable condition. I noticed that the streets--some of them--particularly Fourth avenue and Third street, were crowded almost from curb to curb with strangers--not railroad men, because I think I should have recognized, from their appearance, the class of men that work in our work-shops from this crowd. They seemed to be composed of strangers, miners, and others from the neighboring parts here, up and down the river. Of course, the most of that crowd were idlers, men who would be ready to join in almost any destruction of property. They were not, I think, citizens--probably very few of them. Efforts were made by the committee of public safety to get organized. The mayor sent to Washington and got permission to take some of the Government arms. They were brought into the city, and General Negley and others were called in to assist, and, I think, the preparations that were made were done in a very short time, because on Tuesday the city seemed to be entirely quiet, and these crowds started for home. One very large crowd, that came down from the upper Monongahela river, were met by the mayor and General Negley, and many citizens that we organized, some with weapons and arms, and they agreed to go home, and said they had understood that men, women, and children were being shot down by the soldiers from a distance, and they came down to protect them, but they agreed to go home quietly. I believe I have told the story about as near as I can recollect--about all I know of it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Anything in relation to the Duquesne depot that you know of? A. At the meeting on Sunday, we started organizations, and were very much pleased to find our young men, particularly, falling into line. I think it could not have been five minutes after the announcement was made, that we wanted all to organize a company to go to the Duquesne depot--fearing that it might be set on fire--I think it was not five minutes after that, that I noticed, I think a hundred, probably, marching right past where I stood. I was presiding at the meeting, and I believe they were led in the wrong direction--they were taken up Third street, I believe--some person took them up to the elevator. Another company that formed--I do not know how many--went down to the Duquesne depot to protect that. Q. Was any attempt made to destroy the Duquesne depot? A. I understand there was some arrests there. I was present at the mayor's office when a man was brought in there, and Doctor Dickson and some others testified that he was caught in the act. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know anything about the events before the strike, the dispute between the railroad employés and the railroad company--the causes leading to these disturbances? A. Nothing more than from general information, that it was because of reduction of wages, and that the men thought the reduction was more than they were willing to accept, and that it had eventuated in a strike. I understand from quite a number that they were not committing any violence. Mr. Shinn, vice president of the Allegheny Valley railroad, and Mr. McCargo, superintendent of the Allegheny Valley railroad, said to me just before the arrival of the Philadelphia regiment, that there was no effort made at all by the railroad strikers to prevent the running out of trains. I think I can recollect very nearly Mr. McCargo's words. Says he, "Mr. Park, you or I can get on a locomotive and run out any train, and nobody will disturb a hair of our heads." He then followed that up by saying the difficulty was to get anybody to go on to a locomotive. Q. To man the train? A. That understood the moving of a locomotive, and running a train out. After seeing Mr. Cassatt, after this interview with Mr. McCargo, I mentioned that to Mr. Cassatt, and he said their presence intimidated them, and he said they made no act of resistance; but their presence intimidated persons--that the strikers were on the ground or on the road, intimidating persons that would take out trains. Q. Was any threats made by yourself and other citizens to prevent a collision between the military and the people? You related an interview with Mr. Cassatt. Was there any other threats made by citizens like yourself to prevent a collision? A. I don't know of anything done in that way. I suppose persons would have felt that they were interfering. I felt a little in that way. When I was advising Mr. Cassatt, I felt that the State, or the railroad company, or one power, was directing that sheriff--somebody was directing the whole movement, and believed for me to give advice on that, probably it was a little premature, or at least Mr. Cassatt might have thought it was uncalled for, and I was greatly in fear that some stone might be thrown or pistol shot, and that the military might fire, and I felt sure the strength was not there if the mob was started--if a mob was precipitated upon the citizens of Pittsburgh, there was not military enough to put it down. Q. Did you know that the trains had been stopped during Thursday and Friday? A. Yes; I knew by general rumor, and was told by a great many that the Pennsylvania railroad were not able to operate. Q. Why didn't you make a suggestion to the railroad officials sooner? A. I never thought of doing it; but if I had thought of doing it, I would have thought that they might have told me to attend to my business, just as I would have done, if I had any difficulty at my works, and railroad men came to advise me--"you mind your own business, and I will attend to my strikers." Q. In the suggestions that you made to Mr. Cassatt, did you suggest any plan to preserve the property and prevent its destruction from Saturday until Monday? A. I said the better way would be to wait. I am not very clear in my recollection. I tried to fix it upon my memory, but it is a little misty just how I put that to Mr. Cassatt; but as near as I can recollect, it was like this--of course, in substance it would be the same--that Saturday was an idle day, and Sunday would be an idle day, and to-night these people would be in their beds and with the force he had--he said, I think, eight hundred men would be expected in momentarily--I said, as near as I can recollect, that to-night these people will be in their beds, and with the force you will have, take possession of your grounds, but don't attempt to move any train until Monday. I recollect very clearly impressing that upon him, not to move a train until Monday. I knew on Monday all the mills would be running and the men would be at their places, and if there was any little disturbance in the moving of trains, the civil authorities could manage it, even if the military didn't take any part in it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. From your knowledge of the kind of people, did you regard it as necessary to call the military to suppress them? A. No, sir; I didn't. I think it was a mistake, a very serious mistake. I knew that the day police of Pittsburgh had been discharged--that is, most of them, and that the mayor was left with a very small force, but I knew at the same time, that the class of men that was engaged by the railroad companies--they are a pretty intelligent set of men--they can be reasoned with, and if arrangements had been made to have had their ground protected by police, not allowing any one to come up Twenty-sixth or Twenty-eighth streets--done that at night, I don't think there would have been any trouble. I don't think any of those men that were termed strikers--I think they would have hardly violated the law in knocking down police, if the police had said the orders were that nobody was to come. I forgot to say that very soon after the firing, after I had warned these little crowds on Penn street to go into their houses, I went over to my mill--the mills generally stopped about half past three o'clock, sometimes as late as four o'clock, and I found that some of our men had been a good deal excited--one man had rushed into the office, and wanted to know from our time-keeper if his gun was at home. He told him he must not have his gun, must not attempt to go for it, because if he did he would alarm his wife, who was then sick, but he went for, and brought his gun back, and handed it to our time-keeper, and went out in the mill for something, and the time-keeper gave it to our manager, and he took it back in our office, and broke the stock of it, then our time-keeper bet five dollars with this man that he had not a gun, and the gun was brought in, and it was broke up, and this man rejoiced over it, and said he had been making a fool of himself, he was very glad he had come to his senses, and he didn't take time to reason, nor did, I think, any of these men. Their general life and their education and training has been more or less different from yours or mine. If your son had been in that crowd or your brother, and you had heard he was shot, you would have just done as I would have done, sat down and reasoned whether he had any business to be there, and you would not have run in and shot down Philadelphia soldiers, or any other soldiers. They just heard somebody was killed, and they rushed for arms, all being done on the impulse of the moment, and done in a way that you or I would not have done, because if my son had been there and shot, I would have lamented it terribly, but I would not have gone there with a pistol or gun. I would have reasoned, undoubtedly, as you would have done, that he had no business to be there, or ought to have been home. These men didn't reason in that way. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have you not had quite a number of strikes among the employés in the mills or factories in this vicinity, during the last five or six years? A. I can call to mind quite a number of them. Q. You are a manufacturer? A. Yes, sir. Q. Employ a large number of men, do you not, sir? A. Yes, sir. Q. Have you ever had any strikes in your works? A. Yes, a number. Q. Did the strikers attempt to prevent other men from working, that you employed? A. Not by force. I never knew of any attempt by force. They did it by persuasion. I have twenty odd men out now. My rule is never to take any man into my employ that has ever struck on me. I will keep them from starving, with money, but not with work. I don't think there is any occasion for a strike. We require notice, and we give notice, and let every man know that if he ever strikes, he never can work for us as long as God spares me on this earth. I will lend him money, or do anything for him, but he will never work for me. Q. In the different strikes, in your works, was there ever any violence used by the strikers, to prevent men from working, you put in there? A. I don't recollect of any cases. Q. Did you ever have any difficulty in getting strikers quiet--dispersed from your works? A. No, sir; they were always very quiet, and when told to leave--sometimes they were not inclined to go out, and they called to me and I requested them to go, spoke to them mildly about it, and told them that my rules were to be carried out. I did once have to bring in a policeman, but the man was very drunk and did not know what he was doing. I am satisfied that if he had been sober, he would have left the building without calling in a policeman. Q. You have had strikes in the city where there have been a larger number engaged than in this? A. Oh, yes; we have had strikes where the aggregate number would have amounted to many more than those engaged at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's works. We have had ten strikes here. Q. Was there any violence resulting from them at all? A. No; I don't recollect only in the case of a strike on the part of the puddlers, probably about twenty-five years or so ago. There was some little trouble at Bailey's mill. They brought on some eastern puddlers, and when they attempted to start the furnaces--it was principally women, the wives of some of the men--they struck them with stones a little, and had some few knock-downs, but they soon quieted. Q. Have you had any difficulties lately--any violence, that is the last few years? A. No, sir; none at all. Q. Have you not had a strike among your puddlers, within the last few years? A. Yes; about two years and a half or three years ago, and I couldn't employ them again just for the reason that my rules were, that any man that strikes can never work for me again, and I thought, of course, as there were so many idle puddlers at that time, that I would have no trouble in starting up my puddling forge. A puddler came around and says, "I can get men and can start you puddling." Says I, "I would like very much to start." Says he, "I can get up a gang by Monday." Says he, "Did you have any trouble?" Says I, "Yes; they struck." Well, they wouldn't work. That lasted for three or four months, and I concluded that some determination had been agreed upon, that these men that struck, must work for me, and I determined they never would--I determined before we started up. I would lend them money at any time, but they might starve, or their families starve, for want of work. I dedicated that forge to negro labor. My men was a little disposed to interfere by violence with the men who engaged themselves to carry on that work, but I have never known any serious interference with my negro workmen at all. We have had peace and quiet, so far as I can learn, and white puddlers have never molested them at all, and we have had them two or three years. Q. Still working? A. Yes; we pay them the same price as white men, because I told them when they came that we would pay them just the same price as white puddlers got in other mills, and we have had to do so. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Have you an idea how many employés are employed in the different mills in the cities of Allegheny and Pittsburgh? A. I guess twenty or twenty-five thousand, probably; that is merely a guess. I would have to think over the number of mills. I suppose something like twenty thousand, and probably more. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You are speaking about a strike about twenty or twenty-five years ago. Have you any recollection of the military being called out at that time? A. I don't recollect of them being called out--they might have been. Q. At any other time within the last twenty-five years, were the military called out to preserve the peace? A. I think one time I recollect of them being called out--I think it was at the time of starting the negro puddlers at the bolt company's works. I think then the military was called on; that is about two or three years ago. Q. Was there any serious opposition to those new men working there? A. There was some quarreling and knocking down. I think there was nothing very serious. Q. As a general thing, in strikes among your men here in the mills or manufactories, you think it is bad policy to call out the military to suppress any trouble that might arise from them? A. Yes; I do so. I think so for the reason that the military would do very well, if they could overawe, but the fear is that somebody would throw a stone, or somebody would fire a pistol, and then they would fire into the citizens. You understand as well as I do, that you put up proclamations and warn people to disperse, and you can go in and talk and plead with them, and still the crowd will be there, and it is almost certain that innocent people will be shot down, if there is any firing. Q. In your testimony, you state you saw Mr. Cassatt in the rear porch of the Union depot, and advised him not to attempt to move trains on Saturday, as the men in your mills and manufactories were idle on that day--not to attempt to move trains until Monday--what reply did you get from him to that advice? A. He said they must have possession of their property. If the State authorities did not give it to them, they would call on the general Government, taking his watch out, and said that they had now lost an hour and a half. That is about as near as I can recollect. The idea was they had lost an hour and a half in moving the Philadelphia regiment up to Twenty-eighth street--up to where the crowd was congregated over their property; that is, the railroad men as a general thing, on their property. I think the citizens were, as a general thing, on the hillside, as near as I can understand it--the most of the citizens, spectators, &c., were up on the hillside--some of them were up as high as the pest-house, on the hill. One young lad was shot there through the wrist--he was in a line with the pest-house. Q. Were you a member of the citizens' committee waiting on Mr. Cassatt at that time? A. No, sir. We had no citizens' committee at that time. Q. Were you a member of the committee that waited on the Governor and the officials of the railroad company, at any time after that, to give him some advice? A. Yes. Q. State that? A. I have forgotten the day. I don't recollect the day he arrived, but I think it was--I don't recollect the day he did arrive--it was some time in the week after the riot. Q. The latter part of the week? A. Probably it was; by the way, it was Saturday. I recollect very distinctly, because I spoke of Sunday just about as I did to Mr. Cassatt. Joseph F. Dilworth, Mr. Johnson, and myself were appointed a committee to visit the Governor. We got word to meet him Saturday morning at Thirty-third street, in a car, and we went up there and met him. I believe I did the first talking, and advised that nothing should be done until Monday to take possession of the ground. He said he was going to do nothing in a hurry--was going to take his time, and move with caution. Q. Was this the conference with the Governor? A. With the Governor himself. He said he was not out here in the interest of any railroad, but in the interest of peace, or something to that effect. He left me to understand that he didn't come to look after the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, but to look after the safety of this community. He had an impression that our water-works were stopped, and he did just as he said he would do. He waited quietly and did not do anything at all until Saturday night, until everybody was in bed. He put out pickets along Penn avenue, and up and down the streets, to keep everybody from going on the railroad property, and then commenced to work, and tore up the track and relay. That could have been done before the Governor came. Q. Could the trains have been run. A. I think so. I don't think there would have been any disturbance at all. If they had the trains there, they could have taken them out without any disturbance. Q. In your opinion, from what you know, would there have been any disturbance, if they had attempted to move trains on Saturday or Sunday, when the Governor was here, at the time you had this conference with the Governor? A. I think there would have been no disturbance--I am satisfied that the men who were designated as railroad strikers, regretted, probably as much as any other set of men, the destruction of the railroad property, and probably they would have been about as ready as any other men to have interfered with any outside people annoying the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in its moving trains. They might not have gone on to the locomotives and moved them themselves, but if any persons could have been procured to take out the trains, I don't think that the railroad strikers would have interfered. Q. Would the crowd of people have interfered on that Saturday? A. I don't think they would have interfered on that Saturday--that was about a week after the riot. Q. Did I understand you to say you appealed to the Governor not to attempt to move trains on that Saturday? A. Yes, I did. Q. Did you think at that time there might be trouble? A. I think so. I thought it was wise to take time, and do nothing until Monday. * * * * * J. Guy McCandles, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether you were present at the firing of the militia, on Saturday afternoon? A. I was. Q. Go on and state what you saw, and what occurred. A. I was there the whole of Saturday. Went up Saturday morning, and was there during the day, and was there at the time of the firing, and when the Philadelphia troops came up, and whenever the troops came up, the crowd increased in front of them on Twenty-eighth street, until it was very dense, and there was a company deployed across the street to push them back. They marched up in front, with arms port, and marched up against the crowd, in order to push them back, but it was too dense, they could not do it. They retreated back a step or two, and charged bayonet. I was up on the hill, about two or three rods up on the hill, so that I could not hear any orders given of anything of that kind--I could only see their movements. I could see all their movements well. They attempted to charge bayonets, walked up slowly, got nearer and closer every moment, until the bayonets began to infringe on the crowd. Then one of the crowd got hold of a bayonet, and tried to pull the musket from the soldier. He jerked it from him, and he then gave him a sort of a push, and knocked him, I do not know which. Right immediately back of them, I saw a man draw out a pistol, and shoot right into the crowd. At the same time, there was two or three other pistol shots heard at different points. Almost simultaneously, we had a scattering fire from the soldiery, directed mostly right up on the hill towards where our troops were lying. Q. Hid you hear any order to fire given? A. I did not. Q. How close were you? A. About three rods off, at least. I could not have heard an order to fire. There was a good deal of noise and confusion. Q. How many were wounded in the conflict? A. I really don't know. I saw about fifteen or sixteen that were wounded, around on the hill where we were standing. I saw about that many there. There was one of the soldiers that was killed, shot through the head, twenty or thirty feet off, and when I went to him he was dead--a soldier of the Nineteenth regiment. I thought it was one of our own men. He was dead when we reached him. It was not one of our men, but the Nineteenth regiment, that was lying on our right and front. There was a very heavy volley of stones thrown into the soldiers previous to the fire. Q. You were surgeon of the Fourteenth? A. I was surgeon of the Fourteenth regiment. Q. It was commanded by ---- A. Colonel Gray. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know whether this soldier was killed by a shot fired from the mob or not? A. It was not a pistol shot, I know that from the character of the wound. By Senator Reyburn: Q. He was not one of the soldiers who put the mob back? A. No, sir; he was one of the soldiers on the hill. They were facing towards the hill, and there was a great many of the mob that were there on the side of the hill, between the other soldiers, before us and Twenty-eighth street--a dense mass of them there. Q. Was he standing in his command? A. He was away from his command. He was not exactly in the crowd--the crowd was below him. Q. He was not with his command? A. Was not standing in rank at the time. Q. How far away from his command? A. About a rod from where the command was at the time. There was one or two companies on the hill in the same line with the others, and then two or more--three rods down, in front, near the hospital grounds. Had he been down with his command he would not have been shot--the shooting was higher. Q. Was he back of his command? A. As I say, his command was, at the time--some of the companies were--down near the railroad tracks, and there was a couple of companies up to the right of our regiment, three rods back of them on the hill, and it was between two--he was just between the two. Q. Was he immediately behind any particular company, close---- A. He was some little distance to the right. Q. Was he a non-commissioned officer, do you know? A. No, sir; he was a private. * * * * * Doctor John S. Dixon, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 273 Penn avenue. Q. Practicing physician? A. Yes, sir; for ten years, in the city of Pittsburgh. Q. State what knowledge you have of the riot, and what was done to suppress it? A. The first part I took in any suppressing the riot--on Sunday I stayed at home, thought I might be needed, and that that was the best place for me. When it got so bad, and the Union depot had been fired, I thought it was my duty to go to the side of the hill to see what I could do there, and somebody proposed, or said, that as the grain elevator had already been set afire, that the next would be the Duquesne depot, and Mr. Bissell and myself and some others--quite a number started. I think he and I were the only ones of our party that got there. We went down to the Duquesne depot, and met a few persons there we knew and a great many we did not know. I do not know who was in sympathy with us or not. After being there some time, and trying to devise means of preventing the depot from being fired, if an attempt was made, we talked of getting a cable, and shutting off the leading avenues to the depot. There was a man rode up in a buggy and stated there was an attempt to fire the lower end of the depot. We were then at the upper end. We walked down, and there was a party examining a car. I went up and looked into the car, and there was some smoke and embers there, which somebody had scattered before I got there, to prevent it from catching fire. There was a barrel of oil rolled under the car--I do not know for what purpose it was, I suppose to set fire to it, and there was one man in particular by the name of David Carney or Carter. He was arrested afterwards; he was ringleader. I talked to him, and tried to persuade him not to do anything of the kind. He said he had been up all day at the fire above, and that he was one of the advance to set fire to the Duquesne depot. I asked him where he was from. He told me he was first an engineer on the Oil City railroad, and then he said he was from Ohio, then he told me he was from Greene county. He was so drunk and so excited and wild, with the burning, that he didn't know what he was talking about. He was bound to do mischief, and we talked to him one after the other, trying to persuade him, while one was holding him in control, and the party, the rest of the gentlemen, were interested in protecting the depot. They talked to a crowd, trying to persuade the people that lived there, if the Duquesne depot was fired, the whole lower part of the town would be burned, that the fire department were trying to save property on Wilder street on the hill, and that there would be several squares of valuable property destroyed if this depot was set on fire, as it is a mere shell, an old frame building, and very large. This man who was a ringleader of them, he said he didn't care a damn; he said that the property holders would have to pay for it, and the rich would have to pay for it, and he was a friend of the workingman. I told him if he would burn this property the working people, so many of them, would be burned out of house and home. He said there would be good come of it, at any rate, and that he was bound to burn that, and that they would burn the Connellsville depot, and that they would burn the bridges, and then they didn't care a damn what became of the rest of the town. I told him he had better not do that, that it was a very bad thing to do. Mr. Bissell told him, to try and keep him under control, that he had sent for policemen. The policemen came and I made information against him, and as soon as a couple of policemen nabbed him he wilted right away. He was very willing to be marched off to the lock-up. In his testimony at court, he said that he had arrived in the city Saturday afternoon, at two o'clock, from the oil regions, that he had been working that summer on his father's farm, some place up there, I have forgotten where he said--at some place, Parker, Oil City--had been working there during the summer, and heard there was going to be some fun down in Harrisburg, and he was coming down to have some of it, and that he had gotten drunk and didn't know what he was doing--that was according to his own testimony in the criminal court. He was convicted, I believe, for something like four years, that was about the total of my experience. I made an information against him. Q. How did you learn his name? A. I asked his name at the time, and he told me. He gave me two or three names, but his right name is either Carney or Carter. He gave one four or five days afterwards, at municipal hall, and at first he denied that he was the man at all--he never had seen me. Said he had been arrested on the south side for drunkenness, but he was recognized by Bissell and others, and he owned up he had been there. His name is Carney _alias_ Carter. * * * * * Alexander King, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you live? A. Pittsburgh, Nineteenth ward. Q. What is your business here? A. Merchant. Q. In what kind of mercantile business are you engaged? A. In glass material. I am not doing much now--winding up. Q. Employ a large number of men? A. No, sir; we have only two. I have been manufacturing heretofore, and have had quite a lot of them in a glass manufactory. Q. You may go on and state what you desire to on the subject? A. I noticed a few days ago, in an evening paper, a statement made by Sheriff Fife, or said to have been by him--of course, I do not know, I only read it in the papers--that I had offered the rioters a thousand barrels of flour. Q. That was in Sheriff Fife's statement? A. You gentlemen know, of course, what he did say. It was in the evening papers. It is altogether unfounded; it was neither flour nor money, nor have I ever offered nor paid one cent, or spoken to anybody on the subject. It is utterly without foundation. Q. What you desire is to correct---- A. Any impression of that kind. Q. And if such statements were made by the crowd, they were made without authority? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. Was it not an assertion made here that that was the strikers this side, not the rioters? A. The strikers. The crowd there claimed that the citizens were in sympathy with them, and they, too, had offered them a thousand barrels of flour. I think that was mentioned in the _Chronicle_. I should just say, I had never seen one of the strikers or rioters until I saw one of them in July--that is the first I ever saw any of them. * * * * * C. L. Jackson, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 202 Juniata street, Allegheny. Q. What is your business? A. Engineer of the Fort Wayne railroad. Q. Were you an engineer of that road in July last? A. I was. Q. State, Mr. Jackson, whether you had any knowledge of any pre-arranged plan among the railroad employés to strike? A. I had not. Q. Before the day of the 19th of July? A. I had not. The first time I heard of it I came in in the evening at nine-twenty, Friday evening. I heard that they were stopping the trains from coming out. Q. You came in from the west on Friday evening? A. Yes, sir. Q. That was the first you knew anything about it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you know anything about the organization of the Trainmen's Union? A. Yes, sir. Q. For what class of employés was that organized? A. Brakesmen and firemen. Q. Conductors? A. Conductors. Q. Engineers, too? A. Engineers, I think. Q. What was the purpose and object of that union? A. Indeed, I could not say. Q. Were you connected with it? A. No, sir. Q. Don't belong to it? A. No, sir. Q. Had you any talk with men that did belong to it? A. No, sir. Q. Were you solicited by other employés to join it? A. Yes; I was asked to join it. Q. What reasons did they give--what inducements did they hold out for your joining it? A. Indeed, I hardly know what they were. Q. Who asked you to join it? A. Conductors. Q. What persons? A. Indeed, I could not say. Q. Conductors asked you to join it? A. Yes, sir. Q. What did they say was the object of the union? A. They did not say. Q. Didn't they give you any object? A. Didn't give me any information. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did they say to you how much advantage it would be to you to join it? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was it secret? A. Yes; I believe it was. Q. You know how extensive it was? A. No, sir; I do not. Q. Don't you know how many lodges there were organized? A. Lodges organized all over the country, I think. Q. You say you knew nothing of any pre-arranged plan for a strike? A. No, sir. Q. Did you go out again after coming in on Friday night? A. No, sir; not until after it was settled. Q. And remained in the city of Allegheny all the time? A. Yes, sir; I was over Sunday afternoon. Q. Were you over Saturday to Pittsburgh? A. I came over Saturday about two-thirty, or near two-thirty to three o'clock. Q. Where did you go Friday night? A. During the night I stayed in about two squares of home--Washington avenue, there. Q. With the crowd? A. There was a crowd around there. There was not very many. Q. What class of men--railroad employés? A. There was very few railroad men there. Q. What were you staying there for? A. I thought it was best to stay there. I heard of the trouble over in the city here, and I thought I would not come over, and that the best place to stay was at home. Q. You were not at home? A. Within two squares of home. Q. How many men were there with you? A. I suppose the forepart of the evening there was a good many men around there. Q. How many would you judge? A. I suppose maybe fifty or hundred; but they scattered away. Q. All railroad men? A. No, sir. Q. What other men were there, besides railroad employés? A. There was men that lived around there. Q. And you remained there all night? A. I remained there. I stayed there until about two o'clock in the morning. Q. What was the object of that meeting? A. There was no meeting. Q. About fifty of you together. Would not you call that a meeting? A. There was only two or three of us at seven or eight o'clock. Q. What was the purposes or the objects of the coming there? A. The men were just waiting. They saw the fire over at Pittsburgh. Q. Was there any fire Friday night? A. This was Saturday night. Q. Friday night, you said? A. I went right home Friday night. Q. And stayed at home? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then it was Saturday night you spoke of the coming there? A. Yes, sir. Q. Sunday morning, where were you? A. I did not get up at all until about ten o'clock. Q. What time did you come over to the depot? A. I came over about half-past two. Q. How long did you remain at Union depot? A. About ten or fifteen minutes. Q. Did you come up to Twenty-fifth street? A. No, sir. Q. Where did you go from Union depot? A. I came down Smithfield street, and went over the bridge to Allegheny again. Q. You remained with this crowd until two o'clock, that you have spoken of? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where were you during the day on Sunday? A. Sunday night came over to the city, between one and two o'clock on Sunday. Q. Go up to the ground? A. I was over at the Union depot. I was up on the hill side. Q. How large a crowd was engaged in burning and plundering? A. I do not know. I could see eighteen or twenty in the crowd. Q. Did you see any railroad men among them? A. I did not see a railroad man. Q. Did you know any of the men? A. I know some of them. Q. Who were they? A. I thought you asked me if I knew any of the railroad men--no, I did not know the men there. Q. Did you know any of the men you saw there? A. No. Q. How long have you been working on the railroad? A. About seventeen years. Q. Then you knew most of the men who were working on railroads leading out of Pittsburgh, did you not? A. I did not know a very few of them, except on our own road. Q. Except on the Fort Wayne road? A. I have stopped right there. Q. You know nothing of any pre-arranged plan among the men for a strike? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. You belong to the Engineers' Brotherhood? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there anything talked of in that organization of strikes? A. No, sir; there was not. Q. Was there anything communicated from the Trainmen's Union to the Engineers' Brotherhood of a strike? A. Not that I know of. Q. If you know anything of the origin or the cause of the strike, I wish you to state it to us fully? A. All I know about it, is the reduction of the wages ten per cent. Q. That you think was the cause of it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any order on the Fort Wayne road for running double-headers? A. No, sir. Q. Then the only thing that they had to complain of on the Fort Wayne and Chicago road, was the ten per cent. reduction, was it? A. Yes, sir. Q. When did that take effect? A. I think it was on the 1st of July. I could not say certain. By Mr. Means: Q. Was there a necessity to run double-headers on the Fort Wayne and Chicago road, if they want to do it? A. I do not know. I guess there is about as much necessity as there is on the Central road, if they wanted to do it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Are double-headers used as a general thing where there are heavy grades? A. Not on our road, there ain't. Q. You have no very heavy grades on the Fort Wayne road? A. We pull seventeen cars as our load. Q. Don't you know, as a railroad man, that double-headers are used generally on heavy grades, if at all? A. I know they are used on the Pennsylvania road. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were there any other complaints or grievances by the men of that road? A. Indeed, I can't say that there was. Q. Have you ever heard? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is there any other secret organization of railroad men, besides the Engineers' Brotherhood, that you know of? A. No, sir. Q. Are you at liberty to state the object of the Engineers' Brotherhood? A. It is a more beneficial thing than anything else. Q. The object of that association is not to control railroad companies, is it? A. No, sir. Q. Simply for their own benefit? A. Benefit; yes, sir. Q. During the trouble at the outer depot, or on the Fort Wayne, did you know of any armed force of railroad men that were prepared to protect any trains from coming into the city of Pittsburgh that had troops on? A. I know there was a lot of them went to get some guns. Went down to the lower end of the yard. Q. Railroad men? A. I could say I did not see that. I saw a crowd about two squares off from our house. I could see them move down the track. I understood afterwards that was who they were. Q. In your conversation with railroad men of the Pennsylvania Central, did you learn what their grievances were? A. No; not particularly. Q. Did they not complain of double-headers? A. Yes; I believe there was a complaint of double-headers. Q. Anything else? A. Indeed, I could not say that there was. Q. On your road it was on account of reduction of wages, was it, that they struck? A. I think that is what it was. Q. Are you acquainted with Bob Ammon? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you receive any orders from him? A. No, sir. Q. During the strike? A. Never saw him during the strike. Q. Did you assist the railroad men in protecting the property of the company? A. I did, sir. Q. Help to guard it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Against the mob? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any violence used to prevent the running of trains that you know of? A. Not as I know of. Q. No threats made? A. No, sir; I didn't hear any. Q. Were you on duty during the riots--were you at work, or did you run your engines during the troubles? A. I would if they had wanted me to. Q. If the company wanted you to? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you assist the strikers in running the cars down out of danger? A. I was over at the city the afternoon they were taken out. Q. Take any of the cars out yourself? A. No, sir. Q. Did you run any engine during that time--from Thursday until Monday? A. No, sir. Q. Were you called on by the railroad officials? A. No, sir. Q. Or by Bob Ammon? A. No, sir. Q. You are still in the employment of the road? A. Yes, sir. At this point the committee adjourned until three o'clock, this afternoon. PITTSBURGH, _Saturday, February 23, 1878_. The committee met at three o'clock, pursuant to adjournment, Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present. * * * * * William W. Thompson, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Fourth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business? A. Attorney. Q. State, Mr. Thompson, what knowledge you have of the riots and means taken to suppress--I do not know the fact that you are called to prove particularly, but go on and state it? A. I just say this: That during the time of the riots, I was chairman of the police committee of the city of Pittsburgh, and that on the evening of Saturday, the 21st of July, I was up at city hall. The mayor had called a special meeting in order to enable him to employ additional police, and he employed the policemen round about the city hall at that time to deliver the notices, and we had a meeting on Sunday morning, at ten o'clock, and authorized the mayor to employ as many additional policemen as he deemed necessary for the emergency. That was all that the police committee had authority to stop. Q. What time was that meeting? A. On Sunday, the 22d of July, at ten o'clock. Q. You then authorized him to employ as many police as he deemed necessary? A. Yes; for the emergency that was all we could do. Afterwards that evening I was at city hall, and Colonel Howard--I do not remember the number of his regiment-- Q. The Nineteenth, I believe? A. I think it was the Nineteenth--asked me to call a meeting of the councils. At that time, on account of the absence of Negley, I was president of common council, and at his instance I called a meeting of the common council, and also issued a call, in the name of Mr. Aiken, president of the select council, for a meeting of the select council the next morning at ten o'clock, for the meeting to authorize the payment of any expenses that might be necessary for the purpose of suppressing the riot. We had a meeting next morning, at ten o'clock, and authorized the payment of whatever expenses were necessary for that purpose. Q. Did the mayor increase his police force after that, to your knowledge? A. I know before that time the policemen had been reduced, on account of want of appropriation--had been reduced one half--and he sent out notices for all the discharged policemen to come in and be sworn in as additional policemen. That was Saturday, and on Sunday morning there were some of them there, but not many of them. There were a good many of the police refused to serve on account of being employed for an emergency. They said if they were to be employed for the balance of the year they would serve, but if they were to be employed for a few days, to go into this fight, they would not act. That evening--that Sunday evening--there were several residents down in the Fourth ward, in the neighborhood of the Duquesne depot, employed a force to guard the Duquesne depot there that night. It was said there was going to be an attack on it, and they had a guard around it to protect it that night--to prevent the rioters from setting it on fire. There were two men arrested for making an attempt to burn it. I believe they were tried and convicted afterwards for attempted arson. Q. Was there any disposition on the part of either branch to employ all the force required in the city to suppress the riot? A. That whole matter rested with the police committee, and the vote of the police committee was unanimous authorizing the mayor to employ as many men as he deemed necessary. There was no opposition. We held a joint session Monday morning for the purpose of authorizing the payment of all expenses necessary for that purpose. My recollection for that purpose has been paid without any objection that I know of. * * * * * E. P. Jones, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In the Thirteenth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business? A. Attorney. Q. I do not know the fact you are called upon to prove, but if you will just go on and state it---- A. I hardly know myself. I saw a good deal of the riot, but I think some one mentioned to me that it was with reference to the circumstances that I saw Saturday night. I rode past the round-house between nine and ten o'clock, on Saturday night. Q. What time? A. Between nine and ten o'clock. When I got to the round-house, and was just passing it, there was a two horse carriage drove up. It stopped, or was stopped, just when I was there, and they had something in the carriage that they delivered to the crowd, taking the articles from under the seats, and as soon as they delivered them to the crowd, the whole crowd burst in one applause and hurrah. I presume, too, without knowing the fact--I did not see the articles--but I thought they were ammunition and arms. I went on, after that. There was a great crowd of people there, and I rode by way of Liberty street from that point down to the depot. Every avenue leading on Liberty street, and to the round-house, were crowded with people going that way. They were all in a great hurry. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You did not see what was in the carriage? A. No; I could not say that I saw the articles, positively. I happened to mention that circumstance, and some one---- Q. Did you hear in the crowd anything expressive of what it was? A. Nothing but applause. They received whatever there was there, with great applause and excitement. I saw the burning on Sunday. Q. Do you know who drove the carriage? A. No, sir; the driver was sitting up in one of those high sitting carriages--a two horse carriage. It stopped right at the round-house, in the midst of the crowd, and the articles, whatever they were, were delivered. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you know the carriage? A. No, sir; it appeared to be a hired carriage. I am satisfied of that. Q. Belonging to---- A. I would take it that it was one of those livery stable rigs. Q. A hack? A. Yes, one of those carriages. It was not a private carriage. I do not know any other facts. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where were you during Sunday, during the burning of the property there and rioting? A. I was on the hill--I was on Grant street, and different places during the day. Went to church in the morning, and then in the afternoon I was among the rioters. Q. Were you near the scene of the riot? A. Yes, sir. Q. What kind of people appeared to be engaged in this riot? A. They appeared to be foreigners, and I must say that looking at them, and being among them, I could not recognize one face. Q. You speak of foreigners. You mean not living in this vicinity? A. Yes, sir; and I saw some Germans, but the burners were Irish--a few negroes, but very few. Q. Did you have any conversation with many of those people? A. Yes; talked with them some. Q. Did you remonstrate with any of them for the rioting? A. Yes; talked of the impropriety of what they were doing. I was stationed at the last part of the riot at Grant street, when the elevator was burning. There were a great many there. I had some talk with people there. I was struck by one--it was an Irishman that struck me. Q. How did it happen--how did he come to strike you? A. I was just in the street there, and he struck me. Q. Without any provocation? A. Without any provocation at all. Q. What did he say? A. He damned me. Q. Give any reasons for striking you? A. No reasons at all. Q. Was it for remonstrating with him? A. No; I was not talking with him. I was standing in the street, talking to another man, and he came along, and I believe he jostled against somebody, and his hat went off, and I heard him command some one to take up his hat, and I paid no attention to it. The gent I was talking to, said we had better get away from here. He stepped in the street and went away, and this fellow made a pitch at me, and struck me. Q. Without assigning any reason? A. He says, "Damn you, pick up that hat, or I will make you do it." Q. Did you pick it up? A. No; I did not. After he struck me, I knocked him down, and kicked him twice. I struck him. Knocked him down, and kicked him twice, and wheeled right in the crowd and remained there, and did not go away. * * * * * Henry Warner, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence? A. Allegheny City. Q. And official position? A. Comptroller of Allegheny City. Q. You may just go on and state the facts. A. My testimony will bear entirely on the restoration of order and closing scenes of the riot. I will state that on Saturday, the day the riot broke out, I left my office here, at fifteen minutes after five o'clock in the evening, and took the train to a place I was boarding at, in the country, with my family. I did not hear before I left the office, nor hear on the train, one word of any disturbance that had taken place on the Pennsylvania railroad. I knew that there had been a strike. I knew that the trains were prevented from running by the strikers, but I did not know of any overt act of violence having been committed, either by the public authorities or the strikers. There is no telegraphic communication with the place I was boarding at, and on Sabbath day, late in the day, rumors commenced to circulate throughout the country of the scenes that were occurring in the city, and when the night was pretty far advanced, the light from the burning could be seen at that distance, over twelve miles--the glare in the sky. I made arrangements with some persons, thinking that, probably, the train might be detained at Little Washington, and not come in. I made arrangements to come with some other gentlemen by private conveyance, but the train came along that day, and I arrived at my office on Monday at half past eight o'clock. The first message I received was from Mayor McCarthy to come to his office without delay, and I took one of the county commissioners and started for his office. I had no opportunity of learning the extent of the disaster that had occurred. I met him on the corner of Fifth and Smithfield. He appeared to me to have been coming up in this direction. As soon as he saw me, he hallooed me, and said that the Philadelphia military had been driven from the city, and had taken refuge at the Allegheny county work-house, and the authorities had refused to provide them with victuals, and requested me to order the authorities at the work-house to provide the soldiers with something to eat. Mr. Begard and I--Mr. Begard is the county commissioner--started for the Western Union telegraph office, and at my request, the telegraph company put one of their lines--gave me the use of one of their lines to communicate as long and much as I wished. The nearest telegraph station to the work-house was a mile and a half away from the work-house. The operator tried his line, and found that they were down, and reported the fact, and stated, that probably if I would go to Allegheny City, and the West Penn station, that probably I would get communication there. I went over to the West Penn station, and the proprietor there tried the lines also, and his lines were down--could not get any communication. He then advised me to go to the transfer station of the West Penn railroad, about three quarters of a mile out, and probably I could get communication there. When I went out there, we got telegraphic communication, and discovered that the soldiers were all loaded on cars, and were then on their way to Blairsville. On my return to the Allegheny depot, I met one of the soldiers of the Philadelphia command, who had straggled away from his regiment, and who was in citizen's dress. Some citizens called my attention to the man, and said that he was eager for protection, that he was in fear of personal danger, and they requested that I would take charge of him and do something for him. I told him the circumstances, where his command had been shipped to, and went to one of the officials of the West Penn railroad, and got him transportation on the first line that left the depot. I took a card out of my pocket, and directed it to the commanding officer, requesting him to come back with his command to the work-house, and that he would be provisioned there and be taken care of. I don't know whether that note ever reached the commanding officer or not. It certainly had no effect. That and the meeting of the committee of safety, in Pittsburgh, on Monday afternoon, in which they requested the prompt coöperation of the county authorities, and especially the use of the means under our control, and restore order, was my first day's work. On Tuesday, at the request of the committee of public safety, I went to Colonel Howe, superintendent Western Union Telegraph Company, and requested him to send a man to Claremont to put the work-house in telegraphic communication with the city, as there were very serious rumors prevailing that the coopers, who were much opposed, in this vicinity, to prison labor, were about to assault the work-house, and probably destroy it. Colonel Rowe did so. He sent his men there, and in less than two hours I had a dispatch from the superintendent of the work-house. The dispatch was to the effect that I should send him out arms and ammunition. Senator McNeil was then in the city, and he and I got a buggy, and went out to the arsenal, stated our case to the commandant of the Allegheny arsenal, and he told us he had authority to issue five hundred stand of arms from the Secretary of War--authority from the Secretary of War to issue five hundred stand of arms to the mayor of Allegheny City. As the mayor of Allegheny had only drawn four hundred, he had one hundred left, and suggested that we should get an order for the balance. We took a flour wagon over to the arsenal. The mayor of Allegheny told McNeil, and some citizens also told us, that we could not possibly get away from the arsenal with arms and ammunition, as we should be watched, and that all avenues leading to and from the city were carefully guarded by the rioters. We got one hundred stand of arms from the arsenal, five thousand rounds of ammunition, and loaded it in our flour wagon, and, with a single driver, and McNeil and myself in the buggy, took them to the Allegheny work-house, a distance of eight miles, by country roads. We were not misled nor questioned by any person. At the time we left the arsenal, the commandant showed us out a private entrance. I might state here that the superintendent of the work-house proposed to defend that institution with the employés of the institution, and with some trusty criminals that he had in charge. He thought that if he had the arms and ammunition he would be perfectly safe. We remained all night at the work-house, and on Wednesday morning instructed the sheriff of the county--the county commissioner and myself, instructed the sheriff of the county, in view of the fact that the railroad officials had appeared to have abandoned their property entirely, to immediately throw a guard of men of not less than one hundred around all the burned district to protect what remaining property was on the ground, scrap iron, &c., and it was rumored that a car load of bullion had been melted and run into the debris, and the sheriff immediately did so. We also called into our aid--although we were advised that it was out of our jurisdiction--that is, there appeared to be no person to undertake these things--we called into our aid the county detective, and instructed him to employ as many detectives, and as many wagons as he could possibly use, and to hunt for and restore the stolen property that had been taken away, and to bring it to a warehouse that we rented on Liberty street--a large warehouse for the purpose, and also put notices--had notices inserted in all the papers, morning and evening, directing any persons who had any property in their possession that had been taken during the riot to deliver it to those detectives, or at that warehouse. A very large amount of property was recovered--property of all descriptions, and under an arrangement with the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, as this property was nearly all theirs and taken from their cars, they were delivered over to the officials of the railroad company, and their receipts were taken for the same. That covers a period of probably two weeks, and various instances happened in regard to that property that would scarcely be necessary for me to repeat. Some of them were very curious. A great deal of the property was voluntarily brought back, and the excuse was given that, as it seemed to be a general thing, and as every person was taking property, thought that that property, a barrel of flour, or a ham, or box of cigars, or whatever it may be, might as well be taken by them as be lost. I had a conversation with the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company a few days after that--Colonel Thomas A. Scott--and an arrangement was entered into in regard to those losses--in regard to an account being taken of them, and to have them as definitely settled as possible. The county commissioners and myself appointed a commission, composed of the fire marshal of Allegheny county, and Robert Thorn, an experienced insurance adjuster, and Mr. Trimble, an experienced carpenter, to go upon the ground and thoroughly investigate any claims for loss or damage, which they did, and I have in my office now over one hundred and sixty-nine adjusted claims; that is, claims that were settled--the amount settled by this commission. Colonel Scott was to investigate the losses of freights, which would take a very considerable time, and obtain such proofs as were in the possession of the railroad company in regard to the losses; and the estimated value of the goods that were returned to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company could not have been much short of sixty thousand dollars, at first cost--the cost to the owners. They were disposed of by auction, many of them being broken packages, and much of the goods being such as would spoil by being kept on hand. We also appointed a commission, composed of three experienced locomotive and car builders, to go upon the ground and carefully estimate the damage that was done to locomotives and cars. I have also that report on file in my office; and after a period of about four weeks we suspended, as the civil officers--as the financial officers really had no jurisdiction in thosematters--suspended all operations in that line, and handed it over to the civil authorities of the county. I may say here, in addition to that, that we considered, as financial officers of the county, that no expense should be spared nor efforts spared to make restitution, and return all the property it was possible to get hold of. A great deal of property was returned to private individuals, besides that that was returned to the railroad company. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the amount of losses adjusted by the two commissions? A. The amount that was adjusted of strictly private property, that has been finished by the fire marshall's commission, as we call it, has been fixed at about $160,000, in round figures. The locomotive engineers' report---- By Senator Reyburn: Q. Let me understand. What do you mean by strictly private property, does that include furniture? A. No; that includes houses that were burned, and furniture destroyed. Q. Any railroad property? A. No railroad property. I will also state that there was some claims of that nature, that the parties who had the claims refused to present them to the commission, and have them adjusted by the commission. A notable instance of that kind is the Pittsburgh elevator. Their claim for loss is above, I believe, $200,000, alone. Some person will come along with a claim for a suit of clothes, or something of that kind, that was lost in a hotel, or in some house. The commissions reported in regard to locomotive property--railroad property. I considered it private, and have not given the figures to the public. Q. Have you any estimate of the loss of freight? A. We have no authentic estimate. I wrote to Colonel Scott in regard to that before I published my annual report, and got no reply, but I understood that the matter was in the hands of a gentleman in Altoona, who had not got through with it. I want to impress the committee with the fact that every effort was made to make restitution. * * * * * James Little, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Twenty-first ward, city of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your business? A. Wholesale liquor. Q. I believe you are called to give us some information as to what was done to suppress the riot on Sunday night? A. The trouble is to know where to begin and not detain you with unnecessary ideas. I came in on Sabbath morning, when I heard of it. As I came down street, William Smith, the pipeman, proposed we would hold a meeting, and I went down street, and as I went down every prominent man I met I announced it to them, and went on down at the meeting--down at the old market-house. Q. Citizens' meeting? A. Citizens' meeting, Sunday. When the meeting was called to order, James Parke was called to the chair, and he assumed to run the whole meeting. He didn't want any one else to speak but himself, and he had been managing the strikers for twenty-five years, and cut me out entirely, and I felt, perhaps, a little personal disgust with how it was managed. I went up to the depot. Citizens came to me and pleaded with me to take part. I went among the railroad men I knew, and asked, Where are the leaders--where is the man that has this thing in charge, where can we go to get parties to prevail on them to stop? They would say, That man over there, pointing to some man; and the first answer he would give would be a rebuff, very harsh generally. I would tell them, That is no use--I don't want to be treated in that way. This thing is disgracing and injuring you and all of us. I treated them as railroad men. Railroad men would send me to those parties. They were invariably strangers. Those that took command were men that were not known here--that is, gave the hints to stand along and managed the guards that were keeping the citizens back that were interfering with them firing the cars. Q. Railroad men seemed to know who they were? A. Railroad men knew who they were. At first they denied me any conversation, then I would get and talk with them, and after awhile they would say. So far as I am concerned we will consent to have the thing stopped. Then here was a crowd that I did see some among--I knew the faces of a large number--that would not permit the fire to stop. Told them to burn, apparently, through spite they had of the employers. About the time the fire got round to Seventh street, they had exhausted the line of railroad there--it goes into the tunnel--and we heard the remark, "Now for the point depot." They were quite drunk. There was a car of whisky behind the elevator--they had broken open the car--high wines--and it was perhaps the saving of any further destruction--had made them dead drunk. We gathered up five or six and started with them, explaining to them what districts would be burned, if they didn't furnish assistance. One or two men set fire to cars and in a short time we prevailed on the citizens. I made a speech on a barrel, and we found we had backing enough to call in the police officers and have one of the men arrested, and to stop the riot there. They made declarations that have come before the courts here--that the attorney who has been attending to these courts will recollect--how they were going to proceed to burn the railroad property on the south side. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did these men tell you how they were going to proceed? A. They said they would not stop until they would burn the cars that were standing on the south side, and the different depots--they were going to burn these depots, and so forth. Some of them made remarks, and some of them did not, on that question. I was treated with perfect respect--announced myself, and we discussed it there. I was one of those unfortunate men that thought I could stop that riot with fifty men. Q. You mean by remonstrances? A. By talking, not by force. Q. Pick handle persuasion? A. No; white handkerchief. Go right at it, and when a man won't submit to be arrested, try to put him out of the way; if we had to hurt him, hurt him. I served a short time in the military, and we done things very quick in that way there. We would try to handle men gently, and if he would not submit, he was handled roughly. By Mr. Englebert: Q. What you would call knock down arguments? A. There was no chance for white handkerchief nor pick handle arguments there. The crowd was too close. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you have quelled the disturbance without the use of fire arms? A. No, sir; not at all. Perhaps, without the use of them. I would think that, if they had seen men determined to do their work, there would be no necessity for any trouble. Q. The idea was to be prepared, in case there was a necessity for using fire arms. A. I, unfortunately, employed in the army, on police duty, through the country, and would arrest many a man who shot a dozen, and you come at them quietly and determined, and they would surrender. Q. You thought it was necessary to use a show of force and resolution? A. Yes; and I consider State officers and all were interested by "don't hurt anybody," that that idea got through the crowd, and they were confident that there was nobody going to be hurt. Q. Do you know of anybody waiting upon the city authorities? A. I was not connected with that part. I had connection with the mayor's proceeding, to some extent, as a councilor. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What efforts did he make? A. He sent for some of the leading councilmen, and called a meeting of the council, and we met in general session, and resolved that we would sustain the mayor in paying any expense that he would incur. Q. When was that? A. I think on Monday. Q. After the riot? A. They supposed the riot was still unquelled. Q. What I mean is, before the breaking out of the riot--before Saturday night--during Thursday and Friday--was there any steps taken before any consultations with the councilmen? A. There was, to some extent, but in the shape of a meeting of council. Q. Was there any talk about calling a meeting, and it would be necessary to take means to suppress any disturbance that might grow out of it? A. There was, up to the time the county and the military took hold. Then it looked as if the force was immense to a great many--the military force being called out--they had called on them, and the exertions, perhaps, relaxed on the part of the city authorities. Q. What seemed to animate these men among this crowd? A. These men that stood back and threatened to shoot any man that would interfere--was a man that appeared to be animated by a spirit of opposition to the railroad--to burn out the railroad--and those that were doing the burning were parties that apparently acted under this direction and were generally strangers that none of us could recognize. On the other hand, it was citizens of Harrisburg that was generally doing the wrecking and carrying away goods. That is as near as I can judge from my connection with them, and I mingled right among them. Q. Were you among them there Thursday or Friday--have you any knowledge? A. The first that surprised me in the transactions--I went up to the Union depot on--I think it was Saturday, and the military there--some of the companies--were marched out to go to East Liberty, and instead of ridding the crowd away, they bundled through the crowd, so that they could hardly hold ranks--got out as best they could. I was surprised at it. I thought there was no disposition shown by the military to disperse these crowds. Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to the riot, at all? A. Oh, yes. Q. From personal knowledge? A. Yes; I suppose I have as good a knowledge of that as most people, because you mingled with railroad men and heard them talk. They were clamoring on account of the reduction of wages and the double-headers. These two were the arguments they plead their cases on. As a general thing they had a good deal of sympathy, I think. Q. What do you mean by sympathy? A. They represented their case so that a great many people thought that they were imposed on. Q. What cause did they assign--a reduction in wages? A. The reduction in wages was such that, for instance, one brakesman I know to be of good character, he had his last check or warrant, showing that eighteen dollars and some cents was all he could make during the month. His argument was in this shape: Brakesmen would not go out for a day or so, and they could not make a living at the wages they paid; that too many of them were employed. He did not use that argument, but his argument went to show that there was too many of them employed, and that they could not get steady work, and it was still being cut down lower. That was the argument of one man, as a sample. Q. He seemed to express the ideas of all of them--he was a man of intelligence? A. He was a very nice man, a man I have known for some time. I think he has a wife and some children. He pulled out his warrant and showed me, as a part of his argument. Q. He only received eighteen dollars a month? A. Only got in time enough to make that. While the railroad men stood in the position of defending themselves, they had a great many friends, until it got into the shape of a riot, and then people began to complain. They were uneasy, and saw that things were changed. Q. Have you any other information on that subject--the cause, which is, as you have expressed, this man's opinion? A. No other argument that was used in regard to the double-headers. They were on these heavy trains, with only the same number of brakemen as on a single train, and it was so hard to work, and at the same time it was throwing a part of them out of work, and making their time so much less to the men--the same as that man described--he only made eighteen dollars. Numbers of them talked. There was a neighborhood handy to me, where railroad men live, and I often dropped in with them, and talked with them to see what their views are during the week, and that was a leading argument among the common men. I can explain that almost as fully as a road man. I am so familiar with that--any question you wish to ask about it. Double-header is where there is a locomotive put to thirty-six cars, and where they will take about half of that with a single one, and then they would put on a crew to break the cars and attend to them--one conductor and one or two brakemen--the same number that was put on a single train, and they would have to do the work of a number of hands, and they objected to that work--was too heavy, with the mountains and the heavy grades, and with the heavy trains, made their breaking so heavy that it was very hard and dangerous. They complained, of the way they were abused by handling these heavy trains. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did the men appear to think that they should be allowed to make ... and higher up, and none of them discharged? A. They argued, that the pay should not be reduced and the labor increased. They talked against these double-headers, the reduction being made on their wages, and their labor increased by doubling up the train, making their labor heavier and those who were doing the work. This is the shape they objected. Q. Did you learn whether it was their idea that they should be getting full time, or were they willing that part should be discharged, and then let them make full time? A. I never heard them express their views on that point, but they complained they were not getting full time. Were standing, waiting for days, looking for a job, and that if they were not there for a moment, they would lose their chance. * * * * * J. L. Kennedy, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where is your residence, Mr. Kennedy? A. Claremont. Q. What is your official business? A. Warden of the county work-house, at present. Q. Were you in July last? A. I was assistant warden at that time. Q. State whether the militia under the command of General Brinton came to the work-house, and what you saw and heard? A. On the Sunday afternoon General Brinton came to the building, about two o'clock, I guess, him and another gentleman from Philadelphia came there in a buggy, and wanted to know if he could put his troops inside. I told him the superintendent was not at home, and I did not feel like them going inside, as they would not be more secure than outside. I advised him to take his men up on the hill in camp. They said they had been driven from the city, and the mob was following them. I told him I did not think there would be much danger in taking the men up on the hill. They would be just as secure. He inquired the way back to Sharpsburg. He had not his troops with him. He was in advance of them. I told him the way to Sharpsburg, and he wanted to know if he could get back without going back on the public road. I told him he could not, unless he would leave his horse there, and walk through the field. He appeared to be very much frightened, and very much demoralized. He started back to meet his troops, and took them upon the hill, and kept them in camp there. The next morning he left, I believe, and put them aboard cars, and took them to Blairsville. In the evening some men came down, and asked if we could give them some provisions. We gave them as much bread as they wanted, and all the meat about the institution. At that time the superintendent came back, and him and I went up, and we saw more bread than the troops had any use for. I believe the poor-house gave them all the coffee they wanted. Q. Did you converse with the troops any? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see them when they marched up? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did they march in regular order? A. Some of them, and some did not--kept straggling up there all the evening, after the main body came through, they kept straggling up all the evening. In fact, the next two days they came there one or two at a time. Some of them had their uniforms on, and several came around with citizen's clothes on. The next day after they left, there were two came there, one of them had been wounded. We took him inside, and had our hospital steward dress his wound, and kept him there until we got transportation for them, and they were sent to Blairsville. Q. Did any of the mob follow them up Sunday? A. No, sir; no person came after them at all. Q. Was there any attack made upon this institution, or threatened? A. It was threatened very strongly, but they never made any attack. Q. What preparations did you make to meet them? A. There had been a lot of arms sent out to us through the county commissioners, and we were prepared to meet any emergency. * * * * * W. G. Johnson, _sworn_: Witness: I do not know that I can give you anything in addition to what you have already had. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. There was information that it was suggested that you might give about something that was done on the south side in the way of protection of the depot or the trains there--of patrolling the approaches to the city on that side. A. The committee of safety on Monday immediately took steps. They organized military force of the citizens. General Negley had already made a start in that direction, and our committee coöperated with him. In fact, he was a member of that committee. He was in continual correspondence with the committee. Quite a number of military organizations were formed under General Negley's command; among others was that of Major Paul. That was a mounted patrol. The safety committee purchased horses and hired horses for some two or three weeks; had them patrol all the highways and streets at all hours of the day and night, and wherever there was any disturbance they were, of course, sent in that direction to see what was necessary to put it down. I suppose what you refer to is over at the Cork Run tunnel. There were no disturbance there, but there were some threatenings of burning of cars in the tunnel. Major Paul visited that point and scoured the whole country. Q. Is that on the Allegheny road? A. No, sir; that is on the Pan Handle. He scoured the country around and found--the only thing he found in that direction in the way of an assemblage was a lot of miners out by Mansfield holding a meeting there. They saw nothing that looked riotous among those miners. They were holding a meeting in regard to the strike at the time. Whether any damage would have arisen to the cars there in Cork Run tunnel, we would see if there were any parties having an eye to it, and Major Paul's command would have kept the post pretty clear. Q. You do not think of anything new, Mr. Johnson, in relation to the organizations. We had a pretty full explanation of the organization by the citizens. A. You have had a pretty full explanation through Mr. Park and Mr. McKune and others. They have testified to the main facts in relation to what the committee did. At the very outset the pledging of these individuals to unlimited amounts to restore peace and order. They have already told you of what the nature of the disquiet was on Monday morning. The streets were crowded to excess, apparently by strangers never seen here before, and it looked very threatening, indeed--very alarming. Every precaution was taken by this committee at the time. They were in session continuously from Monday morning until Saturday night, from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, and sometimes until midnight. We were in correspondence with the Secretary of War, as to ammunition, and got all we wanted--arms and ammunition; in correspondence with Governor Hartranft on his route from the west here. We met him on his arrival. Urged him to remain here, thinking his presence would be of great benefit, but he only consented to remain until three o'clock on the following morning. He remained from eight or nine o'clock until three o'clock the following morning, saying he could do us more good by going to Philadelphia to consult with General Hancock, and he would have sufficient force of military here to restore perfect quiet. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I understood you to say that you organized this citizens' committee--this committee organized of companies--and armed them? A. Yes, sir. Q. How did you arm them? A. We procured arms from the arsenal. Q. Muskets? A. Muskets--rifles--Springfield rifles. Q. What class of men were those you organized into companies? A. Some of them--some members of them--were men who had been out in the last war. Q. Were any of them in those companies among the rioters or part of the rioters? A. Yes; I will explain a little matter of that character. General Negley had his head-quarters in Lafayette hall, and I think it was on Tuesday noon I had left the Chamber of Commerce rooms to go to my dinner, and I noticed a squad of probably sixty men, about as rough looking chaps as I had ever laid eyes on, going through some military motions on Wood street. I saw General Negley on the opposite corner, and I asked him the question whether he was feeding a lot of tramps. We were paying the expense of feeding them. Says he, "You are about right. We are mustering those fellows out." He had taken under his command all that would offer, and he had to sift them out afterwards. He said these he had sifted out, and he was going to muster them out--going to pay them a dollar a piece and tell them "go." The night previous he discovered that some of these men had been among the rioters. They were regular tramps, undoubtedly, and he had these men arrested and sent to the lockup, and found that they had been among the rioters, and these others were undoubtedly tramps of the same character. The city was infested with them at that time. Q. These men had been armed by your committee, without knowing what class of men they were? A. General Negley had placed arms in the hands of the men under his control. Q. Some of them had turned out to be some of the rioters? A. Yes, sir. Q. As soon as it was discovered---- A. As soon as it was discovered, those he knew to be rioters he had arrested, and sent to the lockup. The others were picked out by their appearance, and he had them mustered out. Q. Did you keep any men in these commands you knew were among the rioters? A. None we knew of. General Negley was very particular in regard to them. My own knowledge in reference to tramps was brought out on Sunday, the day of the riot. I wanted to come to town to see what was going on, and my family persuaded me to remain at home for a double reason. They were not very far from the stock-yards, which were threatened by fire, and the hotel out there, and another reason for my remaining at home was the great number of tramps, that for some days before had been coming along the road and getting food. East Liberty was a great camping ground for these tramps. Q. Were there more than the usual number of those tramps? A. A great many more than usual. At that time I did not connect the fact of the unusual number of tramps with the riots. Q. What direction did they go? A. Heading towards the city invariably. * * * * * J. L. Bigham, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I now reside in Allegheny. Q. Are you a member of the National Guard? A. Yes, sir; I am captain of the Nineteenth regiment, commanding company G, of that regiment. Q. Were you with your command on the 21st of July? A. Yes, sir. Q. State what orders you heard given by General Brown, at the transfer station, in reference to the regiments disbanding? A. General Brown came in, I suppose, about eleven o'clock. There was some consultation between him and the colonels--Colonel Howard and Colonel Gray. There was some move talked about. I came down and asked Colonel Howard what was to be done, and he said he didn't know, and in a few moments General Brown came up, and directed him to have his arms and equipments concealed in the building, where the mob would not get them when they came in, and dismiss his men there in the sheds, and directed them to find their way home the best way they could, each man for himself. Q. That was done, was it? A. Yes, sir. Q. What was done by you and by the balance of the regiment as to re-assembling? A. I went home that night. The next morning when I got up--I had breakfast about eight o'clock--everything was on fire then. I got my lieutenant to come out and hunt up some of the men, and sent for my sergeant to have the armory open, and went over to the Union depot to see what was to be done. I saw General Brown there, and asked him if he would allow the regiment to be re-assembled and let us go out to protect the fire department. I got information that the mob had stopped the fire department from work. He says: No, it will exasperate the mob. I saw General Latta, and made the same request of him; he first said our regiment had not behaved well the day before, and there was no use in re-assembling us, and finally he said he would not take the responsibility--refused to allow us to re-assemble and go out. I went from there down to see the adjutant, and told him what occurred, and I understand that he went up by some direction of the colonel, and asked for orders to the same effect. That evening Mayor Philips organized the citizens, and made arrangements to go down and protect one of the lower bridges there. Part of my men were in that, and partly citizens. There were twenty of my muskets used there. I was down at the bridge when Colonel Howard came there, about one o'clock in the morning, and ordered me to re-assemble and report for duty at nine o'clock. I left there, and started men out to order the other men to report, and reported shortly after nine o'clock with a portion of my men, and got the other men gathered by eleven, and we were on duty from that time, continuously, until we were dismissed. Q. Had the regiment re-assembled as a regiment? A. They re-assembled as a regiment on Monday morning, and were used in suppressing several disturbances that occurred on Monday. Q. How many men were together on Monday? A. I suppose about a hundred men. When the regiment came together, Captain McFarland was not with us. He had been assembled earlier than the rest of the regiment, and was sent up to Second avenue park here, where there was some disturbance, and was kept moving about. I, myself, had only about sixteen men. I and a part of Captain Batchelor's company and a part of Captain Archibald's were taken down to Limerick, where there had been an attack made on some cars. We went down there and came back, and when we came back, the regiment was re-assembled as a regiment. The balance of Captain Bachelor's company and Captain Gordon's company. He had been operating by scattered detachments until near two o'clock. Q. You remained here until the arrival of the Governor with troops from the east? A. We remained until I think the night of the 21st of July, when we left for Scranton. Q. How many men did you have when you left for Scranton? A. I do not how many, exactly, sir. I think thirty-six men with me, and I think our companies averaged about that--seven companies on duty. Q. Something over two hundred, then? A. Yes, sir. Q. What does the regiment number when all the men are present? A. We had only six companies, of about thirty-five or thirty-six men. There should be forty men to each company. There were one or two companies that ran about fifty men, but usually the companies did not run over forty. We considered turning out thirty-six men as a pretty full turnout. Q. Were the men obedient--did they perform their duty? A. I had no trouble. None of my men refusing to obey orders. Two or three of them deserted. I had two of them in jail for it afterwards. There was no disobedience of orders. * * * * * Colonel Robert Monroe, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you live, if you please? A. In Allegheny City. Q. What is your business? A. Boiler manufacturer. Q. I do not know what point you are called to testify to, but you may go on and state? A. I could not say because I saw very little of the riot. I was kept down at the Point. My location is at the Point. Q. I presume that it is perhaps best to state to us what was done towards protecting the Duquesne depot? A. I was at the Duquesne depot on Saturday evening. When I first went there, probably, it was four o'clock. Persons that I was acquainted with there, stated there was going to be trouble. People were moving their goods from the houses around the depot. I asked them what the trouble would be, and they said they had been notified to move all their personal effects, as the mob would be down in a short time--to turn out, stating the hour. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did they say who notified them? A. Persons that came down from the upper depot stated they were to burn it at a certain hour, I think five o'clock was the hour. My place of business was located just below it, and I kept at the lower part of the depot. Between five and six o'clock, there were seven or eight persons congregated at the lower part of the depot, trying to break open the depot. They talked as though they were going to set fire to the depot, and also burn up some cars that were across on Water street siding that was there. They broke open a car door and set fire to one of the cars. There were probably five or six of us standing there at the time. Several remonstrated with them for trying to set fire to the cars--objections were made. They had that on fire and it was kicked out. They got a keg of beer from some store or other, and about six or eight of them drank that keg of beer. They tried to start a fire in a second car, and Mr. Reeves, one of the party, told him he would put a ball through the man that put a match to that car. He asked me for a pistol at the time. He said he had none, but he made that remark to frighten them--the men were intoxicated. A number of us agreed to stick together in case any attack was made, that we could assist each other in resisting these drunken men that were trying to burn the depot and the cars. One young man hammered a good deal at the depot door, trying to get the door started to get in, but did not succeed. The crowd continued there probably an hour--from three quarters of an hour to an hour. Some gentlemen. Doctor Dixon among the rest, came down from the upper end of the depot, hearing that we were there, and, as I understand, they arrested the parties that were drinking and threatening the depot with destruction. Q. These men intoxicated? A. Every one of them. Q. Any other facts? A. I do not know of anything. I kept down at the Point all the time. Q. How large was the crowd there; about how many? A. They gathered towards six o'clock--a pretty large crowd--and at the time I allude to when they were trying to burn the cars in the depot, or wanted to burn the depot--the drunken men--about six or eight. They talked very loud. There were but three of us at first, when we were at the lower part of the depot, and stayed there until we got more force. * * * * * John Slagle, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State to the committee where you reside? A. Allegheny City. Q. And your business? A. Business is iron commission merchant, in Pittsburgh. Q. You may state to the committee any facts--any information--you are in possession of, in regard to the riot, and the means used to suppress it, that have not been already fully gone over? A. You have got most of the facts that I am conversant with, I expect, Mr. Chairman. During the week preceding the Sunday of the riots, I had learned, through the papers and by hearsay, that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were going to enforce what was known as the double-header order. I heard of the attack upon Mr. Watt, and the question came up as to what was to be done in reference to it, and on inquiry of some parties, we learned that the railroad company did not suppose it was going to be a very serious strike, or would be very difficult for them to run their trains, as they had a large number of loyal men that would run trains as soon as they issued the order, and the rest would be taken care of. I paid no special attention to the matter, until I heard the military were coming that day. Failing to get their double-header order put into effect by the police, that they had arranged for military, and the excitement began to get up a little; and I remember very well how I felt, for the reason that I had a boy just about the age that boys want to go to such places. He was anxious to go to the scene of the trouble. I charged him that he must not go, and that everybody that went to a place of that sort was a rioter, unless he went there to help put down the strikes, and he had better stay away. As the consequence, I stayed at home, even after the shooting took place that evening. I might say, however, about that, that on Saturday evening I visited the house of my brother, on the hill above, on Centre avenue, and after leaving his house, along about five or six o'clock, to go to my own home, I met some of these soldiers coming, without their guns, on the street. Saw one of them talking to a girl immediately in front of my brother's house, and overheard him say that he had abandoned the field; that the Philadelphia troops had fired on the crowd, and there were a good many people killed and a terrible riot there, and he had abandoned the field, and was going home. I followed to my own home, and stayed there until the citizens were called out, on Sunday at noon, with this exception, that I had watched a little of the operations of what was going on in Allegheny, at the outer depot, and I went that Saturday evening down to the transfer station to see what they were doing there, and found a large number of people--railroad men and others--and in talking with them, I asked what they were doing. They said that they were stopping all trains that came into Allegheny, housing the freights, and seeing that nobody went to Pittsburgh on the passenger trains that had any arms, or was likely to interfere with the strike at the Pennsylvania railroad. One of the men I talked to was a railroad employé, working in the machine shop--the son was a fireman, and the son and father were standing together. Said I, "You do not seem to be among the strikers." "No," he said, "we think it is best to keep off the railroad property in times like this, and we are leaving that to some other fellows." As to my own part, it began on Sunday noon. I was appointed on a committee of twenty-five to see what could be done to stop the burning and riot, and went with the committee to the scene of the fire about one o'clock, and you have heard from Mr. Scoville and others all that Mr. Bennett and Mr. Tuigg, the bishop, and Doctor Donnelly, and Mr. Barr did and said while they were in the railroad yards. I remained in my buggy outside of the railroad yards, and saw a good many people that I knew, and a great many that I did not know, and in answer to a question that was put to me as to what we were doing there, I said these gentlemen that had gone in the yard came there to see if they could not devise some means to stop this burning before there was any further destruction of railroad cars, and especially to save the Union depot. They asked me, "How do you propose to do it?" I stood up in the buggy, and addressed the crowd--told them we wanted to find some of the railroad strikers that could handle the cars, and then we would take them up with citizens to stop the burning. If we could find ten railroaders to handle the cars, we would go into the depot grounds, and stop that fire and save the depot. A fellow on top of the cars says: "You can't do that. We are going to burn clear to the river, and the lower depot as well, before we are done." I looked at the fellow, who was on top of one of the burning cars. They had run it down, and checked the brakes at the side of a freight train, so that the fire would communicate. I had a curiosity to hitch my horse, and climb up and see that fellow. There was three of them. He appeared to be guiding the others, and had charge of the car, and checked it alongside of two other box cars, so that the fire might communicate. He said they were going to burn the whole train--they were going to continue until they burned everything the railroad owned. I got into my buggy and drove a square further toward the round-house, and stopped again and asked the crowd if there was any railroad men who were strikers in that crowd, and at that point a young man came to me in his shirt sleeves, with a handkerchief, says he, "Slagle, you don't remember me. I am a railroader, but not a P.R.R. man." I said, "Can you find any P.R.R. men? They all abandoned the property last night." Says I, "Will you take me to where they can be found?" He said he would, and he jumped in my buggy, and drove me down to Twenty-fourth street. He wouldn't take me any further. Says he, "You stop here, and I will bring them to you." I stopped and sat in my buggy a little while, and, after a while, he came back, and he said he could only find two, but we will go to Twenty-sixth street, and I can find you two or three. I got into the buggy, and drove to Twenty-sixth street, I stopped again at the corner of Twenty-sixth, and he went up toward the railroad, and came back with one man. This man said, "What do you want?" Says I, "We want from ten to twenty railroaders to go to stop this firing before it reaches the depot." Said I, "I don't know you." Says he, "You have got no advantage of me, for I don't know you, and we will go on one condition, that is, I think we can get the men to go on one condition, and that is, that we are protected against arrest for what we have done in the way of striking, for," says he, "we have destroyed no property, and we abandoned it as soon as the mob begun to burn, and we fear we will be arrested, and if you will guarantee us against the arrest, we will arrest the men." I asked him to arrest the men, and I would see about the other. So I took my buggy and drove back, and met some of the other committee coming up--Tuigg, Scoville, Park, and McCune, and others--and we arranged a meeting at Twenty-sixth street, and on the curb-stone we talked it over, and told them we could not guarantee them against arrest, but, if they would come down and help us to put out the fire, and they were arrested, we would go their bail. Three men stepped out, and said they were strikers, and they would go. They started then to find more, and we met again at Twenty-fourth street, I think it was, and had another meeting. At that meeting they arranged to go down to the city hall, and they began to back out a little. At that point I left them, and they arranged with Park and McCune to meet at the city hall, at half past three o'clock, and said they would go with the citizens, and stop the burning. From that point, I had left my young friend, and took the buggy and started, when a fireman says to me, "You are going down town?" Says I, "I guess you are the man I am hunting. We want some one to put out this fire." Says I, "Who are you?" Says he, "I am the chief. I would like to borrow your buggy a little bit. I have got a message to bring men to the elevator." I whipped my horse up a little until we found his own horse, and then he jumped from the buggy. I told him we wanted to get a hose company to go in there, and I thought we could water the fellows off the cars. Says he, "We will get you one, and we will try it." When I got down, he had got a hose company, and started in. They had not thrown long, I think, till somebody cut the hose, and they were backed out, or pushed out of the crowd, and were not allowed to throw water for some cause. This took two hours or more of time, and we came back to a point a short distance above the Union depot, and, while we were conferring with these firemen and some others, a fire was started down below in the back shed. Then I left, and attended this meeting at the city hall. At the city hall you have heard was done there. From there I went to the Duquesne depot, and met this man that Colonel Monroe and Doctor Dixon told you about, and I saw what they were doing. In the meantime, the elevator was burned. I went over to Allegheny, and took some little steps to protect the railroad property at the outer depot and the dispatcher's office. The only point I would like to say anything about after that was this: From that time until the end of the strike, and the trains were running, I was busy every day and every night going back and forth between the railroad employés and officials, and the mayor, and committee of safety. There is one point I have heard much said about, and it is this: I had been in the immediate vicinity of the dispatcher's office in Allegheny, back and forth to see what was going on. I happened to be there about the time that Ross vacated his place, and Ammon took it, and watched a little of the operations by which the trains were run under Ammon's administration, and I saw, with my own eyes, what the trainmen appear very unwilling to testify to, and that was whenever an engine came into that yard it was immediately assailed by from three to twenty men, and the men that were on it were told, called generally by their first name, "You get off, and let that engine be just where she is; this thing has got to be fought out now." Whilst they did not use personal violence in taking a man off a train, I saw a passenger train stand there one hour after it had come away from the Union depot before they could get a crew, for the reason that as fast as they got one fireman on they would intimidate him by threats of violence. It would not be safe for him if he got out of town with the mob and crowd somewhere else, and he had better stay where he was. I have seen three sets of men taken out in an hour before they got enough men to take a passenger train out. I was sent for after the strikers begun to disagree. A man had been displaced from his position there by his fellow strikers, and Ross had been re-instated. It was rumored that man was going to be arrested, that they had a warrant out for him. I was sent for to go to the _Chronicle_ office one day, to know if I would go with Bob Ammon, and see Layng, McCullough, and Thaw, of the railroad. I said I did not want to do so. I didn't want to have anything to do with Ammon; thought he was a bad man; didn't care about it. Ammon had a proposition to make by which he could break the blockade. As a merchant interested in shipping, I agreed to go with Ammon, and I met him at the _Chronicle_ office, went to the railroad office, and stayed there in the building while he was making his proposition to Layng and McCullough and others to break the blockade. I did not hear what his proposition was, for while he was talking to them I was with Solicitor Scott, talking with him. After he came down to Layng's office again they had a warrant for him, but they concluded they would not arrest him then. Then afterwards, it was proposed that Ammon said he could break that blockade--would I go to Allegheny with him, and see if we could. I didn't want to go to Allegheny with Ammon. I thought they were going to kill him over there; finally I consented to go to Allegheny, and did so. This was early in the week after the Sunday. I went over there with him, down Penn street, and went in the street cars, and on the way he introduced me to a railroad passenger conductor, and appeared to be on good terms with him. We went down to the dispatcher's office, and walked along the track, and now says he, "You will see if they are going to kill me or not." We walked together and joined the crowd--one hundred and fifty or two hundred railroaders. I was introduced to one whose name was Cole, from Chicago. I asked Cole what he was doing there, and he had been advised that there was going to be a strike, and he had come there, because he was one of the officers of the union, at Chicago, and he was there in the discharge of his business. I asked where those other men were from. I would not know him again if I would see him. I said, I don't see many of our Allegheny boys, where are they? He said, You can see them over at the hall directly, we are going to have a meeting. Nobody molested Ammon at all. We went to the dispatcher's office, and he looked in and spoke to people that were there, and stayed with me there, for I was going to see what he was going to propose. We then went to a meeting of railroaders in the hall, and at that meeting this citizens' committee and the mayor was present, and as I had not been appointed for that office, I took my place in the back part of the hall. There was about three hundred or four hundred railroaders there, so they said. The hall was jammed full--there was not room for more. They organized by having a chairman and secretary. McCune and Captain Gray, and Mr. Morehead, Mayor Phillips, and somebody else was the committee. They began to call for Slagle, knowing me, being an Allegheny man, and living near there, and knew a good many of their faces. I told them I hadn't anything to say at that meeting; I had come with one of the railroaders, and Mr. McCune was foreman of that committee, and then after awhile they talked the matter over, back and forth, those citizens and railroaders went over their grievances. Here was Ammon's proposition: "Now, I am going to make my proposition; I want you to wait." He got up and addressed the chairman, and they began to hoot at him--howl, you have no right here, you are a scamp, and abused him as though he was a man they did not want to associate with, and the meeting got very boisterous, and the chairman took his position and tapped on the table, and, says he, "Ammon has a right to speak here." Ammon said, "I propose we break this blockade by organizing two or three crews, and I am authorized to say that the engines will be furnished, if we can get the crews to run. I propose that we organize two or three crews, and take the first freight train that is on the track below the city, and run it through to Chicago." I never heard such yelling: throw him out the window, kill him--all sorts of threats were made--but they quieted down, and the result of that meeting was an interview between nine railroaders appointed by that meeting, at the office of the mayor, at which I was invited to be present, and we sat three hours. Q. At the mayor's office? What mayor? A. Mayor Phillips. I did not participate in that discussion only to be a witness at the interview between those nine men and the committee, which was all in reference to their illegal possession of property that did not belong them, and they ought to abandon their possession, and give the property back to the railroad company in the condition they left it the first day of the strike. It was understood that the railroad officials had abandoned the property to the strikers, insisting that it had been taken away from them illegally, and they wanted to get possession of their property in a legal way. I believe, Mr. Chairman, except the little part I took with this safety committee in raising money and men to do whatever might be needed, that that is all I know about the strike. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did these men state what their grievances were? A. It was very clear. They said they had no double-header order to be rescinded, but they were bound to get back this reduction of ten per cent. and to break up this classification of engineers, and they said a great deal on that subject in this boisterous meeting. Some of the speeches were very intemperate and very boisterous--bread or blood--and all that sort of thing, but they were hot-headed fellows. Then other men thought they had made a mistake. They all admitted they had made a mistake in striking and holding possession of the property. They admitted that when we argued it quietly. The mayor argued it with them, and they admitted to him that they had made a mistake in striking, and in abandoning their jobs to the road, and they said they were so organized that the road could not run a train out without the consent of the strikers. Mayor Phillips said to them, "What do you mean by so organized?" Says he, "We have our Brotherhood of Engineers and Trainmen's Union, and they extend all over, and if one man or the association says strike, his train is not to go, and you cannot get any man to run that train, and the road will have to give us what we demand." You have been aware of this movement to save the freight on Saturday, when it was run down the road, and it is not necessary for me to detail that. I might just say this about that: Having lived in Allegheny for twenty years, and several years right down there in the neighborhood of the depot, that I was surprised to find so few of these men that were on the track that afternoon, and other afternoons, to be our own Allegheny railroaders, and in answer to a question that I put to these men, calling to a man named Sourbeer, and one or two others, he said, You must understand that a great many of these trainsmen that are young men that are not married, and have no fixed home, and they are just where their train happens to be. There is a man, for instance, who has a wife and family, lives near Union. The day he is in Allegheny he boards at the house, and a large number of those men that are striking are men that live at the places along the line of the road, and that accounted for why I didn't know more of them. * * * * * James P. Barr, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence? A. Fourteenth ward of Pittsburgh. Q. Editor of the _Pittsburgh Post_? A. Editor of the _Post_. Q. Editor and publisher? A. Yes, sir. Q. Just go on and make a statement and what you know of the causes of the riot that came within your knowledge by conversation with the employés of the road, etc., and what came under your observation during the riot and the days of the progress of the riot? A. I think I should prefer to answer questions first before I go into anything like that, because my personal observation does not extend over a great deal. Q. When did you first learn of any disturbance among the railroad employés? A. On Friday morning. The first was on Thursday at noon. I did not know anything about it at all till Friday morning's paper. I do not know any of our people knew there was any trouble beyond the railroad employés, but it was mentioned in Friday morning's paper, and on Friday morning we learned that a proclamation was issued, and the military were called for. I went to the depot about twelve o'clock. About half-past one I went out to the Eighteenth regiment, at Torrens station. Remained there three or four hours. There was considerable of a crowd there. I talked to Mr. Hice--he is on trial here now--he appeared to be a leader of the party there. Colonel Guthrie talked with him. He told him that he would get on the trains as they were coming into the city and inform the conductors and engineers and trainmen that there was a strike, and have them abandon their trains when they came in. I talked with him a good while, expostulating with him. He said they did not intend to perform any overt act, that they felt persuaded they could accomplish their purposes by abandoning their trains. It required experts and people of experience to take them out again. They knew such people were not about. I told them I thought it would soon get out of his hands. The sheriff and General Pearson had been out there just before. I came on the ground while he was there--probably came out on the cars. The military were called into position two or three times. The crowd was uneasy. There were no trains going eastward. I think there were some trains passed while I was there on Friday, and a good many people came out on an engine during the afternoon. I came in on Friday night. I was about at the office. Around town there was no particular excitement. We had been subject to these things for years--strikes of employés in the mills and in the mines--and they generally exhausted themselves without any violence. We did not anticipate any trouble, but on Saturday the knowledge came that the Philadelphia troops were coming, and we had our Sixth division out--the regiments and two batteries--and had a kind of a circus. Great crowds of people gathered. Crowds of women and children gathered on the hill side. I was not at the depot nor at Twenty-eighth street at the time the firing occurred, but was somewhat conversant with the condition of things. Q. Did you know on Friday, when you went to Twenty-eighth street, that the militia had been called out? At that time did you know it? A. There was a printed proclamation, purporting to be coming from the Governor. On Friday morning, at nine o'clock, it had been posted on the streets, calling for the local troops here. General Pearson's orders were printed in all the papers, as well as the orders of Thursday night. All the telegraphic dispatches were in the papers on Friday morning--from the sheriff, from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Attorney General, the Adjutant General, and Mr. Farr--some eight or nine dispatches were all printed on Friday morning, and our division called out. At that time, the whole public was informed as to the fact of the military there. Q. On Saturday night, what knowledge had you of the movements of the military? A. I learned, after the firing, that a great deal of excitement prevailed. I might as well state now, that the fact of the firing upon the mob did not make any difference, whether it was by orders or without orders. The crowd supposed it was by orders, because their vengeance seemed to be concentrated on General Pearson, who was in command. They thought he gave orders, but practically it made no difference whether it was by an order or without an order. It makes a difference, in fact, so far as parties killed were concerned, or the act itself; but they supposed that an order had been given to fire, and that they then had a grievance, which they had not before. Before that, it was confined to railroad employés. They assumed that they had not got wages enough. There were double-headers put on, but when people were killed, they said there was then a good cause for grievance, and they rushed to the gunshops--one right opposite my office--took all the weapons they could find in there, broke open the whole place, carried off the guns, and paraded the streets. The feeling then was intense--bitter, and revengeful feelings seemed to pervade all classes of labor. There had been a sympathy with them all the way through--they were part of the labor element. I think myself that if the military had not been there, and had not provoked a collision at that unfortunate time, that there would not have been a life lost, nor a dollar's worth of property destroyed. As everybody can tell after the battle is lost how it might have been won, we find that after we survey the whole thing over again, it is pretty hard to lay the blame on anybody. The action of the militia just at that time has been the common action of the militia all over the world. It requires the strictest and sternest discipline of the regular soldier, to obey the command after he has been struck or knocked, to refrain from resistance. The militiaman is not paid for it; he carries his humanity into the ranks, and when he is struck he resists. What our militia did here, they did in Baltimore, they did all over the country, and they would do again under similar circumstances. The question of their firing without orders, is a thing you never can provide against with militia. Q. Sunday morning, what was done by the military or civil authorities, county or city? A. Sunday morning, at nine o'clock, when I came to my office I found a number of gentlemen there, merchants, manufacturers, and business men, alarmed and dazed by the condition of things. About the first thing that was done, was to write a resolution--they wrote a resolution to get the citizens together, and provide a leader. They waited from Thursday until Sunday, the city, the county, and the State at her back, and we had not provided any other agency for self-protection or the preservation of the peace, but these. When we ascertained on Sunday morning, that twelve hundred soldiers, veterans, under the command of experienced officers, had not been able to quell this violence, we felt that no fifty or one hundred men could do it, and we were at a loss to dam the brook on Saturday night, and the flood was then over, and we had to wait until the water subsided before we could get foothold or make a landing. We went to work as fast as we could. I went to the Union depot until about half-past nine or ten o'clock. I saw quite a lot there, they appeared to be cool but utterly unable to provide for the difficulty, the military having gone away, contrary to their instructions or their orders. While I was in there, General Gallagher, I think it was, came in. He had been around the city, and they asked him how many troops it would take to hold the city at that time, and he said, it would require at least fifteen thousand. I stayed there that time, and a servant came up and said we were the last people in the hotel building, and we had better go off. Then we went to the Monongahela House. Q. Who is Gallagher? A. I think he is colonel in one of the neighboring counties. Q. Belonging to the National Guard of Pennsylvania? A. Yes, he is a colonel--at least he was in undress. Q. Was he not a colonel in the Pennsylvania Reserves, during the war? A. Yes; in Westmoreland, I think. The whole town was out, you know. I think there has a very great delusion taken possession of the public mind, in regard to the Sunday's burning. There were not many people on the tracks at any time during Sunday, because they were crowded with cars--cars burning slowly, and the work of destruction commenced at night. The motive was, they wanted to burn these troops out of the round-houses, and communicating fire from car to car, was rather slow, and many people imagined, that because there were but few people on the tracks during the day, therefore a few people could have controlled them. The reflection seems to be made upon the officers of the city and county, and the military, that a few policemen, or a few military, could have driven those people off the tracks, and that would have been the end of it. But anybody that stood there during that day, and was among these people, found thousands of people on the streets and on the side-walks, the side streets, at Liberty street, that prevented any water being thrown on the cars, and prevented any interference. It was not necessary for many people to be there to fire the cars. They were strangers. I suppose the railroad men who had the first grievances, did not go there, because they might have been recognized, but they all stood on the streets, and not a drop of water dared to be thrown on these tracks. It is the sheerest nonsense to talk about ten men, or twenty-five men, or two thousand men, to have stopped this. They had broken open barrels of whisky, and they knew the military were gone, and they were perfectly satisfied there was no police force to stop the people, and unarmed citizens called by the sheriff to put down the mob, was simply ridiculous. The sheriff did what any sheriff would do--he called a posse, a lot of clerks, or--lawyers, to put down a mob. The mob understood as well as anybody else, that that could not be done, it was not his fault, and it was not the fault of the mayor that there was not any police. The State prevented the city of Pittsburgh from borrowing any money. The bankers in this city offered to furnish the amount of appropriation that was short for police, but they could not get the money back again, because the city could not borrow any money. The bankers offered to provide us with our usual number of police, but the State law stated that we could not borrow any money for that purpose. Q. Constitution, ain't it? A. Yes; it is in the Constitution, too. The State stepped in, and would not let us do it. Eighty-five men to cover twenty-five miles square. The patrolmen were up all Thursday night, and on Friday we hadn't any police. We held a meeting at half past twelve, and in the meantime a committee five was appointed, of which I was one, who went into the crowd, and asked them to stop. There was one man, he was in a blouse, he seemed to be dressed as a railroader--he attached a burning car to a locomotive, and jumped the track four or five squares east of the depot. When our committee came in, and when Bishop Tuigg was speaking, he rang his bell, and started off with his steam whistling, not allowing people to hear what was said, and there were words lost on the crowd that was in front. They were not railroad men. If it hadn't been for the fireman the city would have been in ashes. If it hadn't been for the citizens preserving the peace, there is no telling what would have happened. The matter was of such dimensions, and extended over so many cities, and miles of railway, that if this whole city had have burned down, and if every man, woman, and child had been arrested, that was not the end of the thing. It was only a small element--a portion of it. I think it extended over nine cities, and twenty thousand miles of railway. It had proclamations from six or seven Governors, and proclamations from the President of the United States. It was a matter not of contagion, but of organization. I have here the proclamation of the Governor, and meeting of trainmen. Q. What facts have you to say that it was a matter or organization? A. Not being a member of any of their organizations, although I am of some other societies, I only get it by publications which I have in my bound files, and can furnish you the meetings of trainmen, and the fact that on the 16th of July, on Monday, that these same railroad men, on account of wages in West Virginia, Martinsburg, resisted the authority. They called on the Governor, and the Governor appealed to the President of the United States. That on Wednesday, the 18th, the proclamation of the President of the United States was issued, which was twenty-four hours in advance of the first interruption here, and that it extended over nine of the most populous States in the Union. It is a matter of current public positive history, which of itself would be sufficient to show that all the railroad employés were in consultation, and had, of course, an organization. I suppose that railroads had to reduce wages in consequence of reduced receipts, and that these people, with their oath bound organization, had agreed that the only way they could cure that, would be by stopping work. I think that was their only object. Q. Have you any facts, aside from the actual existence of the strike, to show that they had secret organizations and a pre-arranged plan to strike throughout the nine States? A. Not being a member of any secret organization myself, I was only governed, as a public journalist, by the facts that came to me. Q. You arrive at that conclusion, then, from the existence of the strikes themselves, and their spreading over so large a territory? A. Yes; and at the same time, it could not be simply contagion from one line to the other. There was not time enough to communicate from man to man along all the line of railroads, and that they having possession of the telegraphic wires at the same time, they had all the works of the entire railroad itself, and it was communicated to the whole of them, and they had their resolutions and perfected their organization. Q. Do you know how many railroads in this country reduced their wages ten per cent. on the 1st of June? A. I do not, except from the current reports at the time that the four great trunk lines did--branches of the roads east agreed with it. About forty thousand miles of railroad in the United States agreed with it. About all, although the strike was not developed all over. I think some of the New York roads, perhaps, arranged it with their employés, but still there was trouble. The main trouble here, was the reduction of wages. I don't know that it would be of benefit to this committee, but I would be perfectly willing to give my bound files which give the current history of that during the two weeks. It might be useful to look over to show the existence of this thing. There are many things that are official--the Governor's proclamation is official. Q. You have no copies of the papers that you could furnish us to retain? A. I will furnish them to you or send them to you at Harrisburg by express. You can keep them as long as you want. I can get them very well. I have extracts taken out of them, all of which I would be very glad to furnish. There is one thing I might state---- By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have you got your files bound for the month of July? A. The daily and weekly are bound together. I have them bound, and I will furnish them gladly to you. Q. Could you not furnish us with a bound copy, with references to the pages? A. You can have from July 28, to August 24, that is two weeks. We felt here the crisis approaching, and the importance of this whole matter, and I telegraphed to Mr. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania railroad, these words: PITTSBURGH, _Saturday noon, 1877_. To T. A. SCOTT, _Philadelphia_: Don't you think you could best serve your company, rescue imperiled interests, and perhaps save valuable lives by your presence here, and make in person some proposition to convince our people your company has rights and grievances. The current sets against you with every shade of labor, and it is important that you should be on hand to decide whatever may be presented to you. I can assure you the situation is critical. J. P. BARR. That was on Saturday, about eleven o'clock, before any firing--before I knew that the Philadelphia people were here at all. I was so utterly convinced of the critical situation of affairs here, that I thought if Mr. Scott was here in person, that he might be able to say to these people that they were then an unlawful assembly, and that an appeal from him would settle this thing. If the committee desire, I will read his answer: PHILADELPHIA, _July 21--4, P.M._ JAMES P. BARR, _Pittsburgh_: I have just received your message, and fully appreciate the grave importance of the matters transpiring in your community. You will speedily discover that the strike of a few of our railway employés is simply being used by the mob violence, which some of your people are permitting or encouraging, to effect other purposes, which, if successful, will destroy many of your leading local interests. The strike on our road at Pittsburgh was inaugurated without any notice to or conference with the officers of our company as to the existence of a grievance. The reductions in the compensation to the people in the service of this company are to-day less than in any other branch of business in the country, and were made only because of the great depression in trade interests, to enable us to aid the various communities in carrying on business at all. When violent possession was taken of our property, and the business obstructed, there was no recourse left us but to call upon the authorities of the city, county, and State to take charge of the matter, and vindicate the laws by the restoration of order in such form as to them should seem best. If I could be of any possible service in Pittsburgh, I would go out, but at present I think it would be most unwise to interfere in any manner with the State authorities in their enforcement of law and order. Thomas A. Scott. On Sunday he telegraphs: PHILADELPHIA, _July 25--12.30, P.M._ To JAMES P. BARR, _Pittsburgh_: What is the situation of affairs in Pittsburgh to-day? Are the loyal people in shape to protect life and property? The statements of my message of last Saturday to you have been terribly realized. I think there is not and cannot be any safety for life or property unless the State and United States authorities will adopt the measures necessary to restore absolute law and order, and make it permanent. Would be glad to have your views of the situation this morning. THOMAS A. SCOTT. I telegraphed him back: PITTSBURGH, _Wednesday, July 25--2, P.M._ To T. A. SCOTT, _Philadelphia_: The local military and organized citizens, animated by a determination to quell mobs, are quite sufficient to preserve the peace and property of this city. Everything is quiet. Our impending danger is the suspension of general labor and thronging our streets with idle men. Local traffic for coal and provisions is first demanded. Neither you nor labor will surrender, because it involves humiliation, but you can suggest or agree to a board of arbitration to present a compromise, which will relieve you and labor without disturbing the rights or grievances of either. Compromise governs the daily business of the world. You have it in your power to restore peace and preserve society. The discontent of many years against the extravagance of railway management has culminated, and forms the subject of complaint, as well as the reduction of wages. I implore you not to assume the ground that military can settle anything but defiance of law. Have this compromise effected at once, and the country will owe you a debt of gratitude. J. P. BARR. And he says: PHILADELPHIA, _Wednesday--4, P.M._ To JAMES P. BARR: I like your suggestion as to the restoration of the local business of the country, and the giving of employment to mines and factories. This it has always been a pleasure to me to do, and we will do it to-morrow, if your people will protect the employés of the company who are willing and anxious to work and preserve the interest of the country, as highways like our own are able to do. My own judgement is that the restoration of law and order can only be effected by a return to common sense by the people, and by them refraining from encouraging or connecting themselves with mobs or violence of any kind, and that the channels of trade and business will immediately fill up, and give employment to every man that the depressed condition of the business of the country will permit. I am sure we shall be glad to aid them, but to do it in any other way would be but simply temporizing with the worst evil the world has ever seen; but to effect permanent peace and order, and protection to life and property, the matter must be settled by the governmental authorities of the country as they exist, and independently of the transportation companies of the country, which have been doing and are anxious to do their full duty. I believe if our men are protected by you and by other good citizens, there won't be an hour's delay in opening our roads for the convenience of traffic. I am sure that nearly the entire force connected with our road is thoroughly loyal, and that no trouble will come from them, but that they will do their duty. THOMAS A. SCOTT. It is well enough in Scott to say--I think he stated in an independent communication, that ninety per cent. of the Pennsylvania railroad employés were loyal. If there were ten per cent. of them loyal I think it would be nearer the truth, for if on Sunday twenty-five men could have put down that riot--they have three hundred clerks, and three or four hundred more in their machine shops, that could have been sworn in by the mayor--they had a better right to protect them. I suppose it is well enough for Scott to say, that they were not invited by the citizens of Pittsburgh. It was a rebellion on the part of the employés, because of grievances they had, or supposed they had, and when mad riot was inaugurated after that, other people came in to do it. It was not the people of Pittsburgh, the taxpayers or representatives of the people of Pittsburgh, any more than it was in Philadelphia in 1844, while a riot held possession of that city for over a week, notwithstanding the military. It was an unfortunate thing that the military were ever called. They did the very best they could. They supposed they were coming to restore order, by the quickest method. I have no complaints to make in that regard, because if our foresight was as good as our hindsight, I don't think there would have been any trouble in this case. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you have any consultation with the sheriff about his calling for militia? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. When you learned he had made the call, did you take any steps to see him? A. I did not. Q. Didn't you know that he was going to make the call? A. No; I never heard of any call. I did hear, to some extent, I may say. I knew that the railroad authorities were more perfectly aware of the extent of this trouble than the community generally, and when the strike was made, on Thursday, July 19--when the day for putting the order for double-headers into effect. That when an officer of the railroad was assaulted, and the police were asked to arrest that man, which was done, and immediately communication was made with the State authorities to provide for a military force. Q. How do you know that? A. I don't want you to ask me how I know it exactly. Q. If you can give us any knowledge---- A. As a member of a grand jury, I cannot tell who swore to these facts, although I did make certain facts public. I can state here the facts that came before me--that the general of the Sixth division here was called several hours before the civil authorities were called upon. That he was at the railroad depot, and in communication with the State authorities. That he was called there by the State authorities to consult with them. Under the law, I take it, that the civil authorities must come in as a sort of figure head. It was not intended that the sheriff could get any posse of our citizens to put down the riot, but he had to follow up the requirements of the law. That was after the railroad had called upon the State to do this work, being perfectly aware that we had no police force sufficient. The sheriff did his full duty. It was not the fault of the mayor that there was no police. So I do not think the railroad, if they intended to meet this thing, had anything else to do but to call on the State. I think it is a most dangerous power, and one that will stab the liberties of this country, that by the click of the telegraph they can call for a thousand armed men, instead of exhausting the civil authority, if it takes two weeks to do it. It is a dangerous power to give them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You claim that they have the power to compel the Governor to furnish troops? A. Who? Q. The sheriff or the railroad company? A. I say it is a power entrusted to him, that Mr. Scott can call on the Governor of the State and furnish transportation, after the sheriff only says so, because the sheriff must conform with the law. Q. Is that dangerous that he has that right? A. It is dangerous that any man has a right to ... with a thousand armed troops. Q. It is dangerous for anyone to have that power? A. The Governor or any other man. The bill reads: It says that the military shall be subordinate to the civil authorities. It means that the civil power are paramount, and the military should never be called in except to kill--they are not to be degraded into police. Q. I want to know whether you wish to convey the idea that the railroad company or the sheriff has the power to call out the military, or that he can only make a request, and the Governor has the power? A. Under the old militia law of the State the sheriff could call them out, or General Pearson, or the major general in command of this division, and he could oblige them to serve as a posse. As it is to-day, he cannot do it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understand, from what you have already said, that it was not necessary, in your opinion, to call out the militia in this instance, at the time they were called? A. I don't exactly mean that, but I do mean to say, it seemed to be the only power at hand, as we have not enough provided in the city or county. It was ill advised and bad judgment when they were called to put them inside of the mob, and not to keep them in reserve. The purpose of a soldier is simply to kill, and it was particularly ill advised on Saturday, in the teeth of protests made by representative citizens. It could effect nothing but what it did effect, and that was violence in every form. Q. You had not sufficient police force here to cope with a mob of its extent and power? A. No, sir. Q. The sheriff had not sufficient force to cope with it? A. No. Q. And I understand it would be folly for the sheriff to attempt to raise a posse of citizens to cope with it--then there was nothing left but to call out the military? A. I do not see anything else--if they intended to do what they supposed they could do. I do not think it was necessary to call out anybody. Q. You think it was ill advised, to undertake to move trains at the time? A. They could not have moved a train, because they had not the men to move it, but they could have done there what they did elsewhere. They could have let it exhaust itself. The very presence of the soldiers begat excitement, and if they intended to intimidate the great crowd, I suppose the calling of the soldiers would do that, if they had cool leaders, men who understood what was to be done in an exigency of that sort. They ought not to be thrown into a crowd to be assaulted by stones. Q. Would the mob have exhausted itself before there would have been great destruction of property? A. There would not have been any destruction of property whatever. Q. Would not there not have been a loss of perishable property that was in transit, too? A. They seemed to be willing to make provision even for that. It seems to me the whole labor movement has failed signally in strikes in coal mines, in mills, and in large places, because it was only local, and the whole community failed to sympathize with them. They failed to get their rights by strikes, because it did not affect the general interests. They discovered, for the first time, where forty millions of people could be stricken as with a blow, by all the people on these roads refusing to work. They found out, for the first time, where the weak point was, as well as the strong point, in this country. They can do it again. When the employés--brakemen, trainmen, conductors, and engineers will agree not to run a railroad in this country, that is the end of traffic, and they can starve out whole communities. They discovered that fact, and then it was on Saturday evening, that labor sympathizing with those people, they partook of the strike, and helped to burn cars and carry on the work of destruction. That is a danger we are subject to, and the Governor, in this city, when he came back from the West, the very first proclamation he issued, was this: PITTSBURGH, _July 25--1.30, A.M._ _To the people of the State of Pennsylvania_: WHEREAS, There exists a condition of turbulence and disorder within the State, extending to many interest, and threatening all communities, under the impulse of which there has grown up a spirit of lawlessness, requiring that all law observing citizens shall organize themselves into armed bodies for the purpose of self-protection and preserving the peace; therefore, I, John F. Hartranft, Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, recommend that all citizens shall organize themselves into associations, with such arms as they can procure, for the purpose of maintaining order and suppressing violence, and all good citizens are warned against appearing in company with any mob or riotous assembly, and thus giving encouragement to violators of the law. (Signed) J. F. HARTRANFT, _Governor_. He did not confine it to Pittsburgh, but called for the whole power of the United States to put it down. By Senator Yutzy: Q. It was not on railroads? A. It got into coal and everything. It struck labor. They found when you hit the mills it was only local; but when you struck the railroads it struck everybody. I will furnish you files of the papers. Also the official report of the coroner, and the testimony taken before him, and the number of people killed on Saturday. Q. You have the official report of the coroner in the files? A. Yes. The first fire there were ten people killed outright, and there were some sixty or seventy wounded--I have the names of all of them. The first fire the people were killed that had no right to be killed--the fire of Saturday night. Anybody that was killed after Saturday night had a right to be killed; but it is a very dangerous doctrine--judges have to charge that--that everybody is constructively a mob that is then around, but that won't do in the United States, to charge that everybody is a mob. Colonel Gray, re-called: The witness: When I dismissed my command at the Union depot, at eleven o'clock on Saturday night, just in advance of that I want to say, because I took all the responsibility, General Brown left Twenty-eighth street on that afternoon about one or two o'clock, and came to the Union depot and left me in command, and it is in your testimony that I sent an officer to Colonel Howard, with the purpose in view--that purpose I want to say--I had felt all day that whatever orders they had were not carried out, and I thought it was impossible, so far as I was concerned, that something should be done, and I sent an officer to Colonel Howard, to ask his coöperation, and I would take a different course. I intended to vacate that railroad and prevent any one from coming on it; and I want to say in connection with that, there was some great difficulty--the local trains running in from Walls and East Liberty were coming constantly, and the strikers at all points on the railroad were arriving to and fro. They were getting off these trains and getting on them, so that the military were at a great disadvantage. Hundreds came in on every train, and got off right on the track; and another point I want to say, that after my men assembled--the companies coming at the original call--the men that wanted to come in on the railroad were put off; they couldn't get into the city; they wanted to report to the companies here on duty. They were put off the trains. I was telegraphed to for two or three days, men along the railroads were put off. I re-organized my regiment Monday morning--all the companies--two companies at the request of Mr. King, who was here from the Allegheny Valley railroad. At his request, I left one company in charge of the sheds, and my command was re-assembled, very promptly, to my great astonishment, Monday morning. There was no difficulty in getting the men to the armory and re-assembling, and I had two hundred and forty or two hundred and fifty men, and had two companies outside of the city. My command was in service until the 6th day of December, and did faithful service. My officers are men that don't run away. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You account for the small turn out of your command, when you first assembled them, from the fact that they were prevented from coming on the trains, some of them? A. Yes, sir. At this point the committee adjourned until to-morrow morning, at eight and a half o'clock. PITTSBURGH, _Tuesday, February 26, 1878_. The committee met, at half past ten o'clock. Mr. Reyburn in the chair. All members present except Messrs. Larrabee and Lindsey. * * * * * Captain J. D. McFarland, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. John D. McFarland. Q. Where do you reside? A. 78 Logan street, Seventh ward. Q. You were a member of the militia? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what capacity? A. Captain of the Washington infantry. Q. Were you called out during the late disturbance? A. Yes, sir; called out--got my orders on Friday morning. Q. Will you be kind enough to make a statement of what you know in relation to the late riots? A. On Friday, I believe the 21st of July, I received orders from the adjutant of the regiment to which we are attached, to assemble my command as soon as possible, at the armory. I sent a notice to the sergeants of the company, and about two o'clock in the afternoon, I reported to Colonel Howard, commanding the regiment, at Union depot. We stayed there some time--a short time--I suppose an hour, perhaps an hour and a half. The regiment was ordered out on the street, with two pieces of Breck's battery, to proceed to Twenty-eighth street. We were halted, after marching three or four hundred yards. We had no ammunition, and there was a box opened on the stone wall near the depot, and to the best of my recollection, we there received one hundred and twenty rounds for the company--that was issued to us--to the whole of the command, and we remained on the street some time, I suppose, maybe three quarters of an hour, and then we were ordered back on to the platform of the depot, inside of the railroad company's lines. We remained there all that night, the night of Friday, and until Saturday morning, until about four o'clock. At four o'clock we were ordered to move out along the line of the tracks. Two pieces of Breck's battery was placed on a gondola car, and the regiment I understood had been sent around in the rear on the hill. We were the first company on the track at Twenty-eighth street, and arriving there, we found from twenty-five to thirty men, citizens. There were not over thirty, I think; and to the best of my knowledge, the colonel ordered me to clear the tracks, and put them off the company's property, which we did. We moved up and down the track, and that was repeated, I suppose, a couple of hours. When we would move down the track to clear it, the parties would gather in on our rear and flank, there had been no pickets out, and they would gather in on our rear on the track. We remained there with the command, clearing the tracks, I suppose, until about two o'clock in the afternoon. By Senator Yutzy: Q. On Saturday? A. Yes; on Saturday, perhaps later than that. I am not certain about the time. At that time I came in, had permission to come in and attend to some private business, and I was not there during the firing. As soon as I heard there was such a thing, I hastened out, and found that the Philadelphia troops had been put in the round-house, and it was reported that the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments, which constitute our division, that the Eighteenth had been sent to the Union depot. I learned this at the hospital. There was then a great mob making such a noise, as a mob usually does. I hastened to the Union depot, and met the sergeant, who informed me that our regiment was out at the transfer office. I went out there, and found General Brown and Colonel Howard with a portion of the command in a shed surrounded by cars. I asked Colonel Howard--he was the first officer I saw--asked him what he was doing there. He said he was there by orders, and asked me the state of affairs in the city. I told him the condition in the neighborhood of the Union depot. There was a large mob upon the street--from the Union depot to Twenty-eighth street was crowded with a mob, and they were hooting, yelling, and threatening what they would do. I heard them shouting, they would break into the armories and gun stores--that was the common threat that was used by the mob on the street. That afternoon, Colonel Howard said to me, that he would see General Brown, who was up stairs in the transfer office. General Brown came down. He asked me the condition. I made to him the same statement I had made to Colonel Howard, and I advised him to take another position than that--he had first asked me what my advice would have been. I told him that I thought he might get a better place for the men than that. I then came down to the city, to the armory, and found the mob there who had broken in and taken all the arms that had been left in the armory, with the exception of those that had been concealed. They got the arms and left. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where is your armory? A. It is on Market street. It is in the city property, over one of the market-houses. All of the regiments are quartered there in the city property. I suppose I had been there fifteen or twenty minutes when the balance of the officers, and the men of the regiment, came down into the armory. There was nothing more done that night. I was on the streets, I suppose, until twelve o'clock, until an alarm from the box at Twenty-eighth street sounded for fire, and, in company with several other persons, we started on the hill above the hospital, or near the hospital, not quite so far out, and there saw what I took to be the first car that was burned that had been set on fire. It was running down near the round-house. I remained on the hill a good portion of that evening--it was then morning. Q. Sunday morning? A. Sunday morning; yes, sir. Sunday morning I came home and laid down awhile, and got breakfast, and started to the city to see if anything had been done to gather the battalion together. I saw none of the officers on the street at all, I believe, with the exception of the assistant adjutant general, Colonel Moore, of our division, and one officer of General Pearson's staff. There was nothing done that day until afternoon. A citizen came up to the house--I had gone home. He said to me, says he, "The citizens are going to put this thing down. They would like to get your arms." I said, "No; if the citizens will back us up, we will find a gun for every man. We have got all ours. All we want is ammunition and backing." I sent out and I had as many men of my company who lived near me come to a room in my own house, and I there ordered those men to go out, and order the balance of the company to take their accoutrements, which they had so thrown off, and come to the mayor's office. I did not want to go to my own armory. In fact, I was afraid to go there, from the fact that it was a place that could not have been defended at all. It could easily be set fire to. Went to the mayor, and asked him if I could have one of the rooms in which to assemble men. He said, "Certainly." He was glad I had come. I sent one of my officers out--my first lieutenant, Mr. Brown--out to our colonel's house. I sent my lieutenant out to notify Colonel Howard what I had done--I had ordered the company to assemble at the mayor's office--and asking if he would procure us more ammunition than what I had. He came in--General Brown came in--and General Brown gave me an order on Major Buffington, and Mayor McCarthy furnished us with a wagon in which to go out and get ammunition. Major Buffington returned word that they had scarcely sufficient ammunition to give to their own guard. I stated the case to Mayor McCarthy, and Mayor McCarthy, about eleven o'clock, started out, and, in the course of a half or three quarters of an hour, he came back and handed me two hundred and forty rounds which he had got. He asked me if I would remain with him during the night, and put down any disturbance. I said I would, subject to the orders of my superior officers. On Monday morning, about half past eight or nine o'clock, I had left the men go to get something to eat, and the mayor said to me, "I don't want you to let the men go away from here unless under orders, and I will see that they receive provisions; that I should take my men around to a saloon near there; they would be attended to there." Shortly after breakfast he notified me there was a boat load of miners coming down on the packet from Elizabeth. He had received information that they had come down, and expected a pretty rough time, and asked me to go with them. I assembled the men, and General Brown went down with us. There was a squad of police. As I recollect the line of march, there was a squad of police in front. There was my company, and then there was a company of citizens, armed with shot-guns, rifles, and carbines, under the command of General Negley. General Negley and Mayor McCarthy and General Joe Brown were with us. We went down to Smithfield street, and we learned that the men, in place of coming down on the packet as far as its regular landing, had got off about half a mile above the landing, and come down that way; I suppose, so as to get in the city without any trouble. I threw my company across Grant street, and blocked up the passage. Ordered the men to load, and I saw then, while standing in front of the command, General Negley and Mayor McCarthy and others, making addresses to this band of miners--they were all reputed to be miners--I do not know whether they were or not. The crowd was dispersed. We marched down to Water street. There were no shots fired--no disturbance of any kind. They seemed to be pacified by the remarks made by the officers. We then went back to city hall, to the mayor's office, and were quartered there until the afternoon, when I received orders to report to my colonel. I reported to him on First avenue, and after supper we were sent to our armory again. During the night, between ten and eleven o'clock, I was ordered out again to support another detachment of the police. It seems that a party of roughs from Cumberland had taken a train, and taken possession of it, and the mayor was notified, and he sent down a detail of police, and we were sent down to support the police. The police had men under arrest before we got there, and the next day we escorted these men and the police over to Allegheny, to take the cars for Claremont. That was about all the trouble--all the duty we really did, with the exception of some ordinary patrolling--marching around. There was nothing of any importance. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You came from the transfer station to your armory in the city--this was on Saturday night? A. This was on Saturday night. Q. What time in the night? A. I should judge it would be about eleven o'clock. Q. Bring your command down to the armory? A. No, sir. Q. Did you leave your command there? A. Yes, sir. Q. And never went back to the regiment after that, that night? A. That night. No, sir. The regiment was disbanded, as I understood it. Q. You understood that next day? A. Yes, sir; well, I knew of the fact within half an hour afterwards as I stated. The balance of the officers came there while I was still in the armory. Q. What was your object in going to the armory? A. My object in going there was to save any property that could possibly be saved. We had considerable property there of ours independent of the State's. Q. Were you in uniform when you came down to the armory? A. No, sir. Q. Citizen's dress? A. Plain clothes. Q. Were you in citizen's dress during the time you were in command? A. No, sir. Q. You changed your uniform? A. It would be impossible, in my own opinion, for any man to have gone through that mob in uniform. Q. You rallied your men on Sunday and went to the mayor's office--did you remain there during all of Sunday? A. All of Sunday evening and Sunday night and up until Monday, until we went with the mayor to stop the progress of these miners. Q. Where was the balance of your regiment? A. I do not know, sir. I know they were assembled on Monday--I do this from hearsay, which, of course, is not evidence--I know that there were two of the companies in Allegheny who were doing duty of one kind or other over there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There was no organization of the regiment--you received no orders from the colonel? A. No, sir. Q. You were acting independently? A. Yes; I was acting independently in support of the mayor. * * * * * Thomas Graham, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Give your full name and address? A. Thomas C. Graham. Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in the Fifteenth ward of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am janitor of the city hall. Q. Have you any information concerning the riots of July, the subject which we are investigating? A. I was present at Twenty-eighth street, at the side of the hill, at the time the firing was done. Q. Be good enough to state, then, what you know about it? A. I was on my way home about a quarter past four o'clock, I think, to the best of my knowledge, and General Brown was in the car with me; the car was pretty well crowded; we were standing up. When we arrived at Twenty-eighth street he said to me, Come along up and see the military; come up along. I said I didn't care about going up, and I didn't think that any one outside of the railroad employés had any business there; but he said he was not going to stop, and rather insisted, and I got off the car, and went up there. We crossed over the track, and away from the crowd altogether, on the south side of the track, beside of the hill, and we walked up that way, leading along the public road--it is used as a public thoroughfare, to a certain extent--and there halted. I thought by going up there we could have a good view of everything that was going on, and get out of danger. I found out my mistake afterwards, though. When the military came up I was standing right about seventy-five or one hundred feet from the tracks, on the side of the hill. Was elevated a considerable distance, and had a good view over all that was going on. I kept moving my head, or rather my eyes rolling, from one point to the other, taking all in that was going on, and when the troops came up and cleared the track on both sides, the battery came up and across, through Twenty-eighth street; they could not get through, but part of them came to support the battery; came up, and when they got up to the crowd--there is a watch-box stationed on the side of the hill, by the side of the hospital gate, and there was a crowd of half grown boys congregated around that box. I seen, as soon as they came up by the boys, they stooped down and picked up stones, there was like to be trouble, but I concluded I would be safe where I was, and remained there. As soon as the troops came up to Twenty-eighth street crossing, the boys commenced to throw at the troops, and some missiles were thrown from the corner of the hospital grounds. Then the firing began, and continued for quite a length of time. I stayed where I was, until I saw two men fall, one of them as close as to that window, the other one further down, towards the track. There was a ravine in the rear of where I was standing, and I made the remark to a gentleman standing by me that it appeared to be getting very warm here, we had better get out of this, and I leaped right into the ravine, and there remained until the firing was over, and then came down and went home. I didn't come out of my house down the street, as I live eight squares further from there out. I didn't come in till that night. That was about what I saw of the occurrence. Q. How many people were engaged in this throwing? A. Well, as I said, the starting point of the throwing came from the side of the watch-box--the watch-box of the man who tends switch. There was about a dozen of them around there, and that was where the throwing commenced. Q. Did you see any of the troops struck with stones? A. No; I didn't see anyone struck particularly, but I would consider it would be impossible most to throw into that crowd without striking some one. I didn't see any missiles. Q. Were you close enough to hear any command given by the officers? A. I was about seventy-five or one hundred feet when the throwing begun; I heard the word "fire" very distinctly. Q. Where did it come from? A. It appeared to come from the head of the column. Q. Was it in the crowd? A. I should say, that it came from the head of the military column--there was not more than a space of, I suppose, thirty feet, and it might have been a little more, it could not have been much more than that from the head of the column to Twenty-eighth street, where the crowd was. Q. From the head of the column? A. Yes, sir. Q. Which column do you mean? A. I am not a military man. Q. You mean the company marched up? A. No, sir; the company that marched up was then as close as I am to the other side of the table, with their arms at a charge. Q. Close to what? A. To the crowd at Twenty-eighth street. Q. Trying to press the crowd back? A. Trying to press the crowd or make their way through them--was not thrusting or anything of that kind. Q. You don't know who gave this command, or was it an exclamation you heard in the crowd? A. I am under the impression that it was a command or a military order, but I would not swear who it was that gave it. I could not do that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did it appear to be in front of the command--the head of the column where the command came from to fire? A. I was standing immediately opposite the head of the column, and the sound of that command appeared to come directly opposite to me, down at the head of the column. Q. Did you see any officers in advance of that command? A. When the military marched up? Q. At that time, when you heard this command, were any officers in advance of the column? A. I seen several officers. The most of the officers were strangers. I don't know who they were. I could see they were officers, by their uniform. Q. Were they in front of the men? A. They were in front of them at the head of the column. The troops were formed in a hollow square. They marched up, and then got the command front. They marched to the side of the hill, to clear the track of any that might be there, and those who were standing on the track got up on the side of the hill. There were very few on that side. The rear rank got the command, To the rear, open order, march. Q. You heard these commands? A. Yes; very distinctly. They got the command to about, and then they marched to the north side, which left an interval of two or three tracks clear--formed a hollow square. Q. This company marched down between these two lines? A. This company appeared to be at the head of the column, and they marched through up the lines. There was a portion of them came away to let them in, and they marched up. Q. Was there a company marched up between those two lines, after the open order? A. The company appeared to come from the head of the column. Q. Wheeled out from the head of the column? A. I don't think--I am not positive, but I am under the impression it was separated from the column. I would not swear positively. They were dressed in blue. Q. How did they march up--company front--in line of battle? A. They marched up, I think, in sections of about four--I am not positive about that. Q. Until they reached---- A. Nearly to Twenty-eighth street, then they halted. Q. And saw them open order, and one rank faced about, and they took positions on two sides of the track, which left a place between? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then was there a company marched up between these two? A. I am not positive, but I think this company was taken from the head, or a portion of it--it was not a full company, it was what you might term a squad--there was not, I suppose, over twenty-five. Q. It was taken from the head of the column? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there a company marched up between those two ranks? A. I think a battery. I think this company, as I said, was taken from the head of the column, and marched up to support the battery, in order to get through the crowd at Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did this company turn around and face the crowd--how did they face? This crowd, you said, they marched up and tried to press the crowd back, and they wheeled out from the column and marched up against the crowd, or did they go down between the two lines, and march up against the crowd? A. I stated that they appeared to be reserved for the purpose of supporting that battery, as they were not brought from the rear in front rank at all. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see the sheriff and his posse? A. I did. Q. Where were they? A. They were at the head, coming up--the head of the column. Q. All of them? A. All of them. I recognized Sheriff Fife, Mr. Pitcairn, superintendent of the Pennsylvania railroad, and General Pearson at the head. When they came up, the sheriff attempted to say something to the crowd, and there was such jeering and hallooing, it was impossible to be heard from where I was standing. Q. You are positive about hearing this command to fire--was not this jeering---- A. That jeering and hooting was not at that particular time. There appeared to be a little confusion when that portion of the company came up, the jeering only began during the speaking of the sheriff. I don't know whether he was reading the riot act or not. I don't know what he was doing; of course I could not hear it. * * * * * E. F. A. Hastings, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. E. F. A., not quite the whole alphabet. Q. Where do you reside, Mr. Hastings? A. I live between Twenty-second and Twenty-third now. Q. What is your occupation? A. Machinist. Q. Were you present during the disturbance last July? A. Yes, I was. Q. State what came under your observation? A. I was there on Twenty-eighth street, on the side of the hill, when the troops were coming up, and I waited there until they came pretty well up the track, then I came down the hill, and I looked for my boy. Q. What time was this? A. On Saturday afternoon, when I seen the troops come up--and they came in regular--I think it was four deep. They came up and stopped and halted. They turned around in open order, formed in a hollow square, and I turned around and came away with the young man, and I took him off the track, and started him down towards Penn street. I turned around and looked for my boy, and I could not see him. Walked in towards the cars, and stood by the side of the sand-house--the cars extended up a little ways beyond the sand-house--and I got right in to the end of the car. Then came orders to charge bayonets. I turned to get back, and the crowd was behind, and I could not get back. I got a bayonet right in behind here. [Indicating.] Just at that time Pearson stood in about that direction. Q. Who do you mean by Pearson? A. General Pearson, or Pierson, or whatever you call him. He was looking in the direction towards the watch-box. There was some stones being thrown over there--it would fly all to pieces, it appeared to be like clay. There was only one stone I could distinguish, about that large, [indicating,] the shape of an oyster shell. It came from there. Then there was a couple of old shoes--I didn't see anybody struck with them. Pearson turned around, when he was standing there he was looking about this--he turned around towards the men, and his officer standing here--I don't know whether they belonged to Pittsburgh, or where they belonged, and I don't know whether they were officers. Monkey jackets it was, I think. He says, "Order your men to fire." He repeated the word fire louder than he did the others, and turned around, and walked right down the track after that. I did not see them commence firing, and I dropped right down. They fired on that corner, on the side of the hill first--these men in front with the black plumes in their hat. I don't know one from the other. They wheeled round, and fired down Twenty-eighth street. They walked over the top of me. I laid there. I don't know where Pearson or any of the rest went after that. I got up, and helped this man in front of me, that was killed--I helped him back. Q. What man do you mean? A. Some say it was Dearmot, I don't know his name. Q. Killed by the cars? A. No; killed by the firing. A gun was right up against his breast when he was shot. Q. Where did this fire come from--those men standing by the cars? A. The military all around that hollow-square, except the lower end. I laid there; I was right underneath them; could see the whole thing that was going on. Some of the men fired right up in the air. I don't know whether they belonged to Philadelphia or not. By Senator Yutzy: Q. From what part of the line of this hollow-square did the firing commence? A. I will show you in just about a minute. [Witness illustrates on paper, the situation of the troops during the firing.] Q. Just say where the first fire commenced in that hollow square, so that the reporter can take it down. A. It was near the corner, on the side of the track next to the hill. Q. Near the corner of the square of troops, next to the hill? A. There was no square there. It was round. Q. It came from the right, next towards the hill? A. Next towards the hill. Q. How many shots were fired at first? A. They shot like a little fellow would throw a lot of shooting crackers out. Q. How long after you heard the command to fire did this shooting commence? A. It was right by those other fellows standing over on this side--right by them. I guess there was four or five of them repeated it. I took them to be officers. Q. Dressed differently? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they in front of their men when they gave the order? A. They were in this hollow square. Q. Did they turn round to fire? A. They were facing the crowd to fire. Pearson turned and gave these men the command. Q. It was General Pearson that gave the command? A. Yes, sir. Q. You are positive it was General Pearson? A. I am positive. I was standing close enough to hear him. Q. Did he give the command to fire, or was he cautioning the men? A. He gave the command to fire, and repeated the word fire louder than he did all the others. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were there any other officers in that hollow square, that you knew, besides General Pearson? A. None to my knowledge, that I knew. There were some men that I knew, coming up ahead of them. Mr. Pitcairn and Mr. Watt came up ahead of them. I know some of them, beside, but don't know their names. Q. Do you know Colonel Brown or Moore? A. I don't know him by name. Q. Did General Pearson give this command to an officer standing close by him? A. Yes; called them officers. Q. You saw him when he gave the command? A. The men that had swords, I think. Q. You saw General Pearson when he gave this order? A. Yes, sir. Q. How close was he to the men he gave the order to? A. He was standing looking towards the switch box, where these were coming from. Right in front there were some men had a bayonet in another, and he wanted to get it away. He wheeled round this way and gave the orders for these men to fire, and then walked right down the track, but wherever he went to I could not say. Q. Was he standing close to where the men commenced firing when he gave the order to those men? You say he wheeled around; those he gave the command to must have been behind him? A. Here is where he stood. [Illustrating.] He wheeled around to the officers to the rear, and they passed the command to the officers in front. They repeated the order to fire. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the officers who repeated that command repeat it in a distinct, loud tone of voice? A. Yes; they repeated it distinctly. Q. How many of them? A. There were some three or four, I could not say exactly. I am positive there was three or four, if not more--positive of three. Q. And then the firing was done--it was not a volley of musketry--it was just done at random, was it? A. The first squad that fired there, I don't believe there was more than about half a second between them, and the squads, as soon as this squad fired on this side first, then these other fellows here fired, [indicating,] and the crowd broke away and run down. I laid there. They wheeled right down over me, and fired down Twenty-eighth street. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the crowd scatter when they fired? A. The crowd scattered. By Mr. Means: Q. How many of the soldiers fired at that time--at the first command? A. The first fire? Q. When General Pearson gave the command to fire, then his officers under him repeated the command. Now how many soldiers fired when these officers repeated that command? A. It looked about like a platoon--about twenty-five, I suppose, if not more. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were the crowd resisting these men? What were they doing when the soldiers came up? A. They were on Twenty-eighth street crossing--the railroad crosses Twenty-eighth street--they were on there. They were talking and hollering. Some man called Pearson--that was the man I took away--called Pearson a son of a bitch, and these men took Pearson's part. Says he: "Don't call Al a son of a bitch; he is a friend of mine!" I thought there was going to be a fight between them, too, and a man called me over and told me to get him away. I took him away with me across the track towards the round-house, and he started on down. There was nobody in front of me at all, and I had hardly got in there until the crowd was right at my heels. By Mr. Means: Q. You say there was about twenty-five men fired? How many men fired after that? A. They appeared to be firing in squads all over the line. Q. How long did this firing last? A. I don't suppose it lasted more than about two and a half or three minutes--could not have lasted any longer, I think. Q. What were the officers doing? A. Some of them went down the track flying--running over the other side. Q. They were hunting their quarters? A. They were hunting their quarters. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Did you hear the order to load? A. No, sir; they were all loaded before they got there. They could not have loaded in that time. After the first volley was fired, then I seen them loading--those men in front. Q. Don't you know who gave the order to load? A. I didn't hear anybody give the order to load. Q. They loaded without orders? A. I suppose so, after the first fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see them load afterwards? A. Yes; breech loaders. Q. Did you see the operation? A. I saw them pull the cock back--that part that turns back--and put in a cartridge. I was lying right underneath them when they were doing it. The parties in front fired the last shot down Twenty-eighth street. I don't know who they were. They were men with black plumes in their hats. Q. You say the parties next to Twenty-eighth street were the last to fire? A. They wheeled right round---- Q. That was the party that fired first? A. No; the party that fired first was over here. [Illustrating.] Q. The party facing down Liberty street? A. Yes; they fired. There was some that was against a car that could not do anything. Q. Did they fire before the front line fired? A. They fired about the same time. There was a car stood in here when they fired, so that you could do nothing. Some of them fired up like. Q. Fired in the air, did they? A. They appeared to fire in the air. Q. How did these men of this side? You say they turned and fired the other way? A. No, sir; those men in front wheeled round this way, and fired down Twenty-eighth. Fired up first and then---- Q. Where did they deliver their first fire--the men on that north side of the track? A. They fired some of them right up square--down below the car. I could not see on account of the cars. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You are positive that the firing did not come from that side of the line next towards Liberty street first? A. I am positive it did not, for the first firing commenced along the side of the hill--that part I saw. By Mr. Dewees: Q. How far was General Pearson out from the military when this command to fire was given? A. He was in the hollow square. Q. How far from the men? A. It would appear to be in the center, about Twenty-eighth street. You know this line went round on Twenty-eighth, and covered over part of Twenty-eighth street towards the hill. Q. Did you see the fire during the night? A. I was down on Penn street when the fire started. I do not know anything about that. I went up there to see it, and stood on Liberty street, watching the fire. Q. Did you see the troops come out of the round-house? A. No, sir; I did not. I was not there at that time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You said General Pearson--he repeated the word fire louder than the balance of his order. Are you right positive what the balance of the order was? A. Order your men to fire. Q. That was the exact language? A. That is the very words. Q. You are positive you heard the words, "order your men?" A. Right in that way: "Order your men to fire." Q. Were any of the soldiers struck? A. I did not see anybody struck. There was a man carried away. They say he got sun struck. I seen him carried away. I didn't see anybody hit. Q. Did you hear any pistol shots, or any shots fired from the crowd, or in the crowd, before the firing of the soldiery? A. No, sir. Q. Did you hear any? A. One appeared to be like a cap--it was right in that corner. [Indicating.] Q. In the crowd? A. That was the first shot I heard fired. That soldier fired it. He didn't fire straight out. His gun went off up in that way. Q. You heard a noise like a cap before the firing of the troops? A. I couldn't tell exactly where that come from. It appeared to be round the watch-box. Q. About the switch-box? A. Yes, sir. Q. That is, the watch-box on the corner of the street, and the railroad toward the hill? A. That was on the side of the hill. It was right here. [Indicating.] Q. It appeared to come from that direction? A. From that direction. Q. Didn't it sound like a pistol shot? A. No; like a cap. By Mr. Means: Q. Then you heard no firing from the crowd until after the military fired? A. There was no firing done until the military. Q. Was there any firing done from the crowd at all that you heard? A. Yes; I seen the firing. Parties were firing from the side of the hill after that fire. A man on a car fired a revolver. He was laying right down at the end of the car. This man pulled out his revolver and fired at the crowd. Q. There was no firing from the crowd or mob until after General Pearson had given the command to fire, and they had obeyed that command? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. There was a man fired from a car? A. That was after the firing was done. Q. Do you know that man? A. I would know him if I would see him. Don't know him by name. I have met him a dozen times on the street since. I didn't want to go and ask his name, for fear they would ask me what my name was. Q. Do you know where he lives? A. No, sir. I know he lives in the city somewhere. Q. Do you know General Pearson well? A. I know him just by seeing him, and that is about all. Never spoke to the man at all. I don't know whether he spoke to me that time in the car or not. I won't say positively. Q. Why were you afraid to ask this man his name? A. I will tell you just the reason why. I didn't want to be called up as a witness. I have had enough trouble running round with this thing. I don't want to go against a man. Q. You prefer that he should go scot-free? A. I don't think he done anything. * * * * * R. S. Jones, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. R. S. Jones. Q. Where is your residence? A. No. 337 Chestnut alley, south side. Q. What is your occupation, Mr. Jones? A. I am a boiler--puddler. Q. Were you present at the fire that occurred by the troops on the Saturday, the 21st of July? A. I was. Q. Will you be kind enough to tell what you saw? A. I went out there about quarter to four o'clock--near that time--got there just about half an hour before the troops came up--the Philadelphia troops. I was there when the command was given to fire. They marched up the track. I saw General Pearson there, and Sheriff Fife and his deputies, some of them I don't know. Q. State the movements of the troops, and what you saw? A. They marched up the track to the corner of Twenty-eighth street. They came to a front to the round-house--fronted to the round-house. The rear rank came to about face and charged bayonets. They marched across the track--the opposite side--and that left a space there of about thirty feet; and there was a company behind that, formed in two sections, and one section marched up the track--they charged bayonets--and the Gatling guns came right along after them. They came to the head of the column and stopped, and they about faced and formed a square. I heard the command given to fire. I was standing right alongside of one of the soldiers, talking to him at the time, from Philadelphia. I never thought they were going to fire, or I would not have been there. Q. You heard the command given to fire? A. Yes, sir; when they came by the officer that was at the head of the column, turned around and stepped right into the square, and the sheriff and his deputies stepped in. Q. Did they fire in a volley? A. They fired just about the same as a new recruited regiment--you can pick them out in the field--you give them orders to fire, and they wouldn't fire as one. I guess it was just about as near as they could fire under the circumstances. I suppose they were a little scared. Q. Did the crowd resist these men? A. I didn't see any disturbance whatever when I was there. I didn't stay there after the firing. Q. Did you see anything thrown, or any disturbance in the crowd? A. No, sir. Q. The crowd just stood there? A. They were all standing there before the firing. I guess there was not many there after the firing. I didn't stay there to see. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see any stone thrown from the crowd at the soldiers before the firing? A. I didn't, sir. Q. Did you hear any firing from any one in the crowd? A. I didn't. Q. How long after you heard the command given to fire did the firing take place? A. Instantly. Q. Did you hear that command given by more than one officer? A. I did not. Q. Was it a simultaneous discharge of a good many pieces? A. As I said before, it was just something like a new regiment. Q. Have you had any experience in active service in the army? A. I was in the army three years, sir. Q. What is the difference between the firing in a new regiment and an old one? A. They don't fire together--they will in time. Time makes everything perfect. Q. The firing is somewhat like the firing in a battle, after the first volley is fired? A. Yes; I suppose there was about a dozen guns went off, and then the rest followed, the same as a new regiment. Q. What the boys used to call a rattling fire in the army? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. How near were you to where General Pearson stood when this command was given? A. I guess they were about the center of the square, and I was standing three men from the end, at the head of the column--that is, the right of the square towards the round-house. Q. What distance would you suppose? A. About fifteen feet, I guess. Q. From where General Pearson was standing to where you were? A. Yes, sir. Q. You cannot tell whether General Pearson gave that command? A. I don't know. Q. Was the command given as though it was peremptory? A. It was given in a clear, distinct voice. Q. Give us the exact language of the command? A. The first thing I heard was, "fire!" just about that loud. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Did it come from the officers or the crowd? A. It came from the inside of the square. Q. You don't know who gave it? A. I don't know. I was looking right in at the soldiers, too, but I could not swear who gave the order. Q. Wouldn't you have been apt to notice? How were they dressed? A. Pearson had a blouse. By Senator Yutzy: Q. A military blouse? A. A military blouse. The rest of the officers had their swords on, the general, I don't think he had a sword on. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he have on a hat? A. He had a cap on. By Mr. Means: Q. Might not that command have come from one of the men in the ranks? A. I don't think so--I never heard an order given from a soldier in the ranks? Q. Might not that command have come from one in the line, and not from the officer in command? A. From where I was standing, I thought it came from right in the center. They were not standing in the center, they were standing about five feet from the head of this square. It came from that direction. Q. You don't know whether it came from an officer or who it came from? A. I couldn't state--I judge it did. Q. You supposed it would, but you really don't know that it did? A. No; I didn't see his mouth open at the time. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you present at the disturbance that night? A. No, sir; I went home, and stayed there. I went out Sunday, and I guess half the cars were burned when I went out. Q. You went over Saturday night, and stayed home the balance of the night? A. Balance of the night; yes, sir. Q. What was the feelings in the crowd? A. I don't know. I didn't ask, and I felt just as if I had no business there, and the quicker I got out the better. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say General Pearson wore a blouse and a cap? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he have any braid or anything of that kind about the uniform? A. No; I don't think there was. I don't think there was anything to distinguish that he was a general or an officer of any kind. Q. That is, to distinguish his rank? A. No, sir; at least I didn't see it. Q. Did he have brass buttons on his blouse? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you take particular notice of it? A. I was talking to him a few minutes before. The way I came to speak to him, we had gone up to the road above the track, and I had got through the guard. There was a guard across the track, and I had come through, and the party that had come with me--there was three of us, the guard wouldn't let them through, and the general was standing there and I asked him to let them through, and he said certainly, and they let the party through--that is the way I came to speak to him. Q. Was that soon after or before the firing? A. That was just before. Q. Did you see General Pearson after the firing? A. I didn't stay there after the firing. I got out of that as quick as I could. Q. How long before the fire began did you see General Pearson? A. I saw him before, and I saw him just when the order was given. Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to this strike first? A. I have not, indeed. I don't know anything about it. I knew there was a strike. Q. Did you see them leaving the round-house? A. No, sir; I was not there. * * * * * William J. Shaner, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. I board at 1145 Penn street. Q. What is your occupation? A. Roll turner. Work for my brother-in-law. Q. Were you present on the day of the firing on the troops, on Saturday, the 21st of July? A. Yes, sir. Q. Describe where you were and what occurred, as near as you can recollect? A. When the troops were coming up the track, I was up on the side of the hill, with a comrade of mine, Charles Bier. He and I went down a few steps, and waited until after they had got up and halted and formed two ranks. Before they formed a hollow square, I says to him, I am going down to see them, and to hear, if I can hear them read anything or say anything. He said, No, no, he says, you might get hurt. Says I, No, there is danger; so I left him standing, and went down and made my way in. There was a good many standing around at that time, and the watch-box which stood there--I put my foot up on the window, and held on to a bracket, a little above the rest of the crowd, and I stood there for a few moments, and I heard the command given to fire, and when it was given I tried to get down, but I couldn't on account of the crowd there, and when they had cleared away, I got down and ran up to the ravine there, and laid down the best I could. That was my position when the firing took place. When the firing ceased, I went and looked to see if I could see my comrade, and I couldn't find him. I went down the street, and found that he was shot. I didn't find him until I found him in the hospital. I got everything he had on his person, and carried them home to his folks. Q. You heard the command given to fire? A. Yes, sir. Q. What occurred--did the crowd stand still, or were they making a noise--and did they interfere with the soldiers? A. There was no interference with the soldiers at all. Q. Did you see anything thrown? A. Yes, I did. Q. What was thrown? A. I saw one stone, to my knowledge, and that was all thrown--about as large as your hand--for it come from the corner of where the gate goes up to the hospital--the right hand corner as you face Twenty-eight street. Q. Did you hear any firing by the crowd before the soldiers were ordered to fire? A. No, sir. Q. Did you hear any firing from the watch-box there? A. Yes, sir; the soldiers--not from the crowd. Q. Not from the crowd? A. Not at all. Q. There was no firing at all from that part of the crowd? A. No, sir. Q. Could you have heard any firing? A. Yes, I could have. Q. It was quiet there? A. So far as firing was concerned it was. Q. I mean before this firing took place? A. There was noise, talking, and hooting, and just when the military fired for a moment it ceased like. Q. You could hear who gave the command? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who was it--an officer? A. Yes, it was an officer. Q. Do you know him? A. Yes, I do. Q. Who was it? A. General Pearson, or Albert Pearson. Q. Do you know General Pearson? A. Yes, I do. Q. How long have you known him? A. That is, I know him by sight, but never spoke to the man in my life. Q. How was he dressed that day? A. He was dressed in a white vest and blouse, with brass buttons on it, and the blouse was buttoned up middling close to the neck, and he had something similar to that. [Indicating.] Q. A soft hat? A. Yes; as near as I could see. Q. Did you know General Pearson before that? A. Yes, sir. Q. In all this confusion, you could see General Pearson give the command to fire? A. Right at the moment the command to fire was given, it was kind of stopped--the confusion was--and I heard distinctly the command "fire" given by General Pearson. Q. Where was he standing? A. He was standing a little over half way through the square, towards the rear rank. Q. Did the men fire as soon as he gave the command? A. Yes, sir. Q. They fired at his command? A. They fired at his command. Q. You are sure of that? A. I am certain of it. Q. Did you see any of the soldiers struck by any stones? You say you only saw one stone thrown? A. I only saw one stone thrown, to my knowledge, that I could distinguish perfectly, and I didn't see any soldier struck at all. By Senator Yutzy: Q. After General Pearson gave the command to fire, was it repeated by any other officers? A. Not to my knowledge. I didn't pay any attention to it. I tried to get out of the ... and I couldn't. I was looking out for my head, then. Q. How did you know the order was given by Pearson? A. I saw it. I saw General Pearson, and saw his lips move. Q. In what direction was he facing, then? A. He was kind of facing toward the rear rank. Q. Towards the hill-side? A. No, sir. Q. The other way down, towards Liberty street? A. Kind of towards the sand-house. Q. That is, on the left hand side, as you could see? A. Yes, sir. Q. He was facing in that direction? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did the fire commence from that direction? A. No, sir; it commenced from the corner, right at the watch-box. Q. Did he turn his back to give the command? A. He kind of turned round to the officers that were there, and who they were I don't know. Q. He had his back towards the watch-box when the command was given to fire? A. Not altogether, he didn't. [Witness illustrates the situation of affairs on paper.] That is Twenty-eighth street; here is the watch-box; there is the rear rank; and here is the front rank; and here is General Pearson, right in here; and here is where the firing commenced; and General Pearson was standing, with his face towards Twenty-eighth street, before he gave the command to fire; and when he turned, he turned right around this way, and his face was directed about towards me; I could look right into his face there. There was a man standing between me and General Pearson, up like from him, and that was an officer, and who that officer was I don't know. Q. You say you heard no command from any of the other officers? A. No, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What did he do after the firing? Did you notice what became of him? A. I took notice he disappeared very quickly. I don't know whether he was inspecting car wheels or not. Q. All that I want to know is what occurred after the command to fire was given? A. The firing commenced immediately. By Mr. Means: Q. You didn't tell them that General Pearson was inspecting car wheels, did you? A. It was hard to say what he was doing, I know he got away. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say General Pearson had a blouse on? A. Yes, sir. Q. It was buttoned up close? A. Buttoned up right across there. [Indicating.] Q. That is, how far from his chin? A. About there. [Indicating.] Q. About six inches. A. I suppose about that--six or seven inches, as near as I could see. Q. How many rows of buttons had he on his coat? A. That I don't know. Q. What kind of a hat did he wear? A. A soft hat, something similar to that. Q. Had he any braid, or any thing else; a wreath, or anything on his hat? A. Not as I took notice of. Q. Had he any trimmings on his coat to distinguish him from the other officers? A. No, sir; not that I saw. Q. Had he any braid on his breast? A. No, sir; it was brass buttoned. Q. Buttoned clear up? A. It was buttoned at the top. Buttoned, but I do not know whether it was buttoned below; it was a kind of a sack---- Q. You say he wore a white vest? A. No, sir. Q. How could you know that he wore a white vest? A. I could see his white vest here. [Indicating.] His vest came up middling close. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Did you hear General Pearson, or anybody else, notify the mob to disperse? A. No, sir. Q. Did you hear anybody give orders to load? A. No, sir. Q. You heard nothing but the word, fire? A. There was a command before that, to charge bayonets, but I do not know who it was that gave that. I did not see him. Q. You were standing upon the window? A. With my foot on the window, and holding on to the bracket above. Q. Were there any officers about, except General Pearson? A. Yes; there were other officers there, but I do not know who they were. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did General Pearson have on a belt and sword? A. No, sir; not as I saw. Q. He had nothing then by which you could distinguish him as an officer--he had no shoulder straps? A. No, sir. Q. No trimmings on his coat? A. No, sir; not as I saw. Q. Nor any sword. He was just simply dressed as a civilian, with the exception of his blouse and brass buttons? A. Yes, sir; a blouse. I did not take notice to his dress, only in that way. Q. Had he shoulder straps on? A. No, sir; not as I saw. Q. You are sure of that? A. So far as I know. I did not see it. Q. You would have noticed it if he had? A. I should think so. Q. Did you see the sheriff? A. I did not know Sheriff Fife, but a man was pointed out to me as Sheriff Fife, and I would know him again if I was to see him. The man that was pointed out to me had a straw hat on. Q. You are sure General Pearson was not pointed out to you? A. No, sir; I am sure of that. No man need point out General Pearson to me. Q. You are sure somebody did not say in that crowd, "There is General Pearson along with the sheriff's posse." A. Not to my recollection. There was no one told me that. When they came up, General Pearson, Sheriff Fife, and some other man--and who this man was I did not know--was kind of together. They were at the head of the column, and came up the railroad just as they halted, and before they formed an open square. By Mr. Means: Q. You said you did not know Sheriff Fife. How do you know it was Sheriff Fife? A. I said a man that was pointed out to me as Sheriff Fife. I did not know the man personally, only he was pointed out to me that day by a party that that was Sheriff Fife. I never saw the man before, to my recollection, or afterwards. Q. Did you see any party of citizens in front of the military, as they came up? A. As they came up the track? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; only those at Twenty-eighth street. Q. Only the crowd that was at Twenty-eighth street? A. That is all. Q. You did not see any civilians in front of the military as they marched up? A. Not to my recollection. Q. You say you went down to hear the sheriff's proclamation? A. I went down to hear if he would read any riot act, or anything like that. Q. You did not see the sheriff at all? A. Only when he was pointed out to me as the sheriff, as I stated before. Q. Did not see the party with the man who was pointed out as the sheriff? A. I said I saw General Pearson and some other gentleman with the sheriff. Q. There were only three of them? A. Those were together. There were a great many others alongside of them. Q. When the military marched up the track, what led you to go down to hear the proclamation? A. Nothing; only curiosity. Q. Did you understand that the sheriff was coming there with a posse? That he was going to read the riot act, or something of that kind? A. No, sir; I did not know that the sheriff was coming at all. I did not know who was coming until after they got up there. Q. What did you go down--you said you went down to hear what the sheriff would say? A. I went down there to hear whether there would be anything read, or what would be said, and that was after the sheriff was pointed out to me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You went down there after the sheriff was pointed out to you? A. I went down to the watch-box after the sheriff was pointed out to me. By Senator Reyburn: Q. There were only three of them together, Sheriff Fife, General Pearson, and another man? A. That other man, I do not know who it was. Q. I mean in front of the soldiers. A. There were other ones around them. There were other officers near them. Those three were pretty close together. Q. When did you go there in the crowd? A. I went up on the side of the hill among the boys before the Philadelphia troops came in at all; before I knew they were coming in--before the train came in, I went up among the boys. I know a great many of them among the military. Spoke to them and shook hands with them. Q. Talked with them? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you witness any of the occurrences during the night after the firing? A. The only thing I saw after the firing was a car that was fired, and I could see that plainly from the steps I was sitting on, with two other boarders that were sitting around the steps. The steps are very large, and one of the boarders drew attention to it. He says, "What is that lighting up there." I asked him, what. He says, "Don't you see it?" I said, "It is nothing more than a railroad man's lamp." Q. You were not down in the crowd? A. I was four or five squares away. Q. I understood you to say you went to look for your friend? A. That was after the firing commenced. It was before dark I had found him, but I had left him in the hospital just before dusk, and went to his home. I came back to the boarding-house and got my supper, and stayed there. Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What style of hat did General Pearson wear? You said he had a slouch hat. Of what color was it? A. It appeared to me as soft. It was black. Q. Broad brimmed hat? A. I do not know. The rim was not broader than that [indicating]--it might have been. By Senator Reyburn: Q. It was a straw hat? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see any policemen there at the time of the fire? A. When the Philadelphia soldiers fired? By Senator Reyburn: Q. Yes. A. Not to my knowledge, I did not. Q. What do you mean by your knowledge. Do you mean you did not see it at all--you did not see any police officers? A. That I did not see them to the best of my knowledge. They might have been there. I did not see them. Q. Did you see the soldiers come out of the round-house, Sunday? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did you see them after they came out? A. Yes; I did. Q. As they marched along? A. Yes; in order. Q. Did you see any firing on them. A. Yes; I did. Q. Do you know who did that firing? A. No, sir; I do not. The only one I saw firing was one man, and he was running the whole crowd of them out, as near as I could tell. Q. One man was following them up? A. That was the only man I saw have a shooting iron with him, and he had his coat off; but who he was I do not know, and I would not know him if I was to see him, for I was standing in the doorway of the boarding house when he went past, and he loaded his gun right ferninst the door. He had one of the guns the same as the military uses. Q. Had a breech-loading musket? A. Yes. Q. And cartridges for it? A. He had cartridges for it and a belt on--a cartridge-box. Q. Did you see any firing from houses along the street? A. No, sir; I did not go out for to see until after they had passed by. Then I went out along the street. After that, saw several of them that was shot--some killed dead--and helped pick them up and carry them in. One of the Philadelphia soldiers I helped up at Thirty-third street. A ball must have went in there [indicating] and come out through his wrist. At least the hole was through his wrist--through here and back here. [Indicating.] Q. One man did all the shooting, you say? A. That is the only man I saw--that is, right there where I live. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where do you live? A. 1145 Penn street--board there. Q. Will you please describe that man that did that firing? A. I cannot do it, sir. It is impossible. Only he was a tall man; but how he was dressed I could not tell, with the exception that he had a white shirt on, and whether it was an undershirt or a fine shirt I do not know, because I did not pay that much attention to it. He had his coat off. Q. How close were you to him? A. He passed along the pavement and I was standing out on the steps--the steps is five high, I think. I was standing in the doorway, and he was below me, and passed along the pavement. Q. Was he an old or a young man? A. Middle aged man, as far as I could judge. Q. Did he wear whiskers? A. That I could not say. Q. Did he follow the troops up? A. He followed them as far as the corner above. Then I did not take notice where he went to, because I come to the conclusion I was not going to interest myself in it. Q. How many shots did you see him fire? A. I only saw him fire one shot, and that he fired from the corner of Thirty-first street, and by the time he fired the shot I saw the troops he fired into stop and point down, and there was two balls came right past the door right over my head. I thought it was time to pass into the house. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did this man say anything? A. He said something about spilling the blood of some of his friends, and he was going to have revenge, when he passed the door. That is all I know. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What kind of a breech-loading gun did he have? A. The same as the military have. Q. It was a military gun, you mean? A. It was a military gun; yes, sir. Q. Did you ever attend any meeting, during that excitement, of citizens or people, for the purpose of organizing to resist the soldiers? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know of any meeting being held out Penn street or Butler street? A. No, sir. Q. Would you know this man that fired at the soldiers if you were to see him? A. No, sir; I am certain of that. Q. You say he had a cartridge-box--this man that fired? A. Yes; and a white belt. Q. Had it buckled around his body? A. Yes, sir. Q. What kind of a looking cartridge-box was it? A. The same as the military used--a black one. Q. A square box? A. Yes; kind of square. * * * * * P. M. Stack, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in Spring alley, near Twenty-eighth street. Q. What is your occupation? A. Constable, Twelfth ward. Q. Were you present at Twenty-eighth street on Saturday, 21st July? A. At the time of the shooting? Q. Yes? A. I was. Q. Will you be kind enough to state what you observed? A. I was in town that afternoon. I think it was about half past two o'clock, and I went up, and I saw a large crowd up there--went as far as Twenty-eighth street crossing--saw a lot of men right across the railroad, and went up there, and seen some men that I know--seen some Philadelphia soldiers come up. Seen General Pearson there. I stayed up two or three minutes, and they opened ranks, and Pearson came right up the middle, and stayed there for a few minutes, and Sheriff Fife was on the right hand side next to the hill. The crowd was hollering "Hold the fort," or something to that effect. I think it was "Hold the fort" they were hollering, and General Pearson was there and he said, "Charge bayonets," and they commenced to charge. As soon as they commenced to charge the crowd behind shoved up. I was one of the front and could not get back. The first thing I knew they commenced to fire. I thought they were firing blank cartridges, until I saw a man by the name of John Long fall, and saw they was not firing blank cartridges, and I turned around and ran away as fast as I could. That is all I knew about it. Q. Where was Pearson? A. Pearson was about in the middle. They came up about sixteen abreast, or something like that. I could not exactly tell. He was in the middle, anyhow. They opened order and came right up. Q. About sixteen of them? A. About sixteen abreast, right across the track. Q. The sheriff, you mean? A. What they call the Philadelphia soldiers. I do not know whether they were Philadelphia soldiers or not. Q. Was not anybody in front of the soldiers when they marched up the railroad track? A. There was a crowd in front of them. Sheriff Fife--there is a board walk where you get off the train, a platform where you get on the train--he was marching right up at the right hand side as you come up the railroad track, as far as Twenty-eighth street. Q. Anybody with him? A. That I could not say; he was right with the soldiers, and you could not see right over their heads. Q. Was not he in front of the soldiers? A. He was right on abreast with them. Q. Could not you see Fife and who was with him? A. I could not see who was behind me. I could see the front. I could not discern the men who was behind the front men. Q. You heard Pearson give the command to fire? A. Charge bayonets first. I was one of the fellows that was sticking around. Q. What were you doing, trying to keep it off? A. I went up there--I was a sworn officer of the railroad--and I thought I would try to do what I could. Q. Had you tried to quell it? A. Yes, I had, so far as I knew how. I assisted Mayor McCarthy's police when I went up there. Q. Were the police there? A. They were; eight or ten police there during the day and at night. Q. What did they do? A. The boys were around there playing with the cars--wherever there is excitement the boys are always there--they were trying to put the boys away, and the men were not doing any harm, it was the boys. Q. You could not put the boys away then? A. No; they were little boys. Q. When the soldiers marched up, what did the crowd do? Did they fall back? A. At the time they charged bayonets, the rear crowd shoved the front up--they were shoving them up. That is all I seen about it. Q. Did you see any stones thrown? A. I did; there was some little boys threw a couple of stones, and I says, "Quit that, boy, there will be trouble here." Q. A couple of stones? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you hear any firing? Did you hear anybody shoot before the soldiers shot? A. No, sir. Q. You didn't see but a couple of stones thrown at all? A. It was thrown from a couple of boys from the sand-house. They were in the sand-house, and there was some stones in the sand, and they threw them over our heads. I seen the boys that threw them--little boys about eight or ten years of age. There is a sand-house where they dry sand for the engines, and they were in the sand-house at the time. Q. You did not see any stones come from the side of the hill? A. No, sir; I was on this side of the railroad, nearer to Penn street than I was to the hillside. Q. They would not have reached you? A. No; I do not think they could, unless they could throw them that far. Q. Where was Pearson standing when he gave this command? A. He was standing in the middle of the ranks--right up the middle. Q. Did he give the command himself to fire, or did he give it to somebody else? A. He did; he said "fire." Q. That is all he said? A. That is all, sir; he gave command to charge bayonets first. Q. Charge bayonets and then fire? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did the men that he ordered to charge bayonets, fire? A. I could not see where the shots came from, they came from the gun some place, that I know. We were standing right in front. When these men fired, Johnny Long fell down. I helped to carry him in when the doctor was examining him there. I took him into the round-house. Q. Do you know Pearson? A. I do, sir. Q. Did you know him by sight? A. I had known Pearson for ten years. Q. How was he dressed? A. That is more than I can tell you. Q. You did not notice? A. I was just looking at his face, same as I am looking at you. I did not pay particular attention to his dress. Q. You say you heard him give this command? A. I did, sir. Q. You are right certain of this? A. I am positive. Q. You are sure it was not "not to fire," and you only heard "fire." A. He said fire, as loud as I am talking now. I was not sixteen feet away from him. Q. Did you see the troops when they came out of the round-house? A. When they came out, on Sunday morning, I saw them go up Penn avenue. I did not see them leave the round-house. Q. How were they marching, in order? A. Yes; in order. Q. Was anybody firing on them? A. I did see one man, just as I was coming down the hill. I went up there to see the burning from the top of the hill, near what they call the pest-house, and saw the soldiers between the round-house and the square shop. Q. That was not where they marched out Penn street before the fire? A. The fire was pretty close to the round-house when the cars were fired. Q. That was after the troops had fired? A. This was at five o'clock Sunday morning. Q. When they came out? A. The soldiers that were in there, they were firing away all night, and when I came out they were getting down off the hill on Twenty-eighth street, and the troops were getting out then, and I was coming down. The tail end of them were passing, and a man came down Twenty-eighth street in his shirt sleeves--a pretty good sized man, not too big--and he had a musket, and he was rolling up his shirt sleeves, and when he came to the drug store, corner of Twenty-eighth and Penn, I seen him raising his musket. I thought they would return back the fire up that street and I got down the alley and run into the house. Q. Did you make any attempt to arrest this man? A. No. Q. Did you not think it was your duty, as constable, to stop that man from shooting? A. If the whole police force could not stop him, I could not stop him. Q. You did not try? A. I was afraid of the gun. Q. Did you see anybody else shoot? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know this man? A. No, sir; never saw him, to my knowledge. Could not describe him to you. Q. What did he say when he was shooting? A. I was not that close to him. I did not get that close. Q. Were you over there on Thursday, when the strike first took place? A. I was up there; yes, sir. Q. Did you hear any of the men say why they struck? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know any of the causes that led them to strike? A. It was putting on double-headers. I believe that was the cause I heard for it. Q. Was there any disturbance there Thursday? A. No, sir; there was very few there on Thursday. Q. Were there on Friday? A. Friday they commenced to gather a little; on Saturday, there was upwards of a thousand. Q. Were you called upon at any time to exert your authority to keep the peace? A. No, sir; the city did not pay me for that as a constable. Q. Is not that part of your duties as a constable? A. It is a part of my duty as constable to try to suppress or arrest anybody I would see acting disorderly on the street, but a constable among two or three hundred men is of very little use. We ain't paid by the city government as constable, to do anything---- By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you not have arrested this man who was firing on the troops? A. I do not know. Q. Were you not armed? A. I was not. Q. Had no pistol? A. No, sir. Q. Did you try to get somebody else to assist you in arresting this man? A. It was too early in the morning. There was nobody out of bed, hardly. Q. You did not follow after the troops. You say you went home? A. I went home. Yes, sir. Q. Stayed there? A. Stayed there. Q. Did you see any police about the fire during Sunday--see them making any effort to put out the fire or prevent it? A. I did not. I went to my mother-in-law's on Sunday. Q. You were not about then on Sunday? A. No, sir. Q. Do not know anything about what occurred then, of your own observation? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see Mayor McCarthy about on Sunday? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Saturday night? A. No, sir; he might have been there. I did not see him. * * * * * C. G. Barnett, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. C. G. Barnett. They call me Neall for short. Q. Where do you reside? A. I live 296 Centre avenue. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am solicitor for the Consolidated Gas Company. Q. Were you present on Saturday, the 21st of July? A. Yes, sir. Q. At Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes, sir. Q. Be kind enough to describe what came under your observation? A. I will tell you how I got there. I live on Centre avenue, and I came over the hill to our works. I went over there about dinner time, and stayed at the works until about three o'clock. I had nothing more to do that day, and I thought I would come up and see what the railroad men were doing. I stopped there, I suppose, until about half past three, and the train came in with the Philadelphia soldiers on, so I got talking, like the rest of the men around there, and I stayed there, and they finally commenced to holler, and they said, "There comes the Philadelphia soldiers." I knew a young fellow in the Philadelphia troops, by the name of Deal, and I thought I would get to see him. I looked along the line, and finally found him; he was at the lower part. As they came up they divided off. Q. What is his name? A. Willie Deal; he lives in Philadelphia. When the soldiers came up, the first I saw was Sheriff Fife, General Pearson, Captain Moore, and then the soldiers came up. I was talking with Deal awhile, and he says, "You had better get out of here," and I finally walked up towards the switch-house, at the corner of Twenty-eighth and the railroad track, and I got up, standing beside the switch-house, and I took notice of a few boys commencing to lift up some small stones that did not amount to much; of course it would hurt a person to be hit with them. I told the boys, "You had better quit that, you will get into trouble." They said they were having some fun. I said it was wrong kind of fun to have. Then there was a squad of about twenty-five soldiers came up in the center, and they commenced to shove the crowd back, and the first thing I saw I heard the command to fire given. I thought it was about time to get down, and I got around to the side. I could still see the soldiers, and the first thing I heard was General Pearson giving the command to fire. Q. You heard General Pearson? A. I heard him just as distinctly as you are speaking to me. Q. Do you know General Pearson? A. I do, sir; that is, I am acquainted with him to see him. I have lived in this town all my life, and I know him as well as my own brother to see him. Q. How was he dressed that day? A. He had a blouse on. I should judge it buttoned up to about there. [Indicating.] A plain blouse; I do not think there was any trimmings on it, except the buttons. It was buttoned up. Q. Did he have a sword? A. That I would not positively say. I did not pay that much attention to him. Q. Did any of the officers have swords, or did you notice the other officers? A. I noticed an officer that was pointed out to me as General Brinton. Q. Did he have a sword? A. He had a sword. Q. The captains of the companies had swords? A. The officers had, yes, sir. Q. All had swords? A. Yes; but I would not say positively that General Pearson had a sword on, because I did not take that particular notice of him. I did not think it was necessary. I did not know they would ever have any trouble. Q. You are sure you heard Pearson give the command? A. I did, sir. Q. Where was he standing? A. He was standing--there was a car between the sand-house and the round-house, and General Pearson was standing at the far end of the car, towards the Union depot, in the neighborhood of the sand-house. Q. That is on the round-house side? A. Yes; that is on the round-house side--that old sand-house. Q. Where did the first fire come from? A. The first fire was on the side that the round-house was on, about midway of the soldiers. Some of them fired up in the air, and after the first volley--there is a road runs up the hill, the way I came down--after the first volley I thought it was getting warm, and I would get out of that and get home. I run about half way, and there was a little boy that was shot right there, and I grabbed the boy as I was running. I just grabbed him and took him with me, and there was a little hollow there where the water runs, and I thought that was a safe place for myself and the boy both. After the firing there was a boy standing there, and I said, "You had better go and get Doctor McCandless." After the firing stopped, I carried the boy to a little shanty house, and laid him down there. This other boy went for the doctor. Q. When Pearson gave the command, what became of him? A. I did not notice. Q. You are right sure he gave the command "fire?" He did not say not to fire? A. No; he gave the order to fire. I heard it distinctly. Q. You are sure it was Pearson--you could distinguish Pearson among the crowd of officers? A. As a military man, I have heard him give orders. Have heard him time and time and time again, and I know a man's voice when I hear it very often. Q. What did he have on--a hat? A. I think he had a soft hat--black soft hat, with a rim about that wide [indicating]--it may have been wider, but I did not pay particular attention to it--did not pay enough attention to him to know that he had a sword, because I did not think it was necessary. Q. Did you see the troops come out of the round-house the next day? A. After the firing was over, about five o'clock, I went home, and a gentleman by the name of Root, that boards in the house with me--after supper I says, "Suppose we go over and see what is going on over the hill." We went over and stayed there awhile--did not go down. The next Sunday morning, about one o'clock, I heard an alarm, and I got out of my room and went through the hall and rapped at the door. Says I, "There is an alarm of fire. I bet that's the railroad property." Says he, "Oh, no." I went back to bed, and stayed there until the next morning about seven o'clock. I got up and went over the hill, and about eight o'clock--I think it was eight o'clock, I would not say for certain--the Philadelphia soldiers went out of the round-house. I was away up on the hill. Q. Did you see them come out? A. I saw a crowd. I could not distinguish. I was five or six hundred yards away from them. Q. You were up on the hill? A. You can't see very well, because of the smoke and one thing or other--I would not say for certain it was them. Q. You do not know anything that occurred. Did you see any police in this crowd when you went there Saturday--when you went to see this friend of yours? A. I think I saw one or two police--I think I saw two police. Q. Were they making an effort to keep the crowd back, and keep them orderly? A. One of these police talked to a man on the corner of Liberty and Twenty-eighth street, right at the end of the Pennsylvania shops. I judged, from the way he was talking to him, that he wanted him to go home. I was not near enough to him to tell. Q. There was no force there sufficient to make any impression on the crowd? A. There was nothing necessary for force. The men were quiet. Of course they were standing on the railroad track, but there was no noise. They were quiet, peaceable men. There was nothing until the Philadelphia soldiers came. That was the commencement of it. Q. When the sheriff came up, what did the crowd--did they say anything or do anything? A. Not until the squad of about twenty-five soldiers came up in the center. Then they commenced to shove, and they had not room to get out. I suppose if they had given them five minutes, they could have got away. Q. Did the sheriff make any call upon the crowd to disperse? A. Not that I saw. Q. You were talking with this friend of yours? A. He told me to get out, and I walked toward the switch-house. Says he, "Neall, go away; if there is anything happens here you will get hurt," and I took his advice. Q. What led him to say that? A. I do not know. That is exactly what he told me. Q. Were there not stones being thrown, that led this man to think there would be trouble? A. No; he was at the lower end, towards the Union depot. Q. Could he not see? A. Not where he was standing. Q. Was there not a crowd making an attack upon the soldiers, and that there was likely to be trouble? A. Not at that time. They were not throwing any stones until I got to the switch-house, and then I saw the boys throwing stones. Q. Was the crowd resisting the soldiers? A. Not at that time. This middle division had not gone up. Just as they started, he told me to get out of there. Q. When they got up, didn't the crowd resist them? A. I think if they had given them five minutes there would have been no trouble. There was a great many men tried to get away, and the crowd held them back. Q. Was it men there like yourself, or was it men there to resist the soldiers? A. There was a great many men I knew had nothing to do with the Pennsylvania. They were there just standing looking on. Q. If you went through a crowd like that, you could judge whether there were men there to resist the soldiers, or whether they were there out of curiosity? A. I should judge that the most of them were there out of curiosity, and I did not know the feeling of the men. I never go up that direction, unless I am on business. Q. Did you see any efforts made by the police during Sunday to stop the burning? A. I was not near the railroad track on Sunday. I stood away up on the hill--not until Sunday evening, until half past seven, and then came down by the car way, and came down to the Union depot. There I saw a lot of police stopping the men from carrying away ale. I should judge--from the looks of the barrels--what they call Milwaukee ale or beer. Q. Milwaukee ale or beer? A. Beer, I suppose. It is not our style of keg that is made in Pittsburgh here. I do not drink enough for to know that. I know it was beer or ale. By Mr. Means: Q. Had you any trouble getting through the crowd when you wanted to get away on Saturday? A. No, sir. I ran alongside of the hill, while there was very few people. Q. You were right down the railroad among the soldiers? A. I did see a lot of guns there, said to be Knapp's battery, lying at the watch-house--that was all the trouble. Just as I got away from the mob, I had no trouble at all--I could run away along the hill. Q. Would it have been any trouble for the crowd to get away when the soldiers came up to ask them to fall back? A. I think some of them could get away--not all the crowd, because there was cars on the other side of Twenty-eighth street, lying in there, and they got in round the cars, and could not get out. Q. You said three fourths of the men there were spectators? A. Yes, sir. Q. What did the other fourth come there for? A. I have not the least idea, I never go there unless going to the works. Q. I suppose three fourths went there from mere curiosity, and that the other fourth went for some purpose? A. Most likely they did, but I could not see that. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Did you hear General Pearson say anything else but "fire!"? A. No, sir; and it was not a minute or a minute and a half after he gave the order to fire, until they did fire. Q. How far were you from him? A. I was standing about fifteen or twenty feet up off the railroad track right out to the switch-house. Q. Would not a man have to have said something before he could have given the word "fire!"--you heard nothing before the word "fire!"? A. They did not get away fast enough than was given to fire, and just about a minute afterward the firing took place. * * * * * William Black, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. William Black. Q. Where do you reside? A. Out at Millvale borough. Q. What is your occupation? A. Boiler-puddler. Q. Were you present at Twenty-eighth street on the 21st of July, Saturday, at the time of the firing? A. I was a little while, about the time I seen the Philadelphia troops marching up the railroad four abreast, and they came to a halt just before they got to Twenty-eighth street. Came to a front and open order--rear open order, then the front rank came to about face, and they faced the rear rank. Then a company marched up through the center, right up front to Twenty-eighth street. I was standing outside then and heard the order given to fire. Q. You were standing where? A. Just across from Twenty-eighth street, outside the crowd. Q. You were out behind the crowd? A. Yes, sir. Q. You say you heard the command to fire? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know who gave the command? A. No, sir; I do not know who it was gave it. Q. You just heard the word? A. The minute the word was given to fire I left. Q. Did you see anything of the firing? You left then--saw nothing of it? A. No, sir; I left the place then after they started to fire. Q. Then you know nothing about the firing, any more than you heard the command given--did it come from an officer? A. I could not say that. Q. Or was it from the crowd--did you hear the crowd talk about firing? A. Not while I was there. Q. Did you see anything thrown? A. No, sir. Q. Was there any disturbance there, any noise or resisting of the soldiers? A. There was some noise there. Q. What do you mean by some noise? A. Some of them hollering "Hold the fort." Q. What did they mean by holding the fort--holding Twenty-eighth street? A. I suppose so. Q. They meant to stay there in spite of the soldiers, was that the idea that you had--to stay there in spite of the soldiers? A. I suppose that was their idea. Q. Had you been there any time previous to the firing? A. No, sir. Q. You know nothing whatever of the events occurring before that? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see the soldiers afterwards? A. No, sir; never saw them any more after that. I never crossed the river again until Monday, I came down to the city again. Q. Do you know anything about any organization formed to resist the soldiers? A. No, sir. Q. Who went with you to the scene of the riot? A. Saturday? Q. Yes. A. There was a friend of mine lives right over here. Q. Was not there a large crowd of you went over there together? A. No, sir; there was no crowd. Q. What mill are you working at? A. Graff & Bennett's. Q. Was not there a large number of men from your mill went over there on Saturday just before the firing? A. If they went over there I didn't know anything about it. Q. Were the men working at that time--that afternoon? A. Saturday they generally shut down about two o'clock or three o'clock. Q. You were not working that day on Saturday? A. Yes, sir. Q. What time did you leave the mill? A. We shut down work about one o'clock at the upper end of the mill. Q. About one o'clock? A. Yes, sir. Q. Didn't most of the men who were at work in the forenoon come over to Twenty-eighth street? A. I couldn't say anything about that at all. Q. Didn't see a great many of them? A. No, sir; there might have been a good many there, but I didn't see them, the crowd was so big. Q. Was there any talk about there in the crowd when you were standing there. Did you hear any talk about resisting the soldiers, and not allow them to clear the track? A. No, sir; I didn't hear anything of the kind. Q. Was it people there just out of curiosity? A. I couldn't say what they were there for. Q. You were there out of curiosity, were you? A. Yes; just come over to see the soldiers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear any abusive or threatening language on the part of the crowd towards the soldiers? A. No, sir; not at the time I remained there. By Mr. Means: Q. In the forenoon of Saturday, while at work, did you hear any of the men say that they were going over there in the afternoon after they quit work? A. No, sir; I didn't hear the men say anything. Q. Didn't have any talk about going over to the scene of this riot? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you there on Sunday? A. No, sir. Didn't come over this side of the river on Sunday. Q. Do you know of quite a number of citizens carrying away goods and bringing them over to near your works, in that vicinity? A. No, sir. Q. On Sunday? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did you see anybody carrying any plunder from the cars? A. They didn't fetch it across there in the day time. I thought they were watching pretty sharp around there over the other side. * * * * * Charles P. Wall, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your first name? A. Charles P. Q. Where do you reside? A. Fourteenth ward. Q. What is your occupation? A. Plumber. Q. Were you at Twenty-eighth street on Saturday, the 21st July, the time of the firing? A. Yes, sir; I was. Q. Will you be kind enough to state what you saw? A. I went there out of curiosity, to see what was going on, on Saturday afternoon, and shortly after I was there the Philadelphia soldiers came up with their posse, the sheriff at the head. I was standing on the track and toward the round-house, and General Pearson came round and said he was ordered to clear the track, so I got around and walked up Twenty-eighth and come around on the hill which looks down on the track, and the soldiers formed a hollow square--the soldiers facing the hill as well as facing the round-house--and then the soldiers marched towards Twenty-eighth street, and the command was given to charge bayonets. They charged, I think, but the men there could not or would not move away from Twenty-eighth street. The soldiers came up to them with their bayonets, and they grabbed the guns, and pushed them away from them. Then the order was given to fire. The men, after the order was given them, started to run down Twenty-eighth street. The men that were charging--that were facing Twenty-eighth street--could not fire because they were so close. The moment they started to run they brought their guns to bear on them, and fired on the crowd as they were running. The men facing the hill fired into the party standing on the hill, and I seen them commence to fire, and stayed there for some moments, and thought they were firing blank cartridges, until a party along side of me was shot in the head and dropped down, and I thought it was time to get, and I started. Q. Where were you standing? A. Standing right on the hill, looking down on the soldiers. Q. How far from them? A. I suppose between twenty and thirty feet. Q. There is a road that runs up there? A. Yes, sir. Q. How far were you from that watch-house? A. I was about thirty feet from the watch-house, I guess. Q. Did you see anything thrown at the soldiers? A. Yes; I saw some stones thrown. Q. Anything fired at them--see any shots or hear any? A. No, sir; didn't see or hear any shots. Q. Were you close enough to tell who gave the order, or whether it was an order to fire? A. Yes; I was close enough. Q. Was it given by an officer? A. Yes; it was. Q. Do you know who the officer was? A. Yes, sir. Q. State his name? A. General Pearson? Q. Do you know General Pearson? A. Yes, sir. Q. Personally? A. Yes, sir; that is, I don't know the General personally to speak to him. Q. I mean by sight--if you see General Pearson walking along? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where was he when he gave the command? A. He was in the square, a little toward Twenty-eighth--nearer Twenty-eighth street than any other part of the square. Q. Anybody near him? A. Yes; Mr. Pitcairn and some of the other officers was handy. Q. Any of the sheriff's posse? A. I didn't notice. Q. They were in front, were not they, when the troops came up? A. The sheriff marched front; yes, sir. Q. Did he stop and address the crowd? A. I suppose he was addressing the crowd when I was going round, but as soon as he gave the command to clear the track, I was walking round to get on the hill. Q. You are sure you heard General Pearson give the command? A. Yes; positively. Q. It was not somebody told you that that was Pearson? A. No, sir; I know the man. Q. Did you notice how he was dressed that day? A. Yes, sir--not particularly. I noticed he had a blouse on, with brass buttons on, buttoned up. I suppose I was as close to him as I am to you when he gave the command to clear the track. He said he had orders to clear the track. As soon as I seen they were going to clear the track, I got off the track and walked around. Q. Did he have a sword on? A. Not that I could see. Q. Did you notice whether any of the other officers had swords on? A. No, sir; I did not notice particularly. Q. How would you distinguish an officer? A. Well, I would distinguish him by his clothes, of course. Q. If there were a number of men there, how did you distinguish it was General Pearson gave the command? A. I could not help to distinguish him, because I knew him personally--knew him to be what they call a general. He had a blouse on. Q. Did he order them to load, or anything preliminary--he just said fire? A. Just gave the command to fire? Q. Did he give that directly to the men themselves? A. I could not say whether it was direct to the men, because immediately after he gave the command to fire, they commenced to fire--whether it was passed down the line or not, I could not say. Q. Did you see any of the soldiers struck with stones? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. How many stones were there thrown? A. Oh, a good many. Q. Quite a volley? A. Quite a volley of stones thrown. They seemed to all come from one place, though. On the hillside, where I was standing, there was not a stone thrown. Q. Any stones thrown from below where you were standing? A. From towards the hospital, there was. That seemed to be the only place there was any stones coming from. Q. What became of General Pearson after he gave this order? A. I didn't wait to see what became of him. I seen him start towards the round-house. Then I started myself, and ran up the hill some three hundred or four hundred yards, and then I stopped. Q. From what point did the stones appear to come? A. From the direction of the hospital. Q. In front of you? A. No, sir; from the rear. Q. Could you see who threw the stones? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did General Pearson have anything about him, or his uniform, that would indicate his rank? A. He had a blouse on with brass buttons I think he had epaulets on his shoulders, I could not say positively. I knew the man, knew him to be a general. Q. What kind of a hat did he wear? A. He wore a slouch hat--a soft hat. Q. Did you see any other officers there that wore hats? A. No, I couldn't say that I did. I didn't take notice of the officers particularly. In fact I did not take notice of any of them. Q. Did you see the troops after they came out of the round-house on Sunday? A. No, sir; I didn't. Q. Were you there during Saturday night? A. No, sir; I left there as soon as they went into the round-house; then I left and went home; didn't go there until the next morning. I went over on the hill and stayed a while, then I went home again. Q. Did you hear them talk in the crowd about resisting the soldiers? A. No, sir; heard nothing said. The crowd seemed to be very orderly up to the time the Philadelphia soldiers came. I was among the crowd until past one o'clock or two o'clock, and the Fourteenth regiment had charge of the track, and the shifting engine was going backwards and forwards. Of course, there was a big crowd there; but they didn't interfere in any way that I saw. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you hear the crowd say what they would do when the Philadelphia soldiers came in? A. No, sir; I didn't hear them say anything. Q. They were looking for them, were they not? A. Not that I know of; didn't hear them say so. Q. Was it possible for you to be mistaken in the man that gave the command "fire?" Might it not have been somebody else? A. I don't think so. I knew the general, and was close enough to hear distinctly. Q. You knew the command really came from him? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was General Pearson facing towards Liberty street, or up the hill? A. He was facing kind of towards Twenty-eighth street. Twenty-eighth crosses Liberty. That is where the most excitement was. The soldiers were trying to force them off the track. The crowd had gathered up the track, and they were trying to force them down. I suppose the men in front would have got out of that if they could, because I don't think any man would stand up to a bayonet. Q. Facing towards Twenty-eighth and Liberty streets? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did the firing commence from that direction? A. No; not just exactly. They fired into the car where they threw the stones first. When they started, the men that were standing on Twenty-eighth started to run. Q. The crowd? A. Then the soldiers brought their guns up and fired on them as they ran down Twenty-eighth street. Then the soldiers that was fronting the hill fired into the parties on the hill. Q. Then the firing commenced on the line that were on Twenty-eighth street--lying parallel with Twenty-eighth street--facing up the track? A. Yes; facing up the track. Q. How long after that fire did the troops commence firing that were standing to their right, facing up the hill? A. I suppose it was not more than ten or twelve seconds. Q. Did those that were facing down towards Liberty street fire at that time? A. No, sir; they did not. Q. Did they fire at any time? A. Not that I seen. * * * * * William J. McKay, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Give your full name. A. William J. McKay. Q. Where do you reside? A. Thirtieth and Penn street. Q. What is your occupation? A. Work in the Western air brake shop, on Twenty-fifth street. Q. Were you present during Saturday, the 21st July, at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes, sir. Q. Be kind enough to state what came under your observation. A. I was up there when the Philadelphia soldiers came. One of them got sun struck, and they had to carry him down to the office, Twenty-sixth street. That is all I have got to say. Q. That is all you know about what occurred? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you in the telegraph office there? A. I was in the superintendent's office. Q. You know nothing of what occurred at the time the soldiers fired? A. No, sir; didn't hear them fire at all. Q. Did any of the officers come to the telegraph office while you were there? A. One soldier, and some other men came down, I don't know who they were. Q. Was he an officer? A. I took him to be an officer. Q. Did you know the man? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What do you do at the Western air brake? A. Chip brass castings. Q. Where did you carry this man that was sick? A. Carried him into the office--the left second door. Q. What office? A. The office under the superintendent's office; I don't know whose office it was. Q. Was it a telegraph office? A. I didn't take notice. Q. Were you in the telegraph office at any time after you carried this man down? A. No, sir; I was never in the office before in my life. Q. It was not a telegraph office you carried this man to? A. I didn't notice what office it was. Q. It was the superintendent's office, you say? A. No, sir; the superintendent's office is up stairs. Q. Whom did you see there in this office, where you carried this soldier? A. There was no person there. Q. No one there at all? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know where the telegraph was of the railroad company? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where is it? A. Twenty-sixth street--it was, before it was burned down, I don't know where it is now. Q. Isn't there a telegraph office at the superintendent's office? A. I don't know anything about that. I passed the office often, but I was never in it. Q. What was this office used for that you carried the man to? A. I don't know what it was for. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were there any officers of the militia there when you went there with this man, except the one that helped? A. No, sir; there was no other person in the room at all. Q. Did you stay there with those men, or put him down? A. We laid him down on two chairs, and there was a man came in and told us there was shooting up there, and I went up and left him there. The other two stayed there. Q. Said they were shooting up there? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is that all he said about it? A. That is all. Q. Did he say anything about an order having been given to fire on the crowd? A. No, sir; he just wheeled round and started back out again. Q. Did you know this man? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say there was no one in this office at all, when you carried this soldier there? A. No, sir; there was no person in when we went in. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see General Pearson about there? A. I don't know the man. Never saw him. Q. Did you see whether there was any other offices right there, close by this--that is, where you carried this soldier? A. How do you mean? Q. In the same building? A. I didn't see any. Q. The rooms close by these are used as offices? A. Yes; there several rooms in this office. There may have been a thousand in there, but I didn't see them. Q. On which side of the track, going down towards the Union depot? A. It is on the right, coming down this way. Q. Was it between the two tracks, between the Allegheny Valley and the Pennsylvania Central track? A. Yes; it is right along side of the Allegheny track. Q. Did you carry this man down the Allegheny track, or the Pennsylvania track? A. Down the Pennsylvania. Q. And then turned to the right? A. Yes; where the engines come out of the round-house--carried him down across there, and went into the office. Q. Is that the only building standing between these two tracks--the Allegheny Valley track and the Pennsylvania Central, in that vicinity? A. No, sir; there is two or three dozen buildings. Q. What were they? A. There is a square shop, and the round-houses, and this shop, and then there is small buildings. I don't know what they are used for. Q. There are offices in some of those buildings, are there not--machine shops for instance? A. There is an office between the two round-houses--Shafer's office. That is the only one I know there. Q. You are positive it was not the superintendent's office? A. Yes, sir; the superintendent's office is up stairs. Q. How many rooms were there down stairs? A. I don't know how many; I was never in only this one. Q. Were you there on Thursday or Friday previous to this? A. Yes; I was up there. Q. Do you know anything about the causes leading to this riot? A. No, sir; only the double-headers. That is all I know. Q. Did you hear any talk of resisting the troops if they attempted to clear the track? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see any stones or anything thrown at the soldiers? A. No, sir; I was not there when they came up. This man fainted, and I helped to carry him down. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you notice whether there were any doors leading out of this office to any other rooms, or from the hall you went into to other rooms? A. Yes, sir; as you go into the door there is a door leads to the left, past the stairs. There is one under the stairs. Q. Did you go in the first door? A. No, sir; the second. Q. To the left? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was the first door open on the left as you went in the hall? A. I didn't notice; I know there is a door there, because I took notice to it as we went in--we went on to a second door. The other fellow helping to carry him seemed to know where to take him to, and I went along. Q. Did you see anybody in the room--the first room--the front room--to which this door led to, through the windows or door? A. No, sir; I could see no person. * * * * * D. L. Reynolds, _sworn_: By Mr. Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. D. Leach Reynolds. Q. Where do you reside? A. At the time of this trouble I resided in the Twelfth ward, on Thirtieth street. Q. What is your occupation? A. I was conductor on the road at that time. Q. Do you know anything of the causes leading to this strike? A. Yes, sir; the more important cause of it was the abuse of the men by the petted officials, such as despatchers, and so forth, and the double-headers. Q. What do you mean by the petted parties? A. It is just this way: They have a set of men that are posted, not only in Pittsburgh, but at the principal stations, whose duty it is to give the conductors orders, what they shall do with the cars, what cars they shall set off and take on, and they can either give a man a nice train or a train where there is no work to do, or they can give all the work to one man--one man they give all the work to do, and one man they let go behind with nothing to do. It caused a great deal of dissatisfaction, and a great deal of growling. As sure as a man did any growling, that man would be discharged the next trip. Q. Are you employed by the railroad now? A. No, sir; I left the road on the 16th August. Q. Were you present on Saturday, the time the troops came in collision with the crowd? A. I was. Q. State what you saw? A. I went up there about half-past one or two o'clock in the afternoon, and saw the crowd that was standing on Twenty-eighth street, and didn't like the looks of it. There was some rather rough characters there. I do not know who they were, and where they belonged. I then took up a position in the hospital grounds, about one hundred yards from the track, one side of a tree that stands by the fence, so that I could fully see and observe all that was going on. The report was that they were going to send a train out, with lots of militia, and General Pearson on the cow-catcher. I was waiting to see if the train succeeded in getting through the crowd. The Philadelphia troops, as I was going up Twenty-eighth street, came in. I believe the second section was coming in at the time I was going up. I remained up there, I presume, all of two hours before the Philadelphia troops came up the track. I was looking in so many different directions that I could not tell you whether General Pearson and Pitcairn, and the sheriff, was in front of the soldiers or not. I saw the entire body of them as they came up. I do not remember of any persons or citizens of the Commonwealth in front of the militia when they came up and formed their hollow square. Then I saw Mr. Pitcairn plainly, and, also, General Pearson. Sheriff Fife I did not see. At the time they formed their hollow square, they threw out a platoon, as has been described, but across the front end of the square. That platoon undertook to chase the crowd back off the railroad tracks, off Twenty-eighth street. They refused to go back, and, of course, that is where the riots began. The soldiers tried to drive them back by shoving them back with their breasts. They refused to be pushed back. Then they undertook to charge them back with their bayonets. After that they fell back a step or two, and I heard the order to fire, and they did fire with good effect. About that time I took up over the hill, and came down the other way, a few minutes after the fire. I presume I was about fifty feet from the front end of the soldiers. They were then moving around somewhat, and I asked one of the railroad boys if he had seen any of our boys fall. He said there was three or four. I asked him if any of the soldiers were killed. About that time there was a gun went off--I think it went off in the air--and just then I seen one of the conductors coming down with his arm resting on his coat. He had taken his coat off, and I went over to and asked him how bad he was hurt. He said his arm was weak, so that he could not hold it up. I assisted him down to Penn street, and put him in a grocer's wagon, and took him to Doctor Clark's, and went to my own house and told my wife I was not hurt. I didn't find her there, I found her on Penn street. I put her in a baker shop, and then went off to look for some more friends. About this time they threw the platoon of soldiers across Twenty-eighth street, and I supposed they were going to fire, and I got into a hotel where I heard there was some wounded, to hear who they were. There had been some there, but they had been removed. I afterwards saw them bringing down an old gentleman, Mr. Stockel. I went home that evening, got my supper and remained at home until, I presume, it was three o'clock. Then I took my wife and started down to see. At Twenty-eighth street the crowd had got so dense that I went into a drug store, and while I was in there, a whole party went by, with a drum beating in front of them. They were whooping and hollering. I don't remember that there was any firearms in the party, but I know they had a big drum, and were pounding on that. As soon as they got by, I says, I will take my wife home. I took her home, and after I got there, the neighbors and her together persuaded me to remain there, and the consequence was I didn't go away from my own door stoop that evening. I went to bed, I presume it was about half past nine o'clock, and on Sunday morning, I presume about two or three o'clock, she tried to awaken me to tell me the Pennsylvania railroad property was on fire, but she could not get me awake, and later in the morning, when the Philadelphia soldiers were going up Penn street, they formed a platoon in front of my house. I started out to hear where they had gone to, and found out that they were gone up the street. Q. Did you see anybody fire on them? A. No, sir; I didn't. Q. Was there any talk of resisting these soldiers in clearing the track, and preventing them from running trains? A. You might hear men talking of a great many things, but nobody could imagine what they were going to do. Nobody had any firearms to resist anything with. They were asking the question, that there were one thousand five hundred Philadelphia soldiers coming, and what are you going to do with them? Q. The crowd resisted the soldiers, did they, when they attempted to clear the track? A. Yes, sir. Q. The soldiers did not use any more force than was necessary, at first? A. No, sir; they did not use any force at all, but simply pushed ahead with their breasts. Q. Tried to push the crowd back quietly? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you see any stones thrown? A. I saw one that I took to be a clod of earth, about the size of my hand, thrown from the west side of the watch-box from the side of the hill, down into the soldiers. That was the only stone I saw thrown that day. Q. You were not near enough to tell who ordered the firing? A. I could hear a great many words. I could not hear sentences, but I heard the word, "fire," distinctly. I could not hear any conversation unless it was in a loud tone of voice, but I heard, "fire," as distinctly as you speak. Q. Did the soldiers fire in a volley? A. No; more like one soldier got scared and he fires off his gun, and the balance follow suit. Q. What was the objection to running double-headers? A. It puts two men's work on one man for one man's pay. We had been reduced so often that we thought they had got about as low as we could live. Q. How much did you average? A. If I averaged full time, it was $70 20 per month before the reduction. After that I got $2 45 a day, and never got a full month. If you want to know all about their wages, I can tell you from the first reduction. When I went on the road they were paying conductors $2 60 a day. Q. When was that? A. The 21st February, 1872, I think. They were paying conductors then $2 60 a day, and there was an order came out--or rather the men wanted more wages, and the committee went to Philadelphia, and it was arranged that conductors, who had been running trains prior to March 1, would get $2 85. New conductors were only to get $2 45. When I went on the road first I acted in the capacity of brakeman for about eight weeks, and on the 24th day of April I took out my first train, and I received $2 45 for that. I ran from the 21st day of April till the 16th of June as extra conductor, part of the time running trains and part of the time not. After the 16th day of June I got a regular train, and I ran that for a whole year for $2 45, and from the 16th day of June till the 1st day of next January I received $2 70, which I was led to suppose was a raise of ten per cent. On the 1st day of January an order came out that we should be reduced, and that cut me down to $2 40. I could not understand how a reduction of ten per cent. would take off more than an increase of ten per cent., and I had an interview with Mr. Pitcairn and the only satisfaction I got, that the company was losing money. The 16th day of June my wages went up to $2 70, and that was the wages I received up until the day of the last reduction, when they cut me down to $2 45. Q. You had been getting $2 70, and they cut you down to $2 40, then you went to talk to Mr. Pitcairn, and he told you that the business was bad, and they had to make this reduction? A. I did not make any complaint. They reduced by tens instead of by fives. Q. What reason did he give? A. He could not give me any reason, he said it was done on higher authority. Q. I understood you to say, he said something about business was poor? A. He said that the company was losing money. He took into consideration the different conductors, and they had different pay, and the conclusion was that they were losing money. Q. Then they reduced you? A. They reduced me to $2 40 at that time. They ran the first year for $2 20, and the second year for $2 45, and the third year for $2 70--so the order was in the start out. I never happened to come in under the $2 20 list, they raised me to $2 70, then they cut me down to $2 40, and I had to work from June to January, at $2 40, and then went up again to $2 70, on account of the year having expired. Q. What was the pay of the brakesman? A. Brakesmen originally received $2 00 a day, then afterwards they were cut down to $1 80, and the last reduction brought them down to $1 65. Q. Did you know what wages they were making on an average? A. They, as a general thing, made pretty near only about $26 per month. Some months a man can make almost double time, other months he could not make so much. Q. Did that depend upon his being attentive? A. No, sir; it depended entirely on his business. A new man was treated the same as an old man, so far as going out was concerned, unless he was an extra brakeman. If he was regular, on a regular run, he went on that train every time. Q. Of course, if he was not there to go out, some one took his place? A. If he was not there to go out, they always supplied a man in his place--the crew was slim, I think, as it was. Q. The man that was there always got his work? A. I never lost a day on the Pennsylvania railroad by being absent, unless it was voluntarily or freight was scarce. Sometimes freight was scarce for a month, and they would have to cut one train off one day, and once they sent me home in July, for a week. It was on account of trade being very dull. By Mr. Means: Q. You are not in the employ of the road now? A. No, sir. Q. When did you leave it? A. On the 16th day of August. Q. Was there more of the hands left at that time? A. The road was principally operated after the strike was over, by the same that had been on the line before the strike, and I was among the number, and about the time I stopped off, things began to assume the old fashioned shape--one day they would want me and the next day they would not, and I went to Mr. Pitcairn and asked him for an order for my money, and he said it was not necessary to give an order to get me the money. Q. Quit of your own accord? A. I suppose I would have been discharged if I had stuck to it. * * * * * William M. McKay, was recalled and explained to the committee the situation of the room where the soldier who was sun struck was taken into. * * * * * Colonel Smith, re-called: By Senator Yutzy: Q. You heard the last witness describe the building, and the manner in which he entered that building, and the way that he entered--where he says he left the soldier was at the telegraph office? A. It was not a telegraph office. [Witness explains the situation of the rooms in the building on a plot.] This is the telegraph office, and this is the train master. I presume by the description that was where the soldier was taken. This is the passage connecting the main entrance of the building with the telegraph office. This is the first floor--the first floor above the basement--there is a basement under the telegraph office, and the superintendent's private office is immediately over this, on the second floor. The outer office of the superintendent is there on the second floor, and the clerks here. Three on the first and three on the second, and this is the trainmen's room, this is a sort of counter here with windows where trainmen come up to get their orders. Q. Was there a telegraph office adjourning this room where Mr. McKay carried the soldier? A. The room is connected. There is a door just here. Adjourned until this afternoon, at three o'clock. AFTERNOON SESSION. PITTSBURGH, _Tuesday, February 26, 1878._ The committee met, pursuant to adjournment. All members present except Messrs. Lindsey and Larrabee. * * * * * P. J. Young, _sworn_: By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Where is your residence? A. No. 61 Fountain street. Q. What is your occupation, sir? A. Police officer. Q. Were you on the force at the time of the riots, in July? A. I was one of the men that was dropped at the time of the reduction--suspended. Q. Were you on duty on Thursday and Thursday night, at the railroad? A. Yes, sir. Q. Be kind enough to state what occurred there? A. Well, on Thursday, about noon, I think, Mayor McCarthy called--came to my place where I lived, and told me to hurry down to the mayor's office, I was wanted. I went down, and met Chief Dimick, and he told me I was wanted on the Pennsylvania railroad, there was a strike. I asked him if I was to act as a police officer, and he says, Yes, I was only suspended. I went out and met Mr. Butler at the Union depot. I believe he is the depot master there, and I told him I was sent out there by the mayor's orders. He sent out a car with me and two more officers to Twenty-eighth street, where we joined more police out there. When I arrived there, there was a large crowd of people congregated upon Twenty-eighth street, along the railroad, and remained there until two or three o'clock. I don't know exactly what time. Q. In the afternoon? A. Yes. Then me and four officers were detailed to go on board of a double-header. There was a train going out. I went on the first engine, with another officer, as I understood for a protection for the engineer, as far as East Liberty. The train started, and moved on a little piece up the track, and a crowd of, I couldn't say how many, came in front and motioned their hands at the engineer. I said to the engineer, go ahead. He made some remark, and he jumped off the engine. I remained there on the engine, and finally the fireman jumped off. I stood there for some time, thinking they might come back again. They didn't, and I got off, and was asked by, I think, Mr. Fox--he is police officer of the company--if I wouldn't go on the engine again. I said yes. I went on the engine and remained there. No engineer came aboard, and finally I left. At the same time, the other police that were out there--I don't know how many--were strung all along the track, keeping the crowd off. I suppose in the neighborhood of six o'clock I came into supper here, together with more of the officers, to the Continental, on Fifth avenue, at Mr. Newell's; we had supper there. After supper we all went out. A good many went out along with me to the Union depot, and we expected to get a train to go out as far as Twenty-eighth street. We stayed along there, and no engine came down to the depot that night. Me and two or three more officers walked out Liberty street to Twenty-eighth street. There was a large crowd of people along there when we got out. I moved around through them. We patrolled Liberty and along Penn and Twenty-eighth street, and everything was very quiet. I left, I suppose, in the neighborhood of four o'clock in the morning. About that time. That is all I know. Q. Did the crowd make any demonstrations? Was that all they did, waving their hands to the engineer? A. Yes, sir. Q. They didn't make any attempt to commit any violence? A. No, sir; that night they were a very orderly crowd. Q. What was this crowd composed of, railroad men? A. I suppose there was some railroad men there through them. Q. How many was there, do you suppose, altogether? A. I couldn't exactly say. There was a large crowd of people. They were scattered up and down the railroad. It was dark. Q. When you got this train, could you not have run that train out? Did you have a sufficient police force to guard a train--I mean on Thursday afternoon? A. I wouldn't be afraid, if I was an engineer, to run away. I don't know what might have happened. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have a police uniform on? A. I had a summer uniform--police blouse? Q. A regular police blouse? A. Yes, sir. Q. So that you would be known as a police officer? A. I had no buttons on it. I had my shield on the inside of my coat. I wore citizen's clothes all the time I was detailed as a reserve man. Q. A stranger would not have known you were a police officer? A. There were a great many that did know me. Q. A stranger would not have recognized you as being a police officer? A. No; I didn't wear a shield. Q. Did you know that engineer that jumped off the train? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know the fireman? A. No, sir. Q. How many police officers were there at any one time? A. I couldn't, in fact, say how many. There was a squad went out in the morning--some more men that was suspended at that time. I don't know how many went out. Q. Ten or fifteen or twenty? A. I expect there was over fifteen men. Q. Was there twenty? A. I couldn't say, sir. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Did you keep the track clear? A. The track was clear at that time. Afterwards, of course, we were not keeping it clear. There was a large crowd that stood away back. Q. On Friday, what did you do? A. I didn't go out there on Friday. Q. Why? A. I think I came down to the mayor's office Friday, and I got some sleep that forenoon, Friday, and I heard that the sheriff and his posse had gone out and our services were not required. Q. Who told you that? A. I couldn't say. I don't know whether it came from the chief's clerk or not--Mr. Davis. Q. You heard it at the office? A. I heard it, I think, at the office. I won't swear to it, but I think I heard it at the office. However, I didn't go out. * * * * * M. Mulvaney, _sworn_: By Mr. Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. Michael Mulvaney. Q. Where do you reside? A. In Eighth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. Policeman. Q. Were you on the police force in July, at the time of the disturbance? A. Yes, sir. Q. What days were you on? A. On Thursday, the mayor's clerk told me to go to the Union depot there, and report to Mr. Butler. Mr. Butler told me to go to work at the round-house, and two or three more of us went down and we remained there. We went to the round-house, and we met some more of the police and stayed there for a long time. There was a big crowd around there. A lot of the police jumped on the train to help take it out--a double-header. Eight or nine of the police jumped on the train, and I saw the engineer and fireman jump off. The fireman and engineer jumped off. That is all I saw at that time. Everything was quiet. Q. Were you there during that time? A. No, sir; I was not. I left at four or five o'clock. Q. Clearing the tracks and keeping the crowd off? A. The crowd stood one side. By Mr. Means: Q. Were you one of the discharged men? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who sent for you to appear at the mayor's office? A. I think it was the mayor's clerk or the chief clerk. I could not say which of the two. Q. How many of you went out together? A. Me and two more fellows went together at that time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You went up there to help to take out the train--a double-header? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many of you? A. I could not say. There was a good many police there. I could not say how many. Q. Were you on the engine? A. No, sir; I was not on the engine. I saw a lot of them jump on the engine. Q. Policemen? A. Policemen. Q. Were there any threats made against the engineer or fireman? A. I did not hear any. * * * * * Conrad Shaffer, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. Conrad Shaffer. Q. Where do you reside? A. 318 Fifth avenue. Q. What is your occupation? A. Police officer eight years and nine months. Q. Were you on the police force last July, at the time of the riots? A. I was not, sir. Q. Were you sent for to appear at the mayor's office? A. On Thursday morning, when this occurred, we were standing down there on Smithfield street. We just had been paid off, and I was standing there with George Kauffman, another police officer, and Detective O'Mara came to us and said we were wanted at the mayor's office. We went over, and they said to us there was a strike some place. They did not tell us where. There was ten of us gathered around there in the mayor's office, and we were marched by Smithfield street to the Union depot. Mr. Fox, the railroad officer, was along. We walked up Smithfield to the Union depot and got into a car with the shifter in front, and took us out to Twenty-eighth street. They stopped there and we got out, and when we got there this man McCall, who struck Watt--I seen the man running backwards and forwards--then somebody got him by the back of the neck, and I then ran up and put the nippers on him and arrested him and took him to the Twelfth ward station-house, and we went back to the railroad track. I stayed there all the forenoon, until about two o'clock in the afternoon. There was a train came along, and Mr. Fox came to us and said he wanted men on the engine. Fox told me and Cochran to stay in the rear, and we went back to the rear, and while we were going back the train moved on, and men got in front and done this like, [holding up his hands,] and the engineer got off. The second engineer got off, and the men that was firing they got off, and we stopped there then all the afternoon, and we went to the central station. We had our supper in the Continental, and after we had supper we were marched back again out to the depot. Walked up then to what they call the dispatch office, at the outer depot. There is a little house that they call the dispatch office, and a telegraph dispatch came in that they did not want any more officers--thought they could do without the police out there--so then we stood there for a long time, and did not know what to do, and Clerk Davis told us we might go home if they did not want us. Directly a dispatch came in that we could go out. We were put on a car and taken out again, and we remained all that night, until half past three o'clock in the morning. Then there was no disturbance going on, and we went home. I then stayed at home. We were not wanted any more--the city did not want us, and the railroad company did not want us. Q. Did they tell you they did not want you? A. We were our bosses. Q. You say the railroad company did not want you? A. I did not see any official of the Pennsylvania railroad there at all. On Monday evening after the proclamation was issued for all the old officers to come back again, I went to the Central station and offered my services, and on Monday morning the mayor, and General Negley, and a squad of his men, and a company of Mr. McFarland's were marched down Smithfield street to this place, where the boat was coming in from Elizabeth--right down here on second avenue--and stopped them, and the mayor and General Negley then made speeches to the men, told them they had better not raise any violence in the city of Pittsburgh, and keep quiet. We were taken away again, and placed on the city of Pittsburgh force on our regular beat. Q. After you tried to start this train, and the men waved their hands, and the train stopped, did you get off? A. I was not on the train. I was in the rear of it. Q. Were the officers in possession of the track? A. There was officers all along the track. Q. They could have run this train. It was possible for the train to go out; that is, the crowd could not have interfered. A. Yes, sir. Q. You went back to the depot after supper? A. After we had supper, we marched to the Union depot. Went into the telegraph office, outside the Union depot--there was a two story frame they called a dispatch office. A dispatch came in that they did not want any officers, and I asked Clerk Davis, says I, "Don't they want any more police out there" and he said, "It seems not." Q. Who is Clerk Davis? A. He was the chief's clerk. Q. The mayor's clerk? A. No, sir; the chief's clerk. Q. He was not a railroad official? A. No, sir; the chief's clerk. Q. Dispatch came that they did not want any more officers? A. They dispatched that a man was here, and if they wanted him, they could have him. There were two young men in there that were playing checkers. I could see them standing at the window and looking in. They were playing checkers at the time, and I walked right up to Mr. Davis, and the young fellow held his ear right down to the instrument when it came. They telegraphed, "You can send him, if the man is willing to go out." So he went. Q. You did not go back, you said. A. I went home. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you know those engineers that jumped off the train? A. No, sir; they were perfect strangers to me. Q. Did you know the man that waved, to stop the train? A. No, sir; he was a tall young man, light moustache, to the best of my recollection. Q. Did you know any of the railroad employés? A. No, sir. It was on a different part of the city. My way was out here on Fifth avenue, that was over on the other side. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Did they start the train? A. They ran about the length of this room. Q. How many men were on the track in front, and waved and signaled to stop? A. I could not say how many there were in front of the train. There was not any more on the track than there is in this room. Q. Did they make any threats? A. No, sir. Q. Said nothing to the engineers? A. No, sir. All the man done was this. [Waving his hands.] Q. Did you take that to be a signal to stop? A. I supposed so. I was in the rear, and Mr. Fox told me. He says, "Shaffer, you go in the rear, and get on the train." Says I, "All right, Mr. Fox." Just as I got ready to jump on, the train stopped. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. This man that made these signals, was he on the track in front of the engine? A. Yes, sir. Q. How far were you from the engine? A. I went to jump on. I went to get on, and I seen the young man doing this. Some of them hooted and cheered, and then she stopped. Q. You were not at the rear of the train? A. Not quite; it was a long train. I do not know how many cars were on it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you up there on Sunday? A. No, sir. * * * * * George Cochrane, _sworn_: By Mr. Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. George Cochrane. Q. Your residence? A. Eighth ward. Q. Occupation? A. Been on the police force until they dropped these men. Q. Are you on the force now? A. No, sir. Q. Were you on duty on Thursday and Thursday night of July 19th? A. I was one of the ten men that was called in on Thursday. Q. Be kind enough to relate what occurred? A. We mustered up ten men, started out to the Union depot, got on a car there and went as far as Twenty-eighth street. Seen a big crowd out there. Stopped around there a little while, and this McCall, he jumped on a switch there and made use of some threatening language, and I believe, struck superintendent Watt, and we arrested him and put him in the Twelfth ward station-house. We fetched him to central station at Diamond alley. We came in, got supper and went out again, then went to the Union depot and stopped out there awhile, and didn't know whether they wanted any more men or not. We stopped there awhile, and finally went out as far as Twenty-eighth street again, and stopped there all night. In the morning, I guess, six or seven o'clock, I came in again--Friday morning I came in to the Union depot, and seen Mr. Fox there, and he detailed me for the depot then--detailed five of us. Stayed in around about the Union depot. I stayed there until nine o'clock Friday night, and Fox told me I had better go home and get some sleep. I went home and came back Saturday morning, stayed around there all day Saturday and Saturday night, and I went up home to change my clothes. Sunday morning I came back again, stayed around until the Union depot had catched fire, and word was sent from the mayor's office that the mayor wanted all the policemen he could get hold of to report at the mayor's. We went down to the mayor's office, and was detailed there, doing duty around the city. We went out Second avenue here and stopped a party there from coming in. The mayor made a speech to them. Went to the Connellsville depot and arrested some thirty or forty there that had taken a train and would not pay any fare. Q. Taken a train to go out? A. No; they took charge of a train and would not pay fare. Q. That was the parties that came from Cumberland, Maryland. A. Yes; that was the same party. Q. This double-header, on Thursday, I believe, was thirty-six cars and two locomotives? A. We started to go out with some four or five policemen on each locomotive. Sheaffer and I was on the rear part of the train, and we made several attempts to go out, and the engineer on the first locomotive he jumped off, and the crowd cheered him. Then he got back on to his locomotive, and got his coat out of the box and put it on, and they both left their engine. There was nobody to hinder them going out, that I could see. Q. Do you suppose they could run out, and did you have sufficient force to protect them? A. There was sufficient force to protect them. By Mr. Means: Q. Were any of those ten men you speak of, that left the mayor's office, dressed in police uniform? A. No; they had blouses on them. Q. Could any of them be distinguished from any other citizens? A. No; a stranger would not have known them, I suppose. There was hundreds of them out there knew me. I don't suppose a stranger would. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What made the engineers leave their engines? A. They told them to get off. Q. They told them to get off? A. They beckoned for them, I believe, and they got off. Q. Did you know the engineer? A. Never had any acquaintance with him. Since that time I have. Q. You did not know them at that time? A. No, sir. Q. Didn't tell you why they got off? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was any threats made by any one? A. No, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. You speak of these men making some threats. They struck Mr. Watt? A. Yes, sir; McCall, he used threatening language at the time he struck him. Q. What did he say? A. He jumped out there and says, "We will die here." Q. Die--make a fight before these trains would go out? A. Yes; we had no trouble out there after we made that arrest? * * * * * Patrick J. Carrigan _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 109 Second avenue. Q. What is your occupation? A. Police officer. Q. Were you on the police force on July 19? A. Special police officer--yes, sir. Q. Were you on duty on Thursday and Thursday evening? A. Yes, sir. Q. Will you be kind enough to state what occurred? A. I went on duty Thursday afternoon. There was a pretty good sized crowd at Twenty-eighth street. And they were getting ready to take a train out, and they put a good many officers on each car and the locomotive, and some stayed along the line and watched them. One man got out in front and done this way. [Waving his hand.] The train and the engineer got off. Q. How long did you stay there? A. I stayed until five o'clock, and then came in town, and they were taking this McCall in; and I got supper, and then went out again in the evening, and stayed there all night. Q. Were you on duty Friday? A. No, sir. Q. Friday night? A. No, sir. Q. Saturday? A. No, sir. Q. Were you on duty at any time afterwards there? A. Yes; went on duty again on Tuesday after the riot, and when going out on the train, one of the Pennsylvania officials got on the train, and told us when we got to Twenty-eighth street to get off, and not let these men see us. They did not want these men to know that they were.... About twelve of us went up the hill, and lay there behind some trees all night. Q. This was Thursday? A. Thursday. A few of us would go down to where the railroad fellows were, and stand around there. There was not over twenty-five or thirty. Q. Were they on the tracks? A. No, sir; on Twenty-eighth street. There was nothing on the tracks but railroad men, walking up and down. Q. Could you have taken that train out that day? A. Yes, sir; if they had engineers that train could have gone out. Q. You had possession of the track--and the officers did? A. There was only this one that was on the track. Q. Was there any attempt made to assist him? A. Not that I saw. He went over in the crowd. I was down back where the crowd was, in case of any of them interfering. We were in citizens' clothes, and we scattered amongst them. Q. There was no attempt made to arrest? A. They made arrests before I got up. Q. They got McCall? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Policemen hid behind trees? A. We were told to go there by the railroad officials--to get off and not show ourselves; there was some trees in the road, and we laid down there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you ordered by the railroad officials in charge of you to go behind trees? A. To go up on this road. He didn't tell us to go behind trees. Q. And conceal yourselves? A. And conceal ourselves. * * * * * John Davis re-called: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you out at Torrens, Mr. Davis, during Thursday? A. I was. Q. Will you be kind enough to state what occurred there, and what efforts were made by the police to disperse the crowd? A. When I got there there was nothing special going on, for everything was quiet. I didn't remain there but a short time--came back to Twenty-eighth street, and when I was there everything was perfectly quiet. Q. Officers had possession of the track? A. Yes, sir. Q. You have testified to what knowledge you had of the occurrences at Twenty-eighth street? A. With the exception of Thursday night--a little matter I forgot. After I had got the men their suppers, I went to the depot, and reported at the telegraph office I had men to go out. And the reply came back that everything was quiet, and they needed no more men, and they could not send an engine for us. I told the men what transpired, and directly a second despatch came, that we could go out if we wished to. Some of the men walked out, some remained around the depot, and went out afterwards. As I have stated in my other testimony, on Friday morning I sent officers up to the depot, and they returned and stated that they were not wanted; they had all the men they wished. Q. I believe you testified to that? A. Yes; I testified to that. Q. Anything else? A. Nothing further than I was a witness of the transaction of the firing. Q. Have you testified as to that? A. No, sir. You stopped me right at the firing. I was present when the troops came up, and witnessed the whole transaction. Q. Go ahead? A. After the troops came up there were civilians in front of the troops. They halted probably five or six feet from Twenty-eighth street. The column left faced, and marched towards the sand-house. The first two columns about faced and marched towards the hill side--formed an open square--and a detachment of soldiers came between the two columns, with the Gatling guns in the rear of them. A detachment of soldiers came up between the two columns--came towards where the crowd was gathered--at a carry arms, and it appears they could not get further, and they fell back five or six paces, and came to a charge bayonets. At that time, when they came to a charge bayonets, there was in the neighborhood of a dozen or two missiles thrown from the house. I only saw one stone among the lot. At that moment they commenced to fire. I was on the hill side. Q. Was the crowd resisting the soldiers? A. There was such an immense gathering there they could not get away--they had no chance to get away. Q. Did the soldiers attempt to press them back at first? A. They first came to carry arms--carrying their guns at the side of them--then they stepped back and came to a charge. Just at that point these missiles came from the little house, thrown by the boys. Q. Did you hear any pistol shots? A. Previous to that? No, sir; I did not. Q. Did you hear any command to fire? A. I didn't, sir. I was probably sixty yards above the railroad track. I could witness the movement of the troops, but could not hear any orders given. After the firing I immediately came down the hill the way I went up--took the same course. Came down past the soldiers, and went into the railroad buildings. I saw this soldier, who was carried off the ground before they had formed a square, and helped to bring him to. Q. Who was there? A. There was two men there--a reporter of one of the city papers. Q. Do you know these men? A. Only one of them. Q. What was his name? A. Mr. Rattigan. Him and I went in together. He is a reporter--used to be on the Pittsburgh _Chronicle_. Q. What office was he carried to? A. Telegraph office. The first floor in that building, Twenty-sixth street. Q. Was there anybody in the room at the time besides these two men? A. There were two other men attending him. One of them had a bandage around his head, and said he had got hit with a stone. He said he was not hurt very much. There was a small bandage around his forehead. Q. You didn't know who gave the orders to fire? A. No, sir. After the firing there was quite a .... raised. Some parties were excited over it--some of their friends being killed. It was quiet Thursday, Friday, and Saturday along the railroad. Had no trouble. Q. How soon after the firing did you go down to this telegraph office? A. The minute they commenced firing I saw dust flying pretty lively round me, and I started up the hill. I suppose I was three to five minutes going up and coming down. After the firing was done I came right down the hillside again--I came down the same course I went up. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say a sick soldier was in the telegraph office? A. In the room in the left of the building as you go in. Q. Is that the telegraph office? A. They call it a telegraph office, but it is not in that room. Q. Train master's office? A. I don't know whose office it is. They call it a telegraph office. Q. The instruments are in the adjoining office? A. Yes, sir. Q. Could you see into the telegraph room? A. I opened the door to look in. Q. Anybody in? A. No; the operator was working with this young man on the floor. He was having a spasm, stiffened up. They worked with him for probably ten minutes before he came to. Q. He had a fit, didn't he? A. A fit of some kind. Q. That was fifteen minutes before the firing took place? A. I came down the hill immediately after the firing took place, and went there to see these parties in the room. Q. Did you see General Pearson on the ground just before the firing or during the time of the firing? A. Didn't see him out after the troops went into the round-house; then I saw him in the yard, probably six o'clock in the evening--between five and six--I saw him in the yard. Q. Did you see the officers in the hollow square? A. I saw some, but could not recognize any of them. Q. Do you know General Pearson? A. Yes, sir. Q. Didn't see him? A. No; didn't see him until the firing was all over. Q. If General Pearson had been in the hollow square, wouldn't you have seen him? A. My attention was not directly called to the officers. I was watching the movements of the men, and the minute these stones were thrown, my attention was called to that. In fact, I was not looking at the officers, I was watching the movements of the men. I suppose if I was looking for General Pearson, I could have picked him out from others. I have known him for a good many years. * * * * * Richard Hughes, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. Richard Hughes. Q. Where do you reside? A. 2512 Carson street, south side, Twenty-fifth ward. Q. What is your occupation? A. I was on the police force. Q. Were you on the police force on the 19th day of last July? A. I was one of those suspended. Q. Did you offer your services to the railroad officers on the 19th of July? A. Yes; I went up to the Union depot, two or three parties along with me, ex-policemen, Thursday morning. Stayed there until about eleven o'clock. The first thing, I seen about ten or fifteen, or twenty policemen, with two or three detectives, walking through the Union depot. That drew my attention, and I followed them. George Crosby, and two or three other parties went back, and met Mr. Davis on Smithfield street, and he told us they wanted to see us at the office--wanted us to go out to the Union depot. We went down to the Union depot, and seven of us, with detective White, and taking a train between one and two o'clock from Union depot to the stock-yards, we went out--seven of us. Sam Leary, at East Liberty, he came in, too. Mr. Watt was along with us. There was two or three hundred people around there, and they told us to clear the track, they were going to start a train then. We went to move them off the track, so they did, and when the track was clear, they couldn't get engineers, firemen, or brakemen to take out the train. Stayed there until seven or eight o'clock that evening, and everything was quiet. The regular force came out about half-past six that evening, in full uniform, around the stock-yards. There was nothing going on there. We came on on Monday morning following. I came to town; went up to the Union depot. I saw two or three policemen, and asked who hired them, and they said Fox. I asked him if they wanted any more policemen, and he said he had plenty. I asked for Mr. Watt, the superintendent, and he told me he was at the round-house. He told me they wanted no more policemen. I asked him to pay me what he owed me, I want to leave town in the afternoon. He said he couldn't pay me, to go to the office. He told me he didn't want any more police. I went to Mr. Watt myself. Q. Did you tell him the mayor had sent you? A. I told him the mayor had ordered us out there. The day before that we wanted to know who was going to pay us. They told us the pay was all right. Clerk Davis asked me, why ain't you on duty, and I told him they didn't want me. Q. Did you see anything of the fire that night? A. No, sir; I left two o'clock Friday afternoon. * * * * * George W. Crosby, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. George W. Crosby. Q. Where do you reside? A. No. 1117 Carson street, south side. Q. What is your occupation? A. Formerly a policeman and laborer. Q. Were you on the police force on the 19th of July last? A. No, sir. I was taken off on the reduction. The 11th or 12th of July the suspension took place. Q. Did you offer your services to the railroad officials on Friday, the 20th? A. Yes. I went to the Union depot on Friday, the 20th, between nine and ten o'clock. I met Mr. Fox, a police officer of the Pennsylvania railroad, offered my services to him, and he told me he didn't want any more. He had all the men he wanted, and mentioned the number of men he had. Q. How many did he say he had? A. I couldn't say positively. Three or four, or four or five. I couldn't swear to the exact number, but I know he mentioned it to me. He had all the men he wanted. Q. You were not on duty on Thursday? A. Yes; I was. Q. Did you see anybody besides Mr. Fox? A. At the Union depot? Q. No, sir; that day--on Friday? A. No, sir. I only offered my services to him. Q. Did you see Mr. Watt, the superintendent, at any time? A. I was in company with Mr. Hughes at the time he saw Mr. Watt, and I had nothing to say to Mr. Watt at all. * * * * * William J. White, _sworn_. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. City of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. On the detective force. Q. Were you out at Torrens on Thursday, the 19th of July? A. I was, sir. Q. Will you be kind enough to state what occurred, and what efforts were made by the police force to disperse the crowd? A. I will state that about the neighborhood of twelve o'clock on Thursday, the 19th of July, I met the chief's clerk, Mr. Davis, and he told me he wanted all the available police he could get, to go out on the railroad, there was a strike. I hunted around and got one or two, and going up Fifth avenue I met the mayor, and the mayor told me to go out and get all I could, and go to Twenty-eighth street. I went up to the depot, and got about six or seven men, besides myself, and took up some on my way--about seven men, I guess--and went to Twenty-eighth street, getting off the cars there; and Mr. Watt was with us, and he told us we had better go on to Torrens station. We got on the cars and went to Torrens station, and got off there. There was quite a crowd--I suppose seventy-five or one hundred strikers. Mr. Watt asked me to clear the tracks. I done so. Told the men to get off the tracks, and they all went off the tracks, and had no trouble or difficulty whatever. Stayed around there for a considerable time, and I think Mr. Gumbert, a gentleman connected with the dispatcher, came to me and said, "We are going to send a train out." Says I, "All right." Says he, "What I want you to do, is to get the men up the track, and see that nobody mounts the train." I told the men to scatter along, in different positions, on the track; that this train was going out, and see that nobody got on the train, and that the train went out. No person interfered whatever. Q. What day was this? A. Thursday, the 19th. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Was that a double-header? A. I could not say. I suppose there was over twenty cars on it. Q. Do you know whether there were two engines on it? A. No, sir; there was only one engine. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How long did you remain there? A. I remained until seven o'clock in the evening. Q. Any further effort made to run trains after that? A. No, sir. Q. Any threats made by any of the men when the train started? Was the engineer threatened by the crowd? A. No; I talked to some and they said they did not wish to intimidate any person. They were talking to the engineer and fireman. There was no threats or violence while I was there. Q. Were you at Twenty-eighth street during the firing on the troops? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know anything connected with the riots? A. I was not up at Twenty-eighth street, from the fact that the rules at the mayor's office require that a man has a week in the office, and it was my week in the office, and Friday and Saturday I was in the office all day. Sunday, after dinner, I started out. Then I started to help the fire department, and do what I could in that way. Q. You were at the office after the Thursday of that week? A. Yes, sir. Q. While there, did you hear any demand made on the mayor for a force of police? A. I cannot say that I did. The mayor was a good deal confused about it. We had not the force, in fact. I think it was Friday or Saturday morning. I seen a party come down to the mayor, and go into the office, and ask for that--some warrants that should have been served--that they hand them over. I believe they were handed over to a young man that came there--some warrants issued, I think, for some of the head rioters. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know anything about those warrants? A. No, sir; I do not. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see any one ask the mayor to go along up to the railroad, and see Mr. Cassatt or Pitcairn or anybody else? A. I did not. Q. Did you hear any conversation in the office by some men, in regard to the burning of all the railroad property, on Sunday? A. I did not; no, sir. I was in the office until dinner time. There was a good deal of excitement around there. Citizens running in--and the mayor was doing all he could, under the circumstances. By Mr. Means: Q. Who was the man that demanded the warrants? A. He was a young man. I could not tell. * * * * * James Scott, _sworn_. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your name? A. James Scott. Q. Where do you reside? A. Ninth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am a detective officer. Q. Were you on the force at the time of the disturbance, in July? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you hear the mayor offer the services of the police force to the firemen to protect them, at any time during the fire on Saturday night or Sunday? A. I will just state, as brief as I can. On Sunday morning I was sent by the chief to the Twelfth ward station to take charge of the telegraph office, and I met the mayor coming down. He asked me if I was going down. He told me to remain at the station there until I was relieved. In an hour and a half the mayor came back again in a buggy and asked if any squad of police had come up. He left his buggy there, and went to Twenty-eighth street. The station-house is at Twenty-sixth street. We went up street and came back again, and about the time we came back the squad of police was there. They brought in some prisoners. They had their arms full of goods. The mayor gave them orders to string along on Liberty street and protect the firemen, and arrest anybody that would interfere with them, and they started. I stood there all day, until seven o'clock in the evening. Q. Do I understand you went with those men to Liberty street? A. No, sir. Q. You stayed at the station-house? A. I stayed until I was relieved by the night captain. There were one hundred and fifteen men taken out. I think there are seven different station-houses that have a police wire in, and you have to have a man to attend to it; but in daylight they have none. Q. There is no man left in the station-house at that time? A. Nobody to do that. When we had the one hundred and sixteen men on, the lieutenant was always on duty more or less, and it was understood he could operate, and if there was anything wrong in the district, he could telegraph to head-quarters. We have one in East Liberty, one at Lawrenceville, one in the Twelfth ward, one at Centre avenue, one at the Fourteenth ward, and three on the south side. I came down in the evening at seven o'clock. Some parties threatened they would be around in the evening to burn the water-works, and the citizens of those two blocks surrounding that and edging on the Fort Wayne sheds considered if any of those places got started it would be liable to burn them out. I went down to the mayor's office and reported this danger, and I thought we ought to have a squad of police, fifteen or twenty. I reported to the chief and also to the mayor, and said I would start back and get together what citizens I could; and it was not an hour until there was twenty-five police there. We surrounded these water-works and stayed there until daylight. Q. The morning of---- A. That was Sunday night at the time of the fire. During the night, about eleven o'clock, we smelled smoke at the far end of the Fort Wayne, and a couple of citizens, by the names of Moran and Reed, went down there and put it out. If it had got started there would have been quite a fire there. Q. You are a detective, I understand? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you on duty on Thursday? A. On duty on Thursday; yes, sir, on duty right along. Q. Did you witness any of the occurrences? A. No, sir; was not out there at any time. No orders to go out. Q. You received no instructions about arresting these men. There was a warrant for some men who were supposed to be leaders? A. There was a party detailed for that purpose. Q. You were not in that party? A. No, sir. Q. Would it have been possible that night for these men to get hold of these parties--those officers that had the warrants? Were you out that night on duty? A. Not that night--never off duty, you might say--we are always on duty. Q. What I want to know is, whether these officers could have arrested these men they had warrants for? A. I think it would have been almost an impossibility to have got them, unless they were got at their homes. To take them out of that crowd would take twice the force to get one or two men. Q. You believe that with the force of the mayor, it would have been impossible to have taken these men? A. To take these men right in the crowd, it would have been dangerous. I felt that way. I have had occasion to be where there was something like a riot at the bolt works, this same summer, and we had about twenty police there, and I suppose there was some fifteen hundred or two thousand men. We gave them to understand they could not pass into the gates, and they did not pass in, and it all passed quiet, and nobody hurt; but if we had fired one shot, I do not think we would have been of much use. Q. As an experienced officer, you would not have made the arrest that night in that crowd? A. Not in that crowd. Q. Do you know whether there was any effort made to shadow these men--following them to their homes? A. No, sir. * * * * * Charles L. Schriver, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. Reside in Harrisburg. Q. What is your occupation? A. Locomotive fireman. Q. Were you employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company? A. I was. Q. At the time of the strike on the 19th of July? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you there on Thursday? A. I was there on Thursday morning. Q. Be kind enough to state what occurred? A. I got to the round-house, I guess, about eight o'clock; stayed in there awhile. I was reading a dispatch containing an account of the riot in Martinsburg to three or four other fireman and engineers. There was a man came into the round-house and said the brakemen were on a strike. So a couple of us went down to the yard, and the brakemen said down there that they were not going out on any double-headers. There was a fellow tried to make a coupling, and a man hit him with a link, and a little while after that they took out the same train with a yard engine. They couldn't get any long road engines out--nobody would go. I went home to dinner and came back. They tried to take out this double-header. They coupled engine 775 and 473, and it was an understood thing between the engineers and conductors, that any person could go out ahead and make a signal to stop, they would stop and get off. As soon as 775 went down the yard and got the train of thirty-six cars, and came up into the yard, and 473 coupled ahead and pulled her out, there was four or five policemen got on each engine, and John Major, he was on 473, and the engineer of 473, pulled her out. She made about two exhausts, and a fellow got ahead on the track and threw up his hands. That stopped her. He reversed, and got off. Then the road foreman and civil engineer took the train back into the yard and ran the engines up to the round-house. I went home to supper that evening, and was going to Allegheny, and parties said, "You better stay around here at Twenty-eighth street." It was all very quiet. There was no disturbance or anything. About twelve o'clock, somebody says, there was a kind of collision in the crowd. Right at Twenty-eighth street, about three feet on to Twenty-eighth street, there was a car that they used in loading cinders, and directly a man stepped up--it was Sheriff Fife--and commenced talking, and said we had better go home, and leave the company do as they please. It was only making the thing worse. The company would come out ahead anyhow, and it was no use kicking about it. General Pearson and Davy Watt was along, and, I guess, they talked in the neighborhood of ten minutes, perhaps, and some person went to General Pearson, and asked him about the case of McCall, who had been arrested. Pearson said if they would be down at the lockup with all their witnesses, he would defend them, and would not want any money for it. They thought that was a magnificent offer of General Pearson, and they would accept it, and I do not know whether they went down or not. I went home--the sheriff was there--and went to bed and got up about six o'clock, went down street; bought a paper to read an account of the strike, and went down town; and going down, there was one hundred cars of stock that had come to Twenty-fifth street, and asked for them to have two engines, and some parties volunteered in the crowd that they could have a dozen if they wanted. I went down to the depot about nine o'clock, and the engineer requested me to fire one of these trains to East Liberty. I fired up twice for him. The first trip they had put up this proclamation purporting to be the Governor's. I read it myself. There was three of them, I believe, posted up round there somewhere. This was about eleven o'clock. There was nothing further occurred of any importance there that night. I heard of the First division being called out. Knew of the other troops being called out--I heard of it about eleven o'clock. The First division was called out, and was coming here at about two o'clock. I heard about the shooting in Baltimore, and was told that they came to do the same thing here. I stayed there until General Pearson came. I was acquainted with General Brown. Talked to Major McDonald, he said his men could not fire, that his men had no ammunition. Q. Who told you that? A. Major McDonald, of the Fourteenth regiment. I talked to General Pearson a while, and he got up and said there was no damn use of the boys going around there, he was going out with a double-header, and was going to ride on the pilot. Some of the boys allowed that he was not. I stayed there until ten o'clock, and I knew the Philadelphia troops ought to be there pretty soon. I left and went home; went to bed. I slept then until evening, and didn't know anything about the shooting, until I was awaked up about six o'clock. I went up to Twenty-eighth street. Didn't see any dead men. Seen some blood around. Stayed around Twenty-eighth street and Penn, and saw parties marching out with guns, flags, drums, &c. Went home and slept until half-past three o'clock that morning. I got awake by seeing the fire out of my bed. Waited until daylight. As I got to the Twelfth ward lockup the black maria came. They took down a whole gang for stealing up there that night. Just as I crossed Twenty-sixth street, an engineer of the road says, "The Philadelphia troops fired at us." I got up to Twenty-eighth street again, and was told they were going to leave the round-house. I stayed there at the corner of Twenty-eighth and Liberty, and I saw them marching down Twenty-fifth street. Then I stayed at Twenty eighth street until they passed. I saw they had all their arms cocked, and ready to fire. Q. Did you see anybody fire? A. No, sir. I went up to the hospital grounds with a lady friend of mine, stayed around Twenty-eighth street. She thought it would be the least danger. As soon as they got to Thirty-third street, I heard a volley. I guess it must have been a hundred pieces went off. Q. You said it was understood that if any man came in front of the engines, any engineers and firemen were all to get off? A. It was an understood thing between the crew of this train. The conductor, by the name of Franze--he formerly run from Pittsburgh to Connemaugh, and then from Derry to Altoona. He came from Johnstown that morning. He didn't want to go out, and he came to where there was a crowd standing, and he said if any person would tell me not to turn the switch, I wouldn't do it. He only wanted an excuse not to go out. He wanted to keep himself solid with the company, and keep his job. He went down to the transfer, and coupled up thirty-six cars, and Woodward, the engineer of 473, he said the same. All he wanted was some one to go and signal to stop, and then they would have an excuse that they couldn't go out. They would be solid with the company and men also. When they coupled these engines, 473 and 775, a man by the name of David Davis, he was the first man to swing, and they understood what he wanted, and he reversed, and stopped. That is what I say, it was an understood thing between the crowd and that train crew. Q. Was there any understanding among the men generally? A. No; there was no understanding among the men generally. I think every person said they wouldn't go out on double-headers. Q. They had all agreed on that? A. Yes, sir. Q. What were the causes leading to the strike? A. When the reduction become known it was decided on a strike. Then there was to be a strike, and they sent a committee of engineers to see Mr. Scott; but they couldn't get any satisfaction. I understood then that the 27th, I believe, was set for another strike, and that fell through; but this strike, it was not a pre-arranged thing, until it was known, until the first eight-forty train that morning. When I came to the round-house--everything was double-headers. On Monday there had been an order posted on the telegraph that all trains were double-headers, and a new line would ran to Altoona. That would have taken a great deal of work from some men. There would be a good many discharged. They suspended two or three of their oldest engineers. Every man refused to give up. They all talked of it, and went on with the strike, all the other roads striking. On Friday a telegram came from the Erie that all of them were on a strike. Q. Telegraph came from the Erie? A. Came from Hornersville, New York. Q. To the Trainmen's Union. A. It come to the master of the Firemen's Brotherhood of this division? Q. It was an understood thing they were going to strike on Friday? A. No, sir; you misunderstood me. It was an understood thing that a strike was to occur on the 19th of July, but after the Baltimore and Ohio went out first, and then, when the men on the Pennsylvania struck, then the rest of them followed suit. The Fort Wayne, Pan Handle, and all over the country, all followed after the B. and 0. and Pennsylvania. Q. That was not double-headers? A. The rest of them followed--that was going against their ten per cent. Q. What was the cause? A. The ten per cent. and abuse and double-headers was the main cause of the strike. If a man didn't make himself solid with these petty officials, they were abused. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was it understood that there was to be a strike all over the country when the Pennsylvania Central men struck? A. No; as far as I know I don't think it was. After the Pennsylvania went out, the other men had their cause to strike, too, and they followed suit, right after the Pennsylvania, because they had the two big trunk lines striking, and these other little roads, that they would follow suit. Q. You were speaking of the Firemen's Brotherhood. Is that the same thing as the Trainmen's Union? A. It is just the same as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Q. That is separate from the Trainmen's Union? A. Yes, sir. Q. Are you a member of the Firemen's Brotherhood? A. No, sir; I don't belong. Q. A member of the Trainmen's Union. A. No, sir. Q. Were you a member of any organization? A. No, sir; I attended one meeting the firemen had. Engineers had their meeting, and firemen had their meeting, and trainmen had their meeting. Q. Do you know whether there was a man selected to start this strike in any way? A. To tell the truth, there was not one man in Pittsburgh knew this strike was to occur on the 19th of July. Q. You believe the first man that left the train---- A. Was the cause of the rest following. This Rye, one of the men you had before you, his crew was to go out that morning at eight-forty. That would have been the second double-header on the road. Of course, there was a good many double-headers run over it, but it was to be general. There was to be no single trains. When his crew said they were not going out, we might as well quit this, as to be discharged after a while, then the rest of the men coming in, they would not go out, then, because the first fellows refused to go out on double-headers. If a man would have wanted to go out, he could have. There was nothing to prevent him, if he had a little courage. Q. There would have been no bodily injury? A. No, sir; if I had wanted to go out, I could have gone out or anything else. The strike was conducted by intimidation. Q. I understand you one fellow got struck with a link? A. That was done by a party who was not really responsible for what he was doing. He was a little the worse for his beer, or he would not have done it. Q. We had testimony that links and pins were thrown at engineers on their engines--did you see anything of that kind? A. There was one link thrown at this man that went to couple the caboose to the engines on the Thursday morning, and he had no business to couple a caboose, or they wouldn't have thrown any link. He belonged down to the transfer, and was not a long road man. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Every fellow has his work, and if he undertakes to do anything else, they don't allow him? A. Just as affairs stood then, they didn't allow it. There was no threat made. Another fireman and me sat down on a track and talked to some of them--asked what they were going to do. They said nothing; only we are not going out on double-headers. Q. How did they come and take possession of the switches, and stop trains from running? A. They didn't stop any; they didn't have any men to go out with them. A good many men deny that they had anything to do with the strike, but they had at that time. They wanted their ten per cent. as much as anybody. Q. Had the order cut their wages down below what they could have lived on, or could the men make fair wages enough to live on? A. If the strike had not taken place that morning, there would have been twelve engineers to go off, about ten firemen, and forty trainmen, conductors, brakemen, and flagmen--that would have been fifty or sixty men. It would have been only a week or so until they would have run everything to Altoona, and that would have thrown out the east end of the division, and then there would be nothing left for the strikers at all, only when freight was a little heavy they would not have made anything. A man never made much money unless freights were very good, and he is running all the time, and is half dead--then he can make money. That is in regard to firemen or brakemen; of course engineers, with their big wages, they can make money. Q. Was it your object, as strikers, to compel the railroad company to employ more men than they really needed? A. The object of the strike was to do away with double-headers and get their ten per cent. back, if they could. If Mr. Watt would have come up there that morning and said, all right, let them run single trains, the thing would have been over in half a minute. No; they wouldn't do that. They didn't think about their ten per cent. that morning. All it was about was double-headers. After the strike was prolonged, then the ten per cent. was more thought of. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You informed the masters of those lodges that there was a strike here in Pennsylvania, on the Pennsylvania, and he telegraphed back that there would be strikes on all the roads? A. No, sir. Q. What was it? A. There was a telegram came from Hornersville, on the Erie road, from a man by the name of Donahue, to the master of this division of the Firemen's Brotherhood, stating that they were all out, and wished the Pennsylvania railroad men success. I believe that was it. Q. Was there any understanding among the men that they were safe here, in Pittsburgh, to strike, and not to be molested, and they wouldn't be if they were Philadelphia men? A. No, sir. Q. In other words, that if the Philadelphia men came here they had no sympathy with the strikers, and they would be apt to attempt to run trains out, and take possession of the tracks? A. No, sir; I have never heard anything of that. Q. You don't know that this point was selected, then? A. No, sir; it was only accidental the strike came about, and it was through the double-headers. If the strike would have been to occur that day, every body would have known it. Q. Are you working now? A. No, sir. Q. Discharged? A. No; I never was discharged. I asked for my time twice, and it was refused me, and I never went to work one day. I went down to Pitcairn's office to get a letter of recommendation--I wanted to go on some other road--and all the letter he would give me was a note saying he discharged me on account of reduction of force. * * * * * Officer White, re-called: By Senator Reyburn: Q. State what action the police officers took on Sunday to put down the riot, and burn, and break into the stores? A. I would state that on Saturday night, about the breaking in of stores, I was at the office, and word came there that they were going into Johnson's gun store. I was ordered up there, and went up there, and the mob was then there, and I believe Mr. Johnson had handed out two or three guns there, to keep the mob away until the police came there. As soon as we got there, we closed the doors, stood and guarded the gun-shop for a considerable time, until the mob went away, and stopped them from going in there. Q. Did you have any encounter with the mob? A. No; not a good deal to keep them away? Q. You made a show of force, and they dispersed? A. Yes. Then we had word they were up on Liberty, at a place kept by a man by the name of Shute. I found they had opened and cleaned it out. I came to the office again, and was ordered down to O'Mara and Bown's, and we found they had been in there. Q. What did they take out--pretty much anything they could lay their hands on? A. I do not think it was for arms, for the purpose of going out to kill the Philadelphians. I think it was plunder more than any thing else--a general cleaning out--anything they could get their hands on--scissors or anything else. There was a man came into the office with a couple of pair of scissors he had taken from some one. I did not think he wanted the scissors to kill any one with. They cleaned Bown's out completely--knives, pistols, scissors, anything that was in the store. Q. Do you know where that crowd was from that broke into Bown's store? A. I could not tell. I did not know whether it was the party that had stopped at Johnson's or not. There was a couple of hundred at Johnson's trying to get in, and we kept them from getting in there. Q. Do you know where they were from? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know of an alderman that was with them, from the south side? A. After I had left Bown's store, a company happened on Fifth street. I saw a gang of two or three hundred, and I saw an alderman with them. Q. Anybody else you know? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who? A. A councilman. Q. Did they appear to be leading this crowd? A. The councilman did. The alderman did not seem to take much part in it. The councilman seemed to be at the head of it. Q. What day was this? A. Saturday night. Q. Whereabouts does he live? A. Fifth avenue. After the breaking in at Bown's---- Q. Do you know whether they were part of the crowd that broke into the stores or not? A. I do not think they were. Q. Do you know whether the property was destroyed at the Union depot? A. I could not tell you. I would also state about the police, on Sunday afternoon, during the time the Pan-Handle depot was in their charge. The police drove the mob out of the Pan-Handle depot at the time they were setting fire there. I know that they were police stretched the ropes on the street and kept the mob out, so as not to interfere with the firemen when working there. Q. Did they hold it for any length of time? A. They did hold it and kept the fire from going any further--kept the mob outside of the ropes. Q. Was it not burned? A. It was burned; yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. As an officer, do you believe that had there not been any interference with the railroad employés that you could have kept the peace with the force of police you had? A. I do not think it was the railroad employés that gave us the trouble. I think it was the outside rabble entirely. Q. I asked a question. The question is this: Do you believe, as an officer, had you nothing to contend but the railroad employés, could you have kept the peace? A. Yes, sir; I think the mayor could have kept the peace. I do not think there would have been any trouble at all if the military had not been called out at all. My experience on Thursday, with these men at Torrens station, was, I had not any trouble with them. These men were orderly, and when they were ordered off the track they went off the track, and I had no trouble at all, and I apprehended no trouble. The men said they only wanted their rights, and did not wish to interfere with us at all, while we thought they were. * * * * * Colonel J. B. Moore, re-called. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I believe you testified to being at the firing, and so forth. Did you see General Pearson that afternoon? A. I saw General Pearson continuously, sir, from Friday at eleven o'clock until eleven o'clock Saturday, except---- Q. How was General Pearson dressed that afternoon? A. Full major general's undress uniform. Q. What was that? A. Fatigue cap, with velvet band and wreath, and the letters "U.S." in front of it; shoulder straps, with two stars; dark blue blouse and pants, and blouse braided, as worn by officers usually. Q. Gold braid? A. No, sir; it is black braid. Major general's belt on, very rare workmanship. Q. Was it something that would attract attention--conspicuous? A. Yes; it was one of those gotten up for a present, very elaborately embroidered. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What color was it? A. Red, marked with gold braid. By Senator Reyburn: Q. General Pearson, then, had a fatigue cap? A. Yes; such as prescribed for major generals to wear. Q. What was it made of--the blue cap? A. Dark blue cloth, with a velvet band. Q. Gold wreath, with the letters U.S. in front? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he wear this cap up there, just prior to the firing of the military on the mob? A. No, sir; not just prior. On Friday, when I reported to him, he had on a straw hat, a white vest, and a blouse, before he and I came down from the Union depot, and we put on our uniforms in the evening. I suppose between eight and nine o'clock. It was not dark. Q. On Saturday he wore this uniform? A. Yes; he wore a uniform continuously from that up. Q. Insignia of rank on shoulders? A. Yes; and his sword. He had a sword with a gold scabbard. All the officers of his staff that were there were in full uniform, except Colonel Hays. Q. Was he there with the military or with the Philadelphia troops when the firing took place? A. No, sir; there was no officer near the Philadelphia troops except myself, that is, at the point when the firing took place at Twenty-eighth street. Mr. George Steen, Major Stouts, and Major Fife were at the cars taken out, one hundred and fifty feet below the street. They were down at that flank of the troops. Q. Were you inside of this hollow-square? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you wear a cap? A. I wore a cap. Q. Wear a belt? A. Yes, sir. Q. Sword? A. Sword and blouse, precisely like the one General Pearson had on, except the shoulder straps. Q. Did you know where General Pearson was, about the time the firing took place? A. I knew where he started off. He gave me orders to remain with General Brinton, while he would go to the telegraph office. Q. How long before the firing? A. I should judge five or seven minutes. Q. And started, did he? A. Yes, started; I judge that from the fact that General Brinton went down the Weccacoe Legion and the Gatling guns, and go through the two lines that had been formed on each side of the track. Just as he had sent down that order, General Pearson started, and I should judge it would take time to get the guns up. I have no distinct knowledge of the time at all. It was quite a little time before they were able to get the guns up over the ties. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Then General Pearson left before these troops marched down? That is the Weccacoe Legion, with the Gatling guns--he left before that? A. Yes, sir. Q. And it was before the firing took place? A. Yes, sir. Q. That was the detachment that attempted to put the crowd back off Twenty-eighth street? A. I cannot say whether it was the Weccacoe Legion or Washington Grays. I understood they were both there, but I could not distinguish them, they were all, as a matter of course, strangers to me. I saw "W.L." on their knapsacks, of either the front or rear rank. I could not see which it was. Q. General Pearson could not have been there at the time of the firing? A. No, sir; it was impossible for him to be there without my knowing, for he gave me orders to remain with General Brinton, while he went to the telegraph office, and I know there was no officer there except myself. When a man is alone, he generally knows it. Q. No officer of your division there--that is, General Brinton and his command were there? A. General Brinton was about as close to me as you are. * * * * * Captain E. Y. Breck, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where is your residence? A. Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am a stenographer of court of common pleas, No. 1. Q. What position did you occupy in the militia at the time of the disturbance in July? A. I was captain in the National Guard, commanding Hutchinson's battery at that time, now known as Breck's battery. Q. Were you present at the time of the firing of the troops, at Twenty-eighth street? A. I was, sir. Q. Be kind enough to state what occurred? A. Do you wish a statement, as to the firing? Q. As to the fire, and who were present--what officers? A. Well, I was stationed just above the flag-house--I suppose you know where that is--and I had received an order a short time before the First division arrived on the ground to be prepared to load my guns on gondola cars, and I saw a plank brought out from the round-house on a truck, and dumped there on the track to load the guns. I was quite anxious, of course. There was a large crowd around there, and I did not feel altogether secure. There was only one company of infantry there, behind me, supporting the guns, and there were a great many rumors floating around there. There was a rumor of trouble in Philadelphia, and I was to be sent there, and for various causes I was anxious to see commanding officer--General Pearson--and as soon as I saw the column advancing up the track, I stood up on one of my limbers, where I could look over the heads of the crowd, and see what was going on. As they came up, I noticed, I think, first it was the sheriff, I remember of seeing him, I think some of his deputies, and I saw General Pearson and two officers, whom I afterwards knew as General Brinton and General Matthews. Although I did not know them at the time, I got acquainted with them that night. This, I suppose, was about half-past four in the afternoon. They moved up until the right of the column rested at Twenty-eighth street. They halted once down about opposite Twenty-sixth street gate, and then, I suppose, was the time that General Loud's brigade was put in possession of those cars down there. Then the first division started on up. The First brigade, they came up until the right was about at Twenty-eighth street, the First regiment was leading. The regiment was in columns of four. They wheeled in line to the left, forced the crowd back off the track, and up to within probably within twenty feet of the walls of the round-house. There were, I think, four gondola cars there, standing on side tracks, that prevented them clearing the track clear to the walls of the round-house. These cars were covered with people. As soon as they halted, both ranks were faced about, and what had been the rear rank was marched toward the hill. Then there was a company brought up from the rear, marched up through the open ranks, and about that time General Pearson disappeared from view. I was watching out very carefully for him, because I was expecting orders every moment, and I was very anxious that he would know where I was. In fact, he did see me. As they were marching up I stood on the limber, and did something to attract his attention, and I attracted his attention, and he nodded, as much as to say he knew where I was. The reason I did that was, my position had been changed since morning, the guns had been moved from the position in which he had ordered them placed, and I wanted him to know exactly where they were. About that time I lost sight of him, and I did not see him again until I suppose about quarter of six, I saw him in the telegraph office. Q. How was General Pearson dressed that day--could you see? A. Yes; I was with General Pearson the evening before, when he put on his uniform. We were down at Union Depot hotel, and he asked me if I would like to take a walk around to head-quarters. I told him I would, and he and Colonel Moore and myself started off for head-quarters. We came up Grant, and I remember some house over here, where the general was acquainted with two or three ladies there. That two or three ladies sat on the steps, and they stopped the general and made some remark about they hoped he was not going to shoot the people, and he stood and talked some little time. We went on down to head-quarters, and got a fatigue blouse out of some of the cases there--the fatigue blouse of the old pattern is alike for all officers of different rank--the designation is by the shoulder-straps. He got this blouse out and found his straps, and I pinned the straps on for him--major general's straps--and he put on his cap and belt, and I think he carried his sword in his arm, if I am not mistaken. We stayed there a few minutes, I do not know but we might have been there ten minutes. Then we went down to the corner of Fifth and Smithfield, and took a car for the Union depot, and went right back. He had the same uniform when he came up the track and the same uniform when I saw him in the superintendent's office, at a quarter to six. Q. Immediately after the firing? A. Yes, sir; the first time I saw him after the firing. The cap--it is an ordinary fatigue cap, with a velvet band for general officers. He had that cap and a wreath in front, and I think two stars in the wreath--either U.S. or two stars. I believe it is regulation to wear two stars, and the blouse had what they call herring-bone trimming--black braid, and runs from the buttons out into loops and slashed at the sides, and the belt was usually worn under the blouse, but it was over the blouse--a red morocco belt, groundwork of morocco, with gold embroidery. Quite profusely embroidered. Q. Did the crowd resist these soldiers when they marched to Twenty-eighth? A. Up the tracks? Q. Yes, sir. A. As they came up the crowd opened out for them--the column was narrow. They were in columns of four. There was a great deal of hooting and jeering. I think some few of the people were trying to cheer. It certainly was a sight that any man who had love for the military would cheer at. I never saw a handsomer sight for so small a body of men. They were in regular order, well uniformed, thoroughly equipped, and their guns looked splendidly in the sun; and the crowd gave way and there was no actual resistance--nothing to stop the troops until they tried to clear the Twenty-eighth street crossing. The column marched up without halting. I do not think they impeded their step any. When they marched toward the round-house they wheeled into line, to the left, and went towards the round-house. The crowd got back. They could not clear the tracks clear to the round-house on account of those cars. When the rear rank marched toward the hill the crowd gave way, but the troops only came to the edge of the track--the right hand track going out. That, of course, left plenty of room for the crowd on the road. The road was black with people. There were a great many on the side of the hill and the base of the hill. Q. This crowd at Twenty-eighth street, did they resist when this detachment marched through the center and marched up against them? A. Yes; there was one company that it looked to me, from where I stood, as if they were unable to do anything with the crowd--unable to move it--and there was a stronger company, or more men--it was another company--I think it was the Weccacoe Legion and the Washington Greys--brought up from the rear. They came up at a carry, but they did not drive the crowd far. They could not do it without using their bayonets, and I do not know whether there was an order to charge bayonets given or not, but at any rate, the men commenced to bring their guns down as if they were going to charge, and from where I stood, I could see the guns held by the mob--held them in their hands--and I could see the men take hold, up near the muzzle, and draw their guns back, in order to get them down to a charge. Just as they did that there were one or two pistol shots fired, and then I saw about a wagon load of stones and lumps of coal--in an instant the air was black with stones and lumps of coal. Then a gun went off on the right of the company, followed by three or four more, and then very nearly a volley; and I did not want to be killed and jumped off the lumber. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear any command to fire? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. How near were you to this body of men--the Philadelphia troops? A. I was within sixty feet of the middle of the Twenty-eighth street crossing, I suppose. Q. Could you see the officers inside this hollow square? A. The officers were mostly--except the regimental officers--the general officers were up on the crossing with this company--General Brinton and General Matthews. I ran down on the track to help the first regiment officers stop the firing. The men had fired, I suppose, two or three rounds apiece. I helped the officers to steady the men up, and give a little confidence to the men, and as soon as they did that, and I think loaded again by command. Then I went up to the crossing, and I saw General Brinton and General Matthews, and he had already thrown two companies further up the track, and had the two Gatling guns in position, one pointing up the track--both, in fact. And while I stood there, they, turned and went down Twenty-eighth street. Q. Just before the firing of the troops, did you see any officers in this square, or between these two lines facing away from the tracks--one facing the hill, and another facing down the other way? A. They were both facing the hill at that time. As soon as the battalion wheeled into line, there was some little fuss there--a man or two fainted. They faced both ranks about. Q. There was a space there? A. Yes, sir. Q. The regimental officers were there? A. Yes; I spoke to Colonel Miller. He reminded me of it the other day in Philadelphia. Q. Did you see any of the officers of the Sixth division there between these two lines? A. No, sir; I think not, they were further up, right on the crossing. The two lines reached--suppose this is the lower line of Twenty-eighth street. [Illustrating.] They brought these lines right up to within ten feet, perhaps, of the lower line of the street, and then those two companies were right here. [Indicating.] By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do I understand you to say, that the company that was marched toward Twenty-eighth street did connect with those two wings of the flanks? A. The company was practically covered on the flanks. There was a flag-house in here. [Indicating.] Q. Some space between that company and the flanks of the regiment? A. Yes. There was a little space, because I remember when I went down I went around the left flank. Q. Did you see any of the officers of the Sixth division in the rear of this first company, marching towards Twenty-eighth street. Did you see Colonel Moore? A. I do not remember of seeing him. I might have seen him. Q. Where did you see Pearson? You said you saw Pearson, and nodded to him? A. That was when he was marching up, and I followed him with my eye until I saw him on the crossing where the crowd was, but this was before they attempted to drive the crowd back, and there was one company--it was a small company--and they did not make much of an effort with them. They sent back for more men. I do not think the Gatlings were brought up at first. My recollection is they came up with those other companies that were brought up from the rear. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You did not see him after those other companies came up? A. No, sir; I did not see him then. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where did the firing commence? A. Commenced on the right of this company. Q. The company advancing towards the crossing? A. Yes. They were facing up the railroad track right as you go out. The firing into the troops commenced over here. [Indicating.] There were two or three car loads of coal standing there. Q. On the left going east? A. On the left going east, and there was a man on that car fired the first shot. Q. A pistol shot? A. As nearly as I could state. Then there was a house on the road going up to the hospital grounds--there was a man behind that that was firing down this way--I saw that they both fired about the same time. There must have been a dozen pistol shots almost simultaneously with the lumps of coal and stones. Q. Did that house stand near the gate that leads up to the hospital? A. Yes. I think this end of the house was on a line with the gate. The watch-box would be down here [indicating] across the street, and up a little from the railroad. I was out there a month or so ago, and it has been removed. Q. Where was your battery? A. Right in there. [Indicating.] Q. A little above the watch-house? A. A little above the watch-house. * * * * * Major J. B. Steen, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. James B. Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. The coal business. Q. Were you a member of the National Guard of Pennsylvania in July last? A. Yes; I was quartermaster on General Pearson's staff. Q. Were you present at the time the troops were called out to quell the disturbance or strike? A. I was present at the time the Philadelphia troops arrived. Q. State as briefly as you can when you came upon the scene, and what occurred? A. These Philadelphia troops arrived at Union depot some time after dinner, and they furnished them with meals there, and along in the afternoon the column started out towards Twenty-eighth street, headed by Sheriff Fife, General Pearson, and General Brinton, and Major Stroud, and Givens, and Moore, and myself were on the staff; and when we arrived at Twenty-eighth street, we formed a hollow square. There was a pile of plank about the center of the square, and I sat down on the plank with Pitcairn. We marched the Washington Grays through the center, to force the crowd back off Twenty-eighth street. There was pistol shots, and stones thrown, and they commenced firing on the right, and then there was a general volley along the line. Q. Was this firing by orders? A. I did not hear any orders. General Pearson had passed me while I was sitting on this pile of plank, and he asked Pitcairn where the nearest telegraph office was, and, I think, he told him in his office, and he started down that way. It was five or ten minutes before the firing took place. Q. That was before this company was marched out to clear the crossing? A. No, sir; it was after the company was marched out. I am not positive whether it was after or before, but my recollection is that it was after. Q. General Pearson passed you, then, going down to go to Pitcairn's office? A. Yes; to the telegraph office. Q. How was he dressed? A. He had a fatigue uniform, blue cap, blouse, sword, belt, and blue pantaloons. Q. Had this blouse buttons up close to the throat? A. Buttons all the way up to the throat. Q. Did you notice whether it was buttoned that way? A. I could not say whether it was buttoned or not. I should judge it was though. Q. Did you say he had a cap on? A. Cap; yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Shoulder straps? A. Two stars on the shoulder--straps and stars. Q. Were they conspicuous enough to be noticed? A. They would be noticed, I should judge--regular size. Q. Regulation size? A. Regulation size. By Senator Reyburn: Q. General Pearson passed you before the firing commenced? A. Before the firing commenced. Q. Five or ten minutes? A. Five or ten minutes. I was sitting on a pile of plank there, and Pitcairn was sitting beside me and Major Stroud. Q. How far is it from there to Pitcairn's office? A. I should judge it was about a square--a little over that--two squares. Q. Did he come back again at all, before the firing? A. No, sir; the next place I saw him, was in Pitcairn's office. I went down to hunt him up to report, and I saw him in Pitcairn's office. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he know that there had been firing? A. He knew it; yes, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was anybody there when you got there? A. Yes; there were several gentlemen there, but I do not recollect who they were. Q. Was he in the telegraph office or in Pitcairn's--that is above the telegraph office? A. In Pitcairn's office. Q. Has he a telegraph instrument there? A. There is a waiter that goes down, and they send the messages down to the office. Q. Was he dressed the same as when he passed you? A. Yes; in his fatigue uniform. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How close were you to the military when the firing took place? A. I was sitting right in the center of the hollow square. Q. Were you in uniform? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you hear any command to fire by any officer? A. I did not. I do not think there was any command given to fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the officers attempt to stop the men when the firing took place? A. As soon as the firing took place, they attempted to stop them. One company, I think on the left, did not fire. Q. What did they say--order them to cease firing? A. Run to them and knocked their guns up. Q. Did you hear the command to cease firing? A. I heard that very plain. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Who gave that command? A. The different officers of the regiments. Q. Did you hear any shots fired from the crowd before the firing by the military? A. Some pistol shots and some stones thrown. Q. How many shots? A. I should think there were several. I suppose about ten or twelve. Q. Before the firing by the military? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were any of the military struck or injured before the firing on the mob? A. There was one of them hit with a stone. * * * * * H. Vierheller, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your full name? A. Henry. Q. What is your occupation? A. Keeping saloon. Q. Are you a resident of Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. Were you a member of the National Guard? A. Yes. Q. At the time of the July riots? A. Yes. Q. What position did you hold? A. Private in company A, Eighteenth regiment. Q. Were you out at Twenty-eighth street on the afternoon of the Twenty-first--Saturday? A. No, sir; not on the Twenty-first. I was at the Union depot on Saturday. Q. Did you see the troops start from the Union depot, out? A. I was there before the Philadelphia troops arrived there on Saturday. I went there with Major Stroud, of General Pearson's staff. He came to General Pearson's head-quarters and wished to report to the general. Their head-quarters were right over my place, on Fifth avenue, and he asked me to go out with him to report to the general, and I did so. Q. Did you see General Pearson there? A. Yes, sir. Q. What time was that? A. It must have been between twelve and one o'clock. Q. Had the Philadelphia troops arrived then? A. No, sir. Q. How was General Pearson dressed? A. He had a fatigue uniform blouse--officer's blouse on and a fatigue cap. Q. You were not present when the firing took place? A. No, sir. Q. Know nothing of that? A. No. Q. If you have anything that has not been testified, that is of any importance to our committee, make a brief statement of it? A. In relation to Saturday, and that is all I know of it. I remained around there for an hour or so, intending to wait until the Philadelphia troops arrived, but they were late getting in, and I left there. Q. You were not there when the firing took place? A. No, sir. * * * * * Major General Albert L. Pearson re-called. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. You did testify as to the movements of the troops, &c, out at Twenty-eighth street, I think, Saturday afternoon? A. Yes, sir. Q. I want simply to ask you how you were dressed on that occasion? A. Up until Friday night I was dressed in citizens' clothes; light gray pantaloons, blue cutaway, coat, and straw hat, but at about nine o'clock, Captain Breck, Colonel Moore, and myself came down to my head-quarters, and Colonel Moore and I then procured our uniform. I wore my uniform from nine o'clock Friday night up until long after the difficulty; in fact, the only clothing I had on up until Monday, was a complete major general's uniform. The coat is single breasted, five buttons down front, and from each button was a broad braid which is known in military language as herring bone--goes from each button across the breast--and a large loop. The coat is slashed up the side, and that has got a herring bone along the trimmings on the side, and the same up the arm. The shoulder straps were regular shoulder straps--major general's--two stars. The cap, blue--a fatigue cap as usually worn by officers, with a dark blue velvet band clear around the cap, with a wreath embroidered with gold, and, at that time, the letters U.S. inside of the wreath. The belt was red Turkish morocco, very elaborately embroidered in gold. There was a wreath embroidered entirely around the belt with gold embroidery, up above and below the wreath---- Q. It was morocco? A. Yes; the scabbard was gilt plate, and a handle of silver--it was a uniform, I presume, the only one like it on the ground. General Brinton's blouse was a perfectly plain blouse without the herring bone trimmings on it--it was not slashed. I don't think any of the other general officers had a blouse like it; in fact, I know they had not. Q. You have testified in regard to leaving before the firing? A. When I left, there was no indications of any firing or anything of that kind at all. There had been no stones thrown or pistol shots fired--nothing to indicate that there would be. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Why did you leave? A. I left, as I testified before, from the fact that I had been informed by some of the officers of my own division, that there was a feeling existing among the portion of the troops of my own division that were at Twenty-eighth street, that probably they couldn't be depended upon. I thought it was better to have the other divisions that had been placed under arms sent for at once, and walked down the tracks and telegraphed to General Latta for that purpose. Q. What office did you go to? A. Pitcairn's office was over the telegraph office, at the corner of Twenty-sixth and Liberty. It is two squares away from where the difficulty occurred. Q. Were you in the telegraph office or above? A. In Pitcairn's office. There were waiters running from Pitcairn's office down to the telegraph office, so that messages could be received or sent in that manner. I was accompanied by Major Evans, who went with me. Q. Major Evans you say went back with you? A. Major Evans accompanied me from Twenty-eighth street to Pitcairn's office and was there when we first received the information that the affair had taken place, and was with me all the time that the difficulty was going on. Q. Does he occupy any position in the division? A. He is major and paymaster of the division, but was acting as a personal aid that day. Q. Where is he? A. He is out at his mill, at Soho. Q. Iron mill? A. Yes; the firm of Evans, Dalzell & Co. I think the first man that gave me any information of any firing was Mr. Cassatt--that is a positive assurance that the firing had taken place. He had been up in the cupola of one of the buildings and had observed all the proceedings that had taken place at Twenty-eighth street. I think he was the first that gave me any positive assurance that the troops had fired. I know I had heard no firing, had not heard the explosion of the pieces at all. I am very free to confess that I am very sorry that I was not at Twenty-eighth street at the time of the difficulty, because General Brinton, when no other officer would have had any reason to have waited for an order very long, for most undoubtedly and most assuredly had I been there, and the pistol shots had been fired as has been testified, and stones thrown, as Captain Breck has stated, and the troops treated in the manner in which they undoubtedly were treated, I would have directed Brinton at once to fire upon the rioters, and would have kept it up just long enough that they wouldn't have come back to that locality again, at least a good many of them. I didn't believe an order was given, at least, from what Brinton has informed, but I thought it should have been given. * * * * * Colonel Gray, re-called: By Senator Reyburn: Q. You have given your testimony, I believe, before, as to the occurrences. All we want to ask is, did you see General Pearson on the afternoon of the 21st of July? A. I saw him at a distance. I was on the hill side, and saw him come up with the troops. I was up in the morning, in the forepart of the day, probably twice I saw him there, but I was not close to him. I was not down to the railroad that day. Q. How was he dressed in the morning that you saw him? A. I saw him at the Union depot at night--Friday night--and then in the morning, before he went out there. He was dressed in his fatigue uniform, and it has been very accurately described by himself, and I think everybody in the Sixth division knows it, and everybody who has seen him, the peculiar coat--different from any other fatigue uniform that is in existence now. I think he was dressed in that uniform and fatigue cap. I saw him come up with the Philadelphia troops, at a distance. I was on the hill side, and recognized him very distinctly. I was anxious that he should be there, and was satisfied that he was there. At this point the committee adjourned to meet at Harrisburg, at the call of the chairman. HARRISBURG, _March 8, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to notice, in Senate committee room, No. 6, all members present except Mr. Larrabee. * * * * * Governor John F. Hartranft, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Governor, just state in your own way where you were in July last, when the railroad strikes first broke out, and when you received the first information, and what was done by yourself thereafter? A. I contemplated making a trip to the west with my family, and, in thinking the matter over before I started, I had a conversation with the Adjutant General, in which I stated to him that I thought everything was as calm in the State it ever was since our administration, yet, if there was any trouble, he should exercise the authority vested in the commander-in-chief, in accordance with the same rules and principles that we had established when there was trouble prior to my leaving the State--that is, when there was trouble in a section of the State, we frequently had calls from the sheriffs of the county, and after we became satisfied that the sheriff had exhausted his authority, or was unwilling to exercise his full authority, we generally sent troops. With these general instructions, not anticipating for a moment that it meant anything, I left the State on Monday, the 16th of July. On Wednesday morning, I saw by the papers, at Chicago, where I was, that there was trouble on the Baltimore and Ohio road. On the next day, Thursday, receiving the papers on the train, I saw that the trouble was spreading. I telegraphed to the State for information as to whether this had spread upon the Baltimore and Ohio road into the State. The first dispatch that I received was received at Antelope, on the Union Pacific railroad, on Friday forenoon sometime. The dispatch was as follows: "Mob stopped all freight trains at Pittsburgh. Sheriff called for troops. Ordered Pearson to take charge, and put one regiment on duty. Says he may need more." Q. Who was that dispatch received from? A. It was from General Latta. Q. That was on Friday, the 20th of July? A. That was on the 20th, in the forenoon. As soon as I reached "Order promptly all troops necessary to support the sheriffs in protecting moving trains on Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Go to Pittsburgh and keep supervision of all troops ordered out. Will be due at Ogden to-morrow at six o'clock. In the meantime, _en route_, let me know the situation." I again sent a dispatch from Laramie City, same day, five-twenty, P.M.: "Spare nothing to protect all persons in their rights under the Constitution and laws of the State, in accordance with the policy heretofore adopted. Am on the train to Ogden." I received a dispatch from General Latta--I do not remember whether before sending this last or after--to this effect: "PITTSBURGH, PA., _July 20,1877_. "No difficulty on Baltimore and Ohio railroad in Pennsylvania. Strike extended to Pennsylvania railroad. Trains stopped at Pittsburgh by rioters, numbering two or three thousand. "General Pearson has six hundred men under arms guarding property. General Brinton will be here to-day, with twelve or fifteen hundred men. Movement will be made immediately on his arrival to open road, and we expect to do so without bloodshed. "I will be at Union hotel, Pittsburgh, until order is restored. Keep me advised of your movements. If your presence is needed, I will promptly wire you." I received numerous dispatches after that from General Latta, Mr. Scott, and others, and at Ogden I sent the following dispatch to General Latta, Saturday evening, the 21st of July: "Dispatch received. Unless I hear from you to change my mind, I will take the first train to Pittsburgh. There must be no illegal interference with any person willing to work, and to this end act promptly, that it may be done without bloodshed." I then went to Salt Lake City with my family, the next train east not being due at Ogden until ten o'clock Sunday morning. When I arrived at Salt Lake City, I had another dispatch from Mr. Quay. This I received at nine o'clock Saturday evening: "A collision has occurred here between the strikers and the troops. Number of persons have been killed and wounded. Intense excitement prevails in city, and there are indications of further bloodshed, and that the trouble will be wide-spread and protracted. I suggest that you return, allowing your party to go forward." I then secured a special train, leaving there at twelve o'clock, and got to Pittsburgh on Tuesday afternoon. Q. Before you go any further, I would like to ask a question or two: In your instructions to General Latta, before leaving the State, was it your intention to delegate to General Latta your power as commander-in-chief to call out the militia in case of an emergency? A. Not my power, but simply discretion, under the general order, to act in accordance with our custom in case there was any trouble in my absence, and to issue orders by my authority, just the same as if I were in the State. Q. Signing your name? A. No; his own, by order of the commander-in-chief, or what is the same thing, as Adjutant General. I may say that I talked with the Attorney General before I left the State, and he thought there was no reason why I should not go. Q. He was to follow strictly the regulations that had been adopted heretofore? A. Yes, sir. Q. Under the act of 1864, what have been the regulations--I do not quite understand you on that point--about calling out troops? A. We have not fallen back upon the act of 1864, because the sheriffs have always called. In fact, the sheriffs are generally very prompt to call for troops. They often wanted our assistance when we thought it was not necessary, and in every instance when troops have been ordered out during my administration, they have been ordered, as they were in this case, upon the call of the civil authorities to aid them. We have always kept the troops, so far as we could, subordinate to the civil authorities. In this instance, and some other instances, perhaps the civil authorities were not quite as active as they ought to have been, and they, to a certain extent, disappeared, and then, of course, we came under the act of 1864. But in the first instance we have never exercised our authority under that act. Q. You would consider that under that act you have authority to call out the militia upon notice, or your own knowledge, that there is any serious riot or outbreak in the State? A. Yes. If there is a riot in any section of the State, and the civil authorities are unable or unwilling to suppress it, I think it would be my duty, as Executive, to order out the National Guard, and to take charge of the situation to protect life and property. I would not hesitate to do it, whenever I became satisfied of that fact. Q. In your judgment, would that be in conflict--would such an action be in conflict, in any way--with the Constitution, which says that the military shall always be in subordination to the civil authorities? A. Well, I do not pretend to give any legal opinion upon that point; but, so far as the past has been concerned, we would have been glad and willing to let the civil authorities take entire control, and it is only when they were willing and anxious that we took part, and there never has been a conflict. Q. That has always been the rule adopted by you, as commander-in-chief? A. Yes, sir. I am not quite sure that that question may not arise. I can see very easily how it might arise in the near future, in any locality where the civil authorities might be in sympathy with the lawless elements, but we hope that it may not. Q. And is that a reason why you have adhered to the rules that you have just mentioned? Q. I do not know that it was because of any supposed conflict, but I adhered to that because I thought it was the common-sense way of doing it. That is about all. Q. Then the first telegram, I understood you to say, received from General Latta was in the forenoon of Friday, the 20th? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you know on that day that General Latta had already ordered out the militia? A. Not except through him. Q. Does that telegram state that? A. Yes. He says, "Ordered Pearson to take charge, and put one regiment on duty." Q. Do you know what time General Latta gave that order to General Pearson to take charge? A. No; I do not. Q. I would like you now to state when the news first reached you of any disturbance at Scranton, and through what channel, and your action in relation to the outbreak at Scranton. A. I do not know that I knew anything definitely about the trouble there until the 25th. As I was passing through Harrisburg to Philadelphia, on the 25th, I received a dispatch from the Brotherhood of Firemen and Brakemen, and there was also one, I think, from the officers of the road, which I do not see here just now. The question that arose there was that the railroad company were unable to run their trains, because the firemen and brakemen had struck, and mob would not let them, and then the Brotherhood of Firemen and Brakeman agreed that they might run the mails through, and the company did not want to do that unless they could take a passenger train. I telegraphed back to the superintendent of the railroad, "Would advise you to let mails run through." My object in that was not to precipitate any further disturbance until I had everything in hand. There was, I think, no running of trains for a week or ten days after that. They were making an effort to run trains about the 31st of July, but on the 1st of August there was a disturbance in Scranton, and the mayor called upon me for troops. The miners came out on a strike about the 25th. In consequence of this general confusion in Luzerne county, no trains moved. I had anticipated a movement to Luzerne county for the purpose of starting trains, and had made my arrangements, but this riot at Scranton precipitated the movement, and I got there on August 2d. The riot occurred on the 1st, and I got the first news about two o'clock, and my advance troops got to Scranton early next morning. Q. What day did you say you received the call from the mayor for troops? A. On the 1st of August. The dispatch was: "Mob have partly taken possession of the town. I was assaulted, and sent to my committee for assistance. Mob attempted to follow me up, when three or more were killed. Come to my assistance. "R. H. MCKUNE, _Mayor_." Very soon afterward, I received another dispatch: "How soon can I expect troops?" Then I received half a dozen dispatches from private parties. I sent a dispatch to McKune: "Keep quiet. Will be with you in the morning." Q. Had you any communication with the mayor prior to the 1st day of August? A. Yes; there were several dispatches in which he was confident that he could manage the situation. For instance, here is one on the 29th of July: "Pumps will start to-morrow. Send no troops until you hear further from me. Am in hopes of a peaceful settlement." Here is a dispatch from the mayor on the 25th of July, which I overlooked before: "Strikers have taken the coaches off of the mail train, and will not allow them to proceed. I am unable to assist the company in getting the train started." That is on the 25th of July. There is another dispatch here which influenced me to some extent, dated July 25: "There is not flour or provisions enough in this (Wyoming) district to last one week. We are informed that at Scranton the situation is no better. Unless some means are adopted to open up western communication by rail, there will be serious trouble here. The situation is very grave, and demands urgent attention. "Very respectfully, "CONYNGHAMS & PAINE." That is dated Wilkes-Barre, July 25, 1877. Q. Then, I understand, prior to August 1, the mayor of Scranton did not desire troops to be sent? A. No; the first dispatch did not call for troops, but he was evidently looking to me for assistance. But in a few days after that, on the 29th, he thinks he is able to control it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Up to that time he was confident that the civil authorities could control it? A. Yes. There was no conflict, because the railroad companies could not move their trains, and did not attempt it. They could not move them, and the civil authorities were unable to assist the railroad companies, and therefore did not attempt it, and everything was quiet. Eventually they were looking to me to help them, but I did not propose to go there until I got through with Pittsburgh. Besides, I thought if we got everything started at Pittsburgh, the moral effect of that might settle the question in the whole State, and there would be no necessity to go anywhere else. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you have any other dispatches from him except the one you have read, dated the 29th, in which he expressed himself as being able to control it. A. No; I think not. I find none in the appendix to the message, and I have none in this package, I know. While I was at Pittsburgh, Mr. Farr, my private secretary, was here in charge, and he kept me in constant communication with the region--with the Luzerne region--and there is one dispatch from him here; it is rather lengthy, but it gives the situation on the 31st of July, the day before the riot occurred. The dispatch was read as follows: "With exception of Luzerne county, matters in eastern Pennsylvania have returned to normal condition. Philadelphia is orderly. In Reading all danger is over, and civil authorities are rapidly arresting rioters. About fifty are now in jail. The citizens support General Reeder's action, and believe the firing of his troops prevented great destruction of property. Two of leaders of rioters were killed. The P. & R.R. is running trains, and the bridge will be ready for trains in two weeks. At Harrisburg all signs of disorders have disappeared. Forty arrests have been made, and the authorities are rapidly ferreting others. There is no doubt of their conviction of majority of prisoners, both in Reading and Harrisburg. Captain Linden assures me there are no fears of an outbreak in Schuylkill, unless irruptions of striking miners from Luzerne force the men in Schuylkill to quit work. General Sigfried's advices from Pottsville are to same effect. In Luzerne affairs are threatening. The Lehigh Valley R.R. has not resumed, and trains are stopped on other roads by miners. Engineers driven from pumps, and mines are flooding. In Wilkes-Barre there is said to be a scarcity of provisions, owing to interrupted transportation, and fears are felt of disturbance on that account. A concentration of troops in Luzerne, to give control of property, open traffic, and protect workmen, would remove the last vestige of lawlessness in eastern Pennsylvania. There are two hundred regulars in Reading. Available troops can be taken from Harrisburg or Reading without danger. If to-night's advices indicate the necessity, I will go to Scranton and Wilkesbarre to-morrow, if I can get there." Witness: There is another one here, 11.30, P.M., that I suppose was the same date. The dispatch was read, as follows: "In answer to my dispatch of yesterday, Sheriff Kirkendall, of Luzerne, telegraphs as follows: 'All travel and communication by railroad stopped. Rumors that Lehigh Valley road resumes to-day. There has been no riots so far, nor destruction of property, except incident to stopping mines. Work in all mines stopped; men on strike.' I report no immediate apprehension of danger. There are some five hundred troops--National Guard--encamped here--Wilkes-Barre.... telegraphs from Kingston, July 31, that Kingston, Plymouth, and Nanticoke have been entirely in the hands of mob since last night. If anything is being done to master it, I don't know it. Last night, 30th, they mobbed a passenger train at Plymouth. Have been ready all day to do so again, if one moved. This afternoon, 31st, at Nanticoke, the mob stopped all the pumps at the mines. The citizens are powerless to act; those in authority don't. "C. N. FARR, jr., _Private Sec'y._" Q. Had you any communication with the sheriff of Luzerne county direct? A. His dispatch is incorporated in these: "In answer to my dispatch of yesterday, Sheriff Kirkendall, of Luzerne, telegraphs as follows: 'All travel and communication by railroad stopped. Rumors that Lehigh Valley road resumes to-day. There has been no riot so far, nor destruction of property, except incident to stopping mines. Work in mines all stopped; men on strike.'" And there may have been other dispatches received from him which I have not got--which I did not print. Q. Had you any dispatches from the sheriff of Luzerne county, in which he expressed himself as being able to control the situation of affairs without troops? A. No; I think there were no such dispatches. Q. Did he make any call for troops? A. He made no call. The mayor of Scranton made a call, and so did the mayor of Wilkes-Barre. I cannot find the dispatch from the mayor of Wilkes-Barre, but I am satisfied there was one. Q. Do you know what time the call was made by the mayor of Wilkes-Barre? A. It came on the same afternoon that Mayor McKune called for troops. I do not know just what time the miners came out of the mines. I do not think they came out until after railroad communication was stopped. I think the strike was inaugurated after that. Q. Did you publish the proclamation in your message? A. Yes; there are two proclamations there. Q. I wish you would state when the first proclamation was issued? A. The first proclamation was issued on the 20th of July. The proclamation was gotten up at the office, and I was notified that it was issued as soon as it was done. Q. By the Secretary of the Commonwealth? A. By the Adjutant General. It was signed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The proclamation was prepared on a blank, which was left signed for general purposes. Then, when I returned to Pittsburgh I issued another proclamation, which was dated the 25th of July. The proclamation was as follows: _Pennsylvania, ss_: JOHN F. HARTRANFT. In the name and by the authority of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. {Place of } {great seal} {of State. } JOHN F. HARTRANFT, _Governor of the said Commonwealth_. A PROCLAMATION. _To the people of the State of Pennsylvania_: WHEREAS, There exists a condition of turbulence and disorder within the State, extending to many interests and threatening all communities, under the impulse of which there has grown up a spirit of lawlessness requiring that all law-observing citizens shall organize themselves into armed bodies for the purpose of self protection and preserving the peace. Therefore, I, John F. Hartranft, Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, do hereby recommend that all citizens shall organize themselves into associations, with such arms as they can procure, for the purpose of maintaining order and suppressing violence; and all good citizens are warned against appearing in company with any mob or riotous assembly, and thus giving encouragement to violators of the law. Given under my hand, and the great seal of the State, at Harrisburg, this twenty-fifth day of July, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven, and of the Commonwealth, the one hundred and second. By the Governor: M. S. QUAY, _Secretary of the Commonwealth_. The witness: That was issued that night. It got into the morning papers, I think of the 25th, in which I called upon the people to organize, and aid the civil authorities. Q. Have you a telegram notifying you of the issue of the first proclamation? A. Yes, sir. HARRISBURG, PA., _July 20, 2.20, P.M., 1877_. GOVERNOR J. F. HARTRANFT, _on No. 3, Sherman, Wyoming_: Trouble on the P.R.R., at Pittsburgh. Railroad officials over-anxious, fearing trouble would extend to Philadelphia, where train hands were in session last night. Scott suggested your return, but there is no necessity. Proclamation issued. Go on. Where can we telegraph next? We go to Pittsburgh this afternoon. (Signed) JAS. W. LATTA, C. N. FARR. Q. When you arrived at Pittsburgh, state whether you were met by any committee of citizens or not? A. When I came to Allegheny there was a large number of citizens--a committee in fact. They had telegraphed to me before I arrived. The names in the dispatch were John Kirkpatrick, John Harper, chairman of committee, G. Johnston, Joseph McCune, John B. Guthrie, George A. Berry, John H. Bickelsen, John D. Scully, and there were some twenty or twenty-five citizens, most of whom I was personally acquainted with, asked me to remain. My intention was to go right to Philadelphia, to consult with General Hancock, who had charge of the regular troops that had been sent into the State, and with General Schofield, who represented the President of the United States. I did not see what I could do in Pittsburgh without troops, but, to satisfy them, I remained, went to the hotel, and had the wires brought into the room, and probably lost no time by doing it. I did a great deal of work that night. I became satisfied, by my inquiries, that the roads leading into Pittsburgh would have to be opened as soon as possible. The committee claimed that their supply of coal for the manufacturing establishments, for their water-works, and gas-works would not be sufficient to hold out more than about a week, at least, not two weeks, and if that supply should give out, together with the supplies of food, there would be a terrible state of affairs, and that made me more earnest and determined, perhaps, to organize a force and get back as soon as possible. I then went to Philadelphia and consulted with these gentlemen--the officers I named--and we all agreed that there was but one thing to do, and that was to organize a sufficient force and go to Pittsburgh and open the roads, which was done. Q. Was there any resistance in the city of Allegheny to your passage through the city? A. No, sir. Q. By the rioters or strikers? A. No, sir; they received me very kindly. They cheered me. I would not say they were rioters, but they were the strikers connected with the road. Q. They were blockading freight, or holding freight trains, at that time in Allegheny city? A. Yes; but there was no destruction of property. Mr. R. A. Ammon sent the following dispatch to me as I was coming into Pittsburgh. I received it about fifty or one hundred miles out of Pittsburgh: "We bid you welcome home, and assure you a safe passage over Fort Wayne road." He was very prominent at the depot when I arrived, and I did not see any other person that assumed to have any authority over the road when I arrived. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Will you please state who this R. A. Ammon is? A. I saw him that day, and have never seen him since. Q. Was he a railroad official, or was he one of the strikers? A. I think he was one of the strikers. I think he had possession of the telegraph--I am not sure about that. He told me--I do not know whether it is proper to state this--that the principal railroad official, I forget his name, sent him word to protect the property, which he said he did. Q. Mr. McCollough, was it? A. I do not remember now. Very likely it was--Layng, I think, was the name. Q. State when you left the State, whether there was anything at all to induce you to believe that there was any liability of a disturbance of the peace? A. Not the slightest in the world. I said at the time I had the conversation with General Latta, that I thought things never looked better than they did now--at that time. Q. Since that time, in your intercourse with the railroad officials of the State in any way, have you got information as to the causes of the outbreak? A. Not sufficient for me to express any opinion. I have never investigated that. Q. Far enough to express any opinion on the subject? A. No, sir; I guess you know more about that than I do, by this time. Q. Have you had any conversation or communications with any of the railroad employés who were engaged in the strike, other than Mr. Ammon? A. No, sir. Q. Did Mr. Ammon give any reasons for his taking charge of the railroad and telegraph at Allegheny City? A. No; the only reason he gave, so far as protecting the property was concerned--I think it was Mr. Layng that sent him word to protect the property that night--the night of the 21st--and he claimed that he had. He claimed a good deal of credit for what was done--I do not know, of my own knowledge, whether he had anything to do with it. I might say that there was a committee of engineers came to see me at Pittsburgh, when I was there with the troops on Sunday. They pretended that they were informed that I had authority to settle this question between them and the railroad company. Of course, I told them I had nothing more to do with it than any other citizen, so far as their differences were concerned. Another committee also came to see me, when I was at Kingston with troops--that was in Luzerne county--but there was nothing of any importance passed, because there was nothing that we could do--nothing that I could do. I went simply to preserve order. Q. Had you been at home at the time of receiving the call from the sheriff of Allegheny county for troops, would you have asked him what measures he had taken to suppress the disturbance, before you would have ordered out the troops? A. It is very likely I would; but I would have been influenced by the magnitude of the threatened disturbance to a very great extent. Of course, we always resist the sending of troops to the last moment; but, in this instance, I think it was perfectly proper to send troops. Q. You would be influenced by the magnitude of the disturbance, then, rather than by the efforts put forth by the sheriff to suppress it? A. If I knew the exact character of the sheriff I would be very much influenced by his call; but they are nearly always strangers, and I do not know to what extent they can be relied upon. I always avail myself of all the information I can get, and is very difficult to say what would control the Executive in making up his mind just at the last moment. Some sheriffs are very timid, and they throw the responsibility off as soon as possible. They think the moment they get troops that they are relieved. Others have a good deal more pride, and they try to control matters themselves. I think a great deal more could be done by sheriffs than is generally done. Q. After ordering out the military force of the State, are the civil authorities relieved or superceded by the military force? A. No; not as long as they appear active and on the ground. If they retire, of course the responsibility falls upon the Executive and his troops. Q. To preserve the peace? A. Yes, sir. Then we come under the act of 1864, which, I suppose, was the case in this instance. Q. If the civil authorities in the locality should retire and do nothing towards the suppression of the riot, then you deem it the duty of the military to preserve the peace? A. Yes; I would not hesitate a moment. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Would you not regard it the duty of both military and civil authorities to coöperate? A. I would have the military support the civil authorities, and I think the latter ought to appear somewhere all the time, even if not in any great force, or with much power, because the rioters must be arrested and tried by civil authorities. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. And the military is to support? A. Is to support. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And the civil authorities are not relieved from any responsibility after that just because the military are present? A. I do not think so. I do not think that the laws relieved them. They relieved themselves. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understood you to say you have never found it necessary to fall back upon that act of 1864--the particular section that authorizes the commander-in-chief to call out troops--I think it is the ninety-second section? A. At Susquehanna Depot the sheriff was active all the time, and there was no conflict. In fact, we never had a conflict before. We ordered the troops to Luzerne county again the next year--they were sent there upon the call of the sheriff. He was not very active. I finally told him to come to my office, and we consulted as to the necessity of withdrawing the troops, and we both decided that it was not the time to withdraw the troops. He would not take the entire responsibility, but I divided it with him. That was the nearest to taking the supreme control before. I considered the July riots of such a magnitude and so wide spread over the State--railroad communication stopped--the highways of the State obstructed--that it was necessary to exercise the authority given by the act of 1864. Although the troops went to Pittsburgh on the call of the sheriff, and to Luzerne on the call of the mayor of Scranton and the mayor of Wilkes-Barre, after they got on the spot, it was necessary, I think, to assume general control. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Under the act of 1864, you have the authority or the power to call out the military whenever you get information from any source that there is a disturbance of the peace that cannot be quelled by the civil authorities without being called on, or request made by the sheriff or mayor or other civil authority? A. That is my construction of it. I am quite sure that that was the intention of the act, when it was passed. Q. We are required to examine, and inquire into the conduct of the military during the riot--will you please give us a statement of their conduct--of the militia. A. I think that would be simply expressing an opinion which the committee is called upon to do after investigating the facts. I have investigated the facts, and give my opinion in my message. You can take that as my evidence. Q. What you know of your own professional knowledge of the conduct of the military? A. That is a very comprehensive question. A great deal might be said, _pro_ and _con_. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I suppose you can tell what the conduct of the militia was after you came home and took charge? A. I had every faith in them. The troops that I went to Pittsburgh with, and the troops I went to Luzerne county with, I think they would have done anything I could have expected with that many men. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you consider their conduct, as troops, commendable during the time that you had charge of them after your return to the State? A. Oh, yes; we had no conflict afterwards at all. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I suppose what Mr. Yutzy would like to know is, whether there was any individual instance of misconduct on the part of any officer or soldier, after you took charge, that came within your own knowledge--came under your observation? A. No, sir; I had no occasion to have anybody court-martialed for any misconduct. By Senator Yutzy: Q. If they had misconducted themselves you would have had them court-martialed? A. I would have taken notice of it in that way. A militia officer occupies a very singular position. He ought to have more judgment and more courage than an officer of like grade in the field if he is confronted with any great emergency. The men that he commands are part of the people--part of the very people he is called on to oppose--and in a disturbance like this, suddenly thrown up, a large proportion of the community may be against the troops and in favor of the disturber of the peace. It is a very difficult position to hold, and it requires a great deal of judgment. In fact, a great deal more than it would require in the field. By Mr. Means: Q. It is not like meeting an enemy on the field to meet these people? A. No. Of course this is only at first blush. After everybody cools off and they begin to realize that there must be law and order, then the reaction comes, but in the first instance it is a very difficult thing to determine just what to do. I would not like to loosely condemn people. I cannot tell what I would have done if I had been there. No man can tell. It is probably much easier to tell what ought to have been done after it is all over, and I am very confident now what I would do in the future. I have learned a great deal from these riots that I never knew before, and the experience has been quite valuable to the officers of the National Guard, and everybody. I do not think the like would occur again, unless there is a general revolution. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I would like to ask you this question: Whether you have noticed any tendency of the civil authorities of the State to rely upon the National Guard and shirk their own responsibility since the organization of the guard? A. There has always been a National Guard in the State. As to the main question, there is a tendency to rely too much on the guard. Q. Is that tendency growing, so far as your observation is concerned? A. About two years ago we had a good many calls. They seemed to want troops for every little disturbance. I think there were four calls for troops from the western part of the State--two in one day, I believe. The troops were not sent. There has been no call since this late riot, and there had not been before that for a long time. Q. Has the National Guard been increased under your administration? A. No, sir; we have diminished it. Companies that would not come up to the standard at the annual inspections were mustered out. Last year we mustered out twenty companies. Q. I suppose the Adjutant General's book shows the number of the National Guard? A. Yes; the most they can have is two hundred companies--two hundred is the limit. Q. Those companies are not full, I believe, now? A. Oh, yes; they are full. Our minimum is forty. They must all be above that. Some of them have fifty or sixty, and a few companies have more than that, even. The number of the companies is simply an arbitrary number fixed by statute. Q. Any further statement you desire to make you can do so? A. I have none. We have a large quantity of telegrams and papers. Q. In addition to these that are published in the message--in the appendix? A. Oh, yes; but they are not of very great importance. I picked out those that were the most important. * * * * * Chester N. Farr, _affirmed_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You are the private secretary of the Governor? A. Yes, sir. Q. State where your residence is, Mr. Farr? A. I reside in Reading, Berks county. Q. State where you were last July--on the 19th? A. I was in Reading, at home. Q. Just go on and state from that point what intelligence you received of any disturbance in any portion of the State, and how it came to you, and your knowledge of what transpired after that? A. On the evening of the 19th, about nine o'clock, I received a telegram from the Executive Department, embodying the telegram of the sheriff of Allegheny county to the Governor, and I left in the ten-thirty train to come on here with the expectation of meeting General Latta; and after I arrived here, I found that General Latta had left on the train from Philadelphia, and he was on the way, and during that time, sometime in the morning, about two o'clock, I think, of the 20th, I got a dispatch from the sheriff--at least a dispatch came--it was to the Governor, and I answered him that General Latta was on his way, and that there would be a consultation and action taken if necessary. On the morning of the 20th, I went down to the depot and found out when General Latta was expected to arrive, and went down to meet him at the train, and found he had ordered General Pearson's troops on duty in Pittsburgh; then prepared the proclamation, which is given in the appendix to the message, and went up to the hotel and took an hour or two's sleep, and in the morning the general telegraphed to the Governor that the proclamation was issued or would be issued. I don't remember the form. Q. That was on Friday morning? A. That was Friday morning. Q. Friday morning, the 20th? A. The 20th. During the day there was a number of dispatches by the general to the department, and at three-forty-five the general and myself and his clerk and the Assistant Adjutant General took the train for Pittsburgh, and on the way we received advices frequently in regard to the character of the situation--the threatening character of it--and having ordered General Pearson out, the general was waiting to find what had been the result. It was calculated that the Pittsburgh division--General Pearson's division--would furnish about a thousand men; but sometime in the afternoon we got advices from General Pearson that he had only succeeded in getting two hundred and thirty men. Then the general--if I recollect rightly--General Pearson in the same dispatch advised that the situation was so serious that he thought, in order to save bloodshed, there ought to be some other troops. General Latta then ordered General Brinton or requested General Brinton to have his troops notified, and afterward, when another dispatch came from General Pearson, very much of the same character stating that he had only a very small force out, and the men were not responding promptly, and that the situation was very threatening and would require a great many troops, he ordered General Brinton's division to report to General Pearson at Pittsburgh. Q. What time was that order given to General Brinton? A. Sometime late in the afternoon--I don't know the exact time. Q. Do you remember the point from which the order was sent? A. No, sir; I don't remember the point. Q. It was while you were _en route_ to Pittsburgh? A. It was while we were _en route_; yes. We arrived at Pittsburgh, at the Union depot, between twelve and one o'clock, on Saturday morning. We had been joined on the way by Colonel Norris and Mr. Linn. We were met at the depot by General Pearson; informed us that in the course of the few hours that had intervened, he had succeeded in getting together about six hundred men. I think he stated he had at the depot about three hundred and fifty men; the other two hundred and fifty, composing the Eighteenth regiment, were at Torrens station. The matter was talked over, and it was decided, as I understood, that no movement was to be made until the Philadelphia troops came. I believe General Pearson had intended that afternoon to attempt to run the trains, but had given it up for some reason. I suppose because he thought that if he had more troops, he could do it without a collision. In the morning, it was intended to wait until there was a large force there, for the purpose of having as large a force as possible, so as to avoid any collision if possible. During the morning--I suppose between three and four, or four and five o'clock--the hill at the side near Twenty-eighth street--I never went down to the ground, and don't know anything about it, except from the conversation that took place at the time--the hill at the side of the track at Twenty-eighth street, was occupied by the Fourteenth regiment, and Breck's battery. I believe the intention of that movement was to keep the crowd off the hill. About two o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the first detachment of the First division arrived, and after the troops had been fed, they marched down the track, and shortly afterwards--I suppose it was five o'clock--between four and five o'clock--we were told a collision had taken place between the troops and the rioters. We saw one or two of the Pittsburgh soldiers coming up the streets carrying their guns. The crowd would collect around them, and something would pass between them, and there would be cheers or something of that kind. About six o'clock, or perhaps later, we were told that the troops had gone into the round-house, and about nine o'clock--the time is merely in my mind as a sequence of events--I did not look at the time--I suppose it was about nine o'clock--General Pearson himself came into the room, but left shortly afterwards. All telegraphic communications stopped about that time, and we had no communications with the troops in the round-house, or where they were, until some time after that, when Sergeant Wilson, of the cavalry, came in dressed as a laborer, and brought some dispatches from General Brinton. During the night there were several dispatches brought, and answers returned in the same manner, and in the morning, about nine o'clock--half-past eight or nine o'clock--we were told the troops had left the round house. Q. At this point, Mr. Farr--because there are some questions I want to ask prior to that--what time was it after you received the dispatch at Reading bearing the sheriff's dispatch? A. It was after supper some time. I don't remember the exact time, but about supper time. Q. On the 19th? A. On the 19th; yes, sir. Q. Thursday evening, then, after supper? A. It was Thursday evening, either about supper or after that time. Q. Have you that dispatch, or can you get it? A. I think I have it home. I don't think I have it with me. Q. Who was that signed by? A. It was repeated by Mr. Keely. Q. From the Executive Department? A. From the Executive Department. It might be I am wrong about the dispatch. It may have contained simply Gardner's dispatch. My recollection is, it was the same as the sheriff's, but the sheriff's may have come the next morning. I think I have all those dispatches collected together. I don't know whether that dispatch contained any man's name, or whether I simply assumed it was from the sheriff, from the fact that it may have said, "The following dispatch was received at this office." I think I have the dispatch, and I can get it when I go home and look over the dispatches. Q. What time did you arrive at Harrisburg? A. I got here--that train gets here about midnight; leaves Reading at ten-thirty, and gets here some time between twelve and one. Q. Did you have any communication with the Secretary of State, on your arrival, Mr. Quay? A. The Secretary of State was not here. Q. He was not here? A. No, sir. Q. What time did you meet General Latta? A. Some time between two and three o'clock, I think. The time may have been later. I think it was two-fifty; I am not positive. Q. And you then prepared the first proclamation? A. Yes, sir; drew the draft of it, and, after the general had ordered the troops out, the proclamation was issued. Q. The general didn't make the order until after he arrived here and ordered the troops out? A. I understood him to say he had ordered the troops from Lancaster. Q. Did that proclamation appear in the morning papers? A. That I don't know. I think it did. I am not positive of that. My recollection is it was telegraphed to Pittsburgh. I am not positive. Q. Do you know what time you telegraphed it to Pittsburgh from here? A. No, sir; it was sometime in the morning. It must have been some time about four o'clock. Q. Had you any other intelligence from Pittsburgh than that contained in the telegram of Sheriff Fife? A. That, and simply what I learned from General Latta. Q. You had no other telegrams or communications to you or to the Executive Department? A. Not to me. Q. At the time of issuing the proclamation? A. This other telegram may have been there. I had received one other dispatch from Sheriff Fife, just before I saw General Latta, which, as I stated, I had answered by saying that General Latta would be here. I think you will find that dispatch in the Governor's message. Q. Was that directed to the Governor? A. Yes; it was directed to the Governor, and I think it embodied this dispatch. Q. If you can get both of those dispatches we would like to have them? A. That I answered by stating that General Latta would be there. Q. Where did you meet the Secretary of State first? A. At Pittsburgh. Q. On your arrival at Pittsburgh? A. No, sir; he came in Saturday morning, I think, just after daylight--just about daylight, probably. He was at the Monongahela. We had telegraphed him to meet us at the Monongahela house, and after we got to the Union depot we found General Pearson and the troops were stopping there and were detained. Colonel Quay came in in the morning. Q. After your arrival there and consultation with General Pearson, it was determined not to attempt to move any train until the Philadelphia troops arrived, as I understand you? A. I understood that to be the determination. Of course in these military consultations, although I listened, I did not take any part. That was my understanding of the result of the conversation. Q. Did you understand General Pearson to be giving directions to the military force there? A. I understood General Pearson to be in command. Q. And that the Adjutant General was there exercising his powers and duties as Adjutant General proper? A. So I understood. I understood that the Adjutant General had authority from the Governor, and was exercising his authority so far as getting the troops there. By Senator Reyburn: Q. As commander-in-chief? A. That is, he had directions from the commander-in-chief to issue the orders necessary to assist the authorities. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In calling out the troops? A. Yes; but after the troops were gathered together, they were in command of the officer of the division--that is, so far as any military operations were concerned. Q. And that General Latta was not giving directions to the troops after they came there--not taking command of the troops, or superseding General Pearson at all? A. That was my understanding. Q. After the collision occurred, what time was it when General Pearson arrived at the Union Depot hotel? A. I cannot tell the time exactly, but it was nine or ten o'clock, as near as I can say. I don't think I looked at my watch the whole twenty-four hours. I merely remember the time by the sequence. Q. What was his purpose in coming there, or did he express any purpose? A. My recollection is, he said he had come to see whether he could get provisions and ammunition, and I think that is the same reason that he gives in his report. Q. What efforts did he make to get provisions and ammunition to the troops that night? A. None at all, that I know of. Q. You saw no efforts made? A. I understood from the conversation that took place, that it was admitted that General Pearson could not get back to the round-house, and that he alone, without any force--there was no force there--could not get any provisions to the troops, and that as he seemed to be particularly obnoxious to the mob, it would be safer--or at least keep the mob from going to extremes--if he was out of the way. For these reasons he accepted General Latta's suggestion that he should leave. Q. How long did he remain at the hotel? A. I suppose--perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer. Q. Do you know where he went? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know where he started to go? A. No, sir; I don't. He came there with, I think, four members of his staff. Q. Did they go with him, or did they remain? A. I think one of them remained. I am not positive about that. I did not know the gentleman at that time. I cannot always rank them--there were a good many of them there. Q. Who was to take command of the troops after he left? A. That was understood to devolve upon General Brinton. In fact, that was something that I heard the Adjutant General ask--whether he, General Pearson, had left General Brinton in command, and whether General Brinton expected him back. And he said that he had told General Brinton if he did not come back he was to take command, and I always understood after General Pearson left, General Brinton to be in command of the troops. Q. Of all the troops there then, including those of the Sixth division? A. I don't know that I have any reason for being so explicit as that. I simply supposed that General Brinton was in command of the troops who were in the round-house, whether they were Pittsburgh or Philadelphia troops, who were there at that time. The detachment there was regarded as under his command. Q. What time was the telegraphic communication between the Union Depot hotel and General Brinton cut off? A. Just about the time General Pearson came. I think it was almost simultaneously about the time General Pearson came in, they announced that the communications were closed. The telegraph operator said he could not communicate. Q. Was anything said or done there about moving General Brinton or getting any word to General Brinton--any communication in any other way? A. Oh, yes; there was some talk--very considerable. I think it was believed that General Brinton was perfectly safe with his troops until after the firing began. Then there was considerable anxiety. Q. That is after the burning? A. I mean the burning--after they set fire to the cars. There was very considerable anxiety in regard to him, but the railroad officials stated that the buildings the troops were in were perfectly fire proof, and it was supposed that he was perfectly able to take care of himself. Q. Did you see or hear anything from General Brown or his command that night? A. After we first got there--during Saturday--General Brown was in and out several times in citizen's dress, telling about his conversations with the rioters, and the manner in which they talked to him, and various other things. I did not see him that night after the fire. Q. Did you know anything about his dismissing his command--ordering Colonel Gray or Colonel Howard to dismiss their regiments? A. No, sir. If the Fourteenth regiment came to the Union depot on Saturday night, I did not see it. There was one company of the Fourteenth regiment--I think it was the Fourteenth regiment--that was left, or came in afterwards in some way, that was there that night at the depot, and there were eighteen--eighteen or twenty men of the Black Hussars. There was about thirty thousand rounds of ammunition there. Q. Eighteen of the Black Hussars, do I understand you to say? A. I think there were eighteen or twenty--something like that. They were unarmed, except with the sabers, so far as I could see. Q. Nothing but sabers? A. That is all. Q. Was there any talk by the Adjutant General, or any effort made, to get a communication, or to communicate with General Brinton in any way during the night of Saturday night? A. Oh, yes. After the firing took place--I did not see it, I only knew this, of course, from hearsay--there was a wagon sent out with provisions for the troops. It was loaded up and sent down, but the mob prevented it getting to the troops. That was, I think, just before night-fall, and during the night there were several efforts made. Q. There were none of those Black Hussars, or of Colonel Howard's, or of Colonel Gray's brigade sent, were there? A. There were no troops there. The Black Hussars--it would have been madness to have sent out eighteen or twenty men with sabers into that crowd. Q. Neither was the other company that you spoke of? A. The other company--I don't remember just when that company came in. I noticed it sometime during the night. I didn't see it when it first came. I don't think it was left there when the troops went down. It was considered better to attempt no military movements during the night time, because of the crowd in the streets. Q. When the burning commenced, was there any efforts made by the military in any way to stop the burning so far as you know? A. None that I know of. Q. Was it a subject of conversation at the Union hotel, between Latta and yourself, or any others that were in consultation there? A. I don't understand the question. Q. Was that subject talked of? A. Do you mean, whether we were to prevent it, or whether as to the possibility or the feasibility of General Brinton's preventing it? Q. What was the feasibility of General Brinton himself preventing it? A. I cannot remember that there was anything said particularly about it. Although at that time it was supposed, before we received any communication from him--it was supposed he was able to take care of himself. He had five hundred men and two Gatling guns, and he had taken, I think, twenty rounds of ammunition per man and a couple of thousand for his gun, and until we got that first dispatch from him, it was generally supposed that he would be able to take care of himself. Q. Which was the highest in rank, General Brinton or General Brown? A. General Brinton was the highest. General Brinton was a major general, and General Brown, brigadier. He is brigadier of the Sixth division. While we were in the depot, after the firing took place, there were a number of wounded men brought in--soldiers. I heard the surgeon state, that he had ten or fifteen--I have forgotten which--anyway it was quite a number--it was nearly a dozen at least, and they were sent away on the next train. Most of them were wounded with pistol shots, so he stated. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where did those soldiers come from? A. From the front, where the collision had taken place. Q. Do you recollect how many soldiers were brought in wounded? A. There were from ten to fifteen. Q. All of General Brinton's command? A. I don't know. They were all with that detachment, but there were some troops down there who were not of the First division. General Brown had the Fourteenth, of the Sixth division, and Breck's battery, at Pittsburgh, and the Jefferson cavalry. But I think most of those wounded were Philadelphia troops. I judge so simply from the fact that they were sent down in the train--with the last train that was permitted to go through. Q. What time did you leave the Union depot--just go on from that point? A. After the troops had left the depot, this scout came in and informed us that General Brinton had left the round-house. I believe, however, General Latta had known it just before he came in. The first I knew of it was when he came in and informed us that the troops had left. Then General Brown came in shortly afterwards, and stated that the troops were in bad condition. The report was that they were being massacred by the citizens, and General Brown expressed great indignation then. He said he didn't care what happened to the mob after their exhibition of brutality, and made other expressions of that kind. Afterwards we found out that these were entirely exaggerated reports; that the troops had marched out in reasonably good order. We stayed at the Union depot until nearly noon, or about eleven o'clock, I should judge. That was about nine o'clock. The proprietor got very anxious about the matter, because he thought our presence there would induce the mob to set fire to the building. General Latta would not leave until he made arrangements to save the ammunition, and arrangements were made. The building was then deserted. Nearly everybody was out of it, so far as the occupants of it. There were a number of muskets that had been left by the troops. They were taken up stairs, and put in the room. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, or thereabouts, we left and went down stairs, attempted to get a carriage, and could not find a driver. Then we went across the street and took cars, and went to the Monongahela house; and while there we received information from Colonel Norris, who, with Colonel Stewart, had started in the morning after General Brinton. And we received the same information in various ways--I don't know the exact channels--that the troops were beyond Sharpsburg, across the bridge, and wanted provisions, and efforts were made to get them. Q. The Monongahela house was then the head-quarters of General Latta--General Latta made his head-quarters there? A. Yes; he stopped there, and notified every one with whom we had telegraphic communications where he was. Q. How long did he remain there? A. Until nine o'clock in the evening. Q. That Sunday evening? A. Yes, sir. Q. Yourself and the Secretary of State with him? A. Yes, sir. Q. Any other? A. The Assistant Adjutant General, the Deputy Secretary of State, and Colonel Norris, and Mr. Russell, the clerk. When we went into the Monongahela house, we registered our names, and when I looked at the register afterwards, I found they had scratched them all out and put in fictitious names. While we were there, we heard that the mob had set fire to the Union depot. Of course, we could see the light, and I supposed the proprietors were afraid they might serve the Monongahela house the same way during the night that they had the Union depot. It was within my own personal knowledge that the Adjutant General was endeavoring to get the other detachment of the First division, and the Eighteenth regiment--Colonel Guthrie's regiment--that was at Torrens station, in such a condition that they could join General Brinton in the morning. It was supposed that General Brinton would have no difficulty in staying where he was until that juncture was effected, but the trains were all stopped, and it was difficult to get engineers to run them, even where they could be run, and the junction was not effected, and General Brinton was directed, or instructed whatever it may be, to make that junction himself when he left the round-house. By Senator Reyburn: Q. He didn't make that? A. No, sir. As I understand it, the intention was to get the troops concentrated together after the collision, so as to get as large a force as possible, but they were in detachments, and the railroads were stopped, and many of the troops were without ammunition. Wherever it was possible ammunition was sent to them. It was wagoned down to the detachment of General Brinton's--his second detachment--and it was sent down the Ohio river to the Erie division and wherever it was possible. Q. Were any of the officers of the railroad company at the Monongahela house? A. Yes; both at the Union depot and Monongahela house. They came in. Q. Were there any efforts--did you know on Sunday that Colonel Gray and Colonel Howard's regiment had been dismissed on Saturday night? A. I knew nothing of it? Q. You had no knowledge of it? A. I had no knowledge of it. It was generally understood that the Pittsburgh division had gone to pieces, except the Eighteenth regiment. Q. Did the civil authorities, the mayor of the city of Pittsburgh or the sheriff of the county, have any consultation with General Latta at the Monongahela house during that day? A. Not at the Monongahela house? By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did they at any time after your arrival? A. I don't remember of seeing the sheriff. I don't think he was there in the room at all, although I understood he went with the detachment to Twenty-eighth street. The mayor came, as I understood, when he was sent for by General Latta, and stayed, I suppose, twenty minutes. Q. When was that? A. That was during Saturday night. It may have been early Sunday morning, but it was before daylight. Q. While you were yet at the Union Depot hotel? A. At the Union depot. He came when he was sent for, and I did not take any part in the conversation, or hear it, but he talked with General Latta, afterwards with Secretary Quay, and then left, and that was the last I ever saw of him. Q. Were you in consultation with citizens on Sunday? A. Citizens were very scarce. I never saw many Pittsburgh people. Whenever a Pittsburgh man left, he very seldom came back. Q. Did you know where the head-quarters of the citizens' committee was during the day, Sunday? A. No, sir. Q. And you were not called upon by them? A. Not that I know of, sir. Q. Was it known through the city where General Latta was? A. It was in every paper that I saw in the morning. Q. And you registered when you went to the Monongahela house? A. Our arrival there the night before was in every morning paper that I saw of the city, and we were registered at the hotel, and we registered at the Monongahela house when we went there, and this very party who had been sent out in the interim we had gone to the Monongahela, they had no difficulty in finding us. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you understand the railroad company--the officials, I mean--to believe that they could run trains? Did they seem to have that impression after you arrived in Pittsburgh? A. It was understood that they had the crews ready just as soon as the track was clear, and if protection was given them, they could run trains? By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How did you get that information? From what railroad officer? A. I don't remember. I think it was stated generally--it was so understood. Q. Mr. Cassatt was there, I believe. Was he not? A. Mr. Cassatt was there. Q. And Pitcairn, the superintendent? A. Mr. Pitcairn was there. I think Mr. Pitcairn was the man I heard make the statement that he had the crews? Q. Ready to start? A. Yes, sir; I am not positive as to that. Q. Do you know what efforts General Latta made during the day--Sunday, I mean--to stop the burning, or to collect a force--collect troops for that purpose? A. I understood he was engaged all day in endeavoring to get those troops in the condition that they could be used. Q. Colonel Guthrie's regiment at Torrens station, and General Brinton's command--he was trying to get them to form a junction, so that they could be used? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were there any other troops within the reach of the city? A. I think there was. The second detachment of the First division was on its way, and it must have been near the city, some place. Q. Who was commanding that regiment? A. Colonel Rodgers, I think. Q. Do you know where they were that night? A. No; I do not know of my own knowledge, at that time. I know, since, they were within a few miles. They were, I suppose, twelve or fourteen miles, perhaps less; but they were without ammunition. Q. What time did you leave the Monongahela house, and where did you go from there? A. We left the Monongahela house and took a boat and went to Beaver. Q. What time did you arrive at Beaver? A. About midnight, I guess. Q. Sunday night? A. Yes sir. Q. And from Beaver where? A. From Beaver the intention was to go to Erie. Upon inquiry at Pittsburgh, the railroad officials informed us that they could not get their trains through to Harrisburg, and so the intention was to go from Beaver to Erie, as we understood the Erie railroad was running, and go to Harrisburg; but when we got to Beaver we found that the road running to Erie was stopped also, then General Latta and the Assistant Adjutant General and myself took a carriage and drove over to Allegheny City, and found that the train was running on the West Penn and took that train, and got to Harrisburg. Q. The purpose in coming to Harrisburg was to collect more troops? A. The communications were uncertain, and there was no way to get ammunition or orders to these troops. At this point the committee adjourned until Monday afternoon, at two o'clock. HARRISBURG, _Monday, March, 11, 1878_. The committee met pursuant to adjournment, in Senate committee room, No. 6, at four o'clock in the afternoon. All members present, except Messrs. Means, Torbert, Dewees, and Larrabee. * * * * * Chester N. Farr, _recalled_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Is this the first dispatch you received? [Indicating.] A. That is the first dispatch I received. I received that after supper, Thursday night, the 19th. Q. After supper, about what hour? A. About nine o'clock. It was shortly after, and little before the train left. Q. Dated received 9.16. A. It was about that time. The dispatch was as follows: HARRISBURG, PA., _July 19, 1877_. Received at 10 No. Sixth street, Reading, 9.16, P.M. C. N. FARR, jr., _516 Elm street, Reading, Pa._: Superintendent of Pennsylvania railroad wires, that a number of train men at Pittsburgh have refused to work, and have, by the aid of a promiscuous mob gathered from the streets, and by the most severe threats and violence against our men, who are ready to work, succeeded in intimidating them, and forcing them to get off their trains, and we are unable, by the aid of police furnished by authorities at Pittsburgh, to move our traffic which is suffering, especially live stock. I would respectfully urge, that such protection will be furnished as will enable us to have possession of our road. Did Governor leave any orders with you? WARREN B. KEELY. Then after I got up here, about one or two o'clock, I received one from Sheriff Fife. That I have not been able to find; but that I answered. Q. You have not been able to find the dispatch you received from the sheriff? A. No, sir, I think not. But I can get a copy of it here at the office, if you would like it. Q. Can you give pretty nearly the contents of it? A. No, sir; it was a short dispatch, simply asking me if anything was being done. Q. Is it published in the Adjutant General's report? A. No, sir; I think not. I have not got it here. I am sorry, I looked over all that I had, but I couldn't find it. Q. I wish you would state now your knowledge of the disturbance at Reading--any facts that are within your own knowledge, and that you have obtained through an official capacity? A. I know nothing about the disturbance of my own personal knowledge, except from hearsay after I got there. I got there on Tuesday afternoon--Tuesday evening, I think. Q. What date? A. It was the 24th. When we came down from Harrisburg on Tuesday afternoon, we got here just in time for me to take the two-fifty-seven train, and go to Reading. I had heard there was a disturbance over there, and I went over, and when I got there I found the bridge was burned down. We stopped just this side of the bridge, and had to drive in over the other bridge, and found considerable excitement in town, and a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty about the situation of affairs. General Reeder and his command had left about that time, and they expected the Federal troops in, and they came in shortly afterwards while I was there, and there was no further disturbance in town while I was there. There was a meeting of the citizens called for that night. It was attended by I should suppose fifteen or twenty, and some efforts were made to get up a citizens' organization; but it didn't work. There was not a large amount of cheerful alacrity to go into the organization. Q. By whose authority was the citizens' meeting called? A. They were called together by the mayor. He was there at that time. He was at the meeting. The sheriff I didn't see. Q. The sheriff resided in Reading--the sheriff of the county? A. I think not; but he was in Reading at that time. So I understood, although I didn't see him. Q. What is the sheriff's name? A. His name is Yorgy. Captain Linden and his police were there at that time. I saw them. They had stayed to guard the railroad property. About seventeen or eighteen men he had at that time. Q. Of the city? A. No, sir; coal and iron police. The police were some twenty or twenty-two. A number of those were hurt in the fire--about seven of them were shot. Q. Shot in this conflict that took place between the rioters and the troops? A. Yes. As I understood that matter, Seventh street runs this way, [indicating,] and at the corner--at Penn street--it was where the principle crowd was. The cut opens there, and the police were drawn across Penn street, parallel with Seventh street. When the troops came out of the cut this volley went through the line. Q. Of the police? A. Yes, sir. Q. Any of them killed? A. No, sir; I think one of them lost his foot. Seven of them, altogether, were struck. Q. How many were killed in the conflict that took place that evening? A. Said to be eleven, those that were killed, and fifty odd were wounded. When I was there they had torn up the track. I saw that. They had torn up a rail or two out of the track, and overturned the watchman's box there, and had stone piled up. There was certainly no attempt to make a barricade--there was not much of a barricade. Q. How large a force was assembled there of the rioters when you got there? A. There were only a few men standing round. Q. Were they railroad men that were standing about--railroad employés? A. That I don't know. Of course there were a great many people on the streets, and there were crowds walking around. Q. What night was it that the conflict took place between Reeder's troops and the rioters? A. Monday night. The bridge was burned on Sunday, I think--Sunday night. Q. Did they gather in any considerable force after your arrival in the city? A. No, sir; I saw no mob. Q. There was no further disturbance nor breach of the peace? A. None at all. They commenced to arrest people who were engaged in it immediately. Q. State what efforts were made by the civil authorities to punish those that were engaged in rioting, so far as you know of your own knowledge? A. They had arrested--they arrested about sixty or seventy. I think then the next week they were all held for appearance at court. Two of them pleaded guilty--the two that were engaged in burning the bridge. Those two were in court, and the others were tried, and so far as I know of my own personal knowledge, there were about a dozen that I know of were tried and acquitted, and the others were held for the next term of court. I don't know whether they have been tried or not. I suppose they were, but I do not know. Q. Were those arrests made by the mayor? A. They were made by the chief of police, assisted by the coal and iron police, and the police of the city. Q. This coal and iron police you speak of, is that a police kept up by the company--a private company? A. I understand that to be under some act of Assembly, by which the Governor has power to appoint special policemen. I never looked up the act of Assembly. I know there are policemen appointed that way--special policemen. Q. For the city? A. No, sir; for the protection of corporate property. I don't know whether it specially applies to corporate property or not. Q. Is that a general act? A. Indeed, sir, I never looked at the act. I don't know. I really don't know where the authority comes from, except I know these appointments are made. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Confined to the coal regions? A. They call them coal and iron police. I don't know under what act of Assembly. Q. How are they paid? A. I suppose they are paid by the companies, I don't know though. Q. How many of these were there in the city of Reading? A. I don't know of my own knowledge. I heard there were seventeen or eighteen. There is one correction I want to make. I don't know whether I have stated that I know of my own personal knowledge that Mayor McCarthy came to the room, or whether I said I understood he was sent for. I don't remember him as coming to the room. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That was at Pittsburgh? A. At Pittsburgh. I learned afterwards he had been sent for, and did come. I was not introduced then, and had no conversation myself, and didn't enter into the conversation. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know whether he was sent for? A. That I do not know of my own personal knowledge. * * * * * James W. Latta, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State to the committee where you were on the 19th of July last, or when the news first reached you of the disturbance on the Pennsylvania railroad at Pittsburgh, and what action was taken by you with reference thereto? A. On the evening of the 19th of July, 1877, I was sitting in the room of Post No. 2, Grand Army Republic, at one of its regular weekly sessions, at the corner of Spring Garden and Thirteenth streets, Philadelphia. About nine-thirty o'clock, there was a rap came at the door, and the messenger announced that I was wanted outside. I went outside and found a gentleman in a carriage, who announced himself as an official of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He told me there was some difficulty upon the railway, and that they would like to see me if I could go down to the West Philadelphia depot. I went back and left word it was doubtful whether I would be back again that night, and I went with him to the depot. I there met Mr. Lockhart, superintendent of the Philadelphia division, and went with two others, whom I do not now recollect by name. They told me all the circumstances that had occurred at Pittsburgh. They produced a number of dispatches, described the action that had been taken by the strikers during that day of Thursday, pulling off men from their trains, and pounding some of their officials when they attempted to run them, and the fact that the mayor had been called on, and had been found to have gone to Castle Shannon. This further fact I am not positive whether it appeared in the dispatches, or whether I simply recollect from having learned it subsequently. My impression is it appeared in the dispatches that the fact was that an effort had been made by the mayor, with some thirteen or fifteen policemen, to assist the railroad people in getting the train out, and it had failed. I have endeavored to get those dispatches, but have not been able to do so. Q. Was this information communicated to you by the railroad officials at Philadelphia, or was it contained in the dispatches that you received from Pittsburgh? A. It was communicated to me by them. They showed me the dispatches that contained the information to them, and I read them there in the office. Colonel Scott, it appears, had been sent for. He was somewheres out in the country, and they then said to me, we want troops. I told them they would have to take some other steps to secure the calling for troops before any troops could be ordered. I said, it appears the mayor has been doing something and you must look to the sheriff. They then showed me a dispatch that had been addressed by Mr. Cassatt to the Lieutenant Governor. I was satisfied the Lieutenant Governor had no power in the premises, but, fearing that there might be some question as to whether he had or not, I got the Constitution, and they had Smull's hand-book. I made up my mind conclusively, that he had not, and I telegraphed to the Attorney General. In the meantime, however, Mr. Scott came in, and they, I believe, started off some requests to other people about getting the sheriff on the ground, and I telegraphed to Pearson at the same time, to know something about it myself, and believing it was going to be a serious affair, I went immediately back to my home and took a carriage and drove to the eleven o'clock train, and found Mr. Gardner, who was on a special train. We jumped on his train and came to Harrisburg. Q. Who is Mr. Gardner? A. He is general superintendent of the railway. He was going to his home in Altoona. Q. Pennsylvania railway? A. Pennsylvania railway. My impression is that is all that occurred at the depot. I got on his train at Lancaster. We had a pretty slow run, we were stopped a good deal, and at Lancaster I got a dispatch from the sheriff which appears in my report and appears in all the official documents. Q. Sheriff, Allegheny county? A. Yes, sir; it was addressed to me. It was stating that he had addressed one to the Governor. Q. That is the one dated July 20, 1877, at one-fourteen, P.M.? A. That is the only one. Q. Contained on page No. 1 of your report? The dispatch referred to, is as follows: PITTSBURGH, _July 20, 1877--1.49, A.M._ General JAMES W. LATTA: I have addressed to Governor Hartranft the following message, and learning that he is absent, I forward it to you for your information. R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff of Allegheny county_. PITTSBURGH, _July 20, 1877--1.14, A.M._ Honorable JOHN F. HARTRANFT: A tumultuous mob exists on the Pennsylvania railroad, at East Liberty, in the Twelfth ward of Pittsburgh. Large assemblages of people are upon the railroad, and the movement of freight trains, either east or west, is prevented by intimidation and violence, molesting, obstructing the engineers and other employés of the railroad company in the discharge of their duties. As the sheriff of the county, I have endeavored to suppress the riot, and have not adequate means at my command to do so. I therefore request you to interfere your authority in calling out the military to suppress the same. R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff of Allegheny county_. Witness: Meantime, I had seen some telegrams from the Lieutenant Governor, either before or after this, I forget which, that he had no power in the premises. Having received instructions from Governor Hartranft before he left the State of Pennsylvania, which was upon the Monday previous to this date, that in case of trouble, I should assume the responsibility, and the case being one of serious magnitude, knowing the fact that the regular army had been three or four days endeavoring to open the Baltimore and Ohio road, and had failed, I thought the time had come for prompt and immediate action, and I sent a dispatch which reads as follows--from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to General Pearson. This dispatch shows conclusively, that the military were acting subordinately to the civil authorities: LANCASTER, _7, 20, 1877--2.35, A.M._ Major General A. L. PEARSON, _Pittsburgh_: You will assume charge of the situation in the Twelfth ward of Pittsburgh, to aid the civil authorities in suppressing existing disorders. Place one regiment on duty, advise me which command you so place, and report generally. JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. And I immediately advised the sheriff from Lancaster; the same telegram went to the sheriff: LANCASTER, PA., _July 20, 1877--2.35, A.M._ R. H. FIFE, _Sheriff, Pittsburgh, Pa._: Have directed General Pearson to place one regiment on duty to aid you in suppressing disorders. JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. Q. What time did you send those despatches? A. Two thirty-five, A.M., in the morning of the 20th July, on the way from Lancaster to Harrisburg. We were running very fast. It was a matter more of form than anything else, to prepare a proclamation. The proclamation I did not conceive to be of any moment, and I thought, as a matter of form, I would let one go out. I got it pretty well finished by the time we got to Harrisburg, and at Harrisburg we met Mr. Farr, and I told him to complete it, and let it go out. That is the proclamation that has been referred to in his testimony and the Governor's, and which appears in the Governor's message--in the appendix to the Governor's message. Q. The first proclamation that was issued? A. Yes, sir; the first proclamation. Q. State what advice you gave them? A. At Harrisburg--we moved on Friday quickly from Lancaster, and when I got to Harrisburg--an hour and a half afterward I sent the dispatch, which appears on page 2 of my report, as follows: Governor J. F. HARTRANFT, (care S. H. H. Clark,) _Omaha, Nebraska_: Mob stopped all freight trains at Pittsburgh. Sheriff called for troops. Ordered Pearson to take charge, and to put one regiment on duty. Says he may need more. JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. Q. What time did you send them? A. That was about four o'clock in the morning. Q. When did you inform the Governor that you had issued a proclamation? A. Not until eight or nine o'clock that morning in another dispatch that the Governor produced. The proclamation really had not gone out then. Q. Did you inform him before or after the proclamation had gone out to the public? A. I think the proclamation went over the wires about that time, but it had not really become a proclamation and about the time.... I did not recollect of anything of moment or importance occurring between that time of the sending of that dispatch, about the proclamation, which was read here on Saturday, until some time during the morning. I sent a ... General Pearson, to know how things were progressing, what things had been done, and at two o'clock I received a reply, which appears in my report, on page 2. It left Pittsburgh one-fifty-eight, P.M. Reads as follows, addressed to me: PITTSBURGH, _July 20, 1877--1.58, P.M._ General JAMES W. LATTA, _Harrisburg_: I have ordered out all my infantry and two sections of Hutchinson's battery. The Eighteenth regiment, under command of Colonel Guthrie, are at Torrens station, where several hundred determined rioters are assembled, and defy the officers of the law. The Fourteenth and Nineteenth I will station between the Union depot and East Liberty. At the outer depot, fifteen hundred or two thousand men are congregated, and refuse to allow the passage of any freight trains. I will station the artillery at that point. It will require a strong hand to quell the disturbances, and disperse the mob. Thinking it better to overawe the mob by an appearance of strategy, and to save bloodshed, I have ordered out my command as above. A portion of the eighteenth regiment were on duty at eight o'clock, A.M. A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_. I then left Harrisburg with Mr. Farr and Colonel Hassinger and Mr. Russell on the fast line west. During the morning, I might say that Colonel Scott was telegraphing me quite considerably about whether or not there were enough troops, and earnestly suggesting me to put some more in the field, and to show the opinion in which the troops of Pittsburgh were held at that time, there is a dispatch here which has never been published, and which I will read now. I thought I could understand how to handle people I had been with for a good while, and there ain't any question about it, but this Sixth division, of the National Guard, stood the equal of any in the Commonwealth, on the morning of the 20th day of July, and I assured Colonel Scott, the troops were, in my judgment, so far as I understood the situation, satisfactory to me. I sent to Colonel Scott this telegram, dated Harrisburg, July 20, at noon. ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE, HARRISBURG, _July 20, 1877--12, M._ Colonel THOMAS A. SCOTT, _Philadelphia_: Pearson is moving his whole force, and is doubtless on the ground by this time. He is an efficient, energetic, and judicious commander, with a body of troops under him that are as well disciplined and drilled as any National Guard forces in the country. They are officered by gentlemen of military experience and proved ability. I appreciate the situation, and no energies of mine shall be spared to bring matters to a successful issue. I go west on fast line. Will keep you advised. Have read Mr. Cassatt's dispatch to you. (Signed) JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. Shortly after this dispatch went, some two and a half hours, I got some intimation through the railroad people that the troops were not coming out right, and I told them I could say nothing to them until I heard from General Pearson, who had the whole charge of matters. This dispatch of Pearson's, which appeared in my report, page 3, confirms these suspicions which I had about what these railroad officials had said to me: PITTSBURGH, _July 20, 1877--5, P.M._ Major General JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_, (_on Fast Line west_:) Matters are getting worse. The Fourteenth regiment, up to this time, four o'clock, have not reported a man. The Nineteenth has but fifty (50) men. The Eighteenth regiment has had one hundred and fifty (150) on duty since morning. Captain Breck has his battery horsed and ready for duty. Is now at Union depot. I fear the majority of the troops sympathize with the strikers. Mr. Cassatt is most anxious to have other troops, and as it will take a long time to get country troops together, the Philadelphia troops could be brought here in less time than any others, and would not be in sympathy with the strikers. Mr. Cassatt suggests that you have a good regiment under arms, and if I fail with what I have got, they can be ordered here by special train, and would arrive early in the morning. I will make the attempt to run the trains through in less than an hour, and will notify you of the result. A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_. To which I replied, as follows. MIFFLIN, _July 20, 1877--5.45, P.M._ General A. L. PEARSON, _Pittsburgh_: Your dispatch received. You say Cassatt suggests that another regiment be held under arms. Do you ask that the order be issued? JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. Then immediately after that I got one from Pearson which opened up the whole situation, and was acted on. That dispatch is on the same page, and reads as follows: PITTSBURGH, _July 20, 1877--6.35, P.M._ Major General JAMES W. LATTA, (_Fast Line west_:) After every exertion on the part of myself and staff, since four o'clock this A.M., I have but two hundred and thirty men on hand. There are not less than four or five thousand strikers, and increasing in large numbers hourly. The sympathy of the various companies is with them, and I have no hesitation in saying, that to avert bloodshed, we should have not less than two thousand troops. While I can scatter the crowd, it will be only for the time being, and at fearful loss of life. I suggest that two thousand men be sent to-night. A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_. Q. What hour is that dispatch dated? A. That dispatch is dated six-thirty-five, P.M., Pittsburgh, July 20, 1877, and I got it at McVeytown tower, east of Huntingdon. I immediately ordered the divisions of Generals Brinton, Gallagher, Huidekoper, and White, and the Fifth regiment of General Beaver's division under arms, and advised General Pearson of this by telegram. In view of this fact of sympathetic tendencies on the part of the strikers with the rioters, after I got Pearson's dispatch, in another answer to Colonel Scott, I said I didn't deem it advisable to take any action with the troops just then, until we found out exactly how the troops felt. If the troops were going to be in this condition all over the State, we better study a little before making further movements, and I telegraphed Brinton a private and confidential dispatch, inquiring what the sentiment was there. He telegraphed back, assuring me his people were right, and I might use them on any emergency whatever. Immediately after that I put Brinton in the field, and ordered him to move the whole division to Pittsburgh. I directed Brinton to supply himself with ammunition, such as he had in Philadelphia. I had forty-five thousand rounds prepared for him, and handed to him as he passed through, with instructions to issue it to his troops, not less than ten rounds a man, before they went any further, and I also put in his charge two Gatling guns, which we had at the Harrisburg arsenal, leaving their heavy guns behind them. I pursued my individual movement to Pittsburgh, and, I think I got there some time about one or two o'clock in the morning of Saturday. I do not recollect exactly the time. I found excitement, and things conditioned during the night as I supposed I would find them, from what reports I had. Found these two regiments, the Fourteenth and the Nineteenth, partially gotten together in cars. Pearson was about to execute a movement to carry them out by some strategic plan, about daylight, to Twenty-eighth street, and there hold the crossing with these two regiments and a battery, the object being entirely to avoid bloodshed, that being the tenor of all the dispatches I received. From what I could learn, I thought the movement of that battery and the necessity for two thousand men was rather an unwise one, and I advised against it; but the battery was taken out, and the measure was successfully accomplished. I discovered, much to my surprise, that public sentiment and the press were in pretty strong sympathy and accord with the people who were defying the law. No sheriff, no mayor, that I saw at all. Matters went on until two o'clock, I think, without any change worthy of comment, when Brinton arrived with about six hundred and fifty men. I then asked Pearson distinctly whether he was satisfied, or had enough troops to master the situation, and he said he was satisfied with them, and the movement commenced. I remained at the Union Depot hotel, to say nothing of the transaction at Twenty-fifth street. The firing was first announced to me in a dispatch, which was given in my report. It might be stated, in this connection, that the whole forty-five rounds of ammunition were brought to Pittsburgh, and it was a pretty serious embarrassment in future operations. These facts are all set forth in my report, and the troops were supplied with twenty rounds per man, and the guns with two thousand rounds each--the Gatling. Q. Before they started from the Union depot? A. Before they started from the Union depot. We had a vast amount of it lying there. If we had only got it issued, it might have made some change in circumstances. The dispatch announcing the fire, I received at the Union depot, five-twenty P.M. Q. What page is that on? A. Page 5. OUTER DEPOT, _July 21, 1817--5.25, P.M._ Major General LATTA, _Union Depot_: Send for Huidekoper's, Gallagher's, Beaver's, and White's, divisions. The location of the ground is such that it is almost impossible to handle troops. The troops have just fired into the crowd, and I am informed a number are killed. I am satisfied no trains can be sent out to-night. The appearance of affairs is desperate. A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_ The object of the movement, was, of course, to open the road, and Mr. Pitcairn told me shortly before the movement commenced, in reply to an interrogatory, that he had fifteen crews ready to carry out trains. Q. Ready to take out trains? A. Yes, sir. I never knew the reason why the trains did not run until I read General Brinton's report, which was some ten months afterward. I inquired from a gentleman connected with the railroad company why the trains did not move that day when the tracks were open, ready for them to move, about an hour after the fire occurred, and he told me the reason was that General Pearson said it would not do; but upon referring to General Brinton's report, I found that an offer had been made by the troops to guard the trains, and the railroad people said, we have not got the men to move the trains, and the trains, consequently, could not move. The road was open. The soldiers had discharged their duty, and opened the road. Q. How long was it kept open? A. I do not know, but I presume some couple of hours, from all I learn from the official reports, before they withdrew from this position to the round-house. Q. What time was it that Mr. Pitcairn stated to you that he had fifteen crews to move trains? A. I should think it was about--just a little while before Brinton came in, with his troops, and he got there at two o'clock. I saw him in the hallway of the hotel, standing about ten or fifteen feet from the desk of the Union Depot hotel clerk's office. I think Pearson stood beside me. I am not so sure of that, though. Q. Did you have any consultation with General Pearson or railroad men about the propriety of undertaking to start trains that evening--that afternoon? A. I have no distinct recollection of any consultation with him. Q. Do you remember of any citizens calling at the office of the Union Depot hotel, and advising against moving the trains that afternoon? A. No citizens called on me with such advice. Q. Did any of the civil authorities? A. I never saw any civil authorities of the city of Pittsburgh, except the mayor, for about ten or twelve minutes, and then I sent for him to come, during all the time I was there. Q. When did you send for him? A. About midnight, on Saturday. He met Colonel Quay, and I think the first word he said--I think he said: "If Hartranft had been here the troops would not have been ordered out. Why didn't you do like you did before--telegraph him, and then there would not have been any trouble." I said to him: "I think that if you get out there you can stop this thing now." He said it was beyond his power, and he made some remark I did not like very well, and I turned on my heel, and left him in consultation with Colonel Quay. Q. Can you remember that remark? A. No, sir. Q. The substance of it? A. No; not well enough to testify to under oath. Colonel Quay and he kept up some considerable conversation. Q. Was Colonel Quay present when that remark was made? A. He was; yes, sir. Q. Where was he? A. Our room was at the head of the stairs, on the second floor--the first floor--I suppose the hotel would call it the first floor of the Union Depot hotel. This room faces right opposite the stairs. Quay and McCarthy were sitting on a kind of a bench there, and I was standing up. Matters went on. I don't recollect when I first learned that the troops were in the round-house. Oh, yes! here is the dispatch, on page 5, addressed from Pearson to me: OUTER DEPOT, _July 21, 1877_. Major General JAMES W. LATTA, _Union Depot_: Brinton reports about fifteen killed and wounded, and child of ten years. The rioters numbered not less than ten thousand, and completely surrounded the troops, and fired the first shots. It is reported that the United States arsenal will be attacked, and arms and ammunition captured. Have notified the commandant of the fact. The rioters contemplate burning the railroad buildings, and I have ordered all my troops inside the walls of the buildings, and will protect at all hazards. A. L. PEARSON, _Major General_. Q. What time did you receive that dispatch? A. That dispatch must have been received about dark, or shortly afterward. I see it is without hour. Then I placed myself in communication with him. There are two dispatches here. I started a messenger boy off to the arsenal. It appears that Pearson had been in communication with them to advise the officers of the fact of what trouble there was. I was getting replies and sending messages back from these troops. They were on their way ... of them without ammunition, and some of them had been unable to get out of there, and wanted to know whether they should use force, and they finally did get out and go to the lower end of Pittsburgh by the next morning. Q. What time did Pearson reach you at the Union depot that evening? A. I have reported it at ten o'clock, and I think that hour is about right. Q. What was that report, then, as near as you state it? A. He came in with four of his staff, and I was rather astonished at seeing him. The mob had got pretty thick, and I had learned through the entire afternoon that no soldier could appear upon the highway with any safety, unless he had troops with him. A rope, I learned, was put around the neck of General Brinton's staff officers, and he was threatened with assassination and all sorts of things; but there is no question about the fact, unless a soldier was willing to give up his gun, he had no business out among them. Pearson managed to get down unobserved. The cars were four lines deep--were all down to the round-house--and I suppose he got through them. He said he managed to get down there in that way. I told him I was very much surprised to see him there, and he said the object of his visit was ammunition and rations for the troops--they were almost entirely out, and I told him the situation--whether he understood it fully I do not know--it was impossible for him to get back. I thought his usefulness was about ended. He got there, and he could not return again. I told him to go somewhere else, and report to me at daylight. He went to the house of one of the staff officers, somewhere on the outskirts of the town--Richard Evans. Daylight came, and he could not go through, I suppose, if he had tried. I heard nothing further from him until about one o'clock. One of his staff officers brought a note from him at the Monongahela house. He offered to do any duty he could. He said if he came on the street he was satisfied his life would not be his own for a moment; and I did not see anything for anybody to do just then, and I told him I could see nothing to be answered by his coming out at that time, and he might as well remain where he was. Q. General Pearson was in command of the troops, then, until ten o'clock? A. O, yes. I must say something else. He was in command up to ten o'clock. Before I told Pearson to go away, I asked him four or five times very distinctly, and put the interrogatory as strong as I could, to know whether he had left General Brinton in absolute command, and he said that he had--that Brinton was the commanding officer, and I have since letters from General Brinton, in which he has assumed that he was in command of those troops. Q. After General Pearson left, then General Brinton was the commanding officer? A. He was the commanding officer. Q. Had entire charge. Did you have any communication with General Brinton? A. When Pearson left, no fire had broken out. Pearson rather charges disaster on me in his report. The burning did not occur until after he went home. After Pearson left, Mr. Farr and Colonel Norris, Mr. Linn, and Cassatt and Phillips were active and energetic in getting provisions out--trying at least. Having got an engine fired up, they backed it into the Union depot, and I think they got coffee and sandwiches--a tremendous amount of provisions carried out to where the engine was. An engineer had agreed to push it out, and everything was ready for the movement, when the engineer reported that the fire had gotten between the round-house and the Union depot, and he could not go. The cars were burned, and he could not run his engine past them, and the consequence was that the scheme was abandoned. About that time, a man disguised as a working man, at great personal risk and the exercise of a vast deal of tact, presented himself to my room at the hotel. He told me where he had come from, and brought a dispatch from General Brinton. At that time, I suppose, the fire had got pretty well ahead, and it was rather of a demoralizing character. I had had it in mind, if it was possible, to get a communication to Brinton, and propose some plan to get out of the round-house, and clean that mob out; but I desisted from that when I read that dispatch. I unfortunately have lost it, but I recollect I stood up and read it out in the room, and I recollect I said--that subject of ordering the troops out had been discussed--I said I will assume no responsibility of ordering the troops to fight, when a report like that comes from them, and it left me under the impression that the whole thing was gone up. I recollect, I walked up and down the room that night, and I thought every friend I had would be burned to death by morning. I had no idea they would ever get out, and I devoted my entire energies to their relief. I had been the associate of the First regiment since my early boyhood days, and that dispatch left me and everybody else with that idea. I sat down and answered, in the nature of one which appears upon page 7, of that report, and sent it back by this same man. At that time the mob had got to be so serious, that I did not deem it wisdom to order any troops into the city of Pittsburgh without ammunition. The troops of Colonel Rodgers, which was part of the First division, and which should have been supplied with ammunition, were then about somewhere at Walls station. At the time Pearson came in to me, communications stopped with the round-house--wires were cut. We had one Western Union wire running to different points, and that was the only one we could get hold of. None, however, to the round-house. I sent word to this detachment at Walls, and to the detachments on their way, not to come within ten miles of the city, until they got ammunition. Then I sent this dispatch back to General Brinton: Major General R. M. BRINTON, _round-house_: I know your situation fully. Regret that you are so placed, but knowing your high soldierly qualities, know that you will hold out to the last. It would be sad to sacrifice life, as you would have to, in case of a persistent attack, but if it comes, it consequently must follow. Every one has been untiring in efforts to get rations and ammunition to you, and, in every instance, it has failed. Cassatt and Philips, of the railroad, Baugh, of your staff, Norris, Farr, and Linn, volunteers, are now making every effort to again shortly reach you. No chance for friction primers. Have again made every effort to reach you, but failed on account of the fire. The rest of Philadelphia troops are at Walls station, twelve miles east, and there remain awaiting ammunition. I am starting private conveyance to Torrens, with ammunition to Guthrie, in large enough quantities to supply himself and the troops now at Walls. When I hear of its safe arrival, I will order them forward to Guthrie, to report to him, directing him to move to your relief, with the whole command. His march will be about five miles, and, if all things prove successful, he ought to reach you by five or six o'clock. If compelled to escape at last, do so to the eastward; take Penn avenue, if possible, and make for Guthrie, at Torrens. JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. These instructions were not followed; but a different and another route was taken. I had inquired from the people of Harrisburg where the best place was to feed troops at that time in that large body. I was told by those who seemed to know that one of those large hotels at East Liberty could accommodate five or six hundred men, and I had made this direction to go to East Liberty to get the men fed. Men dragged out from their homes, and kept up two nights, cannot exist like the old and heavier campaigner can, who have become inured to privations. Q. In giving these orders in your communication to General Brinton, and in the orders you gave to Colonel Guthrie and Colonel Rodgers, were you assuming command of the troops, or in what capacity? A. I was assuming command, so far as that was concerned. I could not assume, as Adjutant General, the command of any troops, unless I relieve the officer commanding, and that would be a very delicate thing to do in the situation we were in. For the purpose of concentration, and for the purpose of a movement, I was acting as commander-in-chief, and for the purpose of giving general directions. Q. You had plenty of ammunition at the Union depot? A. Plenty of ammunition. Q. Could you not, have ordered Colonel Guthrie to have marched down Fifth street by a circuitous route, and brought him to the Union depot at night? A. He said he hadn't forces enough. Q. There was no force on Fifth street, was there--running out Fifth avenue? A. I suppose I could have done all these things, but I didn't conceive, in view of the reports I had, that it was wise to undertake, and my views were fully confirmed by the dispatches that came from Guthrie himself, after I had ordered the movement, because he wired me as follows--after I got him an order for the concentration he wants to know--a Pittsburgher inquired of me what route he shall take. Q. Did Colonel Guthrie have any ammunition? A. O, yes; he had some seven to ten rounds, I believe--I know he had some ammunition. Q. How many rounds did General Brinton have with him in the round-house? A. I reported twenty--that is my belief. Q. At the time you sent this communication, on page 7, with the message to General Brinton, could you not have ordered him out of the round-house, and could he not have marched, at that time, down to the Union depot? A. I cannot answer whether he could have marched down. I could have ordered him to do so. Q. What is your opinion about his having been able to march down to Union depot, and cut his way to Union depot at that time? A. I do not think at that time it would have been a wise movement in the night. Q. A fire had already broken out? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know that Brinton had received that communication? A. 0, yes; Brinton got that. Q. Was that discussed, or did that occur to you at the time to order him down to the Union depot? A. Yes; I have just stated I intended to order him out. I do not mean to say at that particular time, but I intended to suggest, when I got this dispatch, and then I would not assume the responsibility of ordering troops out that were described to be in that condition. Q. Have you that dispatch? A. That is lost. Q. Can you state the nature of it--the contents of it? A. I do not want to say one thing that is in it. The contents of it were, as I have stated, general demoralization. Q. Of his troops? A. I do not mean to say his troops. The impression made by the dispatch was one that created upon the mind of anybody who read it--and there was no use attempt to fight just then with the troops. That was an impression left upon my mind, and upon the minds of those who heard me read it. Q. Is that dispatch lost? A. That dispatch is lost. Q. Who was present and heard that dispatch read? A. Colonel Farr, Colonel Quay, Colonel Hassinger, and Mr. Russell. Q. What time was that received? A. About midnight. Q. Did General Pearson consult you after the track had been cleared, and after the collision, at about five o'clock--did he consult you as to the disposition of the troops? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know they were going to be placed in the round-house? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know where the Fourteenth and the Nineteenth regiments were, commanded by Colonel Gray and Colonel Howard? A. I knew where they had been sent to in the morning. Q. Do you know where they were in the evening? A. I made up my mind they had all disappeared. I must not use that phrase any more, because one of the military newspapers says it is a peculiar one to use--that troops disappear. Q. Did you know they were ordered in the transfer depot? A. No, sir; but somebody came in, and told me they were all gone. Q. Do you know when they were disbanded by order of General Brown? A. The first I knew of that was, I saw Brown two or three times during the night in citizens' clothes, and toward the early morning, but I had heard all along his troops had gone. The old gentleman was pretty well excited. He was going out and making promises, and coming back, and having interviews, and getting in among the fellows. The next day, Cap. Bigham, he was a pretty strong man, was in the room at the hotel, between nine and ten o'clock, and I said something pretty rough to Bigham, about the troops running away, and Bigham, like a good soldier, would ... that he had done what he was told; he said these troops left there by order of General Brown. Q. That was the first you knew of General Brown's order? A. That is the first I ever heard. Q. After General Pearson left, then General Brinton was the commanding officer, as I understand, and you learned that fact by and through General Pearson? A. By and through General Pearson. Q. That he had left him in command? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did General Brinton know that the ammunition was at the Union depot? A. O, yes. Q. He knew it had been left there? A. You know he kept sending for us to send it out to him. He left the ammunition under the guard of a detachment of cavalry. They had sabers way up at the lower end of the depot. My recollection is, when things got pretty hot, these men were no earthly account round with their sabers, and I believe a captain and some men of the Fourteenth were standing around there, too. They never reported to me for any special purpose. I sent those gentlemen out. I know I sent some of them out, for they succeeded in getting out, some from this exposed place, down to the cellar of the hotel. Q. Was Cassatt and Pitcairn out at Twentieth street, at the time of the collision? A. I am told they were. Q. Did you have conversation with them after they returned? A. I had a conversation with one of them. Q. Did you ask them whether trains had been moved? A. Yes; and they made answer just as I have stated. Said General Pearson told them not to move--they said General Pearson told them not to move. Q. And did you have any conversation with General Pearson on the subject, when he came in? A. No, sir. Q. Did you have any consultation before the troops started with the civil authorities? A. I never saw them. Q. You don't know what arrangements--as I understand it, the sheriff marched with a posse in front of the troops? A. I have been told so. I never saw the sheriff but once in my life, and that was two or three weeks afterwards. Q. Were your instructions to the commanders to keep themselves subordinate to the civil authorities? A. I have just read my original dispatches--aiding the civil authorities. Q. When General Pearson left, at ten o'clock, you did practically relieve him from command? A. Yes. Of course, it was a virtual relief, as explained in that way. Q. He first asked you whether he had left General Brinton in command? A. Yes, sir. Q. Now, did you consider you had power to order the movements of General Brinton, after General Pearson had left? A. I did; for purposes such as that. Q. And also of Colonel Guthrie? A. I did; yes, sir. Q. And Colonel Rodgers and the troops in that vicinity? A. Yes, sir. You will observe I did not give Brinton any particular order. Q. That power you had by virtue of the instructions that the commander-in-chief had given you before he left? A. I took it I had that power generally in the comprehensive duties of Adjutant General. The conclusion of this dispatch to Brinton is not in the shape of an order. It tells him what to do. Brinton thought he could have done better, he could have gone somewhere else, and when a man don't follow such instructions as that he takes a great deal of risk, just as a man who refuses to obey the order of an adjutant, if the Adjutant General is sustained by his chief, he is going to get a pretty good dressing; if not, he is all right. Q. General Brinton could have obeyed your instructions or disobeyed them? A. I am simply applying that remark to the conclusion of this letter, which reads: "If compelled to escape, at least do so to the eastward. Take Penn avenue, if possible, and make for Guthrie, at Torrens." Brinton could have taken that direction, or taken some other one if he thought he could do better by taking some other. When he didn't take the direction I gave him, he assumed a responsibility. Q. Afterwards, you ordered him to join Guthrie, at Torrens? A. I did; yes. He had got too far then. After this order went out, they succeeded in getting ammunition to Guthrie. I had ordered a train from Walls by telegraph. The reply I got from Walls was, that the "engineers won't run the trains. I can't move them." Then I ordered the wagon. Q. Did you see the sheriff after you arrived at Pittsburgh, or the Union depot, before the troops were sent to Twenty-eighth street? A. I never saw the sheriff nor the mayor until I sent for him. Q. Did you ask General Pearson whether he had a consultation with the sheriff or the mayor? A. I did not ask him anything about the mayor, but I had dispatches from Pearson in which he said he had been with the sheriff. Q. You saw no citizens on Saturday night, I understand you to say? A. Saturday night--I don't recollect. I think Mr. Rook came in the room for a few moments on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Hampden was in the room. Q. Who is the solicitor? A. There was a good many railroad men around there, but outside of the railroad men I have no distinct recollection of any one but Rook. Q. Did you see James Park, junior, Saturday evening? A. I don't know such a name. I might know him if I would see him. Q. He had no conversation with Mr. Cassatt in your presence, that you recollect of? A. No, sir; nor nobody had any conversation with Mr. Cassatt in my presence during the evening. I didn't see Mr. Cassatt more than a few moments. Q. On Saturday afternoon, did you see these gentlemen? A. I don't know--I don't think I did. I might have seen him. If I saw this gentleman I could tell better. I don't know the name. Q. Did any citizens speak to you or to Cassatt, in your presence, in regard to any meeting any time to move trains on Saturday? A. No, sir; nobody. I heard it talked of, but nobody ever came to me. It was talked of in our room between us. By Senator Yutzy: Q. It was talked of in the room? A. Between ourselves. Q. Was this before the effort was made to clear the tracks with troops? A. I do not recollect. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did it occur to you that Saturday would be a bad day to undertake the movement of trains? A. It has occurred to me. Whether it occurred to me then or not I am not able to answer. Q. Were you aware that the rolling mills and manufacturing establishments in Pittsburgh closed at noon on Saturday? A. I don't think I was at that time. Q. And that a large number of men were idle on Saturday afternoon? A. I don't think I was at that time, but it is just one of those sort of things I know now, and I cannot give a full recollection or impression. I know this much, there was no direct report to me of this fact with any suggestion that the movement be suspended on account of that fact, because then I would recollect distinctly. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Your own understanding when you got to Pittsburgh was the civil authorities had lost all control, and were powerless? A. When I first got to Pittsburgh? Q. Yes? A. Yes; so far as any force they had. Q. They were powerless to disperse the crowd? A. Yes, sir; so far as any force which they could control as a civil posse. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. After the burning commenced Saturday--the burning of cars--did it occur to you that it was possible for General Brinton, with the men he had there, to stop that in any way? A. I don't know. It occurred to me. Q. Did you take it into consideration? A. I don't know that I did particularly. I was not thinking particularly about that. Q. Did you have any consultation with the railroad officials during the night there as to any means--or try to devise any means to stop the burning cars? A. There was not any of them there. Q. What became of the railroad officials? A. I don't know, sir. Q. When did you miss them? A. I last saw Mr. Cassatt somewheres towards dark. They were down stairs. I think Mr. Cassatt was down, but I didn't see him. He came back again. Q. Did you see Pitcairn during the night? A. I don't think I ever saw Pitcairn after I had talked with him about the cars. Q. Did you see Mr. Scott? A. Scott was the first man to tell me about the collision. He came in the room and announced the collision, said it was very sad, and walked out. I saw Mr. Phillips, another railroad man, I recollect, when the fire was getting close to the hotel. He and Russell threw cartridges into the pitcher full of water, thinking it would destroy them. Q. What time did you arrive at the Union depot? A. I estimated it at about noon. Q. Sunday? A. Sunday, yes, sir. Q. What means did you take Sunday to try to stop the burning? A. I didn't take any. I had nothing to take any means with. There were six gentlemen in citizens' clothes--most of them civilians--all civilians I think. The next day when I first heard that, Captain Aull was the first party who came in. He announced that the troops had got out of the round-house. There were two parties from East Liberty who had come into the room to ask me to retain the Eighteenth regiment there, and I looked at them in astonishment when I had ordered them to come in to the relief of General Brinton. While I was talking to those citizens, Captain Aull came in, and he overheard the conversation. He stepped up and told me he had driven through Brinton's troops, and they were marching out. I was relieved from a great deal of anxiety, so I sat down and immediately told Aull--having no other, I think--sat down and dictated a dispatch, which appears here on page 11, addressed to Brinton, signed by me, dated July 22, 1877: PITTSBURGH, _July 22, 1877_. Major General R. M. BRINTON: Remain in position at stock-yards, or thereabouts, securing yourself, and await further orders. Congratulate you on your manoeuver of this morning. Consult with Colonel Guthrie, and govern yourself accordingly. From information received here, it appears Eighteenth regiment is sufficient to protect stock-yards, and will not excite special prejudices of the mob. There is an old fort in the vicinity, which is suggested as a good place to hold. It can be shown to you by parties familiar with the neighborhood. Keep your channels of subsistence well open, and await further orders. There may be some developments, which, of course, will require you to act on your own responsibility. If any troops arrive at East Liberty, assume command of them. Report their arrival here, if possible. Norris will be on the ground shortly, and explain the situation here. Act after consultation with him. JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_. At the same time, Norris being a staff officer--it is not customary to give a staff officer written instructions--I started him off to talk with Brinton. Brinton appears to have given this order sometime about the 31st of July, seven or eight days afterwards. Norris got hold of me, and told me the purport of the order, and told me what the directions were, and he moved about a mile beyond Sharpsburg bridge and stayed there. I started off to try to make a junction with the troops at Walls, which I did not know at that time had gone to Blairsville. Q. Did you have any consultation with the officers on Sunday? A. I saw no citizens of Pittsburgh on Sunday, except Mr. Bennett. Whether we called to see him or not, I don't know. I was in the room just as Norris had returned to the Monongahela house. Bennett and Cassatt were sitting upon one bed, and Norris and some other gentleman on the other, and Norris was giving a description of his ride to Brinton, and I was introduced to Mr. Bennett, and shook hands with him, and overheard part of their conversation, which was to the effect that Mr. Bennett was trying to persuade Cassatt to make some compromise with the men, which Cassatt refused to do. Q. He was the only one? A. I think so; the only one I saw. I was going to say, I remained there until nine o'clock at night, and then I had got dispatches from every part of the country, that showed everything was in a general uprising, and I made up my mind I must get to Harrisburg, and Phillips told me there was no way to get over the Pennsylvania, and we went to Beaver, believing the Erie route to be the most practicable. At Beaver I telegraphed to Scott to get a special train. Scott intimated their road was open, and I hired a carriage and drove back to Allegheny City, and came back here. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Do you know what became of the ammunition in the Union depot? A. Before I left the Union depot I spent about nearly an hour in arranging a plan to get it saved. I left it in charge of Captain Breck. The plan we had arranged was to--that was just about the time the milkmen were going back to their places in the country--to get empty milk cans and open the boxes and pour the ammunition into the cans and take the ammunition out. I am told that he got five or six cans loaded, and was on his way to hunt transportation, when the fire got hold of the thing, and the ammunition was destroyed. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the mayor, in that interview, express any intention or desire to suppress this--making any attempt to control it? A. No, sir; simply said the matter was beyond his control, and he could not do anything, and he was tolerably mad. Q. Did he say he had in the first place? A. No, sir; I didn't ask him anything about that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who explained the movements of the troops, as they advanced out to Twenty-eighth street? A. General Pearson. He showed his plans to me before he started. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you know whether the command was given to fire that day, by any of the officers? A. I do not know anything about it. Q. Do you know whether General Pearson was there at the time the firing took place? A. I do not know. Q. Do you know how General Pearson was dressed on that day? A. Yes, sir; he left me with a blouse on. Major general's shoulder-straps and fatigue cap, and my impression is he had one of these old fashioned blouses, with the braid in front, and a sword and belt. Whether the belt was outside of the blouse or inside, I cannot recollect. He had a fatigue uniform of the United States army, excepting that braid, if that was there. It is not now a part of the uniform. Q. What time did he leave you with that uniform on? A. He left me with that uniform on, about three o'clock, and returned again with it on at night. Q. Did he have it on at night? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You saw him before the firing, and after the firing with the same uniform on? A. Yes, sir; with the same uniform. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. After you returned to Harrisburg, who directed the troops from that time until the arrival of the Governor in the State? A. There was very little direction done. In the meantime he had been advised of my movements, and he had in the meantime been directing himself. After the Pittsburgh collision, he commenced to move the troops, and we got into the same channel. Pretty much all the orders were alike. Q. Do you know anything about a collision that occurred at Reading, with General Reeder's troops? A. Only as it is officially reported by General Reeder and Bolton. It was reported here immediately, I saw it the next day. Q. What time did General Huidekoper get to Pittsburgh? A. He got to Pittsburgh from Chicago, a little before daylight on Sunday morning. Q. Did you have any consultation with him after his arrival? A. We had a plan of battle arranged there. Huidekoper started on its accomplishment. We chartered a steamboat, and we managed to smuggle several boxes of ammunition from the hotel, and he went to Rochester, believing his troops were coming down. He ought to have been in Pittsburgh by noon, but the troops were stopped by the riot. Q. They were stopped by reports at Greenfield? A. Yes, sir. Q. Who was the colonel commanding these troops that were on their way? A. I think they were in charge of a major on the Allegheny Valley road. They were in charge of Lieutenant Colonel Magee. Q. They were not in charge of Colonel Carpenter? A. Possibly so. I don't know that. Magee--I had communications with him. Q. Do you know why they stopped at Greenfield? A. No, sir. Q. Did you ever try to ascertain the causes? A. No, sir; that matter was altogether in the hands of General Huidekoper; he was division commander. Q. Did Huidekoper report to you any reasons for it? A. No, sir; not unless there is something in this report here. I think if he had I would have recollected it. Q. Was it reported to you by anybody that there was no cause for the stopping of the troops there, excepting that the colonel commanding the troops was afraid to go on? A. I never heard. I don't think I ever heard that before. There was plenty of ammunition; there was five thousand rounds of ammunition at Greenfield at the time. Q. Plenty of ammunition in Greenfield? A. I didn't know it then because it was in Huidekoper's division. I learned afterwards it was at Greenfield. Q. They should have arrived, you say, at Rochester, at what time? A. If the trains had been on time they ought to have been in Pittsburgh at twelve o'clock. Q. Sunday? A. Sunday, yes, sir. Q. They never got any further than Greenfield? A. Not within fifty or sixty miles. Huidekoper left Rochester and went out west to meet the Governor. He gave up all hopes of getting near about noon. Q. Were any steps taken by the commander-in-chief to ascertain the cause of that delay? A. No, sir; we assumed it was because they could not get the hands to run them. That was the report from every place, and it seemed to be generally confirmed. I was just going to say, in looking at this matter, it ought to be looked at in an exceptional light. It is a thoroughly new thing. The soldiers ought not to be reflected on as severely as the people have. There is as much courage in the National Guard as there is anywhere, and it ought not to be judged of in the light of a regular warfare nor by such rules. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You found after you had organized the troops, and had them out a few times that they were just as good as any soldiers? A. Just as good as any soldiers you bring from any quarter of the globe. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It was reported that some Philadelphia troops were captured across the Susquehanna here by a squad of rioters from Harrisburg, and tramps, and brought into the city. I wish you would state what you know about that, and who the troops were? A. I only know if as you do. I didn't see it, and know nothing of it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. But was the thing not officially reported? A. Nothing official reported to me. I believe the officer in charge of those troops is now undergoing trial by court martial in Philadelphia. Q. Do you know who it is? A. I only know from hearsay. Q. Do you know of any troops that were ordered to Pittsburgh returning without orders? A. I heard so, yes, sir; that there were troops that did return. Q. Do you know it officially? A. No. Q. Of your own knowledge? A. I don't think any troops did return, as bodies, to Philadelphia. Scattered, straggling men did, but no body of troops returned to Philadelphia. I do not think that the straggling in the National Guard was equal to what it is sometimes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you approve of General Brown's course, in disbanding his regiments at Pittsburgh? A. If it be a fact that General Brown did give these troops directions to leave, it was a most outrageous breach of everything a good soldier ought to have done. I believe those troops there could have held that place until now. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understand you to say that it is your judgment that those troops might have held that place? A. I think so. Q. Do you know anything as to the reasons that induced General Brown to disband those two regiments? A. Haven't the most distant idea. I don't even know that it is a fact, except as I have seen it alleged in the newspapers. Q. Are you well acquainted with General Brown? A. I have known him five or six years. He has a very fine record in the army. He used to be adjutant in our corps. Q. Stood well, up to this time, in the National Guard? A. Excellently well. Q. Do you know that he was at that time laboring under any physical or mental disability? A. No, I do not, except that he struck me as being most terribly fussy, and ... a whole lot of information that it was not worth while bothering with. Q. Did he strike you at that time as laboring under any mental disability? A. No; I would not at all have considered that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he show unusual excitement--nervousness? A. Brown is a terribly talkative fellow, and he talked in his usual strain; I should not have set him down as anywise wrong. * * * * * C. N. Farr, recalled: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I wish you would state whether you were present when General Latta received a dispatch from General Brinton, on Saturday evening? A. Yes, sir; I was. Q. Of the 21st. State as nearly as you can what the import of that dispatch was? A. I cannot remember it sufficiently to give any of the language, except the general impression left upon my mind that General Pearson had left me, and that he had had no communications, and didn't understand the situation, and stated the condition of his troops, and how particularly he stated that I can't remember, except that the impression left upon my mind was that the troops were in danger of demoralization. There was a certain amount of unreliability, and that was intensified from the fact that we knew or understood, at that time, that the Pittsburgh division had gone to pieces, and up to that time we had considered that there would be no difficulty in General Brinton's holding his position until morning; that he had sufficient force, and was well armed and ammunitioned; but the dispatch created the impression that his troops were somewhat infected with that feeling of sympathy, or disinclined to take vigorous operations, and I understood that to be the reason why no more vigorous measure were taken. * * * * * General James W. Latta, recalled: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In relation to General Brown--whose duty would it be to investigate the conduct of General Brown there at that time? A. General Pearson's duty first; and if he did not investigate it himself, he ought to have reported the fact officially here. There was no official report that reached my department of General Brown's having, on that night, asked any troops to withdraw. Q. Was General Pearson relieved of his command for any time after the troubles on the 21st there? A. He remained temporarily withdrawn from his command until we started off to Scranton. When the Governor came into Pittsburgh that night, he found nobody but Brown, and placed Brown in temporary command of the troops that had been gotten together in the city. Q. How long did Brown keep that position? A. I should think from the 24th or 25th of July until the 1st day of August. Q. No report has ever reached you officially that he did dismiss his troops? A. No, sir; I never heard anything of it directly, except what Captain Bingham told me that morning, and I did not know but that Captain Bingham might have been misinformed--he might not have been in direct communication with his general. I did not pay much attention. Q. Did any report reach you from Colonel Gray or Colonel Howard? A. I saw Colonel Gray's report in the newspaper. Colonel Howard I don't think ever said anything to me about it. Q. Does Colonel Gray or Colonel Howard mention the fact in their official report? A. They don't come to me, sir. Q. To whom do they report officially? A. To General Pearson. Q. Those don't come to you at all? A. No, sir. At this point, the committee adjourned until to-morrow morning, at nine o'clock. HARRISBURG, _March 12, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at ten o'clock, A.M., in Senate committee room No. 6. All members present except Mr. Larrabee. * * * * * Honorable A. J. Herr _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It is made the duty of this committee, under the resolution by which they were appointed, to examine into the conduct of the militia of the State. Will you please state what knowledge you have of misbehavior on the part of the officers? A. My personal knowledge is not very extensive, but the information that I received from credible citizens of Harrisburg, is clear and pointed. Shall I give you what I saw first? Q. Yes. A. One day during the riots--what day I can't recollect--but one day during the riots, I happened to be on the pavement in front of the court-*house in the city of Harrisburg, and I saw a large crowd, men and half grown boys, coming up from the depot, going towards the bridge that spans the Susquehanna river. The impression prevailed amongst the citizens that this crowd was going over the bridge to make an attack upon some soldiers that were said to be there. After a time--maybe half an hour or thereabouts--the greater part of that same crowd came back from the bridge. Then I saw in the center as it were of some few men and some half grown boys, soldiers, and these half grown boys, or some of them, were carrying the guns of the soldiers, and they were fraternizing with the young boys round about the soldiers. The soldiers, themselves, all seemed to be in good humor, seemed to know each other, and passed along very nicely and quietly, and the point of the whole thing was, that these soldiers had in this way allowed these few half grown boys either to take the guns, or they had delivered the guns up, and so they passed on down the street, these soldiers, with these few boys surrounding them, and I lost sight of them. I was then afterwards told, that the soldiers had sent word over to some of the people in town that they wanted to come to Harrisburg, and that they wanted these people to come over and escort them into Harrisburg. And then I was told further, that these parties had provided accommodations for these soldiers--these last two things I do not know, only that the rumors were upon the street, and at that time prevailing. And the feeling in my own breast, as well as throughout the citizens, was one of humiliation, that these soldiers would either give up their arms to these half grown boys, or send word to them that they wanted them to come and take them over to Harrisburg, or that they allowed them to take their arms. That is what I saw, and all I saw. Q. How many of the soldiers were there? A. That I cannot tell, because you know how difficult it is in a moving crowd to tell just about how many. I should suppose, maybe, there were six or seven or eight, or thereabouts. I am not accurate in regard to that, but there was a goodly squad. Q. Were there any officers among them? A. That I can't tell. You know I couldn't see very well, in the first place. Q. Did you notice whether they were uniformed or not? A. Oh, yes. Q. No officers then? A. That I could not say. I did hear that there was either a lieutenant or captain, but I am not positive in regard to that, but those were the general facts that I witnessed. Q. How large was the crowd of half grown boys around them? A. I should suppose, maybe, there were ten or twelve, that is, of the immediate crowd, that also was looking on, were attached to the body of men that were bringing the soldiers over. You might say that, perhaps, there were ten or twelve; but the crowd outside of the immediate circle of young fellows that had the guns was larger, and for the most part I guess they were spectators. Q. When they went over the bridge in going out, how large a crowd was there? A. It was a pretty large crowd, perhaps it numbered--I really don't know, but should suppose that that crowd may have numbered two hundred or thereabouts, but they didn't all go across the bridge, because I was told that the bridge-keeper kept them back, and would not let them all go, but I suppose the van of the crowd got over before they closed the gates. Q. What is the bridge-keepers name--give it in full if you can? A. That I can't tell; but I will get it and hand it to you, or to one of the gentlemen. I might get it in the Senate chamber. I guess, maybe, Mr. Childs could tell it. Q. Which bridge was it, the covered bridge? A. Yes, sir; that was about all I saw then. Shortly after, or some time after that, a gentleman by the name of Major Mumma--Major David Mumma---- Q. Do you know what those boys did with that squad? A. I said that I heard that they took them down to some hotel and provided meals for them, and furnished them, I was also told, with means to get away. That I only heard. Q. Do you know what hotel it was? A. My recollection is it was some hotel--Boyer's hotel, on the railroad. I may be mistaken in regard to that. Some of the hotels down in that neighborhood. I was going to say that Major David Mumma, of this city, told me, and I have no doubt it is true, but he can give it you first hand, that he had occasion to go out to his farm, and to reach that farm he had to pass a little town by the name of Progress, and there he found a number of soldiers, and, I understood him to say, the officers with their epaulets torn off, and their buttons cut off, and very much excited and alarmed; and that they told him they had come, I don't know where, over the mountains and through the valleys, and all that sort of thing, and there they were. Q. These are the ones you alluded to? A. Partly. Q. Where were they found? A. In a little tavern in the little town by the name of Progress, near here. I would rather you would get the full statement direct from the major in regard to that. I can repeat what he said, but you can get it first hand. Q. This was the party that was captured by the boys? A. No, no. I just told you what I saw. Now I am only referring to what Major Mumma and other citizens told me about a squad of soldiers, and they characterized them as officers, epaulets cut off and buttons cut off, in a little tavern in a little town called Progress, near this city, and he described their alarm, and what he did to get them safe to the arsenal. By Mr. Means: Q. Did it appear to you that the boys had taken these soldiers prisoners? Did they treat them as prisoners, escort them in unarmed? A. You could hardly use the word prisoners, because the prisoners seemed to be so willing. They were rather captives. Q. A prisoner generally makes a show to go willingly? A. It would only be an opinion as to whether the boys--my own opinion is, that the boys did not capture them in the sense of these men resisting, and finally conquered them, but rather think that I believe what I was told afterwards is true--that is, that the soldiers had, some way or other, sent word here, and those fellows had gone over there. Q. They wanted the boys to capture them? A. I rather think so from what I was told. Q. Did the soldiers carry arms? A. No; the boys were carrying the arms. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. This crowd, when they started out--you could tell something by the way in which they started, whether they were moving toward an objective point? A. Oh, yes, sir. Q. That they appeared to be moving towards---- A. Yes, sir; just for instance, as you would stand by, and see a large crowd passing, and you would wonder where they were going, and you would keep looking to see that they were all directing themselves to one point, and you would then say, well, they are going there. Then I think that there is a Captain McAllister, who is living in Rockville, a few miles over here on the Susquehanna, he can tell you some very amusing things, and I don't know but a little humiliating, too. I could not distinctly recollect all it was that he said, because it was rather a humorous description he gave of their fright, &c. Q. Is he a member of the National Guard? A. No. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. The old gentleman? A. No; it is the old squire, Jim--that is it, Captain James McAllister. Q. Rockville, did you say? A. In that neighborhood. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know anything about the movements of the troops about the arsenal or anywheres about this town? A. No; I can't say. There was so much said. I think that Sheriff Jennings and Mayor Patterson could give you a good deal of information about the movement--the incipient movements of the troops here. Both of those gentlemen could give you a good deal of information. Q. Was the mayor in the city during all the time of the riots? A. I think the mayor was, but the sheriff was not. The sheriff happened to be away. I think, if my recollection serves me, he was either at Atlantic City or Philadelphia at the commencement of the matter. The mayor, though, I understand, was all the time here, but the sheriff came, I think, just as soon as he was telegraphed for--as soon as he could get here. Q. Do you know what action the mayor or civil authorities took to suppress or disperse the mob or crowd that was about the depot? A. I was given to understand, and I think it is the truth, that he and the sheriff, after the sheriff came here, in effect, said to a large crowd that were round about the Lochiel hotel, that all those citizens who were in favor of peace and order should follow; and so the mayor, I understand, and the sheriff--at least one, if not both--led off, and quite a number of the citizens followed them with the purpose of protecting any property that might be threatened at the depot, and suppress any riot that might be threatened. Then I was told further that the mayor and the sheriff--either both or one--addressed the crowd; but what was said exactly I don't know; but the purpose was to preserve the peace, and that I think was the beginning of what was called the law and order party here. Then, the law and order party was composed of citizens of the different wards that were organized into companies, with their captains and their lieutenants, and met at certain points regularly, and were drilled, and patrolled the city from early evening until late at night, and in that way order was preserved here. If there had been any attempt to break the peace in a violent way, outside of simple murmurings and mutterings on the part of the crowd, these citizens were fully determined to suppress it, and they had the means to--I mean as far as arms are concerned. Q. What was the spirit of that mob? A. I did not see it. Q. When they stood before the court-house? A. You mean when it passed there? As a matter of course, there was a good deal of talk, and now and then you would hear a shot and a yell, and so on; and I remember this, that I looked into the faces of some of the men as they passed, and unless it was the effect of imagination altogether in my mind, I would say that these men had a settled, cold, determined look in their faces, and I apprehended trouble. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were they railroad men, in their appearance? A. No; I could not say that. My recollection is, that this man whose countenance I looked at particularly, as he was coming towards me, was a railroad man, but that was the only one I could see, that I believed to be a railroad man, although the probability is that there were more in it; but that fact I do not know. By Mr. Dewees: Q. Were there any strangers? A. No; I don't think there were any strangers, although I can't say that I recognized any of them. If they were brought before me now, I could not say you were there or you were not there, because the fact of the matter is, I felt a little indignation, and so expressed myself to some police officers, that were standing, who happened to be near me. A police officer made a remark that excited me, and I turned upon him and berated him for what I supposed was his neglect of duty, and in that way my attention, possibly, was a little distracted from what was just passing at the time before me. If I understand you, you would like to get the name of this gate-*keeper at the bridge. Q. Can you get any other gentlemen that could relate the same fact that Major Mumma can? A. I cannot just now. Q. About that squad of officers? A. The major can. There was some people with him. McAllister's statement refers to a different transaction from what Mumma's does. Mumma's will be confined, if I remember rightly, to what he saw at Progress. * * * * * John D. Patterson, being duly _sworn_, testified as follows: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were mayor of the city of Harrisburg, I believe, in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. At what day did the first disturbance appear here? A. On Saturday evening, July 23, I think; I do not just remember the correct date. Q. The 21st? A. The 21st; you are right. Q. You may state now the character of it and where it first broke out? A. Do you wish me just to--my attention was first called to the disturbance on Saturday night, probably at ten o'clock. I was at the office, and had sent out the police force or their regular duty, and a report came to the office that there was a large gathering at the Pennsylvania railroad depot. There was a prospect of some trouble there. The mob interfered with the shipping of some ammunition. I immediately sent a special officer to Independence island, where there was a pic-nic and dance going on--and we had anticipated considerable trouble there--to call in the chief of police, and on his way down he should bring in the police officers before he returned. The lieutenant of police I had sent him to the depot. He, in company with special officer Roat, arrested a party for threatening to interfere with the engineer of a train, and had started to bring him to the mayor's office, and were stoned up Chestnut street and up Third to the office. They succeeded in getting the man into the office, and a large crowd gathered there, and I went out front and requested them to disperse. Quite a number of them left; probably three or four hundred remained there. Did not seem to be malicious or disposed to do much damage. Then I sent this man that had been arrested to the door to state that he had been arrested for drunk and disorderly. The crowd then dispersed. On Sunday was the first intimation we had of the strike among the employés of the Pennsylvania railroad. I was told there was a very large crowd at the Asylum crossing, and I took a carriage and went up there during Sunday, but found no person there. On Sunday afternoon I was informed that there was a large meeting out on the commons. I went out, and there was a man named Torbett making a speech to the crowd there. After he left the top of the car, there was an insane man got on the top of the car and talked about organizing to go and take this arsenal. About this time there was a passenger train passed down through the yard to the depot, and the crowd dispersed in the direction of the depot. I walked to the depot and found they had stopped the train--interfering with it. A great gathering there, nearly all of our own citizens--good, bad, and indifferent were there. Passed down the depot to the coupling between the engine and the first car--the baggage car--and found a great many there pulling the coupling. Among them were a great many boys, ranging from fourteen to twenty years of age. I seized two or three of the boys, took them off the platform, and ordered them away, and got up on the steps of the car and made some few remarks to the crowd, calling on the citizens, if they were ready to assist the police, to step forward and we would disperse this crowd. At that time the people did not seem disposed to take much part, as there was no violence done as yet. I motioned to the engineer to pull out--we then had succeeded in coupling up the train. He declined to pull out. Afterwards stated he was informed there were obstructions on the track below the city. I came away and the crowd dispersed during the evening. Probably two hours afterwards they sent the train out. On Monday the parties became threatening; great crowds gathering through the city, stopping trains. I then called on some of the citizens, told them the status, and whatever was to be done must be done for Monday night. We must get ready, for that night we would probably have violence. After consulting with many of the prominent citizens, I went to the office, sent out a police force and notified the better class of citizens that their services would likely be required on Monday night, at least they should hold themselves in readiness to respond and report at the mayor's office in case of two taps of the court-house bell, at any time, day or night. Q. Was it verbal notice? A. Yes; it was given verbally to the citizens by the police officers. Q. In the form of a demand by you, or request? A. It was a request. I had instructed the police force from the beginning to exercise great care and discretion so as not to precipitate or provoke an outbreak; that as long as the strikers or mob failed to do violence, that we should wait until the sentiment of the people would change. I would say that when the strike first came upon us, I presume that the great majority of the people were in sympathy with the strikers--looked upon it as a strike or dispute between the employés and officers of the road--and their sympathies were with the employés; but afterwards the sentiment changed when they found that violence and destruction was perpetrated at Pittsburgh. Then the sentiment changed, and they were ready to take part to put down the outbreak on Monday evening. I came from my house probably at six o'clock--I had been to tea--and coming downtown I was informed that there was a squad of Philadelphia soldiers had gone to Market street in custody of the mob. I then passed down Market street, and found that they had gone up the railroad. I followed up the railroad to Broad street, and there I found probably three thousand people gathered--men, women, and children. The squad of soldiers were there, in addition to the squad that had been brought in from Rockville. I found out who the soldiers were, and I requested--ordered them to send the guns to the mayor's office. Then they had forty-nine breech-loaders. Q. The leaders of the rioters? A. The mob, yes sir. After talking to the rioters they were entirely satisfied to send the guns to the office, but said a portion of the crowd would object, and requested me to make a few remarks to them. I then mounted a shed that was there and talked to them a few moments, and they very cheerfully then sent the guns to the mayor's office. The guns were afterwards turned over to the State, by order of Governor Hartranft. During that night an order came to the office--a report came to the office that they were breaking into a gun store on South Second street. I took a portion of the police force, hurried to South Second street, and we found the mob in possession of a store belonging to a man by the name of Altmeyer. We found that he had opened the door. They had gone there in force and demanded the opening of the door, and he had opened the door, and struck the gas for them, and they were all in possession of guns, and pistols, and knives. I formed the police force on the front and went in to them and talked to them, and after some little parley they all returned their guns--took nothing out with them. We came back to the office, and there Mr. Bergner, editor of the _Telegraph_, reported to me that they were forming on Market street, preparatory to destroying his building. I then struck the signal for the citizens to turn out. Q. What time was that? A. That was probably eleven o'clock. Q. Monday night? A. Yes, sir. The moment we struck the court-house bell the citizens came to our assistance. The sheriff, in the meantime, had returned home. He had got home about seven o'clock in the evening. I reported to him what we had done, and if it met his approval he should carry it out, with our assistance. He approved of our course, and he took charge of the citizens. They formed them into what he called a law and order posse, into companies and into a regiment. We then, after, formed at the corner of Third and Market. The sheriff and one officer and myself went down street to the mob, and attempted to speak to them from the steps of Mr. Muench, but they would not listen to us at all. They had broken into a store or two on Market street in the meantime. We then came back and came down Market street with the police force and the citizens, and the mob dispersed. Q. How large a police force do you have? A. We had seventeen. We had fifteen officers in line and two at the office. Q. How many citizens? A. I presume we had over--I can scarcely give an estimate, as they were formed in the rear of the regular police force--probably three hundred. From three hundred to five hundred. Q. Were the citizens armed? A. Most of them were armed. Q. With what? A. Revolvers and clubs. Q. How large was the crowd at that time? A. I presume there were--it being night we could scarcely tell--the street was crowded with them. There may have been from six hundred to one thousand men in the street in front of us. When we went down Market street the mob dispersed, with the exception of probably two hundred, with whom we had a little collision at the foot of Market street. Then they dispersed and we had no further trouble. Q. Was there any firing? A. No, sir; not a shot fired. Q. The police were ahead? A. Yes, sir. Q. And they dispersed that mob? A. The police would have been unable to disperse the mob without the assistance of the citizens. Q. Were there any of the mob arrested? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many? A. Probably eight or ten arrested during that night. Altogether, there were within the week, a few days following the riot, forty-five or forty-seven arrested. Q. Were the police officers obliged to use their maces in order to disperse the mob that night at the foot of Market street? A. No, sir. Q. Those who were arrested, what class of men were they? A. Most of them followed no occupation. Probably one third of them were employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and I would say that the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were only arrested for interfering with the business of the railroad--they were not arrested for breaking into the stores. Q. Those that were arrested among the mob at the foot of Market street that night, were there any railroad men among them? A. Yes; one of the leaders of the mob was a railroad man. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did the leaders seem to be railroad men--that is, that you came in contact with? A. The fact is, they did not seem to have any leaders, except on Monday night, a man by the name of Finfrock seemed to be the leader. They looked upon him as their leader, and they looked upon him as their leader on Monday night. That was the only time they seemed to have any designated leader. Q. What was done with the parties arrested? A. Some of them were tried and convicted and sentenced to from three to eight months, with fines ranging from $20 to $500, I think. Others were held over for several terms, then their cases were disposed of. Most of them had families, and the greatest trouble we had here, was with them that followed no occupation--thieves and professional men--crooked men of all classes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Tramps? A. A great many tramps. The only man that was wounded by a shot during the excitement, was a tramp. He was turning a switch, and one of the police officers approached him, and he started to run, and he ordered him to halt, and the fellow would not halt, and he shot him in the leg. He was about the only man that was shot, and he was a tramp. Quite a number of those that were arrested and convicted of breaking into the stores and taking the most active part were tramps. We know them as professional tramps. Q. Did you ascertain what the purpose of the mob was on Monday night, in case you had not succeeded in dispersing them? A. I think there was a very small portion of the mob that were disposed to interfere with the loading of ammunition to be sent to Pittsburgh. In order to draw the crowd away from the depot, it appears that the officers had arranged that this man should make a little forward movement, and they would arrest him. That drew the crowd up, and while they were drawn away, they loaded the ammunition and sent it off. Q. To Pittsburgh? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long did you continue up this organization of citizens? A. I think we continued the organization until the early part of August. It was not fully disbanded until the 10th of August. Q. Did you have any trouble in raising it or getting the citizens to aid you? A. No, sir; not at all. I presume we had from a thousand to twelve hundred men enrolled as members of the law and order posse. Q. At the depot on Sunday night, when you called for the citizens to assist the police in protecting that train, did they respond? A. No, sir. Q. Was it from lack of--was it because they feared the result? A. I think it was simply owing to the fact that they did not realize the situation at all. They were backward--I merely put the invitation to them, did not urge them at all, and I am satisfied, that if I had made a strong appeal to them, they would have responded. Q. How large a police force have you? A. Seventeen. Q. In all? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were they kept on duty both day and night? A. Yes; they were on duty for eight days, day and night. Q. Usually, how many were kept on duty? A. At night? Q. Night? A. Twelve. Q. How many during the day? A. Five. Q. This squad of soldiers that was taken down Market street--did you find where the crowd left them? A. The soldiers were with the mob at Broad street and Pennsylvania avenue. When I got there they were feeding them, and giving them their supper. Q. Where did they get the food? A. At the houses right there--one of the hotels. Q. Private houses? A. Yes; some of the private houses. Q. Fed by their captors? A. Yes, sir. Q. What finally became of them? A. They were put on the train here and sent to Philadelphia. Q. How many were there? A. in this squad that was brought from the bridge, I think there were about fifteen. Probably sixteen or eighteen. Q. Any officers among them? A. Yes, sir. Q. What rank? A. Lieutenant. Q. And the other squad that was brought from Rockville, how many were there of them? A. I can scarcely tell you. We received forty-nine guns altogether, that had been captured. Q. Do you know whose command they belonged to or what regiment? A. The knapsacks were mostly marked State Fencibles, and some few Weccacoe Legion. I would just say. Mr. Chairman, that on Sunday we had requested the editors to publish no extras, it would only inflame the public mind still further, and with one exception they had complied with the request. On Sunday morning I had directed all the gun-stores and hardware stores, that were dealing in arms and ammunition, to put away their arms and ammunition during the day or early in the evening, quietly, so it would not be noticed, and we would have had no trouble and the mob got no guns at all except that a party on Market street failed to comply with that request--or on south Second street--they had removed their guns and brought them back on Monday evening to their store. On Sunday evening we had issued a proclamation calling upon citizens to remain at their homes, not to gather in crowds or about the street corners, and these proclamations were put in the hands of the public on Sunday evening. It was late, probably six o'clock or after, when it was printed. The citizens very generally complied with the proclamation. There was no trouble. Our citizens here showed a very willing disposition to do anything that was required of them, and offered their services after they fully realized the situation. Q. On Sunday, were the saloons open? A. No, sir; we closed the saloons in the proclamation of Sunday evening. Q. How long were they kept closed? A. We kept them closed until Thursday, I think--Wednesday or Thursday following--when we allowed them to open during the day and close at six o'clock in the evening. Q. You controlled that yourself, as mayor of the city? A. Yes. The great trouble with us here was as to the question of the authority of the mayor. Whether the mayor under the charter of 1874--while it provides for the mayor to have the same powers as the sheriff in case of an outbreak or riot, it was a question with some of our attorneys here, whether it was an outbreak in the sense of the act until there was some violence committed, and the sheriff unfortunately was absent until Monday. When he returned Monday evening there was no further trouble. We, however, had made arrangements to take the responsibility notwithstanding the doubt about it. Q. If I understand you, there was no act of violence really committed by the railroad employés? A. No, sir. Q. It was done by outsiders and strangers? A. The parties pulling the coupling of the passenger train on Sunday evening, I do not think there was a railroad employé amongst them at all. Not so far as my knowledge goes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They were half-grown boys? A. Yes; the great trouble was, they were boys fourteen to twenty-one years of age--boot-blacks and all classes. On Sunday night, when they talked about taking the arsenal, this man that had made these remarks was formerly an engineer of the Pennsylvania railroad, but, through religious zeal, he lost his reason, and was an inmate of an asylum. Of course, the remarks had very little weight. Did not carry the crowd with him at all. On Saturday night, Captain Maloney, after consulting with some of us, had taken his company to the arsenal with his guns. I called there on Sunday night about eleven o'clock, and he assured me he was fully able to hold the arsenal against the mob. After requesting him to telegraph us in case there was any appearance of an attack, I then came in, and requested Mr. Jenkins to unload Gobin's regiment below what was called the cut, as there was a great number of what was called the mob out between here and the track. We were afraid they would place obstructions on the track. Really they had placed obstructions on the track. I requested Gobin's regiment to be disembarked above the stock-yards, then they would have almost a direct route to the arsenal. At this point the committee adjourned, until four o'clock this afternoon. HARRISBURG, _March 12, 1878_. Committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at four o'clock, P.M., in Senate committee room No. 6. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present. * * * * * W. W. Jennings: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were sheriff of Dauphin county in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. Still sheriff? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you at home at the time of the first disturbance that broke out in Harrisburg. A. I arrived home--I was at Atlantic City--I arrived home Monday evening, July 23, about half-past six or seven o'clock. Q. Just state how you found the city as to order and quietness when you arrived home? A. I found the city under a great deal of excitement. The trains, I was informed, had been stopped from running, and I immediately went to my counsel, Mr. Wise, for instructions in regard to my powers and duties, and met a number of the prominent citizens, and went to work at once under advice of my counsel to prepare a proclamation, and I was informed by the mayor and other citizens, that the citizens had been notified to assemble at two strokes of the court-house bell. I went around town and endeavored to get parties together, until about ten or eleven o'clock, as near as I can recollect, and spent sometime preparing a proclamation and advising with the prominent citizens, and one came to me at the Lochiel Hotel and said that the rioters were breaking into the stores on Market street. I called upon the good citizens for the preservation of law and order to go with me and suppress the riot. I suppose about one hundred or one hundred and fifty went with me, and went down Market street, and we dispersed the mob. We arrested a couple of the rioters there. Afterwards came back, and I sent squads out. I then organized the party into companies, and I sent squads out to arrest and take these men out of bed who had been prominent and active as rioters, who I was informed had been prominent and active as rioters, and we put those in jail. The next morning I had my proclamation out, and also orders organizing companies. The citizens responded promptly. We organized some ten or eleven companies, and we ran the town on military principles for about one week. We had an officer of the day detailed to patrol the town at night, and we had the fire department under command, and everything in readiness if there would be any further trouble. Q. What was the nature of your proclamation, was it calling for citizens to join? A. The substance of my proclamation was, commanding the rioters to disperse, warning them of the penalties of the law, and summoning all good and law-abiding citizens to assist me in putting down the riot. Q. As a posse? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you have any difficulty in raising a posse of citizens? A. No, sir; I cannot say that I had any great difficulty. Q. They joined cheerfully. A. They responded to my call. I arrived here at seven o'clock on Monday evening, and on Tuesday evening I paraded in the streets about nine or ten hundred men, organized as a regiment. My proclamation in the morning--that was issued on Tuesday morning. I had it printed during the night, and I had it posted all around town by daylight almost, and one of my proclamations called for them to assemble at the court-house, at two o'clock in the afternoon, and I supposed there were six or eight hundred men at two o'clock that afternoon there organized into companies. Q. In the evening, at the Lochiel hotel, what was the nature of that call? Was it commanding the citizens to join you as a posse, or was it a request? A. It was more of the nature of a request. Of course, the feeling in town was a matter I suppose would have to be handled very delicately, and I got up on the railing at the Lochiel hotel and said, "Gentlemen, I am informed the rioters are breaking into the stores down on Market street. For the preservation of law and order, how many of you will go with me to suppress it?" and there were a number of voices responded, "We will all go with you." Q. And then you led off and they followed? A. Yes, sir. Q. When you reached the crowd, how large a crowd did you find assembled? A. Well, I could not estimate the numbers. The line was drawn at the foot of Market street by the railroad. There was a line of men across the railroad there--standing there. I remember one man who was in front had a gun in his hand. I went up to him and took the gun from him, and he gave me some impudence and I took him by the neck and tossed him into the crowd. Q. Was his gun loaded? A. Yes; it was loaded. Q. Who was that man? A. A man by the name of Davis. He is now here in our jail. Q. Was he a railroad man? A. No, sir. Q. What class of people were these rioters composed of? A. Well, we afterwards arrested a number of railroaders, though we arrested a number who were not railroaders, and they who were not railroaders, I must say, were the worst characters. The railroaders did not want the trains to run, that was about the extent that they wanted or demanded. The other party, of course, that broke in stores, behaved in a riotous manner. Q. What did your posse--or what did you find it necessary to do to disperse the crowd? A. I think our appearance commanded respect. I could hardly put it in any other way. I think they thought we meant business when we went down there, and I gave them to understand that in as plain a way as I could. Q. Did you disperse them? A. Yes; we did. Q. Was it necessary to use any violence in doing that, any more than to make the arrests you have told us? A. Well, we arrested other parties there. In other words, when we came down there I told them what we proposed to do. We cowed them, and the parties who replied and gave us impudence, we arrested them at once. Q. Did you have any soldiers, any of the militia at your disposal during any of them? A. No, sir; we did not call for the militia at all. Q. Did not find it necessary? A. Did not find it necessary. Q. About how large was the crowd at that time? How many would it number in your opinion? A. It is a hard matter to give you an estimate. The crowd broke and ran across the bridge, and parties who lived on the other side of the canal have estimated them from two to five hundred people. I judge there were two or three hundred people there anyhow. Q. Did they re-assemble at any time after being dispersed that night? A. No, sir. Right after we had dispersed them, we organized at once into companies and patrolled the whole town, and of course it was known that we would arrest any assemblies or any crowds at any place. On Tuesday evening there were a number of parties who were looked upon with a good deal of suspicion at the depot--at the railroad; but they made no demonstration, and dispersed on our approach. Q. What was done with the parties that you arrested? A. Tried and convicted at court. Q. Do you know how many were tried and convicted? A. No, sir; I could not tell you. We had forty under indictment, I believe. Some of them are in jail now. Q. Were they tried by the county courts or police courts? A. They were arrested and had a hearing before the mayor, and were tried by the county courts--committed by the mayor, and tried by the county court. Q. Were any of the militia brought in at any time? A. No, sir. Q. Coming under your own knowledge. A. No, sir; not under my own knowledge. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. I would like to ask you a question. I have understood that there was considerable grumbling and growling about the expense for that thing--how much was that? A. The county paid in the neighborhood of $2,000. They paid me $1,965. We heard of a case in North street where a man had some two or three hundred guns in his house, and on Tuesday we took the guns from him, and he brought in a small bill and the items were made up. There were fifty men that were detailed as specials. They were on duty, in connection with the mayor's police, as policemen, and we paid those two dollars a night--or two dollars a day--and it amounted to something upwards of $1,200--between $1,200 and $1,300--and the balance of the expense was for providing rations for our men at night. We were organized as a regiment, and we had regiment and company quartermasters, and we were provided with rations at night. They had quarters and all that kind of thing. That caused the expense, which was paid by the county commissioners. Q. Not charged to the State? A. No, sir; charged to the county. As it was all done under my orders, the county was liable for the expense--that part of it. The mayor had charge of these fifty men, to a great extent, that acted with his policemen--the mayor's policemen acted with me from the very start. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Both acted in conjunction harmoniously? A. Yes; the mayor and his police were the first to tender their services. Q. Not afraid of one superseding the other? A. We had no trouble at all. We procured fifty revolvers from the State for the use of those fifty men we had. The other men armed themselves. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Armed with muskets, and rifles, and shot guns? A. No, sir; I wanted them only to have clubs, but nearly every one of them had pistols. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understood you to say the mayor and police tendered their services to you? A. As soon as I arrived in town, it was supposed by the people that the sheriff would take charge of it. The mayor came to me, and tendered the services of himself and the policemen, and the policemen and the mayor were in front in anything done where the danger was supposed to be. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Held the post of honor? A. Yes, sir. We used the policemen as skirmishers--you understand that. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Of course, that expense has been paid by the county, and considered finally settled? A. Yes; the expense consisting of pay for these fifty men, and there were some twenty--to distinguish them from them the rioters, we had badges printed and labeled, and all that kind of thing--did not think it necessary to get uniforms--and that cost something. The members of the posse got no pay at all. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In your official duties, did you inquire into the causes and origin of the riots, to ascertain what were the causes and grievances complained of? A. The principal one was they did not receive enough to pay for the labor. Q. These railroad men? A. Yes, sir. Q. What did the others complain of? A. The others talked about being in want, and sympathizing with them on general appearance. I heard "bread or blood" in quite a number of places. Q. Were the mill men and furnace men and the employés of the manufactories in and about the cities engaged in this riot as a general thing? A. No, sir; I would say no. Not the men that worked. The fact of the matter was, my idea was, that the parties who were most active and violent were those who did not work at any time. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Never worked? A. No, sir. Q. Did they belong to the city, mostly? A. Oh a good many of them did; yes, sir. It brought our worst characters to the surface, of course. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. When you found a man who was boisterous, and rather of an ugly disposition, you did not wait until the next day to arrest him? A. We went for him at once. Q. Right then and there? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you not propose to do it in a quiet way? A. We did not want to bark up a fight in any way. Of course, our whole course was to suppress disorder; but when a man was violent, we would not hesitate, and we did not run around with a chip on our shoulders, and ask some one to knock it off, or anything of that kind. Q. The posse had pluck enough to arrest them at once? A. We arrested them after we went to work--after we got the posse organized--wherever they could be found. The mayor's police made the largest number of arrests. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you have any conversation with the railroad men to ascertain what their grievances were? A. No, sir; not to any extent. Q. Did you, with any of the parties that you arrested? A. Oh, I talked with them after they were in jail; yes, sir. Q. Did you find out from the railroad strikers, or from any reliable source, whether there was any pre-arranged plan for a strike or not among the railroad men? A. From what they told me, they would give me that impression--that there was a pre-arranged plan for a strike. They complained. My understanding of what they told me was that they had been got into this thing by the engineers, and then the engineers had stood back and let them stand the trouble. Their words were, "Stand the racket." Q. What day did they first strike here in Harrisburg? A. That I cannot tell. I was not here. Q. Was there any organization here known as the Trainmen's Union? A. I understand that they have an organization here--Locomotive Engineers' and Trainmen's Union. Q. Did you learn it from any of the men themselves? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you learn the objects of the Trainmen's Union? A. Well, all objects--the idea that they gave me was, it was for beneficial and mutual protection. The parties that were arrested--the larger part of them that were arrested by the mayor's police, they blamed it more on the locomotive engineers than any other society. That they had got them to strike, and showed their hand, and got them into trouble, and they had stood back and done nothing. We often find, when persons are in trouble and they are in jail, they always have some other parties to blame it on. Q. Did they say to you what they proposed to do? A. No, sir; other than they wanted their wages increased. They did not speak of the organization as one of the objects being for the purpose of getting up strikes. They said it was more as a beneficial and mutual protection society; but I inferred from what they said that they regarded the society would act together in a strike. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was it a complaint they made of the reduction of the wages--that the wages had been reduced? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you learn when that reduction had taken place? A. I did not. Q. Whether it was immediately preceding this strike or not? A. That I do not know, sir. Q. Did not learn from them how long their complaint had been standing--how long it had been running--whether recent? A. No, sir; they did not go into the particulars at all in their complaint. It was on general principles about the workingmen being oppressed, and the road oppressing them. Q. The rich oppressing the poor? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did these men that you talked with claim the right to interfere with other men who were willing to work; did you have any talk with them on that subject? A. Well, I cannot say that I could answer that direct. They said, in substance, that those men who did not assist them, that were working men, that did not go into the strike with them, were blacklegs, and all that kind of thing; appeared to have a good deal of feeling against those that wanted to work, and did not go in with them to the strike. Q. Complaining against those who would not join them? A. Yes, sir. * * * * * Thomas Reckord, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I resided, at that time, at the bridge--the toll bridge. Q. In July last. A. Yes, sir. Q. What was your business then? A. Toll-gate keeper. Q. At what bridge? A. Harrisburg bridge--toll bridge. Q. The bridge across the Susquehanna? A. Yes, sir. Q. On Monday, the 23d day of July, state whether there was any crowd coming there to cross the bridge from the city? A. Yes; I was sitting in the office, reading a paper. All at once I heard a great noise, and I looked out the window of the house, and I saw a large crowd coming up, I suppose two or three hundred. Q. What time of the day was it? A. I can hardly tell you what time of the day it was. I think it was towards noon, or some place about that time. Q. Go on and tell us all the facts about? A. Well. I jumped off my seat and ran out of the door. I saw they were making for the bridge. I run and shut the gate. There was a great part of them got over before I got that accomplished. I shut the gates and kept a great many this side. Those that got in passed over the bridge while I was there. There was another crowd came and insisted upon going over, and I wouldn't unlock the gates. They told me they would break the gates. Very well, said I, you can do so. There was one man--a young man--he was half grown--a great part of them were young men--he went and took hold of the picket-gate to break it open. I caught him by the collar of the neck and threw him back. I said I would throw him in the river if he didn't stop. He wanted to know what I had to do about it. I told him I would show him. I kept him at bay there for a long time. Finally there was a man came there--I cannot recollect his name now--and told me the mayor had sent him up there to tell me to open the gate. I used the remark that the mayor had nothing to do with that--I wouldn't open the gate--this was individual property, and it had nothing to do with the matter at all. I wouldn't open the gates. Some of them jumped over--some of them jumped over the gates, and finally this man insisted that the mayor had sent him. I wouldn't believe him at first. Finally he said it was so, and there was two or three men stood at the gate there and begged me to leave them over. Says I, if I open the gates they will crowd in. They said they wanted to go over, and would help me to shut the gates. These men were standing there waiting to get over, and they promised to help. I unlocked the gate, and after I unlocked it these men came in and tried to help me shut it, but the crowd pressed so hard, by the time I got the latch in they sprung the gate and threw it off its hinges--it is just set on hinges--and the gate fell over, then they all rushed in. I had no more command over them at all. They all rushed right through. Q. How large a crowd went through? A. I suppose there was a couple of hundred went over. I may say so by the looks of them. Q. Did they say what they were going for? A. Yes; some of them. Q. What did they give as their object? A. Their object was to go over there for some soldiers--over there to bring them over in safety. These soldiers over at Fairview--they wanted to come over, and they sent a man over to get some one to protect them. Q. Did you see the man the soldiers sent over? A. No; I didn't. He might have paid his toll, and went over. Q. Do you know of your own knowledge that they sent a man over? A. No, sir: I don't. Q. You only get that from the crowd? A. Hearsay. Q. Did they come back? A. Yes, sir. Q. State the facts? A. When they came back they had soldiers in the center, they flanked all around, and came in a kind of square across the bridge. Q. How many soldiers were there? A. There might have been twenty or thirty. I really don't recollect. I knew at the time. It has passed my memory. Something near that. They were in the center of these--fetched them over with music. Q. What kind of music did they have? A. Drum and fife, I think it was. Q. How large a crowd was surrounding the soldiers? A. There was not so many surrounding them as they came over. There was a kind of square formed, and the balance was running loose around. Q. What class of men? A. Most of them were half grown boys and negroes. Q. Who carried the arms? A. Some few boys carried some of the soldier's arms, and the rest the soldiers carried themselves. Q. Did you try to prevent them going through the gates when they came back? A. Oh! no. Q. You allowed them to pass? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. No one seemed to be commanding this crowd or to lead the mob--no one seemed to be leading the mob or controlling it? A. No one, individually. There was some men there that used very hard expressions toward me, sitting on the bench, and they threatened to mash my head, and everything else. Q. Was there any one giving commands to the mob? A. No; I didn't see any individual giving commands. They all seemed to take part in it--no one individual that I took notice. Q. No one directed their movements? A. No; they came up in a crowd. Q. Did there seem to be any officers among the soldiers? A. That is more than I can answer. Q. You didn't see any one that from their uniform or any other emblem seemed to be officers? A. Not that I can recollect. I don't know as there was any officers among them. I cannot recollect whether there was or not. Q. The soldiers and the crowd were on good terms? A. They came very quietly through, there was nothing---- Q. Did the soldiers act as if they were prisoners of war? A. They walked very quietly surrounded by these men--went up Market street. Q. There didn't seem to be any coercion there? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long was the crowd gone before they returned with the soldiers? A. It might have been a couple of hours--fully that, I guess. There was a crowd continued there until they came back. I had to keep the gates locked all the time--the crowd was still remaining there waiting for them to come back. * * * * * Attorney General Lear, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You may state what facts came under your own observation in relation to the railroad riots of last July? A. The first knowledge I had of them was on the morning of Friday, which was the 20th, I guess. I received two dispatches, brought by the same boy at the same time, one from Governor Latta and the other from Adjutant General Latta in relation to these matters. The Governor told me that he had been applied to by the sheriff of Allegheny county to assist in suppressing the riot, but he thought he had no authority, and had so answered the application. I telegraphed to him I thought he was right, there was no vacancy in the office of Governor; and the Adjutant General's dispatch was from West Philadelphia, that he was then on his way in pursuance of the clause stating that he had general authority from the Governor before he went away, &c.--I cannot tell the language of the dispatch at all. I telegraphed to him that I thought he ought to go--sent two dispatches, one to Philadelphia and Harrisburg. I believed from his dispatch that he had gone to Harrisburg. Then I was at home in Doylestown, at that time. On Monday or Sunday I got knowledge of the thing being serious. I concluded I ought to be nearer to it so that if there was anything for me to do I could do it; and I started to Philadelphia, and I got there and found a messenger at the hotel waiting to take me to West Philadelphia--with a carriage--to see Colonel Scott, who had a dispatch from the Governor, asking him to send me to meet him at the nearest point I could reach him in Pennsylvania. Colonel Scott suggested that the best place would probably be at Beaver, where Quay was. That was on Monday, the 23d, at twelve o'clock, and at half past six, the first train that went, I started to go to Beaver. I went through Harrisburg on the evening the sheriff has testified to, the 23d, and on out to Pittsburgh. All that occurred there was that I met the Governor. He came to Pittsburgh instead of stopping at Beaver. I got a dispatch that he was going on through, and I saw several committees of citizens at Pittsburgh during the day, and asked for the Governor to remain. A committee of printers and newspaper men, and a committee of bankers, who said they were in the hands then of people that might go any time into their banks and compel them to open their vaults, and a committee, of business men, men who had large numbers of hands employed, wanted me to impress upon the Governor the importance of recommending a compromise, which I didn't feel much inclined to recommend. The Governor came there that evening at seven o'clock, without having determined whether he would remain or not. I went to the train to go with him east, but he concluded--there was a committee of people there to wait upon him--and he did remain. That was seven o'clock, Tuesday evening. He remained until three o'clock the next morning. We didn't go to bed. We remained at the Monongahela house and prepared, and Mr. Quay and the Governor supervised, the proclamation that was issued from the room there, and met committees of citizens, &c., and remained up until three o'clock or half past two, and we started down to Allegheny depot. We had to go from there at that time. We found several acres of people around there in the way. They didn't disturb us. Stopped us going across the bridge to see what we were and who we were, but went on notwithstanding. We came east, and at Altoona, when we took breakfast, there were, I suppose, a thousand people around there. A crowd of that sort of people that generally constitute a riot and a mob. Q. Demonstration at Altoona? A. No. We had to crowd our way through to get our breakfast--the Governor, Colonel Quay, and myself. Doctor Reed was along. We got in and got our breakfast, but we had some difficulty to get there, because there was a crowd there, but they didn't disturb us. The Governor, when they came in, somebody said something to him, and he made some remarks on the platform, and they gave the Governor three cheers--after breakfast. Then we returned to Philadelphia, and made arrangements which took the Governor back. We got to Philadelphia on Wednesday, and on Thursday he returned west, and went to Pittsburgh, when he had got his military properly organized--and Mr. Quay and myself remained there, and some others of the Governor's staff, and communicated with parties in connection with the business, and to see about organizing some others--I was not concerned in that--organizing an additional military organization for the purpose of going out to the scene of the difficulty; but we remained there until Saturday morning. I received a dispatch from the Governor asking me to go and join him at Pittsburgh. I don't think he stated what he wanted me for. Yes, he did. He stated he wanted to see about what to do with certain prisoners that had been captured at Johnstown, by a regiment of regulars, under Colonel Hamilton; and I went out that afternoon, and I reached Pittsburgh about twelve o'clock at night. We went over--the first train, probably, that went in over the route that had been torn up in different places--where the old depot was, and had it torn out, that Colonel Hamilton's train, or the train his soldiers were on, was thrown off the track by the turning of the switch at Johnstown, about seven o'clock in the evening, and that he was very much injured himself--I think he had a rib or two broken--he could hardly sit down; but his men got out immediately and formed, and they picked up everybody that came about there, from that on until Monday--found some of them after daylight--were picked up and put into a car and taken to Pittsburgh, and put in the arsenal, and they had fifty-five of them there. Q. As prisoners? A. Prisoners, and the object of my being sent for was to see what to do with them. On Sunday I went out there, and was met by Daniel J. Worrall and the chief of police of Johnstown. He was brought along to see whether he could identify any of the dangerous or turbulent class of people of Johnstown, and I went into examination--all I could do was with the aid of eight of these policemen and Mr. Worrall, and I examined each one on oath--sixty of them, at least. The other fifteen of them were retained, because they were a little more suspicious characters, and it turned out, according to any kind of evidence that we could get--and I guess it was the fact--that they had been idlers that heard of this train being wrecked. Some of them were very innocent people, who had come there to see if they could render assistance. Some had come as idle spectators, and there was not the slightest evidence from any source that any of them had been guilty of having turned the switch, or were participants in the stoning of the train. The train had been stoned just before they got there, but none of those people were arrested until some little time afterwards, and as I concluded from the evidence I heard there, it seems most probable that the operators of the act wouldn't hardly be about looking on, just after a thing of that kind occurred, and they got out of the way. And these people, while they might have sympathized, there was nothing at all to show that they had any guilty connection with the turning of the switch. On Monday, I waited again to see about some others--we had got reports from Johnstown, saying that they were satisfied--parties who told to me that they were satisfied they were not concerned in it. Finally, from time to time they were all released, having no evidence against them whatever, and that was the principal part of my business there. It kept me there several days--maybe a week--on the train. That is all I know about that. Then there was a difficulty occurred at Scranton and I went up there, and the Governor telegraphed to me while I was there, and I went to see about what to do with some--there was an alderman up there had issued a warrant, in pursuance of the report of the coroner's inquest, I think, upon the bodies of some men who had been shot in the riot, and they had pronounced all the military, I believe, participants in what they called a murder, and I started in obedience to the dispatch the same day. I arrived there, but they had done just what I was going to recommend; they had delivered themselves up to the proper authorities, _habeas corpus_ had been issued, and the judges of the court--I think Judge Harding had them to apply. It turned out that they were either indicted, or no bills found true against them, or something of that kind. There was other difficulties of that kind occurred while we were up there, and occasionally these same police alderman--Mahon, I think his name was, in the Sixth ward of Scranton--would issue out a warrant once in awhile against certain of the military, and they would simply go and give bail, and that was the end of it. That was all the connection I had with the riots--the actual knowledge I have about it. Something about these prisoners. We found some little difficulty in keeping them up there from getting into the hands--it was evident, as the people of Scranton said, that if the warrants of this alderman were executed, and the soldiers were taken over into that Sixth ward, that is made up--if any of you know the situation of Scranton, there is a ward that is made up of miner's houses across the stream--the Lackawanna, I think likely--and they threatened if any soldier was taken over there before this alderman he would never get back alive, and they were devising ways and means to prevent any difficulty of that kind. I remained there a few days, and came back to Philadelphia, and at St. George's hotel I got an honorable discharge from military service. That is all the duties I had, except attachments, &c., which were not connected with the riot. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I wish to ask you a question: You were consulted by Governor before he left the State, as regards his absence for any length of time, whether it was policy for him to be absent and the policy pursued in his absence? A. He spoke to me about it. There seemed to be, as I said to him, and as appeared to him, as good a prospect of peace in this State as ever there was, and he asked me what I thought about the propriety of his leaving upon a trip of that kind, and I told him I could not see any difficulty about it. That no doubt the State would go on harmoniously and all right, that it would not be a vacating of the office of the Governor. He didn't tell me anything about that I give more attention than I otherwise would during his absence, rendering any aid I could to the other authorities, to see to things. General Latta telegraphed to me that morning I speak of, the 20th, that he had a general authority to act in the Governor's absence, when the military were required, and simply telegraphed that there was trouble on the Pennsylvania railroad. He had acted, however, before that, because he had called out the troops. I recollect pretty nearly the second dispatch sent to me to Harrisburg. They were both sent within half an hour of each other. That if the civil authorities were insufficient to suppress disturbance, to maintain the peace and call out the troops, and to communicate to the Governor if he could, and if not, to suppress the riot promptly, and we would look for the authority afterwards. That is about what he had told him, and he acted upon the general authorities which the Governor had given him. By Senator Reyburn: Q. In your conversation with the Governor, was there anything about the probability of a strike on the Pennsylvania railroad? A. No, sir; there was no apprehension of anything of that kind at the time at all, although it seemed to come pretty suddenly after that. There was nothing at all to indicate it--the Governor said nothing at all about that--he simply talked to me about his going out of the State to remain a length of time he would be gone. I forget now what it was, whether it would give any authority to have his office considered vacant or any ability or disability to act. I told him I thought not, that for the purpose of managing the State government, I thought it would be perfectly proper for him to go, that he was entitled to have that sort of recreation. Of course, none of us apprehended anything, except what might arise at any time, and he had taken the precaution, it seems, although I do not know that, to say to General Latta, that he should act for the purpose of sustaining the civil authority as they had done heretofore, or something of that kind, as I learned afterwards, but the Governor did not tell me that, so far as I remember now. I believe that was what the Governor did say. * * * * * Sheriff Jennings, recalled: By Senator Yutzy: Q. As you are a military man, I want to ask you a military question. Do you know anything about the movements of the military about Harrisburg and vicinity and county? A. When I came here, I believe General Sigfried was in command, and all that I saw of the military I thought they would be first rate, and I felt confident they would be useful to me in case I should fail with the posse. He kept them in camp; there was no straggling, no drunkenness or anything of that kind, and the men acted and conducted themselves like soldiers. Q. Good discipline? A. Good discipline. I would say that the troops were under good command. * * * * * David Mumma, _affirmed_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do you reside in the city of Harrisburg? A. Yes, sir. Q. What is your profession? A. I am a practicing attorney. Q. State, Mr. Mumma, what knowledge you had of the conduct of the militia during the riots of last July? A. We had no militia--no organized militia in the city until during the riots, until after the dispersal of the rioters by the sheriff's posse. A few men, two or three in number, sometimes came here in a train, evidently in order to meet their companies, and came for that purpose without organization, not more than five at one time, and the men who seemed to get up all the difficulties about the cars, immediately disarmed them and took their arms from them, and then there was no further violence exhibited to them. There were five, I think, is the highest number I saw. They had no means of resistance, as there was no organization, that was, of the military we had in the city before that. Q. Those were men that had gathered in obedience to the call of their officers? A. Gathered to meet their companies, came from the upper end of the county, some few from Lebanon county. They came in the trains, and they were only in squads of two or three, sometimes one alone. Q. Were they overpowered by the mob? A. They did not resist any, so far as I saw. Their arms were demanded, and they gave them up. Q. How many did you see surrender their arms? A. There may have been twenty or twenty-five, altogether. Q. At different times? A. At different times. Q. Several in small squads? A. Yes; no more than five. I did not see more than five at one time. They came from the upper end of this county. They were coming here to report. Q. Did they surrender, because they were in sympathy, or would it have been folly for them to have resisted? A. It would have been folly to resist, if there was any determination on the part of the men who were in the crowd to enforce the demand. I may say here, that at this time there was not much exhibition of violence. The trains were running, that is the commencement of it. They stopped none but freight trains and local passenger trains; the other trains, more especially the mail trains, were permitted to run through, and there was no violence by anybody. Everybody seemed to stand and look on, and when a train arrived, the engine and tender would immediately be boarded by about four fifths boys, and some two or three men, and the coupling would be drawn, and they would take the engine to the round-house. Shifter was allowed to run, and they would move the cars away. I may say, just here, that on inquiry, many men who were connected with the railroad shops here, men that I knew, that always said they had orders that there was a general strike pending, and they were to stop any local or freight trains, and that other trains with the mails, were to go on, and that they had no disposition to give any trouble, and frequently I was appealed to, that we should use our influence to keep the military away; that if the troops were brought on there would be violence. Q. What class of men undertook to influence you in that direction? A. They were men who were employés of the railroad. Q. Railroad? A. Railroad and other places. Our other shops were not in the matter that I know of. Q. What class of men demanded the guns from the gathering soldiers? A. I know but one, and he was really the principal man who took charge of the guns. He is now in the penitentiary--was convicted at our court--a man by the name of Riggle, a loafer, who does not do anything and never did a day's work when he had it. I did not see any of our men connected with the railroad demand to take any guns from the soldiers at all. Q. It was done by the lawless class? A. Lawless class of men, mostly strangers. I did not know them, though I know a great many of our citizens, and there was a great many strangers here that we did not know at all. In the meantime, General Sigfried had got here, and some head was put to the military part of it, and I remember of speaking to several officers not to have the men brought in the town, for fear they might be overpowered. They were all taken to the arsenal. Everybody was anxious to have the arsenal taken care of. We were constantly assured by the better class of men that the arsenal would not be interfered with unless an attempt was made to put the military in. Hence, every citizen who had any influence tried to prevail on the military officers to get the men into the arsenal without bringing them into the city, and it was so arranged. Men coming in the Lebanon Valley train got off outside of the city and marched across. They came from above, got off at Rockville, and marched across, until they had sufficient men in the arsenal to defend it, and that, I have no doubt, was a very judicious method at that time, until there was a force here to stand up against the mob, if there was any trouble. Q. Did you have any conversation with these soldiers, after they had surrendered their arms? A. I believe I did speak to one or two of the men. There was some men, I just said before you came, Mr. Engelbert, that they came from your town to meet their companies, and they found themselves immediately surrounded by a mob, and they had no remedy, they had to give up their arms. Q. What reasons did they give for surrendering? A. They said they did not see how they could make any defense or hold their arms, because they were alone, and had not found their officers, and did not know what to do. Q. Did you find any officers? A. Military officers? Q. Military officers in this section of the country--on the day---- A. I cannot give dates very well--but on the day when these men were brought over from across the river, I remember that, because when I came back I was informed of the fact that they had brought some men across the river. I was driving out to some property I have out here, and at the cemetery I met a couple of boys who said there was a whole lot of Light Horses, they called them, in the town of Progress. I left the boys and thought I had better go and see. I drove out and found a portion of the company of about thirty men, cavalry, without horses, and think they had infantry--they had muskets, but I think they had their cavalry equipments. These I saw at a tavern. Shall I say how they said they came there? Q. Yes? A. I spoke to them, and they told me they were taken up to Altoona. They were, as they called it, run into and cut off the road, and with a large number of infantry, and they were immediately surrounded there by the mob of about two thousand persons, hooted, yelled, and used violent expressions, and occasionally, I think, throwing stones in a small way. That they were then taken out of the cars, and, while standing there, the infantry surrendered their arms. Stacked their arms, as they called it. They were kept standing quite a long while in the hot sun, until very much exhausted, and finally they were again re-loaded in a train, brought to Rockville, six miles up the river here, and then they were advised or requested to get off the train, that it was not safe for them to come into Harrisburg on account of the mob, and that they started for a walk through the country, got some refreshments from the farmers, and crossed the country, and struck this little town of Progress, two miles or two and a half miles east. They said their purpose was to strike the railroad below Harrisburg, and inquired of me whether the steel works was a good place to strike. I told them it was not desirable to strike it, nor was it a very good place, for, while the men were still doing their duty, and there was no riot, they might be in sympathy with these men, and I would not advise them to come there. I remonstrated most seriously with them not to pursue that course; but to go back to the arsenal with me, where there was about six hundred militia and infantry, and there really was no danger of any body getting hurt in any way, and that they would be protected there, and it would be very unpleasant and unfortunate if they were to go back to Philadelphia, where I believe they were from. I was asked a question whether the infantry would fight. I told them I didn't know that; but from the way things were going, and from what they told me of the surrender of half a brigade at Altoona, I would not swear that they would; but I then went to the arsenal. The arsenal is about a mile from this little town. I drove back and found Colonel Gobin, of Lebanon, was in command. Sigfried was in command, and Gobin was in command on the ground, and I told him what I had done, and asked him to get into the wagon, while I rode out to get the men to come in. We went out and had another interview with the men, and they partially promised to come in; but I told them I would send them a lot of newspapers, and so forth--they had seen no papers, and didn't know what was going on, and to what extent. I came in to take my supper, and then bought a whole lot of newspapers, and started out to take the lower route instead of the upper one, and missed that--they had just started in. I then came into the arsenal, and left them to read my newspapers, and congratulated them. Q. How many officers were among them? A. I think the officers were pretty much all there. I would say they were pretty much all there--the officers of the company. Q. Were the captains and lieutenants there? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were they in uniform? A. O, yes; they were all in uniform. Q. Their uniforms--the buttons and straps were not cut off? A. O, no; they were all in good trim. I was somewhat amused in finding them washing their feet in a trough, when I came out there, and, under the circumstances, I thought it was a little funny. It was not so much so after all. They told me the trouble they were in. I want to say just here, there was a good deal of fault found with men who didn't go through this town in a military way. I am not one of the persons who find fault with the military in that way, and a company of soldiers without any orders is a mob--is not very good shape--and I think it is better that they didn't happen to come in just at that time. They said, however, they had no commanding officer. Their general commanding was back; the first division of Philadelphia; and they had nobody to give them orders, and they didn't know what to do, or what right they would have to come at all--didn't want to come without some authority, and gave that as a reason why they didn't. Q. Did they have arms? A. They had their cavalry arms. Q. Sabers and carbines? A. Sabers and carbines--pistols. Q. Did they have ammunition? A. That I did not inquire into. They had their arms in the bar-room there. I did not inquire, but I presume they had ammunition. Q. Did they tell you they had become separated from their command? A. As I understood it, they didn't belong to the command that they were with when they got to Altoona. General Brinton was at Harrisburg, and they belonged to his division. Q. They were going on their way to join him? A. I suppose they were going on to Harrisburg; but at the time when all this was going on, there was no exhibition of violence in this city, simply because there was nobody interrupting or interfering with the men who were stopping trains on Saturday evening, I think. What I mean by that is, there was no violence beyond that of stopping trains--I think on Saturday evening--I think that was when the first train was stopped in the depot. Rodgers had been interrupted, and they were very tired, and there was a great number of laborers in the cars--immense number of people were in the depot, and many of them were ladies and citizens of the State, and quite an effort was made by a number of us citizens to get that train on. When these boys, as we would call them--most of them were boys--they jumped on the tender, and when the train undertook to move out, they drew the pin. I may say, on that occasion, that a number of men connected with the railroad shops here made an appeal to me and to other citizens to get this train on, that it was not the orders that the passenger trains were to be stopped. These were outside men, boys interfering with them. Had nothing to do with it. I remember that a gentleman in Harrisburg was named who makes speeches for them, and I was asked to go and see him. Mr. McCrea finally said it was not worth while--ten or twelve attempts were made--an attempt to pull the train out, and some few men were pulled off the bumpers, and I pulled a boy off and they said I would start a riot, and they finally stopped that train, and passengers got off that night sometime. Q. I want to ask you a question or two about those soldiers you found out there at this little village. I understand that they said that their reasons for going back were, that they were not with their commander, General Brinton, and there were no division and no brigade, at Altoona, of infantry? A. They did not give that as their reason for coming back--but, as a reason why they did not want to engage in any active service here, because they had nobody to take the command. Q. What reasons did they give for turning back? A. They said the infantry surrendered their arms. Q. At Altoona? A. Yes, sir. Q. What infantry did they refer to. It was not any of their command that surrendered? A. No; as I understood--who commands the center district? Q. General Beaver's command? A. It was one of these middle divisions of the militia. It might not have been General Beaver's, but it was up there somewhere. They were simply, as I understood it, attached to the military train to carry them west, as I understood it, and then they were again ordered into a car and run back without any desire of their own, as I understand that. Q. How far were they run back? A. To Rockville, about six miles to Harrisburg. Q. And then they left there? A. They were asked to go out. If they came to Harrisburg they would be assaulted. There was another party made a much bigger circuit and came to Linglestown. There was a large number. I didn't see them myself. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you know anything about this party of soldiers that were captured across the river here? A. At that time I was out here in the country. I only saw when I came back, that there was a number of people going out Market street, and then I heard that they had captured some soldiers, and marched them down Market street. I didn't learn anything about them. Adjourned to meet at the call of the chairman. AFTERNOON SESSION. PHILADELPHIA, _Friday, March 22, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee met, at two o'clock, P.M., this day, in the St. Cloud hotel, this city, and continued taking of testimony. The first witness examined was: * * * * * Robert A. Ammon, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside? A. In Pittsburgh, when I am at home. Q. Where are you doing business now? A. In the city of New York. Q. How long have you been there? A. Since the 31st day of December. Q. When did you leave Pittsburgh? A. I left Pittsburgh on the 30th day of December, on the eight o'clock train. Q. You mean December last? A. Yes. Q. What business were you engaged in prior to the 19th day of July, 1877? A. I was railroading. Q. On what road? A. On the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago. Q. What position did you occupy on that road? A. I was a freight brakeman on through freight--fast freight. Q. How long had you been acting as a freight brakeman? A. Nearly eleven months. Q. Where were you on the 19th day of July, when the first disturbance occurred at Pittsburgh among the railroad employés? A. I was on the train part of the 19th, and in the city of Pittsburgh part of the day, and in the city of Allegheny part of the day. Q. Thursday the 19th? A. Yes. Q. State what you saw of the strike--when it commenced there, and what information you had about it? A. The first knowledge I had of the strike--I went up to the oil country on the 16th or 17th--I have forgotten the date--a few days prior to strike--to take a position with a friend of mine there, who I had worked for formerly. Before I left Pittsburgh, I had heard of the strike at Martinsburg, in West Virginia, but didn't pay much attention to it, as I was acquainted with the men down there, and didn't think it amounted to a row of pins. I went on up to the oil country. It was on the 18th day of July. I believe I received a telegram from a particular friend of mine that trouble was expected in Pittsburgh, and that he would like me to come down. Q. Where were you when you received that telegram? A. At Parker City, Armstrong county. Q. Who sent you the telegram? A. A railroad employé. Q. Give us his name? A. No; I would rather not. Q. Very well, go on with the history? A. He wanted me to answer quick, but I didn't answer the telegram, so I got another telegram to come down that night, sure, and I did so. I came down. Q. To Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. What time did you arrive there? A. Seven-thirteen, I think it is. We got in on time that morning. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The 19th? A. Yes, I think so--the morning of the strike. I have forgotten the date. I met some of the boys on jumping off the train, and they told me what they were going to do, and asked me to go along with them; but I refused to do that, and told them I didn't think it was any of my affair at all--that, so far as the union men were concerned, I would stay with them, but I wouldn't go to the office of the superintendent of the road with them, because I was not an employé of the road. I had been discharged before that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What did they tell you they were going to do? A. That they were going to strike. Q. How many of them? A. That they were all going to strike. Some friends of mine met me there, when I came down on the train. Q. How many of those men met you? A. I cannot say. There may have been half a dozen or a dozen of them. Q. What class of men? What position did they hold on the railroad? A. They were conductors and brakemen. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were there any engineers? A. I think there were two or three engineers with them, from the Connellsville division of the Baltimore and Ohio road. I stayed there, and talked with them a while, and then went over to Allegheny. I got my breakfast and fooled around the house with my wife and baby for about an hour, and then went to bed. I was tired, as I had been up talking with the conductor of the train all the night before. After I went to bed they came over and knocked at the door, and asked my wife if I was in. She said yes, but that I was in bed. They then said that they wanted to see me, and she said they couldn't, for I was asleep. So they went away, but came back again, in the course of an hour. I heard the noise down stairs, and asked what the matter was, and she said that they wanted me to come out, that they were going out on a strike; but I refused to go with them, and gave my reasons for refusing to go. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What were those reasons? A. These men at the house were members of the Trainmen's Union, but two or three of them I considered scabs, and didn't want to have anything to do with them. A strike was to take place on the 27th of June, when some of those men were instrumental in getting up a rumpus in the Trainmen's Union, and I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I went back to bed again, and I think I must have slept until quarter past two o'clock when five brakemen and two conductors came up to the house and told my wife that they wanted to see me. She came up and called me, and I said it is all right, if they are going to strike I would be there. They went away, and I turned over in bed, and was just going to take another nap, when my wife called and said, Bob, they are going to put No. 15 engine on the siding. I jumped up out of bed, and looked out of the window, and I could see them putting the engine in on the side track. So I then jumped into my clothing as quick as I could, and just as I got to the door five or six of them were there, and they said they wanted me to come quick, that the mayor was coming with twenty-five police. It is just a stone's throw from my house to the track, and my wife had something ready to eat, and I just swallowed a bite and went out on the track. I saw the engine standing there, and the chief of police and about twenty-five police. I jumped up on the engine, when he told me to get off the engine. I told him I wouldn't do it, and I wanted to know why I should, I told him he had no authority. Then an order was given to arrest me, but Mr. Ross, was a neighbor of mine and I told him I was a quiet, orderly citizen, and that I refused to be arrested; that I had not been guilty of any breach of the peace as I saw; but he said, Bob, you had better get off the engine, when I said I wouldn't be put off, but as the dispatcher instructed me to get off the engine I got off. I then started down to the lower end of the yard. Before I got down there the dispatcher asked me what I was going to do, and I said I was going down to see the fun. He said, you are not, you are going down to countenance the strikers. I said, Mr. Ross, I am not. He said, you are in sympathy with them, and I said I am, but I would not say one word to them. So I went down there, and got in the midst of them, and with that the chief of police and twenty-five policemen were told to disperse the men there. They wanted the men dispersed. The police commenced to circulate pretty free among the boys, and I said it was not right, and jumped up on a box car and called for them to come over to me. They all came. I saw Mayor Philips, of Allegheny, there, and they cried out to me to tell him just what they were there for, and who they were, and I did so. I explained to the chief of police and the mayor who they were and what they were going to do. Q. What time was that? A. About two-twenty. Q. Thursday or Friday afternoon? A. That was Friday. I have not got the date. Q. You say two-twenty? A. Yes. Q. All this occurred on Friday? A. Yes; all this occurred on Friday. Q. At the Fort Wayne and Chicago depot? A. Yes. Q. Go on. A. The police didn't disperse them. They couldn't get the train out, and they started to run the engine back into the round-house. Q. Who is Mr. Ross? A. The dispatcher of the Fort Wayne road, and Mr. Ross is the chief of police. By Senator Yutzy: Q. He is a brother? A. No; he is no relation to him at all. That afternoon two or three sections of freight came in, and some of us jumped up on the cars and told the boys what we were doing, and they all came right with us. They stored everything away--put everything in good shape. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What do you mean by storing things away? A. Putting things away compactly on the tracks. To go back now to Mayor Phillips. I read his statement in the Pittsburgh _Dispatch_. As soon as I jumped down off the box car, Mayor Phillips sent one of his police officers over to me, who said that he would like to see me. I told him it was all right, and I walked over to where he was and spoke to him. He said that he had heard everything I had said, and I asked him if he had any fault to find with it, and he said no. I believe I told him just what we intended to do, and that he should not be alarmed about our destroying property or the safety of the city or anything of that kind. That we intended to strike and were going to strike, and thought that we had a right to strike. I asked him if I had been guilty of any breach of the peace, one way or the other, and he told me no, and that as long as I did not do anything worse, that no one could arrest me, and that I should resist if any one did attempt to arrest me. Before he went away he told me that he would leave that portion of Allegheny in my charge. Several of the boys heard what was said, and they repeated it to the others, and they told the mayor that anything I said would be carried out. I never saw Mayor Phillips after that. Q. Who stood by during that conversation with Mayor Phillips--anybody? A. Yes. Q. Can you name any of the parties? A. I would rather not, for this reason, there is an indictment hanging against me in Allegheny county, and I wrote to my attorney about this matter, and he told me that he did not want me to say anything that would have any bearing on my trial. These men I have subpoenaed as witnesses, and they are working on the road now. Q. Go on for the present? A. We got everything into as good shape as possible. Wherever we could get hold of the wires we used them. Q. Do I understand you to say that you took charge of the telegraph office. A. No; but we telegraphed wherever we could wire--we used the telegraph. They had got orders not to allow any messages to go over the wires from actual or intended strikers anywheres. Q. Go on and relate from that time what occurred during the progress of the strike? A. I would sooner answer questions than tell you. I cannot give the story in full, and I do not want to give it to you half. So far as I am individually concerned, I would not care; but there are other men interested, and I would not want to implicate them. Q. How large was the crowd on Friday afternoon, when Mayor Phillips was at the depot? A. I should judge there was in the neighborhood--railroad men there--a hundred, and two or three times as many citizens. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. On Friday? A. Yes. Q. Did any freight cars leave the depot or arrive at the depot that night--Friday night? A. Yes. Q. Did you allow any freight trains to go out after that time? A. We did. Q. How many? A. None went, but we allowed them to go if they could get the men. I told Mayor Phillips distinctly, that if they could get scabs enough to go on them that I would guarantee that any man who would scab it over the road would not be hurt. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What do you mean by a scab? A. I consider a scab when a set of men combine themselves together for a certain purpose--when a man goes back on his obligations, or, in other words, if a man will work for less wages than his fellow men, and preach before going out on a strike that he will stand up for those wages. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You call those scabs? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Do you mean non-union men? A. Yes; but it is not necessary that a man should be a non-union man to be a scab. What I call a scab is a man that will take an oath and go back on that oath--perjure himself. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean belong to a union and go back on the order? A. Yes; but I say it is not necessary that a man should belong to a union. I mean a man that will turn around and work for less money. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do I understand you to say that you were willing to let trains go out if they could get the men to run them? A. Yes; I stated that distinctly, and others there heard it. Q. Was any attempt made to start trains? A. They called on every man on the road, and every man refused to go out. Q. Did you or the party with you interfere with trains going out in any way? A. No. Q. You were the leader of the party on the Fort Wayne and Chicago road? A. I was supposed to be. Q. Did you interfere with the men who wanted to go out in any way? A. No. Q. Did you try to persuade the men not to go out or to run their trains? A. At what time? Q. At any time during the progress of the strike or previous to the strike? A. Undoubtedly, I did. I was a member of the Trainmen's Union--I was the head of it--I mean the union. We said that if they did not give us our wages we would not work. Q. On Friday, did you try to persuade any men not to go out? A. Directly? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did any of the strikers? A. I would rather not answer that question. Q. It is a fair question. Did any of them try to persuade men not to run their trains? A. They did through moral suasion. They talked to them kindly and pleasantly. They did not threaten them or anything of that kind. Q. No threats were made? A. No. Q. And no attempt at violence was made? A. We did not try to bulldoze anybody. Q. During Friday night and during the day, Saturday, you were masters of the situation there in Allegheny City? That part of the city was placed in your care? A. Yes. Q. How large was the crowd during Saturday night? A. It was large. It would be pretty hard to tell. Sometimes it was a pretty big crowd, and sometimes it was not so big. Q. How many actual strikers were there? A. They were all there. All the brakemen and firemen were there anyhow. Q. How large was the number of actual strikers collected together there during Friday and Saturday and Sunday--taking in those days? A. From one hundred and fifty to three hundred. Q. Did you learn that troops were expected to arrive from Erie or from Meadville? A. Yes. Q. On Saturday and Saturday night? A. Yes. Q. State what was done to prevent those troops from coming in--what measures the strikers adopted, if any. A. I believe they let them come. I do not know why General Huidekoper did not come. Q. Was it arranged among yourselves to let them come in? A. I believe they could have come as far as Allegheny City. Q. Did not the strikers send a party down to the lower end of the yard, or below the depot, to intercept any train of troops that might be coming in? A. Some people did go down. I suppose they just walked down that way to see how things were going. Q. Was it not agreed that no troops should be allowed to arrive? A. I do not see how they were going to stop the troops coming to Allegheny City, unless they threw them off the track. Q. Was not that the arrangement--to throw them off the track to prevent their arrival? A. No. Q. Did not a party come down armed to prevent the troops from coming in? A. No; they did not. Men were stationed as far as Sewickley. I suppose some had guns or revolvers. Q. Strikers? A. Men in sympathy with the strikers. Q. What were they stationed along there for? A. I suppose they wanted to know what was coming up along the road, or something of that kind. We did not know what was going to happen. They thought that maybe some soldiers might be coming up along the road. We would have known it then if the soldiers had come. They could not have got to Homewood unless we would have known it. Q. Why? A. We knew perfectly that No. 18 was carrying signals for the southward. It is the Erie night express, due in Allegheny at eleven o'clock. Q. Who stationed those men along the road at Sewickley? A. I suppose they walked down themselves. Q. Who stationed them there? Who gave them orders to go there and occupy those positions? A. I do not know that anybody gave them orders to occupy positions along the road, or to fire into trains, or anything of that kind. Men were sent down the road to watch everything. Q. Sent by the strikers, were they? A. Yes. Q. What were they to watch--what instructions were they given? A. If the troops were coming up we wanted to know something about it. We did not have engines to fire up and the water had run out, and so those men were stationed down there. Some had arms and some had not. If the troops came up and disembarked at Sewickley, or east of Sewickley, we would know it, by their discharging their pieces, that the troops had disembarked. Q. They were to fire off their pieces as a signal? A. Yes; to let us know what the troops were doing. Q. Was it arranged that they should prevent the trains from coming in? A. The calculation was to let the trains come right up to Strawberry lane. Q. Through the Fort Wayne depot? A. It is below--at the lower end of the yard. Q. That is where the larger portion of the strikers were? A. It was head-quarters. Q. Your intrenchments were there? A. There were intrenchments there. Q. What did you intend to do, then, in case the troops came up to Strawberry lane? A. We proposed to interview them before they got to Strawberry lane. Q. How interview them? A. We proposed to get on the train at Wood run, about two miles below there. Q. How many were to get aboard the train there? A. About three. Q. For what purpose? A. To see the commanding officer there and have a little talk with him and explain matters to him. Q. What did you intend to do in case the troops arrived? A. We proposed to dance in case the soldiers played the music, that is all about it. Q. Did you propose to fight the soldiers? A. No, sir; we did not, but we did not propose to be shot down like dogs by any men. Q. Were you armed? A. We were. Q. With what kind of arms? A. There were so many different kinds that I cannot enumerate them. Q. Enumerate some of them? A. Well, improved needle guns, and shot guns, and rifles, and revolvers--things of that kind. Q. Where did you get your arms? A. At different places. Q. Name some of the places? A. Pittsburgh and Allegheny. Q. At what particular places did you get them? A. We got some of them on Sixth street, Pittsburgh. Q. At whose establishment, or store? A. We did not get them out of a store. Q. Where did you get them? A. I was not along with them when they got them. Q. State if you know where you got them? A. I cannot state that, because I did not see them, I only heard so. They got them out of a wagon, that is all I know. Q. You say from a wagon? A. Or bus. Q. Did you get any anywhere else? A. Yes. Q. Where? A. In Allegheny city. Q. At what point? A. Not far away from the suspension bridge. Q. Go on and state all the particulars? A. If it was myself alone I would not care. Q. You need not name individuals? A. If I was to tell you where those men got them, you could find out who was there. I lay in prison three months because I would not tell that, and I do not propose to tell it now. Q. But you say you had arms? A. Yes; given to us by citizens. Q. Of Pittsburgh? A. Yes; and Allegheny. I was offered two hundred stand of arms more than I had. Q. By citizens? A. Yes; and two very prominent citizens of Allegheny. One of them has testified before this honorable committee. He offered to furnish a hundred stand of arms, and told me---- Q. Do you mean Mayor Phillips? A. No. Q. Have you any objections to stating who offered you the arms. It is a matter of importance, and you have made an oath---- A. I know that, but I would rather not answer the question. By Senator Reyburn: Q. When were those arms offered? A. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Q. But they were offered for the purpose of keeping the peace, were they not? You had promised to keep order? A. I did, undoubtedly, promise that to Mayor Phillips, and my action shows that I was a quiet and peaceable citizen. Q. But were not those arms offered for the purpose of keeping the peace? A. Nothing was said about that at all, sir. Nothing was said about it at all. Q. But those arms were not given you to resist the troops? A. Yes, they were; some of them. Q. You say that the citizens gave you those arms to resist the troops? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did those two prominent citizens? A. No, sir; they did not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What did they give you the arms for? A. Nothing was said. Q. What did these two prominent citizens offer you the arms for? A. One of them spoke for himself, and mentioned another prominent citizen who would also furnish arms. Q. What day was that? A. I won't be positive--it was either Saturday evening or Sunday evening--no, I am sure it was Sunday evening. Q. What was the conversation about--in what connection did he offer you those arms? A. The way it came about was this. He came over to Allegheny to the telegraph office, and asked some man outside where Mr. Ammon was, and he said inside the office. He asked if I would see him. I knew him by reputation, and I met him in the private telegraph office--he came in there. He told me he would like to have ten minutes of my time. He then sat down, and then asked me to give him the wages that each man was paid on the road--brakemen, firemen, engineers, and conductors. I sat down and talked with him awhile, and gave him those figures. Then he asked me whether the majority of the railroad men were single men or married men, and I told him they were married men. And he said he could not blame the men for striking, and that he hoped and prayed they would stand out like men, but not be guilty of any violence, and that as long as we did that we would have the support of every citizen of Allegheny county. And he said that if we wanted any assistance or any help, that he would give both money and arms--he said I will furnish a hundred stand of arms, and I know another prominent citizen who told me that he would also furnish arms. I thanked him, and my attention was called in another direction. Q. Did he mention the name of the other citizen? A. He did. Q. Now we would like to have the names of those individuals? A. I have no objection to giving them to the committee privately, but I don't want them to be known. By Mr. Means: Q. You said if the soldiers fiddled, you proposed to dance? A. Yes. Q. Then you intended, if the soldiers pretended to sustain good order, to resist them? A. In the first place, our object---- Q. The question is a straight one? A. I will give it to you straight. We proposed to treat the commanding officer with all the respect in the world due to his position. We were perfectly well aware that the chief executive of the State was out of the State, and we did not think that he could depute his powers to any one in the State. So we would want to know where he got his orders from, and if he got them from a railroad magnate, we did not propose to pay any attention to him. Q. But you said if the soldiers fiddled, you proposed to dance? A. Yes. Q. Then if they proposed to maintain order, you proposed to resist them--answer yes or no? A. I refuse to answer the question in that way. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. If the soldiers undertook to disperse the crowd assembled there, did the strikers intend to resist? A. I did for one, undoubtedly. I would rather have died right there, before I would have budged an inch. Q. Was it talked of--was it understood that you, as a body, would resist? A. I don't think there was a man there but what would have gone to just what I led him to. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean by saying if the commanding officer had his orders from a railroad magnate, you intended to do thus and so? A. What do you mean? Q. To resist, I understood you to say? A. No; we proposed if General Huidekoper came to Allegheny, to go and interview him and explain the situation. We were going to ask him the question as citizens of the Commonwealth, for we looked upon it we had that right; if he had his orders from the chief executive or from Governor Hartranft; if he had, we would recognize him, if he had not, we did not propose to recognize him any more than anybody else. We proposed to treat him as a rioter, for we did not count ourselves as rioters, for if the mob had come we would have given the mob the best we had. Q. Then you would have resisted in that case? A. If he did not have authority, undoubtedly. Q. But suppose he had authority? A. Then we would have recognized it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Do I understand you to say that you would have resisted if the soldiers had undertaken to disperse you? A. We looked at it this way: the Governor was out of the State, and we had our reasons for thinking he had not got his orders from the Governor, so we proposed to see who he got his orders from. Q. If he had his orders from the Governor or the commander-in-chief, then you would have obeyed his orders and dispersed? A. Yes, if he had his orders from the Governor. That was the only authority we recognized, and we knew he was out of the State. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you take advantage of his absence in this strike? A. No, we did not. Q. But you were well aware he was out of the State? A. Yes. Q. Was it your impression that no other man in the State of Pennsylvania could order out the military? A. That was our impression of it, yes. Q. It certainly would be a bad fix if there was nobody else that could order out the military? A. All right; we knew the Lieutenant Governor was here. Q. You did not take advantage of the Governor's absence, then? A. No; we thought we had some rights that the railroad men were bound to respect, but they did not seem to respect them. They treated us like mad dogs. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. When was the Trainmen's Union organized? A. On Saturday evening, June 2, 1877. Q. Were you a member of the body? A. I was the first man that ever took an oath in it. Q. What was the purpose--what were the objects of that Union? A. The purpose and object of the Trainmen's Union was to get the trainmen--composing engineers, conductors, brakemen, and firemen, on the three grand trunk lines of the country--into one solid body. We knew that a reduction over the three grand trunk lines was going to take place, and we thought if we could combine into one body all the men, at a certain hour on a certain day, if the railroad magnates did not accede to our demands we would strike, and leave the trains standing just where they were, and go home. That was the object of the Trainmen's Union. Q. Do you know how far and wide it extended? A. Yes. Q. Please state? A. It extended over the Baltimore and Ohio, the road from Pittsburg to Baltimore, the Fort Wayne road from Pittsburg to Chicago, and I think the last division was organized at Valparaiso, or Fort Wayne. It was on the Northern Central and its leased lines, and all the leased lines of the Pennsylvania company were in it. Q. Did it extend on the Erie road, and to the Atlantic and Great Western? A. Yes. Q. Over the whole length of the road? A. I do not know. Q. Where did it originate? A. In Allegheny City. Q. What arrangements, if any, were made by your organization for a strike? A. When we thought we were strong enough so we could control at least three-fourths of the men of those roads, then we thought we could bring matters to a point--we could all quit. We knew they could not find enough green men to run the roads, and we thought that the citizens would look at it in the same light as we did--that the citizens would not care to trust their lives to green men--that the people traveling on the roads would not trust their lives to green men; and we thought by all going off and stopping the traffic on the roads that they would give us back our ten per cent. Q. It was not organized until after the ten per cent. reduction was made on the 1st of June? A. No; but it was talked about before that. Q. How long before that was it talked about? A. I believe the notice was stuck up by the Pennsylvania Company about the 26th or 27th day of May--somewhere in that neighborhood--and from that time on it was talked about. Q. What led the men to talk about it at that time? A. The notice was stuck up, that there would be a reduction. Q. That was the first that called the attention of the men to it? A. Yes. Q. Was there any day set for the strike by the Trainmen's Union? A. The 27th day of June, at twelve o'clock. Q. State the extent of this strike as it was expected to take place on the 27th of June? How many men had you, who had agreed to strike? How wide was it to extend over the country? A. I have just mentioned over the different lines. Q. Had they all agreed to strike on that day? A. Yes. Three or four days before the 27th of June--the 27th day of June was a Wednesday--the Sunday night before, that is, the 24th, forty men were sent out from Pittsburgh, so if they shut off the wires from us, we could notify the different divisions if we could not get telegrams to them in time, that if anything turned up, that it was ordered, and that that was the day set. Q. At what hour? A. At twelve o'clock, noon, June the 27th. Q. To what points were those men sent? A. All over the different trunk lines. Q. To notify all the different lodges or divisions? A. Yes. Q. Did they so notify them? A. They did, I believe, so far as they could get. But a hitch occurred before the 27th. Q. What was it? A. That was a Sunday night. On Monday night, the Pan-Handle division had a meeting, and most of the members from the other divisions were there, and it was decided on Monday night, when delegates from all the divisions around were there, that the strike should take place on the 27th, and on Tuesday night, all the members of the divisions around there were to come to Allegheny, to the usual place of meeting, and have another talk with the boys there. They met there, when three or four of them kicked up a rumpus, and it came near ending in a row. Some of the men who were the first to go into the thing--who were the first to propose doing anything, were the very men to kick, and two of them that night, went out on No. 11, west, and took the news out west, that there would be no strike the next day. We were all ready on the 27th, at twelve o'clock, noon, to go out on a strike, but we got telegrams from everywhere, asking if we were going on a strike, or whether we were not going on a strike. So the thing got mixed up, and they stopped the telegraph wires, and we couldn't get a word over. We had some trains stopped at Pittsburgh, but I had them all moved out on the track again, as I thought we had better let the thing go, than make a failure of it, and wait for some better time--a better organization, or some time when we could get things into better shape. Q. What became of those men, sent out to notify the various divisions? A. They beat their way back again, I guess, from all over the country to Pittsburgh. Q. Did the Trainmen's Union break up at that time, or did they continue their organization? A. They never had a meeting after the 27th, that I know of, in Pittsburgh. Q. Did they at any other point? A. Yes; the Trainmen's Union is still in existence. Q. Was there any time arranged afterwards for a strike? A. No; no time was agreed upon, but all labored under the impression that the bubble had grown so large, that it would have to burst sooner or later. Q. Was there any pre-arranged plan, by which any strike was to take place on the 19th of July? A. No, there was not. There was some little talk about it, if the railroad company would do so and so, that they would kick. Q. Do what? A. Put on double-headers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What do you mean by kick? A. Not stand it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Strike, do you mean? A. Yes. Q. Then there was no pre-arranged plan for that strike on the 19th? A. There was no pre-arranged plan. Q. Was it talked over? A. Not on that day; but just as soon as they put on double-headers they didn't propose to submit to it, as they thought seventeen cars were enough for the men to take care of. Q. These double-headers were only confined to the Pennsylvania Central? A. Yes. Q. They didn't extend over any other roads leading into Pittsburgh? A. No. Q. Was it known to the men on any other roads that the men on the Pennsylvania Central were going to strike? A. I suppose they knew that they had their sympathy. Q. I understood you to say that you left Pittsburgh the day before the strike? A. No; I left it about the 16th. Q. Did you know any thing about it then, or understand that there would be a strike then? A. Yes; I remarked after the 27th day of June that I was positive there would be a strike, sooner or later--that the thing would have to come to a head itself. Q. Did they say to you, or did you understand from any employés on the Pennsylvania Central road, that there would be a strike on the 19th? A. No one knew that they were going to strike on that day. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Then no time was set? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was it understood that when the order was given to run the double-headers that they would strike? A. It was understood that just as soon as they put on double-headers they wouldn't run them. The men couldn't stand it. Q. Did you know any thing about the strike at Martinsburg? A. Yes; I heard of it. Q. Before it took place? A. No; not before it took place. I knew of it as soon as it did take place. Q. Was there any general understanding that a strike would take place at the time the strike broke out at Martinsburg? A. No; the understanding we had of this thing--our object in organizing the Trainmen's Union was, that the Pennsylvania Company would make a reduction on the first of June of ten per cent., and that, if their employés submitted to it, that the New York Central would follow about the 1st of July, and if their employés submitted to it--they had two roads, and had pooled their earnings--they would make a reduction on the 15th of July on the Baltimore and Ohio. They thought if they didn't get a strike before the 15th day of July, then the Pennsylvania road and these other roads would get so used to it, or that they would get us so frightened that we would have the idea knocked out of us, if they could run their traffic over those roads. They were not going to make a reduction over two trunk lines at one time. Q. Did all that happen? A. No; there was a reduction on the Pennsylvania on the 1st of June, and on Vanderbilt's road on the 1st of July, and on the Baltimore and Ohio on the 15th or 16th, and on the 15th was the strike. Q. Did you have any communication with the men at Martinsburg before they struck? A. I had some friends down there, and I used to hear from them once in a while. Q. About the strike--this particular strike that took place at Martinsburg--did your union communicate with them? Was it understood or arranged between you for that strike on the 16th? A. No; although they said that just as soon as they got the reduction they were going to strike. Q. I understand you to say it was the double-headers, or the order to run them, that caused the strike on the 16th, at Pittsburgh? A. Yes; because it was the wrong time to put on the double-headers, just following the strike at Martinsburg. That just started the whole thing. Q. This Trainmen's Union was organized, you say, for the purpose of protecting yourself? A. For protecting our own interests. Q. What had you to complain of at the time of organizing the union? A. The ten per cent. reduction. We thought we were getting little enough money. Q. Had you anything else to complain of? A. Yes; we had something a little worse than the reduction. That was all right. If they saw fit to reduce, and could get men to work at their rate, all right. The officials of the road, and Mr. Scott, all treated us all right. It was only the little under-officials who treated us like dogs. I was told that if I voted for a certain man I would get discharged off the road. I wanted to vote for a neighbor of mine. Q. By whom were you told that? A. By a petty under-official, the assistant day dispatcher. Q. Had you anything to complain of, except this ten per cent. reduction? A. Not on our road--not on the Fort Wayne road. Q. Had they on the Pennsylvania Central, before the order was issued to run the double-headers? A. No; I don't believe they had. Q. That was the only thing you had to complain of? A. Yes. Q. Did you have any negotiations with the magnates of the road in regard to that? A. Yes; we appointed a committee to wait on them, and talk with them, and try to get the thing settled up; but we couldn't reach them with a forty-foot pole. We tried everything with reference to avoiding a strike. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How long were you on the road? A. About eleven months, I guess. Q. Had there been any talk of striking before--during those eleven months? A. No. Q. Were any committees appointed to wait on the officials? A. That was when we heard of the ten per cent. reduction. Q. Had you any grievances before? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It was arranged then by your union that you would strike in case of a reduction? A. That was what we organized for. Q. Do you claim the right at all times to strike as a body? Do you claim that it is one of the rights that you have? A. I claim that every free born American citizen, if necessary, has the right to quit work if he wants to. That is what I call striking--quitting work. Q. Doing anything more? A. We have no right to destroy property. Q. Do you claim it as a right to interfere with those who want to work? A. It is a right to use mere suasion. If I were to see you rushing on headlong on the breakers, and I can stop you, I would do so. Q. Do you claim that you have a right to assemble in crowds or groups upon the property of the railroad company? A. If that is where we are employed; yes. Q. But when you strike, you are no longer in the employ of the railroad company? A. No; not when we have once struck. Q. Then after you have struck you don't claim that you have the right to assemble there? A. Until we are ordered off? Q. But when ordered off, have you the right to refuse to go? A. It depends greatly upon who orders you off. Q. When ordered off by an official of the railroad company? A. If I am there for any unlawful purpose, I ought to go, but if I am not there for any unlawful purpose, and if I run against a man who wants to show fight or ride a big horse, I don't think I have any business to go, if I want to stay. By Senator Reyburn: Q. But do you say that you have the right to go on another man's property and stay there if he wants you to go away? A. I don't recognize any one like a day dispatcher. It is not his business. Q. But it is his business to keep the track clear? A. No; it is not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You did assemble at yard of the Fort Wayne and Chicago road, one hundred and fifty or two hundred of you? A. Yes. Q. Were you ordered off--ordered to leave or disperse? A. No; directly we were not. Q. By any one belonging to the road? A. The dispatcher told the chief of police to disperse this mob, that they were not employés of the Fort Wayne road, but rioters and loafers from Pittsburgh, and wouldn't allow their men to work. Q. You resisted this? You refused to go? A. I don't like a man to call me a liar. Q. Did you refuse to go? A. No one told me to go off the property. Q. Didn't the policemen tell you to go? A. No. Q. Didn't they undertake to disperse you? A. They got in amongst us, but they didn't push or tell us to go off. Q. But you refused to go? A. We didn't understand it that way. Q. Was it not your duty to disperse when the policemen requested you, having been instructed so to do by the officials of the railroad company? A. The police didn't tell us to disperse. Q. You knew what they came among you for, and what commands had been given to them by the officers of the railroad company? A. I heard the dispatcher say, disperse this lot of loafers and rioters from Pittsburgh. I don't know that he spoke to me. Q. Did he refer to the crowd? A. I don't know of any loafers or bummers in that crowd. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you ordered to disperse by anybody? A. No; the dispatcher didn't speak to us, but to the chief of police, that these men are a lot of rioters from Pittsburgh, and he wanted them off the property. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you consider you had the right to take that property and pack it away on the side tracks? A. I thought I did perfectly right. Q. If it was in danger of being destroyed? A. Everybody appeared to be excited, and they had lost their heads, so that you couldn't get them to do anything. There were some passenger and freight cars, and a lot of cars loaded with live stock standing on one track, and nobody appeared to know what to do with them. People came to me and asked what to do, from even the dispatcher himself--he looked to me. Q. But after you had refused to work, had you any right to interfere with that property? A. We didn't interfere with the property. Q. Had you any right to do anything with it? A. If we were asked to do it we had. Q. Had you any right to interfere with that property in any way? A. Yes. Q. You understand what I mean by my question? Do you not think it was your duty, after having refused to work, to leave the premises entirely and go away? A. That depends on circumstances. Q. But if you were working for a man and stopped work, or he turned you off, have you any right to remain around? A. That depends a great deal on whether he wants me around or not. Q. But have you any right to interfere with his property in any way, under any circumstances? A. I would think I was a very foolish man. If my property was in danger I would like him to come and lend a hand. Q. I didn't ask any question about the property being in danger? A. We didn't interfere with the property in any way or manner. By Mr. Means: Q. Had the commander of the military refused an interview with you, or the party you represent, what would have been the consequences--what was your determination? A. I don't know as we figured that far ahead. Q. But you must have had some plan, sir? A. I didn't happen to meet him, therefore, I cannot tell you. Q. I want to know what was your determination? A. That is something nobody knows. Q. I insist upon an answer? A. It is a question I cannot answer. Q. This is the question. Had the commander of the military refused to have an interview with you or the party you represent, what was your determination--what did you intend to do? A. That would have depended greatly on circumstances. I don't know what we would have done. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you intend to resist the militia? A. If you or any other man or the militia had raised a gun to shoot me, I undoubtedly would have resisted. Q. But answer yes or no, then explain after answering the question? A. What is the question? Q. Did you intend to resist the militia had they attempted to disperse the crowd? A. I will have to answer the question yes and no. If they had come with the requisite authority from the Governor of the State and ordered us to disperse, undoubtedly we would have obeyed them. If they had authority from the Governor of the State, I, for one, would have walked away. Q. But suppose they had authority from General Latta? A. I didn't recognize him. Q. You didn't recognize him? A. I didn't at that time. Q. Certainly you couldn't have been a law-abiding citizen if you didn't? A. I didn't at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Then you intended to use your own judgment as to whether the militia were there lawfully or unlawfully? A. I look upon General Huidekoper as a gentleman, and don't think he would lie. Q. Suppose he had said he was there on authority from the Governor? A. I told you I would have gone off the premises and walked away. If he had told me it was none of my business, I would have told him I would make it my business. If he had told me he was there by authority of some railroad official, I would have told him that the best thing he could do for his own and for our sake, would be to take the back track, and go away. Q. Did you see the daily papers of that week? A. No; I don't believe I did. Q. Did you see a published proclamation of the Governor's? A. I don't believe I did. Q. Did you know a proclamation had been issued? A. I had heard of it. Q. Commanding all citizens to disperse? A. I had heard of it, but I didn't read it. By Mr. Means: Q. Then you and your party were to be the judges, whether or not General Latta had authority or not? A. We were open to conviction. We thought we were endowed with a little common sense. Q. I don't doubt it for a moment--not at all. But you were to be the judges whether General Latta had authority or not? A. The way I came to get under that impression--an attorney, the first day of the strike, who was around there when this question came up about the Governor being out of the State, said that the troops or military could not be ordered out, because the Governor was not here. Q. Give us his name? A. I cannot give it. Q. I insist upon it? A. I refuse to answer the question. Q. If the committee insists upon an answer you certainly will have to answer, because you have sworn to tell the truth? A. Well, I well give the committee the names of any of these parties in confidence, but I don't care about telling their names to the world. I am perfectly willing to give them to the committee in confidence. I don't want to keep anything back, but I don't want to tell tales on anybody else. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did your association have an attorney employed--the Trainmen's Union? A. Two or three were around there, sort of acting as though they were employed, but we never knew who employed them. Q. Did you consult with them? A. No; they came there and gave us advice. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Gratuitously? A. That is about it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were they ever paid any fees? A. Not that I know of. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they practicing attorneys at the bar? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You continued to keep up the strike there, and hold possession of the railroad property, until the arrival of the Governor of the State, did you not? A. I believe we were on the premises when the Governor arrived. Q. And had possession of the property of the railroad? A. I don't know. The property was all lying there. No one was holding it? Q. But didn't you guard it. Didn't you exercise care of it, and didn't you afterwards deliver it over to the railroad officials? A. Yes; we told them that we wouldn't have anything more to do with it, that they must get somebody else to watch it. Q. Who did you deliver it to? A. A man I did not recognize came down and took possession for Mayor Phillips or his police. Q. You surrendered the property to him? A. No, sir; I did not, but to the officers of the road. Q. What day was that? A. That was the evening the Governor came in. Q. The evening the Governor arrived? A. Yes. Q. Did you have any interview with the Governor on his arrival? A. Yes. Q. Tell us what that was? A. I had a little talk with him and passed the compliments of the day, and asked him to come out and say a few words to the boys, and he came out on the back platform and said something to them. We then passed on to the round-house, where there was a crowd of some five or six hundred, and he spoke a few words to them, and then went on to the city of Allegheny, where the citizens met him with a carriage and took him to Pittsburgh, by the suspension bridge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you telegraph to him? A. I did. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the nature of those telegrams? A. Some of them are part of history. I telegraphed along the line not to interfere with the train he was on, so as not to get him angry with us, and I telegraphed him guaranteeing him a safe passage to Allegheny city. Q. You had the power to give him a safe passage through? A. My name was good enough at that time. Q. Over the length of the Fort Wayne and Chicago road? A. Yes. Q. You controlled the road at that time? A. It appeared that they were not going to recognize any man's orders but mine. By Senator Reyburn: Q. But they got obstreperous at last on your hands? A. Towards the last. Q. Didn't you go to a meeting with some citizens to a hall? A. Yes. Q. And there they thought you were taking too much authority on you? A. They thought I was going back on them. At least a scab did. He supposed I was misrepresenting things at that time. At least I think so now. They were starving, and wanted coal, and I ordered a provision train and a coal train out, and one fellow wanted to kill me right off. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. So they struck on you? A. Yes; this was the following Thursday. I had not been down from the Tuesday night when the Governor arrived until this afternoon of Thursday. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What means did you take to enforce your orders after they struck on you? A. They did not strike on me. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Didn't they refuse to obey your orders? A. I had ceased to exist at that time. That was on the Tuesday night, and this meeting was on Thursday afternoon. Because I would not come up, I suppose they felt sick and sore, and thought I was trying to sell them out. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Those citizens you talked about who offered you arms, were not those men the ones who went with you to the meeting? A. Neither one of them was there. Q. Didn't they ask you to protect this property, and after a conversation with you, didn't you agree to go with them to this meeting and talk to the rioters? A. There were no rioters on the Fort Wayne road. Q. Or the strikers? A. Yes. Q. Didn't you promise them to keep order, and in consideration of that didn't they agree to give you the arms to keep off the mob in case any party came to burn the town? A. No, sir; this was on the Thursday after the fire. I was at no meeting from the 27th day of June until this Thursday. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was there no understanding between you and the strikers on the Pennsylvania road during this time, after you got back to Allegheny City and took charge of things--were you acting in concert in preventing trains from going out? A. I don't know that anything particular of that kind was agreed upon. Of course we talked over things of that kind. Q. But you had communications with the parties who were striking on the Pennsylvania road? A. Yes; men were going back and forth all the time. Q. Was there anybody over there that had control of the strike there or who was looked up to as a leader or recognized as such? A. There were some three or four of them. The man supposed to be the leader showed the white feather. Q. Who was that? A. Samuel Muckle, the president of the Pan Handle division. Q. He was supposed to be the leader in the start? A. Yes. Q. Who was their leader after he showed the white feather? A. I don't know, but I think Hice. He was at Torrens station. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How did he show the white feather? A. He was a man who didn't live up to what he said he would do. Q. In what respect? A. He didn't live up to what he said he would do at the meeting. Q. What did he agree to do in the first place? A. He agreed to stand by the boys. Q. What were the boys to do? A. If the boys went out on a strike, Muckle was to stand by them. Q. And prevent the running of trains? A. The understanding was that every man was to quit work and go away, but not to prevent the running of trains. Muckle was discharged, and he tried to get a job in the employ of the road. His object in getting the men to strike was to get them out and then come in and scab it. Q. That is, come in and offer his services to the railroad? A. Yes. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. But were communications going on between you and the leaders of the Pennsylvania road--the leaders of the strike? Was there any concerted movement or action between you? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Give us a definition of your idea of a strike. What is generally understood by railroad men, or what did the Trainmen's Union understand by a strike? A. So far as the Trainmen's Union was concerned, we considered by a strike that every man on the three grand trunk lines should go home when the hour came--just leave his train standing there. Q. You mean refuse to work? A. Yes. Q. Nothing more? A. That was our understanding. Q. But you were not to prevent other men from working? A. We had an understanding if a man was not a union man to coax him off if we could. Q. But if he would not be coaxed? A. Then to leave him stay. We considered that his own conscience would be enough for him. Q. But you were not to try to drive him off? A. No; a man who is a scab has a hard enough time of it. He has a hard time enough of it to make his life unbearable to him. Q. Was any violence used that you know of to prevent trains from running on the Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad? A. No, sir; none was used. I would not have allowed, so far as I was concerned. Q. By what authority did you assume charge of the Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad? A. I think I assumed authority of the Fort Wayne from telegrams I received from Mr. Layng, who is the general manager from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Q. What were those telegrams? A. I was asked to take charge of the trains and engines, and to move them to places of safety. Q. Have you those dispatches? A. I have. Q. Have you them here? A. No. Q. Can you produce them? A. I can, sir. Q. Will you produce them? A. Not in this city. Q. Where will you produce them? A. I will produce them anywhere where I can get them. I asked to have them sent here, but could not get them. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Would this strike on the Fort Wayne and Chicago road have occurred if the strike on the Pennsylvania road had not occurred at that time? A. That is a pretty hard question to answer. Q. From your information--from what you know of the circumstances and the men engaged in it? A. I have not thought over that, and really I cannot give an answer. Q. Do you know whether the men on the Fort Wayne and Chicago road were making any preparations for a strike distinct from any strike upon the Pennsylvania railroad? A. Some of them were and some of them were not. Q. At this particular time that the strike occurred? A. Really, I have never thought the matter over, and I cannot answer that question, because I have not thought it over in that light at all. They may have and they may not. Q. You say that the main cause of the strike on the Pennsylvania road was the running of double-headers? A. That is my impression. Q. The cause of the strike upon the Fort Wayne road at that time was what? A. Several things combined. I think it was the abuse of power by the under officials more than anything else. Q. That and the ten per cent.? A. Yes; that was pretty hard to swallow. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I understood you to say in talking to some citizens you had given some figures as to the wages that could be earned after the ten per cent. reduction. Can you give those figures to the committee now? A. I didn't state the amount that could be earned, but the amount they were paying--brakeman, $1 45. Q. Per day? A. Per trip, that is called a day. By Mr. Englebert: Q. How many hours? A. The shortest run on the road was seven hours and twenty-five minutes. The longest run was eight hours and thirty-five minutes. Firemen the same as brakemen. Conductors, first class, $2 12; second class, $1 89 or $1 91, I forget which. Engineers--I don't remember the classified pay--first class, three dollars and eleven or twelve cents. That had a great deal to do with the strike--the classification--so far as the engineers were concerned. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many days could you average per week? A. The year around, or at that time? Q. At that time? A. I think the month that I was discharged I drew twenty-nine dollars and some cents--I don't know what. By Senator Yutzy: Q. As brakeman? A. Yes. I had an income of forty dollars a month besides that, and it was the only way I could live. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you make all the time? A. I believe I did. I believe I lost only one trip. My impression is I did lose one trip. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was not the amount you could earn governed by the amount of business doing by the road at that time--if the freight shipments were large you all got work? A. We all had work any how. We all came in our turn. Q. But the amount of money you made depended on the amount of the business of the road? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You put in your six days a week--work a week at $1 40? A. I undoubtedly worked six days. Q. Every week? A. Not at that time. We were not averaging six days' work at that time. Q. Were you prior to that time? A. Really I have forgot; but the pay was running very poor. I think the business was good in January and February, March and April, but I think after that time it was very slack. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How many days did you make in any one month? A. In the month of January I made forty-four days. Q. By over work? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did not the officials, when you sent your committee to them, didn't they talk over this matter with you? A. Before the strike? Q. Yes. A. No, sir. Q. Didn't you send a committee down to Philadelphia to see Mr. Scott? A. Of engineers, I believe. We heard what the engineers were doing, and got enough of the engineers. They generally patched things up for themselves. They didn't look after anything else. It was about the time of taking the ten per cent. off. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. What position did you hold in Trainmen's Union? A. I don't know that I held any position. I was appointed to organize the unions, and had unlimited powers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. By whom? A. By what we called--there were members appointed from each division, and they constituted a sort of grand lodge. The division I belonged to was first organized. That is where I got my power from. They sent me right out. It was a Saturday night, and I left Pittsburgh the following Monday, June 4. Q. Who organized the first lodge? A. I was the first man to take an oath. I guess all took a hand in it. Q. Were you president of that lodge? A. There was no president of that lodge at that time. Q. Were you chief of that lodge? A. I suppose I was that night. Q. What did they call the chief of that lodge--what name? A. The grand organizer. Q. Then by delegations from other lodges, you were appointed to organize lodges throughout the country? A. Our lodge gave me authority, and as we formed lodges, they sent in delegations to form a grand lodge, and they confirmed the action of our lodge. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Who paid your expenses going around? A. The boys. Q. As a union or a society, or did the boys contribute what they saw fit? A. All the money I ever got, I got from the union at that time. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. From the lodge? A. Yes; from the treasurer of the lodge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was it an oath-bound association? A. Yes. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you go to Martinsburg, Virginia? A. I was in that neighborhood. Q. Were you at Martinsburg, Virginia? A. I was very near to it. Q. That is not an answer to my question. A. At what time? Q. To organize a lodge there before the strike? A. I did initiate men into the organization called the Trainmen's Union, at Martinsburg. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you organize lodges over the Baltimore and Ohio road? A. Yes. By Mr. Means: Q. Was it understood by your lodges that this strike was to commence at Martinsburg? A. No, sir. Q. Did you know, before the strike commenced at Martinsburg, Virginia, that it was going to take place? A. No; of course I heard all that talk. They talked most loud at Martinsburg, but I thought it was all wind. I didn't think they would strike at all. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When you were telegraphed at Oil City, were you there for the purpose of organizing lodges? A. It was Parker City. Q. Were you there for the purpose of organizing lodges? A. At that time? Q. Yes? A. I went up there to get work. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long had you been railroading? A. About eleven months altogether. Q. What had been your business before that? A. I was in the hotel business. Q. Where? A. At Collinwood, eight miles from Cleveland. Q. Were you proprietor of the hotel? A. Yes. Q. For how long? A. One year and nine months. Q. What was your business before that? A. I was in the insurance business. Q. Where? A. At Pittsburgh. Q. Is that your home? A. Yes; it is my native place. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you working for your father or for yourself in the insurance business? A. I represented four Chicago companies for myself. Q. When you returned from the oil country, you say you met some railroad men who belonged to the Baltimore and Ohio railroad? A. Of the Connellsville division. Q. Where did you meet them? A. Around the Union depot. Q. How many of them did you meet there? A. I remember three engineers who were there. Q. Any other trainmen? A. O, yes. Q. Of the Baltimore and Ohio road? A. These three engineers are all I can remember. Q. Were they the ones who telegraphed to you to come to Pittsburgh? A. No. Q. Where did those men belong to--the Baltimore and Ohio or the Pennsylvania Central? Who telegraphed you? A. To neither road. Q. Of what road were they employés? A. Of the Fort Wayne road. By Mr. Dewees: Q. How many miles of railroad had this trouble? A. I never figured it up. A good many miles. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You had a signal to stop trains? A. You can stop any train if you have the signal. Q. But did not your organization have a particular signal by which you could stop the trains? A. The Trainmen's Union? Q. Yes? A. Before the strike? Q. Yes? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Different from the ordinary signal? A. I don't comprehend the question exactly. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was not there an understood signal among the trainmen by which, if an engineer of a train undertook to run it, they would throw him this signal, and he would stop the train and get off? By Senator Yutzy: Q. Some peculiar signal? A. No; I saw lots of engineers that wanted the boys to do that. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You say then that there was no signal? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What was this signal that was used on the Pennsylvania railroad to stop trains? Was it any peculiar signal among the strikers different from other signals? A. I have heard of it, but I can't speak from my own knowledge. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What did you hear? A. While in jail, McAllister told me that an engineer came to him and said, "McAllister, when we come to pull out from the round-house, you just jump up on the engine and say there is some danger--you put up your hand." McAllister is an innocent sort of a fellow, and he did just as the engineer told him, and he was convicted and sentenced to six months in the work-house. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did the engineer get off when McAllister told him he couldn't go down to Twenty-eighth street? A. He run the engine back into the house. Q. Who was the engineer? A. I don't remember his name. Q. Did you ever hear that a signal was agreed upon? A. I have heard so many stories about that, I did not pay any attention to them. Q. Was there any class of men coöperating with your party, beside your party? A. The mill men and the glass-house men. Q. They all seemed to be in sympathy with the strikers? A. Yes; they came across to the boys. Q. They came voluntarily, did they? A. Yes. Q. And entered into the strike like the railroad men? A. Yes. Q. And took hold and assisted you? A. Yes. Q. Was there another class of men--tramps or strangers--who came there from a distance? A. They crowded into Allegheny City, but we used to railroad them out of the town. Q. You did not care to have the assistance of that class of men? A. No. Q. Were there any men who came from other roads and assisted you there? A. Yes; we had men from other roads--the Baltimore and Ohio, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. Q. How many men came from the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern? A. Oh, two or three men. Q. What did they say their business was? A. That they came from such and such a road, and had a strike, and just come to see how we fellows were doing it. Q. What business did they have to travel up to Allegheny City? A. It was not very far. Q. Was there any agreement or understanding between you strikers and the men who came from distant places, that they should concentrate at Allegheny City or at Pittsburgh? A. There was some talk about that. Q. Why did they want to come to that place? A. Oh, not to Pittsburgh, just exactly. Q. But that was considered to be the head-quarters of the strike? A. Yes. Q. And the principal strike or trouble would be there? A. That is about what they thought. It was talked over in the Trainmen's Union. Q. If the understanding among the strikers was that they were merely to leave their work and go home--to leave their trains--why was there an understanding to congregate at Pittsburgh? A. I didn't say that. It was one of the things that was talked over, but nothing was decided on definitely. If we had struck on the 27th of June, there never would have been any trouble at all. Q. Would the men have come from the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern to Pittsburgh, if a strike had taken place on the 27th of June? Was there any understanding, that if a strike took place then, that men from different points would collect at some one point? A. There was some talk about it, but nothing of the kind was decided on definitely. It was all talked over. Q. Then the men that came without any understanding? A. They just wanted to see how things were going. Q. Were they discharged men, principally, that came from the other roads? A. No. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know anything about that boat load of men that came down the Monongahela river? A. No. Q. Was there any understanding that that boat load should come? A. Not that I know of. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did any other citizens, except the two men you have mentioned--citizens of Pittsburgh or Allegheny City--talk with you or offer to aid you in any way? A. Lots of the citizens were around there in the crowd, and they gave arms to the boys, and encouragement. For instance, one man would have his shot gun, and he brought it, and one man had a rifle, and he brought it out and gave it to the boys, and some had revolvers, and they brought them out. Q. And arms were given to the strikers in that way, by the citizens? A. Yes. Q. Was ammunition given to you in the same way? A. Yes. Q. What class of citizens were they who gave the arms and the ammunition? A. They looked as respectable as Mr. Lindsey. Q. Were they laboring men, or were they professional men? A. They looked like professional men. Q. Were any business men among them? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. When was this? A. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Q. Did they furnish arms and ammunition on Sunday? A. Yes. Q. Was there any other encouragement given to the strikers by the citizens, except what you have mentioned--the giving of the arms? A. They furnished us food. Q. Was this food given to you because you were protecting the property, or was it given to you because you were strikers? A. Well, we were strikers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were arms furnished you for the purpose of resisting the authorities, either the civil or the military, or for the purpose of protecting the railroad property and other property? A. We were not resisting any authorities at all. We had the arms to keep off the mob. We did not take the arms to fight anybody that had authority over us. Q. What did you take the arms for? A. To keep off the mob, or the tramps, or anybody else that wanted to interfere with us. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was that what the citizens gave you the arms for? A. I didn't ask them what they gave us the arms for. Q. What did they say they gave you the arms for? A. Some of them said this, and some of them said the other thing. Q. State what any one citizen said on the one side, and then on the other? A. Some of them said, "Shoot the damned soldiers when they come," and some of them said, "If anybody interferes with you, or tries to wrong you, kill them right here"--talk of that kind. "You are out on a strike now, and have got the railroad company where you want it, and you are damned fools if you don't keep them there." Q. Were similar remarks to those made by any of the persons who furnished you arms and ammunition? A. I cannot say that, because I would only hear some of them talk as I mingled with the crowd. I would turn around and look at them, and then pass on. Of course, everybody was excited--everybody had lost their brains--everybody was wild, and people did not know what they were doing. Q. Was anything said, prior to this strike, by the citizens about furnishing you arms? A. No; I didn't hear anything of the kind prior to the strike. Q. Did anybody offer to furnish you flour or articles to live on during the strike? A. Yes. Q. To what extent? A. Enough to keep us until the strike was over. Q. Were there any business men who offered to do that? A. They were all business men. Q. Flour dealers? A. Yes; and grocery men. Q. Wholesale dealers? A. Men we were dealing with on the road offered to keep us all the time we were on the strike. Q. Offered to keep you all the time you were out on the strike? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did Mr. Jenkins offer to furnish flour to the strikers? A. I have heard it so stated, but I cannot say so from my own knowledge. I don't believe he did. I don't believe he is that kind of a man. Q. Did any other offer to furnish any? A. No one except our grocery men--the men we were dealing with--they encouraged us. They knew their money depended on us. Q. From your intercourse with the citizens, was it your understanding that you, as strikers, had the sympathy of the community? A. Undoubtedly we did, sir. Q. What led you to understand that you had their sympathy? A. By their actions. Q. But what else? A. The way we would hear them talk in their daily conversation; but I think if the strikers had turned in when the mob commenced burning the property, and if the citizens had just turned in with them--and I know if I had been in Pittsburgh, I would have died or I would have stopped that mob--at any rate, I would have attempted it, and I think I would have had enough citizens to help me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean help you to prevent the destruction of the property? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The sympathy you spoke of--was it general? A. We appeared to have the sympathy of the whole community. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you have the sympathy of the citizens while destroying the property of the railroad, or while burning it? A. I think if we didn't have it, I think that they, the citizens, must have acted very funny. I didn't stop to ask them. Q. Did you have the sympathy of the citizens in the destruction of the railroad property? A. I don't think that they cared very much for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, even if it was burned up. They just stood around, and said it was none of their business. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you over at the fire during Sunday? A. No, sir; I kept decently away. Q. Then how do you know that they stood around there? A. I lived in a high house, and I noticed lots of people up on the hill. I had a spy-glass. Q. You say that you, as strikers, had the sympathy of the citizens. Was there any antipathy on the part of the citizens against the railroad company? A. So far as I was able to judge, I don't think the citizens of Pittsburgh ever had any high opinion of the Pennsylvania Company. Q. Why? A. On account of the freight discriminations, &c. I have heard business men say repeatedly that their business had gone away from them--that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company drove that away from them, and the newspapers have been crying the Pennsylvania Company down for years. Q. Was that what encouraged the railroad employés to strike? A. No. We thought that our cause was a just one, and that any one with any sense would be in sympathy with us. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Were there any citizens who condemned the strikers--any of them who ever said a word in rebuke of the strikers at any time? A. After the fire; yes. Q. But prior to the fire? A. No. I never heard any one say anything of the kind before. Q. But none of the officials of Allegheny condemned the action of the strikers? A. At what time? Q. At any time prior to that Sunday? A. I never saw any of the officials, except Mayor Phillips one time when I spoke to him. He said if we wanted to strike we had a perfect right to strike. Q. But he made a speech? A. Yes. Q. Didn't he tell the crowd to disperse and let the railroad property alone? A. Not that I remember. Q. What was the tenor of his speech? A. My recollection of it is, he said if the men were determined to strike, all right, that they had a perfect right; but as chief magistrate of the city he would ask them not to interfere with any one that wanted to work. Q. Didn't he also say that you must not interfere with the railroad property? A. That is my recollection of it--that we must not interfere with anybody that wanted to work. Q. Don't you remember that he said anything about the railroad property? A. I have no recollection about his using the word property. Q. Did he tell them that they must keep the peace? A. Oh, yes. Q. That he was there for the purpose of seeing that the peace was kept? A. Yes. Q. And you told him that you would keep the peace? A. Yes; and he must have had some respect for our words, because he withdrew his police. Q. You had no trouble during the whole disturbance? A. No, sir. Q. There was no interfering with the men that wanted to work? A. No; I said distinctly that--in the presence of the mayor--that if they had scabs enough to work the trains they could do it. Q. Do you know of any railroad men at the time of the disturbance, who were ready to go out on the trains? A. I didn't see a man. Every man I saw said he would not work. * * * * * A. J. Cassatt, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence, and official connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. A. I reside in Philadelphia, and am the third vice president. Q. Just give us a statement, as to where you were when the first disturbance occurred at Pittsburgh, on the Pennsylvania Central railroad, and what came under your observation thereafter. A. I was in the office on Thursday--in the office of the company--about two o'clock, when I got a dispatch from Mr. Gardner, at Altoona, addressed to Mr. Frank Thompson, at Philadelphia, which was brought into me, on account of Mr. Thompson's absence in New York, stating that a strike had taken place that morning at Pittsburgh, among the firemen and brakemen, and that no trains had gone out that morning. I telegraphed to Pittsburgh, to get extra conductors and engineers, to take the place of those who had gone out, and I thought it would be over very soon. I went up to the country where I lived, and I didn't hear anything further until evening. On coming to the West Philadelphia office, I then heard that no trains had moved up to that time, and I thought that my duty ought to be there, and I got on a train and went to Pittsburgh. Q. What time did you arrive there? A. On Friday morning. When I got to Pittsburgh, I found that Sheriff Fife had called upon the State authorities, and that three regiments were getting under arms then. Q. State now, what the civil authorities were doing at that time, and whether you had any interview with the mayor of the city, and if so, what the end of it was, or whether you tried to have an interview? A. I was told when I got there, that Sheriff Fife had gone out to the mob, and had undertaken to disperse them with some deputy sheriffs who were sworn in, but that they hooted at him, and it had no effect at all. I was told that the city had no police force on in the day time, or only a few men. I saw Mr. Stewart, who was formerly connected with the company, and asked him to go and see Mayor McCarthy, and ask him to put on some of the discharged men, and gather a posse, and send them down to disperse the crowd, and get back the property. But Mr. Stewart came back in a short time, and said that the mayor would not listen to it. So I gave up the attempt to have a further communication with the mayor, and wait for the State to take its course. Q. Who is Mr. Stewart? A. He was formerly our freight agent at Pittsburgh, and he is very well known there. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What is his first name? A. David Stewart. What passed between the mayor and Stewart I heard from Mr. Stewart himself. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you request the mayor to come to the Union depot, or request an interview with him? A. No; Mr. Stewart was simply to ask him to swear those people in; and upon the mayor's refusing to do so, he came back and reported to me, and told me at the same time that McCarthy, the mayor, had declined. Q. What time did Mr. Stewart return to you? A. About noon, on Friday. Q. Did you meet Sheriff Fife on your arrival there? A. I saw Sheriff Fife and exchanged a few words with him, because I learned from Mr. Pitcairn and Mr. Watt what powers he had assumed. Q. Did you see General Brinton during the day on Friday? A. He came on Saturday. Q. I mean General Pearson. A. I did. Q. And learned what steps had been taken by the State officials? A. He told me what he had done. He sent Colonel Guthrie's regiment--and, indeed, I saw them when they were out--to East Liberty, and expected to go down with two other regiments and open the road. That attempt afterwards was abandoned, because they thought the force was not sufficient to disperse the crowd who were assembled there. They thought it best to wait until they could get a larger force, when they thought they could overawe the crowd, without coming to actual hostilities. Q. Was any attempt made to move any trains from that time up to four o'clock Saturday afternoon? A. No, sir; no freight trains. Our men declined to go out. The engineers and conductors said they were afraid that the road was blocked with the crowd. Q. And until the arrival of General Brinton, with his force, no attempt was made? A. No; in fact, no attempt was made then. Q. Had you no communication with the citizens of Pittsburgh after your arrival? A. Not as a body. I saw a number of the citizens. I think Mr. Park and Mr. Thaw, and Mr. James Park, junior. I think I saw him on that day, but I don't remember the citizens--quite a number. Q. During the day Friday and Saturday, state whether the police officers made any attempt to disperse the crowd that were assembled about the railroad? A. Not to my knowledge? Q. Had you crews that were willing to go out in case they could get out without any disturbance? A. We had a number of crews to go out after the road was opened. Q. On Saturday had you the crews? A. Yes. On Saturday 1 walked down with the troops as far as the round-house and went into the round-house myself, and saw a number of engineers that said they would take their trains out as soon as the road was open. We might have got up about a half dozen crews if the road was opened, and if they could go in safety. We had the engines all fired up and backed out, and ready to start at fifteen minutes' notice. Q. Were the engineers and the firemen at their posts at the time the troops arrived? A. We had men at the round-house--engineers and firemen and conductors and brakemen, ready to take the trains out, and we were going to send out double-headers, too. Q. How many crews had you ready then? A. They reported twelve or fourteen crews--enough to take out that many trains. I saw a number of men in the round-house, and talked to them, and they said they would go if they had protection. Q. Were you at Twenty-eighth street when the collision occurred with the troops? A. No, sir. I went down with the troops as far as the western round-house, and went in there with the plan of starting the trains at once, as soon as the tracks were cleared. I went into the round-house and made arrangements to start, when the foreman of the machine shop came to me, and said a riot was going on outside, and I got on the roof and witnessed the collision between the troops and the people. A great number of stones were thrown and shots were fired by the crowd, and then I saw the troops fire in return. Q. After the troops fired on the crowd, the crowd ran, and the tracks were cleared for a time? A. Yes. Q. At that time were your crews ready to go out, during the time the tracks were cleared? A. They were. I can state that the only part of the track that was clear was on Twenty-eighth street. The crowd lined the road above Twenty-eighth street, and there was a crowd at East Liberty. Q. Was that the reason why the trains did not start? A. Yes; the men did not think it would be safe to go. The crowd dispersed, and while I was on the roof I got a message from General Pearson--for he was in Mr. Pitcairn's office, three or four hundred feet from where I was--and that he wanted to see me, and I went there, and General Brinton came in at the same time, and I was present when the discussion took place between the two gentlemen as to the proper course to pursue. By Senator Yutzy: Q. After the firing? A. Yes; General Brinton said that he was not satisfied with the orders he had; that his orders were to go down and take possession of the property, but that none had been received about firing on the mob, and that he could not order his men to do it, and he wanted orders to disperse the mob, as it was re-assembling, and drive it away and make an end of it; or he wanted orders to get his command into a different position; that they were hemmed in between the shops and the hill, and were very much exposed to a fire of stones and a fire from the mob, and he did not think the place tenable, unless he got orders to attack and drive away the mob. General Pearson hesitated quite a while, and finally, after five minutes' discussion, or more, he said he did not think it his duty to attack the mob with that small force. He had no doubt that General Brinton could drive off and disperse the crowd, but there would be a great loss of life, and he thought the best thing was to retire the troops and wait for reinforcements, and then overawe the crowd and prevent bloodshed. I did not take any part in the discussion. I think that General Pearson asked me one or two questions, and I said that I was not a military man; that all I wanted was to get possession of the property again. I went afterwards to the Union depot. Q. And did you remain at the Union depot all night? A. To one o'clock, and then went to the Monongahela House. Q. Were you there when General Pearson came in from the round-house? A. I was. Q. Did you hear what was said by General Pearson to General Latta? A. No; I came into General Latta's room about seven o'clock that evening. My room was on the same floor. I saw General Pearson sitting down there, and he said he had come down to communicate with General Latta. I made some remark about his getting there--how he got there, and he said he had come along the tracks and among the cars, and was not recognized. I went away, and when I came in afterwards he had gone. I was not a witness of anything that passed between the two gentlemen. Q. Do you know where General Pearson was during the firing between the troops and the people? A. I believe he was in Mr. Pitcairn's office. I was so told that he was in the office at the time--by the clerks. Q. Do you remember how General Pearson was dressed when the troops went out to Twenty-eighth street? A. He was in a sort of undress uniform--light pantaloons and ordinary fatigue coat--a military coat. He was not in full uniform. Q. In fatigue uniform? A. Yes; a blue military sack coat, and, I think, light or white pantaloons. Q. Did he have his sword? A. No; I think he had a little cane in his hand. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When he went out? A. When he went down with the troops. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How was he when he returned? A. In the same way, except that he had his coat on his arms. He was in his shirt sleeves. It was a very hot evening--a close evening. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he wear his belt? A. I think not; but I am not positive about that. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you observe a belt he had on--a very fine belt? A. No: he may have had it on, but I don't recollect it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In the conversation that you had with James Park, junior, do you remember which day it was--whether it was Friday or Saturday? A. I think it must have been on Saturday--I think it was. Q. Can you state the nature of the conversation? A. Mr. Park, I think, was arguing against the propriety of sending the troops down, and said that the mob was a very violent one, and there were very large numbers of them, and that we ought to have eight or ten thousand troops to disperse them, and he thought that the troops ought not to go down. I replied in substance that was not my business. That I was to open the roads as soon as the tracks were cleared, and I supposed that General Brinton had his orders, and would obey them. Q. Did he suggest that it was a bad time to undertake to open the road that afternoon? A. I think he did, but I gave him to understand clearly that I had no control over the matter; that I was only anxious to get the road open. He wanted me to suggest to the State authorities, or to ask them not to go down with the troops that day, or until we got reinforcements, and other suggestions were made by some other gentlemen--by Mr. Thaw--but I declined to have anything to do with them. In fact, Mr. Thaw had written out a note urging that the troops should not be taken down. I said I didn't think it was our business; that we were in the hands of the State, and that they ought to decide. Mr. John Scott, the solicitor of the Pennsylvania Company, came into the office while the discussion was going on, and said I was right, and Mr. Thaw then tore up the note; but he then made a strong appeal to me, personally, not to have the troops sent down; but I had made up my mind not to interfere in any way with the State officials, and I did not. I took the position that we were in their hands, and it was their problem to work out. Q. Did General Pearson talk to you about the propriety of undertaking to open the road Saturday afternoon? A. There was no discussion about it. It was taken as a matter of course that the troops would be down there. On Friday it was talked about, but on Saturday, when the Philadelphia troops arrived, there was no discussion about it. It was understood that they were to move down there at once. By Senator Reyburn: Q. At the time of this conversation between General Brinton and General Pearson in the office, did you hear General Brinton ask for permission to attack the mob? A. I don't know whether it was put in that form, but he said he had force enough to disperse the mob and to keep them away, and wanted positive orders to attack them. My recollection is, he objected to the form of the orders he had--it throwed the responsibility. He said I have got force enough, and my men are ready to obey orders. I have got force enough to disperse the mob if I have orders to do so. He stated to General Pearson, when he came in, that he had not given the orders to fire, nor had any of his officers, but that the troops had fired in self defense, which I think I can justify myself, as I saw the stones and the pistol shots fired at them before they turned and fired; and, indeed, the way in which the fire was returned led me to believe that it was not upon an order. It was scattering at first, but then became general. Q. At the distance you were off, what led you to believe that no order was given to fire? A. I was about one hundred and fifty yards, or perhaps a little less than that away, and I don't suppose the troops could have heard a command, if given, as there was such a shouting and yelling. The crowd was very large, and they all seemed to be shouting and hallooing. There was quite a shower of stones before the firing commenced, and when it did commence it was scattering, but then became quite general. It lasted a minute or two minutes, and I could see the officers trying to stop the firing, after it commenced. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You remained at the Union depot until one o'clock? A. Until one o'clock, Sunday morning. Q. Did you learn that the mob had commenced firing at that time? A. Yes; we saw the fire at that time. I left the depot in the first place pretty thoroughly worn out, and then it was urged that there was an ill feeling against Mr. Pitcairn, and General Pearson, and myself, and they thought it might endanger the building if I remained there, so I went up to the Monongahela house, and spent the night there. Q. Did you have an interview with either General Latta or General Pearson, in regard to preventing the mob from firing the property? A. General Pearson had left at that time, and General Latta had no force at all. There was a mile of space between the depot and the round-house, where the troops were, and there was a crowd of people all along that distance. Q. Had General Pearson his coat off when he came in? A. Yes; it was a surprise to me that General Pearson could get out at the time he did. He must have been disguised. He had his coat on his arm. He must have got in among the cars. Q. Were you on the ground, anywhere in the vicinity, on Sunday? A. I was at the Monongahela house until eleven or twelve o'clock on Sunday. I then went over the Point bridge, and took that road because there was no crowd there, in company with Mr. Bennett, who drove me over. We went to Mr. Layng's office, and afterwards came back to the Monongahela house, and stayed there until two or three o'clock, and I then went to Allegheny City, and stayed there until eight o'clock, trying to get provisions to General Brinton. I succeeded in getting two wagon loads off, about eight o'clock in the evening. Q. Had you or any of the officials of the road been able to ascertain whether there was any arrangement for a strike of the employés of the road? A. We had heard that the men had organized the Trainmen's Union, as they call it, and that a strike was threatened; but on looking at the thing as carefully as we could, we came to the opinion, or we did not believe, that any strike would take place, and we were rather surprised when the strike did take place. We never had any delegations from the men or any committees come to see us. Q. Were there any complaints from the men after the issuing of the order reducing the wages ten per cent.? A. There was no formal complaints. A committee of engineers came to see Mr. Scott, and after the interview with him, they asked him to put his statement in writing--what he said to them--the necessity for the reduction and the disposition of the company to restore the wages when the business of the company revived; which he did. In reply, they wrote a letter acquiescing in the reduction, because the company believed it was a necessity, and that they would accept it as cheerfully as they could. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What time was that? A. Shortly after the reduction took effect or after it was announced--a couple of weeks before the strike. We never had any communication from any brakemen or firemen or any one respecting that. This running of double-headers, to which they objected, had been practiced on the Pittsburgh division for a number of years, but not to the same extent. Many of the coal trains were running with two engines, and, as a matter of economy, it was decided to run all through trains with two engines. On other portions of the road, we ran fifty or sixty cars to a train, but at that end, we only ran seventeen cars with one engine, and in increasing the numbers of cars, we reduced the number of train hands, and saved expenses; and in order to do this, we decided double-headers. Some of the men objected to that. That may have been a pretext for the strike, but the men were not working any more hours. Q. Did the issuing of the order running double-headers necessarily discharge any men? A. It reduced the force of brakeman. Q. And of engineers? A. Not of engineers or firemen. Q. Conductors? A. Conductors also. Q. And brakemen? A. Yes; the men at that time were making short time, because business was slack. They were not making more than three, four, or five days a week--five trips, and the monthly wages were small. We had discharged a good many men--twenty-five or thirty per cent. of the men, but the remainder, of course, would have made better wages, and we paid by the trip only. Q. How did the business of your company compare with the business done by the company for the three months preceding that time? A. It was much lighter. The business fluctuated a good deal. There is sometimes a market for grain, in Europe for instance, when the shipments are large, and then again the shipments slack off. That very day I got a message from Mr. McCullough, the vice president of the western lines, stating that there was a brisk demand for cars, and asking me to send cars. If they had only waited a couple of weeks, they could all have had enough to do. Q. How did the business compare with the amount of business done at the same time in the previous year? A. We very often have periods of light business, quite as light as that--very often--that last a few weeks or a month or two. Q. Was that what induced the company to reduce the wages--the falling off of business? A. No; because we did not anticipate that falling off of business. In fact, the tonnage that year showed an increase, but on account of the low prices at which the business had to be hauled, we are forced to cut down expenses or else break. Q. Freights were lower than they had been? A. Yes; they had been decreasing for a number of years. We had to do the work cheaper. Q. Was that in relation to through and local freights, both? A. Yes; everything. Our local business was formerly the much larger portion of our trade, and the rates at which they were done were lower than they had been. Q. Did that ten per cent. reduction apply to all the officers and employés of the road? A. Yes; to all the officers and employés of the road, from the president down. Q. Did it apply to the Pennsylvania Central Railroad and all its branches? A. Yes; the order was given simultaneously to reduce on all the lines east and west of Pittsburgh. It was the second reduction made since the panic of 1873. Our board thought that the shrinkage or rather the reduction in the wages of that class of labor had been much greater than nineteen per cent., and that our men ought to be able to stand that. Q. When was the first reduction made? A. In the fall of 1873. Q. What was the amount of that? A. Ten per cent.; and then this reduction of ten per cent. made an aggregate reduction of nineteen per cent. on the original pay of 1873. Nearly every other class of labor had come down more than that. Q. It was the only reduction made since 1873? A. Yes. Q. Were any of the employés of the road getting less than a dollar a day? A. None of the train men were. I think that some of the apprentices in the shops were--the boys--and my impression is that they and the laboring men on the track were getting ten cents an hour, or a dollar a day. When the last reduction was made it didn't apply to the men getting a dollar a day. Q. A dollar a day, or less? A. Yes. Q. Did these men who were working at a dollar a day have an opportunity to put in full time? A. They worked by the day--full time--and the only thing that caused them to lose any time was bad weather, when they could not work. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean the laboring men? A. Yes; laborers about the shops--unskilled labor--on the track. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know anything about citizens going to Mayor McCarthy and asking him to swear in police officers to maintain peace in the city of Pittsburgh? A. I don't know. All I know is what Mr. Stewart told me--about the mayor's reply to him when he took a message to him, that he would not swear in the policemen who were discharged--we offering to pay the wages. Q. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company offering to pay the wages? A. Yes; I was told he had discharged about a hundred men, and we thought that the hundred men who had been on the force--accustomed to the people--could be better handled. We made the offer to pay them. Q. Did you ever have any strike before? A. I don't remember any strike in the last seventeen or eighteen years on the Pennsylvania road. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Had any differences arisen between the employés and the company at any time? A. Oh, yes; differences have arisen, but none that were not adjusted by compromise. Q. Was there any difference existing between the company and the employés about the time of the strike on the Reading railroad--you remember there was a strike a few months before on the Reading railroad--principally the engineers? A. There was no difference, at that time, that I know of. Q. What is the general policy of your company in such cases--cases of disagreement or dissatisfaction between you and the men? A. We hear the statement of the men, and if we think they have any just ground for complaint, we endeavor to remedy them, and after we have said so and so, we stand by our position. We looked upon this objection of the men to the running of double-headers as an interference with our own business. We thought that if we would let them say how many engines or cars should go to a train, we might as well give up the management into their hands, so we did not have any discussion about it. But we had no formal complaint. No committee waited on us in regard to that. We simply knew that some of the men objected, but from no person had we any complaint in a formal way. We did not think it a thing that affected the men, personally, but thought it simply a question of management. Q. Always, when any difficulty had arisen or any complaint had been made, you had come to an amicable solution? A. It had been the result before. I don't think that any strike on the road has taken place--certainly not since 1860, probably not for two or three years before that. There was a strike of engineers before that which was adjusted by conference. Q. You knew nothing of the action of the sheriff at Pittsburgh, or the proclamation of the Governor, until you arrived at Pittsburgh? A. Nothing. Q. Then you had nothing to do with the proclamation? A. Nothing whatever. I never saw it until it was printed in the papers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. To whom did you first make application for protection to your property? A. I stopped at Greensburg, on my way out, and saw the Lieutenant Governor, supposing that, in the absence of the Governor, he was the proper one to take action, and having been advised, on my way out, that Sheriff Fife had telegraphed him for assistance. I stopped over one train, the trains being run close together, to ascertain what action he was going to take, and I came on the next train to Pittsburgh. Q. Did you ever make any application to the mayor of Pittsburgh or of Allegheny for protection? A. I did not make any personally, but it was done by the officers before I got there. Q. Did you make any direct application to the State authorities for protection? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know who made the application to the State for protection? A. I was informed that Sheriff Fife did. I was informed by telegraph, on the way, on Friday night--early on Friday morning, I think, at Cresson, that Sheriff Fife had called upon the Lieutenant Governor for assistance; that he had not force enough to disperse---- By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were informed by your solicitor, Mr. Scott, what had been done in the way of calling for help on your arrival? A. Yes; I was informed that he had first called upon the sheriff, and that the sheriff had made an attempt to recover possession of the property, and failed, and that the sheriff had made a formal call on the State officials. Q. Did Mr. Scott state that they had called on the mayor before calling on the sheriff? A. I don't recollect that. I don't know. When I got there, on Friday morning, the Governor's proclamation had been issued, and the troops were called out, and the matter was then in the hands of the State. Q. Was any call made by you, or by any other officer of the Pennsylvania railroad, to your knowledge, upon the Governor directly? A. No, sir; none whatever. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any effort made by the strikers, or the railroad employés, to compromise the differences between the railroad company and themselves? A. We heard nothing from them at all up to the time of the strike. On Friday afternoon, a committee, representing the strikers, consisting, I think, of engineers and firemen and brakemen, two or three of them, called on Mr. Pitcairn in person, and presented a written demand, stating that unless these demands are complied with, that they would not run their trains. This committee met Mr. Pitcairn on the platform, and I went out there to hear what they had to say. He handed me this paper, and I read it, and handed it back, and told him to have no further talk with them; that they had demanded such things that we couldn't grant them at all, and it wasn't worth while to discuss the matter. They demanded that their wages should be raised, and that double-headers should not be run; that no more than seventeen cars should be run to a train; that each engineer should have the privilege of selecting his own fireman, and that that the firemen should not be changed without his consent, and a number of other things of the same kind. By Senator Reyburn: Q. They also had up the classification? A. Yes; the classification of engineers was to be abolished, and no man engaged in the strike was to be discharged. In other words, they proposed taking the road out of our hands. Q. What was the classification of engineers? A. It was introduced on our road, on the lines west of Pittsburgh, in 1871 or 1872, I think. The engineers asked for an advance of wages at that time, claiming that they were not being paid as much as other lines were paying--other lines that competed with us. A committee, representing each division of the road, called upon Mr. Scott at that time and asked for an advance, which resulted in the meeting being adjourned to Pittsburgh, where I met them. Mr. Layng and I presented this plan, stating that we were willing to advance the older men, but we couldn't advance the younger men in the service. I think it advanced all men who had been in the service over ten years ten per cent., and made no advance for the others. The understanding was that there should be four classes of men. In the first class, those who had served three years; that they should be in the second class two years; and be in the third class one year; and a man who was promoted from a fireman, should be in the fourth class. We made an advance of ten per cent. in the one class, and the second was ten per cent. below the first, and the third was ten per cent. below the second. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You graded the men according to their time of service and efficiency? A. According to their value to the company. Q. Was that one of the things complained of by the men? A. I didn't know that there was any complaint about that until this committee came on Friday afternoon, and that was one of the things they wanted to abolish--the classification. Q. So that they should be all alike? A. All alike. I doubt very much to-day whether it is the sentiment of the road at all. I don't think that fair and sensible. It is the proper thing to do, but I don't think, however, that had anything to do with the strike, but they thought while they were asking for so many things, they might as well ask for that, too. SCRANTON, _March 29, 1878_. The committee met at the Wyoming house, at six o'clock, P.M. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present except Mr. Dewees. * * * * * R. H. McKune: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where your residence is? A. City of Scranton. Q. Were you mayor of the city in July last. A. Yes, sir. Q. How long had you been mayor previous to that time? A. I took the office of mayor in 1875--20th March. Q. When did your term expire? A. It will expire next Monday, sir. Q. I wish you would just go on Mr. McKune, in your own way, and make a statement of the disturbance that occurred in your city here in July last, giving the date when it commenced? A. Will I commence with it at the commencement of the suspension? Q. I think you had better give us a summary of it right along? A. On Sunday evening, July 22, I think, I received notice, or received information, in regard to the riot at Pittsburg. I at that time was at Ocean Grove. I immediately started for home, taking the train next morning, and reached home Monday evening. I found the citizens here very much excited over a rumor of a strike that was to occur. Q. What day was that? A. On Tuesday. I attempted to get my council together, but found that they were opposed to taking any action for protection in any way, and gave it up. The strike was fixed to occur the next day. On Wednesday, I went to the depot, and was in the office of the superintendent, when a gentleman connected with the strike came in and stated to Mr. Halsted---- Q. The superintendent of what road? A. Delaware, Lackawanna and Western--that the trains could go no further. The superintendent asked me for protection for the train. Q. On the 25th? A. On the 25th; yes, sir. Q. What time of day? A. This was at nine-fifty, sir. It was on the 25th, and this young man said that they would permit the engine and mail car to go through, but none--all the other cars to go, or the coaches--none of the coaches to go. Q. Do you know who that gentleman was? A. Mr. William F. Halsted, the superintendent of the road, will know. I think we will have him. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know yourself? A. No, sir; I do not. He was one of the employés of the road. He was one of the members of the executive committee--one of the executive committee of strikers. Mr. Halsted asked me if we could give him any protection to get the train through. The crowd was dense. I told him no. That my advice was that the engine be taken and run into the yard. I might say right here, in coming through New York, I had had an interview with Moses Taylor and other parties connected with the road, and I gave them to understand that I had no force here of any moment, and, from what I knew, that the Governor was out of the State; that I, probably, could not have any to assist them in getting a train through, and that the best way was not to attempt to push a train through until we could get sufficient force to do so. That was why I advised Mr. Halsted so to do. Mr. Halsted gave orders to have the engine taken and placed in the yard--not in the round-house, but in the yard--refused to permit it to go without it went with the train. Previous to that, I telegraphed in respect to the difficulty to Governor Hartranft, and received this telegram: "The Governor will be here at one o'clock. Let things remain in _statu quo_, and do not precipitate a collision. Signed by C. N. Farr." By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where is it dated? A. Dated Harrisburg. Immediately upon the cars being--upon the engine being taken off--I telegraphed to the Governor stating the fact that the strikers had taken the coaches off. That is, on the 24th instant--the 25th, we have got the dates wrong there--no, the dates must be right, this must be wrong, July 24. I telegraphed to the Governor like this, "The coaches have been taken off the mail train." During the afternoon the Governor's dispatch, after arriving, advising Mr. Halsted to let the mail car go through, which dispatch was sent not only to Mr. Halsted, but to the strikers. Their meeting was in the office immediately opposite to mine, and we then consulted in the evening or immediately, and from what I could gather as to the wishes of the parties--the board of directors concluded not to put the train through. On July 26, everything during the day was quiet. I would say on the 26th, the miners came out--the employés of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, with also the mining company--they came out from their works to hold a meeting at the Round woods--a meeting probably of six or eight thousand. Q. Where are the Round woods? A. The Round woods lie in the Fifth ward--just on the borders of the Fifth ward, and the adjoining township. At this meeting a committee was appointed for the purpose of conferring with Mr. Storrs, asking for an advance of wages, and so on. Q. Who was Mr. Storrs? A. He is general manager of the coal department of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company. This is Thursday. The streets began to be filled at that time with strange faces, faces of which my officers, nor none of the old citizens, nor the foreman of any of the companies could identify as citizens of our city. As I said before, I had asked a member of council, and tried to get my council called together to see what they would do to assist me in regard to the matter, and there was nothing done, and I then called together an advisory committee, consisting of seven of our leading men of the city. I selected gentlemen who were not connected in any way, who were all property holders, and not connected in any way with any of the corporations. That advisory committee met in the morning, at nine o'clock, and at three o'clock in the afternoon. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. On Thursday? A. Yes, sir; and the whole time during the strike. On Thursday the pumps in the mines were vacated--ceased to work--and on the 27th of the month I received a notification from the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, through their president, Sam Sloan, like this: ROBERT H. MCKUNE, _Mayor of the City of Scranton_: You are hereby notified that by reason of strikes and threats and unlawful conduct of disorderly and evil disposed persons, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company apprehend that their property, situated within our city, is in danger of damage and destruction, and that the said company is unable to protect its rights and property, and look to you to use such lawful measures as will prevent its destruction and assure its safety. DELAWARE LACKAWANNA AND WESTERN RAILROAD COMPANY, Per SAM SLOAN, _President_. The same day I also received a notification from Mr. W. W. ----. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was it signed by? A. The railroad company, per "Sam Sloan, president"--not "Samuel," you will notice it is "Sam Sloan." I also received from W. W. Scranton, superintendent, on the same day--W. W. Scranton, general superintendent of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company--a like notification. I should state that on the 26th I had received from Mr. Lathrop, the receiver of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, a like notice. On receiving this notice I immediately placed a few special policemen out, and in consulting with my advisory committee, it was thought best to swear in a number of special policemen from among our citizens, who would be willing to act in case of emergency or outbreak, or the like of that without compensation. Q. Will you tell how many policemen you had in the city at that time? A. I had in the city, at that time, nine--ten regular police for day and night service, and put on eight specials. I had eighteen policemen in a city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants. I run the city now with eleven policemen. By Mr. Means: Q. Will you please state just here, if you had any difficulty in getting men to serve as police officers, that were citizens of this city? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Let him get through with the history. A. In the mean time, I had continued my--I may say that on the 25th, a committee from the railroad employés, a committee from several of the organizations of strikers, waited upon me to ask me to issue a proclamation prohibiting the sale of liquor. I issued the following: MAYOR'S OFFICE, SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, _July 25,1877_. The general public opinion, as expressed to me, seems not to apprehend any violence or danger, unless a too free use of liquor shall be indulged in; and, at the request of committees from the workingmen's organizations and others, who have called upon me this morning, requesting me to close all places where liquor is sold, I, therefore, in compliance with said request, ask of you to close your bars, and to strictly abstain from the selling of all kinds of liquor for the present. R. H. MCKUNE, _Mayor_. I will state that, as a general thing, that request was complied with up to the 27th or 28th; in fact, all of our eating-houses sold no liquor during the whole time of the strike. Immediately upon my advisory committee coinciding with me in regard to my special police--they were afterwards known as vigilants--I placed the matter in the hands of Colonel Hitchcock for organization, and Captain Ripple and Captain Merryman. They immediately commenced their organization of enrollment, and during Thursday, I think, some thirty enrolled themselves. In the meantime, on the 27th, I had from Carney's, near Harrisburg--there seems to be two dates here, one of 27th and the other 28th--the following telegram: ROBERT H. MCKUNE, _Mayor_: Can do nothing for you at this moment. If you have patience for a few days, I hope to be able to relieve you. J. P. HARTRANFT. Q. Dated where? A. That is on the Pennsylvania Central, dated 28th. This was in answer to a telegram to know if I could have troops. He had previously sent me a message like this: "General Osborne and troops have been ordered to aid civil authorities. His attention has been called to your dispatch. His is all the force now at command." I will state that General Osborne has command of forces of the division that belongs here in this section, and my committee were of the opinion that that force would be of no benefit to us. Thus things remained in a comparatively quiet state until the 27th, when I sent the following message to the Governor: "The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company have asked me for aid, to prevent their mines from being flooded, and otherwise destroyed. I am unable to render the assistance required. Can you have sent here a body of United States troops. The militia are in sympathy with the strikers, and, in the opinion of my advisory committee, would be of no avail. The presence of United States troops, in my opinion, would secure the desired purpose, without a conflict." It was in answer to this dispatch that the Governor sends this of the 28th, marked Carney's. On Friday evening was the first evening that I met any portion of my posse, or special police, as they were called; swore in at that time a portion, and again on Saturday they were furnished with arms, which we procured here--Remington rifles, mostly. There were some muskets that had been left by the companies, in the armories of the companies that had gone to rendezvous with General Osborne, which I took possession of, and had them sent to my head-quarters. I had established my head-quarters for the posse at the Lackawanna Coal Company's store, where the arms were all kept, and where men were on duty day and night. Thus matters stood with us until Sunday, when, sending for a committee of the employés that had been appointed at the meeting at the Round woods, and laying the state of the case before them, that a cessation of the pumps in the mines was only going to destroy and injure them; that as far as the company was concerned, they would be but little injured, for they didn't care anything about the coal getting out; that some of our mines were in such a situation that if the lower pumps were drowned out, which they would be, it would take six months, or even a year, for them to get pumped out again. The committee, after a couple of hours talk with them, were enabled to see the folly of their course, and I issued there, in their presence--framed the following proclamation, which I had posted in the many mines in the disaffected districts, during the riot: MAYOR'S PROCLAMATION. WHEREAS, A difference of opinion having occurred between the employers and employés of several corporations in this city, whereby labor at the different collieries has been suspended, and on account of this suspension, serious injury has been effected, the most serious of which is the non-working of the mines; _And whereas_, I have the assurance that the men at the collieries are willing to render me their most hearty cooperation for the protection of those who may desire to work the pumps, I hail this as a good omen, and trust that no opposition may be made to the starting of the pumps, and I hereby invoke the good offices of all good citizens to aid the companies in protecting their property of every kind from injury or destruction, and I do also hereby warn all persons that the property not only of corporations, but of individuals, must be protected, and that any act of violence or lawlessness will be by me resisted with all the force I can command, and to this end I call upon all citizens of the city to aid me. ROBERT H. MCKUNE, _Mayor_. MAYOR'S OFFICE, CITY OF SCRANTON, _July 29, 1877_. Immediately upon the adjournment of the committee, I notified Mr. Storrs--Henry R. Storrs--the superintendent of the collieries here, and on Monday morning the men were put in at the pumps to work, and the pumps in the most of the mines were set to work. In the meantime, on Saturday, at the meeting of the councils, the following resolution was passed: "_Resolved by the common council_, (_the select council concurring_,) That it is the sense of the councils that there is no danger of riot or disturbance in the city, and that there is among the workingmen no disposition to disturb the peace of the community, and that there is at present no necessity for any increase of the special police, and that any so-called policemen or watchmen or the employés will not be paid out of the city funds. "On motion, the clerk was instructed to notify the mayor of the action of the councils on the above resolution. "All of which is hereby respectfully submitted." So, you see, I was running this thing somewhat single-handed. On Monday, the pumps, as I said, were going, and on Monday morning, at nine o'clock, I sent for the executive committee of the brakemen and firemen of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, and, in consultation with them, I there gave them to understand that the citizens of the city were desirous of having their trains placed again on the road, so that they could have their mails, the banks could have their money, so that the men who had been at work could receive their pay, and, after a long conversation, lasting three hours, I gave them to understand that I should start a train next morning, at the regular schedule time, nine-fifty, and that any attempt on their part to obstruct it would be met with all the force I could command. The gentlemen of the committee wanted to know when I wanted an answer in regard to whether they would run, and I told them I would like an answer that afternoon, at four o'clock. They immediately, upon leaving my office, called for a meeting of the men who were here in the city, and, at three-thirty, took a vote in regard to the question of resumption, and, by a vote of eighty-two to seven, voted to resume work, and at six o'clock that evening the train that had started from Binghamton, upon a telegraph, passed through here. So on Tuesday evening, the pumps at the mines were working, the road was open. There was a general feeling of quietude among our citizens, and hopes that the strike was passed. On Tuesday morning, the committee from the Round woods, as we called them, met at my office for the purpose of holding consultation with General Brisbin. Q. You say that was on Tuesday? A. Yes. The legal adviser of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, in that interview, lasting some three hours, the whole situation was very thoroughly gone over on the part of the men, by almost each one of them taking some part in the debate, Mr. Brisbin, taking the standing and circumstances of the company and the men, then made the following proposition: That in case hereafter, any differences of opinion arising between employer and employés, that upon the appointment of the committee from the employés, and notifying Mr. Brisbin of the same, that he would call the board of directors together, forward to this committee transportation, and that they should have the opportunity of telling their grievances, direct to the board of directors. This was one point the men tried to gain, in their long strike--the six month's strike--one they gained at this time. I never saw men seemingly more highly pleased with the result, and not only those, but Mr. Brisbin himself. During the afternoon and evening, when the information got through the city--when the evening papers came out, announcing the facts--the opinion in regard to the strike was, that the strike was about over, and we had rumors in regard to a meeting at the silk-works. We all presumed that the reports of this city would be given to that meeting, and that the meeting would, without question, resolve to go to work. The question of the advance of wages, had been abandoned, almost in the first interview with Mr. Brisbin and Mr. Storrs. In the evening, I met a number of special police posse at my head-quarters, stayed there probably half or three quarters of an hour, talking matters over, and we supposed that the emergency was over, and we relaxed, as it were, our vigilance, and most of the men went home. I had not been in bed, at the time I reached home, from the Tuesday night previous, at all. I stayed at home next day and night. I went home that night, and went to bed. I reached my office that morning, at about nine o'clock. I had relieved the officers that had been on day and night. Q. Do you speak of Tuesday or Wednesday? A. Wednesday, the 1st day of August. In the meantime, I might say, right here, that we had established a code of signals, to call any posse together, if it should become necessary. I need not say what it was--it was a code of signals to be given through one of the church bells. A gentleman was at my office, who represented the posse to carry the signal, or carry the orders for the signal to the men who were at the bell, and they were not to ring the bell without orders so given by the party. I remark this, for the purpose of showing in regard to what occurred now, upon the morning of the 1st. I had been hearing some cases, and was about through, when some parties came in, and said there was a large crowd coming up from the silk-works. Q. What time was that? A. I should think about half-past ten. Q. In the morning? A. Yes, sir; half-past ten or a quarter to eleven. One gentlemen, young Mr. Logan, came in with a request from Mr. Scranton that the signal bell should be rung. About the same time, Colonel Hitchcock, over the posse, came in and informed me that a crowd was down round in the neighborhood of the machine-shops, that I showed you to-day, and he immediately left the office. I gave, both to him and Mr. Logan, this order, that they might go to head-quarters as quickly as they could, and any of the boys of the posse that they might see, to notify to come immediately there, and remain there till I should send orders, or the signal bell should be rung. About the same time, Lieutenant Brown came in, and I then put on my hat, and we walked up the street together. We noticed, or, at least, came across a number of the boys, and we ordered them immediately up to head-quarters; and when I came to the corner of Lackawanna and Washington avenue, looking down the machine-shops of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, I saw the whole space there covered with a large number of people. Q. Give an estimate of the number, if you can, Mr. McKune? A. Well, sir, from what I could see--what came under my observation, I should say three or four thousand people, sir, upon the railroad, through and in that part below the road. There were but very few people, we passed but very few people, comparatively, upon the main avenue, as we went up. I went down through the crowd, and as I struck the outer edge of the crowd, I said to them something like this: "Boys this won't answer. You are doing wrong. You must disperse and go home." Most of them that I first saw--the great majority of them--were of those that I knew. The way was immediately opened. Lieutenant Brown was with me. We walked side by side. I went in that way down as far as the office of the car shops--the Mackanny office, as I call it--having learned that Mrs. Mackanny and her daughter was in there, and was very much terrified, and wished to be got out. I found the door locked, and in looking into the window, saw that young Miss Mackanny was in her father's arms, fainting, and, of course, I concluded it was best that she should remain there up there. Turned and came back, for the purpose of going to the company's store--the head-quarters. Having passed from the office probably thirty or thirty-five feet, a party of men came out from the roadway that leads in through to the shops--the car shops of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company. I should think there was one hundred or one hundred and fifty of these men. They had mostly in their hands, clubs of different kinds, handles of picks, and sticks, and when the leader was within probably thirty feet of me, he made an inquiry--there was something of a fuss or noise right round where I was, and seemed to be the center of attraction--made an inquiry, "What was it? Who was it?" With that, some person standing in my vicinity says, "This is the mayor." Then, raising his club, hollered out, in an extreme loud voice, "Kill the son of a bitch. He has got no business here." With that, there were two pistol shots fired, one upon my right hand, and one upon my left, by my side, as I judge from the sound, and almost immediately with that, four or five men, one of them a constable of the Nineteenth ward, and another by the name of Duffy, and some three or four others, whom I did not know personally, rushed immediately behind me, to form a sort of a barrier against this crowd, that was seeming to make for me. With that, I was struck with a club--I judge it to be a club--right behind my shoulders very severely, so much so, that it started my left lung, which has been weak for some years, bleeding. My mouth was almost immediately filled with blood, a stone which was thrown hit me in my kidneys, and before I probably got ten steps, this crowd made towards me, and I was hit some numbers of times, but I kept square upon my feet. I dodged my head to avoid them as well as I could. In the meantime, Lieutenant Brown was standing by me. The very first signal, the very first exclamation of these men, I had ordered that the posse be sent for and the bells would be rung, but Mr. Brown dare not move. But the men passed the cry on, and it was taken up by others standing back. I probably went twenty steps before Father Dunn, the Catholic priest of the parish here, came down, and as soon as he saw me came right up to me and first took hold of my arm. He was a smaller armed man than I am; I then changed and took hold of his. Immediately upon his coming, this party that was behind trying to protect me was increased considerably, numbering twenty or twenty-five. Some of these men, who had had sticks in their hands, came up at this time. By Senator Yutzy: Q. For your protection? A. Yes; the men I speak of, the constable of the Nineteenth ward, and William Duffy and others immediately upon the pistols being shot off, came right for my protection--the citizens here. I might say right here, that all that party who had swept through the shops and came under my observation, not one of them I recognized as a man whom I had ever seen before. The leader, whom I took very close observation of, was a man whom I had never cast my eyes upon before to my recollection. When we got to within twenty-five or thirty feet of the causeway under the railroad, the crowd behind broke through the party that was trying to protect me, and carried off Father Dunn. I slipped from him to the left of him, so that they rushed by me, and I escaped from them and went through under the railway bridge--under the railway near there--the causeway under the railway, and there met four of my policemen. In the meantime, the crowd commenced to surge past, filling the whole street almost, with the cry, "Now for the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company's store." "Now for Lackawanna avenue. Let's clean out the town." The distance from where I met these policemen to Lackawanna avenue, is just a hundred feet, the depth of those lots. Just one hundred feet. When I reached Lackawanna avenue coming up Washington, in looking up the street, I saw my posse coming down. They were nearly opposite the Opera House, a distance of one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet from me. I stopped a moment, and the crowd seemed to give way, and waved my hands three times for them to come on. My idea was, if they could come down to my office, there we would make a stand, if they attempted to go to pillaging. I turned to go down towards my office. Lieutenant Brown was still with me. When opposite the store of Mr. Hunt, in whose employ he was, about twenty-five or thirty feet from the corner, he turned and went into the store. Just after he had left me, the crowd then commenced to surge down and fill up the street. I was struck with an instrument, whether it was a hammer or some heavy instrument I don't know--here, just back of the ear, and I have no memory from that moment of receiving the stroke--but I came down here as was testified to, at the trial, and went into the bank--the Merchants' and Mechanics', nearly opposite, at the distance from where I was struck, of about one hundred and twenty-five feet. I have no memory from that time till I found myself back again up the street, probably fifty feet, and just stepping off the sidewalk, and as I stepped off the sidewalk into the roadway, I partly fell upon my hands, and as I was raising up, I heard a shot or two, and a man cried out, "Now go for them, damn them, they are firing blank cartridges; now take their guns away from them; now kill them," and upon looking round, I saw two men standing together. I gave the word of command to fire, and almost immediately upon the word, a discharge was made, and upon the word fire, one man fell right in his tracks, right where he stood. Q. One of the rioters? A. Yes, sir. Q. It was your posse that fired? A. The posse fired. You will hear of the action of the posse from the gentlemen who were with the posse. I cannot give that. And then while standing--the two men seemed to be standing together--as the one fell, the other, who was standing with him, thew a stick, or stone, or something from his hand and started running, and ran probably ten or fifteen steps. He was covered very thoroughly by two guns, but the parties who were covering him with their guns could not apparently hit him without hitting somebody else. As soon as he uncovered himself the guns were immediately discharged, and he fell dead. Almost in a breath after this, the whole crowd turned in all directions, and inside of five minutes our avenues were almost clear of people. I came down--I do not know whether I mentioned that before I left--while Father Dunn and me were together, that one of those men in front of me previous to coming under the bridge came in front of me, and with a blow from a front as he passed by me, gave me a blow which broke my jaw and fractured the whole roof of my mouth. Q. The upper jaw? A. Yes, sir; I have no use, even now, of my front teeth. The jaw is not together at all. I am unable to use them at all for anything, only soft food. I called upon the citizens to rally, or at least took a gentleman's arm and he made the announcement for me, I was unable to say much, my mouth being so full of blood--calling upon them to come to the rendezvous at the company's store, as my head-quarters; the posse and myself then went there. I immediately telegraphed the Governor stating the case, and issued a proclamation calling upon the citizens to rally and take all precautionary measures possible for the suppression of any further outbreak. In the course of half an hour, the whole of the arms we had were placed in the hands of good responsible persons; our posse was drawn across the head of the street, and orders were sent--I sent my police out with orders that all persons should disperse--all crowds, and so on. In the course of probably half an hour from that, the report came that they were firing in the residence of the Messrs. Scranton, which was immediately above our head-quarters there. I went with the posse there, and placed some men on picket, and so on, taking precautionary measures. By two o'clock the crowds began to gather through the streets again. I sent my police officers out again to try to disperse the crowds. In the meantime, the dead bodies had been taken from off the streets, and taken home. Our acting chief came back and reported to me that he was unable to disperse the crowds. I immediately had Captain Repple to detail twenty-five men, and in company with him marched down the street, and as I met the crowds I merely said this: Gentlemen you must disperse, and go immediately home. I gave no other orders, and the result was that by the time I struck the corner here below, the crowd in this part had all dispersed, or dispersed immediately upon my giving orders. I sent the police on further, as I was quite weak at this time, bleeding very thoroughly from all of my wounds. I was unable to walk further, and went back again to head-quarters, and my policemen went on below, and were unable to disperse the crowd. The posse were kept on duty. I remained at head-quarters until next morning at half-past five o'clock, when General Brinton and his command arrived here. I then went home and had my wounds dressed. That is the history of the matter as I have it. Q. These twenty-five men that you sent down in the afternoon at two o'clock--who were they? A. They were the gentlemen I had sworn in as special police. Q. Citizens of the city? A. Yes; I could give you the names of them if I thought it was necessary, sir. Colonel Hitchcock, and Mr. Brown, and others of our best citizens. Q. What did you learn about the assembling of this crowd, if anything, as to where they got together? A. What I subsequently learned? Q. What have you learned since? A. The meeting was called at the silk-works--what we call the silk-works--it is in the Twentieth ward, near the outskirts of our city--the portion adjoining Taylorville--in a southerly direction. The resolutions which I got from the arrest of the gentleman who was president at the meeting--the chairman of the meeting--he was arrested and brought before me--and Mr. Thomas, who will be subpoenaed before you, can give you the exact wording of that resolution and can give you more intelligently the proceedings of that meeting than any other gentlemen that will be called upon. If you please, bear that in mind. Q. What time was that meeting at the silk-works held? A. I learned they commenced coming from Dunmore and the outer vicinity as early as three o'clock in the morning. Q. Of What day? A. Of the 1st day of August. Q. Had been called by previous announcement? A. They called all their meetings in their own manner of calling--by runners. I might say right here, at this point, they had a complete code of signals on the night of the 1st of August. While we placed our sentinels on the top of the buildings we occupied, we could discern lights from one side of the valley to the other--from point to point--a line of different colors and different shades. They had a thorough code of signals so all the way through. You are aware, undoubtedly, that so far as the engineers or the firemen--the strikers--were concerned, they used their own alphabet in telegraphing over the wires. They used their alphabet. Q. Had there been any assembly prior to their reaching the silk-works? A. No, sir; this was the meeting. Q. What time did they leave the silk-works and come to the city? A. That the other gentlemen, (Mr. Manes,) can give you about the hour when they struck his works. I judge, I left my office somewhere about eleven o'clock. Q. Were there any railroad men among this crowd that assembled on the 1st day of August? A. There were some railroad men that I saw at the shops around when I struck the crowd? Q. What class of men did they seem to be principally? A. Well, they were mechanics and miners and laborers. Q. Were there any men from the shops within the city? A. Yes; there were mechanics and laboring men from the shops. Among the men who were more upon the outskirts, were quite a number of the men who were employés of the shops--men whom I recognized--quite a number of them. As soon as I made the remark that they had better disperse, they commenced, upon the outer portion of the crowd, quite a number, to go through from under the archway, apparently going up the street. Q. Did you have any difficulty in getting extra police to serve? A. Yes; the paid specials I wanted to put on for the protection of the company's property, whom I placed for the purpose of relieving the city from any legal liability, after having received these notices, of which I have given you a copy. It was with difficulty I could find men who would accept the position. Quite a number who came and were sworn in on the morning before stopped at noon, and served half a day; but in regard to those that were specials--were paid--those were probably gathered through and by Colonel Hitchcock--a large number of those--quite a large number came to me; that is, volunteered first, and enrolled themselves. Q. Offered themselves? A. Yes, sir. Q. And were sworn in? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any difficulty in getting men to serve in that way? A. No, sir; not in the least. Had all that I deemed was necessary, and more, too. Q. Had no difficulty in that respect? A. No, sir. Q. In getting the paid police that you spoke of first, what was the reason--what objections did they have in serving that way? A. That was on account of the resolutions that had been passed in some of the meetings of workingmen, in which this vote of censure against me for placing these special policemen on had been passed. These resolutions had been passed without the men having any knowledge--report had it that I was putting five hundred or a thousand special policemen on the city, and putting them on pay. I didn't deem it to be my duty, nor the interest of the city, to let everybody know what I was doing, and this report got it, and this series of resolutions was afterwards passed by the council--first started under a misapprehension. Q. Then I understand you to say, that it was not on account of any unwillingness of the citizens of Scranton to serve and aid in keeping the peace and good order of the city? A. There are the facts, just as they are. It was with difficulty that I could get them. Q. What powers are given you as mayor by the city charter or organization? A. We are acting under the law of 1874, the Wallace act, where the mayor has the same power as the sheriff to call a posse comitatus, and so on. I might state right here, in regard to the passage of that very act, that I was before the committee, Mr. Merryfield and myself, asking that very power of the sheriff to be given to a city. Or town, as an instance, where we were so far from the county seat, in the case of outbreak, under the old charter the mayor would be helpless. Q. Did you make any regular call upon the citizens to serve as a posse? A. I made this call, in which I called those enrolled--my posse. When I went up the street, I might state right here, that Mr. Thomas, a gentleman who will be here, who was one of the committee from the workingmen, came and guaranteed me any aid I might need. Q. How many did that posse number? A. One hundred and twenty, sir, enrolled. Q. Were ready to come at the signal? A. Yes, sir. Q. You speak of legal liability. Is there any law by which your city is made liable for damages done within your limits? A. Nothing more, I suppose, than any neglect upon the part of the officers of the city to protect property. It is nothing further, sir. Q. Any act of Assembly? A. No, sir. I am not a lawyer, but I presume, if the officers of the city should fail to render abundant protection to property, when notified of its danger, that then the city would be held responsible, in case the property was destroyed. Q. In the interview that you had with the executive committee of the railroad employés, did you learn what their grievances were, and their reasons for striking? A. On account of wages--desired more wages. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Were they the first that struck? A. Yes, sir. Q. Had there been any reduction of wages on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, or any of the roads leading to your town? A. Well, sir, I cannot tell you that, sir. The superintendent will be here. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What grievance did the railroad men complain of when they did strike? A. Only in regard to reduction of wages. Q. Had no other complaint? A. I understand that the miners themselves and the laborers in the mine didn't strike. They were forced out of the mines on account of no work the very moment that the railroad ceased operating. That morning, or the next day, at least, mining had to cease, because there was no place to put the coal that they mined; but, upon their coming out, they then assembled together, and asked for an advance of wages. Q. Had there been any reduction of wages among the miners prior to that strike? A. The wages had been under a reduction for some length of time. Q. For several years past? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know when the last reduction was made? A. No, sir; I don't know the date. Q. Did you have any interview with the miners? A. This committee of eighteen represented miners, engineers, and laborers--represented all connected with the mines and all of its parts. Q. What did they complain of? A. The engineers of the pumps had some complaint to Mr. Brisbin in regard to not fulfilling the agreement made at the long strike. Q. The long strike was in what year? A. In 1872, I think. Q. I would like to know whether they were railroad engineers or engineers at the pumps? A. Pumps and collieries. Q. Any railroad men in this delegation? A. Not in this delegation of eighteen. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. I understood you to say they were miners, engineers, and brakemen? A. No, sir: the committee on Monday was firemen and brakemen, not engineers. The engineers were not in the strike. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The committee of eighteen was composed of who? A. Composed of miners, laborers, engineers, and pumpmen at the mines. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. Not railroaders? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did they state in what respect the agreement had not been carried out by the companies after 1872? A. They did, sir; in the interview with Brisbin they did very clearly. It was in regard to the _pro rata_ reduction. I didn't take interest enough in it to explain it to you thoroughly, sir. It was a matter between them more. While it was at my office, and the parties were got together at my suggestions, I was there during the whole time, but the matter was more immediately for them to discuss, as I didn't consider it my place to take any part in the discussion, and did not. Q. What did you ascertain subsequent to the conflict of the 1st of August? What did you find out about the cause that induced that assemblage at the silk-works? A. They were called together, as I understood, to hear the report of this committee of eighteen. Q. In the interview with you, did the committee of eighteen state what their purposes or objects were for the future? A. On this Sunday interview? Q. Yes? A. Nothing more than they believed that the companies had been cutting down their wages too much, that they had been extravagant in the management of corporations, that it had come a time for retrenchment, and the retrenchment was all coming over on them as laborers, that they believed they could, by a proper way of disposing of their coal and so on--they had some grievances in regard to that--that better wages could be paid. Q. Did they intimate about what they intended to do? A. Nothing more than they wouldn't work until there should be an advance in wages. Q. Did they give any intimation of any intention to make an attack upon the city and disturb the peace in any way? A. Directly the opposite, sir; gave me every assurance to aid and support. This question in regard to the large number of strangers that were here, was brought up and discussed, and they felt an anxiety in regard to that very point, that an overt act might bring them into disgrace. Q. The miners? A. This committee of eighteen. Q. What was the object of this delegation calling on the mayor and making this statement? Did they make any demand of you? A. I sent for them when the companies asked of me. This is a notice I didn't read, and this will more clearly show why I sent for the delegation: SCRANTON, _July 27_. R. H. McKune: The men employed by this company to fire and operate the engines at our mines for pumping the water therefrom, have by threats and intimidation been driven from their works, and notice given, that any person or persons who should attempt to perform such service would do so at the peril of the lives. This action involves the flooding of the mines, which would cause immeasurable loss and damage to the company. I therefor call upon you for such protection as employés are entitled to under the laws of this Commonwealth. Signed by WILLIAM R. STOORS, _General Coal Agent_. It was after receiving this from Mr. Stoors that I sent for this committee. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you know that that committee was in existence at that time? A. By the papers, sir. The meeting was a public meeting, and the names of this committee were published in the papers, sir. Nothing secret about it so far as to the gentlemen who were going upon the committee. This committee had also called upon Mr. Stoors, making a request for more wages, which my scrap book that I have, if I had it here, would give you still fuller than that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What did you advise them in the interview, Mr. McKune? A. I advised them--they disclaimed of having any knowledge of these parties who were sending letters or attempting to intimidate these men who were at work at the pumps. They disclaimed any knowledge of that, and at this interview stated clearly and distinctly that it was against their wish and desire, and as I said about the proclamation which I issued in regard to this very matter--the proclamation was framed by us there, jointly. The language, if you will read it, you would see that it is very careful--that it is very guarded--there is no implication of anybody being in the wrong--there is a difference of opinion. The whole thing was carefully gone over. Our interview lasted from one until between four and five o'clock. The whole of our interview was extremely pleasant, and they seemed just about as anxious as I was for the protection of property, and in the first draft of the proclamation that I made, there might have been an inference drawn that they were at fault, and we worked until the proclamation which was issued met their views. Q. I understood you to say that you put persons at the pumps before that interview? A. No, sir; I had nothing to do with putting them at the pumps. I notified Mr. Stoors, the general agent, in regard to the interview that I had. This was on Sunday, sir, and on Monday the men went to work. Q. To work at the pumps? A. Yes; there was more or less intimidation in different parts, even after this. I might state that, sir, and Mr. Stoors probably will be able to give you a better account of the reports that he received. Q. I understand the pumps were working at the time of the assemblage of this crowd, on the 1st of August? A. Yes; the pumps were working more or less. Q. And trains had been started? A. Yes. The pumps were not being worked by the regular engineers or regular pumpmen. Q. By whom were they worked? A. Mostly by men--foremen and other men that understood how to work the pumps, but were not the regular men--were not the men who had previously operated these pumps, in no single instance. Q. By whom were they sent there? A. By the company. Q. The trains were run on that day also? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were the freight trains run? A. Oh, yes, sir. Q. All trains? A. Oh, there was no coal going out, because there was no coal mined. What freight there was through freight, and passenger trains were running on schedule time. Q. In the crowd of men that were assembled there when you went down to the Lackawanna office--Delaware and Lackawanna was it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you see any men that you knew--railroad men or mechanics--about the city--the men you were accustomed to see? A. Oh, yes; saw quite a number standing about. A large number even upon the railway, and a large number of our business men and prominent citizens drawn there to look upon the crowd. Q. Were any of those engaged in riotous conduct that you knew? A. No, sir. Q. Railroad men? A. No, sir. Q. Miners? A. No, sir. The first of the parties who had swept through the shops and who came out from under the shops, there was not a man of them that I recognized as a man I had ever seen before. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. These men that you knew were simply standing about? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were they the men that undertook to protect you? A. Some of them probably did, sir. Q. Did any of your mechanics in the city engage in the riots when it was once precipitated? A. Well, sir, they were among the crowd that passed me as I was coming up Lackawanna avenue. There were quite a number of those that I had passed in going down, and while the cry was being made, "Now for Lackawanna avenue; now for the company's store." By Senator Yutzy: Q. They joined with the rioters after you returned? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I wish you would state whether the action of the council in refusing to pay extra police was justifiable. Whether at that time the condition of affairs here was in a condition to warrant them in taking that action? A. No, sir; it was not, because I had, as I said, but eight special policemen, whom I had sent out to the different parts and to the different properties upon which I received notification, I placed these special men. You, gentlemen, can judge whether a city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants, the larger portion, or a larger per centage of that of the laboring element--whether a force of twenty men is any too great a force as a police and protective force. I leave that for you, gentlemen, to judge. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do I understand you to say that you called your council together with a view of then taking some action on this subject? A. On Wednesday I consulted with a number of the council in regard to whether we had not better call a meeting, and what was best to be done in the matter; but this meeting where these resolutions were passed, I think, was a regular meeting. I am not clear in regard to that. Q. They declined to meet. Is that what I understand you? A. Yes, sir. Q. What reasons did they give? A. They thought it was not necessary--the one or two I talked to. Q. Did they say why they thought it was not necessary? A. No. Everything was quiet and peaceful. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Then, at this regular meeting, what action did they take in regard to disturbances? A. There had been none at that time. Q. But afterwards you said there was a regular meeting? A. No, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. This crowd that swept through the shops was headed by a man who was a stranger? A. They all were strangers. Q. Was that the same crowd that was fired on in the street? A. I should judge that some of them were the same. Q. Were those men that were killed strangers? A. Two of them were not residents of the city. I believe one of them was. Q. Were any of your posse killed? A. No, sir; but two of them were wounded, sir, with pistol shots. Q. With pistol shots? A. With pistol shots and with clubs. Two were wounded with pistol shots, and one with clubs. Q. Did you ever ascertain where those two strangers that were killed came from? A. Yes; I think one of the killed was from the Sixth ward, and two from the adjoining township--Lackawanna township. Q. Were they railroaders? A. Men employed in the mines--around the mines. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were any more of the rioters wounded? A. There was one man--a young man--was wounded. A one legged Welsh boy that had formerly worked for the Lackawanna Coal Company, and he recovered. Q. Did you, in your first correspondence with the Governor, did you think that you were able to control matters here in the city, and did you so indicate to him, without the aid of the militia of the State? A. The following is a copy; I am not clear whether the date is right: "Governor Hartranft, in consulting with my advisory committee, they do not deem troops necessary, and advise against home troops," and further, on the 28th I telegraphed to the Governor again, as follows: "All quiet. I expect to get the pumps in the mines going to-morrow." I telegraphed to the Governor, "The employés of the railroad company have just informed me that their difficulties have been adjusted, or have been settled," and again, on the 29th, I telegraphed to the Governor, "Pumps will start to-morrow. Send no troops until you hear further from me Am in hopes of a peaceful settlement." By Senator Reyburn: Q. That was at the time of this agreement. A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What date was that dispatch? A. The 29th, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What date did you call upon the Governor to send you troops? A. The 1st day of August, sir. Q. After the conflict? A. Yes, sir. Q. As part of our duties is to find out about the conduct of the militia, I wish the mayor would just state what was the conduct of the militia during their presence here? A. I can say, in regard to the militia--I don't know much about them, for I have very little knowledge of General Brinton's command that was here, for I was quite severely unwell, and was not out much, any further than going down in my carriage, and calling on General Lyle. In reference to those that remained, you are aware some of them remained here for three months, the Nineteenth, under Hartley Howard, and the First Pennsylvania. Their conduct was most excellent, so much so as to receive the encomiums, upon all sides, of every person. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You say that you were at Ocean Grove at the time you heard of the Pittsburgh riots? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long had you been there? A. I had been down a week previous. Q. Had there been any rumors of any difficulty here, prior to the commencement of the Pittsburgh riots? A. I telegraphed, on Saturday, to Mr. Halsted, superintendent, like this: "Do you apprehend any difficulty; if so I will return home." He telegraphed me, on Saturday: "I apprehend none; if I do so I will wire you." I have not got a copy of that telegram here. Q. Did you, from any source, receive any intimation that there was liability to be any strike here, prior to the outbreak at Pittsburgh? A. No, sir; not in the least. Q. In your judgment, was this trouble here precipitated by the news of the rioting at other places? A. Yes, sir. Q. You think it grew out of that? That, the news of what was going on at other places, stirred up the workingmen, and incited them to do as they did? A. Yes; permit me to say that I do not believe the miners would ever have come out of the mines, had the railroad men not suspended, and if the coal had been taken away from them as they mined it, the men would not, in my opinion, have come out of the mines. Q. You think, then, it was a sort of a fellow-feeling that animated the workingmen here? A. You might call it an epidemic. Q. Will you state whether there were any symptoms of any difficulty or uneasiness among the men here prior to the news having been received of trouble? A. There was none. Everything was the most perfect quiet when I left home. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The fact that the railroad was not carrying away the coal, was not that the cause of the miners coming out of the mines? A. That is what I say, sir. I wish that to be on record. Q. Did you ascertain who these men were that were interfering with the pumps at the mines? A. No, sir; I do not know as I did. Q. Were they miners on a strike? A. No, sir; there were no arrests made of those. There were arrests made, afterwards, for an attempt of riot somewhere along about the 20th August, I should think, sir, by one of the companies of Colonel Howard's command--I think some five or six--my record book would tell the date, and soon--who were tried, and afterwards convicted at our county court. Q. Men engaged in interfering with the pumps? A. I don't know whether it was that, or an attempt. I think that was an attempt at riot about that date. Q. Were any of the rioters arrested that were engaged in this riot here, on the streets, afterwards? A. I think there has been some, sir. Q. Were any of your posse arrested? A. Yes; thirty-eight were. Q. Arrested on information of some of the rioters? A. The finding of the coroner's jury, sir. A coroner's inquest was held. Q. Were they tried? A. They were. Q. By whom--the court? A. The court, Judge Harding presiding. Q. On what charge? A. Upon a charge of murder--manslaughter. Q. Were they acquitted? A. They were. Q. Were any of the rioters tried, that were arrested? A. I think there has been, sir. There are other gentlemen here, who had charge of that matter, that will be able to testify better in regard to that than myself. Q. At the office where you found the young lady, state whether any assault was made upon that by the crowd or mob? A. None, that I know of. Q. Was there any made after that time, or where did the crowd go, and what became of the inmates of the office? A. The attention of the crowd was drawn away from that part over towards me, and the party who came out from the shops. Q. Had you been informed they were in danger? A. Yes, sir. Q. And that is the reason you went down there? A. Yes, sir. Q. And after you got there, and found the young lady in a fainting condition, you did not consider it advisable to take them away from there, and didn't do so? A. I didn't? consider it advisable to take them away, and made no effort so to do. Q. You did not consider it advisable? A. No, sir. Q. Did they afterwards escape from the office, and reach their homes? A. Without any difficulty. Q. Why didn't you consider it advisable to take them away, if they were in danger? A. I did not consider they were in danger. By Mr. Means: Q. I suppose you considered them more safe, than taking them away in the street? A. Yes, sir. * * * * * Joshua Thomas, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside, if you please? A. I am residing at Hyde Park. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am a blacksmith. Q. Were you here in July last, when the difficulty occurred? A. I was. Q. On what day was it that the disturbance took place in the streets here? A. On the 1st of August. Q. Will you please state whether you had any previous knowledge of the intention or existence of any disturbance, prior to that date? A. No, sir; I had none. Q. And what was the first thing that you noticed or discovered? A. At the silk-factory meeting? Q. Yes. State whether you were at the silk factory meeting? A. Yes, sir. Q. For what purpose was that meeting called? A. As near as I could learn on the streets, the men anticipated hearing the reports of the standing committee of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and they all went down there expecting to hear the committee report as to the result of the intercourse with the company. Q. That was the committee that had been---- A. There was a meeting held out in the Round woods, and a committee appointed there to confer with the company with regard to their wages, and some time after this meeting was called, by whom I do not know, but the people generally thought that this committee was going to make a report there of the result of their conference with the company, and when we arrived there at the meeting, this committee was not present, and after being there possibly half or three quarters of an hour, the chairman of the committee of the coal and iron company's men, called the meeting to order, and he stated that it was now time to appoint a chairman. There was quite a number of the men present in the meantime, but none of them would serve, finally he was told to serve himself in that capacity, and he did. Q. What name did you say it was? A. It was Rudolph Kreshner, and some one asked him from the crowd--there was, possibly, from five thousand to seven thousand people there--asked him what the object of the meeting was, and he told them if they would keep quiet for a few minutes they would learn. He didn't know. He said they would find out, and he talked to some of the men--I could not hear what he said, and then he rose, and he said he believed the meeting was to take some action with regard to those men that were working in the shops at that time, and there was then a party got up and offered a motion that a committee of I can't tell you how many--his motion was, that a committee, however, be appointed to ask these men to leave the work alone for the present, until the difficulty was settled. And after some little discussion, there was a motion made to amend that by making the committee twenty-five. Then that was objected to, on the ground that the companies would discharge all that would be appointed as a committee to go and ask these men to leave their work, and one man, I don't know his name now, he spoke there in favor of a committee of twenty-five, and others again spoke and objected to it, on the ground that they would be discharged--they had been before, and have been since, because they waited on these men. While this motion was under discussion, there was a motion made, that the whole body adjourn, and pass up around by the shops and ask the men to quit their work for the present, until the difficulty was settled with the company. Just at this time there was a man offered a letter to Kreshner, and wanted him to read it. He took up the letter and looked at it, and passed it back to the party and shook his head. Then this man got up on a little stand himself and read the letter to the body. Previous to that there had not been any unkind words, or anything boisterous--nothing out of the way at all, no abusive language, or anything--but as soon as the letter was read it was like a spark in a powder keg. Q. Now, where did that letter come from? A. I don't know. Q. By whom was it signed? A. It was signed by "Working Man." Q. How many? A. One working man. Q. Just signed "Working Man?" A. Just signed "Working Man." Q. Can you give the contents of the letter, or the substance of it? A. Only partially. It was on note paper. He went on to state--the writer did--to speak of the grievances of the men, how they had suffered short wages and short time, and the additional reductions, &c., and he said that the men could not live. He said, that W. W. Scranton had said, that he would have the men work for fifty cents a day--I don't remember how soon, but for fifty cents a day--or he would bury himself in a culm pile. He went on to state he was sorry he could not be present to-day as he had business elsewhere, but he hoped the men would do their duty, and signed himself "Working Man." Q. After that letter was read what was done? A. After that letter was read, there was four, five or six of us--I don't just remember how many--we held a little caucus near the stack--near one end of the silk factory, and we divided; I was to go one side, and another man was to go another side, and try to speak to allay the excitement, but the crowd was so dense we could not get up there. While we were trying to get in, there was a motion made at that time again that the body adjourn to the shops, and ask the men to leave the shops. Even then there was no threats of violence at all, but of course there was some epithets used against W. W. Scranton, but no threats against him at all, nor no threats against any person, or property, or anything. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean by shops? A. These shops where the men were working--railroad shops, furnaces, and steel-works. I didn't hear anything said, or any motion made, and the motion was not made to turn them out, but to ask the men to leave the shops. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I want to know what you mean by shops? A. Railroad shops, steel-works, furnaces, mills, &c. Q. All the manufactories? A. Yes; all down on that side. [Indicating.] Then there was some discussion after this by the men backward and forward, and we went back again to the silk-works, and we were talking, and we saw the crowd dispersing. I saw no motion carried, I simply heard them offered and seconded, and put to the meeting, and then they were discussed. I heard the ayes and noes while I was back, but supposed they were voting on the motion; the decision of the chairman I could not tell what it was. Then the men began to disperse, and we stood talking there. We had no idea that any damage was being done. And while we were standing at the silk factory, just on the railroad we came over from the iron and coal company's factory--we could see the men running towards Ward street, in that direction from here. Q. You remained down there when they started from the shops? A. Yes; and when we saw these men going that way, we came up the L. and S. railroad, and I was just at the arch near the L. and S. shop when the firing occurred. I just heard it, and that was all, and then I walked right up to the corner here. Q. When you got to the corner, what did you do? A. I saw the men lying there dead in the street. Q. Had the crowd dispersed? A. Well yes, in the main. There was a great many standing around down the street, and up and down the avenue, walking and talking. Q. Who notified you of the meeting at the silk-works? A. Indeed, I could not tell you that. I had it from quite a large number. Q. Laboring men? A. Yes--oh yes. A gentleman that told me, said that he understood the D. L. and W. committee was going to make a report. Q. Was it kept secret? A. Oh, no, sir. Q. How long did you know that before the assemblage? A. I knew that was to be three or four days before that--two or three days. Q. Why was it called at the silk-works--to meet at the silk-works? A. Because there was no room elsewhere, unless they would have it up in the Round woods, back of Hyde Park, and that was about just as far over there. Q. What do you mean by the Round woods? A. It is a piece of woods that lies west of Hyde Park, commonly known as the Round woods. Q. Grove? A. A grove. Q. How many were assembled there at the silk-works? A. Well, I should judge there was between five and seven thousand? Q. Assembled in a hall? A. Oh, no, sir; out of doors. Q. What class of men were they? A. Workingmen. Q. Railroad men any of them? A. I do not remember particularly. I did not know a railroad man there. Doubtless there may have been some; but I don't remember of seeing any. Miners, laborers, carpenters, blacksmiths, machinists, teamsters, and so forth. All classes of men--working people. Q. And they were there hearing the report of the committee appointed by the miners? A. Of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Company. Q. To consult with the officers of the company? A. Yes--beg pardon, sir--they were there; believe that that was the object of the meeting. Q. Why were the blacksmiths and carpenters and other mechanics generally notified to meet there? A. They were not notified; but merely heard it talked on the streets, and I went there for one. I was very anxious to learn whether the miners were going to work, for, if they went to work, we stood a chance of getting work in the shops. Q. Did your work in the blacksmith shops depend upon the work going on in the collieries? A. Not altogether in the collieries; no, sir. Q. Carpenters' work would not depend on that at all? A. Curiosity, as much as anything. A great many of them went there out of curiosity. Q. Were the men asked there from the shops--the crowd to stop the work--that is, you said the crowd went up to the steel-works, and the factory and machine shops here. Were any of that class of men at the meeting? A. I only presume they were. I could not say that any one individual was there, but I presume there were, and had good reason to think so. They were Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad men were there. That is, miners, not railroad men, but miners. The coal and iron company's men were there--some of them--and some were there from Munica, a village below here, and some from Taylorville, and some from Old Forge, and they were anxious to know what the report would be of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western committee, and they came here, anticipating to hear that report, because the success or the failure of the strike, in the main, was dependent upon the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western men, and if the report of this committee would be of such a nature as would advise the men to work, then the strike would end immediately, while if they held out, I suppose the rest would. Q. Did you get any report of the committee? A. No, sir. Q. Nothing of the kind? A. Nothing of the kind. Q. Did you learn what action had been taken by the committee and the officers of that committee? A. No, sir; not at that time. I do not know whether they had taken any action at all--whether they were prepared to make a report. Q. Was any motion made to adjourn? A. Down at that meeting? Q. Yes? A. Yes. Q. That was voted down? A. No, sir; it was carried, at least I presume it was carried, for this reason. I heard the motion made to adjourn where I was in the crowd. I could not get any further up towards the stand, but I came up, and then I heard a vote taken, and I could hear the "ayes," and they predominated, and I presumed it was on that question, for immediately afterwards the crowd dispersed. Q. The crowd dispersed in the direction of the machine shops? A. Up this way. Some went up across the river, waded the river, and went to Hyde Park, and some walked the road, and some came up this way and some up the other road. Q. How many came towards the steel-works on the flat? A. I could not tell you how many. Q. Can you judge? A. There was probably--may be--fifteen hundred or two thousand walking up the street and walking over that way. They didn't all go to the shops that came up. Q. Did you know that they started to the shops when they started to persuade the men to quit work? A. No, sir; there was a motion made to adjourn to the shops to request the men to stop work for the present, until the difficulty was settled between them and the company; that was the motion. Q. Was that motion carried? A. I presume it was, but when it was carried we were out of the crowd. Q. And they all went to the shops, a large number? A. A large number went up this way, and towards the shops. Q. Was there any organization--any secret organization here known as the Trainmen's Union, to your knowledge, of the railroad employés. A. I do not know. I presume there was. Q. Do you know of such an organization called the Trainmen's Union? A. No, sir; not as the Trainmen's Union. Q. Do you know of any organization among the railroad employés? A. I have understood that there is what is known as an Engineers' Brotherhood. Q. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers? A. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; but we had nothing to do with this meeting. Q. This Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, was that the only organization that you knew of among the railroad men? A. Oh, I had heard and understood, and it was generally understood, that there was what was called a Firemen's Brotherhood. Q. And brakemen? A. And Brakesmen's Brotherhood. Nearly all trades have some sort of union--Machinists', Blacksmiths' Union, Coopers' Union, and so forth. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Beside the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, then, there was an organization of brakemen and firemen? A. All, sir, independent of each other. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Do you know that of your own knowledge, or only by hearsay? A. Hearsay. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any public call for this meeting in the papers or otherwise? A. No, sir; I didn't see any call; didn't hear of any published call. Q. How did the idea that there would be a meeting there get abroad? A. I do not know. Q. Do you know of any one that advised the meeting? A. I do not. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Is it the custom of workingmen to congregate in meetings and crowds, that way, and hear the report, for instance, if there is a committee been known as having waited on the officials of a railroad or coal companies? A. Yes sir; if there was a committee pending between the men and the company, possibly the committee could not afford to issue a call through the papers, and nine, ten, or fifteen of the committee would go around and tell some one, and they would tell others that the meeting would be held at such a place. Q. Do you suppose that was the way this meeting was called? A. No, sir; I have no idea how it was called. I have no idea how it was called, not the slightest. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Except you heard it talked among several of the laboring men, that there was to be such a meeting? A. Yes; or rather asked me if I was going to be at the meeting. By Senator Reyburn: Q. When the motion to adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up, did the men that went off to the flats, and come towards the city, go in a body, or with an organization, or was it merely that portion that lived in this end of town, coming home? A. I should judge, that out of curiosity, some was along with them from different places, but there was no organization. They didn't come in an organized body. They took in the ground between two roads, between the street and the railroad, on the street and on the railroad, and on the ground between, and on the other side of the road. They were scattered along there. I should judge that it is nearly or quite three quarters of a mile from the silk-factory up to the shops and the head of the body--some of them went on; lived at the steel-works, fifty yards or one hundred yards this side of the steel-works. And we looked towards the hill, and we could see the men on the side of the hill; and we could see them, some of them going towards Ward street. There was nothing in the form of a government at all. Q. You considered the meeting broken up at the time that motion to adjourn was carried? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. This man who read this letter, did he make any remarks in regard to it after he had read it? A. I do not think that he did. Q. Don't think he made any comments or advised the crowd what to do? A. No, sir; he made no comments whatever. Q. Did any one, after the reading of the letter, make any comments upon it, or advise the crowd what to do? A. Not upon the letter. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Did he call upon any of the crowd to follow him? A. No, sir; there was no one that I heard call upon the crowd to follow him. No one. When the motion was made to adjourn, that side of the crowd or of the meeting that was this way, the northern side of it--the north-east of it, came first, some of them, and some stayed back. Q. Did the greater part of the crowd come down through the shops? A. Well, I don't know about that. I would not like to say, because I took no particular notice. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the crowd appear to have a head or a leader? A. No, sir. Q. Every fellow for himself, was it? A. So it seemed to be; yes, sir. There was no leader at all. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. They all seemed to have an idea of coming the same way? A. Not all. Q. That is, they got headed this way? A. Well, there was a great many that come up this way; lived that--live over this way. They live back on this side--a great many that came up--and they came down the avenue. By Mr. Means: Q. From the commencement to the end, in your opinion, you suppose there was no regular organization? A. No, sir; there was no regular organization. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You are pretty well acquainted with the laboring men in this vicinity, are you not? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were those six or seven thousand that assembled there composed of laboring men of this section--Scranton and surroundings--here principally? A. Oh, yes, sir; principally. Q. Were there any strangers, tramps or strangers--outside men entirely--outside of this region? A. I could not answer that, because I do not know as there was. Q. Did you see any? A. No, sir; I took no notice of any. Q. The faces of this crowd was familiar to you, were they, as men that you had seen in the vicinity? A. Yes; a large majority of them were. Q. You didn't see the conflict that occurred on the street? A. No, sir. At this point, the committee adjourned till to-morrow morning, at nine o'clock. SCRANTON, _March 30, 1878_. The committee met pursuant to adjournment, at nine o'clock in the morning, Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present except Mr. Dewees. * * * * * W. W. Mannis, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside, Mr. Mannis? A. Scranton. Q. What is your business? A. Superintendent Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, building and lumber department. Q. I wish you would just state the facts that came under your observation in reference to the troubles--the strike of July last? A. On the date of the riot, the 1st of August, in the morning, about eight o'clock, I heard there was a meeting called at the silk-works. Q. Go on, Mr. Mannis? A. I heard that there was a meeting called down at the silk-works, and they were going to clean us all out. I made my way around among my men, and went down to the foundry, supposing that would be about the first place they would strike. I stayed there. There had a man gone from our shops to attend the meeting. I asked of the different foremen what was best to do, and we decided that we would continue on. We would not close up our shops--that we would see what their intentions were. May be it was false. Pretty soon this man came back, and said, "You had better shut up. They are coming in a body to clean you out. You had better get out of the way." We had another consultation, and decided we would stand our ground and protect our property. Pretty soon we saw them coming up Washington avenue, across the track. There they halted for a few minutes. Then they filed off, a part of them towards our shops, and the other part came on directly up the street. I should judge there were from fifteen hundred to two thousand that turned towards our shop; and as they came to the shops they scattered into all the shops; some of the men run out. Some started to run out, and they struck and chased them. They went into our boiler shop, where we have a shaft driven by water wheel and a large belt. Five or six caught hold of that to stop it. Says I, "Boys, don't destroy property now. You are only injuring yourselves. Don't come around here and destroy property." They paid no attention to me. I got the attention of one that seemed a leader, and says I, "If you have any control over these men, for God's sake take them back. You are only injuring yourselves." "Damn you," said he, "we have got the power." Says I, "If you were worth anything I would knock your brains out." They says, "Where's Bill Scranton, that is going to make us work for three shillings a day." Says I, "Listen to me. Go back and attend to your work." No; they had the power and they were going to use it. "You have got plenty," they said, "and we ain't. We are going to have our rights." They went into our shop and ordered the man to draw the fire. He started to do it, and then some one struck him with a chunk of iron, and he got up and went through the shop, they pelting him as he went. His shirt was torn off him, and his back was bloody. Another one started to run behind the foundry, and they were after him, and throwing stones and chunks of iron and cinder and anything they could get. They got the shops all cleaned out, and they started for the blast furnace. I heard one man sing out. Says he, "I know the way; follow me." With that I started on ahead of them. Before that, while they were standing in front of the machine shop, there was some one got up on a piece of casting. "Now," says he, "fetch on your Bill Scranton. Where is he? We'll gut him. We'll have his heart's blood." Says I, "Don't talk so loud. You are crazy. You do not know what you are talking about." He turned to me with some abuse; "that they had the power now, and they were going to use it--that they were going to gut Scranton." Says I, "You had better keep off Lackawanna avenue or some of you won't get home." They started to the furnace, but I got ahead of them, and went on ahead to notify the men to take off the blast and fix the furnace, and met the foreman and told him they were coming. He ran to the furnace and took the blast off. The most of the men scattered, I don't think they got hold of any of them. I passed through the casting-house, up the steps to the engine-house. There was a lot of them behind me following me up. They came in contact with our boiler tender, an old man sixty or seventy years old. They knocked him down. I went to the engine-house. The engineer was coming out of the engine room--they had brought him out. He had walked across the street. Says I, "Come back, the boiler will blow up in twenty minutes with the steam you have got, if you stop the pumps." The leader of that gang came up and they surrounded me, and swore if they would put that man back in there again they would blow my brains out. Says I, "Gentlemen, you had better go back home; turn right around and go, or you will miss it." Says I, "Don't come around here and destroy property." They soon passed off, and came down toward the shops. I had nothing at all with me to protect myself. I had a pistol at home. I ran up home and got that and put it in my pocket, and went back to the engine-house again. Found the engine-house was afire in two places. The engineer had gone back and put it out, and drew the fire from the boilers. Then I started up to the railroad, toward the company's store again, and as I came right in front of the company's store the men had just filed out of the store--this posse--and came down the street, and as they crossed Washington avenue, the street was literally filled up with men, but they seemed to open and let this posse through, and as they went through the gap closed up again. Then I heard two or three pistol shots, and pretty soon I heard the rifle cracks--more than two minutes, maybe less--heard the rifles crack, and pretty soon they began to scatter. In a very few minutes I saw the posse come back, and the streets were pretty well cleared. I started down this way to where the shooting was; and I got part of the way down and I met them coming, one man on a litter--that was near Mr. Phillips'--his father was behind. I met them walking back towards the company's store. Q. Was this one of the posse? A. No, sir; he was one that was with the rioters. He is a Welshman, a very bad character; had but one leg. He was with them, and he was shot through the arm. The ball passed through the fleshy part of the arm. I thought he was dead, but he recovered again and is now at work. Previous to the 1st of August, they had driven our men and sent our men out of the shops. My shops are on the other side, the car smith shop is on the other side of the engine-house--part of them went over and took them out. Before the day of the strike they had notified them several times that they should stop work. In fact, they had stopped pretty near all my men. There was not more than half a dozen to work at that time. Ordered them to stop work. Q. Had you had any difficulty with your men previous to the 1st of August. A. No, sir; I had not. Q. Did they all continue to work? A. No, sir. Our men came out--I forget the date. Our puddlers were the first men to strike in the city. Q. What day did they strike? A. They struck at noon. I think it was Tuesday night the engineers and railroads all stopped. That was on Tuesday night. I do not remember the date, but the engineers and firemen stopped. Our puddlers all came out that day at noon. Q. What day do you think that was? A. That was the day that the engineers stopped at night--at noon. Q. On the railroads? A. Yes. Our railroad stopped here at night. Q. Was it the Tuesday after the fire at Pittsburg--the burning at Pittsburgh? A. Really, I could not say, sir. It seems to me it was before that, but I won't be positive of that. I forget what day our railroad stopped. Q. Tuesday, after the trouble at Pittsburgh, your railroad stopped? A. Then it was that Tuesday noon our puddlers stopped. The puddlers stopped at noon as the men came out at night. Q. How many of them? A. I should judge there were near a hundred. Q. What did they complain of? A. They made no complaints. It was like a perfect panic among them. They said the first thing they knew, the whistle blew at the mill, and "now come on," and they all came down to the steel mills, took the men with them there, and went down to the machine shops and foundries and stopped the men there. They did not succeed in stopping the foundry. They stopped the men at the machine shops. They had not asked for anything prior to that time. Had not asked for any advance. Mr. Scranton went down as soon as he heard of it, and asked them what they wanted, or had some talk with them. Maybe he could tell more about it than I could. Q. Had they complained of low wages prior to that time? A. It has been a complaint all through about low wages. I had not heard anything from our men. I suppose I have probably one hundred or one hundred and fifty men under my employ. Q. You had heard nothing from them? A. They had made no complaints to me. Q. In any way? A. No, sir. Q. What were you paying these men? A. The puddlers? Q. Yes? A. I could not tell you. They work by the ton, do not know what it was. It is not in my department. Q. Was this W. W. Scranton employed in the works in which you were superintendent? A. Yes; he is general manager. Q. Were any of those puddlers in the crowd that came up from the silk-works? A. I do not know, sir. There was not a single face I knew. All the crowd that I saw, that I came in contact with, were strangers to me, and looked to me more like miners than laborers. Q. What proportion of the number of men that you had employed, was at work on that day--the 1st day of August? A. I should suppose, probably not more than--you mean in my department--probably one fourth. Q. Take it in the whole shops--what proportion were at work? A. Probably one fourth. The others had been intimidated by threats and some had been assaulted before that, because they had continued to work. They had been notified that they should not work. Q. Had you heard of any discontent among the men, or had there been any discontent or any strike contemplated, so far as you learned, prior to the news of the strike at Pittsburgh reaching here? A. There had not anything positive. I knew there was a very bad feeling among the men, I knew the men felt sore and uneasy, didn't seem contented or happy. I had not heard any threats of any strike. Q. What about? A. About low wages. The companies had been oppressive, and they ought to have more, and there seemed to be a general dissatisfaction and bad feeling. Q. Had the wages been reduced any last year, during the summer? A. Yes, sir. Q. When were they reduced? A. I think our reduction took effect the 1st of July--a general reduction among the mechanics, I think. Q. How much did you reduce the wages? A. I think it was ten per cent. Q. Was that reduction general among the companies in Scranton? A. I think it was, I would not be positive about that, I think it was. Q. Did it extend to the miners--had there been any reduction in miners' wages? A. No, sir; I think not. I think there had not been any since the 15th of last March. Q. Simply applied to mechanics? A. There had been a reduction in March of miners' wages--I think it was March there was a general reduction. Q. How much of a reduction was made then? A. I could not tell. That was something I had not anything to do with at all. Q. Can you tell what the class of men were getting in the shops you had charge of? A. How much they were getting? By Senator Reyburn: Q. About? A. From $1 50 to $2 25. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What class of men were getting $1 50? A. Ordinary carpenters and car-makers. Q. What class getting $2 50? A. Our best blacksmiths and some of our best carpenters. Q. Some of the best carpenters getting $2 50? A. Yes, sir. Q. What would the wages average? Take it on an average? A. Among mechanics? Q. Yes. A. I think it would average, probably, $1 75. By Senator Yutzy': Q. This man that was wounded, is still here in the city working? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was he actively engaged in the riot? A. I do not know. Q. Never was arrested? A. No, sir; his father is a very good mill hand, and through the influence of his father, and the sympathy with his family---- By Mr. Means: Q. Had he been in your employ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is he in your employ now? A. Yes, sir; he was a short time ago, and I think he is. His father is a boss heater. It was his father's influence--we had a good deal of sympathy for the family. They are poor. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Can you give us an estimate--an approximate estimate of the amount of loss sustained, by reason of the riot, in the works of the company? A. I could not swear. The principal loss was the furnace. We had two furnaces in blast. They were filled up full. That was a complete loss. It is very expensive to cut them out. Q. Chilled, were they? A. Both chilled. Q. Who can give us the probable loss? A. W. W. Scranton. Q. You said you were notified that there would be a meeting at the silk-works, and they were going to clean your shops out. How did you get your notice? A. The superintendent of the blast furnace told me. Q. Do you know where he got his information? A. I do not. I presume he got it from some of his men there. Q. Got it from some of the hands that heard it talked? A. Yes; how he got it I do not know. We were doing some work at the old mine, and I came through the blast furnace; says he, "There is a big meeting this morning." Says I, "Where is it? I guess we had better go down." Says he, "They have a rousing meeting, and they are going to clean us all out to-day, and you had better be on the lookout." Says I, "I will keep my eye open." That is Carl McKinney, he is superintendent of the blast furnace. Q. You do not know whether it was some of the men that wanted to notify him so that he would be on his guard or not who gave this information? A. I do not. I rather mistrust so, though, thought it was some man he had put for that purpose. I imagine so, he seemed to know pretty well how it was going to be conducted. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is he still here, this man, superintendent of the furnace? A. Yes, sir. Q. What is his name? A. Carl McKinney. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How long was it before your men resumed their work after the strike? A. When our mechanics went to work after the strike? Q. Yes? A. There was not any general resumption of work until after the miners commenced working again. I do not recollect how long they were out, now. Q. Was it a month? A. Yes; it was more than a month, I think. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Some time in September or October? A. I think it was near the 1st of October. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Before your works started up again? A. Yes; but I wouldn't be positive about that. I am a poor hand to remember dates. Q. Where were the men during the time the works were standing? A. They were around home scattered. They were some of them that wanted to work, who would go out in the country and get work. Some of them laid around--loafed around. Q. Unemployed? A. Unemployed principally. Our men--I could have worked a good many more men if they would have worked, but they were afraid; men were actually afraid, my men told me. I could not get enough hardly to do what work I had to do. Tried to prevail on them to work. They said they would like to work but were afraid. I had a few at work, and several of them as they were going home they were stoned. They said if they didn't stop work they would burn every building down. Q. What class of men were those that made these threats? A. They were German and Irish. Q. Were any of them arrested? A. I don't know that any of them were arrested. The men were actually afraid to work. There was a great many glad to work, but they didn't dare. I know it was the case with my men. Q. Was any effort made by the civil authorities here to arrest the men that were threatening others and intimidating them? A. All that I could hear of were arrested--that any one would complain of. These men that they had made the threats to daresn't report them, or it would not have been safe for them. They would have lost their property and their lives, undoubtedly. I had one man working that lived over in the Twelfth ward. He daresn't go to his dinner. He would have his dinner brought to him in the shop. He would go out early in the morning. Daresn't carry a dinner can. I never saw such a state of things among the men in my life. Never saw such a wild set of men as the men were that morning. Q. Those men that threatened to stone those that wanted to work, were they men that had formerly been in your employ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did your company take any means--adopt any plan--to bring those men to justice? A. They did all they could, but they couldn't get the evidence without bringing these men they had made the threats to prosecute. The mayor told me once himself that any man that he could find out that had made any threats of that kind, that could be proved, to bring them right before him. I could get no man willing to go and swear to it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did your company reëmploy any of those men that made threats? A. Not if they knew it. I don't think they did. They would send squads around, half dozen in a squad, and wherever they found a company man at work, they would want to know who they were at work for. If they were at work for the company, they must quit--if they work individually, they could go on. I had some men at work about five miles out, and there were a party of men went out, and wanted to know if they were working for the company. They told them a lie, and said they were working for men that lived out there. They said, "If you are working for the company you have got to stop." By Mr. Reyburn: Q. I would like to ask the gentleman whether those were men or boys, or what aged men they were? A. I think it run from fifteen to forty. Q. They were men most of them, were they? A. Yes, sir. Q. Men of mature years? A. Yes; they were men. I should judge the majority of them were between twenty and thirty, by their looks. Q. Do you know the men composing the mayor's posse? Were you acquainted with them? A. Yes, sir. Q. What character of men were they? A. They were some of our best men--most of them. They were of good standing. Q. And character? A. Yes, sir. I would say nearly all. There might have been one or two that wouldn't bear sifting; but they were composed of our best men. They were headed by W. W. Scranton, and Chittenden up here, and that class of men. They were all young men of good standing. * * * * * James E. Brown, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside. A. Ninth ward, city of Scranton. Q. What is your business? A. Hardware. Q. Hardware merchant? A. Yes, sir. Q. If you will just give us a statement of the facts that came under your observation of the riots here? A. How far back do you want I should go? I was one of the officers of the posse before the riot, and was with the mayor all through the crowd down there. Q. Commence with the origin of it? A. There was a great deal of excitement among all the laboring classes here, and a great many threats and rumors were current that property was going to be destroyed. After they had been current several days, a large number of young men here in the city, in talking over matters, made up our minds that something ought to be done to protect property, and it resulted in a meeting being called, and a paper circulated and largely signed, and the meeting was held at the club room of the Forest and Stream Club, to organize and decide what course we would take. We met and decided that we would organize in a sort of a military style, with the express intention of protecting property; but not interfering in any way between the laboring men and their employers. We had nothing to do with their quarrels, but we must protect our own property and the property of the citizens. Q. When was that meeting called? A. I cannot tell you the date. I could get it. It was near about the time, I think--immediately after the Pittsburgh riots. Q. Had these rumors of difficulty and of attack upon property and destruction of property existed here before the Pittsburgh riots? A. I cannot say just the dates. I didn't pay much attention to it. I thought, like a good many others, it was doubtful that there would be any trouble. We organized as fully as we could, and were careful who we allowed to belong to the party, and after the organization, who we elected went down to the mayor. Of course, we proposed to act through him and under his authority, and in no other way. He welcomed us and took proper steps to give us a legal standing. It was understood that we were to turn out only at the call of one of the officers, and a proper signal was agreed upon to be given, and that signal was only to be given by one of the other officers, and by no other persons; and as I happened to live nearer to the bell than any one else, it was understood that I was the only one to go out at night. A person was on duty all the time at the mayor's office to give me notice if that signal was to be rung if there had been any trouble. Things went on that way--rumors were constantly flying about--until, I think it was, the first Monday in August, when we met as usual at night. There was reports they were going to make an attack that night on the company's store I think, and we met, when I had a long talk with the mayor, as well as a great many others of the posse, and he told us of this meeting to be held at the silk factory on Wednesday. That he was perfectly certain there was going to be no more trouble; that everything was in a very satisfactory condition, and the same story again on Tuesday. That night word came to us they were going to throw a train off the track above the iron company's store, and they wished us to be on hand and see that if that was done there would be a force there to preserve order. We stayed there until a little after twelve, and in view of what the mayor told us of the train coming in all right, peaceable, and quiet, we made up our minds we had fooled with this thing long enough, and I saw Captain Ripple in the morning, and we agreed it was time to stop all that performance, and we would have nothing to do with it unless news came somewhat different from what we had. I went to the store as usual, and was around there. Knew of the meeting at the silk factory. Saw a crowd coming down there--from the upper stories I could see the crowd coming down there. I came down the street, and was talking with several members of the posse. The streets were very crowded. A great many strangers here--strange faces. Along towards eleven o'clock--between ten and eleven--members of the posse commenced to come to me and say they didn't like the looks of the meeting down here, and they wanted me to act--to do something. Captain Riddle was at his works, and was not expected to be here all day, and I was the only one that was here that had any authority to give the signal. Q. You were one of the three officers? A. Yes, sir; I laughed at the notion of there being any trouble, and was so confident that the meeting with the railroad men had been so satisfactory, that I thought there was no danger whatever. Along just about eleven o'clock, near that, a man came to me and was very excited, and told me that the meeting had broken up and were coming up this way, and it was time to act. I told him, well, if you are afraid, go into the company's store--tell everybody you see to go to the company's store--I shall stay here until something more occurs. I went back to the store, saw that the crowd was getting more excited, and I commenced telling every man I saw to go to the company's store. I stayed in front of the store two or three minutes--the store is on the corner where the riot took place, and one of the Logan boys came over and said they wanted the signal given from the company's store. I told him we must have the mayor's order first, and to go down and tell the mayor I was there at the store, and if he wanted the signal given I would give it immediately. He went down and reported to the mayor, and his brother, at the time, standing there over the bell that nobody should ring it, and he had not been gone long before the messenger came then at the company's store who had been sent down to ring the bell, and I could not do it. I sent back word I would get the mayor's order and ring it immediately. I met the chief of police, and said they had sent down to have the signal rung, and they were driving the men out of the blast furnaces, and he said, don't give the signal. He said, send every man you see to the company's store. We went down Washington avenue, and went under the arch. There was a great many saw him going into the crowd where the disturbance was. They were then driving the men out of the car shops--cheering, and others hissing. He made a remark something like this: "Boys you better go home; you better get away from here;" and went on through the crowd. Some spoke and looked, and some started as if they were going to leave. There was no perceptible difference. We went as closely as we could, until we got to Mr. McKinney's office. He went up about to the door. Just as he got to the door the crowds were coming out of the shops. The crowds seemed to strike there--the lookers-on and the rioters. Some that came out of the shops were very much excited, brandishing their sticks around. The mayor started to come back. Just as he turned around and got a little back, I saw him struck over the head with a club. He turned around and went to see who struck him, and started off again. There was a movement made in the crowd as if to protect him, and I was separate from him, I believe, five or six feet. I kept as close to him as I could. Neither of us were armed. Both of us were perfectly helpless, that is, we had not even a stick, and he was struck again. Meanwhile, the crowd as they came out of the shops, didn't seem to recognize him, and they said, "Who is he?" and I guess a dozen voices answered, "The mayor. Protect him." Some said--a great many said, "God damn him, kill him. What is he doing there?" Just then a pistol was fired. I saw the smoke of it. He evidently had it in his hand, and in getting it up the crowd was so thick it went off. Two or three rushed to strike him, and two or three rushed to protect him. The crowd was very thick just then. Father Dunn came along, and took hold of the mayor's arm, and marched him off. Another effort was made by the crowd to protect Father Dunn and the mayor, but especially Father Dunn. A great many more tried to protect him. When I speak of the crowd, I mean the men who had been driving the men out of the car shops. They says, "Who is he--Father Dunn--God damn him, kill him. What is he doing here?" That cry was repeated. After I got out of the crowd, I would have sworn that I saw Father Dunn struck, although he denies it, but I still believe, in my mind, that he was struck. After we got a little further, a man jumped from my side and struck the mayor on the cheek, with either a billy or a slung shot. That was the blow that broke his jaw. That man I wouldn't recognize again. I never saw him before, but from the view I had of the men who were killed, I think he was one of the men who were killed. As we got further along towards the arch--after we got out under the arch--towards Lackawanna avenue on to Railroad alley, the police took hold of the mayor, and helped him on to the street. I saw the rear of our store was open, and I knew what threats had been made, and I jumped into the store and told them to close the front up. I thought that might be a very good place to start a fire. At the same time, I went to get a pistol. I tried to lock the front door, and as I looked over my shoulder, I saw the posse coming down the street. I jumped for the head of the posse. Stones were thrown, pistols were fired, and I heard one shot, I think it was, and I immediately turned around and yelled, "Don't fire!" My impression was they were not in any position, and they wanted to avoid a conflict with the crowd, if possible; but immediately after that, stones came from the other track parties by us, and there was another pistol shot or two--I couldn't say how many--and I saw a crowd throwing stones, and I turned around and I said, "Give it to them boys." Then the volley was fired, and immediately from that side between Colson's store and the next--the crowd over there--and I told them to give it to them, and they turned the guns that way; and by that time the crowd had got so thoroughly panic stricken that the riot was over. Q. How many were there in your posse that were firing? A. There was just fifty-one men with myself. As they came down the street they counted thirty-eight. I had the names of the whole posse, and from evidence I know--positive evidence--I know there was just fifty-one men. Q. They were all present at that time? A. Our whole posse was over a hundred. Q. Was the signal given? A. No, sir; I would not give it without the mayor's order. He was completely bewildered after this blow breaking his jaw. He was struck three or four other times, and just as soon as he could, got out of the crowd. I ran to give the signal, but I wanted my pistols first. I thought we were going to fight, and I wanted to be armed. Before I could get near the church to give the signal, the firing took place, and the whole thing was over. They ordered the men to fall in on Washington avenue, and they all fell right in without any excitement, just like old veterans, and we went straight to the company's store, and by the time we got to the company's store, a great many citizens were there to support us. I had no idea they were whipped. I supposed they would merely go around through the yard and attack us again. We went to the company's store to prepare to meet them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was given command of this posse? A. There was no officer in command. W. W. Scranton had brought them out. They had gone there and got their guns, and W. W. Scranton had as much command as any one. I had command as soon as I got with them. Q. Were your men sworn in as special policemen? A. These also had written authority from the mayor. Q. You said that the intention of your posse was to protect the property of private citizens. Did you intend to leave the property of corporations at the mercy of the mob? A. No, sir; that is, we intended to protect common property which would damage the city if it were destroyed. We did not want to be sworn in. We would be sworn in, but we wished to be placed in such a position that we would not be forced to go over to breakers or outlying property in any direction to protect it, but property here in the city, for instance, the company's store we would protect. We did not wish to be mixed in any such way that we would have to take sides as between strikers and the man that wanted to work. It was not our business, we were not serving for pay, we were only serving for our own protection. Q. I understood that was the case, but the language might be construed otherwise? A. We could not draw the line between private property and corporation property. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You better explain more fully the object of the organization? A. The object of the organization--we understood the cry had been raised all through in all directions among--I can't say whether there were miners or laborers, but among the worthless set of men who were in one thing or another, and hardly ever did a stroke of honest work, that they were going to gut Lackawanna avenue, that was the cry, and we organized to prevent any such thing as that taking place. We wished distinctly, and had it understood as distinctly, that the quarrels of men with their employers were nothing to us. We did not wish to side with the companies or men. Q. The question of wages between the men and the company? A. That was not for us to decide. Q. You organized for protection? A. Merely for protection of the property of the city. We had up to the time of the riot the best wishes of a large portion of the laboring class. Q. How was it after the riot? A. Then came a question of order. Three men were killed--whether in killing these three men we were justifiable, and under the excitement, a great many would privately tell us they thought we were justifiable, at the same time to hear them talk in a crowd, you would think they were not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were tried, and the court sustained you? A. Sustained us. Q. How many were arrested of the posse and tried? A. We were all tried--no we were not all tried. There were two indictments brought, one was for murder, and one was for manslaughter. Those they supposed had done the shooting were tried for murder and acquitted, and those that were under indictment for manslaughter--the whole thing was _nolle prossed_. The same evidence that failed to convict the men of murder would have to be used on the trial for manslaughter. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where were you tried? A. Wilkes-Barre. Q. Before what judge? A. Harding. I was not tried; I was indicted for manslaughter only, because at the time the firing took place I had no weapons about me. Q. All that were tried were acquitted? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was the case ever submitted to a jury? A. Yes; the murder case was submitted to a jury. Q. Under the instruction of the court? A. Yes. It was so plain a case, we had so many men hurt, and we could prove so many stones thrown and pistol shots fired at us. We had four men altogether, wounded--one man shot in the leg, one man a pistol ball took him right across the fingers--it made no wound to speak of, still the intention was to hit him, and that same ball struck a gun and left its mark in the wood, and on the iron. Another ball that was fired whistled by my head and broke a plate-glass window. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did this all occur before your men fired? A. The shooting of this pistol--the man who fired that pistol was killed. Two men were struck, and badly hurt with stones, and the men that threw these stones were killed. All this took place before a single shot was fired from our side. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were there any other stores broken into and robbed? A. No, sir; not robbed. Our store was broken into, but it was by the mob, in their efforts to get away from the guns. Q. After you were arrested, tell what took place in regard to your being arraigned before a magistrate. A. We were not arrested; there were no arrests, virtually no arrests made. We voluntarily gave ourselves up, after this coroner's inquest had taken place, which was a coroner's inquest held by an alderman, an illegal inquest, as decided by Judge Harding. An inquest was held, and myself, as well as a number of others, were found guilty of murder, and warrants issued for the arrest. Q. Were you charged with murder? A. Found guilty by the coroner's inquest of murder, so far as a coroner's inquest could do that. Among the number found guilty, were men, who--or accused of it--were men who were not in the posse, and had no connection with it, and it was known to every one, who were blocks away from Lackawanna avenue. One of them was three blocks away from Lackawanna avenue, at the time the firing took place; another one was in his barn, one block away from Lackawanna avenue; and another one, I doubt whether he was in the city; another one was inside the store--of our store. Both the Messrs. Hunt who were found guilty--were brought in by the coroner's jury, charged with murder, had no connection in any way, shape or manner with the posse, and were not present at it, the elder Mr. Hunt, being inside of the store, and the younger one, being over two blocks away. Warrants were issued for the arrest of the elder Mr. Hunt, and some others, and Mr. Hunt was arrested. This was done at night. It was understood that we would be arrested at night, and taken in carriages to Wilkes-Barre, and not allowed a chance to consult counsel, and taken down through Taylorville, where a large number of this crowd had come from, and where two of this crowd that were killed lived, and then probably lynched. As soon as any notice was given of these arrests, word was carried immediately to General Huidekoper's head-quarters, who was then stationed at the company's store, to come along on the track, and scattered where they would do the most good. He immediately ordered a company down, and took the prisoners from the constable, holding himself personally responsible for their delivery to the proper authorities. That was done, because no one had any idea that the coroner's inquest was a legal affair, and that the lives of the men arrested were not worth that, if they were taken off at night, because any one of them could be arrested in the day time. Any one of us could be arrested at any hour of the day, if they had seen fit to do so, and it was merely an action of revenge on the part of the crowd. The next day, all that were in any danger of arrest, voluntarily went to Wilkes-Barre, and entered bail. Q. How many were arrested by that constable? A. Two. Q. And they were taken from the custody of the constable by this company of Huidekoper's? A. Yes, sir. Undoubtedly other arrests would have been made, but they did not care to go under his guns to do it. We put ourselves under his guns, and spent the night there. Q. Had they warrants against all the posse? A. They were not able to find out. We were not allowed any access to what they were doing. It was all secret. Q. Coroner's jury? A. Yes, sir. Q. Warrants issued by the coroner? A. By an alderman, acting as coroner. Q. And placed in the hands of this constable? A. To arrest. The constable told me that he had a warrant for my arrest that night, but refused to serve it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you ascertain what force accompanied the constable to make these arrests? A. No, sir. There was quite a crowd apparently hanging on, but the constable made the arrest alone. The idea was to hurry the men off quietly, without letting us know anything about it, and get them out of the reach of assistance. Q. Who were the two men that were arrested? A. T. T. Hunt and C. B. Chittenden. Q. Were they part of your posse? A. Hunt had nothing whatever to do with it. Q. What was Hunt's business? A. Hardware merchant. Q. Was Chittenden a member of the posse? A. He was a member of the posse. Q. Did he participate in the conflict? A. I am not certain whether he did or not. Q. In endeavoring to suppress the riot? A. I am not certain whether he was in the squad or not. I know he belonged to the general committee--the general posse. If he was not there, he probably would have been if he had had an opportunity. Q. What class and character of men was that posse composed of? A. The best men of the town. Merchants and lawyers, business men generally. * * * * * J. H. Powell, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside in Hyde Park, this city. Q. What is your business? A. At present I am not doing anything. My last business was editor of the _Industrial Advocate_. Q. In July last what were you? A. At that time my occupation was a miner. Q. And in August? A. At that time my occupation was a miner. Q. In whose employ were you? A. D. L. and W. Co. Q. Delaware, Lackawanna and Western? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what capacity were you employed? A. Miner. Q. As foreman, or as---- A. No, sir; miner. Q. How far were you--was it from the city of Scranton where you worked in July? A. We were not at work at the time. During that time they were on a strike. Q. About the 20th of July--were you not at work at that time? A. I presume not. I presume we were on a strike the 20th of July. Q. Did all the miners---- A. I am not positive whether we commenced the strike---- Q. Did all the miners employed by the company strike? A. It was a general strike. I presume it was a tidal wave that went through the country. The first commencement of the strike was the railroad men struck, and they blocked the mines to a stand still, and the miners at the meeting joined hands with the whole country. Q. The miners struck? A. They called a meeting, and decided to make a demand for higher wages. Q. Had you stopped work before you called that meeting? A. There was a meeting--a preliminary meeting--there was some of the mines idle for want of cars. Q. Take the company that you were working for--the men that you were working with--did they strike, or were you stopped for want of work to do? A. I could not state positive with regard to the whole mines. Part of the mines stopped for want of cars. Q. I am asking whether yours stopped for want of cars? A. At that time I was unable to attend to my work on account of sickness. Q. Then you had not been at work for several weeks? A. I was only working every other week. I could not work on account of sickness at the time. Q. What day did they hold that meeting and agree to join hands with the railroad employés? A. I am not positive of the date of that? Q. Was it before or after the strike at Pittsburgh? A. It was after the strike at Pittsburgh. Q. Was anything done by the miners here about a strike before the strike at Pittsburgh? A. No, sir. Q. Had you held any meetings or contemplated a strike until after you heard of the strike at Pittsburgh? A. No, sir; did not know of any meetings. Q. Then that was the beginning of it? A. Yes, sir. Q. The railroad employés struck first, I understand you to say? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did they send any word or have any interviews with the miners to persuade the miners to strike? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. The miners held a meeting and resolved to strike also. Is that the way of it? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long after the railroad employés struck? A. I presume, if my memory serves me, it was about a week after the railroad strike, so far as I remember. I did not take any notice of it. Q. Did the miners have any organization, any societies among themselves? A. I presume that they had an organization. They used to have organizations. What they termed the W.B.A. Q. Had they any in last summer--in 1877? A. I presume they had. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know the existence? A. I may as well say that I knew of the existence of the W.B.A. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Workingmen's Benevolent Association? A. No; it was the old organization. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the new organization? A. The new organization, I presume, the title is the Knights of Labor? Q. What were the objects of the organization? A. The only object of the organization is men combined together to elevate labor? Q. Are you a member of the organization? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was it secret? A. There were secrets in it. Q. Was it confined entirely to miners? A. No, sir. Q. Other classes of laboring men--did it take any? A. Took in mechanics, and all that earn their living by the sweat of their brow. Q. Took in railroad employés? A. Any class in. Q. Can you give us the extent of that organization? A. I could not, sir. Q. Do you know whether it extends throughout the State, or whether it is confined to the coal region? A. I do not believe it is confined. I do not know that it is confined to any place. Q. How many lodges do you know of, or did you, at that time? A. I could not tell you, sir. I am not posted in the organization. Q. Was there a lodge here in Scranton? A. There was. Q. More than one lodge? A. There were several lodges. I could not state how many. Q. Do you know whether there were any lodges in the vicinity of here, around in the townships? A. I presume there were lodges throughout the county. Q. All through the county? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Are those lodges composed of different trades--different branches of the trades? They are all organized--that is, for instance, miners into one---- Mr. Lindsey: No; he has just said, they took in all classes of laboring men, miners, and mechanics. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I understand that. I want to understand whether he means a lodge, composed of those men generally, or whether they are lodges of each trade, and these lodges compose the organization or delegates from them? A. I presume that there are lodges of different trades. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Under the same title? A. The same title. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Take the lodge to which you belonged. Were they composed entirely of miners? A. No, sir. Q. What other classes of men belonged? A. Mechanics, carpenters, engineers, miners. Q. Were there any railroad employés? A. I do not know of any. Q. In your lodge? A. I do not know of any. There may be. Q. Carpenters? A. Carpenters. Q. Blacksmiths? A. Blacksmiths. Q. Miners? A. Miners. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What class of engineers? A. Stationary engineers; not railroad. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. You only include those employed in collieries and about collieries in your organization? A. All employed around collieries. Q. Can you give us the extent of the organization in the city? A. I could not. Q. Do you know how many members it has throughout the State? A. I could not say. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Approximate about? A. I have no "about" about it. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Have you not heard an estimate of the number in this vicinity or this county? A. No, sir; I have not see anything official, more than it is stated somewhere, from thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand. Q. In this vicinity? A. In this county. That was the estimate. I have nothing official about it. Q. The object is for the elevation of labor? A. The object is the elevation of labor by honorable means and legal means. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Is it beneficial? A. No, sir; only so far as helping a brother when he is in necessity. Q. That is what I mean? A. Yes; beneficial. Q. If a man is sick or out of work or in distress, then he is helped? A. Out of employment. In distress. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Is it not more for assistance in case of a strike in distress than in case of sickness? A. This labor organization, it is on account of distress; for instance, a man out of labor and in distress--a family in need; it is a matter of charity. Q. You do not understand me, or if you do, you do not take it right. If a man strikes, he is helped quicker than if he is taken sick; was he not? A. I don't know of any proviso with regard to men that strike. If a man is thrown out of employment, or deprived of employment, and in distress, and wants help to go somewhere where he can get employment, the object is to help him along, in order to sustain his family. Q. Do they ever assist the miners of a colliery that are on a strike? A. There is no proviso for strikes. Their funds would not afford them to. By Senator Reyburn: Q. If a man loses his employment from any cause, he receives assistance? A. Not any amount. A man, for instance, is deprived of employment, and wants to go somewhere in search of employment--just help him a few dollars to get employment elsewhere. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Is it a part of the objects of the association to organize in strikes case they think it is best in order to get their wages raised? If they are dissatisfied with regard to wages, is it a part of the intent of the society to organize? A. No, sir. Q. Or to help them on to arrange the machinery for a strike, so that it will all come off together? A. There is nothing connected with that organization, only to elevate labor by legal means. Q. I suppose they would not call striking, quitting work, illegal means? A. No; my view of the question, a man has just as much right to quit work, and that is legal. Q. But that is a question, whether this is a part of the objects of the association. Whether in case the men felt that they have been aggrieved by the reduction of wages--whether the association acts as a unit in forwarding a strike, in assisting the men, to all quit work simultaneously? A. Oh, no; nothing of the kind. Q. Nothing of the kind in the by-laws and constitution? A. No; I do not know of anything that I could draw such an inference from. Q. Is this association in existence now? A. Yes, it is. By Mr. Englebert: Q. Were you working in the mines in 1876? A. Yes, sir. Q. What wages were you getting then--average--you being a practical man of intelligence, of course, you know about the average price of miners and laborers in 1876? A. To be able to answer that question intelligently---- Q. As near as you can remember? A. I ought to have prepared myself, by looking up the price of coal. I could not remember exactly what would be the price of a car in 1876. If I could remember that, I could find out about what it would be--the amount of money. Q. What was the difference about in wages between 1875 and 1876, causing this dissatisfaction? A. There was no difference. Q. The same wages? A. The price was the same in 1876 and 1877. Q. Do you mean the pay for mining? A. I do not remember of any reduction taking place. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any reduction in March, 1877, of ten per cent.? A. I believe there was ten per cent. in March. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did that take effect in the mines, or only in the machine shops? A. There was one reduction that didn't take effect in the mines, but in the shops and among the mechanics. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Not among the miners? A. There was one reduction the mechanics had that didn't reach the miners. Q. And are the wages of miners fixed by the price of coal at entirely the same scale? A. They got so much a car. There is one grand mistake been made in the assessment of the car. It leaves the impression that the men get so much a ton instead of so much a car. When a man gets sixty-four cents a car, it is not sixty-four cents a ton, but sixty-four cents for two tons of clean coal. Q. That would be thirty-one cents a ton? A. Yes; for loading and mining and all the expenses in connection with it. The price of a car contained the price of mining coal, loading the coal, and all necessary expenses. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Did not your mine wagons average more than two tons of clean coal? A. I believe they average it so that a car carries about two and a half tons. There is half a ton allowed for breakage and culm, so it makes it about two tons of clean coal. Q. Is that not a big average of loss? A. It appears to me that it is, but it appears on the other side that it don't satisfy the corporation. Q. About what I am speaking about is ordinary mining? A. In my estimation, half a ton would be sufficient. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. How did this price range in 1877, as compared with 1873, at the time of the panic? A. I could give you an estimate of what a miner would make in 1877 and 1876 as well. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Just state whether the wages were any lower in May, June, or July, of 1877, than they were in the same months of 1876? Make your own estimates to yourself. A. I do not want to state anything but what I am positive of, and I cannot bring to memory with regard to the dates of this reduction. Q. Had there been any reductions in 1877? A. Up to that date I cannot remember whether there was a ten per cent. or not. There may be others that can remember these things. Q. You cannot state whether there was any reduction in 1877 or not? A. I am not positive. I am under the impression that there was a reduction; but I could not state positively--in the early part of 1877. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Will you please define the term strike? A. The only definition I can give you is that it means suspension of work. Q. You mean if just one man quits work, he is on a strike, or when there is a combination of men all quit at once? A. Oh, no; a man may suspend work himself, but the term strike means a general suspension of work. Q. Of all the men--then you call it a strike? A. Yes; although the proper term is suspension. Q. You know it is generally termed a strike? A. So the railroad and everything of that kind call it a strike; but it is not termed a strike unless there is an arrangement or understanding that they all quit. A meeting is called, there is a delegation appointed to inform the officials of the corporations of the demand of the men, and that committee returns back and reports; and if that is accepted--sometimes it is decided by ballot--if they agree to suspend work until their demand is complied with--they go under the term strike. Q. What is the object of the men, and what means would be resorted to, to prevent other men from working? A. There is no provision to prevent anybody. I never knew of any proviso to prevent anybody from working. Q. Then when there is any interference, it is unauthorized by your organization? A. Oh, yes. Q. When men go on a strike, and others will undertake to work in their stead, and they are interrupted by violence and threats of violence? A. No organization could be accountable for that, and I wish to state here that the late strike was not under the auspices of that organization. Q. That strike at that time was not under their auspices? A. The strike was not inaugurated by the organization. Q. Did the organization approve of it? A. There was a meeting called. There was a mass meeting, and when that meeting--that meeting adjourned to meet at a mass meeting and take a vote of the committee, and in that second mass meeting they decided to suspend work and join hands. Q. The second mass meeting was at the silk-works? A. No, sir. Q. Where was it? A. Held in the Round woods. Q. Where was the first one held? A. "Fellows' Hall." By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did this organization--"Kights of Labor"--did they by any resolution or by-law discountenance any interference with men that wished to work? A. There is no combination to resort to any violence whatever. Q. Was there anything condemning anything by the men? A. There was nothing under the organization. The constitution and by-laws is the one safe basis of any society, and from their constitution and by-laws there is nothing whatever but that it is a law-abiding organization. Q. Do you know of any resolutions being passed by any of those lodges and by this association, condemning interference with men who wished to work? A. I do not, neither do I know of any resolution that urged anything of that kind. Q. Were you present at this meeting out here at the silk-works? A. Yes, sir. Q. What resolutions were passed there? A. I do not know but very little about the resolutions. I went there in company--at the time, I held the position of chairman of the county and central committee, and was secretary of the Hyde park executive committee, and we went there in company with others of that executive committee--over to the silk-works meeting, with the understanding that there were delegations there from all over the county. Q. You are secretary of the executive committee of what? A. Of the miners. Q. Of those Knights of Labor? A. Oh, no, sir; it was a committee appointed in this mass meeting of members and non-members. I went over there to that meeting, with the understanding that there were delegates to be there from all over the county. I do not know that our committee was notified officially of this meeting, only it was spoken all over the street, and I presume there was notice in the local press, that there was to be a meeting held. When I went there, there was a few thousand people there, and after a while the meeting was called to order by some gentleman, a stranger to me, and some gentleman, I forget his name, was elected chairman. He was also a stranger to me, and the meeting was orderly--there was a few disorderly men there, but the average of the meeting was an orderly meeting, with the exception of those few that may have been aggravated by seeing these men they termed blacklegs working in their places in the shops. I was told that the meeting was called by the Lackawanna Coal Company, to receive the report of some committee, but I never heard of any committee reporting. I did not take any part there, more so than going round, and when I would hear some one making remarks there, to try to quash him of all such remarks, until a letter was brought there by somebody and read--a letter purporting to be written, as I understood at the time, by W. W. Scranton, and in that letter, it was read there, that Scranton stated something, that the men should live on mush and milk, or something to that effect. I was so far off I could not hear the letter, and that drove these men around there to a rage. Q. Did you understand that this letter had been written by Scranton? A. I never thought that was the letter. That was my impression. The impression it left on me was that it was written by some men to accomplish their object--to inspire the men to violate the laws. Q. Do you know of any resolutions passed at that meeting? Do you know the purport of those resolutions? A. I do not know of any resolutions. Q. When this meeting adjourned, what was the general understanding of what was to be done? A. The meeting adjourned. There were a few that got up a cry to go and drive all the blacklegs out; and the meeting adjourned, and the men started and went up in the direction of the shops. Q. What do you mean by the shops? A. The manufactories, you know. Q. Different manufactories? A. Yes; and that is the last I saw of the meeting. I could see these men running. I saw these men running up the hill. I didn't follow them. I took the railroad up. Q. You did not go up with the crowd to the shops? A. No; I didn't see anything. Q. How large a crowd ran in that direction, about? A. I think, maybe, those that went up there might have been three or four thousand people there in the meeting, more or less. I could not make an estimate. There was a large crowd. Q. What class of men were those that talked about driving the blacklegs out of the shops and mills? Were they men from these shops, formerly? A. They were strangers to me. I was not much acquainted with this city. Q. Did the miners join in with that crowd? A. It was not a meeting of miners; it was a public meeting. You could not say it was miners or mechanics. Q. You could not tell whether there was any miners joined that crowd or not? A. Oh, no. Q. A mass meeting of all classes of laboring men? A. A general meeting. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any liquor there, or anything to inflame--any drinking going on? A. Oh, no; not to my knowledge. Q. You didn't see anything of that kind? A. Didn't see any man there under the influence of drink. Q. Do I understand you to say you are a member of the executive committee of miners? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you go there in your official capacity? A. No, sir; we just met, and agreed to go there together. Q. To hear some report? A. Yes, sir; we went over there as a matter of curiosity, being a member of the executive committee of the Hyde Park miners. Q. What did you expect this report from? A. We were informed there would be delegates from different places? Q. They were to make a report? A. Yes; to know the general situation of the men all over the different parts of the county. Q. What were they to report about? A. With regard to what was the condition of the standing of men in different places. That is what we expected they would report. Q. The condition in what respect? A. In regard to what was the condition of the lines that were striking, or any sign of a break, or anything of that kind. Q. That is, whether they were all standing solid in the strike? A. Yes; exactly. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did your committee intend to make a report at that meeting, also? A. No, sir; but we could have made a report in behalf of the Hyde Park men, the men that we represented in committee. If there was any difficulty, we could see that the men at our side were all solid. That is the general phrase of a report, if the men are all solid--all solid. Q. All stand united? A. That meant united. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What wages did you get the last month that you worked? A. I presume that the men---- Q. I just asked you the question, how much did you get the last month that you worked? How much did you make? A. The last month? Q. Yes? A. We generally work there---- Q. I ain't asking you that? A. I could not tell you how much I made in the last month. Q. How much could you make a day? A. In the Diamond vein a man could make about $1 89 a day, figuring down the price of a car, and allowing for expenses, and the price for labor, loading the coal. * * * * * J. F. McNally, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Sixth ward, city of Scranton. Q. What is your business? What was it in July last? A. Boiler tender for the iron and coal company. Q. Where is that located--the works of the company? A. Down this side of Shanty hill a little ways. Q. Were you at work on the 1st day of August? A. No, sir. Q. Go on and state why you were not, and give us the facts connected with the strike here, and all that you are acquainted with? A. On the 8th day of July, I think it was, there was a reduction--it didn't say how much. Q. A reduction of wages? A. A notice put up to that effect. Q. By that company? A. Yes, sir. We didn't like it very well, and we appointed a committee to wait on Mr. Platt--he was outside foreman there--and see what the reduction was, and the committee went to Mr. Platt, and he was to go to Mr. Scranton. The answer was, that when we got paid we would find out what the reduction was. Mr. Platt stated that Mr. Scranton told him he didn't know it was any of his business to go there--something to that effect. So we worked along, and on the 20th they struck. I was on the night turn, and I worked Monday night, and Tuesday afternoon they struck. Q. On the 20th of July? A. Yes; about twelve o'clock. They stated here it was a puddlers'---- Q. It was either the 17th or the 24th--which was it now? Do you think Tuesday, 24th? A. I could not say positively which it was. I know it was summer. The latter part of the month, or getting that way. Q. Go on, then. A. I was on the night turn, and I just got up about two o'clock, and I came over that afternoon a little early, and had a little work to do, and when I was going out mother said to me, "Where are you going? Going to work?" She said she heard they had struck. There was a meeting that night up on the hill. I left the dinner-pail in the house, and went up to the meeting, to see what was going on there. When I got there, Mr. Scranton came about the same time, and he asked what was the matter, and they told him. He said he could not do anything, and he drove away, and that is all there was about it until the 1st of August there was a meeting called to be held at the silk-works. So we went there to hear what it was. We understood it was a report from the miners and other different trades, in regard to what they were going to do, whether they were going to stay out or resume work, or what. After the meeting was called to order, before any committee had a chance to report, or anything of the kind, this letter was produced, and read there. Q. That was at the silk-works? A. Yes. Q. State how the letter read. What the subject of it was. The subject matter, as near as you can remember. A. The substance of the letter was, Mr. Scranton said he would have the men working if, I think, it was thirty-five cents a day and living on mush and molasses, or he would bury himself in a culm-dump. That was the statement of the letter. Q. How was the letter signed? A. Workingmen. Q. These workingmen stated in the letter that that was what Mr. Scranton had said? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did the letter state when and where Mr. Scranton had made that declaration? A. No, sir; not to my recollection. Q. What did the letter advise the meeting to do? A. It didn't state. That was about the substance of the letter. Q. Who read the letter? A. I could not tell you what his name is. I wouldn't know him if I would see him. Q. Did you come up, then, with the crowd that came up to the shop? A. No, sir. After the meeting adjourned, part of us came up the railroad towards the L.S. crossing, and I stood there conversing about fifteen or twenty minutes. The crowd had gone towards Lackawanna avenue. After they had dispersed from there, I thought I would walk to town, and I went up, and when I got up to the top of the hill the crowd and I walked through the crowd, and I met the mayor coming down. He seemed to be quite excited. He was going to McKinney's office. I met him a little this side of there. I passed on to Lackawanna avenue, and stood there. Q. Your recollection of it is the same as that given by Mr. Brown this morning as to what occurred there on Lackawanna avenue? A. No, sir. Q. Go on and state, then, how it was? A. I walked first towards Lackawanna avenue and then I walked back again to Washington avenue and stood down there. The mayor came up, supported by two men, one on each side of him, and the crowd following up. A party says, What is this coming down the avenue? I stood up and I saw it was vigilantes, as they call them, coming down with rifles. They had just about passed about the time the crowd came there. The crowd filed in right behind them. Mr. Boltry stepped back and told them to keep back. With that they turned around again, and with that the first I heard was "crack," "crack," "crack" of the vigilants. They fired right into them. Q. Was the crowd throwing stones? A. I had not seen any. Q. Did you hear any pistol shot from the crowd? A. No, sir; not there, nor anywhere in that section. Q. Whereabouts was the crowd when the vigilantes fired? A. They were right on Washington avenue, from Lackawanna avenue. Q. Going which direction? A. They seemed to be facing down Lackawanna avenue. Q. In this direction? A. Yes. Q. When the firing took place? A. Yes; they were right abreast there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How large a crowd was that? A. I should judge from five to six hundred. Q. What wages were you getting at the time of the strike? A. One dollar and twelve cents. Q. As boiler tender? A. Yes; I looked after boilers there. Q. Was that what your wages were about the time of the reduction or before? A. After the reduction. Q. How was it before the reduction? A. Before the reduction it was one dollar and a half. Q. When was the first reduction? A. I think it was in March. Q. How much was it after the reduction in March? A. One dollar and twenty-five cents. Q. Then after the last reduction it was one dollar and twelve cents? A. One dollar and twelve and a half cents. Q. What were engineers getting in the works where you were at that time? A. One dollar and a half they were getting before the last reduction. One dollar and thirty-five cents, then, after the last reduction. There is one of the engineers here, who can state that. Q. What were the men, generally, getting? What wages in the shops? A. Laboring men were getting eighty cents a day. Q. What kind of work were they doing? A. All kinds of work round there--that is, laborers. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You mean repairing men--truckmen? A. Truckmen, such as that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Get eighty cents a day after the first reduction? A. Yes, sir. Q. How much were they getting before the last reduction? A. I think it was either ninety cents or one dollar, or one dollar and five cents. Q. How much were they getting before the reduction in March? A. I could not say what they were getting. Puddlers were getting three dollars a ton. Q. Three dollars a ton before the reduction? A. Before the reduction. Q. How much were they getting before the reduction? A. Two dollars and seventy cents I think it was, and that had to be divided between two. By Senator Yutzy: Q. They had a helper? A. At this time two puddlermen were in together. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How much would they puddle per day, on an average? A. A ton was about all they were allowed to puddle. Twenty-two hundred, about that--twenty-two hundred I think was allowed for a ton. Q. What then did they make per day, on an average? A. Between one dollar and thirty-five cents and one dollar and fifty cents. Q. Was this reduction of wages that was made in July general? A. Yes; it was a general reduction--stated so. Q. Among all the men? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did it apply to you? A. The notice read that it would be a general reduction. Q. Did the reduction apply to officers of the company--book-keepers and so forth? A. That is something I could not state. Q. Is a ton a day all that two men can puddle? A. Yes--about that. Q. Don't they puddle more than that some days? A. They may perhaps--two hundred over that. Q. Two hundred over? They are paid for all they make over, are they not? A. That is something I cannot state. They are only allowed a ton. Q. Did other companies here reduce their wages also? A. Yes, sir. Q. At the same time? A. Well, somewhere around there. This company was the first that struck here. Q. In the meetings that you attended among the men who struck, was there anything said about interfering with those parties of men who were willing to work? A. No, sir; they were committees appointed to go and wait on them, and ask them civilly whether they could work. There was no violence of any kind. Q. Committees appointed to visit them, and ask them to quit work? A. Yes, sir. Q. Until they got the wages they want? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did they fix upon any definite price per day that you would demand? A. Yes; we asked them twenty-five per cent. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Twenty-five per cent. advance? A. Yes; there was a committee appointed between boiler tenders and engineers of the company, to wait on the former and demand it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you on that committee? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Well, now do you know---- A. I was on after. We could not get no one over there after we met altogether. There was a committee appointed to wait on Mr. Scranton, and I was on that committee to ask Mr. Scranton. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What reason did Mr. Scranton give? A. He said he could not do it. He was not getting price enough for his iron, and could not afford to give it. He said these were just as big a price as any other company. There was one witness stated here to-day, in regard to after the coroner's inquest was held, that they were to take them in carriages to Wilkes-Barre after the arrest. There was no such proposition made. Q. Were you at the coroner's inquest? A. Yes, I was there--a witness there. They were to make these arrests and put them in the lockup here, and take them to Wilkes-Barre. They were not to take them by night. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How do you know? A. Because I was there all the time. Q. Have any conversation with the officers? A. No, sir; it was somewhere about eight o'clock in the evening, or seven o'clock, when the verdict was given, and all the evidence was taken. Then the arrest was to be made immediately after that. He stated then, that there was an indictment in Wilkes-Barre, one for murder and one for manslaughter. There was not. There was only one indictment fetched against them. It was for manslaughter. Q. Against whom? A. Against the vigilants. Q. Do you know how much the miners made per day during May, June, and July, 1877? A. The miners stated to me that they could make on an average about one dollar and fifty cents a day. Q. During May, June, and July? A. Yes, sir; they were not working on full time. Some days they would make half of that. They were paid by the car, and they would not get the cars. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What was your object in coming up Lackawanna avenue at that time? You say you came up and stood on the corner? A. I most generally come up every day two or three times. Q. You had no particular mission to go up there? A. No, sir. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Expect to see any fun? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did you expect there was anything going on? A. No, sir; never dreamed of anything. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you know there was a crowd of men driving the men out of the works. A. No, sir; had not seen any. Q. Did not know anything about that at all? A. Did not see that at all. The men came out peaceably. I did not see any men around. Q. Did you see the crowd going up to the works? A. The place was on the road coming up. Q. You were at the meeting at the silk-works, and came up? A. No, sir; I took the railroad. Q. Did the railroad lead you by the shops? A. No, sir. Q. Were you about the shops when the men were driving the workmen out--when the crowd was? A. Yes. I just came there about the time the workmen were coming out. I did not see them driven out. Q. Did you go inside the shops? A. No, sir. Q. You were along there just as the workmen were coming out? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was the crowd chasing any of them? A. Not that I saw. Q. The workmen came out peaceably and quiet? There seemed to be no trouble? A. There did not seem to be any trouble. Q. At what shops? A. Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. Q. At the lower shops? A. At the first shops as you go down the hill. Q. Did you see any men coming out of the lower works immediately in the vicinity of where the stables are? A. No, sir; I did not. I met them after the crowd had passed. Q. Passed them? A. Yes; and I asked them what the difficulty was. They told me the men came there and ordered them out, so they went out. They stood all around the streets there. Q. Have you any knowledge of some men being clubbed and beaten and injured? A. No, sir. Did not see any clubbed, injured, or beaten in any way, shape, or manner. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Do you not know that such things did take place--that some were beaten and driven out violently? A. It was talked so. I never heard a man say he was hit. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see the mayor hit? A. No, sir. Q. Did you see the mayor bleeding as if he had been struck? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you see that crowd that came out of the shops with clubs in their hands? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Did you see any men---- A. When the mayor got there I passed right on Lackawanna avenue. Q. Did you see anybody in this crowd that came up Washington avenue with clubs? A. I saw some boys had sticks--or laths, rather. Q. What do you mean by boys? A. Boys from twelve to fourteen. Q. You did not see any attack made on the mayor at all? A. No, sir; I did not. Not to my knowledge. Q. Did you see Father Dunn? A. I think I did see the mayor struck. I would not be positive though. I think I saw the mayor struck. I would not be positive. Q. Who struck him? A boy? A. No, sir. I think it was a man. Q. What did he strike him with? A. I could not see what he struck him with. I was quite a distance away. I was up on Washington avenue. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At what point was it you saw the mayor struck? A. Right below the culvert. Q. The causeway under the railroad? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What did the crowd say when they came up Washington avenue? Did you hear any expressions from the crowd what they were going to do? A. When I passed by I heard them ask who it was that was going towards McKinney's office. They said it was the mayor. Those were the only words I heard spoken. Q. You say you came up Washington avenue, and sat down? A. I sat down on the corner of Hunt's store, on Washington avenue. Q. When the crowd came up--after the vigilants came up the street--did the crowd say what they were going to do? A. No, sir; they walked right along up the streets. Q. What did those boys say? A. The boys were ahead of the men. I did not pay much attention to what was going on. I saw the crowd pass up. Q. Was there much noise? A. No, sir. Q. Walking quietly, were they? A. Yes; they were walking at a fair gait. Q. Now, was there not some kind of a row when the mayor was struck; were they walking quietly then? A. They were standing--the majority of the crowd were standing down around the shops at that time. Q. Where did this man come from that struck the mayor--that you think struck the mayor? A. I could not say where he came from. Q. Did he not come out of the crowd? A. That is something I could not say, either. Q. You must, certainly, if you got an impression on your mind that you saw him struck--you must certainly know where the man came from--you say it was a man? A. I think the first I saw of the man, was right in front of the mayor. Where he came from, I could not say anything of the kind. Q. Was the crowd about the mayor trying to protect him? A. Yes; some of them were. Q. You did not see anything of this crowd that came out with clubs--out of the shops? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. You say you heard somebody asking who it was? A. Yes, sir; that passed through the crowd. Q. Where did the reply, "the mayor," come from? A. From the crowd. About the center of the crowd. Q. Did you not hear some expression from these men that came out of the shops? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Such as, "go for him," or "kill him," or something of that kind. Did you hear any expression of that kind in the crowd? A. No, sir; I did not stand there at all. I passed right through. Q. After the crowd got to Lackawanna avenue, where did you go? A. I stood right there. Q. On the corner? A. Yes; about a couple of yards back. I stood about four or five feet away from where one of the men was struck. Q. Where were the vigilant placed? A. The last one stood about the corner of Mr. Hunt's store. Q. Were they drawn up in line across the street? A. No, sir; they were in twos, going down the street. Q. Not this way? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did they halt or march off down the street? A. They halted right there. Q. And faced about and faced the crowd? A. They turned towards--facing the crowd; yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. When the firing took place, were they facing? A. Facing towards the crowd. Q. Facing down this way? A. No, sir; facing that way. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were they drawn across the street in a line, or how were they placed? A. As near as I can recollect it, they turned, and faced around. Suppose they were going down this way, [illustrating,] and they faced that way. [Illustrating.] Q. Were they faced in a straight line across this avenue? A. Not that I saw. Q. Were they up and down the street--I mean, for instance, facing that side--lengthwise? A. Yes; that is about the position they stood. Q. Lengthwise, down this street? A. Yes; and then they turned right around, as near as I can recollect it. When I saw them facing, each man stood right behind the other, and they turned right around and faced. Q. In what direction? A. Towards Washington avenue, where the crowd was coming up. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Faced towards you? A. Yes, sir. Q. They fired pretty close to you? A. Yes, sir. I did not know what was going on, for about a minute, until I heard one buzz pass my ear, and I thought it was time for me to get out. I ran back into Mr. Hunt's building after the fire was over, and they began to form a line across Washington--right on Washington avenue--began to form in line; then I came out. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The position you describe is, that they formed across Washington avenue, facing towards the shop? A. After the firing was done, they formed to go towards the company's store. Q. When the firing was done, where were they formed? A. Right about the center of the street, on the street car track, coming down this way. Q. Did not reach Washington avenue? A. Yes; it was past it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You say there was a man shot within four or five feet of you. What was he doing? A. I could not say what he was doing. I saw him fall. Q. You did not see what he was doing, before the shot was fired? A. No, sir; I turned round just as he was falling, and one buzzed alongside of me, and I got. Q. Was there any demonstration made by the crowd at all, before this firing? A. No, sir; not that I heard. Q. Did not see any stones thrown? A. No, sir; the majority of the crowd was up past me, when the shots began to fire. There was one man came up, and he was talking with me, and he says, "What is this coming down the street?" and I looked around, and saw what was called the vigilants. Q. Were you in position to see the stones when they were thrown? A. Yes; I think I would, if there were any thrown. I stood right on a level with Lackawanna avenue. Q. Had the crowd got across Lackawanna avenue? A. There were some; I could not say exactly whether they crossed to the other side of the street or not. Q. How many men were killed there? A. Three. Q. Whereabouts were they standing when they were killed? A. One of them stood right at Hunt's corner, where I was standing, and as to where the others were, I could not say where they were, but after the firing was over one of them lay right in front of Monie & Pugh's bakery, and the other one lay right across from Hunt's. Q. On this side of the street? A. No, sir; on the other side. One of them lay on the street and one lay on the sidewalk on Washington avenue. Q. Were they both on the right hand side of the street going up from here to Lackawanna avenue? A. One of them was, and the other one was just outside of the side-walk. Q. On the left hand side as you go up? A. Yes, sir. Q. If the firing was done in the other direction how could this man be shot upon that? You say they were facing down Washington avenue or in that direction--facing to the right up Lackawanna avenue? A. Yes, sir; when the shots began to fire. Q. You do not know whether this other man on the left or rear was shot at the same time or not? A. He was shot with that volley. Q. Did you hear any command given to fire? A. Yes; as near as I can recollect, there was some one gave a command to fire, but who it was, I could not say. Q. Give us the exact words if you can? A. They said, "fire." Q. They were all facing in the one direction when that command was given? A. The men that were back, I could not say which way they were facing. The front were facing towards Washington avenue. Q. And in one line? A. Yes; all but Mr. Bolser. He was behind the crowd. I do not know whether he got as far as the crowd when the shots were fired. He stood somewhere about two or three yards back of the crowd. Q. Was the volley fired by the whole command? A. There were three or four shots fired, then there was a couple of seconds between, and then there was, "crack, crack, crack," right along. Q. Was there any firing after that? A. No, sir; not that I know of. By Mr. Means: Q. You said, awhile ago, that you were a member of that committee that waited upon Mr. Scranton? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you chairman of the committee? A. No, sir; I was secretary of that committee. Q. How did Mr. Scranton treat you. Gentlemanly? A. Yes; he did. Q. Treated you gentlemanly and kindly? A. Yes, sir. Q. Just merely stated that he could not advance that twenty-five per cent. A. Said he could not afford to advance a cent the way they were getting paid for what they sold. * * * * * F. L. Hitchcock, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence and business? A. Residence Scranton; practicing law. Q. Please give us a statement of the difficulty as it occurred in the city--as it came under your observation--in July last and the 1st day of August? A. You want the transaction of the 1st of August? Q. We would like to have the origin of it--as much as you can give us--the origin and causes that produced it? A. You have had that all in detail in regard to the causes. I have nothing in addition to that. The only thing I can give you additional would be what I know of the organization of this posse and its work. While this strike was in progress and trouble became apprehended, the mayor called together an advisory committee, of which I was a member. This committee were devising ways and means for protection, and it was deemed best to organize this posse. I suggested, among other things--and we immediately proceeded to organize--this force comprising a good many of the old soldiers of the town, and got together a force of some one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty men, I think. We gathered together what arms we could find, and we commenced to drill. In the meantime we were sworn in as special policemen by the mayor, and we held ourselves in readiness constantly to protect the city and preserve the peace. Our head-quarters were established at the iron company's store, and for several evenings prior to the 1st of August we had been there--most of us--during the evening until twelve o'clock, and a large force all night, apprehending trouble. On the evening before the 1st of August we had resolved not to stay up there any longer, considering it unnecessary. I was sitting in my office, about ten o'clock, when the superintendent came down and told me he apprehended further trouble that night, and he wished us to get our posse together and go there that night. I immediately went up to Doud's store, where Captain Ripple said he would be, to communicate with him. Q. Where is Doud's store? A. Just above the corner of Washington avenue. Q. State where the iron-works store is. A. Still further up--at the corner--clear up. The iron company's store is at the corner of Jefferson avenue and Lackawanna. On my way up there, crossing Washington avenue, I noticed a number of persons looking down the avenue, and I stopped to see what they were looking at, and then for the first time saw this crowd approaching. I knew nothing of the meeting at the silk-works, and I was very apprehensive at the appearance of things. I went to the mayor's office and asked him if he could explain the meaning of that vast crowd coming towards the city. He said he did not know. He thought a moment, and said it was the meeting at the silk-works breaking up, and I said it does not look like breaking up; it is coming to town. "Very well," he says, "you get the posse together at the head-quarters, and await my orders." I immediately gathered together as many of the men as I could, and there we remained until we saw them driving the men out of the shops, clubbing and stoning people. They drove the men out of the furnaces, and they came out on to the track, frightened like a flock of sheep, fleeing for their lives. Mr. Scranton came up and said "What will we do?" I suggested we go down and protect them; we had a right to protect people in their work. "Very well," he said, "I would do that;" and he immediately communicated to Superintendent McKinney, and he said, the men had gone home, and were afraid to work; there was no use. I said our duty was to wait until we were called upon by the mayor. Very soon afterwards we received a summons that there was trouble below. We immediately formed in line and marched down the avenue two and two. We had, I suppose--we counted off before we started--thirty-eight men; but our force received some additions, so we must have had in the neighborhood of fifty. Q. When you got to Washington avenue? A. When we got to Lackawanna avenue, coming down. I was unable to find any one of the officers of the posse, when I notified the men, and acting First Sergeant Bartholomew was in command. He came to me and said I must act as second lieutenant. I was acting then as second lieutenant near the rear of the column. As we approached Washington avenue, we noticed there was a large crowd there, whooping and yelling. There was some stones thrown as we approached, and quite a number of those missiles came in behind us very thick. The crowd parted and let us through. We came down on the street car track. As we passed the avenue--the rear of the line passed the avenue--these missiles became thicker, and some pistol shots were fired, and a number of our guns, I noticed, were leveled. I turned around, and two or three of the men had their guns down to shoot. I yelled to them not to shoot, and they raised their guns again. This attack became much more furious, and we appeared to be in danger of being swallowed up, destroyed, and the whole line fired. I supposed three or four shots fired first, and then the whole line fired. A number of the guns--two of the guns, I think--were seized by the rioters and attempted to be wrested from the men before any firing took place--tried to be taken from the men. Several of the men were hit--several pistol shots were fired. This was all done before our men fired a gun. Then, I suppose, there were about fifty or sixty shots fired. Immediately the whole field was clear, and everything was stopped. We marched back to head-quarters, and after we marched back there, our force was gathered in until we had about two hundred men on duty--two hundred men altogether. We formed a line across the avenue, picketed the streets at the head-quarters, and remained in that position all day and all night. Three men were killed by the volleys. Two of the men fell near that corner on the right side, and one on the left. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In the first place, where did the stones appear to come from and the pistol shots, before your men fired? A. Came from the crowd. Came from both sides. Q. From Washington street? A. Yes, sir; and some from the other side also. Q. Both sides of Lackawanna? A. They were at the junction of Washington avenue and Lackawanna. These men came up Washington avenue, and they divided and let us through, so that there was a large force back of us on Washington avenue. As we came down we went right through them, and they attacked us on both sides. Q. What position were the men in when the firing took place? A. They were faced this way, in column of twos--facing this way, and they simply faced about and fired both ways in the crowd. Q. Faced outwards, both ranks? A. Yes, sir. Q. What position did you take next? A. After the fire? Q. Yes? A. After the firing--after a few moments--we marched back to head-quarters, and formed a line right across Lackawanna avenue, at the company's store. Q. Had you, at any time, formed across Lackawanna avenue during the time you were at Washington avenue? A. No; we just remained along the line of the street car track. Q. Parallel with Lackawanna? A. Yes, sir. We were on our way down to the mayor's office, and the attack stopped us, and compelled us to fire. Q. About how many pistol shots did you hear before your men fired? A. There was a great deal of noise and disturbance, and I could not tell how--exactly how many. There was one or two reports heard. How many I could not tell. There was a great deal of stones thrown, and a very excited time. Q. Was the mob very demonstrative? A. Yes; fearfully so--most terrible sight I ever saw. They seemed to be perfectly infuriated. I never saw men more like devils in my life. Q. Hear any expressions from any of them? A. Oh, yes; all kinds of expressions. "Kill the sons of bitches," "Take their guns," and all that kind of thing. Q. Did you see the mayor in the vicinity of the firing? A. No, sir; I did not see the mayor until after the firing was over. Just as the firing ceased the mayor came to us on the pavement. Q. The man that was killed on the south side of Lackawanna avenue, was he near the corner? A. I think there was one right near the corner. Q. Did you see him shot? A. I recollect seeing the two men fall--yes, I saw them as they fell, drop on to the ground. Q. Was he making any demonstration towards the posse? A. I do not know as to any individual, nor I could not pick out any individual. A large man there swung a club and was very demonstrative. Whether he was shot or not, I do not know. The man I did not know at all personally. Q. On what day was this posse organized? A. That I am not able to give you--the exact date from memory. We have got a record. Q. Was it before or after the Pittsburgh riots? A. I am unable to say. I judge it was--perhaps it was a little after that--what was the date of that? By Mr. Lindsey: Q. It commenced the 19th, but the destruction of property was on the 22d? A. This was after that, I think. I think it was one of the reasons why we were supposed to take care of ourselves if we could. I think that was one of the reasons that actuated the advisory board. The idea was that we were isolated from all, and that we either had to take care of ourselves or take the chances of being stamped out. Q. And this vigilance committee was organized for the purpose of protecting property? A. Nothing else, sir. Preserving peace and protecting property, and for no special property. Protecting the public peace. I might say the reason why we had our head-quarters at the company's store, was simply because we were unable to get any other place. We were unable to get the Second National Bank and other halls--the board of directors refused us admission. Said that would bring the fury of the mob down upon them. Mr. Scranton came forward and said we could occupy their store. We offered to pay for these other places. We were some three days trying to get a place. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Could you see the men being driven out of the shops or any of the works from this store? A. Yes. We could see them. I saw them before I got to the store. I saw them driving them out of the railroad shop and the furnaces before I went into the store. Q. The mob following the men? A. I saw men following them. Stones thrown at them. Following them with clubs, and the men fleeing for their lives. I saw them at all these places. Q. The mob following these men. What was it composed of--boys? A. I suppose boys sixteen to eighteen years old. Some of them were men. I noticed quite a number of those were young fellows--eighteen, twenty, to twenty-five years old. Q. Was information made against you, as one of the posse, for murder? A. Yes, sir. Q. For manslaughter? A. I think the indictment was murder. Q. Were you arrested? A. Yes, sir. Q. By whom? A. We went down and gave ourselves up. I was not one of those arrested by the constable. Q. Not formally? A. I went down before the court, and entered bail before the court--the whole of our posse--some fifty altogether. Q. How many of your posse were tried? A. The whole number, I think. Of those, there were some three or four that were proven not to have been present; that were arraigned as part of our posse. Q. At the preliminary hearing were dismissed? A. Yes, sir. Dismissed by the court. Q. Had you a preliminary hearing before the court? A. We gave bail, and on the trial a number of those persons were proven not to have been present. They were all tried. The judge directed a verdict of acquittal before it went to the jury. Q. Then you had no preliminary hearing at all? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many were indicted for murder? A. Some fifty. Q. Some for murder, and some for manslaughter? A. I think they were all on the same indictment of murder--all in one indictment, sir. Q. And all tried? A. Yes; all tried. There were three cases, but we were all on them. There were three different indictments. One case was made a test case for them all, and the other two the verdict was taken without any evidence at all, following the first one. Q. One case was made a test case? A. There were indictments in each of the three cases of Mr. Langon, Lane, and Dunledin. I think the case that was tried was for the murder of Langon. That was the one that was actually contested. Q. The case that was contested--was that submitted to a jury? A. Oh, yes; with the exception of those parties who were proved not present. * * * * * Carlos W. McKinney, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside? A. The corner of Adams avenue and Spruce street, Ninth ward. Q. What is your business? A. Superintendent blast furnace, Lackawanna Iron Company. Q. On the 1st day of August, state where you were? A. The morning of the first day of August, I went to the furnaces as usual. The furnaces had been idle for sometime before; that they had banked them up, and I got the men to go out and commence operations again. After working two or three days, on the 1st day of August there was a party assembled at the silk-works, while my men were at work at the furnaces. I was notified that there was a party down there, and there would probably be trouble. I went up about nine o'clock in the morning, at the top of the iron company's store, took a field glass and saw a large crowd at the silk-works. I saw the party start up Washington avenue from the silk-works, and I then went down near the steel-works, on an embankment, so that I could have a good view. I didn't know but that they were just going to make a parade through the streets, but when they arrived up as far as the iron company's machine shops--boiler shops--a large party of them left the main line, and passed off into the machine shops and drove the machine shop hands out. I saw them stoning them, and throwing clubs at them, from where I stood. After that a large number of them came up towards the blast furnaces. A small track led in down to the machine shops. I then went down to the blast furnaces, and made arrangements to cast. I told the men it looked like trouble, and I thought we better get out what iron there was in the furnace, and in case the men came upon us we would throw the blast out. I looked around, and saw the crowd coming up, right at the foot of the furnace, probably a thousand of them; we were just then about done casting. I saw the men could not stop long enough to stop the furnace, and told them to run, and I threw the blast off myself. I passed then, off to the engine-house, told the engineer to stop the engine and take the blast off, which he did. By this time the crowd had followed me, and I went up to the iron company's store, and met the general manager there, Mr. Scranton, and told him what had occurred at the furnace, and asked him what should be done. He said, we would wait and see. At that time nearly all the superintendents and foremen had come to the office, and reported that they had been stopped, and their men had been driven off. Then we had collected citizens and people working for the iron company, some forty-four men, that were up in the store. Mr. Scranton, after waiting awhile, said we had better fall in and go down and offer our services to the mayor, as we had already been appointed special policemen for the protection of iron property, and the property in general. And he headed the line--got them in column of two, and made the remark that we might as well die as any other time, and told them to follow. We marched out of the company's store, came down Lackawanna avenue to the corner of Washington here, and we met the crowd which had left the blast furnace, and passed to the shops of the D., L. and W. Quite a number were already on Lackawanna avenue, probably half a block up. We passed them, and they said nothing particular until we got past Washington avenue. I was on the rear end of the line with Bartry, and Mr. Scranton was at the head. After passing Washington avenue, the main body of the mob that came from below, came around rushing into Lackawanna avenue, and there was one man, I don't know who he was--they said his name was Langon--who came up to the line on the side where I was, and he had a stick about that long, [indicating,] and as I came by he shook his fist. I made no reply or anything. Then he turned to the crowd and says, "Fall in, boys, fall in, boys." They were rushing up. Then somebody hollered out, Take the guns away from them, they have blank cartridges. They were probably twenty-five feet from us, and Bartry and myself motioned them to stay back. At that time somebody fired a gun down the line, and when the first gun was fired a general fire commenced. After the crowd dispersed, we formed up in column of twos again, faced the other way, and marched back to the store. Q. How many persons were killed? A. There were three killed. Q. How many wounded? A. I don't know, sir; we have never been able to find out. Q. Were any of the posse wounded? A. Yes; I was wounded. A pistol ball in my knee, shot by a man who was on the corner, next to Jack Slagle. Q. On the left hand side going up Lackawanna? A. At the corner of Lackawanna and Washington. The first time these men shot, he hit my gun, and knocked a piece of the wood off. I have the gun yet. The next time he took me about four or five feet from the corner. I felt the ball strike by my knee. I felt down, and saw I was shot; felt the blood running down my leg, and right after that there was firing. Just at that time there was a man, probably about a head taller than the other man, who shot two men at the rear end of the column. I heard those balls come by, and I saw both shots. Q. Were those shots fired before there was any firing? A. Yes; they were firing before any shots were fired. Q. Were you struck before any firing? A. No, sir; I was struck after the general engagement commenced. Q. Any stones thrown at the posse by the crowd? A. Yes; there were stones thrown. I dodged one stone that struck a man by the name of John Stanton in the back. Q. Was that before any firing? A. That was before any firing. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. I understood you to say that the first pistol shot fired at you was before your posse fired? A. I was not shot until after. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I understood you there was a shot that hit your gun? A. My gun and myself was shot after the firing. Q. You say that the two shots fired by the tall man was before any firing done by the posse? A. Before any firing in the line. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. You don't know who that was that fired, do you? A. No, sir. Q. Ever know what became of him? A. No, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. Were you one of the men that were indicted for murder? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you arrested? A. I was arrested. Q. By the constable? A. No, sir. I went to Wilkes-Barre, and gave myself up with the posse. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you receive any information that this crowd were about to drive your men out of these furnaces? A. My men told me at the blast furnace that some men had told them they had better get out. My foreman, as well as the men who were at work there, told me. That is the reason I went up on to the store so as to get a good view of the crowd, and be in readiness. Q. Were you up in the store when you saw the crowd coming up? A. I was on top of the store. Q. Could you see any demonstrations they made in the furnace and work-shops below? A. After we commenced moving, I left that position, and passed down to the steel-mill, which is on a high embankment, I did not see what the crowd were going to do for certain. I supposed they were going to just have a parade. When I saw them make this demonstration at the lower shops, then I immediately went to the furnaces, and got out whatever iron there was in the furnaces, because I supposed that would be the next point of attack. Q. You were close enough to those shops below the steel-works to see distinctly that the men were being driven out? A. Yes. Saw them throwing stones at them. Saw the men who fired the boiler-house, and they threw stones at them at the same time. Saw two or three men running up the embankment on the opposite side they were stoning them. Q. Did you see any of them hurt? A. I could not tell whether the stones hit them or not. Q. Do you know anything else that would be of interest to our committee, any information that you have not already stated? A. These are just about the facts, so far as the riot is concerned. At this point the committee adjourned to meet at four o'clock, this afternoon. AFTERNOON SESSION. SCRANTON, _March 30, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at four, P.M. All members present except Mr. Dewees. * * * * * John Mucklow, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Down at Greenwood. Q. How far from here? A. They call it three miles. Q. What is your business? A. Working in the mines. Q. Were you at home on the 1st day of August last. A. Yes, sir. Q. Had the miners been at work up to that time? A. I believe not, sir. Q. What time did they quit work? A. I could not tell exactly. They had not worked for a week or so--nearly a couple of weeks, for all I know. Q. Were they on a strike? A. Our men did not strike at all. Our men were all working, and stopped for want of cars. Q. Stopped because there were no cars to carry the coal away? A. Yes. Our men did not strike at all. Did not hear a word about striking among our men. Q. Do you know where Isaac B. Felts lives? A. I guess he lives over in Taylorville. Q. Do you know where his store is? A. Yes, sir; his store is right opposite my house. Q. Opposite your house? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know anything about its being broken into on the morning of the 1st of August--some time after midnight, or before daylight? A. Broken open between twelve and one o'clock that night--that morning. Q. Did you hear the disturbance? A. Yes, sir; saw it, too. Q. Were you up? A. I was up laying on my porch. Q. How many men were there that broke into the store? A. I could not tell. There might have been some twenty; may be thirty, more or less. I could not say. It was moonlight. Q. How did they get in. How did they break in. Give us a description? A. I heard the first noise in the store. There was a crowd outside, and the first noise I heard in the store, and then they opened the front door to the store-room, and they went in there. There were some in the store before that, because they opened the door. Q. Did they break in the door or unlock it? A. The door was broke in--shoved in. Q. Did you hear them when they first came there? A. Yes; I was lying on the porch. Q. What class of men were they? A. I could not tell anything about that. Q. Where did they come from? A. I could not tell. They came up the road. That is, going down towards Pittston. They came up that way. Q. Towards Scranton? A. Came from towards Scranton. Towards Taylorville, the opposite side. Q. What did they say? A. Did not hear anything said, sir. Q. Were they noisy? A. No noise at all. Q. Done quietly, was it? A. Yes, sir. Q. What damage did they do? A. I could not state. I know they took goods away. I saw them carrying goods away. Could not tell how much or how little. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What kind of goods? A. I saw them carry boxes away, blue boxes, and other things. Q. Was it store goods, groceries, or was it iron? A. Carried every sort away. I guess we found everything of every kind lying along through the woods and places afterwards. Q. In what direction? A. Right down towards the Lackawanna. Q. In this direction, [indicating?] A. No; more towards north. Q. Would it be on the road toward the silk-works? A. No, sir; it was down kind of katty-cornered from that; north-west. Q. Did you go over to the store to see who it was? A. No, sir; I did not. I knew better than that. Did not want to get my head broke. Q. Did you consider it dangerous to have gone there? A. I would consider it, and I had a pair of revolvers with me, too. Q. Pair of revolvers? A. I had a pair. Q. And you would not want to risk it? A. No; I would not want to risk it at all. Q. Did you know any of the men? A. No, sir; I did not know a man--had no knowledge of any man that was there. Q. No knowledge? A. No knowledge. Q. Do you know whether those men came from the silk-works? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Was there a meeting at the silk-works that same morning? A. I heard there was afterwards, but I did not hear nothing of that until it was over. The first I heard of that was Langon and Dunledin was shot at Scranton. We heard out there, there was four men shot. That was all I know about it. The news was carried up there in the afternoon. Q. Did you know those two men, Langon and Dunledin? A. I knew Dunledin when he was a boy, and I knew Langon because he worked in our works. Q. Last summer? A. Yes. He worked there when he was killed. Q. What kind of a man was this Langon? A. I never saw anything wrong about him. He was assessor of our township. Q. Assessor of the township? A. Yes, sir. Q. Had he been instrumental in instigating the strike? A. Not that I know of. Q. How was the other man--what kind of a character or reputation had he? A. I do not know anything about him from the time he was a young boy. By Senator Reyburn: Q. How old a man was he? A. Langon? I could not state. Q. The other one. A. He might have been, may be twenty--from twenty to twenty-five. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did Langon say anything to you about going to the silk-works? A. Not a word. Q. Did you know anything about the meeting before. A. Not a word. Did not know until about three o'clock, in the afternoon. Q. Had there been any talk among the men where you work about striking? A. Not that I ever heard. Our men were all at work. Q. What company were you working for? A. Messrs. Correy & Co. Q. Had your wages been reduced any during the spring? A. Not from the fifteen cent drop, or whatever time the drop was. Q. When was that? A. I could not tell exactly what month it was in. Q. What year? A. I guess it must have been 1856 or 1857. Q. 1876, you mean? A. 1876 or 1877. Q. How much were you making per day at the time you had to quit work? A. We had to work pretty hard long hours if we could make one dollar and ninety cents a day as a miner. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. One dollar and ninety cents? A. That was all we made that month. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you paid by the ton? A. We were paid by the car. Q. How much were you paid by the car? A. Sixty-six cents. I think our vein is small--three foot thick and about three or four inches---- Q. How many cars can you put out to-day? A. Six are our day's work. We had too much work. We could not do it. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. For how many men? A. Two. Q. You don't know of any reduction in the price for mining than that of last year? A. Not from the fifteen cent drop. Q. What was the grievance of the miners then? A. Didn't seem to be any grievance at our place at all. I didn't hear them say anything, only they couldn't get cars enough to load the coal. Q. Was there any demand for coal? A. The cars didn't come for taking away. Q. It was not so much then the price that was paid per ton as it was as to the number of cars furnished? A. They had the same price, but they could not get as much as they could do. Q. It was the want of work? A. It was the want of work. Q. Not the amount paid? A. The amount of work, that was what it was for. Q. What was the cause of this want of cars? A. I could not tell that. It seems like this: we did not get the cars because the engineers and firemen stopped for wages. That was what I understood it was for. Q. What? A. The firemen and the engineers struck. That was the reason we could not get cars. Q. For how long did this last, that you didn't have cars enough? A. I could not say how long it was we could not get cars enough; and we don't get enough yet. Q. Was there any plan before that time that the engineers should refuse to work and run the cars? A. I did not hear anything before that. Q. Was these grievances complained of? A. No, sir; but there was not enough cars then. Q. Have there been cars enough since? A. In our place I only make six days a month now. Q. What is the cause of the want of cars now? A. Can't tell anything about it. Q. Is it the want of demand for coal? A. They say so. I don't know what it was. Q. Was there a general understanding of the miners throughout this region, before the strike took place, that there would be a strike? A. I never heard anything about it. Q. Was there a strike among the other miners for higher pay? A. Not as I know of. Q. How much damage was done to Mr. Felt's store? A. I could not say. Q. You don't know the value of the goods they took? A. No, sir. * * * * * John Jones, _sworn_. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. Greenwood. Q. What is your business? A. Stationary engineer. Q. Were you at home in July last, or August the 1st? A. I was at home on the day of August 1st. Q. How far from Mr. Felt's store do you live? A. About fifty feet, or seventy-five feet. Just opposite the store--nearly opposite. Q. Did you hear anybody breaking into the store during the night, and if so, at what time? A. I was not home that night. I was working. Q. Where were you working? A. At the Greenwood slope. Q. Running an engine? A. Running an engine. Q. At what time did you come off? A. Seven o'clock in the morning. Q. You heard nothing of what took place at the store during the night? A. No. Q. Do you know who the parties were that were at the store? A. No, sir; I do not. Q. Do you know from where they came? A. No, sir. Q. Or what class of men they were? A. No, sir. Q. When did you learn of the store being broken open? A. Learned of it when I came home in the morning--when I reached home. Q. Who told you? A. My wife. Q. Did she hear any of the parties? A. She did not say she heard any of the parties that were at the store. She heard from the neighbors. The neighbors told her of it. Q. Did you know anything about the meeting at the silk-works? A. Not until the day they had the meeting. Q. What time did you learn of that? A. I learned of it after the shooting. Q. Where were you when you heard of it? A. Sitting on the store porch. Q. At Greenwood? A. At my home; yes, sir. Q. For what company were you working at the time? A. The Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Company. Q. What wages were you getting, running the engine? A. One dollar and eighty-five cents a day. Q. Had there been any reduction made? A. Not for six months previous to that, there had not been from that time on. There had not been, not very lately. Q. When was the last reduction? A. I think it was in December. Q. Of 1876? A. Of 1876. Q. How much was that reduction? A. Fifteen cents. Q. There had been none since? A. None since that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Fifteen cents a day? A. Fifteen cents on a dollar--fifteen per cent. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you working for the same company that John Mucklow was? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any strike of the men that were working for that company? A. No, sir; not that I know of. Would not call it a strike, anyhow. Q. What do you call a strike? A. I don't know what to call it. When men turn out for wages, for their rights, that is what they term a strike--stick out for their rights. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Tell what they propose to do when they go out for their rights--propose to simply quit? A. Simply quit, and stand out until they get their rights. Q. And prevent others from working, at the same time? A. I don't know. I should not prevent any man, if I was striking. I should not prevent any man from work. Q. Is not that generally done? A. It seems so. Q. Is not that the rule? A. I don't know whether that is the rule or not. I could not say. Q. What has been the custom, generally, when they went out on a strike? Would they permit anybody to work? A. It has been a custom not to let them work. By Mr. Means: Q. Were you one of the strikers? A. No, sir; I was not. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You had charge of an engine? A. Pumping engine and hoist. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you interfered with in your pumping? A. No, sir. Q. Not asked to quit pumping? A. Not asked to quit pumping. Q. Do you know of any other places where they were requested to quit pumping? A. No, sir. Q. Did you quit? A. No, sir. Q. Tended your engine? A. Worked right along. Q. Is there anything else you wish to state to this committee? A. No, sir; nothing at all. Q. We want to give a full hearing to all sides? A. I am one of those kind of men that I don't go around much, and I don't know much; therefore, I can't tell you much of anything. By Mr. Means: Q. You are taking care of No. 1? A. I am taking care of No. 1. * * * * * W. W. Scranton, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside and your business, if you please? A. I live here in Scranton. General manager of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company. Q. I wish you would give us a statement of what took place prior to the 1st of August, in the way of organization for protection, and what you learned about the strike, and causes that induced it, &c., in brief? A. It was Tuesday, July 24, I think, that our iron company men struck. The strike started in the old mill. A few men run out and shouted, "We have struck!" and blew the big whistle, and as the men came out to hear what was the matter, they said, "We have struck--all turn out!" and they all turned out. That was about noon time--between twelve and one o'clock. Those that had gone home, and who knew nothing about it, came back, and were told that the men had struck, and that they must not go back. Whereupon the leaders of them marched the men in a body down to our new mill, where we had some puddlers at work, and got them out there, and from there down to the machine shop. I heard of it then, and drove down and asked them what was the matter. I reproached them for striking without saying anything to me or making any complaint. Inquired what reasons they had, &c., and they said they struck because they were not getting pay enough; and I asked them what they wanted, and they said they wanted thirty-five per cent. advance. Of course I pooh-poohed it; it was ridiculous--such an advance as that in such times as these. Told them that was out of the question. Of course, we could not afford it. I would be glad to pay them better wages if we could; there was nothing to warrant it. They separated, and I went back. Our shop hands still stayed in--the machine shop men, and foundry men, and our furnace men. Of course we did not want to have our furnace go out, if possible, and I went out and talked to these men in the afternoon and evening both. They said that they were perfectly willing to work--were satisfied with their pay, but that they were afraid, that there had been so many threats made that they had not dare stay. They would stay that night, but they must go out the next morning, because their lives were not safe. They said people had been to their wives and children, and they had been told that if their fathers, and brothers, &c., would not stop they would be killed. The long and short of the matter is, our furnace men were afraid. They said they were willing to work, and were satisfied to work, but they did not dare. Of course, judging from the temper of the times, I thought there might possibly be trouble, and I at once proceeded to organize a body of men to protect our property. I called in all our foremen, and a number of men I had confidence in--about thirty--armed them with rifles, kept them in the store that night, ready for anything that might happen. There was a good deal of talk about fire, &c. The next morning the furnace men went out. They said they could not stay. I went down and talked to them. They said they were willing to stay, but were afraid. Our teamsters--I did not think anybody would touch them--they were satisfied--and word came up while I was at breakfast that they had been scared away, and even our store teamster was notified that he would be shot it he went out. I went down, and got him out, and got some others out. That day the police sent us word, notifying us that without doubt our store was to be sacked that night, and that they knew of two wagons or one wagon which had been hired to carry off anything that might be taken out. Of course I listened to it, and got ready for it. That same day--I think it was that day or the next--the mayor sent word that the general of the division here was afraid of his own men with guns, and wanted me to take them and put them in our vaults. We took in about all the guns there were around there--probably five hundred or six hundred, and had them stored in our vaults, because these officers were afraid to trust their people. There was a sort of general panic. The next day I got our teamsters out. Our farm hands had been frightened away, but I talked with them, and reasoned with them, and finally went along with them myself. We took a few rifles along, and cheered them up, and they went to work, and worked on. About Saturday word came round from all quarters that our iron company men, with the exception, perhaps, of a few--that there was no dissatisfaction--the feeling of fear was passing away; they were willing to come back. They said they wanted to be sure of protection--that was the first thing--they must be sure of protection, and they had been threatened, and all that kind of thing. I told them we would protect them from all that danger, so far as I could. I told them that we would protect them--that the government was bound to protect them, and if they wanted to work they could work, and the government must protect them, and we would protect them--do what we could. They asked me to put some such notice as that in the paper. I told them I would do so. Previous to that, on Saturday night, it looked as if the Pennsylvania coal companies might go to work. The head-house, at No. 5, was burned. Of course that blocked all the transportation on that side. The head-house was repaired, and on Monday I was satisfied our men were willing to go to work--only a few that wanted to stay out. I put a notice in the evening paper--the Star I think it was, and I stated that anybody that was willing to go to work for us, we would protect--the government was bound to protect them, and they should be protected if the whole power of the United States came there; otherwise law would amount to nothing, and I re-assured them the best way I could. The next morning, Tuesday morning, they went to work--our machinists and founders. Our farm hands had gone to work, and our furnace men went to work. We had banked our furnaces; we thought we could save them both, so our furnace men went to work again. We took only enough for one furnace, so as to make sure of one; thought we might have to let the other slide until we saved the first, and they went to work, day turn and night turn both. There had been a great deal of talk of trouble, and all that kind of thing, but of course you hear all kinds of rumors at a time like that. I did not take any too much stock in them. Still, we kept our forces in the store all the time. By that time a number of citizens had come in--Colonel Hitchcock, Mr. Ripple, and a number of other gentlemen--and we had signals arranged, and all that kind of thing, in case of trouble, to come out immediately. We had notified the mayor, in case of anything happening to our property, that we should hold the city responsible for damages. Wednesday morning I was down town on some business, and I heard of this meeting at the silk-works. I did not think it would amount to very much more, but while I was down town I heard on all sides that the men had heard that the machine shops were being driven out. I hurried right back to the office, and got there just as the men from the tops of our furnaces were being driven out. I saw the men running. I saw a very large crowd, with sticks and stones, and gesticulation, and those men running and others chasing them, and I knew then it meant business. We had not many men in the store then. Our foremen came in one after another, and stated that the machine shops men there had been driven away and beaten. They came in from the blast furnaces and stated the same thing. Came from the engine-house and stated that it had been set fire to in three places. And I might say, by the way, before this--the very first night I got my foremen together--I took the precaution to have them sworn in as special police, and while we were there my own people came in--probably about thirty or so--and a number of citizens. At that time the mob had got to the railroad shops, and a message came from the mayor stating, for God's sake come down and help him. He was in a sore pass. So 1 made these men a little speech, that we might as well die now as any other time. Come down and do what we could for the mayor. I told them I did not want any fooling. I did not want any man who was not willing to be killed if it was necessary, and did not want any man who was not willing to shoot to kill, and said if there was any man who fired, I wanted him to shoot to kill, that we meant no nonsense. There was only thirty or forty of us. There were three or four thousand of the others, and we wanted no fooling. We wanted them to obey orders to the last degree, and when they received orders to fire, to fire to kill. Nothing else would stop the thing. The thing must be squelched, and the only way to squelch it, when they fired they must fire to kill. That was the only way to save the town. While we were getting ready to go more messages came up, and stated that those men were going from the railroad shops for Pine Grove breaker. I might say that our miners have got an agreement with us. It has been so for some years. They agree to work on, in case of a strike, and we agreed, on our part, to give them, dating from the commencement of the strike, any advance of wages which the railroad company might give their men whenever they settled. If the railroad company gave them ten or fifteen or any per cent. advance, we agreed to give our men the same advance, dating from the start. Our Pine Brook men went in that morning. Understand that our entire force, so far as we had workmen, with the exception of two of our iron rolling men--and we had every reason to believe they would be in the next morning--our miners were at work, and were at work by virtue of agreement with us to work on in case of a strike. I have one of the agreements now in my pocket--a new one, similar to the old one. By that time, we started out. 1 went to the head of them. I did not myself know anything about military matters, beyond keeping the men in line, and that kind of thing, and I gave charge of it to young Bartholomew, who knew something of that sort of thing, and kept them in line and went down. I had seen some riots before, and knew pretty well about how that sort of thing was. We got down street, pretty near the corner of Washington avenue, and this crowd were coming up Washington avenue, and closed in behind our men, and I felt that the time was coming very close, and that it would be necessary to act very quick. They closed in behind us, coming up on each side of the avenue, leaving only the front clear. There were some in front. Not many. They were hooting and yelling, and finally I saw a movement of one or two, apparently leaders, looking at me as though there were getting ready for a rush. I had no doubt of it, and I was just waiting. I heard shouts: "Now, then, come along boys. They won't fire. They have blank cartridges," or something of that sort. There were sticks thrown, and just about as I was going to give the order to fire, I heard a shot fired, and almost simultaneously with that, every man stopped and fired. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where did the shot come from--this first shot you heard? A. Seemed to be a pistol shot. Q. From the crowd or mob? A. Yes; and the crowd rushed up and kind of fell back, and the shooting commenced. The shooting first was wild. By Mr. Means: Q. Before that shot was fired, were there any stones or missiles thrown? A. Many stones and sticks. I was at the head, and the line was a long one--about forty, marching two by two. Q. Were any stones or missiles thrown at the party to which you belonged? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At the rear of the line? A. Yes; and on the side also. It looked to me as though they were going to rush. I happened to see the riots in 1863, and I saw the same swing of the crowd--the fellows behind push up those in front. When these things were thrown, the firing commenced. They fell back once or twice--little short rallies--and run, and we went back to the store. The next day the troops came. I might say when we left the store, we heard the men were going to Pine Brook, and that they were calculating to drive out the men that were in there, and burn the breaker. Q. Were those your mines? A. Yes, our mines. And also that they were going to stop at Dixon's works on the way. Q. Were they also your mines? A. No, sir; they were Dixon Manufacturing Company's works and machine shops. I might say, also, previous to this--the Sunday before this thing--our pump engineers, &c. had been visited, and it was said they were afraid to work, and left us. Of course I put people there in whom I had confidence, to run the pumps and keep them going. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Will you give us a statement of what you were paying your men at that time? A. We pay--most of our work is done by the ton. There is very little day-work with us, except shop hands and furnace men. Our rolling-mill men and steel-works men are working now under the same wages under which they struck. Our rolling-mill heaters are making from ninety to one hundred dollars a month. I can bring you the pay-rolls. I have got them at the office. The most of our men in the mills worked by the ton and by the roll--that is permanent men. All except the commoner class of laborers are making now anywhere from forty-five to sixty and seventy-five dollars--along there. The men in the steel-works are making about--well I should think anywhere from forty-five to sixty dollars--along there--it depends entirely on the product. We pay them according to the ton, and if they do small work they get small pay. Q. Pay in proportion to the amount of work done? A. Yes, sir; so much a ton. We pay a heater ten cents a ton. If he heats forty tons, he gets four dollars. Our mining wages are regulated entirely by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. We pay whatever wages they do. We tried to keep them working as full as possible. Q. Can you give an estimate of what a man can make a day, should they work in the mines all day? A. I am not so conversant with the special details of the mines. I can bring the pay-rolls, if you would like. I think that a miner--with our miners in Briggs shaft, I should think the average now depends a good deal on the men themselves--how smart they are--and I should think anywhere from thirty-eight to forty, along to fifty-five and sixty dollars a month. That is, a miner. Of course, a laborer don't make so much. Q. Laborers in the mines work by the day or by the ton? A. I think they are paid by the car. I don't remember how that is. A miner hires his own laborer, I believe. Q. You haven't any particular charge of the details? A. We pay it, that is all. I don't remember all this. Our Mr. Mattes could tell you better than I can. Our mining wages are virtually out of our hands. Whatever the D.L.W. pay, we pay, and the men, on their part, agree to work through, in case of a strike, and we agree to pay in advance, dating from the commencement of the strike, that the railroad may settle with their men to pay. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Had there been any reduction prior to the 1st of August? A. Our men, all excepting miners, had been reduced on the 1st of July. The reduction was ten per cent., some not that much, some more--averaging, probably, ten or twelve per cent., I suppose. Q. Were there any men, under that reduction, that would make less than a dollar a day? A. Our laborers were making less than eighty cents a day. The number of common laborers we have is very small. We don't have very many. I don't know how many we have, exactly. Our work is by the ton, as far as possible. Of course, it is better to have things by the ton. Q. When was the reduction before the 1st of July? A. I don't remember when we did last reduce. I could tell you this evening. Perhaps Mr. Mattes could tell you. Q. Something has been said about a letter being read at the silk-factory--did you ever try to ascertain how that originated?--purporting to give some statement that you had made? A. I hear of the letter, of course, that was all. No truth in that letter. The letter was forged. I don't know who wrote it. Perhaps I might give a very good guess, and also, about other things. You have a great deal of knowledge that you cannot give legal force to. Q. You have never been able to ascertain who it was, so as to prove it, who wrote the letter? A. I was perfectly satisfied in my mind--no, I have never been able to prove it, but the time will come, undoubtedly, that I shall, and a good many other things, too. Q. Did you find out what motive induced or actuated the man to send it? A. It was, undoubtedly, a desire at the time--the men knew, and were perfectly well aware that our men were, for the time being, just terrorized. They knew, as well as I did, that if I could get our iron company men to work, the thing would stop, therefore it was necessary to drive them out to prolong the strike. For the same reason the Pennsylvania Coal Company's head-house was burnt. Q. How many men did your company employ? A. I think we have got about eighteen hundred or two thousand. I think there is about sixteen or seventeen hundred signatures on the pay-roll, and a great many of them draw pay for their children--two or three--sometimes. I suppose we have probably employed somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen or eighteen hundred. Q. Boys employed? A. To a very large extent, boys who are under eighteen or twenty give their pay to their parents. Their parents draw it for them. My impression is, there is a law by which a parent can take the child's pay under age. I think they do draw it, though in many cases they do not do it. Their parents are paid. Q. That includes the miners? A. Yes; we have three mines. One of our mines is flooded--filled entirely. Q. On account of the strike? A. No; I flooded it myself, long ago, so as to run two mines, to give as steady work as possible to those that did work. By Mr. Means: Q. I would like you tell what passed between you and the chairman of the committee that waited upon you? A. The men waited. Q. First and foremost, do you know the chairman? A. I really don't know who was chairman of that committee. The men can tell you that better themselves. There were a number of spokesmen. Mr. Duffy spoke, and I don't know but McNally did. Q. Did you know the spokesmen yourself? A. Yes; I knew the spokesmen. Q. Who were they? A. I think that John Evans was one. I am not sure; but McNally was another. I think Duffy said something. Q. State what passed between you and the chairman of that committee? A. They came out after the strike--after they had got the furnacemen off--came to the office to see me. I am not sure whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. I had sent around word, and a good many that I felt were not treating the company right to strike and stop their works, without letting us know what ground of complaint they had, and I sent word around there, so that a committee came, and they stated they wanted more pay. They said thirty-five per cent. Q. Thirty-five? A. Thirty-five; yes, sir. Of course, no one in the iron business now could do that. Such an advance as that was out of the question. I told them that was out of the question, we couldn't pay them any more. It was out of the question. We couldn't clear ourselves. I asked them whether it was not better to take what they could get, and work steady until times grew better, than to stop and get nothing. Well, they said, the long and short of the matter was they wouldn't work unless they got thirty-five per cent., and they went away. Q. Did you say to those men--this committee--when the times got better you were willing to advance their wages? A. I believe I did say something of that kind in reply. If we could afford it we would be glad to do so. Q. Did they make any reply to that? A. I don't remember that they did. Q. They said they wouldn't work unless you did advance? A. Yes, sir; but, at that same time, I was receiving information all the time from many sources, that the most of them were perfectly willing to work. All they wanted was protection, and that they would go to work, which they did do on the following Tuesday. Q. They did go to work on the following Tuesday? A. All of our men went to work on the following Tuesday, except our iron rolling men. We had no work for the steel mill. Q. When that committee waited upon you, did they say to you, or did they intimate to you, that they would force you into measures? A. We had quite a long talk. I don't remember anything of that kind. They said they wouldn't work until they got an advance; of course that is equivalent to forcing a way. Q. They didn't make any threats? A. I don't remember of that? By Mr. Larrabee: Q. In consequence of that strike, did you blow out your furnaces? A. Lost two furnaces. Q. What was the damage? A. It cost us about ten thousand dollars. We made up an itemized list of it soon afterwards. It amounted to about ten thousand dollars--a trifle over. It was a direct damage--it took as much to blast out our scaffold and re-line it, and there was some other incidental damage. Q. Ten thousand dollars about covers the damage? A. That is the strike damages--actual loss. Q. To say nothing of incidental losses? A. Yes; we paid that out afterwards to fix it. Q. Was there any loss in the vicinity? A. The Pennsylvania Company's head-house was burnt; their trellising was burnt, not on the actual day of the riots--it was during that time. Q. Can you give an estimate account of that? A. Our Point Brook stable was burnt--that was after we started our works again. Q. Can you estimate the damage to the Pennsylvania Company? A. No; other people could tell you better about that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any disposition manifested on the part of your men, to go in to the furnaces and run them, if you would permit them? A. I don't know of any such; no sir. Of course, we would only have been glad to have them run. If they run them at all, they must run under our protection. Q. Was there any disposition, any offers made on the part of your men to go in and work? A. If we would protect them. Oh, yes; if we would protect them after two or three days. The first day, they stated, they were afraid of men striking outside. We labored with the furnace men by night, talking with them, trying to get them to stay. They said they were afraid. The following Tuesday, they got more or less over the fear, and they did go back, if that is what you mean. Q. Did your men say who made the threats against them--of who they were afraid? A. No; it was that some men would come to their houses and tell them so and so--tell their wives so and so, some men either told their little girls, and that kind of thing. We could get very little information from them. Q. The threats were not open and above board? A. Yes; may have been open, but they didn't give their names to us--were afraid we would act on them. Q. In your opinion, were those men that made these threats in your employ? A. Yes, sir; some were. You see, Mr. McGowan cleaned out the Mollies in Schuylkill. A great many of them who had not been apprehended have come up here and they now lie partly between here and Pittston, and Carbondale, and a good many in Oliphant and Carr's Patch; and the men who had been at Minica, were very largely men who were prominent in the riot. These Mollies are now re-organizing here more or less. We have got accurate information. Our information nowadays is very accurate. We know precisely where we stand. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You have stated the substance of the agreement? A. I have stated the substance of it, that is, with our miners alone. When we took our men back, we made an agreement with all our men, that hereafter they should give us thirty days' notice or forfeit their pay at the time of strike. That agreement was signed by every man who was of any consequence at all. Of course, there is a number of small fry that we don't care anything about. Q. Signed by the men who carried on your works? A. It is signed by three fourths of the men in our employ--miners, laborers, driver boys, &c. Our orders are strict in the matter. Q. Did they enter into this article of agreement with a perfect understanding of what they were doing? A. They received a printed copy. They agreed to give us thirty days' notice. They all agreed to work on in case of a strike, in case of any commotion elsewhere, they agreed to give us thirty days' notice. If they struck after thirty days' notice, they forfeited all pay due them at the time of the strike. That our miners, in case of a general strike, they agreed to work on through it and we agreed to pay them back pay when the railroad company pays. Q. The railroad also engages in mining? A. Yes; the D., L. and W., and the Delaware and Hudson are also mining. We mine no coal except for our own purposes--for our mills and steel-works--and we necessarily make a good deal of fine coal that is not convenient to use ourselves, and we sell what little fine coal we make that we don't want ourselves. We send nothing to New York. Q. Did you notice any uneasiness among the men, or disposition to strike, prior to the strike at Pittsburgh? A. No, sir. Of course, the great depression of business, and all that kind of thing contributed to make things very hard. There was a great many men out of work--that made it somewhat hard. Of course, a reduction of wages is a thing you never take until a necessity comes on, and you cannot help yourself. Q. Had there been any talk or organization among the men about a strike prior to the strike at Pittsburgh? A. Not that I know of, sir. It went like wild-fire everywhere, and took these men like everybody else. * * * * * ... Powell, re-called: By Senator Yutzy: Q. Are you prepared to give the figures as to the pay for mining per ton or per car? A. You referred back, while I was on the stand before, to 1873. I have some figures for the price of mining coal from 1871 to 1878. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company in '71, 2, 3, and 4, the G vein would return per car, $1 17-1/2, the E vein, what they call the Diamond vein---- Q. One dollar seventeen and a half cents per car? A. That was in 1874. Q. The E vein, how much? A. Ninety-three and a half cents. Six cars constitute a full shift between the miner and laborer. Q. That makes what you would call a day's work? A. A full shift; that is in the G vein. In the E vein, it is seven cars. The laborer draws one third of the total mined, then what remains after deducting expenses, on an average, amounts to about $1 10 at that time. Q. One dollar and ten cents for a day for the six or seven cars? A. Expense. That is the wear and tear that has got to come out of the miners. The miner at that wages, would get $3 50, and the laborer about $2 35. Q. The miner how much? A. Three dollars and fifty cents. That is, taking now the highest rates ever given. In January, 1875, I was getting ten per cent. reduction, and G vein was then reduced to $1 06 per car. Q. Just give us the reduction? A. March 15, in 1876, the Diamond G vein per car, ninety-five and one half. Q. Was there reduction there? A. Ten per cent. Q. In addition to what you have stated? A. Yes, sir; March 15, fifteen per cent. reduction. Q. When was the ten per cent. reduction? A. March, 1877. Q. Now there is ten per cent. more? A. Fifteen per cent. Q. On July 1, was there any reduction? A. June, 1875, ten per cent.; March 15, 1876, ten per cent.; January, 1876, ten per cent.; March 15, 1877, fifteen per cent. Q. Was there any reduction after that? A. No, sir; not for the miners. There is one thing, we have another vein here which we call the G vein, top and bottom, that is seventy-two cents per car. Q. Has this reduction been general in all the mines, the same per centage? A. The same per centage. Q. Is there anything else? A. You refer to the number of days worked. I can give you that. Q. Your own days? A. Through the courtesy of the superintendent of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western I got the number of days from their books. The number of days worked in 1876, one hundred and sixty-five and three quarters. That was the breaker work in a year, making an average of $14 per month, that is the whole breaker work. You take the mines there, and all they make is an average of $12 per month--of the miners. In 1877 it averaged about--the breaker work--about $16; that would give the miners about $13 per month. In 1878 it lacks an average of $12, which would give the miners nearly $10. Q. How many days did you make in any month? A. I took the whole average of the mines. Q. Got that from what? A. The books of the company. Q. Of the company you are working for? A. Yes, sir. * * * * * Isaac Felts, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether your store was broken open on the 1st day of August last? A. The 1st day of August I found it was broken open. They said it was broken open in the morning. Q. Done in the night or during the morning? A. After midnight. Q. How far from Scranton is it? A. It is about three miles, or three and one half, I should judge. Q. In which direction? A. It is south from here--pretty nearly south. Q. How far beyond the silk-factory? A. It must be two and one half miles, probably. Q. Is it near the church that stands out at Greenwood? A. It is beyond the church; it is about half a mile or so beyond the church. Q. State what your damage was? A. As near as I can judge, I think it is between $3,000 and $4,000. Q. Goods that were carried off? A. Goods carried off. Q. What kind of goods? A. All kinds of merchandise. Goods pretty much that belong to a country store. We had to keep a little of most everything there. Q. Was anything in the shape of ammunition or arms taken away? A. No, sir; not that I know of. I had mining supplies. I had some little powder there, and one thing or other that was not taken. There was no ammunition that I knew of. * * * * * Joe Shoemaker, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were do you live? A. Over in the Eleventh ward, Sixth street. Q. What is your business? A. Blacksmith. Q. Where were you on the 1st day of August last? A. The 1st day of August I went to work in the morning at the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company's--down here at the flats. Q. Go on and tell us what you did that day? A. I worked there, and about between eleven and twelve o'clock--the miners had a meeting at the silk-factory, and the men came down and called us out. My woman was down there. "Joe," she says, "Come out, the miners will kill you;" says I, "I guess they won't do that." I went out and came up near the boiler-shop--and went out--I was the last man that went out of that shop. I didn't want to go out, I was satisfied with the wages Scranton offered me. I didn't want to go out, but they all went out, and so I went out--I closed the door of the shop, and I went out when everybody was done. I wanted to see what was going on, and I seen them--they went in the boiler-shop. There was a man working in there by the name of Hilton, and there was hollering inside, and I didn't know what was the matter, and I saw a man jump out and some fellow standing outside the door, he was jumping against the door. The door fly open and knocked them fellows back, and they run right in. They picked up stones and fired at them. They seen me, I had my sleeves rolled up. They thought that is a working man, and they fired at me. I got four stones, one on that shoulder, and one on that, and one right here, [indicating.] I sat down. I could not move myself any more. I hopped up, and when I got there he said, "Joe that blow I would not have for fifty dollars." I didn't want to tell them I got hurt. The engineer was getting out, he was half ways in the window and half ways out when they got at him. Q. Do you know any of those men that were hammering your engineer? A. I was too far away. I was up at Robinson's brewery. I was too far off. I didn't go near them any more. He run around the building, and when he got to the foundry there was a pile of pig iron of about three foot high, and he run down, and some people stopped there by the foundry, and they picked up stones and fired at him. When he was behind that pig iron, he was gone from my eyes. That was all I could see of him. If it was not for the stopping work, I would have had about $120 in my pocket, where I didn't have a cent. I was willing to work on, but they didn't let me. Q. How long was you idle? A. Three months idle. Had a family with three children, and was willing to work, but I couldn't work. Q. Because they would not let you? A. No. Q. How much did you get a day when they drove you out of the shop? A. I had $1 53. My wages is $40 any how, and then the three months makes me $120 lost. Whose fault is it? Not mine. I was willing to work. It was not the company's fault either. Q. The fault of strikers, was not it? A. Yes; and then they hit me, and I had to lay two weeks in the bed, and the society to where I belong had to pay me benefits. Q. What society do you belong to? A. To a Dutch society--to two of them. I belong now twenty years--to one of them twenty-five years. Q. What is the name of that society? A. St. Joseph's Verein and Lackawanna Mutual Association. Q. What is that society for? A. For to pay benefits, same as Odd Fellows. Pay benefit if a man is sick. If you die, the woman gets $50. If you are sick, you have $4 a week. The society paid that at the time they hit me, and they had to pay me for it because it was not my fault. They didn't want to do it, but they had to do it. I said it was not my fault. I went to work for my family, and I got hurt. It was not my fault, and they had to pay me, so they did. * * * * * Charles F. Mattes, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence and your business, if you please? A. My residence is here in Scranton. I have general charge of the coal mines, and real estate agent of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company. In reference to this matter, I will state just here that I was not an eye witness of those riots. When this suit was brought against the parties who were engaged in the shooting, I was charged with the gathering of evidence in the case on the part of the defendants, and it brought me in communication with a great many persons who were witnesses who were directly concerned, and I presume it is supposed for that reason that I could give more information than, perhaps, any other person in reference to it; but what I would have to say would not be from observation, but from other parties. Q. We don't care to have you describe the riot as it occurred here that day. That has been described by so many gentlemen. I wish you would give us what information you have as to the cause of the riots, and what your information is as to what produced them, based upon information that you collected in making these defenses? A. In the first place, the strike originated here with the railroad employés--firemen and brakemen ostensibly. Miners and mechanics, generally, and workmen generally were working on quietly, and with no demonstration of any sort, apparently reasonably well satisfied. There had been, from time to time, reductions in the wages, which are always accompanied, as every one knows, with more or less feeling of dissatisfaction on the part of those whose pay is reduced; but this strike here, it occurred to me, was a sympathetic movement in accord with the strike of the firemen. By that strike all transportation ceased. Of course the mines could not be carried on. The men were thrown out of employment; they could not work if they desired to, because there were no cars and no means of carrying away the product of the mines. The consequence was, they would meet together, and these matters were discussed. Agitators would go among them. The better class of men were overruled, and the more violent agitators carried the day, and it resulted in a strike and demand of an increase of twenty-five per cent. in the rate of wages, at a time when everything was depressed, and it was so preposterous. They were assured by a good many that it was a foolish demand, and one they could not expect to have acceded to, and must result in a prolongation of their idleness if they insisted upon that demand. I don't know as I could add anything to what has already been said here as to the cause. The strike on the railroad, in my view, was the primary cause, and it threw the men idle, and as is pretty nearly always the case, there was more or less trouble. By Mr. Means: Q. You think the strike at Pittsburgh was the cause of the strike at Scranton? A. ... By Senator Yutzy: Q. Why was it? A. Because this movement was carried through on the railroads. The railroads were all stopped. Many other classes of men were working along contentedly, satisfied that they were doing the best thing they could do, if they were not satisfied with their wages. We all know they were feeling as though they were working for low wages, and those men who came among them did their utmost to create this spirit of dissatisfaction, and induce the strike. Q. What combination, if any, was there between railroad men and other laborers? A. I don't know that there was any direct combination. There was said to be a general labor union organized at the time. We heard a great deal of unions of various occupations, and of a general union of laboring and workingmen. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you succeed in tracing that thing to a reliable source to find whether there was a union organized here? A. I was perfectly satisfied in my own mind that there was a union. As to the existence of it, I couldn't definitely say. Q. Was there any riot organized in the city of Scranton? A. I think so. Q. Composed of what class of men? A. Composed of all classes of workingmen, so far as I could get at it. I was satisfied it was so. I couldn't state that positively, nor I couldn't point to men as directly connected with it. By Mr. Means: Q. Were the railroad employés the prime movers in this strike? A. It occurred to me they were. They took the initiative at any rate in striking. They spoke first. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The railroad employés did. A. Yes. I mean by the railroad men, the men operating their trains. There was a large mass of miners--much the larger mass of miners are employés of the railroad company in this vicinity. By Senator Reyburn: Q. From the information you got, do you think there was an organization, and it was understood that the railroad men were the first to strike? A. No, sir; I don't know that that is so. Q. From your own knowledge of the state of the case then, as I understand it, you think the railroad men struck first of their own accord? A. It appeared so to me, and, from any knowledge I have, I should judge it was so. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And the rest followed from a general sympathy of all laboring classes with them? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I want to know whether the railroad men struck before or after the strike at Pittsburgh? A. I think it was directly after--just about that same time, and just about the same time the thing followed around all over in quick succession. Q. Do you recollect the day when they struck? A. No, sir; I don't. Q. Do you recollect the day the trains stopped running? A. No, sir. I could easily have ascertained this point, only I didn't suppose I would be called upon for anything of the kind, and made no preparations. Q. You think it was not until after the strike at Pittsburgh? A. It was just about that time. I think it was just after. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have you learned whether it was by a pre-concerted arrangement that they should strike here? A. No, sir; but it appeared as if they did so. We knew very well there were labor organizations among the railroad men. They had their brotherhoods of engineers, and of firemen, and of brakemen, &c. Q. Was there such an organization here as the Trainmen's Union that you knew of? A. I never heard of it by that name. I had nothing particularly to do with the railroad, and, of course, wouldn't be as well posted in that as in some other matters. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. From the investigation you made, and from your knowledge of the strike here, do you think there would have been any strike here had you heard nothing of the strike at Pittsburgh and other parts of the country? A. I think there would have been. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Why do you think there would not have been? A. The men were working on peaceably, and apparently contented, and there were no demonstrations made, whatever, and they were getting reasonable pay. Q. Did you hear any of those strikers say it was because the men struck at Pittsburgh and in Virginia or any other place? A. You could get no reason out of them. I conversed with many men, but there was scarcely an instance in which he would acknowledge that he was a striker. He stopped simply because the rest of the men stopped. Q. It was apparently infectious? A. I don't think I met with a dozen men who would acknowledge that they were interested in the strike. By Mr. Means: Q. He proposed that if he was in Rome he would do as Rome does? A. There was another reason assigned, something in substance to that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. They wouldn't acknowledge that they were engaged in striking, in the conversations you had with them? A. No, sir. Q. Was there any fear, you think, operating on the minds of those men with whom you conversed that if they did acknowledge they were engaged in a strike they might be discharged by their several employers? A. There may have been. I have no doubt some were affected in that way--no doubt of that, whatever. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I understood the witness to say that the railroad men struck first? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there not a strike among other classes of men--iron men and rolling-mill men? A. Not until after the railroad strike occurred. Q. Another strike preceding that? A. I have no recollection of any; no, sir. Not a matter of recent date. There may have been some local strikes about here, or some local difficulties, as is frequently the case. Sometimes there would be a strike at one mine because of some local difficulty. That won't affect the general region, whatever. That is frequently the case. Q. What is the general custom of the men that strike? Is it their custom, when they quit work, to prevent other men from working? A. Almost universally so. Q. And by what means? A. By intimidation of various sorts. Doing it at their houses mainly? Q. Threatening them? A. While the miners were idle, it has been the practice, heretofore, in this valley, for pump men to continue at work through the strike. I have never known a case but where they were stopped. In this case--I can speak positively to this one fact--that at one of the collieries that I have charge of, the pump men were visited by a crowd of men at night and threatened, and ordered to stop. This I have from the men themselves. Q. Threatened with what? A. Threatened with violence--to be beaten--forced out, if they didn't stop. The men, in this particular case, requested to remain until morning, and not to drop everything, and leave it unprotected. In the morning they were so badly frightened that they refused to continue at work. Then there was no recourse but either to let the mines fill, or to get other parties to work in their places. Q. What means were resorted to prevent men from working that wished to work? A. By beating them, going to their houses, and threatening them, sometimes, sending communications--sometimes are ornamented with cross-bones, and coffins, and pistols, and skulls. Q. Drawings on paper? A. Enough to frighten them. Sometimes men desire to be intimidated that way, as an excuse. I think so, many times. Q. Have any of those threats ever been carried out? A. Yes. Men have frequently been beaten. Q. And killed? A. I cannot re-call of any cases here, where men have been killed. Q. Driven away by force? A. Yes, sir. In this case of our colliery, the house of the man who was working as a pump-man--he had been working in the mines for years--been foreman at one time--his house--his house was visited twice, pistol shots fired into it, stones thrown at it, he was stoned and forced from his work; and another man, who was working with me was stoned, his house was stoned several times by parties, in the night. Who they were, we cannot tell, of course. Q. Where men didn't obey the advice of those men that threatened them, was it generally followed by violence? A. It very frequently has been. Q. Has it been generally followed by violence, so far as your observation and knowledge extends? A. No, sir; I wouldn't say generally, because threats have been so common. I could hardly say it was general; but, as a rule, men have been intimidated by the threats. Q. I want to know whether, where they didn't obey the commands of these men that made the threats, and didn't cease work, whether that was generally followed by violence? A. That is a very general question. Q. So far as your observation extends? A. I wouldn't say generally; no, sir; I would say that it has been frequently followed by violence. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Have you seen any of the threatening letters--letters with coffins, &c., on them? A. Oh, yes. Q. Been shown you by the men? A. Yes. I have sometimes taken them off the works. Q. Taken them off--how? A. Found them posted up; because where they had been posted up, they had been so frightened by them, that they wouldn't go in--wouldn't go to work for a day or two, until they got over the strike. I have some of them. I think I could scare up a few. Q. In our examination we have had a good many terms we are not familiar with, and I don't know but what we ought to have some definition of them. For instance, blacklegs? A. A blackleg, as I understand it, is generally applied to a man who takes another man's place. This I understand to apply to a man who, when one man strikes, another goes in and takes his place; but it is just as commonly applied to those who continue at work, and will not go on a strike--they are denominated blacklegs. That was so in this case. Q. Have you any scabs in this county? A. I don't think that is used much about the mines. I have heard that applied to shoe-makers more than any one else. That is, fellows who were wandering about, without any settled place. * * * * * L. C. Bortree, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside, Mr. Bortree? A. I reside in the Ninth ward of the city of Scranton. Q. What is your business? A. I am going to be a farmer on Tuesday next. I am not doing anything now. Q. What were you doing on the 1st August last? A. Special policeman. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Of the city of Scranton--of the mayor? A. Yes, sir; under the mayor. Q. State where you were on the morning of the 1st August, when the men came from the silk-works into the shops, driving the employés out of the shops? A. Allow me to state it as it was. Q. In brief? A. I was here on duty on the upper end of this avenue during the night of the last of July or the 1st of August. I had permission of the chief of police to leave here at five o'clock. Well, I did. During this time there was a fire at what was said to be the Pennsylvania railroad, No. 5. I went out and returned about ten o'clock. I called in to the coal and iron company's store up here, to get a rubber overcoat, with the intention of going home. While I was there, Mr. W. W. Scranton, says to me--I used to be deputy sheriff, was deputy sheriff for the past twelve years, off and on, at this end of the county. I had nothing else from the 24th of November, 1871, till the 12th April, 1878. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Just come to the facts? A. I stopped there and I went up and looked through a field-piece, and saw a large quantity of men. Q. Field-glass? A. Field-glass. I came down, just at the time I came from the building, some one said, that the mayor had sent for his posse. I supposed I was one, as I was a special police. W. W. Scranton gives me a gun, and he said, "Let's form this line." Well, I did. I said to him, "Scranton, I am as well known in this city as you are, and you take one end of the line and I will take the other." I fell back in the rear of the line, and Mr. Carl McKinney was my comrade. We started out of that store and came down, probably, two or three hundred feet, and I saw a man whom I thought I knew, on the opposite side. Q. Come down where? A. Come down this way. Q. Lackawanna avenue? A. Yes, sir; from the company's store. I was in the street railroad that passes here, on the opposite side of the track from here, and I saw this man drawing a revolver, and, I think, it was a four-barreled revolver, and he emptied that at me, at least I think he did. I carried my gun in that hand--my left hand--and taking this right hand I says, "For God's sake keep quiet." I came on a little further, about a hundred feet. Before we struck Washington avenue, stones and clubs were thrown. Bear in mind, I was in the rear end, and when we passed that there was some---- Q. Passed what? A. Passed the avenue, on the edge of it--the upper edge. Say for instance, that was the first edge of Washington avenue, [illustrating.] this man McKinney was close by me. Sometimes I was ten feet from him, sometimes twelve. Just as I struck Washington avenue, there was a man asked me--came up to me and he says, "You son of a bitch, give me that gun." I says, "You can't have my gun." He fell back in the crowd and I heard some one--who it was I don't know--say, "Let's rally on them," or something to that effect. "They have nothing but blank cartridges." Another man, whom I knew, came up within ten or twelve feet of me, and he called me, "Sheriff, you son of a bitch, give me that gun." I says, "No, you can't have my gun; for God's sake get your people off these streets." Previous to this there was three or four shots from these men, who was a hundred feet before you strike Washington avenue. When we struck Washington avenue, there was one, two, or three--anyway that I know--I am sure of one that was shot. Q. One man shot? A. Not any one from us, sir---- By Mr. Means: Q. That was before you passed Washington street? A. Yes; there was from three to four before we struck Washington avenue, and I saw a man when he shot--from three to four shots--just above Monie & Pugh's store, on the right hand side of this avenue. We came down on the center of the avenue. Of course, I do not know how the front end of our squad was. Of course, we were two by two. As soon as we passed through, they closed up like this. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Behind you? A. Yes, behind me. Q. Behind the end, as they were marching along? A. Yes; and I saw parties there whom I knew, and I says to them, "For God's sake, boys, get off the street." I crossed over the avenue. I was struck in the left arm, struck in the shoulder, and struck in the back of the neck. Q. What with? A. One was, I am sure, a piece of a shovel handle. I saw it coming. There was a stone thrown which struck a man right behind me by the name of--I can't tell you his name--he was up here at the company's store. When I saw it coming, I dodged it, and it went over me. Q. Many stones thrown? A. Stones, clubs, sticks, and everything that you might think of. By Mr. Means: Q. You have stated, I believe, that you did advise a crowd there and then to go to their respective homes? A. I says, to leave the streets. There ain't a man in this room but what knows me. Then we came down after we crossed the avenue, and this man, McKinney, he was next to me--I saw a man on the left hand side, at what is called Slager's building, have a revolver at the corner of the building, and he shot, and about the time he shot, some of our vigilants, as they call them, shot, and it lasted for probably, about a minute, I do not think it lasted two minutes. Q. What was the effect of the firing? A. The effect of the firing, I saw three men lying dead then and there--I suppose they were dead. One on the right hand side, as you go up this way, his name was Dunlevy. Q. Were there any other ones wounded? A. I could not swear to that, any further than seeing a man carried up the avenue on a stretcher of some kind. Q. Did the crowd disperse? A. They did. They dispersed right away, as soon as the first volley. I think there was somebody fell. Q. Did you fire? A. I did, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did the man fall that you shot at? A. I do not know that. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. I suppose you didn't shoot to waste your fire? A. You heard what Mr. Scranton swore to. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any firing after the crowd started to run? A. Yes; there was. I saw a gentleman in this crowd that came near blowing my ear off, and while going--we had breach loaders. Q. After the crowd started to run, did they fire? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was he with the crowd? A. No; he belonged to the posse. Q. He fired after the crowd started. A. Yes; and then he loaded again, and it went off again, and I then told him not to put any more in that gun. It was accidental shooting. It was done all within a half second from the time that the first shot was fired. I do not think the shooting from the vigilants, as they term us, and I was the last man in the crowd--and I don't think it lasted one minute. Q. All the firing? A. From the time the vigilants opened fire until it had ceased. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you know the leader of this crowd? A. I know two gentleman in that crowd, two that I supposed---- Q. Did you know them to be the leaders of that crowd or mob? A. I know there was men in that crowd that said, "Boys, come on." Q. I want to know this: if you know the leader of that crowd? A. I should say I did. Q. Were they railroad employés, were they colliers, or what were they? A. I could not say the position they held in life. Q. You have stated in your evidence, that you had told this crowd to disperse and go to their homes--what was their reply? A. They said, "You sons of bitches, we will take your guns from you and we will clean the avenue." Whether the man I spoke to said it or some one else, I cannot say. There was lots of clubs thrown about this time, and stones. I was struck two or three times myself. Q. In your evidence, you have said that they attempted or asked you to take your gun--who was the party that done that? A. That question I don't propose to answer. Q. I insist on it? A. I will not answer that question. Q. Did they belong to the rioters? A. I object to answering to that. Q. The man was one of the rioters--this party that tried to take your gun? A. He is a man that asked me to take my gun. Q. Did he belong to the rioter party? A. He did. At this point the committee adjourned, to meet at the call of the chair. PITTSBURGH, _April 6, 1878_. The sub-committee on railroad riot met at the Orphans' court room at ten o'clock, A.M. Mr. Reyburn in the chair. Present, Messrs. Reyburn, Torbert, Yutzy, Englebert, and Means. * * * * * David A. Stewart, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you live, Mr. Stewart? A. I live on Homewood avenue, Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am president of the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works and Columbia Oil Company. Q. Were you present on the 19th of July, the breaking out or first commencement of the riot? A. The 19th. That was Thursday, was not it? Q. Yes? A. I was in the city on Thursday. Q. Will you be kind enough just to make a statement, in your own way, of what you know of the occurrences of that day? A. The only excitement that I saw was on the street, but on Friday morning when I came into the city--I live six miles out--in the city limits--but six miles from the neighborhood--I understood Mr. Cassatt was there, and I went to see him, and say to him that the city of Pittsburgh was very poorly off for police--one hundred odd men having been discharged--and suggested that he would get the mayor to employ those that had been discharged, and guarantee the payment of their wages, to protect the property of the company and the peace of the city, which he agreed to do. He said he did not know Mayor McCarthy, and I offered to take him down and introduce him. He started to go, and then was called back on some other business, and could not go, and requested me to take a carriage and go down and see the mayor, and bring him up if I could. I took a carriage and went down, and met the mayor on the steps of the city hall; went up to him and said to him I had been sent down by Mr. Cassatt, who would like very much to see him, and I offered a carriage, and asked him if he would come along up and see Mr. Cassatt. He said he would not; he would not have anything to do with it, the whole matter had been taken out of his hands. That there was no necessity, he said, of bringing the military here, that he could have allayed this whole thing if it had been left in his hands. I asked him if he would see Mr. Cassatt, if I would bring him down. He says, "No; I will have nothing to do with him," and he turned on his heel and left, and did not wait to hear the proposition. I did not make the proposition, because he would not wait to hear anything. Q. Did you see the mayor himself? A. The mayor himself, on the steps of the city hall, and he saw the carriage there ready, right in front of him, to take him to the depot, if he had gone. This was on Friday morning. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you go back and report to Mr. Cassatt? A. I went back and reported to Mr. Cassatt that he had declined to see me--to come to see him, or to see him. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you acquainted with the Mayor? A. Oh, I know him. Not intimately. Have been in his office frequently before. I think he knew me, too. Q. Have you any knowledge of any steps taken by the mayor to preserve the peace? A. Not at that time. He declined then. He said the matter had been taken out of his hands, and he would not do anything. Q. Do you know of his having taken any step at any time? A. Well, after that--after the fire on Sunday, I saw him then with a lot of police, bringing some men from the Brownsville boat, or Connellsville road, or somewhere along there--after the fire on Sunday. I was not in town on Sunday, owing to an article in the _Globe_ that Thomas A. Scott was at my house directing affairs from there. Having my family over there, I expected a lot of those men out there. I was at my house in East Liberty, around about the stock-yards, all day on Sunday. Q. You say there was an article in the _Globe_ newspaper published here? A. On Sunday morning. Q. That Thomas A. Scott was at your house? A. Directing affairs from there. Q. Was Mr. Scott there? A. He was not there at any time during the riot. Was not there before the riot, nor has he been there since. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the mayor say to you who had taken this matter out of his hands--what authority had taken it out of his hands? A. I do not think he said what authority. He said the whole matter had been taken out of his hands. Q. Did not say who did it? A. No; he may have stated the sheriff, but I am not sure about that--stated he would have nothing to do with it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where were you on Saturday? Where are your works located? A. Our works are located in Allegheny, but my office is on Sixth street. I was not up about on Saturday. I was at the Union depot about the time the firing commenced at Twenty-eighth street, and I went out on the first train to home; but after the train could get through, and come up as far as the yard, it was stopped at the yard, owing to the troubles at Twenty-eighth street, and I suppose we were there half an hour. I was not at Twenty-eighth street at the time of the firing. I saw great crowds of people around the tracks as our train got through. Q. Did the crowd seem excited? A. Oh, yes; close up to the tracks along on both sides. That was after the first volley had been fired. There was no firing at the time I went through there. That was about five o'clock in the evening. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you about the Fort Wayne depot during Saturday or Sunday? A. No, sir. Q. Don't you know anything about the doings of the mob down there? A. I was not in town on Sunday at all. I saw the troops there at the passenger depot at one o'clock that day, when the Philadelphia troops arrived there, when they were taking their lunch at the Union depot. Q. Were you over in Allegheny at any time during the trouble? A. No, sir; not at all during the trouble. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you apply to any of the other officials--sheriff or any other authorities? A. No; I did not. I am not connected with the railroad in any way, except I am director in the Allegheny Valley road. I talked to Mr. McCargo about him applying, but he thought it was not any use, after the refusal to Mr. Cassatt. Q. After the mayor refused? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What was the nature of that editorial in the _Globe_--was it inflammatory? A. It was not an editorial; it was a local notice, stating that Thomas A. Scott was at the house of his nephew, D. A. Stewart, on Penn avenue, and directing affairs from there. That was to create excitement. There was more inflammatory articles in the extra of the _Critic_ issued on Sunday. Q. The _Globe_ was a Sunday paper also? A. The _Globe_ was a Sunday paper also. By Mr. Means: Q. What was the tenor of that article in the _Critic_--to excite? A. To excite the populace. Q. Or to allay the excitement? A. I think it was signed "Thirty Thousand Citizens," calling for a meeting at city hall, on Sunday, at one o'clock. If I remember, the tenor was to put down the railroad men, and all that sort of thing. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Put down the strikers? A. Tom Scott and the balance of them. By Mr. Means: Q. The railroad officials? A. The better plan is to get the article itself, instead of letting me describe it. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was this in the _Critic_ or _Globe_? A. In the extra of the _Critic_, on Sunday. The _Critic_ had a regular edition, and afterwards issued an extra that was distributed about noon, or during the forenoon. Q. Is there anything else that you know in regard to the riots that would be of interest to us? A. I do not know anything directly. You know, I was about East Liberty on Sunday, and there is nothing that would be evidence. I saw the troops there, and I went to the general, and got him to distribute a guard around the stock-yards and Penn avenue, and made suggestions of that kind. Q. Did the troops preserve order there? A. Everything was very quiet there on Sunday, about East Liberty. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have any conversation with Tom Scott or Mr. Cassatt in regard to this matter, except what you have stated about the mayor furnishing police, or anything that would have any tendency to put down this riot? A. I don't remember now of any. I heard rumors that were current, of one kind and another, which I would not consider as evidence. I heard Mayor McCarthy made such and such speeches, but I don't know who from. That would not be evidence. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What was the conduct of the troops out at East Liberty, those that come under your observation? A. They were very orderly and behaved. They had nothing to do, specially, there. I saw them have their drill there on Sunday evening. General White's troops were up above Torrens, and I applied to him first about having this guard placed along Penn avenue. At first there was no guard there, and there was danger of men coming out and setting fire to the stock-yards; and I applied to him, and he said General Gallagher was the officer in command, and I applied to General Gallagher, and he said he would have it attended to. I went back in a couple of hours, and it still was not done, but he did have it done that afternoon. I saw there was danger, and it might create a great deal of trouble, but they had a guard placed all along Penn avenue, and also requested that there should be a guard put at the lower end of the yard, the upper end of the tracks, to keep persons from going there, except what was necessary on business, which they did. I was in the telegraph office, and heard the reports about the wreck of that stock train. By Mr. Means: Q. The disposition of the troops was to maintain order? A. There was no difficulty, particularly. I think everything was quiet about East Liberty and about the stock-yards on that day--on Sunday. Q. They were ready to do their duty? A. Ready to do their duty. * * * * * Joseph Thomas, _sworn_: By Mr. Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside, Mr. Thomas? A. Reside at No. 117, Bluff street, Sixth ward, Pittsburgh. Q. Were you the coroner at the time of the riots in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. Will you be kind enough to state to the committee the number of persons killed during those riots that came within your official knowledge? A. There was twenty-two that was killed, and there was two that died from wounds. One was Lieutenant Ash, of Philadelphia, and a man by the name of Evans, that was wounded on Sunday morning, and died afterwards. They had amputated his limbs, and he died. I took his deposition. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was he a soldier? A. No; a citizen shot in the neighborhood of Thirty-seventy street on that Sunday morning. That is all I have any account of altogether. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What were those--citizens? A. There was four soldiers--four Philadelphia soldiers, altogether, counting Ash. One of our soldiers that belongs around here, and the others were all citizens. That would be five, counting Ash, that I held an inquest on. Q. What were the occupations of those men that were killed? Do you remember? A. I think that I have got a list down there, if it has not been mislaid. There was some of all kinds, painters--some railroad men among them, there was some rolling-mill men, I think--yes, I know of one. I did have a list of them. Q. Could you give the committee a list of the killed, with a statement---- A. Statement on my docket? I could. I had a list made out, which I gave the grand jury. I don't know what they did with it. Q. We would like to have the list of killed from your docket? A. Yes, and the place they were killed? Q. Yes? A. And their occupation? Q. Yes; just a description of them, so that the committee can file them in their report. Where were those men killed? A. The majority of them were killed in the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street, and some were killed about the corner of Twenty-sixth or Twenty-seventh. That was during Sunday morning--Saturday night. Q. During the time the troops were in the round-house? A. Yes, sir. This one soldier that belongs here, he was shot up on the hill. I had been out in Sharpsburg that afternoon, and was within a couple of squares at the time of the firing. I could see him laying up on the hill from Liberty street. Q. You speak of this man Evans having made a deposition? A. He was shot right in the neighborhood of Thirty-seventh street. Q. He was further out on Penn avenue? A. Yes, sir; that was on the road that the troops retreated on. Butler street there was another--a saloon-keeper shot pretty near the same place. This man Evans' deposition, as near as I can remember, was, that he was engaged in the Valley round-house, taking charge of the engines, and running them in, and he had got done work, and went down to see about some relatives of his--went down street apiece, and saw the troops coming, and he turned off and went around the corner and waited until they passed, he said that after they went apiece, he followed them up on his way home. He was shot in the ankle. Q. That was on Sunday morning? A. Yes, sir; that saloon-keeper--he was shot at his own door, and there was a man that was carried in Doctor Robinson's--I don't remember his name, but I can give it to you--was shot just about a square above that. He was a plasterer. Q. Did you have a physician to make a _post mortem_ examination of the dead? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. What appeared to be the nature of the injuries of the soldiers that were killed? Did they appear to be wounded from rifle bullets or pistol bullets? A. They appeared to be mostly gun-shot wounds. There was one of them had a hole you could pretty near put your fist through. It was where a ball came out. It appeared like a minie-ball. There were two soldiers. They were laid out by Mr. Devore. By the time I got there, he had them fixed up to be shipped, and he could give you a description of their wounds. Q. Joseph? A. Mr. Devore, the undertaker; he got them in Lawrenceville. He had them fixed up at the time I got to see them, and he could give you a description of them. Q. Did you think they were all gun-shot wounds? A. All gun-shot wounds, except one. Q. Rifle of large caliber? A. Yes. Well, these minie-ball are not a very big ball, but they make an ugly wound sometimes. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. I suppose the Senator means that they were not pistol shots? A. No; I feel confident they were gun-shot wounds. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The wounds of how many men did you examine--of the soldiers? A. These two in Devores. I don't know whether I examined the wounds or not. Mr. Devore would know. The other one up here I did. It was a very big wound. He was killed about Thirty-third street. Q. A citizen? A. No; he was a soldier. I think he had two wounds in him. By Mr. Means: Q. Was he a Philadelphia soldier? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were there any women and children killed? A. I didn't see any. There were rumors around the streets Saturday afternoon that there was, but I didn't see any. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You held no inquest upon any children or women? A. No, sir; there were places pointed out to me Saturday where there had been women or children shot, but I didn't hear anything of it afterwards. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Have no knowledge of any being killed--children or women? A. No, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Have you any information, or did you see any of the occurrences on Saturday--Sunday that would be? You are county officer--are you a county officer? A. Yes, sir. I was about two squares from the firing at the time it commenced, coming down Liberty street. I think I was up about Thirty-first street, about three squares. Q. Coming this way? A. Yes, sir; coming this way. I went up along Liberty street in the afternoon about two o'clock, and I was in a buggy when the firing commenced, about three squares up Liberty street from Twenty-eighth street. I could see the people up on the hill from where I was, the dust rising when the balls would strike. I was not near enough to recognize anybody. Q. State how many you know of having been wounded? A. Three. Q. What were they? A. One was a Philadelphia soldier. Q. Where was he wounded? A. He was wounded, I think, in this side, [indicating left side.] Q. Which side? A. I think on the left side. Q. Where--what part of the city? A. He was wounded out in the neighborhood of Thirty-seventh or Thirty-eighth streets. Q. Was his a gun-shot wound? A. I think it was a pistol shot. Q. What were the others? A. The others appeared to me like a pistol shot. This boy Jones, he was there in the hospital. He was shot in that place. His wound appeared like a pistol-shot wound. He was shot about the forks of the road. That would be, I suppose, Thirty-fifth street, maybe. Then there was another man by the name of Scott that was wounded in the leg. I didn't see his wound. * * * * * Mayor Phillips, _sworn_: By Mr. Means: Q. I would like to ask you one question. The committee would like to know, or I would, at least, if you put Allegheny City into the hands of this man Ammon, and if so, what you told him? A. Put Allegheny city into the hands of Ammon? Q. Yes, sir. A. Emphatically, no! I never put anything into the hands of Ammon. Q. Did you tell him to take charge of the lower part of Allegheny City? A. I did not, sir. Q. Did you tell him to resist any arrest that might be attempted to be made upon him? A. Positively, no! I will tell you what I did say. When I went, I found there were five or six hundred men, and my force was very small and I cautioned them to be careful what they are doing, that they would get themselves into trouble, there is danger ahead, and says I, "Be careful what you are doing." That was the sum and substance of what I said. I cautioned Ammon, and it turns out there were three or four of my officers heard me say so. The chief of police is here now, if you would like to have him corroborate it. Q. Do you know of any official communication that Ammon had with the railroad officials? A. I do not, sir. Q. Do you know of any communication at all that he had with them? A. Hearsay, sir. I know nothing of my own knowledge--only heard it indirectly, from some person to me, that he had something from J. D. Layng. Q. He did not tell you himself? A. No, sir. Q. Saw no telegram from Mr. Layng to him? A. No, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you have any conversation with Mr. Robert Ammon during the time he had charge of that railroad--the Fort Wayne railroad? A. Yes, sir; I had conversation--at the time he had charge? Q. Yes, sir. A. I did not know that he had charge. He was there. Q. Did he tell you at any time that one of your police officers attempted to arrest him, and he refused to be arrested? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know of the fact that one of your police officers attempted to arrest him? A. No, sir. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you, at any time, attempt to arrest Ammon--any of your officers? A. Afterwards. Will I give you the particulars of that, sir--the time that I went down with the policemen to protect that ten miles of freight, and again to bring up the first lot. Q. What day was that? A. I cannot tell you. Q. That was after the riot? A. Several days. Q. I mean the Friday morning when the trouble first commenced in Allegheny? A. It was Thursday or Friday before the troubles over here--Thursday or Friday. You asked me about something on Friday? Q. Yes? A. No. I only went down there at that time. I think that is the only time I ever saw him, except after that, the day he was arrested. Q. Did he tell you that one of your officers had attempted to arrest him, and he refused to submit, because he had not a warrant? A. No; I don't remember that--because he hadn't a warrant. No, sir. I never heard of this thing, either through Ammon or the policeman. I know nothing of it at all. I don't believe it. Q. Do you remember Ammon telling you this? A. No; I do not. Q. That you said in reply that that was right, and for him to go ahead? A. That's stuff. That ain't my style. By Mr. Means: Q. Allow no man to arrest him? A. Oh, no, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At any time sent policemen to arrest Mr. Ammon, in preserving the peace? A. I sent police down. I sent a note over to--I am not sure whether I sent the note over to see John McCauley, and he needed protection away down the road. I understood that the men would protect the property as long as they could, and when they were worn out and weary, they would send me word, and I would put out a police force to protect the city. This was several days after that. I did so. I sent them ten or twelve miles down the road. I had no authority to do it with the city police, but they agreed to pay, and have since paid, an improvised police force. Q. The railroad men, although they were on a strike, did they show any disposition to be riotous or lawless, and destroy property? A. Not at all, sir. They told me at this Sunday meeting, that they would do all they could to protect the property until the matters were settled in regard to wages, or something, with the company. Q. Did you have any information, or make any arrests of them--interfere with them? A. No, sir. They said some of the trains were going through which were stopped. I didn't make any arrest before. I cautioned them prudence and carefulness, and the danger and the risk they were running. The men pledged me what they would do to protect the property, and they did it manfully. One night they came up and said they were worn out, and I had the promise of a hundred men to come down from off the hill, and the men didn't come, and one of the messengers came from the railroad men, and I told him I was very sorry, I had been promised one hundred men, and they didn't come, and I would have to ask them to go back again that night, and they did it, though worn out, with a positive assurance from me that I would see that they were relieved the next day. Q. Those were railroad men? A. Those were railroad men. Q. Ammon applied to you for assistance? A. I never saw Ammon, but that one day. Q. Never applied to you for assistance at all? A. No, sir; I don't believe he did. * * * * * W. D. Ross, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. Allegheny City. Q. What was your occupation in July last? A. I was chief of police. Q. Of Allegheny City? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you present during the conversation between Mayor Phillips and Robert Ammon, or Boss Ammon, or Bob Ammon, or whatever his name is? A. I was present a part of the time. I was not there all of the time. Q. Be kind enough to state what your recollection of the occurrence is? A. Well, I was on the scene of action down there before Mayor Phillips came--had been called down. I think I was in Pittsburgh when the word came to the office that they wanted some men down to help disperse this riot--preventing cars from going out, and, I think, took fourteen or fifteen men down, and found a large crowd. I suppose there was two hundred or two hundred and fifty persons there, with an apparent determination to prevent the cars from going out, and showing the disposition manifested by them. They were armed with links and coupling pins, and a great many of them had clinkers. I saw that they were determined to make resistance, and I talked to Mr. Ross, the dispatcher, and told him to send down a car, and see if they could get through. I told Ammon we had come there for the purpose of stopping any violence that might be offered to the railroad employés, and we were informed that a crowd was there to offer resistance, from this side of the river--from Pittsburgh. His answer was, "Not a God damn bit of it." He says, "We are all employés of the Fort Wayne road. We have been discharged from the employment, and there are no Pittsburghers here, and we don't intend to let one pound of freight go out of this yard until our terms were complied with." And when I told him it was a pretty high-handed measure, or something like that, to take possession of the railroad and its property, and they would get into trouble, "Well," he said, "we might just as well die here as be starved to death," and he told me that they had this thing organized all over the country. It was not confined to Pittsburgh. It was North, South, East and West, and he had been in possession of the facts; and, says he, "I could stop it as quick as that," snapping his fingers, "by telegraphic dispatch that our terms are complied with." I had instructed a dispatch man to send down a locomotive and cars, and see if they could pass us, and when the cars came down Ammon stopped it, says, "Now is our time to strike," and he stepped up in front. The whole crowd rushed with him. They stopped the cars and mounted the locomotive, about two or three with him, and ordered them to return to the yard. They had no business coming out, and they reversed their engine and went back, and I saw there was no use in attempting to make an arrest. There was ten to one against us, and as determined to not be arrested as we would be to arrest them. When the cars ran back, I says, "Now, Ammon, you have taken possession of the road by violence, and we don't want to offer any resistance. The question will be determined by law whether you are going to hold it, or whether the railroad company is entitled to it." I thought the best way was to act with persuasion, and, says I, "You will be held responsible. If you have any right to do this, it will be a matter to be determined by law. We don't want to see any violence offered." I told Ross that I did not think it was worth our while to attempt to arrest them. Q. Told whom? A. Ross, the dispatcher in the yard. While we were talking about it, Mayor Phillips came down, and I went over to talk to the mayor. I left Ammon, and I think I remarked to the mayor that we were not able to do anything, and then Ammon came up and began to talk with him. The mayor told him he had need to look out, he would get into trouble. Something of that kind, that was the remark I heard. The mayor talked to him, that it was a high-handed measure, or something of that kind--I could not say positively what--something to that effect. I heard Ammon say he could not help it. He had told the mayor about the same as he told me, that he was in possession of the knowledge of the whole fact--how it was got up. He went to talk to him and I left them, and I left them while Ammon was relating his connection with the matter. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you hear the mayor tell Ammon that he should have charge of the lower part of the city of Allegheny? A. No, sir. Q. Did you hear him tell him to resist any person that should attempt to arrest him? A. No. Q. Did not hear a conversation of that kind? A. No; I talked to Ammon, and told him that he would be arrested; said I, "It is only a matter of time." Q. You told Ammon he would be arrested? A. I told him that he would be arrested. That it was only a matter of time. We didn't want any property destroyed, if we could prevent it. Q. What was Ammon's reply to you when you told him he would be arrested? A. He said he would die before he would be arrested--that was his determination, he said. It was a matter of life and death with the men, and they were willing to stand out--have their terms complied with before they would surrender. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you or any one else attempt to arrest him at any time during the riot? A. No; I don't think we did do anything of the kind. I was down several times and saw them still in force there, but my object was more by persuasion to keep them from committing any overt acts of violence, further than to stop trains. I did not want to see any property destroyed or any lives lost, and I knew that the best policy was to counsel peace and keep from getting into a fight with so small a force as we had. There were more than twenty, I suppose, to one of us, and then, besides that, they had the sympathy of a number of the men that were with us--probably of our police officers. It was with a good deal of difficulty that they would even consent to go down. I had to threaten to put them off the force, but I concluded we had better counsel peace, and keep from getting into trouble with them by arresting them. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you hear any of the citizens have any conversation with the men when you were there, counseling them to hold it? A. I did hear one of the citizens. Q. Just state to this committee what that citizen said to Mr. Ammon? A. That was a man by the name of Hahn. He made a remark of this kind; says he: "The railroad men are right." That was in Ammon's presence. I don't know whether he directed his remarks to Ammon or to me. Says he, "The railroad operators are right, and I will give as much as I can afford to sustain them and help them hold out." Q. What did you say that man's name was? A. His name is Hahn. He is a grocer. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say he has a grocery store? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where? A. Down in the Sixth ward of Allegheny City. That was the only remark that I heard. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know of any understanding between the railroad officials and this man Ammon, that he should run that railroad in their interest? A. No, sir; I was down there--I won't be too certain what morning it was. They had taken possession of the telegraph office. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The strikers had? A. The strikers had, and there appeared to be an arrangement to operate. The company wanted to put one operator in, and Mr. Ross was negotiating with a party--wanted to put in an operator to act in concert with the others, that all telegraphic dispatches that should come over the line might be under the supervision of the two, and the company would select one and they the other. That what business was done, running what little freight was allowed to come through the telegraph wires, would not be obstructed. And Ammon made that proposition. He got up on a barrel or bench of some kind at the telegraph office, and to the crowd he stated what proposition was made to them, that the railroad company wanted to put another man to operate along with others. Q. In concert with the other operator? A. Yes; and says he, "This is the proposition. Now we have got the matter in charge ourselves, and I think we are able to run it. We don't need the assistance of the railroad company." Says he, "It is for the men here to say whether they will accede to this proposition or not. For my part, I think we can control it ourselves, and if the strikers are in favor of accepting the proposition they would signify it by saying aye." They took a vote, and there was nobody said aye, and they took the negative, and they all cried no. He appeared to have control of the thing, and was running it, and all he had to do was to suggest or intimate what was desired, and they were ready to vote it. By Mr. Means: Q. Ammon and his party--did he accept the proposition from the railroad officials that they should have an operator? A. No, sir; they would not accept it. They had the matter in charge, he said, and they would not accept it. They voted it down. Q. Did Ammon say to this crowd, which he appeared to be a leader of--boss of--anything about the railroad officials asking him to run that road, take charge of it, and turn over the earnings of the railroad--railroad officials? A. No; not that I heard of. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You speak of a proposition made by the railroad officials. Who made this proposition? A. Well, it was Mr. Ross. That was their wanting to send some dispatches along on the road. Mr. Ross was dispatcher of the road, and they had taken possession of the railroad and telegraph office belonging to the road, and, as I understood it, put a telegraph operator of their own in there. Q. Did he make this proposition of his own accord, or by the authority of the officials of the railroad company? A. I could not say. I just said what Ammon said. Ammon mounted a bench, and he said the railroad company had made this proposition. Now, says he, "We have got charge of the concern, and we are capable of running it." Q. Did you hear Mr. Ross make any proposition at all? A. No, sir; It was Ammon's own statement. By Mr. Means: Q. Did Ross have any conversation with you as chief of police in regard the situation of things there? A. Yes, sir. He wanted me to do all I could to keep matters quiet--keep them from committing any overt acts of violence, if I could. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was there any disposition on the part of these men expressed to destroy property? A. Well, I could not say that there was after I talked to them. The mayor had talked to them, &c. We counseled peace, and Ammon said, says he, "All that I am afraid of--we are going to hold the property. We will take care of it, we will protect it." I told him he was responsible for it. If he let it be destroyed the responsibility would rest upon him. I wanted to reason with him, as I seen he had control of the affairs. By Mr. Means: Q. Wanted him to realize the situation? A. Realize the situation they were in, and make a more weighty responsibility on them, for having taken it by force, if they would let it be destroyed. I told him so. Says he, "All I am afraid of is, when the hands stop work, they will hang around these damned doggeries and get drunk, and come in here and create a disturbance, and lead the thing into trouble." Says he, "If we just stopped them, I would not be a bit afraid of any property being burned." I told them they had just as good a right to stop doggeries as they had to stop a railroad, the rule would work both ways. If you could take possession of one class of property, why not take possession of the other. I talked with them, and I concluded I would go around and notify the saloons to stop myself. I saw it was the best we could do under the circumstances, and we did notify them, and they obeyed and stopped until the next Monday or Tuesday afterwards. I used a little strategy with them. I told them the mayor had instructed me to stop them, and under the law if they did anything to aid, abet, or encourage riot, they were responsible; that the sale of liquor might have that tendency, and they appeared to be cautious, and shut up their places. Q. They shut up because you told them the mayor had ordered them; it was not this Boss Ammon? A. No, sir; it was not Boss Ammon, it was Mayor Phillips and me had talked about that, and thought best to keep down riot in every form we could, under the excited state of affairs. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did Ammon and his men who were acting in concert with them, make any effort to compel saloons from selling whisky? A. No, sir; I don't think he did anything at all in the matter. Q. You say that Mr. Ammon remarked, that he could stop all this rioting and strike by a single dispatch, if their terms were complied with. Did he say what those terms were? A. He was going on to state the terms at the time Mayor Phillips came down, and the mayor arriving there he hadn't got through with his statement. So far as his statement to me was concerned it was, that the men that had been discharged would all be returned to their positions again, and re-instated at the old wages, that double-headers should be taken off--he was going on making a statement of this kind when Mayor Phillips arrived and interrupted him. I don't know what all he would have stated. It was a part of it, that the men should all be re-instated that had been discharged, at their former wages, with an assurance that they would remain, and double-headers taken off the road. Q. Did your force act in concert with the strikers in protecting the property of the Fort Wayne railroad? A. We acted under the advice of Mayor Phillips, and we acted in concert, as a matter of course, in protecting property. We sent down men to watch the property and to keep it from being stolen. Q. You assisted the railroad strikers, or they did so, in protecting the property? A. They appeared to exercise a guard over it for one or two nights. I guess we had taken charge of the freight trains and set a watch over them, and then, when they gave them up we took charge of them. We sent police down, thirty or forty police, along the road where they had run them out to watch the property, and to keep it from being stolen and carried away. Q. Was it a general understanding between your police force and these railroad men that you would assist each other in stopping any violence or destruction of property? A. After they had---- Q. Taken possession of it? A. Yes; there was an understanding, so far as I understood the situation of the case, the property had to be protected, and they were not able to protect it themselves, and they could not stand it, and when they were not able we protected it, and we had policemen down there by direction of the railroad company, to watch the property also. Under the circumstances we were placed in, we were disposed to do the best we could. Q. Regardless of who it was that helped to protect the property? A. Yes; that was the way I understand it. Q. Coöperate with anybody that was peaceably inclined to assist you? A. Exactly; and let the consequences follow. At this point the sub-committee adjourned, until three o'clock, this afternoon. PITTSBURGH, _April 6, 1878_. The sub-committee met at three o'clock, at the orphan's court room, pursuant to adjournment. Mr. Reyburn in the chair. Present, Messrs. Reyburn, Torbert, Yutzy, and Englebert. * * * * * John I. Nevin, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where is your residence and what is your occupation? A. My residence is Sewickley, and editor of the Leader. Q. Were you editor of the _Leader_ at the time of the railroad strike in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you editor from the 19th to the 24th July? A. Yes, sir. Q. Be kind enough to look at these papers during that time, and see if they are your---- A. If I was editor. Q. Take from the 19th of July on, and take the editorials--whether they were your articles? Witness identifies editorial headed "Talk of the Desperate," July 20; also, editorial headed "No Violence." July 21; also, editorial headed "Fatal Rashness," July 22; also, editorial headed "Law and Order," second edition, July 23. The editorials are as follows: [Leader, July 20.] THE TALK OF THE DESPERATE. "This may be the beginning of a great civil war in this country, between labor and capital, that is bound to come. It only needs that the strikers at Martinsburg, or here, or elsewhere, should boldly attack and rout the troops sent to quell them--and they could easily do it if they tried--to set the spark to the magazine, and the explosion would follow at once. The workingmen everywhere, and of all classes of trade, are in the fullest sympathy with the strikers, and only waiting to see whether they are in earnest enough to fight for their rights. They would all join and help them, the moment an actual conflict took place. Against such an uprising, what would capital have to oppose? The militia? Why, have not we seen how the militia at Martinsburg fraternized with the mob; how at Wheeling only thirty men responded to the Governor's call to arms; how Mr. Garrett, in his appeal to the President, acknowledges that the militia is in such full sympathy with the strikers that they were of no use at all? And do not we see, to-day, in the ridiculous response to the calls upon the Grays to turn out--a corporal's guard--that the militia is of no more use here? The Governor, with his proclamations, may call and call, but the laboring people, who mostly constitute the militia, will not take up arms to put down their brethren. Will capital, then, rely on the United States army? Pshaw! These ten or fifteen thousand men, available men, would be swept from our path like leaves in the whirlwind. The workingmen of this country can capture and hold it, if they will only stick together, and it looks as if they were going to, this time, sure." "Of course, as you say, the capitalists.... Many of the unemployed would be glad to get work as soldiers or extra policemen. The farmers, too, might turn out to preserve your 'law and order.' But the working army would have the most men and the best men. The war might be bloody, but right would prevail. Men like Tom Scott, Frank Thomson, yes, and William Thaw, who have got rich out of the stock-holders of railroads, so they cannot pay honest labor living rates, we would hang to the nearest tree. Honest incorporate management would be enforced, and labor would demand and receive its fair share of the profits that are made by means of it." "But even if the workingmen should fail--even if so-called law and order should beat them down in blood--why, that would be better than starving. We would, at least, have our revenge on the men who have coined our sweat and muscles into millions for themselves, while they think that dip is good enough butter for us, and do not care whether our families get a living or not. We would inflict more loss on them than the last ten per cent. reduction would net them gain in ten years, and if we died in this cause, we would only end lives of degradation and misery. Civilization! You say we should endanger civilization, if we succeeded in enforcing our demands by violence! Well, what has civilization done for us? Better the times of the Conestoga wagon, when everybody lived fat, than these railroad times, when labor goes around begging. Better than both, perhaps, the time when every man had his own farm, or lived by his brow; they had enough to eat then, and did not have to work so hard as we do now. What care we for civilization that is grinding us down, down, down to starvation and nakedness by one ten per cent. reduction after another, and one doubling up of crews after another, until the workingman shall be the white slave of his employer, and work for his board, if he gets even that." It is well that the community should know something of the ideas that are circulating among the strikers and their friends at this time; the hates, and hopes, and aspirations, and half formed plans that animate the more impassioned leaders of them, and therefore we give the above, which is a faithful re-production of what a representative workingman said on the subject this morning. It will be seen, that he is really a communist, and there is no doubt that communistic ideas have widely spread, even among the most respectable, and most thoughtful classes of American workingmen. There is no gainsaying either, that the picture this man draws of the hardship which the present business depression has subjected labor to in many cases is not exaggerated, and it is true, that the sympathy of nearly the entire community, is with the railroad strikers in the present case, who are called to endure still another turn of the screw, which is cutting down their wages to the danger limit. Nor is it wonderful, that these men, contrasting their hard lives with the luxury and extravagance with which certain railroad men live, and the brutal disregard to their sufferings, which one of them is alleged to have shown, should be goaded to revengeful and bitter thoughts, and even desperate talk. But when all these allowances are made, it still remains to be said, that threats of violence, of war, of communism, are worse than folly on the part of strikers or the workingmen general. Of one thing there is no doubt, and that is, that resort to violence will not accomplish its object. Widely spread as is the sympathy with the strikers, it is a fallacy to suppose that lawful force will not be found to put down unlawful force. There never yet was a case in this country, where mob violence triumphed in the end, however apparently righteous the cause in which it was invoked, and there never will be such a case, until the American people loses its strong instinct for the preservation, at all hazards, of the established law and order. The people will turn out and enforce the law, so soon as they really think that the law is in serious danger, and there will be no war, nor even a serious insurrection, but all will yield to the majesty of established authority. And then the violent will see that they have accomplished nothing, and that their vengeance has mainly re-acted upon themselves. It will be a long time, before, in this free country, the communists can achieve even such a temporary success, put down speedily as it was, in fire and blood, as the Paris communes of 1871. We are glad, therefore, to see that these enthusiastic, extravagant, and bitter ideas are being met in the counsels of the workingmen themselves, with solid arguments for moderation, and the use of pacific means only. If the employés of the Pennsylvania railroad can prove, by simply abstaining from work, that the railroad cut down their wages too low, and cannot properly fill their places with other men, everybody will be very glad. If that would show that labor is worth more than was supposed, and the price of labor is the measure of the prosperity of the whole community. But if they attempt to force the railroad to accede to their demands, and prevent any person else from working, they will only make their friends everywhere sorry for them, and insure for themselves a certainty of discharge from their positions in the end. [Leader, July 21.] NO VIOLENCE. One point that the inbred lawlessness of southern blood had something to do with the greater recklessness of the strikers on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, as compared with the conduct of the men in similar circumstances on northern roads, was dreadfully illustrated at Baltimore, yesterday. No sooner was the militia called out to go to Cumberland, than the street crowds assaulted them with stones; and no sooner were they thus assaulted than the militia opened fire with ball cartridge right into the midst of people, dealing destruction around. Contrast now the conduct of both parties here, where an equally determined strike is in progress. The strikers carefully protect the property of the different railroads that center here. In stopping the trains they merely "entreat" the engineers to step down and out, though of course the entreaty is equivalent to command. Everything is done decently and in order, and rumors about the burning of the round-house are baseless and apparently malevolent. All violence is discountenanced; even the communistic speeches of certain hot-heads, who have gone out to incite the men, have been coolly received, and the imputation that they are a mob in act of riot is indignantly denied. Towards the militia, the strikers preserve a dignified and manly attitude. They know that the soldiers had to turn out when ordered, and they entertain no hard feelings to any of them, except, possibly, toward one or two of the officers, whom they believe to have been officious about trying to get the Governor to order out their division. They mingle with the soldiers in perfect good humor, though without abating a jot of their determination. And this is not only the feeling among the strikers, but among all the people whom, though they almost universally sympathize with the strikers, admit that the soldier boys are but doing their duty, and never dream of making that unpleasant duty more difficult by assaulting them with stones. On the other hand, the soldiers are equally determined to get through this matter without shedding blood, if possible. They recognize in the strikers men whom, if they do take an attitude in opposition to authority, are, nevertheless, hard-working, honest, and well-meaning citizens, who only resort to their present procedure from what they conceive a desperate necessity. They are men who are anxious to work for a living, but see, as they have, that living taken away from them, and who are making a desperate effort to prevent the reduction, which they believe will make paupers of them. There is no doubt at all that the soldiers will endure insult, and even stone-throwing, before they will shed blood. But we do not believe that either insult or violence will be offered them. The strikers will confine themselves to the exclusive and more effectual plan of a passive and what may be called distributive resistance. If a large body of troops are stationed here, trains will be allowed to go out, but will be stopped at some other point, at Altoona, or Philadelphia, or Harrisburg, where the soldiers are not. In this way they can and probably will carry on a warfare that will break no bones and shed no blood, but will yet be very difficult to subdue. We are proud of both our workingmen and our soldiers that have thus far got along with no bloodshed, and with no casualty except one black eye and one swollen nose. We hope profoundly that the whole matter will be settled, one way or the other, without any more violence, and it will and can be, too, if our law-abiding people will sustain the reputation they have thus far merited. [Leader, July 22.] A FATAL RASHNESS. A Philadelphia regiment which came here in the name of law and order has been swift to shed blood. Not two hours in our city, and before a hostile shot was fired at them, they have stained our hill-sides with the blood of ten or twelve men and children. Most of them were spectators, drawn by an unfortunate and innocent curiosity to their deaths. The wailing of women and children, the deep cursing of outraged men, and the outspoken indignation of an entire community, swell the chorus of condemnation against the officer or officers of the First regiment of Pennsylvania militia, who assumed the fearful responsibility of that hasty command to fire. We desire not to be unjust to the strangers. The strong current of public feeling should not prevent us from upholding them in their terrible deed, if the facts sustain them. Even now we will say that their side of the story may, perhaps, somewhat modify public opinion, when it is known. As appears elsewhere, the _Leader_ tried to obtain their version of the affair officially, but in vain. Those officers who were seen going along the line striking up the rifles of their troops with their swords and otherwise endeavored to stop the effusion of blood, deserve as much credit as that officer who was seen waving his sword and encouraging the men to keep on with the butchery deserves censure. But making all possible allowance for the Philadelphians, it does still appear that they acted rashly, importunately, deplorably. The crowd hissed them, but that was no reason for shooting. They hooted and jeered them, but all crowds do that, and true soldiers are not disquieted by such demonstrations. Men on the crossing caught hold of their bayonets, and half jocosely expostulated with the soldiers. That was reason for clearing a passage with a quiet forward movement with the bayonet, which would have been effective without hurting anybody. It was still no reason for firing--the hurling of a few stones from the hillside, which seems to have been the provocation that caused the massacre--but neither was that for men who came here to enforce order, it is true, but should have made up to endure much before shedding the blood of honest workingmen, who, even, if wrong were only misguided and had thus far conducted themselves with wonderful calmness and respect for order--neither was sufficient reason for beginning a fire of musketry upon the people, and change, what was before but a peaceful though earnest conflict between the railroad men and their employers, into a scene of battle, murder, and sudden death. The railroad officials do not seem to be responsible for the massacre. They appear to have evoked a power that they could not control, and so dazed and shocked at the consequences. Mr. Pitcairn's expression, "God only knows what will come of it," well shows this. Mr. Thaw, early in the day, expresses himself as willing and anxious that anything, everything, should be yielded up to the men rather than that blood should be shed. But it was too late. The collision was then inevitable, and it came. What the end will be cannot now be known. At this writing the air is filled with rumors of fire and war. The troops of the State are concentrating here from all sides to the support of the Philadelphians, now cooped up, apparently terror-stricken, in the fire-threatened railroad round-house, and surrounded by an ever-increasing mass of armed citizens. It is possible that further bloodshed may be averted. The very free vent given to the excitement to-night, in arming and marching about with banners and guns may explain it, and give time for sober second thought to assert itself. The reasonable speeches at the Southside meeting, show that the best spirits among our workingmen are laboring to prevent riot and disorder. Time works for peace. But it is useless to disguise that the situation is very grave and growing graver, and that the men who were swift to shed blood will have the heaviest responsibility to answer for. [Leader, July 23.] LAW AND ORDER. The citizens of Pittsburgh are rising to-day to defend themselves from the threatened revolt against law and property. This is a ringing answer to the tones that already come from other cities, that Pittsburgh is honored in the manhood and public spirit to put down mob law. The people are responding to the mayor's call by thousands. Let not enlistments slacken, however. Now is the time to display such a force that resistance will be seen to be in vain, and effusion of blood prevented. We are proud to say that the Nineteenth and Fourteenth regiments of militia are redeeming themselves from the fault that they committed on Saturday, and are now mustering strength and will. By night this issuing would be and will be decided, and we hope by Harrisburg and Allegheny efforts alone. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Who was your reporter that reported the occurrences of the riot during Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday? A. Well, we have a corps of about five or six regular men, and during these three or four days, we employed a great many others. We gave page after page of matter about, and it would not have been possible for one or two or three or four to get it up. I can give you the names of a number of them. The man whom we had stationed close to the round-house during Saturday night, was named Mr. George Vickers. He is now, I think, on the Philadelphia _Times_. Mr. John Haslet and Mr. William Clark, and a number of others. Mr. Henry Myer was assisting us some. Q. Had you more than one edition on that Sunday of the riot? A. Yes. Had three editions. Q. They are all on file, are they? A. Think they are, ain't they? Q. Will you please examine this article, and say whether you are author of it. [Indicating article of July 20, headed "Let them Go."] A. Yes, sir. The article referred to is as follows: [Leader, July 22.] LET THEM GO. _To the workingmen of Pittsburgh_: In the name of the whole people of Pittsburgh we make an appeal for peace. There has been bloodshed enough--far more than enough. The workingmen have triumphed over the soldiers who rashly opened fire upon them, and there is now nothing more to fight for. Now is the time to show they deserve victory by proving themselves good citizens, refusing to prolong a slaughter that is a mere useless butchery. The Philadelphia militia, however rash, however boastful, are yet men who thought they were obeying the call of duty. There were undoubtedly roughs among their number, who gave an evil character to the regiment; but there are many good men among them, who simply obeyed orders; even when they fired their pieces they obeyed orders. Now that their point has been gained, we beseech our people not to sully their victory with the further shooting down of these men, who only seek to escape. To continue to hunt them down in their retreat on the north side, whither it is said they have gone, is to stain the green fields of our suburbs this bright Sunday morning with useless effusion of blood. To do this would only be to cause a revulsion of feeling, and the sympathy which to this point has been altogether with the strikers and their friends, and we confidentially appeal to them, that having gained everything they fought for, they now exert themselves as nobly to prevent excited outsiders from taking advantage of their triumph to shoot men, when they only want to get away. Since writing the above it appears that the bulk of Philadelphia have got away from Sharpsburg, and are scattered in clouds through the hills. It is believed that they will now escape in safety, though it is possible that some of them may be yet followed up and shot down. It is a matter of thankfulness that they have escaped, the victory is complete, and that a great final massacre has been avoided. Let us now decently and solemnly mourn our dead, and mourn in calmness and order. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to this strike? A. I have no special knowledge, no, sir, except what common rumor, and what was published about the matter. It originated out of the organization of the Trainmen's Union, precipitated in Maryland, and the particular special cause here, as I understood it, was the double-header grievance on the Pennsylvania railroad. Q. Have you any knowledge as to the necessity of calling the military to this place? A. You mean Philadelphia military? Q. Yes; I mean the military. I will say in explanation that in our resolution we are required to inquire into the necessity of calling out, and the conduct of the troops; and as a public man you would be apt to know, and able to give an expression of opinion that would be of value? A. I could only give my judgment about it, I suppose, not being in the service. Q. That judgment could be expressed as a citizen, and would be formed from facts, I suppose, coming to your knowledge? A. It seemed to me at the time that the military need not have been called so soon. I was under the impression at the time, strongly, that the mayor, with policemen, might have quieted the trouble--and, perhaps, would have done so if the military had not been brought so promptly on the scene--and it seemed to me, also, that bringing Philadelphia troops from a city that Pittsburgh has always felt a kind of rivalry toward, was calculated, perhaps, to inflame feeling here rather than to allay it. I remember there were rumors that Saturday evening--whether authenticated or not, I do not know--that the Philadelphia men had said that Pittsburgh troops had failed here, and they would clean out the rioters. I don't know whether they said it or not; but if they did not say it, it shows just as well the feeling of jealousy with which their presence was regarded, and they asserted that feeling during that whole Saturday night, that in attacking those Philadelphia troops they were cleaning out Philadelphia men. They had come here to interfere in what might have been settled by local authorities, and from that point of view it seemed to me injudicious. Q. Do you believe that the local authorities could have preserved order, and finally quieted the strike, without any loss of property? A. I believe that they could have preserved order until the Governor would return, and I think that his presence would have prevented any outbreak. The fact that the Governor's proclamation calling out troops was gravely doubted here--everybody knew he was out of the State a long distance--had, perhaps, a good deal to do with the disorderly feeling. I do not believe that the local authorities could have eventually put down the riot; but I think they could have preserved order here, and kept things in tolerable order until the Governor himself had arrived here. I think if Governor Hartranft had been here on that evening, the collision could have been avoided. By Senator Yutzy: Q. I see, in this editorial you speak of, the "sympathy being with the strikers and their friends?" A. There is no doubt that the sympathy of the people here was strongly with the strikers, before any act of violence was committed. Q. Before the burning of the property? A. Yes, sir; and the idea spread, after the collision had taken place, that it was all owing to reckless firing, without orders, which kept the sympathy with the strikers until the actual destruction of property commenced. Q. In your opinion, was the sympathy of the citizens, and people generally here in the city, with the strikers when they made the assault on the troops in the round-house and driving them out of the city? A. No, sir; I don't think that. I think the mass of our citizens then were not expressing sympathy with anybody--just paralyzed. Q. Here is one expression: "The workingmen have triumphed over the soldiers, who rashly opened fire upon them, and there is now nothing more to fight for." Did the people, in your opinion, justify these men, called workingmen, in driving out the troops and triumphing over them? A. I don't think they did. No, sir; that is not the spirit of that article, either, which is an appeal for the cessation of any further hostilities. At that time, of course, it was said that it was the workingmen entirely that was fighting--the railroad men--and they were in sympathy with them, the railroad strikers and their friends. Q. There is another sentence: "Now is the time to show they deserve victory, by proving themselves good citizens, and refusing to prolong a slaughter that is mere useless butchery." A. That is to show that they had deserved the victory they had got, by not using it any further. Q. The expression is not used to justify them so much as to allay further bloodshed? A. Yes; that is the whole spirit of it. When that article was written, it was supposed that General Brinton's troops were fleeing out into the country. A large mob was pursuing them, shooting them down in every direction, and nobody knew where the pursuit had stopped, perhaps not until they were all exterminated. We could not get at their side of the story, but it was supposed that they were even more demoralized than perhaps they were. That article was written for the express purpose of trying to stop pursuit, to try to allay the excitement. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You had no intention of contributing any to the excitement by any inflammatory article? A. If I had I certainly would not have asked leave to let them go. Q. Did you have any reporter with the troops as they retired from the round-house and went out Penn street? A. We had no reporter at any time with the troops. You could not get any man to them. We had a reporter right in sight of the round-house. He saw the retreat, and followed out some distance towards Lawrenceville--towards the arsenal. That was Mr. George Vickers, the man I spoke of before. I, myself, was out there early in the morning, to look at the situation at the round-house. There was still some firing then. Q. Did you indicate all the editorials you wrote during the riot on that subject in these papers? A. I think I have indicated them all. * * * * * James W. Breen, _sworn_: By Senator Yutzy: Q. You have no regular file of your _Globe_? A. No, sir; not bound. I gave the sergeant-at-arms two copies. By Mr. Reyburn: Q. What is your occupation? A. Journalist. Q. You reside in Pittsburgh? A. Yes, sir. Thirteenth ward. Q. Did you reside in Pittsburgh at the time of the riots, in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is that a copy of your paper for that date? [Indicating.] A. That is a copy of the extra. The regular edition--I couldn't get a copy for the file. It ran out early in the day. That has all that pertains to the riot in it. Q. Is this article written by you? [Indicating extra, July 22, article headed "First Blood."] A. You mean the entire article? Q. More particularly that following the heading? A. My impression is that it was; but it was made up in detail at different times and by different parties. Q. Would you call that an editorial? A. It is a local introduction. The only editorial that was in the paper during the riot is in that issue of the paper for the following Sunday, July 29--that is the only editorial that was in the paper. Q. These head lines are also yours? A. Yes; I make the head lines. The article referred to is as follows: [Sunday Globe Extra, July 22.] FIRST BLOOD. SEVENTEEN CITIZENS SHOT IN COLD BLOOD BY THE ROUGHS OF PHILADELPHIA. THE LEXINGTON OF THE LABOR CONFLICT AT HAND. THE CITY IN THE HANDS OF THE STRIKERS. ARMED BANDS PATROLLING THE STREETS. THE CIVIL AND MILITARY AUTHORITIES POWERLESS. BITTER DENUNCIATIONS OF SHERIFF FIFE, GENERAL PEARSON, AND THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD AUTHORITIES. THREATS THAT THE PHILADELPHIA SOLDIERS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO HOME ALIVE. THE FOURTEENTH AND NINETEENTH REGIMENTS DISBANDED AND REFUSE TO FIGHT, AND MANY GIVE THEIR ARMS TO THE STRIKERS. THE PHILADELPHIA TROOPS PENNED IN THE ROUND-HOUSE AND SURROUNDED BY 20,000 STRIKERS. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. MILES OF BLAZING CARS. THE STRIKERS HOLD THE FORT AND THE FREIGHT. [Cut of man brandishing a bowie knife.] Now that the strikers' contest has reached its crisis, and the military and civil are powerless to preserve order, and the blood of innocent men and children, shot down by Philadelphia roughs, cries aloud for atonement, it may not be amiss to place the responsibility for this awful condition of things where it belongs. The strikers have manifested, all along, an unwonted forbearance. There was no overt act of violence. The civil process had not been legally exhausted or properly invoked, and Sheriff Fife's misstatements and lying bulletins, and General Pearson's indiscreet bravado, only added fuel to what was already an overmastering flame. In a city where nearly every man is a worker, and where the mercantile community was bitterly hostile to an odious corporation, which had ground its life blood out by discrimination, the folly of bringing a few thousand Philadelphia troops to overawe the one hundred thousand workingmen of the city ought to have been apparent to the dullest observer. The little junta of railroad officials who wrote out the Governor's proclamation at the Union Depot hotel, and their indiscreet buncombe in disregarding Mr. Thaw's advice and cultivating an unnecessary issue with the strikers, and the culminating bloody blunder, which sent thirteen innocent victims to their graves, all show how such martinets as Cassatt, Scott, Gardiner, &c., fail to comprehend the situation. With bands of five and ten thousand men patrolling the streets, the rumors and gun-works sacked, the booming of cannon, and the sharp crack of the strikers' muskets in front of the city hall, the threats of vengeance against the military and the railroad authorities, and the murder of the innocents, all this is directly attributable to the blunder of the sheriff and the indiscreet bluster of the military and railroad authorities, who imagined, because they had a few troops at their back, that they could defy the lightning. The feeling against the Philadelphia soldiery, which seemed to have acted with unseemly precipitancy, was very bitter, and threats were made that they will not be allowed to go home alive. Every law-abiding citizen must deplore extremes, but in a contest like the present, so long as labor, without violence, merely asserted its right to live, it was entitled to the sympathy of every worker in the hive of human industry, and the cowardice and imbecility of the railroad sharks, who sought to overawe all this community by imported bummers, met its proper rebuke. Contrast, in all this crisis, between the mock heroics of the Pennsylvania railroad squad, with its plotting and counter-plotting, and the clear-headed attitude of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, who wisely remained passive until the storm spent itself, shows the difference between the statesmanship of Garrett and the poppy-cock of Scott. As the case stands, every one of the military should be arrested and tried for murder, and their abettors taught a lesson not likely to be soon forgotten. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What reason had you for saying that "seventeen citizens shot in cold blood by the roughs of Philadelphia?" A. From the information that they fired on the populace without orders, and without justification, so far as the information went at that time--it was received to that effect--that they had not fired on the mob, who were in front of them obstructing the track, but fired on the unarmed populace on the hill side. Q. What do you mean by Philadelphia roughs? A. That was the expression used, that parties fired on the people without orders, and acting as roughs--firing recklessly, and without orders, and on people who were not firing on them. Q. Did your information at that time lead you to suppose that there had been no attack made by the mob? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you depend upon your reporters for the information upon which you wrote? A. Yes; largely. To some extent on such information as we could get outside. Q. Were you on the ground where the firing took place, on Twenty-eight street, at the time? A. No, sir; at no time on the ground. I had a reporter sent to Torrens station early in the evening. The idea at that time was that that would be the vital point; there was where the trouble was going to be. Colonel Guthrie was there with the Grays, and it was supposed to be the real point. It turned out afterwards that the trouble was down at the round-house. I got my information from sundry sources. Q. Had you a reporter there? A. No, sir; I had no reporter, but I had parties who were out there and gave me information that was supposed to be intelligent. At the time, they thought that the trouble would be at Torrens station, and I sent parties there, and there was no trouble there. There was no news from that point. The reporter was detained there until very late in the night. By Senator Yutzy: Q. This heading here of threats that the Philadelphia soldiers will not be allowed to go home alive--where did you get that information from--that there was such threats? A. Those threats were made very freely on the street. Q. You heard them yourself? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know any of the parties that made those threats? A. Oh, yes. I couldn't say. I must have met a thousand people. The streets were blocked with people. I couldn't name anybody specifically. By Mr. Means: Q. You say you met a thousand people making threats? A. No; I say I must have met a thousand people on the street--not a thousand making threats. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Here is another expression: "The Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments disband, and refuse to fight, and many give their arms to the strikers." Was that the case? A. That was the information at that time. Q. Was it verified after further investigation? A. I think it was pretty well ascertained afterwards that a portion of the military threw down their arms. I think that was developed afterwards. By Senator Reyburn: Q. In this article, you say that there was no overt act of violence. What do you mean by that? A. There was no overt act of violence committed by the mob at the time it was written. I didn't consider that an overt act of violence to be standing on the railroad track--that refers to a physical effort. Q. Do you mean, that the mob had a right to stand on the railroad track and take possession of the railroad track, and refuse to allow traffic? A. No, sir; it was written from this standpoint: that the military, instead of removing the mob who were in front of them, and who were obstructing traffic, fired on the populace on the hill side who were unarmed and spectators, and were not parties to the conflict. By Mr. Means: Q. I suppose you mean that there were no demonstrations to destroy either life or property? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Had you gone to any trouble to ascertain the truth of the facts as they really occurred before the fire by the mob, before you wrote this article? A. We sent reporters to the point where we supposed the trouble would be, and when we couldn't get reporters, I got other parties to go to the point, and got them to report the facts--used every proper effort to get at the truth of the matter. It was a hard matter to get reporters that night, it being Saturday night, and the daily reporters being all off and at home, it was very difficult to get them. I had to improvise by getting parties outside to give the news, the best way I could--outside of the regular reporters. Q. When you wrote this article, you were fully of the opinion and believed that the mob had not shown any violence towards the troops? A. Yes; that was my information at the time of writing that article. Q. Did you get your information from one of these reporters? A. No; the reporters didn't report until long after midnight. I got that information on the street. Some of the reporters sent out, found it difficult to get back at all in consequence of obstructions to travel--street cars stopped, and difficulty in getting in. Q. You say here, the civil process had not been legally exhausted or properly invoked. "Sheriff Fife's misstatements and lying bulletins, and General Pearson's indiscreet bravado, only added to the fuel to what was already an overmastering flame." What do you mean by that--the civil process had not been exhausted? A. I understood information was made before the mayor first, and that instead of the parties being arrested, that arrangements were being made for the arrest of the leaders of the riot peacefully and without bloodshed, and by that means the backbone of the outbreak would have been broken. Instead of that, the warrants were taken up to court, and bench-warrants were given, and then they attempted to arrest them by the aid of the military, and the military failed. So far as regards Fife, the information was at that time that he had not exhausted his process. Had not called a _posse comitatus_, and hadn't taken sufficient number to go out there and indite a proclamation such as he had indicted, or such as was written for him. My information was, that it was written by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company officials. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What information led you to believe that this proclamation had been written by the Pennsylvania railroad officials? A. I heard it in a number of instances--I cannot exactly recall from whom--that the telegram had been written by somebody for the sheriff. It came in the usual course of news. I forget now from whom, and I think it was repeated in most of the papers at the time. The impression was that the sheriff had not exhausted his powers before calling on the military, and that the matter had been taken out of the hands of the mayor, and given into the hands of the military with undue precipitancy. Q. Do you know that the mayor had been called upon to furnish a police force, for the protection of the railroad? A. Yes; that was the information. I know that the police force was depleted to at least one third of its original force, and it was very difficult to get policemen to go in for a day, or a few hours, at the risk of being shot or killed for one day's pay. There was great reluctance on the part of policemen to go in on that plea. Q. You say "the little junta of railroad officials, who wrote out the Governor's proclamation, at the Union Depot hotel." What reason had you for writing that? Had you any reason to suppose, or did you know that this proclamation had been written by the railroad officials? A. I didn't see them write it; but the information was, at that time, that the proclamation was written in the Union depot. It turned out afterwards, it was written by the Governor's private secretary, Mr. Farr, I believe. That was not the information at that time. It was known, however, that it was not the Governor's proclamation, and it was the common opinion that it was written by Pennsylvania railroad officials. Q. You mean common rumor? A. Yes; in the excitement of the time, it was very difficult to get accurate information. Officials couldn't be found at their positions, and it was very difficult to get people to go--had to take it just as you could. Q. Is it not characteristic of newspaper men to gather up all the information that they can, even if it is flying reports on the street, and give as near the truth of the matter as you can? Is that not characteristic of newspaper men? A. Yes; so far as could be gathered. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You don't mean to say that newspaper men--an editor--will sit down and write an article on nothing but common street rumor, without taking proper steps to verify these facts, and see whether what they allege is true? A. You cannot judicially prove everything before it goes in a newspaper, and the sources of information were stopped. It was impossible to see any railroad officials--most of them had left town. Q. On Saturday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was not Mr. Cassatt and other railroad officials at the Union depot through Saturday afternoon and evening? A. I think not, sir; if they were, they were penned up, and not get-at-able. Q. Couldn't you get at General Latta, and wasn't he there? A. I don't know whether he was there. You speak about street information when that information coincides and comes from many quarters and many sources, it was reasonably something to pass upon. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That article was written before the burning took place, I suppose? A. Yes, sir. Q. I believe you have identified this paper, and this editorial, entitled "Military Mob?" Did you write that? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. Mr. Breen, in your opinion, was the sympathy of the citizens of Pittsburgh with the strikers, when they first struck and quit work? A. Very strongly with the strikers, but not with the mob. Q. I am speaking of the strikers--of the railroad employés? A. Yes, sir; very emphatically; both on the part of the business community and the other portion. Q. Do you know of any business men in the city of Pittsburgh that made any proposition to the strikers in the way of support, furnishing them provisions, or taking care of them while they were not employed on the road? A. There was some talk of that kind at the time, that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. King had proposed to furnish something or other. Q. I don't wish to be personal in this matter; I just wish to know of any parties that proposed to these strikers to give them support? A. I know as in the case of this other knowledge, that it could not be judicially proved at that time as a fact, but it was common rumor and talk that certain gentlemen had proposed to give provisions to aid the strikers. Q. Do you know, of your own knowledge? A. No, sir. Q. But it was common rumor that the citizens of Pittsburgh were in sympathy with the strikers? A. With the strikers, yes, sir; I don't know that there was any doubt of that. Q. You don't know, then, any particular man or Pittsburgh parties who offered aid and comfort? A. No, sir; I heard parties' names mentioned, but as they afterwards disclaimed it, I suppose there was nothing in it. Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to the strike? A. Double-headers, and the issue between the Trainmen's Union and the Pennsylvania railroad. That was the primary cause, as I understood it. By Mr. Means: Q. These parties that reported to you information from which this article was written, were they railroad men or were they citizens of Pittsburgh? A. Citizens of Pittsburgh. Q. From their reports then to you, you wrote this article? A. Yes; from the aggregate reports this article was written. Q. Were these business men, or were they laboring men, or what were they? A. I couldn't exactly classify them. I think they represented all classes. I think the entire sympathy of the community, mercantile and otherwise, was with the strikers up to the time of news of violence. Q. During the destruction of railroad property, was there any demonstration on the part of the citizens to subdue this riot, or did they begin to realize their situation after it came to the destruction of individual property? A. I think they sympathized fully with the strikers up to the point of burning and pillaging, and after that began there was a re-action in public sentiment. Q. Was that so far as the railroad company was concerned, or had they come down to private property? A. I don't exactly understand your question. Q. Just what I want to know is this: Did the citizens of Pittsburgh think that the strikers were doing right, as long as they were destroying railroad property? A. Well, I don't think they thought that exactly, but they didn't make any attempt to stay the conflagration or the fire. Q. As soon as it came down to individual property, then what? A. Then, I think, even before there was an effort made to get up a citizen's committee, and I think it was a failure; and I think only four responded to go out and assist in that. Q. When it came down to individual property, then what? A. Then, of course, there were more active efforts made by the authorities, and by parties living in the neighborhood. Q. Did they seem to be general or just local? A. No, sir; it did not seem to be general. Q. Just local? A. Just local. Q. And then, if a fire was in the Sixth ward, the people of the Sixth ward or the Eighth or the Tenth or the Twentieth ward, or wherever it was, they would want to stop it, but the adjoining ward did not appear to take any part? A. The fire was at Grant and Washington street, immediately in the neighborhood of the depot, and, of course, they used every effort possible, but I do not know, outside of the official departments, that anybody from any other quarter of the city was endeavoring to quell it--the firemen and police department, of course, were there, so far as I can learn, but they were comparatively powerless, on account of the size of the mob, and the area of territory they covered. I wish to make a remark here concerning the expression, "shooting down innocent citizens." That remark was intended to apply, and does apply, from reading the context, to parties on the hill side who were mere spectators, and not active rioters in any sense. If the military had cleared the track, and used proper force in clearing the track, I think they would have been justified, but they didn't even shoot the mob in front of them. They didn't fire into that crowd, but fired into an innocent crowd on the hill side, some of whom were in no sense rioters, and some of whom lived on the hill side. There was a small boy next door to me, was fired at and shot in his lung, who was taking some clothes to his brother, who was in the Fourteenth regiment; a boy about ten years of age, and he was nearly dead for several months. He finally got over it. This class of people here referred to, who were shot at on the hill side, were not rioters or participants in the riot. Q. You say they were fired at. Were they not hit accidentally? A. The information at that time, and, I think, the testimony since, showed that they were fired at an angle with the hillside. The hill ran up there rather abruptly, and the volley took effect there where these people were looking down. I remember a few hours before that, parties had said that would be a good place to see the trouble. The appraiser of the port, here, Mr. Chandler, sent his boy there, that day, and says, "Don't you go down on the track, but go on the hillside; you will be out of harm's way." It turned out afterwards that was the very place to be in harm's way. Q. You speak about trouble. What trouble was there anticipated? Was it anticipated that the mob on the railroad tracks would resist the military, and bring on a collision? A. There was certain trouble anticipated--there was a conflict anticipated of some kind. Either the mob or the soldiers would have to give way, and it was not known which. Trouble was apprehended. Q. Was there trouble talked of--rumors in the street that there would be a resistance to the soldiers? A. No, sir; I didn't think there was any talk of resistance. There was talk of trouble. The rioters seemed to be taking the ground that they had a right to stop there, so long as they did not interfere with the trains, and the military undertook to clear the track; and do not think if the military had cleared the mob who had actively obstructed them, that the trouble would not have been so great as it was. Firing into these people who were on the hillside, and not participating in the riot, I think, considerably aggravated the trouble, from my observation. Q. You were not there when the firing took place? A. No, sir. Q. Do you know that the mob did not fire--that, at least, the soldiers did not fire on the mob in front of them? A. That was the information, and I believe that was the fact, that they fired on the hill-side, and not on the strikers. Q. How many people were killed and wounded upon the hill-side? A. I think there is a list there that was tolerably accurate at the time. I cannot vouch for its absolute accuracy. You refer to the number killed on the hill-side? Q. Yes. A. I could not tell that. This boy, there mentioned, was shot on the hill-side, and I heard of a number of others. I cannot exactly re-call them. That list merely embraces the total number. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were these editorials, with the head-lines, intended to mollify and quiet the mob? A. They were intended to represent the exact condition of affairs as we understood it at that time. Q. Regardless of what effect it would have on the mob? A. It is an exact reflex of the condition of affairs at the time. In the articles below, and in different other parts of the paper, any resort to physical violence was deprecated, further than the act of striking. Q. In your estimation, did your editorial give a representation of the general sentiment of the citizens here as a reflex of the sentiment of the people? A. I think it was, as far as I could learn. Q. At that time? A. Yes, sir. * * * * * Eugene O'Neal, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you live? A. Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. Connected with Pittsburgh _Dispatch_. Q. Are your files here? A. I sent a file up by your sergeant-at-arms. Q. Just state what knowledge you have of the occurrences? A. My knowledge of the occurrences is confined first to the strike and calling out of the military. I was there on the Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday preceding this bloodshed. I was then called away upon business to Buffalo, and all that I know of the strike reporters brought of the suspension of work of the railroad hands, and I saw a crowd collected around the tracks. I was on the ground on Friday night. I also noticed in some degree manifestations of public feeling in regard to the strike and calling out of the troops. That came from personal knowledge. The entire knowledge I had was derived from reports. Q. There is an editorial in your issue of the 21st July, entitled "Fruits of a Hasty Step." Did you write that article? A. Yes, sir. [The following is the article referred to:] [Dispatch, July 21.] FRUITS OF A HASTY STEP. There was a general feeling in the community yesterday that the sudden and unlooked for ordering out of the troops to adjust the railroad difficulty was not the wisest course that might have been pursued. The actions of the strikers, while in some instances reprehensible, could scarcely be held by any construction to amount to a continuous riot, as there was only one case of violence, (in which the offender, McCall, was promptly arrested by the police,) and while there was a very general trespassing upon the company's road, there was certainly no destruction of property. It was hoped that with a cooling night intervening to both the officers and the men calmly thinking the situation over, an amicable arrangement might be effected, and the inconvenience to the public ended; but the precipitate calling for troops dispelled that possibility, and made the affair assume a really very serious aspect. One point that must have been lost sight of by the sheriff in his excitement (and perhaps by the company's representatives too) was, that the engineers and firemen, while not themselves striking, were naturally in sympathy with their late associates, and that the stoppage of the trains was done rather upon solicitation than compulsion. But the question arises whether, conceding there was a riot within the legal acceptation of the term, the usual remedies were exhausted before calling for troops. So far as appears, a small squad of the mayor's police was sufficient to quell the only fight that occurred. It was then supposed that peace was reigning, until sometime after midnight, when Sheriff Fife addressed a party of the strikers advising them to go home, and when a more irreverent person in the crowd replied that he (the mayor) might migrate to a hot climate. This simple circumstance seems to have been the last straw. It was, of course, a very wrong remark to the sheriff who (without waiting, so far as is evidenced, to summon a _posse comitatus_) hastened off to the telegraph office and apprised the Governor, at lightning speed, that the red planet of war had risen on the banks of the Allegheny. And then flashed back telegrams to the major general in local command, and the major general emitted general order number one, (it must have scared the readers of yesterday morning's _Dispatch_ as it burst upon them with double-leaded significance from our advertising columns,) and troops were hurried out of bed, and amid a great rushing to and fro in hot haste, and sleepy eyes looked sad farewells to other eyes that winked, and mouths that yawned again, the regiments were put in marching order for the battle-field which lay from the Union depot along Snyder's hollow to the East Liberty stock-yards. There was a sort of general feeling through the community yesterday that there was a good deal of farce about this, that so solemn a matter as calling out the military, spreading broad-cast over the continent the notion that Pittsburgh was on the verge of a civil war, ought not to have been resolved upon before at least all the ordinary police resources were exhausted. It also had the effect of creating an active sympathy for the strikers with many, who before had none. And besides, it incensed the men themselves, made them less open to argument and persuasion, and in so far as it did this, it tended to prolong the strike, and consequently disturb the business interests of the city; and worse yet, it drew hundreds of angry outsiders to the scene and mixed them in the controversy. We do not believe, as some are inclined to fear, that this affair will--ill-advised though it may have been--will occasion a general bitter feeling between labor and capital. The best proof is to be found in the expressions upon the street yesterday, which were not those of labor against capital or capital against labor; but almost unanimously, one of mortification at the eagerness and haste with which the solemn and expensive course of proclaiming a community in a state of insurrection was decided upon. It was hoped all around that the difference between the railroads and the hands would adjust itself inside of forty-eight hours at the furthest, if left to take its course; when or how it will be settled now remains to be seen; but at the best, there will be bitter feeling, and it is to be feared acts from time to time that under moral suasion and under peaceful treatment would not have been thought of. Two hours of calm, candid talk and fair treatment between the officers of the roads and the employés would have done more toward a permanent pacification than a regiment of military. Who would answer for the consequences, supposing that on the head of the hasty turn out of the military blood had been shed yesterday? The law is great and its majesty powerful when administered with cautious solemnity and decorum, but never should it be stripped of its grave and most serious surroundings. To abate one jot or one tittle of them, is to inflame the passions of the multitude, and make them to forget their paramount duty of obedience to the law, and to precipitate the very evils sought to be avoided. It is scarcely necessary to add to aught which has been written, that on the question of the attitude of the strikers or violence by them or obstruction thrown by them in the way of the company, there can be no two opinions among calm people. Yesterday we said, as we believed firmly and as gathered from their conversations, the reasons that led them to quit work. For quitting work, they are certainly not censurable; in fact, considering the lowness of their wages, if by this method alone they could improve their condition, sympathy would attend their effort; but, of course, they have no right to violently interfere with the roads, if the roads can get other men to fill their places. On this point, no two intelligent and unheated persons think of disputing. There is, however, as explained by them, a considerable difference of opinion between the community and the authorities as to the wisdom of trying to knock this principle into the heads of the strikers with the butt end of a gun, instead of exhausting first peaceful methods. Brute force is bad all around, and even threats of it are not always the best or quickest remedy for evils. Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to the strike? A. I have no personal knowledge. I had, however, some knowledge of the causes which had been gathered for some months before, and which were familiar in people's mouths about the time--the reduction of wages and the bitter feeling that existed between the employés and officers of the roads. I heard of these things as leading to the strikes. I was very familiar with the reports that Tradesmen's Unions had been formed for the purpose of carrying them out. Q. For the purpose of carrying out the strike, do you mean? A. Yes, sir. Q. How did you obtain that information? A. I obtained it by personal information--partly among railroad men, partly among citizens, and from our reporters. Q. Did you have any knowledge leading you to suppose that this strike would take place before the 19th? A. No; the strike had taken place before my attention was directed to it. Of course the information had come from other sections of the country that it had already taken place there. Q. From your knowledge and information, was there any necessity for calling out the troops? A. Not the slightest, sir, according to the best of my judgment and belief, at the time they were called. Q. I believe you were not here after the troops arrived? A. I was here after they arrived, but not here on the night of the bloodshed. Q. You say there was no necessity for calling the troops here? A. None that I could see. Q. You mean by that that the civil authorities were able to cope with the mob, or with the strikers? A. I think the civil authorities could have successfully coped with any disorder if it had not been for the introduction of the troops and their want of discipline. I think that the troops helped more than any other cause, so far as my judgment has been able to reach. Their want of discipline, their want of coolness, and subsequently their demoralization, running away, was the prime cause which led the mob, and brought out the bad elements in it, and gave them to suppose they were masters of the field. By Mr. Means: Q. You mean to say that there was a demonstration of that kind before the Philadelphia troops arrived? A. Of which kind? Q. Of the mob going out to destroy property? A. It had assumed that which in popular parlance, is termed a mob. Q. Was there any demonstration of that kind? A. There was a demonstration to the extent of numbers of citizens assembling at the different points along the road, drawn by curiosity. The first demonstration I saw, was a demonstration of people who went out of curiosity to see the troops. Q. That was your Pittsburgh troops? A. Pittsburgh, yes, sir. So far as I could see, there was no disposition to violence, in any shape, manner or form, at that time. By Mr. Means: Q. After the arrival of the Philadelphia troops, did it excite the people of the city of Pittsburgh or the mob, to more violence than before they arrived? A. There had been no act of violence, to my knowledge, in the sense of physical violence. There was no violence, save in so far as the presence of these men as trespassers might be considered violence, and the action of the strikers in their dealings with the engineers towards stopping the cars, so far as that might be considered violence. I do not speak of that. But there was no violence up to Saturday morning, that I heard of, save in the case of the assault upon the railroad officer at the time, which seemed to be an assault and battery, and the party, I think, was arrested, and brought to the station-house. Q. After the arrival of the Philadelphia troops, was it then demonstrated that the citizens of Pittsburgh or the mob, was determined to clean out the Philadelphia troops? A. I was not in the city after the conflict occurred, but suppose that of course. I could only judge as you judge, from what you read, that the shedding of blood aroused the feeling of animosity, and as to the feeling among the citizens, I do not think there was any disposition among the citizens of Pittsburgh, to the encouragement of arson or bloodshed--that is, among the respectable and larger portion of the community. After the militia, which was supposed to be able to take charge of the situation had fled, then I have no doubt that the mob took control. Q. Did you see any demonstrations made to clean out the Philadelphia troops? A. Not the slightest. The troops arrived here the morning I left. I had arranged for a trip to New York, and I went to Buffalo, and the troops had arrived, and there was a bitter feeling among the people in regard to calling out the Philadelphia troops. There had been mention of that feeling about calling out the Pittsburgh troops, and a great many people thought it was unnecessary, as the civil authorities had been able to cope with disorder for ten years, and would be able to do it on this occasion, and I think the people thought the military force was being used as a police force for the railroad. I think they felt aggravated about it; but there was no evidence of disposition to resist, or tendency towards bloodshed, so far as my observation went, or so far as any reports we heard would lead me to believe. * * * * * J. M. Carson, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. What is your name? A. Joseph M. Q. Where do you reside, sir? A. Pittsburgh. Q. What is you occupation? A. Journalist. Q. Was that your occupation in July last, at the time of the riots? A. Yes, sir. Q. Will you be kind enough to state any information that you have in regard to the causes leading to the riot? A. I have none to give of personal knowledge. I was not out of the office that day from three o'clock until the next morning or the next day at one or two. I only know it from reporters that had been out at the scene of the difficulty. I only know it from hearsay, and I do not suppose that is evidence. I am prepared to answer to the queries in regard to the paper. There is an editorial in there. I desire to state that that is mine. Q. That is in the _Critic_ of July 22? A. I desire that to be part of my evidence. Q. "Military Blunder--Uncalled-for Bloodshed." A. Yes, sir. [Critic, July 22.] MILITARY BLUNDER--UNCALLED-FOR BLOODSHED. Even at the moment of this writing, it is not difficult to perceive that a fearful blunder has been committed by the Governor and his ill-timed military advisers. It is impossible for us to conceive that the action of the railroad strikers, taking the worst view of either side of the case, justified the calling out of the military. Time should have been allowed for a respectful parley between parties; time for the railroad company to properly consider the grievances complained of in the respectful petition of the strikers, and time for the railroad employés to act in response. There is tyranny in this country worse than anything ever known in Russia, and it is time we should get at the gist of it. Strikes are common occurrences, but it appears that it is only when the "great monopoly," the hated company, which discriminates against the interests of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, is subjected to one of these strikes, that the military are ordered out, and that, too, without a moment's consideration, us though the Pennsylvania railroad was more important than the peace and order and the lives of half the citizens of this State. There is no use disguising the matter. The people of this city sympathize with the strikers. They are incensed beyond measure, with the cold, corrupt legislation which has fostered the colder and more corrupt organization known as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. But we cannot disguise the legal technicalities which appear to brace up that company as against the people. All that we say and care to know is, that a fearful blunder was made by the constituted authorities, who from the Governor down to General Pearson and Sheriff Fife, appeared to be only the willing tools of the giant oppressor. We hold that the reckless haste of General Pearson and Governor Hartranft makes them the prime ringleaders of what promises to be the bloodiest riot with which the Commonwealth has ever been visited. The insane policy of calling Philadelphia troops to this city to quell a domestic quarrel is reprehensible beyond degree. Hartranft and Pearson have only added fuel to the flames, that may not be satisfied till the lives of hundreds of militia and citizens are sacrificed. But while we counsel peace, it is only the duty of journalists to fix the blame where it belongs, and therefore we arraign before the board of public opinion General Pearson, Sheriff Fife, Thomas Scott, and Governor Hartranft, and their aiders and abettors for the murder of our fellow-citizens, who were slaughtered by the Philadelphia militia. Whether the officer commanding was drunk or crazy when he ordered the Philadelphia soldiers to fire into our own Nineteenth regiment, whereby one member was killed, it is a matter that should engage the minds of a military court. But such recklessness and mismanagement is only part and parcel of the great blunder of which we complain. The railroad magnates claim and protest their inability to carry on their business with profit without the much vexed reduction. All the employés can say is, we must starve at these wages. Now, granting that on one side or the other there must be suffering, which, is it equable, should suffer? But the concession can only be made for the sake of casuistic argument. The railroads affirm that they cannot meet expenses without curtailing salaries to the extent that has caused this present trouble. Let us take the case of the Pennsylvania Company. In this instance, we could show some other method of escaping the difficulty. Look at this: J. N. McCullough, $12,000 per annum. William Thaw, 10,000 per annum. Thomas D. Messier, 10,000 per annum. John Scott, (solicitor,) 10,000 per annum. H. H. Houston, (in no recognized position,) 10,000 per annum. Contrast this with the ninety cents of the poor brakeman. But then, what is the poor laboring man? Let the following real occurrence tell: BABY FOOD FOR LABORING MEN. While circulating among the strikers at the outer depot, the reporter found a few of the men willing enough to tell their grievances. One said: "When Vice President Cassatt and General Manager Frank Thomson were at the Altoona shop, Cassatt remonstrated with Thomson against any further reduction. 'Why,' said Cassatt, 'the men cannot buy butter for their bread.' 'Butter,' said Thomson, 'what do they want with butter, let them make dip.' The reduction was made," continued the complaining striker, and whether the men have been living on dip or not, it is very evident from the belligerent feeling displayed here to-day, that they can fight on dip. "Yes," continued the man, in a cold, bitter tone, which showed plainly how deeply, how plainly, the cold-hearted insult.... "Mr. Frank Thomson drives his tandem team and draws his big salary, whilst we must do double work at half pay." The officials can build palaces, the laborer can rent a hovel. The one can roll along in the bustling splendor of a four-in-hand, the other cannot hide the burnt and frost-bitten foot. These railroad authorities can afford salaries that will secure the costliest luxuries and sustain an apish aristocracy, that cannot extend the salary to meet the commonest necessaries of life, to the beggared, starving, crushed laborer and his family. All these magnates will talk of the impossibility of running business without further curtailing the wages of the poor laborer. Arrogant impudence! Unbearable tyranny! Why, it has come to this, that labor is servitude! That a poor man must delude himself to satisfaction at the thought of starving, and respectfully take a pittance called wages. The millions must stand off and die smilingly, and look pleasurably at the outstretched arms of a few like Tom Scott grasping, robbing, paralyzing, crushing our industries, even our lives. Capital has raised itself on the ruins of labor. The laboring class cannot, will not stand this longer. The war cry has been raised, and has gone far and wide. It will not confine itself to the narrow, nor even long stretch of the railroads. Labor will assert itself. It must have its equality, and that it will, sooner or later, amicably, it is desirable, forcibly, if necessary. Certainly rebellion against lawful authority is never lawful, but the principle that freed our nation from tyranny will free labor from domestic aggression. The witness: The first page there was our reporters. The head-lines I do not know anything about. I went to bed that morning at half-past four, and those head-lines were put in after. Q. That is, on the first page, and starts out with "Bread or Blood?" A. Yes, sir; but the reports themselves I believe to be correct, and I believe as fair a statement as has been made of the occurrences. I regret this; but I believe they are as fair a statement as could be had. I know they were truthful--there was no object in misrepresenting them, and the exasperating state of troubled feeling, after shooting down and killing twenty-two citizens of Pittsburgh--men and women--would have induced any community to have felt the same way as we did. Q. Who is responsible for these head-lines starting out with "Bread or Blood?" A. Legally, I am responsible; morally, I am not, but legally I am. I do not shirk any responsibility. Q. What I mean by that question is, who wrote these head-lines? A. I did not. I would rather the committee would not press the question as to who did it. It is not material to the issue anyhow. It was done by a young man in my employ at that time, after I had gone to bed. I did not know anything about it. For every line in that paper I am responsible, except these--for everything excepting the head-lines I am responsible for, and nobody else, and I am legally responsible for them. I do not seek to evade any responsibility. Q. When I ask the question as to the responsibility, I do not mean legal responsibility? A. I was the real editor. I do not object to the head-lines. They adequately represented popular sentiment at that time. If it was twenty-two citizens of Philadelphia shot down by Pittsburgh troops, I think there would be a feeling of that kind evinced by the Philadelphia papers. That is my judgment. Q. One part of the head-lines says, "The worthy strikers arm themselves, and assemble thousands strong to compel their rights?" A. I did not say so. I simply said I was legally responsible, and not morally. I did not write them, but I say this: that if twenty-two Philadelphians had been shot down without orders, as the evidence before your committee proves, that the Philadelphia papers would have had just such head-lines. It is very well now, four or five months after the occurrence, and when we can calmly and coolly review the facts, to say that that is incendiary and improper. That is all right. I agree with you. I agree now that it was perhaps to that extent, but you, as a Philadelphian, if our Pittsburgh troops had gone down there and shot you Philadelphians, you certainly would have felt as I did when that was written. I did not write it, but I do not shirk any responsibility for it. Q. Do you mean that that expresses the feeling at that time? A. I believe that it adequately and fully represented that feeling. That is my candid, conscientious conviction. Q. At the time of the occurrence? A. Yes, I did. It is no idle thing to come out here and shoot down twenty-two people that were innocent. If they had been rioters or strikers, if they had had any part or lot in this thing and had shot them down, they would have been right. I would not have blamed you. I do not blame the committee, of course, but I do say this: it was no more and no less than murder to shoot down these people as they were shot down. I think that is the fullest and best account of the riot that appeared in any Pittsburgh paper. By Mr. Means: Q. Mr. Carson, do you say and do you think, in your opinion--had the press time to deliberate--do you believe they would have written so sarcastic an article as that? A. There is no paper in the city of Pittsburgh, published on the eventful Sunday morning of that day, that would not have put some such article as that in their paper. Q. Understand me right. Had the press had time to deliberate, would they have cast these articles broadcast to the world? A. No, sir; they would not, but that Sunday morning--Monday morning there was a change. I understand you---- Q. This was done, Mr. Carson, on the spur of the moment? A. It was done when we knew--when we had four reporters out there, when they were bringing in the intelligence of the murder, as we deemed it then, and as the grand jury has since, by their presentment presented, and when they were shot down without orders, we wrote those head-lines. I did not, but I am responsible. That is why we did it. Q. You say you wrote the balance of the article? A. No; four reporters did. The head-lines--I am responsible for every line that appears there but the head-line. And that editorial, I dictated that. That is entirely my own, and every word of it--I stand over it to-day, after months have elapsed. The head-lines--I did not know of it until the next morning. Q. You say in this editorial, "It is impossible for us to conceive that the action of the railroad strikers, taking the worst view of their side of the case, justified the calling out of the military"--what do you mean by that? A. I mean their action was passive--was not aggressive. They simply were there. They refused to work, and I furthermore believe, that had there been any conciliation, or attempt at conciliation, used by Scott or their pampered officials, that it could have been arranged. That is my candid belief. By Mr. Means: Q. Suppose that the railroad officials had agreed to comply with the request of the strikers--is that what you mean? A. I do not mean that. I mean if there was any attempt made, but there was not any. They assumed the attitude of tyrants--were overbearing, were tyrannical, and they were abusive. Q. What reason have you to believe, Mr. Carson, that the strikers would have gone to work had the railroad officials not raised their wages? A. I can only say in reply to that, I believe they could have been conciliated, and there could have been an adjustment of troubles, and more than that I cannot say. I believe it could have been managed. Q. Without the increase of wages? A. I do. I believe even that. Q. You believe, then, that the strikers would have conceded to the ten per cent. being taken off? A. Yes, I do. But you treat a workingman as a dog, and he will be very apt, like a worm, to turn. It was not so much the reduction as it was they wanted to crush out all the manhood in him, and trample him into the dust. They treated them with no consideration at all. They treated them as just so much machinery. I do not want to interject a speech into my evidence, but if you want a speech I can give it to you on that question. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Had the strikers--had the men sent a committee to the railroad officials? A. Yes--and how was the committee received. Q. How? A. I do not know. If you want me to tell you how I was told they were received, I will tell you; I do not know of my own knowledge. Q. You must have some grounds for forming an opinion. A. I will give you that now. They were received with the utmost haughtiness. They were dismissed with a wave of the hand. They said, "We will make no terms, no concessions with you. Go back to your wages--go to work--then we will talk to you. We will have nothing at all to do with you." Now that was the way they were received. Q. Were they not told that if they would retire from the company's property, and allow the company to enjoy its property and its rights, that they would receive them? A. No, sir, never heard of it; no, sir. Not the most sanguine man that knows anything about the Pennsylvania railroad officials in western Pennsylvania would ever say such a thing either. I make that a part of my testimony. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you pretend to say that the---- A. I pretend to say that the railroad officials in western Pennsylvania, on the part of the Pennsylvania railroad, are tyrants, and serfs in Russia have better lives to lead than employés on the Pennsylvania railroad. There is no serfdom in Russia--if the reporter will make that correction. Slavery has been abolished in America, and has been abolished in Russia, but there is a modified form of it on the Pennsylvania---- By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean when you say that the "hated company discriminates against the interests of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania?" A. Do you want me to talk on that subject? I can talk for five hours. I say they have systematically discriminated against Pittsburgh, and they have ruined it--that is what they have done. They will carry freight from Pittsburgh--they have systematically discriminated against Pittsburgh to the extent of twenty-five per cent., and when Colonel Scott was here, he said he was horrified. He had not dreamed there was such discrimination. He could not believe it possible; and James Parke, junior, who was one of our most eminent citizens, a Christian gentleman, too, he said it was true. Why, said he, I could not believe it possible. We know it's possible--we know it has ruined Pennsylvania; and the only thing that is going to help us is a competing road, and that, thank God, we will have in the course of three or four months. Q. Let me ask you, what do you mean by discriminating? A. it means that they will carry freight from Chicago to Philadelphia cheaper than they will carry from Chicago to Pittsburgh; that they will carry cheaper from Chicago to Albany than they will carry it to Pittsburgh; that Pittsburgh merchants can take goods to Boston, and take them to San Francisco a great deal cheaper--paying the freight to Boston and back--a great deal cheaper than they can ship them direct to San Francisco. There were three thousand tons shipped by Wilson, Walker & Co., to Boston, and from Boston to San Francisco, paying the freight to Boston and back. That is what made trouble in this community. They have been systematically oppressing Pittsburgh. There is no manufacturer unless he has got drawbacks and rebates. By Mr. Means: Q. This trouble might just as well have fallen on some other portion of the State as it did on Pittsburgh, would it not? Q. It could have, and I think would, had we not anticipated the whole trouble here. There was not a community in the State of Pennsylvania, which would have sympathized to the extent that we did. I will answer why: we would have sympathized because we have been systematically oppressed for the last fifteen years. We have been practically ruined. Q. This thing was as likely to occur at Harrisburg or Scranton or Reading, as it was at Pittsburgh, but, unfortunately, Pittsburgh was the place. A. We bore the blunt of it. We were the first to receive it, and it found the community in full sympathy with the strikers, because of their sufferings. You systematically oppress a people, and revolution is not only right, but it is a duty. Q. You say the community--did your merchants give aid and abet in this strike? A. They did not. They were in sympathy with the strikers; but I was up on Sunday, there at the Union depot, and I saw the people. Saw that they were burning, and all that kind of thing. I did not see a single Pittsburgher. They were all strange faces, and not a face there that was familiar to me, and I am thoroughly familiar with Pittsburgh. They were tramps gathered from all parts of the Union. Q. That is not the question I asked you. The question I asked you was this: if the merchants of the city of Pittsburgh sympathized with the strikers? A. They did. Q. Sympathized with the mob in their violence? A. No, sir. I went up to the Union depot on Sunday, between one and three o'clock in the afternoon. I saw that mob, and there was not a single Pittsburgh face in it. They were all strangers--tramps, and the strikers had gone away. Q. No strikers among them. A. No; I did not see any. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any sympathy expressed by the good portions of the citizens of this city after the burning and destruction of property had commenced? A. On the contrary, the utmost detestation of the ravages of the mob. They sympathized with the strikers in their demand for higher wages. Ninety cents is not much for a man to live on, and I would like to see you gentlemen try to live on it. Q. Was there any expression of sympathy on the part of citizens with the mob that attacked the troops in the round-house before the burning took place? A. I rather imagine that the feeling of the community was that the men who had murdered---- Q. I want you to answer the question, whether there was an expression and sentiment to that effect. A. No; no organized expression. Q. Was there any individual expression? A. Yes, sir. Q. Of good citizens? A. Yes, sir. Q. Justifying the attack upon the troops in the round-house? A. No; not justifying the attack on the troops in the round-house? Q. Or in their retreat from the round-house? A. No; but there was a feeling that it was no more than retributive justice--there was no urging that to be done. Q. There seems to be an article in the nature of an advertisement, commencing, "Attention Citizens," &c. A. I cannot tell you about that. That is an advertisement. I did not see that, and I do not know who put it in, even. By Mr. Means: Q. That part you claim that you are not responsible for? A. I do not know anything about an advertisement. A man pays for it and he gets them in. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was that paid for? A. I presume so. I am not business manager. I am responsible for whatever is written there. I assume that responsibility wholly. Q. Do you know of any articles that were published in your paper that were calculated to arouse and inflame the people that were paid for for insertion? A. No, sir; I did not. By Mr. Means: Q. Have you got any idea who wrote that article, if you were paid for it? A. I do not know who wrote it. I do not know anything about that. Q. In writing an article--supposing I was even competent to write an article for your paper, and would wish to suppress my name, would not you require to have my name, so that if you were come back upon you could get it? A. In regard to that, that is not an article, it is an advertisement. Q. It might come under that head. I think it would keep you very busy to make that out an advertisement. I do not claim to be a newspaper man, but it would keep me pretty busy to make that out? A. It was paid for, or it would not have been in, because I have assumed the responsibility for everything that was in there, but I do not assume for that, because I do not know anything about it. By Senator Reyburn: Q. That was paid for as an advertisement? A. I have no doubt that our business manager could give you proper information. I am willing to assume any responsibility. I do not shirk that, but that is a matter that is not in my line. That is a business advertisement. By Mr. Means: Q. I am not a newspaper man, but, I suppose, if I should write an article for your paper, you would require the name? A. Look at the position it occupies; it is put among the advertisements, I believe. Senator Reyburn: No, sir. Mr. Means: No, sir; it would hardly bear that construction. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is not the editor of a paper responsible for anything that is published in his paper, whether it is an advertisement or anything else? A. He is. Q. And therefore you are responsible, as editor of that paper, for that advertisement? A. I am. Q. Now, give us the name of the man that had that advertisement put in? A. I cannot. Q. Can you give us any party that can give us the name? A. Our business manager probably could. Q. Who is he? A. E. G. Minnemeyer. * * * * * W. F. Aull, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. Pittsburgh. Q. Were you a member of the National Guard of the State of Pennsylvania in July last? A. Yes, sir. Q. What position did you hold? A. Captain of the Eighteenth regiment. Q. Did you receive an order from General Latta, ordering General Brinton to take a certain route after leaving the round-house, in case he was driven from the round-house? A. I received an order from General Latta, after they had left the round-house, to deliver to General Brinton, with instructions to deliver to him at the arsenal. It was then supposed he was located at the arsenal. Q. Did you deliver that order to General Brinton? A. No, sir. Q. Can you give the substance of the order? A. Yes, sir. On Sunday morning, we were lying at Torrens station. Communication had been cut off, both by telegraph and couriers. We had no communication with General Latta at all, and Colonel Guthrie requested me to go to the Union depot, and endeavor, if possible, to obtain an interview with General Latta, and ask him what orders he had to issue for our regiment. I went to the Union depot, and, on my way there, I passed the Philadelphia troops just coming out of the round-house. I went to the Union depot and reported to General Latta that the troops were out of the round-house, and on their way out Penn avenue--I do not know where. He waited a few moments, and a messenger came in, stating that they had left the round-house, and had gone to the arsenal. Another one came in in a few moments, saying that they were quartered in the arsenal. General Latta, after deliberating for a few moments over the matter, and consulting one or two parties there, requested me to remain a few moments until he would write an order. I did not know what the substance of the order was at all, and, after I had started, he told me to take that order to General Brinton at the arsenal, and, as soon as I left the Union depot, I read the order, which was instructing General Brinton to proceed by way of Penn avenue to East Liberty, and join Colonel Guthrie. I went immediately to the arsenal, and I found that they were not quartered there at all. I made inquiry and was told they had gone on out Butler street. I drove on up Butler street as rapidly as possible, and when I got to Sharpsburg, or two miles beyond there, they told me they were stationed two miles ahead of me, on the other side of the river. There was a gentleman remarked there that they were striking for Butler county. I deliberated a few moments whether I would follow them, or report first to the regiment, and consult Colonel Guthrie. I finally concluded I would go to my regiment, at East Liberty, and, if Colonel Guthrie thought it advisable, after consulting him, I would go across the river, and deliver the order to General Brinton. Upon handing the order to Colonel Guthrie, he instructed me to take command of the regiment, and he would go to town and see General Latta in person, which he did. I never saw the order from that time until this. A day or two afterwards, however, I received a telegram from General Latta, requesting me, for the first time, to report what action I had taken in the matter, and I reported to him by letter, which is published in the Adjutant General's report, I see. Q. Did you read the order to Colonel Norris, or did he see the order, to your knowledge? A. Yes; I showed him the order at the arsenal. He overtook me at the arsenal coming up a different route, and started for East Liberty. I hailed him, and told him he was on the wrong road. I told him I had an order here, producing it, I think. I think I told him I had an order for General Brinton, and I was going on to overtake him, and he turned immediately and went on ahead of me. I went back to my buggy and he went on ahead of me, and I did not overtake him. He understood, however, what was in the order. I believe he read the order before it left General Latta, at the Union depot. Q. Who was responsible for the delivery of that order, handed you by General Latta for General Brinton? A. Who was responsible for its delivery? Q. For its delivery or its non-delivery? A. My instructions were to deliver the order to General Brinton in the arsenal. When I found he was not in the arsenal, and my instructions being to report back to my regiment, I considered my first duty, after I found he had gone away outside of my route, was to report to my colonel and see what he would do. He then advised me to remain where I was, and said he would go with the order to General Latta, which he did. He took the order, put it in his pocket, and left the regiment on Sunday about eleven o'clock, I think, and went in and had an interview with General Latta. Q. You were at Torrens station? A. Yes, sir. Q. You know nothing of the movement of the troops during Saturday night and Sunday morning? A. I received an order on Sunday morning, at two o'clock, to join Colonel somebody, from Wall station, and move to Twenty-eighth street. We went to Torrens station, and received ammunition sent there for them, and waited there until the next morning, and they never put in an appearance. * * * * * August Ammon, _sworn_: By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where do you reside? A. City of Pittsburgh. Q. What is your occupation? A. I am insurance agent. Q. Are you the father of Robert Ammon, known as Bob Ammon during the troubles in July? A. Yes; I am. Q. Have you any knowledge of the occurrences during that time in Allegheny City? A. I have, somewhat. I felt, of course, it was natural that I should feel an interest, seeing that my son was concerned there. Q. Were you in Allegheny City at the time? A. No, sir. Q. Have you any personal knowledge of any of the occurrences over there? A. Not of the occurrences. My aims were directed to inspire Robert as much as possible--to prevent destruction of property. I sent messages and communications to him frequently, almost hourly. Q. To that effect? A. Yes, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Your son Robert testified in Philadelphia that he had some communications with some parties that were concerned in the railroad, either the officials of the railroad company and the civil authorities of Allegheny City--have you any of these communications--the originals? A. Yes, sir; Robert handed them to me in the jail of Allegheny City, and I turned them over to his lawyer. I would have brought them up this morning, but Mr. Miller was sick. I did not go to see them until this afternoon. I have those that I deemed the most important here. By Senator Reyburn: Q. In whose handwriting are they? A. I do not know. Q. Do you know your son's handwriting? A. Yes. They were dispatches which he received there. Q. Just select them in their order? A. Now here is the first one I present here. I have read them over so often that I am familiar with them, and if you will permit I will read them. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Read that one [indicating?] A. This dispatch is directed to Allegheny City, at the outer depot, where Robert had his station, reads as follows: "Operator, do anything to save property, and if engines and freight can be moved out of the city and men enough to do it, and the strikers will permit, run them west on north track far enough to be safe from any damage from Pittsburgh men. Give copy to Ammon. G. S. G." If you desire an explanation of these, those initials signify "George S. Griscom," whose duty it was to send them. A gentleman by the name of W. A. Routson occupied his place. Q. What position? A. The position of Mr. Griscom, during his absence. Q. What is Mr. Griscom's position? A. He is a railroad official. Kind of assistant superintendent, Mr. Layng is general superintendent, and those gentlemen are next to him. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That was not signed by Griscom? A. Not that. Routson signed these dispatches. I got that information from Robert. There is something on the other side. The operator who signs "K," says, "Ammon wants to know if you want the sixty-eight armed men." Q. Signed by the operator? A. Signed by the operator who signs himself "K." The answer of "G. S. G.," "Yes; if he is in good faith to defend the company's property." If it is in order, I might give you a little explanation. Q. Certainly. A. On Sabbath morning early, I guess, as early as five o'clock--I live on the south side--I got up, and I got my horse and buggy, and I put Robert's mother in with a younger son of mine, and asked them to drive over. I read in the _Chronicle_ that Bob was among the strikers, and I supposed Bob was in the oil regions at the time; I did not know that he was in Allegheny. I sent Mrs. Ammon over with the request to Robert, that if he thought he would be involved in the strike he had better get in the buggy with his mother and come to Birmingham, and stay until the trouble was over, and I gave the little fellow, who was in the buggy some money to pay his fare in the street car. She informed me that Bob would willingly have complied with my request, but that he could not leave. There was a very great many tramps there, and he and the strikers had to get arms to keep these men away from robbing the cars, and for this reason he could not follow my advice, and go to Birmingham. By Mr. Means: Q. I would like to know this before you go any further. Are those telegrams that Robert Ammon received from the railroad officials during the time that he had charge of the road? A. Yes, sir; this is the commencement of them. He had not charge on Sunday. He took charge of it on Monday. The next telegram is directed to Bob. It says: "Ammon, a large crowd of men going down the Brighton road, where coaches and cars are on the main track, east of Manchester. Can you protect them? "G. S. G." Q. Who is "G. S. G."? A. Assistant superintendent Griscom. Here is one directed to the initials "W. F. R." That means William F. Ross. He was also official of the railroad. Q. Dispatcher, wasn't he? A. Yes; I think so. "Tell Ammon, if the freight cannot be moved, we would like to move the engines any way. Tell him to help the C. & P., too. [That means Cleveland and Pittsburgh.] "G. S. G." Q. Were these sent by wire--by telegraph? A. Yes; he got them. Q. By telegraph? A. Yes, sir. Here is an original that is in Bob's handwriting. "J. D. L.: [That means, J. D. Layng.] "I have just sent Ed. Compbell and Paisley to Mayor Phillips for twenty-five police to watch cars, as our men are completely prostrated and wish to obtain some rest. They will watch with police. Can you make some arrangement to get victuals for these men on watch? "AMMON." They got a little provisions--that came a little previous, that ought to come in afterwards. Here is another addressed to J. D. L.: "Can you arrange to send me to-day some hundreds of cartridges? Answer me, as I expect to have use for them. "AMMON." Here is another one: "AMMON: "Have instructed Ross and Parkin to arrange for provisions. See them. "J. D. L." That means J. D. Layng. Q. Who is "J. D. Layng?" A. "J. D. Layng;" he is general superintendent. "AMMON: "C. & P. Shifter wanted to go down to Glendale and back, and take down relief guards and supper to the men. Is it O.K. to run them following 37? "G. S. G." Bob's answer is written in his own handwriting: "Will spare engine 305. Will pick it up and take it down with the relief. "AMMON." Here is another one: "Please hurry engine for 17 over. "W. F. ROSS." Q. These are without dates? A. "AMMON: "Engine No. 421 will go on No. 17; and engine 97 on No. 37; and engine 325 on No. 39. "J. G. PARKIN." Q. Who is J. G. Parkin? A. He arranged with Ross and Parkin for provisions--he was a regular employé there. "AMMON: "Engine, No. 330, will go on 17, instead of engine, No. 421. "G. S. P." That is Parkin. Here is a despatch from Mr. Layng: "AMMON: "I think a new request on the mayor would give you the cartridges, as he no doubt, has been supplied by this time. "J. D. L." By Senator Reyburn: Q. Here is a dispatch: "D. R. AMMON: "Of course, you understand that I cannot do anything in the matter of sending, but if you will permit me, as a private individual, to make a suggestion, it would be, that you send to Mayor Phillips and ask him to send you fifty to one hundred men, to protect the property now on the Fort Wayne tracks. I think, that on a proper representation of the facts, he would do this, and it would give the men now in charge of the property, the rest I have no doubt they very much need. "J. D. L." "AMMON: "You had better see Cole, and get matters in shape to talk; but, as I said in former message, what our men want to do, is to let the mob element quiet down and then they can talk calmly. You all want to maintain a record free from violence in any shape. I know you can fully appreciate the force of this. "J. D. Layng." The witness: These are all the dispatches which represent the general spirit, and there are a great many more, all in the same strain, and that is all I have to say. They speak for themselves as to their being genuine. If it should come to trial, I think it would be no trouble to prove that. One other matter I desire to call your attention to. As I stated already, that on Sunday, I sent Mrs. Ammon to bring Bob to Birmingham. Mr. Siebeneck informed me on Saturday evening that Bob was over there, and I told him I didn't think it was so. I understood, from Bob's wife, he was up in the oil regions. Bob was living right at the scene where the troubles in Allegheny occurred, and had been an employé of the road, as you are aware. On Sunday, when Mrs. Ammon came home, I felt calm about it. I knew when Bob promised a thing, he generally would, at least, try to carry it out. On Monday morning matters seemed to move along smoothly in Allegheny--what I got was from the newspaper reports. I could not leave my office on Wood street, because our secretary had gone to Bedford, and I was there with one of the clerks and the janitor, and the situation in Pittsburgh then looked very threatening. We have a great many valuable assets there about our safe, and I thought my presence was necessary. Occasionally I would go up on Fifth street and send somebody for Bob, with a verbal message or a few lines. On about three o'clock in the afternoon--perhaps a little before---- Q. On what day? A. On Monday, I saw Mr. Siebeneck. He says to me, "Ammon," says he, "I have just got word that Bob is in charge of the Fort Wayne road." I, for a moment, didn't know what to say, but Siebeneck assured me that the thing was so. Looking up the street, I saw Mr. Watt, the ticket agent of the Pennsylvania road, at the corner of Fifth and Smithfield street. He came up to me, and says, "My God, squire, has not there been enough property destroyed! Is there any end to this thing! Can you do anything so that property would not be destroyed in Allegheny. Have you any influence with Bob?" I told Mr. Watt, that I thought I had, and if he would go out and see General McCauley, the vice president of the road, for me, and could tell him that I would go to Allegheny, drive over with my wagon, and I was satisfied that Bob would come away with me, if they wanted him away, but that I would not do so unless I had the consent of the railroad officials, and I gave him my reasons. From what I knew, that Bob kept the thing there at bay, there had been no row, no disturbance. If I should take him away, and trouble should accrue in consequence, I would feel that I was indirectly responsible for it. Mr. Watt went out, and in perhaps half an hour or less time, he came back, and I give you his words as near as I can remember. He said, that the general said, "Tell the old squire we are very much obliged for his kindness, and the interest he shows, but the taking away of Bob, would be, perhaps, the worst move we could make." When I heard that, I felt calm--my clerk--one of my clerks, lives in Allegheny. I again wrote a letter to Bob, and implored him, by all that could be dear and holy to him, to see to it, that no destruction of property would take place there. Early next morning, I got an answer from Bob, wherein he assured me that everything was working smoothly, and said all the best citizens, James L. Bennett, and gentlemen who had been before you, and others had been there, and saw him, and they all seemed to be satisfied for the present that he would do the best he could. Shortly after I received that letter, Mr. William L. Jones came in. He lives in Sewickley, is an insurance man, on Fourth avenue, and he told me that Bob was in charge of the road. I told him I was well aware of that, and stated to him that I had communicated with Mr. Watt and General McCauley, and says he, "I know Mr. Layng; will you permit me to go out and make him the same offer." I told him he should go, and I should be obliged to him. He went out and came back with about the same answer. Mr. Layng said he was perfectly satisfied to leave Bob at present where he was. I heard some more afterward, that Mr. McCauley said he hadn't said that to Watt, and I went out. I knew the general well. He says, "'Squire, I only said I didn't remember it, but if it is said that I did say it, I would not take it back, and under like circumstances I would perhaps say the same thing again." I advised Bob, during the day, then, to get out of it just as soon as he safely could for himself and the property. In the evening the Governor came, and you know, you have heard his Excellency; and the next morning the papers reported that Bob had stepped out and things had assumed the usual aspect again. From that time until Bob was arrested the committee of safety, or sub-committee of safety, they took Bob in charge. He stepped out, say on Wednesday morning, and about noon a gentleman attached to the _Chronicle_ office came down and said there was a committee up there with Bob, and they wanted to see me. When I came up there Mr. Jacob Rees, Major Swearinger, Mr. Slagle, of the iron-works on the south side, and some others were present, and they told me they wanted to see Bob and get the blockade raised of the freight which was still on the tracks there, and it seems he was not much acquainted with him and didn't know what to do, and he said he would not say anything to him until his father came, and I told Bob there to follow the advice of these gentlemen, and if, in consequence of their advice, he would get into trouble, I would see him through. These men subsequently got into the secret meetings of the strikers down to Dietrick's hall, in Allegheny, and things came all right again, and on Monday following--it was just one week after--a railroad official came to my office in the morning, I guess about as early as nine o'clock, and said, "Squire, if you don't want to have Bob arrested, get him out of the road," and I told that gentleman that I was obliged to him for his kindness, but if Bob and the railroad company had anything to settle, they had better settle it now. About two o'clock in the afternoon Bob was standing near the corner of Fourth avenue and Wood street, and six detectives pounced on him and dragged him to jail, and he stayed there for eleven weeks. That is all I have to say in regard to Bob. Now permit me to say, in less than a dozen words, in regard to what I read in the newspapers this afternoon, of the testimony of my friend, the mayor of Allegheny. The mayor swears, point blank and positively, that he had but one interview with Bob. If that was all, it must have been a mighty long one--a very long one. The mayor and myself have been personally acquainted for a number of years, and shortly after Bob was arrested he met me on Fifth avenue, and he stepped up to me and said, "Squire, I am sorry, on your account, in regard to the scrape Bob was in." I told his honor that the thing was certainly unpleasant, but that I did not worry much, after all, about it. I did not think it was anything that was disgraceful, like a charge of stealing or murder, or anything of that kind. It had happened in all countries before, and that I would have to be satisfied whatever the law said; and I says to him, says I, "So far as your city was concerned, mayor, there was not a dollar's worth of property stolen." "There was not anything destroyed." Says I, "Supposing, if Bob is tight, and we put you on the stand, what is the worse you could say against him." "Well," says the squire, "I would have to say that, by continuously persuading Bob and his men, I kept them down so that everything passed off quietly." Now, if it was the only one interview with him, it seems to me he must have been most of the time with Bob. By Mr. Means: Q. Did the mayor of Allegheny City give your son credit for maintaining the peace and order, and saving the destruction of property--did he do that? A. How is it? Q. Did Mayor Phillips, to you, give your son the credit for maintaining peace, and of restraining the crowd and rioters from the destruction of property? A. That is all, sir, that was said between the mayor and myself, what I have recited--what I stated. I asked him what the worst was, if he was on the witness stand, he could say against Bob, and he stated that he would have to say, that, by continuously persuading Bob and his men, he kept them down. That everything went off smoothly. Q. He went to Bob--when he wanted anything he went to Bob? A. He said, by continuously persuading Bob and his men. That is the mayor's words. If he has forgotten it, I have not. Q. In any communication that you had with Bob, did he assure you, or say to you, that he would not allow any property to be destroyed? A. He said that in the most positive terms, verbally and in writing. Q. To you? A. Yes, sir. Q. That he would not allow it? A. Yes; he sent me verbally. Sometimes I would send over a man just to talk to him. That man might bring me back a verbal message, or might bring back a few lines. He said that I should not have the slightest fear. Q. That he would take care of the railroad property? A. He would take care of the property, and nothing should be destroyed while he was there. In one of his letters, he said he would rather die than submit to the destruction of property. Q. Did he intimate to you in these communications that he had control of these men--that they would obey him? A. They did obey him most implicitly. He said that. Q. That they would obey him? A. Yes, sir. Q. And do what he told them to do? A. And others told me something similar. I would say--permit me to recur to one conversation--Mr. James I. Bennett, a gentleman whom I believe has testified before you--he is president of the insurance company which I represent as general agent. I went to him after I had these assurances from the railroad officials that they did not want Bob away. I felt dissatisfied; but I thought I would have been more satisfied if he had been away. I went down to his office, at the iron-works, on Water street, and I told him. Says I, "Mr. Bennett, this is the way things stand." Well, says he, "I was down last night." Mr. Bennett lives near, in close proximity to where the trouble occurred. Says he, "I was there last night and saw Bob, and things are working about as smooth as they could under the circumstances," and says he, "Don't you do anything of the kind." Says he, "The strikers put Bob there to run the road, and, if you take him away, they will put some other man there who is, perhaps, not half as well qualified as Bob is." Those were Bennett's words to me. Q. Is he the president of that road? A. No; Bennett is president of the insurance company which I represent. Q. Did the president of that road, or any of the officials of that road, say to you that they were satisfied that Bob should have charge of this road? A. The vice president, the first vice president, General McCullough, was the man to whom I first went. I heard that Bob was in charge of the road, and agreed to go over and take Bob away, and he sent me back word, through Mr. Watt, the ticket agent, that that would be the worst move he could make. Q. Taking Bob away? A. Yes, sir. And when I afterwards heard that it was said that McCullough hadn't said that, I went out and saw him--I am on intimate terms with him, and says he, "Squire, I simply don't remember that I said it; but, under like circumstances, I would perhaps say the same thing again to-day. I do not know what else I could say." * * * * * W. C. McCarthy, recalled: The witness: I read in the newspapers this afternoon, that Mr. Stewart stated to this committee that he had an interview with me on Friday, in which he stated that the railroad company desired to have one hundred men, that they would pay for them. I have to say that Mr. Stewart had no interview with me on Friday, and he did not make that statement to me on Friday, nor did he make that statement to me upon any other day. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see Mr. Stewart on Friday? A. I did not. Q. At the city hall steps? A. I did not. I did see Mr. Stewart at the city hall steps on Saturday forenoon. Q. What was the conversation then? A. It was simply conveying from Mr. Scott or Mr. Cassatt, as he stated, a desire that I should go up to the Union depot to see Mr. Cassatt. I declined to do so, and gave my reasons for it, which were, substantially, that the troops were brought here unnecessarily; that it was disgracing the city, and that I had an abiding conviction it would end in bloodshed, which would be unnecessary; and I declined to go to see him, as I knew who and what Pennsylvania railroad officers were; that they were imperious and dictatorial, and I could have no influence upon them whatever, and the result verified my predictions. By Mr. Means: Q. At that time did this gentleman ask you to swear in a certain number of police officers, and the railroad company would pay them? A. He never said anything of the kind, either that day or any other day. It is pretty hard to join those two statements together. Q. It is a little rough, mayor? A. Well, I swear to that. The fact is, I scared them, and he did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. I blowed at him about bringing troops here, and it would result in murder, and I used strong language. Q. Did you attempt to scare him? A. No; I just gave the honest convictions of my soul to him in very strong and emphatic language. Q. Why was it necessary that you should scare him? A. It was not necessary to scare him, but he was scared. That is the only way I can account for his ideas that he delivered that message. Q. Why was it necessary for you to use this very strong language to him? A. Except I felt what I said, that these men had brought the troops here and shot people down unnecessarily, made me tell you over there that the police had broken the back of that strike on Thursday afternoon--utterly broken it, and if they had any gumption about them, with the expenditure of less than $500, they could have moved a train, and the strike never would have been heard of again. But instead of that, they laid down upon their belly like dogs, and cried for troops, and did nothing for twenty-four hours, and allowed the strike to get ahead. By Senator Reyburn: Q. I think that is in your testimony before? A. Indeed, I do not know. As I understand, I thought when I was in Philadelphia listening to your proceedings at the St. Cloud, that I heard a gentleman swear that he saw the police, at the station-houses on Penn avenue, fire at them. I was very deaf that day, and I could not swear positively whether he said so, but on that point I have a few words to say. The first that I knew, or rather the first that I heard about the firing by the police upon the troops was contained in this dispatch to Mayor McCarthy: "One of my men was murdered by your police force as we marched up Penn avenue, _en route_ for Sharpsburg. The murderer can be identified by a dozen men of my command, although several others of your force discharged their pistols shots into my column while we marched out Penn avenue. Are you willing to assist me in arresting this murderer?" I replied that I am, that I would. That dispatch I did not preserve a copy of. I afterwards received the following, second one from him: "MAYOR MCCARTHY: "You seemed to misunderstand my telegraph. I asked you if you were willing to assist me in having your man identified. There is no question about the fact. I can produce the evidence of a dozen respectable citizens of Philadelphia who witnessed the firing. By making the proper inquiries on your part, and by arresting all suspected, I can produce those to identify the guilty party. It was not true that the police of Pittsburgh were hooting and yelling at us openly at nearly every point. "R. M. BRINTON, _Major General_" To this dispatch, of which I preserved a copy, I sent the following answer: "R. M. BRINTON, _Major General_: "I will assist you in identifying or arresting any murderer who is on the police force, or on either side of the struggle." I said on either side of the struggle, because I believed both sides committed murder, and I may say that I and six or eight of my policemen are now under bonds to answer the charge--a civil charge--for damages for arresting two men who were suspected as being engaged in shooting at the Philadelphia troops as they went out Penn avenue, out Butler street. Then I go on to say: "By referring to the language of your first dispatch, you will see that the misapprehension was on your part, and not on mine." Well, gentlemen, when the Philadelphia troops came back here, I sent out orders and got all the police who had been up there at that time together, to meet at nine o'clock in the evening. I saw by a newspaper article--I had forgotten who it was--but I saw by a newspaper article here that it was Lieutenant Cochran that I sent out to the Philadelphia troops, to tell Brinton that at nine o'clock that night the men would be all at the mayor's office, and for him to come with his evidence. Nine o'clock came and no person came--until ten o'clock we waited, and they were dismissed. I dismissed the men with orders to appear at nine o'clock the next morning, and sent word out to camp to General Brinton. If General Brinton requires me to state I will just quote from a little remark I made. I say here Cochran had reported to me that the Philadelphia men, for some reason or other, didn't think they could get here last evening. That was the reply of Cochran. Then I took it back until ten o'clock or nine o'clock next morning, when the police were there, together with a large number of citizens in the neighborhood of the station-houses, who were there at the time that the troops passed. The police unanimously, and the citizens unanimously all joined in the statement that on Penn street, between Twenty-sixth street and Twenty-seventh street, where the station-house is, and where the police were on the pavement, that at the time the troops passed the station-house there was no shooting, no disturbance of any kind whatever. That is the testimony of the police and of the citizens, given and sworn to upon that day, when I found the Philadelphia men didn't come to make good their word. By Mr. Means: Q. You say the Philadelphia men did not come to make good their word. What did you expect of the Philadelphia men? A. I believed the Philadelphia men to be as good as their word, as laid down here by General Brinton. Here is General Brinton's dispatch to me: "One of my men was murdered by your police force as we marched up Penn avenue, _en route_ for Sharpsburg. The murderer can be identified by a dozen men of my command, although several others of your force discharged their pistol shots into my column while we marched up Penn avenue. Are you willing to assist me in arresting this murderer?" I expected General Brinton to come with his men and attempt to identify the murderers, as he alleged we shot at those troops as they were passing the station-house. He did not come with his men. An hour or so after all these parties left, two men came to the office; I did not see them myself, but my man at the office reported to me that two men came there, dressed like officers, who stated that they were officers in the Philadelphia regiment, and they repudiated the statement that the troops were fired on as they passed the station-house. Q. They said there was no firing on the troops? A. Yes; these men's names--I heard at the time the names they gave. Q. Do you know the names now? A. No, sir; I do not. I might be able to find out--I don't know whether I could or not. I have forgotten the names; but if that circumstance is sworn to at Philadelphia, I can produce one hundred men to disprove it. Q. Is that all? A. That is all. I think I have said enough. At this point the committee adjourned to meet at the call of the chairman. HARRISBURG, _April 11, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, in Senate committee room No. 6. All members present except Mr. Reyburn. * * * * * William S. Quay, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you present Saturday afternoon, July 24, when the communication was received by General Latta from General Brinton? A. I was. I was present with General Latta in his room during the entire night. Q. In the Union depot? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many dispatches were received? A. I think three, but I am not certain. Q. What time was the first received? A. The first one was in the early part of the night. I couldn't fix the time of receiving any telegrams, or, in fact, any of the occurrences of the night. Q. Can you give the substance of the first dispatch? A. I cannot give the nature. The first dispatch, however, was very discouraging, I remember that much. It related to the condition of his troops in the round-house, related to the supplies, subsistence, ammunition, and he went on, further, to say, my recollection is, that he considered part of his command as unreliable, and that one of his regiments was disposed to sympathize with the strikers--wouldn't fight with them, anyhow. Q. Did he state what regiment it was? A. He didn't use that language, but that was the idea conveyed. Q. Do you recollect whether he named the regiment? A. I think he named the Sixth regiment. We understood that to be the regiment referred to. Sometime afterwards, a second dispatch was received, in better character, and we were re-assured. The first one was very bad. Q. The next dispatch was more encouraging? A. Yes; decidedly more encouraging. Q. Do you recollect how the next dispatch reached the Union depot? A. I think that the dispatches were brought through the lines by Sergeant Wilson of the Jefferson Cavalry. He came out in disguise. Q. All the dispatches you referred to were brought by him? A. I think so. I will not be positive about that. Q. Do you recollect of General Matthews making any remarks when he received the first dispatch? A. I couldn't say positively, but there was conversation. I was in the room, but didn't pay any attention to it myself. Q. Did you know whether General Latta contemplated ordering General Brinton's command out of the round-house, prior to receiving that first dispatch? A. I have no recollection of anything that indicated any such intention. Q. Was it a subject of conversation at all at his head-quarters, during the night? A. As to the removal of those troops? Q. Yes? A. Yes. There was considerable conversation as to that, when General Latta was dictating his last dispatch to General Brinton. There was a conflict of opinion about it. Q. Was the question of the expediency of ordering the troops out, for the purpose of stopping the destruction of property and driving the rioters from the ground--from the railroad ground? Was that the subject of conversation? A. I think not. I don't remember that. There was no conversation amongst us. We had no idea of ordering the troops alone--that detachment of troops. The general plan was to bring on the Philadelphia troops, at Torrens station, unite them with Guthrie, and march them down on the rear of the mob, and attack and disperse them. Q. How early in the evening did the General adopt that as a plan of action? A. I couldn't say, as I said before. I couldn't, at this time, say. Q. Can you tell us anything in relation to the dispatch that was sent by General Latta and General Brinton, Sunday morning, by Captain Aull, what knowledge you have of that dispatch, and what was done? A. I don't think that I have any personal knowledge of that dispatch--don't think I saw it--and what I would give you would be hearsay about that. I have a recollection of a telegram to direct Brinton, I think, to join Colonel Guthrie. Q. Were you present when Major Norris started to find General Brinton? A. I don't think I was present when he left the hotel. I was in the hotel. Q. Did you hear General Latta give him any instructions? A. Well, I couldn't say. I know he had his instructions, but whether I heard Latta give them to him, I don't know. I don't know what his instructions were. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know anything about any proclamations issued by the Governor, in relation to this riot? A. I know very little more than the proclamation was issued. At least, I saw the proclamation signed by the Governor and myself, which, I have no doubt, was issued here, under the seal of the State, but I was not present at the time. I know nothing more, really, than you, gentlemen of the committee, yourself. Q. That proclamation was issued under general instructions from the department? A. When the heads of departments leave, they generally leave blanks signed, to be used in case of an emergency, if they are required. Q. They are issued according to general instructions and custom? A. Yes, sir. I suppose the facts relating to that proclamation are already before the committee. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you receive any communications from General Latta, or from any person connected with the department, prior to the issuing of the proclamation? A. I think not. Q. All proclamations of the Governor are signed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, are they not? A. Yes, sir. Q. The military orders of the commander in chief signed by the Adjutant General? A. Adjutant General. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Has the Secretary of the Commonwealth, or his deputy, authority, under general instructions, to issue proclamations, in the absence of the Governor? A. Well, I don't know. I think I would assume that authority without any hesitancy, in case of necessity. Whether it would be ratified or not, I don't know. Q. Under general custom? A. Custom; yes, sir. I really don't remember a case where I have done so. I am not certain, but what I have, in a case when the Governor was not here, about the reduction of the sinking fund. Q. Do you know anything about a request made by the civil authorities of Allegheny county on the Governor, for troops? A. I received on the morning of Friday, I think the 20th of July--the riots were on the 21st--on the day before, about three o'clock in the morning before, I received a telegram from the sheriff of Allegheny county, including a telegraph to Harrisburg, making the request. He stated that he inclosed it to me for my information. Q. Was there any request made by private citizens or corporations for troops? A. I forwarded the telegram to the Adjutant General, stating that I had received it, and I suggested that the major general commanding the Pittsburgh division furnish the necessary troops. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time did you receive that? A. I think it must have been three o'clock on the morning of Friday. Q. What time did you forward it to the Adjutant General? A. I think by the same messenger. It was from the sheriff of Allegheny county, and I replied to him that I received his telegram. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you at the Union depot at the time the firing took place? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you see General Pearson as he returned from the round-house or that vicinity? A. Yes; I was in General Latta's room that evening with General Pearson and one or two other gentlemen, and he came in. Q. Was he relieved from command by General Latta at that time? A. I didn't understand that he was formally relieved of his command, but I know he was obliged to leave. Q. For what reason? A. The mob was said to be in search of him, and surrounding his house, and destroying his property. There was some conversation passed between us. I said I thought he was of no use there. Q. How long did you remain at the Union depot, Saturday? A. I was there all night. Q. All that Saturday night? A. I was there until in the morning at ten or eleven o'clock. Q. Did you see General Brown there? A. Yes, I saw General Brown in the early part of the night, I think. General Brown came in when the Pittsburgh troops were relieved. Q. Did you know anything about his disbanding his command and sending them home? A. Nothing, except from hearsay. Q. Would you consider it justifiable or legal to issue a proclamation in the absence of the Governor in emergencies of this kind? A. I think so. Q. Did you regard it proper for the Adjutant General to call out troops or furnish troops for the suppression of the riot in the absence of the Governor? A. That is a question I was not considering. There was nothing improper here when he had direct telegraphic communication with the Governor, and had authority to do so. Q. In your estimation, would it require special instructions from the Governor to call out the troops? A. I think he should act under general instructions. The Governor is the commander-in-chief of the troops. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you receive any general instructions prior to the departure of the Governor for the West, as to what would be done in case of an emergency? A. No, sir, I think not. I understood such authority was given in relation to troops to the Adjutant General. I didn't feel that I was vested with any special authority. Q. In forwarding the demand that was made by the sheriff for troops to the Adjutant General, did you say anything to the Adjutant General about issuing any proclamation? A. Nothing. Q. Knew nothing of that until it was issued? A. In my telegram to the Adjutant General was simply a suggestion that the major general commanding the Pittsburgh division--I didn't know who he was at the time--should furnish the troops. * * * * * W. W. Jennings, re-called. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You may identify those papers, if you will state what they are? A. This is my proclamation--the first one. Both are proclamations of mine, and this is an order. [Indicating.] Q. Can you state the date when the first proclamation was issued? A. The first proclamation was placarded over town--both these proclamations was placarded over town by eight o'clock Tuesday morning, the 24th. I arrived here on the 23d, about seven o'clock in the evening. These were all printed in posters. Q. And the citizens were all summoned in accordance, or came out in accordance with this proclamation, I suppose--on the demand made by you in this proclamation? A. Yes, they did, a number of them, in answer to my call. Before this was published I had gathered them up--parties who were excited, and ready to take hold. Q. This force you collected, did you swear them in as deputy sheriffs? A. No, sir. Q. Or special police? A. I summoned as---- Q. _Posse comitatus?_ A. _Posse comitatus._ We didn't stand on ceremony very long. Q. If there are any statements you wish to make, please make them? A. I do not know of any, sir. The following are the proclamations and orders referred to by the witness: PROCLAMATION. SHERIFF'S OFFICE, HARRISBURG, PA. WHEREAS, For the past two days the peace and good order of the county have been disturbed and grave apprehensions exist lest injury be done; _And whereas_, The duty rests upon me to preserve the peace and promote tranquillity; Now, therefore, I, William W. Jennings, high sheriff of the county of Dauphin, do hereby enjoin all persons to remain quietly at their homes or places of business, to avoid gathering upon the streets and highways, thus by their presence keeping alive the excitement which pervades the community, and to further the restoration of good order, I charge upon parents to prevent the half grown lads over whom they have control from frequenting the streets. And I hereby announce my resolute determination, with the aid of special deputies whom I have appointed, and the posse which I have summoned to preserve the peace and protect the person and property of the people within my bailiwick, and I hereby call upon all good and law abiding citizens to assist me and those acting with me to enforce the law and maintain good order. Given under my hand this 23d day of July, A.D. 1877. WM. W. JENNINGS, _Sheriff_. NOTICE TO LAW AND ORDER POSSE. The chief engineer of the fire department of the city of Harrisburg, having issued an order specifying to what alarms the several fire companies shall respond, the following companies of the law and order posse, for the purpose of preserving good order in the event of any fire alarm, will repair to the place designated by the alarm as follows: Company A to Nos. 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 41, 42 for the Friendship Fire Company. Company C to Nos. 6, 21, 24, 31, 32, 61 for the Hope Fire Company. Company I to Nos. 5, 6, 7, 23, 41, 61, for the Citizen Fire Company. Company B to Nos. 7, 12, 13, 41, 42 for the Paxton Fire Company. Companies D, F, and G to Nos. 21, 23, 24, 31, 32 for the Good Will Fire Company. Company H to Nos. 5, 7, 41 for the Mt. Pleasant Hose Company. The other companies of the posse will hold themselves in readiness for orders. WM. W. JENNINGS, _Sheriff_. SHERIFF'S OFFICE, HARRISBURG, _July 24, 1877_. SHERIFF'S OFFICE, HARRISBURG, _July 24, 1877_. Joseph F. Knipe, Commanding Co. A. William K. Alricks, Commanding Co. B. Charles Snyder, Commanding Co. C. J. B. Boyle, Commanding Co. D. George G. Boyer, Commanding Co. E. C. A. Wilhem, Commanding Co. F. Isaiah Reese, Commanding Co. G. LAW AND ORDER POSSE Will report with their respective commands at the Court-House at two o'clock. The posse will hold themselves in readiness to respond to two taps of the court-house bell at any time prior to that hour. Other companies will be designated and assigned to duty as the public exigency may necessitate. W. W. JENNINGS, _Sheriff_. Adjourned to meet at the call of the chairman. HARRISBURG, _April 16, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at eight o'clock, P.M., in Senate committee room No. 6. * * * * * James H. Stewart, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence? A. I reside in Pittsburgh. Q. Did you reside there in July last? A. Yes; I was a resident of Pittsburgh in July, 1877. Q. Were you there during the riots of the 21st and 22d of July? A. I was. Q. State whether you accompanied Colonel Norris on Sunday morning, the 22d, to General Brinton's command? A. I did. Q. State where you overtook General Brinton? A. Do you want me to state where? Q. Yes? A. We overtook General Brinton north of the Allegheny river--north-east of the Allegheny river--about a mile, I think, above Sharpsburg, on the bank of a ravine running up a hill. I don't know the name of the street. I was trying to remember it this afternoon, but I have forgotten the name of the road. Q. From what point did you start? A. From the Union Depot hotel. Q. At what time? A. I can't exactly state the time precisely--it was in the morning. We paid very little attention to time, having been very busily engaged all night and through the morning. We started, I suppose, between nine and ten o'clock, if my recollection serves me right--some place about that time. Q. Had you been with General Latta and Colonel Quay during the night? A. Yes, sir; with the exception of the time that I had been detailed for service outside of the city limits. Of course, where I went to from the Union depot was under orders of the Adjutant General. Q. At whose instance did you and Colonel Norris go in pursuit of General Brinton? A. I was directed by the Adjutant General to accompany Colonel Norris to the office of General Brinton. Q. Did you hear the Adjutant General give Colonel Norris any orders to tell to General Brinton? A. I did not. Q. Verbal? A. I did not hear any. Q. Did he give him any written orders to your knowledge? A. I think not. Q. When you overtook General Brinton, state what conversation took place between Colonel Norris and General Brinton? A. After passing through the city--through Penn avenue--we overtook General Brinton at the rear of his command, then marching very rapidly to the north. We drove partially through the left of his command, got out of our carriage, and walked the balance of the way to the front. Then General Brinton ordered a halt of his troops, and Colonel Norris then told him that the Adjutant General requested that he would turn back, and form a junction with Colonel Guthrie at Torrens station. Do you want me to go on and repeat the whole conversation? Q. Yes? A. They talked some time. I stayed with them. There were some officers of General Brinton's command with him, whom I was not personally acquainted with. General Brinton replied that his troops had been without food for twenty-four hours. That he had been fired upon from every corner and street car in the city. That he intended to go back into the country until he could get a position in which he could intrench himself and protect his men. And he furthermore added, that he would be God damned if he would go back into the city of Pittsburgh. Q. Where were you when that conversation occurred? A. Alongside of him. We were all sitting down. There had been a halt of the command made, and we sat down on the banks of a stream that ran along the public road. Q. Did Colonel Norris deliver it as an order coming from the Adjutant General, or did he state that Captain Aull had had such an order? A. Not that I know of. I can go back in my testimony and mention the fact that we met Captain Aull. Q. Where did you meet Captain Aull? A. We met Captain Aull at the eastern side of the arsenal, on Penn avenue. He stopped our carriage on, I think, the eastern side--the furthest extremity of the arsenal, on Penn avenue--stopped our carriage, and asked us where we were going. I told him we were after Brinton's troops. He said nothing at all about an order that he had. Q. Do you know that he had an order? A. I did not; no, sir. Q. Did Colonel Norris tell General Brinton that Captain Aull had an order? A. Not that I know of. 1 have no recollection of him telling him so. Q. Did Colonel Norris repeat to General Brinton the substance of the order? A. I do not know that he knew that Colonel Norris---- Q. Let me ask you the question over again. Did Colonel Norris tell General Brinton that Captain Aull had an order for him? Did Colonel Norris repeat the substance of the order which Captain Aull had? A. Not that I know of. Captain Aull's name was not mentioned, and from the simple fact that we met Captain Aull, and he knew we were on the way to General Brinton--if Colonel Norris knew he had an order from the Adjutant General, it was not my business to know anything about it. I was simply directed to accompany the colonel on business. Q. Did Colonel Norris state to General Brinton that the Adjutant General had requested him to deliver the order to return and form a junction with Colonel Guthrie? A. As I said before, Mr. Chairman, Colonel Norris said to General Brinton that the Adjutant General had directed him to turn his column back, and pass the Allegheny river, making a junction with Colonel Guthrie, at Torrens station. Stated that fact, that the Adjutant General requested him to do so. Q. And requested Colonel Norris to deliver that order to General Brinton--did he inform him--so inform? A. Of course. He came direct from the Adjutant General, acting under orders of the Adjutant General. Q. He was delivering the orders of the Adjutant General, as you understood? A. Yes. That is what he was doing. That is what took me there. The Adjutant General directed me to accompany Colonel Norris. He was going on official business. Q. We want to get at what Colonel Norris said to General Brinton? A. That the Adjutant General directed him to turn his command back and form a junction with Colonel Guthrie, of the Eighteenth regiment, at or near Torrens. Q. Did you return with Colonel Norris? A. I did; yes, sir. Q. To the Monongahela house? A. To the Union Depot hotel. Q. What time did you go back to the Union Depot hotel? A. As I told you before, I don't remember anything about time; but when I got back there--when we got out of the carriage--we started upstairs to the room which the Adjutant General occupied, and was then informed that they had changed the head-quarters from the Union Depot hotel to the Monongahela house. I suppose that might have been one o'clock. Q. In the afternoon? A. In the afternoon. Q. Of Sunday? A. Of Sunday. At that time the fire was coming down the track towards the hotel. Colonel Norris went before I did to the Monongahela house, and I followed him shortly afterwards. Q. Did you hear him make any report to the Adjutant General? A. I did not; no, sir. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you present when Captain Aull received the orders from the Adjutant General? A. I was not. Q. Did General Latta order Colonel Norris to proceed with any orders to General Brinton? A. He did; yes, sir. Q. Were you ordered to accompany him? A. I was. Q. When you reached General Brinton, what reason did he give for not returning to the city of Pittsburgh or Sharpsburg? A. I stated before that he complained that his command had been without food for twenty-four hours, that he had been fired on from every street corner in the city, that he was anxious to get to the open country, where he could entrench himself, and take up a position to protect his men. He declined to return and make any junction with any troops, or to have anything to do with any troops. Q. Did Colonel Norris ask him to fall back to Sharpsburg, near the railroad, where he could be supplied with ammunition and food? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he ask him to go to Pittsburgh at all? A. I think not. If you will allow me to make a remark here, that at that time trains on the Valley road I believe had been stopped. On our road towards Brinton, after we had crossed the Allegheny river, we found the West Pennsylvania road was running, and I then remarked to Colonel Norris that if Brinton would come back to the river, I would see that rations were sent up the West Pennsylvania road, knowing that we could provide his troops with rations. Q. He was to form a junction with Guthrie's troops where? A. He was requested to go to Torrens station, or to go as near Torrens station as he possibly could. Q. That is where Guthrie was stationed? A. Yes; where the Eighteenth regiment was. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you see General Loud there? A. I did; yes, sir. Q. Was he present during the time that this talk occurred between Colonel Norris and General Brinton? A. That I cannot say. There were several of General Brinton's staff with him; but when we halted we left the line of the troops, and went down to the banks of this stream I speak of. There was several of his staff officers, and some of the colonels, whose names I am not acquainted with. Q. Did you see General Matthews with him? A. I do not remember. Q. There were several of his staff officers? A. They were all strangers to me. Q. How many of his staff officers were present at the time this conversation occurred? A. I suppose there were five or six gentlemen present scattered around. Whether they were listening to the conversation or not I cannot pretend to say. Q. What time was Colonel Norris and General Brinton talking this matter over? A. How long? Q. Yes? A. I suppose twenty minutes. I know it was a longer time than I wanted to stay. I was anxious to get back. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was he sitting down? A. Yes; sitting on the bank of the stream. Q. Not sitting on a log? A. Not on a log. Q. On a rock? A. I might have been sitting on a log or rock. I know I sat down on the grass. It was very dusty and very hot, and we all took a drink out of the stream. Q. This conversation took place while they were sitting there together? A. Yes, sir. Q. A number of the officers sat with them? A. Yes; sitting scattered around, some standing. You know how it is yourself, colonel, when you have a consultation with officers. Q. Did Colonel Norris make any other business known to General Brinton, except this one matter? A. I do not know, they had some little private conversation between themselves. Q. This one matter was all--the business matter that you heard talked over between them? A. So far as I was concerned. That was the business that took me out there, that was all I know. Q. When that concluded, then you turned about and left? A. Yes; walked back nearly to the Sharpsburg bridge, and found our carriage, and returned through the mob at considerable trouble. Q. There was a mob following them at that time? A. No, sir; nobody. Q. You spoke about a mob--you found the mob after you got back? A. Yes; Colonel Norris and myself had some considerable difficulty, and were stopped on our road back by a mounted guide, or vidette, or something--I don't know who he was, or what he was after. He followed us for some considerable time, and came up and addressed us. Q. What was your understanding of the nature of the business that you pursued Brinton? For what purpose did you pursue Brinton? A. Why we pursued Brinton? Q. Yes. A. My understanding was, that he was to go back and form a junction with Colonel Guthrie, and march into the city of Pittsburgh. Q. Was that your understanding before you left the head-quarters of General Latta? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know how you got that impression? A. By being in consultation with the Adjutant General and the balance of the staff during the entire night. Q. And conversation? A. Yes, sir; we were consulting together, of course, about the most feasible means or measures--what to do with this exigency there. If you remember, we were but a handful of men ourselves, and there all night long. Could not get our troops into Pittsburgh, wires were cut, lines of railroad were stopped, and our great anxiety was to get as many troops as possible into the city to protect the city. The idea was, this first division would make a junction--that the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments having disbanded, you might say virtually disbanded. Having left the Eighteenth regiment at three o'clock in the morning, it was our desire to get the First division form a junction with the Eighteenth regiment, and come into the city to protect property which was then on fire. Q. Where did Brinton say he was going to when he was asked to return, and refused to? A. He said he was going to the open country, where he would entrench, and take up a position to protect his troops. Whether he was going to Butler county or further north, I do not know. That was his remark--that he was going to the open country. Where he found that open country is more than I know, if he ever did find it. We did hear that he was marching to Philadelphia. Q. Did General Brinton say anything that would lead you to think that he did not recognize Colonel Norris as an officer? A. Did he say to us? Q. Did he make any remarks to that effect, that led you to think he did not recognize him? A. No, sir. * * * * * THURSDAY EVENING, _April 18, 1878_. The committee met, at the call of the chairman, in Senate committee room No. 6. All present except Mr. Larrabee. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. * * * * * David Branson, _sworn_: Q. State your residence? A. No. 1315, South Broad street, Philadelphia. Q. What is your business? A. Coal merchant. Q. A member of the National Guard? A. Yes; I was last secretary, and am still quarter-master, of the Sixth regiment of infantry; but during the commotion acted as brigade quartermaster and commissary, on the staff of General Loud, commanding the Second brigade of the First division. Q. Did you accompany the troops to Pittsburgh? A. Yes; in the first expedition that started, and remained with the division until it returned in August. Present for duty all the time. Q. On Saturday evening, state where you were--what your position was, on Saturday evening of the troubles at Pittsburgh? A. I was on duty with the brigade in the yards of the company, between the Union Depot hotel and the round-house, engaged in overlooking the line of the men, which kept back the crowd from that portion of the company's property. Q. Were you in the round-house during the night? A. In the round-house during the whole night. Q. Did you leave with the troops in the morning? A. Yes; the last officer to leave the building. Q. State, if you please, whether the building was on fire or not when you left? A. The buildings were all more or less afire when I left. Q. How extensive was the fire in and about the round-house at the time you went out? A. At the time the troops commenced to march out, there had been considerable burning of the buildings which we occupied, some of which had been put out, and re-kindled by the burning cars that were run down against the building. That happened two or three times. We thought it was impossible to keep the fire from spreading, and decided to abandon the building. At the time the troops were going out, all the buildings were on fire, and in some of them the fire had got very extensive; so much so, that I felt hot when I went through the last door. Q. You accompanied the troops on their march out Penn avenue, did you? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you at the arsenal grounds? A. Didn't go into the arsenal grounds, and didn't witness the interview between Brinton and Buffington. At that time, I was engaged in re-forming the troops. They had been broken up by the killed and wounded. Q. Were you present when Colonel Norris overtook General Brinton? A. Yes; when Colonel Norris overtook us beyond Sharpsburg, I was between the two brigades, the first brigade was marching in the rear, some of them assisting the men in charge of the Gatlings, dragging them up the hill. The other brigade had halted to give them time to catch up, and Major Norris arrived in a carriage or a hack, accompanied by some other party whom I didn't know, and Norris not recognizing me, stuck his head out of the side of the hack and told his driver to stop, and asked where General Brinton was. I told him a little further in advance, and I would go and show him, and went up with him about one hundred yards further, and found General Brinton sitting beside of the road, waiting for the troops to close up. Q. You walked with him? A. Walked with him. Walked hastily to him, found him waiting there, and he expressed great gratification to find the general again, they being old personal friends, and showed a good deal of feeling in the matter, and seemed very much exhausted and excited and worn out, evidently with loss of sleep and over-exertion, and the excitement of the occasion. Seemed almost dazed in his appearance by the state of affairs. He immediately inquired of General Brinton, what he proposed to do, and where he was going, and how much he had suffered. The general told him how he had got along. He had got out that way in order to find a place where supplies could reach us, and feed the men and get some supplies to feed the troops and get a little rest. They were completely exhausted with want of sleep and food. Colonel Norris assented to that, as about the only thing that could be done, and asked Brinton what he wanted him to do. Repeated the question several times in the course of the conversation: what do you want me to do, stay with you or go back and see what I can do outside. The General said there was nothing he wanted so much as provisions. That was the substance of the conversation. There was nothing in the form of an order given. The whole conversation was a discussion as to what had best be done, and what he, Brinton, intended to do, and what he wished Norris to do for him to help him. He had arrived there with the impression that we had suffered much more than we had. Q. Did the gentleman who was with Colonel Norris get out of the carriage and accompany you up to where General Brinton was? A. He didn't accompany him. He may have got out of the carriage afterwards. I never noticed, after Norris got out of the carriage. I never saw him, to my knowledge. Q. Was he present when you met General Brinton? A. No, sir. He might have been a short distance in the rear, following us up. I didn't see him. He was not close to us. There was a few officers gathered around. I didn't see anybody else. Q. Officers of---- A. Our division staff officers. And General Loud was there at about the time the conversation commenced. I think General Matthews joined us afterwards. There was several of the staff there, and I was there, by authority of the position which I occupied on the staff, ready to receive any instructions that might be given. Q. Was the division all right when Colonel Norris and you overtook General Brinton? A. The brigade that was marching in advance was halted, waiting for the other to close up; the other was staying back in order to give the men with the Gatling guns time to get up the hill--the brigade in the rear wouldn't go on and leave the men with the guns back there unprotected. We had to halt several times, during our march, on that account. Halted the head of the column, and let the others close up. Q. Did General Brinton and Colonel Norris sit down and have a conversation together, upon a bank or a log? Do you recollect that? A. I don't think they exactly sat down. I think they surrounded, or stood around, a log or stone, with one foot on it, or grouped together--pretty close together--and four or five of us lounged around, waiting for those to close up. I couldn't specify the exact position I was in. There was nothing said without my hearing it, unless some whispering, and I didn't notice any. Q. Did the carriage remain back? A. Some little distance back of where we were. The driver came up close to us, when Colonel Norris went to get in again. The carriage approached us. I don't know exactly the time; and he went away. Q. Did Colonel Norris say anything about Captain Aull's having an order for General Brinton? A. I didn't hear Captain Aull's name mentioned. Never heard of such a man until long afterwards. Q. Did he say anything to General Brinton about returning and joining Colonel Guthrie at Torrens? A. I didn't hear anything about joining him. General Brinton asked questions about where the other troops were. Talked to Norris, and made inquiries where the other troops were, and why they didn't come to his relief, and how disappointed they were that they didn't come, and matters of that kind. Q. Did he tell Colonel Norris that General Latta had given an order to Captain Aull. A. I didn't hear anything of the kind. Didn't hear anything said about orders. Q. Were you present during the whole of the time that they were together? A. I was not more than four paces away all the time they were together. If anything was said that I didn't hear, it must have been purposely said in an undertone to avoid being overheard. Q. Did you know Mr. Stewart, who accompanied Colonel Norris? A. Didn't know him. Never heard of the man before. Q. Did you see any person in the group not an officer in the command? A. No, sir. Q. Do you recognize Major Stewart here as being the man who came up with Colonel Norris? A. No, sir; I didn't recognize him. If that was the man, he looked very different on that occasion. Q. Did you see him? A. I don't remember of seeing him before. Q. Do you remember of seeing any person? A. I saw a man in the carriage with Colonel Norris. Q. Did he accompany you, or did he come up afterwards and join the group? A. He must have kept in the background--might have kept back behind us--didn't crowd up into the group. Q. But did Brinton and Colonel Norris have any conversation by themselves? A. Didn't appear to have any. Q. Or in an undertone that could not be heard by the others? A. Didn't hear anything of the kind going on. There appeared to be no effort to conceal what they were saying from any of the staff. They talked above an ordinary tone of voice. Q. Have you given all the conversation that took place as near as you recollect it? A. I couldn't give the exact wording of the conversation, as I never expected to be questioned about it; but the whole tone and manner of the conversation was as I have stated--asking for information on both sides, and an expression of disappointment on the part of General Brinton, why the troops had not joined him, his intentions as to procuring rest and food for his troops, and his desire, in answer to Colonel Norris' question what he should do, that Norris should go back and assist in getting provisions to him, and if there had been any order given it should certainly have been made known to me at once. By Mr. Means: Q. Will you state to this committee what transpired with the troops during that night in the round-house, and what took place there during the night--about their going out of the round-house--you were there. I believe you said that you were about the last man leaving it, didn't you? A. Yes; the orders given me require me to be the last man to leave. Q. If you please, just state to this committee what transpired during the night about their leaving the round-house, and what condition the troops were in when they left it, and what condition the round-house was in? A. Commencing with after we were stationed in the round-house, the mob commenced to gather around, and, in a short time, they began to fire pistols, and throw stones into the windows, smashing all the windows, and breaking the furniture inside with the missiles they threw in. Shot the sentinels at the gate, wounded other men inside, most of them not seriously. We didn't know at that time whether they were seriously injured or not. Finally, a large number made their appearance with muskets, and commenced firing with rifle balls. Q. That was the crowd outside? A. The crowd outside. Along about dusk this thing got warm. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was this immediately before retiring from the round-house? A. Saturday evening about dusk. That had begun to get right hot, balls commenced to come in very thick and heavy, and some of the rioters emboldened by our not returning the fire, which we were ordered by General Pearson not to, had come up to the gates pointing out at the head of Twenty-eight streets, and commenced sticking their pistols through the gates, and shot two sentries stationed there. Q. Soldiers standing there? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were they Philadelphia soldiers? A. Yes; they shot those two men. They were dragged away by their comrades. Still they would not allow us to fire. While this was going on, we staff officers busied ourselves in making preparations for the slaughter of the crowd, which we thought was bound to come, and was the proper thing to do to extinguish the rioters, and stationed soldiers at the different windows, and got the artillery in proper position--brass pieces and two Gatlings--gave instructions to the infantry not to fire until the artillery opened, knowing, of course, the artillery wouldn't fire without orders from proper authority. When the fire got pretty hot and the sentries were shot down, General Brinton got pretty warm about it, and insisted upon being allowed to fire, and went up to one of the offices where General Pearson made his head-quarters. Q. Did you go to General Pearson? A. Went to General Pearson. I followed him in, and he explained the necessity of being allowed to open fire on the rioters, that he could not stand this thing any longer, that the men were being shot down in cold blood, and now was the time; and Pearson says, "No, no; we must hold on a little longer; the thing must quiet down a little; don't let us have any more bloodshed"--some such thing as that. General Brinton replied, that it was only getting worse, the longer we put off the worse it would be, and Pearson said, "No; we might kill more innocent people. There might be some innocent women and children killed," and made replies of that kind to justify himself in not allowing the firing, which the staff officers standing by--I think about four in number were present besides the general--they were of opinion it ought to be done, and still he would not allow it, and several of us made some remarks on the subject--several of the staff officers. Q. Be kind enough to state what those remarks were? A. They were to the effect, that if we were going to do any shooting, now is the time to do it, and the remark I made to him was, if we were going to kill anybody--at first I said there were no women and children in that crowd. Q. Was that remark made to General Brinton? A. I made this to General Pearson, in the presence of General Brinton and some two or three or four other officers. Q. You were addressing General Pearson? A. I addressed General Pearson, right over General Brinton's shoulder--alongside of him. My rank did not justify it, but my old army rank did, and I presumed to advise him. Says I, "If we are going to do any killing, these are the men to kill. There are no women and children--they are all active rioters;" and he replied, "No, don't fire. You do not know who you will hurt; the artillery will shoot clear through the crowd." Just at that time the men in charge of the Gatling gun again moved it nearer the gate, and he saw the motion outside, or heard the wheels of the gun, and he jumped up and went to the window and motioned not to fire. "Don't fire, don't fire, don't fire," he said; "if they fire, the balls might shoot some innocent woman on a doorstep a mile away down street." That disgusted me so, I sneeringly remarked, if they were afraid of killing people so far off as that, let us fire with infantry, that won't hurt any a mile away, by shooting out of a second story window; and he said, "No, no; don't fire; it will all quiet down; you will kill some innocent people." Then I turned away in disgust, and left him. He went down stairs, and was about three quarters of the opinion to go down in the shadow of the building and give the command to fire anyhow. I changed my mind, for fear that the Pittsburgh troops might be coming around the corner. I am sorry afterwards that I did not give the order. Q. Were you in the service during the late rebellion? A. Yes; five years and one week. Q. What rank? A. I went in as a private and came out as a colonel and brigade commander. Q. As a military officer, what should you have done under the circumstances? A. I should have opened fire with every weapon we had, at just about dusk, from the most available points at the time that General Brinton asked him to allow him to do so. The mob was so dense at that time they could hardly have got out of each others way. They were composed of very different material from the mob at Twenty-eighth street, where the first conflict occurred, the better class having disappeared, and the worst came to the front. The criminal classes, vagrants, bummers, and tramps of every kind, and such men as we call night owls--never seen in day time, were conspicuous in front, urging each other on. A class of the population that would benefit the community by fertilizing the soil. I think at that time, if we had killed those men, it would have silenced the whole riot. Q. As a military man and having military experience, do you believe that General Brinton had force enough there to have cleared that track and taken possession of the railroad property. A. At that time, if we had acted at that time, at dusk, we would had no more trouble. Q. Do you believe that if General Brinton had the privilege to have let his command fire on that mob, could he have taken possession of the track and of the railroad property? A. Yes; if General Pearson had allowed us to fire at the time General Brinton wished to do so, we would have destroyed the mob, and could have taken possession of anything around that neighborhood. All that would have been left of the mob would not have made any fight. Q. I understand you to say in your testimony, that the round-house was on fire before General Brinton's command left it? A. Yes; all the buildings. We not only occupied the round-house, but several other buildings that form a yard between them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Wings of the round-house? A. There were shops. There is a round-house, and engine houses, and machine shops, and there was a wood-working shop, and a car repair shop, and an upholstery shop, and then the company's offices. They are all connected together, and form a small yard in between them. Q. Were they attached to the round-house? A. One came in direct contact with the round-house, or within two or three feet of it, and another within ten feet of it, and there was a space wide enough for two teams to pass between them. We had artillery in this yard and in towards the gates, and the different detachments of troops occupied the different buildings--men were stationed at the windows. By Mr. Means: Q. One more question, and I believe I am done. What kind of discipline were the troops under while in the round-house? A. I considered, for militia, uncommonly good discipline. They obeyed every order I heard given. I will say this: very much to my surprise, from the time I left Philadelphia, there never was an officer or soldier under me that refused to obey an order I gave him. Further than that, I would say, their obedience to the order not to fire, under the aggravating circumstances in the round-house and on the street the next day, when they were fired at constantly with pistols, was one of the most remarkable exhibitions of good discipline I ever witnessed in all my military experience. That is a test of discipline. Q. Do you know of any arrangement, or any effort made, to furnish the troops with provisions at Torrens station, or at any other place, after you left the round-house? A. The first I knew about the provision business, was what I have said about Colonel Norris and General Brinton talking, and then, again, in the evening, when Major Barr overtook us, near the poor-house. He was sent back to arrange about provisions, and we got provisions in the night. We got some provisions at the poor-house. Q. What was the messenger's name in the carriage with you--that rode in the carriage with you? Did you not say there was a party rode in the carriage, when you met General Brinton? Who was with Colonel Norris? A. I do not know who the gentleman was that was with Major Norris. I was not acquainted with him, and never saw him before. Do not know anything about it. Q. Do you know if he got out of the carriage and walked up with you? A. Did not see him get out of the carriage. I could not say positively that he got out of the carriage at all. He might have done so. I did not look back to see. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you say that the troops had orders not to fire upon the men that were following them, firing, on Sunday morning. A. That was in order not to bring on a conflict as long as we could avoid it--to pay no attention to them. They were firing with pistols, and I did not reply to them, until they commenced to fire with rifles--a number of men. Q. Did General Brinton give orders to that effect? A. I do not know who the orders came from. I got orders from my brigade commander, General Loud. Q. That the troops were not to fire upon the mob that were following on? A. It was not so much on the mob following, as people on the sidewalk, and in the doors and windows of the houses, firing with small pistols? Q. At the time there was firing by the troops? A. After a time, when the rioters in different places, under cover, generally, at the windows, and behind signs, and around corners of buildings, commenced firing with rifles, then we returned that fire. In some cases the men standing on the sidewalk deliberately pulled out pistols, and fired at the rear of the column, just as we got by there. In one case I saw a man standing within four feet of a policeman on one side of him, and a squad of policemen, about ten or twenty feet on his other flank--saw this man, who was in citizen's dress, take a revolver and fire into our ranks, and no reply was made to him. Q. No effort made by the police to interfere with him? A. No; they looked on as if it was a dog fight. Q. Did that shot hit any of the soldiers? A. One shot I know took effect. They fired just as the rear of the column was getting by. Q. At the police station? A. It was right near a police station or an engine-house. Q. Where the police were standing? A. A group of them standing there. It was a municipal building. I think it must have been a fire station from the appearance of it. I looked back--we had just got by--and I judge, from the appearance of the building in Philadelphia, that it was a fire station. I was told since that it was. Those policemen were in uniform--quite a number of them--certainly seven or eight. There might have been a dozen of them, and no large crowd near to interfere with them in case they had chosen to arrest the man. I heard other firing at the same time, which, I believe, has been testified to by others as being done by policemen. I did not actually hear a policeman fire. There was more than one man fired--firing from the other side. I noticed this one man, particularly. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Where did this firing come from, parties on the sidewalks or from houses? A. Some from sidewalks, houses, and doorways and cellars, from down street, in our rear, men from the corners of the streets we had just passed from behind projecting signs, in front of stores, boxes in front of stores. Saw some of them shoot. Q. By pistols or muskets? A. Those that fired from the rear were firing with muskets. All that I saw fire from doorways were pistols. Those from the windows were partly muskets and partly pistols. Q. Were the police drawn up in line as you passed them? A. Just standing on the curb-stone--that would naturally put them in line--they did not appear to be drawn up purposely. Q. What was the conduct of the troops as they retired from the round-house? A. They went out in as good order as from parade--regular formation. The only men out of place were three sharp shooters I had under my charge in the upper story of the building to keep men away from the cannon in the street. I was ordered to keep that gun quiet until the troops got out of the building. I had a detachment of men there that I held until nearly all the troops went out, and then dismissed all but three of them to rejoin their companies, and those three men remained out there Sunday until the last moment, and I got down opposite the passage-way through the building, and as the last file of men marched out of the building--the last file of the division marched out--I signaled for them to fire and come down. I fired at the corner of the building around which the rioters were sharp-shooting, to get at the cannon. It chipped off the corner of the building, and we made a run for it and got off before they made a shot at us, and the building that it was from was blazing at the time. Q. The round-house? A. The round-house and this office building, smoke pouring from the building at the time. Q. Could you have remained in that round-house for any length of time after the time you retired, in your opinion? A. Ten minutes afterwards every man's clothes would have been burnt off him if he had stayed there. As we marched around we made a sort of half circle. We went out Twenty-fifth street afterwards, went north to Penn street, and then east along Penn street, and as we passed Twenty-sixth, Twenty-seventh, and Twenty-eighth opposite the buildings, a square away, we saw the buildings, and that the fire had made great progress. The buildings were in complete blaze. Could not have stayed there ten minutes. Q. Was your command supplied with ammunition to hold out against a mob? A. We had very little ammunition then. During the night or just towards morning, I went around and made inquiry among the men and found most of them had from three to seven cartridges left. Here and there I found a man who had a large number, one man as many as twenty-eight, that had been obtained by some sharp practice--he would not tell me how. He would chuckle over it because he was an old soldier and knew how to take care of it. Q. Was there a considerable amount of men that followed you as you retired from the round-house out Penn avenue? A. When we looked back at some of the street corners, quite a crowd would make their appearance. They would not follow directly on the street, they would run down side streets and come up cross streets and come up on the corner at us. If we made a show to fire they would disappear--they would seem to follow the streets parallel with Penn street. Q. Where did Colonel Norris overtake your command? A. A short distance east of Sharpsburg, on the hill-side, in the edge of the timber, I think, about a mile from Sharpsburg. I do not know the exact distance. Q. He got out of the carriage and walked along with the general. How far did he march with your command before he stopped? A. The head of the column had stopped when he arrived. Q. Was General Brinton marching at the time or was he walking along? A. General Brinton was resting at the side, on the slope of the hill overlooking the stream. He sat down on something at the side of the hill. Colonel Norris approached and he got up to meet him. General Brinton had been marching at the head of the column, and halted at the head of the column, in order to get time for the guns to pull up. Q. Was the entire command at rest when Colonel Norris reached there? A. The leading brigade was resting. The other was marching to overtake the leading one. On account of difficulty in hauling the guns, quite a gap intervened between one brigade and the other. Q. Did Colonel Norris walk with General Brinton with his command for any distance? A. When the brigade with the guns overtook us the order was given for the whole column to move forward. By that time Brinton and Norris closed their conversation, and we walked along a short distance. We all walked along together a little ways talking, and he decided to go back, and the carriage turned around and Norris got in and rode back. Q. What was the distance he marched with General Brinton? A. I could not state the exact distance. I do not remember the exact distance. It was not a great distance. Did not pay much attention to that. Q. When General Brinton and Colonel Norris met, was there any considerable excitement in the party? A. The only excitement was on the part of Colonel Norris. He was very much excited, and seemed to be full of expressed emotion. We were all very cool. We got over our excitement and cooled off. Got out of the fire, and we were not half as much excited as outsiders. Q. What was the language used by Colonel Norris at that time to General Brinton? A. Expressed great gratification at seeing him sound and well--something to the effect that he never expected to see him again, and glad to see him--an expression of great gratification, great friendliness. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did General Brinton say to Colonel Norris he would be damned if he would go back to Torrens and form a junction with Colonel Guthrie? A. There was no language of that kind used on any one's part, no violent language of any sort, no obstinate language, everything was pleasant, in the friendliest manner, the whole conversation the whole time they were together. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you present, within hearing distance, during the time that Colonel Norris and General Brinton were together? A. Yes; the whole time. They could not have said anything unless they had whispered without my hearing, and I saw no sign of whispering. I might add that we were all very much interested in what Colonel Norris had to say, what was going on in Pittsburgh, what was the situation in the city, and Colonel Norris described the events that had occurred, so far as he had seen or heard what was going on in Pittsburgh, and we were intensely interested in listening. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What errand had Colonel Norris--what specific reasons, if any, did he make known that he came for? A. I did not hear him specify any particular reason for his coming. I supposed, as a matter of course, he came out to see where we were, and hear what was necessary to be done, the proper thing for a staff officer to do; ascertain the whereabouts and condition of the troops. He seemed to want to know what we wanted and what could be done for us. Q. Did he say he had been sent there by anybody--been ordered to go out and find General Brinton? A. Didn't hear him say anything of the kind. I assume, as a matter of course, that he had been sent to see what had become of us. Q. That you presumed? A. Yes; that is, military custom did not require any statement. The proper duty of a staff officer, when any troops are scattered is to hunt them up and see what is the matter with them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you hear General Brinton say what he intended to do, and what course he intended to pursue? A. He said he wanted to get a place to give the men a chance to sleep, and get his men something to eat. They were entirely exhausted, and remarked that they were fit for nothing until they had that. Q. Did Colonel Norris ask him to go back to Sharpsburg, where he could be supplied with ammunition and rations near the railroad? A. Didn't hear anything of that kind said. It would have aroused me if I had. There was no ammunition at Sharpsburg, and no way to get it there. It would have been an absurd suggestion. Q. The reason I ask that question, there was some testimony heretofore, that he had been asked to go back to Sharpsburg on the railroad, where he could be supplied with rations and ammunition. I want to know whether there was any suggestion of that kind on the part of Norris or any one else? A. I did not know how we could get ammunition to Sharpsburg if we could not get it to the round-house. They might get it to us in the country just as well. They had to wagon it wherever they took it. Q. Did Colonel Norris propose to furnish you with ammunition or rations--propose to furnish General Brinton with ammunition or rations for his command, or say anything about ammunition or rations? A. The word "proposal" hardly covers it. He said he wanted to know of General Brinton if he wanted to go back for supplies, or whether he wished him to stay with him. And General Brinton said he thought it was better to go back for supplies. He particularly needed provisions right away. They might have used the word "supplies" two or three times, but he laid great stress on the fact that the men were nearly starved. That was spoken of two or three times. We were in a pretty desperate condition for something to eat; hadn't eaten anything for twenty-four hours. I know that made an impression on my mind and on my stomach. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What time was it when Colonel Norris arrived? A. When Colonel Norris arrived it was along about ten o'clock. It might have been from half past nine to half past eleven. Q. You had something at the Union depot within twenty-four hours? A. I had not. I sat down to the meal after the others had had their sandwiches, just before two o'clock, and was called away when I was putting the first mouthful in my mouth. I never got back. I was sorry my politeness kept me from putting it in my pocket. Q. Where did you get your first provisions? A. Along in the afternoon a man overtook us in a buggy with some loaves of bread, which General Brinton purchased, and broke up in pieces and gave to the men. Some of the men didn't get any. Q. Did anybody in Sharpsburg furnish your men with provisions and water as your men passed through? A. The men helped themselves to the water. Q. Any of the citizens furnish provisions? A. Some one came out that evidently recognized one of our captains, and came along to inquire for him, and handed him a bundle of cakes and crackers, which he scattered around among a dozen or twenty men--perhaps it might have been twenty-five. The men that got the crackers and cakes broke them up and passed them around. There was only a few got those. Q. In marching out Penn street, after you left the round-house, at what gait did the troops march? A. They marched rather slower than ordinary quick marching time, on account of pulling the guns, which necessitated their moving slow. Q. Was there any haste at any point in the line of march? A. There was a sort of break or stampede at one point before they reached the arsenal, where there was an unusual amount of firing. There was a sudden fusillade of musketry and pistols out of the doors, and out of the windows. A great many came from the second story windows at one time, or windows having the ordinary outside blinds. Q. Shutters? A. Slat shutters. Most of the houses at that time became two stories high. The shutters were bowed, and there came a volley of pistol balls and some rifle balls, and some from the rear. More than half of all the men that were hit during the commotion, were hit within five minutes, in that block. The firing was so sudden and unexpected, and two men were killed at the time, and one mortally wounded, and several others wounded slightly, that the men instinctively stopped. That was in the second brigade, in the rear. The others were beyond it, immediately where this firing took place. I believe I mentioned that all the attacks were made on the men in the rear. They would wait until we just passed before they fired, and fired from behind, alongside of the rear column. The first brigade continued to march on. Our brigade halted, and the men, by common impulse, without any order, commenced to fire in these windows, from which the smoke came. Of course, it stopped the firing from the windows. Some of the men fired from back down the street, and we opened the Gatling gun and fired down the street. The moment we commenced firing with that, we could not see a living thing down the street. Saw a dead horse, and two or three dead men, some smashed signs, and then we succeeded, by loud talking, in getting the men to cease firing, and just at that moment I noticed that the first brigade, or the first regiment, was double-quicking the men in the rear to their regiment, to close up the gap that had occurred in the straggling marching, and that had an appearance as though they were not marching away. The men at the head of the column were marching; in ordinary quick time, and in marching, the men would straggle out. It is very important, in a fight, that they should be together and touch elbows, and they were closing up, and some men in our brigade suddenly remarked, or raised the cry, that "the first is running away!" in the frightened tone of voice. It had that effect, and several others took it up and looked around, stopped firing, and saw that the first brigade was a block away from them, and with a common impulse, there was a sort of stampede or rush after them. The officers rushed around in front and could not stop them, and when they overtook the first brigade, they ran up into them in confusion. That was all the stampede there was. It was settled in a few minutes and got into shape again. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know of any orders, written or verbal, urging General Brinton during the time he was in the round-house, or after he retired from there, within twenty-four hours, from General Latta, as to his course to be pursued after he left the round-house? A. I do not know as I am a competent witness on that. I heard it second hand. Q. Just what you know of your own personal knowledge? A. I didn't see the order. I was informed through my brigade commander that the orders were to go east out Penn street, that was in reply to my expression of opinion that we ought to go to the Union depot and get our ammunition and supplies there. He told me General Brinton had orders to go east out of Penn street when we left. Of course, like a good soldier, I shut up. I supposed that was sufficient knowledge of the order. Q. Any orders to General Guthrie to your knowledge? A. I did not hear of any. All that was explained to me was that the order was to go east at Penn street when we left. * * * * * James H. Stewart, re-called: By Mr. Means: Q. Were you an officer in command of a regiment or brigade--a field officer or commissioned officer? A. I was not, sir. Q. I mean a commissioned officer at that time? A. No, sir. I was not. Q. What position did Colonel Norris occupy? A. I do not know, I understood on the Governor's staff. I don't know whether he held a commission or not. Q. Do you know whether he was commissioned or not? A. No, sir; I did not. Q. Do you know of any arrangement that was made through the colonel to have the troops rationed at any place or at any time? A. Of the first division? Q. Of Colonel Brinton's command? A. Yes; I know something about it. I know we used every effort--do you want me to explain why? Q. I want to know the whys and the wherefores. A. Every effort was made to ration Brinton's command, whilst he was opposite to the round-house. We used everything in our power to do that. I myself had secured an engine from Cassatt, the vice president of the Pennsylvania railroad, and some gentlemen communicated with the Governor. Colonel Farr and Colonel Quay, and quite a number of us, carried on some tubs of sandwiches, and I having learned that the fire had taken place on Liberty street, we then telegraphed out, and found it was west of Twenty-eighth street, consequently, we could not get the rations, and we abandoned that. I afterwards went out myself to the general, carried an order, both written and verbal. I then returned to the Union Depot hotel. Every person connected with us, was very anxious to get the general's command furnished with provisions. Q. Then the sum and substance of it was, you didn't succeed in furnishing them with rations? A. We could not, it was utterly impossible. Q. Were there any other arrangements made to furnish General Brinton's command with rations, after they arrived at the round-house, and after they got away from it? A. We would have furnished him, if we had known where the general was. Q. I ask the question, and I expect an answer plain, whether you did or didn't? A. Whether we had sent any rations to them? Q. Whether you did furnish them, and whether there was an arrangement made to get rations to them? A. We had made arrangements--if he had turned his column back from where he was, beyond Sharpsburg, we had made arrangements to send rations up by the West Pennsylvania road. Q. Where to? A. To Sharpsburg. I supposed we might meet him there. Q. Then you had no definite place that you expected to furnish these troops rations at? A. No, sir. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Does the West Pennsylvania road run through Sharpsburg? A. Yes, sir. By Mr. Means: Q. Now. Mr. Stewart, in short, what arrangements did you make to furnish them with rations at all? A. Where do you mean? Q. At any place after they left the round-house. A. After they left the round-house? Q. Yes. A. We made no arrangements, for the very simple reason, that as I said, we could not find out where General Brinton's command was. You will remember, the telegraph lines were cut. We learned accidentally, that the general was retreating, and we would have used every effort in our power to get the command furnished with rations, and could have done it, if he had turned the head of his column back. And in this connection, I want to just state here, that so far as the First division is concerned, they were a valorous set of troops, and did good service for the county of Allegheny, used every effort that they could. I believe, that so far as my own personal knowledge is concerned, that General Brinton did everything that he possibly could to help along the trouble that occurred. He was posted there in the round-house all night, and I do not blame him, really. Q. Do you mean just what you said: that General Brinton did all he could to help along the trouble that occurred? A. Oh, no. Q. I wish you would explain this; give an explanation. A. What I want to say is this: the general in command did everything he possibly could to protect the citizens of Allegheny county. Q. And suppress the riot? A. And suppress the riot. By Mr. Means: Q. And the railroad property? A. Yes, sir. Q. I would like you to be a little more explicit--a little more definite in regard to these rations. When you intended to transport the rations to these troops, and how you intended to get them there, and if you intended to get them there at all? A. In the first place, we didn't know where the first division were retreating to. We understood that they had left the round-house, and were going north. We then could have made--did make--some arrangements to send rations to them, as I said before in my testimony. Q. What arrangements did you make--put them on cars, or take them by wagons--how did you intend to transport them over there? A. If he had come back south of the Allegheny, we would have sent them out the West Pennsylvania road--if he had made a junction with Guthrie, as we wanted. Q. As who wanted? A. General Latta. Q. Did you say as you wanted? A. I didn't say as I wanted. Q. As the commander-in-chief wanted? A. The Adjutant General; the commander-in-chief was not there. Q. General Brinton, or who? A. If General Brinton had come, and made a junction with Colonel Guthrie, we could have fixed the rations for him--could have done so if he had stayed in Sharpsburg. Q. Now, in what way could General Brinton have made that connection with Colonel Guthrie? A. How do you mean? Q. By what road did he or could he have made it? A. When he left the round-house, it was as easy for him to go to Guthrie's command as it was to march out to Sharpsburg. Q. As you appear to know something about these arrangements, I would like to know what arrangement was made to get General Brinton's command any ammunition? A. What arrangement? Q. Yes; or if any? A. I do not know that General Brinton's command had been exhausted of ammunition. We could have furnished him with all the ammunition that he wanted; as Colonel Norris told him, if he would turn back the head of his column, and make a junction with Guthrie, we could furnish him with both ammunition and rations. Q. Now, do you know that Colonel Guthrie had ammunition, and plenty of it? A. He had enough for his troops. Q. How do you know that he had? A. Having been out there in the morning, before daylight, furnishing Colonel Rodgers' command with some ammunition, I happened to know that Colonel Guthrie had plenty of it, and then we had more of it at the Union Depot hotel, and could have furnished the general's command with all the ammunition that he wanted. Q. Had you any arrangements by which you would transport that ammunition to General Brinton's command--from the round-house, I mean? A. After he left the round-house? Q. From the Union depot? A. O, yes; we could if we knew exactly where General Brinton was. Q. Did you have any arrangements made to do that? A. Well, we knew just exactly how we were handling our own stuff there. Q. You did not know exactly what you were doing? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you know from the commander-in-chief that General Brinton was short of ammunition? A. From the commander-in chief? The commander-in-chief was not there. The Adjutant General was there. I knew from what General Brinton had told us on his route north of the Allegheny that he was short of ammunition. Q. Did General Latta know that, to your knowledge? A. Not until we returned from seeing General Brinton. Q. And when General Brinton had marched north, you say then you supposed him to be retreating, and you gave up all hopes of furnishing any provision or anything else--when General Brinton, you say, went north, out Penn avenue--I believe it is north? A. North-east; yes, sir. Q. Then, after you found he crossed the Allegheny river you gave up all hopes and quit making any efforts to furnish him with either provision or ammunition? A. No, sir; we did not. I believe that every effort was made to furnish his men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I would like to ask Mr. Stewart in what capacity he was acting? A. As a volunteer aid of the Adjutant General. Q. And did what he directed you to do simply? A. At what time? Q. While you were acting as volunteer aid? A. You don't want me to tell everything I know? Q. No, sir; my question is, you did what he directed you to do? A. Everything, of course. Q. That was all? A. Yes, sir. Q. You did not assume to do anything on your own responsibility? A. No, sir. Q. Were you a member of the National Guard at that time? A. I was not. I had been a major on the staff of General Pearson. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Of the National Guard? A. Of the National Guard. Q. And you went out with Colonel Norris because you were directed to go out there by the Adjutant General? A. Directed to go by the Adjutant General. Q. And all you know about ammunition or provisions is what you were directed to do in relation to it? A. Of course that is all. Q. In your testimony heretofore you stated that Brinton made a remark that he would be God damned if he would return to Pittsburgh again. Are you certain he made that remark and used that language? A. I am under oath, am I not? Q. Refresh your memory and see whether he made that remark? A. The general knew Colonel Norris better than he knew me, and of course, was speaking to him. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Mr. Yutzy asks you whether you are certain that he made that remark? A. I most positively assert that General Brinton made that remark. * * * * * Major Lewis D. Baugh, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether you were with General Brinton's command on Sunday morning on their retreat? A. No, sir; I was not. Q. State what knowledge you have of the dispatches sent by General Brinton to General Latta during the night of Saturday? A. I cannot, without my memorandum. I was present when the dispatches came in, several of them, two of them brought in by a scout, I think. Q. From whom? A. From General Brinton. Q. To General Latta? A. Yes, sir. Q. You were in General Latta's office? A. I was in General Latta's office. Q. When two of them were brought in? A. I think one or two, I cannot recollect. I was there when the scout came in. Q. When the first dispatch was brought in? A. I think so, yes, sir. I came in the room and found him there. If I had a report here I could talk more plain. Q. You mean the Adjutant General's report? A. Yes, sir. Q. Can you state the nature of the dispatch? A. If I saw the book I could state which dispatch it is. Q. Did you see any other one than those that are published in the Adjutant General's report? A. I don't recollect of seeing any other. I was in General Latta's head-quarters off and on during the evening, being cut off from my division, and naturally went to the next head-quarters, and I was in there during the evening, trying to get my rations out to the troops. I was commissary of the first division, acting quarter-master at the time, I had some ammunition there as well as rations, and I was in the room and out of it until pretty near midnight, and then I attempted to join General Brinton by myself, and went up street in citizen's clothes. Q. Did you succeed? A. No, sir; could not get to the round-house, found that I would get shot very likely by our own men as I was in citizens clothes, and looked about as much like a rioter as any of the rest of them. Q. Did General Brinton complain of being short of ammunition in any of those dispatches? A. I think he did, short of ammunition and short of provisions. Q. Do you recollect what he said about it? A. No, sir; I do not, because it is all written down, and I had the report. Q. Are all the dispatches that you read or saw, as coming from General Brinton that night, published in the Adjutant General's report? A. I think they are. There may be some more that I did not see. I read it over, and found it pretty near as I knew. I tried my best to get provisions to him, and I delivered ammunition--four boxes--to somebody, to take out to some other station to some other troops. Q. Torrens station? A. Torrens station, I think it was. I recollect going down in the cellar of the hotel and getting them out; it was pretty hard work for some one or two people, besides myself, to lift them up. The elevator was stopped. Q. You were the commissary of General Brinton's staff? A. Yes, sir; I am regular commissary of the First division--General Brinton's division. Q. And as such were in consultation with the general during the night? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know of any supplies being provided to General Brinton's command during the night, or at Torrens station? A. No, sir; not that I know of. There were some supplies I sent down there, but whether they reached or not I do not know; I don't think they did. Some started out there. The supplies went out in a wagon; I did not send those out--out to the round-house. When General Brinton started, he directed me to remain there and make arrangements to ration the troops in the evening and following morning. I made the arrangements, and after getting through with that arrangement I went on the track, and found there had been a fight. Q. You say you were not with General Brinton when Colonel Norris reached him? A. No, sir. Q. When did you see General Brinton after that? A. I think about three o'clock in the afternoon, as near as I can recollect, without having any watch on me. Q. Of Sunday? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did General Brinton say anything about having seen Colonel Norris? A. I do not know that he did--I do not recollect it. Q. Did he tell you anything about Colonel Norris having been to see him? A. I don't think he did. As soon as I found they had left the round-house, I heard they had gone to the arsenal. I heard Captain Breck say to somebody that they had gone to the arsenal. I drove there, and found they were not there, and somebody said they had gone to the right. I followed out, and crossed the railroad track, and came to the hospital, and down to the hotel again. I found they had gone to Sharpsburg. I hired another carriage, and drove out to Sharpsburg; and when I got to Sharpsburg, I was bothered which road to take, and I daresn't ask anybody. I found the mark of the shoes that the column had moved in the road, and I followed up that road some distance. Q. General Brinton did not mention the fact of Colonel Norris having met him that day? A. I don't recollect of it. Q. Did he say anything about having received any orders from General Latta? A. No, sir; he asked me for orders as soon as I got there. I told him I had none. Then I went back to General Latta for the orders. Q. Why did you go back? A. He wanted orders. Q. Did General Brinton send you back for orders? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where did you go? A. Drove down the river road to the bridge, about opposite to the Monongahela House; crossed there, and went to the Monongahela House, and went to General Latta's room, and found him, and delivered a note to General Latta. Q. From whom? A. General Brinton. Q. What did General Latta say in reply? A. Asked where General Brinton was, and I told him back on the hills about the poor-house, as near as I could tell, being a stranger there, then he gave me written orders to give to General Brinton. Q. When did you tell this to General Brinton? A. When he gave me the written orders, I asked him about provisions, and he says, I was commissary and it was my business to feed them. Says I, "Yes, but it is your business to give me some stuff." They had not time, and they left me there. Major Lazarus, one of the special officers, was in the room all the time, and there was a captain of the first regiment. I took them down with me, and turned around to Lazarus, and says I, "You read these orders. In case I do not reach General Brinton, or you see him first, give him these orders." Then there was two of us, in case one got picked up then the other would deliver the orders. When I crossed the river at the West Pennsylvania depot, he drove down and delivered the orders. As soon as I got out in the morning, I overhauled General Brinton and gave him the written order. Q. Do you know what those orders were? A. If I had a report here, I could tell you, sir. Q. They are published in the Adjutant General's report? A. Yes, sir. The substance was to proceed to Altoona. Q. What is the date of the order--can you give that? A. Sunday night, about nine o'clock, when I received it. Q. You may give the substance of the order, as near as you can recollect? A. To proceed to Altoona, and Mr. Creighton would furnish transportation. When I went back General Latta gave me orders that General Brinton should have it to-night. I went out, and jumped in a wagon, and started over. Q. While you were at the Monongahela house, did General Latta say anything about General Brinton having disobeyed his orders? A. No, sir. Q. Did he say anything to you about having sent orders to General Brinton? A. Not to me. Didn't hear him say a word about it. Q. Did he mention having sent Colonel Norris or Captain Aull with orders? A. No, sir; didn't say a word to me about it. I took General Brinton a note in, and handed it to him, and he then dictated an order. The order was written out, and handed to me, and delivered to General Brinton. Q. Do you know whether Colonel Norris had returned? A. I don't know anything about him. Doctor J. E. Mears, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether you were at the Union depot on Saturday morning, when Colonel Norris was sent by General Latta and General Brinton. A. I was, sir. Q. You may state what conversation took place between General Latta and Colonel Norris? A. I don't know that I can state positively the conversation. I came to the hotel about eight o'clock on Sunday morning, went to General Latta's room, and reported that the troops had left the round-house, having learned that fact at the hospital, where I had spent a portion of the night, and said to him that I proposed to purchase some medical stores, and join him at once, and asked him where I should go to join him, and he told me to go to the arsenal. At that time, Colonel Norris was making preparations to join General Brinton also. What their conversation was, I cannot state positively, or what the nature of the instructions given to him were. I knew that he was going to see General Brinton, and, at the time, my impression was that he was going to see him in a friendly way. I knew that he was not officially connected with the National Guard, and the impression I had arrived at, at that time, was, he was simply going out to see him in behalf of General Latta, as a friend of General Brinton, to see what had happened and what condition they were in, but I didn't understand, at the time, that he was going officially to him. Q. Was Captain Aull there, at the time? A. That I cannot state positively. I went into the dining-room of the hotel, and had a conversation with Captain Breck. That I remember, but I don't remember of meeting Captain Aull, at the time. Q. Did you see the major, Saturday? A. I didn't, sir. I may have seen him not to know him. Q. Did you see Colonel Norris when he started in the carriage? A. I didn't; because Colonel Norris started before I did. He took a hack, and I was going to a drug store to get some medical stores, and also going to a livery stable to get a conveyance, and Colonel Norris left the hotel before I had left Pittsburgh. As I said in my testimony before, I met once, after he had seen General Brinton. Q. State what conversation you had with him? A. I took with me, at the suggestion of Captain Breck, a man who had acted as scout during the night, a member of Murphy's cavalry, I believe. He went with me on account of my being a stranger in Pittsburgh, and showed me the way to the arsenal. When we reached the arsenal and found the troops were not there, and when I was denied admittance by the guard at the gate, or refused to be permitted to go near the gate or have conversation with him, I drove on, and the crowd knew nothing at all about the country beyond that point, so that the way was ascertained by asking persons, of course very cautiously, so as not to let them know what our object was. I followed the command by watching the road and seeing the foot-marks across the bridge going through Sharpsburg, and got through Sharpsburg and passed into the country, turned to the left, and I should think, not more than a quarter of a mile from the point at which I met Colonel Norris returning to the city. He was in a carriage with another person whom I did not know, and to whom I didn't pay particular attention. I got out of the buggy and halted them. They didn't seem to be very desirous to be halted, because it was not desirable that it should be known who they were in that portion of the country. I asked the colonel where the command was, and he told me it was about a quarter of a mile beyond, on the hill. That was the only conversation I had with Colonel Norris. As I said before, he wasn't desirous of stopping very long to give me any information. His words and manner was such as indicated that it was not desirable that we should be seen conversing together, or holding any communication which would indicate that they were in any way associated or connected with the troops, as there were persons along the road that had followed up the command. I joined the troops, certainly no more than a quarter of a mile beyond. I found them resting in good order. Q. When you joined the troops and met General Brinton, did he say anything about having received any orders from Colonel Norris? A. No, sir; he didn't. Q. Did he say what he intended to do? A. I asked him the question, and he replied that he was going to the poor-house to get a place to rest his command, and also to get food, and I asked him whether he knew where the poor-house was, and what his information was, and he said that a citizen or some person at Sharpsburg had directed him, and told him to go there, that he could get food there, and get an opportunity to cook his rations. Q. Did Colonel Norris say anything to you as surgeon of the division about having the column halted at any point? A. No, sir; he didn't. Q. To dress any wounds? A. No, sir; not a word. It was as much as I could do to get him to halt them enough to ask him what I regarded as a very important question, where the command was, that I should join him. Q. Did he say anything about what his business had been to the command? A. Not a word; no, sir. Q. Was there anybody in the carriage with him? A. There was a person, sir, whom I didn't know. They were sitting--both of them--back in the corner of the carriage very closely. Q. Would you recognize the person now? A. No, sir. I didn't see anybody in the room whom I should recognize as being with Colonel Norris. I didn't closely examine the person. My business was with Colonel Norris, because I knew him, and desired simply to get the information from him. Q. Did you know Colonel Norris? A. I knew him by sight, having met him with the Governor's staff on one or two occasions. I had seen him at the hotel before. At this point the committee adjourned, to meet to-morrow morning, at Reading, Pennsylvania. * * * * * READING, _April 19, 1878_. The committee met at the Mansion house, at eleven o'clock, A.M. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present except Messrs. Reyburn, Larrabee, and Yutzy. George S. Goodhart, _affirmed_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether or not you were coroner in July last, at the time of the difficulties here among the railroad employés? A. I was coroner; yes, sir? Q. Still holding that position? A. Still hold that position. I was elected at the same time that Samuel J. Tilden was elected--elected, I say, that is my opinion. Q. Can you state what day the first difficulty among the railroad employés broke out here, or commenced? A. No; I cannot. I cannot state the day. I presume it was within a week or somewheres about the 16th--15th or 16th of July. I would date it about a week anterior to the time these men were killed, which was on the 23d, Monday. The excitement ran very high throughout the day of Sunday. Q. Will you please give us a history of how it first started, and then trace the extent of the difficulty and troubles along up until you come to the date of the conflict between the strikers and the militia? A. Well, I don't know that I can answer that question with much accuracy. There had evidently been for some time before considerable contending between these engineers who were suspended and the Reading Railroad Company. It is that, I presume, that led to the difficulty. Q. What time were the engineers suspended by the railroad company? A. That is more than I can say. Q. Was it some time prior to this difficulty--outbreak? A. Yes; certainly it would be prior to this. Q. How many of them had been suspended? A. That I cannot say--a large majority of them, I think, that were on the road were suspended. Q. Were there a large number of them suspended, and were without employ in and about the city of Reading? A. It was generally so supposed. Q. And the first dissatisfaction was among that class of men, was it? A. Yes; and those who sympathized with them. There were differences of opinion among the citizens here. Many sympathized with the railroad company, and many, also, with these employés, and the feeling during the day of Sunday was very much against the Reading Railroad Company. Q. That was Sunday, the 22d? A. Yes; the 22d, and on Monday the general impression was here, with those that I had interviews with, that property and shops would be set fire to that night. Q. The railroad shops? A. Yes; during the day of Sunday, there was a good deal of excitement on the street here, on Penn street, and a great many people congregated out about the corner of Sixth and Penn and Seventh and Penn. Q. What class of people generally gathered? A. They were mostly workingmen, men thrown out of employment. Q. Men from the manufacturing establishments? A. Manufacturing, yes, sir; mechanics and laboring classes, principally. Q. How large a number assembled? A. I presume I saw as many as fifty to seventy-five, probably one hundred at times during the day on Sunday. Q. What day was the railroad bridge across the Schuylkill burned? A. It was burned that same night. Q. Sunday night? A. Yes; sometime during the night, about midnight, I think. Q. This assembly of men on Sunday, was it composed of railroad men--were they actually engaged in running trains then--or was it men who had been discharged? A. I am not prepared to answer that question, because I know very few of the engineers on the road. I do not know that I can point out a single man of them. Q. Did the Reading railroad continue to run their trains? A. They did on Sunday, I think, and a part of the day on Monday. On Monday, towards evening, some of the trains were stopped here in the city by some parties. It seems some of them were boys. Young men got on to the trains, on to the locomotive. At one time, I understood a boy--however, I don't know that I can say that, either, it was so stated by some of the witnesses, that a certain boy got on to a locomotive, and moved it back and forth, just about as he would a little wagon--made a plaything out of it. Q. Drove the engineer from his engine? A. Yes; they got off some way. Q. You did not see them? A. No; I did not see them. In fact I did not go on Seventh street at all on that day. I don't think I was on Seventh street on the Monday. Q. Did the crowd remain together during the night of Sunday night, or did it disperse during the evening? A. That is more than I can say, but I should suppose that it did not disperse very early--I think it highly probable that they kept up looking round for news. Q. What street were they on on Sunday? A. Principally, Penn street--corner Sixth and Penn streets. Q. What was the character of the crowd, as being demonstrative? A. Well, they were anxiously looking for news from other quarters, from Pittsburgh and Baltimore, where they had been on the strike, and, as a matter of course, they would congregate in front of the telegraph offices. Well, the news came pretty direct to the _Eagle_ office, and they looked there to the bulletin boards for exciting news, and they came around for that purpose, and there was some of them, no doubt, were hard cases, and ready for any emergency. Q. Were they noisy and boisterous? A. I cannot say that they were. Q. Did you have any conversation with any of them? A. No; I did not. Q. What seemed to be their troubles and grievances. Did they make them manifest in any way? A. Well, the main grievance among them, that I could learn, was the depressed state of things, being out of employment, not able to get any-anything to do, and want generally. Q. Who did they seem to blame for that state of things? A. There was a good deal of censure placed upon the Reading Railroad Company, more than perhaps any other. Q. On Monday morning was that crowd still in the streets? A. Yes; there were some there on Monday morning. Q. How large a crowd? A. Probably not so many. I do not think there were so many there that morning as there were on Sunday evening and during the day on Sunday. Q. Had the news of the burning of the bridge reached you then? A. Well, not until during the night. I heard the fire alarm bell, but I did not get up. I did not go out at all. Q. The fire alarm was sounded, was it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were there any efforts made to extinguish the fire by the fire companies or civil authorities of the city? A. Well; yes, sir. They went out, as was stated, before the inquisition--before the inquest; the firemen went out, Chief Boyer was there and a number of others, and it appears they could not do anything towards arresting the fire in any way. Some of the cars, I think, were set on fire, some box cars they had out there. Afterwards, it appears, that the report came that the bridge was on fire--that was stated before the inquest, that the mob was so great that they threatened the engineer, the chief of police, and other parties there that intended to suppress the flames--to put down the excitement. Q. The mob would not permit the firemen to work? A. Would not permit them to work--to put any water on the fire at all. Q. Did they use any violence towards the firemen? A. Not that I could learn. Q. Did they make any efforts? A. Not any that I know of. Q. Do you know whether the police of the city were there--any of them to protect the firemen? A. The chief of police was there, and no doubt he had a number of the police with him. Q. Did you see the crowd during the day? How large a crowd was there during the day on Monday? A. I suppose it would vary, likely, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty. Q. Where were they mostly during the day? A. Between the Keystone house, and the _Eagle_ office. Q. They still continued to gather around the bulletin boards? A. Yes; around the bulletin boards. Some of them would come over, occasionally, to look at the _Times'_ office, but most of the news came through the _Eagle_ office, and the consequence was, the most of the crowd were in front of the _Eagle_ office, there and at the Keystone house. Q. How was it at the railroad depot, and about the railroad offices? A. I don't know, for I didn't go there at all. Q. Do you know how large a crowd was there? A. No. Q. Do you know whether there was any efforts made by the civil authorities of the city to disperse the crowd during the day? A. Well, there was an effort made, at least it so appeared in the inquisition, that parties went to the sheriff, with a view of getting him to render some assistance. One party, a man by the name of Miller, proffered to suppress the mob with fifty men. Said that if the sheriff would allow him to, that he thought he could procure that number of men. This was sometime during the day of Monday that this statement was made. The proffer was made to the sheriff. Q. Made by Mr. Miller himself? A. By Mr. Miller, in company with Mr. Wood. Q. What reply did the sheriff make to that offer? A. I don't know the exact words--I have all that testimony down. Q. Give us the substance of it--of his reply? A. He did not feel disposed to do anything. They said they would get arms and ammunition, and everything that was necessary, to put it down, if he would give his consent, which, it seems, he declined to do; and when they said they would get the arms or guns, he said the rioters have guns, too; and he also said to them that he would not go to do anything by way of suppressing it, for fear that he would be shot the same as the sheriff was at Pittsburgh. Q. You had received news, then, that the sheriff of Allegheny county was shot, had you here? A. Yes; at that time. Q. Which afterwards proved incorrect. Was that the only reason that he gave for not accepting the proposition of Mr. Miller? A. I am inclined to think that was the only plausible reason he gave. He didn't believe in going out and being a target to fire at. Q. Did he make any effort to arrest the parties who were in the disturbance during Monday? A. None that I can learn. Q. Did he make any effort at any time? A. I think not. Q. Did he call for any posse to assist you in any way? A. He swore in the next day quite a number of deputy sheriffs, but on Monday I don't think he called on any. He issued his proclamation and called and put it up, I think, in the evening, about five or six o'clock. Q. On Monday? A. On Monday. Q. Now, can you give us the substance of the proclamation? A. No; I cannot. I didn't see it. Q. Didn't see it? A. No. Q. Was there any call made for the militia to come out, by the sheriff, to preserve the peace? A. No. Q. Do you know how the militia happened to come here? A. Well, it was said afterwards that they came here by the order of General Bolton. Q. Monday night--go on and describe the situation of affairs, if you will--where the crowd was, and what took place on Monday night? A. The main crowd was up at the corner of Seventh and Penn, and where there are always quite a number of men congregated, particularly at that hour, shortly before dusk, and about that time. There had been large crowds there for some weeks or so, who frequently congregated there, and on that night, as a matter of course, it would be expected there would be more, in consequence of the transactions that took place during the day. People went there to see the excitement, and so on, and it was with a great deal of difficulty, as I understood from the testimony of Chief Cullen, that they could keep the pass-way clear, to allow people to pass up and down the street. I think, if I mistake not, Mr. Cullen had nearly all his force there. He was chief of police, and once or twice, I think, he stated he got the pass-way cleared. It was soon blocked up again. Just about dusk, or a little after, it appears that General Reeder arrived with some men at the outer depot. Mr. Paxton, in communication with him, told him where the rioters were, and where one of the cars were that they wished to release from the mob. That was at the commencement of the cut there. The general ordered his men right there to release that car, and I suppose, passing through the cut. He concluded to force his men right through. I don't know what acquaintance he had with the surroundings of the cut, but it strikes me very forcibly, even now, and has all along, that if he had sent a dozen men on either side of that cut, and his main body of men through the cut, that there would hardly have been a drop of blood shed. As these troops moved up the cut, they were met with volleys of stones and missiles, pistol-shooting, &c., from above either side, as they were passing along; and, indeed, I cannot see how they got through there and escaped with so little injury as they did. It looks to me almost a miracle. Have you observed the cut--have you been up there? Q. Only in passing through it. A. The testimony came in that they would throw stones large enough--well, too large for one man to handle--take two men--at one time two men were seen to get hold of a large stone, and push it right over, apparently on to them. They were treated in that way, until they got to the lower end of the cut, and they marched up the tracks on either side, I think, principally, on the west side. When they got about two thirds of the way through the cut, they fired forward, killing a number of men right at the corner of Penn and Seventh. One man was killed about two squares--better than two squares--below. He was on his way up town, somewhere. A man by the name of Trace, I believe. Q. A citizen of the city? A. Yes, sir; a citizen. Two or three men were killed on the southeast corner or near the southeast corner of the street, near the gutter. One or two of them were on the sidewalk. I think it very remarkable, indeed, that these men would come through there, and when they met with these missiles on either side of them, that they would fire forward, and being attacked as they were, it would appear as though they would fire in almost any direction for relief, and get out as speedily as possible. Q. After they passed through the cut, did they encounter the mob at the end of the cut? A. Some of them. Those that were throwing these missiles, on either side, I dare say, didn't organize in front of them; but there was some of the parties--some of the same mob--there. Q. Was there any firing there, after they had passed through? A. No; not after they had passed through. Q. What street did they come out on, in passing through the cut? A. Out on Penn street, and then down Penn. Q. There was no firing, as they passed through the cut? A. No; not after they had got on to Penn, west of Seventh. Q. Did the troops accomplish what they were sent to--started to accomplish--gaining possession of the car? A. Yes; they did that. Q. How long did the troops remain in the city, then? A. Well, during the night, I think. I think they left the next morning. Q. Do you know where they went to from there? A. No; I don't; but I learned that they had gone back to Allentown or Easton. Q. Were any troops left at Reading, at all? A. Yes; there was some left at the outer depot. Q. To guard railroad property? A. To guard the property of the railroad company. Q. Was there any disturbance occurred after that Monday night? A. None, that I could learn. Q. Was the mob dispersed by the firing that took place? A. Effectually. Q. Did they ever rally, or come together again? A. No; no rallying there. Q. I wish you would give us the number of killed--the number that was actually killed--so far as you can? A. There were ten killed--then another one subsequently died, about six or eight weeks, I think, afterwards--Corbett--from the wounds received at the same time. Q. Making eleven in all? A. Making eleven altogether. Q. Were these all citizens, or a portion of them soldiers? A. They were all citizens--no soldiers. Q. Were any of them actually engaged, or were they citizens who had congregated there out of curiosity? A. The larger part of them were there out of curiosity. Two of those that were killed were said to have had something to do with this matter, and were not innocent. The others--that is, taking it for granted that they were innocent, by being there, which the law, I believe, doesn't grant, either--may be said to have been innocent. Trace was, perhaps, the least censurable of any of them, for he was far away from the scene where this was transacted. Q. I understand you to say this: of the killed there were only two who were actually engaged in the riots? A. I would say, whose record was not altogether clear--free from censure. Q. Now, how many persons were wounded, so far as you could ascertain? A. That I cannot ascertain; but I presume there were as many as six or eight more that were wounded--probably more. Q. Do you know how many of the soldiers were wounded? A. No; I didn't learn, but I understand--I think that there were but two or three that were in any ways seriously hurt--none mortally. Q. Now you may state what efforts were made by the sheriff on Tuesday--Monday night and Tuesday to preserve the peace? A. The only effort that he made then that I know of was that he sent notice to quite a number of the citizens to call at his office and be sworn in as deputy sheriffs. What instructions they received from him I don't know. Q. Do you know how many offered themselves or responded to his notice? A. I don't know, but I understood there was some five or six hundred citizens that were sworn in by him or his deputy. Q. What efforts did the mayor make, if any, to preserve the peace during the entire disturbance? A. The mayor was not here at the time, but returned the night, I think, shortly before these troops left. He afterwards went out to the depot and was in communication with General Reeder, if I mistake not. I don't think that anything further was done to suppress the mob, for everything was quiet then. Q. The chief of police was on the ground was he? A. He was on the ground, and I think manfully did his duty. Q. How many police were on duty at the time in the city? A. I suppose there were about twenty-five or thirty, I forget the number. Q. Do you know what authority the mayor has in case of riot and disturbances, given by the charter of the city or the laws relating to the city? A. I have never read them. I have never read the charter of the city; but my own judgment would tell me that he had power of suppressing--the same power of suppressing a riot that a sheriff would have. Q. Was that matter discussed, or taken into consideration by the citizens at the time? Did you hear any expression by legal gentlemen as to what the power of the mayor was? A. I cannot say that I did; but the matter was discussed pretty freely among citizens, and some seemed to think that the mayor ought to have suppressed the riot. I presume he would if he had been here. Q. Did he arrive here before the firing took place in the cut? A. No. Q. Not until after? A. Not until afterwards. Q. Did the chief of police make any arrests, to your knowledge, prior to the conflict between the troops and the mob? A. No; they made no arrests so far as I could learn. It seems they were under the impression that they were almost entirely powerless with the meager number they had to arrest them. Q. They didn't feel strong enough to cope with the mob without greater assistance? A. No, sir. Q. Were any arrests made that afternoon? A. Yes; a great many arrests. Q. By what authority--by whom? A. Well, by the chief of police--they made the most of the arrests. Q. Were any arrests made by the sheriff? A. I think not. I don't know of any. Q. The arrests then were mostly made by the chief of police on warrants issued by the mayor? A. I think they were issued by the mayor. Q. What was done with those persons who were arrested? A. Some of them were taken up to jail. Others were released on bail. Q. How many have been tried? A. I suppose there were between forty and fifty that were tried--they were to have been tried. Whether they have all been or not, I don't know. Q. How long is this cut? A. Well, it is nearly two squares. Q. How soon after the soldiers were in did they begin to attack them? A. Within about probably fifteen or twenty minutes. Q. Did they continue to fire on them then until they got down on to Penn street, where the cut runs down level? A. No, not quite. I don't think there were any stones thrown after they had passed Court street, within just half a square from Penn. Q. The firing didn't commence until they got on to the cut? A. No; it was before the firing on the soldiers you mean? Q. Yes, sir? A. It was not, I think, until after they passed Court street--about that. Q. It was still in the cut? A. Still in the cut. Q. Then they got out of the cut on to level ground, and then it was that the firing was done, and when the mob was dispersed. A. Yes; there was firing done there, and at Penn street. They couldn't fire up and down Penn street without being very close to it. Q. And this stone that took two men to throw down--did that hit anybody? A. That is more than I know; not directly, evidently, or it would have killed them. By Mr. Means: Q. Was the sympathy of the people of the city of Reading with the strikers, the discharged employés of the Reading railroad? A. Well, there was sympathy on both sides, evidently; and during the day, on Monday, I am inclined to think, quite a number of the people sympathized with the strikers, rather than with the railroad company. Q. You say on both sides. Now, I would like to know what you mean by both sides? A. I mean the Reading Railroad Company and the dismissed engineers of the road. Q. Then, in your opinion, the sympathy of the people of Reading was with the employés of the Reading railroad in striking and destruction of property? A. No; I couldn't say that. Q. My question was simply this: that I wanted to know if the citizens of the city of Reading were in sympathy with the strikers, or the discharged employés of the Reading road? A. I should say no; although they had a good many to sympathize with them here in the city. Q. Well, then, Mr. Goodhart, were they simply discharged employés of the Reading road that participated in this destruction of property? A. That question I cannot answer, because, as I stated before, I don't know any of the engineers of the road now. Q. Did there appear to be any tramps or any strangers connected with this party who were with the engineers or employés of the Reading road? A. So far as I know they were all strangers to me, and I have very little hesitation in saying, that a good many of them were strangers, coming here from a distance. Q. From a distance and from other sections of the country? A. Yes, sir. I think a number of them were strangers, not citizens of the place, nor had they been in the employ of the Reading Railroad Company. Q. To your knowledge, do you know whether or not, the mayor of the city of Reading ordered out his police to suppress these rioters? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. When the mayor was not here, was there any person in authority? A. The chief of police. Chief Cullen, he has stated, took his men up to the corner of Seventh and Penn that evening, and I presume did his utmost to clear the pass-way there, and suppress the mob. What effect it would have had upon them had they arrested two or three or half a dozen of these men I am not prepared to say, it might, possibly, have dispersed the mob. Q. Well, then, Mr. Goodhart, in your opinion, what amount of men would it have taken to suppress this mob and restore order and peace? A. I should think that one hundred and fifty or two hundred men would have done it, properly armed. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What other property was destroyed beside the destruction of the bridge? A. There was a few houses that were burned. Q. Any freight in them? A. I think there was some, and then there was some property destroyed right on the road here in the city. Q. Private property? A. No; that was cars loaded, and there was one car filled with tobacco, that was broken into and a great deal of it being carried away. Q. Was there any property beside railroad property destroyed? A. No, I think not; not that I know of. Q. What day was the other property destroyed--before or after the destruction of the bridge? A. That was afterwards. Q. The bridge then, I understand, was the first thing? A. No. These cars, at this side of the bridge, were the first, I understood, that were burnt, afterwards the bridge, and then, on Monday--this was on Saturday night--and on the Monday, there was some property destroyed on Seventh street; coal trains were arrested, and the coal was dumped down right on the track, at different places. The watchman's house was turned upside down. Q. Now, I understand you to say that the citizens, some of them, sympathized with the railroad employés who had been discharged, and some sympathized with the railroad company? That is the way you put it, I believe? A. Yes, sir. Q. Well, now, was there any sympathy manifested by the citizens of Reading for those strikers or employés after they began to destroy property--or, in other words, in sympathy with the destruction of property? A. None whatever, that I could learn. By Mr. Means: Q. There was no disposition on the part of the rioters, Mr. Goodhart, if I understand you, to destroy any property except that which belonged to the Reading railroad? A. Yes; just so. Q. Not outside of it? A. Not outside of it. Q. Where did you get your information in regard to Mr. Mullin having proffered his services to the sheriff? A. Got it from his own testimony. Q. Before you at the coroner's inquest? A. Before me; yes, sir, and through Mr. Wootten, also. He testified to the same thing. * * * * * E. F. Evans, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You were mayor of the city of Reading during the past summer? A. Yes, sir. Q. You may tell us, if you please, where you were when the difficulties in July occurred? A. On the Friday morning preceding the riot in this city, which occurred on the Monday, or rather the burning of the bridge, took place on Sunday night. What was known as the riot, followed on Monday night, and the firing of the troops, and so forth. I left this city for four or five days, and went down to Ocean Grove, following the example of the Executive of the State, the mayor of Philadelphia, and the mayor of Scranton, to spend a few days there, intending to return the following week, and at that time I did not dream or apprehend of any danger here with a strike or anything of that kind. On the following Monday morning, at the Grove, I received a telegram about half past ten or eleven o'clock, from the chief of police of this city, that a number of cars were on fire. At that time it said nothing of the bridge, in fact that had not been fired, I believe, at that time. I picked up my things, and left in the first train, which was shortly after twelve o'clock. After reaching Allentown that night, at probably seven o'clock, I was informed that the train had been taken off the East Penn road, and I could not reach home. I then telegraphed to Mr. Wootten. I stated my position in the telegram that I could not get home. He then ordered a train to bring me over--a special car and engine was placed at my disposal--and we started out and ran here, probably at half past ten or eleven o'clock. That was on Monday evening--on, I believe, the 23d, if I mistake not; at any rate, it was Monday evening. Q. Monday evening was the 23d? A. I reached this city after the firing had taken place, and these men had been wounded. I came in from the depot and came down to my office, issued a proclamation requesting our citizens to uphold the authorities of the city. Had it published that night, or rather in the morning paper. I then went up to the depot and remained there until two or three o'clock in the morning, requesting during that time that if there was any trouble, the military being out there, that they should take charge, my police officers then, five or six of them being wounded, and they had been on duty Sunday night, and all day Monday and Monday night. On the following day, then--I think it was the following day--I swore in probably from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty men, furnishing them with maces, to go on duty if any further danger was apprehended. There was but little occurred after Monday night. I believe the tracks were torn up in some places on Seventh street, but not to any extent. Didn't amount to anything, and that was about the closing of what I--we did everything we could after I returned home--the city authorities--to suppress any further violence or outbreak. Q. And succeeded in preserving the peace? A. After that there was nothing occurred. Q. Did the citizens respond heartily to your call? A. As a general thing, as I have stated, probably one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and fifty were sworn in, and they were willing to do duty when called upon. Q. Was there any question about your authority to call out a posse of citizens? A. It was voluntary. It was supposed, that the sheriff, having unlimited power, should have acted, whether in my absence or not, particularly in my being absent, and should have called on parties up there. I do not know when he reached here. There was a train or engine sent for him to bring him back to the city. He resides somewhere below the city. Of course, hearsay evidence does not amount to anything, but they said he didn't act as promptly as he should have done. That is what I heard after I reached home. When I reached home on Monday evening, I learned he had issued a proclamation sometime that evening. Q. Everything was quiet on Friday, as I understand you, when you left? A. I didn't apprehend any danger at all. There was nothing spoken of riot or any outbreak, or anything of the kind--didn't dream of such a thing. Q. Was there any larger number of idle men, discharged men, in the city at that time than usual? A. Not that I know of. I passed around portions of the city, the greater part of it, and I found nothing that would be necessary to call into order the police officers after I returned home. Q. How large a police force had you at the time? A. That I cannot exactly tell. At that time it was reduced, either before or after that, I think, however, before that--amounting to some twenty-six or twenty-nine men. Q. Did you make any arrests after? A. There were quite a number of arrests made. I think in all to be probably fifty--forty or fifty, or along there. Q. Did you learn what the cause of the outbreak was? A. Only from hearsay. Q. What did the men themselves assign? What did they give as their reasons? A. I didn't converse with any of the men on the subject. Q. Did you form any opinion of yourself? A. In reference to the outbreak? Q. In reference to the cause of the outbreak. A. I didn't. Nothing more, than I presume it was stimulated by the action taken in other portions of the country. There was then an outbreak, I believe, in some portions of Maryland, if I mistake not, near Baltimore, and perhaps in Pittsburgh, or near there. By Senator Torbert: Q. The bridge was burned down before you returned? A. Yes, sir; I believe Stokley left the same day I did, and also the Scranton man. At this point, the committee adjourned till half-past one o'clock, this afternoon. AFTERNOON SESSION. READING, _April 19, 1878_. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment. All members present, except Messrs. Reyburn, Larrabee, and Yutzy. * * * * * Peter Cullen, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State where you reside? A. I reside 1022, Centre avenue. Q. Were you connected with the police officers of the city of Reading in July last? A. I was. Q. In what capacity? A. Chief of police. Q. State what day the first disturbance or assemblage of strikers in any considerable number occurred? A. That was on Sunday night, July 22. Q. Had there been any difficulty threatened before that, to your knowledge? A. There didn't appear to, in a general way, going round the streets--the principal streets. There had been a great deal of talk. Parties gathering, would talk quietly. Some were excited; that is, on the news received from Pittsburgh. That seemed to start them up some, but there was not anything particular done until Sunday night, on 22d, when the mob went out to the outer depot, or the new depot of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and the first intimation I had that a mob had gone out there; in fact, I did not expect anything serious. The first intimation I had, was standing at the corner of Fifth and Penn, and I was informed that the crowd, or mob, had gone out to the depot, and were at the depot. That they were there, hooting and yelling, and throwing stones before the engines, and pulling down engineers, and so forth. I immediately started out this street, to go to the depot, and I got as far as Fifth and Elm, and found that box 35 fire-alarm sounded, and I also saw the flame of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company's property. Saw flames near Fifth street bridge, between the depot and the bridge, just about a square off--not more from the depot; and I took Fifth street route, and then saw the crowd had gone over into the cut, and on to the track of the Lebanon Valley road, and I saw the cars were on fire. As I got to Fifth and Elm, I found Chief Engineer Boyer going out in his usual style, and I proceeded to the fire, and when I got there, I found there were a good many people there. The cabooses were on fire and burning on the tracks at that time. There didn't appear to be any disturbance of any kind, but the crowd was very large. That was Sunday evening, July 22, and the crowd was large, and somewhat excited; but there was no fighting. There was nothing in the way of any disturbance going on at that time, as the work had been done, which it appears the rioters had accomplished--which was intended. That was to burn the cars. I saw Chief Engineer Boyer then, and asked him about the fire department going into service, and he said he had been stopped, companies had been stoned, and were not allowed to go into service. We consulted together, and told him we would do all in our power to get the fire department into service. He was willing to do anything; and then G. A. Nichols, the vice president of the Philadelphia and Reading road, he came there, and myself and Chief Engineer Boyer and Mr. Nichols talked about this matter together, and Nichols asked me how many officers I had there. I looked around, and found I had about six or seven officers, and Mr. Nichols asked me if we had all revolvers and pistols. I told him, I was not so sure about that. I thought the most of the men had. I had, and I thought most of the men had. I came to the conclusion that this matter was a very serious disturbance, and we agreed that I would get the entire police force together, and to go immediately to the scene of the riot, and to get the fire department in the service, and instructed the men on the ground to do all in their power to assist Chief Engineer Boyer, of the fire department, and keep the peace, so far as was in their power to do so, until I could get back with the balance of the force. I got as many of the men together as I possibly could, and instructed them to proceed at once to Chief Engineer Boyer, to render him such aid as was in their power to do so; and we found by the time I had got around, or not quite around--and found a box on Jefferson street had sounded an alarm, and the cry was raised that the Lebanon Valley bridge was on fire, and I saw the illumination, which showed that the bridge was on fire. I proceeded to the telegraph office, and telegraphed to Mayor Evans to come home at once, that the cabooses were burning, and that there was serious trouble apprehended, and the state of affairs at that time was very bad in the city. The whole population was very much excited, and there were a great many of the people in the city, in the confusion, running round in the streets, in all directions. Everything seemed to be confused. When I found the bridge had been on fire, instructed the officers to go to the bridge, and they did so; but when they got out, that work of destruction had been completed, so far as the bridge was concerned. The city that night was in a continual state of excitement, and the property of the Reading Railroad Company seemed to be in danger, if not the city of Reading, and matters went on in that way, and also on the following day, (Monday.) The mob kept together. They stopped engines, and were drinking around and disorderly, and they seemed to have a great many sympathizers in the city at the time. I sent out for two hundred men. There were two prominent gentlemen in Reading, Captain E. P. Boas and Henry S. Eckart, that called upon me at the office, and asked what could be done. I told them I was willing to do anything, but we wanted more help, and this thing done right, and they agreed at once that they would be responsible for two hundred men. They would see that they were paid, and they would equip them and give them all seven-shooters and cartridges, and so forth. I then detailed a number of men--cannot tell the exact number--to go out in the different parts of the city, and to prevail upon parties to come to the city hall, and to go on duty to help squelch the riot. I waited and waited, and all in vain, and the reports that came in by the different officers was that they could not get anybody to assist. They would only laugh, and make different kinds of remarks; they didn't want their heads shot off, and they were going against their friends, and it was a workingman's fight, and all that sort of thing. Q. What time was that? A. This was immediately after dinner, on Monday, the 23d, and I only found there was one man I could get in the whole city to respond to the call of two hundred men. I inquired about the sheriff that night. Q. State what inquiries you made of the sheriff? A. I first went to the residence of the sheriff, where he lived, on South Sixth street--that was about twelve o'clock, or half-past twelve, Sunday night--and they informed me that he was not in the city. He had been down home, somewheres near or in the neighborhood of Pottstown--a little this side. I didn't know what to do at the moment, so I called on Judge Hagenman and told him the state of affairs, and how the city was, and how the town was in danger of being destroyed, that the torch of incendiaries had been applied to the property, and all that, and I asked what might be best to do under the circumstances. I told him Sheriff Yorgy was not home, and he advised me at once to try to get Yorgy to come to the city as quick as possible. I immediately, then, went to the office of Mr. Paxton, the master machinist of the P. and R. Railroad Company, and I met him at his office. That was on Monday morning, about one or half-past one o'clock. It might have been in the neighborhood of two. I asked him whether he would accommodate me--whether he could send a telegram for Sheriff Yorgy to come on at once to the city, that there was a riot here, and a large mob had gathered here and were destroying the property of the P. and R., and the city of Reading was in danger. Mr. Paxton was willing to do anything, and had the telegram sent. I also asked Mr. Paxton if he would furnish a special engine to bring the sheriff on to Reading, as it was very important. Mr. Paxton did so, and had an engine furnished to the sheriff, and he had also a conveyance from the sheriff's house to the engine. The sheriff arrived, to the best of my knowledge, early in the morning, about daylight, or thereabouts. I went to the sheriff's office on that Monday morning, and found him in his office in the court-house. I went to consult him as regards the situation, and making arrangements to see what could be done. Told him it was necessary to act at once, and act promptly, and to get at least five hundred men if he possibly could. He seemed, at that time, willing, and said he had sent for William B. Albright. He wanted to consult with him as regards the matter, and he showed all signs of willingness to act and perform his duty on that occasion. I told him I was willing to do anything to aid, help, or assist in the matter, and to have this thing wiped out; and I came back to the office, then, on that morning, and waited there with the intention of reporting to the sheriff, and about nine or ten o'clock on that morning Mr. J. E. Wootten, the superintendent, at that time, I believe, of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and he informed me at the city hall that the sheriff had backed out, and was not going to act; that he would not do anything. I was very much surprised to hear that answer, as he had seemed to be willing in the morning, and matters were getting worse all the time. On that Monday evening, at six o'clock, I took the entire police force. Q. Now, starting with the Monday evening, you give a full history here in this evidence? [Indicating testimony taken before coroner's inquest.] A. From there on, as to what occurred? Q. A full history you give here? A. Yes; it is about correct there as to the trouble. Q. State whether this is evidence given by you before the coroner's inquest? A. Yes; that is all correct. Q. This is your evidence, given under oath? A. That is evidence given under oath before Coroner Goodhart at the city hall, immediately after the trouble. Testimony offered in evidence is as follows: On Monday evening, at six o'clock, I started out with the force for Seventh and Penn streets, where a large crowd had collected. I informed the officers that we would have to go there, and do our duty. I found that nearly all the officers had pistols. Marched them to Seventh and Penn. Saw thousands of people there. Many strangers whom I had never seen before. There were people in all directions. The pavements and walls, as far as I could see along Seventh street, were lined with people, and the crowd extended up and down Penn street; and I got into the crowd at Seventh and Penn streets. I called upon the crowd to disperse, but the people paid but little attention to me. I then ordered the force up, for the purpose of pressing the force back, which they did, and I succeeded in clearing the pavements. Cleared the whole corner and crossings, and I kept the passage open on one side for a certain length of time to allow parties to pass, as also the street cars. A large number were forced up the cut in driving them away, most of whom were strangers, which made the crowd there much larger. I then drew the force up in line from Bechtol's corner over toward the Ubil house. I was expecting an attack at that time from the party in the cut. I noticed then, that they disconnected the engine, and commenced running it up towards us, as also the freight car, and I expected that they intended to attack our police force. They came forward to within sixty or seventy-five yards of us. They saw our lines were firm and solid, and they then stopped. I remained in that position for some time with the force. I found then that the party I had at first dispersed, had come in around me in all directions. Things then became quiet in the cut, and the people remained there. I then formed the force north and south, with the right resting on Breneiser's corner. I had all the police force that was at my command. I had them along the one track. I then detailed men to open the crossings, which they succeeded in doing. That position enabled us to keep the crossings clear, and to allow street cars to pass. The crowd was very large during all this time. There were thousands there. The first disturbance that I heard, was on Sunday evening about nine o'clock. I heard they had stopped a train, and that they had things their own way. There had been gatherings on Saturday evening, but there was nothing of a serious nature. There were no arrests made until Tuesday. I had twenty-six or twenty-eight men on the force at my command. I consulted on Monday with some of the officials of the road, also on Sunday. They made no report to me of threatened destruction of their property. I was at the firing of the caboose on Sunday evening, and had seven or eight men there. I received information of a disturbance at the depot, and went there--the alarm struck before I got there. I saw the light from Fifth and Elm streets. I was not at the Lebanon Valley railroad bridge. I met Howard Boyer at the first fire. He told me his carriage had been stoned, that the mob would not let him put any water on the fire. I consulted with Howard Boyer, and we concluded that it would be best not to interfere. We had no idea who the parties were who were implicated in this matter--they were not all strangers--some of them have since been arrested. I applied for special power. I was authorized by two citizens to raise a special force of two hundred men. I sent the members of my force out to endeavor to enlist men to do special duty up to six o'clock in the evening, but failed to obtain any. There was no person here who had appointing power. Persons laughed at our policemen when they asked for help. Five officers of the force were seriously wounded on Monday evening. I received information on Monday evening, at Seventh and Penn, that troops were coming. Half an hour afterwards heard that troops had arrived at the outer depot. I was not present at their arrival, was not requested to be there, had no communication with them. Did not know who ordered them here, or for what purpose they had come. The first I heard, was two pistol shots from above Court street. I didn't see any bricks thrown, as I had enough to do at Seventh and Penn. I couldn't see anything but the people, as everything was a solid mass. I saw some of the killed and wounded, and helped to carry some of them off. I knew Mr. Weaver, who was killed. The first I saw of the soldiers, was when they passed down Penn. I saw no wounded soldiers then, but have seen several since. During Sunday night and Monday I felt that my force was entirely inefficient, from the large crowds which were gathering and the excitement. I had a consultation with Sheriff Yorgey in his office in the court-house, soon after his arrival. I had telegraphed for him to come at quarter past two o'clock on Monday morning. I telegraphed from the depot, after trying at several other places. I had arranged with Mr. Paxton to furnish a special train to bring him up. He arrived about five o'clock. I informed the sheriff of the condition of affairs at seven o'clock in the morning. Told him it would be necessary for him to summon a thousand men, or thereabouts. He told me he had intended to do it, but it would take some time. I was certain he intended to do it, but he told me had sent for William B. Albright, and was waiting for him. I telegraphed him that I wanted help. Two hours after my interview, Mr. Wootten, of the Reading railroad, called upon me and said that Sheriff Yorgey refused to act, which very much surprised me. There was no force called out until to-day. I placed myself in communication with the mayor, telegraphed to him at a quarter past twelve, A.M., on Monday, July 23. I informed him of the condition of affairs. Asked him to come home at once, that tracks were being torn up, freight cars had been burned, &c. I was told that the telegraph office at Ocean Grove had closed. The mayor arrived in Reading on Monday night. The men on the police force obeyed my commands whenever I asked them to do so. I heard two pistol shots in the cut, and immediately afterwards I heard a volley. Those balls did not come down our way, of any account. The next volley came into us, as well as the third volley. I realized the situation at once. The people commenced running in all directions. I requested all of them to get out of the way. I was struck by a ball on my left breast, while on duty at Seventh and Penn. I was expecting that the military, upon their arrival, would report to some of the civil authorities. All the information that I received was, that the troops had arrived at the outer depot. There were shots fired on Penn street. Know that shots were fired down, as I was in the party. At about half past seven in the evening, was informed of the arrival of troops at the outer depot. Things looked very serious that night after the militia arrived. They reported to me at Fifth and Penn. I found the people were greatly excited in regard to the shooting, and I kept them away from the soldiers as well as I could. There were no riotous disturbances in this city after that, except the tearing up of the tracks. I do not know who ordered the soldiers to come here. Was satisfied they were coming, but did not expect that they were coming in the way in which they did. On being re-called, Chief Cullen said (while the cars were burning) I consulted Mr. Boyer in regard to the situation, and asked him whether it wouldn't be better to attack the party and try to get the fire department into service. I had only seven or eight men with me that evening, and the crowd was very large. When I was there every person was quiet, and the cars were burning on the track. There was no breach of the peace there, so far as I saw. When I asked Mr. Boyer whether it wouldn't be better to make an attack, I believe he answered, "Yes." He told me he was not armed, and I said that under the circumstances I would go into town and get as many men together as I possibly could for the purpose of doing my entire duty; but before I was half way through I noticed that box No. 7 struck an alarm, and immediately afterwards I saw a light looming up along the Lebanon Valley railroad, and I knew there would be trouble, and I told my men to go out and do everything in their power to assist Mr. Boyer to get the department into service. At that time a number of the police were taking lunch, and I had difficulty to get them together. By that time box No. 7 struck again, and I saw the fire looming up at the Lebanon Valley bridge. After I got as many of the force together as I could to go out there, I went to the telegraph office and telegraphed to Mayor Evans to come home at once, telling him of the situation. Then I went to the City hotel to see the sheriff and I was told that he had gone to his home in the country. I then went to see Judge Hagenman at his residence, as affairs were very serious. I told him that neither the mayor nor the sheriff was in town. Judge Hagenman advised me that the best thing to be done would be to telegraph for the sheriff at once. I immediately started out and found the telegraph office closed. I went down to Seventh and Chestnut and saw Mr. Blackman, and asked him where the telegraph operator was, and he told me that he had just gone home. He sent for him then and the operator came to the office, and I telegraphed to the sheriff at once that there was a mob here of about two thousand persons and there was great excitement, that they were tearing up the tracks and burning cars, and so on, and that he shouldn't fail to come. I then saw Mr. Paxton, master machinist, and I asked him whether he would furnish an engine to bring the sheriff up to Reading at once, and he said he would, and he also engaged a conveyance to bring him to the depot, and the sheriff arrived in Reading, as far as I know, at about five o'clock in the morning. I addressed the crowd at Seventh and Penn streets on Monday evening. The feeling seemed to be all one way among the persons who had gathered there. I approached Seventh and Penn with the police, in front of Breneiser's store, and I announced to the crowd to disperse. I appealed particularly to all good citizens to go to their homes so that we would know with whom we had to contend. My voice was loud, so that the people could hear me a considerable distance on Penn and Seventh. I had no power to appoint persons on the police force or call out a posse. Made an effort to get two hundred and fifty men, but failed to get even two men. Found it difficult to get anybody. Persons who were asked, laughed and said they didn't want their heads shot off. The mayor left on Friday morning previous to the disturbance, when everything appeared to be quiet. The city charter, I believe, empowers the mayor to raise a posse the same as the sheriff. This power, I believe, can not be conferred upon the chief of police. Two hundred men, armed, would have done a great deal towards quelling the disturbance. Q. Did you have any conversation with the men engaged in the riot, at any time? A. I had, on Sunday--Sunday afternoon, the 22d of July. Q. What complaints did they make? A. They were talking about the Pittsburgh troubles, and that seemed to be all the go on Sunday, seemed to excite them, and they talked about it, and that was all that was done, so far as talking and exciting and gathering in crowds. I did go into one party, and they were talking over these troubles. In Pittsburgh, the riot was going on at the time, and I had said to them that they would be a great deal more thought of and respected by keeping out of difficulties of the kind, and attending to their business, than in gathering, and going into riots, and one party made the remark, "That was not bread and butter," and that seemed to be the feeling generally among the elements that were going around the streets, and gathering in crowds. The sympathy seemed to be considerably in favor of riot, on the Sunday and Monday, and it only commenced to turn about on Tuesday. Q. What did they appear to complain of--set out as their grievance? Did they seem to have any particular thing? A. No; they did not seem to say much on the matter, so far as that was concerned, as I know of, but the whole feeling seemed to originate from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and the feeling in the city of Reading was very strong in favor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; at least two thirds of the city, as near as I could calculate, they seemed to sympathize with the men's dispute between the company and themselves, and that feeling seemed to follow in reference to the troubles commencing here. Q. Do you know what that dispute was? A. As near as I understand, and so far as I was informed, the Philadelphia and Reading requested the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers that they would have to quit the organization called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and to apply to something similar of their own, which would be beneficial, and as much derived from it as what they would have received from their own, and that the company would not have them in their employ unless they complied with those terms. I heard that spoken of. I cannot say to that officially, because I don't know it. That seemed to be the general talk. Q. Had there been a large number of them discharged by the company prior to this disturbance? A. Well, they were all either discharged or else quit. I believe the men quit. I don't think there were any discharged. I believe the men all quit, that is, the engineers and firemen, and a great many brakemen quit, and I believe some conductors quit. Q. Was it the engineers that had been discharged--the idle employés of the railroad here that first started this disturbance? A. It appears so, that is, some parts of them--not all. There were some men of their brotherhood implicated in these troubles from the first start-out, others did not appear to have much to say or do as far as we know. Q. What class of men, so far as you could judge, were engaged in the actual destruction of property, and burning of the bridge? A. I have knowledge of two of the party that I had caused the arrest of. One of them was a railroad man employed by the company, and the other man had nothing at all to do with the railroad company, so far as I knew; who used to boat on the canal, and perhaps he would be brought into their employ in that way. I believe he was a boatman. Q. Was this one employed by the railroad company at the time? A. He was one of the men that quit the employ of the company. Q. What in your judgment was the actual cause of the riot here? A. I do not believe we would have had a riot in Reading, if the troubles had not started in Pittsburgh. That is my opinion of it, and I would judge to the best of my knowledge, and from what I know, that the troubles originated in this city from the dispute between the P. and R. engineers and the company. That seemed to be at the bottom of it, because some of their men participated in private meetings, held in this city previous to the outbreak which we knew of. Q. And the news from the city of Pittsburgh from the outbreak there stimulated the movement? A. That stimulated the movement, or give it a start. That seemed to start them up, and made them quite lively on having some disturbance. Q. Do you know what the damage done to the railroad property was. What it was estimated at, including the bridge and the burning cars? A. I can't say exactly; but it may have been--it was in the neighborhood of anywheres between $150,000, it may have been more, or a little less, may have gone probably about that. The loss of the bridge was somewheres in the neighborhood of $100,000. I believe there was some ten or twelve freight cars burned, and some cabooses burned. There were telegraph poles cut down, tracks burned up, engines damaged to some extent, and soon. The actual amount, of course, I am unable to say; but I suppose somewheres in the neighborhood of $150,000, may be less and may be more. Q. I understood you to say that this bridge was on fire before you reached the place with your police? A. Yes, sir; the party, when they made this start to go to the Lebanon Valley road from the depot, after they had the engine stop there, &c, and committed their depredations, they started out on the tracks going right from us, and they commenced setting the cars on fire right straight along. There were a number of freight cars standing between the Fifth street bridge, where the first cars had burned, and the Lebanon Valley bridge, and they had them set on fire, and they appeared to keep on right straight ahead, until the whole thing was in flames. There did not appear to be any disturbance we know of, in all that movement. It seemed to be a concocted and well understood plan. Q. Was there any sympathy with the strikers manifested by any of your police force? A. Well, I can't say about that. To the best of my knowledge there was not. They did not express this in my presence. If there was, I have no knowledge of them expressing themselves as being in sympathy with the rioters, that I heard of. Q. Did you have any trouble in getting them to obey orders, or do anything you required of them to do to preserve the peace? A. No, sir; they did just as I told them, I had no trouble whatever. They were willing to just obey any order that was given in the performance of their duty. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know of any communication between the railroad employés of the city of Reading, and any of the railroad employés of the city of Pittsburgh during this strike? A. No, sir; I do not. I have no knowledge at all on that subject. Q. You said in your testimony, that had it not been for the troubles at Pittsburgh, you would not have had any trouble at Reading. Now I want to know how you know that? A. The reason I know that, is owing to telegrams being brought here to the city of Reading, and posted on bulletin boards. Q. To whom were those telegrams sent? A. The telegrams I have referred to, were sent to the _Eagle_ office, they were on the bulletin boards of the _Eagle_ office. Q. To the editor of the _Eagle_? A. I can't tell who they were sent to, but I saw them on the bulletin boards. Q. What was the import of those telegrams? A. Well, they were about the trouble there, and about firing--the trouble in Pittsburgh, in a general way, showing a great deal of trouble, and fighting, and riot going on there. Q. In short, those telegrams were to the effect that the rioters had possession of the railroad property at the city of Pittsburgh? A. I believe that was about the way it worded, or something like that. I cannot say positively the exact wording of the telegram. Q. I just want this for information? A. Certainly, I understand, I will answer all questions. Q. I just want to know this, that if there was an understanding--did you as an officer, in the absence of the mayor of the city of Reading, believe that there was an understanding between these rioters, in the city of Reading, and the city of Pittsburgh? A. There may have been, but I do not know it. I have no knowledge of that at all. As regards any understanding between the parties here, and the parties in Pittsburgh, I do not know. The only reference I had in regard to the trouble in Pittsburgh, is, as I stated, that I believed that had it not been for the trouble there, the probability is, we might not have had any here, because the news coming here, seemed to stimulate the matter. * * * * * George S. Goodhart, recalled: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether this is the testimony taken before you at the coroner's inquest held here in July last? [Indicating paper.] A. It is; yes, sir; I took it down. Q. You reduced it to writing yourself? A. I did, myself. Q. The witnesses here were all sworn? A. Sworn. Q. This is the testimony of John E. Wootten, as it was taken down by you? [Indicating.] A. Yes, sir; _verbatim_. The testimony of John E. Wootten, taken at the coroner's inquest, offered in evidence, and is as follows: * * * * * John E. Wootten, General Manager Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, _sworn_: I called at Sheriff Yorgey's office at about nine and a half o'clock on Monday morning, 23d July, and said to the sheriff that I had come to see him for the purpose of asking him to take some means for the protection of the property of the railroad company, and for the suppression of the mob then threatening to destroy not only the railroad company's property but that of the citizens of Reading. The sheriff said, "Well, what can I do?" I asked him if he had learned of the destruction of the Lebanon Valley bridge and of the burning of the company's cars. He said that he had. I replied that he should issue his proclamation, and call out a force for the suppression of violence and incendiarism. "Yes, I know that, but the men when called upon would not come." I then told him that in such an event I would engage to furnish him with a sufficient force to suppress the mob, and if he wished it, the force would be well armed. He replied "Yes, but the rioters also have arms?" I then said, "Do I understand you to say that nothing can be done by you to check the riotous and incendiary spirit that now threatens to destroy so much property, and for which damage the county is liable?" He replied by saying that he did not see that he could do anything. I said, "Suppose you advise with counsel in relation to the matter." He replied that he had had a talk with Judge Sassaman about it. I asked what he said. The sheriff replied that he did not know what course would be taken. I then left the office, and in the corridor I met Reverend B. R. Miller, who said that the existing condition of affairs at Reading required immediate action, and that he, for one, was ready for any call that might be made upon him to assist in the suppression of the mob. I replied that I was very glad to hear him say so, and told him that I had just called upon the sheriff, who was disinclined to act, and that I would make another appeal to the sheriff if he would accompany me to his office, which he did. I then told the sheriff that Mr. Miller had made a tender of his services for the suppression of disorder, and that I thought there would be no difficulty in getting as many more of our citizens as he might want. To which he replied that he didn't know yet what he would do in the matter, and after somewhat of a repetition of my previous conversation with him, in the presence of Mr. Miller, I left the sheriff's office and proceeded to the office of Chief of Police Cullen. Immediately after the interview with the sheriff I went to Philadelphia and conferred with President Gowen. At the time of my interview with the sheriff, so far as I knew, no one had any intimation that any troops were coming. The troops were sent at the order of General W. J. Bolton. After my arrival in Philadelphia, I telegraphed General Bolton that Reading was entirely without protection. Q. State whether this is the testimony of Reverend B. R. Miller, as taken down by you, at the time? [Indicating paper.] A. It is so. Testimony of Reverend B. R. Miller offered in evidence, and is as follows: * * * * * Reverend B. R. Miller, _posse comitatus_, said: My story is a short one. Coming from my home, on Monday morning, July 23, I saw an unsettled state of affairs at Seventh and Penn. Of course, I knew what had been going on the night before, and I stopped, and then passed on about my business. I saw Mr. Wootten enter the sheriff's office, and followed him, and I said, when he came out, "This is a great scare, and if the sheriff will give me arms and ammunition, I will raise fifty men, and quell the riot before night," and he said, "Come in, and we will see him." Mr. Wootten said to the sheriff, "Here is a volunteer, will raise men for you." The sheriff said, "I would rather not do anything about that," and wouldn't entertain the proposition at all, and Mr. Wootten turned around on his heels, perfectly disgusted, and left the office. This was between nine and ten o'clock in the morning. I didn't know the soldiers were coming until I met them on the platform. Don't know who ordered them through the cut. When I offered to raise men, I thought that was the time to work, but the sheriff wouldn't do anything. Q. State whether this is the testimony of Sheriff George R. Yorgey, as taken down by you? A. It is. Testimony of George R. Yorgey offered in evidence, and is as follows: * * * * * George R. Yorgey, _sworn_: I am the high sheriff of Berks county. Noticed no collision between the militia and citizens or disorderly persons on Monday night. Was in my office at the time, and remained in the office until eleven o'clock that night--Monday night. No officer of the militia, nor any person called upon me between those hours at my office to quell this riot. I had no notice, whatever, that any troops would arrive on that night. Was not aware that any troops were here until I heard the firing, and after they told me. I was never consulted in reference to the military at all. I never ordered them nor knew nothing about them being ordered. They never formed any part of my posse. Daniel Francis and the watchman of the court-house were with me in my office. I was waiting for orders which detained me until eleven o'clock. After the firing, I inquired to know the result and what had been done. Was told that the crowd had dispersed. I did not visit the scene of disaster. I was there once on Monday, saw the crowded condition of the streets, and witnessed the riotous proceedings. Saw this when I posted up my proclamations on the four corners. I should have been informed of the coming of the troops, but was not informed. I do not know whose business it was to tell me. I informed the railroad officials where they might find me if they wanted me to call out the _posse comitatus_. I telegraphed this to Mr. Gowen, Monday afternoon about four o'clock, shortly before I issued my proclamation, and I received no answer from Mr. Gowen. The militia came here without my knowledge, and I had nothing to do with them after they were here. In the forenoon things were middling quiet, and in the afternoon I had my proclamations struck off. I was not in the city on Sunday night, and came up from my Douglass township farm Monday morning at five o'clock. I heard the news Monday morning, and in the evening at five issued my proclamation. I did not think I should have issued my proclamation early on Monday morning instead of waiting until nearly night. In the forenoon of Monday, Mr. Wootten called on me and offered to furnish me with men. I did not issue my proclamation sooner because I could not get ready any sooner. * * * * * Peter Cullen, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State what the conduct of the militia under the command of General Reeder was during their stay in Reading, so far as you are able to judge. A. Well, the conduct of General Reeder and his troops was good, so far as I know. They behaved well, and obeyed the commands of the officers, I know. Immediately after the firing, he marched his command right in front of the Mansion house; and he asked me what was best to be done, or something to that effect, in a general way to inquire about things, and I told him that the Philadelphia and Reading Company seemed to be the property in danger, and I suggested to him that it would be a good idea to go to the new depot, and I furnished a guide to escort his command to the depot. It was then dark, probably half past eight o'clock in the evening, and a great many of the mob followed down. The streets were filled with people at that time, and, undoubtedly, there were a great many of the rioters there--I know there were--and he had his command formed here in front of the Mansion house, Fifth and Penn, and there were some of the men going to attack the soldiers with their sleeves rolled up, and some had brickbats in their hands. One man I had requested one officer to arrest, and he was locked up, and he was going to attack the soldiers of Reeder's command, but Reeder's command was all soldierly, and had a good line of battle when they formed in front of the Mansion house, after their fight in the cut; they seemed to have perfect discipline all throughout. Q. Were there any other troops here whose conduct was not as good as General Reeder's? A. The Sixteenth regiment was here. I saw some of the members of the Sixteenth regiment on the streets, walking about loosely, and one of the members I asked him where he was going to, and got into a conversation with him, and I saw he was away from his command, and I asked him why he did not stay with his command, and he told me, he was not going to fire on his fellow workmen--that he didn't come here to do that. He showed me his hand, and says he, "Do you see that I am a workingman myself? I am not going to fire on any workingman." Q. Who commanded the Sixteenth regiment? A. I can't say positively about that. I believe Colonel Good is commander, or was the commander. Q. Did you meet him, or have any conversation with him? A. I did not come in contact with any of the officers of the Sixteenth regiment then. Q. Knew nothing of his conduct but what was soldierly? A. Never heard anything but what was right on the part of the officers of the regiment; and, undoubtedly, a large portion of the Sixteenth regiment was right. And I had received positive information that members of the Sixteenth regiment had been dealing out ammunition amongst the rioters in the crowds on the street during the day time. Q. Of what day? A. That was on Tuesday, the 24th of July. Q. Did you have any conversation with more than one of the regiments? A. Yes; I spoke to several, as they were walking about, and they did not seem to care about being connected with the military at all. They were walking round independent--didn't seem to care whether they had any duty to perform as soldiers. I did not see very many of them. I saw, probably, five or six in that way; but I heard a number of reports in regard to their giving out ammunition. I have that from worthy sources. Q. Did you call the attention of the commanding officer to that fact? A. I had word sent to that effect to the officer at the depot, but whether it was communicated to him, I am unable to say. But I did send word out to the depot that some of the men had been in amongst the crowd of rioters dealing out ammunition. That made the worst feeling of all that occurred--the soldiers giving their ammunition away, and mingling around with the rioters, and being away from their command. I cannot tell whether they were away from their command with leave. I suppose, certainly, they ought not to have leave given in a crisis of this kind, and I judge they must have been absent without leave. Q. How long was the regiment here? A. The Sixteenth were here, I believe, about a day and a half, to the best of my knowledge. By Mr. Means: Q. I would like to know from whom you received the fire--or if you did receive any--at the cut at Penn street, I believe you call it? A. Seventh and Penn. Q. You received a volley of musketry, or pistol shots, or something there. Whom did you receive it from? A. From the military. I had a police force right on our tracks. Q. It was at Seventh and Penn, if I am rightly informed? A. Yes, sir. Q. That is a part I had already forgotten, but it came into my mind a while ago, that while you had that police force there, you received a volley fired by somebody there at that point. I would like to know who it was from? A. To the best of my knowledge, it was from the soldiers. Q. Of what command? A. General Reeder's command. The soldiers came down through the cut, and the first firing we heard, there were some parties said they are firing blank cartridges. The first firing I heard was pistol shots, that was the starting of the fire, but the crowd was very large on both sides of the cut, and the cut was pretty well filled with the rioters--with the mob, and the first I heard was pistol shots, and then I heard louder shots that seemed more like gun shots, and rifle shots. There were several of them, and immediately afterwards, there was a regular volley fired right down in the crowd. Q. Have you ever been in active service in the army? A. Yes; I have been three years and nine months. Q. And from what you know of being there, did you consider that this shooting was musketry, or was it pistol shots? A. It was musketry, it was rifle firing--there was pistol firing and rifle firing. The shots were sharp enough, that I knew they were minie balls. Q. Could you tell whether there was a volley or skirmishing? A. First, there were a few shots fired that went over our heads. Then a second volley was fired--a heavy volley, and just took a low range. Q. You were there at that time, if I am rightly informed, endeavoring to clear that track, and keep that cut open? A. Keep the crowd open, trying to disperse the crowd at that time. Q. That is the time you received the volley? A. That is the time we received the volley. The military did not see the police force, nor did the police force see the military. It was just dusk, and about that time the crowd was very large, and they came marching into the cut, and were at the corner of Seventh and Penn, right on the railroad tracks, and they got very close upon us before we knew it, owing to the large crowd. Q. If I understand you, the military fired on the party, not knowing who they were firing on? A. They were brick-batted and stoned, and pistol shots fired on the soldiers in the cut before they fired, and from the best information I have, and in that way I judge they did it in self-defense. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You don't think that they knew, or had any intention of firing on the police? A. No; I don't believe that. About the place where the military commenced firing was in the cut, between Court street and Washington street bridge, or about there, and the crowd or mob was all up along that place, from Walnut street, for two squares above in the street, and on the sidewalk, and all along the walls of the cut, and it appears the military came in through the cut, and when they got in they were attacked, and the pistol shots fired, and to the best of my knowledge the shots came from the wall of the cut, right above, over the soldiers' heads. Q. That is what I wanted to know--if you believed that the firing was done in self-defense? A. That is the way I looked at it. I looked at it in that light. They did it in self-defense, and the pistol shots seemed to come from the wall. That was pretty close--only half a square from the place where the firing took place. At this point the committee adjourned, to meet at the call of the chairman. * * * * * HARRISBURG, _May 2, 1878_. The committee met at half past seven o'clock, P.M. Mr. Lindsey in the chair. All members present. Colonel A. Wilson Norris, re-called: Q. Colonel, you may state briefly the facts and details in reference to your visit to General Brinton, on Saturday morning, of July 22? A. Well, I can only state the substance, probably, of what I stated before. When I discovered in the morning that General Brinton had escaped from the round-house, I believe the information was first brought by Captain Aull, of the Grays, and afterwards we ascertained through Captain Breck. There were no officers, I think, at the time, but Colonel Stewart and myself, and I volunteered to go to find--in fact, I was not an officer. I would like that stated. I volunteered to go and find General Brinton. I was moved to this action out of my regard for General Brinton, personally, and for his command, a great many of whom were my friends, and for public reasons, which I thought paramount to all. I thought it was very necessary to effect the junction with Colonel Guthrie and the other troops that were to join him, and I said to General Latta, that if he would procure me a carriage, I would endeavor to find him. At this time, or a little before, the order that is contained in the Adjutant General's report, and which closes, I believe, with an allusion to me, and with a suggestion to General Brinton to consult with me, was written and handed to Captain Aull, and at the same time was read to me, so that I could understand the purport of it. Captain Aull then left with the same purpose of reaching Brinton. When I volunteered to go, Colonel Stewart said he would accompany me, and rose off the bed where he was lying, and when the carriage came, we started and rode through the mob, which was chiefly on Liberty street--I believe it is called. We passed right up Liberty street, over the hose, and through the mob. There was no other way for us below them at that time, and after going a few squares we passed down to the street below. I do not know what the name of it is--I think Penn street; and we went in pursuit of General Stewart to the arsenal. By that time we had reached the skirts of the mob, and had gotten beyond it, we found numbers of men along the way, but no indications of any great crowd having been there. We then discovered Captain Aull, and he told us that General Brinton and his command had gone on before towards Sharpsburg, I believe, or in that direction. I do not remember distinctly where he said. We continued our pursuit of him; inquired here and there from little groups of men that were discovered along the way. Q. What was Captain Aull doing at the arsenal? A. Well, I don't know. He had his buggy there, and had evidently been making some inquiry, I suppose. I didn't know at the time what he was doing. Q. Did you leave him at the arsenal? A. Yes; left him near there. We drove on. Q. Was he driving when you left him? A. No, sir; I think when we saw him he was out of his buggy. His buggy was a short distance away from him--at least I thought it was his buggy. I don't know whether it was or not; I didn't ask him. Q. Proceed? A. We then followed General Brinton across the bridge, and inquired at the end of the bridge if anybody had followed him across the bridge. We thought perhaps the mob had pursued him. He stated that nobody crossed the bridge after him--the toll man. We followed through the town, where everything was peaceful, and there was no indications of any mob, and found General Brinton's command perhaps a half a mile beyond Sharpsburg. The carriage drove up, and I hallooed to some officer, I don't remember who he was, and he directed the command to be opened, and we drove through and I joined General Brinton. We got out of the carriage before he stopped his command, as my recollection is, and then I joined him and continued to walk with him. There were some of his officers around, of course. I couldn't swear positively as to whom were all there, and my first salutation to General Brinton was congratulating him upon his escape, and then made some remarks about where in the name of Heaven he was going, or something of the kind. He was going in the wrong direction, and then the conversation ensued about the order, in which I said that an order had been prepared, signed by Captain Aull. I may have said an officer. I may not have mentioned Captain Aull; but I think I did--pretty sure I did--because very likely when I knew he had gone with the order, and that he had it that, I did say so. General Brinton said that he couldn't take his command back in the condition they were in, and he wouldn't take his command back. He said perhaps if he had a positive order he might go, which implies at once--I don't think he will deny that--that he was pursuing the wrong direction. He then commenced to talk to me about his ammunition and provisions, and I suggested to him to levy mail on the country, to assess the provisions if his troops were in that condition. He said he wouldn't do that, he would have two hundred and fifty thousand people in the country down upon him. That I am positive he said. I then suggested that he should go back to Sharpsburg, saying that he could hold his position there. I didn't say this as an order, perhaps, but it was in our conversation. Of course, I had no right to give it as an order, and I did not. And he said he was not satisfied with the disposition of the people at Sharpsburg. That they were even worse there than they were at Pittsburgh. I thought that rather strange, because I had seen a train standing there, and people sitting in their yards, as we drove through. I am sure he said that. He said, further, that he had been fired on from that train--at least, I so understood it. It may have been from the cars in the city--I may have gotten the two mixed, so far as that is concerned. He said, too, that I told him where he first turned off to unite with Colonel Guthrie. And he said he had been followed by at least a thousand armed men to that point, and they had men over in the direction of Colonel Guthrie. I asked him whether I should go with his command, or go back. He said he would prefer that I would go back, and endeavor to get provisions and ammunition for him. Of course, there had been a running conversation about provisions and ammunition, and his men looked as though they needed it. The most of this conversation passed between us while we were walking along, and I am certain it couldn't have been heard by all of his officers, because Brinton and I went side by side--it could have been heard, a good deal of it. I have no doubt these gentlemen are perfectly honest in saying they didn't hear me say it. I am sure some of them know that what I have stated to-night they did hear. We then had a talk about whether I should stop there, or whether I should go back. And he said he would go on a short distance, and remain there--I think he said about a mile, on a hill. I forgot to say that when I first met him, in speaking about his designs in leaving the city, he said he wanted to get the river between him and the mob, and to reach the hills and entrench; and that was his object in going across the river, so that he could feed his troops and revive them. When I closed the conversation with him, he said then he would go a short distance beyond--and I think he said half a mile--and remain there. That he didn't remain, I only know, of course, from hearsay--that he was not there. Q. Did you see Captain Aull when he started with the order? A. Did I see him when he started? Q. Yes? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long did he go prior to your starting? A. Possibly half an hour, probably more--may have been more. I couldn't swear to that positively. He started before I did. When Captain Aull started, I suppose he went out with his buggy, and we, in the meantime, had to get a carriage. It simply was an effort to duplicate the attempt to reach Brinton, and I volunteered to go, as I said, simply for that reason. I had no other object in the world. Q. You saw the order handed to him by General Latta, did you? A. Yes; I did. Q. Did you read the order? A. The order was read to me, sir. The order, as you observe, contained a suggestion to General Brinton to consult with him in regard to the situation in Pittsburgh. Of course, we had a running general conversation about what had happened in Pittsburgh. The general asked him about the hotel--whether it had been burned, and, when I left, he handed me, and several of the officers handed me, their checks, which were afterwards delivered, I believe, by one of the officers of the staff or one of the gentlemen, over to Major Baugh. Q. When you overtook Captain Aull, at the arsenal, did you have any conversation with him, as to where he was going then? A. No; I didn't. Q. Had you then learned where Brinton's troops were? A. Nothing positive, sir. I don't know whether Captain Aull knew positively. He just, I supposed, had ascertained in some way from inquiries made along the road. Q. When you reached General Brinton, you say you indicated to him the fact that Captain Aull had delivered an order, or an officer had delivered an order? A. An officer had an order to effect this junction. Q. You are not certain whether you named Captain Aull or you named an officer? A. I am not positive about it, but I feel very sure that I did, because of the fact that Captain Aull had the order that had been read to me, and that he had started in advance of me, and all that, and it strikes me that I would say so. I cannot see why I should not. Of course I may not have done it. Q. Did you communicate to him the fact of having seen Captain Aull at the arsenal? A. I don't know that I did, sir. Q. Or that you left an officer at the arsenal? A. I don't know that I did that. I may have done so, without having any recollection of it. Q. Was any other person with you in the carriage, except Mr. Stewart? A. No, sir; nobody accompanied us except the driver. It was an ordinary cab, and the driver was on the outside. Q. When you reached General Brinton's force, did the driver drive you to General Brinton? A. I think not all the way. I think I got out before we reached him. I may not have done so. I wouldn't be sure about that, but am pretty sure we got out before we reached General Brinton and joined him, walking up to him. Q. When you left the carriage, did Stewart leave the carriage with you? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he accompany you to General Brinton? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did General Brinton stop himself? A. He didn't stop. My recollection is that the general didn't stop his command until his surgeon came up and asked him to stop, to take a ball from the shoulder of one of the men. Then they stopped, and the place where we stopped was along a small ravine, where several of the officers and ourselves sat down. Q. Then you walked beside him for some little distance before he stopped? A. Yes; I think I must have walked three fourths of a mile or a mile. I say that, from the fact that we had to go back to find our carriage, and our carriage stopped about the place we left it, and I think it was fully three quarters of a mile or a mile before we joined it. I know we became a good deal alarmed about it, and were afraid that we had lost him, and it was during our walk back we met I think Dr. Mears. Q. Did you and General Brinton walk side by side? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where was Stewart during that time? A. Stewart was walking by my side, and perhaps on the other side of General Brinton a portion of the time. I am pretty positive he was present during nearly everything that was said. Q. Were there any officers walking with General Brinton when you overtook him? A. Yes; I think there were. Q. Did they continue to walk along? A. Well, I think probably they did--some of them. Q. Did you know the officers? A. I remember General Loud being there. I remember Colonel Wilson being there; but whether they were around when everything was said I didn't know. I remember seeing Mr. Pettit. I remember seeing Dale Benson, but not with them. I think I met him on my way back. I know I shook hands with him. Q. Do you remember of seeing Surgeon Mears? A. I recollect about Surgeon Mears directly. I recollect him bringing up some bread, after we had left the command on our way back--that is, the person I took for Surgeon Mears. I have met him since, but I don't think I knew him then. Q. After you had walked some distance, General Brinton halted, I understand you to say? A. Yes, sir. Q. How long did you remain standing there in conversation? A. Well, I don't suppose we had a ten minutes' conversation there. Q. Did you remain standing all the time? A. No, sir; I think we sat down, or sort of lolled on a bank or something of the kind. I don't think we stood, because we were all pretty tired. I know I was dreadful tired. That was the chief cause of my alarm when we went back to find the carriage, because I was satisfied I could never reach Pittsburgh. I had been up for two nights, and was worn out. The ride was a dreadful one. Q. In communicating to him that an officer had been sent out with an order, you communicated to him the substance of the order you saw? A. Yes; it was as I explained to him. I didn't say it in those words, probably, simply the substance of those orders, and they were to effect a junction with Guthrie. The whole object was to have the troops concentrated, and it was with that purpose that I went out. There was no earthly purpose for me to go and find General Brinton, other than that. Q. In communicating that to him, did you tell him that General Latta had requested you to communicate the order to him? A. Yes; I think I did. Q. Did you tell him you had been sent for that purpose? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he make any reply? A. Yes; he said what I have said, that if he got a positive order, he would take his command back. I can say, too, without any reservation, that there was no reason under heaven why General Brinton should not have stopped with his command at Sharpsburg. There was not a symptom of the riot within two miles, after we left the skirts of it, at the arsenal. We rode on, and, of course, we met groups of men, but there were none of them that numbered thirty, and he was followed up by nobody from Sharpsburg but a small collection of boys, that were in the rear of his column, more out of curiosity than anything else, and that was the reason I suggested his taking up the position there, because I knew, and I said to him, we could have access to him there very easily, because the trains were then running, and I had seen a train standing there, and it moved off as we passed toward Allegheny, and my idea was, that if he wanted provisions and ammunition we could more easily get it there for him than at any other point, and I said that he could protect that bridge against any force. Any one who knows the bridge would be aware of that. It is an open bridge, and those two guns would have protected it against any force coming in that direction. Q. Did you meet any officer of General Brinton's command on your return to Pittsburgh? A. That had been with him? Q. Any one that had remained in the city during the night? A. Major Baugh. Q. Where did you meet Major Baugh? A. I saw Major Baugh at the Monongahela house. Q. What time? A. That night, sir. Q. Did you meet him when you were returning to Pittsburgh anywheres about the arsenal, or on the way going to General Brinton's command? A. I don't think I did. I met one officer, and I thought he was Doctor Mears--he had the bread in a bucket--and I don't think we met anybody else, because I cannot remember this circumstance, and if we had met them, I would have recollected it. We were followed, just after the doctor accosted us, by a man on horseback, who endeavored to have us intercepted three or four times--came up to the carriage--and when we got into Pittsburgh, evidently tried to have us intercepted by the mob, and we drove through the alleys to escape him, and we were more concerned about that than anything else at that time, and I think if we would have met anybody, it would have impressed itself upon my mind, and I don't recollect meeting anybody after we crossed the bridge. That I am quite sure. We didn't discover this man until we got across the bridge, and we discovered it by his coming up, and making inquiries, and making some remarks. Q. After you crossed the bridge, you don't remember of meeting Major Baugh? A. I don't, sir. Q. Who made the inquiries of you? A. Major Baugh? Q. Yes, sir? A. I don't have the slightest recollection of that. I think the one officer we took for Surgeon Mears. I think he was pretty nearly where this man accosted us. Q. When Major Baugh came to the hotel in the evening, did you learn the object of his mission? A. What--to General Latta? Q. Yes? A. No, sir; I couldn't say that I did. Q. Did you hear any conversation between him and General Latta? A. I may have heard it without having any recollection of it. Q. Do you know whether General Latta gave him any orders or not? A. I really don't know that, sir. Q. That is all, unless you desire to state something further. A. I have nothing to say, sir, I believe, except what I have said. I simply would ask these gentlemen to be called who heard me, because when I went back I made a statement which, in substance, is what I said here, and I may have said it a little different, but substantially the same, to Colonel Guthrie; and Captain Aull is here himself, and he knows that I was present when the order was given, and Colonel Stewart was present with me all the time, and I simply would like to have them called for that reason, to show that my two statements are consistent. * * * * * Colonel P. N. Guthrie, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You may state what Colonel Norris stated to you on his return from General Brinton's command, in relation to his conversation with General Brinton? A. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would like to start out a little further back than that, because Major Norris stated nothing to me of his own will, only at my request. I would like to state here that when Captain Aull left my regiment to enter the town, he was sent by me with instructions to General Latta, to this effect: that I didn't believe, at that hour, it was possible for the troops from Walls station to reach me; and that it was useless for me to remain at the stock-yards; and to report fully to General Latta the condition in which my regiment was placed; that we were doing nothing, and of no particular service to the railroad or to the public peace, and neither the railroad, at that hour, was threatened, nor the public peace. Captain Aull having gone in and witnessed the departure of General Brinton from the round-house, and conveyed that information to General Latta, receiving an order from General Latta, to be conveyed to General Brinton, one copy of which was to be conveyed to me, and reaching me at an hour of the day--I do not remember what--with the information that he had not reached General Brinton, I deemed it of the greatest importance that I should know, of my own knowledge, what was the intention of the Adjutant General, and what was the condition of the forces. I waited at the stock-yards until I was satisfied by the actual appearance of the troops from Walls station, and from knowledge that I had received by sending one of the men from my regiment out in search of General Brinton, that there was no possibility of that junction. I then came into town fully impressed with the necessity that there should be some understanding between General Brinton's troops and mine, which was the only regiment left in Allegheny county, or in the vicinity of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, after General Brinton had crossed the river at Sharpsburg. I came in there to ascertain information from General Latta. I met Colonel Norris, and I asked him the question. At first he gave me no particular information. Afterwards, when I asked him again, he told me that he and Major Stewart had gone out in search of General Brinton, and had reached him at a point, I understood, across the Sharpsburg bridge. That he had represented to General Brinton that an order had been issued by General Latta, which was an order to him, General Brinton, through Captain Aull, instructing General Brinton to form a junction with me. When that junction was formed, General Brinton was to judge himself of the circumstances, and govern himself accordingly. It was my belief, that if that junction had been formed, the troops could have come into Pittsburgh, and reached the vicinity of that disturbance in time to have saved property. I asked Major Norris, particularly, if he had seen General Brinton and had conversed with him. He said he had. I asked him what the reply was, and he said that General Brinton was not able to come in. I asked him again what General Brinton's reply was. He shrugged up his shoulders, and still did not give me the verbal reply of General Brinton. Sometime afterward, in conversation with Colonel Norris, he told me that General Brinton had refused to form that junction with him, that is, to return from the position that he was then in. There is no "ifs" and "ands" in the matter, in my mind. My impression is distinct and clear that Colonel Norris told me he had met General Brinton and he had had that conversation with General Brinton. He had urged upon General Brinton that he would comply with what were the instructions of this order, though General Brinton had not received it. That General Brinton had refused to comply with that order. I would further state to the committee here, that a copy of that order that was intended for General Brinton reached him on Sunday. I brought it back into the city on Sunday afternoon to General Latta, and I delivered it myself, personally, to General Brinton, at his head-quarters at the hospital, in Pittsburgh, after the return to Pittsburgh. Q. What day? A. Well, nearly a week--just a week. I gave it personally to General Brinton. Q. The 31st of July, was it not? A. I guess so. It was after General Brinton had gone back to the junction and then returned to Pittsburgh with the Governor. General Brinton told me at that time, that that was the first information he had of that order. Q. The copy was delivered to you by Captain Aull, was it, colonel? A. Captain Aull failed to reach General Brinton, for reasons which I will let Captain Aull state to you himself. Q. I do not quite understand your statement, whether it was the original or a copy that was delivered? A. The original order. There was one copy of that order, the original order is probably on file in the head-quarters. Copies of the order were given to Captain Aull, one for General Brinton and one for myself. Q. You brought it into the city and kept it in your possession all the time, until you delivered it to General Brinton? A. I kept it in my possession until I delivered it, personally, to General Brinton, at the hospital grounds, after the return to the city. Q. Do you know whether General Latta was notified that General Brinton had not received the order? A. I cannot say. I do not remember whether I stated that fact to General Latta or not. I do not believe I did. I went into town fully impressed that General Brinton would not join me, and that some other arrangement of troops must be made, and I do not know whether I stated to General Latta that General Brinton would not join me, and that he must make some other arrangement, or whether I stated to him that Captain Aull had been unable to reach General Brinton. At all events, the original order General Brinton never received until the 31st, I believe it was. * * * * * Captain W. F. Aull, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Just state, if you please, what your conversation was with Colonel Norris, and why you did not reach General Brinton with the order given to you by General Latta Sunday morning, the 22d July? A. Colonel Guthrie has stated that he sent me in for a personal conversation with General Latta, and I just state here that in passing Twenty-sixth street, I think it was, that as I approached Twenty-sixth street, I saw the people massed around the corners of the building, looking round up the street, as if something was going on, and I asked two or three parties what it was, and they said the troops were out. I drove across. They undertook to stop me, saying I had better look out, or I would get shot, that they had the Gatling guns up there, and they would shoot down street. I drove across the street and saw no indications of anybody shooting. I drove on and went around the square from there, where I could see the troops more closely, and they passed on out Penn street. I waited until I saw they had the Gatling guns along with them, and I drove then, as rapidly as possible, to the Union depot. I was not aware that General Latta had not yet received the information of their leaving the round-house, until I went in, and, I think General Latta will remember, I was a little slow to tell him, from the fact that I supposed he knew about it, and when I told him they had got out of the round-house, and after getting out upon the street with their Gatling guns, he jumped up and appeared very much pleased, said, "Thank God they are out." I knew then that that was the first information he had received. He then turned to some officers present, and they commenced to congratulate each other that they had got out, and he told me to take a seat and remain. I sat down. A few moments afterwards, a party that I didn't know at the time, but who afterwards turned out to be a man by the name Surgeon Wilson, who had been acting the part of a spy for General Latta, reported that they were out of the round-house, and, I think, reported that they were going to the arsenal. A few moments afterwards another party came in, and reported that they had gone to the arsenal, and were now quartered in the arsenal. That I am positive of. I heard that--that they were quartered in the arsenal. That appeared to afford a great deal of relief to the officers present, and General Latta immediately began to dictate an order to his clerk, Mr. Russell, I believe. I waited until he had written the order, and he either wrote out a duplicate or wrote out two orders, I don't remember which. I am not clear as to whether they were two different orders or duplicate orders. At any rate he gave me an order; but before he gave it to me he had a long talk with Colonel Norris, took him into a private room, or talked with him first. He then read the order in my presence, that he afterwards handed to me, giving Colonel Norris instructions to reach General Brinton. My instructions were to return to my regiment, and that General Brinton being quartered in the arsenal, I should take the order, which I received, to deliver it to him there, then deliver the other order to Colonel Guthrie. When I reached the arsenal, I found the troops were not quartered there, and I went to two or three different parties at the arsenal for fear that they were trying to deceive me, that probably they were in the arsenal. I walked round the fence, and looked in wherever I could see, wherever I had the opportunity to see in, to convince myself positively that they were not there, before I would go any further; but finally, I being convinced that they had gone out Butler street, as the sentinel informed me, I started back to my buggy, and just as I was approaching the street that crosses Butler street at right angles, Colonel Stewart and Major Norris came driving across the street, and I hailed them, and told Colonel Norris that they had gone on out Butler street, that I had information enough to convince me of that, and immediately turned round and started on, without asking for any further information. He drove on out Butler street. I got into my buggy and started after them. I drove on as far as Sharpsburg bridge, and made numerous inquiries of parties along the street how far they were ahead of me, and what the prospects would be of overtaking them. When I reached Sharpsburg bridge I was told they must be at least two miles ahead of me, and they had struck out into the country, towards Butler county. I supposed I stood or sat in the buggy for fully two or three minutes, meditating whether I would follow or take the other order to Colonel Guthrie first. I concluded, at last, that I would first take the order to Colonel Guthrie. I had two orders to deliver, and I concluded I would take the order to Colonel Guthrie, and if he advised me to, to strike across the country, and reach General Brinton with the other order. I drove straight to East Liberty, and reported to Colonel Guthrie what I had seen, and handed him the order that I had been authorized to deliver to him. I also stated to him that I had an order for General Brinton, and stated the circumstances under which I had not delivered it. I asked him the question if I should strike across the country from there, right directly across the river, the direction I knew they were in, or whether I would remain where I was. He replied, "Give me that order and I will go to the city and see General Latta myself," and I handed him the order and I never saw it afterwards. Colonel Guthrie then left the regiment and went to the city, as he has stated. Q. When did you see Colonel Norris next after leaving him at the arsenal? A. I am not exactly clear on that. I think I saw him Friday. I saw him at the Duquesne club-rooms. Q. Well, did you see him within a week? A. No, sir; it was some time afterwards before I saw him again. * * * * * Norman M. Smith re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You may state the facts in relation to the conversation that occurred between General Brinton and Colonel Norris, or what you know in relation to it? A. Mr. Chairman, the only evidence I can give is corroborative. I met Colonel Norris immediately after his return from his trip to General Brinton's command. Met him in front of the Union Depot Hotel, immediately after he got out of his carriage, I think. He stated to me that he had carried the orders to General Brinton. That Colonel Norris has already said to you, that he carried, and also said that General Brinton had refused to obey them, and return to Pittsburgh. Q. What time was it you met him? A. Well, it is pretty hard for me to give the hour exactly. I had been up for three or four days and nights. I think, though, it was between nine and ten o'clock. I will not be positive about that. It might have been earlier, and it might have been later. I think, though, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning. Q. Did he state exactly where he found him? A. He said he had followed him beyond Sharpsburg, and dismounted from his carriage, and had marched on foot with him for some distance. Had communicated the order that he has stated. Had conversed with him for some time, and that General Brinton had refused to return to Pittsburgh. Q. Did he say anything about his refusal to join Colonel Guthrie? A. While I said return to Pittsburgh I meant to join Colonel Guthrie--that was implied. That after they joined, that is, it was in our minds, after they had united their commands, that they were to return to Pittsburgh; but when I said refused to return to Pittsburgh, I meant refused to join Colonel Guthrie, or rather to execute the order that Colonel Norris had to carry. Q. Did he say anything about the condition of General Brinton's troops? A. Perhaps he may have mentioned it in a general way, but 1 do not recollect that he specified it particularly. Q. That was not spoken of? A. I think not. At least that did not impress itself on my mind, if it was mentioned. Q. Anything said about getting provisions to them? A. Well, there probably was, but I am not prepared to say what it was--that was a matter that was paramount in all our minds, the matter of provisions for the troops had been concerning me, particularly, from the evening before, and continued to concern me until the next evening, until I secured some provisions and got them to the troops. Q. Is that all that you know in relation to what occurred between Colonel Norris and General Brinton? A. That is all, I believe, sir. Colonel Norris: I would like to say, when I got back to the hotel, Mr. Cassatt was there, and I believe Mr. Bennett, of Allegheny, and we had a conversation then about supplying General Brinton's command with provisions and ammunition, and an arrangement was there made, I myself giving the directions where he was to convey the provisions to him, and that provisions did ultimately reach him. That conversation was heard, I believe, by Colonel Hassinger. Colonel Smith: If I may be permitted--I was speaking of the time I met Colonel Norris. I was present at that conversation, at the Monongahela house, and can verify what the colonel said at that time. * * * * * Colonel D. L. Hassinger, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You understand, I believe, the subject of evidence to-night. Will you go on and state what knowledge you have on the subject? A. I was at the Monongahela house when Colonel Norris and Major Stewart returned, and I heard just about--he reported that he had caught up with General Brinton on his way out beyond Sharpsburg bridge, that he got out of the carriage and walked along, and had the conversation, and spoke about the order which had been sent to him through Captain Aull, and he said he gave him the substance of the order, and General Brinton had refused to obey him. Q. Can you give the language of Colonel Norris--the exact words that Colonel Norris used? A. Well, I don't know that I can, exactly. I do not recollect that part of it. Q. You don't pretend now, in our statement, to give the language? A. No. I have not heard any of the evidence at all that was before the committee, except sitting here for a few minutes. Q. You are a member of the National Guard? A. Yes, sir. Q. What regiment? A. Assistant Adjutant General of the State. Q. Had you been at Pittsburgh during the riot--the entire progress of it? A. Yes, sir. Q. Were you with General Latta? A. I was with him most of the time that he was there. On that morning I had started out when I heard that the troops were out of the round-house. I went out as far as the arsenal, and when I got there I found that they had gone in another direction. I was afoot, and, I think, returned to the hotel. Q. You were at the hotel when the colonel arrived? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know whether Colonel Norris communicated that fact to General Latta that you have just related? A. Yes; he did. General Latta was in the room at the time. Q. In your presence? A. Yes, sir. Q. That is all you know in relation to the conversation that occurred between them, is it? A. That is about all, sir; yes, sir. * * * * * General James W. Latta re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I would like you to state, general, just what Colonel Norris stated to you on his return from General Brinton's command? A. I did detail that, sir, about as fully as I recollect it, describing the room and situation and surroundings. I will go over it again if you desire. Q. I want to ask you one other question. Did you learn on Sunday that Captain Aull had not reached General Brinton with that order? A. I did not find it out, sir, until nearly a week afterwards. Q. When Major Baugh came to the hotel on Sunday, was anything said to him by you about whether Captain Aull had reached the command or not? A. No, sir. Q. And he did not communicate anything of the kind to you? A. No, sir. Q. When you gave the order to Major Baugh, you had no knowledge whatever of whether Captain Aull had reached General Brinton with the first order or not? A. I had not, sir. I supposed he had. I took that for granted. Captain Aull: Will General Latta add that he gave me no instructions to report back? The witness: I did say that in my report. * * * * * Major General R. M. Brinton re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I wish you to state, general, whether at any time during your stay in Pittsburgh any attempt was made by any of the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to control your movements, or the movements of your troops in any way? A. No, sir; there was no attempts made by any officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, to my knowledge, to dictate or interfere in the slightest with the movements of the troops. I remember at one time, just after the firing occurred at Twenty-eight street, that General Pearson was in Mr. Pitcairn's office, and Mr. Cassatt was there, one of the vice presidents of the Pennsylvania railroad, and I asked permission of General Pearson to clear the streets, and to follow the crowd to the arsenal, and he, more in his manner than anything else, appealed to Mr. Cassatt, and Mr. Cassatt said I have nothing to do with the movements of the troops, I know nothing about that whatever. I can say that at no time did they attempt, to my knowledge, to interfere in any way with the movements of the troops. Q. Will you state from whom, or by whom, the provisions were delivered to your troops, on the hill beyond Sharpsburg? A. After our arrival in Pittsburgh, or previous to our arrival, I telegraphed to Pittsburgh for provisions, to General Pearson, and he procured them from the Union depot, that is, a sandwich and a cup of coffee. After that, we were in the round-house, and I made repeated appeals---- Q. I speak of the provisions that were brought after you went beyond Sharpsburg, on the hill, when you were encamped there--from whom you received, the provisions, that is, who delivered them to you? A. I had a note from Mr. Cassatt, about, I should think, ten or eleven o'clock that night, that is, Sunday night, saying that he had procured for us a lot of hams and provisions, &c, and had sent them out. I thought, at the time, that Mr. Cassatt had left Pittsburgh, but I found that he had not, and he had also sent two parties from Sharpsburg, merchants there, who said that they had an order from Mr. Cassatt to give us whatever they had in their stores, and they gave me an inventory of it, and said it was at my disposal, and that Mr. Cassatt had given them orders, and that he would be responsible for it, and I might say the only provisions I did receive from the time we went to Pittsburgh, until we arrived at Blairsville, came through his energies. Q. Who delivered the line from Mr. Cassatt to you? A. My impression was, or is, it was Mr. Smith--Colonel Smith, I think--who brought it there that night. There is one point I should like to correct. I won't detail any of the conversation, further than to allude to my evidence, which I gave before. You have, with Colonel Norris, stated that I wanted to cross the river and intrench. That I did not say, and, moreover, it would have been impossible, because I had not any means of intrenching--no tools, or anything of the kind. He said he saw no crowd, at all, following to Sharpsburg, and that we should have remained there, in his idea. I merely refer to a dispatch which General Latta sent to the Governor at that time, and which he must have received information either from Captain Aull or Colonel Norris, as it was sent by telegram. It was directed to Governor Hartranft, dated July 22, p. 36, in which he says, among other things: "The first division, after stiff fighting for about fourteen hours, have retired to a point near Sharpsburg, pursued vigorously by a mob, to the high bridge at that point, under a hot fire pretty nearly all the way, but they effectually checked the attack." Colonel Norris returned, he said that there was no mob following us whatever. Q. Go on, general? A. In regard to our not stopping in Sharpsburg, and that ammunition, &c, could reach us, I want to state that we went on a point of the railroad below Sharpsburg, where we could procure provisions, and where we were in direct communication by rail with Pittsburgh, the same railroad which runs through Sharpsburg, and therefore we lost nothing by not stopping in Sharpsburg. In regard to receiving the provisions which Colonel Norris promised us if we would remain there, the provisions never came, except by the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The evidence which Colonel Norris has given in regard to the situation we were in, &c., of course is entirely different from what I have already stated, and from what the officers who were immediately surrounding us when he joined us said. They being on the spot, it was not hearsay evidence on their part, but it was what they actually heard, and they have sworn that they were sufficiently near to hear every word that was passed at the time, but if it is necessary, I can produce those officers to corroborate it. Q. We have had that. Colonel Norris: I wish to ask Colonel Smith, whether the provisions were not sent in pursuance of the arrangements made after my conversation with Mr. Cassatt and Mr. Bennett? By Mr. Lindsey: You may state that, Colonel Smith. Colonel Smith: As has already been stated, Mr. Cassatt and Mr. Bennett, and others, had a consultation at the Monongahela house, about noon of Sunday. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Cassatt left the hotel together, Mr. Cassatt, at least, and I think Mr. Bennett with him, went to Allegheny, to arrange with bakers, and other people there, to prepare sandwiches and other provisions to send out. I left the Monongahela house about three o'clock, and had this understanding with Mr. Cassatt, who was to take the road on the north side of the river, with the wagons of provisions. I was to move up on the south side, as stated in my examination in chief. I proceeded by certain routes across the Allegheny river, and at Aetna, I met Mr. Campbell Herron, and I stated the necessities of the troops, and asked him whether he could assist me in procuring provisions for them. I had in mind the conversation and action taken place at the Monongahela house, between Mr. Cassatt and others. Mr. Herron said that the store belonging to their furnace, their property, had some provisions in it, and he sent for his manager, Mr. Chalfant, and with him I arranged to load up whatever provisions they had, as soon as it became dark, and that they should be sent on to the camp of General Brinton's command. My arrangement with Cassatt, was to wait at General Brinton's camp until I heard from him--either saw him or heard from him. After that, I was to proceed to execute the orders I carried from General Latta, which has already been stated here to the committee. I waited there until about ten o'clock, when a man by the name of Bradley, a livery stable keeper--he had charge of hauling the provisions out there--came into camp, and reported two wagon loads within a short distance, and in the meantime, Mr. Chalfant had reported there, that a wagon containing hams, and some other provisions, which we turned over to the commissary of General Brinton's command. I believe there is no question about that, but all these arrangements were made in pursuance of the understanding arrived at between Mr. Cassatt, and Mr. Bennett and others, at the instigation of Colonel Norris, after his return from visiting General Brinton's command in the morning. At this point the committee adjourned, to meet at the call of the chairman. * * * * * Explanatory Note by the Reporter of the Committee. Owing to an urgent desire on the part of the committee to have the testimony--taken in shorthand--transcribed and printed as rapidly as possible after the order to print was made by the Legislature, a number of men were put to work on it, each man taking a portion, irrespective of dates. As fast as transcribed, these portions were printed. This will explain the mingling of dates. Furthermore and unfortunately, in the hurry and confusion of such quick work, some of the copy was mislaid or lost before reaching the printer's hands, necessitating a re-dictation by myself from the original notes. This will explain the consequent delay. SAM'L B. COLLINS, _Official Reporter of Legislature_. PHILADELPHIA, September 30, 1878. * * * * * F. B. Gowen, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence and official connection with the Reading Railroad Company? A. I reside at Mount Airey, in the city of Philadelphia, and am president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, and have been so since the spring of 1869. Q. We wish you to state now whether there was any difficulty on the Reading railroad during the riots last July; and if so, give us the circumstances? A. There was a difficulty at Reading, on the line of the Reading railroad. We did not originate that, nor was it participated in by any one then in the employ of the company, so far as we have been able to ascertain. In other words the riotous attacks on property at Reading, which culminated in the burning of a large bridge over the Schuylkill river, in the city of Reading, were not the acts of any one of the then employés of the company, nor, so far as we have been able to learn, was there any single man then in the employ of the company absent from his post at that time, nor was there then any strike of any kind whatever among any of the then employés of the company. Q. Did the road continue to run during the troubles? A. The road was stopped for one day--absolutely for a little over twenty-four hours--the main line of the road was stopped--all the branches were running. The main line was stopped at Reading, by the tearing up of the track, and also the Lebanon Valley railroad was stopped for a long time, in consequence of the burning of the bridge, which took place on the night of the day on which the disturbance occurred elsewhere in Reading. Q. Was this destruction of property caused by former employés of the road? A. Almost entirely. It was caused by a mob that was composed principally, I believe, of former employés of the company, or led by them--organized by them--and, of course, participated in, or witnessed by a great crowd of people, many of whom may not have been at all active participants, but merely spectators. Q. State whether you had reason to believe there would be any difficulty; and if so, what steps you took to prevent it? A. Early in the spring of the year, as early as March, at least, we had reason to believe that the society called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was arranging to make some kind of an attack upon the company, somewhat similar to that one which occurred on the Boston and Maine railroad and the Central railroad of New Jersey, and we had also reason to believe that there was then being organized throughout the country, somewhat under the shadow of, or in some way connected with the Locomotive Brotherhood, another society, which was to embrace all the trainmen employed upon the railroads generally, and we thought that the proper way to prevent such action having a disastrous effect upon our company and its property would be to state to those who belonged to this society that they could no longer remain in our employ; and upon a demand being made upon us by a committee of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers for an advance in wages of twenty per cent., which we believed to be the preliminary step for testing the question of power, we notified all the engineers and firemen, who belonged to the Brotherhood of Engineers, that they could not remain in the service of the company and be members of that organization at the same time; but, as we understood, that that organization had a beneficial fund from which the members derived some benefit, we proposed to give them a fund of the same kind to which the company also would be a contributor, as well as themselves, so that no man, in leaving that Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, would lose the money value of his membership. When we issued this circular, between three and four hundred men, principally engineers and firemen, and a few others who left in sympathy with them, left the service of the company. That was in the month of April. That has been spoken of as a strike, but it was no strike, because these people who joined it knew that they could not remain in the service of the company, and it was different from a strike where persons simply stop work for the purpose of enforcing a demand for higher wages. A great number of those persons who left the service of the company in April, still, I think, remained under the impression that they could force the company to take them back, and they organized themselves more closely at Reading, and had a series of meetings at which they took in a great many others that didn't belong to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. They had regular meetings in some hall there, and maintained a position or attitude of hostility to the company. Their object being to embarrass the company in the transaction of its business, so that the company would be forced to take them back; but as the company didn't take them back, as they desired, from day to day, and week to week, and month to month, they became very sore on the subject, and I believe that the riot at Reading--indeed, although I can only speak from hearsay evidence; but as I took part as a lawyer in the cases that grew out of it, I derived a great deal of information as to the reason of it. I believe that when the news came to Reading of the general outbreak upon the Baltimore and Ohio railroad at Martinsburg, a number of those former employés of the company assembled at a hall in one of their meetings, and determined that they would have to do something of the kind, such as the burning down of the bridge and the tearing up of the track, and, resulting from that, this attack was made upon the company, which I believe was confined entirely to such employés as had left the service of the company, and among them such followers or sympathizers as could be got into a crowd on such an occasion; but I believe that none of the employés of the company had anything to do with it, or took any part in it. Q. Prior to the breaking out of the riot, had you filled the places of all those men who had left your services? A. Yes; their places were filled within two or three or four days of the time. Indeed, there was no interruption in the business of the road resulting from those engineers leaving us in the month of April, except that we stopped the movement of the coal trade one day so that all the engineers who remained in our service connected with the coal trade might be on hand in case we didn't have enough new ones, so that all the trains we call schedule trains, that is passenger trains and freight trains, might be moved promptly. The whole thing was over in two or three days. The places of those who left were immediately supplied. We promoted a great many firemen competent to take the places of the engineers. I am sure that within a week or ten days after they commenced to leave, there was no longer any vacancy in our service not filled. Q. Was there any difficulty in finding men? A. None whatever. It was rather remarkable we had them so quickly, so rapidly. Of course, anticipating this disturbance, we were quietly on the lookout for men. Q. Were the new men you employed experienced engineers? A. Yes; and it was more remarkable still. Our business is a peculiar one. It is very much more difficult for an engineer from another road to take hold of a heavy coal train on a down grade, than to handle a passenger or a common freight train on an ordinary grade. But there were very few accidents. There were a few such as might result from the inexperience of men unaccustomed to that kind of business; but they were remarkably few. Of course we had to be very vigilant. The company went to some expense in order to guard against accident. Q. Were any of those new men you got men who had been discharged from other roads? A. I cannot answer that question positively, for the reason that I don't know it; but I should judge from the habit or custom of the company in that respect, that no new man was taken into the service of the company who didn't bring a certificate of good character. I am sure no one would have been taken that was discharged from any cause that affected his ability or knowledge as an engineer. Q. Then I understand you to say that you had no difficulty in securing plenty of engineers? A. None whatever. You will understand, of course, that while quite a number of firemen left our service, a great many other firemen in our service were competent to take an engine, and a number of those were promoted. Q. Have you any knowledge of the number of new men employed? A. I think the entire number of engineers and firemen could not have been more than about from three hundred to three hundred and fifty--probably not so many. I think about three hundred or three hundred and fifty would cover all of those two classes--engineers and firemen. Q. What steps were taken by the company to punish the rioters at Reading? A. We left that, to some extent, to the civil authorities of Reading. In connection with them, prosecutions were commenced against a great number. Two of them who were known to have actually set fire to the bridge, or participated in the actual burning, who ran away, were arrested at a distance, and plead guilty. Q. Were they men who had been in the employ of the company? A. One of them had been at one time. Q. In what capacity? A. I think as a brakeman, and he had left the service of the company, at the time the locomotive engineers left, and at this meeting I spoke of as taking place at the hall in Reading, he had been promised by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers to be paid so much a month, if he left the service of the company. The other one had never been in the service of the company--not that I am aware of. Q. Do you know what steps were taken by the civil authorities at Reading to suppress the riot at that time? A. There was very little done at the time. I think that all disturbance at Reading could have been prevented, if the sheriff of the county had shown the slightest amount of pluck or appreciation of his position. He had full knowledge--in fact, he was informed that it was to take place, but he did nothing practically, except when it was too late, to issue a proclamation that amounted to nothing. Q. Do you know how long before it took place that this information was communicated to him? A. Information was communicated to him of the intended rising. He was told of the facts in the possession of the party informing him, and an offer was made to him of men to act as a _posse comitatus_, about eight or ten o'clock in the morning of the day in which the trouble culminated. He did nothing until late that afternoon. I am quite confident that a determined man, armed with the law, in the position of the sheriff of Berks, at Reading, with twenty men--ten times which number he could have gotten from the citizens--could have prevented the whole disturbance. Q. Do you know whether he made any call for help from the State? A. I am not aware that he did, nor am I really aware of the means used to bring the military to Reading, or who first made the call for them. I know the military were sent there by the orders of some one in the military department of the State, who had authority upon that subject, and the disturbance was finally quelled by the action of the military, which unfortunately led to the killing of several persons. Q. Had there been any reduction of wages on your road prior to July? A. I think there had been no reduction of wages on the road for months before that. There had been two reductions of wages within the last few years. Q. Since 1873--the time of the panic? A. Yes. Q. How large? A. Each, I think, was ten per cent. The engineers on the Reading railroad have been for a great number of years paid according to the length of service. We have four grades, the first year the men get the lowest grade, and after they have been in the service of the company four years, they get the highest grade. That was due entirely, not to his knowledge as an engineer, but to his length of service as an employé in the company. It was understood that the men's wages should increase with the length of time they remained with us. When any man left us, and came back, again he had to go down and come up, as the lowest men. Q. Did that apply to any other employés but the engineers? A. It applied to the firemen. Q. Can you give the wages that the brakemen and firemen and engineers were getting per day. A. I cannot give it exactly. I think at the time of this disturbance the highest grade engineers were paid $2 97 per day. I think the firemen were getting about $1 50 to $1 60 per day. In the coal trade on the Reading railroad there were opportunities for engineers, during the busy seasons, to earn more than six days per week. Since the strike, or shortly after this trouble occurred, in April, as a mark of our appreciation of the fidelity of those who remained with us and resisted the temptation to leave when the Brotherhood of Engineers left--a good many of them, indeed, were members of the Brotherhood that stayed with us--we made a new grade of engineers, which no new men thereafter could enter, except after five years of service, and we put all the faithful men who remained with us in that grade, and gave them $3 23. We have also that system among the conductors of the passenger trains. They are paid according to length of service, and there is an amount of their pay kept back from them, and invested for their benefit which increases with length of time. Q. What were the wages of the brakemen? A. I think from $1 50 to $1 60. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Were you at Reading during the riots? A. I was not there. By Mr. Means: Q. Did any of those firemen or engineers who left you at that time, ever make application to come back? A. A great many, and it was a very sad thing. Q. Was there a man by the name of Clarke who made that application to you personally? A. I cannot give their names, but a great many have made application personally. Q. Didn't you tell him that he had done wrong in being led away by the Brotherhood? A. I know of a great many such cases. A great many I knew expressed a willingness to come back. Q. And acknowledged to you that they had done wrong, and after their places had been filled by other parties, wanted to be again in the employ of the road? A. A great many--I can hardly give you the number. The point with the company was this: we had taken on three hundred new men, and the first duty was to them. And most of those new men are excellent men. Some of them went to the expense of moving their families hundreds of miles. Many of the old men have written and asked to come back, saying that they did wrong, and saying that they were threatened. Many of them have been very seriously crippled, by reason of not receiving the pay promised them. I think that they promised sixty dollars a month to every man who quit the service of the company. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. From what source? A. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. By Mr. Means: Q. The money didn't come? A. They got very little. From what I understand from a number of them, I don't think they got enough to make more than ten dollars a month--hardly that. Adjourned, to meet at eight o'clock this evening. SAME DAY. FRIDAY, _March 22, 1878_--8, P.M. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at eight o'clock, P.M., and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * Robert M. Brinton, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I reside at 1301 South Broad street, Philadelphia. Q. You are a member of the National Guard of Pennsylvania? A. Commanding the First Division National Guard of Pennsylvania. Q. What is your rank? A. Major General. Q. State where you were when the news of the troubles at Pittsburgh, on the Pennsylvania railroad, reached you, and what your movements were afterwards? A. I was at my office in Washington avenue about six o'clock in the afternoon, when I received a note from Mr. Thompson, of the Pennsylvania railroad, saying that General Latta had telegraphed me some instructions in regard to the riot at Pittsburgh. I proceeded to my home, where I found a message asking--from Colonel Scott, of the Pennsylvania railroad, saying that he had a message asking me to come to the Pennsylvania railroad office to confer with him. I did so and found him there. He handed me a message from General Latta, saying that troops were needed, and wanted to know how soon I could have a regiment ready to proceed to Pittsburgh. I suggested to him that if any troops were needed the whole division should be sent. I afterwards received a communication from General Latta to put the division under arms and be ready to move at a moment's notice, to report to General Pearson, at Pittsburgh. I telegraphed to General Pearson my instructions from General Latta, and immediately ordered the division to assemble, sending out officers to notify the different commands. It was summer time, and a great many of the men were absent. It was nine o'clock before I received the last message from General Latta, ordering me to report, and about two o'clock we had some six hundred men at the Pennsylvania depot. Q. On what day? A. In the morning of Saturday. I received the message on Friday night. I kept up communication with General Pearson, informing him of the number of men I had, and where I was on the road. We had no ammunition with the exception of a few rounds that the First regiment had. At Harrisburg we received some ammunition and two Gatling guns, which we attached to our train. We went through to Pittsburgh in eleven hours, arriving there about one o'clock on Saturday afternoon. There I met General Pearson, who ordered me to disembark the troops. I reported to him and General Latta in the Union Depot Hotel. The troops were rested and given coffee and sandwiches, and I ordered an additional ten rounds of ammunition, making twenty in all. Q. Distributed? A. Yes, among the men. General Pearson ordered me to have the troops ready to move to Twenty-eighth street. At that time. I told them in coming up, I had seen the hills covered with people, and I asked them in the event of their ordering me out, to go out with me, and look over the ground. I was an entire stranger there, and I thought they must be misinformed in regard to having cleared the hill, as they said General Brown's brigade had. I also met Mr. Cassatt at the depot, and I said in the event of our going down and clearing the tracks, can you move your trains. He said we can; we have crews already engaged to take out double-headers. General Pearson then ordered me down to Twenty-eighth street. I ordered one brigade to go down Liberty street. General Pearson then told me to go down the railroad, which I did, dragging the Gatling guns. We arrived at the crossing near Twenty-eighth street, going through rows of men, who were hooting and howling at us. Previous to this, while I was yet in the Union depot, I had been approached by several parties, who wanted to know if I would fire on poor workingmen. I didn't give any decided answer, not desiring any conversation with them. I called the brigade companies and several of the regimental companies together, and told them no matter what was done to us--even if they spit in our faces--I didn't want a shot fired, but if they attempted any personal violence, we had the right to defend ourselves, and we should do it. That was the order from which the firing commenced. We got down near to the Twenty-eighth street crossing. There was a large concourse of people there, far back as you could see, back on the railroad, and we were stopped. Sheriff Fife and his posse were ahead of us, and I believe he attempted to read the riot act, at least I heard him saying something; but he disappeared, and I didn't see any more of him or his deputies. General Pearson was with us. We could not force our way through without using some force, and I asked General Pearson whether he had any instructions to give. He hesitated a moment, and then said that the tracks must be cleared. The crowd then had pressed in between the column of fours, and I ordered the fours put into lines backward, and face the rear rank, about to push the crowd back from either side, and form a hollow-square. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How did you march? A. The right in front--the First regiment was in front. The crowd gave back. We had a little difficulty in getting them back to the line of the cars. Quite a number of cars were there--the Twenty-eighth street crossing was blocked. The men standing there had evidently made up their minds to stay, saying that the railroad company had nothing to do with it, that they were not occupying anything but public ground. I then ordered two small companies, but finding them insufficient, I ordered up another command with arms aport, and attempted to push the crowd back; but finding it impossible, I gave orders to charge bayonets, which they did, and I saw one or two men bayoneted. The crowd at that time commenced firing on us, not only stones but pistol balls, and the men, acting on the orders already given to defend themselves, commenced firing--firing a few shots at first, which gradually went along the whole line. At that time, I had not over three hundred men. The second brigade had been left back, to guard the yard where the engines were to start from. Q. Give us the position of your men at that time? A. At that time, the rear rank was faced about. The Washington Grays and the Weccacoe Legion were in double rank, and were occupying the space between the two ranks of the First regiment facing east, trying to force their way back along the railroad from the Twenty-eighth street crossing, and the First regiment was keeping the crowd back from the railroad from the hill, and also from the car-shops. Q. Had you the front and rear ranks of any companies on each side of the railroad? A. Yes. Q. In open order, one facing to the rear and the other to the front? A. Yes. Q. And then a command in front of them in the direction of the railroad? A. A command on their flank--the right flank--facing eastward. By Mr. Means: Q. On the railroad? A. Yes. The firing lasted about a minute--not over that, and the crowd, the moment the firing commenced, or shortly afterwards, dispersed and went in every direction. I gave the order to cease firing, and my staff officers had the firing stopped, and the ranks, which were somewhat broken, were re-formed, and I sent a staff officer to report to General Pearson. I thought he was on the ground, because it was not certainly--my opinion is, that in three minutes after he gave me the order to clear the tracks, the firing commenced. In the meantime, the Pittsburgh troops on the hill--I had not discovered them before--quite a number of them threw down their arms and left. I went up the hill a very short distance, and I saw what was going on there, and I hunted for General Pearson; finally, I received a note from him, saying he was at Mr. Pitcairn's office at the outer depot, and, that if I wished to communicate with him, to send a staff officer, which I did--Colonel Wilson--and he came back and said that General Pearson desired to see me. I turned the command over to General Matthews, and reported to General Pearson at the office of the Pennsylvania railroad at the outer depot--Mr. Pitcairn's office. I said to General Pearson at the time, that I thought we ought to continue to drive the crowd. I understood that they had gone to the arsenal. Several men came up to me and said that the crowd had gone to the United States arsenal to arm themselves, and I thought, when I found that they had gone away, that they would probably get arms and ammunition, and I proposed to General Pearson that we should follow the crowd. He hesitated some time about it, and finally I grew more imperative in my question, and I said, you must do something, I cannot allow my men to stand on the track with the crowd pushing around me, and not be allowed to fire. We will either have to move from there or attack the crowd. Finally, he said that the Second brigade had been moved into the round-house and machine shops, because he was afraid that they would be burned, and then he told me to move my whole force in, amounting to six hundred men, which I did just at dusk in the evening. We moved in there. They told me to occupy one round-house and the machine and upholstery shops and the lumber-yard, and that General Brown would move into the other round-house at Twenty-eighth street, and I was not aware he was not there until I saw the flames. As soon as I went there, the crowd commenced trying to get into the yard, and I had a guard detailed and put out, and two of them were shot, one through the arm and one other through the leg, while on their beats. I then got down the Gatling guns and prepared to fire them, but thought it would be courtesy to communicate with General Pearson, and tell him what I was going to do; which I did, and he prohibited me from doing so. The crowd were firing pistol balls in at us, and a few rifle balls and a considerable number of stones. I went to General Pearson, and said, "I cannot stand it, we must defend ourselves." He said he would go to the mayor and see him, which would do more good than our bullets would, as he had a great deal of influence over the elements predominant then, and said that he did not want to take life unnecessarily, &c., at the same time we were short of ammunition and rations, only having twenty rounds, and if we were going to be in a state of siege, I thought we ought to have a sufficient amount. General Pearson said he would go and see that we got provisions and also ammunition, and left, saying he would be back in an hour. He went through the lumber-yard, and left us. At the same time he told me to open any dispatches that came for him, and I asked if he had any new instructions. He said, "I want you to hold the place," and after he left I proposed to hold it in the way I thought proper, by firing into the mob at the gates, which drove them away from there, so that presently there were only pistol bullets and a few straggling musket balls. We continued to hold it in that way without receiving any communications from the other world. I expected General Pearson back every moment. I didn't want to take it on myself to move out there, or do anything. About two o'clock in the morning Colonel Snowden, of the Third regiment, called into the round-house, and directed my attention to what he considered a piece of artillery. It was quite dark at the time. We watched it for probably fifteen minutes, when a cloud cleared away, and we decided it was a piece of artillery, around which were quite a number of men who were training the piece. I immediately ordered Colonel Snowden to get fifty men out, and told him to lower their pieces and fire low, and I gave the order. They had got the piece finally into a position to suit themselves, and a man had hold of the lanyard. I gave the order to fire, and when the smoke cleared away eleven of them were lying there. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The mob had it? A. Yes; it was a brass field-piece that they had captured from Hutchinson's battery, I believe. During the whole night we had a skirmish with those people. They ran cars down loaded with oil, and attempted to set fire to the building, but fortunately some jumped the track and blocked the others. The next morning they ran down cars from the Allegheny side, which came down with their own gravity, but we finally threw a pile of car wheels on the track, and upset the cars. They were burning. They were loaded with whisky, or the most of them with high wines. We put out those fires by fire extinguishers, and also by a hose that we had there. We finally discovered that the building part of the Sixth division was on fire, and it communicated with the building we were in by the oil sheds. They got on fire, and the building we were in got on fire. During the night I had communication with General Latta, finding General Pearson did not return, and told him my situation, and received orders from him--or suggestions they were afterwards styled--in the first place to hold on vigorously, but in case I was obliged to leave there, to go out Penn avenue east towards Torrens station, and that there would be reinforcements sent to us not later than six o'clock in the morning; that part of the command--three hundred--who had failed to join, were at Walls station, and would join Colonel Guthrie at Torrens, and that they would join us. We waited until ten minutes of eight o'clock, when the smoke got so great that the men could scarcely breathe, and we went through the machine shops. We couldn't go out of the gate, the regular gate, on account of the cars that had been upset there and were burning, and I went out, I think, Twenty-third street--I am not very familiar with the streets--with the intention not to leave Pittsburgh, but to go to the United States arsenal, where I certainly could get ammunition and possibly something to eat, as we had nothing but a sandwich and a cup of coffee since leaving Philadelphia, and through the excitement and the loss of two nights' sleep, the men were very much fatigued and thoroughly worn out. We went out towards the arsenal, and probably had gone a quarter of a mile out Penn avenue, when we were attacked. I was at the head of the column, and didn't see the force that was attacking us, but I sent a staff officer immediately to the rear. The firing was all at the rear, and I think four men were killed and some ten or twelve wounded. Q. On your retreat from the round-house? A. Yes; these men were shot from street cars, and from out of houses, and from behind chimneys. There was not any regular organized body, or a body sufficiently large to attack, until we got nearly to the arsenal, when--the Gatling guns I had placed between the two brigades, so that we could use them either in rear or at the front--when we opened with one of them, and dispersed the mob. We got to the arsenal, and I went ahead to see the commandant there, and went inside the gate, and went to his house and saw him, and told him who I was, and that my men were thoroughly worn out, and asked permission to form in the yard. The men were very thirsty, and the grounds were shady, and I thought we would wait there until I had orders from General Pearson. But we received positive orders from the commandant that we could not come in. I did not want any altercation with him, so I proceeded on eastward. I had received a communication from General Latta during the night, saying that he had made every attempt to feed us, and that it had been impossible, and I therefore thought that the best thing to do was to get something to eat. We had arrived within a short distance of Sharpsburg, when they told us if we came over there we could be fed. I concluded to do so, and went over there, and just as we got into the town, we were informed that two of the Fourteenth regiment, who had been on the hill, had been wounded seriously there by our shots, and that the people had no friendly feeling for us, and then I concluded we had better go on and wait for provisions, which I proceeded to do, when we were met by two gentlemen, who joined us, one belonging to the Pennsylvania railroad, I believe, who said we could be fed a little lower down, at Claremont, where they gave us coffee and rations; but the rations they brought were berries--not very suitable things for soldiers to eat. We proceeded to Claremont, and there, awaited orders. Q. Claremont hospital or the work-house? A. They are both together--that is the work-house or home they call it--it is the poor-house. We were fed, I presume, from both houses--they both sent us out provisions. It has been said that we were ordered to Torrens, and disobeyed orders in not going there; but the orders I received, in regard to Torrens, came just one week after the orders were sent. I got them one week afterwards from Colonel Guthrie, who handed them to me. Colonel Norris is reported to have given us some orders, which I positively deny. I never received them in any way, shape, or form. On the contrary Major Baugh, whom I left at the Union depot, with General Latta, reported to me out there. I asked him "have you any orders," and he said "no; I have not." I said then you will have to go right back to Pittsburgh, and get me some orders. Q. Who was it? A. Major Baugh. Q. What time did he leave General Latta? A. I cannot say; but he joined me about two o'clock--two and a half o'clock. Q. On Sunday? A. Yes. Q. In the afternoon? A. Yes. It has also been said that we marched in a very rapid way out that street. It is about four miles, and I left at ten minutes after eight, and arrived at Sharpsburg a little after ten, which amounts to two miles an hour, and in the army three miles was considered fair marching. The orders we received afterwards from General Latta were to proceed to Altoona, which, as soon as I could procure transportation, I attempted to do, and arrived at Blairsville, where I received a dispatch from Mr. Garner saying, I had better not come there, because he had made some arrangements with the rioters. I telegraphed that my orders were imperative, and that I was coming, provided I could get transportation. I got to Blairsville junction. I could not get transportation any further. I immediately telegraphed General Latta, Colonel Scott, and the Governor. I disembarked my troops, and remained there until I got orders to go back to Pittsburgh. Q. It was on Saturday night you were ordered by General Pearson to enter the round-house? What time did General Pearson leave you? A. About half past eight o'clock. Q. What did he leave for? A. For the purpose of seeing the mayor, for the purpose of getting us rations and ammunition. Q. Did he leave you in general command after he left? A. Yes. His instructions to me were to open any dispatches which might come for him, and hold on until I return, his words were. Q. Hold on until I return? A. I think those were his words. Q. It was a verbal order? A. Yes. He was standing in front of the company shops--inside the yard. Q. Did you hear from him again that night? A. I didn't hear from him until about one week. Q. In his absence, would you have full command yourself? A. I didn't consider I had full command, because he said he would be back in an hour, and I was waiting for him to return. When I found he didn't return, I opened communication with the Adjutant General of the State for him. Q. What orders did you receive from him? A. I received orders to hold on vigorously, that I would be reinforced by Colonel Guthrie's command, and that Colonel Rodgers' men would certainly join me before six o'clock in the morning. Q. Did it occur to you to march out with your command at any time--out of the round-house--and disperse the mob gathered there? A. That was discussed. I talked that over with my staff officers, at any rate, but we were ordered to remain there, and I didn't know--I expected General Pearson's return, and that he would bring us information about what was occurring outside. We had no information of any kind whatever. We couldn't tell whether there were ten thousand armed men in the town, or five hundred thousand. We knew that the force we had there was fully armed and had artillery, and we were outnumbered five to one. Q. Who was it you sent to the Adjutant General? A. A man named Sergeant Wilson, of the Jefferson cavalry, who was disguised. Q. Did he bring you any report as to the number of the mob? A. He didn't bring me any reports as to how many there were, and even if he had, I couldn't trust to a man simply passing through a crowd, because they were on every side. He said that the mob had vowed that they would burn us out or up--if they couldn't capture the place that they could burn us, and they were making arrangements to do that. Q. What time did they begin to fire the cars? A. The first I saw of the fire--I didn't know whether they were cars or buildings--but whatever they were, the first light I saw was about eleven o'clock. I may be mistaken in that, but I think it was. Q. Could you see anything of the number engaged in the burning--the actual burning? A. No; I couldn't see anything of the burning, because the buildings were on the other side--the Twenty-eighth street round-house was below us, and the buildings were above. Q. Above Twenty-eighth street? A. I mean west--nearer the Union depot. Q. Didn't they burn east of you, also? A. They might have burned east, but the first light I saw was there, and it seemed too far down for the cars. Q. They kept burning down towards the Union depot? A. I don't know. I couldn't see from where I was anything, except the illumination in the sky. Q. Nor how many men were engaged in the burning? A. No; on Liberty street and the street--I don't know the number of it--which would have run through the depot had it been prolonged--we could see men marching up and down that street, and could hear them giving commands along Penn street, which ran parallel with Liberty street, and we could see wagon loads of men coming in all the time. Q. Did you send out any scouts? A. I sent out two men of the Hutchinson battery, but they never returned. They said they would carry a dispatch to General Latta, and I wrote a note, but never heard of them afterwards. This scout returned, whose idea was that there were a great many, but he couldn't tell anything more than that, as he walked through the crowd. He could not tell whether there were five thousand or twenty thousand in the city--he could only see the street they were in. I thought if he could get back General Pearson might. Q. You didn't deem it safe to undertake to attack the crowd during the night? A. I thought I would be superseding my orders if I attempted it. I was ordered to remain there. At no time was I in command in Pittsburgh. Q. In the absence of General Pearson, you were the highest in rank, or the senior general, were you not? A. Yes; but I was ordered by him to remain where I was. It was not left discretionary with me. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is General Pearson your senior? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In his failure to return, would you not be justifiable in acting on your own judgment? A. I communicated then with General Latta, and received a reply from him, saying they had made every attempt to provision us and get us ammunition, and that it was impossible, and knowing there were three regiments in Pittsburgh, and not knowing their demoralization--I didn't know they were so much demoralized as they were--if they couldn't communicate with us, I thought there must be a very strong force opposed to us, and my orders were to remain where I was. By Senator Yutzy: Q. From General Latta? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time did you get those orders from General Latta? A. I received two communications from him by the same man. One of them, I think, about eleven o'clock, and the other about one o'clock. I asked the man to out again, and he said he would not attempt it, that he had been stopped before, and that it was at the risk of his life. He would not attempt to go out again. By Mr. Means: Q. As a military man, you received a command from your senior, to hold your position, and you wouldn't have felt like doing anything else but to hold your position--you would have been liable to a court-martial, if you had disobeyed that order? A. I would. Q. The responsibility rested with your senior? A. I told General Latta, in my note, which may have had some influence in his orders to me, that my men were terribly worn out, and had not had anything to eat for over twenty-four hours, and had not had any sleep for two nights, and I didn't think it would have been a wise thing with the amount of ammunition we had to attack that mob that night. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. General Latta had no power as a commanding officer, had he? His duties as Adjutant General were simply to marshal, and bring together the forces of the State--the militia forces, and when General Pearson was relieved or was absent, you would be the next general in command--would you not? A. That is one way of viewing it. I would be, probably. A staff officer does not command troops; but General Latta was acting under the Governor or in his place, and you notice in the Governor's message, he blames me for disobedience of orders which I never received, saying I had refused to return to Pittsburgh by orders of General Latta. Q. Did you understand that General Latta was commander-in-chief. A. I did. I would have obeyed any command that General Latta had sent to me; and not only that, I solicited his commands--I asked him what I should do. Q. What induced you to leave the round-house on Saturday morning? A. The round-house was on fire, and the men were choking with smoke when we left there, and it was not more than twenty minutes after we left, when the whole thing was a cinder. Q. How large a crowd did you encounter when you left the round-house? A. When we left, we came out in perfect order. The moment we came out the crowd fled, and we had no difficulty until we had gone some three or four squares. The crowd had disappeared. Q. Couldn't you have formed then, after driving the crowd? A. There was no crowd to drive at that time. We didn't see any crowd except the crowd which ran. My idea was to go to some place where the men could get something to eat. The Third regiment had three rounds of ammunition, and I thought certainly, at the United States arsenal we could get ammunition, and the men could be fed, or we should certainly get ammunition, and get water. Q. Did it occur to you that it would be good policy to go to the Union depot? A. Yes; and two of my staff, Colonel Wilson and Colonel Pettit, both advised me to go; but I told them my orders are to go east out Penn avenue, and I am going to obey my orders. Q. Those were the orders you received from General Latta? A. Yes. Q. But your own judgment directed you to take the other course, and go to Union depot? A. It did. Q. If you had been acting on your own judgment, should you have gone there? A. If I had it to do over again, I should go there. Q. That was your judgment at that time? A. Yes; but I thought the next best thing was to go to the arsenal. I would then be carrying out my orders, and would remain where General Latta could further instruct me. Q. You had gone some distance before the firing commenced on your troops--that firing from the house? A. Yes. Q. Did you ever ascertain who fired--have you ever been able to learn the names of the parties? A. We ascertained a few. We killed a few, and I think that a policeman fired on us. Mr. Lennig, who was a member of the Washington Grays at the time, and who is a member of the bar here, when he went back to Pittsburgh, identified this man, and talked to him, and the man acknowledged it--that he did fire. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Where did this policeman fire? When you went by the station-house? A. We went by the station-house, but I didn't see them fire, but Mr. Lennig saw them fire near the cathedral. Q. Did you see any policeman fire yourself? A. No. Q. Did Mr. Lennig? A. He saw a policeman fire, and identified him when he went back to Pittsburgh the second time. Q. When you arrived at the arsenal, did you enter at the gate? A. I entered at the gate. The sentry there allowed me to enter, and showed me where Mayor Buffington was to be found, and I went to his quarters and saw him. Q. Was he up at the time? A. He was up. He came out of the house. Q. How was he dressed when he came out? A. In citizen's dress. I asked whether he was the commandant there, and he said he was. He was in citizen's clothes. Q. Was he fully dressed? A. Yes. Q. Did you tell him your name? A. My name and where we had been, and told him I wanted to bring the men in there. He said we couldn't come there, and I asked him where we could encamp. Q. You are positive about giving him your name? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And rank? A. Yes; I had an officer with me who will corroborate it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Whereabouts did you meet him? A. Right at his house. Q. At the door? A. He came on to the steps of a little porch and stepped down to the ground. Q. Whereabouts is his house situated from the gate as you enter? A. Probably two hundred feet from the gate. Q. On the right side of the road leading down through the grounds or the left? A. It is about two hundred yards from the street where we marched out--where the sentry gate is. A path led down, and Major Burlington turned on his heel, and didn't take the trouble to say he was sorry, but immediately turned on his heel and left. Q. Where did he go? A. Back to his house. Q. Did he afterwards come up to the gate? A. I never saw him afterwards. Q. Did you have any wounded at the gate? A. Yes; we had some three or four men carried in there, and Lieutenant Ash had his leg amputated and died there. Q. Did he tell you that he would take care of the wounded? A. No; he never made any remark to me of that kind. Q. Did Lieutenant Lyon make any such remark? A. I never knew such an officer was there. Q. How long did you remain inside of the grounds? A. I don't think I was there over two minutes--maybe I was longer. The firing was quite heavy after I got in there, and I went down to join my command. Q. How were you dressed when you met Major Buffington? A. In a blouse and a cap, with two stars on it, and blue pants. One of my shoulder straps during the night had been torn down, and it hung, and I took it off. Q. Was the other on? A. No; I had taken both off when I found one of them was torn. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What request did you make of Major Buffington when you went there? A. I told him we had been in the company's shops all night, and that we were burned out, and that the men were out of ammunition, and that I wanted something to eat, and wanted to form my men there until I could get some further orders. Q. You wanted to form your men in the arsenal grounds? A. Yes. Q. Did he refuse? A. Most peremptorily, and said that we could not come there. I asked where I could encamp or could bivouac, and he said that I couldn't come in there, but could go somewhere else. I said I was a total stranger in the city, and wanted somebody to direct me--nothing more than a civil question, and he said he didn't know, that I would have to go away, and turned on his heel and left. Q. What excuse did he make, if any, for refusing you admission? A. I think that he had very few men there. The purport was that he was afraid we might draw the fire of the mob. That was the impression left on my mind. Q. Did he say anything about a large amount of valuable ammunition and stores? A. Not to my recollection. He might have said so; but I don't recollect. I know he said he had no ammunition for us. Q. Did he say he had artillery ammunition, but no ammunition for infantry? A. I do not recollect that he did. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you rap at the door or call at the door, and meet him outside, or did he come out before you arrived at the house? A. Two men were at the gate, and one ran ahead, and I think, told him. I think he rapped at the gate. Q. Did you have any conversation with Lieutenant Lyon? A. I do not remember seeing him. Q. I understood you to say that you called at Colonel Scott's office, and was there shown the communication from General Latta? A. Yes; I got my dispatch over the Pennsylvania railroad lines. Q. Was it directed to Colonel Scott or to you? A. To me. Q. It went over their line? A. Yes; all the time I was away we used their wires. Q. Did you receive any orders from any one else before you left Philadelphia, than from General Latta? A. No. Q. Did you receive any communication from General Latta at Pittsburgh, while you were in the round-house, after General Pearson left you, before you sent a communication to him? A. There was a communication, which came over the wires, directed to General Pearson. A dispatch which I did not understand, saying something about when the troops arrive, make disposition for them--a dispatch could not understand, directed to General Pearson, from General Latta. Q. That was from General Latta? A. Yes; but immediately after that the wires were cut, and we had no other communication. Q. Did you send a communication to General Latta by a messenger, before you received the orders from him to hold the round-house? A. I did. It was by the messenger whom I sent to General Latta that I received those orders. Q. That was in reply to your communication? A. Yes. Q. There was no other communication from General Latta? A. I sent him two. The first communication was--the purport of it was--that General Brinton had left there, and that we were suffering for ammunition and for rations, and also had but two friction primers. I have a copy of this, and one of the Sunday papers, I believe, copied it. Q. That was the first? A. Yes. Q. Can you give us the original of that? A. I think I can give the original--I can give you the original of one. _The Sunday Republic_ published it. Q. What was the second communication--the one you received and replied to from General Latta? A. I received a reply to both from General Latta. Q. Give us the nature of the second communication? A. I cannot remember the exact phraseology of it. Q. Give it in substance, as near as you can? A. It was a mere reiteration, asking for ammunition, and asking for rations--saying that we must be provisioned--that the troops were in a terrible state, nearly starved, and suggesting in one of the dispatches, how they could get in there with their engines, that they might run down and we would try to have the gates ready for them to come in, and the engine, I believe, was subsequently loaded, and the engineer refused to take it. Q. Did you try to convey the idea to General Latta, that your troops were unfit for duty? A. No; I conveyed the idea, or attempted to, that they were worn out, not being properly cared for or rationed, and that I had no sufficient amount of ammunition. I tried to convey that idea. Q. That they were demoralized? A. No--I did not. Q. Could there have been such a construction placed on your message? A. No; I don't think so. A few of my men were not in the best condition, morally, but very few. I only placed them in another part of the building. I designated those. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you designate those in your message to General Latta? A. I probably did. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were they officers or men? A. A few of the men--none of the officers. But so far as the men were fatigued or worn out, I tried to convey that in the strongest terms. Q. For the purpose of getting supplies? A. For the purpose of getting something to eat and ammunition. Q. Did General Latta say anything in his communications to you that you were left in command of the round-house, and that you were expected to act on your own discretion? A. No; on the contrary, he gave me specific orders what to do, and when I left where to go. Q. Did you expect to receive further orders from General Pearson when you received your communications from General Latta? A. I cannot say that I expected to, although I would not have been surprised to have received them. Q. Did you consider it your duty to take command of the force and to act at your own discretion after General Pearson had left you and you were not able to communicate with him? A. No further than I did, because communications should have come the other way. I was ordered to do a certain thing, and it was possibly superseding my duty to send out an officer after orders. It would probably have been more soldierly for me to stay there and receive communications from my superior than to send after them. Q. Didn't you consider it proper, as a military man, to exercise your own discretion in an emergency of that kind, and take the responsibility of it? A. No; I do not think I did, nor do I yet. The responsibility rested on me to obey orders, and as I had no means of ascertaining what was going on outside, I resolved to hold that place as far as I could, and didn't move out until the men were nearly choked with the smoke. We held it for two hours longer than we were ordered to hold it. Q. Was the round-house on fire when you left it? A. It was. Q. And the shops adjoining the round-house? A. Yes; the machine shops adjoining the round-house were entirely on fire. The roof was on fire and the floors were saturated with oil and General Matthews sent to me two or three times saying that the smoke was so intense that they could scarcely stay there. Then I moved them out into the yard. Q. The floors were saturated with oil? A. Yes; it was not twenty minutes after leaving the place until it was a cinder. Q. How did that place become saturated with oil--by the mob? A. No; the employés of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company put it there while greasing the engines. Q. Did any whisky or high wines run down into the round-house while you were there? A. Some whisky ran into the cellar of the office while we were there. It was lower than the pavement, and when they threw the cars off the track there, some barrels got down on the pavement. Q. Did it run down into the cellar? A. Yes; into the cellar or basement where the telegraph batteries were stationed. Q. Was the office connected with the round-house or the building you were in? A. They were some of the buildings we were in, but not connected although not over three or four feet off them. Q. Did you see Colonel Norris on your march from the round-house to Claremont? A. I saw Wilson Norris after we had passed Sharpsburg, between there and Claremont. Q. Did you receive any orders from him? A. I have no recollection of receiving any orders from him, and I have questioned my staff who were around me at the time, and they have none. Q. Neither verbal or written? A. Neither verbal or written. Q. Did you receive any orders from any one else before you reached Sharpsburg or Claremont? A. No. Q. No orders from any one to go to Torrens station during Sunday? A. Whilst in the round-house, to proceed east out Penn Avenue, towards Torrens, from General Latta. I did not go there for this reason: Colonel Guthrie was to be at the outer depot at six o'clock in the morning, and we waited there until ten minutes after eight, waiting for him two hours and ten minutes. The suggestions which General Latta gave me were based on Colonel Guthrie's being at Torrens station, but considered I would only be exchanging places with Colonel Guthrie, and for that reason I concluded to go to the arsenal. In the second place, General Latta or the authorities had said it was impossible to ration us. Q. Did you receive any communication from General Latta, or any other superior officer, before you got to Blairsville? A. Yes; from General Latta, to proceed to Altoona, which we immediately proceeded to do. Q. Through whom? A. Through Major Baugh, whom I sent back to General Latta for instructions--sent him back to Pittsburgh. By Senator Reyburn: Q. On Saturday afternoon, when the firing commenced--where did it commence? A. The firing commenced from the Weccacoe Legion. Q. Facing east? A. Yes. Q. It was the first firing from the troops? A. The first firing came from there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. From what direction did the stones and other missiles come? A. They came from every direction. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Was there any pistol firing from the side of the hill? A. After the firing commenced it was very hard to detect in which direction it came. It seemed to come in all directions, and the stones were striking against the muskets of the men as they held them up. It was very hard to detect where the firing came from. Q. Was there any positive order given to fire? A. I didn't hear it, and I didn't give it, and I don't think there was, further than the general order I gave, if we were attacked that we should defend ourselves. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was General Pearson present when the firing took place? A. I think he was--not that I saw him, but he gave me the order to clear the tracks, and the time was so short after he gave the order before the firing commenced, that I do not see how he could arrive at Mr. Pitcairn's office before the firing took place, although I didn't see him myself. He gave me those orders, and I ordered the Weccacoe Legion, which had about seventy-five yards to go, and the whole time didn't occupy over two minutes. Q. How was he dressed? A. I think in full uniform--my impression is that he was. I think he was. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What do you mean by full uniform? A. Blouse and cap--regular fatigue uniform. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Suppose he had turned around immediately after giving you the order and gone to Mr. Pitcairn's office, could he have got there before the firing took place? A. I do not think so, but I may be mistaken. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he wear a hat or a cap? A. I cannot tell you, sir. It really didn't make sufficient impression on me, but I think he had a cap on. That is my impression, because I knew him in the army a long time, and he always used to wear a cap there. Q. Had he a sword and belt on? A. Yes; a sword and belt on. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you in the late war? A. Yes. Q. What rank did you occupy? A. I went out as a private in the Second Pennsylvania cavalry, and afterwards was promoted to different grades to major of a regiment, and brevet lieutenant colonel at Five Forks. I served two years as personal aid to General Griffin, of the Fifth Army Corps. Q. When did you go out? A. In September, 1861, and left the army in June, 1866. Q. What rank did you hold when you left? A. I was major and brevet lieutenant colonel. Adjourned, to meet at two o'clock to-morrow. * * * * * PHILADELPHIA, _Saturday_, _March 23, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled in the St. Cloud hotel, at two o'clock, P.M., this day, and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * J. Ewing Mears, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At No. 1429 Walnut street, in this city. Q. What is your profession? A. That of a physician. Q. State whether you were a member of the National Guard, and if so, what position you held at the time of the riots? A. I was the division surgeon of the First division, National Guard, under command of General Brinton. Q. State whether you accompanied the command of General Brinton to Pittsburgh, and on what day? A. I left the city of Philadelphia on the morning of Saturday, the 21st of July, in company with General Brinton, and arrived at Pittsburgh shortly after the middle of the day of Saturday. Q. Go on and relate just what occurred after your arrival at Pittsburgh? A. I don't know whether I can state it as you wish, without questions from yourself. After our arrival at Pittsburgh, the troops were disembarked, and orders were given with regard to their march up towards the round-house, and I was ordered by General Brinton to establish the division hospital in the mail-room connected with the railroad station. It was nearly opposite to the outer telegraph station, as the depot existed prior to its destruction. Before the command left the depot, I had assigned to the different brigades and regiments medical officers, taking from some regiments officers who were in access of the needs of the regiments; in other words, I distributed medical officers to the different commands, in accordance with the orders of General Brinton. Q. Did you accompany the command at Twenty-eighth street? A. I didn't. Q. Where were you yourself? A. I was at the depot. My orders from General Brinton were, to establish the division hospital at the depot, to which the wounded, if any happened to be wounded, could be sent. Q. Did you send out surgeons with the command--as you distributed them, they went out? A. Yes; there were two surgeons with the First regiment, one surgeon connected with the Second brigade, and one surgeon who was not acting as such among the other companies. Q. Did you remain at the Union depot during Saturday night? A. No; I remained there until ten o'clock, then I left the depot, the object being to join the command in the round-house, if possible. I had, in the meantime, met the surgeon of the Pennsylvania railroad, Doctor Murdock, who was also surgeon of the West Penn hospital, and he informed me that some of the wounded of the division were in the hospital, and offered his services to me to assist, and also on behalf of the staff, the use of the hospital. In view of this fact, and as I had also completed my duty at the depot by sending all of the wounded to Philadelphia prior to ten o'clock, I left the depot to start to join General Brinton in the round-house, but being unable to do so by reason of the mob, I went to the hospital, where I found some of the command. Q. How many wounded were brought to the Union depot? A. Fifteen. Q. Of the militia? A. Yes. Q. They were sent to Philadelphia? A. Yes; I obtained from Mr. Cassatt a special car for that purpose. Q. How were the different men wounded? A. The majority were wounded by small Smith & Wesson balls--balls that belong to the ordinary pocket revolver, and the gun shot wounds were all in the lower extremities. Q. Were any wounded with stones or clubs? A. They were wounded both with bullets, and also with clubs and stones, the majority being wounded with bullets, and as they stated, the wounds being given to them by persons under the cars, the result of that being that the wounds were in the lower extremities. Some had scalp wounds, received from clubs and stones, and some of the wounds in the lower extremities were also from clubs or stones. I should say that 1 moved the hospital from the mail-room, which I had taken, into the hotel, and took for that purpose the two large reading-rooms of the hotel. There I dressed the wounds of those sent to me, and sent them home when I finished the work. Q. On Sunday, where were you? A. On Sunday morning, at seven and a half o'clock, I left the West Penn hospital, and came into the depot. I was aware then that the command had left the round-house, that is, I was so informed, and I came into the hotel for the purpose of getting the medical stores, and also for the purpose of getting means of conveyance to the command. I had received a requisition the afternoon before, from one of the surgeons for lint and medical stores, and I had purchased some the night before in a drug store, at Pittsburgh. Q. The details we don't care for--just simply the number of wounded, and if you heard the firing, and was with the command at the time? A. I didn't hear the firing, and there were more wounded than I saw, because some didn't come to the depot. Q. Do you know the number of the wounded altogether? A. I have endeavored to ascertain that, but have failed thus far. I understood there were about twenty-eight. Q. How many were killed? A. As far as I can ascertain, three were killed, two instantly, and one died from the result of a gun-shot wound. Q. Did you go with the command when it retreated out Penn avenue, and across the river? A. I followed the command as closely as I could, and joined them after they had crossed the river. Q. At what time? A. Ten and a half o'clock. Q. Were you dressed in uniform? A. No. Q. In citizen's clothes? A. Yes. Q. Did you have any trouble in reaching the command? A. No; I was not interfered with, although I drove through the mob. I had with me a guide, a member of one of the cavalry companies of Pittsburgh, but he knew nothing of the country after passing the arsenal. I acted on my own responsibility. I had received an order from General Brinton the evening before, about joining the command, and was directed to join him in citizen's clothes. Q. Did you stop at the arsenal? A. I did. Q. Did you see Major Buffington? A. No. Q. Or Lieutenant Lyon? A. No. Q. Did you see Lieutenant Ash? A. I didn't see him. Q. Did you know that Lieutenant Ash was there? A. I didn't at that time. Q. You reached your command in safety? A. Yes; with the stores I had taken with me. I had a wagon and a horse, and I placed them in the wagon, and took them to the command. Q. Are there any other facts that you wish to state? State whether you heard any orders given by General Latta to General Brinton? A. I heard orders dictated to his secretary or to an officer in his room--I did. Q. At what place? A. At the Union Depot hotel. Q. At what time? A. About eight o'clock on Sunday morning. Q. What were they? A. As near as I can remember them--I was not the officer supposed to hear them, but they were given in an ordinary tone of voice--the order was congratulatory to General Brinton on his retreat from the round-house, as to his generalship in getting out of the round-house, and upon his march out Penn square to the arsenal. That is a portion of the order I distinctly remember. Further, when I asked General Latta where I should join the command, he told me to go to the arsenal. Q. Did you have any conversation with General Latta at that time? A. I asked him where the command was, and how to get there. Q. Did you hear any other command given by General Latta to General Brinton? A. I did not. I met Major Norris returning from the command. He had joined them, and I asked him where they were, and he said on the hill, and that they were going to the poor-house. He said to me nothing at all in regard to any other destination. This hill, I suppose, was a quarter of a mile after the bridge had been crossed--after crossing the river. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have any conversation with citizens of Pittsburgh, or come in contact with them? A. I did, on Saturday night. I had taken, fortunately, a letter of introduction to a druggist in Pittsburgh, and I went to his drug store to make a purchase. Q. Just state whether the citizens of Pittsburgh showed sympathy with the strikers? A. Yes; most decidedly. Q. Their sympathies were with the strikers? A. Yes. Q. And they were hostile to the troops? A. Most decidedly. I had conversations with a number of medical men, and I was surprised to hear them, as medical men, express their sympathy with the action of the rioters. Q. In plain words, they said that the strikers were doing right? A. Yes; they approved their action. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In what way did they manifest or express sympathy with the rioters? A. In this way: they thought they were taking the proper action to redress the wrongs they had suffered. Q. Did they say that the strikers were taking proper action? A. They said that they thought they were doing right. Q. What citizens said that? A. I do not remember the names. I met one gentleman on the street. He was kind enough to conduct me back to the hotel, it being night, and I not knowing the way. He didn't know who I was or my business, and expressed himself very freely about the matter. Q. Was he a business man? A. I do not know that. He appeared to be a gentleman--he was dressed as such. Q. Living in the city of Pittsburgh? A. I suppose he did, sir. Q. At the drug store, did you meet any citizens more than the druggist himself? A. I didn't, because he advised me not to stay there long--that it would not be desirable for them to know who I was. By Mr. Means: Q. The druggist advised you not to stay there long--that he did not want the strikers to know you were in his place of business? A. Or the citizens even to know it. It was rather out of regard for my safety, than possibly for himself. I went through the streets of Pittsburgh, when they were breaking into the stores and seizing arms, and the citizens looked on that indifferently, and no efforts were made to stop that. Q. You went through the city of Pittsburgh, in disguise for your own safety, for fear of bodily harm you might receive. A. I went into the streets of Pittsburgh in citizen's dress, in the first place, because I had been warned by General Latta, in regard to wearing my uniform. He advised me to remove it. He said it was not safe even for himself, or anybody connected with the military, to appear in uniform. That it would probably attract the mob to the hotel. I did it at his suggestion, and also, when I reflected on it, for my own safety. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where was that drug store? A. I cannot tell you where, it was night. Q. Do you remember the street? A. I do not. I can go to it in daytime. Q. Do you know whether it was the proprietor of the drug store with whom you had the conversation? A. It was the clerk. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Did you get an introduction to the proprietor? A. I did not. Q. Who was the letter addressed to? A. To Mr. Ottinger. I took it, thinking I should possibly want to purchase something. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. You cannot give the street? A. I didn't see it in the daytime at all. Q. Can you give us the language--what he said? A. I cannot, because I didn't stop very long at his store. I had sent him an order, and asked that it should be filled, and I went for the order. It was not completed, and it kept us a few minutes. Further, to show the hostility to the troops, when I was taking the wounded to the cars, the mob had got into the station, and were jeering us and making use of insulting remarks, such as to show that they were gratified that they were going home in that condition. * * * * * Thomas A. Scott, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State what your official connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company is? A. I am president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Q. You have held that position for a number of years? A. I have been connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in various capacities, over twenty-six years. Q. State, if prior to the strike that occurred in July last, you had any information that such a strike was to take place, or had any reason to apprehend a strike? A. We had no information on the subject. I was on that evening up the river Delaware eighteen miles, visiting some friends--my daughters' family--and had gone to bed about ten o'clock, and heard nothing of the strike, or anything connected with it, until about eleven o'clock, when one of our officers from West Philadelphia, came up and advised me that there was trouble on the road, and wanted me to come to West Philadelphia. I did so, and arrived there a quarter before twelve, on Thursday night. At that time I had no intimation of any possible trouble with any of our people. Q. Had you any knowledge of the existence of an organization called the Trainmen's Union? A. Yes; I had heard that there was such an organization. There was some discontent about salaries and other matters connected with railroad management, and I had an interview with some engineers and firemen a few weeks before, and went over the whole subject--went over the whole ground with them. I suppose it was a committee of twenty or thirty altogether; and after hearing all that was to be said on both sides, we finally agreed that it was one of the inevitable things that could not be avoided, but would be remedied as soon as the condition of the country got into a more prosperous condition. After the committee retired from the interview, they came back again with a letter directed to me, expressing just what I said, in substance, to you; therefore I had no idea that there was discontent among our people likely to lead to anything like the results attained afterwards--like the difficulty that resulted in Pittsburgh. Q. What complaints did this committee make when they waited on you? A. They wanted to have the ten per cent. restored. Q. What time was that? A. It may have been three or four weeks before the difficulty occurred. Q. It was after the 1st of June--after the ten per cent. reduction? A. After the notice was given. Q. Did they have any other complaint to make than about the ten per cent. reduction? A. They discussed the question of privilege to ride over the road, and about being allowed for time when off duty, and several things of that character, all of which were discussed in the most friendly way with the committee, and I supposed that the committee went away perfectly satisfied. They so expressed themselves in writing to me--perfectly satisfied with the action of the company. Q. Did they make any objections to the classification--what is called the classification? A. They discussed that question with me, and they wanted to get some changes made in that. That had been agreed upon with the engineers and firemen some years before. Q. They were satisfied on that point? A. Entirely. Q. Had you heard of any dissatisfaction on that point from any other source than from this committee? A. I had heard nothing about the question at all. Q. Had there been any complaints made prior to the one made by this committee on that subject? A. A year or two before the question had been discussed. I have always been in the habit when our people come to state their grievances or supposed grievances to hear them, and discuss the matter, and do what we think right about it. I believe I never have declined to receive our men, and talk over matters connected with the company. Q. After the order was issued to run double-headers, did you hear of any dissatisfaction? A. Not until this Thursday night. That that was one cause of dissatisfaction. Q. How long before that was the order issued to run double-headers? A. I cannot give the time, but it was, I think, a few weeks--but how long, I don't know. It is a matter of detail management of the respective divisions that scarcely ever comes to me at all. Q. Do you know what date it went into effect? A. No; I do not. Q. From whom did you get the first information that a strike existed there at Pittsburgh? A. From Mr. Charles E. Pugh, one of our superintendents at West Philadelphia, who came up for me to Andalusia, or near there. Q. What time did he get there? A. At a quarter before eleven o'clock. Q. On the 19th? A. Yes; on Thursday night. Q. When did you get the next information? A. When I got to the depot at West Philadelphia. Q. What was the character of that? A. That there was an outbreak among the men on all the roads extending rapidly over all the lines in the country, and that there was not a sufficient police force in the city of Pittsburgh, to manage the matter, and that the sheriff had been called out or called upon by somebody to organize a _posse comitatus_, and I believe he did make some effort about it. Q. That he was called upon by some officer of your road? A. No; but by some authorities of the city of Pittsburgh; but that, I cannot say. I was not there. That they called upon him, but just when they called upon him, I do not know. Q. That information was communicated to you? A. Yes; by telegraph. Q. Were you informed that the city authorities and the sheriff were not able to suppress the strike or the riot there? A. Yes; I was informed of that fact--that the sheriff had called upon the Governor of the State for aid. Q. What time did you get that information? A. Three or four o'clock in the morning. Q. From whom did you get the information? A. From our officers at Pittsburgh. I think probably from Mr. Pitcairn. Q. Had you any communication with the Governor? A. Yes; I telegraphed to the Governor after he had been called upon and given the general results of the trouble--I telegraphed. I thought it was very important for him to be back in the city at the earliest moment he could come. That I thought the peace of the whole State was threatened. Q. What time did you send that telegram? A. I think that was sent the next day some time. Q. On Friday? A. Yes. Q. Did you see General Latta before he left for Pittsburgh? A. Yes. He was there when I got to West Philadelphia. He was very much disturbed. He told me that the Governor, before leaving, had left power and authority with him to exercise his authority in case of disturbance. I asked what he proposed to do about the matter, and he said he proposed to go to Pittsburgh, and be governed by circumstances. If the Governor was called upon, that he would do what was necessary and proper to be done, under the circumstances, to preserve the order of the State. I think it was about a quarter before twelve o'clock on Thursday night when I saw him. I expressed to him the importance of preserving the highways of the country intact, as I understood it and believed it. Q. When did you first learn that they had ordered the troops out--when the Adjutant General had ordered them out? A. I understood about four o'clock Friday morning that the sheriff of Allegheny county had called for troops. Q. And you understood then that General Latta would call them in pursuance of the call of the sheriff? A. General Latta told me if called on, that he had abundance of troops in the city of Pittsburgh to take care of anything that might arise--under General Pearson. Q. Did you have any communication with General Pearson? A. No; if General Pearson asked me any question about transportation of troops, I told him what was proper under the circumstances; but I do not recollect of having any from him. Q. Had you ever had any strikes on that road prior to this time? A. We had a strike in 1860, when I was general superintendent of the road--a small affair that didn't last but a few days--principally among some of the engineers and some of the shop men. But I believe we had no strike or trouble with our people from that time up to the occurrences last summer. Q. What steps were taken at that time to control it by the company? A. Simply notice to the men engaged in it, that if the wages or arrangements of the company did not suit them, to peaceably go away. Q. Was there any attempt, at that time, to molest or disturb the property of the company? A. Nothing at all, except stoppage of the trains. Q. There never has been any strike before where there was an attempt to destroy property? A. No. Q. Can you give us the amount, or an estimated amount, of the destruction of property at Pittsburgh? A. Well, I think it is in the neighborhood--you mean what property? Q. Belonging to the company? A. About $2,000,000--various things we were interested in. Q. Does that cover the merchandise? A. Not at all. Q. Simply the actual property of the company? A. Yes; and it does not cover the consequent loss from the interruption of our business. Q. But you include the destruction of cars, and engines, and shops, and tracks? A. Yes. Q. Do you know how many cars were destroyed? A. I have not got the number at the end of my fingers, but it is in the annual report of the company. It is all stated there, sir. I think it is summed up in that report, that the probable loss, by reason of this trouble, was about $5,000,000 to our company and to the community at large in Pittsburgh and the community elsewhere owning property in transit. Q. In consequence of the riot that existed there? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. That includes the merchandise? A. Yes; it is an estimated amount of what we thought about the right thing--as near as we could get at it. By Mr. Means: Q. Did General Brinton telegraph you at Blairsville Junction that he, General Brinton, could clear the tracks with the force under his command? A. I think General Brinton did telegraph me; but I do not recollect the details of it at all. Q. At Blairsville Junction? A. That he thought with troops properly located he could take care of it. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. In the interview you had with this committee, they stated their views on the reduction of ten per cent.? A. That and several other questions connected with it. Q. When did this ten per cent. reduction take place? A. In June. Q. Had there been any prior reduction? A. Yes; in 1873, we made a reduction of ten per cent.--following the panic. Q. Then in June you made another reduction? A. Of ten per cent. It applied to everybody in the company--to men on the track, and in the shops, and on the engines, and in the depots, and every officer of the company. By Mr. Yutzy: Q. To all the employés? A. To all getting above a dollar per day. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was this last reduction made in pursuance of any arrangement with any other road? A. Not at all. Q. Was there not a meeting of representatives of the trunk lines in Chicago in May sometime, at which matters were talked over? A. I don't know--I was not there. Q. Was there a representative of your company present? A. There may have been. I don't know nor whether they had up the question of compensation to the men. Our action on the subject was based on the general results of the business of the company, and the necessity of some positive thing being done in aid of the company and in aid of the men as well. Q. The action of your company, in this reduction, was solely by yourselves, without any understanding? A. With the other trunk lines? Q. Yes. A. None whatever. I think they didn't make any reduction until July. Q. Didn't the New York Central make a reduction about that time? A. I think on the 1st of July. Q. And the Baltimore and Ohio about that time? A. Somewhere along there. I don't know the dates exactly. Q. This reduction was arrived at by yourselves without any understanding with other roads? A. Yes; we thought it proper to be done. I think, and believe now, that we were paying men then twenty per cent. above the average price paid for an equivalent amount of labor anywhere else. Q. Do you remember the prices paid the trainmen? A. I don't recollect, but I can get you the data if you want them. I don't recollect the details. Our wages differ a little on different divisions--they are not entirely uniform. There are some places where the living is more expensive, and there the compensation is higher. They are paid according to locality. There are some places where the cost of living is a great deal less than in others, and a difference is made in wages. It is always been so both on the track and roadway and the trainmen also. Q. Do you know whether arrangements were made at Chicago to pool the earnings of the three trunk lines? A. An attempt was made. Q. But never carried out? A. No. Q. You don't know whether this question of wages was discussed at that meeting? A. I don't know. Q. You had no report made to you by the representative of your road who was there? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. To pool the entire earnings of the road? A. No; the competitive business to avoid disagreements, and to put all the shippers on a perfect equality, and get a fair living compensation for doing the work to be done. Through excessive competition, very often business was done resulting in a loss to the companies. They did the work for a great deal less than cost, and in doing, that with certain kinds of traffic, they did violence and injustice to other people at other points. That was one of the troubles with the city of Pittsburgh--perhaps their chief trouble. Q. The purpose of it was to secure uniformity of freights? A. And compensation to everybody. Q. To shippers, too? A. To shippers. In the early part of last year, the through business of the company was done below actual cost to every road that did it. During the first six months of last year, not a farthing was made on through competitive freight by any line. Q. Was that agreed upon at that meeting in Chicago? A. They made an effort, but didn't succeed in having it carried out practically. Q. The trouble was in one line cutting down freights? A. That is the allegation always--that somebody is cheating somebody else. Q. It was attempted to carry it into effect? A. Yes. Q. For how long a time did you work at it? A. Three or four months, probably, but finally it all broke up. On west-bound traffic we have an arrangement for a division of the business under low established rates, by which everybody is placed on a perfect equality. New York, a certain price, Philadelphia so much below that, and Baltimore, so much below that. Under that arrangement, the lines have been doing very much better than when in open warfare. I believe now that every west-bound shipper is placed on an entire equality. Q. You have referred to Pittsburgh. Had there been complaints by shippers in Pittsburgh about discrimination? A. Always. Q. What were the complaints? A. That through goods were carried at a less rate per ton per mile than their goods, and that we ought to be able to control that. I think I have tried diligently for the last five years of my life to get an arrangement or an agreement by which all these questions could be adjusted, and these discriminations of every character wiped out, and I went even to this trouble: I met a committee of merchants and manufacturers of the city of Pittsburgh, and went over the whole case with them. I said to them: gentlemen, there are times when it cannot be controlled. If we succeed in making this west-bound arrangement we will put all your interests here, so far as relates to the western markets, on a fair equality with everything that comes into competition with you from the east. I said so far as we are concerned, we have a strong desire to do just what you want done, and to that end we are working, and we will do anything we can do to bring it about; and if it should happen in the future that we must go through other and more violent wars than we have now passed, we will still agree that your trade in competition with like trade--that your manufacturing interests here shall be protected by at least ten per cent. less than the aggregate rates from points east of you. They expressed themselves very well satisfied with that arrangement. Q. Can you give us any of the methods you have tried for the purpose of preventing those complaints by the people of Pittsburgh? A. The general endeavor is to agree upon rates, and to adhere to them absolutely. We never charge in any case exceeding the rate charged from a distant point. In this arrangement, I referred to, for the city of Pittsburgh, I told them, in any possible state of things, we would make their rates ten per cent. less than any rate prevailing from any point east of them--Philadelphia, New York, or Baltimore. It sometimes happened that competition ruled so strong that we carried things from New York to Chicago lower than we did from Pittsburgh, and when engaged in one of these little troubles, the rates are frequently changed a dozen times in a day. Our aim always has been to put all the shippers on our road and all the intermediate shippers on rates as low as competition might force at the extremes. We think it is right, and endeavor to do it. There have been isolated cases when it is not done, as it may happen that a shipper from New York to-day will have a low rate on some specific kind of goods, while the shipper from Pittsburgh would be paying the rate that prevailed the day before. But whenever such cases came to our notice we gave a drawback. Sometimes they never came to our notice, but have been nursed up, and made a cause of trouble and complaint. Whenever we found the difference too great we always paid them back. By Senator Yutzy: Q. By rebates? A. Yes. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. There never has been a time when the price charged from Pittsburgh was greater than from any point beyond? A. It never was the policy of the company that it should be so, but it has frequently happened in isolated cases that such was the case. Q. Has that been the case for any length of time? A. Never--not for any length of time. Q. For a month at a time? A. Oh, no--a day or two. Q. How did freights compare in July last with what they had been for three months preceding that time? A. They had been extremely low the whole of the year up to that time, and were then extremely low on east-bound business. On west-bound business on the 1st of July that arrangement was made to have a division of the business. Q. How were freights after the strike was over? A. On west-bound business, the arrangement that went into operation then is in operation now. On east-bound, every two or three weeks they have the same chronic trouble. After making an agreement, they violate it and break down, but as a general thing, the rates are better now than they were a year ago. Q. How did rates compare the fore part of last season with the year before, at the same time? A. Very much lower. Two reasons brought it about. First a short crop in the fall of 1876, when there was very little freight to come east--nothing at all equal to the facilities of the various companies, the result being a scramble and competition to get it, and prices ruled away below the cost of doing the work. Q. How did the amount of freight or tonnage during the months of May and June, 1877, compare with the months of May and June, 1876? A. It was not so heavy, but after the harvest of last year--and it was a heavy crop all over the west--and in consequence of the European war, which cause a demand, the roads had better tonnage. Q. Was there any difference in the local freights? A. They were greater in quantity all along our line. The crops were better. Q. How did the local rates compare with the previous year? A. They were on the same general basis as the previous year. I don't think there was any change, unless we got into those violent competitions, when we would reduce our local as well as through rates. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you ship goods or freight cheaper from New York to San Francisco than from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, such as steel or iron? A. I think that has occurred a number of times. The rates are made by the Union and Central Pacific roads. At New York they come into competition with the Pacific mail and sailing vessels around Cape Horn, and on account of that competition, the rates are made low. Q. Less from New York to San Francisco than from Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. Has it been the custom on your road to get a larger rate from New York than from Pittsburgh? A. Yes; on our road we get a larger rate from New York than from Pittsburgh. Q. Do you mean per ton per mile? A. No. I mean the aggregate rate. The Pacific road fixes its own prices from Chicago west-bound. Q. Can you not ship freight at a less rate per ton per mile for a long distance than for a short? A. I think we can. It saves the intermediate handling. Q. Do you know of any instance where iron or steel has been shipped from Pittsburgh to New York and from there to San Francisco by rail? A. No. Q. Because the rates would be cheaper? A. No. I have understood of one or two cases where drugs were sent from Pittsburgh to New York, and these came into competition with drugs shipped by ocean, and were then shipped on back. Q. Did the cheap rates at New York arise from competition with water transportation? A. Yes; at sea. That only applies to heavy articles, about which there is no question of time or of insurance. It may apply to heavy drugs; but it does not apply to dry goods or groceries, or things like that. Q. Are your local freight rates governed by your through rates in any way? A. To the extent that whenever through rates come down below the local charges we reduce the local charges. Q. Proportionately? A. No; but we do not exceed on our local business the amount charged on other roads. Q. Do you reduce the rates on local traffic when you reduce them on other traffic in equal proportion? A. No. Say the rate from Chicago to New York is fifty cents, and the rate from Philadelphia or Harrisburg is fifty cents, and the rate from New York should be reduced to forty or thirty, we reduce the other rate. Q. To the same per centage? A. The same gross rate. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any strike in the city of Philadelphia among your employés? A. There was some striking among the men on our trains. Q. When did that first break out? A. Probably a day or two after the trouble at Pittsburgh. I think the trouble occurred here on Friday night or Saturday. Q. Among what class of your employés. A. The trainmen entirely. Q. Did it include the engineers? A. No. Q. The brakemen, firemen, and conductors? A. Yes; the trainmen--on freight trains. Q. Did they interfere with your property in any way here? A. They declined to run the trains out, and said their lives were in danger, and the result was the trains didn't go for several days. It didn't apply to the Northern Central road or the New York division. Q. Did they attempt to interfere with the property of the road? A. Destroy it? Q. Yes? A. Not at all. I think they felt themselves bound by some organization that seemed to have control of them, not to do anything or allow others to take their places, and, therefore, it was simply a stand off policy--the trains didn't go. But they attempted no destruction of property at all. Q. Did it become necessary for you to call on the civil authorities here? A. Yes. There was a great deal of threatening all over town in regard to the possibility of serious trouble, and we had some trouble at the yards in West Philadelphia. Engines were taken from trains. Q. What steps did you take for protection here? A. I sent word down to the mayor's office about this difficulty on the lines of the road, and that we feared that some effort might be made to destroy our property, and that, therefore, we wanted the protection due to every interest in our State and city--nothing more. He organized a police force. A great many of the people of the city were alarmed about the situation of affairs, and, I believe, they gave the mayor authority to take on additional policemen, which he kept employed for some days, until the threatened trouble was all over. I think his whole action in the management of the police force under him was very efficient and thorough. Q. Did he respond promptly to that call? A. Yes; and succeeded in maintaining order entirely. Q. There was no trouble in maintaining peace and order? A. No; excepting the exercise of a great deal of vigilance and care with a strong force. Q. Was it necessary for the policemen to make any attack on the crowd? A. I think nothing serious. They had several little disturbances. The crowd was armed and threatened trouble and all that. Q. Did the crowd assemble in very large numbers? A. I have been told from two to five thousand people; but they persuaded them to disperse. I do not think there was any trouble at any time. The mayor's policy was to prevent crowds from assembling, to prevent disturbance, and in the conduct of the whole matter I think he showed great wisdom and great efficiency. Q. What day did you start your trains here? A. From here west? Q. Yes? A. I think on the 27th or the 28th. Q. Did you meet with any trouble in getting men to start them? A. No. Q. Was there any resistance made by the crowd? A. Not here. Q. Was it necessary to have any guard to protect the first trains that started? A. Of military? Q. Or policemen? A. No. There were men here about the yards and depots to see that the peace was preserved, but they made no arrests, I believe, in connection with people in leaving trains. They did make arrests of some people for destroying some oil cars. Q. On the Pennsylvania railroad? A. On the junction road. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you, as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, at any time, make any requisition on the State authorities for troops to protect your property? A. Not at all. The State authorities were called out, as I understood, on a requisition from the county of Allegheny. Q. By the sheriff? A. Yes. Q. Have you any knowledge of any officer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company calling on the Governor for troops? A. None whatever. They, no doubt, suggested to the Governor of the State that it was his duty to put the force in such a position as to preserve peace and order. Q. Did you understand that you, as president of a railroad company or as a citizen, have the right to call on the Governor for troops, and that the Governor has a right to respond to that? A. No. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. In the case of an outbreak, such as existed there, to whom would you apply for help? A. To the civil authorities of the place, and they, in their turn, are obliged, as I understood the law, to make the requisition. I do not understand that I, as president of a company, have the right to make a requisition on the Governor, but I certainly have the right to notify him. I have no right to make a requisition. Q. You have the right to notify him under the act of 1864? A. I have no reference to any particular act. I never understood that a railroad company or a mining interest or anything else had a right to make a requisition. I always thought they had the right to state their case, and ask that some action should be taken, letting the mayor or sheriff, as the case may be, make his own requisition. By Senator Yutzy: Q. It has been charged by some that the troops were ordered by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in their movements? A. I think if you will ask the military officers--General Brinton--he will tell you that he moved his troops according to his superior officer's directions, and not at the direction of any railroad man. I guess he was careful to do that. I certainly never asked them to move troops to any particular place or to do any particular thing. Q. But you conferred with the officers or advised them? A. No; I conferred with the Governor of the State, and he gave his orders through his officers. I didn't give them any orders. I did give them every facility they asked for, just as we did with the Government of the United States when they got into the rebellion, when we stopped all our business for a time, and gave our road completely to carry men and equipments, and whatever they might require for the field or elsewhere. We gave them entire control of our road. Q. Do you say you never made any requisition on the State authorities for protection? A. We stated our case to them, and said we are in great danger, and the highways of the State are in great danger, and we want that protection which it is our right to have. Q. As every other citizen of the State, you would have the right to demand protection? A. I think we all pay for peace and order to be preserved in the State, and it ought to be. By Mr. Engelbert: Q. Then you never did dictate to the Governor, or to any one in his absence, what to do with the military? A. Not a bit. I was especially careful not to do anything of that kind. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State if you have been able to ascertain or to gather facts sufficient to form a judgment as to what produced the strike? A. I think the trouble originated through the discontent of men all over the country--not confined to railroads. Every other branch in some how was directly or indirectly connected with the outbreak, looking for compensation of an increased character, without regard to whether parties were able to pay it or not, and altogether, I think that whole movement was made up--either agreed upon or concerted and agreed upon under their own mode of organization. I think they took this abatement of ten per cent. as one pretext for making the outbreak. Q. What facts have you that lead you to believe it was a concerted movement or agreed upon? A. Simply their action, and the results spread before us everywhere. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Is the pay of railroad employés less, as a general thing, than that of any other ordinary avocation? A. No; I think it is greater; and I think it ought to be a little greater, because the men are subject to risks in railroading, that they are not subject to in ordinary work; therefore, I think it is the duty of railroad companies to pay a little more for that service than is paid for an equal amount of labor in the ordinary channels of life. I think we pay twenty per cent. more to-day than men receive in the various other channels of business. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Are they subject to greater expense than others? A. Yes; by reason of going from their homes, their extra cost of living is something. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And in one sense you call it skilled labor, in addition to the risks they run? A. Yes; we want men understanding their duties to run our trains and take care of the property and of the people in their charge. We want that in all the men, and, I think, as a general thing, we have as good a set of men as was ever organized. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Was there any complaint among the men about their not being able to work full time? A. Yes; when the depression of business came so strong, we undertook to retain more men in our service than were needed to do the work, and we did that very often at the request of men--of the older men, in order that younger men might have an opportunity to get some work and get a living out of the general result. Instead of men getting ten hours work they would probably get an average of six, seven, or eight hours, and in that way the work was distributed among a greater number of people. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You did that instead of discharging them? A. Yes; the result of that was that it made the average low, and was a cause of complaint, and when this thing was all over, we had simply to compromise and in giving more hours of work, consequently, to do with fewer men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Looking at the matter from the experience you have, was that plan of retaining more men than you could give full work to a good one? A. No; it caused dissatisfaction to the men, and caused them to complain, I think unreasonably and unjustly against the company, because the company, so far as it was concerned, was perfectly willing to pay that number of dollars for the service done, but it was distributed among so many that instead of their getting fifty dollars, say, per month, they would get thirty or forty, perhaps. Very many of the oldest men had their sympathies aroused in favor of men, and wanted them retained even if they could not get full time, and asked us to do that thing in many instances; but it resulted just in that discontent I have mentioned. Now we have changed our policy, and endeavor to give our men nearly as full time as we can, and in that give our oldest men and thoroughly loyal men, of course, the preference. Q. From your experience and knowledge of the number of railroad men in the country, is there a surplus? A. There is to-day. Q. There are men out of employment? A. Yes; the depression in the iron business, and coal business, and lumber business, and everything else, makes less traffic, and a greatly decreased number of trains. This decrease has made a corresponding decrease in the demand for men. We hope one day that it will change, and we can take on all our people and pay them better wages than now; but we cannot do it until the country becomes more prosperous than now. Q. Did this number of men out of employment have a tendency to produce restlessness among them, and bring on the trouble? A. There is no question about that. It was the want of employment that made the labor of the country dissatisfied. I think if we could set men to work making a living for themselves and their families, I think there would be no trouble about it. I think it is the best law that can be made. Q. It was more that, in your judgment, that caused the trouble than low wages? A. I think so. * * * * * George R. Sowden, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. I live in west Philadelphia, No. 1421 Locust street. Q. What is your business? A. I am a practicing lawyer. Q. Go on and state what knowledge you have of the occurrences at Pittsburgh last July, and the movements of the militia? A. During last summer I was colonel of the Third regiment of infantry, connected with the First brigade of the First division. I was in the brigade commanded by General Mathews. On the evening of Friday, July 20, I got a dispatch from him, asking me to assemble my regiment, and report for duty as soon as possible at the West Philadelphia depot. I got the dispatch at Bryn Mawr. I got to Philadelphia at nine o'clock, and sent out dispatches to my field officers and staff officers and company commanders, and I assembled part of my regiment there, and at two o'clock of Saturday, July 21, I went on the train to Pittsburgh. We reached there about two o'clock on Saturday. There the troops were ordered out of the train, and we moved up the railroad track. I was on the left of Colonel Benson, and in my rear was the Weccacoe Legion and the Keystone Battery. They were dragging the Gatling guns at that time without horses, but it was found impossible to drag the guns over the railroad ties, and men were detailed from the three regiments to assist in hauling the guns. I sent a detail for that purpose. After we got in to the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street--I do not know in the meantime what had become of the Second brigade--I was facing west on the railroad track seventy-five yards below the crossing on Twenty-eighth street, and the rear of my command was towards the hill. Q. Facing toward the hill? A. No; I was facing toward the Allegheny river, forming a straight line. Some little time after I was there, the crowd of rioters formed in front of us, and also on my left flank, and, as I was in a straight line, I withdrew my left flank, so as to connect and form an angle with the balance of the brigade, to keep the rioters from coming in behind us. General Mathews approved of the partial change of front. At that time, there was an enormous crowd of people on the hill back of us, and in front of us, and there was a good deal of noise and confusion. After we had been there some little time, there was some firing of pistol shots; and stones, and brickbats, and clubs, and every thing of that sort were fired at us, and, presently firing began among the troops on my right, and also on the other side. The brigade at one time formed three sides of a hollow square. The firing by the people began, as I saw, from the hill. That was the first I saw. That was, the firing at the troops. After some little firing on their part, the troops began the return fire. My men I didn't permit to fire until on Saturday afternoon, as I had received no orders to fire, and didn't see the immediate occasion for firing. I restrained my men from firing. Then, after this general firing on the right, a great many people on the hill were killed, and some of the rioters in front on twenty-eighth street were also killed. In the mean time, we were all surrounded, where I was, by the rioters. Q. Did you hear any command given to fire? A. No; I did not. There was no command to fire. I got no command to fire. Q. Were there any shots fired by the mob before there was any firing by the militia? A. Yes; a great many. Q. Pistol shots? A. Mostly pistol shots, and, I think, there were two or three gun shots from the side hill fired at us. Q. What other demonstrations were made by the crowd, before the firing took place on the soldiers? A. I was some distance from what you call the right of the brigade, on Twenty-eighth street. I had my hands pretty full where I was, and didn't pay much attention to what was going on there. In front of me some rioters showed pistols, and wanted to go through my lines. I refused to let them. They threatened what they would do with me and my men, and also tried to seduce the men from the lines. They were saying we are all workingmen, and you won't fire on workingmen. In this way they endeavored to break up the morals and discipline of the command. I drove them away without using violence, so far as I could, and kept them at a distance of from three or four yards. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What was the general conduct of the whole command? A. Do you mean of the brigade? Q. Your men? A. It was very good. For raw troops, it was excellent. I have seen troops in the field that didn't behave nearly as well as the men in my command. Most of them are boys, and, like young colts, were a little skittish at the first fire; but finding they didn't get killed, they stood to their work very handsomely. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Had any of your command ever seen actual service during the late war? A. Yes; I have seen service, and some of my officers and some of the men. Q. What proportion of them? A. I should say ten per cent. on an average. Perhaps more. By Senator Reyburn: Q. What was the general conduct of the division as a whole? A. I cannot speak of that because I didn't see the Second brigade, and didn't know where it was; but the general conduct of the troops was excellent. Q. From the commencement of the trouble? A. Yes; in my judgment there was as good discipline, and order, and soldierly behavior on the part of the officers and men, as there would be in an army in the field, and much better than I have seen at times, in case of disaster. I was in the field about two years, and served under Generals McClellan, and Burnside, and Hooper, and Mead. I joined the army at Antietam, and served in the Pennsylvania Reserves at Fredericksburg, with the Third division, under General Reynolds, and was at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. By Senator Yutzy: Q. In what capacity did you serve in the army? A. First as orderly sergeant, and I was then made first lieutenant and captain. I was on General Doubleday's staff part of the time. After this general firing had taken place on Saturday afternoon, we were moved down into the round-house. Some reason was given that we were sent to guard the property. We went into the round-house about dusk, and a little later--between seven and eight o'clock--I was following Colonel Benson, and was given that part of the house to guard opposite Liberty street, about seventy-eight feet long, and was instructed to put out sentries along the line and inside the house to guard the windows, with orders to keep the mob outside back from the windows, and observe their operations, and not to fire without orders. There was great confusion and tumult outside, and a great deal of yelling and screaming, and some firing, and we could scarcely show ourselves at the windows until the mob outside began to throw bricks and direct pistol shots at us, but my men, owing to the orders I had given, didn't fire at all. Occasionally I went to see if the sentinels were on duty and obeying orders. About one o'clock I was lying on a board, when I heard a sentinel call for the sergeant of the guard on this line of Twenty-eighth street, and I immediately went over, taking a posse with me, to learn the cause of the alarm, when I found a large crowd around a field piece, apparently loading it, and preparing to fire. I immediately sent my adjutant to notify General Mathews--to notify him of the fact, and request his attendance. While my adjutant was going for General Mathews, he met General Brinton, and brought him, and General Mathews turned up at the same time. We held a council. The piece was ready to be discharged, and was pointed toward where I was told the Second brigade was. Then it was determined to disperse the mob. I cannot say now whether any intimation was given to them at the time to leave or we should fire--I am not positive--but I think there was. Q. Warning you mean? A. Yes. I am not positive; but they had a light, and were about ready to fire, when, by General Brinton's or Mathew's orders, I drew some men up inside of the windows, and we opened fire on them. They immediately dispersed, a number being killed and wounded. After an interval they came up again, and we let them come up; but as soon as they came up to the piece, and attempted to fire, we ordered them back, and when they didn't go back, we opened fire. After that time notice was always given. I suggested the propriety of going out for the piece and bringing it in, and volunteered to go with my men and bring it in and spike it; but our commanders thought it was not worth while, as we had it covered. After the crowd had withdrawn from the piece, they got back of board-piles and small houses, and kept firing at us all night. One man fired an explosive bullet. Every now and then it would come in over the heads of the men and strike something large--such as the stack of a locomotive--and immediately explode. A number of them had muskets and rifles. In the meantime some cars out on the right of us had been fired, and a number of these burning cars were sent down towards the buildings where we were, and lodged against some building not filled with troops, and in a little while the flames rushed through the window of the first floor and struck the ceiling of the second floor, and in the course of half an hour or so everything was on fire, and about six o'clock everything was on fire all around us, and cinders were falling as long as my hand--large cinders from this building--and the roof of this outside building was entirely on fire, and it had communicated to the roof of the round-house, so that we were enveloped with a great deal of smoke, and in danger of being enveloped entirely in flames. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How far was this cannon stationed from the position you held? A. About as far as from here across the street--about eighty feet. Q. In what direction? A. It was facing about the direction of the grain elevator--in that direction. Q. Down the track? A. Not exactly, but sort of angularly, so as to strike the machine shops. It was on Liberty street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Below you then? A. Yes; but right opposite to us. After we were almost smothered in smoke, and these heavy cinders were falling, we fell in for the purpose of marching out--where, of course, I had no means of knowing--it was not proper for me to inquire. In the meantime we took the ammunition out of two or three guns there and dampened them with water so that it could not be used against us. We turned out the first street and went towards the Allegheny river and then we struck for Penn street, I think, and as soon as we struck that street and got opposite those men, who were firing all night, they turned about face and fired into our flanks. The firing began as soon as we got on Penn street, and they kept firing into our flanks all the time until we got to the arsenal. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where did the firing come from? A. From door-ways, and alley-ways, and second story windows, and doors of houses, and telegraph poles, and from every place where a man could get behind--where he could fire without being in any danger. I saw men standing along the side-walks with large navy revolvers in their coat tails waiting for us to get past a sufficient distance to fire into us. Q. For what distance was the firing kept up? A. I can only give an estimate. I should say a mile. Q. Firing out of houses--was there much of that? A. A great deal of that? I saw repeated cases where a man's arm would be out of a window firing at us; and generally when we would pass a corner there would be a crowd there apparently peaceable, but when we got past they would immediately fire into us. Q. How many men were wounded in going out? A. I don't know. I do not remember the number of men wounded. Q. Was there any jeering of citizens from the houses as you passed along? A. A great deal. Q. And participated in by women? A. I think I heard several women abusing us and a number of men stating, that we had killed their brothers and sons and so on, and that they would kill us. Q. When you arrived at the arsenal, did you go into the grounds? A. No. Q. You do not know what took place? A. Not of my own knowledge. Q. What was the conduct of the troops there under General Brinton, taking them all, during Saturday in the round-house? A. In my judgment, it was excellent, and, as we marched out of the round-house in the morning, I think the men all kept perfect order. The men were dressed in regular files, and no officer, that I saw, was not in his proper place. There was no confusion among the troops until as we got near the arsenal, when there was a movement made, coming from the right, to close up on a double quick, and that brought the Second brigade in the rear up on us, and that sort of huddled up the First brigade, and made some confusion there. Q. Where was that? A. Somewhere in the neighborhood of the arsenal--probably two squares from the arsenal. That confusion lasted two or three minutes, probably, and the Second brigade was just put on the right, and order was immediately restored. At one time there was a little difficulty about drawing the Gatling guns, and I know I assisted myself in pulling a gun some distance with my men. Q. Was there any demoralization during the night in the round-house? A. Not a particle--so far as I saw--not a particle. Q. The discipline was good at the time you were in the round-house? A. Yes; I had sentinels on front, and they observed their duty perfectly, and my whole command was in excellent condition. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was there any disobedience of orders on the part of the officers or men? A. No; occasionally there would be a man that didn't have any experience in the field, as there will always be men who will shirk their duty. Once in a while there would be a man indifferent to his duty, but that was simply in isolated cases just as you would see in the army. I saw it in the army of the Potomac. As a whole the discipline of the troops in the round-house was excellent. Q. You state you thought there was some musket firing or rifle firing from the mob at Twenty-eighth street. A. Yes. Q. Did you see any musket firing? A. Yes. Q. Did you see any muskets or rifles in the hands of the mob? A. I cannot say that I saw--yes I did. I saw it on Saturday morning after leaving the round-house, as we were going up the street. I saw these men firing into us all night. I saw them have muskets. On Saturday afternoon I saw firing that must have come from muskets. I know the difference, and I judged from the sound and the smoke. The firing couldn't have been done with pistols. Q. Were any of the military struck by pistol or rifle shots before they commenced firing on the mob? A. Yes. Q. Did you hear any command given to fire? A. On Saturday afternoon? Q. After this firing from the mob--following the stones thrown at the military. A. No; I cannot say that I did. I am positive I did not; therefore I didn't fire nor order my men to fire. Q. Did you hear a command from any officer to cease firing? A. I do not remember any command to cease firing. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see General Pearson at that time? A. I saw him once that afternoon. That is the time we were going up from the Union depot to the Twenty-eighth street crossing; at least I saw a major general I took to be General Pearson. Q. Did you hear any general give a command in this way: "Order your men to fire?" A. No, sir; I did not. Q. How was General Pearson dressed? A. If this was General Pearson, he had a military coat on with shoulder straps, and no sword. Q. A cap? A. I think he had a cap on. Q. You saw no belt? A. I think he had no sword nor belt. Q. After you left the round-house and were marching along Penn avenue, did you see any police officers fire at you? A. No; I didn't see any firing. I saw them in front of a police-station, and I saw them with pistols; but I know a man that did see them fire. Q. Did they make any hostile demonstration? A. Yes--no; I cannot say that I saw any hostile demonstrations, except in their manner. They looked at us with a forbidding sort of manner. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did they have pistols in their hands? A. Yes. * * * * * E. Wallace Mathews, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In Philadelphia--No. 4105 Walnut street. Q. What is your connection with the National Guard--what is your rank? A. At present I am not in the National Guard. During the July riots I occupied the position of brigadier general, and was in command of the First brigade, First division. Q. State whether you were at Twenty-eighth street on Saturday, the 21st, when the collision occurred between the troops and the mob? A. I was in the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street, near the railway crossing, in command of my brigade. Q. State what occurred prior to the firing? A. The troops had been marching in column of fours, preceded by a gentleman in citizen's dress, who was pointed out to me as the sheriff of the county, and directly in advance of us was General Brinton and an officer dressed in fatigue uniform--a major general--who was pointed out to me as General Pearson. We marched toward Twenty-eighth street, in which was a dense crowd. The crowd was pressing upon both flanks, and was very dense in front, on Twenty-eighth street, at the crossing. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You marched with the right in front? A. Yes. The order of the troops was as follows: The First regiment, under command of Colonel Benson; next the Third regiment, commanded by Colonel Snowden; third an independent company, the Weccacoe Legion; then followed the Gatling guns, with a detachment from some of the different commands to haul them, including one of my independent companies, the Washington Grays. We marched in this order, and we marched into the crowd until we couldn't march any further on account of the pressure ahead of us. Then, by direction or command of General Brinton, when the crowd in the neighborhood of Twenty-eighth street became so dense that we could not penetrate it, the fours were wheeled into line, facing our left flank, that is, facing the Allegheny river. Then, by order of General Brinton, the brigade was marched directly to the front, and across the tracks slowly, the men with their pieces at a carry, thus backing the crowd off from the tracks, the purpose being, as I was informed, to clear the tracks. The crowd was pushed gently back, until they were pushed entirely off the tracks that were free from cars; but there were several open cars in the vicinity, and we saw that in attempting to clear the tracks we had already cleared, perhaps, four tracks. Then, by direction of General Brinton, the front rank was left in this place, and the rear rank was brought to about face, and marched to the rear, thus clearing the few men gathered in the rear. Q. How far did you march to the rear? A. About twenty feet. Q. Across the tracks? A. Yes--twenty or thirty feet--facing the hill so that the front two ranks were facing outward, opposite each other. Their backs were towards the center. The crowd on our right, that is on Twenty-eighth street, were very demonstrative and noisy, and began to press in between the open ranks. By General Brinton's orders, the Washington Grays were brought forward to drive out the crowd between the two ranks. They proved to be insufficient. They were only nine men beside the officer, and the Weccacoe Legion was brought forward to assist them, and General Brinton actively superintended the effort to drive the crowd out. That is where the first mélée occurred in driving out the men who had intruded between the two ranks. As the general took direct command, I didn't interfere. During that trouble some of the crowd, I believe, were hurt by bayonet thrusts, and then commenced pistol firing, and then almost simultaneously from every direction came pieces of coal and stones and all sorts of missiles, in a great measure from the hill and also from the cars--I think some were loaded with coal--and from Twenty-eighth street, mingled with pistol shots and shouting, so that it was a scene of confusion I never saw equaled. We were without orders, and I saw nothing of General Pearson there at that time. General Brinton I saw occasionally moving about in different places. I watched the crowd, because I saw they were very much incensed, fearing for my men. I saw them in several instances seize the muskets of the men, and I knew that many of them were young men, and I feared if such a movement as that became general, they would disarm my men. Consequently, I watched very closely the temper of the crowd, until I became convinced we couldn't temporize any longer, and I gave the command to load. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How long before the firing did you give the command to load? A. Not more than one minute, I should judge; and there had been pistol firing. Q. From the mob? A. Yes. Q. Before you ordered your men to load? A. Yes. Then, before I could take decided action in the matter, the firing commenced somewhere on the right, as near as I could judge, in the ranks of the Weccacoe Legion, or the artillery corps, Washington Grays. I heard no order to fire, and I gave no order to fire. The firing commenced first, a single piece, and then one or two near together, and then it became general on the right of the First regiment, and ran down as far as the center of the regiment, and as far as the close. Immediately all the officers, from all I saw--I remember Colonel Benson and his lieutenant--Colonel Clark--together with the staff officers and myself, attempted to stop the firing. We rushed among the troops in order not only to make ourselves seen, but felt and heard, and gave orders to cease firing. The crowd scattered entirely as soon as the firing commenced. We then moved immediately to the right, covering Twenty-eighth street, and took possession of that, in other words, brought up the Gatling guns, by order of General Brinton, and placed them on the street. One to command twenty-eighth street, and the other to command the tracks eastward. Then a company of the First regiment were brought--as the crowd attempted to cross on to Twenty-eighth street--were brought entirely across that street in the rear, and stretched across the street, in that direction, to keep the people back. Gradually the crowd began to get together in knots, and assemble in our front, and some of the more violent among them, who seemed to be under the influence of liquor or partially intoxicated--some of them came up to within three or four feet, and shook their fists in our faces, and called us vile epithets, in order to break our lines. I saw no disposition on the part of the troops, not even the privates, to hurt anybody, except in self defense. In some cases they allowed the rioters to push through their lines, and get inside. In this way the crowd gathered in little knots, and came nearer, and got more and more bold, until I gave directions for one or two companies commanding Twenty-eighth street to bring their pieces to a ready, when the crowd immediately dispersed, showing that they still feared any application of lead. We then held this position until about dusk, when, by direction of General Brinton, I brought the brigade, marching left in front, into the round-house. There was no explanation given me at the time, so far as I remember, why we were taken into the round-house; but it being night, I presumed we were to be quartered there. Q. By whose command? A. I received my commands from General Brinton. We marched into the round-house, and around the circle, nearly covering the entire circle, the Third regiment, under Colonel Snowden, being stationed, as they had followed in line, opposite the Liberty street windows of the round-house. General Brinton and some of his staff and myself, with some of my staff, then went around the building, looked at the windows, and determined to put on a strong guard, and I gave the orders accordingly. The detail was made, and the guard was stationed at those windows, and I then attempted to get a little rest, but, after a few hours, about ten o'clock, some firing commenced, and, after the firing once commenced, there was no such thing as rest. I spent almost the whole night in the round-house proper. Where I attempted to rest was in the building that had been occupied as the telegraph office at the outer depot. Q. In the round-house? A. Immediately adjoining--three or four feet from the round-house. We had to increase the guard after the firing commenced. Had to put men at each window on the Liberty street side, and on the side of the yard on that side of the building towards Twenty-eighth street. I think we increased the guard, perhaps, twice during the night. At one time during the night, about one o'clock, I received information that a piece of artillery was in Liberty street, and I immediately hastened to the window, and saw a brass piece, which I judged to be a Napoleon gun. Q. What time was that? A. About one o'clock on Sunday morning. Several men were standing about it, and General Brinton was there, and Colonel Snowden. I asked if I should send out a detachment to capture the gun, and bring it in, but he didn't give me direct permission, but gave me some encouragement, and I went immediately to Colonel Benson to consult him about it, and asked for a detail---- Q. Who was Colonel Benson? A. The commander of the First regiment. While consulting him about this matter, the Third regiment opened fire, as I understood, by direction of General Brinton, on the crowd surrounding the piece, and from that time on there was more or less firing. As the mob would come forward and make a demonstration as if they were going to fire the piece, the men at the windows would fire on them, but, after a time, they restrained firing, and ordered them to go back; and that became a by-word through the division, "Go back, go back, one, two, three," and then discharge. Q. Was there any firing at that time from the mob outside on the troops? A. Yes; pistol firing and gun firing--from some sort of guns. From that time until morning there was a good deal of firing. There was one party that was firing an explosive bullet, which would come through the windows and strike and explode. Q. Explode after they came into the round-house? A. Yes. Q. You mean explosive shells, fired from a rifle? A. Yes; small things. One struck on a column not more than four feet from where I was. I happened to be looking in that direction, and I saw it. First there was a sharp crack, and then I saw the smoke and some white ashes drop down from that spot. From that I knew very well that it was an explosive bullet. Further on towards morning, some burning cars were run in between our troops and the cannon, and from that time on we had very little firing there. Then some cars were stopped on the next building from the round-house, towards Twenty-eighth street, and that building took fire. General Brinton had organized a fire brigade, and had the fires put out. I didn't witness it myself, but understood it. He had put out those burning cars, so the round-house was not set on fire by the burning cars; but the machine-shop next took fire, and we could not find any means to put that out. The burning of that decided our case, for the round-house was connected with that by buildings filled with light kindling wood used by locomotives for firing up, and the burning of that building also sent columns of smoke down into our open round-house and cinders, and after a time the building itself took fire. I was then called after day light into a council, by General Brinton, who stated that he had received orders from General Latta, in case of moving out to go out eastward to Penn avenue--I understood it. There was a young man there from the Jefferson Cavalry, and he told where Penn avenue was--and for that matter, I knew myself--and when it was decided, the general gave me orders to take my brigade out first. I formed with Colonel Benson, of the First regiment, and Colonel Snowden, of the Third, and the Weccacoe Legion, and the Washington Grays, with the Gatling guns, and we issued out upon Liberty street. By Senator Reyburn: Q. The round-house was on fire? A. I think the building itself was on fire. At any rate it was only a question of a few minutes. After those other buildings were fired it could not have been saved. Q. Would it have been possible for your troops to have remained there? A. It would not have been possible--not many minutes more. Q. Was the round-house filled with smoke? A. The whole building was so filled with smoke--the smoke was so dense that it was difficult to see. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Before you left? A. Yes. By Senator Reyburn: Q. After coming out and manoeuvering in the street, your troops were steady and kept in good order? A. I was at the head of the line, where I thought my services were most required--at the very head of the line, in advance of the First regiment, nothing being ahead of me, excepting a small skirmish line of a dozen men stretched across to clear the street, and on looking back I never saw a regiment march in better condition, even in the streets of Philadelphia, or march in parade in better order. They had their arms at right shoulder, and were in perfect order. After we had been besieged there and harassed all night, it nerved me, when I looked back at that sight, when I saw those men come out in such gallant style, after being harassed all night, and unaccustomed as they were to fighting. We went down Twenty-fifth street to Penn avenue, and out Penn avenue to the arsenal. From my position at the head of the line, I didn't see any firing in the street. As we went along, people on either side were looking at us, and I was quite anxious about this little skirmish line, and was keeping my eye on them to see that they didn't get nervous, and on that account may not have seen as much as the others. I didn't see any firing from our flanks or in any direction, until we arrived at the arsenal. We halted there, and I saw the guard let General Brinton in, and I think one or two pressed in with them; but after a time they came back again. During that time there was some firing in the rear. We heard them hallooing there, and I distinctly heard firing in the rear, which increased, and then I noticed that the troops in our rear had become somewhat confused, and did not keep their alignment, and some of them came up into my brigade. My brigade then took the left, and Colonel Benson put his regiment in the rear, putting his command on the two sides of the street, so that they could command the windows. Those on the right side of the street commanding the windows opposite, and _vice versa_. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you march in that form? A. Yes; and after that we were not disturbed. We marched to the Sharpsburg bridge, and crossed it, and in Sharpsburg we received a few pieces of bread, and passed on over the hill. Q. From whom? A. From citizens, I think. Q. Of Sharpsburg? A. I think so. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were your troops exhausted by want of food? A. Very much. I didn't get even a piece of bread, but I saw some that had that. I received nothing personally until we passed a mile and a half, perhaps, beyond Sharpsburg, and there I obtained a little buttermilk. Q. Just state in this connection what rations the troops had received from the time they left Philadelphia to the time that you reached Sharpsburg? A. After leaving Philadelphia, received nothing until we got to Altoona. There the men were served with sandwiches and coffee--one or two sandwiches and a cup of coffee to each man. These provisions were handed in to the men. Then on arriving at Pittsburgh they were served with similar things--sandwiches and coffee. Q. During the night of Saturday you had nothing? A. We had nothing after marching to Twenty-eighth street. By Senator Yutzy: Q. At what time did you get the last rations? A. About three o'clock on Saturday afternoon. Q. And you did not get anything after that until you reached Sharpsburg? A. Nothing at all--excepting once in a while a soldier had put into his haversack an extra piece of bread. Q. And this was three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, until that time on Sunday? A. Nine o'clock, Sunday morning; and there was no serving of rations in Sharpsburg. By Senator Reyburn: Q. It was every fellow for himself? A. Yes: each one foraging for himself. Rations were not served until that night. So far as I saw, everything was paid for that was received. I know that I paid for the buttermilk I received. Q. Did you know or hear of any order being given to General Brinton by Colonel Norris to move to Torrens station? A. I heard of no such order. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Or from any one else? A. No; I asked General Brinton frequently what his orders were, and so far as I know, he told me the orders he had. I heard of no such orders. By Senator Reyburn: Q. If these orders had been given, do you think that General Brinton would have obeyed them and communicated the fact to you? You consulted together? A. We did. I think he would have told me certainly if he had such orders. There was hardly any occasion to consult after we left the city. Q. But during Saturday night? A. I frequently saw him, and had he received such orders I would have heard of them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you consult with him during the march from the round-house to Sharpsburg? A. During the march, until my brigade was put on the left, I frequently saw General Brinton. Q. Did you see Colonel Norris? A. I didn't see him--to know him. Q. Do you know him? A. No; I saw a barouche later in the day in the vicinity of the arsenal, and I heard it stated that Colonel Norris was in the barouche. Q. You stated that some cars were run between you and this gun? A. Yes. Q. What became of the gun after that? A. I saw it from the windows--from the higher windows--I went up once for that purpose to look after that gun--and I found that provision had been made by General Brinton in regard to it. I think he had stationed some men of the Second brigade in the upper windows of the office of the building near the round-house, and towards which that gun was pointed. Q. To pick off the gunners? A. I understood that. Q. Did you see any one with a lanyard in his hand fire that gun at any time? A. I didn't. It would have been too dark up to daylight to see a lanyard. Q. Did you see a light with the gun? A. I didn't. I was with Colonel Benson consulting, at that time. Q. Do you know it was a Napoleon? A. No; I judged it was. I could see the gun distinctly, yet Colonel Benson could not see it at all. I would like to corroborate the testimony of Colonel Snowden in regard to the discipline of our troops in the round-house--of both brigades, so far as I saw them. Q. In short, was the conduct of your troops commendable? A. Perfectly so. Q. Of officers and men? A. Yes. Q. Have you had experience in the army? A. Yes. I entered the army early in 1861, in the infantry--the three months' service--and at the end of that time I raised a battery, and served as captain of that battery for a year and a half. I was then on detached duty for awhile, and then, in the spring of 1863, I rejoined the army of the Potomac as major of the First artillery--the same regiment my battery was connected with--and served on General Doubleday's staff, and was in active command of three batteries in the field, and was with my command in the beginning of Chancellorsville, and later on in the battle I served as chief of corps, and after that battle had command of eight batteries in the artillery reserve of the army of the Potomac. Q. With the rank of major? A. Yes. Q. Of artillery? A. Yes. Q. Do you know of any communications sent by General Brinton to General Latta while in the round-house? A. I heard him say repeatedly that he had sent messages and received messages from General Latta. Q. Did you see the communications from either one? A. I saw one, but didn't read it. Q. Do you know the nature of those communications? A. Nothing except as I have stated that in case of leaving--this was near morning, I think--in case of leaving, to march out Penn avenue--whether it stated march east, or go by way of Penn avenue, it was something about Penn avenue. I knew where that was. Q. From your experience as a military man, do you consider that it was a prudent move to go into the round-house with the troops at that time? A. It is very easy to see mistakes after they are made. I can say, however, on general principles, it seemed to me at the time, as it has seemed since, that the first thing to be done was to disperse the mob. Until that was done, there was no safety in going into the round-house. That the troops needed rest, there can be no question. Standing in the sun, many of them had fallen from sheer exhaustion and the heat of the sun. Several of the men were lying about there, and they were applying water to them, if they could get it. There was complaint from all quarters that the men were exhausted, and some seemed to be sunstruck. In that condition, they needed rest, and their commanding officers wanted to give them rest, but it was evident that the mob must be dispersed before there could be much rest for them. Q. Was not the mob already dispersed? A. It was on the crossing, but they were continually gathering. Q. They were re-assembling? A. Yes; and some were very demonstrative and very violent. Q. Did you see General Pearson in the round-house, after you retired there? A. Yes; he was in the telegraph office, which was immediately adjoining the round-house. A building some four or five feet from the round-house. I think they called it the dispatcher's office. It was the office where the wires centered. It was a square building, directly opposite Twenty-sixth street. I saw General Pearson sitting at a desk writing, when I entered. Q. In this telegraph office, adjoining the round-house? A. Yes. Q. How was he dressed? A. There was not much light and I could not tell, except that he was dressed in the fatigue uniform of a major general. He had straps on his shoulders, with two stars. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he have a blouse on? A. I cannot say. Q. Did he have a cap on? A. I don't know. He may not have had any anything on his head in the house. When I saw the officer pointed out as General Pearson, on the tracks, I cannot tell whether he had a cap on or not, but it was something not unmilitary. By Senator Yutzy: Q. But do not remember whether it was a hat or cap? A. No. But if he had a silk hat on, with a soldier uniform, I should have noticed it. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you know of any telegrams passing between General Brinton and Colonel Scott in regard to General Brinton clearing those tracks? A. I do not know of any communications whatever, between them; but I am very confident, I am positive, I heard General Brinton say--we said to each other during the afternoon, we have possession of those tracks, and why don't they send out their trains. Q. Then, in your opinion, they could have sent out trains, so far as you had possession of the tracks? A. So far as the tracks were cleared up to the point where we were. But we understood the reason to be that the men would not serve. Q. That they refused to run? A. That was the excuse we heard; but there was no time during the afternoon, after the first firing, when the crowd were cleared from our immediate neighborhood, and no time, only during the night, that I did not feel as a military officer, that we had command of the position, and were competent to deal with the crowd. The only thing was, that we were lacking rest, and were greatly reduced in strength from hunger. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you hear General Pearson give such an order as follows, to the officers: "Order your men to fire," before the firing took place? A. I did not--nothing of the kind. I heard nothing in relation to firing, except the first fire. By Mr. Means: Q. You suppose that the troops fired in self-defense? A. I supposed at that time, and I don't know that I have any reason to change my impression, that it was an actual shot--the first shot--and there was so much confusion at the time that it would have been very natural for others to suppose the order was given. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You stated that you saw pistol shots fired from the crowd? A. It would be more correct to say that I heard them. Q. Did you see stones and missiles thrown? A. I did. Q. Did you consider that an assault on your troops? A. I did. Q. Did you not then consider the order to fire justifiable? A. I did. * * * * * Robert A. Ammon re-called: By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What day and what time of the day was it you got word that the Governor was coming to Pittsburgh? A. I think it was on the 24th. I think it was early in the morning, but won't be positive about that. That is my recollection. Q. Where did you learn he was at the time? A. He had left Chicago. Q. What time did you expect him? A. I cannot state, as the rioters at that point were not aware when he had left Chicago. I telegraphed along to the different trains, and found he was coming on No. 4. Q. Did you have any communication with him? A. Yes. Q. What did you do when you learned he had come in? A. I knew some men were lying along on the road, and more especially in Ohio, and I had heard the talk indulged in by the men. Some were in favor of stopping the train, and putting the Governor off. So I telegraphed to the men not to do anything to get the Governor down on us. I asked them to do that to please me, and they telegraphed back that they would. Q. Did you telegraph them to more than one point? A. No. Q. To what point? A. Latonia, Ohio. I then telegraphed to the Governor, extending a welcome back to the State, and guaranteeing him a safe passage. I won't be positive whether he got my message at Latonia or Salem. Q. Did the Governor communicate with you? A. No; but the conductor answered "O.K." Q. Did you telegraph more than once to the Governor? A. I believe not. Q. Where were you when the train arrived? A. At the outer depot, Allegheny city. Q. Did you see him immediately on his arrival? A. Yes; in a Pullman car. Q. You went in and saw him? A. Yes; I talked with him about five minutes, I suppose. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What was the nature of the conversation? A. I went into the car, and as I went in the Governor got up and extended his hand, and I sat down alongside of him. He asked what do you men propose to do. I told him what we had done--that we will behave ourselves. He said that he was glad of it, that he wanted the peace of the State preserved, and that he was glad to see us disposed to save property. He wanted to know if he could do anything for me, and I said nothing, but I would be glad if he would come out on the rear platform, and say something to the boys. He did so, and made a little speech. Q. How did you introduce him? A. I just said "boys, this is Governor Hartranft." I pulled the bell cord, and we went up as far as the round-house, and had the train stopped there, and Mr. Perkins, the master mechanic, jumped aboard, and I spoke to him for a while. By Mr. Means: Q. How did the boys take the remarks of the Governor? A. They gave a cheer. I went on to Federal street with him, and a delegation from Pittsburgh met him with carriages, and took him across the river. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you go across the river? A. Yes. Q. With the Governor? A. No; in the crowd that went over. Before I left, I had his car switched over on the West Penn road. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What is your age? A. Twenty-five years. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were you at Torrens station on Thursday? A. No. Q. On Friday? A. I came by there on Thursday night or Friday morning. Q. Were you there when the sheriff came out? A. I was not. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. At what time were you arrested? A. I was arrested on the 30th of July, about three and a half o'clock in afternoon. Q. Was there any preliminary affidavit made? A. I was arrested on a bench warrant, issued by Judge Ewing. Q. Who made the information? A. Chauncey McCoy. Q. Of what road? A. Of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago. Q. Have they ever taken any steps to bring on your trial? A. No. I have asked for my trial repeatedly, but have never got it. Q. Have you asked for your discharge? A. No; because I don't want a discharge. Q. Have you demanded a trial? A. My attorney has asked for my trial. That is what I wish. Q. Are you under bail now? A. Yes. Q. Do you go to Pittsburgh and renew your bail every time? A. When my bail expires my bond is sent to New York, and I take it to a notary public and sign it, and he puts his seal to it, and I send it back to Pittsburgh. Q. What is the amount of it? A. Fifteen hundred dollars. Q. What are the charges made against you? A. Misdemeanor, under your own railroad act of March, 1877. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. I wish you would state once more just what is the object of the Trainmen's Union? A. It was to resist this reduction of ten per cent., and to see if we couldn't bring the company to terms, and get them to look into our condition, so that anything of the kind should not occur again. We thought our labor skilled labor, and we were running great risks, and we thought we ought to earn more money, that instead of reducing it they ought to increase it. The object was to get up a union so strong that the railroad magnates would have to listen to us. Q. Did you intend to strike? A. We did, if they did not accede to our demands. Q. What is a strike? A. It is a body of men acting together for the purpose of quitting work in a body--to strike, and leave the work alone--as we understood it in the Trainmen's Union. We understood it that every man should leave his work at a given day and hour, and go to his home. Q. Go to your homes? A. Yes. Q. You claimed no right then to interfere with those who desired to work? A. No; but we claimed the right to use moral suasion. We didn't think we had any right to use any violence at all. Q. Did you claim any right to interfere with railroad property? A. No; it didn't belong to us. Q. Prior to the organization of the Trainmen's Union, did you have any conversation with the officers of the railroad company in relation to this reduction of wages? A. No; because we didn't think it would be advisable. Q. Why not? A. We thought it better to go ahead, and when we were in shape, if they refused we were ready to act. Q. On the 27th day of June, you sent out forty men to notify all the lodges to get ready for a strike? A. On Sunday, the 24th of June. Unless our demands were acceded to. Q. Had you notified the railroad companies of your demand that the ten per cent. should be restored before that? A. We drew up these resolutions--that is what Mr. Cassatt spoke about--and submitted them by a committee of five to the officials in Pittsburgh--to the local authorities there. They said they did not concern them, and they didn't want anything to do with them. Q. When was that done? A. I think on the 25th. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You mean the railroad authorities? A. Yes. We then asked for passes to come to Philadelphia to see Tom Scott. They wouldn't give us passes, and the boys didn't think they had enough money, with the ten per cent. reduction, to come to Philadelphia. They thought they could quell us by discharging some of the ringleaders, and they discharged a couple hundred of the boys, and this committee were all discharged, and they got around among the men, and said that they did not want them to have anything to do with those men, and they closed the telegraph wires against us, and everything of that kind. So, on the morning of the 27th day of June, we sent a request for them to meet us in the hall. Q. To whom did you send it? A. To the local authorities--Lang, Barrett, Scott, Pitcairn. They didn't come. We found we could not get hold of the telegraph wires to work them. On the night of the 26th, on the last train that night they sent out men on the train--thoroughly loyal men, as they called them--men that belonged to the Union, and we thought all right. They carried the news west and east that there would be no strike in Pittsburgh, and we knew nothing of that, but found it out afterwards. On Wednesday, June 27, one of our men jumped over the traces, and brought the word he was going out, and he told us what instructions his conductor had received in regard to the strike. Mr. Barrett, the superintendent of the Pan Handle road, had told him with the other trains he had sent word that night to the men that there would be no strike in Pittsburgh on the 27th. They told all the men to stay at work, that the thing would be arranged later; but it never was arranged. All were under the impression that the bubble would burst sooner or later. When the railroad officials say they had no notice of it, and did not know anything about the strike, why we tried everything in the world to let them know. Q. In what way? A. Why they discharged three or four hundred of us, and they certainly discharged us for cause. I received a letter myself from Mr. Thaw stating that I had lost the situation on account of being a member of the Trainmen's Union. I was discharged somewhere near Sunday the 24th of June. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you discharged before you organized Trainmen's Union lodges on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad in Virginia? A. I traveled all over the Baltimore and Ohio, and I came back to Pittsburgh--part of the way over the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Mr. Thomas had been watching for me, and he stopped me. I had not been paying railroad fares, so I came into Pittsburgh on a freight train. Q. Were you still an employé? A. Yes; at that time. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Who was running in your place? A. An extra man. I got back and reported for duty. I went west and thought I would lay off at Alliance and go out to Chicago, but while at the breakfast table, notice came that the superintendent of the road wanted to see me at his office, and I went over there and had a talk with him, and the consequence was that I was discharged. By Senator Yutzy: Q. And he gave you that letter you spoke of at that time? A. Yes; or a few days afterwards, I don't remember which. I don't remember whether it was at that time or a few days afterwards. Q. Did you ask for the letter? A. No; but a pass to Chicago. It is customary, when they discharge a man, to give him a pass to where he wants to go. Q. How did he come to give you that letter? A. I don't know. I guess he thought he could use me. Q. Did you ask him for it? A. No. I guess he thought he was doing me a favor, and that I would return him the favor, if he gave me the letter. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Have you a family? A. Yes; a wife and two children. Q. How long have you been married? A. Four years the 13th day of last September. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Why did you select Pittsburgh for the strike? A. The 19th of July? Q. Yes? A. I don't know. The strike did not originate there. It was not our idea at all. Our idea was to have it all over on the 27th day of June--all over the country--to just stop the traffic all over the country. We thought the public would look at it as we did, unless they could get enough pumpkin rollers and snake hunters to run their roads. By Mr. Means: Q. Was that the day the strike took place at Martinsburg? A. No; It took place there on the 16th of July. By Senator Reyburn: Q. In making arrangements for this strike, did you talk about Pittsburgh being a suitable place, or a better place, for a strike, on account of the sympathy of the local authorities? A. No. By Mr. Means: Q. How long were you railroading? A. Between nine and eleven months--about nine months altogether. Q. Didn't you think you were managing that western road pretty successfully, with the experience you had? A. I didn't claim credit for it. If I had not had the men I had, I could not have done it. Q. But were you not the man who run it? You laid out your plans the same as a military officer, and your men carried them out? A. After Mr. Lang put the road in my possession, I tried to do the best I could for it--for the stockholders. Q. Did you have the interests of the stockholders at heart? Did you take into consideration their interests more than the interests of the employés of the road--the men you represented? A. I thought the stockholders were in about the same pew with us. I thought they were about swamped, and that we were. Q. But I mean the question? A. I was looking at the stockholders interests when I turned over all the money, and I wanted the boys to get back their ten per cent. I don't know that I made any distinction between them. Q. But answer my question? A. I think my sympathies did lean a little towards the boys, because I was one of them myself. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you act as general superintendent of the Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, while you were in charge of it? A. I was supposed to be. Q. Who acted as dispatcher? A. A particular friend of mine. I saw that all trains went off, and came in. Q. Had you a dispatcher acting in that capacity? A. I had three telegraph operators, but I acted in the capacity of dispatcher myself. I gave the orders. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. While running that railroad as general manager, what would you have done if your men had struck? A. I would have increased their wages. Adjourned to Monday morning, at ten o'clock. PHILADELPHIA, _Monday, March 25, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at ten o'clock, A.M., this day, in the St. Cloud hotel, and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * R. Dale Benson, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where is your residence? A. No. 260 South Fifteenth street. Q. Were you a member of the National Guards in July last? A. I was colonel of the First regiment of infantry. Q. And you accompanied General Brinton's division to Pittsburgh? A. Yes; I left with them from Philadelphia. Q. Did you go with them to Twenty-eighth street, on Saturday? A. Yes; my position was the right of the First brigade--the right of the division. I have heard General Mathews' and Colonel Snowden's testimony in regard to the details, and my testimony is pretty much the same. Q. Their testimony in that respect was correct? A. Yes; the only difference I would notice is in regard to what they testify in regard to my right. My right was impeded by a crowd of citizens at Twenty-eighth street. The column was halted on account of moving the Gatling guns, and I went ahead and told the crowd to leave my front, and some citizen came back to me agitated and excited, and said it was the sheriff's posse. I told him that it didn't make any difference what it was, that they must leave my front. He asked me whether my men would do their duty, and I told him it was not his business, and I ordered them to disperse. Two or three others came back and said they were ordered to march there, and I declined to allow them to march in my front. General Mathews was in the rear, attending to the Gatling guns, and I turned the party over to him, who turned out to be the sheriff of Allegheny county. General Mathews afterwards came and said they were instructed to march there, and so they were permitted. By Mr. Means: Q. Was it the sheriff himself that you stopped? A. I was so informed afterwards. Q. You knew it was the sheriff afterwards? A. Yes; I didn't know him, and don't now. I never met him after that. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State whether there was any order given to fire at Twenty-eighth street? A. I never received any order, and gave no order to fire, nor do I believe any order was given to fire. The firing at Twenty-eighth street commended by the men in the rear rank of the Weccacoe Legion. The company had been brought to a charge bayonets when the crowd seized this man's musket. I saw them take hold of it. He drew back and fired. The firing extended then towards the right--towards the Washington Grays. Q. Did he draw his musket away? A. He stepped back about a pace, and fired. Q. Did he fire at the man? A. I cannot tell, but he fired into the crowd. The firing then extended to the right. My regiment was crowded into--the crowd overlapping my right, which I suppose was the cause of the troops being ordered from my right to push the crowd back. The firing was desultory file firing, and I think that the responsibility for it rests with the authorities who put the troops into that perilous position. Q. Had there been firing by the crowd before that? A. Yes; there had been shots from the hill, and stone firing and firing also took place from Twenty-eighth street and from under the cars on my front. Q. What time did this occur--this firing? A. I should judge about three and a half or four o'clock. I didn't refer to my watch. Its only a calculation of mine--a guess at it. Q. Did that disperse the crowd? A. Entirely--from our immediate front and from the hill. Q. Where did you remain after the firing? A. In the same position. Q. Until what time? A. Until towards seven o'clock--six and a half or seven o'clock--I didn't refer to my watch during the afternoon. Q. Then you retired into the round-house? A. Yes. Q. State what the condition of the round-house was when you left it in the morning? A. I considered it wholly untenable. During the morning, General Brinton came to me, and we were talking over some matter, and I called his attention to the fact that we would have to leave the building very soon. From the windows we could see that the machine shops adjoining were on fire. At the time the fire was very close, and cars were burning on Liberty street. I told him that the building could not be saved, and some hour or two after that the building was entirely on fire adjoining us, and the smoke was so dense we could not breathe. Shortly after that we were moved out. Q. Did the troops move out in good order? A. In perfect order. Q. In what direction did you retire? A. Out Twenty-fifth street to Penn avenue, and down Penn avenue. Q. Did your troops keep good order during the entire retreat out Penn avenue? A. Pretty much so, until we got to the arsenal. There was some confusion there. Q. What caused it? A. I judge--I was on the extreme right--I suppose it was the firing in the rear. My position on the extreme right prevented me from seeing what took place; but I have no question that the troops were fired into, though I could not see it myself. Q. Did you see any firing along the route from the round-house? A. I didn't, though I heard shots. Q. You heard shots? A. Yes. Q. State what the conduct of the men was in the round-house during the night? A. My observation was almost entirely confined to my own corps. I never left my regiment, except to visit the detachments on duty, and so far as my regiment was concerned they were entirely under my control. The troops in the other buildings I didn't see. Q. Was there any demoralization discoverable? A. None that I saw. I never saw men more patient or under better discipline. Q. How long did you halt at the arsenal? A. I judge a very few moments. Probably five minutes. Q. Did you know or see where General Brinton went? A. I didn't. Q. Did any of your men leave you at the arsenal? A. Yes. Q. How many? A. I think five or six--an officer and five or six men. Q. Where did they join you? A. Some at Blairsville Intersection and some at Pittsburgh. Q. How long afterwards? A. Two or three men joined us in two or three days, and the officer in six or seven days. One of the men never reported at all. He was court-martialed--and the officer, too--all the men that left. Q. A regimental court-martial? A. No; it was ordered by brigade head-quarters. Q. Was the officer discharged from the service? A. He was not discharged. Q. What was done by the court-martial? A. The verdict was absent without leave, without criminal intent. Q. That was the officer? A. Yes. Q. What was his rank? A. Major and surgeon. Q. If you know the reasons that induced that verdict you may state them? A. My opinion is pretty much hearsay. I was not a member of the court. The proceedings were reviewed by General Brinton, and he can give you better the facts that led to the verdict. His order didn't approve of the action of the court. Q. It didn't? A. No. Q. Were the men discharged? A. The result of the court-martial has not been promulgated as yet. Q. Had you any men that refused to report for duty when you first got the call to proceed to Pittsburgh? A. I don't think there was any instance of that kind. My regiment had on duty four hundred and sixty-four men out of a roll of about five hundred and sixty, and some of these men who were absent had made efforts to report, but were unable on account of lack of transportation, or on account of being sent back after they started. Q. Did any of your men who were not able to join you the night you left undertake to come to you at Pittsburgh afterwards? A. Quite a number. One detachment reach Altoona and went back. Q. Which regiment? A. I refer to the detachment of my own regiment. Q. Do you know why they went back? A. My information is--I demanded a statement from the lieutenant--that General Beaver allowed the troops to do as they pleased at Altoona--to remain or to return. Q. Was that detachment the one that marched on foot part of the way, and was escorted over the bridge at Harrisburg? A. No. Q. Did they get back to Philadelphia? A. Yes; they made a march and detour near Harrisburg, but they got to Philadelphia. They were on the same train with the First City Troops. Q. Was there any court-martial of those troops? A. No; they reported to the regiment afterwards. Q. What was done about them? A. The case was scrutinized by me. It didn't go up any higher than myself, because I thought that the officer was justified under the circumstances. He merely followed the direction that most of the other troops took. Q. Could he have gone on to Pittsburgh at that time? A. I judge not--for want of transportation. Q. How many days was it before the road was opened so that the detachment could have gone to Pittsburgh? A. I cannot give the exact day. I think the road was opened about the 27th or 28th. Q. What day was it they returned from Altoona? A. They reported at Blairsville intersection--that detachment with others. Q. When did they report to you at Blairsville? A. I judge it was about the 26th, probably. By Mr. Means: Q. Do you think the troops could have remained any longer in the round-house than they did? A. No; and I didn't see what the necessity was for their remaining there anyhow. Q. What was the condition of your command, in regard to rest and want of food? A. The men were very much exhausted. They had been taken away during the night from their homes, and, of course, had very little sleep, and little or nothing to eat, and, of course, they were very much exhausted. Still, as they demonstrated on their march, they could do their duty. I would like to state to the committee, that at no time, from the hour when my regiment left Philadelphia until it returned, was there any moment, in my estimation, when the men were not prepared for any duty, that they were called on to do. Q. You had some army experience? A. I served about three years and six months in the army. Q. Your troops were as ready to do service as those in the United States army? A. I never saw any difference. * * * * * Walter G. Wilson, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence, and what position you held in the National Guard in July last? A. I live at No. 2323 Green street, Philadelphia, and I was major and acting assistant adjutant general with General Brinton, during the July riots. Q. Did you hear the testimony of Generals Brinton and Mathews? A. Yes. Q. In the details as to what occurred at Twenty-eighth street. State whether their testimony was substantially correct? A. Their testimony was entirely correct, so far as my knowledge went. I was on the ground constantly with General Brinton, during that afternoon, and reported to General Pearson, of my arrival with him. General Pearson was then at the Union depot. The formation of the column and line of march was stated by both Generals Brinton and Mathews, and is substantially correct. Q. State whether at Twenty-eighth street you heard any command given to fire? A. I did not. Q. By any officer? A. I did not. Q. State what the action of the crowd was there, prior to the firing by the troops? A. The action of the crowd was such as to induce me to believe that a conflict was inevitable. I was satisfied they had made up their minds to have a row. There was jeering and insults in every direction, but the men bore it all patiently. I heard General Brinton, on leaving the Union depot, state, if I am not mistaken, to General Mathews and General Loud, that he wanted them to endure, and pay no attention to anything the mob might say or do, even if they spat in their faces--simply, if they were attacked, to defend themselves. At Twenty-eighth street it was absolutely impossible to move on account of the crowd. The Gatling guns were brought in between the ranks, and, when the crowd were pushing in and surging in at the end, the Washington Grays were formed across, but were found insufficient to keep the crowd back. General Brinton then sent me with instructions to bring up other men, as the mob were pressing in between the ranks of the First regiment, which I did. I heard no order given to fire, and saw distinctly, not only pistol shots, but stones and missiles of various kinds thrown from all directions. I saw, after the firing--in fact, it seemed to me that the firing had hardly commenced before the crowd scattered in every direction. I saw, immediately, Generals Brinton and Mathews and Colonel Benson, if I am not mistaken, give the command to cease firing, and go up and down the line endeavoring to stop the men. The crowd had dispersed in every direction. Q. How long did you remain in that position before you moved into the round-house? A. I should judge it was about two hours, probably three hours. The firing had hardly ceased, when General Brinton got a note from General Pearson, to which he sent me to reply in person. Upon reporting to him the state of affairs at Twenty-eighth street, he directed me to return, and inform General Brinton that he would like to see him personally. I did so, and accompanied General Brinton back to the outer office, where General Pearson was. Q. Where was he? A. In the second story in the office at Twenty-sixth or Twenty-seventh street, at the outer depot. Q. How was he dressed? A. He had on a fatigue uniform and cap, and sack coat or blouse--an officer's blouse--and dark pants, and, if I am not mistaken, a white vest. He had on shoulder straps, and the mark of his rank on the cap. Q. Did he have on a belt? A. No; I think not. Q. State what the conduct of the troops was during the night in the round-house? A. The conduct of the troops was unexceptionable. I was up and around during the entire night, from one part of the building to the other, and I saw no instance where the men refused to obey any order given to them, although they were, of course, rather exhausted, and rather hungry; yet, at the same time, any command that was given was obeyed at once, cheerfully and willingly. The slight disturbance that General Brinton spoke of in his testimony was so slight that I never knew anything about it until long afterwards, and I suppose I had probably as much opportunity to know what was going on as anybody. Q. State whether you had notice of the orders received by General Brinton from General Latta or from General Pearson? A. Yes, sir; I had. Q. Of all the orders? A. Yes. Q. State whether General Brinton received any orders from General Latta before leaving the round-house? A. He received two dispatches during the night from General Latta. Q. State what they were? A. The first one was complimenting him very highly. Q. Were they telegraphic dispatches? A. No; they came by the hand of a scout whom General Brinton sent to communicate with General Latta. Q. Named Wilson? A. Yes--of the Jefferson Cavalry. The first were sent off with members of the Hutchinson Battery, and they never returned. Wilson brought back an answer regarding the situation in which we were placed, stating we understand the situation thoroughly, and an effort would be shortly made to provision the troops--that ammunition had been sent to Guthrie, and that the troops at Walls station would join Guthrie, and that Guthrie would be on the way, and certainly ought to be with us by six or seven o'clock, and stating also that there was no chance for friction primers. The second dispatch--Sergeant Wilson went out again and returned about two o'clock--maybe three o'clock--and brought another dispatch from General Latta complimenting the division very highly upon their conduct, and stating that the ammunition had reached Colonel Guthrie, and that he would be on his way shortly, and certainly would reach the round-house not later than five or six o'clock, and to hold on vigorously, or if compelled to leave, that we should do so by way of Penn avenue or eastward, and take Penn avenue. Q. What time was that dispatch received? A. I should judge in the neighborhood of two or three o'clock. Q. Did General Brinton stay as long as he could in the round-house? A. He stayed as long as he possibly could stay--as long as it was possible to stay. I think it was ten minutes of eight o'clock when the order was given for the troops to fall in for the purpose of leaving. At that time the roof of the round-house was on fire, and the building was full of smoke, and the only part that was not on fire was the office building of the upholstery shop, through which we went out. The piles of lumber in the direction of the Union depot--I don't know whether east or north from that--were all afire. Shortly before leaving, I went to the upholstery shops, and could see nothing but a mass of flames to the Union depot. Q. Were any guards thrown out to guard the approaches to the round-house during the night? A. Yes; as far as it was prudent or possible to throw them. Q. Were any attacks made on the guards during the night by the mob? A. There was no attack. It was a desultory kind of firing during the entire night from every direction. Men would conceal themselves behind piles of lumber, and in the windows of the houses, and behind chimneys, on roofs. The firing came from every direction. Q. At what distance were guards placed from the round-house? A. It was probably as far as from here to Eighth street--probably two hundred yards. Q. Did they remain out all night that distance? A. Yes. Q. Were any of them wounded there? A. No; it was on the track side, towards the Union depot. The building was not defensible at all from that side. Q. From the side towards the depot no attack was made? A. No. Q. How far were the guards out on the side towards Philadelphia? A. There were no guards there. A part of the Sixth division was supposed to be in the Twenty-eighth street round-house. Q. You had no guards on the street leading to Penn street? A. There was no occasion for them. Everything was in perfect view, as far as that was concerned, from the building itself. Q. State in what kind of order the troops marched out? A. The order was perfect. Q. Was there any firing along the route? A. There was considerable firing along the route. Q. Were you present when General Brinton met Major Buffington at the arsenal? A. I was present when he met a person, supposed to be the person commanding the arsenal. Q. Where was he? A. It was at his house inside the arsenal grounds. Q. How far from the house? A. Right on the steps--right on the porch. Q. What took place between them? A. Well, General Brinton introduced himself, and told him who he was, and requested substantially--that was he requested permission to bring the men inside, and, if possible, to get ammunition and provisions for them, or if not, to allow them to remain there until he could communicate with General Latta, and get some orders. Buffington immediately ordered him to leave the place as rapidly as possible, and leave no men inside. He did that in an abrupt manner, as much as to say, if you don't go out, I will throw you out. Q. Had you been directed to Major Buffington's house by anybody? A. My impression is that Captain Murphy took us there. It may have been that some person just at the door, or the sentry at the gate, may have said so. Q. You accompanied General Brinton to the house? A. Yes. Q. Did you meet him before calling at the door or ringing the bell? A. We met him right at the porch. I think there was a lady standing there, and the question was asked if Major Buffington was in, and at that moment he came out. I know that nobody went for him. Q. You turned then and---- A. Went to the gate as rapidly as possible. Q. Did Major Buffington come up to the gate before you left? A. No. Q. Did you see anything more of him? A. I didn't. He turned on his heel and went into the house. Q. Did you see anything of Lieutenant Lyon? A. I don't know the lieutenant at all. I will state this much, I think there was some one in citizen's clothing, when the wounded were brought to the gate, who said allow them to come in, and I suppose from what I heard afterwards that it may have been Lieutenant Lyon. Q. Describe the appearance of the man you met at the house, supposed to be Major Buffington? A. I cannot do that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was he in uniform? A. No; in citizen's clothes. I don't know that I would know him if I saw him. It was all in a moment, and the excitement, as a matter of course, was great, and I paid no particular attention to the man's appearance. Q. Do you remember whether he wore a mustache or not? A. I think he had hair on his face; but whether a mustache or not I won't be certain. I think he had hair on his face. Q. Some gentleman was there? A. There was somebody who said he was Major Buffington. Q. There was some person who permitted you to bring the wounded inside? A. Yes; that was afterwards. After we were ordered out. Q. State whether you were present when Colonel Norris overtook General Brinton? A. I was. Q. What orders did he give, if any? A. None; he gave no orders. Q. Did you hear anything or all of what took place between them? A. I did. I heard the entire conversation. Q. Do you know whether General Brinton received any orders after leaving the round-house or not during that day? A. Not until late in the afternoon. Q. What were they, and who communicated them? A. Those orders came out by the hand of Major Baugh, who reported to General Brinton at Claremont, and was immediately sent back by orders from General Latta--I think it was him--but they were received late that afternoon, directing the general to bring the entire division to Altoona by rail. Q. That was a written order? A. Yes. Q. Did a man by the name of Colonel Smith reach you during the day, Sunday? A. Norman Smith? Q. Yes. A. He reached us on Sunday. I saw him--the first time I saw him to know him--he may have reached us an hour or so before--it was after the division had encamped on the hills overlooking Claremont. He was there, and stayed for some hours. Q. Do you know what his mission was? A. I don't know that it had anything to do with any military matters, and I think he said he had an appointment with somebody to go across the country. I didn't ask him who. Q. Do you know whether General Brinton telegraphed to Colonel Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad? A. He sent a number of dispatches to Colonel Scott during the time we were out, in relation to various matters, for the purpose of urging the necessity of endeavoring to procure us ammunition, and provision, and blankets, and clothing, &c. And I know he also sent a note. I am under the impression it was in response to an inquiry as to the condition of the men, and he stated that, if he was allowed his own way, he could open the entire road from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh with the First division. Q. When did he send that dispatch? A. While we were at Blairsville Intersection. Q. Do you know on what day? A. I cannot state the day. We got there, I think, on the afternoon of the 23d, and it may have been the following morning. It was just in response to an inquiry as to the morale of the division. By Mr. Means: Q. Was there one or more sentinels at the gate when you reached the arsenal? A. There was but one. There may have been one or two in the box; but one was patrolling the beat. Q. Didn't the sergeant there point out to you and General Brinton the gate to Major Buffington's quarters? A. No. There may have been somebody who pointed out the house, but nobody went for him. Q. No one went on with you to the house? A. No. He may have pointed it out to General Brinton, in response to a question. I don't recollect that he did or didn't. Q. Did the major come out of the house there, and stand on the steps? A. He came out of the house--out of the entry way--on to the steps. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did Major Buffington give any reason for refusing admission into the arsenal grounds? A. I don't think he said anything, except that there was a large amount of property there, or something. Q. Did he say it would be endangered by bringing on a conflict with the mob? A. I think not. I have no recollection of it. By Mr. Means: Q. Did he tell General Brinton there was no small ammunition there? A. I have no recollection of his saying anything of the kind. He may have told him that he could not get any; but I have no recollection of his saying there was none. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How were your troops supplied with ammunition? Did you have sufficient? A. No; not at that time. The next morning--Monday morning or afternoon--the ordinance return showed that the Third regiment had about three rounds to a man, and the First regiment, I think, an average of ten. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. How many did you have on Saturday afternoon when you went out to Twenty-eighth street? A. We were supposed to have twenty rounds to a man. Ten were issued at Harrisburg, and ten at Pittsburgh. Q. State whether General Brinton received orders from General Latta to go to Torrens station; and, if so, when he received them? A. He received orders from General Latta to go to Torrens station on the night of the 3d of July. Q. What kind of an order was it? A. A written order, and sent, as I was afterwards informed, by the hands of Captain Aull, and delivered by him to Colonel Guthrie, and by Colonel Guthrie to the general, at the reception of the Duquesne club, the night before we left Pittsburgh. Q. When was the order dated. A. On the morning we left the round-house. It was a very congratulatory order, directing him to go to the stock-yards, and entrench himself there, and congratulating him on the movement of the morning, and stating he was glad to hear he was safe. Q. What per centage of the men of the First division were soldiers of the late war? Do you know? A. No; that is pretty hard matter to tell. Q. From your acquaintance with them could you form an estimate? A. I should judge probably fifty per cent. of them--taking the strength of the division right straight through--probably more than that. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You stated you heard no command given to the troops to fire. A. No. Q. Didn't you consider the men justifiable in firing? A. Yes; I consider it would not have been half a minute before the command would have been given. It would have been necessary. Q. Was there a consultation among the officers as to the position you should take after the firing took place? A. The only consultation was between--or a conversation--it was hardly in the nature of a consultation--was between General Brinton and General Pearson. General Pearson sent to know of General Brinton--stating he had heard the firing--whether there were any killed or wounded, and requested him, if he desired to communicate, to send a staff officer. General Brinton sent me, and I immediately returned and reported that General Pearson desired to see him and went back with him. Q. Where did you find General Pearson? A. In the second story of the outer office. Q. Mr. Pitcairn's? A. I don't know. He was in the telegraph room. There was no consultation about it. It was an absolute order from General Pearson to move the troops in there. * * * * * E. DeC. Loud, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Please state your residence? A. No. 3741 Spruce street. Q. State whether you are a member of the National Guard now? A. Yes. Q. And you were in July last? A. Yes. Q. What was your rank? A. Brigadier General, commanding the Second brigade. Q. You accompanied General Brinton to Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. State whether you went out with his command to Twenty-eighth street? A. I did not. Q. On Saturday? A. I did not. When we started from Pittsburgh, or rather from Union depot, a portion of my command was then ordered to guard the passenger trains that were going to be run out, and when we got about the center--from the western half to the center of the round-house--I was ordered to take that position, and to keep the tracks clear, and see that nobody came into my line excepting those that had authority--to keep out all citizens--that the trains were ready to be run, and that I should keep things clear, in that shape, until they could open the road at Twenty-eighth street. I held that position until the firing began at Twenty-eighth street; but, I think, perhaps a little before that I sent an aid to General Brinton and asked him, if possible, to return to me the troops that had been detached, as the ground I had to cover was too large to be covered by the troops I had. He sent them back. Shortly after that, I saw the firing at Twenty-eighth street. It was about a square and a half, and I could see the firing. I had stationed a line across east to keep the crowd back from that side, and when the rioters broke around from the rear of the First brigade, and came back, I ordered the line doubled, and turned the crowd through the yard out on to Liberty street, instead of letting them come on the tracks. So far, as I saw, the trains were all ready, with nobody interfering with them, and if they had had men to run them--engineers and firemen--I think they could have run those trains out after Twenty-eighth street was cleared. Q. Were the engines fired up? A. I think so. Q. Were there engineers with them? A. There seemed to be men about the engines that seemed to have authority. They seemed to be train hands--engineers. Q. And brakemen? A. They seemed to be. The most trouble I had was with young men that claimed to be clerks in the railroad office, who broke through the lines. While I was there, two or three passenger trains were run in from the west, coming in off the Pan Handle and Fort Wayne road, going east. They were some little while getting along; but they went on east. There was some trouble with the passengers on them, because they wanted to see what was going on. I held that position until some time after the firing at Twenty-eighth street, when I got orders from General Brinton, through Major Pettit, to move into the railroad shops connecting with the round-house. I knew the ground, as I had been there several times before, and I supposed we were going through this yard out to Liberty street, and going back to Pittsburgh; but when I got inside, General Brinton ordered me to take possession of the shops there on the left or on the west, and put one regiment in there and some other troops in the office, and put a guard over the gate. There was a double wagon gate there. I had no time to detail a regular guard, so I instructed Captain Ryan, of the Fencibles, to take charge of the gate. In the meantime, Breck's Battery came in, and the First brigade went into the round-house and took possession of that. In about ten minutes, a train was going to run back on the Allegheny Valley road, which runs besides this railroad office or repair shop. When the cars came back--it was some local train--they were just filled with rioters, who were brought back right into Pittsburgh, and they were yelling and hooting and hallooing, and then this crowd gathered around the gate. We had no orders to fire on them at all, and we paid no attention to what was said by the mob. Along about dark, I was talking to General Brinton, when a man pushed himself in, and we ordered him out, and eventually pushed him out. Then a row began, and a couple of pistol shots were fired, and two men were shot, and Captain Ryan came to me and said that my men cannot stand this to be fired at, and without returning the fire. I told him I could not give an order to fire; but that I would ask General Brinton; but he said he could not give an order, that he was under the orders of General Pearson, and that we must first ask General Pearson if we couldn't open fire on the rioters. We run the Gatling guns, in the meantime, so as to command the gate. General Pearson said no, you must not fire a shot, and of course, when he said no, we had nothing else to do. He left about nine o'clock, and when he left General Brinton gave orders if anybody came near the gate to order them away, and if they didn't go, to fire on them. We remained there until they began to run the cars down on us. At first we supposed they ran the cars down to shoot this field-piece off--we supposed that was their idea--but we soon found it was on fire. The general then ordered me to take a detail of men up into the third story of this office, which had windows facing east, and we went up there, and put guards in the second and third stories, and in that way covered the field-piece. We stayed around there until daylight. During the night I think I saw pretty near every dispatch that General Brinton got, and I don't think I was away from him ten minutes at any one time during the night. I saw every dispatch, and was cognizant of their contents. I passed the scout in and out through my lines--this man that carried the dispatches to General Latta--and I know the instructions from General Latta were to hold the position as long as we could, and I know of the dispatch to move east out Penn avenue. When the eastern buildings had got afire, they came and told me that it was necessary to vacate, that the fire had got so hot that they couldn't stand it, and when the First regiment formed, we could hardly see the lines for the smoke and cinders. There had been some cars filled with corn whiskey that had run down and got afire. We got the fire out; but they had blocked the gate so that we couldn't get the field-pieces out. The general then instructed me to have the brass guns spiked, to have them dismounted, and to destroy the powder. The powder was taken into the round-house and soaked in water, so that it couldn't be used, and the ammunition was thrown away, and the pieces were spiked. The Gatlings being much lighter, we found an entrance on the west of this repair-shop, and we moved the Gatlings through the repair-shop out to Twenty-sixth street. When we marched out I was at the head of my brigade. We must have got a half a mile or so, and there was some firing into the lines, and one or two men were wounded. I then went back, and you couldn't see any great number of rioters anywheres near us. I suppose within one or two Philadelphia blocks you could not see anybody; but you could see the crowd back that far. Every now and then there would be a shot coming from a doorway or a window as we passed along the street. Nobody would fire directly at us from a window as we passed along--either from the corners of the streets or the windows; but the firing was all after we passed, after we got by half a block or a block--then they would let into us. About this time a street car was coming up the street, and I don't know why, but I was looking at it, wondering whether it was going to try to get through the lines, when the first thing I heard was two rifle shots from the car, and two men of the Sixth regiment fell dead, one on top of the other. The shots were fired by two men apparently lying on their stomachs--lying on the cushions, and firing out the windows. Q. Did the street car stop after they fired? A. That I cannot say. I recollect, at that time, that the Gatling gun was opened, and I ordered my men to separate, so that they could fire into it, and they did fire. Just before that the driver of the street car had uncoupled the horses, and left the car standing. I have heard since that those two men were killed; but, of course, I cannot testify to that. Q. Those two men in the car? A. Yes; along about that time this man they called the bad angel--he would fire and then run into a house, and run back through the yard, and come out again and fire. He would fire coolly. I saw him twice drop on his knee and fire, just the same as if he were firing at a target. I heard Captain Ryan hallooing "shoot that man," and they fired at him, but, as he was firing out of door-ways or from behind trees, it was almost impossible to hit him. We were moving all the time. I cannot say positively whether Lieutenant Ash was shot previously to that time or not, but I recollect seeing him stagger. I suppose I noticed it more particularly because he was a personal friend of mine. I saw him stagger and fall into the gutter on the north side of the street, and throw up his hand and say, you are not going to leave me, and I ran back with three or four men, and carried him ahead apiece, until some men of the regiment ran their pieces under him, and brought him on, and he was carried on the limber of the Gatling up to the arsenal. By that time I concluded my brigade had enough of that, and I sent word to General Brinton, asking him if I could not change places with the First brigade, and he sent word back, yes, and I changed places at the turn of the street. The reason why I asked to be relieved was, that every man in the brigade had been on duty all night--every man. We had the lumber-yard to cover, and the railroad offices, and the repair shop, and the men had been up all night. I took the right of the line then, and I don't think that there was a shot fired after we changed position in the line. Q. Where was Lieutenant Ash wounded? A. In the leg. He bled very freely. I didn't suppose that he was mortally wounded, and I think if there had been anybody there to take care of him, he might have got through. Q. He was left at the arsenal? A. Yes; that is about the story, until we got to Sharpsburg. We had nothing to eat all the way along. When we got to Sharpsburg, along about ten and a half o'clock, Major Wilson then, Colonel Wilson now, went into a store and bought a couple of boxes of crackers. I recollect it, because he gave one to my brigade, and one to the First brigade. That was all we got until about twelve o'clock. Q. While you were down at the round-house, guarding the trains that were to move out, was there any attack made upon your line by the rioters? A. No. Q. Was there any firing by your men? A. No; there is not a shot fired--they were rather troublesome. There was a considerable crowd there, but Captain Ryan kept them back. I might say that my orders were to keep all citizens off. I met a gentleman coming through, and told him to get out, and had some considerable difficulty. He said he was the sheriff of Allegheny county. That was away back at Twenty-sixth street. He was all alone--no posse with him or anything. By Mr. Means: Q. You say no posse was with him? A. No; and he didn't seem to want a posse. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. That was after the firing at Twenty-eighth street? A. I think it was right after the firing. Q. The sheriff was going towards the depot then? A. Yes; and making pretty good time. Q. State whether there was any insubordination on the part of the troops during the night in the round-house? A. I heard that some of the troops were dissatisfied--that they wanted something to eat, and didn't think they were treated right, and all that. I didn't see anything of it, and I was among them all night long. Q. Was there any refusal to obey orders? A. No; no man refused. There was, perhaps, a little hesitation when I asked some men to do a little piece of business, but they went and did it. Q. What was that? A. I wanted some car wheels put across the track. It was a rather open space, and they didn't seem to like it much, but they went and did it. Q. Have you anything else to say? A. I might say that I saw the scout going out all night long, carrying messages back and forward. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you consider the firing by the troops justifiable? A. I can only say that if I had had command I would have fired sooner than they did. Q. You would have given the order? A. Yes; I gave the order to fire going out Pennsylvania avenue. I always considered when attacked you have the right to return the fire. Q. You have had some experience in the army? A. Some little. Q. How much? A. Four years. Q. And you think that most any troops would have fired under such circumstances without orders? A. I have my own opinion, and I think if I had been in the lines, I would have fired. Q. If struck with a brick, you would have fired? A. I think so. I will say simply this: I think if the troops had been sent to Pittsburgh three days sooner, it would have been a great deal better. They had been playing with the Pittsburgh troops before we got there. Q. Did you see Colonel Norris when he joined General Brinton's command? A. I did. Q. Did Colonel Norris give General Brinton any orders? A. No. Q. Did you hear the conversation between them? A. I did. Q. If he had communicated any orders to General Brinton, you would have heard them? A. I certainly should. I might say that I was standing with General Brinton, when Colonel Norris drove up. He jumped out of the carriage, and he seemed very glad, indeed, to see General Brinton and all hands, and we went over and sat along side of the road, and I heard all the conversation. I would have been very apt, if any orders had been given, to pay some attention, because I was anxious about the situation myself, and particularly as I was personally acquainted with Colonel Norris. Q. You are certain he gave no orders to go to any point from where he was then? A. Not that I know of; and I think if such orders were given, I would have heard them. Q. Were you present during the entire conversation? A. Yes. Q. All the time? A. I think so. Q. Do you know of any orders having been received by General Brinton from any one or by the hands of any one to make any movement in any direction? A. Yes; we had one about going out of Pittsburgh, to go east. Q. After you left the round-house? A. No; I saw the orders that night. I heard or read all the orders that came. The orders were, as I understood, to take a train down at the work-house, and join the command at Blairsville Intersection. I know we got an order after we were in the round-house, or rather an instruction that Colonel Lyle--we supposed that colonel, and the detachment under Colonel Rodgers, were with Colonel Guthrie, and would join us about daybreak. Q. Did General Brinton receive any orders to move his command to Torrens station? A. Not that I am aware of. Q. Or to join Colonel Guthrie? A. Not that I am aware of. By Senator Yutzy: Q. The brass guns at the round-house--whose command did they belong to? A. To General Pearson's. Q. Couldn't you have saved those guns, and taken them with you? A. If we had any way of getting them out, and if we had horses to haul them. Q. It was not possible to take them out where they were, and take them along by hand? A. It might have been done, but under the circumstances, no. If there had not been any firing there, we might have cleared the track, and got the gate open. Q. Couldn't you have taken those guns out of the same gate you took the Gatling guns out? A. No; it would have taken a long while, because the shop was full of timber and all kinds of material, which would have had to be cleared out of the way, and it is not much of a joke to run a twelve pounder by hand. We might have taken a crowd and have dragged them a short distance, but not a long distance. It was as much as the men could do to drag the Gatlings. Q. No horses were provided for those guns? A. Not that I saw. Q. Did Captain Breck have charge of those pieces? A. Yes. Q. Did he turn them over to General Brinton? A. Of course, he was under General Brinton's command. Q. Do you know whether Captain Breck's command retired to the round-house with your command? A. I don't know, but I suppose they did. I cannot say positively. Q. Did many of your men--the rank and file--have experience in the army as soldiers? A. Yes. Q. About what proportion of them? A. I suppose thirty-three per cent. of them, anyhow. I should judge so. Q. What character of men were the balance of the troops composed of generally? A. I would just as lief depend on them, I think, as regular soldiers. Q. You would depend on them just as soon? A. Or a little sooner, I think. Q. In what business were those men before they went out with you, as a general thing? A. Most of them were mechanics. Q. And some clerks? A. Some. Q. Professional men? A. Very few. Q. Men accustomed to manual labor? A. Yes; and accustomed to three square meals a day, too. Q. Could you expect men, taken from their homes as those men were, to be as efficient, so far as endurance is concerned, as men accustomed not only to military discipline, but to service in the field? A. Why certainly not. If you have ever been in the service, you know how long it takes to break men in, before you get them into shape. * * * * * Louis D. Baugh, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. In Philadelphia, No. 2009 Chestnut street. Q. State what your rank was in the National Guard in July last? A. I was commissary of the First division, with the rank of major. I was then and am yet. Q. Did you accompany the troops under General Brinton to Pittsburgh? A. I did. I went with the first detachment. Q. Were you at Twenty-eighth street during the firing? A. No. Q. What was your particular duty? A. It is the duty of the commissary to feed the men--to supply them with rations. Q. Where were you during Saturday? A. When the column was ready to move to Twenty-eighth street, General Brinton ordered me to remain to procure subsistence for the men. Q. When did you re-join the command? A. On Sunday afternoon, about three o'clock. Q. At what point? A. At the work-house. Q. Of Allegheny? A. Yes. Q. Did you have any orders for General Brinton? A. I had none, sir. Q. Did you have any conversation about orders with him? A. Yes. Q. What did he say? A. The moment I arrived, he asked me for orders, once or twice, and I told him I had no orders, or had received none, and he sent me back for orders. Q. To whom? A. General Latta. Q. Did you go back? A. Yes. Q. Where did you find General Latta? A. At the Monongahela house. Q. What orders did you get? A. Do you want the order? Q. Yes. A. I took him the following order: "_Major General R. M. Brinton, commanding First division National Guard of Pennsylvania, bivouacked near Claremont station, West Pennsylvania division, Pennsylvania railroad_: "You will move your command by rail to Altoona, where the rest of your division now is, and there remain for further orders. I leave, _via_ Erie, for Harrisburg to-night. Will be at Erie to-morrow night, on the rail Tuesday, and Harrisburg Wednesday. Have ordered Mr. Creighton, superintendent of the West Pennsylvania division to furnish transportation. Make requisition for more ammunition on Harrisburg by telegraph, and communicate further as to transportation with Mr. Gardner. "JAMES W. LATTA, _Adjutant General_." Q. What time did you take that to General Brinton and deliver it to him? A. The written order? Q. Yes? A. I read that order to another officer, who reached him early in the morning, one or two o'clock. I reached him about eight o'clock. Q. What morning? A. Monday. Q. With that order? A. Yes. Q. And delivered it to him? A. Yes; I handed him the written order. When the order was given to me, I asked for it in writing. There were two of us together, and I gave the other staff officer the contents of the order, and told him if he reached him first to give it to him. Q. Who was that staff officer? A. Major Lazarus. Q. Where did you find him on Monday morning? A. On the railroad. Q. Where? A. I don't know the place, but I guess it is a little off Claremont. Q. A major of whose staff was Major Lazarus? A. General Brinton's. He was in the room when I got this order. I read it to him, and, as the mob was very great, I said if you reach him first, give him this order, and if I reach him first, I will carry it with me. * * * * * E. DeC. Loud re-called: By Senator Yutzy: Q. On your retirement from the round-house, did you cover the retreat a part of the way? A. I had the left of the line as long as there was any firing going on. Q. Did you, on your march, see any policemen on the street? A. I did. Q. Tell us what you saw them do? A. I saw, I suppose, at least fifteen or twenty-five of them standing on a kind of low porch that looked to me something like a station-house, or as if it might be, as we went out, and they seemed to make no effort to keep the peace whatever. They were standing there, and after we passed, I heard the crack of a pistol. I cannot say positively that they fired it; but they certainly made no effort whatever to preserve the peace there. They were in full uniform, too. Q. Did the sound seem to come from that direction? A. Yes; right behind me. At that time I was on the right flank. Q. How far were you from the police when you heard the shot fired? A. Half a block I suppose--perhaps not that far. They were standing on a porch elevated, perhaps, two or three feet. Q. You judge from the sound that the shot came from the police? A. If it didn't come from them, it came from very near them. Q. Did you see any arms in their hands? A. No. Q. Did you see any pistols in their hands? A. No; I was in the street and they were just the width of the pavement from me. Q. Is that the only place where you saw police? A. That is the only place where I saw police. Q. And you say that they made no effort to arrest any of the parties following you? A. Not that I saw, and I would have been very apt to see it. I think there were enough of them there to have stopped it. Q. Did you hear them make any remarks as you passed? A. No; but they didn't seem to be very particularly pleased over the troops being there. Q. But they said nothing? A. No; but I could judge from the expression of their faces that their remarks were not at all complimentary. That was the inference I drew. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have any communication with the citizens of Pittsburgh--did you go out into the crowd among the rioters at any time? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Do you know of any citizens' committee that waited on General Brinton or that waited on your command to have a conversation in relation to this riot? A. No; I heard that a committee came out to see General Brinton while we were at the hospital, when we got back a second time, and I understood that they just came out to pay their compliments to him. Q. It was after you got back to Pittsburgh? A. Yes; the first time nobody came near us--not a soul. In Sharpsburg some men came out, and said they were very sorry that so many were killed, and they seemed to be very kind. Q. Is there anything you know that you have not yet testified to of interest to us or that might be important in the making up of a full history of this affair? A. No; I don't know of anything more that I can say about the matter. I only had my own brigade to look after, and I can only tell what happened there. I can only say this, that I was very much surprised when we were put into the round-house and those shops. Q. Surprised at your being stopped in the round-house? A. Yes; a question has been asked that perhaps I can throw some light on. It was about what kind of a cap or head-covering General Pearson had on. He had a blue blouse on with a fatigue cap. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he have soldier straps on? A. I think so, but cannot say positively--I know he had. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did he have a sword or belt? A. I didn't see any. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did he have a white vest on? A. I cannot say that. Q. Could you have seen a white vest if he had had one on? A. If he had turned right around to me I could have seen it. We all had white vests on, as we didn't have time to get anything else. He might have had no vest at all on. It was hot weather, and it was dark. Q. How close were you to him? A. About as near may be as to this gentleman here, [indicating a party in the room sitting near by.] Q. Almost touching him? A. I could have touched him if I had wanted to. He walked out with me to the wash-stand, I recollect. I don't know what he had on when he went out. All of his staff with him had fatigue suits on. * * * * * Louis D. Baugh re-called: By Mr. Means: Q. Were you dressed in uniform when you went to Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. Did you wear that uniform all the time? A. No; I took it off, by orders of my superior officer. Q. Did you mingle with the crowd after you dressed yourself in citizen's clothing? A. Yes. I attempted to get to the round-house to General Brinton, and I started up from Union Depot hotel. Q. Did you have any conversation with citizens of Pittsburgh, or with the rioters or the strikers? A. I had no conversation with them, because I kept myself very quiet, listening to what they said. Q. What did they say? A. They wanted every damned Philadelphia soldier to go home in a box. That they would tear them to pieces. Then I went on apiece. I didn't want to get into that crowd. Q. Who were they? A. People of Pittsburgh. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What people? A. Part of the crowd along the street. Q. In the vicinity where the riot was going on, or down in the city? A. In the street running from Union depot to the round-house. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Parallel with the railroad? A. Yes. I was trying to get to General Brinton, to make arrangements about feeding the soldiers. When I found what affection they had for us I would move on again. They wanted every damned one sent home in a box. By Mr. Means: Q. You looked upon that as the disposition manifested towards the Philadelphia soldiers? A. Yes; indeed, it was--all Saturday night and Sunday morning when I left town. Q. Did they go for you once in the depot? A. In the West Pennsylvania depot they did, or I thought they did, and I got out. I knew what they were from the night previous. Q. For your own safety, you thought it better to get away? A. Yes. * * * * * George Francis Leland, _sworn with the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. 1622 Chestnut street. Q. You were a member of the National Guard in July last? A. I was adjutant of the Third regiment of infantry. Q. Colonel Snowden's regiment? A. Yes. Q. Were you with him at Twenty-eighth street when the firing occurred? A. I was. Just below Twenty-eighth street. Q. Did you hear any orders given to fire? A. I didn't. I heard Colonel Snowden distinctly say that no one was to fire until they received orders, and they received no orders from him to fire. Q. Were you in the round-house during that night? A. I was. Q. State what the conduct of the troops was during the night, as to discipline? A. It was very good, I think as far as I am a judge. Q. Was there any insubordination? A. No; none whatever. Q. What was the condition of the round-house when you left in the morning? A. It was on fire, I should judge from the amount of sparks and smoke and flame about us. Some of the troops attempted to put the flames out, but did not succeed. Q. Was it safe to remain in the round-house any longer? A. It was not. Q. How did the troops march out--in good order? A. In excellent order. Q. Where were you in the line of march? A. With the right of our detachment part of the time, and part of the time in the rear. We only had about forty-three men in our regiment. Q. Was there any firing along the line in the street? A. Yes. Q. Where did it come from? A. I should judge from citizens of Pittsburgh. Q. Did you see any firing? A. Yes. Q. Did you see any person when they fired? A. Yes; one or two I could pick out if I should see them again. Q. What class of citizens were they? A. The ordinary class of citizens--mechanics and workingmen; and I saw some policemen fire, too. Q. Where were they? A. At a station-house, evidently, from the number of men grouped around it. Q. A police station-house? A. Yes. Q. How many of them? A. Twenty-five or thirty of them. Q. Did they fire as you passed them? Q. They fired after we passed. I should judge the firing they did was intended for General Loud's command. They were in our rear. Q. They fired on the rear of the line? A. Yes. Q. Did you see them when they fired? A. Yes; I think I did. I looked back--I was attracted by the noise--and I turned my head, and I distinctly heard not only the noise, but saw the smoke and the raising of their arms among this crowd of men that I took to be policemen. Q. Were they in uniform? A. Yes; or in dark looking hats and blue sack-coats, I think. I am not familiar with the uniform of the police of that city. Q. Did you see any pistols in their hands? A. Yes; as I passed I saw one with a pistol by his side. One of them stood by the curbstone, as if he was reviewing us. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did they have their maces? A. I think not, but I am not positive about that. I didn't notice any belts. Q. Did you see a uniform on any one policeman--a full uniform? A. I don't know what it is; but the uniform that most of them had on was the same uniform I noticed on the police officers after we returned to the city. Q. When did you return to the city? A. I think on the 28th of July. Q. And the uniform was the same that you saw those men wearing? A. Yes. Q. Did you see any of the policemen on your return to the city, who were in that crowd? A. I couldn't distinguish any of them. We were marching rather rapidly, and I was, in fact, too far off--probably fifty or one hundred feet. I couldn't recognize them again. Q. How many shots were fired from that crowd? A. I cannot tell that--quite a number, I should judge--half a dozen, or a dozen, or more. Q. Did they wait until your men had passed, before they fired? A. Yes. Q. And they fired into your rear? A. Yes. Q. What effect did the firing have? A. I cannot say that it had any. I know none were killed about there, or I don't think there were any. There may have been some wounded--scratches. Q. Was the firing returned by your men? A. No; it was not. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Did you see that man with the linen duster following the command, with a musket? A. Yes. Q. Did you see him shoot? A. Yes; I remember that fellow distinctly. He followed us quite a distance. I remember another fellow particularly--a man with a crutch. As we went along he stood on the sidewalk, and I saw what I took to be a navy revolver in his hand as we passed, and after we passed he deliberately fired and run down a side street, and I could go right to the locality and pick that fellow out; I took a good look at him; I was on the right, near the gutter, and close to him as we passed him. They said afterwards that this fellow in the duster was the man that had been pegging away at us all night with a rifle that had a bullet that exploded when it struck. He kept it up all night while we were in the round-house. They said afterwards that he had lost a brother, and he wanted to be revenged. I am not positive, but I think he was killed--shot. Q. Did you see any firing from houses? A. Yes; from second-story windows. Q. How long after you had left the round-house? A. Some distance down--somewhere in the neighborhood of this police station. The firing I saw from the windows was on the left-hand side going up this street. Q. Going eastward? A. I don't know the location of Pittsburgh. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Towards the arsenal? A. Yes; on the left hand side I noticed firing from the windows, and the police station was on the right hand. By Senator Reyburn: Q. You say this man was killed? A. I heard he was. * * * * * Thompson Lennig, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence? A. 1300 Walnut street. Q. Were you with General Brinton at Pittsburgh, in July last? A. I was in the division--yes. Q. What was your rank? A. I was a private at that time. Q. In which regiment? A. In the artillery corps, Washington Grays. Q. State what your position was in the line in moving out Penn street in the morning? A. I was helping to drag the first one of the Gatling guns. Q. State whether there was any firing from houses or from persons along the street? A. There was no firing, as far as I remember, until we had gone five or six squares, and I thought when there was no firing, that we were going to get out of the town without any trouble at all. It was not until shortly after we had passed the police station on our right, that the firing began. From that time there was firing until we reached the arsenal. Q. There was not much until you reached the police station? A. No. There was considerable firing, which might amount to skirmish firing in real service. Q. Were there any policemen in the station when you passed? A. Yes. I don't know how many. I saw eight or ten men turn up in line on the curb, and I think there may have been from ten to twenty-five scattered around. As I say, I saw eight or ten turn up in line on the curb as we passed. Q. Was there any firing by the police or the troops as you passed? A. That I don't know. I didn't say it; but I should like to say this: that there was firing, and as we passed by the station, I noticed one policeman particularly whose face was impressed upon me. And I saw him the following Sunday--the week following--the 29th of July, when I was wandering through the ruins, with a corporal of the Washington Grays. I saw this same man, and I accosted him and said, that I had seen him in front of the police station last Sunday, and he said he had been there. I then said that I heard it stated among our men that you fired upon us, and he said, I didn't fire, but others did, and he even went so far as to say that the lieutenant had ordered them to fire. Corporal Rider, who was with me at the time, heard the whole conversation, and can corroborate everything I have stated. Q. What is his name? A. Penn Rider, one of the assistant clerks in common pleas, No. 2. Q. He stated that he had been ordered to fire? A. He said that they were ordered by the lieutenant to fire. I saw this man's face. Q. Just give the language of the policeman as near as you can? A. I was walking over the ruins and I caught his face. It struck me again, and I said to myself, that is the man I saw last Sunday, and I accosted him, and said, "You were standing in front of the police station last Sunday." He said, "I was." I said, "I have heard from our men that you fired on us as we passed," and he said, "I didn't fire, but others did, and the lieutenant ordered us to do it." That was the whole conversation. I passed along, and didn't see anything more of him. Q. Did you ask him who the lieutenant of the police was? A. No. Q. Have you ever found it out since? A. I have made no inquiry. After I came back, I made affidavit to these facts, at the request of Colonel Pettit, and I thought it was no longer any matter of mine. It was in their hands. Q. Did you see that policeman any time after that--have you seen him since? A. No; I have not been in Pittsburgh since. I happened to be off duty at the time. Q. Do you think you would recognize that policeman? A. I should know him if I saw him five years hence. Q. Was he in uniform when you met him or saw him? A. Both times. * * * * * John W. Ryan, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence and what position you held in the National Guard in July last? A. I live at No. 102 North Fortieth street, and had command of the independent company State Fencibles, attached to the Second brigade, First division. Q. You accompanied General Brinton to Pittsburgh? A. Yes. Q. You were at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes. Q. Where were you stationed after you went to Pittsburgh? A. I was on the extreme left of the division, the portion of troops closest to Union depot. My company was formed--the major portion of it facing Union depot, with their backs towards Twenty-eighth street, and the smaller portion of it was on front, facing towards Penn street. Q. What was your duty there? A. To keep the people out. Q. And guard the track? A. To keep the people out, was the instruction I received. Q. Well? A. We did so. Q. Did you have any trouble in doing that? A. None special. After the firing began, some people came down the hill--came down, and once or twice my men were on the point of firing at them, because they would not go back; but I held the men in as long as possible. It seemed to be more a want of understanding what we wanted them to do. After they found out what we wanted them to do, they did it. Q. Was there any firing by your company? A. We didn't fire a shot. Q. How many men had you in your company? A. I brought home seventy-four. I had about fifty at that time. Q. Were you in the round-house during the night? A. Once in a while I would go over there. My position was not directly in the round-house. I was in the paint shop, I think it is called, or the machine shop, or something of the kind. Q. Adjoining the round-house? A. Yes; and out in the board-yard. They sent us out there until we got ready to move out of the position. Q. Was any attack made upon you in the shops during the night? A. No; not directly. Q. State what the discipline of the troops was--taking the whole command of General Brinton during the night? A. There was no complaint--it was as good as might be expected. Q. Was there any insubordination or refusal to obey orders that came under your observation? A. Yes; some. Q. Relate it? A. When the companies of the Sixth regiment were formed into line, the company next to mine--I sent one of my sergeants to find out the matter, and he came back and told me that they proposed to lay down their arms and go home, and I said I would like to see them try it, and I intend to shoot them if they attempt to do it. Q. Did you see them afterwards or talk to them about it afterwards? A. I intended to hunt the officers up; but while making up my mind to proceed in the matter, orders came to get ready to move, and that broke the little arrangement up. Q. Did they move when the order came--did they obey the command? A. Yes; so far as I could see, they did. They behaved as well as the rest did. Q. They didn't throw down their arms? A. No. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you say to them after you heard it, that you would shoot them? A. I told them I wouldn't let them out. I told the commander that. My company was put on guard as soon as we got into that portion of the grounds. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What attracted your attention was something unusual in that particular command? A. Yes; they were forming, and I had not received any orders to do so, and was anxious to know what they were forming for. Q. How many were reported as going to throw down their arms? A. One company. Q. How many men were in that company? A. Probably thirty. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What was the reason they gave for doing this, if they gave any? A. They didn't seem to give any. It was sort of dissatisfaction. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you see the officer of the company--the captain? A. I saw an officer in front of them, and afterwards learned he was a lieutenant. Q. You had no talk with him? A. No. Q. What was the conduct of the balance of the men in the division, so far as you could judge? A. In the round-house? Q. Yes. A. First rate. Q. It was that of soldiers? A. Yes; and very patient ones, under the circumstances, I thought. Q. Were you in the army during the late war? A. Yes. Q. How long were you out? A. Over four years. Q. What proportion of your company has seen service? A. I don't know exactly now--we did represent one hundred and fifty-one years at one time in the company. Q. Of actual service? A. Yes; all the officers and non-commissioned officers, with one exception, were veterans. Q. How many men were there in the company, when they represented one hundred and fifty-one years? A. Sixty-seven men. Late on Saturday afternoon, I sent to the brigade commander, and asked permission to come and see him, and I waited, and asked if I could not have permission to drive the people away from the gate, that they were blackguarding us in the most scandalous manner. By Senator Yutzy: Q. What gate? A. Leading out on the street. Men, women, and half-grown boys. It was the most outrageous language I ever heard in my life. When we would go up, and attempt to drive them away, they would just stand and spit at us, and call us all sorts of names. But my men stood it, and walked up and down, and paid no attention to them. But they finally got brandishing revolvers, and the excitement had become intense, when one of my corporals says to me: "I don't think we can stand it any longer, unless you give us permission to kill some of those people out there." and I said if I get permission, I will give it to you very quick. So I asked General Loud, if he would give permission, and he said: "I have no authority," and I asked if I might go and see General Brinton. I did so, and asked the question, and was told that permission could not be given. I said who was in command, and was told General Pearson. I said I know the gentleman, and will you give me permission to go and see him. I stated the position to him, and stated it was impossible to hold out any longer at the gate, and he said: "you must not agitate them. I don't want you to excite them poor people." They were too close to his heart. I turned away perfectly disgusted. Q. You held the position you were commanded to hold? A. Yes; after that General Loud thought it would be a little more secure to put some iron in front of the gate, which we did. I would have been glad to have given a little lead instead. They blackguarded us so that I was anxious to square matters with them. Q. You could have cleared the tracks at that time? A. Yes. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you hear any women using obscene language to the troops? A. They were a little worse than the men. The language was terrible. One young fellow about twenty years of age climbed on to the stone post of the gate, and blackguarded us for the longest time. I have got a very large corporal, and he made a deliberate set at that man. The corporal said, can't I put him off, and I said, yes, he said he makes use of language more than I ever took of any one. I said knock him off, if he don't get off, or give him a jab with a bayonet; but he slipped off. Q. What company of the Sixth regiment was it that wanted to lay down their arms? A. I cannot say, but I can furnish the testimony of that fact from the members of my company, who reported the matter to me. I considered it of such little importance at the time that I really didn't pay much attention to it. Q. They didn't lay down their arms, and obeyed orders afterwards? A. No; they didn't lay down their arms, and I think that, notwithstanding their disposition to do an unmilitary act, if they had been called into line and directed to do their duty as soldiers at that time, they would have done so cheerfully. Q. Did they remain with your command during the rest of your military movements? A. Yes. Q. And went to Scranton with you? A. Yes. Q. Did they observe their duty as soldiers after that? A. As far as I saw, entirely so. Q. You say you didn't ascertain their reasons for wanting to lay down their arms? A. Not especially so. It was a sort of a growl they got into. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Were they not a little disgusted, like yourself? A. I think they would have stood it a little better if they had had orders to defend themselves. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How many companies are there in this Sixth regiment? A. I don't know, but I think they are eight--I don't know exactly. Q. How many men about in the regiment? A. I should judge they had about one hundred and fifty men. Q. How many men in a company? A. About thirty men--twenty-five or thirty. Q. Was it a larger company than the rest of them? A. I don't believe there were over twenty or twenty-five men that appeared in line when my attention was called to them. My company lay across the entrance of the paint-shop at this time, and this company was on the right. I said to one of the sergeants what is that company forming for, and he said I don't know, and I said go and see, and he came back and said they proposed to quit, and lay down their arms and go home. Q. You didn't hear them say it yourself? A. No; I saw the company in line. I told the sergeant to see what they were in line for, and he came back and reported that they proposed to lay down their arms and go home. I said I would like to see them try it. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What time in the night was that? A. It was in the morning--sometime before we started away. Q. After daylight? A. Yes. Q. As late as seven o'clock? A. I cannot tell you that, because I don't remember the time we left the round-house. It was a short time before we left. I know that the orders we got to get ready to move broke the little arrangement up for them. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did they lay down their arms any of them? A. No; they had their arms in their hands. I didn't think it amounted to anything at all. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What is the name of the sergeant that brought you the information? A. George Simpson. Q. Do you know where he is now? A. I think I can find him in a short time. I think he is about the armory of the State Fencibles. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You were with the balance of the troops as they retired out Penn street? A. Yes. Q. Did you see any firing from citizens or policemen on your troops? A. I saw some firing--considerable. Q. By whom? A. It was very hard to tell. I saw parties firing out of a street car. I saw a man fire the shot that I thought killed those two men in the Sixth regiment. It was about the time that the street car came along. I heard General Loud's testimony in reference to the car matter, and I thought at the time, and do yet, that he is mistaken about it. I think yet it was a single man that killed those two men and a single bullet. Q. One shot? A. Yes; I saw him raise the rifle. Q. From the car window? A. No; but behind a large iron pipe lying along the road where a stone wall runs along on the right hand side as we came down. I saw him raise the rifle, and saw his head down on the sight, and I saw the flash, and the bullet came along and cut some little limbs off a tree behind us. I could almost trace its flight until it struck these men, and the two of them fell almost at the same instant; and I thought before, and do yet, that that was the man who killed those two men. Q. Was it near the car? A. The car was down in the hollow, and this was when we were going up the hill, before we got to the arsenal. I called up two or three of my men and said, shoot that fellow, and we tried to, but we didn't succeed, and I am sorry we didn't. Just then things got mixed up a little, and we were ordered to the rear, and we stayed there as long as there was any firing going on, when they took us up and puts us on the right until we found a camping ground. Q. Did you see any policemen on your march? A. Yes; quite a squad in front of a fire engine house or a police station house. It had the appearance of either of those two places. They were strung along the curb-stone as we went along. Some of boys were hallooing "pass in review," "guide right," as soldiers will sometimes, even under the most trying circumstances. I noticed half a dozen or probably ten people there that I supposed to be policemen, with a good many citizens mixed in behind. It looked like a sort of rendezvous for the mob. Q. Did the policemen make any remarks as you passed? A. I didn't hear any. There was some firing out of the crowd after we got by a little piece. Some few shots were fired, and I told the boys to turn around and give it to them; but as we turned around, they went into the house. Q. Could you tell who fired? A. I could not tell. There were some citizens mixed up with them. I saw smoke, and knew the shots came from the crowd, but whether it was policemen or citizens I cannot say. Q. How far away were you? A. Sixty or seventy-five yards. Q. Were any threats made by those policemen to arrest any of those citizens or the crowd who were following you? A. No. Q. Could they have prevented them from following you--the policemen that you saw? A. If they had had the disposition. Q. If they had made the effort? A. Yes; the impression may have been a false one, but our impression was that they were about as bitter enemies as we had there. By Mr. Means: Q. You mean the policemen? A. Yes. By Senator Yutzy: Q. How did you get that idea? A. From the manner in which they acted. We regarded them as bad as anybody we had met there, and so far as my boys were concerned we had made up our minds to give it to them when we got a chance. We thought it was their duty to protect the peace, and not assist in breaking it up, and we preferred them to citizens. That is what I mean. We meant to give it to them, if we got a chance. By Mr. Means: Q. Did you have an opportunity to mingle in with the crowd? A. Not a great many. I served with the Pittsburghers for three years, and I met a few of them out there. Q. You knew some of the Pittsburghers? A. Yes; I have served with them. Q. In what regiment were you? A. The Sixty-first Pennsylvania, commanded by Oliver H. Ripley, of Pittsburgh. Q. You met some of them there while on this trip? A. Yes. Q. State whether you were led to believe that the people of Pittsburgh sympathized with the rioters? A. There is no doubt about it. Q. That they sympathized with the rioters? A. Entirely so. Q. And were hostile towards the Philadelphia soldiers? A. It was very difficult to tell whether they despised the Pennsylvania Railroad Company or the Philadelphia troops most; but they certainly hated both of them. They were very angry at our coming out there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You spoke of citizens of Pittsburgh. Was it not the crowd that surrounded you there, or in the mob that you heard these conversations that led you to think that the people were in sympathy with the rioters? A. No. Not to that extent. Some of my old regiment, the Sixty-first Pennsylvania, came to see me the following Sunday, after we went back, and took occasion to say that it was a great mistake, that they were sorry to see me where I was, and that they didn't want to see any of the Sixty-first coming out there. And they were very bitter. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Of what class of men were they--what positions did they hold in life? A. They were working men, I should judge--men employed in the mills, probably, that work hard for a living, but yet, might be good citizens. Q. You heard them talk so? A. They said they were sorry to see me there. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you have charge of the prisoners captured at Johnstown? A. General Brinton captured three men on the railroad track, and they were taken back, and I think, handed over to the charge of the Washington Grays. Q. Did you take any of those prisoners to Pittsburgh, and hand them over to the civil authorities? A. Yes. And we were most grossly insulted by a policeman in the station-house at the time. He was an officer. Q. What was the nature of that insult? A. He could have easily passed my company. We were in line, and he insisted on pushing me out of his road into the ranks. And I asked him if he couldn't go by without breaking the company up, and he turned around and made use of a very impertinent answer. He was a great big fellow. Q. Did you learn his name? A. No. Q. Or rank? A. He was an officer, I know. He broke the left of my company up. He was a man that weighed two hundred and sixty, and was six feet two or three inches high. He was a very fine large man, but a very great blackguard, none the less. There seemed to be some spite against the soldiers out there on the part of everybody. * * * * * Silas W. Pettit, _sworn_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your rank in the militia, in July last? A. I was judge advocate of the First division, with the rank of major, in July last, when the division went out, on General Brinton's staff. Q. Go on and state the circumstances, omitting the details? A. I was called out about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, and together with the other staff officers went around to notify the different commands, and about two and a half o'clock or two o'clock we left the Pennsylvania railroad depot, about six hundred strong, and got to Pittsburgh about two and a half o'clock on Saturday afternoon. When we got there, General Brinton reported to General Latta. We went upstairs into a room in the hotel. General Latta was there, and General Pearson, and Mr. Quay, and some others. We then marched out. In the meantime, the men were getting fed. We marched out toward Twenty-eighth street, along the track. They had horses for the Gatling guns, but no proper harness or arrangements for them, and the guns had to be hauled by hand. When we got near Twenty-eighth street, General Pearson ordered General Brinton to detach a part of his command to keep the track clear in the rear, and as a result of that, the Second brigade was left, General Pearson superintending that part of the command, to keep those tracks in the rear clear, and the rest of the command--the First brigade--consisting of the First regiment, and the Third regiment, and the Weccacoe Legion, and the Washington Grays, and battery went on towards Twenty-eighth street. When we got there, or close to it, the crowd was very thick on the track and on the hills, and in the empty and loaded cars on our left. The command was formed then into two ranks, the rear rank clearing one side and the front rank the other; but the crowd commenced to press in between the ranks, and the Weccacoe Legion and Washington Grays were thrown across the front. Then we attempted to push the crowd back, and just as we got to Twenty-eighth street the fuss commenced. The sheriff and a posse were in front of us, and they attempted to arrest somebody, as far as I could make out, and clear the tracks themselves, but they failed. The firing took place immediately upon the order to charge bayonets, given to the Washington Grays and Weccacoe Legion. Some men were hurt with the bayonets. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Firing from the troops or the mob? A. From the crowd. The firing from the troops immediately followed. The air seemed to be full of stones, and a great many pistol shots were fired from underneath the cars, and from over fences near the round-house. We got in on both sides of us--on both flanks and in front--then the troops fired. I may be mistaken, but I thought I heard an order when the firing took place. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Whence did the order come? A. I cannot tell that very well. I was between the two ranks--a few feet from the head of the column. It was a short column, not many men in it--not over two hundred and fifty all told, while the crowd must have been ten or fifteen thousand, and it looked pretty short in consequence. I heard the firing, and the men towards the fences and cars returned the fire, and it cleared them, and then they fired up the hill. The men facing the hill fired that way, and the men in front fired, and the crowd commenced to run. The order was given then to cease firing, and I endeavored to see it enforced, and to stop the firing as soon as the order was given. It was all over in a few moments. Q. Who gave the order first to cease firing? A. I heard General Brinton give that order when the crowd was running. Of course, it was my duty to see that it was done. Q. When they commenced firing how far were you from General Brinton? A. I cannot tell exactly. General Brinton had gone front. I thought he was with General Pearson, and I was standing where he left me. He didn't ask me to follow him, and I stopped there. He went up towards the sheriff's posse. They were apparently in among the crowd right where that little watch-tower was or is. By Senator Yutzy: Q. You say you heard an order? A. To cease firing. I thought I heard an order to fire before that. Q. Before there was any firing by the troops? A. I thought I heard an order to fire--commence firing. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Did you see who it was that fired first? A. It was over on the right of the First regiment--these two companies that were crossed from the front--it was right there it commenced. It could not have been delayed, however. Q. You stood between the ranks? A. The ranks were open, and all the officers were between them. The men had been faced outwards to drive the crowd away. It was the only formation that could have been made at the time. Q. Were you in the round-house during the night? A. After this firing the tracks were cleared, and the First brigade was turned across Twenty-eighth street. The crowd were all off the tracks, and nobody was allowed to cross them except those carrying dead and wounded. In one or two instances women came up or men who wanted to go up the hill to their residences; but the main tracks were as clear as Arch street is now. General Brinton reported the tracks were clear, and that he was ready to protect the trains; but we didn't get any, and we waited there for a considerable time. General Brinton went to the round-house with Colonel Wilson, and I remained out where I was, he not asking me to accompany him, and after awhile we received an order to go into the round-house. We took in the command and the guns that were commanded by Captain Breck, and then brought in the Second brigade, which had been back there all this time, and the men were posted in the round-house and the machine-shop, or paint-shop, and lumber-yard. I accompanied General Brinton up stairs into the office, where General Pearson was. The crowd commenced to come around the buildings with jeers and whoops, and were firing shots. General Brinton desired permission to drive them away, which was refused. Shortly after that, two of our sentries were wounded. General Brinton reported that fact, and desired permission to protect himself and drive the mob away, which was again refused him. Several of General Pearson's staff, whose names I don't know, and several railroad men, and Mr. Pitcairn, I think, and Mr. Cassatt, and I think that Mr. Watt was there, but I am not certain about him. Before they left it was fully dark, somewhere between eight and ten o'clock. General Pearson left, and told General Brinton that he was going to the depot to report to General Latta, and get orders and get provisions for the command, and that he would be back. Q. What orders did he give General Brinton about matters while he was absent? Q. He told him, if necessary, that he must use his own discretion until his return, but gave him to understand that he would be back in some little time--a few hours. Then we stayed there during the night. There was a good deal of firing. It sounded like an extra Fourth of July. The men who were on duty as sentinels and guarding parts of the building were alert; and the rest of the men were resting themselves. Q. Just state what the conduct of the troops was during the night? A. They were in good condition--in good spirits, and subordinate--they were in first-rate condition, except that they were hungry. I didn't see this trouble with the Sixth regiment, although I heard of it. But the Sixth regiment marched out in as good shape as any other. They are a regiment scattered all over the city, pretty much. They have no regimental armory, and have labored under a great many difficulties, and have not got that regimental organization and _esprit de corps_ which they would have if they had proper facilities. They are poor men--workingmen, and scattered almost over the city, and it is a wonder to me that they ever kept together at all. When we were going to march out, it was necessary to clear that part of the street, and they cleared it. They opened fire out of some of the windows. Q. Which regiment? A. The left of the Sixth regiment. Captain Ryan's men were guarding at the board-yard. Q. Was there any firing going out Penn street? A. Yes; the command passed out--I don't know what direction it is--the west end of the machine shop in good order. I had cause to know that, because I went back while they were marching out, to see whether Captain Breck had spiked his guns. They were too heavy for us to take with us, and we had no ropes to haul them by. I saw the whole column. We were marching in column of fours. We had received orders during the night to go, and at the time we left the round-house was on fire, and it was a physical impossibility for men to stay there. Q. Did you see any policemen at the station, as you passed out Penn street? A. I saw a number of policemen at the place which I took to be a station-house. It may not have been. In talking about it afterwards, we always spoke of it as a station-house. As I remember, it had a lamp or bracket in front of it. It may have been an engine-house, or some sort of a public hall. A crowd was there of fifteen or twenty men, dressed in police uniform. Of course, I don't know that they were policemen. I did not see them fire. Q. Whereabouts were you in the column? A. I was at the rear part of the time--most of the time--but went forward to report to General Brinton what was the state of affairs there. Then I would come back and see what was going on along the column. The First regiment was front, and the Third regiment in the rear of them, and the battery, and the Weccacoe Legion, and the Washington Grays, and I think Captain Ryan at that time was in the center, and then the Sixth regiment in the rear. Q. Did you hear any firing from near the station-house as you passed? A. It was pretty near all the time, and I didn't notice it specially. It was a subject of conversation afterward among ourselves, that that firing had taken place among the policemen. Q. Were you present when General Brinton met Major Buffington at the arsenal? A. I was at the rear at that time. Q. And you didn't hear what took place? A. I did not. I went to the arsenal--I went up to the front of the column, and was told that General Brinton was in the arsenal, and I jumped over the fence--I was refused admission at the gate--and I went in there, but I met a lot of wounded men and I told them where to go, and I thought, perhaps, I had better go back. So I went back to the rear. Q. Where did you tell them to go? A. I told them to go up towards the buildings, and get attended to. They allowed the wounded to go in. They took in Lieutenant Ash and all the wounded. Q. Were you in the regular army during the late war? A. I was in the Fifteenth Infantry. Q. For how long? A. I was in there about a year. I was only a boy, and my health gave out. Q. What is your profession now? A. I am an attorney-at-law. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Was Captain Breck in the round-house during the night you were there? A. Yes. Q. Did he remain there until you left? A. Yes; he remained there, and seemed to desire to do his duty, as did his command. He only had a squad, however. Q. Where did he go with his command after you left the round-house? A. Nowhere; his men scattered in the city. We could not take his guns, and I suppose he didn't think he was obliged to go with us. Q. Do you know how many men he had? A. About a dozen or fifteen at the outside. Then there was a Captain Murphy who offered to show us the way to the arsenal. I only saw one man with him in uniform. He did his duty as well as he could, and piloted us out there. We were strangers in the city, and didn't know where to go, except that we had orders to go out Penn avenue, and did not know where it was. At Sharpsburg we met Major Norris, and went on towards the poor-house. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you present when Major Norris met General Brinton? A. I was present when he got out of his carriage. Q. Did you hear him give any orders? A. No; I was with the guns we were pulling up. He spoke to me, and then went towards General Brinton, and I didn't see him afterwards. He didn't tell me anything particular, and I never heard of any orders given by him, until about three weeks afterwards. Walter G. Wilson, re-called: By the witness: I simply want to make a little correction in my testimony, in regard to the arsenal. I stated I was not aware of any sentinel or sergeant accompanying us. My impression was it was Captain Murphy, of the Jefferson Cavalry, but I have since been informed it was a sergeant of the guard. I simply want to have that matter corrected. E. DeC. Loud, re-called: By the witness: A statement has been made here, in regard to the Sixth regiment, which I wish to correct. It was one of my brigade. They had about one hundred and ninety to two hundred men that night. That company that Captain Ryan testified in regard to had somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty men. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. The company that wanted to lay down their arms? A. Yes; I went in to see about the matter, and I could find nothing of it. The thing had been all quieted over, and when the troops were ordered out, they obeyed as promptly as any other troops. Q. Who was the captain of that command? A. There was no captain, but a lieutenant. Q. What was his name? A. I don't remember now. I thought it was nothing but a company growl. This company was peculiarly situated. It had a position where they could see nothing of what was going on. I heard from my adjutant general that something was going on--some disturbance--and I went to see about it; but the whole thing was quieted over. The men said they understood that all were going out, and they thought they might as well go out as anybody else, as they had not any chance to get anything to eat. They couldn't defend themselves, and they got tired, and they had nothing to eat. I didn't attach any importance to it, because when I took them out on the street they stood up to their work as well as the rest of them. At this point, the committee adjourned to three o'clock, P.M. SAME DAY. MONDAY, _March 25, 1878_. Pursuant to adjournment, the committee re-assembled at three o'clock, P.M., this day, in the St. Cloud hotel, and continued the taking of testimony. * * * * * Alexander Gilchrist, _sworn by the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where do you reside? A. At No. 1806, Webster street. Q. Were you with General Brinton at Pittsburgh, in July last? A. I was. Q. In what capacity? A. Division orderly. Q. Were you stationed on Saturday afternoon, when the firing occurred, at Twenty-eighth street. A. At the telegraph office. Q. Who placed you there? A. I was placed there by order of General Brinton, who told me to place his division flag out there. I did so. The troops were marched towards Twenty-eighth street. He told me if any dispatches came, to bring them down to him. I put the division flag out there, and kept it out until five and a half o'clock. Then I understood from Major Baugh that the mob was trying to pull the flag down, and he told me to take it down, and put it in the Union depot. I did so. He then told me to get some men of the Black Hussars, and keep guard over some ammunition there. We did so, until two o'clock Sunday morning. Q. How many of the Black Hussars were with you? A. Four or five were there. We kept guard there until very near daybreak. At that time the men said they were going to get something to eat, and I said I would remain until they came back. But no one came back. I then went to major Baugh, and said nobody was on guard but myself over the ammunition, and he said they had shifted for themselves, and I thought I had better do so. I addressed him as major, and he said don't address me as major. He wanted me to drop that. I remained until the people came out of church, and I said I was not going to stay there any longer by myself. I said I was going to try to find out where the division was, and I asked a police officer where the mayor's office was. He said down the street. I said what street. I didn't know the streets. He said, oh, you are one of those Philadelphians. I said yes. One of those damned Philadelphians. He said, down the street, and any person can tell you where it is. I went down to a stone building, and asked a citizen if that was the mayor's office, and he said it was. I went inside, and asked somebody if he could tell where the mayor was, and he said yes, in the back room. I went in and asked a man if he was the mayor. He said he was. I asked if he could tell me where the Philadelphia division was. He said, do you mean General Pearson's division. I said no; General Brinton's division. He said, I don't know anything about that damned division. They ought to be all burned or killed, or something of that kind. Q. You were certain it was Mayor McCarthy? A. He was pointed out to me by an officer. Q. Did you ask him? A. I asked if he was the mayor of the city, and he said he was. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. What did he say? A. I asked him if he could tell me where the Philadelphia division was, and he said he didn't know anything about the division--that they ought to be all killed or in hell, and I thanked him and came away, and went down to Union depot again. That was just before they set fire to it. I stood there a few minutes. At that time the fire was caught to the telegraph office, adjoining the sheds. I thought probably I could get in and get the division flag, but the flames got in that far. I went in, and counted four officers and a sergeant of police. I went to go up stairs, and the sergeant asked where I was going. I said I wanted to get the division flag. He said you just get out of here, or I will break my club over your damned neck. I tried two or three times, and every time I was told I couldn't go up. Q. Where was this ammunition stored that you guarded during Saturday night? A. It was in the cellar, at the Union depot. Q. You remained there until two o'clock Sunday, guarding it? A. Yes. Q. When you left, was there anybody guarding it? A. No. Nobody was there at all. Every person had cleared out. Q. Did Captain Breck come there at any time during Sunday, to move the ammunition? A. Not that I saw. Q. Was any attempt made to move the ammunition while you were there? A. No; the ammunition was all burned up. On Saturday night, I was standing at the gate there, as you go into Union depot; two citizens were standing there talking, and they said it would be the roughest day's work for the Philadelphia militia coming there; that not a damned one would go back alive. Q. How were they dressed? A. They looked to me to be like business men. Q. From their dress, you would think they were? A. Yes. Q. Did they say anything else? A. No; that is all I heard. I was standing right behind them at the time. By Senator Reyburn: Q. Whereabouts was the division head-quarters? A. At the telegraph office. Q. At Union depot? A. No; a little office at the far end of the sheds, towards Twenty-eighth street. General Latta was sending telegraphs from there. Q. Was it at the end of the sheds connected with Union depot, or down in the yard further? A. Say there is Union depot, then there is a line of sheds running down towards Twenty-eight street, and there is a little off sort of place there, and a telegraph office on the first floor. Q. Some distance from Twenty-eighth street? A. I don't know how far Twenty-eighth street is. Q. Was it attached to the sheds? A. I would not say that for certain, but I think it was. * * * * * Wilson Norris, _sworn by the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. State your residence, and what official capacity you were acting in, in July last? A. I live here in Philadelphia. In July last, I was going from Beaver to Pittsburgh, when the riots broke out. General Latta requested me to accompany him. At that time I was going west to visit Colonel Quay. I did accompany him to Pittsburgh, and during the night the riot broke out. The general then requested me to stay. I was there during the whole period of the riot, and subsequently. It would be a long story, to go on and tell all I saw, but I will be glad to answer any questions. Q. Did you convey any orders, or visit General Brinton at any time to convey any orders to him from General Latta? A. In this way. In the morning when we heard that General Brinton had escaped from the round-house, Captain Aull was there, and an order was given to him to convey to General Brinton. No other officers were around, and I volunteered to go and find General Brinton, if I could. I knew very well that General Brinton, perhaps, would not respect my order if I did convey it, and therefore it was mentioned in the order to Captain Aull, that he should consult with me about the situation. I started with Colonel Stewart in a carriage, and reached General Brinton beyond Sharpsburg, just on the hill. I explained the purport of the order sent by Captain Aull, and by the way, the order was but a sequence of other orders he had received during the night. He told me he had not taken the direction he was ordered to go, because he wanted to escape to the hills and entrench, where he could protect himself from the mob. I suggested to him to return to the town of Sharpsburg, but he said there was a worse feeling, or as bad a feeling manifested there as in Pittsburgh, and that directly he would have two hundred and fifty thousand people of the county about him. We had some conversation why he didn't take the route to the east, and he said he had been followed by a large crowd of men. I knew nothing about that, because I saw no armed men on the way to him. General Brinton certainly understood the purport of the order given to Captain Aull, because his conversation evidenced that--there is no question about that. As to the propriety of his going the way he did, going on his own discretion, I have nothing to say about that. But he certainly knew what the purport of the order was, which was that he was to make a junction with Colonel Guthrie, and the other troops at East Liberty. Q. Were you present when the order was given to Captain Aull by General Latta? A. Yes. Q. Was any direction given to him as to what route he should take to reach General Brinton? A. I don't remember any further, than by the most immediate route. I passed Captain Aull myself on the way; as he had a buggy, I presumed he would reach there before we did. Q. How were you traveling? A. In a cab. I then overtook General Brinton, and told him if he would come back to Sharpsburg, that we might possibly get provisions and ammunition to him. That was his great complaint. I suggested that cars were running to and fro--and while I was there a Pullman train was just passing. He didn't even stop to consult with me or stop his command until it was stopped by the surgeon's request--stopped to take a ball out. I walked at least a mile with General Brinton, leaving the carriage behind. I know it must have been that far, from the distance I had to walk back. I wanted him to go back, but he said he would wait half a mile beyond--on the hill beyond, but I ascertained afterward he didn't stop there. I immediately went back. Q. From what point did you start when you started to reach General Brinton? A. From Union depot; and I came back to Union depot. Q. What time of the day was it? A. I won't be positive about that. I cannot say what time. I will not be positive--probably about eight or nine o'clock in the morning. It was shortly after their exit from the round-house. It was not a very great length of time afterwards. Q. What time did you learn of their exit from the round-house? A. I presume it was about half an hour before I started--possibly it might have been three quarters. Q. How did the news reach you? A. It came from Captain Breck. He came down the track with some eight or nine men--no, I think the first information we got was from Captain Aull. He said he had seen the command start down the street, and we discredited it, and went down to make some inquiries, and discovered Captain Breck, and he said it was so. Then the suggestion was made that the command be reached by somebody, and then Captain Aull and myself were sent. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Did you see any messages or dispatches while in the round-house from General Brinton to General Latta? A. Yes. Q. How many. A. I should think three or four, carried by the messenger that was passing to and fro. Q. Can you give the purport of those messages? A. Well they were chiefly calling for provisions and for ammunition, and explaining the situation. Q. Did he ask for any assistance? A. I believe he did. I didn't see what assistance could have been furnished him just then, further than to supply him with ammunition and provisions, and every effort was made to do that. Q. Did he ask about the regular troops--whether they were on the way? A. I really don't recollect. He possibly may have done so--I cannot say at this time. I think there was some information given about the coming of Colonel Rodgers and other troops from the east and General Huidekoper's command from the north. I think there may have been some inquiries about that. I think possibly there were. Q. Did you infer from any of those messages received from General Brinton that his men were in a demoralized condition or inefficient? A. From one portion of them. There was a dispatch that conveyed that information in unmistakable terms. I remember that distinctly, for I remember the regiment he named. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. What regiment did he name? A. I would rather not say that, unless you insist. Q. Was it the Sixth regiment? A. Yes. I think myself from the temper of the people about there, that General Brinton would have been ordered to take the street, had it not been for that dispatch. So far as I was personally concerned, I thought it was a piece of folly to remain there. I was satisfied, at any time, if a proper movement had been made that he could have gotten out. I saw the mob probably better than they did themselves--I saw a great deal of it--in the night and in the morning. It was very much worse in the morning than in the night, because it was aflame with rum, and utterly irresponsible at that time. I think it just simply exhausted itself. By Mr. Larrabee: Q. Was any one present when you communicated the substance of this order to General Brinton? A. There may have been several officers around. I think there were. Q. Do you remember who? A. I don't, because I walked along half a mile, or a mile, possibly--half a mile at least. I suppose that some of General Brinton's staff officers were around. The conversation was just in the way I tell you. I gave him no direct order, because I doubted whether I had the authority, and he intimated he would not take such information, anyhow. He said if he got a direct order he might move back. I didn't pretend to convey any positive order to him. Q. You say you found the command at Sharpsburg or Claremont? A. Yes. Q. How far is it from Sharpsburg to Claremont? A. I really cannot tell you. Q. How far did he march after you met him? A. I heard some seven or eight miles. I don't know anything about that; but, when I asked where they found him, they told me some seven or eight miles from where I met him. Q. Do you know where he encamped that night? A. I do not. I was in Pittsburgh. By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you with General Latta during Sunday evening? A. Yes. Q. And remained with him until Monday? A. Yes. Q. Did any officer or any person reach General Latta from General Brinton asking for orders, on Sunday evening? A. I saw one or two of his officers, but I have no recollection whether they were after orders or not. Q. Where did you see them? A. At the hotel. Q. The Union Depot? A. No; the Monongahela house. When I came back from General Brinton, the Union Depot hotel had been abandoned. Q. What time did these officers come to the Monongahela house? A. In the evening, about seven o'clock--possibly later. Q. Did they return to General Brinton that night? A. That I cannot say. * * * * * Thompson Lennig, re-called: By Senator Reyburn: Q. You were a private in the artillery corps, Washington Grays? A. Yes; I served as such on that occasion. Q. Were you in the company detailed to clear away the crowd at Twenty-eighth street? A. Yes; after the First regiment had been divided, the rear rank remained on the left hand side of the railroad; and the front rank was marched across the railroad, extending west from Twenty-eighth street, and the Washington Grays, to which I was attached at the time, were taking charge of the Gatlings. We were ordered to come front, march through the two ranks, and take charge of the crossing. We only had nine men and one officer. We had received short notice to leave, and that is all the men we had. We were ordered to push the crowd back with arms aport. It had no effect. They outnumbered us six or eight to one. Then the Weccacoe Legion was ordered up, a company with from twenty to twenty-five men at the outside. The Grays were divided, five men to one side, and four men on the other. We were then ordered to push the crowd back again. Being a little heavier, we succeeded in pushing them back; but they began to grab our pieces, and I saw one of the Grays who had his piece almost taken out of his hand. The crowd then began to draw their pistols. We had received no orders to fire whatever. This man simply retained his piece by using his bayonet, and my impression is he run the man through. His piece was rusty the next day. At that time the pistol firing began at Twenty-eighth street. The mob were all yelling and hooting. I then heard a rifle shot on our right; that is to say, the rear rank of the First regiment, which had been marched toward the hill. At the most, in thirty seconds not a man in our command would have had his piece, they outnumbered us so. Other shots followed, and I think that the general impression was that the command had been given. Every man felt that it was necessary it should come. The shots followed each other, and I think the whole command fired spontaneously. I heard no command to fire, and I don't think any other man in the command did. Q. Could you have heard a command? A. No; the only command I heard was from Colonel Benson, as the First regiment was coming up, and from the evolution which followed, it must have been "four paces left." Colonel Benson has a powerful voice. I only judged what it was from the evolution that followed. All the rioters were yelling and screaming at the same time, and it was utterly impossible to hear any command. Q. How many pistol shots were fired before this shot? A. It would be impossible to say. Q. Generally speaking? A. I think there had been firing, perhaps, two or three minutes. There were a number of cars standing there, and a number of rioters were underneath the cars, and the shots came out from underneath, and many of our men, I have heard, were wounded in the legs. I saw myself men drawing pistols in front of us, and heard them all calling us opprobrious names, and saying that no one would get home. They evidently thought we never would fire at all. As soon as the firing did take place, they scattered completely, and to all intents and purposes, it struck me that the riot was quelled. If there had been a little more determination after that, I think there would have been no further trouble. Q. You were in the round-house? A. Until nine o'clock, then the Washington Grays were ordered out with one of the guns or Gatlings, facing on Liberty street, on the opposite side from Captain Ryan's command, and we were there all night. Q. What was the conduct of the soldiers during the night? A. I saw nothing that was not thoroughly soldierly. This Sixth regiment, of which they speak, was in the paint-shop, and we could not see them where they were. I heard no complaints for want of food, yet, of course, we didn't have food. We had an ample supply of water in the round-house. I heard no complaints for want of food. * * * * * Robert M. Brinton, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were there any of your division that failed to report to you at Pittsburgh, after being ordered out, and if so, why? A. There were quite a number--probably one half of the division. More than one half. They failed to report at Pittsburgh on account of the shortness of the notice they received in Philadelphia. They subsequently followed, however, and a number of them reached, I believe, Walls station--some three hundred and fifty, under Colonel Rodgers. Colonel Lyle, with probably as many men, reported at Altoona, where he was stopped. He reported there and did duty with General Beaver. I believe the only reason they failed to report was because of the impossibility of receiving timely notice. Wherever men failed to report, when we returned, the brigade commanders made strict investigation into the cases, and all those men were called before a regimental court of inquiry. Q. Some evidence has been given before the committee of a detachment who, in coming back, stopped across the river from Harrisburg, and were escorted over the river by some parties in Harrisburg. Was that part of your division? A. I have heard that an officer and some twenty or thirty men were, when we were returning, escorted over the river, and their arms taken away from them. I have had that officer placed under arrest, and a court-martial ordered, and the trial was in progress when, unfortunately, the president of the court tendered his resignation, and his resignation was accepted and forwarded to him, and the court was dissolved. Since then another court has been appointed, and that court is now sitting in the investigation of the conduct of that officer. For the last six months we have had courts-martial going on in the division, and in the case of one officer tried, I think the testimony amounted to twenty-seven pages, closely written matter. The finding was cowardice and absence without leave, and the court said under extenuating circumstances. I reviewed the testimony carefully, and from the testimony couldn't see how cowardice could be substantiated--how that verdict was proper. In regard to being absent without leave, I thought that the testimony was not sufficient to exonerate the officer, although he was ill at the time, as he could have communicated with the commanding officer to know where he was. In every instance where we could detect any omission of duty, we examined into it carefully. Q. Did you ascertain who the privates were with that crowd? A. Yes; and those men will be tried. Q. They have not been tried yet? A. Not to my knowledge. I don't officially know anything about the inquiry until it comes from brigade head-quarters; but I know that proceedings have been instituted against every man we could find that deserted his command or who didn't go out. The pay of this officer who was on trial has been stopped. He has not been paid, and it is hanging in that way until the case is decided. Q. The case you speak of now, as reviewing, is the one alluded to by one of the witnesses--Colonel Benson? A. Yes. Q. Did that detachment afterwards report for duty? A. I think it did. I think it afterwards joined us when the Governor came and opened communication with us at Blairsville. Q. State what time Colonel Norris reached you on Sunday? A. We had crossed the bridge near Sharpsburg, and had gone beyond the limits of the town, and were halted on the side of a stream when T first saw Colonel Norris. He stopped his barouche below and came up and stood along side of me. Colonel Wilson and General Loud were with me at the time. I am not mistaken on the subject. He gave me no orders whatever. I have tried to tax my memory, because it was what I wanted all the time. I thought it was a singular thing, because after our column had marched from the round-house, where it was impossible to get orders, I thought possibly I might get an officer to guide our column, and when I saw Colonel Norris, I was glad to see him, expecting orders. Q. What did he state his mission was? A. His mission was to find out where we were, and to attempt to ration us. That seemed to be his particular mission. So far as giving me any orders or consulting me in regard to them, I positively deny it. Q. Did he state to you that Captain Aull had received an order from General Latta, to communicate to you? A. I don't remember that he did that. I didn't know Captain Aull at the time. He was not on the Governor's staff. I had been on the Governor's staff myself, and I knew no such officer on the staff. Q. Did Captain Norris claim to be acting on the staff of General Latta, or on that of the Governor in any way? Was he a staff officer? A. At that time, no. Q. Did he represent himself to be? A. No, sir; he didn't. Q. Or that he was authorized by the Adjutant General to convey orders? A. Our conversation--I remember the first thing he said, was when we got up, "Bob, my God I am glad to see you;" that was the first expression he used. He asked where I was going to, and I said I was going to get something to eat, and that I had moved up the hill because I didn't want to remain in Sharpsburg, where some of the Fourteenth regiment had been shot, and where I thought there might be further difficulty, it being Sunday, and the men all idle. He walked along with us, and halted with us. We were halted when he joined us. We halted there for some little time. I remember going down and getting a drink out of a brook, and quite a number of men did so also. He walked with us for probably quarter of a mile. I said to him, for Heaven's sake Norris, try to get us some rations and some ammunition. Major Baugh joined us, and I sent him back immediately. I asked him whether he had any orders, and then I told him he would be obliged to go right back to Pittsburgh and get them. Major Baugh went back and got the orders he showed here to-day. Q. Does anything else occur to you? A. Only this; those officers who were with me, they may remember what Colonel Norris said; they may have refreshed their memories. I should like you to re-call those officers who were with me at the time. Q. Captain Aull didn't reach you that day? A. I don't remember to have seen Captain Aull that day. He didn't reach me at all. The orders I received, said to be handed to him for me, were given me one week afterwards, by Colonel Guthrie. If I had received those orders, I should have obeyed them implicitly. * * * * * E. DeC. Loud, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you with General Brinton when Colonel Norris reached him on Sunday? A. I was. Q. State what Colonel Norris said? A. When Colonel Norris came up he jumped out of his barouche, and said what General Brinton has testified to--my God, Bob, I am glad to see you; where are you going--and he came up and shook hands with him. He said he was glad to know that we got out, and said it was a pretty good thing to get out all right. General Brinton asked about rations. We were more interested in that than anything else. We sat down on a rock along by a little run, and talked there awhile. Q. Did you hear him say anything about Captain Aull having received any order from General Latta? A. I don't know him. Q. Did you hear him call his name? A. I don't think I did. I think if there had been anything of the kind I should have noticed it, because I was with General Brinton, and my relations with General Brinton, after we got into the round-house, were closer than any other officer, except the Adjutant General. I was with him--I was with him when the scout came in and went out, and was walking with him all the way out. I was with him from the time my brigade took the right of the line, until Doctor Maris came along, and he got into the carriage with Doctor Maris. I was not away from him five minutes during all the time. * * * * * Walter G. Wilson, re-called: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Were you with General Brinton when Colonel Norris reached him? A. I was standing right alongside of him. Q. State what Colonel Norris said? A. The first remark that Colonel Norris made was, my God, Bob, I am glad to see you alive, and he went on to ask some men as to what had taken place during the night, and said, where are you going? The general said, I am going to get something to eat. He said, I have been promised rations on this side of the river. He said, why don't you stay down in Sharpsburg? When he said, I am informed that there is a worse feeling in Sharpsburg than in any other part of this neighborhood, and I deem it best, if that is the case, to take possession of the hill above, only a short distance, probably a quarter of a mile. He said, I had been offered provisions for my men if I came over here, and I have done so. These men are hungry and tired, and worn but, and they really need food. They went on and had some further conversation in relation to what had taken place during the night. The general asked about some matters in relation to the movements of the troops, I believe. He had received a dispatch from General Latta during the night, announcing that a certain division had been ordered there. Colonel Norris then wanted to know whether he should stay, and the general said no; that he would rather he should go back and get some orders, and, if possible, make an effort to get provisions and ammunition. Q. Did he mention Captain Aull's name? A. He did not. Q. Did you walk along with him? A. I was at no time further away than from your phonographer here, (three or four feet.) We got up from the brook and walked up the road--probably walked a distance of a couple of squares on the road. Then Colonel Norris went back, and said he would use his utmost efforts to communicate with him again, and furnish him with ammunition and rations. Captain Aull's name I never heard mentioned in any way, shape, or form until the night of the 31st of July, when at the Duquesne Club, Colonel Guthrie came up to General Brinton, and said I have got a dispatch for you--the order. By Senator Yutzy: Q. Were you within hearing distance all the time? A. Yes; at no time further away than from this gentlemen here, (the stenographer.) I considered that my post, and was always there ready for anything the general might want. * * * * * H. S. Huidekoper, _sworn by the uplifted hand_: By Mr. Lindsey: Q. Where were you when the news of the Pittsburgh riots reached you? A. I was in Chicago. Q. How did they reach you? A. I got the first news of the riot on Friday evening, I think. I was attending the United States court there, and couldn't leave, but had requested General Latta by letter, early in the week, to notify me by letter if the services of my division were needed, and, relying on that, I waited until Saturday morning, when I saw by the newspapers that my division had been ordered to Pittsburgh. I took the eight o'clock train, sending three telegrams, one to General Latta, that I would be in Pittsburgh on Sunday night; one to my brother for my uniform, and one to the assistant adjutant general of the division to move the division to Rochester, Pennsylvania, and await my arrival. I found afterwards that my request to General Latta had escaped his memory, among the many things he had to look after. Q. What is your rank in the National Guard? A. Major general of the Seventh division, commissioned eight years ago. Q. Where is your residence? A. In Meadville, Pennsylvania. I had command of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth regiments. Q. Who is colonel of each of those regiments? A. The colonel of the Fifteenth regiment is Colonel Carpenter, and of the Seventeenth regiment is Colonel Magee, of Oil City, then lieutenant colonel. Q. Who was your assistant adjutant general? A. John M. Clarke, of Meadville. Q. Is he the one you directed to move the division to Rochester? A. Yes. Q. State what time you arrived at Rochester? A. I arrived at Rochester probably about two o'clock on Sunday morning. Fortunately on the train I met Mr. Layng, general manager of the Fort Wayne road. He was in a private car on his way from Chicago to Sewickley. About four or five o'clock in the afternoon Mr. Layng, at my request, telegraphed to Greeneville an instruction to the troops there to take some ammunition that I had put in Packer's warehouse which had been left over under some requisition I made two years ago in anticipation of some trouble in Mercer county, and bring it with them to Rochester. Q. Five o'clock of what day? A. Saturday afternoon. After that Mr. Layng told me it was impossible to get telegraphic communication with anybody except through the hands of the men who had the wires in charge, and who were rioters. Q. The strikers? A. Yes; it was an exceedingly delicate thing to know how far you could telegraph to the troops, how far you could expose your weakness or want of ammunition, or how far to send your orders, or make any inquiries concerning numbers or dispositions. Q. You arrived at Rochester at what time? A. Two o'clock Sunday morning. Q. What were your movements from that time? A. I kept on the Fort Wayne train, getting out of Mr. Layng's car some twelve miles from Pittsburgh, and got into a car in front of the sleeping-car, and ran into Pittsburgh. The train was stopped at the outer depot and was examined there, and I could see the strikers moving along the cars, and there was quite a large crowd outside. The next time the train stopped, I jumped off--it was about a minute afterwards--and went across the Federal street bridge, and took a back street to the Monongahela house, and went in there to leave a hand-book, and stepped down towards the round-house. There I met General Brown, and called twice for a dispatch, but he didn't answer at once, until he saw who I was. I was in citizen's clothes. I then went in a carriage down to General Latta's head-quarters, in the Union Depot hotel. The room he occupied was on the side of the depot towards the street, and I very much questioned the safety of his position or of his staying there, as it was liable at any moment to be entered. Colonel Norris and Colonel Farr and Colonels Russell, Quay, and Stewart were all present in that room. Colonel Norris took me immediately to the end of the building, and looked out to where we could see the round-house burning. We could see distinctly the flames around it, and in a very little while a bright blaze came up, as if some cars were suddenly struck by the fire, and there was a good deal of noise and firing. He said the Philadelphia troops were in there, and asked if I couldn't get down to relieve them. I then went back and asked about ammunition, and was told it was in the cellar--about twenty boxes of it--and that Colonel Stewart had engaged wagons to remove it, and I went down on a wharf about five o'clock to engage a boat to take the ammunition to Rochester. It was hard to find any person willing to take the ammunition or anything. Most all were with the strikers, except one boat, and the captain of that agreed to take it. We went back, and there was considerable delay about getting the ammunition. I went once or twice to the ordinary telegraph office to get word from the troops, but found I could get nothing, as the wires were in the hands of the strikers. OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC PRINTING AND BINDING, HARRISBURG, PA., _November 4, 1878_. The copy for the latter portion of the testimony was not delivered to me by the official reporter until November 2, 1878, which will account for the delay in the printing of this volume. J. W. JONES, _Superintendent of Public Printing and Binding_.